CHAPTER VI.

AT BAYHAM.

EUSTACE THORBURN went to Bayham, and took up his quarters at the George Hotel. The Dorsetshire watering-place had once been fashionable; but its fashion had departed, and an atmosphere of decay pervaded the grandeurs of that bygone day. Happily, the departure of fashion, which had never had any hand in the loveliness of the bay and the broad yellow sands, had robbed the Bayham shore of no grace or charm. The changing opal waters retained their brightest hues, though only west-country gentry came to look upon them. The golden sands were golden still, though the crystal chandeliers and sconces which had once adorned the assembly-room had been sold by auction, and the room itself converted into a Baptist chapel.

There had been many changes at the George within the last twenty years. That once popular establishment had been superseded by a gigantic, stuccoed railway-hotel--itself a dismal failure--and the last two proprietors had been insolvent. Eustace Thorburn sought in vain for a visitors’ book dated ’43. All such books had been sold for waste paper years ago, and the only creature to be found in the hotel who had belonged to the same establishment in the year ’43 was a semi-idiotic ostler. Eustace abandoned all hope of information in this quarter, and went out into the little seaside town to look for the house in which his mother’s childhood had been spent.

He found the place easily enough. It was still a circulating-library and reading-room, and as he lingered before the gaily decorated window, Eustace Thorburn could fancy that nameless stranger, who dated his letters from the George, peering between the lithographs and sheets of music in the hope of seeing Celia Mayfield’s fair young face.

“Why could not an honest man have fallen in love with her?” he asked himself, savagely. “Why must it needs be a villain who was first to discover the charm of her innocent beauty?”

He went into the shop. There was a girl sitting behind the counter, half hidden by a high desk, and busy with some shred of needlework. The young man pictured his mother sitting in the same spot, and all of a sudden the face and figure of the girl grew dim and blurred before his eyes. He was fain to look about him for a few moments, as if seeking some special object, before he could trust himself to speak. Then he asked for some stationery, and contrived to occupy the girl for a considerable time, while he selected what he wanted, and questioned her about the townsfolk.

“Was there any person of the name of Kimber still living in Bayham?” he asked. The girl told him that there were several Kimbers: Mr. Kimber, the plumber, in New Street; Mr. Kimber, the house-agent, at the corner of the Parade; and Kimber and Willows, the drapers, in High Street.

“The person I wish to find is, or was, a Miss Kimber--Sarah Kimber,” said Eustace; “and I believe her father was a draper.”

“Ah!” exclaimed the damsel; “then that is the Miss Kimber who married Mr. Willows. Mr. Willows was head-assistant to old Mr. Kimber, who died five years ago. He left all his money and his business to Miss Kimber--being his only daughter, you see, sir; and as soon as she left off her mourning, she married Mr. Willows. He is a very handsome man, Mr. Willows, and nearly ten years younger than Miss Kimber that was, and they do say Mr. and Mrs. Willows do not live happily together.”

Eustace went straight from the library to the establishment of Messrs. Kimber and Willows. It was a big, glaring shop, with a great deal of plate-glass and gilding, and a gaudy display of dresses and ribbons, bonnets and parasols. A smirking young man pounced immediately upon the stranger, asking what he might please to want; and by him Eustace was conducted to Mrs. Willows, who sat at a desk at the end of the shop, in a perfect bower of ribbons and millinery. She was attended by a bevy of damsels, who were busied in the construction of caps and bonnets, and whom she addressed with extreme acidity of tone and manner. She was not a pleasant-looking person; and if old Mr. Kimber’s money had changed into withered leaves on her inheritance of it, she could scarcely have seemed to have profited less by the dead man’s wealth, so pinched and hungry was her aspect.

She favoured Eustace with the nearest approach to a smile of which her thin lips were capable, but regarded him with evident suspicion when she heard that he wished for a private interview.

“If you are travelling in the drapery line you needn’t trouble yourself to show your patterns,” she said, decisively; “we have dealt with Grossam and Grinder for the last twenty years, and we never take goods from strangers. There are some new people on the other side of the way who may wish to deal with you, if you’ll give them long credit and take their bill for your goods, I dare say; but I don’t recommend you to trust them. When people come into a town without sixpence of capital, and try to undersell an old-established house, they have only themselves to blame if they get into the _Gazette_. However, _I_ say nothing; it’s no affair of _mine_. The increase of our business is wearing me to the grave, and I should be the last to begrudge new people a chance, however unfair _their_ way of proceeding may be.”

