Part 15 (1/2)
”There's a queer vein of cruelty in the Celt--at least in the Cornish Celt--that is worse than the Latin,” went on Boase. ”When they are angered they wreak vengeance on anything. And sometimes when there are a lot of them together under circ.u.mstances which you would think would have roused their pity, the devil of wanton cruelty enters into them. I shall never forget when a school of whales came ash.o.r.e in the Bay ...
they lay there stranded, poor creatures! And from the oldest man to the little boys out of school a blood-l.u.s.t came on everyone. They tore and hacked at the poor creatures with penknives and any weapon they could get, they carved their names on them and stopped up their blow-holes with stones, till the place was a perfect shambles and the blood soaked into the sand as into an arena in ancient Rome.... n.o.body could stop them. It was a sight to make one weep for shame that one was a man.”
Ishmael lay in silence. He knew--no one with eyes to see could live there and not know--but, like Killigrew, he had always tried not to think too much about it. He was so unable to take things superficially that he feared thought, and hence often did less than men who did not care as much. He gave a slight movement now that was not so much impatience as a thrusting away of a thing that sickened him and which he felt he could not stem. It seemed to him that the glory of the day had departed. He, too, remembered that shambles of which the Parson spoke; it had been the first time the pain in the world he so loved had come home to him. He remembered now how, as he and the Parson had come back, in melancholy silence, from that scene of blood, his own declarations about its being such a good world, made to the Parson on his first night home and repeated so often since to his own high-beating heart, had mocked at him. What did it avail being happy when there was such pain in the world? Himself or another, or, worse still, these innocents that could not philosophise about it--that any should suffer made all happiness futile. The same deadly consciousness came upon him now on the sunny cliff, and he resented that the topic should have been started, himself keeping a sullen silence. But the Parson turned and spoke directly to him.
”By the way,” he said, ”I hate to have to tell you, but I hear, and I'm afraid it's true, that Archelaus is starting bush-beating on the estate again. I met John-w.i.l.l.y Jacka coming back from the direction of the wood late one night with a suspicious-looking sack and a bludgeon, and next day I asked John-James if he knew anything. He didn't give anyone away, but I gathered--”
”If it's true--” Ishmael paused for sheer rage, then went on: ”I'll tackle John-w.i.l.l.y, and if it's true he can go. But of course it's Archelaus really, just because he knows how I feel about it. It isn't even as though it were the season for it, if you can talk of a season for such a thing, but no one can be very hard up for food as late as this. Oh, if I can't be free of him even now he's working at Botallack--”
”I had such a quarrel with Mamma about that this morning,” struck in Va.s.sie, who disliked the conversation and thought she had been out of it long enough. ”She was boasting at breakfast--after you'd gone out, Ishmael--that Archelaus was a captain now, and I laughed, and said it was more than he'd ever been in the army, but that of course a mine captain wasn't a real one ... and she was furious. She said it was quite real enough for her and Archelaus anyway, though perhaps not for the likes of me. I met Archelaus at the mill the other day when I was over seeing Phoebe, and he certainly did seem smart, ever so different from when he came back. You wouldn't have known him.”
She ended on her high laugh and rolled over a little woolly puppy that lay in her lap, burying her long fingers in its coat. She was perched upon a gra.s.sy slope like some vast moth that had alighted there, her pale skirts spread, a white cashmere shawl swathed about her shoulders, her golden head tipped back on her full throat. Over her, like a swaying flower, a tiny parasol reared on a long ta.s.selled stalk, held in Killigrew's hand as he lounged beside her. He let his eyes run over her now, tipping the parasol to one side so that at his pleasure the late sunlight should touch her hair and her still flawless skin. She knew she could stand the test, and stayed a moment before motioning him to tip the parasol back again.
”It seems to me Archelaus is going a lot to the mill,” observed Killigrew idly, and more for the purpose of saying something than because he really thought so. ”I ran into him there the other day when I was doing my sketch of it.”
