Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 90, June, 1875

"My father!" said Wenna in a low voice.

"My darling, you needn't be afraid, whoever it is," Trelyon said.

"Certainly not," added Mabyn, who was far more uncomfortable than she chose to appear. "Who can prevent us going on? They don't lock you up in convents now-a-days. If it is Mr. Roscorla, you just let me talk to him."

Their doubt on that head was soon set at rest. White Charley, with his long swinging trot, soon brought George Rosewarne up to the side of the phaeton, and the girls, long ere he had arrived, had recognized in the gloom the tall figure of their father. Even Mabyn was a trifle nervous.

But George Rosewarne—perhaps because he was a little pacified by their having stopped—did not rage and fume as a father is expected to do whose daughter has run away from him. As soon as he had pulled up his horse he called out in a petulant tone, "Well! what the devil is all this about?"

"I'll tell you, sir," said Trelyon, quite respectfully and quite firmly: "I wished to marry your daughter Wenna—"

"And why couldn't you do that in Eglosilyan, instead of making a fool of everybody all round?" Rosewarne said, still talking in an angry and vexed way, as of one who had been personally injured.

"Oh, dada," Mabyn cried, "you don't know how it happened; but they couldn't have got married there. There's that horrid old wretch, Mr. Roscorla—and Wenna was quite a slave to him and afraid of him—and the only way was to carry her away from him; and so—"

"Hold your tongue, Mabyn," her father said. "You'd drive a windmill with your talk."

"But what she says is true enough," Trelyon said. "Roscorla has a claim on her: this was my only chance, and I took it. Now look here, Mr. Rosewarne: you've a right to be angry and all that—perhaps you are—but what good will it do you to see Wenna left to marry Roscorla?"

"What good will it do me?" said George Rosewarne pettishly. "I don't care which of you she marries."

"Then you'll let us go on, dada?" Mabyn cried. "Will you come with us? Oh, do come with us! We're only going to Plymouth."

Even the angry father could not withstand the absurdity of this appeal. He burst into a roar of ill-tempered laughter. "I like that!" he cried. "Asking a man to help his daughter to run away from his own house! It's my impression, my young mistress, that you're at the bottom of all this nonsense. Come, come! enough of it, Trelyon: be a sensible fellow, and turn your horses round. Why, the notion of going to Plymouth at this time o' night!"

Trelyon looked to his companion. She put her hand on his arm, and said, in a trembling whisper, "Oh yes: pray let us go back."

"You know what you are going to, then?" said he coldly.

She trembled still more.

"Come, come," said her father: "you mustn't stop here all night. You may thank me for preventing your becoming the talk of the whole country."

"I shouldn't have minded that much," Mabyn said ruefully, and very like to cry indeed, as the horses set out upon their journey back to Eglosilyan.

It was not a pleasant journey for any of them—least of all for Wenna Rosewarne, who, having been bewildered by one wild glimpse of liberty, felt with terror and infinite sadness and despair the old manacles closing round her life again. And what although the neighbors might remain in ignorance of what she had done? She herself knew, and that was enough.

"You think no one will know?" Mabyn called out spitefully to her father. "Do you think old Job at the gate has lost either his tongue or his nasty temper?"

"Leave Job to me," the father replied.

When they got to Paddock's Gate the old man had again to be roused, and he came out grumbling.

"Well, you discontented old sinner!" Rosewarne called to him, "don't you like having to earn a living?"

"A fine livin' to wait on folks that don't knaw their own mind, and keep comin' and goin' along the road o' nights like a weaver's shuttle. Hm!"

"Well, Job, you sha'n't suffer for it this time," Rosewarne said. "I've won my bet. If you made fifty pounds by riding a few miles out, what would you give the gatekeeper?"

Even that suggestion failed to inveigle Job into a better humor.

"Here's a sovereign for you, Job. Now go to bed. Good-night!"

How long the distance seemed to be ere they saw the lights of Eglosilyan again! There were only one or two small points of red fire, indeed, where the inn stood. The rest of the village was buried in darkness.

"Oh, what will mother say?" Wenna said in a low voice to her sister.

