WHAT THE COWBOY COULD TELL.
After his interview with Cynthia Haggard, Captain Pentreath reasoned
himself into an easier state of mind about his missing brother. His
sanguine nature leaned towards the brighter view of the question.
Oswald had been calm and resigned when he parted with the object of
his fatal love; he had gone away to begin a new life, had cast off
the fetters of passion, and gone forth a free man.
‘I shall hear from him in due time. All will be well,’ said Arnold.
Having made up his mind deliberately to go on hoping, and, indeed,
entertaining the conviction that the riddle of his brother’s destiny
would be solved in time, Arnold Pentreath considered it his duty to
inspire Naomi with the same hopeful view. It afflicted him to see her
pale sad face, to watch her slow listless movements. It became his
most ardent desire to cheer and console her.
With this end he went very often to the minister’s house, and sat in
the quiet old parlour where Oswald had spent so many hours of his
life, and talked to Naomi while she sewed. There was no one to object
to his visits. Aunt Judith was in the shop; Joshua was away, no one
knew whither. It was his habit now to come home wearied at nightfall,
save on those evenings when he had class-meetings, or Bible-meetings,
or some kind of service in his chapel.
Cynthia was gone, and Joshua had accounted briefly for her absence by
stating that she had gone to see her friends at Penmoyle.
‘You had better send her trunk on by the coach,’ said Joshua to Naomi.
‘But why did she go so suddenly, father?’ Naomi asked, puzzled by
this disruption of the household.
‘Because it was her whim to go, and it was not my pleasure to say her
nay.’
‘Has she gone by the coach?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘And when is she to come back?’
‘When I please to bid her come.’
Naomi sighed, and obeyed her father’s order. Alas for this change,
which made her father a person to be obeyed with fear and trembling
rather than with faith and love! Naomi had not forgiven Cynthia
for all the misery she had wrought; but this sudden disappearance
of her father’s wife oppressed her with a sense of injustice and
wrong done by Joshua. With what cruelty had he driven that meek and
sorrowful offender away from him? His daughter had noted his conduct
to his wife, and had seen his harshness, his coldness, his growing
aversion--the chilling mask which passionate love puts on when
jealousy gnaws the heart.
Cynthia was gone, and Naomi’s life was now quite lonely. She was glad
of Arnold’s visit, and took some comfort from his hopeful talk about
the absent master of the Grange.
‘He will come back to his home and to you, Naomi,’ said the Captain.
‘Come back a new man, and an honest one, proud to redeem his faith.’
‘Were he to come back to-morrow I should give him a sister’s loving
welcome,’ answered Naomi, ‘but never more than a sister’s love. He
has broken my heart once--I won’t let him break it again.’
‘But if he were honestly repentant and sincere, Naomi?’
‘He might believe himself sincere. I could not trust him with my
peace. Do not think that I am angry with him. I am only sorry that
he should ever have been so mistaken as to believe in the reality of
his love for me. He never knew what love meant till he gave his heart
where it should not have been given.’
‘Well, Naomi, perhaps you are wise. The vessel that fails to answer
to her helm in the hour of danger is hardly a ship to be trusted.
Then we will think of Oswald as an absent brother only, and look
forward hopefully to his return.’
‘God knows I try to hope for it,’ said Naomi, with a sigh.
‘Why should he not be really your brother--brother in fact as well
as in name?’ pleaded Arnold, taking her unresisting hands. ‘Make him
your brother, Naomi, by making me your husband. We have not known
each other very long, but our mutual sorrow has brought us nearer
together than years of common acquaintance could have done. I have
looked into your heart, Naomi, and I know its worth. Let me take my
brother’s place, dear; I shall never wander; my love shall know no
change. It is founded on a rock--for it was my esteem for your noble
nature which first taught me to love you.’
Naomi withdrew her hands from his, and stood up, looking at him
seriously, with eyes full of tears.
‘Never again let this be spoken of between us, Arnold,’ she said. ‘It
can never be.’
‘Why not?’
‘There is a reason which you must never know.’
‘But I am not to be satisfied like that, Naomi. There is no reason
that I can recognise, unless you say that you do not love me--can
never teach yourself to love me.’
‘I will say that, then--I can never love you.’
