It was late evening when John Penhale left the Helston lawyer’s office.
A fine drizzle was blowing down Coinage Hall Street; thin beams of light
pierced the chinks of house shutters and curtains, barred the blue dusk
with misty orange rays, touched the street puddles with alchemic
fingers, turning them to gold. A chaise clattered uphill, the horses’
steam hanging round them in a kind of lamp-lit nimbus, the post-boy’s
head bent against the rain.
Outside an inn an old soldier with a wooden leg and very drunk stood
wailing a street ballad, both eyes shut, impervious to the fact that his
audience had long since left him. Penhale turned into “The Angel,” went
on straight into the dining-room and sat down in the far corner with the
right side of his face to the wall. He did so from habit. A trio of
squireens in mud-bespattered riding coats sat near the door and made
considerable noise. They had been hare hunting and were rosy with sharp
air and hard riding. They greeted every appearance of the ripe serving
maid with loud whoops and passed her from arm to arm. She protested and
giggled. Opposite them a local shop-keeper was entertaining a creditor
from Plymouth to the best bottle the town afforded. The company was made
up by a very young ensign of Light Dragoons bound to Winchester to join
his regiment for the first time, painfully self-conscious and aloof, in
his new scarlet. Penhale beat on the table with his knife. The maid
escaped from the festive sportsmen and brought him a plate of boiled
beef and onions. As she was about to set the plate before him one of the
hare hunters lost his balance and fell to the ground with a loud crash
of his chair and a yell of delight from his companions.
The noise caused Penhale to turn his head. The girl emitted an “ach” of
horror, dropped the plate on the table and recoiled as though some one
had struck her. Penhale pulled the plate towards him, picked up his
knife and fork and quietly began to eat. He was quite used to these
displays. The girl backed away, staring in a sort of dreadful
fascination. A squireen caught at her wrist calling her his “sweet
slut,” but she wrenched herself free and ran out of the door.
She did not come near Penhale again; the tapster brought him the rest of
his meal. Penhale went on eating, outwardly unmoved; he had been subject
to these outbursts, off and on, for eighteen years.
Eighteen years previously myriads of birds had been driven south by the
hard winter upcountry. One early morning, after a particularly bitter
snap, a hind had run in to say that the pond on Polmenna Downs, above
the farm, was covered with wild duck. Penhale took an old flintlock
fowling piece of his father’s which had been hanging neglected over the
fireplace for years, and made for Polmenna, loading as he went.
As the hind had said, the pool was covered with duck. Penhale crouched
under cover of some willows, brought the five-foot gun to his shoulder,
and blazed into the brown.
An hour later a fisherman setting rabbit snares in a hedge above the
Luddra saw what he described as “a red man” fighting through the scrub
and bramble that fringed the cliff. It was John Penhale; the gun had
exploded, blowing half his face away. Penhale had no intention of
throwing himself over the Luddra, he was blind with blood and pain. The
fisherman led him home with difficulty, and then, being of a practical
mind, returned to the pond to pick up the duck.
An old crone who had the reputation of being a “white witch” was
summoned to Bosula and managed to stop the bleeding by means of
incantations, cobwebs and dung—principally dung. The hind was sent on
horseback to Penzance to fetch Doctor Spargo.
Doctor Spargo had been making a night of it with his friend the
Collector of Customs and a stray ship captain who was peculiarly gifted
in the brewing of rum toddies. The doctor was put to bed at dawn by his
household staff, and when he was knocked up again at eleven he was not
the best pleased. He bade his housekeeper tell the Bosula messenger that
he was out—called out to a confinement in Morvah parish and was not
expected back till evening—and turned over on his pillow.
The housekeeper returned, agitated, to say that the messenger refused to
move. He knew the doctor was in, he said; the groom had told him so.
Furthermore if Spargo did not come to his master’s assistance without
further ado he would smash every bone in his body. Doctor Spargo rolled
out of bed, and opening the window treated the messenger to samples from
a vocabulary enriched by a decade of army life. The messenger listened
to the tirade unmoved and, as Doctor Spargo cursed, it was borne in on
him that he had seen this outrageous fellow before. Presently he
remembered when; he had seen him at Gwithian Feast, a canvas jacket on,
tossing parish stalwarts as a terrier tosses rats. The messenger was
Bohenna, the wrestler. Doctor Spargo closed both the tirade and the
window abruptly and bawled for his boots.
