Chapter I.
"It's all for the best, you may depend upon it," said Frank Trevelyan, addressing his companion, Vernon Wycherley, as those two young men were pursuing a beaten track across one of those wild wastes that form so prevalent a feature in most of the mining districts of Cornwall.
"All for the best, indeed?" repeated Vernon interrogatively. "Can it be all for the best to have a whole batch of poems I've been racking my brains about for the last year and a half—and which even you yourself, hard as you are to please, admitted were worthy of praise—to have all these, not only rejected by every publisher I offered them to, but to be actually returned with a recommendation to give up all idea of ever offering them to public notice?"
"But which convinces me still more that matters have turned out for the best; and that if your poetical effusions had been published, they would have brought you far more ridicule than praise," thought Frank. But at the same time, not wishing to hurt his companion's feelings, he said—"Yet, probably, when you have again revised the manuscripts, and bestowed some of your masterly finishing touches here and there, you will, after all, congratulate yourself upon the source of your present disappointment."
"That's an impossibility—an utter impossibility," returned Vernon Wycherley—"for were I to look through them a hundred times, I should never alter a word.——But stay—Look! look!—what is that I see? Two ladies on horseback, I declare! who could have anticipated meeting with such an occurrence in so outlandish a place?"
The place was by no means undeserving of the remark, being devoid of any kind of vegetation, except some straggling heath and a few patches of stunted gorse, which here and there sprung up amidst the rugged spar-stones that, intermixed with rude crags of granite, were thickly scattered over this wide waste, which, throughout its vast extent, afforded as perfect a picture of sterility as can be well conceived. With this brief outline of the scenery, we must next attempt to describe the parties who were wandering over it.
Frank Trevelyan was about two-and-twenty. In figure he was rather below the middle height, and being slightly made and with the proportions of a tall man, he looked much less than he actually was. His features were not handsome, but he possessed what in a man is far more important—a highly intelligent and intellectual cast of countenance. He wore his hair, which was light and curly, cut very close, and incipient whiskers adorned the outline of his lower jaw. He was dressed in a gray tweed wrapper, with trousers of the Brougham pattern, and he sported a hat—black, but whether beaver or gossamer we are uninformed—high in the crown, but very narrow in the brim, bearing altogether no very remote resemblance to an inverted flower-pot.
His companion was about the same age, but the latter had made so much better use of his growing years, as to have shot up to something more than six feet in height; yet his figure, though slender, exhibited no appearance of weakness. His features were passably good—the nose perhaps rather too projecting; but his teeth were unexceptionable. He had a clear complexion, with a good fresh colour in his cheeks, which were still covered with the down of youth, but without imparting the slightest appearance of effeminacy. A foraging-cap of gray woven horse-hair, with a preposterous shade projecting out in front, covered his head; a loose blouse enveloped the upper, whilst checkered inexpressibles enclosed the lower man. Unlike his companion, he wore his hair, which was rather dark, very long, both at the sides and behind; and the rudiments of mustaches were perceptible upon his upper lip; but whether they were to be allowed to attain a more luxuriant maturity, or their brief existence was to be prematurely cut short by the destroying razor, was, at the time we speak of, involved in doubt, that being a subject which, though it engrossed much of his thoughts, the proprietor had hitherto been unable to make up his mind upon. Each of our two heroes bore a light kind of knapsack upon his back; their general appearance marked them to be gentlemen, whilst their attire and accoutrements denoted they were pursuing a pedestrian tour.
But softly! the ladies approach. See how elegantly they canter their steeds over the only smooth piece of turf our travellers had met with throughout the whole extent of gloomy commons they had that morning traversed.
"Ay, that's right! Pull up in time, my lovely ones, ere you get amongst the rascally mole-hills; and then you'll not only ride the safer, but afford us at the same time a chance of obtaining a view of your pretty faces," thought friend Frank; whilst similar thoughts, although perhaps arranged in more elegant terms, were passing through the mind of his companion. But if the curiosity of the two pedestrians was great, their admiration proved far greater when the objects which excited those feelings, on a nearer approach, proved to be two as lovely young women as the most fastidious admirer of beauty could wish to gaze upon. One of them, indeed, displayed such matchless charms to the youthful poet's eyes, as at the very first glance to form to his excited fancy the beau-ideal of perfect loveliness.
"What an angel!" he mentally exclaimed; "upon such a form I could continue to gaze enraptured for"——
How long he never said, for ere he had time to give utterance to the thought, he stumbled over one of the surrounding mole-hills, and staggering forward several paces with extended arms, he ultimately fell prostrate on the ground, close by the side of the innocent yet moving cause of his misadventure, and with such force, as to bury the whole of his countenance in the soft heavings of a similar hillock to the one he had so inadvertently tripped over.
Luckily for him, the place his physiognomy alighted upon was of so soft and yielding a nature, that though he stamped a perfect model of his features in the clay, the features themselves were unimpaired, otherwise than by the earthy colouring communicated to them by so pressing a contact, which perfectly satisfied the fair equestrians (who had the kindness to pull up and express their hopes that he was not seriously hurt) that the actual damage sustained was of a very superficial nature.
