The Haven Under the Hill. a Novel. Volume One of Three
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
THE HAVEN UNDER THE HILL. BY MARY LINSKILL, AUTHOR OF 'BETWEES TRE HE~~~ERAXD THE ~ORTHERS'SEA,' ETC'. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I, LONDOF : RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, anblishere in Oilrbinnr_uin 8er $lnjcstg thc Quern. 1886. [All RiyAts Resrrved.] Exchange weary of Supreme ~ouncllA.&S#% Aug LQ1 ZQ4Q TI-I18 BOOK ff $jebisaft TO MY lZRTCSD, MRS. JOHN LUPTON, OF NOORL-YSDY. A SLIGIIT .ICliNOWLEDCJICST OF HER USPAILISG KINDNESS, SSD OF IiER \VISE AND UNDERSTASDING PT.\IPATHT, XADE VIFIBLE TlIROUGII JIASY TEARS. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. -- - CHAPTER PACE 1. 'WHERE THE KEEN SEB-CURREST GRINDS AND FRETS ' - - 1 11. MAINLY TRADITIONAL - - 23' 111. THE STORY OF C~EIJRION - - 36 IV. THE HOUSE BY WIGCOSER'S WHARF - - 45 V. WILD WORK - - - 57 VI. AN ANCIENT RURINER - 69 VII. A PRICELESS GIFT, AND UNFORGOT - - 87 VIII. 'HATH NOT A JEW EYES '2' - - 104 IX. THE WAY OF LIFE AT HILD'S HAVEN- - 116 X. MICHAEL SALVAIN - - 130 XI. 'THE PAST IIE CALNLY HATH REVIEWED' - 145 XII. FAIR LAUGHS THE nIoRx - - 164 XIII. BUSY DREARIS AND FASCIES WILD '- - 172 XIV. 'HATH HE RIEDDLED WITH dLL4X, OUR HOLY FATHER'S RLIRCHAXDISE ?' - - 153 .. VIII CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE XV. JOBNNA - 200 XVI. 'AH! WHAT A SWEET RECESS, THOUGHT I, IS HERE ' - - 235 XVII. DAFFODILS - - 244 XVIII. TWO VOICES - - 263 XIX. 'IS ONE DAY MORE SO LOKG TO WAIT!' - 274 XX. 'SO FAREWELL, THOU WHOM I HAVE KNOWN TOO LATE ' - - 287 THE RAVEN UNDER THE HILL, CHAPTER I. 'WHERE THE KEEN SEA-CURRENT GRINDS AND FRETS.' 'As a child She still was simple-rather shall I say More simple than a child, as being lost In deeper admirations and desires.' SIRHESRYTAYLOR: The Eve of the Conquest. HE finest and highest peace is that which is wrought out of strife and pain ; the most thrilling harmony, life's Vesp.er Hymn, heard when the burden and heat of the da,y is over ; but the peace and har- mony of the early morning is sweet and pleasant to the memory. The Haven Under the Hill was not less bright VOL. I. 1 2 THE HA VEN UNDER THE HILL. and picturesque, not less quaintly beautiful when Dorigen Gower was a child than it is now. In those days the old sea-town was, so to speak, an undiscovered place, alike unknown of artists, tourists, speculators, or Railway Kings. Yet the charm of the old haven was not the less strong and striking because no one painted it, or sang of it, or wrote of it. Nay, is there not now to those who knew it and loved it then a sense of discord, of loss and intrusion, of broken unity, of sweet silence interrupted by jarring sound? Is there not pain in the increasing pressure of modern rush and hurry, upon the place tha,t was anciently so restful and so still ? Is there nothing to lament in the incursion of modern use and fashion upon ways of life that were distinctive, peculiar, wel1-nigh unique ? TVe will go back awhile, back to the Hild's Haven where lived four thousand men who went down to the sea in ships--men noted for their skiifulness and bravery even where others weye skilful and brave. And they mere home'- built ships that they sailed in ; vooden ships of such beauty, strength, and stateliliess that they Lad lollg and justly been the pride and glory of the place. Captain Cook knew of them. He had sailed on his first voyage fronz the rock-girt hnrbour at the mouth of the Esk, and none but ' WHERE TNE KEEN SEA-CURRENT GRINDS.' 3 Hild's Haven ships ~vouldcontent him when his mind was set on sailing round the world. The Scoresbys, father and son, they too tested the oak-built ships of the place when they sailed on their adventurous voyages to the whaling grounds of the Greenland seas. And even when these had become matters of historic note the town was still distinctively a seaport, the seventh in the kingdom it was said. Everynrhere there was the presence of the sea. On the calmest. da.y you heard the low ceaseless roll of its music as it plashed and swept about the foot of the stern, darkly towering cliffs on either side of the harbour-bar. Everywhere the place was blown through and through with the salt breeze that mas 'half an air and half a water,' scented with sea-wrack, and laden not ra~elywith drifting flakes of heavy yeast-like foam. The rapid growth of the town had been owing entirely to its nearness to the sea. When the making of alum was begun at various points and bays along the