a law to force the people to attend divine service and receive the
sacrament, under pains of fine and imprisonment, just as children have
to be whipped to make them swallow medicine that is necessary but nasty,
yet Bunface could not be induced to put in an appearance. 'Let me burn
the Bible, or break the Commandments, or test my cleaver on the
minister's head, but if this be denied me, if there be no more
destroying to be done, then I'd rather pay my fine than go.'
When Sir Henry Trecarrel refused to sit in the church under the
preacher, and take the sacrament at the mean table under the pulpit, the
magistrates cautioned him, and when he disregarded their monition they
fined him, and when he paid the fine and continued recusant they threw
him into the common gaol, and there, after languishing two years, he
died of the gaol-fever.
Sir Harry Trecarrel was succeeded by his son, who suffered also in purse
and liberty for his attachment to the old religion. He was convicted of
harbouring a Popish priest, and of hearing mass in his private chapel.
The priest was hung, drawn, and quartered--that is to say, he was cut
down the instant after he had been slung up, sliced open, and his heart
torn out of his breast whilst still palpitating. That was the way in
which recusant priests were dealt with by that bright Occidental Star,
good Queen Bess. Mr. Henry Trecarrel saved his neck only by the
surrender of one of his best manors.
In the civil wars Trecarrel made large sacrifices for the King, and was
accordingly dealt with as a Malignant by the Protector. Confiscation and
fine diminished his estates still further. On the Restoration he went
to London, and laid the record of his services and sufferings at the
feet of Charles II. The King commended his loyalty, and promised him,
if he would take holy orders, that he would recompense him with at least
a canonry; but as Trecarrel was unable to do this, being a Papist, he
was dismissed with, as his sole reward, a portrait of the royal martyr,
full length, in which the lower limbs were so adjusted that, had they
been true to life, the royal martyr could neither have walked nor sat on
his throne. The Trecarrel of the reign of George I. gambled away
everything that had been left except the house and home barton of
Trecarrel, which were inalienable. This Captain Trecarrel had inherited
from his ancestors, together with the picture of Charles I. with
distorted limbs, the Catholic faith, and the Trecarrel blue eyes and
beauty--but chief of all these things, in his estimation, were the
hereditary blue eyes and beauty.
Captain Trecarrel's income was small, so small that he could not marry
on it. He was obliged, therefore, to look out for a wife with money.
Now, as has been said, nature and his ancestors had bestowed on him
aristocratic good looks, and he was admitted by the ladies of the
neighbourhood to be the handsomest man they knew.
He was aware of his beauty, he knew precisely the effect he could
produce on the female heart by a look out of his blue eyes, blue as the
borage blossom. There was not a marriageable girl who would not have
abjured her faith, have adored Mumbo-Jumbo, if required, to become Mrs.
Trecarrel of Trecarrel. The Captain knew his value, and was not
impatient. The young ladies of good birth in the neighbourhood were
neither heiresses nor well dowered. He looked further afield, and was
caught by the handsome face of Orange Trampleasure, and by the handsome
fortune with which popular opinion endowed her.
Old Tramplara was thought to be enormously rich, and to be eager to
marry his daughter well, and to be ready to pay for the blood and
position that would come to the family through a good alliance.
Captain Trecarrel was not a man to feel deeply. He liked Orange, and
that Orange liked and admired him was obvious to his blue eyes. But
then, he was accustomed to be liked and admired, and he had only to
smile and look languishingly to draw to him any amount of affection from
any number of marriageable girls. He looked for something more
substantial than liking and admiration.
After much hesitation, Trecarrel proposed to Orange Trampleasure and was
accepted on the spot. But the proposal was only the first scene in a
long drama, and the second scene did not pass with the same rapidity and
success. Captain Trecarrel had no intention of being married till he
was quite satisfied as to the sum of money Orange would bring with her.
Old Tramplara spoke grandiloquently, and made large promises of what he
would leave her when he was not himself in a position to enjoy his
money. But this was not what the Captain wanted--which was something
present, not prospective. At last he did get the old man to name a very
liberal dowry, and when he next asked in what shape this dower would
come, he discovered an eagerness on the part of his prospective
father-in-law to pay it in Patagonian securities. Now Patagonian bonds
were not at par. They had been declining very steadily in the money
market, and when the South American State deferred meeting its coupons
with punctuality, the drop had been nearly to zero, for it was
anticipated that Patagonia was meditating repudiation.
