Armorel of Lyonesse: A Romance of To-day

'I believe,' he said, gasping, 'that this must be – it is– a torque. I think I have seen something like it in museums. And I've read of them. It was your king's necklace: it was buried with him: it lay around the skeleton neck all these thousand years. Take it, Miss Armorel. It is yours.'

'No! no! Let me look at it. Let me have it in my hands. It is yours' – in ignorance of ancient law and the rights of the lord proprietor – 'it is yours because you found it.'

'Then I will give it to you, because you are the Princess of the Island.'

She took it with a blush and placed it round her own neck, bending open the ends and closing them again. It lay there – the red, red gold – as if it belonged to her and had been made for her.

'The buried king is your ancestor,' said Roland. 'It is his legacy to his descendant. Wear the king's necklace.'

'My luck, as usual,' grumbled Dick, aside. 'Why couldn't I find a torque and say pretty things?'

'Come,' said Armorel, 'we have seen the barrows. There are others scattered about – but this is the best place for them. Now I will show you the island.'

The hill slopes gently northward till it reaches a headland or carn of granite boldly projecting. Here it breaks away sharply to the sea. Armorel climbed lightly up the carn and stood upon the highest boulder, a pretty figure against the sky. The young men followed and stood below her.

At their feet the waves broke in white foam (in the calmest weather the Atlantic surge rolling over the rocks is broken into foam), a broad sound or channel lay between Samson and the adjacent island: in the channel half a dozen rocks and islets showed black and threatening.

'The island across the channel,' said Armorel, 'is Bryher. This is Bryher Hill, because it faces Bryher Island. Yonder, on Bryher is Samson Hill, because it faces Samson Island. Bryher is a large place. There are houses and farms on Bryher, and a church where they have service every Sunday afternoon. If you were here on Sunday, you could go in our boat with Peter, Chessun, and me. Justinian and Dorcas mostly stay at home now, because they are old.'

'Can anybody stay on the island, then?' asked Roland, quickly.

'Once the doctor came for Justinian's rheumatism, and bad weather began and he had to stay a week.'

'His other patients meanly took advantage and got well, I suppose,' said Dick.

'I hope so,' Armorel replied simply.

She turned and looked to the north-east, where lie the eastern islands, the group between St. Martin's and St. Mary's, a miniature in little of the greater group. From this point they looked to the eye of ignorance like one island. Armorel distinguished them. There were Great and Little Arthur; Ganilly, with his two hills, like Samson; the Ganninicks and Meneweather, Ragged Island, and Inisvouls.

'They are not inhabited,' said the girl, pointing to them one by one; 'but it is pleasant to row about among them in fine weather. In the old time, when they made kelp, people would go and live there for weeks together. But they are not cultivated.'

Then she turned northwards, and showed them the long island of St. Martin's, with its white houses, its church, its gentle hills, and its white and red daymark on the highest point. Half of St. Martin's was hidden by Tresco, and more than half of Tresco by Bryher. Over the downs of Tresco rose the dome of Round Island, crowned with its white lighthouse. And over Bryher, out at sea, showed the rent and jagged crest of the great rock Menovawr.

'You should land on Tresco,' said Armorel. 'There is the church to see. Oh! it is a most beautiful church. They say that in Cornwall itself there is hardly any church so fine as Tresco Church. And then there are the gardens and the lake. Everybody goes to see the gardens, but they do not walk over the down to Cromwell's Castle. Yet there is nothing in the islands like Cromwell's Castle, standing on the Sound, with Shipman's Head beyond. And you must go out beyond Tresco, to the islands which we cannot see here – Tean and St. Helen's, and the rest.'

Then she turned westward. Lying scattered among the bright waters, whitened by the breeze, there lay before their eyes – dots and specks upon the biggest maps, but here great massive rocks and rugged islets piled with granite, surrounded by ledges and reefs, cut and carved by winds and flying foam into ragged edges, bold peaks, and defiant cliffs – places where all the year round the seals play and the sea-gulls scream, and, in spring, the puffins lay their eggs, with the oyster-catchers and the sherewaters, the shags and the hern. Over all shone the golden sun of September, and round them all the water leaped and sparkled in the light.

