CHAPTER II
A LUSUS NATURÆ
The two men entered the house talking, Quarm lurching against his companion in his uneven progress; uneven, partly because of his lame leg, partly because of his excitement; and when he wished to urge a point in his argument, he enforced it, not only by raised tone of voice and cogency of reasoning, but also by impact of his shoulder against that of Pepperill.
In the room into which they penetrated sat a girl in the bay window knitting. The window was wide and low, for the ceiling was low. It had many panes in it of a greenish hue. It commanded the broad firth of the river Teign. The sun was now on the water, and the glittering water cast a sheen of golden green into the low room and into the face of the knitting girl. It illumined the ceiling, revealed all its cracks, its cobwebs and flies. The brass candlesticks and skillets and copper coffee-pots on the chimney-piece shone in the light reflected from the ceiling.
The girl was tall, with a singularly broad white brow, dark hair, and long lashes that swept her cheek. The face was pale, and when in repose it could not be readily decided whether she were good-looking or plain, but all hesitation vanished when she raised her great violet eyes, full of colour and sparkling with the light of intelligence.
The moment that Quarm entered she dropped the knitting on which she was engaged; a flash of pleasure, a gleam of colour, mounted to eyes and cheeks; she half rose with timidity and hesitation, but as Quarm continued in eager conversation with Pepperill, and did not notice her, she sank back into her sitting posture, the colour faded from her cheek, her eyes fell, and a quiver of the lips and contraction of the mouth indicated distress and pain.
“How is it possible to turn mud into gold?” asked Pepperill.
“Wait till I have coined my oak and I will do it.”
“I can understand oaks. The timber is worth something, and the bark something, and the tops sell for firewood; but mud--mud is mud.”
“Well, it is mud. Let me light my pipe. I can’t talk without my ’baccy.”
Jason put a spill to the fire, seated himself on a stool by the hearth, ignited his pipe, and then, turning his eye about, caught sight of the girl.
“Hallo, little Toad!” said he; “how are you?”
Then, without waiting for an answer, he returned to the mud.
“Look here, Pasco, the mud is good for nothing where it is.”
“No. It is a nuisance. It chokes the channel. I had a deal of trouble with the last coal-barge; she sank so deep I thought she’d be smothered and never got in.”
“That’s just it. You would pay something to have it cleared--dredged right away.”
“I don’t know about that. The expense would be great.”
“You need not pay a half-crown. It isn’t India only whose shining fountains roll down their golden sands. It is Devonshire as well, which pours the river Teign clear as crystal out of its Dartmoor reservoir, and which is here ready to empty its treasures into my pockets and yours. But we must dispose of Brimpts oak first.”
“I’d like to know how you are going to do anything with mud.”
“What is mud but clay in a state of slobber? Now, hearken to me, brother-in-law. I have been where the soil is all clay, clay that would grow nothing but moss and rushes, and was not worth more than five shillings an acre, fit for nothing but for letting young stock run on. That is out Holsworthy way. Well, a man with the philosopher’s stone in his head, Goldsworthy Gurney, he cut a canal from Bude harbour right through this arrant clay land. With what result? The barges travel up from Bude laden with sand. The farmers use the sand over their clay fields, and the desert blossoms as the rose. Land that was worth four shillings went up to two pound ten, and in places near the canal to five pounds. The sand on the seashore is worthless. The clay inland is worthless, but the sand and clay married breed moneys, moneys, my boy--golden moneys.”
“That is reasonable enough,” said Pasco Pepperill, “but it don’t apply here. We are on the richest of red soil, that wants no dressing, so full of substance is it in itself. Besides, the mud is nothing but our red soil in a state of paste.”
“It is better. It is richer, more nutritious; but you do not see what is to be done with it, because you have not my head and my eyes. I do not propose to do here what was done at Holsworthy, but to invert the operation.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not to carry the sand to the clay, but the mud to the sand. Do you not know Bovey Heathfield? Do you not know Stover sands? What is there inland but a desert waste of sand-hill and arid flat that is barren as my hand, bearing nothing but a little scrubby thorn and thistle and bramble--sand, that’s not worth half a crown an acre? There is no necessity for us to cut a canal. The canal exists, cut in order that the Hey-tor granite may be conveyed along it to the sea. It has not occurred to the fools that the barges that convey the stone down might come up laden with Teign mud, instead of returning empty. This mud, I tell you, is not merely rich of itself, but it has a superadded richness from seaweed and broken shells. It is fat with eels and worms. Let this be conveyed up the canal to the sandy waste of Heathfield, and the marriage of clay and sand will be as profitable there as that marriage has been at Holsworthy. I would spread this rich mud over the hungry sand, thick as cream, and the land will laugh and sing. Do you take me now, brother-in-law? Do you believe in the philosopher’s stone?”
He touched his head. Pasco Pepperill had clasped his right knee in his hands. He sat nursing it, musing, looking into the fire. Presently he said--
“Yes; very fine for the owners of the sandy land, but how about you and me?”
“We must buy up.”
“But where is the money to come from?”
“Brimpts oak.”
“What! the profit made on this venture?”
“Exactly. Every oak stick is a rung in my ladder. There has been, for hundreds of years, a real forest of oaks, magnificent trees, timber incomparable for hardness--iron is not harder. Who knows about it save myself? The Exeter Bank knows nothing of the property on which it has advanced money. The agent runs over it and takes a hasty glance. He thinks that the trees he sees all up the slopes are thorn bushes or twisted stumps worth nothing, and when he passes is too eager to get away from the moor to stay and observe. I have felt my way. A small offer and money down, and the whole forest is mine. Then I must fell at once, and it is not, I say, calculable what we shall make out of that oak. When we have raked our money together, then we will buy up as much as we can of sandy waste near the canal, and proceed at once to plaster it over with Teign clay. Pasco, our fortune is made!”
Jason kept silence for a while, to allow what he had said to sink into the mind of his brother-in-law.
Then from the adjoining kitchen came a strongly-built, fair woman, very tidy, with light hair and pale blue eyes. She had a decided manner in her movements and in the way in which she spoke. She had been scouring a pan. She held this pan now in one hand. She strode up to the fireplace between the men and said in a peremptory tone--
“What
