.... I take up my tale where I left off yesterday.... Dan and I started as soon as we could get Mrs. Hopgood to give us coffee. The old lady was more tentative, more undecided, more pouncing, than I had ever seen her. She was manifestly uneasy: Ha-apgood—who “don't slape” don't he, if snores are any criterion—had called out in the night, “Hark to th' 'arses' 'oofs!” Had we heard them? And where might we be going then? 'Twas very earrly to start, an' no breakfast. Haapgood had said it was goin' to shaowerr. Miss Pasiance was not to 'er violin yet, an' Mister Ford 'e kept 'is room. Was it?—would there be—? “Well, an' therr's an 'arvest bug; 'tis some earrly for they!” Wonderful how she pounces on all such creatures, when I can't even see them. She pressed it absently between finger and thumb, and began manoeuvring round another way. Long before she had reached her point, we had gulped down our coffee, and departed. But as we rode out she came at a run, holding her skirts high with either hand, raised her old eyes bright and anxious in their setting of fine wrinkles, and said:
“'Tidden sorrow for her?”
A shrug of the shoulders was all the answer she got. We rode by the lanes; through sloping farmyards, all mud and pigs, and dirty straw, and farmers with clean-shaven upper lips and whiskers under the chin; past fields of corn, where larks were singing. Up or down, we didn't draw rein till we came to Dan's hotel.
There was the river gleaming before us under a rainbow mist that hallowed every shape. There seemed affinity between the earth and the sky. I've never seen that particular soft unity out of Devon. And every ship, however black or modern, on those pale waters, had the look of a dream ship. The tall green woods, the red earth, the white houses, were all melted into one opal haze. It was raining, but the sun was shining behind. Gulls swooped by us—ghosts of the old greedy wanderers of the sea.
We had told our two boatmen to pull us out to the Pied Witch! They started with great resolution, then rested on their oars.
“The Pied Witch, zurr?” asked one politely; “an' which may her be?”
That's the West countryman all over! Never say you “nay,” never lose an opportunity, never own he doesn't know, or can't do anything—independence, amiability, and an eye to the main chance. We mentioned Pearse's name.
“Capt'n Zach'ry Pearse!” They exchanged a look half-amused, half-admiring.
“The Zunflaower, yu mane. That's her. Zunflaower, ahoy!” As we mounted the steamer's black side I heard one say:
“Pied Witch! A pra-aper name that—a dandy name for her!” They laughed as they made fast.
The mate of the Sunflower, or Pied Witch, or whatever she was called, met us—a tall young fellow in his shirtsleeves, tanned to the roots of his hair, with sinewy, tattooed arms, and grey eyes, charred round the rims from staring at weather.
“The skipper is on board,” he said. “We're rather busy, as you see. Get on with that, you sea-cooks,” he bawled at two fellows who were doing nothing. All over the ship, men were hauling, splicing, and stowing cargo.
“To-day's Friday: we're off on Wednesday with any luck. Will you come this way?” He led us down the companion to a dark hole which he called the saloon. “Names? What! are you Mr. Treffry? Then we're partners!” A schoolboy's glee came on his face.
“Look here!” he said; “I can show you something,” and he unlocked the door of a cabin. There appeared to be nothing in it but a huge piece of tarpaulin, which depended, bulging, from the topmost bunk. He pulled it up. The lower bunk had been removed, and in its place was the ugly body of a dismounted Gatling gun.
“Got six of them,” he whispered, with unholy mystery, through which his native frankness gaped out. “Worth their weight in gold out there just now, the skipper says. Got a heap of rifles, too, and lots of ammunition. He's given me a share. This is better than the P. and O., and playing deck cricket with the passengers. I'd made up my mind already to chuck that, and go in for plantin' sugar, when I ran across the skipper. Wonderful chap, the skipper! I'll go and tell him. He's been out all night; only came aboard at four bells; having a nap now, but he won't mind that for you.”
Off he went. I wondered what there was in Zachary Pearse to attract a youngster of this sort; one of the customary twelve children of some country parson, no doubt-burning to shoot a few niggers, and for ever frank and youthful.
