"There are candles and a match-box in my cupboard," answered Uncle Joseph. "But look out of window, Sarah. It is only twilight—it is not dark yet."
"Not outside; but it is dark here."
"Where?"
"In that corner. Let us have candles. I don't like the darkness when it gathers in corners and creeps along walls."
Uncle Joseph looked all round the room inquiringly; and smiled to himself as he took two candles from the cupboard and lighted them. "You are like the children," he said, playfully, while he pulled down the window-blind. "You are afraid of the dark."
Sarah did not appear to hear him. Her eyes were fixed on the corner of the room which she had pointed out the moment before. When he resumed his place by her side, she never looked round, but laid her hand on his arm, and said to him suddenly—
"Uncle! Do you believe that the dead can come back to this world, and follow the living every where, and see what they do in it?"
The old man started. "Sarah!" he said, "why do you talk so? Why do you ask me such a question?"
"Are there lonely hours," she went on, still never looking away from the corner, still not seeming to hear him, "when you are sometimes frightened without knowing why—frightened all over in an instant, from head to foot? Tell me, uncle, have you ever felt the cold steal round and round the roots of your hair, and crawl bit by bit down your back? I have felt that even in the summer. I have been out of doors, alone on a wide heath, in the heat and brightness of noon, and have felt as if chilly fingers were touching me—chilly, damp, softly creeping fingers. It says in the New Testament that the dead came once out of their graves, and went into the holy city. The dead! Have they rested, rested always, rested forever, since that time?"
Uncle Joseph's simple nature recoiled in bewilderment from the dark and daring speculations to which his niece's questions led. Without saying a word, he tried to draw away the arm which she still held; but the only result of the effort was to make her tighten her grasp, and bend forward in her chair so as to look closer still into the corner of the room.
"My mistress was dying," she said—"my mistress was very near her grave, when she made me take my oath on the Bible. She made me swear never to destroy the letter; and I did not destroy it. She made me swear not to take it away with me, if I left the house; and I did not take it away. She would have made me swear, for the third time, to give it to my master, but death was too quick for her—death stopped her from fastening that third oath on my conscience. But she threatened me, uncle, with the dead dampness on her forehead, and the dead whiteness on her cheeks—she threatened to come to me from the other world if I thwarted her—and Ihavethwarted her!"
She stopped, suddenly removed her hand from the old man's arm, and made a strange gesture with it toward the part of the room on which her eyes remained fixed. "Rest, mistress, rest," she whispered under her breath. "Is my master alive now? Rest, till the drowned rise. Tell him the Secret when the sea gives up her dead."
"Sarah! Sarah! you are changed—you are ill—you frighten me!" cried Uncle Joseph, starting to his feet.
"WITHOUT SAYING A WORD, HE TRIED TO DRAW AWAY THE ARM SHE STILL HELD."
"WITHOUT SAYING A WORD, HE TRIED TO DRAW AWAY THE ARM SHE STILL HELD."
She turned round slowly, and looked at him with eyes void of all expression, with eyes that seemed to be staring through him vacantly at something beyond.
"Gott im Himmel! what does she see?" He looked round as the exclamation escaped him. "Sarah! what is it! Are you faint? Are you ill? Are you dreaming with your eyes open?"
He took her by both arms and shook her. At the instant when she felt the touch of his hands, she started violently and trembled all over. Their natural expression flew back into her eyes with the rapidity of a flash of light. Without saying a word, she hastily resumed her seat and began stirring the cold tea round and round in her cup, round and round so fast that the liquid overflowed into the saucer.
"Come! she gets more like herself," said Uncle Joseph, watching her.
"More like myself?" she repeated, vacantly.
"So! so!" said the old man, trying to soothe her. "You are ill—what the English call out of sort. They are good doctors here. Wait till to-morrow, you shall have the best."
"I want no doctors. Don't speak of doctors. I can't bear them; they look at me with such curious eyes; they are always prying into me, as if they wanted to find out something. What have we been stopping for? I had so much to say; and we seem to have been stopping just when we ought to have been going on. I am in grief and terror, Uncle Joseph; in grief and terror again about the Secret—"
"No more of that!" pleaded the old man. "No more to-night at least!"
"Why not?"
"Because you will be ill again with talking about it. You will be looking into that corner, and dreaming with your eyes open. You are too ill—yes, yes, Sarah; you are too ill."
"I'm not ill! Oh, why does every body keep telling me that I am ill? Let me talk about it, uncle. I have come to talk about it; I can't rest till I have told you."
She spoke with a changing color and an embarrassed manner, now apparently conscious for the first time that she had allowed words and actions to escape her which it would have been more prudent to have restrained.
