Kitabı oku: «Eve», sayfa 8

CHAPTER XV.
AT THE QUAY

On the day of Barbara’s departure Eve attended diligently to the duties of the house, and found that everything was in such order that she was content to believe that all would go on of its own accord in the old way, without her supervision, which declined next day, and was pretermitted on the third.

Jasper did not appear for mid-day dinner; he was busy on the old quay. He saw that it must be put to rights. The woods could be thinned, the coppice shredded for bark, and bark put on a barge at the bottom of the almost precipitous slope, and so sent to the tanyards at Devonport. There was waste of labour in carrying the bark up the hills and then carting it to Beer Ferris, some ten miles.

No wonder that, as Mr. Jordan complained, the bark was unremunerative. The profit was eaten up by the wasteful transport. It was the same with the timber. There was demand for oak and pine at the dockyards, and any amount was grown in the woods of Morwell.

So Jasper asked leave to have the quay put to rights, and Mr. Jordan consented. He must supervise proceedings himself, so he remained the greater part of the day by the river edge. The ascent to Morwell House was arduous if attempted directly up the steep fall, long if he went by the zigzag through the wood. It would take him a stiff three-quarters of an hour to reach the house and half-an-hour to return. Accordingly he asked that his dinner might be sent him.

On the third day, to Eve’s dismay, she found that she had forgotten to let him have his food, both that day and the preceding. He had made no remark when he came back the day before. Eve’s conscience smote her – a convalescent left for nine or ten hours without food.

When she recalled her promise to send it him she found that there was no one to send. In shame and self-reproach, she packed a little basket, and resolved to carry it to him. The day was lovely. She put her broad-brimmed straw hat, trimmed with forget-me-not bows, on her head, and started on her walk.

The bank of the Tamar falls from high moorland many hundreds of feet to the water’s edge. In some places the rocks rise in sheer precipices with gullies of coppice and heather between them. Elsewhere the fall is less abrupt, and allows trees to grow, and the richness of the soil and the friable nature of the rock allows them to grow to considerable dimensions. From Morwell House a long détour through beautiful forest, affording peeps of mountains and water, gave the easiest descent to the quay, but Eve reserved this road for the ascent, and slid merrily down the narrow corkscrew path in the brushwood between the crags, which afforded the quickest way down to the water’s edge.

‘Oh, Mr. Jasper!’ she exclaimed, ‘I have sinned, through my forgetfulness; but see, to make amends, I have brought you a little bottle of papa’s Burgundy and a wee pot of red currant jelly for the cold mutton.’

‘And you have come yourself to overwhelm me with a sense of gratitude.’

‘Oh, Mr. Jasper, I am so ashamed of my naughtiness. I assure you I nearly cried. Bab – I mean Barbara – would never have forgotten. She remembers everything. Her head is a perfect store-closet, where all things are in place and measured and weighed and on their proper shelves. You had no dinner yesterday.’

‘To-day’s is a banquet that makes up for all deficiencies.’

Eve liked Jasper; she had few to converse with, very few acquaintances, no friends, and she was delighted to be able to have a chat with anyone, especially if that person flattered her – and who did not? Everyone naturally offered incense before her; she almost demanded it as a right. The Tamar formed a little bay under a wall of rock. A few ruins marked the site of the storehouses and boatsheds of the abbots. The sun glittered on the water, forming of it a blazing mirror, and the dancing light was reflected back by the flower-wreathed rocks.

‘Where are the men?’ asked Eve.

‘Gone into the wood to fell some pines. We must drive piles into the bed of the river, and lay beams on them for a basement.’

‘Oh,’ said Eve listlessly, ‘I don’t understand about basements and all that.’ She seated herself on a log. ‘How pleasant it is here with the flicker of the water in one’s face and eyes, and a sense of being without shadow! Mr. Jasper, do you believe in pixies?’

‘What do you mean, Miss?’

‘The little imps who live in the mines and on the moors, and play mischievous tricks on mortals. They have the nature of spirits, and yet they have human shapes, and are like old men or boys. They watch treasures and veins of ore, and when mortals approach the metal, they decoy the trespassers away.’

‘Like the lapwing that pretends to be wounded, and so lures you from its precious eggs. Do you believe in pixies?’

Eve laughed and shook her pretty head. ‘I think so, Mr. Jasper, for I have seen one.’

‘What was he like?’

