Christmas passed merrily at Bosula that year. Martha was an authority on
“feasten” rites and delicacies, and Christmas was the culmination. Under
her direction the brothers festooned the kitchen with ropes of holly and
ivy, and hung the “kissing bush”—two barrel hoops swathed in
evergreens—from the middle beam.
Supper was the principal event of the day, a prodigious spread; goose
giblet pie, squab pie made of mutton, raisins and onions, and
queer-shaped saffron cakes, the whole washed down with draughts of
“eggy-hot,” an inspiring compound of eggs, hot beer, sugar and rum,
poured from jug to jug till it frothed over.
The Bosula household sat down at one board and gorged themselves till
they could barely breathe. Upon them in this state came the St. Gwithian
choir, accompanied by the parish fiddler, “Jiggy” Dan, and a score or so
of hangers on. They sang the sweet and simple old “curls” of the West
Country, “I saw three ships come sailin’ in,” “Come and I will sing
you,” “The first good joy that Mary had,” and
“Go the wayst out, Child Jesus,
Go the wayst out to play;
Down by God’s Holy Well
I see three pretty children
As ever tongue can tell.”
Part singing is a natural art in Cornwall. The Gwithian choir sang well,
reverently and without strain. Teresa, full-fed after long moderation,
was in melting mood. The carols made her feel pleasantly tearful and
religious. She had not been to church since the unfortunate affair with
the curate, but determined she would go the very next Sunday and make a
rule of it.
She gave the choir leader a silver crown and ordered eggy-hot to be
served round. The choir’s eyes glistened. Eggy-hot seldom came their
way; usually they had to be content with cider.
Martha rounded up the company. The apple trees must be honored or they
would withhold their fruit in the coming year. Everybody adjourned to
the orchard, Martha carrying a jug of cider, Bohenna armed with the
flintlock, loaded nearly as full as himself. Wany alone was absent; she
was slipping up the valley to the great barrow to hear the Spriggans,
the gnome-miners, sing their sad carols as was the custom of a Christmas
night.
The Bosula host grouped, lantern-lit, round the king tree of the
orchard; Martha dashed the jug against the trunk and pronounced her
incantation:
“Health to thee, good apple tree!
Hatsful, packsful, great bushel-bags full!
Hurrah and fire off the gun.”
Everybody cheered. Bohenna steadied himself and pulled the trigger.
There was a deafening roar, a yard-long tongue of flame spurted from the
muzzle, Bohenna tumbled over backwards and Jiggy Dan, uttering an
appalling shriek, fell on his face and lay still.
The scared spectators stooped over the fiddler.
“Dead is a?”
“Ess, dead sure ’nough—dead as last year, pore soul.”
Panegyrics on the deceased were delivered.
“A brilliant old drinker a was.”
“Ess, an’ a clean lively one to touch the strings.”
“Shan’t see his like no more.”
“His spotty sow coming to her time too—an’ a brearly loved roast
sucking pig, the pretty old boy.”
Bohenna sat up in the grass and sniffed.
“There’s a brear strong smell o’ burning, seem me?”
The company turned on him reproachfully. “Thou’st shotten Jiggy Dan.
Shot en dead an’ a-cold. Didst put slugs in gun by mistake, Ned?”
Bohenna scratched his head. “Couldn’t say rightly this time o’ night
. . . maybe I did . . . but, look ’ee, there wasn’t no offense meant;
’twas done in good part, as you might say.” He sniffed again and stared
at the corpse of his victim.
“Slugs or no seem me the poor angel’s more hot than cold. Lord love,
he’s afire! . . . The wad’s catched in his coat!”
That such was the case became painfully apparent to the deceased at the
same moment. He sprang to his feet and bounded round and round the
group, uttering ghastly howls and belaboring himself behind in a
fruitless endeavor to extinguish the smoldering cloth. The onlookers
were helpless with laughter; they leaned against each other and sobbed.
Teresa in particular shook so violently it hurt her.
Somebody suggested a bucket of water, between chokes, but nobody
volunteered to fetch it; to do so would be to miss the fun.
“The stream,” hiccoughed Bohenna, holding his sides. “Sit ’ee down in
stream, Dan, my old beauty, an’ quench thyself.”
A loud splash in the further darkness announced that the unhappy
musician had taken his advice.
