THE FAMILY CIRCLE.
Oswald Pentreath slept the sleep of exhaustion in the stillness
of the spare chamber. Judith had lowered the blind and drawn the
dimity curtains, and there was obscurity as of summer twilight in
the lavender-scented room. But when Oswald opened his eyes it was
twilight without as well as within, and he had hardly light enough
for the process of dressing in the garments that had been placed
ready for him--Joshua’s clothes for the most part, his own not being
dry enough to put on just yet.
He plunged his face and head in a basin of spring water, and made
himself as decent a figure as he could in the minister’s clothes,
which were much too wide for his slender frame. He was dizzy still
from the buffeting the wind and waves had given him, a little dazed
and uncertain as to the details of his misfortune; but conscious that
Joshua Haggard had saved him from drowning, and that the Dolphin was
lost.
‘Poor little boat,’ he said to himself sorrowfully. ‘It will be a
long day before I get another. Poor little leaky Dolphin, my happiest
days have been spent aboard her.’
The house was very quiet when he went down-stairs presently, shyly,
as in a strange place where he was not quite sure of being welcome.
Even the man who had saved his life might consider him something of
an intruder now the peril was past. He went softly down the dusky
staircase, and in the passage paused and looked about him, uncertain
which room to enter. There was a door on each side of the passage;
that on the left stood a little way ajar, so he pushed it gently
open and looked in, expecting to find the minister and his family
assembled there in the gloaming.
It was the hour for the closing of the shop, and Joshua and his
sister were both engaged. People in Combhaven had a trick of running
in for some indispensable article just before the shutters were put
up, and this vesper hour was sometimes the busiest time of the
day--a period which taxed the united energies of Mr. Haggard, his
shopman, and his sister. For some reason of his own, Joshua had kept
his daughter out of the business--an indulgence which had been a
stumbling-block to Judith.
‘I daresay she’d be more worry than help for the first year or so,’
remarked Judith, ‘and I should have my work cut out to teach her
the business; but I don’t hold with bringing a young woman up in
idleness.’
‘God forbid she should be idle,’ replied Joshua; ‘but you can find
her plenty of work to do in the house, I should think, without
bringing her behind the counter for every young man in Combhaven to
scrape acquaintance with her, on pretence of buying half a quire of
letter-paper or a stick of sealing-wax.’
‘Bless me,’ cried Judith, ‘I didn’t know we had such a beauty in the
family to bring the young men after her.’
‘I said nothing about beauty, Judith,’ answered Joshua in his grave
reproving tones.
‘_I_ was in the shop when I was sixteen,’ said Judith; ‘but I’m
thankful to say I knew how to keep the men at a distance as soon as
I knew how to weigh an ounce of tea. However, if you’ve your fancies
about Naomi, I should be the last to interfere.’
‘I have no fancies,’ replied the imperturbable Joshua; ‘but I don’t
mean Naomi to be in the business.’
‘And when I’m in my grave the shop may go to ruin, I suppose,’ said
Judith.
‘I see no occasion for that. Jim will inherit the business, and I
hope he may have a clever industrious wife to help him--as you have
helped me, Judith,’ added the minister in a propitiatory tone.
‘Her cleverness and industry put together won’t be much use to Jim,
unless she’s been brought up in the grocery line and knows the
substance of calico and printed goods,’ answered Judith decisively.
‘Then let us hope that Providence will give Jim a general-dealer’s
daughter for his wife,’ replied Joshua.
There the discussion terminated; but it left a lurking resentment in
Judith’s mind at the idea that her brother was making a lady of his
daughter. These holy women of the last generation were apt to look
with a jealous eye upon any aspiring tendencies in their nieces. What
was good enough for them, they argued with a show of reason, ought
to be good enough for those that came after them. There was a strong
Conservative element in the Combhaven mind fifty years ago, and
Conservatism at Combhaven meant stagnation.
* * * * *
Oswald Pentreath looked into the twilit parlour, and beheld nothing
to increase his shyness. A girl, tall and slim, dark-haired and
dark-browed, stood by the open window looking listlessly out at the
village street, across a row of stocks and mignonette, which adorned
the window-sill. A boy of fifteen or so sat astride his chair, and
lolled over a slate, with his elbows on the table.
‘Nine into seventy-four will go--come it must go six times
anyhow--_that_ can’t be a tight fit--’ muttered this youthful
student; ‘perhaps it might go seven times--nine into seventy. There’s
seven tens in seventy by the by, and one off each of ’em brings seven
nines down to sixty-three--and put on another nine brings it up to
seventy-two--why that’s eight nines, and two over. I hope the man
who invented arithmetic came to a bad end; don’t you, Naomi?’
‘Why, Jim?’ asked Naomi absently.
