Читать книгу Arminell, a social romance - Baring-Gould Sabine - Страница 20

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TANDEM.

On the edge of a moor, at the extreme limits to which man had driven back savage nature, where were the last boundary walls of stone piled up without compacting mortar, was a farm-house called Court. It stood at the point where granite broke out from under the schistose beds, and where it had tilted these beds up into a perpendicular position. A vast period of time had passed since the molten granite thus broke forth, and the ragged edges of upturned rock had been weathered down to mere stumps, but on these stumps sat the homestead and farm-house of Court, with a growth of noble sycamores about it.

A stream brawling down from the moor swept half round this mass of old worn-down rock, a couple of granite slabs had been cast across it, meeting in the middle on a rude pier, and this served as a foot-bridge, but carts and waggons traversed the water, and scrambled up a steep ascent cut out of the rock by wheels and winter runs.

If Court had been a corn-growing farm, this would have been inconvenient, but this Court was not. It was a sheep and cattle rearing farm, and on it was tilled nothing but a little rye and some turnips.

In an elastic air fresh from the ocean, at a height of a thousand feet above the sea, the lungs find delight in each inhalation, and the pulses leap with perennial youth. ​Pecuniary embarrassments cease to oppress, and the political outlook appears less threatening.

At the bottom of yonder valley three hundred feet above the sea-level, where a steamy, dreamy atmosphere hangs, we see that England is going to the dogs; the end of English commerce, agriculture, the aristocracy, the church, the crown, the constitution is at hand—in a word, the Saturday Review expresses exactly our temper of mind. A little way up the hill, we think the recuperative power of the British nation is so great, the national vigour is so enormous, that it will shake itself free of its troubles in time—in time, and with patience—in a word, we begin to see through the spectacles of the Spectator. But when we have our foot on the heather, and scent the incense of the gorse, and hear the stonechat and the pewit, and see the flicker of the silver cotton grass about us, why then—we feel we are in the best of worlds, and in the best little nook of the whole world, and that all mankind is pushing its way, like us, upward with a scramble over obstacles; it will, like us, in the end breathe the same sparkling air, and enjoy the same extensive outlook, and be like us without care.

From Court what a wonderful prospect was commanded. The Angel in the Apocalypse stood with one foot on the land, and the other in the sea; so Court stood half in the rich cultivated garden of the Western Paradise, and half in the utter desolation of treeless moor. To south and west lay woodlands and pasture, parks and villages, tufts of Scotch fir, cedars, oak and elm and beech, with rooks cawing and doves cooing, and the woodpecker hooting among them; to the east and north lay the haunt of the blackcock and hawk and wimbrel, and tracts of heather flushed with flower, and gorse ablaze with sun, and aromatic as incense.

Far away in the north-west, when the sun went down, he ​set in a quiver of gold-leaf, he doubled his size, and expired like the phœnix in flame. That was when he touched the ocean, and in touching revealed it.

What a mystery there is in distance? How the soul is drawn forth, step by step, over each rolling hill, down each half-disclosed valley. How it wonders at every sparkle where a far-off window reflects the sun, and admires where the mists gather in wooded clefts, and asks, what is that? when the sun discloses white specks far away on slopes of turquoise; as the Israelites asked when they saw the Manna. How a curling pillar of smoke stirs up interest, rising high and dispersing slowly. We watch and are filled with conjecture.

As the afternoon sun shines sideways on the moor-cheek, it discloses what it did not reveal at other times, the faintest trace of furrows where are no fields now, where no plough has run since the memory of man. Was corn once grown there? At that bleak altitude? Did the climate permit of its ripening at one time? No one can answer these questions, but how else account for these furrows occasionally, only under certain aspects discernible? And to Court there was a corn-chamber, a sort of tower standing on a solid basement of stone six feet above the ground, a square construction all of granite blocks, floored within with granite, and with a conical slated roof, and a flight of stone steps leading up to it. A tower—a fortress built against rats, who will gnaw through oak and even lead, but must break their teeth against granite.

The corn-chamber was overhung by a sycamore, and at its side a rown, or "witch-bean" as it is locally called—a mountain ash—had taken root, flourished and ripened its crimson berries.

On the lowest step but one of the flight leading to the corn-chamber sat Thomasine Kite, the daughter of the white-witch, Patience. The evening was still and balmy in ​the valleys; here on the moor-edge airs ever stirred and were crisp. The bells were ringing for evening service far away in a belfry that stood on a hill against the western sky, and their music came in wafts mingled with the hum of the wind among the heather, and the twitter among the sycamores.

Aloft, on the highest twig of the tallest tree sat a crow calling itself in Greek, Korax! and so pleased with the sound of its name in Greek that it repeated its name again and again, and grew giddy with vanity, and nearly over- balanced itself, and had to spread wings and recover its poise.

