Produced by Al Haines.
*JOHN HERRING*
_A WEST OF ENGLAND ROMANCE_
BY SABINE BARING-GOULD
AUTHOR OF 'MEHALAH'
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. I.
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO, 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1883
[All rights reserved]
*PREFACE.*
(_ADDRESSED TO THOSE WHO ARE NOT OF
THE WEST COUNTRY._)
In a tale of the West of England in which are introduced some of the
lowest types of rustic humanity to be found there, it is impossible to
avoid the use of the local dialect. This dialect has, however, been
modified, as much as possible to render it intelligible without
transforming it into the language of the schools. The vulgar dialect is
regardless of gender and reckless in the use of cases. A cow is he, and
a tom-cat wags her tail. At a trial in Exeter, at the Assizes, a man
was charged with the murder of his wife, a woman with an aggravating
tongue. The jury found a verdict of 'Not Guilty' against the clearest
evidence, and, when the Judge expressed his surprise, 'Ah, your
lordship,' said the foreman in explanation, 'us ain't a-going to hang he
for the likes of she.' It is perhaps necessary to explain that 'the
Cobbledicks' are no creation of the imagination--the clan has only been
dispersed of recent years; the old man who lived in a cyder-cask is
dead, but he was alive ten years ago. The clan was literally one of
half-naked savages.
*CONTENTS*
OF
THE FIRST VOLUME
CHAPTER
I. The Cobbledicks
II. What the Cask Did
III. West Wyke
IV. Mirelle
V. The Owl's Nest
VI. That Old Tramplara
VII. That Young Tramplara
VIII. Cicely
IX. Dolbeare
X. A Musical Walking-Stick
XI. The Giant's Table
XII. Ophir
XIII. Captain Trecarrel
XIV. Under The Hearth
XV. Eheu, Bubones!
XVI. Trustee not Executor
XVII. In the Summer-House
XVIII. Salting a Mine
XIX. Two Strings to one Bow
XX. Grinding Gold
*JOHN HERRING.*
*CHAPTER I.*
*THE COBBLEDICKS.*
'Log!' said the voice of Cobbledick the Old from a cyder cask.
'I be a logging like the blue blazes,' answered Cobbledick the younger.
Then a dry and dirty hand emerged from the cask, and with a gorse bush
struck at the girl--that is, at Cobbledick the younger. She evaded the
blow.
'Be quiet, vaither, or I won't log no more!'
'You won't?' with a horrible curse; 'then I'll make you, if I whacks and
whacks till you be all over blood and prickles. There, I will, I swear.
Glory rallaluley!'
On a spur of Dartmoor that struck out into the proximity of cultivated
land, stood a cromlech or dolmen--a rude monument of a lost race, reared
of granite slabs. This spur of moor was a continuation or buttress of
Gosdon Beacon, which, next to Yestor, is the highest point attained by
Dartmoor, and is indeed the second highest mountain in the south of
England.
The dolmen was composed of four great slabs of granite set on edge, two
parallel to the other two, with a fifth stone closing one end. The
whole five supported an enormous quoit or block, plain on the nether
surface, but unshaped above. Local antiquaries, pretending to
knowledge, but actually ignorant, called this erection a Druid altar,
and pointed to a sort of basin on the top formed by the weather, with a
channel from it to the edge, and this they asserted was a receptacle for
the blood of human victims, and a means of lustration for those who
stood below. Other antiquaries, knowing a great deal, and not ashamed
to confess ignorance where knowledge ended and guesswork began, said
simply that the monument belonged to prehistoric times, and that they
neither knew who had built it, nor for what purpose it was raised. The
country folk called it the 'Giant's Table.'
On the lee side of this cromlech was a cyder cask, tethered to the
cromlech by a piece of cord passed through the bung-hole, and attached
to a stout stick within the monument, entering between the interstices
of the blocks.
In this cask lived an old man, named Grizzly Cobbledick by his
neighbours. He had lived in the cask many years.
Some miles away, to the north, in another parish, that of Nymet, lived
the parent stock from which he sprung, in an old tumble-down cottage,
sans windows, sans doors, sans chimney, sans floors, sans everything
save the 'cob'--that is, mud walls--and the ragged roof of thatch.
This hovel was what the Germans would call the 'Stamm-burg' of the
Cobbledicks. That is to say, it was the ancestral cradle of the race; it
was also the hive in which they continued to dwell. They lived there,
apart from their fellows, with whom they held no communication, never
entering a village nor dealing at any shop, never seen at market or
merry-making, least of all at church.
Their unsociable habits went further. They allowed no one to invade
their hovel and pry into their mode of living. If any of them saw a
person stand still near the house to observe it, or to watch a
Cobbledick at his work or his play, a yelp called the whole clan
together, and with howls and curses they set on the inquisitive visitor,
pelting him with stones, and flinging sticks at his head, so that he was
glad to beat a retreat.
The Cobbledicks were half-naked savages. They wore, for warmth not for
decency, some wretched rags. When the scanty supply of garments failed
entirely, then the whole crew dispersed over the country, hunting by
moonlight for a fresh supply; they stole whatever came in their way that
could be converted into covering to clothe their nakedness. Anything
served--a potato-sack or a flour-bag. One or other would change into
coat or gown by making in it slits for head and arms.
Once a farmer lost an oilcloth stack-covering. It was deliberately taken
off his stack one rainy night before he had thatched his wheat. He
recognised it torn up and utilised as curtains to the open holes that
served as windows to Cobbledick Castle. The farmer prosecuted, but
first a rick and then a stack was burned, and he was glad to stay
proceedings and suffer the savages to keep his oilcloth, fearing for the
thatch of his farmhouse, and himself, his wife and babes beneath it.
