The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

A STRANGE WORLD

A Novel

BY THE AUTHOR OF

‘LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET’

ETC. ETC. ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. II.

LONDON

JOHN MAXWELL AND CO.

4, SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET

1875

[All rights reserved.]

CONTENTS TO VOL. II.

A STRANGE WORLD

CHAPTER I
‘FAREWELL,’ QUOTH SHE, ‘AND COME AGAIN TO-MORROW.’

The old housekeeper’s eyes were dim as she finished her story of the heir of Penwyn.

‘He was the best of all,’ she said; ‘Mr. Balfour we saw very little of after he grew up, being the youngest to marry and leave home; Mr. James was a kind, easy-going young fellow enough; but Mr. George was everybody’s favourite, and there wasn’t a dry eye among us when the Squire called us together after his illness, and told us how his son had died. “He died like a gentleman—upholding the honour of his Queen and his country, and the name of Penwyn,” said the master, without a tremble in his voice, though it was feebler than before the stroke, “and I am proud to think of him lying in his far-off grave, and if I were not so old I would go over the sea to kneel beside my poor boy’s resting-place before I die. He displeased me once, but we are good friends now, and there will be no cloud between us when we meet in another world.”’

Here Mrs. Darvis was fairly overcome, much to the astonishment of the girl Elspeth, whose uncanny black eyes regarded her with a scornful wonder. Maurice noticed that look.

‘Sweet child,’ he said to himself. ‘What a charming helpmeet you will make for some honest peasant in days to come, with your amiable disposition!’

He had taken his time looking at the old house, and listening to the housekeeper’s story. The sun was low, and he had yet to find a lodging for the night. He had walked far since morning, and was not disposed to retrace his steps to the nearest town, a place called Seacomb, consisting of a long straggling street, with various lateral courts and alleys, a market-place, parish church, lock-up, and five dissenting chapels of various denominations. This Seacomb was a good nine miles from Penwyn Manor.

‘Perhaps you’d like to see the young Squire’s portrait,’ said Mrs. Darvis, when she had dried those tributary tears.

‘The young Squire?’

‘Mr. George. We used to call him the young Squire sometimes.’

‘Yes, I should like to have a look at the poor fellow, now you’ve told me his history.’

‘It hangs in the old Squire’s study. It’s a bit of a room, and I forgot to show it to you just now.’

Maurice followed her across the hall to a small door in a corner, deeply recessed and low, but solid enough to have guarded the Tolbooth, one would suppose. It opened into a narrow room, with one window looking towards the sea. The wainscot was almost black with age, the furniture, old walnut wood, of the same time-darkened hue. There was a heavy old bureau, brass handled and brass clamped; a bookcase, a ponderous writing desk, and one capacious arm-chair, covered with black leather. The high, narrow chimney-piece was in an angle of the room, and above this hung the portrait of George Penwyn.

It was a kit-kat picture of a lad in undress uniform, the face a long oval, fair of complexion, and somewhat feminine in delicacy of feature, the eyes dark blue. The rest of the features, though sufficiently regular, were commonplace enough; but the eyes, beautiful alike in shape and colour, impressed Maurice Clissold. They were eyes which might have haunted the fancy of girlhood, with the dream of an ideal lover; eyes in whose somewhat melancholy sweetness a poet would have read some strange life-history. The hair, a pale auburn, hung in a loosely waving mass over the high narrow brow, and helped to give a picturesque cast to the patrician-looking head.

‘A nice face,’ said Maurice, critically. ‘There is a little look of my poor friend James Penwyn, but not much. Poor Jim had a gayer, brighter expression, and had not those fine blue-grey eyes. I fancy Churchill Penwyn must be a plain likeness of his uncle George. Not so handsome, but more intellectual-looking.’

‘Yes, sir,’ assented Mrs. Darvis. ‘The present Squire is something like his uncle, but there’s a harder look in his face. All the features seem cut out sharper; and then his eyes are quite different. Mr. George had his mother’s eyes; she was a Tresillian, and one of the handsomest women in Cornwall.’

‘I’ve seen a face somewhere which that picture reminds me of, but I haven’t the faintest notion where,’ said Maurice. ‘In another picture, perhaps. Half one’s memories of faces are derived from pictures, and they flash across the mind suddenly, like a recollection of another world. However, I mustn’t stand prosing here, while the sun goes down yonder. I have to find a lodging before nightfall. What is the nearest place, village, or farmhouse, where I can get a bed, do you think, Mrs. Darvis?’

‘There’s the “Bell,” in Penwyn village.’

‘No good. I’ve tried there already. The landlady’s married daughter is home on a visit, and they haven’t a bed to give me for love or money.’

Mrs. Darvis lapsed into meditation.

‘The nearest farmhouse is Trevanard’s, at Borcel End. They might give you a bed there, for the place is large enough for a barrack, but they are not the most obliging people in the world, and they are too well off to care about the money you may pay them for the accommodation.’

‘How far is Borcel End?’

‘Between two and three miles.’

‘Then I’ll try my luck there, Mrs. Darvis,’ said Maurice, cheerily. ‘It lies between that and sleeping under the open sky.’

‘I wish I could offer you a bed, sir; but in my position——’

‘As custodian such an offer would be a breach of good faith to your employers. I quite understand that, Mrs. Darvis. I come here as a stranger to you, and I thank you kindly for having been so obliging as to show me the house.’

He dropped a couple of half-crowns into her hand as he spoke, but these Mrs. Darvis rejected most decidedly.

‘Ours has never been what you can call a show place, sir, and I’ve never looked for that kind of perquisite.’

‘Come, young one,’ said Maurice, after taking leave of the friendly old housekeeper, ‘you can put me into the right road to Borcel End, and you shall have one of these for your reward.’

Elspeth’s black eyes had watched the rejection of the half-crowns with unmistakable greed. Her sharp face brightened at Maurice’s promise.

‘I’ll show you the way, sir,’ she said; ‘I know every step of it.’

‘Yes, the lass is always roaming about, like a wild creature, over the hills, and down by the sea,’ said Mrs. Darvis, with a disapproving air. ‘I don’t think she knows how to read or write, or has as much Christian knowledge as the old jackdaw in the servants’ hall.’

‘I know things that are better than reading and writing,’ said Elspeth, with a grin.

‘What kind of things may those be?’ asked Maurice.

‘Things that other people don’t know.’

‘Well, my lass, I won’t trouble you by sounding the obscure depths of your wisdom. I only want the straightest road to Trevanard’s farm. He is a tenant of this estate, I suppose, Mrs. Darvis?’

‘Yes, sir. Michael Trevanard’s father was a tenant of the old Squire’s before my time. Old Mrs. Trevanard is still living, though stone-blind, and hardly right in her head, I believe.’

They had reached the lobby door by this time, the chief hall door being kept religiously bolted and barred during the absence of the family.

‘I shall come and see you again, Mrs. Darvis, most likely, before I leave this part of the country,’ said Maurice, as he crossed the threshold. ‘Good evening.’

‘You’ll be welcome at any time, sir. Good evening.’

Elspeth led the way across the lawn, with a step so light and swift that it was as much as Maurice could do to keep pace with her, tired as he was, after a long day afoot. He followed her into the pine wood. The trees were not thickly planted, but they were old and fine, and their dense foliage looked inky black against a primrose-coloured sky. A narrow footpath wound among the tall black trunks, only a few yards from the edge of the cliff, which was poorly guarded by a roughly fashioned timber railing, the stakes wide apart. The vast Atlantic lay below them, a translucent green in the clear evening light, melting into purple far away on the horizon.

