Читать книгу The West Wind - Crosbie Garstin - Страница 11

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“All Gentlemen, Seamen and able-bodied Landmen that have the courage to face Monsieur and make their Fortunes may meet good encouragement by entering aboard the Ghost, privateer, Captain Ortho Penhale (late master of the famous Guineaman Charming Helen). The Ghost carries 18 carriage guns (nine-pounders) besides swivels, and has every convenience for the accommodation of her crew. A brave vessel underfoot that can either speak or leave any Cruizer on the sea.

“N.B.—The ship lies in the King’s Cove, Falmouth, and will be ready for sea in seven days, when she will proceed to her station to intercept some rich Frenchmen that are expected from the West Indies.

“Be Ready, Lads—slip out in quest

Of riches bound to faithless France,

And bravely take another chance.

Revenge and Riches both invite

A Foe insidious to requite:

May your attempts, my willing Boys,

Be crowned with Honour, Wealth and Joys.”

The pride of a young mother in her first-born filled Ortho as he gazed on his initial appearance in print. The woodcut at the top represented a frigate, whereas the Ghost was a brigantine. The prose was largely copied from stock advertisements and the closing doggerel cribbed wholesale from a Liverpool news-sheet. Nevertheless Ortho tasted the sweets of authorship. Albeit he wished he could re-write it. Several improvements had occurred to him, long words for short. ‘Adventitious encouragement’ instead of ‘good encouragement,’ ‘excluding’ for ‘besides,’ ‘possesses’ for ‘has.’ He mentioned his regret to the printer, who, while agreeing that grandiloquence was style, doubted if it would make the same appeal to the unlettered classes. Ortho admitted the force of this, gave instructions that copies should be broadcast, and mounting his mare turned her into the western road. At noon he baited at the Angel, Helston; hammered the potman for spilling ale on him; pursued and embraced an unwilling kitchenmaid, repulsed another who was too willing; promoted a dog-fight in the yard and won a guinea in bets thereon; nailed one of his advertisements to the beadle’s notice board and rode on again, having in the short space of one hour made himself deservedly popular. By late afternoon he was in Penzance, but he stopped only long enough to place another hand-bill with the town-crier and pushed on for home. By eight o’clock the Keigwin valley lay below him, a green river of tree-tops flowing through bare hills, a surprising valley, cleft in the high country, as it were by an axe stroke. The sun was westering in calm glory. Gwithian church tower stood bold and dark against a sky of clear amber. The broken tors to the north-west lay basking like lions in the glow, their flanks tawny-gold. Eastwards over the sea drifted a bubble moon. Ortho checked the mare and gazed on the valley of his boyhood. Two hundred feet below him, hidden by green billows of oak and ash was his home, Bosula, the Owls’ House. There he had been born, there grown to man’s estate. There, daunted by misfortune, he had time and again returned as to a sure haven. But his wounds healed, his spirit revived and he was away again. He could not help it. Twenty-five years he had been wandering; the gypsy itch—legacy from his reprobate old mother—was in his blood. Not a ship sailed past the valley mouth but his heart sailed with her. Not a gale rocked the valley tree-tops but blew a trumpet call in his ears; the echoed boom of surf on the Twelve Apostles reef was the far thunder of guns. When he should have been ploughing he lounged idle against the plough handles dreaming of the Antilles, green jewels set in shining sapphire; or of the minarets of Morocco City coral pink against the Atlas snows. When he should have been sowing he sat on a gate and saw sunset flame over the white corsair port of Sallee with the Bou Regreg running blood and gold; or the surf at Christiansborg, league-long breakers romping shorewards with rainbows glimmering in their manes; and so on, endless flickering pictures. Memory gave him no peace.

