Rewards and Fairies
by Rudyard Kipling · English · Gutenberg #32772 · 424,844 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Rewards and Fairies
Author: Rudyard Kipling
Illustrator: Frank Craig
Release date: June 11, 2010 [eBook #32772]
Most recently updated: January 6, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32772
Credits: Produced by David Edwards, KD Weeks and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REWARDS AND FAIRIES ***
Produced by David Edwards, KD Weeks and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
Transcriber's Note: Printer's errors and typos have been corrected.
Italics are indicated using _underscore_ characters. Consult the
Transcriber's Notes at the end of this text for details.
REWARDS
AND
FAIRIES
BY
RUDYARD KIPLING
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY FRANK CRAIG_
TORONTO
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD.
1910
COPYRIGHT, 1910
BY RUDYARD KIPLING
CONTENTS
PAGE
_A Charm_ ix
Introduction xi
Cold Iron 1
_Cold Iron_ 25
Gloriana 27
_The Two Cousins_ 29
_The Looking-Glass_ 51
The Wrong Thing 53
_A Truthful Song_ 55
_King Henry VII. and the Shipwrights_ 81
Marklake Witches 85
_The Way Through the Woods_ 87
_Brookland Road_ 113
The Knife and the Naked Chalk 115
_The Run of the Downs_ 117
_Song of the Men's Side_ 141
Brother Square-Toes 143
_Philadelphia_ 145
_If_---- 175
'A Priest in Spite of Himself' 177
_A St. Helena Lullaby_ 179
'_Poor Honest Men_' 213
The Conversion of St. Wilfrid 217
_Eddi's Service_ 219
_Song of the Red War-Boat_ 243
A Doctor of Medicine 247
_An Astrologer's Song_ 249
'_Our Fathers of Old_' 275
Simple Simon 277
_The Thousandth Man_ 279
_Frankie's Trade_ 303
The Tree of Justice 305
_The Ballad of Minepit Shaw_ 307
_A Carol_ 337
ILLUSTRATIONS
'Admiral Boy--Vice-Admiral Babe,' says
Gloriana, 'I cry your pardon' _Face page_ 41
I kneeled, and he tapped me on the shoulder.
'Rise up, Sir Harry Dawe,' he says " 74
They made the sign which no Indian makes
outside of the Medicine Lodges " 171
'You'll open a road from the East unto the
West, and back again' " 292
_A CHARM_
_Take of English earth as much
As either hand may rightly clutch.
In the taking of it breathe
Prayer for all who lie beneath--
Not the great nor well bespoke,
But the mere uncounted folk
Of whose life and death is none
Report or lamentation.
Lay that earth upon thy heart,
And thy sickness shall depart!_
_It shall sweeten and make whole
Fevered breath and festered soul;
It shall mightily restrain
Over-busy hand and brain;
It shall ease thy mortal strife
'Gainst the immortal woe of life,
Till thyself restored shall prove
By what grace the Heavens do move._
_Take of English flowers these--
Spring's full-facéd primroses,
Summer's wild wide-hearted rose,
Autumn's wall-flower of the close,
And, thy darkness to illume,
Winter's bee-thronged ivy-bloom.
Seek and serve them where they bide
From Candlemas to Christmas-tide.
For these simples used aright
Shall restore a failing sight._
_These shall cleanse and purify
Webbed and inward-turning eye;
These shall show thee treasure hid,
Thy familiar fields amid,
At thy threshold, on thy hearth,
Or about thy daily path;
And reveal (which is thy need)
Every man a King indeed!_
INTRODUCTION
Once upon a time, Dan and Una, brother and sister, living in the English
country, had the good fortune to meet with Puck, _alias_ Robin
Goodfellow, _alias_ Nick o' Lincoln, _alias_ Lob-lie-by-the-Fire, the
last survivor in England of those whom mortals call Fairies. Their
proper name, of course, is 'The People of the Hills.' This Puck, by
means of the magic of Oak, Ash, and Thorn, gave the children power--
To see what they should see and hear what they should hear,
Though it should have happened three thousand year.
The result was that from time to time, and in different places on the
farm and in the fields and the country about, they saw and talked to
some rather interesting people. One of these, for instance, was a Knight
of the Norman Conquest, another a young Centurion of a Roman Legion
stationed in England, another a builder and decorator of King Henry
VII.'s time; and so on and so forth; as I have tried to explain in a
book called _Puck of Pook's Hill_.
A year or so later, the children met Puck once more, and though they
were then older and wiser, and wore boots regularly instead of going
bare-footed when they got the chance, Puck was as kind to them as ever,
and introduced them to more people of the old days.
He was careful, of course, to take away their memory of their walks and
conversations afterwards, but otherwise he did not interfere; and Dan
and Una would find the strangest sort of persons in their gardens or
woods.
In the stories that follow I am trying to tell something about those
people.
Cold Iron
When Dan and Una had arranged to go out before breakfast, they did not
remember it was Midsummer Morning. They only wanted to see the otter
which, old Hobden said, had been fishing their brook for weeks; and
early morning was the time to surprise him. As they tiptoed out of the
house into the wonderful stillness, the church clock struck five. Dan
took a few steps across the dew-blobbed lawn, and looked at his black
footprints.
'I think we ought to be kind to our poor boots,' he said. 'They'll get
horrid wet.'
It was their first Summer in boots, and they hated them, so they took
them off, and slung them round their necks, and paddled joyfully over
the dripping turf where the shadows lay the wrong way, like evening in
the East.
The sun was well up and warm, but by the brook the last of the night
mist still fumed off the water. They picked up the chain of otter's
footprints on the mud, and followed it from the bank, between the weeds
and the drenched mowing, while the birds shouted with surprise. Then
the track left the brook and became a smear, as though a log had been
dragged along.
They traced it into Three Cows meadow, over the mill-sluice to the
Forge, round Hobden's garden, and then up the slope till it ran out on
the short turf and fern of Pook's Hill, and they heard the
cock-pheasants crowing in the woods behind them.
'No use!' said Dan, questing like a puzzled hound. 'The dew's drying
off, and old Hobden says otters'll travel for miles.'
'I'm sure we've travelled miles.' Una fanned herself with her hat. 'How
still it is! It's going to be a regular roaster.' She looked down the
valley, where no chimney yet smoked.
'Hobden's up!' Dan pointed to the open door of the Forge cottage. 'What
d'you suppose he has for breakfast?'
'One of _them_. He says they eat good all times of the year.' Una jerked
her head at some stately pheasants going down to the brook for a drink.
A few steps farther on a fox broke almost under their bare feet, yapped,
and trotted off.
'Ah, Mus' Reynolds--Mus' Reynolds'--Dan was quoting from old
Hobden,--'if I knowed all you knowed, I'd know something.'[1]
[1] See 'The Winged Hats' in _Puck of Pook's Hill_.
'I say,' Una lowered her voice, 'you know that funny feeling of things
having happened before. I felt it when you said "Mus' Reynolds."'
'So did I,' Dan began. 'What is it?'
They faced each other stammering with excitement.
'Wait a shake! I'll remember in a minute. Wasn't it something about a
fox--last year. Oh, I nearly had it then!' Dan cried.
'Be quiet!' said Una, prancing excitedly. 'There was something happened
before we met the fox last year. Hills! Broken Hills--the play at the
theatre--see what you see----'
'I remember now,' Dan shouted. 'It's as plain as the nose on your
face--Pook's Hill--Puck's Hill--Puck!'
'I remember, too,' said Una. 'And it's Midsummer Day again!'
The young fern on a knoll rustled, and Puck walked out, chewing a
green-topped rush.
'Good Midsummer Morning to you. Here's a happy meeting,' said he. They
shook hands all round, and asked questions.
'You've wintered well,' he said after a while, and looked them up and
down. 'Nothing much wrong with you, seemingly.'
'They've put us into boots,' said Una. 'Look at my feet--they're all
pale white, and my toes are squdged together awfully.'
'Yes--boots make a difference,' Puck wriggled his brown, square, hairy
foot, and cropped a dandelion flower between the big toe and the next.
'I could do that--last year,' Dan said dismally, as he tried and failed.
'And boots simply ruin one's climbing.'
'There must be some advantage to them, I suppose,' said Puck, 'or folk
wouldn't wear them. Shall we come this way?'
They sauntered along side by side till they reached the gate at the far
end of the hillside. Here they halted just like cattle, and let the sun
warm their backs while they listened to the flies in the wood.
'Little Lindens is awake,' said Una, as she hung with her chin on the
top rail. 'See the chimney smoke?'
'To-day's Thursday, isn't it?' Puck turned to look at the old pink
farmhouse across the little valley. 'Mrs. Vincey's baking day. Bread
should rise well this weather.' He yawned, and that set them both
yawning.
The bracken about rustled and ticked and shook in every direction. They
felt that little crowds were stealing past.
'Doesn't that sound like--er--the People of the Hills?' said Una.
'It's the birds and wild things drawing up to the woods before people
get about,' said Puck, as though he were Ridley the keeper.
'Oh, we know that. I only said it sounded like.'
'As I remember 'em, the People of the Hills used to make more noise.
They'd settle down for the day rather like small birds settling down for
the night. But that was in the days when they carried the high hand. Oh,
me! The deeds that I've had act and part in, you'd scarcely believe!'
'I like that!' said Dan. 'After all you told us last year, too!'
'Only, the minute you went away, you made us forget everything,' said
Una.
Puck laughed and shook his head. 'I shall this year, too. I've given
you seizin of Old England, and I've taken away your Doubt and Fear, but
your memory and remembrance between whiles I'll keep where old Billy
Trott kept his night-lines--and that's where he could draw 'em up and
hide 'em at need. Does that suit?' He twinkled mischievously.
'It's got to suit,' said Una, and laughed. 'We can't magic back at you.'
She folded her arms and leaned against the gate. 'Suppose, now, you
wanted to magic me into something--an otter? Could you?'
'Not with those boots round your neck.'
'I'll take them off.' She threw them on the turf. Dan's followed
immediately. 'Now!' she said.
'Less than ever now you've trusted me. Where there's true faith, there's
no call for magic.' Puck's slow smile broadened all over his face.
'But what have boots to do with it?' said Una, perching on the gate.
'There's cold iron in them,' said Puck, and settled beside her. 'Nails
in the soles, I mean. It makes a difference.'
'How?'
'Can't you feel it does? You wouldn't like to go back to bare feet
again, same as last year, would you? Not really?'
'No--o. I suppose I shouldn't--not for always. I'm growing up, you
know,' said Una.
'But you told us last year, in the Long Slip--at the theatre--that you
didn't mind Cold Iron,' said Dan.
'_I_ don't; but folk in housen, as the People of the Hills call them,
must be ruled by Cold Iron. Folk in housen are born on the near side of
Cold Iron--there's iron in every man's house, isn't there? They handle
Cold Iron every day of their lives, and their fortune's made or spoilt
by Cold Iron in some shape or other. That's how it goes with Flesh and
Blood, and one can't prevent it.'
'I don't quite see. How do you mean?' said Dan.
'It would take me some time to tell you.'
'Oh, it's ever so long to breakfast,' said Dan. 'We looked in the larder
before we came out.' He unpocketed one big hunk of bread and Una
another, which they shared with Puck.
'That's Little Lindens' baking,' he said, as his white teeth sunk in it.
'I know Mrs. Vincey's hand.' He ate with a slow sideways thrust and
grind, just like old Hobden, and, like Hobden, hardly dropped a crumb.
The sun flashed on Little Lindens' windows, and the cloudless sky grew
stiller and hotter in the valley.
'Ah--Cold Iron,' he said at last to the impatient children. 'Folk in
housen, as the People of the Hills say, grow so careless about Cold
Iron. They'll nail the Horseshoe over the front door, and forget to put
it over the back. Then, some time or other, the People of the Hills slip
in, find the cradle-babe in the corner, and----'
'Oh, I know. Steal it and leave a changeling,' Una cried.
'No,' said Puck firmly. 'All that talk of changelings is people's excuse
for their own neglect. Never believe 'em. I'd whip 'em at the cart-tail
through three parishes if I had my way.'
'But they don't do it now,' said Una.
'Whip, or neglect children? Umm! Some folks and some fields never alter.
But the People of the Hills didn't work any changeling tricks. They'd
tiptoe in and whisper, and weave round the cradle-babe in the
chimney-corner--a fag-end of a charm here, or half a spell there--like
kettles singing; but when the babe's mind came to bud out afterwards, it
would act differently from other people in its station. That's no
advantage to man or maid. So I wouldn't allow it with my folks' babies
here. I told Sir Huon so once.'
'Who was Sir Huon?' Dan asked, and Puck turned on him in quiet
astonishment.
'Sir Huon of Bordeaux--he succeeded King Oberon. He had been a bold
knight once, but he was lost on the road to Babylon, a long while back.
Have you ever heard, "How many miles to Babylon?"'
'Of course,' said Dan, flushing.
'Well, Sir Huon was young when that song was new. But about tricks on
mortal babies. I said to Sir Huon in the fern here, on just such a
morning as this: "If you crave to act and influence on folk in housen,
which I know is your desire, why don't you take some human cradle-babe
by fair dealing, and bring him up among yourselves on the far side of
Cold Iron--as Oberon did in time past? Then you could make him a
splendid fortune, and send him out into the world?"
'"Time past is past time," says Sir Huon. "I doubt if we could do it.
For one thing, the babe would have to be taken without wronging man,
woman, or child. For another, he'd have to be born on the far side of
Cold Iron--in some house where no Cold Iron ever stood; and for yet the
third, he'd have to be kept from Cold Iron all his days till we let him
find his fortune. No, it's not easy," he said, and he rode off,
thinking. You see, Sir Huon had been a man once.
'I happened to attend Lewes Market next Woden's Day even, and watched
the slaves being sold there--same as pigs are sold at Robertsbridge
Market nowadays. Only, the pigs have rings on their noses, and the
slaves had rings round their necks.'
'What sort of rings?' said Dan.
'A ring of Cold Iron, four fingers wide, and a thumb thick, just like a
quoit, but with a snap to it for to snap round the slave's neck. They
used to do a big trade in slave-rings at the Forge here, and ship them
to all parts of Old England, packed in oak sawdust. But, as I was
saying, there was a farmer out of the Weald who had bought a woman with
a babe in her arms, and he didn't want any encumbrances to her driving
his beasts home for him.'
'Beast himself!' said Una, and kicked her bare heel on the gate.
'So he blamed the auctioneer. "It's none o' my baby," the wench puts in.
"I took it off a woman in our gang who died on Terrible Down yesterday."
"I'll take it off to the Church then," says the farmer. "Mother
Church'll make a monk of it, and we'll step along home."
'It was dusk then. He slipped down to St. Pancras' Church, and laid the
babe at the cold chapel door. I breathed on the back of his stooping
neck--and--I've _heard_ he never could be warm at any fire afterwards. I
should have been surprised if he could! Then I whipped up the babe, and
came flying home here like a bat to his belfry.
'On the dewy break of morning of Thor's own day--just such a day as
this--I laid the babe outside the Hill here, and the People flocked up
and wondered at the sight.
'"You've brought him, then?" Sir Huon said, staring like any mortal man.
'"Yes, and he's brought his mouth with him too," I said. The babe was
crying loud for his breakfast.
'"What is he?" says Sir Huon, when the womenfolk had drawn him under to
feed him.
'"Full Moon and Morning Star may know," I says. "_I_ don't. By what I
could make out of him in the moonlight, he's without brand or blemish.
I'll answer for it that he's born on the far side of Cold Iron, for he
was born under a shaw on Terrible Down, and I've wronged neither man,
woman, nor child in taking him, for he is the son of a dead slave
woman."
'"All to the good, Robin," Sir Huon said. "He'll be the less anxious to
leave us. Oh, we'll give him a splendid fortune, and he shall act and
influence on folk in housen as we have always craved." His Lady came up
then, and drew him under to watch the babe's wonderful doings.'
'Who was his Lady?' said Dan.
'The Lady Esclairmonde. She had been a woman once, till she followed
Sir Huon across the fern, as we say. Babies are no special treat to
me--I've watched too many of them--so I stayed on the Hill. Presently I
heard hammering down at the Forge there,' Puck pointed towards Hobden's
cottage. 'It was too early for any workmen, but it passed through my
mind that the breaking day was Thor's own day. A slow North-East wind
blew up and set the oaks sawing and fretting in a way I remembered; so I
slipped over to see what I could see.'
'And what did you see?'
