‘I zeed a vire o’ Monday night,
A vire both great and high;
But I wool not tell you where, my boys,
Nor wool not tell you why.
The varmer he comes screeching out,
To zave ’uns new brood mare;
Zays I, “You and your stock may roast,
Vor aught us poor chaps care.”
‘Coorus, boys, coorus!’
And the chorus burst out,—
‘Then here’s a curse on varmers all
As rob and grind the poor;
To re’p the fruit of all their works
In **** for evermoor-r-r-r.
‘A blind owld dame come to the vire,
Zo near as she could get;
Zays, “Here’s a luck I warn’t asleep
To lose this blessed hett.
‘“They robs us of our turfing rights,
Our bits of chips and sticks,
Till poor folks now can’t warm their hands,
Except by varmer’s ricks.”
‘Then, etc.’
And again the boy’s delicate voice rung out the ferocious chorus, with something, Lancelot fancied, of fiendish exultation, and every worn face lighted up with a coarse laugh, that indicated no malice—but also no mercy.
Lancelot was sickened, and rose to go.
As he turned, his arm was seized suddenly and firmly. He looked round, and saw a coarse, handsome, showily-dressed girl, looking intently into his face. He shook her angrily off.
‘You needn’t be so proud, Mr. Smith; I’ve had my hand on the arm of as good as you. Ah, you needn’t start! I know you—I know you, I say, well enough. You used to be with him. Where is he?’
‘Whom do you mean?’
‘He!’ answered the girl, with a fierce, surprised look, as if there could be no one else in the world.
‘Colonel Bracebridge,’ whispered Tregarva.
‘Ay, he it is! And now walk further off, bloodhound! and let me speak to Mr. Smith. He is in Norway,’ she ran on eagerly. ‘When will he be back? When?’
‘Why do you want to know?’ asked Lancelot.
‘When will he be back?’—she kept on fiercely repeating the question; and then burst out,—‘Curse you gentlemen all! Cowards! you are all in a league against us poor girls! You can hunt alone when you betray us, and lie fast enough then? But when we come for justice, you all herd together like a flock of rooks; and turn so delicate and honourable all of a sudden—to each other! When will he be back, I say?’
‘In a month,’ answered Lancelot, who saw that something really important lay behind the girl’s wildness.
‘Too late!’ she cried, wildly, clapping her hands together; ‘too late! Here—tell him you saw me; tell him you saw Mary; tell him where and in what a pretty place, too, for maid, master, or man! What are you doing here?’
‘What is that to you, my good girl?’
‘True. Tell him you saw me here; and tell him, when next he hears of me, it will be in a very different place.’
She turned and vanished among the crowd. Lancelot almost ran out into the night,—into a triad of fights, two drunken men, two jealous wives, and a brute who struck a poor, thin, worn-out woman, for trying to coax him home. Lancelot rushed up to interfere, but a man seized his uplifted arm.
‘He’ll only beat her all the more when he getteth home.’
‘She has stood that every Saturday night for the last seven years, to my knowledge,’ said Tregarva; ‘and worse, too, at times.’
‘Good God! is there no escape for her from her tyrant?’
‘No, sir. It’s only you gentlefolks who can afford such luxuries; your poor man may be tied to a harlot, or your poor woman to a ruffian, but once done, done for ever.’
‘Well,’ thought Lancelot, ‘we English have a characteristic way of proving the holiness of the marriage tie. The angel of Justice and Pity cannot sever it, only the stronger demon of Money.’
Their way home lay over Ashy Down, a lofty chalk promontory, round whose foot the river made a sudden bend. As they paced along over the dreary hedgeless stubbles, they both started, as a ghostly ‘Ha! ha! ha!’ rang through the air over their heads, and was answered by a like cry, faint and distant, across the wolds.
‘That’s those stone-curlews—at least, so I hope,’ said Tregarva. ‘He’ll be round again in a minute.’
And again, right between them and the clear, cold moon, ‘Ha! ha! ha!’ resounded over their heads. They gazed up into the cloudless star-bespangled sky, but there was no sign of living thing.
