Two Years Ago Volume I Part 8

Up jump half-a-dozen off the logs and baulkings, where they have been squatting, doubled up knee to nose, after the fas.h.i.+on of their cla.s.s, and a volley of execrations, like a storm of grape, almost blows the two offenders off the wall. The bolder, however, lingers, anathematising in turn; whereon a black-bearded youth, some six feet four in height, catches up an oar, makes a sweep at the s.h.i.+ns of the lad above his head, and brings him writhing down upon the upper pier-way, whence he walks off howling, and muttering threats of "taking the law." In vain;--there is not a magistrate within ten miles; and custom, Lynch-law, and the coast-guard lieutenant, settle all matters in Aberalva town, and do so easily enough; for the petty crimes which fill our gaols are all unknown among those honest Vikings' sons; and any man who covets his neighbour's goods, instead of stealing them has only to go and borrow them, on condition, of course, of lending in his turn.

"What's that collier-lad hollering about, Captain Willis?" asks Mr.

Tardrew, steward to Lord Scoutbush, landlord of Aberalva, as he comes up to the old man.

"Gentleman Jan cut him over, for pelting the schoolmistress below here."

"Serve him right; he'll have to cut over that curate next, I reckon."

"Oh, Mr. Tardrew, don't you talk so; the young gentleman is as kind a man as I ever saw, and comes in and out of our house like a lamb."

"Wolf in sheep's clothing," growls Tardrew.

"What d'ye think he says to me last week? Wanted to turn the schoolmistress out of her place because she went to chapel sometimes."

"I know, I know," replied Willis, in the tone of a man who wished to avoid a painful subject. "And what did you answer, then, Mr. Tardrew?"

"I told him he might if he liked; but he'd make the place too hot to hold him, if he hadn't done it already, with his bowings and his crossings, and his chantings, and his Popish Gregories,--and tells one he's no Papist; called him Pope Gregory himself. What do we want with popes' tunes here, instead of the Old Hundredth and Martyrdom? I should like to see any Pope of the lot make a tune like them."

Captain Willis listened with a face half sad, half slily amused. He and Tardrew were old friends; being the two most notable persons in the parish, save Jones the lieutenant, Heale the doctor, and another gentleman, of whom we shall speak presently. Both of them too, were thorough-going Protestants, and though Churchmen, walked sometimes into the Brianite Chapel of an afternoon, and thought it no sin. But each took the curate's "Puseyism" in a different way, being two men as unlike each other as one could well find.

Tardrew--steward to Lord Scoutbush, the absentee landlord,--was a shrewd, hard-bitten, choleric old fellow, of the shape, colour, and consistence of a red brick; one of those English types which Mr.

Emerson has so well hit off in his rather confused and contradictory "Traits:"--

"He hides virtues under vices, or, rather, under the semblance of them. It is the misshapen, hairy, Scandinavian Troll again who lifts the cart out of the mire, or threshes the corn which ten day-labourers could not end: but it is done in the dark, and with muttered maledictions. He is a churl with a soft place in his heart, whose speech is a brash of bitter waters, but who loves to help you at a pinch. He says, No; and serves you, and his thanks disgust you." Such, was Tardrew,--a true British bulldog, who lived pretty faithfully up to his Old Testament, but had, somehow, forgotten the existence of the New.

