CARN TREWOOFA
Stuart solved the riddle which lay in the personality of Mine Host, by
declaring that whereas in summer he followed the fair and guileless
calling of hotel-keeper, in winter a bolder voice summoned him forth,
and he threw off his disguises, and donned ear-rings, and became a
Corsair. And indeed there was that about him of jolly rakish raffish
swagger, a roll in his gait, and a ruddiness of visage, and withal a
disposition to solemn winking of the left eye, and a tendency to be
found in odd moments dancing strange dances the length of his own hall,
which gave to such a suggestion a flavour of likelihood.
Moreover, the Corsair had surrounded himself by a bewildering bevy
of females, whom he called variously his wife, his cousin, his
housekeeper, his secretary, and his manageress; but who were obviously
delicious yieldings of his six-months’ piracy.
But the Ocean Hotel could produce no equally satisfactory solution to
the problem of Merle, Peter, and Stuart; and the various possibilities
in the way of marital, sentimental, immoral, or blood relationship,
that their companionship entailed. Perceiving this, Stuart found
gentle delight in preserving strict impartiality in the bestowal of
his outward affections. The Spanish waiter at the Billet-doux would
have known much in common with the Five Females of the Ocean Hotel. A
climax was reached, when, under their assembled eyes, Peter entered
the breakfast-room and handed a tobacco-pouch to her lord and master,
reminding him in bell-like tones that he had left it in her room.
Whereat a shudder passed from guest to guest, and a horrified voice
remarked with more virtue than grammar, “Guessed it was her--I mean,
one can always tell!”
Then enter Merle with a book and a box of matches and a green felt
slipper: “You must have left them in my room, Stuart ...” and Stuart
affected great embarrassment,--and they were all three very happy and
contented.
But when the visitors at the hotel complained of people who go from
table to table before meals; deliberately and in the sight of all,
pouring cream from smaller vessels into one gigantic bowl, thereafter
placed upon their own table; then the Five Females did so persistently
harass and beset the Corsair, that he became quite melancholy, and
would sit all day long in the porch, gazing seawards, without even
the heart to nudge Peter in the ribs as she passed him by; a delicate
attention she sorely missed. For he liked the trio, perhaps recognizing
in them the germs of piracy, and was loth to give them notice to quit.
“You know, I really believe we shall be slung out before to-morrow,”
laughed Stuart; “we’re not a bit popular.” They were at that moment
topping for the first time the westward slope of moor. Not yet had they
succeeded in finding their path to the sea. Peter had almost despaired
of feeling the cool water swell and ebb about her ankles.
And then, suddenly, they saw Carn Trewoofa.
Carn Trewoofa lay tucked in a little cove, the green arm of the cliff
flung protectingly around it, as who should say: “All right, dear;
the nasty grim granite-land shan’t touch you then!” And the toy
fishing-village believed this, and was at peace, drowsy and tumbled in
the warm sunshine.
A toy fishing-village. Patched roofs; thatched roofs; roofs both
patched and thatched; wild and abandoned young roofs, seemingly kept
only in their places by heavy chains or great slabs of stone. Sturdy,
ugly stone walls, defying the winds, that, despite protective arm,
dealt sometimes roughly with toy villages. Dwellings of all shapes
and sizes, impartial dwellings for lobster or fowl or human. Round
windlass-tower, painted a startling white, presumably with what
was left over from the coastguard stones. Wood and slate and tar.
Overturned boats and baskets. Nets hung to dry; smocks dangling to
dry; dogs and children spread to dry; and on a rough bench outside the
lifeboat shed, a row of old salts, bearded and tough and stringy, and
beyond the utmost limits of dryness, so that the sun could do to them
no more.
A toy village, no doubt! The kind that one has longed to play with,
ever since first meeting it in picture book. Nor did it beguile with
false whispers, as had done the rest of the false land of Cornwall.
