The farm kitchen, where the tripper takes his tea, was part of Navron dininghall,
and the little half-stair, now terminating in a bricked-up wall, was the stair
leading to the gallery. The rest of the house must have crumbled away, or been
demolished, for the square farm-building, though handsome enough, bears little
likeness to the Navron of the old prints, shaped like the letter E, and of the formal
garden and the park there is no trace to-day.
The tripper eats his split and drinks his tea, smiling upon the landscape,
knowing nothing of the woman who stood there once, long ago, in another summer,
who caught the gleam of the river amidst the trees, as he does, and who lifted her
head to the sky and felt the sun.
He hears the homely farm-yard noises, the clanking of pails, the lowing of
the cattle, the rough voices of the farmer and his son as they call to each other
across the yard, but his ears are deaf to the echoes of that other time, when
someone whistled softly from the dark belt of trees, his hands cupped to his mouth,
and was swiftly answered by the thin, stooping figure crouching beneath the walls
of the silent house, while above them the casement opened, and Dona watched and
listened, her hands playing a little nameless melody upon the sill, her ringlets
falling forward over her face.
The river flows on, the trees rustle in the summer wind, and down on the
mud-flats the oyster-catchers stand at ebbtide scanning the shallows for food, and
the curlews cry, but the men and women of that other time are forgotten, their headstones
encrusted with lichen and moss, their names indecipherable.
To-day the cattle stamp and churn the earth over the vanished porch of
Navron House, where once a man stood as the clock struck midnight, his face
smiling in the dim candle-light, his drawn sword in his hand.
In spring the farmer's children gather primroses and snowdrops in the banks
above the creek, their muddy boots snapping the dead twigs and the fallen leaves of
a spent summer, and the creek itself, swollen with the rains of a long winter, looks
desolate and grey.
The trees still crowd thick and darkly to the water's edge, and the moss is
succulent and green upon the little quay where Dona built her fire and looked
across the flames and laughed at her lover, but to-day no ship lies at anchor in the
pool, with rakish masts pointing to the skies, there is no rattle of chain through the
hawser, no rich tobacco smell upon the air, no echo of voices coming across the
water in a lilting foreign tongue.
The solitary yachtsman who leaves his yacht in the open roadstead of
Helford, and goes exploring up river in his dinghy on a night in midsummer, when
the night-jars call, hesitates when he comes upon the mouth of the creek, for there
is something of mystery about it even now, something of enchantment. Being a
stranger, the yachtsman looks back over his shoulder to the safe yacht in the
roadstead, and to the broad waters of the river, and he pauses, resting on his
paddles, aware suddenly of the deep silence of the creek, of its narrow twisting
channel, and he feels-for no reason known to him-that he is an interloper, a
trespasser in time. He ventures a little way along the left bank of the creek, the
sound of the blades upon the water seeming over-loud and echoing oddly amongst
the trees on the farther bank, and as he creeps forward the creek narrows, the trees
crowd yet more thickly to the water's edge, and he feels a spell upon him,
fascinating, strange, a thing of queer excitement not fully understood.
He is alone, and yet-can that be a whisper, in the shallows, close to the bank,
and does a figure stand there, the moonlight glinting upon his buckled shoes and
the cutlass in his hand, and is that a woman by his side, a cloak around her
shoulders, her dark ringlets drawn back behind her ears? He is wrong, of course,
those are only the shadows of the trees, and the whispers are no more than the
rustle of the leaves and the stir of a sleeping bird, but he is baffled suddenly, and a
little scared, he feels he must go no farther, and that the head of the creek beyond
the farther bank is barred to him and must remain unvisited. And so he turns to go,
heading the dinghy's nose for the roadstead, and as he pulls away the sounds and
the whispers become more insistent to his ears, there comes the patter of footsteps,
a call, and a cry in the night, a far faint whistle, and a curious lilting song. He
strains his eyes in the darkness, and the massed shadows before him loom hard and
clear like the outline of a ship. A thing of grace and beauty, born in another time, a
painted phantom ship. And now his heart begins to beat, and he strains at his
paddles, and the little dinghy shoots swiftly over the dark water away from
enchantment, for what he has seen is not of his world, and what he has heard is
beyond his understanding.
Once more he reaches the security of his own ship, and looking back for the
last time to the entrance of the creek, he sees the full moon white and shining in all
its summer glory rise above the tall trees, bathing the creek in loveliness and light.
A night-jar churrs from the bracken on the hills, a fish breaks the surface of
the water with a little plopping sound, and slowly his ship turns to meet the
incoming tide, and the creek is hidden from him.
The yachtsman goes below to the snug security of his cabin, and browsing
amongst his books he finds at last the thing for which he has been searching. It is a
map of Cornwall, ill-drawn and inaccurate, picked up in an idle moment in a Truro
bookshop. The parchment is faded and yellow, the markings indistinct. The
spelling belongs to another century. Helford river is traced fairly enough, and so are
the hamlets of Constantine and Gweek. But the yachtsman looks away from them
to the marking of a narrow inlet, branching from the parent river, its short, twisting
course running westward into a valley. Someone has scratched the name in thin
faded characters-Frenchman's Creek.
The yachtsman puzzles awhile over the name, then shrugs his shoulders and
rolls away the map. Presently he sleeps. The anchorage is still. No wind blows
upon the water, and the night-jars are silent. The yachtsman dreams -and as the tide
surges gently about his ship and the moon shines on the quiet river, soft murmurs
come to him, and the past becomes the present.
A forgotten century peers out of dust and cobwebs and he walks in another
time. He hears the sound of hoof-beats galloping along the drive to Navron House,
he sees the great door swing open and the white, startled face of the manservant
stare upward at the cloaked horseman. He sees Dona com