Ropes of Sand. A novel

Front matter

jMEW LIBRARY NOVELS. RUJUB, THE JUGGLER. By G. A. Henty. 3 vols. LADY VERNER'S FLIGHT. By Mrs. Hungerford. 2 vol: TIME'S REVENGES. By D. Christie Murray. 3 vols. A FAMILY LIKENESS. By Mrs. B. M. Croker. 3 vols. MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S. By Alan St. Aueyn. 2 voh MRS. JULIET. By Mrs. Alfred Hunt. 3 vols. BARBARA DERING. By A.melie Rives. 2 vols. GEOFFORY HAMILTON. By Edward H. Cooper. 2 vol THE IVORY GATE. By Walter Besant. 3 vols. London: CHATTO & WINDUS, Piccadilly. Jl "glouel BY R. E. FRANCILLON AUTHOR OF r-~ 'OLYMPIA,' 'A REAL QUEEN,' ' KING OR KNAVE?' ETC IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. I %onoon CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY CONTENTS OF VOL. I. CHAPTER PAQE I. THE SECOND TIME OF ASKING - - 1 II. VENI, VIDI, VICI - - - - 17 III. A DOG IN A MANGER - - - 29 IV. AN INGLORIOUS MILTON - - - 48 V. TRANSFORMATION MADE EASY - - 63 VI.

MISS MABEL OPENSHAW - - - 80 VII. THE PINK DAHLIA - - - - 91 VIII. LATET ANGUIS IN HERBA - - - 110 IX. ABOUT A WOMAN .... 122 X. THE THIRD TIME OF ASKING - - 147 XI. LOVE IN IDLENESS - - - - 166 XII. THE PARSON'S PIPE - - - 179 xin. lady's fingers - 197 XIV. ON THE SANDS .... 218 XV. WHAT FRANCIS CAREW FOUND - - 233 XVI. THE HERONS OF WRENSHAW - -

Chapter I. The Second Time Of Asking

It was not often that the people of Stoke Juliot had sight of a live stranger, dead strangers (for cause presently to be shown) being much more in their line. Xor, for the corresponding reasons, had live strangers frequent sight of the people of Stoke Juliot. The mere, bare fact, therefore, that a live stranger was in the midst of the congregation of that remote parish at morning service on Sunday, October the 13th, Seventeen Hundred and Ninety-three, was a special event in the chronicles of a parish which, for the rest, had a more than sufficiently eventful history of its own. Stoke Juliot was, and is, in the north - vol. I. ■9 western corner of Devon. It would, had it been settled yesterday, have been privileged with a stretch of sea-view bounded only by the coast of Newfoundland, some three thousand miles away.

But, having crept into existence before anybody had discovered the advantages of fresh air — not to speak of ozone — the village (for it wras, and is, nothing more) sneaked out of ocean's sight round the first practicable corner, and half perched, half hid itself on a landward slope, so that the coast might serve as a rampart against the west wind and the angel of health who rides thereon. It is true that the first settlers and their descendants thereby laid their faces open to the demon of the East, but they were wise in their generation, since the wind from the sea, which to us brings life with every buffet, was apt, in their da}^, to bring in the Danes. So you might sail all along that coast, from steep Oxhorn and yet more fatal Wrackstone on the north, past Skullcross Bay and the vast desert of sand and dune that follows, to Sack Point on the south, and on past St. Brannock's Burrows to the Taw, without guessing at the existence of a Stoke Juliot — unless, indeed you were on board a West Indiaman homeward bound, with a strong wind, a dark nio-ht, and the shore a-lee.

Then, indeed, you would find out Stoke Juliot, sure enough ; and might publish your discovery, if, by the help of Heaven, you left it alive. This especial stranger, however, had not come into the place by the usual sea-road, but had been blown thither from the East — whence the wise men come — a rara avis indeed. He would have been nothing out of the common, even so near as Bideford or Barnstaple — a lean young man, of compact build and middle stature, with an alert, self possessed bearing, well trimmed and shaven, and with new and well-cut clothes of the latest fashion ; just such a young man as might be seen in any parish church any Sunday in any year. Perhaps, indeed, in those days more commonly than in these, when it is not so much the habit of young men in strange places to sit through matins, Litany, sermon, and the rest, all for nothing and all alone.

