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RUBIES. The most beautiful stones in the world. What is the cold flash and glitter of the diamond to the concentrated glow of all earth’s central fires in the heart of the ruby? It is love’s own stone, burning as the lover’s passion, and there’s none so beautiful on a white bosom or the sway of a delicate hand. If anyone had told me ten years ago that my fate was to be mixed up once and for all with the glorious jewels, I should have laughed in the face of Destiny. Ah, but it never does, though, to chaff that lady! She knows. We do not.

Yet nothing could have seemed more unlikely. My father was a gentleman-farmer, the only one left of a fine old stock, a Pendarvis of Caerlyon. They were rich folk in the old days, and it had been a big property. Now there was only the farm left, but a fine productive one—nothing to grumble at. And if that farm in the wilds of Cornwall had not fallen to his share, rubies and I would never have become acquainted. He had spent his youth in Burma, before his elder brother died and he came in for Caerlyon. My mother was a Scotswoman from the Isle of Skye in the wild Atlantic, and as full of ghostly beliefs and the second sight, as an egg of meat. It is very well known the Cornish folk are that way also, so I got a double dose of it with my blood.

But there was the farm, good land and meant to be my profession and provision, for there was no child but me. And if I did sometimes look back to the days when my people had a great manor-house and were Court cards, generally speaking, still I thought myself a lucky dog. It lay on great sloping downs toward the sea, catching all the south sun, so that, with the salt air and good sunshine and fat rains, our wheat ripened soon and rich, and as for our mutton, there was none so good from Caerlyon to Gwent. We had fish for the taking and oysters for the gathering, and when the sea was all in a silver ripple with the innumerable armies of pilchards, it was tools down on land and out into the bay with every net and basket you could dip over the side. And then came the salting down of the pilchards for the winter—and good food they were, fresh or salted, none better.

A man grows broad and strong on such keep as we got at Caerlyon. The Cornish cream, solid and golden as buttercups, the sweet brown bread my mother and the women turned out in long bannocks, the fish, the oysters from the bed down by the Pillar Reef, the brown, crisp legs of mutton, the smoked hams—Lord, I shall make your mouths water if I go on to apple-pasties and junkets! No, in mercy I’ll stop, for no matter where you were raised the food could not come up to Caerlyon on the sea. Perhaps that was why I scaled a good wrestling weight when I was twenty-two, and had a pair of shoulders on me that set off my six feet uncommonly handsomely, as I thought. A good life too. The ploughing, the hay, the lambing—one thing after another to mark the dial of the year like a clock. But I believe my favourite sport was to run my little boat down the shingle of a still evening, and hoist my butterfly sail and out beyond the horns of the bay and watch the evening star trembling in the water and the moonlight making a pattern of diamond scales all glittering away to the Unknown. Then I would sit and dream in the immense quiet—and that was all the romance I wanted.

But there was more, for, believe me who will, the smugglers made their own of Shoal Bay. They had by no means laid aside their trade with the eighteenth century, and there are still fortunes to be made in spirits and other dutiable articles sneaked in past the Customs. And down in Cornwall no one thought it a thing to be ashamed of, though we did not, of course, cry it at the market cross at Gwent! Since the War the coastguard forces have been reduced, and perhaps my lords at the Admiralty might think the Cornish folk such simple rustics that they need never trouble their heads lest we should cheat the King’s revenue. Anyhow, we went our own way in peace round about Gwent, and I don’t suppose his Majesty wore a coat the less in consequence.

Lord bless me, where had they not their hiding- and meeting-places? In Lord Gwent’s park at Clere, four miles inland, were ways mined by bigger than rabbits, leading to cunning little grottoes overhung by broom and fern, where the landsmen would come in silent-running motors to carry off the stuff, the chests of coffee and puncheons of rum. And, indeed, if a sharp-nosed, sharp-eyed coastguard officer had stirred the wheat-sacks in many a granary he would have found more than spilt grain behind them.