Mr. Trampleasure supposed that the Captain was unaware of this, but
Trecarrel was not as innocent as his blue eyes led people to suppose.
He was one of those few men who know exactly on which side their bread
is buttered; and Captain Trecarrel knew further, what very few people do
know, how to eat bread and butter with most satisfaction to himself. An
adult eats his slice with the butter uppermost, but a child turns the
buttered side down. By so doing he extracts from it the utmost
enjoyment it is capable of giving, for by this expedient the tongue is
brought into immediate contact with the butter. Captain Trecarrel was
not going to eat his bread with thin Patagonian scrape over it, instead
of yellow English gold. Those innocent blue eyes of his could see as
far into a millstone as the keen sloes of Mr. Trampleasure.
Consequently, till that Patagonian business was satisfactorily settled,
Captain Trecarrel held aloof from hymeneal felicity.
The arrival of Mirelle and her admission into the family at Dolbeare
were opportune. Captain Trecarrel was struck with her beauty, but then,
he was struck with the beauty of every girl whose looks were pleasing.
But what struck the Captain far more than her beauty was the opportunity
this arrival afforded him of rousing the apprehensions of Orange and her
father that he might slip through the meshes of their net.
He resolved to pay his court to Mirelle, to exhibit a lively interest in
her, to wake up a little convenient jealousy in the bosom of Orange, and
to give the father clearly to understand that he himself repudiated
Patagonia.
The curious mixture of simplicity and shrewdness in Mirelle amused him.
It was a real pleasure to him to converse with her, and a particular
pleasure to look into those deep eyes and speculate what lay beneath.
Once a month a priest came to Trecarrel on a circuit through the north
of Cornwall, and said mass in the chapel near the house. On these
occasions Mirelle walked over to Trecarrel. Trecarrel lies, like most
old manor houses, in a hollow. A small stream dribbling through the
hollow constituted the only attraction which could lead a gentleman to
build his stately mansion in such a spot. A stately mansion Trecarrel
must have been in its prime. The great banqueting hall was of hewn
granite, with granite windows and doorway and chimney-piece. A little
chapel stood south of the hall, also of cut granite. The mansion-house
itself is, at the present date, reduced to a fragment of the great house
that once occupied three sides of a quadrangle. At the time of which we
are writing it was more than dilapidated, it was falling into utter
ruin. There was no glass in many of the windows, and the roofs were
breaking down. Next to the hall the glory of Trecarrel was the gatehouse
of granite, with a richly sculptured doorway of the same intractable
material, moulded deeply, with strawberry leaves carved in the hollows
of the mouldings. The Trecarrel who gambled pulled down the gate-house
because coaches could not pass beneath the arch; but when he had pulled
it down he had not the power or the means to remove the huge blocks, and
so he left them encumbering the ground where they had fallen, and there
at the present day they lie, rankly overgrown with nettles.
Captain Trecarrel could not suffer Mirelle to walk home unattended when
she made her monthly pilgrimages to his chapel. She was always pleased
to see and converse with him. He was her equal, a gentleman and a
Catholic--the two qualities which made them akin and separated them from
the ignoble and unbelieving around. In these walks the Captain told
Mirelle the story of Sir Henry Trecarrel and the building of Launceston
Church, and the way in which the work was arrested. He told her what
his ancestor had done and suffered in the civil wars, and he showed her
one day in the hall the sole reward he had received for his sacrifices.
Mirelle was able to sympathise with the misfortunes of the house; she
also represented a generous race, that had fought the Moors, had ruled a
county, coined its own money, and set up its own gallows. In that last
particular the Garcias and the Trecarrels had differed. The Garcias had
hung men, the Trecarrels had had much ado to keep themselves from being
hung.
The story of the self-sacrifice of the Trecarrels for Church and King
stirred the soul of Mirelle, ready to warm to all that savoured of
heroism; and she looked on the Captain as the noble representative of a
glorious line of confessors and martyrs. She fondly deemed him made of
the same stuff, ready to lay himself down on the altar if need be. But
no! Trecarrel was wholly free from the spirit of self-sacrifice. He
would not surrender his independence for five thousand pounds in
Patagonian bonds. During one of these walks the Captain ascertained
from Mirelle that her father had left her six thousand pounds, not in
Patagonian bonds, but in hard cash. Six thousand pounds! That was one
thousand above the sum that Orange was promised. Six thousand pounds in
coined gold, with his Majesty's head on each piece, God bless him!
