Should he have in his wallet a registered
letter or be the bearer of a parcel too large for insertion in the
square lips of the sea-trunk, he must needs trudge down the hill and
deliver the troublesome missive, leaving it in person on the owner, and
receiving some small reward of coin or refreshment for his kindness. But such occasions are rare, and his general routine is to take out
of the box such letters as may have been deposited there, and insert
in their place such letters as he has brought. These will be called
for, perhaps that day or perhaps the next, by an emissary from the
Polearn post-office. As for the fishermen of the place, who, in their
export trade, constitute the chief link of movement between Polearn and
the outside world, they would not dream of taking their catch up the
steep lane and so, with six miles farther of travel, to the market at
Penzance. The sea route is shorter and easier, and they deliver their
wares to the pier-head. Thus, though the sole industry of Polearn is
sea-fishing, you will get no fish there unless you have bespoken your
requirements to one of the fishermen. Back come the trawlers as empty
as a haunted house, while their spoils are in the fish-train that is
speeding to London. Such isolation of a little community, continued, as it has been, for
centuries, produces isolation in the individual as well, and nowhere
will you find greater independence of character than among the people
of Polearn. But they are linked together, so it has always seemed
to me, by some mysterious comprehension: it is as if they had all
been initiated into some ancient rite, inspired and framed by forces
visible and invisible. The winter storms that batter the coast, the
vernal spell of the spring, the hot, still summers, the season of rains
and autumnal decay, have made a spell which, line by line, has been
communicated to them, concerning the powers, evil and good, that rule
the world, and manifest themselves in ways benignant or terrible.... I came to Polearn first at the age of ten, a small boy, weak and
sickly, and threatened with pulmonary trouble. My father’s business
kept him in London, while for me abundance of fresh air and a mild
climate were considered essential conditions if I was to grow to
manhood. His sister had married the vicar of Polearn, Richard Bolitho,
himself native to the place, and so it came about that I spent three
years, as a paying guest, with my relations. Richard Bolitho owned
a fine house in the place, which he inhabited in preference to the
vicarage, which he let to a young artist, John Evans, on whom the spell
of Polearn had fallen, for from year’s beginning to year’s end he never
left it. There was a solid roofed shelter, open on one side to the
air, built for me in the garden, and here I lived and slept, passing
scarcely one hour out of the twenty-four behind walls and windows. I was out on the bay with the fisher-folk, or wandering along the
gorse-clad cliffs that climbed steeply to right and left of the deep
combe where the village lay, or pottering about on the pier-head, or
bird’s-nesting in the bushes with the boys of the village. Except on
Sunday and for the few daily hours of my lessons, I might do what I
pleased so long as I remained in the open air. About the lessons there
was nothing formidable; my uncle conducted me through flowering bypaths
among the thickets of arithmetic, and made pleasant excursions into the
elements of Latin grammar, and above all, he made me daily give him an
account, in clear and grammatical sentences, of what had been occupying
my mind or my movements. Should I select to tell him about a walk along
the cliffs, my speech must be orderly, not vague, slip-shod notes of
what I had observed. In this way, too, he trained my observation, for
he would bid me tell him what flowers were in bloom, and what birds
hovered fishing over the sea or were building in the bushes. For that
I owe him a perennial gratitude, for to observe and to express my
thoughts in the clear spoken word became my life’s profession. But far more formidable than my weekday tasks was the prescribed
routine for Sunday. Some dark embers compounded of Calvinism and
mysticism smouldered in my uncle’s soul, and made it a day of terror. His sermon in the morning scorched us with a foretaste of the eternal
fires reserved for unrepentant sinners, and he was hardly less
terrifying at the children’s service in the afternoon. Well do I
remember his exposition of the doctrine of guardian angels. A child,
he said, might think himself secure in such angelic care, but let him
beware of committing any of those numerous offences which would cause
his guardian to turn his face from him, for as sure as there were
angels to protect us, there were also evil and awful presences which
were ready to pounce; and on them he dwelt with peculiar gusto. Well,
too, do I remember in the morning sermon his commentary on the carved
panels of the altar-rails to which I have already alluded. There was
the angel of the Annunciation there, and the angel of the Resurrection,
but not less was there the witch of Endor, and, on the fourth panel,
a scene that concerned me most of all. This fourth panel (he came
down from his pulpit to trace its time-worn features) represented
the lych-gate of the church-yard at Polearn itself, and indeed the
resemblance when thus pointed out was remarkable. In the entry stood
the figure of a robed priest holding up a Cross, with which he faced
a terrible creature like a gigantic slug, that reared itself up in
front of him. That, so ran my uncle’s interpretation, was some evil
agency, such as he had spoken about to us children, of almost infinite
malignity and power, which could alone be combated by firm faith and a
pure heart. Below ran the legend “_Negotium perambulans in tenebris_”
from the ninety-first Psalm. We should find it translated there, “the
pestilence that walketh in darkness,” which but feebly rendered the
Latin. It was more deadly to the soul than any pestilence that can
only kill the body: it was the Thing, the Creature, the Business that
trafficked in the outer Darkness, a minister of God’s wrath on the
unrighteous.... I could see, as he spoke, the looks which the congregation exchanged
with each other, and knew that his words were evoking a surmise, a
remembrance. Nods and whispers passed between them, they understood
to what he alluded, and with the inquisitiveness of boyhood I could
not rest till I had wormed the story out of my friends among the
fisher-boys, as, next morning, we sat basking and naked in the sun
after our bathe. One knew one bit of it, one another, but it pieced
together into a truly alarming legend. In bald outline it was as
follows:

A church far more ancient than that in which my uncle terrified us
every Sunday had once stood not three hundred yards away, on the shelf
of level ground below the quarry from which its stones were hewn.