‘IT WAS THE HOUR WHEN WOODS ARE COLD.’
WHILE the Squire of Penwyn surveyed his flower and fern-bedecked board,
and congratulated himself that he was a power in the land, his
lodge-keeper, the woman with tawny skin, sun-browned almost to mahogany
colour, dark brows and night-black eyes, sat at her door-step watching
the swiftly changing splendours of the west, where the sky was still
glorious with the last radiance of the sunken sun. The crimson light
glows on the brown skin, and gleams in the dusky eyes as the woman sits
with her face fronting westward.
She has a curious fancy for out-of-door life, and is not often to be
found inside the comfortable lodge. She prefers the door-step to an
arm-chair by the hearth, even in winter; nay, she has been seen to sit
at her threshold, with a shawl over her head, during a pitiless storm,
watching the lightning with those bright bold eyes of hers. Her
grandchild Elspeth has the same objection to imprisonment within four
walls. She has no gates to open, and can roam where she lists. She
avails herself of that privilege without stint, and wanders from dawn
till sunset, and sometimes late into the starry night. She has resisted
all Mrs. Penwyn’s kind attempts to beguile her along the road to
knowledge by the easy steps of the parish school. She will not sit among
the rosy-cheeked Cornish children, or walk to church with the
neatly-clad procession from the Sunday school. She is more ignorant than
the small toddlers of three or four, can neither read nor write, hardly
knows the use of a needle, and in the matter of Scriptural and
theological knowledge is a very heathen.
If these people had not been the Squire’s _protégées_ they would have
been dismissed from orderly Penwyn long ere now. They were out of
harmony with their surroundings, they made a discordant note in the calm
music of life at the Manor. While all else was neatness, exquisite
cleanliness, the lodge had a look of neglect, a slovenliness which
struck the observer’s eye disagreeably—a curtain hanging awry at one of
the lattices, a tattered garment flying like a pennant from an open
casement, a trailing branch of jessamine, a handleless jug standing on a
window-sill, a muddy door-step. Trifles like these annoyed Mrs. Penwyn,
and she had more than once reproved the lodge-keeper for her untidiness.
The woman had heard her quietly enough, had uttered no insolent word,
and had curtseyed low as the lady of the mansion passed on. But the dark
face had been shadowed by a sullen frown, and no amendment had ever
followed Mrs. Penwyn’s remonstrances.
‘I really wish you would get rid of those people at the north lodge,’
Madge said to Churchill, one day, after having her patience peculiarly
tried by the spectacle of a ragged blanket hanging to dry in the lodge
garden. ‘They make our grounds look like some Irish squireen’s place,
where the lodge-keeper is allowed a patch of potatoes and a
drying-ground for the family linen at the park gates. If they are really
objects of charity, it would be better to allow them a pension, and let
them live where they like.’
‘We will think about it, my love, when I have a little more time on my
hands,’ answered Mr. Penwyn.
He never said an absolute ‘No’ to his wife; but a request which had to
be thought about by him was rarely granted.
Madge gave an impatient sigh. These people at the lodge exercised her
patience severely.
‘Waiting till you have leisure seems absurd, Churchill,’ she said. ‘With
your parliamentary work, and all that you have to see to here, there can
be no such thing as spare time. Why not send these people away at once?
They make the place look horribly untidy.’
‘I’ll remonstrate with them,’ replied Churchill.
‘And then they are such queer people,’ continued Madge. ‘That girl
Elspeth is as ignorant as a South Sea Islander, and I dare say the
grandmother is just as bad. They never go to church, setting such a
shocking example to the villagers.’
‘My love, there are many respectable people who never go to church. I
rarely went myself in my bachelor days. I used to reserve Sunday morning
for my arrears of correspondence.’
‘Oh, Churchill!’ cried Madge, with a shocked look.
‘My dearest love, you know I do not set up for exalted virtue.’
‘Churchill!’ she exclaimed, tenderly, but still with that shocked look.
