Chapter VII: Naomi’s Holiday

Midsummer had come and gone, and it was sultry August weather again, just a year after the loss of the Dolphin; and life in the minister’s house went smoothly on in its established course, every day the exact image of its defunct brother, yesterday. Joshua had been a little more watchful of Oswald and Naomi in consequence of that conversation with Nicholas Wild; and, perceiving nothing in the manner of either that passed the bounds of friendly feeling, had refrained so far from any overt interference. When the time came he would be ready to speak and to act; but it seemed to him that the time had not come. He was not going to offer his daughter to any man; and to attempt to interrogate Oswald as to his feelings or his intentions would be in a manner to make such an offer. He had a hearty liking for Oswald Pentreath, and he had confidence in the young man’s honour and principle. The life of a man who lives in such a place as Combhaven is tolerably open to inspection, and no one had ever been able to charge Oswald with evil-doing. His pride, his supposed meanness, had been commented upon sharply enough by those who knew him least, and whose ideal squire was a rollicking young man with plenty of money to spend, and a leaning to getting tipsy in the company of his inferiors. But those who liked him least had no more to say than that he was close-fisted and proud; and the few who knew him well praised him warmly, and looked forward to the day when he should rule in his father’s place.

Joshua Haggard, after duly considering these things, held his peace.

‘I will bide my time, Judith,’ he said, when his sister attacked him on the subject. ‘I have seen no love-making between my daughter and Mr. Pentreath.’

‘As if they’d let you see it!’ exclaimed Judith. ‘There’s plenty of time for sweethearting behind your back. In the wilderness of an evening, when he brings her plants with crackjaw names--such rubbish! not a flower among ’em equal to a marigold or a nasturtium--and ferns (ferns was nobody’s money when I was a girl)--do you suppose that isn’t sweethearting? And she seldom goes for an afternoon walk but what she meets him.’

‘Combhaven isn’t a large place,’ said Joshua.

‘Of course not; and it’s easy for young people to make their plans and not miss each other.’

‘Jim is always with his sister.’

‘Yes, and with his eyes on every bird and bush, and he running off to climb trees half his time. I know that by the state of his clothes.’

‘I can trust my daughter,’ replied Joshua, with a dignity that silenced his sister. ‘Naomi will keep no secret from her father.’

One evening early in this golden harvest month the minister took his daughter aside, and questioned her about Oswald Pentreath.

‘We have made a new friend within the last year, Naomi,’ he began--‘a friend of whom you see rather more than I do. What do you think of him?’

The dark-fringed lids drooped over the thoughtful eyes, and a deep crimson glowed on the oval cheek.

‘You mean Mr. Pentreath, father?’

‘Whom else should I mean, my dear? We don’t make many new friends. Tell me frankly how you like him.’

‘Very much, father.’

‘That’s a straight answer, at any rate. Has he ever professed anything more than friendship for you--such friendship as any well-bred man may naturally feel for a superior young woman?’

‘Never!’

‘And you think him good and true, Naomi?’

‘Indeed I do. I should be very sorry if any one thought otherwise of him.’

‘Why, my love? He is so little to us, that, except for charity’s sake, it could matter little what people think of him.’

‘I should be sorry if any one thought ill of him, because I know that he deserves people’s good word. I know how good he is. I know how patient he is with his father,--how glad he would be to make things better for the tenants; how dearly he loves his absent brother; how kind he is to all dumb things, and to Jim--and me.’

‘He has my good opinion, Naomi, and I am glad to hear you speak well of him. But if ever he should seek to be more than your friend--if ever he were to change from friend to lover--you would tell me, wouldn’t you, my dear?’

‘Yes, father. I would not think of keeping a secret from you. You are always first in my thoughts.’

‘There are some, doubtless, who would say I do wrong in allowing any friendship between you and Mr. Pentreath, on account of the disparity in your station. But to my mind, a young woman of high principles and good education is not the less a lady because her father happens to keep a shop; and although I cannot boast such a good old name as Pentreath, I think, by setting my good character against the Squire’s bad repute, we may fairly balance the account.’

After this understanding with his daughter, Mr. Haggard felt quite easy in his mind about Oswald Pentreath. He knew that Naomi had the higher and nobler nature; that union with her would be more elevation for Oswald; and he thought it a small thing that the conventionalities should be outraged a little by the marriage of the Squire’s son with a grocer’s daughter. Again, he had enjoyed so much respect and even reverence from his fellow-men in Combhaven, that he may naturally have fancied himself as great a man as the Squire. He knew that he was better liked and trusted, and that in any conflict between the two powers he could command a majority.

He had told his sister and his children that adventure of his on the way to Penmoyle. Naomi had listened with interest, warmly approving her father’s conduct to the waif. Judith had taken a chilling view of the whole thing, and had opined that Joshua would live to repent his benevolence.

‘I never knew any lasting good to come of mixing oneself up in other people’s lives,’ she said, with conviction. ‘You set ’em going right for a little while, perhaps; but they’re pretty sure to go wrong again as soon as your back’s turned. It’s all very well to teach ’em--of course that’s our duty; and no harm ever came of teaching, if it doesn’t always do good. But when a minister goes beyond his sphere, and tampers with the bodily wants of any idle vagabond he may meet on his way, he’s pretty sure to do mischief--at least that’s my opinion.’

‘Fortunately for the poor, it is not an opinion based upon the gospel,’ replied Joshua.

