284
“I had forgotten the child. Where is he?”
“By his father’s side.”
“That is well and best, doubtless.”
“It is not well and best. What do you know? You have never been a mother. God never gave you such sorrowful grace.”
“We will return to the list, if you please. What do you propose to do?”
“I have spoken to a man in Baker Street who deals in such things. If you wish to buy them and will pay their fair value I will sell them to you, because Roland desired you to have them. If you do not wish to buy them or will not pay a fair price I will remove them to Baker Street. There are others who will know their value.”
“I advanced Roland a great deal of money.”
“You gave him it. You demanded and accepted his thanks. The sums all told would not pay for the use of the property.”
“I shall do right, of course. Bring the man you have spoken of to-morrow afternoon, and I also will have here an expert of the same kind. I will pay you whatever they decide is a proper sum.”
“That will satisfy me.”
“I am sorry affairs have come to this point between us. I tried to be kind to you. I think you have been very ungrateful.”
“You were kind only to yourself. You never were a favourite in St. Penfer. Other ladies did not often call upon you. In me you had a companionship which you could control, you had your sewing done for next to nothing, you had the285news of the town brought to you. You played upon my restless disposition, my love of fine clothing, my ambition to be some one greater than Denas Penelles, and as soon as good fortune came to you and you had everything you desired, you found me a bore, a claimant on your sense of justice which you did not like to meet. Understand that the fact of wearing silk and jewelry does not give you the right to take up an immortal soul and play with it or cast it aside as you find it convenient. I owe you the deepest grudge. You made me dissatisfied with my own life, you showed me the pleasant vistas of a different life, and when I hoped to enter with you, I found myself outside and the door shut in my face. You have always tried to make Roland dissatisfied with me. You insinuated, you deplored, in every letter to him. You stabbed while you pretended to kiss me. I found you out long ago. Everyone finds you out. You never had a friend. You never will have one.”
She spoke with that pitiless scorn which is the language of suppressed passion. Elizabeth only lifted her eyebrows and turned away from her. And Denasia knew that she had made a mistake, and yet she did not regret it. There are times when it is a relief to be angry, whether we do well to be so or not; when to lose the temper is better than to keep it. Of course there are great and beautiful souls with whom nothing turns to bitterness, but the soul of Denasia was not one of these. It had been born ready to feel and ready to speak, and regarded it as something of a virtue to do so.
286
She left Elizabeth’s house in a very unhappy mood, and at a rapid walk proceeded to her lodging in Bloomsbury. She would have felt the confinement of a cab to be intolerable, but it was a relief to set her personality against the friction of a million of encompassing wills. And in a short time she succumbed to that condition of electricity which they evolve, and permitted herself to be moved by it without considering her steps.
At length she was hungry, and she turned into a place of refreshment and ate with more healthy desire than she had felt for many months, and then the restless, fretting creature within was pacified, and she resolved to walk quietly to her room and sleep before she suffered herself to think any more. But as she was following out this plan she came to a famous theatre, and the name at the entrance attracted her. “I will be my own judge,” she said. “I will see, and hear, and be more unmerciful to myself than any other could be.”
So she entered the place and sat throughout three scenes. She did not wait for the final act. There was no necessity. She had arrived at her verdict. It was in her eyes and attitude when she left the building, but she gave it no voice until she sat weary and sad before the glimmering fire in her room.
“I could be Queen of England as easily as I could be a prima donna,” she said mournfully. “There was perhaps a time––perhaps––perhaps, when youth and beauty and love could have helped me, but that time has gone for ever.”
287
She said the words slowly, and the weight of despair was on each one. For she realised that in her case effort had brought forth no lasting fruit and that endurance had been without avail, and she was exceedingly sorrowful. For there is a singular vitality in the idea of public singing or acting when once it has taken root in any nature, and Denasia had been subject that night to one of its periods of revival. She had told herself that “she would probably have a thousand pounds; that she could go to Italy and pay for the best teachers; that it would please Roland if he knew, if he remembered, for her to do so; that it would annoy Elizabeth in many ways if she became a singer; that she would show the world it was possible to sing and act and yet be in every respect womanly, pure-hearted, and blameless before God and man.”
