CHAPTER XXIV
“Perish me! Rot and wither my soul and eyes if it ain’t Saïd!” exclaimed Captain Benjamin MacBride, hopping across the court, his square hand extended.
“Saïd, my bully, where d’you hail from?”
“I’m on the bodyguard at Rabat. The Sultan’s building there now. Skalas all round and seven new mosques are the order, I hear—we’ll all be carrying bricks soon. I rode over to see you.”
“You ain’t looking too proud,” said MacBride; “sort of wasted-like, and God ha’ mercy. Flux?”
Ortho shook his head. “No, but I’ve had my troubles, and”—indicating the sailor’s bandaged eye and his crutch—“so have you, it seems.”
“Curse me, yes! Fell in with a fat Spanisher off Ortegal and mauled him down to a sheer hulk when up romps a brace of American ‘thirties’ and serves me cruel. If it hadn’t been for nightfall and a shift of wind I should have been a holy angel by now. Bad times, boy, bad times. Too many warships about, and all merchantmen sailing in convoy. I tell you I shall be glad when there’s a bit of peace and good-will on earth again. Just now everybody’s armed and it’s plaguy hard to pick up an honest living.”
“Governor here, aren’t you?” Ortho inquired.
“Aye. Soft lie-abed shore berth till my wounds heal and we can get back to business. Fog in the river?”
“Thick; couldn’t see across.”
“It’s lying on the sea like a blanket,” said MacBride. “I’ve been watching it from my tower. Come along and see the girls. They’re all here save Tama; she runned away with a Gharb sheik when I was cruising—deceitful slut!—but I’ve got three new ones.”
Ayesha and Schems-ed-dah were most welcoming. They had grown somewhat matronly, but otherwise time seemed to have left them untouched. As ever they were gorgeously dressed, bejeweled and painted up with carmine, henna and kohl. Fluttering and twittering about their ex-slave, they plied him with questions. He had been to the wars? Wounded? How many men had he killed? What was his rank? A kaid rahal of cavalry. . . . Ach! chut, chut! A great man! On the bodyguard! . . . Ay-ee! Was it true the Sultan’s favorite Circassians ate off pure gold? Was he married yet?
When he told them the recent plague in Morocco had killed both his wife and son their liquid eyes brimmed over. No whit less sympathetic were the three new beauties; they wept in concert, though ten minutes earlier Ortho had been an utter stranger to them. Their hearts were very tender. A black eunuch entered bearing the elaborate tea utensils. As he turned to go, MacBride called “aji,” pointing to the ground before him.
The slave threw up his hands in protest. “Oh, no, lord, please.”
“Kneel down,” the sailor commanded. “I’ll make you spring your ribs laughing, Saïd, my bonny. Give me your hand, Mohar.”
“Lord, have mercy!”
“Mercy be damned! Your hand, quick!”
The piteous great creature extended a trembling hand, was grasped by the wrist and twisted onto his back.
“Now, my pearls, my rosebuds,” said MacBride.
The five little birds of paradise tucked their robes about them and surrounded the prostrate slave, tittering and wriggling their forefingers at him. Even before he was touched he screamed, but when the tickling began in earnest he went mad, doubling, screwing, clawing the air with his toes, shrieking like a soul in torment—which indeed he was.
With the pearls and rosebuds it was evidently a favorite pastime; they tickled with diabolical cunning that could only come of experience, shaking with laughter and making sibilant noises the while—“Pish—piss-sh!” Finally when the miserable victim was rolling up the whites of his eyes, mouthing foam and seemed on the point of throwing a fit, MacBride released him and he escaped.
The captain wiped the happy tears from his remaining eye and turned on Ortho as one recounting an interesting scientific observation.
“Very thin-skinned for a Sambo. D’you know I believe he’d sooner take a four-bag at the gangway than a minute o’ that. I do, so help me; I believe he’d sooner be flogged.Vee-rycurious. Come up and I’ll show you my command.”
The Atlantic was invisible from the tower, sheeted under fog which, beneath a windless sky, stretched away to the horizon in woolly white billows. Ortho had an impression of a mammoth herd of tightly packed sheep.
“There’s a three-knot tide under that, sweeping south, but it don’t ’pear to move it much,” MacBride observed. “I’ll warrant that bank ain’t higher nor a first-rate’s topgallant yard. I passed through the western squadron once in a murk like that there. Off Dungeness, it was. All their royals was sticking out, but my little hooker was trucks down, out o’ sight.” He pointed to the north. “Knitra’s over there, bit of a kasba like this. Er-rhossi has it; a sturdy fellow for a Greek, but my soul what a man to drink! Stayed here for a week and ’pon my conscience he had me baled dry in two days—me! Back there’s the forest, there’s pig . . . what are you staring at?”
Ortho spun about guiltily. “Me? Oh, nothing, nothing, nothing. What were you saying? The forest . . .”
He became suddenly engrossed in the view of the forest of Marmora.
“What’s the matter? You look excited, like as if you’d seen something,” said MacBride suspiciously.
“I’ve seen nothing,” Ortho replied. “What should I see?”
“Blest if I know; only you looked startled.”
“I was thinking.”
“Oh, was you? Well, as I was saying, there’s a mort o’ pigs in there, wild ’uns, and lions too, by report, but I ain’t seen none. I’ll get some sport as soon as my leg heals. This ain’t much of a place though. Can’t get no money out of charcoal burners, not if you was to torture ’em for a year. As God is my witness I’ve done my best, but the sooty vermin ain’t got any.” He sighed. “I shall be devilish glad when we can get back to our lawful business again. I’ve heard married men in England make moan abouttheir‘family responsibilities’—but what of me? I’ve gotthreeseparate families already and two more on the way! What d’you say to that—eh?”
Ortho sympathized with the much domesticated seaman and declared he must be going.