For the coastguard’s path ran straight down the cliff-side to the
very doors of the first fowl-house; and the rocks and pools of the
Atlantic trespassed so far into the heart of the village, that it was
difficult to disentangle them. A way to the sea at last.... Merle and
Peter ran shouting down and on and out, the length of a baby stone lug
that curved into the water, thinking in its infant delusion, that it
broke the force of the waves. And there, at the very furthest end, they
turned and surveyed Carn Trewoofa, spread in a glimmer of gold before
them. And they remarked the multitude of boats strewn drunkenly on the
cobbled slope from the shore to the first cluster of huts; remarked the
fleet of boats that rocked and swung on the vivid green of the bay;
green that beyond the lug deepened and glowed to shadowed ultramarine.
And they received a hint that somewhere was an inn; and somewhere
else the twisted fragments of an ancient wreck; and all about were
seagulls, swooping and balancing and shrieking. And well-pleased with
this latest and most complete piece of nursery-ware designed for
their happiness, they turned their gaze outwards, there to be met
by a rust-red sail passing swift as a dream over the broken white
wave-crests; while a mile nearer to the horizon, a quaint clockwork
lighthouse reared itself from a group of rocks, and made believe to
guard the bay.
Then Merle rubbed her eyes, and turned to Peter, and asked if it were
really all to be had for the price of two-and-eleven-pence-halfpenny?
and might she please carry it home herself?
Stuart joined them on the lug. “They can’t yarn,” he said regretfully,
jerking his thumb towards the line of ancient salts. “I’ve tried them
and they can’t. In fact, I believe they’re tin.”
“Detachable?” queried Peter.
“No; on a row. I daresay it would be possible to break one off from the
end. But they’re too old and glazed to be taught much; we must start
with the new generation, and teach the young idea how to salt. Perhaps
if we sowed among them a few volumes of W. W. Jacobs--I say, come along
and explore.”
They entered Carn Trewoofa softly, as if fearful it should break or
melt or in some such magical fashion manifest its unreality. And,
picking her way between rope and anchor and occasionally a stray
doorstep where there was no door, Merle came to a correct conclusion
regarding the origin of this wonder-corner: It was smell made concrete.
Someone had waved a wand over a handful of the richly mingled
prevailing odour of seaweed and sea, tar and fish and clover, straw
and fowl, soil and stone and lobster-pot; muttered a few compelling
words--and the result was Carn Trewoofa.
The trio were just able to add to their medley of impressions, the mad
swirl of paths, seven to one hut, that none could tell its back nor
yet its front; and the yet madder swirl of chickens, seventy to one
hen, and seven orphans to boot. Every ten yards traversed showed them a
painted slab set in the wall, or in a door, or even on a roof; a slab
and a slit and the word: Letters. They speculated what would happen if
somebody failed to realize that this was a toy village, and posted real
epistles in these alluring receptacles. “They are intended for all the
letters one has never sent,” Stuart declared; “letters to my own feet,
or to my great-uncle in Heaven; to the Times, and to a skylark, and to
the Red King in Looking-glass Land.”
Likewise he discovered the national fisheress costume to be a
cricket-cap; and counted no less than eight of these articles in the
wearing. “Which proves that once, many years ago, a cricket team
rounded the point in a pleasure steamer. And the Corsair lured them
all to their destruction. But their caps were washed up on the shore,
and worn ever since by the Women of Carn Trewoofa.--Nine! I’ll stalk
the lot e’er yet I quit this spot.” He counted the tenth on the head
of a buxom matron standing outside the “Longships” inn, and doing most
effective things with two buckets and a pump.
She nodded pleasantly to the three, and asked them in raucous Cornish
whether they were strangers in the land.
“Very,” responded Peter gloomily.
The wearer of the tenth cricket cap volunteered the information that
she had rooms to let.
“At the inn!” gasped Merle.
“Nay; up-along yon villa. T’inn be nowt fur t’ young leddies.”
Smilingly she indicated a grey stone cottage standing high on its own
steps, a few paces up the hill; its blind patient eyes looking steadily
across the bay, past the toy fishing-fleet, to where sea and sky merged
in a blue quivering haze.
They followed their guide into the tiny sitting-room of the “villa.”
And there Peter cast herself with a sigh of voluptuous content upon
a slippery slithery horsehair sofa; and Merle threw open the lid of a
wheezy harmonium--and broke it; and Stuart remained transfixed before
two black ivory elephants, which stood upon the mantelpiece. And
they each and all declared their intention of remaining in their new
quarters, never again to return to the disapproving atmosphere of the
Ocean Hotel.
