The Wizard of West Penwith Part 17

The lady then left the room, and returned in a short time, and placed upon the table, with her own hands, a little tray containing luncheon for two,--dainty meat and wine, such as the poor girl had scarcely ever seen before. She ate ravenously, and would have drank the whole contents of the small decanter of wine, had she not been prevented. But the kindness of those few minutes had subdued her into humble submission, more than all the beatings and harsh treatment which she had before been accustomed to receive to compel obedience.

So far, all was managed easily; but the girl must sleep somewhere--unseen and unknown. There was a small apartment within that private room, which might be used as a sleeping-room. Mrs. Courland made a sign to the girl, which she quickly understood, and in her strong arms she carried in a small couch; and with shawls and rugs, which Mrs.

Courland managed to bring from other parts of the house, they made a comfortable bed and hiding-place for the stranger for the present, until Mrs. Courland could decide on the best course to be adopted.

She could scarcely make up her mind to believe it; and yet it seemed but too evident that this was the child she had grieved over so long, and so often wished and yet dreaded to see. The plainness of the girl's features she might yet get accustomed to, and art might be brought to her aid to improve her appearance;--the vulgarity in her manner might also be softened and ameliorated. But that sad calamity,--oh! that was dreadful,--no art could get rid of that.

CHAPTER XXIV.

"MAN IS BORN TO TROUBLE AND DISAPPOINTMENT, AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARDS."

Frederick Morley, in the meantime, was hastening on his journey. Love added speed to his horse's feet, and strength to the rider; and by dint of frequent changes on the road, he was not many days reaching Truro once more, where he halted to refresh himself and to deliberate on what course he should adopt.

It was a lone house, Alrina had told him in her letter, near the seaside, she believed, surrounded by a high wall, and not very far, she thought, from her former abode; because she must have been taken there during the night, so that the distance could not have been great. This was a very vague description. There were many lone houses, in those days, near the sea, surrounded by high walls;--indeed, the exception was, to see a lone house, without having a high wall round it, for the protection of the inmates against the lawless bands who infested the sea-coast in those troublous times. His course seemed to be, to go to the Land's-End at once, and see Lieut. Fowler, who might have heard something, or perhaps have seen the boy. He determined, however, to go by the road which would take him nearest to the sea; and, in his journey, he could look out for the house in which his Alrina was confined, and, to make sure of not pa.s.sing her by this time, he determined he would effect an entrance by some pretence or other, into every house he saw surrounded by high walls in the course of his journey.

Having decided on this course, and taken some refreshment, he started on his exploring expedition; but he was obliged to ride the same tired horse, for there was not another to be had in the town. The horse, however, having been well fed and groomed, the ostler a.s.sured him that the animal was as fresh as a hunter going to the meet, and would carry him a long journey yet before sunset. So Frederick mounted once more, and, with whip and spur, got over a good bit of ground in a very short time; for the horse was one of those plucky animals that will run till they drop, under the spur of an impatient rider. Frederick did not intend to be cruel; but he wanted to get on, and the horse seemed willing to go, so on they went at a good pace, and soon neared the sea-coast. The horse was flagging a little, but whip and spur kept him up to the mark, and on they went still. They pa.s.sed several farm-houses surrounded by walls; but none of them at all answered the description Alrina had given of her prison. At length Frederick thinks he sees, at some distance ahead, some high dark walls, and he fancies he discerns the roof of a house just peeping above them. "This must be the very house," cried he, in the greatest excitement; so he urged the horse on, thinking of nothing but the rescue of his Alrina. The road was rugged and the horse was tired. He stumbled over a loose stone going down a gentle declivity towards the building; and, not having sufficient strength left to save himself, he fell heavily. The rider was thrown with violence against the wall; he was stunned, and lay insensible and bleeding beneath the wall of the house he had been so anxious to reach.

