Kitabı oku: «In the Roar of the Sea», sayfa 2

CHAPTER III
CAPTAIN CRUEL

Captain Coppinger occupied an old farmhouse, roomy, low-built, granite quoined and mullioned, called Pentyre Glaze, in a slight dip of the hills near the cliffs above the thundering Atlantic. One ash shivered at the end of the house – that was the only tree to be seen near Pentyre Glaze. And – who was Coppinger? That is more than can be told. He had come – no one knew whence. His arrival on the north coast of Cornwall was mysterious. There had been haze over the sea for three days. When it lifted, a strange vessel of foreign rig was seen lying off the coast. Had she got there in the fog, not knowing her course; or had she come there knowingly, and was making for the mouth of the Camel? A boat was seen to leave the ship, and in it a man came ashore; the boat returned to the vessel, that thereupon spread sail and disappeared in the fog that re-descended over the water. The man gave his name as Coppinger – his Christian name, he said, was Curll, and he was a Dane; but though his intonation was not that of the Cornish, it was not foreign. He took up his residence in S. Enodoc at a farm, and suddenly, to the surprise of every one, became by purchase the possessor of Pentyre Glaze, then vacant and for sale. Had he known that the estate was obtainable when he had come suddenly out of the clouds into the place to secure it? Nobody knew, and Coppinger was silent.

Thenceforth Pentyre Glaze became the harbor and den of every lawless character along the coast. All kinds of wild uproar and reckless revelry appalled the neighborhood day and night. It was discovered that an organized band of smugglers, wreckers, and poachers made this house the centre of their operations, and that “Cruel Coppinger” was their captain. There were at that time – just a century ago – no resident magistrates or gentry in the immediate neighborhood. The yeomen were bribed, by kegs of spirits left at their doors, to acquiesce in a traffic in illicit goods, and in the matter of exchange they took their shares. It was said that on one occasion a preventive man named Ewan Wyvill, who had pursued Coppinger in his boat, was taken by him, and his head chopped off by the captain, with his boat axe, on the gunwale. Such was the story. It was never proved. Wyvill had disappeared, and the body was recovered headless on the Doom Bar. That violence had been used was undoubted, but who had committed the crime was not known, though suspicion pointed to Coppinger. Thenceforth none ever called him Curll; by one consent he was named Cruel. In the West of England every one is given his Christian name. An old man is Uncle, and an old woman Aunt, and any one in command is a Captain. So Coppinger was known as Captain Cruel, or as Cruel Coppinger.

Strange vessels were often seen appearing at regular intervals on the coast, and signals were flashed from the one window of Pentyre Glaze that looked out to sea.

Among these vessels, one, a full-rigged schooner, soon became ominously conspicuous. She was for long the terror of the Cornish coast. Her name was The Black Prince. Once, with Coppinger on board, she led a revenue cutter into an intricate channel among the rocks, where, from knowledge of the bearings, The Black Prince escaped scathless, while the king’s vessel perished with all on board.

Immunity increased Coppinger’s daring. There were certain bridle-roads along the fields over which he exercised exclusive control. He issued orders that no man should pass over them by night, and accordingly from that hour none ever did.¹

Moreover, if report spoke true – and reports do not arise without cause – Coppinger was not averse from taking advantage, and that unlawful advantage, of a wreck. By “lawful” and “unlawful” two categories of acts are distinguished, not by the laws of the land but by common consent of the Cornish conscience. That same Cornish conscience distinguished wrecking into two classes, as it distinguished then, and distinguishes still, witchcraft into two classes. The one, white witchcraft, is legitimate and profitable, and to be upheld; the other, black witchcraft, is reprehensible, unlawful, and to be put down. So with wrecking. The Bristol Channel teemed with shipping, flights of white sails passed in the offing, and these vessels were, when inward bound, laden with sugars and spices from the Indies, or with spirits and wines from France. If outward bound they were deep in the water with a cargo of the riches of England.

Now, should a gale spring up suddenly and catch any of these vessels, and should the gale be – as it usually is, and to the Cornish folk, favorably is – from the northwest, then there was no harbor of refuge along that rock-bound coast, and a ship that could not make for the open was bound inevitably to be pounded to pieces against the precipitous walls of the peninsula. If such were the case, it was perfectly legitimate for every householder in the district to come down on the wreck and strip it of everything it contained.

