CHAPTER XXII
PIPER'S HOLE
Annet, Linnet, and Matthew Henry sat side by side on the granite roller by the gate and watched their friend Jan eat his mid-morning snack—or "mungey," as it is called in the Islands. It consisted, as a rule, of a crust of bread, but Jan had supplemented it to-day with a turnip, which he cut into slices with his pocket-knife. He had been pulling turnips since six o'clock. "And I reckon this'll be the last time of askin'," he commented, letting his eyes wander over the field as he seated himself on a shaft of the cart, which had been brought to await the loading.
The children knew that they would soon be quitting Saaron, and that the prospect distressed their father and mother. They had discussed it, and agreed together that it was a great shame to be turned out of their home, and that the Lord Proprietor must be a hard-hearted tyrant; but secretly they looked forward to the change with a good deal of excitement, not being of an age to fathom the troubles of grown-up folk. After all, Brefar lay close at hand and was familiar. Brefar was populous, and across there they would find many playmates. Brefar, too, held out great promise of adventure after sea-birds' eggs and expeditions of discovery; and if ever the home-sickness came upon them they would cross the sands at low-water and revisit the old haunts and the deserted house. All these consolations, however, they kept to themselves. It would never do to abandon the family grievance merely because it presented a bright side. They felt, as older folks have been known to feel, that a sense of injury carries with it a sense of importance.
"I wonder," said Linnet, severely, "that you can have the heart to talk about it, Jan."
"Jan has no feelings about leaving Saaron," said Annet, more in sorrow than in anger. "Why should he—coming from the mainland?"
"But Jan was born on the Islands," Matthew Henry objected; "and that will be a long time ago."
"Silly! As if you could belong to the Islands by being born here! Why, to belong to them, your father and mother must have been Islanders, and your grandfathers and grandmothers, and right back into the greats and great-greats. And then you never want to go away or live anywhere else in the world."
Matthew Henry pursed up his small mouth dubiously. He himself had sometimes wished to live in the wilds of America, or on a South Sea Island; even to visit Australia and have a try at walking upside down. There must be a flaw in Annet's argument somewhere.
"But if Jan comes from the mainland—" he began.
"Cornwall," said Jan, tranquilly, his mouth full of raw turnip.
"Then you ought to want to go back to it."
"I mean to, one of these fine days."
"I shouldn't put it off too long, if I were you," advised Linnet, candidly. "You're getting up in years, and the next thing you'll be dead."
"But didn't your father ever want to go back?" asked Matthew Henry, sticking to his point.
"No fear."
"Why?"
"Because, if he'd showed his face back in Cornwall, they'd have hanged him; that's all."
"Oh!" exclaimed the three, almost simultaneously, and sat for a moment or two gazing on Jan in awed silence.
"But why should they want to hang your father?" asked Annet.
Jan sliced his bread with an air of noble indifference. "Eh? Why, indeed? He used to say 'twas for being too frolicsome. He never done no wrong—not what you might call wrong: or so he maintained, an' 'twasn't for me to disbelieve 'en. Was it, now?"
"You'll tell us about it, Jan dear?" coaxed Annet.
"There's no particular story in it." (The children put this aside; it was Jan's formula for starting a tale.) "My father, in his young days, lived at a place in Cornwall called Luxulyan, and arned his wages as a tinner at a stream-work——"
"What is a stream-work?" asked Matthew Henry.
"A stream-work is a moor beside a river, where the mud is full of ore, washed down from the country above—sometimes from the old mines. The streamers dig this mud up and wash it through sieves, and so they get the tin. There was enough of it, my father said, in Luxulyan Couse to keep a captain and twelve men in good wages and pay for a feast once a year at the Rising Sun Public House. The supper took place some time in the week before Christmas, and they called it Pie-crust Night, though I can't tell you why. Well, one Pie-crust Night, after this yearly supper—the most enjoyable he had ever known—my father left the Rising Sun towards midnight, and started to walk to his home in Luxulyan Churchtown. He had a fair dollop of beer inside of him, but nothing (as he ever maintained), to excuse what followed, and he got so far as Tregarden Down without accident. Now, this Tregarden Down, as he always described it to me, is a lonesome place given over to brackenfern and strewn about with great granite boulders, and on one of these boulders my father sat down, because the night was clear and a fancy had come into his head to count the stars. He sat there staring up and counting till he reached twenty score, and with that he felt he was getting a crick in the back of his neck, and brought his eyes down to earth again. It seemed to him that, even in the dark, a change had come over the down since he'd been sittin' there, and the whole lie of the ground had a furrin look. Hows'ever, he hadn't much time to puzzle about this, for lo and behold! as he stared about him, what should he see under the lew of the next rock but a party of little people, none of 'em more than a thumb high, dancing in a ring upon the turf! They broke off and laughed as soon as my father caught sight of 'em; and, says one little whipper-snapper, stepping forward and pulling off his cap with a bow, 'Good evening, my man!' 'Sir to you!' says my father. 'There's a good liquor at the Rising Sun,' says the little man. 'None better,' says my father. 'I know by a deal better,' says the little man. 'Would you like to taste it?' 'Would I not?' says my father. 'Well, then,' says the little man, 'there's a shipfull of wine gone ashore early this night on Par Sands, and maybe the Par folk haven't had time yet to clear the cargo. What d'ee say toHo! and away for Par Beach!Eh?' 'With all the pleasure in life,' says my father, thinkin' it a joke; so 'Ho! and away for Par Beach!' he calls out, mimicking the little man. The words weren't scarcely out of his mouth before a wind seemed to catch him up, though gently, from his seat on the boulder, and in two twinklings he was standin' on Par Sands. There was a strong sea running, and out beyond the edge of the tide my father spied a ship breaking up. But if she broke up fast, her cargo was meltin' faster, for a whole crowd of folk had gathered on the sands, and were rolling the casks of wine up from the water and carting them away for dear life. My father and the little people couldn't much as ever lay hands on a solitary one, and, what was worse they hadn't but fairly broached it before a cry went up that the Preventive men were coming. Sure enough, my father, pricking up his ears, could hear horses gallopin' down along the road above the sands. 'Dear, dear!' says the little man, 'this is a most annoyin' thing to happen! But luckily I know a place where there's better liquor still, and no risk of bein' interrupted. SoHo! and away for Squire Tremayne's cellar!'
