able to see. The girl lay on the cushions of the chaise, and some of the
rugs were thrown over her.
'How has this come about, Joyce?'
'I won't tell'y, unless you swears not to let the constable know. I
don't want no hurt to come to vaither of this. Vaither were here a
minute agone, but I reckon he seed you acoming, and so he sloked away.
Hers afeared the constable'll be after'n all along o' doing this.'
'But what has he done to you, child?'
'He's a'most scatted me to bits,' she said. 'Look'y here?' She held out
her arms. Both were broken below the elbows, and the hands hung limp and
powerless. 'I'd angered 'n; and yet, t'warnt my fault neither. The
coord snappt acause the coord were wore out. But never heed that. You
won't tell o' he? See now; say after me, "Blast me blue if I does."'
'My poor girl, I will not tell.'
'Say what I sez: "Blast me blue, and glory rallaluley!"'
'There is no necessity for that. You may trust my word.'
'He'd a right to do it,' argued Joyce. 'I be his daughter, and a
vaither may do what he minds to wi' his child. That's reason.'
'I dispute that. He had no right whatever to maltreat you. But, tell
me, have you had no doctor to you? Your bones must be set.'
'A doctor won't do me no good, maister. I niver seed a animal as had
been mashed that hev come right again. 'Tain't in nature. I be going
to die right on end, I be. But I don't wish vaither no hurt for it. I
be his daughter, and he has a right to do as he pleases.'
'Joyce, when was this done?'
'When were this done? Why, that night the carriage were overset and the
man killed.'
'What! all that time ago, and nothing done to your arms! Did not your
father put splints on them?'
'What be they? Vaither can't mend nothing. He've abroked and tore down
scores and scores of things, but he've amended nothing.'
'And no one has been here to help you?'
'Nobody niver comes here. My vaither be a sight better now than he
were. I'll tell'y how that comed about. I'll tell'y the whole tale
right on end. When I returned home after I'd a' been to West Wyke wi'
you, carrying the lady wi' the white face, him were a' lying in wait for
I, and when I comed up, then he set on me wi' a great stone, and he
hurted me all over, and broke what he could break. You see I'd a angered
'n, and he forgot himself. I've a forgot myself a times too. After that
I crept in here, and laid me down, by the turve fire. But vaither, he
wouldn't come in, he stood and peeped in at the door. I seed 'n and I
sed, "Vaither! Miss Cicely sez you may go and sleep in the calves'
linny among the straw, and it will be warm and comfortable for'y,
vaither, better nor the old barril was. So you go along, and let me
bide quiet and die in peace." Then he went. In the night I were that
burning hot I could not sleep, and I opened my eyes, and there I seed
old mother wot be buried under the hearthstone; her were a heaving up in
the midst of the fire. I seed her head sticking straight out of the
burning turves, and her looked hard at me; her face were red as live
coals. Then her went on heaving and pushing till her'd a worked herself
right out of the earth, in the midst of the fire, and the burning turves
tumbled this way and that as her comed out. Then I seed that her old
gown were flickering wi' blue light, just as you've seed old touchwood.
Her comed to me and her kissed me, but sure her lips were like fire, and
they burned me. Then her sed, "Joyce, tell your vaither that I be
acoming after 'n if he does you any more harm. I knows where he be, in
the linny, lying warm in the straw. But I'll make 'll warmer. I'll
throw fiery turves in among the straw, and he'll burn, he'll burn, he'll
burn!" As her were a saying of that her went backerds into the fire,
and down through the turves, and they closed over she just as afore.
But I heard her still a mumbling to herself under the hearth-stone,
"He'll burn, he'll burn, he'll burn!"'
'Oh, Joyce, you were fevered and wandering in your mind,' said Herring,
who belonged to the nineteenth century after Christ. The condition of
Joyce's mind was that of a savage three centuries before Christ.
'After that,' she went on, 'I told vaither all, and he hev come here and
been very good to I. You see he be mortal afeered o' being caught asleep
in the linny in the straw by mother wi' a flaming turve in her hand. He
thinks her won't make much worrit o' nights, becos of disturbing me.
And then he laughs and sez, "Mother be that pleased I hev a given her
summat to play with, and her be a playing wi' that and won't trouble no
more."
'Joyce, your father must be very sorry for what he has done.'
'He is that for sartain. All becos you see he've a got to do everything
himself now. Afore, I did a deal of things. I got up the taties, and I
baked 'em in the ashes, and I milked the cow, and I did scores and
scores of things. But now that I hev my arms a broke it puts a deal o'
work on vaither. Her hev to do everything from morning to night. And
vaither be getting an old man, and not up to work as he were years by.
