‘They say,Thomas, you’re buildin’ faster an’ better than ever did Uncle Coombe.’
‘They say that, do they?’
‘Aye, all Plyn is talkin’ of it, ’cordin’ to what I hear. I’m proud of you, Thomas.’
‘’Tes all for you an’ the boy, Janie. Look at him, bless his heart an’ his dear innocent face.Who knows, but he’ll be workin’ along o’ his father afore many years, won’t you, my son?’
Samuel kicked in his cradle, he would not go to sleep. He began to scream at the top of his voice.
Thomas rose to his feet, and knelt beside the cradle.
‘There, Sammie, there; you mus’n’ cry, my lovely boy.’
He took the clenched hand and kissed it. ‘Hush, lad, hush. You’ll be breakin’ your father’s heart if you take on so.’
Samuel screamed, scarlet in the face.
Janet smiled, and shook her head. She went to the cradle, and turned him over on his front, patting his little behind.
‘What a fuss an’ a pother,’ she scoffed at her husband, ‘just for a bit o’ wind.’
Thomas sighed and hung his head. She knew more about babies than he did.
4
In the summer of the following year Uncle Coombe, who managed to hobble about on two sticks in spite of his rheumatism, was seized with a chill during a sudden spell of cold weather, and in less than twenty-four hours the old man was dead.
The business was now Thomas’s, for better for worse, and it was for him to work hard and make it a real thriving concern. It was a great responsibility laid on the shoulders of a young man, and he but twenty-seven, but Thomas’s nature was dogged and obstinate and he was not going to let himself be beaten.
It seemed that with the new cares upon him, Thomas’s young lighthearted ways, that had indeed always been kept in control by his natural gravity, forsook him for good. He was a man with nothing of the boy left in him. He thought in terms of pounds, shillings, and pence, and though he professed to be working only for his wife and son, it must be admitted that they were not even in his mind when he glanced with pride at the sign above the yard entrance - ‘Thomas Coombe, Boat Builder’. He had already made more of a name for himself in Plyn than ever his uncle had.
Janet had done well for herself when she married him, thought Thomas, and what more could any woman want than the home he had given her, and his care for her, and the boy in the bargain, with more to follow if it pleased God.
So much for Thomas, as he stood in his yard with his tall, upright figure, calling out sharp orders in a lofty tone to the men who worked for him.
Janet had seen the change in Thomas, but she did not blame him for it. To her the ways of a man were no mystery, she accepted them as natural. That his work should now hold a prior claim was just; she would have despised him if he had been content to let the business care for itself in the old slip-shod manner of Uncle Coombe’s day, and he himself had mooned around the house because of her.
In the realities of life she saw straight before her, knowing truth from falsehood and that changes in people could be accounted for and observed, without bemoaning the fact and shutting her eyes to it. She knew that Thomas’s love for her was solid and true, and that he would never look elsewhere than to her face for comfort; but she knew also that the strange exquisite worship - the sweet bewildered passion that sweeps a boy who possesses a woman for the first time had gone - never to return.
Samuel had strengthened the blood-tie between them, but no more than this. They would cherish each other in sickness and in health, walk through life sharing its pleasures and its sorrows, sleep side by side at night in the little room above the porch, grow old and frail, resting at last, not parted, in Lanoc Churchyard - but from the beginning to the end they would have no knowledge of one another.
Janet’s feeling for Samuel ran parallel to her feeling for Thomas. The one was her husband, the other was her child. Samuel depended on her for care and for comfort until he should grow old enough to look after himself. She washed him and dressed him, seated him beside her in his high chair at table and fed him, helped him with his first steps and his first words, gave him all the tenderness and the affection he demanded from her. She gave to both Thomas and Samuel her natural spontaneity of feeling and a great simplicity of heart; but the spirit of Janet was free and unfettered, waiting to rise from its self-enforced seclusion to mingle with intangible things, like the wind, the sea, and the skies, hand in hand with the one for whom she waited. Then she, too, would become part of these things forever, abstract and immortal.
