‘love is a thing to which we soon consent.’
maurice clissold had not forgotten that entry in the register at seacomb church, and one afternoon, when matthew, justina, and he were cosily seated at the clumsy old lodging-house table drinking tea, he took occasion to refer to his rambles in cornwall, and his exploration of the little out-of-the-way market town.
‘i should fancy you children of thespis must have found life rather difficult at such a place as seacomb,’ he said. ‘dramatic art must be rather out of the line of those nonconformist miners. i saw three dissenting chapels in the small town, one of them being the very building which was once the theatre.’
‘yes,’ said mr. elgood, with a thoughtful look, ‘we had a bad time of it at seacomb. my poor wife was ill, and if it hadn’t been for the kindness of the people we lodged with—well, we might have had a closer acquaintance with starvation than any man cares to make. there’s no such touchstone for the human heart as distress, and no man knows the goodness of his fellow-men till he has sounded the lowest deep of misery.’
‘you had a child christened at seacomb, had you not, mr. elgood?’ asked maurice.
the comedian looked up with a startled expression.
‘how did you know that?’ he asked.
‘i was turning over the parish register, looking for another entry, when i stumbled across the baptism of a child of yours, whose name was not justina. i thought perhaps justina was an assumed name, and that the infant christened at seacomb was miss elgood, as the age seemed to correspond.’
‘no,’ replied matthew, hurriedly. ‘that infant was an elder sister of justina’s. she died at six weeks old.’
‘why, father,’ exclaimed justina, ‘you never told me that you lost a child at seacomb. i did not even know i ever had a brother or sister. i thought i was your only child.’
‘the only one to live beyond infancy, my dear. why should i trouble you with the remembrance of past sorrows? we have had cares enough without raking up dead-and-gone griefs.’
‘was your wife a cornish woman, mr. elgood?’ asked maurice.
‘no; she was born within the sound of bow bells, poor soul. her father was a bookbinder in clerkenwell. she had a pretty voice, and a wonderful ear for music; and some one told her she would do very well on the stage. her home was dull and poor, and she felt she ought to earn her living somehow. so she began to act at a little amateur theatre near coldbath fields, and having a bright pretty way with her, she got a good deal of notice, and was offered an engagement to play small singing parts at sadler’s wells. i was a member of the stock company there at the time, and her pretty little face and her pretty little ways turned my stupid head somehow, and i told myself that two salaries thrown into one would go further than they would divided; never considering that managers would want to strike a bargain with us—lump us together on the cheap—when we were married; or that when two people are earning no salary it’s harder for two to live than one. well, we married, and lived a hard life afterwards; but i was true to my poor girl, and fond of her to the last; and when hunger was staring us in the face we were not all unhappy.’
‘justina is like her mother, i suppose,’ said maurice, ‘as she doesn’t at all resemble you?’
‘no,’ replied matthew, ‘my wife was a pretty woman, but not in justina’s style.’
‘what made you hit upon such an out-of-the-way name as justina? mind, i like the name very much, but it is a very uncommon one.’
mr. elgood looked puzzled.
‘i dare say it was a fancy of my wife’s,’ he said. ‘but i really don’t recollect anything about it.’
‘i’ll tell you why i ask the question,’ pursued maurice. ‘while i was in cornwall, staying at a farm called borcel end, i came across the name.’
the comedian almost dropped his teacup.
‘borcel end!’ he exclaimed, ‘you were at borcel end?’
‘yes. you know the place, it seems. but that’s hardly strange, since you lived so long at seacomb. did you know the trevanards?’
‘no, i only knew the farm from having it pointed out to me once when a friend gave me a drive across the moor in his dog-cart. a queer, out-of-the-way place. what could have taken you there?’
‘it was something in the way of an adventure,’ replied maurice, and then proceeded to relate his experience on that midsummer afternoon among the cornish hills.
he touched lightly upon his visit to penwyn manor house, knowing that this might be a painful subject for justina. but she showed a warm interest in his story.