Eustace had been quite unable to stay this torrent of indignation against the people on the other side of the street; but when Mrs. Willows paused to take breath, he informed her that he was not a commercial traveller, and that he had nothing to do with drapery, either wholesale or retail.

“I very much wish to obtain a few minutes’ conversation with you in private,” he said, glancing towards the young milliners, who had honoured him with a furtive scrutiny while Mrs. Willows was not looking at them, and had returned to their work with an exaggerated appearance of industry directly they felt her cold gray eyes upon them.

That important personage hesitated. It was rather an agreeable sensation to have a handsome young man pleading for a private interview, and she looked towards the other end of the shop, where her husband was displaying cotton prints to an elderly customer of the housekeeper class, with the faint hope of awakening in that gentleman’s breast some twinge of the jealousy which so often racked her own.

“If you will step upstairs to the drawing-room,” she said to Eustace, “you can explain your business without interruption.”

Eustace followed Mrs. Willows to an apartment on the first floor, an apartment which was made splendid by a great deal of bead-work, and by occasional glimpses of a very gaudy Brussels carpet; but the splendour whereof was somewhat subdued by chaste coverings of brown holland and crochet-work.

The linendraperess seated herself in one of the holland-covered arm-chairs, and arranged the rustling folds of her stiff silk dress. Having settled herself deliberately thus, she sat looking at Eustace with her hard gray eyes, waiting for him to speak.

And this had been his mother’s friend, this hard, prosperous, vulgar woman! they had been girls together, and had shared all manner of simple, girlish pleasures! Eustace looked at the woman sadly, thinking how wide a difference there must needs have been between the two girls, and how little real sympathy or womanly tenderness could have ever softened the heart of Mrs. Willows.

“I have to apologize for this intrusion,” he said, after a pause; “for the business that brings me to Bayham is a personal matter, which can have very little interest for you. I am anxious to obtain all possible information respecting a family of the name of Mayfield, and more especially Miss Mayfield, the only daughter of a librarian in this town, who, I am given to understand, was very intimate with you some four-and-twenty years ago.”

The lady’s mouth, tight and hard at the best of times, tightened and hardened itself to an abnormal degree as Eustace said this. A pale fire kindled in the cold, gray eyes, and the stiff shoulders and elbows adjusted themselves anew with increased stiffness.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Willows, “I knew Celia Mayfield.”

“You and she were friends, I believe?”

“We were _companions_,” replied Mrs. Willows, with spiteful promptitude. “Even at this distance of time I should blush to own that Celia Mayfield and I were ever friends.”

The whitey-brown complexion of the draper’s wife seemed incapable of anything approaching a blush; but Eustace’s face glowed with an angry crimson as the woman said this.

“May I inquire _why_ you would be ashamed to confess your friendship for Miss Mayfield?” he asked, his voice tremulous with suppressed passion. It was so difficult to sit quietly by while a spiteful woman belied his mother’s name; it was so difficult to refrain from crying out: “I am her son, and am ready to uphold her as the best and purest of women!” And to own himself her son, would have been to betray the sad secret of her hapless life.

“May I ask what reason you have to be ashamed of your girlish friendship?” he repeated, in steadier tones, when he had waited some moments for Mrs. Willows’ reply.

“Because Celia Mayfield’s conduct was shameful,” answered the woman; “though, goodness knows, it’s not much wonder that a girl who had been spoiled, and petted, and flattered, until she didn’t know whether she stood on her head or her heels, _did_ turn out badly. Mr. and Mrs. Mayfield made a fool of their daughter. _I_ was an only daughter, and an only child, too, for the matter of that; but my father was a sensible man, and _I_ was never brought up to read novels and think myself a beauty. I kept house for my poor pa when I was fourteen years of age; and if there was a halfpenny wrong in my accounts, he didn’t hesitate to box my ears. And I feel the benefit of it now,” added Mrs. Willows, triumphantly. “This business would not be what it is if my father’s property had been left to a frivolous person.”

