THE FIRST DRINK AT THE WELL.
A few months had wrought a great change in the household at Varfell.
The widow, when the stupor of her grief had passed away, and the mental
absorption of her first sorrow had given place to the calm reflection
of melancholy, soon began to see that the comforts and education of her
children demanded energy rather than tears from her.
Then came the struggle. What could _she_ do to help them? And what would
the people think and say if this or that were done?
But Mrs. Davy was not the woman to be daunted by the petty exultation
of neighbours; so that when an opportunity offered for her to embark in
business as a milliner in the neighbouring town, it cost her hardly a
pang—free as she was from all silly pride—to sink from the worldly rank
of the gentlewoman into the humbler station of the trader.
Accordingly, after consulting with Mr. Tonkin upon the matter, she was
duly installed, in conjunction with a young French lady, as dressmaker
and milliner, in a little shop in the town of Penzance.
Nor was Humphry long in finding a fitting occupation. Mr. Tonkin, to
whom the youth had communicated all his determinations, and who loved
the youth almost as if he had been a child of his own (for the greater
part of Humphry’s life had been passed with the old gentleman), was as
pleased as the widow had been to hear of the new spirit that had come
upon the lad; and although the boy’s foster-father was not so sanguine
as his mother had been of the world-wide renown that awaited Humphry
in after life, he had, nevertheless, sufficient faith in the talents
of the youth to believe that he might, by application, ultimately win
his way to competence and respect among the circle of his native town.
Accordingly, when the ardent boy spoke to the calm old man of the fame
and honours he had made up his mind to gain throughout Europe—saying,
with all the fervour of a boy-poet’s nature, that he was resolved his
mind should become a light to all nations, and that his name should be
linked with noble associations in every enlightened country, Mr. Tonkin
smiled incredulously (but still with good humour) at the ambitious
dreams of the lad, and told him he was afraid one so young as he knew not
how difficult it was to excel, even in the most trivial thing, when we
had the entire world for rivals; and that powers which appeared great in
the narrow circle of our own family, grew less and less as the arena of
competition was widened. Therefore, if the youth, instead of regarding
the whole of Christendom as the theatre in which his future powers
were to be displayed, would but limit his views to the humble town of
Penzance, Mr. Tonkin said he thought Humphry might, with industry and
prudence, some day attain a reputable position in the neighbourhood;[19]
adding, that he should consider himself well rewarded for the care and
affection he had bestowed upon Humphry if he should live to see him
settled as a surgeon in his native town.
* * * * *
It was a lovely autumn evening—such an evening as, at the decline of
the year, is known only in those parts of our island which, from the
mildness of their climate, have been styled “the Florence of the North.”
Mr. Tonkin and Humphry had strolled out by Marazion towards St. Michael’s
Mount, journeying along the curved shore of the magnificent bay, with the
ocean spread out on one side, in a broad expanse of unsullied azure, and
fringed with a thin border of silver foam, as the waves came rippling
lazily over the yellow sands. As they sauntered along, the breeze at
sundown began to set from the land towards the ocean, and, sweeping
across the warm earth, it came laden with the perfumes of the many
exotics that bloom in the open air in that part of the world—the garden
of England; for it was just the hour when the flowers love to pour their
odours into the lightened air, like incense from a thousand chalices. The
rays of the declining sun gave a faint tint of purple to the atmosphere,
and the green sward, that was still lustrous with the slanting light,
was striped, here and there, with the long shadows that streamed from
every object intercepting the beams; while the outlines of each form
were growing more and more definite, and the sides and peaks of the
rocks glittered towards the west, as if they were blazoned with red
gold. The brown cattle were quiet in the fields, and the tranquil flocks
on the distant hillsides rested there like clouds; the branches of the
trees beside the roadway were shaggy, almost to the tops, with the long
stalks of wheat that dangled from the twigs, telling of some high-laden
harvest-waggon that had lately swept by them. The white-bellied swallows
skimmed low over the earth in zigzag lines, twittering as they went; and
there was a soothing stillness all around that bathed the soul in balmy
quietude.