These and many such ideas had filled her mind at intervals all the way across the Atlantic, and her passionate renunciation of the stage, made that miserable day when Roland deserted her, began to lose its reasonableness and therefore its sense of obligation. After her interview with Elizabeth, the question of money to carry out such intentions was practically settled, and she had, therefore, only to arrive at a positive personal conclusion. Once or twice in her public career she had received what her heart told her was a just criticism. It had not been a very flattering one, and Roland had passionately denied its justice. But she felt that the hour had now come when she must have the truth and accept the truth.
288
So she had tested herself by the natural and acquired abilities of the greatest singer of the day. It was, perhaps, a pitiless standard, but she felt that her safety demanded its extremity. Her comparisons made her burn with shame at her own shortcomings. She wondered how Roland could have been so deceived, how he could have hoped or believed in her at all. She forgot that circumstances had quite altered Roland’s first intentions, and that in following out his secondary ones less distinctive talent was sufficient. On their marriage if he had taken her, as he proposed, to Italy; if the three last restless, miserable years had been spent in repose, in a favourable climate under fine instructors, with a happy, satisfied, hopeful affection to stimulate and support her ambition––ah, then all of Roland’s hopes might have been fulfilled. But lack of patience as much as lack of money had brought final failure. The blossom had been gathered and worn with but smalléclat, and there was now no hope of fruit.
Full of such sombre thoughts, she turned up the lights and looked at herself. Gone was her radiant beauty, her splendid youth; gone also her buoyant spirit and invincible courage. That night as she sat there alone she buried for ever this hope of a life for which she was not destined. Yet it was while sitting on that very hearth together Roland and she had felt the joy of her first triumph at Willis Hall. She could remember every incident of her return home the night of her brilliantdébut. How Roland had praised her and loved her. Neither of them then thought the temporary success to be the289first downward step from their original grander ideal; the first step toward a miserable failure. Now it was clear enough. Alas! alas! Why cannot joy, as well as sorrow, open the eyes? Why are they only washed clear-seeing with tears?
When the hopeless ceremony was over and she had fully accepted the lot before her, she rose and with tear-filled eyes looked around the place of her renunciation. She felt as if her husband ought to have some consciousness of her disappointment; as if the longing in her heart should bring him to her side. Where was he? Where had he gone to? “Roland! Roland!” she whispered, and the silence beat upon her heart like the blows of a hammer. Was he present? Did he hear her? She felt until she reached the very rim of conscious feeling, and then? Alas! nothing but a mighty mystery looming beyond.
Weary and exhausted with emotion, she lay down and slept, and in the morning the courage born of a resolved mind was with her. When she had finished her business with Elizabeth, then there was her father and her mother and her real life again. She must go back and take it up just where she had thrown it down. And this humiliating duty was all that her own way had brought her. Never again would she take her destiny out of the keeping of the good God who orders all things well. On this resolution she stayed her heart, and somehow in her sleep there had come to her a conviction that the time of smiles would surely come back to her once more. For God giveth His children in their sleep,290and the sorrowful wake up comforted, and the weak strong, because some angel has visited them and “they knew it not.”
Elizabeth was quite prepared for her visitor. She was, indeed, anxious to get the affair settled and to dismiss Denasia from her life for ever. Her lawyer and appraiser were busy when Denasia arrived, and without ceremony each article specified in Roland’s list was examined and valued. Elizabeth offered her sister-in-law no courtesy; she barely bowed in response to her greeting, and there was a final very severe struggle as to values. Mrs. Burrell had certainly hoped to satisfy Denasia with a thousand pounds, but the official adjustment was sixteen hundred pounds, and for this sum Roland’s widow, who was irritated by her sister-in-law’s evident scorn and dislike, stubbornly stood firm.
It is probable that Elizabeth would also have turned stubborn and have suffered the articles to go to the auction-room had not her personal pride and interests demanded the sacrifice. But she had already introduced Lord Sudleigh to these family treasures, and she could not endure to go to Sudleigh Castle and take with her no heirlooms to be surety for her respectability. So that, after all, Denasia won her rights easily, because a man whom she had never seen and never even heard of pleaded her case for her. But she had no exceptional favour. It is the people whom we do not know that are often our helpers. It is the people who seem to have no possible connection with us that are often the tools used by fate for our fortune.
291
When the transaction was fully over and Denasia had Elizabeth’s cheque in her pocket the day was nearly over. The business agents left hurriedly and Denasia was going with them, when Elizabeth said: “Return a moment, if you please, Mrs. Tresham. I have heard nothing from you about my brother. I think it is your duty to give me some information. I am very miserable,” and she sat down and covered her face. Her sobs, hardly restrained, touched Denasia. She was sorry for the weeping woman, for she knew that if Elizabeth had loved any human creature truly and unselfishly, it was her brother Roland.