"'Ho! and away for Squire Tremayne's cellar!' called out my father; and the next thing he knew he found himself in the cellar of Squire Tremayne's great house at Heligan, knocking around with the small people among casks of wine and barrels of beer galore. To do him justice, he never pretended he didn't make use of the occasion. In fact, he fuddled himself so that when the little gentleman called out 'Ho! and away!for the next randivoo' (whatever that might ha' been), he missed to take up the catchword, bein' asleep belike. So there the piskies left him asleep, with his head in a waste saucer and his mouth under the drip of a spigot; and there the butler found him the next morning, knocking his shins among the butts and barrels in the darkness, and calling out to know what the dickens had taken Tregarden Down and the rocks o't, that they grew so pesky close together. The butler haled him upstairs to the Squire, and the Squire heard his story, and not only said he didn't believe a word o't, but (bein' a magistrate) packed him off to Bodmin Jail for burglary. I don't blame the man altogether," said Jan, reflectively; "for, come to think of it, my father's account of himself lay a bit off the ordinary run, and belike he wasn't in any condition to put it clearly.
"At any rate, to jail he went, and from jail he was delivered up to the Judges at Assize, and the Judges sentenced my poor father to death, which was the punishment for burglary in those times, and, for all I know, it may be the same on the mainland to this day.
"The morning came when he was to be put out of the world; and, as I needn't tell you, it gathered a great crowd together, to have a look at the last of a man that had so little sense of wickedness as to take liberties with a gentleman's wine and spirits. There my poor father stood under the gallows-tree with none to befriend 'en, when all of a sudden he heard a shouting up the street, and down along it, through the crowd, came a strange little lady, holding up her hand and a paper in it. The folk opened way respectful-like, seein' by the better-most air of her that she belonged to one of the gentry, and along she came to the scaffold. 'Good mornin', ma'am, and what can I do for you?' says the Sheriff, steppin' forward, with a lift of his hat. He held out a hand for the paper; but the little lady turns to my father, and pipes out in a little voice, very clear and sweet, 'Ho! and away for the Islands!' Glad enough was my father to hear the sound of it. 'Ho! and away for the Islands!' he answers, pat; and in two twinks he and the little lady were off in the sky like a puff of smoke, and the crowd left miles below. The next thing he knew he was sittin' on a rock, over yonder in Inniscaw, by the mouth of Piper's Hole, and starin' at the sea. So he picks himself together and walks up to North Inniscaw Farm (as 'twas called in those days), and there he took service and married and lived steady ever after. Leastways——"
"Leastways," said a voice at the gate, "he gave over drinking except when his master ran a cargo of brandy, and he never gave his wife trouble but once, when he took home a mermaid and made the good soul jealous."
"Aunt Vazzy!" cried the children. "Why, how long have you been standin' there?"
"Long enough to hear the end of the story, and how Jan's father came to the Islands through Piper's Hole."
"But," Linnet objected, "Jan didn't say that his father came through Piper's Hole; only that he found himself on the rocks in front of it. They came through the air, he and the little lady, didn't they, Jan?"
Jan shook his head. "They started to come through the air," he answered cautiously.
"Everybody knows that the fairies always pass to and fro through Piper's Hole," said Annet, in a positive voice. "The mermaids, too. The cave there goes right through Inniscaw and under the sea, and comes up again in the mainland. Nobody living has ever gone that way; but Farmer Santo had an uncle once that owned a sheep-dog that wandered into Piper's Hole and was lost, and a month later it turned up on the mainland with all its hair off."
"It do go in a terrible long way, to be sure," Jan admitted; "for I made a trial of it myself, one time, at low water. First of all you come to a pool, and, then, about fifty yards further, to another pool, and into that I went plump, coming upon it sudden, in the darkness. I swallowed a bellyful of it, too, and the water—if you'll believe me—was quite fresh. I didn't try no further, because, in the first place, the tide was rising, and because, when I pulled myself out, I heard a sound on t'other side of the pool like as if some creature was breathin' hard there in the darkness. It properly raised my hair, and I turned tail."
"Fie, Jan! Ran away from a mermaid!" said Vashti, laughing. "You should have brought her home and married her."