Trecarrel's tone assumed more tenderness, a softer light shone out of
his celestial eyes, and he slightly squeezed the arm that was on his own
under the big umbrella, as he paddled with Mirelle to Launceston under a
Cornish drizzle and through West Country mud.
That night the Captain did not sleep. He tossed on his bed. He sat up
and hammered the pillow into shape and put it under his neck. Then he
got up and drank cold water. Then he tried to count sheep going through
a gap in a hedge. All was in vain. He could not sleep and he could not
count the sheep, because his mind was active. He was stung into
wakefulness by the consideration whether it would be possible for him to
be off his engagement to Orange, and on with one to Mirelle. It would
not be consistent with his honour as a gentleman and an officer (though
only in the militia) to become engaged to Mirelle before breaking with
Orange. It would also not be proper for him to break with Orange; but
it would be perfectly honourable for him so to conduct himself as to
force her to break with him. He made no doubt that Mirelle would have
him. No woman could refuse him, with his eyes and name, his profile and
his position. Besides, Mirelle manifestly liked him. She made no
secret of the pleasure she took in his society. Now the only means of
effecting a rupture with Orange was for him to pay marked attentions to
Mirelle, and to wane in his attentions to herself. Orange would then
speak to her mother, and the mother would communicate her daughter's
trouble to the father, and then a crisis would be attained. The father
would either break off the match, in which case he would be free to
address Mirelle, or, in his dread of losing such a son-in-law, he would
drop the Patagonians and offer ready money. Orange and five thousand
pounds; Mirelle with six! There was no comparing the lots.
Captain Trecarrel turned the situation into an equation. As Mirelle is
to Orange, so is 6,000*l*. to _x_.
Mirelle x *x* = Orange x 6,000*l*.
M
or - = 6,000*l*.
O
Now Orange was of an inferior social grade, and this difference could
not be estimated under 1,000*l*. Then Orange had incumbrances, in the
shape of very vulgar parents and a cur of a brother. This could not
figure at less than 1,000*l*. Orange was plump, and plump girls become
obese women; a serious detriment that could only be covered with another
1,000*l*. Mirelle was a Catholic, and her faith was worth 1,000*l*.
The equation therefore stood thus:--
Mirelle + 6,000*l*. = Orange + 10,000*l*.
'Hah!' said Captain Trecarrel, as he hammered his pillow with both
fists. 'I'll not take Orange under ten thousand pounds, I'm confounded
if I will.'
It must not be supposed that Orange Trampleasure was ignorant of the
walks taken by the Captain with Mirelle. Captain Trecarrel did not
desire that she should remain in ignorance of them, and when he escorted
Mirelle home he came on with her to the house to pay his respects to
Mrs. Trampleasure, and inquire after her cold in the head and her
bronchial tubes. He usually remained on such occasions for the early
dinner, and spent the afternoon with the girls in the garden-house when
it rained, or strolling with them in sunshine through the Castle
grounds.
At these times he was civil to Orange, and even attentive, but he let
her plainly see that when engaged in conversation with her his eyes and
thoughts were roving, and roving in the direction of Mirelle. Orange
would not have been a woman, and a loving woman, if she had not observed
and been hurt by this.
Orange had set her heart on marrying him, not only because she loved
him, but also because she was ambitious. She had more culture than her
father and mother and brother, and she felt their coarseness. She
disliked their friends. She was a proud girl, and when the prospect
opened before her of becoming Mrs. Trecarrel, she resolved to make this
the means of shaking herself free from the sordid society in which she
had been forced to move, and to take her place, as of right, in a class
above it in culture, in traditions, and in aspirations.
Orange volunteered to walk to Trecarrel with Mirelle on her monthly
expeditions, and the offer was frankly accepted.
Mirelle did not know that her cousin was engaged to Trecarrel, she had
not been let into the secret; Orange was not of a confiding nature, and
the intercourse between her and the Captain had of late been strained.
Mirelle regarded him as a friend of the family; she rather wondered what
he could find in the Trampleasures to make him seek their society, but
she entertained no suspicions of a nearer tie than friendship.
The jealousy of Orange was roused. She became less demonstrative in her
affection towards Mirelle, but she was not unkind. She harboured
bitterness in her heart, but it was not suffered to brim over her lips.
