The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Laughing Mill and Other Stories, by Julian Hawthorne This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Laughing Mill and Other Stories The Laughing Mill--Calbot's Rival--Mrs. Gainsborough's Diamonds--The Christmas Guest. A Myth Author: Julian Hawthorne Release Date: December 10, 2012 [eBook #41592] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAUGHING MILL AND OTHER STORIES*** E-text prepared by sp1nd, eagkw, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (http://archive.org) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See http://archive.org/details/laughingmillando00hawtiala Cover THE LAUGHING MILL And Other Stories. BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE. London: MACMILLAN AND CO. 1879. [The right of Translation is reserved.] CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS. PREFACE. What is called the human interest in fiction is doubtless more absorbing than any other, but other legitimate sources of interest exist. The marvellous always possesses a fascination, and justly; for while it is neither human nature nor fact, it ministers to an æsthetic appetite of the mind which neither fact nor human nature can gratify. Superstition has been well abused; but that were a sad day which should behold the destruction in us of the quality which keeps superstition alive. Fortunately that day can never come—least of all under a Positivist administration. Such works as “The Tempest,” “Faust,” and “Consuelo” show their authors at their best, because, being obliged by the subject to soar above the level of vulgar possibility, the writers catch a gleam of transcendent sunlight on their wings. And he who would mirror in his works the whole of man must needs include the impossible along with the rest. Whoever has lived thoughtfully feels that there has been something in his experience beyond what appears in “Tom Jones,” “Adam Bede,” and “Vanity Fair.” They are earth without sky. I do not refer to that goody-goody Sunday- school sky which weeps and smirks over the mimic worlds of so many worthy novelists, male and female; but to that unfathomed mystery opening all around us—the sky of Shakespeare and Dante, of Goethe and Georges Sand. A reader with a healthy sense of justice feels that an occasional excursion mystery-ward is no more than he has a right to demand. And such excursions are wholesome for literature no less than for him. For the story-teller, sensible of the risk he runs of making his supernatural element appear crude and ridiculous, exerts himself to the utmost, and his style and method purify and wax artistic under the strain. These remarks must smooth the way to the confession that in the present volume no “human interest” will be found, or has been attempted. The gist of the work (or at least of three-fourths of it) is to show how the impossible might occur. Now, in order to appreciate the delicate flavour of a ghost, it is indispensable that the palate should not be cloyed by a contemporary diet of flesh and blood. In other words, the reality of the personages amidst whom the disembodied spirit appears should be insisted upon no further than is necessary to the telling them apart; only that side of the human figures which is most in accord with the superhuman should be made prominent. If the writer has managed this part of his business properly, he is open to criticism only in so far as he may have sinned in the way of conception and literary execution; and upon those points he is happily spared the necessity of pronouncing judgment. He may however be permitted to observe that the following stories are among the very lightest and least profound of their class; there are no tears or terrors in them; barely even a smile or a sigh; and, in short, their success—should they achieve any —will be mainly due to the fact that with such small pretensions failure would actually become difficult. One of the tales, it should be added, is a mere jeu d’esprit, the presence of which in the collection is justifiable only on the plea that it makes believe to be what the others are—relieving a note too monotonously sounded by lowering it to the key of mockery. Possibly, nevertheless, it may turn out to be the float which will save the weightier portion of the cargo from going too speedily to the bottom. All the stories have appeared, during the last four years, in various periodicals, to the editors of which my acknowledgments are due for leave to reproduce them. January, 1879. CONTENTS. PAGE THE LAUGHING MILL 3 CALBOT’S RIVAL 105 [iii] [iv] [v] [vi] MRS. GAINSBOROUGH’S DIAMONDS 177 THE CHRISTMAS GUEST. A Myth 295 THE LAUGHING MILL. I. Among the pleasantest memories of my earlier days is one of an old gabled farmhouse overlooking the sea. It is a July afternoon, calm and hot. The sea is pale blue and its surface glassy smooth; but the passage of a storm somewhere to the eastward causes long slumberous undulations to lapse shorewards. They break upon the Devil’s Ribs—that low black reef about half a mile out—and the sound is borne to our ears some seconds after the white-foam line has marked itself against the blue and vanished. There is a fine throb of sun-loving insects in the air, which we may hear if we listen for it; but more immediately audible is the guttural drawing of old Jack Poyntz’s meerschaum pipe, and the delicate clicking of his sweet daughter Agatha’s polished knitting-needles. From within doors comes the fillip of water and the clink of chinaware—good Mrs. Poyntz washing up the dinner-things. For we have just dined, and the blessing of a good digestion is upon all of us. Yes; there we three sit, in my memory, side by side upon the stone bench outside the farmhouse door. The projecting eaves throw a quiet, transparent shadow over us. Two or three venerable hens are scratching and nestling in the hot sandy soil near yonder corner, and conversing together in long-drawn comfortable croakings. The fragrant smoke from Poyntz’s pipe-bowl circles upwards on the air, until it takes the sunlight high over head. Truly a pleasant time, whose peacefulness is still present with me after so many years. I