Chapter 1
A LEGACY OF HATE
Their meeting-place was on the Altarnun Moors, eight miles from the town of Bodmin, perhaps as many from the rugged peaks--the highest peaks in Cornwall--Router and Brown Willy. Almost as far as the eye could reach was bare moorland. A white streak, the road which ran between Altarnun and Bodmin, was the most striking thing seen. On either side of the road were only bare, uncultivated, uninteresting moors; and yet, perhaps, I do the district injustice. Here and there was a rugged tor, and again a few fields taken in from the moorland by some enterprising labourer who wanted to earn a living by farming. Near this road, too, is the famous Dozmary Pool, known to all those who love folk-lore and are acquainted with the legends of the most Western county in England--a dismal piece of water, black as ink, and, so the old stories have it, bottomless. It was here that Tregellas, of Cornish myth, was set by the Devil to scoop out its water by means of a limpet-shell. Here, too, in old times, coaches were robbed and dark deeds done. At the time of which I am writing, however, it was simply one of the most unattractive and bleak districts in what is otherwise perhaps the most beautiful county in England. The woman had walked all the way from Launceston, a distance of not less than a dozen miles. The youth had come from Bodmin, and he had covered nearly the same length of road. The afternoon was drawing to a close as they met. It was a November day, and darkness would be upon them by five o'clock. No one was near, for since the days of stage-coaches the traffic on this road has been small. Occasionally a farmer's cart passes along, or again a vehicle of more ornamental description, used by those who wish to travel either to Bodmin or to Launceston. There is no railway station within ten miles of that drear region, and it seemed a fitting meeting-place for the couple who came there that day. The woman was perhaps thirty-five years of age, and suggested the fact that in her girlhood she must have been strangely beautiful. Even yet there were times when one would have spoken of her as one possessing more than ordinary attraction. That was when her eyes became soft, and her features relaxed into a smile, but these times were very rare. As she trudged along the dreary road her face was set and stern, her lips were compressed, her eyes hard and relentless. As she passed through Five Lanes and asked for a cup of tea at a cottage there, the villagers remarked upon her and wondered who she was. "She might be a witch," said one.
"No, too young for that," said another.
"But where can she be goin'? She is a straanger in thaise paarts."
"Up to no good, I reckon."
But the woman gave no confidences. Evidently her purpose was clear before her mind, and after she had obtained her cup of tea she stepped forward with the same resolution in her eyes, turning neither to the right nor to the left. She seemed as little impressed by the suggestion of beauty contained in the valley where the old Altarnun Church stands, as she was by the bleak moors on to which she presently entered. She might be looking into her own soul rather than on the vast sweep of hill and dale which presently stretched out before her. Now and then she muttered like one talking to herself, but she never faltered on her way. She seemed to know no weariness. Firmly and resolutely she went her way, her mind evidently set upon some grim purpose. It was two o'clock when she left Five Lanes, and considerably past three when she saw a dark object in the road in front of her. "It must be he," she said to herself, and her lips quivered and her eyes shone with a new light. As they drew nearer she quickened her footsteps.
"My boy!" she said; "what will he say--what will he do? But he must know, for his own sake and for mine. He must know that his mother is an honest woman and tried to do right."
The day was dark and drear. Clouds hung heavily in the sky and the moorland was wrapt in a fine mist so peculiar to that district. The roads were heavy, and one could hear the silt crush beneath her feet as she walked.
A little later the two met, and the relationship was evident at the first glance. They were mother and son. The youth was about seventeen years of age, tall and muscular. He wore the dress of a mechanic, and there was in his appearance a suggestion of capability and of resolute resolve. Strangely handsome he was, and yet no one seemed attracted by him. During his journey from Bodmin a labourer would pass the time of day, but he seemed to take no notice. And once the driver of a farmer's cart offered to give him a lift, but he only shook his head and trudged on. There was an eager questioning look in his eyes, and he seemed to be wondering greatly as to the result of his journey. Two days before he had received a letter, urging him to come to a certain spot on Altarnun Moors, and promising him that he should hear of things concerning which he had long been anxious to know. The letter had no signature, but the address given was "Lancroft, near Launceston." Who the writer of the letter was the youth had not the slightest idea, but he never thought of refusing the request made. Almost ever since he could remember he had wondered concerning his father and mother, and now he felt sure that the time of revelation was come.
Presently the two met, and each looked steadily into the other's face, as if wondering who the other might be.
"You received a letter two days ago?" said the woman.
"Yes," was his reply.
