Читать книгу Tregarthen's Wife - Fred M. White - Страница 11

Table of Contents

MRS. GUY had taken farewell of her guests almost tearfully, and after having exacted solemn promises that they would return before long. The rector had gone off early to see a sick parishioner, so that the two friends had perforce to go down to the village alone and charter Hawkes' boat once more.

The sea lay before them very still and intensely blue, there was a crisp invigorating touch in the air, in the sun it was warm and grateful. Yet Mary's beautiful face was very serious as she walked along, for in the hedgerows along the herbage and dead leaves of yester-year was a line of white rime where the jewels of last night's frost still glistened.

"Do you think it has reached the island?" Mary asked.

"It is impossible to say," Miriam replied. "This has come along the mainland with the east wind, and there was a suggestion of breeze last night. As Tregarthen is an island, the frost may have been tempered by passing over the sea. Let us hope for the best, Mary."

And Mary was inclined to take a more cheerful view of the situation. They found Hawkes getting his boat ready for the afternoon tide. He stared with unaffected astonishment at the suggestion that he should earn a trifle by conveying those adventurous women back to the island.

"I guessed Tregarthen had turned you out," he said.

"That is impossible," Mary said serenely. "And as proof of the fact, you are going to take us back again. Of course, if you are afraid to go, we shall have to get somebody else."

Hawkes pointedly admitted his readiness to accommodate passengers. Asked if he thought that the frost had done any damage over yonder, he shrugged his shoulders. This man, like all his kind, was a philosopher in his way. If the flowers had to go, why, they had to go, and there was an end to it. Some seasons the fishing off Trevose was bitterly bad, and then the village starved. They knew what it was to be without bread as well as Tregarthen's people. If the fish wouldn't take bait, why, what was a man to do?

"I know what I should like to do," Mary said between her teeth. "I should like to take that rugged, handsome, honest, picturesque head of yours and hammer some common sense into it. Don't you know that if you were to adopt the Otter trawls the rector suggested that you would never want again? Haven't you got mind enough for that?"

Hawkes looked up placidly from his rowing.

"New-fangled ideas," he said pitifully, "new notions. We fish same as our fathers and their fathers before them did. And what was good enough for them is good enough for us. I don't hold with no trawls, not I."

Mary gave up the case as hopeless, for what can you do with a man like that? Both here and on the Island was the same stern crass conservatism. They would not learn, they did not want to learn. Rather would they starve in the midst of plenty. There was a station being built at Port Gavern Road some three miles away, a station that would bring big dealers here and treble the price of Trevose cod and herring and mackerel. And yet, had the men of Trevose been less God-fearing and law-abiding, they would have marched over to Port Gavern and pulled that station about the ears of the contractors. And why? Because the women who slaved to fill the Gavern slate barges at starvation wages would cease to find employment. That they would not need employment at the enlarged price of the fish was a detail. Small wonder that Mary felt sad and downcast.

She saw the women now, as the boat threshed out for Tregarthen. A ketch heeled over on the sand at Port Gavern, and a knot of women were filling her with slates from the quarries. There were women young and middle-aged bending their backs and streaming under that cruel burden. And all this because the fish fetched next to nothing and the winters were long and treacherous.

"Do you call that a pretty sight?" Mary asked.

Michael replied doggedly that he saw nothing inharmonious about it.

Thus does the eye become educated to the proportion of disgraceful things. The new railway would stop all that, Mary explained; it would even obviate the necessity of a fish-cart. The dealers would come freely, there would be healthy competition, and the weary burden would fall from the backs of the women.

"Nowt of the sort," said Michael. "The slates will be carried by rail, and many a wife will be missing her silver before long. The day that railway opens, Trevose will be in mourning. There'll be black flags on the houses. You stay and see if there won't."

And in the fulness of time events fell out as Michael darkly prophesied. The slates were carried by rail, there was no more white slavery in Port Gavern, and behold the fish-dealers came with bursting pockets, and mackerel fetched a price never before heard of in those parts. And the Sunday hats and bonnets of the women became as the glories of Solomon, and the black flags were hidden in the byres. But nobody was grateful, and nobody had the grace to be ashamed of himself, which is a state of things not altogether peculiar to fishing villages and the like.

Mary stepped on the island with Miriam, anxious to learn the fate of the flowers. As she strode over the ridge past the sea pinks and the sand dunes, where the reeds rustled and looked into the valley beyond, she gave a sigh of thankfulness. The flowers were nodding and blooming in the sunshine, and the air was sweet with the fragrance of violets. Ruth rose, warm and flushed, from a bed of jonquils, and gave them friendly greeting.

"How glad I am that you have escaped the frost," Mary cried.

"We have and we haven't," Ruth explained. "Down here, where all our hopes and interests lie, the frost has done no damage. But they say that towards Port Gwynn, where the Bishops and those live, the frost has been cruelly hard. Gervase Tretire has gone up there to see."

"And such a lovely day as it is," Miriam said sadly.

Ruth turned upon her fiercely. Her eyes were flashing.

"A hateful day!" she cried. "Lovely enough in a way, like a beautiful girl dying of consumption. But the frost is in the air; I can feel it in my blood. A day that most folks would be glad to be alive in, but a bad hour for us. I want to see the wind change, to see the scud flying over Tintagel, and feel the sting of the rain upon my cheeks. If you care for us and our ways, if you would save Tregarthen, pray for that, Miriam Murch."