“What can I tell you?” she asked.
“Something to comfort me, if you are not utterly heartless. Had he doctors? help? comforts of any kind?”
“He had everything that money and love could procure. He died in Mr. Lanhearne’s house. I was at his side. Whatever could be done by human skill to save his life was done.”
“Did he name me often?”
“Yes.”
“And you never said a word––never would have done––you were going away without telling me. How could you be so cruel?”
“It was wrong. I should have told you. He spoke often about you. In his delirium he believed himself with you. He called your name three times just before he died; it was only a whisper then, he was so weak.”
Elizabeth wept bitterly, and Denasia, moved by292many memories, could not watch her unmoved. After a wretched pause she said:
“Good-bye! You are Roland’s sister and he loved you. So then I cannot really hate you. I forgive you all.”
But Elizabeth did not answer. The loss of her brother, the loss of her money––she was feeling that this woman had been the cause of all her sorrows. Grief and anger swelled within her heart; she felt it to be an intolerable wrong to be forgiven. She was silent until Denasia was closing the door, then she rose hastily and followed her.
“Go!” she cried, “and never cross my path again. You have brought me nothing but misery.”
“It is quite just that I should bring you misery. Remember, now, that if you do a wrong you will have to pay the price of it.”
Trembling with anger and emotion, she clasped her purse tightly and called a cab to take her to her lodging. The money was money, at any rate. A poor exchange for love, certainly, but still Roland’s last gift to her. It proved that in his dying hours he loved her best of all. He had put his family pride beneath her feet. He had put his sister’s interest second to her interest. She felt that every pound represented to her so much of Roland’s consideration and affection. It was, too, a large sum of money. It made her in her own station a very rich woman. If she put it in the St. Penfer bank it would insure her a great deal of respect. That was one side of the question. The other was less satisfactory. People would speculate293as to how she had become possessed of such a sum. Many would not scruple to say, “It was sinful money, won in the devil’s service.” All who wished to be unkind to her could find in it an occasion for hard sayings. In small communities everything but prosperity is forgiven; that is never really forgiven to anyone; and though Denasia did not find words for this feeling, she was aware of it, because she was desirous to avoid unnecessary ill-will.
She sat with the cheque in her hand a long time, considering what to do with it. Her natural vanity and pride, her sense of superior intelligence, education, travel, and experience urged her to take whatever good it might bring her. And she went to sleep resolving to do so. But she awoke in the midnight with a strange sense of humiliation. In that time of questions she was troubled by soul-inquiries that came one upon another close as the blows of a lash. She was then shocked at the intentions with which she had fallen asleep. The little vanities, and condescensions, and generosities which she had planned for her own glory––how contemptible they appeared! And in the darkness she could see their certain end––envy and hatred for herself and dissatisfaction and loss of friends for her father and mother. Had she not already given them sorrow enough?
Her right course was then clear as a band of light. She would deposit the money at interest in a London bank. She would say nothing at all about its possession. Before leaving for St. Penfer294she would buy a couple of printed gowns, such as would not be incongruous with her surroundings. She would go back to her home and village as empty-handed as she left them––a beggar, even, for a little love and sympathy, for toleration for her wanderings, for forgiveness for those deeds by which she had wounded the consciences and self-respect of her own people and her own caste.
This determination awoke with her in the morning, and she followed it out literally. The presents she had resolved to buy in order to get herself a little favour were put out of consideration. She purchased only a few plain garments for her own every-day wearing. She left her money with strangers who attached no importance to it; and, with one small American trunk holding easily all her possessions, she turned her face once more to the little fishing village of St. Penfer by the Sea.
295CHAPTER XV.ONLY FRIENDS.
“Stay at home, my heart, and rest,Home-keeping hearts are happiest;For those that wander they know not whereAre full of trouble and full of care––To stay at home is best.”––Song.
“Stay at home, my heart, and rest,Home-keeping hearts are happiest;For those that wander they know not whereAre full of trouble and full of care––To stay at home is best.”––Song.
“Stay at home, my heart, and rest,
Home-keeping hearts are happiest;
For those that wander they know not where
Are full of trouble and full of care––
To stay at home is best.”
