Life on a farm by the roar of the sea approaches the ideal upon earth.
It isn't quite the ideal, because the ideal is always round the corner;
but it is near it, and that is something to be thankful for. Mrs.
Andrawartha ran the farm, and she had two tall, strapping sons and a
daughter. Mrs. Andrawartha was what is called a "comfortable" woman;
and "comfort" is the one virtue prized above rubies in these parts.
[Illustration: OLD NEWLYN.]
It was through accident that we struck the farm one afternoon, the
fact being that the Bookworm was limping, having slightly sprained his
ankle. There wasn't much to recommend us at first sight--three dusty
wayfarers, with small knapsacks, and no warts or other indications
of royal lineage upon either of us. The farmhouse was situated in an
old-fashioned garden, and a good, roomy porch, with seats on either
side, offered hospitality. Open windows were visible through luxuriant
fuchsias and creepers, but what the walls were built of no one could
tell, so completely covered were they with flowering plants. It was a
sort of place which wanted to be looked at again and again, something
fresh coming into view each time; and the oftener you looked at it the
more you liked it.
The Bookworm rapped modestly with his knuckles upon the thick door, but
no one came. We could hear voices, and an aromatic perfume filled the
passage. The Bookworm tried again, and only hurt his knuckles. Then
Guy said he'd negociate, and if he got into trouble we were there to
help him. The smell of burning furze and brambles guided him to the
great kitchen, and he winked again and coughed as the smoke from the
wide open fireplace filled his eyes. There was a little maid heaping
up the thorns and brambles, and somewhere in the blue haze he saw the
supple outline of a young girl, with her arms bare. They were heating
the brick oven for bread-baking. A very sweet voice floated through the
film of blue, aromatic smoke. A sudden draught cleared the smoke, and
Guy stood face to face with the owner of the voice; and a nice face
it was, now radiant with the heat from the burning brambles. The bare
arms were dimpled, and the whole figure was cased in a white wrapper,
showing to perfection the clear skin, and brown hair, and light hazel
eyes of the young girl. This was Miss Andrawartha.
Mrs. Andrawartha was in the "living-room" (and a nice room it was),
overlooking much of the farm land, the sea beyond, and the great
cliffs, rising sheer from the yellow sands, playing hide-and-seek
between them. The lady was portly, and sat in a chair made for comfort
before the open window, and Guy, ushered into the presence of such
homely dignity, wished to stammer an excuse, and back out. Remembrance
of the sprained foot alone restrained him.
"You can stop here as long as you've a mind to, if only you behave
yourselves," said the lady in the chair.
"Three of us?" queried Guy.
"The house is big enough," said the lady.
Guy made a rush for the porch. "Come in, you beggars," said he;
"there's a queen inside, and a divinity in the kitchen."
At the evening meal we were incorporated with the family. Mrs.
Andrawartha, in her chair of comfort, presided, supported by her two
tall sons, then us, then the farm servants, and the daughter of the
house at the other end of the table.
Our presence made no difference to the social economy of the farm,
except that Mrs. Andrawartha presided over a late breakfast in the
living-room. This was quite a personal compliment, and never could
woman look more "comfortable" than the widow Andrawartha at table.
"If this is farm life, I'm a convert for ever," said Guy, chipping an
egg and catching the white cream in his spoon.
The bread, just perfumed with the aroma of the burning furze with which
the clome oven was heated, was delicious by itself, but with the butter
thick upon it, the palate rose to the occasion and was satisfied. The
home-cured ham in front of the comfortable widow would take no denial,
and must be tasted. The cream, with its sheen of gold, and the honey,
winking wickedly at the cream, would not be put aside; so there was
nothing for it but to mix them both in holy matrimony upon the perfumed
bed of bread. There was such a blend of delicate flavours and sightly
delicacies that our eyes would shut, so that nothing might interfere
with the joys of taste. Only a few flowers were on the table, but
through the open window floated the scents of the garden, and the bees
hummed and waltzed, and there was room for all, and to spare, at the
table of the comfortable widow.
"Great Scott!" said Guy. "I shall never forget. Such everything! Only
the worst of it is, I shall never like anything again for evermore.
Fancy shop eggs, and 'best Dosset,' and alumed bread, and stale ham
after this feast of the gods, when they lived among men. There's one
saint still in Cornwall--the saint of good things at the shrine of the
comfortable widow."
We left the Bookworm to himself and the odd volumes of the _Arminian
Magazine_, and suchlike food for such as he, and he seemed as pleased
as Punch at the thought of being alone with anything musty, fusty, and
out of date.
"Incurable," said Guy. "This reading habit sticks to a fellow of his
sort, like dram-drinking to a tramp."
Guy was in the seventh heaven of delight when the daughter of the house
told him that in an orchard, through which the brook ran to the sea,
there were some trout. Her father used to bring home "a fine passul"
sometimes, and his rod and lines were all in the house, for the boys
never troubled the fish. So Guy went a-fishing, his heart full of
content with his breakfast, and susceptible to the diviner impressions
which the daughter of the house in blue print and white apron might
make upon him. The boys called her "Phil," but her name was Phyllis;
he had got so far as that, when the widow's voice awoke him from
contemplation of eyes and hair, and all the points which young men like
to study at chance meetings.
