Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts Part 14

Handing the new-comers over to her, I caught up a line and made off hot-foot after Obed.

At low-water (and the tide had now scarcely an hour to ebb) the sands in Vellingey Porth measure a good half-mile from the footbridge at its head to the sea at its base. My legs were longer than Obed's; but I dare say he had arrived five minutes ahead of me. He was standing and calling to the boat's crew to get out an oar and pull her head-to-sea: for although the smoothing wind had taken most of the danger out of the breakers, they were quite able to capsize and roll over any boat that beached herself in that lubberly fashion.

I ran up panting, and shouted with him--"Pull her round head-to-sea, and back her in!"

Not a man moved or lifted a hand. The next moment, a wave tilted and ran a dozen yards with her, but mercifully pa.s.sed before it broke.

A smaller one curved on the back-draught and splashed in over her gunwale as she took ground. But what knocked the wind out of our sails was this--As the first wave canted her up, two men had rolled out of her like logs; and the others, sitting like logs, had never so much as stirred to help!

"Good Lord!" I called out, and fumbled with my line. "What's the meaning of it?"

"The meaning is," said Obed, "they're dead men, every mother's son.

They're frozen," said he: "I've seen frozen seamen before now."

"I'll have in the boat, anyway," I said. "Here, catch hold and pay out!" Running in, I reached her just as she lifted again; and managed to slew her nose in-sh.o.r.e, but not in time to prevent half-a-hogshead pouring over her quarter. This wave knocked her broadside-on again, and the water shipped made her heavier to handle. But by whipping my end of the line round the thwart in which her mast was stepped, for Obed to haul upon, and myself heaving at her bows, we fetched her partly round as she lifted again, and ran her into the second line of breakers, which were pretty well harmless.

"How many on board?" Obed sang out.

"Five!" called I, having counted them. Up to this I had had enough to do with the boat; besides looking after myself. For twice the heave had tilled me up to the armpits, and once lifted me clean off my feet; and I had no wish to try swimming in my sea-boots. "Five," said I; "and two overboard--that makes seven. Come and look here!"

"Tend to the boat first," he said. "I've seen frozen seamen."

"You never saw the likes of this," I answered. So he ran in beside me.

The boat had her name (or that of the ship she belonged to) painted in yellow and black on the gunwale strake by her port quarter-- "MARGIT PEDERSEN, BERGEN": but by their faces we could not miss knowing to what country the poor creatures belonged. They were--

1. A tall man, under middle age; seated by the mast and leaning against it (his right arm frozen to it, in fact, from the elbow up) with his back towards the bows. The snow was heaped on his head and shoulders like a double cape. This one had no hair on his face; and his complexion being very fresh and pink, and his eyes wide open, it was hard to believe him dead. Indeed, while getting in the boat, I had to speak to him twice, to make sure.

2. A much older man, and shorter, with a rough grey beard. He sat in the stern sheets, with his right hand frozen on the tiller.

Our folk had afterwards to unship the tiller when they came to lift him out: and carried him up to the house still holding it. Later on we buried it beside him. This man wore a good blue coat and black breeches; and at first we took him to be the captain. He turned out to be the mate, Knud Lote, who had put on his best clothes when it came to leaving the ship. His eyes were screwed up, and the brine had frozen over them, like a glaze, or a big pair of spectacles.

3. Against his knee rested the head of a third man--one of the three I had first seen sitting amidships. When the other two toppled overboard this one had slid off the thwart and fallen against the steersman. He was an oldish man, yellow and thin and marked with the small-pox; the only one in the boat who might have come from some other country than Norway. His eyes were cast down in a quiet way, and he seemed to be smiling. He wore a seaman's loose frock, ragged breeches, and sea-boots.

4 and 5. Stretched along the bottom-boards lay a tall young man with straw-coloured hair and beard: and in his arms, tightly clasped, and wrapped in a shawl and seaman's jacket, a young woman.

Her arms were about the young man and her face pressed close and hidden against his side. He must have taken off his jacket to warm her; for the upper part of his body had no covering but a flannel shirt and cinglet.

While we stood there the tide drained back, leaving the bows of the boat high and dry. As I remember, Obed was the first to speak; and he said "She has beautiful hair." This was the bare truth: a great lock of it lay along the bottom-board like a stream of guineas poured out of a sack. He climbed into the boat and lifted the shawl from her face.

Those neighbours of ours, friends and acquaintances, who afterwards saw Margit Pedersen at Vellingey, and for whom this account is mainly written, will not need a description of her. Many disliked her: but n.o.body denied that she was a lovely woman; and I am certain that n.o.body could see her face and afterwards forget it. It was, then and always, very pale: but this had nothing to do with ill health. In fact I am not sure it would have been noticeable but for the warm colour of her hair and her red lips and (especially) her eyebrows and lashes, of a deep brown that seemed almost black. Her lips were blue with the cold, just now: but the contrast between her eyebrows and her pale face and yellow hair struck me at once and kept me wondering: until Obed startled me by dropping the shawl and falling on his knees beside her. "Good G.o.d, Dom!" he sang out: "the girl's alive!"

