‘WHEN TIME SHALL SERVE, BE THOU NOT SLACK.’
Nothing could be more inviting than the aspect of Maurice Clissold’s
rooms at eight o’clock on the following evening, when their proprietor
stood on his hearth, waiting the arrival of his expected guest. The
weather was by no means warm, and the glass and silver on the
friendly-looking circular table sparkled in the glow of a brightly
burning fire. The spotless damask, the dainty arrangement of the table,
with its old Chelsea ware dessert dishes, filled with amber-tinted
Jersey pears, and dusky-hued filberts, agreeably suggestive of good old
port, indicated a careful landlady and well-trained servants. The
dumb-waiter, with its reserve of glasses and cruets, guaranteed that
luxurious ease which is not dependent on external service.
Mr. Elgood, arriving on the scene as the clocks of Bloomsbury struck the
hour, surveyed these preparations with an eye that glistened with
content—nay, almost brightened to rapture—as it wandered from the table
to the fender, where, in a shadowy corner, reposed the expected bottle
of port, cobweb-wreathed, chalk-marked.
The savoury odour of fried fish, mingled with the appetising fumes of
roasting meat, had greeted the visitor’s nostrils as he ascended the
stairs. Even his nice judgment had failed to divine whether the joint
were beef or mutton, but he opined mutton. No one but a barbarian would
load his table with sirloin for a _tête-à-tête_ dinner when Providence
had created the Welsh hills, doubtless with a view to the necessities of
the dinner-table.
‘Glad to see you so punctual,’ said Maurice, cheerily.
‘My dear Mr. Clissold, to be unpunctual is to insult one’s host and
injure one’s self. What can atone for the ruin of an excellent dinner?
You may remember what Dean Swift said to his cook when she had roasted
the joint to rags, and was fain to confess she could not undo the evil:
“Beware wench, how you commit a fault which cannot be remedied.” A
dinner spoiled is an irremediable loss.’
The soup had been put upon the table while Mr. Elgood thus
philosophized, so the two gentlemen sat down without further delay, and
the comedian gazed blandly upon the amber sherry and the garnet-hued
claret, while Maurice invoked a blessing on the feast, and then the
business of dinner began in good earnest.
The joint was mutton, and Welsh, whereby Mr. Elgood’s soul was at ease,
and he gave himself up to the enjoyment of the table with unaffected
singleness of purpose. A brace of partridges and a Parmesan _fondu_
followed the haunch; and when these had been despatched the comedian
flung himself back in his chair, with a sigh of repletion.
‘Well, my dear Mr. Clissold,’ he said, ‘you are a very accomplished
gentleman in many ways; but this I will say, that I never met the man
yet who was your match in giving a snug little dinner. Brilsby Savory,
or whatever his name was, couldn’t have beat you.’
‘I am glad you have enjoyed your dinner, Mr. Elgood. I am of opinion
that a good dinner is the best prelude to a serious conversation; and I
want to have a little quiet and confidential talk with you this evening
upon a very serious matter.’
‘Behold me at your service,—your slave to command,’ answered Matthew,
whose enthusiasm was not easily to be damped. ‘I bare my bosom to your
view,’ he added, with a dramatic gesture, indicative of throwing open
his waistcoat.
They were alone by this time. The servant had carried away the
dinner-things, and only the decanters and fruit dishes remained on the
table.
‘You speak boldly, Mr. Elgood,’ said Maurice, with sudden gravity, ‘yet,
perhaps, if I were to ask you some questions about your past life you
would draw back a little.’
‘My past life, although full of vicissitude, has been honest,’ answered
the comedian. ‘I fear no man’s scrutiny.’
‘Good. Then you will not be angry if I question you rather closely upon
one period of your chequered career. It is in the interest of your—of
Justina that I do so.’
‘Proceed, sir,’ said Matthew, a troubled look overclouding the
countenance which had just now beamed with serenity.
‘Did you ever hear the name of Eden?’
Mr. Elgood started, more violently than he had done on a previous
occasion at the mention of Borcel End. The silver dessert knife with
which he was pealing a Jersey pear dropped from between his fingers.
‘I see you do know that name,’ said Maurice, passing from interrogation
to affirmation. ‘You bore it once at Borcel End, the old farm house on
the Cornish moors, where you took shelter in bitter winter weather, just
nineteen years ago last February.’