"I don't want to marry no woman with a tail like a fish, nor no woman that makes thikky noise with her breathin'," maintained Jan. "That's to say, if merrymaid it were, which I doubts. But you're wrong about my father, Miss Vazzy. He see'd a merrymaid sure 'nough; but he never took her home. No, he was too much of a gentleman, besides bein' afeard o' my mother. If you want the story, he was down in Piper's Hole one day warping ashore some few kegs of brandy that had been sunk thereabouts by a Rosco trader. Mr. Pope's father, that was agent to th' old Duke, used to employ my father regular on this business, knowing him for a silent man, and one to be trusted; and my father had made a very pretty catchet some way back-along in the cave, big enough to hold two score of kegs, and well above reach of the sea-water. But, o' course, while he was at this kind of work, Mr. Pope had to wink an eye now and then if one o' the kegs leaked a bit. Well, my father had finished his job that day in a sweatin' hurry, the tide bein' nearabouts on the top of the flood, and at the end, all the kegs bein' stowed, he spiled one 'for the good of the house,' as he put it, and drew off a tot in a tin panikin he kept handy. With this and his pipe he settled himself down 'pon a dry ledge and waited for the tide to run back.
"Out beyond the mouth of the hole he could see a patch of blue sky, and the little waves under it glancin' in the sunshine; and belike the dazzle of it, or else the tot of brandy, made him feel drowsy-like. Anyhow, he woke up to see that the tide had run out a bravish lot, leavin' the sands high and dry. But, as you know, there's a pool o' water close inside the entrance, and what should my father see in the pool but a woman's head and shoulders!
"She had raised herself out of the water with her hands restin' on a slab of rock, and over the rock she stared at my father, like as if she wanted help, and again like as if she felt too timid to ask. And when I called her a woman I said wrong; for she was more like a child, and a frightened one, with terrible pretty eyes, and her long hair shed down over her shoulders, drippin' wet, and in colour between gold and sea-green. 'Hullo!' said my father, 'and who might you be, makin' so bold?' At the sound of his speech she gave a little scritch at first, and bobbed down face-under, so that her hair lay afloat and spread itself all over the water like sea-weed. My father walked up closer. 'Nonsense, my dear,' says he, in his coaxin' voice, 'there's nothin' to be afeard of. I'm a respectable married man, and old enough to be your father. So put up your face—come now!—and tell me all about it.' After a bit she lifted her face, very pitiful, and says she in a small voice, 'I was afeard you had been drinkin', sir.' 'A little—a very little,' answers my father; 'we'll say no more about it.' 'And I was afeard,' says she, 'you would want to carry me home and marry me against my will!' 'Lord,' says my father, 'trust a woman for putting notions into a man's head. No, no, my dear; I can get all the temperance talk I want without committin' bigamy for it.' 'An' you couldn' marry me,' says the merrymaid, with a kind o' sob, 'because I'm married already, an' the mother of two as pretty children as ever you wished to see. I can hear 'em callin' for me,' she said, 'down there, beyond the bar,' and she went on to tell him (but the tale was all mixed up with sobbin') how she and the children had been swimmin' along shore that afternoon, and liftin' their heads above water to glimpse the sea-pinks and catch a smell of the thyme on the cliffs; and how she had left 'em to play while she swam into the cave to sit for a while and comb out her pretty hair. But the tide had run back while she was busy, and she couldn't crawl back to the sea over the bar, because on dry sand all her strength left her. 'And if I wait for the flood,' she said, 'my husband'll half murder me; for he's jealous as fire.'
"My father listened, and, sure enough, he seemed to hear the children's voices callin' to her out beyond the water's edge. With that, bein' always a tender-hearted man, he knelt down and lifted her out o' the pool. Now, if he'd had more sense at the time he'd have struck a bargain with her; for the merrymaids, they say, can tell where gold is hidden, and charm a man against sickness, and make all his wishes come true. But in the tenderness of his heart he thought 'pon none o' these things. He just let her put her arms round his neck, and lifted her over the sands, and waded out with her, till he stood three feet deep in water in his sea-boots; and then she gave him a kiss and slid away with a flip of her tail. 'Twas only when he stood staring that it crossed his mind what a fool he had been and what a chance he had missed. Then he remembered that she had dropped her comb by the edge of the pool—he had heard it fall when he lifted her, and back he went to search for it: for the sayin' is that with a merrymaid's comb you can comb out your hair in handfuls of guineas. But all he found was a broken bit of shark's jaw, and though he combed for half-an-hour and wished for all kind o' good luck, not a farthin' could he fetch out."
"Is that all?" asked Matthew Henry, as Jan arose from the cart-shaft, dusting the crumbs of bread from his breeches.
"It's enough, I should think," said Linnet, the sceptical, "seeing that it's nothing but a story from beginning to end."
Vashti looked from one child to the other with a twinkle of fun. "We will pay Piper's Hole a visit one of these days," she promised, "and perhaps Linnet will see a real mermaid and be convinced."
"I don't care for mermaids," announced Matthew Henry. "It's the cave I want to explore, to see if it really does lead through to the mainland. And I won't be afraid, like Jan here, and run away from a little noise."
"You wait till you get there before you boast," advised Linnet.
But Vashti's eyes, resting on the boy, grew tender of a sudden. "The way through to the mainland?" she said, musingly. "Matthew Henry is right. It all depends on the heart that tries it; but there is nothing can do him harm if he keeps up his courage; and the end of the road is worth all the journey, for a man."
"Why, Aunt Vazzy, you talk as if you had been there!" cried Annet.
"And so I have, my dear; there and back again."
The three children stared at her. "Aunt Vazzy is joking," said Linnet, severely. Annet was not too sure, and her brow puckered with a frown as she searched for the meaning beneath her aunt's words. But Matthew Henry believed them literally.
"Then," he exclaimed joyfully, "it's all nonsense about Farmer Santo's uncle's sheep-dog. For Aunt Vazzy has beautiful hair!"
