Walter Besant
Armorel of Lyonesse: A Romance of To-day
What was in it? The clasp acted no longer. Armorel lifted the overlapping leather and looked within. There was a thick roll of silk. She took this out. Wrapped up in the silk, laid in folds, side by side, were a quantity of stones – common-looking stones, such as one may pick up, she thought, on the beach of Porth Bay. There were a couple of hundred or more, mostly small stones, only one or two of them bigger than the top of Armorel's little finger.
'Only stones!' she cried. 'All this trouble about a bag full of red stones!'
Among the stones lay a small folded paper. Armorel opened it. The paper was discoloured by age or by water, and most of the writing was effaced. But she could read some of it.
'… from the King of Burmah himself. This ruby I estimate to be worth … 000l. at the very least. The other … Mines. The second largest stone weighs … about 2,000l. The smaller … rt Fletcher.'
It was a note on the contents of the parcel, written by the owner.
The stones, therefore, were rubies, uncut rubies. Armorel knew little about precious stones and jewels, but she had heard and read of them. The price of a virtuous woman, she knew, was far above rubies. And Solomon's fairest among women was made comely with rows of jewels. Queen Sheba, moreover, brought precious stones among her presents to the Wise King. The girl wondered why such common-looking objects as these should be precious. But she was humbly ignorant, and put that wonder by.
This, then, was nothing less than Robert Fletcher's fortune. He had this round his neck, and he was bringing it home to enjoy. And it was taken from him by her ancestor. A wicked thing indeed! A foul and wicked thing! And the poor man had been sent empty away to begin his life all over again. She shivered as she looked at them. All for the sake of these dull, red bits of stone! How can man so easily fall into temptation? In the empty room, so quiet, so ghostly, she heard again the whispers, 'Armorel, find him – find the man – and give him back his jewels.'
She replied aloud, not daring to look round her lest she should see the pale and eager faces of those who had suffered death by drowning in consequence of this sin, 'Yes – yes, I will find him! I will find him!'
She pushed the chagreen case back into its corner and covered it up. 'I will find him,' she repeated. Then she rose to her feet and looked about the room. Heavens! What a sight! The bags of gold, two of them open, their contents lying piled upon the table – the chains of gold on the floor – the handful of old gold coins lying on the table beside the Black Jack, the snuff-boxes, the miniatures, the punch-bowls, the rings, the silver cups – the low room, dark and quiet, filled with ghosts and voices, the recent occupant wagging her shoulders and shaking the back of her bonnet at her from the opposite wall, and, through the open window, the sight of the sunlight on the apple-blossoms mocking the gold and silver in this gloomy cave. She comprehended, as yet, little of the extent of her good fortune. Lace and silk, rings and miniatures, snuff-boxes: all these things had no value to her – of buying and selling she had no kind of experience. All she understood was that she was the possessor of a vast quantity of things for which she could find no possible use – one jewelled dagger, for instance, might be used for a dinner-knife, or for a paper-knife; but what could she do with a dozen? In addition to this museum of pretty and useless things she had forty bags with five hundred guineas, or pounds, in each – twenty-one thousand pounds, say, in cash. This museum was perfectly unique: no family in Great Britain had such a collection. It had been growing for more than three hundred years: it was begun in the time of the Tudor Kings, at least, perhaps even earlier. Wrecks there were, and Roseveans, on Samson, before the seventh Henry. I doubt if any other family, even the oldest and the noblest, has been collecting so long. Certainly no other family, even in this archipelago of wrecks, can have had such opportunities of collecting with such difficulties in dissipating. For more than three hundred years! And Armorel was sole heiress!
She understood that she had inherited something more than twenty thousand pounds – how much more, she knew not. Now, unless one knows something of the capacities of one single pound, one cannot arrive at the possibilities of twenty thousand pounds. Armorel knew as much as this. Tea at Hugh Town costs two shillings a pound – perhaps two-and-four – sugar threepence a pound: nun's cloth so much a yard – serge and flannel so much: coals, so much a ton: wood for fuel, so much. This was nearly the extent of her knowledge: and it must be confessed that it goes very little way towards a right comprehension of twenty thousand pounds.