Surely Shoal Bay itself was made for the very trade and encouragement of smuggling, being honeycombed with caves that would have led the coastguards a dance for a year, and having a sweet landing-place for cargoes—except when the wind blew hard from the south-west. When it did that every sane man who valued his skin made for Trehidy and pretended to be an honest lugger stinking of fish. Nobody saw any harm, not even my father, though he did not meddle with it himself. There is that in the revenue that gets a man’s goat, and he will cheat it when he would give his last sixpence to a needy neighbour and scorn to put a picked-up shilling in his purse. Men are made so, and I own I often had a chat with the skippers of those honest luggers—and why not? They had a fine open-air life of it. They had seen more of the world than I had, and if I filled my tobacco pouch at the same time that was my own affair. Not a creature far or near would have condemned me.

Yes—there was one exception—my Lord Kyriel at Hatton Park. He was not a popular man, though by rank the first in the neighbourhood. He lived almost entirely shut up at the big house with his daughter, going very occasionally to London, and he was known to hold strong opinions about the moonlight gentry. If the law was the law, it must be kept, he said. So the smugglers and their friends gave Hatton Park a wide berth.

And now to my story.

It was a fine night in May, and the roses on the house just out and smelling sweet, when I went after supper to get my boat and go out beyond Shoal Bay into the ocean, seeming to lie as quiet as a sleeping woman that scarcely breathes. As I neared the low cliff above the bay I saw a Penzance lugger dropping her brown wings in the moonlight. I had been working in the home-meadow all day, and she might have been there for hours without my knowing. She had her number, PZ (for Penzance) 4428, painted on her bows and sail according to law, so that when the coastguardsmen shepherded the fishing fleets they would know that particular sheep of theirs. But for all that she was a black sheep, as I knew well, and her cargo was more often dutiable articles than innocent pilchards and herring. I knew exactly how it would be. The cargo would be ashore by this time, and a drove of moorland ponies would be trotting up to Clere, or wherever it was, or possibly a few high-power cars.

On how small a thing hangs our fate! I stood a minute, divided between the wide, moonlit sea beyond the bay and the emptiness of my tobacco pouch, and if the moonlight had won I should have lost—what, this tale will show. But the tobacco had it and the idle lark of the thing, and I went striding away from the cliff and up to where our meadows touched the Gwent Road. I had to look sharp, for, what with willing hands and plenty of them, there was little time between the landing of a cargo and the turn of the Gwent Road. So, looking at my watch, presently I legged it like a hare, and took a toss, I remember, over old Cowslip Queen as she lay dozing in the warm grass in the shadow of the hedge; and there I stood and waited in great surprise, for there was no train of ponies, but only two men on horseback coming slowly along the road as if deep in talk. The one was a man I knew well, a fellow called Quesnel, agent of one of the French houses that ran liquor and tobacco by the Bonnibel and others, and often over our way, and the other was—Lord Kyriel.

Lord Kyriel! A magistrate, no less, and apt to read the lessons in Caerlyon Church on Sundays, while all the small boys ate nuts, cracked beforehand, or sucked peppermint until the time came for the sermon and sleep. I was so completely dumbfounded that I might have tumbled out of the hedge at their feet, but that I was strung up taut with curiosity and determined to see the end, come what would. So I walked quick and light along inside the hedge until I came to the clump of alders where the lane to Hatton Park forks out of the Gwent Road, and there I was rewarded by seeing a fat packet, sealed, pass from Monsieur Quesnel’s hand to my lord’s, the which I could swear held more than a delicate tobacco that perfumed the air as he drew it out of his pocket with a French flourish. And as he took it, weighing it in his hand a moment, Kyriel said seriously:

“The trust was not one that many men would have accepted, sir, and you have carried it out faithfully. Here is my acknowledgement that it is duly received.”

Very formal, you see. And he took a paper out of his pocket and handed it to Quesnel, who read, folded, and pocketed it, replying, with a bow, in his queer French-English:

“I am happy milord approves thus. If it was dangerous—why, death of my life, danger is a man’s business! I have the honour to wish milord good-night.”

On that they parted, and Lord Kyriel turned up Gear Lane that leads to Hatton Park, and Monsieur Quesnel to the bay.

