They went off in a very satisfied temper, leaving Martin to wish that he could find congenial work for all his new subjects with an equal ease.
Chapter Fifty-One
AS the boat grounded Claire saw a boy’s form appear vaguely out of the darkness, with an exclamation of reproach for the lateness of the return, which was checked abruptly—no doubt, she thought, as her presence was recognized.
“It’s all right, Chris. Tie her up now, and come on. We’ll talk at the house,” said Burman, as he lifted a small sack from the bottom of the boat and led the way into the darkness, with Claire behind him.
“Careful here,” he warned her, a moment later, as he began to mount some steps in a confronting wall of blackness. “There’s no rail, but you’ll be right if you follow close.”
She could scarcely see the steps, but she realized the advantage of ‘following close’ under such circumstances, and did her best to keep pace with one who climbed an accustomed way. It seemed that the steps, which were of wood, ran up the side of a cliff that rose like a wall, so that she could steady herself with a hand that pressed against it as she climbed.
It was lighter as they gained the top, and followed a narrow path between bushes of prickly gorse—a path that began to descend, after a stile had been crossed, and came to a field where cows bulked dimly, to some farm-buildings, and beyond these to the farmhouse itself.
It was not more than five minutes’ walk, and they were entering the kitchen as Chris joined them after securing the boat.
An oil-lamp was just alight on the table, and Burman turned it up, showing a low, oak-beamed room, with a large and ancient hearth.
“I thought you’d need it tonight, Dad,” said the voice behind them.
“We haven’t had a light yet. We go to bed when it gets dark,” Burman explained. “We save here.”
Claire was conscious that she was being inspected with some curiosity, and that introductions were lacking.
“I expect your son—” she began.
“Daughter,” Burman corrected.
“Your daughter is rather surprised that you’ve brought a visitor.”
“She’s very glad to see one,” said Chris. “I expect you’re hungry. Dad’s usually starved when he comes back.”
Claire explained that they had had a meal not very long before, but Burman dismissed the idea. Chris would fry them some ham and eggs. He sat down heavily in a fireside chair, after inviting Claire to one that was opposite. He had rowed hard, and was feeling exhausted by the physical effort, and by the strain of his fear that they would have been driven out to sea.
“We’ll leave talk till tomorrow,” he said, but whether he spoke to her or to his daughter Claire could not tell. She was content to be silent herself, and to observe the ways of her new acquaintances.
She watched Chris, adroitly active with the frying-pan, and decided that she would still have taken her for a boy, had she not been informed differently.
The girl may have guessed the observation which she was receiving, for she looked round at Claire, and saw her clearly for the first time in the light of the leaping fire. For the lamp only illuminated the table, and made the shadows visible round it.
Meeting Claire’s eyes, she broke into a moment of laughter.
“They’re Sam’s,” she said. “Some he left. I looked awful in them at first, but I’ve filled out since then.”
She still looked slim enough.
“I was just his height, so they don’t do so badly now…. I suppose you’re staying with us tonight, but I don’t know where we shall put you up. I don’t expect Dad thought of that.”
The words might have seemed inhospitable if spoken differently. But they held a light-hearted friendliness which robbed them of ungracious meaning.
Her father, who had been considering the problem for the last few minutes—it was true that he had not thought of it earlier—was relieved to hear it mentioned.
“There’s good straw over the hen-loft,” he ventured with some timidity.
“She can’t sleep there, Dad.”
“She’s slept on worse than straw,” said Claire. “It sounds heavenly.” She yawned as she spoke, for it had been a long day of some incident, and she was conscious of a healthy tiredness.
“We can’t do better for tonight, Chris. Now can we?” her father asked.
Claire thought of a time, not many months ago, when she had slept on a bare patch of land that the seas submerged daily—slept till she was washed by the returning waves, and had to leave her haven for that last swim that had so nearly ended…. She made it clear that the straw would not be unwelcome.
* * * * * * *
She had promised not to leave the loft before Chris should call her, lest the men should be surprised at her presence, but the undertaking was needless, for she was still sleeping when the noise of the pushing-up of the trap-door disturbed senses which had become alert, even in sleep, to the danger of surrounding movement.
She half rose from the depths of the clean straw in which she had buried herself as Chris advanced toward her.
“No, don’t get up. I want to talk to you here. I’ve got ten minutes. I’ve told Ned that I shan’t take him out today unless he does the pig-feeding. I shall have breakfast ready in half an hour. You won’t take that long to get ready. That’s the best of sleeping like that.”
She sat down on the floor, chin in hands, elbows on knees, and regarded Claire attentively. She gave a little sigh of relief.
“I’m not going to ask you anything now. I know Dad wants the first innings. But I want you to promise that you’ll tell the real truth, whatever Dad asks you to say.”
Claire said, “I don’t know what you mean, but that sounds easy to promise.”
“Then you do promise?”
“Yes, I’ll promise that.”
“Then that’s all right. Can you fish?”
“Not particularly. Why?”
“Because I’ll take you out later on, and we can talk then. You’ll have to see Grandmother first…. I mustn’t stay now. Breakfast’s in the kitchen. I’ve told the men you won’t shoot them.”
