Chapter II: Part 2

All along the Cornish coast the bathing is delightful--when you can get it; but sometimes for miles and miles the cliffs rise in a huge impregnable wall, without a single break. Then perhaps there comes a sudden cleft in the rock, a green descent, possibly with a rivulet trickling through it, and leading to a sheltered cove or a sea-cave, accessible only at low water, but one of the most delicious little nooks that could be imagined. Kynance, we were told, with its "kitchen" and "drawing-room," was the most perfect specimen of the kind; but Kennack was sufficiently lovely. With all sorts of fun, shouting, and laughter, the girls disappeared to their evidently familiar haunts, to reappear as merry mermaids playing about in a crystalline sea.

A most tantalising sight to my two, who vowed never again to attempt a day's excursion without taking bathing dresses, towels, and the inevitable fish-line, to be tied round the waist,--with a mother holding the other end. For we had been warned against these long and strong Atlantic waves, the recoil of which takes you off your feet even in calm weather. As bathing must generally be done at low water, to ensure a sandy floor and a comfortable cave, it is easy enough to be swept out of one's depth; and the cleverest swimmer, if tossed about among these innumerable rocks circled round by eddies of boiling white water, would have small chance of returning with whole bones, or of returning at all.

Indeed, along this Cornish coast, life and death seem very near together. Every pleasure carries with it a certain amount of risk; the utmost caution is required both on land and sea, and I cannot advise either rash or nervous people to go travelling in Cornwall.

Bathing being impracticable, we consoled ourselves with ascending the sandy hillock, which bounded one side of the bay, and sat looking from it towards the coast-line eastwards.

What a strange peace there is in a solitary shore, an empty sea, for the one or two white dots of silent ships seemed rather to add to than diminish its loneliness--lonelier in sunshine, I think, than even in storm. The latter gives a sense of human life, of struggle and of pain; while the former is all repose, the bright but solemn repose of infinity or eternity.

But these thoughts were for older heads; the only idea of the young heads--uncommonly steady they must have been!--was of scrambling into the most inaccessible places, and getting as near to the sea as possible without actually tumbling into it. After a while the land attracted them in turn, and they came back with their hands full of flowers, some known, some unknown; great bunches of honeysuckle, curious sand-plants, and cliff-plants; also water-plants, which fringed a little rivulet that ran into the bay, while, growing everywhere abundantly, was the lovely grey-green cringo, or sea-holly.

All these treasures, to make the parlour pretty, required much ingenuity to carry home safely, the sun withered them so fast. But there was the pleasure of collecting.

We could willingly have stayed here all day--how natural is that wish of poor young Shelley, that in every pretty place he saw he might remain "for ever"!--but the forenoon was passing, and we had much to see.

"Poltesco, everybody goes to Poltesco," observed the patient Charles.

So of course we went there too. At Poltesco are the principal serpentine works--the one commerce of the district. The monotonous hum of its machinery mingled oddly with the murmur of a trout-stream which ran through the pretty little valley, crossed by a wooden bridge, where a solitary angler stood fishing in imperturbable content.

There were only about a dozen workmen visible; one of whom came forward and explained to us the mode of work, afterwards taking us to the show-room, which contained everything possible to be made of serpentine, from mantelpieces and tombstones, down to brooches and studs. Very delicate and beautiful was the workmanship; the forms of some of the things--vases and candlesticks especially--were quite Pompeian. In truth, throughout Cornwall, we often came upon shapes, Roman or Greek, proving how even yet relics of its early masters or colonisers linger in this western corner of England.

In its inhabitants too. When, as we passed, more than one busy workman lifted up his head for a moment, we noticed faces almost classic in type, quite different from the bovine, agricultural Hodge of the midland counties. In manner different likewise. There was neither stupidity nor servility, but a sort of dignified independence. No pressing to buy, no looking out for gratuities, only a kindly politeness, which did not fail even when we departed, taking only a few little ornaments. We should have liked to carry off a cart-load--especially two enormous vases and a chimney-piece--but travellers have limits to luggage, and purse as well.

Pretty Poltesco! we left it with regret, but we were in the hands of the ever-watchful Charles, anxious that we should see as much as possible.

"The driving-road goes far inland, but there's a splendid cliff-walk from Poltesco to Cadgwith direct. The young ladies might do it with a guide--here he is, a man I know, quite reliable. They'll walk it easily in half an hour. But you, ma'am, I think you'd better come with me."

No fighting against fate. So I put my "chickens" in safe charge, meekly re-entered the carriage, and drove, humbly and alone, across a flat dull country, diversified here and there by a few cottages, politely called a village--the two villages of Ruan Minor and Ruan Major. I afterwards found that they were not without antiquarian interest, that I might have gone to examine a curious old church, well, and oratory, supposed to have been inhabited by St. Rumon. But we had left the guide-book at home, with the so longed-for bathing gowns, and Charles was not of archæological mind, so I heard nothing and investigated nothing.

Except, indeed, numerous huge hand-bills, posted on barn doors and gates, informing the inhabitants that an Exhibition of Fine Arts, admittance one shilling, was on view close by. Charles was most anxious I should stop and visit it, saying it was "very fine." But as within the last twelvemonth I had seen the Royal Academy, Grosvenor Gallery, and most of the galleries and museums in Italy, the Fine Art Exhibition of Ruan Minor was not overwhelmingly attractive. However, not to wound the good Cornishman, who was evidently proud of it, I explained that, on the whole, I preferred nature to art.