“And you considered Miss Mayfield a frivolous person?”

“Frivolous to a degree that makes me wonder I could ever waste my time in her company.”

“Will you do me the favour to tell me all you know of the circumstances under which Miss Mayfield left her home?” said Eustace. “I can assure you that my motive for making these inquiries is no idle or unworthy one. You will be doing me a great service if you will give me what information you can in relation to this subject.”

“If you put it in that manner, I will tell you all I know,” answered Mrs. Willows, “though it is not a pleasant subject--especially to me, who might have suffered by Celia Mayfield’s conduct. Goodness knows what people might have said of _me_ if my pa’s position in Bayham hadn’t been what it was.”

There was a pause, during which the woman rearranged her silk dress, and then she began her friend’s story with a stony face, and extreme deliberation of manner.

“I suppose you are aware that Celia Mayfield ran away from her home with a gentleman called Hardwick, or at least calling himself Hardwick, who was staying at the George Hotel when he became acquainted with her, and who it was easy to see was very much above her in station. Indeed, how she could ever bring herself to think that he would marry her, would be a mystery to me if I did not know how her vanity had been fostered and her looks praised by people who ought to have known better. She did think so; and when I warned her of the danger her imprudent conduct might lead her into, she persuaded me to think the same. ‘Very well, Celia,’ I said; ‘you know best; but it isn’t often that a gentleman whose pa is in parliament marries the daughter of a stationer.’ He had let it slip that his father was a member of parliament, and he had let many things slip which proved that he belonged to rich people and to high people.”

“He was a young man, I believe?”

“Five-and-twenty at most, and very handsome.”

As Mrs. Willows pronounced these words, her gaze became suddenly fixed, and she sat staring at her visitor with an expression of extreme astonishment.

“Perhaps you are related to him?” she said, interrogatively.

“I never saw him in my life. But why do you ask the question?”

“Because you are like him. I didn’t notice the resemblance until just now; for it’s so long since I saw him that I’d almost forgotten what he was like. But as I spoke to you his face came back to me. Yes, you are very like him. And you are really not related?”

“I tell you again, Mrs. Willows, that I never saw this man in my life. It is the Mayfield family in which I am interested. Pray go on with your story.”

The beating of his heart quickened as he spoke. He had discovered something at least from this woman. It was something to know that he resembled the nameless father who had abandoned him.

“The likeness between us is a birthright of which he could not rob me,” thought the young man; “or he would have deprived me of that, as well as of the rest.”

“I believe the gentleman had written a book,” resumed Mrs. Willows: “a story, or a novel, or something of that kind. Celia went on about it in her childish way. It was the most beautiful story that ever was written, and so on, she said. My poor pa forbade me reading novels, and I had to give my solemn promise that no book from the circulating-library should ever enter this house, before he would allow me to walk out with Celia Mayfield. When she began to read the book, she didn’t know anything about the author; but while she was reading it, he happened to go into the shop, and she went on about the story to him as she had gone on about it to me; and I suppose his vanity was flattered by her childish talk, for there never was such a childish creature about books and flowers and birds. He told her that he had written the book; and then he wrote to her, first a note, which was delivered by his servant, who hung about the library until he got the opportunity of giving it to Celia unknown to any one; and then letters, which were addressed to the post-office: and she showed me the letters. I said, ‘Celia, these are not letters which a prudent young woman ought to receive.’ But it was no use talking to her. The first letter that was sent to the post-office lay there nearly a fortnight before she went to fetch it; and all that time she went on about it to me when we were out walking; for he had told her he should write, and address his letter to the post-office. Should she fetch it, or shouldn’t she? I said, ‘If you take my advice, Celia, you will have nothing to do with it. People who mean honourably don’t send their letters to post-offices.’ But one evening, when we were coming home from a walk, we passed through the street where the office is; and she let go my arm all of a sudden, ran into the shop, and came out with a letter in her hand. As soon as we turned the corner into a bye-lane, where there was nobody about, she kissed the letter, and went on like a mad thing, and then she read it to me; and she was as proud and happy as if a king had written to her.”

