A LUSUS NATURÆ
The two men entered the house talking, Quarm lurching against his
companion in his uneven progress; uneven, partly because of his lame
leg, partly because of his excitement; and when he wished to urge a
point in his argument, he enforced it, not only by raised tone of voice
and cogency of reasoning, but also by impact of his shoulder against
that of Pepperill.
In the room into which they penetrated sat a girl in the bay window
knitting. The window was wide and low, for the ceiling was low. It had
many panes in it of a greenish hue. It commanded the broad firth of the
river Teign. The sun was now on the water, and the glittering water cast
a sheen of golden green into the low room and into the face of the
knitting girl. It illumined the ceiling, revealed all its cracks, its
cobwebs and flies. The brass candlesticks and skillets and copper
coffee-pots on the chimney-piece shone in the light reflected from the
ceiling.
The girl was tall, with a singularly broad white brow, dark hair, and
long lashes that swept her cheek. The face was pale, and when in repose
it could not be readily decided whether she were good-looking or plain,
but all hesitation vanished when she raised her great violet eyes, full
of colour and sparkling with the light of intelligence.
The moment that Quarm entered she dropped the knitting on which she was
engaged; a flash of pleasure, a gleam of colour, mounted to eyes and
cheeks; she half rose with timidity and hesitation, but as Quarm
continued in eager conversation with Pepperill, and did not notice her,
she sank back into her sitting posture, the colour faded from her cheek,
her eyes fell, and a quiver of the lips and contraction of the mouth
indicated distress and pain.
“How is it possible to turn mud into gold?” asked Pepperill.
“Wait till I have coined my oak and I will do it.”
“I can understand oaks. The timber is worth something, and the bark
something, and the tops sell for firewood; but mud--mud is mud.”
“Well, it is mud. Let me light my pipe. I can’t talk without my ’baccy.”
Jason put a spill to the fire, seated himself on a stool by the hearth,
ignited his pipe, and then, turning his eye about, caught sight of the
girl.
“Hallo, little Toad!” said he; “how are you?”
Then, without waiting for an answer, he returned to the mud.
“Look here, Pasco, the mud is good for nothing where it is.”
“No. It is a nuisance. It chokes the channel. I had a deal of trouble
with the last coal-barge; she sank so deep I thought she’d be smothered
and never got in.”
“That’s just it. You would pay something to have it cleared--dredged
right away.”
“I don’t know about that. The expense would be great.”
“You need not pay a half-crown. It isn’t India only whose shining
fountains roll down their golden sands. It is Devonshire as well, which
pours the river Teign clear as crystal out of its Dartmoor reservoir,
and which is here ready to empty its treasures into my pockets and
yours. But we must dispose of Brimpts oak first.”
“I’d like to know how you are going to do anything with mud.”
“What is mud but clay in a state of slobber? Now, hearken to me,
brother-in-law. I have been where the soil is all clay, clay that would
grow nothing but moss and rushes, and was not worth more than five
shillings an acre, fit for nothing but for letting young stock run on.
That is out Holsworthy way. Well, a man with the philosopher’s stone in
his head, Goldsworthy Gurney, he cut a canal from Bude harbour right
through this arrant clay land. With what result? The barges travel up
from Bude laden with sand. The farmers use the sand over their clay
fields, and the desert blossoms as the rose. Land that was worth four
shillings went up to two pound ten, and in places near the canal to five
pounds. The sand on the seashore is worthless. The clay inland is
worthless, but the sand and clay married breed moneys, moneys, my
boy--golden moneys.”
“That is reasonable enough,” said Pasco Pepperill, “but it don’t apply
here. We are on the richest of red soil, that wants no dressing, so full
of substance is it in itself. Besides, the mud is nothing but our red
soil in a state of paste.”
“It is better. It is richer, more nutritious; but you do not see what is
to be done with it, because you have not my head and my eyes. I do not
propose to do here what was done at Holsworthy, but to invert the
operation.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not to carry the sand to the clay, but the mud to the sand. Do you not
know Bovey Heathfield? Do you not know Stover sands? What is there
inland but a desert waste of sand-hill and arid flat that is barren as
my hand, bearing nothing but a little scrubby thorn and thistle and
bramble--sand, that’s not worth half a crown an acre? There is no
necessity for us to cut a canal. The canal exists, cut in order that the
Hey-tor granite may be conveyed along it to the sea. It has not occurred
to the fools that the barges that convey the stone down might come up
laden with Teign mud, instead of returning empty. This mud, I tell you,
is not merely rich of itself, but it has a superadded richness from
seaweed and broken shells. It is fat with eels and worms. Let this be
conveyed up the canal to the sandy waste of Heathfield, and the marriage
of clay and sand will be as profitable there as that marriage has been
at Holsworthy. I would spread this rich mud over the hungry sand, thick
as cream, and the land will laugh and sing. Do you take me now,
brother-in-law? Do you believe in the philosopher’s stone?”
He touched his head. Pasco Pepperill had clasped his right knee in his
hands. He sat nursing it, musing, looking into the fire. Presently he
said--
“Yes; very fine for the owners of the sandy land, but how about you and
me?”
“We must buy up.”
“But where is the money to come from?”
“Brimpts oak.”
“What! the profit made on this venture?”
“Exactly. Every oak stick is a rung in my ladder. There has been, for
hundreds of years, a real forest of oaks, magnificent trees, timber
incomparable for hardness--iron is not harder. Who knows about it save
myself? The Exeter Bank knows nothing of the property on which it has
advanced money. The agent runs over it and takes a hasty glance. He
thinks that the trees he sees all up the slopes are thorn bushes or
twisted stumps worth nothing, and when he passes is too eager to get
away from the moor to stay and observe. I have felt my way. A small
offer and money down, and the whole forest is mine. Then I must fell at
once, and it is not, I say, calculable what we shall make out of that
oak. When we have raked our money together, then we will buy up as much
as we can of sandy waste near the canal, and proceed at once to plaster
it over with Teign clay. Pasco, our fortune is made!”
