Armorel of Lyonesse: A Romance of To-day

CHAPTER XII

THE CHANGE

'A change,' said Roland, 'will surely come, and that before long. I cannot believe' – Armorel remembered the words afterwards – 'that you will stay on this island for ever.' It needed no unusual gift of prophecy to foretell impending change when the most important member of the household was nearing her hundredth year.

The change foretold actually came in April, when the flower-fields had lost their beauty and the harvest of Scilly was nearly over. Late blossoms of daffodil still reared their heads among the thick leaves, though their blooming companions had all been cut off to grace London tables; there were broad patches of wallflower little regarded; the leaves of the bulbs were drooping and already turning brown: these were the signs of approaching summer to the Scillonian, who has already had his spring. On the adjacent island of Great Britain the primrose clustered on the banks; the hedges of the West Country were splendid, putting forth tender leaves over a wealth of wild flowers; the chestnut-buds were swollen and sticky, ready to burst. Do we not know the signs and tokens of coming spring? On Scilly, the lengthening day – there are no hedges and no trees to speak of – the completion of the flower harvest, and the drooping of the daffodil-leaves in the fields are the chief signs of spring. Yet there are other signs: if there are no woods to show the tender leaf of spring, there are the green shoots of the fern on the down: and there are the birds. The puffin has already come back; he comes in his thousands: he arrives in April, and he departs in September: whence he cometh and whither he goeth no man hath ever learned nor can naturalist discover. At the same time comes the guillemot, and sometimes the solan-goose: the tern and the sheerwater come too, if they come at all, in spring: but the wild ducks and the wild geese depart before the flower-harvest is finished.

Armorel got up one morning in April a little earlier than usual. It was five o'clock: the sun was rising over Telegraph Hill on St. Mary's. She ran down the stairs, opened the door, and stood on the porch drawing a deep breath. No one was as yet stirring on Samson, though I think Peter was beginning to turn in his bed. Out at sea Armorel saw a great steamer, homeward bound, perhaps an Australian liner: the level rays of the early sun shone on her spars and made them stand out clear and fine against the sky: behind her streamed her long white cloud of smoke and steam, hanging over the water, light and feathery. There were no other ships visible. The air was cold, but the sun of April was already strong. Armorel shivered, caught her hat, and ran over the hill, singing as she went, not knowing that in the night, while she slept, the Angel of Death had visited the house.

About seven o'clock she came back, having completely circumnavigated the island of Samson, and made, as usual, many curious observations and discoveries in the manners and customs of puffins, terns, and shags. She returned in the cheerful mood which belongs to youth, health, and readiness for breakfast. She instantly perceived, however, on arriving, that something had happened – something unusual. For Peter stood in the porch: what was Peter doing in the porch at seven o'clock in the morning, when he ought to have been ministering to the pigs? Further, Peter was standing in the attitude of a boy who waits to be sent on an errand. It is an attitude of expectant readiness – of zeal according to duty – of activity bought and freely rendered. You will observe this attitude in all office boys – except telegraph-boys: they never assume it: they affect no zeal: they betray no eagerness to put in a fair day's work. Such an attitude would lack the dignity due to a Government officer. And at sight of Armorel Peter hung his head as one who sorrows, or is ashamed or repentant. What did he do that for? What had happened? Why should he hang his head?

She asked these questions of Peter, who only shook his head and pointed within. She heard Justinian's voice giving some directions. She also heard Dorcas and Chessun. They were all three speaking in low voices. She hurried in. The door of the old lady's bedroom – that sacred apartment into which no one, except the two handmaidens, had ever ventured – stood wide open; not only that, but Justinian himself was in the room – actually in the room – and beside the bed. Then Armorel understood what had happened. On no other condition would Justinian be admitted to his old mistress's room. On the other side of the bed stood Dorcas and Chessun. Seeing Armorel at the door, these two ladies instantly lifted up their voices and wailed aloud – nay, they shrieked and screamed their lamentations, as if it was the first time in the world's history that death had carried off an aged woman. This they did by a kind of instinct: the thing, though they knew it not, was a survival. In ancient times it was the custom in Lyonesse that the women should all wail and weep and shriek, and beat their breasts and tear their hair, and cut their cheeks with their nails, while the body of the dead king or warrior was carried up the slope of the hill to be laid in its kistvaen and covered with its barrow on Samson island.