'A smith forging something or other out of Cold Iron. When it was
finished, he weighed it in his hand (his back was towards me), and
tossed it from him a longish quoit-throw down the valley. I saw Cold
Iron flash in the sun, but I couldn't quite make out where it fell.
_That_ didn't trouble me. I knew it would be found sooner or later by
some one.'
'How did you know?' Dan went on.
'Because I knew the Smith that made it,' said Puck quietly.
'Wayland Smith?'[2] Una suggested.
[2] See 'Weland's Sword' in _Puck of Pook's Hill_.
'No. I should have passed the time o' day with Wayland Smith, of course.
This other was different. So'--Puck made a queer crescent in the air
with his finger--'I counted the blades of grass under my nose till the
wind dropped and he had gone--he and his Hammer.'
'Was it Thor then?' Una murmured under her breath.
'Who else? It was Thor's own day.' Puck repeated the sign. 'I didn't
tell Sir Huon or his Lady what I'd seen. Borrow trouble for yourself if
that's your nature, but don't lend it to your neighbours. Moreover, I
might have been mistaken about the Smith's work. He might have been
making things for mere amusement, though it wasn't like him, or he might
have thrown away an old piece of made iron. One can never be sure. So I
held my tongue and enjoyed the babe. He was a wonderful child--and the
People of the Hills were so set on him, they wouldn't have believed me.
He took to me wonderfully. As soon as he could walk he'd putter forth
with me all about my Hill here. Fern makes soft falling! He knew when
day broke on earth above, for he'd thump, thump, thump, like an old
buck-rabbit in a bury, and I'd hear him say "Opy!" till some one who
knew the Charm let him out, and then it would be "Robin! Robin!" all
round Robin Hood's barn, as we say, till he'd found me.'
'The dear!' said Una. 'I'd like to have seen him!'
'Yes, he was a boy. And when it came to learning his words--spells and
such like--he'd sit on the Hill in the long shadows, worrying out bits
of charms to try on passers-by. And when the bird flew to him, or the
tree bowed to him for pure love's sake (like everything else on my
Hill), he'd shout, "Robin! Look--see! Look, see, Robin!" and sputter out
some spell or other that they had taught him, _all_ wrong end first,
till I hadn't the heart to tell him it was his own dear self and not
the words that worked the wonder. When he got more abreast of his words,
and could cast spells for sure, as we say, he took more and more notice
of things and people in the world. People, of course, always drew him,
for he was mortal all through.
'Seeing that he was free to move among folk in housen, under or over
Cold Iron, I used to take him along with me night-walking, where he
could watch folk, and I could keep him from touching Cold Iron. That
wasn't so difficult as it sounds, because there are plenty of things
besides Cold Iron in housen to catch a boy's fancy. He _was_ a handful,
though! I shan't forget when I took him to Little Lindens--his first
night under a roof. The smell of the rushlights and the bacon on the
beams--they were stuffing a feather-bed too, and it was a drizzling warm
night--got into his head. Before I could stop him--we were hiding in the
bakehouse--he'd whipped up a storm of wildfire, with flashlights and
voices, which sent the folk shrieking into the garden, and a girl
overset a hive there, and--of course _he_ didn't know till then such
things could touch him--he got badly stung, and came home with his face
looking like kidney potatoes!
'You can imagine how angry Sir Huon and Lady Esclairmonde were with poor
Robin! They said the Boy was never to be trusted with me night-walking
any more--and he took about as much notice of their order as he did of
the bee-stings. Night after night, as soon as it was dark, I'd pick up
his whistle in the wet fern, and off we'd flit together among folk in
housen till break of day--he asking questions, and I answering
according to my knowledge. Then we fell into mischief again!' Puck shook
till the gate rattled.
'We came across a man up at Brightling who was beating his wife with a
bat in the garden. I was just going to toss the man over his own
woodlump when the Boy jumped the hedge and ran at him. Of course the
woman took her husband's part, and while the man beat him, the woman
scratted his face. It wasn't till I danced among the cabbages like
Brightling Beacon all ablaze that they gave up and ran indoors. The
Boy's fine green-and-gold clothes were torn all to pieces, and he had
been welted in twenty places with the man's bat, and scratted by the
woman's nails to pieces. He looked like a Robertsbridge hopper on a
Monday morning.
'"Robin," said he, while I was trying to clean him down with a bunch of
hay, "I don't quite understand folk in housen. I went to help that old
woman, and she hit me, Robin!"
'"What else did you expect?" I said. "That was the one time when you
might have worked one of your charms, instead of running into three
times your weight."
'"I didn't think," he says. "But I caught the man one on the head that
was as good as any charm. Did you see it work, Robin?"
'"Mind your nose," I said. "Bleed it on a dockleaf--not your sleeve, for
pity's sake." I knew what the Lady Esclairmonde would say.
'_He_ didn't care. He was as happy as a gipsy with a stolen pony, and
the front part of his gold coat, all blood and grass stains, looked like
ancient sacrifices.
'Of course the People of the Hills laid the blame on me. The Boy could
do nothing wrong, in their eyes.
'"You are bringing him up to act and influence on folk in housen, when
you're ready to let him go," I said. "Now he's begun to do it, why do
you cry shame on me? That's no shame. It's his nature drawing him to his
kind."
'"But we don't want him to begin _that_ way," the Lady Esclairmonde
said. "We intend a splendid fortune for him--not your flitter-by-night,
hedge-jumping, gipsy-work."
'"I don't blame you, Robin," says Sir Huon, "but I _do_ think you might
look after the Boy more closely."
'"I've kept him away from Cold Iron these sixteen years," I said. "You
know as well as I do, the first time he touches Cold Iron he'll find his
own fortune, in spite of everything you intend for him. You owe me
something for that."
'Sir Huon, having been a man, was going to allow me the right of it, but
the Lady Esclairmonde, being the Mother of all Mothers, over-persuaded
him.
'"We're very grateful," Sir Huon said, "but we think that just for the
present you are about too much with him on the Hill."
'"Though you have said it," I said, "I will give you a second chance." I
did not like being called to account for my doings on my own Hill. I
wouldn't have stood it even that far except I loved the Boy.
'"No! No!" says the Lady Esclairmonde. "He's never any trouble when he's
left to me and himself. It's your fault."
'"You have said it," I answered. "Hear me! From now on till the Boy has
found his fortune, whatever that may be, I vow to you all on my Hill, by
Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, _and_ by the Hammer of Asa Thor"'--again Puck
made that curious double-cut in the air--'"that you may leave me out of
all your counts and reckonings." Then I went out'--he snapped his
fingers--'like the puff of a candle, and though they called and cried,
they made nothing by it. I didn't promise not to keep an eye on the Boy,
though. I watched him close--close--close!
'When he found what his people had forced me to do, he gave them a piece
of his mind, but they all kissed and cried round him, and being only a
boy, he came over to their way of thinking (I don't blame him), and
called himself unkind and ungrateful; and it all ended in fresh shows
and plays, and magics to distract him from folk in housen. Dear heart
alive! How he used to call and call on me, and I couldn't answer, or
even let him know that I was near!'
'Not even once?' said Una. 'If he was very lonely?'
'No, he couldn't,' said Dan, who had been thinking. 'Didn't you swear by
the Hammer of Thor that you wouldn't, Puck?'
'By that Hammer!' was the deep rumbled reply. Then he came back to his
soft speaking voice. 'And the Boy _was_ lonely, when he couldn't see me
any more. He began to try to learn all learning (he had good teachers),
but I saw him lift his eyes from the big black books towards folk in
housen all the time. He studied song-making (good teacher she had too!),
but he sung those songs with his back toward the Hill, and his face
toward folk. _I_ know! I have sat and grieved over him grieving within a
rabbit's jump of him. Then he studied the High, Low, and Middle Magic.
He had promised the Lady Esclairmonde he would never go near folk in
housen; so he had to make shows and shadows for his mind to chew on.'
'What sort of shows?' said Dan.
'Just boy's magic as we say. I'll show you some, some time. It pleased
him for the while, and it didn't hurt any one in particular except a few
men coming home late from the taverns. But I knew what it was a sign of,
and I followed him like a weasel follows a rabbit. As good a boy as ever
lived! I've seen him with Sir Huon and the Lady Esclairmonde stepping
just as they stepped to avoid the track of Cold Iron in a furrow, or
walking wide of some old ash-tot because a man had left his swop-hook or
spade there; and all his heart aching to go straightforward among folk
in housen all the time. Oh, a good boy! They always intended a fine
fortune for him--but they could never find it in their heart to let him
begin. I've heard that many warned them, but they wouldn't be warned.
So it happened _as_ it happened.
'One hot night I saw the Boy roving about here wrapped in his flaming
discontents. There was flash on flash against the clouds, and rush on
rush of shadows down the valley till the shaws were full of his hounds
giving tongue, and the wood-ways were packed with his knights in armour
riding down into the water-mists--all his own magic, of course. Behind
them you could see great castles lifting slow and splendid on arches of
moonshine, with maidens waving their hands at the windows, which all
turned into roaring rivers; and then would come the darkness of his own
young heart wiping out the whole slateful. But boy's magic doesn't
trouble me--or Merlin's either for that matter. I followed the Boy by
the flashes and the whirling wildfire of his discontent, and oh, but I
grieved for him! Oh, but I grieved for him! He pounded back and forth
like a bullock in a strange pasture--sometimes alone--sometimes
waist-deep among his shadow-hounds--sometimes leading his shadow-knights
on a hawk-winged horse to rescue his shadow-girls. I never guessed he
had such magic at his command; but it's often that way with boys.
'Just when the owl comes home for the second time, I saw Sir Huon and
the Lady ride down my Hill, where there's not much magic allowed except
mine. They were very pleased at the Boy's magic--the valley flared with
it--and I heard them settling his splendid fortune when they should find
it in their hearts to let him go to act and influence among folk in
housen. Sir Huon was for making him a great King somewhere or other, and
the Lady was for making him a marvellous wise man whom all should praise
for his skill and kindness. She was very kind-hearted.
'Of a sudden we saw the flashes of his discontent turned back on the
clouds, and his shadow-hounds stopped baying.
'"There's Magic fighting Magic over yonder," the Lady Esclairmonde
cried, reining up. "Who is against him?"
'I could have told her, but I did not count it any of my business to
speak of Asa Thor's comings and goings.'
'How did you know?' said Una.
'A slow North-East wind blew up, sawing and fretting through the oaks in
a way I remembered. The wildfire roared up, one last time in one sheet,
and snuffed out like a rush-light, and a bucketful of stinging hail
fell. We heard the Boy walking in the Long Slip--where I first met you.
'"Here, oh, come here!" said the Lady Esclairmonde, and stretched out
her arms in the dark.
'He was coming slowly, but he stumbled in the footpath, being, of
course, mortal man.
'"Why, what's this?" he said to himself. We three heard him.
'"Hold, lad, hold! 'Ware Cold Iron!" said Sir Huon, and they two swept
down like night-jars, crying as they rode.
'I ran at their stirrups, but it was too late. We felt that the Boy had
touched Cold Iron somewhere in the dark, for the Horses of the Hill
shied off, and whipped round, snorting.
'Then I judged it was time for me to show myself in my own shape; so I
did.
'"Whatever it is," I said, "he has taken hold of it. Now we must find
out whatever it _is_ that he has taken hold of; for that will be his
fortune."
'"Come here, Robin," the Boy shouted, as soon as he heard my voice. "I
don't know what I've hold of."
'"It is in your hands," I called back. "Tell us if it is hard and cold,
with jewels atop. For that will be a King's Sceptre."
'"Not by a furrow-long," he said, and stooped and tugged in the dark. We
heard him.
'"Has it a handle and two cutting edges?" I called. "For that'll be a
Knight's Sword."
'"No, it hasn't," he says. "It's neither ploughshare, whittle, hook, nor
crook, nor aught I've yet seen men handle." By this time he was
scratting in the dirt to prize it up.
'"Whatever it is, you know who put it there, Robin," said Sir Huon to
me, "or you would not ask those questions. You should have told me as
soon as you knew."
'"What could you or I have done against the Smith that made it and laid
it for him to find?" I said, and I whispered Sir Huon what I had seen at
the Forge on Thor's Day, when the babe was first brought to the Hill.
'"Oh, good-bye, our dreams!" said Sir Huon. "It's neither sceptre,
sword, nor plough! Maybe yet it's a bookful of learning, bound with
iron clasps. There's a chance for a splendid fortune in that
sometimes."
'But we knew we were only speaking to comfort ourselves, and the Lady
Esclairmonde, having been a woman, said so.
'"Thur aie! Thur help us!" the Boy called. "It is round, without end,
Cold Iron, four fingers wide and a thumb thick, and there is writing on
the breadth of it."
'"Read the writing if you have the learning," I called. The darkness had
lifted by then, and the owl was out over the fern again.
'He called back, reading the runes on the iron:
"Few can see
Further forth
Than when the child
Meets the Cold Iron."
And there he stood, in clear starlight, with a new, heavy, shining
slave-ring round his proud neck.
'"Is this how it goes?" he asked, while the Lady Esclairmonde cried.
'"That is how it goes," I said. He hadn't snapped the catch home yet,
though.
'"What fortune does it mean for him?" said Sir Huon, while the Boy
fingered the ring. "You who walk under Cold Iron, you must tell us and
teach us."
'"Tell I can, but teach I cannot," I said. "The virtue of the Ring is
only that he must go among folk in housen henceforward, doing what they
want done, or what he knows they need, all Old England over. Never will
he be his own master, nor yet ever any man's. He will get half he gives,
and give twice what he gets, till his life's last breath; and if he lays
aside his load before he draws that last breath, all his work will go
for naught."
'"Oh, cruel, wicked Thor!" cried the Lady Esclairmonde. "Ah, look, see,
all of you! The catch is still open! He hasn't locked it. He can still
take it off. He can still come back. Come back!" She went as near as she
dared, but she could not lay hands on Cold Iron. The Boy could have
taken it off, yes. We waited to see if he would, but he put up his hand,
and the snap locked home.
'"What else could I have done?" said he.
'"Surely, then, you will do," I said. "Morning's coming, and if you three
have any farewells to make, make them now, for, after sunrise, Cold Iron
must be your master."
'So the three sat down, cheek by wet cheek, telling over their farewells
till morning light. As good a boy as ever lived, he was.'
'And what happened to him?' asked Dan.
'When morning came, Cold Iron was master of him and his fortune, and he
went to work among folk in housen. Presently he came across a maid
like-minded with himself, and they were wedded, and had bushels of
children, as the saying is. Perhaps you'll meet some of his breed, this
year.'
'Thank you,' said Una. 'But what did the poor Lady Esclairmonde do?'
'What _can_ you do when Asa Thor lays the Cold Iron in a lad's path? She
and Sir Huon were comforted to think they had given the Boy good store
of learning to act and influence on folk in housen. For he _was_ a good
boy! Isn't it getting on for breakfast time? I'll walk with you a
piece.'
When they were well in the centre of the bone-dry fern, Dan nudged Una,
who stopped and put on a boot as quickly as she could.
'Now,' she said, 'you can't get any Oak, Ash, and Thorn leaves from
here, and'--she balanced wildly on one leg--'I'm standing on Cold Iron.
What'll you do if we don't go away?'
'E-eh? Of all mortal impudence!' said Puck, as Dan, also in one boot,
grabbed his sister's hand to steady himself. He walked round them,
shaking with delight. 'You think I can only work with a handful of dead
leaves? This comes of taking away your Doubt and Fear! I'll show you!'
* * * * *
A minute later they charged into old Hobden at his simple breakfast of
cold roast pheasant, shouting that there was a wasps' nest in the fern
which they had nearly stepped on, and asking him to come and smoke it
out.
'It's too early for wops-nestes, an' I don't go diggin' in the Hill, not
for shillin's,' said the old man placidly. 'You've a thorn in your foot,
Miss Una. Sit down, and put on your t'other boot. You're too old to be
caperin' barefoot on an empty stomach. Stay it with this chicken o'
mine.'
COLD IRON
'_Gold is for the mistress--silver for the maid!
Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade._'
'Good!' said the Baron, sitting in his hall,
'But Iron--Cold Iron--is master of them all!'
So he made rebellion 'gainst the King his liege,
Camped before his citadel and summoned it to siege--
'Nay!' said the cannoneer on the castle wall,
'But Iron--Cold Iron--shall be master of you all!'
