 Chapter 10 of The Ship of Stars. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. The Ship of Stars by Arthur Quiller Couch. Chapter 10. A Happy Day. A volley of sand darkened and shook the pain. Taffy, sponging himself in his tub and singing between his gasps, looked up hastily, then flung a big towel about him and ran to the window. Honoria was standing below, and comedy, her gray pony, with a creel and a couple of fishing rods strapped to his canvas girth. Wake up! I've come to take you fishing! Mr. Raymond had started off at Daybreak to walk to Truro on business, so there would be no lessons that morning, and Taffy had been looking forward to a lonely whole holiday. I've brought two pasties, said Honoria, and a bottle of milk. We'll go over to Georgia's country and catch trout. He is to meet us at Vellingay Bridge. We arranged it all yesterday, only I kept it for a surprise. Taffy could have leapt for joy. Go in and speak to mother, he said. She's in the kitchen. Honoria hitched comedy's bridle over the gate, walked up the barren little garden, and knocked at the door. When Mrs. Raymond opened it, she held out a hand politely. How do you do? she said. I have come to ask if Taffy may go fishing with me. Except in church, and outside the porch for a formal word or two, humility and Honoria had never met. This was Honoria's first visit to the parsonage, and the sight of the clean kitchen and shining pots and pans filled her with wonder. Humility shook hands and made a silent note of the child's frock, which was torn and wanted brushing. He may go, and thank you. It's lonely for him here, very often. I suppose, said Honoria gravely, I ought to have called before. I wish. She was about to say that she wished humility would come to treadiness, but her eyes wandered to the orderly dresser and the scalding pans by the fireplace. I mean, if Taffy had a sister, it would be different. Humility bent to lift her kettle off the fire. When she faced round again, her eyes were smiling, though her lip trembled a little. How bright you keep everything here, said Honoria. There's plenty of sand to scour with. It's bad for the garden, though. Don't you grow any flowers? I planted a few pansies the first year. They came from my home up in Devonshire, but the sand covered them. It covers everything. She smiled and asked suddenly, May I kiss you? Of course you may, said Honoria. But she blushed as humility did it, and they both laughed shyly. Hello! cried Taffy from the foot of the stairs. Honoria moved to the window. She heard the boy and his mother laughing and making pretense to quarrel, while he chose the brownest of the hotcakes from the wood ashes. She stared out upon humility's buried pansies. It was strange. A minute back she had felt quite happy. Humility set them off and watched them till they disappeared in the first dip of the toans, and then sat down in the empty kitchen and wept a little before carrying up her mother's breakfast. Honoria rode in silence for the first mile, but Taffy sang and whistled by turns as he skipped alongside. The whole world flashed and glittered around the boy and girl. The white gulls fishing, the swallows chasing one another across the dunes, the lighthouse on the distant spit, the white-washed mine chimneys on the ridge beside the shore. Away on the rises of the moor, one hill farm laughed to another in a steady flame of furs blossom, laughing with a tinkling of singing larks. And beyond the last rise lay the land of wonders, Georgia's country. Hark! Honoria reigned up. Isn't that the cuckoo? Taffy listened. Yes, somewhere among the hillock seaward its note was dinning. Count cuckoo cherry tree be a good bird and tell to me how many years before I die. 96, Taffy announced. 92, said Honoria, but we won't quarrel about it. Happy month to you, eh? It is the first of May. Come along. Perhaps we shall meet the mayors, though we're too late, I expect. Hello, there's a miner. Let's ask him. The miner came upon them suddenly. Footsteps make no sound among the toans. A young man in a suit stained orange tourney with a tallow candle stuck with a lump of clay in the brim of his hat and a striped tulip stuck in another lump of clay at the back and nodding. Good morning, miss. You've come a day behind the fair. Is the maying over? Honoria asked. It's Faye. I've just been home to shift myself. He walked along with them and told them all about it in the friendliest manner. It had been a grand maying. All the boys and girls in the parish. With the halanto, of course. Such dancing. Fine and tired, some of them made it must be. He wouldn't give much for the work they'd do today. Two may mornings in one year would make a grass captain mad, as the saying was. But there, it was as poor spirit that never rejoiced. Which do you belong to? Taffy nodded toward the mine chimneys on the skyline high on their left, which hid the sea, though it lay less than half a mile away, and the roar of it was in their ears. Just such a roar as the train makes when rushing through a tunnel. Bless you, I'm a thinner. I belong to Will Gunaver up the valley. Will blow there, pwn the cliff, he's lead, and next to him, Will Penhail, he's iron. I came a bit out of my way with you for company. Soon after parting from him, they crossed the valley stream. Taffy had to wait it. And here they happened on a dozen tall girls at work, spalling the tin ore, but not busy. The most of them leaned on their hammers or stood with hands on hips, their laughter drowning the thud, thud of the engine house, and the rattle of the stamps up the valley. And the cause of it all seemed to be a smaller girl who stood by with a basket in her arms. Here you be, Lizzie, cried one. Here's a young lady and gentleman coming with money in their pockets. Lizzie turned. She was a child of 14, perhaps, brown-skinned, with shy, wild eyes. Her stockings were torn, her ragged clothes decorated with limp bunches of bluebells, and her neck and wrists with twisted daisy chains. She skipped up to a hornoria and held out a basket. Within it, in a bed of fern, lay a maidol among a few bird's eggs, a poor wooden thing in a single garment of pink calico. Give me something for my doll, miss, she begged. Oh, that's too tame, one of the girls called out and pitched her voice to the true beggar's wine. Spare a copper, my only child, dear kind lady, and its only father broke his tender neck in a blasting accident and left me twelve to maintain. All the girls began laughing again. Onoria did not laugh. She was feeling in her pocket. What is your name? she asked. Lizzie Pezac. My father tensed the lighthouse. Give me something for my doll, miss. Onoria held out a half-crown piece. Hand it to me. The child did not understand. Give me something, she began again in her dull, level voice. Onoria stamped her foot. Give it to me. She snatched up the doll and thrust it into the fishing-creel, tossed the coin into Lizzie's basket, and, taking comedy by the bridal, moved up the path. She have adopted an. They laughed and called out to Lizzie that she was in luck's way, but Taffy saw the child's face as she stared into the empty basket, and that it was perplexed and forlorn. Why did you do that? he asked as he caught up with Onoria. She did not answer. And now they turned away from the sea and struck a high road, which took them between upland farms and across the ridge of cultivated land to a valley full of trees. A narrow path led inland up this valley. They had followed it under pale green shadows, in Indian file, the pony at Onoria's heels and Taffy behind, and stepped out into sunlight again upon a heathery moor where a trout stream chattered and sparkled, and there, by a granite bridge, they found George fishing, with three small trout shining on the turf beside him. This was a day which Taffy remembered all his life, and yet most confusedly. Indeed, there was little to remember it by, little to be told except that all the while the stream talked, the lark sang, and in the hollow of the hills three children were happy. George landed half a dozen trout before lunchtime, but Taffy caught none, partly because he knew nothing about fishing, partly because the chatter of the stream set him telling tales to himself, and he forgot the rod in his hand. And Onoria, after hooking a tiny fish and throwing it back into the water, wandered off in search of lark's nests. She came slowly back when George blew a whistle announcing lunch. Hello, what's this? he asked as he dived a hand into her creel. Ugh, a doll. I say Taffy, let's float her down the river. What humbug, Onoria. But she had snatched the doll and crammed it back roughly into the creel. A minute later, when they were not looking, she lifted the lid again and disposed the poor thing more gently. Why don't you talk, one of you, George demanded with his mouth full. Taffy shook himself out of his waking dream. I was wondering where it goes to, he said, and nodded toward the running water. It goes down to Langona, said George, and that's just a creek full of sand with a church right above it in a big grass meadow, the queerest small church you ever saw. But I've heard my father tell that hundreds of years back, a big city stood there, with seven fine churches and keys, and deep water alongside and above, so that ships could sail right up to the ford. They came from all parts of the world, the tin and lead, and the people down in the city had nothing to do but sit still and grow rich. Somebody must have worked, interrupted Onoria, on the buildings and all that. The building was done by convicts. The story is that convicts were transported here from all over the kingdom. Did they live in the city? No, they had a kind of camp across the creek. They dug out the harbour too, and kept it clear of sand. You can still see the marks of their pickaxes along the cliffs. I'll show them to you someday. My father knows all about it, because his great great great great grandfather, and a heap more greats, I don't know how many, was the only one saved when the city was buried. Was he from the city, or one of the convicts, asked Onoria, who had not forgiven George's assault upon her doll? He was a baby at the time and couldn't remember, George answered, with fine composure. They say he was found high up the creek, just where you cross it by the footbridge. The bridge is covered at high water, and if you try to cross below, especially when the tide is flowing, just you look out. Twice a day the sands become quick there. They've swallowed scores. I'll tell you another thing. There's a bird billed somewhere in the cliffs there. A creek, the people call it, and they say that whenever he goes crying about the sands, it means that a man will be drowned there. Rubbish. I don't believe in your city. Very well then. I'll tell you something else. The fishermen have seen it. Five or six of them. You know the kind of haze that gets up sometimes on hot days, when the sun's drawing water. They say that if you're a mile or two out and this happens between you and Langona Creek, you can see the city quite plain above the shore, with the seven churches and all. I can see it. Taffy blurted this out almost without knowing that he spoke, and blushed furiously when George laughed. I mean, I'm sure, he began to explain. If you can see it, said Onoria, you'd better describe George's property for him. She yawned. He can't tell the story himself, not one little bit. Right you are, miss, George agreed. Fire away, Taffy. Taffy thought for a minute, then, still with a red face, began. It is all true, as George says, a fine city lies there, covered with the sands, and this was what happened. The king of Langona had a son, a handsome young prince, who lived at home until he was 18, and then went on his travels. That was the custom, you know. The prince took only his foster brother, whose name was John, and they travelled for three years. On their way back, as they came to Langona Creek, they saw the convicts at work, and in one of the fields was a girl digging alone. She had a ring around her ankle, like the rest, with a chain and iron weight, but she was the most beautiful girl the prince had ever seen. So he pulled up his horse and asked her who she was, and how she came to be wearing the chain. She told him she was no convict, but the daughter of a convict, and it was the law for the convict's children to wear these things. Tonight, said the prince, you shall wear a ring of gold and be a princess, and he commanded John to file away the ring and take her upon his horse. They rode across the creek and came to the palace, and the prince, after kissing his father and mother, and said, I have brought you all kinds of presents from abroad, but best of all, I have brought home a bride. His parents, who wandered at her beauty, and never doubted but that she must be a