‘you saw his house,’ she said, ‘the old manor house he told me about that night at eborsham. oh, how like the memory of a dream it seems when i think of it! i should like so much to see that place.’
‘you shall see it some day, justina, if—if you will let me show it you,’ said maurice, stumbling a little over the last part of the sentence. ‘it is strange that you should be twice associated with that remote corner of the land, once in your birth, a second time in poor james penwyn’s devotion to you.’
‘it is very strange, sir,’ said the comedian, solemnly, and then with his grand shakespearean manner continued,—
“there are more things in heaven and earth, horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”’
‘it was at borcel end i heard the name of justina,’ said maurice, going back to the subject most interesting to him. ‘there is an old picture there, a portrait of the present proprietor’s grandmother, whose name was justina.’
‘is the old grandmother living still?’ asked matthew, suddenly.
‘what, blind old mrs. trevanard? yes, she is still living. but you said you did not know the trevanards.’
‘only by repute. i heard people talk about them. rather a curious family, i fancy.’
‘in some respects,’ answered maurice, puzzled by the comedian’s manner. it seemed as if he were affecting to know less about the family at borcel end than he really knew. yet why should he conceal so simple a circumstance as his acquaintance with the trevanards?
when maurice and justina were alone together for a short time next day, the girl questioned her companion about his visit to penwyn manor.
‘i want you to describe the old place,’ she said. ‘i cannot think of it without pain. yet i like to hear of it. please tell me all about it.’
maurice obeyed, and gave a detailed description of the grave old mansion, as he had seen it that summer afternoon.
‘how happy he would have been there!’ said justina. ‘how bright and fair that young life would have been! i am not thinking of my own loss,’ she said, as if in answer to an unspoken question of maurice’s. ‘i never forgot what you said about unequal marriages that evening at eborsham, when you came in and found me in my grief, and spoke some hard truths to me. i felt afterwards that you were wiser than i; that all you said was just and true. i should have been a basely selfish woman if i had taken advantage of his foolish impulsive offer—if i had let the caprice of a moment give colour to a life. but believe me, when i let myself love him, i had no thought of his worldly wealth. it was his bright kind nature that drew me to him. no one had ever spoken to me as he spoke. no one had ever praised me before. it was a childish love i gave him, perhaps, but it was true love, all the same.’
‘i believe that, justina. i believed it then when i saw you, little more than a child, so faithfully sorry for my poor friend’s fate. if i had known you better in those days i should not have called his love foolish. i should never have opposed his boyish fancy. i look back now at my self-assertive wisdom, and it seems to me a greater folly than james penwyn’s unreasoning love.’
‘you must not say that,’ remonstrated justina gently, ‘all that you said was spoken well and wisely; and if providence had spared him, and if he had married me, he would have been ashamed of his actress-wife.’
‘i doubt it, justina. a man must be hard to please who could be ashamed of you.’
‘i suppose it is very wicked of me,’ said justina, after a brief silence, ‘but i cannot help grudging those people their happiness in his house. it makes me angry when i think of that cousin—mr. churchill penwyn—who gained so much by james’s death. i remember his cold calm face as i saw it at the inquest. there was no sorrow in it.’
‘he could hardly be supposed to be sorry. he and james had seen very little of each other; and james’s death lifted him at a bound from poverty to wealth.’
‘yes, i can never think of him without remembering that. he gains so much. the murderer with his brutal greed of gain little thought that he was helping another man to fortune—a man who in the evil wish may have shared his guilt.’
‘you have no right to say that, justina.’
‘it is unjust, perhaps, but i cannot be temperate when i think of james penwyn’s murder. nobody thought of interrogating the man who profited so much by his death. you were suspected because you were not at your inn that night; but no one asked where mr. churchill penwyn spent the night of the murder.’
‘there was no ground for suspecting him.’
