"They want mending—yes, they want mending," Mabyn admitted, apparently with some compunction, but then she added boldly, "and you know as well as I do, mother, that there is but the one way of mending them."
CHAPTER XXX.
FERN IN DIE WELT.
If this story were not tied by its title to the duchy of Cornwall, it might be interesting enough to follow Mr. Roscorla into the new world that had opened all around him, and say something of the sudden shock his old habits had thus received, and of the quite altered views of his own life he had been led to form. As matters stand, we can only pay him a flying visit.
He is seated in a verandah fronting a garden, in which pomegranates and oranges form the principal fruit. Down below him some blacks are bringing provisions up to Yacca Farm along the cactus avenue leading to the gate. Far away on his right the last rays of the sun are shining on the summit of Blue Mountain Peak, and along the horizon the reflected glow of the sky shines on the calm sea. It is a fine, still evening; his cigar smells sweet in the air; it is a time for indolent dreaming and for memories of home.
But Mr. Roscorla is not so much enraptured by thoughts of home as he might be. "Why," he is saying to himself, "my life in Basset Cottage was no life at all, but only a waiting for death. Day after day passed in that monotonous fashion: what had one to look forward to but old age, sickness, and then the quiet of a coffin? It was nothing but an hourly procession to the grave, varied by rabbit-shooting. This bold breaking away from the narrow life of such a place has given me a new lease of existence. Now I can look back with surprise on the dullness of that Cornish village, and on the regularity of habits which I did not know were habits. For is not that always the case? You don't know that you are forming a habit: you take each act to be an individual act, which you may perform or not at will; but, all the same, the succession of them is getting you into its power; custom gets a grip of your ways of thinking as well as your ways of living; the habit is formed, and it does not cease its hold until it conducts you to the grave. Try Jamaica for a cure. Fling a sleeping man into the sea, and watch if he does not wake. Why, when I look back to the slow, methodical, common-place life I led at Eglosilyan, can I wonder that I was sometimes afraid of Wenna Rosewarne regarding me as a somewhat staid and venerable individual, on whose infirmities she ought to take pity?"
He rose and began to walk up and down the verandah, putting his foot down firmly. His loose linen suit was smart enough: his complexion had been improved by the sun. The consciousness that his business affairs were promising well did not lessen his sense of self-importance.
"Wenna must be prepared to move about a bit when I go back," he was saying to himself. "She must give up that daily attendance on cottagers' children. If all turns out well, I don't see why we should not live in London, for who will know there who her father was? That consideration was of no consequence so long as I looked forward to living the rest of my life in Basset Cottage: now there are other things to be thought of when there is a chance of my going among my old friends again."
By this time, it must be observed, Mr. Roscorla had abandoned his hasty intention of returning to England to upbraid Wenna with having received a ring from Harry Trelyon. After all, he reasoned with himself, the mere fact that she should talk thus simply and frankly about young Trelyon showed that, so far as she was concerned, her loyalty to her absent lover was unbroken. As for the young gentleman himself, he was, Mr. Roscorla knew, fond of joking. He had doubtless thought it a fine thing to make a fool of two or three women by imposing on them this cock-and-bull story of finding a ring by dredging. He was a little angry that Wenna should have been deceived; but then, he reflected, these gypsy rings are so much like one another that the young man had probably got a pretty fair duplicate. For the rest, he did not want to quarrel with Harry Trelyon at present.