Kitabı oku: «Friends I Have Made», sayfa 8
Chapter Fourteen.
Pengelly’s Weakness
These were the people the Hendricks wished me to go and visit, and in due course I went down to Elmouth to pass two of the most delicious months of rest and peace, growing stronger day by day, and finding ample food for thought in what I saw and heard.
I had left London with a feeling that one great interest of my life would be for the time in abeyance, but I soon found upon mixing with the simple-hearted fishing and mining folks, that though the locality was changed, the pleasures and pains of people were just the same, and that care and suffering came to Cornwall hand-in-hand as often as elsewhere.
One of my great friends here was Old Pengelly, the Ross’s gardener, and often in a dreamy pleasant day have I sat in the old rugged garden, made in a niche of the great granite rocks with a view of the restless changing sea.
Old Pengelly always had an idea that I was too weak to walk, and showed me the tenderest solicitude as he moved my chair more into the shade, fetched my sunshade or book; but his great delight was to kneel down and weed some bed close by me, and talk about the past, and no sooner did he find that he had hit upon some subject that seemed to interest me, than he would go steadily on, only rising up and straightening himself now and then, to get rid of a pain in his back.
“Ah-h-h!” he would say, “don’t take no notice of my groaning ma’am, that’s my back that is, and all along of mowing, and digging, and sweating, and lifting about them lumps of granite stone to make the missus’s rockeries; master don’t seem to do it a bit of good.”
“Doesn’t he, Pengelly?” I said, as I could not help smiling as I thought of the fine sturdy old man’s age, for he was seventy-five.
“No, ma’am; you see it’s rheumatiz just in the small, through the rain on it sometimes, and the sun on it sometimes, and the perspiration on it always, along o’ that bit o’ lawn swade. Nice bit o’ green swade, though, as any in the county – spongy, and springy, and clean. Deal o’ worrit though, to get it to rights, what with the worms a-throwing up their casties, and them old starlings pegging it about and tearing it to rags, and then the daisies coming up all over it in all directions. There ain’t nothing like daisies: cut their heads off, and they like it; spud ’em up, and fresh tops come; stop ’em in one place, and they comes up in another. I can’t get riddy of ’em. That bit o’ lawn would be perfect if it wasn’t for the daisies; but they will come up, and like everything else in this life, that there lawn ain’t perfect. They will come, you know: they will live, and you can’t kill ’em. They ain’t like some things in this life that won’t live, do all you can to make ’em.
“There, don’t you take no notice of them; they ain’t tears, they ain’t; that isn’t crying, that’s a sort o’ watery weakness in the eyes through always being a gardener all your life, and out in the wet. Only, you know, when I get talking about some things living do all you can to kill ’em – such as weeds, you know, and daisies; and of some things not living, do all you can to make ’em, like balsams in frosty springs, you know – I think about my boy, as was always such a tender plant, do all I would, and about all the plans I’d made for him, and all cut short by one o’ the sharp frosts as the good Master of all sends sometimes in every garden, whether it’s such a one as this, with good shelter, and a south aspeck, and plenty of warm walls for your trained trees, or the big garden of life, with the different human trees a-growing in it; some fair plants growing to maturity, and sending out fine green leaves, well veined and strong, well-shaped blossoms of good colour and sweet smell, fair to look upon, and doing good in this life; sturdy, well-grown trees of men, and bright-hued, tender, loving plants of women; some with tendrils and clinging ways – the fruitful vines upon your house – and many clustering blossoms of children; and bad weeds, and choking thorns, and poison-berries, and all. Life’s just one big garden, and when I stick my spade in like this here, and rest my foot on it, and my elber on the handle, and my chin on my hand, I get thinking about it all in a very strange way, oftens and oftens.
“Say I get a bit of ground ready, and put seed in. That’s faith, ain’t it? I put those little tiny brown grains in, and I know in all good time, according as the great God has ordained, those tiny grains will come up, and blow, and seed in their turns. Not all though; some gets nipped, and never comes to anything, spite of all your care, some slowly shrivels away, and those that do are generally the best.
“That’s the watery weakness again. Don’t you take no notice of that; only, you know, whatever I get talking about seems, somehow or other, to work round to my poor boy as we’ve laid in the earth over yonder by the old church – a human seed, sowed in corruption, to be raised in incorruption, eh? Those are the words, ain’t they, ma’am? And that’s faith, too, you’ll say.
