Bochyn was built to escape as easily as possible the many storms of the
desolate country that surrounded it. The windows in the front of the
house looked out between two groves of straight Cornish elms over a
moist valley to a range of low hills, whose checkered green and brown
surface in the perpetual changes of light and atmosphere took on the
variety and translucence of water or precious stones; and not merely
their peripheral tints, but even their very contours seemed during the
courses of the sun and moon hourly to shift. Behind the house was the
town-place, a squelchy courtyard hemmed in by stables and full of casual
domestic animals. From here a muddy lane led up to the fields on the
slopes above, slopes considerably more lofty than those visible from the
front windows and ending in a bleak plateau of heather and gorse that
formed the immediate approach to the high black cliffs of many miles of
coast. The house itself was a long two-storied building, flanked by low
gray stone hedges feathered with tamarisks and fuchsias. The garden,
owing principally to the care of Granfa Champion, had an unusual number
of flowers. Even now in November the dahlias were not over, and against
the walls of the house pink, ivy-leaved geraniums and China roses were
in full bloom. The garden itself ended indeterminately, with no
perceptible line of severance, in the moors or watery meads always
vividly colored, and in summer creaming with meadow-sweet. At the bottom
of the garden was a rustic gazebo, from which it was possible to follow
the course of the stream up the valley between cultivated slopes that
gave way to stretches of gorse and bracken, until the valley swept round
out of sight in thick coverts of dwarfed oaks. Westward in the other
direction the stream, flowing straighter and straighter as it neared the
sea, lost itself in a brown waste of sand, while the range whose
undulations it had followed sank abruptly to a marsh. This flatness made
the contrary slope, which jutted forward so as to hide the actual
breaking of the waves, appear portentously high. Indeed, the cliffs on
that side soon reached three hundred feet and on account of their sudden
elevation looked much higher. The stream spread out in wide shallows to
its outlet, trickling somewhat ineffectively in watery furrows through
the sand.
On the farther side of the brown waste, where not even rushes would
grow, so complete and perpetual was the devastation of the gales, a line
of towans followed the curve of the coast, a desolate tract, gray-green
from the rushes planted to bind the shifting surface, and preserving in
its endless peaks and ridges the last fantastic glissades and diversely
elevated cones into which the wind had carved and gathered and swept the
sand. Mostly, these towans presented to the beach a low line of serrated
cliffs perhaps forty feet high; but from time to time they would break
away to gullies full of fine drifted sand, whose small cavities hoarded
snail-shells wind-dried to an ethereal lightness, and rabbit-bones
bleached and honeycombed by weather. After a storm the gullies gave an
impression of virgin territory, because the sand lay in drifts like
newly fallen snow on which footprints were desecration. The beach itself
was at low water a very wide and flat and completely desolate expanse,
shining near the sea's edge with whatever gold or silver was in the air,
shot with crimson bars at sunset, crinkled by the wind to a vast replica
of one of its own shells, ribbed and ploughed by tempests. The daily
advance or retreat of extreme high water was marked by devious lines of
purple muvices, by claws of seaweed and the stain of dry spume. Beyond
the limit of the spring tides the sand swept up in drifts against the
low cliffs that crumbled like biscuit before an attempted ascent.
This sea solitude reduced all living things to a strange equality of
importance. Twittering sea-swallows whose feet printed the sand with
desultory and fugitive intagliation, sea-parrots flying in profile
against the sky up and down over the water, porpoises rolling out in the
bay, sand-hoppers dancing to any disturbance, human beings--all became
equally minute and immaterial. Inland the towans tumbled in endless
irregularities of outline about a solitude equally complete. The
vegetation scarcely marked the changing seasons, save where in winter
the moss was a livelier golden-green, or where, beside spurges and
sea-holly and yellow horned poppies, stone-crops were reddened by August
suns. At wide intervals, where soil had formed over the sand, there was
a close fine grass starred in spring with infinitesmal squills and
forget-me-nots. But mostly the glaucous rushes, neither definitely blue
nor green nor gray, occupied the landscape. Close at hand they were
vitreous in color and texture, but at a distance and in the mass they
seemed to have the velvety bloom of a green almond or grape. Life of a
kind was always present in the scud of rabbits, in the song of larks and
click of stonechats, in the dipping steel-blue flight of the wheatear
and ruffled chestnut feathers of the whinchat. Yet as the explorer
stumbled in and out of the burrows, forcing a prickly advance through
the sharp rushes and often plunging ankle deep in drifts of sand, life
was more apparent in the towans themselves than in the presence of the
birds and beasts haunting their solitude. The sand was veritably alive
in its power to extract from the atmosphere every color and quality.
Sometimes it was golden, sometimes almost snow-white. Near sunset mauve
and rose and salmon-pink trembled in waves upon its surface, and as it
caught fire to welcome day, so it was eager to absorb night. Moonlight
there was dazzling when, in a cold world, it was possible to count the
snail-shells like pearls and watch the sand trickle from rabbit-skulls
like powdered silver.
