Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 85, January, 1875

"Well, Miss Wenna," said the young man gayly, "how long are we to remain good friends? What is the next fault you will have to find with me? Or have you discovered something wrong already?"

"Oh no," she said with a quiet smile, "I am very good friends with you this morning. You have pleased your mother very much by bringing her for this drive."

"Oh, nonsense!" he said. "She might have as many drives as she chose; but presently you'll find a lot of those parsons back at the house, and she'll take to her white gowns again, and the playing of the organ all the day long, and all that sham stuff. I tell you what it is: she never seems alive, she never seems to take any interest in anything, unless you're with her. Now, you will see how the novelty of this luncheon-party in an inn will amuse her; but do you think she would care for it if she and I were here alone?"

"Perhaps you never tried?" Miss Wenna said gently.

"Perhaps I knew she wouldn't come. However, don't let's have a fight, Wenna: I mean to be very civil to you to-day—I do, really."

"I am so much obliged to you," she said meekly. "But pray don't give yourself unnecessary trouble."

"Oh," said he, "I'd always be civil to you if you would treat me decently. But you say far more rude things than I do—in that soft way, you know, that looks as if it were all silk and honey. I do think you've awfully little consideration for human failings. If one goes wrong in the least thing, even in one's spelling, you say something that sounds as pleasant as possible, and all the same it transfixes one just as you stick a pin through a beetle. You are very hard, you are—mean with those who would like to be friends with you. When it's mere strangers and cottagers and people of that sort, who don't care a brass farthing about you, then I believe you're all gentleness and kindness; but to your real friends the edge of a saw is smooth compared to you."

"Am I so very harsh to my friends?" the young lady said in a resigned way.

"Oh, well," he said, with some compunction, "I don't quite say that, but you could be much more pleasant if you liked, and a little more charitable to their faults. You know there are some who would give a great deal to win your approval; and perhaps when you find fault they are so disappointed that they think your words are sharper than you mean; and sometimes they think you might give them credit for trying to please you, at least."

"And who are these persons?" Wenna said, with another smile stealing over her face.

"Oh," said he rather shamefacedly, "there's no need to explain anything to you: you always see it before one need put it in words."

Well, perhaps it was in his manner or in the tone of his voice that there was something which seemed at this moment to touch her deeply, for she half turned and looked up at his face with her honest and earnest eyes, and said to him kindly, "Yes, I do know without you telling me; and it makes me happy to hear you talk so; and if I am unjust to you, you must not think it intentional. And I shall try not to be so in the future."

Mrs. Trelyon was regarding with a kindly look the two young people walking on in front of her. Whatever pleased her son pleased her, and she was glad to see him enjoy himself in so light-hearted a fashion. These two were chatting to each other in the friendliest manner: sometimes they stopped to pick up wild flowers: they were as two children together under the fair and light summer skies.

They went down and along a narrow valley, until they suddenly stood in front of the sea, the green waters of which were breaking in upon a small and lonely creek. What strange light was this that fell from the white skies above, rendering all the objects around them sharp its outline and intense in color? The beach before them seemed of a pale lilac, where the green waves broke in a semicircle of white. On their right some masses of ruddy rock jutted out into the cold sea, and there were huge black caverns into which the waves dashed and roared. On their left and far above them towered a great and isolated rock, its precipitous sides scored here and there with twisted lines of red and yellow quartz; and on the summit of this bold headland, amid the dark green of the sea-grass, they could see the dusky ruins—the crumbling walls and doorways and battlements—of the castle that is named in all the stories of King Arthur and his knights. The bridge across to the mainland has, in the course of centuries, fallen away, but there, on the other side of the wide chasm, were the ruins of the other portions of the castle, scarcely to be distinguished in parts from the grass-grown rocks. How long ago was it since Sir Tristram rode out here to the end of the world, to find the beautiful Isoulde awaiting him—she whom he had brought from Ireland as an unwilling bride to the old king Mark? And what of the joyous company of knights and ladies who once held high sport in the courtyard there? Trelyon, looking shyly at his companion, could see that her eyes seemed centuries away from him. She was quite unconscious of his covertly staring at her, for she was absently looking at the high and bare precipices, the deserted slopes of dark sea-grass and the lonely and crumbling ruins. She was wondering whether the ghosts of those vanished people ever came back to this lonely headland, where they would find the world scarcely altered since they had left it. Did they come at night, when the land was dark, and when there was a light over the sea only coming from the stars? If one were to come at night alone, and to sit down here by the shore, might not one see strange things far overhead or hear some sound other than the falling of the waves?