Once, again, she had heard Justinian talking of the flower-farm. 'It has made,' he said, 'four hundred pounds this year, clear.' To which Dorcas replied, 'And the housekeeping doesn't come to half that, nor near it.' Whence, by the new light of this Great Surprise, she concluded, first, that the other two hundred, thus made, must have been added to those money-bags, and, next, that two hundred pounds a year would be a liberal allowance for her whole yearly expenditure. Then she made a little calculation. Two hundred pounds a year – two hundred into twenty thousand – twenty thousand – two and four noughts – she put five bags in a row for the number – subtract two – she did so – there remained three – divide by two – she did so – one hundred years was the result of that sum. Her twenty thousand pounds would therefore last her exactly one hundred years. At the expiration of the century all would be gone. For the first time in her life Armorel comprehended the fleeting nature of riches. And, naturally, the discovery, though she shivered at the thought of losing all, made her feel a little proud. A strange result of wealth, to advance the inheritor one more step in the knowledge of possible misery! She was like unto the curious youth who opens a book of medicine, only to learn of new diseases and terrible sufferings and alarming symptoms, and to imagine these in his own body of corruption. In a hundred years there would be no more. She would then be reduced to sell the lace and the other things for what they would then be worth. There would still, however, remain the flower-farm. She would, after all, be no worse off than before the Great Surprise. And then there sprang up in her heart the blossom of another thought, to be developed, later on, into a lovely flower.
She had risen from her knees now, and was standing beside the table, vaguely gazing upon her inheritance. It was all before her. So the Ancient Lady had stood many and many a time counting the money: looking to see if all was safe: content to count it and to know that it was there. The old lady was gone, but from the opposite wall her shoulders and the back of her bonnet were looking on.
Well: Armorel might go on doing exactly the same. She might live as her forefathers had lived: there was the flower-farm to provide all their necessities: if it brought in four hundred pounds a year, she could add two hundred to the heap – in every two years and a half another bag of five hundred sovereigns. All her people had done this – why not she? It seemed expected of her; a plain duty laid upon her shoulders. If she were to live on for eighty years longer – which would bring her to her great-great-grandmother's age – she would save eighty times two hundred – sixteen thousand pounds. The inheritance would then be worth thirty-six thousand pounds – a prodigious sum of money indeed. And, besides, the Black Jack, with its foreign gold, and the rings and lace and things!
A strange room it was this morning. What voice was it that whispered solemnly in her ear, 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal'?
Never before had this injunction possessed any other significance to her than belongs to one manifestly addressed to other people. The Bible is full of warnings addressed to other people. Armorel was like the Royal Duke who used to murmur during the weekly utterance of the Commandments, 'Never did that. Never did that.' Now, this precept was clearly and from the very first intended to meet her own case. Oh! To live for nothing than to add more bags to that tray in the great sea-chest!
Roland had prophesied that there would be a change. It had come already in part, and more was coming.
What next? As yet the girl did not understand that she was mistress of her own fate. Hitherto things had been done for her. She was now about to act for herself. But how? If Roland were only here! But he had only written once, and he had never kept his promise to write back again to Samson. If he were here he could advise.
She looked around, and saw the heaps of things that were all hers, and she laughed. The girl whom Roland thought to be only an ignorant and poor little country girl, a flower-farmer's girl of Samson Island, living alone with her old grandmother and the serving-folk, was ignorant still, no doubt. But she was not poor: she was rich – she could have all that can be bought with money – she was rich. What would Roland say and think? And she laughed aloud.
She was rich – the last girl in the world to hope, or expect, or desire riches. Thus Fate mocks us, giving to one, who wants it not, wealth: and to another, who knows not how to use it, youth: and to a third, insensible of its power, beauty. The young lady of society, she whom the good old hymns used to call the Worldling – fond and pretty title! there are no Worldlings now – would have had no difficulty in knowing how to use this wonderful windfall. She, indeed, is always longing, perhaps praying, for money: she is always thinking how delightful it would be to be rich, and how there is nothing in the whole world more desirable than much fine gold. But to Lady Worldling, poor thing! such a windfall never happens. Again, there are all the distressed gentlewomen, the unappreciated artists, the authors whose books won't sell, the lawyers who have no clients, the wives whose name is Quiverful, the tradesman who 'scapes the Bankruptcy Court year after year by the skin of his teeth, and the poor dear young man who pines away because he cannot join the rabble rout of Comus – why, why does not such a windfall ever come to any of these? It never does: yet they spend all their spare time – all the time when they ought to be planning and devising ways and means of advancement – in dreaming of the golden days they would enjoy, if only such a windfall fell to them. One such man I knew: he dreamed of wealth all his life: he tried to become rich by taking every year a share in a foreign lottery. Of course, he never won a prize. While he was yet young and even far down the shady or outer slope of middle age he continually built castles in the air, fashioning pleasant ways for himself when he should get that prize. When he grew old, he dreamed of the will he would make and of the envy with which other old men, when he was gone, should regard the memory of one who had cut up so well. So he died poor; but I think he had always, through his dreaming, been as happy as if he had been rich.
Armorel told herself, standing in the midst of this great treasure, that she was rich. Roland had once told her, she remembered, that an artist ought to have money in order to be free: only in freedom, he said, could a man make the best of himself. What was good for an artist might be good for her. At the same time – it is not for nothing that a girl reads and ponders over the Gospels – there were terrible words of warning – there were instances. She shuddered, overwhelmed with the prospects of new dangers.