Perhaps Jenny had never looked so well placed as when, with May beside
her in a drift of sand, she rested against the flat fawns and creams and
distant blues and grays of the background. Years ago when she danced
beneath the plane tree, her scarlet dress by long use had taken on the
soft texture of a pastel. Now she herself was a pastel, indescribably
appropriate to the setting, with her rose-leaf cheeks buried in the high
collar of a lavender-colored frieze coat, with her yellow curls and deep
blue eyes, deeper with the loss of their merriment. Her hands, too, were
very white in the clear sea air. May sitting beside her looked dark as a
pine tree against an April larch. If Jenny was coral, May was ivory.
Here they sat while the sea wind lisped over the sand. Jenny marked the
beauty of the country the more carefully because she disliked so
intensely the country people. Every day the sisters went for long walks,
and when May was tired she would sit on the beach, while Jenny wandered
on by the waves' edge.
November went by with silver skies and silver sunsets, with clouds of
deepest indigo and pallid effulgences of sun streaming through traveling
squalls. Days of swirling rain came in with December, when Jenny would
have to sit in the long room, listening to the hiss of the wind-whipped
elms, watching the geranium petals lie sodden all about the paths, and
the gulls, blown inland, scattered on the hillsides like paper. The
nights were terrible with their hollow moanings and flappings, with the
whistle and pipe of the chimneys, with crashing of unclosed doors, with
rattled lattices and scud and scream and shriek and hum and roar of the
wild December storms. Every morning would break to huge shapes of rain
swept up the valley, one after another until the gales of dawn died away
to a steady drench of water. Then Jenny would sit in the hot room, where
the slab glowed quietly into the mustiness, and idly turn the
damp-stained pages of year-old periodicals, of mildewed calendars, even
of hymn-books. At last she would sally forth desperately, and after a
long battle with wind or gurgling walk through mud and wet, she would
return to a smell of pasties and saffron cake and sometimes the cleaner
pungency of marinated pilchards.
Some time before Christmas the gales dropped; the wind veered releasing
the sun, and for a fortnight there was fleckless winter weather. These
were glorious mornings to wander down through the west garden past the
escallonias aromatic in the sunlight, past the mauve and blue and purple
veronicas, out over the watery meadows and up the hill-sides, where the
gorse was almond-scented about midday in the best of the sun. Here for a
week she and May roamed delightfully, until they found themselves in a
field of bullocks and, greatly terrified, went back to the seashore.
"Handsome weather," old Mrs. Trewhella would say, watching them set out
for their long walks, and, after blinking once or twice at the sun,
thumping back to the kitchen, back to household superintendence and the
preparation of heavy meals for the farm workers. Jenny was not inclined
to talk much with them. They lived a life so remote from hers that not
even the bridge of common laughter could span the gulf. Dicky Rosewarne,
for all his good looks, was detestably cruel with his gins and snares
and cunning pursuit of goldfinches and, worse, his fish-hooks baited for
wild duck. Yet he was kind enough to the great cart-horses, conversing
with them all work-time in a guttural language they seemed perfectly to
comprehend. Bessie Trevorrow, the dairymaid, was even less approachable
than Dicky. She had the shyness of a wild thing, and would fly past
Jenny, gazing in the opposite direction. Once or twice, under the
pressure of proximity, they embarked upon a conversation; but Jenny
found it difficult to talk well with a woman who answered her in
ambiguous phrases of agreement or vague queries. Old Man Veal Jenny
disliked since on one occasion she observed him bobbing up and down
behind a hedge to watch her. Thomas was her favorite among the hands. He
had grown used to bringing her curiosities newly found, and others
chosen from a collection that extended back to his earliest youth. These
he would present for her inspection, as a dog lays a stick at his
mistress's feet. Jenny, although she was profoundly uninterested by the
cannon-ball he had found wedged between two rocks, by the George III
halfpenny turned up by the plough, by his strings of corks and bundles
of torn nets, was nevertheless touched by his offer to strike a "lemon"
for her under a jam-jar in the spring. Nor did she listen distastefully
to the long sing-song tales with which he entertained May.