She loved him so much better than herself that she would have liked
heaven to be a certainty for him even at the cost of a cycle in
purgatory for her.
‘Come, dear, you know I have never pretended to be a good man. I do the
best I can with my opportunities, and try to be as much use as I can in
my generation.’
‘But you call yourself a Christian, Churchill?’ she asked, solemnly.
Their life had been so glad, so bright, so busy, so full of action and
occupation, that they had seldom spoken of serious things. Never till
this moment had Madge asked her husband that simple, solemn question.
He turned from her with a clouded face, turned from her impatiently
even, and walked to the other end of the room.
‘If there is one thing I hate more than another, Madge, it is
theological argumentation,’ he said, shortly.
‘There is no argument here, Churchill; a man is or is not a follower of
Christ.’
‘Then I am not,’ he said.
She shrank away from him as if he had struck her, looked at him for a
few moments with a pale agonized face, and left him without a word. She
could not trust herself to speak—the blow had been too sudden, too
heavy. She went away to her own room and shut herself in, and wept for
him and prayed for him. But she loved him not the less because by his
own lips he stood confessed an infidel. That was how she interpreted his
words of self-condemnation. She forgot that a man may believe in Christ,
yet not follow Him: believe, like the devils, and, like the devils,
tremble.
* * * * *
Mrs. Penwyn never spoke to her husband of the people at the north lodge
after this. They were associated with a too painful memory. Churchill,
however, did not forget to reprove the lodge-keeper’s slovenliness, and
his brief and stern remonstrance had some effect. The lodge was kept in
better order, at least so far as its external appearance went. Within it
was still a disorderly den.
The lodge-keeper’s name was Rebecca—by this name at least she was known
at Penwyn. Whether she possessed the distinction of a surname was a moot
point. She had not condescended to communicate it to any one at the
Manor. She had been at Penwyn nearly two years, and had not made a
friend—nay, not so much as an acquaintance who cared to ‘pass the time
of day’ as he went by her door. The peasantry secretly thought her a
witch, a dim belief in witchcraft and wise women still lingering in
nooks and corners of this remote romantic West, despite the printing
press and the School Board. The women-servants were half disposed to
share that superstition. Everybody avoided her. Unpopularity so obvious
seemed a matter of supreme indifference to the woman who called herself
Rebecca. Certain creature comforts were needful to her well-being, and
these she had in abundance. The sun and the air were indispensable to
her content. These she could enjoy unhindered. Her ruling vice was
slothfulness, her master passion love of ease. These she could indulge.
She therefore enjoyed as near an approach to positive happiness as mere
animal mankind can feel. Love of man or of God, the one divine spark
which lights our clay, shone not here. She had a vague sense of kindred
which made some kind of tie between her and her own flesh and blood, but
she had never known what it was to love anything. She kept her
grandchild, Elspeth, gave her food, and raiment, and shelter—first,
because what she gave cost her nothing; and secondly, because Elspeth
ran errands for her, carried a certain stone bottle to be filled and
refilled at the little inn in Penwyn village, did whatever work there
was to be done in the lodge, and saved her grandmother trouble
generally. The delicious laziness of the lodge-keeper’s days would have
been less perfect without Elspeth’s small services; otherwise it would
have given this woman little pain to know that Elspeth was shelterless
and starving.
She sat and watched the light fade yonder over the lake-like sea, and
heavy mists steal up the moorlands as the day died. Presently, sure that
no one would come to the gates at this hour, she drew a short blackened
clay pipe from her pocket, filled and lighted it, and began to
smoke—slowly, luxuriously, dreamily—if so mindless a being could dream.
She emptied her pipe, and filled again, and smoked on, happy, while the
moon showed silver-pale in the opal sky. The opal faded to grey; the
grey deepened to purple; the silver shield grew brighter while she sat
there, and the low murmur of summer waves made a soothing music—soft,
slow, dreamily monotonous. The brightening moon shone full upon that
moorland track by which Maurice Clissold first came to Penwyn Manor. In
making his road across the uplands, the Squire had not followed this
narrow track. The footpath still remained, at some distance from the
road.