“You’re in hell’s own hurry all to a sudden.”
“I’m on the bodyguard, you know.”
“Well, if you must that’s an end on’t, but I was hoping you’d stop for days and we’d have a chaw over old Jerry Gish—he-he! What a man! Say, would you have the maidens plague that Sambo once more before you go? Would you now? Give the word!”
Ortho declined the pleasure and asked if MacBride could sell him a boat compass.
“I can sell you two or three, but what d’you want it for?”
“I’m warned for the Guinea caravan,” Ortho explained. “A couple ofakkabaahhave been lost lately; the guides went astray in the sands. I want to keep some check on them.”
“I thought the Guinea force went out about Christmas.”
“No, this month.”
“Well, you know best, I suppose,” said the captain and gave him a small compass, refusing payment.
“Come back and see us before you go,” he shouted as Ortho went out of the gate.
“Surely,” the latter replied and rode southwards for Sallee at top speed, knowing full well that, unless luck went hard against him, so far from seeing Ben MacBride again he would be out of the country before midnight.
While Ourida lived, life in Morocco had its compensations; with her death it had become insupportable. He had ridden down to the sea filled with a cold determination to seize the first opportunity of escape and, if none occurred, to make one. Plans had been forming in his mind of working north to Tangier, there stealing a boat and running the blockade into beleaguered Gibraltar, some forty miles distant, a scheme risky to the point of foolhardiness. But remain he would not.
Now unexpectedly, miraculously, an opportunity had come. Despite his denials hehadseen something from MacBride’s tower; the upper canvas of a ship protruding from the fog about a mile and a half out from the coast, by the cut and the long coach-whip pennant at the main an Englishman. Just a glimpse as the royals rose out of a trough of the fog billows, just the barest glimpse, but quite enough. Not for nothing had he spent his boyhood at the gates of the Channel watching the varied traffic passing up and down. And a few minutes earlier MacBride had unwittingly supplied him with the knowledge he needed, the pace and direction of the tide. Ortho knew no arithmetic, but common sense told him that if he galloped he should reach Sallee two hours ahead of that ship. She had no wind, she would only drift. He drove his good horse relentlessly, and as he went decided exactly what he would do.
It was dark when he reached the Bab Sebta, and over the low-lying town the fog lay like a coverlet.
He passed through the blind town, leaving the direction to his horse’s instinct, and came out against the southern wall. Inquiring of an unseen pedestrian, he learnt he was close to the Bab Djedid, put his beast in a public stable near by, detached one stirrup, and, feeling his way through the gate, struck over the sand banks towards the river. He came on it too far to the west, on the spit where it narrows opposite the Kasba Oudaia of Rabat; the noise of water breaking at the foot of the great fortress across the Bon Regreg told him as much.
Turning left-handed, he followed the river back till he brought up against the ferry boats. They were all drawn up for the night; the owners had gone, taking their oars with them. “Damnation!” His idea had been to get a man to row him across and knock him on the head in midstream; it was for that purpose that he had brought the heavy stirrup. There was nothing for it now but to rout a man out—all waste of precious time!
There was just a chance some careless boatman had left his oars behind. Quickly he felt in the skiffs. The first was empty, so was the second, the third and the fourth, but in the fifth he found what he sought. It was a light boat too, a private shallop and half afloat at that. What colossal luck! He put his shoulders to the stem and hove—and up rose a man.
“Who’s that? Is that you, master?”
Ortho sprang back. Where had he heard that voice before? Then he remembered; it was Puddicombe’s. Puddicombe had not returned to Algiers after all, but was here waiting to row “Sore Eyes” across to Rabat to a banquet possibly.
“Who’s that?”
Ortho blundered up against the stem, pretending to be mildly drunk, mumbling in Arabic that he was a sailor from a trading felucca looking for his boat.
“Well, this is not yours, friend,” said Puddicombe. “Try down the beach. But if you take my advice you’ll not go boating to-night; you might fall overboard and get a drink of water which, by the sound of you, is not what thou art accustomed to.” He laughed at his own delightful wit.
Ortho stumbled into the fog, paused and thought matters over. To turn a ferryman out might take half an hour. Puddicombe had the only oars on the beach, therefore Puddicombe must give them up.
He lurched back again, steadied himself against the stem and asked the Devonian if he would put him off to his felucca, getting a flat refusal. Hiccuping, he said there was no offense meant and asked Puddicombe if he would like a sip of fig brandy. He said he had no unsurmountable objection, came forward to get it, and Ortho hit him over the head with the stirrup iron as hard as he could lay in. Puddicombe toppled face forwards out of the boat and lay on the sand without a sound or a twitch.
“I’m sorry I had to do it,” said Ortho, “but you yourself warned me to trust nobody, above all a fellow renegado. I’m only following your own advice. You’ll wake up before dawn. Good-by.”
Pushing the boat off, he jumped aboard and pulled for the grumble of the bar.
He went aground on the sand-spit, and rowing away from that very nearly stove the boat in on a jag of rock below the Kasba Oudaia. The corner passed, steering was simple for a time, one had merely to keep the boat pointed to the rollers. Over the bar he went, slung high, swung low, tugged on to easy water, and striking a glow on his flint and steel examined the compass.
Thus occasionally checking his course by the needle he pulled due west. He was well ahead of the ship, he thought, and by getting two miles out to sea would be lying dead in her track. Before long the land breeze would be blowing sufficient to push the fog back, but not enough to give the vessel more than two or three knots; in that light shallop he could catch her easily, if she were within reasonable distance.
Reckoning he had got his offing, he swung the boat’s head due north and paddled gently against the run of the tide.
Time progressed; there was no sign of the ship or the land breeze that was to reveal her. For all he knew he might be four miles out to sea or one-half only. He had no landmarks, no means of measuring how far he had come except by experience of how long it had taken him to pull a dinghy from point to point at home in Monks Cove; yet somehow he felt he was about right.
