Shining Ferry Part 10

From it he took a large Bible.

"I'll show you the text I was speaking of."

"But, uncle."--

"They'm washing-down already," said he, lifting his head to the sound of rushing water on deck. "Your aunt will be back in a moment, and 'tis time for prayers."

Sure enough, at that instant the feet and ankles of Mrs. Purchase appeared on the ladder. "Tide's on the turn," she announced. "Keep your seats, my dears; the Lord knows there's no room to kneel, and He makes allowance."

She set a small packed basket on the table, and turned to her husband.

"You'll have to pray short, too, if the children are going with the rafts."

"Going?--Oh, Aunt Hannah!"

"Why, I'd a notion you _wanted_ to! To be sure, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, and 'tisn' the first time; but young Tom Trevarthen didn' seem to reckon so. There, get your prayers over and cut along; I'll make it all right with your grandfather and Susannah."

Ah, but it was bliss, and blissful to remember! The rafts dropped down past the town quay, past the old lock-houses, past the ivied fort at the harbour's mouth, and out to the open sea that twinkled for leagues under the faint northerly breeze, dazzling Myra's eyes. Tom Trevarthen grinned as he tugged at an enormous sweep with two other men, Methodists both, and sang with them and with Billy Daddo, who steered with another sweep, rigged aft upon a crutch--

"Praise ye the Lord! 'Tis good to raise Your hearts and voices in His praise."--

"Now what should put it in my noddle to take up with that old hemn?" asked Billy aloud, coming to a halt at the close of the first verse and scratching his head. "'Tidn' one of my first fav'rites--nothing in it about the Blood o' the Lamb--an' I can't call to mind havin' pitched it for years. Well, never mind! The Lord hev done it with some purpose, you may be sure."

"I call it a very pretty hymn," said Myra, for he seemed to be addressing her. "And isn't it reason enough that you're glad to be alive?"

"But I bain't," Billy argued, shaking his head. "You wouldn' understand it at your age, missy; but as a saved soul I counts the days. Long after I was a man grown, the very sound of 'He comes, He comes! the Judge severe,' or 'Terrible thought, shall I alone,' used to put me all of a twitter. Now they be but weak meat, is you might say. 'Ah, lovely appearance of death'--that's more in my line--

"Ah, lovely appearance of death!

What sight upon earth is so fair?

Not all the gay pageants that breathe Can with a dead body compare."--

"Don't!" Myra put both hands up to her ears. "Oh, please don't, Mr.

Daddo! And I call it wicked to stand arguing when the Lord, as you say, put a cheerfuller tune in your head."

"Well, here goes, then!" Billy resumed "Praise ye the Lord." At the fifth verse his face began to kindle--

"What is the creature's skill or force?

The sprightly man, or warlike horse?

The piercing wit, the active limb, Are all too mean delights to Him.

But saints are lovely in His sight, He views His children with delight; He sees their hope, he knows their fear, And looks and loves His image there."

"Ay, now," he broke out, "to think I didn' remember that verse about children when I started to sing! And 'twas of you, missy, and the young master here the dear Lord was thinkin' all the time!"

He dropped his eyes and, leaning back against the handle of the sweep, suddenly burst into prayer. "Suffer little children, O dear Jesus! suffer little children. Have mercy on these two tender lambs, and so bring them, blessed Lord, to Thy fold!"

As his fervour took hold of him he left the sweep to do its own steering, and strode up and down the raft, picking his way from balk to balk, skipping aside now and again as the water rose between them under his weight and overflowed his shoes. To Myra, unaccustomed to be prayed for aloud and by name, the whole performance was absurd and embarra.s.sing.

She blushed hotly under the eyes of the other men, and glanced at Clem, expecting him to be no less perturbed.

But Clem did not hear. The two children had taken off their boots, and he sat with the water playing over his naked insteps and his eyes turned southward to the horizon as if indeed he saw. With his blind gaze fastened there he seemed to wait patiently until Billy's prayer exhausted itself and Billy returned to the steering; and then his lips too began to move, and he broke into a curious song.

