Eli shook his head. “He was smaller than I, naught but a little man. I take shame not to have beaten en.”
But Mary would have none of it. “I see no shame then,” she said warmly. “They miners do nothing but wrastle, wrastle all day between shifts and underground too, so I’ve heard tell—but you’ve got other things to do, Eli; ’tis a wonder you stood up to en so long. And they’re nothing but a passell o’ tricksters, teddn what I do call fitty wrastling at all.”
“Well, ’tis fair, anyhow,” said Eli; “he beat me fair enough and there’s an end of it.”
“ ’Es, s’pose,” Mary admitted, “but I do think you wrastled bravely, Eli, and so do father and all of the parish. Oh, look how the man knots his cloth, all twisted; you’m bad as father, I declare. Lave me put it to rights.” She reached up strong, capable hands, gave the neckerchief a pull and a pat and stood back laughing. “You men are no better than babies for all your size and cursing and ’bacca. ’Tis proper now. Are ’e steppin’ home along?”
Eli was. They crossed the field and, turning their backs on the church tower, took the road towards the sea, old Simeon walking first, slightly bent with toil and rheumatism, long arms dangling inert; Mary and Eli followed side by side, speaking never a word. It was two miles to Roswarva, over upland country, bare of trees, but beautiful in its wind-swept nakedness. Patches of dead bracken glowed with the warm copper that is to be found in some women’s hair; on gray bowlders spots of orange lichen shone like splashes of gold paint. The brambles were dressed like harlequins in ruby, green and yellow, and on nearly every hawthorn sat a pair of magpies, their black and white livery looking very smart against the scarlet berries.
Eli walked on to Roswarva, although it was out of his way. He liked the low house among the stunted sycamores, with the sun in its face all day and the perpetual whisper of salt sea winds about it. He liked the bright display of flowers Mary seemed to keep going perennially in the little garden by the south door, the orderly kitchen with its sanded floor, clean whitewash and burnished copper. Bosula was his home, but it was to Roswarva that he turned as to a haven in time of trouble, when he wanted advice about his farming, or when Teresa was particularly fractious. There was little said on these occasions, a few slow, considered words from Simeon, a welcoming smile from Mary, a cup of tea or a mug of cider and then home again—but he had got what he needed.
He sat in the kitchen that afternoon twirling his hat in his powerful hands, staring out of the window and thinking that his worries were pretty nearly over. There was always Teresa to reckon with, but they were out of debt and Bosula was in good farming shape at last. What next? An idea was taking shape in his deliberate brain. He stared out of the window, but not at the farm boar wallowing blissfully in the mire of the lane, or at Simeon driving his sleek cows in for milking, or at the blue Channel beyond with a little collier brig bearing up for the Lizard, her grimy canvas transformed by the alchemy of sunshine. Eli Penhale was seeing visions, homely, comfortable visions.
Mary came in, rolling her sleeves back over firm, rounded forearms dimpled at the elbows. The once leggy girl was leggy no longer, but a ripe, upstanding, full-breasted woman with kindly brown eyes and an understanding smile.
“I’ll give ’e a penny for thy dream, Eli—if ’tis a pretty one,” she laughed. “Is it?”
The farmer grinned. “Prettiest I ever had.”