"I wrote it." Simple as the words were, they were uttered with a sob.
He saw that she was under very strong emotion, and noted the yearning look in her eyes.
"You have wondered all your life who your father and mother are?" and the woman controlled her voice with difficulty. "I know you have. You want to know all about them, don't you?"
"I shouldn't have come here if I hadn't!" was his reply.
"I'm your mother!" said the woman.
He looked at her curiously. He had been thinking, ever since they had met, whether this might not be so; nevertheless the news came to him as a kind of shock. A woman with sad eyes and an expression of unsatisfied yearning in her face; yet handsome withal.
"Do you not believe it?" she asked. "My boy! my boy! I'm your mother, and, if I have kept silent about it, it has been for love of you!"
And she held out her hands towards him.
It seemed as though something touched his heart, as though his whole being thrilled with a recognition of the truth, and, in a way he could not understand, a great love for this lonely woman sprang suddenly into his heart.
"Yes, I believe you are my mother."
"I have come to tell you everything, Paul," she said. "It's a sad story, but I believe you'll understand."
"Yes," he replied, "I shall understand!"
The woman looked at him, still with the same expression of tender yearning in her eyes.
"It's a hard question to ask," she said, "but can you feel towards me as a laddie should feel to his mother?"
"Yes," he replied, "I do."
"Then call me 'Mother,' and kiss me!" she cried passionately.
"Mother!" he said, and held her close to him.
A few minutes later she began to tell him the things which for years he had been longing to know, and concerning which gossip had been rife.
"I want to know, mother," he said, "who my father is, where I was born, and why the truth has been so long kept from me."
"Born," she said, and her face became hard; "you were born in a workhouse, and your father would call himself a gentleman, and we were married in Scotland!"
A bright light came into the youth's eyes at the last part of the sentence. "But is my father alive?" he asked eagerly.
"I do not know," she replied; "I think he must be. I feel sure he is, but I cannot tell. Listen. I was reared in Scotland, not far beyond the English border. My name was Jean Lindsay. My father had been a fisherman as a young man, but came to Cornwall for his wife, and soon after he brought her to Scotland and I was born, she died. He had a farm in Scotland, and there I lived with my stepmother and stepbrothers and sisters, who made life a misery for me until I was eighteen, and then one day I met a gentleman. Oh, my lad, it was no wonder I loved him; he was different from all the lads I had met in those parts, young, handsome, laughter-loving, just the man to captivate a lassie's heart. He married me, Scottish fashion, and on the day we were wed he told me he had received a letter which urged him to go back to his home at once. We were married secretly, my boy, because I was afraid for my father and stepmother to know. They wanted me to wed a young farmer, and would have forced me to do so but for him, and I could not--how could I when I loved him and he loved me? And I believed in him too; he was all the world to me. No one knew but he and me. But when we were married and he came to the inn, he told the landlady I was his wife."
The boy nodded. "And the letter, mother?" he said, "the letter, what of that?"
"It urged him to go to his home," she replied. "You must remember, my boy, that I was young and ignorant. I knew nothing of the ways of the world, nothing of men, but I loved him devotedly. He was my king, my life! When he had read the letter, he said he must leave the following morning, and urged me to go back to my home and wait until he could come and fetch me. I was to tell them, he said, that we were married, and that thus I was free from the attentions of Willie Fearn, the farmer they wanted me to wed."
The youth did not seem to understand her, but looked at her with wild wonder in his eyes, trying to comprehend the story she was telling. It seemed utterly unreal to him. He wondered whether she fully realised what she was saying.
"Yes, mother," he said at length, "go on."
"What could I do but obey him?" she said. "I had promised before God that I would, and I did. I went back to my father--he had wondered where I had gone--and told him I had wedded a young Englishman named Douglas Graham. I think my father thought that all was right, for, while he spoke harsh words to me, he seemed presently to settle down to the conviction that my husband would soon come to me, and that I should be a lady. But my stepmother said awful things. I will not tell you what! Even now her words cut me like a knife."
"Well," said the youth, "and what then?"
"Day after day I waited for a letter from him," she replied. "At first I hadn't a doubt; he had promised me and I believed him. But when one month had gone, and then two, I grew desperate."
"And he never wrote to you at all?" asked the youth.
"At the end of three months," she replied, "I got a letter."
"Yes"--and his voice was eager--"what did he say?"
"Here it is," she replied, and she passed him a crumpled piece of paper. The envelope was stamped with a London post-mark, but the paper within had no address of any sort. It simply contained the words:
"DEAR JEAN,--It cannot be helped now, and of course we were never really married. It was only a joke.--DOUGLAS."
