In the Roar of the Sea

What smoke did escape from a chimney trailed down the roof. Decomposed leaves exhaled the scent of decay. From every stack-yard came a musty odor of wet straw and hay. Stable yards emitted their most fetid exudations that oozed through the gates and stained the roads. The cabbages in the kail-yards touched by frost announced that they were in decomposition, and the turnips that they were in rampant degeneration and rottenness. The very seaweed washed ashore impregnated the mist with a flavor of degeneration.

The new rector, the Reverend Desiderius Mules had been in residence at St. Enodoc for three months. He had received but a hundred and twenty-seven pounds four and ninepence farthing for dilapidations, and was angry, declared himself cheated, and vowed he would never employ the agent Cargreen any more. And a hundred and twenty-seven pounds four and ninepence farthing went a very little way in repairing and altering the rectory to make it habitable to the liking of the Reverend Desiderius. The Reverend Peter Trevisa and his predecessors had been West Country men, and as such loved the sun, and chose to have the best rooms of the house with a southern aspect. But the Reverend Desiderius Mules had been reared in Barbadoes, and hated the sun, and elected to have the best rooms of the house to look north. This entailed great alterations. The kitchen had to be converted into parlor, and the parlor into kitchen, the dining-room into scullery, and the scullery into study, and the library enlarged to serve as dining-room. All the down-stairs windows had to be altered. Mr. Desiderius Mules liked to have French windows opening to the ground.

In the same manner great transformations were made in the garden. Where Mr. Peter Trevisa had built up and planted a hedge there Mr. Desiderius Mules opened a gate, and where the late rector had laid down a drive there the new rector made garden beds. In the same manner shrubberies were converted into lawns, and lawns into shrubberies. The pump was now of no service outside the drawing-room window; it had to be removed to the other side of the house, and to serve the pump with water a new well had to be dug, and the old well that had furnished limpid and wholesome water was filled up. The site of the conservatory was considered the proper one for the well, and this entailed the destruction of the conservatory. Removal was intended, with a new aspect to the north, as a frigidarium, but when touched it fell to pieces, and in so doing furnished Mr. Desiderius Mules with much comment on the imposition to which he had been subjected, for he had taken this conservatory at a valuation, and that valuation had been for three pounds seven and fourpence ha’penny, whereas its real value was, so he declared, three pounds seven and fourpence without the ha’penny at the end or the three pounds before.

When the Reverend Desiderius Mules heard that Captain Coppinger and Judith Trevisa were to be married in his church, “By Jove,” said he, “they shall pay me double fees as extra parochial. I shall get that out of them at all events. I have been choused sufficiently.”

A post-chaise from Wadebridge conveyed Judith, Miss Trevisa, Uncle Zachie, and Jamie from Polzeath.

The bride was restless. At one moment she leaned back, then forward; her eyes turned resolutely through the window at the fog. Her hands plucked at her veil or at her gloves; she spoke not a word throughout the drive. Aunt Dionysia was also silent. Opposite her sat Mr. Menaida in blue coat with brass buttons, white waistcoat outside a colored one, and white trousers tightly strapped. Though inclined to talk, he was unable to resist the depressing influence of his vis-a-vis, Miss Trevisa, who sat scowling at him with her thin lips closed. Jamie was excited, but as no one answered him when he spoke he also lapsed into silence.

When the church-yard gate of St. Enodoc was reached, Mr. Menaida jumped out of the chaise with a sigh of relief, and muttered to himself that, had he known what to expect, he would have brought his pocket-flask with him, and have had a nip of cognac on the way.

A good number of sight-seers had assembled from Polzeath and St. Enodoc, and stood in the church-yard, magnified by the mist to gigantic size. Over the graves of drowned sailors were planted the figure-heads of wrecked vessels, and these in the mist might have been taken as the dead risen and mingling with the living to view this dreary marriage.

The bride herself looked ghostlike, or as a waft of the fog, but little condensed, blown through the graveyard toward the gap in the church wall, and blown through that also within.

