‘FOR THOU WERT STILL THE POOR MAN’S STAY.’
Dinner at Penwyn Manor went off gaily enough. Lady Cheshunt, inspirited
by various light wines, a good deal of Maraschino in the ice pudding,
and a glass of Curaçao as a corrective afterwards, was a host in
herself, and talked loud enough, fast enough, recklessly enough, to keep
the dullest dinner party going. Mr. Penwyn was always an excellent host,
starting fresh subjects of conversation with such admirable tact that no
one knew who changed the current of ideas when interest was just
beginning to flag—never taking the lion’s share of the talk, or drifting
into monologue—listening to every one—encouraging the timid—sustaining
the weak—and proving himself a living encycloæpdia whenever dates,
names, or facts were wanted.
The gentlemen left the dining-room about ten minutes after the ladies
had quitted it, to the delight of Sir Lewis Dallas, and the secret
disgust of Mr. Tresillian, who liked to prose about stable and kennel
for an hour or so over his claret.
The assembly being merely a household party, people scattered themselves
in a free and easy manner through the rooms, the ivory balls clicking in
hall and billiard room, as usual, a little group of ladies round the
piano trying that sweet bit of Schumann’s, chiefly remarkable for
syncopation, and little jerky chords meandering up and down the piano,
and demanding no small skill in the executant.
Maurice found himself in the deep embrasure of one of the hall windows,
talking literature with Miss Bellingham, who evidently preferred his
society to that of the devoted Sir Lewis.
‘A good opportunity to find out a little more about George Penwyn,’
thought Maurice. ‘Miss Bellingham must be acquainted with all the
traditions of the house. If I could but discover what manner of man this
Captain Penwyn was, I should be better able to arrive at a just
conclusion about his relations with Muriel Trevanard.’
A little later, when they were talking of libraries and book-collecting,
Viola said, ‘There were hardly fifty books altogether at Penwyn, I
think, when my brother-in-law came into the property. The library here
is entirely Churchill’s collection. The old Squire and his predecessors
must have been strangely deficient of literary taste. Even the few books
there were had most of them belonged to Captain Penwyn, the poor young
man who was killed in Canada.’
‘Ah, poor fellow! I heard of his sad fate from the housekeeper here when
I came to see the Manor House last summer. A tragical end like that
gives a melancholy interest to a man’s history, however commonplace it
may be in other respects. I suppose you have heard a good deal of gossip
about this George Penwyn?’
‘Yes, our old housekeeper is fond of talking about him. He seems to have
been a favourite with people, especially with cottagers and small
tenants on the estate. I have heard old people regret that he never came
to his own, even in my presence, though the speech was hardly civil to
my brother-in-law. I know that by some of the people we are looked upon
as intruders, on Captain Penwyn’s account. He seems to have been
constantly doing kindnesses.’
‘And you have never heard anything against his character—that he was
dissipated—wild, as the world calls it?’
‘Never so much as a word. On the contrary, Mrs. Darvis has often told me
that he was particularly steady—that he was never known to take too much
wine, or anything of that kind. In fact, she talks as if he had been a
paragon.’
‘Ah,’ thought Maurice, ‘these paragons are sometimes viler at bottom
than your open profligate. Few men ever knew the human heart better than
he who gave us Charles and Joseph Surface.’
‘I have an inward conviction that Captain Penwyn must have been nice,’
said Viola.
‘Indeed! On what is that conviction based?’
‘On various grounds. First, there are the praises of people who cannot
flatter, since there is nothing to be gained by speaking well of the
dead. Secondly, there is that shelf full of books with George Penwyn’s
name in them, all nice books, the choice of a man of refinement and good
feeling. Thirdly, there is his portrait, and I like his face. Are those
reasons strong enough, do you think?’
‘Quite, for a woman! His portrait!—ah, by-the-bye, I should like to have
another look at that.’
‘Come and see it at once, then,’ replied Viola, good-naturedly. ‘It is
in the little study, yonder—the old Squire’s room. The books are there
too.’
The study was a little room off the hall. Maurice remembered it well,
though he had never entered it since Mrs. Darvis showed him George
Penwyn’s portrait, on his first visit to the Manor House.
Viola took a candle from the mantelshelf and led the way to the study, a
room which was still used for business interviews with stewards or
tenants, a second door opening into a passage communicating with the
offices, and obscure backways by which such inferior beings were
admitted to the squire’s presence.
Maurice took the candle from Miss Bellingham’s hand and held it up
before the picture over the mantelpiece. His grip tightened on the
bronze candlestick, and his breath came stronger and quicker as he
looked, but he said never a word.
