these young men so quietly and naturally spoke together, excluding him
as if he were an inferior: which they meant to do.
“You have an uncurtained window overlooking the sea, Mr Sharpe?” he
said, in his military counter-jumper voice.
“You’ll have to put a curtain to it to-morrow,” said Somers to Sharpe.
“What is your name?” chimed the lieutenant.
“Somers--I wasn’t speaking to you,” said Richard coldly. And then to
Sharpe, with a note of contempt: “That’s what it is. Mrs Waugh must just
have passed with a candle.”
There was a silence. The wonderful watchers did not contradict.
“Yes, I suppose that’s it,” said Sharpe, fretfully.
“We’ll put a curtain up to-morrow,” said Somers.
The lieutenant would have liked to search the house. He would have liked
to destroy its privacy. He glanced down to the music room. But Harriet,
so obviously a lady, even if a hateful one; and Somers with his pale
look of derision; and Sharpe so impassive with his pipe; and the weedy
watchers in the background, knowing just how it all was, and _almost_
ready to take sides with the “gentleman” against the officer: they were
too much for the lieutenant.
“Well, the light was there, Mr Sharpe. Distinctly visible from the sea,”
and he turned to his followers for confirmation.
“Oh, yes, a light plain enough,” said the one who had fallen into a
ditch, and wanted a bit of his own back.
“A candle!” said Sharpe, with his queer, musical note of derision and
fretfulness. “A candle just passing--”
“You have an uncurtained window to the sea, and lights were showing. I
shall have to report this to headquarters. Perhaps if you write and
apologise to Major Caerlyon it may be passed over, if nothing of the
like occurs again--”
So they departed, and the three went back to their room, fuming with
rage and mockery. They mocked the appearance and voice of the
lieutenant, the appearance of the weeds, and Harriet rejoiced over the
one who had fallen into a ditch. This regardless of the fact that they
knew now that _some_ of the watchers were lying listening in the gorse
bushes under the windows, and had been lying there all the evening.
“Shall you write and apologise?” said Somers.
“Apologise! no!” replied Sharpe, with peevish contempt.
Harriet and Somers went back home on the Monday. On the Tuesday appeared
Sharpe, the police had been and left him a summons to appear at the
market town, charged under the Defence of the Realm Act.
“I suppose you’ll have to go,” said Somers.
“Oh, I shall go,” said he.
They waited for the day. In the afternoon Sharpe came with a white face
and tears of rage and mortification in his eyes. The magistrate had
told him he ought to be serving his country, and not causing mischief
and skulking in an out-of-the-way corner. And had fined him twenty
pounds.
“_I_ shan’t pay it,” cried Sharpe.
“Your mother will,” said Somers.
And so it was. What was the good of putting oneself in their power in
_any_ way, if it could be avoided?
So the lower fields were cleared of corn, and they started on the two
big fields above on the moors. Sharpe cycled over to say a farmer had
asked _him_ to go and help at Westyr; and for once he had gone; but he
felt spiteful to Somers for letting him in for this.
But Somers was very fond of the family at Buryan farm, and he loved
working with John Thomas and the girls. John Thomas was a year or two
older than Somers, and at this time his dearest friend. And so he loved
working all day among the corn beyond the high-road, with the savage
moors all round, and the hill with its pre-christian granite rocks
rising like a great dark pyramid on the left, the sea in front.
Sometimes a great airship hung over the sea, watching for submarines.
The work stopped in the field, and the men watched. Then it went on
again, and the wagon rocked slowly down the wild, granite road, rocked
like a ship past Harriet’s sunken cottage. But Somers stayed above all
day, loading or picking, or resting, talking in the intervals with John
Thomas, who loved a half-philosophical, mystical talking about the sun,
and the moon, the mysterious powers of the moon at night, and the
mysterious change in man with the change of season, and the mysterious
effects of sex on a man. So they talked, lying in the bracken or on the
heather as they waited for a wain. Or one of the girls came with dinner
in a huge basket, and they ate all together, so happy with the moors and
sky and touch of autumn. Somers loved these people. He loved the
sensitiveness of their intelligence. They were not educated. But they
had an endless curiosity about the world, and an endless interest in
what was _right_.
“Now do you think it’s right, Mr Somers?” The times that Somers heard
that question, from the girls, from Arthur, from John Thomas. They spoke
in the quick Cornish way, with the West Cornish accent. Sometimes it
was:
“Now do’ee think it right?”