"Don't notice me again," she said, with her soft voice, and her gentle, pleading manner. "Don't notice me if I talk or look as I ought not. I lose myself sometimes, without knowing it; and I suppose I lost myself just now. It means nothing, Uncle Joseph—nothing, indeed."
Endeavoring thus to re-assure the old man, she again altered the position of her chair, so as to place her back toward the part of the room to which her face had been hitherto turned.
"Well, well, it is good to hear that," said Uncle Joseph; "but speak no more about the past time, for fear you should lose yourself again. Let us hear about what is now. Yes, yes, give me my way. Leave the Long Ago to me, and take you the present time. I can go back through the sixteen years as well as you. Ah! you doubt it? Hear me tell you what happened when we last met—hear me prove myself in three words: You leave your place at the old house—you run away here—you stop in hiding with me, while your master and his servants are hunting after you—you start off, when your road is clear, to work for your living, as far away from Cornwall as you can get—I beg and pray you to stop with me, but you are afraid of your master, and away you go. There! that is the whole story of your trouble the last time you came to this house. Leave it so; and tell me what is the cause of your trouble now."
"The past cause of my trouble, Uncle Joseph, and the present cause of my trouble are the same. The Secret—"
"What! you will go back to that!"
"I must go back to it."
"And why?"
"Because the Secret is written in a letter—"
"Yes; and what of that?"
"And the letter is in danger of being discovered. It is, uncle—it is! Sixteen years it has lain hidden—and now, after all that long time, the dreadful chance of its being dragged to light has come like a judgment. The one person in all the world who ought never to set eyes on that letter is the very person who is most likely to find it!"
"So! so! Are you very certain, Sarah? How do you know it?"
"I know it from her own lips. Chance brought us together—"
"Us? us? What do you mean by us?"
"I mean—uncle, you remember that Captain Treverton was my master when I lived at Porthgenna Tower?"
"I had forgotten his name. But no matter—go on."
"When I left my place, Miss Treverton was a little girl of five years old. She is a married woman now—so beautiful, so clever, such a sweet, youthful, happy face! And she has a child as lovely as herself. Oh, uncle, if you could see her! I would give so much if you could only see her!"
Uncle Joseph kissed his hand and shrugged his shoulders; expressing by the first action homage to the lady's beauty, and by the second resignation under the misfortune of not being able to see her. "Well, well," he said, philosophically, "put this shining woman by, and let us go on."
"Her name is Frankland now," said Sarah. "A prettier name than Treverton—a much prettier name, I think. Her husband is fond of her—I am sure he is. How can he have any heart at all, and not be fond of her?"
"So! so!" exclaimed Uncle Joseph, looking very much perplexed. "Good, if he is fond of her—very good. But what labyrinth are we getting into now? Wherefore all this about a husband and a wife? My word of honor, Sarah, but your explanation explains nothing—it only softens my brains."
"I must speak of her and of Mr. Frankland, uncle. Porthgenna Tower belongs to her husband now, and they are both going to live there."
"Ah! we are getting back into the straight road at last."
"They are going to live in the very house that holds the Secret; they are going to repair that very part of it where the letter is hidden. She will go into the old rooms—I heard her say so; she will search about in them to amuse her curiosity; workmen will clear them out, and she will stand by in her idle hours, looking on."
"But she suspects nothing of the Secret?"
"God forbid she ever should!"
"And there are many rooms in the house? And the letter in which the Secret is written is hidden in one of the many? Why should she hit on that one?"
"Because I always say the wrong thing! because I always get frightened and lose myself at the wrong time! The letter is hidden in a room called the Myrtle Room, and I was foolish enough, weak enough, crazed enough, to warn her against going into it."
"Ah, Sarah! Sarah! that was a mistake, indeed."
"I can't tell what possessed me—I seemed to lose my senses when I heard her talking so innocently of amusing herself by searching through the old rooms, and when I thought of what she might find there. It was getting on toward night, too; the horrible twilight was gathering in the corners and creeping along the walls. I longed to light the candles, and yet I did not dare, for fear she should see the truth in my face. And when I did light them it was worse. Oh, I don't know how I did it! I don't know why I did it! I could have torn my tongue out for saying the words, and still I said them. Other people can think for the best; other people can act for the best; other people have had a heavy weight laid on their minds, and have not dropped under it as I have. Help me, uncle, for the sake of old times when we were happy—help me with a word of advice."
"I will help you; I live to help you, Sarah! No, no, no—you must not look so forlorn; you must not look at me with those crying eyes. Come! I will advise this minute—but say in what; only say in what."
"Have I not told you?"
"No; you have not told me a word yet."
"I will tell you now."
