"MAN IS BORN TO TROUBLE AND DISAPPOINTMENT, AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARDS."
Frederick Morley, in the meantime, was hastening on his journey. Love
added speed to his horse's feet, and strength to the rider; and by dint
of frequent changes on the road, he was not many days reaching Truro
once more, where he halted to refresh himself and to deliberate on what
course he should adopt.
It was a lone house, Alrina had told him in her letter, near the
seaside, she believed, surrounded by a high wall, and not very far, she
thought, from her former abode; because she must have been taken there
during the night, so that the distance could not have been great. This
was a very vague description. There were many lone houses, in those
days, near the sea, surrounded by high walls;--indeed, the exception
was, to see a lone house, without having a high wall round it, for the
protection of the inmates against the lawless bands who infested the
sea-coast in those troublous times. His course seemed to be, to go to
the Land's-End at once, and see Lieut. Fowler, who might have heard
something, or perhaps have seen the boy. He determined, however, to go
by the road which would take him nearest to the sea; and, in his
journey, he could look out for the house in which his Alrina was
confined, and, to make sure of not passing her by this time, he
determined he would effect an entrance by some pretence or other, into
every house he saw surrounded by high walls in the course of his
journey.
Having decided on this course, and taken some refreshment, he started on
his exploring expedition; but he was obliged to ride the same tired
horse, for there was not another to be had in the town. The horse,
however, having been well fed and groomed, the ostler assured him that
the animal was as fresh as a hunter going to the meet, and would carry
him a long journey yet before sunset. So Frederick mounted once more,
and, with whip and spur, got over a good bit of ground in a very short
time; for the horse was one of those plucky animals that will run till
they drop, under the spur of an impatient rider. Frederick did not
intend to be cruel; but he wanted to get on, and the horse seemed
willing to go, so on they went at a good pace, and soon neared the
sea-coast. The horse was flagging a little, but whip and spur kept him
up to the mark, and on they went still. They passed several farm-houses
surrounded by walls; but none of them at all answered the description
Alrina had given of her prison. At length Frederick thinks he sees, at
some distance ahead, some high dark walls, and he fancies he discerns
the roof of a house just peeping above them. "This must be the very
house," cried he, in the greatest excitement; so he urged the horse on,
thinking of nothing but the rescue of his Alrina. The road was rugged
and the horse was tired. He stumbled over a loose stone going down a
gentle declivity towards the building; and, not having sufficient
strength left to save himself, he fell heavily. The rider was thrown
with violence against the wall; he was stunned, and lay insensible and
bleeding beneath the wall of the house he had been so anxious to reach.
The shadows of night are closing in all round, and the man and horse are
still lying in that lonely road, no one having passed since the
accident, nor has the garden-door been opened. At last a boy comes out;
and, seeing that some accident has happened, he returns to the house,
and a man and woman come out with him and examine the bodies. The horse
is dead--the man sees that at once; but the rider breathes and is
bleeding still. The man goes back to the house, taking the boy with him,
while the woman runs for some water, with which she bathes the face of
the wounded man, and washes away the congealed blood. The man and boy
presently appear again, carrying a board. The three, then, with their
united strength, place the wounded man on the board, and carry him in,
leaving the horse by the roadside. The wounded gentleman is placed in a
comfortable bed, and the man dresses his wounds and applies remedies
with considerable skill. Life is preserved, but delirium comes on,
caused by a slight concussion of the brain. No surgeon is sent for;--the
man says he can cure him himself; and the woman and the boy, having
apparently implicit confidence in his skill, yield to his wishes. They
watch with the sufferer throughout the night, and the boy is despatched,
in the morning, to the nearest town, for medicines and other things
necessary for the patient's use and comfort.
Several days and nights pass, and the patient is still delirious. The
man continues most attentive and skilful. The patient gradually gets
better. He is out of danger; and, one evening, the man, after giving the
woman the most minute instructions as to her treatment of the invalid,
leaves, desiring her to keep strict watch over him, and keep the doors
locked, so that he may not get away from the house until his return.