And with their black eyes they watched the ethical issue in his face.
Queer it was. Right and wrong was not fixed for them as for the English.
There was still a mystery for them in what was right and what was wrong.
Only one thing was wrong--any sort of _physical_ compulsion or hurt.
That they were sure of. But as for the rest of behaviour--it was all a
flux. They had none of the ethics of chivalry or of love.
Sometimes Harriet came also to tea: but not often. They loved her to
come: and yet they were a little uneasy when she was there. Harriet was
so definitely a lady. She liked them all. But it was a bit _noli me
tangere_, with her. Somers was so _very_ intimate with them. She
couldn’t be. And the girls said: “Mrs Somers don’t mix in wi’ the likes
o’ we like Mr Somers do.” Yet they were always very pleased when Harriet
came.
Poor Harriet spent many lonely days in the cottage. Richard was not
interested in her now. He was only interested in John Thomas and the
farm people, and he was growing more like a labourer every day. And the
farm people didn’t mind how long _she_ was left alone, at night too, in
that lonely little cottage, and with all the tension of fear upon her.
Because she felt that it was _she_ whom these authorities, these
English, hated, even more than Somers. Because she made them feel she
despised them. And as they were really rather despicable, they hated her
at sight, her beauty, her reckless pride, her touch of derision. But
Richard--even he neglected her and hated her. She was driven back on
herself like a fury. And many a bitter fight they had, he and she.
The days grew shorter before the corn was all down from the moors.
Sometimes Somers alone lay on the sheaves, waiting for the last wain to
come to be loaded, while the others were down milking. And then the
Cornish night would gradually come down upon the dark, shaggy moors,
that were like the fur of some beast, and upon the pale-grey granite
masses, so ancient and Druidical, suggesting blood-sacrifice. And as
Somers sat there on the sheaves in the underdark, seeing the light swim
above the sea, he felt he was over the border, in another world. Over
the border, in that twilight, awesome world of the previous Celts. The
spirit of the ancient, pre-Christian world, which lingers still in the
truly Celtic places, he could feel it invade him in the savage dusk,
making him savage too, and at the same time, strangely sensitive and
subtle, understanding the mystery of blood-sacrifice: to sacrifice one’s
victim, and let the blood run to the fire, there beyond the gorse upon
the old grey granite: and at the same time to understand most
sensitively the dark flicker of animal life about him, even in a bat,
even in the writhing of a maggot in a dead rabbit. Writhe then, Life, he
seemed to say to the things--and he no longer saw its sickeningness.
The old Celtic countries have never had our Latin-Teutonic
consciousness, never will have. They have never been Christian, in the
blue-eyed, or even in the truly Roman, Latin sense of the word. But they
have been overlaid by our consciousness and our civilisation,
smouldering underneath in a slow, eternal fire, that you can never put
out till it burns itself out.
And this autumn Richard Lovat seemed to drift back. He had a passion, a
profound nostalgia for the place. He could feel himself metamorphosing.
He no longer wanted to struggle consciously along, a thought adventurer.
He preferred to drift into a sort of blood-darkness, to take up in his
veins again the savage vibrations that still lingered round the secret
rocks, the place of the pre-Christian human sacrifice. Human sacrifice!
he could feel his dark, blood-consciousness tingle to it again, the
desire of it, the mystery of it. Old presences, old awful presences
round the black moor-edge, in the thick dusk, as the sky of light was
pushed pulsing upwards, away. Then an owl would fly and hoot, and
Richard lay with his soul departed back, back into the blood-sacrificial
pre-world, and the sun-mystery, and the moon-power, and the mistletoe on
the tree, away from his own white world, his own white, conscious day.
Away from the burden of intensive mental consciousness. Back, back into
semi-dark, the half-conscious, the _clair-obscur_, where consciousness
pulsed as a passional vibration, not as mind-knowledge.
Then would come John Thomas with the wain, and the two men would linger
putting up the sheaves, linger, talking, till the dark, talking of the
half-mystical things with which they both were filled. John Thomas, with
his nervous ways and his quick brown eyes, was full of fear: fear of
the unseen, fear of the unknown malevolencies, above all, fear of death.
So they would talk of death, and the powers of death. And the farmer, in
a non-mental way, understood, understood even more than Somers.
