He had thought by this visit to Damelioc to lay his demon of restlessness; had supposed this monthly account of his stewardship, punctually rendered, to be the business weighing on his mind. But no: as he passed out through the park gates, the imp perched itself again behind his crupper, urging him forward, tormenting him with the same vague sense of duty neglected and clamorous.
Towards evening it grew so nearly intolerable that he had much ado to sit patiently and preside at the School Board meeting, convened, as usual, in the great parlour at Hall. All the Board was there: the Clerk, Mr. Benny, and the six Managers; two Churchmen, three Dissenters, and himself—a Gallio with a casting vote. He was used to reflecting cynically that these opponents trusted him precisely because he cared less than a tinker's curse for their creeds, and reconciled all religious differences in a broad, impartial contempt. But to-night, as Parson Endicott approached the crucial difficulty—the choice of a new teacher—with all the wariness of a practised committee-man, laying his innocent parallels and bringing up his guns under cover of a pleasant disavowal to which the three Dissenters responded with "Hear, hear!" John Rosewarne listened not at all, nor to the fence of debate that followed as Church and Dissent grew heated and their friction struck out the familiar sparks— 'sectarian,' 'undoctrinal,' 'arrogance,' 'broad-mindedness.' At length came the equally familiar pause, when the exhausted combatants turned by consent and waited on their chairman. He sat tapping his fingers upon the polished mahogany, watching the reflected candle-lights along its surface, wondering when these fretful voices would cease, these warring atoms release him to obey the summons of his soul—still incomprehensible, still urgent.
Their sudden hush recalled him with a start. He had heard nothing of their debate. Slowly he lifted his eyes and let them rest upon Mr. Benny, who sat on his right, patiently waiting to take down the next entry for the minutes.
"If you will trust me," he said, "I can find you a teacher—a woman—whom you will all accept."
He had spoken without premeditation, and paused now, doubtful of the sound of his own voice. The five Managers were looking at him with respectful attention. Apparently, then, he was speaking sense; and he spoke on, still wondering by what will (not his own) the words came.
"If you leave her and the children alone, I think her religion will not trouble you. She is accustomed to boys, and teaches them to be honourable to one another and gentle to their sisters."
He paused again and drummed with his fingers on the table. He heard the voices break out again, and gathered that the majority assented. Mechanically he put the resolution, declared it carried, and closed the meeting; as mechanically he shook hands with all the Managers and wished them good-night. "And on your way, Benny, you may tell the maids they may go to bed. I'll blow out the candles myself."
When all had taken their leave he sat for a while, still staring at the reflected lights along the board. Then he arose and passed into his counting-house, where an oil lamp burned upon his writing-table.
He took pen and paper and wrote, addressed the letter, sealed it carefully, and leaned back in his chair, studying the address.
"There is to-morrow," he muttered. "I can reconsider it before post-time to-morrow."
But the restlessness had vanished and left in its stead a deep peace. If Death waited for him in the next room, he felt that he could go quietly now and take it by the hand. He remembered the candles still burning there, and stood up with a slight shiver—a characteristic shake of his broad shoulders. As he did so his eyes fell again upon the addressed letter. He turned them slowly to the door—and there, between him and the lights on the long table, a vision moved towards him—the figure of a girl dressed all in black. His hand went up to the phial in his breast-pocket, but paused half-way as he gazed into the face and met her eyes….
Two children came stealing downstairs in the early dawn, carrying their boots in their hands, whispering, lifting their faces as if listening for some sound to come from the upper floors. But the whole house kept silence.
Their plan was to escape by one of the windows on the ground floor. Tiptoeing along the hall to the door of the great parlour, Myra noiselessly lifted the latch (all the doors in the house had old-fashioned latches) and peeped in. The candles on the long table had burned themselves out, and the shuttered room lay in darkness save for one long glint of light along the mahogany table-top. It came from the half-open doorway in the far corner, beyond which, in the counting-house, a ghost of a flame yet trembled in Rosewarne's lamp.
Myra caught at Clem's arm and drew him back into the hall. For the moment terror overcame her—terror of something sinister within—of their grandfather sitting there like Giant Pope in the story, waiting to catch them. She hurried Clem along to the kitchen-passage, which opened out of the hall at right angles to the front door and close beside it. The front door had a fanlight through which fell one broken sunray, filtered to a pale green by the honeysuckle of the porch; and reaching it, she caught her breath in a new alarm. The bolts were drawn.
After a furtive glance behind her, she peered more closely, holding Clem fast by the sleeve. Yes, certainly the bolts were drawn, and the key had not been turned in the lock. Very cautiously she tried the heavy latch. The door opened easily—though with a creak that fetched her heart into her mouth.
But there was no going back. Whatever might be the explanation of the unbolted door, they were free now, at large in the dewy morning with the world at their feet. The brightness of it dazzled Myra. It broke on Clem's ears with the dinning of innumerable birds.