They wailed aloud, then, because it had always been the right thing for the women of Samson to do. Otherwise, when one so ancient dies at last, mind and memory gone before, what place is there for wailing and weeping? One natural tear we drop, for all must die; but grief belongs to the death-bed of the young. There needed no shriek of the women nor anyone's speech to tell Armorel that the white face upturned on the bed was not the face of a living woman. They had folded the dead hands across her breast: the eyes were closed: the countless wrinkles of the aged face were smoothed out: the lips were parted with a wan smile. After many, many years, Ursula, the widow, was gone to rejoin her husband. Pray Heaven her desire be granted, and that she rise again young and beautiful – such a woman as that ill-starred sailor, dragged to the bottom of the sea by the weight of Robert Fletcher's bag, had loved in life!

Peter presently sailed across the Road, and returned with the doctor. It is the part of the doctor not only to usher the new-born into life, but to bar or open the gates of the tomb: without him very few of us die, and without him no one can be buried. This man of science graciously expressed his willingness to acknowledge, though he had not been called in, that the deceased died of old age. Then he went back.

In the evening there was no music. The violin remained in its place; the great chair was empty; no one brought out the spinning-wheel; the table was not pushed back. How was the long evening to be got through without the violin? How could those ancient tunes be played any more in the presence of that empty chair? When the serving-folk came in as usual and sat round the fire, and the women sighed and moaned, and Justinian stimulated the coals to a flame, and the ruddy light played upon their faces, Armorel began to think that a continuance of these evenings would be tedious. Then they began to talk, the conversation naturally turning on Death and Judgment, and the prospects of Heaven and the departed.

'She was not one of them,' said Dorcas, 'as would never talk of such things. I've often heard her say she wanted to rise again, young and beautiful, same as she was when her husband was took, so that he should love her again.'

'Nay,' said Justinian; 'that's foolish talk. There's neither marrying nor giving in marriage there. You ought to know so much, Dorcas. Husbands and wives will know each other, I doubt not, if it's only for the man's forgiveness after the many crosses and rubs. 'Twould be a pity, wife, if we didn't know each other, golden crown and all. I'd be sorry to think you were not about somewhere.'

Armorel listened without much interest. She wondered vaguely how Dorcas would look in a golden crown, and hoped that she might not laugh when she should be permitted to gaze upon her thus wonderfully adorned. Then she listened in silence while these thinkers followed up their speculations on the next world and the decrees of Heaven, with the freedom of their kind. A strangely brutal freedom! It consigns, without a thought of pity, the majority of mankind to a doom which they are too ignorant to realise and too stupid to understand. The deceased lady, it was agreed, might, perhaps – though this was by no means certain – have fallen under Conviction of Sin at some remote period, before any of them knew her. Not since, that was certain. And as for her husband, he was cut off in his sins – like all the Roseveans, struck down in his sins, without a warning. So that if the old lady expected to meet him, after their separation of nearly eighty years, on the Shores of Everlasting Praise, she would certainly be disappointed, because he was otherwise situated and disposed of. Therefore she might just as well go up old and wrinkled. This kind of talk was quite familiar to Armorel, and generally meant nothing to her. The right of private judgment is claimed and freely exercised in Scilly, where that branch of the Church Catholic called Bryanite greatly flourishes. Formerly, she would have passed over this talk without heeding. Now, she had begun to think of these as well as of many other things. Roland's words on religious things startled her into thinking. She listened, therefore, wondering what view people like Roland Lee would take of her great-grandfather's present condition, and of the poor old lady's prospects of meeting him again. Then her thoughts wandered from these nebulous speculations, and she heard no more, though the conversation became lurid with the flames of Tartarus, and these old religioners gloated over the hopeless sufferings of the condemned. A sweet and holy thing, indeed, has mankind made of the Gospel of Great Joy!

Before they separated, Chessun rose and left the room noiselessly. Armorel had no experience of the situation, but she knew that something was going to be done, something connected with the impending funeral – something solemn.

