The a.s.sembly paid no heed to the pa.s.sing boat.
Miss Marty gazed up at the last star fading in the blue. How clear the morning was! How freshly scented beneath the shadow of the woods! Her gaze descended upon the incongruous top-hat and gold-laced livery of Scipio, touched with the morning sunshine.
She glanced around her and motioned to Cai Tamblyn to bring the boat to sh.o.r.e by a gra.s.sy spit whence (as she knew) a cart-track led alongsh.o.r.e through the young oak coppices to the village.
"And Scipio," she said, turning as she stepped out on the turf, "will like a run in the woods."
She had walked on, maybe a hundred paces, before the absurdity of it struck her. She had been thinking of Mr. Pope"s line:
"When wild in woods the n.o.ble savage ran."
And at the notion of Scipio, in gilt-laced hat and livery, tearing wildly through the undergrowth in the joy of liberty, she halted and laughed aloud.
She was smiling yet when, at a turning of the leafy lane, she came upon the prettiest innocent sight. On a cushion of moss beside the path, two small children--a boy and a girl--lay fast asleep.
The boy"s arm was flung around his sister"s shoulders, and across his thighs rested a wand or thin pole topped with a May-garland of wild hyacinths, red-robin and painted birds" eggs. A tin cup, brought to collect pence for the garland, glittered in the cart-rut at their feet. It had rolled down the mossy bank as the girl"s fingers relaxed in sleep.
They were two little ones of Troy, strayed hither from the merrymaking; and at first Miss Marty had a mind to wake them, seeing how near they lay to the river"s brink. But noting that a fallen log safeguarded them from this peril, she fumbled for the pocket beneath her skirt, dropped a sixpence with as little noise as might be into the tin cup, and tiptoed upon her way.
About three hundred yards from the village she met another pair of children; and, soon after, a score or so in a cl.u.s.ter, who took toll of her in pence; for almost everyone carried a garland. And then the trees opened, and she saw before her the village with its cottages, grey and whitewashed, its gardens and orchards, mirrored in the br.i.m.m.i.n.g tide, all trembling in the morning light and yet exquisitely still. Far up the river, beyond the village and the bridge, a level green meadow ran out, narrowing the channel; and here beneath the apple-trees--for the meadow was half an orchard--had been set out many lines of white-covered tables, at which the Mayers made innocently merry.
Innocently, did I say? Well, I have known up-country folk before now to be scandalised by some things which we in the Duchy think innocent enough. So let me admit that the three long-boats conveyed something more than the youth and beauty of Troy to that morning"s Maying; that when launched from Mr. Runnells" yard they were not entirely what they seemed: that from their trial spin across the bay they returned some inches deeper in the water, and yet they did not leak. Had you perchance been standing by the sh.o.r.e in the half-light as they came up over the shallows, you might have wondered at the number of times they took ground, and at the slowness of the tide to lift and float them. You might have wondered again why, after they emerged from the deep shadow of Sir Felix Felix-Williams" woods upon the southern sh.o.r.e, albeit in shallow water, they seemed to feel their hindrances no longer.
Have you ever, my reader, caught hold of a lizard and been left with his tail in your hands?
Even so easily did these three long-boats shed their false keels, which half an hour later were but harmless-looking stacks of timber among Sir Felix"s undergrowth. Half an hour later, had your unwary feet led you to a certain corner of Sir Felix"s well-timbered demesne, you might have scratched your head and wondered what magic carpet had transported you into the heart of the Cognac District.
And all this was the work of the men of Troy (not being volunteers) who had come either in the long-boats or in the many boats escorting these.
But the women of Troy, being deft with the oar one and all, took the places of the men left behind in the woods, and, singing yet, brought both the long-boats and these other boats safely to Lerryn on the full flood of the tide, and disembarking upon the meadow there, gathered around the tables under the apple-trees to eat bread and cream in honour of May-day, looking all the while as if b.u.t.ter would not melt in their mouths. Between their feasting they laughed a great deal; but either they laughed demurely, being constrained by the unwonted presence of Miss Pescod and other ladies of Troy"s acknowledged _elite_, or Miss Marty as yet stood too far off to hear their voices.