am old, who then was young; but that July sunshine is warm in my heart to-day. Poyntz was an ancient mariner—not lean and uncanny, however; but burly, jovial, and brown; with a huge grizzled beard spreading over his mighty chest, a voice as deep and mellow as a sea-lion’s, and eyes as blue and clear as the ocean upon which they had looked for more than sixty years. He had been a successful sailor, had visited many lands and brought home many cargoes, and was, in a rough simple way, a thorough cosmopolitan. After his last voyage he had settled down in the ancestral farmhouse, and applied himself to agriculture. He was as prosperous, contented, and respected a man as any in the neighbourhood; and during the fortnight or so that I had lodged beneath his roof, I had grown into a hearty liking for him. While as to Agatha—ah, it was not liking that I felt for her! Strange that that fair, finely-moulded, queenly creature was only a sailor’s daughter! Much as I honoured Poyntz, I could not help sometimes feeling surprised at it. At all events, she was as perfect a lady as ever stepped on high-arched feet; and I fancied that the old mariner and his wife treated her in a manner more befitting a distinguished visitor than a child of their own. There was sturdy little Peter, now—he whose brown legs were visible beneath the low spreading bough of a scrub-oak beside the mill-stream yonder—there could be no doubt as to him. But what a brother for Agatha! How well I recall her aspect, though it is more than twenty years since that day. Her shapely head was bound about with a turban of her bright yellow hair, but her eyes and eyebrows were dark. Her neck was round and slender, and supported its burden in unconscious poses of maidenly dignity. The contours of her figure were full, yet refined; her wrists were small, and her hand was shaped like that which lies on the bosom of Canova’s Venus. Her manners breathed simplicity and sweet composure, yet were reserved and serious withal, and sometimes they were tinged with a shadow of melancholy. At such moments her hands would fall into her lap, her head would droop a little forward, and her dark eyes gravely fix themselves upon some sunlit sail that flecked the pale horizon. So would she remain until, perhaps, the sail sank below the verge, or became invisible in shadow; then, with a sigh, the soft fetters of her preoccupation would seem to fall away from her. What were her thoughts during those reveries? and why should they be sad ones? I had never ventured to question her much as yet; her mystery was itself a fascination. One thing about her had attracted my particular notice from the first—the curious pearl-shell necklace that she always wore clasped round her smooth throat. It was composed of very small shells of a peculiar species, not found in that part of the world. These were woven into a singular pattern of involved curves, and were fastened with a broad gold clasp, in the centre of which was set a large pearl. Handsome as the ornament was, however, and becoming to its wearer, it would not have so riveted my attention but for a circumstance to which I must here make a passing allusion. Among my most precious possessions at that time was a fine oil portrait of my great-grandmother, who was a famous beauty in her day. My family, I should have said, is of Danish extraction, though the name—Feuerberg—was, after the emigration of the elder branch to America, translated to the present Firemount. In my great-grandmother’s days there had been a bitter family quarrel; the younger brother had attempted to cast doubts upon the legitimacy of the [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] firstborn, and when he failed to make good his claim, he had fraudulently seized upon a large portion of the inheritance and made his escape—whither was not known, for no effort was made to pursue him. It was believed that he went to Germany and married there; and that afterwards he or his son had made another remove, since which even conjecture had been silent concerning them. But to return to the portrait. It was a half-length, and had the quaint headdress and costume of the period, one detail only being out of the fashion; but this it was that had always possessed most interest for me. It was the curious pearl-shell necklace, woven in a strange pattern, and fastened with a golden clasp, which was represented upon my great-grandmother’s statuesque bosom. This necklace had for centuries been a family heirloom, and many quaint traditions were connected with it. It was said to have been given to the founder of our race by a water- witch, or some such mythologic being; and sundry mysterious virtues were supposed to belong to it. Precisely what these virtues were I cannot tell, nor does it happen to be of much consequence. One saying only I remember—that the wearing of it would ensure us happiness and prosperity so long as no member of the family brought dishonour on the name; but thereafter it would bring ruin. Now the necklace had been handed on from one prosperous generation to another, until the date of the quarrel above alluded to; and then, all at once, it had disappeared; and my great- grandmother was the last person known to have worn it. She mentioned it on her deathbed, and foretold that no good fortune was to be expected for the Feuerbergs until the sacred heirloom was recovered, and made a symbol of the healing of the family feud. The negative part of the prophecy had certainly been verified. The elder branch of the Feuerbergs never got over the effects of the blow inflicted upon it by the younger brother. They gradually subsided from their original high estate; and were at last compelled to abandon the ancestral homestead, and try their luck in the New World. At the time of my birth we were in decently comfortable circumstances, which improved upon the whole as I grew towards manhood. I passed through college, and was afterwards admitted to the Bar, which by-and-by afforded me a tolerable income. But one spring I fancied myself ailing, and resolved to try the sea air; and so it happened that I became acquainted with Jack Poyntz, and with Agatha, and with her