The boy was left to assist the woman in attending on the invalid and
keeping watch.
Frederick had now been an inmate of this lonely house about a week. He
was fast recovering from the effects of the fall, but still too weak to
leave his bed, although he wished most earnestly to get away, or to have
his questions answered; for he didn't at all remember what took place
after the horse fell, nor did he know where he was, nor who his
attendants were.
The woman pretended not to know anything, and the boy generally evaded
the questions, or answered very wide of them. The morning after the
departure of the man, under whose skilful treatment Morley was
progressing so favourably towards recovery, the boy entered the room
with a cunning smile on his countenance, and said that he had a letter
for the invalid.
"A letter!" said Morley, feebly, "who can possibly have written a letter
to me? no one but those I have seen about me, know where I am." Taking
the letter from the boy, however, he was astonished to find that it was
from Alrina. He was too anxious and impatient to read it, to think of
the bearer, or to ask any questions concerning the letter or its writer,
until he had read its contents, which he did with such eagerness, that
the boy was alarmed lest the invalid should relapse into delirium
again;--not that he was easily alarmed or frightened at anything he saw
or heard, but he knew that if the gentleman became delirious again, it
would give him extra trouble.
In her letter, Alrina complained of her lot. She had thought, she said,
that Frederick would, at least, have written her a line in reply to her
first letter. She felt, now, that she was deserted by all. Everything
seemed going against her. Her aunt had not returned yet; but her father
came frequently, and she felt convinced there was some terrible secret,
which they endeavoured to keep from her, but she was determined to find
it out. The boy seemed willing to befriend her, she said, but she was
almost afraid to trust him. And so she went on to the end of the letter,
in the same desponding strain; winding up by asking Frederick, if he
really loved her to lose no time in coming to her rescue, or, at least,
to write a line, that she might know there was, at least, one person in
the world who cared for her. It was a melancholy letter from beginning
to end, and its perusal made her lover wretched. She was evidently under
restraint somewhere; but where? that was the question: even if he knew,
it was impossible for him to go to her at present; he was too weak. The
boy who brought her letter might know something, and he turned to ask
him, but he had left the room. He tried to get up; the exertion was too
much for him, and he sank back on his pillow again. His only resource
was to read the letter again and again. The more he reflected on
Alrina's position, however, and on the unfortunate circumstances which
had prevented his receiving her first letter in time, and his consequent
inability to render her that assistance and consolation which he would
have given worlds to have been able to do, the more irritated and
unhappy did he feel; so that when the boy returned, he was in such a
high state of excitement, that his attendant was afraid, at first, to go
near him.
The wish for further information, however, which he believed the boy
could give him, caused Morley to subdue his feelings, and to induce him,
by the promise of a reward, to be a little more communicative than he
had hitherto been. By degrees, the boy approached the bed cautiously,
when Morley asked him, as mildly as he could, when and where he had
received the letter, and if he knew where Alrina was at that moment
confined, with many other questions too numerous for the boy to answer
without a little time and consideration. Before he answered any of them,
therefore, he gave that cunning smile, which had so annoyed Morley
before, and which now irritated him beyond measure, when he was so
anxious to hear something of her to whom he felt he had unwittingly
given cause for complaint; but he soon saw that he should get nothing
out of the boy by threats or angry expressions, so he changed his
tactics, and extracted the information he wanted by asking one question
at a time. That was certainly the oddest boy he had ever met with, he
thought; for, although, judging from his diminutive stature, no one
would have supposed him to be above eight or nine years of age, yet,
from his shrewd knowledge of the world, and aged expression of
countenance, he might have been eight- or nine-and-twenty. He was the
same boy whom Mr. Brown formerly employed to look after his mare; and it
was said, even then, and generally believed, that he was in constant
attendance on Mr. Freeman, and knew a good many of his secrets.