Turning her eyes lazily towards this path, Rebecca was startled by the
sight of a figure approaching slowly in the moonlight, a man,
broad-shouldered, stalwart, walking with that careless freedom of gait
which betokens the habitual pedestrian, the wanderer who has tramped
over many a hill-side, and traversed many a stony road, a nomad by
instinct and habit.
He came straight on, without pause or uncertainty, came straight to the
gate, and looked in at the woman sitting on the door-step.
‘Ah!’ he said, ‘it was the straight tip Josh Collins gave me. Good
evening, mother.’
The woman emptied the ashes of her pipe upon the door-step before she
answered this filial greeting. Then she looked up at the wanderer
frowningly.
‘What brings you here?’
‘There’s a heartless question!’ cried the man. ‘What brings a son to
look after his blessed old mother? Do you allow nothing for family
feeling?’
‘Not in you, Paul, or any of your breed. What brought you here?’
‘You’d better let me in first, and give me something to eat and drink. I
don’t care about looking through iron bars, like a wild beast in
Wombwell’s show.’
Rebecca hesitated—looked at her son doubtfully for a minute or so before
she made up her mind to admit him, weighed the possibilities of the
case, and then took her key and unlocked the gate. If it had been
practicable to keep this returned prodigal outside without peril to
herself, she would have done it, but she knew her son’s disposition too
well to trifle with feelings which were apt to express themselves with a
savage freedom.
‘Come in,’ she said, sulkily, ‘and eat your fill, and go your ways when
you’ve eaten. It was an ill wind for me that blew you this way.’
‘That’s not over-kind from a mother,’ responded the nomad, carelessly.
‘I’ve had work enough to find you since you gave us the slip at
Westerham fair.’
‘You might have been content to lose me, considering the little store
you ever set by me,’ retorted Rebecca, bitterly.
‘Well, perhaps I might have brought myself to look at it in that light,
if I hadn’t heard of you two or three months ago from a mate of mine in
the broom trade, who happened to pass this way last summer, and saw you
here, squatting in the sun like a toad. He made a few inquiries about
you—out of friendliness to me—in the village yonder, and heard that you
were living on the fat of the land, and had enough to spare. Living in
service—you, that were brought up to something better than taking any
man’s wages—and eating the bread of dependence. So I put two and two
together, and thought perhaps you’d contrived to save a little bit of
money by this time, and would help me with a pound or two if I looked
you up. It would be hard lines if a mother refused help to her son.’
‘You treated me so well when we were together that I ought to be very
fond of you, no doubt,’ said Rebecca. ‘Come in, and eat. I’ll give you a
meal and a night’s lodging if you like, but I’ll give you no more, and
you’d better make yourself scarce soon after daybreak. My master is a
magistrate, and has no mercy on tramps.’
‘Then how did he come to admit you into his service? You hadn’t much of
a character from your last place, I take it.’
‘He had his reasons.’
‘Ay, there’s a reason for everything. I should like to know the reason
of your getting such a berth as this, I must say.’
He followed his mother into the lodge. The room was furnished
comfortably enough, but dirt and disorder ruled the scene. Of this,
however, the wanderer’s eye took little note as he briefly surveyed the
chamber, dimly lighted by a single tallow candle burning in a brass
candlestick on the mantel-piece. He flung himself into the high-backed
Windsor arm-chair, drew it to the table, and sat there waiting for
refreshment, his darkly bright eyes following Rebecca’s movements as she
took some dishes from a cupboard, and set them on the board without any
previous ceremony in the way of spreading a cloth or clearing the litter
of faded cabbage-leaves and stale crusts which encumbered one side of
the table.
The tramp devoured his meal ravenously, and said not a word till the
cravings of hunger were satisfied. At the rate he ate this result was
quickly attained, and he pushed away the empty dish with a satisfied
sigh.