Woe for the Baron and his knights so strong,
When the cruel cannon-balls laid 'em all along!
He was taken prisoner, he was cast in thrall,
And Iron--Cold Iron--was master of it all!
Yet his King spake kindly (Oh, how kind a Lord!)
'What if I release thee now and give thee back thy sword?'
'Nay!' said the Baron, 'mock not at my fall,
For Iron--Cold Iron--is master of men all.'
'_Tears are for the craven, prayers are for the clown--
Halters for the silly neck that cannot keep a crown._'
'As my loss is grievous, so my hope is small,
For Iron--Cold Iron--must be master of men all!'
Yet his King made answer (few such Kings there be!)
'Here is Bread and here is Wine--sit and sup with me.
Eat and drink in Mary's name, the whiles I do recall
How Iron--Cold Iron--can be master of men all!'
He took the Wine and blessed It; He blessed and brake the Bread.
With His own Hands He served Them, and presently He said:
'Look! These Hands they pierced with nails outside my city wall
Show Iron--Cold Iron--to be master of men all!
'Wounds are for the desperate, blows are for the strong,
Balm and oil for weary hearts all cut and bruised with wrong.
I forgive thy treason--I redeem thy fall--
For Iron--Cold Iron--must be master of men all!'
'_Crowns are for the valiant--sceptres for the bold!
Thrones and powers for mighty men who dare to take and hold._'
'Nay!' said the Baron, kneeling in his hall,
'But Iron--Cold Iron--is master of man all!
Iron, out of Calvary, is master of man all!'
Gloriana
THE TWO COUSINS
Valour and Innocence
Have latterly gone hence
To certain death by certain shame attended.
Envy--ah! even to tears!--
The fortune of their years
Which, though so few, yet so divinely ended.
Scarce had they lifted up
Life's full and fiery cup,
Than they had set it down untouched before them.
Before their day arose
They beckoned it to close--
Close in destruction and confusion o'er them.
They did not stay to ask
What prize should crown their task,
Well sure that prize was such as no man strives for;
But passed into eclipse,
Her kiss upon their lips--
Even Belphoebe's, whom they gave their lives for!
Gloriana
Willow Shaw, the little fenced wood where the hop-poles are stacked like
Indian wigwams, had been given to Dan and Una for their very own kingdom
when they were quite small. As they grew older, they contrived to keep
it most particularly private. Even Phillips, the gardener, told them
every time he came in to take a hop-pole for his beans, and old Hobden
would no more have thought of setting his rabbit-wires there without
leave, given fresh each spring, than he would have torn down the calico
and marking-ink notice on the big willow which said: 'Grown-ups not
allowed in the Kingdom unless brought.'
Now you can understand their indignation when, one blowy July afternoon,
as they were going up for a potato-roast, they saw somebody moving among
the trees. They hurled themselves over the gate, dropping half the
potatoes, and while they were picking them up Puck came out of a wigwam.
'Oh, it's you, is it?' said Una. 'We thought it was people.'
'I saw you were angry--from your legs,' he answered with a grin.
'Well, it's our own Kingdom--not counting you, of course.'
'That's rather why I came. A lady here wants to see you.'
'What about?' said Dan cautiously.
'Oh, just Kingdoms and things. She knows about Kingdoms.'
There was a lady near the fence dressed in a long dark cloak that hid
everything except her high red-heeled shoes. Her face was half covered
by a black silk fringed mask, without goggles. And yet she did not look
in the least as if she motored.
Puck led them up to her and bowed solemnly. Una made the best
dancing-lesson curtsy she could remember. The lady answered with a long,
deep, slow, billowy one.
'Since it seems that you are a Queen of this Kingdom,' she said, 'I can
do no less than acknowledge your sovereignty.' She turned sharply on
staring Dan. 'What's in your head, lad? Manners?'
'I was thinking how wonderfully you did that curtsy,' he answered.
She laughed a rather shrill laugh. 'You're a courtier already. Do you
know anything of dances, wench--or Queen, must I say?'
'I've had some lessons, but I can't really dance a bit,' said Una.
'You should learn then.' The lady moved forward as though she would
teach her at once. 'It gives a woman alone among men or her enemies
time to think how she shall win or--lose. A woman can only work in man's
playtime. Heigho!' She sat down on the bank.
Old Middenboro, the lawn-mower pony, stumped across the paddock and hung
his sorrowful head over the fence.
'A pleasant Kingdom,' said the lady, looking round. 'Well enclosed. And
how does your Majesty govern it? Who is your Minister?'
Una did not quite understand. 'We don't play that,' she said.
'Play?' The lady threw up her hands and laughed.
'We have it for our own, together,' Dan explained.
'And d'you never quarrel, young Burleigh?'
'Sometimes, but then we don't tell.'
The lady nodded. 'I've no brats of my own, but I understand keeping a
secret between Queens and their Ministers. _Ay de mi!_ But with no
disrespect to present majesty, methinks your realm is small, and
therefore likely to be coveted by man and beast. For example'--she
pointed to Middenboro--'yonder old horse, with the face of a Spanish
friar--does he never break in?'
'He can't. Old Hobden stops all our gaps for us,' said Una, 'and we let
Hobden catch rabbits in the Shaw.'
The lady laughed like a man. 'I see! Hobden catches conies--rabbits--for
himself, and guards your defences for you. Does he make a profit out of
his coney-catching?'
'We never ask,' said Una. 'Hobden's a particular friend of ours.'
'Hoity-toity!' the lady began angrily. Then she laughed. 'But I forget.
It is your Kingdom. I knew a maid once that had a larger one than this
to defend, and so long as her men kept the fences stopped, she asked 'em
no questions either.'
'Was she trying to grow flowers?' said Una.
'No, trees--perdurable trees. Her flowers all withered.' The lady leaned
her head on her hand.
'They do if you don't look after them. We've got a few. Would you like
to see? I'll fetch you some.' Una ran off to the rank grass in the shade
behind the wigwam, and came back with a handful of red flowers. 'Aren't
they pretty?' she said. 'They're Virginia stock.'
'Virginia?' said the lady, and lifted them to the fringe of her mask.
'Yes. They come from Virginia. Did your maid ever plant any?'
'Not herself--but her men adventured all over the earth to pluck or to
plant flowers for her crown. They judged her worthy of them.'
'And was she?' said Dan cheerfully.
'_Quien sabe?_ (who knows?) But at least, while her men toiled abroad
she toiled in England, that they might find a safe home to come back
to.'
'And what was she called?'
'Gloriana--Belphoebe--Elizabeth of England.' Her voice changed at each
word.
'You mean Queen Bess?' The lady bowed her head a little towards Dan.
'You name her lightly enough, young Burleigh. What might you know of
her?' said she.
'Well, I--I've seen the little green shoes she left at Brickwall
House--down the road, you know. They're in a glass case--awfully tiny
things.'
'Oh, Burleigh, Burleigh!' she laughed. 'You are a courtier too soon.'
'But they are,' Dan insisted. 'As little as dolls' shoes. Did you really
know her well?'
'Well. She was a--woman. I've been at her Court all my life. Yes, I
remember when she danced after the banquet at Brickwall. They say she
danced Philip of Spain out of a brand-new kingdom that day. Worth the
price of a pair of old shoes--hey?'
She thrust out one foot, and stooped forward to look at its broad
flashing buckle.
'You've heard of Philip of Spain--long-suffering Philip,' she said, her
eyes still on the shining stones. 'Faith, what some men will endure at
some women's hands passes belief! If _I_ had been a man, and a woman had
played with me as Elizabeth played with Philip, I would have----' She
nipped off one of the Virginia stocks and held it up between finger and
thumb. 'But for all that'--she began to strip the leaves one by
one--'they say--and I am persuaded--that Philip loved her.' She tossed
her head sideways.
'I don't quite understand,' said Una.
'The high heavens forbid that you should, wench!' She swept the flowers
from her lap and stood up in the rush of shadows that the wind chased
through the wood.
'I should like to know about the shoes,' said Dan.
'So ye shall, Burleigh. So ye shall, if ye watch me. 'Twill be as good
as a play.'
'We've never been to a play,' said Una.
The lady looked at her and laughed. 'I'll make one for you. Watch! You
are to imagine that she--Gloriana, Belphoebe, Elizabeth--has gone on a
progress to Rye to comfort her sad heart (maids are often melancholic),
and while she halts at Brickwall House, the village--what was its name?'
She pushed Puck with her foot.
'Norgem,' he croaked, and squatted by the wigwam.
'Norgem village loyally entertains her with a masque or play, and a
Latin oration spoken by the parson, for whose false quantities, if I'd
made 'em in my girlhood, I should have been whipped.'
'You whipped?' said Dan.
'Soundly, sirrah, soundly! She stomachs the affront to her scholarship,
makes her grateful, gracious thanks from the teeth outwards, thus'--(the
lady yawned)--'Oh, a Queen may love her subjects in her heart, and yet
be dog-wearied of 'em in body and mind--and so sits down'--her skirts
foamed about her as she sat--'to a banquet beneath Brickwall Oak. Here
for her sins she is waited upon by---- What were the young cockerels'
names that served Gloriana at table?'
'Frewens, Courthopes, Fullers, Husseys,' Puck began.
She held up her long jewelled hand. 'Spare the rest! They were the best
blood of Sussex, and by so much the more clumsy in handling the dishes
and plates. Wherefore'--she looked funnily over her shoulder--'you are
to think of Gloriana in a green and gold-laced habit, dreadfully
expecting that the jostling youths behind her would, of pure jealousy or
devotion, spatter it with sauces and wines. The gown was Philip's gift,
too! At this happy juncture a Queen's messenger, mounted and mired,
spurs up the Rye road and delivers her a letter'--she giggled--'a letter
from a good, simple, frantic Spanish gentleman called--Don Philip.'
'That wasn't Philip, King of Spain?' Dan asked.
'Truly, it was. 'Twixt you and me and the bedpost, young Burleigh, these
kings and queens are very like men and women, and I've heard they write
each other fond, foolish letters that none of their ministers should
open.'
'Did her ministers ever open Queen Elizabeth's letters?' said Una.
'Faith, yes! But she'd have done as much for theirs, any day. You are to
think of Gloriana, then (they say she had a pretty hand), excusing
herself thus to the company--for the Queen's time is never her own--and,
while the music strikes up, reading Philip's letter, as I do.' She drew
a real letter from her pocket, and held it out almost at arm's length,
like the old post-mistress in the village when she reads telegrams.
'_Hm! Hm! Hm!_ Philip writes as ever most lovingly. He says his Gloriana
is cold, for which reason he burns for her through a fair written
page.' She turned it with a snap. 'What's here? Philip complains that
certain of her gentlemen have fought against his generals in the Low
Countries. He prays her to hang 'em when they re-enter her realms. (Hm,
that's as may be.) Here's a list of burnt shipping slipped between two
vows of burning adoration. Oh, poor Philip! His admirals at sea--no less
than three of 'em--have been boarded, sacked, and scuttled on their
lawful voyages by certain English mariners (gentlemen, he will not call
them), who are now at large and working more piracies in _his_ American
ocean, which the Pope gave him. (He and the Pope should guard it, then!)
Philip hears, but his devout ears will not credit it, that Gloriana in
some fashion countenances these villains' misdeeds, shares in their
booty, and--oh, shame!--has even lent them ships royal for their sinful
thefts. Therefore he requires (which is a word Gloriana loves not),
_requires_ that she shall hang 'em when they return to England, and
afterwards shall account to him for all the goods and gold they have
plundered. A most loving request! If Gloriana will not be Philip's
bride, she shall be his broker and his butcher! Should she still be
stiff-necked, he writes--see where the pen digged the innocent
paper!--that he hath both the means and the intention to be revenged on
her. Aha! Now we come to the Spaniard in his shirt!' (She waved the
letter merrily.) 'Listen here! Philip will prepare for Gloriana a
destruction from the West--a destruction from the West--far exceeding
that which Pedro de Avila wrought upon the Huguenots. And he rests and
remains, kissing her feet and her hands, her slave, her enemy, or her
conqueror, as he shall find that she uses him.'
She thrust back the letter under her cloak, and went on acting, but in a
softer voice. 'All this while--hark to it--the wind blows through
Brickwall Oak, the music plays, and, with the company's eyes upon her,
the Queen of England must think what this means. She cannot remember the
name of Pedro de Avila, nor what he did to the Huguenots, nor when, nor
where. She can only see darkly some dark motion moving in Philip's dark
mind, for he hath never written before in this fashion. She must smile
above the letter as though it were good news from her ministers--the
smile that tires the mouth and the poor heart. What shall she do?' Again
her voice changed.
'You are to fancy that the music of a sudden wavers away. Chris Hatton,
Captain of her bodyguard, quits the table all red and ruffled, and
Gloriana's virgin ear catches the clash of swords at work behind a wall.
The mothers of Sussex look round to count their chicks--I mean those
young game-cocks that waited on her. Two dainty youths have stepped
aside into Brickwall garden with rapier and dagger on a private point of
honour. They are haled out through the gate, disarmed and glaring--the
lively image of a brace of young Cupids transformed into pale, panting
Cains. Ahem! Gloriana beckons awfully--thus! They come up for judgment.
Their lives and estates lie at her mercy whom they have doubly offended,
both as Queen and woman. But la! what will not foolish young men do for
a beautiful maid?'
'Why? What did she do? What had they done?' said Una.
'Hsh! You mar the play! Gloriana had guessed the cause of the trouble.
They were handsome lads. So she frowns a while and tells 'em not to be
bigger fools than their mothers had made 'em, and warns 'em, if they do
not kiss and be friends on the instant, she'll have Chris Hatton horse
and birch 'em in the style of the new school at Harrow. (Chris looks
sour at that.) Lastly, because she needed time to think on Philip's
letter burning in her pocket, she signifies her pleasure to dance with
'em and teach 'em better manners. Whereat the revived company call down
Heaven's blessing on her gracious head; Chris and the others prepare
Brickwall House for a dance, and she walks in the clipped garden between
those two lovely young sinners who are both ready to sink for shame.
They confess their fault. It appears that midway in the banquet the
elder--they were cousins--conceived that the Queen looked upon him with
special favour. The younger, taking the look to himself, after some
words gives the elder the lie; hence, as she guessed, the duel.'
'And which had she really looked at?' Dan asked.
[Illustration: 'Admiral Boy--Vice-Admiral Babe,' says Gloriana, 'I cry
your pardon.'--P. 41.]
'Neither--except to wish them farther off. She was afraid all the while
they'd spill dishes on her gown. She tells 'em this, poor chicks--and
it completes their abasement. When they had grilled long enough, she
says: "And so you would have fleshed your maiden swords for me--for me?"
Faith, they would have been at it again if she'd egged 'em on! but their
swords--oh, prettily they said it!--had been drawn for her once or twice
already.
'"And where?" says she. "On your hobby-horses before you were breeched?"
'"On my own ship," says the elder. "My cousin was vice-admiral of our
venture in his pinnace. We would not have you think of us as brawling
children."
'"No, no," says the younger, and flames like a very Tudor rose. "At
least the Spaniards know us better."
'"Admiral Boy--Vice-Admiral Babe," says Gloriana, "I cry your pardon.
The heat of these present times ripens childhood to age more quickly
than I can follow. But we are at peace with Spain. Where did you break
your Queen's peace?"
'"On the sea called the Spanish Main, though 'tis no more Spanish than
my doublet," says the elder. Guess how that warmed Gloriana's already
melting heart! She would never suffer any sea to be called Spanish in
her private hearing.
'"And why was I not told? What booty got you, and where have you hid it?
Disclose," says she. "You stand in some danger of the gallows for
pirates."
'"The axe, most gracious lady," says the elder, "for we are gentle
born." He spoke truth, but no woman can brook contradiction.
"Hoity-toity," says she, and, but that she remembered that she was a
Queen, she'd have cuffed the pair of 'em. "It shall be gallows, hurdle,
and dung-cart if I choose."
'"Had our Queen known of our going beforehand, Philip might have held
her to blame for some small things we did on the seas," the younger
lisps.
'"As for treasure," says the elder, "we brought back but our bare lives.
We were wrecked on the Gascons' Graveyard, where our sole company for
three months was the bleached bones of De Avila's men."
'Gloriana's mind jumped back to Philip's last letter.
'"De Avila that destroyed the Huguenots? What d'you know of him?" she
says. The music called from the house here, and they three turned back
between the yews.
