The Laird's Luck and Other Fireside Tales Part 26

"Yet he had no easy business with his sailors, who had quickly made up their own minds about this cloud and that it hung over a pit of fire.

One or two had heard tell of c.i.p.ango, and allowed this might be that lost wandering land. 'But how can we tell what perils await us there?'

'Marry, by going and finding out,' growled Tristram Vaz, and this was all the opinion he uttered. As for Morales, they would have it he was a Castilian, a foreigner, and only too eager to injure us Portuguese.

"But Gonsalvez had enough courage for all: and on the ninth morning he and Tristram set sail, with their crews as near mutiny as might be.

Me they left to rule Porto Santo. 'And if we never come back,' said Gonsalvez, 'you will tell the Prince that _something_ lies yonder which we would have found, but our men murdered us on the way--'"

"My dear brother Bartholomew," Gonsalvez broke in, "you are wearying Master d'Arfet, who has no wish to hear about me." And taking up the tale he went on: "We sailed, Sir, after six hours into as thick a fog as I have met even on these seas, and anon into a noise of breakers which seemed to be all about us. So I prayed to the Mother of Heaven and kept the lead busy, and always found deep water: and more by G.o.d's guidance than our management we missed the Desertas, where a tall bare rock sprang out of the fog so close on our larboard quarter that the men cried out it was a giant in black armour rising out of the waves.

So we left it and the noises behind, and by-and-by I s.h.i.+fted the helm and steered towards the east of the bank, which seemed to me not so thick thereabouts: and so the fog rolled up and we saw red cliffs and a low black cape, which I named the Cape of St. Lawrence. And beyond this, where all appeared to be marshland, we came to a forest sh.o.r.e with trees growing to the water's edge and filling the chasms between the cliffs. We were now creeping along the south of the island, and in clearer weather, but saw no good landing until Morales shouted aft to me that we were opening the Gulf of Cedars. Now I, perceiving some recess in the cliffs which seemed likely to give a fair landing, let him have his way: for albeit we could never win it out of him in words, I knew that the Englishman must have given him some particular description of the place, from the confidence he had always used in speaking of it. So now we had cast anchor, and were well on our way sh.o.r.eward in the boat before I could be certain what manner of trees clothed this Gulf: but Morales never showed doubt or hesitancy; and being landed, led us straight up the beach and above the tide-mark to the foot of a low cliff, where was a small pebbled mound and a plain cross of wood. And kneeling beside them I prayed for the souls' rest of that lamentable pair, and so took seizin of the island in the names of our King John, Prince Henry, and the Order of Christ. That, Sir, is the story, and I will not weary you by telling how we embarked again and came to this plain which lies at our feet. So much as I believe will concern you you have heard: and the grave you shall look upon to-morrow."

Master d'Arfet had left off cracking his joints, and for a while after the end of the story sat drumming with his finger-tips on the table.

At length he looked up, and says he--

"I may suppose, Count Zarco, that as governor of this island you have power to allot and sell estates upon it on behalf of the King of Portugal?"

"Why, yes," answered Gonsalvez; "any new settler in Funchal must make his purchase through me: the northern province of Machico I leave to Tristram Vaz."

"I speak of your southern province, and indeed of its foresh.o.r.e, the possession of which I suppose to be claimed by the crown of Portugal."

"That is so."

"To be precise I speak of this Gulf of Cedars, as you call it. You will understand that I have not seen it: I count on your promise to take me thither to-morrow. But it may save time, and I shall take it as a favour if--without binding yourself or me to any immediate bargain--you can give me some notion of the price you would want for it. But perhaps"--here he lifted his eyes from the table and glanced at Gonsalvez cunningly--"you have already conveyed that parcel of land, and I must deal with another."

Now Gonsalvez had opened his mouth to say something, but here compressed his lips for a moment before answering.

"No: it is still in my power to allot."

"In England just now," went on Master d'Arfet "we should call ten s.h.i.+llings an acre good rent for unstocked land. We take it at sixpence per annum rent and twenty years' purchase. I am speaking of reasonably fertile land, and hardly need to point out that in offering any such price for mere barren foresh.o.r.e I invite you to believe me half-witted. But, as we say at home, he who keeps a fancy must pay a tax for it: and a man of my age with no heir of his body can afford to spend as he pleases."

Gonsalvez stared at him, and from him to me, with a puzzled frown.

"Bartholomew," said he, "I cannot understand this gentleman. What can he want to purchase in the Gulf of Cedars but his wife's grave? And yet of such a bargain how can he speak as he has spoken?"

I shook my head. "It must be that he is a merchant, and is too old to speak but as a haggler. Yet I am sure his mind works deeper than this haggling." I paused, with my eyes upon Master d'Arfet's hands, which were hooked now like claws over the table which his fingers still pressed: and this gesture of his put a sudden abominable thought in my mind. "Yes, he wishes to buy his wife's grave. Ask him--" I cried, and with that I broke off.