Thomasine was in a bad humour. All the household of Court were away, master and mistress, men and maids, and she was left alone like that crow on the tree-tops.

"Tamsin!" muttered the girl, "what a foolish name I have got. It's like damson, of which they make cheese. If they'd call me by my proper name of Thomasine, it would be all right, but Tamsin I hate."

"Korax!" croaked the crow. "Why was I not born in Greece to be called Korax? Crow is vulgar."

"I'm tired of my place," grumbled the girl; "here I am a servant maid at Court, out of the world and hard worked. Nothing going on, nothing to see, no amusements, nothing to read."

Why was Thomasine restless and impatient for a change? She did not herself know. She was dissatisfied with what? She did not herself properly know. She had vigorous health; she had work, but not more than what with her fresh youth and hearty body she could easily execute. She had sufficient to eat. The farmer and his wife were not exacting, nor rough and bad tempered. The workmen and women on the farm were as workmen and women are, with good and bad points about them. Elsewhere she would meet with much the same sort of associates. She knew ​that. Her wage was not high, but it was as much as she was likely to get in a farm-house, and a small wage there with freedom was better than a big wage in a gentleman's family with restraint. She knew that. Yet she was not content. She wanted something, and she did not know what. She would give her mistress notice and go elsewhere. Whither? She did not know. At any rate it would be elsewhere, a change; and she craved for a change, for she had been a twelvemonth in one place. Would she like her new situation? She did not know. Would she, when in a town, look back on the healthy life at Court? Possibly; she did not know. But she could not stay, because as the passion for roving is in the gipsy blood, so was the fever of unrest in hers. She was tired of life as it presented itself to her, uniform, commonplace, unsensational.

There was a period in European history when all was change, when every people plucked itself out of its ancestral ground and went a wandering; when the whole of the continent was trampled over by races galloping west, like cattle and wild beasts disturbed by a prairie fire. What was the cause? We hardly know, but we know that there was not a people, a race, a class which was not thus inspired with the passion for change of domicile. The Germans entitle that period the time of the great Folk-wandering. We are in the midst of such another Folk-wandering, but it is not now the migration of races and nations, but of classes and individuals; the passion for change drives the men and women out of the country to towns, and the young out of their situations. It is in the air, it is in their blood.

The evening sun touched the western sea, and flared up in a spout of fire. Then Thomasine rose to her feet. Her red hair had fallen, and she bent her arms behind her, to do it up. Gorgeous that hair was in the evening sun, it seemed itself to be on fire, to be incandescent in every hair, and her attitude as she stood on the step was grand, her ​vigorous, graceful form, her splendid proportions were shown in perfection, with bosom expanded, and her hands behind her head collecting and tying and twisting the fire that rained off it. The evening sun was full on her, and filled her eyes that she could see nothing; but her handsome face was shown illuminated as a lamp against the cold grey walls of the corn-chamber. Her shadow was cast up the steps and against the door, a shadow that had no blackness in it, but the purple of the plum.

"Tamsin! my word, you are on fire!"

She started, let go her hair, and it fell about her, enveloping her shoulders and arms in flame. Then she put one hand above her eyes, and looked to see who addressed her.

"You here, Archelaus! What has brought you to this lost corner of the world, this time o' day?"

"You, of course, Tamsin, what else?"

"I wish you'd choose a better time than when I'm doing up my hair."

"I could not wish a better time than when you are in a blaze of glory."

The young man who spoke was Archelaus Tubb, son of the captain of the slate quarry. He was a simple, good-humoured, not clever young man. Strongly built, with sparkling eyes and a merry laugh, he was just such a fellow as would have made his way in the world, had he been endowed with wits. He was not absolutely stupid, but he was muddle-headed. He succeeded in nothing that he undertook. He had been apprenticed to a carpenter, and at the expiration of three years was unable even to make a gate.

He tried his hand at gardening, and dug graves for potatoes, and put in bulbs upside down. He had faculties, but was incapable of applying them, or was too careless to call them together and concentrate them on his work. There seemed small prospect of his earning wage above that of a day-labourer.

​He had fair hair, an honest face, always on the alert for a laugh. As he had been unqualified for any trade, his father had given him work in the quarry, but therein he earned but a labourer's wage, fourteen shillings a week.

Thomasine reseated herself on the lowest step but one, and put her feet on the lowest, and crossed her hands on her lap.

"Arkie," said she; "I am going away from Court, the life here is too dull for me. I want to see the world."

"Where are you going, Tamsin?"

"Not to bury myself in a place where nothing is doing, again."

"Nothing doing! There is plenty of work on a farm."

"Work!" scorned Thomasine. "Who wants work now? not I—I want to go where there are murders and burglaries and divorces—into a place where there is life."