'"Simply that De Avila broke in upon a plantation of Frenchmen on that
coast, and very Spaniardly hung them all for heretics--eight hundred or
so. The next year Dominique de Gorgues, a Gascon, broke in upon De
Avila's men, and very justly hung 'em all for murderers--five hundred or
so. No Christians inhabit there now," says the elder lad, "though 'tis a
goodly land north of Florida."
'"How far is it from England?" asks prudent Gloriana.
'"With a fair wind, six weeks. They say that Philip will plant it again
soon." This was the younger, and he looked at her out of the corner of
his innocent eye.
'Chris Hatton, fuming, meets and leads her into Brickwall Hall, where
she dances--thus. A woman can think while she dances--can think. I'll
show you. Watch!'
She took off her cloak slowly, and stood forth in dove-coloured satin,
worked over with pearls that trembled like running water in the running
shadows of the trees. Still talking--more to herself than to the
children--she swam into a majestical dance of the stateliest balancings,
the haughtiest wheelings and turnings aside, the most dignified
sinkings, the gravest risings, all joined together by the elaboratest
interlacing steps and circles.
They leaned forward breathlessly to watch the splendid acting.
'Would a Spaniard,' she began, looking on the ground, 'speak of his
revenge till his revenge were ripe? No. Yet a man who loved a woman
might threaten her in the hope that his threats would make her love him.
Such things have been.' She moved slowly across a bar of sunlight. 'A
destruction from the West may signify that Philip means to descend on
Ireland. But then my Irish spies would have had some warning. The Irish
keep no secrets. No--it is not Ireland. Now why--why--why'--the red
shoes clicked and paused--'does Philip name Pedro Melendez de Avila, a
general in his Americas, unless'--she turned more quickly--'unless he
intends to work his destruction from the Americas? Did he say De Avila
only to put her off her guard, or for this once has his black pen
betrayed his black heart? We'--she raised herself to her full
height--'England must forestall Master Philip. But not openly,' she sank
again--'we cannot fight Spain openly--not yet--not yet.' She stepped
three paces as though she were pegging down some snare with her
twinkling shoe-buckles. 'The Queen's mad gentlemen may fight Philip's
poor admirals where they find 'em, but England, Gloriana, Harry's
daughter, must keep the peace. Perhaps, after all, Philip loves her--as
many men and boys do. That may help England. Oh, _what_ shall help
England?'
She raised her head--the masked head that seemed to have nothing to do
with the busy feet--and stared straight at the children.
'I think this is rather creepy,' said Una with a shiver. 'I wish she'd
stop.'
The lady held out her jewelled hand as though she were taking some one
else's hand in the Grand Chain.
'Can a ship go down into the Gascons' Graveyard and wait there?' she
asked into the air, and passed on rustling.
'She's pretending to ask one of the cousins, isn't she?' said Dan, and
Puck nodded.
Back she came in the silent, swaying, ghostly dance. They saw she was
smiling beneath the mask, and they could hear her breathing hard.
'I cannot lend you any my ships for the venture; Philip would hear of
it,' she whispered over her shoulder; 'but as much guns and powder as
you ask, if you do not ask too----' her voice shot up and she stamped
her foot thrice. 'Louder! Louder, the music in the gallery! Oh, me, but
I have burst out of my shoe!'
She gathered her skirts in each hand, and began a curtsy. 'You will go
at your own charges,' she whispered straight before her. 'Oh, enviable
and adorable age of youth!' Her eyes shone through the mask-holes. 'But
I warn you you'll repent it. Put not your trust in princes--or Queens.
Philip's ships'll blow you out of water. You'll not be frightened? Well,
we'll talk on it again, when I return from Rye, dear lads.'
The wonderful curtsy ended. She stood up. Nothing stirred on her except
the rush of the shadows.
'And so it was finished,' she said to the children. 'Why d'you not
applaud?'
'What was finished?' said Una.
'The dance,' the lady replied offendedly. 'And a pair of green shoes.'
'I don't understand a bit,' said Una.
'Eh? What did _you_ make of it, young Burleigh?'
'I'm not quite sure,' Dan began, 'but----'
'You never can be--with a woman. But----'
'But I thought Gloriana meant the cousins to go back to the Gascons'
Graveyard, wherever that was.'
''Twas Virginia afterwards. Her plantation of Virginia.'
'Virginia afterwards, and stop Philip from taking it. Didn't she say
she'd lend 'em guns?'
'Right so. But not ships--_then_.'
'And I thought you meant they must have told her they'd do it off their
own bat, without getting her into a row with Philip. Was I right?'
'Near enough for a Minister of the Queen. But remember she gave the lads
full time to change their minds. She was three long days at Rye
Royal--knighting of fat Mayors. When she came back to Brickwall, they
met her a mile down the road, and she could feel their eyes burn through
her riding-mask. Chris Hatton, poor fool, was vexed at it.
'"You would not birch them when I gave you the chance," says she to
Chris. "Now you must get me half an hour's private speech with 'em in
Brickwall garden. Eve tempted Adam in a garden. Quick, man, or I may
repent!"'
'She was a Queen. Why did she not send for them herself,' said Una.
The lady shook her head. 'That was never her way. I've seen her walk to
her own mirror by bye-ends, and the woman that cannot walk straight
_there_ is past praying for. Yet I would have you pray for her! What
else--what else in England's name could she have done?' She lifted her
hand to her throat for a moment. 'Faith,' she cried, 'I'd forgotten the
little green shoes! She left 'em at Brickwall--so she did. And I
remember she gave the Norgem parson--John Withers, was he?--a text for
his sermon--"Over Edom have I cast out my shoe." Neat, if he'd
understood!'
'I don't understand,' said Una. 'What about the two cousins?'
'You are as cruel as a woman,' the lady answered. '_I_ was not to blame.
I told you I gave 'em time to change their minds. On my honour (_ay de
mi!_), she asked no more of 'em at first than to wait a while off that
coast--the Gascons' Graveyard--to hover a little if their ships chanced
to pass that way--they had only one tall ship and a pinnace--only to
watch and bring me word of Philip's doings. One must watch Philip
always. What a murrain right had he to make any plantation there, a
hundred leagues north of his Spanish Main, and only six weeks from
England? By my dread father's soul, I tell you he had none--none!' She
stamped her red foot again, and the two children shrunk back for a
second.
'Nay, nay. You must not turn from me too! She laid it all fairly before
the lads in Brickwall garden between the yews. I told 'em that if Philip
sent a fleet (and to make a plantation he could not well send less),
their poor little cock-boats could not sink it. They answered that, with
submission, the fight would be their own concern. She showed 'em again
that there could be only one end to it--quick death on the sea, or slow
death in Philip's prisons. They asked no more than to embrace death for
my sake. Many men have prayed to me for life. I've refused 'em, and
slept none the worse after; but when my men, my tall, fantastical young
men beseech me on their knees for leave to die for me, it shakes
me--ah, it shakes me to the marrow of my old bones.'
Her chest sounded like a board as she hit it.
'She showed 'em all. I told 'em that this was no time for open war with
Spain. If by miracle inconceivable they prevailed against Philip's
fleet, Philip would hold me accountable. For England's sake, to save
war, I should e'en be forced (I told 'em so) to give him up their young
lives. If they failed, and again by some miracle escaped Philip's hand,
and crept back to England with their bare lives, they must lie--oh, I
told 'em all--under my sovereign displeasure. She could not know them,
see them, nor hear their names, nor stretch out a finger to save them
from the gallows, if Philip chose to ask it.
'"Be it the gallows, then," says the elder. (I could have wept, but that
my face was made for the day.)
'"Either way--any way--this venture is death, which I know you fear not.
But it is death with assured dishonour," I cried.
'"Yet our Queen will know in her heart what we have done," says the
younger.
'"Sweetheart," I said. "A queen has no heart."
'"But she is a woman, and a woman would not forget," says the elder. "We
will go!" They knelt at my feet.
'"Nay, dear lads--but here!" I said, and I opened my arms to them and I
kissed them.
'"Be ruled by me," I said. "We'll hire some ill-featured old
tarry-breeks of an admiral to watch the Graveyard, and you shall come
to Court."
'"Hire whom you please," says the elder; "we are ruled by you, body and
soul"; and the younger, who shook most when I kissed 'em, says between
his white lips, "I think you have power to make a god of a man."
'"Come to Court and be sure of it," I says.
'They shook their heads and I knew--I knew, that go they would. If I had
not kissed them--perhaps I might have prevailed.'
'Then why did you do it?' said Una. 'I don't think you knew really what
you wanted done.'
'May it please your Majesty,' the lady bowed her head low, 'this
Gloriana whom I have represented for your pleasure was a woman and a
Queen. Remember her when you come to your kingdom.'
'But did the cousins go to the Gascons' Graveyard?' said Dan, as Una
frowned.
'They went,' said the lady.
'Did they ever come back?' Una began; but--'Did they stop King Philip's
fleet?' Dan interrupted.
The lady turned to him eagerly.
'D'you think they did right to go?' she asked.
'I don't see what else they could have done,' Dan replied, after
thinking it over.
'D'you think she did right to send 'em?' The lady's voice rose a little.
'Well,' said Dan, 'I don't see what else she could have done, either--do
you? How did they stop King Philip from getting Virginia?'
'There's the sad part of it. They sailed out that autumn from Rye Royal,
and there never came back so much as a single rope-yarn to show what had
befallen them. The winds blew, and they were not. Does that make you
alter your mind, young Burleigh?'
'I expect they were drowned, then. Anyhow, Philip didn't score, did he?'
'Gloriana wiped out her score with Philip later. But if Philip had won,
would you have blamed Gloriana for wasting those lads' lives?'
'Of course not. She was bound to try to stop him.'
The lady coughed. 'You have the root of the matter in you. Were I Queen,
I'd make you Minister.'
'We don't play that game,' said Una, who felt that she disliked the lady
as much as she disliked the noise the high wind made tearing through
Willow Shaw.
'Play!' said the lady with a laugh, and threw up her hands affectedly.
The sunshine caught the jewels on her many rings and made them flash
till Una's eyes dazzled, and she had to rub them. Then she saw Dan on
his knees picking up the potatoes they had spilled at the gate.
'There wasn't anybody in the Shaw, after all,' he said. 'Didn't you
think you saw some one?'
'I'm most awfully glad there isn't,' said Una. Then they went on with
the potato-roast.
THE LOOKING-GLASS
_Queen Bess was Harry's daughter!_
The Queen was in her chamber, and she was middling old,
Her petticoat was satin and her stomacher was gold.
Backwards and forwards and sideways did she pass,
Making up her mind to face the cruel looking-glass.
The cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass
As comely or as kindly or as young as once she was!
The Queen was in her chamber, a-combing of her hair,
There came Queen Mary's spirit and it stood behind her chair,
Singing, 'Backwards and forwards and sideways may you pass,
But I will stand behind you till you face the looking-glass.
The cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass
As lovely or unlucky or as lonely as I was!'
The Queen was in her chamber, a-weeping very sore,
There came Lord Leicester's spirit and it scratched upon the door,
Singing, 'Backwards and forwards and sideways may you pass,
But I will walk beside you till you face the looking-glass.
The cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass
As hard and unforgiving or as wicked as you was!'
The Queen was in her chamber; her sins were on her head;
She looked the spirits up and down and statelily she said:
'Backwards and forwards and sideways though I've been,
Yet I am Harry's daughter and I am England's Queen!'
And she faced the looking-glass (and whatever else there was),
And she saw her day was over and she saw her beauty pass
In the cruel looking-glass that can always hurt a lass
More hard than any ghost there is or any man there was!
The Wrong Thing
A TRUTHFUL SONG
I.
THE BRICKLAYER:--
_I tell this tale which is strictly true,
Just by way of convincing you
How very little since things were made
Things have altered in the building trade._
A year ago, come the middle o' March,
We was building flats near the Marble Arch,
When a thin young man with coal-black hair
Came up to watch us working there.
Now there wasn't a trick in brick or stone
That this young man hadn't seen or known;
Nor there wasn't a tool from trowel to maul
But this young man could use 'em all!
Then up and spoke the plumbyers bold,
Which was laying the pipes for the hot and cold:
'Since you with us have made so free,
Will you kindly say what your name might be?'
The young man kindly answered them:
'It might be Lot or Methusalem,
Or it might be Moses (a man I hate),
Whereas it is Pharaoh surnamed the Great.
'Your glazing is new and your plumbing's strange,
But otherwise I perceive no change,
And in less than a month if you do as I bid
I'd learn you to build me a Pyramid.'
II.
THE SAILOR:--
_I tell this tale which is stricter true,
Just by way of convincing you
How very little since things was made
Things have altered in the shipwright's trade._
In Blackwall Basin yesterday
A China barque re-fitting lay,
When a fat old man with snow-white hair
Came up to watch us working there.
Now there wasn't a knot which the riggers knew
But the old man made it--and better too;
Nor there wasn't a sheet, or a lift, or a brace,
But the old man knew its lead and place.
Then up and spake the caulkyers bold,
Which was packing the pump in the after-hold:
'Since you with us have made so free,
Will you kindly tell what your name might be?'
The old man kindly answered them:
'It might be Japhet, it might be Shem,
Or it might be Ham (though his skin was dark),
Whereas it is Noah, commanding the Ark.
'Your wheel is new and your pumps are strange,
But otherwise I perceive no change,
And in less than a week, if she did not ground,
I'd sail this hooker the wide world round!'
BOTH: _We tell these tales which are strictest true, etc._
The Wrong Thing
Dan had gone in for building model boats; but after he had filled the
schoolroom with chips, which he expected Una to clear away, they turned
him out of doors and he took all his tools up the hill to Mr.
Springett's yard, where he knew he could make as much mess as he chose.
Old Mr. Springett was a builder, contractor, and sanitary engineer, and
his yard, which opened off the village street, was always full of
interesting things. At one end of it was a long loft, reached by a
ladder, where he kept his iron-bound scaffold planks, tins of paints,
pulleys, and odds and ends he had found in old houses. He would sit here
by the hour watching his carts as they loaded or unloaded in the yard
below, while Dan gouged and grunted at the carpenter's bench near the
loft window. Mr. Springett and Dan had always been particular friends,
for Mr. Springett was so old he could remember when railways were being
made in the southern counties of England, and people were allowed to
drive dogs in carts.
One hot, still afternoon--the tar-paper on the roof smelt like
ships--Dan, in his shirt sleeves, was smoothing down a new schooner's
bow, and Mr. Springett was talking of barns and houses he had built. He
said he never forgot any stick or stone he had ever handled, or any man,
woman, or child he had ever met. Just then he was very proud of the
village Hall at the entrance to the village, which he had finished a few
weeks before.
'An' I don't mind tellin' you, Mus' Dan,' he said, 'that the Hall will
be my last job top of this mortal earth. I didn't make ten pounds--no,
nor yet five--out o' the whole contrac', but my name's lettered on the
foundation stone--_Ralph Springett, Builder_--and the stone she's bedded
on four foot good concrete. If she shifts any time these five hundred
years, I'll sure-ly turn in my grave. I told the Lunnon architec' so
when he come down to oversee my work.'
'What did he say?' Dan was sandpapering the schooner's port bow.
'Nothing. The Hall ain't more than one of his small jobs for _him_, but
'tain't small to me, an' my name is cut and lettered, frontin' the
village street, I do hope an' pray, for time everlastin.' You'll want
the little round file for that holler in her bow. Who's there?' Mr.
Springett turned stiffly in his chair.
A long pile of scaffold-planks ran down the centre of the loft. Dan
looked, and saw Hal of the Draft's touzled head beyond them.[3]
[3] See 'Hal o' the Draft' in _Puck of Pook's Hill_.
'Be you the builder of the village Hall?' he asked of Mr. Springett.
'I be,' was the answer. 'But if you want a job----'
Hal laughed. 'No, faith!' he said. 'Only the Hall is as good and honest
a piece of work as I've ever run a rule over. So, being born hereabouts,
and being reckoned a master among masons, and accepted as a master
mason, I made bold to pay my brotherly respects to the builder.'
'Aa--um!' Mr. Springett looked important. 'I be a bit rusty, but I'll
try ye!'
He asked Hal several curious questions, and the answers must have
pleased him, for he invited Hal to sit down. Hal moved up, always
keeping behind the pile of planks so that only his head showed, and sat
down on a trestle in the dark corner at the back of Mr. Springett's
desk. He took no notice of Dan, but talked at once to Mr. Springett
about bricks, and cement, and lead and glass, and after a while Dan went
on with his work. He knew Mr. Springett was pleased, because he tugged
his white sandy beard, and smoked his pipe in short puffs. The two men
seemed to agree about everything, but when grown-ups agree they
interrupt each other almost as much as if they were quarrelling. Hal
said something about workmen.