‘It’s an old sign to me,’ quoth Tregarva; ‘God grant that I may remember it in this black day of mine.’
‘How so!’ asked Lancelot; ‘I should not have fancied you a superstitious man.’
‘Names go for nothing, sir, and what my forefathers believed in I am not going to be conceited enough to disbelieve in a hurry. But if you heard my story you would think I had reason enough to remember that devil’s laugh up there.’
‘Let me hear it then.’
‘Well, sir, it may be a long story to you, but it was a short one to me, for it was the making of me, out of hand, there and then, blessed be God! But if you will have it—’
‘And I will have it, friend Tregarva,’ quoth Lancelot, lighting his cigar.
‘I was about sixteen years old, just after I came home from the Brazils—’
‘What! have you been in the Brazils?’
‘Indeed and I have, sir, for three years; and one thing I learnt there, at least, that’s worth going for.’
‘What’s that?’
‘What the Garden of Eden must have been like. But those Brazils, under God, were the cause of my being here; for my father, who was a mine-captain, lost all his money there, by no man’s fault but his own, and not his either, the world would say, and when we came back to Cornwall he could not stand the bal work, nor I neither. Out of that burning sun, sir, to come home here, and work in the levels, up to our knees in warm water, with the thermometer at 85°, and then up a thousand feet of ladder to grass, reeking wet with heat, and find the easterly sleet driving across those open furze-crofts—he couldn’t stand it, sir—few stand it long, even of those who stay in Cornwall. We miners have a short lease of life; consumption and strains break us down before we’re fifty.’
‘But how came you here?’
‘The doctor told my father, and me too, sir, that we must give up mining, or die of decline: so he came up here, to a sister of his that was married to the squire’s gardener, and here he died; and the squire, God bless him and forgive him, took a fancy to me, and made me under-keeper. And I loved the life, for it took me among the woods and the rivers, where I could think of the Brazils, and fancy myself back again. But mustn’t talk of that—where God wills is all right. And it is a fine life for reading and thinking, a gamekeeper’s, for it’s an idle life at best. Now that’s over,’ he added, with a sigh, ‘and the Lord has fulfilled His words to me, that He spoke the first night that ever I heard a stone-plover cry.’
‘What on earth can you mean?’ asked Lancelot, deeply interested.
‘Why, sir, it was a wild, whirling gray night, with the air full of sleet and rain, and my father sent me over to Redruth town to bring home some trade or other. And as I came back I got blinded with the sleet, and I lost my way across the moors. You know those Cornish furze-moors, sir?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then, they are burrowed like a rabbit-warren with old mine-shafts. You can’t go in some places ten yards without finding great, ghastly black holes, covered in with furze, and weeds, and bits of rotting timber; and when I was a boy I couldn’t keep from them. Something seemed to draw me to go and peep down, and drop pebbles in, to hear them rattle against the sides, fathoms below, till they plumped into the ugly black still water at the bottom. And I used to be always after them in my dreams, when I was young, falling down them, down, down, all night long, till I woke screaming; for I fancied they were hell’s mouth, every one of them. And it stands to reason, sir; we miners hold that the lake of fire can’t be far below. For we find it grow warmer, and warmer, and warmer, the farther we sink a shaft; and the learned gentlemen have proved, sir, that it’s not the blasting powder, nor the men’s breaths, that heat the mine.’
Lancelot could but listen.
‘Well, sir, I got into a great furze-croft, full of deads (those are the earth-heaps they throw out of the shafts), where no man in his senses dare go forward or back in the dark, for fear of the shafts; and the wind and the snow were so sharp, they made me quite stupid and sleepy; and I knew if I stayed there I should be frozen to death, and if I went on, there were the shafts ready to swallow me up: and what with fear and the howling and raging of the wind, I was like a mazed boy, sir. And I knelt down and tried to pray; and then, in one moment, all the evil things I’d ever done, and the bad words and thoughts that ever crossed me, rose up together as clear as one page of a print-book; and I knew that if I died that minute I should go to hell. And then I saw through the ground all the water in the shafts glaring like blood, and all the sides of the shafts fierce red-hot, as if hell was coming up. And I heard the knockers knocking, or thought I heard them, as plain as I hear that grasshopper in the hedge now.’
