Maurice Clissold had not forgotten that entry in the register at Seacomb Church, and one afternoon, when Matthew, Justina, and he were cosily seated at the clumsy old lodging-house table drinking tea, he took occasion to refer to his rambles in Cornwall, and his exploration of the little out-of-the-way market town.
‘I should fancy you children of Thespis must have found life rather difficult at such a place as Seacomb,’ he said. ‘Dramatic art must be rather out of the line of those Nonconformist miners. I saw three Dissenting chapels in the small town, one of them being the very building which was once the theatre.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Elgood, with a thoughtful look, ‘we had a bad time of it at Seacomb. My poor wife was ill, and if it hadn’t been for the kindness of the people we lodged with—well, we might have had a closer acquaintance with starvation than any man cares to make. There’s no such touchstone for the human heart as distress, and no man knows the goodness of his fellow-men till he has sounded the lowest deep of misery.’
‘You had a child christened at Seacomb, had you not, Mr. Elgood?’ asked Maurice.
The comedian looked up with a startled expression.
‘How did you know that?’ he asked.
‘I was turning over the parish register, looking for another entry, when I stumbled across the baptism of a child of yours, whose name was not Justina. I thought perhaps Justina was an assumed name, and that the infant christened at Seacomb was Miss Elgood, as the age seemed to correspond.’
‘No,’ replied Matthew, hurriedly. ‘That infant was an elder sister of Justina’s. She died at six weeks old.’
‘Why, father,’ exclaimed Justina, ‘you never told me that you lost a child at Seacomb. I did not even know I ever had a brother or sister. I thought I was your only child.’
‘The only one to live beyond infancy, my dear. Why should I trouble you with the remembrance of past sorrows? We have had cares enough without raking up dead-and-gone griefs.’