"Miss Wenna," he said—and she started suddenly—"are you bold enough to climb with me up to the castle? I know my mother would rather stay here."

She went with him mechanically. She followed him up the rude steps cut in the steep slopes of slate, holding his hand where that was possible, but her head was so full of dreams that she answered him when he spoke only with a vague yes or no. When they descended again they found that Mabyn had taken Mrs. Trelyon down to the beach, and had inveigled her into entering a huge cavern, or rather a natural tunnel, that went right through underneath the promontory on which the castle is built. They were in a sort of green-hued twilight, a scent of seaweed filling the damp air, and their voices raising an echo in the great hall of rock.

"I hope the climbing has not made you giddy," Mrs. Trelyon said in her kind way to Wenna, noticing that she was very silent and distrait.

"Oh no," Mabyn said promptly. "She has been seeing ghosts. We always know when Wenna has been seeing ghosts: she remains so for hours."

And, indeed, at this time she was rather more reserved than usual all during their walk back to luncheon and while they were in the inn; and yet she was obviously very happy, and sometimes even amused by the childlike pleasure which Mrs. Trelyon seemed to obtain from these unwonted experiences.

"Come, now, mother," Master Harry said, "what are you going to do for me when I come of age next month? Fill the house with guests—yes, you promised that—with not more than one parson to the dozen? And when they're all feasting and gabbling, and missing the targets with their arrows, you'll slip quietly away, and I'll drive you and Miss Wenna over here, and you'll go and get your feet wet again in that cavern, and you'll come up here again and have an elegant luncheon, just like this. Won't that do?"

"I don't quite know about the elegance of the luncheon, but I'm sure our little excursion has been very pleasant. Don't you think so, Miss Rosewarne?" Mrs. Trelyon said.

"Indeed I do," said Wenna, with her big, earnest eyes coming back from their trance.

"And here is another thing," remarked young Trelyon. "There's a picture I've seen of the heir coming of age—he's a horrid, self-sufficient young cad, but never mind—and it seems to be a day of general jollification. Can't I give a present to somebody? Well, I'm going to give it to a young lady who never cares for anything but what she can give away again to somebody else; and it is—well, it is—Why don't you guess, Mabyn?"

"I don't know what you mean to give Wenna," said Mabyn naturally.

"Why, you silly! I mean to give her a dozen sewing-machines—a baker's dozen—thirteen. There! Oh, I heard you as you came along. It was all, 'Three sewing-machines will cost so much, and four sewing-machines will cost so much, and five sewing-machines will cost so much. And a penny a week from so many subscribers will be so much, and twopence a week from so many will be so much;' and all this as if my mother could tell you how much twice two was. My arithmetic ain't very brilliant, but as for hers—And these you shall have, Miss Wenna—one baker's dozen of sewing-machines, as per order, duly delivered, carriage free—empty casks and bottles to be returned."

"That is very kind of you, Mr. Trelyon," Wenna said—and all the dreams had gone straight out of her head so soon as this was mentioned—"but we can't possibly accept them. You know our scheme is to make the sewing club quite self-supporting—no charity."

"Oh, what stuff!" the young gentleman cried. "You know you will give all your labor and supervision for nothing: isn't that charity? And you know you will let off all sorts of people owing you subscriptions the moment some blessed baby falls ill. And you know you won't charge interest on all the outlay. But if you insist on paying me back for my sewing-machines out of the overwhelming profits at the end of next year, then I'll take the money. I'm not proud."

"Then we will take six sewing-machines from you, if you please, Mr. Trelyon, on those conditions," said Wenna gravely. And Master Harry—with a look toward Mabyn which was just about as good as a wink—consented.

