THE MINISTER GOES ON A JOURNEY.
Very tranquil was the progress of life at Combhaven. None of those
bubbles called events rippled the calm surface of that Devonian
millpond. Every day and every week brought the same duties--a beaten
round of petty cares and unexciting pleasures--pleasures so small
as to have been positively invisible to any observer surveying this
quiet rustic life from the outside. Even the changes of the season
brought but little change to the dwellers in the High-street. The
farming folks had their harvest-homes, and apple-storing time,
and cider-brewing, and all the variety of rustic life; but in the
village--by courtesy, town--the dull unalterable round went on from
January to December. Save for the fire-glow upon cottage-windows,
and the cheery look of the forge in the early dusk, you would hardly
have known winter from summer. Frost rarely visited this favoured
clime. There was a good deal of mist and rain, and sometimes fierce
winds came tearing across the sea as savagely as if they meant to
root up Combhaven altogether, but the traditional winter of the
North--icicle-crowned and snow-mantled--was a stranger here.
Naomi, just nineteen years of age in this misty November, schooled
her soul to bear the quiet of her life, and performed her daily
duties with a sweet tranquillity which might have seemed the essence
of patience to any one who could have looked into her heart and seen
its eager yearnings for a busier existence. She had talked to her
father of her desire for missionary work, and he had answered her in
the words of St. Paul, ‘Let your women keep silence in the churches:
for it is not permitted unto them to speak.’
Very hard words they sounded to Naomi.
‘But I don’t want to preach, father,’ she pleaded; ‘I only want to
teach the little children.’
‘There are children enough for you to teach here, Naomi. I am not
satisfied yet with our Sunday-school. The boys are backward; and the
girls, though a little better, are wofully unenlightened.’
Naomi sighed and submitted. This was an unanswerable answer. If
she could not do good work with these little English Christians,
born and bred to belief in the Scriptures, how could she hope to
make converts of little heathens, speaking a strange language? Mr.
Pentreath had given her a Hindostani grammar that had belonged to
his uncle, Captain Tremaine, and she had worked in secret at the
language--learning a little bit at a time during the extra quarter
of an hour she could venture to keep her candle burning before
going to bed. Anything beyond a quarter of an hour might have drawn
upon her the displeasure of aunt Judith, who had a sharp eye to the
consumption of bedroom candles, and would have suspected the unholy
practice of novel-reading or a sinful lingering over the braiding
of hair, had she perceived an undue diminution of the tallow. So
Naomi, being convinced that she was not good enough or clever
enough for a missionary, began to despair of ever releasing herself
from the prison-chamber of life in a village. She had no yearning
for fine dresses, or pleasures, or any of the objects that might
have presented themselves to the mind of a girl brought up in a
boarding-school, but she sighed for something more than Combhaven
could give her; or else perhaps she needed some stronger anchor to
hold her in those quiet waters than any which her household ties
offered.
Her father loved her. Of that fact she had no doubt; but his
affection was so undemonstrative as to seem near akin to coldness.
He was formal in his intercourse with his children--more given
to reprove than to praise, to counsel than to caress. As a
child--finding herself motherless in childhood--she had given her
father an almost romantic love, following him about with faithful
solicitude, fearing, if he were out of her sight for a little longer
than usual, that he would go away and she should never see him more,
shedding childhood’s passionate tears at the thought that he would
die as her mother had died, and leave her lonely. The father had
responded to this affection with an almost equal warmth, holding the
little girl on his knees through many an hour of pious meditation,
taking her with him on many a journey, carrying her when she was
tired, watching by her little bed through childhood’s fevers and
illnesses, and, in some wise, filling the dead mother’s place, much
to Judith’s displeasure, who argued that a woman must know more about
the treatment of a sick child than a man, were he twenty times a
father.
Little by little, as Naomi grew from childhood to girlhood, this
sympathy between father and daughter had dwindled--on the father’s
side, not on the daughter’s. Naomi was still as fond, but more
reserved in the expression of fondness. She was too old to sit on
her father’s knee. She must give up those pleasant wanderings by
her father’s side. She had her lessons to learn; her daily tasks,
scholastic and domestic. Aunt Judith taught her household economy;
Joshua trained her mind. The father was transformed into the
schoolmaster; and Judith took care to impress upon her brother that
if he were too indulgent, Naomi would respect him too little to
profit by his instructions.
‘When we were boy and girl, we used to call father and mother sir and
madam,’ said Judith. ‘You must remember that, Joshua.’