And then in the first dark they went down the hill with the wain, to
part at the cottage door. And to Harriet, with her pure Teutonic
consciousness, John Thomas’ greeting would sound like a jeer, as he
called to her. And Somers seemed to come home like an enemy, like an
enemy, with that look on his face, and that pregnant malevolency of
Cornwall investing him. It was a bitter time, to Harriet. Yet glamorous
too.
Autumn drew on, corn-harvest was over, it was October. John Thomas drove
every Thursday over the moors to market--a two hours’ drive. To-day
Somers would go with him--and Ann the sister also, to do some shopping.
It was a lovely October morning. They passed the stony little huddle of
the church-town, and on up the hill, where the great granite boulders
shoved out of the land, and the barrenness was ancient and inviolable.
They could see the gulls under the big cliffs beyond--and there was a
buzzard circling over the marshy place below church-town. A Cornish,
magic morning. John Thomas and Somers were walking up the hill, leaving
the reins to Ann, seated high in the trap.
“One day, when the war ends, before long,” said Somers as they climbed
behind the trap in the sun, past the still-flickering gorse-bushes, “we
will go far across the sea--to Mexico, to Australia--and try living
there. You must come too, and we will have a farm.”
“Me!” said John Thomas. “Why however should I come?”
“Why not?”
But the Cornishman smiled with that peculiar sceptical smile.
They reached town at length, over the moors and down the long hill. John
Thomas was always late. Somers went about doing his shopping--and then
met Ann at an eating house. John Thomas was to have been there too. But
he failed them. Somers walked about the Cornish seaport--he knew it
now--and by sight he too was known, and execrated. Yet the tradespeople
were always so pleasant and courteous to him. And it was such a sunny
day.
The town was buzzing with a story. Two German submarine officers had
come into the town, dressed in clothes they had taken from an English
ship they had sunk. They had stayed a night at the Mounts Bay Hotel. And
two days later they had told the story to some fisherman whose fishing
boat they stopped. They had shown the incredulous fisherman the hotel
bill. Then they had sunk the fishing boat, sending the three fishermen
ashore in the row-boat.
John Thomas, the chatterbox, should have been at the stables at five. He
was an endless gossip, never by any chance punctual. Somers and Ann
waited till six--all the farmers drove out home, theirs was the last
trap.
“Buryan’s trap--always the last,” said the ostler.
It became dark--the shops were all closing--it was night. And now the
town, so busy at noon and all the afternoon, seemed cold, stony,
deserted, with the wind blowing down its steep street. Nearly seven, and
still no John Thomas. Ann was furious, but she knew him. Somers was more
quiet: but he knew that this was a sort of deliberate insult on John
Thomas’ part, and that he must never trust him again.
It was well after seven when the fellow came--smiling with subtle
malevolence and excusing himself so easily.
“I shall never come with you again,” said Somers, quietly.
“I should think not, Mr Somers,” cried Ann.
It was a two hours’ drive home--a long climb to the dark stretch of the
moors--then across the moors in the cold of the night, to the steep,
cliff-like descent on the north, where church-town lay, and the sea
beyond. As they drew near to the north descent, the home face, and the
darkness was below them, Somers suddenly said:
“I don’t think I shall ever drive this way again.”
“Don’t you? Why, what makes you say that?” cried the facile John Thomas.
Past nine o’clock as they came down the rocky road and saw the yellow
curtain of the cottage glowing. Poor Harriet. Somers was stiff with cold
as he rose to jump down.
“I’ll come down for my parcels later,” he said. Easier to take them out
at the farm, and he must fetch the milk.
Harriet opened the door.
“At last you’ve come,” she said. “Something has happened, Lovat!” One of
John Thomas’ sisters came out too--she had come up with Mrs Somers out
of sympathy.
“What?” he said. And up came all the fear.
It was evident Harriet had had a bad shock. She had walked in the
afternoon across to Sharpe’s place, three miles away: and had got back
just at nightfall, expecting Somers home by seven. She had left the
doors unlocked, as they usually did. The moment she came in, in the
dusk, she knew something had happened. She made a light, and
looked round. Things were disturbed. She looked in her little
treasure boxes--everything there, but moved. She looked in the
drawers--everything turned upside down. The whole house ransacked,
searched.
