CHAPTER II.

YOUNG HUMPHRY’S RESOLVES.

“THE FIRST AND LAST INN IN ENGLAND, KEPT BY RICHARD BOTHERAS,” was the inscription recorded on both sides of a sign-board that swung backwards and forwards outside a little lonely homestead—more like a cottage than a tavern—standing at the extreme western point of Cornwall.

The open door revealed a room without a visitor; the floor was white with sea-sand, and you could tell at a glance, from the evenness with which the sand was strewn, how scanty were the customers in that part of the world, for it was plain that no foot had trodden it that day. Above the ample chimney-board was ranged a row of bright tin mugs, that had been worn more by polishing than use. The top of the little round deal table that stood in the centre of the room was as clean as if it had been newly planed; and over the painted chest of drawers, in one corner, stood what appeared like a _quire_ of tea-boards, which, together with the written paper pasted against the wall, and informing the stranger that “parties were supplied with hot water,” gave one a notion of the many visitors who came in summer to take tea at the Land’s End.

The host, from lack of custom, was busy in the garden at the back, digging in refuse fish as manure for his next year’s crop; and the hostess might be seen in the adjoining out-house, with her arms half buried in a cushion of dough, preparing the week’s bread for the humble family.

Suddenly the innkeeper paused, with his foot resting on his spade. His quick ear had caught the clink of a horse’s hoofs on the neighbouring granite. The man put his hand across his brows, and looked under it in every direction to see who was coming.

In a minute or two afterwards he ran to his wife, crying, “Come, tidy thaself a bit, dame! Here’s Master Davy on his pony Derby jist at hand: he’s ale in deep black, too.”

The good wife was not long in scraping the dough from her hands, and, having invested herself in a clean apron, was quickly at the door beside her husband, awaiting the arrival of the youthful visitor.

[Illustration: HUMPHRY AT THE LAND’S END.—Page 37.]

As the innkeeper had stated, the lad was dressed in deep mourning, and the beaver of his hat was completely hidden by the broad crape band that encircled it, while the gloss upon his clothes indicated the recent loss he had met with. To a casual observer there was but little in the youth’s appearance to mark the budding genius which inspired him, excepting the ample forehead and the full black eyes beneath it. He was, however, generally considered an “extraordinary-looking boy.” He was of diminutive stature, while the roundness of his shoulders gave him somewhat—as it has been termed—of a “bucolic aspect.” His hair was chestnut brown, and hung in neglected curls about his brow; his eyes were dark and piercing, but the rest of his features were anything but finely chiselled. His complexion appeared paler than ordinary, from the contrast of the suit of black in which he was habited, and the dejected air and wet-looking eye gave a melancholy tone to his appearance that immediately enlisted the heart towards the boy.[6]

The lad said but a word or two in answer to the greeting of the couple, and jumping from the saddle, gave the reins to the innkeeper, who forthwith led the plump little animal round to the stable.

The instant after the youth had disappeared among the rocks.

“Poor lad! he seems deeply cut up; doan’t he, Richard?” said the wife, following her husband to the shed.

“Ah, that he doa,” returned Richard, as he stooped down under the pony to loosen its girths. “He’s not tha maze-gerry boy he was a little while agone, when he used to come over here, Greace, with a hammer a cracking all the stones that lay in his way into ‘midjons and jouds,’ and scrambling, like a young goat, over the rocks after some trumpery bit of stone as took his fancy—just as our Jan do after daws’ eggs.”

“Yes, that he used to,” returned the wife, taking off her clean apron, and carefully folding it up as she talked; “and I’ve seed Master Humphry come back, after being out all day among the rocks, with his cap full of old stones, as he seemed to prize like as if they was lumps of goold, but such as I wodn’t a picked out of ‘a stomps’—not I. Ah! there’s sad trouble at Varfell now, take my word for it, Richard. Mistress Davy, poor thing! has seen enough sorrow in her time to ha’ broke many a stout heart; and here she’s left with five young ones, and not a ‘cheeld-vean’ among ’em as can get a penny to help her. Master Humphry’s a good scholard, they say; but larning won’t fill the cupboard, Dick; and they tells me, down at Penzance, that Mr. Davy (rest his soul!) was too fond of wasting his money in mines—as we’ve seen many a family ruined with in our day—to leave his wife anything to fall back upon at this time; though I’m sure I pity the poor widow and her little ones from the bottom of my heart, for it isn’t none of their bringings on. Sometimes, do you know, Dick, I fancy as there’s a spell on that poor woman.”