When the neighbourhood was aware that the Cobbledicks ran short of
raiment, old worn garments were purposely left out at night on hedges
for their use.
The migration of Grizzly Cobbledick to the parish of South Tawton took
place in this wise. It marked an epoch in the history of the race. The
Cobbledicks had not arrived at that stage of civilisation in which
property becomes personal. Their views as to property were undeveloped.
The world belonged in part to the Cobbledicks, and the rest did not.
What belonged to the Cobbledicks belonged to the family, not to any
individual in the family. They owned land, reclaimed from the waste
long ago, clay land overgrown with rushes, partly bog; but this land was
not the property of this Cobbledick or that, male or female, old or
young, it belonged to all, on the principle of the Russian mir. Not
only so, but the utensils of the house and of the farm were common, so
also were the garments. The pipkin cooked for the whole family, and the
hoe raised the potatoes for all to eat. The pipkin was not private
property when Poll stirred it, the hoe was not private property when
Dick worked with it, and the potato-sack was not owned by him or by her
who wore it. If, by any chance, it were taken off, it thereby fell back
into the common store.
The Cobbledicks never had been civilised. They were autochthones. The
oldest inhabitant of Nymet remembered them. They did not increase much,
but they did not die out. Their congeners, named the Gubbins, lived in
the Lydford glens in Charles the First's reign, when a poet thus
described them:--
And near hereto's the Gubbins' cave,
A people that no knowledge have
Of law of God or men;
Whom Caesar never yet subdued,
Who've lawless lived, of manners rude,
All savage in their den.
By whom, if any pass that way,
He dares not the least time to stay,
For presently they howl;
Upon which signal they do muster
Their naked forces in a cluster,
Led forth by Roger Howle.
One night a star fell from heaven and descended into the hovel of the
Cobbledicks through the hole in the roof which allowed the smoke of the
communal fire to ascend; and this spark sank into the heart of Old
Grizzly--he was not Old Grizzly then. What his name was then in the
clan never transpired.
That divine spark conveyed to this particular Cobbledick the idea of
personal property. This idea, once conceived, becomes to the social body
what a backbone is to the physical organism. There is all the
difference in social conditions between those who have accepted personal
property and those who have not arrived at it, that exists between
vertebrate animals and invertebrate polypi.
Cobbledick rose from his lair by the fire where he had been snoring,
caught up a female for whom he had long been sighing, stuffed a wisp of
hay into her mouth to prevent her from alarming the sleepers, threw her
over his shoulder, and strode out of the Cobbledick hovel.
The dispersion at Babel was caused by the discovery of the possessive
pronouns.
After having carried his burden beyond earshot, Cobbledick set her down,
pulled the plug out of her mouth, and said, 'If you holler, I'll smash
your head. So hold thee gab and come along of I.'
The female was overawed into submission, and she paddled along at his
side.
When day broke they found themselves on a shoulder of down in close
proximity to Cosdon. Rambling over the moor, the woman hopping and
squealing as she touched the gorse with her bare legs, they lighted on
the grey cromlech, and the male, curling his tongue in his mouth,
produced a loud cluck. The female, as an imitative animal, clucked
responsive. 'Bags!' said Cobbledick male, and by this simple formula he
had claimed the cromlech as personal property to himself, his heirs and
assigns.
The idea of property had swelled to large dimensions in his heart since
he had first admitted it. The tract of moor was at that time--we are
speaking of seventy years ago--wholly uninclosed. Since that date many
encroachments have been made, and much of the furzy waste placed under
cultivation.
Xenophon opens his 'Anabasis' with the words, 'The Greeks began it.' In
the record of the conquest and reclamation of the moor it stands
written, 'The Cobbledicks began it.'
First they filled up the interstices between the blocks of granite of
the dolmen with turf and moss, then they strewed the floor with bracken,
and made bed and seat of heather. Then they marked out a portion of the
moor, collected stones from off the surface with infinite labour, and
fenced it round with these stones set as a dry wall. This they tilled,
and, their appetite for property growing, they inclosed more. The
tillage was rude, but then it was the beginning of tillage to the whole
Cobbledick race. It took that race six thousand years to arrive at a
crooked stick with Mrs. Grizzly dragging it, and Mr. Grizzly driving
with a switch, and his weight resting on the tail of the simple plough.
When he took his weight off, to quicken the motions of Mrs. Grizzly with
the switch, the plough levered out of the ground, she fell, and he also
was thrown forward on his nose. When Grizzly left the ancestral seat,
he carried with him, in addition to a woman, two ferrets in a bag, and a
sharp flintstone. With the ferrets he caught rabbits, and with the
stone he flayed them. Grizzly was a neolithic man.
On their first taking possession of the cromlech, Grizzly fought his
wife for the sack she wore. He wanted to utilise it as a screen for the
entrance. The door was to the south, but the south wind is a rainy wind
and must be shut out.
Mrs. Grizzly resisted, for the same heavenly spark that had brought to
him the idea of appropriating one woman as wife, had carried to her also
the idea of keeping as her own, her very own, the one potato-sack in
which she walked and worked and slept.
This resistance on her part stimulated invention on his. He devised a
screen of wattles and heather for the door, and this proved a better
shelter than any sack could have made. Thus we see how the sense of
property quickens invention. The heavenly spark never expired in the
breasts of the Cobbledicks; they felt no desire, like the Apostles of
old and reformers of the present day, to revert to the conditions from
which they had escaped. The spark burned brighter, it demanded fuel.