‘Yes, Judith. But I don’t know that we loved them any more on that
account. Father’s a beautiful word. I should be sorry to hear Naomi
change it for sir.’
In pure conscientiousness, and with a view to the culture of his
daughter’s mind, Joshua abandoned those loving ways which had been
so dear to his daughter’s heart. The change was so gradual that she
was hardly aware of its progress. It was only when she looked back
to those happy childish days that she knew how much she had lost of
life’s sweetness. Yet she had no thought of complaint, nor was her
father’s goodness lessened in her estimation. He was still the one
most perfect man her little world held; perfect as the best of those
good men she had read about in her narrow range of literature.
Mr. Pentreath availed himself of Joshua’s permission to call
occasionally, and dropped in now and then of an evening, or came at
dusk and drank tea out of the blue and buff Staffordshire teacups.
Sometimes he stayed for prayers and supper, and listened attentively
to the minister’s exposition of psalm or chapter. Perhaps he obtained
more real knowledge of the Scriptures from these evenings than
from all those Sunday services which he had attended, absent-minded
and sleepy, in the old parish church, where the family pew of the
Pentreaths was as large as a small room, provided with a fireplace,
and screened from the vulgar gaze by old oak panelling and faded
green curtains on brazen rods--a fine place for slumber.
Joshua took the young man’s visits as a matter of course; but Judith
expended her spleen in various shrugs and elevations of thin eyebrows
and depressions of thin lips.
‘How fond the young Squire is of us all!’ she said; ‘we ought to be
uncommonly proud, I’m sure. Is it you or me, I wonder, he comes for?’
Whereupon Joshua’s frown warned her that she had better push her
insinuations no further.
* * * * *
It was summer time again--early summer; the sweet fresh season of
newly-opened roses and new-mown hay. The young ferns were unfolding
their tender green fronds under every hedge, on every stone bank; the
hartstongues uncurling their pointed tips; fields purple with clover,
or silver-white with blossoming beans; a time of sweetest subtlest
odours; the sea yonder, deep translucent green, shining through every
opening in the undulating land, through ragged breaks in upland
hawthorn hedges, above the beans and the clover, like another world,
fairer even than earth.
In such sweet summer weather Joshua Haggard left Combhaven on a
journey that was to last a week. He wore his Sunday suit, stout
buckled shoes, and carried a change of linen and the simple
necessaries of his toilet in a small leather knapsack. His journey
was to be performed for the most part in lumbering old stage-coaches,
but the last twenty miles were to be done upon foot. Mr. Haggard was
going to assist at the opening of an humble little chapel in the
wild Cornish country, between the Lizard and Penzance. The minister
of the new chapel was one of his pupils and disciples; a dark-browed
young shoemaker of five-and-twenty, who had come in of an evening
with leather-stained hands to read and study under Joshua Haggard’s
direction, and had nursed a tender passion for Naomi which he had
never ventured to reveal. Perhaps it was his consciousness that this
affection was vain which decided Nicholas Wild upon turning his back
on the quiet comfort of Combhaven about two years ago, and taking up
his staff as a wandering preacher. He had kept his own body and soul
together by mending the shoes of his hearers; and he had ministered
to the souls of his shifting flocks without fee or reward, content
if in field or on common he could see listening faces crowding
round him, and hear the untaught voices pealing up to the open sky
in the hymns he dictated to his congregation line by line. After
an itinerant career of two years, Nicholas had become so popular
in one particular district as to find it advisable to settle there
altogether; and his congregation had contrived among them to build
him a chapel--such a curious little tabernacle, in an angle of a
field, as lonely as if it had dropped from the sky. The walls of cob;
the roof covered with large thick slabs of roughly-cut slate, like
flagstones; a small door at one end, a big window at each side, and
about as much architectural design or beauty in the building as there
is in a toy Noah’s ark. But the temple of Solomon was never lovelier
in the eyes of its founder than was this rude barn to Nicholas Wild.
He wrote to his beloved pastor and teacher, telling him of his good
fortune; how the Word had prospered in these far western villages
by his humble efforts; and entreating Joshua as a favour beyond all
measure of gratitude to come and preach the opening sermon in this
new-built chapel.
‘Your voice would call down a blessing upon my work,’ he wrote, ‘and
move the hearts of my faithful flock as I can never hope to stir
them, though Providence has blessed my teaching. I want the opening
of this lowly temple to be a golden page in their memories so long as
they live. I want them to feel that this tabernacle among the hills
has been sanctified and glorified by an inspired voice, by a chosen
messenger of the gospel, gifted above all other servants of God.’
