monday morning. black monday we were half inclined to call it, knowing that by the week's end our travels must be over and done, and that if we wished still to see all we had planned, we must inevitably next morning return to civilisation and railways, a determination which involved taking this night "a long, a last farewell" of our comfortable carriage and our faithful charles.
"but it needn't be until night," said he, evidently loth to part from his ladies. "if i get back to falmouth by daylight to-morrow morning, master will be quite satisfied. i can take you wherever you like to-day."
"and the horse?"
"oh, he shall get a good feed and a rest till the middle of the night, then he'll do well enough. we shall have the old moon after one o'clock to get home by. between penzance and falmouth it's a good road, though rather lonely."
i should think it was, in the "wee hours" by the dim light of a waning moon. but charles seemed to care nothing about it, so we said no more, but decided to take the drive—our last drive.
our minds were perplexed between botallack mine, the gurnard's head, lamorna cove, and several other places, which we were told we must on no account miss seeing, the first especially. some of us, blessed with scientific relatives, almost dreaded returning home without having seen a single cornish mine; others, lovers of scenery, longed for more of that magnificent coast. but finally, a meek little voice carried the day.
"i was so disappointed—more than i liked to say—when it rained, and i couldn't get my shells for our bazaar. how shall i ever get them now? if it wouldn't trouble anybody very much, mightn't we go again to whitesand bay?"
a plan not wholly without charm. it was a heavenly day; to spend it in delicious idleness on that wide sweep of sunshiny sand would be a rest for the next day's fatigue. besides, consolatory thought! there would be no temptation to put on miners' clothes, and go dangling in a basket down to the heart of the earth, as the princess of wales was reported to have done. the pursuit of knowledge may be delightful, but some of us owned to a secret preference for terra firma and the upper air. we resolved to face opprobrium, and declare boldly we had "no time" (needless to add no inclination) to go and see botallack mine. the gurnard's head cost us a pang to miss; but then we should catch a second view of the land's end. yes, we would go to whitesand bay.
it was a far shorter journey in sunshine than in rain, even though we made various divergencies for blackberries and other pleasures. never had the sky looked bluer or the sea brighter, and much we wished that we could have wandered on in dreamy peace, day after day, or even gone through england, gipsy-fashion, in a house upon wheels, which always seemed to me the very ideal of travelling.
we reached sennen only too soon. pretty little sennen, with its ancient church and its new school house, where the civil schoolmaster gave me some ink to write a post-card for those to whom even the post-mark "sennen" would have a touching interest, and where the boys and girls, released for dinner, were running about. board school pupils, no doubt, weighted with an amount of learning which would have been appalling to their grandfathers and grandmothers, the simple parishioners of the "fine young fellow" half a century ago. as we passed through the village with its pretty cottages and "lodgings to let," we could not help thinking what a delightful holiday resort this would be for a large small family, who could be turned out as we were when the carriage could no farther go, on the wide sweep of green common, gradually melting into silvery sand, so fine and soft that it was almost a pleasure to tumble down the slopes, and get up again, shaking yourself like a dog, without any sense of dirt or discomfort. what a paradise for children, who might burrow like rabbits and wriggle about like sand-eels, and never come to any harm!
without thought of any danger, we began selecting our bathing-place, shallow enough, with long strips of wet shimmering sand to be crossed before reaching even the tiniest waves; when one of us, the cautious one, appealed to an old woman, the only human being in sight.
"bathe?" she said. "folks ne'er bathe here. 'tain't safe."
"why not? quicksands?"
she nodded her head. whether she understood us or not, or whether we quite understood her, i am not sure, and should be sorry to libel such a splendid bathing ground—apparently. but maternal wisdom interposed, and the girls yielded. when, half an hour afterwards, we saw a solitary figure moving on a distant ledge of rock, and a black dot, doubtless a human head, swimming or bobbing about in the sea beneath—maternal wisdom was reproached as arrant cowardice. but the sand was delicious, the sea-wind so fresh, and the sea so bright, that disappointment could not last. we made an encampment of our various impedimenta, stretched ourselves out, and began the search for shells, in which every arm's-length involved a mine of wealth and beauty.
never except at one place, on the estuary of the mersey, have i seen a beach made up of shells so lovely in colour and shape; very minute; some being no bigger than a grain of rice or a pin's head. the collecting of them was a fascination. we forgot all the historical interests that ought to have moved us, saw neither athelstan, king stephen, king john, nor perkin warbeck, each of whom is said to have landed here—what were they to a tiny shell, like that moralised over by tennyson in "maud"—"small, but a work divine"? i think infinite greatness sometimes touches one less than infinite littleness—the exceeding tenderness of nature, or the spirit which is behind nature, who can fashion with equal perfectness a starry hemisphere and a glow-worm; an ocean and a little pink shell. the only imperfection in creation seems—oh, strange mystery!—to be man. why?
