“Charles! Charles !” he pleaded. “Be moderate. Be moderate, my son. This is ill work!” And, while by a gesture he deprecated the Rector’s wrath, “Tell — tell Dr. Portnal that you know nothing of his daughter.”
“I will tell him,” Charles Bligh replied, “one thing, father, and it is the only thing he has a right to ask. His daughter is not here.”
“And you will not tell me where she is?” the Rector cried.
“No, certainly not. If I knew, I would not.” And with that Bligh’s voice rose, his eyes sparkled, indifference fell from him, and his real feelings showed themselves. “Why should I?” he asked sternly. “What do I owe you? You have done your utmost, you have gone out of your way to harm me! You have ruined me as far as lay in your power ! You have driven me from my employment, and have taken my livelihood — a poor livelihood, God knows! — from me. What more you can do, I do not know, but for the future I fear you no more than I fear the china idol on that dresser! Your daughter is not here; so much I have told you. And I shall tell you no more.
You can go elsewhere for your information, sir. You will not get it here.”
The Rector gasped. Words such as these, a challenge as open as this he had not encountered since the day when still a young man he had begun to be a power in Beremouth, and he was shocked as well as enraged; shocked as by the sight of some unnatural thing vomited from the earth. But as a champion who perceives that he has met a foeman worthy of his steel derives prudence from the knowledge, so it was with him. Though the determination to crush the upstart was but strengthened, though he felt for him a hatred beside which the passion that he had harboured ten minutes before was but as the spark beside the fire it has kindled, he saw that he would gain nothing by altercation. Deeds, not words, must be his answer — if it were possible. With a gesture that called heaven to witness the outrage, he waved his opponent from his path.
“You will repent of this!” he said, and his words were not wanting in dignity. “You will repent of this! You have met me, young man, with insolence, you have mocked me and defied me! It shall be my part to see that you do not profit by the deceit of which I believe you to be guilty! On your head be the consequences.”
He turned and went out through the doorway. The habit of power had clothed the man with the outward show of it, and his retreat did him credit. He opened the wicket-gate, and ascended the path.
But his knees as he breasted the slope shook under him, his lips twitched beyond his power to steady them. And sorely did he repent that he had ever descended that path, ever stooped to his errand or exposed himself to the rebuff. The shame of his defeat hardened his heart, and of this in his present temper he was glad. It steeled him against the pity that might have awakened in him, against the affection and remembrance that might presently have stirred, nay, that would surely have stirred, in his breast. Words of which he might have repented, he repeated. He vowed with passion that if his daughter had done this thing — and he had given up hope that she had not — she should no longer be child of his! He disowned her, he flung her off! She deserved no better, castaway as she was and lost to all sense of virtue, of decency, of self-respect! Ay, a castaway! He repeated the word with bitterness.
When Augusta, wearing an anxious face, met him in the hall, he waved her aside.
“She is not there,” he said. “I can tell you no more. I was met with insult and defiance. They would tell me nothing!” And he shut himself into his study, leaving the girl more than a little shaken by his manner. The thing had gone deeper, its effects promised to be more serious than she had foreseen.
He did not reappear, though she hung about the door for a time, hoping to intercept him. He had spoken as if his mind was made up, and the matter at an end. But Augusta could not be satisfied. She had a feeling that, if only to preserve appearances, something more must be done. Some inquiries must be made, some steps taken to ascertain what had happened. The world would expect it, and Augusta thought much of the world’s opinion. At midday, taking her courage in her hands, she went in to him.
He did not turn at her approach or look at her. He sat in his chair leaning forward over the empty hearth. But she clung to her purpose.
“Do you think there is nothing more that we can do, sir?” she ventured.
“What do you mean?”
“To — to learn where she is?”
“I shall do nothing!” he declared, and she saw that he meant it. “Nothing! Your sister has made her bed and she must lie on it. She has deceived her father and abandoned her home! She has degraded herself and disgraced me. She is no longer child of mine.”