––Song.
“... Those first affections,Those shadowy recollections,Which be they what they may,Are yet the fountain-light of all our day;Are yet a master-sight of all our seeing.”––Wordsworth.
“... Those first affections,Those shadowy recollections,Which be they what they may,Are yet the fountain-light of all our day;Are yet a master-sight of all our seeing.”––Wordsworth.
“... Those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day;
Are yet a master-sight of all our seeing.”
––Wordsworth.
Onlythose who have experienced the sensation can tell how strange and sad is the feeling with which the soul turns away from a destiny accomplished. When Denas had deposited her money in the Clydesdale Bank and made the few purchases she thought proper and prudent, she felt that one room of the house of life was barred for ever against her return to it.
For a few years her experiences had been strangely interwoven with those of the Treshams. To what purpose? Why had they been so? As far as this existence was concerned, it seemed a relationship296that might well have been omitted. But who can tell what circumstances went before it or what were to follow? For all human beings leave behind them as they go through life a train of events which are due either to impulses originating in a previous existence or are the seeds of events which are to be perfected in a future one; what we sow, that we shall surely reap.
Leaving London, such thoughts of something final, at least as far as this probation was concerned, greatly depressed Denas. “Never more, never more,” was the monotonous refrain that sprang from her soul to her lips. But it is a wise provision of the Merciful One that the past, in a healthy mind, very soon loses its charm, and the things that are present take the first place.
“I cannot bring anything back. I do not think I would bring anything back if I could. I have been very unhappy and restless in the past. Every pleasure I had was tithed by sorrow. Roland loved me, but I brought him only disappointment. I loved Roland, and yet all my efforts to make him happy were failures. Roland has been taken from me. Our child has been taken away from me. Elizabeth I have put away––death could not sever us more effectually. I am going back to my own people and my own life, and I pray God to give me a contented heart in it.”
These were the colour of her reflections as the train bore her swiftly to the fortune of her future years. She had no enthusiasm about them. She thought she knew all the possibilities they kept.297She looked for no extraordinary thing, for no special favour to brighten their uniformoccupationsand simple pleasures. She had taken the first train she could, without considering the time of its arrival in St. Penfer. She told herself that there would be a certain amount of gossip about her return, and that it could not be avoided by either a public or private arrival. Still, she was glad when the sun set and the shadows of the night were stretched out––glad that the moon was too young to give much light, and that it was quite nine o’clock when the St. Penfer station was reached.
A few people were on the platform, but none of them were thinking of Mrs. Tresham, and the woman so simply dressed and veiled in black made no impression on anyone. She left her trunk in the baggage-room and went by the familiar road down the cliff-breast. It had been raining, of course, and the ground was heavy and wet; but the sky was clear, and the half-moon made a half-twilight among the bare branches and shed a faint bar of light across the ocean.
At the last reach she stood still a moment and looked at the clustered cottages and the boats swaying softly on the incoming tide. A great peace was over the place. The very houses seemed to be resting. There was fire or candle light in every glimmering square of their windows; but not a man, or a woman, or a child in sight. As she drew near to her father’s cottage, she saw that it was very brightly lighted; and then she remembered that it was Friday night, and that very likely the weekly298religious meeting was being held there. That would account for the diffused quiet of the whole village.
The thought made her pause. She had no desire to turn her home-coming into a scene. So she walked softly to the back of the little house and entered the curing shed. There was only a slight door––a door very seldom tightly closed––between this shed and the cottage room. She knew all its arrangements. It was called a curing shed, but in reality it had long been appropriated to domestic purposes. Joan kept her milk and provisions in it, and used it as a kind of kitchen. Every shelf and stool, almost every plate and basin, had its place there, and Denas knew them. She went to the milk pitcher and drank a deep draught; and then she took a little three-legged stool, and placing it gently by the door, sat down to listen and to wait.
Her father was talking in that soft, chanting tone used by the fishers of St. Penfer, and the drawling intonations, with the occasional rise of the voice at the end of a sentence, came to the ears of Denas with the pleasant familiarity of an old song.
As he ceased speaking some woman began to sing “The Ninety-and-Nine,” and so singing they rose and passed out of the cottage and to their own homes. One by one the echoes of their voices ceased, until, at the last verse, only John and Joan were singing. As they finished, Denas looked into the room. Joan was lifting the big Bible covered with green baize. Between this cover and the binding all the letters Denas had sent them were kept, and the fond mother was touching and straightening299them. John, with his pipe in one hand, was lifting the other to the shelf above his head for his tobacco-jar. The last words of the hymn were still on their lips.