Towards the sea the scene was no less beautiful. The ocean was like a
huge green gem, and here and there on its surface tiny boats seemed to
revel in the sundown breeze, now that it had sprung up, and leant over
on one side, as they went ploughing through the liquid field, turning up
the white surf on their way, and leaving far behind them a long trail,
that looked in the distance like a seam upon the water; while in the
offing tall ships stood against the sky, with their sails pouting and
shining white in the sun, like a pigeon’s breast. Nearer the shore rose
the majestic rocky mount of St. Michael, towering above the sea like one
of Nature’s pyramids, with the broken outline of its ivied sides showing
sharp and clear against the grey, ariel distance; one half of it, towards
the east, was dusked in deep rich shadow, while the other, towards the
west, was bathed in such a glory of ruby light, that the Mount shone
as if it had been one huge carbuncle studding the bright shield of the
ocean. Then, in the far west, the sky and the sea were as a sheet of
molten gold; and, almost resting on the ring of the horizon, was seen the
round, liquid orb of the sun, trembling like a well of light, with the
broad beams streaming upwards from it, and tinting the distant masses of
cloud, now ruby and now purple, till they looked like islands of garnet
and amethyst in the heavens.
It was low water, and the couple crossed by the sands from Marazion to
the Mount; and here, after passing the little cluster of fishermen’s
houses that skirted the base of the rocky pyramid, and mounting a short
distance up the cliff, they sat for a while enjoying and discoursing of
the many beauties of the majestic scene that encompassed them on every
side.
And the prospect thence was indeed of the grandest character. The shore
stretched away, revealing headland after headland, to where the Lizard
shot out far into the wave, the rocks there seeming almost phosphorescent
in the sun. Then appeared St. Clement’s Island and the coast towards
the Land’s End, forming a shorter cape, and completing the horn of the
crescent of land towards the west, that looked, as the waves grew crimson
in the sunset, as if bathed in a sea of wine. The ocean here wore its
most imposing attribute of uncontrollable immensity; for the Atlantic,
across the Bay of Biscay to the most western land of Spain, lay on the
south, and melted into distance there; while, beyond the extremity of
our own island, no shore intervened on the north between the line of the
horizon and the land of the New World.
It was a sight that Humphry loved as deeply as old Mr. Tonkin to look
upon, and the couple sat for some time silently watching both the seas
rolling there towards the far distant Spanish and American shores.
The boy, however, less capable of continuous attention to the same
subject, got to weary of the scene sooner than the old man; and when Mr.
Tonkin noticed Humphry’s admiration begin to flag, he availed himself of
the quietude of the time and place to incite a taste in the lad for the
profession he wished him to follow.
Presently the old doctor caught sight of one of the little transparent
zoophytes that had been left on the rocks by the receding tide. In size
it was not larger than a bird’s egg, of a globular form, with several
transparent ridges ranged along it, from pole to pole, as it were, and it
was nearly as pellucid as the purest rock-crystal.
[Illustration: THE FIRST DRINK AT THE WELL.—Page 76.]
“Look, my boy,” said Mr. Tonkin, turning to Humphry, and pointing to the
little ball of jelly at his feet; “here is an orb almost as wonderful
as the sun we have been lately gazing at. It gives light, too, like it;
and though it looks there as if it were only a few drops of the ocean
gelatinised, it is quickened with life, and performs motions that our
wisest engineers can but clumsily imitate.”
The eager boy was about to seize the wonder, so that he might examine it
more minutely.
“Nay, if you touch it,” cried the old man, hastily, as he grasped the
youth’s arm, and held him back, “it will immediately dissolve—thaw, as
it were, to death—so frail is its life, and nothing but a little pool of
water will remain of a creature that once could make the sea glow with
its fire. These little things are by some styled the ‘lucid gems of the
waters.’ By daylight, when in the ocean, they are visible only by the
bright rainbow hues that mark their path as they paddle along; but by
night, Humphry, they blaze with phosphorescent fire, so that some have
termed them ‘the stars of the sea.’ In warm and calm evenings they often
look like balls of light rolling on the surface of the water, and the
more rapid their motion the more intense is the glow they emit. Those
eight transparent ridges you see there,” continued the doctor, as he
pointed with his cane to the tiny watery globe, “support as many rows
of broad, pellucid paddles, and these are all instinct with life, and
by their rapid motion cause the animal to glide, meteor-like, through
the waves. We wonder at the recent invention of the steam-boat, and
speak with pride of the paddle-wheels with which we are to walk upon the
waters; but the tiny paddles here, boy, are far more perfect than any
ever contrived by human ingenuity, for in that little aqueous ball the
cumbrous machinery which is required to move our vessels along, is not
needed, since each float, self-moving without even a visible muscle or
nerve to stir it, keeps time with all the rest.”[20]
“What wonder,” cried the poetic boy, “is here packed in a little living
crystal, as it were, that can make fire flash from what looks almost like
a globe of water, and that can perform the most rapid motions without, as
you say, Mr. Tonkin, any visible means of movement!”
“Yes, indeed, my lad,” went on the old man; “there is a large store of
marvels locked in that little glassy casket. How does it get its food?