CHAPTER XXIII
THE LORD PROPRIETOR HEARS A SIREN SING
Sir,—In answer to your letter of the 19th ultimo, I am directed by the Secretary of State for War to say that a Commission, the composition of which is not finally determined, will shortly be visiting the Islands, with a view to reporting on the adaptability of their existing military works for Coast Defence. Notice of the probable date of this visit shall be sent to you, and the Commissioners will doubtless be glad to avail themselves of any information you may be good enough to put at their disposal. At the same time, there will be given an opportunity of inquiring into the allegations contained in your letter. The Commission will be presided over by Maj.-General Sir Ommaney Ward, K.C.B., R.E., H.M. Director of Fortifications.—I am, sir,Your obedient servant,J. Fleetwood Cunningham.
Sir,—In answer to your letter of the 19th ultimo, I am directed by the Secretary of State for War to say that a Commission, the composition of which is not finally determined, will shortly be visiting the Islands, with a view to reporting on the adaptability of their existing military works for Coast Defence. Notice of the probable date of this visit shall be sent to you, and the Commissioners will doubtless be glad to avail themselves of any information you may be good enough to put at their disposal. At the same time, there will be given an opportunity of inquiring into the allegations contained in your letter. The Commission will be presided over by Maj.-General Sir Ommaney Ward, K.C.B., R.E., H.M. Director of Fortifications.—I am, sir,
Your obedient servant,
J. Fleetwood Cunningham.
Thrice a week—on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays—the steamer arrived at St. Lide's Quay, bringing the mainland mail, and the Lord Proprietor's post-bag usually reached him soon after luncheon. It carried, as a rule, a bulky correspondence, and since the steamer weighed anchor early next morning, the Lord Proprietor set aside the early part of these three afternoons to letter-writing.
The passage had been smooth to-day, and the bag had been delivered to him and opened as he took his solitary meal. Also the mail for the great house was a light one, and out of it the Lord Proprietor, catching sight of the official stamp on the envelope, had at once selected the letter quoted above. He perused it, and re-perused it, to the neglect of the rest of his correspondence, tilting it against a bowl of Michaelmas daisies in front of his plate.
It was satisfactory, he decided—that is to say, on the whole, and so far as it went. He foresaw that short shrift would be given to those idlers on Garrison Hill. On the other hand, he frowned at the prospect—call it the chance, rather—of seeing that establishment replaced by one more efficient. To be sure, if the necessities of Coast Defence demanded it.... Still, for his part, he would have preferred to be let alone. The Islands, with their many outlying reefs and poor anchorage could never afford room to such battleships as were built in these days; and to erect new fortifications to cover a roadstead that would seldom if ever be used appeared the plainest waste of public money.... He really thought that the War Office might have consulted him before coolly proposing to plant a new garrison above St. Lide's. He was not even sure they had a right, without his consent.... He would confer with Mr. Pope on this point. At the very least, it would have been courteous to start by asking his opinion; for, after all, he owned the Islands. He was responsible, too, for the general good conduct of the population; good conduct which the advent of a body of soldiery would certainly affect—nay, might entirely upset.
Nevertheless, he reflected that—however the Commissioners might decide (and he would take care to press his opinion energetically)—his letter to the Secretary of State for War had at least done no harm. The Commissioner's visit had obviously been projected before the receipt of it, and at the worst it would enable him to call quits with Vigoureux.
He reflected further that these roving Commissions to report were often no index of Government policy, but were simply appointed to shelve, while professing to consider a question which the Government found awkward.
So, luncheon over, he sat down and wrote a letter thanking the Secretary for his communication, and very politely offering to do all in his power to make the Commissioners' visit "to these out-of-the-world Islands" a pleasant one.
Having copied the letter and read it over with no little approval, the Lord Proprietor dealt briefly with the rest of his correspondence; consulted his pocket-diary, looked at his watch, and, finding that he had an hour to spare before granting an interview to Eli Tregarthen, stepped out upon the terrace, where Abe Jenkins was cutting back the geraniums that had well-nigh ceased to flower.
"But is it necessary?" asked the Lord Proprietor. "Here, in the very mouth of the Gulf Stream ... and last winter we escaped with nothing worse than two degrees of frost."
"Last winter and this winter be two different things, sir," protested Abe, gently but firmly. "Last winter, sir—as you may have taken notice—we had next to no berries 'pon the holly; and no seals, nor yet no mermaids."
"Seals? Mermaids?" Sir Cæsar echoed.
"Which I've always heard it said, sir," Old Abe went on, with the air of one carefully, even elaborately, deferring to superior ignorance, "as how than seals you can have no surer sign of hard weather. Of mermaids I says nothing, except that with such-like creatures about you may count 'pon something out of the common."
"Since," said the Lord Proprietor, "there are no such things as mermaids, we will confine ourselves to seals.... I had no idea that seals—er—frequented our shores."
