Armorel of Lyonesse: A Romance of To-dayBesant, Walter
General
Armorel of Lyonesse: A Romance of To-day
Besant, Walter
Fraud -- Fiction; Isles of Scilly (England) -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction
'She belongs to Samson. They've always lived on Samson. Once there
were Roseveans, Tryeths, Jenkinses, and Woodcocks on Samson. Now, they
are nearly all gone--only one family of Rosevean left, and one of
Tryeth.'
'She said that nobody else lived there.'
'Well, it is only her own family. They've started a flower-farm lately
on Holy Hill, and I hear it's doing pretty well. It's a likely
situation, too, facing south-west and well sheltered. You should go
and see the flower-farm. Armorel will be glad to show you the farm,
and the island too. Samson has got a good many curious things--more
curious, perhaps, than she knows, poor child!'
He paused for a moment, and then continued: 'There's nobody on the
island now but themselves. There's the old woman, first--you should
see her too. She's a curiosity by herself--Ursula Rosevean--she was a
Traverse, and came from Bryher to be married. She married Methusalem
Rosevean, Armorel's great-great-grandfather--that was nigh upon eighty
years ago; she's close upon a hundred now; and she's been a widow
since--when was it?--I believe she'd only been a wife for twelve
months or so. He was drowned on a smuggling run--his brother Emanuel,
too. Widow used to look for him from the hill-top every night for a
year and more afterwards. A wonderful old woman! Go and look at her.
Perhaps she will talk to you. Sometimes, when Armorel plays the
fiddle, she will brighten up and talk for an hour. She knows how to
cure all diseases, and she can foretell the future. But she's too old
now, and mostly she's asleep. Then there's Justinian Tryeth and
Dorcas, his wife--they're over seventy, both of them, if they're a
day. Dorcas was a St. Agnes girl--that's the reason why her name was
Hicks: if she'd come from Bryher she'd have been a Traverse; if from
Tresco she'd have been a Jenkins. But she was a Hicks. She's as old as
her husband, I should say. As for the boy, Peter----'
'She called him the boy, I remember. But he seemed to me----'
'He's fifty, but he's always been the boy. He never married, because
there was nobody left on Samson for him to marry, and he's always been
too busy on the farm to come over here after a wife. And he looks more
than fifty, because once he fell off the pier, head first, into the
stern of a boat, and after he'd been unconscious for three days, all
his hair fell off except a few stragglers, and they'd turned white.
Looks most as old as his father. Chessun's near fifty-two.'
'Who is Chessun?'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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