king's daughter, were full of joy, and set the bells ringing in all the seven churches. So for a year everybody was happy, and at the end of that time a son was born. You're making it up, said Donoria. Taffy's own stories always puzzled her, with hints and echoes from other stories she half remembered, but could seldom trace home. He had too cunning a gift. George said, do be quiet, of course he's making it up, but who wants to know that? Two days afterward, Taffy went on. The prince was out hunting with his foster brother. The princess in her bed at home complained to her mother-in-law, Mother, my feet are cold, bring me another rug to wrap them in. The queen did so, but as she covered the princess' feet, she saw the red mark left by the ankle ring and knew that her son's wife was no true princess, but a convict's daughter. And full of rage and shame, she went away and mixed two cups. The first she gave to the princess to drink. And when it had killed her, for it was poison, she dipped her finger into the dregs and rubbed it inside the child's lips, and very soon he was dead too. Then she sent for two ankle chains and weights, one larger and one very small, and fitted them on the two bodies, and had them flung into the creek. When the prince came home, he asked after his wife, she is sleeping, said the queen, and you must be thirsty with hunting. She held out the second cup, and the prince drank and passed it to John, who drank also. Now in this cup was a drug which took away all memory, and at once the prince forgot all about his wife and child, and John forgot too. For weeks after this, the prince complained that he felt unwell. He told the doctors that there was an empty place in his head, and they advised him to fill it by travelling. So he set out again, and John went with him as before. On their journey, they stayed for a week with the king of Spain, and there the prince fell in love with the king of Spain's daughter and married her, and brought her home at the end of a year, during which she too had brought him a son. The night after their return, when the prince and his second wife slept, John kept watch outside the door. About midnight he heard the noise of a chain dragging, but very softly, and up the stairs came a lady in white with a child in her arms. John knew his former mistress at once, and all his memory came back to him. But she put a finger to her lips, and went past him into the bed chamber. She went to the bed, laid a hand on her husband's pillow, and whispered, Wife and babe below the river, twice will I come, and then come never. Without another word, she turned and went slowly past John and down the stairs. I know that, anyhow, Honoria interrupted. That's east of the sun and west of the moon, or else it's the princess whose brother was changed into a roebuck, or else. But George flicked a pebble at her, and Taffy went on, warming more and more to the story. In the morning, when the prince woke, his second wife saw his pillow on the side farthest from her, and it was wet. Husband, she said, you have been weeping tonight. Well, said he, that is queer, though, for I haven't wept since I was a boy. It's true, though, that I had a miserable dream, but when he tried to remember it, he could not. The same thing happened on the second night, only the dead wife said, Wife and babe below the river, once will I come, and then come never. And again in the morning there was a mark on the pillow where her wet hand had rested, but the prince in the morning could remember nothing. On the third night, she came and said, Wife and babe below the river, now I am gone, and gone forever. And went down the stairs with such a reproachful look at John that his heart melted and he ran after her, but at the outer door a flash of lightning met him, and such a storm broke over the palace and city as had never been before, and never will be again. John heard screams and the noise of doors banging and feet running throughout the palace. He turned back and met the prince, his master, coming downstairs with his child in his arms. The lightning stroke had killed his second wife where she lay. John floated him out into the streets where the people were running to and fro, and through the whirling sand to the ford, which crossed the creek a mile above the city. And there, as they stepped into the water, a woman rose before John with a child in her arms and said, Carry us. The prince who was leading did not see. John took them on his back, but they were heavy because of the iron chains and weights on their ankles, and the sand sank under him. Then, by and by, the first wife put her child into John's arms and said, Save him, and slipped off his back into the water. What sound was that? asked the prince. That was my heart cracking, said John. So they went on till the sand rose halfway to their knees. Then the prince stopped and put his child into John's arms. Save him, he said, and fell forward on his face, and John's heart cracked again. But he went forward in the darkness until the water rose to his waist and the sand to his knees. He was close to the father's shore now, but could not reach it unless he dropped one of the children, and this he would not do. He bent forward, holding out one in each arm, and could just manage to push them up the bank and prop them there with his open hand. And while he bent, the tide rose and his heart cracked for the third time. Though he was dead, his stiff arms kept the children propped against the bank. But just at the turning of the tide, the one with the ankle weight slipped and was drowned. The other was found next morning by the inland people high and dry, and some do say, taffy wound up, that his brother was not really drowned, but turned into a bird, and that, though no one has seen him, it is his voice that gives the croak, imitating the sound made by John's heart when it burst. But others say it comes from John himself, down there below the sands. There was silence for a minute. Even Honoria had grown excited toward the end. But it was unfair, she broke out. It ought to have been the convict child that was saved. If so, I shouldn't be here, said George, and it's not very nice of you to say it. I don't care, it was unfair, and anyone but a boy, with scorn, would see it. She turned upon the staring taffy. I hate your tale, it was horrid. She repeated it that evening, as they turned their faces homeward across the hithery moor. Taffy had halted on top of a hillock to wave goodnight to George. For years he remembered the scene, the brown hollow of the hills, the clear evening sky with the faint purple arch, which is the shadow of the world, climbing higher and higher upon it, and his own shadow stretching back with his heart toward George, who stood fronting the level rays and waved his glittering catch of fish. What was that, he said? He asked when at length he tore himself away and caught up with Honoria. That was a horrid story, he told. It spoiled my afternoon, and I'll trouble you not to tell it any more of the sort. End of Chapter 10. Recording by Ben Clark, Ben Coda on Twitter. Chapter 11 of The Ship of Stars. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Ship of Stars by Arthur Quiller Couch. Chapter 11. Lizzie redeems her doll, and Honoria throws a stone. A broad terrace ran along the southern front of Treadiness House. It had once been decorated with leaden statues, but of these only the pedestals remained. Honoria, perched on the terraced wall, with her legs dangling, was making imaginary casts with a trout rod when she heard footsteps. A child came timidly round the angle of the big house, Lizzie Pezak. Hello, what do you want? If you please miss. Well, if you please miss, you've said that twice. Lizzie held out a grubby palm with a half crown in it. I want my doll back, if you please miss, but you sold it. I didn't mean to, you took me so sudden. I gave you ever so much more than it was worth, why? I don't believe it cost you three hapents. Tupents, said Lizzie. Then you don't know when you're well off. Go away. Tisnt that, miss? What is it then? Lizzie broke into a flood of tears. Honoria, the younger by a year or so, stood and eyed her scornfully, then turning on her heel, marched into the house. She was a just child. She went upstairs to her bedroom, unlocked her wardrobe, and took out the doll, which was clad in blue silk, and reposed in a dog trough line with the same material. Honoria had recklessly cut up two handkerchiefs for underclothing, and her Sunday sash, and had made the garments in secret. They were prodigies of bad needlework. With the face of a medea, she stripped the poor thing, took it in her arms as if to kiss it, but checked herself sternly. She descended to the terrace with the doll in one hand, and its original calico smock in the other. There, take your two penny baby. Lizzie caught and strained it to her breast, covered its poor nakedness hurriedly, and hugged it again with passionate kisses. You silly, did you come all this way by yourself? Lizzie nodded. Father thinks I'm home minding the house. He's off duty this evening, and he walked over here to the Briar Knight Chapel, up to four turnings. There's going to be a big prayer meeting tonight. When his back was turned, I slipped out after him, so as to keep him in sight across the toans. Why? I'm terrible timid. I can't bear to walk across the toans by myself. You can't see where you be. They're so much alike, and it makes a person feel lost. There's so many bones, too. Dead rabbits. Yes, and dead folks, I've heard father say. Well, you'll have to go back alone anyway. Lizzie hugged the doll. I don't mind so much now. I'll keep along by the sea and run, and only open my eyes now and then. Here's your money, miss. She went off for to run. Honoria pocketed the half-crown and went back to her flyfishing, but after a few casts she desisted and took her rod to pieces slowly. The afternoon was hot and sultry. She sat down in the shadow of the balustrade and gazed at the long, blank facade of the house baking in the sun, at the tall, uncurtained windows, at the peacock stalking to and fro like a drowsy sentinel. You are a beast of a house, she said contemplatively, and I hate every stone of you. She stood up and strolled toward the stables. The stable yard was empty, but for the gordon set her dozing by the pump trough. Across from the kitchens came the sound of the servants' voices chattering. Honoria had never made friends with the servants. She tilted her straw hat further over her eyes and sauntered up the drive with her hands behind her, through the great gates and out upon the toans. She had started with no particular purpose and had none in her mind when she came inside of the parsonage and of humility seated in the doorway with her lace pillow across her knees. It had been the custom among the women of Beer Village to work in their doorways on sunny afternoons and humility followed it. She looked up smiling. Taffy is down by the shore, I think. I didn't come to look for him. What beautiful work! It comes in handy. Won't you step inside and let me make you a cup of tea? No, I'll sit here and watch you. Humility pulled in her skirts, and Honoria found room on the doorstep beside her. Please don't stop. It's wonderful. Now I know where Taffy gets his cleverness. You are quite wrong. This is only a knack. All his cleverness comes from his father. Oh, books! Of course. Mr. Raymond knows all about books. He's writing one, isn't he? Mrs. Raymond nodded. What about? It's about St Paul's epistle to the Hebrews in Greek, you know. He has been working at it for years. And he's indoors working at it now. What funny things men do? She was silent for a while, watching humility's bobbins. But I suppose it doesn't matter just what they do. The great thing is to do it better than anyone else. Does Mr. Raymond think Taffy clever? He never talks about it. But he thinks so, I know. Because at lessons when he says anything to Taffy, it's quite different from the way he talks to George and me. He doesn't favour him, of course. He's much too fair. But there's a difference. It's as if he expected Taffy to understand. Did Mr. Raymond teach him all those stories he knows? What stories? Fairy tales and that sort of thing. Good gracious me, no. Then you must have. And you are clever, after all. Asking me to believe you're not, and making that beautiful lace all the while, under my very eyes. I'm not a bit clever. Here's the pattern you see. And there's the thread. And the rest is only practice. I couldn't make the pattern out of my head. Besides, I don't like clever women. A woman must try to be something. Onoria felt that this was vague, but wanted to argue. A woman wants to be loved, said Mrs. Raymond thoughtfully. There's such a heap to be done about the house that she won't find time for much