A terrible fear came over her. She knew she was antagonistic to the
government people: in her soul she hated the fixed society with its
barrenness and its barren laws. She had always been afraid--always
shrunk from the sight of a policeman, as if she were guilty of heaven
knows what. And now the horror had happened: all the black animosity of
authority was encompassing her. The unknown of it: and the horror.
She fled down to the farm. Yes, three men had come, asking for Mr and
Mrs Somers. They had told the one who came to the farm that Mr Somers
had driven to town, and Mrs Somers they had seen going across the fields
to church-town. Then the men had gone up to the cottage again, and gone
inside.
“And they’ve searched everything--everything,” said Harriet, shocked
right through with awful fear.
“Well, there was nothing to find. They must have been disappointed,”
said Richard.
But it was a shock to him also: great consternation at the farm.
“It must have been something connected with Sharpe--it must have been
that,” said Somers, trying to reassure himself.
“Thank goodness the house was so clean and tidy,” said Harriet. But it
was a last blow to her.
What had they taken? They had not touched Somers’ papers. But they had
been through his pockets--they had taken the few loose letters from the
pocket of his day-jacket--they had taken a book--and a sort of note-book
with scraps of notes for essays in it--and his address book--yes, a few
things like that.
“But it’ll be nothing. It’ll be something to do with Sharpe’s bother.”
But he felt sick and sullen, and wouldn’t get up early in the morning.
Harriet was more prepared. She was down, dressed and tidy, making the
breakfast. It was eight o’clock in the morning. Suddenly Somers heard
her call:
“Lovat, they’re here. Get up.”
He heard the dread in her voice, and sprang into his clothes and came
downstairs: a young officer, the burly police-sergeant, and two other
loutish looking men. Somers came down without a collar.
“I have here a warrant to search your house,” said the young officer.
“But you searched it yesterday, didn’t you,” cried Harriet.
The young officer looked at her coldly, without replying. He read the
search-warrant, and the two lout-detectives, in civilian clothes, began
to nose round.
“And the police-sergeant will read this order to you.”
Somers, white, and very still, spoke no word, but waited. Then the
police-sergeant, in rather stumbling fashion, began to read an order
from the military authorities that Richard Lovat Somers, and Harriet
Emma Marianna Johanna Somers, of Trevetham Cottage, etc., should leave
the county of Cornwall within the space of three days. And further,
within the space of twenty-four hours of their arrival in any place they
must report themselves at the police station of the said place, giving
their address. And they were forbidden to enter any part of the area of
Cornwall, etc., etc., etc.
Somers listened in silence.
“But why?” cried Harriet. “Why. What have we done?”
“I can’t say what you have done,” said the young officer in a cold tone,
“but it must be something sufficiently serious. They don’t send out
these orders for nothing.”
“But what it is then? What is it? _I_ don’t know what we’ve done. Have
we no right to know what you accuse us of?”
“No, you have no right to know anything further than what is said in the
order.” And he folded up the said official foolscap, and handed it
officially to Somers. Richard silently took it and read it again.
“But it’s monstrous! What have they against us? We live here simply--we
do nothing at all that they can charge us with. What have we done?”
cried Harriet.
“I don’t know what you’ve done. But we can take no risks in these
times--and evidently there is a risk in leaving you here.”
“But I should like to know _what_?” cried Harriet.
“That I cannot tell you.”
“But do you _know_?” woman-like, she persisted.
“No, I don’t even know,” he replied coldly.
Harriet broke into a few tears of fright, fear, and chagrin.
“Have we no rights at all?” she cried, furious.
“Be quiet,” said Richard to her.
“Yes. It is your duty to serve your country, if it is your country, by
every means in your power. If you choose to put yourself under
suspicion----”
“Suspicion of what?”
“I tell you, I do not know, and could not tell you even if I did know.”
The foul, loutish detectives meanwhile were fumbling around, taking the
books off the shelves and looking inside the clock. Somers watched them
with a cold eye.
“Is this yours?” said one of the louts, producing a book with queer
diagrams.
“Yes, it’s a botany notebook,” said Somers coldly.
The man secured it.
“He can learn the structure of moulds and parasites,” said Richard
bitterly to Harriet.
“The house is all open, the men can search everything?” asked the
officer coldly.
“You know it is,” said Somers. “You tried yesterday while we were out.”
Then he asked: “Who is responsible for this? Whom can I write to?”
“You can write to Major Witham, Headquarters Southern Division,
Salisbury, if it will do any good,” was the answer.