"And that was all?" said the youth.
"That was all, God helping me, that was all."
"And you have heard nothing from him since?"
"Never a word since the morning he bid me good-bye at the station, and told me to go back to my father, saying he would write to me at once, and come to me soon. No, I have never seen nor heard of him since."
The eyes of the youth became red with anger. His hands clenched and unclenched themselves passionately, but he did not speak. It seemed as if he could not. Then an oath escaped him, and his voice was hoarse.
"But, mother," he cried presently, "tell me more. There must be more than this. What about this marriage? Were there no witnesses? Have you no marriage lines?"
"Things are different in Scotland, my boy," was her answer. "There many people just take each other as man and wife, and that is all, and the marriage is legal. Do you know"--and her voice trembled with passion--"that on the afternoon when he took me as his wife we knelt down by the roadside, and he prayed with me that God would help us to be true man and wife to each other?"
"But, but----" he cried, and he was trembling with emotion, "and he treated you like that?"
The woman did not reply, but looked away across the moors with a hard, stony stare.
"My mother, my poor, poor mother!" He seemed incapable of saying more, and for two or three minutes there was a silence between them.
"And then, mother?" he went on presently.
"Months later," she went on, "I was driven from home. I had no friends, no relatives, no one to whom I could go, and I thought I should go mad!"
"And what did you do?" he asked.
"There seemed to me only one thing I could do," she said. "I could not stay near my old home, I was ashamed--besides, my father and stepmother drove me away with a curse. They said I had disgraced the name of Lindsay. I always hated Scotland, and as my heart turned to my mother's home, I determined I would go to Cornwall. I had just three pounds, and with that I commenced my journey."
"You came by train?" he asked.
"No, I walked. I wanted to hoard my money. You see it was very little."
"You walked all the way to Cornwall from Scotland?"
"Every step," she said. "It was winter time, too, and it often rained, but somehow I felt as though Cornwall would give me a home, a welcome. It took me weeks to do it, but I got there at last. Often I slept in a farmer's barn; more than once I walked all through the night." And into her eyes came a far-away look, while her lips quivered as if with pain.
"And did you find a home and welcome?" he asked.
She shook her head. "How could I? I went straight to St. Ives, but everyone had forgotten my mother, and her people were dead. You see, I looked like a vagrant, my clothes were weather-stained, my boots were worn out, I had no money, and no one wanted me. More than once I thought I should have died of starvation."
"And what did you do?" he asked.
"I did not know what to do. I went from place to place. Here and there I got a day's work, but I never begged. I would rather have died than have done that."
A kind of grim satisfaction settled in the youth's face as he heard this, but it was easy to see that the pain which lay in his mother's heart also passed into his. He was not pleasant to look at at that moment, and if murder can ever be seen in a man's eyes, it could be seen in his at that moment.
"Well, mother?" he said at length, "and what afterwards?"
"I began to tramp northward again," she said. "I hoped that surely, surely, someone would help me. And then one day I fell down by the roadside. It was spring time now but terribly cold, and I thought, 'Now I shall die, and all will be over.' I think I went to sleep, because I knew nothing of what happened. A great darkness fell upon everything, and then, when I woke again, I found myself in a workhouse. I knew it was a workhouse by the clothes the people wore and by the way they talked; but I did not care much--I had got beyond that." She hesitated, like one who did not know how to continue her story. Her teeth became set, her lips quivered, her eyes were hard. "Oh, my boy, my boy!" she said, "I could not help it, I thought I did what was right!"
The youth took hold of her hand almost awkwardly. He wanted to try and comfort her, but knew not how. Perhaps the affectionate action, even although accompanied by no words, was the best thing he could have done to ease her aching heart. She laid her head upon his chest as though she were tired. And then she sobbed convulsively. "There you were born, my boy."
"They always called me a workhouse brat," he said; "but never mind, mother, never mind; what then?"
"They never thought I would live, I suppose," she replied. "For weeks I lay between life and death. I believe I should have died, but presently I came to know that you were alive, and that you were a great, strong, handsome boy. But you are not like him, thank God! He had blue eyes and light hair, but your eyes are black, your hair is black, and you are like me. They christened you in the workhouse, unknown to me. The chaplain gave you a name. If I had had the choosing of it, I should have called you Ishmael or Esau, but they called you Paul. They wanted me to tell them my surname, but I would not--I could not--so they called you Stepaside, the name of the little hamlet where I fell down, as I thought, to die."