To an appeal such as this Joshua Haggard would have esteemed it
sinful to have turned a deaf ear. Nicholas Wild’s intelligence and
piety had made the youth very dear to him. He was proud of his
pupil’s success, as in a considerable measure his own work; and his
heart warmed at the thought of that little chapel among the wild
hills by that rock-bound shore, over whose craggy pinnacles the
dark-winged cormorants and the silver-white gulls skim, and wheel,
and scream, and chatter.
To Joshua this Cornish coast was at once familiar and dear. He, too,
had wandered there in his hardy youth. He had taught and preached
from Camelford to Penzance, and his teaching had prospered. His name
was a word of power in the West, and he seldom let a summer go by
without making some such journey as he was making now--to preach,
to inspect village schools, to spend a day here and there among old
friends, and perform other duties of his office.
The little chapel was opened to the eager flock one bright June
morning; men, women, and children in their smartest clothes, as if
for a flower-feast; a congregation gathered from twenty miles round,
so eager were these Dissenters to hear Joshua Haggard. The fervid
extemporaneous prayers were poured forth above the heads of that
assembly, all standing to pray after their manner; the enthusiastic
hymns were sung--hymns which compared the cob-walled barn to the
gorgeous temple in the sacred city; and then Joshua ascended to the
deal pulpit, and opened his Bible upon the green-baize cushion and
preached a two hours’ sermon upon one of his favourite texts: ‘I was
glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.’
No one felt that two hours’ discourse a sentence too long, unless
it were, perhaps, the children--some of whom yawned piteously, or
shuffled on their seats, and were shaken and otherwise admonished by
offended elders; while others of still more tender years sank into
placid slumber, and enjoyed the warmth of the atmosphere and the
sonorous lullaby of Joshua’s deep melodious voice.
Nicholas Wild was in a glow of gratitude as he walked home to the
adjacent village with his friend.
‘They will never forget your words to-day, nor shall I,’ he said.
‘They have sunk into my heart. You have told us what the minister of
such a flock should be. It shall be the business of my life to come
as near as I can to that sublime type. It ought to be easy for me,
having known you. I have but to imitate my master upon earth in order
to approach nearer to the example of my Master in heaven.’
‘Gently, Nicholas, gently; you offend me by such words as those.
Providence has been very good to me. My lines have fallen in pleasant
places; life has been made easy to me. I have not been tried as
some are tried, or tempted as some are tempted. I have known little
sorrow. My faith has not been shaken by adversity. I have known
neither hunger nor thirst, disease nor loss of fortune. My wife was a
good woman, my children are affectionate and dutiful, my business is
prosperous. I am like Job before Satan asked to try him. What am I,
then, that I should boast, or suffer others to boast of me?’
To which Nicholas replied with fervid eulogy:
‘All that I am I owe to you,’ he said, ‘as Saul owed all to Samuel.
And your lovely daughter, Mr. Haggard, to have known her, to have
lived in her company for a little while, is to have held fellowship
with angels.’
‘Nicholas, you must not talk like that. My daughter is a good girl,
but--’
‘She has more than common goodness. My sisters are good women, but
they are not like Naomi. She is strong and noble, like the women of
old; a woman to sacrifice herself for others, to suffer in silence;
to do great deeds like the women of old time, like Jael or Judith.’
‘I would rather she should resemble Ruth or Esther,’ replied Joshua,
smiling at an enthusiasm which betrayed the speaker’s secret. ‘I
would rather she should live her simple life, meek, obedient,
faithful, domestic, happy herself, and the source of happiness to
others.’
‘We have often talked together of spiritual things, Mr. Haggard, and
perhaps Naomi has poured forth her heart more freely to me than she
would venture to do to you. Her heart burns within her to do some
good and great thing. She would like to go on a foreign mission; to
teach the children of the heathen, to carry light into dark places.’
‘Nonsense,’ exclaimed Joshua contemptuously. ‘Let her stay at home
and mind her own business. That is a woman’s mission. Remember what
St. Paul says about women.’
‘St. Paul had not the privilege of knowing Naomi Haggard,’ said the
rapturous Nicholas. ‘But I will not presume to argue with you, sir;
only tell me that she is well and happy.’
‘She is well, I am thankful to say; and I suppose she is happy. She
has no cause for unhappiness.’