pearl-shell necklace. Of course, all idea of recovering the original necklace had long ago been abandoned. It had been conjectured that the seceding brother of old times had appropriated it along with many other things that did not belong to him; but there was no proof of this, other than that its disappearance had been simultaneous with his own. Moreover, if the fact must be told, I had outgrown the easy credulity of boyhood, and rather inclined to suspect that the whole picturesque old tradition was three parts imagination to one of truth. It might soothe my family pride to ascribe our decadence to the loss of a trinket, or I might excuse my indolence by declaring that fortune was attainable only on condition of its being found again; but if I descended to hard matter-of-fact, as a lawyer should do, I must admit there was nothing cross- questionable in such an old-wives’ tale. Cross-questionable or not, it will readily be conceived that the sight of Agatha’s pearl-shells gave me a thrill of surprise, and deepened my interest in one who needed no such accidental attraction to render her irresistible. The necklace so closely resembled the one in the portrait, that the latter might have been painted from it. It was possible, no doubt, that my great-grandmother’s necklace was not unique; that a duplicate—nay, many duplicates—existed. But it was not upon the face of it probable, nor was I disposed to accept any such commonplace solution of the problem. I loved Agatha, and I loved to think (for have I not hinted that I was romantic, though a lawyer?)—I say it suited me to believe that the necklace linked her, however unaccountably, with me. It was evident that she herself looked upon it as a most precious possession. She wore it continually, as she might have worn a talisman, and touched it often, twisting the golden clasp about, or following the woven pattern with meditative finger-tips. Once, when suddenly alarmed, I saw her grasp it quickly in her hand, as if either seeking protection from it, or instinctively yielding it protection; and another time, during a storm, when a vessel was labouring in the offing, and seemed in danger of being carried upon the Devil’s Ribs, I came upon her just as she kissed the great pearl in the clasp, as a Catholic would have kissed the crucifix to avert misfortune. “Water-witch! water-witch! be thy spells wholesome?” I said in Danish, for a knowledge of the ancestral tongue has always been kept alive in the family. She turned round, started, and to my no small surprise, answered in the same language: “Doubt not the spell, if the danger be daunted!” And then, seeming to recollect herself, she blushed, and said in English: “It was a song my old nurse taught me. I should like to be a witch, if I might save people from being shipwrecked.” I made no reply, and we stood silently watching the struggle of the vessel with the storm for perhaps ten minutes. At length it succeeded in tacking at the very moment when all seemed lost, and bore safely away. Agatha’s eyes met mine for an instant; there were both smiles and tears in them. She kissed her pearl again and moved away. But my digression has already gone farther than I intended. Let us return to the stone bench beneath the eaves, and the hot July sunshine. II. “Mr. Poyntz,” said I, clasping my hands behind my head, and crossing one knee over the other, “how happens your house to be set up directly opposite the Devil’s Ribs, and at least a mile and a half from the village? It’s well enough in summer of course, but in winter, when the snow is on the ground, I should think you’d want to be nearer your butcher, [8] [9] [10] [11] not to speak of the meeting-house.” “Ay, surely!” answered Mr. Poyntz, taking the pipe from his mouth, and smoothing down the great sheaf of his beard. “But, d’ye see, sir, ’twas not I set the house here, nor my father before me, and maybe there was no butcher, nor yet no meeting-house along in those times. And another thing, since you’ve set me a-going, sir; you see the lighthouse on the point yonder?” indicating an abrupt rocky promontory half a mile to the right of our position, which lay athwart the shore like a vast wall, separating us from the little fishing hamlet on the other side. “Ye see the lighthouse on tip-end of Gloam’s Point, don’t ye? Well, sir, old as that lighthouse looks to you now, I, that am a deal older than you are, can remember when ’twa’nt there. And that brings me round to what I was going to say. Along in those times, sir, when there wa’nt no regular lighthouse, but no bit less danger of craft running ashore, they used to rig up a sort of a jury-light, if I might so call it, in the front of our old gable. Ye may see the fixings now if ye steps forward a bit and look up there. Ay, ay, every dark night, more especially every dirty night, some of us would mount the garret shrouds, d’ye see, and show the lantern. And many a ship we saved, no doubt; but they’d come ashore once in a while, for the best we could do.” “That’s a suggestive name—Devil’s Ribs. I suppose the bones of many a good man and vessel lie swallowed up in them.” “Ay, surely,” returned the ancient mariner, swathing his head in a haze of tobacco-smoke. “The more since the currents and whirlpools thereabout mostly keep back the floating bits—spars, bodies, and such like—from getting to the beach. Whatever strikes there, sinks there, speaking in a general way. And forasmuch as there’s five-and-thirty fathom clear water there, and always a tidy bit of surf on, ’tain’t very popular work dredging.” “That’s an ugly thought,” I observed; “a great ship might go down there, and nothing ever be found to show what she was or who sailed in her.” I happened to glance at Agatha as I made this observation, and noticed that she paled a little and let her hands fall in her lap, and after a few moments she got up and entered the house, leaving Mr. Poyntz and me to ourselves. I fancied —but I may have been mistaken—that as she passed the threshold she laid her finger upon the pearl-shell necklace. “Miss Agatha doesn’t like to hear of wrecks,” I remarked after a pause. “Why no, sir,” said Poyntz slowly, his blue eyes fixed upon