Major Vigoureux
A >>
A. T. Quiller Couch >> Major Vigoureux
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 | 17 |
18 |
19 |
20
Abe regarded his master rather in sorrow than in anger. "To be sure,
sir," said he, in a tone of delicate rebuke, "if you don't want to hear
my story----"
"Eh? Yes, certainly, my wits were wool-gathering, Abe, and I beg your
pardon. Let me see.... You were saying that Cara used to wait till the
tide was low----"
"Yes, sir. He'd creep along the sand, he and the two Leggos, and th'
old seal would lie there sleepin', innocent as a child, and let them
come close under the rock, and even climb it. But soon as ever they
made a pounce--c'lk!--he rolled off the slope and into deep water.
Regular as clockwork it happened; quiet and easy as a door on a greased
hinge; and every time it made the three look foolisher and foolisher.
"After half-a-dozen tries, Cara allowed that he couldn' go on bein'
mocked by a dumb animal; so he set his brain to work, and thought out a
new plan. The two Leggos were to take a boat and drop down wi' the tide
close in the shadow of the rock 'pon the seaward side, while Cara
himself crept, as usual, hands-an'-knees, across the beach. So they
planned, an' so they did; and sure enough when Cara made a pounce for
the seal, my gentleman rolled down the ledge and slap into the boat!
'Now you've got 'en!' yells Cara. 'Darn it all!' yells back old Leggo
from the scuffle, 'Seems more like he's got WE!' For that seal, sir,
fought like ten tom-cats; and before the Leggos got in a lucky stroke
and knocked him silly with a stretcher he'd ripped one leg off th' old
man's trousers and bitten the heel clean off Sam's right boot. They
took him home and skinned him, and sold the skin that same year to a
Dutch skipper for thirty shillin'. But Sam has told me more than twice
that he don't mean to tempt Providence again by catchin' any more
seals."
The Lord Proprietor looked at his watch. "I must get Leggo to show me
that adit this very afternoon. I've an appointment at three-thirty to
meet him and Tregarthen at the farm."
"Indeed, sir? Then you've brought Eli Tregarthen to his senses?--if I
may make so bold."
The Lord Proprietor flushed, remembering that Abe had witnessed the
interview in the walled garden. "I fancy the man has begun to see the
red light," he answered, carelessly. "At any rate, he has consented to
meet me and take a look over North Inniscaw."
"Well," said Abe, "you'll find him a good farmer; none better."
"And he'll find me a landlord, willing to let bygones be bygones. By
the way," added Sir Caesar, yet more carelessly, "I am curious to know
if I met that sister-in-law of his the other day?--a decidedly handsome
woman, and strikingly well dressed. In fact, I should say she bought
her clothes in Paris."
Abe stared, as though his master had suddenly taken leave of his
senses.
"I never been to Paris," he said, slowly. "When I seen her last she was
nettin' sand-eels, with her legs bare to the knee."
* * * * *
Sir Caesar walked indoors to fetch his hat and his gun. Though he rarely
used it, he invariably carried a gun under his arm in his walks about
the Islands. It helped his sense of being monarch of all he surveyed.
That sense was strong in him as he took the path which led across the
middle of the Island to North Inniscaw Farm. St. Lide's lay directly
behind him, to the south, and thus no Garrison Hill obtruded upon his
view to remind him of annoyances. The sea shone, the air was pure, the
whole seascape flashed white upon blue--white gulls wheeling aloft,
white breasts of puffins congregated on the smaller islets, white caps
of tiny waves where the breeze met the tide-race, on North Island the
white shaft of a lighthouse fronting the almost level sun. With a touch
of imagination the scene had become a prospect of the Cyclades, the
lighthouse a column to Aphrodite or the twin brothers of Helen. But the
Lord Proprietor was a Briton. He halted on the hill-side to inhale the
vigorous breeze, and his heart rejoiced that all he saw belonged to
him.
The path descended a stony hillside, crossed a marshy green hollow, and
mounted a second stony hill. Over the summit of it the low roofs of a
line of farm-buildings hove into sight. This was North Inniscaw; and
the Lord Proprietor, arriving punctually at three-thirty, found Eli
Tregarthen at the gate in converse with Sam Leggo, the hind in
temporary charge of the farm.
If Eli had begun to see reason, his face held out no promise of it. It
was dark and gloomy; a trifle weary, too, as though he kept this
appointment rather through politeness than with any care for its
outcome. He saluted the Lord Proprietor respectfully, but at once bent
his eyes to the ground.