‘The female mind is a delicate thing, Mr. Haggard, and common
blessings do not always suffice for its contentment. Has Naomi any
thought of settling?’
‘You mean getting married?’ said Joshua. ‘No, I think not. We have
heard nothing about that yet awhile.’
‘None but a superior person would suit Naomi.’
‘I think not; and her only admirer--not an avowed admirer as yet--is
a person so far her superior in birth and fortune that I am doubtful
whether I do right in encouraging their acquaintance.’
Nicholas Wild’s cheek paled at this. He had long ago despaired of
winning Naomi for himself, but it was not the less a pang to hear
that she was likely to be won by another, and that other a man of
higher rank than himself. This gave a keener point to the knife
that stabbed him, for Nicholas, though a good fellow, was not
large-minded, and was inclined to believe that to be a gentleman by
birth and fortune was to belong to the children of Belial.
‘It would be hard to find anybody worthy of Naomi,’ he said, ‘least
of all a pampered idler, with nothing but fine clothes and a fine
name to recommend him.’
‘The young man I speak of has not been very kindly treated by
Fortune, though birth has made him a gentleman, and he will have a
fair estate by and by. You remember young Pentreath, the Squire’s
son?’
‘Remember him? yes; a pale-faced slip of a youth. He comes of a bad
race, if all is true that folks say about the old Squire.’
‘All that folks say of their neighbours rarely is true,’ replied
Joshua. ‘I daresay the Squire led a wild life in his youth, and I
know that he is a hard uncharitable man in his age; but there is no
reason his son should resemble him in character any more than he
does in looks, and there have seldom been father and son less alike.’
Joshua told his disciple about the wreck of the Dolphin, and the
friendship that had since arisen between Oswald and the minister’s
family.
‘I have very little reason to suppose that his feeling for Naomi
is anything warmer than the friendship he has for the rest of us,’
concluded Joshua; ‘but they have been a good deal together, and they
seem to have many ideas in common.’
‘He could not know her and not love her,’ replied Nicholas warmly.
‘How does the old Squire take it?’
‘You mean does he approve his son’s intimacy with me and mine?’ said
Joshua. ‘So far as I can discover he neither approves or disapproves.
He lets his son take his own course in all things, except spending
money. His poor sordid soul seems to be so absorbed in the task of
scraping together every sixpence he can screw out of the land, that
he gives no care or heed to his son’s existence. The youth who ran
away to sea is not more remote from his father than the son who lives
in the same house with him.’
Here the conversation ended. They had arrived at the village where
Nicholas lived. He had a comfortable lodging of two clean little
rooms in a stone cottage set in a square plot of land, chiefly
devoted to the growth of potatoes, but beautified by a few rosebushes
and a row of tiger lilies on each side of the narrow path leading
from the little wooden gate to the cottage door. His landlady had
prepared quite a banquet in honour of the minister--a potato-pasty
and a boiled leg of pork, with cabbage enough for a large family.
Here Joshua lodged for the night. He set out at seven o’clock next
morning, after a comfortable breakfast, on the first stage of his
homeward journey. He might have taken the coach at Helston, only nine
miles off, but he had made up his mind to walk at least as far as
Truro, not always choosing the straightest road thither, but taking a
peep at various spots that had been dear and familiar to him in those
wandering days of his youth, when he had carried the glad tidings
from hamlet to hamlet and homestead to homestead, dropping unawares
upon sequestered households far from the voices of this world, as if
he had been in very truth a heaven-sent messenger.
‘I’m afraid you’ll find the journey tiring,’ said Nicholas at
parting; ‘the sun is so hot, and the roads are dusty.’
‘I love a hot sun, and I must put up with the dust,’ answered Joshua
cheerily. ‘It will do my heart good to see the old places and the old
faces, and to find that I have not been forgotten.’
He shouldered his knapsack, wrung Nicholas’s hand for the last time,
gave him a hearty blessing, and walked away upon the white high-road
with that swinging stride of his, which showed how easy such exercise
was to him.
It was a glorious summer day--the blue bright sky without a cloud,
the warm earth breathing perfume. This village among the hills--two
straggling rows of cottages bordering a broad high-road--seemed to be
set upon the apex of this western world. There lay the bright green
sea, ever so far below yonder dip in the broad fields, that stretched
away to the edge of the cliff. No indication of the rock-bound shore
below--the craggy arches and peaks and ragged boulders--was to be
seen from here; only cornfields and meadows sloping to the cliff, and
in the distance a battlemented mansion, rising from the soil, gaunt
and lonely, like the castle of Giant Blunderbore.