She paused, looked away distrustfully toward the door leading into the shop, listened a little, and resumed: "I am not at the end of my journey yet, Uncle Joseph—I am here on my way to Porthgenna Tower—on my way to the Myrtle Room—on my way, step by step, to the place where the letter lies hid. I dare not destroy it; I dare not remove it; but run what risk I may, I must take it out of the Myrtle Room."
Uncle Joseph said nothing, but he shook his head despondingly.
"I must," she repeated; "before Mrs. Frankland gets to Porthgenna, I must take that letter out of the Myrtle Room. There are places in the old house where I may hide it again—places that she would never think of—places that she would never notice. Only let me get it out of the one room that she is sure to search in, and I know where to hide it from her and from every one forever."
Uncle Joseph reflected, and shook his head again—then said: "One word, Sarah; does Mrs. Frankland know which is the Myrtle Room?"
"I did my best to destroy all trace of that name when I hid the letter; I hope and believe she does not. But she may find out—remember the words I was crazed enough to speak; they will set her seeking for the Myrtle Room; they are sure to do that."
"And if she finds it? And if she finds the letter?"
"It will cause misery to innocent people; it will bring death tome. Don't push your chair from me, uncle! It is not shameful death I speak of. The worst injury I have done is injury to myself; the worst death I have to fear is the death that releases a worn-out spirit and cures a broken heart."
"Enough—enough so," said the old man. "I ask for no secret, Sarah, that is not yours to give. It is all dark to me—very dark, very confused. I look away from it; I look only toward you. Not with doubt, my child, but with pity, and with sorrow, too—sorrow that ever you went near that house of Porthgenna—sorrow that you are now going to it again."
"I have no choice, uncle, but to go. If every step on the road to Porthgenna took me nearer and nearer to my death, I must still tread it. Knowing what I know, I can't rest, I can't sleep—my very breath won't come freely—till I have got that letter out of the Myrtle Room. How to do it—oh, Uncle Joseph, how to do it, without being suspected, without being discovered by any body—that is what I would almost give my life to know! You are a man; you are older and wiser than I am; no living creature ever asked you for help in vain—helpmenow! my only friend in all the world, help me a little with a word of advice!"
Uncle Joseph rose from his chair, and folded his arms resolutely, and looked his niece full in the face.
"You will go?" he said. "Cost what it may, you will go? Say, for the last time, Sarah, is it yes or no?"
"Yes! For the last time, I say Yes."
"Good. And you will go soon?"
"I must go to-morrow. I dare not waste a single day; hours even may be precious for any thing I can tell."
"You promise me, my child, that the hiding of this Secret does good, and that the finding of it will do harm?"
"If it was the last word I had to speak in this world, I would say Yes!"
"You promise me, also, that you want nothing but to take the letter out of the Myrtle Room, and put it away somewhere else?"
"Nothing but that."
"And it is yours to take and yours to put? No person has a better right to touch it than you?"
"Now that my master is dead, no person."
"Good. You have given me my resolution. I have done. Sit you there, Sarah; and wonder, if you like, but say nothing." With these words, Uncle Joseph stepped lightly to the door leading into the shop, opened it, and called to the man behind the counter.
"Samuel, my friend," he said. "To-morrow I go a little ways into the country with my niece, who is this lady here. You keep shop and take orders, and be just as careful as you always are, till I get back. If any body comes and asks for Mr. Buschmann, say he has gone a little ways into the country, and will be back in a few days. That is all. Shut up the shop, Samuel, my friend, for the night; and go to your supper. I wish you good appetite, nice victuals, and sound sleep."
Before Samuel could thank his master, the door was shut again. Before Sarah could say a word, Uncle Joseph's hand was on her lips, and Uncle Joseph's handkerchief was wiping away the tears that were now falling fast from her eyes.
"I will have no more talking, and no more crying," said the old man. "I am a German, and I glory in the obstinacy of six Englishmen, all rolled into one. To-night you sleep here, to-morrow we talk again of all this. You want me to help you with a word of advice. I will help you with myself, which is better than advice, and I say no more till I fetch my pipe down from the wall there, and ask him to make me think. I smoke and think to-night—I talk and do to-morrow. And you, you go up to bed; you take Uncle Max's music box in your hand, and you let Mozart sing the cradle song before you go to sleep. Yes, yes, my child, there is always comfort in Mozart—better comfort than in crying. What is there to cry about, or to thank about? Is it so great a wonder that I will not let my sister's child go alone to make a venture in the dark? I said Sarah's sorrow was my sorrow, and Sarah's joy my joy; and now, if there is no way of escape—if it must indeed be done—I also say: Sarah's risk to-morrow is Uncle Joseph's risk to-morrow, too! Good-night, my child—good-night."