But, on the other hand, there was wrecking that was disapproved of, though practised by a few, so rumor said, and that consisted in luring a vessel that was in doubt as to her course, by false signals, upon a reef or bar, and then, having made a wreck of her, to pillage her. When on a morning after a night in which there had been no gale, a ship was found on the rocks, and picked as clean as the carcase of a camel in the desert, it was open to suspicion that this ship had not been driven there by wind or current; and when the survivors, if they reached the shore, told that they had been led to steer in the direction where they had been cast away by certain lights that had wholly deceived them, then it was also open to suspicion that these lights had been purposely exhibited for the sake of bringing that vessel to destruction; and when, further, it was proved that a certain set or gang of men had garnered all the profits, or almost all the profits, that accrued from a wreck, before the countryside was aware that a wreck had occurred, then it was certainly no very random conjecture that the wreck had been contrived in some fashion by those who profited by it. There were atrocious tales of murder of shipwrecked men circulating, but these were probably wholly, or at all events in part, untrue. If when a vessel ran upon the rocks she was deserted by her crew, if they took to the boats and made for shore, then there remained no impediment to the wreckers taking possession; it was only in the event of their finding a skipper on board to maintain right over the grounded vessel, or the mariners still on her engaged in getting her off, that any temptation to violence could arise. But it was improbable that a crew would cling to a ship on such a coast when once she was on the breakers. It was a moral certainty that they would desert her, and leave the wreck to be pillaged by the rats from shore, without offer of resistance. The character of the coast-wreckers was known to seamen, or rather a legend full of horror circulated relative to their remorseless savagery. The fear of wreckers added to the fear of the sea would combine to drive a crew, to the last man, into the boats. Consequently, though it is possible that in some cases murder of castaway men may have occurred, such cases must have been most exceptional. The wreckers were only too glad to build a golden bridge by which the wrecked might escape. Morally, without a question, those who lured a hapless merchantman upon the rocks were guilty of the deaths of those sailors who were upset in their boats in escaping from the vessel, or were dashed against the cliffs in their attempts to land, but there was no direct blood-guiltiness felt in such cases; and those who had reaped a harvest from the sea counted their gains individually, and made no estimate of the misery accruing thereby to others.

CHAPTER IV
HOP-O’-MY-THUMB

“Listen to me,” said Judith.

“Yes, Ju!”

The orphans were together in the room that had been their father’s, the room in which for some days he had lain with the blinds down, the atmosphere heavy with the perfume of flowers, and that indescribable, unmistakable scent of death. Often, every day, almost every hour, had Judith stolen into the room while he lay there, to wonder with infinite reverence and admiration at the purity and dignity of the dead face. It was that of the dear, dear father, but sublimed beyond her imagination. All the old vacillation was gone, the expression of distress and discouragement had passed away, and in their place had come a fixity and a calm, such as one sees in the busts of the ancient Roman Cæsars, but with a superadded ethereality, if such a word can be used, that a piece of pagan statuary never reached. Marvellous, past finding out, it is that death, which takes from man the spiritual element, should give to the mere clay a look of angelic spirituality, yet so it is – so it was with the dead Peter Trevisa; and Judith, with eyes filling as fast as dried, stood, her hands folded, looking into his face, felt that she had never loved, never admired him half enough when he was alive. Life had been the simmer in which all the scum of trivialities, of infirmities, of sordidness had come to and shown itself on the surface. Now Death had cleared these all away, and in the peaceful face of the dead was seen the real man, the nobility, sanctity, delicacy that formed the texture of his soul, and which had impressed the very clay wrapped about that volatile essence.

As long as the dear father’s body lay in the house Judith had not realized her utter desolation. But now the funeral was over, and she had returned with her brother to the parsonage, to draw up the blinds, and let the light once more enter, and search out, and revivify the dead rooms.

She was very pale, with reddened eyes, and looking more fragile and transparent than ever she did before, worn and exhausted by tearful, wakeful nights, and by days of alternating gusts of sorrow and busy preparation for the funeral, of painful recollections of joyous days that were past, and of doubtful searchings into a future that was full of cloud.

Her black frock served to enhance her pallor, and to make her look thinner, smaller than when in white or in color.

She had taken her place in her father’s high-backed leather chair, studded thick with brass nails, the leather dulled and fretted by constant use, but the nail-heads burnished by the same treatment.

Her brother was in the same chair with her; both his arms were round her neck, and his head was on her shoulder. She had her right arm about his waist, her left was bowed, the elbow leaning on the chair arm, her hand folded inward, and her weary head rested on its back.

