the quick. "At any rate these pearls are _mine_, and I hope you will
accept them from me as a token of admiration and regard--or," and he
fell back into his cringing yet bantering manner which I hate so, "shall
we say, as is written on the fairing cups and saucers, 'A present for a
good girl from Bristol.'"
How I hate Uncle Hubert!
I had left the pearls on the harpsichord. This morning I found the green
shagreen case on the dressing table; Hubert evidently refuses to let me
off his present. But I doubt whether I shall ever muster up civility
enough to wear them. 'Tis a pity, for lack of wearing makes pearls
tarnish.
I have just opened the case to look at them. This is very curious. The
case is new, has the smell of new leather; and the diamond clasp looks
recently furbished, even to a little chalk about it. But--the man must
be oddly ignorant in such matters--the pearls, seen by daylight, have
evidently not come from a jeweller's. For they are yellow, tarnished,
unworn for years; they have been lying in this house, and, heirlooms or
not, there is something wrong about them.
I have been glad of a pretext, however poor, of returning them.
"Uncle Hubert," I said, handing him the case, "you must put these pearls
in a box with holes in it, and put them back in the sea."
I never saw so strange a look in a man's face. "Back in the sea! What do
you mean, dear Lady Brandling?" he cries. "Why do you suspect these
pearls of coming from the sea?"
"All pearls _do_ come from the sea, I thought, and that's why sea water
cures them when they have got tarnished from lack of wearing."
He burst into an awkward laugh, "To think," he says, "that I had
actually forgotten that pearls were not a kind of stone, that they came
out of shell fish."
_February_ 20, 1773.
God help me and forgive my ingratitude for the great, unspeakable
blessing He has given me. But this also, it would seem, is to become a
source of estrangement between me and Eustace. Ever since this great
hope has arisen in my soul, there has come with it the belief also that
this child, which he used so greatly to long for (vainly trying to hide
his disappointment out of gentleness towards me) would bring us once
more together. Perhaps it was wicked graspingness to count upon two
happinesses when one had been granted to me. Be this as it may, my
ingratitude has been horribly chastened. I told my husband this morning.
He was surprised; taken aback; but gave no sign of joy. "Are you quite
sure?" he repeated anxiously. And on my reiterating my certainty, he
merely ejaculated, "Ah ... 'tis an unfortunate moment," and added,
catching himself up, "the best will be that I send you, when the time
approaches, to Bristol or to Bath. I shall be sure of your being well
seen to there."
I nearly burst into tears, not at this proposal, but at the evident
manner in which the thought of our child suggested only small
difficulties and worries to his mind. "To Bristol! to Bath!" I
exclaimed, "and you speak as if you intended leaving me there alone! But
Eustace, why should not our child be born in your house and mine?" I
felt my eyes blaze with long pent up impatience.
"Because, my dear little Penelope," he answered coldly and sharply, "it
is the custom of _your country and mine_ that ladies of your condition
should have every advantage of medical skill and attendance, and
therefore remove to town for such purpose."
"Would it not be worth while to break through such a habit," I asked,
"to have a physician here at the proper time? Besides," I added, "I
promised, and in your presence, that should this event ever take place,
I should send for my mother."
"I shall be delighted," he answered, always in the same tone, "if my
mother-in-law finds it worth while to make so great a journey as that
from Switzerland to Bath--for Bath is the more suitable place, upon
consideration. But seeing that, as I have twice said before, you will
have every care you may require, I really think the suggestion would be
a mere indiscretion--to all parties."
He was busy arranging the instruments in his laboratory. I should have
left him; but I felt my heart swell and overflow, and remained standing
by him in silence.
"It is too cold for you here," he said very tenderly after a moment,
"had you not better go back to your rooms?"
I could not answer. But after a moment, "Eustace, Eustace!" I cried,
"don't you care? Aren't you glad? Why do you talk only of plans and
difficulties? Why do you want to send me away, to leave me all alone
when our child is born?"
He gave a sigh, partly of impatience. "Do not let us discuss this again,
dear Penelope," he said, "and oblige me by not talking nonsense. Of
course I am glad; it goes without saying. And if I send you away--if I
deprive myself of the joy of being with you, believe me, it is because I
cannot help it. My presence is required here. And now," he added,
putting his arm round my waist, but with small genuine tenderness,
methought, "now let us have done with this subject, my dear, and do me
the kindness to return to your warm room."
