How delicious it is for hard-worked people to do nothing, absolutely nothing! Of course only for a little while—a few days, a few hours. The love of work and the necessity for it soon revive. But just for those few harmless hours to let the world and its duties and cares alike slip by, to be absolutely idle, to fold one's hands and look at the sea and the sky, thinking of nothing at all, except perhaps to count and watch for every ninth wave—said to be the biggest always—and wonder how big it will be, and whether it will reach that stone with the little colony of limpets and two red anemones beside them, or stop short at the rock where we sit placidly dangling our feet, waiting, Canute-like, for the supreme moment when the will of humanity sinks conquered by the immutable powers of nature. Then, greatest crisis of all, the sea will attack that magnificent castle and moat, which we grown-up babies have constructed with such pride. Well, have we not all built our sand-castles and seen them swept away? happy if by no unkinder force than the remorseless wave of Time, which will soon flow over us all.
But how foolish is moralising—making my narrative halt like that horse whom we amused ourselves with half the afternoon. He was tied by the leg, poor beast, the fore leg fastened to the hind one, as seemed to be the ordinary Cornish fashion with all animals—horses, cows, and sheep. It certainly saves a deal of trouble, preventing them from climbing the "hedges" which form the sole boundary of property, but it makes the creatures go limping about in rather a melancholy fashion. However, as it is their normal condition, probably they communicate it to one another, and each generation accepts its lot.
This horse did. He was a handsome animal, who came and peered at the sketch which one of us was doing, after the solemn fashion of quadrupedal connoisseurship, and kept us company all the afternoon. We sat in a row on the top of the "hedge," enjoying the golden afternoon, and scarcely believing it possible that yesterday had been yesterday. Of the wild storm and deluge of rain there was not a single trace; everything looked as lovely as if it had been, and was going to be, summer all the year.
We were so contented, and were making such progress in our sketch and distant view of Kynance over the now dry and smiling cornfield, that we had nigh forgotten the duties of civilisation, until some one brought the news that all the household was apparently dressing itself in its very best, to attend the rectory tea. We determined to do the same, though small were our possibilities of toilette.
"But what does it matter?" argued we. "Nobody knows us, and we know nobody."
A position rather rare to those who "dwell among their own people," who take a kindly interest in everybody, and believe with a pardonable credulity that everybody takes a kindly interest in them.
But human nature is the same all the world over. And here we saw it in its pleasantest phase; rich and poor meeting together, not for charity, but courtesy—a courtesy that was given with a kindliness and accepted with a quiet independence which seemed characteristic of these Cornish folk.
Among the little crowd, gentle and simple, we, of course, did not know a single soul. Nevertheless, delivering up our tickets to the gardener at the gate, we entered, and wandered at ease through the pretty garden, gorgeous with asters, marigolds, carnations, and all sorts of rich-coloured and rich-scented autumn flowers; where the hydrangeas grew in enormous bushes, and the fuchsias had stems as thick and solid as trees.
In front of the open hall door was a gravel sweep where were ranged two long tea-tables filled with the humbler but respectable class of parishioners, chiefly elderly people, and some very old. The Lizard is a place noted for longevity, as is proved by the register books, where several deaths at over a hundred may be found recorded, and one—he was the rector of Landewednack in 1683—is said to have died at the age of 120 years.