‘You don’t find St. Paul going about the world getting situations for young women, and hampering himself with the expense of their clothing,’ retorted Judith. ‘He preached to them. That was his mission, and he stuck to it.’

Joshua took no trouble to defend his line of conduct in this matter. He was so far lord of himself and of his own life as to do what he pleased on all occasions, without any explanation of his motives. But when he came to pack a parcel of materials for Cynthia’s clothing, Miss Haggard, who had the drapery business under her thumb, made herself as disagreeable as she could by picking out the ugliest printed goods, the coarsest calico, and flannel very little superior to that which she dealt out to Sally for the washing of stone floors.

‘If you must clothe paupers, clothe them suitably,’ she remarked, as she bounced a piece of hideous print upon the counter, the pattern an ace of clubs on a dingy yellow ground.

‘I won’t have yellow,’ said Joshua decisively, recalling that brown-and-yellow striped gown in which the Miss Weblings had arrayed his protégée.

‘Nothing better to wear and wash,’ replied Judith; ‘and she’ll want stuff that’ll stand wear. Servant-girls can’t afford to choose things for prettiness. I sold a gown off that piece to the housemaid at the Grange.’

‘I’ll choose for myself,’ said Joshua, inspecting the shelves.

He selected two inoffensive patterns in a cool clean-looking lavender.

‘That’s one of the dearest pieces of goods we’ve got in stock,’ objected Judith.

‘I want something that will stand wear,’ replied Joshua. ‘Measure a gown off each of those while I look out something for Sundays.’

‘She can wear this on Sunday, and plenty good enough, while it’s clean.’

Joshua continued his examination of the shelves without noticing this remark, and presently pulled out a piece of printed stuff--quite a lady’s pattern--white ground dotted with tiny pink rosebuds, fresh and innocent-looking.

‘You are not going to cut that piece, surely, Joshua!’ cried his sister, horrified. ‘I’ve been saving that for Miss Tremaine. She wanted something neat and pretty for frocks for her nieces.’

‘There’ll be plenty left for Miss Tremaine’s nieces after I’ve taken off a frock for Cynthia,’ replied Mr. Haggard; and without another word to his sister he measured off the regulation quantity, and then changed the hop-sack calico and the coarse flannel for materials of fair and decent quality. Then he looked into the drawers under the counter, and chose a bonnet ribbon, and packed all these things securely in stout brown paper, for the Truro coach.

‘I can’t think what’s come to you, Joshua, meddling with such fiddle-faddle,’ said Judith discontentedly.

‘I should have left it for you to do, Judith, if you had been disposed to do it with good grace,’ answered Joshua calmly.

He wrote the address upon the parcel, and carried it to the Truro coach in his own hands, and gave it into the guard’s keeping, with special instructions for its conveyance to Penmoyle. He experienced a mild thrill of happiness after doing this, such as a loving mother feels when she has sent some gift to a child at school.

Shortly after that confidential talk between Naomi and her father, Joshua Haggard gave his children a summer-day’s outing, such as they had been accustomed to enjoy once or twice in every summer from their earliest childhood. It was a simple and inexpensive treat enough, consisting of a drive in the general-dealer’s tax-cart to some distant town or village whither his duties, spiritual or temporal, or both combined, summoned the minister and shopkeeper. This August the holiday was to be a drive to Rockmouth, where there were one or two small shopkeepers who took their supplies from Joshua, and several families who derived their spiritual sustenance from his lips, and who looked upon his expounding of the Scriptures as one of the rarest privileges of their lives.

To Jim these outings were particularly delightful; for while his father transacted his earthly business, and then went from cottage to cottage reading and exhorting, he and Naomi were free to wander where they listed, provided they arrived at the inn at the time appointed for the return journey. Aunt Judith also was wont to relax her Spartan severity on these occasions, and to prepare a liberal basket of provisions; that cold potato-pasty which the boy loved, or perchance a parsley-pie--a pie in which tender young chickens nestled in a bed of parsley and cream, preferable in the mind of a West-countryman to all the bloated goose-livers of Strasburg in their crockery piecrust.

This trip to Rockmouth had been talked of for at least a fortnight before Joshua could find a leisure day; so it was scarcely wonderful that the intended journey should be a fact familiar to Oswald Pentreath as well as to numerous other members of Combhaven society--notably the stout landlord of the First and Last, who lived in his porch all summer time, and could see people’s intentions through their open windows, if he did not become possessed of them in conversation.

The day came at last--glowing harvest weather and a sky without a cloud--when Joshua felt himself free to order Gray Dobbin to be harnessed in the cart. Off sped Jim to assist in the operation of harnessing; which performance gave rise to as many ‘stand overs’ and ‘come ups’ in the little stable-yard as if a whole team of impatient thoroughbreds had been getting on their leather. But when Gray Dobbin came out into the road, sleek and shining, with his dark mane symmetrically combed and glossy, his white hind feet pure as newly-fallen snow, ribbons at his ears, and an air of conscious pride in the carriage of his firm bull neck, James felt that his care had not been wasted, and the minister approved.