‘And your eyes are brimming with tears, and your lips tremble as you
say the words. It is not true, Naomi; it is a lie--a lie against the
might of love. You love me as I love you, and we were meant for each
other and for happiness. Why should you or I be miserable all our
lives because a foolish young man has run away from felicity? Naomi,
dearest love, make my life happy.’
‘You are good, and I honour you; you are like Oswald, and my heart
yearns towards you,’ answered the girl falteringly, for it seemed
to her at this moment as if the picture of a new life were suddenly
unfolded before her eyes, and the vision was marvellously bright;
‘but I can never be more than your friend and sister.’
‘I see. You love the truant still. Did I not say so?’
‘His memory is very dear to me.’
Arnold said no more. Those eloquent eyes, those tremulous lips, had
told him he was beloved, and yet this love was denied him. What was
he to think? He was hardly inclined to despair, or to accept this
answer of Naomi’s as final. She had some mistaken notion of fidelity
to a departed love doubtless; she would sacrifice a lover in the
present--a real and living affection--for the sake of that inconstant
lover in the past.
‘Patience,’ thought Arnold; ‘I shall be able to talk her out of her
folly sooner or later.’
Meanwhile he was content to be accepted on the friendly and brotherly
footing. He contrived to see Naomi very often. He found his way even
into the wilderness, that burial-ground of dead joys and bitter
memories. He met her in all her walks. It was difficult for her not
to think that her lost lover had come back to her with a nobler mind
and larger ideas. Here she found no languid indolence, no placid
unconcern for the welfare of others, so long as summer skies were
blue, and one could lie at ease under the beeches reading Byron.
Arnold was full of care for the labourers on his patrimonial estate,
full of sympathy and kindness for the struggling tenant farmers and
their industrious wives, for the young men who desired a little more
enlightenment and education than their fathers had deemed needful
for the fulness of life’s measure. With Arnold benevolent deeds were
not castles in the air, Utopian schemes to be set on foot in some
convenient hour of the future, but duties to be done at once, now,
while it was yet day.
Arnold was glad of so intelligent a sympathiser with his cares as
steward of his brother’s fortune. Naomi was always ready to help him
with counsel and experience. She had visited among the labouring
poor, and knew their needs and shortcomings--knew where disease found
them weakest, how fever crept into their dwellings.
‘I can’t think what I should do without you,’ said Arnold; and it
was a new happiness to Naomi to feel that she had been useful. Life
at home was so empty and barren, her duties mechanically performed,
her service unrecognised. The change in her father had made the very
atmosphere of home gloomy and oppressive.
Cynthia had been away nearly a month, and there had been no tidings
of her. This seemed strange to all the household, but as Joshua
expressed neither wonder nor anxiety, it was supposed that his wife’s
absence was understood and approved by him.
‘Poor weak-minded mortal,’ sighed aunt Judith, after discussing the
question with her niece at their lonely tea-table; ‘the first time I
saw that pink and white piece of prettiness step across the threshold
I knew what he was laying up for himself. A man of his years can’t
set his heart upon a wax doll without paying the penalty; above
all when it’s a doll that has neither parents, nor a good stock of
house-linen, nor decent bringing up. _I_ knew what was coming,’ cried
aunt Judith, with a laugh of exultant irony, ‘and my only wonder is
that things haven’t turned out much worse.’
‘Poor thing!’ sighed Naomi, thinking with some touch of compunction
of the pale sad face from which she had averted her eyes so coldly of
late. ‘Do you think father sent her away?’
‘If he did he’d have done no more than was right,’ said aunt Judith.
‘And if he’d done it when I first tried to open his eyes about her
he’d have shown himself a wiser man. But whether she got tired of her
life here and went off of her own free will, or whether your father
sent her, matters very little to us. She’s gone,’ concluded the
spinster decisively, ‘and I hope it’s not unchristianlike to wish
she may never come back.’
* * * * *
Having put the idea of his brother’s suicide out of his mind, Arnold
had not attached any dark meaning to his interview with Cynthia. Her
statement seemed to him natural and credible, and rather calculated
to reassure than to alarm. Oswald had been calm and resigned. He had
stated his intention of going to a new world, to begin a new life.
What ground was there for supposing that a man in this frame of mind
had been so false to manhood as to take his own life? Arnold sent to
an Exeter bookseller for the _Sorrows of Werther_, and read the story
carefully; but not being of so sentimental a turn as his brother, and
not being in love with another man’s wife, he had found the reading
rather a laborious business, and Werther a weak-minded youth with a
fatal habit of prosing about his own emotions.