He feels it, sure, very much, and wishes he hadn't a done it now. But
wot's the good o' wishing. Wishing won't mend broken bones.'
Herring was kneeling by her. He could not understand the girl. Was she
delirious, or was this the outpour of her reasonable soul? He put his
hand on her low forehead, brushing up the shock of coarse hair. He
wished to feel her pulse, but could not touch the artery in the broken
hand. She lay very still with her eyes fixed on him.
'You are feverish,' he said. 'I am going to fetch a doctor.'
'I say,' exclaimed Joyce, vehemently, 'you've swore not to tell the
constable of vaither. If you were to do that, I'd never be friends wi'
you more.'
Friends with him! The poor savage and the lieutenant in His Majesty's
service! Herring was unable to suppress a smile.
'Joyce,' he said gravely, 'you must have those poor arms patched up.
The surgeon must attend you. I shall have you carried hence. No doubt
Miss Cicely will know of a cottage where you can be received.'
'No,' she said hoarsely, even fiercely, 'I'll go over no drexil
(threshold). Let me lie here and die where I've a lived.'
'But I insist on a doctor attending you.'
'What can a doctor do for me? It ain't in nature. What be broke be
broke; be it a leg, or a neck, or a arm, or a heart, it be all one.
What be a broke be a broke for ever and ever, Amen.'
After some difficulty he persuaded her to consent. Then he ran off to
South Tawton for a surgeon. He returned with one rather over an hour
later. Then he stood outside whilst the medical man entered the den and
examined the patient. Presently he was called.
'She is severely bruised, but no other bones are broken except those in
her arms. She is obstinate, and I cannot induce her to allow me to put
splints on and bandage the arms.'
'Oh, Joyce! if you wish to be well you will submit.'
'I don't care one way or other,' said the girl sullenly. 'I wouldn't
give the turn of a turf whether I lived or whether I died. Wot's life
to me? It ain't anything I cares for.'
'But I do care very much about it, Joyce. You must have your bones
mended and get well to make me happy.'
'You care, do'y? Then I'll live. There!' She held out her broken
arms, but as suddenly drew them back. 'I won't hev the doctor touch me.
Blast me blue if I will. If I be to get well and live, then you must
make me well and live, and none else. Take my hands and do what you
will. You may cut 'em off and I won't cry. You may tie 'em up and I'll
say nort.'
The surgeon said to Herring, 'You had better humour her. She is not a
rational being.'
So Herring put the splints in place, and bound the bandages tightly
round them.
Joyce watched him with her large animal-like eyes fixed on his face. A
feverish fire was burning in them, giving them a factitious light. She
did not withdraw them from him for a moment.
'You're right for sartain,' she said. 'If I'd ha' died, what 'ud
vaither ha' done? And her be growing a brave age.'
Then, still kneeling by her, Herring spoke with the surgeon about the
girl, as to what was to be done with her arms and what she was to eat.
Suddenly he exclaimed with a start and recoil, 'Good heavens, Joyce!
what are you doing?'
He looked at her. A human soul was struggling to emancipate itself from
brute instinct. He saw it in her feverish eyes. She had them fixed on
him as those of a dog look at its master--and _she was licking his
hand_.
*CHAPTER XII.*
*OPHIR.*
'Sampy, my boy,' said Tramplara the elder, 'improve each shining hour,
says Paul, afterwards called Saul, and he couldn't have given a better
piece of advice if he'd been paid to do it. Since Polpluggan has been
blown I have had nothing to do, and I want not only to follow Paul's
advice and improve the shining hour, but do better, and improve the
overcast and rainy ones. You and I, Sampy, are the men to whom the
future belongs, the representatives of the age, and it will not do for
the likes of us to keep our light under a bushel. That ain't
Scriptural, and it ain't advantageous neither.'
'All right, gov'nor. What is this the preface to?'
'Sampy,' said Tramplara, confidingly, 'we must start another mine.'
'What--tin? lead? manganese? copper?'
'Better still, my gosling.'
'I don't know what you can have better except coal, and coal don't
luxuriate alongside of granite.'
'Gold--the noblest of metals--gold.'
'Oh, ah! gov'nor, that won't do. There's no gold to be found here.'
'Why not?'
'Why not? Because no folks are fools enough to sink it in such a
venture as gold mining.'
