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Title: Joshua Haggard's daughter, Vol. 2 (of 3)
Author: M. E. Braddon
Release date: April 25, 2026 [eBook #78549]
Language: English
Original publication: London: John Maxwell and Co, 1876
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78549
Credits: Peter Becker, Dori Allard, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOSHUA HAGGARD'S DAUGHTER, VOL. 2 (OF 3) ***
Transcriber’s Note: Italicized text is surrounded by underscores:
_italics_.
JOSHUA HAGGARD’S DAUGHTER
LONDON:
ROBSON AND SONS, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.
JOSHUA HAGGARD’S DAUGHTER
A Novel
BY THE AUTHOR OF
‘LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET’
ETC. ETC. ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. II.
[Illustration: (Colophon)]
LONDON
JOHN MAXWELL AND CO.
4 SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET
1876
[_All rights reserved_]
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
CHAP. PAGE
I. ‘O, LET MY JOYS HAVE SOME ABIDING!’ 1
II. ‘WE ARE IN LOVE’S LAND TO-DAY’ 38
III. ‘SHE IS FAST MY WIFE’ 76
IV. ‘I LEAN UPON THEE, DEAR, WITHOUT ALARM’ 101
V. ‘TROP BELLE POUR MOI, VOILÀ MON TRÉPAS’ 117
VI. A FAMILY PICTURE 132
VII. CYNTHIA TRIES TO BE USEFUL 154
VIII. ‘E’EN AT TURNING O’ THE TIDE’ 166
IX. THE SORROWS OF WERTHER 195
X. ‘TWO SOULS MAY SLEEP AND WAKE UP ONE’ 226
XI. ‘AND ALL IS DROSS THAT IS NOT HELENA’ 244
XII. ‘IT WAS THY LOVE PROVED FALSE AND FRAIL’ 260
XIII. ‘THE DEEP OF NIGHT IS CREPT UPON OUR TALK’ 283
XIV. ‘A STORM WAS COMING, BUT THE WINDS WERE STILL’ 297
JOSHUA HAGGARD’S DAUGHTER
CHAPTER I.
‘O, LET MY JOYS HAVE SOME ABIDING!’
Placid and happy, after its quiet fashion, was the Sabbath which
followed. The scene of Joshua Haggard’s life was so rarely shifted,
that he may be pardoned by the hearth goddess for feeling a certain
satisfaction in finding himself away from home. The novelty of Sunday
at Penmoyle was pleasing. It was a relief not to receive exactly the
same greetings he had received last Sunday; not to hear precisely the
same speeches, accompanied by the same tones and looks and becks and
nods, and even the same oratorical flourishes of a stout green-cotton
umbrella or a neatly-polished oak sapling; and a relief perhaps
to the eye not to see those particular coal-scuttle bonnets or
bottle-green spencers which adorned his own Bethel. The differences
between Combhaven and Penmoyle were only differences of detail; but
he felt that he was in a strange land, farther west, among people
still more simple than his own flock, and people who loved him no
less.
His sermon was a success. Sixpences and shillings rattled into the
metal platters which the smug-faced deacons, in their glossy Sunday
coats, held at the doors of the chapel. The temple was crowded to its
utmost capacity, and handkerchiefs were used freely for fanning ruddy
faces or for mopping perspiring foreheads, while peppermint lozenges
and smelling-salts were interchanged among friends.
In a corner of the Miss Weblings’ narrow deal pew sat Cynthia, in a
straw gipsy-hat, her head thrown back a little as she looked up at
the preacher. He saw those spiritual blue eyes gazing upward--saw
and was moved by that unknown passion of joy or pain which had
thrilled him last night. He tried to forget that intent face--tried
to thrust every earthly influence out of his thoughts as he pleaded
for his Creator’s glory, for due honour to be paid to the Lord of
heaven and earth, as he urged with warmth the duty of sacrifice and
unselfishness upon that open-mouthed bucolic flock--the duty of
surrendering something of earth’s enjoyments, some portion of their
temporal blessings, to render homage to Him who gives them all.
‘If we had a friend who was always showering gifts upon us,’ he urged
in his familiar way, ‘should we begrudge him some small offering now
and then in return? Should we take all and give nothing? Should we
not be miserly and mean if we did? Should we not secretly despise our
own meanness, even if we contrived to hide it from the eyes of men?
And we have a Benefactor who is always giving. Our sleeping and our
waking, our uprising and our downsitting, our health, our strength,
our household joys, our homes, our fields, our gardens,--all are
gifts from Him. Shall we offer nothing for all these things, not even
a house in which to worship the universal Giver of good? My brethren,
the pagans, whose gods were foolishness, made their temples so
beautiful, that the beauty of the tabernacle has preserved the memory
of the god. Yes, for two thousand years these childish fables have
lived in the memory of men, because those who believed them spared
neither gold nor silver to testify to their belief. The gods of the
Greeks were as real to the Greeks as your God is to you, and the
splendour of their temples has remained to posterity as a testimony
to the reality of their faith. These were foolish heathens, the
children of darkness. Shall we, the children of light, leave nothing
behind us upon earth to show our descendants that we too were in
earnest--that the God of Truth has had as faithful followers as the
god of lies?’
Verse by verse he read them--commenting as he went along--the
description of Solomon’s temple, his picturesque mind revelling
in the gorgeousness of the record. He was asking for funds for a
chapel, which might be built for three or four hundred pounds; and
as he enlarged in glowing language on the glories of that Jewish
shrine--the carven cherubim and palm-trees and flowers overlaid with
gold, the door-posts of olive-tree and the doors of fir, the floor
overlaid with gold within and without, the pillars of brass and the
chapiters of molten brass, the nets of checker-work and wreaths
of chain-work, the lily-work and pomegranates, and that mighty sea
of molten brass standing upon twelve sculptured oxen--his hearers
thought within themselves that it behoved Penmoyle to do something;
not to be behind the Jews of old, people with hook-noses, and perhaps
old-clothes bags and a plurality of hats, whom folks looked down
upon nowadays. And Solomon, who at his best was only a Jew, had been
able to build this sublime temple, nay, if tradition were to be
credited, sent as far as Penzance for tin and copper ore wherewith
to accomplish this great work. This moved them much more than any
idea about the Greeks, whom they depictured to themselves vaguely and
variously, according to their several imaginations.
To Cynthia this sermon, which might have seemed trite and commonplace
to that mordant modern intellect which, like the Athenian mind,
spends itself wholly in going after every new orator, from Monsignor
Capel to Moody and Sankey,--to Cynthia this sermon was full of
colour and meaning. Of romance she knew nothing; poetry was a dark
language to her, save the mute poetry of stars or flowers, earth’s
loveliness or heaven’s sublimity. She had never heard fine music
or seen a stage-play, except the rude representations of showmen at
a fair; eloquence, pictures painted in words, were new to her, and
she listened spellbound. She could have given you no definition of
greatness, yet in her mind she was assured that Joshua was a great
man. She thought of St. Paul holding a vast and adverse throng by the
magic of his discourse, and it seemed to her no blasphemy to compare
Joshua with that saint and apostle. Her youth, her ardour, had
nothing on which to fasten except this ideal of a good and perfect
man. She was grateful to her mistresses for their small kindnesses
and indulgences; but she vaguely felt the element of ridiculousness
in the little fidgety ways and petty particularities of these elderly
damsels, and the flowers of her fancy did not entwine themselves
around the images of Miss Deborah and Miss Priscilla. The garden of
her young mind was a fertile soil, however, and the flowers that
sprung there must have something about which to cling and blossom, so
they wreathed their ductile tendrils round that sturdy oak Joshua.
The afternoon was occupied by a second service, in which the mild
exhortations of Mr. Martin had a somewhat sleepy sound to those who
had dined heavily. Spirits weighed down by roast meat and potatoes,
and a regretful conviction that the Sunday joint had been a thought
too greasy, joined languidly in prayers and hymns; and there was a
sense of relief when the lengthy service came to a close, and the
congregation poured out of the oven-like chapel into the sweet fresh
air.
Several friends dropped in upon the Miss Weblings after service: some
who had known Joshua of old, others who were eager to be presented
to him. Mrs. Gibbs, the butcher’s wife, in her green watered silk,
and with a gold watch--one of the few gold watches known to be
extant in Penmoyle--reposing on her portly side, almost the grandest
lady in the village. Miss Toothy, from the general shop, who was
somewhat eccentric in her attire, but reported wealthy. Mr. and Mrs.
Pamble, tenant-farmers of some importance, occupying a square stone
house on the outskirts of Penmoyle--large people both, and given to
pomposity, as conscious that they had never been a day behind with
the half-year’s rent, and could afford to trust in Providence when
times were bad, having laid by a small fortune before the Peace.
These filled Miss Webling’s parlour to overflowing, and taxed the
resources of the household in the way of teapots. If Cynthia had
been less handy, things could not have gone off so genteelly; and
the sisters might have been lowered in the esteem of Mrs. Pamble,
who really condescended somewhat in visiting them, by sloppy tea;
but Cynthia contrived to have a fresh brew in the every-day crockery
teapot ready to replenish that silver vessel which adorned the tray.
She brought in the rock-cakes hot, and nestling in a clean napkin,
and she was never behindhand with bread-and-butter of the genteelest
thinness.
‘That’s a handy girl of yours, Miss Webling,’ said Mrs. Pamble
approvingly, when the chapel and the day’s sermons and the
possibilities of the building-fund had been amply discussed.
‘And an uncommon good-looking one too,’ added the farmer, in his
beefy voice. ‘You won’t have her long, miss, I fancy; some of the
young chaps will be wanting her to get married. These here pretty
ones go off the hooks so soon.’
The spinsters bridled, taking this as in somewise a personal affront.
They had been accounted personable in their time, they could have
informed Mr. Pamble, though they had not gone off the hooks.
‘If she’s as sensible as I give her credit for being, she’ll be in no
hurry to get married,’ replied Deborah, bridling. ‘Single life is not
without its advantages.’
Miss Webling knew that Mrs. Pamble was one of those disagreeable
women who are as proud of having secured a husband and added largely
to the population as if those achievements were novel and remarkable
facts in the history of womankind.
‘Ah, but they’re all glad to get a husband; even the sensiblest of
them,’ chuckled the farmer. ‘They’re all ready to say snip to the
first as says snap. It’s a feminine failing.’
At which vulgar speech Mrs. Pamble and Mrs. Gibbs laughed until
their silk gowns, or the rigorous corsets under the gowns, creaked
ominously.
Miss Toothy looked daggers. She had never said snip to any one’s
snap, and she felt that the conversation was becoming odiously
personal.
‘Of course I’m not eluding to ladies like you,’ said the farmer,
perchance perceiving that he was on dangerous ground, and accenting
his speech by a slap on Priscilla’s spare shoulder. ‘You’ve had
your offers and throwed over your sweethearts--you and Miss Deborah
and Miss Toothy yonder; but servant-gals and suchlike ain’t so
partickler. A husband’s a husband to their mind, so long as he’s got
a hat, and ain’t blind or deaf. They wouldn’t object to his being
dumb, I daresay, for the sake of havin’ all the talkin’.’
This being an old-established joke, everybody except Joshua laughed
heartily.
‘She’s got very uncommon-coloured hair, that gal of yours, Miss
Webling,’ said Mrs. Pamble. ‘I don’t know as I call it pretty for
a young woman, though it’s very winning in a baby. My Jimmy has
hair just that colour; and when he’s naughty it goes more against
me to slap him than it does the dark-haired ones--he’s got such
an innercent look with him. But I think flaxen hair’s rather too
simple-like for a young woman; it gives her a foolish look.’
‘What matter looks if she is not foolish?’ said Joshua almost
sternly. ‘If you can bring up your daughters to be as sensible and as
pious as that servant-girl, you will be a happy woman, Mrs. Pamble;
and if God makes them as lovely, pray to Him to give them hearts as
pure and minds as innocent as hers.’
From any one else such freedom of speech would have offended the
farmer’s wife; but she had come to see Joshua as a great preacher,
and one must expect hard sayings from prophets and privileged persons
of that kind. She only sniffed dubiously, and looked at her watch,
which, a homely silver one, compared disadvantageously with that
shining golden timekeeper pendent from Mrs. Gibbs’s waistband.
‘I’m afraid we must be going,’ said Mrs. Pamble, as if loth to
pronounce a sentence which must naturally afflict the company.
‘There’s the dairy never gets properly looked after unless I’m
standing behind that girl of mine.’
‘Ah,’ grunted Mr. Pamble, ‘you women can do nothing without a lot o’
cackle. Missusses and maids is pretty much alike. There’s so much
scolding goes on in the dairy I wonder it don’t turn the milk; no
need for rennet, I should think, where there’s women’s tongues.’
‘It isn’t the women that sit arguing about nothing for three hours
at a stretch in a public-house,’ observed Mrs. Pamble, as she drew
her white Paisley shawl across her robust shoulders, and skewered it
on her breast with a large mosaic brooch representing St. Peter’s
at Rome; and after this home-thrust, she rose to depart, the farmer
meekly following.
These magnates of the land being gone, after leave-takings at once
friendly and ceremonious, Miss Toothy discovered that she was wanted
at home, having promised her girl an evening out; and Mrs. Gibbs
pronounced herself pledged to her domestic in the like manner. So
there was a clearance of the smart little parlour, and the Miss
Weblings folded their hands and leaned back in their chairs, feeling
as exhausted after this unwonted assembly as a lady of fashion when
her reception of three or four hundred of the upper ten thousand is
over, and life’s green curtain falls on the social comedy.
‘I hope I was polite to them all, Priscilla,’ said Deborah somewhat
anxiously; ‘but I felt a little confused in my head by their all
dropping in together. I’m afraid Miss Toothy might feel herself
passed over. She’s rather hard to draw out; and the Pambles are so
lively.’
‘Miss Toothy hasn’t seen much company,’ replied Priscilla excusingly.
‘You can’t expect her to be very conversable. But she’s a great
reader, and knows more about politics and the Royal Family than
anybody in Penmoyle. She has friends in London that send her a
newspaper every week; and she’s got some nice books too, Mr. Haggard;
she lent me the _Romance of the Forest_ last winter, and I read it
aloud to Debbie in the long evenings. I don’t see any harm in a good
novel once in a way, if you take your time over it, and don’t loll by
the fireside half the day, poking your nose into a book and letting
your house go to rack and ruin.’
‘I have forbidden my daughter to read novels,’ replied Joshua,
finding himself thus directly appealed to, ‘lest the unrealities
she would find in them should give her a false picture of life, and
encourage her to form baseless hopes or foolish desires. But when she
is married and the mother of a family she may seek amusement for an
evening hour in some innocent fiction, and be none the worse for it.
And, of course, at your discreet age, Miss Priscilla, an appeal to
the imagination can do no harm.’
‘There never was a more particular man than my father,’ said Deborah.
‘He couldn’t abide the sight of a book, when once his children had
learned to read, except the Bible on Sundays and Dr. Watts’s Hymns.
He said books about a place were just an encouragement to idleness,
and that as long as women had the use of their hands they ought never
to waste time in reading. Yet, you see, Priscilla and I wouldn’t be
as independent as we are if Providence hadn’t given us a taste for
learning.’
Joshua bowed assent. He had been somewhat wearied by the
tea-drinking, the fulsome compliments which Mrs. Gibbs and Mrs.
Pamble had paid him, the stuffy parlour smelling of toast and
bread-and-butter. He was yearning for a breath of fresh air.
‘I think I’ll take a turn in that neat little garden of yours,’
he said, as if asking permission of the sisters, who both had a
drowsy look, and regarded him blinkingly, like owls in a zoological
collection.
‘Do, dear Mr. Haggard; and try and get an appetite for your supper.
You made a very poor dinner.’
It was a minor duty of hospitality with the Miss Weblings to pretend
to think that their guests had fared badly, just as it was the major
duty to press the viands upon a visitor’s consideration until he was
so obliging as to over-eat himself.
There was no way of reaching the garden save through the kitchen, so
to the kitchen Joshua went. The door at the end of the narrow little
passage stood open, and the westward-fronting casement was shining
like a jewel at the end of the vista. The kitchen was newly swept
and garnished; no sign of unwashed tea-things or broken victuals;
the polished grate winking and twinkling in the red light from a
neat little fire; the red-brick floor spotless as if it were a
floor in a picture; every pot and pan arranged with the grace that
belongs to perfect order; a dark-brown jug of roses and seringa on
the window-sill; but the figure Joshua had expected to see by the
casement was not there. Cynthia had gone for a walk, he thought;
had gone to meet and mingle with those other handmaidens whose
privilege it was to enjoy a Sabbath-evening ramble; perhaps to keep
company--odious phrase--with some rural swain. The idea was repulsive
to him. It seemed to him that there was pollution in such contact.
He went through the tiny scullery and out into the garden, which
he had surveyed from the window that midsummer evening just a year
ago when he bade Cynthia good-bye. There was not much to admire in
the garden, perhaps, save for those eyes which are in the habit
of looking at all rustic things as pictures, and which can see a
study in brown in an old well and an empty bucket, or a nocturne in
purple and gold in a cottage thatch steeped in moonlight. To Joshua,
whose only experience of landscape-painting had been derived from
tea-trays, that sloping bit of garden seemed commonplace enough;
even for politeness’ sake he would not have gone so far as to say
that he thought it pretty, and yet it charmed him somehow; there
was a beauty in this vulgar rusticity which he felt, although he
could not recognise or understand it. The picture of grassplot
and flower-bed and crooked old apple-trees spreading their gray
branches against the yellow sky; the sweet-pea hedge, the stocks,
the sweet-williams, the blush-roses, the thymy potherbs; the little
thatched shed for the pig yonder in an angle of the hawthorn hedge;
the steep bank where the strawberries grew,--the homely charm of
this picture crept into his heart unawares. He walked slowly across
the little grassplot, where a self-sufficing bantam was pecking at
imaginary worms in dignified solitude; he ascended the narrow path,
which had been cut into steps where the slope was steepest; and on
the higher ground by the hedge discovered Cynthia standing by the
pigsty, and actually exchanging endearments with the pig, whose
black head lolled across the edge of his sty, and who expressed the
gratification he derived from having his ears pulled in a series of
confidential grunts.
‘I thought you had gone for a walk, Cynthia,’ said Mr. Haggard.
‘No, sir. I go across the fields sometimes, and as far as the
copse’--pointing to a dark waving line against the sunset--‘and
gather a bunch of wild flowers, when the ladies give me leave.’
‘You go with your friends, I suppose; some of the young women in
service here?’
‘No, sir. I have no friends except my mistresses.’
‘And no sweetheart, Cynthia?’
‘No,’ she answered, with a curious little smile.
What a relief it was to find that her girlish fancy had not idealised
some boor!
‘Ah, the time will come when you will begin to think of a sweetheart,
I daresay; but I’m glad it hasn’t come yet. I am going for a stroll
across the fields, as far as that wood, perhaps. Will you come with
me, and show me where your wild flowers grow?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And are you quite happy here, Cynthia?’ asked Joshua, when they
had walked a little way. There were sheep in the meadow, and the
sheep-bell was ringing with a pleasant sound in the twilight.
‘Yes, sir; quite happy; most of all when you come here.’
‘That is not often, Cynthia,’ he answered, his dark eyes softening
to tenderness as they looked at her. Why did she say these things in
her thoughtless innocence, and why should words so simple, a mere
childish expression of grateful affection, set his heart beating?
‘No,’ answered Cynthia; ‘it isn’t often you come, sir. But it is
something to think of, and something to remember.’
‘I cannot tell you what pleasure your progress has given me,’ said
Joshua gravely, but with a tenderness in his voice that was quite
involuntary. ‘I have thought of you often in the year that has gone,
and have supplicated for you in my prayers every day of my life. But
I never hoped to reap so rich a harvest. I never thought God would
reward me so bounteously--to find your intelligence so bright, your
heart so pious, your conduct so exemplary. It is very sweet to me;
sweeter than words can say.’
There was a mist before his eyes as he looked away to the broken line
of wood yonder, not trusting himself to look at his protégée.
‘Could I do less than strive to learn what you wished me to learn,
sir?’ asked Cynthia. ‘Can I ever forget what you have done for me? I
was a heathen, as bad as those poor creatures the missionary told us
about last winter. I was left outside in the darkness. I must have
gone to the habitation of the lost but for you. I pray for you night
and day; but my prayers are so little, they can never repay you. I
wish I could be your servant, that I might work my fingers to the
bone to prove my gratitude. I pray for you, I think of you, I dream
of you sometimes; and I see your face all shining, with a glory upon
it, like Stephen’s when the wicked Jews stoned him.’
‘Foolish dreams, my dear. I am neither saint nor hero; only a common
man, with all our common infirmities; prone to sin when tempted,
and chiefly blest in having led a life exempt from temptation to
do wrong. Providence has been very good to me, Cynthia; my lines
have been cast in pleasant places. I have never known hardships or
ill-usage as you have, poor fragile child. No dark shadow has ever
fallen across my path.’
‘It would be hard if you had sorrows to bear, sir; you who are
so good,’ said Cynthia. ‘Miss Priscilla has told me about you:
how you used to preach to the rough miners--men almost as wild as
savages--and how their hearts were melted; how you used to walk many
miles and suffer hardships, for the sake of doing good and teaching
God’s word, though you had a comfortable home, where you might have
stayed if you had chosen. She told me that you offended your father
by field-preaching, and that you were likely to have lost all the
money he had to leave you, yet you never gave way. Was not that being
a hero?’
‘No, my dear; it was only being steadfast. The man who is without
steadfastness will neither do good to others nor to himself. I saw
that there were waste lands to be made ready for harvest, and I put
my hand to the plough. God gave me health and strength, and love of
the work. It would have gone much harder with me to stay at home
behind my father’s counter than to bear the worst hardships that
ever befell me in my wanderings.’
‘Yes, I can understand that,’ said the girl, looking up at him full
of enthusiasm; ‘that is because you are good and great. It was
sweeter to you to help others than to be happy yourself. Every soul
snatched from darkness and death was a rich harvest. Some of those
you have saved are in heaven now. How sweet it must be for you to
think that they are pleading for you at the throne of God!’
‘My dear child, you let your affection carry you too far. I have but
done a humble share of a great work; I only tread in the footsteps of
greater men who have gone before. I am but one of many.’
‘The Bible does not say that,’ replied Cynthia. ‘“The harvest truly
is plenteous, but the labourers are few.”’
‘That was in the beginning, Cynthia, when God’s light was but dawning
on the darkness of this world. The prayer has been heard, and the
labourers now are many. Let us pray that they may labour aright. You
have a lively and ardent mind, my dear; God grant it may never be
led astray. For a nature so fervent, so ready to admire and believe,
an evil world is full of snares and springes; but so long as you are
content to remain at Penmoyle with our kind friends, I feel assured
you will be safe and happy. The life is somewhat monotonous, I
daresay, but I hope you will not grow weary of it.’
‘I shall have your coming to look forward to,’ said Cynthia.
‘And perhaps in time, if you advance steadily with your education,
the Miss Weblings will let you teach in the school; and by and by, as
they get into years, they may give you the entire management of their
pupils; and you will be doing a holy and useful work, and occupying
an important place in your little world. So you see, Cynthia, you
have something better than domestic service to look forward to, if
you go on improving yourself.’
‘I shall try to do that, to please you,’ replied Cynthia. ‘I never
forget anything you say to me. I think I could tell you every word
you have said, from the time you first spoke to me on the common.’
Joshua was silent. There are some emotions whose ineffable sweetness
is akin to pain--there are thrilling moments in which the soul burns
with a rapture that is almost agony. How was he to construe these
innocent expressions of regard, these little gushes of grateful
feeling? Could they, did they, mean something warmer than regard,
something deeper than gratitude?
They had crossed a couple of meadows and come to the edge of the
copse by this time. It was only a narrow strip of wood, pine-trees
for the most part, dividing one farm from another--a ragged edge
of wilderness upon the skirts of cultivation and fertility; but to
Joshua, that Sabbath evening, it was solemn as that darksome dell
Dante walked in--a forest full of mystery and awe. He could scarcely
see his companion’s face under the pine-trees. It was shadowy as the
face of a spirit.
‘It is too late to find any flowers,’ said Cynthia; ‘but this was a
lovely place in the spring. There were violets and wild crocuses, and
bluebells and wind flowers. There are rabbits too; look--do you see
them flashing past that dark-red trunk yonder?’
Joshua was too preoccupied in spirit to look at rabbits. He walked
with his head bent, his hands clasping his stout oak stick, his lips
tightly drawn, as if he were trying to solve some problem. One might
suppose that he had forgotten the existence of his companion.
He was putting curious questions to himself: ‘If I were so
foolish--if I, who have thought myself so strong, should be weak
enough to lay down my life at this girl’s feet, to set all my hopes
on her, to give her the remnant of my days--would there be any going
backward in such an act? Is it sinful to love her for her youth and
her beauty, her sweet tones and looks and fond winning ways? Is the
attraction that draws me to her despite myself sensual or devilish,
a snare of Satan set to catch me in my pride, or is the charm as
innocent as it seems to me to-night? God enlighten me and give me
grace to be wise; for, whether it be for good or ill, I love her.’
Silver arrows of pale summer moonlight pierced the feathery
pine-branches, evening’s breath crept through the wood with a
plaintive sound that was half whisper, half sigh. It was time that
Joshua and his companion should go back to the white cottage yonder
on the lower ground across the meadows.
‘It is getting late, sir,’ said Cynthia; ‘the ladies will be wanting
me.’
‘Yes, Cynthia; but I have a question to ask before we go. Soon after
daybreak to-morrow I shall be on my way home--for I mean to walk the
best part of the way--and then, unless you wish, I shall not see you
for a year--perhaps never again; for who can tell how your mind may
change in a year?’
‘It can never change so as to forget your goodness, sir.’
‘Child, you make too much of my goodness. What I did for you I would
have done for the lowest, the ugliest, a leper standing outside the
gate and crying, Unclean, unclean! I would have gathered a weed by
the wayside, my dear, and cared for it as truly as I cared for the
flower. But God chose that I should gather the fairest flower that
ever grew in His earthly garden, and keep and cherish it to adorn
His heavenly paradise. And this sweet flower, unawares, has grown
very dear to me. Cynthia, in your childlike gratitude you have said
many words of which perchance you have not weighed the meaning. You
have spoken lightly out of the innocence of your mind, but your words
have gone deep into my heart. You have talked of being my servant,
of working for me all the days of my life. Look up at me, love, with
those sweet eyes; look at me, my cherished one, my darling, with the
straight look that goes from soul to soul, and tell me if you could
love me well enough to be my wife--love me well enough to live with
me, and be a part of my life, the blessedest, brightest, fairest part
of life, all that this earth holds for me of human happiness. I have
given my daughter to her lover; henceforth I hold the second place in
her heart. O Lord, let me have something that shall be all my own! I
have tasted but little of temporal joys; I have given my hopes and
desires for others. Before age creeps on, before my day is done, let
me have something on which to pour forth my treasure of earthly love;
let me be blessed like Abraham and Thy chosen ones of old, in the
sacred joys of home. Child, child, it is the cry of a strong man’s
heart that goes forth to thee. Answer, and answer faithfully. Do you
love me well enough to be my wife?’
He held her in his arms, held her to his heart, looking down into her
eyes. They had both grown accustomed to the half light of the wood
by this time, and saw each other’s faces very clearly; hers looking
upward, pale, earnest, full of sweetness and a rapturous content, as
of one in sight of her earthly heaven; his blanched with suppressed
feeling, the mouth firmly set, the eyes grave and sombre.
‘Answer, love, answer; and as God sees us here in this wood, under
this evening sky, answer truly.’
‘I love you well enough to be your servant all the days of my life,’
she said in a low voice--‘and to be made happy by one kind look from
your eyes now and then when you stooped to remember me. I could never
be your equal--could never feel myself good enough to sit by your
side, to be called by your name; but I love you with all my heart and
strength and mind, as I have been taught to love God.’
She slipped from his breast to his feet before he was aware, and
knelt there with clasped hands, looking up at him--a lovely image of
devotion.
‘Not at my feet, but next my heart, dearest,’ he cried, raising her
from that humble posture. ‘You have made me happy beyond the limit
of man’s earthly blessedness. If I could have known, when the path
seemed most difficult, that behind the curtain of long years God held
this joy in store for me, it would have been like a star shining on
me, and beckoning me on. How light all present labours, all present
perplexities would have seemed, measured against this reward!’
The moon shone full on the face lying on his breast. Purity,
innocence, truth, a childlike love, were written there--love so
blended with reverence that it had something devotional in its
character. Why should the young heart ever change or fall away from
affection so pure in its beginning, so holy in its growth? Why,
indeed, save for the reason spoken of by the Prophet: ‘The heart is
deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?’
A moment never to be forgotten--a solemn crisis in life’s history to
be remembered with awe in all the years to come--a moment in which
earth and earthly things seem to fall away, and spirit speaks to
spirit.
They went back through the dewy fields together, Cynthia’s hand in
Joshua’s--the hand which was his own henceforward--a symbol of their
life-long union. The sheep were running about the field, and the
bell ringing. The church-clock struck nine with a sonorous knell,
like the bell of Time counting the measure of man’s years. A little
while, a little while, and the end shall come. While your heart beats
so passionately, while your hopes build so boldly, while your fancy
makes palaces and earthly paradises to dwell in, time is passing, and
the end is at hand. Life is but a journey, and the home where you are
happiest is only an inn, from which you must be gone to-morrow.
* * * * *
‘Dear heart alive!’ cried Deborah, waking from her gentle nap to find
herself in darkness; ‘what’s become of Cynthia, and why hasn’t she
brought candles and the supper-tray? We must have been asleep ever so
long.’
‘The heat quite overcame me,’ said Priscilla, ‘and Mr. Pamble is so
noisy; his coarse jokes and loud vulgar laugh gave me the headache.
I’m afraid Mr. Haggard must have been shocked with him.’
‘I could see it in his face,’ replied Deborah.
Cynthia came in with a pair of mould candles in shining brass
candlesticks and snuffer-tray to match. Joshua followed, grave of
countenance, and paler than usual.
‘How tired you look, dear Mr. Haggard!’ cried Priscilla. ‘I’m afraid
the sermon this morning and those noisy Pambles have wearied you. You
must have a glass of cowslip wine this minute; it’s very reviving.’
Joshua consented, absently, to be revived, and sipped the home-made
nectar with a dreamy look, while the sisters watched him curiously.
He looked like one whose spirit has detached itself temporarily from
the flesh. The body was there, but the eyes saw not, the lips spoke
not; it was a mere automatic body.
‘I’m afraid he’s ill,’ whispered Priscilla to Deborah, ‘and not a
drop of brandy in the house.’
Joshua looked up presently, and saw two pairs of affrighted eyes
gazing at him as at a spectre.
‘I am ready to read and pray with you, dear friends, at the close of
this peaceful day,’ he said.
‘It has been a day that will be remembered in Penmoyle for many a
year to come,’ exclaimed the ardent Priscilla.
In the placid monotony of her life the advent of such a man as
Joshua made an event of mark. She was not likely to forget his rare
appearances in that remote village. She had indeed cherished his
image for these fifteen years past--ever since his widowhood made it
a lawful thing to worship him with a more individual regard than that
reverent affection which the flock gives its shepherd.
Joshua opened his pocket Bible, and read the second chapter of
Ruth; Cynthia seated meekly in her accustomed place by the door. In
his commentary on the text he spoke of that instinct of the heart
which has been called love at first sight, but which is rather an
inspiration, a divine prompting of the spirit, which leads man to his
fittest helpmate. He touched tenderly on the favour which the gentle
Moabitess found in the sight of the stranger; how his heart went
forth to her at the very first, even before his servants had told him
her pathetic story. He dwelt on the blessedness of such an union, and
how God had crowned this marriage with richest honour, His chosen
servant David being descended from this stem.
Priscilla wept copiously, her sentimental soul moved deeply by
Joshua’s discourse; and after he had said his evening prayer, she
approached him with a little gush of rapture, and exclaimed:
‘Dear Mr. Haggard, it has been my privilege often to hear you
eloquent, but your words were never so melting as they have been
to-night. The hardest heart must have shed tears,’ added Miss
Priscilla, too enthusiastic to care for anatomical truth.
Joshua blushed; yes, through the dark clear skin there glowed an
actual blush, as he looked at the Miss Weblings almost sheepishly.
‘I thought that tender story would win your sympathy,’ he said; ‘and
I am glad, for I want you to look with increasing favour upon my
Ruth.’
He put his arm round Cynthia and drew her to his side. The
fair-haired child nestled there, looking up at her mistresses half
shyly, half proudly.
‘What!’ cried Priscilla, with a shrill scream; ‘you don’t mean--’
‘I am like Boaz,’ he said; ‘I have no need to tarry any longer in
doubtfulness of my own heart. This damsel has found grace in mine
eyes, albeit she is a stranger. Heaven gave her to me that summer
day, on Springfield Common. Heaven has given me new thoughts and new
hopes since I have known her. I am more blessed in having found her
than if all the riches of all the mines in Cornwall had been poured
into my lap. May God give me grace to love and cherish her, and to
make the life she has trusted to me happy!’
‘You are going to marry that child!’ cried Priscilla, plucking at the
velvet circlet on her brow in the wild agitation of the moment. ‘You,
a sober serious man of forty and upwards, a chit younger than your
daughter!’
‘If I am not too old to find a place in her heart, I care not how
young she is. It will be all the sweeter duty to protect and cherish
her.’
Priscilla cast away her velvet head-band, reckless of the little
mourning brooch, with her father’s silver hairs behind a tiny square
of crystal, which confined it on her intellectual brow. She looked
wildly round the best parlour, gave a stifled shriek, a gurgle or
two, flung herself on the chintz-covered sofa, grasping the hard
bolster convulsively in her agony, and went into vehement hysterics.
She lay there gurgling and choking, with occasional bursts of shrill
laughter, for the next ten minutes, while cold water was sprinkled
over her head and face, to the detriment of her Sunday toilet and the
sofa-cover.
‘You shouldn’t have told her quite so suddenly,’ said Deborah,
somewhat ashamed of this emotional display. ‘She has such a mind.
The shock has been too much for her. She hasn’t had such a fit of
hysterics since father died.’
Priscilla recovered sufficiently to be led up the corkscrew
staircase, and before departing cast a piteous look at the minister.
‘I should be the last to fling a shadow on your happiness,’ she
said, ‘but I thought you’d never marry again. I thought your mind
was lifted above it; or that if you did, it would be some one of a
suitable age, and with a mind fit to mate with yours. But the human
heart is a mystery.’
And with a strangled sob Priscilla drooped her disordered head upon
her sister’s shoulder, and suffered herself to be assisted up the
corkscrew staircase, an operation which occasioned some bumping of
heads and rapping of elbows at awkward turns in the stair.
