To the making of such a scene as that recounted in the contemporary
journal, much had gone during the months so crudely analysed. That
damning pile of evidence had been building itself up, touch upon touch,
since the first moment when Sophie Bendigo's eyes lit on the instigator
of the trouble; and the causes of her own share in it had been
strengthening from far earlier even than that. In after years the Wise
Woman of Bosullow would recount that when the baby Sophie was brought to
her to be passed for luck through the ringed stone of the Men-an-Tol,
she had foretold for her the rise in life that eventually came about.
True, the terms of the prophecy had been so vague that beyond the fact
that a ladder, metaphorical or otherwise, was to play a part in Sophie's
career, Mr. Bendigo had not been much the wiser. The mother had lain in
the bleak moorland churchyard for several years now, but she had had
time, during the most malleable years of a girl's life, the early teens,
to impress Sophie with a sense of destiny. Not for her the vulgar loves
and joys of other country girls, to her some one shining, resplendent,
would come flashing down, and Sophie must learn to bear with powdered
hair and hoops against that moment. For London, of course, would be her
splendid bourne, and as to saying that hoops got in the way of her
legs--why, hoops were the mode and to a hoop she must come. Since Mrs.
Bendigo had died, worn out by the terrible combination of the Squire's
slow cruelty and his suave tongue, Sophie had given up the struggle with
hoops and powder, but she still lived for and by her vision of the
future. If Sophie Bendigo had not glanced over her shoulder in Troon
Lane, thereby presenting an exceptional face at the most alluring of
angles--chin up and eyes innocently sidelong--to the view of Mr.
Crandon, she might never have climbed so high. When she saw Mr. Crandon,
his white wig tied with a black ribbon, and an excellent paste pin
flashing from his cravat, riding up the lane, she never doubted that her
star had risen at last.
Sophie Bendigo was of the pure Celtic type still preserved among the
intermarrying villages of West Penwith. Her rather coarse hair was a
burnt black, so were her thick, straight brows, but her eyes were of
that startlingly vivid blue one only meets in Cornish women and Cornish
seas. There was something curiously Puck-like about Sophie; the
cheekbones wide and jaw pointed, while her mouth was long, the thin,
finely cut lips curving up at the ends, and there was a freakish flaunt
at the corners of her brows--Crandon thought of piskies as he looked.
She wore a plain white gown, low in the throat and short in the sleeve,
and she carried an apron-load of elder-flower, the pearly blossoms of it
showing faintly green against the deader white of the linen.
"Excuse me, but does this lead to St. Annan?" asked Crandon, bending a
little towards her. Sophie felt one swift pang lest he should be riding
out of her life straightway, and swiftly answered:
"You are out of your way," she told him, "this lane only leads to our
house. You must go back to the highway and follow it past the 'Nineteen
Merry Maidens' and turn on to your right--but it is a matter of three or
four miles."
For a moment they remained looking at each other, then Crandon said:
"Is there perhaps an inn near here where I and my mare could rest? We
have come from Zennor this morning, and she is newly shod."
"There is no need for an inn," said Sophie, "we are always glad to rest
a traveller at Troon Manor. I am Sophie Bendigo."
Crandon smilingly dismounted and walked by her side up the lane.
"It would be ungracious to refuse when the Fates have led me and Venus
herself seconds the invitation. . . . Have you just risen from the sea, I
wonder, that your eyes still hold its hue?"
Sophie, used only to the clumsy overtures of the county squires, flushed
with pleasure, not at the allusion, which she did not understand, but at
the air of gallantry which pervaded the man. She glanced up admiringly
between her narrowed lids--Crandon was accustomed to such glances, so
had his girl-wife in Scotland looked at him, before he deserted her and
her child. He meditated no harm to this girl, no plan was formulated in
his mind; and as to the ten thousand pounds, of which so much was heard
later on, no whisper of it had then reached his ears. The road had led
to her, her own face lured him on, and a few hours of a pretty girl on
such a June day, where was the harm? The innocence and spontaneity of
his feelings gave the Captain a delightful glow of conscious virtue, and
he walked beside Sophie with a slight swagger of enjoyment.
The drive was a mere rutted cart-track; hemlock, foxgloves, purple
knapweed, blue scabious and tall, thin-stemmed buttercups grew along the
tangled hedges, and the blackberry flowers patterned the brambles with
pearliness. The luminous chequer-work of sun and shadow fell over
Sophie's white gown, and the green light, filtering through the trees,
reflected on her face and on her glossy head, so that she seemed to be
walking in the depths of the sea, and Crandon's simile gained in
aptness.
At the bend of the lane they came on the Manor House, its whitewash
dazzling in the sunshine, even the shadows thrown on it by the eaves and
sills were so clear they gave a curious effect of being as light as the
rest. Only the Bendigo arms--a clenched fist--carved on the granite
lintel, had been left untouched by the whitewash, and showed a sullen
grey. A few fawn-coloured fowls, blazing like copper in the sunshine,
pecked at the dusty ground, and some white pigs, looking as utterly
naked as only white pigs can, snuffled at a rubbish heap, their big ears
flapping. A tall, lean woman, clad in a dirty silk dressing-jacket of
bright yellow, was talking to a labourer by the dairy door. There was
something oddly suggestive of secrecy in the turn of their shoulders and
their bent heads, and the woman's soiled finery made her thin face--that
of a shrewd but comely peasant, framed in an untidy pompadour of
reddish-brown hair--seem oddly incongruous. The man lapsed into
insignificance beside her, yet something of likeness in their sharpened
lines, and in the tinge of hot colour showing up through them,
proclaimed them kin. They were Lylie Ruffiniac, Squire Bendigo's
housekeeper, and her brother James, who acted as bailiff on the estate.
Sophie, her head turned towards her companion, did not see them, but
Crandon did, and was pricked at once to curiosity. Living as he did by
his wits, his every fibre was quickened to superficial alertness, though
of intellectual effort he was almost incapable. An old journal for 1752
that published, in addition to its account of the trial, some "Memoirs
of the Life of Lucius William Crandon, Esq.," had enough acumen to
remark: "He was not, however, destitute of parts, for he would often
surprise those who entertained a mean opinion of his abilities, by
schemes and concertions which required more genius than they thought he
had been master of. . . . As he was not of sufficient learning to qualify
him either for law or for physic, he turned his thought towards the
army, where a very moderate share of literature is sufficient, and where
few voices disqualify a man from making a figure. . . ." And a figure
Lucius Crandon certainly made--a figure that caused the woman in the
yellow jacket to stop and stare, then to disappear into the house by a
side-door--Crandon received the impression that she had gone to warn
some one of his approach.