else. Besides, if she has children, she'll be planning for them. Isn't that rather slow? Humility wondered where the child had picked up the word. Slow, she echoed, with her eyes on the horizon beyond the dunes. Most things are slow when you look forward to them. But these fairy tales of yours. I'll tell you about them. When my mother was a girl of sixteen, she went into service as a nursemaid in the clergyman's family. Every evening, the clergyman used to come into the nursery and tell the children a fairy tale. That's how it started. My mother left service to marry a farmer. It was quite a grand match for her. And when I was a baby, she told the stories to me. She has a wonderful memory still, and she tells them capitalally. When I listen, I believe every word of them. I like them better than books, too, because they always end happily. But I can't repeat them a bit. And as soon as I begin, they fall to pieces, and the pieces get mixed up. And worst of all, the life goes right out of them. But Taffy. He takes the pieces and puts them together, and the tale is better than ever. Quite different, and new, too. That's the puzzle. It's not memory with him. It's something else. But don't you ever make up a story of your own, Onoria insisted. Now, you might talk with Mrs. Raymond for ten minutes, perhaps, and think her a simpleton, and then suddenly a cloud, as it were, parted. And you found yourself gazing into depths of clear and beautiful wisdom. She turned on Onoria with a shy, adorable smile. Why, of course I do, about Taffy. Come in and let me show you his room and his books. An hour later, when Taffy returned, he found Onoria seated at the table and his mother pouring tea. They said nothing about their visit to his room, and though they had handled every one of his treasures, he never discovered it. But he did notice, or rather, he felt, that the two understood each other. They did, and it was an understanding he would never be able to share, though he lived to be a hundred. Mr. Raymond came out from his study and drank his tea in silence. Onoria observed that he blinked a good deal. He showed no surprise at her visit, and after a moment seemed unaware of her presence. At length, he raised the cup to his lips, and finding it empty, set it down, and rose to go back to his work. Humility interfered and reminded him of a call to be paid at one of the upland farms. The children might go too, she suggested. It would be very little distance out of Onoria's way. Mr. Raymond sighed, but went for his walking stick, and they set out. When they reached the farmhouse, he left the children outside. The town place was admirably suited for a game of follow my leader, which they played for twenty minutes with great seriousness, to the disgust of the roosting poultry. Then Taffy spied a niche, high up, where a slice had been cut out of a last year's haystack. He fetched a ladder. Up they climbed, drew the ladder after them, and played at being outlaws in a cave until the dusk fell. Still, Mr. Raymond lingered indoors. He thinks we have gone home, said Onoria. Now the thing would be to creep down and steal one of the fowls and bring it back and cook it. We can make believe to do it, Taffy suggested. Onoria considered for a moment. I'll tell you what, there's a great brionite meeting tonight down at the chapel. I expect there'll be a devil hunt. What's that? They turn out the lights and hunt for him in the dark. But he isn't really there. I don't know. Suppose we play at Scouts and creep down the road. If the chapel is lit up, we can spy in on them, and then you can squeeze your nose on the glass and make a face while I say boo, and they'll think the old gentleman is really come. They stole down the ladder and out of the town place. The chapel stood three quarters of a mile away on a turfed wastrel, where two high roads met and crossed. Long before they reached it, they heard clamorous voices and groans. I expect the devil hunt has begun, said Onoria, but when they came inside of the building its windows were brightly lit. The noise inside was terrific. The two children approached it with all the precaution proper to Scouts. Suddenly the clamour ceased and the evening fell so silent that Taffy heard the note of an owl away in the treadiness plantations to his left. This silence was daunting, but they crept on, and soon were standing in the illuminated ring of Fert's winds which surrounded the chapel. Can you reach up to look in? Taffy could not, so Onoria obligingly went on hands and knees and he stood on her back. Can you see? What's the matter? Taffy gasped. He's in there. What? The old gentleman? Yes, no, your grandfather. What? Let me get up. Here, you kneel. It was true. Under the rays of a paraffin lamp, in face of the kneeling congregation sat Squire Moyle, his body stiffly upright on the bench, his jaws rigid, his eyes with horror in them fastened upon the very window through which Onoria peered, fastened, it seemed to her, upon her face. But no, he saw nothing. The bright nights were praying. Onoria saw their lips moving. Their eyes were all on the old man's face. In the straining silence his mouth opened, but only for a moment while his tongue wetted his parched lips. A man by the pulpit stares shuffled his feet. A sigh passed through the chapel as he rose and relaxed the tension. It was Jackie Pascoe. He stepped up to the Squire and lying a hand on his shoulder said, gently, persuasively, yet so clearly that Onoria could hear every word. Try, brother. Keep on trying. Oh, I've known cases. You can never tell how near salvation is. One minute a heart's like a stone, and the next may be Tis melted and singing like fat in a pan. Tis working, Tis working. The congregation broke out with cries. Amen. Glory, glory. The Squire's lips moved and he muttered something. But Stoney despair sat in his eyes. Aye, glory, glory. You've been a doubter and you doubt no longer. Soon you'll be a shelter. Man, you'll dance like as David danced before the ark. You'll feel it in your toes. Come along, friends, while he's resting a minute. Sing altogether. Oh, the blessed piece of it. I long to be there, his glory to share. He pitched the note and the congregation took up the second line with a rolling, gathering volume of song. It broke on the night like the footfall of a regiment at charge. Honorius scrambled off Taffy's back, and the two slipped away to the high road. Shall you tell your father? Aye, I don't know. She stooped and found a loose stone. He shan't find salvation tonight, she said heroically. As the stone crashed through the window, the two children pelted off. They ran on the soft turf by the wayside, and only halted to listen when they reached Tredinus' great gates. The sound of feet running far up the road set them off again, but now in opposite ways. Honorius sped down the avenue, and Taffy headed for the parsonage across the Toans. Ordinarily, this road at night would have been full of terrors for him, but now the fear at his heels kept him going while his heart thumped on his ribs. He was just beginning to feel secure when he blundered against a dark figure which seemed to rise straight out of the night. Hello? Blessed voice, the Wayfarer was his own father. Taffy, I thought you were home an hour ago. Where on earth have you been? With Honoria, he was about to say more but checked himself. I left her at the top of the avenue, he explained. End of Chapter 11. Recording by Ben Clarke. Ben Coda on Twitter. Childhood comes to an end. The summer passed, there was a talk in the early part of it that the bishop would be coming next spring to consecrate the restored church and hold a confirmation service. Taffy and Honoria were to be confirmed in early in August. Mr. Raymond began to set apart an hour each day for preparing them. In a week or two, the boy's head was full of religion. He spent much of his time in the church watching the carpenter at work upon the new seats. His mind ran on the story of Samuel, and he wished his mother had followed Hannah's example and dedicated him to God. He had a suspicion that God would be angry with her for not doing so. He did not observe that as the autumn crept on a shadow gathered on Humility's face. One Sunday the old square did not come to church and again on the next Wednesday at the Harvest Festival. Honoria sat alone in the Trudinus pew. The shadow was on his mother's face as he chatted about this on the way home to the parsonage, but the boy did not perceive it. He loved his parents, but their lives lay outside his own, and their sayings and doings passed him like a vain show. He walked in a separate world of childhood, and it seemed an enormous world yet, though a few weeks were to bring him abruptly to the end of it. But just before he came to the precipice, he was given a glimpse of the real world, and of a world beyond that far more splendid and romantic than any region of his dreams. The children had no lessons during Christmas or for three weeks after. On the last morning, before the holidays, George brought a letter from Mr. Raymond, who read it, considered for a while, and laid it among his papers. It's an invitation. George announced in a whisper, I wonder if he'll let you come. Where, whispered Taffy, up to Plymouth, to the pantomime, what's that? Oh, clowns and girls dressed up like boys and policemen on slides and that sort of thing. Taffy sat bewildered. He vaguely remembered Plymouth as a mass of roofs seen from the train as it drew up for a minute or two on a high bridge, someone in the railway carriage had talked of an engine called Brutus, which it appeared had lately run away and crashed into the cloakroom at the end of the platform. He still thought of railway engines as big, blundering animals with wills of their own end of Plymouth as a town rendered insecure by their vagaries. But the idea that its roofs covered girls dressed up like boys and policemen on slides was new to him and pleasant on the whole, though daunting. Will you give my thanks to Sir Harry, said Mr. Raymond, after it lessens, and tell him that Taffy may go. So on New Year's Day, Taffy found himself in Plymouth. It was an experience which he could never fit into his life except as a gaudy interlude. For when he awoke and looked back upon it, he was no longer the boy who had climbed up beside Sir Harry and behind Sir Harry's restless pair of bays. The world began with that drive to the station, began again in the train, began again as they stepped out on the pavement at Plymouth. Just as a company of scarlet-coated soldiers came down the roadway with a din of brazen music, the crowd that shops the vast hotel completely dazed him, and he seriously accepted the waiter in his black suit and big white shirt front as a contribution to the fun of the entertainment. He must dine early. Sir Harry announced at lunch the pantomime begins at 7. Isn't this the pantomime? Taffy stammered. George giggled. Sir Harry sat down his glass of cleric, stared at the boy, and broke into musical laughter. Taffy perceived he had made some ridiculous mistake and blushed furiously. God bless the child. The pantomime's at the theater. Oh, Taffy recalled the canvas, booth, and wheezy cornet of his early days with a shill of disappointment. But with George at his side it was impossible to be anything but happy. After lunch they salad out, and it would have been hard to choose the gayest of the three. Sir Harry's ready at good temper seemed to gild the streets. He took the boys up to the hoe and pointed out the warships. He whisked them into the camera obscure, thence to the citadel, where they watched a squad of recruits at drill, thence to the Barbican, where the trawling fleet lay packed like herring, and the shops were full of rope and oil-skinned suits and marine instruments. And dirty children rolled about the roadway between the legs of sea-booted fishermen. And so up to the town again, where he lingered in the most obliging manner, while the boys stared into the fishing tackle shops and toy shops. On the way he led them up a narrow passage and into a curious room where fifteen or twenty men were drinking and talking at the top of their voices. The most of them seemed to know Sir Harry well, and greeted him with an odd mixture of respect and familiarity. Their talk was full of mysterious names and expressions, and Taffy thought at first they must be free masons. The more point-to-point was a walk over for the milkman. Lapiduri was scratched, which left it a soft thing, unless Sir Harry fancied a fox catcher like nursery governors in which case Billy behind the bar would do as much business as he liked at six to one. After a while, Taffy discovered they were talking about horses and wondered why they should meet to discuss horses in a dingy room up a backyard. Youngster of yours is growing. Sir Harry