This was the beginning of evils that came out of Joshua Haggard’s
second marriage; an event in the life of man to which his kindred
in particular and his friends in general are especially apt to take
objection; and yet the responsibility of the act is all his, and the
good or ill thereof is a cup which his lips alone can drink. Whether
he chains himself to a fury who shall make his days and nights
miserable, or wins to his side an angel who shall shed upon his
pathway the sunshine of domestic bliss, and make his progress to the
grave pleasant as a noontide ramble through a rose-garden, it is he
who shall pay the penalty of a foolish choice or reap the reward of a
wise one.
CHAPTER II.
‘WE ARE IN LOVE’S LAND TO-DAY.’
A sleepless night shed the sober light of reason upon those clouds
of sentiment which had obscured Miss Priscilla Webling’s mind. ‘When
all is done,’ said Reason, ‘you know but too well that you had no
hope of having Joshua for a husband, suitable as might have been such
an union, blessed as you might have made his days by your cherishing
and ministration. You know yourself a creature especially adapted to
be a Methodist minister’s wife; but his eyes have been blinded to
that fact: he could not pierce the modest veil in which maidenhood
enfolded you, and discern the image of the perfect wife behind it.
His mind--too much given to spiritual things to be acute upon earthly
matters--has been caught by the surface beauty of a foolish child.
It is for you to pity rather than resent an error for which he will
doubtless pay dearly when he lies down in damp sheets, or drinks tea
made with half-boiled water, or eats potatoes as hard as stones, and
suffers in various other ways from the mistakes of an inexperienced
housekeeper; to say nothing of the likelihood that so young a wife
may be dressy and flighty, and given to standing at her door of
afternoons gossipping, to the neglect of the housework.’
Thus counselled by Reason, Priscilla assisted at the seven-o’clock
breakfast with a tranquil demeanour, and even smiled upon Joshua with
an assumed cheerfulness, which had some element of the heroic.
‘I hope you do not think my choice foolish or blameworthy,’ said
Joshua meekly, as Deborah helped him to fried potatoes and bacon.
‘Indeed, dear Mr. Haggard, marriage is such a serious
consideration--and a second marriage, where there are grown-up
children, more particularly--that I don’t feel qualified to form an
opinion. Cynthia is a good girl, as girls go; that I should be sorry
to deny, after the way she nursed me through my quinsy last winter.
But there’s a wide difference between a servant-girl and a minister’s
wife, and a great deal will be expected of her in that position.’
‘I am not afraid,’ said Joshua, ‘if I can but make her happy. In the
innocence of her heart she has given me her love. God give me grace
to keep and strengthen that affection in the days to come!’
‘She has so much reason to be grateful to you,’ began Priscilla.
‘I am not talking of gratitude,’ interrupted Joshua almost angrily.
‘She has given me her love. I know not why I am so blessed; but I
know that she loves me. It is the rich reward of all my days of care
and toil. I have not felt my labour heavy. I have no foolish pride
in my work; but the sum of it has perhaps been pleasing in the sight
of Heaven, and this reward has been granted to me--love and renewed
youth, a life that seems beginning again from the starting-point
of twenty years. I feel as young as on the day I first preached in
Penmoyle--before there was a chapel here--on the bit of green waste
at the opening of the lane that leads to Mr. Pamble’s farm.’
‘That was four-and-twenty years ago,’ said Deborah; ‘for it was the
very year father died, and sister and I walked through the dusty
lanes in our new mourning to hear you.’
This, to Deborah’s mind, was almost equal in self-sacrifice to
walking over red-hot ploughshares.
‘It was before we opened the school,’ said Priscilla, ‘and when folks
were recommending us to take situations as housekeepers, instead of
profiting by our education.’
‘I feel as young as I felt that day--four-and-twenty years ago,’
exclaimed Joshua triumphantly.
This was an intoxication of the mind which seemed to the Miss
Weblings fraught with peril. It was a positive duty to say something
depressing.
‘Ah,’ sighed Priscilla, ‘if poor Mrs. Haggard could have looked
forward to this in her long illness, she would have felt it trying.
It’s a blessing that we’re not permitted to see into the future.’
‘I am not going to act hastily,’ said Joshua, ignoring this dismal
suggestion. ‘I thought it my duty to tell you my intentions without
delay; but I shall tell no one else yet awhile, not even my son
and daughter. I shall leave Cynthia with you for some time longer.
She shall have time for reflection--many peaceful days in which to
consider the promise she has made me. If any change should come to
her mind, if she should discover that she has been mistaken in her
feelings towards me, I shall be ready to set her free. It will need
but a word from her to loosen the bond between us. I shall tell her
this before we part. If she hold steadfast to her promise of last
night, I shall come back to fetch her before this year is ended.
Meanwhile I know that you will be kind to her, and that she will be
happy with you.’
‘We have always tried to do our duty by her,’ returned Deborah rather
stiffly.
She could not quite forgive Mr. Haggard for his absurd choice, when
the superior mind of her sister had been lying open before him for
these last twenty years like a wise and valuable book, and he had not
had the sense to read it.
‘I’m afraid she’ll be puffed up by the change in her prospects,’
suggested Priscilla, ‘and not so obedient and dutiful as she has
been. We can hardly expect it of her under the circumstances.’
‘I do not think you will find any difference,’ said Joshua. ‘She is
sincerely grateful to you for your goodness to her.’
‘Yes; but in our case her gratitude does not turn into love,’
retorted Priscilla sharply.
Cynthia brought in the tea-kettle to make the tea, and took it out
again to be kept on the boil on the kitchen-hob, with a meekness
which seemed to give the lie to her mistresses’ doubts; and
presently, when Joshua had finished his breakfast and went out to the
kitchen to bid his newly-betrothed good-bye, he found her scrubbing
the deal-table with vigorous industry, which had brought a vivid pink
to the fair young face.
She put down the scrubbing-brush, and he took her in his arms
and kissed her--with a kiss which was fatherly in its protecting
gentleness, lover-like in its suppressed passion.
‘Dearest love,’ he said softly, holding her in his embrace all the
while, and looking down at her with tender seriousness, ‘I am going
to leave you for a few months. I am going away, dear, so that you
may look into your heart and be very sure the love you talked of
last night is real, and not a childish fancy which may melt away
like the memory of a dream when we awake. In our sleep we wander in
a beautiful garden, and clasp the hand of a friend--loved and dead,
perhaps, long ago; and in the morning we awake, and there is nothing
left of our dream--hardly a memory. Your love for me might be like
that, Cynthia.’
‘No, no,’ she answered eagerly, looking up into his eyes,--‘no it is
real, like your goodness, like your wisdom.’
‘I am old enough to be your father, Cynthia. I have a daughter older
than you.’
‘What has that to do with it? I did not think about your age when I
began to love you.’
‘When did you begin to do that, sweet one?’
‘When you went away from here I felt that there was something gone
out of my life, and I knew that I liked you very much. But perhaps I
might never have known that I loved you if--’
She stopped, blushing deeply, and trifling with the lapel of his coat.
‘If what, dearest?’
‘I don’t like to tell you; it is so foolish.’
‘Please tell me, dear.’
‘Young Mr. Price, at the Rising Sun, wanted to be my sweetheart. He
used to wait for me coming out of chapel of an evening, and follow me
across the street, and stop me at the garden-gate talking to me. And
when he talked about loving me and wanting to marry me, I hated him
dreadfully; and then I knew that I loved you.’
‘And I hope you made Mr. Price quite understand that you didn’t care
for him?’
‘O yes; I told him so very plainly, and he was rather offended, and
Miss Priscilla said I was very foolish to refuse so good an offer.
But you’ve no idea how I hated him when he talked about being fond of
me.’
‘God bless you, darling, and good-bye till I come back to fetch my
young wife, or till you write me one little line to say you have
changed your mind.’
‘I shall never write that,’ replied Cynthia, with conviction.
And with these words they kissed once more and parted, Joshua setting
out on his homeward journey with the light heart of youth, weaving
visions of this happy future as he walked in the briar-scented
lanes, painting pictures of that familiar home which was soon to be
beautified by Cynthia’s sweet presence. It seemed to him that he had
never known what beauty and grace in woman meant before he found that
wanderer on the sunburnt common--before he looked down on those loose
locks of palest gold, and saw the white feet gleaming under dark
water, the delicate figure half-sitting, half-reclining on the grassy
hillock, with the listless grace of repose.
He speculated how he could make the old home a little brighter for
its new mistress. That dingy carpet in the common parlour must be
exchanged for a new one. He would buy a harpsichord or one of those
new pianos people talked about, and Cynthia could learn to play
hymn-tunes. He would buy a gig or a four-wheeled chaise to drive
his wife in, instead of the tax-cart. When Jim got steadier and
married--events which ought to happen within the next half-dozen
years--Joshua told himself that he might retire from the grocery
business altogether, and devote himself exclusively to the chapel.
There was a cottage on the slope of the hill at the upper end of
Combhaven which he fancied would be a charming home for himself and
his young wife--a romantic cottage, with a garden in which some
ambitious tenant had made a fountain. It seemed to the lover’s
fancy that this cottage, with its fountain and weeping-ash, was
better adapted as a background to his picture of Cynthia than the
substantial commonplace old house opposite the First and Last. Yet it
would go against him to leave the old house. His father and mother
had lived and died there. It was his first idea of home. No; if
Cynthia were satisfied, he would stay there. And that cottage with
the fountain was probably damp. Picturesqueness and rheumatism often
go together.
And Judith? How would that tight-waisted, tight-lipped damsel get on
with a lovely young wife? Judith must be taught to bridle that sharp
tongue of hers, to put the curb on her quick temper. There must be
no biting blasts to wither his tender flower.
‘I shall make Judith understand at once and for ever that she must
be kind and gentle to my wife,’ thought Joshua. ‘She has always
respected and obeyed me--I am bound to remember that.’
He was in no hurry to tell Judith, or even his faithful Naomi, of
the change that had come upon his life--that startling and wondrous
change which had made him a new man. It would be time enough when he
took his young wife home. No one had any right to question his choice
or to doubt his wisdom.
He felt somewhat embarrassed, notwithstanding these arguments, when
Naomi questioned him, with a dutiful interest in all his doings,
about the girl he had found on Springfield Common.
‘Has she been well-behaved, father? Has she learned to read yet?’
‘Yes, my dear. She has made wonderful progress.’
‘And is she as pretty as when you first saw her sitting with her feet
in the water, and with her hair falling loose about her shoulders?’
Naomi’s fancy had pictured the scene; her father’s dark face looking
down at the fair-haired wanderer; the thymy hillocks and gorse-bushes
and wild broom under the blue warm sky.
‘I think she is even prettier.’
‘What a sweet little thing she must be! I should so like to see
her! If Sally were to get married now, we might have Cynthia for a
servant, mightn’t we, father?’
‘There’s not much chance of that, Naomi.’
‘Of Sally’s marrying? I’m not sure of that,’ replied Naomi. ‘I know
she has thoughts of it.’
‘You shall see Cynthia some day, Naomi, and I hope you will learn
to love her; but it will not be as a servant. Nature has made her
fit for something better than servitude. I do not mean to say that
service is not worthy, or that all men and women are not equal in the
eyes of their Maker. But Nature has set a mark upon us all, and we
have each our appointed station. I do not think Cynthia was created
to work like Sally, or to take pleasure in the things that please
Sally.’
‘You might get her a better place, father--as lady’s-maid, for
instance.’
‘To be some fine lady’s drudge! That would be worse rather than
better. Don’t concern yourself about her, my dear, till you come to
know more of her. I have made up my mind as to her future life.’
‘How good you are, father, to take so much trouble for a poor
nameless orphan!’
‘There is more selfishness than goodness in the matter, Naomi. It has
been a pleasure to me to do as much for her.’
This was all that he said to his daughter about Cynthia; but he
was pleased to think that Naomi had shown a friendly interest in
the subject, and he fancied that Cynthia’s beauty and Cynthia’s
sweetness would at once appeal to the girl’s heart; that it would
be natural for these two to love one another, and that they would
cleave to each other like sisters. It never occurred to him that
Cynthia, as the recipient of his charity, was quite a different
person in the eyes of Naomi from the same Cynthia as his second
wife; and that in proportion to his daughter’s love for him would
be her disinclination to divide his affection with a new-comer and
interloper. In the fulness of his content, which inclined him to
see all things on the sunnier side, he could foresee no domestic
difficulty, unless it were a little extra snappishness on the part
of Judith, an exhibition of temper which he meant to put down with a
high hand.
He was very happy. It seemed as if his capacity for full and perfect
happiness had never been called into play till now. His life had been
prosperous, successful; but the rainbow hues of joy had not entered
largely into the fabric of his existence. A gleam of vivid colour
here and there had flashed across the dull gray woof; but now warp
and woof were all brightness and colour. He saw all things under an
altered aspect, apparelled in the beauty of a dream. Nature, which
he had viewed hitherto with a mild regard, moved him now to loving
worship. He thanked God for having set him in so fair a world, for
having given him such a goodly heritage. In his daily walks he
was continually repeating to himself those psalms which breathe
joyfulness and thanksgiving, those canticles which tell of triumph
and rapture for the Lord’s chosen people. There was more eloquence in
his sermons, more fervour in his prayers. His congregation even felt
stirred by that strong floodtide of joy which filled his own breast.
In this state of mind he was naturally disposed to look with an
indulgent eye upon Oswald Pentreath’s wooing. He remembered with a
guilty sheepishness what the Squire had said to him--that if he,
Joshua, were going to be married he would not be for such long delay;
and moved by this recollection he told Oswald one evening in the
wilderness that, if he liked, the wedding might take place early in
the year--say in March, when the spring flowers were coming in and
the days getting bright.
‘Now that your father has given his consent there is less reason for
me to hold you to the letter of your promise,’ said Joshua. ‘If you
are quite sure of your affection for Naomi--quite sure she is the one
woman you would choose for yourself out of all the world--it makes
little difference whether you marry her in March or July.’
‘There is no fear of any change in my feelings,’ answered Oswald; ‘I
love her better every day, and honour her more as I get to know her
better. She is the noblest and best of women. I feel myself small and
weak in comparison with her.’
Oswald lost no time in telling Naomi that the length of his
apprenticeship, as it pleased him to call it, had been lessened.
‘We are to be married early in March, Naomi, when the woods are
yellow with daffodils; and you are coming to brighten that dismal old
house of ours. I shall be a respectable married man by midsummer. I
must get my father to buy me a gig, and put Herne into harness, so
that I may drive you about. We shall be a regular Darby and Joan.’
Naomi blushed at an imaginary picture of herself sitting beside
Oswald in a high-wheeled gig, with that unreliable horse swaying the
vehicle against banks and hedges, and making wild bolts round awkward
corners. The idea of driving with her husband in a gig like old
married people seemed to bring their marriage closer home to her than
any gush of poetry on the lover’s part could have done.
‘And we must think of smartening the old rooms a little bit before
you come to us,’ continued Oswald cheerily. ‘I daresay a coat of
whitewash for the ceilings will be about as much as the Squire will
care to afford; but I must see what Phœbe--that’s our old housemaid,
you know--can do with a few yards of chintz and muslin. She’s a
capital manager, poor old thing, and has made her elbow-bones twice
their natural size with rubbing the panelling and furniture. There’s
no such polish in Devonshire, I should think, as poor Phœbe’s
elbow-grease. I see her at it sometimes at six o’clock in the morning
when I’m going for an early ride; and I often wonder why she takes so
much out of herself to embellish rooms that hardly any one sees. I
fancy it must be a part of her religion. There are Shakers, you know,
and Jumpers; perhaps there is a sect of Rubbers--an extra devout
sect, like the Essenes.’
Naomi looked disapprovingly here. As a dissenter herself she was
not prepared to think lightly of even Shakers or Jumpers, who had
doubtless some reason for the faith that was in them--an innate
conviction of truth, perhaps, so strong as to counterbalance the
ridiculousness of their outward manifestations.
‘But when you come the old oak panels will have their use,’ said
Oswald gaily. ‘They will serve as mirrors to reflect your imperial
beauty. I always fancy you like the good Agrippinas and Julias,
Naomi. There were one or two virtuous Julias, you know, though the
majority turned their attention the other way; and there may have
been a decent Agrippina, though there I’m doubtful. I always picture
you as a Roman lady, with golden embroidery on your robes, and a
golden diadem on that dark hair of yours.’
Naomi had read neither Tacitus nor Gibbon; all she knew about Rome
was that St. Paul had acquired the Roman franchise, and that the
Romans had persecuted the early Christians. But she knew that Oswald
meant to praise her beauty when he likened her to these imperial
ladies of doubtful character.
These two also were very happy, but with a more quiet joy than
Joshua’s. The bloom of novelty had been worn off their love by this
time. They had grown accustomed to look forward to a life spent
together; to think of themselves as bound to each other. Oswald
surveyed his future with a tranquil contentment. He liked Naomi
better every day, leaned upon her more entirely, felt her superiority
and his own weaker nature, and looked forward confidently to the
part she was to play in his life. Naomi’s feelings lay deeper, and
but seldom found expression in words. She could not speak playfully
of a love which was the most solemn element in her life. She thought
of her happiness--of this most perfect boon Heaven had given her in
Oswald’s love--with a subdued sense of awe. If he had never loved
her; if he were to be taken from her? She dared not picture to
herself the hideous blank which life must have been in the first
case, nor the gloomy ruin life must become in the second. Sometimes
she recalled that dreadful day when the storm had swept over
Combhaven and her father’s strong arm had snatched Oswald from the
greedy devouring waves. If he had not been saved, and she had never
known him! She was not metaphysician enough to contemplate life under
such seemingly impossible conditions.
Aunt Judith’s attitude of mind in relation to the lovers was one of
equable disapprobation. She thought that Joshua was sacrificing to
Baal by giving his daughter five thousand pounds in order that the
misguided young woman might be raised from her proper position in
life to a station for which Providence had never intended her. Five
thousand pounds at five per cent meant two hundred and fifty pounds a
year, Judith reflected, or nearly five pounds a week, which division
made the money seem a great deal more, as it was thus brought nearer
the housewife’s eye. Why the entire housekeeping expenses of Mr.
Haggard’s establishment--after debiting all goods had out of the shop
against the house--seldom came to more than five pounds a week. And
Joshua was to surrender all that money to make his daughter a fine
lady.
The idea of this monetary sacrifice weighed heavily upon aunt Judith.
She had begun a system of small economies as a kind of set-off
against Naomi’s dowry. Puddings now only graced the board thrice a
week, and those were puddings of the homeliest and least expensive
character; puddings of a substantial and filling character specially
dear to prudent housekeepers, as they do not require eggs in their
composition, and are for the most part independent of butter. The
tea-table was furnished even more sparingly than of old, and, with
a view to the economising of butter, the careful manager pressed
upon the maturer taste of her nephew and niece that thick and slab
molasses which their childish fancies had affected. She doled out
the week’s allowance of soap more grudgingly than of old, and was a
despot in the matter of soda.
‘I don’t know what’s come to your aunt, Miss Naomi,’ the aggrieved
Sally remarked despondently. ‘It’s as much as I can wash out a pair
of white stockings for Sunday afternoon without her going on about my
vanity and extravagance, and throwing Jezebel in my teeth, as if I
was the wickedest young woman in Combhaven.’
These infinitesimal savings, though they inflicted some annoyance
on the household, could go about as far towards counterbalancing
the loss of five thousand pounds as the laborious exertions of an
industrious beaver in the construction of a dam designed to stem
the waters of Niagara; yet these vain efforts afforded some mental
solace to aunt Judith’s perturbed mind. She scraped the butter off
her bread, and felt herself a domestic martyr.
‘There’ll be fine flaunting when she’s a married woman and her own
mistress,’ thought Judith, ‘with two hundred and fifty pounds a
year for her own spending--silk gowns trimmed with thread-lace on
workadays, I daresay. We sha’n’t see her often at chapel, I should
think. She’ll be going to church for the sake of sitting in a big pew
among the gentry. If I were Joshua I’d as leave have my daughter dead
and buried as married to a fine gentleman that would look down upon
me.’
Judith had never been able to get rid of the idea that in his secret
soul Oswald Pentreath despised the Haggards and their surroundings.
Her narrow mind could not conceive it possible that the son of a
landowner could believe in his equality with shopkeepers; that the
odour of soap and candles was not hateful to the nostrils of a
gentleman who sealed his letters with a coat of arms that looked
almost royal, and bore a name which was engraved on the oldest
brazen tablet in the chancel. She was unable to understand that
easy-going temper of Oswald’s, to which rank and wealth were of
small moment compared with the blessings of personal well-being
and the gratification of one’s own inclination. She had a lurking
conviction that Mr. Pentreath, be he never so polite and respectful,
was secretly laughing at her; that he did not admire her Sunday
gown, and thought her pronunciation vulgar; and that he encouraged
that impudent jackanapes Jim in the practice of grimacing behind
her shoulder as she poured out the tea or carved the cold joint
at supper. This conviction and a general sense of injury, chiefly
referable to that marriage portion of five thousand pounds, made aunt
Judith unpleasant company to herself at this time, and not the most
agreeable company for other people.
The young people were happy after their tranquil fashion, untouched
by the blighting influence of this aggrieved spinster. They had their
afternoon rambles together, and Naomi made progress in the art of
pencil landscape, sitting for many a happy hour copying the bold
curved lines of the hartstongue and the delicate tracery of parsley
and oakleaf fern, or the larger outlines of elm or beech; while
Oswald lay on the grass at her side reading _Marmion_ or _Ivanhoe_.
Gentle, peaceful time--a cup filled to the brim with perfect joy--to
be remembered in days to come, when the memory shall be life’s
crowning sorrow.
The lovers had been employed thus one afternoon in August. Oswald
had just read that intense and dramatic scene of Sir Walter Scott’s
most romantic poem when Constance de Beverley defies her pitiless
judges. There had been an ominous stillness in the air for the last
half-hour, and the birds were uttering those subdued twitterings by
which they seem to warn one another of approaching evil; but Naomi
had been too much absorbed by the story to give any heed to these
whisperings of a coming storm, when one big drop falling on her
pencilled group of ferns startled her out of her complacency. Oswald
had been reading the stirring lines somewhat sleepily, the heavy air
under those tall elms exercising a narcotic effect upon his senses,
and he too had been heedless of a change in the heavens.
‘Why, I declare it’s raining!’ he exclaimed, when one of those big
drops had alighted upon his nose; ‘and what a black sky! I’m afraid
we’re in for a storm. And you in that thin dress, Naomi! Let us get
to the house as fast as we can.’
‘To the Grange?’ cried Naomi, with a look of alarm, as if he had
proposed the most awful thing in the world.
‘Why not, love? It is to be your home next spring. Is it too much to
ask a little shelter from the old roof to-day?’
‘The Squire might not like--’ faltered Naomi.
‘He would be delighted. He has not asked you and your father formally
to visit him, for then, you see, you would be visitors, and it is
against his principles to squander his substance upon entertaining
people; but if you were to drop in upon him unawares he would be
enchanted. Come, dear; the rain-drops are falling faster--and there’s
the first thunder-clap.’
It pealed among the trees, sounding so close to them that it seemed a
local thunder-clap intended for them in particular.
‘What a threatening sound it has, Oswald!’ said Naomi, as they
hurried towards the little gate which opened from the wood into the
path.
‘Yes; one can fancy the first murderer hearing such a peal as he
fled. It sounds like the voice of Nemesis, doesn’t it? There’s a
blinding flash; run, Naomi!’
They were at the gate by this time, and only a broad stretch of
turf lay between them and the house. The Squire’s oxen kept the
turf closely cropped, and Oswald and his companion were able to run
quickly over the short crisp grass. Naomi arrived at the porch with
her cambric dress only lightly sprinkled by the rain.
The hall-door stood open, and Oswald led her in. He tried the handle
of his father’s den; but that sanctuary was locked. The Squire was
out, and had the key of his study in his pocket, no doubt, according
to custom. Naomi stood in the grave old hall, looking about her
wonderingly. It was the first time she had ever entered this house,
in which she was to live and die. She felt as if it were a solemn
moment in her life--a moment to be remembered as the beginning of
an epoch. This house was henceforward to mean something more for her
than a tradition or a feature in a familiar landscape: it was to
embody her idea of home.
She looked round her doubtfully. The fine square hall; the brown-oak
panelling, adorned with half a dozen family portraits browner and
darker than the old oak; the wide shallow staircase with its solid
balustrade; the pavement of white and black marble, had doubtless
a certain dignity and beauty of their own. She felt that she was
beneath a roof that had sheltered many generations; but there was
a bleakness and barrenness in the scene that chilled her. A house
built for the accommodation of a large family and numerous servants
must needs have a cheerless and empty look when it falls into the
occupation of a miser’s shrunken household.
‘Let me show you the rooms that are to be all your own,’ said Oswald,
opening the door of a long drawing-room, an apartment so rarely used
that it had assumed a ghost-like air, as of a chamber conscious of
old family secrets, and made gloomy by the mysteries of the past. It
was a narrow panelled room, painted white and salmon, and this very
delicacy of tint, which would have made the apartment cheerful under
favourable conditions, enhanced its chill phantasmal aspect in the
gray light of this thunderous afternoon.
All the furniture was at least a century old. Naomi had never
imagined such spindle-legged tables, such narrow high-backed chairs,
such a general straightness and spareness of outline. The bareness
of all ornament, save the small oval mirrors and crystal candelabra,
and the lack of colour, struck even her inexperienced eye, which
had been accustomed only to the plainest furniture. The brocaded
window-curtains, once sea-green, had faded to a neutral tint; the
seats and backs of chairs and sofas were covered with holland. There
were no books, no pictures.
Oswald watched his betrothed, expectant of some expression of
admiration. He fancied she would be delighted with rooms so much
larger and more aristocratic than those in which she had lived all
her life.
‘It’s a handsome room, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘Forty feet by eighteen.’
‘It’s very long,’ said Naomi, rather stupidly her lover thought.
‘Perhaps you’d like to see the dining-room?’
‘Very much.’
Anything would be a relief after this ghastly saloon, with its white
cold walls and general emptiness.
They crossed the hall and entered the dining-room. Here brownness
and gloom replaced the ghostly whiteness of the saloon. Here too the
furniture was scanty; but there was more homeliness, a greater look
of occupation, this being the room in which the Squire and his son
lived from January to December. There were newspapers, books, and
writing-materials on a table in the bay-window; there were whips
and walking-sticks in the corners; the large oaken sideboard was
adorned with a pair of solid old silver tankards, and surmounted by a
portrait of the present Squire, painted in the bloom of youth, when
waistcoats were worn long and ‘Wilkes and Liberty’ was still a party
cry.
The lightning flashed across Naomi’s face as she looked out at the
large bay-window, surveying that neatly-kept garden in front of
the house, which was separated by a close-cut holly hedge from the
neglected domain beyond, the wide stretch of turf which had once been
a lawn sacred from the feet of cattle, and on which the Squire’s
store oxen now browsed at their ease. He could see no good in land
which produced nothing--grass that was mown at much cost of labour
only to be thrown on the manure-heap.
The day had grown darker, and the thunder-peals seemed to shake
the old chimney, down whose wide throat there came gusts of wind
and rain. It was an awful chimney for the wind to howl in; and the
Squire and his son, sitting silently by the hearth on a gloomy
winter evening, had often felt as if evil spirits were howling wild
threatenings at them from the house-top.
Naomi looked at the dark hearth with an affrighted glance, as if she
had heard the family banshee shrieking at her.
‘What an awful noise!’ she said.
‘It’s only the wind, love. And now I must show you the family
portraits, and my mother’s sitting-room, which will be yours so
soon. I think it is the most cheerful room in the house.’
Naomi was glad to think that she was going to see something cheerful.
The gloom of the dining-room had been more depressing than the
ghostly pallor of the drawing-room.
They went up the uncarpeted staircase to a gallery which occupied the
whole length of the house, with a row of long narrow windows looking
westward, and a deep oaken seat in each window. Here there were
family portraits of the usual character; sea-pieces, battle-pieces,
fruit-pieces, and a Dutch picture or two to give a touch of human
interest to the collection. Here too there were some old delf jars,
filled with dried rose-leaves--roses that had been gathered by
fingers that were now clay, and which exhaled an odour of the past.
Oswald showed his betrothed the untenanted rooms, all neatly kept
by the indefatigable housemaid. The room that had been his mother’s
was the prettiest Naomi had seen yet. The white walls, embellished
with carved garlands of fruit and flowers; the old furniture,
painted white; a narrow old-fashioned bookcase on each side of the
fireplace; cabinets of shells and sea-weeds between the windows,
local shells and local weeds, which the Squire’s young wife had
collected in her idle uneventful days.
Naomi went eagerly to look at the books. They were many of them
strange to her even in name. Old poets--Spenser, Cowley, Waller,
Dryden, Prior, Pope--in white vellum, with gilded lettering. The
Essayists, in neat duodecimo volumes, with faded calf bindings;
Richardson’s voluminous novels, in thin octavos, bound in brown.
Naomi read the titles with keenest interest. The great world of
books was an unknown region to her, save for such feeble glimmer as
was afforded by the _Pocket Magazine_, a folio Milton, with awful
mezzotint pictures of Sin and Death, Satan and his Council, which she
used to look at shudderingly in her childhood, and those books of a
theological or devotional character which formed the staple of the
minister’s small collection. Joshua had never been a great reader,
save of his Bible and those good old Puritan divines whose teaching
was after his own heart. His life had been too full and busy to admit
of his acquiring the habits of a student. He read the Scriptures, or
Baxter’s _Saints’ Rest_, or Law’s _Serious Call_ by the wayside.
‘What dear little books!’ exclaimed Naomi, admiring the neat rows of
thin volumes, literature spread over a wide surface.
‘They all belonged to my grandfather, and came to my mother at his
death. She was very fond of them, the poets especially.’
‘I did not know there were so many poets. I knew of Pope and Spenser,
but all these other names are strange to me. Why have you never told
me about them?’
‘They are dead, my dear; gone to the limbo of forgotten genius. Byron
sent the whole crew to Hades. They have a kind of fossil life in
old-fashioned libraries, like flies in amber. Their music was sweet
to mawkishness, their loves and sufferings were as unreal as their
periwigs; they were the poets of a patchbox and powder period.’
He took out a volume of Waller and read the ‘Lines to Amoret,’ that
elegant excuse for being in love with two women at once:
‘Amoret! as sweet and good
As the most delicious food,
Which, but tasted, does impart
Life and gladness to the heart.
Sacharissa’s beauty’s wine,
Which to madness doth incline:
Such a liquor as no brain
That is mortal can sustain.’
‘Not a bad definition of the love that satisfies and the love that
intoxicates, is it, Naomi?’ asked Oswald, as he closed the book.
‘These periwigged poets reduced love to a science. You are my Amoret,
Naomi, and have given life and gladness to my heart.’
‘I hope you may never meet your Sacharissa,’ replied Naomi gravely,
‘since it seems that poets can love two women at once.’
‘My dearest, that was written in the days of Charles II., when poets
were fops and courtiers, and it was incumbent on a court poet to have
a new mistress as often as he had a new coat. It was a scenic age,
unreal as a stage play; and yet there were true lovers and broken
hearts while Charles Stuart was king; but you will find no trace of
them among his poets.’
‘I’m afraid I’m not clever enough to like that kind of poetry.’
‘But you like my mother’s room, Naomi?’
‘It is lovely.’
‘I am so glad to hear you say that. It will be your own after next
March.’
‘I have been trying to think of this house as my home, Oswald; but I
have such a strange feeling about it. I cannot imagine myself living
here. I cannot make a picture of our new life. It all seems far away
and shadowy, like my idea of the life to come, which neither my own
faith nor my father’s teaching could ever make real or visible to me.
I must have a very weak imagination.’
‘Perhaps you have too much common sense, Naomi. You will not give
your fancies scope. You think of yourself as Naomi Haggard living in
your father’s house in Combhaven, and you can’t realise the fact that
next year you will be Naomi Pentreath, and sole mistress of these
desolate old rooms. Your coming will alter everything, dear. Even my
father looks forward to it with pleasant anticipations.’
‘He is very good. If it were not foolish or even wicked to give
heed to such fancies, I should think that this feeling of mine was
a presentiment--that God does not intend me ever to live the happy
life you speak of. It is such a settled feeling in my mind to-day; it
comes between me and my happiness, just as those stormy clouds come
between us and the day.’
‘Naomi!’
‘O, it is because I love you so dearly, Oswald! I cannot believe that
Heaven means me to be so perfectly happy all my life, to have no
sorrows, no trials,--I who have been taught that our journey on earth
is to lead us through thorny places,--your love given to me in all
its fulness. It is too much to expect from Providence.’
‘My dearest, you have been taught a gloomy creed. Do you suppose
Providence has never favoured true lovers--never smiled on a happy
union before our time? There are old men and women who loved each
other fifty years ago just as faithfully as you and I love to-day,
and who have climbed the hill of life and gone down into the valley
hand-in-hand. Providence means us to be happy for the most part, I
believe, Naomi. Earth’s most miserable men are those who have made
their own sorrows. That is my creed.’
The Squire’s harsh croak was heard in the hall below at this moment,
and made an end of the conversation. Oswald took Naomi down to
greet her future father-in-law, who had ridden home from one of his
outlying farms in the rain, and was changing his coat and boots with
the assistance of the old butler.
He stopped in the operation to kiss Naomi.
‘We were caught in the storm, father, while we were sketching in
the wood,’ said Oswald. ‘I brought Naomi in for shelter. I’ve been
showing her my mother’s sitting-room.’
‘Very proper. It will be hers when she’s married. She’ll keep her
accounts there, and do her sewing; won’t you, my dear? My shirts and
cravats are in a wretched state. It’ll be a blessing to have a clever
young woman like you to look after them. What a dreadful storm! It
will do no end of mischief to the corn where it isn’t cut--an excuse
for tenants being backward with their Christmas rent.’
‘The rain has stopped, I think,’ said Naomi timidly, looking out
through the open door, ‘and I must go home to tea.’
‘Never mind your tea, my dear. Oswald shall get you a dish of tea
before you go,’ said the Squire, in a gush of hospitality.
But Naomi declared that her father would be alarmed at her absence;
and the storm being really over, Oswald and she set out for Combhaven.
CHAPTER III.
‘SHE IS FAST MY WIFE.’
September was nearly ended. Harvest homes were over, and in Combhaven
there was a general impression that winter was a season in the
immediate future, and that linsey and merino would be soon the only
wear. Household fires began to have a cheery look in the dusk, and
ruddy light flickered on the walls and ceilings of cosy parlours at
tea-time,--in that dim hour when the busiest housewife might lay
aside her daily task of making or mending, and fold her hands for
a brief span, with a virtuous sense of having earned the luxury
of repose, while she discussed the character or prospects of her
neighbours, or talked of that last dreadful murder chronicled in the
county papers, or the latest scandal about England’s crownless queen.