That picture was to him stronger confirmation of his idea about
Justina’s parentage than all the circumstantial evidence in the world.
There, in those pictured lineaments he saw the very lines of Justina’s
face—lines modified in her countenance, it is true, and softened to
feminine beauty, but characteristics too striking to be mistaken even by
a casual observer.
‘Strange that the likeness did not occur to me when I saw that picture
first,’ he thought. ‘But at that time I had only looked at Justina with
the eye of indifference. I did not know her face by heart as I do now.
And I remember that even then the picture struck me as like some one I
knew. Memory only failed to recall the individual.’
Those dark blue-grey eyes, with their somewhat melancholy expression,
were so like the eyes he had seen looking at him mournfully only three
weeks ago, when Justina bade him good-bye; the eyes which he faintly
remembered looking up at him for the first time, in the buttercup meadow
near Eborsham. He put down the candle without a word.
‘I hope you have stared long enough at that picture,’ said Viola,
laughing. ‘You appear to find it remarkably interesting.’
‘It is a very interesting portrait—to me.’
‘Why to you, in particular?’
‘Because it resembles some one very dear to me.’
‘Oh, I understand,’ said Viola, gently. ‘Your poor friend, James
Penwyn!’
Maurice did not attempt to set her right.
‘Now let us look at the books,’ he said, going to the _secretaire_, the
upper shelves of which held about thirty volumes, all well bound. They
were Valpy’s Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats,
Hood, and a few other volumes, chiefly Oxford classics, which Mr. Penwyn
had brought from the University; not by any means the books of a man
wanting in refinement or culture. That they had been well read was
evident to Maurice, on looking into some of the volumes. Many a verse
underlined in pencil marked the reader’s appreciation.
In a volume of Byron, containing ‘Manfred,’ and some of the minor poems,
Maurice found a pencilled note here and there, in a woman’s hand, which
he recognised as Muriel Trevanard’s; words of praise or of criticism,
but in all cases denoting a cultivated mind and a sound judgment. A girl
who could write thus was hardly likely to have been fooled by the first
seducer who came across her path.
‘I wonder who wrote in that book?’ said Viola. ‘George Penwyn had no
sister, and his mother died while he was very young. Perhaps those notes
were written by Miss Morgrave, the young lady his father wanted him to
marry.’
‘I should hardly have thought they were on intimate terms enough for
that kind of thing.’
‘True. One must be very sure of a person’s friendship before one can
venture to scribble one’s opinions in their books,’ returned Viola.
An hour later Maurice left the Manor House. He was glad to be alone, and
free to think over the day’s work.
The idea which had hitherto seemed little better than a baseless fancy,
the filmy weaving of his own romantic dreams, was now conviction. He
held it as a certain fact that Justina was George Penwyn’s daughter, and
that it must be his work to discover the missing link in Muriel
Trevanard’s story, and the nature of that fatal union which had ended in
shattered wits and a broken heart.
‘God grant that I may find evidence to confirm my own belief in the
girl’s purity and the man’s honour,’ he said to himself, as he drove the
dog-cart back to Borcel End. ‘If the popular idea of George Penwyn is
correct, he must have been too good a man to play so base a part as that
of betrayer; too kind to leave his victim to face the storm of parental
wrath unprotected. But he was in his father’s power, and it is possible
that he might have had recourse to a secret marriage rather than forfeit
the old man’s favour and the Penwyn estate. Yet if this were the case,
it is strange that he should have left England without endeavouring to
secure his wife’s safety—that he should have made no provision for his
child’s birth—an event the possibility of which he ought to have
foreseen.’
This was a puzzling point. Indeed, the whole story was involved in
mystery. Either George Penwyn must have deceived everybody who knew him
as to his moral character; or he must have acted honestly towards
Muriel.
‘There is only one person I can think of as likely to know the truth of
the story,’ Maurice said to himself, ‘and that person is Miss Barlow,
the schoolmistress at Seacomb. My first endeavour must be to find Miss
Barlow, if she is still an inhabitant of this lower world.’
He had a good deal to do in Seacomb, yet was anxious, with a lover’s
foolish yearning, to get back to London; so he got Martin to drive him
over to the quiet old market town early next morning, and took care to
put up at the oldest inn in the place—a rambling old house with a
quadrangular yard—a relic of the good old coaching days.
‘There is no better place than an old inn in which to learn the
traditions of a town,’ Maurice told himself. ‘I dare say I shall find
some ancient waiter here who remembers everything that has happened at
Seacomb for the last fifty years.’
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