‘That’s the first hearty feed I’ve had for a week,’ he said. ‘A snack of
bread and cheese and a mug of beer at a roadside public has had to serve
me for breakfast and dinner and supper, and a man of my stamina can’t
live on bread and cheese. And now tell me all about yourself, mother,
and how you came into this comfortable berth, plenty to eat and drink
and nothing to do.’
‘That’s my business, Paul,’ answered the woman, with a dogged air which
meant resistance.
‘Come, you needn’t make a secret of it. Do you suppose I haven’t brains
enough to find out for myself, if you refuse to tell me? It isn’t every
day in the year that a fine gentleman and a lady take a gipsy
fortune-teller into their service. Such things are not done without good
reason. What sort of a chap is this Squire Penwyn?’
‘I’ve nothing to tell you about him,’ answered the woman, with the same
steady look.
‘Oh, you’re as obstinate as ever, I see. All the winds that blow across
the Atlantic haven’t blown your sullen temper out of you. Very well,
since you’re so uncommunicative, suppose I tell you something about this
precious master of yours. There are other people who know him—people who
are not afraid to answer a civil question. His name is Penwyn, and he is
the first cousin of that poor young fellow who was murdered at Eborsham,
and by that young man’s death he comes into this property. Rather a
lucky thing for him, wasn’t it, that his cousin was shot from behind a
hedge? If such luck had happened to a chap of my quality, a rogue and
vagabond bred and born, there’d have been people in the world malicious
enough to say that I had a hand in the murder. But who could suspect a
gentleman like Mr. Penwyn? No gentleman would shoot his cousin from
behind a hedge, even though the cousin stood between him and ever so
many thousands a year.’
‘I don’t know what you mean by your sneers,’ returned Rebecca. ‘Mr.
Penwyn was over two hundred miles away at the time.’
‘Oh, you know all about him. You occupy a post of confidence here, I
see. Pleasant for you. Shall I tell you something more about him? Shall
I tell you that he has family plate worth thousands—solid old plate that
has been in the family for more than a century; that his wife makes no
more account of her diamonds than if they were dog-roses she pulled out
of the hedges to stick in her hair? That’s what I call good luck, for
they were both of ’em as poor as Job until that cousin was murdered.
Hard for a chap like me to stand outside their gates and hear about
their riches, and pass on, with empty stomach, and blistered feet—pass
on to wheedle a few pence out of a peasant wench, or steal a barn-door
fowl. There’s destiny for you!’
He emptied the beer jug, which had held a quart of good home-brewed,
took out his pipe and began to smoke, his mother watching him uneasily
all the time. Those two were alone in the lodge. The moonlight and balmy
air had lured Elspeth far afield, wandering over the dewy moorland,
singing her snatches of gipsy song, and happy in her own wild way—happy
though she knew she would get a scolding with her supper by and by.
‘They’ve got a party to-night, haven’t they?’ asked Paul. ‘Half a dozen
fine carriages passed me an hour or so ago, before I struck out of the
road into the footpath.’
‘Yes, there’s a dinner party.’
The gipsy rose and went to the open window. The lighted windows of the
Manor House shone across the shadowy depth of park and shrubberies.
Those dark eyes of his glittered curiously as he surveyed the scene.
‘I should like to see them feasting and enjoying themselves,’ he said,
moving towards the door.
‘You mustn’t go near the house, you mustn’t be seen about the place,’
cried Rebecca, following him hurriedly.
‘Mustn’t I?’ sneered the gipsy. ‘I never learnt the meaning of the word
mustn’t. I’ll go and have a peep at your fine ladies and gentlemen—I’m
not quite a fool, and I shan’t let them see me—and then come back here
for a night’s rest. You needn’t be frightened if I’m rather long. It’ll
amuse me to look on at the high jinks through some half-open window.
There, don’t look so anxious. I know how to keep myself dark.’
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