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Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 90, June, 1875
"No, no, no," Roscorla said: "it's Wenna he means to marry."
"Why, you were to have married Wenna?"
"Yes, but—"
"Then why didn't you? So she's run away, has she?" George Rosewarne grinned: he saw how the matter lay.
"This is Mabyn's work, I know," said he as he put his foot in the stirrup and sprang into the saddle. "You'd better go home, Roscorla. Don't you say a word to anybody. You don't want the girl made a fool of all through the place."
So George Rosewarne set out to bring back his daughters; not galloping, as an anxious parent might, but going ahead with a long, steady-going trot, which he knew would soon tell on Mrs. Trelyon's over-fed and under-exercised horses.
"If they mean Plymouth," he was thinking, "as is most likely from their taking the high-road, he'll give it them gently at first. And so that young man wants to marry our Wenna? 'Twould be a fine match for her; and yet she's worth all the money he's got—she's worth it every farthing. I'd give him the other one cheap enough."
Pounding along a dark road, with the consciousness that the farther you go the farther you've got to get back, and that the distance still to be done is an indeterminate quantity, is agreeable to no one, but it was especially vexatious to George Rosewarne, who liked to take things quietly, and could not understand what all the fuss was about. Why should he be sent on this mad chase at midnight? If anybody wanted to marry either of the girls, why didn't he do so and say no more about it? Rosewarne had been merely impatient and annoyed when he set out, but the longer he rode, and the more he communed with himself, the deeper grew his sense of the personal injury that had been done him by this act of folly.
It was a very lonely ride indeed. There was not a human being abroad at that hour. When he passed a few cottages from time to time the windows were dark. Then they had just been putting down a lot of loose stones at several parts of the road, which caused Mr. Rosewarne to swear. "I'll bet a sovereign," said he to himself, "that old Job kept them a quarter of an hour before he opened Paddock's Gate. I believe the old fool goes to bed. Well, they've waked him up for me, any way."
There was some consolation in this surmise, which was well founded. When Rosewarne reached the toll-bar there was at least a light in the small house. He struck on the door with the handle of his riding-whip, and called out, "Hi, hi! Job! Come out, you old fool!"
An old man with very bandy legs came hobbling out of the toll-house, and went to open the gate, talking and muttering to himself: "Ay, ay! so yü be agwoin' after the young uns, Maister Rosewarne? Ay, ay! yü'll go up many a lane and by many a fuzzy 'ill, and acrass a bridge or two, afore yü come up wi' 'en, Maister Rosewarne."
"Look sharp, Job!" said Rosewarne. "Carriage been through here lately?"
"Ay, ay, Maister Rosewarne! 'tis a good half hour agone."
"A half hour, you idiot!" said Rosewarne, now in a thoroughly bad temper. "You've been asleep and dreaming. Here, take your confounded money!"
So he rode on again, not believing, of course, old Job's malicious fabrication, but being rendered all the same a little uncomfortable by it. Fortunately, the cob had not been out before that day.
More deep lanes, more high, open, windy spaces, more silent cottages, more rough stones, and always the measured fall of the cob's feet and the continued shining and throbbing of the stars overhead. At last, far away ahead, on the top of a high incline, he caught sight of a solitary point of ruddy fire, which presently disappeared. That, he concluded, was the carriage he was pursuing going round a corner, and showing only the one lamp as it turned into the lane. They were not so far in front of him as he had supposed.
But how to overtake them? So soon as they heard the sound of his horse would they dash onward at all risks, and have a race for it all through the night? In that case George Rosewarne inwardly resolved that they might go to Plymouth, or into the deep sea beyond, before he would injure his favorite cob.
On the other hand, he could not bring them to a standstill by threatening to shoot at his own daughters, even if he had had anything with him that would look like a pistol. Should he have to rely, then, on the moral terrors of a parent's authority? George Rosewarne was inclined to laugh when he thought of his overawing in this fashion the high spirit of his younger daughter.
By slow and sure degrees he gained on the fugitives, and as he could now catch some sound of the rattling of the carriage-wheels, they must also hear his horse's footfall. Were they trying to get away from him? On the contrary, the carriage stopped altogether.