set a red-faced man who's his stable companion. Taffy was introduced into his embarrassment. Sir Harry began to relate his ridiculous mistake at lunch. The men roared with laughter. He made another quite as ridiculous at the pastry cook's, where Sir Harry ordered tea. What will you take with it? Call for what you like, only don't poison yourselves. Taffy, referring his gaze from the buns and confections on the counter to the card in his hands, which was inscribed with words in unknown tongues, made up bold plunge, and announced that he would take a maraschino. This tickled Sir Harry mildly. He ordered the waitress with a wink to bring the young gentleman a maraschino, and Taffy, who had expected something in the shape of a macaroon, was confronted with a tiny glass of a pale liquor at which, when tasted, in the most surprising manner, put sunshine into his stomach and brought tears into his eyes. But under Sir Harry's quizzical gaze, he swallowed it down bravely and sat gasping and blinking. It may have been that the maraschino induced a haze upon the rest of the afternoon. The gas lamps were lit when they left the pastry cooks and entered a haberdasher's where Taffy, without knowing why, was fitted with a pair of white kid gloves. Of dinner at the hotel, he remembered nothing except that the candles on the tables had red shades of which the silverware gave funny reflections that the same waiter flitted about in the penumbra, and that Sir Harry, who was dressed like the waiter, said, Wake up young maraschino, do you take your coffee black? Is usually pale brown at home, answered Taffy, at which Sir Harry laughed again. Black will suit you better tonight, he said, and poured out a small cupful, which Taffy drank and found exceedingly nasty. In a moment later, he was wide awake and the three were following a young woman along a passage which seemed to run in a complete circle. The young woman long open a door, they entered a little room with the balcony in front and the first glorious vision, broke on that child with a blaze of light, a crash of music and the moment of hundreds of voices, faces, faces, faces, faces mounting from the pit below them, up and up to the sky blue ceiling, where painted goddesses danced and scattered pink roses around the enormous castle, sawns piping on the great curtain, fiddles sawing in the orchestra beneath, ladies and gays, silks and jewels leaning over the York balcony's opposite, which were real and which are vision only. He turned helplessly to George and Sir Harry. Yes, they were real, but what of Nana Zabulo and the sandhills and that little parsonage to which that very morning he had turned to raise his anchorchief. A bell rang and the curtain rose upon a company of russet brown elves dancing in a green wood. The play was jacked by the giant killer, but to have you knew the story in the book by heart found the story on this stage almost meaningless. That mattered nothing, it was the world, the new and unimagined world, stretching deeper and still deeper as the scenes were lifted, a world in which solid walls crumbled and forests melted and loveliness broke through the ruins, unfolding like a rose. It was this that seized on the child's heart until he could have wept for its mere beauty. Often he had sought out, the trout pools on the moors behind the tolerance and lying it full length had watched the fish moving between the stones and water plants and watching through a summer's afternoon had longed to change places with them and glide through their grottoes or anchor among the reed stalks and let the ripple run over him. As long back as he could remember all beautiful sights that awakened this ache, this longing, though that I were where I would be, then would I be where I am not, for where I am I would not be and where I would be I cannot. It seemed to him that these bright beings on the stage had broken through the barriers that stepped beyond the flaming ramparts and were happy. Their horseplay, at which George laughed so immodently, called the taffy to come and be happy too, and when Jack the giant killer changed to Jack in the beanstalk and within the transformation scene, a real beanstalk grew and unfolded its leaves and each leaf revealed a fairy seated with a limelight flashing on star and jeweled wand. The longing became unbearable, the scene passed in a minute, the clown and pantaloon came on and presently Sir Harry saw Taffy's shoulders shaking and said it down to laughter at the harlequinade. He could not see the child's face, but perhaps the queer's event of the evening when Taffy came to review his recollections was this. He must have fallen into a stupor and leaving the theater for when he awoke. He found himself on a couch in a gaslit room with George deciding and Sir Harry was shaking him by the collar and saying, God bless the children. I thought they were in bed hours ago. A man, the same who had talked about race horses that afternoon, was standing by the table on which a quantity of cards lay scattered among the drinking glasses and he laughed at this and his laugh sounded just like the rustling of paper. It's all very well, began Sir Harry, but checked himself and lit a candle and led the few boys off shivering to bed. The next morning too had its surprises to begin with, so Harry announced the breakfast that he must go and buy a horse. He might be an hour or two over the business and meanwhile the boys had better go out into the town and enjoy themselves. Perhaps a salve and a peace might help them. Taffy would never in his life possess more than a shilling, but staring at the gold piece in his hand when the door opened and Sir Harry's horse racing friend came in to breakfast and not a good morning. Pity, you're leaving today. He said as he took his seat at a table hard by then. My revenge must wait, Sir Harry answered. It seemed a cold-blooded thing to be said so carelessly. Taffy wondered if Sir Harry's search for a horse had anything to do with this revenge and the notion haunted him in the intervals of his morning's shopping. But how to lay out his sovereign? That was the first question. George, who within 10 minutes has settled his own problem by purchasing a doubtful foxtail of the boots of the hotel, saw no difficulty. The boots had another pup for sale, one of the same litter. But I want something for Mother and the others and Honoria. Botheration, I've forgotten Honoria and now the money's gone. Never mind. She can have my pup. Oh, said Taffy ruefully. Then she won't think much of my present. Yes, she will suppose you buy a collar for him. You can get one for five shillings. They found a saddler's and chose the dog collar which came to four shillings and for 18 pence the shopman agreed to have Honoria from Taffy engraved on it within an hour. Humility's present was chosen with surprising ease, a large frame photograph of the Bishop of Exeter price six shillings. I don't suppose objective Georgia mother cares much for the Bishop of Exeter. Oh, yes, she does, said Taffy. He's coming to confirm us next spring. Besides, he had it with one of those flashes of wisdom which surely he derived from her. Mother won't care what it is so long as she's remembered and it costs more than the collar. This left him with eight and six pence and four three and six pence. He bought a work box for his grandmother with a view of Plymouth. Oh, on the lid but now came the crocs. What should he get for his father? He must be a book George suggested but what kind of a book he has so many? Something in Latin. The booksellers window was filled with yellowback novels and toy books which obviously would not do so they marched in and demanded a book suitable for a clergyman who had a good many books already. A middle-aged clergyman, George added. You can't go far wrong with this. Suggested the bookseller producing Crockford's clerical directory for the current year but this was too expensive and said Taffy, I think he would rather have something in Latin. The bookseller rubbed his chin, went to his shelves and took down a small day. It meant Tatione, Christie, bound and limp cab. You can't go wrong with this either. He assured them so Taffy paid down his money. Just as the boys reached the hotel so Harry drove up in a cab and five minutes later they were all rafting off to the railway station. Taffy eyed the cab horse curiously never doubting it to be so Harry's new purchase and was extremely surprised when the cabin ripped it up and trotted off after receiving his money too but in the bustle there was no time to ask questions. It was about three in the afternoon and the sun already low in the southwest when it came in sight of the crossroads and so Harry pulled up his bays and there on the green by the sun post did Mrs. Raymond. She caught Taffy in her arms and hugged him till he felt ashamed and glanced around to see if the others were looking but the faton was bowing away down the road. But why are you here mother? Mrs. Raymond gazed out a while after the carriage before speaking. Your father had to be at the church she said but there's no service. He broke out. See what I've brought for you and he pulled out the portrait. Do you know who it is? Humility thanked him and kissed him passionately. There was something odd with her this afternoon. Don't you like your present? Darling it is beautiful. She stooped and kissed him again passionately. I have a present for father to a book. Why are you walking so fast? In a little while he asked again why are you walking so fast? I I thought you would be wanting your tea. May I take father his book first? She did not answer but may in time he persisted. They had reached the garden gate humility seemed to hesitate. Yes go. She said at length and he ran with the day Emma Tatione Christy under his arm. As he came with in view of the church he saw and out of men gathered about the door they were pulling something out from the porch. He heard the noise of hammering and squire at the back of the crowd was shouting at the top of his voice. The church is yours is it? I'll see about that. Pitch out the furniture. My billies that's mine anyway. Still the hammers sounded within the church. Don't believe in sudden conversion don't you? I reckon you will when you look around your church. Bishop come into consecrated busy consecrate my furniture. I'll see when your bishop to blaze is first. A heap of shattered timber came flying through the porch. Your church. Hey your church. The crowd fell back and Mr. Raymond stood in the doorway between Bill Udy and Jim the Huntsman. Bill Udy that held a brazen Ure and Patton and Jim a hammer and Mr. Raymond had a hand on one shoulder of each. For a moment there was silence as Taty came running through the Lich gate. A man who had been sitting on a flat tombstone and watching stood up and touched his arm. It was Jackie Pascoe that Brian I best go back. He said it is a rich poor job of it. Taty halted for a moment. The squire's voice had risen to a sudden screen. He sputtered as he pointed at Mr. Raymond. There he is. Neighbors get behind the vomit somebody and stop this earth. Calls himself a minister of God calls it his church. Mr. Raymond took his hands off the men's shoulders and walked straight up to him. Not my church. He said allowed an instinctly God's church. He stretched out an arm. Taty running up. Supposed it stretched out to strike. Father. The Mr. Raymond's palm was open as he lifted it over the squire's head. God's church he repeated in whose service I defy you. Go, or if you will, and have the courage come and stand while I kneel amid the ruin you have done and pray God to judge between us. He paused with his eyes on the squires. You dare not I see go pour coward and plant what missed if you will. Only now leave me in peace a little. He took the boy's hand and they passed into the church together. No one followed. Hand in hand they stood before the dismantled chancel. Taty heard the sound of shuffling feet on the walk outside and looked up into Mr. Raymond's face. Father, kiss me, sonny. The day I'm out to your name, Christie slipped from Taty's fingers and fell upon the chancel's death. So his childhood ended. End of Chapter 12. Chapter 13 of The Ship of Stars. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information nor to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Ship of Stars by Arthur Quiller Couch. Chapter 13, The Builders. These things happened on a Friday. After breakfast next morning, Taty went to fetch his books. He did so out of habit and without thinking, but his father stopped him. Put them away, he said. Someday we'll go back to them, but not yet. Instead of books, humility packed their dinner in the chancel. They reached the church and found the interior just as they had left it. Taty was set to work to pick up and sweep together the scraps of broken glass, which littered the chancel. His father examined the wreckage of the pews. While the boy knelt at his task, his thoughts were running on the pantomime, he had meant at last night to recount all its wonders and the wonders of Plymouth, but somehow the words had not come. After displaying his presence he could find no more to say, and feeling his father's hand laid on his shoulder had burst into tears and hidden his face in his mother's lap. He wanted to console them, and they were pitying him. Why, he could not say, but he knew it was so. And now the pantomime, Plymouth, everything seemed to have slipped away from him into a far past. Only his father and mother had drawn nearer and become more real. He tried to tell himself one of the old stories, but it fell into pieces like the fragments of colored glass he was handling, and presently he began to think of the glass in his hands and let the story go. On Monday Will set to work, said his father. I dare say Joel, this was the carpenter down at Innis village, will lend me a few tools to start with, but the clearing up will take us all today. They ate their dinner in the vestry, Taffy observed that his father said, we will do this, or our best plan will be so-and-so, and spoke to him as to a grown man. On the whole, though the desk found them still at work, this was a happy day. But aren't you going to lock the door? He asked, as they were leaving. No, said Mr. Raymond, we shall win, sonny, but not in that way. On the morrow, Taffy rang the bell for service as usual, to his astonishment Squire Moyle was among the first comers. He led Onoria by the hand, entered the Tridentous pew, and shut the door with a slam. It was the only pew left unmutilated. The rest of the congregation, and curiosity made it larger than usual, had to stand. But a wife of one of the miners found a hasik and passed it to humility, who thanked her for it with brimming eyes. Mr. Raymond said afterward that this was the first success of the campaign. Not willing to tire his audience, he preached a very short sermon, but it was his manifesto, and all the better for being short. He took his text from Nehemiah, chapter 2, verses 19 and 20, but when Saint Brawlett, the Honorite, and Tobiah the Servant, the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arabian heard it, they laughed us to scorn, and despised us and said, what is this thing that ye do? Will ye rebel against the King? Then answered I them, and said unto them, the God of heaven, he will prosper us, therefore we, his servants, will arise and build. Fellow parishioners, he said, you see the state of this church. Concerning the cause of it, I require none of you to judge. I enter no plea against any man. Another will judge, who said, destroy this temple, and in three days I will rear it up. But he spake of the temple of his body, which was destroyed, and is raised up in its living and irrevocable triumph. I, or some other servant of God, will celebrate at this altar Sunday by Sunday, that whosoever will, may see, yes, and taste it. The state of this poor shell is but a little matter to a God whose majesty once inhabited a stable. Yet the honor of this too shall be restored. You wonder how perhaps it may be the Lord will work for us, for there is no restraint to the Lord to save by many or by few. Go to your homes now and ponder this, and having pondered, if you will, pray for us. As the raiments left the church, they found squire-moyle waiting by the porch. Honoria stood just behind him. The rest of the congregation had drawn off a little distance to watch. The squire lifted his hat to humility and turned to Mr. Raymond with a sour frown. That means war. It means that I stay, said the vicar. The war, if it comes, comes from your side. I don't think the worse of he for fighting you're not going to law then. Mr. Raymond smiled. I don't doubt you've put yourself within the reach of it, but if it eases your mind to know, I'm not going to law. The squire glunted, raised his hat again and strode off, gripping Honoria by the hand. She had not glanced towards Taffy. Clearly she was not allowed to speak to him. The meaning of the vicar's sermon became plain next morning when he walked down to the village and called on Joel Hugh, the carpenter. I knows what the art come after began Joel, but tis no use, parson dear. The old fellow owns the roofs over us, and if I do a day's work for he, out I goes, neck and crop. Mr. Raymond had expected this. It's not for work, I'm come, said he, but to hire a few tools if you're minded to spare them. Joel scratched his head, might manage that now, but Lord bless ye, they will never make no hand of it. He chose out saw, hammer, plain and auger, and packed them up in a carpenter's frail with a few other tools. Don't he talk about payment now? Neighbors must be neighborly. Only you see a man must look after his own. Mr. Raymond climbed the hill toward the talons with the carpenter's frail slung over his shoulder. As luck would have it, near the top he met Squire Moyle, descending on horseback. The vicar nodded good morning in passing, but had not gone. A dozen steps when the old man reigned up and called after him. Hi, the vicar halted. Whose basket is that you're carrying? Then getting no answer, wait till next Saturday night when Joel Hugh comes to thank you. I suppose you know he rents his cottage by the week. No harm shall come to him through me, said the vicar, and retraced his steps down the hill. The Squire followed at a foot pace, grinning as he went. That night Mr. Raymond went back to his beloved books, but not to read. And early next morning was ready at the crossroads for the van, which plied twice a week between Innis Village and Truro. He had three boxes with him, heavy boxes, as Calvin, the van driver, remarked when he came to lifting them on board. They are not leaving us, surely, said he. No, but however, just get these lumping boxes up the hill. My son helped me. He had modestly calculated on averaging a shilling of volume for his books, but discovered on leaving the shop at Truro that it worked out at one in Thruppence. He returned to Nanna Zabolo that night with one box only, but it was packed full of tools and a copy of Fuller's Holy State, which at the last moment had proved two pressures to be parted with, at least just yet. The woodwork of the old pews painted deal for the most part, but mixed with a few boards of good red pine and one or two of tea, relics of some forgotten shipwreck, lay stacked in the belfry and around the font under the west gallery. Mr. Raymond and Taffy spent an hour in overhauling it, chose out the boards for their first pew and fell to work. At the end of another hour the pair broke off and looked at each other. Taffy could not help laughing. His own knowledge of carpentry had been picked up by watching Joel Hugh at work and just suffice to tell him that his father was possibly the worst carpenter in the world. I think my fingers must be all thumbs, declared Mr. Raymond. The puckers in his face set Taffy laughing afresh. They both left and felt to work again. The boy explained his notions of the difficult art of mortising. They were rudimentary, but sound as far as they went, and his father recognized this. Moreover, when the boy had a tool to handle, he did it with a natural deafness. In spite of his ignorance, he was humility's child, born with the skill of hand of generations of lace workers. He did a dozen things wrongly, but he neither fumbled nor hammered his fingers nor wounded them with the chisel, which was humility's husband's way. At the end of four days of strenuous effort they had their first pew built. It was a recognizable pew, though it leaned to one side, and the door, for it had a door, fell to with a bang, if not cautiously treated. The triumph was the seat could be sat upon without risk. Mr. Raymond and Taffy tested it with their combined weight on the Saturday evening, and went home full of its praises. But look at your clothes, said humility, and they looked. This is serious, said Mr. Raymond. Dear, you must make us a couple of working suits of corduroy or some such stuff, otherwise this pew making won't pay. Humility stood out against this for a day or two, that her husband and child should go dress like common workmen, but there was no help for it. And on the Monday wheat Taffy went forth to work in mole skin breeches, blue Guernsey and loose white smock. As for Mr. Raymond, the only badge of his calling was his round clerical hat, and as all the miners in the neighborhood wore hats of the same soft felt, and only a trifle higher in the crown this hardly amounted to a distinction. Humility's eyes were full of tears as she watched them from the door that morning, but Taffy felt as proud as punch. A little before noon he carried out a board that required sawing and rested it on a flat tombstone, where with his knee upon it he could get a good purchase. He was sawing away when he heard a dog barking, and looked up to see Onaria coming along the path with George's terrier, frisking at her heels. She halted outside the litch gate and Taffy, vein of his new clothes, drew himself up and nodded. Good morning, said Onaria. I'm not allowed to speak to you, and I'm not going to, after this. She swooped on the puppy and held him. See what George brought home from Plymouth for me? Isn't he a beauty? Held so by the scruff of his neck he was not a beauty. Taffy had it on the tip of his tongue to tell her about the collar he wished he had brought it. I wonder, she went on pensively. Your mother had the heart to dress you out in that style, but I suppose now you'll be growing up into quite a common boy. Taffy decided to say nothing about the collar. I like the clothes, he declared defiantly. Then you can't have the common instincts of a gentleman. Well, goodbye. Grandfather has salvation all right this time. He said he'd put the stick about me if I dared to speak to you. He won't know, won't know why I shall tell him, of course, when I get back. But, but he mustn't beat you. She eyed him for a moment in order to in silence mustn't he? I advised you to go and tell him. She walked away slowly, whistling, but by and by broke into a run and was gone, the puppy's scampering behind her. As the days grew longer and the weather milder, Taffy and his father worked late into the evenings, sometimes if the job needed to be finished by the light of a couple of candles. One evening about nine o'clock the boy, as he playing the bench, paused suddenly, what's that? They listened, the door stood open, and after a second or two they heard the sound of feet tiptoeing away up the path outside. Spies, perhaps, said his father, if so, let them go in peace. But he was not altogether easy. There had been strange doings up at the bryonite chapel of late. He still visited a few of his parishioners regularly, hill farmers and their wives, for the most part, who did not happen to be tenants of squire-moyle, and on whom his visits, therefore, could bring no harm. And one or two had hinted of strange doings, now that the bryonites had hold of the old squire. They themselves had been up just to look. They confessed it shamed facetly, much in the style of men who had been drinking overnight, without pressing them and showing himself curious, the vicar could get at no particulars. But as the summer grew, he felt a moral sultriness as it were growing with it. The people were off their balance, restless, and behind their behavior he had a sense, now of something electric, menacing, now of a hand holding it in check, slowly in those days the conviction deepened in him that he was an alien on this coast, that between him and the hearts of the race he ministered to their stretch and impalpable impenetrable veil. In all this while, the faces he passed on the road, though shy, were kindlier than they had been in the days before his self-confidence left him. It seemed not so long ago. On a Saturday night, early in May, the footsteps were heard again, and this time in the porch itself, while Mr. Raymond and Taffy, listen, the big latch went up with a creak and a dark figure slipped into the church. Who is there? Challenge Mr. Raymond from the chance of where he stood, peering out of the small circle of light. A friend, pass, friend, and all as well, answered a squeaky voice. Bless you, I've served in the militia before now. It was Jackie Pasker, with his coat collar turned up high, about his ears. What do you want? Mr. Raymond demanded sharply. A job. We can pay for no work here. Wait till they are asked, parson dear. I've been spying in upon you. These nights pass, pretty carpenters you be, till the night as I was a peeping. The Lord said to me, arise, go, and for goodness sake, show them chaps how to do it fitty. Dear Lord, I said, thou knowest I be a bryonite. The Lord said to me, none of your back answers, go and do as I tell thee. So here I be. Mr. Raymond has a tainted squire of oil. Is your friend I hear, and the friend of your chapel? What will he say if he discovers that you are helping us? Jackie scratched his head. I reckon the Lord must have thought of that too. Suppose you put me to work in the vestry. There's only one window looks in on the vestry. You can block that up with a curtain, and there I'll be like a weevil in a biscuit. When this screen was fixed, the little bryonite looked round and rubbed his hands. Now, I'll tell thee a parable, he said. A parable about this candle I'm holding. When God Almighty said, let there be light. He gave every man a candle. To some folks, same as you, long six is perhaps some best wax. To others are far than dip. But they all helps to light up, and the beauty of it is, parsing. He laid a hand on Mr. Raymond's cuff. There isn't one of them burns. A half-porth, the worst for every candle. That's lit from him. Now sit down, you and the boy, and I'll larny how to join a board. End of chapter 13. Chapter 14 of the Ship of Stars. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Ship of Stars by Arthur Quiller Couch. Chapter 14. Voices from the sea. Before winter and the long nights came around again, Taffy had become quite a clever carpenter. From the first his quickness fairly astonished. The bryonite, who at the best was, but a journeyman and soon owned himself beaten. I doubt said he, if you'll ever make so good a man as your father, but you can't help making a better workman. He added, with his eyes on the boy's face, there's one thing in which you might copy and he hasn't much of a gift, but he lays it upon the altar. By this time Taffy had resumed his lessons. Every day he carried a book or two in his satchel with his dinner and read it or translated aloud, while his father worked. Two hours were allowed for this in the morning and again to in the afternoon. Sometimes a day would be set apart during which they talk nothing but Latin. Difficulties in the text of their authors they postponed until the evening and worked them out at home after supper with the help of grammar and dictionary. The boy was not unhappy on the whole, though for weeks together he longed for a sight of George Vile, who seemed to have vanished into space or into that limbo where his childhood lay like a toy in a lumber room. Taffy seldom termed the key of that room. The stories he imagined now were not about fairies or heroes but about himself. He wanted to be a great man and astonish the world. Just how the world was to be astonished he did not clearly see, but the triumph in whatever shape it came was to involve a new gown for his mother and for his father, a whole library of books. Mr. Raymond never went back to his books now except to help Taffy. The commentary on the epistle to the Hebrews was laid aside. Someday he told humility. The Sunday congregation had dwindled to a very few, mostly foreign people, squire, moll, having threatened to expel any tenant of his who dared to set foot within the church. In the autumn two things happened which set Taffy wondering. During the first three years that Nana is below, old Mrs. Benning had regularly been carried downstairs to dine with the family. This sea air she said had put new life into her, but now she seldom moved from her room and Taffy seldom saw her except at night when after the old childish custom he knocked at her door to wish her pleasant dreams and pull up the weights of the tall clock which stood by her bed's head. One night he asked carelessly, what do you want with the clock? Lying here you don't need to know the time and its ticking must keep you awake. So it does, child, but blessed you I like it. Like being kept awake, dear yes, I have enough of rest and quiet up here. You mind the Latini? I used to say over to you, Parson Kempthorn taught it to us girls when I was in service with him. It was made up, he said, by another old Devonshire Parson years and years ago. When I lie within my bed, sick in heart and sick in head, and with doubts discomforted, sweet spirit comfort me when the house do sigh and weep. That's it. You wouldn't think how quiet it is here all day, but at night when you're in bed and sleeping, all the house begins to talk. Little creakings of furniture, you know, and the wind in the chimney and sometimes the rain in the gutter running. It's all talk to me. Mostly it's quite sociable too, but sometimes in rainy weather the tune changes and then it's like some poor soul in bed and sobbing to itself. That's when the verse comes in. When the house do sigh and weep and the world is drowned in sleep, yet my eyes, the watch to keep, sweet spirit comfort me. And then the clock ticking is a wonderful comfort, tic-tac, tic-tac, and I think of you stretched to sleep and happy and growing up to be a man and the minutes running and trickling away to my deliverance, granny. My dear, I'm as well off as most, but that isn't saying I shan't be glad to go and take the pain in my joints to a better land. Before we came here in militia time I used to lie and listen for the buglers, but now I've only the clock, no more bugles for me I reckon, till I hear them blown across Jordan. Taffy remembered how he too had lain and listened to the bugles, and with that he saw his childhood as it were a small round globe, set within a far larger one, and wrapped around with other folks thoughts. He kissed his grandmother and went away wondering, and as he lay down that night it still seemed wonderful to him that she should have heard those bugles and more wonderful that night after night for years she should have been thinking of him while he slept, and he never have guessed it. One morning some three weeks later he and his father were putting on their oil skins before starting to work, for it had been blowing hard through the night and the gaol was breaking up in floods of rain when they heard a voice hallowing in the distance. Humility heard it too and turned swiftly to Taffy, run upstairs dear, I expected someone sent from Trussetter Farm, and if so he'll want to see your father alone. Mr. Raymond Frount know he said, the time is past for that. I fizzed, hammered on the door, Mr. Raymond threw it open. Brigantine on the sands, half a mile this side of the lighthouse, Taffy saw across his father's shoulder a gleam of yellow oil skins, and a flapping south-wester hut. The panting voice belonged to Sam Udy, son of old Bill Udy, of laborer at Trussetter. I'll go at once, said Mr. Raymond, run you for the coast guard. The oil skins went by the window, the side gate clashed too. Is it a wreck, cried Taffy, may I go with you? Yes, there may be a message to run with. From the edge of the toans, where the ground dipped steeply to the long beach they saw the wreck about a mile up the coast, and as well as they could judge a hundred or a hundred and twenty yards out, she lay almost on her beam ends, with the waves sweeping high across her starboard quarter, and never less than six ranks of ugly breakers between her and dry land. A score of watchers in the distance they looked like emits were gathered by the edge of the surf, but the coast guard had not arrived yet. The tide is ebbing, and the rocket may reach. Can you see anyone aboard? Taffy spied through his hands, but could see no one. His father set off running, and he followed. Half blinded by the rain, now floundering in loose sand, now tripping in a rabbit hole. They had covered three-fourths of the distance when Mr. Raymond pulled up and waved his head as the coast guard carriage swept into view over a ridge to the right and came plunging across the main valley of the toans. It passed them close, the horses sped locked deep in sand, with heads down and heaving, smoking shoulders. The coast guardsmen, with keen, strong faces like he rose in the boy, long to copy his father and send a cheer after them, as they went galloping by, but something rose in his throat. He ran after the carriage and reached the shore, just as the first rocket shot singing out towards the wreck. By this time at least a hundred miners had gathered, and between their legs he caught a glimpse of two figures stretched at length on the wet sand. He had never looked on a dead body before. The faces of these were hidden by the crowd, and he hung about the fringe of it, dreading and yet courting a sight of them. The first rocket was swept down to Leeward of the wreck. The chief officer judged his second beautifully, and the line fell clean across the vessel and all but amid ships. A figure started up from the Lee of the deckhouse and, springing into the main shrouds, grasped it and made it fast. The beach, being too low for them to work the cradle clear above the breakers, the coast guardsmen, carried the short end of the line up the shelving cliff and fixed it. Within ten minutes the cradle was run out, and within twenty the first man came swinging shoreward. Four men were brought ashore alive, the captain last, the rest of the crew of six lay on the sands with Mr. Raymond kneeling beside them. He covered their faces and now gave the order to lift them into the carriage. Taffy noticed that. He was obeyed without demerit or question, and there flashed in his memory a gray morning, not unlike this one. When he had missed his father at breakfast he had been called away suddenly. Humility explained, and there would be no lessons that day, and she kept the boy indoors all the morning and busy with a netting stitch he had been bothering her to teach him. Father, he asked as they followed the cart, does this often happen? Your mother hasn't thought it well for you to see these sights. Then it has happened often. I've buried seventeen, said Mr. Raymond. That afternoon he showed Taffy their graves. I know the names of all but two. The bodies have marks about them, tattoos, you know, and that helps, and I write to their relatives or friends and restore whatever small property may be found on them. I've often wished to put up some gravestone or a wooden cross at least with their names. He went to his chest and the best string took out a book, a cheap account book ruled for figures. Taffy turned over the pages, November 3rd, 187. Brig, James, and Maria. JD, fair haired height, five feet, eight inches, marked on chest with initials and cross swords, tattooed also anchor and coil of rope on right forearm. Large brown mole on right shoulder blade, striped flannel drawers, otherwise naked, no property of any kind. Ditto, grown man, age 40 or thereabouts, dark iron gray beard, lovers not tattooed on right forearm, with initials RL, EW in the loops, clad in flannel shirt, Guernsey, trousers, blue sea claws, socks, heather, mixture, all unmarked, silver chain in pocket, with free mason's token, half crown, a florn and fourpence, and so on on the opposite page were entered the full names and details afterwards discovered with notes of the vicar's correspondence and position of the grave. They ought to have gravestones, said Mr. Raymond, but as it is, I can only get about 30 shillings for the funeral from the county rate. The balance has come out of my pocket from two to three pounds for each. From the beginning, the squire refused to help to bury sailors. He took the ground that it wasn't a local claim. Hello, said Taffy, for his he turned the leaves as I fell on this entry. January 30th, 187, SS rifleman, all hands, cargo, china clay, WP, age about 18, fair-skinned, reddish hair, short and curled, height 5 feet 10 and 3 and a quarter inches, initials tattooed on chest under a three-masted ship and semicircle of seven stars, clad in flannel, singlet and trousers, cloth, singlet marked with same initials in red cotton, pockets empty, but he was in the Navy, cried Taffy with his finger on the entry. Which one? Yes, he was in the Navy. You'll see it on the opposite page. He deserted poor boy in core Carver and shipped on board a tramp steamer as donkeyman. She loaded it, Fowie, and was wrecked on the voyage back. William Pello, he was called, his mother lives but 10 miles up the coast, she never heard of it, until six weeks after. But we, I mean, knew him. He was one of the sailor boys on Joby's van. You remember they're helping us with the luggage at Indian Queens. He showed me his tattoo marks that day. And again he saw his childhood as it were set about with an enchanted hedge, cross which many voices would have called to him, and some from near but all had hung, muted, and arrested. The inquest on the two drowned sailors was held next day at the 15 balls. Down in Innis Village later in the afternoon the four survivors walked up to the church headed by the captain. We've been hearing, said the captain, of your difficulties, sir. Likewise, your kindness to other poor seafaring