'Those are the Outer Islands.' The girl pointed them out, her eyes brightening. 'It is among the Outer Islands that I like best to sail. Look! that great rock with the ledge at foot is Castle Bryher; that noble rock beyond is Maiden Bower; the rock farthest out is Scilly. If you were going to stay, we would sail round Scilly and watch the waves always tearing at his sides. You cannot see from here, but he is divided by a narrow channel; the water always rushes through this channel roaring and tearing. But once we found it calm – and we got through; only Peter would never try again. If you were going to stay – sometimes in September it is very still – '

'I did not know,' said Roland, 'that there was anything near England so wonderful and so lovely.'

'You cannot see the islands in one morning. You cannot see half of them from this hill. You like them more and more as you stay longer, and see them every day with a different light and a different sea.'

'You know them all, I suppose?' Roland asked.

'Oh! every one. If you had sailed among them so often, you would know them too. There are hundreds, and every one has got its name. I think I have stood on all, though there are some on which no one can land, even at low tide and in the calmest weather. And no one knows what beautiful bays and beaches and headlands there are hidden away and never seen by anyone. If you could stay, I would show them to you. But since you cannot – ' She sighed. 'Well, you have not even seen the whole of Samson yet – and that is only one of all the rest.'

She leaped lightly from the rocks, and led them southward.

'See!' she said. 'On this hill there are ten great barrows at least, every one the tomb of a king – a king of Lyonesse. And on the sides of the hill – they kept the top for the kings – there are smaller barrows, I suppose of the princes and princesses. I told you that the island was a royal burying-ground. At the foot of the hill – you can see them – are some walls which they say are the ruins of a church; but I suppose that in those days they had no church.'

They left these venerable tombs behind them and descended the hill. At its foot, between the two hills, there lies a pretty little bay, circular and fringed with a beach of white sand. If one wanted a port for Samson, here is the spot, looking straight across the Atlantic, with Mincarlo lying like a lion couchant on the water a mile out.

'This is Porth Bay,' said their guide. 'Out there at the end is Shark Point. There are sharks sometimes, I believe: but I have never seen them. Now we are going up the southern hill.'

It began with a gentle ascent. There were signs of former cultivation; stone walls remained, enclosing spaces which once were fields – nothing in them now but fern and gorse and bramble and wild flowers. Half-way up there stood a ruined cottage. The walls were standing, but the roof was gone and all the woodwork. The garden-wall remained, but the little garden was overrun with fern.

'This was my great-great-grandmother's cottage,' said Armorel. 'It was built by her husband. They lived in it for twelve months after they were married. Then he was drowned, and she came to live at the farm. See!' – she showed them in a corner of the garden a little wizened apple-tree, crouching under the stone wall out of the reach of the north wind – 'she planted this tree on her wedding-day. It is too old now to bear fruit; but she is still living, and her husband has been dead for seventy-five years. I often come to look at the place, and to wonder how it looked when it was first inhabited. There were flowers, I suppose, in the garden, when she was young and happy.'

'There are more ruins,' said Roland.

'Yes, there are other ruins. When all the people except ourselves went away, these cottages were deserted, and so they fell into decay. They used to live by smuggling and wrecking, you see, and when they could no longer do either, they had to go away or starve.'

They stood upon the highest point of Holy Hill, some twenty feet above the summit of the northern hill, and looked out upon the Southern Islands.

'There!' said Armorel, with a flush of pride, because the view here is so different and yet so lovely.