At such times he hated the sheltered valley where life fitted its step to the slow trudge of plough oxen and the years rolled through an ordered calendar of sowings and reapings. Now, in the hour of farewell, his heart went out to it. It was his birthplace, his home, and they had had good sport here, he and Eli, as boys. He remembered wonderful spring days bird’s-nesting in the upper valley; glimpses of blue sky seen between clouds of hawthorn, the deep purple of bluebells underfoot. Summer days down at Monk’s Cove, idling among the rock pools, the sun warm on one’s bare skin; diving into delicious cool green deeps where air bubbles streamed like jets of pearls and the bronze weed banners swayed to and fro lazily. Winter days on Polmenna Downs in the wind and rain; a flutter in the gorse, a zigzag streak in the mist, the roar of the old flint-lock and a whoop from Ned Bohenna: “Well shot, zur! As pretty a cock snipe as ever I see!” That old flint-lock! The first time he had fired it he chose an easy mark, the farm cat. The gun knocked him flat, his mother thrashed him for disturbing her nap, Bohenna thrashed him for playing with firearms and the cat went scathless. They had dug foxes out of that hill-side yonder, aye and badgers too. He remembered the first badger he had tailed, swinging it round and round, afraid to let it drop, the dogs leaping and barking, Bohenna waving the lantern, shaken with laughter. That hill-side had seen his first love affair also. A farm girl she was, from Baripper, a sly, sleek, rosy thing. Well he remembered her coming down Rocky Lane between banks of pink campion and tall foxglove, the defiant toss of her chin, the smile that followed. They had sworn eternal fidelity up there amid the campion. Two days later he had come upon her with her blonde head snuggled into the bosom of a fisherman from Monk’s Cove, a married man with three children. All that had been a long time ago—twenty years and more. He was in his forties now, getting on. Another twenty and he’d be downright ancient, grey-haired, wrinkled, too stiff to dance, too gruff to sing, too slow for cutlass play. He’d have to wear a top-coat o’ nights and ride staid horses. Out in the world without a penny to bless himself with, living desperately from hand to mouth and day to day, he felt as young as ever. But when he came home here he felt as old as Moses. There was Eli with his three growing daughters to remind him, the manifold responsibilities of landed property, and Nicola—above all Nicola. As soon as he was out of it the better.

He kicked spurs into the mare, and working his way down the precipitous hill-side into Bosula yard, put his horse away and entered the house. Supper was in progress. The hay-makers sat on each side of the board stuffing food into their mouths with both hands, sun-bronzed, sweat-stained, grunting with animal voracity. At the foot of the table, in startling contrast to the rough boors about her, sat Ortho’s wife, Nicola, dressed in sprigged muslin, with a beribboned mobcap on her shining ringlets, Valenciennes lace at her throat and elbows, an exquisite and lovely figure. In a corner, waiting to share the supper leavings with the dogs, crouched her familiar, the half-wit cow-herd Wany, sharp chin sunk on ragged knees, dark mystical eyes glowing behind shocks of brindled hair.

Ortho bowed formally to his wife and took his place at the top of the table. Nicola inclined her trim head, curved her pink lips and beamed upon him. A beautiful woman, a charming expression, yet somehow meaningless, blank. Ortho groaned inwardly. “She’d smile at Satan just the same,” and seizing his knife and fork attacked the food, not daring to look up. Twelve years before he had first met her, Miss Nicola Barradale, only daughter of a rich Bristol shipowner, travelling in state with duenna and maid. Half in love with her, half with her state, he had swept her up in a whirlwind courtship and married her. A week later the father was ruined and a suicide and the devoted daughter off her head from shock. There was insanity in the family; it was unlikely she would recover her mind, though physically she bloomed, untouched by time, a slender fragrant creature, tinted like apple blossom. The normal Nicola had been a tart, imperious lady, spoilt daughter of an indulgent parent; insane her mind was that of a child, sweet and infinitely trustful. Had she been otherwise there is no saying what Ortho might not have done to free himself, a devil in her would have raised a devil in him, but before her helplessness he stood impotent. She was his wife, yet no wife. Children there were none and there could be none. She was dead in mind but not in body, and the carnal half of her would see him out. He had a vision of Nicola standing at his graveside thirty years on, still pink and white, still slender, smiling that sweet, empty smile of hers. It was a life sentence. Fate had trapped him both neatly and completely.

Seated at supper now he stole a covert glance at her and his heart beat faster. How lovely she was! The poise of her slim body, the perfect moulding of her shoulders, the white throat rising like a lily stem, the proud shapely little head!

All his old passion for her was up in an instant, the blood running in his veins like wild-fire, overmastering him. “By God, I’ll break this cursed spell,” he thought; “I’ll shake her awake! I’ll....”

Nicola glanced up from her plate, met his hot, consuming gaze and—smiled.

The tension snapped like thread, the fire in him quenched as though plunged fathoms deep in polar seas.

He threw his knife down with a clatter, scraped his chair back and rose. The housekeeper, Naomi Davy, railed at him. “My dear life! Finished so soon? Eddn my vittles tasty ’nough for ’e—or what?”

“I ate in Penzance,” he lied, buttoned his coat up and walked out.

Naomi followed him into the yard. “Goin’ up ’long to Roswarva, are ’e?”

“I am.”

“Heard the news, s’pose?”

Ortho nodded.

“Eli has poor seed,” Naomi commented. “Only boy he’s ever had born dead—and no more to come.”

Ortho turned upon her. “What’s that?”

“That’s what doctor says, shan’t be no more,” said Naomi. “Mrs. Penhale’s been in a poor way. Didn’t you hear that?”

“No! Good Lord! I must ...” He stepped forward precipitately, then halted and called back: “Hi! When did you hear last?”

