This happy easy-going life of Maurice Clissold’s was suddenly disturbed by a letter from Martin Trevanard. Some time had elapsed without any communication from the young man when this letter arrived, but Maurice, in his new happiness, had been somewhat forgetful of his Cornish friend. He felt a touch of remorse3 as he read the letter.
‘Things have been going altogether wrong here,’ wrote Martin. ‘I don’t mean in the way of worldly prosperity. We have had a first-rate harvest, and a good year in all respects. But I am sorry to say my mother’s health has been declining for some time. She has been unable to attend to the house, and things get out of gear without her. My father has grown moody4 and unhappy, and, I’m afraid, puts a dash of brandy into his cider oftener than is good for him. Muriel is much the same as usual, and the good old grandmother holds out bravely. It is my mother gives me most uneasiness. I feel convinced that she has something on her mind. I have sometimes thought that her trouble is in some way connected with poor Muriel. I only wish you were here. Your clearer mind might understand much that is dark to me. If it were not asking too much from your friendship, I would willingly beg you to come down here for a week or two. It would do me more good than I can express to see you.’
Maurice’s answer to this appeal was prompt and brief.
‘Dear Martin,—I shall be at Borcel End, all things going well, to-morrow night.
‘Yours always,
‘M. C.’
It was a hard thing for him to leave town just now. There was his new poem, which had all the charm and freshness of a composition recently begun. Little chance for him to continue his work at Borcel, with Martin always at his elbow, and the family troubles and family secrets on his shoulders. And then there was Justina—his afternoon cup of tea in the second-floor parlour—all his new hopes and fancies, which had grouped themselves around the young actress, like the Loves and Graces round Venus, in an allegorical ceiling by Lely or Kneller. But friendship with Maurice Clissold being something more than a name, he felt that he could do no otherwise than hasten to his friend’s relief. So he took his farewell cup of tea out of the dragon china, and departed by an early express next morning, after promising6 Justina to be away as brief a span as possible.
Borcel End looked very much as when he had first seen it, save that the warm glow of summer had faded from the landscape, and that the old farmhouse7 had a gloomy look in the autumn dusk. Maurice had chartered a vehicle at Seacomb station, and driven five miles across country, a wild moorland district, made awful by a yawning open shaft8 here and there, marking the place of an abandoned mine.
The glow of the great hall fire shining through the latticed windows was the only cheerful thing at Borcel. All the rest of the long rambling9 house was dark.
Martin received his friend at the gate.
‘This is good of you, Clissold,’ he said, as Maurice alighted. ‘I feel ashamed of my selfishness in asking you to come to such a dismal10 place as this; but it will do me a world of good to have you here. I’ve told my mother you were coming for a fortnight’s ramble11 among the moors12. It wouldn’t do for her to know the truth.’
‘Of course not. But as to Borcel being a dismal place, you know that I never found it so.’
‘Ah, you have never lived here,’ said Martin, with a sigh; ‘and then you’ve the family up at the Manor13 to enliven the neighbourhood for you. There’s always plenty of cheerfulness there.’
‘And how is Mr. Penwyn going on? Is he getting popular?’
‘He ought to be, for he has done a great deal for the neighbourhood. You’ll hardly recognise the road between here and the Manor when you drive there. But I don’t believe the Squire14 will ever be as popular as Mrs. Penwyn. The people idolize her. But they seem to have a notion that whatever the Squire does is done more for his own advantage than the welfare of his tenants15. And yet, take him for all in all, there never was a more liberal landlord.’
Martin was carrying his friend’s small portmanteau to the porch as he talked. Having deposited that burden, he ran back and told the driver to take his horse round to the stables, and to go round to the kitchen afterwards for his own supper. This hospitable16 duty performed, Martin opened the door, and ushered17 Maurice into the family sitting-room18.
There sat the old grandmother in her accustomed corner, knitting the inevitable19 grey stocking which was always in progress under those swift fingers. There, in an arm-chair by the fire, propped20 up with pillows, sat the mistress of the homestead, sorely changed since Maurice had last seen her. The keen dark eyes had all their old brightness; nay21, looked brighter from the pallor of the shrunken visage; the high cheek-bones, the square jaw22, were more sharply outlined than of old; and the hand which the invalid23 extended to Maurice—that honest hard-working hand, which had once been coarse and brown—was now white and thin.
