Yeast: a Problem

‘And what’s the use of rioting?’ asked some one, querulously.

‘Why, if you don’t riot, the farmers will starve you.’

‘And if we do, they’d turn sodgers—yeomanry, as they call it, though there ain’t a yeoman among them in these parts; and then they takes sword and kills us.  So, riot or none, they has it all their own way.’

Lancelot heard many more scraps of this sort.  He was very much struck with their dread of violence.  It did not seem cowardice.  It was not loyalty—the English labourer has fallen below the capability of so spiritual a feeling; Lancelot had found out that already.  It could not be apathy, for he heard nothing but complaint upon complaint bandied from mouth to mouth the whole evening.  They seemed rather sunk too low in body and mind,—too stupefied and spiritless, to follow the example of the manufacturing districts; above all, they were too ill-informed.  It is not mere starvation which goads the Leicester weaver to madness.  It is starvation with education,—an empty stomach and a cultivated, even though miscultivated, mind.

At that instant, a huge hulking farm-boy rolled into the booth, roaring, dolefully, the end of a song, with a punctuation of his own invention—

‘He’ll maak me a lady.  Zo .  Vine to be zyure.

And, vaithfully; love me.  Although; I; be-e; poor-r-r-r.’

Lancelot would have laughed heartily at him anywhere else; but the whole scene was past a jest; and a gleam of pathos and tenderness seemed to shine even from that doggerel,—a vista, as it were, of true genial nature, in the far distance.  But as he looked round again, ‘What hope,’ he thought, ‘of its realisation?  Arcadian dreams of pastoral innocence and graceful industry, I suppose, are to be henceforth monopolised by the stage or the boudoir?  Never, so help me, God!’

The ursine howls of the new-comer seemed to have awakened the spirit of music in the party.

‘Coom, Blackburd, gi’ us zong, Blackburd, bo’!’ cried a dozen voices to an impish, dark-eyed gipsy boy, of some thirteen years old.

‘Put ’n on taable.  Now, then, pipe up!’

‘What will ’ee ha’?’

‘Mary; gi’ us Mary.’

‘I shall make a’ girls cry,’ quoth Blackbird, with a grin.

‘Do’n good, too; they likes it: zing away.’

And the boy began, in a broad country twang, which could not overpower the sad melody of the air, or the rich sweetness of his flute-like voice,—

‘Young Mary walked sadly down through the green clover,And sighed as she looked at the babe at her breast;“My roses are faded, my false love a rover,The green graves they call me, ‘Come home to your rest.’”‘Then by rode a soldier in gorgeous arraying,And “Where is your bride-ring, my fair maid?” he cried;“I ne’er had a bride-ring, by false man’s betraying,Nor token of love but this babe at my side.‘“Tho’ gold could not buy me, sweet words could deceive me;So faithful and lonely till death I must roam.”“Oh, Mary, sweet Mary, look up and forgive me,With wealth and with glory your true love comes home;‘“So give me my own babe, those soft arms adorning,I’ll wed you and cherish you, never to stray;For it’s many a dark and a wild cloudy morning,Turns out by the noon-time a sunshiny day.”’

‘A bad moral that, sir,’ whispered Tregarva.

‘Better than none,’ answered Lancelot.

‘It’s well if you are right, sir, for you’ll hear no other.’

The keeper spoke truly; in a dozen different songs, more or less coarsely, but, in general, with a dash of pathetic sentiment, the same case of lawless love was embodied.  It seemed to be their only notion of the romantic.  Now and then there was a poaching song; then one of the lowest flash London school—filth and all—was roared in chorus in presence of the women.

‘I am afraid that you do not thank me for having brought you to any place so unfit for a gentleman,’ said Tregarva, seeing Lancelot’s sad face.

‘Because it is so unfit for a gentleman, therefore I do thank you.  It is right to know what one’s own flesh and blood are doing.’