Mrs. Trenner beamed. They did not realize then that her rosy
good-humour concealed the will of a Napoleon. For Mrs. Trenner was the
autocrat of Carn Trewoofa; its leader and counsellor; by virtue of
her unfailing prosperity and the excellence of her cooking. She owned
the inn, and property besides; and she owned her husband and son and
husband’s brother’s wife and their offspring, even as she now owned
Merle and Peter and Stuart. The sons and husbands of other women might
drown at sea; not so Mrs. Trenner’s. The chickens of other women might
cross the road and be run over on the occasion of the fortnightly
visit of the butcher’s cart; never Mrs. Trenner’s chickens. Therefore
she wore her cricket-cap jauntily. On her indeed had fallen some of
the radiance of that Star of Good Fortune under whose mellow auspices
Stuart had been born. She and Stuart became, in consequence, excellent
friends, though the language they spoke was mutually uncanny and
perplexing.
“I’m not going to budge from here,” quoth Peter again. “_J’y suis et
j’y reste._ Isn’t that so, Mrs. Trenner?”
Mrs. Trenner hesitated: “Well, theere t’es,” she ejaculated at last;
her favourite expression in moments of emergency.
Peter continued: “Merle shall go upstairs and feel the beds, and see
if the mattress is clay soil, or whatever has to be done under those
circs. And Stuart can return to the hotel and pack our suit-cases.”
Stuart demurred. He might cope with the Corsair, he said, were it not
for the Five Females. So they all returned to the hotel, telling Mrs.
Trenner to have their dinner on the table that very evening. And they
said this in all innocence, knowing nothing of the dinner, nor of what
lay before them.
Before quitting Carn Trewoofa, Merle dashed through the tiny doorway
marked “Mrs. Nanvorrow, Grocer,” just to see what lay hidden in its
murky depths. She returned with a pennyworth of peardrops, and a
fearsome account of an old ancient crone sitting in the kitchen,
surrounded on floor, ceiling and walls, by china; a frenzied orgy
of china; a veritable Bacchanal of china; china that sprouted and
multiplied and literally asked for the destroying bull. “She squawked
at me like a parrot,” Merle related in awestruck whispers, “and called
me ‘dearie.’” She paused impressively. They were trudging up the
cliff-path towards the Coastguard Station.
--“And I’ve discovered the eleventh cap. It was on the Witch’s head.”
Then Stuart sat down, and reproached her bitterly. He didn’t want any
of the caps now, he said, if he couldn’t be left to find them himself.
And anyway, stalking cricket-caps was a man’s job, in the pursuance of
which, he considered Merle both unladylike and officious. “It isn’t as
if I were childish about things,” concluded Stuart.
Then he looked Peter full in the eyes; and she laughed aloud at his
utter childishness, knowing of the man beneath; knowing he knew she was
by now aware of it. And Merle laughed with her, unconscious as yet that
two of the three were playing games no more.
* * * * *
“Are ye all reet?” demanded Mrs. Trenner, hovering round their three
chairs.
“It’s a feast of Lucullus,” sighed Peter, eating fresh young crab.
And Stuart, over an oozing pasty, declared that Mrs. Trenner must
be a reincarnation of the cook primarily responsible for Epicurean
philosophy.
“Well, theere t’es!” but Mrs. Trenner was obviously not satisfied.
Then, nibbling at a saffron cake, Merle said gently, in words of one
syllable: “The best I have yet ate, Mrs. Trenner.” And, wreathed in
smiles, their landlady departed to the kitchen, there to retail to Maid
Bessy, the one comprehensible bit of praise.
“Best she yet ate--thet’s what her said tu me, t’little leddy....”
“I foresee,” quoth Stuart, “that we shall have to leave to Merle the
hectic chorus of praise which must inevitably accompany all our meals.
Mrs. Trenner doesn’t appreciate our classic mode of expression, Peter.”
Peter moaned: “It’s awful; she gives us five times too much, and seems
to take personal pride in our appetites. I daren’t leave a morsel.
There’s something chubbily relentless about that woman. However, thank
goodness there can be nothing more to come now.”
