FERN IN DIE WELT.
If this story were not tied by its title to the duchy of Cornwall, it
might be interesting enough to follow Mr. Roscorla into the new world
that had opened all around him, and say something of the sudden shock
his old habits had thus received, and of the quite altered views of his
own life he had been led to form. As matters stand, we can only pay him
a flying visit.
He is seated in a verandah fronting a garden, in which pomegranates and
oranges form the principal fruit. Down below him some blacks are
bringing provisions up to Yacca Farm along the cactus avenue leading to
the gate. Far away on his right the last rays of the sun are shining on
the summit of Blue Mountain Peak, and along the horizon the reflected
glow of the sky shines on the calm sea. It is a fine, still evening; his
cigar smells sweet in the air; it is a time for indolent dreaming and
for memories of home.
But Mr. Roscorla is not so much enraptured by thoughts of home as he
might be. "Why," he is saying to himself, "my life in Basset Cottage was
no life at all, but only a waiting for death. Day after day passed in
that monotonous fashion: what had one to look forward to but old age,
sickness, and then the quiet of a coffin? It was nothing but an hourly
procession to the grave, varied by rabbit-shooting. This bold breaking
away from the narrow life of such a place has given me a new lease of
existence. Now I can look back with surprise on the dullness of that
Cornish village, and on the regularity of habits which I did not know
were habits. For is not that always the case? You don't know that you
are forming a habit: you take each act to be an individual act, which
you may perform or not at will; but, all the same, the succession of
them is getting you into its power; custom gets a grip of your ways of
thinking as well as your ways of living; the habit is formed, and it
does not cease its hold until it conducts you to the grave. Try Jamaica
for a cure. Fling a sleeping man into the sea, and watch if he does not
wake. Why, when I look back to the slow, methodical, common-place life I
led at Eglosilyan, can I wonder that I was sometimes afraid of Wenna
Rosewarne regarding me as a somewhat staid and venerable individual, on
whose infirmities she ought to take pity?"
He rose and began to walk up and down the verandah, putting his foot
down firmly. His loose linen suit was smart enough: his complexion had
been improved by the sun. The consciousness that his business affairs
were promising well did not lessen his sense of self-importance.
"Wenna must be prepared to move about a bit when I go back," he was
saying to himself. "She must give up that daily attendance on cottagers'
children. If all turns out well, I don't see why we should not live in
London, for who will know there who her father was? That consideration
was of no consequence so long as I looked forward to living the rest of
my life in Basset Cottage: now there are other things to be thought of
when there is a chance of my going among my old friends again."
By this time, it must be observed, Mr. Roscorla had abandoned his hasty
intention of returning to England to upbraid Wenna with having received
a ring from Harry Trelyon. After all, he reasoned with himself, the mere
fact that she should talk thus simply and frankly about young Trelyon
showed that, so far as she was concerned, her loyalty to her absent
lover was unbroken. As for the young gentleman himself, he was, Mr.
Roscorla knew, fond of joking. He had doubtless thought it a fine thing
to make a fool of two or three women by imposing on them this
cock-and-bull story of finding a ring by dredging. He was a little angry
that Wenna should have been deceived; but then, he reflected, these
gypsy rings are so much like one another that the young man had probably
got a pretty fair duplicate. For the rest, he did not want to quarrel
with Harry Trelyon at present.
But as he was walking up and down the verandah, looking a much younger
and brisker man than the Mr. Roscorla who had left Eglosilyan, a servant
came through the house and brought him a couple of letters. He saw they
were respectively from Mr. Barnes and from Wenna; and, curiously enough,
he opened the reverend gentleman's first--perhaps as schoolboys like to
leave the best bit of a tart to the last.
He read the letter over carefully; he sat down and read it again; then
he put it before him on the table. He was evidently puzzled by it. "What
does this man mean by writing these letters to me?"--so Mr. Roscorla,
who was a cautious and reflective person, communed with himself.--"He is
no particular friend of mine. He must be driving at something. Now he
says that I am to be of good cheer. I must not think anything of what he
formerly wrote. Mr. Trelyon is leaving Eglosilyan for good, and his
mother will at last have some peace of mind. What a pity it is that this
sensitive creature should be at the mercy of the rude passions of this
son of hers! that she should have no protector! that she should be
allowed to mope herself to death in a melancholy seclusion!"