Suddenly, I cannot tell how, I had a startled feeling that I had thrust myself into a dangerous secret, which, heaven knows, I never meant; and the long shadows, like black fingers, which the moon made of the branches, and the dead silence, pointed by the horses’ retreating trot, became strange and eerie. I licked home through the grass near as quick as the hares that scuttled before me in the dew, and so in, and nobody the wiser if I had held my tongue.

But there again Fate was too strong for me. I came on my father alone next day in the turnip field, having said nothing at breakfast because of my mother and the maids. He had been hoeing, for it was no way of his to look on with his hands in his pockets, and glanced up when I came, leaning on the hoe and waiting to see what I would say, because it was so clear there was something on my mind. And it was such a habit with me to open myself with him, he being as good a father as ever stepped, that I said right out:

“Father, what do you suppose Lord Kyriel has to do with Quesnel?”

He let the hoe slip and stooped and picked it up before he looked me in the eyes again.

“And what put that fool’s question into your head, Master Roger, and what have you to do with Kyriel or Quesnel?”

The words were nothing, but when I saw how my father’s eyes darkened I knew there was more in the thing than I suspected, and because he spoke sharp I stumbled in my answer.

“I thought—” I said, and stopped. And after that false start another, “I saw—” and then his eye was so brightly fixed on me that out it all came with a rush, like champagne from a bottle after the cork has bounced out.

He listened, looking at me steadily, and I finished and shifted on my heels like a schoolboy, till at last he said with a kind of sadness:

“If you had stuck to your boat, boy, you would have saved yourself and me some trouble. But since you thrust your foolish nose into another man’s business, look straight at me now and tell me—can you keep a secret? You never had one yet.”

I was twenty-eight, and the question galled me. Why should I not keep a secret like any other man? I did not know then how rare a gift it is. Most men can hold their tongue: few so that none shall guess there is a secret behind it. So I answered with foolish pride that I was certainly able to let it go no farther, and turned, as if to walk off.

But my father stopped me.

“If I tell you that if any living soul knew of the existence of that packet it would bring ruin to more than one, and your father among them, what would you say, Roger? Kyriel must meet Quesnel now and again—worse luck, for it’s a grave risk—but it was fool’s madness to meet on the open road where anyone might pass.”

His look was sad and kind, and something in the quality of it moved me more than I liked to show. I felt I had done wrong and could not tell how.

“Why, Father, nothing you need say would make me shut my jaws the tighter. A look is enough. You can trust me. Let’s forget the whole thing. But look here—if it’s any concern of yours—I don’t care a damn for Kyriel—and if any message wants taking, let me meet Quesnel, and there won’t be a soul to trouble about what half the folks do, and nothing said.”

“Why, that might be!” he said, and stopped, gazing earnestly on the ground. Then, recollecting himself, “No, no. I won’t have you drawn into it. If I drop, your mother only has you. But if you are willing, Roger—your own free choice, mind!—I see no reason why you should not go setting a trap in Hatton Park to-morrow and give Kyriel a written message from me. It’s urgent I should get word to him and hear from him, and if he ran that fool’s risk last night I must risk the less.”

Now I knew it must be urgent, for if there were two things my father loathed it was a poacher and a trap. The first he thought much below a gentleman, the last below any decent man and vilely cruel. And the confounding part of the whole business was that, to the best of my belief, he had never exchanged a word with Lord Kyriel but at market at Gwent, and we knew nothing of him beyond the countryside gossip, which was not altogether in his favour. He did not mix with the gentry because of an ancient scandal at cards, and his lordship thought himself high above the farmers, so there he hung, like Mahomet’s coffin, between heaven and earth.

“Well, of course I could,” says I, “if I don’t get caught by one of the keepers and handed over to the constable. But I won’t balk for that if you think it won’t reflect on my upbringing!”

I laughed. I see now how young I was in the way I took this, as if small things could matter—but you are to remember I no more guessed what was to it than the turnips I stood among. My father was solemn as a tombstone.