He came back with his hands full of bottles.
“What'll you drink? The skipper'll be here in a jiffy. Excuse my goin' on deck. We're so busy.”
And in five minutes Zachary Pearse did come. He made no attempt to shake hands, for which I respected him. His face looked worn, and more defiant than usual.
“Well, gentlemen?” he said.
“We've come to ask what you're going to do?” said Dan.
“I don't know,” answered Pearse, “that that's any of your business.”
Dan's little eyes were like the eyes of an angry pig.
“You've got five hundred pounds of mine,” he said; “why do you think I gave it you?”
Zachary bit his fingers.
“That's no concern of mine,” he said. “I sail on Wednesday. Your money's safe.”
“Do you know what I think of you?” said Dan.
“No, and you'd better not tell me!” Then, with one of his peculiar changes, he smiled: “As you like, though.”
Dan's face grew very dark. “Give me a plain answer,” he said: “What are you going to do about her?”
Zachary looked up at him from under his brows.
“Nothing.”
“Are you cur enough to deny that you've married her?”
Zachary looked at him coolly. “Not at all,” he said.
“What in God's name did you do it for?”
“You've no monopoly in the post of husband, Mr. Treffry.”
“To put a child in that position! Haven't you the heart of a man? What d' ye come sneaking in at night for? By Gad! Don't you know you've done a beastly thing?”
Zachary's face darkened, he clenched his fists. Then he seemed to shut his anger into himself.
“You wanted me to leave her to you,” he sneered. “I gave her my promise that I'd take her out there, and we'd have gone off on Wednesday quietly enough, if you hadn't come and nosed the whole thing out with your infernal dog. The fat's in the fire! There's no reason why I should take her now. I'll come back to her a rich man, or not at all.”
“And in the meantime?” I slipped in.
He turned to me, in an ingratiating way.
“I would have taken her to save the fuss—I really would—it's not my fault the thing's come out. I'm on a risky job. To have her with me might ruin the whole thing; it would affect my nerve. It isn't safe for her.”
“And what's her position to be,” I said, “while you're away? Do you think she'd have married you if she'd known you were going to leave her like this? You ought to give up this business.
“You stole her. Her life's in your hands; she's only a child!”
A quiver passed over his face; it showed that he was suffering.
“Give it up!” I urged.
“My last farthing's in it,” he sighed; “the chance of a lifetime.”
He looked at me doubtfully, appealingly, as if for the first time in his life he had been given a glimpse of that dilemma of consequences which his nature never recognises. I thought he was going to give in. Suddenly, to my horror, Dan growled, “Play the man!”
Pearse turned his head. “I don't want your advice anyway,” he said; “I'll not be dictated to.”
“To your last day,” said Dan, “you shall answer to me for the way you treat her.”
Zachary smiled.
“Do you see that fly?” he said. “Wel—I care for you as little as this,” and he flicked the fly off his white trousers. “Good-morning...!”
The noble mariners who manned our boat pulled lustily for the shore, but we had hardly shoved off' when a storm of rain burst over the ship, and she seemed to vanish, leaving a picture on my eyes of the mate waving his cap above the rail, with his tanned young face bent down at us, smiling, keen, and friendly.
.... We reached the shore drenched, angry with ourselves, and with each other; I started sulkily for home.
As I rode past an orchard, an apple, loosened by the rainstorm, came down with a thud.
“The apples were ripe and ready to fall, Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall.”
I made up my mind to pack, and go away. But there's a strangeness, a sort of haunting fascination in it all. To you, who don't know the people, it may only seem a piece of rather sordid folly. But it isn't the good, the obvious, the useful that puts a spell on us in life. It's the bizarre, the dimly seen, the mysterious for good or evil.
The sun was out again when I rode up to the farm; its yellow thatch shone through the trees as if sheltering a store of gladness and good news. John Ford himself opened the door to me.
He began with an apology, which made me feel more than ever an intruder; then he said:
“I have not spoken to my granddaughter—I waited to see Dan Treffry.”