‘Hark to that song, sir! that’s an old one.  I didn’t think they’d get on to singing that.’

The Blackbird was again on the table, but seemed this time disinclined to exhibit.

‘Out wi’ un, boy; it wain’t burn thy mouth!’

‘I be afeard.’

‘O’ who?’

‘Keeper there.’

He pointed to Tregarva; there was a fierce growl round the room.

‘I am no keeper,’ shouted Tregarva, starting up.  ‘I was turned off this morning for speaking my mind about the squires, and now I’m one of you, to live and die.’

This answer was received with a murmur of applause; and a fellow in a scarlet merino neckerchief, three waistcoats, and a fancy shooting-jacket, who had been eyeing Lancelot for some time, sidled up behind them, and whispered in Tregarva’s ear,—

‘Perhaps you’d like an engagement in our line, young man, and your friend there, he seems a sporting gent too.—We could show him very pretty shooting.’

Tregarva answered by the first and last oath Lancelot ever heard from him, and turning to him, as the rascal sneaked off,—

‘That’s a poaching crimp from London, sir; tempting these poor boys to sin, and deceit, and drunkenness, and theft, and the hulks.’

‘I fancy I saw him somewhere the night of our row—you understand?’

‘So do I, sir, but there’s no use talking of it.’

Blackbird was by this time prevailed on to sing, and burst out as melodious as ever, while all heads were cocked on one side in delighted attention.

‘I zeed a vire o’ Monday night,A vire both great and high;But I wool not tell you where, my boys,Nor wool not tell you why.The varmer he comes screeching out,To zave ’uns new brood mare;Zays I, “You and your stock may roast,Vor aught us poor chaps care.”

‘Coorus, boys, coorus!’

And the chorus burst out,—

‘Then here’s a curse on varmers allAs rob and grind the poor;To re’p the fruit of all their worksIn **** for evermoor-r-r-r.‘A blind owld dame come to the vire,Zo near as she could get;Zays, “Here’s a luck I warn’t asleepTo lose this blessed hett.‘“They robs us of our turfing rights,Our bits of chips and sticks,Till poor folks now can’t warm their hands,Except by varmer’s ricks.”‘Then, etc.’

And again the boy’s delicate voice rung out the ferocious chorus, with something, Lancelot fancied, of fiendish exultation, and every worn face lighted up with a coarse laugh, that indicated no malice—but also no mercy.

Lancelot was sickened, and rose to go.

As he turned, his arm was seized suddenly and firmly.  He looked round, and saw a coarse, handsome, showily-dressed girl, looking intently into his face.  He shook her angrily off.

‘You needn’t be so proud, Mr. Smith; I’ve had my hand on the arm of as good as you.  Ah, you needn’t start!  I know you—I know you, I say, well enough.  You used to be with him.  Where is he?’

‘Whom do you mean?’

‘He!’ answered the girl, with a fierce, surprised look, as if there could be no one else in the world.

‘Colonel Bracebridge,’ whispered Tregarva.

‘Ay, he it is!  And now walk further off, bloodhound! and let me speak to Mr. Smith.  He is in Norway,’ she ran on eagerly.  ‘When will he be back?  When?’

‘Why do you want to know?’ asked Lancelot.

‘When will he be back?’—she kept on fiercely repeating the question; and then burst out,—‘Curse you gentlemen all!  Cowards! you are all in a league against us poor girls!  You can hunt alone when you betray us, and lie fast enough then?  But when we come for justice, you all herd together like a flock of rooks; and turn so delicate and honourable all of a sudden—to each other!  When will he be back, I say?’

‘In a month,’ answered Lancelot, who saw that something really important lay behind the girl’s wildness.

‘Too late!’ she cried, wildly, clapping her hands together; ‘too late!  Here—tell him you saw me; tell him you saw Mary; tell him where and in what a pretty place, too, for maid, master, or man!  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 Saturday night for the last seven years, to my knowledge,’ said Tregarva; ‘and worse, too, at times.’