'Why, that's what _I_ always say,' Mr. Springett cried. 'A man who can
only do one thing, he's but next-above-fool to the man that can't do
nothing. That's where the Unions make their mistake.'
'My thought to the very dot.' Dan heard Hal slap his tight-hosed leg.
'I've suffered in my time from these same Guilds--Unions d'you call 'em?
All their precious talk of the mysteries of their trades--why, what
does it come to?'
'Nothin'! You've just about hit it,' said Mr. Springett, and rammed his
hot tobacco with his thumb.
'Take the art of wood-carving,' Hal went on. He reached across the
planks, grabbed a wooden mallet, and moved his other hand as though he
wanted something. Mr. Springett without a word passed him one of Dan's
broad chisels. 'Ah! Wood-carving, for example. If you can cut wood and
have a fair draft of what ye mean to do, a Heaven's name take chisel and
mall and let drive at it, say I! You'll soon find all the mystery,
forsooth, of wood-carving under your proper hand!' Whack, came the
mallet on the chisel, and a sliver of wood curled up in front of it. Mr.
Springett watched like an old raven.
'All art is one, man--one!' said Hal between whacks; 'and to wait on
another man to finish out----'
'To finish out your work ain't no sense,' Mr. Springett cut in. 'That's
what I'm always saying to the boy here.' He nodded towards Dan. 'That's
what I said when I put the new wheel into Brewster's Mill in Eighteen
hundred Seventy-two. I reckoned I was millwright enough for the job
'thout bringin' a man from Lunnon. An' besides, dividin' work eats up
profits, no bounds.'
Hal laughed his beautiful deep laugh, and Mr. Springett joined in till
Dan laughed too.
'You handle your tools, I can see,' said Mr. Springett. 'I reckon, if
you're any way like me, you've found yourself hindered by those--Guilds,
did you call 'em?--Unions, we say.'
'You may say so!' Hal pointed to a white scar on his cheek-bone. 'This
is a remembrance from the master watching Foreman of Masons on Magdalen
Tower, because, please you, I dared to carve stone without their leave.
They said a stone had slipped from the cornice by accident.'
'I know them accidents. There's no way to disprove 'em. An' stones ain't
the only things that slip,' Mr. Springett grunted. Hal went on:
'I've seen a scaffold-plank keckle and shoot a too-clever workman thirty
foot on to the cold chancel floor below. And a rope can break----'
'Yes, natural as nature; an' lime'll fly up in a man's eyes without any
breath o' wind sometimes,' said Mr. Springett. 'But who's to show
'twasn't a accident?'
'Who do these things?' Dan asked, and straightened his back at the bench
as he turned the schooner end-for-end in the vice to get at her counter.
'Them which don't wish other men to work no better nor quicker than they
do,' growled Mr. Springett. 'Don't pinch her so hard in the vice, Mus'
Dan. Put a piece o' rag in the jaws, or you'll bruise her. More than
that'--he turned towards Hal--'if a man has his private spite laid up
against you, the Unions give him his excuse for working it off.'
'Well I know it,' said Hal.
'They never let you go, them spiteful ones. I knowed a plasterer in
Eighteen hundred Sixty-one--down to the Wells. He was a Frenchy--a bad
enemy he was.'
'I had mine too. He was an Italian, called Benedetto. I met him first at
Oxford on Magdalen Tower when I was learning my trade--or trades, I
should say. A bad enemy he was, as you say, but he came to be my
singular good friend,' said Hal as he put down the mallet and settled
himself comfortably.
'What might his trade have been--plasterin'?' Mr. Springett asked.
'Plastering of a sort. He worked in stucco--fresco we call it. Made
pictures on plaster. Not but what he had a fine sweep of the hand in
drawing. He'd take the long sides of a cloister, trowel on his stuff,
and roll out his great all-abroad pictures of saints and croppy-topped
trees quick as a webster unrolling cloth almost. Oh, Benedetto could
draw, but a was a little-minded man, professing to be full of secrets of
colour or plaster--common tricks, all of 'em--and his one single talk
was how Tom, Dick or Harry had stole this or t'other secret art from
him.'
'I know that sort,' said Mr. Springett. 'There's no keeping peace or
making peace with such. An' they're mostly born an' bone idle.'
'True. Even his fellow-countrymen laughed at his jealousy. We two came
to loggerheads early on Magdalen Tower. I was a youngster then. Maybe I
spoke my mind about his work.'
'You shouldn't never do that.' Mr. Springett shook his head. 'That sort
lay it up against you.'
'True enough. This Benedetto did most specially. Body o' me, the man
lived to hate me! But I always kept my eyes open on a plank or a
scaffold. I was mighty glad to be shut of him when he quarrelled with
his Guild foreman, and went off, nose in air, and paints under his arm.
But'--Hal leaned forward--'if you hate a man or a man hates you----'
'_I_ know. You're everlastin' running acrost him,' Mr. Springett
interrupted. 'Excuse me, sir.' He leaned out of the window, and shouted
to a carter who was loading a cart with bricks.
'Ain't you no more sense than to heap 'em up that way?' he said. 'Take
an' throw a hundred of 'em off. It's more than the team can compass.
Throw 'em off, I tell you, and make another trip for what's left over.
Excuse me, sir. You was saying----'
'I was saying that before the end of the year I went to Bury to
strengthen the lead-work in the great Abbey east window there.'
'Now that's just one of the things I've never done. But I mind there was
a cheap excursion to Chichester in Eighteen hundred Seventy-nine, an' I
went an' watched 'em leading a won'erful fine window in Chichester
Cathedral. I stayed watchin' till 'twas time for us to go back. Dunno as
I had two drinks p'raps, all that day.'
Hal smiled. 'At Bury then, sure enough, I met my enemy Benedetto. He had
painted a picture in plaster on the south wall of the Refectory--a noble
place for a noble thing--a picture of Jonah.'
'Ah! Jonah an' his whale. I've never been as fur as Bury. You've worked
about a lot,' said Mr. Springett, with his eyes on the carter below.
'No. Not the whale. This was a picture of Jonah and the pompion that
withered. But all that Benedetto had shown was a peevish greybeard
huggled up in angle-edged drapery beneath a pompion on a wooden trellis.
This last, being a dead thing, he'd drawn it as 'twere to the life. But
fierce old Jonah, bared in the sun, angry even to death that his cold
prophecy was disproven--Jonah, ashamed, and already hearing the children
of Nineveh running to mock him--ah, that was what Benedetto had _not_
drawn!'
'He better ha' stuck to his whale, then,' said Mr. Springett.
'He'd ha' done no better with that. He draws the damp cloth off the
picture, an' shows it to me. I was a craftsman too, d'ye see?
'"'Tis good," I said, "but it goes no deeper than the plaster."
'"What?" he said in a whisper.
'"Be thy own judge, Benedetto," I answered. "Does it go deeper than the
plaster?"
'He reeled against a piece of dry wall. "No," he says, "and I know it. I
could not hate thee more than I have done these five years, but if I
live, I will try, Hal. I will try." Then he goes away. I pitied him, but
I had spoken truth. His picture went no deeper than the plaster.'
'Ah!' said Mr. Springett, who had turned quite red. 'You was talkin' so
fast I didn't understand what you was drivin' at. I've seen men--good
workmen they was--try to do more than they could do, and--and they
couldn't compass it. They knowed it, and it nigh broke their hearts
like. You was in your right, o' course, sir, to say what you thought o'
his work; but if you'll excuse me, was you in your duty?'
'I was wrong to say it,' Hal replied. 'God forgive me--I was young! He
was workman enough himself to know where he failed. But it all came
evens in the long run. By the same token, did ye ever hear o' one
Torrigiano--Torrisany we called him?'
'I can't say I ever did. Was he a Frenchy like?'
'No, a hectoring, hard-mouthed, long-sworded Italian builder, as vain as
a peacock and as strong as a bull, but, mark you, a master workman. More
than that--he could get his best work out of the worst men.'
'Which it's a gift. I had a foreman-bricklayer like him once,' said Mr.
Springett. 'He used to prod 'em in the back like with a pointing-trowel,
and they did wonders.'
'I've seen our Torrisany lay a 'prentice down with one buffet and raise
him with another--to make a mason of him. I worked under him at building
a chapel in London--a chapel and a tomb for the king.'
'I never knew kings went to chapel much,' said Mr. Springett. 'But I
always hold with a man, don't care who he be, seein' about his own grave
before he dies. Tidn't the sort of thing to leave to your family after
the will's read. I reckon 'twas a fine vault.'
'None finer in England. This Torrigiano had the contract for it, as
you'd say. He picked master craftsmen from all parts--England, France,
Italy, the Low Countries--no odds to him so long as they knew their
work, and he drove them like--like pigs at Brightling Fair. He called us
English all pigs. We suffered it because he was a master in his craft.
If he misliked any work that a man had done, with his own great hands
he'd rive it out, and tear it down before us all. "Ah, you pig--you
English pig!" he'd scream in the dumb wretch's face. "You answer me? You
look at me? You think at me? Come out with me into the cloisters. I will
teach you carving myself. I will gild you all over!" But when his
passion had blown out, he'd slip his arm round the man's neck, and
impart knowledge worth gold. 'Twould have done your heart good, Mus'
Springett, to see the two hundred of us--masons, jewellers, carvers,
gilders, iron workers and the rest--all toiling like cock-angels, and
this mad Italian hornet fleeing from one to next up and down the chapel.
'Done your heart good, it would!'
'I believe you,' said Mr. Springett. 'In Eighteen hundred Fifty-four, I
mind, the railway was bein' made into Hastin's. There was two thousand
navvies on it--all young--all strong--an' I was one of 'em. Oh, dearie
me! Excuse me, sir, but was your enemy workin' with you?'
'Benedetto? Be sure he was. He followed me like a lover. He painted
pictures on the chapel ceiling--slung from a chair. Torrigiano made us
promise not to fight till the work should be finished. We were both
master craftsmen, do ye see, and he needed us. None the less, I never
went aloft to carve 'thout testing all my ropes and knots each morning.
We were never far from each other. Benedetto 'ud sharpen his knife on
his sole while he waited for his plaster to dry--_wheet, wheet, wheet_.
I'd hear it where I hung chipping round a pillar-head, and we'd nod to
each other friendly-like. Oh, he was a craftsman, was Benedetto, but his
hate spoiled his eye and his hand. I mind the night I had finished the
models for the bronze saints round the tomb; Torrigiano embraced me
before all the chapel, and bade me to supper. I met Benedetto when I
came out. He was slavering in the porch like a mad dog.'
'Working himself up to it?' said Mr. Springett. 'Did he have it in at ye
that night?'
'No, no. That time he kept his oath to Torrigiano. But I pitied him. Eh,
well! Now I come to my own follies. I had never thought too little of
myself; but after Torrisany had put his arm round my neck, I--I'--Hal
broke into a laugh--'I lay there was not much odds 'twixt me and a
cock-sparrow in his pride.'
'I was pretty middlin' young once on a time,' said Mr. Springett.
'Then ye know that a man can't drink and dice and dress fine, and keep
company above his station, but his work suffers for it, Mus' Springett.'
'I never held much with dressin' up, but--you're right! The worst
mistakes _I_ ever made they was made on a Monday morning,' Mr.
Springett answered. 'We've all been one sort of fool or t'other. Mus'
Dan, Mus' Dan, take the smallest gouge, or you'll be spluttin' her stern
works clean out. Can't ye see the grain of the wood don't favour a
chisel?'
'I'll spare you some of my follies. But there was a man called
Brygandyne--Bob Brygandyne--Clerk of the King's Ships, a little, smooth,
bustling atomy, as clever as a woman to get work done for nothin'--a
won'erful smooth-tongued pleader. He made much o' me, and asked me to
draft him out a drawing, a piece of carved and gilt scroll-work for the
bows of one of the King's ships--the _Sovereign_ was her name.'
'Was she a man-of-war?' asked Dan.
'She was a war-ship, and a woman called Catherine of Castile desired the
King to give her the ship for a pleasure-ship of her own. _I_ did not
know at the time, but she'd been at Bob to get this scroll-work done and
fitted that the King might see it. I made him the picture, in an hour,
all of a heat after supper--one great heaving play of dolphins and a
Neptune or so reining in webby-footed sea-horses, and Arion with his
harp high atop of them. It was twenty-three foot long, and maybe nine
foot deep--painted and gilt.'
'It must ha' just about looked fine,' said Mr. Springett.
'That's the curiosity of it. 'Twas bad--rank bad. In my conceit I must
needs show it to Torrigiano, in the chapel. He straddles his legs;
hunches his knife behind him, and whistles like a storm-cock through a
sleet-shower. Benedetto was behind him. He were never far apart, I've
told you.
'"That is pig's work," says our Master. "Swine's work. You make any more
such things, even after your fine Court suppers, and you shall be sent
away."
'Benedetto licks his lips like a cat. "Is it so bad then, Master?" he
says. "What a pity!"
'"Yes," says Torrigiano. "Scarcely _you_ could do things so bad. I will
condescend to show."
'He talks to me then and there. No shouting, no swearing (it was too bad
for that); but good, memorable counsel, bitten in slowly. Then he sets
me to draft out a pair of iron gates, to take, as he said, the taste of
my naughty dolphins out of my mouth. Iron's sweet stuff if you don't
torture her, and hammered work is all pure, truthful line, with a reason
and a support for every curve and bar of it. A week at that settled my
stomach handsomely, and the Master let me put the work through the
smithy, where I sweated out more of my foolish pride.'
'Good stuff is good iron,' said Mr. Springett. 'I done a pair of lodge
gates once in Eighteen hundred Sixty-three.'
'Oh, I forgot to say that Bob Brygandyne whipped away my draft of the
ship's scroll-work, and would not give it back to me to re-draw. He said
'twould do well enough. Howsoever, my lawful work kept me too busied to
remember him. Body o' me, but I worked that winter upon the gates and
the bronzes for the tomb as I'd never worked before! I was leaner than a
lath, but I lived--I lived then!' Hal looked at Mr. Springett with his
wise, crinkled-up eyes, and the old man smiled back.
'Ouch!' Dan cried. He had been hollowing out the schooner's after-deck,
the little gouge had slipped and gashed the ball of his left thumb,--an
ugly, triangular tear.
'That came of not steadying your wrist,' said Hal calmly. 'Don't bleed
over the wood. _Do_ your work with your heart's blood, but no need to
let it show.' He rose and peered into a corner of the loft.
Mr. Springett had risen too, and swept down a ball of cobwebs from a
rafter.
'Clap that on,' was all he said, 'and put your handkerchief atop. 'Twill
cake over in a minute. It don't hurt now, do it?'
'No,' said Dan indignantly. 'You know it has happened lots of times.
I'll tie it up myself. Go on, sir.'
'And it'll happen hundreds of times more,' said Hal with a friendly nod
as he sat down again. But he did not go on till Dan's hand was tied up
properly. Then he said:
'One dark December day--too dark to judge colour--we was all sitting and
talking round the fires in the chapel (you heard good talk there), when
Bob Brygandyne bustles in and--"Hal, you're sent for," he squeals. I was
at Torrigiano's feet on a pile of put-locks, as I might be here,
toasting a herring on my knife's point. 'Twas the one English thing our
Master liked--salt herring.
'"I'm busy, about my art," I calls.
'"Art?" says Bob. "What's Art compared to your scroll-work for the
_Sovereign_. Come."
'"Be sure your sins will find you out," says Torrigiano. "Go with him
and see." As I followed Bob out I was aware of Benedetto, like a black
spot when the eyes are tired, sliddering up behind me.
'Bob hurries through the streets in the raw fog, slips into a doorway,
up stairs, along passages, and at last thrusts me into a little cold
room vilely hung with Flemish tapestries, and no furnishing except a
table and my draft of the _Sovereign's_ scroll-work. Here he leaves me.
Presently comes in a dark, long-nosed man in a fur cap.
'"Master Harry Dawe?" said he.
'"The same," I says. "Where a plague has Bob Brygandyne gone?"
'His thin eyebrows surged up a piece and come down again in a stiff bar.
"He went to the King," he says.
'"All one. What's your pleasure with me?" I says shivering, for it was
mortal cold.