The glow which the good things of this life had kindled in Mr. Elgood’s
visage faded slowly out, and left him very pale.
‘How did you know that?’ he gasped.
‘I had it from the lips of a dying woman—Mrs. Trevanard.’
‘What! is Mrs. Trevanard dead?’
‘Yes; she died a fortnight ago.’
‘And she told you——?’
‘All. The birth of the child she entrusted to your care. The old family
Bible she gave you, from which you took the name of Justina.’
The shrewd guess, stated as a fact, passed uncontradicted. Maurice’s
speculative assertion had hit the truth.
‘The supposed daughter who has borne your name all these years, the girl
who has worked for you, who now maintains you, who has been faithful,
obedient, and devoted to you, has not one drop of your blood in her
veins. She is Muriel Trevanard’s child.’
‘You choose to make a statement,’ said Matthew Elgood, who had somewhat
recovered his self-possession by this time, ‘which I do not feel myself
called upon either to deny or admit. I am willing to acknowledge that in
a time of severe misfortune I took shelter upon Mrs. Trevanard’s
premises; that I called myself by a name that was not my own, rather
than expose my destitution to the world’s contumely. But whatever passed
between Mrs. Trevanard and myself at that period is sacred. I swore to
keep the secret confided to me to my dying day, and it will descend with
me to the tomb of my ancestors,’ added Mr. Elgood, grandly, as if, for
the moment at least, he really believed that he had a family vault at
his disposal.
‘You may consider yourself absolved of your oath,’ said Maurice. ‘Mrs.
Trevanard confided in me during the last days of her life, and I pledged
myself to see her grandchild righted.’
‘Mrs. Trevanard must have changed very much at the last if she expressed
any interest in the fate of her grandchild,’ returned Matthew,
forgetting that he had refused to make any admission. ‘When she gave the
child to me and my wife, she resigned all concern in its future: it was
to fare as we fared, to sink or swim with us.’
‘In that wretched hour she thought the child nameless and fatherless. I
did my best to persuade her that she had been too hasty in her
conclusion. It shall be my business to prove Justina’s legitimacy.’
‘That is to say, you mean to take my daughter away from me,’ exclaimed
the comedian, wrathfully. ‘Little did I know what a snake in the grass I
had been cherishing, warming the adder in my bosom, sheltering the
scorpion on my domestic hearth. This is what your kettle-drums, and snug
little dinners, and port and filberts, are to end in. You would rob a
poor old man of the staff and comfort of his declining years: six pounds
a week, and a certainty of a rise to ten if the next part she plays is a
success.’
‘You are hasty, Mr. Elgood, and unjust. Believe me, if it were a
question of my own happiness, I would leave the dear girl you have
brought up, Justina Elgood, till I had the Archbishop of Canterbury’s
permission to give her my own name. But, having promised to perform a
certain duty, I should be a scoundrel if I left it undone. What if I
tell you that I have reason to believe Justina entitled to a large
estate, an estate of six or seven thousand a year?’
Mr. Elgood sank back in his chair aghast. He had drunk a good many
glasses of wine in the course of that comfortable little dinner, and
there was some slight haziness in his brain. Six thousand a year, six
pounds a week. Six pounds a week, six thousand a year—over a hundred
pounds a week. There was a wide margin for spending in the difference
between the lesser and greater sum. But of the six pounds a week, while
Justina supposed herself his daughter, he was certain. Would she share
her annual six thousand as freely when she knew that he had no claim
upon her filial piety?
He pondered the question for a few moments, and then answered it in the
affirmative. Generous, good, loving, she had ever been. If good fortune
befell her she would not grudge the old man his share of the sunshine.
He had not been a bad father to her, he told himself, take him for all
in all—not over-patient, or considerate, perhaps, in those early days,
before he had discovered any dramatic talent in her; a little prone to
think of his own comfort before hers; but upon the whole, as fathers go,
not a bad kind of parent. And he felt very sure she would stand by him.
Yes, he felt sure of Justina. But he must be on his guard against this
scheming fellow, Clissold, who had contrived to get hold of a secret
that had been kept for nineteen years, and doubtless meant to work it
for his own advantage. It would be Matthew Elgood’s duty to countermarch
him here.
