Di, majorum umbris tenuem et sine pondere terram,
Spirantesque crocos, et in urna perpetuum ver,
Qui praeceptorem sancti voluere parentis
Esse loco.
Juvenal.
Light lie the earth upon the shades of those,
Flowers deck their graves, Spring dwell with their repose,
Of old who deemed the teacher should supply
The parent's holy rule, heart, hand, and eye.
Meantime Michael Sinson's scheme was ripening into action. The plot
matured in the metropolis was about to break on the towers of
Trevethlan. Two gentlemen crossed one another in the hurry of Lincoln's
Inn, and stopped to exchange a cordial greeting and a little chat.
"By the by, Winter," said Mr. Truby, as they were parting, "we're
bringing ejectment against a client of yours."
"Indeed!" exclaimed the second lawyer, "and who may that be?"
"Oh, the parties are old antagonists," answered the first. "It's by no
means the first time we've met. Doc d Pendarrel _v._ Trevethlan. Clerk
gone down to serve declaration and notice. You'll hear of it in a post
or two."
"Good Heaven!" thought Mr. Winter, as he proceeded on his way; "what new
calamity is this? Is not that hapless family even yet sufficiently
broken? Poor Morton! Now I will wager this comes in some way out of that
mad scheme."
And indeed it might well seem that nothing was needed to increase the
gloom that invested Trevethlan Castle. It was lonely and desolate in the
lifetime of its late possessor, but there was then at least the buoyancy
of youth to relieve the dreary monotony; and now, even that had
vanished. So far was Helen from being able to restore anything like
cheerfulness to her brother, that she herself became infected by his
sombre moodiness. Strange was the contrast between those dimly latticed
Gothic apartments, and the light and lively saloons of Pendarrel: the
wanderer in the former almost dreading to break the silence with his
footfall, and the latter ringing with careless laughter and mirthful
conversation. Polydore Riches himself could with difficulty preserve his
ever-hopeful equanimity; and Griffith often reproached himself to his
wife for the facility with which he consented to that ill-omened visit
to the metropolis: while the few domestics began to fear moving about
singly after dusk, and to whisper of mysterious sounds heard, and sights
seen, in the darkening corridors.
Such tales spread outside the castle, and were improved upon in their
progress. It became rumoured that the spirit of the unhappy Margaret
wandered through its halls in the silence of night, and harassed the
children she was not permitted to love in her lifetime. The villagers
began to look upon Randolph as the easterns do upon one possessed of the
evil eye, and rather shunned than courted his familiarity. And some of
the older folk recalled his father's marriage, and began to ask
themselves, was it after all only a mockery? Then, indeed, would poor
Margaret have cause to seek vengeance for the deceit by which she was
beguiled. And so they went on stringing story upon story, until in the
rush of the night wind they heard the wailings and howlings which in
days long gone were said to portend disaster to the house of Trevethlan.
Randolph was entirely unconscious of the popular mysticism, and too much
absorbed in his own feelings to have heeded it in any case. Every day he
went forth to the outskirts of the park of Pendarrel, and roamed round
its circuit, in the hope of meeting Mildred; and every day that he
returned disappointed, made him more restless and reserved. Such an
excursion at last led him by Wilderness Gate, and it happened that Maud
Basset was sunning herself there as he passed.
"Randolph Trevethlan," she cried, as he went by; and he turned, and she
came out to the plot of grass to meet him.
"Randolph Trevethlan," she repeated, "son of a murdered mother, there's
a dark hour at hand for thy house, but not darker than is due. I see it
written on thy brow. I heard it in the screams that came down on the
wind of the night. Say they her spirit is abroad in the towers where her
bliss was made her bane? Ay, he is dead, but he shall answer it in his
son."
The wildness of the old crone's language suited Randolph's humour. She
came quite close to him and looked up in his face.
"Hast seen her?" she asked, lowering her voice to a whisper, "hast seen
her, grandson Randolph? Thou knowest who I mean--thy mother, boy. My
Margaret, my winsome Margaret. They tell me she's been seen in the
castle. 'Tis long, long sin' I saw her myself. They said she grew pale
and pale, but they wouldna let me come nigh. And is it true they say?
Hast seen her, grandson Randolph?"
"Ay, it is true, indeed," he answered, in a bewildered manner. "I have
seen her indeed."
There was the trunk of a large tree lying on the grass close beside
them. The old woman took his hand and drew him to a seat upon it. He had
neither the power nor the wish to resist.
"Now I can see thee," Maud said. "Thou'st grown so tall; but art not
like the gleesome lad that used to sport with my Michael. Woe's me! And
how did she look? Said she aught to thee?"
"She hung over my bed with a sweet smiling face, and she bent down and
kissed my lips."