They took hands and hurried down the gravel path. Did ever Madonna lilies, did ever clove carnations smell as did these, lifting their heads from their morning bath? Yet field challenged garden with the fragrance of new-mown hay wafted down through the elms from Parc-an-hal, that great meadow.
On the low wall by the garden-gate Myra found a seat for Clem, helped him to lace his boots, and then did on her own.
"What's the time?" Clem demanded.
"I don't know, but he'll be coming soon. It can't be four o'clock yet, or we should hear Jim Tregay knocking about the milk-pails."
The boy sat silent, nursing his knee, drinking in a thousand scents and sounds. Myra watched the great humble-bees staggering from flower to flower, blundering among their dew-filled cups. She drew down a lily-stem gently, and guided her brother's hand so that it held one heady fellow imprisoned, buzzing under his palm and tickling it. Clem laughed aloud.
"Listen!"
A lad came whistling Up the road from the village. It was Tom Trevarthen, and the sunshine glinted on his silver earrings.
"Good-morning, missy! Good-morning, Master Clem! I'm good as my word, you see; though be sure I never reckoned to find 'ee up and out at this hour."
"Myra woke me," said Clem. "I believe she keeps a clock in her head."
"When I want to wake up at any particular hour, I just do it," Myra announced calmly. "Have they begun the rafting?"
"Bless your life, they've been working all night. There's one raft finished, and the other ought to be ready in a couple or three hours, to save the tide across the bay."
"I don't hear them singing."
"'Tisn't allowed. The Bo—your Aunt Hannah, I mean—says she don't mind what happens to sea, but she won't have her nights in harbour disturbed. Old Billy Daddo hadn't laid hands on the first balk before he began to pipe, 'O for a thousand tongues to sing,' starting on the very first hymn in the collection like as if he meant to sing right through it. He hadn't got to 'music in the sinner's ears' before the old woman pushed her face overside by the starboard cathead, nightcap and all—in that time she must ha' nipped out of her berth, up the companion, and along the length of the deck—and says she, 'I ben't no sinner, William Daddo, but a staid woman that likes her sleep and means to have it.' 'Why, missus,' says Billy, 'you'll surely lev' a man ask a blessing on his labours!' 'Ask quiet then,' she says, 'or you'll get slops.' Since then they be all as mute as mice."
Myra took Clem's hand, and the three hurried down the hill and through the sleeping village to the ferry-slip, where Tom had a ship's boat ready. In fifty strokes he brought her alongside the barque where the rafters— twenty-five or thirty—were at work, busy as flies. TheVirtuous Ladyhad been towed up overnight from her first anchorage to a berth under Hall gardens, and a hatch opened in her bows, through which the long balks of timber were thrust by the stevedores at work in the hold and received by a gang outside, who floated them off to be laid raftwise and lashed together with chains. The sun, already working around to the south, gilded the barque's top-gallant masts and yards, and flung a stream of gold along the raft already finished and moored in midstream. But the great hull lay as yet in the cool shadow of the hillside over which the larks sang.
Tom Trevarthen found the children a corner on the half-finished raft, out of the way of the workmen, and a spare tarpaulin to keep their clothes dry; and there they sat happily, the boy listening and Myra explaining, until Mrs. Purchase, having slept her sleep and dressed herself (partly), emerged on deck with a teapot to fill at the cook's galley, and, looking over the bulwarks, caught sight of them.
"Hullo! You don't tell me that Susannah,"—this was the housekeeper at Hall—"allows you abroad at this hour!"
Now the risk of Susannah's discovering their escape and pursuing was the one bitter drop in the cup of these truants' happiness. Susannah—a middle-aged, ill-favoured spinster, daughter of a yeoman-farmer, with whose second wife she could not agree—scorned the sea and all sailors. Once, as a girl, she had committed her ample person to a sailing boat, and, thank God! that one lesson had been enough. Ships came and went under the windows of Hall, but in the children's eyes they and their crews belonged to an unknown world. Things real to them were the farm and farm stock, harvests and harvest-homes, the waggoners' teams, byres, orchards, garden, and cool dairy. Ships' captains arrived out of fairyland sometimes, and crossed the straw-littered townplace to hold audience with their grandfather; magic odours of hemp and pitch, magic chanty songs and clanking of windlasses called to them up the hill; but until this morning they had never dared to obey the call. Had Clem been as other boys—. But, being blind, he trusted to Myra, and Myra was a girl.
"Come aboard and have a drink of something cordial!" continued Mrs. Purchase, holding the teapot aloft. She walked forward and looked down on the workers. "Now you may sing, boys, if't pleases 'ee."
