CHAPTER III
FIRST FURROW
Youth is susceptible to that which it awakes, and Ishmael sallied out early next morning in a mood to match the month as it then shone to greet him. The sun had not long cleared the east, and the globes of dew glimmered on leaf and twig and darkened his boots as he crossed the ill-kept lawn in front of the house. He promised himself it should be rolled and mown and have flower-beds around it, and that a wind-break of firs should be planted along the low granite wall which was all that divided it from the bare moor. He went to the little gate and, leaning his back against it, looked long at the house as though for the first time. He noted the solid simple lines of its long front and the beauty of its heavy mullions and the stone corbels beneath the roof. The portico over the door had pillars of square rough-hewn granite, a whole room was built out over it, with a wide-silled window, beneath which the Ruan arms were carved on a granite shield. That door should have a drive leading up and widening before it; at present what cart-track there was went meekly along the side of the low wall into the farmyard. Those two big velvet-dark yews that stood sentinel either side of the porch would look splendid when clipped taut and square. So he planned, and then, hearing the voice of John-James calling to the cows, he remembered that the utilitarian side of the place must come first; and he went up the path, through the panelled corridor that led through the house, into the court, passed under the arch at the opposite side, and so into the farmyard. There the cows were gathering for the milking, swinging slowly into the yard while John-James held open the gate from the field. They were good cows, but Ishmael glanced at them critically. Cows were to be his chief concern, for the home farm was not large enough to yield much in the way of crops for sale—nearly all would be needed for the winter consumption of his own beasts. Most of the corn sown was the dredge-corn, a mingling of barley and oats sown together and ground together, which was used for cattle, and the roots and hay were all needed also. Even then there would have to be special foods bought, Ishmael decided, for he believed in farmyard manure, and to obtain that at its best the cattle had to be well and carefully fed. These cows he now saw were good enough of their kind, but he wished to start Guernseys or Jerseys, or more probably a cross-breed of the two, as being fitter for the bare country than pure-bred animals.
John-James tramped in behind the last cow and closed the gate. He had made no remark at sight of Ishmael, and all he now said was:
"Them are good cows. Good as any you'll get up-country I reckon."
"They look all right for their kind," admitted Ishmael.
"Finest in the place. Not like Johnny Angwin's beasts—high in the bone and low in the flesh. He'm a soft kind o' chap, sure 'nough, and sick to his heart at having to take to farming toall. He was in a book-shop to Truro, but had to come home when his brother died. T'other day he come to I and he says, 'Oh, John-James Beggoe, my dear, what shall I do? I forgot I did ought to arrange my cows all in steps, so to speak, so that they shouldn't all calve to wance, and now they'll all be a doen of it and us won't get no milk….'" John-James broke off with a chuckle, then resumed with: "Seen the calves yet?"
"No. I suppose they've been turned out?"
"Not yet. I'll wait till the middle of the month before turnen out.
Eight heifers and three bulls there be."
"Well, I'll see what they look like. Morning, Katie!"
Katie Jacka, who had come out to the milking, responded eagerly to the new master and planked down stool and pails. Ishmael and John-James stood watching for a few minutes.
"That there cow is drawin' to calf, and I'm jealous of her," announced John-James lugubriously; "she'm too fat, and I fear she'll get bruised, but though I turned her into the poorest field in the place she won't go no thinner. She'm never gone dry, and they belongs to be one month dry."
"I want to start Jerseys," said Ishmael boldly; "I'm sure the better quality of the milk will more than make up for the greater cost of the stock."
"Jerseys! … well," said John-James, startled, "that's a new idea, surely. I don't knaw where 'ee'd get a bull to serve en. Hav'ee thought on that?"
"I don't see why I shouldn't have a bull myself. I could advertise it for service all round the country, if it comes to that."
John-James muttered something to the effect that he'd enough to do as it was, but Katie, one ear pressed against a cow, one pricked for the conversation, chimed in.
"There's a Jersey bull to the geart farm to Grey Caunce, maister," she told Ishmael, "and I've heard tell there's nothen but Jerseys there, and the butter's the best in the country and fetches most to market. Many's the time I've said I could make as good if I'd only got cream hangin' in riches like them has got."
"You must come up the Fair with me next time, John-James," suggested
Ishmael, "and then we'll see. Come and show me the calves now…."
