Three weeks later she married John Penaluna. They spent their
honeymoon at home, as sober folks did in those days. John could spare
no time for holiday-making. He had entered on his duties as master of
Hall, and set with vigour about improving his inheritance. His first
step was to clear the long cliff-garden, which had been allowed to
drop out of cultivation from the day when he had cast down his mattock
there and run away to sea. It was a mere wilderness now. But he fell
to work like a navvy.
He fought it single-handed. He had no money hire extra labour, and
apparently had lost his old belief in borrowed capital, or perhaps had
grown timid with home-keeping. A single labourer--his father's old
hind--managed the cows and the small farmstead. Hester superintended
the dairy and the housework, with one small servant-maid at her beck
and call. And John tackled the gardens, hiring a boy or two in the
fruit-picking season, or to carry water in times of drought. So they
lived for two years tranquilly. As for happiness--well, happiness
depends on what you expect. It was difficult to know how much John
Penaluna (never a demonstrative man) had expected.
As far as folks could judge, John and Hester were happy enough. Day
after day, from sunrise to sunset, he fought with Nature in his small
wilderness, and slowly won--hewing, digging, terracing, cultivating,
reclaiming plot after plot, and adding it to his conquests. The slope
was sunny but waterless, and within a year Hester could see that his
whole frame stooped with the constant rolling of barrels and carriage
of buckets and waterpots up and down the weary incline. It seemed to
her that the hill thirsted continually; that no sooner was its thirst
slaked than the weeds and brambles took fresh strength and must be
driven back with hook and hoe. A small wooden summer-house stood in
the upper angle of the cliff-garden. John's father had set it there
twenty years before, and given it glazed windows; for it looked down
towards the harbour's mouth and the open sea beyond. Before his death
the brambles grew close about it, and level with the roof, choking the
path to it and the view from it. John had spent the best part of a
fortnight in clearing the ground and opening up the view again. And
here, on warm afternoons when her house work was over, Hester usually
sat with her knitting. She could hear her husband at work on the
terraces below; the sound of his pick and mattock mingled with the
clank of windlasses or the tick-tack of shipwrights' mallets, as she
knitted and watched the smoke of the little town across the water, the
knots of idlers on the quay, the children, like emmets, tumbling
in and out of the Mayows' doorway, the ships passing out to sea or
entering the harbour and coming to their anchorage.
One afternoon in midsummer week John climbed to his wife's
summer-house with a big cabbage-leaf in his hand, and within the
cabbage-leaf a dozen strawberries. (John's strawberries were known by
this time for the finest in the neighbourhood.) He held his offering
in at the open window, and was saying he would step up to the house
for a dish of cream; but stopped short.
"Hullo!" said he; for Hester was staring at him rigidly, as white as a
ghost. "What's wrong, my dear?" He glanced about him, but saw nothing
to account for her pallor--only the scorched hillside, alive with the
noise of grasshoppers, the hot air quivering above the bramble-bushes,
and beyond, a line of sunlight across the harbour's mouth, and a
schooner with slack canvas crawling to anchor on the flood-tide.
"You--you came upon me sudden," she explained.
"Stupid of me!" thought John; and going to the house, fetched not only
a dish of cream but the tea-caddy and a kettle, which they put to
boil outside the summer-house over a fire of dried brambles. The tea
revived Hester and set her tongue going. "'Tis quite a picnic!" said
John, and told himself privately that it was the happiest hour they
had spent together for many a month.
Two evenings later, on his return from St. Austell market, he happened
to let himself in by the door of the walled garden just beneath the
house, and came on a tall young man talking there in the dusk with his
wife.
"Why, 'tis Zeke Penhaligon! How d'ee do, my lad? Now, 'tis queer, but
only five minutes a-gone I was talkin' about 'ee with your skipper,
Nummy Tangye, t'other side o' the ferry. He says you'm goin' up for
your mate's certificate, and ought to get it. Very well he spoke of
'ee. Why don't Hester invite you inside? Come'st 'long in to supper,
my son."
