Only a clod
“I wish you welcome, Mr. Tredethlyn,” she said; and then, with something
like sadness in her tone, “If the money _was_ to go away from her,
better that it should go to you than to strangers. I don’t think that
you’d turn your back upon her, if she was to need your help; would you
now, Mr. Francis?”
“Turn my back upon her!” cried the young man,--“turn my back upon my
cousin Susy! Do you think I want the money that ought to have been hers?
With God’s blessing, I will go to the end of the world to find my poor
little girl. But tell me--tell me all about it, Martha. I know you are a
good creature. I know you were fond of Susan, though you seemed hard and
stern, like the old man. Tell me all you know about my lost cousin, and
don’t fear but I’ll make good use of my knowledge.”
“It isn’t much I have to tell, sir,” answered the housekeeper, very
gravely. “You remember old Mr. Restwick, of Pen Gorbold. Folks say that
he’s almost as rich as our master was. However it is, he and master were
always fast friends; and when Mrs. Restwick had been dead a little over
a twelvemonth, he and master seemed to get friendlier than ever, and was
always laying their heads together about something, old Restwick hanging
about this place, and sitting in our kitchen, and in this very room--for
master made quite a fuss with the old man, and would sit in the parlour
on his account--all the summer time. Miss Susan usen’t to like the old
man, but she daredn’t say as much, seeing as he was her father’s friend.
Heaven, as looks down upon me, knows, Mr. Francis, than the real reason
of old Restwick pottering about our place night after night never came
into my head, no more than if it had been so much Greek or Latin. But
one night--one quiet summer evening, after such a day as to-day--the
truth came out all at once; and it came upon Susan Tredethlyn as it came
upon me--like a thunderbolt. Can you guess what it was, Mr. Francis?”
“No!” exclaimed the young man, staring at Martha Dryscoll with a
bewildered expression on his face.
“Nor any one else, Mr. Francis, that wasn’t so wrapped up in the love of
his money that the very heart inside of him had turned to stuff as hard
as big golden guineas, or harder; for there’s some kind of furnace as
will melt _them_, isn’t there, Mr. Francis? On the night I am telling
you of, my master told Susan the meaning of old Restwick’s visits. She
was to marry him--poor, pretty young thing. He’d promise to make such
and such--settlements--I think master called ’em, and she’d be mistress
of Pen Gorbold farm, and one of the richest women in this part of the
country. The poor dear only gave one shriek, Mr. Francis, and fell down
upon the floor at her father’s feet as white and as quiet as a corpse.”
“The hard-hearted villain!” cried Francis, pacing up and down the room;
“the infernal villain!”
“She didn’t lie there long; she wasn’t let to do that. Mr. Tredethlyn
lifted her up by the arm, and set her on her feet, fierce and
savage-like; and when she opened her eyes, and looked about her, all
stupefied and bewildered, he began to talk to her. It was cruel talk to
hear from a father to his child; it was a cruel sight to see her
trembling and shivering, and only held from falling by his hard hand
clenched upon her arm. I tried to interfere between them, Mr. Francis;
but my master let his daughter drop into a chair, and pushed me out of
the room. Me and Jonathan was sleeping in the room over the stables
then, and Mr. Tredethlyn took me by the shoulders, and put me out of the
door that opens from the kitchen into the stone-yard at back. I heard
the door bolted against me, and I knew I could be no help or comfort to
that poor child all night. The door’s thick, but I could just hear Susan
Tredethlyn’s sobs now and then, like as if they’d been blown towards me
on the winds, and her father’s voice speaking loud and stern; I listened
till all seemed quiet, and I was in hopes his heart was softened towards
her. But when I got up at four o’clock next morning--for it was
harvest-time, and we were very busy--Susan Tredethlyn’s room was empty,
and the front door was unlocked and unbolted. She’d run away, Mr.
Francis; she’d let herself out some time in the night, and run away.
There was a little scrap of a shawl she used to wear hanging to the
latch of the door. That was bad news for me to tell my master, Mr.
Francis; but I had to tell it. He turned white, and glared at me for a
minute just like a wild beast, and there was a choking, gurgling kind of
noise in his throat. But he was as quiet after that one minute as if he
had been made of iron. ‘So much the better, Mrs. Dryscoll,’ he said, ‘an
undutiful daughter isn’t worth the meat she eats.’”
“But he went after her,” said Francis; “surely he made some attempt to
bring her back? He didn’t let a poor ignorant girl go out into the world
without a friend--without a sixpence?”
“She had a little money, Mr. Francis. Her father had given her a
sovereign on her birthday every year for the last ten years, making her
promise to save the money. She had saved the money, for she had no
chance to spend it, poor child; and she took that money with her, for
when I looked about her room I missed the little box she used to keep it
in. As to looking for her, Mr. Tredethlyn never stirred hand or foot to
do it, though I went on my bended knees to him, begging and praying of
him to bring her back. As to me, Mr. Francis, I’m but a poor ignorant
countrywoman, that never learned to read and write till I was getting on
for thirty; but I got my husband to go to Falmouth with an advertisement
for the county paper, saying as ‘S. T. was to remember she had a true
friend in M. D., and was to be sure and write to her whenever she wanted
help.’ I daredn’t say more, sir; and I think when master saw that
advertisement he knew what it meant, for he glared at me across the
paper, just as he glared at me when I told him his daughter was gone.”