He was stern and sad-eyed, like a man with a great weight of grief on his shoulders. He looked as if he had not slept; his dress was out of order, he had not taken his clothes off, I think. He isn't a man whom you can pity. I felt I had taken a liberty in knowing of the matter at all. When I told him where we had been, he said:
“It was good of you to take this trouble. That you should have had to! But since such things have come to pass—” He made a gesture full of horror. He gave one the impression of a man whose pride was struggling against a mortal hurt. Presently he asked:
“You saw him, you say? He admitted this marriage? Did he give an explanation?”
I tried to make Pearse's point of view clear. Before this old man, with his inflexible will and sense of duty, I felt as if I held a brief for Zachary, and must try to do him justice.
“Let me understand,” he said at last. “He stole her, you say, to make sure; and deserts her within a fortnight.”
“He says he meant to take her—”
“Do you believe that?”
Before I could answer, I saw Pasiance standing at the window. How long she had been there I don't know.
“Is it true that he is going to leave me behind?” she cried out.
I could only nod.
“Did you hear him your own self?”
“Yes.”
She stamped her foot.
“But he promised! He promised!”
John Ford went towards her.
“Don't touch me, grandfather! I hate every one! Let him do what he likes, I don't care.”
John Ford's face turned quite grey.
“Pasiance,” he said, “did you want to leave me so much?”
She looked straight at us, and said sharply:
“What's the good of telling stories. I can't help its hurting you.”
“What did you think you would find away from here?”
She laughed.
“Find? I don't know—nothing; I wouldn't be stifled anyway. Now I suppose you'll shut me up because I'm a weak girl, not strong like men!”
“Silence!” said John Ford; “I will make him take you.”
“You shan't!” she cried; “I won't let you. He's free to do as he likes. He's free—I tell you all, everybody—free!”
She ran through the window, and vanished.
John Ford made a movement as if the bottom had dropped out of his world. I left him there.
I went to the kitchen, where Hopgood was sitting at the table, eating bread and cheese. He got up on seeing me, and very kindly brought me some cold bacon and a pint of ale.
“I thart I shude be seeing yu, zurr,” he said between his bites; “Therr's no thart to 'atin' 'bout the 'ouse to-day. The old wumman's puzzivantin' over Miss Pasiance. Young girls are skeery critters”—he brushed his sleeve over his broad, hard jaws, and filled a pipe “specially when it's in the blood of 'em. Squire Rick Voisey werr a dandy; an' Mistress Voisey—well, she werr a nice lady tu, but”—rolling the stem of his pipe from corner to corner of his mouth—“she werr a pra-aper vixen.”
Hopgood's a good fellow, and I believe as soft as he looks hard, but he's not quite the sort with whom one chooses to talk over a matter like this. I went upstairs, and began to pack, but after a bit dropped it for a book, and somehow or other fell asleep.
I woke, and looked at my watch; it was five o'clock. I had been asleep four hours. A single sunbeam was slanting across from one of my windows to the other, and there was the cool sound of milk dropping into pails; then, all at once, a stir as of alarm, and heavy footsteps.
I opened my door. Hopgood and a coast-guardsman were carrying Pasiance slowly up the stairs. She lay in their arms without moving, her face whiter than her dress, a scratch across the forehead, and two or three drops there of dried blood. Her hands were clasped, and she slowly crooked and stiffened out her fingers. When they turned with her at the stair top, she opened her lips, and gasped, “All right, don't put me down. I can bear it.” They passed, and, with a half-smile in her eyes, she said something to me that I couldn't catch; the door was shut, and the excited whispering began again below. I waited for the men to come out, and caught hold of Hopgood. He wiped the sweat off his forehead.
“Poor young thing!” he said. “She fell—down the cliffs—'tis her back—coastguard saw her 'twerr they fetched her in. The Lord 'elp her mebbe she's not broken up much! An' Mister Ford don't know! I'm gwine for the doctor.”
There was an hour or more to wait before he came; a young fellow; almost a boy. He looked very grave, when he came out of her room.