“As a matter of fact, you must contrive to be caught and brought before Kyriel. It will play the game better than anything yet, if folks think there’s bad blood between him and me. I would sooner lose this” (he held out his right hand) “than bring you into it, but the thing is urgent.”

“Well, but all this is easy enough,” said I; “and no harm can come of it that I can see except being suspected of making too free with Kyriel’s hares and pheasants, and, though I don’t choose it, a man of my age can stand that kind of gossip if Kyriel doesn’t let it go too far. I take it he’ll understand that part of the game?”

But still he looked at me steadily.

“You must be prepared for insults, Roger. Kyriel has a rough side to his tongue, and you’ll taste it. It will be needful he should treat you like any other, and the world knows he’s keen about his game.”

I saw the sense of this, and that if he played his part so must I. That part of it I did not like, I own, for, passing the man riding now and again, there was a contempt in the cold, black glance of him that I found stirred my bile, anyhow. But beyond this and a burning desire to acquit myself well of a trust I saw no farther than my nose, and what my father did was right enough for me, and when he sent me off to the barn, saying, “Very well. Let all this be between you and me,” I went about my own business as careless a young man as any in Cornwall.

Nothing more was said that day, but the next was Saturday, and at noon the farm hands came tumbling into the huge old outer kitchen where their dinners were served to them. The village was two miles off and time could not be wasted tramping to and fro, and the dinner was considered in their wages. There were four of them, and it would have given a dying man an appetite to see the hearty pot of meat and potatoes and carrots and onions and suet dumplings, all boiled together and giving out such a savoury steam as I could smell half over the meadow, coming up from the pasture, when the wind was that way. And when the covers were off and the two maids flew back and forth, chattering like starlings, and each man brought up his big earthen bowl, and my mother, with a great wooden ladle, filled it with soup and dumplings and lumps of meat and vegetables, all in a heavenly abundance that made the mouth water—why then the man that worked on Squire Pendarvis’s land (for so they called my father) felt to the very bottom of his stomach his luck in being with one that fed his men like fighting cocks and grudged them nothing.

I loitered that day at the window of the outer kitchen, for the roast beef was not yet gone into the dining parlour, enjoying the good smell and the men’s content, like horses at their manger, and wishing the beef would hurry up, and so it happened I heard their talk between the journeys of their wooden spoons to their mouths.

Says Tom Blean, our teamster, to Dick Stokes, the best ploughman in those parts, “Was you up to the Gwent Road night before last by any chance? The gentry” (as they called the smugglers) “landed as neat a cargo as any this year, and, by the same token, something went adrift with one o’ the motor cars and they knocked John Jervis up to fix it.”

“Not I. Where was they going to take the stuff?”

“Up to Gwent, same’s last time.”

A minute’s interruption and the sound of comfortably munching jaws, and then Tom Blean started again.

“I see them, and they bursting with liquor and money—a better trade than farming, year in, year out, the Lord knows! The luggermen make a good thing of it, but the men from Gwent get as fat as butter on it, and their wives in silk and di’monds. And then I see the Frenchman up on the Gwent Road by Gear Lane.”

You may judge if I pricked up my ears at this. I knew Tom Blean’s cottage had a view of everything he wanted to see, and he a born talker, his eyes always on the dance for happenings. I forgot the beef, though it was bubbling deliciously on a big spit before the fire, and Nancy basting it and the Yorkshire pudding with rich brown gravy and oozings.

“What Frenchman?” Dick Stokes said at last, licking his spoon affectionately.

“Quesnel,” says Blean, giving it the English s. “Him that comes over with the Bonnibel every quarter to settle up with the Gwent gentry.”

“And what’s to that?”

“Why, nothing, so far’s I’m concerned. Let the high folks keep their business to themselves, and I’ll keep mine. If anyone was to ask me if I see my Lord Kyriel riding down Gear Lane on the roan mare last night, it’s no business of mine. But I sees what I sees all the same.”

“The less you sees and the more you stops your jaw the better, Tom, my lad,” says Stokes. “You’re a jolly sight too fond of hearing your own noise, and if his lordship got wind of your talk, you’d hear of it.”

“Nay, lad, I didn’t say as I saw him.”