“We were quite old folks when we married, you see, not being able to afford it early in life, and when that boy was born, being an odd, old-fashioned gardener of a man, I was always looking upon him as a sort of plant sent to me to bring up to as near perfection as we can get things in a garden that isn’t Eden. And there I used to sit at dinner hours or teas having my pipe, as made the little thing sneeze, but kept away blight, you know: and then I used to plot and plan as to how I’d work him; how, every now and then, I should, as he grew, carefully loosen all the earth about his tender young fibres, and give him some of the best, well-mixed, rich soil when I repotted him, shaking it well in amongst his roots, giving him room to grow, every now and then, by putting him in a larger pot, watching carefully for blight, taking away all green moss, giving him proper light and air, and all the time while it was nursery gardening, treating him as his tender nature required.
“Light, rich, loamy soil I meant him to have as soon as he was fit to go on a border, and then I meant to train him; ah, that I did! I’d made up my mind that no one else should touch him, but that I’d train him myself. A weed shouldn’t come near him, nor slug, nor snail neither, if I knew it, but I’d cover him over, and shelter him from all frosts, and then watch him grow and grow in the light and warmth of God’s beautiful sunshine. And let me tell you that you people who live in your big towns don’t know the real pleasure there is in seeing a young plant grow day by day, putting forth its wonderful leaves from out some tiny bud, where they have lain snugly shut up from the winter’s frosts, then the beautifully-painted flowers with their sweet scents. There, when I go to bed every night, in my humble fashion I thank God that I was made a gardener, with the chance through life of watching His wondrous works, and how He has ordained that man, by industry and skill, can change the wild, worthless weed or tree into the healthy, life-supporting vegetable or fruit. And yet I don’t know but what I’m doing you town-dwellers a wrong, for I’ve seen many a pale face in your close, crowded courts watching patiently over some sickly, sun-asking flower in a broken pot, watering it, maybe, with a cracked jug, and then I’ve longed to put that pale face down in such a place as my garden here – I call it mine, you know, though it’s master’s – to watch it brighten, and see, as I’ve often seen before now, the tears of joy come into the eyes of that pale face because things were so beautiful.
“There’s nothing like gardens, ma’am, to make people good and pure-hearted, for there’s something about flowers that leads the thoughts up and up, higher and higher. I pity you folks in London. There’s religion in gardens, and I think if you put beautiful flowers within reach of people, you do them more good than by showing them grand buildings and sights. There’s a something in flowers that makes its way to the heart – not only in the grandest blossoms, but in the simplest; and I ain’t going to set up for a prophetic person, but I mean to say that as long as this world lasts there will always be a tender love in every human heart for the little, gentle, sweet-scented violets. I’ve lived in big towns myself, and seen the girls with their baskets full of fresh-gathered blossoms, nestling amongst green leaves, with the water lying upon them in big, bright beads, and when, being only a poor man, I’ve spent my penny in a bunch of the fragrant little blossoms, and held it to my face, what have I breathed in? – just the scent of a violet? Oh, no! but God’s bright country – far away from the smoke, and bricks, and mortar – and health and strength, and then it would be that a great longing would come on me to be once again where the wind blew free and the sun shone brightly.
“That was, you know, when I went up to London to better myself, and didn’t; thinking, you know, to get to be gardener to some great man, or in one of the societies, but there wasn’t room for me.
“I’ve heard about some poet saying something about a man to whom a primrose by the river’s brim was a yellow primrose, and nothing more. I wonder what sort of a man that was, who could look upon the simplest flower that grows, and not see in it wonder, majesty, grandeur – a handiwork beside which the greatest piece of machinery made by man seems as it were nothing. But there, that’s always the way with violets and primroses, they always have a tendency towards bringing on that watery weakness. They do it with hundreds, bless you, if given at the right times. They’re so mixed up with one’s early life, you see, and with days when everything looked so bright and sunny; and with some people, I suppose, that is the reason why they act so upon them; while with me, you see, there’s something else, for when I think of them, I can always see two little bunches lying upon a little breast, with never a breath to stir them, – bright blossoms, smelling of the coming spring-time, but soon to be shut from the light of heaven, and buried deep, deep with that seed to be raised where chill winds never come, where the flowers are never-fading, and where the light of love shines ever upon those thought worthy to enter into that garden of life everlasting, amen!