“How many men are there?”
“Two. Three, if you count Ned.”
“Is that all there are of you?”
“Yes—except Grandmother. The boys wouldn’t stay. That’s why I’ve got Sam’s clothes. They’re better for some things—and they save mine. I don’t know when I shall get any more. We don’t get much for the fish besides tea and tobacco. Dad doesn’t mind—he says it’s safer.… But I mustn’t talk about that yet.… I really must go now.”
She jumped up lightly, and disappeared down the ladder. Then her head appeared again, as she called out, “Come inside in two minutes, and I’ll have some hot water ready. That’s what I came to say. We’re not really savages.”
Claire followed a few minutes later.
Chapter Fifty-Two
After breakfast, before the talk with John Burman which was to explain the purpose for which he had invited her, Claire had sat for more than an hour with his mother, a bedridden woman, obviously of great age, but with her faculties still clear, and had guessed something of the trouble from the anxious questioning which she had encountered, and the allusions to the granddaughter which had recurred continually.
Anyway, she was not kept in doubt when he began. He came to the point immediately.
“Well, ma’am, you’ve seen how we live, and how few we are. You can guess how we’d have fared if we’d not kept to ourselves. But it’s the girl that’s the trouble. No one knows that there’s one here, and I don’t mean that they shall. Not till times change, anyway. She’s quite safe here, though she’s a bit too free with that young lout she takes out to the fishing.”
“But she’s only a child,” said Claire.
“She’s not as young as she looks. She was at college last spring. Came home for Whitsunday, or she wouldn’t be here now. Her brothers cleared, but she chose to stay.… Well, she doesn’t
like being cooped here.… The fishing kept her quiet for a time. That was her idea.… She used to go fishing in Cornwall.… So when I found a sailing-boat that we could patch up—I don’t let them keep any boats on the other side she started fishing with a net we used for the beasts.… But she’s done better than that now.… Well, she promised me she wouldn’t go over to the other side, nor be seen on this—not that that would matter so much in those clothes she’s wearing now, and she’ll keep her promise right enough while it lasts, but she’s saying every day now that it won’t last much longer.
“She knows there’s hundreds on the other side, and things happening, and she feels out of it all. When I tell her how things are, she thinks I just talk to scare her. I thought if she heard the same tale from you she might learn that older folk know best.
“She’s just a child, as you say, and I wouldn’t have her see what’s going on on that side, not if she were as safe as a church.… But you’ll know what to tell her better than I, and maybe she’ll hear reason from you.”
“You want me to tell her just how things have been, neither better nor worse?” asked Claire. “Well, I’ll do that. But I hope they’ll be better soon. You won’t want to keep her here alone if we get them straight? She can’t be here all her life, can she?”
John Burman did not look very pleased at this suggestion. The fact was that, real though his anxiety for his daughter might be, he valued his isolation on other grounds. He might value his daughter most, and he had no doubt of the sincerity of the motive which he expressed, but he also valued the farm which his ancestors had held for four hundred years. True, there had always been the obligation of the annual rent to be paid to the owner at Helford Grange, but it was centuries since there had been any difficulty about discharging that, or any thought of the possibility of being dispossessed from the property that they had held so long.
He answered, doubtfully, “We must talk of that when it’s done. We’d best take things as they are now. I’ll be glad enough to see them changed, but it’s not done yet.”
“I think there’s going to be a change, and I think it’s coming soon,” said Claire confidently. “But there may be trouble first, and I’m sure Chris is best out of it. I’m quite willing to tell her that. You’d better keep Ned ashore. I shan’t want him listening. We’ll have a good talk in the boat.”
“You think you’ll manage?” he said, rather doubtfully. “Ned’s a handy lad, and she’s taught him a good bit.”
He was not quite sure what the nature of this conversation, which required no auditor, was going to be.
“Yes, I can promise that. I’m quite used to boats,” she answered easily. She remembered the worry of the night before, which she had thought so needless.
He looked at her speculatively.
“Did you kill Bellamy, as the talk goes?” he surprised her by asking.
“More or less, I suppose. There wasn’t much choice,” she answered. Would everyone always look upon her, she wondered, as having blood on her hands? If they could only understand how easy—how inevitable—it had all been.
“I shouldn’t like her to get those kind of ideas,” he said vaguely, but Claire knew what he meant.
Chapter Fifty-Three
“You’d better let me steer, if you can manage the sail,” Chris said, “the wind’s right, but it’s only at one spot that we can get her over Low Meadow, even with a good tide.”
Seen by daylight, the little harbour, in which were moored the fleet of boats which Burman had collected, was a gravel-quarry, into which the seas had poured on its lower side, so that the water which it contained was much deeper than that of the flooded fields over which the waves had advanced to fill it—fields which Chris still called by the names which they had borne for a dozen generations in the mouths of her ancestors.
Claire saw the wooden steps which she had climbed in the darkness, an old disused flight to the level of the higher road, which had become the only means of reaching the part of the quarry-floor which remained unflooded.