Time went by. The fog pressed about him in walls of discolored steam, clammy, dripping, heavy on the lungs. Occasionally it split, revealing dark corridors and halls, abysses of Stygian gloom; rolled together again. A hundred feet overhead it was clear night and starry. Where was that breeze?
More time passed. Ortho began to think he had failed and made plans to cover the failure. It should not be difficult. He would land on the sands opposite the Bab Malka, overturn the boat, climb over the walls and see the rest of the night out among the Mussulman graves. In the morning he could claim his horse and ride into camp as if nothing had happened. As a slave he had been over the walls time and again; there was a crack in the bricks by the Bordj el Kbir. He didn’t suppose it was repaired; they never repaired anything. Puddicombe didn’t know who had hit him; there was no earthly reason why he should be suspected. The boat would be found overturned, the unknown sailor presumed drowned. Quite simple. Remained the Tangier scheme.
By this time, being convinced that the ship had passed, he slewed the boat about and pulled in. The sooner he was ashore the better.
The fog appeared to be moving. It twisted into clumsy spirals which sagged in the middle, puffed out cheeks of vapor, bulged and writhed, drifting to meet the boat. The land breeze was coming at last—an hour too late! Ortho pulled on, an ear cocked for the growl of the bar. There was nothing to be heard as yet; he must have gone further than he thought, but fog gagged and distorted sound in the oddest way. The spirals nodded above him like gigantic wraiths. Something passed overhead delivering an eerie screech. A sea-gull only, but it made him jump. Glancing at the compass, he found that he was, at the moment, pulling due south. He got his direction again and pulled on. Goodness knew what the tide had been doing to him. There might be a westward stream from the river which had pushed him miles out to sea. Or possibly he was well south of his mark and would strike the coast below Rabat. Oh, well, no matter as long as he got ashore soon. Lying on his oars, he listened again for the bar, but could hear no murmur of it. Undoubtedly he was to the southward. That ship was halfway to Fedala by now.
Then, quite clearly, behind a curtain of fog, an English voice chanted: “By the Deep Nine.”
Ortho stopped rowing, stood up and listened. Silence, not a sound, not a sign. Fichus and twisted columns of fog drifting towards him, that was all. But somewhere close at hand a voice was calling soundings. The ship was there. All his fine calculations were wrong, but he had blundered aright.
“Mark ten.”
The voice came again, seemingly from his left-hand side this time. Again silence. The fog alleys closed once more, muffling sound. The ship was there, within a few yards, yet this cursed mist with its fool tricks might make him lose her altogether. He hailed with all his might. No answer. He might have been flinging his shout against banks of cotton wool. Again and again he hailed.
Suddenly came the answer, from behind his back apparently.
“Ahoy there . . . who are you?”
“ ’Scaped English prisoner! English prisoner escaped!”
There was a pause; then, “Keep off there . . . none of your tricks.”
“No tricks . . . I am alone . . .alone,” Ortho bawled, pulling furiously. He could hear the vessel plainly now, the creak of her tackle as she felt the breeze.
“Keep off there, or I’ll blow you to bits.”
“If you fire a gun you’ll call the whole town out,” Ortho warned.
“What town?”
“Sallee.”
“Christ!” the voice ejaculated and repeated his words. “He says we’re off Sallee, sir.”
Ortho pulled on. He could see the vessel by this, a blurred shadow among the steamy wraiths of mist, a big three-master close-hauled on the port tack.
Said a second voice from aft: “Knock his bottom out if he attempts to board . . . no chances.”
“Boat ahoy,” hailed the first voice. “If you come alongside I’ll sink you, you bloody pirate. Keep off.”
Ortho stopped rowing. They were going to leave him. Forty yards away was an English ship—England. He was missing England by forty yards, England and the Owls’ House!
He jerked at his oars, tugged the shallop directly in the track of the ship and slipped overboard. They might be able to see his boat, but his head was too small a mark. If he missed what he was aiming at he was finished; he could never regain that boat. It was neck or nothing now, the last lap, the final round.
He struck to meet the vessel—only a few yards.
She swayed towards him, a chuckle of water at her cut-water; tall as a cliff she seemed, towering out of sight. The huge bow loomed over him, poised and crushed downwards as though to ride him under, trample him deep.
The sheer toppling bulk, the hiss of riven water snapped his last shred of courage. It was too much. He gave up, awaited the instant stunning crash upon his head, saw the great bowsprit rush across a shining patch of stars, knew the end had come at last, thumped against the bows and found himself pinned by the weight of water, his head still up. His hands, his unfailing hands had saved him again; he had hold of the bob-stay!
The weight of water was not really great, the ship had little more than steerage way. Darkness had magnified his terrors. He got across the stay without much difficulty, worked along it to the dolphin-striker, thence by the martingale to the fo’csle.
The look-out were not aware of his arrival until he was amongst them; they were watching the tiny smudge that was his boat. He noticed that they had round-shot ready to drop into it.
“Good God!” the mate exclaimed. “Who are you?”
“The man who hailed just now, sir.”
“But I thought . . . I thought you were in that boat.”
“I was, sir, but I swam off.”
“Good God!” said the mate again and hailed the poop. “Here’s this fellow come aboard after all, sir. He’s quite alone.”
An astonished “How the devil?”
“Swam, sir.”
“Pass him aft.”
Ortho was led aft. Boarding nettings were triced up and men lay between the upper deck guns girded with side arms. Shot were in the garlands and match-tubs filled, all ready. A well-manned, well-appointed craft. He asked the man who accompanied him her name.
“Elijah Impey.East Indiaman.”
“Indiaman! Then where are we bound for?”
“Bombay.”