That was Harry Trelyon's decision. For some time back he had been listening attentively. At length he said, "Don't you hear some one riding back there?"
"Yes, I do," said Wenna, beginning to tremble.
"I suppose it is Mr. Roscorla coming after us," the young man said coolly. "Now I think it would be a shame to drag the old gentleman halfway down to Plymouth. He must have had a good spell already. Shall I stop and persuade him to go back home to bed?"
"Oh no," said Mabyn, who was all for getting on at any risk.
"Oh no," Wenna said, fearing the result of an encounter between the two men.
"I must stop," Trelyon said. "It's such precious hard lines on him. I shall easily persuade him that he would be better at home."
So he pulled up the horses, and quietly waited by the roadside for a few minutes. The unknown rider drew nearer and more near.
"That isn't Roscorla's pony," said Trelyon listening. "That's more like your father's cob."
"My father!" said Wenna in a low voice.
"My darling, you needn't be afraid, whoever it is," Trelyon said.
"Certainly not," added Mabyn, who was far more uncomfortable than she chose to appear. "Who can prevent us going on? They don't lock you up in convents now-a-days. If it is Mr. Roscorla, you just let me talk to him."
Their doubt on that head was soon set at rest. White Charley, with his long swinging trot, soon brought George Rosewarne up to the side of the phaeton, and the girls, long ere he had arrived, had recognized in the gloom the tall figure of their father. Even Mabyn was a trifle nervous.
But George Rosewarne—perhaps because he was a little pacified by their having stopped—did not rage and fume as a father is expected to do whose daughter has run away from him. As soon as he had pulled up his horse he called out in a petulant tone, "Well! what the devil is all this about?"
"I'll tell you, sir," said Trelyon, quite respectfully and quite firmly: "I wished to marry your daughter Wenna—"
"And why couldn't you do that in Eglosilyan, instead of making a fool of everybody all round?" Rosewarne said, still talking in an angry and vexed way, as of one who had been personally injured.
"Oh, dada," Mabyn cried, "you don't know how it happened; but they couldn't have got married there. There's that horrid old wretch, Mr. Roscorla—and Wenna was quite a slave to him and afraid of him—and the only way was to carry her away from him; and so—"
"Hold your tongue, Mabyn," her father said. "You'd drive a windmill with your talk."
"But what she says is true enough," Trelyon said. "Roscorla has a claim on her: this was my only chance, and I took it. Now look here, Mr. Rosewarne: you've a right to be angry and all that—perhaps you are—but what good will it do you to see Wenna left to marry Roscorla?"
"What good will it do me?" said George Rosewarne pettishly. "I don't care which of you she marries."
"Then you'll let us go on, dada?" Mabyn cried. "Will you come with us? Oh, do come with us! We're only going to Plymouth."
Even the angry father could not withstand the absurdity of this appeal. He burst into a roar of ill-tempered laughter. "I like that!" he cried. "Asking a man to help his daughter to run away from his own house! It's my impression, my young mistress, that you're at the bottom of all this nonsense. Come, come! enough of it, Trelyon: be a sensible fellow, and turn your horses round. Why, the notion of going to Plymouth at this time o' night!"
Trelyon looked to his companion. She put her hand on his arm, and said, in a trembling whisper, "Oh yes: pray let us go back."
"You know what you are going to, then?" said he coldly.
She trembled still more.
"Come, come," said her father: "you mustn't stop here all night. You may thank me for preventing your becoming the talk of the whole country."
"I shouldn't have minded that much," Mabyn said ruefully, and very like to cry indeed, as the horses set out upon their journey back to Eglosilyan.
It was not a pleasant journey for any of them—least of all for Wenna Rosewarne, who, having been bewildered by one wild glimpse of liberty, felt with terror and infinite sadness and despair the old manacles closing round her life again. And what although the neighbors might remain in ignorance of what she had done? She herself knew, and that was enough.
"You think no one will know?" Mabyn called out spitefully to her father. "Do you think old Job at the gate has lost either his tongue or his nasty temper?"
"Leave Job to me," the father replied.
When they got to Paddock's Gate the old man had again to be roused, and he came out grumbling.
"Well, you discontented old sinner!" Rosewarne called to him, "don't you like having to earn a living?"