But, in Stoke Juliot, the fact of his being a stranger made him so much of a Phœnix that a Duke could not have drawn to himself a single microscopic gaze from a single eye more than he. When every eye is staring its hardest, nothing is left, even for the King. Thus it was that a pair of marvellously quick and keen gray eyes, an aquiline nose, and a good-natured, good-tempered mouth diverted a certain amount of attention among the brown-eyed, broad-nosed folk of Stoke Juliot — even from the coat of deep claret coloured broadcloth, the embroidered waistcoat, and the fine linen neckcloth, whereof the like had never been seen since the Young Lavinia went to pieces between the Wrackstone and Skullcross Bay. That he was rather of the build of a champagne bottle about the shoulders, and narrow about the chest, received less note from that broad and burly congregation than such details would have obtained where that style of human architecture is more common.

For it seemed only according to the fitness of things that the owner of so fine a coat, and of a waistcoat like that, should neither toil nor spin. For men who must work for bread used to wonder a good deal at men who will work for play : and they wonder a little still, despite the commonness of amateur muscle. There were no cricket clubs in those days, and it was thought genteel to suggest the canielopard in one's figure, and to show soft, white hands. The stranger showed his hands a good deal, by resting them alternately, with careless grace, on the edge of his high pew. For his part, this fine young gentleman had plenty of time for making his own observations in return. For, though eleven o'clock was the hour for service, and it was already more than half-past, no clergyman had appeared.

How ever, as nobody seemed to take any notice of the resemblance of the church to a Quakers' meeting, beyond an occasional creak from the parish fiddle or grunt from its bassoon, the stranger, like a man of the world, took the situation as a matter of course, and made the most of it by pursuing the proper study of mankind. Indeed, except for an ecclesiologist very far in advance of his age, there was little else to study. True, the church, dedicated to Saint Juliot, who, as everybody knows, was the daughter of Prince Brychan of Wales, and had twenty-three brothers and sisters, all, as well as herself, saints in the British calendar, was of extreme antiquity, and of a squat ugliness so complete as to render it wellnigh unique among all the churches of the land. But whatever interest it no doubt possessed in detail had been rendered null and void by many generations of Gallios — not, indeed, that a Gallio is the worst enemy a church can know, considering what the restoring Vandal has done.

The area, small of itself, was rendered still smaller by the devotion of a good half of the gallery to a haystack ; on one of a more or less broken row of pegs driven into the crumbling plaster of the north wall, hung a scythe; a coil of old fishing-nets over two more. In front of the clerk's desk, under a black oak pulpit, worthy of Flanders, stood a table, obviously made of broken ship timbers, and curiously marked with such stains as are left by rustic smokers; indeed, from a sea-chest under the table the stranger's swift eyes perceived the projection of a brownish-white bowl of clay. Obviousl}* the parish church was more closely connected with the daily life of Stoke Juliot than was usual in England at large. But the young gentleman's eyes were soon sated with such like ecclesiastical eccentricities.

They rambled round at their own level, from the winter apple face of the oldest inhabitant to the labyrinthine wrinkles of the parish grand dame, to wind-blown fisherman and stout matron, wondering a little how all the parish seemed to have been turned out of the same rough mould, so like brothers and sisters, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, grand parents and grand-children, all were, till they settled down at last on the most natural place within their reach — the prettiest face they could find. Even a common parish mould will turn out its happy accidents now and then. The face which thus, for want of a better, drew and fixed the regards of the stranger was a happy accident — speaking by comparison. The eyes were dark, of the precise shade of hazel that characterized all Stoke Juliot in days when all the goddesses to whom mortals made verses were composed of rose, lily, and violet, carnation and cream ; but hers had a little more light of her own in them ; they were at once more grave and less dull.