‘I do not know, I only caught glimpses of him. Do not laugh satirically. I am serious. I did see something, but I don’t know exactly what I saw.’

‘That is not a very convincing reason for the existence of pixies.’

Eve drew her little feet together, and folded her arms in her lap, and smiled, and tossed her head. She had taken off her hat, and the sun glorified her shining head.

Jasper looked admiringly at her.

‘Are you not afraid of a sunstroke, Miss Eve?’

‘O dear no! The sun cannot harm me. I love him so passionately. O Mr. Jasper! I wish sometimes I lived far away in another country where there are no wet days and grey skies and muggy atmospheres, and where the hedges do not drip, and the lanes do not stand ankle deep in mud, and the old walls exude moisture indoors, and one’s pretty shoes do not go mouldy if not wiped over daily. I should like to be in a land like Italy, where all the people sing and dance and keep holiday, and the bells in the towers are ever ringing, and the lads have bunches of gold and silver flowers in their hats, and the girls have scarlet skirts, and the village musicians sit in a cart adorned with birch branches and ribands and roses, and the trumpets go tu-tu! and the drums bung-bung! – I have read about it, and cried for vexation that I was not there.’

‘But the pixy?’

‘I would banish all pixies and black Copplestones and Whish hounds; they belong to rocks and moors and darkness and storm. I hate gloom and isolation.’

‘You are happy at Morwell, Miss Eve. One has but to look in your face and see it. Not a crabbed line of care, not the track of a tear, all smoothness and smiles.’

The girl twinkled with pleasure, and said, ‘That is because we are in midsummer; wait till winter and see what becomes of me. Then I am sad enough. We are shut in for five months – six months – seven almost, by mud and water. O, how the winds howl! How the trees toss and roar! How the rain patters! That is not pleasant. I wish, I do wish, I were a squirrel; then I would coil myself in a corner lined with moss, and crack nuts in a doze till the sun came again and woke me up with the flowers. Then I would throw out all my cracked nutshells with both paws, and leap to the foot of a tree, run up it, and skip from branch to branch, and swing in the summer sunshine on the topmost twig. O, Mr. Jasper, how much wiser than we the swallows are! I would rather be a swallow than a squirrel, and sail away when I felt the first frost to the land of eternal summer, into the blazing eye of the sun.’

‘But as you have no wings – ’

‘I sit and mope and talk to Barbara about cows and cabbages, and to father about any nonsense that comes into my head.’

‘As yet you have given me no description of the pixy.’

‘How can I, when I scarce saw him? I will tell you exactly what happened, if you will not curl up the corner of your lips, as though mocking me. That papa never does. I tell him all the rhodomontade I can, and he listens gravely, and frightens and abashes me sometimes by swallowing it whole.’

‘Where did you see, or not see, the pixy?’

‘On my way to you. I heard something stirring in the wood, and I half saw what I took to be a boy, or a little man the size of a boy. When I stood still, he stood; when I moved, I fancied he moved. I heard the crackle of sticks and the stir of the bushes. I am sure of nothing.’

‘Were you frightened?’

‘No; puzzled, not frightened. If this had occurred at night, it would have been different. I thought it might have been a red-deer; they are here sometimes, strayed from Exmoor, and have such pretty heads and soft eyes; but this was not. I fancied once I saw a queer little face peering at me from behind a pine tree. I uttered a feeble cry and ran on.’

‘I know exactly what it was,’ said Jasper, with a grave smile. ‘There is a pixy lives in the Raven Rock; he has a smithy far down in the heart of the cliff, and there he works all winter at a vein of pure gold, hammering and turning the golden cups and marsh marigolds with which to strew the pastures and watercourses in spring. But it is dull for the pixy sitting alone without light; he has no one to love and care for him, and, though the gold glows in his forge, his little heart is cold. He has been dreaming all winter of a sweet fairy he saw last summer wearing a crown of marigold, wading in cuckoo flowers, and now he has come forth to capture that fairy and draw her down into his stony palace.’

‘To waste her days,’ laughed Eve, ‘in sighing for the sun, whilst her roses wither and her eyes grow dim, away from the twitter of the birds and the scent of the gorse. He shan’t have me.’ Then, after a pause, during which she gathered some marigolds and put them into her hat, she said, half seriously, half jestingly, ‘Do you believe in pixies?’

