Mary Anne had received the news of the marriage with equanimity--not to say apathy4. In the dreadful calamities5 that had overwhelmed her, petty troubles were lost. Cordially indeed did she welcome her brother and his wife home, and hoped they would remain. To be alone there was, as she truly told them, miserable6.
A ship letter had been received from Richard, written when he was nearly half way on his voyage. It appeared that he had written on embarking7, just a word to tell the name of his ship, and whither it was bound, and had sent it on shore by the pilot. Isaac could only suppose that the man had forgotten to post it.
His destination was New Zealand. Some people whom he knew had settled there, he said, and he intended to join them. He should purchase some land and farm it; but he would never again set foot on European soil. He supposed he should get on; and he hoped in time some sort of peace would return to him.
"I would advise your telling my father the whole, if you have not already done so," the letter concluded. "It is right that he should know the truth about Cyril, and that I shall never come home again. Tell him that the remorse8 lies very heavily upon me; that I would have given my own life ten times over--given it cheerfully--to save my brother's. Had it been any one but a brother, I should not feel it so deeply. I think of myself always as a second Cain. I will write you again when we arrive. Meanwhile, address to me at the post-office, Canterbury. I suppose you will not object to correspond with me. Perhaps my father will write. Tell him I should like it."
Before the arrival of this letter to Isaac, he had been consulting with his sister about the expediency9 of enlightening their father. His own opinion entirely10 coincided with Richard's--that it ought to be done. Mr. Thornycroft was in a state of doubt about Cyril; and also as to the duration of Richard's exile, and restlessly curious always in regard to what had led to it.
One balmy June day, when the crop of hay was being got in, Isaac told his father. They were leaning upon a gate in the four-acre mead11, watching the haymakers, who were piling the hay into cocks at the farther end of the field.
Mr. Thornycroft was like a man stunned12.
"Hunter not dead! Cyril lying there, and not Hunter! It can't be, Isaac!"
Isaac repeated the facts again, and then went into details. He concluded by showing Richard's last letter. "Poor Dicky! Poor Dicky!" cried the justice, melted to compassion13. "Yes, as you say, Isaac, Cyril is in a happier place than this--gone to his rest. And Dick--Dick sent him there in cruelty. I think I'll go in if you'll give me your arm."
Wonderingly Isaac obeyed. Never had the strong, upright Justice Thornycroft sought or needed support from any one. The news must have shaken him terribly. Isaac went with him across the fields, and saw him shut himself in his room.
"Have you been telling him?" whispered Mary Anne.
"Yes."
"And how has he borne it? Why did he lean upon you in coming in?"
"He seemed to bear it exceedingly well. But it must have had a far deeper effect upon him than I thought, or he would not have asked for my arm."
Mary Anne Thornycroft sighed. A little pain, more or less, seemed to her as nothing.
On the following morning Mr. Thornycroft sent for his son. Isaac found him seated before his portable desk; some papers upon it. The crisis of affairs had prompted the justice to disclose certain facts to his children, that otherwise never might have been disclosed. Richard Thornycroft was not his own son, though he had been treated as such. Isaac listened in utter amazement14. Of all the strange things that had lately fallen upon them, this appeared to him to be the strangest.
"I have been writing to Richard," said Mr. Thornycroft, taking up some closely-written pages. "You can read it; it will save me going over the details to you."
Isaac took the letter, and read it through. But his senses were confused, and it was not very clear to him.
"It seems that I cannot understand it now, sir."
"Not understand it?" repeated the justice, with a touch of his old heat. "It is plain enough to be understood. When my father died, he left this place, the Red Court Farm, to my elder brother, your uncle Richard--whom you never knew. A short while afterwards, Richard met with an accident in France, and I went over with my wife, to whom I was just married. We found him also with a wife, which surprised me, for he had never said anything of it; she was a pretty little Frenchwoman; and their child, a boy, was a year old. Richard, poor fellow, was dying, and of course I thought my chance of inheriting the Red Court was gone--that he would naturally leave it to his little son. But he took an opportunity of telling me that he had left it to me; the only proviso attached to it being that I should bring up the boy, as my son. He talked with me further: things that I cannot go into now: and I promised. That is how the Red Court came to me."
"But why should he have done this, sir?" interrupted Isaac, who liked justice better than wrong. "The little boy had a right to it."
"No," said Mr. Thornycroft, quietly. "Richard had not married his mother."
Isaac saw now. There was a pause.
"He said if time could come over again he would have married her, or else not have taken her. He was dying, you see, Isaac, and right and wrong array themselves in very distinct colours then. Anyway, it was too late now, whatever his repentance15; and he prayed me and my wife to take the boy and not let it be known for the child's own sake that he was not ours. We both promised; at a moment like that one could not foresee inconveniences that might arise later, and it almost seemed as if we owed the compliance16, in gratitude17 for the bequeathal of the Red Court Farm. He died, and we brought the boy with us to London--he who has been looked upon as your brother Richard. When people here used to say that he was more like his uncle Richard than his father Harry18, my wife would glance at me with a smile."
"And his mother?"
"She died in France shortly afterwards. She had parted with the boy readily, glad to find he would have so good a home. Had she lived, the probabilities are that the secret could not have been kept."
"Did you intend to keep it always, father?"
"Until my death. Every year as they went on, gave less chance of our disclosing it. When you were all little, my wife and I had many a serious consultation19; for the future seemed to be open so some difficulty; but we loved the boy, and neither of us had courage to say, He is not ours; he has no legitimate20 inheritance. Besides, as your mother would say to me, there was always our promise. It must have been disclosed at my death, at least to Richard, to explain why you, and not he, came into the Red Court."