"No more they don't, unless summat extr'ord'ny has taken the weather. But I've heard tell of a season when, for weeks together, you could count up two or three score together baskin' on the beaches to the north of the Island here. Sam Leggo can tell you all about it"—Abe jerked a thumb in the direction of North Inniscaw Farm. "He and his father used to hunt them, one time, along with Phil Cara of St. Hugh's. You know where the old adit goes into the cliff under Carn Coppa? Well, they tell me that if you follow the adit for fifty yards you come to a kind of pit that breaks straight down and through the roof of a cave—Ogo Vean, they call it—to the west of Piper's Hole, and this cave fairly swarmed with seals. The three men would lower themselves by rope-ladders—I reckon old Leggo had learnt the trick of it in by-gone days when the Free-traders used the adit—and get down upon a strip of firm shingle at the inner end of the cave; and there Sam Leggo would hold the lantern while his father and Phil Cara blazed away. They never shot more than a brace at a time, because of the difficulty of getting the bodies up the ladder, for they had to be gone before high-water, and likewise there was always a danger that the seals might charge 'em in a herd, bein' angered by the loss of their mates. In this way they pretty well cleared out the cave—all but one great beauty that old Leggo had sworn to take alive. For, instead of bein' yellow or motley-brown like the rest, this fellow was white as milk all over, besides bein' powerful as any other two. He seemed to know from the first that the three men didn't mean to shoot him. The lanterns and the firing never hurried him a bit, and he never threw himself into a rage over the loss of his relations. He just kept out of reach, looking like as if he despised the whole business, and refused to quit. He was cautious, too; wouldn't trust the cave in weather when a boat could follow him and block up the entrance. On fine nights he had a favourite rock just outside Ogo Vean—you can see it from the top of the cliff—and there he'd lie asleep and dare 'em; out of reach, but plain enough to see, even in the dark, because of his white skin.
"Now, as you may have taken notice, sir, the tide runs out dry to this rock on the inshore side; but seaward it goes down, even at low springs, into more'n three fathoms of water, and my gentleman always took his forty winks on the seaward slope. Half-a-dozen times did Phil Cara, thinkin' to catch him——"
"I beg your pardon," interrupted Sir Cæsar, "'Cara,' did you say?"
"Yes, sir; Philip Cara, father to Eli Tregarthen's wife over to Saaron; and likewise, o' course, to Eli Tregarthen's wife's sister, that is lodging at Saaron Farm, having come home from service a while back."
"Eh? From service?" the Lord Proprietor echoed, with quickened interest. "What sort of service?"
"Why, as to that, sir, I can't say that I can tell you for certain; but it's somewheres on the mainland, and the young woman seems a very respectable young woman. But whether she means to bide wi' the family or has come to lodge while lookin' out for another place, I can't certainly say—the Tregarthens bein' a close-tongued lot, as you know."
"A lady's-maid?" hazarded the Lord Proprietor.
"May be. Well, as I was tellin' you, half-a-dozen times did Phil Cara, bidin' his time till the tide was low and the sand hard——"
"But it's impossible," said the Lord Proprietor, pursuing his own train of thought.
Abe regarded his master rather in sorrow than in anger. "To be sure, sir," said he, in a tone of delicate rebuke, "if you don't want to hear my story——"
"Eh? Yes, certainly, my wits were wool-gathering, Abe, and I beg your pardon. Let me see.... You were saying that Cara used to wait till the tide was low——"
"Yes, sir. He'd creep along the sand, he and the two Leggos, and th' old seal would lie there sleepin', innocent as a child, and let them come close under the rock, and even climb it. But soon as ever they made a pounce—c'lk!—he rolled off the slope and into deep water. Regular as clockwork it happened; quiet and easy as a door on a greased hinge; and every time it made the three look foolisher and foolisher.
"After half-a-dozen tries, Cara allowed that he couldn' go on bein' mocked by a dumb animal; so he set his brain to work, and thought out a new plan. The two Leggos were to take a boat and drop down wi' the tide close in the shadow of the rock 'pon the seaward side, while Cara himself crept, as usual, hands-an'-knees, across the beach. So they planned, an' so they did; and sure enough when Cara made a pounce for the seal, my gentleman rolled down the ledge and slap into the boat! 'Now you've got 'en!' yells Cara. 'Darn it all!' yells back old Leggo from the scuffle, 'Seems more like he's gotWE!' For that seal, sir, fought like ten tom-cats; and before the Leggos got in a lucky stroke and knocked him silly with a stretcher he'd ripped one leg off th' old man's trousers and bitten the heel clean off Sam's right boot. They took him home and skinned him, and sold the skin that same year to a Dutch skipper for thirty shillin'. But Sam has told me more than twice that he don't mean to tempt Providence again by catchin' any more seals."
The Lord Proprietor looked at his watch. "I must get Leggo to show me that adit this very afternoon. I've an appointment at three-thirty to meet him and Tregarthen at the farm."
"Indeed, sir? Then you've brought Eli Tregarthen to his senses?—if I may make so bold."
The Lord Proprietor flushed, remembering that Abe had witnessed the interview in the walled garden. "I fancy the man has begun to see the red light," he answered, carelessly. "At any rate, he has consented to meet me and take a look over North Inniscaw."
"Well," said Abe, "you'll find him a good farmer; none better."
"And he'll find me a landlord, willing to let bygones be bygones. By the way," added Sir Cæsar, yet more carelessly, "I am curious to know if I met that sister-in-law of his the other day?—a decidedly handsome woman, and strikingly well dressed. In fact, I should say she bought her clothes in Paris."
Abe stared, as though his master had suddenly taken leave of his senses.
"I never been to Paris," he said, slowly. "When I seen her last she was nettin' sand-eels, with her legs bare to the knee."
Sir Cæsar walked indoors to fetch his hat and his gun. Though he rarely used it, he invariably carried a gun under his arm in his walks about the Islands. It helped his sense of being monarch of all he surveyed.