How digest it? and how is its frail body nourished? for we can trace
no blood-vessels, nor heart, nor glands—indeed, hardly any organs at
all—in the little clot of half-liquid life. All we know, is, that it is
furnished underneath with so many tentacles or filaments, that serve it
for claws, and that these, which are set round an aperture that we call
a mouth, draw the food it lives upon into its body—which is literally
nothing but a stomach. If we were to watch long enough, we should see
the food thus seized and swallowed gradually dissolve and be reduced to
a fluid state, while the more solid and indigestible portion would be
rejected by the aperture through which it entered. The nutritive matter
we know to be absorbed by the walls of the stomach, every part of which
appears to be endowed with equal power in this respect; and it is then
conveyed to the remoter portion of the body by the simple inbibition of
one part from another, without any proper circulation through vessels.
In some animals of this class the external covering of the body and the
lining of the stomach so closely correspond in their structure as to
admit of being changed one for the other—for the animal may be turned
inside out without its functions being in any way deranged.”
“Can it be?” said Humphry, filled with delight. “Where can I learn these
things, sir? Why was I not taught them at school?”
“You _shall_ learn them, my boy,” replied the old man, pressing the lad’s
hand with pleasure to find the taste that he had longed to develope for
his own favourite study springing up in Humphry’s mind. “And think, if
that little lump of jelly—which is, perhaps, the simplest form of life,
where the vital mechanism is seen in its rudest form—can stir you to so
much wonder—think, I say, Humphry, what admiration will be excited in
you when you come to comprehend the beautiful processes and organism
exhibited in complicate animals like ourselves! If a living, digesting
creature—a thing almost without sense—a mere moving mouth—can appear so
wonderful to you in its structure, what marvels shall you not find in the
constitution of a thinking, speaking, reasoning being like man!”
Then the old doctor ran over to the youth the many sources of knowledge
that the study of human life opens up to the thoughtful and inquiring
mind.
He told the eager boy—as they sat there in the subdued light of the
evening, with the hum of the sea that rippled into the caverns at the
base of the Mount, falling almost musically on the ear—how, in the
organism of the nerves and brain, we get our first insight, rude though
it be, into the subtle processes of the senses, and even the mind itself.
He told him, also, how, in the senses themselves, lay the rudiments of
all the sciences; how, without the sense of vision, there could have
been no “optics,” and consequently no astronomy—for to the blind the
movements of the planets, and even the very existence of the stars, must,
of course, have remained unknown: in like manner, without the sense of
hearing there could have been no “acoustics” and no music; and without
the sense of muscular effort no knowledge of weight, and consequently
of “gravitation”—the main-spring, as it were, of the mechanism of the
universe.
Mr. Tonkin explained to the youth, moreover, that had we been formed
without the exquisite organ of the hand there would have been little work
done, and but little art achieved; and without the organs of the mouth,
there could have been no inter-communication of thought—no transfusion of
mind into mind, by which one wise man nowadays contains stored in his own
brain the wisdom of almost all those who have preceded him. And further,
if we had had no appetites, and no pains nor uneasinesses to stir us to
action, we should, even with the beautiful muscular apparatus with which
our frames are fitted, have remained idle and inactive all our time,
starving to death with delight.
“Some persons,” said Mr. Tonkin, “have supposed that plants may be
susceptible of feeling, as well as ourselves and the rest of the animal
race. But that trees and herbs are incapable of knowing either pain or
pleasure” (he added) “is made evident, physiologically, by the fact
that they are supplied with no organs of locomotion, and consequently
deprived of the means of avoiding the one and seeking the other. For,
so benevolently is the world arranged, that wherever feeling is given,
the power of acting is immediately associated with it; indeed, it
requires hardly a moment’s thought to perceive that it would have been
incompatible with All-Kindness to have made creatures sensible to pain,
and yet have denied them the means of escape from it.”
After this the old man pointed out to Humphry, that in the comparison of
one system of life with another, and so tracing the delicately interwoven
chain of animal creation, we perceive that the first type of sentient
existence was a mere stomach—a life of pure appetite—susceptible of no
other feeling than hunger, and fitted only with organs for seizing and
assimilating its food; while as we advance gradually in the scale of
development, we find nerve after nerve added, and a new set of feelings
and actions brought out, with each new set of fibres. “We discover,
besides,” he continued, “that when a little kernel of nervous matter was
superadded to the previous sentient apparatus, the wondrous sense of
vision was first awakened in animal life, and how the addition of another
such little kernel made an animal for the first time hear, and another
gave the first sense of odour to the world, while another added taste to
the food and drink.”