"Thank'ee, ma'am," answered up Billy Daddo; "then lev' us make a start with Wrestling Jacob, Part Two—"
'Lame as I am, I take the prey'—
'Lame as I am, I take the prey'—
'Lame as I am, I take the prey'—
"'Tis a pleasant old tune and never comes amiss, but for choice o' seasons give me the dew o' the mornin'."
He pitched the note in high falsetto, and after a couple of bars five or six near comrades joined in together—
"Speak to me now, for I am weak,But confident in self-despair:Speak to my heart, in blessings speak;Be conquer'd by my instant prayer!Speak, or thou never hence shall move,And tell me if thy name is Love."
"Speak to me now, for I am weak,But confident in self-despair:Speak to my heart, in blessings speak;Be conquer'd by my instant prayer!Speak, or thou never hence shall move,And tell me if thy name is Love."
"Speak to me now, for I am weak,But confident in self-despair:Speak to my heart, in blessings speak;Be conquer'd by my instant prayer!Speak, or thou never hence shall move,And tell me if thy name is Love."
Billy Daddo's gang hailed from a parish, three miles up the coast, noted for containing "but one man that couldn't preach, and that was the parson." Their fellow-labourers—the crew of the barque and half-a-score longshoremen belonging to the port—heard without thought of deriding. Though themselves unconverted—for life in a town, especially in a seaport town, makes men curious and critical rather than intense, and life in a ship ruled by Mrs. Purchase did not encourage visionaries—they were accustomed to the fervours of the redeemed.
"'Tis Love! 'tis Love! thou diedst for me:I hear thy whisper in my heart—!"
"'Tis Love! 'tis Love! thou diedst for me:I hear thy whisper in my heart—!"
"'Tis Love! 'tis Love! thou diedst for me:I hear thy whisper in my heart—!"
"Brayvo! 'tis workin'! 'tis workin'! Give it tongue, brother Langman!" cried Billy, as a stevedore within the hold broke forth into a stentorian bass that made the ship rumble—
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,Pure universal Love thou art:To me, to me thy bowels move,Thy nature and thy name is Love!"
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,Pure universal Love thou art:To me, to me thy bowels move,Thy nature and thy name is Love!"
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,Pure universal Love thou art:To me, to me thy bowels move,Thy nature and thy name is Love!"
Meanwhile young Tom Trevarthen had brought the children under the vessel's side, and was helping Clem up the ladder. Mrs. Purchase greeted them with a kiss apiece, and carried them off to the cabin, where they found Mr. Purchase eating bread and cream.
Skipper Purchase, a smart seaman in his day and a first-class navigator, had for a year or two been gradually weakening in the head; a decline which his wife noted, though she kept her anxiety to herself. She foresaw with a pang the end of their voyaging, and watched him narrowly, having made a compact with herself to interfere before he imperilled theVirtuous Lady. Hitherto, however, his wits had unfailingly cleared to meet an emergency. While she could count upon this, she knew herself competent to rule the ship in all ordinary weather.
"Help yourselves to cream," said Mr. Purchase, after giving them good-morning. "Clever men tell me there's more nourishment in a pound o' cream than in an ox. Now that may seem marvellous in your eyes?" He paused with a wavering, absent-minded smile. "'Tis the most nourishing food in the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdoms,—unless you count parsnips."
"T'cht!" his wife put in briskly, banging down a couple of clean teacups on the swing-table. "Children don't want a passel o' science in their insides. Milk or weak tea, my dears?"
"I don't know," the skipper went on after another long pause, bringing his Uncertain eyes to bear on Clem, "if you've ever taken note what astonishing things folks used to eat in the Bible. There's locusts, and wild honey, and unleavened bread—I made out a list of oddments one time. Nebbycannezzar don't count, of course; but Ezekiel took down a whole book in the shape of a roll."
Mrs. Purchase signed to Myra to pay no heed, and engaged Clem in a sort of quick-firing catechism on the cabin fittings, their positions and uses. The boy, who had been on board but once in his life before, stretched out a hand and touched each article as she named it.
"The lamp, now?"
Clem reached up at once and laid his fingers on it, gently as a butterfly alights on a flower.
"How does it swing?"
"On gimbals."
"Eh? and what may gimbals be?"
"There's a ring fastened here,"—the boy's fingers found it—"and swinging to and fro; and inside the ring is a bar, holding the lamp so that it tips to and fro crossways to the ring. You weight the bottom of the lamp, and then it keeps plumb upright however the ship moves."
"Wunnerful memory you've got, to be sure—and your gran'father tells me you can't even read!"
"But he knows his letters," Myra announced proudly; "and when the new teacher comes he's to go to school with me. Susannah says so."
"How in the world did you teach'n his letters, child?"
"I cut them on the match-boarding inside the summer-house, and he traces them out with his fingers. If you go up you can see for yourself—the whole lot from A to Ampassy! He never makes a mistake—do you, Clem? And I've begun to cut out 'Our Father,' but it's slow work."