The next moment, of course, I was as wild as he. "Get her out, then," I cried, "and up to the house at once!"

"I can't loosen the man's arms!" Though less than a yard apart, we both shouted at the top of our voices.

"Nonsense!" I answered: but it was true all the same--as I found out when I stepped in to Obed's help. "We must carry up the pair as they are," I said. "There's no time to lose."

We lifted them out, and making a chair of our hands and wrists, carried them up to Vellingey; leaving the others in the boat, now for an hour well above reach of the tide. And here I must tell of something that happened on the way: the first sign of Obed's madness, as I may call it.

All of a sudden he stopped and panted, from the weight of our load, I supposed. "Dom," he said, "I believe that nine men out of ten would kiss her!"

I told him not to be a fool, and we walked on. In the town-place we happened on the shepherd, Reuben Santo, and sent him off for help, and to look after the frozen people in the boat. The sight of us at the door nearly scared Selina into her grave: but we allowed her no time for hysterics. We laid the pair on a blanket before the open fire, and very soon Obed was trying to force some warm milk and brandy between the girl's lips. I think she swallowed a little: but the first time she opened her eyes was when one of the lambs (which everyone had neglected for twenty minutes or so) tottered across the kitchen on his foolish legs and began to nuzzle at her face. Obed at the moment was trying to disengage the dead man's arms. A thought struck Selina at once.

"Put the lamb close against her heart," she said. "That'll warm her more than any fire."

So we did, making the lamb lie down close beside her; and it had a wonderful effect. In less than half-an-hour her pulse grew moderately firm and she had even contrived to speak a word or two, but in Norwegian, which none of us understood. Obed by this time had loosened the dead man's arms; and we thought it best to get her upstairs to bed before the full sense of her misfortune should afflict her.

Obed carried her up to the spare-room and there left her to Selina; while I saddled horse and rode in to Truro, for Doctor Mitch.e.l.l.

Much of what followed is matter of public knowledge. Our folks carried the dead Norwegians up to Church-town, including one of the two that had fallen overboard (the next tide washed him in; the other never came to land); and there buried them, two days later, in separate graves, but all close together. The boat being worthless, we sawed it in two just abaft the mast and set the fore-part over the centre grave, which was that of Captain Pedersen, the young man we had carried up with Margit.

The mast rotted and fell, some years ago, although carefully stayed: but the boat, with the names painted on it, remains to this day. Also we set up a small wooden cross by each man's grave, with his name upon it.

Margit was able, from our description, to plan out the right name for each.

On the third day an interpreter came over from Penzance. Margit could not yet leave her bed: and before he stepped up to question her, I took him aside and showed a small Norwegian Bible we had found in the pocket of the seaman's jacket to which she owed her life. On the first page was some foreign writing which I could not make out. The interpreter translated it: first the names "Margit Hansen to Nils Pedersen": and after them, this strange verse from the _Song of Solomon_--strange, I mean, to find written in such a place--"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine."

The interpreter, Mr. Scammel, went upstairs, and she told him her story.

"Our vessel," she said (I give it in brief) "was the _Margit Pedersen_, brig. She belonged to me and was called after me. We were bound for the Tagus with a cargo of salted fish which I had bought at Bergen from the Lofoden smacks--fish for the Roman Catholics to eat in Lent.

Nils Pedersen, the captain, was my husband: Knud Lote was mate."

Mr. Scammell having expressed some surprise that so young a man should have been captain, she explained, "He was twenty-two. I made him captain. My father and mother died: they had not wished me to marry him. They were proud. But they left very little money, considering; and with it I bought the brig and cargo. She was an old craft, half rotten. We had fair weather, mostly, down the English Channel and almost to Ushant. There we met a strong southerly gale, and in the middle of it a pintle of our rudder gave way and the loose rudder damaged our stern-post. We tried to bear up for Falmouth, but she would not steer; and we drove up towards the Irish Coast, just missing Scilly.

On the 8th the wind changed to N.W. and increased. That night, as Nils tried to lay to, she carried away her fore-mast, which had been shaky for days. She was now leaking fast. At noon on the 9th we managed to launch a boat, and abandoned her. She sank at four o'clock: we saw her go down. The weather grew colder, that night. I think it snowed all the time: and the seas were too heavy to let the boat run. The men pulled to keep her nose to them and the wind, and so she drifted.

I forget when they gave over pulling. For a night and a day I baled steadily. After that I lay most of the time in the bottom of the boat.

Our food was almost done. It was very cold. That is all I can remember."

