trooping into the drawing-room attired in the gowns and jewels of
Patti’s operatic rôles. Patti herself came last, in “Leonora’s” white
and jewels. What a dinner party we had that night--we men, in the prim
black and white of “evening dress,” sitting there with “Leonora,” and
“Desdemona,” and “Marguerite,” and “Rachel,” and “Lucia,” and “Carmen,”
and “Dinorah,” and I know not how many more! Nobody but Patti would
have thought of such merry masquerading, or, having thought of it,
would have gone to the trouble of providing it.
Of course, we talked of her favorite characters in opera, and then
of singers she has known. She said it would give her real pleasure
to hear Mario and Grisi again, or, coming to later days, Scalchi and
Annie Louise Cary. The latter being an American and a friend, I was
glad to hear this appreciation of her from the Queen of Song. “Cary
and Scalchi were the two greatest contraltos I have ever known; and
I have sung with both of them. I remember Annie Louise Cary as a
superb artist, and a sweet and noble woman.” I said “Hear, hear,” in
the parliamentary manner, and then Patti added: “Now we will go into
the theatre again. There is to be another entertainment.” It was, of
all unexpected things, a magic-lantern show. Patti’s magic-lantern is
like everything else at Craig-y-Nos, from her piano to her pet parrot,
the only one of its kind. It is capable of giving, with all sorts of
“mechanical effects,” a two-hours’ entertainment every night for two
months without repeating a scene. Patti invited me to sit beside her
and watch the dissolving views. It seemed to me that it would be like
this to sit by the queen during a “state performance” at Windsor.
Here was Patti Imperatrice, dressed like a queen, wearing a crown of
diamonds, and attended by her retinue of brilliantly attired women and
attentive gentlemen of the court. And it was so like her to cause the
entertainment to begin with a series of American views, and to hum
softly a verse of “Home, Sweet Home,” as we looked out upon New York
harbor from an imaginary steamship inward bound.
[Illustration: THE PROSCENIUM OF CRAIG-Y-NOS THEATER.]
The next morning I started from Craig-y-Nos for America. As the
dog-cart was tugged slowly up the mountain-side the Stars and Stripes
saluted me from the castle tower, waving farewell as I withdrew from my
peep at paradise.
ONCE ABOARD THE LUGGER.
BY “Q.”
Early last fall there died in Troy an old man and his wife. The woman
went first, and the husband took a chill at her grave’s edge, when he
stood bareheaded in a lashing shower. The loose earth crumbled under
his feet, trickling over, and dropped on her coffin-lid. Through two
long nights he lay on his bed without sleeping, and listened to this
sound. At first it ran in his ears perpetually, but afterwards he
heard it at intervals only, in the pauses of acute suffering. On the
seventh day he died, of pleuro-pneumonia; and on the tenth (a Sunday)
they buried him. For just fifty years the dead man had been minister
of the Independent chapel on the hill, and had laid down his pastorate
two years before, on his golden wedding day. Consequently there was a
funeral sermon, and the young man, his successor, chose II. Samuel, i.
23, for his text: “Lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their
death they were not divided.” Himself a newly married man, he waxed
dithyrambic on the sustained affection and accord of the departed
couple. “Truly,” he wound up, “such marriages as theirs were made in
heaven.” And could they have heard, the two bodies in the cemetery had
not denied it; but the woman, after the fashion of women, would have
qualified the young minister’s assertion in her secret heart.
[Illustration]
When, at the close of the year 1839, Reverend Samuel Bax visited Troy
for the first time, to preach his trial sermon at Salem chapel, he
arrived by Bontigo’s van, late on a Saturday night, and departed again
for Plymouth at seven o’clock on Monday morning. He had just turned
twenty-one, and looked younger, and the zeal of his calling was strong
upon him. Moreover, he was shaken with nervous anxiety for the success
of his sermon; so that it is no marvel if he carried away but blurred
and misty impressions of the little port, and the congregation that
sat beneath him that morning, ostensibly reverent, but actually on
the lookout for heresy or any sign of weakness. Their impressions, at
any rate, were sharp enough. They counted his thumps upon the desk,
noted his one reference to “the original Greek,” saw and remembered
the flush of his young face and the glow in his eye as he hammered the
doctrine of the redemption out of original sin. The deacons fixed the
subject of these trial sermons, and had chosen original sin, on the
ground that a good beginning was half the battle. The maids in the
congregation knew beforehand that he was unmarried, and came out of
the chapel knowing also that his eyes were brown, that his hair had
a reddish tinge in certain lights, that one of his cuffs was frayed
slightly, but his black coat had scarcely been worn a dozen times,
with other trifles. They loitered by the chapel door until he came out,
in company with Deacon Snowden, who was conveying him off to dinner.