“For it was all in vain, it was not to be. I made all my plans, I took all the care I could, I meant to train and prune and cut out all foreright and awkward growths, I meant that boy to be something to be proud of; but it was not to be: he was not to blossom here, – this did not seem to be his climate; and though I wouldn’t see it, there was the plain fact, that there was a canker somewhere out of sight where it could not be got at; and though I tried, and the doctor tried, all we knew, it was of no use, and at last I was obliged to own that my little fellow was slowly withering away. I used to have him in his little chair in a sheltery spot, where there was sunshine, and give him a bunch of flowers to play with; but at last he grew too weak to be taken out, so I used to take him some flowers home, and it was always the same, he would hold them in his hand till they withered away, and then cry to see how they were faded.
“And at last there came a day when he did not seem any worse than usual. It was one of those soft, bright, warm spring days, that come in all at once, setting the buds bursting, the birds building, and your heart seeming to drink in a kind of joy from the soft breeze. I’d been to dinner, and was going back to the garden, to finish a bit of nailing in over there upon the south wall, that ought to have been done long before. Well, I’d got to the door, when my poor little fellow burst out crying to go with me; and at last, seeing how bright and warm it was, and how sheltered he would be there, under the sunny wall, we wrapped him up, and I took him in his little chair to the warmest spot I could find, gave him some violets and primroses, and a crocus and snowdrop or two, and then I was soon up on my ladder, nailing away, laying in young wood there, moving a branch here, and, being fond of my work, and soon interested, I was sometimes a quarter of an hour together without looking at our little fellow; but I was down four times to pick him a fresh flower or two and the last time I was down I thought he seemed a little drowsy.
“At last I got off to move my ladder, and had my foot on the round to get up again, when I looked at the little chair, and started to see that my boy was lying fast asleep, when, for fear of cold, I caught him up, and carried him towards our cottage; but I had not gone half-way, before a strange shudder seemed to run through me, and I stopped short to look in the little face, saying something that I knew would make him smile if he heard it; and then, hardly knowing what I did, I rushed home with my light burden, whose little hands were tightly holding some of God’s early gifts of spring against the little breast now growing colder and colder.
“No, he didn’t hear me; but there was just the faint dawning of a smile about his little mouth: for God is very kind to some of those he loves, and there was no sign of pain there as he went to sleep. And I can’t think that I’m wrong, in always fancying my boy where never-fading flowers bloom, for he was too young to have ever angered his Maker; and besides, did he not say, ‘Suffer little children to come unto me,’ and ‘Of such is the kingdom of heaven?’
“Don’t you take no notice of me, that’s a watery weakness; but, now, just look there, I went over every bit of that lawn reg’lar, last week, and then there wasn’t a bit of daisy to be seen; while now, here they are coming up in a bunch. But it really is the case with flowers, that those you want to kill and get rid of won’t die, while those you wish to save – There, don’t take no notice of me, it’s only a watery weakness.”
Poor old Pengelly went away, for the weakness seemed disposed to increase, and for long enough he was busy weeding a nook of the garden far away from where I sat. He was very reticent afterwards, for days to come, and when at last he grew more sociable his face was hard, rugged and weather-stained, and he seemed the last man to have been influenced by a tender sympathetical thought.
Chapter Fifteen.
Salt Tears
That rugged exterior and tenderness of heart of the Cornish people render them marked amongst their fellows. It is questionable whether you would find in any part of England so respectable and religious a body of men as those of Cornwall. Whether fishers or miners it is the same, they are quiet, temperate, and God fearing, and certainly more intelligent than the men of many counties. I have often sat in the Ross’s garden of an evening listening to the singing of the fishermen upon the cliff, not the roaring of some sailors’ chorus, but the sweetly blended parts of some old hymn, or glee – for part singing lingers still amongst these Western folks.
Then as to education, I have been surprised at their amount of knowledge and reading. One fair ruddy sturdy old fellow, the corners of whose lips were not free from the stains of tobacco, used to take me out occasionally in his boat and showed me the various rocks and caves, and he surprised me by his reading. The first time I was out with him I found that his boat was called The Chemorne, and I naturally enough asked why he had given it so quaint a name.
“Oh, it means Birch Canoe,” he said, and when I asked further, he told me that he had found the name in Hiawatha, when he was reading Longfellow’s poems.
One of my greatest intimates though amongst the fishermen, was a quiet stern-faced middle-aged man, who seemed to have some great trouble upon his mind; and one evening when he had rowed me out beyond the headland, and lay upon his oars, he began talking to me about the sorrow of his life, the death of the woman he had loved and who was to have been his wife.
