KENSINGTON, _this 29th of March_.
For my deere brother, thes.
'Oh,' said Elise, as Marion laid down the letter. 'How delightful for
you, Marion! London! Balls, the play, the gardens, music. Even, I
suppose,' she wistfully added, 'the Court.'
Elise seemed certainly to have recovered from her chagrin, and Marion's
heart warmed to her for the unselfishness of her words. The Admiral,
standing before the chimney, his favourite place both summer and winter,
looked curiously at the French girl and then at his daughter.
'Well, Mawfy, now I suppose you be all of a bustle to forsake your old
father and this deadly dull place?'
Marion instantly came and clasped her hands round her father's arm.
True to her character, she had made no great sign of the delight the
letter had given her.
'Do you want me to go or not, Father?'
'What I do mightily like,' chuckled the Admiral, 'is what Constance says
about your dress. Doubtless we are half-clothed savages, here at Garth.
Yes, my dear, I think you should go. Go and learn to drop a grand
curtsey and hold a fan with a languid air and take on that look of
boredom your Aunt Keziah has to such perfection. Never again cheat
Zacchary of his saddling to ride Molly barebacked; never again come
flying across the garden to leap at your father's neck.'
'Father!' An arm stole up towards the said neck. 'I won't ever leave
you if you talk so. All the same, I think perhaps I ought to learn some
of these things.'
'But certainly she should go!' cried Elise from her window seat. 'Such
an excellent opportunity of becoming a lady.'
'Faith! I never thought of that,' drily put in the Admiral. Elise bit
her lip.
At that moment the door opened and Victoire, the French girl's one-time
nurse and present maid, came with the glass of milk she considered it
the nightly duty of her charge to take.
'Only think, Victoire,' cried Elise, 'here is an invitation from the
Lady Constance for Mistress Marion to go to Court!'
'To Kensington,' laughed Marion. 'How your thoughts do run on Courts,
Elise!'
Victoire's black eyes snapped at the speaker. She was a dark-skinned,
vivacious woman, bearing the look of the French peasant without the
heavy features that mark that class. Her devotion to her _enfant_ was
of an absorbing nature, and came nearer that of confidante than
waiting-woman. Marion she treated with a servile deference that was far
from the honest humility of the Cornish serving folk.
If Marion had probed her thoughts she would have known that she
thoroughly disliked Victoire. But Marion had accepted Elise for her
friend in her childhood's days, and (until her aunt had somewhat
unsettled her mind) had remained loyal in spite of the drawbacks of the
French girl's temperament and character, and for her sake had tolerated
Victoire. Frankly, Elise had puzzled her, but Victoire had puzzled her
a hundred times more. She refused to discuss her with her own thoughts.
And of course Victoire, being a shrewd woman, was aware of the feeling
that lay behind Marion's manner towards her. As a result, she became
increasingly servile, constantly trying to remind Marion that this
person in her household was the poorest of French servants, and that
Marion was mistress and heiress of a great house and name.
'But, Madame, how truly excellent!' she cried. 'Madame will certainly
go?'
'Yes, I think I shall go,' said Marion quietly.
As the Admiral's curious glance shot towards Elise, he caught a look
that passed between his ward and her maid. As the latter left the room
the Admiral stepped out on to the terrace.
'How delightful for you, Marion,' said Elise again, as the old man's
stumping tread sounded on the stones.
Marion was staring absently out of the window. After Elise's words had
died away she became aware of them echoing in her brain, all blurred and
mixed up with the magic sound: London. Waking from her day-dream Marion
spoke, her fingers on a straying branch that climbed up the woodwork of
the casement. 'It is now a long time since you yourself were in London.
You have never said much about it. Did you see any of the gay sights
while you were waiting for my father to come and fetch you?'
