TREVENNACK.
It was a stiff, hot climb to the top of the cliff; but as soon as he
reached it, Eustace Le Neve gazed about him, enchanted at the outlook.
He was not in love with Cornwall, as far as he'd seen it yet; and to
say the truth, except in a few broken seaward glens, that high and
barren inland plateau has little in it to attract or interest anyone,
least of all a traveler fresh from the rich luxuriance of South
American vegetation. But the view that burst suddenly upon Eustace Le
Neve's eye as he gained the summit of that precipitous serpentine bluff
fairly took his breath away. It was a rich and varied one. To the north
and west loomed headland after headland, walled in by steep crags, and
stretching away in purple perspective toward Marazion, St. Michael's
Mount, and the Penzance district. To the south and east huge masses of
fallen rock lay tossed in wild confusion over Kynance Cove and the
neighboring bays, with the bare boss of the Rill and the Rearing Horse
in the foreground. Le Neve stood and looked with open eyes of delight.
It was the first beautiful view he had seen since he came to Cornwall;
but this at least was beautiful, almost enough so to compensate for his
first acute disappointment at the barrenness and gloom of the Lizard
scenery.
For some minutes he could only stand with open eyes and gaze delighted
at the glorious prospect. Cliffs, sea, and rocks all blended with one
another in solemn harmony. Even the blackness of the great crags and
the scorched air of the brown and water-logged moorland in the rear now
ceased to oppress him. They fell into their proper place in one
consistent and well-blended picture. But, after awhile, impelled by a
desire to look down upon the next little bay beyond--for the coast is
indented with endless coves and headlands--the engineer walked on along
the top by a coastguard's path that threaded its way, marked by
whitened stones, round the points and gullies. As he did so, he
happened to notice on the very crest of the ridge that overlooked the
rock they called St. Michael's Crag a tall figure of a man silhouetted
in dark outline against the pale gray skyline. From the very first
moment Eustace Le Neve set eyes upon that striking figure this man
exerted upon him some nameless attraction. Even at this distance the
engineer could see he had a certain indefinite air of dignity and
distinction; and he poised himself lightly on the very edge of the
cliff in a way that would no doubt have made Walter Tyrrel shudder with
fear and alarm. Yet there was something about that poise quite
unearthly and uncanny; the man stood so airily on his high rocky perch
that he reminded Le Neve at once of nothing so much as of Giovanni da
Bologna's Mercury in the Bargello at Florence; he seemed to spurn the
earth as if about to spring from it with a bound; his feet were as if
freed from the common bond of gravity.
It was a figure that belonged naturally to the Cornish moorland.
Le Neve advanced along the path till he nearly reached the summit where
the man was standing. The point itself was a rugged tor, or little
group of bare and weather-worn rocks, overlooking the sea and St.
Michael's Crag below it. As the engineer drew near he saw the stranger
was not alone. Under shelter of the rocks a girl lay stretched at
length on a loose camel's-hair rug; her head was hatless; in her hand
she held, half open, a volume of poetry. She looked up as Eustace
passed, and he noted at a glance that she was dark and pretty. The
Cornish type once more; bright black eyes, glossy brown hair, a rich
complexion, a soft and rounded beauty.
"Cleer," the father said, warningly, in a modulated voice, as the young
man approached, "don't let your hat blow away, dear; it's close by the
path there."
The girl he called Cleer darted forward and picked it up, with a little
blush of confusion. Eustace Le Neve raised his hat, by way of excuse
for disturbing her, and was about to pass on, but the view down into
the bay below, with the jagged and pointed crag islanded in white foam,
held him spellbound for a moment. He paused and gazed at it. "This is a
lovely lookout, sir," he said, after a second's silence, as if to
apologize for his intrusion, turning round to the stranger, who still
stood poised like a statue on the natural pedestal of lichen-covered
rock beside him. "A lovely lookout and a wonderful bit of wild coast
scenery."
"Yes," the stranger answered, in a voice as full of dignity as his
presence and his mien. "It's the grandest spot along the Cornish coast.
