‘AND YET I FEEL I FEAR.’
Under that quiet surface which life wore in Joshua Haggard’s
household there were troubled waters.
Naomi had never forgotten the awful look in her father’s face that
afternoon in the wood. It haunted her in all places and at all
seasons. The impression it had made upon her mind would not pass
away. What it meant she knew not--dared not shape the thought in her
mind; but she was very sure that it meant evil of some kind--evil to
her father’s soul, wrong to Oswald.
If she could have known for certain that Oswald had carried out the
intention set forth in his fatal letter to Cynthia, she would have
been, comparatively speaking, at ease and happy. But of this she
knew nothing. Whether he had really gone to America, how and when he
had left Combhaven, of these things she was ignorant. Cynthia might
know, perhaps; but not even to set these anxious fears at rest
could Naomi stoop so low as to seek for any information about her
lover from the woman for whose sake she had been abandoned. No; if
Cynthia knew anything for certain, the knowledge must remain locked
in her breast. Save in the merest outward and ceremonial form, a
bare civility in every-day intercourse, there could be no contact
between Naomi and her stepmother. The gulf that sundered these two
was impassable.
Oswald’s letter had stated that he meant to leave Combhaven by the
night coach. He had not gone by that coach, for James Haggard, who
was fond of an evening stroll when the shutters were up, and who
took a lively interest in other people’s business, had watched the
departure of the coach on that particular evening, and entertained
his family at the silent supper-table with a detailed account of that
exciting event in the every-day life of his town.
‘There was only one inside, and that was old Mrs. Skevinew, who is
going to Exeter to see her married daughter,’ said Jim; ‘she had
three bandboxes, two umbrellas, a pair of pattens, and a pair of the
new-fashioned clogs--she bought ’em of aunt Judith the day before
yesterday--a hamper of peas, a green goose, a basket of eggs, a tin
of clouted cream, a red-cotton handkerchief full of bullaces, two
pasties done up in brown paper, and a pig’s head. Won’t her friends
be glad to see her?’
‘Who were the outsides?’ asked Judith.
Jim ran over the names, checking them off on his fingers.
‘Was there no one else in the coach?’ asked Naomi, looking at her
father, who sat in his usual place with bent brows, neither eating
nor drinking.
‘No one.’
He had not gone by that coach, then, thought Naomi. But presently it
occurred to her that Mr. Pentreath’s return to Combhaven having been
a secret and underhand proceeding, he would hardly care to leave the
place under the broad glare of his townspeople’s eye. The departure
of the coach from the First and Last Inn was a public event. To
leave by that vehicle at that point of departure, and not be seen,
came hardly within the limits of possibility, unless a man had got
himself hidden away in the boot before the spectators assembled. No,
if Oswald had determined to travel by that coach, he had doubtless
walked on to some quiet spot, to be taken up as the mail passed.
This reflection quieted Naomi’s fears in some measure, yet did not
set her heart at ease. Her father’s face haunted her like some unholy
image sent by Satan to suggest evil. What had passed between Joshua
and that weak sinner--what violence of upbraiding had the minister
used against his wife’s lover? That there had been an angry meeting
of some kind Naomi did not doubt. Only a wild indulgence of evil
passion, only an utter abandonment of himself to man’s omnipresent
tempter, could have conjured up such a look in Joshua Haggard’s face.
The dark mind of the spirit of evil was there reflected. The lurid
gleam in those darkly brooding eyes was the red glare caught from the
open doors of hell.
There had been hard words spoken, words of hatred and fury, perchance
even some act of open violence--a blow struck by that strong hand of
Joshua’s, who might have spurned the sinner as if he had been the
tempter himself in his base form of serpent. But it was over, and
Joshua had doubtless begun to repent of his violence; and Oswald was
on his way to a distant world, to begin a new and wiser life.
‘God keep him and guard him and lead him aright,’ thought Naomi,
‘and make him a good and great man. I could bear the pang of parting
with him, could I feel secure about his happy future here and in the
better world.’
O empty life from which he had vanished for ever! O dreary days which
hung upon this young spirit like a burden, and weighed her down to
the dust! Yes, verily, to the dust; so that, in her utter weariness,
she felt as if it would be a good and pleasant end of all things to
lie down in some lonely corner of the land--lie face downward among
the fern and wild flowers, and wait for death. Surely the dark angel
would take pity upon her joyless fate, and come and fold her in his
sheltering wings, and comfort and cure her.
‘There is no other comfort, no other cure,’ she said, forgetting all
the old pious lessons in her despair, forgetting even to do good to
others in the sharpness of her pain.