Maurice paused to look back at Penwyn Manor House, the grave, substantial old dwelling-house which had seen so little change since the days of the Tudors. High gable ends, latticed windows gleaming in the last rays of the setting sun; stone walls moss-darkened and ivy-shrouded, massive porch, with deep recesses, and roomy enough for a small congregation; mighty chimney-stacks, and quaint old iron weathercock, with a marvellous specimen of the ornithological race pointing its gilded beak due west.

‘Poor old James! what good days we might have had here!’ sighed Maurice, as he looked back at the fair domain. It seemed a place saved out of the good old world, and was very pleasant to contemplate after the gimcrack palaces of the age we live in—in which all that architecture can conjure from the splendour of the past is more or less disfigured by the tinsel of the present.

‘Dear old James, to think that he wanted to marry that poor little actress girl, and bring her to reign down here, in the glow and glory of those stained-glass windows—gorgeous with the armorial devices of a line of county families! Innocent, simple-hearted lad! wandering about like a prince in a fairy tale, ready to fall in love with the first pretty girl he saw by the roadside, and to take her back to his kingdom.’

‘If you want to see Trevanard’s farm before dark you must come on, sir,’ said Elspeth.

Maurice took the hint, and followed at his briskest pace. They were soon out of the pine grove, which they left by a little wooden gate, and on the wild wide hills, where the distant sheep-bell had an eerie sound in the still evening air.

Even the gables of the Manor House disappeared presently as they went down a dip in the hills. Far off in a green hollow, Maurice saw some white buildings—scattered untidily near a patch of water, which reflected the saffron-hued evening sky.

‘That’s Trevanard’s,’ said Elspeth, pointing to this spot.

‘I thought as much,’ said Maurice, ‘then you need go no further. You’ve fairly earned your fee.’

He gave her the half-crown. The girl turned the coin over with a delighted look before she put it in her pocket.

‘I’ll go to Borcel End with you,’ she said. ‘I’d as lief be on the hills as at home—sooner, for grandmother is not over-pleasant company.’

‘But you’d better go back now, my girl, or it’ll be dark long before you reach home.’

Elspeth laughed, a queer impish cachinnation, which made Maurice feel rather uncomfortable.

‘You don’t suppose I’m afraid of the dark,’ she said, in her shrill young voice, so young and yet so old in tone. ‘I know every star in the sky. Besides, it’s never dark at this time of year. I’ll go on to Borcel End with you. May be you mayn’t get accommodated there, and then I can show you a near way across the hills to Penwyn village. You might get shelter at one of the cottages anyhow.’

‘Upon my word you are very obliging,’ said Maurice, surprised by this show of benevolence upon the damsel’s part.

‘Do you know anything about this Borcel End?’ he asked, presently, when they were going down into the valley.

‘I’ve never been inside it,’ answered Elspeth, glibly, more communicative now than she had been an hour or two ago, when Churchill questioned her about the house of Penwyn. ‘Mrs. Trevanard isn’t one to encourage a poor girl like me about her place. She’s a rare hard one, they say, and would pinch and scrape for a sixpence; yet dresses fine on Sundays, and lives well. There’s always good eating and drinking at Borcel End, folks say. I’ve heard tell as it was a gentleman’s house once, before old Squire Penwyn bought it, and that there was a fine park round the house. There’s plenty of trees now, and a garden that has all gone to ruin. The gentleman that owned Borcel spent all his money, people say, and old Squire Penwyn bought the place cheap, and turned it into a farm, and it’s been in the hands of the Trevanards ever since, and they’re rich enough to buy the place three times over, people say, if Squire Penwyn would sell it.’

‘I don’t suppose I shall get a very warm welcome if this Mrs. Trevanard is such a disagreeable person,’ said Maurice, beginning to feel doubtful as to the wisdom of asking hospitality at Borcel End.

‘Oh, I don’t know about that. She’s civil enough to gentlefolks, I’ve heard say. It’s only her servants and such like she’s so stiff with. You can but try.’

They were at the farm by this time. The old house stood before them—a broad stretch of greensward in front of it, with a pool of blackish-looking water in the middle, on which several broods of juvenile ducks were swimming gaily.

The house was large, the walls rough-cast, with massive timber framework. There was a roomy central porch, also of plaster and timber, and this and a projecting wing at each end of the house gave a certain importance to the building. Some relics of its ancient gentility still remained, to show that Borcel End had not always been the house of a tenant farmer. A coat of arms, roughly cut on a stone tablet over the front door, testified to its former owner’s pride of birth; and the quadrangular range of stables, stone-built, and more important than the house, indicated those sporting tastes which might have helped to dissipate the fortunes of a banished and half-forgotten race. But Borcel End, in its brightest day, had never been such a mansion as the old Tudor Manor House of Penwyn. There was a homeliness in the architecture which aspired to neither dignity nor beauty. Low ceilings, square latticed windows, dormers in the roof, and heavy chimney-stacks. The only beauty which the place could have possessed at its best was the charm of rusticity—an honest, simple English home. To-day, however, Borcel End was no longer at its best. The stone quadrangle, where the finest stud of hunters in the county had been lodged, was now a straw-yard for cattle; one side of the house was overshadowed by a huge barn, built out of the débris of the park wall; a colony of jovial pigs disported themselves in a small enclosure which had once been a maze. A remnant of hedgerow, densest yew, still marked the boundary of this ancient pleasance, but all the rest had vanished beneath the cloven hoof of the unclean animal.

Though the farmyard showed on every side the tokens of agricultural prosperity, the house itself had a neglected air. The plaster walls, green and weather-stained, presented the curious blended hues of a Stilton cheese in prime condition, the timber seemed perishing for want of a good coat of paint. Poultry were pecking about close under the latticed windows, and even in the porch, and a vagabond pigling was thrusting his black nose in among the roots of one solitary rose bush which still lingered on the barren turf. Borcel End, seen in this fading light, was hardly a homestead to attract the traveller.

‘I don’t think much of your Borcel End,’ said Maurice, with a disparaging air. ‘However, here goes for a fair trial of west-country hospitality.’

CHAPTER II
‘O’ER ALL THERE HUNG A SHADOW AND A FEAR.’

Mr. Clissold entered the porch, scattering the affrighted fowls right and left. As they sped cackling away, the house door, which had stood ajar, was opened wider by a middle-aged woman, who looked at the intruder frowningly. ‘We never buy anything of pedlars,’ she said, sharply. ‘It’s no use coming here.’

‘I’m not a pedlar, and I haven’t anything to sell. I am going through Cornwall on a walking tour, and want to find a place where I could stop for a week or so, and look about the country. I am prepared to pay a fair price for a clean homely lodging. The housekeeper at Penwyn Manor told me to try here.’

‘Then she sent you on a fool’s errand,’ replied the woman; ‘we don’t take lodgers.’

‘Not as a rule perhaps, but you might strain a point in my favour, I dare say.’

Maurice Clissold had a pleasant voice and a pleasant smile. Mrs. Trevanard looked at him doubtfully, softened in spite of herself by his manner. And then no Trevanard was ever above earning an honest penny. They had not grown rich by refusing chances of small profits.

‘Come, mother,’ cried a cheery voice from within, while she was hesitating, ‘you can ask the gentleman to come in and sit down a bit, anyhow. That won’t make us nor break us.’

‘You can walk in and sit down, sir, if you like,’ said Mrs. Trevanard, with a somewhat unwilling air.