"She will be very sorry we did not get away altogether," Mabyn answered. "And of course it was Mr. Roscorla who spoiled it. Nobody knew anything about it but himself. He must have run on to the inn and told some one. Wasn't it mean, Wenna? Couldn't he see that he wasn't wanted?"

"Are you talking of Mr. Roscorla?" Trelyon said: George Rosewarne was a bit ahead at this moment. "I wish to goodness I had gagged him and slung him below the phaeton. I knew he would be coming down there: I expected him every moment. Why were you so late, Mabyn?"

"Oh, you needn't blame me, Mr. Trelyon," said Mabyn, rather hurt. "You know I did everything I could for you."

"I know you did, Mabyn: I wish it had turned out better."

What was this, then, that Wenna heard as she sat there bewildered, apprehensive and sad-hearted? Had her own sister joined in this league to carry her off? It was not merely the audacity of young Trelyon that had led to their meeting. But she was altogether too frightened and wretched to be angry.

As they got down into Eglosilyan and turned the sharp corner over the bridge they did not notice the figure of a man who had been concealing himself in the darkness of a shed belonging to a slate-yard. So soon as they passed he went some little way after them until, from the bridge, he could see them stop at the door of the inn. Was it Mrs. Rosewarne who came out of the glare, and with something like a cry of delight caught her daughter in her arms? He watched the figures go inside and the phaeton drive away up the hill; then, in the perfect silence of the night, he turned and slowly made toward Basset Cottage.

CHAPTER XXXVII

AN ANGRY INTERVIEW

Next morning George Rosewarne was seated on the old oak bench in front of the inn reading a newspaper. Happening to look up, he saw Mr. Roscorla hurrying toward him over the bridge with no very pleasant expression on his face. As he came nearer he saw that the man was strangely excited. "I want to see your daughter alone," he said.

"You needn't speak as if I had tried to run away with her," Rosewarne answered, with more good-nature than was his wont. "Well, go in-doors: ask for her mother."

As Roscorla passed him there was a look in his eyes which rather startled George Rosewarne.

"Is it possible," he asked himself, "that this elderly chap is really badly in love with our Wenna?"

But another thought struck him. He suddenly jumped up, followed Roscorla into the passage, where the latter was standing, and said to him, "Don't you be too harsh with Wenna: she's only a girl, and they are all alike." This hint, however discourteous in its terms, had some significance as coming from a man who was six inches taller than Mr. Roscorla.

Mr. Roscorla was shown into an empty room. He marched up and down, looking at nothing. He was simply in an ungovernable rage. Wenna came and shut the door behind her, and for a second or so he stared at her as if expecting her to burst into passionate professions of remorse. On the contrary, there was something more than calmness in her appearance: there was the desperation of a hunted animal that is driven to turn upon its pursuer in the mere agony of helplessness.

"Well," said he—for indeed his passion almost deprived him of his power of speech—"what have you to say? Perhaps nothing. It is nothing, perhaps, to a woman to be treacherous—to tell smooth lies to your face and to go plotting against you behind your back. You have nothing to say? You have nothing to say?"

"I have nothing to say," she said with some little sadness in her voice, "that would excuse me, either to you or to myself: yes, I know that. But—but I did not intentionally deceive you."

He turned away with an angry gesture.

"Indeed, indeed I did not," she said piteously. "I had mistaken my own feelings—the temptation was too great. Oh, Mr. Roscorla, you need not say harsh things of me, for indeed I think worse of myself than you can do."

"And I suppose you want forgiveness now?" he added bitterly. "But I have had enough of that. A woman pledges you her affection, promises to marry you, professes to have no doubts as to the future; and all the while she is secretly encouraging the attentions of a young jackanapes who is playing with her and making a fool of her."

Wenna Rosewarne's cheeks began to burn red: a less angry man would have taken warning.

"Yes, playing with her and making a fool of her. And for what? To pass an idle time and make her the by-word of her neighbors."

"It is not true, it is not true," she said indignantly; and there was a dangerous light in her eyes. "If he were here, you would not dare to say such things to me—no, you would not dare."

"Perhaps you expect him to call after the pretty exploit of last night?" asked Roscorla with a sneer.

"I do not," she said. "I hope I shall never see him again. It is—it is only misery to every one." And here she broke down, in spite of herself. Her anger gave way to a burst of tears.