The next morning wrought no change in the resolution at which Uncle Joseph had arrived overnight. Out of the amazement and confusion produced in his mind by his niece's avowal of the object that had brought her to Cornwall, he had contrived to extract one clear and definite conclusion—that she was obstinately bent on placing herself in a situation of uncertainty, if not of absolute peril. Once persuaded of this, his kindly instincts all sprang into action, his natural firmness on the side of self sacrifice asserted itself, and his determination not to let Sarah proceed on her journey alone, followed as a matter of course.
Strong in the self-denying generosity of his purpose—though strong in nothing else—when he and his niece met in the morning, and when Sarah spoke self-reproachfully of the sacrifice that he was making, of the serious hazards to which he was exposing himself for her sake, he refused to listen to her just as obstinately as he had refused the previous night. There was no need, he said, to speak another word on that subject. If she had abandoned her intention of going to Porthgenna, she had only to say so. If she had not, it was mere waste of breath to talk any more, for he was deaf in both ears to every thing in the shape of a remonstrance that she could possibly address to him. Having expressed himself in these uncompromising terms, Uncle Joseph abruptly dismissed the subject, and tried to turn the conversation to a cheerful every-day topic by asking his niece how she had passed the night.
"I was too anxious to sleep," she answered. "I can't fight with my fears and misgivings as some people can. All night long they keep me waking and thinking as if it was day."
"Thinking about what?" asked Uncle Joseph. "About the letter that is hidden? about the house of Porthgenna? about the Myrtle Room?"
"About how to get into the Myrtle Room," she said. "The more I try to plan and ponder, and settle beforehand what I shall do, the more confused and helpless I seem to be. All last night, uncle, I was trying to think of some excuse for getting inside the doors of Porthgenna Tower—and yet, if I was standing on the house-step at this moment, I should not know what to say when the servant and I first came face to face. How are we to persuade them to let us in? How am I to slip out of sight, even if we do get in? Can't you tell me?—you will try, Uncle Joseph—I am sure you will try. Only help me so far, and I think I can answer for the rest. If they keep the keys where they used to keep them in my time, ten minutes to myself is all I should want—ten minutes, only ten short minutes, to make the end of my life easier to me than the beginning has been; to help me to grow old quietly and resignedly, if it is God's will that I should live out my years. Oh, how happy people must be who have all the courage they want; who are quick and clever, and have their wits about them! You are readier than I am, uncle; you said last night that you would think about how to advise me for the best—what did your thoughts end in? You will make me so much easier if you will only tell me that."
Uncle Joseph nodded assentingly, assumed a look of the profoundest gravity, and slowly laid his forefinger along the side of his nose.
"What did I promise you last night?" he said. "Was it not to take my pipe, and ask him to make me think? Good, I smoke three pipes, and think three thoughts. My first thought is—Wait! My second thought is again—Wait! My third thought is yet once more—Wait! You say you will be easy, Sarah, if I tell you the end of all my thoughts. Good, I have told you. There is the end—you are easy—it is all light."
"Wait?" repeated Sarah, with a look of bewilderment which suggested any thing rather than a mind at ease. "I am afraid, uncle, I don't quite understand. Wait for what? Wait till when?"
"Wait till we arrive at the house, to be sure! Wait till we are got outside the door; then is time enough to think how we are to get in," said Uncle Joseph, with an air of conviction. "You understand now?"
"Yes—at least I understand better than I did. But there is still another difficulty left. Uncle! I must tell you more than I intended ever to tell any body—I must tell you that the letter is locked up."
"Locked up in a room?"
"Worse than that—locked up in something inside the room. The key that opens the door—even if I get it—the key that opens the door of the room is not all I want. There is another key besides that, a little key—" She stopped, with a confused, startled look.
"A little key that you have lost?" asked Uncle Joseph.
"I threw it down the well in the village on the morning when I made my escape from Porthgenna. Oh, if I had only kept it about me! If it had only crossed my mind that I might want it again!"
"Well, well; there is no help for that now. Tell me, Sarah, what the something is which the letter is hidden in."
"I am afraid of the very walls hearing me."
"What nonsense! Come! whisper it to me."
She looked all round her distrustfully, and then whispered into the old man's ear. He listened eagerly, and laughed when she was silent again. "Bah!" he cried. "If that is all, make yourself happy. As you wicked English people say, it is as easy as lying. Why, my child, you can burst him open for yourself."
"Burst it open? How?"
