Читать книгу Tregarthen's Wife - Fred M. White - Страница 5

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THE man with the refined features bowed with the grace of courts and palaces. He was a Louis, a Charles, a Bayard and troubadour at the same time. Yet he might have been—indeed, from his own point of view he was—a monarch welcoming strangers to his court. A handsome man with a dreamy intellectual face, the face of a poet, and the hard firm mouth of a soldier. A man who formed his own judgments—generally wrong ones—and who acted up to them to the detriment of himself and everybody about him. But you will know more about that presently.

"I wish I could say I was glad to see you," he said. "Did they not tell you at Trevose that under no circumstances were strangers permitted within the Dominion of Tregarthen? I am king here, I make my own laws, I can imprison my subjects without let or hindrance. I could send you to gaol, and the British House of Commons has no right of interference."

"All these things," Mary said, "did they tell us at Trevose. And, being women, that is exactly the reason why we are here."

Something like a smile trembled on Tregarthen's thin lips.

"However," he replied, "we must make the best of it now that you are here. So long as this ground-swell runs it is impossible for a small boat to reach the mainland. After a big storm out in the western ocean the swell sometimes runs for days."

"The longer the better," Mary murmured.

"Perhaps you will have cause to modify your opinion," Tregarthen suggested dryly. "Sometimes we are compelled to have people here from the mainland, as last year, for instance, when the herring failed us entirely, and half the people at Trevose were starving. But they have to conform to our regulations, and I fear I cannot make any exception in your favour. In the Sanctuary are our poor—it is a workhouse, if you like to call it so. There you will have to reside, indeed there is no other place for you. You will wear a blue woollen dress with white cuffs and collars. Nothing like this, oh no."

He indicated Mary's faultlessly cut tweed gown and her jewels with a fine contempt. Once more Miriam smiled. A little colour crept into Mary's cheeks. The performance of walking over the man's body was not working out in strict accordance with the programme.

"It might help us a little," she said coldly, "if I were to tell you who we really are. I am an American."

Tregarthen glanced once more at the diamonds.

"So I should have gathered," he said pointedly.

"Of English extraction," Mary went on rapidly. Really, this monarch was too painfully outspoken. "My name is Blenkiron, and I claim and can prove direct descent from the Amyas Blenkiron of this island."

"Pray go on," Tregarthen replied, "I am deeply interested."

Mary melted in a moment. She spoke of the diary which she knew almost by heart, she touched on scenes in the history of the island which Tregarthen had deemed to be known only to himself. Beyond question the girl was all she claimed to be. Tregarthen admitted this as a monarch might who interviews a claimant to an attainted estate.

"I cannot deny what you say," he admitted, magnanimously. "Some of these days I should like to see that diary which is more than once quoted in the archives of the Dominion."

"I will try and get it for you," Mary said demurely.

Thus Mary's diplomacy. But then she had a good and pressing reason why she should not show Tregarthen the diary. Why she did not desire to show it to him, and what happened on the occasion when she did show him, will be told in due course. Her eyes were full of smiling promise.

"Are we still doomed to the Sanctuary?" she continued.

"Unfortunately, yes. Indeed, there is nowhere else you could possibly go. And if you were my own sister I could not violate one of my rules for you. In my own house I have male vassals only, so you could not come there. The cottages, I am ashamed to say, are of the humblest. We are miserably poor here, we can only fish rarely, and our flowers are a little later than those of Scilly, and therefore fetch less money at Plymouth and Bristol. Fortunately my people have no taxes to pay and no rent. We are a Christian Commonwealth and I am the Lord Protector."

Cromwell might have said it or Wolsey. For one brief moment Mary was actually deeply impressed.

"Have you no manufactures?" Miriam asked. "No source of employment for the poor women? You know what I mean?"

Tregarthen's eyes flashed. The spring of fanaticism that Miriam had guessed at from the first was tapped. His speech gushed out like water from the living rock. Miriam watched him with all the palpitating interest the student of human nature feels for a new type.