"A fine livin' to wait on folks that don't knaw their own mind, and keep comin' and goin' along the road o' nights like a weaver's shuttle. Hm!"
"Well, Job, you sha'n't suffer for it this time," Rosewarne said. "I've won my bet. If you made fifty pounds by riding a few miles out, what would you give the gatekeeper?"
Even that suggestion failed to inveigle Job into a better humor.
"Here's a sovereign for you, Job. Now go to bed. Good-night!"
How long the distance seemed to be ere they saw the lights of Eglosilyan again! There were only one or two small points of red fire, indeed, where the inn stood. The rest of the village was buried in darkness.
"Oh, what will mother say?" Wenna said in a low voice to her sister.
"She will be very sorry we did not get away altogether," Mabyn answered. "And of course it was Mr. Roscorla who spoiled it. Nobody knew anything about it but himself. He must have run on to the inn and told some one. Wasn't it mean, Wenna? Couldn't he see that he wasn't wanted?"
"Are you talking of Mr. Roscorla?" Trelyon said: George Rosewarne was a bit ahead at this moment. "I wish to goodness I had gagged him and slung him below the phaeton. I knew he would be coming down there: I expected him every moment. Why were you so late, Mabyn?"
"Oh, you needn't blame me, Mr. Trelyon," said Mabyn, rather hurt. "You know I did everything I could for you."
"I know you did, Mabyn: I wish it had turned out better."
What was this, then, that Wenna heard as she sat there bewildered, apprehensive and sad-hearted? Had her own sister joined in this league to carry her off? It was not merely the audacity of young Trelyon that had led to their meeting. But she was altogether too frightened and wretched to be angry.
As they got down into Eglosilyan and turned the sharp corner over the bridge they did not notice the figure of a man who had been concealing himself in the darkness of a shed belonging to a slate-yard. So soon as they passed he went some little way after them until, from the bridge, he could see them stop at the door of the inn. Was it Mrs. Rosewarne who came out of the glare, and with something like a cry of delight caught her daughter in her arms? He watched the figures go inside and the phaeton drive away up the hill; then, in the perfect silence of the night, he turned and slowly made toward Basset Cottage.
CHAPTER XXXVII
AN ANGRY INTERVIEW
Next morning George Rosewarne was seated on the old oak bench in front of the inn reading a newspaper. Happening to look up, he saw Mr. Roscorla hurrying toward him over the bridge with no very pleasant expression on his face. As he came nearer he saw that the man was strangely excited. "I want to see your daughter alone," he said.
"You needn't speak as if I had tried to run away with her," Rosewarne answered, with more good-nature than was his wont. "Well, go in-doors: ask for her mother."
As Roscorla passed him there was a look in his eyes which rather startled George Rosewarne.
"Is it possible," he asked himself, "that this elderly chap is really badly in love with our Wenna?"
But another thought struck him. He suddenly jumped up, followed Roscorla into the passage, where the latter was standing, and said to him, "Don't you be too harsh with Wenna: she's only a girl, and they are all alike." This hint, however discourteous in its terms, had some significance as coming from a man who was six inches taller than Mr. Roscorla.
Mr. Roscorla was shown into an empty room. He marched up and down, looking at nothing. He was simply in an ungovernable rage. Wenna came and shut the door behind her, and for a second or so he stared at her as if expecting her to burst into passionate professions of remorse. On the contrary, there was something more than calmness in her appearance: there was the desperation of a hunted animal that is driven to turn upon its pursuer in the mere agony of helplessness.
"Well," said he—for indeed his passion almost deprived him of his power of speech—"what have you to say? Perhaps nothing. It is nothing, perhaps, to a woman to be treacherous—to tell smooth lies to your face and to go plotting against you behind your back. You have nothing to say? You have nothing to say?"
"I have nothing to say," she said with some little sadness in her voice, "that would excuse me, either to you or to myself: yes, I know that. But—but I did not intentionally deceive you."
He turned away with an angry gesture.
"Indeed, indeed I did not," she said piteously. "I had mistaken my own feelings—the temptation was too great. Oh, Mr. Roscorla, you need not say harsh things of me, for indeed I think worse of myself than you can do."