As they drove quietly back again to Eglosilyan, Mabyn had taken her former place by the driver, and found him uncommonly thoughtful. He answered her questions, but that was all; and it was so unusual to find Harry Trelyon in this mood that she said to him, "Mr. Trelyon, have you been seeing ghosts, too?"

He turned to her and said, "I was thinking about something. Look here, Mabyn: did you ever know any one, or do you know any one, whose face is a sort of barometer to you? Suppose that you see her look pale and tired or sad in any way, then down go your spirits, and you almost wish you had never been born. When you see her face brighten up and get full of healthy color, you feel glad enough to burst out singing or go mad: anyhow, you know that everything's all right. What the weather is, what people may say about you, whatever else may happen to you, that's nothing: all you want to see is just that one person's face look perfectly bright and perfectly happy, and nothing can touch you then. Did you ever know anybody like that?" he added rather abruptly.

"Oh yes," said Mabyn, in a low voice: "that is when you are in love with some one. And there is only one face in all the world that I look to for all these things, there is only one person I know who tells you openly and simply in her face all that affects her, and that is our Wenna. I suppose you have noticed that, Mr. Trelyon?"

But he did not make any answer.

CHAPTER XXI.

CONFESSION

The lad lay dreaming in the warm meadows by the side of a small and rapid brook, the clear waters of which plashed and bubbled in the sunlight as they hurried past the brown stones. His fishing-rod lay beside him, hidden in the long grass and the daisies. The sun was hot in the valley—shining on a wall of gray rock behind him, and throwing purple shadows over the clefts; shining on the dark bushes beside the stream and on the lush green of the meadows; shining on the trees beyond, in the shadow of which some dark red cattle were standing. Then away on the other side of the valley rose gently-sloping woods, gray and green in the haze of the heat, and over these again was the pale blue sky with scarcely a cloud in it. It was a hot day to be found in spring-time, but the waters of the brook seemed cool and pleasant as they gurgled by, and occasionally a breath of wind blew over from the woods. For the rest, he lay so still on this fine, indolent, dreamy morning that the birds around seemed to take no note of his presence, and one of the large woodpeckers, with his scarlet head and green body brilliant in the sun, flew close by him and disappeared into the bushes opposite like a sudden gleam of color shot by a diamond.

"Next month," he was thinking to himself as he lay with his hands behind his head, not caring to shade his handsome and well-tanned face from the warm sun—"next month I shall be twenty-one, and most folks will consider me a man. Anyhow, I don't know the man whom I wouldn't fight or run or ride or shoot against for any wager he liked. But of all the people who know anything about me, just that one whose opinion I care for will not consider me a man at all, but only a boy. And that without saying anything. You can tell, somehow, by a mere look, what her feelings are; and you know that what she thinks is true. Of course it's true—I am only a boy. What's the good of me to anybody? I could look after a farm—that is, I could look after other people doing their work—but I couldn't do any work myself. And that seems to me what she is always looking at: 'What's the good of you, what are you doing, what are you busy about?' It's all very well for her to be busy, for she can do a hundred thousand things, and she is always at them. What can I do?"

Then his wandering day-dreamings took another turn: "It was an odd thing for Mabyn to say—'That is when you are in love with some one.' But those girls take everything for love. They don't know how you can admire, almost to worshiping, the goodness of a woman, and how you are anxious that she should be well and happy, and how you would do anything in the world to please her, without fancying straight away that you are in love with her, and want to marry her and drive about in the same carriage with her. I shall be quite as fond of Wenna Rosewarne when she is married, although I shall hate that little brute with his rum and his treacle. The cheek of him, in asking her to marry him, is astonishing. He is the most hideous little beast that could have been picked out to marry any woman, but I suppose he has appealed to her compassion, and then she'll do anything. But if there was anybody else in love with her, if she cared the least bit about anybody else, wouldn't I go straight to her and insist on her shunting that fellow aside? What claim has he on any other feeling of hers but her compassion? Why, if that fellow were to come and try to frighten her, and if I were in the affair, and if she appealed to me even by a look, then there would be short work with something or somebody."