‘What are the knockers?’
‘They are the ghosts, the miners hold, of the old Jews, sir, that crucified our Lord, and were sent for slaves by the Roman emperors to work the mines; and we find their old smelting-houses, which we call Jews’ houses, and their blocks of tin, at the bottom of the great bogs, which we call Jews’ tin; and there’s a town among us, too, which we call Market-Jew—but the old name was Marazion; that means the Bitterness of Zion, they tell me. Isn’t it so, sir?’
‘I believe it is,’ said Lancelot, utterly puzzled in this new field of romance.
‘And bitter work it was for them, no doubt, poor souls! We used to break into the old shafts and adits which they had made, and find old stags’-horn pickaxes, that crumbled to pieces when we brought them to grass; and they say, that if a man will listen, sir, of a still night, about those old shafts, he may hear the ghosts of them at working, knocking, and picking, as clear as if there was a man at work in the next level. It may be all an old fancy. I suppose it is. But I believed it when I was a boy; and it helped the work in me that night. But I’ll go on with my story.’
‘Go on with what you like,’ said Lancelot.
‘Well, sir, I was down on my knees among the furze-bushes, and I tried to pray; but I was too frightened, for I felt the beast I had been, sir; and I expected the ground to open and let me down every moment; and then there came by over my head a rushing, and a cry. “Ha! ha! ha! Paul!” it said; and it seemed as if all the devils and witches were out on the wind, a-laughing at my misery. “Oh, I’ll mend—I’ll repent,” I said, “indeed I will:” and again it came back,—“Ha! ha! ha! Paul!” it said. I knew afterwards that it was a bird; but the Lord sent it to me for a messenger, no less, that night. And I shook like a reed in the water; and then, all at once a thought struck me. “Why should I be a coward? Why should I be afraid of shafts, or devils, or hell, or anything else? If I am a miserable sinner, there’s One died for me—I owe him love, not fear at all. I’ll not be frightened into doing right—that’s a rascally reason for repentance.” And so it was, sir, that I rose up like a man, and said to the Lord Jesus, right out into the black, dumb air,—“If you’ll be on my side this night, good Lord, that died for me, I’ll be on your side for ever, villain as I am, if I’m worth making any use of.” And there and then, sir, I saw a light come over the bushes, brighter, and brighter, up to me; and there rose up a voice within me, and spoke to me, quite soft and sweet,—“Fear not, Paul, for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles.” And what more happened I can’t tell, for when I woke I was safe at home. My father and his folk had been out with lanterns after me; and there they found me, sure enough, in a dead faint on the ground. But this I know, sir, that those words have never left my mind since for a day together; and I know that they will be fulfilled in me this tide, or never.’
Lancelot was silent a few minutes.
‘I suppose, Tregarva, that you would call this your conversion?’
‘I should call it one, sir, because it was one.’
‘Tell me now, honestly, did any real, practical change in your behaviour take place after that night?’
‘As much, sir, as if you put a soul into a hog, and told him that he was a gentleman’s son; and, if every time he remembered that, he got spirit enough to conquer his hoggishness, and behave like a man, till the hoggishness died out of him, and the manliness grew up and bore fruit in him, more and more each day.’
Lancelot half understood him, and sighed.
A long silence followed, as they paced on past lonely farmyards, from which the rich manure-water was draining across the road in foul black streams, festering and steaming in the chill night air. Lancelot sighed as he saw the fruitful materials of food running to waste, and thought of the ‘over-population’ cry; and then he looked across to the miles of brown moorland on the opposite side of the valley, that lay idle and dreary under the autumn moon, except where here and there a squatter’s cottage and rood of fruitful garden gave the lie to the laziness and ignorance of man, who pretends that it is not worth his while to cultivate the soil which God has given him. ‘Good heavens!’ he thought, ‘had our forefathers had no more enterprise than modern landlords, where should we all have been at this moment? Everywhere waste? Waste of manure, waste of land, waste of muscle, waste of brain, waste of population—and we call ourselves the workshop of the world!’
