Jack Wingate lives in a little cottage whose bit of garden ground
"brinks" the country road where the latter trends close to the Wye at
one of its sharpest sinuosities. The cottage is on the convex side of
the bend, having the river at back, with a deep drain, or wash, running
up almost to its walls, and forming a fence to one side of the garden.
This gives the waterman another and more needed advantage--a convenient
docking place for his boat. There the _Mary_, moored, swings to her
painter in safety; and when a rise in the river threatens he is at hand
to see she be not swept off. To guard against such catastrophe he will
start up from his bed at any hour of the night, having more than one
reason to be careful of the boat; for, besides being his _gagne-pain_,
it hears the name, by himself given, of her the thought of whom sweetens
his toil and makes his labour light. For her he bends industriously to
his oar, as though he believed every stroke made and every boat's length
gained was bringing him nearer to Mary Morgan. And in a sense so is it,
whichever way the boat's head may be turned; the farther he rows her the
grander grows that heap of gold he is hoarding up against the day when
he hopes to become a Benedict. He has a belief that if he could but
display before the eyes of Farmer Morgan sufficient money to take a
little farm for himself and stock it, he might then remove all obstacles
between him and Mary--mother's objections and sinister and sacerdotal
influence included.
He is aware of the difference of rank--that social chasm between--being
oft bitterly reminded of it; but, emboldened by Mary's smiles, he has
little fear but that he will yet be able to bridge it.
Favouring the programme thus traced out, there is, fortunately, no great
strain on his resources by way of drawback; only the maintaining of his
own mother, a frugal dame--thrifty besides--who, instead of adding to
the current expenses, rather curtails them by the adroit handling of her
needle. It would have been a distaff in the olden days.
Thus helped in his housekeeping, the young waterman is enabled to put
away almost every shilling he earns by his oar, and this same summer all
through till autumn, which it now is, has been more than usually
profitable to him, by reason of his so often having Captain Ryecroft as
his fare; for although the Hussar officer no longer goes salmon
fishing--he has somehow been spoilt for that--there are other excursions
upon which he requires the boat, and as ever generously, even lavishly,
pays for it.
From one of these the young waterman has but returned; and, after
carefully bestowing the _Mary_ at her moorings, stepped inside the
cottage. It is Saturday--within one hour of sundown--that same Saturday
spoken of "at the Harvest Home." But though Jack is just home, he shows
no sign of an intention to stay there; instead, behaves as if he
intended going out again, though not in his boat.
And he does so intend, for a purpose unsuspected by his mother, to keep
that appointment, made hurriedly, and in a half whisper, amid the fracas
of the fireworks.
The good dame had already set the table for tea, ready against his
arrival, covered it with a cloth, snow-white of course. The tea-things
superimposed, in addition a dining plate, knife and fork, these for a
succulent beefsteak heard hissing on the gridiron almost as soon as the
_Mary_ made appearance at the mouth of the wash, and, soon as the boat
was docked, done. It is now on the table, alongside the teapot; its
savoury odour mingling with the fragrance of the freshly "drawn" tea,
fills the cottage kitchen with a perfume to delight the gods.
For all, it gives no gratification to Jack Wingate the waterman. The
appetising smell of the meat, and the more ethereal aroma of the Chinese
shrub, are alike lost upon him. Appetite he has none, and his thoughts
are elsewhere.
Less from observing his abstraction, than the slow, negligent movements
of his knife and fork, the mother asks--
"What's the matter with ye, Jack? Ye don't eat!"
"I ain't hungry, mother."
"But ye been out since mornin', and tooked nothing wi' you!"
"True; but you forget who I ha' been out with. The captain ain't the
man to let his boatman be a hungered. We war down the day far as
Symond's yat, where he treated me to dinner at the hotel. The daintiest
kind o' dinner, too. No wonder at my not havin' much care for eatin'
now--nice as you've made things, mother."
Notwithstanding the compliment, the old lady is little satisfied--less
as she observes the continued abstraction of his manner. He fidgets
uneasily in his chair, every now and then giving a glance at the little
Dutch clock suspended against the wall, which in loud ticking seems to
say, "You'll be late--you'll be late." She suspects something of the
cause, but inquires nothing of it. Instead, she but observes, speaking
of the patron:--"He be very good to ye, Jack."
"Ah! that he be; good to every one as comes nigh o' him--and 's
desarvin' it."
