A Singer from the Sea Part 34

"Speak them words again, Denas."

She spoke them again, smiling with frank delight and love into his face.

"Thank G.o.d! Now tell me about it! Joan, my old dear, come and tell me about it."

Then they sat down together and told him all, and showed him the St.

Penfer _News_ containing Lawyer Tremaine's statement regarding the property which had come of right to Denas. And John listened until the burden he had been carrying rolled quite away from his heart, and with a great sigh he stood up and said loudly, over and over again, "Thank G.o.d! Thank G.o.d! Thank G.o.d!" Then, as if a sudden hurry pressed him, he cried--"Come, Joan! Come, Denas! Let us go to the pier and welcome her home."

She was just tacking to reach harbour when they mingled with the crowd of men and women already there. And Ann Trewillow was calling out: "Why, it is Tris Penrose at her wheel!" Then as she came closer a man shouted: "It be the _Darling Denas_. It must be John Penelles' boat.

To be sure it be John's boat!" This opinion was reached by an instant conviction, and every face was turned to John.

"It be my boat, mates. Thank G.o.d and my little girl. It be my boat, thank G.o.d!"

And then Tris was at the slip, and the anchor down and all the men were as eager about the new craft as a group of hors.e.m.e.n could possibly be about the points of some famous winner. Tris had to tell every particular about her builder and her building, and as the fishers were talking excitedly of these things, Joan gave a general invitation to her friends, and they followed her to the cottage, and heard the St. Penfer _News_ read, and had a plate of junket[5] and of clotted cream.

And they were really proud and glad of what they heard. Denas had made herself so beloved that no one had a grudging or, envious feeling.

Everyone considered how she had come back to them as if she had been penniless; "and teaching our little ones too--with sixteen hundred pounds at her back! Wonderful! Wonderful!" said first one and then another of the women. Indeed, if Denas had thought out a plan to make herself honoured and popular, she could hardly have conceived of one more in unison with the simple souls she had to influence. They could not sleep for talking about it. Denas Penelles was a veritable romance to them.

"And fair she was and fair she be!" said Mary Oliver, a good woman, with not a pinch of pride in her make-up. "And if Tris Penrose win her and she win him, a proper wedding it will be--a wedding made by their guardian angel. I do think that." And the group of women present answered one and then another, "A proper wedding it will be, to be sure."

In the evening there was a great praise-meeting at John's cottage; for in St. Penfer all rejoicing and all sorrow ended in a religious meeting. And Denas and Tris sang out of the same hymn-book, and sat side by side as they listened to John's quaintly eloquent tribute to the G.o.d "who did always keep faith with His children." "I was like to lose sight of my G.o.d," he cried, "but my G.o.d never did lose sight of me. G.o.d's children be well off, He goes so neighbourly with them. He is their pilot and their home-bringer. I did weep to myself all last night; but just as His promise says, joy did come in the morning." And then John burst into song, and all his mates and neighbours with him.

And it is in such holy, exalted atmospheres that love reaches its sweetest, fairest strength and bloom. Tris had no need of words. Words would have blundered, and hampered, and darkened all he had to say.

One look at Denas as they closed the book together--one look as he held her hand on the door-step, and she knew more than words could ever have said. She saw through his eyes to the bottom of his clear, honest soul, and she knew that he loved her as men love who find in one woman only the song of life, the master-key of all their being.

She expected Tris would come and see her the next day, but Ann Trewillow brought word that he had sailed with Mr. Arundel. Tris had been expecting the order, and the yacht had only been waiting for guests who had suddenly arrived. Denas was rather pleased. She was not yet ready to admit a new love. She felt that in either refusing or accepting Tris' affection she would be doing both herself and Tris an injustice. A love that does not spring into existence perfect needs cautious tending; too much sunshine, too much care, too constant watching will slay it. There must be time given for it to grow.

Without reasoning on the matter, Denas felt that absence would be a good thing. She was afraid of being driven by emotion or by circ.u.mstances into a mistaken position. And she had now an absorbing interest in her life. Her school was a delight. No consideration of money qualified her pleasure in her pupils. She was eager to teach all she knew. She was eager to learn, that she might teach more. As the weeks went by her school got a local fame; it was considered a great privilege to obtain a place in it.