As they passed through the miserable hamlet-street of Ashy, they saw a light burning in window. At the door below, a haggard woman was looking anxiously down the village.
‘What’s the matter, Mistress Cooper?’ asked Tregarva.
‘Here’s Mrs. Grane’s poor girl lying sick of the fever—the Lord help her! and the boy died of it last week. We sent for the doctor this afternoon, and he’s busy with a poor soul that’s in her trouble; and now we’ve sent down to the squire’s, and the young ladies, God bless them! sent answer they’d come themselves straightway.’
‘No wonder you have typhus here,’ said Lancelot, ‘with this filthy open drain running right before the door. Why can’t you clean it out?’
‘Why, what harm does that do?’ answered the woman, peevishly. ‘Besides, here’s my master gets up to his work by five in the morning, and not back till seven at night, and by then he ain’t in no humour to clean out gutters. And where’s the water to come from to keep a place clean? It costs many a one of us here a shilling a week the summer through to pay fetching water up the hill. We’ve work enough to fill our kettles. The muck must just lie in the road, smell or none, till the rain carries it away.’
Lancelot sighed again.
‘It would be a good thing for Ashy, Tregarva, if the weir-pool did, some fine morning, run up to Ashy Down, as poor Harry Verney said on his deathbed.’
‘There won’t be much of Ashy left by that time, sir, if the landlords go on pulling down cottages at their present rate; driving the people into the towns, to herd together there like hogs, and walk out to their work four or five miles every morning.’
‘Why,’ said Lancelot, ‘wherever one goes one sees commodious new cottages springing up.’
‘Wherever you go, sir; but what of wherever you don’t go? Along the roadsides, and round the gentlemen’s parks, where the cottages are in sight, it’s all very smart; but just go into the outlying hamlets—a whited sepulchre, sir, is many a great estate; outwardly swept and garnished, and inwardly full of all uncleanliness, and dead men’s bones.’
At this moment two cloaked and veiled figures came up to the door, followed by a servant. There was no mistaking those delicate footsteps, and the two young men drew back with fluttering hearts, and breathed out silent blessings on the ministering angels, as they entered the crazy and reeking house.
‘I’m thinking, sir,’ said Tregarva, as they walked slowly and reluctantly away, ‘that it is hard of the gentlemen to leave all God’s work to the ladies, as nine-tenths of them do.’
‘And I am thinking, Tregarva, that both for ladies and gentlemen, prevention is better than cure.’
‘There’s a great change come over Miss Argemone, sir. She used not to be so ready to start out at midnight to visit dying folk. A blessed change!’
Lancelot thought so too, and he thought that he knew the cause of it.
Argemone’s appearance, and their late conversation, had started a new covey of strange fancies. Lancelot followed them over hill and dale, glad to escape a moment from the mournful lessons of that evening; but even over them there was a cloud of sadness. Harry Verney’s last words, and Argemone’s accidental whisper about ‘a curse upon the Lavingtons,’ rose to his mind. He longed to ask Tregarva, but he was afraid—not of the man, for there was a delicacy in his truthfulness which encouraged the most utter confidence; but of the subject itself; but curiosity conquered.
‘What did Old Harry mean about the Nun-pool?’ he said at last. ‘Every one seemed to understand him.’
‘Ah, sir, he oughtn’t to have talked of it! But dying men, at times, see over the dark water into deep things—deeper than they think themselves. Perhaps there’s one speaks through them. But I thought every one knew the story.’
‘I do not, at least.’
‘Perhaps it’s so much the better, sir.’