The pair rode westwards, the truculent hind cantering on the heels of
the physician’s cob, laying into it with an ash plant whenever it showed
symptoms of flagging. The cob tripped over a stone in Bucca’s Pass and
shied at a goat near Trewoofe, on each occasion putting its master
neatly over its head. By the time Spargo arrived at Bosula he was
shaking worse than ever. He demanded more rum to steady his hand, but
there was none. He pulled himself together as best he could and set to
work, trembling and wheezing.
Spargo was a retired army surgeon; he had served his apprenticeship in
the shambles of Oudenarde and Malplaquet among soldiers who had no
option but to submit to his ministrations. His idea was to patch men up
so that they might fight another day, but without regard to their
appearance. He sewed the tatters of John Penhale’s face together
securely but roughly, pocketed his fee and rode home, gasping, to his
toddies.
John Penhale was of fine frame and hearty. In a week or two he was out
and about; in a month he had resumed the full business of the farm, but
his face was not a pleasant sight. The left side was merely marked with
a silvery burn on the cheek bone, but the right might have been dragged
by a harrow; it was ragged scars from brow to chin. The eye had gone and
part of an ear, the broken jaw had set concave and his cheek had split
into a long harelip, revealing a perpetual snarl of teeth underneath. He
hid the eye socket with a black patch, but the lower part of his face he
could not mask.
Three months after his accident he rode into Penzance market. If one
woman squeaked at the sight of him so did a dozen, and children ran to
their mothers blubbering that the devil had come for them. Even the men,
though sympathetic, would not look him in the face, but stared at their
boots while they talked and were plainly relieved when he moved away.
John never went in again, unless driven by the direst necessity, and
then hurried out the moment his affairs were transacted. For despite his
bulk and stoic bearing he was supersensitive, and the horror his
appearance awoke cut him to the raw. Thus at the age of twenty-three he
became a bitter recluse, a prisoner within the bounds of his farm,
Bosula, cared for by a widow and her idiot daughter, mixing only with
his few hinds and odd farmers and fishermen that chance drove his way.
He had come to Helston on business, to hear the terms of his Aunt
Selina’s will, and now that he had heard them he was eager to be quit of
the place. The serving girl’s behavior had stung him like a whip lash
and the brawling of the drunken squires jarred on his every nerve. He
could have tossed the three of them out of the window if he liked, but
he quailed at the thought of their possible mockery. They put their
heads together and whispered, hiccoughing and sniggering. They were, as
a fact, planning a descent on a certain lady in Pigs Street, but John
Penhale was convinced that they were laughing at him. The baby ensign
had a derisive curl in his lip, John was sure . . . he could feel the
two shop-keepers’ eyes turned his way . . . it was unbearable.
Sneers, jeers, laughter . . . he hated them all, everybody. He would get
out, go home to Bosula, to sanctuary. He had a sudden longing for
Bosula, still and lonely among the folding hills . . . his own place. He
drank off his ale, paid the score and went out to see what the weather
was like.
The wind had chopped around easterly and the rain had stopped. The moon
was up breasting through flying ridges of cloud like a naked white
swimmer in the run of surf. Penhale found an ostler asleep on a pile of
straw, roused him and told him to saddle his horse, mounted and rode
westwards out of town.
He passed a lone pedestrian near Antron and a string of pack horses
under Breage Church, but for the rest he had the road to himself. He
ambled gently, considering the terms of his aunt’s will. She had left
him her strong farm of Tregors, in the Kerrier Hundred, lock, stock and
barrel, on the one condition that he married within twelve months. In
default of his marrying it was to pass to her late husband’s cousin,
Carveth Donnithorne, ship chandler of Falmouth.
John Penhale paid silent tribute to his aunt’s cleverness. She disliked
the smug and infallible Donnithorne intensely, and in making him her
next heir had passed over four nearer connections with whom she was on
good terms. Her reasons for this curious conduct were that she was a
Penhale by birth with intense family pride and John was the last of her
line. A trivial dispute between John and Carveth over a coursing match
she had fostered with all the cunning that was in her till the men’s
dislike of each other amounted to plain hatred. She knew John would do
anything in his power to keep Donnithorne out of the Tregors’ rents. She
would drive him into matrimony, and then, with reasonable luck, the line
would go on and Penhales rule at Bosula forever and ever.