She sought for consolation from no one--not even from honest Jim, who
was distressed at seeing such blank hopeless faces in his home, and
was eager, after his rough and ready fashion, to administer comfort.
‘Come, Naomi, cheer up and be bright, like a sensible girl,’ he
would say. ‘There’s as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it,
and though you’ve missed landing a fine salmon through father’s
foolishness, you’ll have your net full by and by, I’ll warrant.
A good-looking straight-built lass like you will never want a
sweetheart.’
‘Jim, if you talk to me like that I shall hate you!’ cried Naomi. ‘I
shall go single to my grave, and you know it; or if you can think
otherwise of me, you’re not worthy to be my brother.’
‘Hoity-toity!’ cried Jim, ‘what fine notions run in our family!
Here’s father refusing the lord of the manor for his son-in-law, and
you talking of dying an old maid because your first affections have
been blighted. Why, if my first love takes a wrong direction, I
shall turn my heart into the right road, as easily as I guide gray
Dobbin down a lane where he doesn’t want to go. Just a shake of the
reins or a touch of the whip, and off we start.’
Crushed by this weariness of life, Naomi strove notwithstanding to
do her duty. Even aunt Judith found no room for complaint with Naomi
or Cynthia, unless haggard eyes and pale faces, and low voices with
no joyous ring in them, were sufficient ground for upbraiding. The
household work was faithfully performed. The starching and ironing,
the dusting and beeswaxing, the sewing and darning were duly done.
Cynthia had finished her dozen of shirts, without a gusset set
awry, a seam puckered, or one deviation from a right line in the
pearl-like stitching of collars and wristbands; and now she had
taken to knitting Joshua’s gray-woollen stockings, which was a
pleasantly dreamy occupation calling for very little exercise of the
intellectual faculties till one came to the heel. She used to sit
in the garden or the wilderness in the calm September afternoons,
with a grave quiet face bent over her flashing needles--a face
that told of an abiding sorrow. The Miss Weblings would scarcely
have recognised their sunny-faced little maid in the serious young
matron, with a complexion almost as white as her cap. Joshua rarely
saw that patient figure sitting in his place on the grass-plat, for
he had been growing more and more indefatigable in his visitations
among the scattered members of his flock, walking great distances to
lonely homesteads or labourers’ cottages, or, when not thus occupied,
spending his afternoons in solitary wanderings by the wild sea-shore,
holding commune with his troubled soul.
Save at family prayer and at meals he was now seldom seen in his own
house, while he had almost wholly deserted the shop. Aunt Judith
bewailed this falling away from the good old habits which had made
Haggard’s the leading commercial institution in Combhaven. The
salvation of one’s soul was a vital transaction, doubtless; but a
man secure of his calling and election in eternity could well afford
to attend to his temporal business, instead of wandering about in
desolate places like John the Baptist, without having any one to
baptise.
‘He might as well live on the top of a pillar like St. Simon
What’s-his-name, and have his meals sent up to him by a ladder,’ said
Judith contemptuously, ‘if his mind is never in his business. We’re
always running out of things now, for want of proper attention to the
stock.’
To Naomi it was a small thing that her father should be indifferent
to loss and gain, and turn his back upon the trade by which
his father and grandfather had maintained their importance and
respectability in the little town. The change she saw in him was
more alarming than this neglect of daily duties--a change which she
associated involuntarily with that bitter day on which she had seen
his gloomy murderer’s face pass by her in the woodland dimness.
In the autumn evenings, when she could escape from the joyless house,
Naomi felt herself drawn, as by a magnet, to Pentreath Wood. It was
not that she found peace there, or consolation. She loved the shadowy
scene as a place in which she could feed her grief, and haunted it
as an inconsolable mourner haunts the burial-ground where lies her
dead. How desolate the place seemed in the season of earth’s decay,
all the winding ways deeply strewn with the red-brown leaves, soft
and soddened in the hollows where the autumn rains lay longest; frogs
croaking in the marshy places, and a dead snake lying here and there
among the brambles!
It was not often that Naomi went within sight of the deserted house,
where the old servants lived on in a lazy seclusion, waiting their
master’s bidding; almost as slumberous a household as that which
slept for a hundred years in the old fairy story, only that here
there was no lovely princess shining like a jewel in the innermost
chamber of the castle. Here were only empty rooms and dust and
loneliness.
One evening early in October, Naomi roamed a little farther than she
had intended, and found that, to reach home in decent time, she must
go by the nearest way, which was across the park, and out into the
road by the park-gate. This would take her very near the house.