Ortho drew a deep breath. It was a long road home.
CHAPTER XXV
The little Botallack man and Eli Penhale shook hands, tucked the slack of their wrestling jackets under their left armpits and, crouching, approached each other, right hands extended.
The three judges, ancient wrestlers, leaned on their ash-plants and looked extremely knowing; they went by the title of “sticklers.”
The wrestling ring was in a grass field almost under the shadow of St. Gwithian church tower. To the north the ridge of tors rolled along the skyline, autumnal brown. Southward was the azure of the English Channel; west, over the end of land, the glint of the Atlantic with the Scilly Isles showing on the horizon, very faint, like small irregularities on a ruled blue line.
All Gwithian was present, men and women, girls and boys, with a good sprinkling of visitors from the parishes round about. They formed a big ring of black and pink, dark clothes and healthy countenances. A good-natured crowd, bandying inter-parochial chaff from side to side, rippling with laughter when some accepted wit brought off a sally, yelling encouragement to their district champions.
“Beware of en’s feet, Jan, boy. The old toad is brear foxy.”
“Scat en, Ephraim, my pretty old beauty! Grip to an’ scandalize en!”
“Move round, sticklers! Think us can see through ’e? Think you’m made of glass?”
“Up, Gwithian!”
“Up, St. Levan!”
At the feet of the crowd lay the disengaged wrestlers, chewing blades of grass and watching the play. They were naked except for short drawers, and on their white skins grip marks flared red, bruises and long scratches where fingers had slipped or the rough jacket edges cut in. Amiable young stalwarts, smiling at each other, grunting approvingly at smart pieces of work. One had a snapped collar-bone, another a fractured forearm wrapped up in a handkerchief, but they kept their pains to themselves; it was all in the game.
Now Eli and the little Botallack man were out for the final.
Polwhele was not five feet six and tipped the beam at eleven stone, whereas Eli was five ten and weighed two stone the heavier. It looked as though he had only to fall on the miner to finish him, but such was far from the case. The sad-faced little tinner had already disposed of four bulky opponents in workmanlike fashion that afternoon—the collar bone was his doing.
“Watch his eyes,” Bohenna had warned.
That was all very well, but it was next to impossible to see his eyes for the thick bang of hair that dangled over them like the forelock of a Shetland pony.
Polwhele clumsily sidled a few steps to the right. Eli followed him. Polwhele walked a few steps to the left. Again Eli followed. Polwhele darted back to the right, Eli after him, stopped, slapped his right knee loudly, and, twisting left-handed, grabbed the farmer round the waist and hove him into the air.
It was cleverly done—the flick of speed after the clumsy walk, the slap on the knee drawing the opponent’s eye away—cleverly done, but not quite quick enough. Eli got the miner’s head in chancery as he was hoisted up and hooked his toes behind the other’s knees.
Polwhele could launch himself and his burden neither forwards nor backwards, as the balance lay with Eli. The miner hugged at Eli’s stomach with all his might, jerking cruelly. Eli wedged his free arm down and eased the pressure somewhat. It was painful, but bearable.
“Lave en carry ’e so long as thou canst, son,” came the voice of Bohenna. “Tire en out.”
Polwhele strained for a forwards throw, tried a backwards twist, but the pull behind the knees embarrassed him. He began to pant. Thirteen stone hanging like a millstone about one’s neck at the end of the day was intolerable. He tried to work his head out of chancery, concluded it would only be at the price of his ears and gave that up.
“Stay where ’e are,” shouted Bohenna to his protégé. “T’eddn costin’younawthin’.”
Eli stayed where he was. Polwhele’s breathing became more labored, sweat bubbled from every pore, a sinew in his left leg cracked under the strain. Once more he tried the forwards pitch, reeled, rocked and came down sideways. He risked a dislocated shoulder in so doing with the farmer’s added weight, but got nothing worse than a heavy jar. It was no fall; the two men rolled apart and lay panting on their backs.
After a pause the sticklers intimated to them to go on. Once more they faced each other. The miner was plainly tired; the bang hung over his eyes, a sweat-soaked rag; his movements were sluggish. In response to the exhortations of his friends he shook his head, made gestures with his hands—finished.
Slowly he gave way before Eli, warding off grips with sweeps of his right forearm, refusing to come to a hold. St. Gwithian jeered at him. Botallack implored one more flash. He shook his head; he was incapable of flashing. Four heavy men he had put away to come upon this great block of brawn at the day’s end; it was too much.
Eli could not bring him to grips, grew impatient and made the pace hotter, forcing the miner backwards right round the ring. It became a boxing match between the two right hands, the one clutching, the other parrying. Almost he had Polwhele; his fingers slipped on a fold of the canvas jacket. The spectators rose to a man, roaring.
Polwhele ran backwards out of a grip and stumbled. Eli launched out, saw the sad eyes glitter behind the draggles of hair and went headlong, flying.
The next thing he knew he was lying full length, the breath jarred out of him and the miner on top, fixed like a stoat. The little man had dived under him, tipped his thigh with a shoulder and turned him as he fell. It was a fair “back,” two shoulders and a hip down; he had lost the championship.
Polwhele, melancholy as ever, helped him to his feet.
“Nawthin’ broke, Squire? That’s fitly. You’ll beat me next year—could of this, if you’d waited.” He put a blade of grass between his teeth and staggered off to join his vociferous friends, the least jubilant of any.
Bohenna came up with his master’s clothes. “ ’Nother time you’m out against a quick man go slow—make en come toyou. Eddn no sense in playin’ tig with forked lightnin’. I shouted to ’e, but you was too furious to hear. Oh, well, ’tis done now, s’pose.”
He walked away to hob-nob with the sticklers in the “Lamb and Flag,” to drink ale and wag their heads and lament on the decay of wrestling and manhood since they were young.