"Good afternoon! Good afternoon, Tregarthen!" Sir Caesar began, in his
heartiest voice, to show that he bore no malice. "I like punctuality,
and those who practise it. Punctuality, if I may say so, is not a
wide-spread virtue in these Islands. Shall we go round and take stock?"
"If it will give you satisfaction, sir," assented Eli.
Sir Caesar led the way, pausing at every gate to discuss the soil, the
crop, the present price of oats, barley, roots of beef and mutton;
drainage and top-dressing; aspect and shelter; a hundred odds and ends.
He talked uncommonly good sense, too, as Eli confessed to himself. The
Lord Proprietor had taken up with agriculture late in life, but he
brought to it a trained and thoroughly practical mind. Once or twice he
submitted a point to Sam Leggo, who had worked all his life on this
very farm, and Eli was forced to admire the pertinence of his questions
and cross-questions.
He talked with great good humour, too, although Eli gave it small
encouragement. The shadow of leaving Saaron had hung over Eli's mind
for more than two months; heavy, oppressive, but until this morning
intangible as a cloud. Vashti had remarked that the days deadened him
while they should have been nerving him to action; and Vashti, this
very morning, had forced his eyes open by asking, in a business-like
way, if he had ever thought of emigrating to the mainland. Were it not
wiser, since the wrench must come, to make it complete?--to go where
regret would not be kept aching by the daily sight of Saaron? The
children would find better schools on the mainland, and it was high
time to be thinking of Matthew Henry, who deserved a better education
than the Islands could afford.
In arguing thus, Vashti was not entirely serious. She knew that Eli
would never cut himself loose from the Islands; but she hoped, by
forcing him to face the alternative, to shake him out of his torpor. In
this she had partly succeeded. For the first time the man opened his
eyes and saw hard facts--facts that in a few weeks' time he must
grapple with, since neither grieving nor grumbling would remove them.
But for the moment the discovery, instead of nerving him, inflamed his
wrath.
A strong man, finding himself helpless, suffers horribly. Especially he
suffers when, with a dim sense that in the last resort all power
depends on strength, he finds himself tripped up and laid on his back
by a man physically his inferior. Had the Lord Proprietor inherited the
Islands from a line of ancestors--had his tyranny rested on any feudal
tradition--Eli was Briton enough to have acquiesced or submitted. But
this whipper-snapper had bought the Islands: money--dirty money
alone--gave him power over men who were Islanders by birth and by long
generations of breeding. While the Lord Proprietor talked, Eli felt an
impulse almost uncontrollable to lay hands on him and wring his neck.
The three men had reached Coppa Parc, an enclosure of twelve acres
bounded along the north by the cliffs' edge, and deriving its name from
a mass of granite rock--Carn Coppa--that, rising in ledges from near
the middle of the field, ran northward until it broke away
precipitously, overhanging the sea. The slopes around the base of the
Carn showed here and there an outcrop of granite, but with pockets of
deep soil in which (or so the Lord Proprietor maintained) barley could
be grown at a profit. He appealed to Eli.
"Come, what does Mr. Tregarthen say to it? A piece of ground like
this--hey?--oughtn't to beat a man that has grown barley on Saaron?"
He said it intending no offence, but in a bluff, hearty way, which he
meant to be genial. After a second or two, Eli not answering, he turned
and saw to his amazement that the man was trembling from head to foot
with wrath.
"What right have you? What right----" Eli stammered fiercely, and came
to a full stop, clenching his fists.
The Lord Proprietor stared at him. "My good fellow, I hadn't the
smallest wish to hurt your feelings. What ails you? An innocent remark,
surely!"
"What ails me?" echoed Eli, and stopped again, panting. "Man, have done
with this, and let me go--else I'll not promise to keep my hands off
you!"
For a moment he stood threatening, his eyes--like the eyes of a dumb
animal at bay--travelling from the Lord Proprietor to Sam Leggo. The
blood ebbed from his face, and left it unnaturally white. But of a
sudden he appeared to collect himself; thrust both hands in his
pockets, and, turning his back, walked away resolutely down the slope.
"Well!" said Sam Leggo, after a pause. "Well!"
"The man has never been thwarted before," said the Lord Proprietor, as
they gazed after him together. "That's what comes of living alone in a
place like Saaron; and I'll take care his children don't learn the same
folly. Feels the curb, as you might say. Have you ever seen a horse
broken late in life?"
"You take it very quiet, sir, I must say," protested Sam, admiringly.
