The Laird's Luck
by
Arthur Quiller-Couch
Part 5 out of 5
of horse moving past. "It will be Mark's troop," I whispered, and
listened again. It seemed to me that the noise moved away to our right
instead of towards Lostwithiel. A quick suspicion took me then: I
scaled the right-hand side of the quarry at a run, burst through the
fringe of pines, and came out suddenly upon a knoll in full view of
the down. The first gleam of sunshine was breaking over this slope,
and towards it at an easy trot rode the whole body of rebel cavalry,
in number above a thousand.
"Escaped!"
While I stood and stared, Margery caught up with me. We looked into
each other's face. Then without a word she went from me. I lingered
there for perhaps ten minutes; for now, from behind the trees above, a
squadron of Royalist horse charged across the slope at a gallop. They
were less than four hundred, however, and as the rebel rearguard
turned to face them, drew rein and exchanged but a few harmless shots.
I watched the host as it wound slowly over the crest with its pursuers
hanging sullenly at heel: then I turned and descended in search of
Margery. As I reached the gap in the hedge, Mark entered the garden by
the little gate opposite. He came hastily, but halted as if shot, with
his hand on the gatepost to steady him--yet not at sight of me. I
looked across the gap into the garden between us. Beside a heap
of freshly turned mould, with her back to the currant-bush, stood
Margery, her hands stained with soil; and on the ground before her lay
a small chest with its lid open.
I lifted my eyes from the glinting coins and sought Mark's gaze: but
it was fastened on Margery, who walked slowly forward and straight up
to him. Though he shrank, he could not retreat. She went to him, I
following a pace behind. She put out a hand and touched the pistol in
his sling.
"Redeem." The voice was Margery's and yet not hers. "Redeem," she
repeated--"_not Lantine_."
With a groan he ran round the gable of the cottage. A moment later we
heard the gallop of his horse down the lane.
At seven o'clock that morning the King's forlorn hope of foot, in
number about 1,000, entered Lostwithiel after a smart skirmish with
the rebel rearguard at the bridge; and not long after, the rebel
reserve of foot, perceiving their comrades giving ground and being
themselves galled by two or three pieces of cannon which began to play
upon them from the captured leaguer, moved away from the hill they had
been holding: so that now we had the whole force falling back towards
Fowey along the ridge, with our forlorn hope following in chase from
field to field.
Before eight the King himself with two troops of horse (one of them my
brother's) passed over a ford a little to the south of the town, with
intent to catch this movement in flank: and there, by the ford's edge,
I believe, took a cartload of muskets with five abandoned pieces, two
of them very long guns. The river being too deep, with a rising tide,
for Margery to wade, we made our crossing by the bridge, where the
fighting had been, but where there was now no soldiery, only a many
dead bodies, some huddled into the coigns of the parapet, more laid
out upon a patch of turf at the bridge end, the mud caked on their
faces. It made me shiver to see: but my sister went by with scarce a
glance and, once past the river, caught my hand and set off running
after the troops.
The beginning of the retreat had been brisk enough--so brisk that it
outpaced his Majesty's movement in flank: who, breasting the hill with
his cavalry (after some minutes lost at the ford in collecting the
cannon and muskets which might well have been gleaned later) found
himself, if anything, in the rear of his victorious footmen. But after
two miles, coming to that part of the ridge where it narrows above
Lawhibbet, and in view of our old earthwork which was yet pretty
strongly held by their artillery, the enemy made a more forcible
resistance, fighting the several hedges and, even when dislodged,
holding them with a hot skirmishing fire while the main body found the
next cover. By these checks we two, who had lost ground at the start,
now regained it fast; and by and by (towards ten o'clock as I guess)
were forced to pick our way under shelter of the hedges, to avoid
the enemy's bullets and espial by any of the King's men, who would
doubtless have cursed and driven us back out of the way of danger.
It was Margery who bethought her here of a sunken cart-road descending
along the right of the ridge and crossed on its way by another which
would lead us to the summit again and within two gunshots of the great
earthwork. By following these two roads we might outflank the soldiery
while keeping the crown of the ridge between us; for the fighting
still followed along the left-hand slope, above the river.
This way, to be sure, was reasonably safe for a while; but must lead
us out, if we persisted, into close danger--perhaps into the very
interval between the fighting lines, and if at the rebels' rear, then
certainly between them and their artillery on the earthwork. As we ran
I tried to prove this to Margery. She would not listen: indeed I
doubt that she heard me. "He must," "he must," she kept saying: and I
thought sure she had taken leave of her wits.
It happened as I warned her. The second cart-track, mounting from the
valley bottom, led us up to the high road on the ridge; and there,
peering out cautiously, I spied the backs of a rebel company posted
across it, a bare two hundred yards away towards Lostwithiel. Their
ranks parted and I had time enough, and no more, to push Margery into
the ditch and fling myself beside her among the brambles before a team
of horses swept by at a gallop, with a cannon bumping on its carriage
behind them and dragging a long cloud of dust.