Mrs. Trenner entered; in one hand a plate of cheese-straws wherewith to
break the camel’s back; in the other a bottle of Pond’s Extract.
“Are ye all reet?” she demanded, placing these upon the table. The
three gazed, worried, at the Pond’s Extract. Was it local fashion to
consume this with their cheese-straws?
“Mis’ Gurton, she thet hev t’ big room faacin’ this, she sent it over,
thinkin’ ee might hev tired feet o’ nights, after walkin’,” volunteered
Mis’ Gurton’s messenger. Then, hovering uncertainly awhile, in the
difficulty of removing herself through the door, without assistant
impetus, Mrs. Trenner shot forth: “Well, theere t’es”--and vanished.
“Evidently,” mused Peter, “one leaves Pond’s Extract in lieu of cards,
up-along tu Carn Trewoofa. I suppose we are bound by etiquette to
return toothpaste or Dinneford’s Magnesia upon Mis’ Gurton. They seem
inclined to be friendly here.”
Outside the little square of window, the sky-colour was fast being
drained and sucked into the West; and over the line of moor, a pale
lemon-coloured moon wound and unwound herself like a dancer amidst
trailing wisps of cloud, lilac and tender pink. Swaying rhythmically
from the fading glow of day to the lifeless pallor of evening, the
little dark fleet of fishing-boats could be glimpsed in the bay.
Indeed, Carn Trewoofa was inclined to be friendly with the strangers.
* * * * *
--Stuart leapt the low wall, and made a dash for a group of sheds
huddled in the farmhouse yard.
“Come along!” he cried; and helter-skelter, through the icy sting of
rain, they followed his lead.
... Something enormous hurled itself impotently against the wooden
door, as they slammed it behind them.
“It’s a pig. I saw it,” gasped Peter. Her hand fumbled for the latch,
could not find it; small wonder, since it existed on the further side
of the door. The latter opened inwards. Peter leant against it the full
weight of her body: “Help! it’s big and black and bulging--and it’s
coming in!”
“Let it,” quoth Stuart indifferently. “Who are we, to object to a
respectable old sow?”
But Merle, sitting exhausted in the trough, avowed a firm refusal to
share this harbour of refuge with aught whatsoever in the pork line.
So Stuart took Peter’s place at the door; and she sank into the trough
beside Merle, and through the dim light watched with breathless
interest the fierce encounter between man and beast, divided only by a
thin partition of wood. Again and yet again did the ungainly monster
hurl its quivering bulk to the assault, till the insecure building
rocked and shook. Disgusted snortings and gruntings mingled pleasantly
with the lash of the rain, and the distant chime of church-bells from
Carn Trewoofa, six miles to the south from this clump of moorland huts
and farms.
“My--sympathies--are all--with--the--pig,” jerked out Stuart, holding
his own against terrific odds. “After all, it _is_ her sty. An English
pig’s sty is her castle.”
Chorus of indignant assent from the pig.
And then Merle was suddenly seized by an uncontrollable fit of laughter.
“Peter, it’s Sunday afternoon, first Sunday in the month; and our At
Home day at Lancaster Gate. Did your little granddaughter’s frock come
from Paris, _chère Madame? mais tout à fait charmante_.”
The pig rallied for yet a final onslaught. This time she was just able
to inject a bristling snout....
* * * * *
Merle liked to feel that she was ‘making friends with the rustics.’
Nevertheless, sitting abreast of the low sea-wall, she looked somewhat
astonished at the bearded veteran who slouched to her side; and,
pointing to a picturesque abode covered by a round roof of mud,
announced fiercely, and without any preamble, that it was to be razed
to the ground, after he and his had dwelt therein for close on four
hundred years.
“Taaken from me an’ destroyed, next Monday week. Iss. An’ me without a
hoam tu put my foot in et.”
“There’s no place like home for putting one’s foot in it,” murmured
Peter, in the background, to Stuart.
Merle heeded them not; she was busy sympathizing with the ‘peasant
heart of England.’
“Fur why?” demanded the man, brandishing his stick. “Fur nowt. Bit o’
rain pourin’ through roof an’ in our beds. Mud isna slate.”
