Chapter VI: The Wanderer’s Return

It was March--just a year since the old Squire had been stricken with his fatal illness. The daffodils were blooming in sunny places; there was a faint tinge of green upon the hedgerows.

Naomi was sitting alone in the twilit parlour in the calm gray evening. She had done all her daily duties, and could afford to rest from her toil. She looked at the familiar scene--the glimpse of sea, the curve of the road winding up the hill towards Pentreath Grange--with sad hopeless eyes. No bright harbinger of joy would ever come to her by yonder road, down which she had seen the Squire’s funeral train slowly descending with wind-tossed plumes and scarves less than a year ago.

‘I had such a strange sense of loss that day,’ she thought, remembering the dismal procession, and her own feelings as she watched its approach. ‘I seemed to know that the end of my happiness had come; that change, or sorrow, or death was near.’

Twilight deepened, and the scene took a shadowy look. Who was this walking down the hill at a leisurely pace, with a careless easy gait which seemed familiar? Nay, it was familiar, for it set Naomi’s heart beating vehemently; it made her cold and faint. This was no peasant returning from his work. She knew how the Combhaven population carried themselves. This tall slim figure, so straight, and yet so easy of motion, was no son of the soil, no hard-handed agricultural labourer, no fisherman smelling of tar and sea-weed, with wet raiment all glistening and scaly.

She stood up, and opened the window--stood with the chill March breeze blowing upon her terror-stricken face. This time she felt verily as if she were seeing a ghost.

‘He has come back,’ she thought. ‘He is not dead. O foolish fear! O wretched doubt of the best and truest upon earth! He is safe; and has come back again. I shall see him once again, living and happy. My God, I thank Thee!’

The figure came nearer. Yes, it was Oswald Pentreath. She saw the well-remembered face in the dim light. How well he looked! how strong, how brave! Travel and strange countries had improved him. His chest had expanded, he walked with a firmer step, held his head higher. And he was coming to her father’s house, boldly, with no stealthy approach. He came as a man who had done no evil, and had no cause for fear.

‘He is cured of his folly; he is my true and noble lover once again. O God, Thou art full of mercy; Thy love aboundeth.’

The familiar figure was close at hand. There was nothing but the narrow front garden between him and Naomi; yet now there was a strangeness--her heart grew lead. The young man looked up at the house inquiringly, like a stranger who reconnoitres an unfamiliar place. He glanced up and down the street--quite empty of humanity at this moment, the solitary young woman with a basket, who had constituted its traffic a minute ago, having just gone indoors--then looked again at the house, and became conscious of Naomi’s pale face at the window.

‘I beg your pardon,’ he began courteously. ‘Is this Mr. Haggard’s?’

Life-long sorrows are not so keen as a sudden stab like this--an arrow that pierces the heart and kills its hope for ever. It was not Oswald’s voice. There was a likeness in the tone, that family resemblance so often to be found in the voices of kindred; but these tones were more decided, rougher. They lacked the poetic languor, the gentle sweetness of Oswald’s utterance. This speaker was one who had commanded men on the high seas; not the musing idler who had wasted half his life lying listlessly in summer woods, or wandering with his rod beside autumn’s swollen streams.

It was not Oswald. For the space of half a minute the surging blood in Naomi’s brain almost blinded her. For an instant or so reason faltered, and she was on the verge of unconsciousness. Then the strong young soul resumed her power, and she comprehended that this was no shade from Avernus, but her lost lover’s brother, the Squire’s runaway son.

‘Yes,’ she answered, with a steady voice, ‘this is Mr. Haggard’s house. Do you want to see my father?’

‘Ah, then you are Naomi,’ cried the stranger eagerly. ‘I think I would rather talk to you than to your father; you can tell me more. I have only just come home, and I am very unhappy about my brother. May I come in, please?’

How friendly, how dear his voice sounded in its resemblance to the voice of Oswald! The familiar tones comforted Naomi somehow, after that bitter disappointment just now. Her heart was lifted up from its despair. Arnold had come home--Arnold would find out all about his brother.

At that thought a sudden dread came upon her, like a vision of doom.

If there were any guilty mystery in Oswald’s fate, would not his brother bring the deed to light? Her shapeless fears rose up like gorgons and confronted her.

She opened the door for Arnold, and stood dumbly as he came in and held out his hand to her.

‘How deadly cold your hand is!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m afraid I startled you coming so suddenly. People say I am very like my brother. And I daresay you are anxious about Oswald.’

He had gone into the parlour with her, and seated himself with a familiar friendliness close to the chair into which Naomi had sunk.

‘Yes; I have been very anxious,’ she said faintly.

‘I can see that. Please God, there is no real cause for fear, though old Nicholas has frightened me a little by his raven-like talk. The last letter I had from my brother was written in London on the fourteenth of July. He urged me to come home, and told me he had some thoughts of going to America; and that if he went I was to take care of the estate in his absence, and to consider myself master, and so on, in his generous reckless way--as ready to give up all his privileges as Esau was to swop his birthright against a dish of lobscouse. This letter has been following me from port to port, and I only got it nine or ten weeks ago at Shanghai, where my ship was waiting for a cargo. I went straight to Oswald’s London agent when I left the docks; but he could tell me nothing, except that my brother had made all arrangements for a long absence from England. He was to have sailed for New York on the fourteenth of August. But a thing that puzzled this lawyer fellow a little was that Oswald should have drawn no money since he left home. “He may have taken plenty with him,” said I--for you see Oswald was brought up to make a little money go a long way, or to do without it altogether mostly. “So he may,” said the lawyer; “but I find that young men generally do draw a good deal of money when they’ve got any sources to draw upon--and even, sometimes, when they have not. It’s a way they have.” This made me rather uneasy, and I came down here as fast as those blundering coaches, which hardly do six knots an hour, could bring me. And the old house looked so lonely and dismal without Oswald, that the mere sight of it made me miserable; and then old Nicholas’s raven croakings made me worse; so I came straight off to you for comfort.’

‘I can tell you nothing,’ answered Naomi, with a sigh.

‘Nicholas told me you had received no letter. That’s strange, certainly. He would have written to you before any one, I should think.’

‘No, I had no right to expect any letter from him. I expected none.’

‘What--not as his betrothed wife?’

‘Our engagement was broken off some time before he went. Did you not know?’

‘Not a word. His last mention of you was full of affection--not in his latest letter, by the way, but in the one which told me of my father’s death. I was to come home, and be very fond of you, and we were all to be happy together.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Naomi, with a pang of bitterest remembrance. How often had Oswald talked to her of union and love and happiness--sweet domestic joys which Arnold was to share!

‘But why was your engagement broken off?’ asked the sailor bluntly. ‘Did you quarrel?’

‘Quarrel? No.’

‘He must have behaved very ill, then.’

‘No, no. It was my father’s wish. I obeyed my father in setting Oswald free. And he accepted his liberty--he was grateful for his release. Love does not always last a lifetime: there is a difference, you see. I think that he once loved me, but--’

Here the tears rained down upon her trembling hands. Arnold drew nearer to her, and gently pressed one of those cold hands with a brotherly kindness.

‘My poor girl--my sister that was to have been! He behaved badly, I’m afraid. There was something wild and mysterious in his last letter; and then that sudden resolve to go to America! I ought to have seen that things had gone wrong with him. Poor Oswald! And I expected to see him so happy with you.’

‘Providence willed it otherwise. I was too happy with him, I think--too much absorbed in the joys of this world.’

‘Why should we not be happy in this world? God would never have made so fair a world for a scene of suffering. You can’t imagine, you stay-at-home people, how beautiful this earth is. The birds and animals and reptiles and insects are happy. All free creation enjoys itself, from its birth to its death. Why should man be wretched, or the source of misery in others? Why should Providence be offended because you and my brother loved each other and were happy?’

Naomi could not answer. It was an article of her religion that Heaven disapproved of too much earthly bliss.

‘But you must have known where he was going--he told you his plans, surely?’ asked Arnold.

‘No, I knew nothing of his intentions--directly,’ answered Naomi, a faint blush dyeing her pallid cheek.

‘Did you not see him when he came back to the Grange in the beginning of August? He came to bid you good-bye, I suppose?’

‘No, I did not see him.’

‘Then why did he come back to Combhaven at all? I can hear of nothing that he did in the way of business, except to pack those trunks, which he left behind him after all his trouble. What was the motive of his return?’

‘Indeed, I cannot tell you,’ faltered Naomi, sorely distressed.

Arnold looked troubled. He rose and walked up and down the narrow parlour, as he had walked his quarter-deck in many an hour of doubt and difficulty.

‘I can’t understand it,’ he said. ‘It is the strangest business altogether. Why did he come back and pack his trunks, and have them taken to the coach, and why did he not appear to claim them? If he did not leave by the coach, how did he get away?’

‘There are vessels that sail between Rockmouth and Bristol, are there not?’ suggested Naomi. ‘He may have gone that way.’

‘A slow roundabout way for him to choose, after making up his mind to go by the coach. I begin to feel as anxious as Nicholas. O my dearest Oswald, where are you, and why this mystery? God grant that he is safe and happy somewhere! God grant there has been no foul play!’

At these words Naomi’s face took a deathlike hue. But the room was too dark for Arnold to see the change.

‘If harm of any kind has happened to him, Heaven help the wrongdoers, for they shall have no mercy from me! I’ll hunt them down. But no, I won’t think it. I won’t believe that he has come to an untimely end--the brother who carried me in his arms, and was so gentle and loving, and whom I loved, God knows, with all my heart, though I left him! How I have looked forward to our reunion, and counted upon it, and built upon it in all these years! And I come back to find him far away, and his fate a mystery.’

He threw himself into a chair and sobbed aloud, honest manly tears coming from a loyal heart.

It was Naomi’s turn to be comforter. She bent over him, and laid her hand lightly on his shoulder.

‘Pray do not say that evil has befallen him,’ she said. ‘He may have changed his mind as to his way of travelling at the last; who can tell what trifling thing may have influenced him?’

‘What did he do with himself all that day?’ asked Arnold. ‘Nicholas tells me that he left the Grange before one o’clock, and the coach was not to pick him up till after eight in the evening. Where was he? With whom did he spend his time? He seems to have no friends in Combhaven but you and your family. And he was not with you?’

‘No.’

‘Cannot you help me to find out where he was?’

‘No, I cannot.’

‘That’s a pity. If I could only find out the people who saw the last of him here, they might enlighten me as to his intentions. I must see what I can do elsewhere. I came to you naturally for help; but then I did not know your engagement was broken off.’

Sally brought in the lighted candles, and started at sight of the sea-captain.

‘Don’t be frightened, Sally,’ said Naomi; ‘this is Captain Pentreath, the Squire’s brother.’

‘Lor’ sakes!’ faltered the handmaiden, ‘I took he for the young Squire’s ghost.’

‘Is your father at home?’ asked Arnold presently; ‘I should like to see him.’

‘No, it is his class-night; he will not be home for nearly an hour. And I know he could tell you nothing more than I have told you,’ added Naomi.

‘Perhaps not, but he might advise me; I have heard that he is a superior man. I should like to see him: I’ll call to-morrow. Good-night, Naomi--I may call you Naomi, I hope, for my brother’s sake? He told me to think of you as a sister.’

‘I should like you to think me so still, if you can,’ Naomi answered gently.

And then he pressed her hand, and was gone.

There was some kind of comfort in the sailor’s friendliness, in this brave, strong, manly figure suddenly introduced into the dull scene of a sorrow-shadowed life. He was so like Oswald, and yet so unlike. And he loved his brother so dearly. Oswald’s fate would be no longer a mystery. All those unspoken fears, which had preyed upon her like a consuming disease, would be proved vain and foolish. He was safe, he was happy in some strange land. There needed only a little energy and cleverness to find out all about him, and Arnold would supply both.

Then there flashed upon her the memory of that awful moment in the wood, when she saw her father go by with a look upon his face that seemed to her like the brand of Cain, full of awful meaning.