The Admiral's tread sounded coming nearer. There was no reply from the
girl in the other window seat. Marion was aware of a slight movement,
and then a peculiar stillness, as if her companion was forcibly
restraining further motion. Marion glanced over her shoulder and then
swung round. On Elise's face was a strange hunted look which gave way
to a sorrowfulness that sat strangely on her girlish features. Startled
and puzzled, Marion was groping for the right word to say, when the
Admiral's figure darkened the window. At the same moment Elise dropped
her scissors; and when she was settled in her seat again her face wore
its usual expression. The thought crossed Marion's mind that the look
had been caused by a sudden homesickness and memory of distant
days--France; of her dying father, perhaps. Again her heart softened to
the girl.
'What did we do?' said Elise, biting her thread. 'Oh, we did not do
much.'
'Come, Marion,' called the Admiral, 'are you so wrapped up in your
dreams you have forgotten me already?'
Marion slipped out. It was the nightly habit of the two to wander in
the garden after supper. She found her father revolving plans for her
immediate departure, and, her thoughts leaping forward to meet the
future, the consideration of Elise's affairs left her mind.
For close on an hour the two paced to and fro, and then, finding that
Elise had retired, Marion went to her own room. Her sad mood of the
earlier part of the evening had disappeared, her apprehensions flown. A
bright vista shone before her wherein no mist of doubt was suffered to
live. She found the housekeeper, who had combined her own duties with
those of waiting-woman, standing by the dressing-table, ready to brush
her hair.
'Curnow,' she said as she closed the door, 'you will never guess what
has happened. Just try.'
Meanwhile down in the garden the Admiral was solemnly stumping the
length of the terrace. The light went softly out of the sky and gleamed
on the face of the Channel far below. The scent of the furze, in full
bloom, came up from the headland, and over the trees behind the house a
slip of a new moon showed.
The serenity of the evening was lost on the old sailor. He was musing on
two problems, puffing at his pipe.
What had Elise been doing alone down at Polrennan, on the other side of
the water, to-day? That was the only spot whence Poole's cottage,
hidden by the winding valley from the sight of Garth, could be seen.
And why were she and Victoire so anxious to get rid of Marion?
The night had fully come, and the house was in darkness before the
Admiral turned indoors.
*CHAPTER IV*
*ROGER TREVANNION*
There is something of peculiar brightness in the dawn of the day
following an evening of good news. Old folk and young alike confess to
the drowsy joy of that hour, and when the person in question is a girl
of seventeen, who has never even crossed the county border, and is now
bound for London and moreover lives in an age when to travel thither
from Cornwall is as great an adventure as a journey to the East Indies
would be some half dozen generations later, then truly there is an
unearthly radiance in that first morrow's dawn.
Marion turned lazily on her pillow, dimly aware that something unusual
had happened. For a few seconds she lay inert, then heaved a great sigh
of content. She remembered. She threw her arms out on the coverlet and
smiled. Springing out of bed, she drew back the window curtains and
opened the lattice.
A short time later a figure in a white cotton gown, with blue ribbons in
her hair, stole lightly downstairs.
It was Marion's loved duty to make the toast for her father's morning
tankard. A confused sound of voices came from the kitchen as she
crossed the hall, and ceased suddenly as she opened the kitchen door.
Two of the serving girls and a milking maid were there; it was easy for
Marion to see from their faces that she had been the subject of their
chatter.
'Marnin', Mistress Marion!' came in chorus. The girls stood and stared
in a stupid sort of way, their great rosy hands wedged on their hips,
sleeves and petticoats tucked up for work.
'Us 'as just heard, Mistress Marion, as you be a-gooin' away to London,'
said one of them, after a pause. They stared afresh.
'Us ain't niver zeen afore a lady as wor a-gooin' to London, Mistress,'
respectfully remarked the milking maid.
A ripple of laughter ran over Marion's face as she stood, her back to
the girls, cutting a piece of bread at the trencher. Evidently she was
to be a nine days' wonder. For that matter, she had the promise of
being a nine days' wonder to herself. 'Is it I?' ran her thoughts. 'Is
it really I?' And if the domestics stared now, what would they do when
she came back with new gowns and laces, and her hair dressed in a new
way; and, she hoped, that indefinable something in her manner that had
made them gape at Mistress Keziah, and peep out of doorways at her,
their fingers on their lips?