There was a pause. Somers wrote it down: not in his address book because
that was gone.
“And one is treated like this, for nothing,” cried Harriet, again in
tears. “For nothing, but just because I wasn’t born English. Yet one has
married an Englishman, and they won’t let one live anywhere but in
England.”
“It is more than that. It is more than the fact that you are not English
born,” said the officer.
“Then what? What?” she cried.
He refused to answer this time. The police-sergeant looked on with
troubled blue eyes.
“Nothing. It’s nothing but that, because it _can’t_ be,” wept Harriet.
“It can’t be anything else, because we’ve never done anything else. Just
because one wasn’t born in England--as if one could help that. And to be
persecuted like this, for nothing, for nothing else. And not even openly
accused! Not even that.” She wiped her tears, half enjoying it now. The
police-sergeant looked into the road. One of the louts clumped
downstairs and began to look once more among the books.
“That’ll do here!” said the officer quietly, to the detective lout. But
the detective lout wasn’t going to be ordered, and persisted.
“This your sketch-book, Mr Somers?” said the lout.
“No, those are Lady Hermione Rogers’ sketches,” said Somers, with
derision. And the lout stuffed the book back.
“And why don’t they let us go away?” cried Harriet. “Why don’t they let
us go to America? We don’t _want_ to be here if we are a nuisance. We
want to go right away. Why won’t they even let us do that!” She was all
tear-marked now.
“They must have their reasons,” said the young officer, who was getting
more and more uncomfortable. He again tried to hurry up the detective
lout. But they were enjoying nosing round among other people’s
privacies.
“And what’ll happen to us if we don’t go, if we just stay?” said
Harriet, being altogether a female.
“You’d better not try,” said the young man, grimly, so utterly confident
in the absoluteness of the powers and the rightness he represented. And
Somers would have liked to hit him across the mouth for that.
“Hold your tongue, Harriet,” he said, turning on her fiercely. “You’ve
said enough now. Be still, and let them do what they like, since they’ve
the power to do it.”
And Harriet was silent. And in the silence only the louts rummaging
among the linen, and one looking into the bread-tin and into the
tea-caddy. Somers watched them with a cold eye, and that queer slight
lifting of his nose, rather like a dog when it shows disgust. And the
officer again tried to hurry the louts, in his low tone of command,
which had so little effect.
“Where do you intend to go?” said the officer to Somers.
“Oh, just to London,” said Somers, who did not feel communicative.
“I suppose they will send the things back that they take?” he said,
indicating the louts.
“I should think so--anything that is not evidence.”
The louts were drawing to an end: it was nearly over.
“Of course this has nothing to do with me: I have to obey orders, no
matter what they are,” said the young officer, half apologising.
Somers just looked at him, but did not answer. His face was pale and
still and distant, unconscious that the other people were real human
beings. To him they were not: they were just _things_, obeying orders.
And his eyes showed that. The young officer wanted to get out.
At last it was over: the louts had collected a very few trifles. The
officer saw them on to the road, bade them good-morning, and got out of
the house as quick as he could.
“Good-morning, sir! Good-morning, mam!” said the police-sergeant in
tones of sympathy.
Yes, it was over. Harriet and Lovat looked at one another in silent
consternation.
“Well, we must just go,” she said.
“Oh, yes,” he replied.
And she studied the insolent notice to quit the area of Cornwall. In her
heart of hearts she was not sorry to quit it. It had become too painful.
In a minute up came one of the farm girls to hear the news: then later
Somers went down. Arthur, the boy, had heard the officer say to the
police-sergeant as he went up the hill:
“Well, that’s a job I’d rather not have had to do.”
Harriet was alternately bitter and mocking: but badly shocked. Somers
had had in his pocket the words of one of the Hebridean folk songs which
Sharpe had brought down, and which they all thought so wonderful. On a
bit of paper in his jacket-pocket, the words which have no meaning in
any language apparently, but are just vocal, almost animal sounds: the
Seal Woman’s Song--this they had taken.
“Ver mi hiu--ravo na la vo--
Ver mi hiu--ravo hovo i--
Ver mi hiu--ravo na la vo--an catal--
Traum--san jechar--”
What would the investigation make of this? What, oh, what? Harriet loved
to think of it. Somers really expected to be examined under torture, to
make him confess. The only obvious word--Traum--pure German.