Maurice crossed the threshold, and found himself in a large stone-paved room, which had once been the hall, and was now the living room. The staircase, with its clumsy, black-painted balustrades, shaped like gouty legs, occupied one side of the room; on the other yawned the mighty chimney, with a settle on each side of the wide hearth, a cosy retreat on winter’s nights. The glow of the fire had a comfortable look even on this midsummer evening.

A young man—tall, broad-shouldered, good-looking, clad in a suit of velveteen which gave him something the air of a gamekeeper—stood near the hearth cleaning a gun. He it was who had spoken just now—Martin Trevanard, the only son of the house, and about the only living creature who had any influence with his mother. Pride ruled her, religion, or bigotry, had power over her, gold was the strongest influence of all. But of all the mass of humanity there was but one unit she cared for besides herself, and that one was Martin.

‘Sit down and make yourself at home, sir,’ said the young man, heartily. ‘You’ve walked far, I dare say.’

‘I have,’ answered Maurice, ‘but I don’t want to rest anywhere until I am sure that I can get a night’s shelter. There was no room for me at the “Bell” at Penwyn, but I left my knapsack there, thinking I should be forced to go back to the village anyhow. It was an afterthought coming on here. Oh, by the way, there’s a girl outside, the lodge-keeper’s daughter, who has been my guide so far, and wants to know my fate before she goes home. What can you do with me, Mrs. Trevanard? I’m not particular. Give me a truss of clean hay in one of your barns, if you’re afraid to have me in the house.’

‘Don’t be ill-natured, old lady,’ said the young man, ‘the gentleman is a gentleman. One can see that with half an eye.’

‘That’s all very well, Martin; but what will your father say to our taking in a stranger, without so much as knowing his name?’

‘My name is Clissold,’ said the applicant, taking a card out of his pocket-book and throwing it on the polished beechwood table, the only handsome piece of furniture in the room. A massive oblong table, big enough for twelve or fourteen people to sit at. ‘There are my name and address. And so far as payment in advance goes,’—he put a sovereign down beside the card—‘there’s for my night’s accommodation and refreshment.’

‘Put your money in your pocket, sir. You’re a friend of Mr. Penwyn’s, I suppose?’ asked Mrs. Trevanard, still doubtful.

‘I know the present Mr. Penwyn, but I cannot call myself his friend. The poor young fellow who was murdered, James Penwyn, was my nearest and dearest friend, my adopted brother.’

‘Let the gentleman stop, mother. We’ve rooms enough, and to spare, in this gloomy old barrack. A fresh face always brightens us up a little, and it’s nice to hear how the world goes on. Father’s always satisfied when you are. You can put the gentleman in that old room at the end of the corridor. You needn’t be frightened, sir, there are no ghosts at Borcel End,’ added Martin Trevanard, laughing.

His mother still hesitated—but after a pause she said, ‘Very well, sir. You can stop to-night, and as long as you please afterwards at a fair price—say a guinea a week for eating, drinking, and sleeping, and a trifle for the servant when you go away.’

Even in consenting the woman seemed to have a lingering reluctance, as if she were giving assent to something which she felt should have been refused.

‘Your terms are moderation itself, madam, and I thank you. I’ll send away my small guide.’

He went out to the porch where Elspeth sat waiting—no doubt a listener to the conversation. Maurice rewarded her devotion with an extra sixpence, and dismissed her. Away she sped through the gathering gloom, light of foot as a young fawn. Maurice felt considerably relieved by the comfortable adjustment of the lodging question. He seated himself in an arm-chair by the hearth, and stretched out his legs in the ruddy glow, with a blissful sense of repose.

‘Is there such a thing as a lad about the place who would go to the “Bell” at Penwyn to fetch my knapsack for a consideration?’ he asked.

There was a cowboy who would perform that service, it seemed. Martin went out himself to look for the rustic Mercury.

‘He’s a good-natured lad, my son,’ said Mrs. Trevanard, ‘but full of fancies. That comes of idleness, and too much education, his father says. His grandmother yonder never learned to read or write and ’twas she and her husband made Borcel End what it is.’

Following the turn of Mrs. Trevanard’s head, Maurice perceived that an object which in the obscurity of the room he had taken for a piece of furniture was in reality a piece of humanity—a very old woman, dressed in dark garments, with only a narrow white border peeping from under a cowl-shaped black silk cap, a dingy red handkerchief pinned across her shoulders, and two bony hands, whose shrivelled fingers moved with a mechanical regularity in the process of stocking knitting.

‘Ay,’ said a quivering voice. ‘I can’t read or write—that’s to say I couldn’t even when I had my sight—but between us, Michael and I made Borcel what it is. Young people don’t understand the old ways—they have servants to wait upon ’em, and play the harpsichord—but little good comes of it.’

‘Is she blind?’ asked Maurice of the younger Mrs. Trevanard, in a whisper.

The old woman’s quick ear caught the question.

‘Stone blind, sir, for the last eighteen years. But the Lord has been good to me. I’ve a comfortable home and kind children, and they don’t turn me out of doors, though I’m such a useless creature.’

A gloomy figure in that dark corner beyond the glow of the fire. Maurice felt that the room was less comfortable somehow, since he had discovered the presence of this old woman, with her sightless orbs, and never-resting fingers, long and lean, weaving her endless web, gloomy as Clotho herself.

A plump, ruddy-cheeked maid-servant came bustling in with preparations for supper, making an agreeable diversion after this sad little episode. She lighted a pair of tall tallow candles in tall brass candlesticks, which feebly illumined the large low room. The wainscoted walls were blackened by smoke and time, and from the cross-beams that sustained the low ceiling hung a grove of hams, while flitches of bacon adorned the corners, where there was less need of headway. Every object in the room belonged to the useful rather than the beautiful. Yet there was something pleasant to Maurice’s unaccustomed eye in the homely old-world comfort of the place.

He took advantage of the light to steal a glance at the face of his hostess, as she helped the servant to lay the cloth and place the viands on the table. Bridget Trevanard was about fifty years of age, but there were few wrinkles on the square brow, or about the eyes and mouth. She was tall, buxom, and broad-shouldered; a woman who looked as if she had few feminine weaknesses, either moral or physical. The muscular arm and broad open chest betokened an almost virile strength. Her skin was bright and clear, her nose broad and thick, but fairly modelled of its kind, her under lip full, and firm as if wrought in iron, the upper lip long, straight, and thin. Her eyes were dark brown, bright and hard, with that sharp penetrating look which is popularly supposed to see through deal boards, and even stone walls on occasion. So at least thought the servants at Borcel End.

A model farmer’s wife, this Mrs. Trevanard, a severe mistress, yet not unjust or unkind, a proud woman, and in her own particular creed something of a zealot. A woman who loved money, not so much for its own sake, as because it served the only ambition she had ever cherished, namely, to be more respectable than her neighbours. Wealth went a long way towards this superior respectability, therefore did Mrs. Trevanard toil and spin, and never cease from labour in the pursuit of gain. She was the motive power of Borcel End. Her superlative energy kept Michael Trevanard, a somewhat lazy man by nature, a patient slave at the mill. Martin was the only creature at Borcel who escaped her influence. For him life meant the indulgence of his own fancies, with just so much work as gave him an appetite for his meals. He would drive the waggon to the mill, or superintend the men at hay-making and harvest. He rather liked attending market, and was a good hand at a bargain, but to the patient drudgery of every-day cares young Trevanard had a rooted objection. He was good-looking, good-natured, walked well, sang well, whistled better than any other man in the district, and was a general favourite. People said that the good blood of the old Trevanards showed in young Martin.