A short hush, pregnant with thought, followed on his words. To Boase and Va.s.sie--those two so different beings--came the swift reflection ”That would not be at all a bad thing. It would remove a danger.”
Killigrew was interested, as an onlooker, in the idea of the alliance his own words had suggested. Ishmael felt an irrational little pang.
Phoebe's smiles, her little friendliness, had always belonged to him--Archelaus would crush them as big fingers rub the powder off a b.u.t.terfly's wings.... If he and Archelaus had been more truly brothers it would have been a very nice arrangement ... little Phoebe would make a sweeter sister in some ways than the imperious Va.s.sie....
”This puppy is for Phoebe,” cried Va.s.sie, breaking into a hurried speech; ”it's been promised her a long time. She's so fond of pets.”
This was true. Phoebe's maternal instincts made her love to have a soft, helpless little lamb or calf dependent on her; but it seemed her instinct was oddly animal in quality, for when the creature on which she had lavished so much care grew to st.u.r.diness she saw it go to the butcher's knife with unimpaired cheerfulness and turned her attentions to the next weakling. It was a standing joke against Phoebe that she called all her hens by name and nursed them from the egg up, only to inform you brightly at some meal that it was Henrietta, or Garibaldi, or whatever luckless bird it might be, that you were devouring.
”If you like I'll take that puppy over to the mill now, if you'll see Wanda doesn't follow to bring it back,” observed Ishmael, getting to his feet, ”and then perhaps I can find out something about this bush-beating scare. If Archelaus is there--”
”Be careful, Ishmael,” said the Parson quietly.
”Oh, I'll keep my temper, or try to. Coming with me, Joe?”
Va.s.sie sat nonchalantly picking blades of gra.s.s. She would sooner never have seen Killigrew again than have asked him to stay with her, even than have suggested, with apparent carelessness, some plan that should keep him. But she waited with throbbing heart for his answer.
”I'd like to,” said Killigrew briskly; ”I've been abominably lazy till to-day, and that means I shall get fat. And when a person with light eyelashes and sandy whiskers gets fat all is over. I should have to go into my Guv'nor's business and become an alderman.”
He reared his singularly graceful self up from the gra.s.s as he spoke and helped Va.s.sie to her feet.
”Good-bye, both of you, then,” said Va.s.sie, withdrawing her hand when she was on her feet. ”If you're going to the mill, I'll expect you when I see you.”
This would have been arch had Va.s.sie been a little less clever; as it was it sounded so natural that even that man-of-the-world, Killigrew, was taken in. As he set off with Ishmael he felt a moment's regret that he had not stayed with Va.s.sie--a moment inspired by her lack of pique at his not having stayed.
The sun that had gilded Va.s.sie's head had sunk swiftly by the time they reached the mill; and when the miller opened to their knock a flood of lamplight came out to mingle with the soft dusk. Phoebe's mother had died some two or three years earlier, and since then the miller had lived with only an old aunt of his own to help him look after his daughter. He peered out at them almost anxiously, Ishmael thought, and seemed rather upset at sight of him.
”Who's that there?” he asked sharply; then, as Killigrew stepped forward round the porch: ”I thought maybe Phoebe was weth 'ee.”
”Phoebe? Oh, no!” said Ishmael; ”why, is she out?”
”'Tes of no account,” replied the miller. ”I reckon she'm just gone down-along to see to the fowls or semthen. Will 'ee come in, you and your Lunnon friend?”
Ishmael hesitated, then, remembering on what errand he had come, he stepped in, and, despite Killigrew's obvious unwillingness, they found themselves pledged to stay to supper.
”We really only just came to bring Phoebe this puppy my sister promised her,” Ishmael explained. ”It's the pick of our Wanda's litter and Phoebe had set her heart on it.” Ishmael held up the squirming little thing as he spoke, and it licked its black nose nervously with a pink tongue that came out curled up like a leaf.