"So disrespectful as he was, too--and to the likes of you! Well! I've
known Eli Tregarthen forty year, and if any man had come and told
me----"
"The worst is, we have wasted an afternoon," said Sir Caesar, easily.
"But since we are here, with half-an-hour to spare before sunset, what
do you say to showing me the adit?"
"The adit, sir?"
"There's an old adit hereabouts--eh?--that leads down to a cave....
Come, come, my good man, you don't deceive me by putting on that stupid
face! We don't allow smuggling on the Islands in these days, and I like
to know the secrets of my own property. The cave is called Ogo Vean, or
something like it; and if I must explain more precisely, it is where
you and your father used to go hunting seals."
"Yes, yes, to be sure," Sam admitted; "an adit there is, or used to be.
But," he went on more cheerfully, "you'll find it nothing to look at. I
han't set foot inside it for years, and I doubt but the entrance is
choked."
"Take me to it," said Sir Caesar.
Sam, without further remonstrance, led the way. They scrambled out to
the edge of the Carn, and there, where the last great boulder thrust
itself forward over the sea, Sam scrambled off to the left, and lowered
himself down upon a turfy ledge. Warning his master to leave his gun
behind and beware of the slippery grass, he sidled out alongside the
jutting slab, and suddenly ducked under it. The Lord Proprietor,
following, crawled under the stone, and found himself staring into the
mouth of the adit--a dark hole less than four feet in height, and
overgrown with ivy. Sam had spoken the truth. The passage,
whithersoever it led, had been disused for years.
"Cur'ous old place!" said Sam, reflectively, plucking at the ivy. "I've
a mind to try the inside of it again, one of these days."
"I've a mind to explore it now," said the Lord Proprietor.
Sam stared at him. "You couldn't, sir; not without a lantern. You'd be
breakin' your neck, to a certainty."
"Then fetch a lantern. Look sharp, man! Run back to the farm and fetch
a lantern. I'll wait for you--no, not here: a few minutes on this ledge
would turn my head giddy--but on the Carn above."
Without further words, he worked his body around carefully, and led the
way back to the summit.
"You'd best hurry," he advised Sam, who showed no eagerness for the
job. "In another twenty minutes the dusk will be closing down fast."
Sam slouched off at a fair pace across the field. Sir Caesar watched his
retreating figure until it reached the gate, and then, picking up his
gun, disposed himself to wait.
Seals? They ought to give good sport--better sport, he should imagine,
than deerstalking. A pity, too, to let it die out ... if seals still
frequented the Islands.... He must consult Sam about it, and pick up a
few wrinkles. He peered over the edge of the Carn, scanning the water,
a hundred feet below him, for the rock which Abe had described. He
could see no such rock. Maybe, though, it would be covered by the tide,
now close upon high-water.
Then he bethought him that the rock must lie a little to the west,
towards Piper's Hole--that is to say, in the next small indentation of
the shore. He strolled in that direction, following the cliff's edge,
still with eyes upon the sea.
Of a sudden he stopped and straightened himself up with a gasp.
What sound was that?... Surely a voice--a woman's voice--singing up to
him from the depth!
Was he awake or dreaming?... Beyond all doubt someone was singing, down
there: a mournful, wordless song. He was no judge of music, but it
seemed to him that, let alone the mystery of the singer, he had never
heard a voice so wonderful. It rose and fell with the surge of the
tide.
The Lord Proprietor laid down his gun. He had come to a shelving slope
that descended like a funnel or the half of a broken crater, narrowing
to a dark pit, in which the sea heaved gently, but with a sound as of a
monster sobbing; but still above this sound rose the voice of the
singer.
He flung himself on the verge beside his gun and craned forward....
Yes, there was the rock; yes, and there on the rock sat a figure--a
woman--and combed her long hair while she sang.
CHAPTER XXIV
LINNET SEES A MERMAID
Annet, Linnet, and Matthew Henry sat together in a niche of the cliff
to the west of Piper's Hole, and panted after their climb.
They had raced up the hill in the gathering twilight for this (their
Aunt Vazzy had assured them) was the time, if ever, to hear the
mermaids singing in Piper's Hole, and perhaps to catch a glimpse of
them; this, and the hour of moonrise--which for them would be out of
the question.
For some days they had been discussing the adventure--not, it scarcely
needs to be said, in their parents' hearing. But they had once or twice
consulted with Aunt Vazzy, who understood children, and had a sense
(denied to most grown-ups) of what was really interesting; and to-day,
at dinner-time, Aunt Vazzy had allowed that no time could well be more
propitious than this evening, when the hours of twilight and of low
water almost exactly coincided. But in private she warned Annet very
earnestly to look well after the two younger ones, and see to it that
they did not risk their necks--a caution seldom given to Island
children, who grow up sure-footed as young goats.