Naomi came tripping down the narrow staircase somewhat hurried and fluttered, for the trip had at last been decided upon hastily, but all aglow with beauty, in her cottage-bonnet--a kind of house or sentry-box, in which a woman sheltered herself in those days, and lived secluded from the world, even while she took her walks abroad--and lilac-muslin dress, starched and ironed by her own industrious hands. The cottage-bonnet, of coarse Dunstable straw, was trimmed with white ribbon and lined with pale pink--such a bonnet as Eugénie Grandet wore when she took that dismal morning walk with her father; her petticoat was short enough to show the neat narrow feet in white stockings and ‘low shoes;’ her waist was short also; and a black-silk scarf crossed over her breast and tied behind completed her costume.

Her father contemplated her approvingly.

‘You and Dobbin have put on your best looks this morning,’ he said.

‘I always wear my best bonnet when I go out with you, father,’ answered Naomi meekly, but blushing a little at the thought that she had cherished a vague idea of Oswald’s appearance at the last moment, asking permission to accompany them on Herne the Hunter.

‘He could not know that we were going this morning,’ she told herself.

Naomi mounted to her seat in the cart, the post of honour beside the driver. Jim and the basket of provisions occupied the back of the vehicle; and that youth received numerous injunctions not to jog this, or spill that, or let the cork out of the other, from aunt Judith, who came to the gate in her morning headgear of curl-papers to assist at the departure.

‘Sit up straight, and don’t crease your scarf, Naomi,’ she cried. ‘There never was a better bit of silk; and you’ll have to be careful of that muslin frock, if you mean to wear it next Sunday. Two starched frocks in a week would be more extravagance than I could reconcile my conscience to, even if you could--and you don’t get any more starch out of me this side of Monday, remember.’

With this injunction in her ears, Naomi left home behind her; but earth was too fair this day for any one’s mind to be worried by the thought of a starched frock. What is there between the North and South Pole fairer than an English landscape--Devonshire lanes and commons, woods and vales, Devonshire’s coast and sea, in the vivid August sunlight? Can any Alpine grandeur, can all the glory and colour of the tropics, surpass this tender English beauty--beauty that creeps into one’s soul and makes one glad; beauty that melts the ice of frozen hearts, that warms age into the exuberance of youth, that bids the wanderer lay down his bundle of cares, his knapsack of perplexities, and rejoice because the sunshine is so kind and earth so fair?

Naomi was in the humour for rejoicing this morning, but her joy was very quiet. She sat by her father’s side in silence, and watched the landscape dreamily, thinking of her lover. Her lover? Yes, for she loved him. Yes, for she believed that he loved her.

Joshua too was silent and had his own thoughts this August morning. Gray Dobbin was quiet to drive, or in other words required no driving whatever, but took his way steadily over familiar roads, and plodded cautiously down hills of appalling steepness, and clambered up the same hills cheerfully, as an animal that knew he had been foaled in a hilly country and was contented with his lot. So Joshua sat with the reins loose in his left hand, and dreamed his dreams; and the commons were golden with furze, and the reapers were busy in the tawny cornfields, and a covey of partridges went whirring upward every here and there from the shelter of some hedge, and the poppies gleamed scarlet amidst the wheat, and the bindweed’s white bells hung on every hedge, and the traveller’s joy shed its aromatic perfume on the air, and the orchards on hill-side and in hollow were ruddy with ripening fruit, and all sweet things that blossom late in the summer were in perfection.

No sign of Herne the Hunter yet awhile, though they had travelled half their journey, and Dobbin had stopped to have his mouth washed out at the hamlet of Simondale, a handful of cottages and a battered old public-house at the feet of two steep hills--a village in a pit.

‘He won’t come to-day,’ thought Naomi, with a sigh; and the holiday seemed not quite so perfect as it might have been--not so perfect as it was last year, when there was no such person as Oswald Pentreath in her thoughts, and the glory and beauty of the earth had no double meaning.

Over another common and up and down more hills, and then from a narrow road descending a wooded steep they see Rockmouth lying at their feet--not a tourists’ resort in those days, but an obscure little fishing village on a rocky shore.

There it lay--the lowly cluster of thatched cottages, the humble patches of garden, the wells, and pigsties, and beehives, and hayricks, and strawyards; the village forge; the church, standing aloof on a hill, looking down at the abodes of its congregation; the Squire’s house--red-brick and spacious, set on a richly-timbered slope--a little way off, with its front to the sea; and, as the curve of the bay widened, rose the rocky wall of the tall cliff, precipitous, dangerous, yet not too steep for sheep to browse upon its rugged breast.

‘How lovely!’ cried Naomi, surveying that rocky coast, with its wild variety of crag and pinnacle. ‘Wouldn’t you think they were castles, father, over there--keeps and watch-towers? I can fancy men in armour firing their arrows down into the valley, or keeping guard upon those battlements against enemies from the sea.’

‘How jolly nice it must be for smugglers on such a coast as this!’ remarked Jim. ‘Plenty of caves to hide their plunder in, and those rocks to climb when they want to survey their ground, and to hoist signals upon--tar-barrels and suchlike. Where shall we have our dinner, father?’

‘I sha’n’t have much time to waste upon dinner, Jim,’ replied Mr. Haggard indifferently. ‘You and Naomi had better take charge of the basket, and settle it all between you.’

‘O, come, father, you must have your share of the pasty. I saw aunt Judith making it--she happened to be in a particularly good temper, or she wouldn’t have let me--and I know it’s prime. Such juicy steak, and lots of potato! Won’t the gravy gush out when you put your knife into it, unless it’s turned to jelly! My eye, ain’t I hungry!’