Never had Joshua Haggard been in a happier frame of mind than on this
fair June morning. He loved the sunshine, the soft westerly breeze,
which warmed him even more than the sun. It was some hereditary
instinct, perhaps, from his Spanish forefathers, some innate love
of sunburnt sierras and a torrid sky, that made him so fond of the
breathless midsummer weather and the fierce noontide sun. He walked
on for a good many miles without a halt, and in this solitary walk
fell into meditation upon his family and their prospects. That
conversation yesterday afternoon with Nicholas Wild had set him
thinking about his daughter and Oswald Pentreath.
He was not an ambitious man, either for himself or for his children.
He was not a man who sought for earthly distinctions or set his
affections on the things of this world. Yet it pleased him to think
that his daughter might be raised in the social scale by marriage
with a gentleman and a man who took his rank from the land. In the
minds of these country people there is a natural love of the soil
which makes landed estate seem to them above all other fortune. A
manufacturer with a million would have been a very small man at
Combhaven compared with Squire Pentreath, whose race had occupied the
land from time immemorial.
‘Why should he not choose her for his wife?’ argued Joshua. ‘She is
a lady in education and principle. She has the manners of a lady,
and beauty that is given to few women, be their rank of the highest.
As for fortune--well, I could give her enough to make the marriage
no imprudent one for Oswald Pentreath. I must get to understand the
state of that young man’s feelings. Judith may be right after all.
We have been going on too easily, perhaps. I must ascertain the old
Squire’s sentiments. I will not have my daughter trifled with or
slighted.’
Having come to this conclusion, Joshua Haggard dismissed the subject.
He was too clear-brained and definite to go on revolving his ideas
in a mill. There had never yet been confusion or perplexity in his
mind upon any subject: no question had ever arisen that he had not
been able to grapple with and answer satisfactorily. But then, as he
himself said to Nicholas Wild, his life journey had been an easy one.
Heretofore Fate had given him no hard riddles to solve. But every man
in his time meets the Sphinx, and must answer or die. Joshua’s time
had not yet come.
Very beautiful was that far Cornish land in the summer noon--a large
wild beauty, but neither desolate nor gloomy. The undulating fields
had a fertile prosperous look, the patches of common were golden with
furze, and all the water-pools shone like jewels under that bounteous
glorifier of all things, the sun. Three miles short of Penmoyle, a
village made dear to him by pleasant youthful memories, and where he
had determined to take his rest, Joshua Haggard turned aside from the
sandy road, little better than a lane on this steep hill-side, and
strolled on to a bit of rugged common-land, all hillock and hollow,
with water here and there in the deeper hollows, and furze ablaze
upon all the hillocks. Here, he thought, was a pleasant place for
half an hour’s repose. He had walked seven or eight miles, and had
three more to walk to Penmoyle, where he meant to dine with some of
his old friends. The Penmoyle dinner-hour would be over by an hour
or two when he arrived, but the land was full of plenty. There would
be a slice of corned beef or Cornish ham or a wedge of cold pasty at
his service, to say nothing of crisply-baked cakes, fried potatoes
and bacon--luxuries which the minister’s soul renounced as dangerous,
savouring too much of Esau’s fatal feast.
Nothing could be prettier in its own peculiar way than that little
bit of common on the top of the sandy hill. Perhaps it was its
peacefulness that made it so lovely, or the summer atmosphere, in
itself so delicious that it would have beautified a desert. There was
a silence, save of sweet vague summer sounds: the humming of insects,
the whispering of that soft west wind, and presently, bursting out
with a shrill gush, the carol of the skylark aloft, a speck in the
dazzling blue.
Joshua Haggard sighed the sigh of utter contentment as he stretched
himself on the mossy turf (the soil here grew more moss than grass),
and inhaled the almond perfume of the furze--a warm sweetness, as if
those golden butterfly blossoms smelt of the sun that had given them
their colour and their bloom.
It seemed as if that sigh of his woke the sleeping nymph of the
scene; for there came in answer to it a faint fluttering sound like
the rustle of a woman’s garment--no _frôlement_ or _frou-frou_ of
rich silken tissue, but a little fluttering noise of softer humbler
drapery, such as poor folks wear.