"A sweet smiling face!" Maud echoed; "that was hers indeed, my own
Margaret. And she smiled on thee, and kissed thee! Then she doth not
hate thee?"
"Why should she, Maud?"
"Art thou not his son? and did he not murder her?" exclaimed the crone,
in her former harsh manner. "Who said there was no marriage? He! he!
Surely thou wilt defend her fame, Randolph Trevethlan?"
"With my life," he answered.
"What's this I'm saying?" again Maud cried, checking herself. "There's a
dark hour at hand for thy house, I tell thee. God give thee the strength
to bear it!"
And she faltered away as quickly as she could, passed through the gate,
and entered the lodge, leaving Randolph still seated, motionless, upon
the timber.
Old Maud Basset was deeply versed in all the wild superstitions which
still lingered among the Cornubians. She knew the presages which
foretold sorrow or death to different old houses. Here, the fall of one
of the trees in the avenue was the harbinger of dole; there, ancient
logs of timber rose to the surface of the pool in the park before a
coming vacancy at the family board. She could tell, too, how drowned
persons broke the stillness of night by hailing their own names; of the
candle borne by unseen hands in the track of a future funeral; of many a
kind of unholy augury; of evil spirits who led wayfarers astray, and
precipitated them from the summit of their carns; and in particular of
Tregagel, condemned for his many ill deeds to empty the fathomless pool
of Dosmary by means of a limpet shell with a hole in it.
The incoherence of the old woman's speech, and her half-uttered
predictions, tallied very exactly with some of the feelings which had of
late been familiar to Randolph. Mildred, indeed, still occupied by far
the greatest portion of them; but his thoughts not unfrequently wandered
from her to the dream which had visited him the first night of his
return to the castle, and the fair face which had been pressed to his
own. That the features so revealed were those of his mother he never
doubted, and he felt a restless desire to learn something of the parent
whom he had lost before he was three years' old. But to whom should he
apply for information? Where could he find the sympathy which such a
topic demanded? The long silence that had been observed respecting it,
within the castle, must, he thought, have been the effect, in part, of a
deficiency of interest, and therefore he was reluctant to open his
wishes, even to the chaplain. And without the walls he knew no one to
confer with on such a subject. So he was at once fascinated by old
Maud's sudden allusion to her child, and answered her questions from the
recollections of his dream.
But what did she mean by her reiterated reference to Margaret's death,
and her dark announcement of coming calamity? The latter, indeed,
harmonized but too well with his own gloomy forebodings--"Who said there
was no marriage?--Thou wilt defend her fame?" What was the meaning of
such ominous insinuations? Randolph mused on them, without quitting the
posture in which Maud had left him, until they became so oppressive,
that he resolved to learn all the story from Polydore, without delay.
In the dusk of the evening, he walked with the chaplain in the
picture-gallery of the castle. The dim light which came through the high
Gothic windows, gave strange and unintended expression to some of the
portraits, and left others in such deep shadow that they could hardly be
discerned, while the vaulted ceiling hung indistinct over head. Randolph
paused at length before the likeness of his father. It was painted when
Henry Trevethlan was in the prime of youth, and presented the aspect of
a man very different indeed from the cold and stern personage with whom
his son was acquainted.
"What changed that countenance, Mr. Riches?" Randolph asked. "What swept
away the ardour and enthusiasm which beam from all those lineaments?
From what he told me himself, in his dying hour, I framed a tale of
hopeless attachment, of love striving to forget itself in ruin. Was it
so? Did Esther Pendarrel indeed break my poor father's heart, after
trifling with its affection? Methinks, he was not a man to be made a
mock of. Yet the mocker has prevailed."
"Randolph," Polydore answered, with a deep sigh, "your speech brings
back days of sorrow, which I would were forgotten. But that was all past
before I became a resident here. From the steward only, and from popular
report, did I learn the intimacy which once subsisted between your
father and Mrs. Pendarrel. It was in a thoughtless hour, if all that's
said be true, that she crushed his last hopes by wedding. And so, by
this time, she knows, perhaps, too well."
"Did she love him, then, Mr. Riches?" Randolph inquired quickly.
"Nay," said the chaplain, "that is a question which I cannot answer. But
sure I am, that if one spark of feeling yet lives in her heart, as I
would fain believe, she must be visited with deep remorse as often as
she looks back upon the ruin wrought by her girlish levity. May you, my
dear Randolph, never know the pangs of affection unrequited, or requited
only to be broken. And, if such sad lot be yours, may Heaven teach you
to bear up against it, nor hide misery in the show of defiance."