Until her going was decided on, she did not know how much her aunt's
talk had awakened a desire to see the world of men and women. Now she
was going to see it, as Elise had said--plays, music, the Court. She
smiled as she trimmed her piece of bread. Then the voice of one of the
wenches roused her to a forgotten sense of duty.
'A bain't niver----'
'Zora,' said Marion, swinging round, 'it is past five o'clock. I can
hear Spotty now calling to be milked. You must remember that the cows
don't know I'm going to London.'
'Ees fay, so un do sure, Mistress Marion. A told Spotty meself. First
thing a did, Mistress. I says to she, I says: "Do ee know Mistress
Marion be a-goin' to London?" And her kind of said: "'Er bain't, now,
sure!" her did. I allus tells Spotty. A told un when Simon Jibber come
a-court----'
'Zora, go at once to your work! Millie and Sue, if you haven't anything
to do, I must inquire of Mrs. Curnow of your duties.'
There were no hearers left for the end of Marion's sentence, and it was
fortunate for them, for with her last words in came the housekeeper from
the dairy, carrying a great bowl of clotted cream.
Her father's toast made, her own breakfast of bread and milk partaken
of, Marion set herself to the little duties of the day. Elise, she
learned from the housekeeper, was in the throes of one of her periodic
headaches, concerning which, it must be confessed, our fair Marion was
rather unsympathetic. The young mistress of Garth had never known what
it was to be ailing. For all her delicate cheeks, she was as healthy and
robust as Zora herself. She got slightly impatient about Elise's
migraine, and when the sufferer emerged from her retirement, full of the
petulance that generally succeeded her attacks, Marion, in her mental
poise of perfect health, did not find it easy to make allowances.
Indeed, the only quarrels that rose between them, the only swift,
straight-out blows Marion had ever been known to give, seemed to be
reserved for these occasions.
Marion went dutifully to her friend's room, and talked with her a few
minutes, feeling as usual her impatience arise at Elise's martyr-like
tones. Presently, saying she must confer with the housekeeper about the
dinner, she went below again.
Dinner was at twelve o'clock, as was the custom of the day, and supper
came at five or six. At nine o'clock the household was abed, for it was
considered a shameful thing not to be up with the sun. These two meals
being the sole fare for the day, were of a generous order, and Marion
thought it nothing unusual when the housekeeper told off on her fingers
the items for dinner: a dish of prawns, a marrow-bone pie (and the good
things that went into that pie!), a pair of fat fowls, a fore-quarter of
lamb, and a sirloin of beef; a spiced pudding with brandy sauce, a
gooseberry pie, and some little tarts made with conserve, that Victoire
had introduced to the household.
Having satisfied herself that the cooking was in a satisfactory way,
Marion went into the still-room, to see to the straining of her
gooseberry wine. About ten o'clock she mounted to her own chamber and
shut the door. A serious business was now afoot. The early joy of the
morning had subsided to an under-current of secret pleasure, but even
that bade fair to be destroyed when she turned out the contents of her
clothes chest. Her going had been settled by the Admiral for Thursday.
To-day was Tuesday. There was no time even for Victoire's skilful
fingers--and Victoire was better than most sempstresses or tailors--to
make her another gown. Marion turned over the laces that had been her
mother's, the ribbons that were her sole ornament. Her best embroidered
bodice she looked at with a dissatisfied air, and then sought her
father, who was casting up accounts at his desk.
'Father,' she said somewhat ruefully, 'I had no idea what a great many
things I haven't got. I don't know what Aunt Constance will think of
such a niece.'
The Admiral considered his daughter at length. ''Tis certainly a
problem, but I should not mind laying long odds Aunt Constance will find
her niece fair to middling. For the rest, her father is taking her, and
he has a purse heavy enow to stand a new gown, I trow. Now take your hat
and come across to the far pasture with me. I hear Sukey's got a fine
calf.'