They proceeded to obtain a cow. How they procured it nobody knew,
though all suspected. The Cobbledicks disappeared from Tawton parish for
several days. When they reappeared they were driving a cow before them
down the flanks of Cosdon. Had they fished her out of the swamps round
Cranmere pool? or had they gone far, far beyond, and acquired her in the
South Hams, and driven her across the moor, leaving no traces in the
spongy soil and on the blooming heather whereby they might be traced, in
the event of those from whom she had been acquired disputing their right
to make off with her?
But if this latter were the case, what labour and perseverance it must
have cost them to convey a cow across brawling torrents, over
granite-strewn mountains, and through treacherous bogs!
This was the way of the Cobbledicks. When they wanted anything, they
went after it over the moor. Beyond was El Dorado, between the pathless
waste, a barrier forbidding pursuit. They never robbed their neighbours
of anything beyond turnips and field potatoes. They had made sufficient
advance along the path of social culture to recognise a sort of
fellowship with their neighbours, and to respect the property of near
neighbours. But this sense of fellowship did not extend beyond the
moor. On the other side was a sea full of fish, into which whoever
would might dip his net.
One day the female Cobbledick became a mother, and Grizzly a father.
Soon after this the wife died. Grizzly dug a hole in the floor of the
cromlech, just under where the fire burned, and laid her there.
She was pleased, when alive, to sit over the red ashes, spreading out
her toes, and laughing at the yellow flames. Under the hearthstone she
should lie, with her face to the ashes, and her toes turned to the
blaze. The Cobbledick ideas were growing. The first dawn of that
sentiment which in another generation might flower into poetry had
appeared in Grizzly's mind.
But the experiment was not happy. At night, as Grizzly slept, he
thought he saw the old woman working her way up out of the ground,
throwing the earth forth like a mole, and then peering at him from a
corner. After that she dived again and disappeared. Presently he felt
her heave the earth under him where he lay, and roll him over, so that
he could not sleep. He was very angry, and he got a great piece of
granite and beat the floor hard with it. But this was of no avail. Next
night the old woman was heard scratching with her nails at the bases of
the granite slabs. Once she had been given a hunch of saffron cake by a
farmer's wife, and she had picked all the currants out and eaten them,
before attacking the substance. She was now at work on the granite,
picking out the hornblend, mistaking the black grains for currants.
'Her'll do with these great stones as her did with the cake,' said
Grizzly; 'her got that all crumbled with hunting the currants, and
her'll treat the stones same way, and bring the table down on our
heads.'
After that he disappeared for three days, and when he returned he was
rolling a cyder-cask before him down Cosdon. This cask he brought
alongside of the cromlech, and attached it to the old house in the
manner described. He lined it with fern, and retired into it, along
with the child, at night. He would no longer sleep in the stone mansion
that was being undermined by the dead wife. He did not object to occupy
it by day; and when he ate, he always threw some crumbs or bits of meat
into the fire, to satisfy the cravings of the old woman. He supposed
that she picked at the stones because she was hungry.
The child slept with him in the cyder-cask till she grew too big, and
made it uncomfortable for her father. One night he had cramp in his
leg, and kicked out, and kicked her forth, head over heels; then he bade
her go for the future to the old house, and sleep there and be darned,
glory rallaluley. Occasionally, in spring, when all is waxing and
wanton, the Methodists held revival meetings on the down, and Old
Grizzly was accustomed then to prowl about the outskirts of the
assembly, listening to the preachers, and to the hymns and rhapsodical
outcries of the converted. These camp meetings reminded him in some
particulars of the ways of the primitive Cobbledicks. The new feature,
unfamiliar to him, was the association of religion with these orgies.
From such meetings Grizzly had picked up a few cant expressions which he
used for rounding his sentences without in the least understanding their
import. If he began a sentence with a curse, he finished it with a
hallelujah, much as a grocer, having put an iron weight into one scale,
heaps the other with sugar till the balance is complete.
Cobbledick father and daughter were not in the unseemly condition of
nudity affected by their relatives at Nymet. These latter so far
resembled Adam and Eve in the period of man's innocency that they were
naked and were not ashamed, but with the sense of personal property came
the sense also of self-respect. The land on which Grizzly and his wife
squatted belonged to the manor of West Wyke, of which the Battishills
were lords, and the Squire took care that his tenants should not go
unprovided with old clothes. The Battishills were very poor, and wore
their garments till the last moment consonant with respectability; then
they passed them on to the squatters, whom they made, if not
respectable, at least decent.
'Log!' screamed the old man from the cask.
'I be a logging[1] like the blue blazes,' answered the girl, and she
spoke the truth.
[1] To '_log_' is to rock. Thus a logan stone is a rocking stone, and a
woman logs her baby in its cradle.
She was seated with her back to one of the great stones of the 'Giant's
Table,' with a bare foot resting on the cask on each side of the
restraining rope. She worked her feet alternately, so as to produce a
vibratory motion in the barrel from left to right. The old man liked
being rocked to sleep; he exacted the task of his daughter: and only
when he began to snore and ceased to swear, dare Joyce Cobbledick desist
from logging and retire to her own lair.
The evening had fallen. The sun was set, but a haze of light hung like
a warm hoar frost over the head of Cosdon, though darkness had settled
down in the valleys, and the village of Zeal began to twinkle out of all
its windows.
The air was still. The rush of the stream over the granite masses that
choked its course was the only sound audible, save the fretting of the
cask on the turf in its oscillations.