And how grand nature was in this fishing-village of Cadgwith, to which after a long round, we came at last!

Nestled snugly in a bend of the coast which shelters it from north and east, leaving it open to southern sunshine, while another curve of land protects it from the dense fogs which are so common at the Lizard, Cadgwith is, summer and winter, one of the pleasantest nooks imaginable. The climate, Charles told me, is so mild, that invalids often settle down in the one inn--a mere village inn externally, but very comfortable. And, as I afterwards heard at Lizard Town, the parson and his wife--"didn't I know them?" and I felt myself rather looked down upon because I did not know them--are the kindest of people, who take pleasure in looking after the invalids, rich or poor. "Yes," Charles considered Cadgwith was a nice place to winter in, "only just a trifle dull."

Probably so, to judge by the interest which, even in this tourist-season, our carriage excited, as we wound down one side and up another of the ravine in which the village is built, with a small fishing-station at the bottom, rather painfully odoriferous. The fisher-wives came to their doors, the old fisher-men stood, hands in pockets, the roly-poly healthy fisher-children stopped playing, to turn round and stare. In these parts everybody stares at everybody, and generally everybody speaks to everybody--a civil "good-day" at any rate, sometimes more.

"This is a heavy pull for you," said a sympathetic old woman, who had watched me leave the carriage and begin mounting the cliff towards the Devil's Frying-pan--the principal thing to be seen at Cadgwith. She followed me, and triumphantly passed me, though she had to carry a bag of potatoes on her back. I wondered if her feeling was pity or envy towards another old person who had to carry nothing but her own self. Which, alas! was enough!

She and I sat down together on the hill-side and had a chat, while I waited for the two little black dots which I could see moving round the opposite headland. She gave me all kinds of information, in the simple way peculiar to country folk, whose innocent horizon comprises the whole world, which, may be, is less pleasant than the little world of Cadgwith. Then we parted for ever and aye.

The Devil's Frying-pan is a wonderful sight. Imagine a natural amphitheatre two acres in extent, inclosed by a semi-circular slope about two hundred feet high, covered with grass and flowers and low bushes. Outside, the wide, open sea, which pours in to the shingly beach at the bottom through an arch of serpentine, the colouring of which, and of the other rocks surrounding it, is most exquisite, varying from red to green, with sometimes a tint of grey. Were Cadgwith a little nearer civilisation, what a show-place it would become!

But happily civilisation leaves it alone. The tiny farm-house on the hill-side near the Frying-pan looked, within and without, much as it must have looked for the last hundred years; and the ragged, unkempt, tongue-tied little girl, from whom we succeeded in getting a drink of milk in a tumbler which she took five minutes to search for, had certainly never been to a Board School. She investigated the penny which we deposited as if it were a great natural curiosity rarely attainable, and she gazed after us as we climbed the stile leading to the Frying-pan as if wondering what on earth could tempt respectable people, who had nothing to do, into such a very uncomfortable place.

Uncomfortable, certainly, as we sat with our feet stuck in the long grass to prevent slipping down the slope--a misadventure which would have been, to say the least, awkward. Those boiling waves, roaring each after each through the arch below; and those jagged rocks, round which innumerable sea-birds were flying--one could quite imagine that were any luckless vessel to find itself in or near the Frying-pan, it would never get out again.

To meditative minds there is something very startling in the perpetual contrast between the summer tourist-life, so cheerful and careless, and the winter life of the people here, which must be so full of privations; for one half the year there is nothing to do, no market for serpentine, and almost no fishing possible: they have to live throughout the dark days upon the hay made while the sun shines.

"No, no," said one of the Lizard folk, whom I asked if there was much drunkenness thereabout, for I had seen absolutely none; "no, us don't drink; us can't afford it. Winter's a bad time for we--sometimes for four months a man doesn't earn a halfpenny. He has to save in summer, or he'd starve the rest of the year."

Which apparently is not altogether bad for him. I have seldom seen, in any part of England or Scotland, such an honest, independent, respectable race as the working people on this coast, and indeed throughout Cornwall.

We left with regret the pretty village, resolving to come back again in a day or two; it was barely three miles from the Lizard, though the difference in climate was said to be so great. And then we drove back across the bleak down and through the keen "hungry" sea-air, which made dinner a matter of welcome importance. And without dwelling too much on the delights of the flesh--very mild delights after all--I will say that the vegetables grown in the garden, and the grapes in the simple green-house beside it, were a credit to Cornwall, especially so near the sea-coast.

We had just time to dine, repose a little, and communicate our address to our affectionate friends at home--so as to link ourselves for a few brief days with the outside world--when appeared the punctual Charles.

"Don't be afraid, ladies, he's had a good rest,"--this was the important animal about whose well-being we were naturally anxious. Charles patted his shoulder, and a little person much given to deep equine affections tenderly stroked his nose. He seemed sensible of the attention and of what was expected from him, and started off, as lively as if he had been idle for a week, across the Lizard Down and Pradenack Down to Mullion.

"I hope Mary will be at home," said Charles, turning round as usual to converse; "she'll be sure to make you comfortable. Of course you've heard of Mary Mundy?"