And when he had thus briefly explained to the youth the uses and
characteristics of the several organs in man and the lower animals,
the old gentleman went on to point out to him how these same organs
were nourished, and the destruction that was continually going on in
the body—“for,” said he, “we cannot move a muscle, not even wink our
eyelids, without wasting some tissue or other”—was being as continually
repaired by the food consumed. Pursuing this subject, he then proceeded
to explain to young Humphry how the blood was made to circulate by means
of the cunningly-wrought chambers of the heart through the veins and
arteries, distributing health and vigour to the different organs in
its course—now renovating the tissues, now depositing little specks of
bone, then extending the filaments of hair, and then exciting thought
and developing feeling in the nerves and brain, stimulating action in
the muscles, and diffusing warmth throughout the whole frame—all these
different functions being performed by the one wondrous substance in
which, even when examined by the highest microscopic power, it was
impossible to detect even the rudiments of the many various tissues it
formed.
“Such,” said Mr. Tonkin, “is a part of the marvellous process of
secretion—a process so subtle that even the wisest can only wonder
in their ignorance concerning the function; for it is a mystery to
them how, by means merely of little glands, so many different things
can be produced from one and the same fluid. How, for instance, skin,
cartilages, muscles, hair, nails, bones, tears, and the infinite variety
of products which our bodies are made up of and evolve, can all come from
the same ruby stream, and that a small nut-like organ only shall be
necessary to eliminate each different substance from it. Then, again,
there is the beautiful process of breathing, by which the vital air is
combined with the blood, and the blue fluid of the veins changed into the
crimson stream of the arteries;” and he recounted to him the while how
respiration among animals was merely a process of burning, accompanied
with the evolution at each exhalation of so much invisible smoke from the
lungs—the same smoke, indeed, as comes from burning charcoal: and he told
Humphry that he would one day come to see how the rotting wood underwent
precisely the same chemical change as the breathing man, and that what is
a process of death and decay in the one is a process of life and health
in the other.
“Indeed,” concluded the old gentleman, “there is, perhaps, no sphere of
knowledge so replete with wonder and beauty as that which unfolds to us
the mysteries of our own existence—no science which gives us greater
wisdom or deeper insight into the constitution of our natures, as well
as that of the elements around us. To comprehend such a subject, even
vaguely, requires an intimacy with almost every branch of learning,
dealing as it does at once with the material and spiritual; while a just
appreciation of the wonders it reveals cannot fail to inspire us with the
highest regard for life, even in its rudest forms, and render us more
keenly alive to suffering than the rest of humanity, from the greater
sense it gives us of the causes of pain, while it arms us, at the same
time, with the means of relieving anguish, restoring health, and often of
prolonging existence.
“Some there are,” he added, “who prefer poetry to philosophy; but
science, Humphry, rightly understood, is merely the translation of the
Great Poem of Nature—that which the Almighty himself conceived when he
designed Creation. There may be high beauty in music, boy; but, to my
mind, there is even higher beauty still in comprehending the phenomena
by which the Creator has fitted us to enjoy it. In the rich glories of
colour there is, certainly, an exquisite feast of visual delight; but
what array of tints, be they ever so beautifully blended—what tracery of
form, be it ever so cunningly put together—can fill the mind with ecstasy
equal to the contemplation of that splendid little translucent globe,
the eye—a crystal world in itself, filled with an infinity of wonders—by
which we are enabled to perceive the light, and to tell one hue from
another? What work of art, however consummate the execution—what picture,
however choice the painting or grand the composition—what architecture,
however commanding the mass or harmonious the details—and what poem, even
though the verse be mellifluent as music on the water, though the imagery
be luminous and profuse as the stars in winter, and the thoughts subtle
as the mountain air, can bear the least comparison, either as regards
the skill of its art, the craft of its design, or the nice adjustment of
its parts, with the organism of the smallest animalcule fashioned by the
Great Artist, Architect, and Poet of All?”
The sentence was barely finished when the sharp report of a gun rattled
amidst the rocks, and Humphry, whose eyes had been turned upward as he
listened to the wonders recounted by the doctor, saw the gull, which but
a moment before he had noticed almost lying on the air, poised on its
white outstretched wings, bound suddenly upwards with a shriek, and the
instant afterwards it tumbled heavily on the crag at Mr. Tonkin’s side.