"Queer sort of life that," said Archelaus, casting himself down on the lowest step.

"I want to be where those things are done and talked about," said Thomasine; "what do I care about how the corn looks, and whether the sheep have the foot-rot, and what per stone is the price of bullocks? Now—you need not sit on my feet."

"I will choose a higher step," said the lad; then he stepped past her, and seated himself on that above her.

"Upon my word, Tamsin," he said, "you have wonderful hair. It is like mother's copper kettle new scoured, and spun into spiders' threads. Some red hair," continued he, "is coarse as wire, but this," he put his fingers through the splendid waves, "but this——"

"Is not for you to meddle with," said Thomasine. "Shall I make my fortune with it in the world?"

She stood up, and stepped past him, and seated herself on the step immediately above that he occupied.

"In the world!" repeated Archelaus. "What world—— ​that where murders and burglaries and divorces are the great subject of talk?"

"Aye—in the world where something is doing, where there is life, not in the world of mangold-wurzel."

"I do not know, Tamsin," said the lad dispiritedly. "I hope not."

"Why not? I am not happy here. I want to be where something is stirring. "Why," said Thomasine with a flash of anger in her cheek and eye and the tone of her voice—"Why am I to be a poor farm girl, and Miss Arminell Inglett to have all she wishes? She to be wealthy, and I to have nothing? She to be happy, and I wretched? I suppose I am good-looking, eh, Arkie?"

"Of course you are," said he; "but, Tamsin, I cannot talk to you as you are behind me."

"I do not care to see your face," said the girl, "the back of your collar and coat are enough for me. Is that your Sunday wide-awake?"

"Yes—what have you against it?"

"Only that there is a hole in it, there"—she thrust her finger through the gap in the crown, and touched his scalp.

"I know there is, Tamsin; a coal bounced on to it from the fire."

"Without bringing light to your brain."

"I shall change my place," said Archelaus; he stood up, stepped past the girl, and seated himself above her.

"Now," said he, "I can look down on, and seek for blemishes in your head."

"You will find none there—eh! Arkie? Shall I make my fortune with my hair? Coin it into gold and wear purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day? That is what I want and will have, and I don't care how I get it; so long as I get it. My head and hair are not for you."

​Then she stood up, strode past Archelaus, and planted herself on the step higher than that he occupied.

"This is a queer keeping company, tandem fashion, and changing the leader," laughed Archelaus.

"We are not keeping company," answered Thomasine. "Tandem is best as we are, single best of all."

"I don't see why we should not keep company," said the lad.

"I do," answered Thomasine sharply; "have I not made it plain to you that I didn't want a life of drudgery, and that I choose to have a life in which I may amuse myself?"

"Let us try to sit on the same step," said Archelaus, "and then we can discuss the matter together, better than as we are, with one turning the back on the other."

"There is not room, Arkie."

"I'll try it all events," said he, as he got up and seated himself beside her. "Now we are together, and can keep steady if one puts an arm round the other."

"I will not be held by you," said she, and mounted to the step above; then she burst out laughing, and pointed. "Do y' look there," she said, "there is a keeping of company would suit you."

She indicated a pair that approached the farm. The man was lame, with a bad hip, and his right hand was furnished with two fingers only—it was Samuel Ceely. His maimed hand was thrust between the buttons of his waistcoat, and on his right arm rested the coarse red hand of Joan Melhuish.

"Do y' look there!" exclaimed Thomasine, "are they not laughable? They have been courting these twenty years, and no nigher marriage now than when they began, it might be the same with us, were I fool enough to listen and wait for what you offer."

"It is no laughing matter," said the lad, "it is sad."

"It is sad that she should be such a fool! Will his ​fingers grow again, and his hip right itself? She should have looked about for another lover twenty years ago, now it is too late, and I take warning from her. You, Arkie, are like Samuel Ceely, not in body but in wits, crippled and limping there."

"Tamsin!" exclaimed Arkie, "you shall not speak like that to me." He stood up and stepped to where she was, and seated himself again beside her. That was on the highest step, and they were now both with their backs to the granary door. He tried to take her hand.

"No, Arkie," she said, "I speak seriously, I will not be your sweetheart. I like you well enough. You are a good-tempered, nice fellow, very good natured, and always cheerful, but I won't have you. I can't live on fourteen shillings a week, and I won't live in the country where there is nothing going on, but cows calving and turnips growing. There is no wickedness in either, and wickedness makes life various and enjoyable. I can read and write and cypher, and am tired of work accordingly. I want to enjoy myself. There is mistress!" she exclaimed, stood up, stepped aside, missed her footing, and fell to the bottom of the steps.

"Oh, Tamsin, if only you had let me hold you!" cried Archelaus, and ran down to raise her. "Then you would not have fallen." She had sprained her foot and could only limp.