CHAPTER III
‘HE COMETH NOT,’ SHE SAID.

When the supper-table was ready, the servant girl ran to the porch and rang a large bell, which was kept under one of the benches—a bell that pealed out shrilly over the silent fields. This summons brought home Michael Trevanard, who appeared in about five minutes, pulling down his shirt-sleeves, and carrying his coat over his arm, while some stray wisps of hay which hung about his hair and clothes indicated that he had but that moment left the yard where they were building a huge stack, which Maurice had seen looming large through the dusk as he approached Borcel.

‘We’ve stacked the fourteen acre piece, mother,’ said the farmer, as he pulled on his coat, ‘and a fine stack it is, too, as sweet as a hazel nut. No fear of mildew this year. And now I’ll give myself a wash——’

He stopped, surprised at beholding a stranger standing by his hearth. Maurice had risen to receive the master of the house.

Martin explained the traveller’s presence.

‘We’ve taken to lodging-letting since you’ve been out, father,’ he said, in his easy way. ‘This gentleman wants to stay here and to look about the country round for a few days, and as mother thought he’d be company for me, and knew you wouldn’t have any objection, she said yes. Mr. Clissold, that’s the gentleman’s name, is a friend of the family up yonder.’ An upward jerk of Martin’s head indicated the Manor House.

‘Any friend of the Squire’s, or any one your mother thinks proper to accommodate, my lad, she’s missus here,’ answered Mr. Trevanard. ‘You’re kindly welcome, sir.’

The farmer went out to some back region, whence was immediately heard an energetic pumping and splashing, and a noise as of a horse being rubbed down, after which Mr. Trevanard reappeared, lobster-like of complexion, and breathing hard after his rapid exertions.

He was a fine-looking man, with a face which might fairly be supposed to show the blood of the Trevanards, for the features were of a patrician type, and the broad open brow inspired at once respect and confidence. That candid countenance belonged to a man too incapable of deceit to be capable of suspicion; a man whom an artful child might cheat with impunity, a man who could never have grown rich unaided.

Mr. and Mrs. Trevanard, their son, and their guest, sat down to supper without delay; but the old blind mother still kept her seat in the shadowy corner, and ate her supper apart. It consisted only of a basin of broth, sprinkled with chopped parsley, which the old woman sipped slowly, while the rest were eating their substantial meal.

Maurice had eaten nothing since noon, and did ample justice to the lordly round of corned beef, and home-cured chine, the freshly gathered lettuces, and even the gooseberry pie and clotted cream. He and Martin talked all supper-time, while the house-mother carved, and the farmer abandoned himself to the pleasures of the table, and drank strong cider with easy enjoyment after the toilsome day.

‘There’s no place like a hay-field for making a man thirsty,’ he said, by way of apology, after one of his deep draughts; ‘and I can’t drink the cat-lap mother sends to the men.’

Martin talked of field sports and boating. He had a little craft of his own, four or five tons burden, and was passionately fond of the water. By and by the conversation drifted round to the Squire of Penwyn.

‘He rides well,’ said Martin, ‘but I don’t believe he’s over-fond of hunting, though he subscribes handsomely to the hounds. I never knew such a fellow for doing everything liberally. He’s bound to be popular, for he’s the best master they ever had at the Manor.’

‘And is he popular?’ asked Maurice.

‘Well, I hardly know what to say about that. I only know that he ought to be. People are so hard to please. There are some say they liked the old Squire best, though he wasn’t half so generous, and didn’t keep any company worth speaking of. He had a knack of talking to people and making himself one of them that went a long way. And then some people remember Mr. George, and seem to have a notion that this man is an interloper. He oughtn’t to have come into the property, they say. Providence never could have meant the son of the youngest son to have Penwyn. They’re as full of fancies as an egg is full of meat in our parts.’

‘So it seems. Mrs. Penwyn is liked, I suppose?’

‘Yes, she made friends with the poor people in no time. And then she’s a great beauty; people go miles to see her when she rides to covert with her husband. There’s a sister, too, still prettier to my mind.’

Martin promised to show his new friend all that was worth seeing for twenty miles round Borcel. He would have the dog-cart ready early next morning, directly after breakfast, in fact, and six o’clock was breakfast-time at the farm. Maurice was delighted with the friendly young fellow, and thought that he had stumbled upon a very agreeable household.

Mrs. Trevanard was somewhat stern and repellent in manner, no doubt, but she was not absolutely uncivil, and Mr. Clissold felt that he should be able to get on with her pretty well.

She had said grace before meat, and she stopped the two young men in their talk presently, and offered a thanksgiving after the meal. It was a long grace, Methodistical in tone, with an allusion to Esau’s mess of pottage, which was brought in as a dreadful example of gluttony.

After this ceremonial Mrs. Trevanard went upstairs to superintend the preparation of the stranger’s apartment. The grandmother vanished at the same time, spirited away by the serving wench, who led her out by a little door that opened near her corner, and the three men drew round the hearth, lighted their pipes, and smoked and talked in a very friendly fashion for the next half-hour or so. They were talking merrily enough when Mrs. Trevanard came downstairs again, candle in hand. She had taken out one of the old silver candlesticks which had been part of her dower, in order to impress the visitor with a proper notion of her respectability.

‘Your room’s ready, Mr. Clissold,’ she said, ‘and here’s your bedroom candle.’

Maurice took the hint, and bade his new friends good night. He followed Mrs. Trevanard up the broad, bulky old staircase, and to the end of a corridor. The room into which she led him was large, and had once been handsome, but some barbarian had painted the oak paneling pink, and the wood carving over the fireplace had been defaced by the industrious knives of several generations of schoolboys; there was a good deal of broken glass in the lattices, and a general air of dilapitude. A fire burned briskly in the wide basket-shaped grate, and, though it brightened the room, made these traces of decay all the more visible.

‘It’s a room we never use,’ said Mrs. Trevanard, ‘so we haven’t cared to spend money upon it. There’s always enough money wanted for repairs, and we haven’t need to waste any upon fanciful improvements. The place is dry enough, for I take care to open the windows on sunny days, and there’s nothing better than air and sun to keep a room dry. I had the fire lighted to-night for cheerfulness’ sake.’

‘You are very kind,’ replied Maurice, pleased to see his knapsack on a chair by the bed, ‘and the room will do admirably. It looks the pink of cleanliness.’

‘I don’t harbour dirt, even in unused rooms,’ answered Mrs. Trevanard. ‘It needs a mistress’s eye to keep away cobwebs and vermin, but I’ve never spared myself trouble that way. Good night, sir.’

‘Good night, Mrs. Trevanard. By the way, you’ve no ghosts here, I think your son said?’

‘I hope both you and he know better than to believe any such rubbish, sir.’

‘Of course; only this room looks the very picture of a haunted chamber, and if I were capable of believing in ghosts I should certainly lie awake on the look-out for one to-night.’

‘Those whose faith is surely grounded have no such fancies, sir,’ replied Mrs. Trevanard, severely, and closed the door without another word.

‘The room looks haunted, for all that,’ muttered Maurice, and then involuntarily repeated those famous lines of Hood’s,—

‘O’er all there hung a shadow and a fear;

A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,

And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,

The place is haunted!’

The bedstead was a four-poster, with tall, spirally twisted posts, and some dark drapery, shrunken with age, and too small for the wooden framework. There was an old-fashioned press, or wardrobe, of black wood, whose polished surface reflected the firelight. A three-cornered wash-hand stand, and a clumsy-looking chest of drawers between the windows, surmounted by a cracked looking-glass, completed the furniture of the room. The boards were uncarpeted, and showed knots and dark patches in the worm-eaten wood, which a morbid fancy might have taken for the traces of some half-forgotten murder.