"Quick!" called Margery as it passed: sprang to her feet and across
the road in the noise and smother. Choking with dust and anger I
followed, almost on all-fours.
"But what folly is this?" I demanded, overtaking her by the opposite
hedge.
"I know what I am doing," she said. "They did not see---the dust hid
us. Now quick again, and help me up to this hazel-bush."
I swung her up, and myself after her. The bush was one which I myself
had polled two years before; an old stump set thickly about with young
shoots, in the cover of which we huddled, staring down the slope of
our own great grass-field (the largest on Lawhibbet farm) now filled
with rebels withdrawing in good order upon the earthwork on Castle
Dore. This earthwork stood in the very next field on our right, behind
what had used to be a hedge but where was now a gap some twenty yards
wide (levelled a few days before by Essex's cannoniers), and through
this gap, towards which the regiments were streaming, drifted the
smoke of the guns as they flung their round shot high over our heads,
and over the hedge on our left which hid from us all of the royal
troops save now and then the flash of a steel cap behind the
top-growth of hazel ash and bramble.
The line of this hedge, on the near side to us, was yet held by
musketeers who had spread themselves along it very closely and seemed
to be using every bush. Indeed I wondered how they were to be forced
from such cover, when a party of them by the gate suddenly gave back
and began running, and through the gateway a small troop of horse came
pouring at their heels. And albeit these cavaliers must have suffered
desperately in so charging up to a covered foe (and many riderless
chargers came galloping with them), yet the remnant held such good
order that in pouring through they seemed to divide by agreement, a
part wheeling to right and a part to left to drive the skirmishers,
while the main troop held on across the field nor drew rein until they
had chased the rebel rearguard to the gap. But as the gap cleared
ahead and showed the earthwork and the muzzles of the guns now lowered
right in their path, their leader checked his horse, wheeled about in
as pretty a curve as you would wish to see, and his troop following
cantered back towards the gate.
It was gallantly done and clearly won high approval from a horseman
who at the moment came at a trot through the gate, with a second troop
behind him, and was saluted by the returning squadron with, one flash
of sword-blades, all together, hilt brought to chin and every blade
pointing straight in air--a flourish almost as pretty as the feat it
concluded. He too held his sword before him with point upright, but
awkwardly; and though he sat his saddle well, his bearing had more
of civil authority than of soldierlike precision. I was wondering,
indeed, what his business might be on this field of arms--for his men
hung back somewhat, as escorting rather than charging at his lead,
when Margery plucked at my elbow.
"The King!"
I stared at her stupidly. And reading awe in her wide eyes, I had
almost turned to follow their gaze when my own fell on a rider who had
detached himself from the escort and was coming towards us along the
hedge row, whipping it idly with the flat of his sword, and now
and again thrusting at it with the point, as if beating for hidden
skirmishers. It was our brother Mark, and he frowned as he rode.
I held my breath as he drew near. Margery's eyes were on the King; but
she must needs recognise her brother when he came abreast of us.
And so it was. She gave him an idle glance, and with that she let out
a short choking cry, and leapt down from the hedge right in his path,
dragging me after her by the sleeve.
"Mark!" she cried.
He swerved his horse round with a curse. But she caught at the bridle
and pointed towards the gap through which, though hidden from us by
the angle, pointed the muzzles of the rebel artillery. "You must! Oh,
if you fear, I will run with you and die with you--I your sister!
There is no other way. You _must_, Mark!"
He pushed past her sullenly, moving towards the group where the King
stood.
"Mark, if you do not, the King shall know! Redeem, brother; or I
swear--and when did I break word?--here and now the King shall know
who lost him the rebel horse."
She spoke it fast and low, with a dead-white face. We were close now
to the royal group; close enough to hear the King's words.
"I must needs," he was saying, "envy her Majesty, Captain Brett. Under
your leading her troop has done that which my own can only envy."
He turned at what seemed at first a murmur among his own men, and no
doubt was framing a compliment from them too. But their murmur grew to
a growl of mere astonishment as a thud of hoofs drew all eyes after my
brother riding at full gallop for the gap.
"But what is the madman after?" began the King, and broke off with a
sharp exclamation as his eyes fell on Margery, who had picked up her
skirts and was running after Mark. She was perhaps a hundred yards
behind him when the cannon roared and, almost in the entrance of the
gap, he flung up both arms, and horse and rider rolled over together.
A moment later she too staggered and fell sideways--stunned by the
wind of a round-shot.
The firing ceased as suddenly as it began. I heard a voice saying as
if it continued a discussion--"And Lantine of all men! I'd have picked
him for the levellest-headed man in the troop. By the way, he comes
from these parts, I've heard say."
And with that I ran to my sister's side.