In fact, Chessun returned after ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, the others making a pretence of expecting nothing. Doctrinal meditation was written on Justinian's brow: resignation on that of Dorcas. Chessun bore in her hands a tray with glasses and a silver tankard filled with something that steamed. It was a posset, made with biscuits, new milk and sherry, nutmeg and sugar – an emotional drink, strong, sweet, comforting, very good for mournful occasions, but, of late years, unfortunately, gone out of fashion.

They all had a glass, the two women moaning over their glasses, and the old man shaking his head. Then they went to bed.

They had a posset every night until the funeral. They buried the ancient dame on Bryher. A boat carried the coffin across the water to the landing-place in New Grinsey Sound, behind which stands the little old church with its churchyard. Armorel and her household followed in one of the family boats, as in a mourning-carriage. All the people of Tresco and Bryher were present at the funeral; and most of them came across to Samson after the ceremony to drink a glass of wine and eat a slice of cake, the women no longer wailing and the men no longer shaking their heads.

All the Roseveans who have escaped the vengeance of Mr. Fletcher's terrible bag lie in Bryher churchyard. They are mostly widows, poor things! They sleep alone, because their husbands' bones lie about among the tall weeds in the tranquil depths of the ocean.

And Armorel, looking forward, thought with terror of the long, silent evenings, while the old serving-folk would sit round in the firelight, silent, or saying things that might as well have been left unsaid.

CHAPTER XIII

ARMOREL'S INHERITANCE

'You are now the mistress, dearie,' said Dorcas. 'It is time that you should learn what that means.'

It was the morning after the funeral – the Day of Accession – the beginning of the new reign.

'Why, Dorcas, it makes no difference, does it? There are still the flowers and the house and everything.'

'Yes – there's everything.' The old woman nodded her head meaningly. 'Oh! yes – there is everything. Oh! you don't know – you don't suspect – nobody knows – what a surprise is in store for you!'

'What surprise, Dorcas?'

'You've never been into her room except to see her lying dead. It's your room now. You can go in whenever you like. Always the master or the mistress has slept in that room. When her father-in-law died she took the room. And she's slept in it ever since. And no one, except me and Chessun to clean up and sweep and dust, has ever been in that room since. And now it's yours.'

'Well, Dorcas, it may be mine; but I shall go on sleeping in my own room.'

'Then keep it locked – keep it locked up – day and night. There's nobody in Samson to dread – but keep it locked! As for sleeping in it, time enough, perhaps, when you come to marry. But keep it locked – '

'Why, Dorcas, what is in it?'

'I am seventy-five years old and past,' Dorcas went on. 'I was fifteen when I came to the house, and here I've been ever since. Not one of the grandchildren nor the great-grandchildren ever came in here. No one ever knew what is kept here.'

'What is it, then?' Armorel asked again.

'She used to come here alone, by daylight, regularly once a month. She locked the door when she came in. No one ever knew what she was doing, and no one ever asked. One day she forgot to lock the door, and by accident I opened it, and saw what she was doing.'

'What was she doing?'

'She'd opened all the cupboards and boxes, and she'd spread out all the things, and was counting, and – no, no – you may guess, when you have looked for yourself, what she was doing. I shut the door softly, and she never knew that I'd looked in upon her. She might have been overseen from the orchard, but no one ever went in there except to gather the fruit. To make safe, however, I've put up a muslin blind now, because Peter might take it into his head – boys go everywhere peering and prying. Nobody knows what I saw. I never even told Justinian. Men blab, you see: they get together, and they drink – then they blab. You can never trust a man with a secret. How long would it be before Peter would let it out if he knew? Once over at Hugh Town, drinking at a bar, and all the world would know in half an hour. No, no; the secret was hers: it was mine as well – but that was an accident – she never knew that: now it will be yours and mine. And we will tell nobody – nobody at all.'

'Where shall I find this wonderful secret, Dorcas?'

'Wherever you look, dearie. Oh! the room is full of things. There can't be such another room in all the world. It's crammed with things. Look everywhere. If they knew, all the young lords and princes would be at your feet, Armorel, because you are so rich. Best keep it secret, though, and get richer.'

'I so rich? Dorcas, you are joking!'