“God help her, poor innocent soul!” murmured Eustace, tenderly.

“I don’t know what you call _innocence_,” exclaimed the matron, with severity; “but if you consider _that_ the conduct of a prudent young woman, I do not. The end of the story proved that I was right. Celia and I had been in the habit of walking on the sands in a sheltered place beyond the bay, where there was very little company, and where two young women could walk together without being followed or stared at. We walked there almost every evening when it was fine, and the gentleman at the George used to meet us there, and talk to Celia. I told her that I disapproved of these meetings; but she had a way of talking people over, and she talked me over, and made me believe what she believed. If the gentleman really wanted to marry her, there could be no harm in her meeting him in the company of a young female friend. Things went on like this for some time, and then, when the summer season was quite over, the gentleman went away. Celia fretted a great deal; but she told me he was coming back in the winter to see her father and to explain everything, and there’d be an end to all secresy. I said, ‘Celia, don’t build upon his coming back. It’s not my wish to make you unhappy; but, if you take _my_ advice, you’ll forget all about him.’”

“But he did return?”

“I suppose he did, though I never saw him after the summer. I gave Celia Mayfield good advice, and she wasn’t pleased to hear it. We had some words upon the subject; and as my pa’s position was very superior to Mr. Mayfield’s, it was not likely I should suffer myself to be put upon by his daughter. When Celia wanted to make friends with me, I declined; and from that time we never spoke. I sat under Mr. Slowcome, at the Baptist chapel in Walham Lane, and Celia Mayfield attended the parish-church; so we didn’t often meet. When we did meet, Celia used to look at me in her childish way, as if she wanted to be friends; but I made a point of looking straight before me. I heard nothing more of the Mayfields until one morning in the winter, when a young person came into our shop and told me that Celia had run away from home.”

“Was the manner of her leaving generally known?”

“It was not. The Mayfields kept things very close. There was a great deal of talk, as you may suppose, and people had their opinions; but nothing was ever known for certain; and from that time to this I have never set eyes on Celia Mayfield.”

“And you never will,” said Eustace, solemnly. “She is dead.”

Mrs. Willows murmured an expression of surprise. Her hard, grim face softened a little, and when she spoke again, her tone was less severe.

“I am sorry to hear that,” she said. “I never expected to meet Celia Mayfield again; but I am sorry to hear that she is dead.”

Even for this hard nature the sanctity of the grave had some softening influence. The linendraper’s wife could afford to think a little more indulgently of the spoiled and petted beauty whose loveliness had been so bitter to her, now that she knew her rival had passed into those shadowy regions where earthly charms count for so little. Some faint touch of tenderness, some memory of her own youth--when Bayham was gayer and more pleasant, and even the sands and the sea had seemed brighter to her than now--came back to the grim, purse-proud tradeswoman, and one solitary tear glittered in her stern, gray eye. She brushed it away quickly, ashamed of the human emotion.

“You can tell me nothing more respecting the man who lured your friend from her home?”

“Nothing. Celia told me that the name by which we knew him was an assumed one, but she never told me his real name. I don’t believe that even she knew it. She told me that he was very grand and very rich; and it was easy for any one to discover from his conversation that he was a gentleman, and had travelled half over the world.”

“Do you remember the title of the book that he had written?”

Mrs. Willows shook her head.

“In one or more volumes?”

“In one volume. I have seen it in Celia’s hand. Mr. Hardwick gave her a copy of it, bound in green morocco.”

“Had Miss Mayfield any other friend than yourself?” Eustace asked, after a brief pause. “Was there any one else in whom she would have been likely to confide?”

“No one else. Society in Bayham is very limited. Mr. Mayfield was so wrapped up in his daughter, and had such high ideas, on account of being the son of a clergyman, that he scarcely thought any one good enough to associate with her. I was Celia’s only female friend.”

“I hope you will think more tenderly of her in future,” said Eustace, gently; “she is now beyond all human praise or blame, and the turf will lie none the less lightly above her grave, let the world judge her never so harshly. But I, who knew her and loved her, would like to think that the companion of her youth remembered her kindly.”

A second solitary tear bedewed the eye of Mrs. Willows.