“Go along with you and your spells!” indignantly shouted the husband, as he held the pail of water for the pony to drink from; “you’ve always got some stuff of that kind in your head, Greace.”

“Well, you may talk as you like, but I shall b’lieve in such things to my dying day,” retorted the superstitious little body. “Didn’t I go to Madern Well and drop some pins into it; and didn’t they fall with their pints together, I should like to know? And wasn’t our old sow took ill the very week afterwards, and died on the very day as we’d settled to kill her—eh? Oh! you’re as unb’lieving as a Jew; you are, indeed, Dick.”

The innkeeper treated his wife’s argument with a hearty laugh, whereupon the dame proceeded to cite to him a hundred and one such instances as were current throughout the county, and in the midst of which we must leave the worthy couple for the present.

* * * * *

The restless, pensive boy, had wandered to the extreme point of the land, and here, resting upon a shelf of crag far above the sea, that roared and dashed against the base, he sat for a while, with his tearful eye peering across the Atlantic, vacantly gazing at the huge watery disc that heaved like a giant breast before him. Behind the lad towered tremendous pinnacles of granite, some with their monster blocks ranged in cubes one above the other, like Nature’s solid masonry; others with massive stones standing right on end; while some seemed tossed about in such confusion as if the “sixth seal” itself had opened, and the heavens had rained rocks upon the land. Here a large square lump protruded like a bond-stone from the straight sides of some tall pile; there a huge mass was scored through at the top, leaving the blocks standing up on either side of it, as if castellated; and there again was seen a ponderous lump, so delicately balanced on some high peak, that it seemed as if the least gust would topple it over into the sea beneath; while the outline of the whole was as jagged as if it had been gnawed, or as if the entire granite pile were some immense crystal that the sea was gradually dissolving away. Below the height the crags stretched far out into the sea, their black and bluff heads peeping up at different distances through the waves which compassed them with a ring of the whitest foam; while at the end of the winding, broken line, there rose one rock higher than the rest, and on top of this glistened the silver tower of the light-house, that, like a star-tipped wand, pointed the way, as it gave the first glimpse of home to the returning mariner.[7] Far beyond this, again, the eye could just trace, in the mist of the distance, the cloud-like islands[8] studding the crystal ring of the horizon, while all the rest was one wide desert of water stretching away to the Western World, that even the fancy was weary-winged in its struggle to reach.

Nor was the scene behind the narrow tongue of land that forms the very end of our island less grand and solemn than that which lay before it. To the southward the pathway was along the edge of a precipice that the sea beneath had scooped into a curve, and here, at one extremity, the ocean had drilled huge caldron-like cavities in the rock,[9] and pouring into these boiled with a roar that made the cliffs boom again with the noise. Beyond this rose the majestic headland of “_Carn-y-Voel_” its summit half veiled by a light scarf of clouds, and its tall sides, built of granite cubes, rising straight as a fortress wall from out the sea. Here the ocean had worked for itself a little bay, where the smooth green water lay like a mirror, with the shadows of the yellowish-red cliffs above it reflected deep into the pool, and trembling, as the surface rippled, into zigzag lines that played with a thousand lights and shades. On the other side of this bay a low granite cliff jutted out like a buttress, the green ground above sloping abruptly down; and against this the waves beat and dashed till the spray played around the rocks like a cloud of smoke, and sparkled in the sun delicately tinted with many a prismatic hue. Here, again, the ocean had burrowed into the thick granite wall, while near the verge of the cliff there was a perpendicular shaft, the sides of which were smooth and circular, as if they had been drilled out of the solid rock; and looking down these, as down a dark well, the eye could see the white waves tumbling and tossing below with a terrible fury.[10]