That gap was usually blocked with planks from a wreck, supported by beams; when the church was to be put in requisition, then the beams were knocked away, whereupon down clattered the boards and they were tossed aside. It had been so done on this occasion, and the fragments were heaped untidily among the graves under the church wall. The clerk-sexton had, indeed, considered that morning, with his hands in his pockets, whether it would be worth his while, assisted by the five bell-ringers, to take this accumulation of wreckage and pile it together out of sight, but he had thought that, owing to the fog, a veil would be drawn over the disorder, and he might be saved this extra trouble.

Within the sacred building, over his boots in sand, stamped, and frowned, and paced, and growled the Reverend Desiderius Mules, in surplice, hood, and stole, very ill at ease and out of humor because the wedding-party arrived unpunctually, and he feared he might catch cold from the wind and fog that drifted in through the hole in the wall serving as door.

The sand within was level with the sills of the windows; it cut the tables of commandments in half; had blotted away the majority of inhibitions against marriage within blood relationship and marriage kinship. The altar-rails were below the surface. The altar-table had been fished up and set against the east wall, not on this day for the marriage, but at some previous occasion. Then the sexton had placed two pieces of slate under the feet on one side, and not having found handy any other pieces, had thought that perhaps it did not matter. Consequently the two legs one side had sunk in the sand, and the altar-table formed an incline.

A vast number of bats occupied the church, and by day hung like little moleskin purses from the roof. Complaints had been made of the disagreeableness of having these creatures suspended immediately over the head of the officiant, accordingly the sexton had knocked away such as were suspended immediately above the altar and step – a place where the step was, beneath the sand; but he did not think it necessary to disturb those in other parts of the church. If they inconvenienced others, it was the penalty of curiosity, coming to see a wedding there. Toward the west end of the church some wooden pew-tops stood above the sand, and stuck into a gimlet-hole in the top rail of one was a piece of holly, dry and brown as a chip. It had been put there as a Christmas decoration the last year that the church was used for divine worship, at the feast of Noel; when that was, only the oldest men could remember. The sexton had looked at it several times with his hands in his pockets and considered whether it were worth while pulling his hands out and removing the withered fragment, and carrying it outside the church, but had arrived at the conclusion that it injured no one, and might therefore just as well remain.

There were fragments of stained glass in the windows, in the upper light of the perpendicular windows saints and angels in white and gold on ruby and blue grounds. In one window a fragment of a Christ on the cross. But all were much obscured by cobwebs. The cobwebs, after having entangled many flies, caught and retained many particles of sand, became impervious to light and obscured the figures in the painted glass. The sexton had looked at these cobwebs occasionally and mused whether it would be worth his while to sweep them down, but as he knew that the church was rarely used for divine offices, and never for regular divine worship, he deemed that there was no crying necessity for their destruction. Life was short, and time might be better employed – to whit in talking to a neighbor, in smoking a pipe, in drinking a pint of ale, in larruping his wife, in reading the paper. Consequently the cobwebs remained.

Had Mr. Desiderius Mules been possessed of antiquarian tastes, he might have occupied the time he was kept waiting in studying the bosses of carved oak that adorned the wagon-roof of the church, which were in some cases quaint, in the majority beautiful, and no two the same. And he might have puzzled out the meaning of three rabbits with only three ears between them forming a triangle, or three heads united in one neck, a king, a queen, a bishop and a monk, or of a sow suckling a dozen little pigs.

But Mr. Desiderius Mules had no artistic or archaeological faculty developed in him. His one object on the present occasion was to keep draught and damp from the crown of his head, where the hair was so scanty as hardly to exist at all. He did not like to assume his hat in the consecrated building, so he stamped about in the sand holding a red bandanna handkerchief on the top of his head, and grumbling at the time he was kept waiting, at the Cornish climate, at the way in which he had been “choused” in the matter of dilapidations for the chancel of the church, at the unintelligible dialect of the people, and at a good many other causes of irritation, notably at a bat which had not reverenced his bald pate, when he ventured beyond the range of the sexton’s sweeping.

Presently the clerk, who was outside, thrust in his head through the gap in the wall, and in a stage whisper announced, “They’s a-coming.”

The Reverend Mules growled, “There ought to be a right to charge extra when the parson is kept waiting – sixpence a minute, not a penny less. But we are choused in this confounded corner of the world in every way. Ha! there is a mildew-spot on my stole – all come of this villainous damp.”