The deacon, on week days, was harbor-master of the port, and on Sundays
afforded himself roasted duck for dinner. Lizzie Snowden walked at her
father’s right hand. She was a slightly bloodless blonde, tall, with
a pretty complexion, and hair upon which it was rumored she could sit
if she were so minded. The girls watched the young preacher and his
entertainers as they moved down the hill, the deacon talking, and his
daughter turning her head aside as if it were merely in the section of
the world situated on her right hand that she took the least interest.
“That’s to show ’en the big plait,” commented one of the group behind.
“He can’t turn his head hes way, but it stares ’en in the face.”
“An’ her features look best from the left side, as everybody knows.”
“I reckon, if he’s chosen minister, that Lizzie’ll have ’en,” said a
tall, lanky girl. She was apprenticed to a dressmaker and engaged to
a young tinsmith. Having laid aside ambition on her own account, she
flung in this remark as an apple of discord.
“Tenifer Hosken has a chance. He’s fair-skinned hissel’, and Lizzie’s
too near his own color. Black’s mate is white, as they say.”
“There’s Sue Tregraine. She’ll have more money than either, when her
father dies.”
“What, marry one o’ Ruan!” the speaker tittered, despitefully.
“Why not?”
[Illustration]
The only answer was a shrug. Ruan is a small town that faces Troy
across the diminutive harbor, or, perhaps, I should say that Troy looks
down upon it at this slight distance. When a Trojan speaks of it he
says, “Across the water,” with as much implied contempt as though he
meant Botany Bay. There is no cogent reason for this, except that the
poorer class at Ruan earns its livelihood by fishing. In the eyes of
its neighbors the shadow of this lonely calling is cast upwards upon
its wealthier inhabitants. Troy depends on commerce, and employs these
wealthier men of Ruan to build ships for it. Further it will hardly
condescend. In the days of which I write intermarriage between the
towns was almost unheard-of, and even now it is rare. Yet they are
connected by a penny ferry.
“Her father’s a shipbuilder,” urged Sue Tregraine’s supporter.
“He might so well keep crab-pots, for all the chance she’ll have.”
Now there was a Ruan girl standing just outside this group, and she
heard what was said. Her name was Nance Trewartha, and her father was a
fisherman, who did, in fact, keep crab-pots. Moreover, she was his only
child, and helped him at his trade. She could handle a boat as well as
a man, she knew every sea-mark up and down the coast for forty miles,
she could cut up bait, and her hands were horny with handling ropes
from her childhood. But on Sundays she wore gloves, and came across
the ferry to chapel, and was as wise as any of her sex. She had known
before coming out of her pew that the young minister had a well-shaped
back to his head, and a gold ring on his little finger with somebody’s
hair in the collet, under a crystal. She was dark, straight, and
lissome of figure, with ripe lips and eyes as black as sloes, and she
hoped that the hair in the minister’s ring was his mother’s. She was
well aware of her social inferiority; but--the truth may be told--she
chose to forget it that morning, and to wonder what this young man
would be like as a husband. She had looked up into his face during
sermon time, devouring his boyish features, noticing his refined
accent, marking every gesture. Certainly, he was comely and desirable.
As he walked down the hill by Deacon Snowden’s side, she was perfectly
conscious of the longing in her heart, but prepared to put a stop to
it, and go home to dinner as soon as he had turned the corner and
passed out of sight. Then came that unhappy remark about the crab-pots.
She bit her lip for a moment, turned, and walked slowly off towards the
ferry, full of thought.
[Illustration]
Three weeks later Reverend Samuel Bax received his call.
He arrived, to assume his duties, in the waning light of a soft January
day. Bontigo’s van set him down, with a carpet-bag, bandbox, and chest
of books, at the door of the lodgings which Deacon Snowden had taken
for him. The house stood in the North Street, as it is called. It was
a small, yellow-washed building, containing just half a dozen rooms,
and of these the two set apart for the minister looked straight upon
the harbor. Under his sitting-room window was a little garden, and at
the end of the garden a low wall, with a stretch of water beyond it
and a bark that lay at anchor but a stone’s throw away, as it seemed,
its masts overtopping the misty hillside that closed the view. A green
painted door was let into the garden wall--a door with two flaps, the
upper of which stood open; and through this opening he caught another
glimpse of gray water.