"And I suppose you want forgiveness now?" he added bitterly. "But I have had enough of that. A woman pledges you her affection, promises to marry you, professes to have no doubts as to the future; and all the while she is secretly encouraging the attentions of a young jackanapes who is playing with her and making a fool of her."
Wenna Rosewarne's cheeks began to burn red: a less angry man would have taken warning.
"Yes, playing with her and making a fool of her. And for what? To pass an idle time and make her the by-word of her neighbors."
"It is not true, it is not true," she said indignantly; and there was a dangerous light in her eyes. "If he were here, you would not dare to say such things to me—no, you would not dare."
"Perhaps you expect him to call after the pretty exploit of last night?" asked Roscorla with a sneer.
"I do not," she said. "I hope I shall never see him again. It is—it is only misery to every one." And here she broke down, in spite of herself. Her anger gave way to a burst of tears.
"But what madness is this?" Roscorla cried. "You wish never to meet him again, yet you are ready at a moment's notice to run away with him, disgracing yourself and your family. You make promises about never seeing him: you break them the instant you get the opportunity. You profess that your girlish fancy for a barber's block of a fellow has been got over; and then, as soon as one's back is turned, you reveal your hypocrisy."
"Indeed I did not mean to deceive you," she said imploringly. "I did believe that all that was over and gone. I thought it was a foolish fancy."
"And now?" said he hotly.
"Oh, Mr. Roscorla, you ought to pity me instead of being angry with me. I do love him: I cannot help it. You will not ask me to marry you? See, I will undertake not to marry him—I will undertake never to see him again—if only you will not ask me to keep my promise to you. How can I? How can I?"
"Pity you! and these are the confessions you make!" he exclaimed. "Why, are you not ashamed of yourself to say such things to me? And so you would undertake not to marry him? I know what your undertakings are worth."
He had struck her hard—his very hardest indeed—but she would not suffer herself to reply, for she believed she deserved far more punishment than he could inflict. All that she could hope for, all that her whole nature cried out for, was that he should not think her treacherous. She had not intentionally deceived him. She had not planned that effort at escape. But when, in a hurried and pathetic fashion, she endeavored to explain all this to him, he would not listen. He angrily told her he knew well how women could gloss over such matters. He was no schoolboy to be hoodwinked. It was not as if she had had no warning: her conduct before had been bad enough, when it was possible to overlook it on the score of carelessness, but now it was such as would disgrace any woman who knew her honor was concerned in holding to the word she had spoken.
"And what is he?" he cried, mad with wrath and jealousy. "An ignorant booby! a ploughboy! a lout who has neither the manners of a gentleman nor the education of a day-laborer."
"Yes, you may well say such things of him now," said she with her eyes flashing, "when his back is turned. You would not say so if he were here. But he—yes, if he were here—he would tell you what he thinks of you, for he is a gentleman, and not a coward."
Angry as he was, Mr. Roscorla was astounded. The fire in her eyes, the flush in her cheeks, the impetuosity of her voice—were these the patient Wenna of old? But a girl betrays herself sometimes if she happens to have to defend her lover.
"Oh it is shameful of you to say such things!" she said. "And you know they are not true. There is not any one I have ever seen who is so manly and frank and unselfish as Mr. Trelyon—not any one; and if I have seen that, if I have admired it too much, well, that is a great misfortune, and I have to suffer for it."
"To suffer? yes," said he bitterly. "That is a pretty form of suffering that makes you plan a runaway marriage—a marriage that would bring into your possession the largest estates in the north of Cornwall. A very pretty form of suffering! May I ask when the experiment is to be repeated?"
"You may insult me as you like—I am only a woman," she said.
"Insult you?" he cried with fresh vehemence. "Is it insult to speak the truth? Yesterday forenoon, when I saw you, you were all smiles and smoothness. When I spoke of our marriage you made no objection. But all the same you knew that at night—"
"I did not know—I did not know," she said. "You ought to believe me when I tell you I knew no more about it than you did. When I met him there at night, it was all so sudden, so unexpected, I scarcely knew what I said; but now—but now I have time to think. Oh, Mr. Roscorla, don't think that I do not regret it. I will do anything you ask me—I will promise what you please—indeed, I will undertake never to see him again as long as I live in this world; only, you won't ask me to keep my promise to you?"
