Читать книгу Tregarthen's Wife - Fred M. White - Страница 9

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WITH the morning the great ground-swell died away, the grey swinging battalions no longer smote upon the cliffs, the boats were dancing upon the wrinkled blue bay. Out of a perfect sky the sun was shining, moreover the threatened frost had not come, for Mary had been upon the uplands before breakfast to see.

A kindly-looking man with grey hair and keen features stood talking to Miriam as Mary came up. His eyes were at once the eyes of a fighter and a scholar. His clean shaven lips were keen and humorous. His dress was a compromise between that of a parson and a sportsman, item, tweed trousers tucked into sea boots and correct clerical waistcoat and tie, item, a worn Norfolk jacket and a battered cap of sorts. A tall wiry man, keen as a hawk and kindly as a dove, a disappointed man who had been driven from the front rank by a physical disorder and forced back to pure air and quiet—for there are some who cannot live in towns. His disappointment had given a certain pungency to this man's speech. For the rest he who had once been in the running for a bishopric was perforce curate-in-charge of St. Minver 'up to Trevose,' where every man was a Dissenter and where the church congregation could be counted on the fingers. Thus the Reverend Reginald Guy, prince of gentlemen and best of good fellows.

"This is Mr. Guy, Rector of St. Minver," Miriam explained.

"Who has come begging, Miss Blenkiron," Guy explained. "Possibly the fact may not astonish you. A friend of mine says that the sturdiest beggars of all are to be found in the Establishment. But my alms are a favour. Lady Greytown, who is by way of being related to my wife, writes that you are down here for a time. We should take it as a great favour if you will come and stay with us for a day or two. We see so few people from the towns here excepting in the summer when Trevose has its complement of visitors. Will you come?"

Guy's tone was almost pleading. Mary understood the loneliness of these good, refined, educated people amidst the beauty and ignorance of the place. She looked at Miriam and nodded.

"We will come with pleasure," she said. "I was once on the Pacific coast for six months, after an illness, and I can quite understand your feelings."

They pushed off in the boat presently, having changed their dresses in defiance of Tregarthen. They were good women and original ones, but they had not the sheer audacity to present themselves to Mrs. Guy in blue woollen frocks, the waists of which were under their arms. Then they landed on the long razor-backed piece of sand that constituted Trevose harbour, where the fishermen were lounging with the boats pulled beyond high water. The fishers stared coolly yet not insolently, but never a one lent a hand to parson's boat though they accepted his speech with benign toleration. On the whole Mary gathered the impression that they were sorry for him.

"Are they intolerably rude or intolerably lazy?" Mary asked. "Is there some blistering sin for a Dissenter to help a Churchman?"

"Not a cardinal sin," Guy smiled. "I dare say they would look for forgiveness in time. The men condescend to speak to me, they come to my reading-room and use my bagatelle board and smoke my tobacco. But it is tacitly understood that I am in no way to tamper with their spiritual welfare, or lead them towards Romish practices. The parson has his uses all the same. He is expected to approach Lord Greytown when they want anything, he has to get up subscriptions when there is a boat lost or the nets have to be abandoned. In the summer all the people let their houses, and every prospective tenant is referred to me. I write something like five hundred letters every summer."

"And yet they won't touch your boat," Mary said.

"Well, they are a queer people. Till I came down here I had but a hazy idea what independence of character means. And they are proud. It is their constant boast that they are Cornishmen. Now, I can understand a man being proud to call himself a Briton, or else a Scot or Irishman. But why this conceit because one happens to see the light on the peninsula called Cornwall?"

"Pretty, but poor," Miriam said. "A county tied up with bits of string. But you didn't tell us why they refused to handle your boat."