She knew everything: the room had yielded all its secrets there were no more cupboards, boxes, or drawers. The sight of the treasures already began to pall upon her. She applied herself to putting everything back. First the chagreen case. This she laid carefully in its corner among the daggers and pistols, remembering that she had promised to find the owner. How should she do that if she remained on Samson? Then she put back the snuff-boxes, the miniatures, and the watches in their silk handkerchiefs: then the box of rings and the silver spoons and dishes. Then she put the tray in its place and laid the bags in the tray, and locked the old sea-chest. This done, she bore back to the shelves in the cupboard the punch-bowls, candlesticks, tankards, and the big silver ship: she locked and double-locked the cupboard-door: she crammed the lace into the drawers, and put back the box of trinkets.
Then she dropped the keys in her pocket. Oh! what a lump to carry about all day long! But the weight of the keys in her pocket was nothing to the weight that was laid upon her shoulders by her great possessions. This, however, she hardly felt at first.
Everything was her own.
When the new King comes to the throne he makes a great clearance of all the personal belongings of the old King. He gives away his cloaks and his uniforms, and all the things belonging to the daily life of his predecessor. That is always done. Therefore, Queen Armorel – Vivat Regina! – at this point gathered together all her predecessor's belongings. She turned them out of the drawers and laid them on the floor – with the great bonnet and the wonderful cap of ribbons. And then she opened the door. She would give these things to Dorcas. Her great-great-grandmother should have no more authority there. Even her clothes must go. If her ghost should remain, it should be without the bonnet and the cap.
She called Dorcas, who came, curious to know how her young mistress took the Great Surprise. Armorel had taken it, apparently, as a matter of course. So the new King stands upon the highest step of the Throne, calm and collected, as if he had been prepared for this event, and was expecting it day after day.
'You know all now, dearie?' she whispered, shutting the door carefully. 'Did you find everything?'
'Yes – I believe I found everything.'
'The silver in the cupboard: the lace: the bags of gold?'
'I think I have found everything, Dorcas.'
'Then you are rich, my dear. No Rosevean before you was ever half so rich. For none of it has been spent. They've all gone on saving and adding – almost to the last she saved and added. Oh! the last thing she lost was the love of saving, and the jealousy of her keys she never lost. Oh! you are very rich – you are the richest girl in the whole of Scilly – not even in St. Mary's is there anyone who can compare with you. Even the Lord Proprietor himself – I hardly know.'
'Yes. I believe I must be very rich,' said Armorel. 'Dorcas, you kept her secret. Keep mine as well. Let no one know.'
'No one shall know, dearie – no one. But lock the door. Keep the door locked always.'
'I will. Now, Dorcas, here are all her dresses and things. You must take them all away and keep them. They are for you.'
'Very well, dearie. Though how I'm to wear black silk – Oh! Child,' she cried, out of the religious terrors of her soul – 'it is written that it is harder for a rich man to enter into heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. My dear, if these great riches are to drag your soul down into hell, it would be better if they were all thrown into the sea, the silver punch-bowls and the bags of gold and all. But there's one comfort. It doesn't say, impossible. It only says, harder. So that now and then, perhaps, a rich man may wriggle in – just one – and oh! I wish, seeing the number of rich people there are in the world, that there'd been shown one camel – only a single camel – going through the needle's eye. Think what a miracle! 'Twould have brought conviction to all who saw it, and consolation ever afterwards to all who considered it – oh! the many thousands of afflicted souls who are born rich! You are not the only one, child, who is rich through no fault of her own. Often have I told Justinian, thinking of her, and he not knowing or suspecting, but believing I was talking silly, that, considering the warnings and woes pronounced against the rich, we cannot be too thankful. But don't despair, my dear – it is nowhere said to be impossible. And there's the rich young man, to be sure, who was told to sell all that he had and to give to the poor. He went away sorrowful. You can't do that, Armorel, because there are no poor on Samson. And it's said, "Woe unto you that are rich, for you have had your consolation!" Well, but if your money never is your consolation – and I'm sure I don't know what it is going to console you for – that doesn't apply to you, does it? There's the story of the Rich Man, again; and there's texts upon texts, when you come to think of them. You will remember them, child, and they will be your warnings. Besides, you are not going to waste and riot like a Prodigal Son, and where your earthly treasure is there you will not set your heart. You will go on like all the Roseveans before you: and though the treasure is kept locked up, you will add to it every year out of your savings, just as they did.'
'There is another parable, Dorcas. I think I ought to remember that as well. It is that of the Talents. If the man who was rich with Five Talents had locked them up, he would not have been called a good and faithful servant.'
