FOR THERE’S NO SAFETY IN THE REALM FOR ME.
It was a dull autumnal afternoon when Maurice paid his final visit to
the Manor House. That brilliant summer, which had lasted in all its heat
and glory to the end of August, and even extended to September, had
vanished all at once, and had given place to a bleak and early autumn.
Stormy winds by night, and dull grey skies by day, had prevailed of
late; sad stories of disaster at sea filled many a column in the
newspapers—to the relief of editors, who must needs have had recourse to
gigantic gooseberries, or revivified the sea-serpent, but for these
catastrophes.
Even the Manor House had a gloomy look under this leaden sky. Pyramids
of scarlet geraniums, thickets of many-coloured dahlias, lent their
gaudy hues to the scene; but the lack of sunlight made all dull. The
gilded vane pointed persistently northeast. Gardeners and underlings had
laboured in vain to keep the paths and lawns clear of dead leaves. Down
they came, in a crackling shower, with every gust, emblems of decay and
death. Maurice Clissold, sensitive, as the poet must ever be, to
external influences, felt depressed by the altered aspect of the place.
Within, however, all was mirth and brightness. There was the usual
family group in the hall, where a mighty wood fire blazed in the antique
grate, with its massive ironwork, and two burnished brazen globes, on
iron standards—golden orbs that reflected the ruddy glow of the fire.
The billiard-players were at work. A party of young ladies playing pool
industriously, under the leadership of Mr. Tresillian, J.P., who was in
great force in feminine circles where there was not much strain upon a
man’s intellect. Lady Cheshunt was in her pet chair by the fire—her
complexion guarded by a tapestry banner-screen—deeply absorbed in that
very French novel the iniquity whereof she had seen denounced by the
critical journals. Viola Bellingham was working point-lace at a little
table by the central window, and listening with rather a listless air to
Sir Lewis Dallas’s discourse. Neither Madge nor her husband was present.
Lady Cheshunt closed her novel with a faint sigh, leaving a finger
between the pages. Mr. Clissold was not so interesting as the last and
worst of French novelists; yet she felt called upon to be civil to him.
‘How is Mrs. Penwyn?’ he asked, when he had shaken hands with, and duly
informed himself as to the health of, the distinguished dowager.
‘That poor child is not very well,’ replied her ladyship. ‘East wind, I
suppose. I don’t think we were created for a world in which the wind is
perpetually in the east. On such a day as this I always wish myself in
the torrid zone, the centre of Africa, anywhere where one could feel the
sun. To look at that grey sky and those falling leaves is enough to give
one the horrors. It’s as bad as reading Young’s “Night Thoughts,” or
staying at a country house with goody-people, who insist upon reading
one of Blair’s sermons aloud on a wet Sunday afternoon.’
‘I hope it is nothing serious,’ said Maurice, meaning Mrs. Penwyn’s
indisposition.
‘Oh dear no, not in the least. She is only a little out of spirits, and
has been spending the morning in her own room with the baby. I dare say
she will come down presently. I think she worked a little too hard last
season, giving dinners to all the people Mr. Penwyn wanted to
conciliate, and going everywhere he wished. She would make an admirable
Cabinet minister’s wife, I tell her, so devoted and self-sacrificing;
and I suppose, at the rate Mr. Penwyn is going on, he is sure to be in
the Cabinet sooner or later. A very wonderful man—so serious and
self-contained—a man who never wasted a minute of his life, I should
think.’
Madge entered at this moment, a little paler than in the days of old,
but very beautiful. Her flowing grey silk dress, with broad sash and
gimps and fringes of richest violet, became her admirably. Not a jewel
or ornament, except the single amethyst stud which fastened her plain
linen collar, and the triple band of diamonds on her wedding finger. The
plenteous dark hair wound coronet fashion round the small head. A woman
for a new Velasquez to paint, just as she stood before Maurice to-day in
the soft grey light.
‘I am so sorry to hear you have been ill,’ he said, as they shook hands.
‘But you must not be sorry, for I was not really ill. I was a little
tired, perhaps a little idle, too, and I wanted a morning alone with my
boy. What have you done with Churchill, Lady Cheshunt?’ with a little
anxious look round the room—empty for her, lacking that one occupant.
‘What have I done with him?’ ejaculated the dowager. ‘Do you suppose
your husband is a man to be kept indoors by any fascinations of mine? I
should as soon expect to see Brutus, or Cassius, or any of those
dreadful Shakesperian persons in togas, playing the tame cat. I asked
your husband to read aloud to us, thinking that might please him—most
men are proud of their elocution,—but you should have seen his look of
quiet contempt. “I am so sorry I am too busy to allow myself the
pleasure of amusing you,” he said, and then went off to superintend some
new plantation of Norwegian firs. Wonderful man!’
‘You have come to spend the rest of the day with us of course, Mr.
