Part 2

Other matters went apace. With the help of the housekeeper and Mistress Trevannion of the Manor House, the little girl learned not only to hem her sheets, but to make those numerous 'stitches' in embroidery that were her teacher's delight. Concerning this branch of her industry, it being beyond his ken, the Admiral was disposed to be critical. Secretly proud as he was of the little maid's skill, he became nevertheless uneasy about the hours she must needs bend over her silks. To the housekeeper's argument that all young ladies spent their time thus he paid no heed save to 'Pish!' and 'Pshaw.' And one day when Mistress Trevannion, thinking to win his approval, counted on her fingers the stitches Marion had already learned--cross-stitch, tent-stitch, long and short stitch, crewel and feather-stitch, tent-on-the-finger, tent-on-the-frame, gold-stitch, fern-stitch, satin-stitch, and rosemary stitch--the Admiral cried for mercy and vowed his brain was reeling.

'Enough,' he said, striking with his stick on the stone flags of the hall. 'Let be. There are hangings and quilts and cushions in the house to last my grandsons. And the child has already wrought me three night-caps in such a device I dare not sleep in them for fear of dreams. Let be. She may stitch, if stitch she must, at that satin sheet you have just set in her frame. 'Twill last her, on and off, a lifetime. But she shall do it when she pleases.'

Mrs. Trevannion was aghast at this heresy, but the Admiral had his way. The work-stand holding Marion's 'wrought sheet'--a crimson quilt embroidered with a pattern of flowers--was placed by the great chimney in the hall, and the young lady took up her silks and laid them down as she willed. Much more to her taste were her rides with Zacchary the groom and Roger Trevannion, who from childhood days had been her constant playfellow; the long mornings she and Roger spent with their bows and arrows, shooting at targets set by the Admiral; her days in Jack Poole's boat on the river, the fishing expeditions in Bob Tregarthen's cutter; her afternoons spent in the garden on a pretence of reading with her father. Once a week a tutor rode out from Bodmin to teach her dancing and music. Next to the archery practice, in which sport she was becoming unusually skilled, these lessons were Marion's special delight, and were shared by Roger until he went to school at Blundell's in Tiverton.

With Roger and her father, and kind Mistress Trevannion in the background, Marion's life had been a happy one. Roger's going was a sore blow, and would have saddened the autumn for her, had not fate put up a finger to turn her thoughts in another direction.

Coming up from the village one morning, she found the house in a commotion, the great travelling coach with its four horses out in the courtyard, and Zacchary ready, as outrider, with the chestnut mare.

'Here a be!' called one of the stable boys to some one within, 'here be Mistress Marion.'

Forthwith Marion was hastily summoned to her father's room, where Peter, his man, was dressing him in his best clothes. A travelling cloak and a couple of pistols lay on the bed.

'Father!' cried Marion, 'where are you going?'

Then the Admiral put Peter to the door, saying he would do very well now, and took the maid upon his knee, pressing a kiss upon her troubled face.

'It means this, sweetheart,' he said. 'I'm going to London. Yes, to London, to bring some one back. A playmate for you, little one.'

He stroked her waving hair as he spoke, and kissed her again, the child, as was her way, taking it very quietly, but opening her grey eyes wide.

'You remember what I told you about poor de Delauret?'

Marion nodded. More than once her father had related the incident of his friendship for the French gentleman whom he had met on an expedition to the Indies. They had begun as enemies and crossed swords; they had ended by being sworn friends. De Delauret had nursed the Admiral through a vile fever; the Englishman later on had saved his friend from death at the hand of a rascal, who was for having his purse and jewelled rapier. During the years of the Admiral's fighting life the two had kept up a constant intercourse. Once the Admiral had gone to visit de Delauret in his home in Brittany, and found the Frenchman in sore trouble. His wife had just died and left him with an infant daughter, and he himself was ailing.

'What shall I do,' says he, 'about the little one, should I die? My Elise may be a great heiress through her mother's house. She will be sought after, taken to Court. And, saving the King's Majesty, you know what the Court of Louis is.'