"But what madness is this?" Roscorla cried. "You wish never to meet him again, yet you are ready at a moment's notice to run away with him, disgracing yourself and your family. You make promises about never seeing him: you break them the instant you get the opportunity. You profess that your girlish fancy for a barber's block of a fellow has been got over; and then, as soon as one's back is turned, you reveal your hypocrisy."

"Indeed I did not mean to deceive you," she said imploringly. "I did believe that all that was over and gone. I thought it was a foolish fancy."

"And now?" said he hotly.

"Oh, Mr. Roscorla, you ought to pity me instead of being angry with me. I do love him: I cannot help it. You will not ask me to marry you? See, I will undertake not to marry him—I will undertake never to see him again—if only you will not ask me to keep my promise to you. How can I? How can I?"

"Pity you! and these are the confessions you make!" he exclaimed. "Why, are you not ashamed of yourself to say such things to me? And so you would undertake not to marry him? I know what your undertakings are worth."

He had struck her hard—his very hardest indeed—but she would not suffer herself to reply, for she believed she deserved far more punishment than he could inflict. All that she could hope for, all that her whole nature cried out for, was that he should not think her treacherous. She had not intentionally deceived him. She had not planned that effort at escape. But when, in a hurried and pathetic fashion, she endeavored to explain all this to him, he would not listen. He angrily told her he knew well how women could gloss over such matters. He was no schoolboy to be hoodwinked. It was not as if she had had no warning: her conduct before had been bad enough, when it was possible to overlook it on the score of carelessness, but now it was such as would disgrace any woman who knew her honor was concerned in holding to the word she had spoken.

"And what is he?" he cried, mad with wrath and jealousy. "An ignorant booby! a ploughboy! a lout who has neither the manners of a gentleman nor the education of a day-laborer."

"Yes, you may well say such things of him now," said she with her eyes flashing, "when his back is turned. You would not say so if he were here. But he—yes, if he were here—he would tell you what he thinks of you, for he is a gentleman, and not a coward."

Angry as he was, Mr. Roscorla was astounded. The fire in her eyes, the flush in her cheeks, the impetuosity of her voice—were these the patient Wenna of old? But a girl betrays herself sometimes if she happens to have to defend her lover.

"Oh it is shameful of you to say such things!" she said. "And you know they are not true. There is not any one I have ever seen who is so manly and frank and unselfish as Mr. Trelyon—not any one; and if I have seen that, if I have admired it too much, well, that is a great misfortune, and I have to suffer for it."

"To suffer? yes," said he bitterly. "That is a pretty form of suffering that makes you plan a runaway marriage—a marriage that would bring into your possession the largest estates in the north of Cornwall. A very pretty form of suffering! May I ask when the experiment is to be repeated?"

"You may insult me as you like—I am only a woman," she said.

"Insult you?" he cried with fresh vehemence. "Is it insult to speak the truth? Yesterday forenoon, when I saw you, you were all smiles and smoothness. When I spoke of our marriage you made no objection. But all the same you knew that at night—"

"I did not know—I did not know," she said. "You ought to believe me when I tell you I knew no more about it than you did. When I met him there at night, it was all so sudden, so unexpected, I scarcely knew what I said; but now—but now I have time to think. Oh, Mr. Roscorla, don't think that I do not regret it. I will do anything you ask me—I will promise what you please—indeed, I will undertake never to see him again as long as I live in this world; only, you won't ask me to keep my promise to you?"

He made no reply to this offer, for a step outside the door caused him to mutter something very like an oath between his teeth. The door was thrown open. Mabyn marched in, a little pale, but very erect.

"Mabyn, leave us alone for a moment or two," said Wenna, turning away so as to hide the tears on her face.

"I will not. I want to speak a word or two to Mr. Roscorla."

"Mabyn, I want you to go away just now."

Mabyn went over to her sister and took her by the hand: "Wenna, dear, go away to your own room. You've had quite enough—you are trembling all over. I suppose he'll make me tremble next."

"Really, I think your interference is lather extraordinary, Miss Mabyn," said Mr. Roscorla, striving to contain his rage.

"I beg your pardon," said Mabyn meekly. "I only want to say a word or two. Wouldn't it be better here than before the servants?" With that she led Wenna away. In a minute or two she returned.