'No – you shall look and find out. Not that you will understand at first – because, how should you know the value of things? Here's her bunch of keys. She always carried them in her pocket, and at night she kept them under her pillows – and there I found them, sure enough, when she was cold and dead. Take them, child. I never told her secret – no – not even to my own husband. Take the keys, child. They are yours – your own. You can open everything: you can look at everything: you can do what you like with everything. It's your inheritance. But tell no one,' she repeated, earnestly. 'Oh! my dear, let it remain a secret. Don't let anyone see you when you come in here. Lock the door, as she did – and keep it locked.'

The old woman led Armorel by the hand to the door of the room where there was to be found the Great Surprise. She opened it, placed a bunch of keys in her hand, pushed her in and closed it behind her, whispering, 'Lock it, and keep it locked.'

The girl turned the key obediently, wondering what would happen next.

The room was on the ground floor, looking out upon the orchard, with a northern aspect, so that the sun could only shine in for a small portion of the year, during the summer months. The apple-trees were now in blossom, the white pink and flowers bright in the sunshine contrasting with the grey lichen which wrapped every branch and hung down like ribbons. The room was the oldest part of the house, the only remaining portion of an earlier house: it was low and small: the fireplace had never been modernised: it stood wide open, with its dogs and its broad chimney: the window was of three narrow lights, one of which could be opened: all were still provided with the old diamond panes in their leaden setting. Armorel observed the muslin blind put up by Dorcas to keep out prying eyes. In dull and cloudy days the room would be gloomy. As it was, even with the bright sunshine out of doors, the air seemed cold and oppressive – perhaps from the fresh association of Death. Armorel shivered as she looked about her.

The greater part of the room was taken up by a large bed. In the old lady's time it had curtains and a head, and things at the four corners like the plumes of a hearse, but in faded crimson. Then it looked splendid. Now, the bed had been stripped: curtains and plumes and all were gone, and only the skeleton bed left, with its four great solid posts and its upper beams, and its feather bed lying exposed, with the bare pillow-cases upon the mattress. But the bedstead was magnificent without its trappings, because it was made of mahogany black with age: they no longer make such bedsteads. There was also a table – an old black table – with massive legs; but there was nothing on it.

Between door and wall there was a row of pegs, with a chair beneath them. Now, by some freak of chance, when Dorcas and Chessun hung up the ancient dame's things for the last time – her great bonnet, and the cap of many ribbons within it, and her silk dress – they arranged them so as to present a most extraordinary presentment of the venerable lady herself – much elongated and without any face: she seemed to be sitting in the chair below the pegs, dressed as usual, and nodding her great bonnet, but pulled out to eight or ten feet in length. Armorel caught the ghostly similitude and started, trembling. It seemed as if in a moment the wrinkled old face, with the hawk-like nose and the keen eyes, would come back to the bonnet and the cap. She was so much startled that she turned the bonnet round. And then the figure seemed watching with the shoulders. This was uncanny, but it was not so terrible as the faceless form.

Beside the fireplace was a cupboard – one of those huge cupboards which one only finds in the old houses. Armorel tried the door, but it was locked. Against the wall stood a chest of drawers, brass-bound, massive. She tried the handles, but every lock was fast. Under the window stood an old sea-chest. It was a very big sea-chest. One would judge, from its rich carvings and its ornamental ironwork, that it was probably the sea-chest of an admiral at least – perhaps that of Admiral Hernando Mureno, Armorel's ancestor, if such was his rank in the navy of his Catholic Majesty. The sight of this sea-chest caused the girl to shiver with the fear of expectation. Nobody contemplates the absolutely unknown without a certain fear. It contained, she was certain, the things that Dorcas had seen, of which she would not speak. The chest seemed to drag her: it cried, 'Open me. Look inside me – see what I have got to show you.'

Then she remembered, as one in a dream, hearing people talk. Words long forgotten came back to her. 'Twas in Hugh Town, whither she went across to school when she was as yet a little girl. 'What have the Roseveans' – thus and thus said the voice – 'done with all their money? They've never spent anything: they've gone on saving and saving. Some day we shall find out what became of it.' Was she going to find out what had become of it?