“Yesterday.”

“Yesterday! Why the dicken didn’t you send to-day?”

“Send!—and who am I to send if you please?” Naomi shrilled, indignant. “Think I’m made of men? Aren’t we busy haying? Go gadding about the face of the world thyself and then have nought but complaints for we as stop and mind thy place for thee! Thou scatterling! Thou skipjack!”

The latter part of the tirade was lost on the evening air, Ortho was gone, striding up the western hill-side for his brother’s farm. Naomi continued to call him names for some time after. She had a warm heart which boiled over easily, and she brooked no criticism from any man. Her own husband she handled affectionately but firmly. Nominally he was farm bailiff, but everybody knew whence the orders issued. Men to her were simple, transparent creatures, indispensable in matters of brute strength but of a low order mentally. In her fifty years she had met but a few men whom she could not fathom, and one of them was Ortho. Hence her abuse. She eased her feelings by several more expressions of contempt and returned indoors to minister to her darling Nicola. A good woman, but sharp-tongued.

The blue green dusk was down when Ortho reached Roswarva. The moon hung low, trailing a wake of light across the summer sea, Venus beside her. Through the stunted sycamores bats went swooping and beetles boomed. Cattle, lying out, made dark blots on the moonlit fields. The air was full of the scents of new-mown hay and dew-wet hedgerows.

There were lights in the house and somebody moving in the yard. Ortho heard the scrape of metal on stone, and a man came from behind a stack, a fork on his shoulder. Ortho knew him by his bulk.

“Hi! That you, Eli?”

The giant slewed about, the fork-prongs glinting momentarily in the moonlight.

“Ortho ... you back?”

“Yes, just come. How’s Mary?”

“Better. Doctor says she’ll do now.”

“Thank God!” Ortho sighed, relaxing suddenly. The husband said not a word. He had thanked his God already—bent double on his knees—and was not given to repeating himself.

Ortho sat down on the massive water trough that Eli had painfully chiselled out of a single block of granite—they made everything of granite up on that plateau. He had ridden full forty miles that day and realized now that he was tired. Eli remained standing, hands crossed upon the fork, staring across the moonlit sea, a stone colossus.

Presently he broke silence. “Mary will have no more children. Did they tell you?”

“Yes.”

Again silence. There was no need for speech. Both brothers knew what was in each other’s heart. Both were chewing on the same bitter cud. It was the end of the Penhales. For five centuries men of their family had farmed the Keigwin valley, had carved a holding out of the raw wilderness and clung to it through drought, famine, war, plague and persecution, adding a bit more land here, building a little there and passing it on to lusty sons. Now the end was in sight. Ortho was his mother’s son, he had no overpowering love of land, but the idea of a stranger stamping a proprietary foot in his family stronghold cut him on his most tender spot, his pride. The invincible line was beaten at last—and all through him. It was not Eli’s fault. If only he, Ortho, had looked before leaping into his disastrous marriage! ... If only! Too late to count the ‘ifs’ now. Nicola would outlast him, Eli die sonless. Exit the Penhales of Bosula. Poor Eli! In him was no alien strain, he was yeoman to the marrow, soil of the soil, embodiment of those five centuries of stout farmers. While he had been roaming up and down it was Eli who had stood by the old place, saved it from their mother’s extravagances, nursed it through the hard times and slaved early and late to make it what it was, the best farm in the Penwith Hundred. Poor Eli! Poor old lad! He had an impulse to throw an arm about his brother’s neck, to blurt some words of regret, of consolation. He glanced at Eli standing huge and impassive in the moonlight and kept himself in check. What use to beat upon this stoic with a wind of words? Eli had always despised talk.

He changed the subject. “By the way, Burnadick has given me that ship. I have to thank you for it, I believe.”

Eli stirred, waking out of his trance. “Not me, Mary. Burnadick told me he was wanting a master—met him in Truro when I was looking at that school for Jennifer—but I did not think of you somehow. When, later, I happened to mention it to Mary, she said at once, ‘Why, that would just suit Ortho; write to-day.’ So I did.”

Ortho was amused. There was the whole tale of his brother’s married life—‘Mary told me to do it, so I did.’

“Can I see her?” he asked. “I am leaving to-morrow, or the day after. Might not get another chance.”

Eli said he would ask; took off his boots in the kitchen and, in a pathetic effort to be quiet—as of an elephant playing mouse—crept aloft in his stockings, the staircase protesting loudly under his weight.