'Here you can see the South Islands. Look! there is Minalto, which you drifted past yesterday: those are the ledges of White Island, where you were nearly cast away and lost: there is Annet, where the sea-birds lay their eggs – oh! thousands and thousands of puffins, though now there are not any: you should see them in the spring. That is St. Agnes – a beautiful island. I should like to show you Camberdizl and St. Warna's Cove. And there are the Dogs of Scilly beyond – they look to be black spots from here. You should see them close: then you would understand how big they are and how terrible. There are Gorregan and Daisy, Rosevean and Rosevear, Crebawethan and Pednathias; and there – where you see a little circle of white – that is Retarrier Ledge. Not long ago there was a great ship coming slowly up the Channel in bad weather: she was filled with Germans from New York going home to spend the money they had saved in America: most of them had their money with them tied up in bags. Suddenly, the ship struck on Retarrier. It was ten o'clock in the evening and a great sea running. For two hours the ship kept bumping on the rocks: then she began to break up, and they were all drowned – all the women and all the children, and most of the men. Some of them had life-belts on, but they did not know how to tie them, and so the things only slipped down over their legs and helped to drown them. The money was found on them. In the old days the people of the islands would have had it all; but the coastguard took care of it. There, on the right of Retarrier, is the Bishop's Rock and lighthouse. In storms, the lighthouse rocks like a tree in the wind. You ought to sail over to those rocks, if it was only to see the surf dashing up their sides. But, since you cannot stay – ' Again she sighed.

'These are very interesting islands,' said Dick. 'Especially is it interesting to consider the consequences of being a native.'

'I should like to stay and sail among them,' said Roland.

'For instance' – Dick pursued his line of thought – 'in the study of geography. We who are from the inland parts of Great Britain must begin by learning the elements, the definitions, the terminology. Now to a Scilly boy – '

'A Scillonian,' the girl corrected him. 'We never speak of Scilly folk.'

'Naturally. To a Scillonian no explanation is needed. He knows, without being told, the meaning of peninsula, island, bay, shore, archipelago, current, tide, cape, headland, ocean, lake, road, harbour, reef, lighthouse, beacon, buoy, sounding – everything. He must know also what is meant by a gale of wind, a stiff breeze, a dead calm. He recognises, by the look of it, a lively sea, a chopping sea, a heavy sea, a roaring sea, a sulky sea. He knows everything except a river. That, I suppose, requires very careful explanation. It was a Scilly youth – I mean a Scillonian – who sat down on the river bank to wait for the water to go by. The history seems to prove the commercial intercourse which in remote antiquity took place between Phœnicia and the Cassiterides or Scilly Islands.'

Armorel looked puzzled. 'I did not know that story of a Scillonian and a river,' she said, coldly.

'Never mind his stories,' said Roland. 'This place is a story in itself: you are a story: we are all in fairyland.'

'No' – she shook her head. 'Bryher is the only island in all Scilly which has any fairies. They call them pixies there. I do not think that fairies would ever like to come and live on Samson: because of the graves, you know.'

She led them down the hill along a path worn by her own feet alone, and brought them out to the level space occupied by the farm-buildings.

'This is where we live,' she said. 'If you could stay here, Roland Lee, we could give you a room. We have many empty rooms' – she sighed – 'since my father and mother and my brothers were all drowned. Will you come in?'

She took them into the 'best parlour,' a room which struck a sudden chill to anyone who entered therein. It was the room reserved for days of ceremony – for a wedding, a christening, or a funeral. Between these events the room was never used. The furniture presented the aspect common to 'best parlours,' being formal and awkward. In one corner stood a bookcase with glass doors, filled with books. Armorel showed them into this apartment, drew up the blind, opened the window – there was certainly a stuffiness in the air – and looked about the room with evident pride. Few best parlours, she thought, in the adjacent islands of St. Mary's, Bryher, Tresco, or even Great Britain itself, could beat this.

She left them for a few minutes, and came back bearing a tray on which were a plate of apples, another of biscuits, and a decanter full of a very black liquid. Hospitality has its rules even on Samson, whither come so few visitors.

'Will you taste our Scilly apples?' she said. 'These are from our own orchard, behind the house. You will find them very sweet.'

Roland took one – as a general rule, this young man would rather take a dose of medicine than an apple – and munched it with avidity. 'A delicious fruit!' he cried. But his friend refused the proffered gift.

'Then you will take a biscuit, Dick Stephenson? Nothing? At least, a glass of wine?'

'Never in the morning, thank you.'

'You will, Roland Lee?' She turned, with a look of disappointment, to the other man, who was so easily pleased and who said such beautiful things. 'It is my own wine – I made it myself last year, of ripe blackberries.'

'Indeed I will! Your own wine? Your own making, Miss Armorel? Wine of Samson – the glorious vintage of the blackberry! In pies and in jam-pots I know the blackberry, but not, as yet, in decanters. Thank you, thank you!'

