‘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 piscin?.
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.