Jason kept silence for a while, to allow what he had said to sink into
the mind of his brother-in-law.
Then from the adjoining kitchen came a strongly-built, fair woman, very
tidy, with light hair and pale blue eyes. She had a decided manner in
her movements and in the way in which she spoke. She had been scouring a
pan. She held this pan now in one hand. She strode up to the fireplace
between the men and said in a peremptory tone--
“What is this? Speculating again? I’ll tell you what, Jason, you are
bent on ruining us. Here is Pasco as wax in your hands. We’ve already
lost half our land, and that is your doing. I do not wish to be sold out
of house and home because of your rash ventures--you risk nothing, it is
Pasco and I who have to pay.”
“Go to your scouring and cooking,” said Jason. “Zerah, that is in your
line; leave us men to our proper business.”
“I know what comes of your brooding,” retorted the woman; “you hatch out
naught but disaster. If Pasco turned a deaf ear, I would not mind all
your tales, but more is the pity, he listens, and listening in his case
means yielding, and yielding, in plain letters, is LOSS.”
Instead of answering his sister, Jason looked once more in the direction
of the girl, seated in the bay-window. She was absorbed in her thoughts,
and seemed not to have been attending to, or to be affected by, the
prospects of wealth that had been unfolded by her father. When he had
addressed her previously, she had answered, but as he had not attended
to her answer, she had relapsed into silence.
She was roused by his strident voice, as he sang out--
“There was a frog lived in a well
Crock-a-mydaisy, Kitty alone!
There was a frog lived in a well,
And a merry mouse lived in a mill,
Kitty alone and I.”
Now her pale face turned to him with something of appeal.
“How is the little worm?” asked Quarm; “no roses blooming in the cheeks.
Wait till I carry you to the moors. There you shall sit and smell the
honeybreath of the furze, and as the heather covers the hillsides with
raspberry-cream, the flush of life will come into your face. I’m not so
sure but that money might be made out of the spicy air of Dartmoor. Why
not condense the scent of the furze-bushes, and advertise it as a
specific in consumption? I won’t say that folks wouldn’t buy. Why not
extract the mountain heather as a cosmetic? It is worth considering. Why
not the juice of whortleberry as a dye for the hair? and pounded
bog-peat for a dentifrice? Pasco, my boy, I have ideas. I say, listen to
me. This is the way notions come flashing up in my brain.”
He had forgotten about his daughter, so enkindled was his imagination by
his new schemes.
Once again, discouraged and depressed, the girl dropped her eyes on her
work.
The sun shining on the flowing tide filled the bay of the room with
rippling light, walls and ceiling were in a quiver, the glisten was in
the glass, it was repeated on the floor, it quivered over her dress and
her pale face, it sparkled and winked in her knitting-pins. She might
have been a mermaid sitting below the water, seen through the restless,
undulatory current.
Mrs. Pepperill growled, and struck with her fingers the pan she had been
cleaning.
“What is a woman among men but a helpless creature, who cannot prevent
the evil she sees coming on? Talk of woman as the inferior vessel! It is
she has the common sense, and not man.”
“It was not you who brought Coombe Cellars to me, but I brought you to
Coombe Cellars,” retorted her husband. “What is here is mine--the house,
the business, the land. You rule in the kitchen, that is your proper
place. I rule where I am lord.”
Pasco spoke with pomposity, drawing his chin back into his neck.
“When you married me,” said Zerah, “nothing was to be yours only, all
was to be yours and mine. I am your wife, not your housekeeper. I shall
watch and guard well against waste, against folly. I cannot always save
against both, but I can protest--and I will.”
On hearing the loud tones of Mrs. Pepperill, Kate hastily collected her
knitting and ball of worsted and left the room. She was accustomed to
passages of arms between Pasco and his wife, to loud and angry voices,
but they frightened her, and filled her with disgust. She fled the
moment the pitch of the voices was raised and their tones became harsh.
“Look there!” exclaimed Zerah, before the girl had left the room. “There
is a child for you. Her father returns, after having been away for a
fortnight. She never rises to meet him, she goes on calmly knitting,
does not speak a word of welcome, take the smallest notice of him. It
was very different with my Wilmot; she would fly to her father--not that
he deserved her love; she would dance about him and kiss him. But she
had a heart, and was what a girl should be; as for your Kate, brother
Jason, I don’t know what to make of her.”
“What is the matter with Kitty?”
“She is not like other girls. Did you not take notice? She was cold and
regardless when you arrived, as if you were a stranger--never even put
aside her knitting, never gave you a word.”
Zerah was perhaps glad of an excuse for not continuing an angry
discussion with her husband before her brother. She was hot; she could
now give forth her heat upon the head of the girl.
“I don’t think I gave her much chance,” said Jason; “you see, I was
talking to Pasco about the oaks.”
“Give her the chance?” retorted Zerah. “As if my Wilmot would have
waited till her father gave her the chance. It is not for the father to
dance after his child, but the child should run to its father. I’ll tell
you what I believe, Jason, and nothing will get me out of the belief.
You know how Jane Simmons’ boy was born without eyelashes; and how last
spring we had a lamb without any tail; and that Bessie Penny hasn’t got
any lobe of ear at all, only a hole in the side of her head; and Ephraim
Tooker has no toe-nails.”
“I know all that.”
“Very well. I believe--and you’ll never shake it out of me--that child
of yours was born without a heart.”