Ships in the Bay (Historical Novel). D. K. Broster

Penitent was one of the tragedies in which she used to enact the heroine when she was playing in Liverpool and Manchester twenty years ago, before she came to London. Liverpool possesses many privateers, does it not?”

      “Scores, my dear sir, scores. As many, or more than Bristol. We see them sometimes passing the Bishop and Clerks out there. And slave ships also; the port has a great trade to the Guinea coast. But I cannot remember either a privateer or a prize ever putting in here before.”

      Patch being roused from his meditations, they now drove slowly home again. Of the privateersmen there was no further sign, and conversation, abandoning present day affairs, flowed once more round the relics of the past.

      (2)

      Nest Meredith’s home, the Precentory, was one of the many buildings which had adorned the precincts of the Cathedral of St. David’s in the days of the former greatness of the see, when its Bishop had been little less than a prince, and the shrine of the Saint a very great and famous place of pilgrimage. In those ages an embattled wall, with four gateways, had encircled the whole close, a veritable ecclesiastical city-state. Fuit Ilium; now in places that wall had crumbled, and but one gate remained; part of the Cathedral itself had long been roofless, the beautiful Bishop’s Palace was in ruins, and St. Mary’s College, John of Gaunt’s foundation, also; while of the various prebendal dwellings and archdeaconries some were mere skeletons, of some no traces were left. But among those which had survived was the Precentory, and this had moreover been added to and improved, and presented an appearance at once pleasant and dignified. It stood, not like the Cathedral on the floor of the green hollow, but some way up the lip, looking at the great church as it were sideways, and more directly across the Vale of Roses, the “Merry Vale,” meadow-like, shallow and open, where the little river Alan, once perhaps a large stream, wound unobtrusively along to the tiny harbour of Porthclais, its meeting place with the sea. Below the house was a terraced garden, the supporting wall of which abutted on a little road which crossed the Alan on an ancient bridge and separated the Precentory from the “Chanter’s Orchard,” a field stretching to the river.

      It was to this sloping garden, and to the shade of a mulberry tree, that Nest brought out some sewing this afternoon. Under the same tree sat already her Aunt Pennefather, the Precentor’s widowed sister, who kept his house for him, mild, almost visionary, learned and poetical. The dignified cap which crowned her brow was a trifle askew, yet the stitches which she was putting into a much smaller cap were as microscopic as those of the least intellectual of sempstresses.

      But Nest, though she sewed for a while, was really longing to go for a walk, being unusually active in that respect for a young lady of her generation. It was all very well to be drawn along at a snail’s pace behind Patch! . . . And suddenly some deity—Hygeia perhaps—provided an excuse for satisfying this desire, by bringing to her ears a scrap of a conversation between her father and Mr. Thistleton, who had just come out into the garden, and were standing not far away.

      “It was most careless of me, Precentor! The leaf upon which I made the notes of the proportions of that chimney must have been loose, and I greatly fear that I let it slip out while in St. Justinian’s chapel!”

      “But to the best of my belief,” replied Dr. Meredith, “you never took out your notebook there. No, depend upon it, you dropped the page in Rhosson farmhouse itself, and the Lloyds, who are good, careful people, will have picked it up and kept it. I will send someone over there to make inquiries. No, my dear Thistleton, you cannot go yourself, even in the pony-chaise, for I am to take you in half an hour’s time to drink tea with Mr. Salt the antiquary up at Bowen’s Folly. If you will excuse me I will give orders about sending to Rhosson at once.”

      Throwing down her work Nest sprang up and ran after her father into the house. “Papa, you will be wanting Richards to drive you up to Mr. Salt’s, and John Parry is so stupid that he will not be able to explain anything to Mrs. Lloyd. I will go to Rhosson and ask them if they have found the leaf of notes. It is only a mile and a half, and Bran needs a run.”

      The Precentor hesitated, then yielded. “Very well, my dear, since I know that walking gives you pleasure, and that John Parry is not very intelligent. I could however send him with a letter—yet, now that I come to think of it, I am not sure that Mrs. Lloyd can read. Go then, child, if you do not fear the heat. I shall not tell Mr. Thistleton, however, until after you have started.”

      It was not really very hot now, but Nest took her new parasol with her. She was proud of this adjunct, of which there was not yet another in St. David’s. And beneath its shade she walked slowly along the route already traversed behind Patch this morning, accompanied by Bran, her mongrel brown dog, who had the formation of a lurcher but the pelt (possibly) of a retriever. Nest, however, deprecated criticism of his appearance, but exalted his intelligence and warm heart.

      The lane was really like two long garden beds! Never, even in Devonshire, which she had once visited, had Nest Meredith met honeysuckle growing so thickly as here at home; never elsewhere, surely, were foxgloves so determined to go on blooming up to the very last infant buds of their spires. Further inland, it was true, the lanes had fewer flowers, but myriads of ferns. And yet the lanes were not overshaded like some of those in Devon, for they had no hedges on top of their banks; and the air of Dewisland was not soft and damp, but tingling with the wine of its twin seas, and magical always with the scent of flowers—even when no flowers were to be seen. Yes, Dewisland was Dewisland, and like no other place in the world!

      Miss Meredith’s quest was crowned with success. Bidden into the closely shut, never used parlour in all its stiff array, where there hung a picture much admired by her in childhood, of the wreck of a full-rigged barque, entirely carried out in coloured wools and enclosed in a black frame with a large natural whelk shell adhering to each corner, Nest received (in Welsh) the lost sheet of notes, dropped, by good fortune, inside the house itself. Looking affectionately at the woolly disaster on the wall, she asked if the Dutch prize were still in the Sound, and was told, No, that she had sailed some three quarters of an hour ago, of which Mrs. Lloyd was glad, for she did not like the look of the men whatever, and once when they came past they were swearing most horribly, she was sure, though she could not understand what they said. After which, with mingled triumph and respect, she asked leave to show Miss Meredith her daughter’s new baby.

      (3)

      Calling off Bran, who was barking, from a safe distance, at the enormous sow in the yard, Nest started back. The sight of Mrs. Lloyd’s infant grandchild had set her thinking of her own nephew, aged six months, whose presence, with that of his mother, was shortly to enliven the Precentory. It was strange to know oneself an Aunt. Undoubtedly it made one feel very old. On any count, indeed, twenty was a considerable age. One should, said Aunt Pennefather, begin to have serious thoughts at twenty. Yet Nest feared that her thoughts were no more serious than at eighteen, save that with riper years had inevitably come reflections—nay, more, conclusions—on the transitory nature of human affections, both male and female. For certainly last winter she had believed herself deeply in love with a gentleman, a stranger to the neighbourhood, whom she had met at a ball in Haverfordwest, and had even begun to picture herself going into a decline upon his account. There had not, however, been time for this process to take effect, since this infatuation, nourished on air, had lasted but a month, its demise, too, being materially assisted by the fact that young Mr. Perrot of Camrose had then begun to pay her somewhat marked attentions, continually finding, for instance, that business required him to ride eleven miles or so into St. David’s instead of four into Haverfordwest. These attentions Nest enjoyed without in the least making up her mind about their author; then, suddenly, they ceased. So she had good reason, she told herself, to feel that she knew something of life and its impermanence. In her less cheerful moods she sometimes felt also that one so disillusioned should prepare for old age and spinsterhood by learning Latin, or following some intellectual pursuit equally sustaining to the mind. The cultured Aunt Pennefather, although she had married, knew Greek as well.

      Reflecting on the advent of Jane and her infant, Nest, before she had gone very far, paused to look over the gate of a hayfield and, tempted by the thought of a short rest upon her