Once upon a time--only once, observe, she did not do it twice--a widow
of the name of Maylands went, in a fit of moderate insanity, and took up
her abode in a lonely, tumble-down cottage in the west of Ireland.
Mrs Maylands was very poor. She was the widow of an English clergyman,
who had left her with a small family and the smallest income that was
compatible with that family's maintenance. Hence the migration to
Ireland, where she had been born, and where she hoped to live
economically.
The tumble-down cottage was near the sea, not far from a little bay
named Howlin Cove. Though little it was a tremendous bay, with mighty
cliffs landward, and jutting ledges on either side, and forbidding rocks
at the entrance, which waged continual warfare with the great Atlantic
billows that rolled into it. The whole place suggested shipwreck and
smugglers.
The small family of Mrs Maylands consisted of three babes--so their
mother styled them. The eldest babe, Mary--better known as May--was
seventeen years of age, and dwelt in London, to which great city she had
been tempted by an elderly English cousin, Miss Sarah Lillycrop, who
held out as baits a possible situation and a hearty welcome.
The second babe, Philip, was verging on fifteen. Having kicked,
crashed, and smashed his way though an uproarious infancy and a stormy
childhood, he had become a sedate, earnest, energetic boy, with a slight
dash of humour in his spirit, and more than a dash of determination.
The third babe was still a baby. As it plays little or no part in our
tale we dismiss it with the remark that it was of the male sex, and was
at once the hope, fear, joy and anxiety of its distracted mother. So,
too, we may dismiss Miss Madge Stevens, a poor relation, who was worth
her weight in gold to the widow, inasmuch as she acted the part of
general servant, nurse, mender of the household garments, and recipient
of joys and sorrows, all of which duties she fulfilled for love, and for
just shelter and sustenance sufficient to keep her affectionate spirit
within her rather thin but well-favoured body.
Phil Maylands was a hero-worshipper. At the time when our tale opens he
worshipped a youth--the son of a retired naval officer,--who possessed
at least some of the qualities that are occasionally found in a hero.
George Aspel was daring, genial, enthusiastic, tall, broad-shouldered,
active, and young--about twenty. But George had a tendency to
dissipation.
His father, who had recently died, had been addicted to what he styled
good-fellowship and grog. Knowing his so-called weakness, Captain Aspel
had sent his boy to be brought up in the family of the Reverend James
Maylands, but some time before the death of that gentleman he had called
him home to help to manage the small farm with which he amused his
declining years. George and his father amused themselves with it to
such an extent that they became bankrupt about the time of the father's
death, and thus the son was left with the world before him and nothing
whatever in his pocket except a tobacco-pipe and a corkscrew.
One day Phil met George Aspel taking a ramble and joined him. These two
lived near to each other. Indeed, Mrs Maylands had been partly
influenced in her choice of a residence by her desire to be near George.
It was a bitterly cold December afternoon. As the friends reached the
summit of the grey cliffs, a squall, fresh from the Arctic regions, came
sweeping over the angry sea, cutting the foam in flecks from the waves,
and whistling, as if in baffled fury, among the opposing crags.
"Isn't it a grand sight?" said Phil, as they sought shelter under the
lee of a projecting rock.
"Glorious! I never look upon that sight," said Aspel, with flashing
eyes, "without wishing that I had lived in the days of the old Vikings."
The youth traced his descent from the sea-kings of Norway--those
tremendous fellows who were wont in days of yore to ravage the shores of
the known and unknown world, east and west, north and south, leaving
their indelible mark alike on the hot sands of Africa and the icebound
rocks of Greenland. As Phil Maylands knew nothing of his own lineage
further back than his grandfather, he was free to admire the immense
antiquity of his friend's genealogical tree. Phil was not, however, so
completely under the fascination of his hero as to be utterly blind to
his faults; but he loved him, and that sufficed to cover them up.
"Sure, they were a wild lot, after all?" he said in a questioning tone,
as he looked up at the glowing countenance of his friend, who, with his
bold mien, bulky frame, blue eyes, and fair curls, would have made a
very creditable Viking indeed, had he lived in the tenth century.
"Of course they were, Phil," he replied, looking down at his admirer
with a smile. "Men could not well be otherwise than wild and warlike in
those days; but it was not all ravage and plunder with them. Why, it is
to them and to their wise laws that we owe much of the freedom, coupled
with the order, that prevails in our happy land; and didn't they cross
the Atlantic Ocean in things little better than herring-boats, without
chart or compass, and discover America long before Columbus was born?"
"You don't mean that?" said Phil, with increased admiration; for the boy
was not only smitten by his friend's physical powers, but by his
supposed intellectual attainments.
"Yes, I do mean that," returned Aspel. "If the Norsemen of old did
mischief, as no one can deny, they were undoubtedly grand old
scoundrels, and it is certain that they did much good to the world,
whether they meant it or not."
Phil Maylands made no reply, but continued to look meditatively at his
friend, until the latter laughed, and asked what he was thinking about.
"It's thinking I am, what I wouldn't give if my legs were only as long
as yours, George."