‘So, Mr. Clissold,’ he began, after about five minutes’ reverie, ‘you
are a pretty deep fellow, you are, in spite of your easy, open-handed,
open-hearted, free-spoken ways. You think you can establish my Justina’s
claim to a fine fortune, do you? And I suppose, when the claim is
established, and the girl I have brought up from babyhood, and toiled
for and struggled for many a long year, comes into her six thousand per
annum, you’ll expect to get her for your wife, with the six or seven
thousand at her back. Rather a good stroke of business for you!’
‘I expect nothing,’ answered Maurice, gravely. ‘I love Justina with all
my heart, as truly as ever an honest man loved a fair and noble woman;
but I have refrained from any expression of my heart’s desire, lest I
should bind her by a promise while her position is thus uncertain. Let
her win the station to which I believe she is entitled; and if, when it
is won, she cares to reward my honest affection, I will take her and be
proud of her; but not one whit prouder than I should be to take her for
my wife to-morrow, knowing her to be your daughter.’
‘Spoken like a man and a gentleman,’ exclaimed the comedian. ‘Come, Mr.
Clissold, I couldn’t think badly of you if I tried. I’ll trust you; and
it shall be no fault of mine if Justina is not yours, rich or poor.
She’s worthy of you, and you’re worthy of her, and I believe she has a
sneaking kindness for you.’
Maurice smiled, happy in a conviction which needed no support from
Matthew Elgood’s opinion. That little look of Justina’s yesterday—that
tender look of greeting—had been worth volumes of protestation. He knew
himself beloved.
‘And now tell me what your ideas are; and how Mrs. Trevanard—the
strangest woman, and the closest that I ever met—came to confide in you;
and how it has entered into your mind that our Justina has any legal
right to either name or fortune.’
‘I’ll tell you,’ said Maurice, and forthwith proceeded to relate all
that he had learned at Borcel, a great deal of which was new to Matthew
Elgood, who had been told nothing about the parentage of the child
committed to his care. It was essential to Justina’s interests that her
adopted father should know all, since he was the only witness who could
prove her identity with the child born at Borcel End.
‘It seems tolerably clear that this George Penwyn must have been the
father,’ said Mr. Elgood. ‘But who is to prove a marriage?’
‘If a marriage took place, the proof must exist somewhere, and it must
be for one of us to find it,’ answered Maurice. ‘The first person to
apply to is Miss Barlow, Muriel’s schoolmistress, supposing her to be
still living. The only period of Muriel’s absence from the farm after
she left school was the time she spent with Miss Barlow—three weeks—so
that if any marriage took place it must have happened during that visit.
I have searched the registers of both churches at Seacomb without
result. But it is not likely that George Penwyn would contract a secret
marriage within a few miles of his father’s house. Whatever occurred in
those three weeks Miss Barlow must have been in some measure familiar
with. My first business therefore must be to find her. When last heard
of she was established as a teacher of music in the neighbourhood of
London. A directory ought to help us to her address, if she is still
living within the postal radius.’
‘True,’ said Matthew, glancing at the shelves which lined the room from
floor to ceiling. ‘I suppose among all these books you have the Post
Office Directory?’
‘No, strange to say, it is a branch of literature I am deficient in. I
must wait till to-morrow to look for Miss Barlow’s address.’
‘How did it occur to you that my daughter Justina and that castaway
child were one and the same?’
‘Well, I hardly know how the idea first took possession of me. It was a
kind of instinct. The circumstances that led me to think it seemed
insignificant enough when spoken of, but to my mind they assumed
exaggerated importance; perhaps it was your look of surprise when I
mentioned Borcel End that first awakened my suspicions, not of the
actual truth, but of some mysterious connection between yourself and the
Trevanards.’
‘I certainly was astonished when you spoke of that out-of-the-way farm
house.’
‘Then the name Justina, which I heard of as a family name at Borcel End,
that set me thinking; the fact that your daughter was said to have been
born at Seacomb, within a few miles of that remote farmhouse; the fact
that her age tallied with the age of Muriel’s child. Never mind how I
came by the conviction, since I happily, or unhappily, stumbled on the
truth. But tell me how you fared when you left Borcel End that bleak
spring morning?’