Michael Trevanard sat at the opposite side of the hearth24, with a pewter tankard, a newspaper, and a long clay pipe on the square oak table at his elbow. These idle autumn evenings were trying to the somewhat mindless farmer, to whom all the world of letters afforded no further solace25 than the county paper, or an occasional number of the Field.
‘I’ve had a bad time of it this year, Mr. Clissold,’ she answered. ‘I had an attack of ague and low fever in the spring, and it left a cough that has stuck to me ever since.’
‘I hope my coming here while you are an invalid, will not be troublesome to you.’
‘No,’ answered Mrs. Trevanard, with a sigh, ‘I’ve got used to the notion of things being in a muddle27; and neither Michael nor Martin seem to mind; so it doesn’t much matter that the house is neglected. I’ve been obliged to take a second girl, and the two between them make more dirt than ever they clean up. Your old room’s been got ready for you, Mr. Clissold; at least I told Martha to clean it thoroughly28, early this morning, and light a good fire this afternoon; so I suppose it’s all right. But you might as well make up your mind that the wind was always to blow from one quarter, as that a girl would do her duty when your eyes are off her. If I had a daughter, now, a handy young woman to look after the house——’
She turned her head upon her pillow with a shuddering29 sigh. That thought was too bitter.
‘My dear Mrs. Trevanard,’ cried Maurice, cheerfully, ‘I feel assured that the room will be—well not so nice as you would have made it perhaps, but quite clean and comfortable.’
He took his seat by the hearth, and entered into conversation with the master of the house, who seemed cheered by the visitor’s arrival.
‘And pray what’s doing up in London, Mr. Clissold?’ Michael Trevanard asked, as if he took the keenest interest in metropolitan30 affairs.
Maurice told him the latest stirring events—wars and rumours31 of wars, reviews, royal marriages in contemplation—to which the farmer listened with respectful attention, feeling these facts as remote from his life as if they had occurred in the East Indies.
He, on his part, told Maurice all that had been stirring at Penwyn; amongst other matters that curious circumstance of the attempted burglary, and Mr. Penwyn’s lenity towards the offender32.
‘I’m rather surprised to hear that,’ said Maurice. ‘I should not have thought the Squire a particularly easy-going person.’
‘No, he can be stern enough at times,’ answered the farmer. ‘That business up at the justice-room caused a good bit of talk. If it had been one of us, folks said, Squire Penwyn wouldn’t have let go his grip like that. They couldn’t understand why he should be so lenient33 just because the man was the son of his lodge34-keeper. It would have seemed more natural for him to get rid of the whole lot altogether, for they’re a set of vagabonds to be about a gentleman’s place. That girl Elspeth, who brought you here, is always robbing the orchards35 and hen-roosts about the neighbourhood. She’s a regular pest to the farmers’ wives.’
‘That curious-looking woman is still at the lodge, then?’ asked Maurice.
‘Yes, she’s still there.’
‘Perhaps it was Mrs. Penwyn who interceded36 for the son.’
‘Well, it was a curious business altogether,’ answered the farmer. ‘Mrs. Penwyn and the woman has a talk together in a room to themselves, and then Mrs. Penwyn comes back to the justice-room looking as white as a corpse38, and says a few words to her husband, and on that he talks over Mr. Tresillian, and then Mr. Tresillian lets the vagabond off with a reprimand. Now why Mrs. Penwyn should intercede37 for the woman’s son I can’t understand, for it’s well known, through Mrs. Penwyn’s own maid having talked about it, that the Squire’s lady can’t endure the woman, and is vexed39 with her husband for keeping such trash on his premises40.’
‘I dare say there’s something more in it than any of us Cornish folks are likely to find out,’ said Mrs. Trevanard. ‘The Penwyns were always a secret underhanded lot; smooth on the outside; as fair as whitened sepulchres, and as foul41 within.’