Dinner time passed, and still Elise did not leave her chamber. Marion
went again to her door, and finding she was asleep sought her own room.
She seated herself at her chamber window, a piece of lace and a mending
needle in her hand.
It had been an eventful week, a week unequalled in her simple life; it
had opened with the bustle of her Aunt Keziah's departure; a prodigious
bustle that, for the lady had elected to travel in state, with six
horses to her coach, a couple of out-riders and her page on the step.
Marion and Zacchary had ridden on either side the chariot as far as
Lostwithiel, and Marion felt she would always have an affectionate
memory of the fine old head thrust from the coach as she had turned her
chestnut homeward. Coming back, the house had seemed for the first time
somewhat lacking. Wearisome as her demands on her niece's liberty had
been, the old lady had nevertheless brought an added interest to the
girl's quiet life, and, as she had intended, successfully sown the seeds
of unrest.
The next day Marion had met Roger on the headland, and later saved him
from the folly of championing Jack Poole. Then had come the letter, the
dazzling, bewildering prospect of her aunt's house in far-away London
opening inviting doors to her. How Roger had scoffed at the idea!
Marion smiled and sighed in the same breath. She felt great uneasiness
at the thought of leaving Roger, so headstrong and foolish, to act as he
chose, to mix himself up with all the rebel factions of the county if
the fancy pleased him.
She stitched away at her lace, a look of unusual gravity on her face.
Her thoughts had now wandered to Elise; and in spite of the kindly
feelings Elise's later behaviour had evoked in her, she could not dispel
the sense of foreboding her words at supper had aroused. Nor could she
quite forgive her. Roger had been the playmate and sole companion of
her childhood for many years before Elise came to Garth. The bond of
the boy-and-girl intimacy was of a far stronger nature than the tie of
friendship between herself and Elise. In fact, if Roger had not gone
away to school and left her sorrowing and lonely, it is probable that
the friendship between herself and the French girl would never have
ripened at all.
Memories of her childhood days with Roger came up from the early years;
the thought of his unswerving loyalty, when she had done things he did
not like and he had taken the blame himself; of the boats they had
builded together and sailed on the duck-pond; of the hours he had sat by
her in the window seat, when she was learning her stitches, and talked
and told her stories--always of the sea; of the battles they had had
concerning the riding of the colts--'You see, Mawfy,'--she could see him
now, a clumsy, thick-set figure of a boy, his sturdy legs planted
apart--'you haven't got a brother except me, and your father's no good
at riding now, poor old man, so I've got to look after you. And I
shan't let you ride Starlight till I've tried him better. If he's going
to throw somebody--and he looks like it--I'd rather he threw me than
you. I know just how to fall on a place where it doesn't hurt. And you
don't. It's no good saying you do, or anything of that sort. I just
shan't let you ride Starlight.'
Then, when she had argued and sulked: 'You look much nicer when you're
smiling, Mawfy. You've got such a funny face.'
'My hair lies down, any way!' was her unfailing retort on personal
questions, 'and I don't look like a heathen black-a-moor.'
Marion laid down her needle, with tears not far from the smile in her
eyes as she remembered. In Roger's black thatch of hair there had
always been a lock somewhere about the crown stiff as a broom handle,
which defied all efforts at persuasion on the fond mother's part. One
day Marion had taken a piece of dough from Curnow's kneading-pan, and
plastered it in a thick cake over the unruly patch. The dough had
hardened and refused to be removed, and Roger had gone about many days
wearing this tonsure. In the end (the day being Saturday, and the
question of church arising) Marion had worked at the stiff cake and
brought it off, plentifully set with hairs, at the sight of which her
own tears had dropped.
'Never mind, Mawfy,' Roger had said, between his yells, 'I don't really
mind. And perhaps you'll be pretty some day. But I don't care if all
my hair stands up. I knew a sailor who wore all his hair standing up.
Harder than mine.'