“No, no, indeed,” cooed Merle. (“Do be quiet, Peter.”)
The veteran swung round, and indicated a timid-looking damsel standing
a few yards off: “Yon’s my daughter. Yon’s t’ girl as gets fits.”
His tone rang with such pride, that Stuart stepped forward and
congratulated him heartily.
“How very sad for the poor girl,” Merle raised hyacinth wells of
sympathy to the weather-beaten face above hers. (“Stuart!”)
“Eh, thet’s t’lass. She du get them moastly in chapel, she du.”
“Oh,” brightly, “then wouldn’t it be better if she never went to
chapel?”
A gurgle of laughter from Peter. Merle turned her back yet more
squarely upon her irrepressible companions.
“Ne’er can tell when she be gettin’ one o’ they fits. Scream, she du,
an’ fling up her arms.” He regarded his talented offspring intently.
“Seem tu me, she be gettin’ thet way now....”
Merle fled.
“Never mind, then,” Stuart teased her half an hour later. “She _shall_
be remembered in the hearts of the people. She shall understand the
simple joys and sorrows of the rude peasantry----”
“After all,” Peter finished consolingly, “you’re the only one of us who
can make Mrs. Trenner understand what pudding we want for lunch.”
* * * * *
Merle cried, casting herself upon their beloved horsehair sofa:
“Oh, what a day! I’ve never been so happy--and never so gloriously
disgracefully untidy!”
Then Peter and Stuart looked long upon her, and looked at each other
and smiled. For despite her delusions to the contrary, Merle’s vaunted
‘untidiness’ merely succeeded in fitting her to her present frame, as
surely as the central figure of a Cornish Riviera poster; a daintily
clad mermaid was she, pale-faced and lissom, with eyes reflecting the
stormier tints of the sea; delicate ankles; blue-green jersey, closely
blown to the figure; hair waving in long strands, albeit not wispily,
about her shoulders.
“Merle’s appearance,” remarked Stuart, “is of the very few that can
be trusted to look after itself for hours together. Now Peter’s
physiognomy needs careful attention every five minutes; it burns and
flushes and freckles; and her hair gets really untidy, not merely
picturesquely ruffled; and her cap falls to the back of her head, and
the buttons are off her skirt, and her neck is mottled mahogany, and
oh, her jersey! how sagged and dragged and bagged it was----”
“But then, how it was cheap,” finished Peter.
“When are you two girls going home?” suddenly. “I’m off at to-morrow’s
dawn. The call of diamonds. You’d better fix another day; we don’t want
to look back on a long journey together, and a sulky, sooty arrival
in London, as an ending to all this that we have had. It would be
ungrateful.”
“O thou of the Hairpin Vision!” but Peter understood his mood. “When do
we want to go, Merle?”
“Saturday is my birthday, and grandmaman is giving me a dinner-party
of all the people I hate most. We may as well leave on Friday morning.
It’s Wednesday to-day, isn’t it?” vaguely.
“Tuesday. By the way, what have you done about your letters home?
Postmarks, I mean.”
“Carn Trewoofa is the nearest postal town to Orson Manor in
Devonshire,” replied Merle. And Stuart sat down beside her on the sofa,
and discoursed pleasantly on the lake of fire and brimstone, till
Mrs. Trenner appeared to introduce them to their lunch, in its raw
and natural condition. After which, she retired to cook it. Even Carn
Trewoofa is no stranger to certain conditions of etiquette.
* * * * *
... So they all three squatted upon the outermost rock, and waited to
be Caught by the Tide.
Sitting thus, bare-legged, knees hunched up to the chin, hands clasped
about the knees, eyes solemn with expectation, they might have served
for an illustration to some children’s tale of adventure. Peter wore
a floppy crimson cap on her pale tangle of hair. Merle’s two heavy
black plaits hung uncrowned. They did not speak; only gazed outwards,
to desolate seas beyond the seas that have an end; and waited ...
patiently. The lapping of water was the only sound. A wee crab, a green
crab, waddled crookedly forth to examine with interest the thirty toes
dangling into his private pool.
A south-westerly breeze blew upon their tanned throats ... and the
light began to ebb.
