CHAPTER XIV.
THE BAR PARLOR.
The bar parlor of the Gethin Castle was a small snug apartment in the rear of the house, and therefore exposed to the full fury of the Atlantic winds, which were now roaring without, and enhanced, by their idle menace, the comfort of its closely drawn red curtains, and its ample fire, the gleam of which was cast back from a goodly array of glasses and vessels of burnished pewter. Upon a well-polished oak chest—the pride of the house, for oak was almost as rare at Gethin as among the Esquimaux—stood a mighty punch-bowl; and on the mantel-piece was a grotesque piece of earthen-ware, used for holding tobacco, about which some long clay pipes and peacocks' feathers were artistically arranged. A smell of nutmeg and lemons pervaded this apartment, and pleasantly accorded with its almost tropical temperature; and the contrast it altogether afforded to his own more stately but desolate "private sitting-room," with its disused air and comfortless surroundings, struck Richard very agreeably. On a chintz-covered sofa, in the most retired corner of this parlor, sat Solomon Coe and Harry Trevethick, and it was difficult to say in which of their countenances the most astonishment appeared when the young painter presented himself at the door. Harry's cheeks, which were not pale before, became crimson, though she neither moved nor spoke. But Solomon rose, and, with a frown, seemed to be asking of Trevethick the reason of this unexpected intrusion.
"This is a friend of Mr. Whymper's," said the landlord, setting down the sherry on the table; "and therefore, I am sure, the friend of all of us. That's my daughter Harry, Sir; and that" (and here he grinned) "is Solomon Coe, a very intimate friend of hers—as you may see. We are a family party, in fact, or shall be some day; so, pray, make yourself at home."
"I have seen Mr. Coe before," said Richard, frankly, and shaking that gentleman's unwilling hand; "and, though he took me for a bagman, I bear him no malice on that account."
"A bagman! Lor, Sol, what could you ha' been thinking about?" laughed Trevethick, grimly. "Why, this here gentleman has been stopping at Crompton with the Squire! But you mustn't mind Sol, Sir; his mind ain't free just Well, Harry, lass, why don't you get up and shake hands with the gentleman?"
"I have seen this young lady before, also," explained Richard. "It was she who was good enough to get me the key of the castle, which I have just returned, by-the-by, to your father," he added.
Harry gave him a look which showed him that his second pilgrimage up the rock was not unappreciated.
"Did you see the chapel, Sir, and the tombs?" inquired she.
"I hardly know, indeed," said Richard. "It was the climb itself that I enjoyed the most, and shall never forget as long as I live."
"Oh, but you must go properly over our ruins, young gentleman," said Trevethick, with the air of a proprietor. "My girl here, or Solomon, must show you them to-morrow, for they need a bit of explanation. Sol knows all about them. Don't you, Sol?"
"Oh yes; I know," answered Solomon, doggedly; "but nobody won't go up to the castle to-morrow, I reckon, with this sou'wester a-blowing."
"It is a wild night, indeed," said Richard, putting aside the curtain, and looking out through the shutterless window. "The clouds are driving by at a frightful speed."
"Ay, and it ain't only the clouds," said Trevethick, filling his pipe, and speaking with great gravity; "the Flying Dutchman was seen off the point not two hours ago."
"By old Madge, I suppose?" observed Solomon, derisively.
"Yes, by old Madge," retorted the landlord, sturdily. "She as knew our life-boat was lost last year with all hands long before she drove into Turlock Bay, bottom upward."
"But how was that?" inquired Richard, with interest.
"Well, Sir, it was this way," said Trevethick. "It was a stormy night, though not so bad a one as this is like to be, and the life-boat had gone out to a disabled Indiaman. She had been away three hours or more, when, as I was sitting in this very parlor, in came Madge, looking scared enough. She had been to Turlock on an errand for me. So, 'Sit down,' says I, 'and take a glass, for you look as though the wind had blown your wits away, old woman.' 'Tain't that, John Trevethick,' says she; 'but I'm near frightened to death. I've seen a sight as I shall never forget to my dying day. I have just seen our life-boat men—all nine of 'em. The Lord have mercy on their souls!' 'Well, why not?' says I. 'Why shouldn't you ha' seen 'em? They've got back sooner than we hoped for—that's all.' 'Nay,' said she; 'but I met 'em coming out of Gethin—away from home—the home they will never see again—all wet and white like corpses. They're drowned men, as sure as you stand there, John Trevethick.' And so it turned out, poor fellows!"
