Roland, startled out of sleep by the sudden feeling of danger which always seizes us in a strange bed—except a bed at an inn—sat up and looked around him. His room was small and low and simply furnished. He was lying on a feather bed of the old-fashioned kind; the bedstead was of wood, but without curtains. He presently remembered where he was: on Samson Island—the guest of a child, a girl of fifteen.
He sprang out of bed and threw open the window. His room was over the porch. The fragrance of the lemon-verbena treearose like steam from a haystack, and filled his chamber. Below him, and beyond the garden, the geese waddled on the green, the ducks splashed in the pond, and in the farmyard Peter walked about slowly, carrying a pitchfork in his hands, but, apparently, for amusement rather than use, as if it had been a court sword.
He looked at his watch. It was half-past seven. At this time in London he would have been still in the first long slumber of the night. Now he was eager to be up and dressed, if only for a better understanding of the situation. To be the guest of a child has the freshness of novelty; but it is a situation which might lead to complications. Suppose a guardian, or a lawyer, or a cousin of some kind were to cross over in a boat and ask what he was doing there. And suppose he had no better reply than the plain truth—that this young lady had been so good as to invite him. Would a man go down to stay at a country house on the simple invitation of a school-girl? At the same time, this girl appeared to be the mistress of the establishment. There was an ancient lady—too old for superintendence—and there were servants. Well, if no guardian challenged his presence, why, then, for a single day—he must not stay more—it surely mattered little. The girl was but a child. Yet he must not stay longer. Perhaps they were not too well off: he must not be a burden. And, again, though the girl invited him to stay she named no limit of time. She did not invite him to stay, for a week or for a fortnight. Perhaps she expected him to go away that very morning.
He proceeded—with somewhat thoughtful countenance, considering these things—to dress, paying as much attention to his personal appearance as a young man should, and an old man must. It is the privilege of middle-aged men to go slovenly if they please: no one regardeth him of middle age. While their locks are turning grey and their children are growing up they are in the thick of the day's work, and they may disregard, if they choose, the mysteries of the toilette. Apollo, however, must be as jealous about his apparel and adornment as the Graces themselves, who are always represented at the moment before the choice is made. A velvet jacket and a white waistcoat are trifles in themselves, but they become a youthful figure and a face which has finely-cut features and is decorated with a promising silky beard, pointed withal, and the brown shading of a young moustache. Besides, he who is an artist thinks more than other young men about such things. Dress, to him, as to a woman, becomes costume. Colour has to be considered; such picturesqueness as is possible in modern fashion is aimed at; the artistic craving for fitness and beauty must be satisfied. Roland did what he could: and with his velvet coat, a clean white waistcoat, a crimson scarf, a good figure, and a handsome face, he was as handsome a youth of twenty-one as one is likely to find anywhere.
Again, as he opened his door and began to descend the narrowstairs, there came over him that curious feeling of having been in the place before. He had felt it in the evening when Armorel played 'Dissembling Love.' Now he felt it again. And when he stood in the porch he seemed to remember standing there once—long ago, long ago—but how long he could not tell; nor, as happened to him before, could he remember what had happened on that occasion.
Armorel herself was in the garden looking for some flowers for the breakfast-table. She greeted him with a smile of welcome and a friendly grasp of the hand. There was also a look of kindly solicitude on her face which would have suited a châtelaine of forty years. Had he slept well? Had he really been provided with everything he wanted? Was there anything at all lacking? If so, would he speak to Chessun? Breakfast, she said, leaving him in the garden, would be served in a few minutes.
Would he speak to Chessun? Then, it seemed as if she meant him to stay another night. What should he do?
Then Armorel came back.
'Breakfast is quite ready,' she said. 'Come in, Roland Lee. It is a beautiful morning. There is a fresh breeze and a smooth sea. We can go anywhere this morning. I have spoken to Peter, and he will be ready to go with us in an hour or so. I think we may even get out to Scilly and Maiden Bower.'
Yes; the morning was bright and the sky was clear. In the golden sunshine of September the islets across the water showed like creations of a poet's dream.
Roland drew a deep breath of admiration. 'Everybody,' he said, 'ought to come to Scilly and to stay a long time.'
He turned from the view to the girl beside him. She had changed her blue flannel dress for a daintier and a prettier costume—think not that there are no shops at Hugh Town—of grey nun's cloth, daintily embroidered in front. Still at her throat she wore a red flower, and round her neck clung the golden torque found in the old king's grave. Her dark eyes glowed: her lips were parted in a smile: her cheek showed the dewy bloom that some girls, fortunate above their sisters, can exhibit when they first appear in the morning: her long tresses were now tied up and confined; she looked as if she had just stepped forth from her chamber, fresh from her sleep. No one certainly could have guessed that she had been up since six; nor that the fish which had been hissing in the frying-pan, and were now lying meekly side by side in a dish on the breakfast-table, were of her own catching. An hour's sitting in the boat off Samson Ledge with hook and line had procured this splendid contribution to the morning banquet. Fish fragrant with the salt sea: fish that had not been packed tight in boxes, nor travelled in railway trains, nor been slapped about on counters, nor been packed in ice; fish that can never lie on a London table—these were set out before Roland's hungry gaze.
The ancient dame did not appear. The two breakfasted, as they had supped, together. I do not know how or where Armorel learned the art and practice of hospitality, but certainly she showed a true feeling in the matter of feeding—especially at breakfast. First, the table was decorated with the autumn leaves of the bramble—crimson, yellow, purple—few, indeed, know how beautiful a table may be made when decorated with these leaves. There were also a few late flowers from the garden; but not many. The coffee was strong, the milk hot and thick, the bread and butter home-made, like the beer of yester eve: the ham was cured by Chessun: the eggs were collected by Armorel: she had also with her own hands made the jam and the cake.
Armorel sat behind the cups with as much ease as if she had been accustomed from infancy to entertain young gentlemen at breakfast. She was serious over her task, and poured out the coffee as if it was something precious, not to be wasted or carelessly administered, which is the spirit in which all good food should be approached. She did not ask any questions, nor did she talk much during the banquet. Perhaps she had an instinctive perception of the great truth that breakfast, which is taken at the beginning of the day—the sacred day, with all its possibilities and its chances of what may happen; the fateful day, which alone and unaided may change the whole course and current of a life—should be approached with a becoming gravity. At breakfast the man fortifies himself before he goes forth to work. But he has the work before him. In the evening it is done: he has passed through the dangers of the day: he still lives: he has received no hurt: he has, we hope, prospered in his honest handiwork: he may laugh and rejoice. But at breakfast we should be serious.
'What will you do,' asked Armorel, breakfast completed, 'until Peter is ready? He has got some work, you know, before he can come out.'
'I should like first,' he said, 'to see your flower-farm, if I may.'