The only token she gave of wrath and jealousy was a heightened colour
and a dangerous flicker in her eye, whenever subjected to one of those
slights which are only perceptible to the eye of love. Trecarrel
noticed this, and was content. He would achieve his end by means
strictly honourable. Mirelle was unconscious and unsuspicious of what
was going on around her. She liked the Captain, she told Orange as
much, without colour rising in her transparent cheek or lowering her
eye. She liked Orange, who, if not cordial, was kind, and who proved a
very serviceable screen against the brutality of her father and brother.
That the Captain was playing her off upon Orange for his own selfish
purposes, and that deadly jealousy and hate against her were being
kindled in the bosom of her cousin--of this Mirelle was unsuspicious.
*CHAPTER XIV.*
*UNDER THE HEARTH.*
John Herring visited Joyce daily. He had no choice. She would allow no
one else to touch her bandages. He was impatient to prosecute his
journey, but was detained by this poor savage, who refused doggedly to
allow the doctor or Cicely to touch her arms. Herring remonstrated, and
insisted that he must go. Cicely Battishill volunteered to take his
place. Then Joyce became wild, she tore at the rags with her teeth, and
would have ripped them off and relaxed the splints, and undone all that
had been done for her broken bones, had not Herring hastily promised to
remain and attend to her daily, and so with difficulty allayed her
apprehension and anger. He was particularly anxious to be in Exeter,
but he could not risk the health of Joyce by deserting her in this
juncture. He was held captive at West Wyke, held in captivity by Joyce's
broken hands. The reason why he was impatient to go forward was that he
had been summoned to Exeter to rejoin his regiment, then quartered
there. The morning following the accident he had applied for an
extension of leave, but no answer had come to his application. He knew
that he ought to be with his regiment. He would get into trouble for
his absence, and yet--he allowed himself to be detained. The call of
humanity was one he was unable to resist. He was good-natured, that
is--weak. The strong men are the selfish men. Herring's simple and
kindly heart was interested in Joyce, but perplexed and pained. He had
no experience of life, and no knowledge of its problems. He had never
before been brought in contact with a character utterly rude and
destitute of that elementary knowledge which we take for granted is as
universally diffused as the atmosphere. He sat under the Giant's Table
and talked to Joyce, asked her questions, and endeavoured to draw out
the thoughts of her clouded brain. But the profound ignorance, the
gross barbarism of her mind and manner of thought amazed him.
He saw nothing of Old Grizzly, who, as Joyce expressed it, 'sloked away'
whenever he came in sight.
'Joyce,' said Herring one day, as he knelt by her, having just bandaged
her arms, 'do you know the difference between right and wrong?'
The question was called forth by some words of the girl showing a
startling ignorance of the elements of morality.
'In coorse I do,' she answered; then sitting up on her bed of heather,
'I'll tell'y how I comed to know. I were once in a turnip-field
fetching a turnip for our dinner. There were a wooddoo (dove) running up
an oak hard by, and he sings out, "Tak' two, Joyce, tak' two;" and in an
old holm tree sat a raven, and her shooked her head and said, "Very
wrong, Joyce, very wrong." But I minded more what the wooddoo sed, and
I took two. Then as I were climbing over the hedge, I dropped one
turnip back in the field whence I'd took 'n; and the wooddoo called
again "Tak' two, Joyce, tak' two." "So I will," sez I, and I pitches on
my feet again in the field where the turnip had fallen to, and as I
picked 'n up, in at the gate comed Farmer Freeze, and he seed me and set
his dog Towzer on me, and my legs be scored now where Towzer set his
teeth in me. After this I knowed never to believe wooddoos no more when
they sez "Tak' two." The raven were right. I shud ha' tooked one or
three or five. I knows now that it be wrong to take even numbers of
aught, and right to take odd.[1] For you sees,' she continued
earnestly, 'if I had taken only one turnip, I'd ha' been over the hedge
and away avore Farmer Freeze comed in; but as I minded the wooddoo, and
waited to take two, I were tore cruel bad by Towzer.'
[1] This story was told the author by a poor Devonshire labourer. He
believed he had understood the language of the birds.
Herring looked in her face with wonder.
'Joyce,' he said, 'is this possible? Pray, have you ever heard of God?'
'Who be he?'
'He is above the sky.'
'What, over the clouds, do'y mean?'
'Yes.'