The shadows of night are closing in all round, and the man and horse are still lying in that lonely road, no one having pa.s.sed since the accident, nor has the garden-door been opened. At last a boy comes out; and, seeing that some accident has happened, he returns to the house, and a man and woman come out with him and examine the bodies. The horse is dead--the man sees that at once; but the rider breathes and is bleeding still. The man goes back to the house, taking the boy with him, while the woman runs for some water, with which she bathes the face of the wounded man, and washes away the congealed blood. The man and boy presently appear again, carrying a board. The three, then, with their united strength, place the wounded man on the board, and carry him in, leaving the horse by the roadside. The wounded gentleman is placed in a comfortable bed, and the man dresses his wounds and applies remedies with considerable skill. Life is preserved, but delirium comes on, caused by a slight concussion of the brain. No surgeon is sent for;--the man says he can cure him himself; and the woman and the boy, having apparently implicit confidence in his skill, yield to his wishes. They watch with the sufferer throughout the night, and the boy is despatched, in the morning, to the nearest town, for medicines and other things necessary for the patient's use and comfort.

Several days and nights pa.s.s, and the patient is still delirious. The man continues most attentive and skilful. The patient gradually gets better. He is out of danger; and, one evening, the man, after giving the woman the most minute instructions as to her treatment of the invalid, leaves, desiring her to keep strict watch over him, and keep the doors locked, so that he may not get away from the house until his return.

The boy was left to a.s.sist the woman in attending on the invalid and keeping watch.

Frederick had now been an inmate of this lonely house about a week. He was fast recovering from the effects of the fall, but still too weak to leave his bed, although he wished most earnestly to get away, or to have his questions answered; for he didn't at all remember what took place after the horse fell, nor did he know where he was, nor who his attendants were.

The woman pretended not to know anything, and the boy generally evaded the questions, or answered very wide of them. The morning after the departure of the man, under whose skilful treatment Morley was progressing so favourably towards recovery, the boy entered the room with a cunning smile on his countenance, and said that he had a letter for the invalid.

"A letter!" said Morley, feebly, "who can possibly have written a letter to me? no one but those I have seen about me, know where I am." Taking the letter from the boy, however, he was astonished to find that it was from Alrina. He was too anxious and impatient to read it, to think of the bearer, or to ask any questions concerning the letter or its writer, until he had read its contents, which he did with such eagerness, that the boy was alarmed lest the invalid should relapse into delirium again;--not that he was easily alarmed or frightened at anything he saw or heard, but he knew that if the gentleman became delirious again, it would give him extra trouble.

In her letter, Alrina complained of her lot. She had thought, she said, that Frederick would, at least, have written her a line in reply to her first letter. She felt, now, that she was deserted by all. Everything seemed going against her. Her aunt had not returned yet; but her father came frequently, and she felt convinced there was some terrible secret, which they endeavoured to keep from her, but she was determined to find it out. The boy seemed willing to befriend her, she said, but she was almost afraid to trust him. And so she went on to the end of the letter, in the same desponding strain; winding up by asking Frederick, if he really loved her to lose no time in coming to her rescue, or, at least, to write a line, that she might know there was, at least, one person in the world who cared for her. It was a melancholy letter from beginning to end, and its perusal made her lover wretched. She was evidently under restraint somewhere; but where? that was the question: even if he knew, it was impossible for him to go to her at present; he was too weak. The boy who brought her letter might know something, and he turned to ask him, but he had left the room. He tried to get up; the exertion was too much for him, and he sank back on his pillow again. His only resource was to read the letter again and again. The more he reflected on Alrina's position, however, and on the unfortunate circ.u.mstances which had prevented his receiving her first letter in time, and his consequent inability to render her that a.s.sistance and consolation which he would have given worlds to have been able to do, the more irritated and unhappy did he feel; so that when the boy returned, he was in such a high state of excitement, that his attendant was afraid, at first, to go near him.

