Joshua Haggard's Daughter (Complete)

‘It mun be a ’clipse, I think,’ said old Jabez Long, the fisherman, contemplative of that awful horizon yonder, where one streak of copper-coloured light made a narrow rent between sea and sky.

‘’Clipse, man!’ cried his neighbour; ‘how can it be a ’clipse, when there ain’t none in the almanick? It’s more like a judgment than a ’clipse, to my mind—a judgment agen the farmers for making bread so dear last Chrisselmas. Sarve ’em right if their corn’s drownded afore they can get it under cover.’

There was no rain yet, but when the rain came by and by, it would be a flood, thought that little group of awe-stricken fishermen gathered in front of the King of Bells public-house, at the fishermen’s end of Combhaven.

‘Look at the sea,’ exclaimed Jabez, pointing seaward.

It had a curious look, the ocean—that sea which in summer time was wont to seem an emerald lake dappled with purple shadows. To-day the water was a dull red, darkened to indigo here and there. There was a strong ground-swell, and the sea heaved like a passionate bosom stirred with deepest anger. White surf came creeping up the sand, and with every receding wave there rose a roar like distant thunder.

‘An angry sea,’ cried Jabez. ‘I hope the young Squire won’t try to come in from Clovelly upon such a tide as this.’

‘Has he gone to Clovelly?’ asked Mike Durran, the younger of the two men. Both were old and gray and rugged, and had a look of having aged rather from hard weather than from the flight of years. Time had crawled for these villagers, winters and summers creeping slowly on their sluggish course; much labour, little pleasure. They must have felt a century old at least.

‘Yes, he sailed yesterday morning, and was to be back to-day. Him and Jack and the lad Peter; not enough of ’em to manage that clumsy old tub of his, to my mind. He’ll get into trouble some day, I’m afeard.’

‘Money’s scace with him, I’m thinking,’ said Mike.

‘Money’ll never be anything but scace while the old Squire’s alive,’ answered Jabez. ‘There’s money enough and to spare hid away somewheres; but nobody’ll ever see the colour of it while he’s alive.’

‘Not they,’ groaned Mike Durran; and there was a general groan from the little group of idlers, by way of tribute to the Squire.

‘Hard upon everybody,’ said Jabez.

‘Hardest of all upon his own flesh and blood,’ said another man. ‘His cruelty drove his second son to sea.’

‘Arnold,’ said Jabez. ‘Ah, a fine lad that! I remember ’im; a fine out-spoken lad, with a kind word for every one.’

‘Ah, he were the right sort, he were,’ said Mike; ‘not like Mr. Oswald. He haven’t a word to throw at a dog, wrapped up in his-self, and proud as Lucifus; and as for the colour of his money—well, I never see it.’

This implies the deepest depth of unpopularity—a man unable or unwilling to give.

At this juncture there came a silence in the little assembly, and all eyes were turned in the same direction to look at a man who came round the sharply-jutting cliff which ran out seaward into a dangerous reef, and cut off this straggling bit of sea-shore from the tidy little town that nestled in a cleft of the fertile Devonian hills. On this side of the promontory there was the original fishing village, a row of ancient thatched cabins built against the cliff, and that popular house of entertainment, the Ring of Bells, a low-roofed, old-fashioned dwelling, with steep gables and curious abutments and ceilings whose rough-hewn beams scarcely cleared the heads of its tallest customers.

The person whose approach commanded the general attention was a man of somewhat striking appearance. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a head nobly mounted on the throat of a gladiator, penetrating black eyes, boldly-cut features, a swarthy complexion, a square lower jaw, and a capacious strongly-marked brow—he was a man to attract attention anywhere. Intellect and power had set their seal upon his face, and his bearing was that of one accustomed to command. A man of superior mind, stranded for life in such a place as Combhaven, might naturally think himself a king.

The new-comer’s costume was that of the yeoman class. He wore knee-breeches, coarse gray knitted stockings, and stout buckled shoes. His only distinguishing characteristic was a white cravat, but this was a symbol which marked his power and authority over that little group of rough fishermen; and Mrs. Jakes, the landlady, who stood at her door listening to the discourse of her customers, dropped a low curtsy at sight of the man in the white neckcloth.