O God, O God, take pity on my loneliness! For with the dearest of
mothers, and what was once the kindest of husbands, and the joy of this
coming child, I am surely the loneliest of women!
_February_ 27, 1773.
God forgive me, I say again, and with greater reason, for I now
recognise that my sense of loneliness and of estrangement; all my
selfish misery, has been the fruit of my own lack of courage and of
loving kindness. This child, though yet unborn, has brought me strength
and counsel; the certainty of its existence seems, in a way, to have
changed me; and I look back upon myself such as I was but a few weeks
ago, as upon some one different, an immature girl, without
responsibilities or power to help. And now I feel as if I _could_ help,
and as if I must. For I am the stronger of the two. What has befallen
Eustace? I can but vaguely guess; yet this I know, that without my help
Eustace is a lost man; his happiness, his courage, his honour, going or
gone. My mother used to tell us, I remember, the legend of a clan in her
own country, where the future chieftain, on coming of age, was put into
possession of some secret so terrible that it turned him from a
light-hearted boy into a serious and joyless man. St. Salvat's has
wrought on Eustace in some similar manner. On arriving here, or, indeed,
before arriving, he has learned something which has poisoned his life
and sapped his manhood. What that something is, I can in a measure
guess, and it seems to me as if I ought to help him either to struggle
with or else to bear it, although _bearing it_ seems little to my taste.
It is some time since I have seen through the silly fiction of the
pilchard fishery of St. Salvat's; and although I have not been out of my
way to manifest this knowledge, I have not hidden it, methinks, from
Eustace or even from Uncle Hubert. The rooms and rooms crammed with
apparent lumber, the going and coming of carriers' wagons (so that my
husband's cases of instruments and my new _pianoforte_ arrived from
Bristol as by magic), the amount of money (the very maids gambling for
gold in the laundry) in this beggarly house; and the nocturnal and
mysterious nature of the fishing expeditions, would open the eyes even
of one as foolish and inexperienced as I; nor is any care taken to
deceive me. St. Salvat's Castle is simply the headquarters of the
smuggling business, presided over by my uncles and doubtless
constituting the chief resource of this poor untilled corner of the
world. Breaking His Majesty's laws and defrauding his Exchequer are
certainly offences; but I confess that they seem to me pardonable ones,
when one thinks of the deeds of violence by which our ancestors mostly
made their fortunes, let alone the arts of intrigue by which so many of
our polished equals increase theirs. Perhaps it was being told the
prowess of our Alpine smugglers, carrying their packs through
snow-fields and along hidden crevasses, and letting themselves down from
immeasurable rocks; perhaps it was these stories told to me in my
childhood by the farm servants which have left me thus lax in my
notions. This much I know, that the certainty of the uncles being
smugglers, even if smuggling involve, as it must, occasional acts of
violence against the officers of the Excise, does not increase the
loathing which I feel towards the uncles. Nor would this fact, taken in
itself, suffice to explain Eustace's melancholy. What preys upon his
mind must rather be the disgust and disgrace of finding his house and
property put to such uses by such men.
For Eustace is a man of thought, not of action; and I can understand
that the problem how to change this order of things must weigh upon him
in proportion as he feels himself so little fitted for its solution.
With this is doubtless mingled a sense of responsibility towards me, and
perhaps (for his dreamer's conscience is most tender) of exaggerated
shame for bringing me here. If this be as I think, it is for me to help
my husband to break the bad spell which St. Salvat's has cast over him.
And I will and can! The child will help me. For no child of mine shall
ever be born into slavery and disgrace such as, I feel, is ours.
III
_April_ 10, 1773.
The spring gales have begun, and with them the "fishing" as it is
called, has become constant. Rough weather, I suppose, is favourable to
the smuggling operations, as it leaves this terrible coast in the hands
of those who know every inch of its reefs and rocks and quicksands, and
who possess the only safe landing-place for miles, the little cove
beyond the churchyard in the glen.