“The old woman there fond of her? nurse her well...? Fond as a dog!—good! Don't know—can't tell for certain! Afraid it's the spine, must have another opinion! What a plucky girl! Tell Mr. Ford to have the best man he can get in Torquay—there's C—-. I'll be round the first thing in the morning. Keep her dead quiet. I've left a sleeping draught; she'll have fever tonight.”
John Ford came in at last. Poor old man! What it must have cost him not to go to her for fear of the excitement! How many times in the next few hours didn't I hear him come to the bottom of the stairs; his heavy wheezing, and sighing; and the forlorn tread of his feet going back! About eleven, just as I was going to bed, Mrs. Hopgood came to my door.
“Will yu come, sir,” she said; “she's asking for yu. Naowt I can zay but what she will see yu; zeems crazy, don't it?” A tear trickled down the old lady's cheek. “Du 'ee come; 'twill du 'err 'arm mebbe, but I dunno—she'll fret else.”
I slipped into the room. Lying back on her pillows, she was breathing quickly with half-closed eyes. There was nothing to show that she had wanted me, or even knew that I was there. The wick of the candle, set by the bedside, had been snuffed too short, and gave but a faint light; both window and door stood open, still there was no draught, and the feeble little flame burned quite still, casting a faint yellow stain on the ceiling like the refection from a buttercup held beneath a chin. These ceilings are far too low! Across the wide, squat window the apple branches fell in black stripes which never stirred. It was too dark to see things clearly. At the foot of the bed was a chest, and there Mrs. Hopgood had sat down, moving her lips as if in speech. Mingled with the half-musty smell of age; there were other scents, of mignonette, apples, and some sweet-smelling soap. The floor had no carpet, and there was not one single dark object except the violin, hanging from a nail over the bed. A little, round clock ticked solemnly.
“Why won't you give me that stuff, Mums?” Pasiance said in a faint, sharp voice. “I want to sleep.”
“Have you much pain?” I asked.
“Of course I have; it's everywhere.”
She turned her face towards me.
“You thought I did it on purpose, but you're wrong. If I had, I'd have done it better than this. I wouldn't have this brutal pain.” She put her fingers over her eyes. “It's horrible to complain! Only it's so bad! But I won't again—promise.”
She took the sleeping draught gratefully, making a face, like a child after a powder.
“How long do you think it'll be before I can play again? Oh! I forgot—there are other things to think about.” She held out her hand to me. “Look at my ring. Married—isn't it funny? Ha, ha! Nobody will ever understand—that's funny too! Poor Gran! You see, there wasn't any reason—only me. That's the only reason I'm telling you now; Mums is there—but she doesn't count; why don't you count, Mums?”
The fever was fighting against the draught; she had tossed the clothes back from her throat, and now and then raised one thin arm a little, as if it eased her; her eyes had grown large, and innocent like a child's; the candle, too, had flared, and was burning clearly.
“Nobody is to tell him—nobody at all; promise...! If I hadn't slipped, it would have been different. What would have happened then? You can't tell; and I can't—that's funny! Do you think I loved him? Nobody marries without love, do they? Not quite without love, I mean. But you see I wanted to be free, he said he'd take me; and now he's left me after all! I won't be left, I can't! When I came to the cliff—that bit where the ivy grows right down—there was just the sea there, underneath; so I thought I would throw myself over and it would be all quiet; and I climbed on a ledge, it looked easier from there, but it was so high, I wanted to get back; and then my foot slipped; and now it's all pain. You can't think much, when you're in pain.”
From her eyes I saw that she was dropping off.
“Nobody can take you away from-yourself. He's not to be told—not even—I don't—want you—to go away, because—” But her eyes closed, and she dropped off to sleep.
They don't seem to know this morning whether she is better or worse....
.... It seems more like three weeks than three days since I wrote. The time passes slowly in a sickhouse...! The doctors were here this morning, they give her forty hours. Not a word of complaint has passed her lips since she knew. To see her you would hardly think her ill; her cheeks have not had time to waste or lose their colour. There is not much pain, but a slow, creeping numbness.... It was John Ford's wish that she should be told. She just turned her head to the wall and sighed; then to poor old Mrs. Hopgood, who was crying her heart out: “Don't cry, Mums, I don't care.”