Her hair was hidden under a hideous covering of black beaver, but he had an admirable view of her nose, which, while sharing in the common tendency to be flat and broad, contrived to convert, by means of some imperceptible variation of some infinitesimal line, a certain leonine heaviness into a curious piquancy. Every painter, and still more every sculptor, knows what miracles the merest shadow of a shade's breadth of difference in touch will do. For the rest, cheeks and lips had, at any rate, the beauty of youth ; and sufficient unto the day is the good thereof, as well as the evil. A time might come when the softly crimsoned brown would coarsen into the florid tan which reigned round her under the influence of east wind and west wind, the blaze of the sun, and the glare of the sea; and when the lips, already somewhat over full and ripe, would grow either, like some, merely heavy, or, like others, both heavy and hard.

For there was no pleasant look about the Stoke Juliot mouth ; and no wonder, if all tales about those who had owned it for generations were but half true. But meanwhile In such speculations on the vanity of all things, even of youth and beauty, the strange young gentleman was no doubt more or less profitably engaged, when a tramp as of an elephant in boots, and a commotion in the close air as of the advent of Æolus, disturbed him from his reverie. He bad hardly time to shift his eyes from the black beaver, quick as they were, before ' When the wicked man ' thundered through the church as if Stentor had come again. There was no doubt about it — a Parson had come at last, and was making up, both in speed and in volume of sound, for lost time. A Parson? Surely The Parson: if definite articles and capital letters have any value at all.

Indeed, he would have made an ordinary parson and a half, if not an entire Two. The fishermen of Stoke Juliot were burly fellows, beyond the common run, but the burliest of them all was not so burly as he. He measured six feet two, if an inch ; be weighed eighteen stone, if a pound, and all this not by fat, but by good bone, muscle, and brawn. Yet he did not look altogether so wholesome as he should have done. His face was florid, it is true, where it was not yellowish white, but quite evidently not like the cheeks of his flock, with sun and wind ; his eyes, naturally of a pale blue, were blood shot, his nostrils much too fleshy, and his lips coarse and protruding. As for his three chins, which might be the original of them had become hard to say. Add to these things a fringe of sandy hair showing under an antique scratch wig put on awry, a crumpled pair of bands, and a stained surplice huddled on anyhow over an old coat of the shabbiest snuff-colour, and the secret of how Stoke Juliot came to have a bad name, and the gallery to be used for a hay loft, stood revealed.

Nay, the figure of this mountainous sloven with the voice of a trumpet sufficed to withdraw the eyes of the young buck below from the parish belle. For the grotesque is the only formidable rival that beauty knows. This same young buck, having clearly found his way here from civilized regions, had now ample food for both eyes and ears in the big parson, the wizened clerk below him, and the fiddle, flute, and bassoon, which the clerk's pitch-pipe set going, and then left to their own individual and most commonly hostile wills. In what mood he followed the service depended upon whether devotion or humour prevailed in his composition. If the former, he must have been scandalized; if the latter, he must have, at any rate, been amused — unless, indeed, he had that depth and breadth of humour which understands how a cracked fiddle, an asthmatic flute, and an indescribable bassoon may surpass the grandest of cathedral organs in the spirit which (to commit but little violence on George Herbert) ' makes them and the music fine.' I doubt, however, if one so completely self-possessed and at his ease had much of either devotion or humour.

A slight smile hovered on his lips, but then it never left them ; it was the same for beauty, j:>arson, clerk, and choir. It was never a whole smile, yet it gave the impression of being as much as the lips could manage, even should they condescend to attempt more. It was the same when he regarded his own white hands, and when the trio of musicians extemporized a deplorably appropriate accompaniment to ' Like as the hart doth pant and bray The well-springs to obtain.' Nor did it alter by a shade when the parson, having squeezed himself into the pulpit, proclaimed : ' I publish the Banns of Marriage between Cornelius Hale, bachelor, and Tamzin Craddock, spinster, both of this parish. If any of you know cause or just impediment why these two Simpletons should not be joined together in wedlock, }Te are to declare it.