Eli pulled on his clothes. One or two Monks Covers shouted “Stout tussle, Squire,” but did not stop to talk, nor did he expect them to; he was respected in the parish, but had none of the graceful qualities that make for popularity.
His mother went by, immensely fat, yet sitting her cart-horse firm as a rock.
“The little dog had ’e by the nose proper that time, my great soft bullock,” she jeered, and rode on, laughing. She hated Eli; as master of Bosula he kept her short of money, even going to the length of publicly crying down her credit. Had he not done so, they would have been ruined long since instead of in a fair state of prosperity, but Teresa took no count of that. She was never tired of informing audiences—preferably in Eli’s presence—that if her other son had been spared, her own precious boy Ortho, things would have been very different.Hewould not have seen her going in rags, without a penny piece to bless herself, not he. Time, in her memory, had washed away all the elder’s faults, leaving only virtues exposed, and those grossly exaggerated. She would dilate for hours on his good looks, his wit, his courage, his loving consideration for herself, breaking into hot tears of rage when she related the fancied indignities she suffered at the hands of the paragon’s unworthy brother.
She was delighted that Polwhele had bested Eli, and rode home jingling her winnings on the event. Eli went on dressing, unmoved by his mother’s jibes. As a boy he had learnt to close his ears to the taunts of Rusty Rufus, and he found the accomplishment most useful. When Teresa became abusive he either walked out of the house or closed up like an oyster and her tirades beat harmlessly against his spiritual shell. Words, words, nothing but words; his contempt for talk had not decreased as time went on.
He pulled his belt up, hustled into his best blue coat and was knotting his neckcloth when somebody behind him said, “Well wrastled, Eli.”
He turned and saw Mary Penaluna with old Simeon close beside.
Eli shook his head. “He was smaller than I, naught but a little man. I take shame not to have beaten en.”
But Mary would have none of it. “I see no shame then,” she said warmly. “They miners do nothing but wrastle, wrastle all day between shifts and underground too, so I’ve heard tell—but you’ve got other things to do, Eli; ’tis a wonder you stood up to en so long. And they’re nothing but a passell o’ tricksters, teddn what I do call fitty wrastling at all.”
“Well, ’tis fair, anyhow,” said Eli; “he beat me fair enough and there’s an end of it.”
“ ’Es, s’pose,” Mary admitted, “but I do think you wrastled bravely, Eli, and so do father and all of the parish. Oh, look how the man knots his cloth, all twisted; you’m bad as father, I declare. Lave me put it to rights.” She reached up strong, capable hands, gave the neckerchief a pull and a pat and stood back laughing. “You men are no better than babies for all your size and cursing and ’bacca. ’Tis proper now. Are ’e steppin’ home along?”
Eli was. They crossed the field and, turning their backs on the church tower, took the road towards the sea, old Simeon walking first, slightly bent with toil and rheumatism, long arms dangling inert; Mary and Eli followed side by side, speaking never a word. It was two miles to Roswarva, over upland country, bare of trees, but beautiful in its wind-swept nakedness. Patches of dead bracken glowed with the warm copper that is to be found in some women’s hair; on gray bowlders spots of orange lichen shone like splashes of gold paint. The brambles were dressed like harlequins in ruby, green and yellow, and on nearly every hawthorn sat a pair of magpies, their black and white livery looking very smart against the scarlet berries.
Eli walked on to Roswarva, although it was out of his way. He liked the low house among the stunted sycamores, with the sun in its face all day and the perpetual whisper of salt sea winds about it. He liked the bright display of flowers Mary seemed to keep going perennially in the little garden by the south door, the orderly kitchen with its sanded floor, clean whitewash and burnished copper. Bosula was his home, but it was to Roswarva that he turned as to a haven in time of trouble, when he wanted advice about his farming, or when Teresa was particularly fractious. There was little said on these occasions, a few slow, considered words from Simeon, a welcoming smile from Mary, a cup of tea or a mug of cider and then home again—but he had got what he needed.
He sat in the kitchen that afternoon twirling his hat in his powerful hands, staring out of the window and thinking that his worries were pretty nearly over. There was always Teresa to reckon with, but they were out of debt and Bosula was in good farming shape at last. What next? An idea was taking shape in his deliberate brain. He stared out of the window, but not at the farm boar wallowing blissfully in the mire of the lane, or at Simeon driving his sleek cows in for milking, or at the blue Channel beyond with a little collier brig bearing up for the Lizard, her grimy canvas transformed by the alchemy of sunshine. Eli Penhale was seeing visions, homely, comfortable visions.
Mary came in, rolling her sleeves back over firm, rounded forearms dimpled at the elbows. The once leggy girl was leggy no longer, but a ripe, upstanding, full-breasted woman with kindly brown eyes and an understanding smile.
“I’ll give ’e a penny for thy dream, Eli—if ’tis a pretty one,” she laughed. “Is it?”
The farmer grinned. “Prettiest I ever had.”
“Queen of England take you for her boy?”
“Prettier than that.”
“My lor’, it must be worth a brear bit o’ money then! More’n I can afford.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Is it going cheap, or do you think I’m made of gold pieces?”
“It’s not money I want.”
“You’re not like most of us then,” said Mary, and started. “There’s father calling in the yard. Must be goin’ milkin’. Sit ’e down where ’e be and I’ll be back quick as quick and we’ll see if I can pay the price, whatever it is. Sit ’e down and rest.”
But Eli had risen. “Must be going, I believe.”
“Why?”
“Got to see to the horses; I’ve let Bohenna and Davy off for the day, ’count of wrastling.”
Mary pouted, but she was a farmer’s daughter, a fellow bond slave of animals; she recognized the necessity.
“Anybody’d think it was your men had been wrastlin’ and not you, you great soft-heart. Oh, well, run along with ’e and come back when done and take a bite of supper with us, will ’e? Father’d be proud and I’ve fit a lovely supper.”