"Perhaps his father, my uncle Richard, expected it would be left to him?"
"No, Isaac. We talked of that. Only in the event of my having no children of my own would the property have become his. Richard will take his share as one of my younger children. You are the eldest21. I shall at once settle this money upon him; you have read to that effect in the letter; so that he will have enough for comfort whatever part of the world he may choose to remain in."
Isaac mechanically cast his eyes on the letter, still in his hand.
"I have disclosed these facts to him now for his own comfort," resumed Mr. Thornycroft. "It may bring him a ray of it to find Cyril was not his brother."
Isaac thought it would. He folded the letter and returned it to his father.
"There is one thing I wished to ask you, sir, and I may as well ask it now. You do not, I presume, think of running more cargoes22."
"Never again," said Mr. Thornycroft. "Richard was the right hand of it, and he is gone. That's over for ever. But for him it would have been given up before. And there's Kyne besides."
Isaac nodded, glad to have the matter set at rest. "May I tell Mary Anne what you have disclosed to me?"
"Yes, but no one else. She may be glad to hear Richard is not her brother."
How glad, the justice little thought. It seemed to Mary Anne as if this news removed the embargo23 she had self-imposed upon her marriage with Robert Hunter. Perhaps she had already begun to question the necessity of it--to think it a very utopian, severe decision. In the revulsion of feeling that came over her, she laid her head down on Isaac's shoulder with a burst of tears, and told him all. Isaac smiled.
"You must tell him that you have relented, Mary Anne."
"He will not be back for five years."
"He will be back in less than five months; perhaps in five weeks."
She sat upright, staring at him.
"Isaac!"
"He will, indeed. Anna had a letter from him yesterday. It came to Miss Jupp's, addressed to 'Miss Chester.' Business matters are bringing him home for a short while; personal things, he says, that only himself can do. I wonder if he wrote to her in the hope that the information would penetrate24 to Coastdown?"
She sat in silence, her colour going and coming, rather shrinking from the merriment in Isaac's eye. Oh, would it be so?--would it be so?
"In that case--I mean, should circumstances bring him again to the Red Court Farm--we shall have to disclose publicly the truth about Cyril, Mary Anne. As well that it should be so, and then a tombstone can be put. But it can wait yet."
As she sat there, looking out on the sparkling sea, a prevision came over her that this happiness might really come to her at last, and a sobbing25 sigh of thankfulness went up to heaven.
Coastdown went on in its ordinary quiet routine. The mysteries of the Red Court Farm were at an end, never again to be enacted26. Long and perseveringly27 did Mr. Superintendent28 Kyne look out for the smugglers; many and many a night did he exercise his eyes and his patience on the edge of that bleak29 plateau; but they came no more. Old Mr. Thornycroft, deprived, he hardly knew how, of his sons, lived on at the Red Court, feeling at times a vacancy30 of pursuit: he had loved adventure, and his occupation was gone. But the land got a better chance of being tilled to perfection now than it ever had been.
Meanwhile the whole neighbourhood remained under a clear and immutable31 persuasion32 that the ghost still "walked" in the churchyard. The new right of road had come to a hot dispute; but Coastdown persisted in using it after nightfall, to avoid the graves and their ominous33 visitor. While Captain Copp, taking his glass in the parlour at the Mermaid34, did not fail to descant35 upon the marvels36 of that night, when he and that woman-servant of his, who (he would add in a parenthesis) was undaunted enough for a she-pirate, saw with their own eyes the spirit of Robert Hunter. And then the parlour would fall into a discussion of the love of roving inherent in the young Thornycrofts--Cyril lingering away still; Richard also perhaps gone to look after him; and speculate upon how long it would be before they returned, and the glorious dinners were resumed at the Red Court Farm.
END OF VOL. II.
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1
heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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accede
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| v.应允，同意 | |
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anticipation
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| n.预期，预料，期望 | |
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apathy
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| n.漠不关心，无动于衷；冷淡 | |
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calamities
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| n.灾祸，灾难( calamity的名词复数 )；不幸之事 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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embarking
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| 乘船( embark的现在分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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remorse
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| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
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expediency
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| n.适宜；方便；合算；利己 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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mead
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| n.蜂蜜酒 | |
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stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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compassion
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| n.同情，怜悯 | |
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amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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repentance
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| n.懊悔 | |
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compliance
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| n.顺从；服从；附和；屈从 | |
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gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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consultation
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| n.咨询；商量；商议；会议 | |
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legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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eldest
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| adj.最年长的，最年老的 | |
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cargoes
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| n.（船或飞机装载的）货物( cargo的名词复数 )；大量，重负 | |
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embargo
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| n.禁运（令）；vt.对...实行禁运，禁止（通商） | |
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penetrate
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| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
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sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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enacted
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| 制定（法律），通过（法案）( enact的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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perseveringly
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| 坚定地 | |
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superintendent
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| n.监督人，主管，总监；(英国)警务长 | |
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bleak
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| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
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vacancy
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| n.（旅馆的）空位，空房，（职务的）空缺 | |
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immutable
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| adj.不可改变的，永恒的 | |
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persuasion
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| n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
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ominous
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| adj.不祥的，不吉的，预兆的，预示的 | |
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mermaid
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| n.美人鱼 | |
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descant
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| v.详论，絮说；n.高音部 | |
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marvels
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| n.奇迹( marvel的名词复数 )；令人惊奇的事物（或事例）；不平凡的成果；成就v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的第三人称单数 ) | |
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