This is the second time of asking, and I hope, before the third, seeing that Tamzin is in my own service, and well off, and Cornelius can't keep himself sober, let alone a wife, they'll have got into a more reasonable state of mind. There'll be no sermon to-day, because I had to sit up all night with my cow, that's sick, and I can't afford to lose her these hard times. But it doesn't matter, for I've not seen one bit of improvement in the parish (especially among the farmers) since my last ; and as that didn't bring them to their senses, I don't know what will. As the Greek has it, Glosse gar auchon t'adic eu peristelein, esti d'ouc agan sophos. You may go.' The unknown tongue seemed to contain double thunder. The preacher wasted none of its effect, but made his exit even as his entrance had been.

The young man lingered in his pew until the black beaver bonnet had passed him on its way to the porch, and had received from him, to its apparent amaze and confusion, as impudent a glance as fine gentleman ever threw to a pretty country girl. He triumphed in her blush, and followed the parson into the vestry, where he caught his still surpliced reverence in the act of filling a mug from a large jug of ale. He also observed that the parson wore high top boots splashed with red clay, meeting a pair of corduroy breeches such as ploughmen wore, but of which any reputable ploughman would be ashamed. 'I have the honour,' said the young man, in a thin, but not unmusical voice, ' of speaking to the Reverend Jordan Pengold, Vicar of Stoke Ju ' ' I'm Parson Pengold,' said the Vicar, in a broad North Devon, of which not a trace had been noticeable in the pulpit. ' And who are you ?

Will you have some ale ?' 'My name is Quickset — Captain Quickset, you know, of the North, and the Indies, and all there,' said the visitor. Never, I suppose, in all this world of contrasts, was there ever a greater than between this big sloven of a parson, with his red face and heavy jowl, and the dapper little Captain, all spruce and polite — unless, indeed, it might be between a white poodle and a brown bear. 'And you've come to forbid the banns of that foolish wench, Tamzin Craddock, eh ?' asked the Parson. ' If the lady is that monstrous pretty girl that was in the pew under the mowing machine,' said the Captain, ' I forbid them with all my soul.' ' What — little Nance Derrick ? What's she to do with Tamzin's banns ?' ' Oh, if it wasn't she who was asked, Heaven forbid the course of true love, as the play says, should ever be made rough by me.' ' Then if you've not come on business, and don't want ale, why do you come bother ' ' Oh, pray don't mention it — the pleasure is all on my side, I'm sure ; and the honour, too.

I'm staying in these parts with my friend Squire Carew, of Hornacombe ' The Parson pitched his surplice into a corner. ' Humph !' he growled. ' Then you'll know well enow why I wouldn't have told that, neither by your being to church, nor by your passing the ale. However, if Squire Carew's got any sort of a friend, I'm not the man to grudge him. He'll want 'em all before he's done.' ' Ah, Sir !' said the Captain, ' it was the true pastor, who knows every spot and blemish in his flock, that spoke there. I can quite under stand that my being a guest at Hornacombe should not prove my best recommendation to these sacred walls. But Ave men of the world, and more especially we who serve the Kino- ' (he raised his fingers, in the manner of a salute, to his forehead) ' get mixed in our company — very mixed indeed, It was my good fortune to have saved Squire Carew's perhaps not venr valuable life : and he has the virtue of o-rati tude.

It may be that I shall do him more real service before I have done. I have ' ' The jaw of Old Harry, young gentleman. Let's come to business. I've got a sick cow to mind, and a new maid to look for in a parish of thieves and liars and scandalmon gers : and the only hot dinner I get in the wTeek wraiting. " Gnaw the bone which is fallen to thy lot," as it is said in the Hebrew. Now, out with it, lad. You've come from Hornacombe — we've got so far.' ' The truth is, Sir, that I wished to express my astonishment at finding a scholar of your calibre buried, so to speak, in such a nook and corner. With Latin and Hebrew at your fingers' ends, and throwing them before swine — by George !' ' Eh ? Well, it's true enough, as they say in the next parish, that Stoke Juliot is the last place Heaven made, and the first the devil will take ....