He made no reply to this offer, for a step outside the door caused him to mutter something very like an oath between his teeth. The door was thrown open. Mabyn marched in, a little pale, but very erect.
"Mabyn, leave us alone for a moment or two," said Wenna, turning away so as to hide the tears on her face.
"I will not. I want to speak a word or two to Mr. Roscorla."
"Mabyn, I want you to go away just now."
Mabyn went over to her sister and took her by the hand: "Wenna, dear, go away to your own room. You've had quite enough—you are trembling all over. I suppose he'll make me tremble next."
"Really, I think your interference is lather extraordinary, Miss Mabyn," said Mr. Roscorla, striving to contain his rage.
"I beg your pardon," said Mabyn meekly. "I only want to say a word or two. Wouldn't it be better here than before the servants?" With that she led Wenna away. In a minute or two she returned.
Mr. Roscorla would rather have been shut up in a den with a hungry tigress. "I am quite at your service," he said with a bitter irony. "I suppose you have some very important communication to make, considering the way in which you—"
"Interfered? Yes, it is time that I interfered," Mabyn said, still quite calm and a trifle pale. "Mr. Roscorla, to be frank, I don't like you, and perhaps I am not quite fair to you. I am only a young girl, and don't know what the world would say about your relations with Wenna. But Wenna is my sister, and I see she is wretched; and her wretchedness—Well, that comes of her engagement to you."
She was standing before him with her eyes cast down, apparently determined to be very moderate in her speech. But there was a cruel frankness in her words which hurt Mr. Roscorla a good deal more than any tempest of passion into which she might have worked herself. "Is that all?" said he. "You have not startled me with any revelations."
"I was going to say," continued Mabyn, "that a gentleman who has really a regard for a girl would not insist on her keeping a promise which only rendered her unhappy. I don't see what you are to gain by it. I suppose you—you expect Wenna to marry you? Well, I dare say if you called on her to punish herself that way, she might do it. But what good would that do you? Would you like to have a wife who was in love with another man?"
"You have become quite logical, Miss Mabyn," said he, "and argument suits you better than getting into a rage. And much of what you say is quite true. You are a very young girl. You don't know much of what the world would say about anything. But being furnished with these admirable convictions, did it never occur to you that you might not be acting wisely in blundering into an affair of which you know nothing?"
The coldly sarcastic fashion in which he spoke threatened to disturb Mabyn's forced equanimity. "Know nothing?" she said. "I know everything about it, and I can see that my sister is miserable: that is sufficient reason for my interference. Mr. Roscorla, you won't ask her to marry you?"
Had the proud and passionate Mabyn condescended to make an appeal to her ancient enemy? At last she raised her eyes, and they seemed to plead for mercy.
"Come, come," he said, roughly: "I've had enough of all this sham beseeching. I know what it means. Trelyon is a richer man than I am: she has let her idle girlish notions go dreaming day-dreams, and so I am expected to stand aside. There has been enough of this nonsense. She is not a child; she knows what she undertook of her own free will; and she knows she can get rid of this school-girl fancy directly if she chooses. I, for one, won't help her to disgrace herself."
Mabyn began to breathe a little more quickly. She had tried to be reasonable; she had even humbled herself and begged from him; now there was a sensation in her chest as of some rising emotion that demanded expression in quick words. "You will try to make her marry you?" said she, looking him in the face.
"I will try to do nothing of the sort," said he. "She can do as she likes. But she knows what an honorable woman would do."
"And I," said Mabyn, her temper at length quite getting the better of her, "I know what an honorable man would do. He would refuse to bind a girl to a promise which she fears. He would consider her happiness to be of more importance than his comfort. Why, I don't believe you care at all whether Wenna marries you or not: it is only you can't bear her being married to the man she really does love. It is only envy, that's what it is. Oh, I am ashamed to think there is a man alive who would force a girl into becoming his wife on such terms!"
"There is certainly one considerable objection to my marrying your sister," said he with great politeness. "The manners of some of her relatives might prove embarrassing."
"Yes, that is true enough," Mabyn said with hot cheeks. "If ever I became a relative of yours, my manners no doubt would embarrass you very considerably. But I am not a relative of yours as yet, nor is my sister."
