CHAPTER IV.

THE FIRST DRINK AT THE WELL.

A few months had wrought a great change in the household at Varfell.

The widow, when the stupor of her grief had passed away, and the mental absorption of her first sorrow had given place to the calm reflection of melancholy, soon began to see that the comforts and education of her children demanded energy rather than tears from her.

Then came the struggle. What could _she_ do to help them? And what would the people think and say if this or that were done?

But Mrs. Davy was not the woman to be daunted by the petty exultation of neighbours; so that when an opportunity offered for her to embark in business as a milliner in the neighbouring town, it cost her hardly a pang—free as she was from all silly pride—to sink from the worldly rank of the gentlewoman into the humbler station of the trader.

Accordingly, after consulting with Mr. Tonkin upon the matter, she was duly installed, in conjunction with a young French lady, as dressmaker and milliner, in a little shop in the town of Penzance.

Nor was Humphry long in finding a fitting occupation. Mr. Tonkin, to whom the youth had communicated all his determinations, and who loved the youth almost as if he had been a child of his own (for the greater part of Humphry’s life had been passed with the old gentleman), was as pleased as the widow had been to hear of the new spirit that had come upon the lad; and although the boy’s foster-father was not so sanguine as his mother had been of the world-wide renown that awaited Humphry in after life, he had, nevertheless, sufficient faith in the talents of the youth to believe that he might, by application, ultimately win his way to competence and respect among the circle of his native town. Accordingly, when the ardent boy spoke to the calm old man of the fame and honours he had made up his mind to gain throughout Europe—saying, with all the fervour of a boy-poet’s nature, that he was resolved his mind should become a light to all nations, and that his name should be linked with noble associations in every enlightened country, Mr. Tonkin smiled incredulously (but still with good humour) at the ambitious dreams of the lad, and told him he was afraid one so young as he knew not how difficult it was to excel, even in the most trivial thing, when we had the entire world for rivals; and that powers which appeared great in the narrow circle of our own family, grew less and less as the arena of competition was widened. Therefore, if the youth, instead of regarding the whole of Christendom as the theatre in which his future powers were to be displayed, would but limit his views to the humble town of Penzance, Mr. Tonkin said he thought Humphry might, with industry and prudence, some day attain a reputable position in the neighbourhood;[19] adding, that he should consider himself well rewarded for the care and affection he had bestowed upon Humphry if he should live to see him settled as a surgeon in his native town.

* * * * *

It was a lovely autumn evening—such an evening as, at the decline of the year, is known only in those parts of our island which, from the mildness of their climate, have been styled “the Florence of the North.” Mr. Tonkin and Humphry had strolled out by Marazion towards St. Michael’s Mount, journeying along the curved shore of the magnificent bay, with the ocean spread out on one side, in a broad expanse of unsullied azure, and fringed with a thin border of silver foam, as the waves came rippling lazily over the yellow sands. As they sauntered along, the breeze at sundown began to set from the land towards the ocean, and, sweeping across the warm earth, it came laden with the perfumes of the many exotics that bloom in the open air in that part of the world—the garden of England; for it was just the hour when the flowers love to pour their odours into the lightened air, like incense from a thousand chalices. The rays of the declining sun gave a faint tint of purple to the atmosphere, and the green sward, that was still lustrous with the slanting light, was striped, here and there, with the long shadows that streamed from every object intercepting the beams; while the outlines of each form were growing more and more definite, and the sides and peaks of the rocks glittered towards the west, as if they were blazoned with red gold. The brown cattle were quiet in the fields, and the tranquil flocks on the distant hillsides rested there like clouds; the branches of the trees beside the roadway were shaggy, almost to the tops, with the long stalks of wheat that dangled from the twigs, telling of some high-laden harvest-waggon that had lately swept by them. The white-bellied swallows skimmed low over the earth in zigzag lines, twittering as they went; and there was a soothing stillness all around that bathed the soul in balmy quietude.