On the northern side of the promontory, called in Cornish “_Antyer Deweth_,” or the Land’s End, the headlands were higher than those even on the south, for there one tall rock rose out of the waves towering high into the air, and formed also of granite cubes, which looked in the distance so like a suit of mail, that it had acquired the name of the “_Armed Knight_;” and here at the very top of one of the craggy summits a singular cross of rock was to be seen, while as the eye travelled along the curved and crumpled shore, far away to the north, it rested on the point of land known by the name of “Cape Cornwall,” the outlines and tints of whose slate cliffs, seen through the atmospheric veil, appeared soft and blue with the haze of distance.

Despite the blocks of granite that protruded through the land, like the bones of the earth itself, the ground roundabout was rich in parts with flowers. Now the soil was purple with the richest heaths, and now it was yellow as a plate of gold with the bloom of the dwarf-furze, the latter filling the air with a perfume like apricots, while the green patches of grass were almost iridescent with the various wild flowers that peeped with their delicate blossoms from out the blades. The air, too, was savoury with the odour of the sea, and fresh with the spray that, like a dew, brushed against the cheek. Still amidst the solemn convulsion of rocks and the vast belt of water which encompassed the beholder as far as the sight could stretch, a feeling of overpowering loneliness—a sense of one’s own insignificance and helplessness, such as travellers are said to feel in deserts—oppressed the mind there—_there_, at the very brink, as it were, of one’s native country—the last bit of the land with which all one’s affections and associations were linked—and rapt in a ghastly silence, that was broken only by the moan-like booming of the monster sea, as it beat into the cavities of the cliff far beneath the feet, or, now and then, by the shrill shrieking of the cormorant, or the whirr of some passing sea-mew’s wing.[11]

The boy sat, as we said, for a while staring vacantly at the waves that pranced, like curvetting steeds, before him, and as he did so a heavy teardrop fell now and then on the moss that spotted the rock at his feet. Sometimes his lips would move, though not a word escaped them, and he would strike the air with his clenched fist as though a sudden resolution had crossed his mind; then a shudder would pass over his frame, and he would clasp his forehead with both his hands, and sway his body to and fro, as he bent his head almost to his knees. Presently, after a slight pause, he would raise his head, and with his neck stretched back, look steadfastly at the heavens as if gazing at some spirit there. And when this fit was passed, he would resume his seat, and clasp his hands as in prayer.

Suddenly the boy started to his feet, crying, “Yes, I’ll do it—that I will. I will rescue them all—every one—from the poverty that threatens them. I have promised my dead father to do so. I have prayed God to give me the strength and firmness to carry out my purpose, and in a few years our home shall be as happy as it’s wretched now. I feel as if I had just woke from a long dream. What a thoughtless, idle fool, I’ve been! but it’s past—never to return. Poor mother! I’ve cost her many a tear, I know, of late. How have I wasted this last year, when I should have been at some business seeking the means of adding to my mother’s comforts, instead of lessening the little that is left her at such a time as this! If I had only worked instead of squandering my time in silly pleasures, I might now have been a help to her rather than the wretched burden I am—without the power to earn a crust for myself. What do I know that is of use to any one? Who would give me a penny for anything that I can do? and yet I’m old and strong enough to get my own living. Oh, shame! shame! that I, at my time of life, should have to take from poor mother’s little store. If I’d had a proper spirit, I should have felt this long ago: but no matter, it’s ended now; and I’ll go to work and so fill my mind with knowledge that mother shall soon be as pleased about me, as I know, poor thing! she has been pained of late. Yes, and father will watch over me; I know he will. Oh! if I could only have changed before he died, what a comfort it would have been to him in his last moments: but as it was, I, like a wretch, let him leave me in doubt as to what was to become of me. Why didn’t I wake up before? If it had only been a month ago, he might have felt no pain on my account. Oh, shame! shame! but, thank God, I’m different now, and I’ll go back home and tell mother all I mean to do. I’ve the power in me—I know I have. I’ll go back and tell her not to grieve, and that I’ll do all I can to help her and my brother and sisters for the future.”[12]