"That they will soon be," returned George, "if they go on at the rate
they've been growing of late."
"That's a true word, anyhow; but as men's legs don't go on growing at
the same rate for ever, it's not much hope I have of mine. No, George,
it's kind of you to encourage me, but the Maylands have ever been a
short-legged and long-bodied race. So it's said. However, it's some
comfort to know that short men are often long-headed, and that many of
them get on in the world pretty well."
"Of course they do," returned Aspel, "and though they can't grow long,
they never stop short in the race of life. Why, look at Nelson--he was
short; and Wellington wasn't long, and Bonny himself was small in every
way except in his intellect--who's that coming up the hill?"
"It's Mike Kenny, the postman, I think. I wonder if he has brought a
letter from sister May. Mother expects one, I know."
The man who had attracted their attention was ascending towards them
with the slow, steady gait of a practised mountaineer. He was the
post-runner of the district. Being a thinly-peopled and remote region,
the "runner's walk" was a pretty extensive one, embracing many a mile of
moorland, vale and mountain. He had completed most of his walk at that
time, having only one mountain shoulder now between him and the little
village of Howlin Cove, where his labours were to terminate for that
day.
"Good-evening, Mike," said George Aspel, as the man approached. "Any
letters for me to-night?"
"No, sur, not wan," answered Mike, with something of a twinkle in his
eye; "but I've left wan at Rocky Cottage," he added, turning to Philip
Maylands.
"Was it May's handwriting?" asked the boy eagerly.
"Sure I don't know for sartin whose hand it is i' the inside, but it's
not Miss May's on the cover. Niver a wan in these parts could write
like her--copperplate, no less."
"Come, George, let's go back," said Phil, quickly, "we've been looking
out for a letter for some days past."
"It's not exactly a letter, Master Phil," said the post-runner slowly.
"Ah, then, she'd never put us off with a newspaper," said Phil.
"No, it's a telegram," returned Mike.
Phil Maylands looked thoughtfully at the ground. "A telegram," he said,
"that's strange. Are ye sure, Mike?"
"Troth am I."
Without another word the boy started off at a quick walk, followed by
his friend and the post-runner. The latter had to diverge at that place
to leave a letter at the house of a man named Patrick Grady. Hence, for
a short distance, they followed the same road.
Young Maylands would have passed the house, but as Grady was an intimate
friend of George Aspel, he agreed to stop just to shake hands.
Patrick Grady was the soul of hospitality. He was not to be put off
with a mere shake of the hand, not he--telegrams meant nothing
now-a-days, he said, everybody sent them. No cause for alarm. They
must stop and have a glass of mountain dew.
Aspel was resolute, however; he would not sit down, though he had no
objection to the mountain dew. Accordingly, the bottle was produced,
and a full glass was poured out for Aspel, who quaffed off the pure
spirit with a free-and-easy toss and smack of the lips, that might have
rendered one of the beery old sea-kings envious.
"No, sur, I thank ye," said Mike, when a similar glass was offered to
him.
"What! ye haven't taken the pledge, have ye?" said Grady.
"No, sur; but I've had three glasses already on me walk, an' that's as
much as I can rightly carry."
"Nonsense, Mike. You've a stiff climb before you--here, take it off."
The facile postman did take it off without further remonstrance.
"Have a dhrop, Phil?"
"No, thank ee," said Phil, firmly, but without giving a reason for
declining.
Being a boy, he was not pressed to drink, and the party left the house.
A short distance farther on the road forked, and here the post-runner
turned off to the right, taking the path which led towards the hill
whose rugged shoulder he had yet to scale.
Mike Kenny breasted it not only with the energy of youth and strength,
but with the additional and artificial energy infused by the spirits, so
that, much to his own surprise, his powers began to fail prematurely.
Just then a storm of wind and sleet came down from the heights above,
and broke with bitter fury in his face. He struggled against it
vigorously for a time till he gained a point whence he saw the dark blue
sea lashing on the cliffs below. He looked up at the pass which was
almost hid by the driving sleet. A feeling of regret and
self-condemnation at having so readily given in to Grady was mingled
with a strong sense of the duty that he had to discharge as he once more
breasted the steep. The bitter cold began to tell on his exhausted
frame. In such circumstances a small matter causes a man to stumble.
Kenny's foot caught on something--a root it might be--and he fell
headlong into a ditch and was stunned. The cold did its work, and from
that ditch he never rose again.
Meanwhile Mr Grady looked out from the window of his cottage upon the
gathering storm, expressed some satisfaction that it did not fall to his
lot to climb hills on such a day, and comforted himself--though he did
not appear to stand in need of special comfort--with another glass of
whisky.
George Aspel and Philip Maylands, with their backs to the storm, hurried
homewards; the former exulting in the grand--though somewhat
disconnected--thoughts infused into his fiery soul by the fire-water he
had imbibed, and dreaming of what he would have dared and done had he
only been a sea-king of the olden time; the latter meditating somewhat
anxiously on the probable nature of his sister's telegram.