Shining Ferry Part 45

"But what is the meaning of it?"

The question was on her lips when her ear caught the note of a voice-- Nuncey's voice--and these words, low, and yet distinct--

"At the call 'Attention!' the whole body and head must be held erect, the chin slightly dropped, chest well open, shoulders square to the front, eyes looking straight forward. The arms must hang easily, with fingers and thumbs straight, close to one another and touching the thighs; the feet turned out at right angles or nearly. Now, please--'Tention!"--(a pause)--"You break my heart, you do! Eyes, I said, looking _straight forward_; and the weight of the body ought to rest on the front part of the foot--not tilted back on your heels and looking like a china cat in a thunderstorm. Now try again, that's a dear!"

Hester gazed around wildly at Calvin, who was twisting himself in silent contortions of mirth.

"Take a peep!" he gasped. "She's courting Archelaus Libby, and teaching him to look like a man."

"You odious child!" Hester, ashamed of her life to have been trapped into eavesdropping, and yet doubting her ears, strode past the edge of the rick and into full view.

Nuncey drew back with a cry.

"Hester Marvin!"

Hester's eyes travelled past her and rested on Archelaus. He, rigid at attention, caught and held there spellbound, merely rolled a pair of agonized eyes.

"Nuncey! Archelaus! What on earth are you two doing?"

"Learnin' him to be a Volunteer, be sure!" answered Nuncey, her face the colour of a peony. After an instant she dropped her eyes, her cheeks confessing the truth.

"But--but why?" Hester stared from one to the other.

"If he'd only be like other men!" protested Nuncey.

Hester ran to her with a happy laugh. "But you wouldn't wish him like other men!"

"I do, and I don't." Nuncey eluded her embrace, having caught the sound of ribald laughter on the other side of the rick. Darting around, she was in time to catch Master Calvin two cuffs, right and left, upon the ears.

He broke for the gate and she pursued, but presently returned breathless.

"'Tis wonderful to me," she said, eyeing Archelaus critically and sternly, "how ever I come to listen to him. But he softened me by talking about _you_. He's a deal more clever than he seems, and I believe at this moment he likes you best."

"I don't!" said Archelaus firmly; "begging your pardon, Miss Marvin."

"I am sure you don't," laughed Hester.

"Well, anyway, I'll have to tell father now," said Nuncey; "for that imp of a boy will be putting it all round the parish."

But here Archelaus a.s.serted himself. "That's my business," he said quietly. "It isn't any man's 'yes' or 'no' I'm afraid of, Miss Marvin, having stood up to _her_."

CHAPTER XXVI.

MESSENGERS.

In Cornwall, they say, the cuckoo brings a gale of wind with him; and of all gales in the year this is the one most dreaded by gardeners and cidermen, for it catches the fruit trees in the height of their blossoming season, and in its short rage wrecks a whole year's promise.

Such a gale overtook the _Virtuous Lady_, homeward bound, in mid-Atlantic.

For two days and a night she ran before it; but this of course is a seaman's phrase, and actually, fast as the wind hurled her forward, she lagged back against it until she wallowed in its wake, and her crew gave thanks and crept below to their bunks, too dog-weary to put off their sodden clothes.

The gale pa.s.sed on and struck our south-western coast, devastating the orchards of Cornwall and Devon and carpeting them with unborn fruit-- _dulcis vitae ex-sortes_. Amid this unthrifty waste and hard by, off Berry Head, the schooner _One-and-All_ foundered and went down, not prematurely.

Foreseeing the end, her master had given orders to lower the whale-boat.

The schooner might be apple-rotten, as her crew declared, but she carried a whale-boat which had inspired confidence for years and induced many a hesitating hand to sign articles; a seaworthy boat, to begin with, and by her owner's and master's care made as nearly unsinkable as might be, cork-fendered, fitted bow and stern with air tanks, well found in all her gear. Woe betide the seaman who abstracted an inch of rope from her to patch up the schooner's crazy rigging, or who left a life-belt lying loose around the deck or a rowlock unrestored to its due place after the weekly scrub-down!