Two days later by the earthwork where we had played as children his
Majesty received the surrender of the rebel foot; while, on the
slope below, the house which should have been Mark's heritage blazed
merrily, fired by the last shot of the campaign.
PHOEBUS ON HALZAPHRON
"_God! of whom music
And song and blood are pure,
The day is never darkened
That had thee here obscure_."
Early in 1897 a landslip on the tall cliffs of Halzaphron--which
face upon Mount's Bay, Cornwall, and the Gulf Stream of the
Atlantic--brought to light a curiosity. The slip occurred during the
night of January 7th to 8th, breaking through the roof of a cavern at
the base of the cliff and carrying many hundreds of tons of rock and
earth down into deep water. For some weeks what remained of the cavern
was obliterated, and in the rough weather then prevailing no one took
the trouble to examine it; since it can only be approached by sea. The
tides, however, set to work to sift and clear the detritus, and on
Whit-Monday a party of pleasure-seekers from Penzance brought their
boat to shore, landed, and discovered a stairway of worked stone
leading up from the back of the cavern through solid rock. The steps
wound spirally upward, and were cut with great accuracy; but the
drippings from the low roof of the stairway had worn every tread into
a basin and filled it with water. Green slippery weeds coated the
lowest stairs; those immediately above were stained purple and crimson
by the growth of some minute fungus; but where darkness began, these
colors passed through rose-pink into a delicate ivory-white--a hard
crust of lime, crenelated like coral by the ceaseless trickle of water
which deposited it.
At first the explorers supposed themselves on the track of a lost holy
well. They had no candles, but by economising their stock of matches
they followed up the mysterious and beautiful staircase until it
came to a sudden end, blocked by the fallen mass of cliff. Still in
ignorance whither it led or what purpose it had served, they turned
back and descended to the sunshine again; when one of the party,
scanning the cliff's face, observed a fragment--three steps
only--jutting out like a cornice some sixty or seventy feet overhead.
This seemed to dispose of the holy well theory, and suggested that the
stairway had reached to the summit, where perhaps an entrance might
be found. The party returned to Penzance, and their report at once
engaged the attention of the local Antiquarian Society; a small
subscription list was opened, permission obtained from the owner of
the property, and within a week a gang of labourers began to excavate
on the cliff-top directly above the jutting cornice. The ground here
showed a slight depression, and the soil proved unexpectedly deep and
easy to work. On the second day, at a depth of seven feet, one of the
men announced that he had come upon rock. But having spaded away the
loose earth, they discovered that his pick had struck upon the edge of
an extremely fine tessellated pavement, the remains apparently of a
Roman villa.
Yet could this be a Roman villa? That the Romans drove their armies
into Cornwall is certain enough; their coins, ornaments, and even
pottery, are still found here and there; their camps can be traced.
That they conquered and colonised it, however, during any of the four
hundred years they occupied Britain has yet to be proved. In other
parts of England the plough turns up memorials of that quiet home life
with its graces which grew around these settlers and comforted their
exile; and the commonest of these is the tessellated pavement with its
emblems of the younger gods, the vintage, the warm south. But in the
remote west, where the Celts held their savage own, no such traces
have ever been found.
Could this at last be one? The pavement, cleared with care, proved
of a disappointing size, measuring 8 feet by 4 at the widest. The
_tessellae_ were exceptionally beautiful and fresh in color; and each
separate design represented some scene in the story of Apollo. No
Bacchus with his panther-skin and Maenads, no Triton and Nymphs, no
loves of Mars and Venus, no Ganymede with the eagle, no Leda, no
Orpheus, no Danae, no Europa--but always and only Apollo! He was
guiding his car; he was singing among the Nine; he was drawing his
bow; he was flaying Marsyas; above all--the only repeated picture--he
was guiding the oxen of Admetus, goad in hand, with the glory yet
vivid about his hair. Could it (someone suggested) be the pavement
of a temple? And, if so, how came a temple of the sun-god upon this
unhomely coast?
The discovery gave rise to a small sensation and several ingenious
theories, one enthusiastic philologer going so far as to derive the
name Halzaphron from the Greek, interpreting it as "the salt of the
west winds" or "Zephyrs," and to assert roundly that the temple (he
assumed it to be a temple) dated far back beyond the Roman Invasion.
This contention, though perhaps no more foolish than a dozen others,
undoubtedly met with the most ridicule.
And yet in my wanderings along that coast I have come upon broken
echoes, whispers, fragments of a tale, which now and again, as I
tried to piece them together, wakened a suspicion that the derided
philologer, with his false derivation, was yet "hot," as children say
in the game of hide-and-seek.