In the tower stood five men, ready to pull the ropes and sound a merry peal when the service was over, and earn a guinea. They had a firkin of ale in a corner, with which to moisten their inner clay between each round. Now that they heard that the wedding party had arrived they spat on their hands and heaved their legs out of the sand.

Through the aperture in the wall entered the bridal party, a cloud of fog blowing in with them and enveloping them. They stepped laboriously through the fine sand, at this place less firm than elsewhere, having been dug into daily by the late rector in his futile efforts to clear the church.

Mr. Mules cast a suspicious look into the rafters above him to see that no profane bat was there, and opened his book.

Mr. Menaida was to act as father to the bride, and there was no other bride’s-maid than Miss Trevisa. As they waded toward the alter, Judith’s strength failed, and she stood still. Then Uncle Zachie put his arm round her and half carried her over the sand toward the place where she must stand to give herself away. She turned her head and thanked him with her eyes, she could not speak. So deathly was her whiteness, so deficient in life did she seem, that Miss Trevisa looked at her with some anxiety, and a little doubt whether she would be able to go through the service.

When Judith reached her place, her eyes rested on the sand. She did not look to her left side, she could hear no steps, for the sand muffled all sound of feet, but she knew by the cold shudder that thrilled through her, that Captain Coppinger was at her side.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here – now then order, if you please, and quiet, we are twenty-five minutes after time,” said Mr. Desiderius Mules.

The first few words, seven in all were addressed to the wedding party, the rest to a number of men and women and children who were stumbling and plunging into the church through the improvised door, thrusting each other forward, with a “get along,” and “out of the road,” all eager to secure a good sight of the ceremony, and none able to hurry to a suitable place because of the sand that impeded every step.

“Now then – I can’t stay here all day!”

Mr. Mules sniffed and applied the bandanna to his nose, as an indication that he was chilled, and that this rheum would be on the heads of the congregation, were he made ill by this delay.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered,” he began again, and he was now able to proceed.

“Cruel,” said he in loud and emphatic tones, “wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her so long as ye both shall live?”

The response of Coppinger went through the heart of Judith like a knife. Then the rector addressed her. For answer she looked up at him and moved her lips. He took her hand and placed it in that of Coppinger. It was cold as ice and quivering like an aspen leaf. As Captain Coppinger held it, it seemed to drag and become heavy in his hand, whilst he pronounced the words after the rector, making oath to take Judith as his own. Then the same words were recited to her, for her to repeat in order after the priest. She began, she moved her lips, looked him pleadingly in the face, her head swam, the fog filled the whole church and settled between her and the rector. She felt nothing save the grip of Coppinger’s hand, and sank unconscious to the ground.

“Go forward,” said Cruel. Mr. Menaida and Aunt Dionysia caught Judith and held her up. She could neither speak nor stir. Her lips were unclosed, she seemed to be gasping for breath like one drowning.

“Go on,” persisted Cruel, and holding her left hand he thrust the ring on her fourth finger, repeating the words of the formula.

“I cannot proceed,” said the Reverend Desiderius.

“Then you will have to come again to-morrow.”

“She is unconscious,” objected the rector.

“It is momentary only,” said Aunt Dionysia; “be quick and finish.”

Mr. Mules hesitated a moment. He had no wish to return in like weather on another day; no wish again to be kept waiting five and twenty minutes. He rushed at the remainder of the office and concluded it at a hand gallop.

“Now,” said he, “the registers are at the rectory. Come there.”

Coppinger looked at Judith.

“Not to-day. It is not possible. She is ill – faint. To-morrow. Neither she nor I nor the witnesses will run away. We will come to you to-morrow.”

Uncle Zachie offered to assist Judith from the church.

“No,” said Cruel, peremptorily, “she is mine now.”

She was able with assistance to walk, she seemed to recover for a moment in the air outside, but again lapsed into faintness on being placed in the chaise.

“To Pentyre Glaze,” ordered Coppinger; “our home.”

CHAPTER XXXIV

A BREAKFAST

“She has been over-exerted, over-excited,” said Miss Trevisa. “Leave her to recover; in a few days she will be herself again. Remember, her father died of heart complaint, and though Judith resembles her mother rather than a Trevisa, she may have inherited from my brother just that one thing she had better have let him carry to his grave with him.”