That sense was strong in him as he took the path which led across the middle of the Island to North Inniscaw Farm. St. Lide's lay directly behind him, to the south, and thus no Garrison Hill obtruded upon his view to remind him of annoyances. The sea shone, the air was pure, the whole seascape flashed white upon blue—white gulls wheeling aloft, white breasts of puffins congregated on the smaller islets, white caps of tiny waves where the breeze met the tide-race, on North Island the white shaft of a lighthouse fronting the almost level sun. With a touch of imagination the scene had become a prospect of the Cyclades, the lighthouse a column to Aphrodite or the twin brothers of Helen. But the Lord Proprietor was a Briton. He halted on the hill-side to inhale the vigorous breeze, and his heart rejoiced that all he saw belonged to him.
The path descended a stony hillside, crossed a marshy green hollow, and mounted a second stony hill. Over the summit of it the low roofs of a line of farm-buildings hove into sight. This was North Inniscaw; and the Lord Proprietor, arriving punctually at three-thirty, found Eli Tregarthen at the gate in converse with Sam Leggo, the hind in temporary charge of the farm.
If Eli had begun to see reason, his face held out no promise of it. It was dark and gloomy; a trifle weary, too, as though he kept this appointment rather through politeness than with any care for its outcome. He saluted the Lord Proprietor respectfully, but at once bent his eyes to the ground.
"Good afternoon! Good afternoon, Tregarthen!" Sir Cæsar began, in his heartiest voice, to show that he bore no malice. "I like punctuality, and those who practise it. Punctuality, if I may say so, is not a wide-spread virtue in these Islands. Shall we go round and take stock?"
"If it will give you satisfaction, sir," assented Eli.
Sir Cæsar led the way, pausing at every gate to discuss the soil, the crop, the present price of oats, barley, roots of beef and mutton; drainage and top-dressing; aspect and shelter; a hundred odds and ends. He talked uncommonly good sense, too, as Eli confessed to himself. The Lord Proprietor had taken up with agriculture late in life, but he brought to it a trained and thoroughly practical mind. Once or twice he submitted a point to Sam Leggo, who had worked all his life on this very farm, and Eli was forced to admire the pertinence of his questions and cross-questions.
He talked with great good humour, too, although Eli gave it small encouragement. The shadow of leaving Saaron had hung over Eli's mind for more than two months; heavy, oppressive, but until this morning intangible as a cloud. Vashti had remarked that the days deadened him while they should have been nerving him to action; and Vashti, this very morning, had forced his eyes open by asking, in a business-like way, if he had ever thought of emigrating to the mainland. Were it not wiser, since the wrench must come, to make it complete?—to go where regret would not be kept aching by the daily sight of Saaron? The children would find better schools on the mainland, and it was high time to be thinking of Matthew Henry, who deserved a better education than the Islands could afford.
In arguing thus, Vashti was not entirely serious. She knew that Eli would never cut himself loose from the Islands; but she hoped, by forcing him to face the alternative, to shake him out of his torpor. In this she had partly succeeded. For the first time the man opened his eyes and saw hard facts—facts that in a few weeks' time he must grapple with, since neither grieving nor grumbling would remove them. But for the moment the discovery, instead of nerving him, inflamed his wrath.
A strong man, finding himself helpless, suffers horribly. Especially he suffers when, with a dim sense that in the last resort all power depends on strength, he finds himself tripped up and laid on his back by a man physically his inferior. Had the Lord Proprietor inherited the Islands from a line of ancestors—had his tyranny rested on any feudal tradition—Eli was Briton enough to have acquiesced or submitted. But this whipper-snapper had bought the Islands: money—dirty money alone—gave him power over men who were Islanders by birth and by long generations of breeding. While the Lord Proprietor talked, Eli felt an impulse almost uncontrollable to lay hands on him and wring his neck.
The three men had reached Coppa Parc, an enclosure of twelve acres bounded along the north by the cliffs' edge, and deriving its name from a mass of granite rock—Carn Coppa—that, rising in ledges from near the middle of the field, ran northward until it broke away precipitously, overhanging the sea. The slopes around the base of the Carn showed here and there an outcrop of granite, but with pockets of deep soil in which (or so the Lord Proprietor maintained) barley could be grown at a profit. He appealed to Eli.
"Come, what does Mr. Tregarthen say to it? A piece of ground like this—hey?—oughtn't to beat a man that has grown barley on Saaron?"
He said it intending no offence, but in a bluff, hearty way, which he meant to be genial. After a second or two, Eli not answering, he turned and saw to his amazement that the man was trembling from head to foot with wrath.
"What right have you? What right——" Eli stammered fiercely, and came to a full stop, clenching his fists.
The Lord Proprietor stared at him. "My good fellow, I hadn't the smallest wish to hurt your feelings. What ails you? An innocent remark, surely!"
"What ails me?" echoed Eli, and stopped again, panting. "Man, have done with this, and let me go—else I'll not promise to keep my hands off you!"
For a moment he stood threatening, his eyes—like the eyes of a dumb animal at bay—travelling from the Lord Proprietor to Sam Leggo. The blood ebbed from his face, and left it unnaturally white. But of a sudden he appeared to collect himself; thrust both hands in his pockets, and, turning his back, walked away resolutely down the slope.
"Well!" said Sam Leggo, after a pause. "Well!"
"The man has never been thwarted before," said the Lord Proprietor, as they gazed after him together. "That's what comes of living alone in a place like Saaron; and I'll take care his children don't learn the same folly. Feels the curb, as you might say. Have you ever seen a horse broken late in life?"