The old gentleman stretched out his hand and grasped the still warm and
quivering form of the bird. “If the wings of this body had been moved by
some piece of curious mechanism, Humphry,” he said—“if by some cunning
combination of cogwheels, and levers, and springs, it had been made to
beat the air and to rise by clock-work into the sky, how would men have
prized the marvellous apparatus! Monarchs would have given immense wealth
to possess it: and yet the machine would have been, at best, but a clumsy
toy compared with the exquisite arrangement here; for in this wonderful
piece of divine mechanism the force was supplied by means of little
threads of nerves that the unaided eye can scarcely trace—the movement
given by muscles so beautifully elastic that no artificial fabric can
imitate their play—and the bones jointed together so aptly, that when
our wisest engineers wish to get movements in all directions, they can
only copy their arrangement, instead of designing any such hinges for
themselves. Then, again, to give lightness to the whole, these same
bones were filled with air, and the living, flying machine, so made more
buoyant in the thin fluid in which it was destined to soar. But let us
suppose, Humphry, that it might be within the compass of art to reproduce
such an apparatus as this by mechanical means; still what mechanism,
however skilful, could have supplied the wonderful motive power that
lately quickened it? What spring, or arrangement of weights, could
imitate the action of life? Could steam even, or electricity itself, have
moved the wings and guided them, like the subtle principle that stirred
and directed this body only a few moments past? And then, what cunning
engineery could ever have performed the function of the senses? Could
mechanism have made the animal see? Could the galvanic fluid—the most
spiritual, perhaps, of all our motive powers—have made it love its young,
or know when to repair its strength with food? Ah! had the thoughtless
fool who, for wanton sport, Humphry—who for the mere sake of hitting
a moving mark in the air—known and pondered over all this, do you not
think he would have found more pleasure in watching the performance of
all its wondrous functions than in destroying the beautiful principle
which animated them? Had he needed its body for food, hunger would have
excused him. But no! It was simply the petty pleasure—the little spasm
of exultation—that we derive from success in trials of skill which led
him to put an end to the life of the poor bird, that had surely as much
_divine_ right to its place in creation as even a king himself.”
* * * * *
Humphry was overjoyed with the lesson of kindness and wisdom he had
learnt. He had been so enraptured with the knowledge that Mr. Tonkin had
poured into his mind that he sat almost like one entranced, with his
spirit lulled in a dream of bright things he had never heard or thought
of before.
The boy till now had been more smitten with the beauty of creation
than curious as to its mysteries. True, in his romantic visits to the
extremity of the island, as well as to the Mount of St. Michael, he had
been often led to wonder how the huge masses of rock had come there;
and he had many times pondered over the origin of metals, as in his
rambles he had passed the openings of the mines that perforated the
surface of his native country, wondering as he went along why a vein
of one ore should be deposited here, and another there. As he noticed,
too, the Atlantic waves lashing the Land’s End, he would repeatedly
question himself as to what became of the rocks that the sea was for
ever crumbling into sand; and he would form fanciful theories in his own
mind, as to how the detritus of one ancient country became at last the
substratum of some new one. Again, the ebbing and flowing of the ocean
had led his mind to ruminate vaguely upon the mighty pulsation of the
tides, while the sight of the liquid orb of the sun sinking below the
ring of the horizon, away towards the invisible shores of America, had
often turned his thoughts to the revolutions of the planets, and set him
rudely speculating as to the source of the light and the heat of the sun
itself.
Still the youth as yet had found more pleasure in contemplating the
golden glories of sunset, than in seeking to comprehend the wisdom that
designed them. The sea, too, to him had been more an object of grandeur
than a stimulus to thought, while the sight of the rocks had filled his
mind with admiration far oftener than they had quickened it with inquiry.
The mystery, and even the beauty, of the principle of life, however, had
never before been heeded by Humphry; so that, when he heard Mr. Tonkin
relate the many wonders wrought in the changes that were continually
going on in his own frame, the boy was almost overwhelmed with the flood
of new thoughts that poured through his brain, and he felt as if he could
have sat and listened to the old man the long night through.
Accordingly, when Mr. Tonkin came to a conclusion, Humphry begged him to
proceed, saying he had begotten emotions in him that he had never known
before; and he felt as if a burning thirst had come upon him for the
truth, and he could drink of such knowledge for ever without quenching it.
Mr. Tonkin was pleased to find he had stirred the boy’s thoughts so
effectively; and he promised him that, before long, he would place him in
a position where he should be able to pursue the subject as far as his
powers could carry him.
* * * * *
Not many weeks after the above conversation, Humphry, to his exceeding
delight, was articled to Mr. Bingham Borlase, the surgeon and apothecary
of Penzance; and there, alone in his little chamber, at night, he wrote
the following passage in his note-book:
“I have neither riches nor birth to recommend me; yet, if I live, I trust
I shall not be of less service to mankind and to my friends than if I had
been born with these advantages.”[21]