‘You must not ask me. I have seen but one fairy in all my life, and she now sits before me.’

‘Mr. Jasper,’ said Eve, with a dimple in her cheek, in recognition of the compliment, – ’Mr. Jasper, do you know my mother is a mystery to me as much as pixies and fairies and white ladies?’

‘No, I was not aware of that.’

‘She was called, like me, Eve.’

‘I had a sister of that name who is dead, and my mother’s name was Eve. She is dead.’

‘I did not think the name was so common,’ said the girl. ‘I fancied we were the only two Eves that ever were. I do not know what my mother’s other name was. Is not that extraordinary?’

Jasper Babb made no reply.

‘I have been reading “Undine.” Have you read that story? O, it has made me so excited. The writer says that it was founded on what he read in an old author, and that author, Paracelsus, is one papa believes in. So, I suppose, there is some truth in the tale. The story of my mother is quite like that of Undine. One night my father heard a cry on the moor, and he went to the place, and found my mother all alone. She was with him for a year and a day, and would have stayed longer if my father could have refrained from asking her name. When he did that she was forced to leave him. She was never seen again.’

‘Miss Eve, this cannot be true.’

‘I do not know. That is what old Betsy Davy told me. Papa never speaks of her. He has been an altered man since she left him. He put up the stone cross on the moor at the spot where he found her. I like to fancy there was something mysterious in her. I can’t ask papa, and Bab was – I mean Barbara – was too young at the time to remember anything about it.’

‘This is very strange.’

‘Betsy Davy says that my father was not properly married to her, because he could not get a priest to perform the ceremony without knowing what she was.’

‘My dear Miss Eve, instead of listening to the cock-and-bull stories – ’

‘Mr. Jasper! How can you – how can you use such an expression? The story is very pretty and romantic, and not at all like things of this century. I dare say there is some truth in it.’

‘I am far from any intention of offending you, dear young lady; but I venture to offer you a piece of advice. Do not listen to idle tales; do not encourage people of a lower class to speak to you about your mother; ask your father what you want to know, he will tell you; and take my word for it, romance there always must be in love, but there will be nothing of what you imagine, with a fancy set on fire by “Undine.”’

Her volatile mind had flown elsewhere.

‘Mr. Jasper,’ she said, ‘have you ever been to a theatre?’

‘Yes.’

‘O, I should like it above everything else. I dream of it. We have Inchbald’s “British Theatre” in the library, and it is my dearest reading. Barbara likes a cookery book or a book on farming; I cannot abide them. Do you know what Mr. Coyshe said the other day when I was rattling on before him and papa? He said I had missed my vocation, and ought to have been on the stage. What do you think?’

‘I think a loving and merciful Providence has done best to put such a precious treasure here where it can best be preserved.’

‘I don’t agree with you at all,’ said Eve, standing up. ‘I think Mr. Coyshe showed great sense. Anyhow, I should like to see a theatre – O, above everything in the world! Papa thinks of Rome or the Holy Land; but I say – a theatre. I can’t help it; I think it, and must say it. Good-bye! I have things my sister left that I must attend to. I wish she were back. Oh, Mr. Jasper, do not you?’

‘Everyone will be pleased to welcome her home.’

‘Because I have let everything go to sixes and sevens, eh?’

‘For her own sake.’

‘Well, I do miss her dreadfully, do not you?’

He did not answer. She cast him another good-bye, and danced off into the wood, swinging her hat by the blue ribands.

CHAPTER XVI.
WATT

The air under the pines was balmy. The hot July sun brought out their resinous fragrance. Gleams of fire fell through the boughs and dappled the soil at intervals, and on these sun-flakes numerous fritillary butterflies with silver under-wings were fluttering, and countless flies were humming. The pines grew only at the bottom of the crags, and here and there in patches on the slopes. The woods were composed for the most part of oak, now in its richest, fullest foliage, the golden hue of early spring changing to the duller green of summer. Beech also abounded with their clean stems, and the soil beneath them bare of weed, and here and there a feathery birch with erect silver stem struggled up in the overgrowth to the light. The wood was full of foxgloves, spires of pink dappled bells, and of purple columbine. Wild roses grew wherever a rock allowed them to wreath in sunshine and burst into abundant bloom over its face. Eve carried her straw hat on her arm, hung by its blue ribands. She needed its shelter in the wood no more than in her father’s hall.

