"It made _me_ feel rather funny," said May. "You know, all over like."
The girls shivered, and the cart jogged on across the waste. They pa.s.sed a skewbald sign-post crowded with unfamiliar goblin names, and a dry tree from which once depended, Trewh.e.l.la a.s.sured them, the bodies of three notorious smugglers. One of the carriage candles proved too short to sustain the double journey and presently flickered out gradually, so that the darkness on one side seemed actually to advance upon them.
After a long interval of silence Trewh.e.l.la pulled up with a jerk.
"Listen," he commanded.
"Oh, what is it?" asked Jenny, with visions of a murderer"s approach. On a remote road sounded the trot of horses" hoofs miles away.
"Somebody coming after us," she gasped, clutching May"s sleeve.
"No, that"s a cart; but listen, can"t you hear the sea?"
Ahead of them in the thick night like the singing of a kettle sounded the interminable ocean.
"Wind"s getting up, I believe," said Trewh.e.l.la. "There"s an ugly smell in the air. Dirty weather, I suppose, dirty weather," he half chanted to himself, whipping up the mare.
Soon, indeed, with a wide sigh that filled the waste of darkness, the wind began to blow, setting all the withered rushes and stunted gorse bushes hissing and lisping. The effort, however, was momentary; and presently the gust died away in a calm almost profounder than before.
After another two miles of puddles and darkness, the heavy air was tempered with an unwonted freshness. The farmer again pulled up.
"Now you can hark to it clear enough," he said.
Down below boomed a slow monotone of breakers on a long flat beach.
"That"s Trewinnard Sands, and when the sea do call there so plain, it means dirty weather, sure enough. And here"s Trewinnard Churchtown, and down along a bit of the way is Bochyn."
A splash of light from a dozen cottages showed a squat church surrounded by clumps of shorn pine trees. The road did not improve as they drew clear of the village, and it was a relief after the jolting in and out of ruts to turn aside through a white gate, and even to crunch along over a quarter of a mile of rough stones through two more gates until they reached the softness of farmyard mud. As they pulled up for the last time, between trimmed hedges of escallonia a low garden gate was visible; and against the golden stream suffused by a slanting door, the black silhouette of a woman"s figure, with hand held up to shade her eyes.
"Here we are, mother," Trewh.e.l.la called out. Then he lifted down the two girls, and together they walked up a flagged path towards the light.
Jenny blinked in the dazzle of the room"s interior. Old Mrs. Trewh.e.l.la stared critically at the sisters.
"Yon"s a wisht-looking maid," she said sharply to her son, with a glance at May.
"Oh, they"re both tired," he answered gruffly.
"And what do "ee think of Cornwall, my dear?" asked the old woman, turning to the bride.
"I think it"s very dark," said Jenny.
Chapter x.x.xVI: _The Tragic Loading_
The bridal feast was strewn about the table; the teapot was steaming; the cream melted to ivory richness, and, among many more familiar eatables, the saffron cake looked gaudy and exotic. After the first bashful make-weights of conversation, Jenny and May put their cloaks down, took off wraps, and made the travelers" quick preparation for a meal which has expected their arrival for some time. Then down they all sat, and with the distraction of common hunger the painful air of embarra.s.sment was temporarily driven off. Old Mrs. Trewh.e.l.la was inclined with much a.s.sertion of humility to yield to Jenny her position at the head of the table; but she, overawed by the prodigal display of new dishes, of saffron cake and pasties and bowls of cream, prevailed upon the older woman to withhold her resignation.
The living-room of Bochyn was long, low, and raftered, extending apparently to the whole length of the farmhouse, except where a parlor on the left of the front door usurped a corner. Very conspicuous was the hearth, with its large double range extravagantly embossed with bra.s.s ornaments and handles. On closer inspection the ironwork itself was hammered out into a florid landscape of paG.o.das, mandarins and dragons.
Jenny could not take her eyes off this ostentatious piece of utility.
"Handsome slab, isn"t it?" said Trewh.e.l.la proudly.
"Slab?"
"Stove--we do call them slabs in Cornwall."
"It"s nice. Only what a dreadful thing to clean, I should say."
"Maid Emily does that," explained Mrs. Trewh.e.l.la.
Jenny turned her glances to the rest of the room. By the side of the slab hung a copper warming-pan holding in ruddy miniature the room"s reflection. Here were also bra.s.s ladles and straining spoons and a pair of bellows, whose perfectly circular box was painted with love-knots and quivers. On the high mantlepiece stood several large and astonished china dogs with groups of roughly cast, crudely tinted pottery including Lord Nelson and Elijah, all set in a thicket of bra.s.s candle-sticks.