John laughed grimly at the thought of his aunt—sly old devil! She had
married and left home before he was born, and he had not seen her a
score of times in his life, but she was a vivid memory. He could see her
now riding into Bosula, a-pillion behind one of her farm hands, her cold
blue eyes taking in every detail of the yard, and hear her first words
of greeting to her brother after a year’s separation.
“Jan, thou mazed fool, the trash wants cutting back down to Long meadow,
and there’s a cow coughing—bring her in to once and I’ll physick her.”
The cow came in at once; everybody obeyed Selina without question or
delay both at Bosula and Tregors. Her husband, Jabez Donnithorne, was
the merest cipher whose existence she barely acknowledged.
On one occasion Jabez, returning very drunk from Helston market, having
neglected to buy the heifers he was sent after, Selina personally
chastised him with a broom handle and bolted him in the pig-sty for the
night, where he was overlaid by a sow and suffered many indignities.
That cured Jabez.
Selina never stopped long at Bosula—three days at the most—but in that
time she would have inspected the place from bound to bound, set
everybody to rights, and dictated the policy of the farm for twelve
months to come. As she had ruled her brother in boyhood she ruled him to
the day of his death. She was fond of him, but only because he was head
of the family. His wife she looked on merely as a machine for producing
male Penhales. She would see to it that on her death Tregors fell to her
family, and then, doubly endowed, the Penhales of Bosula would be
squires and gentlefolk in the land.
When, after many years, John remained the only child, Selina bit back
her disappointment and concentrated on the boy. She insisted on his
being sent to Helston Grammar School, paid half the cost of his
education, kept him in plentiful pocket money and saw that his clothes
were of the best. He was a handsome, upstanding lad and did her credit.
She was more than satisfied; he would go far, she told herself; make a
great match. Then came John’s accident. Selina made no move until he was
out and about again, and then rode over to assess the damage. She
stalked suddenly into the kitchen one morning, surveyed the ruins of her
nephew’s comely face, outwardly unmoved, and then stalked out again
without a word of consolation or regret, barked instructions that her
horse was to be baited and ready in two hours and turned up the hill.
Up the hill she strode, over Polmenna Downs and on to that haunt of her
girlhood, the Luddra Head. Perched high on its stone brows, the west
wind in her cloak and hair, she stared, rigid and unseeing, over the
glitter of the Channel. She was back in the two hours, but her eyelids
were red—for the last time in her life Selina had been crying.
She slept at the Angel at Helston that night, visited a certain
disreputable attorney next morning and left his office with the
Tregellas mortgage in her pocket.
Mr. Hugh Tregellas of Tregellas had four daughters and a mania for
gambling. He did not fling his substance away on horse-racing, cock or
man fights—indeed he lifted up his voice loudly against the immorality
of these pursuits—he took shares in companies formed to extract gold
from sea water, in expeditions to discover the kingdom of Prester John,
and such like. Any rogue with an oiled tongue and a project sufficiently
preposterous could win a hearing from the Squire. But though much money
went out few ships came home, and the four Miss Tregellases sat in the
parlor, their dowries dwindling to nothing, and waited for the suitors
who did not come.
All this was well known to their neighbor, Selina Donnithorne. She knew
that when the four Miss Tregellases were not in the parlor playing at
ladies they were down on their knee bones scrubbing floors. She even had
it on sound authority that the two youngest forked out the cow-byre
every morning.
She called on the Squire one afternoon, going to Tregellas in state,
dressed in her best, and driving in a cabriolet she had purchased dirt
cheap from a broken-down roisterer at Bodmin Assizes. She saw Mr.
Tregellas in his gunless gun-room and came to the point at once. She
wanted his youngest daughter for John Penhale. Mr. Tregellas flushed
with anger and opened his mouth to reply, but Selina gave him no
opportunity. Her nephew was already a man of moderate means, she said,
living on his own good farm in the Penwith Hundred, with an income of
nearly one hundred pounds per annum into the bargain. When she died he
would have Tregors also. He was well educated, a fine figure of a man
and sound in wind and limb, if a trifle cut about one side of the
face—one side only—but then, after all these wars, who was not?
Here Mr. Tregellas managed to interpose a spluttering refusal. Selina
nodded amiably. She ventured to remind Mr. Tregellas that since
Arethusina’s dowry had sunk off Cape St. Vincent with the Fowey
privateer, _God’s Providence_, her chances of a distinguished marriage
were negligible—also that she, Selina, was now mortgagee of Tregellas
and the mortgage fell due at Michaelmas.