"And I suppose you intend to say that this is all for the best?" observed Vernon in rather a rueful tone, as, the ladies having ridden on, he was attempting to rub off the dirt from his face with his pocket handkerchief—the first wipe of which was sufficient to show him how much the effects of his tumble had changed the natural hue of his complexion.
"To be sure I do," answered Frank "and any man less unreasonable than yourself would say so too."
"What! say it was all for the best for him, like an awkward booby, to fall sprawling in the dirt, thereby making himself a laughing-stock to that beautiful, angelic creature? Oh! only look, my dear Frank, only look—see her—see both of them! Why, as I live, they are almost ready to fall off the very backs of their horses from the laughter my blundering awkwardness has excited. Oh, it's really dreadful—I must turn my head another way. I can bear the sight of it no longer!"
"But only think how much worse it would have been if your phiz, instead of the soft earth, had encountered one of the hard spar-stones that are so plentifully strewed about here?"
"And supposing it had—wouldn't it have been better, at the cost of little pain and suffering, to have excited the compassion, instead of the laughter of that heavenly creature?"
"But hardly at the sacrifice of your nose, I should say," rejoined Frank, "which, from the deep impression it has made in the clay, must have been smashed flat as a pancake had it battled out the matter with the stones."
The young poet had a great regard for his nose, and his companion's remarks upon the subject were so palpable, that he was not only silenced but convinced.
"I say here, my man. Here, Jan, Jan, I say," bawled out our friend Frank, to what he was pleased to style a straw-yard savage in the disguise of a gentleman's servant on horseback, who, whilst engaged in the pleasant employment of munching an apple, had allowed the ladies he was attending to canter off some distance a-head, and was then in the act of passing, at a very moderate pace, close by our two heroes, but pulled up his nag at the summons, and, touching his hat, replied, in the singing accent of the western Cornishmen—" Your sarvant, gen'lmen both; what 'ud ye plaze to have, sir?—though my name b'aint Jan, plaze yer honours."
"What is it then?—Bill, Dick, Tom, Harry, Ben, Jim, Nic, Mike, Mathey, or Peter?"
"Neither, maester, plaze your honour, sir," said the man, with a grin that denoted he was entering into the humour of the thing, and who, as well as Frank, was a bit of a wag in his way. "Timothy's my name, at your sarvice, gen'lmen—what 'ud your honours plaze to have of I?"
"What I would have, Timothy," answered Frank, "is for you to tell me who those two young ladies are that you are in attendance upon?"
"Maester's two dafters," replied Timothy.
"And who's maester?" asked Frank.
"The squire, to be sure," answered his man.
"And what's squire's name?" inquired Frank.
"Potts—Squire Potts," replied Timothy—at which announcement Vernon Wycherley lifted up both eyes and hands in unfeigned amazement.
"And the young ladies?" resumed the questioner.
"Lor, sir! I ha'n't a got time to bide and tell'ee no more. See they be 'most out of sight a'ready, and I shall have to ride a brave pace to catch mun again—and most dead wi' thest, too, I be's a'ready."
Frank, who plainly saw Timothy's drift, dived his hand into the deep recesses of his trousers' pockets.—Timothy, who witnessed the act, not altogether an unexpected one, drew nearer and nearer, and when close alongside of Frank, cramming the remainder of the apple into his mouth, he dropped the hand that had conveyed it there, as if by the merest accident in the world, within easy reach of the interrogator's, who, slipping into it a coin of sufficient importance, small as it was, to raise a grin of delight in the groom's countenance, again asked him the names of the two young ladies.
"Heerken, and I'll tell'ee," he answered. "She with the light hair and eyes, she's Miss Bessie; and she with the dark hair and eyes, she's called Miss Molly—that's she's name." And having so said, Timothy rode off at a rapid pace.
"Can it be possible!" exclaimed Vernon Wycherley—"can it be possible that so lovely a being—one who seems too beautiful to tread the earth"——
"And so rides on horseback over it; is that what you mean?" interrupted Frank.
"No, you know very well it is not what I mean," answered Vernon petulantly. "My wonder is, how one so elegant could be called by such a name as that knave uttered."
"What! Molly Potts, eh? that I believe was the name he mentioned?" interposed Frank.
"Pshaw, nonsense!" retorted his companion; "it can't be her name. The idea's too preposterous to be true. That insolent clown has dared to try to hoax us; for which I promise him, if I were his master, I'd break every bone in his good-for-nothing body. Molly Potts! It never can be so. The thing's quite out of the question—utterly impossible!"
"Impossible or not, I don't see that it's likely to make much difference either to you or me," observed Frank; "for the chances are, we never set eyes upon either of them again."
"Then," said Vernon, "I almost wish that I, at least, had never set eyes upon one of them at all. To know that such an angel moves about on earth, and to think that I may never see her more, must ever form a source of deep regret; and yet it seems strange—very strange—that I—I—who have ever looked upon the fairest of the sex unmoved, should be so struck as I was here by a mere glance."
"A very hard hit, certainly," said Frank: "I never saw a fellow more completely floored."
"Better book that to tell again," retorted vernon; "it really is so seldom you do say a witty thing, that it's a pity it should be lost upon these dull moors."
"Then, unless we intend to follow the fate of my wit," resumed Frank, "we must step out a little faster to get out of them; which we sha'n't do under a couple of miles' walk more, I promise you."