The Admiral took the sick man's hand in his great one.

'You're not going to die,' says he. 'But, if you do, s'death, man! I'll take your child, and my wife shall bring her up at Garth.'

So the compact was settled. M. de Delauret did not die. But he was never again strong enough to travel, the Admiral later on was invalided; so the two lost sight of each other, and the great friendship was expressed only in occasional letters.

'And now poor de Delauret's gone,' said the Admiral, 'and wrote me a letter before he died, reminding me of my promise. Three months the letter has been in coming. Elise and her woman are in London. I must hasten and fetch her at once. And I must see my lawyer in London so that he can arrange the poor child's affairs with de Delauret's attorney in Paris. That is the story, little one. Kiss me and let me go.'

Presently with a great bustle the Admiral was gone, Marion watching the coach from the terrace and waving her handkerchief as the horses took the corner by the church. Then she flung herself on the grass and burst into tears.

'I shall hate her,' she said. 'I hate her now.'

But when the Admiral came back, a fortnight later, with the sallow, frightened-looking little girl who was a year younger than Marion, she was so much interested that she forgot all about the hating. Only when there was another girl in the house did Marion realise how lonely it had been before. Elise's gowns and cloaks, too, her boxes full of finery, woke in Marion an instinct that had been sleeping. Nothing would serve but the tailor must be ordered from Plymouth to make Marion some new gowns. Marion's halting French and Elise's lisped English joined to make a commotion in the house, just as Elise's maid, Victoire, conspired with Mrs. Curnow the housekeeper to make the servants' quarters unusually lively. The two children, adaptable as only the very young are, soon learned each other's ways and became great friends.

'One thing is certain,' mused the Admiral, who, in truth, was the one to be pitied, as he dragged his wooden leg in solitude about the garden, 'times are changed. Whether for good or ill we shall see.'

After a while, the Admiral concluded that 'good or ill' was beside the mark. The results of the coming of his ward could not be so easily assessed. The French girl brought a certain quality into the house which was for Marion's improvement: racial touches, the stories of her own land and coast, a new string of interests about which Marion's thoughts began to twine themselves. On the other hand, there were points in Elise's character that made the Admiral uneasy for his daughter's sake. The French girl seemed to be lacking in the sense of honour which, fully developed in Marion, was her father's pride. She was not above petty deceptions; there ran a strain of secrecy through her doings which her guardian, appearing not to notice, thoroughly condemned. 'Any one would think she had something to hide,' he mused.

Had the Admiral been aware of the stories growing in the village and the gossip in the servants' hall when Victoire was absent, he would have been more uneasy still. But nothing came to his ears.

The household, if not greatly liking the French girl, tolerated her. But there was one person in whom she inspired a profound distrust, and that was Roger Trevannion. Roger took the innovation with bad grace when he came home for his first holidays and found the Admiral's ward installed at Garth, and was scarce better minded on the second (when he brought his school friend, Dick Hooper, with him), thereby making himself the object of much raillery from Marion. Dick Hooper, a fair-faced, fair-haired youth, was the son of the Squire of St. Brennion. Marion found the company of the two boys agreeably diverting after the quieter life she had been leading with Elise. Her old headlong rides were resumed in their company, Elise on these occasions absenting herself, to the undisguised relief of two of the party. Bows and arrows came out once more, and Roger forgave Marion for beating him by a yard because Hooper was watching; and Roger's pride in Marion was unbounded.

As time went on, the Admiral could deceive himself no longer. He was disappointed in the daughter of his friend. Many times he considered whether it would not be wise to separate the two girls for a time, sending one or the other on a round of visits among his kinsfolk. Then he saw how untouched Marion was, how proof her nature was against any contact, what a pleasant intercourse seemed to obtain between the two, and he put the matter from him.