the surf-whitened reef; “and perhaps ’tis natural she should not—specially those wrecks that the Devil’s Ribs is to blame for.” “Has that necklace of hers anything to do with it?” I asked—though I cannot tell what possessed me to put so inconsequent a question. Partly to justify myself, I added: “It looks as if it might have been washed up out of the sea.” Poyntz threw a sharp look at me out of the corner of his weather-eye. “Ye’ve noticed the necklace, have ye?” said he; “and ye’ve a quick wit of your own, as they say is the way with lawyers. Howbeit, I think Jack Poyntz knows an honest man when he sights him, and hoping ye’ll excuse the freedom, sir, methinks you are one. Now there’s a bit of a yarn I’d like to spin ye—you being beknown amongst the great gentlefolks down to New York and elsewhere—about a wreck that once was on the Devil’s Ribs. Maybe some of those you do business for can throw light upon it like; for what the ship was that was wrecked, or whence she sailed, was never known; for only that necklace that Agatha wears —only that and—something else, ever came to land. Ye guessed right, sir, d’ye see, and in hopes of your guessing yet more, I’ll spin ye the yarn, leastways if ye’ve no objection. But afore starting, if ye’ll kindly allow me, sir, I’ll load my pipe, for with me the words come ever easier when there’s smoke behind ’em.” I said nothing, but Poyntz saw well enough that I was very much interested, and, like all incorrigible yarn-spinners, he found a humorous pleasure in prolonging his hearer’s suspense. It was five minutes before his pipe was cleaned out, refilled, and lighted to his satisfaction, and then, having spread out his great arms along the back of the bench, stretched his mighty legs in front of him, and fixed his gaze upon the lighthouse—his favourite yarn-spinning attitude—he appeared to wait for an inspiration. “How long ago was it?” I asked at length, to set him going. “Well, sir, it might be five-and-twenty years ago that that wreck took place. You was hardly more than out of your nursery then, I’m thinking. As for me, I was a chap of maybe forty—or maybe not so much; my old father he had just parted his last cable, as I might say, and I had just come in from a voyage to the Pacific Coast for hides, and was living in this house alone by myself. I’d come home, sir, to find the girl as had given me her word spliced to another man; and so it happened that I stayed a bachelor till after the age when many find themselves grandads. But I wedded at last, sir, as ye see, and never had cause to think the worse of myself for doing it!” “I should think not, indeed,” I assented, laughing. But meanwhile I was telling myself that Agatha must be nearly twenty years old, and that if Poyntz had wedded only at the age of a grandfather, she could hardly be his own offspring by marriage. Were the doubts which her aspect had already suggested to me well founded, then? I prudently waited, in the hope that this question likewise might find its answer in the course of my host’s story. “It was along about that time, sir,” Poyntz continued, having acknowledged my compliment with a friendly nod, “that I first came acquainted with Scholar Gloam, as the folks called him; him that yonder point’s named after, and that lived at the Laughing Mill, over there, back of the wood. But now I come for to think on it,” broke off the old yarn-spinner, [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] pulling his meerschaum out of the corner of his mouth and looking round at me, “did I ever chance to speak to ye of Scholar Gloam afore?” “I don’t think you ever did; but I always like to hear about anything that has a picturesque nickname, as almost everything hereabouts seems to have.” The hale old man laughed, and raked his brown fingers through his spreading beard. “In an out-of-the-way place like this, sir,” said he, “where’s few enough things anyway, nicknames come natural. Well, now, as touching Scholar Gloam, he died nigh a score of years ago; leastways he knocked off living in the body. For there be those,” lowering his voice and wrinkling his brows, “there be those—superstitious like—ready to take affidavit of having seen him, certain days in the year, a prowling round the Laughing Mill. His grave is near by, right under the Black Oak; and maybe the place is a bit skeery. “Howsoever, that don’t concern us now. When I knew Scholar Gloam, he was a middling-sized, slender-built young gentleman, having queer hair not all of the same colour, and a trick of talking to himself in a sort of a low mumbling way, as it might be the bubbling of water under a ship’s stern, if ye know what I mean, sir. He was a comely favoured man of the pale sort, and grave and silent, though always the gentleman in his manners, as by blood and breeding. For the Gloams was the great family here fifty years ago, and was landlords of most of the farms roundabout; but they steered a bad course, as I might say, and died out, so as Scholar Gloam was the last of ’em. Old Harold, the Scholar’s father, he was a reckless devil if any man ever was; and when he died ’twas found that Gloam Hall and all belonging thereto must go to the auction. The only bit left was the Laughing Mill itself, and an acre or two of land round about it.” “What did the mill laugh at, Mr. Poyntz? its own prosperity?” “Nay, sir!” returned the burly mariner, shaking his head. “I heard it laugh once, and I’d as soon crack jokes with Davy Jones as listen to it again. ’Twas a mad, wild scream more than a laugh, and like nothing human, praise goodness, that ever I heard! There was ugly yarns about that mill, d’ye see; folks said as how it had killed a man, and afterwards had got possessed with his evil spirit that was always roaming about seeking whom it might devour ... or maybe I’ve got things a bit mixed!” “Who was it that was killed?” I suggested. “Ay, surely,” said Mr. Poyntz thoughtfully, “I should have told ye that. It was the man that was married to old Squire Harold’s housekeeper. And that housekeeper, sir, when she was a young one, was about as well-favoured a wench as a man would care to speak with on a week day; and ’twas said,” hitching