The girl was tired, and one of her feet was bleeding. She had cut it
with a sharp stone that day.
Joyce Cobbledick was aged eighteen. She was a tall, well-built girl,
with bright colour, a low forehead, and dark eyes. Her hair was as
uncombed and uncared for as the mane of a moorland pony. It was dark
brown. Her jaws were heavy and her cheek-bones high, like those of her
ancestry. There was some beauty about her--the beauty of a fine animal;
she was perfectly supple in every limb, admirably proportioned, easy and
even graceful in her movements, unrestrained by shoes and cumbrous
clothing. Her face was even fine, but there was nothing like
intelligence illumining her dark eyes.
She wore a thin print gown, and that was in tatters from her knees by
scrambling through hedges to steal turnips, and brushing through gorse
brakes after rabbits.
Presently the girl intermitted her trampling movement, believing the old
man to be asleep.
The stars were coming out. The one street of Zeal, lying between rich
meadows and wood, was like a necklace of diamonds embedded in black
velvet.
Joyce leaned forwards to listen if her father were snoring. All was
still in the cask, preternaturally still.
She bent her head lower. Then, suddenly, with a roar, 'Darn your eyes,
glory rallaluley!' an old grey, frowzy head and face shot out of the
barrel, and with it a long arm. A heavy blow of the furze bush fell
across the girl's head and cheek, making her cry out with pain.
She recovered her position in a moment, and dashed her feet together
savagely at the cask. The violence of the action was more than the cord
could endure, already fretted against the rugged edges of the granite
blocks. It snapped, and in a moment the cask was driven forward by the
impetus of Joyce's angry kick. It rolled over and over, ran down a
bank, then along an incline of smooth turf, dashed against a stone which
somewhat diverted its course, bounded into the high road, where it shot
forth its tenant, and continued its course in rapid revolutions down the
road that here ascended from the valley. Joyce uttered a cry, sprang to
her feet, and ran after the rolling barrel towards the highway, and
there saw her father lying stretched across the road, stunned and
speechless.
*CHAPTER II.*
*WHAT THE CASK DID.*
As Joyce stood on the bank about to leap down into the road to her
father's assistance, she was arrested by a sight calculated to fill her
with dismay. A chaise drawn by a pair of horses was approaching from
the direction of Okehampton at a brisk pace. The cask was in full
career down the road, gaining velocity as it rolled. A curve hid it
from the postillion, and Joyce stood breathless, powerless to warn the
post-boy or arrest the cask, watching for the result.
The boy was in spirits; he cracked his whip, and stimulated the
horses--fresh from the stable at Okehampton--to take the hill in style.
The cask was whirling on. Then it reached the sweep in the road, and it
went direct against the bank, danced light-heartedly up it, reeled back,
swung itself round and shot straight down the road at the horses. In
another moment it was on them, leaping at them like a tiger at the
throat of his prey.
What followed was so sudden, and the light was so imperfect, that Joyce
could not quite make out what she saw. She heard a loud cry from the
post-boy, who was thrown. Whether one of the horses went down and
floundered to his feet again she was not sure; she believed it was so.
Next moment the chaise was off the road, the two frightened animals
tearing away with it over the common. Forgetful of her father in the
excitement of the spectacle and in dread of the final catastrophe, Joyce
ran after the carriage, which she saw bounding over heaps of peat that
had been cut and laid to dry, lurching into hollows, jolting over tufts
of gorse, and jarring against stones.
Then she saw against the light of the horizon the figure of a man
emerging from the window of the chaise, trying to open the door. Almost
simultaneously the wheel of the carriage struck a huge block of granite,
and in an instant the chaise was thrown on one side, the horses were
kicking furiously, and the whole converted into a wreck of living beasts
and struggling men and splintered fragments of carriage.
'Ho, heigh! stay them osses,' yelled the post-boy, who had picked
himself up and was running over the down. 'Sit on their necks; kip 'em
down.'
Joyce ran also, and reached the spot soon after him.
The postillion went straight at the horses, regardless of everything
else, and cut their traces; whereupon they ran off, and he careered in
full pursuit after them.
'Leave the beasts alone, boy,' shouted a young man who had disengaged
himself from the shattered carriage, and was helping out a young lady.
'Leave the beasts and come here.'
'No, no, sir! The osses fust. Them's my concern.' And away went the
boy.
'Here, girl,' said the same young man to Joyce, as she came up; 'help
me.' He signed to her what to do, to raise a man who was lying
motionless among the fragments of the carriage, to carry him a little
distance, and lay him on the turf at full length.
'Stay by him whilst I go for the young lady.'
Joyce nodded.
The young lady was seated on the rock that had upset the carriage.
'What frightened the horses?' she asked.
'I do not know. Are you hurt?'
'My foot is sprained. I cannot walk; but no bones are broken, of that I
have satisfied myself. How goes my father?'
'He is seriously injured.'
'He did wrong to try and open the door. The carriage must have fallen
over on him.'
'Will you remain here whilst I go back to him?
'Certainly. The moss is soft as a cushion on this stone.'
'Your father, I fear, is seriously hurt. As you say, he was leaning out
of the window when the coach turned over, and it went down on the side
where he was.'
'Bring me my cloak from the chaise. It is chilly, and the spot is
desolate. Il me donne les frissons.' She spoke with wonderful
composure. She might have been on a picnic, and the dish with the
chicken pie broken; yet she had narrowly escaped death herself, and her
father was lying dead a few feet from her. The young man looked at her
face, a little surprised at her perfect coolness. The face was wax-like,
of transparent whiteness; there was no colour in it. But then she was
cold and possibly frightened, though betraying no fear in her manner.