Eli promised and betook himself homewards. Five strenuous bouts on top of six hours’ work in the morning had tired him somewhat, bruises were stiffening and his left shoulder gave him pain, but his heart, his heart was singing “Mary Penaluna—Mary Penhale, Mary Penaluna—Mary Penhale” all the way and his feet went wing-shod. Almost he had asked her in the kitchen, almost, almost—it had been tripping off his tongue when she mentioned her cows and in so doing reminded him of his horses. By blood, instinct and habit he was a farmer; the horses must be seen to first, his helpless, faithful servitors. His mother usually turned her mount into the stable without troubling to feed, unsaddle it or even ease the girths. The horses must be seen to.
He would say the word that evening after supper when old Simeon fell asleep in his rocker, as was his invariable custom. That very evening.
Tregors had gone whistling down the wind long since; the unknown hind from Burdock Water had let it go to rack and ruin, a second mortgagee was not forthcoming, Carveth Donnithorne foreclosed and marched in. Tregors had gone, but Bosula remained, clear of debt and as good a place as any in the Hundred, enough for any one man. Eli felt he could make his claim for even prosperous Simeon Penaluna’s daughter with a clear conscience. He came to the rim of the valley, hoisted himself to the top of a bank, paused and sat down.
The valley, touched by the low rays of sunset, foamed with gold, with the pale gold of autumnal elms, the bright gold of ashes, the old gold of oaks.
Bosula among its enfolding woods! No Roman emperor behind his tall Prætorians had so steadfast, so splendid a guard as these. Shelter from the winter gales, great spluttering logs for the hearth, green shade in summer and in autumn this magnificence. Holly for Christmas, apples and cider. The apples were falling now, falling with soft thuds all day and night and littering the orchard, sunk in the grass like rosy-faced children playing hide and seek.
Eli’s eyes ran up the opposite hillside, a patchwork quilt of trim fields, green pasture and brown plow land, all good and all his.
His heart went out in gratitude to the house of his breed, to the sturdy men who had made it what it was, to the first poor ragged tinner wandering down the valley with his donkey, to his unknown father, that honest giant with the shattered face who had brought him into the world that he, in his turn, might take up this goodly heritage.
It should go on. He saw into the future, a brighter, better future. He saw flowers outside the Owls’ House perennially blooming; saw a whitewashed kitchen with burnished copper pans and a woman in it smiling welcome at the day’s end, her sleeves rolled up to show her dimpled elbows; saw a pack of brown-eyed chubby little boys tumbling noisily in to supper—Penhales of Bosula. It should go on. He vaulted off the bank and strode whistling down to the Owls’ House, bowed his head between Adam and Eve and found Ortho sitting in the kitchen.
CHAPTER XXVI
The return of Ortho Penhale, nearly seven years after his supposed death, caused a sensation in West Cornwall. The smuggling affair at Monks Cove was remembered and exaggerated out of all semblance to the truth. Millions of gallons had been run through by Ortho and his gang, culminating in a pitched battle with the dragoons. Nobody could say how many were killed in that affray, and it was affirmed that nobody ever would know. Midnight buryings were hinted at, hush money and so on; a dark, thrilling business altogether. Ortho was spoken of in the same breath as King Nick and other celebrities of the “Trade.” His subsequent adventures lost nothing in the mouths of the gossips. He had landed in Barbary a slave and in the space of two years become a general. The Sultan’s favorite queen fell in love with him; on being discovered in her arms he had escaped by swimming four miles out to sea and intercepting an East Indiaman, in which vessel he had visited India and seen the Great Mogul.
Ortho discovered himself a personage. It was a most agreeable sensation. Men in every walk of life rushed to shake his hand. He found himself sitting in Penzance taverns in the exalted company of magistrates and other notables telling the story of his adventures—with picturesque additions.
And the women. Even the fine ladies in Chapel Street turned their proud heads when he limped by. His limp was genuine to a point; but when he saw a pretty woman ahead he improved on it to draw sympathy and felt their softened eyes following him on his way, heard them whisper, “Ortho Penhale, my dear . . . general in Barbary . . . twelve times wounded. . . . How pale he looks and how handsome!”
A most agreeable sensation.
To insure that he should not pass unnoticed he affected a slight eccentricity of attire. For him no more the buff breeches, the raffish black and silver coats; dressed thus he might have passed for any squire.
He wore instead the white trousers of a sailor, a marine’s scarlet tunic he had picked up in a junk shop, a colored kerchief loosely knotted about his throat, and on his bull curls the round fur cap of the sea. There was no mistaking him. Small boys followed him in packs, round-eyed, worshipful. . . . “Ortho Penhale, smuggler, Barbary lancer!”
If he had been popular once he was doubly popular now. The Monks Cove incident was forgiven but not forgotten; it went to swell his credit, in fact. To have arrested him on that old score would have been more than the Collector’s life was worth. The Collector, prudent man, publicly shook Penhale by the hand and congratulated him on his miraculous escape.
Ortho found his hoard of six hundred and seventy pounds intact in the hollow ash by Tumble Down and spent it freely. He gave fifty pounds to Anson’s widow (who had married a prosperous cousin some years before, forgotten poor Anson and did not need it) and put a further fifty in his pockets to give to Tamsin Eva.
Bohenna told him the story as a joke, but Ortho was smitten with what he imagined was remorse.
He remembered Tamsin—a slim, appealing little thing in blue, skin like milk and a cascade of red gold hair. He must make some honorable gesture—there were certain obligations attached to the rôle of local hero. It was undoubtedly somewhat late in the day. The Trevaskis lout had married the girl and accepted the paternity of the child (it was a boy six years old now, Bohenna reported), but that made no difference; he must make his gesture. Fifty pounds was a lot of money to a struggling farmer; besides he would like to see Tamsin again—that slender neck and marvelous hair! If Trevaskis wasn’t treating her properly he’d take her away from him, boy and all; b’God, he would!