She came to a brook, dribbling and tinkling on its way through moss and over stone. The path was fringed with blazing marigolds. Eve had already picked some, she now halted, and brimmed the extemporised basket with more of the golden flowers.

The gloom, the fragrant air, the flicker of colour made her think of the convent chapel at Lanherne, whither she had been sent for her education, but whence, having pined under the restraint, she had been speedily removed. As she walked she swung her hat like a censer. From it rose the fresh odour of flowers, and from it dropped now and then a marigold like a burning cinder. Scarce thinking what she did, Eve assumed the slow and measured pace of a religious procession, as she had seen one at Lanherne, still swinging her hat, and letting the flowers fall from it whilst she chanted meaningless words to a sacred strain. Then she caught her straw hat to her, and holding it before her in her left arm, advanced at a quicker pace, still singing. Now she dipped her right hand in the crown and strewed the blossoms to left and right, as did the little girls in the Corpus Christi procession round the convent grounds at Lanherne. Her song quickened and brightened, and changed its character as her flighty thoughts shifted to other topics, and her changeful mood assumed another complexion. Her tune became that of the duet Là ci darem la mano, in ‘Don Giovanni,’ which she had often sung with her sister. She sang louder and more joyously, and her feet moved in rhythm to this song, as they had to the ecclesiastical chant; her eyes sparkled, her cheeks flushed.

It seemed to her that a delicate echo accompanied her – very soft and spiritual, now in snatches, then low, rolling, long-drawn-out. She stopped and listened, then went on again. What she heard was the echo from the rocks and tree boles.

But presently the road became steeper, and she could no longer spare breath for her song; now the sacred chant was quite forgotten, but the sweet air of Mozart clung to her memory, as the scent of pot-pourri to a parlour, and there it would linger the rest of the day.

As she walked on she was in a dream. What must it be to hear these songs accompanied by instruments, and with light and scenery, and acting on the stage? Oh, that she could for once in her life have the supreme felicity of seeing a real play!

Suddenly a flash of vivid golden light broke before her, the trees parted, and she stood on the Raven Rock, a precipice that shoots high above the Tamar and commands a wide prospect over Cornwall – Hingston Hill, where Athelstan fought and beat the Cornish in the last stand the Britons made, and Kitt Hill, a dome of moorclad mountain. As she stepped forth on the rock to enjoy the light and view and air, there rushed out of the oak and dogwood bushes a weird boy, who capered and danced, brandished a fiddle, clapped it under his chin, and still dancing, played Là ci darem fast, faster, till his little arms went faster than Eve could see.

The girl stood still, petrified with terror. Here was the Pixy of the Raven Rock Jasper had spoken of. The malicious boy saw and revelled in her fear, and gambolled round her, grimacing and still fiddling till his tune led up to and finished in a shriek.

‘There, there,’ said he, at length, lowering the violin and bow; ‘how I have scared you, Eve!’

Eve trembled in every limb, and was too alarmed to speak. The scenery, the rock, the boy, swam in a blue haze before her eyes.

‘There, Eve, don’t be frightened. You led me on with your singing. I followed in your flowery traces. Don’t you know me?’

Eve shook her head. She could not speak.

‘You have seen me. You saw me that night when I came riding over your downs at the back of Martin, when poor Jasper fell – you remember me. I smashed your rattletrap gig. What a piece of good luck it was that Jasper’s horse went down and not ours. I might have broken my fiddle. I’d rather break a leg, especially that of another person.’

Eve had not thought of the boy since that eventful night. Indeed, she had seen little of him then.

‘I remember,’ she said, ‘there was a boy.’

‘Myself. Watt is my name, or in full, Walter. If you doubt my humanity touch my hand; feel, it is warm.’ He grasped Eve and drew her out on the rocky platform.

‘Sit down, Eve. I know you better than you know me. I have heard Martin speak of you. That is how I know about you. Look me in the face.’

Eve raised her eyes to his. The boy had a strange countenance. The hair was short-cropped and black, the skin olive. He had protruding and large ears, and very black keen eyes.

‘What do you think is my age?’ asked the boy. ‘I am nineteen. I am an ape. I shall never grow into a man.’ He began again to skip and make grimaces. Eve shrank away in alarm.