chaps. We'd have liked to make you a small offering for your church, but 16 shillings is all we can raise between us. So we come to say that if you can put us onto a job, why we're staying over the funeral and the day's work or more after that won't hurt us one way or another. Mr. Raymond led them to the chancellor and pointed out a new beam on which he and Jackie Pascoe had been working a week past and over which they had been cuddling their brains how to get it lifted and fixed in place. I can send to one of the miners and borrow a couple of ladders. Ladders, Lord love you, sir, and begging your pardon we don't want ladders. With a sling bill, A, and a couple of tackles, you leave it to we, sir. He went off to turn over the gear, salved from his vessel in early next forenoon, had the apparatus rigged up and ready, he was obliged to leave it at this point, having been summoned across to Falmouth to report to his agents. His last words before starting were addressed to his crew, I reckon you can fix it now boys. There's only one thing more, and don't you forget it hats off and any man that wants to spit must go outside. That afternoon Taffy learned for the first time what could be done with a few ropes and pulleys, the seamen seemed to spin ropes out of themselves like spiders. By three o'clock the beam was hoisted and fixed, and they broke off their work to attend their shipmates funeral. After the funeral they fell to again, though more silently, and before nightfall the beam shone with a new coat of varnish. They left early next morning, after a good deal of hand shaking, and Taffy looked after them wistfully as they turned away their caps and trudged away over the rise towards the crossroads. The way to the left in the wintery sunshine a speck of scarlet caught his eye against the blue gray of the toans. He watched it as it came slowly towards him and his heart leaped, yet not quite as he had expected it to leap. For it was George Vile. George had lately been promoted to pink and made a gallant figure on his strapping gray hunter. For the first time Taffy felt ashamed of his working suit and would have slipped back to the church, but George had seen him and pulled up. Hello, said he. Hello, said Taffy, and absurdly enough could find no more to say. How are you getting on? Oh, I'm all right. There was another pause. How's Minoria? Oh, she's all right. I'm riding over there now. They meet at Trudanus today. He tapped his boot with his hunting crop. Don't you have any lessons now? Asked Taffy after a while. Dear me, yes. I've got a tutor. He's no good at it, but what made you ask? Really, Taffy could not tell. He'd ask merely for the sake of saying something. George pulled out a gold watch. I must be getting on. Well, goodbye. Goodbye. And that was all. End of chapter 14. Pascoe, who, in addition to his other trades, was something of a glasier, had taken the damaged east window in hand. For six months, it had remained boarded up, darkening the chancel. Mr. Raymond removed the boards and fixed them up again on the outside, and the Brinite worked behind them night after night. He could only be spied upon through two lancet windows at the west end of the church, and these they cut in. But what continually bothered them was their ignorance of ironwork. Staples, rivets, hinges were forever wanted. At length, one evening, toward the end of March, the Brinite laid down his tools. Tell me what, Tesparsant? You must send the boy to someone that'll teach and smithy work. There's no sense in this cold hammering. We'll write Hawken, holds his shop and cottage from the squire. Why not put the boy to Menderwa the smith over to Benny beneath? He's a first-rate workman. That is more than six miles away. No matter for that, there's Joel's farm close by. Farmer Joel would board and lodge in for nine shillings a week and glad of the chance, and he could come home for Sundays. Mr. Raymond, as soon as he reached home, sat down and wrote a letter to Menderwa the smith and another to Farmer Joel. Within a week, the bargains were struck, and it was settled that Taffy should go at once. I may be calling before long to look you up, said the Brionite, but mind, do you do no more than nod when you see me. Joel's farm lay somewhere near Carvithill, across the moor where Taffy had gone fishing with George and Honoria. On the Monday morning, when he stepped through the white front gate with his bag on his shoulder and paused for a good look at the building, it seemed to him a very comfortable farmstead and vastly superior to the tumbledown farms around Nannis Abul. The flagged path, which led up to the front door between great bunches of purple honesty, was swept as clean as a dairy. A dark-haired maid opened the door and led him to the great kitchen at the back. Hams wrapped in paper hung from the rafters and strings of onions. The pans over the fireplace were bright as mirrors and through the open window he heard the voices of children at play as well as the clacking of poultry in the town place. I'll go and tell the mistress, said the maid, but she paused at the door. I suppose you don't remember me now. No, said Taffy truthfully. My name's Lazy Pizzak. You were with the young lady that day when she bought my doll. I mind you quite well, but I put my hair up last Easter and that makes a difference. Why? You were only a child. I was 17 last week and I say, do you know the Brionite over to Saint Anne's preacher Jackie Pescoe? He nodded, remembering the caution given him. I got salvation off him. Master and Miss S, they've got salvation too, but they take it very quiet. They're very fond of one another. If you please one, you'll please him both. They let me walk over to prayer meeting once a week, but I don't go by Menderba's shop. That's where you work though, test the shortest way. Because there's a woman buried in the road there with the stake through her and I'm a terrible coward for ghosts. She paused as if expecting him to say something, but Taffy was staring at a neck of corn, elaborately plated, which hung above the mantle shelf and just then, Mrs. Joll entered the kitchen. Taffy, without any reason, had expected to see a middle-aged housewife, but Mrs. Joll was hardly over 30. Her shapely woman with the plain, pleasant face and urban hair, the wealth of which she concealed by wearing a drowned straight bag from the forehead and plated in the severest coil behind. She shook hands. You like a drink of milk before I show you your room? Taffy was grateful for the milk, while he drank it, the voices of the children outside rose suddenly to shouts of laughter. That will be their father come home, said Mrs. Joll, and going to the side door called to him, John, put the children down, Mr. Raymond's son is here. Mr. Joll, who had been galloping round the farm yard with the small girl of three on his back and a boy of six tugging at his coattails, pulled up and wiped his good-natured face. Kindly welcome, said he, coming forward and shaking hands while the two children stared at Taffy. After a minute the boy said, my name's Bob, come and play horses too. Farmer Joll looked at Taffy with a shyness that was comic. Shall we? Mr. Raymond will be tired enough already, his wife suggested. Not a bit, declared Taffy, and hoisting Bob on his back, he set off furiously prancing after the farmer. By dinner time he and the family were fast friends, and after dinner the farmer took him off to be introduced to Menderva the Smith. Menderva's forge stood on a triangle of turf, beside the high road where a cart-track branched off to descend to Joll's farm in the valley, and Menderva was a dark giant of a man with a beard like those you see on the statues of Nineveh. On Sundays he parted his beard carefully and tied the ends with little boughs of scarlet ribbon, but on weekdays it curled at will over his mighty chest. He had one assistant whom he called the Dane, a red-haired youth as tall as himself and straighter from the waist down. Menderva's knees had come together with ears of poising and swinging his great hammer. He's little, but he'll grow, said he after eyeing Taffy up and down. Dane, come for and tell me if we'll make a workman of him. The Dane stepped forward and passed his hand over the boy's shoulder and down his ribs. He's slight, but he'll fill out, good pair of shoulders, give hold of your hand, my son. Taffy obeyed, not very well liking to be handled thus like a prized pullock. Hand like a lady's, tidy wrist though, he'll do, master. So Taffy was passed, given a leathern apron and said to his first task of keeping the forge-fire raked and the bellows going, while the hammers took up the music he was to listen to for a year to come. This music kept the Dane merry, and beyond the window, along the bright high road, there was usually something worth seeing. Farm carts, chow ters, carts, the doctor and his gig, peddlers and Johnny Fortnights, the millers, wagons from the valley bottom below John's farm, and on Tuesdays and Fridays, the market ran going and returning. Menderva knew or speculated upon everybody, and, with half the passes by, broke off work and gave the time of day, leaning on his hammer. But down at the farm, all was strangely quiet, in spite of the children's voices, and at night the quietness positively kept him awake, listening to the purr of the pigeons in their coat against the house wall, thinking of his grandmother awake at home, and hearkening to the tic-tac of her tall clock. Often when he awoke to the early summer daybreak, and saw through his attic window the gray shadows of the sheep still, and long on the slope above the farmstead, his ear was wanting something, asking for something, for the murmur of the sea never reached this inland valley, and he would lie and long for the chirping of the two children in the next room, and the drawing of boards and clatter of milkpales below stairs. He had plenty to eat, and that plenty simple and good, and clean linen to sleep between. The kitchen was his except on Saturday nights when Mrs. Joel and Lizzie tubbed the children there, and then he would carry his books off to the best parlor or stroll around the farm with Mr. Joel and discuss the stock. There were no loose rails in Mr. Joel's gates, no farm implements lying out in the weather to rust. Mr. Joel worked early and late, and his shoulders had a telltale stoop, for he was a man in the prime of life, perhaps some five years older than his wife. One Saturday evening he unburdened his heart to taffy. It happened at the end of the hay harvest, and the two were leaning over a gate, discussing the yet untouched rake. What I say is, declared the farmer quite inconsequently, a man must be able to lay his troubles upon the Lord. I don't mean his work, but his troubles, and go home and shut the door, and be happy with his wife and children. Now, I tell you that for months, is, yes. After Bob was born, I kept plaguing myself in the field, thinking that some harm might have happened to the child. Why? I used to make an excuse and creep home, and then, if I'd see a blind pole down, you wouldn't think how many hearts go thump, and I'd stand with my hired on the door-habs and say, if so be, the Lord have taken, I must go and comfort Susan. Not my will, but thine, Lord. But, Lord, don't be cruel this time. And then find the chilled, right-ass mnine-pence, and the blind only pull down to keep the sun off the carpet. After a while, my wife guessed what was wrong. I used to make up such poor twiddling pretenses. She said, Look here, the Lord and me will see after Bob, and if you can't keep to your own work without poking your nose into ours, then I married for worse, and not for better. Then it came upon me that by leaving the Lord to look after my job, I had been treating him like a farm labourer. It's the things he can't help, he looks after, not the work. A few evenings later, there came a knock at the door, and Lizzie, who went to open it, returned with the brighenite skipping behind her. Blessings being upon this ear-house, he cried, cutting a sort of double shuffle on the threshold. He shook hands with the farmer and his wife, and nodded towards Taffy. So you've got Parson Raymond's boy here. Yes, said Mrs. Joel, and turned to Taffy. He've come to pray a bit. Perhaps you would rather be in the parlour. Taffy asked to be allowed to stay, and presently Mr. Pascoe had them all down on their knees. He began by invoking God's protection on the household, but his prayers soon ceased to be a prayer. It broke into ejaculations of praise. Friends, I be too happy to ask for anything. Glory, glory, the blood, the precious blood, oh deliverance, oh streams of redemption running. The farmer and his wife began to chime in. Hallelujah, glory, and Lizzie Pezac to sob. Taffy, kneeling before the kitchen chair, peeped between his