He was found one night, when quite an infant, lying at the door of a
farm-house in the neighbourhood of St. Just, wrapped up in coarse
flannel; but it was never discovered who put him there, nor who the
child's parents were. He was placed in the poor-house; and when he was
old enough, he was apprenticed to one of the farmers of the district;
but he would never settle down under one master,--and after trying to
subdue him, without success, his master gave him up to his own
inclinations, and so he got his living by doing odd jobs. From his
constant intercourse with Mr. Freeman, he lost the broad Cornish dialect
in a measure, and only spoke in that way when he was associating with
the miners. He was fond of going into Penzance and mixing with the
gentlemen's servants there occasionally, from whom he picked up many a
slang expression, which he would retail to the frequenters of Mr.
Brown's bar, very much to their amusement. He was an awkward individual
to gain information from; so Morley was obliged to deal with him
accordingly, and put his questions with caution:--
(_Morley_) "I think I have seen you before, my boy?"
(_Boy_) "I shouldn't wonder if you had, sir; and, maybe, I've seed you
before."
(_Morley_) "You kept that mare like a picture;--I never saw a better
groom, either at home or abroad."
(_Boy--smiling_) "It wasn't much odds, as it turned out, sir."
(_Morley_) "No, no; but that doesn't alter the fact of your ability as
groom. Now, tell me--there's a good fellow--who gave you that letter."
(_Boy--still pleased_) "Why, Miss Reeney, to be sure."
(_Morley--excited_) "What! Alrina herself? Where did you see her?"
(_Boy--putting on his cunning look again_) "Where? why here, to be
sure."
(_Morley--more excited_) "Here! what, in this house?"
(_Boy_) "To be sure; why not? She called to me through the keyhole
upstairs, and shoved the letter out under the door, and told me to take
it as before. I couldn't ask her anything, for I heard Mrs. Cooper
coming upstairs."
(_Morley--rising up in bed in the greatest excitement_) "Oh! take me to
her!--or, stay, take a message to her at once; tell her I am----"
(_Boy_) "Stop, stop, sir; you must lend me a horse to do that."
(_Morley_) "I thought you said she was here, in this house."
(_Boy_) "So she was; but 'The Maister' took her off with him last
night."
(_Morley_) "Then that was Mr. Freeman who attended me; and Alrina has
been here all the time, and did not come near me! Oh! cruel, cruel! she
must be offended, indeed. Didn't she ask or try to come to see me?"
(_Boy_) "No, she didn't, sir, 'cause she didn't know you was here."
(_Morley_) "Not know it? strange!"
(_Boy_) "Nothing strange at all, sir, that I can see; I have seed
stranger things than that, a bra' deal. She was kept at the top of the
house, and you down here--under lock and key, both of 'ee; and last
night 'The Maister' took her off with him. Where they're gone, I can't
say,--I heard 'The Maister' tell Mrs. Cooper something about America."
(_Morley_) "America! do you think he intends to go there?"
(_Boy_) "I do no more know than you do, sir. F'rall I've b'en with 'The
Maister' so often, an' have seed a good many of his quips and quirks,
and helped in them too, I do no more know what he do main by what he do
say, than a cheeld unborn. He ha' got something upon his mind, that's a
sure thing."
The boy was beginning to throw off his reserve, as Morley thus
cautiously questioned him; but he saw that if he put his questions too
pointedly, the boy would "shut up" again; so he asked a few gossipping
questions about Mr. and Mrs. Brown, and Mrs. Trenow, which took the boy
off his guard, and he went on talking. It seemed at last as if it were a
relief to him to talk of "The Maister," as he called Mr. Freeman, in
common with most people of the neighbourhood,--and, in relieving his
pent-up mind, he told, perhaps, more than he intended; but he seemed to
feel that Mr. Morley was a gentleman who wouldn't betray him, and so he
threw off his reserve and trusted him.
"You've heard of Chapel Carn Brea, I s'pose, sir?" asked the boy.
"Yes; I've been there," replied Morley; "it is one of the curiosities of
the neighbourhood. No doubt it was a handsome building at one time; and
those mounds near it are tombs, no doubt."