From here you can see in one view St. Michael's Mount, St. Michael's
Crag, St. Michael's Church, and St. Michael's Promontory. The whole of
this country, indeed, just teems with St. Michael."
"Which is St. Michael's Promontory?" the young man asked, with a side
glance at Cleer, as they called the daughter. He wasn't sorry indeed
for the chance of having a second look at her.
"Why Land's End, of course," the dignified stranger answered at once,
descending from his perch as he spoke, with a light spring more like a
boy's than a mature man's. "You must surely know those famous lines in
'Lycidas' about
'The fable of Bellerus old,
Where the Great Vision of the guarded mount
Looks towards Namancos and Bayona's hold;
Look homeward, angel, now, and melt with ruth.'"
"Yes, I KNOW them, of course," Eustace answered with ingenuous shyness;
"but as so often happens with poetry, to say the truth, I'm afraid I
attached no very definite idea to them. The music so easily obscures
the sense; though the moment you suggest it, I see they can't possibly
mean anyone but St. Michael."
"My father's very much interested in the antiquities of Cornwall," the
girl Cleer put in, looking up at him somewhat timidly; "so he naturally
knows all these things, and perhaps he expects others to know them
unreasonably."
"We've every ground for knowing them," the father went on, glancing
down at her with tender affection. "We're Cornish to the
backbone--Cornish born and bred, if ever there were Cornishmen. Every
man of my ancestors was a Tre, Pol, or Pen, to the tenth generation
backward; and I'm descended from the Bassets, too--the Bassets of
Tehidy. You must have heard of the Bassets in Cornish history. They
owned St. Michael's Mount before these new-fangled St. Aubyn people."
"It's Lord St. Levan's now, isn't it?" Le Neve put in, anxious to show
off his knowledge of the local aristocracy.
"Yes, they've made him Lord St. Levan," the dignified stranger
answered, with an almost imperceptible curl of his delicate lower lip.
"They've made him Lord St. Levan. The queen can make one anything. He
was plain Sir John St. Aubyn before that, you know; his family bought
the Mount from my ancestors--the Bassets of Tehidy. They're new people
at Marazion--new people altogether. They've only been there since 1660."
Le Neve smiled a quiet smile. That seemed to him in his innocence a
fairly decent antiquity as things go nowadays. But the dignified
stranger appeared to think so little of it that his new acquaintance
abstained from making note or comment on it. He waited half a moment to
see whether Cleer would speak again; he wanted to hear that pleasant
voice once more; but as she held her peace, he merely raised his hat,
and accepting the dismissal, continued his walk round the cliffs alone.
Yet, somehow, the rest of the way, the figure of that statuesque
stranger haunted him. He looked back once or twice. The descendant of
the Bassets of Tehidy had now resumed his high pedestal upon the airy
tor, and was gazing away seaward, like the mystic Great Vision of his
own Miltonic quotation, toward the Spanish coast, wrapped round in a
loose cloak of most poetic dimensions. Le Neve wondered who he was, and
what errand could have brought him there.
At the point called the Rill, he diverged from the path a bit, to get
that beautiful glimpse down into the rock-strewn cove and smooth white
sands at Kynance. A coastguard with brush and pail was busy as he
passed by renewing the whitewash on the landmark boulders that point
the path on dark nights to the stumbling wayfarer. Le Neve paused and
spoke to him. "That's a fine-looking man, my friend, the gentleman on
the tor there," he said, after a few commonplaces. "Do you happen to
know his name? Is he spending the summer about here?"
The man stopped in his work and looked up. His eye lighted with
pleasure on the dignified stranger. "Yes; he's one of the right sort,
sir," he answered, with a sort of proprietary pride in the
distinguished figure. "A real old Cornish gentleman of the good old
days, he is, if ever you see one. That's Trevennack of Trevennack; and
Miss Cleer's his daughter. Fine old crusted Cornish names, every one of
them; I'm a Cornishman myself, and I know them well, the whole grand
lot of them. The Trevennacks and the Bassets, they was all one, time
gone by; they owned St. Michael's Mount, and Penzance, and Marazion,
and Mullion here. They owned Penmorgan, too, afore the Tyrrels bought
it up. Michael Basset Trevennack, that's the gentleman's full name; the
eldest son of the eldest son is always a Michael, to keep up the memory
of the times gone by, when they was Guardians of the Mount and St.