So Judith was given the little room that adjoined her aunt’s, and Miss Trevisa postponed for a week her migration to Othello Cottage.

Aunt Dionysia was uneasy about her niece; perhaps her conscience did suffer from some qualms when she saw how Judith shrank from the union she had driven her into for her own selfish convenience. She treated her in the wisest manner, now she had brought her to the Glaze, for she placed her in her old room next her own, and left her there to herself. Judith could hear her aunt walking about and muttering in the adjoining chamber, and was content to be left alone to recover her composure and strength.

Uncle Zachie and Jump were, however, in sore distress; they had made the trim cottage ready, had prepared a wedding breakfast, engaged a helping hand or two, and no one had come to partake. Nor was Mr. Desiderius Mules in a cheerful mood. He had been invited to the breakfast, and was hungry and cold. He had to wait while Mr. Menaida ran up to Pentyre to know whether any one was going to honor his board. While he was away the rector stamped about the parlor, growling that he believed he was about to be “choused out of his breakfast. There was really no knowing what these people in this out-of-the-world corner might do.” Then he pulled off his boots and shook the sand out, rang for Jump, and asked at what hour precisely the breakfast was to be eaten, and whether it was put on table to be looked at only.

From Pentyre Glaze Mr. Menaida was not greatly successful in obtaining guests. He found some wild-looking men there in converse with Coppinger, men whom he knew by rumor to belong to a class that had no ostensible profession and means of living.

Mr. Menaida had ordered in clotted cream, which would not keep sweet many days. It ought to be eaten at once. He wanted to know whether Coppinger, the bride, Miss Trevisa, anyone was coming to his house to consume the clotted cream. As Jamie was drifting about purposeless, and he alone seemed disposed to accompany Uncle Zachie, the old gentleman carried him off.

“I s’pose I can’t on the spur of the moment go in and ask over St. Minver parson?” asked Menaida, dubiously, of the St. Enodoc parson. “You see I daresay he’s hurt not to have had the coupling of ’em himself.”

“Most certainly not,” said Mr. Mules; “an appetite is likely to go into faintness unless attended to at once. I know that the coats of my stomach are honeycombed with gastric juice. Shall I say grace? Another half-hour of delay will finish me.”

Consequently but three persons sat down to a plentiful meal; but some goose, cold, had hardly been served, when in came Mr. Scantlebray, the agent, with a cheery salutation of “Hulloa, Menaida, old man! What, eating and drinking? I’ll handle a knife and fork with you, unasked. Beg pardon, Mr. Mules. I’m a rough man, and an old acquaintance of our good friend here. Hope I see you in the enjoyment of robust health, sir. Oh, Menaida, old man! I didn’t expect such a thing as this. Now I begin to see daylight, and understand why I was turned out of the valuership, and why my brother lost this promising young pupil. Ah, ha! my man, you have been deprived of fun, such fun, roaring fun, by not being with my brother Scanty. Well, sir,” to Mr. Mules, “what was the figure of the valuation? You had a queer man on your side. I pity you. A man I wouldn’t trust myself. I name no names. Now tell me, what did you get?”

“A hundred and twenty-seven pounds four and ninepence farthing. Monstrous – a chouse.”

“As you say, monstrous. Why that chancel, show me the builder who will contract to do that alone at a hundred and twenty-seven pounds? And the repairs of the vestry – are they to be reckoned at four and ninepence farthing? It is a swindle. I’d appeal. I’d refuse. You made a mistake, sir, let me tell you, in falling into certain hands. Yes – I’ll have some goose, thank you.”

Mr. Scantlebray ate heartily, so did the Reverend Desiderius, who had the honeycomb cells of his stomach coats to fill.

Both, moreover, did justice to Mr. Menaida’s wine, they did not spare it; why should they? Those for whom the board was spread had not troubled to come to it, and they must make amends for their neglect.

“Horrible weather,” said the rector. “I suppose this detestable sort of stuff of which the atmosphere is composed is the prevailing abomination one has to inhale throughout three-quarters of the year. One cannot see three yards before one.”