"That is an old story," Guy explained. "These men live on their fishing. They have one of the finest fishing grounds round our coast—The Golden Ground it is called. And yet they go on hook and lining as they have done for generations, catching cod and mackerel, selling them to the hucksters for so much or so little, generally so little, per hundred. But there are choice ground fish here by the score. So, by way of an object lesson, I bought an otter trawl, and the first day I went out I got a catch of soles that I sold on the beach for thirty-two shillings. Of course the money was expended in charity, but since then not one of them will touch my boat."

They passed up the steep causeway from the village with the whitewashed cottages clustering on either side. From end to end of Trevose no house stood alone. In the good old times, when the wrecking and smuggling was a madder and better paying game than fishing, this had been an advantage, for one house opened into another, and when the preventive officers came hotfoot on the trail they came only to be baffled by the rabbit warren called Trevose. All this Guy explained in his chatty, cheery way.

"And here we are," he said. "This is my house."

A pleasant white cottage it was, standing in the hollow and girt by trees. On each side a wing had been built out and was already covered with creepers; to the right lay the garden, and the lawn itself was in the shadow of the grey square-towered church, the church that had been empty since John Wesley blazed across the Tamar, and set all Cornwall afire to the new creed. For they are stern men and tempestuous in Cornwall, under a placid exterior, and the tranquil doctrines of the Church are not to their liking.

Mrs. Guy came out to meet them, a tall handsome woman, with lovely blue eyes, and the charm of manner that comes with breeding and contact with gentlefolks. Only Reginald Guy himself guessed what his wife had given up when she came down from the world and high places for his sake.

"To say that I am glad to see you is a mere figure of speech," she said, with a charming smile. "Let me show you to your rooms, and then we will have luncheon, which really is dinner, at one o'clock."

Everything was sweet and fresh and wholesome there, everything good and in the best of taste. There were flowers everywhere, the whole house was fragrant with them. The meal was simple and unpretentious, but a duchess might have sat down to it. And the rector's conversation was refreshing as a well-mixed salad.

"You see, there are three sorts of pie on the table," he said. "Pies and pastry exhaust our gastronomic imagination. Do you know why the devil never came to Cornwall, Miss Murch?"

"I give it up," Miriam smiled.

"Because he was afraid they would put him in a pie. We immure everything that way. Some little time ago I had a hare sent me. You must know that a hare is a great rarity in these parts. The very day that hare arrived, the cook made a pie of it. It was a great grief to me."

Mary sat listening. The shadow of the church was on her face, she could see the grey pinnacles glistening in the sun. She felt too languid and sleepy and restful for conversational effort.

"Do I understand that you are not really the rector?" she asked.

"That is the fact," Guy explained. "I do the work and draw the stipend, but the rector is Mr. Tregarth of Tregarth Court. You see, he went into the Church for family reasons, and when his elder brother died, five years ago, and he came into the property, he gave up regular spiritual work. He is at home now, and you will have the privilege of hearing him preach to-morrow. A clever man who had a serious love disappointment in early life, he is a little eccentric. Nobody takes any notice. Would you like to look at the church? It is over seven hundred years old, and we have some really fine glass here."

Mary rose promptly. "I am a good American," she laughed, "and you can always catch me with a bait of old architecture. If you could move your church bodily to Chicago I know a man who would give two million dollars for it."

"And we can't half fill it," Guy said sadly. "How hard I tried when I came here. My congregation and my choir do not total half a hundred. I fear that past apathy had much to answer for. At one time I had only myself and the organist—and my wife is the organist."

"I have been many things in my time," Mrs. Guy laughed. "We don't mind it so much now, but it was an awful disappointment at first. Here is the parish church where scarcely anybody ever comes, whilst down in the village of nine hundred souls they have three chapels—Wesleyan, Baptist, and Bible Christian. And yet all the Trevose people who die are buried here, and Reggie reads the service."

"And the bodies are carried up a hill seven hundred feet from the village," Guy explained. "There is absolutely no hearse in the village. But there is something very simple and very touching and pathetic in a fisherman's funeral."