Her features were regular and of extraordinary beauty. Her eyes were
large and the lashes long; her hair abundant and black. Of emotion in
her face there was none.
'I remember my father said he had suffered from the rheumatism. Pray
take him from off the grass.' The young man thought to himself, 'He
will never suffer from that more;' but he made no answer. He went back
to the man lying on the turf, knelt over him, and examined him. Joyce
stood by with arms folded.
'Is there any house near to which this gentleman could be removed? he
asked.
'West Wyke,' answered Joyce.
'Where is that?'
She made a motion with her chin, indicating the direction.
'And is there a gate to be had on which I can lay him?'
She jerked her chin again.
'Now, sir,' said the post-boy, coming up, 'I've got the osses quiet,
what can I do for you?'
'This gentleman must be removed at once on a hurdle or gate. Run and
bring me one.'
'Be he hurted cruel bad?' asked the boy.
'He is dead.'
'Deary me!' exclaimed the post-boy. 'What a mussy it weren't one of the
osses. Make us truly thankful. I'll get you a gate.'
'I'll help you,' said Joyce. 'You don't look a sort to carry a gate.
Do you call yourself a man or a rat?'
Presently the two returned with a hurdle; that is to say, Joyce was
carrying one on her head, casting occasionally a contemptuous glance at
the dapper little fellow at her side.
'Is my father able to speak yet?' asked the lady.
'No,' answered the young man. 'Do not be alarmed. We must carry him to
a house, where he can be put to bed, and then we will return for you.
Do you mind being left alone, or can you walk as far as to the house?'
'I have already told you that I cannot walk. You are forgetful,
monsieur.'
'Then this girl will remain with you till we return.'
'Very well. If she likes to remain she may remain. It is her affair.'
The young lady spoke with a foreign--a French accent, which was pretty.
Indeed, there was a foreign grace in her attitudes, and taste in her
dress, which showed that, if an Englishwoman, she must have lived a
great deal in France.
The gentleman returned to Joyce; he was a tall and fine young man, with
dark hair and moustache and frank blue eyes.
'Will you remain here with the lady while we go on to the house?'
Joyce nodded and went over to the rock on which the young lady was
seated. She planted herself before her.
'The 'ouse to which we must carry the gent be yonder,' said the
post-boy. 'I seed him as I went for the gate.'
'Do not be alarmed if we carry your father.'
'I shall not be alarmed.'
Then the post-boy going before and the young gentleman following, they
proceeded very gently to carry the motionless form in the direction of
West Wyke.
Joyce remained with the young lady; she studied her with great attention
from head to foot. The sky was clear, and there was still much light
entangled in the upper atmosphere. The whole of the north was full of
silvery twilight.
'I niver seed a born leddy afore so close,' said Joyce.
'I am a born lady,' replied the other, haughtily.
'Did I say you wasn't? Have you any other rags on but what I sees?'
'Rags!' indignantly. 'What do you mean, girl?'
'Look here,' said Joyce, 'I hasn't. Fust comes the gown, and then comes
I. Down in the good land to Zeal and Tawton, where the lanes be cut
deep, I seed there be nethermost hard rock, then over that comes
shellat, then a sort of gravelly trade (stuff), then a top o' that meat
airth; and over all, like the gown, the waving green grass. Up here on
the moor t'ain't so. There's the granite and then the moss, and if you
scrats through the moss you comes right on and on to the stone. That be
like us as lives up here, vaither and I, but wi' the quality it be
different, as lives in lew (sheltered) places; they has more coverings
nor us, night and day, I reckon.'
'You have no more clothes on you than that thin gown?'
'No, us be like moor rock, fust the moss, then the stone.'
'Are you begging?'
'I never axes for naught; what I wants I takes.'
The lady shivered and drew back on her seat. She was disgusted with the
appearance, and offended at the rudeness of the girl.
'Why don't clothes grow on our backs, thick and warm as the wool on
sheep, the fur on rabbits, and the moss on moorstones?'Twould come
handier,' observed Joyce Cobbledick.
The lady made no reply.
'Wot's that man, that young man as spoke to you and I?' asked Joyce.
'I do not know his name.'
'He don't belong to you?'
'Most certainly not,' with a contemptuous shrug.
'Where did you get mun?'
'He is travelling with us--that is all. He joined my father in taking a
chaise from Launceston.'
'Why didn't y' travel by the mail-coach? Her goes by ivery day.'
'The coach had left Launceston when we arrived there from Falmouth, so
we engaged a chaise. My father was in haste to reach Exeter, and that
person joined us. I do not know his name, neither do I care. My father
satisfied himself, I presume, of his respectability. That is all.'
'Where do'y come from, mistress? Over t'other side of the moor I
reckon.'
'I come from France.'
Joyce was puzzled. Her geographical knowledge was too limited for her
to know of France.
'I reckon that be a long way off, t'other side o' Prince's Town and the
prisons, surely. Be there savages in them parts?'
'Savages! certainly not.'
'There be here. I be one. I be a Cobbledick, and the Cobbledicks be
all savages. But vaither and I be better nor the rest out Nymet. They
be savages and no mistake.'
'I have no doubt of it.'
'I say, young lady, is that man as they carried on the gate to West Wyke
your vaither?'
'He is my father.'
'Did he bang you about much? Did he whack you often wi' a bunch of
vuzz? Not but you'd mind over much wi' all them pack o' clothes to your
back.'