The wish for further information, however, which he believed the boy could give him, caused Morley to subdue his feelings, and to induce him, by the promise of a reward, to be a little more communicative than he had hitherto been. By degrees, the boy approached the bed cautiously, when Morley asked him, as mildly as he could, when and where he had received the letter, and if he knew where Alrina was at that moment confined, with many other questions too numerous for the boy to answer without a little time and consideration. Before he answered any of them, therefore, he gave that cunning smile, which had so annoyed Morley before, and which now irritated him beyond measure, when he was so anxious to hear something of her to whom he felt he had unwittingly given cause for complaint; but he soon saw that he should get nothing out of the boy by threats or angry expressions, so he changed his tactics, and extracted the information he wanted by asking one question at a time. That was certainly the oddest boy he had ever met with, he thought; for, although, judging from his diminutive stature, no one would have supposed him to be above eight or nine years of age, yet, from his shrewd knowledge of the world, and aged expression of countenance, he might have been eight- or nine-and-twenty. He was the same boy whom Mr. Brown formerly employed to look after his mare; and it was said, even then, and generally believed, that he was in constant attendance on Mr. Freeman, and knew a good many of his secrets.

He was found one night, when quite an infant, lying at the door of a farm-house in the neighbourhood of St. Just, wrapped up in coa.r.s.e flannel; but it was never discovered who put him there, nor who the child's parents were. He was placed in the poor-house; and when he was old enough, he was apprenticed to one of the farmers of the district; but he would never settle down under one master,--and after trying to subdue him, without success, his master gave him up to his own inclinations, and so he got his living by doing odd jobs. From his constant intercourse with Mr. Freeman, he lost the broad Cornish dialect in a measure, and only spoke in that way when he was a.s.sociating with the miners. He was fond of going into Penzance and mixing with the gentlemen's servants there occasionally, from whom he picked up many a slang expression, which he would retail to the frequenters of Mr.

Brown's bar, very much to their amus.e.m.e.nt. He was an awkward individual to gain information from; so Morley was obliged to deal with him accordingly, and put his questions with caution:--

(_Morley_) "I think I have seen you before, my boy?"

(_Boy_) "I shouldn't wonder if you had, sir; and, maybe, I've seed you before."

(_Morley_) "You kept that mare like a picture;--I never saw a better groom, either at home or abroad."

(_Boy--smiling_) "It wasn't much odds, as it turned out, sir."

(_Morley_) "No, no; but that doesn't alter the fact of your ability as groom. Now, tell me--there's a good fellow--who gave you that letter."

(_Boy--still pleased_) "Why, Miss Reeney, to be sure."

(_Morley--excited_) "What! Alrina herself? Where did you see her?"

(_Boy--putting on his cunning look again_) "Where? why here, to be sure."

(_Morley--more excited_) "Here! what, in this house?"

(_Boy_) "To be sure; why not? She called to me through the keyhole upstairs, and shoved the letter out under the door, and told me to take it as before. I couldn't ask her anything, for I heard Mrs. Cooper coming upstairs."

(_Morley--rising up in bed in the greatest excitement_) "Oh! take me to her!--or, stay, take a message to her at once; tell her I am----"

(_Boy_) "Stop, stop, sir; you must lend me a horse to do that."

(_Morley_) "I thought you said she was here, in this house."

(_Boy_) "So she was; but 'The Maister' took her off with him last night."

(_Morley_) "Then that was Mr. Freeman who attended me; and Alrina has been here all the time, and did not come near me! Oh! cruel, cruel! she must be offended, indeed. Didn't she ask or try to come to see me?"

(_Boy_) "No, she didn't, sir, 'cause she didn't know you was here."

(_Morley_) "Not know it? strange!"

(_Boy_) "Nothing strange at all, sir, that I can see; I have seed stranger things than that, a bra' deal. She was kept at the top of the house, and you down here--under lock and key, both of 'ee; and last night 'The Maister' took her off with him. Where they're gone, I can't say,--I heard 'The Maister' tell Mrs. Cooper something about America."