Augusta winced. She had not quite pictured this. She had not foreseen that things would come so speedily to a point so desperate and final. The fact disturbed and even shocked her. But she saw that his mood was not to be trifled with, his will had always been law in his house, and after lingering a minute in the hope that he would add something, her courage failed her and she left him.
But she was ridden by the thought, born in part of certain scruples, that things could not be left there; that something more must be done, no matter how painful inquiry and pursuit might be. A daughter could not be cast off so lightly; even a daughter who had fled from her home and abandoned her duty could not be discarded without an effort to reclaim her. They could not sit down with folded hands and make no sign. She was afraid to venture again into her father’s room, but after some thought she took it on herself to act. Confiding in her maid, but telling her no more than the girl knew already — for the house was humming with the scandal — she sent her out to make inquiry. If little came of it, and she expected little, it would at least satisfy the world, and ease the pangs of a conscience that was not overtender.
The woman went on her errand, and no doubt relished to the full the part assigned to her. It was the day of her life. She made her inquiries here and there, and before night she was able to report her that Miss Peggy had neither posted from the only inn that boasted a post-chaise, nor taken the east or the west-bound coach. But she was gone, and very cleverly. She had boarded a boat that, starting from Beremouth at six in the morning, conveyed passengers on that particular day to a fair at Saltash putting in at Plymouth by the way. She had stolen on board, cloaked and veiled, and had no doubt done her best to shun notice. But three persons, at least, had seen her and recognized her.
“But if he has not gone?” Augusta reflected. And she was puzzled. Timidly she conveyed the news to her father. Surely he ought to follow, if it were only to satisfy his fellows that he had done his duty. But I the Rector received the news in silence and with a forbidding face, and made no move.
CHAPTER IX
UPPER BERE — those who lived in and about it called it simply the Manor — was a long low house, on the northern slope of the valley that two miles below opened on the sea at Beremouth. It stood in a small park and looked over meadows sinking gently to the river Bere, and the green curves of the land about it wore the soft rounded outlines that mark the features alike of Devon men and Devon landscapes. The front of the house, which was faced with mellow rough-cast, showed five gables, the eastern and western of which came forward a few feet and formed a sun-trap about the door and the seats of water-worn teak that flanked it.
Two bygone generations of Wykes had used those seats, had smoked tobacco on them, and there of a morning drunk old October and of an evening sound port; had, seated on them, heard with due dignity Justices’ cases, or watched a main of cocks, or with sleepy Devon eyes measured the home-coppices and the farm lands in the vale below. And though the present Squire had not, like the Admiral and the Captain before him, been bred to the sea, the love of clean well-swabbed timber was in Sir Albery also, and he loved to lounge there. Of the two, habit led him to the seat on the right, and many a morning of late he had lingered there, scratched the spaniel’s head, and lost himself in a vision, and always the same vision — of Peggy, Peggy Portnal that once had been, seated beside him or playing wi
th old Nep at his feet, her ringlets falling over her face and her youth and girlish laughter belying the fact that she was the mistress of the house.
He sat there on this May morning and, as he smoked his pipe, a fatuous smile betrayed his thoughts. Surely by this time three months the home would have its mistress, and the housekeeper’s book, ever presented at unwelcome moments, would have ceased to fret, and the sheep killed last Friday to last something short of a week! Then, if he had still to scold, he must scold the dear extravagant whose wilful ways and pouting lips would win forgiveness for a world of waste. Oh, happy day, oh, welcome extravagance, he thought. Oh, happy sheep whose short-lived saddle gave such tender sport, whose legs proved bones of contention so soon over, a cause for upbraidings so gentle!