Indeed, bra.s.s was the predominant note in the general decoration. The walls were shining with tobacco boxes, snuffers, sconces and trays. Very little s.p.a.ce on the low walls could be found for pictures; but one or two chromolithographs, including "Cherry Ripe" and "Bubbles," had succeeded in establishing a right to be hung. All down the middle of the room ran a long oak trestle-table, set with Chippendale chairs at the end which Jenny and the family occupied, but where the rest of the household sat, with benches. The five windows were veiled in curtains of some dim red stuff, and between the two on the farther side from the front door stood an exceptionally tall grandfather"s clock, above whose face, in a marine upheaval that involved the sun, moon and stars, united rising, a ship rocked violently with every swing of the pendulum. A door at the back opened to an echoing vault of laundries, sculleries, larders and pantries, while in the corner beyond the outhouse door was a dark and boxed staircase very straight and steep, a cavernous staircase gaping to unknown corridors and rooms far away.
Old Mrs. Trewh.e.l.la suited somehow that sinister gangway, for, being so lame as to depend on a crutch, the measured thump of her progress was carried down the gloom with an eternal sameness of sound that produced in the listener a sensation of uneasiness. She had a hen-like face, the brightness of whose eyes was continually shuttered by rapid blinks. Her hair, very thin but scarcely gray, was smoothed down so close as to give her head the appearance of a Dutch doll"s. She had a slight mustache and several tufted moles. There was much of the witch about her and more of the old maid than the mother.
When the new arrivals had been seated at the table for some minutes, the rest of the household trooped in through the outhouse door. Thomas Hosken led the procession. His face under the glaze of soap looked more like an orange than ever, and he had in his walk the indeterminate roll of that fruit. Emily Day came next, a dark slip of a maid with long-lashed stag"s eyes, too large for the rest of her. She was followed by d.i.c.ky Rosewarne, a full-blooded, handsome, awkward boy of about twenty-three, loose-jointed like a yearling colt and bringing in with him a smell of deep-turned earth, of bonfires and autumn leaves. Bessie Trevorrow, the dairymaid, ripe as a pippin, came in, turning down the sleeves of a bird"s-eye print dress over forearms that made Jenny gasp.
She could not reconcile the inconsistencies of feature in Bessie, could not match the burning almond eyes with the coa.r.s.e lips, nor see how such weather-stained cheeks could belong to so white a neck. Last of all came Old Man Veal, whose duties and status no one rightly knew. The household individually slid into their separate places along the benches with sidelong shy greetings to Jenny and May, who for their part would have sat down with more ease to supper with a flock of sheep. One chair still remained empty.
"Where"s Granfa Champion?" asked Trewh.e.l.la.
"Oh, my dear life, that old man is always last," grumbled Mrs.
Trewh.e.l.la. "What a thing "tis to have ancient old relations as do never know to come in to a meal. Go find him, boy Thomas," she added with a sigh.
Thomas was much embarra.s.sed by this order, and a subdued t.i.tter ran round the lower part of the table as Thomas made one of his fruit-like exits to find Granfa Champion.
"He"s my uncle," explained Mrs. Trewh.e.l.la to Jenny. "A decent old man as anyone could wish to meet, but most terrible unknowing of the time. I believe he"s so old that time do mean nothing to him. I believe he"s grown to despise it."
"Is he very old?" asked Jenny, for want of anything better to say.
"Well, n.o.body do know how old he is. There"s a difference of twenty years in the opinions you"ll hear put about. Poor old soul, he do give very little trouble at all. For when the sun do shine, he"s all the time walking up and down the garden, and when "tis dropping, he do sit in his room so quiet as a great old lamb."
Here Thomas came back with positive news.
"Mr. Champion can"t get his boot off and he"s in some frizz about it."
"How can"t he get his boot off? How didn"t "ee help him?"
"So I did," said Thomas. "But he wouldn"t hear nothing of what I do know about boots, and kept on all the time telling what a fool I was. I done my best with "en."
At this moment Granfa Champion himself appeared, his countenance flushed with conquest, his eyes shining in a limpid blue, his snow-white hair like spindrift round his face.
"Come in, you Granfa," his nephew invited.
"Is the maids come?" he asked.
"Ess, ess, here they are sitting down waiting for "ee."
Mr. Champion advanced with a fine stateliness and n.o.bility of welcome.
Indeed, shy as she was, his entrance tempted Jenny to rise from her chair.