"I would cut off my right hand first," he cried. He strode to and fro across the wet sand; he had forgotten his audience. "Rather would I see my people starving in a ditch. I say your modern commerce is a hateful and loathsome thing; that what you call business is a delusion and a lie. And now you have dragged women into it, women who should remain pure and unspotted from the world, who should remain at home and make it beautiful. Once start a manufactory here, and the purity and morality of my people are doomed. Poor they may be, but honest and upright they are, and so they shall remain while there is strength in my arm and breath in my body. Let the men stick to their flowers and their fish, let them toil in the sweet air and in God's blessed sunshine, and they will be as their fathers before them—good men, with no guile in their hearts. Do you know that there has been no crime of any kind on this island for over a century? But once you send greed and the love of gain amongst us, you destroy our purity for ever. And anything would be better than that."

"There is a great deal in what you say," Miriam replied. "And at the same time a deal of nonsense. Do you know, sir, that I have made a large fortune by my own efforts?"

"You have my profound sympathy," Tregarthen said with feeling.

Indeed, he was so obviously sincere that all the contemptuous anger died out of Miriam's heart.

"You are utterly and absolutely wrong," she said. "There is a large field waiting for women, a field that calls to her. Oh, I would not have her different from what she is for all the wealth in the world. But I have found scores of them starving with temptations such a man as you cannot dream of," Miriam said, glaring behind her spectacles. It was Mary's turn to look on and enjoy the fray. "Do you know what I would do with you if I had my way?"

"Could one hazard a guess as to the wishes of a woman?" Tregarthen asked.

"Well, I would send you out into the fierce hard wolfish world with just one solitary half-crown in your pocket to get your own living. I would starve your eyes clear and your mental vision clean. Ah, you should learn what it is to be a defenceless woman, you should learn what opportunities you are wasting here. That's what I would do with you, if I had the chance."

"A woman at work, at man's work, is an outrage before God," Tregarthen cried stubbornly. "You will never see that here."

"What if your flowers fail?" Mary asked.

"We starve, or near it," Tregarthen admitted. "But we are patient. Complaining is for the children. They are tried in the fire of affliction, and they endure it with silence."

Miriam listened quietly, but the gleam of battle was in her eyes. On woman's mission she was the greatest authority in the United States. The Employer was no god in the car, nothing more than the conduit pipe from which flowed Capital. And here was an Employer, a king of Employers, who regarded starvation as one of the first attributes of labour. That man would have to be taught things. When she had her glasses on, Miriam would have taught things to the Czar.

"Do you starve with them?" she repeated.

"Yes," Tregarthen replied simply, "I do."

"You starve deliberately in the land of plenty? Do you know that I could make your island as fine a paying property as Monte Carlo? Of course I don't mean as a gambling resort. Do you know that I have three newspapers with an average weekly circulation of five million copies? I could 'boom' your island—every good American during the European tour would come here. Huge hotels would spring up. From thirty to forty thousand pounds annually would find their way into the pockets of your subjects. There would be no more trouble, no more starvation—all would be peace and happiness."

"Don't," Mary gasped. "Please don't, Miriam."

The light of battle died out of Miriam's eyes and she laughed. At the same time she was filled with bitter contempt for Tregarthen. The man was so regal and yet so bigoted and narrow. But still he starved with the rest when the flowers failed.

"Is your flower harvest now?" she asked.

"From now till the beginning of April," said Tregarthen. "That is, during the next six weeks. When the Scilly and French crops begin to flag we step in. Of course we get nothing like the Scilly prices, because they have what the tradesmen call 'the cream of the market,'"—he pronounced the phrase with an air of supreme contempt—"and then we get snow sometimes and frosts. You will see for yourself that our flowers are more robust than those from Scilly. But even a good season barely serves us with food."

"And the pilchards?" Mary asked.

"They only come once in two or three years now. At the top of the island, at Port Gwyn, you will see fifty or sixty deserted, dismantled cottages. That was once my most thriving village. But the pilchards failed and failed, and the villagers dropped off and died one by one—of starvation."