'He lays his hand flat on my draft. "Master Dawe," he says, "do you know
the present price of gold leaf for all this wicked gilding of yours?"
'By that I guessed he was some cheese-paring clerk or other of the
King's Ships, so I gave him the price. I forget it now, but it worked
out to thirty pounds--carved, gilt, and fitted in place.
'"Thirty pounds!" he said, as though I had pulled a tooth of him. "You
talk as though thirty pounds was to be had for the asking. None the
less," he says, "your draft's a fine piece of work."
'I'd been looking at it ever since I came in, and 'twas viler even than
I judged it at first. My eye and hand had been purified the past months,
d'you see, by my iron work.
'"I could do it better now," I said. The more I studied my squabby
Neptunes the less I liked 'em; and Arion was a pure flaming shame atop
of the unbalanced dolphins.
'"I doubt it will be fresh expense to draft it again," he says.
'"Bob never paid me for the first draft. I lay he'll never pay me for
the second. 'Twill cost the King nothing if I re-draw it," I says.
'"There's a woman wishes it to be done quickly," he says. "We'll stick
to your first drawing, Mus' Dawe. But thirty pounds is thirty pounds.
You must make it less."
'And all the while the faults in my draft fair leaped out and hit me
between the eyes. At any cost, I thinks to myself, I must get it back
and re-draft it. He grunts at me impatiently, and a splendid thought
comes to me, which shall save me. By the same token, 'twas quite
honest.'
'They ain't always,' said Mr. Springett. 'How did you get out of it?'
'By the truth. I says to Master Fur Cap, as I might to you here, I
says, "I'll tell you something, since you seem a knowledgeable man. Is
the _Sovereign_ to lie in Thames river all her days, or will she take
the high seas?"
'"Oh," he says quickly, "the King keeps no cats that don't catch mice.
She must sail the seas, Master Dawe. She'll be hired to merchants for
the trade. She'll be out in all shapes o' weathers. Does that make any
odds?"
'"Why, then," says I, "the first heavy sea she sticks her nose into 'll
claw off half that scroll-work, and the next will finish it. If she's
meant for a pleasure-ship give me my draft again, and I'll porture you a
pretty, light piece of scroll-work, good, cheap. If she's meant for the
open sea, pitch the draft into the fire. She can never carry that weight
on her bows."
'He looks at me squintlings and plucks his under-lip.
'"Is this your honest, unswayed opinion?" he says.
'"Body o' me! Ask about!" I says. "Any seaman could tell you 'tis true.
I'm advising you against my own profit, but why I do so is my own
concern."
'"Not altogether," he says. "It's some of mine. You've saved me thirty
pounds, Master Dawe, and you've given me good arguments to use against a
wilful woman that wants my fine new ship for her own toy. We'll not have
any scroll-work." His face shined with pure joy.
'"Then see that the thirty pounds you've saved on it are honestly paid
the King," I says, "and keep clear o' womenfolk." I gathered up my
draft and crumpled it under my arm. "If that's all you need of me I'll
be gone," I says, "for I'm pressed."
'He turns him round and fumbles in a corner. "Too pressed to be made a
knight, Sir Harry?" he says, and comes at me smiling, with
three-quarters of a rusty sword.
'I pledge you my Mark I never guessed it was the King till that moment.
I kneeled, and he tapped me on the shoulder.
'"Rise up, Sir Harry Dawe," he says, and, in the same breath, "I'm
pressed, too," and slips through the tapestries, leaving me like a stuck
calf.
'It come over me, in a bitter wave like, that here was I, a master
craftsman, who had worked no bounds, soul or body, to make the King's
tomb and chapel a triumph and a glory for all time; and here, d'you see,
I was made knight, not for anything I'd slaved over, or given my heart
and guts to, but expressedly because I'd saved him thirty pounds and a
tongue-lashing from Catherine of Castile--she that had asked for the
ship. That thought shrivelled me withinsides while I was folding away my
draft. On the heels of it--maybe you'll see why--I began to grin to
myself. I thought of the earnest simplicity of the man--the King, I
should say--because I'd saved him the money; his smile as though he'd
won half France! I thought of my own silly pride and foolish
expectations that some day he'd honour me as a master craftsman. I
thought of the broken-tipped sword he'd found behind the hangings;
the dirt of the cold room, and his cold eye, wrapped up in his own
concerns, scarcely resting on me. Then I remembered the solemn chapel
roof and the bronzes about the stately tomb he'd lie in, and--d'ye
see?--the unreason of it all--the mad high humour of it all--took hold
on me till I sat me down on a dark stair-head in a passage, and laughed
till I could laugh no more. What else could I have done?
[Illustration: I kneeled, and he tapped me on the shoulder. 'Rise up,
Sir Harry Dawe,' he says.--P. 74.]
'I never heard his feet behind me--he always walked like a cat--but his
arm slid round my neck, pulling me back where I sat, till my head lay on
his chest, and his left hand held the knife plumb over my
heart--Benedetto! Even so I laughed--the fit was beyond my
holding--laughed while he ground his teeth in my ear. He was stark
crazed for the time.
'"Laugh," he said. "Finish the laughter. I'll not cut ye short. Tell me
now"--he wrenched at my head--"why the King chose to honour
you--you--you--you lickspittle Englishman? I am full of patience now. I
have waited so long." Then he was off at score about his Jonah in Bury
Refectory, and what I'd said of it, and his pictures in the chapel which
all men praised and none looked at twice (as if that was _my_ fault!)
and a whole parcel of words and looks treasured up against me through
years.
'"Ease off your arm a little," I said. "I cannot die by choking, for I
am just dubbed knight, Benedetto."
'"Tell me, and I'll confess ye, Sir Harry Dawe, knight. There's a long
night before ye. Tell," says he.
'So I told him--his chin on my crown--told him all; told it as well and
with as many words as I have ever told a tale at a supper with
Torrigiano. I knew Benedetto would understand, for, mad or sad, he was a
craftsman. I believed it to be the last tale I'd ever tell top of mortal
earth, and I would not put out bad work before I left the lodge. All
art's one art, as I said. I bore Benedetto no malice. My spirits, d'you
see, were catched up in a high, solemn exaltation, and I saw all earth's
vanities foreshortened and little, laid out below me like a town from a
cathedral scaffolding. I told him what befell, and what I thought of it.
I gave him the King's very voice at "Master Dawe, you've saved me thirty
pounds!" his peevish grunt while he looked for the sword; and how the
badger-eyed figures of Glory and Victory leered at me from the Flemish
hangings. Body o' me, 'twas a fine, noble tale, and, as I thought, my
last work on earth.
'"That is how I was honoured by the King," I said. "They'll hang ye for
killing me, Benedetto. And, since you've killed in the King's Palace,
they'll draw and quarter you; but you're too mad to care. Grant me,
though, ye never heard a better tale."
'He said nothing, but I felt him shake. My head on his chest shook; his
right arm fell away, his left dropped the knife, and he leaned with both
hands on my shoulder--shaking--shaking! I turned me round. No need to
put my foot on his knife. The man was speechless with laughter--honest
craftsman's mirth. The first time I'd ever seen him laugh. You know the
mirth that cuts off the very breath, while ye stamp and snatch at the
short ribs? That was Benedetto's case.
'When he began to roar and bay and whoop in the passage, I haled him out
into the street, and there we leaned against the wall and had it all
over again--waving our hands and wagging our heads--till the watch came
to know if we were drunk.
'Benedetto says to 'em, solemn as an owl: "You have saved me thirty
pound, Mus' Dawe," and off he pealed. In some sort we were mad drunk--I
because dear life had been given back to me, and he because, as he said
afterwards, because the old crust of hatred round his heart was broke up
and carried away by laughter. His very face had changed too.
'"Hal," he cries, "I forgive thee. Forgive me too, Hal. Oh, you English,
you English! Did it gall thee, Hal, to see the rust on the dirty sword?
Tell me again, Hal, how the King grunted with joy. Oh, let us tell the
Master."
'So we reeled back to the chapel, arms round each other's necks, and
when we could speak--he thought we'd been fighting--we told the Master.
Yes, we told Torrigiano, and he laughed till he rolled on the new cold
pavement. Then he knocked our heads together.
'"Ah, you English," he cried. "You are more than pigs. You are English.
Now you are well punished for your dirty fishes. Put the draft in the
fire, and never do so any more. You are a fool, Hal, and you are a fool,
Benedetto, but I need your works to please this beautiful English
King----"
'"And I meant to kill Hal," says Benedetto. "Master, I meant to kill him
because the English King had made him a knight."
'"Ah!" says the Master, shaking his finger. "Benedetto, if you had
killed my Hal, I should have killed you--in the cloister. But you are a
craftsman too, so I should have killed you like a craftsman, very, very
slowly--in an hour, if I could spare the time!" That was Torrigiano--the
Master!'
Mr. Springett sat quite still for some time after Hal had finished. Then
he turned dark red; then he rocked to and fro; then he coughed and
wheezed till the tears ran down his face. Dan knew by this that he was
laughing, but it surprised Hal at first.
'Excuse me, sir,' said Mr. Springett, 'but I was thinkin' of some
stables I built for a gentleman in Eighteen hundred Seventy-four. They
was stables in blue brick--very particular work. Dunno as they weren't
the best job which ever I'd done. But the gentleman's lady--she'd come
from Lunnon, new married--she was all for buildin' what she called a
haw-haw--what you an' me 'ud call a dik--right acrost his park. A
middlin' big job which I'd have had the contract of, for she spoke to me
in the library about it. But I told her there was a line o' springs
just where she wanted to dig her ditch, an' she'd flood the park if she
went on.'
'Were there any springs at all?' said Hal.
'Bound to be springs everywhere if you dig deep enough, ain't there? But
what I said about the springs put her out o' conceit o' diggin'
haw-haws, an' she took an' built a white tile dairy instead. But when I
sent in my last bill for the stables, the gentleman he paid it 'thout
even lookin' at it, and I hadn't forgotten nothin', I do assure you.
More than that, he slips two five-pound notes into my hand in the
library, an' "Ralph," he says--he allers called me by name--"Ralph," he
says, "you've saved me a heap of expense an' trouble this autumn." I
didn't say nothin', o' course. I knowed he didn't want any haw-haws
digged acrost his park no more'n _I_ did, but I never said nothing. No
more he didn't say nothing about my blue-brick stables, which was really
the best an' honestest piece o' work I'd done in quite a while. He give
me ten pounds for savin' him a hem of a deal o' trouble at home. I
reckon things are pretty much alike, all times, in all places.'
Hal and he laughed together. Dan couldn't quite understand what they
thought so funny, and went on with his work for some time without
speaking.
When he looked up, Mr. Springett, alone, was wiping his eyes with his
green and yellow pocket-handkerchief.
'Bless me, Mus' Dan, I've been asleep,' he said. 'An' I've dreamed a
dream which has made me laugh--laugh as I ain't laughed in a long day.
I can't remember what 'twas all about, but they do say that when old men
take to laughin' in their sleep, they're middlin' ripe for the next
world. Have you been workin' honest, Mus' Dan?'
'Ra-ather,' said Dan, unclamping the schooner from the vice. 'And look
how I've cut myself with the small gouge.'
'Ye-es. You want a lump o' cobwebs to that,' said Mr. Springett. 'Oh, I
see you've put it on already. That's right, Mus' Dan.'
KING HENRY VII. AND THE SHIPWRIGHTS
Harry our King in England, from London town is gone,
And comen to Hamull on the Hoke in the countie of Suthampton.
For there lay _The Mary of the Tower_, his ship of war so strong,
And he would discover, certaynely, if his shipwrights did him wrong.
He told not none of his setting forth, nor yet where he would go,
(But only my Lord of Arundel,) and meanly did he show,
In an old jerkin and patched hose that no man might him mark;
With his frieze hood and cloak about, he looked like any clerk.
He was at Hamull on the Hoke about the hour of the tide,
And saw the _Mary_ haled into dock, the winter to abide,
With all her tackle and habiliments which are the King his own;
But then ran on his false shipwrights and stripped her to the bone.
They heaved the main-mast overboard, that was of a trusty tree,
And they wrote down it was spent and lost by force of weather at sea.
But they sawen it into planks and strakes as far as it might go,
To maken beds for their own wives and little children also.
There was a knave called Slingawai, he crope beneath the deck,
Crying: 'Good felawes, come and see! The ship is nigh a wreck!
For the storm that took our tall main-mast, it blew so fierce and fell,
Alack! it hath taken the kettles and pans, and this brass pott as well!'
With that he set the pott on his head and hied him up the hatch,
While all the shipwrights ran below to find what they might snatch;
All except Bob Brygandyne and he was a yeoman good,
He caught Slingawai round the waist and threw him on to the mud.
'I have taken plank and rope and nail, without the King his leave,
After the custom of Portesmouth, but I will not suffer a thief.
Nay, never lift up thy hand at me! There's no clean hands in the trade--
Steal in measure,' quo' Brygandyne. 'There's measure in all things made!'
'Gramercy, yeoman!' said our King. 'Thy council liketh me.'
And he pulled a whistle out of his neck and whistled whistles three.
Then came my Lord of Arundel pricking across the down,
And behind him the Mayor and Burgesses of merry Suthampton town.
They drew the naughty shipwrights up, with the kettles in their hands,
And bound them round the forecastle to wait the King's commands.
But 'Since ye have made your beds,' said the King, 'ye needs must lie
thereon.
For the sake of your wives and little ones--felawes, get you gone!'
When they had beaten Slingawai, out of his own lips,
Our King appointed Brygandyne to be Clerk of all his ships.
'Nay, never lift up thy hands to me--there's no clean hands in the trade.
But steal in measure,' said Harry our King. 'There's measure in all
things made!'
_God speed the 'Mary of the Tower,' the 'Sovereign' and 'Grace Dieu,'
The 'Sweepstakes' and the 'Mary Fortune,' and the 'Henry of Bristol' too!
All tall ships that sail on the sea, or in our harbours stand,
That they may keep measure with Harry our King and peace in Engeland!_
Marklake Witches
THE WAY THROUGH THE WOODS
They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate.
(They fear not men in the woods
Because they see so few)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods....
But there is no road through the woods.
Marklake Witches
When Dan took up boat-building, Una coaxed Mrs. Vincey, the farmer's
wife at Little Lindens, to teach her to milk. Mrs. Vincey milks in the
pasture in summer, which is different from milking in the shed, because
the cows are not tied up, and until they know you they will not stand
still. After three weeks Una could milk _Red Cow_ or _Kitty Shorthorn_
quite dry, without her wrists aching, and then she allowed Dan to look.
But milking did not amuse him, and it was pleasanter for Una to be alone
in the quiet pastures with quiet-spoken Mrs. Vincey. So, evening after
evening, she slipped across to Little Lindens, took her stool from the
fern-clump beside the fallen oak, and went to work, her pail between her
knees, and her head pressed hard into the cow's flank. As often as not,
Mrs. Vincey would be milking cross _Pansy_ at the other end of the
pasture, and would not come near till it was time to strain and pour
off.
Once, in the middle of a milking, _Kitty Shorthorn_ boxed Una's ear with
her tail.
'You old pig!' said Una, nearly crying, for a cow's tail can hurt.
'Why didn't you tie it down, child?' said a voice behind her.
'I meant to, but the flies are so bad I let her off--and this is what
she's done!' Una looked round, expecting Puck, and saw a curly-haired
girl, not much taller than herself, but older, dressed in a curious
high-waisted, lavender-coloured riding-habit, with a high hunched collar
and a deep cape and a belt fastened with a steel clasp. She wore a
yellow velvet cap and tan gauntlets, and carried a real hunting-crop.
Her cheeks were pale except for two pretty pink patches in the middle,
and she talked with little gasps at the end of her sentences, as though
she had been running.
'You don't milk so badly, child,' she said, and when she smiled her
teeth showed small and even and pearly.
'Can you milk?' Una asked, and then flushed, for she heard Puck's
chuckle.
He stepped out of the fern and sat down, holding _Kitty Shorthorn's_
tail. 'There isn't much,' he said, 'that Miss Philadelphia doesn't know
about milk--or, for that matter, butter and eggs. She's a great
housewife.'
'Oh,' said Una. 'I'm sorry I can't shake hands. Mine are all milky; but
Mrs. Vincey is going to teach me butter-making this summer.'
'Ah! _I_'m going to London this summer,' the girl said, 'to my aunt in
Bloomsbury.' She coughed as she began to hum, '"Oh, what a town! What a
wonderful metropolis!"'
