Part 5 (2/2)
The Parson sat for a moment in silence while John-James s.h.i.+fted his feet anxiously. Mingled with the swift appreciation of the humour of himself as tutor to the arrogant Va.s.sie was a pang of reproachful conscience.
”What does your mother say?” he temporised; ”and Va.s.sie?”
”Mother's willen, only she did say you was so took up with the lil'un you wouldn't take no account of Va.s.sie, seeing she'm only a b.a.s.t.a.r.d like the rest of us. But Va.s.sie said if you thought it was the right thing to do by her you'd do it.”
Boase had as little vanity as any man, but it was pleasurably p.r.i.c.ked by this. Also he still reproached himself.
”John-James,” he began almost diffidently, ”you mustn't talk like that about b.a.s.t.a.r.ds--as though it made any difference to me. You know it isn't because of that I look after Ishmael and treat him differently; it's because he was left to me as a charge. I want to make a fine thing of him and for him to make a fine thing of Cloom.... But that includes his overcoming this barrier between him and his family; it won't be complete till he and Archelaus can meet in friends.h.i.+p as brothers should, without a grudge or a fear. All this bad blood needs sweetening.”
”I daresay,” said John-James, ”but meanwhile Ishmael'll be growen up further and further from his folk.”
”But you wouldn't have me not educate him, would you?” urged Boase, speaking as to a fellow-man; ”you say yourself it's too late with Archelaus. It always was; he hated me from Ishmael's birth.”
”That's right enough,” agreed John-James; ”it's only Va.s.sie you can help. And helpen her will help your plan too, won't it? For it'll make one of his own kind in his family. And she's gwain to be 'ansome, she is.”
”You're quite right, John-James, and I'm obliged to you for the suggestion. I don't think I can supply an education much good to a young lady, but we'll see what can be done.”
”Mother says,” mumbled John-James, ”that happen later Va.s.sie could go to what they do call a boarding school to Plymouth church town, seen' as the money won't be Ishmael's yet awhile.... Only she must learn to cipher and make nadlework flowers afore go, or the other maids'll mock at she.”
”I can teach the ciphering but not the needlework flowers, I fear,” said the Parson, laughing; ”my housekeeper will have to be called in over that. Well, you tell Va.s.sie to be here by nine in the morning and she shall begin her education. Whether she sticks to it is her own affair.”
”She'll stick to it,” prophesied John-James. ”She'm terrible proud, is Va.s.sie.”
That was how it came about that Va.s.silissa Beggoe, half pouting defiance, half eager, began to pull herself out of the slough into which her race had slipped. There were difficulties perpetually arising--Ishmael had to be snubbed for sneering at her abysmal ignorance; and a course more adapted to her needs and temperament than the cla.s.sic one the Parson was unfolding before the boy had to be arrived at; and her own recurring fits of suspicion and obstinacy had to be overcome. The intimacy between brother and sister did not deepen perceptibly, for the three years between them made too wide a gulf at that period in life, and to counter Ishmael's scorn of her as a girl and far more ignorant than himself, was her scorn of him as younger, less daring, much less swift of apprehension, though keener of application.
Each began to have a certain respect for the other, nevertheless--she in his superiority over the other boys she knew, he in her splendour that made the other boys' sisters seem dim. These two were laying the foundations for possible intimacy later on, though there was too much against it now.
The Parson felt it as a matter for self-reproach that he never became really fond of Va.s.sie; her hardness, and a certain set determination about her that was rather fine as well, blinded him to her good points.
She was certainly unlovable at that period, but she and the Parson had natures which would mutually fail to respond at the best of times. Being what he was, this made him all the more careful to do all he could for her, but he never rejoiced in her really quick intellect as he did in the slow sensitive one of Ishmael, or even in the kittenish superficiality of Phoebe's.
For the miller had no rest when he heard what was going on at the Vicarage of a morning until his Phoebe was reaping equal benefits, or benefits that would have been equal had Phoebe the temperament to avail herself of them. If the Parson had not possessed a natural genius for teaching, even his patience would never have survived those schoolroom struggles with three children of differing ages and capacities. But he was interested in Va.s.sie's determination to improve herself, and of little Phoebe he was fond in the way one cannot help being fond of some soft confiding little animal that rubs up against one.