Joshua had gone on another journey in this tranquil autumn weather.
He had not told his family much about the object or design of this
last excursion, but had contented himself with stating that it was
a matter of business which called him away, and that he should be
absent at most a week.
Judith was not a little offended at this reticence.
‘I don’t know what’s come over your father that he’s taken to
gadding,’ she said to Naomi. ‘He’s never been the same man since he
went to open young Wild’s chapel. One would think it had turned his
head. And yet it was no great honour for him to be asked to do it--an
out-of-the-way place like that, where the people are as ignorant as
negro slaves, I daresay.’
‘I can see no change in father,’ replied Naomi. ‘He is as good as
he has always been, and as thoughtful for others. If there is any
change, it is that he seems kinder than ever.’
‘Ah!’ exclaimed Judith, with vexation; ‘what’s the use of talking
to girls in love? It’s throwing away good words. You’ve no eyes nor
ears for any one but your lover. If you were in the business you’d
see the change in your father fast enough. Half his time his wits are
wool-gathering.’
‘Perhaps he’s thinking of his sermons, aunt.’
‘He never used to think of ’em when he was behind his counter.’
Naomi had no further explanation to offer. It had indeed seemed to
her of late that her father was kinder and more sympathetic than
she had ever known him to be since the days of her childhood, when
she had been his prattling companion in many a rustic walk. He
had entered into her feelings about Oswald, he had talked to her
of her future; and to Oswald himself he had been all kindness and
indulgence. Never had her home been pleasanter to her, or her life
happier, than during the last three months. Perhaps this is why she
had found it so difficult to imagine herself transferred to any other
home, the scene of her life shifted from the homely house in the
High-street to the gloomy dignity of the Grange.
Joshua had been absent more than ten days, a breach of faith upon
which aunt Judith enlarged with some bitterness.
‘A stranger in the pulpit, and our last butter-cask nearly empty. If
that isn’t a change in your father I don’t know the meaning of the
word. But some people can twist words any way; one ’ud need a new
dictionary to understand ’em,’ exclaimed the anxious housewife, as
she and Naomi sat together at tea in the glow of an afternoon fire.
Jim had gone to Barnstaple to order goods. He was gradually emerging
from the chrysalis of boyhood, and showing an aptitude for business
which his aunt lauded as the crowning ornament of manhood. He was
sharp and energetic, intensely matter of fact, and more eager for
gain than his father cared to see him, but a good boy withal,
soft-hearted and kindly.
‘Perhaps father may be home to-night,’ said Naomi soothingly.
‘Ah, that’s what you said last night, and the night before last. If
he isn’t home to-night or to-morrow there’ll be no service on Sunday,
for Mr. Scrupel only promised for the one Sabbath. And there’d be a
pass for things to come to! How could your father hold his head up in
Combhaven after that?’
‘I am sure my father won’t neglect his duty.’
‘Won’t he? How about our next cask of butter? Where’s that to come
from, I should like to know, before we’ve been out of Irish ever so
long? It was more than I would take upon myself to write to Ireland
for it.’
‘You might have ordered another cask, aunt.’
‘I wouldn’t be so venturesome. A deal of thanks I should get for my
pains if the butter turned out rancid. No, Naomi; if your father
neglects his business be must bear the brunt of his own conduct; and
if there’s no service on the Sabbath--’
‘There will be service,’ cried Naomi, starting from her chair at the
sound of a vehicle drawing up in front of the gate. ‘That’s father!’
‘Why, there’s no coach to bring him at this time, child. The
Barnstaple mail won’t be in for a good hour. Why, bless us and save
us, if it isn’t a post-shay, with a trunk on the roof too!’ exclaimed
aunt Judith, looking out of the window. ‘Your father took nothing
with him but a bag, and unless he was gone clean out of his mind he
wouldn’t come home in a shay.’
‘He may be ill,’ cried Naomi, alarmed; for this apparition of a
post-chaise was one of those startling appearances which must mean
something out of the common--possibly evil.
‘It must be a mistake,’ said aunt Judith, following Naomi into the
passage. ‘No, there’s Joshua getting out, and no more the matter with
him than there is with me,’ she added, in a tone of disgust.
Yes, there was Joshua confronting them in the twilight, with a
curious look on his dark face, a kind of shy triumph, as of one half
ashamed of a great happiness. He drew Naomi to him, and kissed her
with more warmth of feeling than he had ever shown after so short a
severance.
‘How is my dear daughter?’ he asked gently.
‘Very well, father, and very glad to have you back again.’
‘We’re all but out of Irish butter,’ said Judith accusingly from the
obscurity of the passage.
‘Ah, Judith, is that you? Never mind the butter. We’ll soon set
things right,’ replied the minister, going back to the chaise.
‘You won’t get another cask till the end of next week, with all your
cleverness. I thought you’d broken a leg at the least, or you’d
never have come home in a shay,’ added Judith.
‘I came in a chaise because I had some one to bring with me, my
dear,’ replied Joshua calmly.
He handed out a girl--a slim girlish figure, a lily face under a
gipsy bonnet tied with a broad white ribbon. Naomi saw tender blue
eyes looking up at her beseechingly in the twilight, and rosebud
lips that were faintly tremulous. She had never before beheld such
flower-like beauty, loveliness so delicate in form or colouring.
Joshua put the stranger’s hand under his arm and led her into the
house, and into the fire-lit parlour; Judith falling back against the
passage wall as they went by, as if she had made way for a spectre;
Naomi following her father full of wonder.
‘I have brought you a companion and friend, Naomi,’ said Joshua,
when they were all in the parlour, aunt Judith having followed
automatically like Hamlet after the Ghost. ‘I have brought you some
one whom you must love and cherish for my sake.’
‘If you’ve brought this young woman to help in the business, you may
give her the drapery department altogether. I wash my hands of it
from this moment!’ exclaimed Judith, awful in her indignation.
‘I have brought her to occupy the first place in my household, as she
holds the first place in my heart,’ answered Joshua. ‘This is Cynthia
Haggard, my wife.’
Sister and daughter stared at the minister with wonder-stricken
countenances, pallid with horror. This calm announcement of his went
so far beyond their ideas of the possible--this fact of a second
marriage was an event so wide of their wildest dreams--that both aunt
and niece were dumb. To both it seemed that Joshua must have gone out
of his mind; that he must be talking distractedly under the spell of
demoniac possession, rather than that this thing could be true--this
slender flower-girl the grave preacher’s second wife.
Joshua Haggard looked at the two women, surprised at the
consternation his words had caused. Having once made up his mind
that Cynthia was his fittest helpmate, created for him by his God,
as Eve for Adam, it had not occurred to him that other people could
have any occasion to wonder at his choice. Her youth, her beauty,
were blessings which Heaven had bestowed upon him with the free gift
of her love. She loved him, she had chosen him; gladly, willingly
she had nestled in his arms, and yielded him a love which was almost
worship. She had spanned the gulf of years that yawned between them;
she had flown to him as a bird to its nest. By her free choice she
had justified his boldness in loving her. Had any one else the right
to count his years, or see unfitness in this union of youth and
maturity, if she had not done so?
He was angry at his daughter’s blank look of surprise. From Judith he
had expected rebellion, and he took no heed of her mute horror.
‘You do not give my wife a very warm welcome, Naomi,’ he said, with
suppressed indignation. ‘I had expected more from your sense of duty,
if not from your affection.’
‘Forgive me, father,’ said Naomi, with a look of unspeakable pain.
Those deliberate words of Joshua’s had shown her that this thing was
very real. ‘I was so surprised, I could not speak.’ And then, going
up to Cynthia, she put out her hand and said gently, ‘I am very glad
to see you.’
Cynthia took the proffered hand, which was cold as ice, bent her
graceful head, and kissed the cold fingers tearfully.
‘I am sorry you should have been so surprised,’ she said. ‘I asked
Mr. Haggard to tell you before we were married, but he thought it was
better not.’
‘I fancied my marriage would have been a pleasant surprise for my
daughter. I thought she might be glad to know that when she leaves me
I shall still have some one to care for me--’
Aunt Judith’s overcharged breast relieved itself by a groan.
‘Some one young and bright and pleasant for my companion.’
Judith groaned rather louder than before.
‘For the rest, I had no one’s leave or license to ask for my
marriage. And now, Judith, perhaps you’ll be good enough to get us
some tea, while I go out and settle with the postboy. We’ve had a
long drive from Barnstaple. Naomi, you can show Cynthia the way
up-stairs, and help her to take off her cloak and bonnet. My room is
ready, I suppose?’
‘It’s ready for _you_,’ replied Judith; ‘I don’t know whether it’s
good enough for Mrs. Haggard’--throwing a spiteful intensity into the
mere utterance of the name which showed great power of expression.
‘She may be used to something better; though I might have known what
was going to happen when you ordered new chintz for the bedstead and
windows.’
‘What is good enough for me will be good enough for my wife,’ said
Joshua, looking fondly after his bride as she left the room with
Naomi. ‘And now bestir yourself, Judith, like a kind soul, and
give us a comfortable tea--a dish of ham and eggs, or something
substantial. Cynthia ate hardly any dinner.’
‘Cynthia!’ ejaculated Judith, as if suddenly awakened from a state
of semi-consciousness; ‘why, that’s the name of the young woman you
found on the common.’
‘It is.’
‘And you’ve married that young woman--a tramp, a servant-girl!’
‘I have married a lovely and innocent girl, whom Providence designed
to be the blessing of my later years,’ replied Joshua. ‘God gave her
to me for my own that day on the common. She has loved me from that
day, and I am not sure that my love for her was not born in me then.
My thoughts have followed her and cared for her all the time, though
I only knew last midsummer how dear she had become to me. You look at
me as if I was talking a strange tongue, Judith.’
‘It might as well be Hebrew for my understanding of it,’ answered
Judith. ‘However, you’ve made your bed and you can lie upon it. You
don’t want my leave or license, as you say; no man wants leave or
license to play the fool. That’s an act of free will with most folks.’
‘Come, Judith,’ cried the minister sternly, ‘if you think that I am
going to submit to insolence or insult in a matter that touches me
so nearly as this you are mistaken. A man’s worst foes are those of
his own household. I will have no enemy to share my daily bread and
my daily prayer. If you and I are to live together, you must love
my wife as you love me. She is a part of me--the brighter, better
part. An insult to her is twice an insult to me, and I shall resent
it twice as keenly. And now, Judith, shake hands upon this, and take
it into your heart; or else find some other shelter than this roof
before you lie down to-night. No one shall live in my house that is
an enemy to my wife.’
‘That’s short notice,’ said Judith grimly. ‘Well, there’s my hand.
You’ve been a good brother to me, and I’ve not been a bad sister to
you. We won’t quarrel about a--pretty face. May you be happy!’
They shook hands--heartily upon Joshua’s side, with a shade of
reservation on Judith’s. The minister felt that he had conquered; but
these household victories sometimes leave behind them the seed of
future warfare.
Judith bustled out to prepare a meal for the travellers; and soon
there was a cheerful hissing sound--an odour of fried ham from the
kitchen, where Judith stood over the frying-pan with a moody brow,
while Sally obeyed her orders in fear and wonder.
‘Get out the best tea-things and the plated candlesticks, and get
a pair of wax-candles from the shop,’ said Judith; at which command
Sally stood open-mouthed and speechless. There had been no such
preparations since the last tea-party.
‘Your master has got married, Sally. We must show him how pleased we
are.’
‘Married!’ cried Sally. ‘Is it Mrs. Trimly?’
Mrs. Trimly was a corpulent widow, with a very respectable fortune
that had been made in a tan-pit. She occupied a large red-brick
house--her own--at the upper end of Combhaven; she wore silk gowns
every afternoon, gold spectacles, and the smartest caps in the town,
and was a devoted disciple of Joshua’s, wheezing through the service
every Sunday morning, and sometimes guilty of nasal breathings of an
unmistakable character on a Sunday afternoon.
To Sally it seemed the most natural thing in the world that Joshua
should espouse the tanner’s widow, although she was fifteen years
his senior, and a sufferer from high feeding and chronic asthma.
Sally had made up her mind ever so long ago, on the occasion of a
state tea-drinking, that Mrs. Trimly looked with peculiar favour on
the minister, and that the comfortably-furnished brick house, with
its twenty acres of orchard and meadow, as well as a fortune in the
Funds, might be Joshua’s for the asking.
‘No,’ said Judith; ‘it isn’t Mrs. Trimly. That would have been a
sensible marriage, if you like. But when men of my brother’s age
marry they don’t think of pleasing sensible people. They marry to
please their eye, Sally. Your new mistress has got flaxen hair and
blue eyes, Sally. That’s enough for my brother. I hope you’ll like
her, and that you’ll take the same pains with polishing the furniture
that you have taken in my time.’
‘You are not going away, are you, mum?’ gasped Sally, with a vision
of a paradisiacal life opening before her almost too dazzling for the
mental eye.
‘No, Sally, I am not going away; but I’m going to be a cipher,’
replied Judith severely.
Sarah’s spirits sank. She did not know the meaning of that
substantive cipher, though she had a distant acquaintance with
the same word as a verb. But she felt that so long as Miss Judith
remained upon the scene her toil would know no relaxation.
Meanwhile the two girls--wife and daughter--were up-stairs in
Joshua’s bedroom, stealing shy glances at each other by the dim
light of a candle which Naomi held while Cynthia stood before the
dressing-table taking off her bonnet.
There were tears in the young wife’s eyes, and a sad look about the
sweet rosy mouth, as she smoothed her bright hair with Joshua’s hard
black brush, looking in the glass at a misty reflection of that
half-sorrowful, half-frightened face. Inexperienced as she was in the
varieties of humanity, instinct was keen enough to teach her that her
husband’s marriage was distasteful to his kindred, that there was no
loving welcome for her in this strange home.
She looked at Naomi with unspeakable awe. Was this the affectionate
daughter, the tender companion and friend Joshua had promised her?
That tall erect figure, that nobly-chiselled face, with its crown
of raven hair bound in a thick coil round a high comb on the summit
of the head, inspired admiration, but held love at a distance.
Cynthia felt that she could never be familiar with this handsome
stepdaughter; and yet the face was like Joshua’s, and for that
reason must needs seem dear to her.
‘I am so sorry your father did not tell you sooner,’ she began
falteringly. ‘I’m afraid his marrying me has made you unhappy--’
‘It has surprised me very much,’ Naomi answered gravely. ‘I have
never thought of my father marrying--the idea never came into my
head. If any one had suggested it, I should have been angry. And you
are so young--so much fitter to be his daughter than his wife.’
‘No wife could love and honour him more than I do,’ said Cynthia, the
tears streaming down her cheeks.
‘No one could know him and not honour him,’ replied the daughter
proudly. ‘Don’t cry; I am not blaming you. I have no right to blame
him. I don’t want to speak unkindly to you, still less to speak
undutifully of my father; but his marriage is a great surprise.’
Here Naomi broke down, and the two young women performed a sobbing
duet. Naomi was the first to recover.
‘I am very wicked,’ she said remorsefully. ‘As if my dear father had
not the right to be happy in his own way. I am jealous, unreasonable,
abominable. Poor little thing’--drawing Cynthia to her with
protecting tenderness--‘don’t cry. I am not so cruel or so ungrateful
as I must have seemed just now. But I love my father so dearly, and
I thought I should have him always all my own; and the idea that he
could love any one else more than me was too bitter, just at first. I
was selfish, cruel, undutiful. Dry your tears, dear; we must be fond
of each other for my father’s sake.’
Cynthia’s sobs ceased. She clung lovingly to the tall figure, hanging
on it like ivy on an oak.
‘O, if you will love me a little I shall be so happy,’ said the
girl-wife. ‘He ought to have told you. I know I must seem an
intruder. But if you could know how I love him; how from the
first--when he took me under his care, a poor runaway creature,
without a friend, used to hard usage and hard words--from the first
I worshipped him! He was so true, so strong, a rock of defence. I
feared no one when he had taken me under his care.’
‘Yes, he told me how he found you,’ said Naomi thoughtfully. ‘Poor
child!’
This was the waif of whom her father had spoken--the girl in whose
story she had felt a tender pitying interest, never dreaming that
this nameless wanderer was to rob her of her father’s heart.
‘Did he tell you that I was a heathen then,’ asked Cynthia solemnly,
‘knowing nothing, believing nothing, without one hope beyond my daily
life--and that was altogether hopeless? I had known no father on
earth, I knew of no Father in heaven. I thought death was the end of
all things, and I sometimes longed to die.’
‘Poor child!’ repeated Naomi, with grave pity.
‘Poor then,’ said Cynthia, ‘the poorest of the poor. But from that
blessed day rich beyond measure. “Henceforward there is laid up for
me a crown of glory.”’
There was no touch of sanctimoniousness or cant in her utterance of
these words, only a childlike and implicit faith.
‘Yes,’ answered Naomi, with deepest gravity, ‘if you win the race.’
Her more serious nature was not so easily assured. These triumphant
party cries and watchwords of evangelism sometimes awakened doubts
and anxieties in her reflective mind. For St. Paul such a glad
burst of triumph was but the natural expression of a victorious
soul; but for these followers of St. Paul, who had endured nothing,
accomplished nothing--who had fought no battle, won no victory--from
them this bold assurance of felicity seemed arrogant to the verge of
blasphemy.
‘And you will try to love me a little?’ said Cynthia pleadingly.
‘I shall love you very much, for my father’s sake, if you make his
life happy.’
‘I shall honour and obey him, and wait upon him like his servant if
he will let me,’ answered Cynthia. ‘And may I call you Naomi?’
‘Yes, Cynthia.’
And from that moment they spoke to each other as Cynthia and Naomi.
There was no question of the word mother; but in Naomi’s manner to
her stepmother there was from the first a touch of motherliness,
a protecting kindness, which was in a manner the reversal of their
positions.
The wife’s weaker nature, clinging, dependent, childlike in its
exquisite womanliness, leaned on the firmer and more masculine
character of the daughter.
* * * * *
‘I thought you were never coming,’ said Joshua, when they went
down to the parlour, where the tea-table had assumed a positively
splendid appearance, lighted by wax-candles, such as were supplied
at three-and-sixpence a pound to Mr. Haggard’s most aristocratic
customers.
Judith sat bolt upright, with her hands folded, watching the candles
burning, as a larger soul might have watched the blazing pyre which
consumed the fortunes of an imperial house. There was a depth of
desolation in this sacrifice of the wax-candles, a bitter irony in
the setting up of these waxen tapers to do honour to that wandering
beggar-girl whom Joshua had chosen for his wife.
‘What have you two girls been talking about all this time?’ asked
Joshua, with an attempt at cheeriness; ‘making friends, I hope?’
‘Yes, father,’ Naomi answered, with a look that was full of duty
and affection; ‘we have made friends. Cynthia and I are going to be
sisters. It would sound foolish for me to call her mother, for she is
two years younger than I am, and looks younger than she is.’
‘Very well, my dear. You shall be sisters, then. I care not what name
you give the bond, so that you love each other. And now, Judith, the
tea.’
Miss Haggard had placed herself at a corner of the table remote
from her accustomed seat in front of the tea-tray. There she sat
rigid, impenetrable. She did not frown; no sour expression of visage
betrayed her discontent. She had composed her features to a sublime
self-abnegation--a resignation of all active share in the life
passing around her. She looked what she had called herself in her
late discourse with Sally--a cipher.
‘O, dear no,’ she exclaimed; ‘I couldn’t think of such a thing. I
have done with the teapot. Mrs. Haggard will pour out the tea of
course; it’s her place.’
‘O, please don’t make any difference on my account,’ cried Cynthia,
with a timidly beseeching glance at that stony countenance. ‘I have
never been accustomed to pour out the tea. I should feel quite
awkward, unless Joshua wished it,’ with a little look at her husband,
which plainly said, His lightest wish is my law.
‘I desire nothing that can cause discomfort or ill-will in this
household,’ answered Joshua. ‘All I wish is that we may live happily
together, in perfect peace and union. Pour out the tea, Judith, and
let there be no senseless fuss about trifles.’
‘I’m not one to make a fuss about nothing,’ replied Judith, with
dignity. ‘But it’s just as well to put things on a proper footing at
once. It saves misunderstanding afterwards.’
And with this protest she assumed her accustomed position, which she
never afterwards offered to resign.
Cynthia took the chair nearest her husband, nestling to his side, and
looking up at him with bright glances of admiration and regard as he
talked about home affairs with his daughter.
Jim came home by and by, full of importance, and was presented to
his father’s wife. The surprise was startling for him as well as for
the rest, but he received the blow much more coolly than his aunt
and sister. His brain, sharpened by a course of wholesale and retail
grocery, took in the material aspects of this change in his family
circumstances, rather than that spiritual side of things which had
troubled Naomi. He did not think regretfully of his father’s second
marriage as a foolish and undignified act in a grave career; but he
began to wonder what effect this union might exercise upon his own
prospects.
‘As long as father gives me the business, I’m content,’ he told
himself. ‘And my stepmother looks a pretty foolish thing, that
wouldn’t be likely to make one’s life unpleasant. I hope she’ll take
the reins out of aunt Judith’s hands, and let us have puddens every
day.’
It was not till after prayers that Naomi left off expecting Oswald,
who rarely let an evening pass without coming in, were it but for
half an hour. But on this particular evening the Squire had taken
it into his head to be prosy, and kept his son at home, talking
politics by the wood fire in the dining-room, while the autumn wind
sighed and moaned in the wide old chimney.
‘I wonder what Oswald will think of father’s marriage?’ was Naomi’s
chief thought that evening.
CHAPTER IV.
‘I LEAN UPON THEE, DEAR, WITHOUT ALARM.’
Naomi awoke with a strange feeling of trouble on the morning after
her father’s return with his young wife. She felt like one who, after
some sudden bereavement, awakens to the old familiar world to find it
desolate and empty.
‘I have lost my father,’ came like a cry of despair from her troubled
heart; and then came Reason, the calm and quiet teacher, and sat
down by her bed, and argued the matter to its logical issue, and
showed her that her father had done her no wrong. She blushed at the
thought of her own selfishness--she to grudge her father this new
happiness--she who had given so much of her heart to another--she who
was so soon to abandon the home-nest.
‘But my father has always been first, my father will always be
first, in my heart,’ she said to herself excusingly.
‘Let her only make my father happy, and I shall be satisfied,’ she
thought, as she stood before the little looking-glass, twisting the
heavy coil of hair round her neat tortoise-shell comb. ‘I wish she
were only a little older. She has such a childish look. I cannot
fancy her a companion for my father.’
Naomi went down-stairs with a determination to be very kind to the
poor little wife--to shield her, if need were, from aunt Judith’s
acrimony; but on this first morning aunt Judith was scrupulously
civil; if she erred at all it was on the side of over-politeness. She
was inclined to be righteous over-much in her dealings with the new
member of the household.
Jim greeted his stepmother with frank familiarity, and offered to
take her for a nutting expedition in the woods after dinner.
‘Of course you’re fond of nuts?’ he said.
‘I’m very fond of the woods,’ answered Cynthia, whose heart
overflowed with kindly feeling for these stepchildren, and who was
grateful for the smallest token of regard on their part.
‘I should like to know how the business is to go on if you’re out
nutting every afternoon,’ said Judith, turning sharply on her nephew.
She was not going to waste civility on him.
‘Come, now, I’ve been sticking pretty close to the shop for the last
six months. I don’t often play truant, I’m sure, and there’s not much
doing in my line between dinner and tea.’
‘Of course, if Mrs. Haggard wishes you to go out walking--’
‘Call me Cynthia, please,’ cried the girl, and then added timidly,
‘unless you would like to call me sister.’
‘You’re very kind, but I couldn’t turn my tongue to it. I never had a
sister, and I can’t bring myself to make believe. As to calling you
by your Christian name, I should feel myself wanting in respect to my
brother’s wife; and nobody shall ever have cause to lay that at my
door.’
‘I shall call you Cynthia, though,’ said Jim. ‘It would never do for
a great hobbledehoy like me to be calling a pretty little thing like
you mother. Folks would split their sides with laughing. And you’ll
come nutting this afternoon? There’s hazel and cobnuts, and no end,
in Matcherly Wood. It’s three miles from here; but you can walk that
much, I daresay.’
‘I am a pretty good walker,’ answered Cynthia, delighted to be on
such good terms with her stepson.
‘Shall I wash the tea-things?’ she asked, when breakfast was over and
Joshua had gone out.
‘I’ve washed ’em for the last four-and-twenty years, and I shouldn’t
like harm to come to them,’ answered Judith politely; ‘you needn’t
trouble about it, Mrs. Haggard. All you’ve got to do is to amuse
yourself; you’re the mistress here, and it’s your place to be waited
on.’
‘But, indeed, Miss Haggard, I have never been accustomed--’ protested
Cynthia.
‘What you may have been accustomed to has nothing to do with it,’
replied Judith. ‘You are my brother’s wife, and you shall be treated
as such. There’s the best parlour, when you like to sit by yourself.
_We_ haven’t used it on workadays; but, of course, that’s no reason
why you shouldn’t.’
‘I had rather sit in the room you use,’ said Cynthia, oppressed by
so much courtesy; ‘I should be very sorry to cause any trouble or
alteration in your life.’
Naomi was somewhat restless in her goings in and out, and up and down
stairs, between breakfast and dinner, on this particular morning,
having an idea that, as Oswald had not paid her his accustomed visit
yesterday, he was likely to come early to-day; and she was anxious
to be the first to tell him of the startling change that had taken
place in the household, to soften the edge of his resentment should
he be inclined to resent this act of her father’s. She had not quite
realised the fact that no one had any right to question Joshua’s
disposal of his own life.
There were the usual morning tasks: a batch of starched curtains
to be ironed on the board in front of the kitchen window--the best
parlour to be dusted and beeswaxed--flowers to be trimmed and
watered. But throughout her performance of these duties Naomi was
listening or watching for Oswald’s coming. Dinner-time came, however,
and no Oswald.
Joshua went out directly after dinner, and Judith retired to her
stronghold behind the counter. Cynthia and Jim started for their walk
to Matcherly Wood, and Naomi was standing at the parlour window,
in her afternoon dress, in that quiet hour of the declining day
when the sky takes a golden tinge above distant woods. She had been
watching some time, when she saw her lover coming round the bend
of the road, walking slowly till he caught sight of her, and then
quickening his pace, and approaching her with a smile. She went out
to the garden-gate to meet him, and they went to the garden together,
instead of going into the dull old house. They greeted each other
with the tranquil affection of lovers whose future happiness is
secure, whose present bliss is undisturbed by outward influences or
inward doubts.
‘Why didn’t you come yesterday evening, Oswald?’
‘Because my father took it into his head to be unusually
conversational, and I did not like to leave him without a listener. I
thought I could make amends for last night’s self-denial by coming to
tempt you out for a morning ramble in the woods; but this morning the
Squire discovered that he was not well enough to keep an appointment
with his tenant at Chale, and sent me off to represent him; so
after a ten-mile ride upon Herne I had to walk about a farm all the
morning, hearing complaints and excuses, and inspecting improvements
of whose nature or advantage I had only the vaguest idea, yet about
which I knew I should have to stand a rasping cross-examination on my
return.’
‘Poor Oswald!’
‘I’m afraid I never was made to grow rich out of the soil, Naomi. And
did you really miss me, dearest? That would be a wonderful admission
from you. You don’t often gratify my self-esteem by letting me think
myself necessary to your happiness.’
‘Oswald!’ she said, with a tender reproachfulness in the serious
eyes, which meant much more than words.
‘You would have me believe that love’s best language is silence,’ he
answered playfully; ‘but I sometimes wish you were just a little more
given to sweet words.’
‘There are some feelings that are too sacred to be spoken of lightly.
If it should please Heaven to put my affection to the test, you would
not find it wanting.’
‘I believe that, dear. I have a measureless faith in your truth and
constancy, only I am exacting enough to sigh for a little more warmth
as well. There are moments in which I have asked myself, Is this
love, or only a sublimated friendship? We have schooled ourselves to
such perfect tranquillity; we have so stifled all the agitations and
emotions which poets depict as love’s necessary adjuncts--nay, love’s
very atmosphere--that I have found myself asking, Is it really love?
or is it some calmer, softer, holier feeling, such as the saints of
old felt for each other; a sentiment which might be breathed through
a convent grating, or communicated by martyr to martyr in a pitying
sigh on the pathway to the stake?’
‘I don’t know whether my love is like the love your poets write
about, Oswald--that Court poet, for instance, who was in love with
Amoret and Sacharissa at the same time--but I know that if my life
were weighed against it, love would conquer life.’
‘My dearest,’ cried Oswald tenderly, drawing her to him, ‘I will
never say these foolish things again. Yours is the true love, yours
are the depth and steadfastness; and I am a shallow wretch who cannot
properly understand any feeling that does not gush forth in a torrent
of words. Darling, I will trust you, and believe implicitly in the
love that is not loud.’
They had come to the end of the garden, and to that green oasis of
grass plot where there were a bench and table under the shade of
trees whose leaves were now fast falling, or hanging limp and yellow
on the dark-brown branches. It was one of those still autumnal
afternoons on which the earth seems to rest in a dreamy silence, as
if wearied by summer’s long pageant. Her corn is garnered, her fruits
are stored, she has done her work, this faithful Mother Earth, and
she folds her hands in the soft September atmosphere and composes
herself for winter’s long sleep.
‘My Naomi, how grave you are!’ said Oswald when they had strolled to
the wilderness without a word on either side.
‘I have something to tell you, Oswald,’ she answered, looking at him
anxiously.
‘Nothing bad, I hope. No postponement of our marriage?’
‘No. It is something about my father, something that will surprise
you very much--perhaps shock you.’
Oswald was puzzled. He had been taught to consider Joshua Haggard a
rich man--a man who made money fast and spent it slowly; but Naomi’s
words and manner suggested trouble of some kind, and he could only
imagine financial difficulty.
‘You mean that your father’s business is not so profitable as we
believe,’ he said; ‘he has some apprehension of failure?’
‘It is nothing about business. My father has married again, Oswald.
He brought his wife home to us yesterday evening.’
Oswald gave a long sigh of astonishment.
‘That is a surprise! But as long as it does not make you unhappy,
darling, and I don’t see why it should, as you’ll soon be out of a
stepmother’s power, it can’t make any difference to me. Who is the
lady? Is she very grim and awful?’
‘She is very pretty, and younger than I.’
‘You don’t mean it?’
‘I hope you won’t despise my father, Oswald?’ said Naomi
deprecatingly.
‘Despise him for marrying a pretty young woman instead of an ugly old
one! No, my dear, I am not so inhuman. The fact is sudden enough to
be startling, but it is not unnatural. And a pretty girl will hardly
be a gorgon as a stepmother. You are not very much afraid of her, are
you, Naomi?’
‘Poor child! I think she is more inclined to be afraid of me. It is
such a relief to have told you, Oswald. You will not think any the
worse of my father, will you, dear?’
‘Think worse of him for being human enough to fall in love. No,
Naomi; I am too deeply entangled in the meshes myself not to have
a fellow-feeling for another prisoner in the net. And for a man
of your father’s age, love is a very serious business. Cupid has
a stronger grip upon sober manhood than on shallow and frivolous
youth. Tell me all about it, dear. Who is the lady? Young, you say,
and pretty? Do I know her? Have I ever seen her? Is she one of your
Bethelites?’
‘No, Oswald; she’s quite a stranger. She was never at Combhaven till
yesterday evening.’
‘And do you know nothing about her?’
Naomi was silent. Here was a divided duty. Oswald, as her future
husband, had a right to possess her confidence; yet loyalty to her
father demanded that she should keep the secret of his wife’s lowly
origin; and she had some sense of personal shame in the idea that her
father’s wife had been one little year ago a houseless wanderer upon
the country side, without name or friends--a waif, whose only history
was of starvation and ill-usage.
‘Is she vulgar, or disagreeable in any way?’ asked Oswald, taking
Naomi’s silence as an evidence of embarrassment, and picturing to
himself some miller’s blowsy-cheeked daughter, or worse, perhaps,
the vivacious handmaid of some roadside inn.
‘No; she is gentle and quiet. I do not think you will dislike her. I
only feared that you might think my father foolish for having chosen
such a young wife.’
The church-clock struck five, the inevitable tea-time; and Naomi
turned to leave the wilderness, where the patriarchal ferns were
already brown and yellow, while younger varieties still retained
their tender green.
They went back to the house by the long straight pathway between
the borders of rose-bushes and old-fashioned autumn flowers, which
bounded the neat expanse of vegetables in carefully kept rows; the
celery-bed, which already breathed forth its aromatic odour; the
dark leaves of beet-root, and straggling winter kail. Oswald felt a
mild curiosity about the preacher’s new wife. He was slightly amused
at this revelation of human weakness in the reserved and dignified
Joshua, a man who had seemed to occupy a higher stage of life than
that on which human weaknesses have sway. He followed Naomi into the
house, and stood close behind her as she opened the parlour-door,
and, looking over her shoulder, saw Joshua’s wife.
Cynthia was kneeling by the newly-lighted fire, with her straw bonnet
hanging over her arm, just as she had come in from the nutting
expedition; her loosened hair falling a little over her face, her
cheeks flushed to a delicate carnation by air and exercise, her
eyes looking dreamily at the bright flames leaping up from the
newly-kindled wood; a pretty picture assuredly, concentrating all the
light in the dusky room. The tea-things were laid, but the family had
not yet assembled. Cynthia was alone.
She started up as Naomi entered with her lover, and stood before them
shyly, too much abashed by a stranger’s presence for speech.
‘I hope you enjoyed your ramble,’ said Naomi kindly.
‘The wood was lovely. It was very kind of your brother to take me
there.’
‘I think it was kind of you to go with him. This is Mr. Pentreath.
I--I have told him about my father’s marriage.’
Cynthia curtsied, and Oswald held out his hand, at which she gave him
hers shyly, never having shaken hands with any one so different from
the young men of Penmoyle, whose hands were always red and inclined
to coarseness, and who breathed hard in society. She was not awed or
impressed by Oswald’s appearance, as she had been by Joshua Haggard’s
dark and earnest face, but she considered him highly ornamental.
Oswald was surprised by this delicate and flower-like beauty. He
had expected to see a pretty young woman, buxom and good-tempered,
with rosy cheeks adorned by large bunches of curls, not innocent of
bergamot-scented pomatum, coral earrings, perhaps, and one of those
velvet headbands which he so heartily detested--the kind of young
woman he had seen in a tobacconist’s shop at Exeter.
