AT THE QUAY.
ON the day of Barbara’s departure Eve attended diligently to the duties
of the house, and found that everything was in such order that she
was content to believe that all would go on of its own accord in the
old way, without her supervision, which declined next day, and was
pretermitted on the third.
Jasper did not appear for mid-day dinner; he was busy on the old quay.
He saw that it must be put to rights. The woods could be thinned, the
coppice shredded for bark, and bark put on a barge at the bottom of the
almost precipitous slope, and so sent to the tanyards at Devonport.
There was waste of labour in carrying the bark up the hills and then
carting it to Beer Ferris, some ten miles.
No wonder that, as Mr. Jordan complained, the bark was unremunerative.
The profit was eaten up by the wasteful transport. It was the same with
the timber. There was demand for oak and pine at the dockyards, and any
amount was grown in the woods of Morwell.
So Jasper asked leave to have the quay put to rights, and Mr. Jordan
consented. He must supervise proceedings himself, so he remained the
greater part of the day by the river edge. The ascent to Morwell House
was arduous if attempted directly up the steep fall, long if he went by
the zigzag through the wood. It would take him a stiff three-quarters
of an hour to reach the house and half-an-hour to return. Accordingly
he asked that his dinner might be sent him.
On the third day, to Eve’s dismay, she found that she had forgotten to
let him have his food, both that day and the preceding. He had made no
remark when he came back the day before. Eve’s conscience smote her—a
convalescent left for nine or ten hours without food.
When she recalled her promise to send it him she found that there was
no one to send. In shame and self-reproach, she packed a little basket,
and resolved to carry it to him. The day was lovely. She put her
broad-brimmed straw hat, trimmed with forget-me-not bows, on her head,
and started on her walk.
The bank of the Tamar falls from high moorland many hundreds of feet
to the water’s edge. In some places the rocks rise in sheer precipices
with gullies of coppice and heather between them. Elsewhere the fall
is less abrupt, and allows trees to grow, and the richness of the soil
and the friable nature of the rock allows them to grow to considerable
dimensions. From Morwell House a long _détour_ through beautiful
forest, affording peeps of mountains and water, gave the easiest
descent to the quay, but Eve reserved this road for the ascent, and
slid merrily down the narrow corkscrew path in the brushwood between
the crags, which afforded the quickest way down to the water’s edge.
‘Oh, Mr. Jasper!’ she exclaimed, ‘I have sinned, through my
forgetfulness; but see, to make amends, I have brought you a little
bottle of papa’s Burgundy and a wee pot of red currant jelly for the
cold mutton.’
‘And you have come yourself to overwhelm me with a sense of gratitude.’
‘Oh, Mr. Jasper, I am so ashamed of my naughtiness. I assure you I
nearly cried. Bab—I mean Barbara—would never have forgotten. She
remembers everything. Her head is a perfect store-closet, where all
things are in place and measured and weighed and on their proper
shelves. You had no dinner yesterday.’
‘To-day’s is a banquet that makes up for all deficiencies.’
Eve liked Jasper; she had few to converse with, very few acquaintances,
no friends, and she was delighted to be able to have a chat with
anyone, especially if that person flattered her—and who did not?
Everyone naturally offered incense before her; she almost demanded it
as a right. The Tamar formed a little bay under a wall of rock. A few
ruins marked the site of the storehouses and boatsheds of the abbots.
The sun glittered on the water, forming of it a blazing mirror, and the
dancing light was reflected back by the flower-wreathed rocks.
‘Where are the men?’ asked Eve.
‘Gone into the wood to fell some pines. We must drive piles into the
bed of the river, and lay beams on them for a basement.’
‘Oh,’ said Eve listlessly, ‘I don’t understand about basements and
all that.’ She seated herself on a log. ‘How pleasant it is here with
the flicker of the water in one’s face and eyes, and a sense of being
without shadow! Mr. Jasper, do you believe in pixies?’
‘What do you mean, Miss?’
‘The little imps who live in the mines and on the moors, and play
mischievous tricks on mortals. They have the nature of spirits, and
yet they have human shapes, and are like old men or boys. They watch
treasures and veins of ore, and when mortals approach the metal, they
decoy the trespassers away.’
‘Like the lapwing that pretends to be wounded, and so lures you from
its precious eggs. Do _you_ believe in pixies?’
Eve laughed and shook her pretty head. ‘I think so, Mr. Jasper, for I
have seen one.’
‘What was he like?’
‘I do not know, I only caught glimpses of him. Do not laugh
satirically. I am serious. I did see something, but I don’t know
exactly what I saw.’
‘That is not a very convincing reason for the existence of pixies.’
Eve drew her little feet together, and folded her arms in her lap, and
smiled, and tossed her head. She had taken off her hat, and the sun
glorified her shining head.
Jasper looked admiringly at her.
‘Are you not afraid of a sunstroke, Miss Eve?’
‘O dear no! The sun cannot harm me. I love him so passionately. O Mr.
Jasper! I wish sometimes I lived far away in another country where
there are no wet days and grey skies and muggy atmospheres, and where
the hedges do not drip, and the lanes do not stand ankle deep in mud,
and the old walls exude moisture indoors, and one’s pretty shoes do not
go mouldy if not wiped over daily. I should like to be in a land like
Italy, where all the people sing and dance and keep holiday, and the
bells in the towers are ever ringing, and the lads have bunches of gold
and silver flowers in their hats, and the girls have scarlet skirts,
and the village musicians sit in a cart adorned with birch branches
and ribands and roses, and the trumpets go tu-tu! and the drums
bung-bung!—I have read about it, and cried for vexation that I was not
there.’
‘But the pixy?’
‘I would banish all pixies and black Copplestones and Whish hounds;
they belong to rocks and moors and darkness and storm. I hate gloom and
isolation.’
‘You are happy at Morwell, Miss Eve. One has but to look in your face
and see it. Not a crabbed line of care, not the track of a tear, all
smoothness and smiles.’
The girl twinkled with pleasure, and said, ‘That is because we are
in midsummer; wait till winter and see what becomes of me. Then I am
sad enough. We are shut in for five months—six months—seven almost,
by mud and water. O, how the winds howl! How the trees toss and roar!
How the rain patters! That is not pleasant. I wish, I do wish, I were
a squirrel; then I would coil myself in a corner lined with moss, and
crack nuts in a doze till the sun came again and woke me up with the
flowers. Then I would throw out all my cracked nutshells with both
paws, and leap to the foot of a tree, run up it, and skip from branch
to branch, and swing in the summer sunshine on the topmost twig. O, Mr.
Jasper, how much wiser than we the swallows are! I would rather be a
swallow than a squirrel, and sail away when I felt the first frost to
the land of eternal summer, into the blazing eye of the sun.’
‘But as you have no wings——’
‘I sit and mope and talk to Barbara about cows and cabbages, and to
father about any nonsense that comes into my head.’
‘As yet you have given me no description of the pixy.’
‘How can I, when I scarce saw him? I will tell you exactly what
happened, if you will not curl up the corner of your lips, as though
mocking me. That papa never does. I tell him all the rhodomontade I
can, and he listens gravely, and frightens and abashes me sometimes by
swallowing it whole.’
‘Where did you see, or not see, the pixy?’
‘On my way to you. I heard something stirring in the wood, and I half
saw what I took to be a boy, or a little man the size of a boy. When I
stood still, he stood; when I moved, I fancied he moved. I heard the
crackle of sticks and the stir of the bushes. I am sure of nothing.’
‘Were you frightened?’
‘No; puzzled, not frightened. If this had occurred at night, it would
have been different. I thought it might have been a red-deer; they are
here sometimes, strayed from Exmoor, and have such pretty heads and
soft eyes; but this was not. I fancied once I saw a queer little face
peering at me from behind a pine tree. I uttered a feeble cry and ran
on.’
‘I know exactly what it was,’ said Jasper, with a grave smile. ‘There
is a pixy lives in the Raven Rock; he has a smithy far down in the
heart of the cliff, and there he works all winter at a vein of pure
gold, hammering and turning the golden cups and marsh marigolds with
which to strew the pastures and watercourses in spring. But it is
dull for the pixy sitting alone without light; he has no one to love
and care for him, and, though the gold glows in his forge, his little
heart is cold. He has been dreaming all winter of a sweet fairy he saw
last summer wearing a crown of marigold, wading in cuckoo flowers, and
now he has come forth to capture that fairy and draw her down into his
stony palace.’
‘To waste her days,’ laughed Eve, ‘in sighing for the sun, whilst her
roses wither and her eyes grow dim, away from the twitter of the birds
and the scent of the gorse. He shan’t have me.’ Then, after a pause,
during which she gathered some marigolds and put them into her hat, she
said, half seriously, half jestingly, ‘Do you believe in pixies?’
‘You must not ask me. I have seen but one fairy in all my life, and she
now sits before me.’
‘Mr. Jasper,’ said Eve, with a dimple in her cheek, in recognition of
the compliment,—’Mr. Jasper, do you know my mother is a mystery to me
as much as pixies and fairies and white ladies?’
‘No, I was not aware of that.’
‘She was called, like me, Eve.’
‘I had a sister of that name who is dead, and my mother’s name was Eve.
She is dead.’
‘I did not think the name was so common,’ said the girl. ‘I fancied we
were the only two Eves that ever were. I do not know what my mother’s
other name was. Is not that extraordinary?’
Jasper Babb made no reply.
‘I have been reading “Undine.” Have you read that story? O, it has made
me so excited. The writer says that it was founded on what he read in
an old author, and that author, Paracelsus, is one papa believes in.
So, I suppose, there is some truth in the tale. The story of my mother
is quite like that of Undine. One night my father heard a cry on the
moor, and he went to the place, and found my mother all alone. She
was with him for a year and a day, and would have stayed longer if my
father could have refrained from asking her name. When he did that she
was forced to leave him. She was never seen again.’
‘Miss Eve, this cannot be true.’
‘I do not know. That is what old Betsy Davy told me. Papa never speaks
of her. He has been an altered man since she left him. He put up the
stone cross on the moor at the spot where he found her. I like to fancy
there was something mysterious in her. I can’t ask papa, and Bab was—I
mean Barbara—was too young at the time to remember anything about it.’
‘This is very strange.’
‘Betsy Davy says that my father was not properly married to her,
because he could not get a priest to perform the ceremony without
knowing what she was.’
‘My dear Miss Eve, instead of listening to the cock-and-bull stories——’
‘Mr. Jasper! How can you—how can you use such an expression? The
story is very pretty and romantic, and not at all like things of this
century. I dare say there is some truth in it.’
‘I am far from any intention of offending you, dear young lady; but I
venture to offer you a piece of advice. Do not listen to idle tales;
do not encourage people of a lower class to speak to you about your
mother; ask your father what you want to know, he will tell you; and
take my word for it, romance there always must be in love, but there
will be nothing of what you imagine, with a fancy set on fire by
“Undine.”’
Her volatile mind had flown elsewhere.
‘Mr. Jasper,’ she said, ‘have you ever been to a theatre?’
‘Yes.’
‘O, I should like it above everything else. I dream of it. We have
Inchbald’s “British Theatre” in the library, and it is my dearest
reading. Barbara likes a cookery book or a book on farming; I cannot
abide them. Do you know what Mr. Coyshe said the other day when I was
rattling on before him and papa? He said I had missed my vocation, and
ought to have been on the stage. What do you think?’
‘I think a loving and merciful Providence has done best to put such a
precious treasure here where it can best be preserved.’
‘I don’t agree with you at all,’ said Eve, standing up. ‘I think Mr.
Coyshe showed great sense. Anyhow, I should like to see a theatre—O,
above everything in the world! Papa thinks of Rome or the Holy Land;
but I say—a theatre. I can’t help it; I think it, and must say it.
Good-bye! I have things my sister left that I must attend to. I wish
she were back. Oh, Mr. Jasper, do not you?’
‘Everyone will be pleased to welcome her home.’
‘Because I have let everything go to sixes and sevens, eh?’
‘For her own sake.’
‘Well, I do miss her dreadfully, do not you?’
He did not answer. She cast him another good-bye, and danced off into
the wood, swinging her hat by the blue ribands.