Redruth

“ Saucy Cornish girls blew kisses to us from the windows of Saint Day. Sauciness is a quality in which the girls of Cornwall are rich. Alas! our friend drove through the narrow streets all unheeding, like another Jehu. If we had known him longer we would have cursed him for it, but he was a “new chum,” and it could not be done. Discourtesy is always reserved for friends of old standing. And thus we drove into Redruth on a Saturday afternoon.
241 Redruth still remains a busy and populous town, despite the exhausted condition of its neighbouring mining-fields. ”

“ This much should be assumed and conceded—that the young lady was not necessarily to blame for Redruth's becoming a crazed and world-hating hermit. When we have done, Miss Garland shall render the JUDGEMENT OF WOMAN. As the Spirit of her Sex she shall decide which version of the story best and most truly depicts human and love interest, and most faithfully estimates the character and acts of Redruth's betrothed according to the feminine view. The apple shall be bestowed upon him who is awarded the decision. ”

“ She never married him. Marmaduke Mulligan, down at Paradise, seen a man once that come from old Redruth's town. He said Redruth was a fine young man, but when you kicked him on the pocket all you could hear jingle was a cuff-fastener and a bunch of keys. He was engaged to this young lady—Miss Alice— something was her name; I've forgot. This man said she was the kind of girl you like to have reach across you in a car to pay the fare. Well, there come to the town a young chap all affluent and easy, and fixed up with buggies and mining stock and leisure time. ”

“ Redruth forsook the face of mankind and became a hermit, as we have seen.
"My story," concluded the young man with an Agency, "may lack the literary quality; but what I wanted it to show is that the young lady remained true. She cared nothing for wealth in comparison with true affection. I admire and believe in the fair sex too much to think otherwise."
The narrator ceased, with a sidelong glance at the corner where reclined the lady passenger.
Bildad Rose was next invited by Judge Menefee to contribute his story in the contest for the apple of judgment. The stage-driver's essay was brief. ”

“ Of course Redruth was jostled a good deal by this duck who had money to play ball with who tried to cut him out of his girl. So he goes around, naturally, and asks her if the game is still square. Well, nobody wants a guy cutting in with buggies and gold bonds when he's got an option on a girl. Well, he goes around to see her. Well, maybe he's hot, and talks like the proprietor, and forgets that an engagement ain't always a lead-pipe cinch. Well, I guess that makes Alice warm under the lacy yoke. ”

“ The windmill man grinned good-naturedly.
"Oh, I ain't no Guy de Mopassong," he said, cheerfully. "I'm giving it to you in straight American. Well, she says something like this: 'Mr. Gold Bonds is only a friend,' says she; 'but he takes me riding and buys me theatre tickets, and that's what you never do. Ain't I to never have any pleasure in life while I can?' 'Pass this chatfield-chatfield thing along,' says Redruth;—'hand out the mitt to the Willie with creases in it or you don't put your slippers under my wardrobe.'
"Now that kind of train orders don't go with a girl that's got any spirit. ”

“ To Captain Thomas Teague, of Redruth, an experienced and very intelligent miner, and who during many years has principally conducted the working of Tin Croft mine, I am indebted for the Section. He informed me that in some part of Dunkin's vein, granite was found on one side of it and schist on the other, and that detached masses of each substance were found both in it and in the South vein; and frequently, that where granite formed the country on each side of the vein, the masses were of schist, and vice versa. ”

“ The result is that the industry is comparatively less prosperous than formerly, and employs far fewer of the inhabitants. However, in the district of Camborne, Carn Brea, Illogan and Redruth, and near St Just in the extreme west, the mines are still active, while there are others of less importance elsewhere, as near Callington in the south-east. And when, as in 1906, circumstances affecting the production of foreign mines cause a rise in the price of tin, the Cornish mines enjoy a period of greater prosperity ”

“ Out upon thee, coward, demon, and tempter!" and in the wildness of her scorn and hatred, she smote him on the mouth with her clenched hand.
"Then be it so!" replied Redhall, with a horrible laugh, as an emotion of rage rose within him. "Thou shalt die as one accursed by God and man, with the flames around thee, and the yells of an assembled city in thine ears, as the meed of thy unmerited scorn. ”

