A Strange World: A Novel. Volume 2 (of 3)

Here Mrs. Darvis was fairly overcome, much to the astonishment of the girl Elspeth, whose uncanny black eyes regarded her with a scornful wonder. Maurice noticed that look.

‘Sweet child,’ he said to himself. ‘What a charming helpmeet you will make for some honest peasant in days to come, with your amiable disposition!’

He had taken his time looking at the old house, and listening to the housekeeper’s story. The sun was low, and he had yet to find a lodging for the night. He had walked far since morning, and was not disposed to retrace his steps to the nearest town, a place called Seacomb, consisting of a long straggling street, with various lateral courts and alleys, a market-place, parish church, lock-up, and five dissenting chapels of various denominations. This Seacomb was a good nine miles from Penwyn Manor.

‘Perhaps you’d like to see the young Squire’s portrait,’ said Mrs. Darvis, when she had dried those tributary tears.

‘The young Squire?’

‘Mr. George. We used to call him the young Squire sometimes.’

‘Yes, I should like to have a look at the poor fellow, now you’ve told me his history.’

‘It hangs in the old Squire’s study. It’s a bit of a room, and I forgot to show it to you just now.’

Maurice followed her across the hall to a small door in a corner, deeply recessed and low, but solid enough to have guarded the Tolbooth, one would suppose. It opened into a narrow room, with one window looking towards the sea. The wainscot was almost black with age, the furniture, old walnut wood, of the same time-darkened hue. There was a heavy old bureau, brass handled and brass clamped; a bookcase, a ponderous writing desk, and one capacious arm-chair, covered with black leather. The high, narrow chimney-piece was in an angle of the room, and above this hung the portrait of George Penwyn.

It was a kit-kat picture of a lad in undress uniform, the face a long oval, fair of complexion, and somewhat feminine in delicacy of feature, the eyes dark blue. The rest of the features, though sufficiently regular, were commonplace enough; but the eyes, beautiful alike in shape and colour, impressed Maurice Clissold. They were eyes which might have haunted the fancy of girlhood, with the dream of an ideal lover; eyes in whose somewhat melancholy sweetness a poet would have read some strange life-history. The hair, a pale auburn, hung in a loosely waving mass over the high narrow brow, and helped to give a picturesque cast to the patrician-looking head.

‘A nice face,’ said Maurice, critically. ‘There is a little look of my poor friend James Penwyn, but not much. Poor Jim had a gayer, brighter expression, and had not those fine blue-grey eyes. I fancy Churchill Penwyn must be a plain likeness of his uncle George. Not so handsome, but more intellectual-looking.’

‘Yes, sir,’ assented Mrs. Darvis. ‘The present Squire is something like his uncle, but there’s a harder look in his face. All the features seem cut out sharper; and then his eyes are quite different. Mr. George had his mother’s eyes; she was a Tresillian, and one of the handsomest women in Cornwall.’

‘I’ve seen a face somewhere which that picture reminds me of, but I haven’t the faintest notion where,’ said Maurice. ‘In another picture, perhaps. Half one’s memories of faces are derived from pictures, and they flash across the mind suddenly, like a recollection of another world. However, I mustn’t stand prosing here, while the sun goes down yonder. I have to find a lodging before nightfall. What is the nearest place, village, or farmhouse, where I can get a bed, do you think, Mrs. Darvis?’

‘There’s the “Bell,” in Penwyn village.’

‘No good. I’ve tried there already. The landlady’s married daughter is home on a visit, and they haven’t a bed to give me for love or money.’

Mrs. Darvis lapsed into meditation.

‘The nearest farmhouse is Trevanard’s, at Borcel End. They might give you a bed there, for the place is large enough for a barrack, but they are not the most obliging people in the world, and they are too well off to care about the money you may pay them for the accommodation.’

‘How far is Borcel End?’

‘Between two and three miles.’

‘Then I’ll try my luck there, Mrs. Darvis,’ said Maurice, cheerily. ‘It lies between that and sleeping under the open sky.’

‘I wish I could offer you a bed, sir; but in my position——’

‘As custodian such an offer would be a breach of good faith to your employers. I quite understand that, Mrs. Darvis. I come here as a stranger to you, and I thank you kindly for having been so obliging as to show me the house.’

He dropped a couple of half-crowns into her hand as he spoke, but these Mrs. Darvis rejected most decidedly.

‘Ours has never been what you can call a show place, sir, and I’ve never looked for that kind of perquisite.’

‘Come, young one,’ said Maurice, after taking leave of the friendly old housekeeper, ‘you can put me into the right road to Borcel End, and you shall have one of these for your reward.’

Elspeth’s black eyes had watched the rejection of the half-crowns with unmistakable greed. Her sharp face brightened at Maurice’s promise.

‘I’ll show you the way, sir,’ she said; ‘I know every step of it.’

‘Yes, the lass is always roaming about, like a wild creature, over the hills, and down by the sea,’ said Mrs. Darvis, with a disapproving air. ‘I don’t think she knows how to read or write, or has as much Christian knowledge as the old jackdaw in the servants’ hall.’

‘I know things that are better than reading and writing,’ said Elspeth, with a grin.

‘What kind of things may those be?’ asked Maurice.

‘Things that other people don’t know.’

‘Well, my lass, I won’t trouble you by sounding the obscure depths of your wisdom. I only want the straightest road to Trevanard’s farm. He is a tenant of this estate, I suppose, Mrs. Darvis?’

‘Yes, sir. Michael Trevanard’s father was a tenant of the old Squire’s before my time. Old Mrs. Trevanard is still living, though stone-blind, and hardly right in her head, I believe.’

They had reached the lobby door by this time, the chief hall door being kept religiously bolted and barred during the absence of the family.

‘I shall come and see you again, Mrs. Darvis, most likely, before I leave this part of the country,’ said Maurice, as he crossed the threshold. ‘Good evening.’

‘You’ll be welcome at any time, sir. Good evening.’

Elspeth led the way across the lawn, with a step so light and swift that it was as much as Maurice could do to keep pace with her, tired as he was, after a long day afoot. He followed her into the pine wood. The trees were not thickly planted, but they were old and fine, and their dense foliage looked inky black against a primrose-coloured sky. A narrow footpath wound among the tall black trunks, only a few yards from the edge of the cliff, which was poorly guarded by a roughly fashioned timber railing, the stakes wide apart. The vast Atlantic lay below them, a translucent green in the clear evening light, melting into purple far away on the horizon.

Maurice paused to look back at Penwyn Manor House, the grave, substantial old dwelling-house which had seen so little change since the days of the Tudors. High gable ends, latticed windows gleaming in the last rays of the setting sun; stone walls moss-darkened and ivy-shrouded, massive porch, with deep recesses, and roomy enough for a small congregation; mighty chimney-stacks, and quaint old iron weathercock, with a marvellous specimen of the ornithological race pointing its gilded beak due west.

‘Poor old James! what good days we might have had here!’ sighed Maurice, as he looked back at the fair domain. It seemed a place saved out of the good old world, and was very pleasant to contemplate after the gimcrack palaces of the age we live in—in which all that architecture can conjure from the splendour of the past is more or less disfigured by the tinsel of the present.

‘Dear old James, to think that he wanted to marry that poor little actress girl, and bring her to reign down here, in the glow and glory of those stained-glass windows—gorgeous with the armorial devices of a line of county families! Innocent, simple-hearted lad! wandering about like a prince in a fairy tale, ready to fall in love with the first pretty girl he saw by the roadside, and to take her back to his kingdom.’