FIRST FURROW
Youth is susceptible to that which it awakes, and Ishmael sallied out
early next morning in a mood to match the month as it then shone to
greet him. The sun had not long cleared the east, and the globes of dew
glimmered on leaf and twig and darkened his boots as he crossed the
ill-kept lawn in front of the house. He promised himself it should be
rolled and mown and have flower-beds around it, and that a wind-break of
firs should be planted along the low granite wall which was all that
divided it from the bare moor. He went to the little gate and, leaning
his back against it, looked long at the house as though for the first
time. He noted the solid simple lines of its long front and the beauty
of its heavy mullions and the stone corbels beneath the roof. The
portico over the door had pillars of square rough-hewn granite, a whole
room was built out over it, with a wide-silled window, beneath which the
Ruan arms were carved on a granite shield. That door should have a drive
leading up and widening before it; at present what cart-track there was
went meekly along the side of the low wall into the farmyard. Those two
big velvet-dark yews that stood sentinel either side of the porch would
look splendid when clipped taut and square. So he planned, and then,
hearing the voice of John-James calling to the cows, he remembered that
the utilitarian side of the place must come first; and he went up the
path, through the panelled corridor that led through the house, into the
court, passed under the arch at the opposite side, and so into the
farmyard. There the cows were gathering for the milking, swinging
slowly into the yard while John-James held open the gate from the field.
They were good cows, but Ishmael glanced at them critically. Cows were
to be his chief concern, for the home farm was not large enough to yield
much in the way of crops for sale--nearly all would be needed for the
winter consumption of his own beasts. Most of the corn sown was the
dredge-corn, a mingling of barley and oats sown together and ground
together, which was used for cattle, and the roots and hay were all
needed also. Even then there would have to be special foods bought,
Ishmael decided, for he believed in farmyard manure, and to obtain that
at its best the cattle had to be well and carefully fed. These cows he
now saw were good enough of their kind, but he wished to start Guernseys
or Jerseys, or more probably a cross-breed of the two, as being fitter
for the bare country than pure-bred animals.
John-James tramped in behind the last cow and closed the gate. He had
made no remark at sight of Ishmael, and all he now said was:
"Them are good cows. Good as any you'll get up-country I reckon."
"They look all right for their kind," admitted Ishmael.
"Finest in the place. Not like Johnny Angwin's beasts--high in the bone
and low in the flesh. He'm a soft kind o' chap, sure 'nough, and sick to
his heart at having to take to farming toall. He was in a book-shop to
Truro, but had to come home when his brother died. T'other day he come
to I and he says, 'Oh, John-James Beggoe, my dear, what shall I do? I
forgot I did ought to arrange my cows all in steps, so to speak, so that
they shouldn't all calve to wance, and now they'll all be a doen of it
and us won't get no milk....'" John-James broke off with a chuckle, then
resumed with: "Seen the calves yet?"
"No. I suppose they've been turned out?"
"Not yet. I'll wait till the middle of the month before turnen out.
Eight heifers and three bulls there be."
"Well, I'll see what they look like. Morning, Katie!"
Katie Jacka, who had come out to the milking, responded eagerly to the
new master and planked down stool and pails. Ishmael and John-James
stood watching for a few minutes.
"That there cow is drawin' to calf, and I'm jealous of her," announced
John-James lugubriously; "she'm too fat, and I fear she'll get bruised,
but though I turned her into the poorest field in the place she won't go
no thinner. She'm never gone dry, and they belongs to be one month dry."
"I want to start Jerseys," said Ishmael boldly; "I'm sure the better
quality of the milk will more than make up for the greater cost of the
stock."
"Jerseys! ... well," said John-James, startled, "that's a new idea,
surely. I don't knaw where 'ee'd get a bull to serve en. Hav'ee thought
on that?"
"I don't see why I shouldn't have a bull myself. I could advertise it
for service all round the country, if it comes to that."
John-James muttered something to the effect that he'd enough to do as it
was, but Katie, one ear pressed against a cow, one pricked for the
conversation, chimed in.
"There's a Jersey bull to the geart farm to Grey Caunce, maister," she
told Ishmael, "and I've heard tell there's nothen but Jerseys there, and
the butter's the best in the country and fetches most to market. Many's
the time I've said I could make as good if I'd only got cream hangin' in
riches like them has got."
"You must come up the Fair with me next time, John-James," suggested
Ishmael, "and then we'll see. Come and show me the calves now...."
The two went off to the cowsheds and for the next hour were examining
livestock, from the calves down to the bees--rather a rarity in those
parts and the joy of John-James, who had the bee-gift, and was never
stung, being able to move a swarm in his bare hands unscathed.