(_Morley_) "America! do you think he intends to go there?"

(_Boy_) "I do no more know than you do, sir. F'rall I've b'en with 'The Maister' so often, an' have seed a good many of his quips and quirks, and helped in them too, I do no more know what he do main by what he do say, than a cheeld unborn. He ha' got something upon his mind, that's a sure thing."

The boy was beginning to throw off his reserve, as Morley thus cautiously questioned him; but he saw that if he put his questions too pointedly, the boy would "shut up" again; so he asked a few gossipping questions about Mr. and Mrs. Brown, and Mrs. Trenow, which took the boy off his guard, and he went on talking. It seemed at last as if it were a relief to him to talk of "The Maister," as he called Mr. Freeman, in common with most people of the neighbourhood,--and, in relieving his pent-up mind, he told, perhaps, more than he intended; but he seemed to feel that Mr. Morley was a gentleman who wouldn't betray him, and so he threw off his reserve and trusted him.

"You've heard of Chapel Carn Brea, I s'pose, sir?" asked the boy.

"Yes; I've been there," replied Morley; "it is one of the curiosities of the neighbourhood. No doubt it was a handsome building at one time; and those mounds near it are tombs, no doubt."

"You're right, sir," said the boy; "I've heard 'The Maister' tell stories in Mr. Brown's bar, about that place, that would make your hair stand on end, ef you b'lieved it all. The men he told it to, b'lieved every word; and they wud no more go anist Chapel Carn Brea in the night, than they wud clunk boiling lead. I've b'en there by night an' by day; for I wor curious to find out somethen'."

"You were not likely to find anything there," said Morley, carelessly--which threw the boy completely off his guard; and, being in a communicative mood, he went on,--

"I saw something there one night, that made me feel uncommon queer, sure nuf; and I b'lieve that 'The Maister' ha' got some notion that I do knaw somethen'; for he slocked me up there for to try to frighten me more than once. It was somethen' that I'm sure he must have put there inside one of the walls, that went off like a clap of thunder, and frightened the mare, that night when I was throwed; and I'm sure 'twas his doing, for, when I came to myself, I was upon a bed in 'The Maister's' house, and n.o.body but his sister knaw'd a word about et. He gave me some stuff, and I soon got about agen. He went out the next morning, and Miss Freeman kept me there under lock and key; and when he came home in the afternoon, he told all about the mare, and how poor Mr. Brown was sitting down 'pon a rock by hisself, fretting about it, and he sent me up to bring him home."

"So you never saw anything more than that at Chapel Carn Brea, after all?" said Morley, by way of bringing the boy back to the secret he seemed about to tell,--for he saw, by his manner, there was something more, and he was anxious to know all he could about this man, although his thoughts were, even then, dwelling, with intense anxiety, on the probable sufferings, both in body and mind, of his Alrina.

"Iss I have," cried the boy, eagerly; "but I never told it to a single soul, from that time to this. Now, mind, you must promise that you'll never tell." And, without waiting for the promise, he went on eagerly with his tale. "When 'The Maister' came here to live first," resumed the boy, "I was but a little chap."

"So I should suppose," said Morley, smiling, "even if you were in existence, which I very much doubt,--for that must be fourteen or fifteen years ago, according to the account of Mrs. Brown and Josiah Trenow, and others of the neighbourhood; so I fancy you are about to tell me a tale in imitation of your master."

"No, no," replied the boy; "you don't know what I'm going to tell, and p'rhaps you won't. I'm older than I do look, I can tell 'ee. I'm no cheeld, f'rall I do look like one to a stranger, I dare say."

"Well, how old are you?" said Morley; "for I confess I have been puzzled several times as to your age. In stature you are but a very little boy; but when I look into your face, and hear your shrewd remarks, I fancy you may be almost any age."