Zeke followed them in, and this was the first of many visits. John was
one of those naturally friendly souls (there are many in the world)
who never go forth to seek friends, and to whom few friends ever come,
and these by accident. Zeke's talk set his tongue running on his own
brief _Wanderjahre_. And Hester would sit and listen to the pair with
heightened colour, which made John wonder why, as a rule, she shunned
company--it did her so much good. So it grew to be a settled thing
that whenever the _Touch-me-not_ entered port a knife and fork awaited
Zeke up at Hall, and the oftener he came the pleasanter was John's
face.
V
Three years passed, and in the summer of the third year Captain Nummy
Tangye, of the _Touch-me-not_, relinquished his command. Captain
Tangye's baptismal name was Matthias, and Bideford, in Devon, his
native town. But the _Touch-me-not_, which he had commanded for
thirty-five years, happened to carry for figurehead a wooden
Highlander holding a thistle close to his chest, and against his thigh
a scroll with the motto, _Noli Me Tangere_, and this being, in popular
belief, an effigy of the captain taken in the prime of life, Mr.
Tangye cheerfully accepted the fiction with its implication of
Scottish descent, and was known at home and in various out-of-the-way
parts of the world as Nolim or Nummy. He even carried about a small
volume of Burns in his pocket; not from any love of poetry, but to
demonstrate, when required, that Scotsmen have their own notions of
spelling.
Captain Tangye owned a preponderance of shares in the _Touch-me-not_,
and had no difficulty in getting Zeke (who now held a master's
certificate) appointed to succeed him. The old man hauled ashore to a
cottage with a green door and a brass knocker and a garden high
over the water-side. In this he spent the most of his time with a
glittering brass telescope of uncommon length, and in the intervals of
studying the weather and the shipping, watched John Penaluna at work
across the harbour.
The _Touch-me-not_ made two successful voyages under Zeke's command,
and was home again and discharging beside the Town Quay, when, one
summer's day, as John Penaluna leaned on his pitchfork beside a heap
of weeds arranged for burning he glanced up and saw Captain Tangye
hobbling painfully towards him across the slope. The old man had on
his best blue cut-away coat, and paused now and then to wipe his brow.
"I take this as very friendly," said John.
Captain Tangye grunted. "P'rhaps 'tis, p'rhaps 'tisn'. Better wait a
bit afore you say it."
"Stay and have a bit of dinner with me and the missus."
"Dashed if I do! 'Tis about her I came to tell 'ee."
"Yes?" John, being puzzled, smiled in a meaningless way.
"Zeke's home agen."
"Yes; he was up here two evenin's ago."
"He was here yesterday; he'll be here again to-day. He comes here too
often. I've got a telescope, John Penaluna, and I sees what's goin'
on. What's more, I guess what'll come of it. So I warn 'ee--as a
friend, of course."
John stared down at the polished steel teeth of his pitchfork,
glinting under the noonday sun.
"As a friend, of course," he echoed vaguely, still with the
meaningless smile on his face.
"I b'lieve she means to be a good 'ooman; but she's listenin' to
'en. Now, I've got 'en a ship up to Runcorn. He shan't sail the
_Touch-me-not_ no more. 'Tis a catch for 'en--a nice barquentine, five
hundred tons. If he decides to take the post (and I reckon he will) he
starts to-morrow at latest. Between this an' then there's danger, and
'tis for you to settle how to act."
A long pause followed. The clock across the harbour struck noon, and
this seemed to wake John Penaluna up. "Thank 'ee," he said. "I think
I'll be going in to dinner. I'll--I'll consider of it. You've took me
rather sudden."
"Well, so long! I mean it friendly, of course."
"Of course. Better take the lower path; 'tis shorter, an' not so many
stones in it."