"Did ever you hear tell!" Mrs. Purchase turned to her husband, who had come out of his reverie and sat regarding Clem with something like lively interest. He had, in fact, opened his mouth to utter a scriptural quotation, but, checked on the verge of it, dropped back into pensiveness.
At this point Mrs. Purchase's practised ear told her that the stevedores were ceasing work, and she bustled up the ladder to summon her crew to swab decks. The old man, left alone with the children, leaned forward, jerked a thumb after her, and said impressively, "I named her myself."
"Who? Aunt Hannah?" stammered Myra, taken aback.
"No, the ship. I named her after your aunt. 'Who can find a virtuous woman?' says Solomon. 'I can,' says I; 'and, what's more, I done it: only I changed the word to lady, as more becoming to one of her haveage. Proverbs thirty-one, fourteen—turn it up when you get home, and you'll find these words: 'She is like the merchant ships, she bringeth her food from afar.'"
"Uncle," put in Myra breathlessly, "I want you to listen for a moment! Clem and I have run away this morning, and by this time Susannah will have found it out and be searching. If she sends down here, couldn't you hide us—just for a little while? The—the fact is, we've set our hearts on going with the rafts. There's no danger in this weather, and Tom Trevarthen has promised to look after us. I don't dare to ask Aunt Hannah; but if you could have a boat ready just when the rafts are starting, and hide us somewhere till then."—
Mr. Purchase did not seem to hear, but rose and opened a small Dutch corner-cupboard, inlaid with parrots and tulips, and darkly varnished. From it he took a large Bible.
"I'll show you the text I was speaking of."
"But, uncle."—
"They'm washing-down already," said he, lifting his head to the sound of rushing water on deck. "Your aunt will be back in a moment, and 'tis time for prayers."
Sure enough, at that instant the feet and ankles of Mrs. Purchase appeared on the ladder. "Tide's on the turn," she announced. "Keep your seats, my dears; the Lord knows there's no room to kneel, and He makes allowance." She set a small packed basket on the table, and turned to her husband. "You'll have to pray short, too, if the children are going with the rafts."
"Going?—Oh, Aunt Hannah!"
"Why, I'd a notion youwantedto! To be sure, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, and 'tisn' the first time; but young Tom Trevarthen didn' seem to reckon so. There, get your prayers over and cut along; I'll make it all right with your grandfather and Susannah."
Ah, but it was bliss, and blissful to remember! The rafts dropped down past the town quay, past the old lock-houses, past the ivied fort at the harbour's mouth, and out to the open sea that twinkled for leagues under the faint northerly breeze, dazzling Myra's eyes. Tom Trevarthen grinned as he tugged at an enormous sweep with two other men, Methodists both, and sang with them and with Billy Daddo, who steered with another sweep, rigged aft upon a crutch—
"Praise ye the Lord! 'Tis good to raiseYour hearts and voices in His praise."—
"Praise ye the Lord! 'Tis good to raiseYour hearts and voices in His praise."—
"Praise ye the Lord! 'Tis good to raiseYour hearts and voices in His praise."—
"Now what should put it in my noddle to take up with that old hemn?" asked Billy aloud, coming to a halt at the close of the first verse and scratching his head. "'Tidn' one of my first fav'rites—nothing in it about the Blood o' the Lamb—an' I can't call to mind havin' pitched it for years. Well, never mind! The Lord hev done it with some purpose, you may be sure."
"I call it a very pretty hymn," said Myra, for he seemed to be addressing her. "And isn't it reason enough that you're glad to be alive?"
"But I bain't," Billy argued, shaking his head. "You wouldn' understand it at your age, missy; but as a saved soul I counts the days. Long after I was a man grown, the very sound of 'He comes, He comes! the Judge severe,' or 'Terrible thought, shall I alone,' used to put me all of a twitter. Now they be but weak meat, is you might say. 'Ah, lovely appearance of death'—that's more in my line—
"Ah, lovely appearance of death!What sight upon earth is so fair?Not all the gay pageants that breatheCan with a dead body compare."—
"Ah, lovely appearance of death!What sight upon earth is so fair?Not all the gay pageants that breatheCan with a dead body compare."—
"Ah, lovely appearance of death!What sight upon earth is so fair?Not all the gay pageants that breatheCan with a dead body compare."—
"Don't!" Myra put both hands up to her ears. "Oh, please don't, Mr. Daddo! And I call it wicked to stand arguing when the Lord, as you say, put a cheerfuller tune in your head."
"Well, here goes, then!" Billy resumed "Praise ye the Lord." At the fifth verse his face began to kindle—
"What is the creature's skill or force?The sprightly man, or warlike horse?The piercing wit, the active limb,Are all too mean delights to Him.But saints are lovely in His sight,He views His children with delight;He sees their hope, he knows their fear,And looks and loves His image there."
