‘SURELY, MOST BITTER OF ALL SWEET THINGS THOU ART.’
MAURICE CLISSOLD keenly scrutinized Bridget Trevanard’s face as they sat
at supper that evening. Muriel’s look of horror at the mention of her
mother’s name had inspired unpleasant doubts upon the subject of his
hostess’s character. He remembered how Elspeth had told him that Mrs.
Trevanard was known as a hard woman; and he told himself that cruelty,
or even crime, might be consistent with that hard nature which had won
for the farmer’s wife the reputation of a stern and exacting mistress.
His closer examination of that face showed him no indication of lurking
evil. That square, unwrinkled brow, those dark brown eyes, with their
keen, straight outlook, denoted at least an honest nature. The firm
lips, the square jaw, gave severity to the countenance—a resolute
woman—a woman not to be turned from her purpose, thought Maurice, but a
woman whom he could hardly imagine capable of crime.
And then why give credence to the rambling assertions of lunacy? It is
the nature of madness to accuse the sane. Maurice tried to put the
thought of Muriel’s wild talk out of his mind; yet that awful question,
‘What has she done with my child?’ haunted him.
He felt less desire to prolong his stay at Borcel. The restful
tranquillity of the place seemed to have departed. Muriel’s fevered mind
had its influence upon the atmosphere. He could not forget that she was
near—wakeful, unhappy—waiting for the lover who was never to return to
her.
He took good care to lock his door that night, and his slumbers were
undisturbed. The next morning was devoted to a long ramble with Martin.
They walked to a distant hill-side, where there were some Druidic
remains well worth inspection; came back to the farm in time for the
substantial early dinner, had a look at the haymakers dining plenteously
in a great stone kitchen, and then retired to a field where the hay was
cocked, to lie basking in the sun, with their faces seaward, dreaming
away the summer afternoon.
Here Maurice told Martin the story of James Penwyn’s death, and the
brief love story which had come to so pitiful an ending.
‘Poor child,’ he said, musingly, recalling his last interview with
Justina, ‘I verily believe she loved him truly and honestly, and would
have made him a good wife. I never saw a nobler countenance than that
player girl’s. I’m sorry I thrust myself between them with so much as
one hard word.’
‘Was no one ever suspected of the murder?’ asked Martin.
‘Yes,’ replied Maurice, without taking his cigar from his lips, ‘I was
for a little while.’
This was rather startling. Martin Trevanard stared at his new
acquaintance with a curious look for a moment or so, before he recovered
himself.
‘You were?’
‘Yes. Didn’t you know? My name was in the papers, but I believe they did
me the favour to spell it wrong. Perhaps I ought to have mentioned the
fact when I was asking Mrs. Trevanard to take me in. Yes, I, his bosom
friend, was the only person they could pitch upon when they wanted to
find the assassin. Yes, I have been in Eborsham gaol under suspicion as
a murderer. The charge broke down at the inquest, and I came off with
flying colours, I believe. Still there the fact remains. The
Spinnersbury detectives put the crime down to me.’
‘It would need pretty strong proof to make _me_ suspect you,’ said
Martin, heartily.
‘I was a good many miles away from the spot when that cursed deed was
done, but it did not suit me to advertise my exact whereabouts to the
world.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because to have told the truth would have been to compromise a woman,
the only one I ever loved, as a man loves one chosen woman out of all
the world.’
Martin threw away his unfinished cigar, turned himself about upon the
haycock which he had chosen for his couch, and settled himself to hear
something interesting, with a bright eager look in his dark eyes.
‘Tell me all about it,’ he said.
‘Bah! weak sentimentality,’ muttered Maurice, ‘I should only bore you.’
‘No, you wouldn’t. I should like to hear it.’
‘Well, naming no names, and summing up the matter briefly, there will be
no harm done. It is the story of a dead and buried folly, that’s all; a
hackneyed commonplace story enough.’
He sighed, as if the recollection hurt him a little, dead as this old
foolishness might be—sighed and looked seaward dreamily, as if he were
looking back into the past.
‘You must know that when I was a year or two younger, and life was
fresher to me, I went a good deal into what people call society—didn’t
set my face against new acquaintances, dinner parties, dances, and so
forth, as I do now. I’ve a fair income for a bachelor, belong to a good
family, and can hold my own position well in a crowd. Now amongst the
houses I visited in those days there were only two or three where I went
from sheer honest regard for the people I visited. Among these was the
house of a certain fashionable physician, not a hundred miles from
Cavendish Square. He was a widower, with three daughters, the two elder
thorough women of the world, and most delightful girls to know. We were
chums from the outset. They drove me about in their barouche, made me
useful as an escort at flower shows, a perambulatory catalogue at
picture galleries, and we all three comprehended perfectly that I was
not to dream of marrying either of them.’