The old lady, in her most lucid moments, had never dropped the least hint of any inheritance, except that disagreeable necessity of getting drowned on account of the unfortunate Robert Fletcher. And that was not an inheritance to gladden the heart. Yet there was an inheritance. It was here, in this room. And she was locked in alone, in order that she, herself unseen by any, might discover what it was.

Baron Bluebeard's last wife – she who afterwards, as a beautiful, rich, and lively young widow, set so many hearts aflame – was not more curious than Armorel. Nor was she, in the course of her investigations, more afraid than Armorel. The girl looked nervously about the room, so ghostly and so full of shadow. All old rooms have their ghosts, but some of them have so many that one is not afraid of them. There is a sense of companionship in a crowd of ghosts. This room had only one – that of the woman who had grown old in it – who had spent nearly eighty years in it. All the old ghosts had grown tired of this monotonous room, gone away and left the place to her. Armorel not only 'believed in ghosts' – many of us accord to these shadows a shadowy, theoretical belief – she actually knew that ghosts do sometimes appear. Dorcas had seen many – Chessun herself, while not going actually that length, threw out hints. She herself had often, too, gone to look for them. Now she glanced nervously where the 'things' were hanging, expecting to see the ancestral figure reappear, shoulders move, the bonnet and cap turn round, the old, old face within them, ready to warn, to admonish, and to guide. If this had happened, it would have seemed to Armorel nothing but what was natural and in the regular course of things looked for. But, outside, the sun shone on the white apple-blossom. No one is very much afraid of ghosts in the sunshine.

She encouraged herself with this reflection, and began with unlocking the chest of drawers. The lower drawers, when they were opened, contained nothing but the 'things' of her great-great-grandmother. Among them was a box roughly made – a boy's box made with a jack-knife: it contained a gold watch with a French name upon it – a very old watch, with a representation of the Annunciation in low relief on the gold face. There were also in the box two or three gold chains and sundry rings and trinkets. Armorel took them out and laid them on the table. They were, she said to herself, part of her inheritance. Was this the Great Surprise spoken of by Dorcas? She tried the two upper drawers. They were locked, but she easily found the right key, and opened them. She found that they were filled with lace; they were crammed with lace. There were packets of lace tied up tight, rolls of lace, cardboards with lace wound round and round – an immense quantity of lace was lying in these drawers. As for its value, Armorel knew nothing. Nor did she even ask herself what the value might be. She only unrolled one or two packets, and wondered vaguely what in the world she should do with so much lace. And she wished it was not so yellow. Yet the packets she unrolled contained Valenciennes – some of it half a yard wide, precious almost beyond price. Armorel knew, however, very well how it had got there, and what it meant. The descendant of so many brave runners was not ignorant that lace, velvet, silk and satin, brandy and claret, all came from the French coast with which her gallant forefathers were so familiar before the Preventive Service interfered. This, then, was left from the smuggling times. They had not sold all. They had kept enough, in fact, to stock half a dozen West-End shops, to adorn the trousseau of fifty Princesses. And here the stuff had lain undisturbed since – well, perhaps, since the unfortunate visit of Mr. Robert Fletcher.

'My inheritance, so far,' said Armorel, 'is a pile of yellow lace and a gold watch and chain and some trinkets. Is this the Great Surprise?' But she looked at the sea-chest. Something more must be there.

Next she turned to the cupboard. It was locked and double-locked. But she found the key. The cupboard was one of those great receptacles common in the oldest houses, almost rooms in themselves, but dark rooms, where mediæval housekeepers kept their stores. In those days, housekeeping on a respectable scale meant the continual maintenance of immense stores. All the things which now we get from shops as we want them were then laid in store long before they were wanted. Outside the country town there were no shops; and, even in London itself, people did not run to the shop every day. The men had great quantities of shirts – three clean shirts a day was the allowance of a solid city man under good Queen Anne – a city man who respected himself: the women had a corresponding quantity of flowered petticoats. Wine was by no means the only thing laid down for future years. All these accumulations helped to give solidity to the appearance of life. When a woman thought of her cupboards filled with fine linen and a man of his cellars filled with wine, the uncertainty and brevity of life alleged by the Preacher seemed not to concern them. It would be absurd to lay down a great bin of good port if one was not going to live long enough to drink it. The fashion, therefore, has its advantages.