When they had gone, she asked for her violin. She made them hold it for her, and drew the bow across the strings; but the notes that came out were so trembling and uncertain that she dropped the bow and broke into a passion of sobbing. Since then, no complaint or moan of any kind....
But to go back. On Sunday, the day after I wrote, as I was coming from a walk, I met a little boy making mournful sounds on a tin whistle.
“Coom ahn!” he said, “the Miss wahnts t' zee yu.”
I went to her room. In the morning she had seemed better, but now looked utterly exhausted. She had a letter in her hand.
“It's this,” she said. “I don't seem to understand it. He wants me to do something—but I can't think, and my eyes feel funny. Read it to me, please.”
The letter was from Zachary. I read it to her in a low voice, for Mrs. Hopgood was in the room, her eyes always fixed on Pasiance above her knitting. When I'd finished, she made me read it again, and yet again. At first she seemed pleased, almost excited, then came a weary, scornful look, and before I'd finished the third time she was asleep. It was a remarkable letter, that seemed to bring the man right before one's eyes. I slipped it under her fingers on the bed-clothes, and went out. Fancy took me to the cliff where she had fallen. I found the point of rock where the cascade of ivy flows down the cliff; the ledge on which she had climbed was a little to my right—a mad place. It showed plainly what wild emotions must have been driving her! Behind was a half-cut cornfield with a fringe of poppies, and swarms of harvest insects creeping and flying; in the uncut corn a landrail kept up a continual charring. The sky was blue to the very horizon, and the sea wonderful, under that black wild cliff stained here and there with red. Over the dips and hollows of the fields great white clouds hung low down above the land. There are no brassy, east-coast skies here; but always sleepy, soft-shaped clouds, full of subtle stir and change. Passages of Zachary's Pearse's letter kept rising to my lips. After all he's the man that his native place, and life, and blood have made him. It is useless to expect idealists where the air is soft and things good to look on (the idealist grows where he must create beauty or comfort for himself); useless to expect a man of law and order, in one whose fathers have stared at the sea day and night for a thousand years—the sea, full of its promises of unknown things, never quite the same, a slave to its own impulses. Man is an imitative animal....
“Life's hard enough,” he wrote, “without tying yourself down. Don't think too hardly of me! Shall I make you happier by taking you into danger? If I succeed you'll be a rich woman; but I shall fail if you're with me. To look at you makes me soft. At sea a man dreams of all the good things on land, he'll dream of the heather, and honey—you're like that; and he'll dream of the apple-trees, and the grass of the orchards—you're like that; sometimes he only lies on his back and wishes—and you're like that, most of all like that....”
When I was reading those words I remember a strange, soft, half-scornful look came over Pasiance's face; and once she said, “But that's all nonsense, isn't it...?”
Then followed a long passage about what he would gain if he succeeded, about all that he was risking, the impossibility of failure, if he kept his wits about him. “It's only a matter of two months or so,” he went on; “stay where you are, dear, or go to my Dad. He'll be glad to have you. There's my mother's room. There's no one to say 'No' to your fiddle there; you can play it by the sea; and on dark nights you'll have the stars dancing to you over the water as thick as bees. I've looked at them often, thinking of you....”
Pasiance had whispered to me, “Don't read that bit,” and afterwards I left it out.... Then the sensuous side of him shows up: “When I've brought this off, there's the whole world before us. There are places I can take you to. There's one I know, not too warm and not too cold, where you can sit all day in the shade and watch the creepers, and the cocoa-palms, still as still; nothing to do or care about; all the fruits you can think of; no noise but the parrots and the streams, and a splash when a nigger dives into a water-hole. Pasiance, we'll go there! With an eighty-ton craft there's no sea we couldn't know. The world's a fine place for those who go out to take it; there's lots of unknown stuff' in it yet. I'll fill your lap, my pretty, so full of treasures that you shan't know yourself. A man wasn't meant to sit at home....”