‘there was the one fact that he was the only gainer by the crime. he should have been made to prove himself innocent. and now he is happy, proud of his usurped position.’
‘so far as one man can judge another man’s life, churchill penwyn seems to me completely happy. his wife is a woman in a thousand, and devoted to him; but i shall have the pleasure of introducing you to her some day, perhaps, justina.’
‘do not think of such a thing. i could never regard churchill penwyn as a friend. i hope never to see him again.’
maurice clissold saw that this feeling about james penwyn’s successor was deeply rooted, and he argued the question no further. he was too happy in justina’s society to dwell long upon discordant notes. they had so much to talk about, small as was the actual world in which they had mutual interest. maurice had undertaken to show all the glories of london to the girl whose life hitherto had been spent in small provincial towns. justina had ample leisure for sight-seeing, for mr. flittergilt’s original comedy proved an honest success, and there was no new piece yet in rehearsal at the royal albert theatre. nor had mr. elgood, comedian, any prudish notions about the proprieties, which might have hindered his daughter’s enjoyment of picture galleries and museums, abbeys and parks. he did not care for sight-seeing himself; for his love of art, he confessed honestly, was not strong enough to counterbalance certain gouty symptoms in his feet, which made prolonged standing a fatigue to him.
‘let me enjoy my pipe and my newspaper, and let justina see the pictures and crockery,’ he said, with reference to the south kensington museum. so the two young people went about together as freely as if they had been brother and sister, and spent many a happy hour among the national art treasures, or in hyde park, in whose deserted alleys autumn’s first leaves were falling.
mr. clissold went less and less to his clubs, and became, as it were, a dead letter in the minds of his friends.
one man suggested that clissold must be writing a novel. another opined that clissold had fallen in love.
in the meanwhile clissold was perfectly happy after his own fashion. never had his mind been more serene—never had his verse flowed clearer in those quiet night hours which he gave to the muses; never had the notes of his lyre rung out with a fuller melody. he was writing a poem to succeed the ‘life picture,’ a romance in verse, calculated to be as popular with mudie’s subscribers as his first venture had been. he soared to no empyrean heights of metaphysical speculation, but in strong melodious verse, with honest force and passion, told his story of human joys and human sorrows, human loves and human losses.
it pleased him to hear justina praise the ‘life picture,’ pleased him to think that he would be exalted in her eyes were she to know him as its author. but it pleased him still better to keep his secret, to hear her frank expression of opinion, and leave her free to form her ideal fancy of the poet.
‘the prize i seek to win must be won by myself alone,’ he thought. ‘my literary work is something outside myself. i will not be valued for that.’
one sunday, that being justina’s only disengaged evening, maurice persuaded mr. elgood to bring his daughter to dine with him in his bachelor quarters.
‘i want to show you my books,’ he said to justina. ‘collecting them has been my favourite amusement for the last five years, and i think it may interest you to see them.’
justina was delighted at the idea. mr. elgood foresaw something special in the way of dinner, perhaps a bottle or two of champagne, so the invitation was accepted with pleasure.
the september evenings were shortening by this time. they dined by lamplight, and the bachelor’s room, with its dark crimson curtains and paper, its heterogeneous collection of pictures, prints, bronzes, and china, looked its best in the mellow light of a pair of carcel lamps. the inner room was lined from floor to ceiling with books, handsomely bound most of them; for mr. clissold devoted all his superfluous cash to books and bookbinding. to this study and sanctum the party adjourned for coffee and dessert, and while mr. elgood did ample justice to a bottle of old port, maurice showed justina his favourite authors, and expatiated on the beauty of wide margins. innocent, happy hours; yes, every whit as happy as those days of delusion in cavendish square. and all this time there were all manner of distinguished people anxious to be introduced to miss elgood; richmond and greenwich dinners without number which she might have eaten had she been so minded; diamonds, broughams, sealskin jackets, pug-dogs, all the glories of existence ready to be laid at her feet.