"Well, I know everything after that," he replied.
"Very nearly," was her answer. "You were brought up in the workhouse, while I, as soon as I was strong enough, had to go away into service. On the whole, I suppose, they did as well as one could expect for you. They gave you good schooling, and taught you a trade, and now you are beginning to earn your own living."
"Yes, mother," he replied. "I have got a job as a blacksmith in the Pencarrow Mines. Soon I shall be getting a pound a week, and later on you must come and live with me."
She shook her head. "No, Paul. While I am not with you, people will not insult you. Now that you are away from the place where you were born and reared, no one knows your history. No one knows that you were born in a workhouse and that your mother does not know where your father is."
"But you were married, mother?"
"Yes," she cried eagerly, "and that is why I have told you everything to-day. When you were seventeen, I said to myself, 'Directly I can get to him we will meet, and I will tell him, tell him with my own lips.' Paul, that man has covered your mother with black shame. If he is alive you must find him. The day he wrote me that letter he killed all the love I had for him. The last feeling I had, when I lay down and thought I was going to die on the roadside, was a feeling of hatred for him. When I first saw you, although my heart went out to you with a great love, I hated your father. For seventeen long years I have hated him, and I hate him still."
She looked like a savage, and there was a snarl in her voice as she spoke. "But for him, but for him----" And then she stopped. "Paul, find him out, wherever he is. Find him out!"
The passion which burned in the mother's eyes passed into those of the youth. She need not have told him what was in her heart. Paul Stepaside hated his father from that day.
"Yes, I will," he said grimly. "I will find him. An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth; disgrace for disgrace; misery for misery. Mother, all you have suffered he shall suffer, and a thousand times more. Wherever he is, whatever he is, I will find him." His eyes turned away towards the dreary moors. Router and Brown Willy stood like grim sentinels watching over the scene. A slight wind had arisen, which soughed its way across the great silent spaces, dispelling the mists. The black tors in the near distance became visible again; frogs croaked in the marshes near by.
"But tell me more, mother. I know nothing yet. Who is he? What is he? Tell me all you know of him."
"There is little I can tell," said the mother. "He told me his name was Douglas Graham. I believe that to be true. I found out that from the people at 'Highlands,' the big house close by my father's farm."
"Ah, they can tell us," he cried.
"Nay," replied the mother. "They only had the house for a short time, and then left. They are gone, I know not whither, and I, fool that I was, was too ignorant to find out in those days more about him. But he was called Douglas Graham, there is no doubt about that."
"And is that all?"
"Only this," replied the mother, "he is a lawyer--what they call an English barrister. I have heard that books are kept, containing a list of such people. I expect they'll be in London; but these barrister men go around the country, some of them. Anyhow, that is for you to find out."
He nodded his head. "Yes, I will find out," he said; "but the thing will be difficult, mother. I see what you mean now, and why you cannot live with me. I must go to London, or to one of the other big places where I can find out the truth about such things. Oh, I shall know, and I will not spare him. Don't be afraid, mother, you shall be avenged for all he's done to you."
A kind of evil joy flashed from the woman's eyes. "Yes, Paul," she said presently, "and you are clever, you were the cleverest lad in the workhouse school. I found out that. You were always ahead with your lessons, and you are quick with your brains and you are strong. But remember, he is clever and strong too, and he has much book-learning, and he knows all about the law, English law especially. You must be able to meet him on equal terms. You must learn, my boy--you must know everything. You need not fear for me. I have a place now where I can live comfortably; but remember, I shall never be happy until either he sets me and you right before the world, or I have made him suffer all I have suffered and all you have suffered."
For half an hour more they stood talking, he asking questions, she answering and explaining. Night had fallen now, but the moon had risen and made darkness impossible. The mists had cleared away, too, and patches of blue were to be seen in the sky. Here and there a star peeped out.
"Good night, Paul," she said at length. "You will write me often, won't you? Remember, you are the only thing I love on earth."
"You know what I will do," he replied. "Good night, mother."
For a few seconds he held her like a man might hold the maid he loved, and then, turning, he walked slowly back towards Bodmin, from which town he intended to take the train to the place where he lived. Mile after mile he walked, seeming to take no notice of his surroundings. It might be day, it might be night; it might be summer, it might be winter, for all he cared. The iron had entered his soul, the poison of hatred had filled his heart. He loved his mother with a kind of savage, passionate love, but the man who was his father he hated, and on him he swore to be revenged. "That is my work in life," he said to himself; "that is the purpose for which I shall live, and I will do it--yes, I will do it."