‘There! Put your fears aside, and be reasonable,’ said Watt, coming to a rest. ‘Jasper is below, munching his dinner. I have seen him. He would not eat whilst you were by. He did not suspect I was lying on the rock overhead in the heath, peering down on you both whilst you were talking. I can skip about, I can scramble anywhere, I can almost fly. I do not wish Jasper to know I am here. No one must know but yourself, for I have come here on an errand to you.’

‘To me!’ echoed Eve, hardly recovered from her terror.

‘I am come from Martin. You remember Martin? Oh! there are not many men like Martin. He is a king of men. Imagine an old town, with ancient houses and a church tower behind, and the moon shining on it, and in the moonlight Martin in velvet, with a hat in which is a white feather, and his violin, under a window, thinking you are there, and singing Deh, vieni alla finestra. Do you know the tune? Listen.’ The boy took his fiddle, and touching the strings with his fingers, as though playing a mandolin, he sang that sweet minstrel song.

Eve’s blue eyes opened wonderingly, this was all so strange and incomprehensible to her.

‘See here, Miss Zerlina, you were singing Là ci darem just now, try it with me. I can take Giovanni’s part and you that of Zerlina.’

‘I cannot. I cannot, indeed.’

‘You shall. I shall stand between you and the wood. You cannot escape over the rock, you would be dashed to pieces. I will begin.’

Suddenly a loud voice interrupted him as he began to play – ’Watt!’

Standing under the shadow of the oaks, with one foot on the rocky platform, was Jasper.

‘Watt, how came you here?’

The boy lowered his violin and stood for a moment speechless.

‘Miss Eve,’ said Jasper, ‘please go home. After all, you have encountered the pixy, and that a malicious and dangerous imp. Stand aside, Watt.’

The boy did not venture to resist. He stood back near the edge of the rock and allowed Eve to pass him.

When she was quite gone, Jasper said gravely to the boy, ‘What has brought you here?’

‘That is a pretty question to ask me, Jasper. We left you here, broken and senseless, and naturally Martin and I want to know what condition you are in. How could we tell whether you were alive or dead? You know very well that Martin could not come, so I have run here to obtain information.’

‘I am well,’ answered Jasper, ‘you may tell Martin, everywhere but here,’ he laid his hand on his heart.

‘With such a pretty girl near I do not wonder,’ laughed the boy. ‘I shall tell poor Martin of the visits paid you at the water’s edge.’

‘That will do,’ said Jasper; ‘this joking offends me. Tell Martin I am here, but with my heart aching for him.’

‘No occasion for that, Jasper. Not a cricket in the grass is lighter of spirit than he.’

‘I dare say,’ said the elder, ‘he does not feel matters acutely. Tell him the money must be restored. Here I stay as a pledge that the debt shall be paid. Tell him that I insist on his restoring the money.’

‘Christmas is coming, and after that Easter, and then, all in good time, Christmas again; but money once passed, returns no more.’

‘I expect Martin to restore what he took. He is good at heart, but inconsiderate. I know Martin better than you. You are his bad angel. He loves me and is generous. He knows what I have done for him, and when I tell him that I must have the money back he will return it if he can.’

‘If he can!’ repeated the boy derisively. ‘It is well you have thrown in that proviso. I once tossed my cap into the Dart and ran two miles along the bank after it. I saw it for two miles bobbing on the ripples, but at last it went over the weir above Totnes and disappeared. I believe that cap was fished up at Dartmouth and is now worn by the mayor’s son. It is so with money. Once let it out of your hands and it avails nothing to run after it. It disappears and comes up elsewhere to profit others.’

‘Where is Martin now?’

‘Anywhere and everywhere.’

‘He is not in this county, I trust.’

‘Did you never hear of the old lady who lost the store closet key and hunted everywhere except in her own pocket? What is under your nose is overlooked.’

‘Go back to Martin. Tell him, as he values his safety and my peace of mind, to keep out of the country, certainly out of the county. Tell him to take to some honest work and stick to it, and to begin his repentance by – ’

‘There! if I carry a preachment away with me I shall never reach Martin. I had a surfeit of this in the olden days, Jasper. I know a sailor lad who has been fed on salt junk at sea till if you put but as much as will sit on the end of your knife under his nose when he is on land he will upset the table. It is the same with Martin and me. No sermons for us, Jasper. So – see, I am off at the first smell of a text.’

He darted into the wood and disappeared, singing at the top of his voice ‘Life let us cherish.’