And as plain Mother-English is Greek to them, 'tis all the same whether I give them Parson Pengold or Parson Euripides. For myself, I prefer Parson Euripides.' ' Allow me, Sir, to prefer Parson Pengold ; though doubtless the other gentleman is excel lent in his way. Your sermon this morning was not long ; but it was sharp and straight to the point, and full of learning. I judge by sample — and I flatter myself I understand pulpit eloquence as well as any man. You ou<dit to be preaching in Windsor — by gad you ought, Sir, not here. As I was saying to my old friend the Bishop of Horchester only the other day ('twas at my friend Joe Norris's — Sir Joseph Norris, you know), what we want in the Church is a man who'll give it 'em hot all round, with none of your bush-beating. " But where's such a man, Quickset ?" asks the Bishop.

" My Lord," said I, " on my honour as an officer and a gentleman who serves the King, confound me if I know." But the next time I meet his Lordship, I shall say : " My Lord, I know that man." ' Parson Pengold's heavy face assumed a look that was almost pathetic ; and some sort of dew rose into his eves. ' There's one big tomb in this churchyard,' said he, ' and it's lettered, Here lies Ambi tion. . . . But one don't meet a gentleman and a scholar every day. You can eat beef, I suppose, if you can't drink ale. If you can put up with a rump and a junket, come and see my pigs— not the two-legged ones, but the four.' ' If there's one thing I admire, next to a scholar, 'tis a pig,' said Captain Quickset. ' And I can eat beef and drink ale too, in good company. We often escape from becaficos and burgundy to a plain steak and porter, my friend Joe Norris and I.'

Stoke Juliot, among many peculiarities, possessed one exceedingly common thing — a legend. Experts in folk-lore will no doubt perceive a good many family likenesses in it to a dozen traditions that are only just on their death-beds elsewhere, and may argue that the souls whereof Parson Pengold had the care were somewhat deficient in originalitv of im agination. Nevertheless the story of Michael Scot's Redcap was not likely to have travelled all the way, without the help of print, to North Devon from the Scottish Border ; and, with the help of print, less likely still. It may be, after all, that Stoke Juliot was the mother soil of its favourite legend : or it may be that the story was true, and had really happened in one place just as much as in a dozen more. At any rate, it has one quality of truth, that it can be very quickly told. vol. i. 2 *S The general repute of Stoke Juliot in those parts for all manner of evil was so high, and in some respects so well founded, that for a man to leave his name behind him as synony mous with that of an incomparable villain must have been very far from an easy thing to do.

Nevertheless, this distinction had been actually attained by one Horneck — and perhaps even he would have failed had he not come originally from another parish, so that in blaming him for its own sins, Stoke Juliot may have felt the less guilty of inconsistency. When that terrible old story was charged upon Parson Pengold's flock, of how a great West Indiaman was drawn to its doom in Skullcross Bay by a false light (and there is none so terrible), the retort was ready, ' That hap come in o' Horneck, and he were none o' we.' Whether that arch-villainy were true or false, Horneck was not only a smuggler, which was to his credit, nor only a wrecker, which meant no more than what to win by another's loss means to men of business now, but he aspired to create the chances that Heaven forgot to send ; just as in later time he would not have been content with merely taking fair advantage of financial panics and inflations, but would have actively promoted them.

In short, he followed the otherwise respectable calling of wreckage as a brigand and murderer, on a scale only limited by opportunity. Not even at Stoke Juliot had it been held fair play to set a trap for a ship, and to strangle those of the crew whom the rocks spared, till Horneck came — nor were these things considered reputable (be it said to the people's credit) after he was gone. But it is matter, not of legend but of history, that this finished scoundrel, during his happily short career, ruled all Stoke Juliot like a Rhenish robber-Baron, and defied such law of the land as that Heaven-forgotten corner knew. For that matter, when Lundy Island, not far away, was ruled by a pirate chief with Spaniards, and even Moors, among his subjects, the law thereabouts plainly had not much to do or say.