'If you please. But there is nothing to see at this time of the year. You must not think we grow flowers all the year round. If you were here in February, you would see the fields covered with beautiful flowers—iris, anemone, jonquil, narcissus, and daffodil. They are very pretty then, and the air is sweet with their scent. But now the fields are quite bare.'
'I should like to see them, however.'
'I will show them to you. It is a great happiness to the islands,' said Armorel, gravely, 'that we have found out the flower-farming. Everybody was very poor before. All the old ways of living were gone, you see. A long time ago the people had wrecks every winter—the sea cast up quantities of things which they could sell, or they went out in boats and took the things out of the hold when the ship was on the rocks. And then they were all smugglers: the Scillonians used to run over to France openly, day and night,with no one to stop them. And they used to carry fruit and vegetables out to the homeward-bound ships in the Channel. And then they were pilots as well. Some of the men used to make as much as two hundred pounds a year as pilots. My grandfathers were all pilots. They were smugglers too; and they had this farm and grew vegetables for the ships. Then the Government built the lighthouses, and there were no more wrecks; and the Preventive Service came and stopped the smuggling; and since the steamers took the place of the sailing-ships no vessels put in here, and there are no more pilots wanted. So, you see, it was as if nothing was left at all.'
'It does seem rough on the people.'
'First they tried kelp-making. They collected the sea-weed and put it in a kiln or furnace, and made a fire under it. I can show you some of the old furnaces still. But that came to an end. Then they tried a fishing company; but I believe it did not pay. And then they began to build ships; but I suppose other people could build them better. So that came to an end too. And for some time I do not know how all the people lived. As for the farms, they could never grow enough for the islands. Then a great many of the people went away. They had to go, or they would have starved. Some went to England, and some to America, and some to Australia. All the families went away from Samson, one by one, until at last there were none left but ourselves and Justinian. On Bryher and St. Martin's they became fishermen, but not here. As for Justinian, he sent away all his boys except Peter. Oh! they have done very well—splendidly. One is a coastguard, and one is bo's'n in the Queen's Navy. One is captain of a steamer trading between Philadelphia and Cuba, and one is actually chief steward on a great Pacific liner! Justinian is very proud of him.'
'Indeed, yes,' said Roland, 'with reason.'
'The Scillonians,' the girl continued, proudly, 'all get on very well wherever they go. They are honest, you see, as well as clever.'
'And the flower-farming?'
'Somebody discovered that the early spring flowers, which begin here in January, could be carried to London and sold quite fresh. And then everybody began to plant bulbs. That is all. We have had a farm of some kind here for I do not know how many generations.'
'Since the time,' Roland suggested, 'when, in consequence of the separation of Scilly from the mainland and the disappearance of Lyonesse, the royal family found themselves left in Samson.'
She laughed. 'Well, all these stone inclosures on the hill belonged to our farm. We grew things and ate them, I suppose. Perhaps we sold them. But we were then poor, I know, and now we have no more trouble.'
Beside and behind the farmhouse on the slope of the hill theycame upon a series of little fields following one after the other. They were quite small—some mere patches, none larger than a garden of ordinary size, and they were all enclosed and shut in by high hedges, so that they looked like largish boxes with the lids off. Some of the hedges were of elm, growing thick and close; some of escallonia, with its red flowers; some of veronica, its purple blossom like heads of bulrush; some of the service-tree; and some, but not many, of tamarisk, its pink bunches of blossom all displayed at this time of the year. But the fields were now brown and bare, and had nothing at all growing in them, except a few patches of gladiolus, now dying. Beyond these fields, however, there were others of larger area, with ruder hedges formed by laths, reeds, wooden palings, and stone walls. These were inclosed, and partly sheltered for the growth of vegetables.
'These are our fields,' said Armorel. 'At this time of the year there is nothing to show you. Our harvest begins in January, and lasts till May; but February and March are our best months. See—there is Peter, with a young man from Bryher, planting bulbs for next year: they are taken up every three years and replanted.'
Peter, in fact, was at work. He was superintending—a form of work which he found to suit him best—while the young man from Bryher, who looked more than half sailor, with a broad, long-handled spade, was leisurely turning over the light sandy soil and laying in the bulbs side by side out of a great basket.
'It seems an easy form of agriculture,' said Roland.
'It is not hard. There is nothing to do after this until the flowers are picked. But sometimes a cold wind will come down from the north and will kill a whole field full of blossoms—in spite of all our hedges. That is a terrible loss. When everything goes well, we cut the flowers, pack them in boxes, carry them over to the port, and next morning they are sold in London—oh! and all over the country, in every big town.'
'I shall never again behold a daffodil in February,' said Roland, 'without thinking of Samson. You have lent a new association to the spring flowers. Henceforth they will bring back this glorious view of sea and islands, grey and black rocks, the splendid sunshine and the fresh breeze—and,' he added, with a winning smile and deferential eyes, 'the Lady of Lyonesse.'
Armorel laughed. It was very nice to be called the Lady of Lyonesse—nobody before had ever called her anything except plain Armorel. And it was quite a new experience to have a young gentleman treating her with deference as well as compliment.
At the back of the house was an orchard, through which they presently passed. Like the flower-fields, it was protected by a high hedge. But the apple-trees looked like the olives of Provence: every one seemed in the last decay of age. They were twisted and dwarfish; the branches grew in queer angles and elbows, as if they were crouching down out of reach of the north wind; thetrunks were bent, and, which completed their resemblance to the olive, all alike were covered and clothed with a thick grey lichen, clinging to every bough like a glove, and hanging like a fringe. If you tear it off, the tree begins to shiver and shake, though on Samson it is never cold.
'Let us sit down,' said Roland, 'in this secluded spot and talk. Have I your leave, Armorel, to—— Thank you.' He filled and lit his briar-root, and lay back on the warm bank, gazing upwards at the blue sky through the leaves and the twisted branches of an aged apple-tree.
'It is good to be here. Do you know how very, very good it was of you to ask me, Armorel? And do you know how very, very rash it was?'
The girl, who showed her youth and inexperience in many little ways, regarded him with admiration unconcealed. Certainly, he was a personable young man, even picturesque; when his beard should be a little longer, when his moustache should be a little stronger, he might be able to pass for Charles I. idealised, and in early manhood, when as yet he had not begun to dissimulate.
'I was so glad when you promised to stay,' she replied, truthfully.
'Again, it is most good of you to say so. But, Armorel, a dreadful misgiving has possessed me. Does your—does the Ancestress approve of the invitation?'
Armorel laughed. 'Why,' she said, 'we never consult her about anything. She is too old, you know.'
'Was nobody consulted at all? Did you ask me here all out of your own head, as the children say?'
'Why not? There is nobody to consult. Why should I not ask you?'