Uncle Joseph went to the window-seat, which was made on the old-fashioned plan, to serve the purpose of a chest as well as a seat. He opened the lid, searched among some tools which lay in the receptacle beneath, and took out a chisel. "See," he said, demonstrating on the top of the window-seat the use to which the tool was to be put. "You push him in so—crick! Then you pull him up so—crack! It is the business of one little moment—crick! crack!—and the lock is done for. Take the chisel yourself, wrap him up in a bit of that stout paper there, and put him in your pocket. What are you waiting for? Do you want me to show you again, or do you think you can do it now for yourself?"
"I should like you to show me again, Uncle Joseph, but not now—not till we have got to the end of our journey."
"Good. Then I may finish my packing up, and go ask about the coach. First and foremost, Mozart must put on his great coat, and travel with us." He took up the musical box, and placed it carefully in a leather case, which he slung by a strap over one shoulder. "Next, there is my pipe, the tobacco to feed him with, and the matches to set him alight. Last, here is my old German knapsack, which I pack last night. See! here is shirt, night-cap, comb, pocket-handkerchief, sock. Say I am an emperor, and what do I want more than that? Good. I have Mozart, I have the pipe, I have the knapsack. I have—stop! stop; there is the old leather purse; he must not be forgotten. Look! here he is. Listen! Ting, ting, ting! He jingles; he has in his inside money. Aha, my friend, my good Leather, you shall be lighter and leaner before you come home again. So, so—it is all complete; we are ready for the march now, from our tops to our toes. Good-by, Sarah, my child, for a little half-hour; you shall wait here and amuse yourself while I go ask for the coach."
When Uncle Joseph came back, he brought his niece information that a coach would pass through Truro in an hour's time, which would set them down at a stage not more than five or six miles distant from the regular post-town of Porthgenna. The only direct conveyance to the post-town was a night-coach which carried the letter-bags, and which stopped to change horses at Truro at the very inconvenient hour of two o'clock in the morning. Being of opinion that to travel at bed-time was to make a toil of a pleasure, Uncle Joseph recommended taking places in the day-coach, and hiring any conveyance that could be afterward obtained to carry his niece and himself on to the post-town. By this arrangement they would not only secure their own comfort, but gain the additional advantage of losing as little time as possible at Truro before proceeding on their journey to Porthgenna.
The plan thus proposed was the plan followed. When the coach stopped to change horses, Uncle Joseph and his niece were waiting to take their places by it. They found all the inside seats but one disengaged, were set down two hours afterward at the stage that was nearest to the destination for which they were bound, hired a pony-chaise there, and reached the post-town between one and two o'clock in the afternoon.
Dismissing their conveyance at the inn, from motives of caution which were urged by Sarah, they set forth to walk across the moor to Porthgenna. On their way out of the town they met the postman returning from his morning's delivery of letters in the surrounding district. His bag had been much heavier and his walk much longer that morning than usual. Among the extra letters that had taken him out of his ordinary course was one addressed to the housekeeper at Porthgenna Tower, which he had delivered early in the morning, when he first started on his rounds.
Throughout the whole journey, Uncle Joseph had not made a single reference to the object for which it had been undertaken. Possessing a child's simplicity of nature, he was also endowed with a child's elasticity of disposition. The doubts and forebodings which troubled his niece's spirit, and kept her silent and thoughtful and sad, cast no darkening shadow over the natural sunshine of his mind. If he had really been traveling for pleasure alone, he could not have enjoyed more thoroughly than he did the different sights and events of the journey. All the happiness which the passing minute had to give him he took as readily and gratefully as if there was no uncertainty in the future, no doubt, difficulty, or danger lying in wait for him at the journey's end. Before he had been half an hour in the coach he had begun to tell the third inside passenger—a rigid old lady, who stared at him in speechless amazement—the whole history of the musical box, ending the narrative by setting it playing, in defiance of all the noise that the rolling wheels could make. When they left the coach, he was just as sociable afterward with the driver of the chaise, vaunting the superiority of German beer over Cornish cider, and making his remarks upon the objects which they passed on the road with the pleasantest familiarity, and the heartiest enjoyment of his own jokes. It was not till he and Sarah were well out of the little town, and away by themselves on the great moor which stretched beyond it, that his manner altered, and his talk ceased altogether. After walking on in silence for some little time, with his niece's arm in his, he suddenly stopped, looked her earnestly and kindly in the face, and laid his hand on hers.
"There is yet one thing more I want to ask you, my child," he said. "The journey has put it out of my head, but it has been in my heart all the time. When we leave this place of Porthgenna, and get back to my house, you will not go away? you will not leave Uncle Joseph again? Are you in service still, Sarah? Are you not your own master yet?"
"I was in service a few days since," she answered; "but I am free now. I have lost my place."