He got up hastily, with something of a gloomy and angry look on his face. He did not notice that he had startled all the birds around from out of the bushes. He picked up his rod and line in a morose fashion, not seeming to care about adding to the half dozen small and red-speckled trout he had in his basket.

While he was thus irresolutely standing he caught sight of a girl's figure coming rapidly along the valley under the shadow of some ash trees growing by the stream. It was Wenna Rosewarne herself, and she seemed to be hurrying toward him. She was carrying some black object in her arms.

"Oh, Mr. Trelyon," she said, "what am I to do with this little dog? I saw him kicking in the road and foaming at the mouth; and then he got up and ran, and I caught him—"

Before she had time to say anything more the young man made a sudden dive at the dog, caught hold of him and turned and heaved him into the stream. He fell into a little pool of clear brown water: he spluttered and paddled there for a second, then he got his footing and scrambled across the stones up to the opposite bank, where he began shaking the water from his coat among the long grass.

"Oh, how could you be so disgracefully cruel?" she said, with her face full of indignation.

"And how could you be so imprudent?"' he said quite as vehemently. "Why, whose is the dog?"

"I don't know."

"And you catch up some mongrel little cur in the middle of the highway—He might have been mad."

"I knew he wasn't mad," she said: "it was only a fit; and how could you be so cruel as to throw him into the river?"

"Oh," said the young man, coolly, "a clash of cold water is the best thing for a dog that has a fit. Besides, I don't care what he had or what I did with him, so long as you are safe. Your little finger is of more consequence than the necks of all the curs in the country."

"Oh, it is mean of you to say that," she retorted warmly. "You have no pity for those wretched little things that are at every one's mercy. If it were a handsome and beautiful dog, now, you would care for that, or if it were a dog that was skilled in getting game for you, you would care for that."

"Yes, certainly," he said: "these are dogs that have something to recommend them."

"Yes, and every one is good to them: they are not in need of your favor. But you don't think of the wretched little brutes that have nothing to recommend them, that only live on sufferance, that every one kicks and despises and starves."

"Well," said he with some compunction, "look there! That new friend of yours—he's no great beauty, you must confess—is all right now. The bath has cured him. As soon as he's done licking his paws he'll be off home, wherever that may be. But I've always noticed that about you, Wenna: you're always on the side of things that are ugly and helpless and useless in the world; and you're not very just to those who don't agree with you. For after all, you know, one wants time to acquire that notion of yours—that it is only weak and ill-favored creatures that are worthy of the least consideration."

"Yes," she said rather sadly, "you want time to learn that."

He looked at her. Did she mean that her sympathy with those who were weak and ill-favored arose from some strange consciousness that she herself was both? His cheeks began to burn red. He had often heard her hint something like that, and yet he had never dared to reason with her or show her what he thought of her. Should he do so now?

"Wenna," he said, blushing hotly, "I can't make you out sometimes. You speak as if no one cared for you. Now, if I were to tell you—"

"Oh, I am not so ungrateful," she said hastily. "I know that two or three do; and—and, Mr. Trelyon, do you think you could coax that little dog over the stream again? You see he has come back again—he can't find his way home."

Mr. Trelyon called to the dog: it came down to the river's side, and whined and shivered on the brink.

"Do you care a brass farthing about the little beast?" he said to Wenna.

"I must put him on his way home," she answered.

Thereupon the young man went straight through the stream to the other side, jumping the deeper portions of the channel: he caught up the dog and brought it back to her; and when she was very angry with him for this mad performance, he merely kicked some of the water out of his trousers and laughed.

Then a smile broke over her face also. "Is that an example of what people would do for me?" she said shyly. "Mr. Trelyon, you must keep walking through the warm grass till your feet are dry; or will you come along to the inn, and I shall get you some shoes and stockings? Pray do, and at once. I am rather in a hurry."

"I'll go along with you, anyway," he said, "and put this little brute into the highway. But why are you in a hurry?"

"Because," said Wenna, as they set out to walk down the valley—"because my mother and I are going to Penzance the day after to-morrow, and I have a lot of things to get ready."

"To Penzance?" said he with a sudden falling of the face.