‘Not a cheerful-looking room by any means, even with the aid of that blazing fire,’ thought Maurice.

He opened one of the casements and looked out. The night air was soft and balmy, perfumed with odours of clover and the newly stacked hay. The Atlantic lay before him, shining under the great red moon, which had but just risen. A pleasanter prospect this than the bare walls of faded, dirty pink, the black clothes-press, and funereal four-poster.

Maurice lingered at the window, his arms folded on the broad ledge, his thoughts wandering idly—wandering back to last year and the moonlight that had shone upon the cathedral towers of Eborsham, the garden of the ‘Waterfowl’ Inn, and the winding river.

‘Poor James!’ he mused, ‘how happy that light-hearted fellow might have been at Penwyn Manor!—how happy, and how popular! He would have had the knack of pleasing people, with that frank, easy kindness of his, and would have made friends of half the county. And if he had married that actress girl? A folly, no doubt; but who knows if all might not have ended happily? There was nothing vulgar or low about that girl—indeed, she had the air of one of Nature’s gentlewomen. It would have been a little difficult for her to learn all the duties of a châtelaine, perhaps—how to order a dinner, and whom to invite—the laws of precedence—the science of morning calls. But if James loved her, and chose her from all other women for his wife, why should he not have been happy with her? I was a fool to oppose his fancy, still more a fool for leaving him. He might be alive now, perhaps, but for that wild-goose journey of mine.’

Here his thoughts took another turn. They went back to that train of circumstances which had brought about his absence from Eborsham on the night of James Penwyn’s murder.

It was past midnight when Maurice Clissold roused himself from that long reverie, and prepared for peaceful slumber in the funereal bed. His fire had burned low by this time, and the red glow of the expiring embers was drowned in the full splendour of the risen moon, whose light silvered the bare boards, and brought into strong relief those stains and blotches upon the wood which looked so like the traces of ancient murder. The bed was luxurious, for there was no stint of feathers at Borcel End; yet Maurice wooed the god of sleep in vain. He began to think that there must be some plumage of game birds mingled with the stuffing of his couch, and that, soft and deep as it was, this was one of those beds upon which a man could neither sleep nor die comfortably.

‘I ought to be tired enough to sleep on a harder bed than this, considering the miles I’ve walked to-day,’ he thought.

It may have been that he was over-tired, or it may have been that flood of silver light streaming through the diamond-panes of yonder lattice. Whatever might be the reason of his restlessness, sleep came not to straighten his unquiet limbs, or to steep his wandering thoughts in her cool waters of forgetfulness.

He heard a distant clock—in the hall where he had supped, most likely—strike two, and just at this time a gentle drowsiness began to steal over him. He was just falling deep down into some sleepy hollow, soft as a bed of poppies, when his door was opened by a cautious hand, and a light footstep sounded on the floor. He was wide awake in a minute, and without moving from his recumbent position, drew the dark curtain back a little way and looked towards the door. The shadow of the curtain fell upon him as he lay, and the bedstead looked unoccupied.

‘The ghost!’ he said to himself, with rather an awful feeling. ‘I knew there must be one in such a room—or perhaps the house is on fire, and some one has come to warn me.’

No; that wanderer through the deep of night had evidently no business with Mr. Clissold—nay, was unconscious of, or indifferent to, the fact of his existence. The figure slowly crossed the floor, with a light step, but a little sliding noise, as of a foot ill-shod—a slipper down at heel.

It came full into the moonlight presently, between the bedstead and the two windows.

‘Ay, verily a ghost,’ thought Maurice, with a feeling like ice-cold water circulating slowly through every artery in his body.

Never had he seen, or conceived within his mind, a figure more spectral, yet with a certain wild beauty in its ghastliness. He raised himself in his bed, still keeping well within the shadow of the curtains, and watched the spectre with eyes which seemed endowed with a double power of vision in the thrilling intensity of that moment.

The spectre was a woman’s form; tall, slender—nay, so wasted that it seemed almost unnaturally tall. The face was death-pale in that solemn light, the eyes large and dark, the hair ebon-black and falling in long loose masses over the white garment, whose folds were straight as those of a winding-sheet. So might the dead, risen from a new-made grave, have looked.

The figure went straight to one of the casements—that furthest from the bed, and at right angles with it—unfastened the hasp, and flung the window wide open. She drew a chair close to the open window, and kneeled upon it, resting her arms on the sill, and leaning out of the window, as if watching for some one to come, thought Maurice, that frozen blood of his beginning to thaw a little.

‘Those actions seem too deliberate and real for a ghost,’ he told himself. ‘Phantoms must surely be soundless. Now I heard the slipshod feet upon the floor. I heard the scrooping of the chair. I can see a gentle heaving of the breast under that shroud-like garment. Ergo my visitor is not a ghost. Who can she be? Not Mrs. Trevanard assuredly, nor the old blind grandmother, nor the buxom lass who waited on us at supper. I thought those were all the women kind in the house.’

A heavy sigh from that unearthly-looking intruder startled him, a sigh so long, so full of anguish, so like the utterance of some lost soul in pain! Difficult not to yield to superstitious fear as he gazed at that kneeling figure, with its long dark hair, and delicate profile, sharply outlined against the black shadow of the deep-sunk casement.

Again came the sigh, despairing, desolate.

‘Oh, my love, my love, why don’t you come back to me?’

The words broke like a cry of despair from those pale lips. Not loud was the sorrowful appeal, but so full of pain that it touched the listener’s heart more deeply than the most passionate burst of louder grief could have done.

‘Dear love, you promised, you promised me. How could I have lived if I had not thought you would come back?’

Then the tone changed. She was no longer appealing to another, but talking to herself, hurriedly, breathlessly, with ever increasing agitation.

‘Why not to-night? Why shouldn’t he come back to-night? He was always fond of moonlight nights. He promised to be true to me, and stand by me, come what might. No harm should ever come to me. He swore that, swore it with his arms round me, his eyes looking into mine. No man could be false, and yet look as he looked, and speak as he spoke.’

Silence for a brief space, and then a sudden cry—a sharp anguish-stricken cry, as of a broken heart.

‘Who said he was dead and gone, dead and gone years ago? The world wouldn’t look as bright as it does if he were dead. He loved the moonlight. Could you shine, false moon, if he were dead?’ Again a pause, and then a slower, more thoughtful tone, as if doubts disturbed that demented brain. ‘Was it last year he used to come, last year when we were so happy together—last year when——’

A sudden burst of tears interrupted the sentence. The woman’s face fell forward on her folded arms, and the frail body was shaken by her sobs.

Maurice Clissold no longer doubted his visitant’s humanity.

This was real grief, perchance real madness. For a little while he had fancied it a case of somnambulism. But the eyes which he had seen lifted despairingly to that moonlit sky had too much expression for the eyes of a somnambulist.

For a long time—or time that seemed long to Clissold’s mind—the woman knelt by the window, now silent, motionless as an inanimate figure, now talking rapidly to herself, anon invoking that absent one whose broken promises were perhaps the cause of her wandering wits. Never had the young man beheld a more piteous spectacle. It was as if one of Wordsworth’s most pathetic pastorals were here realized. His heart ached at the sound of those heart-broken sighs. This flesh and blood sorrow moved him more deeply than any spectral woe. This was no ghostly revisitant of earth, who acted over agonies dead and gone, but a living, loving woman, who mourned a lost or a faithless lover.