'You've got a cold,' said Una.
'No. Only my stupid cough. But it's vastly better than it was last
winter. It will disappear in London air. Every one says so. D'you like
doctors, child?'
'I don't know any,' Una replied. 'But I'm sure I shouldn't.'
'Think yourself lucky, child. I beg your pardon,' the girl laughed, for
Una frowned.
'I'm not a child, and my name's Una,' she said.
'Mine's Philadelphia. But everybody except René calls me Phil. I'm
Squire Bucksteed's daughter--over at Marklake yonder.' She jerked her
little round chin towards the south behind Dallington. 'Sure-ly you know
Marklake?'
'We went a picnic to Marklake Green once,' said Una. 'It's awfully
pretty. I like all those funny little roads that don't lead anywhere.'
'They lead over our land,' said Philadelphia stiffly, 'and the coach
road is only four miles away. One can go anywhere from the Green. I went
to the Assize Ball at Lewes last year.' She spun round and took a few
dancing steps, but stopped with her hand to her side.
'It gives me a stitch,' she explained. 'No odds. 'Twill go away in
London air. That's the latest French step, child. René taught it me.
D'you hate the French, chi--Una?'
'Well, I hate French, of course, but I don't mind Mam'selle. She's
rather decent. Is René your French governess?'
Philadelphia laughed till she caught her breath again.
'Oh no! René's a French prisoner--on parole. That means he's promised
not to escape till he has been properly exchanged for an Englishman.
He's only a doctor, so I hope they won't think him worth exchanging. My
Uncle captured him last year in the _Ferdinand_ privateer, off Belle
Isle, and he cured my Uncle of a r-r-raging toothache. Of course, after
_that_ we couldn't let him lie among the common French prisoners at Rye,
and so he stays with us. He's of very old family--a Breton, which is
nearly next door to being a true Briton, my father says--and he wears
his hair clubbed--not powdered. _Much_ more becoming, don't you think?'
'I don't know what you're----' Una began, but Puck, the other side of
the pail, winked, and she went on with her milking.
'He's going to be a great French physician when the war is over. He
makes me bobbins for my lace-pillow now--he's very clever with his
hands; but he'd doctor our people on the Green if they would let him.
Only our Doctor--Dr. Break--says he's an emp----or imp something--worse
than impostor. But my Nurse says----'
'Nurse! You're ever so old. What have you got a nurse for?' Una finished
milking, and turned round on her stool as _Kitty Shorthorn_ grazed off.
'Because I can't get rid of her. Old Cissie nursed my mother, and she
says she'll nurse me till she dies. The idea! She never lets me alone.
She thinks I'm delicate. She has grown infirm in her understanding, you
know. Mad--quite mad, poor Cissie!'
'Really mad?' said Una. 'Or just silly?'
'Crazy I should say--from the things she does. Her devotion to me is
terribly embarrassing. You know I have all the keys of the Hall except
the brewery and the tenants' kitchen. I give out all stores and the
linen and plate.'
'How jolly! I love store-rooms and giving out things.'
'Ah, it's a great responsibility you'll find when you come to my age.
Last year Dad said I was fatiguing myself with my duties, and he
actually wanted me to give up the keys to old Amoore, our housekeeper. I
wouldn't. I hate her. I said, "No, sir. I am Mistress of Marklake Hall
just as long as I live, because I'm never going to be married, and I
shall give out stores and linen till I die!"'
'And what did your father say?'
'Oh, I threatened to pin a dishclout to his coattail. He ran away. Every
one's afraid of Dad, except me.' Philadelphia stamped her foot. 'The
idea! If I can't make my own father happy in his own house, I'd like to
meet the woman that can, and--and--I'd have the living hide off her!'
She cut with her long-thonged whip. It cracked like a pistol-shot across
the still pasture. _Kitty Shorthorn_ threw up her head and trotted away.
'I beg your pardon,' Philadelphia said; 'but it makes me furious. Don't
you hate those ridiculous old quizzes with their feathers and fronts,
who come to dinner and call you "child" in your own chair at your own
table?'
'I don't always come to dinner,' said Una, 'but I hate being called
"child." Please tell me about store-rooms and giving out things.'
'Ah, it's a great responsibility--particularly with that old cat Amoore
looking at the lists over your shoulder. And such a shocking thing
happened last summer! Poor crazy Cissie, my Nurse that I was telling you
of, she took three solid silver tablespoons.'
'Took! But isn't that stealing?' Una cried.
'Hsh!' said Philadelphia, looking round at Puck. 'All I say is she took
them without my leave. I made it right afterwards. So, as Dad says--and
he's a magistrate--it wasn't a legal offence; it was only compounding a
felony.'
'It sounds awful,' said Una.
'It was. My dear, I was furious! I had had the keys for ten months, and
I'd never lost anything before. I said nothing at first, because a big
house offers so many chances of things being mislaid, and coming to hand
later. "Fetching up in the lee-scuppers," my Uncle calls it. But next
week I spoke to old Cissie about it when she was doing my hair at night,
and she said I wasn't to worry my heart for trifles!'
'Isn't it like 'em?' Una burst out. 'They see you're worried over
something that really matters, and they say, "Don't worry"; as if _that_
did any good!'
'I quite agree with you, my dear; quite agree with you! I told Ciss the
spoons were solid silver, and worth forty shillings, so if the thief
were found, he'd be tried for his life.'
'Hanged, do you mean?' Una said.
'They ought to be; but Dad says no jury will hang a man nowadays for a
forty-shilling theft. They transport 'em into penal servitude at the
uttermost ends of the earth beyond the seas, for the term of their
natural life. I told Cissie that, and I saw her tremble in my mirror.
Then she cried, and caught hold of my knees, and I couldn't for my life
understand what it was all about,--she cried so. _Can_ you guess, my
dear, what that poor crazy thing had done? It was midnight before I
pieced it together. She had given the spoons to Jerry Gamm, the
Witchmaster on the Green, so that he might put a charm on me! Me!'
'Put a charm on you? Why?'
'That's what _I_ asked; and then I saw how mad poor Cissie was! You know
this stupid little cough of mine? It will disappear as soon as I go to
London. She was troubled about _that_, and about my being so thin, and
she told me Jerry had promised her, if she would bring him three silver
spoons, that he'd charm my cough away and make me plump--"flesh-up," she
said. I couldn't help laughing; but it was a terrible night! I had to
put Cissie into my own bed, and stroke her hand till she cried herself
to sleep. What else could I have done? When she woke, and I coughed--I
suppose I _can_ cough in my own room if I please--she said that she'd
killed me, and asked me to have her hanged at Lewes sooner than send her
to the uttermost ends of the earth away from me.'
'How awful! What did you do, Phil?'
'Do? I rode off at five in the morning to talk to Master Jerry, with a
new lash on my whip. Oh, I was _furious_! Witchmaster or no
witchmaster, I meant to----'
'Ah! what's a Witchmaster?'
'A master of witches, of course. _I_ don't believe there are witches;
but people say every village has a few, and Jerry was the master of all
ours at Marklake. He has been a smuggler, and a man-of-war's man, and
now he pretends to be a carpenter and joiner--he can make almost
anything--but he really is a white wizard. He cures people by herbs and
charms. He can cure them after Dr. Break has given them up, and that's
why Dr. Break hates him so. He used to make me toy carts, and charm off
my warts when I was a child.' Philadelphia spread out her hands with the
delicate shiny little nails. 'It isn't counted lucky to cross him. He
has his ways of getting even with you, they say. But _I_ wasn't afraid
of Jerry! I saw him working in his garden, and I leaned out of my saddle
and double-thonged him between the shoulders, over the hedge. Well, my
dear, for the first time since Dad gave him to me, my _Troubadour_ (I
wish you could see the sweet creature!) shied across the road, and I
spilled out into the hedge-top. _Most_ undignified! Jerry pulled me
through to his side and brushed the leaves off me. I was horribly
pricked, but I didn't care. "Now, Jerry," I said, "I'm going to take the
hide off you first, and send you to Lewes afterwards. You well know
why." "Oh!" he said, and he sat down among his bee-hives. "Then I reckon
you've come about old Cissie's business, my dear." "I reckon I just
about have," I said. "Stand away from these hives. I can't get at you
there." "That's why I be where I be," he said. "If you'll excuse me,
Miss Phil, I don't hold with bein' flogged before breakfast, at my time
o' life." He's a huge big man, but he looked so comical squatting among
the hives that--I know I oughtn't to--I laughed, and he laughed. I
always laugh at the wrong time. But I soon recovered my dignity, and I
said, "Then give me back what you made poor Cissie steal!"
'"Your pore Cissie," he said. "She's a hatful o' trouble. But you shall
have 'em, Miss Phil. They're all ready put by for you." And, would you
believe it, the old sinner pulled my three silver spoons out of his
dirty pocket, and polished them on his cuff! "Here they be," he says,
and he gave them to me, just as cool as though I'd come to have my warts
charmed. That's the worst of people having known you when you were
young. But I preserved my composure. "Jerry," I said, "what in the world
are we to do? If you'd been caught with these things on you, you'd have
been hanged."
'"I know it," he said. "But they're yours now."
'"But you made my Cissie steal them," I said.
'"That I didn't," he said. "Your Cissie, she was pickin' at me and
tarrifyin' me all the long day an' every day for weeks, to put a charm
on you, Miss Phil, and take away your little spitty cough."
'"Yes, I knew that, Jerry, and to make me flesh up!" I said. "I'm much
obliged to you, but I'm not one of your pigs!"
'"Ah! I reckon she've been talking to you, then," he said. "Yes, she
give me no peace, and bein' tarrified--for I don't hold with old
women--I laid a task on her which I thought 'ud silence her. _I_ never
reckoned the old scrattle 'ud risk her neckbone at Lewes Assizes for
your sake, Miss Phil. But she did. She up an' stole, I tell ye, as
cheerful as a tinker. You might ha' knocked me down with any one of them
liddle spoons when she brung 'em in her apron."
'"Do you mean to say, then, that you did it to try my poor Cissie?" I
screamed at him.
'"What else for, dearie?" he said. "_I_ don't stand in need of
hedge-stealings. I'm a freeholder, with money in the bank; and now I
won't trust women no more! Silly old besom! I do beleft she'd ha' stole
the Squire's big fob-watch, if I'd required her."
'"Then you're a wicked, wicked old man," I said, and I was so angry that
I couldn't help crying, and of course that made me cough.
'Jerry was in a fearful taking. He picked me up and carried me into his
cottage--it's full of foreign curiosities--and he got me something to
eat and drink, and he said he'd be hanged by the neck any day if it
pleased me. He said he'd even tell old Cissie he was sorry. That's a
great come-down for a Witchmaster, you know.
'I was ashamed of myself for being so silly, and I dabbed my eyes and
said, "The least you can do now is to give poor Ciss some sort of a
charm for me."
'"Yes, that's only fair dealings," he said. "You know the names of the
Twelve Apostles, dearie? You say them names, one by one, before your
open window, rain or storm, wet or shine, five times a day fasting. But
mind you, 'twixt every name you draw in your breath through your nose,
right down to your pretty liddle toes, as long and as deep as you can,
and let it out slow through your pretty liddle mouth. There's virtue for
your cough in those names spoke that way. And I'll give you something
you can see, moreover. Here's a stick of maple which is the warmest tree
in the wood."'
'That's true,' Una interrupted. 'You can feel it almost as warm as
yourself when you touch it.'
'"It's cut one inch long for your every year," Jerry said. "That's
sixteen inches. You set it in your window so that it holds up the sash,
and thus you keep it, rain or shine, or wet or fine, day and night. I've
said words over it which will have virtue on your complaints."
'"I haven't any complaints, Jerry," I said. "It's only to please
Cissie."
'"I know that as well as you do, dearie," he said. And--and that was all
that came of my going to give him a flogging. I wonder whether he made
poor _Troubadour_ shy when I lashed at him? Jerry has his ways of
getting even of people.'
'I wonder,' said Una. 'Well, did you try the charm? Did it work?'
'What nonsense! I told René about it, of course, because he's a doctor.
He's going to be a most famous doctor. That's why our doctor hates him.
René said, "Oho! Your Master Gamm, he is worth knowing," and he put up
his eyebrows--like this. He made joke of it all. He can see my window
from the carpenter's shed, where he works, and if ever the maple stick
fell down, he pretended to be in a fearful taking till I propped the
window up again. He used to ask me whether I had said my Apostles
properly, and how I took my deep breaths. Oh yes, and the next day,
though he had been there ever so many times before, he put on his new
hat and paid Jerry Gamm a visit of state--as a fellow-physician. Jerry
never guessed René was making fun of him, and so he told René about the
sick people in the village, and how he cured them with herbs after Dr.
Break had given them up. Jerry could talk smugglers' French, of course,
and I had taught René plenty of English, if only he wasn't so shy. They
called each other Monsieur Gamm and Mosheur Lanark, just like gentlemen.
I suppose it amused poor René. He hasn't much to do, except to fiddle
about in the carpenter's shop. He's like all the French
prisoners--always making knick-knacks; and Jerry had a little lathe at
his cottage, and so--and so--René took to being with Jerry much more
than I approved of. The Hall is so big and empty when Dad's away, and I
will _not_ sit with old Amoore--she talks so horridly about every
one--specially about René.
'I was rude to René, I'm afraid; but I was properly served out for it.
One always is. You see Dad went down to Hastings to pay his respects to
the General who commanded the brigade there, and to bring him to the
Hall afterwards. Dad told me he was a very brave soldier from India--he
was Colonel of Dad's regiment, the Thirty-third Foot, after Dad left the
Army, and then he changed his name from Wesley to Wellesley, or else the
other way about; and Dad said I was to get out all the silver for him,
and I knew that meant a big dinner. So I sent down to the sea for early
mackerel, and had _such_ a morning in the kitchen and the store-rooms.
Old Amoore nearly cried.
'However, my dear, I made all my preparations in ample time, but the
fish didn't arrive--it never does--and I wanted René to ride to Pevensey
and bring it himself. He had gone over to Jerry, of course, as he always
used, unless I requested his presence beforehand. _I_ can't send for
René every time I want him. He should be there. Now, don't you ever do
what I did, child, because it's in the highest degree unladylike;
but--but one of our woods runs up to Jerry's garden, and if you
climb--it's ungenteel, but I can climb like a kitten--there's an old
hollow oak just above the pigsty where you can hear and see everything
below. Truthfully, I only went to tell René about the mackerel, but I
saw him and Jerry sitting on the seat playing with wooden toy trumpets.
So I slipped into the hollow, and choked down my cough, and listened.
René had never shown _me_ any of these trumpets.'
'Trumpets? Aren't you too old for trumpets?' said Una.
'They weren't real trumpets, because Jerry opened his shirt collar, and
René put one end of his trumpet against Jerry's chest, and put his ear
to the other. Then Jerry put his trumpet against René's chest, and
listened while René breathed and coughed. I was afraid _I_ would cough
too.
'"This hollywood one is the best," said Jerry. "'Tis won'erful like
hearin' a man's soul whisperin' in his innards; but unless I've a
buzzin' in my ears, Mosheur Lanark, you make much about the same kind o'
noises as old Gaffer Macklin--but not quite so loud as young Copper. It
sounds like breakers on a reef--a long way off. Comprenny?"
'"Perfectly," said René. "I drive on the breakers. But before I strike,
I shall save hundreds, thousands, millions perhaps, by my little
trumpets. Now tell me what sounds the old Gaffer Macklin have made in
his chest, and what the young Copper also."
'Jerry talked for nearly a quarter of an hour about sick people in the
village, while René asked questions. Then he sighed, and said, "You
explain very well, Monsieur Gamm, but if only I had your opportunities
to listen for myself! Do you think these poor people would let me listen
to them through my trumpet--for a little money? No?"--René's as poor as
a church mouse.
'"They'd kill you, Mosheur. It's all I can do to coax 'em to abide it,
and I'm Jerry Gamm," said Jerry. He's very proud of his attainments.
'"Then these poor people are alarmed--No?" said René.
'"They've had it in for me for some time back because o' my tryin' your
trumpets on their sick; and I reckon by the talk at the alehouse they
won't stand much more. Tom Dunch an' some of his kidney was drinkin'
themselves riot-ripe when I passed along after noon. Charms an'
mutterin's and bits o' red wool and black hens is in the way o' nature
to these fools, Mosheur; but anything likely to do 'em real service is
devil's work by their estimation. If I was you, I'd go home before they
come." Jerry spoke quite quietly, and René shrugged his shoulders.