He went up to the Trevaskis homestead one afternoon and saw a meager woman standing at the back of a small house washing clothes in a tub. Her thin forearms were red with work, her hair was screwed up anyhow on the top of her head and hung over her eyes in draggled rat’s-tails, her complexion had faded through long standing over kitchen fires, her apron was torn and her thick wool socks were thrust into a pair of clumsy men’s boots.
It was some seconds before he recognized her as Tamsin. Tamsin after seven years as a working man’s wife. A couple of dirty children of about four and five were making mud pies at her feet, and in the cottage a baby lifted its querulous voice.
She had other children then—two, three, half a dozen perhaps—huh!
Ortho turned about and limped softly away, unnoticed, the fifty pounds still in his pockets.
Making amends to a pretty woman was one thing, but to a faded drudge with a school of Trevaskis bantlings quite another suit of clothes.
He gave the fifty pounds to his mother, took her to Penzance and bought her two flamboyant new dresses and a massive gold brooch. She adored him. The hard times, scratching a penny here and there out of Eli, were gone forever. Her handsome, free-handed son was back again, master of Bosula and darling of the district. She rode everywhere with him, to hurling matches, bull baitings, races and cock-fights, big with pride, chanting his praises to all comers.
“That Eli would have seen me starve to death in a ditch,” she would say, buttonholing some old crony in a tavern. “But Ortho’s got respect for his old mother; he’d give me the coat off his back or the heart out of his breast, he would, so help me!” (Hiccough.)
Mother and son rode together all over the Hundred, Teresa wreathed in fat, splendid in attire, still imposing in her virile bulk; Ortho in his scarlet tunic, laughing, gambling, dispensing free liquor, telling amazing stories. Eli stayed at home, working on the farm, bewildered, dumb, the look in his eyes of a suffering dog.
Christmas passed more merrily than ever before at the Owls’ House that year. Half Gwithian was present and two fiddlers. Some danced in the kitchen, the overflow danced in the barn, profusely decorated with evergreens for the occasion so that it had the appearance of a candlelit glade. Few of the men went to bed at all that night and, with the exception of Eli, none sober. Twelfth Night was celebrated with a similar outburst, and then people settled down to work again and Ortho found himself at a loose end. He could always ride into Penzance and pass the time of day with the idlers in the “Star,” but that was not to his taste. He drank little himself and disliked the company. Furthermore, he had told most of his tales and was in danger of repeating them.
Ortho was wise enough to see that if he were not careful he would degenerate from the local hero into the local bore—and gave Penzance a rest. There appeared to be nothing for it but that he should get down to work on the farm; after his last eight years it was an anti-climax which presented few allurements.
Before long there would be no excuse for idleness. The Kiddlywink in Monks Cove saw him most evenings talking blood and thunder with Jacky’s George. He lay abed late of a morning and limped about the cliffs on fine afternoons.
The Luddra Head was his favorite haunt; from its crest he could see from the Lizard Point to the Logan Rock, some twenty miles east and west, and keep an eye on the shipping. He would watch the Mount’s Bay fishing fleets flocking out to their grounds; the Welsh collier brigs racing up-channel jib-boom and jib-boom; mail packets crowding all sail for open sea; a big blue-water merchantman rolling home from the world’s ends, or a smart frigate logging nine knots on a bowline, tossing the spray over her fo’csle in clouds. He would criticize their handling, their rigs, make guesses as to their destinations and business.
It was comfortable up on the Head, a slab of granite at one’s back, a springy cushion of turf to sit upon, the winter sunshine warming the rocks, pouring all over one.
One afternoon he climbed the Head to find a woman sitting in his particular spot. He cursed her under his breath, turned away and then turned back again. Might as well see what sort of woman it was before he went; you never knew. He crawled up the rocks, came out upon the granite platform pretending he had not noticed the intruder, executed a realistic start of surprise, and said, “Good morning to you.”
“Good afternoon,” the girl replied.
Ortho accepted the correction and remarked that the weather was fine.
The girl did not contest the obvious and went on with her work, which was knitting.
Ortho looked her all over and was glad he had not turned back. A good-looking wench this, tall yet well formed, with a strong white neck, a fresh complexion and pleasant brown eyes. He wondered where she lived. Gwithian parish? She had not come to his Christmas and Twelfth Night parties.
He sat down on a rock facing her. “My leg,” he explained; “must rest it.”
She made no remark, which he thought unkind; she might have shown some interest in his leg.
“Got wounded in the leg in Barbary.”
The girl looked up. “What’s that?”
Ortho reeled slightly. Was it possible there was anybody in England, in the wide world, who did not know where Barbary was?
“North coast of Africa, of course,” he retorted.
The girl nodded. “Oh, ’es, I believe I have heard father tell of it. Dutch colony, isn’t it?”
“No,” Ortho barked.
The girl went imperturbably on with her knitting. Her shocking ignorance did not appear to worry her in the least; she did not ask Ortho for enlightenment and he did not feel like starting the subject again. The conversation came to a full stop.
The girl was a ninny, Ortho decided; a feather-headed country ninny—yet remarkably good looking for all that. He admired the fine shape of her shoulders under the blue cloak, the thick curls of glossy brown hair that escaped from her hood, and those fresh cheeks; one did not find complexions like that anywhere else but here in the wet southwest. He had an idea that a dimple would appear in one of those cheeks if she laughed, perhaps in both. He felt he must make the ninny dimple.
“Live about here?” he inquired.
She nodded.
“So do I.”
No reply; she was not interested in where he lived, drat her! He supplied the information. “I live at Bosula in the valley; I’m Ortho Penhale.”
