A PRAYER-RAFT.
How long Arminell had been resting in her sunny nook above the water,
reading the record of luxury, misery and vice, she did not know, for she
became engrossed in the repulsive yet interesting tale, and the time
slipped away, unperceived.
She was roused from her reading by the thought that suddenly occurred to
her, quite unconnected with the story, that she had let go the strands
of ivy when she reached the cave,—and in a moment her interest in the
“Gilded Clique” ceased and she became alarmed about her own situation.
In her delight at attaining the object of her ambition, she had cast
aside the streamers without a thought that she might need them again,
and they had reverted to their original position, beyond her reach. She
could not venture along the strip of turf without their support, and she
had not the crook with her, wherewith to rake them back within reach of
her hand.
What was to be done? The charm of the situation was gone. Its novelty
had ceased to please. Her elation at her audacity in venturing on the
“path perilous” had subsided. To escape unassisted was impossible, and
to call for assistance useless in a place so rarely visited.
“It does not much matter,” said Arminell; “I shall not have to spend a
night among the owls. My lady when she misses me will send out a
search-party, and Jingles will direct them whither to go for me. I will
return to my book.”
But Arminell could not recover her interest in the story of the “Gilded
Clique.” She was annoyed at her lack of prudence, for it had not only
subjected her to imprisonment, but had placed her in a position somewhat
ridiculous. She threw down the book impatiently and bit her lips.
“This is a lesson to me,” she said, “not to make rash excursions into
unknown regions without retaining a clue which will enable me to retrace
my steps to the known. Cæsar may have been a hero when he burnt his
ships, but his heroism was next akin to folly.”
She sat with her hands in her lap, with a clouded face, musing on the
chance of her speedy release. Then she laughed, “Like Jingles, I am in a
wrong position, but unlike him, I am here by my own foolhardiness. He
was carried by my lord into the eagle’s nest. Like Sinbad, out of the
valley of diamonds. But in the valley of diamonds there were likewise
serpents. My lord swooped down on poor Jingles, caught him up, and
deposited him in his nest on the heights for the young eagles to pull to
pieces.”
As she was amusing herself with this fancy, she observed a man by the
waterside at the east or further end of the quarry, engaged in launching
a primitive raft which he drew out of a bed of alder. The raft consisted
of a couple of hurdles lashed together, on which an old pig-sty or
stable door was laid. Upon this platform the man stationed himself when
the raft was adrift, and with a long oar sculled himself into the middle
of the pond.
What was his object? Had he seen Arminell and was he coming to her
assistance, concluding that she could be rescued in no other fashion? On
further observation Arminell convinced herself that he had not seen her
and knew nothing of her predicament and distress.
What was he about to do? To fish?
No—not to fish.
When the raft floated in the middle of the tarn, the man laid down his
oar, knelt on the board and began to pray.
“Why——!” exclaimed the girl; “that is Captain Saltren, Jingles’ father.”
Captain Stephen Saltren, master of the manganese mine, was a tall man,
rather gaunt and thin, and loosely compacted at the joints, with dark
hair, high cheek-bones and large, deeply-sunken eyes. His features were
irregular and ill cut—yet it was impossible to look at his face without
being impressed with the thought that he was no ordinary man. His hands,
though roughened and enlarged by work, had long fingers, the indication
of a nervous temperament. He had, moreover, one of those flexible voices
which go far towards making a man an orator. He was unaware of the value
of his organ, he was devoid of skill in using it; but it was an
impressive voice when used in times of deep emotion, thrilling those who
heard it and sweeping them into sympathy with the speaker. His eyes were
those of a mystic, looking into a far-off sphere, esteeming the world of
sense as a veil, a painted film, disturbing, impeding distinct vision of
the sole realities that existed in the world beyond.
There was velvety softness in his dark eyes, and gentleness in his
flexible mouth, and yet the least observant person speaking with him
could see that fire was ready to leap out of those soft eyes on
provocation, and that the mouth could set with rigid determination when
his prejudices were touched.
The forehead of the man was of unusual height. He had become partly
bald, had shed some of the hair above the brow, and this had given
loftiness to his forehead. There were hollows between his temples and
eye-brows; his head was lumpy and narrow. Altogether it was an
ill-balanced, but an interesting head.
The mystic, who at one time was a prominent feature in religious life,
has almost disappeared from among us, gone utterly out of the cultured
classes, gone from among the practical mercantile classes, going little
by little from the lower beds of life, not expelled by education but by
the materialism that penetrates every realm of human existence. In time
the mystic will have become as extinct as the dodo, the great auk, and
the Caleb Balderstones. But there are mystics still—especially where
there is a strain of Celtic blood, and of this class of beings was
Stephen Saltren.