It was a fine bright evening. The sun had set redly behind the trees
before she had entered the wood, and now the moon had risen and
was shining over the great sea yonder--a lovely evening, mild and
peaceful. She was loth to go back to the lighted room at home, and
her father’s evening lecture, now always of so gloomy a character as
to minister to her despair rather than to lift up her soul from its
depth of sorrow.
The hall-door stood open, and a light burned dimly within. Old
Nicholas, the butler, was sitting in the porch. He recognised Naomi
as she skirted the outer garden, and got up quickly and came after
her.
‘I beg your pardon, Miss Haggard, but seeing you go by just now, I
made bold to follow you. Have you heard any news of the young Squire?
I’ve wanted to ask sometimes when I’ve been up at the shop, to get my
bit of tea and sugar; but your father wasn’t about, and I don’t like
to ask your aunt--she’s apt to be snappy.’
‘No, Nicholas, we have had no news. You would be more likely to hear
of your master than we.’
‘Deary, now! I knew there was something wrong when he came down here
so sudden, and told me I was to say nothing about it, and he was
going off to Ameriky, and I was to keep the place in order agen Mr.
Arnold came home, and then he was to be the master here. A power of
changes to happen in such a short time, ain’t it, miss? I feel as
if the world was topsy-turvy, somehow. The poor old master gone! He
was dreadful near, to be sure; but I’d got used to him, and I misses
his fidgety pinching ways, looking after every candle-end, and such
a nose of his own if he suspected we was frying a bit of bacon for
supper. Well, he’s gone where scraping and saving won’t help him,
poor gentleman. There’s no candle-ends in the heavenly Jerusalem.’
Nicholas sighed despondently, as if he doubted whether an immortal
home in which cheese-paring could not be practised would satisfy his
departed master.
‘And you haven’t heard nothing, miss?’
‘Nothing,’ answered Naomi. ‘But there is hardly time for any one to
have had a letter yet, is there, Nicholas?’
‘I can’t say, miss. Perhaps not. It were the beginning of August when
he went away, warn’t it? and here we are in October. I suppose there
wouldn’t be time; and yet I begin to feel oneasy in my mind about
him. There was something queer about his going away, you see.’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Naomi, looking at him intently.
‘Well, you see, he says to me, “Nicholas, you get they two big trunks
down to the coach this evening, and that there bag.” The trunks
was what he’d packed his clothes and books in, and suchlike, that
morning, purpose to take them with him to Ameriky. “I shall walk on
ahead, and let the coach pick me up this side of Henbury turnpike,”
he says. “But you get they trunks safe in the boot,” says he. So the
gardener and me puts ’em in a barrer and wheels ’em down, and gets
’em safe packed into the boot afore seven o’clock.’
‘Well, what then?’ asked Naomi, with suppressed eagerness.
‘What then, Miss Haggard? Why, they trunks and that there bag is in
the young Squire’s room now--come back, like a bad penny!’
‘Come back?’
‘Yes. The coach never picked him up this side of Henbury turnpike.
The coachman never set eyes upon him all along the road. When he got
to Exeter, there was no one to take to they trunks, no directions
left about ’em, so he just brought ’em back; and if the young Squire
be gone to Ameriky, he be gone without his luggage. Lord, miss, how
you do trimble! I hope there’s nothing wrong, but it comes over me
sometimes that things ain’t altogether right.’
‘He may have changed his mind at the last,’ said Naomi falteringly.
‘He may not have gone to America.’
‘Perhaps not, miss; but wherever he’s gone, he’s gone without his
luggage--even the carpet-bag, with his razors and night-clothes.’
‘He may have had other luggage in London.’
‘He had a black portmanteau at the inn where he’d been stopping in
London, but it wasn’t a big one. It wouldn’t have been luggage enough
for Ameriky, or anywhere else in foreign parts. And then the books
and things that he was so fond of, and his writing-desk, and most of
his clothes--all in they big boxes. It’s odd he didn’t send for ’em.’
‘He may not want them.’
‘But it’s queer for him not to want ’em all this time. And if that
there coach didn’t pick him up--and we know it didn’t--how did he
get away? Nobody saw him leave, nobody heard of him. Lord-a-mercy,
miss, how white you be! I didn’t ought to say suchlike things, but
it weighs so heavy on my mind, it’s a comfort to talk about it. The
London lawyer he sends me down my wages monthly, and board-wages for
me and the others indoors. We might live on the fat of the land if we
chose, only our constitutions have got used to pinching, and we likes
it. We couldn’t have a better place; only they two trunks weighs
upon my mind, and I sha’n’t feel easy till I’ve had a letter from my
master.’
What comfort could Naomi give him--she whose thoughts were full of
fear? She went home and found the family circle waiting for her. It
was past the customary prayer-time by ten minutes or so.
