Penelope Brandling: A Tale of the Welsh coast in the Eighteenth Century

by Vernon Lee

But I hid my face. "Oh, Eustace," I answered, "when I think of our child!"

But what I was saying, God help me, was not true.

October 1, 1773.

What frightful suspicions are these which I have allowed to creep insidiously into my mind! Did he or did he not know? Does he know yet? Every time we meet I feel my eyes seeking his face, scanning his features, and furtively trying to read their meaning, alas! alas! as if he were a stranger. And I spend my days piecing together bits of the past, and every day they make a different and more perplexing pattern. I remember his change of manner on receiving the news of his brother's death, and the gloom which hung over him during our journey and after our arrival here. I thought then that it was the unexpected return to the scenes of his unhappy childhood; and that his constraint and silence with me were due to his difficulty in dealing with the shocking state of things he found awaiting him. It seemed natural enough that Eustace, a thinker, a dreamer even, should feel harassed at his inability to clean out this den of iniquity. But why have remained here? Good God, is my husband a mere pensioner of all this hideousness, as his wretched brother seems to have been? And even for that miserable debauched creature the day came when he turned against his masters, and faced death, perhaps like a gentleman. Death.... How unjust I am grown to Eustace! I ought to try and put myself in his place, and see things as he would see them, not with the horrified eyes of a stranger. Like me, he may have believed at first that St. Salvat's was merely a nest of smugglers.... Or he may have had only vague fears of worse, haunting him like bad dreams of his childhood....

Besides, this frightful trade in drowned men and their goods has, from what Davies tells me, been for centuries the chief employment of this dreadful coast. Whole villages, and several of the first families of the country, practised it turn about with smuggling. Davies was ready with a string of names, she expressed no special horror and her conscience perhaps represents that of these people; an unlawful trade, but not without its side of peril, commending it to barbarous minds like highway robbery or the exploits of buccaneers, whom popular ballads treat as heroes.

But why have I recourse to such explanations? Men, even men as noble as my husband, are marvellously swayed by all manner of notions of honour, false and barbarous, often causing them to commit crimes in order to screen those of their blood or of their class. Some words of Hubert's keep recurring in my memory, to the effect that all the Brandlings were given up to what the villain called pilchard fishing, and none more devotedly than Eustace's own father. I remember and now understand the tone in which he added "all of us Brandlings except this superfine gentleman here." Those words meant that however great his horror of it all, Eustace could not break loose from that complicity of silence. For to expose the matter would be condemning all his kinsmen to a shameful death, to the public gallows; it would be uncovering the dishonour of his dead brother, of his father, and all his race.... What right have I to ask my husband to do what no other man would do in his place?

But perhaps he does not know, or is not certain yet.... To what a size have I allowed my horrid suspicions to grow! Behold me finding excuses for an offence which very likely has never been committed; and while seemingly condoning, condemning my husband in my mind, without giving him a chance of self-defence! What a confusion of disloyalty and duplicity my fears have bred in my soul! Anything is better than this; I owe it to Eustace to tell him my suspicions, and I will tell him.

November 2, 1773.

I have spoken. O marvellous, most unexpected reward of frankness and loyalty, however tardy! The nightmare has vanished, leaving paradise in my soul. For inconceivable as it seems, this day, on which I learned that we are prisoners, already condemned most likely, and at best doomed to die before very long, this day has been of unmixed, overflowing joy, such as I never knew or dreamed of.

Eustace, beloved, that ever I could have doubted you! And yet that very doubt, that sin against our love is what has brought me such blissful certainty. And even the shameful question, asked with burning cheeks, "Did you know all?" has been redeemed, transfigured, and will remain for ever in my soul like the initial bars of some ineffably tender and triumphant piece of music.