"They couldn't have done that in America," Miriam snapped. "They would have hustled round for something to do. And if you had stepped in with your antediluvian ideas, they would have deposed you."

Tregarthen smiled in a pained manner. This newspaper woman was a terror to him; but he got to love her in time, as everybody did. For the present most of his speech and all of his eyes were for Mary. He had never looked upon so bright and glorious a creature as this before. Mrs. Guy, the Rector's wife up to St. Minver, was a handsome woman, but she had no loveliness, no dresses like Mary. He turned for relief to Mary.

"Show us your flowers," she said.

Tregarthen silently led the way beyond the long hedge of cactus and oleander bushes to the fields beyond. Here was a valley surrounded by a high foliage, palms, bamboo shoots and pampas grass, a warm and sunny valley filled from end to end with sheets of flowers.

Mary gave an involuntary cry of delight. So far as the eye could reach, there were nothing but blooms set out regularly with narrow grassy paths between. There were daffodils, big tranquil yellow and blood-red blooms, waving narcissus, jonquils, and beyond these again vivid flashes of gladioli and tulips and great waxen-headed hyacinths, stiff and splendid. There were tiny green hollows, too, filled with violets. Besides these, there were other flowers that Mary had not seen before.

The sun was shining clearly over this paradise, the air was heavy with perfume. From beyond the rampart hedges came the boom of the sea. Tregarthen surveyed the scene with an air of pride.

"This is our main garden," he said. "We have no place in the island that is so well protected as this. There are orchards and corn-fields, and on the sloping sides to the west we grow our potatoes. But this is the spot where our hopes and interests are centred."

"How large is it?" asked Miriam, the practical.

"About forty acres altogether. Most of our womenkind are here, you see."

There were women and girls harvesting the flowers, young and old, perhaps some five score altogether. They were dressed in plain blue woollen gowns short in the skirt, they had strong boots, and homespun black stockings, and on their heads were stiff frilled caps that looked like fans placed gracefully at the back of their heads. As one or another stood up, Mary noticed the freedom and grace of their carriage. One, a girl, passed with a frank bold glance, but with no vulgar curiosity in it, though the people she saw were strangers. Mary moved towards her in a friendly manner.

"Please may I speak to her?" she asked Tregarthen.

"Surely yes. You are going to stay here a few days, you are going to dress like the rest, and live like them too. Jane, come here."

The girl advanced fearlessly. "Yes," she said; "do you want me, Tregarthen?"

She was absolutely natural and self-possessed, she answered all Mary's questions in a manner that many a Society aspirant might have envied. She spoke of the harvest of the flowers, the planting of the bulbs, of the constant clamour of the dealers for more foliage, which they were unable to give without diminishing the vitality of the parent bulb. And all this time she was opening out a new world to Mary.

The skin under its olive varnish was clear as milk, her dark eyes were utterly fearless, and yet there was the reflection of a tragedy in them. But then, there were times when starvation was perilously close at hand.

"I should like to see more of that girl," Mary said, when Jane had departed, nodding over a bunch of daffodils.

"You can see them all as much as you please," Tregarthen said regally. "You shall see all the machinery of the island. Meanwhile I have had all your belongings removed to the Sanctuary. When you have had supper I shall be glad for you to assume the garments provided for you. To-morrow you may explore the island at your leisure, and will perhaps do me the honour of dining with me at one o'clock."

There was dismissal in the tones of the speech. Mary did not know whether to resent it or not. She had forgotten for the moment that this man and his ancestors had been rulers of Tregarthen for seven hundred years.

"There is one thing you have forgotten," she said.

"Indeed," the Protector asked, "and what is that?"

"To show us where the Sanctuary is. Do they expect us there? Are rooms prepared for us? Shall we be in the way?"

"Everything is ready for you. There is always room in the Sanctuary. You will draw your rations and sup at the common table, after which you are free to do as you please till ten o'clock, when all lights are extinguished. You will perhaps do me the honour of dining with me to-morrow. One o'clock."