And this, I think, was all we ever heard from her. On his return to Penzance, Mr. Scammell sent me a Norwegian dictionary; and with the help of it Obed and I soon managed to talk a little with her, in a mixture of Norwegian and English. But she never wanted to speak of the past, and fell silent whenever we spoke of it. What astonished me more was that, though she told us the names of the dead men, she showed no further interest in them. At first, knowing how weak she was, and fearing to distress her, I fought shy of the subject; but one day, towards the end of the third week--she being strong enough to walk a moderate distance-- I plucked up courage and asked if she cared to come with me to the churchyard. She agreed, and that afternoon, after a heavy shower, we walked thither together. I feared what effect the first sight of her husband's grave might work on her feelings; and all the way kept wishing that we had omitted to set up the boat and mast. But she looked at them calmly, and at the graves. "That is good," she said: "you have done great kindness to them. I will not come any more." And so she prepared to walk away.

I own that this seemed to me unfeeling. Outside the churchyard I pulled from my pocket the small Bible. "This belongs to you," I said: "I have kept it to help me with your language"--but I held it open at the fly-leaf. She glanced at it, "Oh yes, I gave it to Nils, my husband.

You wish to keep it?"

"You were very fond of him, to judge from this," I said; and halted, expecting her to be angry. But she halted too, and said quite coolly-- looking at me straight--"Yes? Oh yes; very much."

That same evening I spoke to Obed as we sat alone with our pipes.

"I suppose," said I as carelessly as I could, "Margit Pedersen will be leaving us before long." He looked up sharply, and began to shift the logs on the hearth. "What makes you say so?" he asked. "Well, she will have friends in Bergen, and business--" "Has she written to her friends?" he interrupted. "Not to my knowledge: but she won't be staying here for ever, I suppose." "When she chooses to go, she can.

Are you proposing to turn her out? If so, I'd have you to mind that Vellingey is my house, and I am master here."

This was an unworthy thing to say, and he said it with a fury that surprised me. Obed and I had not quarrelled since we were boys. I put a stopper on my tongue, and went on smoking: and after a while he began to talk again in his natural way on ordinary matters.

Margit stayed on; and to all appearance our life at Vellingey fell back into its old groove. As a matter of fact there was all the difference in the world--a difference felt before it was seen, and not to be summed up by saying that a woman sat at our table. I believe I may quite fairly lay the blame on Obed. For the first time in our lives he kept a part of his mind hidden from me; he made show enough of frankness in his talk, but I knew him far too well to miss the suspicion behind it. And his suspicion bred suspicion in me. Yet though I searched, I could find nothing amiss in his outward bearing. If he were indeed in love with the girl--her age, she told us, was twenty-one--he gave no sign upon which one could lay hold. And certainly Margit's bearing towards us was cool and friendly and impartial as the strictest could desire. Of the two, I had, perhaps, more of her company, simply because Obed spent most of his time in the lugger, while I worked in the fields and within easy reach of an afternoon's stroll. Margit would be busy with housework most of the morning, or in the kitchen, helping Selina--"domineering,"

Selina preferred to call it.

For, whatever our feelings, Selina had set her face against the new-comer from the first. She started, no doubt, with the old woman's whiddle that no good ever comes of a person saved from the sea. But as time went on she picked up plenty of other reasons for dislike.

Margit took charge from the day she came downstairs, and had a cold way of seeing that her orders were attended to. With about twenty words of English she at once gave battle to Selina, who had bullied us two men from childhood; and routed her. The old woman kept up a running fight for a week before appealing to Obed, and this delay cost her everything.

Obed flew in a rage that more than equalled her own, and had the advantage to be unusual and quite unexpected by her. She ran from him to the kitchen, in tears; and thenceforth was a beaten woman, however much she might grumble at the "foreigner" and "interloper."

For me, I will confess, and have done with it, that before a month was out my interest in this pale foreign woman, who moved about the house so quietly and surely, had grown to a degree that troubled me. That Obed had suspected me before he had any cause made it no easier now to play a concealed game at cross-purposes; and no pleasanter. In the two months that followed I hated myself pretty often, and at times came near to despise myself for the thought that before long I might be hating Obed.

This would never have done: and luckily I saw it in time. Towards the end of June I made application to the Board: and left Vellingey in July, to sail for Bombay on board the _Warren Hastings_, in my old capacity of first mate. My abandoning the field to Obed would deserve some credit, had Margit ever by word or look given me the slightest reason to hope.

But she had not; indeed I hoped that she had never guessed the state of my feelings.

Eighteen months pa.s.sed before I returned to Vellingey--this time on a short leave. Obed had written constantly and with all the old familiarity; a good deal concerning Margit--her health, her walks, her household business--everything, in short, but what I expected and dreaded to hear. "Come," I said to myself, "five minutes' start in life and eighteen months in courtship is no such bad allowance for Obed.

Perhaps he will allow me now to have _my_ turn."

I had this thought in my head as I drew near Vellingey in a light gig hired from the Truro post-master. It was a rainy afternoon in January, and a boisterous north-wester blew the Atlantic weather in our teeth as we mounted the rise over Vellingey churchtown. My head being bent down, I did not observe the figure of a woman coming up the village street, but looked up on hearing the sound of her clogs close beside the gig.

It was Selina, tearful, carrying a bundle.

"Whatever is the matter?" I asked, on pulling up.