“Yes,” he said, “I behaved bad to her ma’am, and all through blind obstinacy and want of faith.
“I’ve seen that same face of hers scores of times since, and though it makes me shudder, and nips me to the heart, I always go and have a good long earnest look at it, and come away a better man. You may see that face yourself – as much like as if it had been taken from her sad, anxious looks – you may see it at the picture-shop windows, and it’s of a woman tying a handkerchief round a man’s arm, and she looks up at him pitifully, and it’s called ‘The Huguenot.’ That’s like the look, and the face that gazed up into mine after she’d told me what I know now was the truth; and I – yet I’m most ashamed to own it – I flung her away from me, and wouldn’t believe what she said. There was a tear upon each cheek, and the bright drops were brimming in her eyes, and ready to fall; but I was hard and bitter, and whispered to myself that they were false tears, put on to cheat me, and I ran out of her father’s house, swearing that I’d enter it again no more.
“Speaking as a fisherman, and one who was brought up with the sound of the sea always in his ears, I may say we rowed well together in the same boat, Mary and I. I had a long fight of it before I could persuade her that it would be best for her future that she should take me for pilot, and not Harry Penellyn; but I did persuade her at last, and we were to be married down at the little fishermen’s church at the head of the cove. So we worked and waited.
“Two years of as happy a life then fell to my lot as could fall to that of any man in this life, I believe. My ways were rough, and hers were not those of a lady, but they suited our stations in life, and what more would you have? I look back upon that bright bit of life as if it was some dream; and though I can’t settle to go back to the old place, I cling to the fish, and look upon those days when a Lozarne boat comes in, as days worth recollecting; for they bring the blood in one’s cheek, and a bit of light into one’s eye.
“I can see it all now as plain as can be: the little fishing village under the cliff; the stout granite pier running out so as to form a harbour for the fishing-boats; and the blue sea, stretching away far as eye could reach. Down by its edge, too, the weed-fringed rocks, piled high in places, with the sea foaming amongst the crevices, and again forming little rock-pools where the bright sea growths flourished; and as the tide came in, with its fresh cooling waters, you saw the limpets and sea flowers wakening again to life, while many a spider-crab and shell-fish crept out of the nook or crack where it had hidden from the warm sun. I can see it all now at any time, though I am growing grey, and nigh a score of years have passed since; but brighter than all seem to stand out those two mournful eyes, with the same tearful look they gave me as I flung out of the door and saw them for the last time; for when next I looked upon that face the eyes were fast closed, and could I have opened them the lustre would have been gone.
“A west country fisherman’s life is one which takes him a deal from home, for sometimes we go off for perhaps three months at a time to the north coast, or to Ireland when the herring season is on; and, like the rest, I used to be off in my boat, sorry enough to leave home – happy enough to return after a busy season, till one year, when I took it into my head to think it strange that Harry Penellyn, Mary’s old beau, should spin his illness out so long and stop ashore, time after time, when the boats went out, and him seeming to be well and strong as any of us. There had been a heavy gale on the coast some weeks before, and, as we always do at such times, we had run in for the harbour as soon as we saw it coming; but, through bad seamanship, Penellyn’s boat came inside the rocks, when she should have come outside, and then, through their not having water enough, she grounded, lifted again, caught by the stern, and then swung round broadside to the waves, which swept her half deck, while a regular chorus of shrieks rose from the women standing ashore.
“It was a rough time, for even our boats that were in the harbour were groaning and grinding together, while every now and then the sea washed over so as to threaten to fill them, and sweeping the pier from end to end. In an ordinary way we made a custom of laughing at the crew of a boat who, from bungling, got her on the rocks, for born as we were in the bay, with our fathers fishers before us, we knew every stone along the coast, and could almost have steered our boat to them blindfold; but this was no time to jeer, for now the poor fellows were being swept one by one from their hold, and borne struggling through the surf to the rocks, where they were in danger of being dashed to pieces, for ours was no smooth, sandy beach. Some were swimming, some beating the water frantically; and clad as our men are, in their thick cloth trousers, heavy sea boots, and stout Guernsey shirts, they stand a poor chance of keeping long afloat, for the weight of their boots is enough to drag them down.
“There was every one in a state of excitement; some running out as far as they could and throwing ropes – men shouting orders that nobody attended to – women tossing their arms up and crying, while first one and then another of the boat’s crew was dragged ashore, and carried half drowned up to the cottages.