'Certainly not.'
'Did you have to rock him to sleep o' nights in a barril?'
'No.'
'Mebbe you niver had much dodging out of the way of the stones he
throwed at your head.'
'Of course not.'
'My old vaither doth all these to me. He whacks me wi' brimmles and
vuzz, and he throws turves and stones at me, and I has to rock mun every
night or he wouldn't sleep a wink. Of all the proper blaggards in the
world there ain't an ekal to vaither. But I reckon vaithers is vaithers
all the world over. They be all like oaksticks, some crookeder nor
others, but none straight. You don't mind over much what has happened
to yours?'
The young lady only imperfectly understood the girl, owing to the
rudeness of her speech and her strong provincial brogue.
'There be my old vaither rolled out of his barril right across the high
road, and I don't know if he've a broke his neck or no; and I don't kear
hover much, no more nor you does because your vaither ha' gone and done
the same.'
'What do you mean, girl?'
'I mean what I sez. I know what broke necks mean. I ha' broke the
necks o' rabbits scores and scores o' times. Him's just the same, ivery
bit and croome.'
The young lady shuddered. She did not cry, but her breath caught in her
throat.
'Mon Dieu! Ce n'est pas vrai! Comme cette fille me fait peur!'
'What be that jabber about? You oughtn't to mind.'
'For the love of God, girl, do not frighten me. It is wicked--it is
cruel. It is not true.'
'Not true!' echoed Joyce; 'I knows it be. I knows a broke neck in a man
as in a rabbit.'
'Be quiet. If you want money, _en voila_, take and leave me tranquil.'
Joyce struck her hand aside.
'What'll you do wi' he now? Mother be poked under the hearthstone,
where the fire can warm her. But when Old Grizzly goes, I shan't put he
along o' mother. He can't sleep under the table now, and her'll lead'n
a life of it, if he be put under the hearthstone along of she. Her
niver worrits me, but her don't leave old vaither alone not one minnit
of nights. Her does it because he knacked her, and beat her scores and
scores o' times when her were alive. Now her thinks her turn be come.
But her's got no vice in her. It be all play, only vaither be that
crabbed he don't put up wi' it. When Old Grizzly goes, I'll up wi' his
heels and send him into a bog once for all. He'll be wet and cold there
I reckon, and the moss grows so thick over them quaking bogs, that once
in there be no getting out, no more than when you're gone under the ice
on Rayborough Pool. Then he'll leave me in peace I reckon.'
'You will do that, you long cripple (viper), you!' screamed the old man,
who had overheard the arrangements planned for his interment, and
disapproved of them. 'You will do that!' He rushed on Joyce from
behind, raining furious blows on her with his fists. 'You will stog me
in a bog, will'y? I'll put you in fust, curs'd ever-lasting rallaluley
if I don't.' The old man yelled with fury. He stepped backwards and
leaped at Joyce, and beat and swore.
The young lady was frightened, and cried out for help. The horrible old
man seemed to her to be some superhuman apparition rising out of the
moor soil--a vampyre, a ghoul from a cairn, come to destroy the wretched
girl before her.
'You chuck down thicky (that) stone, vaither?' cried Joyce, as he
stooped and took up a piece of granite in both hands.
'I won't, I won't. I'll mash you first, you unnat'ral varmint! You
nigh upon killed me by rolling me over and over in the cask, and shan't
I nigh upon do the same by you? Glory rallaluley, blast me blue!'
Joyce was unquestionably stronger than old Cobbledick, and might have
disarmed him, but the divine spark had been communicated to her; it
flickered faintly in her dim soul, and a dumb instinct forbade her
raising her hand against her father. She had borne his brutality for
many a year, and had not resented it. She was his child, for him to
deal with as he thought best. The sense of property had become strongly
rooted in the minds of this branch of the Cobble dicks, and as forces
are correlated, and heat, and light, and electricity, and sound are but
the same force acting in different ways, so was it with the sense of
possession. In the breast of Joyce it had transformed itself into a
consciousness of filial duty.
Joyce put up her hand to ward off the blow.
Then the young man who had carried the injured gentleman away arrived,
running up, summoned by the cries, and with one stroke of the stick he
held in his hand, he made the old man drop the stone.
'In another moment he would have beaten out your brains,' said he,
panting.
'I reckon he would,' observed Joyce.
The old man howled with pain, dancing about holding his arm where
struck.
'Who are you? What are you doing here?' asked the gentleman.
'Never you heed he,' said Joyce. 'Hers old vaither.'
'Help me away from this horrible place,' entreated the lady: 'I have
fallen among savages in a dreadful wilderness. Am I in England, in
Europe--or is this the wilds of Northern Canada?'
'She is lame,' said the young man to Joyce. 'Assist me in conveying her
to the house yonder.'
Joyce put herself submissively on one side.
'How is my father?' asked the young lady.
'No better,' he replied.
'This strange girl tells me he has broken his neck.'
He was silent. He could not tell her the truth. It must be broken
gently to her.
'I should wish to know if it be so.'
'Let us hope for the best. I have sent the post-boy to Okehampton for a
doctor. He will know better than I what is the matter, and what must be
done.'
'But you can surely tell me whether he be alive or dead.'
'He is still unconscious.'
'I know he be dead,' said Joyce roughly. 'What's a broke is a broke, and
his neck be broke as sure as a bit o' cloam. I told her so.'
'Is he dead?' again asked the young lady.
She was now being carried to the house. There was no tremor in the arms
that rested on the shoulders of her bearers.
'I asked you a simple question. It is unmannerly to refuse an answer.'