himself nearer to me on the bench and rumbling in my ear, “that the Squire had a fancy to her, and that after a time she was married off in a hurry and sent to live at the mill, and that her baby was born six months from the wedding. Well, all I know is, little enough that child looked like him as passed for its father; and now comes the ugliest part of it. A year after the child’s birth the miller was found dead one morning underneath his own mill-wheel. Seems he’d fallen in the mill-race by some mishap, and so had the life crushed out of him. But bad things was said ... and the widow and child they went back to the Hall, and lived there many years, till the Squire died. The child got all his growth and training there, and folks used to say he’d have been more like the Squire if he hadn’t been most like his mother. Well, the Squire being gone at last, and the estate all sold saving just the mill, as I told ye, what does the housekeeper and her son do but go back to the mill again. The son —David he was called—was then a likely young chap of maybe seventeen; and he took right hold and began for to run the mill, and a very fair profit he made out of it, taking one year with another. And Scholar Gloam, he was living in the mill-house along with them, having his room to himself, and his books and instruments quite cosy.” “Wasn’t that rather an odd thing for him to do, Mr. Poyntz, under the circumstances?” “Ay, surely; but ye must keep it in mind, sir, that Scholar Gloam was a wondrous odd man. He’d been his whole life shut up with his books and his studies, and no doubt had a vast deal of that sort of learning; but of worldly knowledge, as I might say, he’d none at all whatever, no more than a child. Little he’d heard of his father’s doings, be it with the handsome housekeeper or anything else; and little he dreamed—ye can make affidavit—that her son had any claim to call himself his brother, though ’twas told him once afterwards, as we’ll come to presently. Nay, but my thought of him is, he was a simple, honest gentleman at that time, kind of heart and thinking ill of no one; only a bit strange and distant, d’ye see, as was no harm in the world for him to be. And being quite the same thing to him whether he lived in a palace or a mud hut, so long as he might study his fill, why, likely he’d an easy enough time of it. “And ’twould have been smooth enough sailing for the whole of them only for one thing, which is to say as how, ever and anon, in the mid of a big run of luck, that there mill would take on a spell of its laughing; and with that folks would be giving it a wide berth, and business would slack up again. It was no use the old woman and David a swearing that a bit of rust on the axle was the cause of it all; for, mind ye, there was no steering round that black fact of the old miller’s having met his death on the wheel; and, too, though they was never done hunting for that bit of a rust spot, they never found it, or if ever they thought they had, lo! there’d be the laugh in their faces again, so to say, the next morning. Ay, ’twas a bad, unholy sound that, sir; but the Scholar, strange to be told, seemed less to mind it than anyone; the cause being, mayhap, as how he was a wondrous absent-minded man anyway, and the only one as had never been told the true story of how the old miller came by his end. “So now, sir, having dropped ye this bit of a hint of who Scholar Gloam was, I’ll go on with the yarn of the wreck on [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] the Devil’s Ribs and the necklace. III. “But, first and foremost,” continued Mr. Poyntz, after having revived his failing pipe with a dozen or so of quick whiffs, “first and foremost I must mention a queer habit he had—Scholar Gloam, I mean—and by which it was as I first came acquainted with him. As long as the sun was over the horizon line he’d stay indoors, behind the lock of his study door; but at nightfall out he’d walk, foul weather or fair, and through the wood back yonder, down across the rocky pasture to the sea, a trip of maybe a mile and over. And often at midnight, as I’ve been pulling shorewards from the offing in my fishing dory, I’ve seen him standing a-top of the point, where the lighthouse stands now, the sky being light behind him, and he looking black, and bigger than any human creature; and sometimes he’d be tossing his arms about, and shouting out some un-Christian lingo, though there was no one there to talk to—leastways that I could see. ’Twas a queer thing, I say, for a slender, delicate-looking gentleman like him to be out so by night, in all weathers, seeming not to know the difference whether it blew, or rained, or snowed, or all three together. Some folks used for to shake their heads over it, and say he was gone daft; others there was (the superstitious kind, d’ye see) would have it as how Davy Jones, whose black bones had been the end of many a good ship and cargo, was in the custom of coming nightly to the point to hold parley with him, as it might be to strike a bargain whereby Davy should get the Scholar his estates and riches again in change for his soul. “But Jack Poyntz never troubled his head with such fancies, sir; and times, when I’d stowed my boat away, I’d hail him, and have him down to the house; and sitting snug together by the kitchen fire, many a strange yarn has he spun me, the like of which never was heard before—leastways not outside of the books that were hid in his library—and of which many were writ in strange tongues as are not spoken in our Christian times. But it’s not for me to be repeating of ’em now, only, as I was a-telling ye, it was such-like things brought us acquainted; and very good chums we were, allowing for his being a young gentleman scholar, and me a sailor as had no great book-learning, though knowing more of men and things than a hundred such as him. And by the end of a couple of years or so, meeting him that way off and on, I knew him as well as ever anybody knew him—as well, maybe, as he knew himself. “Well, things being this way, one day, about the last week in September, it came on to blow. There was no rain, but no moon either, and the air was