He took leave of Mendarva and the
Jolls just before Christmas. The smith was unaffectedly
sorry to lose him. “But,” said he,
“the Dane will be entered for the championship
next summer, so I s’pose I must look forward
to that.”
Every one in the Joll household gave
him a small present on his leaving. Lizzie’s
was a New Testament, with her name on the flyleaf,
and under it, “Converted April 19, 187-.”
Taffy did not want the gift, but took it rather than
hurt her feelings.
Farmer Joll said, “Well, wish
’ee well! Been pretty comfiable, I hope.
Now you’m goin’, I don’t mind telling
’ee I didn’t like your coming a bit.
But now ‘tis wunnerful to me you’ve been
wi’ us less than two year’; we’ve
made such friends.”
At home Taffy bought a small forge
and set it up in the church at the west end of the
north aisle. Mr. Raymond, under his direction,
had been purchasing the necessary tools for some months
past, and now the main expense was the cost of coal,
which pinched them a little. But they managed
to keep the fire alight, and the work went forward
briskly. Save that he still forbade the parish
to lend them the least help, the old Squire had ceased
to interfere.
Mr. Raymond’s hair was greyer,
and Taffy might have observed but did not how
readily towards the close of a day’s laborious
carpentry he would drop work and turn to Dindorf’s
Poetae Scenici Graeci, through which they were
reading their way. On Sundays the congregation
rarely numbered a dozen. It seemed that, as the
end of the Vicar’s task drew nearer, so the
prospect of filling the church receded and became
more shadowy. And if his was a queer plight,
Jacky Pascoe’s was queerer. The Bryanite
continued to come by night and help, but at rarer
intervals. He was discomforted in mind, as anyone
could see, and at length he took Mr. Raymond aside
and made confession.
“I must go away; that’s
what ’tis. My burden is too great for me
to bear.”
“Why,” said Mr. Raymond,
who had grown surprisingly tolerant during the last
twelve months, “what cause have you, of all men,
to feel dejected? You can set the folk here
on fire like flax.” He sighed.
“That’s azactly the reason I
can set ’em afire with a breath, but I can’t
hold ’em under. I make ’em too strong
for me and I’m afeard.
Parson, dear, it’s the gospel truth; for two
years I’ve a been strivin’ agen myself,
wrastlin’ upon my knees, and all to hold this
parish in.” He mopped his face. “‘Tis
like fightin’ with beasts at Ephesus,”
he said.
“Do you want to hold them in?”
“I do, and I don’t.
I’ve got to try, anyway. Sometimes I tell
mysel’ ’tis putting a hand to the plough
and turning back; and then I reckon I’ll go
on. But when the time comes I can’t.
I’m afeard, I tell ’ee.” He
paused. “I’ve laid it before the
Lord, but He don’t seem to help. There’s
two voices inside o’ me. ’Tis a terrible
responsibility.”
“But the people: what are you afraid of
their doing?”
“I don’t know. You
don’t know what a runaway hoss will do, but
you’re afeared all the same.” He
sank his voice. “There’s wantonness,
for one thing six love-children born in
the parish this year, and more coming. They
do say that Vashti Clemow destroyed her child.
And Old Man Johns him they found dead on
the rocks under the Island he didn’t
go there by accident. ’Twas a calm day,
too.”
As often as not Taffy worked late
and blew his forge-fire alone in the church, the tap
of his hammer making hollow music in the desolate
aisles. He was working thus one windy night in
February, when the door rattled open and in walked
a totally unexpected visitor Sir Harry
Vyell.
“Good evening! I was riding
by and saw your light in the windows dancing up and
down. I thought I would hitch up the mare and
drop in for a chat. But go on with your work.”
Taffy wondered what had brought him
so far from his home at that time of night, but asked
no questions. And Sir Harry placed a hassock
on one of the belfry steps, and taking his seat, watched
for a while in silence. He wore his long riding-boots
and an overcoat with the collar turned up about a
neckcloth less nattily folded than usual.
“I wish,” he said at length,
“that my boy George was clever like you.
You were great friends once you remember
Plymouth, hey? But I dare say you’ve not
seen much of each other lately.”
Taffy shook his head.
“George is a bit wild.
Oxford might have done something for him; made a
man of him, I mean. But he wouldn’t go.
I believe in wild oats to a certain extent.
I have told him from the first he must look after
himself and decide for himself. That’s
my theory. It makes a youngster self-reliant.
He goes and comes as he likes. If he comes home
late from hunting I ask no questions; I don’t
wait dinner. Don’t you agree with me?”
“I don’t know,”
Taffy answered, wondering why he should be consulted.
“Self-reliance is what a man wants.”
“Couldn’t he have learnt that at school?”
Sir Harry fidgeted with the riding-crop
in his hands. “Well, you see, he’s
an only son I dare say it was selfish of
me. You don’t mind my talking about George?”
Taffy laughed. “I like it. But ”
Sir Harry laughed too, in an embarrassed
way. “But you don’t suppose I rode
over from Carwithiel for that? Well, well!