He bowed low, with a sweep of his soft felt hat, and went his way. Mary stood watching him until he was out of sight.

"A fine man, a handsome man, and a man who lives entirely for his people," she said, not without enthusiasm. "Miriam, I feel as if I had slipped back half a dozen centuries. We are going to have a good time here."

"Yes, and these people are going to have a good time later on," Miriam snapped. "A splendid man if you like, but a visionary and a fool. What business has he to starve these people when they might have peace and plenty? Some of the finest crops in the kingdom might be grown here—a little enterprise might change the whole aspect of the place. Look at that splendid girl who spoke to us just now. She might have been a duchess, only she is too handsome. And yet you saw the shadow of the tragedy in her eyes. Tregarthen ought to be made to get his own living or starve. If we could only persuade him to take a voyage round the world! Shall we save these people, Mary?"

Mary's eyes gleamed. "Yes, yes," she cried. "The lesson shall be taught—taught kindly if possible, but taught all the same. It seems horrible to think of famine in connection with a paradise like this. That man must be brought to his knees. If not, we will invoke the aid of the Great Secret."

Miriam nodded approval. What the Great Secret was and how it affected Tregarthen will be seen all in good time. For the present Mary pleaded a wholesome and unromantic hunger, and a desire for the Sanctuary and rest.

The Sanctuary was over beyond the flower garden, they were told, amongst the orchards where the apple trees were, and whence came the cider in due season. The two visitors climbed up and looked down into the valley. Then they turned to one another with a cry of admiration and delight.

A shelving broken valley lay below them, a green pleasance fed and watered by a stream fringed by ferns—maidenhair, kingfern, and the like. There were hundreds of trees in the orchards, apple trees just touched with tender emerald points where the buds were bursting. And back in the valley was a long low stone house covered to the quaint twisted chimneys with creepers, out of which mullioned windows peeped. A more perfect specimen of an old abbey it was impossible to imagine. All about it lay wide green lawns gay with flowers.

"It is Tennyson's 'haunt of ancient peace,'" Mary cried. "We only want the moan of doves, and the murmur of innumerable bees to complete the picture. Did you ever see anything so lovely? And to think that we are actually going to live in that delightful place!"

Miriam was duly enthusiastic. Perhaps she was also thinking of the frost and snow, and of the tragedy in Jane's splendid eyes. And the man who owned this paradise in his ignorance and folly seeing the tragedy of those eyes day by day yet doing nothing to avert it.

"I'll fight him," she thought, "fight him and beat him on his own ground. No mortal man has the right to play Providence like this."

Mary just caught the last few words. "But he starves with his own people," she said.

"Fine excuse, truly," Miriam cried. "I knew a girl, a rich girl, who would have given her opinion with considerable freedom to a less picturesque host than ours. Don't let the glamour of it overwhelm you, Mary; don't blind your eyes to that man's awful folly. I could render the place rich and prosperous in a year without so much as brushing the dew off a single illusion. It's monstrous, Mary, perfectly monstrous. Every woman here has her living in her own hands, and a good one, too. Don't you remember what the diary said about the Spanish lace?"

Mary recollected. It was all coming back to her now.

"But suppose the art is lost," she suggested. "My ancestress, Marcia, had it, and so had two other women in the island. They learnt it from the survivors of the Spanish galleon after the defeat of the Armada. It was a great art, the making of that Spanish lace. I saw some of it in Paris the other day, modern make, quite, and they asked me ten guineas a yard for it——"

"And you bought it, of course?" Miriam smiled.

"I plead guilty," Mary admitted. "It was like a lovely cobweb. And to think that once they made that kind of lace here, to think that somebody on the island may still possess the art. Do you think it possible that such can be the case, Miriam?"

Miriam shook her head and pointed towards the Sanctuary.

"Let us go and see," she said. "There is a deal of promiscuous knowledge to be gained by asking questions."