Michael's Constables. And the lady's Miss Cleer, after St. Cleer of
Cornwall--her that gives her name still to St. Cleer by Liskeard."
"And do they live here?" Le Neve asked, much interested in the
intelligent local tone of the man's conversation.
"Lord bless you, no, sir. They don't live nowhere. They're in the
service, don't you see. They lives in Malta or Gibraltar, or wherever
the Admiralty sends him. He's an Admiralty man, he is, connected with
the Vittling Yard. I was in the navy myself, on the good old Billy
Ruffun, afore I was put in the Coastguards, and I knowed him well when
we was both together on the Mediterranean Station. Always the same
grand old Cornish gentleman, with them gracious manners, so haughty
like, an' yet so condescending, wherever they put him. A gentleman
born. No gentleman on earth more THE gentleman all round than
Trevennack of Trevennack."
"Then he's staying down here on a visit?" Le Neve went on, curiously,
peering over the edge of the cliffs, as he spoke, to observe the
cormorants.
"Don't you go too nigh, sir," the coastguard put in, warningly. "She's
slippery just there. Yes, they're staying down in Oliver's lodgings at
Gunwalloe. He's on leave, that's where it is. Every three or four years
he gets leave from the Vittling and comes home to England; and then he
always ups and runs down to the Lizard, and wanders about on the cliffs
by himself like this, with Miss Cleer to keep him company. He's a chip
of the old rock, he is--Cornish granite to the core, as the saying
goes; and he can't be happy away from it. You'll see him any day
standing like that on the very edge of the cliff, looking across over
the water, as if he was a coastguard hisself, and always sort o'
perched on the highest bit of rock he can come nigh anywhere."
"He looks an able man," Le Neve went on, still regarding the stranger,
poised now as before on the very summit of the tor, with his cloak
wrapped around him.
"Able? I believe you! Why, he's the very heart and soul, the brains and
senses of the Vittling Department. The navy'd starve if it wasn't for
him. He's a Companion of St. Michael and St. George, Mr. Trevennack is.
'Tain't every one as is a Companion of St. Michael and St. George. The
queen made him that herself for his management of the Vittling." "It's
a strange place for a man in his position to spend his holiday," Le
Neve went on, reflectively. "You'd think, coming back so seldom, he'd
want to see something of London, Brighton, Scarborough, Scotland."
The coastguard looked up, and held his brush idle in one hand with a
mysterious air. "Not when you come to know his history," he answered,
gazing hard at him.
"Oh, there's a history to him, is there?" Le Neve answered, not
surprised. "Well, he certainly has the look of it."
The coastguard nodded his head and dropped his voice still lower. "Yes,
there's a history to him," he replied. "And that's why you'll always
see Trevennack of Trevennack on the top of the cliff, and never at the
bottom.--Thank'ee very kindly, sir; it ain't often we gets a chance of
a good cigar at Kynance.--Well, it must be fifteen year now--or maybe
sixteen--I don't mind the right time--Trevennack came down in old
Squire Tyrrel's days, him as is buried at Mullion Church town, and
stopped at Gunwalloe, same as he might be stopping there in his
lodgings nowadays. He had his only son with him, too, a fine-looking
young gentleman, they say, for his age, for I wasn't here then--I was
serving my time under Admiral De Horsey on the good old Billy
Ruffun--the very picture of Miss Cleer, and twelve year old or
thereabouts; and they called him Master Michael, the same as they
always call the eldest boy of the Trevennacks of Trevennack. Aye, and
one day they two, father and son, were a-strolling on the beach under
the cliffs by Penmorgan--mind them stones on the edge, sir; they're
powerful loose--don't you drop none over--when, just as you might
loosen them pebbles there with your foot, over came a shower o' small
bits from the cliff on top, and as sure as you're livin', hit the two
on 'em right so, sir. Mr. Trevennack himself, he wasn't much hurt--just
bruised a bit on the forehead, for he was wearing a Scotch cap; but
Master Michael, well, it caught him right on the top of the head, and
afore they knowed what it was, it smashed his skull in. Aye, that it
did, sir, just so; it smashed the boy's skull in. They carried him
home, and cut the bone out, and trepanned him; but bless you, it wa'n't
no good; he lingered on for a night, and then, afore morning, he died,
insensible."
