WATT.

The air under the pines was balmy. The hot July sun brought out their resinous fragrance. Gleams of fire fell through the boughs and dappled the soil at intervals, and on these sun-flakes numerous fritillary butterflies with silver under-wings were fluttering, and countless flies were humming. The pines grew only at the bottom of the crags, and here and there in patches on the slopes. The woods were composed for the most part of oak, now in its richest, fullest foliage, the golden hue of early spring changing to the duller green of summer. Beech also abounded with their clean stems, and the soil beneath them bare of weed, and here and there a feathery birch with erect silver stem struggled up in the overgrowth to the light. The wood was full of foxgloves, spires of pink dappled bells, and of purple columbine. Wild roses grew wherever a rock allowed them to wreath in sunshine and burst into abundant bloom over its face. Eve carried her straw hat on her arm, hung by its blue ribands. She needed its shelter in the wood no more than in her father’s hall.

She came to a brook, dribbling and tinkling on its way through moss and over stone. The path was fringed with blazing marigolds. Eve had already picked some, she now halted, and brimmed the extemporised basket with more of the golden flowers.

The gloom, the fragrant air, the flicker of colour made her think of the convent chapel at Lanherne, whither she had been sent for her education, but whence, having pined under the restraint, she had been speedily removed. As she walked she swung her hat like a censer. From it rose the fresh odour of flowers, and from it dropped now and then a marigold like a burning cinder. Scarce thinking what she did, Eve assumed the slow and measured pace of a religious procession, as she had seen one at Lanherne, still swinging her hat, and letting the flowers fall from it whilst she chanted meaningless words to a sacred strain. Then she caught her straw hat to her, and holding it before her in her left arm, advanced at a quicker pace, still singing. Now she dipped her right hand in the crown and strewed the blossoms to left and right, as did the little girls in the Corpus Christi procession round the convent grounds at Lanherne. Her song quickened and brightened, and changed its character as her flighty thoughts shifted to other topics, and her changeful mood assumed another complexion. Her tune became that of the duet LÀ ci darem la mano, in ‘Don Giovanni,’ which she had often sung with her sister. She sang louder and more joyously, and her feet moved in rhythm to this song, as they had to the ecclesiastical chant; her eyes sparkled, her cheeks flushed.

It seemed to her that a delicate echo accompanied her—very soft and spiritual, now in snatches, then low, rolling, long-drawn-out. She stopped and listened, then went on again. What she heard was the echo from the rocks and tree boles.

But presently the road became steeper, and she could no longer spare breath for her song; now the sacred chant was quite forgotten, but the sweet air of Mozart clung to her memory, as the scent of pot-pourri to a parlour, and there it would linger the rest of the day.

As she walked on she was in a dream. What must it be to hear these songs accompanied by instruments, and with light and scenery, and acting on the stage? Oh, that she could for once in her life have the supreme felicity of seeing a real play!

Suddenly a flash of vivid golden light broke before her, the trees parted, and she stood on the Raven Rock, a precipice that shoots high above the Tamar and commands a wide prospect over Cornwall—Hingston Hill, where Athelstan fought and beat the Cornish in the last stand the Britons made, and Kitt Hill, a dome of moorclad mountain. As she stepped forth on the rock to enjoy the light and view and air, there rushed out of the oak and dogwood bushes a weird boy, who capered and danced, brandished a fiddle, clapped it under his chin, and still dancing, played LÀ ci darem fast, faster, till his little arms went faster than Eve could see.

The girl stood still, petrified with terror. Here was the Pixy of the Raven Rock Jasper had spoken of. The malicious boy saw and revelled in her fear, and gambolled round her, grimacing and still fiddling till his tune led up to and finished in a shriek.

‘There, there,’ said he, at length, lowering the violin and bow; ‘how I have scared you, Eve!’

Eve trembled in every limb, and was too alarmed to speak. The scenery, the rock, the boy, swam in a blue haze before her eyes.

‘There, Eve, don’t be frightened. You led me on with your singing. I followed in your flowery traces. Don’t you know me?’

Eve shook her head. She could not speak.

‘You have seen me. You saw me that night when I came riding over your downs at the back of Martin, when poor Jasper fell—you remember me. I smashed your rattletrap gig. What a piece of good luck it was that Jasper’s horse went down and not ours. I might have broken my fiddle. I’d rather break a leg, especially that of another person.’

Eve had not thought of the boy since that eventful night. Indeed, she had seen little of him then.

‘I remember,’ she said, ‘there was a boy.’

‘Myself. Watt is my name, or in full, Walter. If you doubt my humanity touch my hand; feel, it is warm.’ He grasped Eve and drew her out on the rocky platform.

‘Sit down, Eve. I know you better than you know me. I have heard Martin speak of you. That is how I know about you. Look me in the face.’

Eve raised her eyes to his. The boy had a strange countenance. The hair was short-cropped and black, the skin olive. He had protruding and large ears, and very black keen eyes.

‘What do you think is my age?’ asked the boy. ‘I am nineteen. I am an ape. I shall never grow into a man.’ He began again to skip and make grimaces. Eve shrank away in alarm.

‘There! Put your fears aside, and be reasonable,’ said Watt, coming to a rest. ‘Jasper is below, munching his dinner. I have seen him. He would not eat whilst you were by. He did not suspect I was lying on the rock overhead in the heath, peering down on you both whilst you were talking. I can skip about, I can scramble anywhere, I can almost fly. I do not wish Jasper to know I am here. No one must know but yourself, for I have come here on an errand to you.’

‘To me!’ echoed Eve, hardly recovered from her terror.

‘I am come from Martin. You remember Martin? Oh! there are not many men like Martin. He is a king of men. Imagine an old town, with ancient houses and a church tower behind, and the moon shining on it, and in the moonlight Martin in velvet, with a hat in which is a white feather, and his violin, under a window, thinking you are there, and singing Deh, vieni alla finestra. Do you know the tune? Listen.’ The boy took his fiddle, and touching the strings with his fingers, as though playing a mandolin, he sang that sweet minstrel song.

Eve’s blue eyes opened wonderingly, this was all so strange and incomprehensible to her.

‘See here, Miss Zerlina, you were singing LÀ ci darem just now, try it with me. I can take Giovanni’s part and you that of Zerlina.’

‘I cannot. I cannot, indeed.’

‘You shall. I shall stand between you and the wood. You cannot escape over the rock, you would be dashed to pieces. I will begin.’

Suddenly a loud voice interrupted him as he began to play—’Watt!’

Standing under the shadow of the oaks, with one foot on the rocky platform, was Jasper.

‘Watt, how came you here?’

The boy lowered his violin and stood for a moment speechless.

‘Miss Eve,’ said Jasper, ‘please go home. After all, you have encountered the pixy, and that a malicious and dangerous imp. Stand aside, Watt.’

The boy did not venture to resist. He stood back near the edge of the rock and allowed Eve to pass him.

When she was quite gone, Jasper said gravely to the boy, ‘What has brought you here?’

‘That is a pretty question to ask me, Jasper. We left you here, broken and senseless, and naturally Martin and I want to know what condition you are in. How could we tell whether you were alive or dead? You know very well that Martin could not come, so I have run here to obtain information.’

‘I am well,’ answered Jasper, ‘you may tell Martin, everywhere but here,’ he laid his hand on his heart.

‘With such a pretty girl near I do not wonder,’ laughed the boy. ‘I shall tell poor Martin of the visits paid you at the water’s edge.’

‘That will do,’ said Jasper; ‘this joking offends me. Tell Martin I am here, but with my heart aching for him.’

‘No occasion for that, Jasper. Not a cricket in the grass is lighter of spirit than he.’

‘I dare say,’ said the elder, ‘he does not feel matters acutely. Tell him the money must be restored. Here I stay as a pledge that the debt shall be paid. Tell him that I insist on his restoring the money.’

‘Christmas is coming, and after that Easter, and then, all in good time, Christmas again; but money once passed, returns no more.’

‘I expect Martin to restore what he took. He is good at heart, but inconsiderate. I know Martin better than you. You are his bad angel. He loves me and is generous. He knows what I have done for him, and when I tell him that I must have the money back he will return it if he can.’

‘If he can!’ repeated the boy derisively. ‘It is well you have thrown in that proviso. I once tossed my cap into the Dart and ran two miles along the bank after it. I saw it for two miles bobbing on the ripples, but at last it went over the weir above Totnes and disappeared. I believe that cap was fished up at Dartmouth and is now worn by the mayor’s son. It is so with money. Once let it out of your hands and it avails nothing to run after it. It disappears and comes up elsewhere to profit others.’

‘Where is Martin now?’

‘Anywhere and everywhere.’

‘He is not in this county, I trust.’

‘Did you never hear of the old lady who lost the store closet key and hunted everywhere except in her own pocket? What is under your nose is overlooked.’

‘Go back to Martin. Tell him, as he values his safety and my peace of mind, to keep out of the country, certainly out of the county. Tell him to take to some honest work and stick to it, and to begin his repentance by——’

‘There! if I carry a preachment away with me I shall never reach Martin. I had a surfeit of this in the olden days, Jasper. I know a sailor lad who has been fed on salt junk at sea till if you put but as much as will sit on the end of your knife under his nose when he is on land he will upset the table. It is the same with Martin and me. No sermons for us, Jasper. So—see, I am off at the first smell of a text.’

He darted into the wood and disappeared, singing at the top of his voice ‘Life let us cherish.’