John stared after him as he picked his way down the hill; then fell to
rearranging his heaps of dried rubbish in an aimless manner. He had
forgotten the dinner-hour. Something buzzed in his ears. There was no
wind on the slope, no sound in the air. The shipwrights had ceased
their hammering, and the harbour at his feet lay still as a lake. They
were memories, perhaps, that buzzed so swiftly past his ears--trivial
recollections by the hundred, all so little, and yet now immensely
significant.
"John, John!"
It was Hester, standing at the top of the slope and calling him. He
stuck his pitchfork in the ground, picked up his coat, and went slowly
in to dinner.
Next day, by all usage, he should have travelled in to market: but he
announced at breakfast that he was too busy, and would send Robert,
the hind in his stead. He watched his wife's face as he said it. She
certainly changed colour, and yet she did not seem disappointed. The
look that sprang into those grey eyes of her was more like one of
relief, or, if not of relief, of a sudden hope suddenly snatched at;
but this was absurd, of course. It would not fit in with the situation
at all.
At dinner he said: "You'll be up in the summer-house this afternoon? I
shouldn't wonder if Zeke comes to say good-bye. Tangye says he've got
the offer of a new berth, up to Runcorn."
"Yes, I know."
If she wished, or struggled, to say more he did not seem to observe
it, but rose from his chair, stooped and kissed her on the forehead,
and resolutely marched out to his garden. He worked that afternoon in
a small patch which commanded a view of the ferry and also of the road
leading up to Hall: and at half-past three, or a few minutes later,
dropped his spade and strolled down to the edge of his property, a low
cliff overhanging the ferry-slip.
"Hullo, Zeke!"
Zeke, as he stepped out of the ferry-boat, looked with some confusion
on his face. He wore his best suit, with a bunch of sweet-william in
his button-hole.
"Come to bid us good-bye, I s'pose? We've heard of your luck. Here,
scramble up this way if you can manage, and shake hands on your
fortune."
Zeke obeyed. The climb seemed to fluster him; but the afternoon was a
hot one, in spite of a light westerly breeze. The two men moved side
by side across the garden-slope, and as they did so John caught sight
of a twinkle of sunshine on Captain Tangye's brass telescope across
the harbour.
They paused beside one of the heaps of rubbish. "This is a fine thing
for you, Zeke."
"Ay, pretty fair."
"I s'pose we sha'n't be seein' much of you now. 'Tis like an end of
old times. I reckoned we'd have a pipe together afore partin'." John
pulled out a stumpy clay and filled it. "Got a match about you?"
Zeke passed him one, and he struck it on his boot. "There, now," he
went on, "I meant to set a light to these here heaps of rubbish this
afternoon, and now I've come out without my matches." He waited for
the sulphur to finish bubbling, and then began to puff.
Zeke handed him half-a-dozen matches.
"I dunno how many 'twill take," said John. "S'pose we go round together
and light up. 'Twont' take us a quarter of an hour, an' we can talk by
the way."
Ten minutes later, Captain Tangye, across the harbour, shut his
telescope with an angry snap. The smoke of five-and-twenty bonfires
crawled up the hillside and completely hid John Penaluna's garden--hid
the two figures standing there, hid the little summer-house at the top
of the slope. It was enough to make a man swear, and Captain Tangye
swore.
John Penaluna drew a long breath.
"Well, good-bye and bless 'ee, Zeke. Hester's up in the summer-house.
I won't go up with 'ee; my back's too stiff. Go an' make your adoos to
her; she's cleverer than I be, and maybe will tell 'ee what we've both
got in our minds."
This was the third rash thing that John Penaluna did.
He watched Zeke up the hill, till the smoke hid him. Then he picked up
his spade. "Shall I find her, when I step home this evening? Please
God, yes."
And he did. She was there by the supper-table? waiting for him. Her
eyes were red. John pretended to have dropped something, and went back
for a moment to look for it. When he returned, neither spoke.