Denas opened the door and stood just within the room, looking at them. Both fixed their eyes upon her. They thought they saw a spirit. They were speechless.
“Father! Mother! It is Denas!”
She came forward quickly as she spoke. Joan uttered one piercing cry. John let his pipe fall to pieces on the hearthstone and drew his child within his arms. “It be Denas! It be Denas! her own dear self,” he said, and he sat down and took her to his breast, and the poor girl snuggled her head into his big beard, and he kissed away her tears and soothed her as he had done when she was only a baby.
And then poor Joan was on the rug at their feet. She was taking the wet stockings and shoes off of her daughter’s feet; she was drying them gently with her apron, fondling and kissing them as she had been used to do when her little Denas came in from the boats or the school wet-footed. And Denas was stooping to her mother and kissing the happy tears off her face, and the conversation was only in those single words that are too sweet to mix with other words; until Joan, with that womanly instinct that never fails in such extremities, began to bring into the excited tone those tender material cares that make love possible and life-like.
“Oh, my darling,” she cried, “your little feet300be dripping wet, and you be hungry, I know, and we will have a cup of tea. And, Denas, there be such a pie in the cupboard. And a bowl of clotted cream, too. It is just like the good God knew my girl was coming home. And I wonder who put it into my heart to have a mother’s welcome for her? And how be your husband, my dear?”
“He is dead, mother.”
“God’s peace on him!”
“And the little lad, Denas––my little grandson that be called John after me.”
“He is dead, too, father.”
Then they were speechless, and they kissed her again and mingled their tears with her tears, and John felt a sudden lonely place where he had put this poor little grandson whom he was never to see.
Then Denas began to drink her warm tea and to talk to her parents; but they said no words but kind words of the dead. They listened to the pitiful taking-away of the young man, and before the majesty of death they forgot their anger and their dislike, and left him hopefully to the mercy of the Merciful. For if John and Joan knew anything, they knew that none of us shall enter paradise except God cover us with His mercy.
And not one word of all her trouble did Denas titter. She spoke only of Roland’s great love for her; of their trials endured together; of his resignation to death; of her own loneliness and suffering since his burial; and then, clasping her father’s and mother’s hands, she said:
“So I have come back to you. I have come back301to my old life. I shall never act again. I shall sing no more in this world. That life is over. It was not a happy life. Without Roland it would be beyond my power to endure it.”
“You be welcome here as the sunshine. Oh, my dear girl, you be light to my eyes and joy to my heart, and there is no trouble can hurt me much now.”
Then Joan said: “’Twas this very morning I put clean linen on your bed, Denas. I swept the room, and then made the pie, and clotted the cream, and I never knew who I did it for. Oh, Denas, what a godsend you do be! John, my old dear, our life be turned to sunshine now.”
And long after Denas had fallen asleep they sat by their fire and talked of their child’s sorrow, and Joan got up frequently and took a candle and, shading it with her hand, went and looked to see if the girl was all right. When Denas was a babe in the cradle, Joan had been used to satisfy her motherly longing in the same way. Her widowed child was still her baby.
In the morning John went from cottage to cottage and told his friends to come and rejoice with him. For really to John “the dead was alive and the lost was found.” And it was a great wonderment in the village; men nor women could talk of anything else but the return of Denas Tresham. Many were really glad to see her; and if some visited the poor, stricken woman thinking to add a homily to God’s smiting, they were abashed by her evident suffering, by her pallor and her wasted form, and the sombre plainness302of her black garments. For some days life was thus kept at a tension beyond its natural strain, and Joan and her daughter had no time to recover the every-day atmosphere. But no excitement outlasts the week’s perchances and changes, and after the second Sunday all her acquaintances had seen Denas, and curiosity and interest were at their normal standard.
All her acquaintances but Tris Penrose. Denas wondered that he did not come to see her, and yet she had a shy dislike to make inquiries about him. For the love of Tris Penrose for Denas Penelles had been the village romance ever since they were children together, and she feared that a word from her about him might set the women to smiling and sympathising and to taking her affairs out of her own hands.