Willis was a very different and a very much n.o.bler person; the most perfect specimen which I ever have met (for I knew him well, and loved him) of that type of British sailor which good Captain Marryat has painted in his Masterman Ready, and painted far better than I can, even though I do so from life. A tall and graceful old man, though stooping much from lumbago and old wounds; with snow-white hair and whiskers, delicate aquiline features, the manners of a n.o.bleman, and the heart of a child. All children knew that latter fact, and clung to him instinctively. Even "the Boys," that terrible Berserk-tribe, self-organised, self-dependent, and bound together in common iniquities and the dread of common retribution, who were in Aberalva, as all fis.h.i.+ng towns, the torment and terror of all douce fogies, male and female,--even the Boys, I say, respected Captain Willis, so potent was the influence of his gentleness; nailed not up his shutters, nor tied fis.h.i.+ng-lines across his doorway; tail-piped not his dog, nor sent his cat to sea on a barrel-stave; nor put live crabs into his pocket, nor dead dog-fish into his well; yea, even when judgment, too long provoked, made bare her red right hand, and the lieutenant vowed by his commission that he would send half-a-dozen of them to the treadmill, they would send up a deputation to "beg Captain Willis to beg the schoolmistress to beg them off." For between Willis and that fair young creature a friends.h.i.+p had grown up, easily to be understood. Willis was one of those rare natures upon whose purity no mire can cling; who pa.s.s through the furnace, and yet not even the smell of fire has pa.s.sed upon them. Bred, almost born, on board a smuggling cutter, in the old war-times; then hunting, in the old coast-blockade service, the smugglers among whom he had been trained; watching the slow horrors of the Walcheren; fighting under Collingwood and Nelson, and many another valiant Captain; lounging away years of temptation on the West-Indian station, as sailing-master of a s.h.i.+p-of-the-line; pensioned comfortably now for many a year in his native town, he had been always the same gentle, valiant, righteous man; sober in life, strict in duty, and simple in word; a soul as transparent as crystal, and as pure. He was the oracle of Aberalva now; and even Lieutenant Brown would ask his opinion,--non-commissioned officer though he was,--in a tone which was all the more patronising, because he stood a little in awe of the old man.

But why, when the boys wanted to be begged off, was the schoolmistress to be their advocate? Because Grace Harvey exercised, without intending anything of the kind, an almost mesmeric influence on every one in the little town. Goodness rather than talent had given her wisdom, and goodness rather than courage a power of using that wisdom, which, to those simple, superst.i.tious folk, seemed altogether an inspiration. There was a mystery about her, too, which worked strongly on the hearts of the West-country people. She was supposed to be at times "not right;" and wandering intellect is with them, as with many primitive peoples, an object more of awe than of pity. Her deep melancholy alternated with bursts of wild eloquence, with fantastic fables, with entreaties and warnings against sin, full of such pity and pathos that they melted, at times, the hardest hearts. A whole world of strange tales, half false, half true, had grown up around her as she grew. She was believed to spend whole nights in prayer; to speak with visitors from the other world; even to have the power of seeing into futurity. The intensity of her imagination gave rise to the belief that she had only to will, and she could see whom she would, and all that they were doing, even across the seas; her exquisite sensibility, it was whispered, made her feel every bodily suffering she witnessed, as acutely as the sufferer's self, and in the very limb in which he suffered. Her deep melancholy was believed to be caused by some dark fate--by some agonising sympathy with evil-doers; and it was sometimes said in Aberalva,--"Don't do that, for poor Grace's sake. She bears the sins of all the parish."

So it befell that Grace Harvey governed, she knew not how or why, all hearts in that wild simple fis.h.i.+ng-town. Rough men, fighting on the quay, shook hands at Grace's bidding. Wives who could not lure their husbands from the beer-shop, sent Grace in to fetch them home, sobered by shame: and woe to the stranger who fancied that her entrance into that noisy den gave him a right to say a rough word to the fair girl!

The maidens, instead of envying her beauty, made her the confidant of all their loves; for though many a man would gladly have married her, to woo her was more than any dared; and Gentleman Jan himself, the rightful bully of the quay, as being the handsomest and biggest man for many a mile, beside owning a tidy trawler and two good mackerel-boats, had said openly, that if any man had a right to her, he supposed he had; but that he should as soon think of asking her to marry him, as of asking the moon.

But it was in the school, in the duty which lay nearest to her, that Grace's inward loveliness shone most lovely. Whatever dark cloud of melancholy lay upon her own heart, she took care that it should never overshadow one of those young innocents, whom she taught by love and ruled by love, always tender, always cheerful, even gay and playful; punis.h.i.+ng, when she rarely punished, with tears and kisses. To make them as happy as she could in a world where there was nothing but temptation, and disappointment, and misery; to make them "fit for heaven," and then to pray that they might go thither as speedily as possible, this had been her work for now seven years; and that Manichaeism which has driven darker and harder natures to destroy young children, that they might go straight to bliss, took in her the form of outpourings of grat.i.tude (when the first natural tears were dried), as often as one of her little lambs was "delivered out of the miseries of this sinful world." But as long as they were in the world, she was their guardian angel; and there was hardly a mother in Aberalva who did not confess her debt to Grace, not merely for her children's scholars.h.i.+p, but for their characters.

