Short Fiction

you were took from us?”

“He mustn’t go near the hole if he does,” said Mally, speaking at last in a solemn voice, and imparting the knowledge which she had kept to herself while Barty was her enemy; “ ’specially not if the wind’s anyway from the nor’rard.”

“She’d better go down now,” said the father.

Barty kissed the hand which he held, and Mally, looking at him as he did so, thought that he was like an angel.

“You’ll come and see us tomorrow, Mally?” said he.

To this she made no answer, but followed Mrs. Gunliffe out of the room. When they were down in the kitchen the mother had tea for her, and thick milk, and a hot cake⁠—all the delicacies which the farm could afford. I don’t know that Mally cared much for the eating and drinking that night, but she began to think that the Gunliffes were good people⁠—very good people. It was better thus, at any rate, than being accused of murder and carried off to Camelford prison.

“I’ll never forget it on her⁠—never,” the father had said.

Those words stuck to her from that moment, and seemed to sound in her ears all the night. How glad she was that Barty had come down to the cove⁠—oh, yes, how glad! There was no question of his dying now, and as for the blow on his forehead, what harm was that to a lad like him?

“But father shall go with you,” said Mrs. Gunliffe, when Mally prepared to start for the cove by herself. Mally, however, would not hear of this. She could find her way to the cove whether it was light or dark.

“Mally, thou art my child now, and I shall think of thee so,” said the mother, as the girl went off by herself.

Mally thought of this, too, as she walked home. How could she become Mrs. Gunliffe’s child; ah, how?

I need not, I think, tell the tale any further. That Mally did become Mrs. Gunliffe’s child, and how she became so the reader will understand; and in process of time the big kitchen and all the wonders of the farmhouse were her own. The people said that Barty Gunliffe had married a mermaid out of the sea; but when it was said in Mally’s hearing I doubt whether she liked it; and when Barty himself would call her a mermaid she would frown at him, and throw about her black hair, and pretend to cuff him with her little hand.

Old Glos was brought up to the top of the cliff, and lived his few remaining days under the roof of Mr. Gunliffe’s house; and as for the cove and the right of seaweed, from that time forth all that has been supposed to attach itself to Gunliffe’s farm, and I do not know that any of the neighbours are prepared to dispute the right.

The Gentle Euphemia

Or, “Love Shall Still Be Lord of All”

“Lo, I must tell a tale of chivalry,
For large white plumes are dancing in mine eye.”

Keats

I

“Knowledge, so my daughter held,
Was all in all.”

Tennyson

The gentle Euphemia lived in a castle, and her father was the Count Grandnostrel. The wise Alasco, who had dwelt for fifty years in the mullioned chamber of the North Tower, was her tutor, and he taught her poetry arithmetic and philosophy, to love virtue, and the use of the globes.

And there came the lord of Mountfidget to her father’s halls to drink the blood-red wine, and make exchange of the beeves and swine of Mountfidget against the olives and dried fruits which grow upon the slopes of Grandnostrel. For the pastures of Mountfidget are very rich, and its beeves and swine are fat.

“And peradventure I shall see the fair Euphemia,” said the young lord to Lieutenant Hossbach, of the Marines, who sojourned oft at Grange of Mountfidget, and delighted more in the racket-court, the billiard-table, and the game of cards, than in guiding the manoeuvres of his trusty men-at-arms. “Peradventure,” said the young lord, “I shall see the fair Euphemia⁠—for the poets of Grandnostrel sing of her peerless beauty, and declare her to be the pearl of pearls.”

“Nay, my lord,” said the lieutenant, “but an you behold the girl once in that spirit, thou art but a lost man, a kestrel with a broken wing, a spavined steed, a noseless hound, a fish out of water; for credit me, the fair Euphemia wants but a husband;⁠—and therefore do the poets sing so loudly.” For Lieutenant Hossbach knew that were there a lady at the Grange the spigot would not turn so freely.

“By my halidome,” said the young lord, “I will know whether the poets sing sooth or not.”

So the lord of Mountfidget departed for the Castle of Grandnostrel, and his beeves and his swine were driven before him.

Alasco the Wise sat in the mullioned chamber, with the globes before him and Aristotle’s volume under his arm, and the gentle Euphemia sat lowly on a stool at his feet. And she asked him as to the lore of the ancient schools. “Teach me,” she said, “as Plato taught, and the learned Esculapius and Aristides the Just; for I would fain walk in the paths of knowledge, and be guided by the rules of virtue.” But he answered her not at all, nor did he open the books of wisdom. “Nay, my father,” she said; “but the winged hours pass by, and my soul is athirst!”

Then he answered her and said; “My daughter, there cometh hither this day the young lord of Mountfidget, whose beeves and swine are as the stars of heaven in number, and whose ready money in many banks brings in rich harvest of interest. He cometh hither to drink the blood-red wine with your father, and to exchange his beeves and swine for the olives and the dried fruits which grow upon the slopes of Grandnostrel; and peradventure he will ask to see thy father’s daughter. Then wilt