In the Roar of the Sea

by S. Baring-Gould

November scowled over sea and land, perverting the former into lead and blighting the latter to a dingy brown.

The wedding-day was sad. Mist enveloped the coast, wreathed the cliffs, drifted like smoke over the glebe, and lay upon the ocean, dense and motionless, like a mass of cotton-wool. Not a smile of sun, not a glimmer of sky, not a trace of outline in the haze overhead. The air was full of minute particles of moisture flying aimlessly, lost to all sense of gravity, in every direction. The mist had a fringe but no seams, and looked as if it were as unrendable as felt. It trailed over the soil, here lifting a ragged flock or tag of fog a few feet above the earth, there dropping it again and smearing water over all it touched. Vapor condensed on every twig and leaf, but only leisurely, and slowly dripped from the ends of thorns and leaves; but the weight of the water on some of the frosted and sickly foliage brought the leaves down with it. Every stone in every wall was lined with trickles of water like snail crawls. The vapor penetrated within doors, and made all articles damp, of whatever sort they were. Fires were reluctant to kindle, chimneys smoked. The grates and irons broke out into eruptions of rust, mildew appeared on walls, leaks in roofs. The slate floors became dark and moist. Forks and spoons adhered to the hands of those who touched them, and on the keys of Mr. Menaida’s piano drops formed.

What smoke did escape from a chimney trailed down the roof. Decomposed leaves exhaled the scent of decay. From every stack-yard came a musty odor of wet straw and hay. Stable yards emitted their most fetid exudations that oozed through the gates and stained the roads. The cabbages in the kail-yards touched by frost announced that they were in decomposition, and the turnips that they were in rampant degeneration and rottenness. The very seaweed washed ashore impregnated the mist with a flavor of degeneration.

The new rector, the Reverend Desiderius Mules had been in residence at St. Enodoc for three months. He had received but a hundred and twenty-seven pounds four and ninepence farthing for dilapidations, and was angry, declared himself cheated, and vowed he would never employ the agent Cargreen any more. And a hundred and twenty-seven pounds four and ninepence farthing went a very little way in repairing and altering the rectory to make it habitable to the liking of the Reverend Desiderius. The Reverend Peter Trevisa and his predecessors had been West Country men, and as such loved the sun, and chose to have the best rooms of the house with a southern aspect. But the Reverend Desiderius Mules had been reared in Barbadoes, and hated the sun, and elected to have the best rooms of the house to look north. This entailed great alterations. The kitchen had to be converted into parlor, and the parlor into kitchen, the dining-room into scullery, and the scullery into study, and the library enlarged to serve as dining-room. All the down-stairs windows had to be altered. Mr. Desiderius Mules liked to have French windows opening to the ground.

In the same manner great transformations were made in the garden. Where Mr. Peter Trevisa had built up and planted a hedge there Mr. Desiderius Mules opened a gate, and where the late rector had laid down a drive there the new rector made garden beds. In the same manner shrubberies were converted into lawns, and lawns into shrubberies. The pump was now of no service outside the drawing-room window; it had to be removed to the other side of the house, and to serve the pump with water a new well had to be dug, and the old well that had furnished limpid and wholesome water was filled up. The site of the conservatory was considered the proper one for the well, and this entailed the destruction of the conservatory. Removal was intended, with a new aspect to the north, as a frigidarium, but when touched it fell to pieces, and in so doing furnished Mr. Desiderius Mules with much comment on the imposition to which he had been subjected, for he had taken this conservatory at a valuation, and that valuation had been for three pounds seven and fourpence ha’penny, whereas its real value was, so he declared, three pounds seven and fourpence without the ha’penny at the end or the three pounds before.

When the Reverend Desiderius Mules heard that Captain Coppinger and Judith Trevisa were to be married in his church, “By Jove,” said he, “they shall pay me double fees as extra parochial. I shall get that out of them at all events. I have been choused sufficiently.”

A post-chaise from Wadebridge conveyed Judith, Miss Trevisa, Uncle Zachie, and Jamie from Polzeath.

The bride was restless. At one moment she leaned back, then forward; her eyes turned resolutely through the window at the fog. Her hands plucked at her veil or at her gloves; she spoke not a word throughout the drive. Aunt Dionysia was also silent. Opposite her sat Mr. Menaida in blue coat with brass buttons, white waistcoat outside a colored one, and white trousers tightly strapped. Though inclined to talk, he was unable to resist the depressing influence of his vis-a-vis, Miss Trevisa, who sat scowling at him with her thin lips closed. Jamie was excited, but as no one answered him when he spoke he also lapsed into silence.

When the church-yard gate of St. Enodoc was reached, Mr. Menaida jumped out of the chaise with a sigh of relief, and muttered to himself that, had he known what to expect, he would have brought his pocket-flask with him, and have had a nip of cognac on the way.

A good number of sight-seers had assembled from Polzeath and St. Enodoc, and stood in the church-yard, magnified by the mist to gigantic size. Over the graves of drowned sailors were planted the figure-heads of wrecked vessels, and these in the mist might have been taken as the dead risen and mingling with the living to view this dreary marriage.