He looked at Cynthia silently, lost in wonder. Where could Joshua
Haggard have discovered this gracious creature? It was as if he had
come unawares into that homely parlour and found Milton’s Sabrina or
Ovid’s Daphne standing by the hearth.
Mr. Haggard came in presently, followed by his sister. He gave his
wife a little look of greeting which was full of quiet tenderness,
and then welcomed his future son-in-law with a hearty shake-hands.
‘You see I have stolen a march upon you all, Oswald,’ he said. ‘At my
age a man does not care to make a fuss about getting married; and I
knew that Naomi and you would give my wife an affectionate welcome. I
had no occasion to stipulate for that beforehand.’
Cynthia had slipped away to carry her bonnet up-stairs. She had been
too well trained by the Miss Weblings not to know that a bonnet flung
carelessly on a chair in the family sitting-room would be an offence
to aunt Judith. She came back breathless, with her hair neatly
arranged, and took her seat by her husband’s side, but not before
Miss Haggard had exclaimed,
‘When ever are we going to sit down to tea, I wonder? It’s a
quarter-past already. I don’t know what’s come to the house.’
CHAPTER V.
‘TROP BELLE POUR MOI, VOILÀ MON TRÉPAS.’
The actual machinery of life, the common details of domestic
existence, underwent little change after Joshua Haggard’s second
marriage, and the introduction of a fair girl-wife into the sober
household. The change was in the minds of the household, not in
outward things. Aunt Judith abated no jot or tittle of her authority.
Her assumption of her accustomed post at the tea-table upon the
evening of Cynthia’s arrival was symbolical of her maintenance of
supreme authority in all domestic matters. She did not even offer to
surrender the keys of those awful and impenetrable repositories in
which she kept the jams and jellies, the pickles and home-made wines,
and all those items which, in Jim’s opinion, gave savour and relish
to life--the ornamental margin of existence’s daily needs, like the
labyrinthine scroll-work and illumination which border the text in
a mediæval Bible. She retained supreme authority in the kitchen; and
this young wife’s coming did not benefit her stepson by so much as an
extra pudding on weekdays, or a currant cake flavoured with saffron,
and of that golden hue his soul loved, on Sundays.
Before Cynthia had been established in her new home for the space of
a week she had discovered that her domestic duties and rights were
alike usurped by another, that in yielding the teapot she had given
up her place in her husband’s home. This was a disappointment; for in
her happy dreams of life with Joshua she had seen herself ministering
to him, providing for his comforts, working with those busy clever
hands of hers for his small needs and simple luxuries, lending new
graces and pleasures to his daily life, were they but the smallest
things, such as a bunch of fresh flowers on his breakfast-table, or a
dish of light cakes at tea-time. She had a natural taste for and love
of household work--a handiness in all womanly offices which had won
her the approval of her mistresses at Penmoyle; and to be shut out of
these offices was a hardship she felt keenly.
Not one word of complaint was ever spoken by her, or Joshua would
have promptly transferred the domestic sceptre. She was by nature
submissive, and the experience of her brief life had made obedience a
habit. She bowed her neck to Judith’s yoke, and resigned her simple
household privileges without a murmur. Joshua thought it right, no
doubt, or he would not look on approvingly. She did not know that
Joshua--whose temporal and spiritual duties filled his time and
thoughts to overflowing--had never thought about the matter at all.
She remembered what he had said on that first evening--‘Let there
be peace in the household, and no foolish fuss about trifles;’ and
she accepted this speech as a command. Any opposition to aunt Judith
would be rebellion against her husband.
Cynthia’s position in the family, therefore, seemed rather that of
daughter than wife. She sat by her husband’s side at meals; she spent
her mornings in needlework, and her afternoons in serious reading,
or occasionally in a ramble on the sea-shore or in the woods with
Jim. She would have been better pleased to accompany her husband on
his pastoral visits to distant homesteads and cottages, but Joshua
told her gently that her presence would be out of place on such
occasions. She taught in Mr. Haggard’s Sunday-school, held in a roomy
loft at the top of the chapel. She often went to read to the sick and
aged among her husband’s flock, delighted to be of some use in this
manner; but these occupations left a wide margin of her life to be
filled somehow; and there were afternoon hours in which she sat with
the Bible or Baxter open before her, and her thoughts wandering far
from the text.
There were some sad thoughts mingled with her full contentment in an
union which had seemed to her royal and triumphant as Esther’s bridal
with Ahasuerus. She had been quick to perceive the consternation
her appearance had occasioned on that first evening; and she
was conscious that beneath Judith’s cold civility and somewhat
exaggerated politeness there lurked a disapproving spirit that was
not to be conciliated. Let her be never so assiduous to please
her husband’s sister, Judith would never love her; and, more than
this, Judith had contrived to let her know, without any apparent
unkindness of intention, that Joshua’s marriage had lowered him in
the esteem of his flock.
‘We can’t all be apostles and martyrs,’ said Judith; ‘but folks
expected a great deal of my brother. “He that is unmarried careth
for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord,”
and he that’s married doesn’t. St. Paul says that pretty plain, you
see; there’s no getting away from the right meaning of his words. And
people will naturally cast that up at my brother--marrying a second
time, and a girl younger than his daughter. I don’t blame you, my
dear. I daresay if you’d thought of these things you’d have said no,
especially as your own inclination would have led you to prefer a
younger man.’
‘I could never have loved or honoured any one as I love and honour my
husband,’ protested Cynthia, flushing with anger at the suggestion.
‘Ah,’ sighed Judith, with a world of significance, ‘of course it was
a great thing for you to come to such a home as this, and a husband
as comfortably off as my brother. It isn’t many young women in
service that get as well provided for.’
‘I hope you don’t think--’ cried Cynthia eagerly.
‘I trust I’m too much of a Christian to think evil of any one,’
replied aunt Judith, with dignity. ‘I’m thinking what _other_ people
will say. You can’t stop their tongues. If they choose to say that my
brother Joshua was led away from his own principles and the First of
Corinthians by a pretty face, and that you married him for the sake
of a home, there’s no law in the land to hinder ’em from having their
say.’
Thus for the first time in her life Cynthia heard of that invisible
and irresponsible tribunal which is always sitting outside our
doors; and was taught to feel that it was not to her Creator and her
own conscience alone she had to answer, but that she ought also to
shape her acts to meet the views of other people; other people would
measure her conduct by their standard, sound the depths of her heart
with their plummet; and unheard, undefended, ignorant alike of her
indictment and her sentence, she would be convicted and condemned.
This was a chilling revelation to one as innocent of life’s
complexities as Miranda or Perdita. One of the few lessons in the
world’s bitter school which Cynthia had thoroughly learned was to
endure undeserved affliction patiently. She bore aunt Judith’s sharp
stings and quiet stabs as meekly as she had borne ill-usage from the
tyrants of her childhood. But she felt her punishment none the less
keenly; and already, ere she had been married a month, began to ask
herself if Joshua had verily done wisely in marrying her, and whether
it would not have been better for her to have gone on worshipping him
at a distance all her life, spending her tranquil industrious days
in the little kitchen at Penmoyle, doing her duty, and being praised
for faithful service, among people who were in no wise scandalised by
her existence. It had been a very monotonous life, containing little
for memory to dwell on, offering still less for hope to build upon;
and the river of life, which youth would fain sail upon, is a bright
and swiftly flowing current--not a tideless canal. But it had been
a life full of peace, and already in this new life there had come a
feeling which was not peace. Unhappily Judith’s Christianlike and
candid remarks upon popular feeling at Combhaven were sustained by a
foundation of truth. The minister’s congregation did not contemplate
his second marriage with entire approval. They were not prepared to
take his youthful flaxen-haired wife to their hearths and bosoms
with any warmth of affection. She would be invited out to tea, of
course, and best teapots would be taken out of their chamois-leather
enfoldings, and amber-hued cakes would be baked for her regalement;
but there would be little heartiness in her reception--it would
be ceremonial and civic only, like the welcome of a foreign
princess when the nation feels their prince has made a foolish or
insignificant choice.
There were so many things to be said against this marriage of Joshua
Haggard’s. In the first place, why marry at all? In the second, if he
must needs marry, why not choose one of his own flock--a comfortable
widow, for instance--and there were several comfortable widows among
the Bethelites--whose antecedents would be patent to everybody at
Combhaven, whose life from the cradle upwards would be as well
known to the community as the pattern of her parlour carpet, or the
furniture in her best bedroom? Such a marriage, though unspiritual,
and, in somewise, depoetising the ideal pastor, would at least have
recommended itself to the more practical members of the congregation
as prudent and suitable.
Whatever disappointment such a marriage might have caused in those
loftier minds which had elevated the preacher and teacher into the
Saint and Apostle--minds to be found chiefly among the spinsters of
Joshua’s flock--it could hardly have occasioned scandal; but this
unannounced, unexplained union with an unknown young woman from the
far West of Cornwall--a girl who had worked in the mines, perhaps,
and worn unholy attire, and toiled shoulder-to-shoulder with rough
barbarians, speaking a strange tongue--this was enough to inspire
unpleasant doubts in the minds of Joshua’s congregation, to call all
their prejudices to arms against the fair intruder.
Who was she--supposing that she had not worked in the mines? Who
was she? whence came she? to whom belonged she?--questions to which
no one could supply any categorical or satisfactory answer, though
speculative answers and suggestions were to be had in abundance.
Whence came this wandering rumour, traceable to no particular source,
yet in everybody’s mouth, that Joshua had found his young wife by
the wayside, a beggar, with bare feet, houseless, friendless, not
even knowing the name of her kindred, or the place of her birth, nor
on what parish she might fasten her helplessness; the merest waif
upon the stream of life? This notion could hardly have arisen from
any imprudent communicativeness upon the part of aunt Judith, for,
when sounded by solicitous friends upon the subject of her brother’s
marriage, that lady had refrained from all expression of opinion
save such dumb, inscrutable movements as shoulder-shrugs, elevation
of the eyebrows, lips tightly drawn, and head shaken with a solemn
significance. Whatever this dumbshow meant, Combhaven felt assured
that it meant a great deal, and meant no good.
There was a general and growing conviction that Joshua had acted
foolishly, if not wickedly, in marrying this strange young woman.
‘How are the mighty fallen!’ cried the Bethelites; and in their
lamentations over the degradation of their pastor, they indulged
in a great deal of Scriptural language to his disadvantage. Perhaps
the value of our Bible never comes so fully home to us as when we
quote it against our erring neighbour. It was felt that Joshua held
the same position in Combhaven that David must have occupied in
Jerusalem after that lamentable episode in the princely life which
brought greatness to the level of the sinful herd. The preacher read
disapproval in the faces of his flock on the first Sabbath after his
marriage; he discovered a coldness, an alteration in the tone of
those customers at the shop who were of his congregation. His Church
of England patrons, on the contrary, congratulated him heartily upon
his marriage, and praised his wife’s pretty face in the friendliest
manner. But they had never canonised the pastor; they contemplated
him solely in his aspect as a general dealer; and what more natural,
what more distinctly human, than that a well-to-do grocer should
beautify the autumn of his life with the charms and graces of a young
wife?
Joshua saw the change in his flock, and his heart rebelled against
their hardness. Pride sustained him--a manly and honest pride, and a
spiritual pride, which told him that he was better than the best of
those who presumed to sit in judgment upon him. Who among them had
toiled for the good cause as he had done? Who, among these professing
Methodists, had trodden in the footsteps of the great founder of
Methodism as he had trodden, faithfully imitating that pious man’s
asceticism and self-denial? And were these people, whom he had served
so faithfully, for whose spiritual welfare he had laboured so hard,
to turn the light that he had kindled against him, to distort the
law he had taught them, in order to pass an iniquitous sentence upon
their teacher? He felt these cold looks and altered greetings keenly
as a deep injustice, and shut himself up in the armour of offended
pride. God had given him this infinite blessing--the love of a pure
and lovely woman--and was man’s malice to poison his cup of bliss?
No, he told himself. He could live without the world’s regard. He
had never served mankind for their own sake, and he could dispense
with their affection. In his prayers and sermons at this time of
estrangement he raised himself so far above the level of daily life
and earthly ills, that there was no taint of personal feeling to be
perceived in any of his words, no murmur against man’s injustice
crept into his communion with God. Never had his teaching been
clearer or more elevated; never were his prayers more fervent. Into
that spiritual world of which he possessed the key neither worldly
malice nor worldly misconception could follow him.
Again, at the worst, were his flock never so ungrateful, he knew
of one listener whose mute enthusiasm was in itself sufficient
for inspiration. If he had not been able, of his own unassisted
strength, to lift up his soul to the very gates of heaven, that
look of Cynthia’s, as she sat in the narrow little pew just under
the square box of a pulpit, would have been the source of pure
imaginings and holy thoughts. His Sabbaths were now such blessed
days; for all the time he did not owe to duty he gave to his young
wife. They walked together by that lovely sea which in its jewel-like
colouring so often recalled the Oriental imagery of Holy Writ.
They talked together of spiritual things, with a fond familiarity
which is natural to those whose only poetry, whose only knowledge
of the beautiful, has been drawn from Scripture. Cynthia’s greatest
delight at this time was to hear her husband talk of his youthful
career, his discouragements and successes, his alternate despair and
triumph; those hysterical gusts of enthusiasm in the newly-converted
which had promised so much, those chilling disappointments caused by
backsliding in his brightest disciples, the sudden going out of the
sacred fire.
Perfectly blessed in such perfect love, Joshua was able to live his
own life with supreme indifference as to the opinion of the outside
world; and this independence of feeling speedily revealing itself
to the flock, there was a general sense of disappointment at the
discovery that Mr. Haggard had not been crushed by their disapproval,
and then the cold looks began to give place to friendly smiles and
salutations, as of old. The pastor was complimented on his last
sermon; the more select of the community were pressing in their
invitations to tea-parties of a ceremonious character.
Joshua, who had felt his affections outraged, was not so easily to
be won back to the pleasant path of brotherly love. He rejected all
invitations to tea, responded coldly to the warmest salutations, and
heard men’s praises of his eloquence unmoved. But in all pastoral
duties he was faithful, as of old; ministered to the sick, taught
in his school, gave three evenings a week to a class of young men
belonging to the labouring community, who met in the loft over the
chapel for serious reading and conversation by the light of two
dip candles, and joined in a hymn before they separated. It may be
supposed, therefore, that, with the exception of those tranquil
Sabbath hours between the services, there was not much time left
for him to devote to his young wife, and that Cynthia had plenty of
leisure in which to meditate upon things spiritual and temporal.
CHAPTER VI.
A FAMILY PICTURE.
The year drew to its close, and society at Combhaven, which possessed
something of that capacity for adapting itself to circumstances which
is characteristic of society in wider circles, had got accustomed
to the idea of Joshua Haggard’s marriage; and, if not altogether
reconciled to his union, had become, at any rate, resigned to the
inevitable.
‘It’s a blessed mercy for Mr. Haggard that he’s got a sister to
look after his house and keep the furniture polished, and see that
the bottoms of the loaves and broken pieces don’t get thrown to the
fowls,’ remarked careful housewives to each other in the friendly
loquacity of the tea-table, ‘or else things would go to wrack and
ruin altogether, I should think, with a young wife like that.’
‘And so pretty, too,’ sighed a matron, gently shaking the stiffest
of caps, as if prettiness were a crime.
‘Pretty and useless, no doubt, poor thing. And he seems so foolishly
fond of her. I’m sure to see them out walking together you’d think
they were sweethearts that had only just begun to keep company,’
remarked Mrs. Pycroft, of the First and Last, whose conversations
with her husband after marriage had been chiefly of a didactic or
argumentative character.
Once, and once only, had Joshua--whose style of preaching was more
personal and familiar than that which obtained at this time in the
Established Church, where the chaff of abstruse doctrine was but
sparsely qualified with the grain of moral teaching and Gospel
truth--approached indirectly the subject of his marriage.
He had been quoting Richard Baxter’s _Call to the Unconverted_, and,
suddenly diverging from the theology of the preacher, enlarged upon
the man and his life.
‘It was in many ways a life of trial, yet in all ways a life full
of blessing,’ he said; ‘nor do I count it the smallest of graces
which Providence bestowed upon this great and good man that, at
forty-seven years of age, he was blessed in the affection of a wife
of three-and-twenty. He had come to that time of life without having
ever known the sweetness of domestic happiness. But it pleased God
that he should be the instrument of this dear girl’s conversion,
and that her heart should go forth to him who had brought her the
message of salvation. There were some, perchance, in those evil days
who were scandalised by this marriage; for it had been a part of
Baxter’s creed that for ministers to marry was barely lawful. But
Heaven smiled upon this wedded pair, who were verily married in the
Lord; and Baxter has told us that he found in his wife a helpmeet, a
comforter in all his sorrows, the sharer of his prison, and always
the helper to his joy.’
Before the year was ended Naomi had become completely reconciled to
her father’s marriage. She had suffered faint thrills of pain just at
first, when she saw Cynthia draw her chair near Joshua’s, and perhaps
sit with her hand in his, while he read the evening Scriptures.
She had felt it just a little hard to see her father’s eyes rest
with such ineffable love upon the face of the stranger; but she
had schooled her heart to submit to this loss--if loss it could be
called--since her father was more affectionate to his children than
he had been before his marriage. She had subdued all human jealousy,
and had taught herself to be glad that her father had won so fair
and faithful a companion. There was something indescribably touching
in the young wife’s childlike affection for her husband, her intense
belief in him, her unbounded admiration for his talents and powers as
preacher and teacher, her implicit faith in his judgment. If flattery
be a pleasant poison, Joshua was in a fair way to be poisoned by the
sweetest of all flatteries--the exaggerated estimate which springs
from womanly love. Love with a woman of this temper is but another
name for worship; and Cynthia’s love had begun in a spiritual
idolatry which had set Joshua but a little way below the saints
and apostles he had taught her to reverence. In a man so truthful
as Joshua closer communion revealed no flaw, familiarity was not
followed by disillusion. After two months of married life the husband
still occupied the pedestal upon which Cynthia had elevated the
teacher; but, although she had suffered no disappointment in the man
himself, her vivid and romantic mind began to find something wanting
in his surroundings. The atmosphere of her daily life was depressing;
the young eager spirit yearned for work of some kind, and was flung
back upon the dull blank of idleness. She sighed for keener air, a
wider horizon, yet scarcely knew what she desired. She had secret
aspirations for her husband, and rebelled against that commonplace
trade which occupied one half of his life--that buying and selling
and getting gain, which seemed to her enthusiastic mind a practical
denial of the Gospel which the trader preached on Sundays, the lesson
which he taught his flock on weekdays. These divided duties, this
solicitous service to a worldly master, struck her as out of joint
with her husband’s sacred character. To her, who had known no other
church than this Dissenting community, and who hardly knew that they
were Dissenters, Joshua was as holy as if Episcopal hands had been
laid upon him, and she was troubled by the incongruity between the
trader and the priest. Yet, seeing that Joshua saw no harm in his
calling, that he held honest trade as an honourable office, she dared
not lift up her voice in remonstrance, and accepted the shop as one
of those things which, like aunt Judith, were an inevitable element
in her life.
Christmas brought cheerful thoughts and friendly relations between
the minister and his flock. Presents rained upon Joshua at this
season, and those stiffnecked members of his congregation who had
lifted the nose at his marriage, atoned for their unfriendly feeling
by the fattest of turkeys and youngest of geese. Christmas was a
season of much eating and drinking at Combhaven; and even Methodism
forgot to be ascetic, and gorged itself with beef and pudding, with
a riotous delight in the good things of this mortal life that would
have made William Law’s hair stand on end. The Established Church
woke up from its comfortable doze, and sang carols on Christmas-eve;
the ecclesiastical feeling for colour displayed itself in sprigs of
holly, stuck here and there in convenient places by the hands of
beadle and pew-opener; and a dole of bread, provided by the bequest
of the virtuous dame Margery Hawker, of this parish, was meted out
to five-and-twenty poor women on Christmas morning. New bonnets,
modelled upon the coal-scuttle of the period, were to be seen above
the high oaken pews of St. Mary Magdalene, and enlivened the crowded
congregation at Little Bethel. It was altogether a season of pleasant
thoughts and general contentment, a season which seemed very sweet to
Naomi, as she walked in the leafless woods with the lover who was so
soon to be her husband. Early in March, before the birds had pecked
the crocuses to death, before the daffodils had begun their fairy
dances in the windy afternoons, Naomi and Oswald were to be married
at the gray old parish church. It was a wonderful thing to think of.
Naomi was to be a great lady, and live at the Grange, and have that
pretty morning-room, with its dainty bookcases, and neat duodecimo
edition of the old poets, bound in white vellum, for her very own.
She was to belong to the old Squire and his son. The gardens and
the park, where the cattle browsed, and the beautiful mysterious
wood, with its glades and dells and lopsided old trees, and knolls
and thickets, which one could never quite know by heart, were to be
hers--a part of her life, inseparable from all her future years.
‘You will let me go to chapel, Oswald?’ she asked earnestly; ‘you
will never try to keep me away from Little Bethel?’
‘My dearest, I would rather go there with you than hinder your going.
You shall be free, my dear. These things are more to you than they
are to me. It would be hard if I were to oppose my prejudices to your
deep-rooted faith. And who shall say whether John Wesley’s creed is
right or wrong? It is a comfortable doctrine most assuredly that sin
brings us closer to Christ, and that the deeper we sink in the mire
the nearer we are to the stars.’
‘O Oswald, you don’t understand. It is our consciousness of sin that
brings us to the Fount of grace, not the sin.’
They were very happy at this Christmastide. It was one of those
green yules to which popular prejudice accredits the filling of
churchyards, although the _Times_ obituary goes far to prove the good
old-fashioned Christmas, with his icicle diadem and his mantle of
snow, Death’s sterner coadjutor. Blackbirds were merry in the woods
at evensong, and mistaken dog-violets struggled into untimely bloom
under the shelter of tall hedges. Oswald dined with his father upon
the great festival, and, as soon as he decently could do so, stole
away from the fire-lit dining-room, leaving the old Squire asleep
in his big arm-chair, where he would in all likelihood slumber
peacefully until bed-time, when he would awake with wonderful
briskness to go his round of the lower chambers, and see that every
bolt was duly drawn against thieves and burglars, for although half
a dozen spoons and forks, and a pair of salt-cellars with corpulent
bodies and attenuated legs comprised the utmost display of silver
that ever decorated the Squire’s table, there was a goodly store of
old tankards, venison-dishes, soup-tureens, and smaller plate stowed
away in the great oak closet in old Mr. Pentreath’s bedroom.
Oswald walked straight to the minister’s house--but not quite so fast
as he had been accustomed to walk in the same direction. The air
was wondrously mild; the western sky a pale primrose; the wooded
horizon-line bluer than it is wont to be. It was a winter twilight
that might tempt a man to linger, and Oswald was full of thought.
Early in March--so soon--for him, as for Naomi, that approaching
marriage was an event to be contemplated with wonder, almost with
disbelief. His apprenticeship, which at the beginning had seemed to
him as long as Jacob’s, was nearly ended. His patience and truth and
constancy were to have their reward.
‘Dear girl!’ he said to himself, thinking of his betrothed. ‘She is
the best and noblest of women; where could I find so perfect a wife?
I do not believe there is a flaw in her goodness. I always feel
myself a better man when I am with her. Yes, that is what a wife
ought to be.’
And then in his low legato tones he repeated that familiar verse of
Wordsworth’s--
‘A perfect woman, nobly planned’--
from a poem which seems to concentrate in thirty lines all that can
ever be said or sung in praise of womankind.
He could see the ruddy firelight shining in the minister’s best
parlour as he came round the bend of the road. It was tea-time,
and they were all assembled there, no doubt--aunt Judith in her
best gown, which was such an excellent fit across the chest as to
be faintly suggestive of a strait waistcoat; Naomi sitting in her
favourite corner with the red light flickering upon her glossy hair,
and those deep dark eyes of hers full of grave thoughts; and on the
other side of the hearth that childlike face and figure, the very
type of innocent and guileless maidenhood, Oswald’s idea of Goethe’s
Gretchen, nestling close to Joshua’s side, looking up at him now and
then with worshipping eyes.
Oswald saw the family scene afar off, as if it had been a
mirage-picture. He turned the handle of the door and went in.
The passage was dimly lighted by an oil-lamp. He knocked at the
parlour-door by way of ceremony, and the minister’s deep voice bade
him enter. Yes, the scene was just as his imagination had shown it
to him--aunt Judith seated at the tea-board, the old brown Bible at
Joshua’s right hand, Cynthia’s fair hair looking like palest gold
in the uncertain light, Naomi’s dark head drooping thoughtfully,
Jim screwed as close as possible to the fire, stooping to roast
chestnuts between the bars--a peaceful home-picture. They all looked
up and gave him welcome, but Naomi’s gratified smile was worth all
the rest.
‘I did not think you would be able to come,’ she exclaimed.
‘Luckily for me my father indulged in a heavier dinner than usual
and fell asleep immediately after it. But I should have contrived to
come under any circumstances. I hope I am in time for a cup of your
excellent tea, Miss Haggard? It is not every one can make such tea as
yours.’
‘Every one hasn’t been making tea in the same pot for five-and-twenty
years,’ replied aunt Judith, obviously mollified by this compliment.
‘You want to know your pot and to know your tea if it’s to be worth
drinking.’
Miss Haggard dispensed the beverage with an abnormal stiffness
peculiar to festive occasions and best gowns. Social gatherings of a
cheerful nature did not induce aunt Judith to unbend. On occasions
of this kind she assumed a spinal inflexibility which, in her mind,
was the surest indication of a virtuous bringing-up and a polite
education. And this backboard politeness was accepted at Combhaven,
where Miss Haggard was considered ‘quite the lady.’
‘I don’t know what’s coming to the women in this place,’ said aunt
Judith presently, when there was a pause in the conversation, ‘but I
think they must have set their hearts on spending money one against
the other. I counted four new bonnets in chapel this morning, without
counting Mrs. Spradgers’s, that had been fresh trimmed, and she only
had it in October, for I sold her the ribbon for it--a lovely maroon
with an orange spot.’
‘I hope you had something better to do in chapel than count the new
bonnets and think badly of your neighbours, Judith,’ remonstrated
Joshua.
‘I’ve got eyes in chapel as well as out of chapel,’ answered Judith,
‘and there’s times when the most serious-minded Christian can use
’em--while the hymn’s being given out, for instance; our time’s
our own then, I should think. All I can say is, that if milliners’
made-up bonnets--drawn silk trumpery that one heavy shower will
spoil--don’t bring Combhaven to ruin, nothing else will. There’s
Mrs. Flitton, that I’ve sold many a serviceable straw to in days
gone by, decked out in a velvet cottage with a bird of Paradise from
Barnstaple. It was luxury of this kind that led to the French king
losing his head when we were young folks, Joshua. I’ve heard you say
as much many a time, so don’t deny it.’
‘If you thought less of your neighbours’ shortcomings, Judith--’
‘I can’t help thinking of them when I’ve got fourteen straw bonnets,
best quality, left out of last summer’s stock. The shape will be old
next year, I daresay. Fashions change so quick nowadays. I shall have
to sell ’em to the servant-girls, half-price.’
‘How you do worry about a few shillings, aunt!’ cried Jim, in a
disgusted tone. ‘We make more on our side of the shop in a day than
you can lose on your side in a week.’
‘Thank you, Mr. Pert. When your father loses money by _my_ department
I hope he’ll tell me so. I haven’t heard of it yet.’
‘Then why do you make such a fuss about half a dozen straw bonnets?
You _said_ you were going to lose by ’em.’
‘If I lose by my bonnets I shall come home upon my ribbons, you may
be sure, Mr. James; and when you know the grocery business as well as
I know the drapery, you may take me to task, not sooner.’
‘We won’t talk any more about the shop this evening, Judith,’ said
Joshua. ‘We may be too assiduous in business.’
‘The Bible tells us not to be slothful,’ replied the aggrieved
Judith; ‘but I daresay it vexes Mrs. Haggard to hear such talk. She’d
have liked to have married a bishop, with his carriage and pair.’
This was a hit at Cynthia’s dislike to the shop, which the girl had
revealed involuntarily upon one or two occasions.
‘I should be glad if my husband had nothing to distract his thoughts
from his chapel and his schools,’ answered Cynthia. ‘Any man can keep
a shop. It seems a hard thing that his time should be taken up with
selling grocery.’
‘Does it seem a hard thing that he’s got a comfortable home and money
in the bank, and a fortune to give his daughter?’ demanded aunt
Judith. ‘He wouldn’t have got those out of Little Bethel.’
Cynthia sighed. She fancied it would have been far happier to have
wandered with her husband from village to village, tending him and
comforting him in his pilgrimage, than to lead this prosperous life
in a settled home, where there was so much to draw his mind away
from his great work. And was it for the sake of a substantial house
and daily food, for money heaped up in the bank, that the teacher
consented so to limit his sphere of usefulness--nay, in a manner to
hide his light under a bushel? Naomi had talked to Cynthia of that
missionary life which seemed so glorious to her, and the younger girl
had caught the enthusiasm of the elder. She felt as if her husband’s
true vocation lay far away beyond the wide strange seas, among the
races that had never heard of the Christian’s God.
Happily for household peace upon this festive occasion the clearing
away of the tea-things, and the retirement of Judith to wash them,
put an end to a discussion that had tended towards unpleasantness.
Naomi and Oswald were able to enjoy their quiet talk on one side of
the hearth, while Joshua read one of his favourite Puritan divines
on the other, Cynthia sitting by him in meek silence, full of sweet
thoughts and dreamy aspirations after an unknown good. James went on
roasting his chestnuts, which ever and anon exploded with a fizz and
a splutter, to his own delight and the consternation of the assembly.
‘How pretty she is!’ whispered Oswald to Naomi, contemplating
Cynthia’s thoughtful face during a pause in his talk. He watched
her with the same pleasure and interest he might have felt in the
contemplation of a pretty child--something soft and sweet and
helpless, which he looked down upon from the altitude of his mature
years.
‘Yes, she is very pretty and very good. My father is quite happy in
his marriage.’
‘Why does she never come with us in our walks? It must be dull for
her of an afternoon, when your father is out.’
‘She goes for a walk with Jim sometimes.’
‘But why not with us?’
‘I don’t know. She’s very shy. I rather think she’s afraid of you.’
‘Afraid of me! O, that’s too ridiculous.’
‘She thinks you a very fine gentleman.’
‘That’s delightful! You know how much of the fine gentleman there is
about me, Naomi. I am afraid she must be rather silly.’
‘O no, indeed. She is wonderfully bright and quick in everything.’
‘Is she? I should hardly have thought her so. We are talking of
you, Mrs. Haggard,’ pursued Oswald, abandoning his confidential,
half-whispering tone; ‘I have been asking Naomi why you never join us
in our afternoon rambles. Perhaps you don’t care for woods and hills?’
‘Yes I do,’ answered Cynthia; ‘I am very fond of this beautiful
place. It is prettier than anything I ever saw before.’
‘I should think so,’ said aunt Judith sharply. ‘It’s bare enough in
the mining country where you come from, I’ve always heard say.’
‘You should come with us sometimes, Mrs. Haggard,’ said Oswald.
‘Yes,’ said Joshua, looking up from his book. ‘It would be better for
you to go out-of-doors oftener, Cynthia. I find you sitting reading
or working in the parlour every afternoon when I come home to tea.’
‘There’s nothing so bad as poring over a book for a young woman’s
spine,’ said aunt Judith. ‘Mrs. Haggard will be round-shouldered
before she’s thirty if she doesn’t take care.’
Judith’s backbone was her tower of strength. Years might creep on,
the insidious approach of age might show itself in a sprinkling of
gray hairs among the dark ones--by crow’s-feet at the corners of the
eyes--but Judith’s spine defied the assailant Time. It straightened
itself against the enemy, and at eight-and-forty Miss Haggard was
more erect than she had been at eighteen.
‘Yes, my love, you must really have more air and exercise,’ said
Joshua.
Cynthia gave a faint sigh. She was very happy, on such an evening as
this, in her husband’s company, sitting next him, stealing her hand
into his now and then, or leaning against his shoulder to read a page
or so of the book he was reading; but there were times in her life
when she felt as if she belonged to no one. Thus it was that she had
taken to pore over books, or to sit long at some laborious piece of
plain needlework. There was so little for her to do; she was never
happier than when Joshua allowed her to go and sit in some stuffy
cottage, beside the bed of sickness or decrepitude, and read the Book
she loved. She felt then that she too had her mission in the world,
and that she was in some wise worthy of the husband who had chosen
her.
Not a festive Christmas evening this for those who have been wont to
associate the occasion with cheery family circles, merry children,
old-fashioned games, cards, forfeits, and snapdragon--the good old
traditional Christmas immortalised by Washington Irving and Charles
Dickens. A pack of cards had never been seen in Mr. Haggard’s house,
and forfeits or snapdragon he would have accounted childish folly.
His children had never been gratified with such empty delights. In
the day when he took up John Wesley as his guide and model, he
put away from him all small pleasures, all sensual gratifications.
At heart he was an ascetic, and it grated a little upon his sense
of right to see the board loaded with cold turkey and chine and
plum-pudding upon this particular evening. He would have been happier
eating his dry bread and hard cheese, and feeling that he was denying
himself while all the rest of the world were feasting and revelling.
There was a touch of the Pharisee’s spiritual pride here, perhaps;
but the pride had its source in that idea of calling and special
grace which was implanted in the preacher’s heart. Had he not been
chosen and elected in the days of his youth, when he first felt
himself called to do God’s work? He could name the day and hour.
It was no slow awakening to solemn truths, no gradual leavening
of the human mind with spiritual grace; but a sudden and absolute
conversion--an instantaneous call to righteousness. Yesterday a
child of wrath, to-day the heir of salvation, a citizen of heaven,
an inhabitant of eternity. Wondrous, mysterious had been this
Pentecostal season; he looked back at it with love and pride. How
pitiful a price had he paid for so great a treasure, in surrendering
the transient pleasures of this world!
And now Heaven had rewarded him with the sweetest of all earthly
blessings--the blessed joys of home.
He looked at his daughter, happy by her lover’s side; at his son,
healthy, intelligent, active, dutiful; at his useful sister, rough
and bitter, like medicinal herbs, but a faithful servant; at his
wife, dearest of all; and thanked God for these manifold blessings.
CHAPTER VII.
CYNTHIA TRIES TO BE USEFUL.
