CHAPTER XX.

A FAMILY GROUP.

And so he was gone--this tender husband, who had loved her so dearly, and whose secret she had shared so unavailingly for years; and apart from the horror of the doubt that hung over the future of her children, whose means and honour, like her own, had too probably perished with him, a despair grew in the heart of Constance when she surveyed the familiar objects, the little household gods of their once happy home, and thought upon the days that could never, never come again.

There were times when she could not believe that she had lost him; that her sorrow was a painful dream from which she must awake. She perpetually found herself softly whispering his name, especially in the waking hours of the night. Thus too, from overtension of the nervous system, she would start at the fancied sound of her own name, uttered as if by his voice at a vast distance.

In the delicacy and tenderness of Constance, there was an amount of keenness and intensity possessed by few, and thus her heart bled for her daughter, rather than for her own dubious position, the fact of which had been so coarsely thrust upon her by the insolent letter of Downie Trevelyan, who was now formally spoken of and everywhere announced and received as "Lord Lamorna."

That Sybil had given all the wealth of her young heart to this man's son, was but too evident to her anxious mother's observation; but how would matters tend now, and could that misplaced love have a successful termination?

Days were passing in sorrow now; no letters from Audley came to either. Sybil looked delicate and grew pale and thin, for a double grief was consuming her, and Constance began to marvel in her heart, was she meant to live in suffering and penury, perhaps to die early, this child--her dead father's idol, so loved and petted by him.

Sybil felt secretly pleased with the idea that there existed between her and Audley a tie--the tie of blood--which even the antagonism of his crafty father could not break. "The idea of cousinly intimacy to girls is undoubtedly pleasant," says Anthony Trollope; "and I do not know whether it is not the fact, that the better and the purer the girl, the sweeter and the pleasanter is the idea."

How often had Constance asked of herself--but never of him who was gone--"How long is this deception to be carried on? How long am I to wait before I take my place in the world as the wife of Richard Trevelyan, and cease to figure as a sham Devereaux, and how long are our children to be thus under a cloud?" All obstacles were removed now, but the sham was becoming a reality, and the cloud was growing darker than ever.

And was her poor Denzil, then so far away from her, to be tamely robbed of his noble inheritance after all?

The necessity for action in some way, even before acquainting him with his father's death and real rank, compelled Constance to bestir herself. She knew no one whom she felt tempted to consult with confidence, and was totally ignorant of the line of action to adopt, but on hearing, before a week had passed, that the whole family of the Trevelyans had come from town and taken up their residence at Rhoscadzhel, she resolved to lose no time in confronting the usurper personalty, attended only by her daughter. She could--she feared not--fully prove the identity of "Captain Devereaux" with Captain Trevelyan the late lord, and her husband's miniature, which she wore, and his letters, especially the last from Montreal, would prove still further the fact of her marriage, and his intentions as regarded his will, though they were all addressed to her as Mrs. Devereaux, and simply bore his signature as "Richard," save one already mentioned, to which he appended his title.

So she thought and flattered herself while, clad in the deepest mourning, she and Sybil traversed, by the Cornwall Railway, the forty odd miles that lay between Porthellick and Rhoscadzhel, followed by the prayers and blessings of old Winny Braddon.

"That which we fancy must break our hearts, we can bear patiently, and what is more, so learn to conform to, that after a few years of life, we can wonder that we thought them hardships," says a writer with much truth. So did Constance think her heart would break, when all the reality of her desolate condition was brought home to her, by her mirror reflecting her face--the face that Richard loved so well--encircled by a widow's cap--that odious ruche of tulle; but she already felt the conviction strongly, that whatever happened now, she would not have many years of life before her.

Mother and daughter sat silent and sad while the train swept on, Lostwithiel with its antique octagon spire and the ruins of Restormal, with their moat full of sweet-briars; St. Blazey, to whose shrine the woolcombers made their pilgrimages in the days of old (the saint having been tortured or curried to death with wool-combs, by the Cornish men who declined to be converted from Druidism), with many a spacious lawn and bare autumnal wood and many a purple moor, were speedily left behind; and now it was past Grampound with its market-house and ancient granite cross, the train went screaming and clanking. Redruth next, in a dreary and barren district whose wealth lies far below the soil, which is literally honeycombed by the shafts and levels of mines; and then came Hayle, the houses of which are all built of scoria or slag, the debris of ancient mines; and then the travellers hired at the "White Hart," a carriage for Rhoscadzhel.

To Constance, the scenery there had its chief interest in the circumstance that in youth and manhood her husband must have been familiar with every feature of it, and must have shot and hunted over it all. Noon was past now; but the sun shed a rich golden light upon a calm sea, of which they had lovely glimpses at times between the grey granite _carns_ and clumps of oak and elm. Sometimes the carriage rolled past wildernesses of rock and morass, where wild tarns reflected in their glassy depths the blue sky above, and where valleys opened westward to the Bristol Channel, whose waves were buttressed out by precipices of bold and striking outline, and the heart of Constance began to beat painfully as each revolution of the wheels drew her nearer and nearer to the house, that long ere this should have been her home.

She felt, or thought, that now she was about to face, confront, and grapple with her fate, and to know the best or worst! The secret burden so long intolerable, would now be cast aside, and the adoption of any line of action, in lieu of the existence she had led since her loss was confirmed--the dumb mechanical life of one too paralysed even to think--was a relief. Yet moments there were when she half repented of her journey.