"'Tis well for her," Randolph mused aloud, having scarcely heard
Polydore's last words, "'tis very well for her, if indeed she loved. For
so is no account between us. But if it be otherwise, if, out of
wilfulness or vanity, she broke the heart that adored her, then let her
look to her own. Not unscathed shall she go down to the grave. Does not
the vow lie heavy on my soul?"
"Oh, Randolph, Randolph!" Polydore exclaimed; "what words are these?"
But the young man heeded him not, and, taking his arm, led him several
times up and down the long gallery in silence, and at last drew him to
one of the windows, from which they looked forth upon the sea. The white
crests of the waves were still visible in the increasing darkness.
"Pardon me, Mr. Riches," Randolph said, "if I recall days that are gone,
and which are recollected only with pain. But these are topics which
have been forbidden, which I can no longer resist approaching, on which
I must be informed. My father's marriage, my mother.... How came it
about? How did she die? Strange tales have fallen upon my ears----"
The chaplain was much distressed. "What!" thought he, "will they not let
poor Margaret rest even in her grave? Do they bear their foul scandal to
her son? And is it for me to tell him the story of his father's fault?"
"Speak, Mr. Riches," said Randolph, with some impatience; "let me hear
all the truth of the history."
"You know not what you ask," Polydore answered sadly. "Margaret Basset
could not resist the influence which made her the seeming mistress of
this castle. I could not approve--I went away. The marriage was strictly
private. The people were very jealous. Some said--be patient--that it
was not duly performed. I know that it was. I had some slight
acquaintance with Mr. Ashton the clergyman; he was murdered shortly
after the ceremony, and the witness disappeared. The rumours spread; but
they died away when you were born. You can imagine the details."
"How did she die?" Randolph asked again.
"You know your father, Randolph," the chaplain replied. "Cannot you
conceive the position was too much for her? And her kindred were
imprudent. She pined away. But she was an angel. We all loved her. If
the devotion of those around her could have made up for the affection
which should hallow her situation, surely she were living now."
His hearer mused again for some time in silence, thinking of his dream;
and it produced its usual effect of soothing his excitement, and
tranquillizing his spirits.
"Come, Mr. Riches," he said, "let us seek my sister. We must not leave
her desolate too long."
But the chaplain laid his hand on his old pupil's arm, saying:
"One moment, Randolph; let me detain you one moment. Let me play the
master again. What we have been discoursing of will be best forgotten.
And oh! let it not be remembered in one fatal sense! Let not these sad
events be the foundation of evils yet to come! You spoke of a vow. Such
are often wrongly demanded and rashly given. Pride lingers on the bed of
death, and bequeaths itself to its successors. Vengeance, unappeased,
requires satisfaction by the hands of its heir. So hatred is handed down
for ever, and rancour and strife made perpetual. Pray Heaven the vow you
speak of requires none of these things! Pray Heaven, that if haply it
do, it will be revoked and forgotten!"
"A parent's curse," said Randolph in a hollow voice, "is a terrible
thing."
"To him!" the chaplain exclaimed. "To him it is, indeed, a terrible
thing, and to his children, if it impels them into wrong-doing. There is
no power in man to curse, my dear pupil, and surely Heaven is deaf to
all such imprecations."
Alas! Polydore might as well have reasoned with the foaming waves
beneath him. Randolph listened in respectful silence, but entirely
unconvinced. As law is silent amid the din of arms, so is reason in the
conflict of passions. Few sources have been more fruitful of evil than
the pledges extorted by the dying. The giver succumbs absolutely to an
obligation he ought never to have undertaken, allows himself no
discretionary power, yields nothing to the alteration of circumstances,
and acts as if the behest were imposed by certain foreknowlege and
unerring wisdom. There is no absolution from a death-bed promise, and no
chancery to qualify its mischievous engagements.
This conversation was little adapted to restore Polydore Riches to his
old equanimity. Gentle and simple-hearted, he was ill-calculated to
wrestle with the stormy passions which had desolated his late patron's
life, and now threatened shipwreck to the happiness of his pupil. He
mourned for the day when, in pride and confidence, neglecting the
worldly-wisdom of the more prudent steward, he enthusiastically bade the
brother and sister go forth on their way, and foretold for them a
prosperous career, and a joyful return. He almost blamed himself for not
having given them more adequate preparation for the struggle of life,
and attributed their failure to his own deficiency. Yet surely never did
teacher better answer the desire of those ancients, lauded by the Roman
poet in the lines which head this chapter. Polydore had nothing
wherewith to reproach himself.
But the discourse had also revived his own particular griefs, recalling,
as it did, the days when he paid his first vows of love to Rose
Griffith, and won her timid consent, only to see her wither away. A
pensive melancholy was visible upon his countenance when he returned
with Randolph through the gloomy galleries to the apartments over the
little flower-garden.