'You are wrong. There is one quality I can always rely on--as the
Apostle says, "Folly never faileth, everything else may vanish away."
If you appeal to men's reasons, it is like looking for ghosts in haunted
tenements; they are supposed to be there, but never found when wanted.
Human folly is like Dozmare pool, it is unfathomable, though you let
down into it all the bell-ropes of Cornwall. You can set up windmills
in Essex, for there the wind always blows; and you can establish water
wheels in Cornwall, for the rain supply is inexhaustible; and you can
float speculations where you will, and the fools will keep them going.
In the story of the Fisherman in the "Arabian Nights" the fish that have
been scraped and disembowelled and put in a frying-pan over the coals
stand up on their tails and say, "We are doing our duty. If you reckon
we reckon; if you fly we mount and are content." Now those fish we are
told were men. And men are just the same now. They do their duty in
coming to be scraped and gutted and roasted, and what you pipe they
repeat; they have no pleasure apart from yours, and they rush into your
hands to be cleaned out, just as the martyrs asked to be tortured.'
Sampson junior nodded.
'What is it that Solomon said, "A fool and his money are soon parted?"'
'I say, gov'nor, it is dry work listening. Let us have in some grog.'
'Bring the spirits out of the cupboard and ring for Bella to give us
sugar and hot water. Are you listening to me? What I say is important.
I am leading you after gold.'
'All right; but you were speaking of human folly.'
'Human folly is the cable[1] that incloses the ore. It is not for
nothing, Sampy, that I have been regular at chapel and paid for my pew
at Salem. Mr. Israel Flamank, the minister, is a very good man; a sort
of cedar in Lebanon, always green, and he is as soft as butter and as
easy to make a pat out of with, at pleasure, a crown or a goose at top.
There are in the world good men of whom with Scripture it may be said,
"It were better that a millstone had been hanged round their necks than
they should have learned to read and write." For, you see, Sampy, they
read a great deal without knowing the relative value of what they read,
and they write the first craze that comes into their heads to set other
fools crazy after them. When there is a choice of herbs set before an
ass, he prefers a thistle, because, as Shakespeare sings, "It is his
nature to." You may take my word for it, gosling, there is a parcel of
people in this world with an exuberant fund of piety in their
constitutions, just as some children are born with water on the brain.
And as these have no definite belief, the pious element within washes
about, unable to settle. When you was a boy, Sampy, it was your delight
to make silver trees. You had a fluid clear as crystal in a bottle, and
into it you introduced a scrap of carpet thread, and all at once the
metal held in solution crystallised about the rubbish you had inserted,
and built round it a mass of sparkling metal, hard as steel and shining
as silver. It is the same with folk of the calibre of Israel Flamank.
Their dilute piety is ready to settle round any trashy notion that gets
into them, and rear about it a tree of fantastic conviction. Flamank
has done a deal of crystallising since I have known him, about all sorts
of odds and ends. First he was a total abstainer, then a vegetarian,
then he found the gospel in the pyramids, and now he is all for the
Phoenicians.'
[1] The rock altered by the vein of ore it surrounds is termed by miners
the cable.
'But, father, what does this concern us?'
'Everything, my son,' said old Tramplara, with sunny self-complacency.
'Fill your glass and listen. Do you know what the Phoenicians were?'
'I don't know, and don't care.'
'Then I'll tell you. The Phoenicians were next-door neighbours to the
Jews, and, what is a wonder, were on speaking terms, and did each other
little neighbourly acts, which shows they lived in the Dark Ages. You
don't happen to know anything about the Cassiterides, do'y, Sampy?'
'Not a farthing. Had they anything to do with the Phoenicians?'
'Oh, what an ignorant boy you are! You are living in the midst of the
Cassiterides, and don't know it. Cassiterides is the Phoenician for
Devon and Cornwall. It means the place whence the Phoenicians drew
their tin; and where the Phoenicians went the Jews went also. Marazion,
as every fool knows, is called also Market Jew, because the Jews came
there to buy metal for Solomon's temple. You haven't a Bible, have'y,
Sampson junior, ready to hand?'
'I doubt if there be such a thing in the house.'
'There is, though, only I don't know where it be stowed away this
present moment. I bought one for taking the level of the Phoenicians
under the guidance of the Reverend Flamank. Now Solomon; you've heard
of Solomon?'
'Which, the pawnbroker?'