March had come; the anemones were white in the woods, the gummy
chestnut-buds were bursting in sheltered corners of the land, there
was a perfume of violets in the lanes, and primroses began to peep
out like pale earth-stars, amidst tender green tufts fringed with
the ragged disorder of last year’s leaves. The gaudy daffodils were
flaunting everywhere. March was growing old, but Naomi Haggard’s
wedding had not yet come to pass. The date had been fixed, and all
things had gone prosperously till within a week of the appointed
day, when the Squire, returning on horseback from Barnstaple, where
he had been to take counsel with his lawyer as to the ejectment of a
troublesome tenant, had been overtaken by a heavy fall of rain, which
lasted with a cruel persistency throughout his homeward journey.
Instead of immediately resorting to a hot bath and dry clothes as a
cure, Mr. Pentreath had sat by the dining-room fire, while he solaced
himself with a tumbler of hot brandy-and-water, before changing his
raiment. The consequences of the wet ride and of his imprudence
showed themselves next morning in a sharp attack of bronchitis, which
speedily degenerated into inflammation of the lungs. Before the week
was out the Squire’s life was in danger, and Naomi’s wedding was
deferred to an indefinite period.
Oswald was in much distress about his father’s state. They had not
loved each other tenderly, but the son was soft-hearted, and felt a
curious aching pity for the lonely old man lying on his deathbed,
more friendless than the lowliest hind on his estate. The family
surgeon and sole doctor of Combhaven, who attended all the families
round about, and killed or cured by the Pharmacopœia without let or
hindrance from any opposing practitioner, declared that the Squire’s
only chance of recovering lay not in medicine, or blood-letting, or
blistering, but in good nursing. And who was to nurse this peevish,
cantankerous old man, who, while groaning in the agonies of mortal
disease, would grudge the nurse her food and feel an extra pang at
every meal she ate? The professional nurses of Combhaven were ancient
females of the sibyl or witch type, women one might expect to meet on
solitary moors, or in fever-haunted swamps, gathering simples under
a stormy moon, and whose ignorance was only matched in degree by
their cunning and cruelty. The housemaid at the Grange, who had such
a conscientious regard for the oak panelling that she would begin
beeswaxing at six o’clock in the morning, was not so deeply attached
to her old master. When Oswald appealed to her for aid she told him
she had never been where there was sickness, and did not know much
about invalids’ ways, and that she should scream if any one asked
her to handle a leech. The housekeeper was old and purblind, and
cooked her dinners by the aid of habit and memory rather than by any
existing sense. Oswald could not trust his father’s life to her.
In this difficulty he naturally applied to Miss Haggard as a person
likely to have all the resources of Combhaven at her fingers’ ends.
‘Do I know any woman that would go out sick-nursing?’ she exclaimed,
repeating Oswald’s question. ‘If I know one such I know twenty.
There’s nothing people won’t undertake to do if you’ll pay them for
it. But if you ask me to recommend you a nurse for your father, Mr.
Pentreath, that’s quite another thing. There isn’t a woman who goes
out nursing in Combhaven that I’d trust with the life of a kitten, if
I wanted the kitten to grow up to a cat.’
‘That’s conclusive,’ said Oswald despondently. ‘Yet I suppose people
in Combhaven get nursed somehow when they’re ill.’
‘Somehow; yes, that’s about it. Sometimes they die, and sometimes
Providence is extra kind to them, and pulls them through their
troubles, nursing and all.’
This was depressing. Oswald sat looking at the fire gloomily,
wondering what he ought to do. It was tea-time. Aunt Judith was
in her accustomed place before the tea-tray. Naomi stood by the
mantelpiece looking at her lover, too much disturbed by his
despondency to obey that rigorous code of etiquette which her aunt
had imposed upon the household, and in which sitting down to meals
the instant they were ready was a stringent article. Cynthia had
taken her place and was cutting bread-and-butter for Jim, with a calm
matronly air which became her fair young face. She was always pleased
to be useful, were it in the smallest detail.
‘I wish I could nurse your father, Oswald,’ said Naomi earnestly.
‘But you can’t,’ exclaimed Judith with prompt severity. ‘A pretty
thing indeed for you to go and live in the Squire’s house before
you’ve any right. A nice scandal there’d be in Combhaven. You a
minister’s daughter too! You ought to have more sense than to talk of
such a thing.’
‘I can’t see that it would be wrong,’ cried Oswald, with some show of
heat. ‘Who has a better right to be at home in my father’s house than
my future wife?’
‘If young men like you were able to draw a line between right and
wrong, right and wrong wouldn’t get mixed up so often as they do,’
replied Judith sententiously. ‘As to Naomi making herself at home at
the Grange till she’s Mrs. Pentreath, it’s out of the question, and
she ought to have known it. Besides which, she knows about as much of
sick-nursing as a baby in its cradle.’
‘God would teach me,’ said Naomi, ‘and my love for Oswald would make
me strong to help his father.’
‘I believe that, Naomi,’ exclaimed Oswald, with a grateful look.
‘Let me nurse the Squire,’ said Cynthia, with a subdued eagerness.
‘I have so little to do at home, I should hardly be missed. And I do
know something about sickness. I nursed Miss Webling, a lady who had
the quinsy very badly. The doctor thought she would die; and I put on
leeches and blisters, and sat up with her fifteen nights. And I have
nursed the poor people here, haven’t I, Joshua?’ she asked, looking
up at her husband, who had this moment entered the room.
‘Yes, love; you have been a ministering angel by many sick-beds, and
you would have done more if I had suffered you. But what is all this
talk about nursing?’
‘If some of you will sit down,’ remonstrated Judith, ‘I’ll pour
out the tea. But I don’t feel as if anybody wanted it while you’re
standing about higgledy-piggledy.’
Thus reproved, Naomi took her seat meekly, and Oswald, feeling that
the reproof applied with double force to him as a visitor, seated
himself in a desponding attitude at a corner of the table.
‘I want to nurse old Mr. Pentreath, Joshua,’ said Cynthia. ‘Miss
Haggard says there is no nurse to be trusted in Combhaven, and the
doctor says the old gentleman must have good nursing. Will you let
me go to the Grange for a little while and sit up with him, as I did
with Miss Webling?’
Joshua watched her earnest face with a tender smile.
‘Why, my love, how anxious you are! And do you think you know enough
about sickness--that you would have strength for such a task?’
‘It would be a good work, and I should do it with all my heart. God
would give me strength and knowledge. I have no fear. I feel often
that my life here is of very little use. I am never happier than
when you let me visit the sick people. Let me go to the Grange,
Joshua, and nurse poor Mr. Pentreath.’
‘You are too good to offer such a thing,’ cried Oswald, wondering
at the ardour of this delicate, flower-like creature. ‘It would be
a troublesome task. You have no notion how cross my poor old father
is. He abuses the doctor in a most ferocious style--accuses him of
picking his pocket. Our housemaid will scarcely go near him. There is
a scrub of a girl who works about the house under every one else, a
stupid good-natured thing, too much accustomed to hard words to mind
them, and she is the only creature I can get to stay in my father’s
room; but she is clumsy and sleepy.’
‘Do you really wish to go, Cynthia?’ asked Joshua seriously.
To his mind there was nothing unnatural in this desire of his young
wife’s. He belonged to a community in which to minister to the sick
was a paramount duty, in which affliction was a period of closer
brotherhood, a drawing together of those links which bound the little
flock to one another at all times. True, that the Squire was an
ungodly person, outside that circle; but he had been in a manner
united to Joshua’s household by his son’s choice of Naomi. Here was
a sick man to be snatched from the jaws of Death; here was something
higher and nobler, a soul to be saved from the clutch of Satan. That
the Squire’s body must perish was, in all probability, inevitable--an
event not to be staved off by leechings and blisterings, or all the
resources of medicine; but there was a great battle to be fought for
that immortal part of him, that impalpable, indestructible spark
destined for an eternal future of good or evil.
What had the Church of England--of those slumberous days--done for
the Squire? Well, it had taken tithe of his substance, and thereby
secured to itself his antipathy; it had preached diluted Tillotson,
South, and Barrow over his head while he dozed in the noontide sun;
it had christened and married him, and held itself in readiness to
bury him; and for the rest it had civilly and obligingly let him
alone.
It seemed to Joshua Haggard that if his wife succoured the Squire
in his fight with disease and death he too could be by the bedside
to defend the sinner against the onslaughts of his invisible foe;
for Joshua’s positive theology had never been troubled by any doubt
of the reality and personality of man’s first tempter and perpetual
adversary.
‘If you really feel that you have a call for this good work, Cynthia,
I should be sorry to forbid your obeying it,’ he said, after a
thoughtful pause.
‘It seems too bold to say that I am called to do it,’ answered his
wife humbly, ‘but indeed, Joshua, my heart is drawn towards the poor
lonely old man in his sickness and pain.’
‘Then you shall go, my dear,’ said Joshua decisively.
Cynthia rose as if to depart that moment.
‘God bless you for that permission!’ cried Oswald.
‘You may as well wait till tea’s finished,’ exclaimed Judith tartly;
‘other people want their teas, if you don’t. We didn’t use to have
tea in such a fashion.’
Whereupon Cynthia resumed her seat meekly, and begged pardon of the
authorities for this breach of the household law.
‘I don’t know how to thank you both,’ said Oswald,--‘you for your
generous offer, Mrs. Haggard, or your husband for his goodness in
letting you obey your benevolent inclination; but I am more grateful
than I can say. I will take care that you are not over-fatigued
by your task. Phœbe--that’s the girl I spoke of just now--will do
anything you want. She’d work till she dropped, I believe, poor girl,
and only requires to be taught. My poor father was delirious last
night. That won’t frighten you, I hope--if his mind wanders?’
‘No,’ said Cynthia; ‘I was sitting with a poor woman yesterday who
was light-headed. She talked of all kinds of strange things. Yet
every now and then she spoke quite clearly, and followed the sense
when I read to her. I shall not be frightened.’
After tea, when the bondage of etiquette was loosened a little, Naomi
stole to her young stepmother’s side and kissed her tenderly.
‘I am so grateful to you, Cynthia,’ she said.
‘Dear Naomi, there’s no reason for gratitude or praise. I am only
doing my duty. I am sorry you were not permitted to perform this
task, dear, as I know it would have seemed sweet to you, for Oswald’s
sake.’
CHAPTER VIII.
‘E’EN AT TURNING O’ THE TIDE.’
Cynthia took her place at the Squire’s bedside, and assumed the care
of the sick-room with as much calmness and self-possession as if she
had been trained in a city hospital. That intense faith which made
the two Wesleys so strong to resist all earthly opposition is the
staff and anchor of all true followers in that wide school which
they and Whitfield founded. Joshua’s young wife had no fear that her
strength would fail her in this ordeal. Whatever strength she needed
would be given to her.
It was not a pleasing or an easy task either, this attendance upon an
irritable old man, who had served no apprenticeship to sickness, and
to whom acute bodily pain was almost a new thing.
‘Mrs. Haggard has been so good as to come to nurse you, father,’
said Oswald, when he brought Cynthia to the bedside.
The Squire looked at the small gray figure--‘a shadow like an angel
with bright hair’--doubtfully.
‘I don’t know that girl,’ he said. ‘Your mother was never so pretty.’
‘Will you let her nurse you, father?’ inquired Oswald.
‘I don’t want nursing; I only want to be let alone. Give me something
to drink,’ said the Squire, with some inconsistency.
Cynthia examined the table by the bed, upon which empty
medicine-bottles, discarded poultices, rags, and dirty tumblers
were crowded in unseemly confusion. There was an uncorked bottle,
containing half-a-tumbler of claret.
‘Does your father drink that wine?’ asked Cynthia, as she washed
a tumbler swiftly, while the Squire expressed a general sense of
discomfort by feeble moanings.
‘Yes; the doctor says he may have claret, but no other wine.’
Cynthia put the tumbler in the wasted hand, which clutched it with
a tremulous eagerness, and supported the old man while he drank. She
seemed to have a natural capacity and handiness which made these
offices of charity easy to her.
‘Phœbe will get you anything you want,’ said Oswald, looking on
helplessly.
Phœbe was standing on the other side of the bed, breathing hard,
and staring at Mrs. Haggard, open-mouthed and open-eyed, as at a
supernatural appearance.
But on being thus referred to she made a curtsy, and said she should
be pleased to wait upon the lady.
‘And do you really think you shall be able to get on?’ asked Oswald.
‘I shall get on very nicely. You need not be anxious, Mr. Pentreath.
It will be best for your father to be kept very quiet.’
‘Yes, I daresay. I’ll go to my own room. It’s on this floor, and I
shall be at hand if my father should ask for me. You’ll send for me
if he does, won’t you?’
‘Yes; Phœbe shall come for you.’
Oswald lingered by the bedside before going away, and bent over his
father with that helpless feeling which robust youth has in the
presence of suffering age. It can pity, but can hardly sympathise. If
it could share the burden in any way, take half the pain, or all, it
would do so; but it cannot measure or understand that agony.
‘How are you feeling now, father?’ asked the son.
‘I feel as if a wolf was gnawing me, that’s all,’ gasped the old man.
‘Go away. You only keep the air from me.’
Cynthia took a loose blanket from an arm-chair, and spread it over
the Squire’s chest and shoulders, and then went quietly to the
nearest window and opened it. The sweet cool night air blew in like a
rush of refreshing waters upon a thirsty land.
‘That’s better,’ cried the old man.
‘You didn’t oughtter open the windows,’ said Phœbe; ‘the doctor said
we was to keep un warm!’
Cynthia found a screen in one corner of the room, and this she placed
as a guard against the keen edge of the draught. She had a conviction
that the sufferer needed air, but she was not going to do anything
rash or reckless.
‘Tell me what the doctor said about the leeches and the poultices,
and everything that is to be done, Phœbe,’ she said.
At midnight Oswald looked into the room again. His father was
sleeping the fitful painful slumber of disease. Phœbe was snoring
by the fire. Cynthia was seated by the bedside, reading her pocket
Bible by the dim candle-light. What a graceful figure it was in the
neatly-fitting gray-stuff gown, the Puritan muslin kerchief crossed
over the delicately-moulded bust, the little white cap giving a
matronly air to the bright young face!
The room seemed changed somehow since Cynthia’s coming. The
accumulated litter of the past week had been carried off. Everything
was in its place--snowy linen on the bed, the hearth neatly swept,
a small bright fire in the shining grate, a cheerful home-like air
in the room which a few hours ago had looked so desolate. And all
had been done quietly, with the least possible inconvenience to the
invalid.
‘Has he been long asleep?’ asked Oswald.
‘About half an hour. I read to him a little before he went off.’
‘Out of your Bible?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he like your doing that?’
‘I think it soothed him.’
Oswald could hardly realise the idea of his father being instructed
in the Scriptures by a Methodist preacher’s wife. It seemed a general
upheaving of things.
This went on for many days and nights. The Squire’s life seemed to
these patient watchers to tremble in the balance, though the doctor
had made up his mind which way the balance was to turn at last.
For many days and nights, without weariness or murmuring, Cynthia
performed the painful tasks of the sick-room, and was full of love
and care for this grim old man, who in his weakness seemed like a
baby in her arms, and was fain to submit to be ministered to as a
baby might have done. While caring for this poor mortal body of his,
she was full of tender anxiety for his imperishable soul; and this
disciple of Tom Paine was fain to listen to that ineffable story
which even the most hardened unbeliever must hear with some touch of
love and awe. Cynthia had not been taught to be doubtful of deathbed
conversions; in her direct and positive creed this sinner--who,
perhaps, in all his life had never done a good action or sacrificed
a selfish desire--was as near the gates of heaven as the man of
spotless life and active benevolence, could he but be brought to
acknowledge his unworthiness, to believe in the all-atoning Sacrifice
which had been made for him, to accept in implicit faith the pardon
that God was for ever holding out to sinners. A Shibboleth, perhaps,
this parrot-cry of instantaneous conversion, but this Shibboleth was
to Cynthia a great reality.
Curious it must have seemed to the ear of the listener--had there
been any one by--to hear this child fighting Satan beside that
dying-bed; arguing with the unbelieving mind, sharpened and hardened
by fifty-years mature worldliness; pleading, praying, repeating
divinest messages of compassion and love. The Squire heard her
patiently, which was much. One night she sang one of Wesley’s hymns
in a low sweet voice. The sound pleased and soothed the sick man, and
after this he often bade her sing to him. Oswald paced the corridor
softly sometimes of an evening, listening to those clear and pure
tones, which had a soothing influence for him as well as for his
father.
‘I wish you would let my husband come and read to you, Mr.
Pentreath,’ Cynthia ventured to say one afternoon when the Squire
seemed a little better than usual, and quite free from pain.
‘Your husband! Who is he?’
‘Joshua Haggard.’
‘What, the Ranter? No; I’ll have none of his preaching. He’s a decent
fellow, in his way, and has made money. My son is going to marry his
daughter; but I’ll have no ranting. I won’t have fire and brimstone
pelted at me on my deathbed. You may read what you like; it does no
harm.’
‘I don’t think you know what kind of man my husband is,’ remonstrated
Cynthia gently.
‘Don’t I! I know what field preachers are. You may hear ’em a mile
off, raving about Sodom and Gomorrah and the worm that never dies.
Haggard preached in the fields before he built that chapel of his.
I’ll have none of his howling.’
This was discouraging; but the Established Church, which, represented
by a port-winey vicar of the good old school, had called politely,
during the Squire’s illness, to offer its ministrations, had also
been kept at arm’s-length by Mr. Pentreath, who swore that no
tithe-pig parson should cross the threshold of his chamber while he
had sense enough to forbid him.
Oswald showed considerable anxiety about Cynthia’s comfort during
this weary time of watching, and Joshua came to the Grange at least
once a day to see for himself that his wife was not injuring her
health by this work of charity. The acute inflammation had been
conquered, chiefly by Cynthia’s nursing, as the doctor frankly
acknowledged; but the foe left the citadel in so dilapidated a state,
that the cessation of active disease was by no means a warrant for
the patient’s recovery. The lamp flickered in the socket, and might
at any moment be suddenly extinguished. The worn-out frame was not
easily to be patched up by high feeding and stimulants, quinine or
iron.
Once in every day Joshua Haggard came up to the long gallery, where
the family portraits faced the searching north-west light, which
showed every crack in the surface, for a brief interview with his
young wife.
‘I’m afraid you are not getting enough rest, dearest,’ he said,
turning the small pale face towards the spring sunshine, and looking
at it with anxious scrutiny.
‘Yes, indeed, Joshua. I have some hours’ sleep every day, while Phœbe
watches for me. I let her sleep at night, poor girl; for it seems so
painful to her to keep her eyes open after the clock has struck ten.’
‘I am glad for you to do this good work, my love. I am proud of you.
But remember that you have my happiness in charge. You must not
sacrifice health even to duty--for my sake.’
He advanced this plea with a consciousness of its weakness, its
selfishness.
‘I walk in the garden every day when it is fine,’ said Cynthia,
anxious to reassure him as to her well-being. ‘Naomi and Oswald take
me for a little walk every afternoon. It is such a happiness to me to
see her, dear girl.’
‘Yes, she has told me about your walks together. It gratifies me to
think of your being so united; I feared there was a want of sympathy
on Naomi’s part.’
‘No, Joshua. She has always been good to me; but I think we have been
more drawn together since the Squire’s illness. How glad I shall be
when he gets well, and we can have the wedding! I want to see Naomi
in that lovely gray silk. Does Dr. Harrow say that he will soon be
well?’
‘Dr. Harrow does not seem very hopeful; he thinks his patient in a
sadly weak state.’
‘But that racking cough is almost gone, and we shall soon make him
strong.’
‘I hope so, dear; but there is a disease called old age. The Squire
has lived a hard life. He did not spare himself in his youth, when
he gave himself up to what the world calls pleasure, and he has not
spared himself of late years, while he has been a slave to Mammon.
The thread of life is worn very thin, my love.’
This was a disappointment to Cynthia, who had begun to hope for
the Squire’s recovery. He was not an agreeable old man, but she
had nursed him and cared for him, and she had grown in somewise
attached to him. Oswald looked on wonderingly while she bent over
the bed, soothing her charge with pretty tender speeches, supporting
the grizzled head, holding the feverish hand, feeding the grim old
sufferer as lovingly as if he had been a pet bird.
‘How good you are!’ he exclaimed one day. ‘Is it in the nature of
all women to be so tender? I can just remember my mother nursing
me in some small illness, and she was like you; but then I was her
favourite son, the creature she loved best on earth, as they tell me.
You come here to nurse a stranger, and yet your tenderness for him
seems inexhaustible.’
‘I am so sorry for your poor father that I cannot help loving him,’
Cynthia answered simply.
‘Ah, I see; that is what the old saw means: “Pity is akin to love.”’
Those walks with Naomi and her lover were a delight to Cynthia at
this time; so keen a delight, that it sometimes occurred to her this
pleasure might be sinful, a snare and a temptation which she ought in
somewise to resist; for Joshua’s teaching dwelt much upon snares, and
the liability of weak human nature to be led astray by inclination.
After close confinement in the sick-room the very air of heaven was
a source of rapture. The bright spring afternoon, the windy sky with
patches of deepest blue shining through white fleecy clouds, and just
one dark cloud overhead, holding the promise of an April shower;
the daffodils waving with every gust; the yellow chestnut-buds just
unfolding; the tender young ferns peeping up through the mossy ground
in sheltered places, snake fern and adder fern--what could be more
beautiful than the neglected old manor at such a season? Even the
dark-red cattle had a friendly air, Cynthia thought, and looked at
her with grave kindliness.
Never had Naomi been so kind or so loving to the poor little
stepmother; and Oswald, who had seemed quite a remote unsympathetic
personage a little while ago, came now as near as to be almost
brotherly in his kindness--he was so grateful for Cynthia’s devotion
to his sick father.
For the space of an hour by Oswald’s watch these three perambulated
the path on the skirts of the wood, making fresh discoveries of
Nature’s progress every day, and admiring the wonder of this gradual
yet swift awakening of old Mother Earth after the dreary winter
sleep. How quickly the flower-buds opened, and the little curled-up
leaflets widened into leaves; here, under last year’s dead branches,
are the ferns of next summer; the willows are yellow-green already;
the mossy ground is enamelled with primroses and bluest violets.
‘Please God the poor old father picks up strength, we shall be
married before the hawthorns are in flower,’ said Oswald to his
betrothed.
Naomi’s only answer was a sigh; for her father had told her how
little hope the doctor entertained of his patient’s recovery.
There was an appearance of improvement, however, at this time which
deceived Oswald and Cynthia and the good-hearted drudge, Phœbe. The
Squire’s cough was almost gone, though his breathing was still
troublesome, and his wits somewhat given to wander in the pauses of
wakefulness between his brief slumbers. He was able to be moved from
his bed to the great easy-chair, in which spacious piece of furniture
he looked like a living mummy, propped up with pillows. This seemed a
great advance upon his condition of ten days ago; and Oswald fancied
him on the high-road to recovery--an opinion shared by the patient
himself, though in querulous moments he declared that he shouldn’t
trouble anybody long, and that Oswald would soon have the handling of
the estate.
‘And a nice mess he will make of it, for he knows no more of business
than a baby,’ grumbled the Squire.
Seeing her charge so far restored, and believing his recovery an
assured thing, despite her husband’s despondent view of the case,
Cynthia was now anxious to return to her home duties. Those duties
were not manifold, certainly, since Judith Haggard was the mainspring
of the household machine; but Cynthia was at least her husband’s
companion, and she knew that she was sorely missed by him. She had
carefully instructed Phœbe in all the offices of the sick-room, and
felt that she might now leave the Squire to that damsel’s care, with
just a little supervision and assistance from Oswald, who was a light
sleeper, and might look in upon the invalid now and then of a night
to give him his wine or his medicine.
When, however, Mrs. Haggard ventured to hint at departure, the
Squire’s distress was piteous to behold. Could she be so cruel as
to talk of leaving him when but for her he should be in his grave?
If she left him he should die. Phœbe nurse him, indeed! Phœbe would
murder him, with her big rough hands and her clumsy ways. He might
die in his bed at any hour, with not a soul to help him, while Phœbe
was snoring like a pig by the fireside. That girl thought of nothing
but sleeping and eating; she was a lump of selfishness, like all the
rest of his servants.
The old man shed tears; and the tears of feeble age are sad to see.
What could Cynthia do? The tender heart, in which love and pity were
the ruling instincts, was moved to deepest compassion. She told her
husband of the Squire’s distress, and he said stay.
‘Stay, my love, if you can bear the trial of witnessing the end. It
will not be long.’
‘Does the doctor really think he will die?’
‘Yes, dear; the doctor is quite hopeless. Nothing less than a miracle
could save him, he says, and God has ceased to work miracles for
our worthless mortal bodies. His supernatural dealings are with our
souls.’
‘Then I would not leave him on any account.’
‘You have never seen death, Cynthia. You are not afraid to face the
end?’
‘No,’ she answered bravely; ‘I fear nothing since you have taught me
where to put my trust.’
So Cynthia stayed and ministered to the departing sinner, and made
these last days of his life sweeter to him than all the arid years of
his widowhood, in which human affection had been as dead in him as
if he had been one of those conical stones which antiquity chose for
its gods. He had grown really attached to his fair young nurse, and
submitted to her with a senile docility.
‘If I had had a daughter like you, my dear, I should have been a
better man,’ he said.
‘You have had a good son, dear Mr. Pentreath.’
‘Yes, Oswald has never given me any trouble; but there’s not much in
him--a young man to be drawn any way. I’m afraid he’ll spend my money
like water. It’s a hard thing to know one must lie in one’s grave,
not able to move a finger, while one’s property is being made ducks
and drakes of. That’s the sting of death.’
‘No, no, dear friend; the sting of death is sin.’
‘And isn’t it sinful to fool away a fine estate?’ cried the Squire
testily.
Wheeled close up to the glowing hearth in his big arm-chair, with
a tumbler of warm negus, weak and harmless but soothing to the
spirits, on the little table at his elbow, the Squire listened with
great complacency to Cynthia’s Scripture-reading. If the Bible
had been something less than it is, the keen old man would hardly
have tolerated it, for he started with a strong prejudice in its
disfavour. But the mighty Book compelled his attention, and seemed
to appeal to him individually with a force his mortal weakness could
not withstand.
Oswald now began to spend his afternoons in the sick-room, save that
one hour which he spent out-of-doors with Cynthia and Naomi. The
Squire liked to have him there, and was fond of calling his attention
to certain passages of Scripture which, in the father’s mind, bore
upon his son’s deficiencies. Oswald was a very patient listener to
that pious reading, to those touching Wesleyan hymns which Cynthia
used to sing in the gathering twilight. Joshua, while following that
sect of Primitive Methodists and field preachers, which the Rev. Hugh
Bourne had founded early in the century, had adopted the Wesleyan
hymn-book, and differed from the modern Wesleyans chiefly in his
closer adherence to the principles of their pious founder.
Sad, yet not unpleasing, days gliding gently by in that quiet
chamber; a spacious bedroom, oak-panelled, with three deep-set
windows, a carved mantelpiece, six feet high, and a curious old
basket grate set round with blue and white Dutch tiles, Scriptural
illustrations, to which the Squire referred now and then when Cynthia
was reading.
‘David! ah! there he is, slaying Goliath--the third from the
top. I remember when I was a boy I used to take him for Jack the
Giant-killer. And David was a sinner, was he, though the Lord loved
him? Ah, the Lord had need to be fond of me, for I’ve been a great
sinner. I wonder if John Wilkes is in heaven?’
Sweet slow days, which hardly left a trace behind them, one being so
like another, save a vague memory of a pleasing sadness. It seemed
to Oswald, by and by, as if all his life were shut in this grave old
room, and the outside world were something in which he had no part.
Naomi noticed that his manner was dreamy and absent-minded at this
time, a change which she ascribed to natural anxiety about his father.
* * * * *
It was about half way between midnight and morning, just when the
night is coldest, most silent, most dismal, that the Squire called
Cynthia to his bedside. He had been a little more restless than
usual, and had wandered more between his snatches of broken sleep;
had talked of his wild youth, naming old friends, old loves, long
dead and half-forgotten.
‘What was the name of that fellow who supped with us at the Blue
Posts?’ he asked eagerly. ‘You know, don’t you? a man with big
whiskers and a belcher handkerchief--a fighting man.’
Cynthia knelt down by the bed and took his cold hand and chafed it
gently. There was a sharp ring in his voice which she had never heard
before.
‘That’s a good girl, Polly--yes, my hand’s very cold. You always had
a good heart, Polly; but too fond of spending money. Yes, Polly,
better marry the cheesemonger. He means well.’
Then the dull eyes turned suddenly on Cynthia with slowly returning
consciousness.
‘Is it you, child? And you say God loves sinners?’
‘God loves all things that He has made,’ answered Cynthia earnestly;
‘and Christ died to save sinners. If you repent of all your sins,
dear Mr. Pentreath, and believe in that atoning Sacrifice--’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t live a better life, and that I hadn’t a daughter
like you,’ interrupted the Squire faintly; and letting his head sink
softly upon Cynthia’s breast, he quietly loosened his feeble hold
upon this mortal life, and passed into the unknown land beyond it.
Not at first did Cynthia know that this was death; and when the truth
dawned upon her she uttered no cry, gave way to neither terror nor
agitation, but gently laid the lifeless head upon the pillow, and
went quietly to tell Oswald Pentreath that he was fatherless.
She was surprised, even in this awful moment, to see that his door
was ajar and a light burning in his room. She knocked, and he
answered at once, ‘Come in.’
‘Why has he been sitting up?’ she wondered.
He was sitting at a table with an open book before him, the candles
burned down to the sockets of the old plated candlesticks, his hair
and dress disordered as if he had been lying down, his eyes hollow
and weary-looking. He started at sight of Cynthia, but did not move
from his seat or change his dejected attitude, his elbows on the
table, his head leaning on his hands.
‘What is the matter?’ he asked. ‘Is my father worse?’
‘All his pain is over, dear Oswald. God has taken him to His rest.’
‘And you were with him at the last--alone--he died in your arms?’
‘Yes.’
‘You are a saint, an angel,’ cried Oswald passionately, brushing
the tears from his eyes. ‘You came into this house as an angel of
mercy--you brought light to my poor old father’s darkened mind. You
made his last days the sweetest he had ever known. How can I ever
forget your goodness?’
‘There is nothing for you to remember. I have only done my duty.
How pale you look, Mr. Pentreath; this sudden loss has shocked you!
He died so peacefully, and his last words were good. Is not that
comforting?’
‘How could his thoughts be evil with an angel at his side? Poor old
man! And he is gone? Yes, it is very sudden.’
‘Why were you sitting up all night? Had you a presentiment that the
end was so near?’
‘No,’ with a bitter laugh. ‘I sat up because I have lost the knack of
sleeping. My thoughts are too active, and I try to quiet them with
philosophy; but I can no more read than I can sleep. My ideas travel
in a circle, and always come back to the same point.’
‘You have been too anxious about your father,’ said Cynthia, with a
look that was half pity, half wonder.
‘Yes; I am too devoted a son--that is my strong point.’
‘Will you go and see him?’
‘Yes; and there will be people to send for, I suppose, as soon as it
is light?’
He opened a shutter. The stars were pale in a cold gray sky: daybreak
was at hand, and in that chilly half light Oswald Pentreath’s haggard
face looked like a ghost’s.
He followed Cynthia to the Squire’s room. Phœbe had roused the small
household. The housekeeper was there already, and had begun the last
dismal offices which life can render to death.
‘I laid out your sweet mother, Mr. Pentreath,’ faltered the crone.
‘She looked lovely in her coffin.’
The old butler had gone to the village to awaken the sexton, in
order that the passing bell might speedily inform Combhaven that
its seigneur had departed. Phœbe stood at the bottom of the great
fourpost-bed, with her apron over her face, weeping as in duty
bound--not that she had loved Squire Pentreath, but because it was
proper to cry at a death or a funeral. To weep for her deceased
master was an obligation which, although not expressly set forth in
the Catechism, was implied in the general idea of doing her duty in
that state of life to which it had pleased God to call her. And if
the Squire, although a hard man, should have happened to do the right
thing in the way of legacies and mourning, it would be a comfort to
remember having honoured him with these disinterested tears.
Oswald went round and kissed the cold brow of the dead, and then
stood by the bedside, looking down at that unconscious clay, with
a curious blank look in his own face, as if he knew not whether
there were any further duty required of him. ‘He looked clean daft,’
the housekeeper said afterwards, when she and the old man-servant
discussed the dismal scene over a substantial breakfast.
The shutters had been opened, and the candles burned with a yellow
glare in the cold gray light. Cynthia looked at her neat silver
watch, Joshua’s gift upon her wedding-morning.
‘Half-past five o’clock,’ she said. ‘I think I had better go home
now, Mr. Pentreath. If Joshua should hear the passing bell, he would
be coming to fetch me.’
‘Why not wait till he comes?’ asked Oswald.
‘I would rather save him the trouble. I can do no more good here.’
‘No; you can do no more good.’
She took her black mantle from a drawer, and put on her bonnet, and
then went up to Oswald, who was still standing by the bed with that
helpless absent look in his face.
‘Good-bye, Mr. Pentreath; I hope you will take comfort to your heart
in this loss.’
‘I am coming with you. You cannot go home alone at this hour.’
‘Do you think I am afraid of the birds or the opening flowers?’
Cynthia asked.
‘You must not go alone.’
‘Come with me, if you like. Joshua will be glad to see you. You can
stop to breakfast with us and see Naomi.’
Cynthia thought it a work of charity to take him away from that
death-chamber. Joshua could comfort and advise him.
The morning air blew in coolly when Oswald softly opened the great
hall-door. That clear cool light of dawn had a soothing influence;
the solemn stillness of park and wood, the hollow murmur of yonder
steel-gray sea, flecked with whitest foam, awed and yet comforted the
heart, or so it seemed to Cynthia as she walked beside her silent
companion. The bell began to toll as they came from the park into
the wooded lane that led down to the bay and the open space at the
beginning of the High-street. Each slow and dismal stroke made
Cynthia shiver, as if each repetition were a surprise.
She made no attempt to console her companion during this lonely walk,
which might be supposed a fitting opportunity for the expression
of sympathy. If he needed human consolation, Joshua’s wisdom could
better measure and administer to his necessity, she thought; and,
next to Joshua, Naomi would be the best, the most natural consoler.
But to Cynthia’s surprise, when they came to the little green gate,
Oswald refused to go in. The parlour shutters had been opened,
and the household was evidently astir. She urged him to stay to
breakfast, or at least to see Joshua.
‘No,’ he said; ‘it is very kind of you to wish it; but I am too much
upset. I would rather go back. I shall have many things to arrange. I
may be wanted.’
‘Joshua shall come to you, then,’ replied Cynthia. ‘Good-bye.’
She gave him her hand. He held it in both his own for a moment or
two, looking at her with an expression full of sadness, half piteous,
half pleading. He bent his head over the cold gloveless hand and
kissed it. There were tears upon it when he let it go, and, with a
scarcely audible blessing, he left Cynthia Haggard standing at the
gate, and walked quickly back towards the Grange.
