The “best parlour” was frequently panelled with carved oak, and the ceiling, often highly, though it must be admitted, heavily decorated. In such a room, in the declining light of a January afternoon, were some ten or a dozen farmers’ daughters, all of them unmarried, and many of them having an eye on the farmer’s eldest son, a fine young man about twenty years of age, called Joseph.
This farmer and his wife, at the time of which we speak, had three sons and two daughters. The eldest son was an excellent and amiable young man, possessed of many personal attractions, and especially fond of the society of his sisters and their friends. The next son was of a very different stamp, and was more frequently found in the inn at Church-town than in his father’s house; the younger son was an apprentice at Penzance. The two daughters, Mary and Honour, had coaxed their mother into “a tea and heavy cake” party, and Joseph was especially retained, to be, as every one said he was, “the life of the company.”
In those days, when, especially in those parts, every one took dinner at noon, and tea not much after four o’clock, the party had assembled early.
There had been the usual preliminary gossip amongst the young people, when they began to talk about the wreck of a fruit-ship which had occurred but a few days before, off the Land’s-End, and it was said that considerable quantities of oranges were washing into Nangissell Cove. Upon this, Joseph said he would take one of the men from the farm, and go down to the cove—which was not far off—and see if they could not find some oranges for the ladies.
The day had faded into twilight, the western sky was still bright with the light of the setting sun, and the illuminated clouds shed a certain portion of their splendour into the room in which the party were assembled. The girls were divided up into groups, having their own pretty little bits of gossip, often truly delightful from its entire freedom and its innocence; and the mother of Joseph was seated near the fireplace, looking with some anxiety through the windows, from which you commanded a view of the Atlantic Ocean. The old lady was restless; sometimes she had to whisper something to Mary, and then some other thing to Honour. Her anxiety, at length, was expressed in her wondering where Joseph could be tarrying so long. All the young ladies sought to ease her mind by saying that there were no doubt so many orange-gatherers in the Cove, that Joseph and the man could not get so much fruit as he desired.
Joseph was the favourite son of his mother, and her anxiety evidently increased. Eventually, starting from her chair, the old lady exclaimed, “Oh, here he is; now I’ll see about the tea.”
With a pleased smile on her face, she left the room, to return, however, to it in deeper sorrow.
The mother expected to meet her son at the door—he came not. Thinking that he might possibly have been wetted by the sea, and that he had gone round the house to another door leading directly into the kitchen, for the purpose of drying himself, or of changing his boots, she went into the dairy to fetch the basin of clotted cream,—which had been “taken up” with unusual care,—to see if the junket was properly set, and to spread the flaky cream thickly upon its surface.
Strange,—as the old lady subsequently related,—all the pans of milk were agitated—“the milk rising up and down like the waves of the sea.”
The anxious mother returned to the parlour with her basin of cream, but with an indescribable feeling of an unknown terror. She commanded herself, and, in her usual quiet way, asked if Joseph had been in. When they answered her “No,” she sighed heavily, and sank senseless into a chair.