Bonds of Earth, The

by Thompson, E. V.

  Morwenna appeared dismayed, but Alan spoke directly to her. ‘Don’t worry, Morwenna, I’ll prove myself to both you and your pa. I’ll work twice as hard as any other miner so that we’ll have a bit of money put by to get started in a home together. You’ll be proud of me by then, you just wait and see.’

  Warming to the fervent young man, Annie said, ‘I am sure we’ll all be proud of you, and it means Morwenna will have time to get some of the things together that you’re both going to need in a home of your own.’

  Morwenna had been hoping for an early wedding, but Alan had committed himself to marrying her and she was confident he would not go back on his word now. Besides, what he and her mother had said made a lot of sense. Setting up a home meant a lot of work, planning – and money. She would ensure Alan did more than his share to achieve at least two of the requisites. She had her own ideas of the sort of home she wanted. She smiled happily once more.

  The only person in the room who did not share wholeheartedly in wishing the young couple well for their future together was Nessa. While she would do nothing to upset her sister’s plans she had not entirely forgiven her duplicity in coming between Goran and herself.

  Piran was aware of his middle daughter’s lack of enthusiasm for Morwenna’s betrothal and, after the meal, when the pots and plates had been cleared away and Morwenna and Alan were seated outside on a bench talking together, he suggested that Nessa walk with him to the mine, making the excuse he would like her to bring one of the mine’s account books back to the cottage with her to check his figures.

  As they walked side-by-side, he said, ‘Are you happy that Morwenna and Alan are to be married?’

  ‘It’s what Morwenna’s always wanted.’ Nessa replied, ambiguously.

  ‘It’s going to feel strange having a daughter marry and leave the home, but I suppose it’s something your ma and me will need to get used to. You’ll no doubt be next.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll need to worry about me getting married for a while, if at all, but you know Uncle Cedric has asked if I’d like to travel to London to live with him and Aunt Joan? He’s opened his own school and would like me to teach the girls there. He thinks I would be a good teacher with his tuition.’

  ‘Yes, your ma told me. If that’s what you would really like to do we wouldn’t stand in your way – but I think Goran would be very disappointed if you were to leave.’

  ‘I doubt it, we haven’t seen each other for a long time.’

  ‘Would that be because Morwenna gave everyone the impression she was seeing him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Nessa could have said a great deal more on the subject but she chose to remain silent.

  ‘Goran wasn’t aware of any of that, you know. I think he’s very hurt that you have never gone to Elworthy to congratulate him on taking over the farm.’

  When Nessa made no reply, Piran added, ‘Do you know that when he learned you had given your bracelet to Morwenna in exchange for an dictionary for him he bought you a bracelet to replace it?’

  Startled, Nessa said, ‘Are you sure, he’s never brought it up here for me?’

  ‘He told me himself but asked me to keep it a secret. He bought it when he and Jenken went to a fair in Liskeard to buy something that was needed for the farm. I think he’s probably been waiting for the right moment to give it to you, but with all that’s been going on and the hours he’s been putting in on the farm I doubt whether he’s had a moment to spare. I don’t think that helping to rescue me and the other miners helped. I spoke to Albert a day or two ago and he says he’s never known anyone work as hard as Goran; he’s determined to make his farm a success.’

  ‘I didn’t know, Pa. I’ll get down to the farm and give him my belated congratulations as soon as I can now that Morwenna’s settled with Alan and there’s no question of her being involved with Goran.’

  Chapter 35

  HORACE RUNDLE ARRIVED at Elworthy Farm a few days after the excitement caused by Jacob Barlow and his disorderly miners had died down, those taken into custody having been remanded to appear at the next assizes.

  The ploughman arrived with his two horses which were pulling a heavy wagon containing a plough, harrow and a number of other farming implements. It heralded a very busy time for Goran and Jenken when the general work around the farm would not cease, animals needed to be fed, their houses cleaned and general welfare attended to, but Horace would only be at Elworthy for a few days, lodging in the farmhouse.

  During his stay Goran would need to learn at least the rudiments of preparing land to take crops – initially root vegetables. Horace had suggested potatoes, turnips and swedes in order to clean the ground before sowing wheat, the crop Goran had been urging Agnes to grow for almost as long as he had been working for her.

  Ploughing was hard work for both man and horses, but it was Jenken who was particularly eager to try his hand at controlling the plough. He swiftly learned he did not yet possess sufficient strength needed for the task and for the time being would have to be content to watch and listen to what was being explained. However, he was allowed to lead the horses which were so experienced in their task that once the first furrow had been cut they needed little or no guiding.

  On the second day of ploughing instruction, Horace received an unexpected visitor in the form of his great-niece, Victoria. A dark-haired girl who had just celebrated her sixteenth birthday, she walked to the farm from her home to find Horace and thank him for the silver bracelet he had bought for her at the fair, leaving it with her mother to be presented to her on her birthday.

  She was taken to the field by Harriet Bolitho who brought along her two youngest boys to see their big brother working. After hugging and thanking her great-uncle, Victoria left Horace introducing Harriet and the two young boys to the large but patient and gentle horses and made her way to where Goran was cleaning off the ploughshare.

