‘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 chatelaine, 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.’
