Part 28 (1/2)

What are you doing here?'

'What is that to you, my good girl?'

'True. Tell him you saw me here; and tell him, when next he hears of me, it will be in a very different place.'

She turned and vanished among the crowd. Lancelot almost ran out into the night,--into a triad of fights, two drunken men, two jealous wives, and a brute who struck a poor, thin, worn-out woman, for trying to coax him home. Lancelot rushed up to interfere, but a man seized his uplifted arm.

'He'll only beat her all the more when he getteth home.'

'She has stood that every Sat.u.r.day night for the last seven years, to my knowledge,' said Tregarva; 'and worse, too, at times.'

'Good G.o.d! is there no escape for her from her tyrant?'

'No, sir. It's only you gentlefolks who can afford such luxuries; your poor man may be tied to a harlot, or your poor woman to a ruffian, but once done, done for ever.'

'Well,' thought Lancelot, 'we English have a characteristic way of proving the holiness of the marriage tie. The angel of Justice and Pity cannot sever it, only the stronger demon of Money.'

Their way home lay over Ashy Down, a lofty chalk promontory, round whose foot the river made a sudden bend. As they paced along over the dreary hedgeless stubbles, they both started, as a ghostly 'Ha!

ha! ha!' rang through the air over their heads, and was answered by a like cry, faint and distant, across the wolds.

'That's those stone-curlews--at least, so I hope,' said Tregarva.

'He'll be round again in a minute.'

And again, right between them and the clear, cold moon, 'Ha! ha!

ha!' resounded over their heads. They gazed up into the cloudless star-bespangled sky, but there was no sign of living thing.

'It's an old sign to me,' quoth Tregarva; 'G.o.d grant that I may remember it in this black day of mine.'

'How so!' asked Lancelot; 'I should not have fancied you a superst.i.tious man.'

'Names go for nothing, sir, and what my forefathers believed in I am not going to be conceited enough to disbelieve in a hurry. But if you heard my story you would think I had reason enough to remember that devil's laugh up there.'

'Let me hear it then.'

'Well, sir, it may be a long story to you, but it was a short one to me, for it was the making of me, out of hand, there and then, blessed be G.o.d! But if you will have it--'

'And I will have it, friend Tregarva,' quoth Lancelot, lighting his cigar.

'I was about sixteen years old, just after I came home from the Brazils--'

'What! have you been in the Brazils?'

'Indeed and I have, sir, for three years; and one thing I learnt there, at least, that's worth going for.'

'What's that?'

'What the Garden of Eden must have been like. But those Brazils, under G.o.d, were the cause of my being here; for my father, who was a mine-captain, lost all his money there, by no man's fault but his own, and not his either, the world would say, and when we came back to Cornwall he could not stand the bal work, nor I neither. Out of that burning sun, sir, to come home here, and work in the levels, up to our knees in warm water, with the thermometer at 85 degrees, and then up a thousand feet of ladder to gra.s.s, reeking wet with heat, and find the easterly sleet driving across those open furze-crofts-- he couldn't stand it, sir--few stand it long, even of those who stay in Cornwall. We miners have a short lease of life; consumption and strains break us down before we're fifty.'

'But how came you here?'

'The doctor told my father, and me too, sir, that we must give up mining, or die of decline: so he came up here, to a sister of his that was married to the squire's gardener, and here he died; and the squire, G.o.d bless him and forgive him, took a fancy to me, and made me under-keeper. And I loved the life, for it took me among the woods and the rivers, where I could think of the Brazils, and fancy myself back again. But mustn't talk of that--where G.o.d wills is all right. And it is a fine life for reading and thinking, a gamekeeper's, for it's an idle life at best. Now that's over,' he added, with a sigh, 'and the Lord has fulfilled His words to me, that He spoke the first night that ever I heard a stone-plover cry.'