“I’m sure I bear no malice,” she said, in an injured tone. “If Celia and I were at variance for some months before she left, it was more her fault than mine, for I gave her the best advice, and gave it with the best intentions. But I am quite willing to forget all that. Do you know if the gentleman who called himself Mr. Hardwick really did marry her? People in Bayham concluded, by her not coming back, that she was altogether deceived and deluded by his fine promises; and it was said her father’s heart was broken by her conduct. He died very soon after, as you may be aware; and his wife did not long survive him.”

“I know very little of your friend’s sad story,” answered Eustace; “but I know that her life for twenty years was as pure as the life of an angel--as self-denying as that of a saint.”

There was no more to be said. Eustace thanked Mrs. Willows for her compliance with his wishes, and took his departure. He went out into the High Street of Bayham very little wiser than when he had entered the prosperous emporium of Kimber and Willows. He walked slowly along the quiet street, and found himself by and by on the outskirts of the town, strolling onward in an objectless manner, and meditating upon his mother’s broken story.

When he paused for the first time to look about him he was face to face with the sea. Behind him a terrace of white houses reflected the full blaze of the southern sun. Before him lay the bay--a wide expanse of tawny sand, with pools of sunlit water glimmering here and there.

The tide was low, and the sandy amphitheatre lay open to the foot of the pedestrian. On one side of the bay rose a tall cliff; on the other a stretch of sand lay beyond the jutting line of rocks. Eustace crossed the bay in this direction. He wanted to see the place in which Celia Mayfield had walked with her false lover, and he knew that this lonely stretch of sand beyond the rocks must be the spot alluded to in his father’s letters, and mentioned that day by Mrs. Willows.

It was a fit spot for a lovers’ trysting-place--remote from the voices of the little town, and yet within the sound of church-bells, which took a silvery tone as they floated hitherward across the rippling water. Summer visitors to Bayham rarely penetrated beyond the screen of rocks which sheltered the bay, and this smooth stretch of sand was not often invaded by the spades and barrows of noisy children or the feet of idle damsels. It was an enchanted cove, which might have been sacred to the sea-nymphs, so seldom did human creatures disturb its poetic calm.

Here Eustace lingered for some time, still meditating the story of his mother’s youth, and with strangely intermingled feelings of tenderness and anger in his heart. How could he ever think of _her_ with sufficient love and pity? How could he ever think of her destroyer without considering how he should avenge her wrongs?

“So trusting, so childlike, and deceived so cruelly! What a villain he must have been! what an unutterable villain!” thought Celia’s son, as he contemplated the scene of his mother’s love-story. It should have been such a sweet idyll--a modern fairy tale of rustic beauty and princely truth and chivalry--and it had been instead so dark a history of falsehood and shame.

The sun was low in the west when Eustace left that lonely sea-shore. He had been walking there for hours, indifferent alike to the progress of time and to the fact that he had eaten nothing since nine o’clock that morning. And after leaving the sands he did not return immediately to his hotel, but made his way to the parish churchyard, guided by the old Norman tower, which stood out in sombre relief against a rosy evening sky. There was just light enough to serve him in his search amongst the tombstones; nor was he long finding that which he sought--a tall, white head-stone, standing near the low wall which bounded the crowded burial-place. The churchyard stood on rising ground; and the irregular roofs and chimneys of the town, with here and there a glimpse of foliage, and the broad purple sea for a background, made no unlovely picture in the soft evening light.

Eustace knelt upon the grass beside the simple grave, and in that pious attitude read the inscription on the head-stone:

Sacred to the Memory OF EUSTACE THORNBURN MAYFIELD, YOUNGEST SON OF THE LATE SAMUEL MAYFIELD, CURATE OF ASHE, IN THIS COUNTY, Obiit April 3, 1846, ætat. 52; AND OF MARY CELIA, HIS WIDOW, SECOND DAUGHTER OF THE LATE MR. JAMES HOWDEN, FARMER, Obiit February 1, 1847, ætat. 49. This stone is erected by their affectionate children.

“Have I any right to think of them as my grandfather and my grandmother?” the young man asked himself. “The law would tell me no. But I take my stand upon a higher law than that made by political economists, and claim the right to call these my kindred, and to avenge their injuries.”