The miller built much on those few years of childish friends.h.i.+p during which he told himself his Phoebe too was learning to be as good as anyone else, but the Parson had no fears on that score. Ishmael was going, as he saw things, to be a man of wider ideas than ever little facile Phoebe, with her superficial quickness in acquiring anything ”lady-like,” would be able to fill.
Meanwhile, the Parson told Ishmael, in language that made everything seem clean and wonderful, as much as he thought wise of the mysteries which had perplexed him and Jacka's John-w.i.l.l.y over the snail. The ideals Ishmael gradually absorbed during these years made the thought of the furtive conversations with John-w.i.l.l.y seem hateful, and with their swift acquisitiveness of values both little girls appreciated that he would be superior to them if they indulged in any of the vulgarities most children are apt to fall into at one period, harmless enough in fact, but not cleansing to the mind. Therefore each of the three affected the other two in some way, and the pattern of Ishmael's life, though so essentially isolated as everyone's must be in greater or less measure, was intermingled at many of its edges with those of the two girls'. But always it was the Parson who held his heart as far as any human ent.i.ty could be said to do so. For it was still the world of things and ideas which filled the round of his horizon most for Ishmael, and in that world the thought of his great trust held ever-strengthening place.
One great cause for relief he had, which came upon him soon after the settlement of the scholastic arrangement at the Vicarage, and that was the departure of Archelaus, who enlisted and went to the Crimea. Later he was wounded and discharged, but even then he did not come home, but went to the goldfields of New South Wales. The great fever of that rush was on, and, any form of mining being in a Cornishman's blood, there were many that went from West Penwith alone. The malignant presence of Archelaus withdrawn, though he did not understand the malignancy, Ishmael felt lighter, freer. Tom he hardly ever saw, and the girls were under dire penalties from the Parson never to hint to Ishmael the true reason of the domestic complications of Cloom. That Boase reserved for himself, as a difficult telling, which Ishmael might take hardly, and for which he was to be well fortified in the years of childhood.
Long after, on looking back, Ishmael saw better the whole atmosphere of those years from eight to twelve than he did when in the midst of them.
Golden summers, when he spent whole days out on the cliff or moor with the Parson, their specimen cases at their backs; ruddy autumns when the peewits cried in the dappled sky and the blackberries were thick on the marsh; grey winters when the rain and mist blotted the world out, and he and the Parson sat by a glowing fire of wreckage, the Parson reading aloud from Jorrocks or Pickwick, or the entrancing tales of Captain Marryat, and later, for more solid matter, Grote's ”History of Greece,”
its democratic inferences counterbalanced by ”Sartor Resartus,” whose thunderous sentences enthralled Ishmael, if their purport was yet beyond him; wonderful pale springs when the suns.h.i.+ne and the blood in his veins were both like golden wine. So the time went, and it mostly belonged to himself and his dreams, with even the Parson more unconsciously felt than actively realised, and with the two girls still more upon the fringe, though it was true there were splendid games, such as Cavaliers and Roundheads, which could not be played by himself. For this and kindred affairs Va.s.sie and Phoebe were of great use, though Phoebe cried if she had to be a Roundhead too often out of her turn. Still, she was a good little thing, but when the fateful date arrived which was to see the journey to St. Renny, Ishmael had no pang at leaving her or anyone else. He was not a shy boy, and felt only intense interest at the thought of what lay before him. For the journey in a railway train was alone enough to set the blood thrilling--it was a thing that no one whom Ishmael knew, excepting Parson Boase, had ever undertaken. It was only a matter of five years since the West Cornwall Railway from Truro Road to Penzance had been opened. The same year the great Duke had died, but the opening of the railway, with the mayor and all the magistrates and the volunteer band in attendance, had made far the greater stir in West Penwith. Iron Dukes were intangible creatures compared with iron engines, although the Parson had preached about the former and seemed to think, as some paris.h.i.+oners said, that it might have been the Almighty Himself who had pa.s.sed away. Wellington had gone, but the railway had come--therein lay the difference; and Ishmael swelled with pride as he talked casually to Phoebe of the experience before him.
The miller lent his trap for the drive into Penzance, for, incredible as it may seem, there was still hardly a cart in the countryside, all the carrying of turf, furze, and produce being done on donkeys' back, and thus it came about that Phoebe came too to see him off. She held her round softly-tinted face, with the mouse-coloured ringlets falling away from it, up to his in the railway station as he prepared to climb to his place in the pumpkin-shaped compartment. He ensured a tear-wet pillow for her that night by merely shaking her hand at the full length of a rigid arm.
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