'It was very good of you—only—well—you are younger than most ladies who invite people to their house.'
'Well—but I asked you,' she replied, with a little irritation, 'and you said you would come. You asked if anybody could stay on the island.'
'Yes, of course.' He did not explain that at first he thought the place was a lodging-house. The mistake was not unnatural; but he could not explain. 'I ought to have known,' he said. 'You are the Queen of Samson, as well as a Princess in Lyonesse. I beg your Majesty to forgive the ignorance of a traveller from foreign parts.'
'Justinian and Peter manage the farm. Dorcas and Chessun manage the house. There is no one to ask,' she added, simply, 'what I am doing.'
She said this with a touch of sadness.
'Have you no relations—cousins—nobody?'
'I have some far-off cousins. They live in London, I believe. One of them went away—a long, long time ago, in the Great War—andbecame a purser in the Navy. After that he was purveyor for the Fleet, and was made a knight. He was my grandfather's cousin, so I suppose he is dead by this time, but I dare say he has left children.'
'You are very lonely, Armorel.'
'I had three brothers; but they were all drowned—father, mother, three brothers, all drowned together coming from St. Agnes. That was ten years ago, when I was only a little girl and did not know what it meant. All our misfortunes, my great-great-grandmother says, are due to the wickedness of her husband's father, who took a bag of treasure from the neck of a passenger rescued from a wreck. You heard her last night. Do you think that God would drown my innocent brothers and my innocent father and mother all on the same day, because, eighty years ago, that wicked thing was done?'
'No, Armorel. I can believe a great deal, but that I cannot believe.'
'And so, you see, I am quite alone. Why should I not invite you to stay here?'
'There is not, in reality, Armorel, any reason, except that you did not know anything about me.'
'Oh! but I saw you and talked with you.'
'Yes; but that was not enough. We do not ask people into our houses unless we know something about them.'
'I could see that you were a gentleman.'
'You are very good to think so. Let me try to justify that belief. But, Armorel, seriously, there are thieves and rogues and wicked men in the world. Some of these may come to Scilly. Do not ask another stranger. Believe me, it is dangerous. As for me, you have shown me your flower-farm and have entertained me hospitably: let me thank you and take my departure.'
'Go away? Take your departure? Why?' Armorel looked ready to cry. 'You have only just come. You have seen nothing.'
'Do you wish me to stay another night?'
'Of course I do. What is it, Roland Lee? You have got something on your mind. Why should you not stay?'
'I should like somebody,' he replied, weakly, 'to approve. If the Ancestress, or even Dorcas, or Chessun herself, would approve——'
'Why, of course Dorcas approves. She says it is the best thing in the world for me to have someone here to talk to. She said so yesterday evening, and again this morning.'
'In that case, Armorel, and since it is so delightful here—and so new—and since you are so kind, I will stay one more day.'
He remembered his friend's warning, and the grumpiness which he showed on the way back. His conscience smote him, but not severely. He would be very careful. And, after all, shewas but a child. He would just stay the one day and make a sketch or two. Then he would go away.
'That is settled, then. One more day—or, perhaps, one more week, or a month, or a year,' she said, laughing. 'And now, before Peter is ready, I must leave you for ten minutes, because I have to make a cake for your tea this evening. As for dinner, we shall have that in the boat, or on one of the islands. It is my business, you know, to make the puddings and the cakes.'
'Armorel—you shall not. I would rather go without.'
'You shall certainly not go without a cake. Why, I like to make things. It would be dull here indeed if I had not got things to do all day long.'
'Do you not find it dull sometimes, even with things to do?'
'Perhaps. Sometimes. I suppose we are all of us tempted to be discontented at times, even when we have so many blessings as I enjoy.' Armorel was young enough, you see, to talk the language of her nurses and serving-women.
'How do you get through the day?'
'I get up at six o'clock, except in winter, when it is too dark. I have a run with Jack after breakfast; we run up the hill and down the other side—round Porth Bay, just to see the waves beating on White Island Ledge, where you very nearly——'
'Very nearly,' Roland echoed, 'but for you.'
'Then we run up Bryher Hill and stand on the carn just for Jack to bark at the north wind.'
'Sometimes it rains.'
'Oh, yes—and sometimes it blows such a gale of wind that I could not stand on the carn for a moment. Then I stay at home and make or mend something. There are always things to be made or mended. Then we are always wanting stores of some kind or other, and I have to go over to Hugh Town and buy them. At Hugh Town there are shops where they keep beautiful things—you can buy anything you want at Hugh Town. We cannot make pins and needles at home, can we? Then we have dinner, and Granny is brought in. Sometimes she wakes up then, and gets lively, and knows everything that is going on. She will talk quite sensibly for an hour at a time. And I have my fiddle to practise. After tea, when the days are long enough, I go up on the hills again and wander about till dark.'
'And do you never have any companions at all?' he asked with a curious, unreasoning, perfectly inexcusable touch of jealousy, because it could not matter to him even if all the young men of St. Mary's and Bryher and Tresco and St. Martin's came over every Sunday to court this dainty damsel. Yet he did feel the least bit anxious.
'Never any companions. Nobody ever comes here. They used to come, when Granny was still able to talk, in order to ask her advice. She was so wise, you see.'
'And every evening you make music for the Ancestress and the worthy Tryeth family?'
'Yes, and then I have supper and go to bed. Generally by nine o'clock we are all asleep in the house.'
'It would be a monotonous life if you were older. But it is only a preliminary or a preparation to something else. It is the overture, played in soft music, to the happy comedy of your future life, Armorel.'
'You mean to say something kind,' she replied. 'Of course, my life must seem dull to you.'
'One cannot always live on lovely skies and sunlit seas and enchanted islands.'
'Sometimes it seems to me that a little more talk would be pleasant. Justinian talks very well, to be sure; but he is the only one. He knows quantities of wrecks. It would astonish you to hear him tell of the wrecks he has seen. Dorcas talks very little now, because she has lost all her teeth. Chessun is a silent woman, because she's always been kept under by her mother. And Peter's not a talkative boy, because he's always been kept under both by his father and his mother. Besides, he got that nasty fall which made all his hair fall off. You can't wonder if he thinks about that a good deal. And they are all getting old.'
'Yes. They seem to be getting very old indeed. Some day they will follow the example of other old people and vanish. Then, Armorel, you will be like Robinson Crusoe or Alexander Selkirk.'
'I know all about Alexander Selkirk. He lived alone on Juan Fernandez, having been put ashore by Captain Stradling, of the "Cinque Ports." He had been four years and four months on the island when Captain Woodes Rogers found him. He was clothed in goat-skin. He built two huts with pimento-trees, and covered them with long grass and lined them with the skin of goats. He made fire by rubbing two sticks together on his knee. And he lived by catching goats. You mean, Roland Lee,' she said, with great seriousness, 'that some day or other all these old people will die—my great-great-grandmother, Justinian, Dorcas, and even Peter and Chessun, and that then I shall be alone on the island. That would be terrible. But it will not happen in that way. I am sure it will not, because it would be so very terrible. We are in the Lord's hand, and it will not be allowed.'