palms and saw her shoulders heaving. The brinyte sprang to his feet, overturning the settle with the crash. Didn't know use, I must skip, hold dance for me. He held out his hand to Mrs. Joel. She took them and skipped once shame-facedly. Lizzie, with flaming cheeks, pushed her aside. Leave me try, Mrs. I shall die if I don't. She caught the preacher's hands and the two leapt about the kitchen. I can dance higher than Mrs. Farmer Joel looked on with a dazed face. Hallelujah, I'm in. He said at intervals, quite mechanically. The pair stood under the bacon rack and began to whirl like dervishes. Hands clasped, toes together, bodies leaning back and almost rigid. They whirled until Taffy's brains whirled with them. With a louder sob, Lizzie let go, her hold and tottered back into a chair, laughing hysterically. The brinyte leaned against the table, panting. There was a long pause. Mrs. Joel took a napkin from the dresser and fell to fanning the girl's face, then to slapping it briskly. Get up and lay the table. She commanded. The preacher'll stay to supper. Thank ye, ma'am, I don't care if I do. Said he, and ten minutes later they were all seated at supper and discussing the fall in wheat in the most matter-of-fact voices. Only their faces twitched now and again. I hear you had the preacher down to Joel's last night. Said Mendeva, the smith. What stink of n? I can't make him out, was Taffy's colorless but truthful answer. He's a bellows of a man. I do hear he's heating up the old square-mile soul to knack an angel out of him. He'll find that a job and a half. You mark my words. There'll be a dover over in your parish one of these days. During work hours, Mendeva bestowed most of his talks on Taffy. The dain seldom opened his lips except to join in the anvil chorus. Here goes one. Sing, sing, Johnny. Here goes two. Sing, Johnny, sing. Whack until he's red. Whack until he's dead. And whoop, goes the window with a brand new ring. And when the boy took a hammer and joined in, he fell silent. Taffy soon observed that a singular friendship knit these two men who were both unmarried. Mendeva had been a famous wrestler in his day and his great ambition was now to train the other to win the county belt. Often after work, the pair would try a hitch together on the triangle of turf with Taffy for stickler, Mendeva illustrating and explaining the dain nodding seriously whenever he understood but never answering a word. Afterwards, the boy recalled these bouts very vividly, the clear evening sky, the shoulders of the two big men shining against the level sun as they crept and swayed their long shadows on the grass under which, as he remembered, the poor self-murdered woman lay buried. He thought of her at night, sometimes, as he worked alone at the forge, for Mendeva allowed him the keys and use of the smithy over time in consideration of a small payment for coal. And then he blew his fire and hammered with a couple of candles on the bench and a homer between them and beat the long hexameters into his memory. The incongruity of it never struck him. He was going to be a great man and somehow this was going to be the way. These scraps of iron, these tools of his forging, were to grow into the arms and shields of Achilles. In his own time would come the magic moment, the shield find its true circumference and swing to the balance of his arm, proof and complete. End of chapter number 15. Chapter number 16 of The Ship of Stars This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Shashank Jagmola. The Ship of Stars by Arthur Quillier Couch. Lizzie and Honoria. His apprentice ship lasted a year and six months, and all this while he lived with the Jaws, walking home every Sunday morning and returning every Sunday night, rain or shine. He carried his stiffness of hand into his new trade and it was Mandirva, who begged and obtained an extension of the time agreed on. Rather than lose the boy, I'll teach and for love. So Taffy stayed on for another six months. He was now in his 17th year, a boy no longer. One evening, as he blew up his smithy fire, the glow of it fell on the form of a woman standing just outside the window and watching him. He had no silly fears of ghosts, but the thought of the buried woman flashed across his mind and he dropped his spencer with a clatter. "'Tis only me,' said the woman. You needn't to be afraid.' And he saw it was the girl Lizzie. She stepped inside the forge and seated herself on the dain's anvil. I was walking back from prayer meeting. She said, "'Tis nigh at this way, but I don't ever dare to come. Might, I dare say, if I'd somebody to see me home.' Ghosts asked Taffy, picking up the pincers and thrusting the bar back into the hot cinders. "'I don't know. I get frightened though the very shadows on the road sometimes. I suppose, now, you never walks out that way.' "'Which way? Why, towards where your home is. That's the way I comes.' "'No, I don't.' Taffy blew at the cinders until they glowed again. "'It's only on Sundays I go over there.' "'That's a pity,' said Lizzie candidly. "'I'm kept in. Sunday evenings to look up to the children while Farmer and Missus goes to the chapel. That's the agreement I came upon.' Taffy nodded. "'It would be nice now, wouldn't it?' She broke off, clasping her knees and staring at the blaze. "'What would be nice?' Lizzie laughed confusedly. "'Oh, you make me sate. I can't bear any of the young men up to the chapel. If me and you,' Taffy ceased blowing. The fire died down, and in the darkness he could hear her breathing hard. "'They're so rough,' she went on, and the other night I met young Squire Vile riding along the road, and he stopped me and wanted to kiss me. "'George Vile?' Surely he didn't. Taffy blew up the fire again. "'Yes, he did. I don't see why not, neither.' "'Why, he shouldn't kiss you. Why, he shouldn't want to.' Taffy frowned, carried the white-hot bar to his anvil, and began to hammer. He despised girls, as a rule and their ways. Decidedly, Lizzie annoyed him, and yet, as he worked, he could not help glancing at her now and then, as she sat and watched him. By and by he saw that her eyes were full of tears. "'What's the matter?' He asked abruptly. "'I—I can't walk home alone. I'm a-feared.' He tossed his hammer aside, raked out the fire, and reached his coat off its peg. As he swung round in the darkness to put it on, he blundered against Lizzie, or Lizzie blundered against him. She clutched at him nervously. "'Clemsey, can't you see the doorway?' She passed out, and he followed and locked the door. As they crossed the turf to the high road, she slipped her arm into his. "'I feel safe that way. Let it stay, girl.' After a few paces, she added, "'You're different from the others. That's why I like you.' "'How? I don't know, but you'll be different. You don't think about girls, for one thing?' Taffy did not answer. He felt angry, ashamed, uncomfortable. He did not turn once to lick at her face, dimly visible by the light of the young moon, the hunter's moon, now sinking over the slope of the hill. Thick dust, too thick for the heavy dew to lay, covered the car track down to the farm, muffling their footsteps. Lizzie paused by the gate. "'Best go in separate,' she said, paused again and whispered. "'You may stay, if you like.' "'May do what?' "'What? What young Squire Weil wanted?' They were face to face now. She held up her lips, and as she did, so they parted in an amorous little laugh. The moonlight was on her face. Taffy bent swiftly and kissed her. "'Oh, you heard?' With another little laugh, she slipped up the garden path and into the house. Ten minutes later, Taffy followed, hating himself. For the next fortnight, he avoided her, and then, late one evening, she came again. He was prepared for this, and had locked the door of the smithy, and let down the shutter while he worked. She tapped upon the outside of the shutter by their knuckles. "'Let me in.' "'Can't you leave me alone?' He answered fetishly. "'I want to work, and you interrupt.' "'I don't want no love-making. I don't indeed. I'll sit quite as a mouse, but I'm a fear out here.' Nonsense. "'I'm a fear out the ghost. There's something coming. Let me in. Go!' Taffy unlocked the door, and held it half open while he listened. "'Yes, there's somebody coming on horseback. Now, look here. It's no ghost, and I can't have you about here with people passing. I—I don't want you here at all, so make haste and slip away home. That's a good girl.' Lizzie glided like a shadow into the dark lane as the trample of hooves drew close, and the rider pulled up beside the door. "'You're working late, I see. Is it too late to make a shoe for either the camp here?' It was a noria. She dismounted and stood at the doorway, holding her horse bridle. "'No,' said Taffy. That is, if you don't mind the waiting.' With his leather apron, he wiped the dance-anvil for a seat, while she hitched up either the camp and stepped into the glow of the forge-fire. The hounds took us three miles beyond Carvathill, and there, just as they lost, I, the camp, cast his off-hine shoe. I didn't find it out at first, and now I've had to walk him all the way back. "'Are you alone here?' "'Yes.' "'Who was that I saw leaving as I came up?' "'You saw someone?' "'Yes,' she nodded, looking him straight in the face. It looked like a woman. Who was she?' "'That was Lizzie Pezac, the girl who sold you her door, once. She's a servant down at the farm where I lodge. Honoria said no more for the moment, but seated herself on the dance-anvil, while Taffy chose a bar of iron and stepped out to examine I'd the camp's hoof. He returned and in silence began to blow up the fire. "'I daresay you were astonished to see me,' she remarked at length. "'Yes, I'm still forbidden to speak to you. The last time I did it, grandfather beat me.' "'The old brute!' Taffy nibbed the hot iron savagely in his pincers. I wonder if he'll do it again. Somehow I don't think he will.' Taffy looked at her. She had drawn herself up and was smiling. In her close-fitting habit, she seemed very slight, yet tall, and a woman groan. He took the bar to the anvil and began to beat it flat. His teeth were shut, and with every blow he said to himself, "'Brute!' "'That's beautiful,' Honoria went on. I stopped Menderva the other day, and he told me wonders about you. He says he tried you with a hard-boiled egg, and you swung the hammer and chipped the shell all round without bruising the white a bit. Is that true?' Taffy nodded. "'And you're learning the Latin and Greek. I mean, do you still go on with it?' He nodded again, towards the volume of utipides that lay open on the workbench. "'And the stories you used to tell George and me, do you go on telling them to yourself?' He was obliged to confess that he never did. She sat for a while, watching the sparks as they flew. Then she said, "'I should like to hear you tell one again, that one about Aslock and Orm, who ran away by night across the ice fields, and took a boat and came to an island with a house on it, and found a table spread and the fire lit, but no inhabitants anywhere. You remember?' It began, "'Once upon a time, not far from the city of Drontheim, there lived a rich man.' Taffy considered a moment and began. "'Once upon a time, not far from the city of Drontheim.' He paused. I'd the horseshoe cooling between the pincers, and shook his head. It was no use. Abolo had been too long in service with ad meters, and the tale would not come. "'At any rate,' Anoria persisted, "'you can tell me something out of your books, something you have just been reading.' So he began to tell her the story of iron, and managed well enough in describing the boy, and how he ministered before the shrine at Delphi, sweeping the temple and scaring the birds away from the precincts. But when he came to the plot of the play and, looking up, Contanoria's eyes, it suddenly occurred to him that all the rest of the story was essential one, and he could not tell it to her. He blushed, faltered, and finally broke down. "'But it was beautiful,' said she, so far as it went, and it's just what I wanted. I shall remember that boy iron now, whenever I think of you helping your father in the church at home. If the rest of the story is not nice, I don't want to hear it.' How had she guessed? It was delicious, at any rate, to know that she thought of him, and Taffy felt how delicious it was, while he fitted and hammered the shoe on Ida Kamp's hoof. She standing by with the candle in either hand, the flames scarcely quivering in the windless night. When all was done, she raised a foot for him to give her a mound. "'Good night,' she called, shaking the reins, half a minute later. Taffy stood by the door of the forge, listening to the echoes of Ida Kamp's scanta, and the palm of his hand tingled, where her foot had rested. End of chapter number 16