Towards the sea the scene was no less beautiful. The ocean was like a huge green gem, and here and there on its surface tiny boats seemed to revel in the sundown breeze, now that it had sprung up, and leant over on one side, as they went ploughing through the liquid field, turning up the white surf on their way, and leaving far behind them a long trail, that looked in the distance like a seam upon the water; while in the offing tall ships stood against the sky, with their sails pouting and shining white in the sun, like a pigeon’s breast. Nearer the shore rose the majestic rocky mount of St. Michael, towering above the sea like one of Nature’s pyramids, with the broken outline of its ivied sides showing sharp and clear against the grey, ariel distance; one half of it, towards the east, was dusked in deep rich shadow, while the other, towards the west, was bathed in such a glory of ruby light, that the Mount shone as if it had been one huge carbuncle studding the bright shield of the ocean. Then, in the far west, the sky and the sea were as a sheet of molten gold; and, almost resting on the ring of the horizon, was seen the round, liquid orb of the sun, trembling like a well of light, with the broad beams streaming upwards from it, and tinting the distant masses of cloud, now ruby and now purple, till they looked like islands of garnet and amethyst in the heavens.

It was low water, and the couple crossed by the sands from Marazion to the Mount; and here, after passing the little cluster of fishermen’s houses that skirted the base of the rocky pyramid, and mounting a short distance up the cliff, they sat for a while enjoying and discoursing of the many beauties of the majestic scene that encompassed them on every side.

And the prospect thence was indeed of the grandest character. The shore stretched away, revealing headland after headland, to where the Lizard shot out far into the wave, the rocks there seeming almost phosphorescent in the sun. Then appeared St. Clement’s Island and the coast towards the Land’s End, forming a shorter cape, and completing the horn of the crescent of land towards the west, that looked, as the waves grew crimson in the sunset, as if bathed in a sea of wine. The ocean here wore its most imposing attribute of uncontrollable immensity; for the Atlantic, across the Bay of Biscay to the most western land of Spain, lay on the south, and melted into distance there; while, beyond the extremity of our own island, no shore intervened on the north between the line of the horizon and the land of the New World.

It was a sight that Humphry loved as deeply as old Mr. Tonkin to look upon, and the couple sat for some time silently watching both the seas rolling there towards the far distant Spanish and American shores.

The boy, however, less capable of continuous attention to the same subject, got to weary of the scene sooner than the old man; and when Mr. Tonkin noticed Humphry’s admiration begin to flag, he availed himself of the quietude of the time and place to incite a taste in the lad for the profession he wished him to follow.

Presently the old doctor caught sight of one of the little transparent zoophytes that had been left on the rocks by the receding tide. In size it was not larger than a bird’s egg, of a globular form, with several transparent ridges ranged along it, from pole to pole, as it were, and it was nearly as pellucid as the purest rock-crystal.

[Illustration: THE FIRST DRINK AT THE WELL.—Page 76.]

“Look, my boy,” said Mr. Tonkin, turning to Humphry, and pointing to the little ball of jelly at his feet; “here is an orb almost as wonderful as the sun we have been lately gazing at. It gives light, too, like it; and though it looks there as if it were only a few drops of the ocean gelatinised, it is quickened with life, and performs motions that our wisest engineers can but clumsily imitate.”

The eager boy was about to seize the wonder, so that he might examine it more minutely.

“Nay, if you touch it,” cried the old man, hastily, as he grasped the youth’s arm, and held him back, “it will immediately dissolve—thaw, as it were, to death—so frail is its life, and nothing but a little pool of water will remain of a creature that once could make the sea glow with its fire. These little things are by some styled the ‘lucid gems of the waters.’ By daylight, when in the ocean, they are visible only by the bright rainbow hues that mark their path as they paddle along; but by night, Humphry, they blaze with phosphorescent fire, so that some have termed them ‘the stars of the sea.’ In warm and calm evenings they often look like balls of light rolling on the surface of the water, and the more rapid their motion the more intense is the glow they emit. Those eight transparent ridges you see there,” continued the doctor, as he pointed with his cane to the tiny watery globe, “support as many rows of broad, pellucid paddles, and these are all instinct with life, and by their rapid motion cause the animal to glide, meteor-like, through the waves. We wonder at the recent invention of the steam-boat, and speak with pride of the paddle-wheels with which we are to walk upon the waters; but the tiny paddles here, boy, are far more perfect than any ever contrived by human ingenuity, for in that little aqueous ball the cumbrous machinery which is required to move our vessels along, is not needed, since each float, self-moving without even a visible muscle or nerve to stir it, keeps time with all the rest.”[20]

“What wonder,” cried the poetic boy, “is here packed in a little living crystal, as it were, that can make fire flash from what looks almost like a globe of water, and that can perform the most rapid motions without, as you say, Mr. Tonkin, any visible means of movement!”