For the stretch of sea overlooked by Halzaphron covers the lost land
of Lyonnesse. Take a boat upon a clear, calm day, and, drifting, peer
over the side through its shadow, and you will see the tops of tall
forests waving below you. Walk the shore at low water and you may fill
your pockets with beech-nuts, and sometimes--when a violent tide has
displaced the sand--stumble on the trunks of large trees. Geologists
dispute whether the Lyonnesse disappeared by sudden catastrophe
or gradual subsidence, but they agree in condemning the fables of
Florence and William of Worcester, that so late as November, 1099,
the sea broke in and covered the whole tract between Cornwall and the
Scillies, overwhelming on its way no less than a hundred and forty
churches! They prove that, however it befell, we must date the
inundation some centuries earlier. Now if my story be true--But let it
be told:
* * * * *
In the year of the great tide Graul, son of Graul, was king in the
Lyonnesse. He lived at peace in his city of Maenseyth, hard by
the Sulleh, where the foreign traders brought their ships to
anchor--sometimes from Tyre itself, oftener from the Tyrian colonies
down the Spanish coast; and he ruled over a peaceful nation of
tinners, herdsmen, and charcoal-burners. The charcoal came from the
great forest to the eastward where Cara Clowz in Cowz, the gray rock
in the wood, overlooked the Cornish frontier; his cattle pastured
nearer, in the plains about the foot of the Wolves' Cairn; and his
tinners camped and washed the ore in the valley-bottoms--for in those
days they had no need to dig into the earth for metal, but found
plenty by puddling in the river-beds.
So King Graul ruled happily over a happy people until the dark morning
when a horseman came galloping to the palace of Maenseyth with a cry
that the tide had broken through Crebawethan and was sweeping north
and west upon the land, drowning all in its path. "Hark!" said he,
"already you may hear the roar of it by Bryher!"
Yann, the King's body-servant, ran at once to the stables and brought
three horses--one for Queen Niotte; one for her only child, the
Princess Gwennolar; and for King Graul the red stallion, Rubh,
swiftest and strongest in the royal stalls, one of the Five Wonders
of Lyonnesse. More than six leagues lay between them and the Wolves'
Cairn, which surely the waters could never cover; and toward it the
three rode at a stretch gallop, King Graul only tightening his hand
on the bridle as Rubh strained to outpace the others. As he rode he
called warnings to the herdsmen and tinners who already had heard the
far roar of waters and were fleeing to the hills. The cattle raced
ahead of him, around him, beside him; he passed troop after troop; and
among them, in fellowship, galloped foxes, badgers, hares, rabbits,
weasels; even small field-mice were skurrying and entangling
themselves in the long grasses, and toppling head over heels in their
frenzy to escape.
But before they reached the Wolves' Cairn the three riders were alone
again. Rubh alone carried his master lightly, and poised his head to
sniff the wind. The other two leaned on their bridles and lagged after
him, and even Rubh bore against the left-hand rein until it wearied
the King's wrist. He wondered at this; but at the base of the cairn he
wondered no longer, for the old gray wolf, for whose head Graul had
offered a talent of silver, was loping down the hillside in full view,
with her long family at her heels. She passed within a stone's throw
of the King and gave him one quiet, disdainful look out of her green
eyes as she headed her pack to the southward.
Then the King understood. He looked southward and saw the plain full
of moving beasts. He looked northward, and two miles away the rolling
downs were not, but in their place a bright line stretched taut as a
string, and the string roared as if a great finger were twanging it.
Queen Niotte's horse had come to a standstill. Graul lifted and set
her before him on Rubh's crupper, and called to Gwennolar to follow
him. But Gwennolar's horse, too, was spent, and in a little while he
drew rein and lifted her, too, and set her on the stallion's broad
back behind him. Then forward he spurred again and southward after
the wolves--with a pack fiercer than wolves shouting at Rubh's heels,
nearer and yet nearer.
And Rubh galloped, yet not as before; for this Gwennolar was a
witch--a child of sixteen, golden-tressed, innocent to look upon as a
bird of the air. Her parents found no fault in her, for she was their
only one. None but the Devil, whom she had bound to serve her for a
year and a day, knew of her lovers--the dark young sailors from
the ships of Tyre, who came ashore and never sailed again nor were
seen--or beneath what beach their bodies lay in a row. To-day his date
was up, and in this flood he was taking his wages.
Gwennolar wreathed her white arms around her father and clung to him,
while her blown hair streamed like gold over his beard. And King Graul
set his teeth and rode to save the pair whom he knew to be dearest and
believed to be best. But if Niotte weighed like a feather, Gwennolar
with her wickedness began to weigh like lead--and more heavily yet,
until the stallion could scarcely heave his strong loins forward, as
now the earth grew moist about his hoofs. For far ahead of the white
surge-line the land was melting and losing its features; trickles of
water threading the green pastures, channelling the ditches, widening
out into pools among the hollows--traps and pitfalls to be skirted,
increasing in number while the sun sank behind and still the great
rock of Cara Clowz showed far away above the green forest.