Because of her knowledge that this would come to pass, Janet strove to banish despondency. She hid her loneliness, and always appeared willing and cheerful in the face of others.
It was as if she had two selves; the one of a contented wife and mother, who listened to her husband’s plans and ceaseless talk of his great business, and laughed at her baby’s prattle, and visited her own folk and the neighbours of Plyn, with a real pleasure and enjoyment of the happenings of her daily life; and another self, remote, untrammelled, triumphant, who stood tiptoe on the hills, mist-hidden from the world, and where the light of the sun shone upon her face, splendid and true.
These things were not conscious definitions in Janet’s mind; introspection belonged not to the inhabitants of Plyn in the early days of the nineteenth century and to the twenty-one-year-old wife of a Cornish boat-builder. All she understood was that the peace of God was unknown to her, and that she came nearer to it amongst the wild things in the woods and fields, or on the rocks by the water’s edge, than she did with her own folk in Plyn.
Only glimpses of peace came her way, streaks of clarity at unwakened moments that assured her of its existence and of the certainty that one day she would hold the secret for her own.
So Janet bided her time, and passed the days in the same way as all the wives in Plyn, with baking and cleaning, and mending her man’s clothes and the boy’s too. There was the walk to church of a Sunday and joining in the simple gossip of the neighbours afterwards, with a cup of strong brewed tea, and a slice of saffron or seedy cake and then home to supper, and the boy put in his cot and she and her husband to sleep sound beside one another till morning came.
In the spring of 1833, a fortnight after Samuel’s second birthday, his sister was born.
She was fair and blue-eyed, very much like Samuel, and gave not more trouble than he had done at the same age.
The little girl was christened Mary, and Thomas was nearly as proud of his daughter as he had been of Samuel.
Though Thomas liked to think he had his own way over things, it was generally Janet who had the last say in the matter. She would fling a word at her husband and no more, and he would go off to his work with an uneasy feeling at the back of his mind that she had won. He called it ‘giving in to Janie’, but it was more than that, it was unconscious subservience to a quieter but stronger personality than his own.
He would never have admitted it, but he ‘couldn’t quite make Janet out’, to use his own unspoken epithet. She was his wife and he loved and respected her, there was the home and the two children to bind them together, but her thoughts were a mystery to him. It was funny the way she would go off into silence sometimes, and gaze out of the window towards the sea, with a queer unbelonging look in her eyes.
He would notice this of an evening, when he had been sparing a moment to play with the children after the day’s work, and there would be Janet, with her work on her knee, inside of herself as it were.
‘What are you thinkin’, Janie?’ he would ask her, and she’d either shake her head smiling and make no reply, or come out with some nonsense or other such as - ‘I’d been a man, Thomas, if I had my way.’
It was hardly encouraging to be told this. What could she want with being a man, when there wasn’t a better home in Plyn, nor two sweeter children, nor indeed a more faithful, loving husband than himself?
‘It’s a puzzle you are to me sometimes,
Janie, for sure,’ he would say with a sigh, and then she would change her mood, like the sudden flash of lightning in summer, and come to where he’d be sitting with the children on the floor and maybe join in with them in their play or question him on real sensible matters that a man could answer, as to the work at the yard and so on. And then, perhaps, before he knew it, she’d be off again with some wild foolish saying, like expressing her pity for old Dan Crabb, who’d been caught at last in his smuggling tricks and sent off to Sudmin for trial.
‘But, dear heart, the man is a villain, and an evil double-faced rogue i’ the bargain; deceivin’ His Majesty’s officers, breakin’ the law and raisin’ his hand against honest, peaceable folk.’
‘Aye, Thomas, but it’s a man’s game, for all that.’
‘You call it a man’s game, do ye, a sneakin’ rotten thing like smugglin’. Why, I would’n shake the hand of one o’ them, for fear of contamination.’