The young man coloured and dropped his eyes. There certainly was not a single girl of all those whom he knew in London who could have said such a thing so simply and so sincerely. Not the youngest girl fresh from the most religious teaching could say such a thing. Yet they go to church a good deal oftener than Armorel, whose chances were only once a week, and then only when the weather was fine. This it is to be a Scillonian, and to believe what you hear in church. Roland had no reply to make. Evento hint that faith so simple and so complete was rare would have been cruel and wicked.
'You have quoted Woodes Rogers,' he said presently. 'Have you read that good old navigator? It is not often that one finds a girl quoting from Woodes Rogers.'
'Oh! I do not read much. There is a bookcase full of books; but I only read the voyages. There is a whole row of them. Woodes Rogers, Shelvocke, Commodore Anson, Wallis, Carteret, and Cook—and more besides. I like Carteret best, because his ship was so small and so crazy, and his men so few and so weak, and yet he would keep on traversing the ocean as long as he could, and discovered a great deal more than his commander, who cowardly deserted him.'
'There are other things in the world besides voyages—and other books.'
'I learned the other things at school. There was geography—the world is only the Scilly Islands spread out big—and history, too. You would be surprised to find what a lot of English history there is that belongs to Scilly. Queen Elizabeth built the Star Fort—you've seen the Star Fort on the Garrison. There is Charles the First's Castle, on Tresco, all in ruins; and, down below it, Cromwell's Castle, which I will show you. And Charles the Second stayed here. Oh! and there was the Spanish Armada; I must not forget that, because of another great-great-far-off-great-grandfather, three hundred years ago, who was wrecked here.'
'How was that?'
'He was a captain, or officer of some kind, on board one of the Spanish ships; his name was Don Hernando Mureno. After the Armada was defeated and driven away, some of the ships came down the Irish Sea, and among them his ship—and she ran ashore on one of the Outer Islands—I think on Maiden Bower. How many were saved I cannot tell you; but some were, and among them Don Hernando Mureno himself. He stayed here, and never wanted to go away any more; but married a Scillonian, and lived out his life on Bryher, and is buried at the old church at St. Mary's, where I could show you his grave and the headstone—though the letters are all gone by this time. I have his sword still, and I will show it to you. One of my grandfathers married his granddaughter. They say I take after the Spanish side.'
'You are a true Castilian, Armorel; unless, indeed, you happen to be an Andalusian or a Biscayan.'
'Do you think I ought to read the other books?' she asked him, anxiously. 'If you really think so, I will try—I will, really.'
I suppose that no young man—not even the most hardened lecturers at Newnham—ever becomes quite indifferent to the spectacle of Venus entrusting the care of her intellect to a young philosopher. It is a moving spectacle, and still novel. It makes a much more beautiful picture than that of Venus handing overthe care of her soul to the Shaven and Shorn. Roland coloured. He felt at once the responsibility and the delicacy of the task thus offered him.
'We will look into the shelves,' he said. 'I suppose that the Ancestress no longer reads?'
'She never learned to read at all. She can neither read nor write: yet there was never anyone who knew so much. She could cure all diseases, and the people came over here from all the islands for her advice. Dorcas knew a great deal, but she does not know the half or the quarter of her mistress's knowledge.'
'Armorel'—Roland knocked out the ashes of his pipe—'I think you want—very badly—someone to advise you.'
'Will you advise me, Roland Lee?'
'Child'—he slowly got up—'all my life, so far, I have been looking for someone to advise and help myself. You must not lean upon a reed. Come—let us seek Peter the boy, and launch the ship and go forth upon our voyage about this sea of many islands. Perchance we may discover Circe upon one of them—unless you are yourself Circe—and I shall presently find myself transformed; but you are too good to turn me into anything except a prince or a poet. And we may light upon St. Brandan's Land; or we may find Judas Iscariot floating on that island of red-hot brass; or we may chance on Andromeda, and witness the battle of Perseus and the dragon; or we may find the weeping Ariadne—everything is possible on an island.'
'Roland Lee,' said the girl, 'you are talking like your friend Dick Stephenson. Why do you say such extravagant things? This is the island of Samson, and I am nothing in the world but Armorel Rosevean.'
All day long the boat sailed about among the channels and over the shallow ledges of the Outer or Western Islands, whither no boat may reach save on such a day, so quiet and so calm. The visitor who comes by one boat and goes away by the next thinks he has seen this archipelago. As well stand inside a great cathedral for half an hour and then go away thinking you have seen it all. It takes many days to see these fragments of Lyonesse, and to get a time sense of the place. They sailed round the southern point of Samson, and they steered westward, leaving Great Minalto on the lee, towards Mincarlo, lying, like an old-fashioned sofa, high at the two ends and flat in the middle. They found a landing at the southern point, and clambered up the steep and rocky sides of the low hill. On this island there are four peaks with a down in the middle, all complete. It is like a doll's island.Everywhere in Scilly there are the same features: here a hill strewn with boulders; here a little down, with fern and gorse and heath; here a bay in which the water, on such days as it can be approached, peacefully laps a smooth white beach; here dark caves and holes in which the water always, even in the calmest day of summer, grumbles and groans, and, when the least sea rises, begins to roar and bellow—in time of storm it shrieks and howls. Those who sail round these rumbling water-dungeons begin to think of sea monsters. Hidden in those recesses the awful calamary lies watching, waiting, his tentacles forty feet long stretching out in the green water, floating innocently till they touch their prey, then seizing and haling it within sight of the baleful, gleaming eyes and within reach of the devouring mouth. In these holes, too, lie the great conger-eels—they fear nothing that swims except that calamary; and in these recesses walk about the huge crabs which devour the dead bodies of shipwrecked sailors. On the sunlit rocks one looks to see a mermaiden, with glittering scales, combing out her long fair tresses: perhaps one may unfortunately miss this beautiful sight, which is rare even in Scilly; but one cannot miss seeing the seals flopping in the water and swimming out to sea, with seeming intent to cross the broad ocean. And in windy weather porpoises blow in the shallow waters of the sounds. All round the rocks at low tide hangs the long sea-weed, undisturbed since the days when they manufactured kelp, like the rank growth of a tropical creeper: at high tide it stands up erect, rocking to and fro in the wash and sway of the water like the tree-tops of the forest in the breeze. Everywhere, except in the rare places where men come and go, the wild sea-birds make their nests; the shags stand on the ledges of the highest rocks in silent rows gazing upon the water below; the sea-gulls fly, shrieking in sea-gullic rapture—there is surely no life quite so joyous as a sea-gull's; the curlews call; the herons sail across the sky; and, in spring, millions of puffins swim and dive and fly about the rocks, and lay their eggs in the hollow places of these wild and lonely islands.