The fine weather broken in upon by the gale had returned; the sun shone in unhindered at the window, and blazed on the children’s hair; the brass nails, polished by friction, twinkled as little suns, but were naught in lustre to the gorgeous red of the hair of the twins, for the first were but brass, and the other of living gold.

Two more lonely beings could hardly be discovered on the face of the earth – at all events in the peninsula of Cornwall – but the sense of this loneliness was summed in the heart of Judith, and was there articulate; Jamie was but dimly conscious of discomfort and bereavement. She knew what her father’s death entailed on her, or knew in part, and conjectured more. Had she been left absolutely alone in the world her condition would have been less difficult than it was actually, encumbered with her helpless brother. Swimming alone in the tossing sea, she might have struck out with confidence that she could keep her head above water, but it was quite otherwise when clinging to her was a poor, half-witted boy, incapable of doing anything to save himself, and all whose movements tended only to embarrass her. Not that she regretted for an instant having to care for Jamie, for she loved him with sisterly and motherly love combined, intensified in force by fusion; if to her a future seemed inconceivable without Jamie, a future without him would be one without ambition, pleasure, or interest.

The twin brother was very like her, with the same beautiful and abundant hair, delicate in build, and with the same refined face, but without the flashes of alternating mood that lightened and darkened her face. His had a searching, bewildered, distressed expression on it – the only expression it ever bore except when he was out of temper, and then it mirrored on its surface his inward ill-humor. His was an appealing face, a face that told of a spirit infantile, innocent, and ignorant, that would never grow stronger, but which could deteriorate by loss of innocence – the only charge of which it was capable. The boy had no inherent naughtiness in him, but was constantly falling into mischief through thoughtlessness, and he was difficult to manage because incapable of reasoning.

What every one saw – that he never would be other than what he was – Judith would not admit. She acknowledged his inaptitude at his books, his frivolity, his restlessness, but believed that these were infirmities to be overcome, and that when overcome the boy would be as other boys are.

Now these children – they were aged eighteen, but Jamie looked four years younger – sat in their father’s chair, clinging to each other, all in all to one another, for they had no one else to love and who loved them.

“Listen to me, Jamie.”

“Yes, Ju, I be – ”

“Don’t say ‘I be’ – say ‘I am.’”

“Yes, Ju.”

“Jamie, dear!” she drew her arm tighter about him; her heart was bounding, and every beat caused her pain. “Jamie, dear, you know that, now dear papa is gone, and you will never see him in this world again, that – ”

“Yes, Ju.”

“That I have to look to you, my brother, to stand up for me like a man, to think and do for me as well as for yourself – a brave, stout, industrious fellow.”

“Yes, Ju.”

“I am a girl, and you will soon be a man, and must work for both of us. You must earn the money, and I will spend it frugally as we both require it. Then we shall be happy again, and dear papa in Paradise will be glad and smile on us. You will make an effort, will you not, Jamie? Hitherto you have been able to run about and play and squander your time, but now serious days have come upon us, and you must fix your mind on work and determine – Jamie – mind, screw your heart to a strong determination to put away childish things and be a man, and a strength and a comfort to me.”

He put up his lips to kiss her cheek, but could not reach it, as her head was leaning on her hand away from him.

“What are you fidgeting at, my dear?” she asked, without stirring, feeling his body restless under her arm.

“A nail is coming out,” he answered.

It was so; whilst she had been speaking to him he was working at one of the brass studs, and had loosened its bite in the chair.

“Oh, Jamie! you are making work by thus drawing out a nail. Can you not help me a little, and reduce the amount one has to think of and do? You have not been attending to what I said, and I was so much in earnest.” She spoke in a tone of discouragement, and the tone, more than the words, impressed the susceptible heart of the boy. He began to cry.

“You are cross.”

“I am not cross, my pet; I am never cross with you, I love you too dearly; but you try my patience sometimes, and just now I am overstrained – and then I did want to make you understand.”

“Now papa’s dead I’ll do no more lessons, shall I?” asked Jamie, coaxingly.

“You must, indeed, and with me instead of papa.”

“Not rosa, rosæ?”

“Yes, rosa, rosæ.”

Then he sulked.

“I don’t love you a bit. It is not fair. Papa is dead, so I ought not to have any more lessons. I hate rosa, rosæ!” He kicked the legs of the chair peevishly with his heels. As his sister said nothing, seemed to be inattentive – for she was weary and dispirited – he slapped her cheek by raising his hand over his head.