He smiled heroically while he held the glass to the light, smelt it, rolled it gently round. Then he tasted it. 'Sweet,' he said, critically. 'And strong. Clings to the palate. A liqueur wine – a curious wine.' He drank it up, and smiled again. 'Your own making! It is wonderful! No – not another drop, thank you!'

'Shall I show you?' – the girl asked, timidly – 'would you like to see my great-great-grandmother? She is so very old that the people come all the way from St. Agnes only just to look at her. Sometimes she answers questions for them, and they think it is telling their fortunes. She is asleep. But you may talk aloud. You will not awaken her. She is so very, very old, you know. Consider: she has been a widow nearly eighty years.'

She led them into the other room, where, in effect, the ancient dame sat in her hooded chair fast asleep, in cap and bonnet, her hands, in black mittens, crossed.

'Heavens!' Roland murmured. 'What a face! I must draw that face! And' – he looked at the girl bending over the chair placing a pillow in position – 'and that other. It is wonderful!' he said aloud. 'This is, indeed, the face of one who has lived a hundred years. Does she sometimes wake up and talk?'

'In the evening she recovers her memory for awhile and talks – sometimes quite nicely, sometimes she rambles.'

'And you have a spinning-wheel in the corner.'

'She likes someone to work at the spinning-wheel while she talks. Then she thinks it is the old time back again.'

'And there is a violin.'

'I play it in the evening. It keeps her awake, and helps her to remember. Justinian taught me. He used to play very well indeed until his fingers grew stiff. I can play a great many tunes, but it is difficult to learn any new ones. Last summer there were some ladies at Tregarthen's – one of them had a most beautiful voice, and she used to sing in the evening with the window open. I used to sail across on purpose to land and listen outside. And I learned a very pretty tune. I would play it to you in the evening if you were not going away.'

'I am not obliged to go away,' the young man said, with strangely flushing cheeks.

'Roland!' That was Dick's voice – but it was unheeded.

'Will you stay here, then?' the girl asked.

'Here in this house? In your house?'

'You can have my brother Emanuel's room. I shall be very glad if you will stay. And I will show you everything.' She did not invite the young man called Dick, but this other, the young man who drank her wine and ate her apple.

'If your – your – your guardian – or your great-great-grandmother approves.'

'Oh! she will approve. Stay, Roland Lee. We will make you very happy here. And you don't know what a lot there is to see.'

'Roland!' Again Dick's warning voice.

'A thousand thanks!' he said. 'I will stay.'

CHAPTER V

THE ENCHANTED ISLAND

The striking of seven by the most sonorous and musical of clocks ever heard reminded Roland of the dinner-hour. At seven most of us are preparing for this function, which civilisation has converted almost into an act of praise and worship. Some men, he remembered, were now walking in the direction of the club: some were dressing: some were making for restaurants: some had already begun. One naturally associates seven o'clock with the anticipation of dinner. There are men, it is true, who habitually take in food at midday and call it dinner: there are also those who have no dinner at all. He began to realise that he was not, this evening, going to have any dinner at all. For he was now at the farmhouse, sitting in the square window with Armorel: he had gone back to Tregarthen's and returned with his portmanteau and his painting gear: fortunately he had also taken an abundant lunch at that establishment. He had become an inhabitant of Samson. The increased population, therefore, now consisted of seven souls.

In fact, there was no dinner for him. Everybody in Samson dines at half-past twelve: he had tea with Armorel at half-past four: after tea they wandered along the shore and stood upon Shark Point to see the sun set behind Mincarlo, an operation performed with zeal and despatch, and with great breadth and largeness of colouring. When the shades of evening began to prevail they were fain to get home quickly, because there is no path among the boulders, nor have former inhabitants provided hand-rails for visitors on the carns. Therefore they retraced their steps to the farm, and Armorel left him sitting alone in the square window while she went about some household duties. In the quiet room the solemn clock told the moments, and there was light enough left to discern the ghostly figure of the ancient dame sleeping in her chair. The place was so quiet and so strange that the visitor presently felt as if he was sitting among ghosts. It is at twilight, in fact, that the spirits of the past make themselves most readily felt, if not seen. Now, it was exactly as if he had been in the place before. He knew, now, why he had been so suddenly and strangely attracted to Samson. He had been there before– when, or under what conditions, he knew not, and did not ask himself. It is a condition of the mind known to everybody. A touch – a word – a look – and we are transported back – how many years ago? The hills, the rocks, the house, Armorel herself – all were familiar to him. The thing was absurd, yet in his mind it was quite clear. It was so absurd that he thought his mind was wandering, and he arose and went out into the garden. There, the figure-head of the woman under the tall fuchsia-tree – the glow from the fire in the sitting-room fell upon the face through the window – seemed to smile upon him as upon an old friend. He went back again and sat down. Where was Armorel?