Fortunately we had. There was in one of our guide-books a most glowing description of the Old Inn, and also an extract from a poem, apostrophising the charms of Mary Mundy. When we said we knew the enthusiastic Scotch Professor who had written it, we felt that we rose a step in the estimation of Charles.

"And Mary will be so pleased to see anybody who knows the gentleman"--in Cornwall the noted Greek Professor was merely "the gentleman." "She's got his poem in her visitors' book and his portrait in her album. I do hope Mary will be at home."

But fate was against us. When we reached Mullion and drove up to the door of the Old Inn, there darted out to meet us, not Mary, but an individual concerning whom Fame has been unjustly silent.

"It's only Mary's brother," said Charles, with an accent of deep disappointment.

But as the honest man who had apparently gone through life as "Mary's brother" stood patting our horse and talking to our driver, with both of whom he seemed on terms of equal intimacy, his welcome to ourselves was such a mixture of cordiality and despair that we could scarcely keep from laughing.

"Mary's gone to Helstone, ladies; her would have been delighted, but her's gone marketing to Helstone. I hope her'll be back soon, for I doesn't know what to do without she. The house is full, and there's a party of eleven come to tea, and actually wanting it sent down to them at the Cove. They won't get it though. And you shall get your tea, ladies, even if they have to go without."

We expressed our gratitude, and left Charles to arrange all for us, which he did in the most practical way.

"And you think Mary may be back at six?"

"Her said her would, and I hope her will," answered the brother despondently. "Her's very seldom out; us can't get on at all without she."

This, and several more long and voluble speeches given in broad Cornish, with the true Cornish confusion of pronouns, and with an air of piteous perplexity--nay, abject helplessness, the usual helplessness of man without woman--proved too much for our risible nerves. We maintained a decorous gravity till we had driven away, and then fell into shouts of laughter--the innocent laughter of happy-minded people over the smallest joke or the mildest species of fun.

"Never mind, ladies, you'll get your tea all right. If Mary said she'd be back at six, back she'll be. And you'll find a capital tea waiting for you; there isn't a more comfortable inn in all Cornwall."

Which, we afterwards found, was saying a great deal.

Mullion Cove is a good mile from Mullion village, and as we jolted over the rough road I was remorseful over both carriage and horse.

"Not at all, ma'am, he's used to it. Often and often he comes here with pic-nic parties, all the way from Falmouth. I'll put him in at the farm, and be down with you at the Cove directly. You'll find the rocks pretty bad walking, but there's a cave which you ought to see. We'll try it."

There was no resisting the way the kindly young Cornishman thus identified himself with our interests, and gave himself all sorts of extra trouble on our account. And when after a steep and not too savoury descent--the cove being used as a fish cellar--we found ourselves on the beach, shut in by those grand rocks of serpentine, with Mullion Island lying ahead about a quarter of a mile off, we felt we had not come here for nothing.

The great feature of Mullion Cove is its sea-caves, of which there are two, one on the beach, the other round the point, and only accessible at low water. Now, we saw the tide was rising fast.

"They'll have to wade; I told them they would have to wade!" cried an anxious voice behind me; and "I was ware," as ancient chroniclers say, of the presence of another "old hen," the same whom we had noticed conducting her brood of chickens, or ducklings--they seemed more like the latter now--to bathe on Kennack Sands.

"Yes, they have been away more than half an hour, all my children except this one"--a small boy who looked as if he wished he had gone too. "They would go, though I warned them they would have to wade. And there they are, just going into the cave. One, two, three, four, five, six," counting the black specks that were seen moving on, or rather in, the water. "Oh dear, they've _all_ gone in! I wish they were safe out again."

Nevertheless, in the midst of her distress, the benevolent lady stopped to give me a helping hand into the near cave, a long, dark passage, with light at either end. My girls had already safely threaded it and come triumphantly out at the other side. But what with the darkness and the uncertain footing over what felt like beds of damp seaweed, with occasional stones, through which one had to grope every inch of one's way, my heart rather misgave me, until I was cheered by the apparition of the faithful Charles.

"Don't go back, ma'am, you'll be so sorry afterwards. I'll strike a light and help you. Slow and steady, you'll come to no harm. And it's beautiful when you get out at the other end."

So it was. The most exquisite little nook; where you could have imagined a mermaid came daily to comb her hair; one can easily believe in mermaids or anything else in Cornwall. What a charming dressing-room she would have, shut in on three sides by those great walls of serpentine, and in front the glittering sea, rolling in upon a floor of the loveliest silver sand.

But the only mermaid there was an artist's wife, standing beside her husband's easel, at which he was painting away so earnestly that he scarcely noticed us. Very picturesque he looked, and she too, in her rough serge dress, with her pretty bare feet and ankles, the shoes and stockings lying in a corner as if they had not been worn for hours. Why should they be? they were quite unnecessary on those soft sands, and their owner stood and talked with me as composedly as if it were the height of the fashion to go barefoot. And far more than anything concerning herself, she seemed interested in my evident interest in the picture, which promised to be a remarkably good one, and which, if I see it on the R. A. walls next year will furnish my only clue to the identity of the couple, or theirs to mine.