The fact is one gets foolish as one grows
old George went out hunting this morning,
and didn’t turn up for dinner. I kept to
my rule and dined alone. Nine o’clock came;
half-past; no George. At ten Hoskins locked up
as usual, and off I went to bed. But I couldn’t
sleep. After a while it struck me that he might
be sleeping here over at Tredinnis; that is, if no
accident had happened. No sleep for me until
I made sure; so I jumped out, dressed, slipped down
to the stables, saddled the mare and rode over.
I left the mare by Tredinnis great gates and crept
down to Moyle’s stables like a housebreaker,
looked in through the window, and sure enough there
was George’s grey in the loose box to the right.
So George is sleeping there, and I’m easy in
my mind. No doubt you think me an old fool?”
But Taffy was not thinking anything of the sort.
“I couldn’t wish better than that.
You understand?”
“Not quite.”
“He lost his mother early.
He wants a woman to look after him, and for him to
think about. If he and Honoria would only make
up a match. . . . And Carwithiel would be quite
a different house.”
Taffy hesitated, with a hand on the forge-bellows.
“I dare say it’s news
to you, what I’m telling. But it has been
in my mind this long while. Why don’t
you blow up the fire? I bet Miss Honoria has
thought of it too: girls are deep. She has
a head on her shoulders. I’ll warrant
she sends half a dozen of my servants packing within
a week. As it is, they rob me to a stair.
I know it, and I haven’t the pluck to interfere.”
“What does the old Squire say?” Taffy
managed to ask.
“It has never come to saying
anything. But I believe he thinks of it, too,
when he happens to think of anything but his soul.
He’ll be pleased; everyone will be pleased.
The properties touch, you see.”
“I see.”
“To tell you the truth, he’s
failing fast. This religion of his is a symptom:
all of his family have taken to it in the end.
If he hadn’t the constitution of a horse, he’d
have been converted ten years before this. What
puzzles me is, he’s so quiet. You mark
my words “ Sir Harry rose, buttoned
his coat and shook his riding-crop prophetically “he’s
brewing up for something. There’ll be the
devil of a flare-up before he has done.”
It came with the Midsummer bonfires.
At nine o’clock on St. John’s Eve, Mr.
Raymond read prayers in the church. It was his
rule to celebrate thus the vigils of all saints in
the English calendar and some few Cornish saints besides;
and he regularly announced these services on the preceding
Sundays: but no parishioner dreamed of attending
them.
To-night, as usual, he and Taffy had
prayed alone: and the lad was standing after
service at the church door, with his surplice on his
arm (for he always wore a surplice and read the lessons
on these vigils), when the flame of the first bonfire
shot up from the headland over Innis village.
Almost on the moment, a flame answered
it from the point where the lighthouse stood; and,
within ten minutes, the horizon of the towans was
cressetted with these beacon-fires: surely (thought
Taffy) with many more than usual. And he remembered
that Jacky Pascoe had thrown out a hint of a great
revival to be held on Baal-fire Night (as he called
it).
The night was sultry and all but windless.
For once the tormented sands had rest. The
flame of the bonfires shone yellow orange-yellow and
steady. He could see the dark figures of men
and women, passing between him and the nearest, on
the high wastrel in front of Tredinnis great gates.
Their voices reached him in a confused murmur, broken
now and then by a child’s scream of delight.
And yet a hush seemed to hang over sea and land:
an expectant hush. For weeks the sky had not
rained. Day after day, a dull indigo blue possessed
it, deepening with night into duller purple, as if
the whole heavens were gathering into one big thundercloud,
which menaced but never broke. And in the hush
of those nights a listener could almost fancy he heard,
between whiles, the rabbits stirring uneasily in their
burrows.
By-and-by the bonfire on the wastrel
appeared to be giving out sparks of light which blazed
independently; yet without decreasing its own volume
of flame. The sparks came dancing, nearer and
larger: the voices grew more distinct.
The revellers had kindled torches and were advancing
in procession to visit other bonfires. The torches,
too, were supposed to bless the fields they passed
across. Small blessing had they ever brought
to the barren towans.
The procession rose and sank as it
came over the uneven ridges like a fiery snake; topped
the nearest ridge and came pouring down past the churchyard
wall. At its head danced Lizzie Pezzack, shrieking
like a creature possessed, her hair loose and streaming
while she whirled her torch. Taffy knew these
torches; bundles of canvas steeped in tar and fastened
in the middle to a stout stick or piece of chain.
Lizzie’s was fastened to a chain; and as he watched
her uplifted arm swinging the blazing mass he found
time to wonder how she escaped setting her hair on
fire. Other torch-bearers tossed their arms and
shouted as they passed. The smoke was suffocating,
and across the patch of quiet graveyard the heat smote
on Taffy’s face. But in the crowd he saw
two figures clearly Jacky Pascoe and Squire
Moyle; and the Bryanite’s face was agitated
and white in the infernal glare. He had given
an arm to the Squire, who was clearly the centre of
the procession and tottered forward with jaws working
and cavernous eyes.
“He’s saved!” a voice shouted.
Others took up the cry. “Saved!”
“The Squire’s saved!” “Saved
to-night saved to glory!”