But Gonsalvez nodded. "I know," said he softly, and turned to the Englishman. "Your desire Sir, is to buy the grave I spoke of?"

Master d'Arfet nodded.

"With what purpose? Come, Sir, your one chance is to be plain with us.

It may be the difference in our race hinders my understanding you: it may be I am a simple captain and unused to the ways and language of the market. In any case put aside the question of price, for were that all between us I would say to you as Ephron the Hitt.i.te said to Abraham. 'Hear me, my lord,' I would say, 'what is four hundred shekels of silver betwixt me and thee? Bury therefore thy dead.' But between you and me is more than this: something I cannot fathom. Yet I must know it before consenting. I demand, therefore, what is your purpose?"

Master d'Arfet met him straightly enough with those narrow eyes of his, and said he, "My purpose, Count, is as simple as you describe your mind to be. Honest seaman, I desire that grave only that I may be buried in it."

"Then my thought did you wrong, Master d'Arfet, and I crave your pardon. The grave is yours without price. You shall rest in the end beside the man and woman who wronged you, and at the Last Day, when you rise together, may G.o.d forgive you as you forgave them!"

The Englishman did not answer for near a minute. His fingers had begun to drum on the table again and his eyes were bent upon them. At length he raised his head, and this time to speak slowly and with effort--

"In my country, Count, a bargain is a bargain. When I seek a parcel of ground, my purpose with it is my affair only: my neighbour fixes his price, and if it suit me I buy, and there's an end. Now I have pa.s.sed my days in buying and selling and you count me a huckster. Yet we merchants have our rules of honour as well as you n.o.bles: and if in England I bargain as I have described, it is because between me and the other man the rules are understood. But I perceive that between you and me the bargain must be different, since you sell on condition of knowing my purpose, and would not sell if my purpose offended you. Therefore to leave you in error concerning my purpose would be cheating: and, Sir, I have never cheated in my life. At the risk then, or the certainty, of losing my dearest wish I must tell you this--_I do not forgive my wife Anne or Robert Machin_: and though I would be buried in their grave, it shall not be beside them."

"How then?" cried Gonsalvez and I in one voice.

"I would be buried, Sirs, not beside but between them. Ah? Your eyes were moist, I make no doubt, when you first listened to the pretty affecting tale of their love and misfortune? Not yet has it struck either of you to what a h.e.l.l they left _me_. And I have been living in it ever since! Think! I loved that woman. She wronged me hatefully, meanly: yet she and he died together, feeling no remorse. It is I who keep the knowledge of their vileness which shall push them asunder as I stretch myself at length in my cool dead ease, content, with my long purpose achieved, with the vengeance prepared, and nothing to do but wait securely for the Day of Judgment. Pardon me, Sirs, that I say 'this shall be,' whereas I read in your faces that you refuse me. I have cheered an unhappy life by this one promise, which at the end I have thrown away upon a little scruple." He pa.s.sed a hand over his eyes and stood up. "It is curious," he said, and stood musing. "It is curious," he repeated, and turning to Gonsalvez said in a voice empty of pa.s.sion, "You refuse me, I understand?"

"Yes," Gonsalvez answered. "I salute you for an honest gentleman; but I may not grant your wish."

"It is curious," Master d'Arfet repeated once more, and looked at us queerly, as if seeking to excuse his weakness in our judgment. "So small a difficulty!"

Gonsalvez bowed. "You have taught us this, Sir, that the world speaks at random, but in the end a man's honour rests in no hands but his own."

Master d'Arfet waited while Martin translated; then he put out a hand for his staff, found it, turned on his heel and tottered from the room, the interpreter following with a face which had altered nothing during our whole discourse.

Master d'Arfet sailed at daybreak, having declined Gonsalvez' offer to show him the grave. My old friend insisted that I must stay a week with him, and from the terrace before his house we watched the English pinnace till she rounded the point to eastward and disappeared.

"After all," said I, "we treated him hardly."

But Gonsalvez said: "A husk of a man! All the blood in him sour! And yet," he mused, "the husk kept him n.o.ble after a sort."

And he led me away to the warm slopes to see how his young vines were doing.

MARGERY OF LAWHIBBET

_A Story of 1644_

I pray G.o.d to deal gently with my sister Margery Lantine; that the blood of her twin-brother Mark, though it cry out, may not prevail against her on the Day of Judgment.