"Yes. She has been dreadfully out of sorts lately, and she has sunk into a kind of despondent state. The doctor says she must have a change—a holiday, really—to take her away from the cares of the house—"

"Why, Wenna, it's you who want the holiday—it's you who have the cares of the house," Trelyon said warmly.

"And so I have persuaded her to go to Penzance for a week or two, and I go with her to look after her. Mr. Trelyon, would you be kind enough to keep Rock for me until we come back? I am afraid of the servants neglecting him."

"You needn't be afraid of that: he's not one of the ill-favored—every one will attend to him," said Trelyon; and then he added, after a minute or two of silence, "The fact is, I think I shall be at Penzance also while you are there. My cousin Juliott is coming here in about a fortnight to celebrate the important event of my coming of age, and I promised to go for her. I might as well go now."

She said nothing.

"I might as well go any time," he said rather impatiently. "I haven't got anything to do. Do you know, before you came along just now, I was thinking what a very useful person you were in the world, and what a very useless person I was—about as useless as this little cur. I think somebody should take me up and heave me into a river. And I was wondering, too"—here he became a little more embarrassed and slow of speech—"I was wondering what you would say if I spoke to you, and gave you a hint that sometimes—that sometimes one might wish to cut this lazy life if one only knew how, and whether so very busy a person as yourself mightn't—don't you see?—give one some notion—some sort of hint, in fact—"

"Oh, but then, Mr. Trelyon," she said quite cheerfully, "you would think it very strange if I asked you to take any interest in the things that keep me busy. That is not a man's work. I wouldn't accept you as a pupil."

He burst out laughing. "Why," said he, "do you think I offered to mend stockings and set sums on slates and coddle babies?"

"As for setting sums on slates," she remarked with a quiet impertinence, "the working of them out might be of use to you."

"Yes, and a serious trouble too," he said candidly. "No, no—that cottage business ain't in my line. I like to have a joke with the old folks or a romp with the kids, but I can't go in for cutting out pinafores. I shall leave my mother to do my share of that for me; and hasn't she come out strong lately, eh? It's quite a new amusement for her, and it's driven a deal of that organ-grinding and stuff out of her head; and I've a notion some o' those parsons—"

He stopped short, remembering who his companion was; and at this moment they came to a gate which opened out on the highway, through which the small cur was passed to find his way home.

"Now, Miss Wenna," said the young man—"By the way, you see how I remember to address you respectfully ever since you got sulky with me about it the other day?"

"I am sure I did not get sulky with you, and especially about that," she remarked with much composure. "I suppose you are not aware that you have dropped the 'Miss' several times this morning already?"

"Did I, really? Well, then, I'm awfully sorry; but then you are so good-natured you tempt one to forget; and my mother she always calls you Wenna Rosewarne now in speaking to me, as if you were a little school-girl, instead of being the chief support and pillar of all the public affairs of Eglosilyan. And now, Miss Wenna, I sha'n't go down the road with you, because my damp boots and garments would gather the dust; but perhaps you wouldn't mind stopping two seconds here, and I'm going to go a cracker and ask you a question: What should a fellow in my position try to do? You see, I haven't had the least training for any one of the professions, even if I had any sort of capacity—"

"But why should you wish to have a profession?" she said simply. "You have more money than is good for you already."

"Then you don't think it ignominious," he said, with his face lighting up considerably, "to fish in summer and shoot in autumn and hunt in winter, and make that the only business of one's life?"

"I should if it were the only business, but it needn't be, and you don't make it so. My father speaks very highly of the way you look after your property; and he knows what attending to an estate is. And then you have so many opportunities of being kind and useful to the people about you that you might do more good that way than by working night and day at a profession. Then you owe much to yourself, because if every one began with himself, and educated himself, and became satisfied and happy with doing his best, there would be no bad conduct and wretchedness to call for interference. I don't see why you should be ashamed of shooting and hunting and all that, and doing them as well as anybody else, or far better, as I hear people say. I don't think a man is bound to have ambition and try to become famous: you might be of much greater use in the world, even in such a little place as Eglosilyan, than if you were in Parliament. I did say to Mrs. Trelyon that I should like to see you in Parliament, because one has a natural pride in any person one admires and likes very much, and one wishes—"