‘Just think of the misery he brought upon mankind. If there was no
arithmetic, there’d be no ledgers and daybooks; and if there were
no tradesmen’s books, nobody could get into debt. That’s number
one. Then if there was no arithmetic there’d be no usury, for the
money-lenders couldn’t reckon up their interest. In my opinion, the
man who invented figures did as much mischief as Eve when she ate the
apple. Why, it was numbering the people that got David into trouble,
if you remember. The Bible’s dead against figures.’
‘May I come in, please?’ asked Oswald gently.
Young men brought up in remote villages fifty years ago were prone to
shyness. They were not gifted with that placid assurance of their own
acceptability, and that calm contempt for everybody else, by which
the species is distinguished nowadays.
‘O!’ cried Naomi with a little start, ‘it’s Mr. Pentreath. Come in,
if you please, sir. Father will be so glad you’re better.’
‘Except for a headache, I feel as well as ever I felt in my life,
Miss Haggard. But for your father I might be lying at the bottom of
the sea. I want to thank him for his goodness.’
‘I don’t think father would like to be thanked,’ said Naomi. ‘He
looks upon all that happened as the work of Providence; but if you
wish to speak to him--’ she went on, hesitating a little--‘he’ll be
coming in to prayers and supper presently, and I’ve no doubt he’ll be
pleased to see you.’
Oswald went over to the window and looked at the stocks, and at the
prospect, which afforded a peep at the bay, beyond the angle of a
garden on the hill-side. Opposite the minister’s house there was
some open ground, with a running stream between two roads which made
a fork at the entrance to the town. At the angle of the fork stood
the chief inn of Combhaven, the First and Last, where the coaches
stopped, and where any sojourner of distinction--a black swan which
appeared about once in five years--was wont to take up his abode.
This hostelry was supposed to be the first house the traveller
beheld on arriving at Combhaven, the last on which his longing eye
lingered when departing.
Oswald looked at the glimpse of sea yonder, dim in the evening
gray--the air was curiously calm and balmy after the tempest--and
then his eyes wandered to the face on the other side of the window.
It was not quite unfamiliar to him. He had met Naomi Haggard walking
with her father and her brother many a time on summer Sunday evenings
after chapel, and had admired the darkly handsome face in which
Combhaven saw so little beauty. For Mr. Pentreath, Naomi’s face had a
greater interest than the fresh-complexioned buxom prettiness which
prevailed among the daughters of the soil. This girl had a foreign
look, he fancied, like a wanderer from a warmer brighter land; and he
was not surprised to learn by and by that Joshua had Spanish blood
in his veins, and that if destiny had not made him a disciple of
Wesley, and a Quietist of the William Law pattern, he might have been
a follower of Loyola in the land of his forefathers.
Sally came in presently with a pair of mould-candles in tall
brass candlesticks, and a snuffer-tray; and having set these on
the sideboard, began to lay the cloth. Supper was a formal meal
in the minister’s household, though it consisted generally of
bread-and-cheese, or at most a cold joint. A fragment of fruit-pie
or pasty was a thing for Jim to rejoice about, so rarely were his
sensual appetites so much indulged. In Joshua’s creed temperance
and sobriety meant a complete renunciation of the pleasures of the
table. He ate just enough to maintain him in health and vigour,
and his food was of the plainest. To murmur because a joint was
overcooked or undercooked, tough or tasteless--to sigh for savoury
sauces or appetising condiments--to eat for the mere gratification
of the senses after absolute hunger was satisfied--would have been,
in Joshua’s eyes, an indulgence in the fleshy lusts, and a sinful
unthankfulness for the blessing of plenty. All such weakness of the
flesh came under the head of Esau’s shameful barter. The big strong
man, prosperous, secure of income, sat down to as plainly furnished
a table as if he had been a convict on gaol allowance or a pauper in
a workhouse. Judith fell easily into her brother’s way of thinking.
He gratified his self-denial, she her economy, which was a virtue she
carried to the verge of vice; and every one except Jim was satisfied.
There was plenty of this plain fare--no one need go hungry; and the
hirelings of the household, seeing that they came no worse off than
that good man their master, were never known to murmur.
Naomi and Mr. Pentreath contemplated the stocks and mignonette in
silence, while Sally set the big home-baked loaf and liberal wedge of
cheese on the table. They were silent simply because they had nothing
to say to each other. They could not burst into lively conversation
about the Royal Academy, or the evening parades at the Botanical,
the school of cookery, or the last new skating-rink, like a young
man and woman of the present day. They could not talk about hunting,
for Naomi had never been on horseback in her life; or of theatres,
for she hardly knew the meaning of the word; or of books, for their
reading, limited in each case, lay so far apart.
James, who was not given to shyness, came to their relief just as
the silence was growing oppressive. He had finished his sum to his
own satisfaction, though whether the results he had arrived at would
satisfy his father was an open question.
‘I’m sorry you’ve lost the Dolphin,’ he began, swaggering across to
the window with his hands in his trousers-pockets; ‘she was a smart
little craft. I’ve often wished myself aboard her.’
‘She was the best I could get,’ answered Oswald.
‘Ah, but now you’ll be getting a better one, I’ll warrant.’
‘Not much chance of that. I had hard work to get that one.’
‘What a shame! and the Squire so rich. He is rich, isn’t he?’
‘Jim!’ cried Naomi reproachfully.
‘I have never asked him the question,’ replied Oswald. ‘It suits
his humour to call himself poor; and whether the poverty is real or
imaginary, I have to bear the brunt of it. It drove Arnold off to
sea, but I suppose I haven’t as much spirit as my brother. I dawdle
about here, and contrive to rub on somehow.’
This was quite a burst of confidence for Oswald Pentreath, who rarely
opened his mind to any one in Combhaven. He lived like some small
mediæval lord among his vassals, and only conversed with them upon
the indispensable questions of daily life.
Naomi looked up at him earnestly, full of sympathy and wonder.
‘Wouldn’t you like to be a soldier or a sailor?’ she asked.
‘I have never felt myself tempted that way.’
‘I think I should, if I were a man. I should be so tired of
Combhaven--’
‘It isn’t the liveliest place in the world certainly--out of the
hunting season.’
‘And I should so long to go far away into strange countries--to
India, for instance.’
‘To die among cobras and blackamoors,’ said Oswald.
‘Father has read to us about the missionaries in India. I should like
to be a female missionary.’
‘And to be strangled by a Thug, or eaten by some backsliding
cannibal, or to be buried up to your neck in the burning sand and
have a litany said over you preparatory to being sacrificed to some
of their murderous gods,’ said Oswald. ‘What a destiny for a young
woman to sigh for!’
‘I might do those poor heathens some good; and I should see the
palm-trees, and the mountains that touch the sky, and the temples,
and elephants, and jungles, and palanquins.’
‘And tigers, and rattlesnakes, and mosquitoes, and upas-trees,’ added
Jim. ‘What a mixture! I should have thought you had enough preaching
at home, Naomi, without wanting to go and preach to the blackamoors.’
Naomi sighed. She was a young woman of energetic temperament, and
her energies were beginning to feel cramped by the narrow bounds of
Combhaven. The events of to-day had perhaps unduly excited her, and
she was inclined to speak of half-formed dreams and hopes that she
would have shrunk from telling in a calmer mood.
‘There can never be too much of what is really good,’ she said, with
a reproving look at Jim.
Joshua and his sister came in at this moment, their evening labour
finished. Oswald went straight up to his preserver, and shook him by
the hand.
‘I feel how much I owe you, Mr. Haggard,’ he said. ‘I only wish you
had saved a better life, or that I had better opportunities for
proving my gratitude.’
‘I desire no gratitude, Mr. Pentreath, for I did no more than my
bounden duty; but if you’ll try to prove that I saved a good life,
and not a bad one, I shall be doubly rewarded.’
‘Ah!’ sighed Oswald, ‘I’m afraid your idea of a good life and mine
would never match. I don’t think I’ve any particular leaning to
wickedness, but I don’t feel any strong pull the other way.’
‘Without that strong pull, as you call it, Mr. Pentreath, there is
not much chance for a man.’
‘I’m not going to intrude upon you any longer, Mr. Haggard, if you’ll
allow me to take my borrowed clothes home with me. I’ll see they’re
sent back to-morrow morning.’
‘You are heartily welcome.’
‘And they’re a suit he’s left off wearing,’ said Judith, ‘so you
needn’t make yourself unhappy about them. But I always mend ’em and
put ’em away tidy. What’s worth keeping at all is worth keeping
decently. That’s my idea.’
‘Good-night, Mr. Haggard,’ said Oswald, holding out his hand again.
‘Nay, you’ll not leave us till you’ve eaten a bit of supper,’
remonstrated Judith, who, despite her dislike to the name of
Pentreath, objected to see this young man depart hungry. ‘Our table’s
about the plainest in Combhaven, I daresay; but what we have is good;
and if it’s not what you are accustomed to at home--’
‘We are no epicures at the Grange, Miss Haggard,’ replied Oswald,
‘and I shall be glad to take a crust of bread-and-cheese with you
before I go.’
Oswald did not know that by this acceptance of hospitality he
had involved himself in the minister’s evening prayer, and was
a little surprised to see the shopman, the errand-boy, and
the maid-of-all-work come in and take their seats against the
parlour-wall, with solemn countenances and newly-washed hands, while
Joshua stood up, with his pocket Bible open in his hand, looking
through the pages thoughtfully, as if seeking an appropriate chapter
for the evening’s meditation.