An odd fancy occurred to Mr. Roscorla at this moment, and he smiled: "I
think I have got a clew to Mr. Barnes's disinterested anxiety about my
affairs. The widower would like to protect the solitary and unfriended
widow, but the young man is in the way. The young man would be very much
in the way if he married Wenna Rosewarne; the widower's fears drive him
into suspicion, then into certainty; nothing will do but that I should
return to England at once and spoil this little arrangement. But as soon
as Harry Trelyon declares his intention of leaving Eglosilyan for good,
then my affairs may go anyhow. Mr. Barnes finds the coast clear: I am
bidden to stay where I am. Well, that is what I mean to do; but now I
fancy I understand Mr. Barnes's generous friendship for me and his
affectionate correspondence."
He turned to Wenna's letter with much compunction. He owed her some
atonement for having listened to the disingenuous reports of this
scheming clergyman. How could he have so far forgotten the firm,
uncompromising rectitude of the girl's character, her sensitive notions
of honor, the promises she had given?
He read her letter, and as he read his eyes seemed to grow hot with
rage. He paid no heed to the passionate contrition of the trembling
lines--to the obvious pain that she had endured in telling the story,
without concealment, against herself--to the utter and abject
wretchedness with which she awaited his decision. It was thus that she
had kept faith with him the moment his back was turned! Such were the
safeguards afforded by a woman's sense of honor! What a fool he had
been, to imagine that any woman could remain true to her promise so soon
as some other object of flirtation and incipient love-making came in her
way!
He looked at the letter again: he could scarcely believe it to be in her
handwriting. This the quiet, reasonable, gentle and timid Wenna
Rosewarne, whose virtues were almost a trifle too severe? The despair
and remorse of the letter did not touch him--he was too angry and
indignant over the insult to himself--but it astonished him. The
passionate emotion of those closely-written pages he could scarcely
connect with the shy, frank, kindly little girl he remembered: it was a
cry of agony from a tortured woman, and he knew at least that for her
the old quiet time was over.
He knew not what to do. All this that had happened was new to him: it
was old and gone by in England, and who could tell what further
complications might have arisen? But his anger required some vent: he
went in-doors, called for a lamp, and sat down and wrote with a hard and
resolute look on his face:
"I have received your letter. I am not surprised. You are a woman,
and I ought to have known that a woman's promise is of value so
long as you are by her side to see that she keeps it. You ask what
reparation you can make: I ask if there is any that you can
suggest. No: you have done what cannot be undone. Do you think a
man would marry a woman who is in love with, or has been in love
with, another man, even if he could overlook her breach of faith
and the shameless thoughtlessness of her conduct? My course is
clear, at all events. I give you back the promise that you did not
know how to keep; and now you can go and ask the young man who has
been making a holiday toy of you whether he will be pleased to
marry you.
"RICHARD ROSCORLA."
He sealed and addressed this letter, still with the firm, hard look
about his face: then he summoned a servant--a tall, red-haired Irishman.
He did not hesitate for a moment: "Look here, Sullivan: the English
mails go out to-morrow morning. You must ride down to the post-office as
hard as you can go; and if you're a few minutes late, see Mr. Keith and
give him my compliments, and ask him if he can possibly take this letter
if the mails are not made up. It is of great importance. Quick, now!"
He watched the man go clattering down the cactus avenue until he was out
of sight. Then he turned, put the letters in his pocket, went in-doors,
and again struck a small gong that did duty for a bell. He wanted his
horse brought round at once. He was going over to Pleasant Farm:
probably he would not return that night. He lit another cigar, and paced
up and down the gravel in front of the house until the horse was brought
round.
When he reached Pleasant Farm the stars were shining overhead, and the
odors of the night-flowers came floating out of the forest, but inside
the house there were brilliant lights and the voices of men talking. A
bachelor supper-party was going forward. Mr. Roscorla entered, and
presently was seated at the hospitable board. They had never seen him so
gay, and they had certainly never seen him so generously inclined, for
Mr. Roscorla was economical in his habits. He would have them all to
dinner the next evening, and promised them such champagne as had never
been sent to Kingston before. He passed round his best cigars, he hinted
something about unlimited loo, he drank pretty freely, and was
altogether in a jovial humor.
"England!" he said, when some one mentioned the mother-country. "Of one
thing I am pretty certain: England will never see me again. No, a man
lives here: in England he waits for his death. What life I have got
before me I shall live in Jamaica: that is my view of the question."
"Then she is coming out to you?" said his host with a grin.
Roscorla's face flushed with anger. "There is no _she_ in the matter,"
he said abruptly, almost fiercely. "I thank God I am not tied to any
woman!"
"Oh, I beg your pardon," said his host good-naturedly, who did not care
to recall the occasions on which Mr. Roscorla had been rather pleased to
admit that certain tender ties bound him to his native land.