‘Don’t be so vulgar, Jim,’ remonstrated Naomi, with a depressing conviction that such a youth as this would be no fitting brother-in-law for young Squire Pentreath. Since that serious conversation with her father she had thought much of social differences and distinctions, and had told herself despondently that, good and great as her father might be, there was a wide gulf between a Methodist preacher’s daughter and Oswald Pentreath. But then Love has a knack of spanning such gulfs, and the good old story of King Cophetua and the beggar-maiden is always being acted over again after some fashion or other.

‘I’ll tell you a tiptop place for dinner, father,’ exclaimed Jim. ‘You see that rock yonder--the tallest one, the shape of a castle--there’s a grassy hollow just under it, facing the sea, quite safe, for the cliff isn’t half so steep there as it is in other places; and the ferns grow there lovely, and purple mosses, and red stonecrop just like coral, and all sorts of things that Naomi’s fond of. Will you come there with us, father--it isn’t above a mile from the inn where Dobbin stops--and dig into the pasty before you begin your business calls?’

Mr. Haggard looked at his watch meditatively. He did not much affect these picnickings and carousings, but he was glad to oblige his children on such a day as this, which was a kind of annual holiday, a rare occasion on which he went out of his way a little to give them pleasure. Dobbin had come at a good pace, so it was early yet, not much past noontide, and the days were still long.

‘Very well, my dears,’ he said; ‘I’ll come and have some dinner with you, and then I’ll leave you to amuse yourselves among the rocks while I go my rounds.’

Dobbin was safely installed in his stables at the Traveller’s Rest, a comfortable little inn just at the bottom of the hill, and then Jim shouldered the basket, and trudged sturdily on ahead, while Naomi and her father followed at a more sober pace.

The path they trod was a wild and romantic footway, a narrow ledge cut out of the cliff. Below them shelved the steep craggy slope, rich in the varied colours of wild flower and moss, with lonely sheep feeding here and there, or bounding chamois-like from peak to peak. Far away spread the summer sea, placid as an Italian lake, and as exquisite in hue.

‘Isn’t it lovely, father?’ cried Naomi. ‘I always feel grateful to God for having given us such a beautiful world when I come to Rockmouth.’

‘We ought to be grateful at all times and under all circumstances, Naomi, even if our lot had been cast at the bottom of a coal-mine.’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ sighed the girl; ‘but gratitude comes easier to people who dwell among lovely scenes. It must be hard work to be grateful for life that is all misery.’

Joshua had no answer. These problems in man’s existence were not easily to be solved.

‘There is a better world, Naomi, where the balance is adjusted,’ he said after a pause.

‘I know, father. And if the unhappy people in wretched places _can_ believe that, it must comfort them. But it must be difficult for people who have never known what it is to be happy on earth to believe in the blissfulness of heaven.’

They came to the castle rock, a spot where there was a break in the steep wall of cliffs, as if some mammoth battering-train had made a breach in the island’s battlements; and here a green cup-shaped valley opened in the craggy shore--a vale scattered with rocks and boulders, moss-grown and fern-embellished.

‘How sweet!’ cried Naomi.

‘Isn’t it prime?’ inquired James, who had arrived some minutes in advance of his companions, and had already unpacked the basket, or ‘maund,’ as he called it. ‘There’s a pasty for you, and cheesecakes, and a big stone jar of cider, and a couple of tumblers, and plates, and knives and prongs, and all complete. Sit down, father--that’s your place; and here’s a mossy seat for Naomi, just as if it was made for us.’

Then came half an hour of real domestic harmony. Joshua and his children being hungry, ample justice was done to the pasty and cheesecakes, and much commendation bestowed upon aunt Judith as the provider of the feast. It seemed such a curious thing to eat a meal without that pragmatic presence--without fear of being called to order for the too free use of God’s creatures, in the shape of beef-steak and piecrust. Even Mr. Haggard, though he would have been unwilling to own as much, enjoyed this dinner on the castle rock, with the green valley and the jasper sea spread out like a carpet at his feet, better than any meal he had ever eaten in his respectable parlour, where there was no wider prospect than a glimpse of the First and Last, and a background of wooded hill, seen across the tops of the geraniums and double stocks that somewhat bounded one’s view of the outer world. To-day these picnickers seemed to have a universe all to themselves.

‘I feel just as if we had gone out somewhere in a ship and landed on an unknown island,’ said Jim. ‘I wonder if we shall meet any of the natives by and by, and if they will scalp us?’

‘I think there is nothing in life so nice as a picnic,’ exclaimed Naomi, ‘except having you all to ourselves, father. That is better than the picnic.’

‘I wish you would stay with us all the afternoon, father, and tell us stories about foreign countries,’ said Jim.

‘That would not be doing my errand at Rockmouth, James,’ answered the minister, pulling out his big watch once more. ‘It’s nearly two o’clock, and we must start for home at six. I must leave you, my dears. I trust Naomi to you, James, remember. Be sure you lead her into no dangerous places. You’d better not go any farther along the cliff, but take a stroll across the valley, and up the hill to those woods yonder. You’ll find plenty of new ferns for your wilderness up there, I daresay, Naomi.’

‘Don’t be uneasy, father,’ replied James confidently; ‘I’ll take care of her.’

Joshua departed, thoughtful of all that he had to do, of his duties temporal and spiritual--the prices at which he could afford to sell tea and sugar and other colonial produce; the bedridden old men and women to whom he must administer counsel and consolation.

It was just the sleepiest, goldenest hour of the summer day. Naomi sat in her mossy hollow under the overhanging rock, with her head resting against the stone, and her eyes fixed dreamily on a silver-shining sail far away on the edge of the sea.

‘I could watch the sea and sky for hours on such a day as this,’ she said, too deliciously idle to look in the direction of the individual to whom she addressed the remark.

‘And I could be content to watch beside you, or to swim such a sea to come to you,’ answered a voice--not Jim’s--close at her side.

The suddenness and the closeness startled her. She turned white and then red.

‘I’m afraid I frightened you,’ said Oswald apologetically.

He had come up from the valley, his footfall noiseless on the soft mossy turf.

‘You did startle me a little,’ replied Naomi breathlessly, with a hot blush still staining her cheek.

How should a country girl, unschooled in pretences of any kind, know how to hide her emotion?

‘But you must have known that I should come,’ said Oswald, looking up at Jim, who had climbed a loftier peak, and was taking a survey of earth and ocean from about the most unsafe footing he could find for himself.

‘How could I know? I thought perhaps that you--’ faltered Naomi, plucking little tufts of coral-tinted sea-moss from the crag at her side.

‘Did you think that I could endure Combhaven for a day without you, having the power to follow you? I knew all about your picnic, but not when it was to be; and I made up my mind to join you. I should have been here earlier, only my father took it into his head to want me this morning; and I was closeted in his study, reading over leases to him, for a couple of hours. It was twelve o’clock when I went out for my ride. I called at the shop as I passed, and the man told me you had come here with your father; so I let Herne have his head and bring me over to Rockmouth as fast as he liked. I’ve left him at the Traveller’s Rest.’

‘That’s where Dobbin stays,’ said Naomi.

‘Yes, I saw him munching hay in a dark old stable. And how long are you going to stay here, Naomi?’

‘O, ever so long! Jim and I are free till six o’clock, and we are going fern-hunting.’

‘Never mind the ferns to-day. Let me take you for a ramble along the beach.’

‘Is it safe? Father told us not to go into any dangerous places.’

‘It is quite safe. Do you think I would lead you into danger? I know every bit of this coast. We’ll hunt sea-anemones instead of ferns; they are much more interesting.’

‘Sea-anemones!’ cried Naomi, opening her eyes.

She had some acquaintance with the tribe, but did not know them by name.

‘Yes; those lovely pink and white and green and blue things, which uncurl their petals and expand, and close again like living blossoms--the roses and lilies in old Neptune’s garden; animal flowers, the naturalists call them. Let me introduce you to them. We’ll go down to the beach. You’re not afraid to trust yourself to my care, are you, Naomi?’

The noble dark eyes met his with a look that was all truth and trustfulness. Faith, hope, and charity were the three virtues that looked out of Naomi’s eyes--infinite faith in the goodness of others, infinite pity for the sorrows of others, infinite hope in all things pure and fair on earth and in heaven.

Naomi looked down at the beach. There were shining patches of wet yellow sand here and there, and low rocks covered with many-coloured seaweed--slippery perilous rocks, no doubt, but very beautiful in their brilliant colouring under that summer sky. It would be nice to explore that beach, Naomi thought; but at this moment her eye caught the basket, which Jim had deposited in a sly cleft of the rocks.

‘You have had no luncheon, perhaps,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t you like to try aunt Judith’s pasty before we go to look for those sea-flowers?’

‘Aunt Judith’s pasty would be most _apropos_.’

‘I am so glad!’ cried Naomi, delighted to minister to his wants.

She opened the basket and brought out the remains of the pasty, and spread a napkin on a ledge of the crag, and made things quite comfortable, in picnicking fashion. There was some cider left in the stone jar. She looked beyond measure happy as she sat by Oswald’s side while he ate, and poured out the cider for him in a little old-fashioned tumbler with a foot. He enjoyed this rustic meal vastly, but would not waste much time upon eating.

‘Come,’ he said, folding the napkin and putting it back into the basket, ‘let us go after the anemones.’

‘May Jim come with us?’ asked Naomi.

‘Of course he may.’

On looking round over land and sea, however, there was no James to be seen. Naomi called, but there was no answer.

‘What a tiresome boy! And father was so anxious that he should not go into any dangerous places.’

‘He’s safe, depend upon it: boys always are. Nothing serious ever happens to a boy, no more than it does to a cat. Boys tumble from places and tear their clothes, but nothing ever hurts them.’

‘That’s rather true about Jim,’ replied Naomi. ‘He’s always frightening us somehow or other; but he never comes to any harm.’

‘Of course not. I daresay we shall find him on the beach.’

The beach seemed as likely as any other place for finding him; so Naomi assented, and they went down the narrow path--the slenderest footway--and Naomi stepped lightly from crag to crag with her hand in Oswald’s. It was like going to heaven the reverse way. Her soul fluttered and soared, and rose higher and higher, as her mortal frame descended the cliff.

How lovely it was on the beach--those smooth shining sands, those treacherous rocks, slippery and cruel and deceitful as the heart of man! How lovely sea and sky, and the fertile earth sloping upwards from the sands! How lovely to live in such a world, and to feel as Naomi felt, her hand still locked in Oswald’s--perhaps unawares--as they walked slowly along the sands, pretending to look for sea-anemones in all those still water-pools in the hollows of the rocks--darkly-shining water, like black diamonds!

‘Naomi,’ said Oswald in a low voice, ‘how sweet it is to be alone with you!’

Naomi crimsoned at the speech, commonplace as it was.

‘We are often alone--in the wilderness,’ she said shyly. ‘There’s one, striped purple and white. How pretty!’ pointing to a creature in a pool.

‘I doat upon the wilderness,’ replied Oswald. ‘But we are not often alone there; Jim is generally good enough to keep us company. He is a dear fellow; but I would rather have you all to myself like this. Look round, Naomi; except for yonder white sail we might be in some unknown island of the Southern Sea. Are you glad that I found you to-day, Naomi?’

She looked at him thoughtfully, gravely, with those truthful eyes, and then answered deliberately,

‘Yes.’

‘The day is sweeter to you because we spend it together?’

‘Yes. You are the only friend I have in Combhaven--the only friend who seems to understand all I think and feel and hope. I have other friends, of course--people I like; only they seem far off compared with you.’

‘Does that mean love, Naomi?’

‘I do not know,’ she answered, with drooping eyelids.

‘Tell me that it does, Naomi, and make me the happiest of men. I have waited for an hour like this--solitude calm as this--to tell you all I feel, to show you my heart. It has been yours for a long while, dear. You have made my life happy; you have given me hopes and dreams I never had before. You reprove me sometimes for my willingness to live what you call a purposeless life at Combhaven. My darling, I have no purpose in life but to live happily with you; no ambition except to win you for my wife.’

‘A very poor ambition,’ she answered, with a grave sweet smile, ‘and perhaps a foolish one. I will not say that I am surprised, Oswald,’ lifting her eyes shyly to his earnest face,--‘I will not say that I did not think you--cared for me. I have thought it lately, and thought of it very seriously; but my mind is not clear. I am not sure that it is for your welfare or mine that I should let you speak to me of love; that I should ever be any nearer to you than I am now, as your faithful and true friend.’

‘My gentle sermoniser,’ exclaimed Oswald, contemplating her with admiring eyes, and stealing his arm round her waist, ‘and why these doubts?’

‘We are not of the same rank in life; we are very far apart. What would be said in Combhaven if you should marry a grocer’s daughter?’

‘Why, I suppose the verdict of the majority would be that I had married the prettiest girl in the place,’ he answered lightly.

‘O Oswald, please be serious. I know that people would say hard and bitter things. They would say you had lowered yourself by such a marriage; that father had set a trap for you. And you yourself would be sorry after a little while. How would you like to have aunt Judith for your aunt, and to know that your father-in-law was standing behind a counter?’

‘I will put up with the counter and aunt Judith for your sake.’

‘Why should you make such a sacrifice when you might marry a lady?’

‘I have seen no better lady than you, Naomi, and I will have no other lady for my wife. I respect your father as much as if he were a bishop, and shall never blush for my alliance with him. I suppose I am a republican at heart; for I have no idea that the fact of a man keeping a shop makes him my inferior. There is no huckster living that will haggle longer or make a closer bargain than my father when he has a farm to let. Is he less a trader because his stock-in-trade is the soil? He is so much the less to be honoured for its possession that it came to him from his father, instead of being the fruit of his own industry.’

‘That is the way a great many people talk, and very few people think,’ answered Naomi thoughtfully.

‘I am one who think as I speak. Come, love, let us not argue social questions. I want an answer to a question that touches us nearer. I love you with all my heart, Naomi; I want you for my wife; I recognise no social difference between us. I shall be as proud to win you as if you were the daughter of a duke. I shall feel as triumphant on our wedding-day as if you were a princess of the land, and our marriage set all the church-bells in this island ringing. Answer me, dearest. I give you true and ardent love; have you nothing to give me in return?’

‘I will not answer lightly,’ said Naomi, grave to sadness. ‘Think how awful a question you wish me to answer. All our lives to come depend upon our wisdom in this matter. We must not decide thoughtlessly, either you or I. And I am afraid you are thoughtless in most things, Oswald,’ she added, looking up at his smiling face.

‘I do not think love and thought are very close allies, Naomi. I love you too well to analyse my feelings or argue about my love; and I think if you loved me ever so little you would be less disposed to make difficulties.’

‘Do you feel that you will love me all your life, Oswald; that this fancy of yours will not wear out; that, if I were to be your wife, the day would never come when you would regret your choice, when you would feel that you might have chosen more wisely?’

‘That day would never come, Naomi; my heart answers for that. Come, love, have we not seen enough of each other to be very sure of our own feelings? I have known you a year, dearest. It is no sudden fancy which I miscall love. My affection for you began as friendship, grave and sweet and tranquil, and slowly ripened into love. Have I not the right to answer boldly for such a love as this? We have bared our hearts to each other, we have no secrets from each other, we have knelt side by side and prayed together, we have been as familiar as if we were of the same household. Can you fear change or decay in a love that has so ripened? Indeed, my dearest, there is no need for fear.’

Naomi had made up her mind to be very serious--very firm--whenever this question came to be argued; to yield only on conviction, and to be very slow to be convinced. But she felt her reasoning powers beginning to fail her. Sincerity was written on Oswald’s brow, truth shone in his eyes, and she loved him--loved him with all the trustfulness and hopefulness of first love. How should she argue in such a case?

‘Answer me, Naomi; tell me that I have not fooled myself with baseless hopes--that you give me love for love?’

‘I will answer nothing for myself,’ she replied, releasing herself from his arm; ‘my father shall decide for us. He shall choose.’

‘That’s a cold answer to give a lover,’ said Oswald, offended.

‘It is for life,’ she answered. ‘I will not answer lightly; I will not trust myself to decide.’

‘If you loved me, Naomi, you would not let any one else decide my fate.’

‘If you think that I do not love you put me out of your thoughts,’ she answered, with a little touch of dignity. She was thinking more of his future happiness than her own. Would it not be ineffable bliss to be his--to belong to him as his servant, his bond slave--how much more as his equal companion and helpmeet!

‘You are cold-hearted and cruel.’

‘No, Oswald, I am trying to be wise. I think my father will answer as you wish, but he will not answer rashly. If he did not think it for your welfare that we should be married, he would say no, although he might think it was for my happiness.’

‘It is hard to have to deal with such good people. Any other girl than you would have answered differently.’

‘How would she have answered?’ asked Naomi.

‘Silently, perhaps. She would have looked up in my face, and our lips would have met and sealed the bond between us. Our first kiss would have meant for ever and ever. She would not have preached me a sermon about social differences and my future welfare,’ said Oswald, angered by his sweetheart’s measured replies.

He had made up his mind that he had but to speak the word, and she would put her hand in his, and accept her fate as submissively as Esther received the crown, or Ruth gave herself to Boaz. He was quite willing to sacrifice all social distinctions and descend to the level of Joshua Haggard’s family, but he expected that sacrifice to be regarded in some wise as a favour.

They walked on slowly and in silence for a little while, and there was no more talk of the sea-anemones. Naomi looked at the shining pools among the rocks with eyes that saw not; Oswald gazed steadily seaward.

He got the better of his angry feelings after a little while, and was ashamed of his ill-temper.

‘Forgive me, Naomi, for my ungraciousness,’ he said. ‘I know that you are one of the noblest of women; but there is a leaven of selfishness in man that makes him impatient of high principles when they oppose the tide of his passion. You are good and unselfish and true, and strong as a rock. You are not like Byron’s women, Naomi. They are love incarnate; ready to sacrifice themselves or their lover at the shrine of love. They look neither backward nor forward; with them the present is infinite and eternal, and the present is love. They are gloriously happy for a little while; then come despair and ruin, and they die untimely, broken-hearted. They are not made

“Through years or moons the inner weight to bear,
Which colder hearts endure till they are laid
By age in earth.”’

‘Do you want me to be like that?’ asked Naomi. ‘It seems a hard destiny.’

‘No, Naomi; but I wish you had less thoughtfulness and more feeling.’

‘You have not sounded the depths of my heart,’ she answered, with her grave smile.

‘No, because you keep its treasures too closely guarded. Come, dearest, only tell me that you love me, and I will be satisfied.’

‘And you will abide by my father’s decision?’

‘Yes, for I cannot believe he would be so cruel as to part us.’

‘Then I will tell you the truth. I love you with all my heart. You have changed all things in my life. I used to have great thoughts of doing some good work, far away, among heathen children in strange benighted lands. They are all gone now. I have no thought--except love and duty to my father--that does not belong to you.’

‘Bless you, Naomi, for that sweet confession. I fear nothing now. Your father would have parted us long ago if he had meant to part us ever. I am content to abide his decision; but I wanted the assurance of love from your own dear lips.’

Cheered by this assurance Oswald was very happy for the rest of that summer afternoon, and the tranquil radiance in Naomi’s eyes told of an equal, and perhaps a deeper, joy. They wandered on that bright shore, and made-believe to be interested in the study of natural history; but their talk drifted away from jelly-fish and sea-weeds and rosy-shining shells, to vague speculations about their own future--Oswald talking of what he would do for Combhaven by and by when the Squire should sleep with his forefathers, and how his brother Arnold would come back and live with them, and how Naomi should build a new chapel for her father and a school for her own little flock, and the grocery business should be handed over to Jim and aunt Judith, and Joshua should have more leisure for his duties as preacher and teacher.

‘And you will never be ashamed of your Methodist wife and your Methodist father-in-law, Oswald?’ asked Naomi anxiously.

‘Never, dearest. Shall I scorn the light because it shines from a lamp of a different fashion from that the State prescribes? Who knows that I shall not turn Methodist myself some day? I have learned more of the Gospel in your father’s parlour than I ever learned before I came among you, and have been more moved by his sermons than by the sleepy doctrinal treatises our good vicar gives us--a weak dilution of Tillotson or Blair.’

The westering sun warned them that it was time to look for James, and to think of getting back to the Traveller’s Rest, where they were to meet Joshua after his labours. Oswald looked at a large white-faced watch that had belonged to his mother, and was not the most reliable of timekeepers. It was a quarter to five; so they walked slowly back to the point at which they had descended, and climbed the devious way to the castle rock, where they had the satisfaction of finding James seated at the base of the crag, with the basket between his knees, devouring the remains of the pasty.

‘Where have you been hiding yourself all the afternoon, Jim?’ asked Naomi.

‘Ah, I daresay; a deal you’ve looked for me. Where have _you_ been all the afternoon? down on the beach making a regular panorama of yourselves. You didn’t know anybody was looking, did you? You didn’t know I was on the top of the cliff all the time enjoying the view. Never mind, Naomi, I forgive you.’

‘We’ve had a very happy afternoon, Jim, and Naomi has promised to be my wife--with her father’s consent.’

Jim clapped his hands, and performed a kind of war-dance on the little bit of sunburnt sward on the edge of the cliff.

‘I’m so glad,’ he said. ‘Of course I saw what was coming--at least I saw that you and Naomi were getting very fond of each other, and I thought you were the right sort, and wouldn’t be ashamed to marry a grocer’s daughter if you loved her dearly--like Caroline in the song, who married the sailor bold.’

And Jim began, with strong Devonian twang, to sing the opening verse of a popular ballad--

‘Caro_line_ was a nobleman’s daughter.’

Oswald was too deep in love just now to be struck by the idea that this would be rather an inconvenient brother-in-law; and perhaps Jim was not much more vulgar than boyhood is in general.

They went back to the village of Rockmouth through the valley, instead of taking the narrow path on the cliff, and there was some loitering by the way to dig spleenwort from the interstices of a low stone wall. It was a pleasant sauntering walk; but they contrived to reach the Traveller’s Rest just as the clock struck six. Dobbin was harnessed, and standing patiently before the door; Joshua Haggard sat in the porch talking to a little group of men.

He showed some surprise at seeing Oswald with his children, but greeted him with hearty friendliness. Jim stowed away the empty basket, Naomi took her seat in the chaise-cart without loss of time, Herne the Hunter was brought out of his stable, and the little party started on the return journey, Herne curveting beside the near wheel of the cart, while his master talked to Naomi and her father.

What a delightful homeward drive that was, by hill and dale, across those wide rippling commons, where the yellow gorse looked pale in the twilight; past those deep and silent valleys, where a lonely homestead here and there made the solitude seem more intense; through hamlets that had a sleepy look already, as if half their little world had gone to bed! And by and by the full round harvest moon rose above the distant sea, and steeped all this fair world in glory.

Something in that moonlight splendour moved Oswald--as Nature’s deepest beauties are apt to move hearts that love--and he leant over to Naomi and clasped her hand; and in that hand-clasp it seemed to both as if they locked their lives for ever.

* * * * *

Oswald had an interview with Joshua Haggard next day, and pleaded his cause with warmth and generous feeling, to which Naomi’s father responded with perfect frankness.

‘I am not too proud to confess that I am proud of your choice,’ he said. ‘I know it is out of the beaten track for the son of a landowner--a man of old family--to marry a tradesman’s daughter. If I were a wholesale trader in the city of London, and had made a million of money, it would be a different thing. I know that hard things will be said of such a marriage, and that there are people who will slight your wife if you are not wise enough to keep her out of their way. I know all this, Mr. Pentreath; and yet, knowing also that here are two fresh unsullied young hearts cleaving to each other naturally like twin hazel-nuts in the same shell, I cannot bring myself to study the world’s opinion, and to withhold my consent to your marriage with my daughter.’

‘I knew you would not,’ cried Oswald impetuously.

‘All I ask--and that I insist upon--is that this marriage shall not be entered upon rashly; that you shall have ample time to know your own mind, to weigh the consequences of such an act, to make sure against the possibility of repentance. You are both young--Naomi only on the threshold of womanhood. Give me your promise that you will think no more of marriage for the next two years; that in all your communion with my daughter you will keep within the bounds of a sober friendship; that there shall be no foolish love-talk between you. And if at the end of those two years your heart still inclines to her, if you still believe that it will be for the happiness of both that you should marry, I will freely give my blessing on your union, and feel that I have wronged no man.’

‘Those are somewhat hard conditions, Mr. Haggard,’ said Oswald, reduced from rapture to disappointment. ‘You will surely allow me to be considered Naomi’s affianced husband during these two years of probation?’

‘Not so, Mr. Pentreath. You will be welcome here as the friend of the household; but I will sanction no engagement between you and my daughter till the end of the time I have named. I ask only for your promise that you will be Naomi’s friend, and not her lover. I think I can trust you: I know that I can trust my daughter.’

‘I would submit to the hardest conditions rather than be parted from Naomi,’ replied Oswald, after a pause; ‘and I know that she will obey you, however hard your decree. It must be so, then, I suppose, Mr. Haggard. I will say no word to Naomi that a household friend might not say; I will forbear from all talk of our future; I will give her reverence and honour, and keep all sweeter thoughts and hopes locked in my heart.’

‘There is my hand upon it, Oswald,’ said Joshua, calling the Squire’s son by his Christian name for the first time. ‘You shall be like a son of the house henceforward. And now let me ask you a question. Has your father any idea of your attachment to Naomi?’

‘He knows that I have spent many an evening in your house--I have never kept that a secret from him--and I think, from certain hints and innuendoes of his, that he has suspected the nature of the attraction that has drawn me here so often. I do not believe that he would entertain any strong objection to my marriage with Naomi, and if he did object, I should refuse to submit to his authority in this matter. He has not been so tender a father that I should sacrifice my inclination to his whims.’

‘He _is_ your father,’ said Joshua, ‘and you are bound to obey him.’

‘Yes, in all right things. But I do not think that he will oppose any hindrance to my free choice of a wife, so long as I choose one who has been carefully brought up, and who will not squander the money he has scraped together.’