The Squire paused, still leaning on
the Bryanite’s arm. While the procession
swayed around him, he gazed across the gate as a man
who had lost his bearings. No glint of torchlight
reached his cavernous eyes; but the sight of Mr. Raymond’s
surpliced figure standing behind Taff’s shoulder
in the full glare seemed to rouse him. He lifted
a fist and shook it slowly.
“Com’st along, sir!”
urged the Bryanite. But the Squire stood irresolute,
muttering to himself.
“Com’st along, sir!”
“Lev’ me be, I tell ’ee!”
He laid both hands on the gate and spoke across it
to Mr. Raymond, his head nodding while his voice rose.
“D’ee hear what they say?
I’m saved. I’m the Squire of this
parish, and I’m goin’ to Heaven.
I make no account of you and your church. Old
Satan’s the fellow I’m after, and I’m
going to have him out o’ this parish to-night
or my name’s not Squire Moyle.”
“That’s of it, Squire!” “Hunt
’en!” “Out with ’en!”
He turned on the crowd.
“Hunt ’en? Iss fay
I will! Come along, boys back to Tredinnis!
No, no” this to the Bryanite “we’ll
go back. I’ll show ’ee sport
we’ll hunt th’ old Divvle by scent and
view to-night. I’m Squire Moyle, ain’t
I? And I’ve a pack o’ hounds, ha’n’t
I? Back, boys back, I tell ’ee!”
Lizzie Pezzack swung her torch.
“Back back to Tredinnis!”
The crowd took up the cry, “Back to Tredinnis!”
The old man shook off the Bryanite’s hand,
and as the procession wheeled and reformed itself
confusedly, rushed to the head of it, waving his hat
“Back! Back to Tredinnis!”
“God help them!” said
Mr. Raymond; and taking Taffy by the arm, drew him
back into the church.
The shouting died away up the road.
For three-quarters of an hour father and son worked
in silence. The reddened sky shed its glow gently
through the clear glass windows, suffusing the shadows
beneath the arched roof. And in the silence
the lad wondered what was happening up at Tredinnis.
Jim the Whip took oath afterward that
it was no fault of his. He had suspected three
of the hounds for a day or two Chorister,
White Boy, and Bellman and had separated
them from the pack. That very evening he had
done the same with Rifler, who was chewing at the straw
in a queer fashion and seemed quarrelsome. He
had said nothing to the Squire, whose temper had been
ugly for a week past. He had hoped it was a
false alarm had thought it better to wait,
and so on.
The Squire went down to the kennels
with a lantern, Jim shivering behind him. They
had their horses saddled outside and ready, and the
crowd was waiting along the drive and up by the great
gates. The Squire saw at a glance that two couples
were missing, and in two seconds had their names on
his tongue. He was like a madman. He shouted
to Jim to open the doors. “Better not,
maister!” pleaded Jim. The old man cursed,
smote him across the neck with the butt-end of his
whip, and unlocked the doors himself. Jim, though
half stunned, staggered forward to prevent him, and
took another blow, which felled him. He dropped
across the threshold of Chorister’s kennel;
the doors of all opened outwards, and the weight of
his body kept this one shut. But he saw the
other three hounds run out, saw the Squire turn with
a ghastly face, drop the lantern, and run for it as
White Boy snapped at his boot. Jim heard the
crash of the lantern and the snap of teeth, and with
that he fainted off in the darkness. He had cut
his forehead against the bars of the big kennel, and
when he came to himself one of the hounds was licking
his face through the grating.
Men told for years after how the old
Squire came galloping up the drive that night, hoof
to belly, his chin almost on mare Nonsuch’s
neck, his face like a man’s who hears hell cracking
behind him, and of the three dusky hounds which followed
(the tale said) with clapping jaws and eyes like coach-lamps.
Down in the quiet church Taffy heard
the outcry, and, laying down his plane, looked up
and saw that his father had heard it too. Mr.
Raymond’s mild eyes, shining through his spectacles,
asked as plainly as words: “What was that?”
“Listen!”
For a minute two minutes they
heard nothing more. Then out of the silence
broke a rapid, muffled beat of hoofs, and Mr. Raymond
clutched Taffy’s arm as a yell a cry
not human, or if human, insane ripped the
night as you might rip linen, and fetched them to
their feet. Taffy gained the porch first; and
just at that moment a black shadow heaved itself on
the churchyard wall and came hurling over with a thud a
clatter of dropping stones then a groan.
Before they could grasp what was happening
the old Squire had extricated himself from the fallen
mare, and came staggering across the graves.
“Hide me! ”
He came with both arms outstretched,
his face turned sideways. Behind him, from the
far side of the wall, came sounds horrible
shuffling sounds and in the dusk they saw
the head of one of the hounds above the coping and
his forepaws clinging as he strained to heave himself
over.
“Off! Keep ’en off!”
They caught him by both hands, dragged
him within, and slammed the door.
“Hide me! Hi !”
The word ended with a thud as he pitched
headlong on the slate pavement. Through the
barred door the scream of the mare Nonesuch answered
it.