At last, with one farewell look seaward, as if it were along yon moonlit track across the waves she watched for the return of her lover, this new Hero turned from the casement, closed it carefully and quietly, and then slowly left the room. Maurice heard that slipshod foot going slowly along the passage, until the sound dwindled and died in the distance.

He fancied sleep would have been impossible after such a scene as this, but perhaps that over-strained attention of the last hour had exhausted his wakefulness, for he fell off presently into a sound slumber, from which he was only awakened by a friendly voice outside his door saying, ‘Six o’clock, Mr. Clissold. If you want the long round I promised you last night we ought to start at seven.’

‘All right,’ answered Maurice, as gaily as if no uncanny visitor had shortened his slumbers. ‘I’ll be with you in half an hour.’

He kept his word, and was down in the hall, or family sitting-room, just in time to hear the noisy old eight-day clock strike the half-hour, with a slow and laborious movement of its inward anatomy, as if fast subsiding into dumbness and decrepitude. Mr. Trevanard had breakfasted an hour ago, and gone forth to his haymakers. Mrs. Trevanard was busy about the house, but the old blind grandmother sat in her corner, plying those never-resting needles, just as she had sat, just as she had knitted last night; with no more apparent share or interest in the active life around her than the old clock had.

There was a liberal meal ready for the stranger. Last night’s round of beef, and a Cornish ham, archetype of hams, adorned the board, but were only intended as a reserve force in case of need, while the breakfast proper consisted of a dish of broiled ham and eggs, and another of trout, caught a hundred yards or so from the house that morning. Home-baked bread, white and brown, a wedge of golden honeycomb, and a plate of strawberries counted for nothing.

Both young men did justice to the breakfast, which they eat together, making the best use of the half-hour allotted for the meal, and not talking so much as they had done last night at the more leisurely evening repast.

‘I hope you slept pretty well,’ said Martin, when he had taken the edge off a healthy appetite, and was trifling with a slice of beef.

‘Not quite so well as I ought to have done in so comfortable a bed. My brain was a little over-active, I believe.’

‘Ah, that’s a complaint I don’t suffer from. Father says I haven’t any brains. I tell him brains don’t grow at Borcel End. One year is so like another that we get to be a kind of clockwork, like poor old granny yonder. We get up every morning at the same hour, look out of our windows to see what sort of weather it is, eat and drink, and walk about the farm, and go to bed again, without using our minds at all from the beginning to the end of the business. Father and I brighten up a little on market days, but for the rest of our lives we might just as well be a couple of slow-going machines.’

‘There is nothing drowsy or mechanical about your mother’s nature, I should think, in spite of the quiet life you all lead here.’

‘No, mother’s mind is a candle that would burn to waste in a dark cellar. Her blood isn’t poppy-juice, like the Trevanards’. Do you know that my father has never been as far as Plymouth one way, or as far as Penzance the other way, in his life? He has no call to go, he says, so he doesn’t go. He squats here upon his land like a toad, and would if his life was to be threescore and ten centuries instead of as many years.’

‘You would like a different kind of life, I dare say,’ suggested Maurice.

The young man’s bright eye reminded him of a caged squirrel’s—a wild, freeborn creature, longing for the liberty of forests and untrodden groves.

‘Yes, if I could have chosen my own life, I would have been a soldier, like George Penwyn.’

‘To die by the hands of savages.’

‘Yes, they say he had a hard death, that those copper-coloured devils scalped him—tied him to a tree—tortured him. His soldiers went mad with revenge, and roasted some of the miscreants alive afterwards, I believe; but that wouldn’t bring the captain to life again.’

‘Do you remember him?’

‘Well. He used to come fishing in our water; the very stream that trout came out of this morning. I was a little chap of eight or nine years old when the Captain was last home, and used to catch flies for him, and carry his basket and loaf about with him half the day through; and many a half-crown has he given me, for he was an open-handed fellow always, and one of the handsomest, pleasantest young men I ever remember seeing—when I say young, I suppose he must have been past thirty at this time, for he was the oldest of the three brothers, and Balfour, the youngest, had been married ever so many years. But here’s the trap, and we’d better be off; good-bye, granny.’

The old woman gave a hoarse chuckle of response, marvellously like the internal rumbling of the ancient clock.

‘Good morning, ma’am,’ said Maurice, anxious to be civil; but of his salutation the dame took no notice.

The horse, though clumsily built, and not unacquainted with the plough, was a good goer. The two young men had soon left Borcel End behind them, down in its sleepy hollow, and were driving over the fair green hills.

‘Now to fathom the mystery of last night’s adventure,’ thought Maurice, when they were out of sight of Borcel. ‘I think I can venture to speak pretty freely to this good-natured young man.’

He meditated a few minutes, and then began the attack.

‘When you asked me at breakfast how I rested last night, I didn’t give you quite a straightforward answer,’ he said. ‘There was a reason for my not getting a full allowance of sleep, which I didn’t care to speak of till you and I were alone.’

‘Indeed,’ said Martin Trevanard, looking round at him sharply. ‘What was that?’

There was a lurking anxiety in that keen glance of scrutiny, Maurice Clissold thought.

‘Some one came into my room in the dead of the night—a woman,’ he said. ‘At first I almost thought she was a ghost. I was never so near yielding to superstitious terror in my life. But I soon discovered my mistake, and that she was only a living, suffering fellow-creature.’

‘I am very sorry such a thing should have happened,’ said Martin, gravely. ‘She ought to be better taken care of. The person you saw must have been my unfortunate sister.’

‘Your sister?’

‘Yes. She is ten years older than I, and not quite right in her mind. But she is perfectly harmless—has never in her life attempted to injure any one—not even herself, poor soul, though her own existence is dreary enough; and neither my father nor my mother will consent to send her away to be taken care of. Our old doctor sees her now and then, and doesn’t call her mad. She is only considered a little weak in her intellect.’

‘Has she been so from childhood?’ asked Maurice.

‘Oh dear no. She went to school at Helstone, and was quite an accomplished young woman, I believe—played the piano, and painted flowers, and was brought up quite like a young lady; never put her hand to dairy work, or anything of the kind. She was a very handsome girl in those days, and father and mother were uncommonly proud of her. I can just remember her when she left school for good. I was always hanging about her, and I used to think she was like a beautiful princess in a fairy tale. She was very good to me, told me fairy stories, and sung to me in the twilight. Many a time I’ve fallen asleep in her lap, lulled by her sweet voice, when I was a little chap of eight or nine. There were only us two, and she was very fond of me. Poor Muriel!’

‘What was it brought about such a change in her?’

‘Well, that’s a story I’ve never quite got to the bottom of. It’s a sore subject even with father, who’s easy enough to deal with about most things. And as to mother, you have but to mention Muriel’s name to make her look like thunder. Yet she’s never unkind to the poor soul. I know that.’

‘Does your sister live among you when you are alone?’

‘No, she has a little room over granny’s, with a little old-fashioned staircase leading up to it. A room quite cut off from the rest of the house. You can’t reach it except by going through granny’s bedroom, which is on the ground-floor, you must understand, on account of the old lady’s weak legs. Now one of poor Muriel’s fancies is to roam about the house in the middle of the night, especially moonlight nights, for the moonlight makes her wakeful. So, as a rule, granny locks her door of a night. However, I suppose last night the old lady forgot, in consequence of the excitement caused by your arrival, and that’s how you happened to have such an uncomfortable time.’

‘You haven’t told me even the little you do know as to the cause of your sister’s state.’