These things, which one presently expects and observes without wonder in all the islands, were new to Roland when he set foot on the rugged rock of Mincarlo. He climbed up the steep sides of the rock and stood upon the top of its highest peak. He made two or three rapid sketches of rock and sea, the girl looking over his shoulder, watching curiously, for the first time in her life, the growth of a picture.
Watching curiously, for the first time in her life, the growth of a picture.Watching curiously, for the first time in her life, the growth of a picture.
Then he stood and looked around. The great stones were piled about; the brown turf crept up their sides; where there was space to grow, the yellow branches of the fern were spread; and on all four sides lay the shining water.
'All my life,' he said, 'I have dreamed of islands. This is true joy, Armorel. For a permanency, Samson is better than Mincarlo,because there is more of it. But to come here sometimes—to sit on this carn while the wind whistles in your ear, and the waves are lapping against the rocks all day long and always——Armorel, is there any other world? Are there men and women living somewhere? Is there anybody but you and me—and Peter?' he added, hastily. 'I don't believe in London. It is a dream. Everything is a dream but the islands and the boat and Armorel.'
She was only a child, but she turned a rosy red at the compliment. Nothing but the boat and herself. She was very fond of the boat, you see, and she felt that the words conveyed a high compliment. Then they began to explore the rest of this mountainous island, which has such a variety of scenery all packed away in the small space of twelve acres. When they had walked over the whole of Mincarlo that is accessible, they returned to their landing-place, where Peter sat in the boat keeping her off, with head bent as if he was asleep.
'It must be half-past twelve,' said Armorel. 'I am sure you are hungry. We will have dinner here.'
'No better place for a picnic. Come along, Peter. Bear a hand with the basket. Here, Armorel, is a rock that will do for a table, and here is one on which we two can sit. There is a rock for you, Peter. Now! The opening of a luncheon-basket is always a moment of grave anxiety. What have we got?'
'This is a rabbit-pie,' said Armorel. 'And this is a cake-pudding. I made it yesterday. Do you like cake-pudding? Here are bread and salt and things. Can you make your dinner off a rabbit-pie, Roland Lee?'
'A very good dinner too.' The young man now understood that on Samson one uses the word dinner instead of lunch, and that supper is an excellent cold spread served at eight. 'A very good dinner, Armorel. I mean to carve this. Sit down and let me see you make a good dinner.'
An admirable rabbit-pie, and an excellent cake-pudding. Also, there had not been forgotten a stone jar filled with that home-brewed of which the like can no longer be found in any other spot in the British Islands. I hope one need do no more than indicate the truly appreciative havoc wrought by the young gentleman among all these good gifts and blessings.
After dinner, to lie in the sunshine and have a pipe, looking across the wide stretch of sunny water to the broken line of rocks and the blue horizon beyond, was happiness undeserved. Beside him sat the girl, anxious that he should be happy—thinking of nothing but what might best please her guest.
Then they got into the boat again, and sailed half a mile or so due north by the compass, until they came within another separate archipelago, of which Mincarlo is an outlying companion.
It is the group of rocks, called the Outer or the Western Islands, lying tumbled about in the water west of Bryher and Samson.Some of them are close together, some are separated by broad channels. Here the sea is never calm: at the foot of the rocks stretch out ledges, some of them bare at low water, revealing their ugly black stone teeth: the swell of the Atlantic on the calmest days rises and falls and makes white eddies, broken water, and flying spray. Among these rocks they rowed: Peter and Roland taking the oars, while Armorel steered. They rowed round Maiden Bower, with its cluster of granite forts defying the whole strength of the Atlantic, which will want another hundred thousand years to grind them down—about and among the Black Rocks and the Seal Rocks, dark and threatening: they landed on Ilyswillig, with his peak of fifty feet, a strange wild island: they stood on the ledge of Castle Bryher and looked up at the tower of granite which rises out of the water like the round keep of a Norman castle: they hoisted sail and stood out to Scilly himself, where his twin rocks command the entrance to the islands. Scilly is of the dual number: he consists of two great mountains rising from the water sheer, precipitous, and threatening: each about eighty feet high, but with the air of eight hundred; each black and square and terrible of aspect: they are separated by a narrow channel hardly broad enough for a boat to pass through.
'One day last year,' said Armorel—'it was in July, after a fortnight of fine weather—we went through this channel, Peter and I—didn't we, Peter? It was a dead calm, and at high tide.'
The boy nodded his head.
The channel was now, the tide being nearly high, like a foaming torrent, through which the water raced and rushed, boiling into whirlpools, foaming and tearing at the sides. The rapids below Niagara are not fiercer than was this channel, though the day was so fair and the sea without so quiet.
'Once,' said Peter, breaking the silence, 'there was a ship cast up by a wave right into the fork of the channel. She went to pieces in ten minutes, for she was held in a vice like, while the waves beat her into sticks. Some of the men got on to the north rock—what they call "Cuckoo"—and there they stuck till the gale abated. Then people saw them from Bryher, and a pilot-boat put off for them.'
'So they were saved?' said Roland.
'No, they were not saved,' Peter replied, slowly. ''Twas this way: the pilot-boat that took them off the rock capsized on the way home. So they was all drowned.'
'Poor beggars! Now, if they had been brought safe ashore we might have been told what these rocks look like in rough weather: and what Scilly is like when you have climbed it: and how a man feels in the middle of a storm on Scilly.'
'You can see very well what it is like from Samson,' said Armorel. 'The waves beat upon the rocks, and the white spray flies over them and hides them.'
'I should like to hear as well as to see,' said Roland. 'Fancy the thunder of the Atlantic waves against this mass of rock, the hissing and boiling in the channel, the roaring of the wind and the dashing of the waves! I wonder if any of these shipwrecked men had a sketch-book in his pocket.
'To be drowned,' he continued, 'just by the upsetting of a boat, and after escaping death in a much more exciting manner! Their companions were torn from the deck and hurled and dashed against the rock, so that in a moment their bones were broken to fragments, and the fragments themselves were thrown against the rocks till there was nothing left of them. And these poor fellows clung to the rock, hiding under a boulder from the driving wind—cold, starving, wet, and miserable. And just as they thought of food and shelter and warmth again, to be taken and plunged into the cold water, there to roll about till they were drowned! A dreadful tragedy!'
Having thus broken the ice, Peter proceeded to relate more stories of shipwreck, taking after his father, Justinian Tryeth, whose conversational powers in this direction were, according to Armorel, unrivalled. There is a shipwreck story belonging to every rock of Scilly, and to many there are several shipwrecks. As there are about as many rocks of Scilly as there are days in the year, the stories would take long in the telling.