Throughout this letter—for all its real passion—one could feel how the man was holding to his purpose—the rather sordid purpose of this venture. He's unconscious of it; for he is in love with her; but he must be furthering his own ends. He is vital—horribly vital! I wonder less now that she should have yielded.
What visions hasn't he dangled before her. There was physical attraction, too—I haven't forgotten the look I saw on her face at Black Mill. But when all's said and done, she married him, because she's Pasiance Voisey, who does things and wants “to get back.” And she lies there dying; not he nor any other man will ever take her away. It's pitiful to think of him tingling with passion, writing that letter to this doomed girl in that dark hole of a saloon. “I've wanted money,” he wrote, “ever since I was a little chap sitting in the fields among the cows.... I want it for you now, and I mean to have it. I've studied the thing two years; I know what I know....
“The moment this is in the post I leave for London. There are a hundred things to look after still; I can't trust myself within reach of you again till the anchor's weighed. When I re-christened her the Pied Witch, I thought of you—you witch to me....”
There followed a solemn entreaty to her to be on the path leading to the cove at seven o'clock on Wednesday evening (that is, to-morrow) when he would come ashore and bid her good-bye. It was signed, “Your loving husband, Zachary Pearse....”
I lay at the edge of that cornfield a long time; it was very peaceful. The church bells had begun to ring. The long shadows came stealing out from the sheaves; woodpigeons rose one by one, and flapped off to roost; the western sky was streaked with red, and all the downs and combe bathed in the last sunlight. Perfect harvest weather; but oppressively still, the stillness of suspense....
Life at the farm goes on as usual. We have morning and evening prayers. John Ford reads them fiercely, as though he were on the eve of a revolt against his God. Morning and evening he visits her, comes out wheezing heavily, and goes to his own room; I believe, to pray. Since this morning I haven't dared meet him. He is a strong old man—but this will break him up....
.... It's over—I leave here to-morrow, and go abroad.
A quiet afternoon—not a breath up in the churchyard! I was there quite half an hour before they came. Some red cows had strayed into the adjoining orchard, and were rubbing their heads against the railing. While I stood there an old woman came and drove them away; afterwards, she stooped and picked up the apples that had fallen before their time.
“The apples are ripe and ready to fall, Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall; There came an old woman and gathered them all, Oh! heigh-ho! and gathered them all.”
.... They brought Pasiance very simply—no hideous funeral trappings, thank God—the farm hands carried her, and there was no one there but John Ford, the Hopgoods, myself, and that young doctor. They read the service over her grave. I can hear John Ford's “Amen!” now. When it was over he walked away bareheaded in the sun, without a word. I went up there again this evening, and wandered amongst the tombstones. “Richard Voisey,” “John, the son of Richard and Constance Voisey,” “Margery Voisey,” so many generations of them in that corner; then “Richard Voisey and Agnes his wife,” and next to it that new mound on which a sparrow was strutting and the shadows of the apple-trees already hovering.
I will tell you the little left to tell....
On Wednesday afternoon she asked for me again.
“It's only till seven,” she whispered. “He's certain to come then. But if I—were to die first—then tell him—I'm sorry for him. They keep saying: 'Don't talk—don't talk!' Isn't it stupid? As if I should have any other chance! There'll be no more talking after to-night! Make everybody come, please—I want to see them all. When you're dying you're freer than any other time—nobody wants you to do things, nobody cares what you say.... He promised me I should do what I liked if I married him—I never believed that really—but now I can do what I like; and say all the things I want to.” She lay back silent; she could not after all speak the inmost thoughts that are in each of us, so sacred that they melt away at the approach of words.
I shall remember her like that—with the gleam of a smile in her half-closed eyes, her red lips parted—such a quaint look of mockery, pleasure, regret, on her little round, upturned face; the room white, and fresh with flowers, the breeze guttering the apple-leaves against the window. In the night they had unhooked the violin and taken it away; she had not missed it.... When Dan came, I gave up my place to him. He took her hand gently in his great paw, without speaking.