‘God forbid that my brother should ever follow the example of
such a booby!’ said Arnold, when he had seen Werther laid in
his unconsecrated grave, in the memorable blue coat and yellow
waistcoat, with Charlotte’s pink breast-knot in his pocket; ‘I should
have as much contempt for his want of sense as regret for his want of
religion.’
Arnold had not yet gone to look at the spot where Oswald had parted
from Mrs. Haggard. He remembered the scene well enough in days gone
by; the lonely common with its hillocks and hollows and marshy spots,
over which the swift-winged plover skimmed lightly, vanishing with a
shrill cry into blue distance. The scene was so familiar to him that
it had no special significance; it never struck him that just that
one spot of all others, that little bit of sunburnt common by the
abandoned mine, might be fatal--that here yawned a natural grave,
ready for the end of a tragedy.
He went up to an old farmhouse one afternoon, to settle a question
of roofing and thatching which had been for some time in discussion.
It was the last house on the way to Matcherly Common, a house that
stood on the edge of the wood, or almost in the wood. The latticed
casements looked down a beechen glade. It was a place of silence and
soft cool shadows, a welcome retreat on a summer’s day like this on
which Arnold rode over to settle matters with Farmer Westall about
his granary roofs.
Herne had been made happy in a spacious stable where the good old
white wagon-horses dozed over their hay and clover, and where the
thud of a ponderous tail whisked round for the slaughter of a
forest-fly and the slow munching of fodder were the only sounds
that broke the slumberous stillness. Captain Pentreath had made
his inspection of the premises, and was drinking a glass of Mrs.
Westall’s famous perry before departing, when the farmer mentioned a
subject which always found Arnold an attentive listener.
‘You haven’t heerd anything of your brother, I suppose, Captain?’
‘Not a line. But I don’t despair of getting news of him before long.
He’s not been gone a twelvemonth yet, you see, Mr. Westall, and a
year is a short time when a man has to cross the sea. He may have
changed his mind about America, and gone to New South Wales, and
that’s half a year’s voyage to begin with.’
‘That’s where the convicks go, ain’t it, Captain? The young Squire
’ud never go theer, surely.’
‘There’s no knowing how far a man may go when he’s once made up his
mind to turn rover,’ said Arnold cheerily.
‘Ah,’ sighed the farmer, ‘this here world of ours be a strange un;
there’s things in it that puzzles my poor old wits a’most as much as
that theer thatch catchin’ fire the identical day arter I refused
aunt Nancy the faggit.’
There was a lurking significance in this remark that caught Arnold’s
attention.
‘You have heard something about my brother!’ he cried; ‘you can tell
me something! For God’s sake keep nothing from me; it is a matter of
life or death.’
‘The by’s a truth-spoken by,’ said the farmer, ‘or I shouldn’t ha’
listened to un.’
‘What boy?’
‘It isn’t because a by earns his bit o’ mate minding cows that he
hasn’t got a soul to be saved,’ continued the farmer, as deliberately
as if pursuing a philosophical argument; ‘and I can’t say as ever I
found out this here lad in a lie.’
‘Will you tell me what you mean, how this bears upon my brother?’
cried Arnold, breathless with impatience.
‘My wife and me have sat under Mr. Haggard for the last ten years.
He was the first to tell us our souls were in danger o’ everlasting
fire, and he’s gone on warning of us ever since. ’Tain’t likely I’m
going to speak agen him.’
‘Speak plainly at any rate,’ exclaimed Arnold, ‘if you mean anything.
And from your manner it’s clear you mean something. What has this boy
of yours to do with my brother’s fate?’
‘It ain’t what he has to do, but what he can tell. It was a hot
summer day, you may remember, that day as the young Squire were last
seen at Combhaven--harvest time, and reg’lar harvest weather. This
lad o’ mine, Tim, was out in the forest mindin’ cows. But perhaps
you’d sooner hear it from the lad’s own lips?’ suggested the farmer.
‘I don’t care how I hear it, so long as I hear it quickly!’
‘Well, I’ll call the by; he’s close handy, diggin’ taties.’