Annet had promised. The main difficulty would be to give the slip to
Jan, who usually pulled across from Saaron in good time to fetch them
home, and smoked a pipe by the shore while waiting for school to be
dismissed. It would take them a good forty minutes to reach Piper's
Hole and return. If they gave Jan the slip and delayed him so long, he
would undoubtedly lose his temper, and probably report them. After
discussing this, they decided to take Jan into the plot. "Maybe," said
Annet, "he'll come along, too. I almost think he will if we put it to
him all of a sudden, for he's mighty curious about mermaids; but if we
give him time to think it over he'll feel ashamed, and say it's all
children's whiddles, and back out--I know Jan. So we must wait till
school is over and then coax him to come."
Annet did not know that her father, having an appointment with the Lord
Proprietor at North Inniscaw Farm, designed himself to call at the
school on his way back, and row the children home. Had she guessed this
it would have prevented the adventure, which, in fact, it furthered;
for, coming out of school and hurrying down to the shore to catch Jan
and wheedle him, she found the boat moored there empty. Jan, no doubt,
had taken a stroll up to the Lord Proprietor's garden, to have a chat
with Old Abe. They had caught him napping; and now, if they kept him
waiting, he could not grumble.
So off the three children set for Piper's Hole; Annet and Linnet with
long strides, Matthew Henry trotting to keep up with them. Arrived at
the cliff's edge, they deployed with great caution--that no noise might
scare the mermaids from coming forth--and searched for a nook where,
themselves hidden, they could command a view of the cove at their feet.
Linnet, searching to the westward, found just such a spot; a rocky
ledge, well grassed, close under the topmost cornice of the cliff, and
quite easy of access. To be sure, a rock on their right cut off their
view of the cove's inmost recess, where the funnel-shaped slope broke
sheer over the mouth of the Hole. But the ledge looked full upon the
Mermaid's Rock and the heave of black water surging past it to
gurgitate between the narrowing walls of rock.
Even the matter-of-fact Linnet could not repress a shiver as, after
panting a while, she raised herself on one elbow and looked down into
the awesome pit. For not only was the water black, but the whole
shadowed base of the cliff wall; black as though stained by the inky
wave. Black, too, showed the hither side of the Mermaid's Rock against
a gray sea, from which the last tint of sunset had faded. Now and then,
between the sobbing of Piper's Hole, the children caught the murmur of
the tide race, half-a-mile off shore, slackening its note as it neared
the time of high-water and its turning point. Out there the sea was
agitated; within the line of the race, sharply defined on the gray, it
heaved and sank on an oily swell.
"My!" said Matthew Henry, gazing; and Annet turned on her sister and
said, "There, now!" The words may seem inadequate, but Linnet
understood them, and that they conveyed a question which she felt to be
a poser. How could she doubt the existence of mermaids in such a spot
as this? If a mermaid were to swim up to the surface under their very
eyes, would she be more wonderful than the actual scene--the black
rocks, the sobbing water?
"Folks," said Annet, incisively, "that laugh at stories about Piper's
Hole, ought to come and see the place for themselves."
"Yes," Matthew Henry agreed; "and after that they can begin to talk."
"I didn't laugh," protested Linnet, flung upon her defence. "Besides,"
she went on weakly, "I don't see why it must be mermaids. If anything
lives down there, why shouldn't it be a dragon---or a giant,
perhaps----"
"Linnet's improving," put in Matthew Henry, with fine sarcasm.
"Well, it sounds to me more like the noise a dragon would make," Linnet
persisted, finding as she went on that her argument was carrying her
through very creditably; "or a giant snoring, as they always do after
meals."
Annet scanned the black water pensively. "I've heard tell," she said,
"of great cuttles that sit and squat under the water; and sometimes,
when they are hungry, they fling up their suckers and pull you down off
the rocks and eat you."
Matthew Henry drew back from the brink, visibly daunted.
"Look here," he began, "I don't mind mermaids. Mermaids, so far as they
go----"
But here he came to a halt as a tinkling sound--the sound of a stringed
instrument, gently thrummed, rose from out of the abyss.
It fell on their ears in a pause of the surging water. It came from the
Mermaid's Rock, and thither all three children turned their eyes, to
see, over the crest of it, from its hidden seaward side, a woman's head
and shoulders emerge into view!