‘I reckon I would then, an’ follow him too. It’s often I’ve pictured the life to myself. A pitch-dark night in Lannywhet Cove, an’ no sound but the waves breakin’ on the shore. Then a faint light glimmerin’ through the blackness, and oars creakin’ stealthy-like. There’d come a whistle, faint an’ low, an’ your boots would crunch on the shingle as you crept to meet the boat. There’d be voices murmurin’, while the stuff was unloaded, and then a shout and a cry from the top o’ the hill, and wild confusion on the beach; an’ you’d be runnin’ for your dear life, your hair in the wind, with nigh six revenue officers pantin’ at your heels. That’s livin’, Thomas, and dyin’ all in one - no reckonin’ o’ time.’
She laughed at his shocked, pained face.
‘Will ye chide me for a shameless, brazen woman?’
And he would answer her, solemn as a judge: ‘Why, Janie, how you do run on.’
The two children gazed at their mother; Samuel holding on to his father’s hand, and the baby Mary safe in his arm, the pair were the picture of each other and Thomas all over again. Janet smiled to see them so, the three of them belonging to her, and part of her too, maybe; but the rest of her stole from the warm, cheerful room, and the dear kindly faces, and fled away, away, she knew not whither, beyond the quiet hills and the happy harbour of Plyn, through the seas and the sky - away to the untrodden air, and the nameless stars.
5
Next Christmas snow fell on Plyn. It lay light upon the hills and the fields, like the touch of a white hand protecting the earth. Even in Polmear Valley the stream was frozen, and the dark trees looked scarred and bleak against the sky.Then the sun shone from the blue heaven where there was never a cloud, and the hard frosts went with the melting snow, leaving but a thin pale covering in their place.
Thomas went up to Truan woods and brought down with him great bunches of holly with flaming berries. With them he mingled pieces of ivy that could be spared from the house, and together he and Janet placed bits here and there about the rooms, and Thomas cleverly fashioned a bent branch of holly into a rough cross, and hung it above the porch.
Janet busied herself in the kitchen, baking in preparation for the day of general rejoicing; there was to be company in the afternoon for tea, and she knew they would make short shrift of her cakes and puddings and pasties, and maybe expect a cup of hot broth too before they took their leave and went into the chill night.
Thomas sat by the fire with his Bible on his knee, and the two children clung to Janet’s skirts the while, pleading for a taste of that which smelt so good in the pan on the hob.
‘Now leave your mother alone, there’s good children, do, or it’s never a taste of the puddin’ you’ll get till Christmas Day is come an’ gone,’ she scolded, and their father couldn’t but help to show his powers of authority, and called sharply to Samuel, ‘Now, let your mother be, Sammie, and you and your sister give over plaguin’. Come here to your father, and listen while I reads the good book to ye.’
They obeyed silently, the boy dragging his little sister along the floor, she scarce able to walk. Thomas read aloud in his careful voice the first chapters of St Matthew, but it was not likely that two babies of their age could know what he was about, and they sat at his feet quietly enough playing with a rag doll that was shared by the pair of them.
Janet straightened her back and rested awhile, her hand on her hip. After she had tidied up and laid the supper, and the children put to bed, it would soon be time for finding her bonnet and shawl, and while a kindly neighbour sat in the house to mind things, she and Thomas would set out side by side across the frosty hill to Lanoc Church for the midnight service.
Somehow she had no wish to go tonight. She did not care to listen to the parson’s words, nor to join in singing the hymns with the others, nor even kneel by the altar rail to receive the Blessed Sacrament. She had a mind to slip away in the darkness, and run for the cliff path that overlooked the sea. There’d be a moon over the water, like a path of silver leading away from the black sea to the sky, and she’d be nearer to peace there than on her knees in Lanoc Church. Nearer to something for which there was no name, escaping from the world and losing herself, mingling with things that have no reckoning of time, where there is no today and no tomorrow.
She was thinking, ‘’Tesn’t a churchy worshipful feeling in me tonight, ‘tes a wish to be alone with the moonlight on my face.’