“ Men of Redworth's nature go through sharp contests, though the duration of them is short, and the tussle of his worship of this woman with the materialistic turn of his mind was closed by the complete shutting up of the latter under lock and bar; so that a man, very little of an idealist, was able to sustain her in the pure imagination—where she did almost belong to him. ”

“ To Thomas Redworth's mind the lack of perfect sanity in his conduct at any period of manhood, was so entirely past belief that he flew at the circumstances confirming the charge, and had wrestles with the angel of reality, who did but set him dreaming backward, after flinging him. ”

“ Redhall did not anticipate having his high-sounding sophistry so acutely criticized; he started as if a viper was beside him, and fixing upon her his eyes, which were fired with a strange mixture of sternness and ardour, he said in his slow calm voice—
"Strong and serene in thy boasted purity and pride, thou laughest at me; and by that laugh," he continued, in a hoarse and bitter voice, "I know that all is over with me; but beware thee, proud woman—for love and illusion may die fast together." ”

“ The Downs were like floating islands, like fairy-laden vapours; solid, as Andrew Hedger's hour of eating; visionary, as too often his desire!
Redworth muttered to himself, after taking the picture of the house and surrounding country from the sward, that he thought it about the sharpest night he had ever encountered in England. He was cold, hungry, dispirited, and astoundingly stricken with an incapacity to separate any of his thoughts from old Andrew Hedger. Nature was at her pranks upon him. ”

“ In a short time Redwald appeared on the roof, above the gateway.
“What dost thou require, Sir Monk?” said he; “thy words sound strange in my ears.”
“I am come, false traitor,” said Father Swithin, waxing wroth, “to demand the person of Elfric of Æscendune, whom thou detainest contrary to God’s law and the king’s.”
“Elfric of Æscendune! right glad am I to hear that he is alive; my followers have brought me word that they saw him fall in battle.” ”

“ That contemplation of her incomparable beauty, with the multitude of his ideas fluttering round it, did somewhat shake the personal luminary in Redworth. He was conscious of pangs. The question bit him: How far had she been indiscreet or wilful? and the bite of it was a keen acid to his nerves. A woman doubted by her husband, is always, and even to her champions in the first hours of the noxious rumour, until they had solidified in confidence through service, a creature of the wilds, marked for our ancient running. ”

“ Redwald had also been up nearly all night pacing his room, muttering incoherently to himself. Over and over again he regarded intently a locket containing a solitary tress of grey hair, and once or twice the word “Avenged” rose to his lips.
“And they little know,” said he, soliloquising, “who the avenger is, or what have been his wrongs; little know they how the dead is represented in the halls of his sire—blind! blind! Whichever way the victory eventually turn, he is avenged.” ”

“ Flashing across our retrospective mind-screens, as at times we dreamily delve into the past, beloved faces come and go. Forever in the memory of the writer, as his ideal conception of healthy, virile splendid Youth personified, will stand the bronzed, debonair, clean-shaven young face of George Redmond—or "Reddy," as he was more familiarly dubbed by his comrades of L. Division. ”

“ For one may be the cleverest alive, and still hoodwinked while blood is young and warm.
The perpetuity of the contrast presented to her reflections, of Redworth's healthy, open, practical, cheering life, and her own freakishly interwinding, darkly penetrative, simulacrum of a life, cheerless as well as useless, forced her humiliated consciousness by degrees, in spite of pride, to the knowledge that she was engaged in a struggle with him; and that he was the stronger;—it might be, the worthier: she thought him the handsomer. ”

“ Mr Redbury dared not insist, in front of Rhoda, the parlour-maid—not to mention Beatrice, Samson Phillips and Miss Swinley. Besides, though his sway might be peevishly unpleasant, it never exacted the awed obedience yielded to a true despot. He quivered with horror at the present predicament, as it dawned upon him that his wife intended to read aloud the letter from Germany, in little bursts and snatches of joy. David was encouraging her by eager questions—that boy had no sense whatever. Mr Redbury began to talk very loud and fast. ”