“I was standing looking on, with Mary by my side, for she was out on the cliff when my boat ran into the little harbour, while her hand was the first to clasp mine when I got ashore, thankful for the escape we had had, for the sea had risen wonderfully quick. I had taken no part in trying to save the boat’s crew, for there were plenty of willing hands, and there being but little standing-room down below the cliff, I had thought I should be in the way; but now it seemed to me that one poor fellow would be lost with the efforts they were making to save him, for he was too weak to cling to the ropes thrown out, and as fast as he was swept in by the waves, they sucked him back.
“I had not seen who it was, but just then, as I made a start as if to go down, Mary clutched, my arm, and there was a wild look in her face as she said aloud, ‘Harry Penellyn.’
“The excitement of the moment carried almost everything before it, but I had a strange feeling shoot through my heart, and something seemed to say, ‘Keep back;’ but the next minute I was fighting with the waves, with the noose of a rope round my body, and plenty of stout mates ashore fast hold of the end. Then, after a strangling battle, I got tight hold of Penellyn, and we were drawn ashore, and both of us carried up to Mary’s father’s cottage, though I tried hard to get upon my feet and walk, but I might have known that our fellows would not have let me on any account.
“Well, Harry Penellyn lay there three or four days, and Mary tended him, and all that time I had to fight against a strange, ungenerous, cowardly feeling that would creep over me, and seemed at times to make me mad, till I got myself in a corner and asked myself questions, to all of which I could only answer the same word – nothing. Then Penellyn got better, and went to his mother’s house; and time went on, till I grew bitter, and harsh, and morose, and was always haunted by a suspicion that I would not put into words, while now the question came again and again – ‘Why doesn’t Harry Penellyn go to sea?’
“But no answer came to my question; and though he seemed to be well and strong as ever, he always kept at home while we went out; and in my then state of mind this troubled me, and I kept feeling glad that we were only out now on the short trips of a few days in length. I grew angry with myself and with all around. Ay, and I grow angry even now, when I think that a few earnest words of explanation – a few questions that I know would have been answered freely – would have set all right, and perhaps saved the life of as good and loving a woman as ever lived in the light.
“But it was not to be so; and I went on wilfully blinding my eyes to everything – placing a wrong construction upon every look and word, and making those true eyes gaze at me again and again in wonder; whilst Harry Penellyn, who had never before shown me much goodwill, now that I had saved his life, would have been friends, only I met his every advance with a black scowl, when he always turned off and avoided me.
“One evening it had come to the lot of my boat to run into harbour with the fish of several other boats; for the takes had been very light, and somehow or another I felt more bright and happy than I had done for weeks. I got ashore, left my mates tending the mackerel, and ran up to Old Carne’s cottage to find Mary out.
“This did not trouble me at first; but after a few minutes’ fidgeting about, I felt a flush come in my face, and hurrying out, I made an excuse at Mrs Penellyn’s, and got to know that Harry was out too.
“The hot blood rose from my cheeks to my forehead, and seemed to blind me; then a strange singing sensation came in my ears; but the next minute I was tearing along the cove in the dark of the evening, so as to get away where I might be alone with my thoughts, for that vile suspicion that was struggling with me before, had now conquered and beaten me down, so that I was its slave, and for the time a regular madman.
“I had run about half a mile, when I stopped panting, and began to walk slowly along beneath the trees close beside the fern-hung rocky bank, while it was now too dark to see far before me. But the next instant I was standing with my breath held, and one hand resting on my side, for as I crouched close to the bank I heard Penellyn’s voice, talking earnestly as he passed a few yards from me, with his arm tightly clasping a woman’s waist, and just as they had passed they stopped, and there was light enough for me to see him bend over her, and without stopping to think, I leaped from where I was hid, and, as the woman shrieked and fled, I had Penellyn by the throat, and we joined in a fierce struggle.
“If an angel had told me I was deceived, I should not have believed him then in my blind fury; and it was not until, having dashed his head against the ground again and again, and felt my enemy’s hold relax, that I leaped up, kicked him savagely, and then ran back.
“Just as I expected, Mary was at home, looking hot and flushed, but she jumped up with a smile, and hurried to me, saying —
“‘I was down at Mrs Trevere’s, dear; but I heard your boat had come, and – ’
“She stopped short, half frightened by my wild looks and disordered clothes, and half by the savage curse I gnashed out at her as I seized her arms; while, as the…” (two pages missing here.)