'I've seed 'n scores and scores o' times.' (Here we must note that by
this expression Joyce meant 'any number of times.' She could not count
above ten, the number of her fingers, and a score was her highest
reckonable number, for that was the number of her fingers and toes.)
'You mean the sun as goes running everlasting after the moon; she be his
wife, I reckon.'
'Why so?' asked Herring, with a smile.
'Becos her be always a trying to get out of his way.'
'Did your father ill-treat your mother?' he asked.
'In coorse he did, though I can't remember much about it. Her was his
wife, and he had a right to.'
'Do you mean that he beat and kicked her, as he has beaten and kicked
you?'
'Kicked!' echoed Joyce. 'Who ever sed as he kicked mother or I. It be
gentlefolks and wrastlers as kick; us has nothing on our toes, and so us
don't kick for fear of hurting 'em.'
'Does your father often beat you?'
'As he likes, but that don't matter now.'
'Why not?'
'Becos I don't belong to 'n any more.'
'What! emancipated at last, Joyce?'
'I belongs to you.'
'To me!' Herring drew back, staggered by the thought.
'A coorse I do. Vaither a'most broked me to pieces, and I'd a died, but
you mended me up and made me to live again. So it stands to reason that
I don't belong to vaither no more, but belong to you. 'Tes clear as a
moor stream. I can see the reason on it as sartain as I can a trout in
a brook. I've been a thinking it over and over, and I never could
reckon it right out. Then, one night mother began to grub her way up by
thicky stone. I seed her grey hairs coming out o' the ground, and I
thought 'twere moss; but after some'ut white and round like a turnip
comes, and I sed to myself, "How ever comes a turnip to be growing here,
under the Giant's Table?" Presently I seed her eyes acoming up, and
then I knowed it were mother. Then I went over and I helped her wi' a
rabbit's legbone. I scratched the earth away, so as her could get her
nose and mouth out of the ground, and her were snuffling like a horned
owl.'
'My dear Joyce, you were dreaming.'
'It were true--true as I see you here.'
'But, Joyce, how could you have helped her out of the ground, as you
say, with your arms broken?'
Joyce was puzzled. Like other savages, she had not arrived at that
point of enlightenment in which dream and reality are distinguished.
'I don't know nothing about that,' said Joyce, 'but it be true what I
ses, I know that very well. Let me go on. At last when her could speak
plain, her sed, "Joyce, you belong no more to Grizzly, you belong to the
young maister." So I sez to her, "How can that be?" Then her answers,
"You mind the old iron crock as were chucked away by the Battishills.
They'd a broke 'n, and wanted 'n no more. Then your vaither found 'n
and mended 'n up somehow. There her hangs now wi' turnips and cabbidge
a stewing in her over the fire. Do thicky crock belong to the
Battishills now any more? No, her don't, they broke 'n and chucked 'n
away. Her belongs to Old Grizzly for becos he took 'n and patched 'n
up. That be reason," sed my mother, "for sartain." And what her said
be true and right. So I belong to you.'
'But I decline the honour, Joyce,' said Herring, laughing.
'Will you beat and break me and cast me away, like as did vaither?'
'I beat and hurt you! God forbid, my poor child.'
'Then till you does, I belongs to'y--that's sartain!'
She laid herself down on the cushions with the action and tone of voice
that implied the matter was concluded past contradiction.
Here was a state of affairs! A state of affairs sufficiently startling.
A few weeks ago John Herring had been his own master, with no one
depending on him, and without responsibility. Now he was in a measure
responsible for three girls. Mirelle, it is true, had asserted her
independence, but she had nevertheless imposed on him obligations.
Cicely made no scruple of declaring that she relied on him for
direction, not to be got from a father never very dependable, and now
enfeebled in mind and body. Joyce now informed him that she had
transferred her allegiance to him from her father, and he had seen so
far into her dark mind as to perceive that what she said she meant, and
what she meant she acted on.
'Here,' said Joyce, 'you put your hand on my elbow.'
'Why on your elbow?'
'I can feel there what I want to feel. My hands be as hard as my feet,
and they don't feel much. When I wants to know if the porridge be
scalding, or whether I can eat 'n, I don't put a finger in, I put my
elbow. Now do as I ax'y. Put your hand there.'
She made Herring place his hand above the splints on the elbow. Then
she fixed her eyes on him and asked, 'Wot's her name?'
'Whose name?'