The crew, then, launched the boat--half filling her in the process--and, tumbling in, pulled for the lee of the high land between Berry Head and Brixham. The master took the helm. He was steering without one backward look at the abandoned s.h.i.+p, when the oarsmen ceased pulling, all together, with a cry of dismay.

On the schooner's deck stood a child, waving his arms despairingly.

How he came there they could not tell, nor who he was. The master, not understanding their outcry, cursed and shouted to them to pull on.

But already the starboard oars were holding water and the bowman bringing her around head-to-sea.

"Good Lord deliver us!"

The master carried a pair of binoculars, slung in a leathern case about his shoulders inside his oilskin coat.

They had been given to him by public subscription many years before, with a purse of gold, as a reward for saving life at sea. Since then he had forgotten in whisky-drinking and money-getting all the generous courage of his youth. His business for many years had been to play with human life for his own and his owner's profit, with no care but to keep on the right side of the law. The n.o.ble impulse which had earned him this testimonial was dead within him; to recover it he must have been born again.

He might even, by keeping his pumps going and facing out the peril for another couple of hours, have run the _One-and-All_ into Torbay and saved her; but he had not wanted to save her. Nevertheless, when he had run down to collect his few treasures from the cabin, these binoculars were his first and chiefest thought, for they attached him to something in his base career which had been n.o.ble. So careful was he, so fearful of facing eternity and judgment--if drown he must--without them, that, although the time was short and the danger instant, and the man by this time a coward, he had stripped off oilskin coat and pea-jacket to indue them again and b.u.t.ton them over his treasure.

Yet either his hands were numb or the sea-water had penetrated these wraps and damped the tag of the leathern case, making it difficult to open.

When at length he tugged the binoculars free and sighted them, it was to catch one glimpse, and the last, of the child waving from the bulwarks.

"Good Lord deliver us!"

A high-crested wave blotted out the schooner's hull. She seemed to sink behind it, almost to midway of her main shrouds. She would lift again into sight as that terrible wave went by--

But she did not. The wave went by, but no portion of her hull appeared.

With a slow lurch forward she was gone, and the seas ran over her as though she and her iniquity had never been.

In that one glimpse through his binoculars the master, and he alone of the crew, had recognised the child--Calvin Rosewarne, his owner's son.

To their credit, the men pulled back for the spot where the _One-and-All_ had gone down. Not till an hour's battling had taught them the hopelessness of a search hopeless from the first did they turn the boat and head again for Brixham.

The news, telegraphed from Brixham, began to spread through Troy soon after midday. Since the law allowed it, over-insurance was accepted by public opinion in the port almost as a matter of ordinary business; almost, but not quite. In his heart every citizen knew it to be d.a.m.nable, and voices had been raised in public calling it d.a.m.nable. Men and women who would have risked nothing to amend the law so far felt the public conscience agreeing with their own that they talked freely of Rosewarne's punishment as a judgment of G.o.d. Folks in the street canva.s.sed the news, insensibly sinking their voices as they stared across the water at the elm trees of Hall. Behind those elms lay a house, and within that house would be sitting a man overwhelmed by G.o.d's vengeance.

In the late afternoon a messenger knocked at Hester's door with a letter.

It was brought to her where she sat, with Mrs. Trevarthen, by Aunt Butson's bedside, and it said--

"I wish to speak with you this evening, if you are willing."

"--S. Rosewarne."

She rose at once, silently, with a glance at her two companions. They had not spoken since close upon an hour. When first the news came the old woman on the bed had raised herself upon her elbow, struggled a moment for utterance, and burst into a paean of triumphant hatred, horrible to hear.

Mrs. Trevarthen sat like one stunned. "Hush 'ee, Sarah! Hush 'ee, that's a good soul!" she murmured once and again in feeble protest. At length Hester, unable to endure it longer, had risen, taken the invalid by one shoulder and forced her gently back upon the pillow.

"Tell me to go," she said, "and I will leave you and not return. But to more of this I will not listen. I believed you an ill-used woman; but you are far less wronged than wicked if you can rejoice in the death of a child."