“Yes, indeed, my lad,” went on the old man; “there is a large store of marvels locked in that little glassy casket. How does it get its food? How digest it? and how is its frail body nourished? for we can trace no blood-vessels, nor heart, nor glands—indeed, hardly any organs at all—in the little clot of half-liquid life. All we know, is, that it is furnished underneath with so many tentacles or filaments, that serve it for claws, and that these, which are set round an aperture that we call a mouth, draw the food it lives upon into its body—which is literally nothing but a stomach. If we were to watch long enough, we should see the food thus seized and swallowed gradually dissolve and be reduced to a fluid state, while the more solid and indigestible portion would be rejected by the aperture through which it entered. The nutritive matter we know to be absorbed by the walls of the stomach, every part of which appears to be endowed with equal power in this respect; and it is then conveyed to the remoter portion of the body by the simple inbibition of one part from another, without any proper circulation through vessels. In some animals of this class the external covering of the body and the lining of the stomach so closely correspond in their structure as to admit of being changed one for the other—for the animal may be turned inside out without its functions being in any way deranged.”

“Can it be?” said Humphry, filled with delight. “Where can I learn these things, sir? Why was I not taught them at school?”

“You _shall_ learn them, my boy,” replied the old man, pressing the lad’s hand with pleasure to find the taste that he had longed to develope for his own favourite study springing up in Humphry’s mind. “And think, if that little lump of jelly—which is, perhaps, the simplest form of life, where the vital mechanism is seen in its rudest form—can stir you to so much wonder—think, I say, Humphry, what admiration will be excited in you when you come to comprehend the beautiful processes and organism exhibited in complicate animals like ourselves! If a living, digesting creature—a thing almost without sense—a mere moving mouth—can appear so wonderful to you in its structure, what marvels shall you not find in the constitution of a thinking, speaking, reasoning being like man!”

Then the old doctor ran over to the youth the many sources of knowledge that the study of human life opens up to the thoughtful and inquiring mind.

He told the eager boy—as they sat there in the subdued light of the evening, with the hum of the sea that rippled into the caverns at the base of the Mount, falling almost musically on the ear—how, in the organism of the nerves and brain, we get our first insight, rude though it be, into the subtle processes of the senses, and even the mind itself. He told him, also, how, in the senses themselves, lay the rudiments of all the sciences; how, without the sense of vision, there could have been no “optics,” and consequently no astronomy—for to the blind the movements of the planets, and even the very existence of the stars, must, of course, have remained unknown: in like manner, without the sense of hearing there could have been no “acoustics” and no music; and without the sense of muscular effort no knowledge of weight, and consequently of “gravitation”—the main-spring, as it were, of the mechanism of the universe.

Mr. Tonkin explained to the youth, moreover, that had we been formed without the exquisite organ of the hand there would have been little work done, and but little art achieved; and without the organs of the mouth, there could have been no inter-communication of thought—no transfusion of mind into mind, by which one wise man nowadays contains stored in his own brain the wisdom of almost all those who have preceded him. And further, if we had had no appetites, and no pains nor uneasinesses to stir us to action, we should, even with the beautiful muscular apparatus with which our frames are fitted, have remained idle and inactive all our time, starving to death with delight.

“Some persons,” said Mr. Tonkin, “have supposed that plants may be susceptible of feeling, as well as ourselves and the rest of the animal race. But that trees and herbs are incapable of knowing either pain or pleasure” (he added) “is made evident, physiologically, by the fact that they are supplied with no organs of locomotion, and consequently deprived of the means of avoiding the one and seeking the other. For, so benevolently is the world arranged, that wherever feeling is given, the power of acting is immediately associated with it; indeed, it requires hardly a moment’s thought to perceive that it would have been incompatible with All-Kindness to have made creatures sensible to pain, and yet have denied them the means of escape from it.”

After this the old man pointed out to Humphry, that in the comparison of one system of life with another, and so tracing the delicately interwoven chain of animal creation, we perceive that the first type of sentient existence was a mere stomach—a life of pure appetite—susceptible of no other feeling than hunger, and fitted only with organs for seizing and assimilating its food; while as we advance gradually in the scale of development, we find nerve after nerve added, and a new set of feelings and actions brought out, with each new set of fibres. “We discover, besides,” he continued, “that when a little kernel of nervous matter was superadded to the previous sentient apparatus, the wondrous sense of vision was first awakened in animal life, and how the addition of another such little kernel made an animal for the first time hear, and another gave the first sense of odour to the world, while another added taste to the food and drink.”