Be this as it may, these expeditions have left the castle wonderfully
peaceful; the sound of brawling no longer rises perpetually from the big
hall and the courtyards. The uncles are away for days and nights at a
time, taking with them every male creature about the place. Even Hubert,
seized, as he says, by a fit of his master passion, has not appeared for
days. The sluttish maids and the old rheumatic gardener are lodged in
the outhouses, or are taking a holiday in the neighbouring villages; and
the house has been, methinks, given over to ourselves and Mrs. Davies,
who waits assiduously in her silent manner, and no doubt keeps the
uncles informed of all our doings. It is three days that Eustace and I
have been alone together. But the knowledge of what he will not
confess, and of what I have not the courage to ask, sits between us at
meals, makes us constrained during our walks, even like the presence of
a living stranger.
_April_ 20, 1773.
The gales have been getting worse and worse; and the sound of the sea,
the wind in the trees and chimneys, has been filling the castle with
lamentation. This evening, at the harpsichord, I could no longer hear,
or at least no longer listen to, my own voice. I shut the instrument and
sat idle by the fire, while every beam and rafter strained and groaned
like the timbers of a ship in the storm. My husband also was quite
unstrung. He walked up and down, without a word. Suddenly a thought
entered my mind; it is extraordinary and inhuman that it should not have
done so before.
"I hope Hubert and the uncles are not out to-night," I said.
Eustace stopped in his walking, straight before the fire and stared long
into it.
"Perhaps they have returned already," he answered. "I hope so," and with
the excuse of some notes to put in order in his study, he bid me
good-night and hoped I should go to bed soon.
But shall I be able to sleep on such a night!
_April_ 21st.
I understand now. But, Good God, what new and frightful mysteries and
doubts!
It was late when I went to bed last night; and, against all expectation,
I fell into a heavy sleep. I was awakened out of dreams of shipwreck by
a great light in my eyes. The moon had risen, almost full, and dispelled
the clouds. And the storm was over. Indeed, I think it was the
stillness, after so many days of raging noise, which had wakened me as
much as the moonlight. I was alone; for Eustace, these weeks past, has
slept in the closet next door, as he reads deep into the night and says
my condition requires unbroken rest. It was so beautiful and peaceful, I
seemed drawn into the light. I rose and stood in the big uncurtained
window, which, with its black mullions casting their shadows on the
floor, looked more than ever like a great glass cage. It was so lovely
and mild that I threw back a lattice and looked out: the salt smell and
the sea breeze left by the storm rushed up and met me. Beyond the trees
the moonlight was striking upon the white of the breakers, for though
the gale was over the sea was still pounding furiously upon the reefs.
My eyes had sought at first the moon, the moonlit offing; to my
amazement, they fell the next instant on a great ship quite close to
shore. She seemed in rapid movement, pitching and rolling with all her
might; but after a moment I noticed that she did not move forward, but
remained stationary above the same tree tops. She seemed enchanted, or
rather she looked like some captive creature struggling desperately to
get free. I was too much taken up by the strangeness of the sight to
reflect that no sane crew would have anchored in such a spot, and no
anchorage have held in the turmoil of such a sea. Moreover, I knew too
little of such matters to guess that the ship must have run upon one of
the reefs, and that every breaker must lift her up to crash and shiver
herself upon its sawlike edge; indeed I had no notion of any danger; and
when I saw lights on the ship, and others moving against her hull, my
only thought was that I was watching the smugglers at their work. As I
did so, a sudden doubt, of which I felt ashamed, leaped into my mind;
and, feeling indignant with myself the while, I crept to the door of the
dressing-room. Was Eustace there? I noiselessly turned the handle and
pushed open the door. I cannot say what were my feelings, whether most
of shame or of a kind of terror when, by the light of a lamp, I saw my
husband kneeling by the side of his camp bed, with his head buried in
the pillow, like a man in agony. He was completely dressed. On hearing
the door open he started to his feet and cried in a terrible voice "What
do you want with me?"
I was overwhelmed with shame at my evil thoughts.
"O Eustace," I answered foolishly, and without thinking of the bearing
of my words, "the ship! I only wanted to call you to look at the ship."
He paid no attention to my presence.
"The ship! The ship!" he cries--"is she gone?" and rushes to the window.