Ortho grinned and looked about the kitchen. Queer, Mary getting him this ship! She had always urged him to stop at home and do his duty by the farm. Why this abrupt change? Oh, well, whatever the motive, it was kindly meant, trust her for that. Nobody like Mary. His mind went back to his fruitless courtship of her—that first day up on the Luddra Head—in her blue cloak with the brown hair blowing about her face—big, clean, wholesome as the wind itself she was. What would have happened if she had married him instead of Eli? he wondered. She would have kept him straight, he thought, he might have done great things. Ah, well, that was dead and buried. Still, there was nobody like her. This kitchen, for instance, so orderly in her presence, now littered with female fripperies. He examined the first frippery to hand, a fine muslin dress, freshly ironed and spread over the table. On a chair stood a round box bearing the name of a Penzance milliner. A roll of tissue-paper on the dresser contained lace collarets. What was such finery doing in austere Roswarva? Mary turned modish all of a sudden? Something in a corner aroused his curiosity. He stalked it, pounced on it and opened it gingerly. It was an absurd little silk parasol, in spread not much larger than his hat and hinged at the top. “What the devil....!”

There was a patter of light feet on the stairs and into the kitchen skipped a young lady in a dove-grey dress caught round her high waist with a single ribbon. On her head she wore a little chip bonnet with a bunch of pink roses on one side. She snatched the parasol from him and minced up and down the room in imitation of the fashionable walk, wearing an expression of extreme disdain, skirt held daintily between finger and thumb. Then down went the parasol and she was off, dancing round and round him, in and out among the chairs, brown ringlets tossing, scarlet slippers a-twinkle, halted under the grandfather clock and sank to the ground in a sweeping curtsy.

“Jenny!”

“Yes, it’s me.” She was standing now, eyes downcast, hands crossed before her, very demure.

“My dear, how pretty!”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

“You’re not saying that just to be kind?”

“Kind, rubbish! You’re ravishing, my honey, and if anybody denies it, you tell your old uncle and I’ll eat him alive.”

Jennifer snorted. “ ‘Old uncle,’ indeed! You’re nothing but a boy—as mother always says.”

“I wonder if your mother intended that as a compliment. Howsobe, I am a year older than your father, miss, though you might not believe it—which shows what high thinking and pure living will do for a man. All this prinking and pranking is in honour of school, I suppose?”

“Yes. In less than a week. Oh dear!”

“What is it, Jenny Wren?”

“M-miserable.”

“So gay just now.”

Jennifer nodded. “I—I love all the new dresses and things—but when I think of leaving mother and father and Polly and Melinda—and—and the cows, I—I——”

The pink mouth quivered, the long dark lashes quivered ominously.

“Oh, come now, there’ll be cows at Truro.”

“Yes, but not our cows.”

Ortho’s arm went round her. “Shoo-oo,” he soothed, as one might a frightened horse. “Shoo-oo. There’s nothing to fret over. What does a year or two of school mean? Why, a mort of fun, that’s all. A crowd of you fine young ladies together, up to every sort of mischief; you’ll enjoy every minute, I swear. Truro is a brave town, vastly genteel, with oysters very plentiful. And after all it’s not to China you’re faring. If anything goes amiss your father can be with you in a day. Myself too. I’ve got a new ship, you know. I shall be constantly in and out of Falmouth. It’s no distance. I’ll ride over when I’m in port and we’ll dine in style at the ‘Red Lion’—on oysters.”

“I have never tasted oysters and don’t like them,” Jennifer objected.

“A very sufficient reason,” said Ortho. “Then you shall dine on Caraccas chocolate sugar-plums, lollipops, pastries, conserves, manna—anything you choose. Feel better now?”

“Yes,” said Jennifer, sniffing.

He turned her wet little face up to his. Mary must have been just like this when young, he thought; the same thick creamy skin, peat-brown eyes and soft sweet mouth.

“Look at me,” he commanded. “What am I doing?”

“L-laughing.”

“I am bound for the coasts of Spain—and, maybe, further. You for Truro. Can’t you laugh too?”

“Yes,” said Jennifer, bravely.

“Laugh with me then, and the Lord bless us! You look twice, thrice, ten times as pretty when you laugh. There’s a wicked little dimple breaks out on your starboard cheek like a lone star, and your nose turns up the least small bit.” He gave an infectious crow of delight. “My soul, it’s turning now!”

Jennifer buried her face in his shoulder, bubbling happily. “Dear Ortho!” A violent creaking of the stairs proclaimed the stockinged descent of Eli.

“Nurse says you’d best not go up,” he announced. “Mary is very slight yet. She sends you God-speed and her love.”

Ortho looked up blankly. “Can’t see me—eh? Oh yes—yes, I understand. Her love?—thank you, thank you. Well, I must be going, I suppose, hard day to-morrow.”

He caught up his hat, turned away and then suddenly drew Jennifer to him. “Good-bye, my dear,” he said, and kissed the soft sweet mouth—but it was not to her he spoke.