Joshua Haggard turned his head a little way, and looked across the
ragged clump of furze that topped the hillock on which he had thrown
himself. There was a tiny pool of water in the hollow below, and
on the other side of the hillock sat a girl, bareheaded under the
summer sun, a little bundle lying on the turf beside her, her bare
feet in the water. They shone ivory white under that clear water, and
Joshua’s heart gave a curious thrill--half fear, half wonder--as if
he had seen a fairy.
There came back to his memory stories that he had loved in his
childhood, before he had grown to believe that there were no other
stories save Bible stories that were good for a man to read or
admire. Dimly there came back to him a legend of a summer noontide
such as this, and a princess transformed by wicked arts into a beggar
wench washing her toil-worn feet by the wayside.
He could not see the girl’s face as he looked down the slope on which
she sat, with her back to the hillock and to him; but he saw she had
the princess’s long fair hair, fair as flax, and bright as the silk
his children used to wind from the cocoons of their silkworms in the
autumn evenings a few years ago.
‘I am not much like the prince who met the disguised princess,’ he
thought, smiling at his fancy, ‘nor yet like the lucky adventurer I
used to read of in those fairy books. Poor child! I daresay she is
some miner’s daughter, who has been over the hills yonder to carry
her father his dinner. I wonder whether she has ever read her Bible.
I used to teach many such fair-haired children when I was in this
part of the country years ago.’
The furze rustled as he bent over to look down at that sunlit head
with its loose flaxen hair, and the girl started and looked up at
him, and gave a little cry of fear on seeing that dark intent face
bent above her.
She took her feet hastily out of the water, snatched her bundle, and
sprang up as if about to fly; but Joshua stepped quickly down from
the hillock and stood beside her.
‘Why are you running away, child? Are you afraid of me?’
She looked up at him with great blue eyes--those rare eyes that are
absolutely blue, the azure of the summer sky--looked up at him in
evident terror.
‘Let me go,’ she cried, as his strong hand grasped her arm, gently
but firmly.
‘My child, I have no desire to detain you. But you mustn’t run away
from me as if I were some terrible monster. I will not do you any
harm. I would do you good if I could, poor wandering lamb. Alas, I
fear the world has not used you kindly, or the sight of a strange
face would not scare you so.’
‘You won’t take me back to them?’ cried the girl, with a shudder.
‘I will take you nowhere that you do not wish to go. But who are
these people whom you fear so much?’
‘The people I belong to.’
‘Your father and mother?’
‘No. I never had a father or mother--not to know them.’
‘Who are these people, then?’
‘The strollers. I was at Helston fair with them yesterday; and I ran
away and slept under a haystack last night, and came on here this
morning; and O, please, please, please, good gentleman, don’t take me
back to them!’ she cried, clasping her hands piteously.
‘Strolling players--mountebanks, you mean?’
‘Yes. They act, and dance, and tumble at fairs and places; and they
have some horses, and sometimes they call themselves a circus; and
they made me dance on the horses’ backs and jump through hoops. I
fell once, and was nearly killed: it was only the sawdust saved me,
they said.’
‘Poor child! Have you been with them long?’
‘All my life,’ answered the girl, opening those innocent blue eyes.
‘I belong to them. I never had any other home or any other friends.’
‘My poor lost lamb! And were they unkind?’
The girl’s red under-lip--fuller than the upper, like Sophia
Western’s--pouted a little as she meditated this question.
‘They never starved me,’ she said; ‘they did not beat me often.’
‘But they did sometimes strike you?’ cried the minister indignantly.
‘Yes, when I was stupid and could not learn what they wanted. I
was fond of the horses and the jumping through hoops, though it
was dangerous; but they wanted me to learn tricks with cards, and
conjuring. I was stupid at that: the numbers puzzled me. And then the
Black Captain--he’s the master of us all--used to get into a passion,
and hit me, and swear at me--such dreadful words.’
The very recollection was appalling, for she burst into tears and
sobbed passionately for a minute or two. Joshua was accustomed to be
the confidant and consoler of other people’s troubles. He patted
this wanderer gently on the shoulder, and comforted her with a few
soothing words.
‘You shall not go back to these people, child, if I can prevent it,’
he said; ‘and you shall learn to read your Bible. You have never
learned that, I fear.’
‘Is that the book people read in the churches?’ she asked.
‘Yes, and in chapels, and in every Christian home.’
‘What’s that?’ asked the girl wonderingly; ‘I don’t know what it
means.’
