CHAPTER XIII ‘NOT AS A CHILD SHALL WE AGAIN BEHOLD HER.’

Maurice Clissold went back to Cornwall next day, with full powers, so far as Justina’s interests were concerned. Her greatest anxiety was to see the unhappy mother from whom she had been severed since the hour of her birth; but to bring about a meeting between these two was not the easiest thing in the world. Other interests were at stake. The Albert Theatre could not get on without Justina, or so the manager affirmed; and Justina’s engagement was for the entire season. No breaking it, save by forfeiture of reputation with the public, and at the hazard of a lawsuit.

The only thing to be done was to bring Muriel nearer London so soon as she should be strong enough to bear the journey. Maurice hoped much from the daughter’s influence upon the mother’s disordered brain. He was at Borcel End by eight o’clock in the evening—neither Mr. Trevanard nor his son suspecting that their erratic guest had been further than Seacomb—and found the aspect of things improving. Muriel was calmer; the burns had proved of the slightest, and all was going on favourably. He went in and sat by her bedside for a few minutes, and talked to her. The wan eyes looked at him calmly enough, but with a curious wonder. He found that she remembered nothing of the fire, and had no idea why she had been ill and in pain. But she did remember the promise he had made her about her daughter.

‘Some one told me I should see my baby again,’ she said. ‘I don’t know who it was, but some one told me so, and I know that I shall see her—when we meet our friends in heaven.’

‘You shall see her here, on this earth,’ said Maurice.

‘Is that true?’

‘Quite true.’

‘Then let me go to sleep till she comes. Lay her here beside me, and let me find her here when I open my eyes—my sweet baby!’

‘Consider how many years have come and gone since you saw her. She is an infant no longer, but a beautiful young woman.’

Muriel stared at him with a puzzled look. ‘I don’t want to see any young women; I want my baby again—the little baby my mother stole from me.’

This made things difficult. Maurice saw in this a fond clinging to the past, memory strong enough to make the lapse of years as nothing. He made no attempt to argue the point, but left Muriel to the devoted grandmother’s care.

The blind woman sat in her easy chair by the bed, knitting industriously, and murmuring a soothing word now and then. No voice had such power to comfort Muriel.

‘When shall I see my niece, and when will you tell father?’ Martin asked, eagerly, directly he and Maurice were alone together.

‘You shall see your niece as soon as your sister is strong enough to bear a journey, when you can bring her up to some quiet little place in the neighbourhood of London. As for your father, I think my chain of evidence is now so complete that I cannot tell him too soon. I will get a quiet hour with him to-morrow after breakfast, if I can. Later I am going to the Manor House to examine my ground and discover if there is any chance of a friendly compromise.’

‘I hope you’ll be able to settle things pleasantly,’ said Martin. ‘I can’t bear the idea of those poor young ladies—Mrs. Penwyn and Miss Bellingham—being turned out of house and home.’

‘It shall not be so bad as that, depend upon it,’ replied Maurice.

He was down early next morning, and asked Mr. Trevanard for half an hour’s conversation after breakfast.

‘An hour, if you like,’ answered Michael, in his listless way. ‘There’s not much for me to do upon the farm. I only potter about; the men would get on quite as well without me, I dare say.’

‘I can’t believe that, Mr. Trevanard,’ said Maurice, cheerily. ‘The master’s eye—you know the old adage?’

‘Bridget was the ruling mind, sir. Bridget was worth twenty of me!’

It was a cold and blusterous morning—the dead leaves falling fast from the few trees about Borcel, but Michael and his companion were fond of the open air, so they went out into the neglected garden, a wilderness where Muriel had been wont to range alone and at liberty for the last twenty years.

Here, in a narrow path screened by hazel bushes, the farmer and Maurice Clissold paced up and down while Maurice told his story, taking care to soften Bridget Trevanard’s part in the domestic tragedy, and to demonstrate that, when erring most, she had been actuated only by regard for the family honour, and a mistaken family pride.

Michael heard him with deepest emotion.

‘My poor girl!—my beautiful Muriel! You don’t know how proud I was of her—how I doted on her and to think that I should never have suspected that all was not well, that my poor child was being ill-used in her own home.’

‘Not ill-used,’ remonstrated Maurice, pleading for the dead wife who had trusted him with her secret. ‘There was no unkindness.’

‘No unkindness? They made her suffer shame, they refused to believe in her purity; was that no unkindness? They robbed her of her child! For what? The world’s good word! I would have stood between my darling and the world. None should have dared to slander her while I was near. What right had my wife to take this matter into her own hands—to hoodwink me with her secrecies and suppressions? I would have stood by my child. Muriel would have trusted me. Yes, she would have trusted her indulgent old father, even if she feared to confide in her mother. Bridget was always too severe.’

‘Remember that your wife erred in her anxiety for your good name.’

‘Yes, yes, I know that. God knows, it goes hard with me to speak against her in her grave—poor faithful soul! She was faithful according to her notion of right. But she took too much heed of the world—her world—half a dozen families within five miles of Borcel. The sun, and moon, and heaven, and all God’s angels were not so much account to her. Poor soul! She must have suffered. I’ve seen the lines of trouble growing deeper in her face, and never knew why they came there. My poor, trampled-upon Muriel! It was a cruel thing to send away the child. I could have loved it dearly!’

‘You will love her dearly still, when I bring her to you.’

‘Yes, but not as I could have loved her twenty years ago—when she was a helpless infant. My firstborn grandchild.’

The idea that this grandchild of his was the rightful owner of the Penwyn estate, Borcel End included, moved Michael Trevanard but slightly. He was not calm enough to consider this business from a worldly point of view. He could only think of the grandchild that was born under his roof, and spirited away while he lay in his bed, unsuspecting of the evil that was being wrought for love of his good name. He could only think of the persecuted daughter whose life had been made so bitter—of the husband who had never lived to acknowledge his wife—the father who had never known of his child’s birth. The thought of these things altogether absorbed his mind, and he scarcely realized the fact of his grandchild’s claim to wealth and position.

‘And where is she? What is she doing now—Muriel’s daughter—my grandchild?’ he asked.

Maurice explained Justina’s position.

‘What!’ cried the old man, with a wry face, ‘a play actress? Raddled red and white, and in short petticoats all over tinsel stars, capering outside a show?’ his only notion of actresses was founded on his experiences at Seacomb cattle fair—‘do you mean to say that my flesh and blood has come to that?’

Maurice hastened to correct the farmer’s idea of the dramatic profession, and to assure him that his granddaughter was to all intents and purposes a lady; modest, refined in feeling and in manner, beautiful in mind and person, a grandchild of whom he had ample reason to be proud.

‘A London theatre is not in the least like those itinerant playhouses you have seen at Seacomb fair,’ he said.

‘Humph! They don’t dance outside, I suppose? or play the Pandean pipes, and beat a gong?’

‘Nothing approaching it. You might mistake a London theatre for a church, looking at its outside.’

‘And they don’t raddle their faces, eh?’

‘Oh dear no!’ Maurice replied, with a faint twinge in that region of his sensorium which phrenologists appropriate to conscientiousness. ‘Not in the least. In short, acting in London is high art.’

‘And no short petticoats and tinsel stars, eh?’

‘No tinsel stars! Nor does your granddaughter ever appear in short petticoats. She is a most refined and elegant actress, and I know that whether you see her on or off the stage, you will be equally charmed with her.’

‘I shall love her for Muriel’s sake,’ answered Michael Trevanard, tenderly. ‘Yes, I should love her dearly; even if she raddled her cheeks and danced outside a show at a fair!’