"Aha! You have lost your place; and why?"
"Because I would not hear an innocent person unjustly blamed. Because—"
She checked herself. But the few words she had said were spoken with such a suddenly heightened color, and with such an extraordinary emphasis and resolution of tone, that the old man opened his eyes as widely as possible, and looked at his niece in undisguised astonishment.
"So! so! so!" he exclaimed. "What! You have had a quarrel, Sarah!"
"Hush! Don't ask me any more questions now!" she pleaded earnestly. "I am too anxious and too frightened to answer. Uncle! this is Porthgenna Moor—this is the road I passed over, sixteen years ago, when I ran away to you. Oh! let us get on, pray let us get on! I can't think of any thing now but the house we are so near, and the risk we are going to run."
They went on quickly, in silence. Half an hour's rapid walking brought them to the highest elevation on the moor, and gave the whole western prospect grandly to their view.
There, below them, was the dark, lonesome, spacious structure of Porthgenna Tower, with the sunlight already stealing round toward the windows of the west front! There was the path winding away to it gracefully over the brown moor, in curves of dazzling white! There, lower down, was the solitary old church, with the peaceful burial-ground nestling by its side! There, lower still, were the little scattered roofs of the fishermen's cottages! And there, beyond all, was the changeless glory of the sea, with its old seething lines of white foam, with the old winding margin of its yellow shores! Sixteen long years—such years of sorrow, such years of suffering, such years of change, counted by the pulses of the living heart!—had passed over the dead tranquillity of Porthgenna, and had altered it as little as if they had all been contained within the lapse of a single day!
The moments when the spirit within us is most deeply stirred are almost invariably the moments also when its outward manifestations are hardest to detect. Our own thoughts rise above us; our own feelings lie deeper than we can reach. How seldom words can help us, when their help is most wanted! How often our tears are dried up when we most long for them to relieve us! Was there ever a strong emotion in this world that could adequately express its own strength? What third person, brought face to face with the old man and his niece, as they now stood together on the moor, would have suspected, to look at them, that the one was contemplating the landscape with nothing more than a stranger's curiosity, and that the other was viewing it through the recollections of half a lifetime? The eyes of both were dry, the tongues of both were silent, the faces of both were set with equal attention toward the prospect. Even between themselves there was no real sympathy, no intelligible appeal from one spirit to the other. The old man's quiet admiration of the view was not more briefly and readily expressed, when they moved forward and spoke to each other, than the customary phrases of assent by which his niece replied to the little that he said. How many moments there are in this mortal life, when, with all our boasted powers of speech, the words of our vocabulary treacherously fade out, and the page presents nothing to us but the sight of a perfect blank!
Slowly descending the slope of the moor, the uncle and niece drew nearer and nearer to Porthgenna Tower. They were within a quarter of an hour's walk of the house when Sarah stopped at a place where a second path intersected the main foot-track which they had hitherto been following. On the left hand, as they now stood, the cross-path ran on until it was lost to the eye in the expanse of the moor. On the right hand it led straight to the church.
"What do we stop for now?" asked Uncle Joseph, looking first in one direction and then in the other.
"Would you mind waiting for me here a little while, uncle? I can't pass the church path—" (she paused, in some trouble how to express herself)—"without wishing (as I don't know what may happen after we get to the house), without wishing to see—to look at something—" She stopped again, and turned her face wistfully toward the church. The tears, which had never wetted her eyes at the first view of Porthgenna, were beginning to rise in them now.
Uncle Joseph's natural delicacy warned him that it would be best to abstain from asking her for any explanations.
"Go you where you like, to see what you like," he said, patting her on the shoulder. "I shall stop here to make myself happy with my pipe; and Mozart shall come out of his cage, and sing a little in this fine fresh air." He unslung the leather case from his shoulder while he spoke, took out the musical box, and set it ringing its tiny peal to the second of the two airs which it was constructed to play—the minuet in Don Giovanni. Sarah left him looking about carefully, not for a seat for himself, but for a smooth bit of rock to place the box upon. When he had found this, he lit his pipe, and sat down to his music and his smoking, like an epicure to a good dinner. "Aha!" he exclaimed to himself, looking round as composedly at the wild prospect on all sides of him as if he was still in his own little parlor at Truro—"Aha! Here is a fine big music-room, my friend Mozart, for you to sing in! Ouf! there is wind enough in this place to blow your pretty dance-tune out to sea, and give the sailor-people a taste of it as they roll about in their ships."
"SHE SIGHED HEAVILY AS SHE FOLLOWED THE LETTERS OF THE INSCRIPTION MECHANICALLY, ONE BY ONE, WITH HER FINGER."