Fortunately, Peter did not know all. It is natural, however, that a native of Samson, and the descendant of many generations of wreckers, should love to talk about wrecks. Therefore he proceeded to tell of the French frigate which came over to conquer Scilly in 1798, and was very properly driven ashore by the sea which owns allegiance to Britannia, and all hands lost, so that the Frenchmen captured no more than their graves, which now lie in a triumphant row on St. Agnes. On Maiden Bower he placed, I know not with what truth, the wreck of the Spaniard which gave Armorel an ancestor. On Mincarlo he remembered the loss of an orange-ship on her way from the Azores. On Menovaur he had seen a collier driven in broad daylight and broken all to pieces in half a day, and of her crew not a man saved. Other things, similarly cheerful, he narrated slowly while the sunshine made these grey rocks put on a hospitable look and the boat danced over the rippling waves. With his droning voice, his smooth face with the long white hair upon it, like the last scanty leaves upon a tree, he was like the figure of Death at the Feast, while Armorel—young, beautiful, smiling—reminded her guest of Life, and Love, and Hope.
They sailed round so many of these rocks and islets: they landed on so many: they lingered so long among the reefs, loth to leave the wild, strange place, that the sun was fast going down when they hoisted sail and steered for New Grinsey Sound on their homeward way.
You may enter New Grinsey Sound either from the north or from the south. The disadvantage of attempting it from the former on ordinary days is that those who do so are generally capsized and frequently drowned. On such a day as this, however, the northern passage may be attempted. It is the channel, dangerous and beset with rocks and ledges, between the islands of Bryher and Tresco. As the boat sailed slowly in, losing the breeze as it rounded the point, the channel spread itself out broad and clear. On the right hand rose, precipitous, the cliffs and crags of Shipman's Head, which looks like a continuation of Bryher, but is really separated from the island by a narrow passage—you may work through it in calm weather—running from Hell Bay to the Sound. On the left is Tresco, its downs rising steeply from the water, and making a great pretence of being a very lofty ascent indeed. In the middle of the coast juts out a high promontory, surrounded on all sides but one by the water. On this rock stands Cromwell's Castle, a round tower, older than the Martello Towers. It still possesses a roof, but its interior has been long since gutted. In front of it has been built a square stone platform or bastion, where once, no doubt, they mounted guns for the purpose of defending this channel against an invader, as if Nature had not already defended it by her ledges and shallows and hardly concealed teeth of granite. To protect by a fort a channel when the way is so tortuous and difficult, and where there are so many other ways, is almost as if Warkworth Castle, five miles inland, on the winding Coquet, had been built to protect the shores of Northumberland from the invading Dane: or as if Chepstow above the muddy Wye had been built for the defence of Bristol. There, however, the castle is, and a very noble picture it made as the boat slowly voyaged through the Sound. The declining sun, not yet sunk too low behind Bryher, clothed it with light and splendour, and brought out the rich colour of grey rock and yellow fern upon the steep hillside behind. Beyond the castle, in the midst of the Sound, rose a pyramidal island, a pile of rocks, seventy or eighty feet high, on whose highest carn some of Oliver Cromwell's prisoners were hanged, according to the voice of tradition, which, somehow, always goes dead against that strong person.
Roland, who had exhausted the language of delight among the Outer Islands, contemplated this picture in silence.
'Do you not like it?' asked the girl.
'Like it?' he repeated. 'Armorel! It is splendid.'
'Will you make a sketch of it?'
'I cannot. I must make a picture. I ought to come here day after day. There must be a good place to take it from—over there, I think, on that beach. Armorel! It is splendid. To think that the picture is to be seen so near to London, and that no one comes to see it!'
'If you want to come day after day, Roland,' she said, softly,'you will not be able to go away to-morrow. You must stay longer with us on Samson.'
'I ought not, child. You should not ask me.'
'Why should you not stay if you are happy with us? We will make you as comfortable as ever we can. You have only to tell us what you want.'
She looked so eagerly and sincerely anxious that he yielded.
'If you are really and truly sure,' he said.
'Of course I am really and truly sure. The weather will be fine, I think, and we will go sailing every day.'
'Then I will stay a day or two longer. I will make a picture of Cromwell's Castle—and the hill at the back of it and the water below it. I will make it for you, Armorel; but I will keep a copy of it for myself. Then we shall each have a memento of this day—something to remember it by.'
'I should like to have the picture. But, oh! Roland!—as if I could ever forget this day!'
She spoke with perfect simplicity, this child of Nature, without the least touch of coquetry. Why should she not speak what was in her heart? Never before had she seen a young man so brave, so gallant, so comely: nor one who spoke so gently: nor one who treated her with so much consideration.
He turned his face: he could not meet those trustful eyes, with the innocence that lay there: he was abashed by reason of this innocence. A child—only a child. Armorel would change. In a year or two this trustfulness would vanish. She would become like all other girls—shy and reserved, self-conscious in intuitive self-defence. But there was no harm as yet. She was a child—only a child.
As the sun went down the bows ran into the fine white sand of the landing-place, and their voyage was ended.
'A perfect day,' he murmured. 'A day to dream of. How shall I thank you enough, Armorel?'
'You can stay and have some more days like it.'
This was the first of many such voyages and travels, though not often in the outside waters, for the vexed Bermoothes themselves are not more lashed by breezes from all the quarters of the compass than these isles of Scilly. They sailed from point to point, and from island to island, landing where they listed or where Armorel led, wandering for long hours round the shores or on the hills. All the islands, except the bare rocks, are covered with down and moorland, bounded in every direction by rockyheadlands and slopes covered with granite boulders. They were quite alone in their explorations: no native is ever met upon those downs: no visitor, except on St. Mary's, wanders on the beaches and around the bays. They were quite alone all the day long: the sea-breeze whistled in their ears; the gulls flew over their heads—the cormorants hardly stirred from the rocks when they climbed up; the hawk that hung motionless in the air above them changed not his place when they drew near. And always, day after day, they came continually upon unexpected places: strange places, beautiful places: beaches of dazzling white: wildly heaped carns: here a cromlech, a logan stone, a barrow—Samson is not the only island which guards the tombs of the Great Departed—a new view of sea and sky and white-footed rock. I believe that there does not live any single man who has actually explored all the isles of Scilly: stood upon every rock, climbed every hill, and searched on every island for its treasures of ancient barrows, plants, birds, carns, and headlands. Once there was a worthy person who came here as chaplain to St. Martin's. He started with the excellent intention of seeing everything. Alas! he never saw a single island properly: he never walked round one exhaustively. He wrote a book about them, to be sure; but he saw only half. As for Samson, this person of feeble intelligence even declared that the island was not worth a second visit! After that one would shut the book, but is lured on in the hope of finding something new.