"You're right, sir," said the boy; "I've heard 'The Maister' tell
stories in Mr. Brown's bar, about that place, that would make your hair
stand on end, ef you b'lieved it all. The men he told it to, b'lieved
every word; and they wud no more go anist Chapel Carn Brea in the night,
than they wud clunk boiling lead. I've b'en there by night an' by day;
for I wor curious to find out somethen'."
"You were not likely to find anything there," said Morley,
carelessly--which threw the boy completely off his guard; and, being in
a communicative mood, he went on,--
"I saw something there one night, that made me feel uncommon queer, sure
nuf; and I b'lieve that 'The Maister' ha' got some notion that I do knaw
somethen'; for he slocked me up there for to try to frighten me more
than once. It was somethen' that I'm sure he must have put there inside
one of the walls, that went off like a clap of thunder, and frightened
the mare, that night when I was throwed; and I'm sure 'twas his doing,
for, when I came to myself, I was upon a bed in 'The Maister's' house,
and nobody but his sister knaw'd a word about et. He gave me some stuff,
and I soon got about agen. He went out the next morning, and Miss
Freeman kept me there under lock and key; and when he came home in the
afternoon, he told all about the mare, and how poor Mr. Brown was
sitting down 'pon a rock by hisself, fretting about it, and he sent me
up to bring him home."
"So you never saw anything more than that at Chapel Carn Brea, after
all?" said Morley, by way of bringing the boy back to the secret he
seemed about to tell,--for he saw, by his manner, there was something
more, and he was anxious to know all he could about this man, although
his thoughts were, even then, dwelling, with intense anxiety, on the
probable sufferings, both in body and mind, of his Alrina.
"Iss I have," cried the boy, eagerly; "but I never told it to a single
soul, from that time to this. Now, mind, you must promise that you'll
never tell." And, without waiting for the promise, he went on eagerly
with his tale. "When 'The Maister' came here to live first," resumed the
boy, "I was but a little chap."
"So I should suppose," said Morley, smiling, "even if you were in
existence, which I very much doubt,--for that must be fourteen or
fifteen years ago, according to the account of Mrs. Brown and Josiah
Trenow, and others of the neighbourhood; so I fancy you are about to
tell me a tale in imitation of your master."
"No, no," replied the boy; "you don't know what I'm going to tell, and
p'rhaps you won't. I'm older than I do look, I can tell 'ee. I'm no
cheeld, f'rall I do look like one to a stranger, I dare say."
"Well, how old are you?" said Morley; "for I confess I have been puzzled
several times as to your age. In stature you are but a very little boy;
but when I look into your face, and hear your shrewd remarks, I fancy
you may be almost any age."
"Well, sir," replied the boy, looking pleased at the gentleman's having
noticed him so much as to be puzzled about his age; "I'm above twenty,
but how much I don't exactly know."
"Billy!" cried a rough voice from below,--"Billy! I say. Where the devil
is that rapscallion?"
"There!" said the boy; "Cap'n Cooper is come back, and the old woman is
gone out, I s'pose. There'll be the devil to pay if I don't go down."
And away he ran, leaving Morley in a most unpleasant state of suspense;
for he had calculated on gaining a great deal of information from the
boy, both with regard to Mr. Freeman, and, what he was still more
concerned about, the probable movements and present abode of Alrina.
It was evident, from what the boy said, that he was a prisoner. He
wouldn't have minded the old woman and the boy so much; for he thought
he might be able to work upon their feelings, by bribes and fair words,
sufficiently to induce them to connive at his escape; and he speculated
in his mind, even while the boy was talking with him, that he might be
able to prevail on him to leave Mr. Freeman and follow him as groom and
valet, when he might be of the utmost assistance in many ways. But now
it seemed as if all his aerial castles were dissolving into the element
of which they were composed; for here was a more formidable jailor, if
he might judge by the rough voice and the commanding tone of the fresh
arrival. This was the master of the house, he had no doubt, from the
name;--Cooper was the old woman's name, he knew. These thoughts drove
him almost mad, and he lay back on his pillow and gave himself up to
despair. "Alrina!" cried he, in his agony; "I feel that all things are
working against us; but oh! Alrina, forgive your Frederick,--it was not
my fault. Alrina! Alrina!" And, after raving like a madman for some
minutes, he fell back exhausted.