"But ain't he stayin' in the neighbourhood longer than he first spoke of
doin'?"
"Maybe he is. Grand gentry such as he ain't like us poor folk. They
can go and come whens'ever it please 'em. I suppose he have his reasons
for remaining."
"Now, Jack, you know he have, an' I've heerd something about 'em
myself."
"What have you heard, mother?"
"Oh, what! Ye han't been a rowin' him up and down the river now nigh on
five months without findin' out. An' if you haven't, others have. It's
goin' all about that he's after a young lady as lives somewhere below.
Tidy girl, they say, tho' I never seed her myself. Is it so, my son?
Say!"
"Well, mother, since you've put it straight at me in that way, I won't
deny it to you, tho' I'm in a manner bound to saycrecy wi' others. It
be true that the Captain have some notion o' such a lady."
"There be a story, too, o' her bein' nigh drownded an' his saving her
out o' a boat. Now, Jack, whose boat could that be if it wa'nt your'n?"
"'Twor mine, mother; that's true enough. I would a told you long ago,
but he asked me not to talk o' the thing. Besides, I didn't suppose
you'd care to hear about it."
"Well," she says, satisfied, "'tan't much to me, nor you neyther, Jack;
only as the Captain being so kind, we'd both like to know the best about
him. If he have took a fancy for the young lady, I hope she return it.
She ought after his doin' what he did for her. I han't heerd her name;
what be it?"
"She's a Miss Wynn, mother. A very rich heiress. 'Deed I b'lieve she
ain't a heiress any longer, or won't be, after next Thursday, sin' that
day she comes o' age. An' that night there's to be a big party at her
place, dancin' an' all sorts o' festivities. I know it because the
Captain's goin' there, an' has bespoke the boat to take him."
"Wynn, eh? That be a Welsh name. Wonder if she's any kin o' the great
Sir Watkin."
"Can't say, mother. I believe there be several branches o' the Wynn
family."
"Yes, and all o' the good sort. If she be one o' the Welsh Wynns, the
Captain can't go far astray in having her for his wife."
Mrs Wingate is herself of Cymric ancestry, originally from the shire of
Pembroke, but married to a man of Montgomery, where Jack was born. It
is only of late, in her widowhood, she has become a resident of
Herefordshire.
"So you think he have a notion o' her, Jack?"
"More'n that, mother. I may as well tell ye; he be dead in love wi'
her. An' if you seed the young lady herself, ye wouldn't wonder at it.
She be most as good-looking as--"
Jack suddenly interrupted himself on the edge of a revelation he would
rather not make, to his mother nor any one else. For he has hitherto
been as careful in keeping his own secret as that of his patron.
"As who?" she asks, looking him straight in the face, and with an
expression in her eyes of no common interest--that of maternal
solicitude.
"Who?--well--" he answers confusedly; "I wor goin' to mention the name
o' a girl who the people 'bout here think the best-lookin' o' any in the
neighbourhood--"
"An' nobody more'n yourself, my son. You needn't gi'e her name. I know
it."
"Oh, mother! what d'ye mean?" he stammers out, with eyes on the but
half-eaten beefsteak. "I take it they've been tellin' ye some stories
'bout me."
"No, they han't. Nobody's sayed a word about ye relatin' to that. I've
seed it for myself, long since, though you've tried hide it. I'm not
goin' to blame ye eyther, for I believe she be a tidy proper girl. But
she's far aboon you, my son; and ye maun mind how you behave yourself.
If the young lady be anythin' like's good-lookin' as Mary Morgan--"
"Yes, mother! that's the strangest thing o' all--"
He interrupts her, speaking excitedly; again interrupting himself.
"What's strangest?" she inquires with a look of wonderment.
"Never mind, mother! I'll tell you all about it some other time. I
can't now; you see it's nigh nine o' the clock."
"Well; an' what if't be?"
"Because I may be too late."
"Too late for what? Surely you arn't goin' out again the night?" She
asks this, seeing him rise up from his chair.
"I must, mother."
"But why?"
"Well, the boat's painter's got frailed, and I want a bit o' whipcord to
lap it with. They have the thing at the Ferry shop, and I must get
there afores they shut up."
A fib, perhaps pardonable, as the thing he designs lapping is not his
boat's painter, but the waist of Mary Morgan, and not with slender
whipcord, but his own stout arms.
"Why won't it do in the mornin'?" asks the ill-satisfied mother.