"What is the creature's skill or force?The sprightly man, or warlike horse?The piercing wit, the active limb,Are all too mean delights to Him.But saints are lovely in His sight,He views His children with delight;He sees their hope, he knows their fear,And looks and loves His image there."
"What is the creature's skill or force?The sprightly man, or warlike horse?The piercing wit, the active limb,Are all too mean delights to Him.But saints are lovely in His sight,He views His children with delight;He sees their hope, he knows their fear,And looks and loves His image there."
"Ay, now," he broke out, "to think I didn' remember that verse about children when I started to sing! And 'twas of you, missy, and the young master here the dear Lord was thinkin' all the time!"
He dropped his eyes and, leaning back against the handle of the sweep, suddenly burst into prayer. "Suffer little children, O dear Jesus! suffer little children. Have mercy on these two tender lambs, and so bring them, blessed Lord, to Thy fold!"
As his fervour took hold of him he left the sweep to do its own steering, and strode up and down the raft, picking his way from balk to balk, skipping aside now and again as the water rose between them under his weight and overflowed his shoes. To Myra, unaccustomed to be prayed for aloud and by name, the whole performance was absurd and embarrassing. She blushed hotly under the eyes of the other men, and glanced at Clem, expecting him to be no less perturbed.
But Clem did not hear. The two children had taken off their boots, and he sat with the water playing over his naked insteps and his eyes turned southward to the horizon as if indeed he saw. With his blind gaze fastened there he seemed to wait patiently until Billy's prayer exhausted itself and Billy returned to the steering; and then his lips too began to move, and he broke into a curious song.
It frightened Myra, who had never heard the like of it; for it had no words, but was just a sing-song—a chant, low at first, then rising shrill and clear and strong, and reaching out as though to challenge the waters twinkling between raft and horizon. Through it there ran a note of high courage touched with tremulous yearning—yearning to escape yonder and be free.
She touched his hand. So well she loved and understood him, that even this strange outbreak she could interpret, though it caught her at unawares. For the moment he did not feel the touch; he was far away. He had forgotten her—alas!—with his blindness. She belonged to his weakness, not to his strength. For the while he dwelt in the vision of his true manhood, which only his one infirmity forbade his inheriting; and she had no place in it.
He came back to reality with a pitiful break and quaver of the voice, and turned his eyes helplessly toward her. She answered his gaze timidly, as though he could see her. She was searching his eyes for tears. But there was no trace of tears in them. He took the food she handed him from Aunt Purchase's basket; and, having eaten, laid his head in her lap and fell asleep.
Slowly under the noonday heat and through the long afternoon the two rafts moved across the bay, towing each its boat in which the rafters would return in the cool of the evening.
But the children did not return in them; for on the quay, where the balks were due, to be warped ashore unlashed and conveyed inland to the mines, stood Jim Tregay waiting with their grandfather's blood-mare Actress harnessed in a spring-cart. How came Jim here, at this distance from home?
"Been waiting for you these two hours!" he called to the children. "Jump into the boat there and come ashore. You'm wanted to home, and at once!"
They landed and clambered into the spring-cart.
"Nothing wrong at home, I hope?" called Tom Trevarthen from the quay's edge, as he pushed off to scull back to the raft.
"Oh, this is Susannah's nonsense, you may be sure!" called back Myra. "I suppose she carried her tales to grandfather, and he packed you off after us, Jim Tregay? Well, you needn't look so glum about it. Aunt Hannah gave us leave, and told Tom to look after us, and we've had a heavenly day, so Susannah may scold till she's tired."
"Hold the reins for a moment, Miss Myra, if you please." Jim left the mare's head and walked down the quay, holding up his hand to delay the young sailor, who slewed his boat round, and brought her alongside again. The pair were whispering together. Myra heard a sharp exclamation, and in a moment Tom Trevarthen was sculling away for dear life. Jim ran back, jumped into the cart, and took the reins.
"But what is he shouting?" asked Myra, as the mare's hoofs struck and slid on the cobbles and the cart seemed to spring forward beneath her. She clutched her brother as they swayed past mooring-posts, barrels, coils of rope, and with a wild lurch around the tollman's house at the quay-head, breasted the steep village street. "What's he shouting?" she demanded again.
Jim made no answer, but, letting the reins lie loose, flicked Actress smartly with the whip. Even a child could tell that no horse ought to be put at a hill in this fashion. Faces appeared at cottage doors—faces Myra had never seen in her life—gazing with a look she could not understand. All the faces, too, seemed to wear this look.
"What has happened?"
At the top of the hill, on a smoother road, the mare settled down to a steady gallop. Jim Tregay turned himself half-about in his seat.
"From battle and murder and from sudden death—good Lord, deliver us!"
"Oh, Jim, be kind and tell us!"
"Your grandfather, missy—the old maister! They found 'en in the counting-house this mornin' dead as a nail!"