'Yes, dearie, yes. You will find some Scripture to comfort and assure your soul, no doubt. There's a good deal in Scripture. Something for all sorts, as they say. Though, after all, riches is a dangerous thing. Child! if they knew it over at St. Mary's, not a young man in the place but would be sailing over to Samson to try his luck. Our secret, child, all to ourselves.'
'Yes; our secret, Dorcas. And now take away all these things, everything that belonged to her: there are her shoes – take them too. I want the room to be all my own. So.'
When all the things were gone, Armorel closed and locked the door. Then she ran out of the house gasping, for she choked. Everything was turned into gold. She gasped and choked and ran out over the hill and down the steps and across the narrow plain, and up the northern hill, hoping to drive some of the ghosts from her brain, and to shake off some of the bewildering caused by the Great Surprise. But a good deal remained, and especially the religious terrors suggested by that pious Bryanite Christian and Divider of the Word, Dorcas Tryeth.
When she sat down in the old place upon the carn, the great gulf between herself and Bryher island reminded her of that great gulf in the parable. How if she should be the Rich Man sitting for ever and for ever on the red-hot rock, tormented with pain and thirst – and how if on Samson Hill beyond she should see Abraham himself, the patriarch, with Lazarus lying at his feet – as yet she had developed no Lazarus – but who knows the future? The Rich Man must have been a thoughtless and selfish person. Until now the parable never interested her at all: why should it? She had no money.
The other passages, those which Dorcas had kindly quoted in this her first hour of wealth, came crowding into her mind, and told her they were come to stay. All these texts she had previously classed with the denunciations of sins the very meaning of which she knew not. She had no concern with such wickedness. Nor could she possibly understand how it was that people, when they actually knew that they must not do such things, still went on doing them. Now, however, having become rich herself, all the warnings of the New Testament seemed directed against herself. Already, the load of wealth was beginning to weigh upon her young shoulders.
She changed the current of her thoughts. Even the richest girl cannot be always thinking about woes and warnings. Else she would do nothing, good or bad. She began to think about the outer world. She had been thinking of it constantly ever since Roland left her. Now, as she looked across the broad Roadstead, and remembered that thirty miles beyond Telegraph Hill rose the cliffs where the outer world begins – they can be seen in a clear day – a longing, passionate and irresistible, seized her. She could go away now, whenever she pleased. She could visit the outer world and make the acquaintance of the people who live in it.
She laughed, thinking how Justinian, who had never been beyond St. Mary's, pictured, as he was fond of doing, the outer world. The Sea of Tiberias was to him the Road: the Jordan was like Grinsey Sound: the steep place down which the swine fell into the sea was like Shipman's Head: the Sermon on the Mount took place on just such a spot as the carn of the North Hill on Samson, with the sun shining on the Western Islands: the New Jerusalem in his mind was a city like Hugh Town, consisting of one long street with stone houses, roofed with slate; each house two storeys high, a door in the middle, and one window on each side. On the north side of the New Jerusalem was the harbour, with the ships, the sea-shore, and the open sea beyond: on the south side was a bay with beaches of white sand and black rocks at the entrance, exactly like Porth Cressa. And it was a quiet town, with seldom any noise of wheels, and always the sound of the sea lapping on either hand, north or south.
Now, there was nothing to keep her: she could go to visit the outer world whenever she pleased – if only she knew how. A girl of sixteen can hardly go forth into the wide, wide world all alone, announcing to the four corners her desire to make the acquaintance of everybody and to understand anything.
And then she began to remember her teacher's last instructions. The perfect girl was one who had trained her eye and her hand: she could play one instrument well: she understood music: she understood art: she was always gracious, sympathetic, and encouraging: she knew how to get their best out of men: she was always beautifully dressed: she had the sweetest and the most beautiful manners.
And here she blushed crimson, and then turned pale, and felt a pang as if a knife had pierced her very heart. For a dreadful thought struck her. She thought she understood at last the true reason why Roland never came back, though he promised, and looked so serious when he promised.
Why? why? Because she was so ill-mannered. Of course that was the reason. Why did Roland speak so strongly about the perfect girl's gracious and sympathetic manners, unless to make her understand, in this kindly and thoughtful way, how much was wanting in herself? Of course, he only looked upon her as a common country girl, who knew nothing, and would never learn anything. He wanted her to understand that – to feel that she would never rise to higher levels. He drew this picture of the perfect girl to make and keep her humble. Nay, but now she had this money – all this wealth – now – now – She sprang to her feet and threw out her arms, the gesture that she had learned I know not where. 'Oh!' she cried, 'it is the gift of the Five Talents! I am not the rich young man. I have not received these riches for my consolation. They are my Five Talents. I will go away and learn – I will learn. I will become the perfect girl. I will train eye and hand. I will grow – grow – grow – to my full height. That will be true work in the service of the Giver of those Talents. I shall become a good and faithful servant when I have risen to the stature that is possible for me!'