thick; and night coming on, it was as black as my hat. It wasn’t long afore there was a heavy sea running, and ye could have heard the surf on them Devil’s Ribs five miles inland. I shipped the lantern up in the fore gable as usual, though knowing it couldn’t show far in such a night; and, thinks I, see it or not, any ship that gets caught in the tide this weather is bound to wreck; so I’ll hope, says I to myself, that they’ll give us a wide berth. Howbe, I wasn’t sleepy, so I loaded my pipe, and, thinks I, I’ll have a snug smoke and a drop of grog alongside the kitchen fire afore turning in. No chance, thinks I, of my Scholar happening in this night; he never could beat up against that wind, not if he had Davy Jones himself to pilot him. Well, there I sat for maybe an hour, the noise of the storm getting ever louder and louder, so at times I could hardly hear the rattle of my spoon as I stirred up the grog in the tumbler. Then all of a sudden there comes a knocking at the door, quick and heavy, and up I jumps and opens it, and lo! there was the Scholar, with no hat and no coat, and that strange-coloured hair of his blown up wild about his head, and his eyes wide open and bright as a binnacle. “‘Why don’t you come in, sir?’ shouts I, loud as if I was a-hailing him at the maintop, such a noise the wind made; ‘ye’ll get the heart and lungs blown clean out of ye if ye stop there!’ “Seemed like he answered me something, I couldn’t make out what; but he laid hold on my sleeve with that thin white hand of his, that gripped like a vice, as if he’d pull me out into the storm with him, instead of coming in to me. And by his face I could see there was a storm within him as stirred him more than the one without; and then he pointed down seawards, and, thinks I, ’tis a ship he’s seen or heard on the Devil’s Ribs. And though I knew well we could no more help any poor wrecked souls than if they was in the moon, yet it wasn’t in me to back out of going with him to see what there was to see. So just laying hold of my tarpaulin and a flask of rum, off we starts on the run, dead in the wind’s eye. How he managed for to scud over the ground at that rate is more than I could make out; the wind seemed to take no hold on him, but just let him through easy, though all the time it was near blowing my ears off. “Well, down we came to the beach at last, at a place about a cable’s length this side of the point. I’d kept my man in sight up to this time by reason of the white shirt he had on, his coat, as I told ye, being off him, but whither gone I’d not remembered for to ask him. But now, all of a sudden, I found he’d disappeared, and all I could see was the pale froth of the surf that came leaping up the beach, with a sound from the black wave behind it like the going off of a big gun. Howsoever, I presently stumbled round the corner of a big boulder—ye may see it yonder, sir, in a line with the face of the lighthouse and the top of the pine stump—and there he was on his knees beside something wrapped up and still; and when I looked, ’twas seemingly a young girl, about twelve to thirteen years old, with no life in her. She had come ashore on a bit of planking, and the Scholar he had seen her coming, and had scrambled down from the cliff in time to haul her in and under the lea of the boulder. How he did it the Lord only knows, for ten men working together might have failed in it. But there she lay, with no mark of harm or bruise upon her, and yet (as my heart misgave me) lifeless from the washing of the waves through which she had voyaged to land. “I saw ’twould be no use trying to give her rum yet awhile, so I stoops to lift her up along with the bit of planking that she lay upon; and Scholar Gloam he helped, though neither of us spoke, by reason of the thundering noise of the surf [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] and the wind that half deafened us. It took us maybe a quarter of an hour, and then we were at home, and had her down before the fire, and wrapped in hot blankets, and everything done that could be done; and after nigh a couple of hours’ work, she moved the least mite in the world, and fetched a sigh. With that I sings out like I’d come upon a chest full of gold dollars, and says I, ‘All’s well, Scholar Gloam; she’s a-coming to, and she’ll live to smile on us yet!’ And then what does he do, sir, but just throws his head back with a little laugh, and topples over in a dead faint. ’Twas the exhaustion, ye must understand, as had come on all at once after the suspense of whether she was alive or dead was over. So there was I with the two of ’em to doctor. Well, I soon had the Scholar all right again; but when he saw as how the child was a-doing well, he drops off suddenly to sleep, being tired right out and unable for to keep his eyes open; and I didn’t wake him, but just threw a blanket over him, and let him sleep it out. “It was, maybe, half an hour after that that the little girl spoke; she had been opening her eyes and then shutting them several times, and wondering where she was got to, I suppose, poor little dear. She was pretty and white, with yellow hair and big blue eyes, and soft little feet and hands, and pointed fingers; and round her neck was the pearl-shell necklace that ye’ve seen Agatha wearing, sir. Well, she looked at me for a bit, and seemed like to cry, not knowing who I was, or where she’d got to, d’ye see; and then she said something, repeating it over twice or thrice; but I couldn’t understand her, by reason of her speaking some foreign lingo as was unknown to me. Howsoever, I took for granted that it must be some of her people she was asking after; so I pointed to the back room, and made believe as they were in there, but asleep, and not to be disturbed then. She believed me, poor little soul, and presently after dropped quietly asleep, with the tears yet under her eyelids, and the firelight flickering over her sweet face and yellow hair. “Well, I sat there between the two, for I wasn’t sleepy at all myself, and kept the fire alight, and my own pipe a- going, till morning, by which time the storm was mostly cleared off. So I got the old lantern down from the gable, and