The two went off to the cowsheds and for the next hour were examining livestock, from the calves down to the bees—rather a rarity in those parts and the joy of John-James, who had the bee-gift, and was never stung, being able to move a swarm in his bare hands unscathed. Afterwards they walked over part of the farmlands, and Ishmael's heart began to beat high with pride and joy. There is nothing more romantic than land—its wilfulness, its possibilities, its endless intimacies. Ishmael's land was to prove an exacting mistress, unlike the rich, sleek home counties, which only have to be stroked to smile and yield. On these granite heights the soil needed breaking every three years; if a field did very well it might be left four, but never longer. The deep ploughing of the midlands was impossible—the hard subsoil lay too close to the surface, and little wheat was sown as the shallow soil would not bear it, and what was sown never grew to be like the heavy eight-sided corn of softer counties. Yet Ishmael loved his land already and was to love it more and more, its very hardness and fighting of him helping to make its charm.
Neither his early experiences of farm life nor his opportunities of more scientific study had been wasted on Ishmael, and he looked over pasture and arable now with an eye knowing enough, if not quite as much so as he tried to make it appear to John-James. He found the land in good condition, the early-sown grain showing clear green blades and the grass rich enough, while even in the more neglected pastures towards the sea where the thistles had not been refused a foothold they had been kept cut down to prevent seeding. John-James was conscientious, though handicapped by a rigid conservatism and lack of proper help. For the emigration had been very heavy of late years from that part of the world, to the goldfields both of Australia and California. Times were bad, though not as bad as in the North, where thousands of cotton operatives were literally starving owing to the stoppage of the cotton supplies through the American Civil War. The papers were full for months, amid the greater excitement of Princess Alexandra's wedding, of paragraphs headed "The Distress in the North," that had become as much a regular feature as the weather reports or the society gossip. The consequent uneasiness made itself felt even in Cornwall, and perhaps the Anti-Slavery meetings held in Penzance were not entirely disinterested. Also Botallack mine was then in full work and swallowing young men, though for poor enough wage. One way and another, managing the farm was none too easy, and so John-James had found. He looked with as much interest as his stolid mind could compass to the return of Ishmael, with the power of the purse-strings and the expenses of his own education at an end, to work something of a miracle at Cloom. But he had not imagined the miracle to take the form of Jersey cows, and he began to wonder dolefully what newfangled notions about machinery and manure might not also be hatching in the young owner's brain. They mounted in silence the steepest slope of the rolling land and came to a stone hedge on which John-James leant, Ishmael beside him.
They stood in silence, John-James because he hardly ever spoke unless spoken to, and Ishmael because over his spirit rushed a flood of memory that for an aching moment overwhelmed him. This was the field where the Neck had been cried, when, as a little boy, he had first caught at the flying skirts of happiness, first realised the sharpness of the actual instant—and thought it surely could never, so vivid and insistent was it, cease to be…. Now, as then, his eyes sought the line of twisted hedge, and he saw it, looking so much the same, yet set with leaf and blossom so many seasons away from that August evening, even as he was himself from the child who had thought to arrest Time. Yet, realising that, he again tried to snatch at the present, though with the difference that now he told himself that anyway there was such a long, long time before him to be young in that it wouldn't ever pass….
"That's for ploughing now," announced John-James suddenly. "For the mang'ls. 'Tes as good land as any in the place, and a waste to hav'en grass, so it is. Maybe you'd like to come and have a try at it, if you'm not gwain to be above turnen your own hand to work?"
Ishmael had a moment's qualm. What ploughing he had done had been but slight, and he was not free from an uneasy impression that John-James was laying a trap for him into which he would not be sorry to see him fall. It would be no better to put it off, for he could imagine the comments that would fly, so he nodded his head.
"We'll set to work this morning on it," he agreed lightly; "I suppose you're still using wooden ploughs down here?"
"Wooden ploughs …? And what'd 'ee have ploughs made of, I should like to knaw? Gold, like what Arch'laus has in Australy?"
"Iron. All modern ploughs are made of iron, and so are rollers."
"Iron … iron rollers. What's wrong weth a geart granite roller, lad?"
"Well, it's very cumbersome, isn't it? It's three men's work to cart it from one place to another, for one thing. Anyway, I've brought down an iron plough and a chain-harrow…."
Over John-James's face came a gleam of interest. "A chain-harrow?" he repeated; "I've long wanted one o' they. Us allus has to take the yard-gate off its hinges and weave furze in and out of it and drag that over the ground."
"Well, now you've got a real chain-harrow and won't have to do that any more. I tell you what it is, John-James, I want you and me between us to make this the finest farm in the country; I don't want Archelaus to sneer at us when he comes home and say how much better he could have run it. Of course, I can't do it without you; but if you'll only help…."