Joshua Haggard was a strong influence in the little town of Combhaven, being chief custodian of the souls of its inhabitants, from Miss Tremaine, the rich maiden lady at Tremaine Place, to the grubby kitchen-wench at the Ring of Bells, who cleaned herself once a week, and, with face smarting from the vigorous application of mottled soap and coarsest huckaback, went to Little Bethel to hear Mr. Haggard preach. It was over the womankind of Combhaven, doubtless, that Joshua was most potent; but the men, if they went to any place of worship, did it for the most part to please their womankind; and thus was Little Bethel crowded to overflowing on warm summer evenings; while the white-haired vicar of Combhaven preached his drowsy orthodox sermon to the school-children, the pew-opener and beadle, and the half-dozen stanch followers of the Established Church who had not overeaten themselves at dinner, or drank too much after that ponderous and hearty meal.

Fifty years ago the Established Church was nowhere in Combhaven, as compared with Joshua Haggard and Little Bethel. The great Anglican revival has doubtless awakened that slumberous old parish church into new life and vigour, and left Little Bethel in the rear; but in those days Bethel was dominant, and to sit under Joshua was to be in the right away to salvation, in the opinion of Combhaven; always excepting certain old families of landed estate, and the more substantial of the tenant-farmers, who clung to the Established Church like barnacles to a ship’s bottom, and with little more ability to reason upon their faith than the barnacles. They stuck to the Church of England chiefly because their fathers had done so, and they looked down upon Joshua as a ranter, and follower of that low person, John Wesley.

Mr. Haggard had his temporal avocation and business in life as well as his spiritual profession, and a man of less energy and intellect would have hardly fared so well as he did with both. The business he had inherited from his father. His clerical position he had made for himself. He had received no collegiate education; he was a member of no convocation. If he followed any other light than his own it was assuredly that lamp which John Wesley lighted nearly a century earlier; yet the Wesleyans would have disowned Joshua Haggard. Early in life he had taken to field-preaching, and had made as great an impression upon his benighted hearers as Whitfield made in the woods near Bristol. When his father died, reconciled to his only son at the last, and leaving Joshua his business and a nice little lump of money in the bargain, Joshua built himself a chapel, and settled down after his wanderings in his native town. He belonged rather to the order of Primitive Methodists, founded by Vincent Bourne, than to any other denomination; but he was a man of more original mind and broader views than are common to Methodist preachers, and a loving student of the old Puritan Divines.

Haggard’s was one of the best shops in Combhaven. Ostensibly devoted to groceries, it gave a counter to linen-drapery, supplied its customers with stationery, and was generally willing to procure any article that might be wanted in Combhaven from the larger resources of Barnstaple or the illimitable storehouses of Exeter. Enthusiast as Joshua really was in religion, he never neglected his trade; order and attention marked the conduct of his business; a scrupulous honesty recommended him even to careful housekeepers. No adulterated coffee, no sanded sugar, came from his stores; to say that any article came from Haggard’s was tantamount to saying it was the best that money could buy. Haggard’s eight shilling mixed tea was a specific for nervous headache, and for plasters in urgent cases no one thought of using any mustard but Haggard’s.

Joshua being a widower of some years’ standing, the feminine element in the business was supplied by his maiden sister Judith, a woman of commercial mind, frugal housewifely habits, and energy as inexhaustible as her brother’s. She was of Joshua’s temperament as regarded mundane things, but lacked his loftier aspirations and spiritual views. Piety with her was of rather a mechanical order, dependent upon the number of her attendances at church. She took an ascetic view of life, especially as regarded the lives of other people, and was continually cutting off some small enjoyment or gratification of mind or senses as ‘a snare.’ She was the sole and despotic ruler of Joshua’s household and family, the family consisting of one son and one daughter, the household of a sturdy maid-of-all-work, a shopman, and a boy who carried out goods in barrow or basket, and occasionally came to grief by upsetting a box of eggs or breaking a vinegar-bottle.

Joshua Haggard’s house and garden were always the pink of neatness, his shop was a model of cleanliness and precision; and his life altogether was so wisely ordered, so temperate, regular, and honourable, that he himself seemed the highest example of that sober Christian life he preached to others. When he read the first Psalm, in that rich sonorous voice of his, his congregation thought of him as the man whose ‘delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate day and night.