Rubh's head was leaning and his lungs throbbed against the King's
heels. Yet he held on. He had overtaken the wolves; and Graul,
thinking no longer of deliverance, watched the pack streaming beside
him but always falling back and a little back until even the great
gray dam dropped behind. A minute later a scream rang close to his
ear; the stallion leaped as if at a water-brook, and as suddenly sank
backward with a dozen wolves on his haunches.
"Father!" shrieked Gwennolar. "Father!" He felt her arms dragged from
around his neck. With an arm over his wife Niotte he crouched,
waiting for the fangs to pierce his neck. And while he waited, to his
amazement the horse staggered up, shook himself, and was off with a
bound, fleet as an arrow, fleeter than ever before, yet not fleeter
than the pack now running again and fresh beside him. He looked back.
Gwennolar rose to her knees on the turf where the wolves had pulled
her down and left her unhurt; she stretched out both arms to him, and
called once. The sun dipped behind her, and between her and the sun
the tide--a long bright-edged knife--came sweeping and cut her down.
Then it seemed as if the wolves had relinquished to the waters not
their prey only but their own fierce instinct; for the waves paused
at the body and played with it, nosing and tumbling it over and over,
lifting it curiously, laying it down again on the green knoll, and
then withdrawing in a circle while they took heart to rush upon it
all together and toss it high, exultant and shouting. And during that
pause the fugitives gained many priceless furlongs.
They reached the skirts of the great forest and dashed into its
twilight, crouching low while Rubh tore his way between the gray
beech-trunks and leaped the tangles of brier, but startled no life
from bough or undergrowth. Beast and reptile had fled inland; and the
birds hung and circled over the tree-tops without thought of roosting.
Graul's right arm tightened about his wife's waist, but his left hand
did no more than grasp the rein. He trusted to the stallion, and
through twilight and darkness alike Rubh held his course.
When at length he slackened speed and came to a halt with a shudder,
Graul looked up and saw the stars overhead and a glimmering scarp of
granite, and knew it for the gray rock, Cara Clowz. By the base of
it he lowered Niotte to the ground, dismounted, and began to climb,
leading Rubh by the bridle and seeking for a pathway. Behind him the
voices of crashing trees filled the windless night. He found a ledge
at length, and there the three huddled together--Niotte between
swooning and sleep, Graul seated beside her, and Rubh standing
patient, waiting for the day. When the crashing ceased around them,
the King could hear the soft flakes of sweat dripping from the
stallion's belly, and saw the stars reflected now from the floor where
his forest had stood. Day broke, and the Lyonnesse had vanished.
Forest and pasture, city, mart and haven--away to the horizon a
heaving sea covered all. Of his kingdom there remained only a thin
strip of coast, marching beside the Cornish border, and this sentinel
rock, standing as it stands to-day, then called Cara Clowz, and now
St. Michael's Mount.
If you have visited it, you will know that the mount stands about half
a mile from the mainland; an island except at low water, when you
reach it by a stone causeway. Here, on the summit, Graul and Niotte
built themselves a house, asking no more of life than a roof to
shelter them; for they had no child to build for, and their spirit was
broken. The little remnant of their nation settled in Marazion on the
mainland, or southward along the strip of coast, and set themselves to
learn a new calling. As the sea cast up the bodies of their drowned
cattle and the trunks of uprooted trees, they took hides and timber
and fashioned boats and launched forth to win their food. They lowered
nets and wicker pots through the heaving floor deep into the twilight,
and, groping across their remembered fields, drew pollack and conger,
shellfish and whiting from rocks where shepherds had sat to watch
their sheep, or tinners gathered at noonday for talk and dinner. At
first it was as if a man returning at night to his house and, finding
it unlit, should feel in the familiar cupboard for food and start
back from touch of a monstrous body, cold and unknown. Time and use
deadened the shock. They were not happy, for they remembered days of
old; but they endured, they fought off hunger, they earned sleep; and
their King, as he watched from Cara Clowz their dark sails moving out
against the sunset, could give thanks that the last misery had been
spared his people.
But there were dawns which discovered one or two missing from the tale
of boats, home-comings with heavy news for freight, knots of women and
children with blown wet hair awaiting it, white faces and the wails of
widow and orphan. The days drew in and this began to happen often--so
often that a tale grew with it and spread, until it had reached all
ears but those of King Graul and Queen Motte.
One black noon in November a company of men crossed the sands at
low-water and demanded to speak with the King.
"Speak, my children," said Graul. He knew that they loved him and
might count on his sharing the last crust with them.
"We are come," said the spokesman, "not for ourselves, but for our
wives and children. For us life is none too pleasant; but they need
men's hands to find food for them, and at this rate there will soon be
no men of our nation left."
"But how can I help you?" asked the King.
"That we know not; but it is your daughter Gwennolar who undoes us.
