.... Do you remember the letters I wrote you from Moor Farm nearly three
years ago? To-day I rode over there. I stopped at Brixham on the way for
lunch, and walked down to the quay. There had been a shower—but the sun
was out again, shining on the sea, the brown-red sails, and the rampart
of slate roofs.
A trawler was lying there, which had evidently been in a collision. The
spiky-bearded, thin-lipped fellow in torn blue jersey and sea-boots who
was superintending the repairs, said to me a little proudly:
“Bane in collision, zurr; like to zee over her?” Then suddenly screwing
up his little blue eyes, he added:
“Why, I remembers yu. Steered yu along o' the young lady in this yer
very craft.”
It was Prawle, Zachary Pearse's henchman.
“Yes,” he went on, “that's the cutter.”
“And Captain Pearse?”
He leant his back against the quay, and spat. “He was a pra-aper man; I
never zane none like 'en.”
“Did you do any good out there?”
Prawle gave me a sharp glance.
“Gude? No, t'was arrm we done, vrom ztart to finish—had trouble all the
time. What a man cude du, the skipper did. When yu caan't du right, zome
calls it 'Providence'. 'Tis all my eye an' Betty Martin! What I zay es,
'tis these times, there's such a dale o' folk, a dale of puzzivantin'
fellers; the world's to small.”
With these words there flashed across me a vision of Drake crushed
into our modern life by the shrinkage of the world; Drake caught in the
meshes of red tape, electric wires, and all the lofty appliances of our
civilization. Does a type survive its age; live on into times that
have no room for it? The blood is there—and sometimes there's a
throw-back.... All fancy! Eh?
“So,” I said, “you failed?”
Prawle wriggled.
“I wudden' goo for to zay that, zurr—'tis an ugly word. Da-am!” he
added, staring at his boots, “'twas thru me tu. We were along among the
haythen, and I mus' nades goo for to break me leg. The capt'n he wudden'
lave me. 'One Devon man,' he says to me, 'don' lave anotherr.' We werr
six days where we shuld ha' been tu; when we got back to the ship a
cruiser had got her for gun-runnin'.”
“And what has become of Captain Pearse?”
Prawle answered, “Zurr, I belave 'e went to China, 'tis onsartin.”
“He's not dead?”
Prawle looked at me with a kind of uneasy anger.
“Yu cudden' kell 'en! 'Tis true, mun 'll die zome day. But therr's not a
one that'll show better zport than Capt'n Zach'ry Pearse.”
I believe that; he will be hard to kill. The vision of him comes up,
with his perfect balance, defiant eyes, and sweetish smile; the way the
hair of his beard crisped a little, and got blacker on the cheeks; the
sort of desperate feeling he gave, that one would never get the better
of him, that he would never get the better of himself.
I took leave of Prawle and half a crown. Before I was off the quay I
heard him saying to a lady, “Bane in collision, marm! Like to zee over
her?”
After lunch I rode on to Moor. The old place looked much the same; but
the apple-trees were stripped of fruit, and their leaves beginning to go
yellow and fall. One of Pasiance's cats passed me in the orchard hunting
a bird, still with a ribbon round its neck. John Ford showed me all his
latest improvements, but never by word or sign alluded to the past. He
inquired after Dan, back in New Zealand now, without much interest; his
stubbly beard and hair have whitened; he has grown very stout, and I
noticed that his legs are not well under control; he often stops to lean
on his stick. He was very ill last winter; and sometimes, they say, will
go straight off to sleep in the middle of a sentence.
I managed to get a few minutes with the Hopgoods. We talked of Pasiance
sitting in the kitchen under a row of plates, with that clinging smell
of wood-smoke, bacon, and age bringing up memories, as nothing but
scents can. The dear old lady's hair, drawn so nicely down her forehead
on each side from the centre of her cap, has a few thin silver lines;
and her face is a thought more wrinkled. The tears still come into her
eyes when she talks of her “lamb.”
Of Zachary I heard nothing, but she told me of old Pearse's death.
“Therr they found 'en, zo to spake, dead—in th' sun; but Ha-apgood can
tell yu,” and Hopgood, ever rolling his pipe, muttered something, and
smiled his wooden smile.
He came to see me off from the straw-yard. “'Tis like death to the
varrm, zurr,” he said, putting all the play of his vast shoulders into
the buckling of my girths. “Mister Ford—well! And not one of th' old
stock to take it when 'e's garn.... Ah! it werr cruel; my old woman's
never been hersel' since. Tell 'ee what 'tis—don't du t' think to much.”
I went out of my way to pass the churchyard. There were flowers, quite
fresh, chrysanthemums, and asters; above them the white stone, already
stained:
“PASIANCE
“WIFE OF ZACHARY PEARSE
“'The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away.'”
The red cows were there too; the sky full of great white clouds, some
birds whistling a little mournfully, and in the air the scent of fallen
leaves....
May, 1900.