Good fortune seemed to have come to St. Penfer by the Sea when Denas came back to it. Never had there been a more abundant sea-harvest than that summer. The _Darling Denas_ brought luck to the whole fleet. She was a swift sailer, always first on the fishing-ground and always first in harbour again; and it was a great pleasure to Denas to watch her namesake leading out and leading home the brown-sailed bread-winners of the hamlet. When the time and the tide and the weather all served, Denas might now often be seen, with her mother and the rest of the fishermen's wives, standing on the wind-blown pier watching the boats out in the evening.

There had been a time when she had positively declined the loving ceremony--when she had hated the thought of any community in such feelings--when the large brown faces of the wives and mothers and the sad patience of their att.i.tude had seemed to her only the visible signs of a poor and sorrowful life. And even yet, as she stood among them she was haunted by a rhyme she had read in some picture paper years ago--a rhyme that so pathetically glanced at love that dwelt between life and death that she never could see a group of fishermen's wives on the pier watching the boats outside without saying it to herself:

"They gazed on the boats from the pier, ah, me!

Till their sails swelled in the wind, Till darkness dropped down over the sea And their eyes with tears were blind.

Then home they turned, and they never spoke, These daughters and wives of the fisher-folk."

But years and experience had taught her the falsehood of extremes; she knew now that life has many intermediate colours between lamp-black and rose-pink, and that if the fisherman's wife had hours of anxious watching, she had also many hours of such rapturous love as comes sparingly to others--love that is the portion of those who come back from the very grave with the shadow of death on their face.

In the autumn Tris returned for a few days, but he was so busy that he could not leave the yacht. She was being provisioned and put in order for the long Mediterranean winter voyage, and Tris was in constant demand. But John and Joan and Denas walked over to St. Clair to bid him good-bye. And never had Tris looked so handsome and so manly. His air of authority became him. In a fishing-boat men are equal, but on this lordly pleasure-boat it was very different. Tris said to one man go and to another come, and they obeyed him with deference and alacrity. This masterful condition impressed Denas greatly. She thought of Tris with a respect which promised far more than mere admiration for his beauty or his picturesque dress.

After Tris was gone the winter came rapidly, but Denas did not dread it. Neither did John nor Joan. John looked upon his boat as a veritable G.o.dsend. What danger could come to him on a craft so blessed? All her takes were large and fortunate. The other boats thought it lucky to sail in her wake. On whatever side the _Darling Denas_ cast her bait, they knew it was right to cast on that side also.

Joan was happy in her husband's happiness; she was happy in her unstinted housekeeping; she was now particularly happy in Denas'

school. The little lads and la.s.ses brought all their news, all their joys and sorrows to Denas; and when Denas went home every day, Joan, with her knitting in her hands, was waiting to give her a dainty meal and to chat with her over all she had heard and all she had done.

And Denas was happy. When she mentally contrasted this busy, loving winter with the sorrows of the previous one, with the hunger and cold and poverty, the anguish of death and the loneliness, she could not but be grateful for the little home-harbour which her storm-tossed heart had found again. If she had a regret, it was that she could not retain her hold upon her finished life. Every time she asked her heart after Roland, memory gave her pictures in fainter and fainter and fainter colours. Roland was drifting farther and farther away.

She could no longer weep at his name. A gentle melancholy, a half-sacred remoteness invested the years in which he had been the light of her life. For

"When the lamp is shattered, The light in the dust lies dead; When the cloud is scattered, The rainbow's glory is fled."

Mercifully, youth has this marvellous elasticity. And the children filled all the vacant places in her life. For as yet she did not think much nor at all decidedly about Tris. If Roland was slipping away from memory, Tris by no means filled her heart. Yet she was pleased when Ann Trewillow's little maid Gillian told her one morning:

"Master Arundel's yacht be come into harbour safe and sound, and Captain Tris, he be brave and hearty, and busy all to get ash.o.r.e again. And my mother do say Mr. Arundel he be going to marry a fine lady, and great doings at the Abbey, no doubt. And mother do say, too, that Captain Tris will be marrying you. And I was a brave bit frightened at that news, and I up and answered mother: 'It bean't so.