"What a terrible story!" Le Neve exclaimed, with a face of horror,
recoiling instinctively from the edge of the cliff that had wrought
this evil. "Aye, you may well say so. It was rough on him," the
coastguard went on, with the calm criticism of his kind. "His only
son--and all in a minute like, as you may term it--such a promising
young gentleman! It was rough, terrible rough on him. So from that day
to this, whenever Trevennack has a holiday, down he comes here to
Gunwalloe, and walks about the cliffs, and looks across upon the rocks
by Penmorgan Point, or stands on the top of Michael's Crag, just over
against the spot where his boy was hurted. An' he never wants to go
nowhere else in all England, but just to stand like that on the very
edge of the cliff, and look over from atop, and brood, and think about
it."
As the man spoke, it flashed across Le Neve's mind at once that
Trevennack's voice had quivered with a strange thrill of emotion as he
uttered that line, no doubt pregnant with meaning for him. "Look
homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth." He was thinking of his own
boy, most likely, not of the poet's feigned Lycidas.
"He'll stand like that for hours," the coastguard went on
confidentially, "musing like to himself, with Miss Cleer by his side,
reading in her book or doing her knitting or something. But you
couldn't get him, for love or money, to go BELOW the cliffs, no, not if
you was to kill him. He's AFRAID of going below--that's where it is; he
always thinks something's sure to tumble from the top on him. Natural
enough, too, after all that's been. He likes to get as high as ever he
can in the air, where he can see all around him, and be certain there
ain't anyone above to let anything drop as might hurt him. Michael's
Crag's where he likes best to stand, on the top there by the Horse; he
always chooses them spots. In Malta it was San Mickayly; and in
Gibraltar it was the summit of Europa Point, by the edge of the Twelve
Apostles' battery."
"How curious!" Le Neve exclaimed. "It's just the other way on now, with
my friend Mr. Tyrrel. I'm stopping at Penmorgan, but Mr. Tyrrel won't
go on TOP of the cliffs for anything. He says he's afraid he might let
something drop by accident on the people below him."
The coastguard grew suddenly graver. "Like enough," he said, stroking
his chin. "Like enough; and right, too, for him, sir. You see, he's a
Tyrrel, and he's bound to be cautious.'
"Why so?" Le Neve asked, somewhat puzzled. "Why a Tyrrel more than the
rest of us?"
The man hesitated and stared hard at him.
"Well, it's like this, sir," he answered at last, with the shamefaced
air of the intelligent laboring man who confesses to a superstition.
"We Cornish are old-fashioned, and we has our ideas. The Tyrrels are
new people like, in Cornwall, as we say; they came in only with
Cromwell's folk, when he fought the Grenvilles; but it's well beknown
in the county bad luck goes with them. You see, they're descended from
that Sir Walter Tyrrel you'll read about in the history books, him as
killed King William Rufious in the New Forest. You'll hear all about it
at Rufious' Stone, where the king was killed; Sir Walter, he drew, and
he aimed at a deer, and the king was standing by; and the bullet, it
glanced aside--or maybe it was afore bullets, and then it'd be an
arrow; but anyhow, one or t'other, it hit the king, and he fell, and
died there. The stone's standing to this day on the place where he
fell, and I've seen it, and read of it when I was in hospital at
Netley. But Sir Walter, he got clear away, and ran across to France;
and ever since that time they've called the eldest son of the Tyrrels
Walter, same as they've called the eldest son of the Trevennacks
Michael. But they say every Walter Tyrrel that's born into the world is
bound, sooner or later, to kill his man unintentional. So he do right
to avoid going too near the cliffs, I say. We shouldn't tempt
Providence. And the Tyrrels is all a conscientious people."