stirred about to get breakfast ready; and at sunrise, the two being still sleeping, I walked out to see if so be as anything of the wreck was visible. But the Devil’s Ribs was only a bank of foam, and when I came to the beach there was naught there but a few shattered timbers and bits of spars and rigging; whatever else there may have been had gone down within the whirlpool of the Devil’s Ribs, and would never see daylight more; nor was there anything to tell where the wrecked ship hailed from, or what she was, or whither she was bound. Nay, a man might well have doubted whether there’d been any wreck at all; and superstitious folks might have thought that the pretty child we had found was a sea-nymph or a mermaid, who had come on the shoulders of waves to bring us good luck—or bad, maybe! Not that I’d have ye to think, sir, that I’m of the superstitious kind, being a man as has seen much of the world, and lived a number of years in it. But ’twas a strange thing altogether, and stranger yet was to follow, as ye shall hear. “In my walk I happened by the boulder where I’d been with the Scholar overnight, and there I picked up a small iron box, with a big lock on it; it was lashed to four bits of wood, so as it might float, and I think it must have come ashore along with the raft that brought the little girl. Just as I laid hands on it, and cut away the lashings, I sighted one of the villagers a-coming over the cliff path towards me. So, not caring to be hailed at that time, I slipped the box in the pocket of my jacket, and steered for the house. “And lo! there was the fair child sitting in the chair, and the Scholar he was kneeling in front of her, with her hands in his, and they were a-talking together in that same foreign lingo as she had spoken in to me; for, d’ye see, he had learnt it all from his books, and understood it as well as she who was born to it. The child was a bit scared and tearful still, and he seemed to be a-comforting of her; and as I came in, says he, ‘Don’t let on that her folks are drowned, Jack; for I’ve told her they’re but borne away to another harbour, and will return one day to claim her. So meanwhile,’ says he, ‘she’ll come to live with me at the mill, and be my little girl; for is she not my little girl now, since ’twas I brought her forth from the ocean that would have robbed her sweet young life?’ With that he kisses her little hands, and says somewhat to her again in her own tongue. It touched my heart to see the two together, sir; for, d’ye see, the Scholar had never seemed to be aware, as I may say, of women or children until now; he had moved through life without seeing them or speaking to them, save at times in an absent, dreamy sort of a way, as though they were in different worlds. But now he was full of earnestness and a kind of joyful trembling surprise, as one who had all of a sudden opened his eyes to a great treasure, and was delighting in it all the more for that he had been unknowing of it before. He was all in all a changed man, and softened, and waked up inside, so that his eyes seemed to be a-seeing the things that was round him, and not things in a dream; and methought there was a difference in his voice, too; it was deeper and tenderer like, and made you feel as how he had grown to be a man more than a scholar. I thought he was as a ship that had long been lingering in cold dark waters, baffled with winds that set towards no pleasant harbour, but which had at last found its sails filled with a fair fresh breeze, as was blowing her to warm southern seas and tropic islands full of heat and life. Ye’ll maybe laugh, sir, to hear an old sailor talk like this; but surely I had loved the man, and pitied him, too, for his loneliness; and it touched me, as I said, to see that he had found a good thing in the world, and could feel the happiness of it. “‘Pretty soon, Jack,’ says he again, ‘ye must help me carry her to the mill this morning, before the village folks are astir; and don’t tell them that she’s there, or whence she came. She’s my own, and her past is all gone for ever; God has sent her to me for my own. I shall make her love me as I now love her, and no other shall have any part in her. I will be to her all that she has lost, and more; and I will cherish her always and make her happy. And when the village folks find out that I have her (as soon of course they must), they shall be told that she is a good fairy come to bring me fortune and delight. I’d say that she rose up one morning out of the deep clear pool just above the mill-race; and that though appearing as a human being, she is in very truth not mortal, but has consented to live with me so long as I continue worthy of her companionship. But when the time comes—which God forbid it ever should!—that I prove [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] unworthy, then shall she vanish back to her natural abode, and I be more desolate than before she came. And as for this necklace,’ says he, ‘it is a talisman; and should fate ever separate us, yet this be left me, ’twill be a pledge that’....” “What’s happened?” IV. The yarn broke off abruptly enough. Poyntz and I had both started to our feet, our eyes and ears straining towards the mill-stream, where little Peter had during the last hour been quietly fishing. The sound of a quick scramble, a heavy plunge, and simultaneously a lusty scream, had sharply broken the repose of the summer afternoon. “’Tis the brat has toppled in!” cried Poyntz, the sunburnt ruddiness of his complexion turning to a tawny sallow hue. “He can’t swim; haste ye lower down, sir; I’ll to the pool; but if as he’s carried over the fall, ye’ll stop him at the rapid.” We had already set off on a run towards the bank, and we now separated in accordance with Poyntz’s suggestion. I saw no more of the latter, being wholly absorbed in carrying out my part of the programme; and in a few moments I was standing panting beside the rushing water, trying to select the best point from which to take my plunge. Just then I heard a swift rustling step behind me, and there was Agatha, her lovely face and eyes aglow with terrified excitement. Then it passed through my mind