Mr. Tregellas was a gambler. As long as there was one chance left to
him, no matter how long, the future was radiant. He laughed at Selina.
He had large interests in a company for trading with the King of certain
South Sea atolls, he said, the lagoons of which were paved with pearl.
It had been estimated that this enterprise could not fail to enrich him
at a rate of less than eleven hundred and fifty-three per centum. A ship
bearing the first fruits was expected in Bristol almost any day now, was
in fact overdue, but these nor’-easterly head winds . . . Mr. Tregellas
saw Selina to the door, his good humor restored, promising her that long
before Michaelmas he would not only be paying off the mortgage on
Tregellas, but offering her a price for Tregors as well.
Selina rocked home in her cabriolet no whit perturbed by the Squire’s
optimism. Nor’-easterly head winds, indeed! . . .
Three months from that date Mr. Tregellas returned the call. Selina was
feeding ducks in the yard when he came. She emptied her apron, led the
Squire into the kitchen and gave him a glass of cowslip wine—which he
needed.
“Come to offer me a price for Tregors?” she asked.
The old gambler blinked his weak eyes pathetically, like a child
blinking back tears, and buried his face in his hands. Selina did not
twit him further. There was no need. She had him where she wanted him.
She smiled to herself. So the pearl ship had gone the deep road of the
Fowey privateer—and all the other ventures. She clicked her tongue,
“Tchuc—tchuc!” and offered him another glass of wine.
“I’ll send for John Penhale to-morrow,” said she. “I’ll tell him that if
he don’t take your maid he shan’t have Tregors. You tell your maid if
she don’t take my John I’ll put you all out on the road come Michaelmas.
Now get along wid ’ee.”
Arethusina came over to Tregors to pay Mrs. Donnithorne a week’s visit,
and John was angled from his retreat by the bait of a roan colt he had
long coveted and which his aunt suddenly expressed herself willing to
sell.
The sun was down when he reached the farm; Selina met him in the yard,
and leading him swiftly into the stables explained the lay of the land
while he unsaddled his horse, but she did not tell him what pressure had
been brought to bear on the youngest Miss Tregellas.
John was amazed and delighted. Mr. Hugh Tregellas’ daughter willing to
marry him, a common farmer! Pretty too; he had seen her once, before his
accident, sitting in the family pew in Cury church—plump, fluffy little
thing with round blue eyes, like a kitten. This was incredible luck!
He was young then and hot-blooded, sick of the loneliness of Bosula and
the haphazard ministrations of the two slatterns. He was for dashing
into the house and starting his love-making there and then, but Selina
held him, haggling like a fish wife over the price of the roan. When he
at length got away from her it was thick dusk. It was dark in the
kitchen, except for the feeble glow of the turf fire, Selina explaining
that she had unaccountably run out of tallow dips—the boy should fetch
some from Helston on the morrow.
Arethusina came downstairs dressed in her eldest sister’s bombazine
dress, borrowed for the occasion. She was not embarrassed; she, like
John, was eager for change, weary of the threadbare existence and
unending struggle at home, of watching her sisters grow warped and
bitter. She saw ahead, saw four gray old women, dried kernels rattling
in the echoing shell of Tregellas House, never speaking, hating each
other and all things, doddering on to the blank end, four gray nuns
cloistered by granite pride. Anything were better than that. She would
sob off to sleep swearing to take any chance rather than come to that,
and here was a chance. John Penhale stood for life full and flowing in
place of want and decay. He might only be a yeoman, but he would have
two big farms and could keep her in comfort. She would have children,
she hoped, silk dresses and a little lap dog. Some day she might even
visit London.
She entered the kitchen in good heart and saw John standing before the
fire, a vague but imposing silhouette. A fine figure of a man, she
thought, and her heart lifted still higher. She dropped him a
mischievous curtsey. He took her hand, laughing, a deep, pleasant laugh.
They sat on the settle at the back of the kitchen and got on famously.
John had barely spoken to any sort of woman for a year, leave alone a
pretty woman; he thought her wonderful. Arethusina had not seen a
presentable man for double that period; all her stored coquetry bubbled
out. John was only twenty-four, the girl but nineteen; they were like
two starved children sitting down to a square meal.
The brass-studded grandfather clock tick-tocked, in its corner; the
yellow house cat lay crouched on the hearth watching the furze kindling
for mice; Selina nodded in her rocker before the fire, subconsciously
keeping time with the beats of the clock. A whinny of treble laughter
came from the settle, followed by John’s rumbling bass, then
whisperings.