CHAPTER IX.
THE SORROWS OF WERTHER.
Oswald Pentreath, having set his father’s papers in order, and
reduced the dusty chaos of the old Squire’s private study into form,
found himself, comparatively speaking, a rich man. Those long years
of retirement in which Squire Pentreath had held himself aloof from
all social intercourse had not been spent in vain. They left their
fruit behind them in the shape of stock, and shares, and bonds, which
all meant money; for Mr. Pentreath had not speculated his savings
in wild ventures, but had cloven to safe investments, and had been
content with a reasonable percentage. Not even for the chance of
doubling his capital would he have risked it. His was not the genius
of the stockjobber, but rather the plodding temper of the village
miser, who puts coin to coin, and finds an all-sufficient joy in the
growth of his hoard.
The estate was in excellent order--every mortgage paid off--and the
rental was close to three thousand a year. The Squire’s investments
were worth another thousand, and brought Oswald’s income to an amount
which, to a young man who had seldom enjoyed the unfettered use of a
five-pound note, seemed inordinate wealth.
The Squire had made a will, dated the year of his son Arnold’s
flight, bequeathing twenty pounds a year to each of his old servants,
and all the rest of his property, real and personal, to Oswald. There
was no mention of the younger son. In the letter which informed
Arnold of his father’s death, Oswald affectionately urged his brother
to give up a seafaring life and return to Combhaven, where he should
have one of the farms and a thousand a year. ‘My father’s will was
evidently made in a fit of anger against you,’ wrote Oswald; ‘you
must not think that I could be so unjust as to take advantage of my
father’s injustice and keep all for myself. No, Arnold; I am sure you
know me better than to suppose me capable of such iniquity. I shall
be a rich man in any case. You must have had enough of the sea by
this time. Come back, my dear brother, for the sake of the good old
days when we were boys together. I want you more than I can say. I
love you as dearly as I did when we were children, and I was the
big brother. Do you remember that summer day when we lost ourselves
in Matcherly Wood, and you were so tired I was obliged to carry you
home? When we had got about half way you wanted to carry me, though
I was twice your size. I never pass that corner of the wood without
remembering what you said, and your clinging arms round my neck, and
your warm cheek next mine.’
* * * * *
The Squire being laid with his forefathers, and honoured with a
handsome funeral--which was attended by many people who had detested
him living, but reverenced him as a parochial institution dead--life
at the Grange fell back into its old quiet round, save that the door
was more frequently assailed by importunate tenants, who boldly asked
favours of the new lord which they would not have dared to hint at
to the old one. The old servants felt that the spirit of parsimony
was gone from the household, and kept a better table; but they had
been so long and severely trained in economy, that extravagance was
an impossibility for them, and Oswald had nothing to apprehend on
that score. For his own part, the new master had a curious feeling of
freedom as he paced the dull old rooms and rattled the money in his
pockets absently, wondering how it had come there.
He looked very handsome and melancholy in his sable suit, and the
young ladies who came to the parish church, where he worshipped alone
in his big pew on Sunday mornings, thought it a hard thing that he
should have engaged himself to a Methodist parson’s daughter.
He attended Little Bethel of an evening, they were informed, which
seemed an unmanly dallying with two creeds--to say nothing of chapel
being so much less genteel than church, and a mode of salvation
peculiarly adapted for the shopkeeping class, who did not mind
perspiring together in a limited space, and inhaling one another’s
breath.
Naomi’s wedding seemed a long way off in these days, when the
Squire’s funeral was still the newest topic in Combhaven, and when
people had not yet left off disputing in a friendly way as to the
number of the mourning coaches, or inveighing bitterly against those
tenants who ought to have attended the funeral and had not done so.
Shadowy and remote--the merest speck in a cloudy future--seemed that
marriage-day which had once been so near, the fair to-morrow of life.
Oswald was quite broken down by his father’s death--more grieved than
even Naomi, who best knew the softness of his nature, had expected
him to be. It was not likely that he could talk of marriage at such
a time, and Naomi was neither surprised nor offended at his silence
about the wedding that was to have been, and the far-off wedding
which was to be.
She put away her wedding dress on the day of the Squire’s funeral,
while the sepulchral bell, which had rung out its solemn note for the
passing of his soul, tolled again in the windy April weather, while,
through changing lights and shadows, by fluttering young leaves, and
under the blue sky where the lark was singing above the dark-brown
earth newly pierced by the green corn-spears--came the black funeral
train--sable plumes, horses’ manes, mourners’ scarves tossing in the
fresh April breeze--slowly winding down the hilly road to Combhaven.
The funeral bell was in Naomi’s ears as she folded the
pretty pearl-gray silk--the first silk dress she had ever
possessed--shedding some quiet tears as she smoothed the folds, and
laid the garment in a drawer, wrapped in fresh white linen, with
a sprinkling of dried lavender, as beseemed so precious a fabric.
There was the serviceable brown cloth pelisse, too, which she was to
have worn on her journey to Cheltenham, where she and Oswald were
to have spent their honeymoon. That also must be put away for the
days to come. Naomi’s wear for the next six months was to be sombre
black. She had put on mourning for her betrothed’s father, as in duty
bound. Cynthia also wore black, and aunt Judith had produced a suit
of ancient sable, rusty but whole, not sorry to have this opportunity
of wearing out the surplus stock left from her mourning for her
sister-in-law, when Joshua, in his character of grief-stricken
widower, had been naturally liberal, and had allowed her to lay in
large supplies of bombazine and crape.
Oswald said little about the postponed wedding, but he came to Mr.
Haggard’s as often as before his father’s death; and even Judith, who
was lying in wait for a deterioration in his character now that he
had come into his fortune, could not yet put her finger on a flaw. He
was changed, nevertheless; but the change was sweet and commendable
in his nature, as it was in Hamlet, when that young prince gave way
to moodiness and despondency after the loss of his parent. He was
melancholy, and often absent-minded, his cheek paler than of old, his
eye heavier.
Never had Naomi loved him so tenderly as now, when, for the first
time since their betrothal, he needed sympathy and consolation. To
her who so deeply loved her father, this grief for a parent seemed
in no wise strained or unnatural. True that the Squire had not been
one’s ideal of a father--not a gracious and dignified figure like
that dead Hamlet who revisited the glimpses of the moon; but death
has a sanctifying influence--nay, even a fantastical power, which
lends new attributes to the image of the departed--and Oswald, whose
youth had been made a time of restraint and deprivation by his
father’s meanness, was soft-hearted enough to regret his tyrant.
Never did a man seem less inclined to take advantage of a loosened
rein and run into riot and extravagance. Day after day Oswald led
the same calm, orderly life--riding or reading in the mornings,
according to the weather; devoting his afternoons and evenings to
his betrothed. He had thoughts of buying, or building, a yacht; but
deferred even this indulgence in the hope of Arnold’s return.
‘We’ll build our yacht here, in Combhaven,’ he said; ‘and Arnold
shall superintend the work, and be skipper.’
Oswald looked forward to his brother’s coming with an almost feverish
impatience. It seemed as if there were some innate weakness in his
character which made him incapable of enjoying the privilege of
independence. Now that his father was gone, he wanted his brother
for a guide and adviser. Or it might be only the affection of the
elder brother for the younger, made a barren love by long years of
separation, which now yearned for the unforgotten companion of
boyhood. Whatever feeling it was that made him anxious, Oswald’s
anxiety was very evident; and Naomi sympathised with him in this
longing, and loved to hear him talk of his brother.
‘How fond I shall be of him!’ she said one evening, when they were
sitting on the old stone bench in the wilderness, talking of Arnold.
‘He is like you, Oswald; I have heard my father say so. He remembers
you both as boys.’
‘Yes, we were always considered very much alike. But Arnold is
stouter and stronger built than I--a man of tougher fibre altogether.
It seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to run away to
sea. You might have prophesied it of him when he was two years old.
Such a hardy, bold, uncompromising little vagabond, but brimming over
with affection.’
‘And fond of you, Oswald?’
‘Fond of me! Bless his loving little heart! He used to run after
me like an affectionate puppy when he first began to toddle; such
a round fat little thing in those baby days; always ready for
fisticuffs in my defence, though I was twice his size. There was a
time when he would not go to sleep of a night unless I sat on the
edge of his bed and told him stories. Yes, I have good reason to love
him, dear fellow; and the strongest claim he has upon my love is my
latest memory of my mother, when I saw the sweet pale face lying on
the pillow, and Arnold’s baby eyes looking up at it.’
The tears came to his eyes as he spoke of that sad memory, almost
dreamlike in its remoteness. Naomi put her hand in his without a
word. Only by that gentle touch did she remind him that it was her
mission to share all his griefs, even the old unforgotten sorrows of
his earliest days.
It was a mild May evening--an evening on the edge of summer, with a
perfect calmness in atmosphere and sky--an evening on which the soul
broods on sad, sweet thoughts. The lovers had been sitting alone
for an hour or more, talking by fits and starts, with lengthening
intervals of silence.
‘My father has been dead five weeks, hasn’t he, Naomi?’ Oswald asked,
after a long pause, during which Naomi’s needle had been methodically
travelling along a fine linen wristband, leaving a line of pearly
stitches behind it. The manufacture of a shirt for her father was a
work of high art with Naomi.
‘Yes, dear; five weeks yesterday.’
‘Then in seven weeks more we must be married, Naomi,’ said Oswald, as
seriously as he had spoken of his mother’s death.
This was his first word about the postponed marriage, and it startled
Naomi as if it had been the most unlikely subject for a lover’s
discourse.
‘So soon, dear?’
‘Three months, Naomi. Surely that is long enough to wait out of
respect to the dead. It is not as if we meant to have a grand
wedding. We will just walk quietly into the old parish church some
morning, with your father and his wife, and aunt Judith and Jim, and
there shall be a post-chaise at the lych gate, ready to drive us to
Cheltenham. Let me see, this is the twenty-fourth of May. We might be
married early in July. Why should we wait any longer?’
‘Dear Oswald, you must know I have hardly a wish that is not yours,’
Naomi began earnestly.
‘I know you are all goodness.’
‘But--’
‘But what, love?’
‘I have fancied--it may be nothing more than fancy perhaps, but you
must not be angry with me for speaking of it--I have fancied lately
that there was some change in your feeling for me; it is not that you
have been less kind or affectionate, yet I have felt the change. You
remember how my father wished that we should be very sure of each
other’s sincerity. That is why he wanted us to wait two years before
we were even engaged. The two years are not gone yet; and if--if the
change has come--the change he thought likely, he who knows the human
heart and its weakness--let us loosen the bond, dear Oswald. There
shall be no word of complaint from me--I should neither blame you nor
think ill of you, dear love--I should honour you for being frank and
truthful with me--and keep the memory of our happy days as the most
sacred part of my life--and be your affectionate friend to my death.’
‘Best, noblest, dearest, you are only too good for me!’ cried
Oswald, clasping his betrothed to his breast, moved to a rapture of
reverence and regard by her generous kindness. ‘No, I have never
changed to you--no, I could never change in my esteem, my admiration
for all that is highest in woman. Do you remember those verses of
Waller’s, dear:
‘Amoret! as sweet and good
As the most delicious food,
Which, but tasted, does impart
Life and gladness to the heart.’
You are my Amoret, dearest. What do I want with Sacharissa’s beauty,
“which to madness doth incline”?’
‘But you ought to go to London now that you are free and rich; you
ought to see the world, Oswald, and in London you may meet your
Sacharissa,’ suggested Naomi, radiant with happiness.
She had said what had long been in her mind to say. She had made her
offer of self-sacrifice, in all good faith, and it had been rejected.
She had no further fear or hesitation.
‘I don’t care about London, love. It is nothing but a den of thieves,
according to my poor father’s description. When I see it we will see
it together, and go to the Tower, and St. Paul’s, and the wax-works,
and Westminster Abbey, like regular country cousins. Come, Naomi, let
us be serious and talk about the future. There is the old house to
be brightened and smartened a little before I take my wife home to
it. I should have had much ado to screw a new carpet and a coat of
whitewash out of my father; but I am the master now, and I can pull
down the Grange and build an Italian villa after Palladio, if you
like.’
‘Dear Oswald, you must know that I would not have you disturb a stone
of the old house.’
‘In good faith, dear, I shouldn’t care to do it. It is the house my
mother lived and died in, the first house my eyes saw, the house
where my brother was born, the only house that has ever been home to
me, though, Heaven knows, it has been but a cheerless home at times.
No, we won’t alter, Naomi; we will only beautify. I have been too
idle all this time. I’ll send to Exeter for an architect, and put the
business in hand at once.’
The architect arrived on the scene about a week later, and made
a somewhat supercilious inspection of the good old house, which
had seemed to its occupiers solid enough to last for another three
hundred years, but which, according to the architect, was in a
very perilous condition. He tapped the oak panels contemptuously,
pronounced the flooring of the upper stories too worm-eaten for
anything save entire reinstatement, feared that the whole fabric
required under-pinning, and took an altogether despondent view of the
matter.
‘You want the thing done thoroughly, I suppose, Mr. Pentreath,’ he
said.
‘I should like the drawing-room painted, and the sitting-room
up-stairs; and if you could build a greenhouse anywhere--’
‘Of course, of course--you must have a conservatory opening out of
the drawing-room. If we were to glaze that western end, now, and
throw out a rotunda at the end for tropical plants, palms and so on,
you know. I did the same thing for Sir Brydges Baldrick’s place on
the other side of Exeter, and it had a charming effect. I’ll make you
a sketch if you like.’
‘You are very good,’ said Oswald dubiously; ‘but I don’t think my
father would have liked--’
He had conscientious scruples about spending so much
money--squandering hundreds of pounds upon fanciful improvements--not
that he set undue value upon the money himself, but from the thought
of what an agony of indignation such an outlay would have caused
his father. Rotundas, forsooth! Could that lean old miser lie quiet
in his grave while his beloved guineas were being wasted on such
trumpery?
‘Really, now, Mr. Pentreath,’ said the architect, with the easy
assurance of a professional man employed by the best families, ‘I
should imagine the question was not so much what your father would
have liked, were he living to enjoy his opinion, but what will please
your wife when you bring her home here. Rather a dismal house for a
young lady, I should think. A domed conservatory, now, at the end of
this drawing-room, would have an enlivening effect. As it is, there
is a meanness about the room; long and narrow, no variety, no relief.
But you must please yourself. Shall we go to the boudoir?’
The room which the architect insisted on calling a boudoir was the
pretty parlour on the first floor which Mrs. Pentreath had used. Here
the professional adviser suggested so many improvements--a marble
mantelpiece and a more civilised stove, French windows and a balcony,
an alcove built out at the end for a statue, with a painted glass
window behind it--that Oswald felt as if the Grange were going to
be improved off the face of the earth unless he made a bold stand
against the improver.
‘This was my mother’s room,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t alter it for the
world.’
The architect shrugged his shoulders and felt inclined to ask, ‘Then
what do you want me for, sir, if you have made up your mind to keep
your money in your pockets?’ But there were certain things about
which the architect was arbitrary--flooring which must be taken up,
warped and shrunken oaken panels which must be replaced by new ones,
passages and servants’ offices which must be altered and improved to
adapt them to the requirements of a more civilised form of life.
‘Think of the change which has taken place in our habits,’ exclaimed
the architect conclusively.
Oswald submitted, and a voluminous specification was the result of
this interview. This in due course was submitted to a builder of
Barnstaple and a builder of Exeter; whereupon the Exeter builder,
as the man of more advanced views and larger capital, or credit,
won the day; and about a fortnight afterwards sent a small army of
white-jacketed men to Pentreath Grange, who took the place in hand,
and made haste to render it utterly odious and uninhabitable. Oswald
contrived to sleep in the old house, shifting his quarters as the
men followed him from room to room, now taking out his windows, anon
cutting a rotten patch out of his ceiling, and descending upon him,
like Jove, in a shower of plaster.
Having no home of his own at this period of disruption, he spent his
days in the house of his betrothed, sharing the minister’s homely
fare, hearing all aunt Judith’s complaints against the general
incapacity of her subordinates, and spending long and quiet hours
talking or reading aloud in the neat parlour where Naomi and her
stepmother sat at work.
‘What women you are for plain needlework!’ he exclaimed one warm
afternoon in a sudden burst of impatience, wearied by the rhythmical
movement of the two needles methodically stitching on, no matter how
passionate the subject of his reading--whether Rebecca was standing
on the verge of the castle parapet, or Constance de Beverley left to
perish in her living grave. ‘I never saw anything like your perpetual
industry. One would suppose it were a kind of feminine treadmill, by
which you do penance for your sins.’
‘We have nothing else to do,’ said Cynthia, with a faint sigh. ‘Naomi
is teaching me to make her father’s shirts; if I could not do that, I
could do nothing for him. But I’m afraid my stitching will never be
so good as Naomi’s.’
Oswald looked out of the window listlessly across the row of stocks
and carnations in red flower-pots. It was a midsummer afternoon,
warm to oppressiveness. There was a perfume of newly-cut hay from
the meadows behind the First and Last, a faint breath from distant
bean-fields in flower, the warm air heavy as with the incense Earth
offers to her goddess Summer. The bricklayers were hard at work up at
the Grange, and there was a run upon that thin and sour cider which
had been the old Squire’s household beverage, and which nothing less
than very warm weather and honest toil could render acceptable to the
human palate.
Oswald had an air of being tired of life this afternoon as he threw
himself back in his chair, and sighed, and stifled a yawn, and looked
far away across the haycocks yonder. Naomi glanced up at him now and
then from her work with grave observant eyes. It seemed to her that
there was a jarring chord somewhere. He was not happy. And how was
it, and why was it? Not grief for his father’s death, surely; that
cloud had passed. Impatience for his brother Arnold’s return perhaps;
that seemed more likely.
There was no idea now of the marriage being early or late in July.
The improvements and reparations at the Grange would not be finished
till October at the earliest, and Oswald must have his house ready
before he could take to himself a wife. Naomi felt that the wedding
was still far off.
‘I shall bring you a new book to-morrow afternoon,’ said Oswald,
rousing himself from his reverie.
‘By the author of _Waverley_?’
‘No; you cannot have a new novel by the author of _Waverley_ every
day, though he writes two, and sometimes three, a year. This is
quite a different kind of book--a study of the human heart--a
man’s great sorrow described by himself. He was coward enough to
let the sorrow make an end of him, instead of making an end of
his sorrow--strangling it as Hercules strangled the snakes in his
cradle--as a brave man would have done, no doubt,’ with a short
laugh, half scorn, half bitterness.
‘Is it a book that a Christian may read?’ asked Naomi. ‘But I am sure
you would not bring us any book in which there were evil thoughts.’
‘There are no evil thoughts in this--only an irresistible fate
governing a weak soul. There is no sin in the book--only foolishness
and an overmastering sorrow.’
‘What is it called?’
‘The _Sorrows of Werther_, a translation from the German of Goethe--a
book that set Germany in a blaze many years ago, but which I never
saw till the other day. I bought the volume at a bookstall in Exeter,
when I went over to settle with the builders.’
The reading of _Werther_ began on the following afternoon, in the
wilderness. Naomi and her lover were alone, Cynthia having gone to
sit with an old woman of the flock, whose frame was a kind of museum
for the exhibition of interesting varieties in the rheumatic line.
Oswald looked disappointed at losing one of his auditors.
‘I thought Mrs. Haggard would have liked _Werther_,’ he said.
‘She always reads to old Mrs. Pincote on Wednesday afternoons. She
said you were to begin the book all the same--she would enjoy hearing
any part of it. But if you would rather not begin to-day--’
‘My unselfish Naomi! No, dear, I shall read to you. It is of your
pleasure I think at all times, you know, Naomi.’
‘You are too good to me.’
Oswald began rather lazily, and dawdled so much over the
pages--stopping to talk now and then, and stopping to yawn very
often--that he got no farther than the threshold of the story when
five o’clock struck from the old gray tower, and it was time to go
back to the house for tea.
‘I’m afraid you don’t find it very interesting so far,’ said Oswald.
‘It is not like _Ivanhoe_ or the _Antiquary_,’ replied Naomi; ‘but
it is very pretty. The young man seems kind and amiable--fond of
children--warmly attached to his friend--fond of picturesque scenery.’
‘Yes, he is all that. It is a picture painted in delicate half tints
at the beginning--the strong colouring comes afterwards.’
They went into the woods next day for their afternoon ramble, Cynthia
accompanying them, and Oswald carrying _Werther_ in his pocket.
They peeped in at the Grange on their way. It looked a chaos of raw
plaster and new deal, and did not invite a long inspection. Oswald
had consented to the rotunda for tropical plants, and one end of the
long drawing-room was open to the daylight.
‘You are going to be mistress of quite a handsome mansion, Naomi,
and will have to play the great lady,’ said Oswald, laughing at the
look of consternation with which his betrothed contemplated the
improvements.
‘That I shall never be able to do, Oswald.’
‘There I can’t agree with you. Nature intended you for a person of
importance. There are only a few details to be learnt--how to issue
invitations, the precedence of your guests, to drive a pair of
ponies, to play the Lady Bountiful with discretion, and so on. I have
more to learn as country squire than you as the squire’s wife.’
‘I wish Providence had not made you so rich, Oswald. It seems
ungrateful to repine at blessings, but if you had been my equal in
birth and fortune I should have been the happiest of women.’
‘It will be very ungrateful of you if you are not the happiest of
women with that rotunda,’ said Oswald gaily; and then they went
across the park--it was to be really a park in future, and Oswald was
eager to introduce a herd of deer--and from the park into the tangle
of greenery, amid the ever-shifting lights and shadows of the wood.
Here they found a ferny bank, more luxurious than any sofa, on which
the two girls sat down to work, while Oswald lay on the grass at
their feet, and resumed the story of Werther. He read long, and read
well, losing his own identity in that of the melancholy hero. He came
to the pretty house on the skirts of the forest, and the picture
of Charlotte cutting hunches of black bread for the eager little
brothers and sisters before setting out for the ball. That innocent
image of youth and beauty was something new to the listeners. Not
even in the pages of Scott had they met with so pure and perfect a
picture of womanhood.
Then came the rustic dance, and the thrill of rapture that moved
Werther’s breast when his hand touched the maiden’s for the first
time, and he floated in the waltz with her, and felt a lightness
he had never known before, as if he no more belonged to grovelling
humanity; the consciousness of sorrow and loss when he heard that
she was pledged to another--the thunderstorm--the simple, childish
games by which Charlotte beguiled the terrors of her companions--the
whole description as artless as Goldsmith’s pictures of the Primrose
family, but with a ground-swell of passion below the placid surface
which Goldsmith knew not.
‘And since that time sun, moon, and stars may go their ways; I know
not day from night: the world around me has vanished.’
Cynthia’s work dropped on her lap. She sat with her large blue eyes
fixed on the reader, her lips slightly parted; all her soul in that
listening look. For the first time she heard the story of a love
that was fatal--not like Rebecca’s unrequited passion, elevating
and strengthening the soul by the ordeal of a silent sorrow--but an
overmastering love taking possession of a weak nature, and holding it
as the seven devils held their fated prey.
And this was what love meant sometimes in the world; not a
reverential affection, not gratitude, esteem, respect, such as she
had given to Joshua, and which had made marriage with him seem the
highest honour that Providence could bestow--but blind, unreasoning
passion--a fire kindled in a moment, and consuming the soul. She
knew that Werther would never be happy again. She longed intensely
to follow that devious path of his; to know if he struggled and
conquered, or yielded and fell. She found herself wishing that some
evil fate--at least a convenient fever or merciful consumption--would
remove Charlotte’s excellent betrothed.
‘No. I do not deceive myself! I read in her eyes a deep interest in
me and my fate. Yes, I feel, and in this I will trust my own heart,
that she--O, dare I, can I, breathe the heaven in those words?--I
feel that she loves me!’
At these words Oswald closed the book suddenly, with a sigh.
‘Will you read to us again after tea?’ Cynthia asked eagerly, when
the inexorable church-clock warned them that they had but just time
to be punctual in their attendance at the tea-table.
‘I thought you would like the book,’ said Oswald.
‘It is beautiful,’ she sighed.
He looked up at her, and their eyes met. Dangerous for such eyes so
to meet, such thoughts in the minds of each, such disquiet in either
heart. Cynthia’s delicate colour had faded to ivory pale before that
lingering look had ended. Fatal book, which told them what was amiss
in their lives!
They walked home for the most part in silence, though Oswald tried to
be merry about the rotunda, and the tremendous things that the Exeter
architect was doing with the Grange, half against its owner’s will.
His gaiety had a forced sound, and Naomi looked at him wonderingly.
Why was it that since his father’s death he had been so unlike his
old self--so fitful and variable?
After tea they went to the wilderness, and sat there while the soft
summer light faded gently into gray evening, and the bats skimmed to
and fro above their heads, and distant nightingales called to each
other in the woods. Oswald read into the heart of the book--read
until Werther’s passion had grown from dawn to mid-day--from a
rose-coloured dream of innocence and beauty, pure as morning, to the
lurid gloom of a thunder-charged sky.
The earliest stars were up, silver pale, when he shut the book
without a word. Joshua Haggard came through the little orchard and
looked at the group with a grave smile.
‘Reading all this time, Oswald!’ he exclaimed, ‘and some foolish
fiction, I’ll be bound. How much of your life you waste upon fancies!’
‘Fancy is sometimes sweeter than reality,’ answered Oswald, ‘and real
life has given me very little to do.’
‘A pity,’ said the minister.
‘We cannot all have our mission. One man is born a preacher, like
you; another a soldier, like Wellington; or a lawyer and defender of
the oppressed, like Brougham. I was born nothing; born to enjoy the
hunting in winter, and the sunshine in summer; to lie in Pentreath
woods and read Byron; to do no harm, I hope, and any good that I can.’
The minister sighed.
‘The blessings Providence gives us are charges,’ he said. ‘We shall
have to account for them.’
They went back to the house together, and Oswald took his place at
the usual assembling of the household for evening prayer. To-night
the preacher chose the parable of the Talents for his reading and
exposition. Oswald felt that the moral drawn therefrom was intended
for his admonition. His house, gardens, park, farm, woods, shares,
and stocks were the ten talents for which he was at present in no
wise able to give a satisfactory account. So far he had done nothing
to improve the condition of the labourer upon his land; to let in
the light of Gospel truth, or the free air of heaven to those stone
cabins in which the hind and his family pigged in the company of
their pigs. He had thought of improving his own house, but not of
draining those stifling dens. He had been too easy a landlord, ready
to grant any favour his tenants asked; but had taken no trouble to
discover the state of the toil-bowed tiller of the soil and his
half-starved wife and children, the husbandman who was compelled to
receive two shillings of the nine that made his weekly wage in the
shape of sour cider.
The time had been when Oswald Pentreath’s mind was full of plans for
doing good to his fellow-men, and when he had looked upon the day of
his independence as the dawning of a new era for the labourers on
his land, but since his father’s death he had been the victim of a
distraction which had put all philanthropic intentions out of his
mind.
‘When Arnold comes back I shall be able to set things going in a good
way. Arnold has more energy than I have,’ he thought, expecting every
good thing as a consequence of his brother’s return.
CHAPTER X.
‘TWO SOULS MAY SLEEP AND WAKE UP ONE.’
It was about a week after Mr. Pentreath had begun _Werther_, and
he was now approaching the end of the story, when he came to the
minister’s house at his usual hour, and found Cynthia sitting alone
in the parlour. Naomi had a headache, and had gone up-stairs to lie
down. It was not often that Joshua Haggard’s daughter gave way to any
such feminine ailment, and it was a surprise to Oswald to find her
absent. He had been riding among his farms all the morning, looking
at ancient tiled roofs that had a tendency to subside in the middle;
at barns and cart-sheds, with mouldering thatches and worm-eaten
timbers; at enclosures of meadow-land, where primroses, cowslips, and
wild hyacinths grew abundantly, but where the grass was sour for lack
of draining.
‘I wanted her to rest on the sofa here,’ said Cynthia, ‘but she
fancied she would be better in a darkened room. She has been looking
ill for the last few days. I am sometimes afraid’--timidly, and with
hesitation--‘that she is not quite happy.’
‘I am afraid we are none of us quite happy,’ answered Oswald, with an
undisguised sigh.
Cynthia’s needle travelled to and fro with the usual rhythm. It
seemed to Oswald as if it were some weary tune to which he was forced
to listen.
‘Shall I go on with _Werther_?’ he asked presently, after he had
looked at the stocks and carnations, and over them at the sleepy
old inn, where the landlord stood in his porch and contemplated his
neighbours, like an image of immutability. People who could remember
Combhaven twenty years ago remembered just the same figure in the
porch. It had grown a trifle more obese in the twenty years, that was
all.
‘I would rather you waited till Naomi was well enough to hear the
end,’ said Cynthia.
‘But are not you anxious to know what becomes of that unhappy wretch?
Have you no pity for him?’ asked Oswald almost angrily.
‘I pity him for being so wretched,’ answered Cynthia; ‘but I think
if he had been good, and wise, and brave, he would have gone far away
where he would never have seen Charlotte any more. Instead of writing
unhappy letters to his friend he would have prayed to God to help
him, and fled from temptation.’
‘You will see that in the end he did go away--very far from Charlotte
and temptation. But you have seen him in the heat of the battle: you
will see him by and by a conqueror--or conquered--whichever you like
to call it.’
‘Will you let me read the end for myself? You can read it aloud to us
both when Naomi is better.’
‘No; you shall hear the end as you have heard the rest--from my lips.’
‘But Naomi--’ expostulated Cynthia.
‘I will read it again to Naomi. Why should I not read it to you this
afternoon? You have been more interested in the story than Naomi.’
Cynthia made no further objection, but went on with her work
silently. Oswald took his favourite seat by the open window, in the
shadow of the chintz curtain, with the spicy odours of stocks and
carnations floating in upon the sultry air. They had the room almost
entirely to themselves. Aunt Judith came in and out two or three
times in the afternoon on some small errand, and looked at the two
with a curious expression in her sharp black eyes--a look which might
have set Oswald thinking had he been observant enough to notice it.
But he was deep in the sorrows of Werther, who was fast approaching
his final agony, and Cynthia was listening as she had listened that
other day in the wood, with her hands lying idle in her lap, and the
glossy white linen she had been working upon crumpled in a heap under
those idle hands.
‘Very nicely Joshua’s new shirts will get on at that rate, and she
so eager to set about them,’ mused Judith as she went back to the
shop, with close-locked lips; ‘to think that novel-reading and such
abominations should flourish in my brother’s house. But what else
could be expected of such a marriage? Lucky for Joshua if nothing
worse comes of it.’
Oswald read on, in nowise disturbed by Miss Haggard’s entrance to
look for an account-book in the bureau, or to get her thimble from
the chimneypiece. He had come to that scene of abject passion--of
self-abandonment and despair--when Werther, having resolved to put
an end to his misery, comes in the winter evening to see his idol
for the last time. Forgetful of herself for the moment, Charlotte
reproaches him for coming. She shrinks from the idea of being alone
with him, and recovers her self-possession with an effort. She seats
herself at her harpsichord, and begins a minuet; then asks Werther to
read to her his own translation of a part of Ossian, which he brought
her a few days ago. Perhaps no scene in the wide range of sentimental
fiction surpasses this in restrained power, in suppressed passion.
Not a whisper, not a thought of impurity sullies the picture from the
first line to the last: there is only a fatal, irresistible love.
‘She tore herself from him, and in hopeless bewilderment, trembling
between love and anger, she cried, “This is the last time, Werther!
You must see me no more!” And casting a look full of love upon the
wretched one, she fled into the adjoining room, and shut the door
behind her. Werther stretched out his arms after her, but dared
not detain her. He lay upon the ground, his head on the sofa, and
remained in this position for half an hour, until a sudden noise
recalled him to himself. It was the servant, who came to lay the
table. He walked up and down the room; and when he found himself
alone again, went to Charlotte’s door, and called in a low voice,
“Lotte, Lotte!--only one word--one farewell!” There was no answer.
He waited, and knocked, and waited again; then tore himself away,
crying, “Farewell, Lotte! Farewell for ever!”’
Cynthia sat listening with dilated eyes and hands tightly clasped, as
if the whole scene were reality--as if she could see Werther there at
her feet, grovelling on the ground. There stood the open harpsichord
at which Charlotte had been playing. The vivid picture shaped itself
before her eyes. The winter evening and home-like fire-lit room, the
hopeless sinner lying there unpitied and alone, the suicide’s dark
resolve in his mind; and Charlotte knew not his fatal intention.
She refused him the poor comfort of a last farewell. No hand was
stretched out to save him. It was too awful a picture.
Cynthia clasped her hands before her face, and burst into tears. In
the next moment Oswald was on his knees beside her, trying to unclasp
those small nervous hands.
‘You pity _him_,’ he cried passionately; ‘pity me, then, for I suffer
as he suffered; I love as he loved, and yet have courage to live,
and to go on fighting with an invincible passion--though I feel the
struggle is vain--and to try to be happy with another; yes, to hold
firmly to the tie which once promised happiness, and which now means
only bondage. Pity me, Cynthia, pity _me_; not that poor shadow in
the book, who lived and suffered, and is dead and at rest; for there
was such a man. Pity me, Cynthia; for I have loved you, and have
been fighting against that love ever since that sweet time before my
father’s death, when you came to his sick-bed as an angel of mercy,
and brought woe unutterable to me.’
He had poured forth his confession in a torrent of words not to be
arrested by Cynthia’s choked sobs or look of horror, or the pleading
gesture of her tremulous hands.
‘Oswald, how can you be so cruel?’
‘Cruel! Is it cruel to suffer, to be miserable, to know myself the
worst and weakest of men, and to hate myself--as I do, Cynthia,
from my soul? Do you think I have not struggled? Yes, and conquered
myself, after a fashion. I am going to marry Naomi, and we are to be
a happy couple,--as married couples go nowadays--happier than nine
out of ten, perhaps; for, at least, I can admire and respect my wife;
and I once believed I loved her, before I knew you and the hidden
depths of my own heart, and the meaning of that word “love.” Yes,
we are going to be vastly happy. The builders are doing wonders for
our house; and we shall be thought much of and looked up to by the
neighbourhood. I may keep a pack of hounds very likely by and by, and
teach my wife to ride across country. I am not going to shoot myself,
as Werther did.’
‘Why did you read that book to me?’ asked Cynthia, with a piteous
accent that thrilled him. It sounded like an admission of
weakness--a faint cry of despair.