She lies out yonder beneath the waters, and through the night she
calls to men, luring them down to their death. I myself--all of us
here--have heard her; and the younger men it maddens. With singing and
witch fires she lures our boats to the reefs and takes toll of us,
lulling even the elders to dream, cheating them with the firelight and
voices of their homes."
Now the thoughts of Graul and Niotte were with their daughter
continually. That she should have been lost and they saved, who cared
so little for life and nothing for life without her--that was their
abiding sorrow and wonder and self-reproach. Why had Graul not turned
Rubh's head perforce and ridden back to die with her, since help her
he could not? Many times a day he asked himself this; and though
Niotte's lips had never spoken it, her eyes asked it too. At night he
would hear her breath pause at his side, and knew she was thinking of
their child out yonder in the cold waters.
"She calls to us also," he answered, and checked himself.
"So it is plain her spirit is alive yet, and she must be a witch,"
said the spokesman, readily.
The King rent his clothes. "My daughter is no witch!" he cried. "But I
left her to die, and she suffers."
"Our lads follow her. She calls to them and they perish."
"It is not Gwennolar who calls, but some evil thing which counterfeits
her. She was innocent as the day. Nevertheless your sons shall not
perish, nor you accuse her. From this day your boats shall have a
lantern on this rock to guide them, and I and my wife will tend it
with our own hands."
Thenceforward at sunset with their own hands Graul and Niotte lit and
hung out a lantern from the niche which stands to this day and is
known as St. Michael's Chair; and trimmed it, and tended it the night
through, taking turns to watch. Niotte, doited with years and sorrow,
believed that it shone to signal her lost child home. Her hands
trembled every night as Graul lit the wick, and she arched her palms
above to shield it from the wind. She was happier than her husband.
Gwennolar's spell defied the lantern and their tottering pains. Boats
were lost, men perished as before. The people tried a new appeal.
It was the women's turn to lay their grief at the King's door. They
crossed the sands by ones and twos---widows, childless mothers, maids
betrothed and bereaved--and spread their dark skirts and sat before
the gateway. Niotte brought them food with her own hands; they took
it without thanks. All the day they sat silent, and Graul felt their
silence to be heavier than curses--nay, that their eyes did indeed
curse as they sat around and watched the lighting of the lantern, and
Niotte, nodding innocently at her arched hands, told them, "See, I
pray; cannot you pray too?"
But the King's prayer was spoken in the morning, when the flame and
the stars grew pale together and the smoke of the extinguished lamp
sickened his soul in the clean air. His gods were gone with the oaks
under which he had worshipped; but he stood on a rock apart from the
women and, lifting both hands, cried aloud: "If there be any gods
above the tree-tops, or any in the far seas whither the old fame
of King Graul has reached; if ever I did kindness to a stranger or
wayfarer, and he, returning to his own altars, remembered to speak of
Graul of Lyonnesse: may I, who ever sought to give help, receive help
now! From my youth I have believed that around me, beyond sight as
surely as within it, stretched goodness answering the goodness in my
own heart; yea, though I should never travel and find it, I trusted
it was there. O trust, betray me not! O kindness, how far soever
dwelling, speak comfort and help! For I am afflicted because of my
people."
Seven mornings he prayed thus on his rock: and on the seventh,
his prayer ended, he stood watching while the sunrays, like dogs
shepherding a flock, searched in the mists westward and gathered up
the tale of boats one by one. While he counted them, the shoreward
breeze twanged once like a harp, and he heard a fresh young voice
singing from the base of the cliff at his feet--
"_There lived a king in Argos,--
A merchantman in Tyre
Would sell the King his cargoes,
But took his heart's desire:
Sing Io, Io, Io!--_"
Graul looked toward his wife. "That will be the boy Laian," said
Motte; "he sits on the rock below and sings at his fishing."
"The song is a strange one," said Graul; "and never had Laian voice
like that."
The singer mounted the cliff--
"_The father of that merry may
A thousand towns he made to pay,
And lapp'd the world in fire!_"
He stood before them--a handsome, smiling youth, with a crust of brine
on his blue sea-cloak, and the light of the morning in his hair.
"Salutation, O Graul!" said he, and looked so cordial and well-willing
that the King turned to him from the dead lamp and the hooded women as
one turns to daylight from an evil dream.
"Salutation, O Stranger!" he answered. "You come to a poor man, but
are welcome--you and your shipmates."
"I travel alone," said the youth; "and my business--"
But the King put up his hand. "We ask no man his business until he has
feasted."
"I feast not in a house of mourning; and my business is better spoken
soon than late, seeing that I heal griefs."
"If that be so," answered Graul, "you come to those who are fain
of you." And then and there he told of Gwennolar. "The blessing of
blessings rest on him who can still my child's voice and deliver her
from my people's curse!"
The Stranger listened, and threw back his head. "I said I could heal
griefs. But I cannot cure fate; nor will a wise man ask it. Pain
you must suffer, but I can soothe it; sorrow, but I can help you to
forget; death, but I can brace you for it."