"No, there is not," he said. "What fool would have his comfort and peace
of mind depend on the caprice of a woman? I like your plan better,
Rogers: when they're dependent on you, you can do as you like, but when
they've got to be treated as equals, they're the devil. No, my boys, you
don't find me going in for the angel in the house--she's too exacting.
Is it to be unlimited?"
Now to play unlimited loo in a reckless fashion is about the easiest way
of getting rid of money that the ingenuity of man has devised. The other
players were much better qualified to run such risks than Mr. Roscorla,
but none played half so wildly as he. His I.O.U.'s went freely about. At
one point in the evening the floating paper bearing the signature of Mr.
Roscorla represented a sum of about three hundred pounds, and yet his
losses did not weigh heavily on him. At length every one got tired, and
it was resolved to stop short at a certain hour. But from this point the
luck changed: nothing could stand against his cards; one by one his
I.O.U.'s were recalled; and when they all rose from the table he had won
about forty-eight pounds. He was not elated.
He went to his room and sat down in an easy-chair; and then it seemed to
him that he saw Eglosilyan once more, and the far coasts of Cornwall,
and the broad uplands lying under a blue English sky. That was his home,
and he had cut himself away from it, and from the little glimmer of
romance that had recently brightened it for him. Every bit of the place,
too, was associated somehow with Wenna Rosewarne. He could see the seat
fronting the Atlantic on which she used to sit and sew on the fine
summer forenoons. He could see the rough road leading over the downs on
which he met her one wintry morning, she wrapped up and driving her
father's dog-cart, while the red sun in the sky seemed to brighten the
pink color the cold wind had brought into her cheeks. He thought of her
walking sedately up to church; of her wild scramblings among the rocks
with Mabyn; of her enjoyment of a fierce wind when it came laden with
the spray of the great rollers breaking on the cliff outside. What was
the song she used to sing to herself as she went along the quiet
woodland ways?--
Your Polly has never been false, she declares,
Since last time we parted at Wapping Old Stairs.
He could not let her go. All the anger of wounded vanity had left his
heart: he thought now only of the chance he was throwing away. Where
else could he hope to find for himself so pleasant a companion and
friend, who would cheer up his dull daily life with her warm sympathies,
her quick humor, her winning womanly ways?
He thought of that letter he had sent away, and cursed his own folly. So
long as she was bound by her promise he knew he could marry her when he
pleased, but now he had voluntarily released her. In a couple of weeks
she would hold her manumission in her hands; the past would no longer
have any power over her; if ever they met they would meet as mere
acquaintances. Every moment the prize slipping out of his grasp seemed
to grow more valuable; his vexation with himself grew intolerable; he
suddenly resolved that he would make a wild effort to get back that
fatal letter.
He had sat communing with himself for over an hour: all the household
was fast asleep. He would not wake any one, for fear of being compelled
to give explanations; so he noiselessly crept along the dark passages
until he got to the door, which he carefully opened and let himself out.
The night was wonderfully clear, the constellations throbbing and
glittering overhead: the trees were black against the pale sky.
He made his way round to the stables, and had some sort of notion that
he would try to get at his horse, until it occurred to him that some
suddenly awakened servant or master would probably send a bullet
whizzing at him. So he abandoned that enterprise, and set off to walk as
quickly as he could down the slopes of the mountain, with the stars
still shining over his head, the air sweet with powerful scents, the
leaves of the bushes hanging silently in the semi-darkness.
How long he walked he did not know: he was not aware that when he
reached the sleeping town a pale gray was lightening the eastern skies.
He went to the house of the postmaster and hurriedly aroused him. Mr.
Keith began to think that the ordinarily sedate Mr. Roscorla had gone
mad.
"But I must have the letter," he said. "Come now, Keith, you can give it
me back if you like. Of course I know it is very wrong, but you'll do it
to oblige a friend."
"My dear sir," said the postmaster, who could not get time for
explanation, "the mails were made up last night--"
"Yes, yes, but you can open the English bag."
"They were sent on board last night."
"Then the packet is still in the harbor: you might come down with me."
"She sails at daybreak."
"It is not daybreak yet," said Mr. Roscorla, looking up.
Then he saw how the gray dawn had come over the skies, banishing the
stars, and he became aware of the wan light shining around him. With the
new day his life was altered; he would no more be as he had been; the
chief aim and purpose of his existence had been changed.
Walking heedlessly back, he came to a point from which he had a distant
view of the harbor and the sea beyond. Far away out on the dull gray
plain was a steamer slowly making her way toward the east. Was that the
packet bound for England, carrying to Wenna Rosewarne the message that
she was free?