They wandered out of the house at length, across the lawn and into the grey brown shadows of the old church. Here were many monuments and mural tablets to dead and gone Tregarths who seemed to have been great people in these parts years agone. And on the Sunday morning the visitors had the pleasure of seeing the head of the family conducting the entire service. Out of respect to the keen-visaged, white-haired old man, many people had come to church who usually abstained. There might have been a hundred of them altogether, retired 'captains'—you could not throw a stone down Trevose street without hitting a 'captain'—a sprinkling of lean, sunbaked farmers, with the bent shaking pensioners in the free seats, and the Tregarth Court servants behind them.

Then a strange thing happened, so strange a thing that I should hesitate to record it but for the fact that there are good men and true who can testify to the truth of it. Moreover, it had happened so often that none took heed of it at Trevose. The aged rector had given out the public notices in his loud strident voice, had published the banns of marriage between Rebecca May and Roland Tregavenny, both of this parish—and both present smiling, not unmindful of their large bulk in the public eye—and then the rector proceeded thus—

"And this is to give notice that a month from to-morrow, Job Hawken, an idle fellow and a most incompetent groom, quits my service. As also does Jane Bishop, who broke three Dresden china dishes last Thursday."

Mary pinched herself to make quite sure that she was awake. She glanced fearfully round the church expecting some outburst of feeling. But nobody seemed to have heard anything unusual. The recalcitrant Job, and the equally recreant Jane, grinned uncomfortably, and there was an end of the matter. After the service was over Mr. Tregarth joined Guy and his party in the churchyard. Mary was too fascinated to do more than respectfully gaze at him.

He looked like a gentleman with his commanding face, yet he wore a woollen shirt, and a most amazingly rusty black suit, a suit that old inhabitants could recall any time the last fifty years. No self-respecting ploughman or labourer would have been seen in such garments on the sabbath day. In no case would the village have permitted such a thing.

"These ladies are from America," Guy explained.

"Indeed, indeed," Mr. Tregarth muttered. "What do they come for? Young lady, what do you come here for?"

"I came to see Tregarthen," Mary said pleasantly. "He is a distant connection of mine. My ancestors came from here."

Over a pair of large silver-rimmed glasses Mr. Tregarth looked keenly.

"What do you think of the man Tregarthen?" he demanded.

Mary was of opinion that he was a little wrong-headed.

The keen eyes gleamed. Tregarth bounced his ebony cane on the pavement.

"A visionary, a dreamer, a fool," he cried. "Actually had the impudence to tell me no honest man ever went into business. Says every business man is bound to be a knave. You are an American and you are rich. Oh, I can see your frock is made in Paris, though I wear a coat that isn't worth sixpence. Marry Tregarthen, force him to fall in love with you, and then take him to see the world. Get to the bottom of him, and he is a good fellow. At present he is a deplorable ass. Good day."

Tregarth raised his hat and kissed his fingers with a fine gallant air, ridiculously out of keeping with his rusty coat, and hobbled out of the churchyard.

"A gentleman and a good man," said Guy, "though he loves to be taken for a tramp. Once a new servant threw him off the premises, and he was delighted."

"Show me some more types," said Mary. "If you only knew how I am enjoying this! Can't you bring me in contact with the fisher-folk?"

"If you can stand the tobacco smoke," said Guy. "I am taking the chair at a meeting in the village to-night where all are invited. This being the Jubilee year, we are seriously contemplating a memorial to celebrate the event. We meet to open a fund and make suggestions. You will have a good opportunity of seeing the fisherman at his best."

"Delightful!" Mary cried.

"I would not miss it for worlds," Miriam murmured. "Mr. Guy, I am glad that I came down here, I am glad to find so sweet a place. And it is good of you to take all this trouble for us."

"That is nonsense," Eleanor Guy said cheerfully. "It is pure selfishness on our part. We shall be sorry when you have to go, for our own sakes. You have only seen the bright and best side up to now."

And with this dark speech Mrs. Guy led the way in to dinner.