And when he had thus briefly explained to the youth the uses and characteristics of the several organs in man and the lower animals, the old gentleman went on to point out to him how these same organs were nourished, and the destruction that was continually going on in the body—“for,” said he, “we cannot move a muscle, not even wink our eyelids, without wasting some tissue or other”—was being as continually repaired by the food consumed. Pursuing this subject, he then proceeded to explain to young Humphry how the blood was made to circulate by means of the cunningly-wrought chambers of the heart through the veins and arteries, distributing health and vigour to the different organs in its course—now renovating the tissues, now depositing little specks of bone, then extending the filaments of hair, and then exciting thought and developing feeling in the nerves and brain, stimulating action in the muscles, and diffusing warmth throughout the whole frame—all these different functions being performed by the one wondrous substance in which, even when examined by the highest microscopic power, it was impossible to detect even the rudiments of the many various tissues it formed.

“Such,” said Mr. Tonkin, “is a part of the marvellous process of secretion—a process so subtle that even the wisest can only wonder in their ignorance concerning the function; for it is a mystery to them how, by means merely of little glands, so many different things can be produced from one and the same fluid. How, for instance, skin, cartilages, muscles, hair, nails, bones, tears, and the infinite variety of products which our bodies are made up of and evolve, can all come from the same ruby stream, and that a small nut-like organ only shall be necessary to eliminate each different substance from it. Then, again, there is the beautiful process of breathing, by which the vital air is combined with the blood, and the blue fluid of the veins changed into the crimson stream of the arteries;” and he recounted to him the while how respiration among animals was merely a process of burning, accompanied with the evolution at each exhalation of so much invisible smoke from the lungs—the same smoke, indeed, as comes from burning charcoal: and he told Humphry that he would one day come to see how the rotting wood underwent precisely the same chemical change as the breathing man, and that what is a process of death and decay in the one is a process of life and health in the other.

“Indeed,” concluded the old gentleman, “there is, perhaps, no sphere of knowledge so replete with wonder and beauty as that which unfolds to us the mysteries of our own existence—no science which gives us greater wisdom or deeper insight into the constitution of our natures, as well as that of the elements around us. To comprehend such a subject, even vaguely, requires an intimacy with almost every branch of learning, dealing as it does at once with the material and spiritual; while a just appreciation of the wonders it reveals cannot fail to inspire us with the highest regard for life, even in its rudest forms, and render us more keenly alive to suffering than the rest of humanity, from the greater sense it gives us of the causes of pain, while it arms us, at the same time, with the means of relieving anguish, restoring health, and often of prolonging existence.

“Some there are,” he added, “who prefer poetry to philosophy; but science, Humphry, rightly understood, is merely the translation of the Great Poem of Nature—that which the Almighty himself conceived when he designed Creation. There may be high beauty in music, boy; but, to my mind, there is even higher beauty still in comprehending the phenomena by which the Creator has fitted us to enjoy it. In the rich glories of colour there is, certainly, an exquisite feast of visual delight; but what array of tints, be they ever so beautifully blended—what tracery of form, be it ever so cunningly put together—can fill the mind with ecstasy equal to the contemplation of that splendid little translucent globe, the eye—a crystal world in itself, filled with an infinity of wonders—by which we are enabled to perceive the light, and to tell one hue from another? What work of art, however consummate the execution—what picture, however choice the painting or grand the composition—what architecture, however commanding the mass or harmonious the details—and what poem, even though the verse be mellifluent as music on the water, though the imagery be luminous and profuse as the stars in winter, and the thoughts subtle as the mountain air, can bear the least comparison, either as regards the skill of its art, the craft of its design, or the nice adjustment of its parts, with the organism of the smallest animalcule fashioned by the Great Artist, Architect, and Poet of All?”

The sentence was barely finished when the sharp report of a gun rattled amidst the rocks, and Humphry, whose eyes had been turned upward as he listened to the wonders recounted by the doctor, saw the gull, which but a moment before he had noticed almost lying on the air, poised on its white outstretched wings, bound suddenly upwards with a shriek, and the instant afterwards it tumbled heavily on the crag at Mr. Tonkin’s side.