"You take it very quiet, sir, I must say," protested Sam, admiringly. "So disrespectful as he was, too—and to the likes of you! Well! I've known Eli Tregarthen forty year, and if any man had come and told me——"
"The worst is, we have wasted an afternoon," said Sir Cæsar, easily. "But since we are here, with half-an-hour to spare before sunset, what do you say to showing me the adit?"
"The adit, sir?"
"There's an old adit hereabouts—eh?—that leads down to a cave.... Come, come, my good man, you don't deceive me by putting on that stupid face! We don't allow smuggling on the Islands in these days, and I like to know the secrets of my own property. The cave is called Ogo Vean, or something like it; and if I must explain more precisely, it is where you and your father used to go hunting seals."
"Yes, yes, to be sure," Sam admitted; "an adit there is, or used to be. But," he went on more cheerfully, "you'll find it nothing to look at. I han't set foot inside it for years, and I doubt but the entrance is choked."
"Take me to it," said Sir Cæsar.
Sam, without further remonstrance, led the way. They scrambled out to the edge of the Carn, and there, where the last great boulder thrust itself forward over the sea, Sam scrambled off to the left, and lowered himself down upon a turfy ledge. Warning his master to leave his gun behind and beware of the slippery grass, he sidled out alongside the jutting slab, and suddenly ducked under it. The Lord Proprietor, following, crawled under the stone, and found himself staring into the mouth of the adit—a dark hole less than four feet in height, and overgrown with ivy. Sam had spoken the truth. The passage, whithersoever it led, had been disused for years.
"Cur'ous old place!" said Sam, reflectively, plucking at the ivy. "I've a mind to try the inside of it again, one of these days."
"I've a mind to explore it now," said the Lord Proprietor.
Sam stared at him. "You couldn't, sir; not without a lantern. You'd be breakin' your neck, to a certainty."
"Then fetch a lantern. Look sharp, man! Run back to the farm and fetch a lantern. I'll wait for you—no, not here: a few minutes on this ledge would turn my head giddy—but on the Carn above."
Without further words, he worked his body around carefully, and led the way back to the summit.
"You'd best hurry," he advised Sam, who showed no eagerness for the job. "In another twenty minutes the dusk will be closing down fast."
Sam slouched off at a fair pace across the field. Sir Cæsar watched his retreating figure until it reached the gate, and then, picking up his gun, disposed himself to wait.
Seals? They ought to give good sport—better sport, he should imagine, than deerstalking. A pity, too, to let it die out ... if seals still frequented the Islands.... He must consult Sam about it, and pick up a few wrinkles. He peered over the edge of the Carn, scanning the water, a hundred feet below him, for the rock which Abe had described. He could see no such rock. Maybe, though, it would be covered by the tide, now close upon high-water.
Then he bethought him that the rock must lie a little to the west, towards Piper's Hole—that is to say, in the next small indentation of the shore. He strolled in that direction, following the cliff's edge, still with eyes upon the sea.
Of a sudden he stopped and straightened himself up with a gasp.
What sound was that?... Surely a voice—a woman's voice—singing up to him from the depth!
Was he awake or dreaming?... Beyond all doubt someone was singing, down there: a mournful, wordless song. He was no judge of music, but it seemed to him that, let alone the mystery of the singer, he had never heard a voice so wonderful. It rose and fell with the surge of the tide.
The Lord Proprietor laid down his gun. He had come to a shelving slope that descended like a funnel or the half of a broken crater, narrowing to a dark pit, in which the sea heaved gently, but with a sound as of a monster sobbing; but still above this sound rose the voice of the singer.
He flung himself on the verge beside his gun and craned forward.... Yes, there was the rock; yes, and there on the rock sat a figure—a woman—and combed her long hair while she sang.
CHAPTER XXIV
LINNET SEES A MERMAID
Annet, Linnet, and Matthew Henry sat together in a niche of the cliff to the west of Piper's Hole, and panted after their climb.
They had raced up the hill in the gathering twilight for this (their Aunt Vazzy had assured them) was the time, if ever, to hear the mermaids singing in Piper's Hole, and perhaps to catch a glimpse of them; this, and the hour of moonrise—which for them would be out of the question.
For some days they had been discussing the adventure—not, it scarcely needs to be said, in their parents' hearing. But they had once or twice consulted with Aunt Vazzy, who understood children, and had a sense (denied to most grown-ups) of what was really interesting; and to-day, at dinner-time, Aunt Vazzy had allowed that no time could well be more propitious than this evening, when the hours of twilight and of low water almost exactly coincided. But in private she warned Annet very earnestly to look well after the two younger ones, and see to it that they did not risk their necks—a caution seldom given to Island children, who grow up sure-footed as young goats.
Annet had promised. The main difficulty would be to give the slip to Jan, who usually pulled across from Saaron in good time to fetch them home, and smoked a pipe by the shore while waiting for school to be dismissed. It would take them a good forty minutes to reach Piper's Hole and return. If they gave Jan the slip and delayed him so long, he would undoubtedly lose his temper, and probably report them. After discussing this, they decided to take Jan into the plot. "Maybe," said Annet, "he'll come along, too. I almost think he will if we put it to him all of a sudden, for he's mighty curious about mermaids; but if we give him time to think it over he'll feel ashamed, and say it's all children's whiddles, and back out—I know Jan. So we must wait till school is over and then coax him to come."