The apple trees fully secured for twelve months, the party returned to
the kitchen, but the incident of Dan had dissipated the somewhat pious
tone of the preceding events. Teresa, tears trickling down her cheeks,
set going a fresh round of eggy-hot. Ortho pounced on Tamsin Eva, the
prettiest girl in the room, carried her bodily under the kissing bush
and saluted her again and again. Other men and boys followed suit. The
girls fled round the kitchen in mock consternation, pursued by flushed
swains, were captured and embraced, giggling and sighing. Jiggy Dan,
sniffing hot liquor as a pointer sniffs game, limped, dripping, in from
the stream, was given an old petticoat of Martha’s to cover his
deficiencies, a pot of rum, propped up in a corner and told to fiddle
for dear life. The men, headed by Ortho, cleared the kitchen of
furniture, and then everybody danced old heel and toe country dances,
skipped, bowed, sidled, passed up and down the middle and twirled around
till the sweat shone like varnish on their scarlet faces.
The St. Gwithian choir flung themselves into it heart and soul. They
were expected at Monks Cove to sing carols, were overdue by some hours,
but they had forgotten all about that.
Teresa danced with the best, with grace and agility extraordinary in a
woman of her bulk. She danced one partner off his feet and all but
stunned another against the corner of the dresser, bringing most of the
crockery crashing to earth. She then produced that relic of her
vagabondage, the guitar, and joined forces with Jiggy Dan.
The fun became furious. The girls shook the tumbled hair from their
eyes, laughed roguishly; the men whooped and thumped the floor with
their heavy boots. Jiggy Dan, constantly primed with rum by the
attentive Martha, scraped and sawed at his fiddle, beating time with his
toe. Teresa plucked at the guitar till it droned and buzzed like a hive
of melodious bees. Occasionally she sang ribald snatches. She was in
high feather, the reaction from nine months’ abstinence. The kitchen,
lit by a pile of dry furze blazing in the open hearth, grew hotter and
hotter.
The dancers stepped and circled in a haze of dust, steaming like
overdriven cattle. Eli alone was out of tune with his surroundings. The
first effects of the drink had worn off, leaving him with a sour mouth
and slightly dizzy. The warmer grew the others, the colder he became.
He scowled at the junketers from his priggish altitude and blundered
bedward to find it already occupied by the St. Gwithian blacksmith, who,
dark with the transferable stains of his toil, lay sprawled across it,
boots where his head should have been. Eli rolled the unconscious
artificer to the floor (an act which in no way disturbed that worthy’s
slumbers) and turned in, sick and sulky.
With Ortho, on the other hand, things were never better. He had not
drunk enough to cloud him and he was getting a lot of fun out of Tamsin
Eva and her “shiner.” Tamsin, daughter of the parish clerk, was a
bronze-haired, slender creature with a skin like cream and roses and a
pretty, timid manner. Ortho, satiated with swarthy gypsy charmers,
thought her lovely and insisted upon dancing with her for the evening.
That her betrothed was present and violently jealous only added piquancy
to the affair. The girl was not happy—Ortho frightened her—but she had
not enough strength of mind to resist him. She shot appealing glances at
her swain, but the boy was too slow in his movements and fuddled with
unaccustomed rum. The sober and sprightly Ortho cut the girl out from
under his nose time and time again. Teresa, extracting appalling
discords from the guitar, noted this by-play with gratification; this
tiger cub of hers promised good sport.
Towards one o’clock the supply of spirituous impulse having given out,
the pace slackened down. Chastened husbands were led home by their
wives. Single men tottered out of doors to get a breath of fresh air and
did not return, were discovered at dawn peacefully slumbering under
mangers, in hen roosts and out-of-the-way corners. Tamsin Eva’s
betrothed was one of these. He was entering the house fired with the
intention of wresting his lass from Ortho and taking her home when
something hit him hard on the point of the jaw and all the lights went
out. He woke up next morning far from clear as to whether he had
blundered into the stone door post or somebody’s ready fist. At all
events it was Ortho who took Tamsin home.
Teresa fell into a doze and had an uncomfortable dream. All the people
she disliked came and made faces at her, people she had forgotten ages
ago and who in all decency should have forgotten her. They flickered out
of the mists, distorted but recognizable, clutched at her with hooked
fingers, pressed closer and closer, leering malevolently. Teresa was
dismayed. Not a friend anywhere! She lolled forward, moaning, “John! Oh,
Jan!” Jiggy Dan’s elbow hit her cheek and she woke up to an otherwise
empty kitchen filled with the reek of burnt pilchard oil, a dead hearth,
and cold night air pouring in through the open door. She shuddered,
rubbed her sleepy lids and staggered, yawning, to bed.
Jiggy Dan, propped up in the corner, fiddled on, eyes sealed, mind
oblivious, arm sawing mechanically.
They found him in the morning on the yard muck heap, Martha’s petticoat
over his head, fiddle clasped to his bosom, back to back with a snoring
sow.