The picture was too much for him, too vivid, too intoxicating. Impossible to sit still with that Tantalus draught at his lips, to sit and scratch Nep’s head, that fancy saw caressed by those slender fingers, kissed by those shy lips! He rose and with an air of purpose he strode to the sundial. His hands plunged deep in his breeches’ fobs, he gazed intently at it — and saw nothing. He moved to the brink of the ha-ha that divided the lawn from the park and in a foolish rapture he gloated over the nettles and docks that lined it. But even this did not satisfy; he muttered “Oh, d — n!” and turned towards the house. It was early, too early to visit. But he could have his hair cut, he could ask about the cast-nets that the gardener needed, he could breathe the salt air that she breathed. And by that time — he dragged down the iron bell-pull, and when the man came, ordered his horse. He ordered it with shamefacedness; was not he always ordering it on the same errand so that he fancied that the very servants smiled at his plight? But, hang it, what was there to do at home? Or worth the doing as long as that matter remained unsettled? He must summon up courage. He must bring things to a head.
He fetched his hat and whip from the spacious hall that was shady in summer and warm in winter, and while he waited, impatient to be off, he viewed from the doorstep his possessions, and wished for her sake that they were more. Half of the valley was his and he could lay it at her feet; and with it the roomy old house of his race, that was neither stately nor splendid, yet wore from parlour to garret the air that long possession alone can give. If only he himself had been more worthy of her! And impatiently, though the horse was even then pacing into sight round the corner of the house, he went in and sought the diningroom, and for the thousandth time he planted himself before the portrait of his grandfather, the Admiral, that hung above the fireplace. He had gazed at it often of late, and always with the same envy, the same wonder. The sea-dog who had sailed the sea in rough times, who had been at Porto Rico with Vernon, who had served and fretted under Matthews, who had given his indignant testimony on Byng’s behalf, and had lived to erase the unworthy past on that wild and terrible night amid the breakers and howling gales of Quiberon — he lived here on canvas in the beauty of early manhood, effeminately handsome, with the face of a Romeo and the dreamy eyes of a poet — slender, graceful, smiling, giving the lie in every line to his dare-dog reputation. A marvel, a standing enigma. Ah, if only he, Sir Albery, had been like him! If he had done something, been anything! If there had been one thing to commend him beyond the dirty acres that he could lay at her feet. A captain of Fencibles — and even those he could not drill without help. Oh lord, how he had wasted his young years! What was he? A clod!
He turned from the picture with a sigh, and got to his horse. But, as he jogged over the turf beside the drive, the sun shone, and the trees were green, and when he looked back the many windows of the house twinkled at him cheerfully. And gradually his spirits rose. After all, he was Wyke of Upper Bere, he could make her my lady, and who else was there who was more worthy of her! He flipped his horse and made a playful cut with his whip at the smiling urchin who ran out to open the Lodge gate.
Unfortunately when he had ridden a hundred yards along the highway a magpie flew across his path and dashed his spirits. “Oh, hang!” he muttered, following the pied one’s flight with his eyes. “One for sorrow! Why does not Hawes keep the vermin down?” He rode more soberly after that until he came abreast of the Grange, a spruce white house set in the middle of a lawn on the left of the road, with parterres before it, that old-fashioned people who had only reached the stage of shrubberies, sniffed at. And there, leaning on the gate, pretty much as if she expected someone to pass, stood Charlotte Bicester.
The girl nodded as he pulled up. “You haven’t been in for the last two days, have you?” she asked. “I haven’t seen you.” Her face was serious and she seemed a little out of breath, but he was full of his own thoughts, and he did not notice this.
“Not for three days,” he answered, colouring slightly, he was so conscious of his errand. “I’ve been from home. Do you want anything in Beremouth?” Constantly passing, he sometimes did errands for the Grange.
“No, I think not,” Charlotte said doubtfully. “But” — she paused, looking away from him down the road—” you’ve heard no bad news, have you?” She shot a sharp glance at him and as quickly averted her eyes.
“Bad news?” He stroked his horse’s neck with his whip — he had no suspicion. “No, I’ve heard none.” Then, “You don’t mean of the Peggy? You don’t mean to say,” he continued, his voice rising, “that she’s taken?”
“No.” Charlotte kept her eyes fixed on the road. “It’s not that. It’s her namesake, poor — poor Peggy! She has — Sir Albery, are you sure you haven’t heard? She has gone away.” Charlotte brought out the last words with an effort.
“No?” He was still in the dark. “Miss Peggy? Is she from home?” His face betrayed his disappointment.