Myra, with an arm about Clem and her disengaged hand gripping the light rail of the cart, strove to fix her mind, to bring her brain to work upon Jim's words. But they seemed to spin past her with the hedgerows and the rushing wind in her ears. A terrible blow had fallen. Why could she not feel it? Why did she sit idly wondering, when even a dumb creature like Actress seemed to understand and put forth all her fleetness?
"Who sent you for us? Susannah?"
"Susannah's no better than a daft woman. Peter Benny sent me. He took down the news to Mrs. Purchase, and she told him where you was gone. He called out the horse-boat and packed me across the ferry instanter."
Myra gazed along the ridge of the mare's back to her heaving shoulders.
"Clem!" she whispered.
"Yes," said the boy slowly, "I am trying to understand. Why are we going so fast?"
So he too found it difficult. In truth their grandfather had stood outside their lives, a stern, towering shadow from the touch of which they crept away to nestle in each other's love. Because his presence brooded indoors they had never felt happy of the house. Because he seldom set foot in the garden they had made the garden their playground, their real nursery; the garden, and on wet days the barn, the hay-lofts, the apple-lofts, any Alsatia beyond the rules, where they could run free and lift their voices. He had never been unkind, but merely neglectful, unsmiling, coldly deterrent, unapproachable. They knew, of course, that he was great, that grown men and women stood in awe of him.
When at length Jim Tregay reined up in the roadway above the ferry, they found a vehicle at a stand there, with a rough-coated grey horse in a lather of sweat; and peering over the wall from her perch in the spring-cart, Myra spied Mr. Benny on the slipway below, in converse with a tall, black-coated man who held by the hand a black-coated boy. As a child, she naturally let her gaze rest longer on the boy than on the man; but by and by, as she led Clem down the slipway, she found herself staring at the two with almost equal distaste.
Little Mr. Benny ran up the slipway to meet the children. His eyes were red, and it was with difficulty that he controlled his voice.
"My dears," he began, taking Myra by the hand and clasping it between his palms, "my poor dears, a blow indeed! a terrible blow! Your uncle—dear me, I believe you have never met! Let me present you to your uncle, Mr. Samuel, and your cousin, Master Calvin Rosewarne. These are the children, Mr. Samuel—Miss Myra and Master Clem—and, as I was saying, I sent a trap to fetch them home with all speed."
The man in black shook hands with the children gloomily. Myra noted that his whiskers were black and straggling, and that, though his upper lip was long, it did not hide his prominent yellow teeth. As for the boy, he shook hands as if Under protest, and fell at once to staring hard at Clem. He had a pasty-white face, which looked the unhealthier for being surmounted by a natty velveteen cap with a patent-leather up-and-down peak, and he wore a black overcoat, like a minister's, knickerbockers, grey woollen stockings, and spring-side boots, the tags of which he had neglected to turn in.
"You sent for them?" asked Mr. Samuel sourly as he shook hands, turning a fishy eye upon Mr. Benny. "Why did you send for them?"
"Eh?" stammered Mr. Benny. "Their poor grandfather, Mr. Samuel! I could not have forgiven myself. It was, after telegraphing to you, my first thought."
"I can't see with what object you sent for them," persisted Mr. Samuel, and pulled at his ragged whiskers. "Were they—er—away on a visit? staying with friends? If so, I should have thought they were much better left till after the funeral."
He shifted his gaze from Mr. Benny and fixed it on Myra, who flushed hotly. What right had this Mr. Samuel to be interfering and taking charge?
"We were not staying with friends," she answered, "or paying any visit. Clem and I have never slept away from home in our lives. We have been across the bay with the rafts—that's all; and Aunt Hannah gave Us leave."
He ignored her display of temper. "You've been let run wild, you two, I daresay," he replied, in a tone almost rallying. "I guess you have had matters pretty much your own way."
Poor Myra! This was the first whole holiday she and Clem had ever taken. But how could she tell him? She gulped down her tears—she was glad he had turned away without perceiving them—clutched Clem's hand in silence, and followed down to the boat, which Uncle Vro was bringing alongside.
As the party settled themselves in the sternsheets Master Calvin fixed his pale, gooseberry-coloured eyes on hers.
"You needn't show temper," he said slowly, with the air of a young ruminant animal.
"I'm not showing temper!" Myra retorted in a tone which certainly belied her.
"Yes, you are; and you've told a fib, which only makes things worse." He smiled complacently at having beaten her in argument, and Myra thought she had never met such an insufferable boy in her life.
He transferred his unblinking stare to Clem, and for half a minute took stock of him silently. "Is he blind," he asked aloud, "or only pretending?"
Myra's face flamed now. A little more, and she had boxed his ears; but she checked herself and, caressing the back of Clem's hand, answered with grave irony, "Hewasblind, up to a minute ago; but now, since seeing you, he prefers to be pretending."