Clissold?’ said Madge, with that pleasant cordial manner which was one
of her charms, and in no wise out of harmony with her somewhat queenly
bearing. Who more delightful than a queenly woman when she desires to
please?
‘I shall be only too happy if I may, and if you will excuse my appearing
at dinner in a frock coat. I reserved this day for my visit here. It is
my last day but one in the west.’
‘I am so sorry,’ said Madge. ‘Well, since we have you for so short a
time we must do our best to amuse you. Perhaps,’ with a happy thought,
‘you would like to go and see Churchill’s new plantation. We might go
for a drive and join him.’
Maurice understood the wife’s desire to be near her husband, a new proof
of that love which had an element of pathos in its quiet intensity.
‘I should like it of all things,’ he answered.
‘But are you sure you have lunched?’ It was between three and four in
the afternoon.
‘Quite sure. I joined Mr. Trevanard at his early dinner.’
‘Clara—Laura, which of you will come for a drive?’ asked Madge,
indiscriminately of the pool-players. ‘I know it would be useless to ask
you, dear Lady Cheshunt.’
‘My love, I would as soon drive across the Neva in a sledge for
pleasure. I never stir from my fireside, except to go out to dinner,
when the wind’s in the east. Setting aside the discomfort, I can’t see
why one should make a horror of one’s self by exposing one’s complexion
to be rasped as the bakers rasp their rolls.’
The pool-players were too deeply involved in their game to care about
leaving it, unless dear Mrs. Penwyn particularly wished them to go out.
‘Let me come, Madge,’ said Viola, ‘and let us take Nugent.—You won’t
mind, will you, Mr. Clissold?’
‘Do you think that I am such a barbarian as to object to that small
individual’s society?’ asked Maurice. ‘He shall sit on my knee, and pull
my beard as hard as he likes.’
Sir Lewis Dallas asked to be allowed to join the party, so the sociable
was ordered, and Mrs. Penwyn and her sister retired to put on their
hats.
‘She is not looking well,’ said Maurice.
‘No, she is not,’ answered Lady Cheshunt, with more earnestness than was
common to that somewhat frivolous dowager. ‘She has never been quite the
same since that burglar business.’
‘Indeed! The alarm caused her a great shock, I suppose.’
‘Well, she knew nothing about the attempt until it was all over; but I
suppose the worry and excitement afterwards were too much for her. The
man turned out to be a son of the lodge-keeper, and the woman came
whining to Mrs. Penwyn to get him let off easily; and Madge, who is the
most tender-hearted creature in the world, persuaded Churchill to use
his influence with that good-natured Mr. Tresillian, whom he can wind
round his finger,’ in a whisper, ‘and the man got off. It was
particularly good of Mrs. Penwyn, for I know she detests that lodge
woman.’
‘Really!’ said Maurice, affecting ignorance. ‘Then I wonder Mr. Penwyn
keeps her on his premises, now that he knows her son to be such a
dangerous character.’
‘Yes, it’s just one of those absurd things men do for the sake of having
their own way. I’ve talked to Mr. Penwyn about it myself ever so many
times. “Why do you annoy your poor wife by keeping a horrid creature
like that?” I have asked him. “Suppose I know your horrid creature to be
deserving of protection and shelter, Lady Cheshunt? Should I not be
unmanly if I were to sacrifice her to a foolish prejudice of Madge’s?”
he retorts. So both Madge and I have left off talking about the
creature; but I must say that it always makes me feel uncomfortable to
see her squatting on the threshold in the sunshine, like an overgrown
toad.’
‘Perhaps I could tell Mr. Penwyn something about his _protégée’s_
antecedents that would make him change his opinion.’
‘Then pray do. But is it anything very dreadful?—murder, or anything of
that kind?’ asked Lady Cheshunt, with a scared look. ‘You make me feel
as if we were all going to have our throats cut.’
‘It is nothing very dreadful. Perhaps hardly enough to cause any change
in Mr. Penwyn’s opinion. I remember that woman plying her trade as a
gipsy fortune-teller at Eborsham, the day before my poor friend, James
Penwyn, was murdered. She in a manner—by the merest accident, of
course—foretold James’s early death.’
‘Dear me, what an extraordinary thing! And you find her, two years
afterwards, in Churchill Penwyn’s service. That is very curious.’
‘The whirligig of time brings many curious things to pass, Lady
Cheshunt. But here are the ladies.’
They went to the porch, where the sociable was waiting for them with a
pair of fine bays, impatient to be gone. It was not an inviting day for
open-air excursions, but just one of those grey afternoons which have a
kind of poetry—a sentiment all their own. The sombre expanse of
moorland, dun colour against the grey, had a fine effect.
They took a longish drive, made a circuit, and came round to the new
plantation, where Churchill was superintending the work, seated on his
favourite, Tarpan, an animal which had of late shown himself
unmanageable by any one except his master, and had been the cause of
more than one groom’s retirement from a service which was in every other
respect admirable. Churchill seemed to have a peculiar fancy for the
somewhat ill-conditioned brute, though he did not often ride him, on
account of Mrs. Penwyn’s apprehensions.