“She’s gone off,” Charlotte said in a low voice, “with — with Mr. Bligh, I am afraid.” This time she was determined that he should understand.
She expected him to cry out; to declare with an oath that it was a lie, that he did not believe it. But he did not say a word. He sat his horse in the sunshine, and just one shiver ran through him from head to heel, the sort of shiver that might run through a man struck by a bullet in a vital part.
“I only heard it this morning,” Charlotte continued hurriedly, her face working. “She — she was missed the day before yesterday. And yesterday he — went away, I hear. I am afraid there is no doubt of it. It is known everywhere. And oh, oh! I am grieved.” The girl broke down and cried, letting her tears run openly down her face. In part it was the news that she was telling that moved her. But more, far more it was the man’s stony silence, and the knowledge of what he was suffering. “I am so — so grieved for her!” she sobbed.
He sat as still as before, gazing between his horse’s ears. So grieved! She was so grieved! Grieved — when it meant nothing to her! He could have laughed aloud, laughed at the bitter absurdity of it. The sun had fallen from the sky, the earth heaved, all the devils of hell were loosed — and she grieved! It was only by a fierce effort that he refrained from that wild laughter.
After a long silence he spoke, and Charlotte was thankful to hear his voice. He knew the worst; the thing was told now, at any rate.
“Where are they — gone?” he asked huskily, yet in something like his ordinary voice.
She wiped her eyes, but she was still at pains not to look at him. “I don’t know,” she said. “I believe that she went by the Saltash boat that touches at Plymouth. He left by the London coach, I am told — yesterday morning.”
“Then — they did not go together?” he muttered.
“No, but — but I am afraid that they had arranged it.” She was unwilling to let him hope. “I am afraid — I fear that it is certain.”
“Has — has her father done anything?”
“No,” she said reluctantly. “I think not.”
“He has not followed her?”
“No. I’m afraid that he was too angry. He is not a forgiving man, you know — I don’t think that he is, at least. Oh, poor, poor Peggy!” She broke down a
gain. “She is terribly to blame, I know. Terribly! But—”
“D — n him!” Wyke said ‘ the words softly to himself. Then he was silent for a long time — long at any rate it seemed to Charlotte. At last, “You are sure that it is true?” he muttered.
“I do fear so. Oh, I do fear so!” Charlotte exclaimed, her tears falling. “I had noticed things, and — and I am told that there had been meetings. It seems to have been known to some. He was working at Budgen’s, and it is said that the Rector got him dismissed from there and — and that drove them to it. At least my maid tells me that is what they are saying — in the town.”
Another pause, painful to Charlotte. Then, “Thank you,” he said. “I think I must be getting on now.”
“You are going there?” she ventured.
“I must be sure,” he said. Without looking at her, without leave-taking, he touched his horse. He moved away down the road.
The girl, when he was gone, bowed her head on the gate, and cried. Her way of taking it would have surprised those who many a time had winced at her bluntness. But Charlotte was fond of Peggy. She understood, or thought that she understood, the girl, her virtues and her failings, her wilfulness and her loyalty. Nor was that all. It was not only for Peggy and the hapless fate that she foresaw for her that Charlotte grieved. It was not to spare her that she had imposed on herself a painful task, that she had voluntarily undergone ten of the horrible minutes of life. Some one had to break it to him. It was for him, to spare him, that she had suffered — she best knew why.
Not many minutes later on that morning Wyke entered the Rectory drawing-room, and found Augusta alone; and Augusta, seeing him, knew that another critical moment lay before her. She rose to meet him, and as she put her cold hand into his, her manner was perfect. It combined humility and a sense of the wrong that had been done him with a sympathy that, too deep for words, shone in her eyes. Nor indeed was Augusta acting. She was honestly distressed. She had not foreseen the gravity of the thing or its appalling effect on her father, or she told herself that she would have acted otherwise on that morning three days past. Now, brought face to face with the man, she was moved, and she was clever enough to make no effort to conceal the fact. In one usually so calm the display was effective.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 750