‘Well, it wasn’t the most comfortable kind of departure, certainly—four
miles on foot on a cold March morning, and an infant to carry into the
bargain. But my poor wife and I had gone through too much to be
particular about trifles, and we were both of us sustained by the
thought of a snug little fortune in my breast pocket; for you may
suppose that to us two hundred pounds odd seemed the capital of a future
Rothschild. Mrs. Trevanard had given us some substantial clothing into
the bargain, and my poor Nell wore a good cloth cloak, under which the
baby was kept warm and snug. She was stronger, too, my poor girl, for
the month’s rest and plentiful food that we had enjoyed at
Borcel—indeed, though our lodging there was but a deserted hayloft, I
don’t think either of us was ever happier than when Nell sat at her
needlework and I lay luxuriously reposing on a truss of hay, while I
read an old magazine aloud to her. We were shut out from the world, but
we had peace and rest and plenty; and I think we were pretty much like
the birds of the air as to thought of the morrow in those days. But now
that I had Mrs. Trevanard’s savings in my breast pocket I began to take
a serious view of life, and throughout that walk to Seacomb I was
scheming and contriving, till at last, just as we came in sight of the
town, I cried out in a burst of enthusiasm, “Yes, Nell, I’ve hit it.”
“Hit what?” asked my wife. “Hit upon the surest way to make our
fortunes, my girl,” I answered, all of a glow with the thought. “We’ll
take a theatre.” “Lor’, Mat,” said my wife with a gasp, “and I can play
the leading business!” Managers had been putting other women over her
head in the Juliets and Rosalinds, and she felt it, poor soul. “But
Matthew,” she went on, growing suddenly serious, “we haven’t seen much
good come of taking theatres. Look at Seacomb, for instance.” “Seacomb
isn’t a case in point,” I answered, quite put out by her narrow way of
looking at things. “A psalm-singing place like that was never likely to
support the drama. When I take a theatre it will be in a very different
town from Seacomb.” “But,” remonstrated poor Nell, “don’t you think it
would be breaking faith with Mrs. Trevanard? She gave us the money to
set us up in some nice little business. We were to start with part of
the capital and keep the rest in reserve against a rainy day.” “Well,
isn’t theatrical management a business?” I retorted, “and the only
business that I am fit for. Do you suppose that I can blossom into a
full-blown grocer, or break out all at once into a skilful butcher,
because Mrs. Trevanard wishes it? Why, I shouldn’t know one end of an ox
from the other when his head was off. And as for Mrs. Trevanard,” I went
on, “you ought to have sense enough to know that she cares precious
little what becomes of us now we’ve taken this unfortunate child off her
hands.” “I don’t believe that, Matthew,” answered my wife, “she’s a
Christian, and she wouldn’t like us to starve on the child’s account.”
“Who’s going to starve?” I cried, savagely, for I felt it was in me to
make money as a manager. There never was an actor yet that hadn’t the
same fancy, and many a man has brought ruin upon himself and his family
by the delusion.’
‘You had your own way, of course?’ said Maurice.
‘I had, sir. First and foremost my poor little wife never obstinately
opposed me in anything; and secondly, her foolish heart was longing for
the leading business, and to be a manageress, and cast all the pieces,
and put herself in for the best parts. So we went straight to the
Seacomb station, where we found we should have to wait upwards of an
hour for a train, and I thought I could not make better use of my time
than by buying an _Era_, and finding out what theatres were to let.
There were about half a dozen advertisements of this class, and one of
them struck me as the exact thing. “The Theatre Royal, Slowberry,
Somersetshire, to let for the summer season. Rent moderate. Can be
worked with a small company. Scenery in good condition. Market town;
population twelve thousand.” I made a calculation on the spot,
demonstrating that ten per cent. of those twelve thousand
inhabitants—allowing a wide margin for infants, the aged, and
infirm—were bound to come to the theatre nightly. Now a nightly audience
of twelve hundred was safe to pay. I found that we could get straight to
Slowberry by the Great Western, and accordingly took tickets for that
station, third class, for prudence was to be the order of the day. Well,
Mr. Clissold, I need not trouble you with details. We went to Slowberry,
and established ourselves in humble and inexpensive lodgings, apartments
which I felt were hardly worthy of my managerial position, but prudence
prevailed. I became lessee of the Slowberry theatre, which I am fain to
admit was in architectural pretensions even below the Temple of the
Drama at Seacomb. I engaged my company, cheap and useful. My old man
combined the heavy business and second low comedy; my first
chambermaid—second I need hardly say there was none—danced or sang
between the pieces, and acted in male attire when we ran short of
gentlemen. My wife and I played all the best parts. Nothing could have
been organized upon more rigid principles of economy, yet the financial
result was ruin. For a considerable part of the season I only paid half
salaries, for the concluding portion we became a commonwealth. Yet Mrs.