Then Joshua tried in simplest, easiest phrases to tell her what
Christianity meant, and what its Founder had done for men. She
listened meekly, and understood some part of what he said; but even
that much was dimly comprehended by her. The veil of ignorance which
shrouded her young mind was too dense to be penetrated easily by the
light of truth.
‘Tell me how you came to belong to these strollers,’ said Joshua
presently.
‘I don’t know. I belonged to them always.’
‘You have no memory that goes back beyond that strolling life?
Your mind cannot pierce to something behind that--far away--half
forgotten--a different life, a fixed home?’
‘No. The first thing I can remember is a little close room upon
wheels, a room that was always moving, the hedges and trees going
by outside. I used to watch them move. I thought it was the road
that moved, not us; and I remember the little dark corner where I
slept, squeezed in by the wall, and how I used to be almost smothered
sometimes. That was when my first mother was alive. She was kind to
me, and I loved her dearly; but she used to get tipsy sometimes, poor
thing. She danced on the slack-rope, and she was very clever. She had
been a rope-dancer in London, they said; and one night at Truro she
had been drinking, and lost her balance and fell from the rope, and
hurt her head against a post, and she was very bad, and soon after
she died.’
Tears came into the girl’s eyes as she told of her protectress’s fate.
‘How do you know that this woman was not really your mother?’ asked
Joshua.
‘Because they all told me I had no father or mother. I don’t know how
they came by me, but I belonged to them, and none of them belonged
to me. Somebody once said they had bought me. When Susannah Beck was
dead I had another mother, called Harriet Long; and she was cruel,
and used to beat me if I didn’t learn the steps or the songs she
taught me quick enough. She was a dancer too, but on the ground, not
on ropes; and she sang and acted, and tried to do everything. She
didn’t drink like poor Susannah, but she was greedy for money, and
used to make me go round with a tambourine among the crowd begging,
when the Black Captain--he did the tumbling--wasn’t looking, and
then used to take the money from me; and one day the Captain heard
of it, and he beat her and me too, and then she took a dislike to
me, and used to be very cruel; and then I grew up, and she said I
was too big for my business; and then I made up my mind to run away
the first time I could get off; and I watched and waited; and last
night, at Helston, Harriet was asleep in the van, and the others were
almost all tipsy, and I crept out into the fields. It was warm and
starlight; I felt quite happy. I ran for a long, long way, till I
heard the sea washing against the rocks; and then I came to a farm,
and crept in among some loose hay beside a haystack, and it smelt so
sweet, and I forgot that I was hungry, and fell asleep; and when I
woke the sun was shining, and a little field-mouse was looking at me
with its bright eyes, and I was ever so much hungrier.’
‘Poor child! Have you had nothing to eat since then?’
‘Yes; a woman in a village I came through gave me a great thick slice
of bread-and-cheese.’
‘Good woman! And now tell me what you mean to do?’
‘To work in the fields, if they will let me.’
‘Field-labour! You don’t look much like that. Show me your hands.’
She laid a thin little hand confidingly in Joshua’s broad brown palm.
Quite a delicate hand, sunburnt on the outside, but with a soft pink
palm and filbert-shaped nails; a hand that had done no hard work, and
which, according to a popular theory, might be taken as a sign of a
good lineage.
‘My child, you were never made for field-labour,’ said the minister,
with kindly seriousness; ‘we must find some other work for you. It
would be better for you to be a servant, if any one would be patient
with you and teach you for a little while. I feel sure you are
teachable.’
‘I learnt all but the card tricks,’ exclaimed the girl innocently.
‘I know the rabbit trick, and I learnt the nosegay trick and the
pocket-handkerchief trick very quickly; but the numbers were so
puzzling.’
‘Are you clever at your needle?’
‘Nobody ever taught me to work. I used to mend the dresses sometimes,
and sew on gold lace and spangles; but I’m afraid the stitches
weren’t very neat--they used to be so big.’ And the damsel measured
off a Brobdignagian stitch on her slender forefinger.
‘You might be taught to work. You might be taught almost anything, I
am sure,’ mused Joshua, looking intently at the fair sweet face so
delicately, purely chiselled, with the pearly tints of a Greuze and
the azure eyes he so loved to paint--just that exquisite ideal of
girlhood’s innocence which approaches as nearly as earthly mould can
come to the angelic, and which may mean much or little. So innocent,
so artless, so unconscious, so divinely lovely may Gretchen have
appeared to the student in that vision in the witch’s kitchen. This
girl was of the Gretchen type, that fair Saxon beauty which seems
made for love, and to have lived its hour and fulfilled its end when
it has won its first lover. It was not the Cleopatra beauty, created
to subjugate and hold a triad of heroes, but the transient perfection
of a rose in June, which blooms once and for one only.
