CHAPTER FIFTEEN
STARLIGHT AND FROST
Born of the sunshine, on a morning in late December, gray ephemerae danced and dipped and fashioned vanishing patterns against the green of the great laurel at the corner of Drift farmyard. The mildness of the day had wakened them into brief life, but even as they twinkled their wings of gauze death was abroad. A sky of unusual clearness crowned the Cornish moorland, and Uncle Chirgwin, standing at his kitchen door, already foretold frost, though the morning was still young.
"The air's like milk just now, sure 'nough, an' 'twill bide so till noon; then, when the sun begins to slope, the cold will graw an' graw to frost. An' no harm done, thank God."
He spoke to his niece, who was in the room behind him; and as he did so a circumstance of very unusual nature happened. Two persons reached the front door of the farm simultaneously, and a maid, answering the double knock, returned a moment later with two communications, both for Mary Chirgwin.
"Postman, he brot this here, miss, an' a bwoy from Mouzle brot t'other."
The first letter came from London, the second, directed in a similar hand, reached Mary from the adjacent fishing hamlet. She knew the big writing well enough, but showed no emotion before the maid. In fact her self command was remarkable, for she put both letters into her pocket and made some show of continuing her labors for another five minutes before departing to her room that she might read the news from Joe Noy.
He, it may be said, had reached Penzance by the same train which conveyed his various missives, all posted too late for the mail upon the previous night. Thus he reached the white cottage on the cliff in time to see Mrs. Tregenza and bid her destroy unread the letter she would presently receive; and, on returning to his parents, himself took from the letter-carrier his own communications to them and burned both immediately. He had also dispatched a boy to Drift that Mary might be warned as to the letter she would receive by the morning post, but the lad, though ample time was given him to reach Drift before the postman, loitered by the way. Thus the letters had arrived simultaneously, and it was quite an open question which the receiver of them would open first.
Chance decided: Mary's hand, thrust haphazard into her pocket, came forth with Hoy's epistle recently dispatched from Mousehole; and that she read, the accident saving her at least some moments of bitter suffering.
"Dear Mary," wrote Noy, "you will get this by hand afore the coming in of the penny post. When that comes in, there will be another letter for you from me, sent off from London. It is all wrong, so burn it, and don't you read it on no account. Burn it to ashes, for theer's a many reasons why you should. I be coming up-long to see you arter dinner, and if you can walk out in the air with me for a bit I'll thank you so to do. Your friend, J. Noy. Burn the letter to dust 'fore anything else. Don't let it bide a minute and doan't tell none you had it."