The old gentleman stretched out his hand and grasped the still warm and quivering form of the bird. “If the wings of this body had been moved by some piece of curious mechanism, Humphry,” he said—“if by some cunning combination of cogwheels, and levers, and springs, it had been made to beat the air and to rise by clock-work into the sky, how would men have prized the marvellous apparatus! Monarchs would have given immense wealth to possess it: and yet the machine would have been, at best, but a clumsy toy compared with the exquisite arrangement here; for in this wonderful piece of divine mechanism the force was supplied by means of little threads of nerves that the unaided eye can scarcely trace—the movement given by muscles so beautifully elastic that no artificial fabric can imitate their play—and the bones jointed together so aptly, that when our wisest engineers wish to get movements in all directions, they can only copy their arrangement, instead of designing any such hinges for themselves. Then, again, to give lightness to the whole, these same bones were filled with air, and the living, flying machine, so made more buoyant in the thin fluid in which it was destined to soar. But let us suppose, Humphry, that it might be within the compass of art to reproduce such an apparatus as this by mechanical means; still what mechanism, however skilful, could have supplied the wonderful motive power that lately quickened it? What spring, or arrangement of weights, could imitate the action of life? Could steam even, or electricity itself, have moved the wings and guided them, like the subtle principle that stirred and directed this body only a few moments past? And then, what cunning engineery could ever have performed the function of the senses? Could mechanism have made the animal see? Could the galvanic fluid—the most spiritual, perhaps, of all our motive powers—have made it love its young, or know when to repair its strength with food? Ah! had the thoughtless fool who, for wanton sport, Humphry—who for the mere sake of hitting a moving mark in the air—known and pondered over all this, do you not think he would have found more pleasure in watching the performance of all its wondrous functions than in destroying the beautiful principle which animated them? Had he needed its body for food, hunger would have excused him. But no! It was simply the petty pleasure—the little spasm of exultation—that we derive from success in trials of skill which led him to put an end to the life of the poor bird, that had surely as much _divine_ right to its place in creation as even a king himself.”

* * * * *

Humphry was overjoyed with the lesson of kindness and wisdom he had learnt. He had been so enraptured with the knowledge that Mr. Tonkin had poured into his mind that he sat almost like one entranced, with his spirit lulled in a dream of bright things he had never heard or thought of before.

The boy till now had been more smitten with the beauty of creation than curious as to its mysteries. True, in his romantic visits to the extremity of the island, as well as to the Mount of St. Michael, he had been often led to wonder how the huge masses of rock had come there; and he had many times pondered over the origin of metals, as in his rambles he had passed the openings of the mines that perforated the surface of his native country, wondering as he went along why a vein of one ore should be deposited here, and another there. As he noticed, too, the Atlantic waves lashing the Land’s End, he would repeatedly question himself as to what became of the rocks that the sea was for ever crumbling into sand; and he would form fanciful theories in his own mind, as to how the detritus of one ancient country became at last the substratum of some new one. Again, the ebbing and flowing of the ocean had led his mind to ruminate vaguely upon the mighty pulsation of the tides, while the sight of the liquid orb of the sun sinking below the ring of the horizon, away towards the invisible shores of America, had often turned his thoughts to the revolutions of the planets, and set him rudely speculating as to the source of the light and the heat of the sun itself.

Still the youth as yet had found more pleasure in contemplating the golden glories of sunset, than in seeking to comprehend the wisdom that designed them. The sea, too, to him had been more an object of grandeur than a stimulus to thought, while the sight of the rocks had filled his mind with admiration far oftener than they had quickened it with inquiry. The mystery, and even the beauty, of the principle of life, however, had never before been heeded by Humphry; so that, when he heard Mr. Tonkin relate the many wonders wrought in the changes that were continually going on in his own frame, the boy was almost overwhelmed with the flood of new thoughts that poured through his brain, and he felt as if he could have sat and listened to the old man the long night through.

Accordingly, when Mr. Tonkin came to a conclusion, Humphry begged him to proceed, saying he had begotten emotions in him that he had never known before; and he felt as if a burning thirst had come upon him for the truth, and he could drink of such knowledge for ever without quenching it.

Mr. Tonkin was pleased to find he had stirred the boy’s thoughts so effectively; and he promised him that, before long, he would place him in a position where he should be able to pursue the subject as far as his powers could carry him.

* * * * *

Not many weeks after the above conversation, Humphry, to his exceeding delight, was articled to Mr. Bingham Borlase, the surgeon and apothecary of Penzance; and there, alone in his little chamber, at night, he wrote the following passage in his note-book:

“I have neither riches nor birth to recommend me; yet, if I live, I trust I shall not be of less service to mankind and to my friends than if I had been born with these advantages.”[21]