"Well, ye see, there's no knowin' but that somebody may come after the
boat. The Captain mayent, but he may, changin' his mind. Anyhow, he'll
want her to go down to them grand doin's at Llangowen Court?"
"Llangowen Court?"
"Yes; that's where the young lady lives."
"That's to be on Thursday, ye sayed?"
"True; but, then, there may come a fare the morrow, an' what if there
do? 'Tain't the painter only as wants splicin', there's a bit o' a leak
sprung close to the cutwater, an' I must hae some pitch to pay it."
If Jack's mother would only step out, and down to the ditch where the
_Mary_ is moored, with a look at the boat, she would make him out a
liar. Its painter is smooth and clean as a piece of gimp, not a strand
unravelled--while but two or three gallons of bilge water at the boat's
bottom attest to there being little or no leakage.
But she, good dame, is not thus suspicious, instead so reliant on her
son's truthfulness, that, without questioning further, she consents to
his going, only with a proviso against his staying, thus appealingly
put--"Ye won't be gone long, my son! I know ye won't!"
"Indeed I shan't, mother. But why be you so partic'lar about my goin'
out--this night more'n any other?"
"Because, Jack, this day, more'n most others, I've been feelin' bothered
like, and a bit frightened."
"Frightened o' what? There han't been nobody to the house--has there?"
"No; ne'er a rover since you left me in the mornin'."
"Then what's been a scarin' ye, mother?"
"'Deed, I don't know, unless it ha' been brought on by the dream I had
last night. 'Twer' a dreadful unpleasant one. I didn't tell you o' it
'fore ye went out, thinkin' it might worry ye."
"Tell me now, mother."
"It hadn't nought to do wi' us ourselves, after all. Only concernin'
them as live nearest us."
"Ha! the Morgans?"
"Yes; the Morgans."
"Oh, mother, what did you dream about them?"
"That I wor standin' on the big hill above their house, in the middle o'
the night, wi' black darkness all round me; and there lookin' down what
should I see comin' out o' their door?"
"What?"
"The canwyll corph!"
"The canwyll corph?"
"Yes, my son; I seed it--that is I dreamed I seed it--coming just out o'
the farm-house door, then through the yard, and over the foot-plank at
the bottom o' the orchard, when it went flarin' up the meadows straight
towards the ferry. Though ye can't see that from the hill, I dreamed I
did; an' seed the candle go on to the chapel an' into the buryin'
ground. That woked me."
"What nonsense, mother! A ridiklous superstition! I thought you'd left
all that sort o' stuff behind, in the mountains o' Montgomery, or
Pembrokeshire, where the thing comes from, as I've heerd you say."
"No, my son; it's not stuff, nor superstition neyther; though English
people say that to put slur upon us Welsh. Your father before ye
believed in the _Canwyll Corph_, and wi' more reason ought I, your
mother. I never told you, Jack, but the night before your father died I
seed it go past our own door, and on to the graveyard o' the church
where he now lies. Sure as we stand here there be some one doomed in
the house o' Evan Morgan. There be only three in the family. I do hope
it an't her as ye might some day be wantin' me to call daughter."
"Mother! You'll drive me mad! I tell ye it's all nonsense. Mary
Morgan be at this moment healthy and strong--most as much as myself. If
the dead candle ye've been dreamin' about we're all o' it true, it
couldn't be a burnin' for her. More like for Mrs Morgan, who's half
daft by believing in church candles and such things--enough to turn her
crazy, if it doesn't kill her outright. As for you, my dear mother,
don't let the dream bother you the least bit. An' ye mustn't be feeling
lonely, as I shan't be long gone. I'll be back by ten sure."
Saying which, he sets his straw hat jauntily on his thick curly hair,
gives his guernsey a straightening twitch, and, with a last cheering
look and encouraging word to his mother, steps out into the night.
Left alone, she feels lonely withal, and more than ever afraid. Instead
of sitting down to her needle, or making to remove the tea-things, she
goes to the door, and there stays, standing on its threshold and peering
into the darkness--for it is a pitch dark night--she sees, or fancies, a
light moving across the meadows, as if it came from Farmer Morgan's
house, and going in the direction of Rugg's Ferry. While she continues
gazing, it twice crosses the Wye, by reason of the river's bend.
As no mortal hand could thus carry it, surely it is the _canwyll corph_!
Volume One, Chapter XVIII.