The ship, sure enough, was gone. Where she had been her three great
masts still projected from the water. Slowly they disappeared, and
another sharp black point, which must have been her bowsprit as she
heeled over, rose and sank in its turn.
How long we stood, Eustace and I, silently watching, I cannot tell.
"There were lights alongside," I exclaimed, "the uncles' boats must
have been there. There has been time to save the crew. O Eustace, let us
run down and help!"
But Eustace held me very tight. "Do not be a fool, Penelope. You will
catch your death of cold and endanger the child. The people of the ship
are saved or drowned by this time."
_June_ 12, 1773.
But a few months ago I wrote in this diary that no child of mine should
ever be born into slavery and dishonour. Alas, poor foolish Penelope!
What ill-omened words were those! And yet I cannot believe that God
would have visited their presumptuousness upon me with such horrid
irony. May God, who knows all things, must know that those words were
even more justified than I dreamed of at the time: the slavery and
dishonour surpassing my most evil apprehensions. Indeed, may it not be
that in taking away our child while yet unborn He did so in His mercy to
it and to its wretched parents? Surely. And if my husband surprised me,
some months back, by his indifference in the face of what we were about
to gain, 'tis he, perhaps, who is surprised in his turn at the strange
resignation with which I take my loss. For indeed, I am resigned, am
acquiescent, and, below the regrets which come shuddering across me, I
feel a marvellous peacefulness in the depths of my being. No! no child
should ever be born in such a house, into such a life as this....
* * * * *
I am still shattered in body (I understand that for days recovery was
given up as hopeless), and my mind seems misty, and like what a ghost's
might be, after so many hours of unconsciousness, and of what, had it
endured, would have been called death. But little by little shreds of
recollection are coming back to me, and I will write them down. Some
strangely sweet ones. The sense, even as life was slipping away, that
all Eustace's love and tenderness had returned; that it was he (for no
physician could be got, or was allowed, in this dreadful place) he
himself who wrestled for me with death, and brought me back to life.
Moments return to my memory of surpassing, unspeakable sweetness, which
penetrated through all pain: being lifted in his arms, handled like a
child; seeing his eyes, which seemed to hold and surround me like his
arms; and hearing his words as when he thanked God, over and over again,
and almost like one demented, for having caused him to study medicine. I
felt I was re-entering life upon the strong, full tide of incomparable
love.
Let me not seem ungrateful, for I am not. Most strangely there has
mingled in this great flood of life-giving tenderness the sense also of
the affection of poor Mrs. Davies. I call her _poor_, because there is,
I know not why, something oddly pathetic in her sudden devotion to me.
When I met her wild eyes grown quite tender and heard her crooning
exclamations in her unintelligible language, I had, even in the midst of
my own weakness, the sort of half pitying gratitude which we feel for
the love of an animal, of something strong and naturally savage, grown
very gentle towards one.
_July_ 5, 1773.
Is that hideous thing true? Did it ever happen? Or is some shred of
nightmare returning ever and again out of the black depths of my
sickness? It comes and goes, and every time new doubts--hope it may be
a dream, fear it may be reality--come with it.
It was three days after the shipwreck; the weather had calmed, and for
the first time I ventured abroad into the park. That much and a little
more is real, and bears in my mind the indescribable quality of
certainty. I had wandered down the glen and through the churchyard, and
I remember pausing before the great stone cross, covered with curious
basket work patterns, and wondering whether when it was made--a thousand
years ago--women about to be mothers had felt as great perplexity and
loneliness as I, and at the same time, as great joy. I crossed the piece
of boggy meadow, vivid green in the fitful sunshine, and climbed upon
the sea-wall and sat down. I was tired; and the solitude, the sunshine,
the faint silken rustle of the sea on the reefs, the salt smell--all
filled me with a languid happiness quite unspeakable. All this I know, I
am certain of, as the scratching of my pen; in fact, those moments on
the sea-wall are, in a manner, the latest thing of which I have vivid
certainty; all that came later--my illness, the news of my miscarriage,
my recovery, and even this present moment, seeming comparatively unreal.