‘Haven’t I? All I know is what my father told me once. She was crossed in love, it seems—loved some one rather above her in station—and never got over it. That comes of being constant to one’s first fancy.’

‘You say she lives in a room by herself. Does she never have air or exercise?’

‘Do you imagine us barbarians? Yes, she roams about the old neglected garden at the back of the house, just as she pleases, but never goes beyond. She has a pretty clear notion that that is her beat, poor girl, and I’ve never known her break bounds. Mother fetches her indoors at sunset, and gives her her supper, and sees that she’s comfortable for the night, and tries to keep her clothes decent and tidy, but the poor soul tears them sometimes when her melancholy fit is upon her.’

CHAPTER IV
‘AND I SHALL BE ALONE UNTIL I DIE.’

The image of that white-robed figure, pallid face, and ebon hair haunted Maurice Clissold throughout the day, though his day was very pleasant, and Martin Trevanard the most cheerful of companions. They halted at various villages, explored old parish churches, where tarnished and blackened brasses told of mitred abbots, and lords of the soil, otherwise unrecorded and forgotten. Clissold was learned in church architecture, and not a gargoyle escaped his keen eye. Martin was pleased to exhibit the interesting features of his native land, and listened deferentially to Maurice’s disquisitions on brasses, fonts, and piscinæ.

They stopped at a wayside inn, lunched heartily on bread and cheese and cider, and were altogether as companionable as young men can well be. Martin had read about half a dozen books since he left Helstone grammar school, but those were of the highest character, and he had them in his heart of hearts. Shakespeare, Pope, and Byron were his poets; Fielding, Goldsmith, and Scott his only romances.

From Shakespeare and Scott he had learned history, from Fielding and Goldsmith he had caught the flavour of wit and humour that are dead as the Latin classics. Thus Clissold found, not without a touch of surprise, that the farmer’s son was no unworthy companion for a man who had made literature his profession.

On their homeward round they pulled up at Penwyn Church, which stood high and dry on the green hill-side, midway between the village and the manor, and looked like a church that had fallen from the sky, so completely was it out of everybody’s way. Tradition insisted that in the Middle Ages there had been a village close to the church, but no trace of that vanished settlement remained. There stood the temple, square-towered, with crocketed finials at the four angles of the tower. There lay its ancient slumberous graveyard on the slope of the hill, the dead for ever basking in the southern sun, which, in this midsummer weather, seemed to have power enough to warm them back to life again.

Here Maurice saw the resting-place of the Penwyns, almost as old as the church itself, a vault so large that these lords of the soil seemed to have a whole crypt to themselves. Very mouldy, and cold and dark, was this last abode of the squires and their race. Here he saw also the parish registers, which contained a concise synopsis of the history of the Penwyns since the Middle Ages, how they had been christened, married, and buried.

‘James ought to have been brought down here,’ said Maurice, when they were in the churchyard, where the deep soft grass was full of field flowers, and the air of sweet homely odours; not in that mouldy old crypt with his ancestral dust, but here amongst this thymy grass, face to face with the sun and the sea, and with the skylark singing above his grave. ‘It would have been ever so much better than Kensal Green.’

It was eight o’clock when they drove down into the valley, where the old white house and its numerous barns and outbuildings looked like a village nestling in that grassy hollow. The scene looked just the same as last night, when Maurice Clissold approached it for the first time—the same stillness upon all things, the same low yellow light in the western sky, the same red glow from the hall fire, the same changeless figure of the old grandmother in her high-backed leather-covered arm-chair, half hidden in the shadow of the corner where she sat.

It wanted an hour to supper, and Mr. Trevanard was struggling with some accounts at a table by one of the windows, where he had the last of the dying daylight.

‘Hope you’ve had a pleasant day, sir,’ he said, without looking up from his papers, or relaxing the frown with which he contemplated a long column of figures. ‘Take a pull of that cider after your drive; it’s only just drawn.—You might give me a hand with these accounts, Martin. I never was a dab at figures.’

‘All right, father, we’ll soon tot ’em up.’

Martin sat down by his father, and took the pen out of his hand. Maurice refreshed himself with a draught of cider, and then went to the porch.

‘I should like to take a look round the place between this and supper-time, if you don’t mind, Mr. Trevanard,’ he said.

‘Look where you please, sir, you’re free and welcome. You’ll hear the supper-bell at nine o’clock.’

Maurice lighted a cigar as he left the porch, and prepared for a contemplative, dreamy stroll, one calm hour of solitude before the day was done.

He avoided the stackyard, and did not honour the various families of black and white piglings, in divers stages of infancy and adolescence, with his attention. He made a circuit of the pond, and went round to the back of the homestead, where lay that neglected garden which he had seen from the distance. At this midsummer-time it was a wilderness of verdure, and flowers ran wild. Great lavender bushes, forests of unpruned roses, tall white lilies, syringa, carnations, weeds, and blossoms, growing as they would. Moss-grown paths, a broken sundial fallen across a bed of heart’s-ease and mignonnette. Beyond the flower-garden there was a still deeper wilderness of hazel, quinces, and alders, which drew their chief sustenance from a shallow pool, whose dark shining surface was almost hidden by the spreading branches, the grey old trunks, the thick screen of leaves, through which the light came dimly even at noon.

A delightful spot for a meditative poet. Maurice was charmed with garden and wilderness, and lighted a second cigar on the strength of his discovery of the alder and quince grove.

It was not easy walking here by reason of the undergrowth of St. John’s-wort, fern, and briar, which made a dense jungle, but after a little exploration Mr. Clissold came upon a narrow footpath, evidently well trodden, which wound in and out among the old grey trunks, and under the hazel boughs, till it brought him to the brink of the water.

The pool was wider than he had thought, but so covered with water-lilies that the dark water only showed in patches through that thick carpet of shining leaves. Just such a pool as a stranger might easily walk into unawares. Maurice pulled up in time, and seated himself on the gnarled trunk of an alder, whose roots straggled deep down into the water, among sedges and innocent, harmless cresses. Here he slowly pulled at his cigar, abandoning himself to such thoughts as a poet has in such a scene and such an hour.

The last yellow gleam of the sun shone faintly behind the low thick trees, and through the one break in the wood the distant sea-line showed darkly grey, just where ocean merged into sky.

‘I should write better verses if I lived here for a year,’ thought Maurice, musing upon a certain volume which he meant to give the world by and bye. He hardly knew whether there would be much in it worthy the world’s acceptance. It was only the outpouring of a strong, fresh soul, a soul that had known its share of human sorrow, and done a brave man’s battle with care.

He was deep in a reverie that had led him very far away from Borcel End when he heard a rustling of the branches near him, and turned quickly round, expecting to see Martin Trevanard.

The face that looked at him from between the parted hazel boughs startled him almost as much as that white-robed figure last night. It was the face he had seen in the moonlight, and which he saw now with peculiar distinctness in the clear grey light—a wan white face, with large dark eyes—a face which once must have been most beautiful. The dark eyes, the delicate features, were still beautiful, but the complexion was almost ghastly in its pallor, and the eyes were unnaturally bright. This was Muriel Trevanard.

Maurice thought she would have been frightened at sight of him, and would have hurried away. But, to his surprise, she came a little nearer him, cautiously, stealthily even, those restless eyes glancing right and left as she approached. There was a curious intensity in her gaze when her eyes fixed themselves at last upon his face, peering at him, scrutinizing him with something of her mother’s keen look. One hand was lifted to her head to push back the wild mass of tangled hair, and the loose sleeve of her gown fell back from the white wasted arm. Face and body seemed alike wasted by the mind’s consuming fire.