Miss Denas likes better teaching us boys and girls.' I said that, and wishing it so with all my heart."

And Denas, seeing that the boys and girls were looking anxiously at her for an a.s.surance of this position, said positively:

"I am happier with you, children, than I could be with anyone else, and I do not intend to marry at all."

"Never? Say never!"

"Well, then--never."

Yet there was a faint longing in her heart for love all her own. A man can love what others love, but a woman wants something or someone to love that is all her own. And she was interested enough in Tris'

return to dress with more than usual care that evening. She felt sure he would come, and she put on her best black gown and did not brush the ripples out of her front hair, but let the tiny tendrils soften the austere gravity of her face and make that slight shadow behind the ears which is so womanly and becoming.

About seven o'clock she heard his footsteps on the shingle and the gay whistle to which they timed themselves. Joan went to the door to welcome him. Denas stood up as he entered, and then, meeting his ardent gaze, trembled and flushed and sat down again. He sat down beside her. He told her how much already he had heard of her gracious work in the village. He said it was worth going to France and Italy and Greece, only to come back and see how much more lovely than all other women the Cornish women were. And by and by he took from his pocket the most exquisite kerchief of Maltese lace and a finely-carved set of corals. Denas would have been less than a woman had she not been charmed with the beautiful objects. She let Tris knot the lovely silky lace around her throat, and she went to her mirror and put the carved coral comb among her fair, abundant tresses, and the rings in her ears, and the necklace and the locket round her white slender throat.

Then Tris looked at her as if he had met a G.o.ddess in a wilderness; and Joan, with her hands against her sides, congratulated and praised herself for having given to St. Penfer by the Sea a daughter so lovely and so good.

FOOTNOTE:

[5] Junket is made of fresh milk, spirits, spices, sugar; curdled with rennet and eaten with clotted cream.

CHAPTER XVII.

DENAS.

"She that is loved is safe; and he that is loved is joyful."

--BISHOP TAYLOR.

"No pearls, no gold, no stones, no corn, no spice, No cloth, no wine, of Love can pay the price; Divine is Love, and scorneth worldly pelf, And can be bought with nothing but itself."

--HEYWOOD.

"To-morrow, Love, as to-day, Two blent hearts never astray; Two souls no power may sever; Together, O Love, for ever!"

--ROSSETTI.

During the summer which followed, Tris was much at home. Mr. Arundel did not go to Norway; he was in London with the lady whom he intended to marry, until the end of the season, and afterward frequently at her country home in Devonshire. Tris had then his opportunity and he did not neglect it. But he was an impulsive young man, and very often lost the ground on Monday that he had gained on Sunday. All of love's fitful fevers and chills tormented him, and then he tormented Denas.

He was jealous of every moment of her time, of every kind word and look she bestowed on others. The school offended, the children irritated his conception of his own rights. He was as thoroughly unreasonable and Denas as thoroughly contradictory as was necessary for the most tantalising of love affairs.

About the beginning of the summer, just before the pilchard season, Jacob Trenager died. He was a Pentrath man, and of course "went home"

for his burying. It did not seem an event likely to affect the lives of Tris and Denas, and yet it did have a very pleasant influence upon their future. In some far-back generation a Trenager had saved the life of an Arundel, and ever since, when any adult of one family was buried an adult of the other threw the first earth upon the coffin, in token of their remembrance and of their friendship. Mr. Arundel was aware of the tradition, and he desired to perpetuate it. He was, perhaps, actuated by some religious respect for the customs and feelings of his ancestors; he was, undoubtedly, considerate of the fact that he had just bought a valuable estate in the midst of these old clannish fisher-folk, and well aware that such a trifling concession to their prejudices might in a future Parliamentary struggle be of preponderating value to him.