“What, Jamie, strike me, your only friend?”

Then he threw his arms round her again, and kissed her. “I’ll love you; only, Ju, say I am not to do rosa, rosæ!”

“How long have you been working at the first declension in the Latin grammar, Jamie?”

He tried for an instant to think, gave up the effort, laid his head on her shoulder, and said:

“I don’t know and don’t care. Say I am not to do rosa, rosæ!”

“What! not if papa wished it?”

“I hate the Latin grammar!”

For a while both remained silent. Judith felt the tension to which her mind and nerves had been subjected, and lapsed momentarily into a condition of something like unconsciousness, in which she was dimly sensible of a certain satisfaction rising out of the pause in thought and effort. The boy lay quiet, with his head on her shoulder, for a while, then withdrew his arms, folded his hands on his lap, and began to make a noise by compressing the air between the palms.

“There’s a finch out there going ‘chink! chink!’ and listen, Ju, I can make ‘chink! chink!’ too.”

Judith recovered herself from her distraction, and said:

“Never mind the finch now. Think of what I say. We shall have to leave this house.”

“Why?”

“Of course we must, sooner or later, and the sooner the better. It is no more ours.”

“Yes, it is ours. I have my rabbits here.”

“Now that papa is dead it is no longer ours.”

“It’s a wicked shame.”

“Not at all, Jamie. This house was given to papa for his life only; now it will go to a new rector, and Aunt Dunes² is going to fetch us away to another house.”

“When?”

“To-day.”

“I won’t go,” said the boy. “I swear I won’t.”

“Hush, hush, Jamie! Don’t use such expressions. I do not know where you have picked them up. We must go.”

“And my rabbits, are they to go too?”

“The rabbits? We’ll see about them. Aunt – ”

“I hate Aunt Dunes!”

“You really must not call her that; if she hears you she will be very angry. And consider, she has been taking a great deal of trouble about us.”

“I don’t care.”

“My dear, she is dear papa’s sister.”

“Why didn’t papa get a nicer sister – like you?”

“Because he had to take what God gave him.”

The boy pouted, and began to kick his heels against the chair-legs once more.

“Jamie, we must leave this house to-day. Aunt is coming to take us both away.”

“I won’t go.”

“But, Jamie, I am going, and the cook is going, and so is Jane.”

“Are cook and Jane coming with us?”

“No, dear.”

“Why not?”

“We shall not want them. We cannot afford to keep them any more, to pay their wages; and then we shall not go into a house of our own. You must come with me, and be a joy and rest to me, dear Jamie.”

She turned her head over, and leaned it on his head. The sun glowed in their mingled hair – all of one tinge and lustre. It sparkled in the tears on her cheek.

“Ju, may I have these buttons?”

“What buttons?”

“Look!”

He shook himself free from his sister, slid his feet to the ground, went to a bureau, and brought to his sister a large open basket that had been standing on the top of the bureau. It had been turned out of a closet by Aunt Dionysia, and contained an accumulation of those most profitless of collected remnants – odd buttons, coat buttons, brass, smoked mother-of-pearl, shirt buttons, steel clasps – buttons of all kinds, the gathering together made during twenty-five years. Why the basket, after having been turned out of a lumber closet, had been left in the room of death, or why, if turned out elsewhere, it had been brought there, is more than even the novelist can tell. Suffice it that there it was, and by whom put there could not be said.

“Oh! what a store of pretty buttons!” exclaimed the boy. “Do look, Ju, these great big ones are just like those on Cheap Jack’s red waistcoat. Here is a brass one with a horse on it. Do see! Oh, Ju, please get your needle and thread and sew this one on to my black dress.”

Judith sighed. It was in vain for her to impress the realities of the situation on his wandering mind.

“Hark!” she exclaimed. “There is Aunt Dunes. I hear her voice – how loud she speaks! She has come to fetch us away.”

“Where is she going to take us to?”

“I do not know, Jamie.”

“She will take us into the forest and lose us, like as did Hop-o’-my-Thumb’s father.”

“There are no forests here – hardly any trees.”

“She will leave us in the forest and run away.”

“Nonsense, Jamie!”

“I am sure she will. She doesn’t like us. She wants to get rid of us. I don’t care. May I have the basket of buttons?”

“Yes, Jamie.”

“Then I’ll be Hop-o’-my-Thumb.”