“It’s bad for some and good for others,” answered Scantlebray. “There’ll be wrecks, certainly, after this, especially if we get, as we are pretty sure to get, a wind ashore.”

“Wrecks!” exclaimed the Rector, “and pray who pays the fees for drowned men I may be expected to bury?”

“The parish,” answered Uncle Zachie.

“Oh, half-a-crown a head,” said Mr. Mules, contemptuously.

“There are other things to be had besides burial fees out of a wreck,” said Scantlebray; “but you must be down early before the coast-guard are there. Have you donkeys?”

“Donkeys! What for?”

“I have one, a gray beauty,” exclaimed Jamie; “Captain Coppinger gave her to me.”

“Well, young man, then you pick up what you can, when you have the chance, and lade her with your findings. You’ll pick up something better than corpses, and make something more than burial half-crowns.”

“But why do you suppose there will be wrecks?” inquired the rector of St. Enodoc. “There is no storm.”

“No storm, certainly, but there is fog, and in the fog vessels coming up the Channel to Bristol get lost as to their bearings, get near our cliffs without knowing it, and then – if a wind from the west spring up and blows rough – they are done for, they can’t escape to the open. That’s it, old man. I beg your Reverence’s pardon, I mean, sir. When I said that such weather was bad for some and good for others you can understand me now – bad for the wrecked, good for the wreckers.”

“But surely you have no wreckers here?”

Mr. Scantlebray laughed. “Go and tell the bridegroom that you think so. I’ll let you into the knowledge of one thing” – he winked over his glass – “there’s a fine merchantman on her way to Bristol.”

“How do you know?”

“Know! Because she was sighted off St. Ives, and the tidings has run up the coast like fire among heather. I don’t doubt it that it has reached Hartland by this; and with a thick fog like to-day there are a thousand hearts beating with expectation. Who can say? She may be laden with gold-dust from Africa, or with tin from Barca, or with port from Oporto.”

“My boy Oliver is coming home,” said Mr. Menaida.

“Then let’s hope he is not in this vessel, for, old man, she stands a bad chance in such weather as this. There is Porth-quin, and there is Hayle Bay ready to receive her, or Doom Bar on which she may run, all handy for our people. Are you anything of a sportsman, sir?”

“A little – but I don’t fancy there is much in this precious country – no cover.”

“What is fox-hunting when you come to consider – or going after a snipe or a partridge? A fox! it’s naught, the brush stinks, and a snipe is but a mouthful. My dear sir, if you come to live among us, you must seek your sport not on the land but at sea. You’ll find the sport worth something when you get a haul of a barrel of first-rate sherry, or a load of silver ingots. Why, that’s how Penwarden bought his farm. He got the money after a storm – found it on the shore out of the pocket of a dead man. Do you know why the bells of St. Enodoc are so sweet? Because, so folks say, melted into them are ingots of Peruvian silver from a ship wrecked on Doom Bar.”

“I should like to get some silver or gold,” said Jamie.

“I daresay you would, and so perhaps you may if you look out for it. Go to your good friend, Captain Coppinger, and tell him what you want. He has made his pickings before now on shore and off wrecks, and has not given up the practice.”

“But,” said Mr. Mules, “do you mean to tell me that you people in this benighted corner of the world live like sharks, upon whatever is cast overboard?”

“No, I do not,” answered Scantlebray. “We have too much energy and intelligence for that. We don’t always wait till it is cast overboard, we go aboard and take what we want.”

“What, steal!”

“I don’t call that stealing when Providence and a southwest wind throws a ship into our laps, when we put in our fingers and pick out the articles we want. What are Porth-quin and Hayle Bay but our laps, in which lie the wrecks heaven sends us? And Doom Bar, what is that but a counter on which the good things are spread, and those first there get the first share?”

“And pray,” said Mr. Desiderius Mules, “have the owners of the vessels, the passengers, the captains, no objections to make?”

“They are not there. Don’t wait for our people. If they do – so much the worse for them.” Then Scantlebray laughed. “There’s a good story told of the Zenobia, lost four years ago. There was a lady on board. When she knew the vessel was on Doom Bar she put on all her jewelry, to escape with it. But some of our people got to the wreck before she got off it, and one lobe of her ears got torn off.”