‘Why? I must insist on knowing. It is necessary—proper, that is—that I should hear everything that concerns—’
‘I understand, sir; so it is; and I’ll tell you. The story goes, that in the old Popish times, when the nuns held Whitford Priors, the first Mr. Lavington that ever was came from the king with a warrant to turn them all out, poor souls, and take the lands for his own. And they say the head lady of them—prioress, or abbess, as they called her—withstood him, and cursed him, in the name of the Lord, for a hypocrite who robbed harmless women under the cloak of punishing them for sins they’d never committed (for they say, sir, he went up to court, and slandered the nuns there for drunkards and worse). And she told him, “That the curse of the nuns of Whitford should be on him and his, till they helped the poor in the spirit of the nuns of Whitford, and the Nun-pool ran up to Ashy Down.’”
‘That time is not come yet,’ said Lancelot.
‘But the worst is to come, sir. For he or his, sir, that night, said or did something to the lady, that was more than woman’s heart could bear: and the next morning she was found dead and cold, drowned in that weir-pool. And there the gentleman’s eldest son was drowned, and more than one Lavington beside. Miss Argemone’s only brother, that was the heir, was drowned there too, when he was a little one.’
‘I never heard that she had a brother.’
‘No, sir, no one talks of it. There are many things happen in the great house that you must go to the little house to hear of. But the country-folk believe, sir, that the nun’s curse holds true; and they say, that Whitford folks have been getting poorer and wickeder ever since that time, and will, till the Nun-pool runs up to Ashy, and the Lavingtons’ name goes out of Whitford Priors.’
Lancelot said nothing. A presentiment of evil hung over him. He was utterly down-hearted about Tregarva, about Argemone, about the poor. The truth was, he could not shake off the impression of the scene he had left, utterly disappointed and disgusted with the ‘revel.’ He had expected, as I said before, at least to hear something of pastoral sentiment, and of genial frolicsome humour; to see some innocent, simple enjoyment: but instead, what had he seen but vanity, jealousy, hoggish sensuality, dull vacuity? drudges struggling for one night to forget their drudgery. And yet withal, those songs, and the effect which they produced, showed that in these poor creatures, too, lay the germs of pathos, taste, melody, soft and noble affections. ‘What right have we,’ thought he, ‘to hinder their development? Art, poetry, music, science,—ay, even those athletic and graceful exercises on which we all pride ourselves, which we consider necessary to soften and refine ourselves, what God has given us a monopoly of them?—what is good for the rich man is good for the poor. Over-education? And what of that? What if the poor be raised above “their station”? What right have we to keep them down? How long have they been our born thralls in soul, as well as in body? What right have we to say that they shall know no higher recreation than the hogs, because, forsooth, if we raised them, they might refuse to work—for us? Are we to fix how far their minds may be developed? Has not God fixed it for us, when He gave them the same passions, talents, tastes, as our own?’
Tregarva’s meditations must have been running in a very different channel, for he suddenly burst out, after a long silence—
‘It’s a pity these fairs can’t be put down. They do a lot of harm; ruin all the young girls round, the Dissenters’ children especially, for they run utterly wild; their parents have no hold on them at all.’
‘They tell them that they are children of the devil,’ said Lancelot. ‘What wonder if the children take them at their word, and act accordingly?’
‘The parson here, sir, who is a God-fearing man enough, tried hard to put down this one, but the innkeepers were too strong for him.’
‘To take away their only amusement, in short. He had much better have set to work to amuse them himself.’
‘His business is to save souls, sir, and not to amuse them. I don’t see, sir, what Christian people want with such vanities.’
Lancelot did not argue the point, for he knew the prejudices of Dissenters on the subject; but it did strike him that if Tregarva’s brain had been a little less preponderant, he, too, might have found the need of some recreation besides books and thought.
By this time they were at Lancelot’s door. He bid the keeper a hearty good-night, made him promise to see him next day, and went to bed and slept till nearly noon.
When he walked into his breakfast-room, he found a note on the table in his uncle’s handwriting. The vicar’s servant had left it an hour before. He opened it listlessly, rang the bell furiously, ordered out his best horse, and, huddling on his clothes, galloped to the nearest station, caught the train, and arrived at his uncle’s bank—it had stopped payment two hours before.