  Waiting until he looked up she said, ‘Hello, I’m Victoria, Horace’s great-niece. You must be Goran, he’s talked a lot about you.’

  ‘He’s spoken to me about you, too. I believe you’ve just had a birthday?’ Victoria was a very pretty girl and Goran felt unusually tongue-tied in her presence.

  ‘That’s right and Uncle Horace remembered it. That’s why I came here today, to thank him for buying me this lovely bracelet and leaving it with my mother for me.’ She held out her wrist to show him the bracelet, adding, ‘It’s a very expensive present and must have cost him a lot of money.’

  Goran was about to say that he was present when the bracelet was bought, but changed his mind hurriedly. He did not know whether Horace had exaggerated the value of the bracelet, or whether the girl had put her own value upon it. Instead, he said, ‘It’s very nice, he must think a lot of you.’

  Pleased to have impressed him, Victoria removed the present from her wrist and handed it to Goran, saying, ‘You look here inside, it says it’s real silver – and that’s worth a lot of money.’

  ‘It is indeed.’

  Taking the bangle from her, Goran made much of examining it properly before slipping it back on her wrist as she extended her arm to him.

  When it was in place she gripped his hand and, smiling up at him coquettishly, said, ‘Thank you.’

  It was blatant flirting and Goran was amused – but it did not amuse everyone who witnessed it.

  No one had noticed the arrival of Nessa Pyne on the scene. Hidden behind a tall, summer-luxuriant hedgerow until she arrived at the field gate, she had arrived in time to see Goran slip a bracelet on to the wrist of a very pretty young girl who appeared to be gazing up at him adoringly.

  Suddenly, the volume of poetry she was carrying as a gift for Goran felt unbearably heavy. Turning away, she hurried back the way she had come, heading for the high moor but avoiding Elworthy Farm, from where Albert Bolitho had given her directions to the field where Goran was ploughing.

  Arriving on open moorland, out of sight of the farm, she found she was trembling
and knew she could not go home immediately. She first needed to gain control of herself and put her scrambled thoughts into some semblance of order.

  When Piran returned home from the mine that evening he was greeted by his wife who said, ‘It seems it’s not just one daughter we are about to lose, Piran, but two!’

  Taken by surprise, Piran said ‘Two? Why, has Nessa come to her senses and made it up with Goran … he hasn’t proposed to her? She’s still too young to be thinking of marriage, but I’m very pleased….’

  He stopped when Annie rested a hand on his arm, bringing his happy chatter to a halt.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s nothing like that. In fact, it would appear that any chance of a romance between the two of them is over. Nessa has decided to take up Cedric’s offer and go to London to teach in his school. It’s something she’s always said she wanted, you know that.’

  ‘It was what she wanted, but that was before she met Goran.’

  ‘I know, but things haven’t been going well between the two of them lately. I think she went to the farm today with the intention of making it up with him, but she must have had second thoughts about what it was she really wanted. When she came home she sat straight down and wrote a letter to Cedric accepting his offer.’

  ‘Where is she now, I’ll speak to her about it?’

  Annie shook her head ruefully, ‘It would make no difference, Piran. You know what Nessa is like when she’s made up her mind about something. Besides, as soon as she’d written the letter she went out to send it off in the mail. Before she left she said she’d like you to make arrangements for her to travel to Falmouth where she’ll stay with my sister until a respectable family can be found going by sea to London with whom she can travel. She says she wants to do it right away, before Cedric finds someone else to teach in his school.’

  ‘What do you think about it, Annie?’ Piran asked, unhappily.

  ‘I think I feel much the same as you do. I was hoping she might marry Goran one day, but if that’s not going to happen, we must let her go to London. After all, she has always said it’s what she wants and she’s worked hard at her schooling in order to achieve it. I don’t think we can stop her now.’

  Piran thought about it for a long time before nodding his head. ‘No, you’re quite right, Annie and, as you say, it’s what she’s always told us she wanted to do. The trouble is we’re both going to miss her so much – and so too will Jennifer, but I suppose what will be, will be.’

  Chapter 36

  1839

  IT WAS EIGHTEEN months since Nessa had left Cornwall to take up a teaching post in her uncle’s London school and, although England’s capital city was an exciting place to be, it had taken her a long time to adapt to city life.

  During the first few months she had assisted an elderly and stern woman teacher in instructing the few girls who attended the school and who were taught separately from the boys. Although never having married herself, the teacher firmly believed that the most important thing for her pupils to learn was how to become a good wife and mother and master social skills in order to attract a suitable man to elevate them to this highly desirable state.

  For Nessa, to whom learning had much wider implications, such strictures were frustrating, especially when she came across the occasional girl whose views on education matched her own and who possessed a thirst for knowledge that extended beyond a home, a husband and a family.

  It had been thought that the elderly teacher was ailing and that Nessa would take over from her soon after arriving in London but she seemed determined to continue teaching until senility deprived her of the ability to communicate with her young pupils. Because of her past loyalty, Cedric Couch was reluctant to retire her.