The fine weather lasted right up to Christmas Day. Violets bloomed
against the white stones that edged the garden paths. Wallflowers wore
their brown velvet in sheltered corners and, best of all, bushes of
Brompton stocks in a sweetness of pink and gray scented the rich Cornish
winter. Jenny and May would wander up and down the garden with Granfa,
while the old man would tell in his high chant tales as long as Thomas's
of by-gone Australian adventures, tales ripened in the warmth of spent
sunshine, and sometimes stories of his own youth in Trewinnard with
memories of maids' eyes and lads' laughter. Then in January came storm
on storm, dark storms that thundered up the valley, dragging night in
their wake. Lambing went on out in the blackness, a dreadful experience,
Jenny thought, when Zachary came in at all hours, sometimes stained with
blood in the lantern light. Jenny was scarcely aware of her husband in
the daytime. The volubility which had distinguished his conversation in
London was not apparent here. Indeed, he scarcely spoke except in
monosyllables, and spent all his time working grimly on the farm. He did
not seem to notice Jenny, and never inquired into her manner of passing
the day. She was his, safe and sound in Cornwall, a handsome property
like a head of fine stock. He had desired her deeply and had gained his
desire. Now, slim and rosy, she was still desirable; but, as Jenny
herself half recognized, too securely fastened, too easily attainable
for any misgiving. She certainly had no wish for a closer intimacy, and
was very thankful for the apparent indifference which he felt towards
her. She would have been horrified, had he suggested sharing her walks
with May, had he wanted to escort them over Trewinnard Sands, or worst
of all, had he invited her to sit beside him on his Sunday drives to
preach at distant chapels. He did not even bother her to come and hear
him preach in Trewinnard Free Church. Yet as the weeks went by, Jenny
came to think that he regarded her more than she thought at first. He
often seemed to know where she had been without being informed. When she
complained about Old Man Veal's spying on her, Zachary laughed oddly,
not much annoyed presumably by his servant's indiscretion. Jenny tried
sometimes to imagine what Trewinnard would have been like without her
sister. The fancy made her shudder. With May, however, it was like a
rather long, pleasantly dull holiday.
February brought fair days, scattered shining celandines like pieces of
gold over the garden beds, set the stiff upright daffodil buds drooping
and was all too soon driven out by the bleakest March that was ever
known, a fierce, detestable month of withering east winds, of starved
primroses, and dauntless thrushes singing to their nests in the shaken
laurustinus. Jenny began to hate the country itself now, when all she
could see of it was savage and forbidding as the people it bred.
In the middle of this gray and blasted month, Jenny became aware that
she was going to have a baby. This discovery moved her principally by a
sudden revival of self-consciousness so acute that she could scarcely
compel herself to break the news even to May. It seemed such an absurd
fact when she looked across the table at Zachary somberly munching his
pasty. She could hardly bear to sit at meals, dreading every whisper and
muffled giggle from the lower end of the table. Although the baby would
not arrive till September, and although she tried to persuade herself
that it was impossible for anyone to discern her condition, her own
knowledge of it dismayed her.
"But it'll be nice to have a baby," said May.
"What, in this unnatural house? I _don't_ think. Oh, May, whatever shall
I do? Can't I go away to have it?"
"Why don't you ask him?" suggested May.
"Don't be silly, how can I tell _him_ anything about it?"
"He's got to know some time," May pointed out.
"Yes, but not yet. And then you can tell the old woman and she can tell
him, and I'll hide myself up in the bedroom for a week. Fancy all the
servants knowing. What a dreadful thing! Besides, it hurts."
"Well, it's no use for you to worry about that part of it now," said
May. "I call it silly."
"I hope it'll be a boy," said Jenny. "I love boys. I think they're such
rogues."
"I'd rather it was a girl," said May.
"Perhaps it don't matter which after all," Jenny decided. "A boy would
be nicest, though, if you loved the man. Because you'd see him all over
again. Perhaps I'd rather have a girl. I expect she'd be more like me.
Poor kid!" she added to herself, meditating.
During April the subject was put on one side by mutual consent. There
was no immediate necessity for bother; but Jenny's self-consciousness
made her unwilling to wander any more over the towans, for all that the
weather was very blue and white, and the sheltered sand-drifts
pleasantly warm in the spring sun. Jenny, however, felt that every
rush-crowned ridge concealed an inquisitive head. She knew already how
curious the country people were, and that Old Man Veal was no exception.
Once she had walked through Trewinnard Churchtown near dusk, and had
been horribly aware of bobbing faces behind every curtained window,
faces that bobbed and peered and followed every movement and gesture of
her person.
Therefore May and Jenny determined to withdraw all opportunity from
inquisitiveness by exploring the high cliffs behind Bochyn. They climbed
up a steep road washed very bare by the sea wind, but pleasant enough
with its turfed hedges fluttering with the cowslips that flourished in a
narrow streak of limestone. At the top the road ran near the cliff's
edge through gorse and heather and moorland scrub. They found a spot
where the cliff sloped less precipitous in a green declivity right down
to the sea. This slope was gay with sea-pinks and fragrant with white
sea-campion. Primroses patterned the turf, and already ferns were
uncrumpling their fronds. Below them the sea was spread like a peacock's
tail in every lustrous shade of blue and green. Half-way down they threw
themselves full length on the resilient cushions of grass and, bathed in
sunshine, listened to the perpetual screaming of the gulls and boom of
the waves in caverns round the coast.
"Not so dusty after all," said Jenny contentedly. "It's nice. I like it
here."
"Isn't it lovely and warm?" said May.
So they buzzed idly on with their sunlit gossip and drowsy commentaries,
until a bank of clouds overtook the sun and the water became leaden.
Jenny shivered.
"Somebody sitting on my grave," she said. "But it's nice here. Nicer
than anywhere we've walked, I think."