“Out of the melted iron,” answered the puddler; “I go in after ’em.”
George whistled.
“Ay, ay! you mayn’t go for to believe me,” said the puddler, angrily; “but I’ll do so afore your very eyes.”
“How is it you don’t get burned up, father?”
“Why, I’ve a chemical stuff with which I grease myself, and that saves me; but it is awful torment in that fire!”
George looked incredulous, but dared not utter his doubts, lest his father should break forth into a paroxysm of rage.
“There’s a Hope of Salvation goes with every sparkle,” continued Peter Lundy. “But, dash me, if I care, so long as it can be turned into money.”
“God forbid!” exclaimed George—for he had a conscience.
“I intend you, George, to help me in getting those affairs: you are young, and will have more. I have nearly gathered in and sold all mine; they do not appear as bright, or so often as they used to; and I have been into that sweltering heat twice or thrice, and got nothing out, after all.”
“I won’t go, father,” said George, resolutely.
“You won’t! then I’ll throw you in alive, you young—”
George escaped through the door, as his father slung one of his stone shoes savagely after him.
On the following day, Peter went in before his son’s eyes; however much he stirred the metal, no spark appeared, and he was obliged to step out alter a fruitless ten minutes of death-agony.
George had stood numbed with horror; at first he had endeavoured to make his father desist, but vainly. Then followed the wild writhing in the fire, then the settled agony on his father’s countenance, as he moved about stirring the scum, his features kindled by the upward glare.
When he stepped out, and scaled from his limbs the flakes of dross which adhered, George feared to approach him; but Peter, with a wild laugh, shouted.
“Well lad! has’t pluck enough to do as I have done? My grace-hours are numbered, seest thou? I could get no crystal today?”
George shook his head resolutely.
“Ah, well, well!” exclaimed the puddler, “after a little while it will not frighten you. Faix! it tried me a bit, to step in the first time!”
When George was next left alone in the cottage, he opened the chest, took away several of the specimens, and hurrying to the foundry, flung them into the iron.
As the first Monday after the new moon arrived, Peter waited impatiently for the arrival of the stranger. George, who also expected him, was on the alert as well.
At eleven, precisely, there was a tap at the window; and, on opening it, the elderly gentleman was visible in the starlight, dressed in his long brown cloak.
“You are rather short of the usual number,” complained he, counting the crystals in his hand. “How comes that, Peter?”
“Well, I don’t know,” replied the founder; “but they are getting scarce now. I want my son George to take to the profession, but he hasn’t a fancy that way.”
“Well, Peter,” said the naturalist, “I looked in at the foundry on my way—”
“It is locked up!” interrupted Peter.
“Nevertheless, I managed to see in as much as was requisite. It struck me that the metal was in a prime state; can you not come with me, and see if your luck, this night, will not be better? I particularly want a fine specimen, and these you have given me are so small. Come! suppose you make a trial this night.”
“Well, I do not mind. George, lad! come with us; you must learn the trade.”
The boy followed.
Without, the stars shone clear from a deep frosty sky to earth, and no air stirred the pensive boughs of beech; rime lay on the long bending grass: far off trilled a frog from a swamp, it was a goodly autumn night.
Lundy unlocked the silent foundry; the fires below were tended by a man all night; but the upper portion, containing the exposed metal, was kept locked.
Peter divested himself of his clothing, anointed himself as high as the waist, drew a felt cap over his head, placed his feet in the stone shoes, and took up his ladle; then he cautiously stepped into the fused iron.
George turned aside his head; but he could not stop his ears to the moans and gasps of his father. When he looked again, Peter was moving through the fire.
The stranger uttered a shout of joy. In the centre of the vat burned brightly a starry spark whiter and keener than any Peter had seen before, forward, vehemently, he waded, his ladle brandished in his right hand.
“Peter!” shouted the stranger. “Twenty pounds for that!”
“Father! dear father!” cried George, moved by a sudden impulse, “leave that one—that only one!”
“Thirty pounds for that sparkle!” yelled the elderly man, rushing frantically along the verge.
“Father, father! do y’ leave it!” cried the boy once more.
“Come, Peter! I will give you fifty for it. I tell you this: that one spark is your last chance; you never can have one more.”
Lundy redoubled his efforts to move through the treacly mass. George grasped a long-handled rake, ran forward, dashed it towards the white star, and began to drag it from his father’s reach. Peter yelled forth a horrible curse.
“Get it, get it!” roared the stranger, stamping, and dashing his arms about, and running upon the white-hot bricks.
George, almost beat down by the blast of fire, dragged on still.
The puddler ploughed desperately after it. his head was reeling in that sweltering lire breath, which brought tears from the hot eyes, but dried them up on the cheeks. His ladle dropped from his fingers, was black only for a moment, and then white as the bed on which it lay.
George fell, exhausted, dragging the rake towards the edge, and the spark along with it.
Peter Lundy bent forwards.
“Catch it, man! catch it!” hallooed the stranger.
Peter dashed his hands into the metal—and fell forwards.
George caught one glimpse of a charred mass lifting itself and falling again heard the sound as it burned and he dashed through the door, and staggered to faint upon a bank of ragged-robin and bird’s-eye speedwell.
The workmen, when, on the following morning they came to the foundry, saw the lower part of a man floating on the surface of the fire-vat, red, and unconsumed: but of the upper portion, there remained but some thin white dust, which, when collected, their breath blew away.
Aunt Joanna
(A tale from A Book of Ghosts)
In the Land’s End district is the little church-town of Zennor. There is no village to speak of—a few scattered farms, and here and there a cluster of cottages. The district is bleak, the soil does not lie deep over granite that peers through the surface on exposed spots, where the furious gales from the ocean sweep the land. If trees ever existed there, they have been swept away by the blast, but the golden furze or gorse defies all winds, and clothes the moorland with a robe of splendour, and the heather flushes the slopes with crimson towards the decline of summer, and mantles them in soft, warm brown in winter, like the fur of an animal.
In Zennor is a little church, built of granite, rude and simple of construction, crouching low, to avoid the gales, but with a tower that has defied the winds and the lashing rains, because wholly devoid of sculptured detail, which would have afforded the blasts something to lay hold of and eat away. In Zennor parish is one of the finest cromlechs in Cornwall, a huge slab of unwrought stone like a table, poised on the points of standing upright blocks as rude as the mass they sustain.
Near this monument of a hoar and indeed unknown antiquity lived an old woman by herself, in a small cottage of one story in height, built of moor stones set in earth, and pointed only with lime. It was thatched with heather, and possessed but a single chimney that rose but little above the apex of the roof, and had two slates set on the top to protect the rising smoke from being blown down the chimney into the cottage when the wind was from the west or from the east. When, h
owever, it drove from north or south, then the smoke must take care of itself. On such occasions it was wont to find its way out of the door, and little or none went up the chimney.
The only fuel burnt in this cottage was peat—not the solid black peat from deep bogs, but turf of only a spade graft, taken from the surface, and composed of undissolved roots. Such fuel gives flame, which the other does not; but, on the other hand, it does not throw out the same amount of heat, nor does it last one half the time.
The woman who lived in the cottage was called by the people of the neighbourhood Aunt Joanna. What her family name was but few remembered, nor did it concern herself much. She had no relations at all, with the exception of a grand-niece, who was married to a small tradesman, a wheelwright near the church. But Joanna and her great-niece were not on speaking terms. The girl had mortally offended the old woman by going to a dance at St. Ives, against her express orders. It was at this dance that she had met the wheelwright, and this meeting, and the treatment the girl had met with from her aunt for having gone to it, had led to the marriage. For Aunt Joanna was very strict in her Wesleyanism, and bitterly hostile to all such carnal amusements as dancing and play-acting.
Of the latter there was none in that wild west Cornish district, and no temptation ever afforded by a strolling company setting up its booth within reach of Zennor. But dancing, though denounced, still drew the more independent spirits together. Rose Penaluna had been with her great-aunt after her mother’s death. She was a lively girl, and when she heard of a dance at St. Ives, and had been asked to go to it, although forbidden by Aunt Joanna, she stole from the cottage at night, and found her way to St. Ives.
Her conduct was reprehensible certainly. But that of Aunt Joanna was even more so, for when she discovered that the girl had left the house she barred her door, and refused to allow Rose to re-enter it. The poor girl had been obliged to take refuge the same night at the nearest farm and sleep in an outhouse, and next morning to go into St. Ives and entreat an acquaintance to take her in till she could enter into service. Into service she did not go, for when Abraham Hext, the carpenter, heard how she had been treated, he at once proposed, and in three weeks married her. Since then no communication had taken place between the old woman and her grand-niece. As Rose knew, Joanna was implacable in her resentments, and considered that she had been acting aright in what she had done.
The nearest farm to Aunt Joanna’s cottage was occupied by the Hockins. One day Elizabeth, the farmer’s wife, saw the old woman outside the cottage as she was herself returning from market; and, noticing how bent and feeble Joanna was, she halted, and talked to her, and gave her good advice.
“See you now, auntie, you’m gettin’ old and crimmed wi’ rheumatics. How can you get about? An’ there’s no knowin’ but you might be took bad in the night. You ought to have some little lass wi’ you to mind you.”
“I don’t want nobody, thank the Lord.”
“Not just now, auntie, but suppose any chance ill-luck were to come on you. And then, in the bad weather, you’m not fit to go abroad after the turves, and you can’t get all you want—tay and sugar and milk for yourself now. It would be handy to have a little maid by you.”
“Who should I have?” asked Joanna.
“Well, now, you couldn’t do better than take little Mary, Rose Hext’s eldest girl. She’s a handy maid, and bright and pleasant to speak to.”
“No,” answered the old woman, “I’ll have none o’ they Hexts, not I. The Lord is agin Rose and all her family, I know it. I’ll have none of them.”
“But, auntie, you must be nigh on ninety.”
“I be ower that. But what o’ that? Didn’t Sarah, the wife of Abraham, live to an hundred and seven and twenty years, and that in spite of him worritin’ of her wi’ that owdacious maid of hern, Hagar? If it hadn’t been for their goings on, of Abraham and Hagar, it’s my belief that she’d ha’ held on to a hundred and fifty-seven. I thank the Lord I’ve never had no man to worrit me. So why I shouldn’t equal Sarah’s life I don’t see.”
Then she went indoors and shut the door.
After that a week elapsed without Mrs. Hockin seeing the old woman. She passed the cottage, but no Joanna was about. The door was not open, and usually it was. Elizabeth spoke about this to her husband. “Jabez,” said she, “I don’t like the looks o’ this; I’ve kept my eye open, and there be no Auntie Joanna hoppin’ about. Whativer can be up? It’s my opinion us ought to go and see.”
“Well, I’ve naught on my hands now,” said the farmer, “so I reckon we will go.”
The two walked together to the cottage. No smoke issued from the chimney, and the door was shut. Jabez knocked, but there came no answer; so he entered, followed by his wife.
There was in the cottage but the kitchen, with one bedroom at the side. The hearth was cold.
“There’s some’ut up,” said Mrs. Hockin.
“I reckon it’s the old lady be down,” replied her husband, and, throwing open the bedroom door, he said: “Sure enough, and no mistake—there her be, dead as a dried pilchard.”
And in fact Auntie Joanna had died in the night, after having so confidently affirmed her conviction that she would live to the age of a hundred and twenty-seven.
“Whativer shall we do?” asked Mrs. Hockin.
“I reckon,” said her husband, “us had better take an inventory of what is here, lest wicked rascals come in and steal anything and everything.”
“Folks bain’t so bad as that, and a corpse in the house,” observed Mrs. Hockin.
“Don’t be sure o’ that—these be terrible wicked times,” said the husband. “And I sez, sez I, no harm is done in seein’ what the old creetur had got.”
“Well, surely,” acquiesced Elizabeth, “there is no harm in that.”
In the bedroom was an old oak chest, and this the farmer and his wife opened. To their surprise they found in it a silver teapot, and half a dozen silver spoons.
“Well, now,” exclaimed Elizabeth Hockin, “fancy her havin’ these—and me only Britannia metal.”
“I reckon she came of a good family,” said Jabez. “Leastwise, I’ve heard as how she were once well off.”
“And look here!” exclaimed Elizabeth, “there’s fine and beautiful linen underneath—sheets and pillow-cases.”
“But look here!” cried Jabez, “blessed if the taypot bain’t chock-full o’ money! Whereiver did she get it from?”
“Her’s been in the way of showing folk the Zennor Quoit, visitors from St. Ives and Penzance, and she’s had scores o’ shillings that way.”
“Lord!” exclaimed Jabez. “I wish she’d left it to me, and I could buy a cow; I want another cruel bad.”
“Ay, we do, terrible,” said Elizabeth. “But just look to her bed, what torn and wretched linen be on that—and here these fine bedclothes all in the chest.”
“Who’ll get the silver taypot and spoons, and the money?” inquired Jabez.
“Her had no kin—none but Rose Hext, and her couldn’t abide her. Last words her said to me was that she’d ‘have never naught to do wi’ the Hexts, they and all their belongings. ’”
“That was her last words?”
“The very last words her spoke to me—or to anyone.”
“Then,” said Jabez, “I’ll tell ye what, Elizabeth, it’s our moral dooty to abide by the wishes of Aunt Joanna. It never does to go agin what is right. And as her expressed herself that strong, why us, as honest folks, must carry out her wishes, and see that none of all her savings go to them darned and dratted Hexts.”
“But who be they to go to, then?”
“Well—we’ll see. Fust us will have her removed, and provide that her be daycent buried. Them Hexts be in a poor way, and couldn’t afford the expense, and it do seem to me, Elizabeth, as it would be a liberal and a kindly act in us to take all the charges on ourselves. Us is the closest neighbours.”
“Ay—and her have had milk of me these ten or twelve years,
and I’ve never charged her a penny, thinking her couldn’t afford it. But her could, her were a-hoardin’ of her money—and not paying me. That were not honest, and what I say is, that I have a right to some of her savin’s, to pay the milk bill—and it’s butter I’ve let her have now and then in a liberal way.”
“Very well, Elizabeth. Fust of all, we’ll take the silver taypot and the spoons wi’ us, to get ’em out of harm’s way.”
“And I’ll carry the linen sheets and pillow-cases. My word!—why didn’t she use ’em, instead of them rags?”
All Zennor declared that the Hockins were a most neighbourly and generous couple, when it was known that they took upon themselves to defray the funeral expenses.
Mrs. Hext came to the farm, and said that she was willing to do what she could, but Mrs. Hockin replied: “My good Rose, it’s no good. I seed your aunt when her was ailin’, and nigh on death, and her laid it on me solemn as could be that we was to bury her, and that she’d have nothin’ to do wi’ the Hexts at no price.”
Rose sighed, and went away.
Rose had not expected to receive anything from her aunt. She had never been allowed to look at the treasures in the oak chest. As far as she had been aware, Aunt Joanna had been extremely poor. But she remembered that the old woman had at one time befriended her, and she was ready to forgive the harsh treatment to which she had finally been subjected. In fact, she had repeatedly made overtures to her great-aunt to be reconciled, but these overtures had been always rejected. She was, accordingly, not surprised to learn from Mrs. Hockin that the old woman’s last words had been as reported.
But, although disowned and disinherited, Rose, her husband, and children dressed in black, and were chief mourners at the funeral. Now it had so happened that when it came to the laying out of Aunt Joanna, Mrs. Hockin had looked at the beautiful linen sheets she had found in the oak chest, with the object of furnishing the corpse with one as a winding-sheet. But—she said to herself—it would really be a shame to spoil a pair, and where else could she get such fine and beautiful old linen as was this? So she put the sheets away, and furnished for the purpose a clean but coarse and ragged sheet such as Aunt Joanna had in common use. That was good enough to moulder in the grave. It would be positively sinful, because wasteful, to give up to corruption and the worm such fine white linen as Aunt Joanna had hoarded. The funeral was conducted, otherwise, liberally. Aunt Joanna was given an elm, and not a mean deal board coffin, such as is provided for paupers; and a handsome escutcheon of white metal was put on the lid.
The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Sabine Baring-Gould Page 28