Afterwards they walked over part of the farmlands, and Ishmael's heart
began to beat high with pride and joy. There is nothing more romantic
than land--its wilfulness, its possibilities, its endless intimacies.
Ishmael's land was to prove an exacting mistress, unlike the rich, sleek
home counties, which only have to be stroked to smile and yield. On
these granite heights the soil needed breaking every three years; if a
field did very well it might be left four, but never longer. The deep
ploughing of the midlands was impossible--the hard subsoil lay too close
to the surface, and little wheat was sown as the shallow soil would not
bear it, and what was sown never grew to be like the heavy eight-sided
corn of softer counties. Yet Ishmael loved his land already and was to
love it more and more, its very hardness and fighting of him helping to
make its charm.
Neither his early experiences of farm life nor his opportunities of more
scientific study had been wasted on Ishmael, and he looked over pasture
and arable now with an eye knowing enough, if not quite as much so as he
tried to make it appear to John-James. He found the land in good
condition, the early-sown grain showing clear green blades and the grass
rich enough, while even in the more neglected pastures towards the sea
where the thistles had not been refused a foothold they had been kept
cut down to prevent seeding. John-James was conscientious, though
handicapped by a rigid conservatism and lack of proper help. For the
emigration had been very heavy of late years from that part of the
world, to the goldfields both of Australia and California. Times were
bad, though not as bad as in the North, where thousands of cotton
operatives were literally starving owing to the stoppage of the cotton
supplies through the American Civil War. The papers were full for
months, amid the greater excitement of Princess Alexandra's wedding, of
paragraphs headed "The Distress in the North," that had become as much a
regular feature as the weather reports or the society gossip. The
consequent uneasiness made itself felt even in Cornwall, and perhaps the
Anti-Slavery meetings held in Penzance were not entirely disinterested.
Also Botallack mine was then in full work and swallowing young men,
though for poor enough wage. One way and another, managing the farm was
none too easy, and so John-James had found. He looked with as much
interest as his stolid mind could compass to the return of Ishmael, with
the power of the purse-strings and the expenses of his own education at
an end, to work something of a miracle at Cloom. But he had not imagined
the miracle to take the form of Jersey cows, and he began to wonder
dolefully what newfangled notions about machinery and manure might not
also be hatching in the young owner's brain. They mounted in silence the
steepest slope of the rolling land and came to a stone hedge on which
John-James leant, Ishmael beside him.
They stood in silence, John-James because he hardly ever spoke unless
spoken to, and Ishmael because over his spirit rushed a flood of memory
that for an aching moment overwhelmed him. This was the field where the
Neck had been cried, when, as a little boy, he had first caught at the
flying skirts of happiness, first realised the sharpness of the actual
instant--and thought it surely could never, so vivid and insistent was
it, cease to be.... Now, as then, his eyes sought the line of twisted
hedge, and he saw it, looking so much the same, yet set with leaf and
blossom so many seasons away from that August evening, even as he was
himself from the child who had thought to arrest Time. Yet, realising
that, he again tried to snatch at the present, though with the
difference that now he told himself that anyway there was such a long,
long time before him to be young in that it wouldn't ever pass....
"That's for ploughing now," announced John-James suddenly. "For the
mang'ls. 'Tes as good land as any in the place, and a waste to hav'en
grass, so it is. Maybe you'd like to come and have a try at it, if you'm
not gwain to be above turnen your own hand to work?"
Ishmael had a moment's qualm. What ploughing he had done had been but
slight, and he was not free from an uneasy impression that John-James
was laying a trap for him into which he would not be sorry to see him
fall. It would be no better to put it off, for he could imagine the
comments that would fly, so he nodded his head.
"We'll set to work this morning on it," he agreed lightly; "I suppose
you're still using wooden ploughs down here?"
"Wooden ploughs ...? And what'd 'ee have ploughs made of, I should like
to knaw? Gold, like what Arch'laus has in Australy?"
"Iron. All modern ploughs are made of iron, and so are rollers."
"Iron ... iron rollers. What's wrong weth a geart granite roller, lad?"
"Well, it's very cumbersome, isn't it? It's three men's work to cart it
from one place to another, for one thing. Anyway, I've brought down an
iron plough and a chain-harrow...."
Over John-James's face came a gleam of interest. "A chain-harrow?" he
repeated; "I've long wanted one o' they. Us allus has to take the
yard-gate off its hinges and weave furze in and out of it and drag that
over the ground."
"Well, now you've got a real chain-harrow and won't have to do that any
more. I tell you what it is, John-James, I want you and me between us to
make this the finest farm in the country; I don't want Archelaus to
sneer at us when he comes home and say how much better he could have run
it. Of course, I can't do it without you; but if you'll only help...."