* * * * *
The Christmas festivities terminated on Twelfth Night with the visit of
goose dancers from Monks Cove, the central figure of whom was a lad
wearing the hide and horns of a bullock attended by other boys dressed
in female attire. Horse-play and crude buffoonery was the feature rather
than dancing, and Teresa got some more of her crockery smashed.
Next morning Eli went to Helston for his last term and Ortho took off
his coat.
When Eli came home at midsummer he could hardly credit his eyes. Ortho
had performed miracles. Very wisely he had not attempted to fight back
the moor everywhere, but had concentrated, and the fields he had put in
crop were done thoroughly, deep-plowed, well manured and evenly
sown—Penaluna could not make a better show.
The brothers walked over the land on the evening of Eli’s return;
everywhere the young crops stood up thick and healthy, pushing forwards
to fruition. Ortho glowed with justifiable pride, talked farming
eagerly. He and Ned had given the old place a hammering, he said. By the
Holy they had! Mended the buildings, whitewashed the orchard trees,
grubbed, plowed, packed ore-weed and sea-sand, harrowed and hoed from
dawn-blink to star-wink, day in, day out—Sundays included. But they’d
get it all back—oh, aye, and a hundredfold.
Eli had been in the right; agriculture was the thing—the good old soil!
You put in a handful and picked up a bushel in a few months.
Cattle—pah! One cow produced but one calf per annum and that was not
marketable for three or four years. No—wheat, barley and oats forever!
Now Eli was home they could hold all they’d got and reclaim a field or
so a year. In next to no time they’d have the whole place waving yellow
from bound to bound. Ortho even had designs on the original moor, saw no
reason why they should not do their own milling in time—they had ample
water power. He glowed with enthusiasm. Eli’s cautious mind discounted
much of these grandiose schemes, but his heart went out to Ortho; the
mellowing fields before him had not been lightly won.
Ortho was as lean as a herring-bone, sweated down to bare muscle and
sinew. His finger nails were broken off short, his hands scarred and
calloused, his face was torn with brambles and leathern with exposure.
He had fought a good fight and was burning for more. Oh, splendid
brother!
Ned Bohenna was loud in Ortho’s praise. He was a marvel. He was quicker
in the uptake than even John had been and no work was too hard for him.
The old hind was most optimistic. They had seeded a fine area and crops
were looking famous. Come three years at this pace the farm would be
back where it was at John’s death, the pick of the parish.
For the rest, there was not much news. Martha had been having the cramps
severely of late and Wany was getting whister than ever. Said she was
betrothed to a Spriggan earl who lived in the big barrow. He had
promised to marry her as soon as he could get his place enlarged—he,
he!
There had been a sea battle fought with gaffs and oars off the Gazells
between Jacky’s George and a couple of Porgwarra boats. Both sides
accused each other of poaching lobster pots. Jacky’s George sank a
Porgwarra boat by dropping a lump of ballast through her—and then
rescued the crew. They had seen a lot of Pyramus Herne, altogether too
much of Pyramus Herne. He had come down with a bigger mob of horses and
donkeys than usual and grazed them all over the farm—after dark. Seeing
the way he had befriended Ortho, they could not well say much to him,
especially as they had grass to spare at present; but it could not go on
like that.
Eli buckled to beside the others. They got the hay in, and, while
waiting for the crops to ripen, pulled down a bank (throwing two small
fields into one), rebuilt a couple more, cleaned out the orchard, hoed
the potatoes and put a new roof on the stables. They were out of bed at
five every morning and into it at eight of an evening, dead-beat, soiled
with earth and sweat, stained with sun and wind. They worked like
horses, ate like wolves and slept like sloths.
Ortho led everywhere. He was first afoot in the morning, last to bed at
night. His quick mind discerned the easiest way through difficulties,
but when hard labor was inevitable he sprang at it with a cheer. His
voice rang like a bugle round Bosula, imperious yet merry. He was at
once a captain and a comrade.
Under long days of sunshine and gentle drenches of rain the crops went
on from strength to strength. It would be a bumper year.
Then came the deluge. Wany, her uncanny weather senses prickling,
prophesied it two days in advance. Bohenna was uneasy, but Ortho,
pointing to the serene sky, laughed at their fears. The next day the
heat became oppressive, and he was not so sure. He woke at ten o’clock
that night to a terrific clap of thunder, sat up in bed, and watched the
little room flashing from black to white from the winks of lightning,
his own shadow leaping gigantic across the illuminated wall; heard the
rain come up the valley, roaring through the treetops like surf, break
in a cataract over the Owls’ House and sweep on. “This’ll stamp us out
. . . beat us flat,” he muttered, and lay wondering what he should do,
if there was anything to do, and as he wondered merciful sleep came upon
him, weary body dragging the spirit down with it into oblivion.