‘Dangerous, I should think,’ suggested Martin.
‘Safe as the Tarpeian rock. My feelings for the dear girls were of a
purely fraternal character from the first. I would as soon have bought
the winner of the last Derby for a Park hack as had one of these two for
my wife. I went shopping with them occasionally, twiddled my thumbs at
Peter Robinson’s while they turned over silks, and I knew the amount of
millinery required for their sustenance. No, Martin, there was no peril
here. Unluckily, there was the third daughter—a tender slip of a girl,
hardly out of the schoolroom—a child who had her gowns meted out to her
by her sisters, and wore perpetual white muslin for evening dress, and
brown holland for morning. Good heavens! I can see her this moment,
standing by the piano in her holland frock, with a blue ribbon twisted
through her loose brown hair, and those divine hazel eyes looking at me
pleadingly, as who should say, “Be gentle to me, you see what a child I
am.” No worldliness here—no ambition here—no avid desire of millinery—no
set purpose of making a great marriage, I said to myself. Only
innocence, and trustfulness, and childlike meekness. So I fell over head
and ears in love with my friend’s third daughter.’
‘Very natural,’ said Martin. ‘I don’t see why it shouldn’t have ended
pleasantly.’
‘I didn’t act like a sneak—make love to the girl behind her sisters’
backs, and bide my time for winning her. I went to the doctor at once,
told him what had happened, ventured to add that I thought my darling
liked me, and asked his permission to offer her my hand. He hummed and
hawed, said there was no one he would like better for a son-in-law; but
his youngest child was really not out of the nursery, any question of an
engagement was absurd. It seemed only yesterday that he had bought her a
Shetland pony. However, he gave me to understand, in a general way, that
I was free to come and go, so our intimacy knew no abatement. I still
did the walking-stick business at flower shows, and the catalogue
business at exhibitions, and made myself generally useful, seeing a good
deal of my fair blossom-like maiden in the meanwhile. We met very often,
sat together of an evening unnoticed when the room was full, and before
long we knew that we loved each other, and we had sworn that for us two
there, should be no love but this. Papa might say what he liked about
youth and foolishness and Shetland ponies. We were not impatient, we
would wait for ever so many years, if necessary, but in good time we two
should be one. Sweet and tender promises breathed in the twilight from
lips too lovely to betray, dove-like eyes lifted shyly to mine, soft
little hand resting so fondly within my arm! I laugh when I think of
you, and how it all ended.’
He did laugh bitterly, savagely almost, as he flung the stump of his
cigar across the hay-cocks towards the sea. Martin waited in respectful
silence, awed by this little gust of passion.
‘Well, we were pledged to each other and happy. This went on for a year.
Nobody took any notice of us, any more than if we had been children
playing at lovers. We lived in a foolish Paradise of our own, at least I
did. Heaven only knows what her thoughts may have been. One day, when I
had been away from town for a week or so, I called in Cavendish Square,
saw the two elder girls, and heard that my betrothed had gone for a long
visit to some friends in Yorkshire, at a place called Tilney Longford, a
fine old country seat. Papa had thought her looking pale and thin, and
had sent her off at a day’s notice. She might be away two or three
months. Lady Longford was the kindest of women, and was always asking
them to stay at her place. “We can’t go, of course,” they said, “with
our large circle; but that child has no ties, and can stay as long as
they like to keep her.”
‘This was hard upon me. The privilege of correspondence was denied us,
for I could not write my darling a clandestine letter. I went to the
doctor a second time, and told him that I had waited a year, that I was
so much deeper in love by every day of that blessed year, and urged him
to receive me as his daughter’s suitor. He treated the question rather
more seriously than before, repeated his assurance that I was the very
man he would have liked for a son-in-law, but added that he did not
consider my income sufficiently large, or my profession sufficiently
lucrative to allow of his entrusting his daughter’s happiness to my
care. “My girls have been expensively brought up,” he said. “You have no
notion what they cost me. I have been too busy to teach them prudence.
It has been easier for me to earn money for them to waste than to find
leisure to check their extravagance. We live in too fast an age for the
vulgar virtues.” I argued the point, but vainly, and told him that
whatever decision he might arrive at, his youngest daughter and I had
made up our minds to be true to each other against all opposition. “I am
sorry to hear that,” he replied, “for it will oblige me to ask you to
discontinue your visits here when my little girl comes back, a
discourtesy which goes very much against the grain.” I left him in a
white heat, went straight off to James Penwyn, and arranged a tour which
we had been talking about ever so long. We were to walk through the
north of England, and I was to coach poor Jim for his last struggle at
Oxford. London was hateful to me now that my darling had left it, and
James Penwyn’s company the only society I cared for.’
