The Loving Spirit Part 3

The little girl was christened Mary, and Thomas was nearly as proud of his daughter as he had been of Samuel.

Though Thomas liked to think he had his own way over things, it was generally Janet who had the last say in the matter. She would fling a word at her husband and no more, and he would go off to his work with an uneasy feeling at the back of his mind that she had won. He called it 'giving in to Janie', but it was more than that, it was unconscious subservience to a quieter but stronger personality than his own.

He would never have admitted it, but he 'couldn't quite make Janet out', to use his own unspoken epithet. She was his wife and he loved and respected her, there was the home and the two children to bind them together, but her thoughts were a mystery to him. It was funny the way she would go off into silence sometimes, and gaze out of the window towards the sea, with a queer unbelonging look in her eyes.

He would notice this of an evening, when he had been sparing a moment to play with the children after the day's work, and there would be Janet, with her work on her knee, inside of herself as it were.

'What are you thinkin', Janie?' he would ask her, and she'd either shake her head smiling and make no reply, or come out with some nonsense or other such as - 'I'd been a man, Thomas, if I had my way.'

It was hardly encouraging to be told this. What could she want with being a man, when there wasn't a better home in Plyn, nor two sweeter children, nor indeed a more faithful, loving husband than himself?

'It's a puzzle you are to me sometimes, Janie, for sure,' he would say with a sigh, and then she would change her mood, like the sudden flash of lightning in summer, and come to where he'd be sitting with the children on the floor and maybe join in with them in their play or question him on real sensible matters that a man could answer, as to the work at the yard and so on. And then, perhaps, before he knew it, she'd be off again with some wild foolish saying, like expressing her pity for old Dan Crabb, who'd been caught at last in his smuggling tricks and sent off to Sudmin for trial.

'But, dear heart, the man is a villain, and an evil double-faced rogue i' the bargain; deceivin' His Majesty's officers, breakin' the law and raisin' his hand against honest, peaceable folk.'

'Aye, Thomas, but it's a man's game, for all that.'

'You call it a man's game, do ye, a sneakin' rotten thing like smugglin'. Why, I would'n shake the hand of one o' them, for fear of contamination.'

'I reckon I would then, an' follow him too. It's often I've pictured the life to myself. A pitch-dark night in Lannywhet Cove, an' no sound but the waves breakin' on the sh.o.r.e. Then a faint light glimmerin' through the blackness, and oars creakin' stealthy-like. There'd come a whistle, faint an' low, an' your boots would crunch on the s.h.i.+ngle as you crept to meet the boat. There'd be voices murmurin', while the stuff was unloaded, and then a shout and a cry from the top o' the hill, and wild confusion on the beach; an' you'd be runnin' for your dear life, your hair in the wind, with nigh six revenue officers pantin' at your heels. That's livin', Thomas, and dyin' all in one - no reckonin' o' time.'

She laughed at his shocked, pained face.

'Will ye chide me for a shameless, brazen woman?'

And he would answer her, solemn as a judge: 'Why, Janie, how you do run on.'

The two children gazed at their mother; Samuel holding on to his father's hand, and the baby Mary safe in his arm, the pair were the picture of each other and Thomas all over again. Janet smiled to see them so, the three of them belonging to her, and part of her too, maybe; but the rest of her stole from the warm, cheerful room, and the dear kindly faces, and fled away, away, she knew not whither, beyond the quiet hills and the happy harbour of Plyn, through the seas and the sky - away to the untrodden air, and the nameless stars.

5.

Next Christmas snow fell on Plyn. It lay light upon the hills and the fields, like the touch of a white hand protecting the earth. Even in Polmear Valley the stream was frozen, and the dark trees looked scarred and bleak against the sky.Then the sun shone from the blue heaven where there was never a cloud, and the hard frosts went with the melting snow, leaving but a thin pale covering in their place.

Thomas went up to Truan woods and brought down with him great bunches of holly with flaming berries. With them he mingled pieces of ivy that could be spared from the house, and together he and Janet placed bits here and there about the rooms, and Thomas cleverly fas.h.i.+oned a bent branch of holly into a rough cross, and hung it above the porch.

Janet busied herself in the kitchen, baking in preparation for the day of general rejoicing; there was to be company in the afternoon for tea, and she knew they would make short shrift of her cakes and puddings and pasties, and maybe expect a cup of hot broth too before they took their leave and went into the chill night.

Thomas sat by the fire with his Bible on his knee, and the two children clung to Janet's skirts the while, pleading for a taste of that which smelt so good in the pan on the hob.

'Now leave your mother alone, there's good children, do, or it's never a taste of the puddin' you'll get till Christmas Day is come an' gone,' she scolded, and their father couldn't but help to show his powers of authority, and called sharply to Samuel, 'Now, let your mother be, Sammie, and you and your sister give over plaguin'. Come here to your father, and listen while I reads the good book to ye.'

They obeyed silently, the boy dragging his little sister along the floor, she scarce able to walk. Thomas read aloud in his careful voice the first chapters of St Matthew, but it was not likely that two babies of their age could know what he was about, and they sat at his feet quietly enough playing with a rag doll that was shared by the pair of them.

Janet straightened her back and rested awhile, her hand on her hip. After she had tidied up and laid the supper, and the children put to bed, it would soon be time for finding her bonnet and shawl, and while a kindly neighbour sat in the house to mind things, she and Thomas would set out side by side across the frosty hill to Lanoc Church for the midnight service.

Somehow she had no wish to go tonight. She did not care to listen to the parson's words, nor to join in singing the hymns with the others, nor even kneel by the altar rail to receive the Blessed Sacrament. She had a mind to slip away in the darkness, and run for the cliff path that overlooked the sea. There'd be a moon over the water, like a path of silver leading away from the black sea to the sky, and she'd be nearer to peace there than on her knees in Lanoc Church. Nearer to something for which there was no name, escaping from the world and losing herself, mingling with things that have no reckoning of time, where there is no today and no tomorrow.

She was thinking, ''Tesn't a churchy wors.h.i.+pful feeling in me tonight, 'tes a wish to be alone with the moonlight on my face.'

Then she took herself away and began to lay supper on the table, thinking the while of an excuse for staying from the service. It was Thomas himself who gave it to her.

'There's shadows 'neath your eyes tonight, Janie, and your face has a pale wearisome look. Are you feelin' poorly?'

'I reckon it's the cookin' and all that bendin' over the stove; it's put a pain across my head an' my back. Maybe it's better if I bide in the house, Thomas, and let you go to Lanoc without me.'

'I hate to be leavin' you, dear, the first Christmas Eve I've done so since we was wed.'

''Twill be better so, all the same. I can't be sick tomorrow, with the folk comin' an' all.'

So it was arranged, and when the bells called softly through the air from Lanoc beyond the fields, Thomas went alone, his lantern in his hand, while Janet watched him climb the hill from the shelter of the porch, the holly cross creaking and sighing above her head. The neighbour, whose presence was no longer needed, bade her good night and a happy Christmas, and went her way. Janet was now alone in the house with the two children, who were sleeping soundly in the room above. She prepared some hot broth for her husband when he should return from the church, cold and hungry from his prayers and his walk.

She wrapped her shawl about her shoulders and leant from the window. A faint film of snow still lay upon the ground.

The moon was high in the sky, and there was no sound but the moan of the still water lapping the rocks beyond the harbour. Suddenly she knew that she must go to the cliffs, and follow the call of her heart.

She hid the key of the door in her bodice and left the house. It seemed to her that there were wings to her body that bore her swiftly away from home and the sleeping children, away up the steep, narrow street of Plyn, to the white-frosted hills and the silent sky.

She leant against the Castle ruins with the sea at her feet, and the light of the moon on her face. Then she closed her eyes, and the jumbled thoughts fled from her mind, her tired body seemed to slip away from her, and she was possessed with the strange power and clarity of the moon itself. When she opened her eyes for a moment there was a mist about her, and when it dissolved she saw kneeling beside the cliff with his head bowed in his hands, the figure of a man. She knew that he was filled with wild despair and bitterness, and that his poor lost soul was calling to her for comfort.

She went and knelt beside him, and held his head to her breast, while she stroked his grey hair with her hand.

Then he looked up at her, his wild brown eyes crazy with fear at himself.

And she knew him to belong to the future, when she was dead and in her grave, but she recognized him as her own.

'Hush, my sweet love, hush, and cast away your fear. I'm beside you always, always, an' there's none who'll harm you.'

'Why didn't you come before?' he whispered, holding her close. 'They've been trying to take me away from you, and the whole world is black and filled with devils. There's no truth, dearest, no path for me to take. You'll help me, won't you?'

'We'll suffer and love together,' she told him. 'Every joy, and sorrow in your mind an' body is mine too. A path will show itself soon, then the shadows clear away from your spirit.'

'I've heard your whispers often, and hearkened to your blessed words of comfort. We've talked with one another too, alone in the silence of the sea, on the decks of the s.h.i.+p that is part of you. Why have you never come before, to hold me like this, and to feel my head beside your heart?'

'I don't understand,' she said. 'I don't know where we come from, nor how the mist was broken for me to get to you; I heard you callin', and there's nothing kept me back.'

'They've been long weary days since you went from me, an' I've not heeded your counsel, nor deserved your trust in me,' he told her. 'See how I'm old now, with the grey hairs in my head and beard, and you younger than I ever knew you, with your pale girl's face and your tender unworn hands.'

'I have no reckoning in my mind of what is past, nor that which is to be,' said she, 'but all I know is there's no s.p.a.ce of time here, nor in our world, nor any world hereafter. There be no separation for us, no beginnin' and no end - we'm cleft together you an' I, like the stars to the sky.'Then he said: 'They whisper amongst themselves I'm mad, my love, my reason's gone and there's danger in my eyes. I can feel the blackness creepin' on me, and when it comes for good, I'll neither see you nor feel you - and there'll be nothin' left here but desolation and despair.'

He shuddered and trembled as a cloud pa.s.sed over the face of the moon, and it seemed to her he was a child in her arms crying for comfort.

'Never fear, when the black fit seizes you, I'll hold you as I hold you now,' she soothed him. 'When you can neither see nor hear, and you're fightin' with yourself, I'll be at your side and strivin' for you.'

He threw back his head and watched her as she stood, white against the sky with a smile on her lips.

'You're an angel tonight,' he said, 'standing at the gates of Heaven before the birth of Christ. It's Christmas, and they're singing the hymn in Lanoc Church.'

'Fifty years or a thousand years, it's all the same,' said Janet. 'Our comin' here together is the proof of it.'

'You'll never leave me again, then?' he asked.

'Never no more.'

He knelt and kissed her foot-prints in the snow.

'Tell me, is there a G.o.d?'

He looked into her eyes and read the truth.

They stood for a minute and gazed at each other, seeing themselves as they never would on earth. She saw a man, bent and worn, with wild unkempt hair and weary eyes; he saw a girl, young and fearless, with the moonlight on her face.

'Good night, my mother, my beauty, my sweet.'

'Good night, my love, my baby, my son.'

Then the mist came between them, and hid them from one another.

Janet stood by the Castle ruin, the sea lapped the rocks beneath her, and across the water stretched a path of silver. Nothing had stirred nor moved, nothing had changed. A second maybe had pa.s.sed since she had stood there, but no more.

Yet she had travelled half a century, out of the world into s.p.a.ce, into another time. She neither wondered nor feared, she was only filled with a great love and thankfulness.

Then she turned away from the sea, and made her way from the cliffs down the steep hillside to Plyn. It was past midnight, and Christmas day had come. She paused to listen for a moment and across the air came the faint sound of voices, as they sang the last hymn in Lanoc Church. The song came sweet and low, the voices of simple people who brought glad tidings to the world.

The church tower was lighted with a streak of gold.

Hark! the Herald Angels sing

Glory to the new-born King,

Peace on earth and mercy mild,

G.o.d and sinners reconciled.

Joyful all ye nations rise,

Join the triumph of the skies,

With the Angelic Host proclaim

Christ is born in Bethlehem.

Hark! the Herald Angels sing

Glory to the new-born King.

And Janet smiled, and looked to the east, where high in the sky shone a star like the star of Bethlehem.

6.