'No; Solomon the wisest of men, and because the wisest the richest. He
sent a navy of ships with his own men and Phoenicians to get gold for
the temple at Jerusalem and his own house. There is one thing strikes
an earnest inquirer like me about King Solomon, and makes me admire the
beauty of his character greatly. When he were building the temple he
built his own palace at the same time, and didn't make of 'em separate
accounts. So the Jews gave profusely for the building of their temple,
and how much of that subscription went to the King's house, I reckon
Solomon himself would have been pushed to answer. He was seven years
building the temple, and thirteen years over his own palace, and when
you know that, you can guess how the material went. But that is neither
here nor there. I was just giving you a sample of the wisdom of
Solomon. Well, the ships of Solomon came for gold to Ophir, and fetched
thence four hundred and twenty talents of gold-dust; that, Israel
Flamank tells me, is nigh on fifty-three thousand pounds weight. Think
of that! Now where gold came from, there gold is to be had.'
'But where did it come from?'
'From Ophir, to be sure. We must find Ophir.'
'Governor, that won't do. You and I are not going to leave Old England
gold prospecting. You are too old, and I am disinclined.'
'Didn't I tell you we were in the Cassiterides?'
'Yes; but Cassiterides is not Ophir.'
'But Ophir may be in the Cassiterides.'
'Gold never was found in the West,' said Sampson junior, shaking his
head.
'There never was any tin in Wheal Polpluggan,' said the old man, who
turned blazing red with suppressed laughter. His sides shook, his white
hair gleamed ghastly against his red skin. Then he broke into a roar,
and slapping Sampson on the knee, he shouted, as he waved his glass of
grog over his head, and spilled the contents on his silver hair and
gleaming cheeks, 'To the prosperity of Ophir! Drink, Sampy, drink! to
Ophir, the Ophir of Solomon in the West Country.'
'Polpluggan was tightly salted,' said young Sampson, 'and salted only
with tin. Besides, Polpluggan was in the Scilly Isles, some forty or
fifty miles from Penzance. There were many who would rather jeopardise
their money than risk their breakfast in a rough passage. But gold----'
He shook his head.
'We'll salt Ophir when we have found the spot.'
'What! with gold dust? You'll sink a fortune in that, and the success
is doubtful.'
'It is bound to succeed,' answered the father. 'My boy, I've come to
see that there is a pan of cream has not been skimmed yet, and I hope,
if I live long enough, to skim it. There is not much more to be done at
those pans we have gone over hitherto. We must try a fresh one. I'll
tell you what that big rich pan is; it is the big rich pan of religious
fanaticism. I'll take a lesson from the rats. The rat when he has an
eye on the cream sits down with his back to it, and looking up at the
wall lets drop the end of his tail into the cream; then he pulls it up
with a shocked and bashful air, sucks it, and lets it down again, and in
half an hour he has cleared the pan of all but sky blue.'
'I don't see how it is to be done,' said young Tramplara, meditatively.
'You are young and inexperienced,' answered his father. 'You haven't
sounded the depths of human folly yet. Lord bless you! I've been
surprised myself at its profundity. And when we come to religious
folly, my private conviction is that it goes down through the world and
out at the other side. It is like the well of Zem-zem, that has no
bottom. I have not been an earnest inquirer at the feet of the Reverend
Israel Flamank for nothing. Whilst kneeling to him I have been like a
shoemaker taking the measure of his foot. I know the sort of gate he
will clear, and where the bellwether goes all the flock will leap. You
listen to me and I will give you a parable--a mighty comforting one.
There was an old manganese mine long disused, and the adit ran level out
into a meadow where some bullocks were feeding. One hot day, when the
flies were troublesome, one bullock took refuge in the adit, and when
the others saw that in they walked after him, each thrusting forward the
fellow before him. Presently they got frightened with being so far from
the light, so the foremost bellowed, and the second bellowed, and this
was repeated to the last, who, in mighty alarm, dug his horns into the
hinder quarters of the bullock in front, and he repeated the performance
on the one before him, and so on, driving one another further and
further into the heart of the mine. Well, they got so far that there
was no getting them out, and the owner had to kill them where they were.
They were too frightened to back, and to turn was impossible. Sampy,
that good foolish Israel Flamank is just like the leading bullock.
He'll go into Ophir eagerly, and all his congregation after him,
thrusting one another on, and we shall have the slaughtering of them.
They will be too compromised to back when they find themselves in the
wrong place.'
'But how about the salting?'