‘Good God! 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; ‘God grant that I may remember it in this black day of mine.’

‘How so!’ asked Lancelot; ‘I should not have fancied you a superstitious 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 God!  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 God, 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°, and then up a thousand feet of ladder to grass, 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, God 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 God 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.’

‘What on earth can you mean?’ asked Lancelot, deeply interested.

‘Why, sir, it was a wild, whirling gray night, with the air full of sleet and rain, and my father sent me over to Redruth town to bring home some trade or other.  And as I came back I got blinded with the sleet, and I lost my way across the moors.  You know those Cornish furze-moors, sir?’

‘No.’

‘Well, then, they are burrowed like a rabbit-warren with old mine-shafts.  You can’t go in some places ten yards without finding great, ghastly black holes, covered in with furze, and weeds, and bits of rotting timber; and when I was a boy I couldn’t keep from them.  Something seemed to draw me to go and peep down, and drop pebbles in, to hear them rattle against the sides, fathoms below, till they plumped into the ugly black still water at the bottom.  And I used to be always after them in my dreams, when I was young, falling down them, down, down, all night long, till I woke screaming; for I fancied they were hell’s mouth, every one of them.  And it stands to reason, sir; we miners hold that the lake of fire can’t be far below.  For we find it grow warmer, and warmer, and warmer, the farther we sink a shaft; and the learned gentlemen have proved, sir, that it’s not the blasting powder, nor the men’s breaths, that heat the mine.’

Lancelot could but listen.

‘Well, sir, I got into a great furze-croft, full of deads (those are the earth-heaps they throw out of the shafts), where no man in his senses dare go forward or back in the dark, for fear of the shafts; and the wind and the snow were so sharp, they made me quite stupid and sleepy; and I knew if I stayed there I should be frozen to death, and if I went on, there were the shafts ready to swallow me up: and what with fear and the howling and raging of the wind, I was like a mazed boy, sir.  And I knelt down and tried to pray; and then, in one moment, all the evil things I’d ever done, and the bad words and thoughts that ever crossed me, rose up together as clear as one page of a print-book; and I knew that if I died that minute I should go to hell.  And then I saw through the ground all the water in the shafts glaring like blood, and all the sides of the shafts fierce red-hot, as if hell was coming up.  And I heard the knockers knocking, or thought I heard them, as plain as I hear that grasshopper in the hedge now.’

‘What are the knockers?’

‘They are the ghosts, the miners hold, of the old Jews, sir, that crucified our Lord, and were sent for slaves by the Roman emperors to work the mines; and we find their old smelting-houses, which we call Jews’ houses, and their blocks of tin, at the bottom of the great bogs, which we call Jews’ tin; and there’s a town among us, too, which we call Market-Jew—but the old name was Marazion; that means the Bitterness of Zion, they tell me.  Isn’t it so, sir?’

‘I believe it is,’ said Lancelot, utterly puzzled in this new field of romance.

‘And bitter work it was for them, no doubt, poor souls!  We used to break into the old shafts and adits which they had made, and find old stags’-horn pickaxes, that crumbled to pieces when we brought them to grass; and they say, that if a man will listen, sir, of a still night, about those old shafts, he may hear the ghosts of them at working, knocking, and picking, as clear as if there was a man at work in the next level.  It may be all an old fancy.  I suppose it is.  But I believed it when I was a boy; and it helped the work in me that night.  But I’ll go on with my story.’

‘Go on with what you like,’ said Lancelot.