So months drifted into years. Marion grew up a tall, supple girl, but without the promise of her mother's perfect beauty. 'Her'll never be so lovely as my lady,' said the village. 'Wait,' said the mistress of the Manor. 'Hair gold to russet. Her mother's poise of head and her mother's neck and throat. A skin like curds. Her father's grey eyes and the Penrock look. Wait.'

Not until the girl was nearly seventeen did the Admiral suddenly wake up to realise that his 'little maid' was dangerously near womanhood. Also, he could not hide from himself the fact that Elise, now the heiress of a considerable estate in France (governed by Delauret's attorney) could not for ever stay hidden in a Cornish village. Hazy ideas of the future began to float about his mind, of his duty to these two young ladies in his care. But with Marion's seventeenth birthday came the landing of Monmouth at Lyme. The Admiral ceased to be a father and became a loyalist magistrate.

With the spring of the following year, however, Mistress Keziah Penrock came down with her coach and servants from Bath, and before she left, did more than find holes in the guest chamber hangings. Time, and the lady's curiosity about her niece, had healed the breach between brother and sister. Thus, for the first time for twelve years, Mistress Keziah visited the home of her childhood. In Marion she scarcely recognised the little one she had seen before; but during her stay the shrewd eyes had glimpses of depths of resolution and hardihood under the girl's gentle demeanour that made the old woman grave. 'She'll go her own way,' she mused. 'And whether 'tis a bid for sorrow or happiness 'twill be just the same. Her mother's given her that sweetness, but she's a Penrock.'

One night when 'the child,' as the Admiral persisted in calling his daughter, was abed, Mistress Keziah hazarded to her brother a plan she had conceived concerning her niece's future. A slight disappointment had preceded the making of this plan. She had hoped Marion would be affectionately inclined towards her and consent to coming to Exeter awhile. But the lady, not realising in time that Marion was no longer a child--indeed being the age when most girls in that period were either married or embroidering their wedding clothes--had weighed a little too heavily on her authority. She had said, 'Do this, my child,' where it had been wiser to say 'Will you, my dear?' She was keen-sighted enough to see that the girl would not come to her for her pleasure, and being sincerely attached to her, decided to try other means of wresting her from that beleaguered garrison which she was pleased to consider Garth had become. Deciding the moment was good, she opened fire on the Admiral.

'Let Marion go up to Constance a spell, or get Constance to come here. A beautiful girl like that should not be married off-hand to a country squire.'

'Married!' said the Admiral, aghast. 'Who's talking of marriage, pray? Not the child herself?'

'Marion has never even thought of it,' said the lady quietly. 'That is the way you have brought her up.'

'All the better,' replied the Admiral with a look of content. Then the heavy brows drew down at an unaccustomed idea. 'Beautiful? Marion beautiful? Nonsense!'

'It were just as well Marion did not hear you say so, or the men fishing in the Channel for that matter,' icily remarked the lady.

The thought was new to the Admiral, who had long ago settled his mind to the fact that however adorable his child might be, beauty was not her lot.

'Her chin is a trifle long,' mused the lady, 'her nose a trifle short. But somehow each makes the other right. 'Tis a straight little nose. She has no colouring, it is true, and her hair is rather spoiled, bleached in parts, through exposure to the sun. But she has the Penrock eyes and air.' The lady drew herself up. She had been a noted beauty in her youth.

The Admiral pish'd and pshaw'd at regular intervals during his sister's recital. 'Why, even Elise says----' he began gravely, watching her.

'Elise!' cries Mistress Keziah, fanning herself with great energy. 'I pray you, brother, do not mention that young person to me just now. I have more to say about her anon. And now, sir,' rising and dropping a state curtsey, 'I will bid you good night.'

And so the old lady swept off to her room.

Between Mistress Keziah and Elise there had been war from the beginning, and only Marion's tact had saved an open breach before her aunt's visit came to an end. The Admiral, watching the sparring of his sister and his ward, and noting how shrewdly the young girl delivered her blows, had been greatly entertained and amused. But the night before she left, Mistress Keziah was closeted a long time with her brother, and when she sought her own chamber the man's chuckles had ceased.