but away with moralising, or dreaming, though this was just a day for dreaming, clear, bright, warm, with not a sound except the murmur of the low waves, running in an enormous length—curling over and breaking on the soft sands. everything was so heavenly calm, it seemed impossible to believe in that terrible scene when the captain and his wife were seen clinging to the brisons rock, just ahead.
doubtless our friend of the agamemnon was telling this and all his other stories to an admiring circle of tourists, for we saw the land's end covered with a moving swarm like black flies. how thankful we felt that we had "done" it on a sunday! still, we were pleased to have another gaze at it, with its line of picturesque rocks, the armed knight and the irish lady—though, i confess, i never could make out which was the knight and which was the lady. can it be that some fragment of the legend of tristram and iseult originated these names?
after several sweet lazy hours, we went through a "fish-cellar," a little group of cottages, and climbed a headland, to take our veritable farewell of the land's end, and then decided to go home. we had rolled or thrown our provision basket, rugs, &c., down the sandy slope, but it was another thing to carry them up again. i went in quest of a small boy, and there presented himself a big man, coastguard, as the only unemployed hand in the place, who apologised with such a magnificent air for not having "cleaned" himself, that i almost blushed to ask him to do such a menial service as to carry a bundle of wraps. but he accepted it, conversing amiably as we went, and giving me a most graphic picture of life at sennen during the winter. when he left me, making a short cut to our encampment—a black dot on the sands, with two moving black dots near it—a fisher wife joined me, and of her own accord began a conversation.
she and i fraternised at once, chiefly on the subject of children, a group of whom were descending the road from sennen school. she told me how many of them were hers, and what prizes they had gained, and what hard work it was. she could neither read nor write, she said, but she liked her children to be good scholars, and they learnt a deal up at sennen.
apparently they did, and something else besides learning, for when i had parted from my loquacious friend, i came up to the group just in time to prevent a stand-up fight between two small mites, the casus belli of which i could no more arrive at, than a great many wiser people can discover the origin of national wars. so i thought the strong hand of "intervention"—civilised intervention—was best, and put an end to it, administering first a good scolding, and then a coin. the division of this coin among the little party compelled an extempore sum in arithmetic, which i required them to do (for the excellent reason that i couldn't do it myself!)—and they did it! therefore i conclude that the heads of the sennen school-children are as solid as their fists, and equally good for use.
simple little community! which as the fisher wife told me, only goes to penzance about once a year, and is, as yet, innocent of tourists, for the swarm at the land's end seldom goes near whitesand bay. existence here must be very much that of an oyster,—but perhaps oysters are happy.
by the time we reached penzance the lovely day was dying into an equally lovely evening. st. michael's mount shone in the setting sun. it was high water, the bay was all alive with boats, and there was quite a little crowd of people gathered at the mild little station of marazion. what could be happening?
a princess was expected, that young half-english, half-foreign princess, in whose romantic story the british public has taken such an interest, sympathising with the motherly kindness of our good queen, with the wedding at windsor, and the sad little infant funeral there, a year after. the princess frederica of hanover, and the baron von pawel-rammingen, her father's secretary, who, like a stout mediæval knight, had loved, wooed, and married her, were coming to st. michael's mount on a visit to the st. aubyns.
marazion had evidently roused itself, and risen to the occasion. half the town must have turned out to the beach, and the other half secured every available boat, in which it followed, at respectful distance, the two boats, one full of luggage, the other of human beings, which were supposed to be the royal party. people speculated with earnest curiosity, which was the princess, and which her husband, and what the st. aubyns would do with them; whether they would be taken to see the land's end, and whether they would go there as ordinary tourists, or in a grand visit of state. how hard it is that royal folk can never see anything except in state, or in a certain adventitious garb, beautiful, no doubt, but satisfactorily hiding the real thing. how they must long sometimes for a walk, after the fashion of haroun alraschid, up and down regent street and oxford street! or an incognito foreign tour, or even a solitary country walk, without a "lady-in-waiting."
we had no opera-glass to add to the many levelled at those two boats, so we went in—hoping host and guests would spend a pleasant evening in the lovely old rooms we knew. we spent ours in rest, and in arranging for to-morrow's flight. also in consulting with our kindly landlady as to a possible house at marazion for some friends whom the winter might drive southwards, like the swallows, to a climate which, in this one little bay shut out from east and north, is—they told us—during all the cruel months which to many of us means only enduring life, not living—as mild and equable almost as the mediterranean shores. and finally, we settled all with our faithful charles, who looked quite mournful at parting with his ladies.
"yes, it is rather a long drive, and pretty lonely," said he. "but i'll wait till the moons up, and that'll help us. we'll get into falmouth by daylight. i've got to do the same thing often enough through the summer, so i don't mind it."
thus said the good fellow, putting a cheery face on it, then with a hasty "good-bye, ladies," he rushed away. but we had taken his address, not meaning to lose sight of him. (nor have we done so up to this date of writing; and the fidelity has been equal on both sides.)
then, in the midst of a peal of bells which was kept up unweariedly till 10 p.m.—evidently marazion is not blessed with the sight of a princess every day—we closed our eyes upon all outward things, and went away to the land of nod.