The rain continued with scarcely less violence for a week, held off for
two days and came down again. August crept out blear-eyed and
draggle-tailed.
The Penhales saved a few potatoes and about one-fifth of the
cereals—not enough to provide them with daily bread; they would
actually have to buy meal in the coming year. Bohenna, old child of the
soil, took the calamity with utter calm; he was inured to these bitter
caprices of Nature. Ortho shrugged his shoulders and laughed. It was
nobody’s fault, he said; they had done all they could; Penaluna had
fared no better. The only course was to whistle and go at it again; that
sort of thing could hardly happen twice running. He whistled and went at
it again, at once, breaking stone out of a field towards Polmenna, but
Eli knew that for all his brave talk the heart was out of him. There was
a lassitude in his movements; he was merely making a show of courage.
Gradually he slowed down. He began to visit the Kiddlywink of a night,
and lay abed long after sunrise.
At the end of October a fresh bolt fell out of the blue. The Crowan tin
works, in which the Penhale money was invested, suddenly closed down. It
turned out that they had been running at a loss for the last eight
months in the hope of striking a new lode, a debt of three hundred
pounds had been incurred, the two other shareholders were without
assets, so, under the old Cost Book system current in Cornish mining,
Teresa was liable for the whole sum.
She was at first aghast, then furious; swore she’d have the law of the
defaulters and hastened straightway into Penzance to set her lawyer at
them. Fortunately her lawyer was honest; she had no case and he told her
so. When she returned home she was confronted by her sons; they demanded
to know how they stood. She turned sulky and refused details, but they
managed to discover that there was not five pounds in the house, that
there would be no more till the Tregors rent came in, and even then was
pledged to money-lenders and shop-keepers—but as to the extent of her
liabilities they could not find out. She damned them as a pair of
ungrateful whelps and went to bed as black as thunder.
Ortho had a rough idea as to the houses Teresa patronized, so next day
the brothers went to town, and after a door to door visitation
discovered that she owed in the neighborhood of four hundred pounds!
Four plus three made seven—seven hundred pounds! What was it to come
from? The Penhales had no notion. By selling off all their stock they
might possibly raise two hundred. Two hundred, what was that? A great
deal less than half. Their mother would spend the rest of her life in a
debtor’s prison! Oh, unutterable shame!
They doddered about Penzance, sunk in misery. Then it occurred to Ortho
to consult the lawyer. These quill-driving devils were as cunning as dog
foxes; what they couldn’t get round or over they’d wriggle through.
The lawyer put them at their ease at once. Mortgage Bosula or Tregors
. . . nothing simpler. Both strong farms should produce the required
sum—and more. He explained the system, joined his finger-tips and
beamed at the pair over the top.
The brothers shifted on their chairs and pronounced for Tregors
simultaneously. The lawyer nodded. Very well then. As soon as he got
their mother’s sanction he would set to work. Ortho promised to settle
his mother and the two left.
Ortho had no difficulty with Teresa. He successfully used the hollow
threat of a debtor’s prison to her, for she had been in a lock-up
several times during her roving youth and had no wish to return.
Besides she was sick of debt, of being pestered for money here, there
and everywhere.
She gave her consent readily enough, and within a fortnight was called
upon to sign.
Carveth Donnithorne, the ever-prospering ship chandler of Falmouth, was
the mortgagee; nine hundred and fifty pounds was the sum he paid, and
very good value it was.
Teresa settled the Crowan liabilities with the lawyer, and, parading
round the town, squared all her other accounts in a single afternoon.
She did it in style, swept into the premises of those who had pressed
her, planked her money down, damned them for a pack of thieves and
leeches, swore that was the end of her custom and stamped majestically
out.
She finished up in a high state of elation. She had told a number of her
enemies exactly what she thought of them, was free of debt and had a
large sum of ready money in hand again—two hundred and fifty pounds in
three canvas bags, the whole contained in a saddle wallet.
Opposite the market cross she met an old crony, a retired ship captain
by the name of Jeremiah Gish, and told him in detail what she had said
to the shop-keepers. The old gentleman listened with all his ears. He
admired Teresa immensely. He admired her big buxom style, her strength,
her fire, but most of all he revered her for her language. Never in
forty years seafaring had he met with such a flow of vituperation as
Teresa could loose when roused, such range, such spontaneity, such
blistering invention. It drew him like music. He caught her
affectionately by the arm, led her to a tavern, treated her to a pot of
ale and begged her to repeat what she had said to the shop-keepers.