The girl did not receive this enthralling intelligence with proper emotion. She looked at him calmly and said, “Penhale of Bosula, are ’e? Then I s’pose you’m connected with Eli?”
Once more Ortho staggered. That any one in the Penwith Hundred should be in doubt as to who he was, the local hero! To be known only as Eli’s brother! It was too much! But he bit his lip and explained his relationship to Eli in a level voice. The ninny was even a bigger fool than he had thought, but dimple she should. The conversation came to a second full stop.
Two hundred feet below them waves draped the Luddra ledges with shining foam cloths, poured back, the crannies dribbling as with milk, and launched themselves afresh. A subdued booming traveled upwards, died away in a long-drawn sigh, then the boom again. Great mile-long stripes and ribbons of foam outlined the coast, twisted by the tides into strange patterns and arabesques, creamy white upon dark blue. Jackdaws darted in and out of holes in the cliff-side and gulls swept and hovered on invisible air currents, crying mournfully. In a bed of campions, just above the toss of the breakers, a red dog fox lay curled up asleep in the sun.
“Come up here often?” Ortho inquired, restarting the one-sided conversation.
“No.”
“Ahem!—I do; I come up here to look at the ships.”
The girl glanced at him, a mischievous sparkle in her brown eyes. “Then wouldn’t you see the poor dears better if you was to turn and face ’em, Squire Penhale?”
She folded her knitting, stood up and walked away without another word.
Ortho arose also. She had had him there. Not such a fool after all, and she had dimpled when she made that sally—just a wink of a dimple, but entrancing. He had a suspicion she had been laughing at him, knew who he was all the time, else why had she called him “Squire”?
By the Lord, laughing at him, was she? That was a new sensation for the local hero. He flushed with anger. Blast the girl! But she was a damned handsome piece for all that. He watched her through a peep-hole in the rocks, watched her cross the neck of land, pass the earth ramparts of the Luddra’s prehistoric inhabitants and turn left-handed along the coast path. Then, when she was committed to her direction, he made after her as fast as he was capable. Despite his wound he was capable of considerable speed, but the girl set him all the pace he needed.
She was no featherweight, but she skipped and ran along the craggy path as lightly as a hind. Ortho labored in the rear, grunting in admiration.
Catch her he could not; it was all he could do to keep her in sight. Where a small stream went down to the sea through a tangle of thorn and bramble she gave him the slip.
He missed the path altogether, went up to his knees in a bog hole and got his smart white trousers in a mess. Ten minutes it took him to work through that tangle, and when he came out on the far side there was no sign of the girl. He cursed her, damned himself for a fool, swore he was going back—and limped on. She must live close at hand; he’d try ahead for another mile and then give it up.
Within half a mile he came upon Roswarva standing among its stunted sycamores.
He limped up to the door and rapped it with his stick. Simeon Penaluna came out. Ortho greeted him with warmth; but lately back from foreign parts he thought he really must come and see how his good neighbor was faring. Simeon was surprised; it was the first time the elder Penhale had been to the house. This sudden solicitude for his welfare was unlooked for.
He said he was not doing as badly as he might be and asked the visitor in.
The visitor accepted, would just sit down for a moment or two and rest a bit . . . his wounds, you know. . . .
A moment or two extended to an hour. Ortho was convinced the girl was somewhere about—there were no other houses in the neighborhood—and, now he came to remember, Penaluna had had a daughter in the old days, an awkward child, all legs like a foal; the same girl, doubtless. She would have to show up sooner or later. He talked and talked, and talked himself into an invitation to supper. His persistency was rewarded; the girl he had met on the cliffs brought the supper in and Simeon introduced her as his daughter Mary. Not by a flicker of an eyelash did she show that she had ever seen Ortho before, but curtsied to him as grave as a church image.
It was ten o’clock before Ortho took his way homewards. He had not done so badly, he thought. Mary Penaluna might pretend to take no interest in his travels, but he had managed to hold Simeon’s ears fast enough.
The grim farmer had laughed till the tears started at Ortho’s descriptions of the antics of the negro soldiers after the looting at Figvig and the equatorial mummery on board the Indiaman.
Mary Penaluna might pretend not to be interested, but he knew better. Once or twice, watching her out of the tail of his eye, he had seen her lips twitch and part. He could tell a good story, and knew it. In soldier camps and on shipboard he had always held his sophisticated audiences at his tongue’s tip; it would be surprising if he could not charm a simple farm girl.
More than ever he admired her—the soft glow on her brown hair as she sat sewing, her broad, efficient hands, the bountiful curves of her. And ecod! in what excellent order she kept the house! That was the sort of wife for a farmer.
And he was a farmer now. Why, yes, certainly. He would start work the very next day.
This wandering was all very well while one was young, but he was getting on for thirty and holed all over with wounds, five to be precise. He’d marry that girl, settle down and prosper.
As he walked home he planned it all out. His mother should stop at Bosula of course, but she’d have to understand that Mary was mistress. Not that that would disturb Teresa to any extent; she detested housekeeping and would be glad to have it off her hands. Then there was Eli, good old brother, best farmer in the duchy. Eli was welcome to stop too and share all profits. Ortho hoped that he would stop, but he had noticed that Eli had been very silent and strange since his home-coming and was not sure of him—might be wanting to marry as well and branch out for himself. Tregors had gone, but there was over four hundred pounds of that smuggling money remaining, and if Eli wanted to set up for himself he should have every penny of it to start him, every blessed penny—it was not more than his due, dear old lad.
As soon as Mary accepted him—and he didn’t expect her to take more than a week in making up her mind—he’d hand the money over to Eli with his blessing. Before he reached home that night he had settled everybody’s affairs to his own satisfaction and their advantage. Ortho was in a generous mood, being hotly in love again.