He began with the thirtieth psalm: ‘I will extol Thee, O Lord,
for Thou hast lifted me up, and hast not made my foes to rejoice
over me’--a cry of a grateful sinner, trustful, and even glad, yet
with deepest sense of his feebleness. And then he went on to the
thirty-third: ‘Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous, for praise is
comely for the upright.’ And when he had read these he preached a
short sermon, taking the Christian’s duty of gratitude for his text;
and without being absolutely personal, reminded Oswald how deep a
debt he owed his Creator and Preserver for the work of this day.
Oswald was impressed by the simple pathos, the unaffected power,
of the speaker. Not actively irreligious at any time, but inclined
to ridicule the fervid piety of Dissenters, the young Squire was
to-night more open than usual to good impressions. He was really
grateful to Joshua, and in a secondary manner, as to a remoter and
less tangible benefactor, grateful to Providence for his rescue;
and to-night he saw nothing absurd in these long prayers, this
Scripture-reading and commentary. It lasted for nearly an hour; and
the clock was striking ten when the family and their guest sat down
to supper--the shopman at his master’s table, the servant-girl and
errand-boy at a smaller table by the door--a curiously primitive
arrangement, at which the young Squire smiled, and of which Naomi
felt ashamed this evening for the first time.
Mr. Pentreath, who had eaten nothing since he breakfasted at
Clovelly, did ample justice to the simple fare, praised the
home-baked bread and the home-brewed ale, much to the satisfaction
of Judith Haggard, who was chief agent in the manufacture of both.
Joshua was always cheerful and pleasant at supper-time. It was
the one hour in which he unbent the bow. The duties of the day,
spiritual and temporal, were done; he could afford to enjoy life’s
innocent pleasures. The society of his children, a little chat with
Judith about the day’s takings and the steady improvement of the
business,--how quickly that last chest of tea was going off, and what
a run there had been on Dutch cheeses and Manchester printed goods
lately.
To-night Joshua avoided all business talk; he and Mr. Pentreath
discussed the prospects of Combhaven, which was supposed to be
making rapid strides in the march of improvement.
‘If anybody would work our mines, we might get on faster than we do,’
said Joshua; ‘but while there’s no trade in the place but fishing,
and a little boat-building, we can’t expect much expansion. I
sometimes wonder that the Squire does not work those old tin mines on
Matcherly Common. The mines belong to him, I think.’
‘Yes; but in his opinion the lode is exhausted. He doesn’t care about
risking his money,’ answered Oswald. ‘If a company would take to the
mines, I daresay he’d be very glad.’
‘But if the mines are exhausted a company would only lose money. It
would be as bad for the shareholders as for your father.’
‘So it would,’ replied Oswald; ‘but I don’t suppose my father sees it
in that light.’
Supper was over by this time, and the young man took his leave with
reiterated thanks, and a shyly-expressed hope that his acquaintance
with Mr. Haggard and his family might not end here.
‘I’m afraid there would be neither profit nor pleasure to any of us
in its continuance, Mr. Pentreath,’ answered Joshua. ‘It’s civil in
you to wish it; but you see we are only tradespeople, in a humble way
of life, and you are a gentleman’s son, with large expectations. What
can there be in common between us?’
‘Friendship,’ said Oswald boldly. ‘I don’t think that is measured by
social standing. If I can respect a man, he is more than my equal,
for I should hardly do that unless I thought him better than myself;
and I do most assuredly respect you, Mr. Haggard.’
‘You are free and welcome to come here whenever you please,’ answered
Joshua. ‘I’m not going to shut my door in your face. But I’m afraid
if you were known to come often, Combhaven would begin to talk about
it, and say you were forgetting yourself.’
‘A fig for Combhaven and its petty distinctions. I have not so many
friends in this God-forsaken place that I can afford to sacrifice a
good one.’
‘God-forsaken!’ repeated Joshua, horrified. ‘Do you think for a
moment that we are farther from His care because we live in one of
the quiet corners of His earth?’
‘O, of course not. It’s only a way of speaking. Once more good-night.
I shall tell my father how much I owe you; and I shall drop in
sometimes of an evening, Mr. Haggard, since you’ve promised not to
shut your door against me.’
‘A very civil-spoken young man,’ said aunt Judith approvingly,
directly Oswald was gone. ‘I shouldn’t have expected a Pentreath to
be so mannerly, considering the way they’ve been brought up. What do
you think of him, Joshua?’
‘A good-natured youth, but a weak one. An ash sapling, to be bent by
any wind; not an oak, to stand firm against the storm.’