‘Rambling again, Naomi!’ said her father severely; and then opened
his Bible and began to read a chapter of Jeremiah, which he
afterwards expounded, dwelling darkly on all that was darkest in the
text. The prayer that followed was rather a cry of self-abasement
and desolation than a supplicatory address, curiously different
from that simple and single-minded appeal which the Divine Teacher
dictated to His disciples. Joshua asked for no common wants of common
life, he pleaded not to be forgiven as freely as he forgave; but he
grovelled in the dust before an angry God, and heaped ashes upon his
head, and abased himself with humility which touched the confines of
fanaticism.
‘What kept you out so long, sis?’ asked James, when they were seated
at supper.
‘Nicholas, the butler at the Grange, stopped me to ask about his
master. He is very anxious about him.’
‘Why?’ asked her father sharply.
‘Because he has been away so long, and has not written.’
Cynthia lifted her languid eyes, large with sudden terror.
‘How could any one get a letter? He has not been gone three months.
And even if there were time enough, why should he write to Nicholas?’
said Joshua.
‘Nicholas is anxious about him, in any case,’ answered Naomi.
She said nothing about the luggage left behind, which was the chief
cause of the old servant’s uneasiness.
‘Well, all I can say is, that a young man with such a property as
that was a fool to go to America,’ remarked Jim conclusively.
It was a generally accepted fact by this time that the young Squire
had gone to America, and there were various versions of his motive
for this exile. The male gossips inclined to the idea that he and
Naomi had quarrelled, and that this lovers’ quarrel had been the
cause of his departure; the female portion of the community pinned
their faith upon the young man’s fickleness. He had repented of his
engagement to the grocer’s daughter, and had gone away to avoid its
fulfilment.
‘It was all very fine while his father was living, and likely to
live to a hundred, and he hadn’t a five-pound note,’ said Mrs.
Spradgers. ‘He knew that Mr. Haggard was a warm man, and he might do
worse than marry Naomi; but it was quite another thing when the old
gentleman went off, and the property turned out better than young Mr.
Pentreath had ever expected. It’s only natural he should look higher.
Circumstances alter cases.’
The year wore to its close, and yet there came no tidings of the
young Squire. There was, perhaps, no reason why he should trouble
himself to write to any one at Combhaven, argued Naomi, trying to
shake off that burden of unquiet thoughts which oppressed her.
He could hardly be expected to write to his old servants; he had
provided for their comfort through his London solicitor. His rents
were collected by a local agent and paid to the same man of business.
There was no one at Combhaven who had any right to expect letters
from him. He had broken away from his old moorings, and begun a new
life in a new country. He was happy, perhaps, amused and interested
by the novelty of his surroundings--occupied, adventurous, a
light-hearted traveller, while her thoughts of him were so full of
gloom.
‘Why cannot I banish him from my mind altogether?’ she asked herself.
‘It is a sin to dwell thus persistently upon an earthly loss. “If
thy right hand offend thee, cut it off.” He came between me and
heaven--for I loved him too well. Even now that he is far away the
thought of him binds me down to earth. Why cannot I forget him?’
There was another question in her mind which hardly shaped itself in
direct words: ‘Why cannot I forget my father’s face that day in the
wood?’
The new year began, and there was no change in the quiet household,
save a change in Cynthia which had been so gently wrought that it was
invisible to the eyes that saw her daily. The minister’s young wife
had faded and drooped since that troubled summer time of the year
just gone. The slender figure had lost its graceful curves, the white
arm was no longer round and full, the oval of the cheek had fallen,
and the blue-veined lids drooped languidly over the gentle eyes, in
which there was a look that seemed to plead for pity or forgiveness.
Joshua’s popularity was at its height this winter. Those stirring
sermons--those eloquent theological fulminations--acted on his
hearers as a stimulant and a tonic. People flocked to hear him
from distant villages. He was proud of his popularity, lifted up
and exalted by the idea that he was bringing sinners home to God,
fighting hand to hand with the devil and all his angels. He lived
apart from his own household, a stranger among them, though sitting
by the same fireside. It was as if they were people of old time
giving shelter to a prophet. They scarcely dared speak to him, but
approached him with an awful respect. It was an understood thing
that he had no more to do with the business which had in years past
occupied half his time and some portion of his care. James now took
the helm in the commercial vessel, and felt that he was of the stuff
that makes great captains. Joshua seemed hardly aware of the change
that had come over his life. He was a dreamer, and lived in a world
of dreams.
So the year began, and it was early spring again, and Naomi felt that
her youth was gone, and that the years could bring her nothing but
age and death. They would come and go, and make no difference in her
life. They held no promise, they knew no hope.