THE WANDERER’S RETURN.
It was March--just a year since the old Squire had been stricken with
his fatal illness. The daffodils were blooming in sunny places; there
was a faint tinge of green upon the hedgerows.
Naomi was sitting alone in the twilit parlour in the calm gray
evening. She had done all her daily duties, and could afford to
rest from her toil. She looked at the familiar scene--the glimpse
of sea, the curve of the road winding up the hill towards Pentreath
Grange--with sad hopeless eyes. No bright harbinger of joy would ever
come to her by yonder road, down which she had seen the Squire’s
funeral train slowly descending with wind-tossed plumes and scarves
less than a year ago.
‘I had such a strange sense of loss that day,’ she thought,
remembering the dismal procession, and her own feelings as she
watched its approach. ‘I seemed to know that the end of my happiness
had come; that change, or sorrow, or death was near.’
Twilight deepened, and the scene took a shadowy look. Who was this
walking down the hill at a leisurely pace, with a careless easy gait
which seemed familiar? Nay, it was familiar, for it set Naomi’s heart
beating vehemently; it made her cold and faint. This was no peasant
returning from his work. She knew how the Combhaven population
carried themselves. This tall slim figure, so straight, and yet so
easy of motion, was no son of the soil, no hard-handed agricultural
labourer, no fisherman smelling of tar and sea-weed, with wet raiment
all glistening and scaly.
She stood up, and opened the window--stood with the chill March
breeze blowing upon her terror-stricken face. This time she felt
verily as if she were seeing a ghost.
‘He has come back,’ she thought. ‘He is not dead. O foolish fear! O
wretched doubt of the best and truest upon earth! He is safe; and has
come back again. I shall see him once again, living and happy. My
God, I thank Thee!’
The figure came nearer. Yes, it was Oswald Pentreath. She saw the
well-remembered face in the dim light. How well he looked! how
strong, how brave! Travel and strange countries had improved him.
His chest had expanded, he walked with a firmer step, held his head
higher. And he was coming to her father’s house, boldly, with no
stealthy approach. He came as a man who had done no evil, and had no
cause for fear.
‘He is cured of his folly; he is my true and noble lover once again.
O God, Thou art full of mercy; Thy love aboundeth.’
The familiar figure was close at hand. There was nothing but the
narrow front garden between him and Naomi; yet now there was a
strangeness--her heart grew lead. The young man looked up at the
house inquiringly, like a stranger who reconnoitres an unfamiliar
place. He glanced up and down the street--quite empty of humanity
at this moment, the solitary young woman with a basket, who had
constituted its traffic a minute ago, having just gone indoors--then
looked again at the house, and became conscious of Naomi’s pale face
at the window.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he began courteously. ‘Is this Mr. Haggard’s?’
Life-long sorrows are not so keen as a sudden stab like this--an
arrow that pierces the heart and kills its hope for ever. It was
not Oswald’s voice. There was a likeness in the tone, that family
resemblance so often to be found in the voices of kindred; but these
tones were more decided, rougher. They lacked the poetic languor, the
gentle sweetness of Oswald’s utterance. This speaker was one who had
commanded men on the high seas; not the musing idler who had wasted
half his life lying listlessly in summer woods, or wandering with his
rod beside autumn’s swollen streams.
It was not Oswald. For the space of half a minute the surging blood
in Naomi’s brain almost blinded her. For an instant or so reason
faltered, and she was on the verge of unconsciousness. Then the
strong young soul resumed her power, and she comprehended that this
was no shade from Avernus, but her lost lover’s brother, the Squire’s
runaway son.
‘Yes,’ she answered, with a steady voice, ‘this is Mr. Haggard’s
house. Do you want to see my father?’
‘Ah, then you are Naomi,’ cried the stranger eagerly. ‘I think I
would rather talk to you than to your father; you can tell me more. I
have only just come home, and I am very unhappy about my brother. May
I come in, please?’
How friendly, how dear his voice sounded in its resemblance to the
voice of Oswald! The familiar tones comforted Naomi somehow, after
that bitter disappointment just now. Her heart was lifted up from its
despair. Arnold had come home--Arnold would find out all about his
brother.
At that thought a sudden dread came upon her, like a vision of doom.