‘Why?’ he cried, trying to take her hands in both his own. ‘Can’t
you understand why? Because it is my own story; because it was my
only way of telling you my love, and I burned to tell you. It was an
irresistible longing. I could not keep silence any longer. Somehow,
in some language, if not in plainest speech, I must tell you. And now
bid me die, my Charlotte, and I will slay myself, like Werther. Only
say to me, Life would be easier for all of us if thou wert dead, and
I will not live another day to disturb your placid existence. I am
your slave, dearest, your abject obedient slave!’
‘If you are,’ said Cynthia, trembling violently, and paler than the
wood anemones she had gathered to deck the old Squire’s sick-room,
‘if you are, you will obey me. Never speak to me again as you have
spoken to-day; forget that you have ever been so wicked. Ask your
Saviour to give you a better heart, and respect my dear husband and
his daughter.’
Before Oswald could answer honest Sally entered with the big
mahogany tea-tray, knowing no more of the thundercloud of passion
in the atmosphere than the maid who laid the supper in the story of
Werther. Mr. Pentreath had risen from his knees to pace the room
after that last speech of his, and there was no extraordinary picture
offered to the eye of the handmaiden. Cynthia folded her work even
more carefully than usual, but with hands that trembled sorely. She
smoothed the white linen garment which had progressed so slightly
towards completion this afternoon, and laid it in its allotted place,
and took her stand by the window, watching for her husband’s return.
She tried to seem at her ease, but not the faintest tinge of colour
relieved the absolute pallor of her face. Strangely was that face
changed from the radiant countenance that had welcomed Joshua Haggard
at Penmoyle one little year ago.
Oswald walked up and down the parlour while Sally set out the homely
feast--a big loaf in an iron tray, a brown butter-pot of Wedgewood’s
ware, a dish of lettuce and overgrown radishes. Anon appeared Miss
Haggard; and had either Oswald or Cynthia been in an observant mood,
they might have remarked that the industrious Judith had not paid as
much attention as usual to her afternoon toilet. The corkscrew curls
were somewhat roughened, the large mosaic brooch, which she was wont
to put on by way of evening dress, was missing.
‘I think I’ll go and have a look at the builders,’ said Oswald,
taking up his hat. ‘I’ll come round again in the evening, perhaps,
and see how Naomi is.’
No one attempted to hinder his going; so, after a brief adieu to the
two ladies, he departed, leaving Werther lying on the little round
table by the window. Cynthia took up the volume, and turned eagerly
to the page at which he had left off reading.
‘Ah!’ sighed Miss Haggard, ‘that’s the worst of novel-reading. It
grows upon people.’
Cynthia neither heeded nor heard. Her thoughts were with the suicide
who was roaming bareheaded in the winter night, outside the gates of
the little town, not knowing whither or how long he wandered.
Joshua came in while his wife was standing with the open book in her
hand, absorbed, unconscious of his entrance.
‘Why, little one, how pale you are!’ he said, in that gentler tone
which his voice assumed unwittingly whenever he spoke to his wife. ‘I
missed your welcoming look as I came across the street.’
‘There’s too much novel-reading in this family,’ snapped Judith. ‘You
mustn’t expect things to go on as they ought, if you let the young
Squire bring bad books into your house.’
‘This is not a bad book!’ cried Cynthia indignantly. ‘It is a
beautiful book!’
‘I say that it is a bad book!’ answered Judith fiercely. ‘And I’ve
good reason to know it--a book that puts bad thoughts into people’s
heads. Gainsay me if you dare, Mrs. Haggard!’
Cynthia’s white face turned from her dumbly. What did she guess--what
had she overheard? Something assuredly. Deepest shame took possession
of Joshua’s wife. She felt the burden of unspeakable guilt--she who
was only the passive object of an unauthorised passion.
‘Why, Judith, Cynthia, what is this! Who would dare to bring a wicked
book into my house; my son that is soon to be, above all? And if he
were capable of doing such a shameful thing, would my wife read the
book?’
‘It is not wicked,’ said Cynthia, handing him the offending
_Werther_. ‘It is a story of sorrow--not wickedness. If stories are
to be written at all, they must tell of sorrow--and human weakness,
and sinfulness. Even the Bible tells us that life is made up of
these.’
‘Very much so,’ remarked Judith. ‘There’s nothing the Bible says
about human nature’s wickedness that human nature doesn’t faithfully
carry out.’
Joshua took the book and glanced at it helplessly. He was not able
to take a bird’s-eye view of plot and style, swoop upon a catchword
here and there, and straightway made up his mind that the book was
altogether vile, after the manner of certain modern critics. He
turned the leaves thoughtfully, saw a story told in a series of
letters, much talk of the beauties of Nature, a little philosophy,
some mention of a country pastor and children--their innocent
gambols in rustic gardens, their affection for a kind elder sister,
bread-and-butter, village life, a pastoral air altogether: not a bad
book assuredly, decided Joshua.
‘I do not think, my dear Judith, that you are a very acute judge of
literature,’ he said mildly.
‘Perhaps not,’ assented Miss Haggard, with a faint moan. ‘But I hope
I am a tolerable judge of human nature.’
‘I can trust my future son’s honour for not bringing any ill-chosen
book into my house; and I can trust my wife’s purity well enough to
know that it would revolt against anything evil.’
‘Nothing like trustfulness in this life,’ remarked Judith
sententiously, as she took up the teapot.
Now a general proposition--indisputable in its nature though vague in
its drift--flung out in this way, has a tendency to instil disquiet
into the most tranquil mind. There was not much in the words, but the
tone meant a great deal; most of all, a kind of scornful pity. It
was like that remark of Iago’s anent Michael Cassio’s honesty--the
plainest, most straightforward observation; yet dropping the poison
seed of doubt into the heart of the listener.
Joshua Haggard looked at his sister’s pursed-up lips wonderingly,
and then at his wife’s pale face, in which there was an expression
that was new to him.
Great heavens! what did it mean? Not guilt; not the lightest taint
of evil? No; he could never believe the faintest shadow of evil
of his beloved--not even the most venial deceit, the smallest
double-dealing. She was the purest of the pure--pure as the saintly
damsels of old--the women who ministered to the apostles in the
sweet early dawn of Christianity. He could admit her to be no less
pure than these--as white a soul--unsullied by human frailty. He
had preached the sinfulness of the human heart--it was the very
keystone of his creed--a sinful humanity in need of being called and
regenerated, chosen and purified, redeemed by a vicarious sacrifice.
But here he was false to his own theology: he would not admit of
original sin in this one pure soul. Love had issued his imperious
edict, like a papal bull, and this one woman was to be without sin.
‘My love, you are trembling,’ said Joshua, taking his wife’s cold
hand, after a long and earnest scrutiny of the pale sad face. ‘There
must be something amiss in the book if it has agitated you so.’
‘It is a very sorrowful story,’ she faltered; ‘I could not help
crying--at the end.’
‘Oswald must bring you no more books to make you unhappy. I heard
you all laughing pleasantly one afternoon when he was reading some
Scotch book about an old gentleman and a dog. He must bring you only
pleasant books. In a world where there is so much real sorrow, it
is foolish and even wrong to waste our tears upon story-books. That
is one reason why I have always tried to keep such books out of my
house.’
‘I will never read such stories again,’ said Cynthia earnestly. ‘Only
tell me how to please you, and I will be obedient in all things.’
Judith sighed audibly. It was a way she had at times, and always
exercised a depressing influence upon her family circle.
‘Is there anything wrong, Judith?’ inquired the minister.
‘No, brother; it’s only my chest.’
This was her invariable answer; but as medical science had never
yet discovered anything amiss in this region--not so much as a brief
attack of indigestion--the reply was generally accepted as a sort
of formula, and her sighing was taken to mean something which Miss
Haggard did not choose to communicate.
‘My dearest, you have always been obedient,’ said Joshua, pressing
his wife’s little hand; ‘I have never been dissatisfied with you. But
I do not like to see you low-spirited about a foolish book, written
by some weak-minded German,’ said Joshua, with a sublime ignorance as
to the pretentions of the great Wolfgang.
‘Try me with some hard thing,’ exclaimed Cynthia, with increasing
earnestness; ‘put my gratitude and affection to the proof. Do I
forget what you have done for me--how you saved me from heathen
ignorance? how I owe you all that I am and all that I hope to be?
_Could_ I be ungrateful to you, my benefactor and my deliverer?’
Had Judith Haggard been a student of Shakespeare, she would have here
quoted Ophelia’s remark upon the Player-queen inwardly or audibly--
‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much!’
But as her sole notion of the poet was that he had been rather a low
and loose-lived person who wrote plays, and glorified much drinking
of sack and canary as a cardinal virtue, she relieved her feelings
with another sigh, deeper than the last.
‘Don’t mind me, brother,’ she said; ‘it’s only my chest.’
Joshua neither heard the sigh nor the excuse; his eyes were fixed
upon his wife’s white face, down which the gathering tears rolled
slowly.
‘Ungrateful, my love!’ he cried; ‘have I ever claimed gratitude from
you? My part has been to thank God for having given me so dear a
companion. Only be happy, my darling; that is the sole obedience I
ask from you. Let no foolish fancies out of books disturb your peace
of mind. God has given us real happiness, dear; let us be thankful
for it and value it, lest the cloud should come upon us because we
have made light of the sunshine.’
He drew her to him and kissed her tenderly; and in that hour at least
there was no shadow of distrust in his mind.
CHAPTER XI.
‘AND ALL IS DROSS THAT IS NOT HELENA.’
It was some time before Oswald saw his betrothed after that last
reading of _Werther_; and the book remained a broken story for
Naomi, who knew not the issue of Werther’s fatal love. Cynthia
carried the volume up to her own room, and read it, and wept over
it in secret, and then hid it under the little stock of ribbons
and collars and feminine prettinesses--all of the simplest, most
puritanical kind--which she had acquired since she had been Joshua
Haggard’s wife. She put the book away out of sight, as if it were a
guilty thing, feeling that it had brought her face to face with a
guilty secret. But for the book those wicked words of Oswald’s might
never have been spoken. The sad, the awful inexpiable guilt would
have existed all the same in the depths of two erring hearts; but it
might never have found a voice. Werther had given form and language
to that mysterious and sinful passion--bitterest proof of poor
humanity’s ingrained iniquity.
‘Not by ourselves can we escape sin,’ she cried, on her knees,
in abject self-abasement. ‘We are nothing of ourselves: not
even faithful to the most sacred ties--not even true to our
own affections--not even pure or constant. Only by Thee, O
Redeemer!--only by Thee can we escape the snares our erring hearts
set for us; only through Thee can we break loose from the bondage
of original sin. O, pity him, spotless Saviour--pity this helpless
sinner; pity me, for I love him.’ She was not afraid to carry this
secret sorrow, sinful as it was, to the foot of the cross. Her
husband’s theology had taught her that Calvary was the sinner’s
altar--his temple of expiation; the threshold of heaven, on which all
guilty hearts could lay their burdens down, and pass, purified from
earthly stain, and liberated from earthly chains, through the golden
gate beyond it. The deeper the guilt, the surer welcome for the
penitent.
Cynthia’s guilt was but a thought--a fond, weak yielding to a dream
of impossible happiness; a sinful regret for the things that might
have been. She had not stood firmly against the insidious approach
of the tempter; she had suffered him to steal upon her footsteps
unawares; she had not shut her eyes and refused to see the dangerous,
dazzling vision. Passion was an unknown element in this purely
sentimental and poetic nature. Love for Cynthia could never mean
storm and fever, guilt and ruin; but it might mean corroding remorse,
a slow and silent despair.
When had she first discovered that something amiss in her placid
life--that little rift in the lute which made life’s music dumb?
Closest self-examination would have scarcely enabled her to answer
that question. It might be, perhaps, that on the morning when Oswald
parted from her at her husband’s door--in the blank sorrow of his
face, with its look of mute appeal, in the tears he shed upon her
hand as he clasped it in his own--she had faintly understood a secret
which was to become plainer to her by and by. The thought, vague
though it was at first, had brought sorrow. She had felt a restraint
in the presence of Naomi’s lover, and had striven to avoid him. But
the days in which she did not see him, seemed desolate and empty;
and then, not weighing the consequences or meaning of her acts,
she weakly yielded to the desire to be in his company, and allowed
herself to be the companion of Naomi’s walks, the sharer of her
lover’s attentions. This was the sin she now looked back upon as the
black spot in her life--this was when she had suffered the tempter to
overtake her steps, to walk by her side.
O happy fatal afternoons in wood or wilderness--on the hills--by the
malachite and purple sea! She could see the bright face looking up at
her; she could hear the low thrilling voice reading sweet sad verse
that seemed to speak straight to her heart--to have been written and
meant only for her: she could see and hear the earthly tempter even
now, in this hour of penitence and grief.
‘O, if I had never seen you, if I had never known you, I should have
been innocent and true all the days of my life; worthy of Joshua’s
noble heart.’
She could pray no more. She sat upon the ground, lost in foolish
memories, recalling her first days at Combhaven, and all the
peaceful time, before she had given up her soul to this guilty
dream. She remembered that autumn afternoon, the first time she saw
Oswald--she standing by the hearth, with her bonnet in her hand; he
coming in at the door.
‘And he was nothing to me,’ she thought wonderingly. ‘If he had died
that night, I should only have been sorry for Naomi’s sake.’
She had thought him handsome--different in every way from all other
men she had ever seen--a new creature. He was like a picture that
Joshua had shown her in an old country-house they went to see in
their brief honeymoon--the portrait of a young man in dark-green
velvet clothes of a curious fashion, with fair hair falling on his
shoulders, and a melancholy look in his eyes. How often she had seen
that melancholy look in Oswald’s eyes, after the Squire’s death, and
had known only too well that it was not grief for his father that
made him sad!
How gradually it had crept into her heart, this weak, wicked love!
Had it come like a bold assailant she could have repulsed it; but
sweetly, slowly, gently, like the tender dawn of a summer morning,
this new light had overspread the sky of life. How should she bear
her life without it!
‘Duty, duty!’ she cried, wresting herself from this web of foolish
memories. ‘O, let me remember all I owe my husband; let me remember
how I worshipped him one little year ago: what a grace and honour I
counted it to be chosen by him. I loved him, because he was the best
and wisest of men. He is best and wisest--kindest, truest. Whom have
I ever known equal to him?’
* * * * *
When Naomi went down to the parlour, a little later than usual, on
the morning after that last reading of _Werther_--languid still
from yesterday’s headache--she found a letter from Oswald on the
chimneypiece. Cynthia was sitting at work by the window--just where
_he_ had sat yesterday. Judith was washing the breakfast cups and
saucers in a little crockery pan which she was accustomed to bring
into the parlour for that purpose.
‘Dearest,--I have made up my mind quite suddenly to go to London,
and inquire about Arnold’s ship. It seems such a strange thing
that I have had no answer to my letters, and I am getting really
uneasy. I shall go to Lloyds’--or whatever the right place may
be to obtain information about a ship in the merchant service.
Forgive me for going away so suddenly and without waiting to say
good-bye. An irresistible impulse took hold of me. I shall only
stay long enough to make all needful inquiries and to take a
hasty look at the City; and I shall write to tell you how I get
on. God bless you, dear, and good-bye!--Your always affectionate
‘OSWALD.’
Naomi read the letter twice over, surprised at this sudden impulse in
Oswald, who was not subject to impulses, or at least not subject to
carrying out their promptings when they prompted immediate action. He
was rather of a dreamy temperament, never doing anything to-day which
he could possibly put off till to-morrow.
She read the letter a third time, aloud to Cynthia.
‘Did he say anything about this yesterday?’ she asked. ‘Had he any
idea of going to London?’
‘I think not,’ answered Cynthia, working steadily. O blessed
mechanical click-click of the needle, which went on with its measured
paces while the pulses of the heart throbbed so stormily. Naomi gave
a little sigh as she folded the letter. It was hard to lose him
for an indefinite time, were it ever so short. And her wedding-day
seemed so far off now. The neglected old Grange no longer awaited
her with its sober old-world look--the look it had worn since her
infancy. Confusion had fallen upon the old house, and Naomi felt as
if she could have no part in the new house which was to arise from
this chaos. Money was being spent recklessly to make the grave old
mansion fit for a fine lady; and Naomi knew that it was not in her to
become a fine lady. All the money in the world would never make her
like Mrs. Carew of the Knoll, who wore rouge, and drove a curricle;
or like Miss Donnisthorpe, the daughter of the master of the hounds,
who hunted the innocent red deer, in a short green habit, with a gold
band round her velvet hunting-cap.
‘If he would only keep to the old simple ways,’ she thought, looking
back at the departed Squire’s miserly plainness of living with a
touch of regret, ‘I am sure we should be much happier; he would spend
his money in doing good.’
She knew, by the experience of one who had succoured and cared
for the poor, all the sad details of that dark picture which lies
behind the fair outside of country life. That lovely landscape, rich
in its variety of colour as the Queen’s regalia, is the theatre
in which many a drama of sin and suffering, guiltless poverty and
unmerited woe, has to be acted. Yonder cottage, whose thatched
roof makes so pretty a feature in the view, shelters starvation: a
mother toiling to feed her children, while their father lies in jail
for--a rabbit. Pinched faces, untimely wrinkles, meet the traveller
in those delightful lanes where the wild apple and the clustering
elder suggest to the poetic mind a land of milk, and honey, and
pomegranates--faces marked with the brand of premature care, defiled
by the cunning that is engendered of childish struggles with tyrants
and taskmasters, and a hard, inexorable fate. Not in fetid alleys and
festering London back slums only is man’s fight with difficulty a
bitter and crushing battle; but here, even where earth is a paradise
and the untainted sky an Italian blue, man starves and perishes, and
learns to curse the unequal destiny that gives his master all, and
him nothing.
Naomi knew what poverty meant in a rural district; and she longed
for the power to help and improve, and to use the knowledge which
experience had given her. She had talked to Oswald of the labourers’
homes on his estate--hovels rather than houses--and had gently urged
the need for improvement. He had put her off lightly, in his pleasant
yielding way: so full of grace and beauty in her sight that she
forgot the weakness it indicated.
‘It shall be done, dear; “The sooner, sweet, for you,” as Othello
says. We will do wonders for the poor things. The Exeter architect
shall make a plan--after we are married. You must let me finish the
Grange first, and then I will do anything you like; but I can’t take
the builder off that till his work is done.’ As if there were no
other builder in the world!
* * * * *
Oswald was in London trying to find his Lethe in the somewhat
prosaic distractions of that capital;--not the London of to-day,
with its Viaduct and Embankment, and houses as tall as those of old
Edinburgh and Paris; its innumerable railway-stations, and theatres,
and restaurants, and music-halls; but a city of narrower streets
and more jovial manners. He knew no one, and put up at the busy
commercial hotel at which the Western coach deposited him, taking
no trouble to seek a more refined habitation. He made his inquiries
about his brother’s ship, and, after some trouble, found out the last
port she had touched at in the China seas. Yet this was not much:
for Arnold might have exchanged to another ship for anything Oswald
knew to the contrary. But to gain intelligence about his absent
brother had not been Mr. Pentreath’s only business in London, or
even his chief reason for going there. He went thither in quest of
forgetfulness--to cure himself, were it curable, of a passion that
threatened to be fatal at once to peace of mind and honour. He had
torn himself away from Combhaven with a wrench, thinking that to turn
his back upon Cynthia might be to forget her; but, alas for youth’s
constancy to a forbidden dream! the sweet face followed him to the
crowded city, and harassed him by day, and held him awake at night;
the soft blue eyes betrayed love’s sad secret; the tremulous lips
seemed to him to murmur: ‘Yes, dearest, I love and pity you; though
it can never be--though we are parted in life and eternity, I love--I
pity--I deplore.’
Not quite in vain had he loved her if she but loved him in return;
though all hopes, dreams, delights that love could give--were it
ever so erring--must be here laid down: a solemn sacrifice to duty
and honour. Yes, there was much comfort--nay, more than comfort, a
rapture that thrilled him--in knowing that he was loved. And he did
most assuredly know it, though no admission had fallen from Cynthia’s
lips. Their spirits had touched, as flame touches flame, but a
moment--swift as the quivering arrows of fire that flash and fade in
the instant; yet the touch was a revelation. He did not doubt that
she loved him.
He had never meant to speak of his love. This he repeated to himself
deprecatingly in his hours of remorse. Passion had forced his
secret from him, and he despised himself for the confession that had
dishonoured him. He had meant to speak only through Werther; finding
a morbid delight in dwelling upon the record of sufferings so like
his own, half assured that Cynthia understood and recognised his
passion veiled in the words of another; and then impulse and emotion
had been too strong for him, and he had given loose to the desire of
his heart and disgraced himself for ever in his own eyes, and in the
sight of the woman he loved.
‘She could not look upon me without loathing after that wretched
scene,’ he told himself. Yet the vision of Cynthia which he carried
with him everywhere did not regard him with loathing, but with a
tender pity, a sad, immeasurable love.
He tried to steep himself in London dissipations, knowing about
as much of them as a baby. If he could have fallen in with the
mohawks of the day--the gentlemen who went to Epsom races in a
hearse, and wrenched off harmless citizens’ knockers, or plucked
out their bell-wires; who drank porter with hackney coachmen and
their watermen, and made bosom friends of prize-fighters--he would
perchance have enrolled himself in that band of choice spirits,
and tried to discover a new Lethe in the porter-pot, wherein the
Corinthian Tom of the period was generally so fortunate as speedily
to find that oblivion which goes by the name of Death. But Oswald
Pentreath had no introduction to this patrician set, and was fain to
seek for distraction in such simple pleasures as Vauxhall, and the
theatres, where he found something at every turn which reminded him
of himself and of Cynthia.
Sometimes a face that had been sweet and fair flashed past him under
the coloured lamps in the Vauxhall groves--bright with artificial
hues--and in its venal smile dimly recalling Cynthia’s innocent
beauty; sometimes a face upon the stage reminded him of hers, or a
tone of voice in some young actress thrilled him like hers. Forget
her! Everything in life was associated with her. He could not even
remember what life had been like before he loved her.
He saw all that London could show him--parks, streets, theatres,
gambling-houses, racecourses, folly, extravagance, vacuity--but
found no forgetfulness. Nay, his passion grew and strengthened in
absence. The aching void in his heart went with him everywhere.
At the play, when the house was roaring at Tom and Jerry, and the
Charlies were carried off bodily in their rickety old watchboxes,
Oswald sat staring blankly. His thoughts were in the parlour at
Combhaven, acting that foolish scene over again--living in the light
of Cynthia’s eyes--draining deep delight from every look--however
sad, however reproachful--which told him he was beloved.
He did not yield himself up to despair without a struggle--which was
a manly struggle for one whom Nature had cast in no heroic mould. He
wrestled with himself, and tried to make a stand against the tempter,
and had it in his mind to thrust Joshua’s wife out of his heart, and
to be faithful to Joshua’s daughter. He would go back to Combhaven
in a month or so, regenerated; and would hurry on his marriage, and
begin a new life as a useful and worthy member of society.
‘Arnold may be home by that time,’ he thought; ‘and the delight of
seeing him again will make me forget everything.’
In the mean while, he wrote twice a week to Naomi, decorous and
amiable letters, describing all he saw, and telling nothing of his
feelings or impressions--hardly one word of himself from beginning
to end. Poor Naomi read and re-read the letters, and puzzled herself
sorely about them. He seemed to be enjoying himself, for he was
always going to theatres and operas and races; and he was staying in
London longer than he had intended, which proved that he was pleased
with what he saw. Naomi was contented to bear the pain of severance,
for the sake of his pleasure; but to be parted from him was a sharper
pain than she could have thought possible before he went. Life was
so empty without him! She had her father--always the first in her
esteem, she had told herself; she had all her old home duties and
home ties; but Oswald’s absence took the sunshine and colour out of
everything.
CHAPTER XII.
‘IT WAS THY LOVE PROVED FALSE AND FRAIL.’
A cloud had fallen upon that quiet household at Combhaven. A sharper
pain than Naomi’s sense of loss had crept into the breast of Naomi’s
father, and gnawed it in secret, while the strong man kept silence,
ashamed of his suffering--nay, angry at the human weakness which made
it possible for him so to suffer.
That little scene with Cynthia--that unexplained mystery about the
book called _Werther_--had not been without its influence upon Joshua
Haggard’s mind. He might have forgotten it, and gone on trusting
implicitly--as it was his nature to trust where he confided at
all--had he been true to his own instincts; but this privilege--the
melancholy privilege of being happy and deceived--had not been
allowed him. Judith had hinted, and whispered, and looked, and
insinuated, and, without committing herself to any direct statement,
had contrived to poison her brother’s mind with a shapeless
suspicion of his wife’s purity.
Cynthia had drooped somewhat after that evening on which she sobbed
out her despair upon her husband’s breast. The pale cheek had not
regained its wild-rose bloom; the sweet blue eyes had grown dull and
languid. The young wife looked like one who sickened under the burden
of some secret sorrow. She was not strong enough to suppress the
outward signs of a heart ill at ease.
Joshua saw the change; at first wondered at it, and then, enlightened
by Judith’s hints, began to suspect.
Cynthia was not happy. It was no bodily sickness which oppressed her,
but a secret grief.
Was it that she regretted her marriage with him--that she had chosen
him hastily, mistaking religious fervour for love? This seemed likely
enough.
‘How should she love me?’ he asked himself. ‘A man more than twice
her age; grave--full of cares for serious things. Is it natural
that she should find happiness in my society or in the life she
leads here? Naomi is different; she has been brought up to this
quiet life--to see all things in the same sober light. Cynthia was a
wanderer, used to motion and variety--to crowds and noise. How can
she help it if the longing for the old gipsy life comes back to her?
How can I blame her if she wearies of my dull home?’
This is how he would have explained the change to himself; but
Judith’s oracular sentences hinted at something darker.
‘What is it that you mean, Judith?’ he asked one day, with a burst of
anger; ‘you and my wife speak fairly enough to each other’s faces,
and seem to live peacefully together; but there is something lurking
in your mind--there is something underneath all this smoothness. Is
it Christianlike to deal in hints and dark looks?’
‘I should think it was Christianlike to stand by my brother,’
answered Judith, with her injured air, ‘and to consider him before
everybody.’
‘Is it a sign of consideration for me to speak unkindly of my wife?’
‘What have I said that is unkind? Perhaps it might be kindness to
say more. There’s things that can’t go on without bringing misery to
more than you, brother; but it isn’t my business to talk about ’em if
you’ve no eyes to see ’em for yourself.’
‘What do you mean, woman?’
‘Yes; things must have come to a pretty pass when my only brother,
that I’ve toiled for and served faithfully all my life, calls me
names. A minister, too, who preaches against bad language. But I
knew what it would be when that young woman crossed this threshold.
Good-bye family affection! The man who is led away by a pretty face
turns his back upon blood-relations. He’s bound to follow where his
new fancy leads him.’
With these random arrows of speech did Miss Haggard harass her victim
and relieve her own feelings.
‘Judith, do you want to drive me mad?’ he cried, with exasperation,
‘or to make me think that you are fit for a madhouse yourself? How
has my wife offended you? What evil have you ever seen in her?’
He stood with his back against the parlour-door, facing his sister,
with a resolute look in his dark eyes--resolute even to fierceness,
which told her that a crisis had come. She would be obliged to speak
out; and to speak out was the very last thing she desired. Never
before had she seen that sombre fire in Joshua’s dark eyes. She
quailed before the unknown demon she had raised.
‘What is amiss?’ he demanded savagely; ‘how has my wife sinned
against purity, or against me?’
‘I am not accusing her of sin,’ faltered Judith. ‘You shouldn’t be
so hot-tempered, brother; it isn’t becoming in a Christian minister.
I do not accuse her of sin; but there’s foolishness which brings
young women to the threshold of sin; and, once there, it is easy to
cross over to fire and brimstone. I say that a girl of nineteen is no
wife for a man of your age; that Providence must have meant her for
a trial of your patience; that’s what I’ve always thought and shall
always say, as willingly before her face as behind her back.’
‘Is this all you have to say? You might have said as much the night I
brought my wife home. Is this the upshot of all your dark looks and
insinuations? You have kept me on thorns for the last three weeks;
and, driven into a corner, you can only beat about the bush like
this.’
His scornful tone stung her. To be ridiculed--to be made of no
account in her brother’s household--was more than Judith Haggard
could bear. Whatever wealth of affection there was in her nature
had been given to Joshua. He was the one man she believed in and
honoured, even when least respectful in her attitude towards him.
She could not tamely see him wronged; and her jealousy of Cynthia
was quick to suspect and imagine wrong. She had seen and heard
enough to give force and meaning to her suspicions; and her bosom
had been labouring with the weight of that secret knowledge. She
wanted to tell Joshua--she wanted not to tell him. The secret gave
her a sense of power. It was as if she held a thunderbolt which she
might launch at any moment on the heads of the household; but the
bolt once launched and the domestic sky darkened, her power would be
gone. Pity for Joshua she had none, although she loved him. He had
wronged her love too deeply in marrying a nameless girl. It would do
her good to see him suffer through his wife. She would stand by him
afterwards--stand by him and console him, comfort him with her love,
instead of Cynthia’s. But Providence--and Judith as an instrument of
Providence--meant him to suffer this ordeal.
‘You’ve no call to make light of me,’ she said; ‘I’m not one to speak
without authority. I can hold my tongue, as I’ve held it for the last
twelvemonth. Do you want me to speak plainly? Do you want me to say
all I know?’
‘All--to the last word,’ said Joshua, livid with rage.
‘Don’t turn round upon me afterwards and say it would have been
better if I’d kept my counsel.’
‘Say your say, woman, and make an end of it.’
‘Well, brother, I’ve seen a change in Mr. Pentreath ever since his
father’s death; absent looks, and smothered sighs, and restlessness,
and no pleasure in life. Grief for his father, you’ll say, perhaps;
but is it likely he’d give way like that for an old man, that kept
him short of money, and hadn’t anybody’s good word? It isn’t in
nature.’
‘Who made you a judge of nature? But go on.’
‘Well, brother, I had my own ideas, and I kept ’em to myself, and
should have so kept ’em as long as I lived, if I’d had no stronger
cause for suspicion. But when I see a young man on his knees at a
young woman’s feet, and hear him asking her to pity him because he’s
miserable for love of her, and threatening to shoot himself, and the
young woman sobbing as if her heart would break all the time--and
that young woman my brother’s wife--when things came to such a pass
as this, I think it’s my duty to speak.’
‘Lies!--lies!’ gasped Joshua. ‘You see my happiness, and envy me! You
hate my wife because she is lovely, as you never were--passionately
loved, as you never were.’
Judith laughed hysterically.
‘I don’t know about beauty,’ she said; ‘but I had a high colour and
jet-black hair, with a natural curl, when I was a young woman--and
that used to be thought good looks enough for any girl in my
time--and I might have married a hundred and fifty acres of land
and a flour-mill. But I’m sorry to see you so beside yourself with
passion, Joshua, because I speak plainly for your own good.’
‘Is it for my good to tell me lies? My wife listening to Oswald
Pentreath’s wicked love! No--I’ll never believe it.’
‘Turn it over in your own mind a little more before you call your
only sister a liar. Have you forgotten the last afternoon Mr.
Pentreath was here--when Naomi was lying down with a sick headache,
and those two--Mrs. Haggard and the young Squire--were alone together
from dinner till tea. And you came home and found your wife all in a
flutter and as white as a sheet of paper; and I accused her to her
face of reading a wicked book; and you turned against me to take her
part; and she burst into tears in the middle of tea, and told you she
was grateful to you and would do her duty by you. What was that but
a guilty conscience? Why, a mole could have seen through it! But a
man of your age, who marries a young woman for the sake of her pretty
face, is blinder than the blindest mole. He has not eyes to see
anything but the prettiness.’
Joshua wiped the sweat-drops from his forehead with a broad
muscular hand that shook like a leaf. Never had his manhood been
so shaken--never in all the trials of his early life, when to hold
fast by his thorny path had cost him many a struggle, had he felt
the hot blood surging in his brain as it surged to-day. There was a
fiery cloud before his eyes. He could scarcely see his sister’s face,
looking at him full of angry eagerness, intent to prove her own case,
to assert her own dignity, and with but little consideration for his
anguish.
‘Judith,’ he said falteringly--and that strong voice of his so rarely
faltered that its weakness had a touch of deepest pathos--‘you are my
own and only sister. I cannot think that you would tell me lies on
purpose to make me miserable. Forgive me for what I said just now.
No, I cannot believe my sister a liar. I will not believe my wife
unfaithful to me by so much as a thought. But this young man is a
weak vessel. Tell me--plainly--all you saw and heard.’
‘That’s easily told. He had been reading that book to her--what’s his
name--Werther. I went in and out to fetch my thimble and suchlike,
and whenever I went in it was the same story--“Didst thou but know
how I love thee,” and “Charlotte, it is decided--I must die;” and
such rubbish. And there sat your wife, with her work crumpled up in
her lap, staring straight at him with tears in her eyes. It was close
upon tea-time, and I was going in again when I heard something that
stopped me. The door stood a little way ajar--it’s an old box-lock,
and the catch is always giving way, as you know, Joshua--and I waited
outside just to find out what it all meant; for I felt that I was
bound to do that much by my duty to you. I could just see into the
room. He was on his knees, holding her hands, and she sobbing as if
her heart would break. He told her how he loved her, and asked her
to pity him; and she never said him nay, only went on crying, and
presently told him he was cruel, and O, why did he read such a book
to her? Because it was his own story, he said, and the only way he
could find of telling her his love.’
‘And she did not cry out against such iniquity?’ cried Joshua; ‘she
did not reprove him for such wickedness--rise up before him in her
dignity as an offended woman and my true and loyal wife?’
‘I heard myself called in the shop just at that moment, and I was
obliged to go,’ answered Judith. ‘When I came back to the parlour
Sally was laying the tea-things.’
‘I will answer for my wife’s truth and honour,’ said Joshua firmly.
‘I will pledge myself that she repulsed and upbraided this guilty
young man as he deserved--that she looks upon his wicked passion with
abhorrence. That was why she looked so pale--shocked to the heart,
my gentle one; that was why she clung to me so piteously, seeking
sanctuary in my affection. My lily! no villain shall sully thy purity
while I am near to shield thee! My dearest! has the tempter assailed
thee so soon, sin’s poisoned breath so soon tarnished thy soul’s
whiteness? I will love thee all the more, guard thee more closely,
honour thee more deeply, because thou hast been in danger!’
Judith stared at her brother in dumb amazement. Against such
infatuation as this the voice of reason was powerless. It almost
tempted her to believe in witchcraft--a superstition by no means
extinct in this Western world. Judith had put the thought behind her
hitherto, as a delusion of the dark ages unworthy of a strong-minded
woman. But here, surely, was a case of demoniac possession, an
example of something more foolish than mortal folly.