Mr. Roscorla would rather have been shut up in a den with a hungry tigress. "I am quite at your service," he said with a bitter irony. "I suppose you have some very important communication to make, considering the way in which you—"

"Interfered? Yes, it is time that I interfered," Mabyn said, still quite calm and a trifle pale. "Mr. Roscorla, to be frank, I don't like you, and perhaps I am not quite fair to you. I am only a young girl, and don't know what the world would say about your relations with Wenna. But Wenna is my sister, and I see she is wretched; and her wretchedness—Well, that comes of her engagement to you."

She was standing before him with her eyes cast down, apparently determined to be very moderate in her speech. But there was a cruel frankness in her words which hurt Mr. Roscorla a good deal more than any tempest of passion into which she might have worked herself. "Is that all?" said he. "You have not startled me with any revelations."

"I was going to say," continued Mabyn, "that a gentleman who has really a regard for a girl would not insist on her keeping a promise which only rendered her unhappy. I don't see what you are to gain by it. I suppose you—you expect Wenna to marry you? Well, I dare say if you called on her to punish herself that way, she might do it. But what good would that do you? Would you like to have a wife who was in love with another man?"

"You have become quite logical, Miss Mabyn," said he, "and argument suits you better than getting into a rage. And much of what you say is quite true. You are a very young girl. You don't know much of what the world would say about anything. But being furnished with these admirable convictions, did it never occur to you that you might not be acting wisely in blundering into an affair of which you know nothing?"

The coldly sarcastic fashion in which he spoke threatened to disturb Mabyn's forced equanimity. "Know nothing?" she said. "I know everything about it, and I can see that my sister is miserable: that is sufficient reason for my interference. Mr. Roscorla, you won't ask her to marry you?"

Had the proud and passionate Mabyn condescended to make an appeal to her ancient enemy? At last she raised her eyes, and they seemed to plead for mercy.

"Come, come," he said, roughly: "I've had enough of all this sham beseeching. I know what it means. Trelyon is a richer man than I am: she has let her idle girlish notions go dreaming day-dreams, and so I am expected to stand aside. There has been enough of this nonsense. She is not a child; she knows what she undertook of her own free will; and she knows she can get rid of this school-girl fancy directly if she chooses. I, for one, won't help her to disgrace herself."

Mabyn began to breathe a little more quickly. She had tried to be reasonable; she had even humbled herself and begged from him; now there was a sensation in her chest as of some rising emotion that demanded expression in quick words. "You will try to make her marry you?" said she, looking him in the face.

"I will try to do nothing of the sort," said he. "She can do as she likes. But she knows what an honorable woman would do."

"And I," said Mabyn, her temper at length quite getting the better of her, "I know what an honorable man would do. He would refuse to bind a girl to a promise which she fears. He would consider her happiness to be of more importance than his comfort. Why, I don't believe you care at all whether Wenna marries you or not: it is only you can't bear her being married to the man she really does love. It is only envy, that's what it is. Oh, I am ashamed to think there is a man alive who would force a girl into becoming his wife on such terms!"

"There is certainly one considerable objection to my marrying your sister," said he with great politeness. "The manners of some of her relatives might prove embarrassing."

"Yes, that is true enough," Mabyn said with hot cheeks. "If ever I became a relative of yours, my manners no doubt would embarrass you very considerably. But I am not a relative of yours as yet, nor is my sister."

"May I consider that you have said what you had to say?" said he, taking up his hat.

Proud and angry, and at the same time mortified by her defeat, Mabyn found herself speechless. He did not offer to shake hands with her. He bowed to her in passing out. She made the least possible acknowledgment, and then she was alone. Of course a hearty cry followed. She felt she had done no good. She had determined to be calm, whereas all the calmness had been on his side, and she had been led into speaking in a manner which a discreet and well-bred young lady would have shrunk from in horror. Mabyn sat still and sobbed, partly in anger and partly in disappointment: she dared not even go to tell her sister.