In the gathering dusk, even had she lifted her face to them, they could
not have discerned her features. But as she climbed into view her
loosened hair fell all about her; on the summit of the rock she turned
and seated herself fronting the sea; and while the three children drew
together, cowering, at her gaze, she began to sing.
And she sang marvellously. If her song had words, they were foreign
words; but whether articulate or not it was beautiful beyond all human
compass--or so at least it seemed to the children, whose experience
rested, to be sure, on the congregational efforts of Brefar Church.
It rose and sank upon the swell of the tide. It held such sweetness in
its mystery that, frightened though they were, the wonder of it drew
tears to their eyes. It seemed to open pathways into that world of
their desire, on the boundaries of which they were forever treading;
yet forever vainly, because they had not the passwords, and in their
ignorance could only guess that miracles lay beyond, sealed,
unimaginable.
The children huddled together, lost their fear in wonder, as the voice
of the mermaid, growing more and more confident, pierced new roads for
them--roads upon which the twilight closed at once; rays into a glory
they felt, and trembled to feel, but could not apprehend, because the
vision was of mere beauty, and music divorced from words is the last of
arts to convey form and meaning.
Yet though wholly indefinite, almost wholly meaningless, it spoke to
something to which the children felt all their blood thrilling,
responding. Listening, they forgot their fear altogether....
The singer laid down her instrument. The grey of the twilight ran over
her bare shoulders as, with a turn of the arm, she swept her tresses
back, and--still singing--drew out mirror and comb....
They craned to watch.
Suddenly from the height of the cliff, close on their right, rang out
the report of a gun. The song ceased abruptly, lost in the echoes that
beat from cliff to cliff, and amid these echoes the children heard a
noise of falling stones, followed by a heavy splash.
Annet had sprung to her feet. Linnet and Matthew Henry, too, had picked
themselves up, though more slowly.... A wisp of smoke drifted by the
rock to their right. When they turned their eyes upon the Mermaid's
Rock the singer had vanished.
Annet caught Matthew Henry by one hand; Matthew Henry stretched out
another to Linnet. The three scrambled up to the cliff-top, and thence
raced homeward, panic-stricken, across the darkening fields.
CHAPTER XXV
MISSING!
_"Sir,--I am directed by the Secretary of State for War to
acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 19th ultimo, the
contents of which shall receive his attention._
_"I am, sir,_
_"Your obedient servant,_
"J. FLEETWOOD CUNNINGHAM."
The Commandant, from long disuse, had forgotten the formalities of
official correspondence. His hand shook as he tore open the long
envelope, expecting to read his fate, and in the revulsion, as his eyes
fell on the few lines of acknowledgment, he caught at the table's edge
and sank into his chair with a sudden feeling of faintness.
For a few hours, then--possibly for a few days--he was respited. He put
the letter aside and walked out, to take his afternoon stroll around
the fortifications and steady his nerves.
By the Keg of Butter Battery he halted for a long look across the Sound
and towards Saaron. Unconsciously for a week past, he had fallen into a
habit of halting just here and letting his eyes travel towards Saaron.
It was just here that Vashti had seated herself the first morning, and
had asked him the fatal question, "For what, then, do they pay you?" He
remembered the words, the inflection of scorn in her tone. Here at his
feet on a cushion of wild thyme lay the stone she had prised out
absently, while she spoke, with the point of her sunshade. Just here,
too, she had taken leave of him on the night of her escapade, the night
when (it was bliss to remember) she had recanted her scorn, had asked
his forgiveness.
For a whole week he had not seen her. Was she careless, then, of the
answer?--of what resulted from the train she had fired?... But, after
all (the Commandant told himself), she had no need to concern herself
about it. She had but set him in the way of doing his duty; for the
rest, a man must accept his own responsibility, stand by his own
actions, abide his own fate.
Yet he would have given a great deal, just now, for speech with her, to
tell her that, unimportant though it was, some word from the War Office
had reached him.
Throughout his stroll his mind kept harking back to this letter,
seeking behind the few and formal words for meanings they did not
cover; and again that evening, after his frugal supper, he drew the
envelope from its pigeon-hole, spread the paper on the table before
him, and sat studying it.
He lifted his head, at a sound in the passage. The outer door had been
burst open violently, as though by a gust of wind, and a moment later
Archelaus came running in with a face of panic.
"The Lord behear us!" gasped Archelaus. "Oh, sir, here's awful, awful
news! The Lord Proprietor's been murdered, and his body flung over the
cliff, and Sam Leggo and Abe the gardener be running through the
streets wi' the news of it!"
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 | 17 |
18 |
19 |
20