‘My dear love, he will never throw _me_,’ Churchill said, in answer to
his wife’s request that Tarpan should be disposed of. ‘If I were not
thoroughly convinced of that I would part with him. The brute
understands me, and I understand him, which neither of those fellows
did. And I like his pace and action better than those of any other horse
in the stable. Nothing revives me like a gallop on Tarpan.’
Wonderful to see the influence of Madge Penwyn’s presence on her
husband, as Maurice saw it to-day. The moody brow relaxed its
contemplative frown, the thoughtful eye brightened, while a gentle
pressure of the hand and a fondly whispered greeting welcomed the wife.
‘This is an unexpected pleasure, Madge,’ he said. ‘I did not think you
would drive to-day.’
‘I wanted to show Mr. Clissold your new plantation, Churchill.’
They all alighted, and Churchill showed them his newly planted groves,
the graceful feathery Norwegian saplings, a ship-load of them brought
from Norway for his special benefit, rhododendrons planted in between,
and here and there a mountain ash or a copper beech to give colour and
variety.
While they were walking in the plantation, Maurice and Churchill side by
side, the former seized the opportunity of speaking of the gipsy woman
whose presence at Penwyn Manor was a perplexity to him. It might
possibly be an impertinence on his part to call in question Mr. Penwyn’s
domestic arrangements, but Maurice felt that there were circumstances in
this case which fully justified a breach of manners.
‘Do you know that I have made a curious discovery about a person in your
employment, Mr. Penwyn?’ he began.
‘Indeed, and pray who and what is the person?’ asked Churchill, with the
slightest possible change of manner, from cordiality to reserve.
‘Your lodgekeeper,’ replied Maurice; and then he proceeded to relate the
circumstances of his first meeting with Rebecca Mason.
Mr. Penwyn received the information with supreme indifference.
‘Curious,’ he said, carelessly, ‘but I have long since discovered that
life is made up of curious coincidences, and I have lost the faculty of
astonishment. Multitudinous as the inhabitants of this globe are, we
seem to be perpetually moving in circles, and knocking our heads against
some one or other connected with our past lives. If I had wronged a man
in Otaheite twenty years ago, it would not in the least surprise me to
meet him at Seacomb Corn Exchange to-morrow. With regard to the woman
Mason, I found her in circumstances of extreme distress, and offered her
a home. It was one of those rare occasions on which I have indulged in
the luxury of doing good,’ with an ironical laugh. ‘I knew, when I did
this, that Rebecca had gipsy blood in her veins, and had led a roving
life. But I had reason to believe her an honest woman then, and I have
never found any cause for thinking her otherwise since. And this being
so, I have made up my mind to keep her, in spite of the vulgar prejudice
against her tawny skin—in spite even of my wife’s dislike.’
‘You are not alarmed by the idea of her relationship to a burglar?’
‘No. First and foremost, I am not prepared to admit that the man is a
burglar; and secondly, if he be, I am as well able to defend the Manor
House from him as from any other member of his profession.’
‘Except that he would have the advantage of his mother’s lodge as a base
of operations, and his mother’s knowledge of your domestic
arrangements,’ remonstrated Maurice, determined to push the question.
‘I have told you that I know Rebecca to be an honest woman, whatever the
son may be. Come, Mr. Clissold, we may as well drop this subject. You
are not likely to influence me upon a point which I have maintained
against the wish of my wife.’
‘So be it,’ said Maurice, closing the discussion, with the conviction
that there was some hidden link between the gipsy and the Squire of
Penwyn; some influence stronger than philanthropy which secured the
wanderer’s home. The fact that it should be so, that there should be
some secret alliance between the woman who had foretold James Penwyn’s
death and the man who had been so large a gainer by that early death,
impressed him strangely. He was thoughtful and silent throughout the
homeward drive; so thoughtful and so silent as to arouse Madge Penwyn’s
curiosity.
‘I can hardly compliment you upon being the most amusing of companions,
Mr. Clissold,’ she said, with a forced smile, as they approached the
Manor House. ‘There was a time when your conversation used to be amusing
enough to enliven the dullest drive, but to-day you have been the image
of gloom.’
‘Black care sits behind us all, at odd times, Mrs. Penwyn,’ he answered,
gravely. ‘Be assured I must have cause for serious thought when the
charm of your presence does not put me in spirits.’
‘Thanks for the compliment; but you talk rather too much like a Greek
oracle,’ retorted Madge, lightly, but with an uneasy look which did not
escape Maurice’s observation.
‘There is a cloud hanging over this house,’ he said to himself. ‘A
trouble in which husband and wife share. But it can be no such dark
secret as Justina’s suspicions point to, or Mrs. Penwyn would know
nothing about it. No husband would reveal such guilt as _that_ to his
wife.’
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