Читать книгу A Woman of Samaria - Rita - Страница 11

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Thus time marked its changes in the passage of years that still left unexplained the mystery of Dolores' fate.

Miss Webbe, in her Cornish cottage, pondered often on the subject. She lived quite alone with the old servant from the Vicarage as her housekeeper and attendant, and years of faithful service having given a certain right to confidence, it happened that mistress and maid talked often together of the absent girl, whom both had loved and tended from infancy to that time of sudden disappearance.

Once in every year Miss Webbe went to London to spend a month with her friend Mrs. Sylvester, and each time returned with a promise that her friend would come and spend a few weeks with her; but the promise remained a promise still, either from adverse circumstances or because Mrs. Sylvester's engagements prevented it.

However, three years after Dolores' disappearance Miss Webbe wrote to Patience Tremlyn, her servant, saying that Mrs. Sylvester would come back to Cornwall with her at the end of July and giving certain directions and orders as to the necessary preparations.

Patience had never seen this friend of her mistress. She was a little inclined to resent her visit as being that of a fine London lady, who would give trouble and find fault with homely meals, and country hours, and plain cooking.

It was a pleasant surprise, therefore, to find herself confronted by a pleasant-faced, middle-aged lady, with the most charming of smiles, and a manner that could only be described as "fascinating." Furthermore she gave herself no airs, but simply raved about the cottage and view, and the quaint surroundings. She was full of life and energy. She was up at extraordinarily early hours, bathed in the sea, walked for miles along the coast before breakfast, made friends with the fisher-folk even to the extent of deep-sea fishing excursions, and, in fact, was quite, an addition to the cottage life. One morning she returned to breakfast with the news of a discovery she had made.

The coast around was remarkable for a series of coves, divided from each other by jutting cliffs, each a thing of beauty in point of silvery sands, blue waters, and shell-strewn caves. Marion Sylvester had walked along the firm sands for a mile or two, then suddenly came upon a chine or inlet formed by broken cliffs and leading upward and inland for a considerable distance. Following this natural road she found herself skirting a thick hedge of myrtle and escallonia. Then she came to an iron gate set in heavy grey stonework. It stood half-open and showed a wild expanse of garden, luxuriant and neglected. Thickets of fuchsia, dog roses, geranium, and lemon verbena, spread wild and wide above weed-covered paths. The myrtles were like trees, so sheltered and so sunny was the situation, and the geraniums towered, strong of stem and branch, to the height of the outer walls.

Feeling she was an intruder, but impelled by curiosity, Mrs. Sylvester moved cautiously up the weed-covered paths until she came to an opening and faced a worn, tumble-down old house, yellow with lichen, green with moss, its square windows facing the sea with closely shuttered eyes. Silence reigned everywhere. Silence broken only by the song or flight of birds, the flutter of a falling leaf, the stir of a bough.

Old and grim and desolate it looked, though the warm sunshine poured lavish glory over its tiled roof, and Mrs. Sylvester supposed it untenanted, and moved forward more boldly. She was greeted by a loud bark, and a huge brindled mastiff leaped suddenly towards her, startling her into consciousness of intrusion.

She held her ground, not being in the least frightened of dogs, and the animal surveyed her with the scrutiny of a superior instinct that apparently recognised the types and grades of trespassers. At the same time there came from near at hand the soft incoherent chuckle of a very young child, and from the bushes on her right crept out a small, yellow-headed mortal newly arrived at the dignity of an elevated standing-point.

"You darling baby!" exclaimed the intruder, and went down on her own knees in sudden adoration of anything so small and lovely and incongruous to present surroundings. The mastiff watched her narrowly. The small wanderer was quite friendly and permitted itself to be embraced, and gave incoherent explanation of its presence, which were perfectly satisfactory to a woman's ears.

But Mrs Sylvester's wonder deepened. Her eyes searched the face of the desolate mansion with new curiosity. The presence of so young a member of the human family argued inhabitants in the vicinity; and there was more than a hint of carelessness in the manner the child was arrayed, as well as in its unguarded freedom.