“How small my hand looks there,” she said, “too small.” Dan put it softly back on the bedclothes and wiped his forehead. Pasiance cried in a sharp whisper: “Is it so hot in here? I didn't know.” Dan bent down, put his lips to her fingers and left the room.
The afternoon was long, the longest I've ever spent. Sometimes she seemed to sleep, sometimes whispered to herself about her mother, her grandfather, the garden, or her cats—all sorts of inconsequent, trivial, even ludicrous memories seemed to throng her mind—never once, I think, did she speak of Zachary, but, now and then, she asked the time.... Each hour she grew visibly weaker. John Ford sat by her without moving, his heavy breathing was often the only sound; sometimes she rubbed her fingers on his hand, without speaking. It was a summary of their lives together. Once he prayed aloud for her in a hoarse voice; then her pitiful, impatient eyes signed to me.
“Quick,” she whispered, “I want him; it's all so—cold.”
I went out and ran down the path towards the cove.
Leaning on a gate stood Zachary, an hour before his time; dressed in the same old blue clothes and leather-peaked cap as on the day when I saw him first. He knew nothing of what had happened. But at a quarter of the truth, I'm sure he divined the whole, though he would not admit it to himself. He kept saying, “It can't be. She'll be well in a few days—a sprain! D' you think the sea-voyage.... Is she strong enough to be moved now at once?”
It was painful to see his face, so twisted by the struggle between his instinct and his vitality. The sweat poured down his forehead. He turned round as we walked up the path, and pointed out to sea. There was his steamer. “I could get her on board in no time. Impossible! What is it, then? Spine? Good God! The doctors.... Sometimes they'll do wonders!” It was pitiful to see his efforts to blind himself to the reality.
“It can't be, she's too young. We're walking very slow.” I told him she was dying.
For a second I thought he was going to run away. Then he jerked up his head, and rushed on towards the house. At the foot of the staircase he gripped me by the shoulder.
“It's not true!” he said; “she'll get better now I'm here. I'll stay. Let everything go. I'll stay.”
“Now's the time,” I said, “to show you loved her. Pull yourself together, man!” He shook all over.
“Yes!” was all he answered. We went into her room. It seemed impossible she was going to die; the colour was bright in her cheeks, her lips trembling and pouted as if she had just been kissed, her eyes gleaming, her hair so dark and crisp, her face so young....
Half an hour later I stole to the open door of her room. She was still and white as the sheets of her bed. John Ford stood at the foot; and, bowed to the level of the pillows, his head on his clenched fists, sat Zachary. It was utterly quiet. The guttering of the leaves had ceased. When things have come to a crisis, how little one feels—no fear, no pity, no sorrow, rather the sense, as when a play is over, of anxiety to get away!
Suddenly Zachary rose, brushed past me without seeing, and ran downstairs.
Some hours later I went out on the path leading to the cove. It was pitch-black; the riding light of the Pied Witch was still there, looking no bigger than a firefly. Then from in front I heard sobbing—a man's sobs; no sound is quite so dreadful. Zachary Pearse got up out of the bank not ten paces off.
I had no heart to go after him, and sat down in the hedge. There was something subtly akin to her in the fresh darkness of the young night; the soft bank, the scent of honeysuckle, the touch of the ferns and brambles. Death comes to all of us, and when it's over it's over; but this blind business—of those left behind!
A little later the ship whistled twice; her starboard light gleamed faintly—and that was all....
.... Do you remember the letters I wrote you from Moor Farm nearly three years ago? To-day I rode over there. I stopped at Brixham on the way for lunch, and walked down to the quay. There had been a shower—but the sun was out again, shining on the sea, the brown-red sails, and the rampart of slate roofs.
A trawler was lying there, which had evidently been in a collision. The spiky-bearded, thin-lipped fellow in torn blue jersey and sea-boots who was superintending the repairs, said to me a little proudly:
“Bane in collision, zurr; like to zee over her?” Then suddenly screwing up his little blue eyes, he added:
“Why, I remembers yu. Steered yu along o' the young lady in this yer very craft.”
It was Prawle, Zachary Pearse's henchman.
“Yes,” he went on, “that's the cutter.”