One must not ask of the islanders themselves for information about the isles, because few of them ever go outside their own island unless to Hugh Town, where is the Port, and where are the shops. Why should they? On the other islands they have no business. Justinian Tryeth, for instance, was seventy-five years of age; Hugh Town he knew, and had often been there, though now Peter did the business of the farm at the Port: St. Agnes he knew, having wooed and won a wife there: he had been to Bryher Church, which is close to the shore—the rest of Bryher was to him as unknown as Iceland. As for St. Martin's, or Annet, or Great Ganilly, he saw them constantly; they were always within his sight, yet he had never desired to visit them. They were an emblem, a shape, a name to him, and nothing more. It is so always with those who live in strange and beautiful places: the marvels are part of their daily life: they heed them not, unless, like Armorel, they have no work to do and are quick to feel the influences of things around them. Most Swiss people seem to care nothing for their Alps, but here and there is one who would gladly spend all his days high up among the fragrant pines, or climbing the slope of ice with steady step and slow.
But these young people did try to visit all the islands. Upon Roland there fell the insatiate curiosity—the rage—of an explorer and a discoverer. He became like Captain Cook himself: helonged for more islands: every day he found a new island. 'Give,' cries he who sails upon unknown seas and scans the round circle of the horizon for the cloudy peak of some far-distant mountain, 'give—give more islands—still more islands! Let us sail for yonder cloud! Let us sail on until the cloud becomes a hill-top, and the hill another island! Largesse for him who first calls "Land ahead!" There shall we find strange monsters and treasures rare, with friendly natives, and girls more blooming than those of fair Tahiti. Let us sail thither, though it prove no more than a barren rock, the resting-place of the sea-lion; though we can do no more than climb its steep sides and stand upon the top while the spray flies over the rocks and beats upon our faces.' In such a spirit as Captain Carteret (Armorel's favourite) steered his frail bark from shore to shore did Roland sail among those Scilly seas.
Of course they went to Tresco, where there is the finest garden in all the world. But one should not go to see the garden more than once, because its perfumed alleys, its glasshouses, its cultivated and artificial air, are somehow incongruous with the rest of the islands. As well expect to meet a gentleman in a Court dress walking across Fylingdale Moor. Yet it is indeed a very noble and royal garden: other gardens have finer hothouses: none have a better show of flowers and trees of every kind: for variety it is like unto the botanical gardens of a tropical land: you might be standing in one of the alleys of the garden of Mauritius, or of Java, or the Cape. Here everything grows and flourishes that will grow anywhere, except, of course, those plants which carry patriotism to an extreme and refuse absolutely to leave their native soil. You cannot go picking pepper here, nor can you strip the cinnamon-tree of its bark. But here you will see the bamboos cluster, tall and graceful: the eucalyptus here parades his naked trunk and his blue leaves: here the fern-tree lifts its circle of glory of lace and embroidery twenty feet high: the prickly pear nestles in warm corners: the aloe shoots up its tall stalk of flower and of seed: the palms stand in long rows: and every lovely plant, every sweet flower, created for the solace of man, grows abundantly, and hastens with zeal to display its blossoms: the soft air is full of perfumes, strange and familiar: it is as if Kew had taken off her glass roofs and placed all her plants and trees to face the English winter. But, then, the winter of Scilly is not the winter of Great Britain. The botanist may visit this garden many times, and always find something to please him; but the ordinary traveller will go but once, and admire and come away. It is far better outside on the breezy down, where the dry fern and withered bents crack beneath your feet, and the elastic turf springs as you tread upon it. There are other things on Tresco: there is a big fresh-water lake—it would be a respectable lake even in Westmoreland—where the wild birds disport themselves: beside it South Americanostriches roam gravely, after the manner of the bird. It is pleasant to see the creatures. There is a great cave, if you like dark damp caves: better than the cave, there is a splendid bold coast sloping steeply from the down all round the northern part of the island.
Then they walked all round St. Mary's. It is nine miles round; but if, as these young people did, you climb every headland and walk round every bay, and descend every possible place where the boulders make a ladder down to the boiling water below, it is nine hundred miles round, and, for its length, the most wonderful walk in all the world. They crossed the broad Sound to St. Agnes, and saw St. Warna's wondrous cove: they stood on the desolate Gugh and the lonely Annet, beloved of puffins: they climbed on every one of the Eastern Islands, and even sailed, when they found a day calm enough to permit the voyage, among the Dogs of Scilly, and clambered up the black boulders of Rosevear and scared the astonished cormorants from wild Goreggan.
One day it rained in the morning. Then they had to stay at home, and Armorel showed the house. She took her guest into the dairy, where Chessun made the butter and scalded the cream—that rich cream which the West-country folk eat with everything. She made him stand by and help make a junket, which Devonshire people believe cannot be made outside the shadow of Dartmoor: she took him into the kitchen—the old room with its old furniture, the candlesticks and snuffers of brass, the bacon hanging to the joists, the blue china, the ancient pewter platters, the long bright spit—a kitchen of the eighteenth century. And then she took him into a room which no longer exists anywhere else save in name. It was the still-room, and on the shelves there stood the elixirs and cordials of ancient time: the currant gin to fortify the stomach on a raw morning before crossing the Road; the cherry brandy for a cold and stormy night; the elderberry wine, good mulled and spiced at Christmas-time; the blackberry wine; the home-made distilled waters—lavender water, Hungary water, Cyprus water, and the Divine Cordial itself, which takes three seasons to complete, and requires all the flowers of spring, summer, and autumn. Then they went into the best parlour, and Armorel, opening a cupboard, took out an old sword of strange shape and with faded scabbard. On the blade there was a graven Latin legend. 'This is my ancestor's sword,' she said. 'He was an officer of the Spanish Armada—Hernando Mureno was his name.'
'You are indeed a Spanish lady, Armorel. Your ancestor is well known to have been the bravest and most honourable gentleman in King Philip's service.'
'He remained here—he would not go home: he married and became a Protestant.'
She put back the sword in its place, and brought forth other things to show him—old-fashioned watches, old compasses, sextants,telescopes, flint-and-steel pistols—all kinds of things belonging to the old days of smuggling and of piloting.
Then she opened the bookcase. It should have been filled with histories of pirates and buccaneers; but it was not: it contained a whole body of theology of the Methodist kind. Roland tossed them over impatiently. 'I don't wonder,' he said, 'at your reading nothing if this is all you have.' But he found one or two books which he set aside.