‘Let’s go to him,’ said Arnold, taking up his whip and gloves.
The farmer wished to bring the boy to the parlour, as a mode of
proceeding more consistent with the respect due to his landlord,
but the Captain was too eager to endure ceremony. He hurried to the
straggling old kitchen-garden at the back of the house, where ancient
espaliers which had long outgrown their sustaining framework spread
wide their arms against the blue June sky.
Here, digging up the smooth golden-skinned potatoes, they found the
farmer’s cowboy, a frank-looking blue-eyed lad, over whose sunburnt
forehead trickled the dew of toil.
‘Now look ’ee here, Tim,’ said the farmer; ‘I want ’ee to tell the
Captain what it was you saw and heerd that day in Matcherly Wood,
when th’ young Squire passed ’ee by.’
The boy wiped his forehead upon his shirt-sleeve, shifted his spade
from one hand to the other, and after some moments of obvious
embarrassment found a voice.
‘I were mindin’ cattle in the forest, you see, sir, and theer were
one cow wi’ a white face, she were a new un that master had boughten
at Barnstaple last market-day, and she were strange, poor thing, and
strayed away ever so far up towards the common; and I was goin’ arter
her, when who should I see but the minister on afore me, goin’ right
up to the common.’
‘Do you mean Mr. Haggard?’
‘Surely. And he went on ahead o’ me, till he come right out o’ the
wood, just wheer the old shaft be; and he looked about un a bit,
when he got clear o’ the trees, and then went into the engine-house.
I watched a bit, wonderin’ what he were up to; and then I see un
standin’ just inside the doorway, where there’s a lot o’ fallen
stones and rubbish, and tansy growin’ as tall as young trees, and he
stood there lookin’ out, yet keepin’ of hisself hidden like, as if
he were watchin’ for somebody. And just then I catched sight o’ the
white-faced cow, ever so far across the common, and I ran arter her.’
‘Strange, warn’t it?’ said the farmer. ‘But there’s more to tell.’
‘I cotched the old cow, and I was takin’ of her back to the wood,
when I comes right up agen the young Squire. I was a bit scared at
seein’ he, for I’d heerd tell as he were away from Combhaven. He
didn’t take no notice o’ me, but went on, swingin’ his stick round,
and singin’ to hisself, soft like. Well, I thowt no more about un,
and I was here and theer with they cows, and they would stray up
towards the common, though there warn’t much but tansy for they
to eat up theer; and I were up close to the common about an hour
arterwards, when I heerd a shot fired and then another, so close
together they might a been one a’most.’
A white blankness spread itself over Arnold’s face--the vacant horror
of despair. It was some moments before he could speak.
‘You ran to see what those shots meant?’ he cried.
‘I couldn’t tell wheer they come from, not for sartain; but I thowt
it was somewheer near the old shaft, and I went up theer arter a bit,
but theer was nowt to be seen, and no one about. I went into the
engine-house, but the minister was gone.’
‘Why has this been kept from me?’ asked Arnold. ‘Why, in Heaven’s
name, didn’t you let me know this sooner, Westall? You know how
anxious I have been about my brother.’
‘I only heerd of it t’other day, when I overheerd Timothy talkin’ to
our Prudence, the dairymaid. He was tellin’ her about the shot.’
‘Don’t you think it was your duty to have told your master, boy?’
asked Arnold.
‘I didn’t think it was any harm. It might ha’ been some one firin’
at a rabbit or a gull. There’s plenty o’ say-gulls flies across
Matcherly Common.’
‘You saw no more--you heard no more?’
‘No, there was nowt arter that. It were milkin’ time, and I had to
take the cows home.’
‘Now look here, Westall,’ said Captain Pentreath, taking the farmer
aside. ‘Those shots may mean nothing, or they may mean a great deal.
I know my brother was up yonder, by the old shaft, that August day.
I know he had an enemy, and was watched and followed. I have no
evidence that he was ever seen alive after that day. Till to-day
I’ve hugged myself with the hope that he is living in some distant
country, and that I shall hear of him in due time. I begin to think
that hope is a delusion, and that he never left this neighbourhood.
If he has been murdered, it is my business to bring his murderer to
the gallows. But I must first find his murdered body. Will you help
me? You’ve plenty of farm-labourers in your service. Will you help me
to search Matcherly Common, and the mine below it?’