It frightened Myra, who had never heard the like of it; for it had no words, but was just a sing-song--a chant, low at first, then rising shrill and clear and strong, and reaching out as though to challenge the waters twinkling between raft and horizon. Through it there ran a note of high courage touched with tremulous yearning--yearning to escape yonder and be free.

She touched his hand. So well she loved and understood him, that even this strange outbreak she could interpret, though it caught her at unawares. For the moment he did not feel the touch; he was far away.

He had forgotten her--alas!--with his blindness. She belonged to his weakness, not to his strength. For the while he dwelt in the vision of his true manhood, which only his one infirmity forbade his inheriting; and she had no place in it.

He came back to reality with a pitiful break and quaver of the voice, and turned his eyes helplessly toward her. She answered his gaze timidly, as though he could see her. She was searching his eyes for tears. But there was no trace of tears in them. He took the food she handed him from Aunt Purchase's basket; and, having eaten, laid his head in her lap and fell asleep.

Slowly under the noonday heat and through the long afternoon the two rafts moved across the bay, towing each its boat in which the rafters would return in the cool of the evening.

But the children did not return in them; for on the quay, where the balks were due, to be warped ash.o.r.e unlashed and conveyed inland to the mines, stood Jim Tregay waiting with their grandfather's blood-mare Actress harnessed in a spring-cart. How came Jim here, at this distance from home?

"Been waiting for you these two hours!" he called to the children.

"Jump into the boat there and come ash.o.r.e. You'm wanted to home, and at once!"

CHAPTER VII.

THE HEIRS OF HALL.

They landed and clambered into the spring-cart.

"Nothing wrong at home, I hope?" called Tom Trevarthen from the quay's edge, as he pushed off to scull back to the raft.

"Oh, this is Susannah's nonsense, you may be sure!" called back Myra.

"I suppose she carried her tales to grandfather, and he packed you off after us, Jim Tregay? Well, you needn't look so glum about it.

Aunt Hannah gave us leave, and told Tom to look after us, and we've had a heavenly day, so Susannah may scold till she's tired."

"Hold the reins for a moment, Miss Myra, if you please."

Jim left the mare's head and walked down the quay, holding up his hand to delay the young sailor, who slewed his boat round, and brought her alongside again. The pair were whispering together. Myra heard a sharp exclamation, and in a moment Tom Trevarthen was sculling away for dear life. Jim ran back, jumped into the cart, and took the reins.

"But what is he shouting?" asked Myra, as the mare's hoofs struck and slid on the cobbles and the cart seemed to spring forward beneath her.

She clutched her brother as they swayed past mooring-posts, barrels, coils of rope, and with a wild lurch around the tollman's house at the quay-head, breasted the steep village street. "What's he shouting?" she demanded again.

Jim made no answer, but, letting the reins lie loose, flicked Actress smartly with the whip. Even a child could tell that no horse ought to be put at a hill in this fashion. Faces appeared at cottage doors--faces Myra had never seen in her life--gazing with a look she could not understand. All the faces, too, seemed to wear this look.

"What has happened?"

At the top of the hill, on a smoother road, the mare settled down to a steady gallop. Jim Tregay turned himself half-about in his seat.

"From battle and murder and from sudden death--good Lord, deliver us!"

"Oh, Jim, be kind and tell us!"

"Your grandfather, missy--the old maister! They found 'en in the counting-house this mornin' dead as a nail!"

Myra, with an arm about Clem and her disengaged hand gripping the light rail of the cart, strove to fix her mind, to bring her brain to work upon Jim's words. But they seemed to spin past her with the hedgerows and the rushing wind in her ears. A terrible blow had fallen. Why could she not feel it? Why did she sit idly wondering, when even a dumb creature like Actress seemed to understand and put forth all her fleetness?