'There are various sorts of salting. You only know one sort. You have
seen Polpluggan salted with tin ore brought from elsewhere, and
basketfuls drawn out of the shaft that had been previously put in. That
is one sort of salting, and I allow that with gold this would come
expensive. I shall have to manage more economically. My dear boy, when
fools are hungering to be deceived, they are not particular about the
meat that feeds their folly. They don't inquire if the mutton comes of
rotten sheep.'
'How shall you float it?'
'Nothing easier. Let us find Ophir, and the Reverend Israel will do the
rest. He conducts a religious paper, entitled "The Western Cornucopia,"
much read by those of his persuasion, and throughout the West of
England. I like that word persuasion, Sampy. When I hear a man talk of
his persuasion, I feel that he is persuadable to any sort of suicide.
Now, let me get my truck on Israel's rails, and it will run down by the
law of gravity.'
'But where will you light on Ophir?'
'I do not know yet. I am an earnest inquirer, and I have been sitting
with the Reverend Flamank many an hour, as solemn as a Quaker, over our
Bibles, making it out. I'm hard to believe, he eager to convince. He has
no idea that I am leading him on; he believes he is driving me. Now and
then, as the light of nature prompts, I throw out a suggestion, and he
snaps at it enthusiastically, appropriates it, and reproduces it as an
original inspiration. Country folks will tell you that every cloud
brings with it wind. That is the reverse of the fact. It is the wind
that brings the cloud. So in this case there occurs a little mistake as
to which is the impelling power. The Reverend Israel has shown me that
the situation of Ophir is pretty accurately indicated. It is said in
Scripture that Ophir lies between Mesha and a mountain in the East
called Sephar. Now, with my incenting, the Reverend Flamank has arrived
at this--that Mesha is the village of Meshaw, near South Molton, and
that Sephar is Sheepstor, which is a mountain due east of Launceston.'
'It is due south of Meshaw.'
'Yes, but it is due east of Salem Chapel. People always reckon from
where they are themselves. You see the line uniting them passes through
Crediton, South Tawton, Cosdon----'
'By the way, father, Squire Battishill told me he had found a silver
lead mine at Upaver.'
'Upaver!--Upaver!--Ophir! Ophir! Sampy! By the wisdom of Solomon, we
have spotted Ophir!'
*CHAPTER XIII.*
*CAPTAIN TRECARREL.*
Captain Trecarrel was Captain only in the militia, yet he flourished his
captaincy with as much pride as if he were in the regulars. He was
Trecarrel of Trecarrel, the head of one of the oldest families in
Cornwall. When we say that, we mean that he was head in the sense of a
tadpole's head, which is head and nothing else. Trecarrel was head and
nothing else. There was no tail of younger brothers and sisters
dependent on the property. But then the property barely supported the
head, and by no possibility could have sustained the burden of a tail.
It was not always so. At one time the Trecarrels were the chief family
in the neighbourhood, and Sir Henry Trecarrel, Knight, at his proper
cost, to the glory of God, and in honour of St. Mary Magdalen, rebuilt
the parish church of Launceston in the most sumptuous manner he was
able. Not one stone was set in the fabric that was not the finest
granite, and not one block was unsquared and unsculptured; the sculpture
was as delicate as the grain of the granite would allow, with trees
distilling balsam, plumes and palm-branches, with the arms of Trecarrel,
and with minstrels harping and playing the rebeck, the tabor, and the
bagpipe. Under the east window in a niche was sculptured the recumbent
effigy of that most yielding of saints, the Magdalen, wrought in the
most obdurate of stones. The pinnacles and gurgoils were all cut out of
the same material with infinite labour, and at extraordinary cost.
The church was not quite finished when the Reformation came. Then the
King's Commissioners paid a visit to Launceston and swept from the
church its valuables in silver and gold, for the filling of the royal
exchequer and for the abolition of idolatry. After the Commissioners
had departed, a rabble followed, headed by one Bunface, a butcher, who
burst into the church and destroyed what the King's Commissioners had
spared. They smashed the stained glass in the windows, and broke the
legs of the Christ on the rood, but left the thieves on either side
unmolested. They extinguished the perpetual lamp and spilled the oil
over the chancel floor. They threw down the altar, and, having broken
open the shrine, cast the sacrament under their feet. They knocked the
heads off the apostles, and lastly, with a lever, overthrew the font,
and in so doing exceeded the intentions of the Reformers, who having
destroyed five sacraments, and reduced a sixth to a stump, elected to
maintain the seventh intact. After that the party rang a peal in the
tower and finished the evening by getting uproariously drunk at the Pig
and Whistle.