Teresa, nothing loth, obliged. The old tarpaulin listened rapt, nodded
his bald head in approval, an expression on his face of one who hears
the chiming of celestial spheres.
A brace of squires jingled in and hallooed to Teresa. Where had she been
hiding all this time? The feasten sports had been nothing without her.
She ought to have been at Ponsandane the week before. They had a black
bull in a field tied to a ship’s anchor. The ring parted and the bull
went loose in the crowd with two dogs hanging on him. Such a screeching
and rushing you never did see! Old women running like two-year-olds and
young women climbing like squirrels and showing leg. . . . Oh, mercy!
The squire hid his face in his hands and gulped.
Teresa guffawed, took a pound out of one of the bags, strapped up the
wallet again and sat on it. Then she called the pot boy and ordered a
round of drinks. To blazes with economy for that one evening!
The company drank to her everlasting good health, to her matchless eyes
and cherry lips. One squire kissed her; she boxed his ears—not too
hard. He saluted the hand that smote him. His friend passed his arm
round her waist—she let it linger.
Jerry Gish leaned forward and tapped her on the knee. “Tell ’em what you
said to that draper, my blossom—ecod, yes, and to the Jew . . . tell
’em.”
Once more Teresa obliged. The company applauded. Very apt; that was the
way to talk to the sniveling swine! But her throat must be dry as a
brick. They banged their pots. “Hey, boy! Another round, damme!”
Other admirers drifted in and greeted Teresa with warmth. Where had she
been all this time? They had missed her sorely. There was much rejoicing
among the unjust over one sinner returned.
Teresa’s soul expanded as a sunflower to the sun. They were all old
friends and she was glad to be with them again. Twice more for the
benefit of newcomers did Captain Gish prevail on her to repeat what she
had said to her creditors, and by general request she sang three songs.
The pot boy ran his legs off that night.
Towards eleven p. m. she shook one snoring admirer from her shoulder,
removed the hand of another from her lap, dropped an ironical curtsey to
the prostrate gentlemen about her and, grasping the precious wallet,
rocked unsteadily into the yard. She had to rouse an ostler to girth her
horse up for her, and her first attempts at mounting met with disaster,
but she got into the saddle at last, and once there nothing short of
gunpowder could dislodge her. Her lids were like lead; drowsiness was
crushing her. She kept more or less awake until Bucca’s Pass was behind,
but after that she abandoned the struggle and sleep swallowed her whole.
She was aroused at Bosula gate by the barking of her own dogs,
unstrapped the wallet, turned the roan into the stable as it stood, and
staggered upstairs. Five minutes later she was shouting at the top of
her lungs. She had been robbed; one of the hundred pound bags was
missing!
The household ran to her call. When had she missed it? Who had she been
with? Where had she dropped it? Teresa was not clear about anything. She
might have dropped it anywhere between Penzance and home, or again she
might have been robbed in the tavern or the streets. The point was that
she had lost one hundred pounds and they had got to find it—now, at
once! They were to take the road back, ransack the town, inform the
magistrates. Out with them! Away!
Having delivered herself, she turned over and was immediately asleep.
Ortho went back to bed. He would go to Penzance if necessary, he said,
but it was useless before dawn. Let the others look close at home first.
Wany and Martha took a lantern and prodded about in the yard, clucking
like hens. Eli lit a second lantern and went to the stable. Perhaps his
mother had dropped the bag dismounting. He found the roan horse standing
in its stall, unsaddled it, felt in the remaining wallet, turned over
the litter—nothing. As he came out he noticed that the second horse was
soaking wet. Somebody had been riding hard, could only have just got in
before Teresa. Ortho of course. He wondered what his brother was up to.
After some girl probably . . . he had heard rumors.
Martha reported the yard bare, so he followed the hoof tracks up the
lane some way—nothing.
Ortho was up at dawn, ready to go into town, but Teresa, whose
recuperative powers were little short of marvelous, was up before him
and went in herself. She found nothing on the road and got small
consolation from the magistrates.
People who mixed their drinks and their company when in possession of
large sums of ready money should not complain if they lost it. She ought
to be thankful she had not been relieved of the lot. They would make
inquiries, of course, but held out no hope. There was an officer with a
string of recruits in town, an Irish privateer and two foreign ships in
the port, to say nothing of the Guernsey smugglers—the place was
seething with covetous and desperate characters. They wagged their wigs
and doubted if she would ever see her money again.
She never did.