‘Well, sir, I was down on my knees among the furze-bushes, and I tried to pray; but I was too frightened, for I felt the beast I had been, sir; and I expected the ground to open and let me down every moment; and then there came by over my head a rushing, and a cry.  “Ha! ha! ha!  Paul!” it said; and it seemed as if all the devils and witches were out on the wind, a-laughing at my misery.  “Oh, I’ll mend—I’ll repent,” I said, “indeed I will:” and again it came back,—“Ha! ha! ha!  Paul!” it said.  I knew afterwards that it was a bird; but the Lord sent it to me for a messenger, no less, that night.  And I shook like a reed in the water; and then, all at once a thought struck me.  “Why should I be a coward?  Why should I be afraid of shafts, or devils, or hell, or anything else?  If I am a miserable sinner, there’s One died for me—I owe him love, not fear at all.  I’ll not be frightened into doing right—that’s a rascally reason for repentance.”  And so it was, sir, that I rose up like a man, and said to the Lord Jesus, right out into the black, dumb air,—“If you’ll be on my side this night, good Lord, that died for me, I’ll be on your side for ever, villain as I am, if I’m worth making any use of.”  And there and then, sir, I saw a light come over the bushes, brighter, and brighter, up to me; and there rose up a voice within me, and spoke to me, quite soft and sweet,—“Fear not, Paul, for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles.”  And what more happened I can’t tell, for when I woke I was safe at home.  My father and his folk had been out with lanterns after me; and there they found me, sure enough, in a dead faint on the ground.  But this I know, sir, that those words have never left my mind since for a day together; and I know that they will be fulfilled in me this tide, or never.’

Lancelot was silent a few minutes.

‘I suppose, Tregarva, that you would call this your conversion?’

‘I should call it one, sir, because it was one.’

‘Tell me now, honestly, did any real, practical change in your behaviour take place after that night?’

‘As much, sir, as if you put a soul into a hog, and told him that he was a gentleman’s son; and, if every time he remembered that, he got spirit enough to conquer his hoggishness, and behave like a man, till the hoggishness died out of him, and the manliness grew up and bore fruit in him, more and more each day.’

Lancelot half understood him, and sighed.

A long silence followed, as they paced on past lonely farmyards, from which the rich manure-water was draining across the road in foul black streams, festering and steaming in the chill night air.  Lancelot sighed as he saw the fruitful materials of food running to waste, and thought of the ‘over-population’ cry; and then he looked across to the miles of brown moorland on the opposite side of the valley, that lay idle and dreary under the autumn moon, except where here and there a squatter’s cottage and rood of fruitful garden gave the lie to the laziness and ignorance of man, who pretends that it is not worth his while to cultivate the soil which God has given him.  ‘Good heavens!’ he thought, ‘had our forefathers had no more enterprise than modern landlords, where should we all have been at this moment?  Everywhere waste?  Waste of manure, waste of land, waste of muscle, waste of brain, waste of population—and we call ourselves the workshop of the world!’

As they passed through the miserable hamlet-street of Ashy, they saw a light burning in window.  At the door below, a haggard woman was looking anxiously down the village.

‘What’s the matter, Mistress Cooper?’ asked Tregarva.

‘Here’s Mrs. Grane’s poor girl lying sick of the fever—the Lord help her! and the boy died of it last week.  We sent for the doctor this afternoon, and he’s busy with a poor soul that’s in her trouble; and now we’ve sent down to the squire’s, and the young ladies, God bless them! sent answer they’d come themselves straightway.’

‘No wonder you have typhus here,’ said Lancelot, ‘with this filthy open drain running right before the door.  Why can’t you clean it out?’

‘Why, what harm does that do?’ answered the woman, peevishly.  ‘Besides, here’s my master gets up to his work by five in the morning, and not back till seven at night, and by then he ain’t in no humour to clean out gutters.  And where’s the water to come from to keep a place clean?  It costs many a one of us here a shilling a week the summer through to pay fetching water up the hill.  We’ve work enough to fill our kettles.  The muck must just lie in the road, smell or none, till the rain carries it away.’

Lancelot sighed again.

‘It would be a good thing for Ashy, Tregarva, if the weir-pool did, some fine morning, run up to Ashy Down, as poor Harry Verney said on his deathbed.’