He found the brook, and then the orchard. The water was as bright as
glass, and the sun-motes danced upon it between the shadows. Trout
there were in the stream, but they had not tasted a worm for a month,
except by chance, and the flies were not to their liking. Guy walked
up stream to where the brook was fed by two trickling rills, where
there was some depth of water, and an old, overhanging bank, and
current enough for his fly to sail downward, temptingly, to the eyes of
adventurous trout wanting to see life. At the deepest part the stream
was shadowed by a large apple tree, and here Guy changed his flies, and
cast deftly towards the spot where he felt sure the king of the stream
must linger, if, indeed, it had a king. Presently, a melodious splash
above his own fly told its secret, and Guy's hopes rose until he caught
a little beauty, and then another, and another, and laid them on the
grass, covering them with dock leaves with loving tenderness. Small fry
that he would have been thankful for on other days he returned to the
stream with words of advice.
Breakfast doesn't last for ever, and Guy began to feel peckish, but
he wasn't going to give up yet, not he. He'd take home a fry of trout
which would send an incense above the farm to the blue heavens, and
make all invisible spirits envious. Presently he heard dry branches
breaking under a light footstep, and the daughter of the farm stood by
him, a ministering angel, with a pasty and a bottle of milk in a basket
covered with a cloth of purest white. This was what she used to do for
her father, who wouldn't leave off until he had a dish to his liking;
and mother, thinking all men who fished for trout were the same,
sent her with the basket of "croust" to keep off the pangs. So the
dainty messenger. Then Guy uncovered his spoil, and Phyllis played him
artlessly, so that he, in his turn, rose and bolted the sweet bait, and
turned to go down stream again, only to know that he was in the toils,
unless the fair angler should let him go.
She must go herself now, and Guy, who could not get away on his own
account, felt grieved that release must come. It was sudden, but
irresistible, and the thrilling exquisite. Then came the shock. "I am
bespoke already, sir." The line parted.
Guy fished and fished until after sunset, but joy of capture was gone.
He had himself been captured, and felt pity. Still he brought home a
fine basket, and the comfortable widow served them up for breakfast,
whole, and still beautiful.
The Bookworm, nursing his slight sprain, enjoyed himself in his own
fashion, and, rummaging at the back of the open book-case, unearthed
a book, bound in parchment, which commenced with farm accounts, and
ended with "Receipts and Charms for the Cure of Man and Beastes."
The pages were undated, but were written a hundred years ago by one
Andrawartha, grandfather of the comfortable widow's husband. The
document bore the following preface:--
"Lest I forget what has been told to me, I commit to paper charms and
other devices for the cure of men and beastes. My forbears used these
charms for more years than I can tell, and those who use them must have
faith in them that they will work their work, or they labour in vain.
And I pray God that I commit no sin in handing down what I have been
taught, but that it may be counted merit in me to preserve what has
been found out with much labour, and hath spared man and beast great
and grievous sufferings in the flesh, and saved much money, when it
could ill be spent, as, God wot, is the case on farms in this country.
"'Mortal are we and subject to diseases,
We all must die even when and how God pleases!
Into the world but one way we do come,
A thousand ways from hence we are sent home.'"
Some of the receipts would offend moderns, but all were seemingly set
down in good faith; and the Bookworm copied many, with permission.
"A tooth from a dead man's mouth carried in the pocket is an infallible
charm against toothache."
"The eighth psalm read three times a day, three days running, cures the
thrush."
"To keep away evil spirits from cattle, nail four horse-shoes in the
form of a cross against the door."
"A church key applied to a wound stops bleeding."
"Bore a hole in a nutmeg and tie round your neck, and nibble nine
mornings fasting, and boils will disappear in spring and autumn."
"Breathe over a newly made grave, and cure a cough."
"Take spoonful of earth from grave of newly interred virgin, dissolve
in water, and drink fasting, to cure 'decline.'"
"Toad's liver fried is good for rheumatism, so also are adders' tails;
the adders must be killed whilst dew is on them."
"The sign of the cross drawn on wood, stone, or metal, and bound over a
wound, stops bleeding in man or beast."
For toothache was this formula: "Upon a rock St. Peter stood, towards
Jerusalem. And Peter prayed, 'Lord, forgive me my sins, and I shall
be free. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost.--Amen.' Say three times a day, three days running, and drink
powdered brimstone water between whiles."
To cure heartache: "Sleep with key of church door around your neck."
"Water taken from church font is good for children with rickets, and
will straighten bow-legged children, and children with 'wobbles.'"
"Black spiders dried and powdered cure heart-burn." There were many
other cures for heart-burn, and all of them nasty, so nasty that
spider-powder sprinkled in water was dainty by comparison.
Meteorolites and curious stones when ground to powder will cure men or
beasts of all common diseases, and blue snake-stones are infallible in
case of snake-bite.
There were love philtres innumerable, and it appeared that a deserted
maid had only to steal her lover's jacket, turn the sleeves inside out,
bury it at midnight in a churchyard, and then, presto! the lover's
heart would turn, and turn, as the jacket rotted in the ground, until
he came back repentant to his ancient flame.
The Bookworm made notes of many other things which would do for the
curious in such matters, and remarked as singular that, in all the
book, there was no reference to saints or invocations to saints, which,
he said, was very strange in the land of saints. Guy confessed that
the matter was beyond him, and said he did not care if he never heard
the word "saint" again. Saint this, and saint that, and saint the
other--there was too much of it in one small county, to his taste.
[Illustration: A CORNISH INTERIOR.]