Her husband, her sole protector, was gone, and the proofs of their marriage, and of his intentions by will, too, were gone also! If her arguments were repelled, her assertions denied, what must be her fate, and how terribly should she and those he loved so well be exposed to the sneers and heartlessness of a world that knew nothing of their good qualities, or of the cause for that concealment which might now prove the cause of their destruction.

What if even now, at the eleventh hour, as it were, she turned prudently back, and concealed the fact that she was the true Lady Lamorna--that her son was a peer of the realm--and let him and Sybil pass through life as humble Devereaux, content to earn their bread as best they could? But to see Downie Trevelyan, the author of that harsh and most insulting letter, occupying the place of her Denzil--no--no! a thousand times no!

Some such fears had been occurring to Sybil, who now said, in a low voice, as they drew near the stately gate of Rhoscadzhel,

"I doubt, dearest mamma, whether this is a wise proceeding on our part; if we have the legal right to call ourselves Trevelyans, that right should be placed for proof in legal hands."

"If we have--" began Constance, impetuously, and then became silent, for she felt that the views of her daughter were, perhaps, the most correct.

The elaborate iron gate, and its tall granite pillars, each supporting a grotesque _Koithgath_, surmounted by a coronet, were left behind, and they proceeded along the stately avenue by which we have so lately seen Richard passing as chief mourner at the funeral of the old lord; and now, as the porte-cochère (which bore a double hatchment) was approached, came a new perplexity to the mind of Constance. How was she to announce herself?

As "Lady Lamorna," where there was already one who called herself so; simply as "Mrs. Devereaux," or as "a lady wishing an interview with Lord Lamorna"? But from the utterance of his name in this instance she shrunk.

The pampered servants, on seeing that the approaching vehicle was only a carriage hired from the neighbouring inn, and not an equipage having coats of arms and showy liveries, were somewhat slow in answering the summons at the bell; but as the hall door stood open, and, luckily for the perplexed Constance, Mr. Jasper Funnel, the solemn, portly, and intensely respectable-looking butler, was lingering there, she asked if she could "see his master."

Now this was a mode to which Mr. Jasper Funnel was all unused, and he might have been disposed to summon "Jeames" or "Chawles" to attend to her; but there was now a hauteur in the bearing of Constance that thoroughly bewildered, if it failed to awe him.

"Master, mum?" he stammered; "his lordship is at home, but engaged with General Trecarrel--I can take in your card, however."

"I have not my card-case with me."

"What name, then?"

"It matters not--just say----"

"Perhaps, mum, relations of the family?" suggested Funnel, perceiving the depth of mourning worn by the two ladies.

"Yes--near relations, indeed," replied Constance, restraining her tears with difficulty.

The man of bins and vintages, who thought he knew the branches of the Trevelyan family through all their ramifications, looked still more perplexed; however, he said, with a still lower bow,

"This way, mum--please to follow me," and desiring their driver to await them, Constance and Sybil entered the mansion of Rhoscadzhel.

As if to tantalise them by a display of all they were perhaps to lose, or had already lost for ever, a valet, to whose care Mr. Funnel now consigned them, conducted them by a somewhat circuitous route, as all the suites of rooms were not in order, the family having arrived unexpectedly from town.

Passing through the marble vestibule, an arch on one side of which opened to a gay aviary, and one on the other to the beautiful conservatory, they entered a long and lofty corridor, where the soft carpet muffled every foot-fall, and where were the objects of _vertu_, accumulated by several generations of Trevelyans; a veritable museum it seemed, of glass cases filled with quaintly illuminated vellum MSS., in fine old Roman bindings, red-edged and clasped; old laces of Malines and Bruges; Chinese ivory carvings, delicate as gossamer webs; Burmese idols; Japanese cabinets, covered with flaming dragons; Majolica vases, where rosy cupids, grotesque tritons, nude nymphs, and shining dolphins, were all grouped together; Delft hardware of odd designs; Etruscan cups, cream-coloured or crimson, with slender black demoniac figures thereon; mediæval suits of armour; family portraits of dames in ruffs and farthingales, and of past Trevelyans, all well-wigged, cuirassed, and armed: some with Bardolph noses and paunches of comely curve, suggestive of sack and venison; the chiefs of these being Lord Henry, who was Governor of Rougemont Castle for Queen Elizabeth, and Launcelot, the cavalier-lord, who sought shelter in Trewoofe from the victorious Roundheads.

The refined and cultivated taste of Constance could well appreciate all these objects; but now, as one in a dream, her eyes wandered over those walls where many a gem of art was hanging; the soft-eyed and white-skinned girls of Greuze; the bearded and doubleted nobles of Vandyke; cattle, fat and lazy-looking, by Cuyp; hazy sea-pieces by Turner, and more than one lovely Raphael; but then her every thought was turned inward; and as if to support herself, she retained Sybil's tremulous little hand, on which her clasp tightened, as the servant, who was clad in mourning livery, with a black cord aiguilette on each shoulder, opened noiselessly the half of a folding-door, and ushered them into that splendid library where her husband had found his proud old uncle dead at the writing-table, and Downie (with the unsigned deed) hanging over him, with confusion and disappointment on his usually stolid visage.

"Visitors, my lord," said the servant.

And to add to the perplexity of Constance, she found herself face to face with the whole family group--the whole, at least, save one, her nephew Audley.