coast, vessels were needed for car- rying it to London, ' whither,' as an old chron- icler tells us, ' nobody belonging to Hild's Haven had ever gone without making their wills.' This was the beginning of the shipbuilding trade, which grew and flourished so vigorously, lending 1-2 4 THE HA YEN UNDER THE HILL. such an interest to the sights and sounds of the place, and finally becoming its very life. What would the old haven have been without the clatter of its carpenters' hammers, the whirr of its ropery wheels, the smell of its boiling tar-kettles, the busy stir and hum of its docks and wharves and mast-yards? And where, in the midst of so much labour, could there have been found any time to laugh or to dance, but for the frequent day of pride and rejoicing when the finished ship with her flying flags came slipping slowly from the stocks to the waiting waters, bending and gliding with a grace that gave you as much emotion as if you had watched some conscious thing? . It is a little sad to know that one has watched the launching of the last wooden ship that shall go out with stately masts and rounding sails from the Ha,ven Under the Hill. Those of the men of the place who were not actually sailors were yet, for the most part, in some way dependent upon the great changeful: bounteous sea. All about the sands, on ledges of rock and slopes of shale, were perched the dwellings of the fisher-folk, surrounded by boats and nets, by oars, sails, a-nd lines, and all the other picturesque belongings of their ancient craft. When Leland VfflERE THE KEEN SEA-CURRENT GRINDS! 5 visited the place it seemed to him only ' an have- net holp with a peere, and a great fischar toune,' probably little more than an outgrowth of the more important world which had clustered round the Abbey of St. Hild on the eastern heights above the haven. In days yet farther away the monks themselves were employed on the perilous waters; and when the royal Blfleda sailed on her voyage to the Holy Isle to visit St. Cuth- bert, the first voyage from Hild's Haven on record, doubtless the vessel in which she embarked was none other than one of the Abbey fishing- boats, commanded, if not altogether manned, by her brethren in the faith; for the Monastery of Hild, like many other monasteries of the order of Iona, was a double one, including both monks and nuns, the difference in this instance being that during the life of Hild and that of her suc- cessor, Blfleda, the rule and sway was entirely in the hancls of the abbess. It was a beautiful place to have been born in, beautiful with history, and poetry, and legend- with all manner of memorable and soul-stirring things. A young and ignorant child might know but little about them, and be able to realize less; yet a child dowered with the temperament which had been bestowed as sole dower upon the girl whose history is to be [given here could not by 6 THE HA VEN UNDER THE HILL. any means have escaped the influence of such greatly impresslye surroundings. Her father, John Gower, was a jet-worker, neither more nor less than this ; a master jet- worker, who had not been too eminently success- ful, as the world counts success. Rut, let it he plainly said, by descent he was a man who in days gone by would have been accorded the grand old name of gentleman. He knew it, and the local antiquaries knew it, yet the fact was of less importance to him than it should have been. He had quietly ignored it until it was as a thing for- gotten. What had it mattered to him in his struggling youth and sorely-tried manhood that once upon a time the Hild7s Haven Gowers had intermarried with the De Percys ? What had he been benefited by the known high worth and honourable social standing of those long-dead ancestors of his ? He had asked these questions of no one save himself; had he asked then1 of anyone else-of any man of wider knowledg~, keener insight into non-apparent truths, he might have been answered that he had benefited much. Nobility obliges, somewhat less imperatively for being unacknowledged, it is true, still the obliga- tion presses. Courage is in the veins, and strong silent fortitude, and determination to the death. So far this man had not fought the battle of life ' WHERE THE KEEN SEA-CURRENT GXITNDS.' 7 overwisely, but he had fought well; that is to say, with an unfailing desperateness that admitted no thought of yielding. It might be that he was only obeying the instincts within him, but such instincts are worth something, and are generally to be accounted for.