The captain was in trouble, and whenever he was in trouble or unhappy he
had recourse to prayer, and he prayed with most disengagement on his
raft. He came to the quarry when his mind was disturbed and his heart
agitated, thrust himself out from land, and prayed where he believed
himself to be unobserved and unlikely to be interrupted.
The cause of his unrest on this occasion was the threat Lord Lamerton
had uttered of closing the manganese mine. This mine had its adit,
crushing mill and washing floors at but a short distance from the great
house. About fifteen years previous, a mine had been worked on the
estate that yielded so richly, that with the profits, Lord Lamerton had
been able to clear off some mortgages. That lode was worked out. It had
been altogether an extraordinary one, bunching, as it is termed, into a
great mass of solid manganese, but this bunch, when worked out, ended
without a trace of continuance. Then, as Lord Lamerton was assured,
another came to the surface in the hill behind the mansion, and as he
was in want of money, he reluctantly permitted the mine to be opened
within a rifle shot of his house. The workings were out of sight, hidden
by a plantation, and manganese mines make no great heaps of unsightly
deposit; nevertheless, the mine was inconveniently near the place. It
did not yield as it had promised, or as the experts had pretended it
promised, and Lord Lamerton had lost all hope of making money by it. The
vein was followed, but it never “bunched.” Foreign competition affected
the market, English manganese was under-sold, and Wheal Perseverance, as
the mine was called, did not pay for the “working.” Lord Lamerton
annually lost money on it. Then he was informed that the lode ran under
Orleigh gardens, and promised freely to “bunch” under the mansion. That
is to say, he was asked to allow his house to be undermined. This
decided his lordship, and he announced that the mine must be abandoned.
Bunch or no bunch, he was not going to have his old place tunnelled
under and brought about his ears, on the chance—the chimerical chance—of
a few thousand pounds’ worth of metal being extracted from the rock on
which it stood.
To Lord Lamerton his determination seemed right and reasonable. The land
was his. The royalties were his; the house was his. Every man may do
what he will with his own. If he has a penny in his pocket, he is at
liberty to spend or to hoard it as he deems best.
But this decision of his lordship threatened ruin or something like ruin
to a good many men who had lived on the mine, to families whereof the
father worked underground, and the children above washing ore on the
floors. The cessation of the mining would throw all these out of employ.
It was known to the miners that manganese mines were everywhere
unprofitable and were being abandoned. Where then should they look for
employment?
It was open to bachelors to migrate to America, but what were the
married men to do? The captain would feel the stoppage of the mine most
of all. He had kept the accounts of the output, had paid the wages, and
sold the metal. The miners might, indeed, take temporary work on the new
line in course of construction, but that meant a change of life from one
that was regular, whilst living in settled homes, to a wandering
existence, to makeshift housing, separation from their families, and to
association with demoralising and lawless companions. The captain,
however, had not this chance within reach. He could not migrate, because
he possessed the little house in which he lived, together with an acre
of garden ground beside it, which his father had enclosed and reclaimed.
Moreover, he was not likely to find work which gave him a situation of
authority and superiority. Instead of being a master he must be
content—if he found employ—to work as a servant. Hitherto, he had
engaged and dismissed the hands, now he must become a hand—and be glad
to be one—liable to dismissal.
It was natural that the men, and especially Saltren, should feel keenly
and resent the closing of the mine. People see things as they affect
themselves, and appreciate them only as they relate to their own
affairs. I knew a man named Balhatchet who patented a quack medicine
which he called his Heal-all, and this man never could be brought to see
that the Fall of Man was a disaster to humanity, for, he argued, if
there had been no fall, then no sickness, and therefore no place for
Balhatchet’s Heal-all.
According to “The Spectator,” when the news reached London that the King
of France was dead, “Now we shall have fish cheaper,” was the greeting
the tidings evoked. The miners were angry with the bleachers, because
they used German manganese instead of that raised in England, and angry
with the shippers for bringing it across the sea. But above all, at this
time, they were inclined to resent the action of Lord Lamerton in
closing the mine, for by so doing he was, as they put it, snatching the
bread out of their hungry mouths, whilst himself eating cake. They did
not believe that undermining the great house would disturb its
foundations. That was a mere excuse. How could his lordship be sure that
undermining would crack his walls till he had tried it? And—supposing
they did settle, what of that? They might be rebuilt. The men had been
told that his lordship had painted the north wall with impenetrable,
anti-damp preparation, because on that side of the house the paper in
the rooms became mildewed. If there was damp, what better means of
drying the house than undermining it? Why should his lordship send many
pounds to London for damp-excluding paint, when by spending the money in
Orleigh he might so drain the soil through a level under the foundations
that no moisture could possibly rise?
Lord Lamerton had made a great deal of money out of the first mine. He
had provided good cottages for his tenants, the workmen, but so much
worse if they were to be turned out of them.
The mine had been christened Wheal Perseverance, and what does
perseverance mean, but going on with what is begun? If his lordship had
not intended to carry on the mine indefinitely, he should not have
called it Wheal Perseverance. When he gave it that name he as much as
promised to keep it going always, and to stop it now was a breach of
faith. Was it endurable that Lord Lamerton should close the mine? Who
had put the manganese in the rock? Was it Lord Lamerton? What had the
metal been run there for but for the good of mankind, that it might be
extracted and utilized? God had carried the lode under Orleigh Park
before a Lamerton was thought of. Was it justifiable that one man
through his aristocratic selfishness should interfere with the public
good, should contravene the arrangements of the Creator? In the gospel
the man who hid his talent was held up to condemnation, but here was a
nobleman who sat down upon the talent belonging to a score of
hard-working and necessitous men, desirous of extracting it, and refused
to permit them to do what God had commanded. Was there not a fable about
a dog in the manger? Was not his lordship a very dog in a manger,
neither using the manganese himself, nor allowing those who desired to
dig it out to put a pick into the ground and disturb it? Maybe there was
a “bunch” under the state drawing-room large enough to support a score
of families for three years, the men in meat and broadcloth, the women
in velvets and jockey-club essence. Lord Lamerton and Lady Lamerton
begrudged them these necessaries of life. The laws of the land, no
doubt, were on the side of the nobleman, but the law of God on that of
the labourer. The laws were imposed on the people by a House of Lords
and the Queen, and therefore they would agitate for the abolition of an
hereditary aristocracy and keep their hats on when next the National
Anthem was played.
There were more mixed up in the matter than his lordship. Lord Lamerton
did nothing without consulting the agent, Mr. Macduff. The abandonment
of the mine was Macduff’s doing. The reason was known to every
one—Macduff was under the control of his wife. Mrs. Macduff was offended
because the school children did not curtsey and touch their caps when
she drove through the village in her victoria.
The rector also had a finger in this particular pie. He bore a spite
against Captain Saltren, because the captain was not a church-man. Not a
word had been said about stopping the lime-quarry. Oh no! of course not,
for Captain Tubb taught in the Sunday-school. If Stephen Saltren had
taken a class, nothing would have been said about discontinuing the
mine. Therefore the miners resolved to join the Liberation Society and
make an outcry for the disestablishment of the Church.
So the men argued—we will not say reasoned, and that is no caricature of
their arguments, not reasonings, in similar cases. The uneducated man is
always a suspicious man. He never believes in the reasons alleged, these
are disguises to hide the true springs of action.
When his lordship was told how incensed the miners were, he made light
of the matter. Pshaw! fiddlesticks! He was not going to have his dear
old Elizabethan home in which he was born, and which had belonged to the
Ingletts before they were peers, tumbled about his ears like a pack of
cards, just because there was a chance of finding three ha’porth of
manganese under it. The mine had been a nuisance for some years. The
standing up to their knees in water had been injurious to the health of
the girls, many of whom had died of decline. Wheal Perseverance was a
bad school of morals, lads and lasses worked together there, and
necessarily in a semi-nude condition. The schoolmaster and the
Government Inspector had complained that the attendance at school was
bad and irregular, for the children could earn money on the washing
floors, and did not see the fun of sitting at desks earning nothing.
The miners had been a constant source of annoyance, they were all of
them poachers, and had occasional fights with the keepers. The presence
of the miners entailed the retention of extra keepers to protect the
game, so that in this way also the mine proved expensive. Besides, the
manganese dirtied the stream that flowed through the grounds, made it of
a hideous tawny red colour, and spoiled the fishing not only in it, but
in the river Ore, into which it discharged its turbid waters.
The miners were all radicals and dissenters, and he would be glad to be
rid of them.
So every question has its two sides, equally plausible.
Stephen Saltren had been from boyhood shy, silent and self-contained.
His only book of study was the Bible, and his imagination was fired by
its poetry and its apocalyptic visions. His thoughts were cast in
Scriptural forms; his early companions had nick-named him the Methodist
Parson. But Saltren had never permanently attached himself to any
denomination. The Church was too ceremonious, he turned from her in
dislike. He rambled from sect to sect seeking a dwelling-place, and
finding only a temporary lodging. For a while he was all enthusiasm, and
flowed with grace, then the source of unction ran dry, and he attributed
the failure to deficiencies in the community he had joined, left it to
recommence the same round of experiences and encounter the same
disappointments in another. As a young man he had worked with his father
at the original mine, Wheal Eldorado, and on his father’s death, had
continued to live in the house his father had built on land he had
appropriated. He continued to work at Eldorado, became captain in his
father’s room, and when Eldorado was exhausted, directed the works of
Wheal Perseverance. Every one spoke highly of Stephen Saltren, as a
steady, conscientious man, truthful and of unimpeachable honesty. But no
one quite understood Saltren, he made no friends, he sought none; and he
left on all with whom he came in contact, the impression that he was a
man of very abnormal character.
Whilst Adam slept, the help-mate was formed and set by him. When he
opened his eyes, it was with a start and with something like terror that
he saw Eve at his side. He could not but believe he was still a prey to
dreams. Ever since that first meeting love has come as a surprise on the
sons of Adam, has come on them when least prepared to resist its
advance, and has never been regarded in the first moment as a grave
reality.
Thousands of years have rolled their course, and love has remained
unchanged, like the rose and the nightingale, neither developing forward
to some higher form of activity, nor degenerating to one less generous.
The diseases pass through endless modifications, varying in phenomena
with every generation, changing their symptoms, disguising their nature,
but the fever of love is always one and runs the identical course.
Enthusiasts have sought to stifle it in hair-cloth, and reduce its
virulence by vaccination with foreign matter, but it resists every
effort to subdue it. Society has attempted to discipline it and turn it
to practical ends. But love is a fire which will consume all bonds and
snap them, and is only finally extinguished with a handful of clay, when
the breast in which it has burnt is reduced, ashes to ashes, and dust to
dust.
Unexpectedly, unaccountably, the fever laid hold of Stephen Saltren. He
lost his heart to Marianne Welsh, who had been servant at the park, a
handsome girl, with refinement of manner beyond her class.
He courted her for a month. She had left the great house for some
unexplained reason, some folks said she was a liar, and had been
dismissed because found out to be unreliable: others said she left
because she was so good-looking that the rest of the maids were jealous
of her and worried her out of her situation.
Whilst courting Marianne, Saltren was a charmed man. His vision of the
spiritual world became clouded, and he was not sensible of the loss. A
new world of unutterable delight, and of ideal beauty, clothed in
rainbow colours and bathed in brilliant light, had unfurled before him
and now occupied his perspective.
The acquaintanceship led at once to marriage. There was no delay. There
was no occasion for delay. Saltren possessed his own house and land, and
was in receipt of a good salary. The marriage ensued; and then another
change came over Saltren. The new world of love and beauty, so real,
faded as the mirage of the desert, disclosing desert and dead bones.
Seven months after the marriage, Marianne became the mother of a boy,
and only Stephen knew that the son was not his own. A cruel act of
treachery had been committed. Marianne had taken his name, not because
she loved him, but to hide her own dishonour.
When he knew how he had been deceived, a barb entered Stephen’s heart,
and he was never after free from its rankle. A fire was kindled in his
veins that smouldered and gnawed its way outwards, certain eventually to
flare forth in some sudden and unexpected outbreak. He became more
reserved, more dreamy, more fantastic than before his marriage, and more
of an enigma to those with whom he associated.
“Let the babe be christened Giles Inglett,” said Marianne, “that has a
distinguished sound, none of your vulgar Jacks, and Harrys, and
Bills—besides, it will be taken as a compliment at the park, and may be
of benefit to the little fellow afterwards.”
Saltren shrugged his shoulders.
“It is your child, call it what you will.”
The boy was brought up by Stephen as his son, none doubted the
paternity. But Saltren never kissed the infant, never showed the child
love, took no interest in the welfare of the youth. To his wife he was
cold, stern and formal. He allowed her to see that he could never
forgive the wrong that had been done him.
So much for the past of Captain Stephen Saltren. Now, on this spring
Sunday morning, Arminell Inglett watched the man at his devotions on the
raft. She allowed him to proceed with them undisturbed for some time;
but she could not spend the whole day in the owl’s nest. Saltren must be
roused from his spiritual exercises and raptures. He must assist her—he
must surely have ropes at his disposal, and could call men to help in
her release.
She called him by name.
Her call was re-echoed from the rocky walls of the quarry. Saltren
looked up, looked about, and remained expectant, with uplifted hands and
eyes.
Then, half impatiently, half angrily, Arminell flung the crimson-covered
novel of Gaboriau far out into the air, to fall on or near Saltren, in
the hopes of directing his attention to her position.
He saw the fluttering book in the air, and stretched forth his hands to
receive it. The book whirled about, expanded, turned over, shut, and
shot down into the pond, where it floated one moment with its red cover
upwards. Captain Saltren was engrossed in interest to see and to secure
the book, he sculled towards it, stooped over the water to grasp it,
lost balance, and fell forward, and in his effort to recover the volume
and save himself from immersion, touched it, and the book went under the
raft and disappeared.
The attempt to attract attention to herself had failed, and Arminell
uttered an exclamation of vexation.