‘If you will trust me and come with me, I will get you more fitting
work than field-labour,’ said Joshua; ‘I have plenty of friends in
the next village, and I shall find some one who will give you food
and shelter for my sake. You will have to work for your bread of
course, and to be obedient.’
‘I always did what Harriet told me,’ answered the girl. ‘I will do
anything to earn my bread.’
‘Anything that is honest,’ replied the minister’s grave voice. ‘I
hope you know the difference between right and wrong.’
‘I know that it is wrong to tell lies or to steal, but most of our
people did it.’
‘You did not, I hope?’
‘No. I tried to tell a lie once, but the words wouldn’t come.
Something inside me seemed to rise against it. I felt as if I should
choke; and I thought after all they could only beat me, and then I
told them the truth.’
‘That was brave and good of you. And when you have learnt to read
your Bible you will love truth still more, and you will know many
things that you do not know now.’
‘I’m afraid that will be a long time,’ said the girl despondently,
‘for I don’t know any letters except those our clever pony knew. It
was he that taught me to count.’
‘A pony taught you?’
‘Well, perhaps I taught myself when I had to show the pony. “Now,
Mr. Macaroni, show us number ten,” I used to say; and the pony used
to put his hoof upon the card with the number; and he could tell the
days of the week, and a lot more.’
‘You shall learn to read your Bible, my child, and to work with your
needle, and to be industrious in proper useful duties; and you must
forget all about the pony.’
‘Poor Macaroni!’ sighed the girl. ‘I was very fond of him. He used to
put his kind old nose upon my shoulder, and against my cheek; and I
used to fancy that he pitied me. He was so clever, you see. I think
he knew I was unhappy.’
‘What is your name, my dear child?’ inquired Joshua thoughtfully.
Even in Penmoyle some kind of introduction would be necessary, and
it would be as well to make sure of his _protégée’s_ name before he
presented her to his friends in that village.
‘O, I’ve had ever so many names,’ answered the girl frankly.
‘Sometimes they called me Mamselle Fantini, and sometimes The Little
Wonder.’
‘O, dear, those outlandish names would not do,’ exclaimed Joshua.
‘Were you never baptised?’
‘If that’s anything to do with church, I should think not,’ replied
the girl. ‘But they used to call me Cynthia generally. Perhaps that
was my name.’
‘Cynthia! It’s not a common name; but it is pretty enough, and it
will do.’
They have rather a leaning to fine names in Cornwall; and Mr. Haggard
was not appalled by this fanciful name of Cynthia, even for a
servant-girl.
‘Come,’ he said, looking at his big silver watch, a huge machine in a
double case, ‘if you’ve rested enough, we had better be moving on.’
‘You are not going to take me back to them?’ asked the girl again,
with an affrighted look.
‘My child, can you not understand that an honest man’s yea or nay
is as good as an oath? I have promised not to give you back to your
people. I am going to take you where you may earn your living, and
learn to be a Christian.’
‘Is that as hard as conjuring?’ asked Cynthia simply.
‘O child, child, what sad darkness--here, in this land of light! What
need to seek far away for the heathen, when we have them round us,
near us, calling upon us mutely, like dumb creatures neglected and in
pain?’
Cynthia had dried her bare feet on the sun-scorched grass--such
pretty little feet, arched and slender. If such feet were put up at
auction at Christie and Manson’s, peeresses would be racing one
another for them. She tied on a pair of dilapidated boots, the most
miserable things, which hung round her feet like ragged sandals.
Had she been Scotch or Irish she would have gone barefoot, and been
comfortable; but being an English girl, these apologies for shoes
seemed to her better than nothing.
She took up her little bundle again, and was ready to follow her new
friend. They stood side by side under that cloudless blue, the lark
singing loud and clear, bees humming, sweet wild flowers abloom under
their feet, the distant sea gleaming yonder above the hills, like
a strip of brightness against the sky. They seemed alone upon this
lonely earth, alone under that azure heaven; of human voices there
was no sound, only the glad chorus of Nature--bird and insect, waving
trees and falling waters.
‘Come,’ said Joshua again; and they walked down to the white road
side by side and in silence.