Seven days now had they tarried in Carn Trewoofa, and had not yet
succeeded in being Caught by the Tide. Therefore shame was upon them.
For the waves of Cornwall said: “If we surround them, they will merely
elude us. And if they elude us, they will regard our strength and our
cunning as mere attributes in a game of play invented by themselves.
They are not as others, these strangers in the land. So we will not
be beguiled into an attempt to drown them. They shall return to their
homes without the supreme wonder and glory of being Caught by the Tide.”
Thus the Waves of Cornwall.
... And when they had been fully nineteen minutes on the outermost rock
of all, waiting ... patiently ... Peter said in a very small voice: “Do
you think, oh, do you think, it can be because the tide is going out?”
Stuart replied: “Peter, Peter, I didn’t like to say so before, but I am
afraid it is indeed because the tide is going out.”
“If we were now in France, we would be Caught by the Tide.”
“But we are in Cornwall.”
... And sorrowfully they rose, and picked their way over the slippery
boulders, towards the beckoning grey cottage that stood high on its own
steps, a few paces up the hill.
The little south-westerly breeze was gaining in strength.
* * * * *
The little south-westerly breeze had become a south-westerly gale. It
blew a great restlessness into Stuart that evening, so that he walked
ceaselessly from window to door of the cottage, and at last suggested
going forth to meet the elements squarely, and without the intervention
of stone or glass.
Merle was drowsy from much scrambling, said she preferred to remain
peacefully within.
“Come along, Peter.”
And from a lazy desire likewise to refuse the battle, the other girl
quickened to something in his tones; without a word, threw on a heavy
cloak; and, bare-headed, followed him through the village, and up the
coastguard’s path to the crest of the cliff.
Here the wind caught them; not erratically, nor in gasping squally
fashion, but a massed wall of wind, blowing steadily, straight and hard
from across the sea, with never a swell nor yet a drop in the strength
and sound of it. A mighty cleansing wind, causing every muscle and
nerve of the body to be braced in resistance, without a second of rest
or relaxation.
From far below, echoed the cold crash of breakers on the rocks. Far
above, torn battalions of cloud swirled witlessly across a shuddering
moon. Along the cliff, white splashes that marked by day the
coastguard’s path, now came and went like evil staring faces....
Stuart swung on, unfaltering; Peter followed as best she might. Once
she stumbled. He stopped, and flung a guiding arm about her.
“I can walk alone,” said Peter.
“I know you can....” The tempest hurled his voice straight past her,
and across the black stretch of moor. “And it’s because you can walk
alone, that you’re going to walk with me now.”
They pressed forward, eluding carefully what they thought was bog-land,
only to discover on looking back, that they had been tricked by
shadows. And shadows, again, resolved themselves into marsh-patches,
yielding and treacherous. A fine rain sprayed their coats to a glitter.
The moon had been beaten from her fields, leaving the world in a roar
of darkness.... Once they halted abruptly on the verge of nothing,
where the land had been eaten away. Once they followed the cliff that
ran out sheer to a point, crested by dark shapes of granite, monsters
thrown up æons ago by the waves.
Peter and Stuart stood motionless for several moments, rigid bodies
thrusting at the wall of wind, that blew with never a drop nor yet a
swell in the strength and sound of it; stripped from them all memory of
a narrower stuffier world.
--“Tired?”
“Of the wind?”
“Of me, then?”
“I’ve never yet met the man who could tire me.”
“Never?”
“Never!”
With a laugh, he turned, strode back to the mainland. Then, facing
suddenly round, met her scrambling down from the granite. Met her, and
put his arms about her--this time neither in support nor in guidance,
but fiercely, and because of the thing that had lain crouching between
them, now storm-whipped to sudden life. Her short hair beat and stung
against his face. Their lips were stiff and crusted with salt. It was
not a night for words. Once he spoke her name....
* * * * *
Later, swinging down the homeward path, they came upon sight of Carn
Trewoofa, three or four stray lights splashing the darkness. It was
good to know that one of these was from Merle’s lamp. Good to imagine
her sitting in the battered arm-chair by the window, thinking of the
other two in the turmoil outside.
Good to be the two in the turmoil outside.