'Oh, Roger, Roger!' said Marion softly, her needle suspended as she
stared out over the garden. 'What a dear child you were!'
Then, uncomfortable fact, Roger had grown up. Each time he had come back
from Blundell's he had been different: rougher, noisier, not knowing
what to do with his strength that was coming on him, given to saying and
doing awkward things; with a loudly voiced scorn for girls (in Elise's
presence) that disappeared when the two were together; for Marion was
Marion, and, like his mother (and no other) set apart in his boyish
thoughts.
And all through his growing youth, toughening every year just as an ivy
stem toughens and becomes a tree trunk, ran that one desire to be a
sailor. Thwarted, it had merely bent another way, and grown stouter for
the opposition. That the thwarting was not good for the boy, Marion
knew instinctively, as her father knew from experience, and failed not
to say so to Mrs. Trevannion. 'You're wrong, Ma'am,' he had said,
striking the stones of the Manor porch with his stick. 'Roger's got a
sailor's blood, and he'll go to sea. If you won't let him go, he'll run
away.'
'No,' said the lady quietly, 'he won't do that. He has promised.'
The old Salt Eagle glared under his pent-house brows. 'Women are queer
folk. To make a lad promise that, and continually bid him to wait,
knowing all the time you have not the slightest intention of ever
letting him go! You will have only yourself to thank if he flings
himself hot-headed, in desperation, into some political bother. We live
in sorry times, and the country's seething underneath like one of yonder
Dartmoor bogs beneath its cap of green slime. And a boy who is
discontented is easily drawn into trouble. And now I'll bid you good
day, Ma'am.'
And so the old sailor had stumped off, with sorrow in his heart under
his rage. He had never had a son, but had fate been kinder to him, he
would have been proud of a boy like Roger Trevannion.
Her father's fears were Marion's also, and in the light of experience
had been amply justified. That 'miserable rising,' as the Admiral
described the Monmouth Rebellion, had stirred the green smooth surface
of the bog of unrest, and the black depths still bubbled. The Lord
Chief-Justice Jeffreys had come out to the West to hold his 'Bloody
Assize,' the punishment meted out by Kirke's Lambs after the battle of
Sedgemoor not being deemed sufficient. Jeffreys, doing his work of
extermination of the rebels, with one ear listening to the desires of
his own foul heart, and the other bent on distant Whitehall, whence
James II. smiled approval and murmured encouragement, saw to it that his
work was well done. His spies were everywhere, from the White Horse of
the Danes in the Mendips to the fishing coves of Land's End. And the
net he cast in this way was of the finest mesh. Cornwall was mainly
Protestant, and it was more on the grounds of dislike for a monarch who
insisted on the observance of the Catholic religion, than allegiance to
the youth who led the Protestant rebellion against him, that some of
their numbers flocked to Monmouth's standard. The Westerners had had
ample cause to rue the day before ever Judge Jeffreys set out on his
tour of death. The rebellion had failed, their young lads dying with it
in the marshes of Sedgemoor; and Monmouth, their hero and hope, had fled
for a coward, and earned the reward of his deeds. And now their lusty
cries of: 'God bless the Protestant Duke!' had given way to the silence
of unreasoning fear. The country folk had not time to dry their eyes
for their sons who would never return, before they were opened wide in
horror at this new danger for those who were left. The danger menaced
(and touched) high and low alike. Men talking in taverns or at the
cross roads on the events of the rising, talking, as they thought, with
friends, were haled up the next day and hanged, for the love they bore
to Monmouth. It was not necessary even, in some cases, that they should
speak the word that showed they were against the Catholic king; a look
sufficed; they hanged just the same. Here and there a man who was
suspected was found rich enough to pay the Lord Chief-Justice the price
of his life. But not many were so fortuned; and before the assize in
the West was over, men had learned to distrust their lifelong friends,
and to be afraid, going home at night, of their own shadows; and women
stilled their crying children with the merest whisper of Jeffreys' name.