‘You can tell me, perhaps,’ she said, in a quick eager voice, ‘others won’t, they’re too unkind, for they must know. You can tell me, I’m sure. When will he come back?’

‘My poor soul, I would gladly tell you if I knew. But I don’t even know whom you are talking of.’

‘Oh yes, you do. Mother knows. She told you, I dare say. I’m not going to tell his name. I promised to keep that secret, whatever it cost me to be silent, and I’m not going to break my promise. When is he coming back?’

She paused, looking at him with beseeching expectant eyes, as if she waited breathless for his answer.

‘Is he ever coming back?’

She waited again.

‘Indeed, Miss Trevanard, I know nothing about it.’

‘How dare you call me Miss Trevanard? That’s not my name.’

‘Muriel, then.’

‘That’s better. He called me Muriel.’

Her chin dropped on her breast, and she stood for a few moments looking down at the water, all her face softened by some sweet sad thought.

‘He called me Muriel,’ she repeated. ‘Muriel, Muriel. I can hear his voice now. Hear it—yes, as plainly as I can see him when I close my eyes.’

Again a pause, and then an eager question.

‘How can he be dead when he is so near me? How can he be dead when I hear him and see him, and can even feel the touch of his hand upon my head, his lips upon my lips. He awakes me from my sleep sometimes with a kiss, but when I open my eyes he is gone. Was he always a spirit?’

She seemed unconscious of Maurice’s presence as she moved a few paces further along the water’s edge, always looking downward, in self-communion.

‘My love, how can they say that you are dead, when I am waiting for you so patiently, and will wait for you to the end—wait till you come to take me away with you? It was to be little more than a year, you told me. Oh, God, what a long year!’

The anguish in that last ejaculation pierced the listener’s heart as it had been pierced by her wild cry of sorrow last night. He followed her along the brink of the pool, put his arm round her shrunken form protectingly, and tried to comfort her as best he might, knowing so little of her grief.

‘Muriel,’ he said gently, and her name so spoken seemed to have a softening influence upon her, ‘I am almost a stranger to this place and to you, but I would gladly be your friend if I could. Tell me if there is anything I can do to comfort you. Are you happy in your home, with your poor old grandmother? or would you rather be somewhere else?’

He wanted to find out if she was suffering from any sense of ill-usage, if she felt herself a prisoner and an alien in her father’s house.

‘No,’ she said, resolutely, ‘I must stay here. He will come and fetch me.’

‘But you speak sometimes as if you knew him to be dead. Is it not foolish, vain, to hope for that which cannot happen?’

‘He is not dead. People have told me so on purpose to break my heart, I think. Haven’t I told you that I see him very often?’

‘Then why are you so unhappy?’

‘Because he will not stay with me—because he does not come to fetch me away, as he promised, in a little more than a year—because he comes and goes like a spirit. Perhaps they are right, and he is really dead.’

‘Would it not be better to make up your mind to that, and to leave off watching for him, and roaming about the house at night?’

‘Who told you that?’ she asked, quickly.

‘Never mind who told me. You see I know how foolish you are. Wouldn’t it be wiser to try and go back to the common business of life, to bind up all that loose hair neatly, like a lady, and to try to be a comfort to your father and mother.’

At that last word an angry cry broke from the pale lips.

‘Mother!’ echoed Muriel, ‘I have no mother. That woman yonder,’ pointing towards the house, ‘is my worst enemy. Mother! My mother!’ with a bitter laugh. ‘Ask her what she has done with my child?’

That question came upon Maurice Clissold like a revelation. Here was a sadder story than he had dreamt of, a story which no word of Martin’s had hinted at, a story of shame as well as of sorrow, perchance. He remained silent, troubled and perplexed by this new turn of affairs. His office of consoler, his attempt to smooth the tangled threads of a disordered brain, came to an end all at once.

The woman turned from him impatiently, muttering to herself as she went away. He followed her along the sinuous footpath, and across the garden, and watched her as she entered by a low half-glass door at the back of the house. He passed this door afterwards, and stole a glance through the glass into a large low room, where there was a fire burning—a room which he divined to be the grandmother’s chamber.

An old-fashioned tent bedstead, with red and white chintz curtains, occupied one side of the room; a ponderous old arm-chair stood near the fireplace; a huge wooden chest made at once a seat and a receptacle for all kinds of household stores; a corner cupboard filled with crockery ware, and a small round table near the hearth, completed the catalogue of furniture.

Here, on the hearth-rug, sat Muriel, her wild hair falling about her face, her hands clasped upon her knees, her eyes bent gloomily upon the burning log.

The supper-bell rang from the porch on the other side of the homestead while Maurice was watching that melancholy figure by the hearth.

‘She has taken away my appetite for supper,’ he said to himself, ‘and has almost set me against Borcel End.’

That last speech of Muriel Trevanard’s troubled him—‘Ask her what she has done with my child?’

It set him thinking of dark stories of family pride and hidden crime. It took the flavour of enjoyment out of this rustic home, and imparted a taint of mystery and suspicion which poisoned the atmosphere.

CHAPTER V
‘SURELY, MOST BITTER OF ALL SWEET THINGS THOU ART.’

Maurice Clissold keenly scrutinized Bridget Trevanard’s face as they sat at supper that evening. Muriel’s look of horror at the mention of her mother’s name had inspired unpleasant doubts upon the subject of his hostess’s character. He remembered how Elspeth had told him that Mrs. Trevanard was known as a hard woman; and he told himself that cruelty, or even crime, might be consistent with that hard nature which had won for the farmer’s wife the reputation of a stern and exacting mistress. His closer examination of that face showed him no indication of lurking evil. That square, unwrinkled brow, those dark brown eyes, with their keen, straight outlook, denoted at least an honest nature. The firm lips, the square jaw, gave severity to the countenance—a resolute woman—a woman not to be turned from her purpose, thought Maurice, but a woman whom he could hardly imagine capable of crime.

And then why give credence to the rambling assertions of lunacy? It is the nature of madness to accuse the sane. Maurice tried to put the thought of Muriel’s wild talk out of his mind; yet that awful question, ‘What has she done with my child?’ haunted him.

He felt less desire to prolong his stay at Borcel. The restful tranquillity of the place seemed to have departed. Muriel’s fevered mind had its influence upon the atmosphere. He could not forget that she was near—wakeful, unhappy—waiting for the lover who was never to return to her.

He took good care to lock his door that night, and his slumbers were undisturbed. The next morning was devoted to a long ramble with Martin. They walked to a distant hill-side, where there were some Druidic remains well worth inspection; came back to the farm in time for the substantial early dinner, had a look at the haymakers dining plenteously in a great stone kitchen, and then retired to a field where the hay was cocked, to lie basking in the sun, with their faces seaward, dreaming away the summer afternoon.

Here Maurice told Martin the story of James Penwyn’s death, and the brief love story which had come to so pitiful an ending.

‘Poor child,’ he said, musingly, recalling his last interview with Justina, ‘I verily believe she loved him truly and honestly, and would have made him a good wife. I never saw a nobler countenance than that player girl’s. I’m sorry I thrust myself between them with so much as one hard word.’

‘Was no one ever suspected of the murder?’ asked Martin.

‘Yes,’ replied Maurice, without taking his cigar from his lips, ‘I was for a little while.’

This was rather startling. Martin Trevanard stared at his new acquaintance with a curious look for a moment or so, before he recovered himself.

‘You were?’