Selina beamed at her vis-à-vis, the yellow cat. She was elated at the
success of her plans. It had been a good idea to let the girl get to
know John before she could see him. The blow would be softened when
morning came. In Selina’s experience obstacles that appeared
insurmountable at night dwindled to nothing in the morning light; one
came at them with a fresh heart. She was pleased with Arethusina. The
girl was healthy, practical and ambitious—above all, ambitious. She
might not be able to do much with John, marred as he was, but their
children would get all the advantages of the mother’s birth, Selina was
sure. The chariot of the Penhales would roll onwards, steered by small,
strong hands.
She glanced triumphantly at the pair on the settle and curled her thin
lips. Then she rose quietly and slipped off to bed. The yellow cat
remained, waiting its prey. Arethusina and John did not notice Selina’s
departure, they were engrossed in each other. The girl had the farmer at
her finger ends and enjoyed the experience; she played on his senses as
on a keyboard. He loomed above her on the settle, big, eager, boyish,
with a passionate break in his laughter. She kept him guessing, yielded
and retreated in turn, thrilled to feel how easily he responded to her
flying moods. What simpletons men were!—and what fun!
John shifted nearer up the settle, his great hot hand closed timorously
over hers; she snatched it free and drew herself up.
“La! sir, you forget yourself, I think. I will beg you to remember I am
none of your farm wenches! I—I . . .” She shook with indignation.
John trembled; he had offended, lost her. . . . O fool! He tried to
apologize and stuttered ridiculously. He _had_ lost her! The prospect of
facing a lifetime without this delectable creature, on whom he had not
bestowed a moment’s thought three hours before, suddenly became
intolerable. He bit his nails with rage at his impetuosity. So close
beside him, yet gone forever! Had she gone already? Melted into air?
. . . A dream after all? He glanced sideways. No, she was still there;
he could see the dim pallor of her face and neck against the darkness,
the folds of the bombazine dress billowing out over the edge of the
settle like a great flower.
A faint sweet waft of perfume touched his nostrils. Something stirred
beside him; he looked down. Her hand . . . her hand was creeping back up
the settle towards him! He heard a sound and looked up again; she was
crying! . . . Stay, _was_ she crying? No, by the Lord in heaven she was
not; she was _laughing_! In a flash he was on his feet, had crushed her
in his arms, as though to grasp the dear dream before it could fade, and
hold it to him forever. He showered kisses on her mouth, throat,
forehead—anywhere. She did not resist, but turned her soft face up to
his, laughing still. Tregors and Bosula were safe, safe for both of them
and all time.
At that moment the yellow cat sprang, and in so doing toppled a clump of
furze kindling over the embers. The dry bush caught and flared, roaring,
up the chimney. The kitchen turned in a second from black to red, and
John felt the youngest Miss Tregellas go suddenly rigid in his arms, her
blue eyes stared at him big with horror, her full lips were drawn tight
and colorless across her clenched teeth. He kissed her once more, but it
was like kissing the dead.
Then she came to life, struggled frantically, battered at his mouth with
both fists, giving little “Oh! Ohs!” like a trapped animal mad with
pain. He let her go, amazed.
She fled across the kitchen, crashing against the table in her blind
hurry, whipped round, stared at him again and then ran upstairs, panting
and sobbing. He heard the bolt of her door click, and then noises as
though she was piling furniture against it.
John turned about, still amazed, and jumped back startled. Who was that?
. . . that ghoul’s mask lit by flickers of red flame, snarling across
the room? Then he remembered it was himself of course, himself in the
old round mirror. After his accident he had smashed every looking-glass
at home and had forgotten what he looked like. . . . During the few
hours of fool’s paradise he had forgotten about his face altogether
. . . supposed the girl knew . . . had been told. The fatal furze bush
burnt out, leaving him in merciful darkness.
John opened the door, stumbled across to the stable, saddled his horse
and, riding hard, was at Bosula with dawn.
When the farm girl went to call Arethusina next morning she found the
room empty and the bed had not been slept in. Selina sent to the Squire
at once, but the youngest Miss Tregellas had not returned. They
discovered her eventually in an old rab pit halfway between the two
houses, her neck broken; she had fallen over the edge in the dark. It
was supposed she was trying to find her way home.