Joshua Haggard's Daughter (Complete)
9781465605399
418 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
There was darkness over the land—darkness that might be felt. In the midst of the ripe warm harvest-time, when all things were at their fairest, and the farmers about Combhaven were congratulating each other on the glorious weather, the storm came: a strange bluish blackness overspread the sky—metallic, tempest-charged, not one cloud or many clouds, but a darkening of the face of heaven. It was like a sudden twilight at noon. ‘It mun be a ’clipse, I think,’ said old Jabez Long, the fisherman, contemplative of that awful horizon yonder, where one streak of copper-coloured light made a narrow rent between sea and sky. ‘’Clipse, man!’ cried his neighbour; ‘how can it be a ’clipse, when there ain’t none in the almanick? It’s more like a judgment than a ’clipse, to my mind—a judgment agen the farmers for making bread so dear last Chrisselmas. Sarve ’em right if their corn’s drownded afore they can get it under cover.’ There was no rain yet, but when the rain came by and by, it would be a flood, thought that little group of awe-stricken fishermen gathered in front of the King of Bells public-house, at the fishermen’s end of Combhaven. ‘Look at the sea,’ exclaimed Jabez, pointing seaward. It had a curious look, the ocean—that sea which in summer time was wont to seem an emerald lake dappled with purple shadows. To-day the water was a dull red, darkened to indigo here and there. There was a strong ground-swell, and the sea heaved like a passionate bosom stirred with deepest anger. White surf came creeping up the sand, and with every receding wave there rose a roar like distant thunder. ‘An angry sea,’ cried Jabez. ‘I hope the young Squire won’t try to come in from Clovelly upon such a tide as this.’ ‘Has he gone to Clovelly?’ asked Mike Durran, the younger of the two men. Both were old and gray and rugged, and had a look of having aged rather from hard weather than from the flight of years. Time had crawled for these villagers, winters and summers creeping slowly on their sluggish course; much labour, little pleasure. They must have felt a century old at least. ‘Yes, he sailed yesterday morning, and was to be back to-day. Him and Jack and the lad Peter; not enough of ’em to manage that clumsy old tub of his, to my mind. He’ll get into trouble some day, I’m afeard.’ ‘Money’s scace with him, I’m thinking,’ said Mike. ‘Money’ll never be anything but scace while the old Squire’s alive,’ answered Jabez. ‘There’s money enough and to spare hid away somewheres; but nobody’ll ever see the colour of it while he’s alive.’ ‘Not they,’ groaned Mike Durran; and there was a general groan from the little group of idlers, by way of tribute to the Squire. ‘Hard upon everybody,’ said Jabez. ‘Hardest of all upon his own flesh and blood,’ said another man. ‘His cruelty drove his second son to sea.’ ‘Arnold,’ said Jabez. ‘Ah, a fine lad that! I remember ’im; a fine out-spoken lad, with a kind word for every one.’ ‘Ah, he were the right sort, he were,’ said Mike; ‘not like Mr. Oswald. He haven’t a word to throw at a dog, wrapped up in his-self, and proud as Lucifus; and as for the colour of his money—well, I never see it.’ This implies the deepest depth of unpopularity—a man unable or unwilling to give. At this juncture there came a silence in the little assembly, and all eyes were turned in the same direction to look at a man who came round the sharply-jutting cliff which ran out seaward into a dangerous reef, and cut off this straggling bit of sea-shore from the tidy little town that nestled in a cleft of the fertile Devonian hills. On this side of the promontory there was the original fishing village, a row of ancient thatched cabins built against the cliff, and that popular house of entertainment, the Ring of Bells, a low-roofed, old-fashioned dwelling, with steep gables and curious abutments and ceilings whose rough-hewn beams scarcely cleared the heads of its tallest customers.