“ A month of comfort, physical and mental, had removed the harassed expression from her wizened, homely countenance; she no longer looked much more than her age, which was forty-three. To Mr. Redhorn, however, she, standing in her doorway, appeared the same as ever, for it is to be remembered that he and she were as strange to each other as two people in a small community like Fairport may be. ”

“ Unscrupulous—careless of truth—contemptuous of religion—yet he had all that attraction in his person which first endeared him to Elfric, whom he really loved. Alas! his love was deadly as the breath of the upas tree to his friend and victim. When the first measures of vengeance were taken against Dunstan, with the concurrence of wicked but able ministers of state, Redwald was selected as the agent who should bribe the thanes, and begin the course of conduct which should eventually lead to the destruction of the enemy of the king. ”

“ Redwald seemed for one moment like a man contending with himself, like one who felt pity struggling with sterner emotions; yet the contest was very short.
“It is of no use—he must die; if hearts break, I hope his will break, and save me the task of shedding his blood, or causing it to be shed; there must be no weakness now; he has been sadly wounded; if he is left alone, he will die; better so—I would spare him if I were not bound by an oath so dread that I shudder to think of it. The others have escaped: he must die.” ”

“ Waveringly, a skinned-knuckled, but sinewy, shapely hand crept out and gently ruffled Redmond's curly auburn hair. Vaguely he heard a voice speaking to him. Could that tired, kind, whimsical voice belong to Yorke? It said: "Reddy, my old son! . . . we're still in the ring, anyway. . . . Seems—do what we would or could—we couldn't poke each other out. . . ."
Came a long silence; then: "If ever a man was sorry for the rotten way he's acted, it's surely me right now. ”

“ They are keen to catch an inimical tone; they will find occasion to chastise the presumptuous individual, unless it be the leader of a party, therefore a power; for they respect a power. Redworth knew their quaintnesses; without overlooking them he winced at the acid of an irony that seemed to spring from aversion, and regretted it, for her sake. He had to recollect that she was in a sharp-strung mood, bitterly surexcited ”

“ The sad procession started; they descended the steps to the courtyard. Redwald had left some forty or fifty men behind—men who had grown old in arms, and who, if they had pleased, might perhaps have stopped the exit, but they were not sufficiently in the confidence of their leader to take the initiative; and the only man who was in his confidence, and whom he had charged to see that no one departed, was fortunately at that moment in another part of the building. The sentinel at the drawbridge was one of Redwald’s troop. ”

“ There was no need for Redworth to run hunting the man at so late an hour, but he was drawn on by the similarity in dissimilarity of this devotee of a woman, who could worship her at a distance, and talk of her to everybody. ”

“ Redhall turned and bowed with a cold smile in his eyes, the ferocious expression of which he vainly endeavoured to conceal.
"I crave pardon for interrupting your lordship's morning reveries or orisons," said Roland, with somewhat of mischief in his eye; "but, 'odzounds! you must know that I permit no man to pass or avoid me without a pretty weighty reason; and your lordship has just so served me."
"'S life, sir! dost thou think that I will give any reasons to one who queries me in such a tone?"
"I did not thou thee," replied Roland, with rising wrath. ”

“ Rising to his full height, and towering above his capturers, he endeavoured to throw them from him; but his vast strength failed; for, fearing to let him free, eager to avenge the wounds he had inflicted, and more passionately eager to serve their lord, whom (lawless and savage as they were) they loved better than life, and animated, no doubt, by the bribes which had purchased their secresy and services, the followers of Redhall hung upon the hands and throat of the furious earl like bloodhounds. ”

“ Now she sought the chapel, and found refuge in prayer. She had found refuge many many hours of that eventful day, but especially since Redwald had borne the news of the imminent battle.
At length the long suspense was ended. Redwald was seen riding at full speed towards the castle, followed by the long-expected messenger.
“Victory! victory!” he cried; “the rebels are defeated; the king shall enjoy his own.”
“But Elfric, my son! my son!”
“Is safe: and will be here in a day or two, perhaps tomorrow.” ”