John-James held silence for a space. Then he said:
"I've allus said as how us wanted carts, 'stead of carr'n all our furze
and the butter and everything as goes in or out upon they harses and
lil' dunkies. And gates ... if us could have a few more gates to the
place 'stead of thrawing the hedges up and down all our days.... It'll
cost money, but what you do put into the land you get out of the land.
Same as weth cows."
It was a long speech for John-James, and he paused with his countenance
suffused a deep purplish hue. Ishmael seized his hand and wrung it with
a sudden young gust of enthusiasm that he could not control.
"You'll help. I know you will. Oh, we'll pull the old place up yet.
We'll make such a thing of it...."
But John-James had withdrawn his hand limply. "Go maken it so fine it'll
be a pretty place for gentry, s'pose," he said; "be shamed to see I
about the place then, I reckon."
Ishmael laughed joyously at him. "Don't be an ass, John-James," he said;
and it was the first time he had been able to meet any little speech of
the kind without strain. John-James stood at ease, and slowly some faint
trace of a change of expression appeared on his immobile features.
"I reckon thee'll do, lad," was all he said; but Ishmael felt his heart
give an upleap of triumph; he knew he had made his first conquest. As he
and John-James went into breakfast side by side he felt quite equal to
meeting Annie unperturbed. But he was not to be called on to make trial
of his stoicism, as Annie hardly spoke to him; but with a thrill of
emancipation he realised that his mother's tongue no longer held terror
for him--merely the annoyance of a persistent fly.
As long as he lived Ishmael never forgot the exquisite moment when he
broke his first furrow on his own land. Harvest gathered is a wonder and
a release from strain; sowing and tending of seed and young crops is
sweet, but ploughing holds more of romance than all the rest. It is the
beginning, the fresh essay with soil that has become once more savage;
it is the earliest essential of man's conquest of Nature; his taming of
her from a wild mistress to a fruitful wife.
The day shone with the clear pearliness of early June: high in air the
big cumulus clouds rode golden-white, trailing their shadows over the
dappled land beneath; the branches of hawthorn gleamed silvery amidst
the pearly blossom; a wine-pale sunlight washed with iridescence sky and
earth. In the great sloping field, which held six days' hard ploughing
between its stone ramparts, the granite monolith stood four-square to
all the winds that blew, defying ploughs and weathers. The two brown
horses waited by the highest hedge, the plough, that always looks so
toy-like and is so stubborn, quiescent behind them, a boy ready at their
heads, switch in hand. With a freshness of emotion never quite to be
recaptured, Ishmael gathered up the rope reins and took the handles of
the plough in his grip. The impact of the blade against the soil when
the straining horses had given the first jerk up the slope was as some
keen exquisite mating of his innermost being with the substance of the
earth ... a joy almost sensual, so strong was the pleasure of the actual
physical contact as yielding soil and fine hard edge met--his hands
sensitively aware of the texture of that meeting through the iron frame
of the plough. Up and down the field, over its humped back, widening the
strip of brown between him and the hedge, always with pleasure at sight
of that long rich fold of earth turning over perpetually under the
sideways impact of the blade, turning over till the green turf was
hidden by the brown of the under soil....
The field was not an easy one for the horses by reason of its curve; the
off horse, on the vore, as the part already ploughed is called, dug his
great hoofs firmly in the stiff soil, but the near horse slipped
perpetually on the short turf. Every now and then the plough had to be
stopped while great hunks of granite were hacked out of the earth; then,
with loud cries of encouragement and a cut of the whip, the horses were
urged on again, the flash of their shoes gleaming rhythmically up and
down, up and down, as Ishmael guided the plough behind them. His hands
gripped the handles, the plough clanked, the horses struggled, and the
sound of their hoofs made a dull thud-thud upon the earth; the wind blew
gratefully on his moist brow and on the flanks of the animals; at every
turn the shouts of his voice as he stopped the horses and reversed the
clanking plough went up through the quiet world.
The gulls sat, dazzlingly white, motionless as little headstones, along
the rim where green land met brown vore, then rose and shrieked and
swooped as the clatter began again, dipping in the wake of the new
furrow. And the sun went overhead, making sweating steeds and sweating
man and bright wheels and brighter blade of the plough glisten like
sculptured bronze, while all the time the green was being more and more
swamped, furrow after furrow, by the encroaching brown.
That night Ishmael was sore and stiff, but happy, with a deep physical
content. The next day and the next and on till the last furrow lay
turned along the lower hedge he kept himself at it doggedly, in spite of
aching muscles, driven by a vague feeling that this was his initiation,
his test of knighthood, and that to fail at it, to leave it to other
hands, would augur ill. When, on the sixth night, he washed the sweat
and earth from off his healthily tired body he felt life could hold
nothing sweeter than what it had yielded him in these six days. He had
taken seizen of his land.