We three were all the children of Ephraim Lantine, a widower, who owned and farmed (as I do to-day) the little estate of Lawhibbet on the right sh.o.r.e of the Fowey River, above the ford which crosses to St. Veep. The whole of our ground slopes towards the river; as also does the neighbour estate of Lantine, sometime in our family's possession, but now and for three generations past yielding us only its name. Three miles below us the river opens into Fowey Harbour, with Fowey town beside it and facing across upon the village of Polruan, and a fort on either sh.o.r.e to guard the entrance. Three miles above us lies Lostwithiel, a neat borough, by the bridge of which the tidal water ceases. But the traffic between these two towns pa.s.ses behind us and out of sight, by the high-road which after climbing out of Lostwithiel runs along a narrow neck of land dividing our valley from Tywardreath Bay. This ridge comes to its highest and narrowest just over the chimneys of Lawhibbet, and there the old Britons once planted an earthwork overlooking the bay on one hand and the river-pa.s.sage on the other. Castle Dore is its name; a close of short smooth turf set within two circular ramparts and two fosses choked with brambles. Thither we children climbed, whether to be alone with our games--for I do not suppose my father entered the earthwork twice in a year, and no tillage ever disturbed it, though we possessed a drawerful of coins ploughed up from time to time in the field outside--or to watch the sails in the bay and the pack-horses jingling along the ridge, which contracted until it came abreast of us and at once began to widen towards Fowey and the coast; so that it came natural to feign ourselves robbers sitting there in our fastness and waiting to dash out upon the rich convoys as they pa.s.sed under our noses.

I talk as if we three had played this game with one mind. But indeed I was six years younger than the others, and barely nine years old when my brother Mark tired of it and left me, who hitherto had been his obedient scout, to play at the game alone. For Margery turned to follow Mark in this as in everything, although with her it had been more earnest play. For him the fun began and ended with the ambush, the supposed raid and its swas.h.i.+ng deeds of valour; for her all these were but incident to a scheme, long brooded on, by which we were to ama.s.s plunder sufficient to buy back the family estate of Lantine with all the consequence due to an ancient name in which the rest of us forgot to feel any pride. But this was my sister Margery's way; to whom, as honour was her pa.s.sion, so the very shadows of old repute, dead loyalties, perished greatness, were idols to be wors.h.i.+pped. By a ballad, a story of former daring or devotion, a word even, I have seen her whole frame shaken and her eyes brimmed with bright tears; nay, I have seen tears drop on her clasped hands, in our pew in St. Sampson's Church, with no more cause than old Parson Kendall's stuttering through the prayer for the King's Majesty--and this long before the late trouble had come to distract our country. She walked our fields beside us, but in company with those who walked them no longer; when she looked towards Lantine 'twas with an angry affection. In the household she filled her dead mother's place, and so wisely that we all relied on her without thinking to wonder or admire; yet had we stayed to think, we had confessed to ourselves that the love in which her care for us was comprehended reached above any love we could repay or even understand--that she walked a path apart from us, obedient to a call we could not hear.

In her was born the spirit which sends men to die for a cause; but since G.o.d had fas.h.i.+oned her a girl and condemned her to housework, she took (as it were) her own hope in her hands and laid it all upon her twin brother. They should have been one, not twain. He had the frame to do, and for him she nourished the spirit to impel. With her own high thoughts she clothed him her hero, and made him mine also. And Mark took our homage enough, without doubting he deserved it. He was in truth a fine fellow, tall, upright, and handsome, with the delicate Lantine hands and a face in which you saw his father's features refined and freshly coloured to the model of the Lantine portraits which hung in the best sitting-room to remind us of our lost glories.

For me, I take after my mother, who was a farmer's daughter of no lineage.

I remember well the Christmas Eve of 1643, when the call came for Mark; a night very clear and crisp, with the stars making a brave show against the broad moon, and a touch of frost against which we wrapped ourselves warmly before the household sallied down to the great Parc an Wollas orchard above the ford, to bless the apple-trees. My father led the way as usual with his fowling-piece under his arm, Mark following with another; after them staggered Lizzie Pascoe, the serving maid, with the great bowl of lamb's wool; Margery followed, I at her side, and the men after us with their wives, each carrying a cake or a roasted apple on a string. We halted as usual by the bent tree in the centre of the orchard, and there, having hung our offerings on the bough, formed a circle, took hands and chanted, while Lizzie splashed cider against the trunk--

"Here's to thee, old apple-tree Whence to bud and whence to blow, And whence to bear us apples enow-- Hats full, packs full, Great bushel sacks full, And every one a pocket full-- With hurrah! and fire off the gun!"

I remember the moment's wait on the flint-lock and the flame and roar of my father's piece, shattering echoes across the dark water and far up the creek where the herons roosted. And out of the echoes a voice answered--a man's voice hailing across the ford.

Mark took a torch, and, running down to the water's edge, waved it to guide the stranger over. By-and-by we caught sight of him, a tall trooper on horseback with the moonlight and torchlight flaming together on his steel morion and gorget. He picked his way carefully to sh.o.r.e and up the bank and reined up his dripping horse in the midst of us with a laugh.

"Hats full, pockets full, eh? Good-evenin', naybours, and a merry Christmas, and I'm sure I wish you may get it. Which of 'ee may happen to be Master Ephr'm Lantine?"

My father announced himself, and the trooper drew out a parchment and handed it.