"And did you tell any body of this before you knew that they were drowned?" inquired Richard.
"Ay, that's the point," muttered Solomon, approvingly.
"No," said Trevethick. "I didn't believe the old woman, and I thought her story would be very ill taken; so I kept it to myself. But it turned out true for all that; the thing happened just as I say. John Trevethick ain't no liar."
"Of course you are stating what you believe to be the fact," said
Richard, in a conciliating tone; "I don't doubt that."
"Just so; he's told it so often that he really does behave it," said Solomon, laughing. "But what seems curious is, that it is always Madge—purblind old woman, as wants to be thought a witch—as sees these things—drowned sailors, and Flying Dutchmen, and so forth. I should like to know who else has ever had the chance?"
"Lots of folks," said the landlord, doggedly.
"Well, you been here these forty years," said Solomon, "have you seen 'em? And Harry here has been at Gethin all her life, has she seen 'em?"
There was an awkward silence. Harry had turned very pale—in terror, as Richard thought, of the dispute between her father and Solomon becoming serious.
"That's naught to do with it," said Trevethick, sharply. "You're no Gethin man, Solomon, or you wouldn't talk so. Why, didn't Madge describe the very ship as was lost off Castle Rock, the night before we ever set eyes on her? and wasn't it printed in the paper?"
"In the next Saturday's paper: yes," replied Solomon, curtly.
"Nay, I heard the old woman with my own ears," said Harry, gravely. "There had been no wreck when she told me she had seen the schooner. 'The Firefly,' said she, 'will never come nearer home than Gethin Bay: you mark my words.' That was twelve hours, ay, and more, before she struck."
"Forgive me for interrupting," said Richard; "but I don't understand this matter. Is it supposed that a vessel announces her own destruction beforehand?"
"Sometimes," said Trevethick, gravely. "A ship is as well known here—if she belongs to this part of the coast—as a house is known in the Midlands. Well, if she's doomed, Madge—and it ain't only Madge neither—will see her days before she comes to her end. This Firefly, for example, belonged to Polwheel, and had been away for weeks."
"But still she was expected home?" interrogated Richard.
"Ay, that's it," said Solomon, once more nodding approval. "The old woman had that in her mind."
"Why so?" argued Trevethick. "What was the Firefly to her that she should think she saw her drive into the bay, and break to pieces against the rock out yonder? And why should she tell her vision to Harry?"
"That certainly seems strange, indeed," said Richard, "as showing she attached importance to the affair herself. It was a most curious coincidence, to say the least of it. But what is this Flying Dutchman, of which you also spoke? I did not know he ever came so far out of his proper latitude as this."
"He's seen before great storms, however," said Trevethick; "you ask the coast-guard men, and hear what they say. There's many a craft has put out to her from Gethin, and come quite close, so that a man might almost reach her with a boat-hook, and then, all of a sudden, there is nothing to be seen but the big waves."
John Trevethick had more to say to the same effect, to which Richard listened with attentive courtesy; while at the same time he held to the same skeptical view entertained by Solomon. Thus he won the good opinion of both men; and of that of the girl he felt already assured. He scarcely ever addressed himself to Harry, and as much as possible avoided gazing at her. If the idea of his paying any serious attention to her had ever been put into her father's mind, the intelligence that he had been the friend and guest of Carew's had been probably sufficient to dissipate it: the social position which that fact implied seemed to make it out of the question that he should be Harry's suitor. It only remained for him to disabuse Solomon of the same notion. This was at first no easy task; but the stubbornness with which his rival resisted his attempts at conciliation gave way by degrees, and at last vanished. To have been able to make common cause with him upon this question of local superstition was a great point gained. Solomon had a hard head, and prided himself upon his freedom from such weaknesses; and he hailed an ally in a battle-field on which he had contended at odds, five nights out of every seven, for years. Harry, as we have seen, shared her father's sentiments in the matter; and it was a great stroke of policy in Richard to have espoused the other side. He would, of course, have much preferred to agree with her—to have embraced any view which had the attraction of her advocacy; but it now gave him genuine pleasure to find his opposition exciting her to petulance. She was not petulant with Solomon, but left her father to tilt with him after his own fashion.
From the superstitions of the coast they fought their way to those of the mines. Old Trevethick believed in "Knockers" and "Buccas," spirits who indicate the position of good lodes by blows with invisible picks; and, as these had more immediate connection with his own affairs than the nautical phenomena, he clung to his creed with even greater tenacity than before. So fierce was their contention that it was with difficulty that Richard could put in an inquiry as to whence these spirits came who thus interested themselves in the success of human ventures.