"SHE SIGHED HEAVILY AS SHE FOLLOWED THE LETTERS OF THE INSCRIPTION MECHANICALLY, ONE BY ONE, WITH HER FINGER."
Meanwhile Sarah walked on rapidly toward the church, and entered the inclosure of the little burial-ground. Toward that same part of it to which she had directed her steps on the morning of her mistress's death, she now turned her face again, after a lapse of sixteen years. Here, at least, the march of time had left its palpable track—its foot-prints whose marks were graves. How many a little spot of ground, empty when she last saw it, had its mound and its head-stone now! The one grave that she had come to see—the grave which had stood apart in the by-gone days, had companion graves on the right hand and on the left. She could not have singled it out but for the weather stains on the head-stone, which told of storm and rain over it, that had not passed over the rest. The mound was still kept in shape; but the grass grew long, and waved a dreary welcome to her as the wind swept through it. She knelt down by the stone, and tried to read the inscription. The black paint which had once made the carved words distinct was all flayed off from them now. To any other eyes but hers the very name of the dead man would have been hard to trace. She sighed heavily as she followed the letters of the inscription mechanically, one by one, with her finger:
SACRED TO THE MEMORYOFHugh Polwheal,AGED 26 YEARS.HE MET WITH HIS DEATHTHROUGH THE FALL OF A ROCKINPORTHGENNA MINE,DECEMBER 17TH, 1823.
SACRED TO THE MEMORYOFHugh Polwheal,AGED 26 YEARS.HE MET WITH HIS DEATHTHROUGH THE FALL OF A ROCKINPORTHGENNA MINE,DECEMBER 17TH, 1823.
Her hand lingered over the letters after it had followed them to the last line, and she bent forward and pressed her lips on the stone.
"Better so!" she said to herself, as she rose from her knees, and looked down at the inscription for the last time. "Better it should fade out so! Fewer strangers' eyes will see it; fewer strangers' feet will follow where mine have been—he will lie all the quieter in the place of his rest!"
She brushed the tears from her eyes, and gathered a few blades of grass from the grave—then left the church-yard. Outside the hedge that surrounded the inclosure she stopped for a moment, and drew from the bosom of her dress the little book of Wesley's Hymns which she had taken with her from the desk in her bedroom on the morning of her flight from Porthgenna. The withered remains of the grass that she had plucked from the grave sixteen years ago lay between the pages still. She added to them the fresh fragments that she had just gathered, replaced the book in the bosom of her dress, and hastened back over the moor to the spot where the old man was waiting for her.
She found him packing up the musical box again in its leather case. "A good wind," he said, holding up the palm of his hand to the fresh breeze that was sweeping over the moor—"A very good wind, indeed, if you take him by himself—but a bitter bad wind if you take him with Mozart. He blows off the tune as if it was the hat on my head. You come back, my child, just at the nick of time—just when my pipe is done, and Mozart is ready to travel along the road once more. Ah, have you got the crying look in your eyes again, Sarah? What have you met with to make you cry? So! so! I see—the fewer questions I ask just now, the better you will like me. Good. I have done. No! I have a last question yet. What are we standing here for? why do we not go on?"
"Yes, yes; you are right, Uncle Joseph; let us go on at once. I shall lose all the little courage I have if we stay here much longer looking at the house."
They proceeded down the path without another moment of delay. When they had reached the end of it, they stood opposite the eastern boundary wall of Porthgenna Tower. The principal entrance to the house, which had been very rarely used of late years, was in the west front, and was approached by a terrace road that overlooked the sea. The smaller entrance, which was generally used, was situated on the south side of the building, and led through the servants' offices to the great hall and the west staircase. Sarah's old experience of Porthgenna guided her instinctively toward this part of the house. She led her companion on until they gained the southern angle of the east wall—then stopped and looked about her. Since they had passed the postman and had entered on the moor, they had not set eyes on a living creature; and still, though they were now under the very walls of Porthgenna, neither man, woman, nor child—not even a domestic animal—appeared in view.
"It is very lonely here," said Sarah, looking round her distrustfully; "much lonelier than it used to be."
"Is it only to tell me what I can see for myself that you are stopping now?" asked Uncle Joseph, whose inveterate cheerfulness would have been proof against the solitude of Sahara itself.
"No, no!" she answered, in a quick, anxious whisper. "But the bell we must ring at is so close—only round there—I should like to know what we are to say when we come face to face with the servant. You told me it was time enough to think about that when we were at the door. Uncle! we are all but at the door now. What shall we do?"
"The first thing to do," said Uncle Joseph, shrugging his shoulders, "is surely to ring."
"Yes—but when the servant comes, what are we to say?"