For a long time he sat smoking over the dying logs. Then as he rose and knocked out his pipe, he looked at the portrait of his wife, hanging above the mantelshelf.

'If thou hadst not gone, sweetheart,' he said, the grim old face sorrowful, 'all this had been changed long ago.'

*CHAPTER III*

*A LETTER FROM KENSINGTON*

When Marion told, at supper, the story of Jack Poole's arrest, the Admiral had no pity whatever to show. If there was one failing about which he was merciless, it was a sympathy with the rebel cause. The truth might be, as Marion guessed, that his heart was sore for Poole's folly in joining Monmouth's standard, for Jack and Bob Tregarthen had more nearly touched the inner circle of the life at Garth than any other of the villagers; but he gave no sign of it.

'Poole has made his bed, and he must lie on it,' he said, slicing at the collared head. 'And all the more pity for his mother.'

'And Charity Borlase,' softly put in Marion. 'Poor girl!'

'He not only made his bed,' remarked Elise, 'but he turned it when he escaped from Bodmin gaol. 'Tis bad enough to make a bed, but to turn it is sheer folly. Defying fate, I say.'

The lack of sympathy in the girl's tone nettled Marion. Indeed, the words were more than unsympathetic; behind them seemed to lie a touch of hardness, of calculated malice, as if on the whole Elise was pleased at the fisher-lad's detention.

Marion's grey eyes looked hard at her across the table. Something had lately seemed to emerge like a cloud that blurred her old regard for Elise, an instinct, hitherto sleeping, rising to respond to her aunt's criticism of her. And Marion was quite unaware that the sharp-eyed French girl was conscious of a subtle change in the attitude of her friend.

More than once Elise had heartily wished Mistress Penrock had never darkened the doors of her guardian's house. She had had overmuch of Aunt Keziah, more than Marion knew. Elise was genuinely fond of Marion. She had never felt more attached to her than at the present moment, in the relief of the elder lady's departure; but the demon lurking in her heart nevertheless singled out Marion as a point of attack; and Elise knew better than any one else just where to strike. Here was a chance of paying back on the niece the snubs she had received from the aunt.

In the short silence that fell after Elise's remarks, Marion had a sudden vision of the look her aunt would have cast on the speaker. How nearly her own expression resembled that of the old lady at the time Marion did not know, but Elise saw it and her mouth tightened. The Admiral, with his sister's warnings fresh in his mind, glanced at his ward sitting there in her elaborate gown that contrasted so much with Marion's. (For though Marion had taken a keen interest in her gowns since the French girl's arrival, she had a naturally simple and rather austere taste.) The Admiral considered the girl afresh. It was not that Elise's skin was unpleasantly sallow, or her features too sharp; but there was something in the expression of the face that made it seem so. As Mistress Keziah had said to her brother when he spoke of the 'poor girl's' looks, 'Tut, tut, brother, where are those sharp eyes of yours? 'Tis not her face. Her face is well enough for a Frenchwoman. All Frenchwomen are yellow. What's wrong with Elise's face is Elise.'

Though neither knew it, the same thought was passing through the mind of father and daughter.

'It was a very great pity that Jack did not get aboard the _Fair Return_ sooner,' Marion went quietly on. 'She's bound for Virginia, I think, and Jack would have been well out of the way.'

'So you are on his side, as well as Roger?'

Marion started and looked again, harder than ever, at Elise. The French girl's face was set, and a malicious gleam shot from her eyes. The Admiral gave a glance over his shoulder, but the servant was gone to the buttery for more ale.

'I said not Roger was on his side,' said Marion, in her usual even tones.

Elise, angrier than ever in the face of Marion's calm, threw all discretion to the winds.

'But he would have tried to save him had you not stopped him.'

Here the Admiral turned his eagle look full on Elise. 'Not a word before the servants,' he said sternly.