If there were any guilty mystery in Oswald’s fate, would not his
brother bring the deed to light? Her shapeless fears rose up like
gorgons and confronted her.
She opened the door for Arnold, and stood dumbly as he came in and
held out his hand to her.
‘How deadly cold your hand is!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m afraid I startled
you coming so suddenly. People say I am very like my brother. And I
daresay you are anxious about Oswald.’
He had gone into the parlour with her, and seated himself with a
familiar friendliness close to the chair into which Naomi had sunk.
‘Yes; I have been very anxious,’ she said faintly.
‘I can see that. Please God, there is no real cause for fear, though
old Nicholas has frightened me a little by his raven-like talk.
The last letter I had from my brother was written in London on the
fourteenth of July. He urged me to come home, and told me he had
some thoughts of going to America; and that if he went I was to take
care of the estate in his absence, and to consider myself master,
and so on, in his generous reckless way--as ready to give up all
his privileges as Esau was to swop his birthright against a dish of
lobscouse. This letter has been following me from port to port, and
I only got it nine or ten weeks ago at Shanghai, where my ship was
waiting for a cargo. I went straight to Oswald’s London agent when I
left the docks; but he could tell me nothing, except that my brother
had made all arrangements for a long absence from England. He was
to have sailed for New York on the fourteenth of August. But a thing
that puzzled this lawyer fellow a little was that Oswald should have
drawn no money since he left home. “He may have taken plenty with
him,” said I--for you see Oswald was brought up to make a little
money go a long way, or to do without it altogether mostly. “So he
may,” said the lawyer; “but I find that young men generally do draw
a good deal of money when they’ve got any sources to draw upon--and
even, sometimes, when they have not. It’s a way they have.” This made
me rather uneasy, and I came down here as fast as those blundering
coaches, which hardly do six knots an hour, could bring me. And
the old house looked so lonely and dismal without Oswald, that the
mere sight of it made me miserable; and then old Nicholas’s raven
croakings made me worse; so I came straight off to you for comfort.’
‘I can tell you nothing,’ answered Naomi, with a sigh.
‘Nicholas told me you had received no letter. That’s strange,
certainly. He would have written to you before any one, I should
think.’
‘No, I had no right to expect any letter from him. I expected none.’
‘What--not as his betrothed wife?’
‘Our engagement was broken off some time before he went. Did you not
know?’
‘Not a word. His last mention of you was full of affection--not in
his latest letter, by the way, but in the one which told me of my
father’s death. I was to come home, and be very fond of you, and we
were all to be happy together.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Naomi, with a pang of bitterest remembrance. How
often had Oswald talked to her of union and love and happiness--sweet
domestic joys which Arnold was to share!
‘But why was your engagement broken off?’ asked the sailor bluntly.
‘Did you quarrel?’
‘Quarrel? No.’
‘He must have behaved very ill, then.’
‘No, no. It was my father’s wish. I obeyed my father in setting
Oswald free. And he accepted his liberty--he was grateful for his
release. Love does not always last a lifetime: there is a difference,
you see. I think that he once loved me, but--’
Here the tears rained down upon her trembling hands. Arnold drew
nearer to her, and gently pressed one of those cold hands with a
brotherly kindness.
‘My poor girl--my sister that was to have been! He behaved badly, I’m
afraid. There was something wild and mysterious in his last letter;
and then that sudden resolve to go to America! I ought to have seen
that things had gone wrong with him. Poor Oswald! And I expected to
see him so happy with you.’
‘Providence willed it otherwise. I was too happy with him, I
think--too much absorbed in the joys of this world.’
‘Why should we not be happy in this world? God would never have
made so fair a world for a scene of suffering. You can’t imagine,
you stay-at-home people, how beautiful this earth is. The birds and
animals and reptiles and insects are happy. All free creation enjoys
itself, from its birth to its death. Why should man be wretched, or
the source of misery in others? Why should Providence be offended
because you and my brother loved each other and were happy?’
Naomi could not answer. It was an article of her religion that Heaven
disapproved of too much earthly bliss.
‘But you must have known where he was going--he told you his plans,
surely?’ asked Arnold.
‘No, I knew nothing of his intentions--directly,’ answered Naomi, a
faint blush dyeing her pallid cheek.