John-James held silence for a space. Then he said:
"I've allus said as how us wanted carts, 'stead of carr'n all our furze and the butter and everything as goes in or out upon they harses and lil' dunkies. And gates … if us could have a few more gates to the place 'stead of thrawing the hedges up and down all our days…. It'll cost money, but what you do put into the land you get out of the land. Same as weth cows."
It was a long speech for John-James, and he paused with his countenance suffused a deep purplish hue. Ishmael seized his hand and wrung it with a sudden young gust of enthusiasm that he could not control.
"You'll help. I know you will. Oh, we'll pull the old place up yet.
We'll make such a thing of it…."
But John-James had withdrawn his hand limply. "Go maken it so fine it'll be a pretty place for gentry, s'pose," he said; "be shamed to see I about the place then, I reckon."
Ishmael laughed joyously at him. "Don't be an ass, John-James," he said; and it was the first time he had been able to meet any little speech of the kind without strain. John-James stood at ease, and slowly some faint trace of a change of expression appeared on his immobile features.
"I reckon thee'll do, lad," was all he said; but Ishmael felt his heart give an upleap of triumph; he knew he had made his first conquest. As he and John-James went into breakfast side by side he felt quite equal to meeting Annie unperturbed. But he was not to be called on to make trial of his stoicism, as Annie hardly spoke to him; but with a thrill of emancipation he realised that his mother's tongue no longer held terror for him—merely the annoyance of a persistent fly.
As long as he lived Ishmael never forgot the exquisite moment when he broke his first furrow on his own land. Harvest gathered is a wonder and a release from strain; sowing and tending of seed and young crops is sweet, but ploughing holds more of romance than all the rest. It is the beginning, the fresh essay with soil that has become once more savage; it is the earliest essential of man's conquest of Nature; his taming of her from a wild mistress to a fruitful wife.
The day shone with the clear pearliness of early June: high in air the big cumulus clouds rode golden-white, trailing their shadows over the dappled land beneath; the branches of hawthorn gleamed silvery amidst the pearly blossom; a wine-pale sunlight washed with iridescence sky and earth. In the great sloping field, which held six days' hard ploughing between its stone ramparts, the granite monolith stood four-square to all the winds that blew, defying ploughs and weathers. The two brown horses waited by the highest hedge, the plough, that always looks so toy-like and is so stubborn, quiescent behind them, a boy ready at their heads, switch in hand. With a freshness of emotion never quite to be recaptured, Ishmael gathered up the rope reins and took the handles of the plough in his grip. The impact of the blade against the soil when the straining horses had given the first jerk up the slope was as some keen exquisite mating of his innermost being with the substance of the earth … a joy almost sensual, so strong was the pleasure of the actual physical contact as yielding soil and fine hard edge met—his hands sensitively aware of the texture of that meeting through the iron frame of the plough. Up and down the field, over its humped back, widening the strip of brown between him and the hedge, always with pleasure at sight of that long rich fold of earth turning over perpetually under the sideways impact of the blade, turning over till the green turf was hidden by the brown of the under soil….
The field was not an easy one for the horses by reason of its curve; the off horse, on the vore, as the part already ploughed is called, dug his great hoofs firmly in the stiff soil, but the near horse slipped perpetually on the short turf. Every now and then the plough had to be stopped while great hunks of granite were hacked out of the earth; then, with loud cries of encouragement and a cut of the whip, the horses were urged on again, the flash of their shoes gleaming rhythmically up and down, up and down, as Ishmael guided the plough behind them. His hands gripped the handles, the plough clanked, the horses struggled, and the sound of their hoofs made a dull thud-thud upon the earth; the wind blew gratefully on his moist brow and on the flanks of the animals; at every turn the shouts of his voice as he stopped the horses and reversed the clanking plough went up through the quiet world.
The gulls sat, dazzlingly white, motionless as little headstones, along the rim where green land met brown vore, then rose and shrieked and swooped as the clatter began again, dipping in the wake of the new furrow. And the sun went overhead, making sweating steeds and sweating man and bright wheels and brighter blade of the plough glisten like sculptured bronze, while all the time the green was being more and more swamped, furrow after furrow, by the encroaching brown.
That night Ishmael was sore and stiff, but happy, with a deep physical content. The next day and the next and on till the last furrow lay turned along the lower hedge he kept himself at it doggedly, in spite of aching muscles, driven by a vague feeling that this was his initiation, his test of knighthood, and that to fail at it, to leave it to other hands, would augur ill. When, on the sixth night, he washed the sweat and earth from off his healthily tired body he felt life could hold nothing sweeter than what it had yielded him in these six days. He had taken seizen of his land.