Jeffreys had returned to London with his triumphant tale of some
hundreds hanged, and many more sold as slaves to the Plantations, and
for such loyal service to the Crown had been made the Lord High
Chancellor of England.
It had been mainly owing to the Admiral's influence and well-known
loyalist views that Garth had escaped suspicion; escaped, that is to
say, with the exception of Jack Poole, who, working in a shipwright's
yard at Lyme when Monmouth landed, and with plenty of enthusiasm to
spare for any cause, such as smuggling or rioting, that ran against
authority, joined the lads of Lyme, was taken (not in action) by the
loyalists, clapped into jail at Bodmin, and now, in Bodmin again, was
awaiting his trial.
Roger had taken no part at all in the rebellion, but his sense of
loyalty to his friends would always outride his discretion, as Marion
had proved. And she might not always be there to stay his folly.
She sighed, and was laying her work aside, when a quick step sounded on
the terrace, and there was a ringing hail.
'Marion, are you there? Curnow said she thought you were above.'
Marion looked out at her casement. Roger was standing just below
looking out at the moment on the shrubbery where two of the stable dogs
were trespassing. The youth was, as usual, hatless, and the black head
was in reach of Marion's fingers as she leaned out. Roger was aware of
a sudden tug near the crown of his head.
'Aie! Aie!' he said, swinging round. 'I thought you'd forgotten that.
It still stands up--always will.' The brown eyes looked up
affectionately. 'Do you remember that dough cake?'
'I had just been thinking of it, and how I cried when the hair came out.
It certainly looks queer, Roger. Let us hope you will begin to grow bald
just there first.'
'Most probably I shall grow bald all round it, and leave it upstanding.
Never mind. I say, Mawfy, I've----'
'Don't speak so loudly,' said Marion in sudden contrition. 'I had
forgotten, Elise has a headache.'
Roger made a slight grimace. 'Put on your habit, and come for a ride,'
he said softly. ''Tis my last chance. I hear you are going Thursday.
And to-morrow I must go down country about some sheep.'
'Good,' said Marion. 'I will only be five minutes. Will you ask
Zacchary to saddle the grey?'
As they rode out of the courtyard and turned their horses towards the
downs, Marion gave one of her sudden chuckles. 'Do you remember
Starlight,' she said, 'and the fights we used to have about my riding
him?'
'I remember. He was a vicious brute. I was always glad I bullied you
on that score. What has made you remember Starlight?'
'I had a thinking fit this afternoon,' said Marion, 'and all sorts of
things came back to me. Things we did when we were children.'
'Ay,' said Roger. 'Do you remember----' And the two went off together
on a journey of reminiscences that lasted them, with breathless
intervals when the ground tempted a gallop, for close on an hour. The
memory of that ride lived long with Marion; in talking of their
childhood they had become children again.
On a windy ridge some dozen miles from the house they paused to breathe
their horses. Marion looked across the land, all touched with tender
green, to the distant Channel.
'I wish Aunt Constance had asked me to visit her at any time but the
spring,' she said suddenly. 'And I can't conceive how I shall endure
many weeks without the smell of the sea.'
It was the first mention of her approaching journey. The merry, boyish
look went out of Roger's face. 'I hate the idea of your going,' he said
moodily. 'Who is going to look after you in London, and see that you
don't ride Starlight?' A smile came and went, but there was a lingering
sadness in his eyes.
'There won't be any chance of riding, I suppose,' said Marion.
'And I hate London, too,' added the young countryman. 'All the troubles
in England are brewed first of all in Whitehall.' He looked hard at his
companion for a moment, and then back to the distant sea. 'How long are
you going to stay?' he asked abruptly.
'I don't know,' said Marion lightly. 'A long time--years perhaps.'
Roger's brows drew together. 'And you have never seen your Aunt
Constance. What is Sir John Fairfax like? Who is going to look after
you?' he said again.
'I don't know--Roger!' Marion turned in her saddle to face him. 'The
point is much more: who is going to look after _you_!'