But the tide was fast advancing; they began to take down the easel, and I remembered that the narrow winding cave was our only way out from this rock-inclosed fairy paradise to the prosaic beach.

"Look, they are wading ashore up to the knees! And we shall have to wade too if we don't make haste back."

So cried the perplexed mother of the six too-adventurous ducklings. But mine, more considerate, answered me from the rocks where they were scrambling, and helped me back through the cave into safe quarters, where we stood watching the waders with mingled excitement and--envy?

Alas! I can still recall the delicious sensation of paddling across the smooth sea-sand, and of walking up the bed of a Highland burn. But "Oh! the change twixt Now and Then," I sat calmly on a stone, dry-shod; as was best. Still, is it not a benign law of nature, that the things we are no longer able to do, we almost cease to wish to do? Perhaps even the last cessation of all things will come naturally at the end, as naturally as we turn round and go to sleep at night?

But it was not night yet. I am proud to think how high and steep was the cliff we re-ascended, all three of us, and from which we stood and looked at sky and sea. Such a sea and such a sky: amber clear, so that one could trace the whole line of coast--Mount's Bay, with St. Michael's Mount dotted in the midst of it, and even the Land's End, beyond which the sun, round and red, was just touching the top of the waves. We should have liked to watch him drop below them--that splendid sea-sunset of which one never tires, but we had some distance to walk, and we began to rejoice in the prospect of Mary Mundy's tea.

"I'll go on ahead and have the carriage ready," said the ever thoughtful Charles. "You can't miss your way, ladies. Just follow the hedges"--that tempting aerial promenade, to which we were now getting accustomed, becoming veritable Blondins in petticoats--"then cross the cornfield; and take to the hedges again. You'll be at the farm-yard directly."

Not quite--for we lingered, tempted by the abundance of corn-flowers, of which we gathered, not handfuls but armfuls. When we reached it, what a picture of an English farm-yard it was! With a regular old-fashioned English milk-maid--such as Izaak Walton would have loved to describe--sitting amidst her shining pails, her cows standing round her, meekly waiting their turn. Sleek, calm creatures they were, Juno-eyed and soft-skinned--of that peculiar shade of grey which I have seen only in Cornwall. And, being rather a connoisseur in cows, I have often amused myself to notice how the kine of each country have their own predominant colour, which seems to harmonise with its special landscape. The curious yellow tint of Highland cattle, the red, white, or brown of those of the midland counties, and the delicate grey of Cornish cows, alike suit the scene around them, and belong to it as completely as the dainty little Swiss herds do to their Alpine pastures, or the large, mild, cream-coloured oxen to the Campagna at Rome.

But we had to tear ourselves away from this Arcadia, for in the midst of the farm-yard appeared the carriage and Charles. So we jolted back--it seemed as if Cornish carriages and horses could go anywhere and over everything--to the Old Inn and Mary Mundy.

She _had_ come home, and everything was right. As we soon found, everything and everybody was accustomed to be put to rights by Miss Mary Mundy.

She stood at the door to greet us--a bright, brown-faced little woman with the reddest of cheeks and the blackest of eyes; I have no hesitation in painting her portrait here, as she is, so to speak, public property, known and respected far and wide.

"Delighted to see you, ladies; delighted to see any friends of the Professor's; and I hope you enjoyed the Cove, and that you're all hungry, and will find your tea to your liking. It's the best we can do; we're very homely folk here, but we try to make people comfortable," and so on and so on, a regular stream of chatty conversation, given in the strongest Cornish, with the kindliest of Cornish hearts, as she ushered us into a neat little parlour at the back of the inn.

There lay spread, not one of your dainty afternoon teas, with two or three wafery slices of bread and butter, but a regular substantial meal. Cheerful candles--of course in serpentine candlesticks--were already lit, and showed us the bright teapot full of that welcome drink to weary travellers, hot, strong and harmless; the gigantic home-baked loaf, which it seemed sacrilegious to have turned into toast; the rich, yellow butter--I am sure those lovely cows had something to do with it, and also with the cream, so thick that the spoon could almost have stood upright in it. Besides, there was a quantity of that delicious clotted cream, which here accompanies every meal and of which I had vainly tried to get the receipt, but was answered with polite scorn, "Oh, ma'am, it would be of no use to _you_: Cornish cream can only be made from Cornish cows!"

Whether this remarkable fact in natural history be true or not, let me record the perfection of Mary Mundy's cream, which, together with her jam and her marmalade, was a refection worthy of the gods.

She pressed us again and again to "have some more," and her charge for our magnificent meal was as small as her gratitude was great for the slight addition we made to it.

"No, I'll not say no, ma'am, it'll come in handy; us has got a young niece to bring up--my brother and me--please'm. Yes, I'm glad you came, and I hope you'll come again, please'm. And if you see the Professor, you'll tell him he's not forgotten, please'm."

This garniture of "please'm" at the end of every sentence reminded us of the Venetian "probbedirla," _per ubbedirla_, with which our gondolier Giovanna used to amuse us, often dragging it in in the oddest way. "Yes, the Signora will get a beautiful day, probbedirla," or "My wife has just lost her baby, probbedirla." Mary Mundy's "please'm" often came in with equal incongruity, and her voluble tongue ran on nineteen to the dozen; but her talk was so shrewd and her looks so pleasant--once, no doubt, actually pretty, and still comely enough for a middle-aged woman--that we departed, fully agreeing with her admiring Professor that

"The brightest thing on Cornish land
Is the face of Miss Mary Mundy."

Recrossing Pradenack down in the dim light of a newly-risen moon, everything looked so solitary and ghostly that we started to see moving from behind a furz-bush, a mysterious figure, which crossed the road slowly, and stood waiting for us. Was it man or ghost, or--

Only a donkey! A ridiculous grey donkey. It might have been Tregeagle himself--Tregeagle, the grim mad-demon of Cornish tradition, once a dishonest steward, who sold his soul to the devil, and is doomed to keep on emptying Dozmare Pool, near St. Neots (the same mere wherein Excalibur was thrown), with a limpet-shell; and to spend his nights in other secluded places balancing interminable accounts, which are always just sixpence wrong.

Poor Tregeagle! I fear some of us, weak in arithmetic, had a secret sympathy for him! But we never met him--nor anything worse than that spectral donkey, looming large and placid against the level horizon.

Soon, "the stars came out by twos and threes,"--promising a fine night and finer morning, during which, while we were comfortably asleep, our good horse and man would be driving across this lonely region to Falmouth, in time to take the good people to church on Sunday morning.

"And we'll do it, too--don't you be anxious about us, ladies," insisted Charles. "I'll feed him well, and groom him well. I likes to take care of a good horse, and you'll see, he'll take no harm. I'll be back when you want me, at the week's end, or perhaps before then, with some party or other--we're always coming to the Lizard--and I'll just look in and see how you're getting on, and how you liked Kynance. But take care of the tide."

We thanked our kindly charioteer, bade him and his horse good-bye, wished him a pleasant journey through the moonlight, which was every minute growing more beautiful, then went indoors to supper--no! supper would have been an insult to Mary Mundy's tea--to bed.

DAY THE FOURTH

Sunday, September 4th--and we had started on September 1st; was it possible we had only been travelling four days?

It felt like fourteen at least. We had seen so much, taken in so many new interests--nay, made several new friends. Already we began to plan another meeting with John Curgenven, who we found was a relation of our landlady, or of our bright-faced serving maiden, Esther--I forget which. But everybody seemed connected with everybody at the Lizard, and everybody took a friendly interest in everybody. The arrival of new lodgers in the "genteel" parlour which we had not appreciated was important information, and we were glad to hear that Charles had started about four in the morning quite cheery.

And what a morning it was!--a typical Sabbath, a day of rest, a day to rejoice in. Strolling round the garden at eight o'clock, while the dew still lay thick on the grass, and glittered like diamonds on the autumnal spider-webs, even the flowers seemed to know it was Sunday, the mignonette bed to smell sweeter, the marigolds--yes! æsthetic fashion is right in its love for marigolds--burnt in a perfect blaze of golden colour and aromatic scent. The air was so mild that we could imagine summer was still with us: and the great wide circle of sea gleamed in the sunshine as if there never had been, never could be, such a thing as cloud or storm.

Having ascertained that there was no service nearer than Grade, some miles off, until the afternoon, we "went to church" on the cliffs, in Pistol Meadow, beside the green mounds where the two hundred drowned sailors sleep in peace.

And such a peaceful place! Absolutely solitary: not a living creature, not even a sheep came near me the whole morning:--and in the silence I could hear almost every word said by my young folks, searching for sea-treasures among the rocks and little pools far below. Westwards towards Kynance, and eastwards towards Landewednack--the church we were to go to in the afternoon--the cliff path was smooth and green, the short grass full of those curious dainty flowers, some of which were new to our eager eyes. At other times the road was so precipitous that we did not wonder at those carefully white-washed stones every few yards, which are the sole guide to the coastguard men of dark nights. Even in daylight, if the wind were high, or the footing slippery with rain, the cliff-walk from the Lizard to Kynance would be no joke to uninitiated feet.

Now, all was so still that the wind never once fluttered the letter I was writing, and so warm that we were glad to escape the white glare of the wall of the Lizard Lights and sit in a cool hollow, watching sky and ocean, with now and then a sea-bird floating lazily between, a dark speck on the perpetual blue.

"If it will only keep like this all week!" And, as we sat, we planned out each day, so as to miss nothing, and lose nothing--either of time or strength: doing enough, but never too much--as is often the fatal mistake of tourists. And then, following the grand law of travelling, to have one's "meals reg'lar"--we went indoors and dined. Afterwards in honour of the day

"that comes between
The Saturday and Monday,"

we dressed ourselves in all our best--very humble best it was!--to join the good people going to church at Landewednack.

This, which in ancient Cornish means "the white-roofed church of St. Wednack"--hagiologists must decide who that individual was!--is the name of the parish to which the comparatively modern Lizard Town belongs. The church is in a very picturesque corner, close to the sea, though both it and the rectory are protected by a sudden dip in the ground, so that you see neither till you are close upon them. A fine Norman doorway, a curious hagioscope, and other points, interesting to archaeologists--also the neatest and prettiest of churchyards--make note-worthy this, the most southerly church in England. A fine old building, not spoiled though "restored." The modern open pews, and a modern memorial pulpit of serpentine, jarred less than might have been expected with the carefully-preserved remains of the past.

In Landewednack church is said to have been preached the last sermon in Cornish. This was in 1678. Since, the ancient tongue has completely died out, and the people of King Arthur's country have become wholly English.

Still, they are not the English of the midland and northern districts, but of a very different type and race. I have heard it said that a seaboard population, accustomed to wrestle with the dangers of the coast, to move about from place to place, see foreign countries, and carry on its business in the deep waters, is always more capable, more intelligent, as a whole, than an inland people, whether agricultural or manufacturing. It may be so: but certainly the aborigines of Lizard Town, who could easily be distinguished from the visitors--of whom there was yet a tolerable sprinkling--made a very interesting congregation; orderly, respectable, reverent; simple in dress and manner, yet many of them, both the men and women, exceedingly picturesque. That is, the old men and the old women: the younger ones aped modern fashion even here, in this out-of-the-way corner, and consequently did not look half so well as their seniors.

I must name one more member of the congregation--a large black dog, who walked in and settled himself in the pew behind, where he behaved during half the service in an exemplary manner, worthy of the Highland shepherds' dogs, who always come to church with their masters, and conduct themselves with equal decorum.

There is always a certain pathos in going in to worship in a strange church, with a strange congregation, of whom you are as ignorant as they of you. In the intervals of kneeling with them as "miserable sinners," one finds oneself speculating upon them, their possible faults and virtues, joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, watching the unknown faces, and trying to read thereon the records of a common humanity. A silent homily, better perhaps than most sermons.

Not that there was aught to complain of in the sermon, and the singing was especially good. Many a London choir might have taken a lesson from this village church at the far end of Cornwall. When service was over, we lingered in the pretty and carefully tended churchyard, where the evening light fell softly upon many curious gravestones, of seafaring men, and a few of wrecked sailors--only a few, since it is but within a generation that bodies washed ashore from the deep were allowed to be buried in consecrated ground; most of them, like the two hundred in Pistol Meadow, being interred as near as convenient to where they were found, without any burial rites. Still, in all the churchyards along this coast are graves with a story. A little corner railed off has an old and sad one. There lie buried the victims of the plague, which in 1645 devastated the village. No one since has ever ventured to disturb their resting-place.

Very green and peaceful the churchyard looked: the beautiful day was dying, beautiful to the last. We stood and watched the congregation melt slowly away, disappearing down the lane, and then, attracted by the sound of music, we re-entered the church. There we sat and listened for another half-hour to the practising of an anthem ready for the harvest festival, which had been announced for the following Tuesday; exceedingly well done too, the rector's voice leading it all, with an energy and enthusiasm that at once accounted for the capital condition of the choir.

"If this weather will only last!" was our earnest sigh as we walked home; and anxious not to lose a minute of it, we gave ourselves the briefest rest, and turned out again, I to watch the sunset from the cliffs, while the others descended once more to their beloved sea-pools.

"Such anemones, such sea-weed! and scrambling is so delicious! Besides, sunsets are all alike," added the youthful, practical, and slightly unpoetical mind.

No, they are not alike. Every one has a mysterious charm of its own--just like that in every new human face. I have seen hundreds of sunsets in my time, and those I shall see are narrowing down now, but I think to the end of my life I shall always feel a day incomplete of which I did not see the sunset.

This one was splendid. The usual place where the sun dropped into the sea, just beyond the point of the Land's End, was all a golden mist. I hastened west, climbing one intervening cliff after the other, anxious not to miss the clear sight of him as he set his glowing feet, or rather his great round disc, on the sea. At last I found a "comfortable" stone, sheltered from the wind, which blew tolerably fresh, and utterly solitary (as I thought), the intense silence being such that one could almost hear the cropping of three placid sheep--evidently well accustomed to sunsets, and thinking them of little consequence.

There I sat until the last red spark had gone out, quenched in the Atlantic waters, and from behind the vanished sun sprung a gleam of absolutely green light, "like a firework out of a rocket," the young people said; such as I had never seen before, though we saw it once afterwards. Nature's fireworks they were; and I could see even the two little black figures moving along the rocks below stand still to watch them. I watched too, with that sort of lonely delight--the one shadow upon it being that it is so lonely--with which all one's life one is accustomed to watch beautiful and vanishing things. Then seeing how fast the colours were fading and the sky darkening, I rose; but just took a step or two farther to look over the edge of my stone into the next dip of the cliff, and there I saw--

Actually, two human beings! Lovers, of course. Nothing else would have sat so long and so silently, for I had been within three yards of them all the time, and had never discovered them, nor they me. Poor young things! they did not discover me even yet. They sat, quite absorbed in one another, hand in hand, looking quietly seaward, their faces bathed in the rosy sunset--which to them was a sunrise, the sort of sun which never rises twice in a life-time.

I left them to it. Evidently they did not see me, in fact I just peered over the rock's edge and drew back again; any slight sound they probably attributed to the harmless sheep. Well, it was but an equally harmless old woman, who did not laugh at them, as some might have done, but smiled and wished them well, as she left them to their sunset, and turned to face the darkening east, where the sun would rise to-morrow.

The moon was rising there now, and it was a picture to behold. Indeed, all these Cornish days seemed so full of moonrises and sunsets--and sunrises too--that it was really inconvenient. Going to bed seemed almost a sin--as on this night, when, opening our parlour door, which looked right on to the garden, we saw the whole world lying in a flood of moonlight peace, the marigolds and carnations leaning cheek to cheek, as motionless as the two young lovers on the cliff. Who, alas! must long ago have had their dream broken, for five minutes afterwards I had met a most respectable fat couple from Lizard Town taking their Sunday evening stroll, in all their Sunday best, along those very cliffs. Most painful interruption! But perhaps, the good folks had once been lovers too.

What a night it was! fit night to such a perfect day. How the stars shone, without a mist or a cloud; how the Lizard Lights gleamed, even in spite of the moonlight, and how clear showed the black outline of Kynance Cove, from which came through the silence a dull murmur of waves! It was, as we declared, a sin and a shame to go to bed at all though we had been out the whole day, and hoped to be out the whole of to-morrow. Still, human nature could not keep awake for ever. We passed from the poetical to the practical, and decided to lay us down and sleep.

But, in the middle of the night I woke, rose, and looked out of the window.

What a change! Sea and sky were one blackness, literally as "black as ink," and melting into one another so that both were undistinguishable. As for the moon and stars--heaven knows where they had gone to, for they seemed utterly blotted out. The only light visible was the ghostly gleam of those two great eyes, the Lizard Lights, stretching far out into the intense darkness. I never saw such darkness--unbroken even by the white crest of a wave. And the stillness was like the stillness of death, with a heavy weight in the air which made me involuntarily go to sleep again, though with an awed impression of "something going to happen."

And sure enough in another hour something did happen. I started awake, feeling as if a volley of artillery had been poured in at my window. It was the wildest deluge of rain, beating against the panes, and with it came a wind that howled and shrieked round the house as if all the demons in Cornwall, Tregeagle himself included, were let loose at once.

Now we understood what a Lizard storm could be. I have seen Mediterranean storms, sweeping across the Campagna like armed battalions of avenging angels, pouring out their vials of wrath--rain, hail, thunder, and lightning--unceasingly for two whole days. I have been in Highland storms, so furious that one had to sit down in the middle of the road with one's plaid over one's head, till the worst of their rage was spent. But I never saw or heard anything more awful than this Lizard storm, to which I lay and listened till the day began to dawn.

Then the wind lulled a little, but the rain still fell in torrents, and the sky and sea were as black as ever. The weather had evidently broken for good--that is, for evil. Alas! the harvest, and the harvest festival! And alas--of minor importance, but still some, to us at least--alas for our holiday in Cornwall! Only four days, and--this!

It was with a heavy heart that, feeling there was not the slightest use in getting up, I turned round and took another sleep.

DAY THE FIFTH

"Hope for the best, and be prepared for the worst," had been the motto of our journey. So when we rose to one of the wettest mornings that ever came out of the sky, there was a certain satisfaction in being prepared for it.

"We must have a fire, that is certain," was our first decision. This entailed the abolition of our beautiful decorations--our sea-holly and ferns; also some anxious looks from our handmaiden. Apparently no fire, had been lit in this rather despised room for many months--years perhaps--and the chimney rather resented being used. A few agonised down-puffs greatly interfered with the comfort of the breakfast table, and an insane attempt to open the windows made matters worse.

Which was most preferable--to be stifled or deluged? We were just considering the question, when the chimney took a new and kinder thought, or the wind took a turn--it seemed to blow alternately from every quarter, and then from all quarters at once--the smoke went up straight, the room grew warm and bright, with the cosy peace of the first fire of the season. Existence became once more endurable, nay, pleasant.

"We shall survive, spite of the rain!" And we began to laugh over our lost day which we had meant to begin by bathing in Housel Cove; truly, just to stand outside the door would give an admirable douche bath in three minutes. "But how nice it is to be inside, with a roof over our heads, and no necessity for travelling. Fancy the unfortunate tourists who have fixed on to-day for visiting the Lizard!" (Charles had told us that Monday was a favourite day for excursions.) "Fancy anybody being obliged to go out such weather as this!"

And in our deep pity for our fellow-creatures we forgot to pity ourselves.

Nor was there much pity needed; we had provided against emergencies, with a good store of needlework and knitting, anything that would pack in small compass, also a stock of unquestionably "light" literature--paper-covered, double-columned, sixpenny volumes, inclosing an amount of enjoyment which those only can understand who are true lovers of Walter Scott. We had enough of him to last for a week of wet days. And we had a one-volume Tennyson, all complete, and a "Morte d'Arthur"--Sir Thomas Malory's. On this literary provender we felt that as yet we should not starve.

Also, some little fingers having a trifling turn for art, brought out triumphantly a colour-box, pencils, and pictures. And the wall-paper being one of the very ugliest that ever eye beheld, we sought and obtained permission to adorn it with these, our _chefs-d'[oe]uvre_, pasted at regular intervals. Where we hope they still remain, for the edification of succeeding lodgers.

We read the "Idylls of the King" all through, finishing with "The Passing of Arthur," where the "bold Sir Bedivere" threw Excalibur into the mere--which is supposed to be Dozmare Pool. Here King Arthur's faithful lover was so melted--for the hundredth time--by the pathos of the story, and by many old associations, that the younger and more practical minds grew scornful, and declared that probably King Arthur had never existed at all--or if he had, was nothing but a rough barbarian, unlike even the hero of Sir Thomas Malory, and far more unlike the noble modern gentleman of Tennyson's verse. Maybe: and yet, seeing that

"'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all,"

may it not be better to have believed in an impossible ideal man, than to accept contentedly a low ideal, and worship blindly the worldly, the mean, or the base?

This topic furnished matter for so much hot argument, that, besides doing a quantity of needlework, we succeeded in making our one wet day by no means the least amusing of our seventeen days in Cornwall.

Hour after hour we watched the rain--an even down-pour. In the midst of it we heard a rumour that Charles had been seen about the town, and soon after he appeared at the door, hat in hand, soaked but smiling, to inquire for and sympathise with his ladies. Yes, he _had_ brought a party to the Lizard that day!--unfortunate souls (or bodies), for there could not have been a dry thread left on them! We gathered closer round our cosy fire; ate our simple dinner with keen enjoyment, and agreed that after all we had much to be thankful for.

In the afternoon the storm abated a little, and we thought we would seize the chance of doing some shopping, if there was a shop in Lizard Town. So we walked--I ought rather to say waded, for the road was literally swimming--meeting not one living creature, except a family of young ducks, who, I need scarcely say, were enjoying supreme felicity.

"Yes, ladies, this is the sort of weather we have pretty well all winter. Very little frost or snow, but rain and storm, and plenty of it. Also fogs; I've heard there's nothing anywhere like the fogs at the Lizard."

So said the woman at the post-office, which, except the serpentine shops, seemed to be the one emporium of commerce in the place. There we could get all we wanted, and a good deal that we were very thankful we did not want, of eatables, drinkables, and wearables. Also ornaments, china vases, &c., of a kind that would have driven frantic any person of æsthetic tastes. Among them an active young Cornishman of about a year old was meandering aimlessly, or with aims equally destructive to himself and the community. He all but succeeded in bringing down a row of plates upon his devoted head, and then tied himself up, one fat finger after another, in a ball of twine, upon which he began to howl violently.

"He's a regular little trial," said the young mother proudly. "He's only sixteen months old, and yet he's up to all sorts of mischief. I don't know what in the world I shall do with he, presently. Naughty boy!" with a delighted scowl.

"Not naughty, only active," suggested another maternal spirit, and pleaded that the young jackanapes should be found something to do that was not mischief, but yet would occupy his energies, and fill his mind. At which, the bright bold face looked up as if he had understood it all--an absolutely fearless face, brimming with fun, and shrewdness too. Who knows? The "regular little trial" may grow into a valuable member of society--fisherman, sailor, coastguardman--daring and doing heroic deeds; perhaps saving many a life on nights such as last night, which had taught us what Cornish coast-life was all winter through.

The storm was now gradually abating; the wind had lulled entirely, the rain had ceased, and by sunset a broad yellow streak all along the west implied that it might possibly be a fine day to-morrow.

But the lane was almost a river still, and the slippery altitudes of the "hedges" were anything but desirable. As the only possible place for a walk I ventured into a field where two or three cows cropped their supper of damp grass round one of those green hillocks seen in every Cornish pasture field--a manure heap planted with cabbages, which grow there with a luxuriance that turns ugliness into positive beauty. Very dreary everything was--the soaking grass, the leaden sky, the angry-looking sea, over which a rainy moon was just beginning to throw a faint glimmer; while shorewards one could just trace the outline of Lizard Point and the wheat-field behind it. Yesterday those fields had looked so sunshiny and fair, but to-night they were all dull and grey, with rows of black dots indicating the soppy, sodden harvest sheaves.

Which reminded me that to-morrow was the harvest festival at Landewednack, when all the world and his wife was invited by shilling tickets to have tea in the rectory garden, and afterwards to assist at the evening thanksgiving service in the church.

"Thanksgiving! What for?" some poor farmer might well exclaim, especially on such a day as this. Some harvest festivals must occasionally seem a bitter mockery. Indeed, I doubt if the next generation will not be wise in taking our "Prayers for Rain," "Prayers for Fair Weather," clean out of the liturgy. Such conceited intermeddling with the government of the world sounds to some ridiculous, to others actually profane. "Snow and hail, mists and vapours, wind and storm, fulfilling His Word." And it must be fulfilled, no matter at what cost to individuals or to nations. The laws of the universe must be carried out, even though the mystery of sorrow, like the still greater mystery of evil, remains for ever unexplained. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"

And how right is His right! How marvellously beautiful He can make this world! until we can hardly imagine anything more beautiful in the world everlasting. Ay, even after such a day as to-day, when the world seems hardly worth living in, yet we live on, live to wake up unto such a to-morrow--

But I must wait to speak of it in another page.

DAY THE SIXTH

And a day absolutely divine! Not a cloud upon the sky, not a ripple upon the water, or it appeared so in the distance. Nearer, no doubt, there would have been that heavy ground-swell which is so long in subsiding, in fact is scarcely ever absent on this coast. The land, like the sea, was all one smile; the pasture fields shone in brilliant green, the cornfields gleaming yellow--at once a beauty and a thanksgiving.

It was the very perfection of an autumn morning. We would not lose an hour of it, but directly after breakfast started leisurely to find Housel Cove and try our first experiment of bathing in the wide Atlantic.