This strange familiarity with an unknown place quickly passes, though it may return. He now began to feel as if, perhaps, he was making a mistake. He was living on an island, with, practically, no other companion than a girl of fifteen. Dick, who had become suddenly grumpy on learning his resolution to stay, might be right. Well, he would sketch and paint; he would be very careful; not a word should be said that might disturb the child's tranquillity. No – Dick was a fool. He was going to have a day or two – just a day or two – of quiet happiness. The girl was young and beautiful and innocent. She was also made happy – she showed that happiness without an attempt at concealment – because he was going to stay. What would follow?

Well – it was an adventure. One does not ask what is going to follow on first encountering an adventure. What young man, besides, sallying forth upon a simple holiday, looks to find himself upon a desert island with no other companion than a trustful and admiring maiden of fifteen?

Then Armorel returned and took a chair beside him. He was a little surprised – but then, on a desert island nothing happens as on terra firma – that she did not ring for lights, and was still not without some hope of dinner. They took up the thread of talk about the islands, concerning which Roland Lee perceived that he would before long know a good deal. Local knowledge is always interesting; but it does not, except to novelists, possess a marketable value. One cannot, for instance, at a dinner-party, turn the conversation on the respective families of St. Agnes and St. Martin's. He made a mental note that he would presently change the subject to one of deeper personal interest. Perhaps he could get Armorel to talk about herself. That would be very much more interesting than to hear about the three Pipers' Holes of Tresco, White, and St. Mary's Islands. How did she live – this girl – and what did she do – and what did she think?

Meantime, while the girl herself was talking of the rocks and bays, the crags and coves, the white sand and the grey granite, the seals and the shags, the puffins and the dottrells, she was wondering, for her part, what manner of man this was – how he lived, and what he did, and what he thought. For when man and woman meet they are clothed and covered up; they are a mystery each to the other; never, since the Fall, have we been able to read each other's hearts.

But when the clock struck seven Armorel sprang to her feet, as one who hath a serious duty to perform, and preparations to make for it.

First she pulled down the blind, and so shut out what was left of the twilight. The fire had sunk low, but by its light she was dimly visible. She pushed back the table; she placed two chairs opposite the old lady, and another chair before the spinning-wheel.

'Something,' said the young man to himself, 'is certainly going to happen. One can no longer hope for dinner. Family prayers, perhaps; or the worship of the old lady as an ancestor. The descendants of the ancient people of Lyonesse no doubt bow down to the sun and dance to the moon, and pass the children through the holèd stone, and make Baal fires, and worship their grandmothers. It will be an interesting function. But, perhaps, only family prayers.'

Armorel took down the fiddle that hung on the wall and began to tune it, twanging the strings and drawing the bow across in the manner which so pleasantly excites the theatre before the music begins.

'Not family prayers, then,' said the young man, perhaps disappointed.

What did happen, however, was a series of things quite new and wholly unexpected. Never was known such a desert island.

First of all, the lady of many generations moved uneasily in her sleep at the twanging of the strings, and her fingers clutched at her dress as if she was startled by an uneasy dream.

And then the door opened, and a small procession of three came in. At this point, had the young man been a Roman Catholic, he would have crossed himself. As he was not, he only started and murmured, 'As I thought. The worship of the ancestor! These are the ghosts of the grandfather and the grandmother. The old lady is a mummy. They are all ghosts – I shall presently awake and find myself on my back among the barrows.'