The landlady, who showed him into this room and at once began to
explain that the furniture was better than it looked, was hardly
prepared for the rapture with which he stared out of the window. His
boyhood had been spent in a sooty Lancashire town, and to him the green
garden, the quay door, the bark, and the stilly water seemed to fall
little short of Paradise.
“I reckoned you’d like it,” she said. “An’, to be sure, ’tis a blessing
you do.”
He turned his stare upon her for a moment. She was a benign-looking
woman of about fifty, in a short-skirted gray gown and widow’s cap.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because, leavin’ out the kitchen, there’s but four rooms, two for you
an’ two for me; two facin’ the harbor, an’ two facin’ the street. Now,
if you’d took a dislike to this look-out I must ha’ put you over the
street an’ moved in here mysel’. I do like the street, too, there’s so
much more doin’.”
“I think this arrangement will be better in every way,” said the young
minister.
“I’m main glad. Iss, there’s no denyin’ that I’m main glad. From
upstairs you can see right down the harbor, which is prettier again.
Would’ee like to see it now? O’ course you would--an’ it’ll be so
much handier for answerin’ the door, too. There’s a back door at the
end o’ the passage. You’ve only to slip a bolt an’ you’m out in the
garden--out to your boat, if you choose to keep one. But the garden’s a
tidy little spot to walk up an’ down in an’ make up your sermons, wi’
nobody to overlook you but the folk next door, an’ they’m churchgoers.”
[Illustration]
After supper that evening the young minister unpacked his books and was
about to arrange them, but drifted to the window instead. He paused
for a minute or two, with his face close to the pane, and then flung
up the sash. A faint north wind breathed down the harbor, scarcely
ruffling the water. Around and above him the frosty sky flashed with
innumerable stars, and behind the bark’s masts, behind the long chine
of the eastern hill, a soft radiance heralded the rising moon. It was
the new moon, and while he waited, her thin horn pushed up, as it were,
through the furze brake on the hill’s summit, and she mounted into the
free heaven. With upturned eyes the young minister followed her course
for twenty minutes, not consciously observant, for he was thinking
over his ambitions, and at his time of life these are apt to soar with
the moon. Though possessed with zeal for good work in this small
seaside town, he intended that Troy should be but a stepping-stone in
his journey. He meant to go far. And while he meditated his future,
forgetting the chill in the night air, it was being decided for him by
a stronger will than his own. More than this, that will had already
passed into action. His destiny was actually launched on the full
spring tide that sucked the crevices of the gray wall at the garden’s
end.
A slight sound drew the minister’s gaze down from the moon to the
quay-door. Its upper flap still stood open, allowing a square of
moonlight to pierce the straight black shadow of the garden wall.
In this square of moonlight were now framed the head and shoulders of a
human being.
The young man felt a slight chill run down his spine. He leaned forward
out of the window and challenged the apparition, bating his tone, as
all people bate it at that hour.
“Who are you?” he demanded, “and what is your business here?”
There was no reply for a moment, though he felt sure his voice must
have carried to the quay-door. The figure paused for a second or two,
then unbarred the lower flap of the door and advanced across the wall’s
shadow to the centre of the bright grassplot under the window. It was
the figure of a young woman. Her head was bare and her sleeves turned
up to the elbows. She wore no cloak or wrap, to cover her from the
night air, and her short-skirted, coarse frock was open at the neck.
As she turned up her face to the window, the minister could see by the
moon’s rays that it was well-favored.
“Be you the new preacher?” she asked, resting a hand on her hip and
speaking softly up to him.
“I am the new Independent minister.”
“Then I’ve come for you.”
“Come for me?”
“Iss; my name’s Nance Trewartha, an’ you ’en wanted across the water,
quick as possible. Old Mrs. Slade’s a-dyin’ to-night, over yonder.”
“She wants me?”
“She’s one o’ your congregation, an’ can’t die easy till you’ve seen
her. I reckon she’s got something ’pon her mind; an’ I was to fetch you
over, quick as I could.”
As she spoke the church clock down in the town chimed out the hour, and
immediately after, ten strokes sounded on the clear air.
The minister consulted his own watch, and seemed to be considering.
“Very well,” said he, after a pause. “I’ll come. I suppose I must cross
by the ferry.”
“Ferry’s closed this two hours, an’ you needn’t wake up any in the
house. I’ve brought father’s boat to the ladder below, an’ I’ll bring
you back again. You’ve only to step out here by the back door. An’ wrap
yourself up, for ’tis a brave distance.”