“And Captain Pearse?”
He leant his back against the quay, and spat. “He was a pra-aper man; I never zane none like 'en.”
“Did you do any good out there?”
Prawle gave me a sharp glance.
“Gude? No, t'was arrm we done, vrom ztart to finish—had trouble all the time. What a man cude du, the skipper did. When yu caan't du right, zome calls it 'Providence'. 'Tis all my eye an' Betty Martin! What I zay es, 'tis these times, there's such a dale o' folk, a dale of puzzivantin' fellers; the world's to small.”
With these words there flashed across me a vision of Drake crushed into our modern life by the shrinkage of the world; Drake caught in the meshes of red tape, electric wires, and all the lofty appliances of our civilization. Does a type survive its age; live on into times that have no room for it? The blood is there—and sometimes there's a throw-back.... All fancy! Eh?
“So,” I said, “you failed?”
Prawle wriggled.
“I wudden' goo for to zay that, zurr—'tis an ugly word. Da-am!” he added, staring at his boots, “'twas thru me tu. We were along among the haythen, and I mus' nades goo for to break me leg. The capt'n he wudden' lave me. 'One Devon man,' he says to me, 'don' lave anotherr.' We werr six days where we shuld ha' been tu; when we got back to the ship a cruiser had got her for gun-runnin'.”
“And what has become of Captain Pearse?”
Prawle answered, “Zurr, I belave 'e went to China, 'tis onsartin.”
“He's not dead?”
Prawle looked at me with a kind of uneasy anger.
“Yu cudden' kell 'en! 'Tis true, mun 'll die zome day. But therr's not a one that'll show better zport than Capt'n Zach'ry Pearse.”
I believe that; he will be hard to kill. The vision of him comes up, with his perfect balance, defiant eyes, and sweetish smile; the way the hair of his beard crisped a little, and got blacker on the cheeks; the sort of desperate feeling he gave, that one would never get the better of him, that he would never get the better of himself.
I took leave of Prawle and half a crown. Before I was off the quay I heard him saying to a lady, “Bane in collision, marm! Like to zee over her?”
After lunch I rode on to Moor. The old place looked much the same; but the apple-trees were stripped of fruit, and their leaves beginning to go yellow and fall. One of Pasiance's cats passed me in the orchard hunting a bird, still with a ribbon round its neck. John Ford showed me all his latest improvements, but never by word or sign alluded to the past. He inquired after Dan, back in New Zealand now, without much interest; his stubbly beard and hair have whitened; he has grown very stout, and I noticed that his legs are not well under control; he often stops to lean on his stick. He was very ill last winter; and sometimes, they say, will go straight off to sleep in the middle of a sentence.
I managed to get a few minutes with the Hopgoods. We talked of Pasiance sitting in the kitchen under a row of plates, with that clinging smell of wood-smoke, bacon, and age bringing up memories, as nothing but scents can. The dear old lady's hair, drawn so nicely down her forehead on each side from the centre of her cap, has a few thin silver lines; and her face is a thought more wrinkled. The tears still come into her eyes when she talks of her “lamb.”
Of Zachary I heard nothing, but she told me of old Pearse's death.
“Therr they found 'en, zo to spake, dead—in th' sun; but Ha-apgood can tell yu,” and Hopgood, ever rolling his pipe, muttered something, and smiled his wooden smile.
He came to see me off from the straw-yard. “'Tis like death to the varrm, zurr,” he said, putting all the play of his vast shoulders into the buckling of my girths. “Mister Ford—well! And not one of th' old stock to take it when 'e's garn.... Ah! it werr cruel; my old woman's never been hersel' since. Tell 'ee what 'tis—don't du t' think to much.”
I went out of my way to pass the churchyard. There were flowers, quite fresh, chrysanthemums, and asters; above them the white stone, already stained:
“PASIANCE
“WIFE OF ZACHARY PEARSE
“'The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away.'”
The red cows were there too; the sky full of great white clouds, some birds whistling a little mournfully, and in the air the scent of fallen leaves....
May, 1900.
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg