Chapter IX: Repudiated

Captain Pentreath went back to London on business of his own. He had to wind up his affairs with the shipowners who had employed him from the beginning of his career; and this was no easy matter, for the owners had rarely had so good a captain, and were disinclined to lose him. Arnold had made up his mind that his place was on shore for some time to come. His brother had left him the stewardship of his estate, and he meant to be faithful to that trust till Oswald came back to claim his own, if it pleased God to bring him safely back by and by--a result for which Arnold most fervently prayed. The neglect into which all things had fallen appealed strongly to the Captain’s love of order; there was a pleasure for him in making crooked things straight. He assumed the command at Combhaven with as much decision as if he had been on board ship; and people obeyed him as well as his sailors had done; and it is to be remarked that the most popular commander is the captain who is best obeyed.

Business kept him in London some time; but when he went back to Combhaven he was a free man, and his career as land steward lay before him--till Oswald’s return. Hope had argued the question with fear, until Arnold had taught himself to believe that the idea of Oswald’s suicide was a morbid delusion of Joshua Haggard’s, and that, sooner or later, the welcome letter would come, from some remote spot of earth, to say that the young Squire had forgotten his griefs, and was happy, and homeward bound.

It was May when Captain Pentreath returned to the Grange in this more hopeful state of mind. The Exeter coach came in to Combhaven at five o’clock in the afternoon, and after a hasty dinner Arnold went straight to the minister’s house. He had made no friendships in his native place, and it seemed to him that Naomi Haggard was the nearest and dearest to him in his home. Had Oswald remained true, she would have been his sister. He felt all a brother’s tenderness for her already.

‘She shall be my sister,’ he told himself; ‘my friend and counsellor. Both our lives have been made lonely.’

Mr. Haggard’s family had just finished tea when Arnold was ushered into the parlour. Sally had been carrying out the tea-board when she heard his knock, and had been so flurried by such an unusual circumstance as to be scarcely able to deposit her burden on the kitchen-table without loss or damage. When she opened the door and saw Captain Pentreath, she gave utterance to one of those suppressed screams with which she always greeted his likeness to his brother. ‘It was like seeing the young Squire come back again, broader chested and nobler looking,’ she told Jim, with whom she was on more confidential terms than with any other member of the household. Aunt Judith had gone back to the shop; Naomi sat reading by the open window; Joshua was in his arm-chair, his head thrown back upon the cushion, his eyes half closed, resting after one of those pilgrimages over hill and dale which had of late sorely exhausted him. His whole life was much more exhausting than it had been, the candle was being burned more fiercely. Traces of fatigue showed plainly in the sharpened lines of his face, in the pallor of his skin, and the shadows about his eyes.

There was no one else in the room.

Joshua Haggard opened his eyes and started up. He looked at Arnold curiously for a moment or so, as if he scarcely knew him--like a man not quite released from the thraldom of a dream.

‘I am afraid I’ve disturbed you in a comfortable nap, Mr. Haggard,’ said Arnold.

‘No, I was hardly asleep--only resting.’

‘You look as if you had much need of rest.’

‘Do I?’ asked the minister musingly. ‘Well, the scabbard must wear out in time, I suppose. It matters little, if the sword is only bright till the last.’

‘You don’t ask me if I have found out anything about my brother in London,’ said Arnold.

‘Because I don’t expect to hear that you have. I have told you my opinion,’ replied Joshua gloomily.

‘It is an opinion which I will never entertain until it is forced upon me by positive proof. My watchword is hope--yes, Naomi, hope,’ he added, turning to Joshua’s daughter, who was looking at him gravely, with no answering ray of hope in her sad eyes.

He held out his hand to her, and they shook hands warmly, like brother and sister. Joshua sank back into his chair, and took up an open volume from the table, and resumed his reading, as if to indicate that he had no more to say to his visitor.

This reception was so cold as to be scarcely civil; but Arnold was not going to take offence easily. He wanted to know more of Naomi. In his mind she was the only person who could thoroughly sympathise with him in his longing for the absent, or in his grief for the lost. She alone in Combhaven had fondly loved his brother.

He began to talk of indifferent subjects, trying to infuse a little cheerfulness into the conversation; but there was a leaden gloom in the atmosphere of the minister’s parlour which Arnold had no power to brighten. Naomi listened and replied with grave attention.

She was gentle and friendly, but he could not win a smile from her. She seemed weighed down by an unconquerable melancholy.

‘Do they ever smile, I wonder?’ thought Arnold. ‘Or has the household always this funereal air? Is it grief for my absent brother that makes her so sad? I should have given her credit for strength of mind to surmount such a grief, or at least to hide it. And the parson--well, I suppose that gloomy cast of countenance is simply professional.’

Despite Naomi’s lack of cheerfulness, Captain Pentreath was interested in her. That melancholy look lent a poetic air to her beauty. He felt that she was a woman of deepest feelings, one who would love but once and love for ever. Even Oswald’s inconstancy had not weakened her affection. He would have given much to be alone with her again for a little while, to have talked freely with her, heart to heart. He felt as if he could have spoken about his brother, and his brother’s errors, without wounding her. But that figure of the minister sitting between him and the light oppressed him like a waking nightmare. There came an awkward silence presently, and Arnold felt he had no more to say, and must needs take his leave.

He had just risen to depart when the door opened, and a girl with fair hair, pale face, and Puritan cap, came into the room.

At sight of him she gave a faint cry and put her hand to her heart, and then, with a great effort of self-restraint, made him a grave curtsy, and crossed the room to an empty chair near Joshua.

‘My God!’ cried Arnold, turning very pale.

The sudden apparition wrung the exclamation from him before he had time to summon up his self-command. This was the face he had seen in his brother’s journal. This was Joshua’s young wife, of whose girlish beauty he had heard people talk, but whom he had never seen till this moment, for she had been ailing of late, and had kept much in her own room. And this was Oswald’s fatal love--a love so wildly foolish, so deeply dishonourable, that it might well work the ruin of him who harboured it.

Joshua looked up as the door opened, and heard Cynthia’s cry and Arnold’s ejaculation, and saw the pale startled look of the one, the utter amazement of the other.

‘He will be like his brother, perhaps,’ he thought gloomily, and an angry shadow stole over his dark face. He looked at his wife as she seated herself quietly near him. She was very white and her lips trembled. This sudden appearance of Oswald Pentreath’s brother affected her as if she had seen a ghost.

Arnold took a hurried leave of the minister and his daughter, made a grave bow to Cynthia, and was gone. He could not have conversed calmly after the revelation which had surprised and shocked him. It was an awful thing to know that his brother had been guilty enough to fix his affections here.

Did Joshua know or suspect the truth? Yes, Arnold thought, he did suspect, and this suspicion was the cause of his coldness about Oswald, and that gloomy tone which suggested animosity.

Having discovered the fatal siren who had beguiled his brother from the paths of peace, Arnold’s next desire was to be able to question her about his brother’s fate. Who so likely to be in the secret of Oswald’s intentions at the time he left Combhaven as the woman he loved? Doubtless he had contrived to see her during his last brief residence at the Grange, and he had told her what he meant to do with his life.

The difficulty was for Arnold to obtain an interview with Joshua’s wife without doing harm of some kind. Joshua was unfriendly and repellent in his manner, very ready to suspect evil, no doubt, of any one bearing the name of Pentreath. Arnold had also to consider Naomi’s feelings. It was just possible that she was ignorant of her stepmother’s part in the tragedy of her life.

Accident brought about a meeting which could have been only contrived with difficulty. Arnold had been out for a long rambling ride on Herne on the third day after his return to the Grange, and coming slowly homeward in the afternoon sunlight, he overtook Cynthia Haggard walking alone in one of the green lanes just outside Combhaven. She was walking very slowly, with bent head and listless step, like one whose thoughts are far away from the scenes that surround her.

The full western sunlight shone through the young oak leaves, the hawthorns were fleecy masses of white blossom, and filled the air with perfume, the sea glittered above the waving line of the hedge, and through the deep cleft in the rich red bank the little town of Combhaven showed its tiled roofs and many gables, its mellow thatches and cool gray slates, and shining ochre walls that seemed made of sunlight.

Arnold slipped quietly from his horse and put the bridle over his arm. Herne, having been as fiendish in behaviour as in name during the first half of his day’s work, was now in a calm and philosophic mood, and cropped the young ferns contently.

‘Mrs. Haggard, may I have a few words with you?’ Arnold asked gently.

Cynthia had looked up startled at the sound of the horse’s hoofs. She dropped a curtsy, and answered nervously,

‘If you please, sir.’

‘You wonder what I can have to say to you, perhaps?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And yet you must know that my mind is full of anxiety about my brother.’

Her cheek crimsoned, and then paled.

‘I am--we are all anxious,’ she said. ‘It is so strange that he has not written to you. He was not likely to write to any one else--but to you, his brother, of whom he was so fond.’

‘You have heard him talk about me, then?’ inquired Arnold.

‘Very often. He looked forward so anxiously to your return.’

‘Would to God I had come sooner! I might have kept him at home, perhaps. Come, Mrs. Haggard, be candid with me. This mystery about my brother is making me very wretched. Cannot you help me? You may know something, perhaps, which no one else knows--something which might enlighten me as to his intentions when he left home. For Heaven’s sake, be truthful with me. Do not be afraid to trust me. I know the trouble that made my brother leave his country. A diary of his fell into my hands a little while ago, with the story of his unhappy love written in it. I know that it was for your sake he became an exile. I implore you to tell me all you can that may help me to discover his fate.’

Cynthia trembled, and grew deadly pale, yet looked at her questioner steadily. There was innocence in the look, Arnold thought. This was no guilty wife--but, not the less, a most unhappy woman.

‘I know that he was going to America,’ answered Cynthia, ‘and I know no more than that.’

‘Did you see him on that last day?’

‘I did. Pray do not tell Naomi or any one else. No one knows of our meeting. It was a secret. He wished to say good-bye to me before he went.’

‘Were you the last person who saw him?’

‘I think so. When he left me he was going to the coach.’

‘Are you sure he meant to go by the coach?’

‘He told me so.’

Arnold’s countenance fell. This gave a darker aspect to the affair.

‘What time in the day did you see him?’

‘About four o’clock in the afternoon.’

‘And where did you meet?’

‘Will you promise to tell no one?’

‘Yes, I promise.’

‘On Matcherly Common, by the old shaft.’

‘I know the place. We have played there many a time when we were children. Are you sure that no one knew of your meeting?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘And that no one met you, or watched you, that afternoon?’

‘I saw no one. I do not believe that any one saw me.’

‘My brother told you he meant to leave by the coach; yet he did not leave by it. You saw him at four o’clock that last afternoon, and I cannot hear of any one who saw him after that hour. It is strange--alarming even--is it not?’

‘Very strange. But I trust in God that he is safe; though we do not know where he is.’

‘That’s an easy way of putting it,’ said Arnold, with a shade of bitterness.

‘No one can be more sorry for him than I am,’ answered Cynthia, with a sudden sob. ‘It is my sin to be so sorry.’

‘Poor child! Forgive me for speaking harshly. I fancy sometimes that every one except myself is indifferent to my brother’s fate. Your husband thinks he committed suicide; but I can’t and won’t believe that. You don’t believe it, do you?’ he asked, turning upon her quickly.

‘O, no, no, no!’ she cried, with a startled look of pain, as if the idea were new to her. ‘He would never do that. He would never be so wild--so guilty--as to shoot himself, like Werther.’

‘Who is Werther?’

‘A man in a book your brother read to us; but it was a real person, who was very unhappy, and who shot himself. He did not seem to know that suicide was a sin. But I cannot believe that Oswald would be so rash. O, no, no, God forbid that he should be tempted to such a dreadful deed! I cannot think it. He was very calm when we bade each other good-bye. He blessed me, and promised to take more heed of serious things in days to come than he had done in days past.’

‘And there was no wildness in his manner? He did not talk like a desperate man?’

‘No, indeed.’

‘I thank you for having been truthful and frank. It is a sad story. Would to God that he had been constant and faithful to that noble girl, your stepdaughter!’

He could not spare her this implied reproach. His brother’s fate seemed ever so much darker to him after what he had just heard. And for all this sorrow and uncertainty, the fair young creature standing by his side was in some measure to blame. Even that last secret meeting might have been in some wise the turning-point of his destiny.

‘Had you been in the habit of meeting my brother secretly?’ he asked presently. ‘Had you met him often before that day?’

‘Never in my life before,’ answered Cynthia, with an indignant look; ‘I should not have gone then, even though he made my going a last favour, if I had not had a purpose in seeing him. I thought I might win him back to Naomi. I knew he had once loved her dearly; and I thought perhaps it needed but a few words to awaken the old love in his heart.’

‘And do you think you were the best preacher to preach that sermon?’ asked Arnold. ‘Well, you acted for the best, I daresay; and again I thank you for your candour. But I am no nearer the secret of my brother’s fate than I was an hour ago. Good-bye!’

He raised his hat and left her with a somewhat formal salutation, not offering her his hand. There was resentment in his heart against this fair-faced wife who had spoiled Naomi’s life and his own. He led Herne to the end of the lane, and there mounted him, and trotted quickly home, the sagacious animal scenting the oats and clover in his now luxurious stable.

Cynthia walked slowly on, crying a little in a languid helpless way, like one who was accustomed to solitude and tears. The sharp sound of Herne’s hoofs died away in the distance. A lark was singing loud and shrill in the high blue sky, and there was a drowsy bee among the hawthorns, but all the rest of Nature was silent. Suddenly there broke upon that summer stillness a loud rustling of boughs, and a man sprang through a gap in the hedge and confronted her.

She looked up, full of sudden fear, expecting to see some unknown ruffian bent on robbery or murder; but the dark and angry face looking into hers was the face of her husband.

‘Joshua! How you frightened me!’

‘No doubt. Women who meet their lovers in secret are easily startled.’

‘My lover! Joshua, are you mad? I have been talking to Captain Pentreath, who overtook me by chance a little while ago.’

‘By chance! Do you think I am going to believe that story? Woman, I know you too well. Satan set you in my path for my undoing--to the peril and loss of my soul; for my ruin and destruction here and hereafter. Fool, fool, fool!’--this with a cry of anguish, striking his forehead with his clenched fists--‘I ought to have known it was a snare--the fair strange face under the burning summer sky; the gipsy waif, homeless, nameless, a stranger to Christ and salvation! Spawn of Beelzebub, why did I not recognise you?’

‘Joshua, for pity’s sake! I am your true wife; I have honoured and obeyed you--’

‘Honoured! Was it to honour me you lured that young man to his doom? Was it for my honour you met him and kissed him? Yes; I saw him holding you in his arms under God’s all-seeing eye; clasping you to his breast, as I held you that accursed night when I thought myself the happiest among men, because I had won you for my own. Won you! O thou incarnate falsehood! fair as an angel to the eye, foul as sin to the heart that knows thee! And having tempted one brother to death and doom eternal, you are spreading your nets for the other. You would have him, too. You are like her that waiteth at the street-corner, “in the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death. Yea, verily, her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.” Away with you, fair devil!’

His arm was raised to strike; but she fell on her knees, and thus by a happy chance escaped the degrading blow, and saved her husband that last shame.

‘Joshua, what madness has seized you? I never wronged you willingly, as God knows. If I did do you wrong, it is because human nature is weak, and God does not always stand by us. He lets us stand alone a little while in order to show us how weak we are without Him, how soon we stumble and fall when that heavenly hand is withdrawn. Yes, husband, I have been a sinner. God hid His face for a time. Oswald loved me, and I loved him, and forgot my wickedness in the sweetness of being beloved by him. It was like a dream. But when he spoke of his love my heart awakened, and I was your true wife. I have said no word to him--never, from first to last--that I dare not repeat to you, or that I am ashamed to remember. I am your true wife, and honour and revere you now as I did that first day when you took me to the only decent home I had ever known. Have I forgotten what I owe you, Joshua? O no, no, no! I am not so base, nor so ungrateful.’

‘Your speech is like your face,’ said Joshua, with set teeth--‘passing fair, passing fair. But I know you, pretty one! Yes; look up, eyes, blue as God’s summer sky--look up in sad innocent wonder! A lie, a lie, nothing but a lie! Satan has made you so: he painted your cheeks, and limned your smile and every delicate feature, that you might lure good men to death and hell. Can he work without his instruments, do you think? He does not walk this earth in palpable shape, lest we should know him and avoid him; but he puts on such a pretty garb as yours, and counts his worshippers by the score. Every priestess such as you brings a crowd to his altar. But I have done with you. I have rent the net; I will have no further dealings with you; I will see your false face no more!’

‘Joshua, have pity!’

‘“Can a man take fire in his bosom and not be burned?”’

‘Joshua!’

‘“He that doeth it destroyeth his own soul. A wound and dishonour shall he get; and his reproach shall not be wiped away.”’

‘Joshua, can you believe that there was any harm, any wrong against you, in my meeting with Captain Pentreath just now?’ cried Cynthia, still at her husband’s feet, looking up at him in an agony of supplication, trying to grasp those strong cruel hands that thrust her from him.

‘I know that you are false to the core. I know that Satan made you to lead me down to the pit. What do I know about you and Captain Pentreath? Very little. I was just in time for the fag-end of your interview. I came across the field, and saw you through a break in the hedge. You were standing in close converse with him, just as you were with his brother--’

‘Ah,’ cried Cynthia, startled, ‘you were there that day--you saw us. You said so just now.’

‘The kisses were over, I daresay,’ continued Joshua, too much beside himself to heed this interruption. ‘The kisses were done with before I came. He heard my step, perhaps, and so left you with a formal salutation, as if you were strangers parting. Hypocrites, liars both--children of the accursed! But I have done with you. I turn my face away from Satan and his witchcraft, and I will make my peace with God before I die. Go back--go back to your tents, to the children of Baal! Go back to your juggleries and mummeries, and leave me to repent of my folly--to put on sackcloth and ashes--to go up alone among the hills, like Elijah in the mountains, to wait for the advent of my God!’

‘Joshua, for mercy’s sake be calm; speak to me quietly, that I may know what you really mean. I have no wish but to obey you. If you say that I am to go away from you--to go back and be a servant, and work for my daily bread as I did before I was your wife--I shall go, and make no complaint. But I am your true and obedient wife all the same. Do not doubt that. I will obey you when you are cruel, just as I obeyed you when you were kind, and I shall never murmur.’

‘Fair of speech, and fair of face,’ muttered Joshua. ‘Yes, Lucifer, her master, was beautiful as the morning star.’

‘Do you mean to turn me out of doors, Joshua? Do you mean that your home is to be mine no longer?’

‘I do. You have brought misery and shame into my house. You have poisoned my cup, turned my daily bread to ashes. I would fain be rid of you for ever. I cannot serve God while you are near me. Satan is too strong for me while he works under such a mask.’

‘And you wish us to part,’ she said deliberately, ‘for ever?’

‘Yes; I love my imperishable soul better than that viler human heart which cleaves to you. In heaven there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. In heaven I shall forget the anguish of an unsatisfied love.’

‘Joshua, I am your servant, to obey you in this as in all things. You have but to say you wish me gone, and I shall go. When you cease to pity, God will forgive and take pity on me, because He does not make our burdens too heavy for us. Do you remember that night in the pine-wood, Joshua, when you took me to your heart and told me that I was precious in your sight? I said then that I was not good enough to be your wife; that it would be happiness for me to be your servant, and wait upon you and work for you, and gather words of wisdom from your lips. But you would have it otherwise. I was wiser in this, you see; for now you are weary of me, and want to send me away. Let it be so, then; I will forget that I am your wife, and remember only that I am your servant, and bound to obey in all things. I am your servant, and you have dismissed me. I can go back to Penmoyle and work for my living--far away, where I shall not disgrace you. Good-bye, sir.’

She took his hand and kissed it, still on her knees. He shuddered at the contact of those rosebud lips, but never looked at her. His eyes were fixed on the distant sea-line--wide-open eyes gazing blankly at the blue bright light.

‘Am I really to go, Joshua?’ Cynthia asked meekly, after a brief silence, in which the hum of insects, the sharp whirring sound of the grasshopper, filled the air.

He passed his hand across his brow wearily.

‘Get thee behind me, Satan. Yes, go, go, go! I can never scale the walls of God’s eternal city while this weight of earthly passion cleaves to me. Go far out of my reach, lest I should slay you; and think of your dead lover, and repent your sin.’

‘What! he _is_ dead, then--and you know it?’ she exclaimed, with a bitter cry.

‘Yes,’ answered Joshua, flinging her away from him into the dust; ‘go and weep and howl for him. It was your sin that slew him!’

She lay for a little while where he had thrown her, on the sun-baked grass of the bank, amongst the ferns and wild flowers--not quite unconscious, but with a brain in which strange and familiar images whirled wildly as in a demon dance. Then came a few moments in which all was blank--moments of blessed repose; and then she staggered to her feet, and looked round her. The lane was empty. Joshua had said his last word, and was gone.

She stood looking round her in the westering sunshine, pondering what she ought to do. Not for an instant did she contemplate rebellion against her husband’s decree. He had bidden her to leave him, and she would go away, meekly, uncomplainingly, as Hagar went out into the wilderness.

‘Ah me,’ she said to herself piteously, comparing herself with Hagar, ‘I have no Ishmael to be my comfort and hope.’

It never occurred to her to go back to her husband’s house, and claim the place which was hers by right, and which no act of hers had forfeited. She did not even contemplate going back to claim her own--the clothes and books and small possessions dear to womanhood which she had acquired since her marriage. Empty-handed and penniless as when Joshua found her sitting by the water-pool on the distant Cornish waste, she left the scene of her brief and hapless married life. She had neither purse nor scrip--not so much as a few shillings to help her on her way. But she turned her pale face steadily to the west, and set out to walk to Penmoyle. In all this wide world she had no other friends than the spinster sisters whom she could turn to for a refuge in her desolation, and even from them she could not feel quite sure of a kind reception. They had offered her their friendship, telling her on the day she left them to appeal to them in any hour of need. But how would they receive her when she told them that Joshua had cast her off--they who reverenced Joshua as a saint and prophet?

To them she must needs turn in her distress, having no other earthly haven. She had served them faithfully in the past, and had won their favour; and she was willing to serve them in the future for her daily bread, and nightly shelter, and the privilege of worshipping her God in the faith Joshua had taught her. She thought of the white-haired old minister, with his gentle old-world manners and his ready kindness. She remembered how his praise had thrilled her at the thought that Joshua would hear of her well-doing and be glad. And now all was over. Joshua hated her; Joshua spurned her as a vile and guilty creature. No man’s praise, no woman’s favour, could ever lift her up in his esteem any more. She was degraded and cast off for ever.

Well, she could be a servant again, and toil for her bread and serve her God in patience so long as life’s burden was laid upon her. It seemed to her that the road along which she had to carry her burden was not interminable. A little way off there came a region of mist and cloud, entering which she would be at peace, and would lay down her load, and rest her weary head upon the sweetest pillow, and let her tired eyelids close amidst a divine sunshine, a light as of the resurrection morning, when the glad sunbeams danced upon the hill-tops.

It was a long way from Combhaven to that little village high up among the rolling Cornish tors. Cynthia could not calculate the number of miles; but she had an idea that Penmoyle was very far away--many days’ journey at the rate at which she could walk, which was slow, for her cough and low fever had left her weak.

‘Luckily I know how to sleep under a haystack, and I am not ashamed to beg my bread when I see a kind face at a cottage-door,’ she said to herself.

She had her silver watch and chain, which she thought she might sell in one of the towns she had to pass through; and there was the gold keeper above her wedding-ring--this too she might dispose of, if hard pressed by want; but if people were kind she could get on without money, so little would serve to keep body and soul together.

So she set out on her journey, a new Hagar, but with no sweet child companion to make the desert blossom like the rose.