Part 19 (1/2)
The Meades, old-time planters in Virginia, have been very poor since the distant war of the sixties, and it has been one of my luxuries to give Sally a lift over hard places. Always with instant reward, for the smallest bit of sunlight, going into her prismatic spirit, comes out a magnificent rainbow of happiness. So when the idea came that they might let me have the girl to take abroad that summer, her friend, the girl spirit in me, jumped for joy. There was no difficulty made; it was one of the rare good things too good to be true, that yet are true. She did more for me than I for her, for I simply spent some superfluous idle money, while she filled every day with a new enjoyment, the reflection of her own fresh pleasure in every day as it came.
So here we were prowling about the south of England with ”Westward Ho!”
for a guide-book; coaching through deep, tawny Devons.h.i.+re lanes from Bideford to Clovelly; searching for the old tombstone of Will Cary's grave in the churchyard on top of the hill; gathering tales of Salvation Yeo and of Amyas Leigh; listening to echoes of the three-hundred-year-old time when the great sea-battle was fought in the channel and many s.h.i.+ps of the Armada wrecked along this Devons.h.i.+re coast. And always coming back to sleep in the fascinating little ”New Inn,” as old as the hills, built on both sides of the one rocky ladder street of Clovelly, the street so steep that no horses can go in it, and at the bottom of whose breezy tunnel one sees the rolling floor of the sea. In so careless a way does the Inn ramble about the cliff that when I first went to my room, two flights up from the front, I caught my breath at a blaze of scarlet and yellow nasturtiums that faced me through a white-painted doorway opening on the hillside and on a tiny garden at the back.
The irresponsible pleasure of our first sail the next afternoon was never quite repeated. The boat shot from the landing like a high-strung horse given his head, out across the unbordered road of silver water, and in a moment, as we raced toward the low white clouds, we turned and saw the cliffs of the coast and the tiny village, a gay little pile of white, green-latticed houses steeped in foliage lying up a crack in the precipice. Above was the long stretch of the woods of Hobby Drive.
Clovelly is so old that its name is in Domesday Book; so old, some say, that it was a Roman station, and its name was Clausa Vaillis. But it is a nearer ancientness that haunts it now. Every wave that dashes on the rocky sh.o.r.e carries a legend of the s.h.i.+ps of the Invincible Armada. As we asked question after question of our sailor, handsomer than ever to-day with a red silk handkerchief knotted sailor-fas.h.i.+on about his strong neck, story after story flashed out, clear and dramatic, from his answers. The bunch of houses there on the sh.o.r.e? Yes, that had a history. The people living there were a dark-featured, reticent lot, different from other people hereabouts. It was said that one of the Spanish galleons went ash.o.r.e there, and the men had been saved and had settled on the spot and married Devons.h.i.+re women, but their descendants had never lost the tradition of their blood. Certainly their speech and their customs were peculiar, unlike those of the villages near. He had been there and had seen them, had heard them talk. Yes, they were distinct. He laughed a little to acknowledge it, with an Englishman's distrust of anything theatrical. A steep cliff started out into the waves, towering three hundred feet in almost perpendicular lines. Had that a name? Yes, that was called ”Gallantry Bower.” No; it was not a sentimental story--it was the old sea-fight again. It was said that an English sailor threw a rope from the height and saved life after life of the crew of a Spaniard wrecked under the point.
”You know the history of your place very well,” said Sally. The young man kept his eyes on his steering apparatus and a slow half-smile troubled his face and was gone.
”I've had a bit of an education for a seaman--Miss,” he said. And then, after apparently reflecting a moment, ”My people live near the Leighs of Burrough Court, and I was playmate to the young gentlemen and was given a chance to learn with them, with their tutors, more than a common man is likely to get always.”
At that Sally's enthusiasm broke through her reserve, and I was only a little less eager.
”The Leighs! The real, old Leighs of Burrough? Amyas Leigh's descendants? Was that story true? Oh!--” And here manners and curiosity met and the first had the second by the throat. She stopped.
But our sailor looked up with a boyish laugh that illumined his dark face.
”Is it so picturesque? I have been brought up so close that it seems commonplace to me. Every one must be descended from somebody, you know.”
”Yes, but Amyas Leigh!” went on Sally, flushed and excited, forgetting the man in his story. ”Why, he's my hero of all fiction! Think of it, Cousin Mary--there are men near here who are his great--half-a-dozen greats--grandchildren! Cousin Mary,” she stopped and looked at me impressively, oblivious of the man so near her, ”if I could lay my hands on one of those young Leighs of Burrough I'd marry him in spite of his struggles, just to be called by that name. I believe I would.”
”Sally!” I exclaimed, and glanced at the man; Sally's cheeks colored as she followed my look. His mouth was twitching, and his eyes smouldered with fun. But he behaved well. On some excuse of steering he turned his back instantly and squarely toward us. But Sally's interest was irrepressible.
”Would you mind telling me their names, Cary?” she asked. He had told us to call him Cary. ”The names of the Mr. Leighs of Burrough.”
”No, Cary,” I said. ”I think Miss Meade doesn't notice that she is asking you personal questions about your friends.”
Cary turned on me a look full of gentleness and chivalry. ”Miss Meade doesn't ask anything that I cannot answer perfectly well,” he said.
”There are two sons of the Leighs, Richard Grenville, the older, and Amyas Francis, the younger. They keep the old names you see.
Richard--Sir Richard, I should say--is the head of the family, his father being dead.”
”Sir Richard Grenville Leigh!” said Sally, quite carried away by that historic combination. ”That's better than Amyas,” she went on, reflectively. ”Is he decent? But never mind. I'll marry _him_, Cousin Mary.”
At that our sailor-man shook with laughter, and as I met his eyes appealing for permission, I laughed as hard as he. Only Sally was apparently quite serious.
”He would he very lucky--Miss,” he said, restraining his mirth with a respect that I thought remarkable, and turned again to his rudder.
Sally, for the first time having felt the fascination of breathing historic air, was no longer to be held. The sweeping, free motion, the rush of water under the bow as we cut across the waves, the wide sky and the air that has made sailors and soldiers and heroes of Devons.h.i.+re men for centuries on end, the exhilaration of it all had gone to the girl's head. She was as unconscious of Cary as if he had been part of his boat.
I had seen her act so when she was six, and wild with the joy of an autumn morning, intoxicated with oxygen. We had been put for safety into the hollow part of the boat where the seats are--I forget what they call it--the scupper, I think. But I am apt to be wrong on the nomenclature.
At all events, there we were, standing up half the time to look at the water, the sh.o.r.e, the distant sails, and because life was too intense to sit down. But when Sally, for all her gentle ways, took the bit in her teeth, it was too restricted for her there.
”Is there any law against my going up and holding on to the mast?” she asked Cary.
”Not if you won't fall overboard, Miss,” he answered.
The girl, with a strong, self-reliant jump, a jump that had an echo of tennis and golf and horseback, scrambled up and forward, Cary taking his alert eyes a moment from his sailing, to watch her to safety, I thought her pretty as a picture as she stood swaying with one arm around the mast, in her white s.h.i.+rt-waist and dark dress, her head bare, and brown, untidy hair blowing across the fresh color of her face, and into her clear hazel eyes.
”What is the name of this boat?” she demanded, and Cary's deep, gentle voice lifted the two words of his answer across the twenty feet between them.
”The Revenge” he said.