The dog, sitting on its haunches and watching the familiar friendliness of woman and child, could yet offer no solution of the mystery. He seemed content that they should sit on the grass and entertain each other for an unlimited space of time. Again Mrs. Sylvester's eyes swept the front of the house. Two-storied, verandah-shaped, four shuttered windows closing the rooms to the living world without, so it confronted her, giving still no hint of life within, though life there must be, else how account for the child or the dog.

She rose to her feet at last and asked herself what she should do? The child held up arms of entreaty, so she lifted it from the grass. The action elicited a low growl from the dog. He evidently suspected kidnapping intentions. With no further warning he made a spring forward and seized the hem of the intruder's dress, and firmly and unmistakably gave her to understand that he objected to her moving.

Mrs. Sylvester was conscious of feeling foolish. It was impossible to say how long she might be detained in this fashion, and she recognised the misfortune of possessing ancestry who had made curiosity a female virtue for all time. The child nestled cosily into her arms, sucked an apparently nutritive thumb, and gave signs of slumbrous content. At the feet the dog crouched with her gown between his teeth, and overhead the sun streamed warm and bright with no limitations of shade. The moments seemed of quite unwarrantable length. The silence was of a rest and peace, almost deathlike in significance. She gazed at the windows, at the chimneys whence came no sign of smoke, at the door, close-shut and weather-beaten, its peeling paint and blistered wood telling, as the house told, of long neglect or indifference.

It seemed to her she had better sit down again, when suddenly there came the harsh creak of a hinge, and a door at the side of the house opened, revealing the figure of an old woman in a white sun bonnet. She peered across the space that meant a lawn, and saw the prisoner and the gaoler, and the child crooning itself to sleep.

When she had recognised the situation she advanced. Her movements were slow, her face was brown, wrinkled, and weather-beaten as the house. Her short homespun skirts reached only to her ankles.

"Lord keep us!" she ejaculated. "What be 'ee doin' here, and how do 'ee come to be nursin' the babe?"

Mrs. Sylvester laughed. "I found it straying about," she said. "I thought this was an empty house, and came to look at it; and there was the child running about over the grass, and I took it up, and your dog seems to object. He won't let me move."

"Gate didn't ought to be open. That's Peter's doin'. Peter Pasco, servin' man and husband to me. He's down to Penzance now, he be. Now ma'am, gie me the child, and thee may go. We do'ant care too much for strangers here at Penharva."

She held out her arms and Mrs. Sylvester placed the child, now fast asleep, in them. "Perhaps," she said, "you will call your dog off now. I ask your pardon for intruding, but really the place looked quite deserted."

The old woman muttered something about the wisdom of folks minding their own business, and marched away. Marian walked quickly back to the gate, and made her way home to the cottage.

Miss Webbe listened with interest to the story. "I had no idea there was a house there," she said. "I must ask my old Patience about it."

But Patience knew nothing of it either, not being given to gossip, and seldom going beyond her immediate domain, save on errands of marketing and household matters. The subject, therefore, dropped, though Mrs. Sylvester promised herself to make enquiries on the matter and find out what mysterious person lived in those darkened rooms and owned a golden-haired cherub that claimed the privileges of a rover at the dignified age of two years—or thereabouts. She even persuaded Miss Webbe to accompany her one evening to the spot of her discovery, but on that occasion Peter Pasco, whoever he might be, had not been neglectful of his duties, and the gate was closed fast.

Sarah Webbe laughed at her friend's disappointed face. "You surely didn't intend to go in," she said.

"It was such a darling baby. And to think of it shut up in that grim place," lamented Mrs. Sylvester.

"I suppose it has a mother, or father. I wonder if any of the fisher folk know the history or mystery of Penharva? There's old Boaz Trescott, he knows everyone and everything. A regular old gossip. We might ask him, if you really are very curious."

"Interest is not curiosity, Sarah. By all means let us ask Boaz Trescott. What names these people have! And you'll have to be translator, for I can't make out what they say."

Miss Webbe agreed, and they sauntered back in the cool summer twilight to interview Boaz Trescott on the mysterious tenant of Penharva.