"Can death be welcomed," asked Graul, "save by those who find life
worse?"
"You shall see." He stepped to the mourning women, and took the eldest
by the hand. At first he whispered to her--in a voice so low that
Graul heard nothing, but saw her brow relax, and that she listened
while the blood came slowly back to her cheeks.
"Of what are you telling her?" the King demanded.
"Hush!" said the Stranger, "Go, fetch me a harp."
Graul brought a harp. It was mute and dusty, with a tangle of strings;
but the Stranger set it against his knee, and began to mend it deftly,
talking the while in murmurs as a brook talks in a covert of cresses.
By and by as he fitted a string he would touch and make it hum on a
word--softly at first, and with long intervals--as though all its
music lay dark and tangled in chaos, and he were exploring and picking
out a note here and a note there to fit his song. There was trouble
in his voice, and restlessness, and a low, eager striving, and a hope
which grew as the notes came oftener, and lingered and thrilled on
them. Then his fingers caught the strings together, and pulled the
first chord: it came out of the depths with a great sob--a soul set
free. Other souls behind it rose to his fingers, and he plucked them
forth, faster and faster--some wailing, some laughing fiercely, but
each with the echo of a great pit, the clang of doors, and the mutter
of an army pressing at its heels. And now the mourners leaned forward,
and forgot all except to listen, for he was singing the Creation. He
sang up the stars and set them in procession; he sang forth the sun
from his chamber; he lifted the heads of the mountains and hitched on
their mantles of green forest; he scattered the uplands with sheep,
and the upper air with clouds; he called the west wind, and it came
with a rustle of wings; he broke the rock into water and led it
dancing down the cliffs, and spread it in marshes, and sent it
spouting and hurrying in channels. Flowers trooped to the lip of it,
wild beasts slunk down to drink; armies of corn spread in rank along
it, and men followed with sickles, chanting the hymn of Linus; and
after them, with children at the breast, women stooped to glean or
strode upright bearing baskets of food. Over their heads days and
nights hurried in short flashes, and the seasons overtook them while
they rested, and drowned them in showers of bloom, and overtopped
their bodies with fresh corn: but the children caught up the sickles
and ran on. To some--shining figures in the host--he gave names; and
they shone because they moved in the separate light of divine eyes
watching them, rays breaking the thickets or hovering down from
heights where the gods sat at their ease.
But before this the men had brought their boats to shore, and hurried
to the Mount, drawn by his harping. They pressed around him in a ring;
and at first they were sad, since of what he sang they remembered the
like in Lyonnesse--plough and sickle and flail, nesting birds and
harvest, flakes of ore in the river-beds, dinner in the shade, and the
plain beyond winking in the noon-day heat. They had come too late for
the throes of his music, when the freed spirit trembled for a little
on the threshold, fronting the dawn, but with the fire of the pit
behind it and red on its trailing skirt. The song rolled forward now
like a river, sweeping them past shores where they desired to linger.
But the Stranger fastened his eyes on them, and sang them out to broad
bars and sounding tumbling seas, where the wind piped, and the breeze
came salt, and the spray slapped over the prow, hardening men to
heroes. Then the days of their regret seemed to them good only for
children, and the life they had loathed took a new face; their eyes
opened upon it, and they saw it whole, and loved it for its largeness.
"Beyond! beyond! beyond!"--they stared down on the fingers plucking
the chords, but the voice of the harp sounded far up and along the
horizon.
And with that quite suddenly it came back, and was speaking close at
hand, as a friend telling them a simple tale; a tale which all could
understand, though of a country unknown to them. Thus it ran:
"_In Hellas, in the kingdom of Argos, there lived two brothers,
Cleobis and Biton--young men, well to do, and of great strength of
body, so that each had won a crown in the public games. Now, once,
when the Argives were keeping a festival of the goddess Hera,
their mother had need to be driven to the temple in her chariot,
but the oxen did not return from the field in time. The young men,
therefore, seeing that the hour was late, put the yoke on their
own necks, and drew the car in which their mother sat, and brought
her to the temple, which was forty-five stades away. This they did
in sight of the multitude assembled; and the men commended their
strength, while the women called her blessed to be the mother of
such sons. But she, overjoyed at the deed and its renown, entered
the temple and, standing before the image of Hera, prayed the
goddess to grant her two sons, Cleobis and Biton, the greatest
boon which could fall to man. After she had prayed, and they had
sacrificed and eaten of the feast, the young men sat down in the
temple and fell asleep, and never awoke again, but so made an end
with life. In this wise the blessing of Hera came to them; and
the men of Argos caused statues to be made of them and set up at
Delphi, for a memorial of their piety and its reward_."
Thus quietly the great song ended, and Graul, looking around on his
people, saw on their faces a cheerfulness they had not known since the
day of the flood.