In the meantime, the boy, locking the door behind him, as he passed out
of the room in which Morley lay, hastened downstairs to meet the master
of the establishment.
"Hallo!" exclaimed that gentleman, as he stood with his back to the
fire; "where's all the people?"
"How should I know?" replied the boy, in the same unceremonious
manner,--for he feared no one but "The Maister," and could be as
impertinent as the greatest blackguard in the parish when he chose to
be, for which he frequently got punished by those who didn't know him
well, and these he generally took some opportunity of retaliating upon,
so that no one gained much by punishing little Bill.
It was evident that the captain was out of sorts, and was inclined to
vent his spleen upon anybody or anything that happened to come in his
way.
"Confound your impudence," said he, advancing towards the boy, with his
uplifted fist ready to make a blow at him, when he got near enough;
"I'll knock you into the middle of next week, you young rascal!" And he
struck at the young offender with such force, that the boy would have
been seriously injured, had he not nimbly jumped on one side. The
impetus of the blow not being checked by coming in contact with the
boy's head, sent the man forward, and he was caught in the arms of his
loving wife, who entered at that moment, and they both fell headlong on
the floor together, at which the boy laughed and ran out of the room.
Nothing makes a person feel so awkward and foolish as when he measures
his length on the floor by an accidental fall; and Captain Cooper and
his better half felt quite ashamed of themselves, as they scrambled up
from their ignominious position. Fortunately there were no spectators;
for the boy had escaped, and was keeping out of sight for the present,
but not out of hearing. A little corner sufficed for a hiding-place for
him, and thus he frequently picked up a good many odd secrets, which he
repeated to "The Maister" when he was assisting him in any of his
necromancy, and obtained credit even from "The Maister" for shrewdness
beyond his years.
"Where's Freeman?" asked the man, opening a cupboard and taking out a
bottle of brandy and a glass to solace him after his fall.
"Gone," replied the woman, shaking herself to rights again; "he started
last night, and took Alrina with him."
"The devil he did!" exclaimed the man, drinking off a full glass of the
exhilarating liquor; "that's a queer game, when he promised to----"
"Don't you know that his promises can't always be kept?" said the
woman. "Circumstances alter cases. There's been a circumstance here."
"A what!" cried the man, in an angry tone; "why, you're getting so bad
as the boy, Jenny Cooper."
"Hush, Cap'n! I've got something to tell 'ee," replied his wife; and
seating herself on a low chair, opposite the fire, and blowing it up
lustily with the bellows at the same time, she related to her husband
the accident, and told him the young gentleman was still in bed
upstairs.
"Whew!" whistled the captain;--"then his game is up for a spur, and
t'other is out of the way and off the scent,--so no herring-pool, after
all; but where is the old man gone to?"
"I don't know," replied his wife; "but I shouldn't wonder if he's gone
down to the old place again, now the coast is clear. He'll be noted
again in St. Just, now that the breeze is blown over, and the scent is
in another quarter, as you do say it is."
"Right you are," rejoined the captain, looking more pleased than he had
looked yet since his return. "And now I'll tell you our bit of spree."
And he related to his wife the expedition to Ashley Hall, and how his
companion had left the girl with the lady, thinking to frighten her into
submission to their terms, and that, when she went back again the next
day, to see how the land lay, she found the little door in the lane
locked and barred on the inside, and when she applied for admission, at
the front entrance, she was told that Mrs. Courland could not see her.
"So she's in a fix," continued the man; "but she stayed behind, and
she'll blow the gaff, if they don't come to, soon. I should have stopped
too, but I thought my old friend might want to be off at once, and so I
came back to get all things right and straight for the trip."
"And you'd better get things right and straight now," said his wife;
"for he may be going off all the same, for what I do know."