Let us return to Scipio, who, on receiving Miss Marty"s permission to wander, had made his way up through the woods in search of the Devil"s Hedge, along which, as he knew, his master would be leading back the triumphant Gallants.
Fidelity was ever the first spring of Scipio"s conduct. He adored the Major with a canine devotion, and by an instinct almost canine he found his way up to the earthwork and chose a position which commanded the farthest prospect in the direction of Looe. From where he sat the broad hedge dipped to a narrow valley, climbed the steep slope opposite, and vanished, to reappear upon a second and farther ridge two miles away. As yet he could discern no sign of the returning heroes; but his ear caught the throb of a drum beaten afar to the eastward.
Of the Major"s two body-servants it might be said that the one spoke seldom and the other never; and again that Cai, who spoke seldom, was taciturn, while Scipio, who spoke never, was almost affable.
In truth, the negro"s was the habitual silence of one who, loving his fellows, spends all his unoccupied time in an inward brooding, a continual haze of day-dreams.
Scipio"s day-dreams were of a piece with his loyalty, a reflection in some sort of his master"s glory. He could never--he with his black skin--be such a man; but he pa.s.sionately desired to be honoured, respected, though but posthumously. And the emblazoned board in the church, appealing as it did to his negro sense of colour, had suggested a way. It is not too much to say that a great part of Scipio"s time was lived by him in a future when, released from this present livery, his spirit should take on a more gorgeous one, as "Scipio Johnson, Esquire, late of this Parish," in scarlet twiddles on a buff ground.
He seated himself on the earthwork, and the better to commune with this vision, tilted his gold-laced hat forward over his eyes, shutting out the dazzle of the morning sun. Once or twice he shook himself, being heavy with broken sleep, and gazed across the ridges, then drew up his knees, clasped them, and let his heavy, woolly head drop forward, nodding.
Let us not pursue those stages of conviviality through which the Looe Diehards, having been seen home by the Troy Gallants, arrived at an obligation to return the compliment. Suffice it to say that Major Hymen and Captain Pond, within five minutes of bidding one another a public tearful farewell, found themselves climbing the first hill towards Lerryn with linked arms. But the Devil"s Hedge is a wide one and luckily could not be mistaken, even in the uncertain light of dawn.
And, to pa.s.s over the minor incidents of that march, I will maintain in fairness (though the men of Troy choose to laugh) that the sudden apparition of a black man seated in the morning light upon the Devil"s Hedge was enough to daunt even the tried valour of the Looe Diehards.
"The De"il"s awa", the De"il"s awa", The De"il"s awa" wi" th" exciseman."
The eye notoriously magnifies an object seen upon a high ridge against the skyline; and when Scipio stood erect in all his gigantic proportions and waved both arms to welcome his beloved master, the Diehards turned with a yell and fled. Vainly their comrades of Troy called after them. Back and down the hill they streamed pell-mell, one on another"s heels; down to the marshy bottom known as Trebant Water, nor paused to catch breath until they had placed a running brook between them and the Power of Darkness.
For the second time that night the Gallants rolled about and clung one to another in throes of Homeric laughter; laughter which, reverberating, shout on shout, along the ridge and down among the tree-tops, reached even to the meadow far below, where in the sudden hush of the lark"s singing the merrymakers paused and looked up to listen.
But wait awhile! They laugh best who laugh last.
CHAPTER IX.
BY LERRYN WATER.
"O will you accept of the mus-e-lin so blue, To wear in the morning and to dabble in the dew?"
_Old Song_.
Miss Marty had duly visited the meadow and eaten and paid for her breakfast of bread and cream. But she had eaten it in some constraint, sitting alone. She had never a.s.serted her position as the Major"s kinswoman in the eyes of Miss Pescod and the ladies of Miss Pescod"s clan, who were inclined to regard her as a poor relation, a mere housekeeper, and to treat her as a person of no great account. On the other hand, the majority of the merrymakers deemed her, no doubt, a stiff stuck-up thing; whereas she would in fact have given much to break through her shyness and accost them.