that she had always evinced a particular tenderness and affection for poor little Peter; and at the thought I must confess that my resolve to save him at all risks became tenfold as strong as it had been before. It was all a whirl and confusion; and only by comparing notes afterwards did we make out the order of events. Master Peter, it seems, after much unfruitful angling, had at last succeeded in hooking a huge trout, and straightway had lost first his mental and then his bodily balance. The fish being fairly on the hook, and pulling hard, the little man had rather chosen to go in after it, rod and all, than save himself at the cost of losing it. His scream, however, had startled not only his father and myself but Agatha and his mother likewise; and the latter had followed her husband, as Agatha did me. When Poyntz reached the brink of the pool, the young fisherman had just risen for the second time, and was circling helplessly in the eddy. Poyntz sprang forward; but his foot catching in a vine, he fell prone, his head in the water and the rest of his body on dry land. Before he could disentangle himself (an operation which the well-meant but too convulsive efforts of Mrs. Poyntz only served to retard) the child had drifted into the current and was carried over the fall. It was now that Agatha and I first caught sight of him. She pressed impulsively forward, and had I not retained her would have leaped into the headlong rapids herself. As I caught her arm, I felt rather than saw her glance at me, as though measuring my ability to do what must be done. Apparently her decision was in my favour, for she stepped back; and an instant after I was staggering breast deep in the boiling stream, watching the swift but topsy-turvy onset of Master Peter. Down he swept; and to make a long story short, I succeeded in catching hold of him without losing my footing, and thereby in saving his life and my own. Agatha helping from the bank, we were soon landed high and dry, or rather, very wet. Then ensued a great and indescribable hullaballo, wherein the first distinguishable words burst from Mr. Poyntz: “Look ye here, wife!” cried he, laughing and weeping in the same breath, “look if the lad hasn’t stuck to his fish through it all!” And so it proved; Peter had rivalled the childish exploit of his predecessor, stout little Kit North. There was the rod, still lightly gripped in his small fist; and a three-pound trout was flapping and gasping at the end of the line. “He’s but a chip of the old block, Mr. Poyntz,” said I, when the shouts that greeted the discovery had somewhat subsided. “What is that sticking in the corner of your mouth?” The old mariner put up his hand and took the thing out, and after staring at it for a moment in comical dismay, he burst into a laugh, in which everybody joined. It was the stem of his well-loved meerschaum, held unconsciously between his teeth throughout the entire turmoil; the bowl had probably been snapped off when he fell on the brink of the pool. So we all retraced our way to the house, the trout resting triumphantly in Peter’s arms, who was himself carried by his father. Agatha and I walked side by side; neither spoke to the other, and I knew not what thoughts were in her mind; but for my own part I had never been more light of heart, and I regarded Peter and his trout as the best friends that ever lover had. My achievement had been trifling enough, Heaven knows; but such as it was, it had been done before her eyes, and partly at least for her sake. When we had reached the house-door, and the others had passed in before us, she paused on the threshold and turned to me, smiling, with her finger upon the necklace-clasp. “I kissed it to save you ... and Peter!” she added hastily, and with a light in her dark eyes that was half mischievous, half earnest. “And now that we’re saved, I suppose you are going to kiss ... Peter?” I dared to reply, for my ducking had given me courage. She blushed, but looked straight at me; and the next moment was gone into the house, leaving me uncertain whether I had gone too far or not far enough. But, ah! happy Peter. A few bruises, and the involuntary swallowing of a gallon or two of water, were the extent of his injuries; while his blessings were beyond estimation. When I came downstairs half an hour later, after changing my clothes, I found him bundled up in an old pea-jacket of his father’s, and sitting in [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] Agatha’s arms. He was watching his mother clean the big trout, the prize of his valour; and as I passed by, Agatha glanced up at me and kissed him! I stole out by the kitchen-door and looked about for Mr. Poyntz; for his yarn had, for several reasons, begun to interest me exceedingly, and I was most anxious to hear the end of it. But he was nowhere to be seen; he had gone off to attend to something on the farm, and would as likely as not be absent till supper-time. It was a long time till then, and meanwhile I was without anything to amuse me. My mind was restless and excited, and I would have been thankful for any distraction. Nothing turned up, however, and at length—without being at the pains even to notice what direction I was taking—I set off on an objectless tramp, and was soon out of sight of the farmhouse. I had plenty to think about—so much, indeed, that I could think coherently about nothing. Ideas crowded incongruously upon one another, now this one and now that catching my attention for a moment, and then receding to the background. From the picture of my late adventure in the mill-stream, I slid to a review of Agatha—my relations with her; did she care for me? had my lucky exploit really advantaged me? and ought I to have stolen a kiss upon the doorstep? Instead of considering these questions, I was pondering the tale which Poyntz had begun to tell. Was it all true? would he ever finish it? and what would be its upshot? But now the pearl-shell necklace ruled my thoughts. Was it possibly the same as that which my great-grandmother had lost? and if so, would Agatha be likely to know anything about it? The next moment a vision of Scholar Gloam had risen before me. How h...