As the home-life settled to its usual colour and cares, Denas became conscious of a change in it. She saw that her father went very seldom to sea, that he was depressed and restless, and that her mother, in a great measure, echoed his moods. And she was obliged to confess that she was terribly weary. There was little housework to do, except what fell naturally to Joan’s care, and interference with these duties appeared to annoy the methodical old woman. The knitting was far ahead, there were no nets to mend; and when Denas had made herself a couple of dresses, there seemed to be no work for her to do. And she was not specially fond of reading. Culture and study she could understand if their definite end was money; but for the303simple love of information or pleasure books were not attractive to her.
So in a month she had come to a place in her experience when it was a consolation to think of that sixteen hundred pounds in London. She might yet find it necessary to her happiness; for without some change she could not much longer endure the idleness and monotony of her life. Fortunately the change came. One morning a woman visited the cottage, and the sole burden of her conversation was the lack of a school in St. Penfer by the Sea to which the fisher-children might go in the morning.
“Here be my six little uns,” she cried, “and up the cliff they must hurry all, through any wind or weather, or learn nothing. And then they be that tired when they do get home again, they be no use at all about the bait-boxes or the boats. There be sixty school-going children in the village, and I do say there ought to be a school here for them.”
And suddenly it came into the heart of Denas to open a school. Pay or no pay, she was sure she would enjoy the work, and that afternoon she went about it. An empty cottage was secured, a fisher-carpenter agreed to make the benches, and at an outlay of two or three pounds she provided all that was necessary. The affair made a great stir in the hamlet. She had more applications for admission than the cottage would hold, and she selected from these thirty of the youngest of the children.
For the first time in many months Denas was sensible of enthusiasm in her employment. But Joan did not apparently share her hopes or her pleasure.304She was silent and depressed and answered Denas with a slight air of injury.
“They have agreed to pay a penny a week for each child,” Denas said to her mother.
“Well, Denas, some will pay and some will never pay.”
“To be sure. I know that, mother. But it does not much matter.”
“Aw, then, it do matter, my girl––it do matter, a great deal.” And Joan began to cry a little and to arrange her crockery with far more noise than was necessary.
“Dear mother, what is it? Are you in trouble of any kind?”
“Aw, then, Denas, I be troubled to think you never saw your father’s trouble. He be sad and anxious enough, God knows. And no one to say ‘here, John,’ or ‘there, John,’ or give him a helping hand in any way.”
“Sit down, mother, and tell me all. I have seen that father’s ways are changed and that he seldom goes to the fishing. I hoped the reason was that he had no longer any need to go regularly.”
“No need? Aw, my dear, he has no boat!”
“No boat! Mother, what do you mean to tell me?”
“I mean, child, that on the same night the steamerLornewas wrecked your father lost his boat and his nets, and barely got to land with his life––never would have done that but for Tris Penrose, who lost all, too––and both of them at the mercy of the waves when the life-boat reached them. Aw, my dear, a305bad night. And bad times ever since for your father. Now and then he do get a night with Trenager, or Penlow, or Adam Oliver; but they be only making a job for him. And when pilchard time comes, ’tis to St. Ives he must go and hire himself out––at his age, too. It makes me ugly, Denas. My old dear hiring himself out after he have sailed his own boat ever since man he was. And then to see you spending pounds and pounds on school-benches and books, and talking of it not mattering if you was paid or not paid; and me weighing every penny-piece, and your father counting the pipefuls in his tobacco-jar. Aw, ’tis cruel hard! Cruel! cruel!”
“Now, then, mother, dry your eyes––and there––let me kiss them dry. Listen: Father shall have the finest fishing-boat that sails out of any Cornish port. Oh, mother, dear! Spend every penny you want to spend, and I will go to the church town this afternoon to buy father tobacco for a whole year.”
“Let me cry! Let me cry for joy, Denas! Let me cry for joy! You have rolled a stone off my heart. Be you rich, dear?”
“Not rich, mother, but I have sixteen hundred pounds at interest.”
“Sixteen hundred silent pounds, and they might have been busy, happy, working pounds! Aw, Denas, what hours of black care the knowing of them might have saved us. But there, then––I had forgotten. The money be dance money and theatre money, and your father will not touch a penny of it. I do know he will not.”
306
“Mother, when I stopped singing––when I left the theatre for ever I had not in my purse one half-penny. Roland gave me fifty dollars; that came from Elizabeth––that was all I had. When it was gone, Roland was employed by Mr. Lanhearne. I told you about him.”