“And he never relented--he never softened towards that poor unhappy
girl?”
“For three years, sir, he never mentioned her name. Night after night
he’d sit and write, and make out his accounts, and calculate his
profits, and such-like, and he’d talk to me fast enough about the
business of the farm; but he never spoke his daughter’s name. One day he
got a letter directed in her hand. I took it from the postman at
Landresdale myself one afternoon when I was down there marketing, and I
wrote down the post-mark that was on it, and that was all I ever knew of
that letter. When my master saw the hand, he came over all of a tremble
like, and there was something awful in the sight of that stern old man
trembling and shivering like as if he had been stricken by the palsy;
but he got over it in a minute, and read the letter, me watching him all
the time. If his face had been stone, it couldn’t have told less. He
crumpled up the letter and put it in his pocket, and for three months he
never spoke of that nor of his daughter. Yet I knew somehow that he
thought of her; for a kind of change came over him, and he seemed always
brooding, brooding, brooding; and he’d start up all of a sudden when we
was all sitting of a night quiet in this kitchen--he’d start up as if he
was going right away, and then heave a long sigh, and sit down again.
But he never said anything about what was in his thoughts, till one
morning he came to me, and said very quietly, ‘Pack me some clothes in a
carpet-bag, Mrs. Dryscoll. I’m going to London to look for my daughter.’
My husband and him went on foot down to Landresdale to catch the
Falmouth coach; but our master never came back. The next news as we
heard of him, Mr. Francis, came to us a month after he’d left. It was a
letter from the lawyers, to say that Mr. Oliver Tredethlyn was dead.”
“And is that all?”
“Yes, Mr. Francis; I can tell you no more. My master was a good master
to me, and I served him faithfully, and worked hard to save his money.
But things have all seemed to come before me in a new light since that
night when I saw Susan Tredethlyn fall white and cold at her father’s
feet, and him without pity for her. It seems as if I’d been stone-blind
up to that time, Mr. Francis; and my eyes was opened all of a sudden;
and I saw that we’d been all wicked heathens, making an idol out of
money that had never brought happiness or comfort to any living
creature; least of all to ourselves. I saw it all at once that night,
Mr. Francis, and I knew that our lives had been wrong somehow.”
Martha Dryscoll spoke very earnestly. She was a good woman, after her
own manner; eager to do her duty to the uttermost, grateful for small
favours, faithful and affectionate. A noble heart beat in that
grenadier-like form, a gentle spirit looked out of those hard gray eyes.
She told the story of her young mistress’s flight with a sorrowful
solemnity, undisturbed by tears. Perhaps her hard childhood, her bitter
youth, her joyless middle life had dried up the source of that tender
womanly emotion; for Martha Dryscoll had never been seen by living
witnesses to shed a tear. She unlocked a grim-looking workbox, and took
from it a little pocket-book, out of which she tore a leaf.
“That’s the name that was on the post-mark, Mr. Francis,” she said,
handing the paper to Mr. Tredethlyn.
The young man read the word Coltonslough.
“Coltonslough,” he repeated, “I never heard of a place of that name. But
I’ll find it, if it’s the most obscure spot upon the earth. God bless
you, Martha Dryscoll, for I believe you’re a good woman.”
He held out his hand, and grasped the housekeeper’s bony fingers as he
spoke.
“We’ve been awaiting--me and the master--for orders from you as to what
we was to do, sir. We’re ready to serve you faithful, if you want our
service; but we’re ready to leave the old place, if we’re any burden
upon you. You’ll be coming to settle here, maybe?”
“No,” answered Francis Tredethlyn, with something of a shudder. “If I’d
found Susan here, as I once thought to find her, I should have been glad
enough to settle somewhere in these parts. As it is, there’s something
in the place that gives me the heartache, and I doubt if I shall ever
come near it again. Whatever wages you and your husband had in my
uncle’s time shall be doubled from to-night, Mrs. Dryscoll; and if my
cousin Susan is still alive, and should ever find her way back to this
place, I should like her to see a light burning in the old window, and
to find a faithful friend ready to bid her welcome home.”
Francis Tredethlyn did not linger very long in the house where a great
part of his boyhood had been spent. Martha’s husband came in presently,
smelling very strongly of cowhouse and stable, and the two would fain
have given Mr. Tredethlyn a detailed account of their stewardship: but
the young man had no heart to listen to them. What did it matter to him
that he was the poorer by the death of an Alderney cow on the
pasture-farm down in the valley, or the richer by a great sheep-shearing
season on the hill? He came home to find no creature of his kith or kin.
He stood as much alone in the world as Adam before Eve was created to
bear him company; and he felt very desolate in spite of his thirty
thousand a year.
He walked back to Landresdale across the bleak moorland under the still
summer night. Away in the distance he saw the dark expanse of purple
ocean melting imperceptibly into purple sky: and vague and dim as that
shadowy distance seemed the unknown future that lay before him. He slept
at the Crown, and left Landresdale early the next morning by the
Falmouth coach, journeying Londonward: but he had by no means abandoned
his search for Susan Tredethlyn.
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CHAPTER VII.