‘Come, Bridget, you’re prejudiced against them. You always have been, I think. It isn’t fair to speak ill of those that have been good landlords to us.’
‘Haven’t we been good tenants? We’re even there, I think.’
The maid-servant came in to lay the supper-table, Mrs. Trevanard’s watchful42 eyes following the girl’s every movement. A good substantial supper had been prepared for the traveller, but the old air of comfort seemed to have deserted43 the homestead, Maurice thought. The sick wife, with that unmistakable prophetic look in her face, the forecast shadow of coming death, gave a melancholy44 air to the scene. The blind old grandmother, sitting apart in her corner, looked like a monument of age and affliction. The farmer himself had the heavy dulness of manner which betokens45 a too frequent indulgence in alcohol. Martin was spasmodically gay, as if determined46 to enjoy the society of his friend; but care had set its mark on the bright young face, and he was in no wise the Martin of two years ago.
Maurice retired47 to his bedroom soon after supper, conducted by Martin. The apartment was unchanged in its dismal aspect; the dingy48 old furniture loomed49 darkly through the dusk, Martin’s one candle making only an oasis50 of light in the desert of gloom.
The memory of his first night at Borcel End was very present to Maurice Clissold as he seated himself by the hearth, where the fire had burned black and dull.
‘Poor Muriel,’ he thought, ‘what a dreary51 chamber52 for youth and beauty to inhabit! And in a fatal hour the girl’s first love dream came to illumine the gloom—sweet delusive53 dream, bringing pain along with it, and inextinguishable regret.’
‘Poor mother’s right,’ he said. ‘Those girls never do anything properly now she isn’t able to follow them about. I told Ph?be to be sure to have a bright fire to light up this cheerless old den2, and she has left nothing but a mass of smouldering coal.’
‘Never mind the fire, Martin. Sit down like a good fellow, and tell me all your troubles. Your poor mother looks very ill.’
‘So ill that the doctor gives us no hope of her ever getting better. Poor soul, she’s going to leave us. Heaven only knows how soon. She’s been a good faithful wife to father, and a tender mother to me, and a good mistress and a faithful servant in all things, so far as I can tell. Yet I’m afraid there’s something on her mind—something that weighs heavy. I’ve seen many a token of secret care, since she’s been ill and sitting quietly by the fire, thinking over her past life.’
‘And you imagine that her trouble is in some way connected with your sister?’
‘I don’t see what else it can be. That’s the only unhappiness we’ve ever had in our lives. All the rest has been plain sailing enough.’
‘Have you questioned your mother about her anxieties?’ asked Maurice.
‘Many times. But she has always put me off with some impatient answer. She has never denied that she has secret cares, but when I have begged her to trust me or my father, she has turned from me peevishly56. “Neither of you could help me,” she has told me. “What is the use of talking of old sores when there’s no healing them?”’
‘An unanswerable question,’ said Maurice.
‘You remember what you said to me about poor Muriel the day you left Borcel? Well, those words of yours made a deep impression upon me, not so much at the time as afterwards. I thought over all you had said, and it seemed to grow clear to me that there was something sadder about my poor sister’s story than had ever come to my knowledge. She had not been quite fairly used, perhaps. Things had been hushed up and hidden for the honour of her family, and she had been the victim of the family respectability. My mother’s one fault is pride—pride in the respectability of the Trevanards. She doesn’t want to be on a level with her superiors, or to be thought anything better than a yeoman’s wife, but her strong point has been the family credit. “There are no people in Cornwall more looked up to than the Trevanards.” I can remember hearing her say that, as soon as I can remember anything; and I believe she would make any sacrifice of her own happiness to maintain that position. It is just possible that she may have sacrificed the peace of others.’
‘I agree with you there, Martin. Whatever wrong has been done, great or small, has been done for the sake of the good old name.’
‘Now it struck me,’ continued Martin, earnestly, ‘that although my mother cannot be persuaded to confide57 in me, or in my father, who has been a little dull of late, poor soul, she might bring herself to trust you. I know that she respects you, as a clever man, and a man of the world. You live remote from this little corner of the earth where the Trevanards are of importance. She would feel less pain perhaps in trusting you with a family secret than in telling it to her own kith and kin5. You would go away carrying the secret with you, and if there were any wrong to be righted, as I fear there must be, you might right it without giving rise to scandal. This is what I have thought—foolishly, perhaps.’