"Sir," said he, "yours is the half of my poor kingdom and yours the
inheritance, if you will abide with us and sing us more of these
songs."
"For that service," answered the Stranger, "I am come; but not for the
reward. Give me only a hide of land somewhere upon your cliffs, and
there will I build a house and sing to all who have need of me."
So he did; and the fable goes on to say that never were known in the
remnant of Lyonesse such seasons as followed, nor ever will be. The
fish crowded to the nets, the cliffs waved with harvest. Heavy were
the nets to haul and laborious was the reaping, but the people forgot
their aches when the hour came to sit at the Stranger's feet and
listen, and drink the wine which he taught them to plant. For his part
he toiled not at all, but descended at daybreak and nightfall to bathe
in the sea, and returned with the brine on his curls and his youth
renewed upon him. He never slept; and they, too, felt little need of
sleep, but drank and sang the night away, refreshed by the sacred
dews, watching for the moon to rise over the rounded cornfields, or
for her feet to touch the sea and shed silver about the boats in the
offing. Out yonder Gwennolar sang and took her toll of life as before;
but the people heeded less, and soon forgot even when their dearest
perished. Other things than sorrow they began to unlearn. They had
been a shamefaced race; the men shy and the women chaste. But the
Stranger knew nothing of shame; nor was it possible to think harm
where he, their leader, so plainly saw none. Naked he led them from
the drinking-bout down the west stairway to the bathing-pool, and
naked they plunged in and splashed around him and laughed as the cool
shock scattered the night's languor and the wine-fumes. What mattered
anything?--what they did, or what they suffered, or what news the
home-coming boats might bring? They were blithe for the moment and
lusty for the day's work, and with night again would come drink and
song of the amorous gods; or if by chance the Singer should choose
another note and tell of Procris or of Philomela, they could weep
softly for others' woes and, so weeping, quite forget their own.
And the fable goes on to say that for three years by these means the
Stranger healed the griefs of the people of Lyonnesse, until one
night when they sat around he told them the story of Ion; and if
the Stranger were indeed Phoebus Apollo himself, shameless was the
telling. But while they listened, wrapped in the story, a cry broke
on the night above the murmur of the beaches--a voice from the cliff
below them, calling "Repent! Repent!"
They leaped to their feet at once, and hurried down the stairway. But
the beach was empty; and though they hunted for an hour, they found no
one. Yet the next night and every night after the same voice called
"Repent! Repent!" They hurled down stones upon it and threatened
it with vengeance; but it was not to be scared. And by and by the
Stranger missed a face from his circle, then another. At length came a
night when he counted but half of his company.
He said no word of the missing ones; but early next morning, when the
folk had set out to their labors in the fields, he took a staff and
walked along the shore toward the Mount. A little beyond Parc-an-als,
where a spring gushes from the face of the cliff, he came upon a man
who stood under it catching the trickle in a stone basin, and halted
a few paces off to watch him. The man's hair and beard were long and
unkempt, his legs bare, and he wore a tattered tunic which reached
below the knees and was caught about his waist with a thong girdle.
For some minutes he did not perceive the Singer; but turned at length,
and the two eyed each other awhile.
Then the Singer advanced smiling, while the other frowned.
"Thou hast followed me," he said.
"I have followed and found thee," the other answered.
"Thy name?"
"Leven," said the man. "I come out of Ireland."
"The Nazarite travels far; but this spot He overlooked on his travels,
and the people had need. I brought them help; but they desert me
now--for thee doubtless?"
The Saint bent his head. The Singer laughed.
"He is strong, but the old gods bear no malice. I go to-night to join
their sleep, but I have loved this folk in a fashion. I pitied their
woes and brought them solace: I taught them to forget--and in the
forgetting maybe they have learned much that thou wilt have to
unteach. Yet deal gently with them. They are children, and too often
you holy men come with bands of iron. Shall we sit and talk awhile
together, for their sakes?"
And the fable says that for a long day St. Leven sat on the sands of
the Porth which now bears his name, and talked with the Singer; and,
that in consequence, to this day the descendants of the people of
Lyonnesse praise God in cheerfuller hymns than the rest of the world
uses--so much so that a company of minstrels visiting them not long
ago were surprised in the midst of a drinking-chorus to find the
audience tittering, and to learn afterward that they had chanted the
most popular local burying-tunes!
Twilight had fallen before the Stranger rose and took his farewell. On
his way back he spied a company approaching along the dusky shore,
and drew aside behind a rock while they passed toward the Saint's
dwelling. He found his own deserted. Of his old friends either none
had come or none had waited; and away on a distant beach rose the
faint chant of St. Patrick's Hymn of the Guardsman:
"_Christ the eye, the ear, the heart,
Christ above, before, behind me;
From the snare, the sword, the dart,
On the Trinity I bind me--
Christi est salus,
Christi est salus,
Salus tua, Domine, sit semper nobiscum!_"
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