The man came in as he spoke, and filling his master's tankard took his place behind his chair. A dark flush mounted to Elise's face, but she said no more. Presently Peter placed the pudding and custards and went out.

'Was there any one else with you when you saw Poole's arrest?' suddenly asked the Admiral of his ward. He had been thinking a little while Marion, in her tranquil way, showing no sign of uneasiness, had gone on talking of ordinary affairs.

Elise, taken off her guard by an unexpected question, stammered slightly. 'I, sir? I never said...' Then faced by her guardian's penetrating eye. 'No, sir.'

The Admiral 'humphed' and turned to the pudding. Marion was silent. Then after a pause, in ominously quiet tones he spoke again. 'Tell us once more exactly what passed, Marion.'

The colour came and went in Marion's face as she obeyed. 'It was not that Roger was on anybody's side, sir,' she said at the finish. 'But Roger always had a great kindness for Jack, as I truly have, as we all have, and he was thinking of the boy, not the party.'

'Of course, of course,' came the Admiral's deep voice in hearty assent. 'Roger Trevannion cares neither for Rebel nor Loyalist, Catholic nor Protestant. All he cares for is to be a sailor.'

Her father's words at once dispelled Marion's lurking fears concerning his attitude to Roger, and her face relaxed a little. Then looking up at Elise she saw a peculiar expression in her eyes, and a dim sense of foreboding assailed her.

There was silence for a few minutes. The man at the head of the table was wearing a look his fellows on the bench knew well. His eyes grew round and hard, as if he had borrowed blue granite marbles for the occasion. Marion, fearing a storm, cast about for some excuse to leave the table. While she was pondering, her father spoke.

'What I cannot understand, Elise,' he said, obviously trying to soften his voice, 'is how your father's daughter comes to have such ways. He was never crooked. He could not be. You know full well, as well as I, the truth of what I have just said concerning the direction of Roger's interests. You are shrewd enough.'

The ugly colour flushed the girl's sallow face again, but she said no word.

The Admiral, staunch loyalist as he was known to be, lowered his voice again, glancing at the closed doors. 'From what we have seen here of the results of that miserable rising, you also know as well as I that such words as you spoke of Roger, overheard by the domestics, breathed abroad and strengthened, as is the way of idle tales, are enough to send the lad to the gallows. Were you one of Jeffreys' agents, well and good. Were you not of the family, well and good. All's fair in war, folk say. But, out of idle malice to give away the life of one's own people--Roger Trevannion is almost as my own son--s'death, girl!' the Admiral's fist smote the table, and his voice slipped its leash, 'how comes a de Delauret to act thus?'

Marion sat aghast, trembling.

'Father,' she implored, distressed and embarrassed at the outburst. Never before had she heard the Admiral speak thus to his ward. But before her father could say anything more, Elise rose from the table, tears in her eyes.

'I am sorry to have offended you, sir,' she said. 'And if my presence is irksome----'

The man stirred uneasily in his chair. He could never abide the sight of women's tears.

'Tut, tut--there's no call for weeping. Sit down. We'll say no more about it. Let us have some more of that pudding, Marion.'

Elise wiped her eyes on her lace handkerchief and pulled awkwardly at its border.

'A little more conserve, Elise,' said Marion gently. ''Tis your favourite, you know.'

The awkward moment passed. The Admiral poured out a little wine for the ladies, and calling 'The King!' drained his own glass.

Presently Marion rose, and the two girls, leaving the Admiral to finish his bottle, went into the hall, which served as a general sitting-room. The little drawing-room above had never been used since my lady's death. According to the wishes of the Admiral that apartment had never been invaded by 'the children.' It remained exactly as in the last days of its mistress, with the little card box and the sugar-plum box on the small table by the high-backed chair, and the work frame with its needle, now sadly rusted, where the fair fingers of the lady of Garth had left it. The servants used lovingly to say that their master went to pray there; and certainly he had been seen to come out with a suspiciously dim look in his honest sailor's eyes.