The fishing-boat was small, but stoutly built, lugger-rigged, such as were common on the Welsh coasts, being hired to visitors for summer sails, and used for fishing at other seasons. It was not difficult to handle, but it drew more water than the one on which Burman was accustomed to visit the mainland, and there was reason for Chris’s sigh of relief as they left the willows behind them, and felt the stronger breeze of the open sea.
The wind blew from the south-west, scarcely enough to roughen the water, which lay to westward, with an unbroken surface sunlit and placid, but northward it showed ridges and knolls of land, too low and small and sea-swept for any human use.
The boat went smoothly onward, keeping to the edge of the shallower water, Chris talking all the time of the flooded land beneath them. “That’s the hundred-acre that we’ve just left. Dad’ll never forgive the sea for taking his two best meadows. You wouldn’t believe the amount of hay we used to get off them every summer. I don’t, anyway. It gets more every time Dad talks about it.
“There used to be three poplars,” she went on, “where it ended. They were in Barton’s field, not ours. I suppose they’re flat now. Sam climbed one, and carved his name on the top, one holiday. He said I daren’t, and I went half-way up, and came down again. I thought I should get blown off when the tree swayed. When he’d gone back to school, I tried again on a quieter day, and got up to where he had. The top looked farther off than it had done from the ground, but it was a good height. I meant to put my name over his, but it seemed mean when he’d gone back, and couldn’t try again, so I put it just level. They’re dirty trees to climb.… Yes, it’s quite safe. There’s quite a channel. It was all low along Bishop’s Lane.… I’ve promised Dad I’ll never go out where they could see us from Cowley Common.… Besides, it’s here I get the best fishing, where the level keeps changing.… I don’t know why, but I know where they come up…. Oh, it’s safe enough. I’ve been aground once or twice, but I’ve got off. Dad doesn’t worry. He thinks a boat’s safer with a sail.… But I wish I’d learnt to swim.… Could you really? I should love to learn.… We’re not going to fish today. We’ll just anchor, and talk.… Have you really had such ripping times? You looked as jolly as a pirate when you came in last night.”
“Some things are jollier to talk about than to live through,” Claire answered. “It’s been a hateful time, and it looks as though there’s more trouble ahead. You’ll never know how lucky you’ve been to be out of it. Fighting isn’t jolly, except in books. It isn’t jolly to get killed. It isn’t jolly to hurt others, and watch them die. And it isn’t jolly to know that your friends may be getting hurt or killed to protect you.”
“I don’t care,” said the girl; “it isn’t jolly to know things are going wrong, and not to be able to do anything to help, or to know what’s happening. You might better be dead than that. You’re just as dead as though you’d got killed, and you feel meaner.”
“I know how you feel, but I think your father was right, all the same. You couldn’t have done any good, and it’s he who might have been in danger, if they’d known you are here. I hope things are going to be better, but if you understood how they have been—”
“How can I, when Dad won’t say a word he can help, except ‘promise not to be seen’? They can’t be killing each other all the time; they’d be dead before now instead of eating a boat-load of fish every time I catch it.”
“I’ll tell you all I’ve seen, and all I’ve heard. You ought to know for yourself.”
“I thought you looked the right sort.… Luff a bit. We can anchor in that pool.… That’s about it.… There’s no hurry about getting back.… There’s some food under the seat.”
So they sat and talked—or rather Claire did—a narrative broken by a battery of eager questions, till she became uneasy at the sight of the waning day, and remarked that it must be time for them to return.
Chris assented easily, but her comment on the information she had
received did not suggest that the desired impression had been very deeply made.
“Golly, what a lark it all is!” she said gaily, “But you don’t know everything. Nor Dad. I’ve got something to show you when we get back, if you’ll promise not to tell.”
“I’m afraid I shall have to go home when we get back. It’s getting late now.”
“You can’t get back tonight. It’s too late already.”
“I’m afraid I must. I promised definitely.”
“Well, you couldn’t. Not till tomorrow. It wouldn’t be possible for Dad to get the boat back. You don’t want him drowned, do you? Besides, I really have something to show you. Something you’d never guess.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
The following morning Burman came with the morning tide, which was not his custom, bringing a note from Claire.
DEAR MARTIN,
If I’m not needed, I may stay a day or two longer, but let me know if I am, and I’ll be back this afternoon. I’ve got something on here rather interesting, and it might possibly be important, but I’ll explain it when I get back. I am quite safe and well. Love to Helen, and, of course, to yourself. Kiss the babies for me.
CLAIRE
Martin sent a brief answer that there was no need for her to return till she wished. Perhaps, he thought, if she stayed away over Thursday it might not be a bad thing. The note was cheerful. He knew that she could take care of herself.… And he was finding already that he had little time to think of anything which was not forced upon him, little for his recovered children, little even for Helen….
Jack had come again, with a surprising amount of neatly tabulated information. He had prepared a census of the known population, with names and descriptions, and had found it to be somewhat larger than had been previously estimated, and even more disproportioned.
Excluding Cooper’s gang, who were regarded as outlaws, and those at Upper Helford, whose numbers were not certainly known, it summarized:
MEN*WOMEN*CHILDREN
In and round the Railway Camp—54/33/5
Larkshill and beyond—40/23/7
Cowley Thorn and the North Coast—98/39/8
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