Trevanard’s savings dribbled away, and, when my poor wife and I left
Slowberry, with Justina—then a fine child of seven months old,—we had
not twenty pounds left out of a capital which had appeared to my mind to
be almost inexhaustible.’
‘The child was christened at Slowberry, I suppose?’
‘Yes, we lost no time in having the baptismal rite performed, lest she
should go off with croup, or red-gum, or vaccination, or any of the
perils which beset the infant traveller on life’s thorny road. The Bible
which Mrs. Trevanard had given to my wife contained in the fly-leaf the
name of Justina Trevanard, doubtless its original possessor. That name
caught my wife’s fancy. It struck me, also, as euphonious and
aristocratic, a name that would look well in the bills by and by, when
our daughter was old enough to make her first juvenile efforts in the
profession, as the child in “Pizarro,” or little William in “The
Stranger.” We were fond of her already, and soon grew to forget that
there was no tie of kindred between us. My wife indeed passionately
adored this nameless orphan, and was never tired of weaving romantic
fancies about her future, how she would turn out to be the daughter of a
nobleman, and we should see her by and by with a coronet on her head,
and owe comfort and wealth to her affection when we grew old. It would
be a curious thing if one of poor Nell’s romantic dreams were to be
realized. How proud that loving heart would have been! but it lies under
the grass and daisies in a Berkshire churchyard, and neither joy nor
sorrow can touch it any more.’
Mr. Elgood checked a rising sigh, and helped himself to another glass of
port.
‘You fared ill, I fear, after your managerial experiment,’ said Maurice.
‘Our life from that point was a series of struggles. If the efforts of
the honest man battling with adversity form a spectacle which the gods
delight in—a fact which I vaguely remember having seen stated
somewhere—my career must have afforded considerable entertainment in
Olympus. We had our brief intervals of sunshine, but cloud prevailed;
and in the course of years my poor wife sank beneath the burden, and
Justina and I were left to jog on together, just as you saw us in the
town of Eborsham two years ago. So far as a struggler can do his duty to
his daughter, I believe I did mine to Justina. I gave her what little
education I could afford, and luckily she was bright enough to make the
most of that little. There never was such a girl for picking up
knowledge. Clever people always seemed to take to her, and she to them,
though for a long time we thought her stupid on the stage. Her talent
for the profession came out all at once. Heaven knows, she has been a
good girl to me, through good and evil fortune, and I love her as well
as if she were twenty times my daughter. It would be a hard thing if any
change of circumstances were to part us.’
‘Have no fear of that,’ said Maurice. ‘Justina is too true a woman to be
changed by changing fortune. I do not hesitate to leave my fate in her
hands. You, who have an older claim upon her love, have even less cause
for fear.’
The little black marble clock on the mantelpiece chimed the half-hour
after ten—time to repair to the theatre. Mr. Flittergilt’s piece ended
at a quarter before eleven, and at a few minutes past the hour Justina
appeared at the stage door, ready to be escorted home.
Maurice and Mr. Elgood went together to the dark little side street in
which the stage door of the Royal Albert was situated, dingy and
repellent of aspect after the manner of stage doors.
It was a starlight autumn night, and that walk back to Bloomsbury with
Justina’s little hand resting on his own arm was very pleasant to
Maurice Clissold. They chose the quietest streets, without reference to
distance, and the walk lasted about a quarter of an hour longer than it
need have done had they gratified Mr. Elgood’s predilection for certain
short cuts, by Wych Street and Drury Lane. But throughout that homeward
walk not one whispered word of Maurice’s betrayed the lover, and when he
and Justina parted at the door of her lodgings, the girl thought
wonderingly of that summer night in Eborsham, more than two years ago,
when James Penwyn told her of his love in the shadow of the old minster.
‘Shall I ever have a second lover as generous and devoted?’ she mused.
‘That was only boy and girl love, I suppose, yet it seemed truer and
brighter than anything that will ever come my way again.’
She had been thinking of Maurice not a little of late, and had decided
that he did not care for her in the least.
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