  Aware of Nessa’s increasing frustration, in January of 1839, her uncle called her to his study in the large house that was both school and home. Inviting her to take a seat across the desk from him he leaned back in his chair and said, ‘I understand from Miss Brooks that you are not entirely happy with the breadth of the teaching given to our young ladies?’

  Miss Brooks had been teaching at Cedric Couch’s school since it first opened and enjoyed the full confidence of its headmaster. Because of this, Nessa made a cautious reply. ‘There’s nothing wrong with Miss Brooks’s teaching methods for the majority of the girls, but she has little time for the occasional girl who is far more intelligent than the average pupil and who feels a need to learn more than how to become a good housewife.’

  ‘I am inclined to agree with you, Nessa, and it may surprise you to know that when my school first opened Miss Brooks sat where you are seated now and made a similar complaint to me.’

  The statement took Nessa by surprise, but her uncle was still talking. ‘… I sympathized with her then, as I do with you now. Unfortunately it is the parents who pay their daughters’ fees – sometimes with considerable reluctance. They feel education is advantageous only to their sons and we are forced to teach what is wanted by them.’

  Nessa’s inclination was to challenge her uncle’s explanation, but she knew he was right. She had offered special tuition for one particularly bright girl who showed great promise in mathematics, only to have her mother threaten to remove her daughter from the school if Nessa continued to put ideas unbecoming of a young lady into her daughter’s head.

  ‘I was unaware Miss Brooks shared my feelings,’ Nessa confessed, ‘but it doesn’t change anything. I enjoy teaching, but so much of what I want to teach is impossible when all the parents want is for their daughters to marry men who expect little more from their wives than to behave as well-bred servants. So much of my work and the girls’ intelligence is being wasted!’

  ‘I have known for some time how you feel and am aware it’s because you are a gifted and dedicated teacher. You care about what you are doing. For such a teacher there can be nothing more soul-destroying than feeling that his, or her, work is not being appreciated – but I can assure you it is not going unnoticed and it is not you who are at fault.’

  Wondering why her uncle had called her to his study to express support for her, while at the same time declaring there was nothing that could be done to change their method of teaching, Nessa asked, ‘Are you trying to tell me in a kind way that you feel I’m not suitable to teach in your school, Uncle?’

  ‘Of course not, you are eminently suitable to teach anywhere. No, I asked you here because I have some extra duties in mind that I feel you might find rather more stimulating. I personally believe it to be most worthwhile but it poses a challenge that not all teachers are either willing or capable of accepting. I believe you are.’

  Intrigued, Nessa waited for her uncle to explain further.

  Leaning forward in his chair, he asked, ‘You have heard of what have become known as “ragged schools”?’

  Nessa nodded. Ragged schools were free schools set up by philanthropic or religious bodies in the most deprived areas of British cities to provide education of widely differing standards to children who themselves had equally diverse views on what, if anything, they expected from life.

  ‘Good. I have a friend, Father Michael Jaye, a fellow Cornishman, who is vicar of one of the most deprived parishes in the whole of London. He has asked me if I will give my support to a school he has opened there. He recently moved premises to an empty furniture workshop in order to expand the school. When he opened his first school, critics said he would never have any pupils, yet children have been falling over themselves to enrol and he has needed to expand, but is in desperate need of more teachers. Mind you, the fact that he provides soup and bread once a day for all his pupils and wherever possible cleans them up and provides them with second-hand clothing may have something to do with the school’s popularity, but he is highly gratified at what he feels is a most unexpected success. In general it’s rather simple teaching – reading, writing and basic arithmetic, but he has said to me that if someone showed exceptional talent he would do all within his power to help them go further. I
t is an enormous challenge, Father Michael says so himself, but without something to lift them out of their squalor he fears the only way out is either prison or the gallows … a path taken by a great many who reside in the Old Nichol. However, given a basic education he is hoping he might be able to find sponsors to send them to countries like America or Canada in order to make a fresh start.’

  Aware of Nessa’s uncertainty about teaching basic skills in such an environment, Cedric Couch said, ‘Think about it overnight, Nessa. I promised Father Michael I would go to the Old Nichol tomorrow and see the school for myself. Come with me and we will see if there is anything we might do to help him.’

  Leaving the wide streets flanked by tall well-kept houses far behind, the next day Nessa and her uncle, riding in a hackney-carriage, entered a part of London she had not seen before and could never have envisaged in her worst nightmare. There were no smart carriages drawn by well-groomed horses on the narrow streets here. Instead, most wheeled vehicles seemed to be handcarts of all descriptions and condition, being pushed or pulled by men, women or children whose dress was as varied as the carts.

  The houses were small and dingy, seeming to lean in upon each other and in various states of disrepair. The people who occupied the streets and houses were different too. In the area of London around Kensington, where her uncle had his home and school, there were ill-dressed men, women and children, but they were few and far between. Here there were people who were actually clothed in what could only be described as ‘rags’.