'I believe he is dead,' said he with an effort.
'I am very sorry,' was her calm reply.
The young man stopped; the girl Joyce stopped also. The twilight from
the north-west was full on the white lovely face; there was no
expression of distress on it, none of grief--not a trace of a tear in
her large dark eyes.
'Why do you not go on? I said I am very sorry, naturally. He was my
father. What else should I say?'
*CHAPTER III.*
*WEST WYKE.*
The young man and Joyce conveyed the lady between them under a low
embattled gateway into a small yard or garden--it was too dark to
distinguish which--and halted in the porch of a house.
Joyce said: 'Stay, I go no vurder. I niver ha' been inside a house and
under hellens (slates) afore, and I bain't a going now.'
The door opened, and a blaze of ruddy light fell on them. A young lady
had opened to admit them.
'There be Miss Cicely Battishill,' said Joyce. 'Sure her will take my
place once for all.'
'Another step more, girl,' said the young man to Joyce, 'and our burden
is in a chair.'
'Why do'y call me a gurl?' asked Joyce. 'I bain't a gurl, I be a maiden.
There be maidens in these parts and no gurls. I dunnow, but the leddy I
been a helping may be a girl; hers different from I, I be a maiden.'
'Never mind distinctions,' said the young man, impatiently. 'Go on
another step.'
'No, I'll put my head under no hellens. I be a savage,' said Joyce,
obstinately. 'You go on yourself, and get Miss Cicely to help.'
'I will take your place, Joyce,' said the young lady at the door; and
she assisted the strange pale girl to come in.
The young man looked back over his shoulder, and said, 'Thanks for your
help as far as it went, maiden.'
Joyce stood without, the red light on her, with the dark garden, the
moor, and the night sky behind, her strange face appearing even handsome
in the glow, and the flicker reflected in her dull eyes.
The figure struck the young man with an evanescent sense of pity. She
seemed an outcast--desolate, friendless.
Then the door closed, and the light was cut off. But Joyce did not
leave. She stood in the porch with her arms folded looking over the
black garden wall at the wild, blacker moor beyond, over which the wind
was soughing. She was lost in a day-dream unintelligible to herself.
The light from the window streaked the garden and fell on an orange lily
that stood out luminous and fiery against the inky background of foliage
and wall. The stars were coming out in the sky. Joyce remained
motionless, with her eyes on the fiery flower.
In the meantime the pale young lady was conveyed to a seat by the fire.
The porch door opened immediately into the hall or parlour. This was a
small low room, irregularly built, with a bay in which was the window.
It was so small that with twenty people within it would be crowded
inconveniently; it was so low that a tall man could touch the ceiling.
The hall was panelled throughout, very unpretentiously, with plain black
oak; there was no carving except over the great fireplace, where was a
coat of arms, once heraldically emblazoned, but now obscured by smoke.
The coat was curious. Azure, a cross crosslet in saltire, between four
owls argent, beaked and legged or.
On the walls were hung a few old portraits in tarnished oval frames.
The paint was cracked and peeling off.
The ceiling was crossed by moulded oak beams of great size, black with
age and smoke.
A tall, very thin gentleman, Mr. Battishill, the owner of the house, and
squire of West Wyke and lord of the manor, had been seated in a
high-backed leather-covered chair beside the fire. He started up and
offered it to the young lady with many rather uncouth bows. This
gentleman was old; he still wore his hair tied back by a black riband,
though the fashion had gone out. His suit was rusty, his boots were
split in the upperleather, and the elbows of his long coat were patched.
His face was peculiar. The nose was pointed and aquiline, and, as
forehead and chin receded, it gave his head the appearance of that of a
bird. The eyes were very wide open, prominent, and of the palest grey.
His hair was frosted with age.
The expression of his eyes was one of eager inquiry. His mouth was
weak, and the lips were incessantly quivering. There was a kindly look
about the feeble mouth which assured those who studied the face that a
kind heart was lodged within, and showed them that the qualities of this
organ were superior to those of the head.
Mr. Battishill's daughter Cicely was a fine girl, about the same age as
Joyce--eighteen. She was somewhat stoutly built, with hair of a glowing
auburn, almost red, but not harshly red, rather of the richest, sunniest
chestnut. Her complexion was of that quality, seen nowhere but in Devon;
transparent, delicate, white, with the brightest, healthiest, purest
colour conceivable; a face in which the mounting of a blush had all the
beauty and splendour of a sunrise. Her eyes were hazel, dancing with
life and intelligence. There was buoyant good nature in every line of
her face. At the present moment her expression was that of distressed
sympathy with the lovely girl just introduced into her father's house.
The contrast between the two was striking. The new comer was absolutely
colourless. Her hair was dark, almost if not wholly black. She was very
slenderly built, her hands were long, and the fingers fine and tapering.
The hands indicate culture and purity of race; those at which Cicely now
looked were hands belonging to a lady of high nervous sensibility and
perfect breeding. Her features were regular, and singularly delicately
and beautifully cut. The eyes, when raised, sent a tremor to the heart
of him on whom they rested; they were deep, full, and mysterious. A
soul lay in those unfathomed pools, but of what sort none might guess.
There was nothing in the expression of the face to assist in the
inquiry. And yet the face was not a blank page and therefore
uninviting. The expression that sat on it was one of reserve, and
therefore as provoking as those wonderful eyes.
Cicely was frank and impulsive; her heart was visible to all the world,
she had no reserve whatever, what she thought she said; and her heart
spoke through her eyes, a genial, affectionate heart, fresh and simple.