Master Calvin considered this for almost a minute. "That's rude," he announced at length decisively.
But meanwhile other passengers in the boat had found time to get themselves at loggerheads.
"Your servant, Master Samuel!" began old Nicky affably, as he fell to his oars. "I hope I see 'ee well, though 'tis a sad wind that blows 'ee here. Ay, there's a prophet gone this day from Israel!"
Mr. Samuel frowned. "Good-evening," he answered coldly, and added, with an effort to be polite, "I seem to know your face, too."
"He-he!" Uncle Nicky leaned on his oars with a senile chuckle. "Know my face, dost-a? Ought to, be sure, for I be the same Nicholas Vro that ferried 'ee back and forth in the old days afore your father's stomach soured against 'ee. Dostn't-a mind that evening I put 'ee across with your trunks for the last time? 'Never take on, Master Sam,' said I— for all the parish knew and talked of your differences—'give the old man time, and you'll be coming home for the Christmas holidays as welcome as flowers in May.' 'Not me,' says you; 'my father's is a house o' wrath, and there's no place for me.' A mort o' tide-water have runned up an' down since you spoke they words; but here be I, Nicholas Vro, takin' 'ee back home as I promised. Many times I've a-pictered 'ee, hearing you was grown prosperous and a married man and had took up with religion. I won't say that years have bettered your appearance; 'tisn't their way. But I'd ha' picked out your face in a crowd—or your cheeld's, for that matter. He features you wonderful."
"I remember you now," said Mr. Sam. "You haven't grown any less talkative in all these years." He turned to Mr. Benny. "Your telegram was sent off at nine-forty-five. Was that as early as possible?"
"I can say 'yes' to that, Mr. Samuel. Of course I had to begin by quieting the servants—they were scared out of their wits, and it took me some time to coax them out of their alarm. Then, taking boat, I rowed down to the post-office, stopping only at the barque yonder, to break the news to Mrs. Purchase. She put on her bonnet at once and was rowed ashore. 'Twas from her, too, I learned the whereabouts of Miss Myra and Master Clem; for up at the house they could not be found, and this had thrown Miss Susannah into worse hysterics—she could only imagine some new disaster. At first I was minded to send a boat after them, but by this time the rafts were a good two miles beyond the harbour, and Mrs. Purchase said, 'No, they can do no good, poor dears; let them have their few hours' pleasure.' From the barque I pulled straight to the post-office, and sent off the telegram, and—dear me, yes—at the same time I posted a letter. I had found it, ready stamped, lying on the floor by my poor master's feet. It must have dropped from his hand; no doubt he had just finished writing it when the end came."
"But why such a hurry to post it?"
"It was marked 'Private and Immediate.'"
"For whom?"
Mr. Benny hesitated. "You will excuse me, Mr. Samuel."—
"Confidential?"
"As a matter of fact, sir, when Mr. Rosewarne marked his letters so I made it a rule never to read the address. But this one—coming upon it as I did—I couldn't help."—
"You prefer to keep the address to yourself?"
"With your leave, sir."
Mr. Samuel eyed him sharply. "Quite right!" he said curtly, with a glance at Uncle Vro; but the old man was not listening.
"Lord! and I mind his second marriage!" he muttered. "A proper lady she was, from up Tamar-way. He brought her home across water, and that's unlucky, they say; but he never minded luck. Firm as a nail he ever was, and put me in mind of the nail in Isaiah: 'As a nail in a sure place I will fasten him, and they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father's house, the offspring and the issue, all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups even to all the vessels of flagons.' But the offspring and the issue, my dears," he went on, addressing Clem and Myra, "was but your poor mother. Well-a-well, weak or strong, we go in our time!"
As they landed and climbed the hill, Mr. Sam spoke with Peter Benny aside.
"They may ask about that letter at the inquest. You have thought of the inquest, of course?"
"If they do, I must answer them."
"So far as you know, there was nothing in it to cause strong emotion— nothing to account—?"
"Dear me, no," answered Mr. Benny, staring at him in mild astonishment; "so far as I know, nothing whatever."
After packing Susannah off to her room with a Bible and a smelling-bottle, Mrs. Purchase had set herself to reduce the household to order. "'Tisn't in nature to think of death," confessed Martha the dairy-girl, "when you'm worrited from pillar to post by a woman in creaky boots."
Above and beside her creaky boots Aunt Hannah had a cheerful, incurable habit of slamming every door she passed through. It came, she would explain, of living on shipboard where cabin was divided from cabin either by a simple curtain or by sliding panels. Be this is it may, she kept the house of mourning re-echoing that day "like a labouring ship with a cargo of tinware," to quote Martha again, whose speech derived many forcible idioms from her father, the mate of a coaster.