‘But as for him,’ continued Joshua, with clenched fist, ‘for the
tempter--the would-be seducer--he shall never cross this threshold
again; and let him beware how he crosses my path, lest I should slay
him in my righteous rage, as Moses slew the Egyptian.’
‘And Naomi’s engagement,’ suggested Judith timidly. There was a power
in her brother’s look which awed her.
‘Naomi’s engagement is cancelled from this hour. My daughter shall
marry no double-dealer, swearing to be true to her at God’s altar
with lips that are defiled by the avowal of love for another man’s
wife. My daughter shall go unmarried to her grave rather than be wife
of such a man, were his place the highest in the land.’
‘It was a very grand match for her,’ said Judith, with a
propitiating air; ‘but for my part I never saw happiness come from an
unequal marriage, and I’ve seen many such in my time. But I’m afraid
Naomi will take it to heart.’
‘Poor child!’ sighed the father. ‘Is it my sin that I have brought
this sorrow upon her? How could I know that her lover would prove so
base? Poor child! she must bear her burden--she must carry her cross.’
He was deadly pale; and now that the angry light had gone out of his
eyes, his face had a faded look, as if the anguish of many years had
aged him within the last half-hour.
‘I can’t but remember what Jabez Long said the day the Dolphin went
down: “No good ever came of saving a drowning man; he’s bound to do
you wrong afterwards.” It’s come true, you see,’ said Judith.
‘Do you think I believe that heathen superstition any more because
Oswald Pentreath has proved a villain? I thought you had more sense,
Judith.’
‘Well, I don’t say I believe it; but, to say the least, it’s
curious. However, I never did think much of young Mr. Pentreath, or
of the stock he comes from. But it seems hard upon Naomi. Shall you
tell her the reason?’
‘Tell her that a villain has insulted my wife? No, Judith. My
daughter will obey me, though I bid her sacrifice her heart’s
desire, as Jephthah’s daughter obeyed when she laid down her life in
fulfilment of her father’s promise.’
‘Ah!’ sighed Judith, with suppressed gusto, ‘it’s a world of trouble.’
She felt more in her element now that things were going wrong, and
that she was at the helm once more, in a manner. Her little world had
been given over to two girls, and she had felt herself, in her own
language, a cipher.
It was hardly in Joshua’s nature to be slow to act, however painful
the business which duty imposed upon him. On that very evening he
found Naomi alone in the wilderness, on her knees before a craggy
bank, planting some wild flowers which she had discovered in her
afternoon rambles.
She looked up from her clustering ferns and humble wayside blossoms
with a smile, as her father approached; but the troubled expression
of his face alarmed her, and she rose quickly and came to him.
‘Dear father, is anything wrong?’
She had not seen him since his interview with Judith; and that aged
and altered look in his face, which had struck the sister, alarmed
the daughter.
‘Yes, my dear, there is something very wrong. Providence bids me
inflict pain upon one I fondly love--upon you, my Naomi.’
He drew her towards him, looking down at her with tender pity. It
seemed very hard that she should suffer--that this young life was so
soon to be clouded.
‘Dear father, what has happened?’ cried Naomi, tremulous in her
agitation. ‘It is about Oswald! The evening post has just come; you
have had a letter--is he ill? Yes, yes, I can see that it is about
him!’
‘He is well enough, my love; I have heard nothing to the contrary. I
am very sorry that he is so dear to you.’
‘Why, dear father?’
‘Because I have learned lately that he is unworthy of your affection;
and I must desire you, as you are my true and obedient daughter, to
give up all thought of marrying him.’
The girl’s face blanched, her eyelids closed for a moment, and the
slender figure swayed against Joshua’s arm as if it would have
fallen. But only for a moment. Naomi was not made of feeble stuff,
nor prone to fainting. She lifted her eyelids, and looked at her
father steadily, holding his arm with fingers that tightened upon it
almost convulsively in that moment of pain.
‘What have you heard against him, father, and from whom?’ she asked
resolutely. ‘You are bound to tell me that, in common justice. It is
my duty to obey you, but not blindly. I am not a child; I can bear to
know the worst. What has he done, my love, my dearest--too gentle to
hurt a worm--what evil thing has he done that you should turn against
him?’
‘That I cannot tell you, Naomi; and in this matter you must obey me
blindly as a child. He has sinned; and his sin proves him alike
false and feeble--a broken reed, a man not to be relied on--unworthy
of a woman’s trust. Naomi, believe me, your father, who never
deceived you, that if I inflict pain upon you to-day, in forbidding
this marriage, I spare you ten thousandfold of misery in days to
come. It is not possible that you could be happy as Oswald’s wife!’
‘Let me be the judge of that. It is my venture--it is my happiness
that is at stake. Let me be the judge. What is his sin?’
‘Again I say I cannot tell you. You must trust me and obey me, Naomi,
or you cease to be my daughter. Oswald Pentreath will never cross my
threshold again with my sanction. I shall never more speak to him in
friendship.’
‘Father, is this Christianlike?’
‘It is my duty to myself as a man.’
‘How has he offended you?’
‘By his sin.’
‘But he has not sinned against me,’ said Naomi piteously. ‘Why am I
to renounce him?’
‘He has sinned against you and against God.’
‘If he has sinned, he has so much the more need of my love. Am I to
forsake him in his sorrow--I, who would die for him?’
‘He does not need your love, Naomi, or desire it. It is for the
happiness of both that you should be parted.’
‘For his happiness?’ faltered Naomi, with a look of acute pain.
It was as if all her vague doubts of the past few months were
suddenly condensed into a horrible certainty.
‘Do you mean that Oswald has ceased to love me?’
‘Yes, Naomi. At the beginning I was doubtful of his stability. I
feared that his was a character in which impressions are quick to
come and go. I stipulated for delay, in order that your lover’s
constancy might be tested. The event has proved my doubts but too
well grounded.’
‘I offered to release him only a little while ago,’ said Naomi, ‘and
he would not be set free. He assured me of his unchanging love.’
‘He was a liar!’ cried Joshua fiercely; and his daughter recoiled
before the fury in that dark face. Never had she seen such anger
there till to-day--never had she believed him capable of such
passion. The revelation shocked her; the father whom she so tenderly
loved was degraded in her eyes by this un-Christianlike resentment.
‘Why are you so angry, father?’ she asked pleadingly.
‘Because I hate falsehood, treachery, double-dealing, a fair face
and a foul heart. I can say no more, Naomi. I have said enough to
warn you; it is for you to accept or reject my warning. Marry Oswald
Pentreath if you choose; but remember that from the hour of your
marriage you cease to be my daughter. I will never acknowledge that
man as my son. I will never acknowledge that man’s wife as my flesh
and blood. It is for you to choose between us.’
‘Father, you know I have no choice; you know that you are first--have
always held the first place in my heart. There is no one else whose
love I could weigh against yours--not even Oswald, though I love him
dearly--must love him to the end--love him all the more for his
weakness--for his sorrow. I am your true and loyal daughter, dearest;
and I give you up my heart, as I would give up my life--yes, dear
father, freely, gladly, for your sake.’
‘That’s my own brave Naomi! It is for your own welfare, believe me,
dearest, however hard the trial may be to bear just now. The man is
not true; there could be no happiness for you with him.’
‘Do not say anything more against him, father,’ pleaded Naomi gently.
‘I give him up; but let me honour him as much as I can--let him hold
a high place in my thoughts. It is easier to bear the pain of parting
from him if I can keep his image in my heart undefiled.’
‘I will say no more, Naomi. You will write to him, and tell him your
engagement is ended, at my desire. A few decided words will say all
that is needful. His own heart will tell him the reason. I do not
think that he will question or plead against your decision.’
‘I will write, father.’
Joshua folded her in his arms and kissed the pale sad brow, drawn
with pain.
‘May God bless and comfort you, dearest, and give you joy in this
sacrifice!’ he said solemnly. ‘On my honour, as your father and your
pastor, it is for the best.’
And so he left her, standing in her desolated wilderness, from which
the beauty had gone forth for ever. Her ferns and hedgerow blossoms
smiled at her in the rosy evening light--feathery mosses, trailing
periwinkle, opalescent dog-roses steeped in golden glory, purple
foxgloves towering from a sea of fern--all the sweet wild things she
had gathered together looked at her, and gave her no comfort in this
hour of bitter agony. She cast herself, face downward, on the grassy
path, and gave herself up, body and soul, to despair.
Yes, she had known it, long ago; he loved her no more. She had tried
to put away the thought. She had made her direct appeal to him, and
been reassured by his loving reply. But the aching pain had lingered
at the bottom of her heart. She had not been happy.
Better so; better, as her father said, to renounce him altogether--to
give him back his freedom--than to let him chain himself in a
loveless wedlock. Better anything than the humiliation of an unloved
wife.
But this sin which her father spoke of with such deep
resentment--this offence which had kindled such unseemly anger in a
Christian’s breast--what was this deadly and desperate error? Herein
lay the bitterest trial of all--to be kept in the dark, not to be
able to comfort or succour the sinner.
CHAPTER XIII.
‘THE DEEP OF NIGHT IS CREPT UPON OUR TALK.’
Joshua proved a true prophet in so far as related to Oswald
Pentreath’s line of conduct on receipt of his betrothed’s letter. To
Naomi’s sad epistle, renouncing all claim upon him at her father’s
desire, he answered briefly:
‘Your letter has taken me by surprise, dearest; but harsh and
sudden as your decision seems, I acquiesce. I know not how your
father may have arrived at his estimate of my character, or
what has influenced him to desire that our engagement shall be
cancelled, but I am willing to abide his sentence. He may be
right, perhaps. I am by nature unstable. I am not worthy of so
noble a heart as yours. Yet be assured, Naomi, that, although
unworthy, I am at least capable of appreciating and admiring your
character, as well as a better man. To the end of my life I
shall honour and esteem you. To the end of my life I shall deem
you the purest and noblest of women, and think those days of my
life happiest in which I loved you best, and when there was no
shadow of mistrust between us.
‘God bless you, dearest, and farewell! It may be long before I
revisit Combhaven, and this may be a lifelong farewell.--Your
friend, your servant always,
‘OSWALD PENTREATH.’
‘He is grateful to me for letting him go,’ thought Naomi, with a
touch of bitterness. She could read gratitude for his release between
the lines of this letter.
‘He might have spared me much pain if he had been more candid,’ she
thought--‘if he had confessed the truth that day I told him of the
change I had seen in him.’
She opened the drawer where her wedding-dress lay on the day she
received this final letter, the last she could ever expect from
Oswald Pentreath. She looked at the pale silken gown with such
sorrowful eyes as look upon a corpse. Was it not the dead corpse of
her lost happiness which lay there, with sprigs of rosemary among the
folds of its shroud?
‘Poor wedding-gown!’ she said to herself; ‘I shall give it to Lucy
Simmonds. Why should it lie and fade in a drawer when it would make
her happy? Would it be any comfort to me to look at it in years to
come, and remember that I was once young and very happy, fancying
myself beloved?’
Lucy Simmonds had been Naomi’s favourite pupil in the Sunday-school
over Little Bethel; an intelligent biblical student, who knew Kings
and Chronicles as well as a bishop, and had never been known to
confound the miracles of Elijah and Elisha. She had blossomed into
womanhood, and was about to unite her fate with that of a promising
young butcher--a staunch member of Joshua’s congregation.
Naomi folded the dress carefully, and packed it in a large sheet
of white paper. The skirts of those days were scanty, and the silk
dress did not make a bulky parcel. She wrote a loving letter to her
old pupil, and sent the parcel to the widow Simmonds’s house that
afternoon. The dress might be too good for Lucy’s present station,
but not for her future position as the wife of an aspiring butcher.
The young matron would wear that pretty gray silk at friendly
tea-parties and Christmas gatherings for years to come, and would
think affectionately of the donor. It seemed a small thing, this
giving away of her wedding-gown; but to Naomi it meant the total
surrender of hope. There was nothing left for her in life but duty
and her love for her father.
She bore her cross meekly. None could have told how withering a
sorrow had passed over her young life. There was a curious compound
of pride and humbleness in her nature. She accepted her lot humbly,
as a trial which was but her portion of humanity’s common burden;
but she was too proud to let others see how deeply she had been
wounded. She put on a brave front; and her father gave her credit for
stoicism, in no wise suspecting that the weight of her secret grief
was almost intolerable.
Very little was said in the small household about this change in
Naomi’s fortunes. The cancelment of her engagement was accepted as
an act of Joshua’s. He had forbidden the marriage for some good
reason of his own. No one dared ask him why--his wife least of
all. She could not have spoken Oswald’s name to him. Her heart was
full of fear, sorrow, and deepest pity for Naomi; yet she dared not
offer her sympathy. There was a look in Naomi’s face that forbade
all approach--every offer of love. Cynthia felt that there was a
gulf between them. Naomi tacitly avoided her. She was not unkind,
but she shrank from all companionship with her father’s wife; and
henceforward Cynthia’s life became very lonely. Her husband’s
hours were closely occupied, and spent for the most part away from
her. Naomi lived her own life, as much as possible apart from her
stepmother, and Judith was harsh and unfriendly. Jim was always
Cynthia’s friend and champion; but his busy career did not admit of
much companionship. The small household met at meals, at the same
hours, with the same regulations and ceremonies; but these family
assemblies were silent and gloomy.
‘Our dinner-time is getting uncommonly like a Quakers’ meeting,’
observed the audacious Jim at one of these dreary gatherings; ‘I wish
the spirit would move some of us to be lively.’
‘When you’ve as much trouble on your mind as your father has you
won’t be quite so active with your tongue,’ retorted aunt Judith.
The works at the Grange had undergone a sudden check. Oswald had
written peremptory orders to his architect. The contract was to be
carried out only so far as concerned the substantial repairs of the
house. There was to be no rotunda, and the end of the drawing-room
was to be walled up again.
‘I am going abroad,’ he wrote; ‘make as good a job as you can of the
place, and write to me at the subjoined address for cheques as you
want them.’
The subjoined address was that of a London solicitor, a man who had
done business for the old Squire occasionally.
The architect wondered and talked; and before many days everybody in
Combhaven knew that Mr. Pentreath’s engagement to Joshua Haggard’s
daughter was broken off. There was a great deal of talk, and much
discussion and disputation about details, but a wonderful unanimity
of opinion. The match would have been most unsuitable. Naomi Haggard
was much too serious for a Squire’s lady. The Grange could never
have held up its head properly under such a mistress, and a glass
rotunda would have been absurdly out of keeping. ‘He ought to marry
Mr. Pinkley’s only daughter,’ said Combhaven, deciding for him
offhand. ‘There’s only an accommodation road between Pinkley’s land
and his.’
The builders finished their work. The end of the long drawing-room
was walled-up again, and there was no more talk of palms or fountains
or an Italian garden. The Grange resumed its air of gloom and
emptiness, and looked almost as dismal as in the lifetime of the old
Squire.
So the summer ripened and grew more glorious, bringing no delight of
heart to the minister’s small household. The colours of the sea took
a more vivid lustre from the fulness of the sun, like jewels in an
Indian temple shining in the glare of many torches. There came over
the land the sultry hush of the days before harvest. Very little
doing in those rich fields, where the corn was gently stirred by the
hot south wind, like the waves of a golden sea; very little doing
in the big farmyards, where the cattle stood knee-deep in the tawny
gorse-litter, and contemplated the outer world listlessly, with
dreamy brown eyes and a general air of benevolence: stillness and
repose on all things. Cynthia Haggard looked at this lovely external
universe languidly, with eyes that saw its beauty dimly, as in a
dream in which one absorbing sense of overwhelming trouble makes all
things faint and blurred. Her husband had spoken no unkind word to
her since that scene with Oswald; yet she felt that he was estranged.
He read more; he shut himself up in his own thoughts; gave himself
up more completely to his contemplative and subjective religion, and
that religion seemed to take a more gloomy and inexorable character.
In his sermons he dwelt less on the divine love and charity,
and harped on a harsher string--the doom of sinners destined to
perdition; wretches on whom the divine light had never shone, for
whom that all-saving faith which could lift the sinner out of the
mire by one upward impulse of an awakened soul was a dead letter.
Cynthia shuddered as she listened. Was Oswald Pentreath one of these
lost spirits?
She could see that her husband was unhappy, yet had no power to
comfort him. That weighed upon her heavily. She dared not complain
to him of this disunion, lest she should be drawn into a confession
of her sinful weakness, and constrained to admit her guilty love for
the sinner. She could not have stood up before that righteous man and
spoken falsely.
He never questioned her about Oswald Pentreath; yet she felt that
there must be some strong suspicion of evil in his mind, and at
the root of his arbitrary conduct in cancelling his daughter’s
engagement. It never occurred to her that Oswald’s wild talk that
afternoon had been overheard, and told to Joshua. She looked upon his
knowledge rather as the result of some occult power of his own. His
wisdom had penetrated the guilty secret.
One night, a little while after Naomi had given up her lover, Joshua
came up to his bedchamber somewhat later than usual. He had stayed
in the parlour after supper, writing or reading. Cynthia was lying
awake, full of sad thoughts, vague forebodings of evil, aching pity
for that weak sinner, wandering she knew not where. Joshua walked
up and down the room in silence for some minutes, and then stopped
suddenly beside the bed, and looked down at the small face on the
pillow, the sad blue eyes glancing up at him timidly, deprecating
blame.
‘I am glad you are not asleep,’ he said. ‘I want that book--the
_Sorrows of Werther_. I have been thinking of what my sister said
about it. I want to judge for myself. I looked at it too hurriedly
the other day. I want to see what kind of book it was that made you
unhappy.’
‘You can’t read it to-night, Joshua, surely? It’s so late, and you
must be tired.’
‘I am tired, but not able to sleep. I would rather read than lie
awake. My thoughts have been a burden to me of late. There was a
time when my wakeful hours were full of sweetness, when I could
lose myself in communion with my Redeemer. That time is past. Human
trouble has made a wall between this poor clay and the spirit world.’
This was a reproach which smote the erring wife to the heart.
‘Joshua, it is my fault,’ she faltered; ‘you were happier before you
married me.’
‘Happier!’ he cried bitterly; ‘I never knew the extremes of human joy
or human pain till I knew you. Well, the pain has been immeasurable
as the joy. If I erred, I have paid the penalty. Give me that book,
Cynthia.’
Cynthia rose without another word, went to the drawer where she had
hidden that fatal romance of real life, and brought the book to her
husband with a meek obedience that moved him deeply. Even in his
doubt and distrust of her--for he did doubt her, despite his brave
words to Judith--there was an abiding love in his soul, a yearning to
take her to his heart and forgive her and comfort her, and offer her
deeper love than was ever given to woman--the wide strong love of a
heart that had only awakened to passion in the maturity of its force
and power. Could the love of youth, in all its glow of romance and
poetry, be in anywise equal to this?
Cynthia put the book into his hand, and then remonstrated gently
against the folly of midnight studies.
‘Read it to-morrow, dear Joshua. You look tired and ill. Hark! it is
striking eleven.’
‘Go to bed and sleep,’ he said sternly; ‘I cannot. I want to read the
book that melted you--and Oswald Pentreath. I wonder whether it will
move me to tears.’
He set the candle on the old mahogany escritoire at which he wrote
sometimes, and seated himself in the wide horsehair-covered arm-chair
edged with brass nails, like an old-fashioned coffin. He opened the
book with a resolute air, as a man who meant to plod through it,
whatever stuff it might be. He read and read on with an intent face,
turning leaf after leaf at measured intervals; Cynthia, lying with
her face turned towards that gloomy figure, watching him as if he
were reading in the book of doom. To her mind that book held the
confession of Oswald’s weakness and of hers. Joshua would know all
when he had read that. Had it been an acknowledgment of sin written
with her own hand, signed and attested, she could not have thought it
more complete or final.
He read on deep into the night, Cynthia dozing a little now and
then, but for the most part watching him. The small hours struck, one
after another, on the solemn old church bell; a faint chillness crept
into the summer air; then slowly, softly, mysteriously, like a dream,
came the gray dawn--first with a glimmer at the window; then with
a broad cold light, that filled the room and made the flame of the
candle pale and ghost-like; then with gleams of saffron and rose, and
dim morning sunbeams like an infant’s vague sweet smile. Still Joshua
sat reading in the same fixed attitude; reading on with indomitable
resolve, bent on knowing the utmost and the worst. For him, too, the
book was a confession and a revelation. Werther was Oswald Pentreath;
Charlotte was Cynthia: and they loved each other; their young hearts
yearned to each other, overflowing with tenderest sympathies, with
unspeakable affection; and fate, duty, religion, and honour stood
between them, in the person of the unloved husband, separating them
for ever.
The room was flooded with sunlight when he closed the book, with one
long sigh. He could not refuse the sinner that one expression of
pity, so lost, so given over to an unconquerable passion, and yet
with so much in him that was gentle and true and worthy.
Cynthia had fallen asleep at last. Joshua looked down at the pale
face on the pillow, full of compassion, pitying her, pitying himself.
‘Those two lived happily together, when Werther was gone,’ he said to
himself, thinking of Albert and Charlotte; ‘but then Albert did not
know that his wife’s heart had gone from him.’
He washed and dressed himself, and went down to his daily round of
labour, and said no word to Cynthia about the fatal book.
CHAPTER XIV.
‘A STORM WAS COMING, BUT THE WINDS WERE STILL.’
No life could have been more self-contained than Naomi’s in this
fair summer time. She claimed sympathy from no one, but bore the
anguish of her widowed heart in a resolute silence. From Cynthia she
shrank, with a feeling that was more nearly akin to aversion than
she would have liked to confess to herself. Womanly instinct had
fathomed the mystery of Oswald’s defection. She had looked back, and
remembered, and weighed looks and tones of his, which had but faintly
impressed her at the time, but which now, considered by the light
of his subsequent conduct, had fullest significance. His heart had
gone astray, and it was to Cynthia, her father’s wife, that truant
heart had wandered. Not with deliberate sinfulness; she could not
believe him deliberately wicked. The tempter had set this snare for
him, and he had weakly yielded. Cynthia’s childish beauty, Cynthia’s
innocently simple ways, had allured him from the straight path of
righteous dealing. He had struggled, poor sinner, fought and striven
with the Evil One, and, finding the powers of darkness too strong for
him, had turned and fled. It was wisest, it was best so.
Naomi loved him with so fondly indulgent an affection--a passion
so unselfish--that she could find it in her heart to forgive him
for having fallen away from her. She could pardon and pity him,
though he had taken the light and glory out of her life, and left
her world empty as an exhausted crater. But she could not so
easily forgive Cynthia. Her father’s wife should have been above
suspicion, unassailable by temptation. And if Cynthia had not shown
some tokens of weakness, Oswald would surely have been stronger.
Cynthia, the wandering waif, cherished and garnered by the most
generous of men, should have loved her husband with a love strong
enough to shield her from the possibility of temptation; and yet in
this false wife’s pallid face, in the heavy eyes, and sad set lips,
Naomi read the secret of a guilty sorrow. She, Cynthia, grieved for
the absent one--she shared Naomi’s sacred grief, she intruded upon
that privileged domain of fond regret. The knowledge of this silent
distress made Naomi angry and unforgiving.
One evening in the beginning of August, soon after Joshua’s reading
of _Werther_, Naomi walked alone in Pentreath Wood. Such lonely
evening rambles were her melancholy comfort, and this wood her
favourite resort. Her wild garden had been neglected of late. It
was too narrow for her grief. Jim, or aunt Judith, or Cynthia might
intrude upon her at any moment. But here, in this wide shadowy
wood, she was really alone--no one to spy out her tears or offer
humiliating pity; no companions but the stars high up yonder, shining
through overarching beech and oak; the unknown life in brambles and
underwood, dry fern and last year’s leaves, which were stirred now
and then mysteriously by those unfamiliar creatures that make merry
at nightfall, or by the distant hoot of some ancient owl, sounding
ghost-like in the dimness, or the red-brown cattle lying in the
grassy hollows and sheltered corners, restful but unsleeping.
Here Naomi could nurse her grief as she pleased. She could bring
forth her sorrow from its hiding-place, and cherish and caress it,
as if it had been a fondly-loved child. Here she recalled Oswald’s
looks and tones, when she had believed him true, and lived over again
the happy days in which he had been all her own--the time before
Cynthia came and brought sorrow and shameful thoughts into Joshua
Haggard’s peaceful home. Every turn and wind of the dear old wood,
every veteran oak, ferny bank, and knoll and hollow, was associated
with that lost lover, and aided fancy to conjure up his image. Here
he had read _Ivanhoe_, here _Marmion_. Here, in a lazy mood, he
had lain stretched at full length, and told her the story of Caleb
Williams, and how he had once seen Kean play the part of Sir Edward
Mortimer, in the _Iron Chest_, at the little theatre in Exeter. Here,
leaning against the silvery bark of this giant beech, he had recited
Byron’s ‘Isles of Greece,’ thrilled with a fervour which was almost
inspiration. O, happy irredeemable hours--the dead departed delights
of life!
Here, on this August evening, Naomi walked and meditated. It was a
dim and hazy twilight, with a pale new moon shining faintly behind
the tree-tops. The young trees and the underwood beneath them had a
ghostly look in this half light. It might have been a scene made up
of shadows.
Bitter, beyond all measure of common bitterness, to remember the
days--but a little while ago--when Naomi and her lover had roamed
in this very wood, when there was but the red-brown glow of coming
foliage on the beech-boughs, and the chestnut fans were still
unfolded, and the anemones whitened the hollows, and the blue
dog-violets smiled up at the blue April sky. Cynthia had been with
them always--the fair young sick-nurse in her neat gray gown and
little Quaker cap. She had been with them, sharing all their talk;
and Naomi had nothing suspected, nothing doubted. It was only now
that she understood the drama in which her own part had been so
sad a one--only now that she could fathom the meaning of that low
subdued voice, those pauses of silence, and lapses into dreamy
thoughtfulness, which had marked Oswald’s manner during this time.
‘It was then he began to care for her,’ she told herself. ‘God
help and pardon them both! I do not believe that either entered
deliberately upon this path of sin. But if Cynthia saw that he was so
weak, so wicked, she ought to have left the Grange at once; she ought
never to have seen him again. It was her duty.’
Easy enough to say this, but a moment’s reflection showed Naomi
that it would have been no easy thing to do. To avoid temptation
thus would have been to create a scandal. And Oswald had made no
confession of his weakness. Those subtle differences in his tones and
looks may have been meaningless for Cynthia.
‘No,’ thought Naomi, with a burst of very human passion, ‘she must
have understood them; his words and looks must have been clear to
her, for she loves him.’
Pondering thus--as she had pondered on many an evening since her
lover’s desertion, travelling over and over again the same sad
pathway of thought--Naomi came to the skirt of the wood, and from
the wood into the park, where the trees stood far apart, and the
smooth sward rose and fell in gentle undulations. She could see the
house from this point. How lonely it looked, how deserted; a gloomy
dwelling that might have been so bright!
‘I was to have been a fine lady, with a drawing-room and a
conservatory,’ Naomi said to herself, full of bitterness; ‘and
coaches were to come rolling over the gravel drive, where the weeds
grow so thickly. And there were to be lights in all those windows;
and music sounding in the night--a life like fairyland. Poor Oswald!
How he used to talk of our future! And he was true then--he meant all
he said. O my dearest, my dearest,’ she murmured, with clasped hands,
‘I wanted no lights or music; I wanted no grand visitors--no bliss
other than this common world can give, while I had you! My life would
have been all happiness, had Providence made you the poorest of God’s
poor, and our home a hovel, and our days full of toil, if we had only
spent them together--if you had only been true to me.’
She stopped, with tears rolling down her faded cheeks, tears that
gushed forth unawares at the thought of what life might have been.
She stood looking straight before her with those tear-dimmed eyes,
looking at the dull old house.
Not a gleam of light! Yes; the heavy hall-door opens slowly, and she
sees the dim lamp within. A figure comes out of the dusky porch, and
walks at a leisurely pace along the broad gravel terrace at the side
of the house.
Naomi gave a faint awe-stricken cry, as if she had seen a ghost--a
cry so faint that it could not reach the ears of yonder solitary
dreamer pacing the gravel path with bent head. She turned, and
hurried back to the wood, and was quickly lost in the darkness
of that green mystery of oak and beech; and then, secure from
observation, walked slowly home meditating, upon what she had seen.
He had come back; he who had said his path of life was to lie in
other lands; he, the self-banished exile, the new Childe Harold. Why
had he come? and was it for long? How was it that the village had
not been aware of his coming, and made his return common talk--an
inevitable consequence of such knowledge? Had he any purpose in
returning secretly, in hiding himself from his little world? Naomi
was perplexed and troubled by these unanswerable questions.
It was late when she entered the little parlour at home. Prayers were
over, and the family were seated in the usual formal array round the
temperately furnished board. The huge junk of single Gloucester,
about the size and shape of one of those granite slabs which bestrew
the path of the adventurous tourist who tempts the perils of the
Loggan Rock, stood up in the centre of the table like a household
idol, round which the family had assembled for evening worship.
The brown beer-jug--simulating a portly figure in a three-cornered
hat--occupied its accustomed corner. Everything was precisely as
Naomi remembered it in her earliest childhood. The quiet monotony
of life had never been disturbed by new crockery, or a change of
form and colour in the vulgar details of existence. The Druids could
hardly have lived more simply than Joshua Haggard.
And now that the mainspring of life was broken, this sordid sameness
seemed odious; nay, almost unbearable. Naomi looked at the familiar
home-picture with a shudder. Affection gave it no beauty in her
eyes to-night. A fair enough picture of domestic peace from the
outside, if there had been any one in the street to contemplate that
candle-lit circle through the window; some vagabond, perchance,
homeless, and deeming that there must be bliss in a home. Yet, save
honest Jim, who sat munching his bread-and-cheese with a countenance
of equable discontent, there was no member of that family circle
whose bosom had not its load of care.
‘Half-past nine, Naomi!’ exclaimed Joshua, looking up reproachfully,
as his daughter came into the room. ‘The first time I’ve read prayers
without you since I can remember, except when you’ve been ill. What
has kept you so long?’
‘I’ve been frightened,’ answered Naomi, looking not at her father,
but at Cynthia. ‘I was in Pentreath Park, and I thought I saw a
ghost.’
‘A ghost, Naomi? I thought you were too good a Christian to believe
in such folly.’
‘Saul saw a ghost,’ interjected Jim, with his mouth full of lettuce,
‘and you wouldn’t say that was folly.’
‘Saul lived in days when God taught His children by miracles.’
‘And if Providence chose to send a ghost to Combhaven, who’s to
hinder it?’ cried Jim, with unconscious irreverence. ‘I’m sure ghosts
are wanted--people are wicked enough. I daresay the Cock-lane ghost
would have done a deal of good if a pack of busybodies hadn’t made
her out an impostor. And there are the ghosts that worried the Wesley
family. You can’t fly in _their_ faces.’
‘Sit down to your supper, Naomi,’ said Joshua, rebuking Jim’s
flippancy by a grave disregard which was more crushing than
remonstrance: ‘you ought not to be wandering about so late of nights.
It is not respectable.’
Naomi sighed and made no answer. Those weary ghosts in Dante’s shadow
world, wandering in their circles of despair, might have felt very
much as she did, had any accuser charged them with levity or unseemly
conduct. She looked at her father with eyes full of a wondering
reproachfulness, as if she would have said, ‘Can you, who know my
burden, upbraid me?’
‘What about the ghost?’ asked aunt Judith, sweeping her crumbs into
a neat little heap with the back of her knife. ‘Don’t tell me it was
Mr. Trimmer. Sally had the impudence to hint at his walking, only
last Sunday night; but I think I stopped her tongue.’
Mr. Trimmer was a retired miller who had died of dropsy ‘up street,’
and who was supposed to be not quite comfortable in his mind
concerning the division of the property which he had left behind
him, about which there had been some squabbling among his nephews
and nieces. This disagreement of the miller’s heirs had given rise
to the report of ghostly visitations of an erratic and unconsecutive
character on the part of the miller.
‘I won’t swear to his having walked,’ cried Jim eagerly: ‘but there
have been groans heard down at the old mill. _That_ I can vouch for,
because Joe Davis’s father heard them when he was coming home from
his work last Saturday night.’
‘Why, Trimmer hadn’t worked the mill for ten good years,’ exclaimed
aunt Judith. ‘What could he want down there?’
‘To look after the money he’d buried,’ replied Jim, with conviction.
‘You may depend that what he’s left behind him above ground isn’t
half what he’s left beneath.’
‘Was it Trimmer?’ asked Judith, letting her natural love of the
marvellous get the better of common sense.
‘No,’ answered Naomi; ‘it was nothing but fancy, I daresay. The mists
were rising--white clouds of vapour that looked like the shadows of
the dead.’
‘Let there be no more said upon the subject,’ said Joshua sternly.
‘It is sinful to dwell upon such folly. Eat your supper, Naomi, and
let there be none of these evening wanderings.’
It is not easy to eat when one is bidden. The home-made bread, sweet
as it was, seemed bitter to Naomi’s parched mouth. She drank a long
draught of water and held her peace, and there was silence till the
end of the meal. Naomi lifted her downcast eyelids once or twice, and
looked at Cynthia with thoughtful scrutiny. There was nothing in the
young wife’s countenance to betray any knowledge of Oswald’s return
to the Grange. There was only that settled sadness which had become a
part of the sweet face lately.
‘She will know very soon, I daresay,’ thought Naomi bitterly. ‘It is
not to see me that he has come back.’
Her heart burned with indignation, as if Cynthia had, by some unholy
witchcraft, some subtle silent exercise of womanly artifice, lured
the false lover back to her net. She could not give her credit for
innocence, or even for unconscious yielding to a guilty love. No, it
was Cynthia’s fault that Oswald had gone astray. Had she been strong
in purity of heart, Oswald would never have been so weak.
When the time came for bidding good-night, and Cynthia approached
with her pretty pleading look and rosebud mouth ready to kiss, Naomi
turned away from her stepmother with a stony face, and left the
room in silence. Cynthia looked after her wonderingly, but said not
a word. She knew but too well what it meant. Oswald’s treachery had
made a lasting breach between them. Her only hope was that Joshua had
not seen that cruel repulse. But he had seen it, and formed his own
conclusions thereupon.
END OF VOL. II.
LONDON:
ROBSON AND SONS, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.
Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
silently corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences
within the three volumes of this work and consultation of external
sources. Some hyphens in words have been silently removed and
some silently added when a predominant preference was found in
the original work. Except for those changes noted below, original
spellings in the text and inconsistent or archaic usage have been
retained.
Page 126: “the mearest waif” replaced by “the merest waif”.
Page 189: “about you father” replaced by “about your father”.
Page 215: “only foolishnes” replaced by “only foolishness”.
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
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