The pale young lady was evidently relieved by being placed in a chair by
the fire. Her foot had pained her; it was now rested on a footstool.
'I beg your pardon,' said Mr. Battishill, 'I did not catch the name. It
is such a pleasure to me to know to whom I am able to offer hospitality.
It places persons on a footing of friendship at once when they are able
to address each other by name.'
'My name is Mirelle,' said the young lady, without raising her eyes from
the fire or moving a muscle of her face. 'My mother was the Countess
Garcia. She married my father, a Mr. Strange. It is not necessary in
Spain to take the paternal name; I prefer to be called Mirelle Garcia de
Cantalejo. Cantalejo is territorial.'
Mr. Battishill listened with open mouth and staring eyes, and drew
himself up. A distinguished guest this.
'And Canta----'
'Cantalejo,' interrupted Mirelle, 'is in Segovia--in Old Castile of
course. We belong to the purest of the ancient Castilian nobility.
Cantalejo belonged to the family from the earliest period; it is even
said that when Saint Jacques came to Spain he was the guest of my
ancestor, and that is why we bear an escallop on our coat. Cantalejo
belonged to us till the sixteenth century.'
'And now?'
'It has ceased to belong to us for three hundred years. But before that
we exercised sovereign powers in the country, we coined our own money,
and hung malefactors on our own gallows.'
'Your poor father,' began Mr. Battishill, his nervous mouth working and
his eager eyes staring, 'that is, Mr. Strange--I think you said
Strange--'
Mirelle bowed an affirmative.
'Your poor father, Mr. Strange, lies, I fear, in a very sad and
precarious state. He has been placed in the spare bedroom upstairs, and
the doctor has been sent for, but cannot well be here for an hour.'
'I am told that my lather is dead,' said the young lady composedly. 'I
am very sorry. And what increases my desolation is that he was a
heretic.'
'You love him,' whispered Cicely, looking pained and puzzled.
'I have always prayed for him, and I will pray for him still,' said
Mirelle. 'He did not know the truth, so his invincible ignorance may
save him.'
'You would hardly like to see him now,' suggested Cicely.
'No, perhaps to-morrow.'
'You love him,' persisted Cicely.
'Of course,' answered Mirelle. 'It is my duty. But you must understand
that I have not known him except by name till last fortnight. I had not
seen him at all till a fortnight ago, when he came to Paris to take me
away from the Sacre Coeur.'
The young man had been watching her face intently. He had seemed more
pained than Cicely at her want of feeling. Now he drew a long breath, a
sigh of relief; these words of Mirelle explained her coldness.
'I am sorry that he is dead,' she went on, 'but he ought not to have
married my mother.'
'We cannot regret that,' said Mr. Battishill with awkward gallantry,
'since to that we are indebted for the pleasure of making your
acquaintance.'
Mirelle considered for a moment, then she said simply, 'You mean that I
should not have existed. True; I did not think of this.'
Mr. Battishill and the young man were unable to repress a smile. She
was a curious mixture of simplicity, reserve, and frankness. The reserve
was exercised over her feelings, but she was perfectly frank about her
thoughts.
'Have you ever been to Cantal----? I have not quite caught the name.'
'I have never been in Spain at all,' answered Mirelle.
'Where, then, have you lived?'
'In Paris. Where else should I live? One lives in Paris, one exists
elsewhere.'
'But your father?'
'Mr. Strange was a Brazilian diamond merchant. I mean a merchant of
diamonds living in Brazil. My mother married him there. It was very
good of my mother, but she was an angel. He was rich--_comme ca, mais
bourgeois_. When I was born, my mother came to Paris to have me
properly educated, and I lived there till the good God took her. I have
been at school with the English sisters of the Sacre Coeur. When my
father came to Paris he took me away, to bring me to his home in
England.'
'Where is his home?'
'He has none; he would make one. He has retired from his business.'
'What relations has he? They should be communicated with.'
'I do not know that he has any. My mother never spoke of my father's
relations. She knew nothing of them; she did not want to know them. In
this world everything is on shelves, and the things on each shelf are
kept to themselves. Where they get mixed there is inextricable
confusion. Above, angels; then kings, nobles, bourgeois, peasants,
monkeys, and so down to the lowest form of life--those laid on the
floor. My father's relatives were not noble.' Then suddenly, 'Are you
noble, sir?'
Mr. Battishill threw up his head proudly. 'My family is gentle, and of
ancient degree,' he said. 'We appeared in the Heralds' Visitation of
1620 in four descents, but I have title-deeds that show we were lords of
the manor of West Wyke from the time of Edward the Third.'
'Those are your arms?' asked Mirelle, looking at the chimney-piece.
'What birds are those?'
'Owls,' answered Mr. Battishill, proudly; 'owls argent, beaked and
clawed or.'
Mirelle contemplated the owls, then looked at the gentleman, with his
blank eyes, beak-like nose, and grey hair. Her lips twitched slightly,
but she was too well bred to smile.
'The bird is dedicated to Minerva. It is the symbol of wisdom,' she
said.
'The Battishills were ever owls,' said he, proudly. Then he asked,
glancing at the young man, 'Is this gentleman your brother?'
Mirelle looked up full for the first time into the young stranger's
face.
'He is no relative of mine. I do not even know his name.'
'My name,' said he, stepping forward, 'is John Herring.' He was
interrupted by a laugh from Mirelle.
'Herring!' she exclaimed, 'Quel drole de nom! That is a fish they split
and pickle, and pack in barrels, is it not?' The young man coloured.