“Yes, dear. How then?”
“Roland’s father left him pictures and silver plate and many valuable things belonging to the Treshams, and when Roland died they were mine. Elizabeth bought them from me. They were worth two thousand pounds; she gave me sixteen hundred pounds.”
“Why didn’t you tell father and me? ’Twas cruel thoughtless of you.”
“No, no! I wanted to come back to you as I left you––just Denas––without anything but your love to ask favour from. If I had come swelling myself like a great lady, worth sixteen hundred pounds, how all the people would have hated me! What dreadful things they would have said! Father would have had his hands full and his heart full to make this one and that one keep the insult behind their lips. Oh, ’twould have been a broad defiance to evil of every kind. I did think, too, that father had some money in St. Merryn’s Bank.”
“To be sure. And so he did. But there––your aunt Helen’s husband was drowned last winter, and nothing laid by to bury him, and father had it to do; and then there was a mortgage on the cottage, and that was to lift, or no roof to cover Helen and her children. So with this and that the one hundred307pounds went away to forty pounds. That be for our own burying. There be twenty pounds of yours there.”
“Mine is yours!” Then rising quickly, she struck her hands sharply together and cried out: “OneandAll!OneandAll!”[4]
And Joan answered her promptly, letting the towel fall from her grasp to imitate the sharp smiting of the hands as with beaming face she repeated the heart-stirring cry.
“OneandAll!OneandAll! Denas. Aw, my girl, there was a time when I said in my anger I was sorry I gave you suck. This day I be right glad of it! You be true blood! Cornish clean through, Denas!”
“Yes, I be true Cornish, mother, and the money I have is honest money. Father can take it without a doubt. But I will see Lawyer Tremaine, and he shall put the sum I got in the St. PenferNews, and tell what I got it for, and none can say I did wrong to take my widow right.”
“I be so happy, Denas! I be so happy! My old308dear will have his own boat! My old dear will have his own boat!”
“Now, mother, neither you nor I can buy a boat. Shall we tell father and let him choose for himself?”
Joan knew this was the most prudent plan, but that love of “surprise pleasures” which is a dominant passion in children and uneducated natures would not let Joan admit at once this solution of the difficulty. How could she forego the delight of all the private consultations; of the bringing home of the boat; of the wonder of the villagers; of John’s happy amazement? She could not bear to contemplate the prosaic, commonplace method of sending John to buy his own boat when it was within the power of Denas and herself to be an unseen gracious providence to him. So after a moment’s thought she said: “There be Tris Penrose. It will be busy all and happy all for him to be about such a job.”
“I have not seen Tris since I came home. He is the only one who has not come to say welcome to me.”
“Aw, then, ’twas only yesterday he got home himself. He has been away with Mr. Arundel on his yacht.”
“You never told me.”
“You never asked. I thought, then, you didn’t want Tris to be named.”
“But what for shouldn’t I name Tris?”
“La! my dear, the love in Tris’ heart was a trouble to you. You weresayingthat often.”
“But Tris knows about fishing-boats?”
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“Who knows more?”
“And what kind of a boat father would like best?”
“None can tell that as well.”
“And Tris is home again?”
“That be true. Ann Trewillow told me, and she be working at the Abbey two days in the week.”
“Has Mr. Arundel bought the Abbey?”
“He has done that, and it be made a grand place now. And when Tris lost his boat trying to save your father’s life and boat, Mr. Arundel was with the coast-guard and saw him. And he said: ‘A fine young man! A fine young man!’ So the next thing was, he spoke to Tris and hired him to sail his yacht. And ’tis far off, by the way of Giberaltar, they have been––yet home at last, thank God!”
“Tris will be sure to come here, I suppose?”
“Ann Trewillow told him you were home––a widow, and all; he will be here as soon as he can leave the yacht. It is here he comes first of all as soon as he touches land again.”
“Then we will speak to him about the boat.”
“To be sure. And I do wish he would hurry all and show himself. New boats be building, but the best may get sold––a day might make a difference.”
“And now, mother, you must try and lift the care from father’s heart. Let him know, some way, that money troubles are over and that he may carry his head up. You can do it––a little word––a little look from you––he will understand.”
“Aw, then, Denas, a smile is enough. I can lift my eyelids, and he’ll see the light under them and310catch it in his heart. John isn’t a woman. Thank God, he can be happy and ask no questions––trusting all. Your father be a good man to trust and hope.”