Frank Headley the curate, therefore, had touched altogether the wrong chord when he spoke of displacing Grace. And when, that same afternoon, he sauntered down to the pier-head, wearied with his parish work, not only did Tardrew stump away in silence as soon as he appeared, but Captain Willis's face a.s.sumed a grave and severe look, which was not often to be seen on it.

"Well, Captain Willis?" said Frank, solitary and sad; longing for a talk with, some one, and not quite sure whether he was welcome.

"Well, sir?" and the old man lifted his hat, and made one of his princely bows. "You look tired, sir; I am afraid you're doing too much."

"I shall have more to do, soon," said the curate, his eye glancing towards the schoolmistress, who, disturbed by the noise above, was walking slowly up the beach, with a child holding to every finger, and every fold of her dress.

Willis saw the direction of his eye, and came at once to the point, in his gentle, straightforward fas.h.i.+on.

"I hear you have thoughts of taking the school from her, sir?"

"Why--indeed--I shall be very sorry; but if she will persist in going to the chapel, I cannot overlook the sin of schism."

"She takes the children to church twice a Sunday, don't she? And teaches them all that you tell her--"

"Why--yes--I have taken the religious instruction almost into my own hands now."

Willis smiled quietly.

"You'll excuse an old sailor, sir; but I think that's more than mortal man can do. There's no hour of the day but what she's teaching them something. She's telling them Bible stories now, I'll warrant, if you could hear her."

Frank made no answer.

"You wouldn't stop her doing that? Oh, sir," and the old man spoke with a quiet earnestness which was not without its effect, "just look at her now, like the Good Shepherd with His lambs about His feet, and think whether that's not much too pretty a sight to put an end to, in a poor sinful world like this."

"It is my duty," said Frank, hardening himself. "It pains me exceedingly, Willis;--I hope I need not tell you that."

"If I know aught of Mr. Headley's heart by his ways, you needn't indeed, sir."

"But I cannot allow it.--Her mother a cla.s.s leader among these Dissenters, and one of the most active of them, too.--The school next door to her house. The preacher, of course, has influence there, and must have. How am I to instil Church principles into them, if he is counteracting me the moment my back is turned? I have made up my mind, Willis, to do nothing in a hurry. Lady-day is past, and she must go on till Midsummer; then I shall take the school into my own hands, and teach them myself, for I can pay no mistress or master; and Mr. St.

Just--"

Frank checked himself as he was going to speak the truth; namely, that his sleepy old absentee rector, Lord Scoutbush's uncle, would yawn and grumble at the move, and wondering why Frank "had not the sense to leave ill alone," would give him no manner of a.s.sistance beyond his pittance of eighty pounds a-year, and five pounds at Christmas to spend on the poor.

"Excuse me, sir, I don't doubt that you'll do your best in teaching, as you always do: but I tell you honestly, you'll get no children to teach."

"No children?"

"Their mothers know the worth of Grace too well, and the children too, sir; and they'll go to her all the same, do what you will; and never a one will enter the church door from that day forth."

"On their own heads be it!" said Frank, a little testily; "but I should not have fancied Miss Harvey the sort of person to set up herself in defiance of me."

"The more reason, sir, if you'll forgive me, for your not putting upon her."

"I do not want to put upon her or any one. I will do everything. I will--I do--work day and night for these people, Mr. Willis. I tell you, as I would my own father. I don't think I have another object on earth--if I have, I hope I shall forget it--than the parish: but Church principles I must carry out."

"Well, sir, certainly no man ever worked here as you do. If all had been like you, sir, there would not be a Dissenter here now; but excuse me, sir, the Church is a very good thing, and I keep to mine, having served under her Majesty, and her Majesty's forefathers, and learnt to obey orders, I hope; but don't you think, sir, you're taking it as the Pharisees took the Sabbath-day?"

"How then!"

"Why, as if man was made for the Church, and not the Church for man."

"That is a shrewd thought, at least. Where did you pick it up?"

"'Tis none of my own, sir; a bit of wisdom that my maid let fall; and it has stuck to me strangely ever since."

"Your maid?"

"Yes, Grace there. I always call her my maid; having no father, poor thing, she looks up to me as one, pretty much,--the dear soul. Oh, sir! I hope you'll think over this again, before you do anything. It's done in a day: but years won't undo it again."

So Grace's sayings were quoted against him. Her power was formidable enough, if she dare use it. He was silent awhile, and then--

"Do you think she has heard of this--of my--"