I do not know how long I may have sat there. I was listening to the sea,
to the wind in my hair, and watching the foam running in little feathery
balls along the sand, when I heard voices, and saw three men wading
among the rocks a little way off, as if in search of something. My eyes
followed them lazily, and then I saw close under me, what I had taken at
first for a heap of seaweed and sea refuse cast upon the sand, but
which, as my eyes fixed it, became--or methought it became--something
hideous and terrible; so that for very horror I could not shriek. And
then, while my eyes were fixed on it, methought (for as I write it seems
a dream) the three men waded over in its direction, and one silently
pointed it out to the other. They came round, one turned a moment, and
instead of a human face, I saw under his looped-up hat a loosely fitting
black mask. Then they gathered round that thing the three of them, and
touched it with a boat-hook, muttering to each other. Then one stooped
down and did I know not what, stuffing, as he did so, something into the
pockets of his coat, and then put out a hand to one of his companions,
receiving back something narrow, which caught a glint of sun. They all
three stooped together; methought the water against the sands and the
pale foam heaps suddenly changed colour, but that must surely be my
nightmare.
"Better like that," a voice said in English. Between them they raised
the thing up and carried it through the shallow water to a boat moored
by the rocks. And then my voice became loosened. I gave a cry, which
seemed to echo all round, and I jumped down from the sea-wall, and flew
across the meadow and tore up the glen, till I fell full length by the
neglected pond with the broken leaden nymph. For as they took _it_ up,
the thing had divided in two, and somehow I had known the one was a
mother and the other a child; one was I, and the other I still carried
within me. And the voice which had said "Better like that" was Hubert's.
But as I write, I know it must have been a vision of my sickness.
* * * * *
"Eustace," I asked, "how did it begin? Did I dream--or did you find me
lying by the fountain on the terrace--the fountain of your poor water
snake?"
"Forget it, dearest," Eustace said, very quietly and sweetly, and with
the old gentle truthfulness in his eyes. "You must have over-walked that
hot morning and got a sunstroke or fainted with fatigue. We did find you
by the fountain--that is to say, our good Mrs. Davies did." And Davies
merely nodded.
_July_ 15, 1773.
Shall I ever know whether it really happened? Methinks that had I
certainty I could face, stand up to, it. But to go on sinking and
weltering in this hideous doubt!
_August_ 1, 1773.
The certainty has come; and God in Heaven, what undreamed certainties
besides! I did not really want it, though I told myself I did. For I
felt that Mrs. Davies knew, that she was watching her opportunity to
tell me; and I, a coward, evading what I must some day learn. At last it
has come.
It was this morning. This morning! It seems weeks and months ago--a
whole lifetime passed since! She was brushing my hair, one of the many
services required by my weakness, and which she performs with wonderful
tenderness. We saw one another's face, but only reflected in the mirror;
and I recognised when she was going to speak.
"Lady Brandling," she said in her odd Welsh way--"Lady Brandling fell
ill because she saw some things from the sea-wall."
I knew what she meant--for are not my own thoughts for ever going over
that same ground? But the sense of being surrounded by enemies, the
whole horrid mystery about this accursed place, have taught me caution
and even cunning. Davies has been as a mother to me in my illness; but I
remembered my first impression of her unfriendliness towards Eustace and
me, and of her being put to spy upon us. So I affected not to
understand; and indeed, her singular mixture of English and Welsh, her
outlandish modes of address, gave some countenance to the pretence.
"What do you mean, Davies?" I asked, but without looking up in the glass
for fear of meeting her eyes there. "What has the sea-wall to do with my
illness? It was not there you found me when I fainted. You told me it
was by the fountain."
The old woman took a paper from her stays, and out of it a muddy piece
of linen which she spread out on the dressing-table in front of me. It
was a handkerchief of mine; and I understood that she had found it,
treasured it as a sign of what I had witnessed. The place, the moment,
might mean my death-warrant; for what I thought I saw had been really
seen.
"It was on the sea-wall the morning that Lady Brandling fainted in the
shrubbery," she answered. And I felt that her eyes were on my face,
asking what I had seen that day.
I made a prodigious effort over myself.
"And why have you kept it in that state instead of washing it? Did
you--was it picked up then or only now? _I suppose some one else found
it?"_
Merciful God! how every word of that last sentence beat itself out in my
heart and throat!--and yet I heard the words pronounced lightly,
indifferently.