‘Did you not see him when he came back to the Grange in the beginning
of August? He came to bid you good-bye, I suppose?’
‘No, I did not see him.’
‘Then why did he come back to Combhaven at all? I can hear of nothing
that he did in the way of business, except to pack those trunks,
which he left behind him after all his trouble. What was the motive
of his return?’
‘Indeed, I cannot tell you,’ faltered Naomi, sorely distressed.
Arnold looked troubled. He rose and walked up and down the narrow
parlour, as he had walked his quarter-deck in many an hour of doubt
and difficulty.
‘I can’t understand it,’ he said. ‘It is the strangest business
altogether. Why did he come back and pack his trunks, and have them
taken to the coach, and why did he not appear to claim them? If he
did not leave by the coach, how did he get away?’
‘There are vessels that sail between Rockmouth and Bristol, are there
not?’ suggested Naomi. ‘He may have gone that way.’
‘A slow roundabout way for him to choose, after making up his mind to
go by the coach. I begin to feel as anxious as Nicholas. O my dearest
Oswald, where are you, and why this mystery? God grant that he is
safe and happy somewhere! God grant there has been no foul play!’
At these words Naomi’s face took a deathlike hue. But the room was
too dark for Arnold to see the change.
‘If harm of any kind has happened to him, Heaven help the wrongdoers,
for they shall have no mercy from me! I’ll hunt them down. But no,
I won’t think it. I won’t believe that he has come to an untimely
end--the brother who carried me in his arms, and was so gentle and
loving, and whom I loved, God knows, with all my heart, though I left
him! How I have looked forward to our reunion, and counted upon it,
and built upon it in all these years! And I come back to find him far
away, and his fate a mystery.’
He threw himself into a chair and sobbed aloud, honest manly tears
coming from a loyal heart.
It was Naomi’s turn to be comforter. She bent over him, and laid her
hand lightly on his shoulder.
‘Pray do not say that evil has befallen him,’ she said. ‘He may have
changed his mind as to his way of travelling at the last; who can
tell what trifling thing may have influenced him?’
‘What did he do with himself all that day?’ asked Arnold. ‘Nicholas
tells me that he left the Grange before one o’clock, and the coach
was not to pick him up till after eight in the evening. Where was
he? With whom did he spend his time? He seems to have no friends in
Combhaven but you and your family. And he was not with you?’
‘No.’
‘Cannot you help me to find out where he was?’
‘No, I cannot.’
‘That’s a pity. If I could only find out the people who saw the last
of him here, they might enlighten me as to his intentions. I must see
what I can do elsewhere. I came to you naturally for help; but then I
did not know your engagement was broken off.’
Sally brought in the lighted candles, and started at sight of the
sea-captain.
‘Don’t be frightened, Sally,’ said Naomi; ‘this is Captain Pentreath,
the Squire’s brother.’
‘Lor’ sakes!’ faltered the handmaiden, ‘I took he for the young
Squire’s ghost.’
‘Is your father at home?’ asked Arnold presently; ‘I should like to
see him.’
‘No, it is his class-night; he will not be home for nearly an hour.
And I know he could tell you nothing more than I have told you,’
added Naomi.
‘Perhaps not, but he might advise me; I have heard that he is
a superior man. I should like to see him: I’ll call to-morrow.
Good-night, Naomi--I may call you Naomi, I hope, for my brother’s
sake? He told me to think of you as a sister.’
‘I should like you to think me so still, if you can,’ Naomi answered
gently.
And then he pressed her hand, and was gone.
There was some kind of comfort in the sailor’s friendliness, in this
brave, strong, manly figure suddenly introduced into the dull scene
of a sorrow-shadowed life. He was so like Oswald, and yet so unlike.
And he loved his brother so dearly. Oswald’s fate would be no longer
a mystery. All those unspoken fears, which had preyed upon her like a
consuming disease, would be proved vain and foolish. He was safe, he
was happy in some strange land. There needed only a little energy and
cleverness to find out all about him, and Arnold would supply both.
Then there flashed upon her the memory of that awful moment in the
wood, when she saw her father go by with a look upon his face that
seemed to her like the brand of Cain, full of awful meaning.