THE WINGLESS VICTORY CHAPTER I CLOVER HONEY AND GULL'S WING THE black cliffs of Bossiney Cove threw solid shadows on the sand, but above the chasm the blaze of westering light glistened on the bleached heads of sea-thrift. To left and right headland rose beyond headland, from Trevose on the west to the great shutter of Hennacliff on the east. Beyond these more headlands were but shadows in the blue-grey of distance, each bearing jewelled names as full of the bygone zest of life, which is romance, as is Pentelicus itself. For this was the magic coast of the far west, and the nearest cape merged in the buttresses of Tintagel. All things shimmered in the heat-haze as if the air were full of the breath of a great fire, and along the coast in the stillness the ear caught the rhythm of the Atlantic rollers breaking on the ledges of slate. The sea, curving like a bow, was but a mirage, with cloud-cast shadows of deeper blue flecking its surface ominously; for the spaces of sea and sky, with the rock bastions guarding the sun-tanned cliffs, were but waiting for the shivering whimper of distant storm. On the road that winds upward from the cove there appeared the figures of two women, their skirts whistling through the sea-thrift as they passed. The sun caught the sparkle of a buckle at the waist of the younger woman and flashed on the red of her sunshade-finding, too, a moment's B harbourage in the depths of her hair, which, black as it was indoors, in the light gleamed brown in its depths like the fur of a black beast. Wilmot Borlace was a tiny woman, somewhat like a wild strawberry, for she had the knack of gathering but the daintiest perfection from food and air. The waves of dark hair half hid her blue-veined forehead, above the stormcloud eyes that, on a close analysis, showed grey-brown at the surface, filmy grey within, black in the depths. Tiny wrists, tiny neck, with an ivory skin that darkened into brown shadows with weariness or pain: it is a type that some call Spanish in the far west, but is probably of much older ancestry in the land. The quivering restlessness of Wilmot's manner was accentuated by the oak-like build of Tryphena White, the Amazon of the farm kitchen, by whose side she walked. A muscular woman was Tryphena, with fierce beady eyes and blue-black hair that whitened into a ring round the temples, like a human rook. They stood for a moment looking down at the cove from which they had just come. In the surf the sun gleamed on the bare limbs of racing boys, who, mad with the sting of the sea-wind and their own dancing pulses, tossed a ball from hand to hand. One splendid lad stood for a second outlined against the sky on the sun-warmed surface of a rock. The left button on the shoulder of his bathing-suit had burst, and the heave of his flat, boyish breast could be seen from above: in the panting heart-beats that shook his lithe flanks the glory of old marble lived again. Then with a shout he plunged; the momentary sense of lissom power was over, and the lads became, at the feet of the weed-hung Elephant rock, but human mayflies once more. "Rapscallions," said Tryphena, turning away in an ardour of propriety, "and not so much as a shift between the most of 'em." Then, as they turned inland across the cliff-fields, she resumed the subject of her previous conversation-Wilmot's marriage, now three months accomplished, but still a subject of wonder in Bossiney, where wonders live far longer than nine days. "What comes over me," said Tryphena, "is that a maid like you should ha' been found to commit matrimony with 'en. Whiskers and that, like a day-cat that's been after cream, and you not such a bad-looking maid after all, when you don't dress up a proper old fright." "But," protested Mrs. Borlace, "he shaved off the whiskers before he proposed." "It isn't so much," answered Tryphena, dogmatically, "what a man is that matters; it's the way you happen to see 'en. Now, I never think of Dr. Borlace but what I see whiskers, though there mayn't be none to his face at the minute. But there, 'twas written down above against your name, Dr. Anthony Borlace, and no maid can go against that." As the two paused for a moment to enable Tryphena to readjust the market-basket on her hip, it could be seen that the faces of both, notwithstanding the differences due to class and education, bore a similar expression, for both wore the look of struggle. Struggle or acquiescence in the sullen flow of things it is the bed-rock difference in faces, not snub nose or aquiline, rosy lips or pale. In these two, though the one recognized only the material evils of cold, hunger, dirt, and nakedness, and the other usually lived in that pursuit of inward joys which so seldom leads joywards, the sense of struggle produced a look of kinship that was unmistakable. Wilmot Quick, now Wilmot Borlace, as a child had left her mother's house at Bossiney to live with her uncle at |