But Mr. Roscorla, as he went over the bridge again and went up to Basset Cottage, had lost all his assumed coolness of judgment and demeanor. He felt he had been tricked by Wenna and insulted by Mabyn, while his rival had established a hold which it would be in vain for him to seek to remove. He was in a passion of rage. He would not go near Wenna again. He would at once set off for London, and enjoy himself there while his holiday lasted: he would not write a word to her; then, when the time arrived, he would set sail for Jamaica, leaving her to her own conscience. He was suffering a good deal from anger, envy and jealousy, but he was consoled by the thought that she was suffering more. And he reflected, with some comfort to himself, that she would scarcely so far demean herself as to marry Harry Trelyon so long as she knew in her heart what he, Roscorla, would think of her for so doing.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE OLD, HALF-FORGOTTEN JOKE

"Has he gone?" Wenna asked of her sister the next day.

"Yes, he has," Mabyn answered with a proud and revengeful face. "It was quite true what Mrs. Cornish told me: I've no doubt she had her instructions. He has just driven away to Launceston on his way to London."

"Without a word?"

"Would you like to have had another string of arguments?" Mabyn said impatiently. "Oh, Wenna, you don't know what mischief all this is doing. You are awake all night, you cry half the day: what is to be the end of it? You will work yourself into a fever."

"Yes, there must be an end of it," Wenna said with decision—"not for myself alone, but for others. That is all the reparation I can make now. No girl in all this country has ever acted so badly as I have done: just look at the misery I have caused; but now—"

"There is one who is miserable because he loves you," Mabyn said.

"Do you think that Mr. Roscorla has no feelings? You are so unjust to him! Well, it does not matter now: all this must come to an end. Mabyn, I should like to see Mr. Trelyon, if just for one minute."

"What will you say to him, Wenna?" her sister said with a sudden fear.

"Something that it is necessary to say to him, and the sooner it is over the better."

Mabyn rather dreaded the result of this interview; and yet, she reflected to herself, here was an opportunity for Harry Trelyon to try to win some promise from her sister. Better, in any case, that they should meet than that Wenna should simply drive him away into banishment without a word of explanation.

The meeting was easily arranged. On the next morning, long before Wenna's daily round of duties had commenced, the two sisters left the inn, and went over the bridge and out to the bold promontory of black rock at the mouth of the harbor. There was nobody about. This October morning was more like a summer day: the air was mild and still, the blue sky without a cloud; the shining sea plashed around the rocks with the soft murmuring noise of a July calm. It was on these rocks long ago that Wenna Rosewarne had pledged herself to become the wife of Mr. Roscorla; and at that time life had seemed to her, if not brilliant and beautiful, at least grateful and peaceful. Now all the peace had gone out of it.

"Oh, my darling!" Trelyon said when she advanced alone toward him—for Mabyn had withdrawn—"it is so good of you to come! Wenna, what has frightened you?"

He had seized both her hands in his, but she took them away again. For one brief second her eyes had met his, and there was a sort of wistful and despairing kindliness in them: then she stood before him, with her face turned away from him, and her voice low and tremulous. "I did wish to see you—for once, for the last time," she said. "If you had gone away, you would have carried with you cruel thoughts of me. I wish to ask your forgiveness—"

"My forgiveness?"

"Yes, for all that you may have suffered, and for all that may trouble you in the future—not in the long future, but for the little time you will remember what has taken place here. Mr. Trelyon, I—I did not know. Indeed, it is all a mystery to me now, and a great misery." Her lips began to quiver, but she controlled herself. "And surely it will only be for a short time, if you think of it at all. You are young—you have all the world before you. When you go away among other people, and see all the different things that interest a young man, you will soon forget whatever has happened here."

"And you say that to me," he said, "and you said the other night that you loved me! It is nothing, then, for people who love each other to go away and be consoled, and never see each other again?"

Again the lips quivered: he had no idea of the terrible effort that was needed to keep this girl calm. "I did say that," she said.

"And it was true?" he broke in.

"It was true then—it is true now: that is all the misery of it," she exclaimed, with tears starting to her eyes.

"And you talk of our being separated for ever!" he cried. "No, not if I can help it. Mabyn has told me of all your scruples: they are not worth looking at. I tell you you are no more bound to that man than Mabyn is, and that isn't much. If he is such a mean hound as to insist on your marrying him, then I will appeal to your father and mother, and they must prevent him. Or I will go to him myself and settle the matter in a shorter way."