Then the day, that had seemed to stretch itself out so long and wearily, was all too short for Joan and Denas. They talked about the money freely and happily, and Denas could now tell her mother all the circumstances of her visit to Elizabeth. They were full of interest to the simple woman. She enjoyed hearing about the dress Elizabeth wore; about her house, her anger, her disappointment, and hard reluctance to pay money for the treasures she had begun to regard as her own.
So the morning passed quickly away, and in the afternoon Denas went into the village to look after her school-room. It was such a lovely spring day. The sky was so blue, the sea was so blue, the earth was so green and sweet, and the air so fresh and clear that Denas could not but be glad that she was alive to be cheered by them. Not for a very long time had she felt so calmly happy, so hopeful of the future, so resigned to the past.
After her business in the village was over she walked toward the cliff. She had some idea that it would be pleasant to go up to the church town, but just where the trees and underwood came near to the shingle a little bird singing on a May-thorn beguiled her to listen. Then the songster went on and on, as if it called her, and Denas followed its music; until, by and by, she came to where the shingle was but a narrow strip, and the verdure retreated,311and the rocks grew larger and higher; and, anon, she was at the promontory between St. Penfer and St. Clair.
It would now be impossible to go up the cliff and back again before tea-time, and she sat down to rest a little before returning home. She sat longer than she intended, for the dreamy, monotonous murmur of the waves and the stillness and solitude predisposed her to that kind of drifting thought which keeps assuring time: “I am going directly.”
She was effectually roused at last by the sound of a clear, strong voice whistling a charming melody. She sat quite still. A conviction that it was Tris Penrose came into her heart. She wondered if he would notice––know––speak to her. Tris saw her figure as quickly as it came within his vision, and as quickly as he saw it he knew who was present. He ceased whistling and cried out cheerily:
“Denas? What, Denas?”
She stood up then and held out her hands to him. And she was startled beyond measure by the Tris that met her gaze. Naturally a very handsome man, his beauty was made most attractive by a sailor suit of blue broadcloth. His throat was open to the sea breeze, a blue kerchief tied around it in a sailor’s knot. And then her eyes wandered to his sun-browned face, close-curling black hair, and the little blue, gold-trimmed cap set upon the curls. The whole filled her with a pleasant wonder. She made a little time over his splendour, and asked if he was going to the pilchard fishing in such finery. And he took all her hurried, laughing, fluttering remarks312with the greatest good-humour. He said, indeed, that he had been told she was home again, and that he wore the dress because he was coming to see her.
Then they sat down, and she told Tris what she desired to do for her father, and Tris entered into the project as enthusiastically as if he was a child. Never before had Tris felt so heart-satisfied. It was such a joy to have Denas beside him; such a joy to know that she was free again; such a joy to share a secret with her. And gradually the effusiveness of their first meeting toned itself down to quiet, restful confidence, and then they rose together and began to walk slowly toward the cottage. For of course Joan was to be consulted, and besides, Tris had a present for her in his pocket.
The westering sun sent level rays of sunshine before them, and they tried involuntarily to step in it as they used to do when they were children. Tris could not help a smile as they did so, and then one of those closely personal conversations began whose initial point is always: “And do you remember?” Tris remembered everything, and especially one Saturday when they ran away together to a little fairy cove and made boats all day long. Yes, every movement of that happy day was in Tris’ heart, and he told Denas that the same pebbly shore was still there, and that often he fancied he heard on it the beat of their little pattering, naked feet, and wished that they could have been children upon the shore for ever, and ever, and evermore.
“I do not think that would have been nice at all, Tris,” answered Denas. “It is better to be grown313up. You were only good to play with then. I could not have asked you to go and buy a boat for father, could I?”
And Tris looked at her sweet, pale face, and noting how the pink colour rushed into her cheeks to answer his looks, thought how right she was, and that it was much better to have Denas a woman to be loved than a child to be played with.
And somehow, after this, they had no more words to say, and Tris walked at her side under his old embarrassment of silence. Nor could Denas talk. If she tried to do so, then she raised her eyes, and then Tris’ eyes looking into hers seemed to reproach her for the words she did not say. And if she kept her eyes on the shingle, she still felt Tris to be looking at her, questioning her, loving her just as he used to do––and she could not bear it––never! never! At the first opportunity she must make Tris understand that they could only be friends––friends only––and nothing, positively nothing more.