For these reasons, the meal over, she was glad to pay her sixpence and escape from the throng back to the woodland paths and solitude.
The children by this time had grown tired of straying, and were trooping back to the village. Fewer and fewer met her as she followed the sh.o.r.e; the two slumberers were gone from the mossy bank; by and by the procession dried up, so to speak, altogether.
She understood the reason when a drum began to bang overhead behind the woods and pa.s.sed along the ridge, still banging. The Gallants were returning; and apparently flushed with victory, since between the strokes she could hear their distant shouts of laughter.
At one moment she fancied they must be descending through the woods: for a crackling of the undergrowth, some way up the slope, startled and brought her to a halt. But no; the noise pa.s.sed along the ridge towards the village. The crackling sound must have come from some woodland beast disturbed in his night"s lair.
She retraced her way slowly to the spot where she had disembarked; but when she reached it, Cai and the boat had vanished. No matter; Cai was a trustworthy fellow, and doubtless would be back ere long.
Likely enough he had pulled across to the farther sh.o.r.e to bear a hand in what Troy euphemistically called the "salvage" of the long-boats" cargoes. Happy in her solitude, rejoicing in her extended liberty, Miss Marty strolled on, now gazing up into the green dappled shadows, now pausing on the brink to watch the water as it swirled by her feet, smooth and deep and flawed in its depths with arrow-lights of sunshine.
She came by and by to a point where the cart-track turned inland to climb the woods and a foot-path branched off from it, skirting a small recess in the sh.o.r.e. A streamlet of clear water, hurrying down from the upland by the Devil"s Hedge, here leapt the low cliff and fell on a pebbly beach, driving the pebbles before it and by their attrition wearing out for itself a natural basin. Encountering a low ridge of rock on the edge of the tideway, the stones heaped themselves along it and formed a bar, with one tiny outlet through which the pool trickled continually, except at high spring tides when the river overflowed it.
Now Miss Marty, fetching a compa.s.s around this miniature creek, came in due course to the stream and seated herself on a fallen log, to consider. For the ground on the farther side appeared green and plashy, and she disliked wetting her shoes.
Overhead a finch piped. Below her, hidden by a screen of hazel, chattered the fall. Why should she wend farther? She must be greedy of solitude indeed if this sylvan corner did not content her.
And yet. . . . High on the opposite bank there grew a cl.u.s.ter of columbine, purple and rosy pink, blown thither and seeded perhaps from some near garden, though she had heard that the flower grew wild in these woods. Miss Marty gazed at the flowers, which seem to nod and beckon; then at the stream; then at the plashy sh.o.r.e; lastly at her shoes. Her hand went down to her right foot.
She drew off her shoes. Then she drew off her stockings.
By this time she was in a nervous flurry. Almost you may say that she raced across the stream and clutched at a handful of the columbines. In less than a minute she was back again, gazing timorously about her.
No one had seen; n.o.body, that is to say, except the finch, and he piped on cavalierly. Miss Marty glanced up at him, then at a clearing of green turf underneath his bough, a little to her left.
Why not? Why should she omit any of May morning"s rites?
Miss Marty picked up her skirts again, stepped on to the green turf, and began to dabble her feet in the dew.
"The morn that May began, I dabbled in the dew; And I wished for me a proper young man In coat-tails of the blue. . . ."
"_Whoop! Whoo-oop!_"
The cry came from afar; indeed, from the woods across the river.
Yet as the hare p.r.i.c.ks up her ears at the sound of a distant horn and darts away to the covert, so did Miss Marty pause, and, after listening for a second or two, hurry back to the log to resume her shoes and stockings.
Her shoes she found where she had left them, and one stocking on the rank gra.s.s close beside them. _But where was the other?_