‘Indeed, no, Martin, I see no folly58 in your idea; and if I can persuade your mother to trust me, depend upon it I will.’
‘She knows you are a gentleman, and might be willing to trust in your honour, where she would doubt any commoner person.’
‘We’ll see what can be done,’ answered Maurice, hopefully. ‘Your poor sister lives apart from you all, I suppose, in the old way?’
‘Yes,’ replied the young man, ‘and I fear it’s a bad way. Her wits seem further astray than ever. When I meet her now in the hazel copse, where she is so fond of wandering, she looks scared and runs away from me. She sings to herself sometimes of an evening, as she sits by the fire in grandmother’s room. I hear her, now and then, as I pass the window, singing some old song in her sad, sweet voice, just as she used to sing me to sleep years ago. But I think she hardly ever opens her lips to speak.’
‘Does she ever see her mother?’
‘That’s the saddest part of all. For the last year my mother hasn’t dared go near her. Muriel took to screaming at the sight of her, as if she was going into a fit; so, since then, mother and she have hardly ever met. It’s hard to think of the dying mother, so near her only daughter, and yet completely separated from her.’
‘It’s a sad story altogether, Martin,’ said Maurice, ‘and a heavy burden for your young life. If I can do anything to lighten it, be sure of my uttermost help. I am very glad you sent for me. I am very glad you trust me.’
On this the two young men shook hands and parted for the night, Martin much cheered by his friend’s coming.
No intrusion disturbed the traveller’s rest. He slept soundly after his long journey, and awoke to hear farmyard cocks crowing in the sunshine, and to remember that he was more than two hundred miles away from Justina.
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1
malady
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| n.病，疾病(通常做比喻) | |
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den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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remorse
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| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
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moody
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| adj.心情不稳的，易怒的，喜怒无常的 | |
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kin
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| n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的 | |
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promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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farmhouse
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| n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房） | |
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shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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rambling
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| adj.[建]凌乱的，杂乱的 | |
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dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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ramble
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| v.漫步，漫谈，漫游；n.漫步，闲谈，蔓延 | |
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moors
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| v.停泊，系泊（船只）( moor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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manor
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| n.庄园，领地 | |
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squire
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| n.护卫, 侍从, 乡绅 | |
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tenants
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| n.房客( tenant的名词复数 )；佃户；占用者；占有者 | |
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hospitable
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| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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ushered
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| v.引，领，陪同( usher的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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propped
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| 支撑，支持，维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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invalid
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| n.病人，伤残人；adj.有病的，伤残的；无效的 | |
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hearth
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| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
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solace
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| n.安慰；v.使快乐；vt.安慰(物)，缓和 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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muddle
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| n.困惑，混浊状态；vt.使混乱，使糊涂，使惊呆；vi.胡乱应付，混乱 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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shuddering
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| v.战栗( shudder的现在分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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metropolitan
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| adj.大城市的，大都会的 | |
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rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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offender
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| n.冒犯者，违反者，犯罪者 | |
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lenient
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| adj.宽大的，仁慈的 | |
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lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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orchards
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| （通常指围起来的）果园( orchard的名词复数 ) | |
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interceded
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| v.斡旋，调解( intercede的过去式和过去分词 )；说情 | |
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intercede
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| vi.仲裁，说情 | |
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corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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foul
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| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
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watchful
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| adj.注意的，警惕的 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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betokens
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| v.预示，表示( betoken的第三人称单数 ) | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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49
loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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oasis
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| n.（沙漠中的）绿洲，宜人的地方 | |
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51
dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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52
chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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53
delusive
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| adj.欺骗的，妄想的 | |
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54
poked
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| v.伸出( poke的过去式和过去分词 )；戳出；拨弄；与（某人）性交 | |
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vehemently
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| adv. 热烈地 | |
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peevishly
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| adv．暴躁地 | |
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57
confide
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| v.向某人吐露秘密 | |
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folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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