“Very well. I suppose it’s really serious.”
“Mortal. I’m glad you’ll come,” she added, simply.
The young man nodded down in a friendly manner, and going back into the
room, slipped on his overcoat, picked up his hat, and turned the lamp
down carefully. Then he struck a match, found his way to the back door,
and unbarred it. The girl was waiting for him, still in the centre of
the grassplot.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” she repeated, but this time there was something
like constraint in her voice. As he pulled to the door softly, she
moved and led the way down to the water side.
From the quay-door a long ladder ran down to the water. At low water
one had to descend twenty feet and more; but now the high tide left
but three of its rungs uncovered. At the young minister’s feet a small
fishing-boat lay ready, moored by a short painter to the ladder. The
girl stepped lightly down and held up her hand.
“Thank you,” said the young man, with dignity, “but I do not want help.”
She made no answer to this; but, as he stepped down, went forward and
unmoored the painter. Then she pushed gently away from the ladder,
hoisted the small foresail, and, returning to her companion, stood
beside him for a moment with her hand on the tiller.
“Better make fast the foresheet,” she said, suddenly.
The young man looked helplessly at her. He had not the slightest
idea of her meaning, did not, in fact, know the difference between a
foresheet and a mainsail. And it was just to find out the depth of his
ignorance that she had spoken.
“Never mind,” she said, “I’ll do it myself.”
She made the rope fast and took hold of the tiller again. The sails
shook, and filled softly as they glided out from under the wall. The
soft breeze blew straight behind them, the tide was just beginning to
ebb. She slackened the mainsheet a little, and the water hissed as they
spun down under the gray town towards the harbor’s mouth.
A dozen vessels lay at anchor below the town quay, their lamps showing
a strange orange-yellow in the moonlight; between them the minister
saw the cottages of Ruan glimmering on the eastern shore, and above
them the coastguard station, with its flagstaff, a clear white upon
the black hillside. It seemed to him that they were not shaping their
course for the little town.
“I thought you told me,” he said at length, “that Mrs.--the dying
woman--lived across there.”
The girl shook her head. “Not in Ruan itsel’--Ruan parish. We’ll have
to go round the point.”
She was leaning back and gazing straight before her, towards the
harbor’s mouth. The boat was one of the class that serves along that
coast for hook and line as well as drift-net fishing, clinker built,
about twenty-seven feet in the keel and nine in the beam. It had no
deck beyond a small cuddy forward, on top of which a light hoarfrost
was gathering as they moved. The minister stood beside the girl, and
withdrew his eyes from this cuddy roof to contemplate her.
“Do you mean to say,” he asked, “that you don’t take cold wearing no
wrap or bonnet on frosty nights like this?”
She let the tiller go for a moment, took his hand by the wrist and laid
it on her own bare arm. He felt the flesh, but it was firm and warm.
Then he withdrew his hand hastily, without finding anything to say. His
eyes avoided hers. When, after half a minute, he looked at her again,
her gaze was fixed straight ahead upon the misty stretch of sea beyond
the harbor’s mouth.
In a minute or two they were sweeping between the tall cliff and the
reef of rocks that guard this entrance on either side. On the reef
stood a wooden cross, painted white, warning vessels to give it a wide
berth; on the cliff a gray castle, with a battery before it, under the
guns of which they spun seaward, still with the wind astern.
[Illustration]
Outside the sea lay as smooth as within the harbor. The wind blew
steadily off the shore, so that, close-hauled, one might fetch up or
down channel with equal ease. The girl began to flatten the sails, and
asked her companion to bear a hand. Their hands met over a rope, and
the man noted with surprise that the girl’s was feverishly hot. Then
she brought the boat’s nose round to the eastward, and, heeling gently
over the dark water, they began to skirt the misty coast, with the
breeze on their left cheeks.
“How much farther?” asked the minister.
She nodded towards the first point in the direction of Plymouth.
He turned his coat-collar up about his ears, and wondered if his
duty would often take him on such journeys as this. Also he felt
thankful that the sea was smooth. He might, or might not, be given to
seasickness; but somehow he was sincerely glad that he had not to be
put to the test for the first time in this girl’s presence.
They passed the small headland, and still the boat held on its way.
[Illustration]
“I had no idea you were going to take me this distance. Didn’t you tell
me the house lay beyond the point we’ve just passed?”
To his amazement the girl drew herself up, looked him straight in the
face, and said:
“There’s no such place.”
“What?”
“There’s no such place. There’s nobody ill at all. I told you a lie.”