He paused, abandoned himself to the memory of that vanished past for a
little, and then went on more hurriedly.
‘It was at Eborsham, the morning before James Penwyn’s murder, that I
received the first and last letter I was ever to get from my love. She
had addressed it to me at my London lodgings, and it had been travelling
about after me for the last three weeks. Her first letter! I opened it
with such a thrill of joy, thinking how divine it was of her to be so
daring as to write to me. Such a broken-hearted letter!—telling me how a
certain rich landowner, near Lady Longford’s, had proposed to her—she
broke into a parenthesis, a page long, to assure me she had never given
him the faintest encouragement—and how everybody persuaded her to accept
him, and how her father himself had come down to Tilney to lecture her
into subjection. “But it is all useless,” she said, “I will marry no one
but my own dear love; and, oh, please, write and tell me what I am to
do.” Think what I must have felt, Trevanard, when I considered that the
letter was three weeks old, and what persecution the poor little soul
might have had to suffer in the interval.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Can you ask me? I started off without a quarter of an hour’s delay, and
got to Tilney as soon as the trains would carry me. It was an abominable
cross-country journey, and there I was eating my heart out at dismal
junctions for half the day. It was past three o’clock when I ended my
journey of something less than a hundred miles, and found myself at a
detestable little station called Tilney Road, eight miles from Tilney
Longford, and no conveyance of any kind to be had. I did the distance in
something under two hours, and entered the park gates just as the church
clock hard by was striking five.’
‘You went straight to the house?’
‘No, I didn’t want to bring trouble upon that poor child, so I prowled
about the place like a poacher, skirting the carriage roads. Luckily for
me, there was a right of way through the park, so I was able to get
pretty close to the house without attracting any one’s particular
attention. I reflected that, unless the doctor was still there—not a
likely thing for a man whose moments were gold—there was no one to
recognise me except my poor pet. As I approached the gardens I heard
laughter and fresh young voices, and a general hubbub, on the other side
of the haw-haw which divided the park from a croquet lawn. There was a
gaily striped marquee on one side of the lawn, a group of people taking
tea under a gigantic cedar, and a double set of croquet players
disporting on the level sward. My eyes were keen as a hawk’s to
distinguish my dearest in mauve muslin and an innocent little chip hat
trimmed with daisies—I observed even details, you see—busily engaged
with her attendant cavalier, and with no appearance of being bored by
his society. Her fresh young laugh rang out silver-clear—that girlish
laugh which had been one of her many charms, to my mind. “That hardly
sounds like a broken heart,” I said to myself.’
He sighed, and waited for a minute or so, and then resumed in a harder
voice,—
‘Well, I was determined to form no judgment from appearances; and I
could not stand on the other side of the haw-haw taking observations
from the covert of an old hawthorn for ever, so I went round to the back
of the house, waylaid a neat little Abigail, and asked her if she could
find Miss Blank’s maid for me. I accompanied my question with a fee
which insured compliance, and my pretty one’s handmaiden appeared
presently at the gate where I was waiting. She remembered me among the
intimates in Cavendish Square, and consented to give her mistress the
note I scribbled on a leaf of my pocket-book: “I hope I am not doing
wrong, sir,” she said, “but a young lady in my mistress’s position
cannot be too careful how she acts—” “In what position?” I asked.
“Didn’t you know, sir, my young lady is to be married the day after
to-morrow?”’
‘That was a facer!’ exclaimed Martin.
‘It wasn’t a pleasant thing to hear, was it—with that letter in my
pocket vowing eternal fidelity? The remembrance of that gay young
laughter was hardly pleasant either. The man I had seen on the croquet
lawn was a good-looking fellow enough; and then one man is so like
another now-a-days. A woman may be constant to the type whilst she jilts
the individual. I had written to my betrothed, asking her to meet me in
the park at nine o’clock, by a certain obelisk which I had observed on
my way. By nine she would be free, I fancied, in that half hour of
liberty which the women get after dinner, while the men are talking
politics and pretending to be very wise about claret.’
‘Did she come?’
‘Yes, poor, pretty, shallow-hearted thing, looking very sweet in the
moonlight, but tearful and trembling, as if she thought I should beat
her. She sobbed out her wretched little story. Papa had been so kind,
her elder sisters had badgered her. Poor Reginald, the lover, had been
so good, so generous, so self-sacrificing, and it had ended as such
things generally do end, I dare say. She was to be married to him the
day after to-morrow. “And oh, Maurice, pray give me back my letter,” she
said, “for I don’t know what would become of me if it ever fell into
Reginald’s hands.”’
‘How did you answer her?’
‘With never a word. I tore the lying letter into atoms, and threw them
away on the summer wind. I made my love a respectful bow and left her,
never, I trust in God, to see her fair, false face again.’
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