At last this Horneck obtained the blue ribbon of legend by having it understood of him that he had sold his soul to a greater demon still, according to this bargain — that he should be a free man, to do his own will, till his purchaser should find him a task that should baffle his own craft and cunning. For long he contrived to hold his own. But at length the greater craft of his master hit upon the device of twisting all Hornacombe sands into ships' cables. And whether he be dead or alive, he is at it still — for so gigantic is his pluck that, after three hundred years' failure to twist an inch of whip-cord, old Horneck won't give in. But Cables of Sand, indeed ? Nay — deserts : such an expanse of sand that you might walk all the miles between Skullcross Bay and Sack Point without leaving a footprint, all was so firm and hard : and so broad that at low tide the most landward line of gray surf seemed to coincide with the offing.

This was Horna combe Sands — an immense brown flat, parting the cliffs to the far north from the cliffs to the far south, with no sign of human neighbour hood but a limekiln, of animal life but the rabbit burrows among the clouds of high dunes above high-water, of vegetation but the forests of sea-reed and marram that hid the latter, and without a break save one huge black rock, rising like a broken steeple from the midst of all — the very smithy where old Horneck toiled at his chains of sand all night long. The scene must have been barren even to desolation in cloudy weather — desolate even to grandeur under wind and rain. But this Sunday morning the whole desert seemed one vast, broad smile. The sky was a blue lake, among white Alps of motionless cloud, and the sun, still high, turned a million pools into as many sparkling dimples.

The far-off foam rolled in with its faint music, as white and light as falling snow-flakes : and there was just enough breeze to variegate the dunes with a double shade of moving green. In an elbow of the broken Black Steeple, smoking the blackest ship tobacco from a broken black pipe, sprawled Squire Carew of Hornacombe — the best-bored man in Devon, bar none. Such an introduction is not attractive. But, as Francis Carew is the hero of this romance (if he can be called any sort of a hero), at least as much descriptive attention is due to him as was freely paid to Parson Pen gold, or Captain Quickset, or Nance Derrick. For that matter, it was of Nance Derrick that he was thinking just then — and yet he was bored. If he had not been bored, he would have gone to church to see her, instead of sacrific ing her to such a rival as a black pipe in solitude.

Nor was there any reason why he should not have gone there to see, as well as to be seen : for, though his face was nothing to boast of, in the matter of build and shoulders he might have given the best man in Stoke Juliot odds, and come off the winner. He was certainly nothing like so large as the Parson — happily for himself ; but his modest seventy inches were made the most of in the matter of natural strength, and he had the grace of youth besides. By grace, however, he set little store ; for while all the rest of the parish (save the Vicar) was dressed in its Sunday best, the Squire had apparently made a point of giving the gulls and the rabbits and the sandpipers the benefit of his very worst — which was very bad indeed, for a Squire. He looked like a fisherman with a touch of the gamekeeper ; or, much more accurately, like a wrecker with a dash of the poacher.

Or, perhaps, like a blackguard with a dash of the gentleman, or a gentleman run ning into blackguard, each meeting each mid way — the blackguard being past the line. On the whole, it was not strange that the Vicar should have been surprised to see a guest from Hornacombe in church or vestrv. When I say that Francis Carew was think ing of Anne Derrick, I used too strong a word. Thinking, even were he capable of it, was not in his line. Therefore am I spared the trouble of saying what his thoughts were. Only, somehow, the dark eyes, young mouth, and brown cheeks, blent themselves with the glory of that autumn day, and made the young man feel more than ever bored. The reason why dogs and hogs are never bored is that they never see anything that is not before their eyes. Francis Carew had thus to pay the penalty of his purely accidental superiority over birds, beasts, and fishes in the scale of creation.