Nevertheless—and although it appeared to induce a steady breeze through the house, rising to a moderate gale when meals were toward—Aunt Hannah's presence acted like a tonic on all. She presented to Mr. Sam a weather-ruddied cheek, receiving his kiss on what, in so round a face as hers, might pass for the point of the jaw. In saluting Master Calvin she had perforce to take the offensive, and did so with equal aplomb. After a rapid survey of some three seconds she picked off his velveteen cap and kissed him accurately in the centre of the forehead.
"I meant to do it on the top of his head," she informed Myra later, "but the ghastly child was smothered in bear's-grease. Lord knows that, as 'twas, I very nearly slipped in my thumb and kissedthat, as I've heard tell that folks do in the witness-box."
Myra did not understand the allusion; but from the first she divined that her aunt misliked Master Calvin and found that mislike consolatory.
"As for these two," the good lady announced, indicating brother and sister, "I allow to myself they'll be best out of the way till the funeral. I've been through the clothes-press, and put up their night-clothes and a few odd items in a hand-bag. 'Siah will be here at eight-thirty sharp, to take 'em aboard with him. For my part, I reckon to sleep here to-night and look after things till that fool Susannah comes to her senses. And as for you, Peter Benny, you'll stay supper, I hope, for there's supper ready and waiting to be dished—a roast leg of lamb, with green peas. It puts me in mind of Easter Day," she added inconsequently. "You may remember, Sam, that your poor father always stickled for a roast leg of lamb at Easter. He was a good Christian to that extent, I thank the Lord!"
"And I thankyou, ma'am," protested Mr. Benny, "but I couldn't touch a morsel—indeed I couldn't, though you offer it so kindly."
"To my knowledge, you've not eaten enough to-day to keep a mouse alive. Well, if you won't, you won't; but I've been through the garden, and there's a dish of strawberries to take home to your wife."
Mrs. Purchase could not know—good soul—that in removing the two children to shipboard, to spare them the ugly preparations for the funeral, she was connecting their grandfather's death in their minds for ever with the most delightful holiday in life. Yet so it was. Punctually at half-past eight Mr. Purchase appeared and escorted them on board theVirtuous Lady; and so, out-tired with their long day, drugged and drowsed by strong salt air and sunshine and the swift homeward drive, they came at nightfall, and as knights and princesses come in fairy tales, to the palace of enchantment. As they drew close, its walls towered up terribly and overhung them, lightless, forbidding; but far aloft the riding-lamp flamed like a star, and Myra clapped her hands as she reached the deck and peered down into a marvellous doll's-house fitted with couches, muslin blinds, and brass-locked cupboards that twinkled in the lamplight. There was a stateroom, too, with a half-drawn red curtain in place of a door, and beyond the curtain a glimpse of two beds, one above the other, with white sheets turned back and ready for the sleepers—at once like and deliciously unlike the beds at home. The children, having unpacked their bag and undressed, knelt down side by side as usual in their white night-rails. But Myra could not pray, although she repeated the words with Clem. Her eyes wandered among marvels. The lower bed (assigned to Clem by reason of his blindness) was not only a bed but a chest of drawers.
"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,Look upon a little child;Pity my simplicity."—
"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,Look upon a little child;Pity my simplicity."—
"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,Look upon a little child;Pity my simplicity."—
Her fingers felt and tried the brass handles. Yes, a real chest of drawers! And the washstand folded up in a box, and in place of a chair was a rack with netting in which to lay their garments for the night! "God bless dear Clem, and grandfather."—What was she saying? Their grandfather was dead, and praying for dead people was wicked. Susannah had once caught her praying for her mother, and had told her that it was wicked, with a decisiveness that closed all argument. None the less she had prayed for her mother since then—once or twice, perhaps half a dozen times—though slily and in a terror of being punished tor it and sent to hell. "And Susannah, and Martha, and Elizabeth Jane,"—this was the housemaid—"and Peter Benny, and Jim Tregay, and all kind friends and relations,"—including Uncle Sam and that odious boy of his? Well, they might go down in the list; but she wouldn't pretend to like them.
"Ready, my dears?" asked Uncle Purchase from outside. "Sing out when you're in bed, and I'll come and dowse the lights."
He did so, and stood for a moment hesitating, scarcely visible in the faint radiance cast through the doorway by the lamp in his own cabin. Maybe the proper thing would be to give them a kiss apiece? He could not be sure, being a childless man. He ended by saying good-night so gruffly that Myra fancied he must be in a bad temper.
"Clem!" she whispered, after lying still for a while, staring into darkness. "Clem!"
But Clem was already sound asleep.
She sighed and turned on her pillow. She had wanted to discuss with him a thought that vexed her. Did folks love one another when they grew up? And, if so, how did they manage it, seeing that so few grownups had anything lovable about them? Clem and she, of course, would go on loving each other always; but that was different. When one grown-up person died, were the others really sorry? No one seemed sorry for her grandfather—no one—except, perhaps, Peter Benny….