‘There won’t be much of Ashy left by that time, sir, if the landlords go on pulling down cottages at their present rate; driving the people into the towns, to herd together there like hogs, and walk out to their work four or five miles every morning.’

‘Why,’ said Lancelot, ‘wherever one goes one sees commodious new cottages springing up.’

‘Wherever you go, sir; but what of wherever you don’t go?  Along the roadsides, and round the gentlemen’s parks, where the cottages are in sight, it’s all very smart; but just go into the outlying hamlets—a whited sepulchre, sir, is many a great estate; outwardly swept and garnished, and inwardly full of all uncleanliness, and dead men’s bones.’

At this moment two cloaked and veiled figures came up to the door, followed by a servant.  There was no mistaking those delicate footsteps, and the two young men drew back with fluttering hearts, and breathed out silent blessings on the ministering angels, as they entered the crazy and reeking house.

‘I’m thinking, sir,’ said Tregarva, as they walked slowly and reluctantly away, ‘that it is hard of the gentlemen to leave all God’s work to the ladies, as nine-tenths of them do.’

‘And I am thinking, Tregarva, that both for ladies and gentlemen, prevention is better than cure.’

‘There’s a great change come over Miss Argemone, sir.  She used not to be so ready to start out at midnight to visit dying folk.  A blessed change!’

Lancelot thought so too, and he thought that he knew the cause of it.

Argemone’s appearance, and their late conversation, had started a new covey of strange fancies.  Lancelot followed them over hill and dale, glad to escape a moment from the mournful lessons of that evening; but even over them there was a cloud of sadness.  Harry Verney’s last words, and Argemone’s accidental whisper about ‘a curse upon the Lavingtons,’ rose to his mind.  He longed to ask Tregarva, but he was afraid—not of the man, for there was a delicacy in his truthfulness which encouraged the most utter confidence; but of the subject itself; but curiosity conquered.

‘What did Old Harry mean about the Nun-pool?’ he said at last.  ‘Every one seemed to understand him.’

‘Ah, sir, he oughtn’t to have talked of it!  But dying men, at times, see over the dark water into deep things—deeper than they think themselves.  Perhaps there’s one speaks through them.  But I thought every one knew the story.’

‘I do not, at least.’

‘Perhaps it’s so much the better, sir.’

‘Why?  I must insist on knowing.  It is necessary—proper, that is—that I should hear everything that concerns—’

‘I understand, sir; so it is; and I’ll tell you.  The story goes, that in the old Popish times, when the nuns held Whitford Priors, the first Mr. Lavington that ever was came from the king with a warrant to turn them all out, poor souls, and take the lands for his own.  And they say the head lady of them—prioress, or abbess, as they called her—withstood him, and cursed him, in the name of the Lord, for a hypocrite who robbed harmless women under the cloak of punishing them for sins they’d never committed (for they say, sir, he went up to court, and slandered the nuns there for drunkards and worse).  And she told him, “That the curse of the nuns of Whitford should be on him and his, till they helped the poor in the spirit of the nuns of Whitford, and the Nun-pool ran up to Ashy Down.’”

‘That time is not come yet,’ said Lancelot.

‘But the worst is to come, sir.  For he or his, sir, that night, said or did something to the lady, that was more than woman’s heart could bear: and the next morning she was found dead and cold, drowned in that weir-pool.  And there the gentleman’s eldest son was drowned, and more than one Lavington beside.  Miss Argemone’s only brother, that was the heir, was drowned there too, when he was a little one.’

‘I never heard that she had a brother.’

‘No, sir, no one talks of it.  There are many things happen in the great house that you must go to the little house to hear of.  But the country-folk believe, sir, that the nun’s curse holds true; and they say, that Whitford folks have been getting poorer and wickeder ever since that time, and will, till the Nun-pool runs up to Ashy, and the Lavingtons’ name goes out of Whitford Priors.’