As they wandered about the islands, of course they talked. It wants but little to make a young man open his heart to a girl; only a pair of soft and sympathetic eyes, a face full of interest and questions of admiration. Whether she tells him anything in return is quite another matter. Most young men, when they review the situation afterwards, discover that they have told everything and learned nothing. Perhaps there is nothing to learn. In a few days Armorel knew everything about her guest. He had come from Australia—from that far-distant land—in search of fortune. He had as yet made but few friends. He was unknown and without patrons. He had no family connections which would help him. The patrimony on which he was to live until he should begin to succeed was but small, and although he held money-making in the customary contempt, it was necessary that he should make a good deal, because—which is often the case—his standard of comfort was pitched rather high: it included, for instance, a good club, good cigars, and good claret. Also, as he said, an artist should be free from sordid anxieties: Art demands an atmosphere of calm: therefore, he must have an income. This, like everything that does not exist, must be created. Man is godlike because he alone of creatures can create: he, and he alone, constantly creates things which previously did not exist—an income, honour, rank, tastes, wants, desires, necessities, habits, rules, and laws.
'How can you bear to sell your pictures?' asked the girl. 'We sell our flowers, but then we grow them by the thousand. You make every picture by itself—how can you sell the beautiful things? You must want to keep them every one to look at all your life. Those that you have given to me I could never part with.'
'One must live, fair friend of mine,' he replied, lightly. 'It is my only way of making money, and without money we can do nothing. It is not the selling of his pictures that the artist dreads—that is the necessity of Art as a profession: it is the danger that no one will care about seeing them or buying them. That is much more terrible, because it means failure. Sometimes I dream that I have become old and grey, and have been working all my life, and have had no success at all, and am still unknown and despised. In Art there are thousands of such failures. I think the artist who fails is despised more than any other man. It is truly miserable to aspire so high and to fall so low. Yet who am I that I should reach the port?'
'All good painters succeed,' said the girl, who had never seen a painter before or any painting save her own coloured engravings. 'You are a good painter, Roland. You must succeed. You will become a great painter in everybody's estimation.'
'I will take your words for an oracle,' he said. 'When I am melancholy, and the future looks dark, I will say, "Thus and thus spoke Armorel."'
The young man who is about to attempt fortune by the pursuit of Art must not consider too long the wrecks that strew the shores and float about the waters, lest he lose self-confidence. Continually these wrecks occur, and there is no insurance against them: yet continually other barques hoist sail and set forth upon their perilous voyage. It may be reckoned as a good point in this aspirant that he was not over-confident.
'Some are wrecked at the outset,' he said. 'Others gain a kind of success. Heavens! what a kind! To struggle all their lives for admission to the galleries, and to rejoice if once in a while a picture is sold.'
'They are not the good painters,' the girl of large experience again reminded him.
'Am I a good painter?' he replied, humbly. 'Well, one can but try to do good work, and leave to the gods the rest. There is luck in things. It is not every good man who succeeds, Armorel. To every man, however, there is allotted the highest stature possible for him to reach. Let me be contented if I grow to my full height.'
'You must, Roland. You could not be contented with anything less.'
'To reach one's full height, one must live for work alone. It is a hard saying, Armorel. It is a great deal harder than you can understand.'
'If you love your work, and if you are happy in it——' said the girl.
'You do not understand, child, Most men never reach their full height. You can see their pictures in the galleries—poor, stunted things. It is because they live for anything rather than their work. They are pictures without a soul in them.'
Now, when a young man holds forth in this strain, one or two things suggest themselves. First, one thinks that he is playing a part, putting on 'side,' affecting depths—in fact, enacting the part of the common Prig, who is now, methinks, less common than he was. If he is not a prig uttering insincere sentimentalities, he may be a young man who has preserved his ideals beyond the usual age by some accident. The ideals and beliefs and aspirations of young men, when they first begin the study of Art in any of its branches, are very beautiful things, and full of truths which can only, somehow, be expressed by very young men. The third explanation is that in certain circumstances, as in the companionshipof a girl not belonging to society and the world—a young, innocent, and receptive girl—whose mind is ready for pure ideas, uncontaminated by earthly touch, the old enthusiasms are apt to return and the old beliefs to come back. Then such things may spring in the heart and rise to the lips as one could not think or utter in a London studio.
Sincere or not, this young man pursued his theme, making a kind of confession which Armorel could not, as yet, understand. But she remembered. Women at all ages remember tenaciously, and treasure up in their hearts things which they may at some other time learn to understand.
'There was an old allegory, Armorel,' this young man went on, 'of a young man choosing his way, once for all. It is an absurd story, because every day and all day long we are pulled the other way. Sometimes it makes me tremble all over only to think of the flowery way. I know what the end would be. But yet, Armorel, what can you know or understand about the Way of Pleasure, and how men are drawn into it with ropes? My soul is sometimes sick with yearning when I think of those who run along that Way and sing and feast.'
'What kind of Way is it, Roland?'
'You cannot understand, and I cannot tell you. The Way of Pleasure and the Way of Wealth. These are the two roads by which the artistic life is ruined. Yet we are dragged into them by ropes.'
'You shall keep to the true path, Roland,' the girl said, with glistening eyes. 'Oh! how happy you will be when you have reached your full height—you will be a giant then.'
He laughed and shook his head. 'Again, Armorel, I will take it from your lips—a prophecy. But you do not understand.'
'No,' she said. 'I am very ignorant. Yet if I cannot understand, I can remember. The Way of Pleasure and the Way of Wealth. I shall remember. We are told that we must not set our hearts upon the things of this world. I used to think that it meant being too fond of pretty frocks and ribbons. Dorcas said so once. Since you have come I see that there are many, many things that I know nothing of. If I am to be dragged to them by ropes, I do not want to know them. The Way of Pleasure and the Way of Wealth. They destroy the artistic life,' she repeated, as if learning a lesson. 'These ways must be ways of Sin, don't you think?' she asked, looking up with curious eyes.
Doubtless. Yet this is not quite the modern manner of regarding and speaking of the subject. And considering what an eighteenth-century and bourgeois-like manner it is, and how fond we now are of that remarkable century, one is surprised that the manner has not before now been revived. When we again tie our hair behind and assume silver-buckled shoes and white silk stockings, we shall once more adopt that manner. It was not, however,artificial with Armorel. The words fell naturally from her lips. A thing that was prejudicial to the better nature of a man must, she thought, belong to ways of Sin. Again—doubtless. But Roland did not think of it in that way, and the words startled him.
'Puritan!' he said. 'But you are always right. It is the instinct of your heart always to be right. But we no longer talk that language. It is a hundred years old. In these days there is no more talk about Sin—at least, outside certain circles. There are habits, it is true, which harm an artist's eye and destroy his hand. We say that it is a pity when an artist falls into these habits. We call it a pity, Armorel, not the way of Sin. A pity—that is all. It means the same thing, I dare say, so far as the artist is concerned.'