Annet did not know that her father, having an appointment with the Lord Proprietor at North Inniscaw Farm, designed himself to call at the school on his way back, and row the children home. Had she guessed this it would have prevented the adventure, which, in fact, it furthered; for, coming out of school and hurrying down to the shore to catch Jan and wheedle him, she found the boat moored there empty. Jan, no doubt, had taken a stroll up to the Lord Proprietor's garden, to have a chat with Old Abe. They had caught him napping; and now, if they kept him waiting, he could not grumble.
So off the three children set for Piper's Hole; Annet and Linnet with long strides, Matthew Henry trotting to keep up with them. Arrived at the cliff's edge, they deployed with great caution—that no noise might scare the mermaids from coming forth—and searched for a nook where, themselves hidden, they could command a view of the cove at their feet.
Linnet, searching to the westward, found just such a spot; a rocky ledge, well grassed, close under the topmost cornice of the cliff, and quite easy of access. To be sure, a rock on their right cut off their view of the cove's inmost recess, where the funnel-shaped slope broke sheer over the mouth of the Hole. But the ledge looked full upon the Mermaid's Rock and the heave of black water surging past it to gurgitate between the narrowing walls of rock.
Even the matter-of-fact Linnet could not repress a shiver as, after panting a while, she raised herself on one elbow and looked down into the awesome pit. For not only was the water black, but the whole shadowed base of the cliff wall; black as though stained by the inky wave. Black, too, showed the hither side of the Mermaid's Rock against a gray sea, from which the last tint of sunset had faded. Now and then, between the sobbing of Piper's Hole, the children caught the murmur of the tide race, half-a-mile off shore, slackening its note as it neared the time of high-water and its turning point. Out there the sea was agitated; within the line of the race, sharply defined on the gray, it heaved and sank on an oily swell.
"My!" said Matthew Henry, gazing; and Annet turned on her sister and said, "There, now!" The words may seem inadequate, but Linnet understood them, and that they conveyed a question which she felt to be a poser. How could she doubt the existence of mermaids in such a spot as this? If a mermaid were to swim up to the surface under their very eyes, would she be more wonderful than the actual scene—the black rocks, the sobbing water?
"Folks," said Annet, incisively, "that laugh at stories about Piper's Hole, ought to come and see the place for themselves."
"Yes," Matthew Henry agreed; "and after that they can begin to talk."
"I didn't laugh," protested Linnet, flung upon her defence. "Besides," she went on weakly, "I don't see why it must be mermaids. If anything lives down there, why shouldn't it be a dragon—-or a giant, perhaps——"
"Linnet's improving," put in Matthew Henry, with fine sarcasm.
"Well, it sounds to me more like the noise a dragon would make," Linnet persisted, finding as she went on that her argument was carrying her through very creditably; "or a giant snoring, as they always do after meals."
Annet scanned the black water pensively. "I've heard tell," she said, "of great cuttles that sit and squat under the water; and sometimes, when they are hungry, they fling up their suckers and pull you down off the rocks and eat you."
Matthew Henry drew back from the brink, visibly daunted.
"Look here," he began, "I don't mind mermaids. Mermaids, so far as they go——"
But here he came to a halt as a tinkling sound—the sound of a stringed instrument, gently thrummed, rose from out of the abyss.
It fell on their ears in a pause of the surging water. It came from the Mermaid's Rock, and thither all three children turned their eyes, to see, over the crest of it, from its hidden seaward side, a woman's head and shoulders emerge into view!
In the gathering dusk, even had she lifted her face to them, they could not have discerned her features. But as she climbed into view her loosened hair fell all about her; on the summit of the rock she turned and seated herself fronting the sea; and while the three children drew together, cowering, at her gaze, she began to sing.
And she sang marvellously. If her song had words, they were foreign words; but whether articulate or not it was beautiful beyond all human compass—or so at least it seemed to the children, whose experience rested, to be sure, on the congregational efforts of Brefar Church.
It rose and sank upon the swell of the tide. It held such sweetness in its mystery that, frightened though they were, the wonder of it drew tears to their eyes. It seemed to open pathways into that world of their desire, on the boundaries of which they were forever treading; yet forever vainly, because they had not the passwords, and in their ignorance could only guess that miracles lay beyond, sealed, unimaginable.
The children huddled together, lost their fear in wonder, as the voice of the mermaid, growing more and more confident, pierced new roads for them—roads upon which the twilight closed at once; rays into a glory they felt, and trembled to feel, but could not apprehend, because the vision was of mere beauty, and music divorced from words is the last of arts to convey form and meaning.
Yet though wholly indefinite, almost wholly meaningless, it spoke to something to which the children felt all their blood thrilling, responding. Listening, they forgot their fear altogether....
The singer laid down her instrument. The grey of the twilight ran over her bare shoulders as, with a turn of the arm, she swept her tresses back, and—still singing—drew out mirror and comb....
They craned to watch.
Suddenly from the height of the cliff, close on their right, rang out the report of a gun. The song ceased abruptly, lost in the echoes that beat from cliff to cliff, and amid these echoes the children heard a noise of falling stones, followed by a heavy splash.
Annet had sprung to her feet. Linnet and Matthew Henry, too, had picked themselves up, though more slowly.... A wisp of smoke drifted by the rock to their right. When they turned their eyes upon the Mermaid's Rock the singer had vanished.
Annet caught Matthew Henry by one hand; Matthew Henry stretched out another to Linnet. The three scrambled up to the cliff-top, and thence raced homeward, panic-stricken, across the darkening fields.