"Say?" repeated Uncle Joseph, knitting his eyebrows quite fiercely with the effort of thinking, and rapping his forehead with his forefinger just under his hat—"Say? Stop, stop, stop, stop! Ah, I have got it! I know! Make yourself quite easy, Sarah. The moment the door is opened, all the speaking to the servant shall be done by me."
"Oh, how you relieve me! What shall you say?"
"Say? This—'How do you do? We have come to see the house.'"
When he had disclosed that remarkable expedient for effecting an entrance into Porthgenna Tower, he spread out both his hands interrogatively, drew back several paces from his niece, and looked at her with the serenely self-satisfied air of a man who has leaped, at one mental bound, from a doubt to a discovery. Sarah gazed at him in astonishment. The expression of absolute conviction on his face staggered her. The poorest of all the poor excuses for gaining admission into the house which she herself had thought of, and had rejected, during the previous night, seemed like the very perfection of artifice by comparison with such a childishly simple expedient as that suggested by Uncle Joseph. And yet there he stood, apparently quite convinced that he had hit on the means of smoothing away all obstacles at once. Not knowing what to say, not believing sufficiently in the validity of her own doubts to venture on openly expressing an opinion either one way or the other, she took the last refuge that was now left open to her—she endeavored to gain time.
"It is very, very good of you, uncle, to take all the difficulty of speaking to the servant on your own shoulders," she said; the hidden despondency at her heart expressing itself, in spite of her, in the faintness of her voice and the forlorn perplexity of her eyes. "But would you mind waiting a little before we ring at the door, and walking up and down for a few minutes by the side of this wall, where nobody is likely to see us? I want to get a little more time to prepare myself for the trial that I have to go through; and—and in case the servant makes any difficulties about letting us in—I mean difficulties that we can not just now anticipate—would it not be as well to think of something else to say at the door? Perhaps, if you were to consider again—"
"There is not the least need," interposed Uncle Joseph. "I have only to speak to the servant, and—crick! crack!—you will see that we shall get in. But I will walk up and down as long as you please. There is no reason, because I have done all my thinking in one moment, that you should have done all your thinking in one moment too. No, no, no—no reason at all." Saying those words with a patronizing air and a self-satisfied smile, which would have been irresistibly comical under any less critical circumstances, the old man again offered his arm to his niece, and led her back over the broken ground that lay under the eastern wall of Porthgenna Tower.
While Sarah was waiting in doubt outside the walls, it happened, by a curious coincidence, that another person, vested with the highest domestic authority, was also waiting in doubt inside the walls. This person was no other than the housekeeper of Porthgenna Tower; and the cause of her perplexity was nothing less than the letter which had been delivered by the postman that very morning.
It was a letter from Mrs. Frankland, which had been written after she had held a long conversation with her husband and Mr. Orridge, on receiving the last fragments of information which the doctor was able to communicate in reference to Mrs. Jazeph.
The housekeeper had read the letter through over and over again, and was more puzzled and astonished by it at every fresh reading. She was now waiting for the return of the steward, Mr. Munder, from his occupations out of doors, with the intention of taking his opinion on the singular communication which she had received from her mistress.
While Sarah and her uncle were still walking up and down outside the eastern wall, Mr. Munder entered the housekeeper's room. He was one of those tall, grave, benevolent-looking men, with a conical head, a deep voice, a slow step, and a heavy manner, who passively contrive to get a great reputation for wisdom without the trouble of saying or doing any thing to deserve it. All round the Porthgenna neighborhood the steward was popularly spoken of as a remarkably sound, sensible man; and the housekeeper, although a sharp woman in other matters, in this one respect shared to a large extent in the general delusion.
"Good-morning, Mrs. Pentreath," said Mr. Munder. "Any news to-day?" What a weight and importance his deep voice and his impressively slow method of using it, gave to those two insignificant sentences!
"News, Mr. Munder, that will astonish you," replied the housekeeper. "I have received a letter this morning from Mrs. Frankland, which is, without any exception, the most mystifying thing of the sort I ever met with. I am told to communicate the letter to you; and I have been waiting the whole morning to hear your opinion of it. Pray sit down, and give me all your attention—for I do positively assure you that the letter requires it."
Mr. Munder sat down, and became the picture of attention immediately—not of ordinary attention, which can be wearied, but of judicial attention, which knows no fatigue, and is superior alike to the power of dullness and the power of time. The housekeeper, without wasting the precious minutes—Mr. Munder's minutes, which ranked next on the scale of importance to a prime minister's!—opened her mistress's letter, and, resisting the natural temptation to make a few more prefatory remarks on it, immediately favored the steward with the first paragraph, in the following terms: