CHAPTER IV
The Lonely Pedestrian

The Hope churchyard lay in a dell formed by a landslip ages ago, and the church had long been a ruin. At the hour appointed she descended the rocks and found him waiting at the foot of them.

They wandered hither and thither in the shades, and the solemnity of the spot and the absence of daylight assisted him in sounding her mind on a subject which could not be approached with levity.

He found that, in common with all the islanders born, she knew of the observance. But it was obvious that, in view of herself as a modern young woman, she had never expected it to arise as a practical question between him and her. Some of the working quarriers kept it up, but nobody else, she said. Jocelyn hastened to inform her that he only wished to consult her desires as to the terms of their engagement, and not knowing how far she respected the island’s history, felt bound to mention it; though urge it he did not.

“Well,” said he; “here we are, arrived at the fag-end of my holiday. What a pleasant surprise my old home, which I have thought not worth coming to see for more than two years, had in store for me!”

“You must go to-morrow?” she said uneasily.

“Yes.” He reflected, and decided that instead of leaving in the daytime he would defer his departure till the night mail-train from Budmouth. He had hardly looked into his father’s quarries, and this would give him time to do so, and enable her, if she chose, to accompany him a little way. If she would agree, he purposed to send on his luggage to the aforesaid watering-place, and ask her to walk with him along the beach as far as to Henry the Eighth’s Castle above the sands, where they could stay and see the moon rise over the sea. He would see her nearly all the way back, and there would be ample time after that for him to catch the last train.

“You can reserve your answer till to-morrow,” he added.

She hesitated. “I understand you to mean, dear Jocelyn,” she said, “that my accompanying you to the castle would signify that I conform to the custom of working the spell?”

“Well, yes,” he answered.

“I will think it over to-morrow, and ask mother if I ought to, and decide,” said she. “I fear it is heathen and ungodly.”

After spending the next day with his father in the quarries, Jocelyn prepared to leave, and at the time appointed set out from the stone house of his birth in this stone isle to walk to Budmouth-Regis by the path along the beach, Avice having some time earlier gone down to see some friends at Slopeway Well, which was halfway towards the spot of their proposed tryst. The descent soon brought him to the pebble bank, and leaving behind him the last houses of the isle, and the ruins of the village destroyed by the November gale of 1824, he struck out along the narrow thread of land. When he had walked a hundred yards he stopped, turned aside to the pebble ridge which walled out the sea, and sat down to wait for her.

Between him and the lights of the ships riding at anchor in the roadstead two men passed slowly in the direction he intended to pursue. One of them recognised Jocelyn, and bade him good-night, adding, “Wish you joy, Sir, of your choice, and hope the wedding will be soon?”

“Thank you, Seaborn. Well – we shall see what Christmas will do towards bringing it about.”

“My wife opened upon it this mornen: ‘Please God, I’ll up and see that there wedden,’ says she, ‘knowing ’em both from their crawling days.’ ”

The men moved on, and when they were out of Pearston’s hearing the one who had not spoken said to his friend, “Who was that young kimberlin? He don’t seem an islander.”

“O, he is, though, every inch o’ en. He’s Mr. Jocelyn Pearston, the stone-merchant’s only son up at East Wake. He’s to be married to a stylish young body, whose mother, a widow, carries on the same business as well as she can; but their trade is not a twentieth part of Pearston’s. He’s worth thousands and thousands, they say, though ’a do live on in the same wold way up in the same wold house. His son is doing great things in London as a image-carver; and I can mind when, as a boy, ’a first took to carving soldiers out o’ bits o’ stone from the soft bed of his father’s quarries; and then ’a made a set o’ stonen chess-men, and so ’a got on. He’s quite the gent in London, they tell me; and the wonder is that ’a cared to come back here and pick up little Avice Caro – nice maid as she is notwithstanding…. Hullo! there’s to be a change in the weather soon.”

Meanwhile, the subject of their remarks waited at the appointed place till seven o’clock, the hour named between himself and his affianced, had struck. Almost at the moment he saw a figure coming forward from the last lamp at the bottom of the hill. She meant, then, to conform to the custom.¹ But the figure speedily resolved itself into that of a boy, who, advancing to Jocelyn, inquired if he were Mr. Pearston, and handed him a note.

(To be continued.)

When the boy had gone Jocelyn retraced his steps to the last lamp, and read, in Avice’s hand –

“My Dearest, – I shall be sorry if I grieve you at all, but I have thought over your inquiry, and cannot agree² to conform to the old pagan custom (or whatever it is) of the isle. I did not expect you to ask me so suddenly, or I should have been more positive at the time it was mentioned. As I am quite aware that you merely asked, and did not press me, I know that this decision will not disturb you for long, that you will understand my feelings, and, above all, think the better of me in time to come.

“And if we were unfortunate in the trial of it we could never marry, could we, honourably? This is an objection which I am sure you have not thought of, and will, I know, share with me.

“I am sorry that the custom, uncivilised as it is, which has prevailed in our families on both sides for so many centuries should thus be brought to an end by me, and I am the more sorry in that it prevents my bidding you farewell. However, you will come again soon, will you not, dear Jocelyn? and then the time will soon draw on when no more farewells will be required. – Always and ever yours,

“Avice.”

Jocelyn, having read the letter, pondered awhile: and then, finding that the evening seemed louring, yet feeling indisposed to go back and hire a vehicle, he went on quickly alone. In such an exposed spot the night wind was gusty, and the sea behind the pebble barrier kicked and flounced in complex rhythms, which could be translated equally well as shocks of battle or shouts of thanksgiving.

Presently on the pale road before him he discerned a figure, the figure of a woman. He remembered that a woman passed him while he was reading Avice’s letter by the last lamp, and now he was overtaking her.

He did hope for a moment that it might be Avice, with a changed mind. But it was not she, nor anybody like her. It was a taller, squarer form than that of his betrothed, and, although the season was only autumn, she was wrapped in furs, or in thick and heavy clothing of some kind.

He soon advanced abreast of her, and could get glimpses of her profile against the roadstead lights. It was dignified, arresting, that of a very Juno.³ Nothing more classical had he ever seen. She walked at a swinging pace, yet with such ease and power that there was but little difference in their rate of speed for several minutes; and during this time he regarded and conjectured. However, he was about to pass her by when she suddenly turned and addressed him.

“Mr. Pearston, I think, of East Wake?”

He assented, and could just discern what a handsome, commanding, imperious face it was – quite of a piece with the proud tones of her voice. She was a new type altogether in his experience; and her accent was not so local as Avice’s.

“Can you tell me the time, please?”

He looked at his watch by the aid of a light, and in telling her that it was a quarter past seven observed, by the momentary gleam of his match, that her eyes looked a little red and chafed, as if with weeping.

“Mr. Pearston, will you forgive what will appear very strange to you, I dare say? That is, may I ask you to lend me some money for a day or two? I have been so foolish as to leave my purse on the dressing-table at home.”

It did appear strange: and yet there were features in the young lady’s personality which assured him in a moment that she was not an impostor. He yielded to her request, and put his hand in his pocket. Here it remained for a moment. How much did she mean by the words “some money.” The Junonian quality of her form and manner made him throw himself by an impulse into harmony with her, and he responded regally. He scented a romance. He handed her five pounds.

His munificence caused her no apparent surprise. “It is quite enough, thank you,” she remarked quietly, as he announced the sum, lest she should be unable to see it for herself.

While overtaking and conversing with her he had not observed that the rising wind, which had proceeded from puffing to growling, and from growling to screeching, with the accustomed suddenness of its changes here, had at length brought what it promised by these vagaries – rain. The drops, which at first hit their left cheeks like the pellets of a pop-gun, soon assumed the character of a raking fusillade from the bank adjoining, one shot of which was sufficiently smart to go through Jocelyn’s sleeve. The tall girl turned, and seemed to be somewhat concerned at an onset which she had plainly not foreseen before her starting.

“We must take shelter,” said Jocelyn.

“But where?” said she.

To windward was the long, monotonous bank, too obtusely piled to afford a screen, over which they could hear the canine crunching of pebbles by the sea without; on their right stretched the inner bay or roadstead, the distant riding lights now dim and glimmering; behind them a faint spark here and there in the lower sky showed where the island rose; before there was nothing definite, and could be nothing, till they reached a house by the bridge, a mile farther on, Henry the Eighth’s Castle being a little farther still.

But just within the summit of the bank, whither it had apparently been hauled to be out of the way of the waves, was one of the local boats called lerrets, bottom upwards. As soon as they saw it the pair ran up the pebbly slope towards it by a simultaneous impulse. They then perceived that it had lain there a long time, and were comforted to find it capable of affording more protection than anybody would have expected in a distant view. It formed a shelter or store for the fishermen, the bottom of the lerret being tarred as a roof. By creeping under the bows, which overhung the bank to leeward, they made their way within, where, upon some thwarts, oars, and other fragmentary woodwork, lay a mass of dry netting – a whole seine. Upon this they scrambled and sat down, through inability to stand upright.