"I know nothing of that," said Trevethick, frankly, "any more than I know where that wind comes from that is shaking yonder pane; I only know that it is there."
"Nay, father, but I know," said Harry, with a little blush at her own erudition: "the Buccas are the ghosts of the old Jews who crucified our Lord, and were sent as slaves by the Roman emperor to work the Cornish mines."
"Very like," said Trevethick, approvingly, although probably without any clear conception of the historical picture thus presented to him. "It's the least they could do in the spirit, after having done so much mischief in the flesh."
The contradiction involved in this exemplary remark, combined with the absurdity of repentance taking the form of interest in mining speculations, was almost too much for Richard's sense of humor; but he only nodded with gravity, as became a man who was imbibing information, and inquired further, whether, in addition to these favorers of industry, there were any spirits who worked ill to miners.
"Well, I can't say as there are," said the landlord, with the air of a man who can afford to give a point in an argument; "but there's a many things not of this world that happen underground, leastway in our mines, for Sol there is from the north, and it mayn't be the same in those parts."
"It certainly is not," interrupted Solomon, taking his pipe out of his mouth to intensify the positiveness of his position.
"I say," continued Trevethick, reddening, "that down in Cornwall here there is scarce a mine without its spirit o' some sort. At Wheal Vor, for example, a man and his son were once blown to pieces while blasting; and, nothing being left of them but fragments of flesh, the engine-man put 'em into the furnace with his shovel; and now the pit is full of little black dogs. I've seen one of 'em myself."
Solomon laughed aloud.
Richard was expecting an explosion of wrath. The old man turned toward him quietly, and observed with tender gravity: "And in a certain mine, which Sol and I are both acquainted with, a white rabbit always shows itself before any accident which proves fatal to man. It was seen on the day that Sol's father sacrificed his life for mine." Then he told the story which Richard had already heard from Harry's lips, while Solomon smoked in silence, and Harry looked hard at the fire, as though—as Richard thought—to avoid meeting the glance of her father's hereditary benefactor.
"You are right to remember such a noble deed as long as you live," said
Richard, when the old man had done. "My own life," added he, in a lower
tone, "was once preserved by one whom I shall love and honor as long as
I have breath."
He saw the color glow on the young girl's cheek, and the fire-light shine with a new brilliance in her eyes. Neither Trevethick nor Solomon had caught his observation; at the moment it was made the former was stretching out his great hand to the latter, moved by that memory of twenty years ago, and, perhaps, in token of forgiveness for his recent skepticism.
"Then there's the Dead Hand at Wheal Danes, father," observed Harry, in somewhat hasty resumption of the general subject. "That's as curious as any, and more terrible."
"Wheal Danes!" said Solomon. "Why, how comes that about, when nobody can never have been killed there? It's been disused ever since the Roman time, I thought?"
"Yes, yes; so it has," answered Trevethick, impatiently.
"But I thought you told me about it yourself, father?" persisted Harry. "How you saw the Thing, with a flame at the finger-tops, going up and down where the ladders used to be, and heard voices calling from the pit."
"Not I, wench—not I. That was only what was told me by other folks.—Take another glass of your own sherry before supper, Sir; and after that we will have a bowl of punch."
The hospitalities of Mr. Trevethick were, in fact, profuse, and his manner toward Richard most conciliatory.
"We'll be glad to see you, Sol and I, in our little parlor, whenever you feel in want of company," were his last words at parting for the night. And, "Ay, ay, that's so," had been Solomon's indorsement.
Harry had said nothing; but the tender pressure of his hand, when he wished her good-night, had not gone unreturned, and was an invitation more welcome than words. The events of the day, the conversation of the evening, had given him plenty of matter for reflection; but the touch of those soft fingers was more potent, and the dreams evoked by it swallowed up all soberer thoughts. He sat up for hours that night, picturing to himself a future altogether new to his imagination; and when he went to bed it was not to rest. His excited brain was fed with a nightmare vision. He thought that he was once more with Harry on the castled rock; his lips were pressed to hers; his arm was around her waist, just as they had been; but, instead of his slipping alone over the precipice, they fell together; and as they did so—not without a wild delight mingling with his despair—she was suddenly plucked away from him, and, as he sank headlong down, down, he saw that Solomon Coe had caught her in his arms, and, with her father, was looking down upon him with savage and relentless glee!