Gervase Tretire came slowly down into the valley. His eyes were grave, and he even walked as a messenger of evil tidings. Things were very bad up to Port Gwynn, he explained. On the exposed hillsides the frost had cut the smiling crops off like a scythe. It was a pitiable sight to see Bishop's lot. And Mary Bishop had locked up her cottage and betaken herself, weeping, to the Sanctuary.

"Is it so hopeless?" Mary asked.

"Ay, ay," Tretire replied. "Not one blossom more will be cut in Port Gwynn this year. Absolute ruin, it is. All swept away in a night. Go and see for yourself, Mary Blenkiron. We are getting used to it."

"And all Tregarthen's fault," Mary cried impulsively.

"All his fault," said Gervase. "We all know it here, though the Islanders would cry shame to hear me say so. I saved that man's life twice; I risked my own to do it. If he had gone down off Lantern Rock he would have perished as the last of his race, a more far-seeing man would have ruled us, and to-day would have smiled back to God's blessed sunshine and not been afraid. Oh, why didn't I let him go; why didn't I let him drown?"

He spoke more with the intensity of a long and bitter despair than from revengeful impulse. Ruth laid a trembling hand on his arm.

"I cannot bear to hear you speak of Tregarthen like that," she said gently.

All the fire died out of Tretire's eyes. His glance met that of Ruth fondly and yet without pathos. Her lips were quivering, and the lovelight was in her eyes. She might have been saying farewell to a lover.

"I forgot," said Gervase, "that you were bespoke to him."

"Bespoke!" Mary cried. "Engaged to Tregarthen! You?"

"Yes, yes." Ruth's glance was clear, but there was no proud look in her eyes. "I thought you knew, I thought everybody knew. It will be no love-match, Tregarthen's and mine. He is the last of his race. By the charter he is bound to marry. There are four First Families here, and from them the head of the island has to choose a wife. In those four First Families I am the only girl. It is nothing strange. European rulers are influenced by similar political reasons."

There was just a touch of satire in Ruth's tones. Mary was about to ask another question, then she paused. She saw the glance of Ruth and Gervase meet, and she understood everything. These two loved one another. Any woman of ordinary intelligence would have divined the fact by sheer instinct.

"And here," thought Mary, "are all the makings of a tragedy." But you shall hear it all in good time.

"Has Tregarthen none of his own blood to choose from?" Mary asked.

"They are all extinct," Ruth replied indifferently. "If any remained, he would not go to the Four Families. And, if one remained, she could claim to be the bride of Tregarthen with the same right that he could claim her for his wife. It is all in the Charter, as you may see for yourself."

Mary looked up swiftly, and her eyes met Miriam's. The latter read her friend like an open book, and for the first time in her life she was afraid of Mary. For she was going to do a mad thing, a wild, unreasonable thing, and Miriam knew that nothing would turn her from her purpose. You can do things with a man; you can blackguard him, or, what is worse, ridicule him. You can knock him down if the extreme is called for; but nobody on earth can influence or check a pretty, spirited young woman, who is a great heiress to boot.

"Come up to Port Gwynn with me," Miriam said sharply.

The two moved off together, leaving Ruth and Gervase knee-deep in the jonquils. The sun was on Gervase's face, that strong handsome face that was as gentle as a child's in Ruth's presence.

"Don't be cross with me, dear," said Mary. "And look at those two—they are positively made for one another. If Tregarthen marries Ruth he will be guilty of an unpardonable crime. He must not do it."

"And you are going to prevent him?"

"I am going to try, dear," Mary said demurely. "Now, honestly, wouldn't you marry Tregarthen if you had the chance?"

All Miriam's anger vanished at once. It was impossible for any one to be angry for long with Mary. And even newspaper proprietors have their weak spots.

"I might if I had the time," she said placidly. "Tregarthen's education would be such a long and exhausting process. His conceit is monumental, he is the absolute incarnation of the Fixed Principle. Mary, could you marry that man?"

"I really fancy I could, dear," Mary said academically. "In the first place, I should be a kind of queen. American girls have married dukes and princes—of ice-cream extraction most of these latter. But I can't recollect any greasy Chicago dollars going to the support of the purple. Then Tregarthen is young and very handsome. He has a deliciously dreamy poetic nature——"

"And a vein of singularly tough obstinacy, not to say pig——"

"Fixety of purpose," Mary said reprovingly. "My dear, monarchs are never pig——Besides, the word is so dreadfully reminiscent of Chicago. And Tregarthen could be tamed; he could be made to take a proper view of his position."

"Meaning your position, of course."

"Really, Miriam, it is just the same thing. On the whole it would save a deal of bother if I married Tregarthen. I'm going to put the island right, and don't you forget it."

"But if the Charter says that, failing kin, the Four Families——"

"A bas the Four Families. Recollect what Ruth said. Besides, there has been no failure of kin. Am I not directly descended from Tregarthen's own family—can I not prove it?"

Miriam groaned. This was worse than she had anticipated.

"My dear," she gasped, "I—I thought you were only going to make Tregarthen care for you; I had no idea that you intended to compel him to marry you."

"I guess," Mary said nasally, "I guess, marm, that's about the size of it."