“You didn’t say as you didn’t. Now cork your jaw. I don’t want no more blether. Just want to enjoy them dumplings, as is fair delicious.”

And not a word more, but their heads down like cattle. And presently the beef was too good for me to hold back any longer after my morning among the sheep, so I followed it into the dining parlour, and my father washed his hands and came in, and so did my mother, with her fine, delicate face and still pretty to my eye; and down we sat and had our dinner, with home-made cheese, very unlike the bought article, and gooseberry fool and cream junket to follow it, and right good it tasted.

Before we rose from the table, after, my mother said slowly, “I had my dream last night, John.”

Father was lighting his pipe, but stopped and looked at her. He knew that dream, and so did I, because so sure as she dreamed it something happened to upset us one way or another. Last time a heavy frost, almost unknown in our parts, came on, and we lost half the lambs; and the time before Father broke his arm. I never liked that dream. I liked it less to-day.

“Yes, I dreamt I heard the horse with the loose shoe, as plain as if I heard it now,” she said, with her Highland rolling r’s and her large, wistful eyes on him. “First a long way off, with echoes, like some one riding furiously down a mountain road; far off—near—close, and then it was Lord Kyriel riding along the Gwent Road and the loose shoe clattering.”

Now, it is a most amazing thing, but true as I write this, I suddenly remembered that as the two men rode up to me on that night I had heard the clatter of a loose shoe. I was so flustered at the time that it meant nothing to me, and besides, they were riding slowly and it was not very noticeable. My mind was clearer now. I remembered—and also that after they parted the sound had gone up Gear Lane. But my mother was asleep more than a mile off!

“I saw the moon on his face, and the dark look he gives when he’s vexed to the bone—like all his family,” she added, drumming her fingers gently on the table as if playing a dumb piano.

She came from the Isle of Skye, near the home of the Kyriels, as I shall tell in its place.

My father tried to put it off.

“You never liked them, Elspeth,” says he. “And so, if you have a bad dream you get him into it. But dreams are dreams, and heaven’s above all.”

“I don’t like it. I don’t like it,” she said.

And there we left her, still gently drumming with her fingers on the cloth. Father picked up his gun and went up the pastures after some rabbits she wanted, and I loped after him, eager to get out what I had heard between Blean and Stokes.

When I had told him he sat on a tussock that overlooks Penleigh Headland and the track through the woods to Hatton Park, and says he, “That fixes it. You must go right away. But hold hard, Roger, my boy,” and pulled out his notebook and pencil, tore a sheet out, and scribbled a few words and gave it to me.

“Read it,” says he.

I read and could make nothing of it. It looked like a torn bit of a letter, so that if found blowing about no one would notice it, and was only an unfinished sentence—“and after all the day was so wet that it spoilt our plans for the outing. In hopes—” That was all.

“Now, off with you for an afternoon’s work in Hatton copses. Be bold and go up fairly near the house with as much care as a man who doesn’t want to be seen. And then all your part is to take meekly whatever he says and give him this. Now, off! Time is precious.”

He had a kind of heavy anxiety on his face, very unlike anything I had seen in him before. He gave me a push on the shoulder and bid me run, and I did so, and before I dropped over the knoll looked back and saw him staring after me with the same sombre look. It gave me a notion of the gravity of what I was doing—that and my mother’s unlucky dream—which I had not had before.

She was a McLeod of Dornish, and, three hundred years ago, an ancestor of hers who had killed his man in a bloody murder was riding for his life at midnight past the ruined chapel of Lenie, an awful lonely, forsaken place with the grave slabs all heaved sidewise, she would say, as if the dead men underneath had turned in their sleep. And far down the valley they heard him coming with a loose shoe on the horse, and whether that had anything to do with it they could not say, but suddenly the noise, and the echo that was as loud as the noise, stopped —and their thought was the Great Devil had taken his own.

There was not a man would venture out that night, but next morning they found the horse at the bottom of the cliff that goes down from Lenie and James McLeod’s skean-dhu was lying beside him, but he himself was never seen more. We could do without that dream in peaceful Cornwall!