“You told me a lie--then why in the name of common sense am I here?”
“Because, young minister--because, sir, I’m sick o’ love for you, an’ I
want ’ee to marry me.”
“Great heaven!” the young minister muttered, recoiling, “is the girl
mad?”
“Ah, but look at me, sir.” She seemed to grow still taller as she stood
there, resting one hand on the tiller and looking at him with perfectly
serious eyes. “Look at me well before your fancy lights ’pon some
other o’ the girls. To-morrow they’ll be all after ’ee, an’ this’ll
be my only chance; for my father’s no better’n a plain fisherman, an’
they’re all above me in money an’ rank. I be but a common Ruan girl,
an’ my family is counted for naught. But look at me well; there’s none
stronger nor comelier, nor that’ll love thee so dear!”
The young man positively gasped. “Set me ashore at once!” he commanded,
stamping his foot.
“Nay, that I will not till thou promise, an’ that’s flat. Dear lad,
listen--an’ consent, consent--an’ I swear to thee thou’ll never be
sorry for’t.”
“I never heard such awful impropriety in my life. Turn back; I order
you to steer back to the harbor at once!”
She shook her head. “No, lad, I won’t. An’ what’s more, you don’t know
how to handle a boat, an’ couldn’t get back by yoursel’, not in a
month.”
“This is stark madness. You--you abandoned woman, how long do you mean
to keep me here?”
“Till thou give in to me. We’m goin’ straight t’wards Plymouth now, an’
if th’ wind holds--as ’twill--we’ll be off the Rame in two hours. If
you haven’t said me yes by that, maybe we’ll go on; or perhaps we’ll
run across to the coast o’ France----”
“Girl, do you know that if I’m not back by daybreak I’m ruined?”
“And oh, man, man! can’t ’ee see that I’m ruined, too, if I turn back
without your word? How shall I show my face in Troy streets again, tell
me?”
At this sudden transference of responsibility the minister staggered.
“You should have thought of that before,” he said, employing the one
obvious answer.
“O’ course I thought of it. But for love o’ you I made up my mind to
risk it. An’ now there’s no goin’ back.” She paused a moment and then
added, as a thought struck her, “Why, lad, doesn’t that prove I love
’ee uncommon?”
“I prefer not to consider the question. Once more--will you go back?”
“I can’t.”
He bit his lips and moved forward to the cuddy, on the roof of which he
seated himself sulkily. The girl tossed him an end of rope.
“Dear, better coil that up an’ sit upon it. The frost’ll strike a chill
into thee.”
With this she resumed her old attitude by the tiller. Her eyes were
fixed ahead, her gaze passing just over the minister’s hat. When he
glanced up he saw the rime twinkling on her shoulders and the starshine
in her dark eyes. Around them the firmament blazed with constellations,
up to its coping. Never had the minister seen them so multitudinous
or so resplendent. Never before had heaven seemed so alive to him. He
could almost hear it breathe. And beneath it the little boat raced
eastward, with the reef-points pattering on its tan sails.
Neither spoke. For the most part the minister avoided the girl’s eyes,
and sat nursing his wrath. The whole affair was ludicrous; but it meant
the sudden ruin of his good name, at the very start of his career.
This was the word he kept grinding between his teeth: “ruin,” “ruin.”
Whenever it pleased this madwoman to set him ashore he must write to
Deacon Snowden for his boxes and resign all connection with Troy. But
would he ever get rid of the scandal? Could he ever be sure that, to
whatever distance he might flee, it would not follow him? Had he not
better abandon his calling once and for all? It was hard!
A star shot down from the Milky Way and disappeared in darkness behind
the girl’s shoulder. His eyes, following it, encountered hers. She left
the tiller and came slowly forward.
“In three minutes we’ll open Plymouth Sound,” she said, quietly; and
then, with a sharp gesture, flung both arms out towards him. “Oh, lad,
think better o’t, an’ turn back wi’ me. Say you’ll marry me, for I’m
perishin’ o’ love.”
The moonshine fell on her throat and extended arms. Her lips were
parted, her head was thrown back a little, and for the first time the
young minister saw that she was a beautiful woman.
“Ay, look, look at me,” she pleaded. “That’s what I’ve wanted ’ee to do
all along. Take my hands; they’m shapely to look at and strong to work
for ’ee.”
Hardly knowing what he did, the young man took them; then in a moment
he let them go--but too late; they were about his neck.
With that he sealed his fate for good or ill. He bent forward a little,
and their lips met.