Then she took herself away and began to lay supper on the table, thinking the while of an excuse for staying from the service. It was Thomas himself who gave it to her.
‘There’s shadows ’neath your eyes tonight, Janie, and your face has a pale wearisome look. Are you feelin’ poorly?’
‘I reckon it’s the cookin’ and all that bendin’ over the stove; it’s put a pain across my head an’ my back. Maybe it’s better if I bide in the house, Thomas, and let you go to Lanoc without me.’
‘I hate to be leavin’ you, dear, the first Christmas Eve I’ve done so since we was wed.’
‘’Twill be better so, all the same. I can’t be sick tomorrow, with the folk comin’ an’ all.’
So it was arranged, and when the bells called softly through the air from Lanoc beyond the fields, Thomas went alone, his lantern in his hand, while Janet watched him climb the hill from the shelter of the porch, the holly cross creaking and sighing above her head. The neighbour, whose presence was no longer needed, bade her good night and a happy Christmas, and went her way. Janet was now alone in the house with the two children, who were sleeping soundly in the room above. She prepared some hot broth for her husband when he should return from the church, cold and hungry from his prayers and his walk.
She wrapped her shawl about her shoulders and leant from the window. A faint film of snow still lay upon the ground.
The moon was high in the sky, and there was no sound but the moan of the still water lapping the rocks beyond the harbour. Suddenly she knew that she must go to the cliffs, and follow the call of her heart.
She hid the key of the door in her bodice and left the house. It seemed to her that there were wings to her body that bore her swiftly away from home and the sleeping children, away up the steep, narrow street of Plyn, to the white-frosted hills and the silent sky.
She leant against the Castle ruins with the sea at her feet, and the light of the moon on her face. Then she closed her eyes, and the jumbled thoughts fled from her mind, her tired body seemed to slip away from her, and she was possessed with the strange power and clarity of the moon itself. When she opened her eyes for a moment there was a mist about her, and when it dissolved she saw kneeling beside the cliff with his head bowed in his hands, the figure of a man. She knew that he was filled with wild despair and bitterness, and that his poor lost soul was calling to her for comfort.
She went and knelt beside him, and held his head to her breast, while she stroked his grey hair with her hand.
Then he looked up at her, his wild brown eyes crazy with fear at himself.
And she knew him to belong to the future, when she was de
ad and in her grave, but she recognized him as her own.
‘Hush, my sweet love, hush, and cast away your fear. I’m beside you always, always, an’ there’s none who’ll harm you.’
‘Why didn’t you come before?’ he whispered, holding her close. ‘They’ve been trying to take me away from you, and the whole world is black and filled with devils. There’s no truth, dearest, no path for me to take. You’ll help me, won’t you?’
‘We’ll suffer and love together,’ she told him. ‘Every joy, and sorrow in your mind an’ body is mine too. A path will show itself soon, then the shadows clear away from your spirit.’
‘I’ve heard your whispers often, and hearkened to your blessed words of comfort. We’ve talked with one another too, alone in the silence of the sea, on the decks of the ship that is part of you. Why have you never come before, to hold me like this, and to feel my head beside your heart?’
‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where we come from, nor how the mist was broken for me to get to you; I heard you callin’, and there’s nothing kept me back.’
‘They’ve been long weary days since you went from me, an’ I’ve not heeded your counsel, nor deserved your trust in me,’ he told her. ‘See how I’m old now, with the grey hairs in my head and beard, and you younger than I ever knew you, with your pale girl’s face and your tender unworn hands.’
‘I have no reckoning in my mind of what is past, nor that which is to be,’ said she, ‘but all I know is there’s no space of time here, nor in our world, nor any world hereafter. There be no separation for us, no beginnin’ and no end - we’m cleft together you an’ I, like the stars to the sky.’Then he said: ‘They whisper amongst themselves I’m mad, my love, my reason’s gone and there’s danger in my eyes. I can feel the blackness creepin’ on me, and when it comes for good, I’ll neither see you nor feel you - and there’ll be nothin’ left here but desolation and despair.’