'"I am prisoner on parole, Monsieur Gamm," he said. "I have no home."
'Now that was unkind of René. He's often told me that he looked on
England as his home. I suppose it's French politeness.
'"Then we'll talk o' something that matters," said Jerry. "Not to name
no names, Mosheur Lanark, what might be your own opinion o' some one who
ain't old Gaffer Macklin nor young Copper? Is that person better or
worse?"
'"Better--for time that is," said René. He meant for the time being, but
I never could teach him some phrases.
'"I thought so too," said Jerry. "But how about time to come?"
'René shook his head, and then he blew his nose. You don't know how odd
a man looks blowing his nose when you are sitting directly above him.
'"I've thought that too," said Jerry. He rumbled so deep I could
scarcely catch. "It don't make much odds to me, because I'm old. But
you're young, Mosheur--you're young," and he put his hand on René's
knee, and René covered it with his hand. I didn't know they were such
friends.
'"Thank you, _mon ami_," said René. "I am much oblige. Let us return to
our trumpet-making. But I forget"--he stood up--"it appears that you
receive this afternoon!"
'You can't see into Gamm's Lane from the oak, but the gate opened, and
fat little Doctor Break stumped in, mopping his head, and half-a-dozen
of our people followed him, very drunk.
'You ought to have seen René bow; he does it beautifully.
'"A word with you, Laennec," said Dr. Break. "Jerry has been practising
some devilry or other on these poor wretches, and they've asked me to be
arbiter."
'"Whatever that means, I reckon it's safer than asking you to be
doctor," said Jerry, and Tom Dunch, one of our carters, laughed.
'"That ain't right feeling of you, Tom," Jerry said, "seeing how clever
Dr. Break put away your thorn in the flesh last winter." Tom's wife had
died at Christmas, though Dr. Break bled her twice a week. He danced
with rage.
'"This is all beside the mark," he said. "These good people are willing
to testify that you've been impudently prying into God's secrets by
means of some papistical contrivance which this person"--he pointed to
poor René--"has furnished you with. Why, here are the things
themselves!" René was holding a trumpet in his hand.
'Then all the men talked at once. They said old Gaffer Macklin was dying
from stitches in his side where Jerry had put the trumpet--they called
it the devil's ear-piece; and they said it left round red witchmarks on
people's skins, and dried up their lights, and made 'em spit blood, and
threw 'em into sweats. Terrible things they said. You never heard such a
noise. I took advantage of it to cough.
'René and Jerry were standing with their backs to the pigsty. Jerry
fumbled in his big flap pockets and fished up a pair of pistols. You
ought to have seen the men give back when he cocked his. He passed one
to René.
'"Wait! Wait!" said René. "I will explain to the doctor if he permits."
He waved a trumpet at him, and the men at the gate shouted, "Don't touch
it, Doctor! Don't lay a hand to the thing."
'"Come, come!" said René. "You are not so big fool as you pretend, Dr.
Break. No?"
'Dr. Break backed toward the gate, watching Jerry's pistol, and René
followed him with his trumpet, like a nurse trying to amuse a child, and
put the ridiculous thing to his ear to show how it was used, and talked
of _la Gloire_, and _la Humanité_, and _la Science_, while Dr. Break
watched Jerry's pistol and swore. I nearly laughed aloud.
'"Now listen! Now listen!" said René. "This will be moneys in your
pockets, my dear _confrère_. You will become rich."
'Then Dr. Break said something about adventurers who could not earn an
honest living in their own country creeping into decent houses and
taking advantage of gentlemen's confidence to enrich themselves by base
intrigues.
'René dropped his absurd trumpet and made one of his best bows. I knew
he was angry from the way he rolled his "r's."
'"Ver-r-ry good," said he. "For that I shall have much pleasure to kill
you now and here. Monsieur Gamm"--another bow to Jerry--"you will please
lend him your pistol, or he shall have mine. I give you my word I know
not which is best; and if he will choose a second from his friends over
there"--another bow to our drunken yokels at the gate--"we will
commence."
'"That's fair enough," said Jerry. "Tom Dunch, you owe it to the doctor
to be his second. Place your man."
'"No," said Tom. "No mixin' in gentry's quarrels for me." And he shook
his head and went out, and the others followed him.
'"Hold on," said Jerry. "You've forgot what you set out to do up at the
alehouse just now. You was goin' to search me for witchmarks; you was
goin' to duck me in the pond; you was goin' to drag all my bits o'
sticks out o' my little cottage here. What's the matter with you?
Wouldn't you like to be with your old woman to-night, Tom?"
'But they didn't even look back, much less come. They ran to the village
alehouse like hares.
'"No matter for these canaille," said René, buttoning up his coat so as
not to show any linen. All gentlemen do that before a duel, Dad
says--and he's been out five times. "You shall be his second, Monsieur
Gamm. Give him the pistol."
'Dr. Break took it as if it was red-hot, but he said that if René
resigned his pretensions in certain quarters he would pass over the
matter. René bowed deeper than ever.
'"As for that," he said, "if you were not the ignorant which you are,
you would have known long ago that the subject of your remarks is not
for any living man."
'I don't know what the subject of his remarks might have been, but he
spoke in a simply dreadful voice, my dear, and Dr. Break turned quite
white, and said René was a liar; and then René caught him by the throat,
and choked him black.
'Well, my dear, as if this wasn't deliciously exciting enough, just
exactly at that minute I heard a strange voice on the other side of the
hedge say, "What's this? What's this, Bucksteed?" and there was my
father and Sir Arthur Wesley on horseback in the lane; and there was
René kneeling on Dr. Break, and there was I up in the oak, listening
with all my ears.
'I must have leaned forward too much, and the voice gave me such a start
that I slipped. I had only time to make one jump on to the pigsty
roof--another, before the tiles broke, on to the pigsty wall--and then I
bounced down into the garden, just behind Jerry, with my hair full of
bark. Imagine the situation!'
'Oh, I can!' Una laughed till she nearly fell off the stool.
'Dad said, "Phil--a--del--phia!" and Sir Arthur Wesley said, "Good Ged!"
and Jerry put his foot on the pistol René had dropped. But René was
splendid. He never even looked at me. He began to untwist Dr. Break's
neckcloth as fast as he'd twisted it, and asked him if he felt better.
'"What's happened? What's happened?" said Dad.
'"A fit!" said René. "I fear my _confrère_ has had a fit. Do not be
alarmed. He recovers himself. Shall I bleed you a little, my dear
Doctor?" Dr. Break was very good too. He said, "I am vastly obliged,
Monsieur Laennec, but I am restored now." And as he went out of the gate
he told Dad it was a syncope--I think. Then Sir Arthur said, "Quite
right, Bucksteed. Not another word! They are both gentlemen." And he
took off his cocked hat to Dr. Break and René.
'But poor Dad wouldn't let well alone. He kept saying, "Philadelphia,
what does all this mean?"
'"Well, sir," I said, "I've only just come down. As far as I could see,
it looked as though Dr. Break had had a sudden seizure." That was quite
true--if you'd seen René seize him. Sir Arthur laughed. "Not much change
there, Bucksteed," he said. "She's a lady--a thorough lady."
'"Heaven knows she doesn't look like one," said poor Dad. "Go home,
Philadelphia."
'So I went home, my dear--don't laugh so!--right under Sir Arthur's
nose--a most enormous nose--feeling as though I were twelve years old,
going to be whipped. Oh, I _beg_ your pardon, child!'
'It's all right,' said Una. 'I'm getting on for thirteen. I've never
been whipped, but I know how you felt. All the same, it must have been
funny!'
'Funny! If you'd heard Sir Arthur jerking out, "Good Ged, Bucksteed!"
every minute as they rode behind me; and poor Dad saying, "'Pon my
honour, Arthur, I can't account for it!" Oh, how my cheeks tingled when
I reached my room! But Cissie had laid out my very best evening dress,
the white satin one, vandyked at the bottom with spots of morone foil,
and the pearl knots, you know, catching up the drapery from the left
shoulder. I had poor mother's lace tucker and her coronet comb.'
'Oh, you lucky!' Una murmured. '_And_ gloves?'
'French kid, my dear'--Philadelphia patted her shoulder--'and morone
satin shoes and a morone and gold crape fan. That restored my calm. Nice
things always do. I wore my hair banded on my forehead with a little
curl over the left ear. And when I descended the stairs, _en grande
tenue_, old Amoore curtsied to me without my having to stop and look at
her, which alas! is too often the case. Sir Arthur highly approved of
the dinner, my dear: the mackerel _did_ come in time. We had all the
Marklake silver out, and he toasted my health, and he asked me where my
little bird's-nesting sister was. I _know_ he did it to quiz me, so I
looked him straight in the face, my dear, and I said, "I always send her
to the nursery, Sir Arthur, when I receive guests at Marklake Hall."'
'Oh, how chee--clever of you. What did he say?' Una cried.
'He said, "Not much change there, Bucksteed. Ged, I deserved it," and he
toasted me again. They talked about the French and what a shame it was
that Sir Arthur only commanded a brigade at Hastings, and he told Dad of
a battle in India at a place called Assaye. Dad said it was a terrible
fight, but Sir Arthur described it as though it had been a
whist-party--I suppose because a lady was present.'
'Of course you were the lady; I wish I'd seen you,' said Una.
'I wish you had, child. I had _such_ a triumph after dinner. René and
Dr. Break came in. They had quite made up their quarrel, and they told
me they had the highest esteem for each other, and I laughed and said,
"I heard every word of it up in the tree." You never saw two men so
frightened in your life, and when I said, "What _was_ 'the subject of
your remarks,' René?" neither of them knew where to look. Oh, I quizzed
them unmercifully. They'd seen me jump off the pigsty roof, remember.'
'But what _was_ the subject of their remarks?' said Una.
'Oh, Dr. Break said it was a professional matter, so the laugh was
turned on me. I was horribly afraid it might have been something
unladylike and indelicate. But _that_ wasn't my triumph. Dad asked me to
play on the harp. Between just you and me, child, I had been practising
a new song from London--I don't always live in trees--for weeks; and I
gave it them for a surprise.'
'What was it?' said Una. 'Sing it.'
'"I have given my heart to a flower." Not very difficult fingering, but
r-r-ravishing sentiment.'
Philadelphia coughed and cleared her throat.
'I've a deep voice for my age and size,' she explained. 'Contralto, you
know, but it ought to be stronger,' and she began, her face all dark
against the last of the soft pink sunset:
'I have given my heart to a flower,
Though I know it is fading away,
Though I know it will live but an hour
And leave me to mourn its decay!
'Isn't that touchingly sweet? Then the last verse--I wish I had my harp,
dear--goes as low as my register will reach.' She drew in her chin, and
took a deep breath:
'Ye desolate whirlwinds that rave,
I charge you be good to my dear!
She is all--she is all that I have,
And the time of our parting is near!'
'Beautiful!' said Una. 'And did they like it?'
'Like it? They were overwhelmed--_accablés_, as René says. My dear, if I
hadn't seen it, I shouldn't have believed that I could have drawn
tears, genuine tears, to the eyes of four grown men. But I did! René
simply couldn't endure it! He's all French sensibility. He hid his face
and said, "_Assez Mademoiselle! C'est plus fort que moi! Assez!_" And
Sir Arthur blew his nose and said, "Good Ged! This is worse than
Assaye!" While Dad sat with the tears simply running down his cheeks.'
'And what did Dr. Break do?'
'He got up and pretended to look out of the window, but I saw his little
fat shoulders jerk as if he had the hiccoughs. That _was_ a triumph. I
never suspected him of sensibility.'
'Oh, I wish I'd seen! I wish I'd been you,' said Una, clasping her
hands. Puck rustled and rose from the fern, just as a big blundering
cockchafer flew smack against Una's cheek.
When she had finished rubbing the place, Mrs. Vincey called to her that
_Pansy_ had been fractious, or she would have come long before to help
her strain and pour off.
'It didn't matter,' said Una; 'I just waited. Is that old _Pansy_
barging about the lower pasture now?'
'No,' said Mrs. Vincey, listening. 'It sounds more like a horse being
galloped middlin' quick through the woods; but there's no road there. I
reckon it's one of Gleason's colts loose. Shall I see you up to the
house, Miss Una?'
'Gracious no! thank you. What's going to hurt me?' said Una, and she put
her stool away behind the oak, and strolled home through the gaps that
old Hobden kept open for her.
BROOKLAND ROAD
I was very well pleased with what I knowed,
I reckoned myself no fool--
Till I met with a maid on the Brookland Road,
That turned me back to school.
_Low down--low down!
Where the liddle green lanterns shine--
Oh! maids, I've done with 'ee all but one,
And she can never be mine!_
'Twas right in the middest of a hot June night,
With thunder duntin' round,
And I see'd her face by the fairy light
That beats from off the ground.
She only smiled and she never spoke,
She smiled and went away;
But when she'd gone my heart was broke,
And my wits was clean astray.
Oh! Stop your ringing and let me be--
Let be, Oh Brookland bells!
You'll ring Old Goodman[4] out of the sea,
Before I wed one else!
Old Goodman's farm is rank sea sand,
And was this thousand year;
But it shall turn to rich plough land
Before I change my dear!
Oh! Fairfield Church is water-bound
From Autumn to the Spring;
But it shall turn to high hill ground
Before my bells do ring!
Oh! leave me walk on the Brookland Road,
In the thunder and warm rain--
Oh! leave me look where my love goed
And p'raps I'll see her again!
_Low down--low down!
Where the liddle green lanterns shine--
Oh! maids, I've done with 'ee all but one,
And she can never be mine._
[4] Earl Godwin of the Goodwin Sands (?).
The Knife and the Naked Chalk
THE RUN OF THE DOWNS
_The Weald is good, the Downs are best--
I'll give you the run of 'em, East to West._
Beachy Head and Winddoor Hill,
They were once and they are still.
Firle, Mount Caburn and Mount Harry
Go back as far as sums'll carry.
Ditchling Beacon and Chanctonbury Ring,
They have looked on many a thing;
And what those two have missed between 'em
I reckon Truleigh Hill has seen 'em.
Highden, Bignor and Duncton Down
Knew Old England before the Crown.
Linch Down, Treyford and Sunwood
Knew Old England before the Flood.
And when you end on the Hampshire side--
Butser's old as Time and Tide.
_The Downs are sheep, the Weald is corn,
You be glad you are Sussex born!_
The Knife and the Naked Chalk
The children went to the seaside for a month, and lived in a flint
village on the bare windy chalk Downs, quite thirty miles away from
home. They made friends with an old shepherd, called Mr. Dudeney, who
had known their father when their father was little. He did not talk
like their own people in the Weald of Sussex, and he used different
names for farm things, but he understood how they felt, and let them go
with him. He had a tiny cottage about half a mile from the village,
where his wife made mead from thyme honey, and nursed sick lambs in
front of a coal fire, while Old Jim, who was Mr. Dudeney's sheep-dog's
father, lay at the door. They brought up beef bones for Old Jim (you
must never give a sheep-dog mutton bones), and if Mr. Dudeney happened
to be far in the Downs, Mrs. Dudeney would tell the dog to take them to
him, and he did.
One August afternoon when the village water-cart had made the street
smell specially townified, they went to look for their shepherd as
usual, and, as usual, Old Jim crawled over the door-step and took them
in charge. The sun was hot, the dry grass was very slippery, and the
distances were very distant.
'It's just like the sea,' said Una, when Old Jim halted in the shade of
a lonely flint barn on a bare rise. 'You see where you're going,
and--you go there, and there's nothing between.'
Dan slipped off his shoes. 'When we get home I shall sit in the woods
all day,' he said.
'Whuff!' said Old Jim, to show he was ready, and struck across a long
rolling stretch of turf. Presently he asked for his beef bone.
'Not yet,' said Dan. 'Where's Mr. Dudeney? Where's master?'
Old Jim looked as if he thought they were mad, and asked again.
'Don't you give it him,' Una cried. 'I'm not going to be left howling in
a desert.'
'Show, boy! Show!' said Dan, for the Downs seemed as bare as the palm of
your hand.
Old Jim sighed, and trotted forward. Soon they spied the blob of Mr.
Dudeney's hat against the sky a long way off.
'Right! All right!' said Dan. Old Jim wheeled round, took his bone
carefully between his blunted teeth, and returned to the shadow of the
old barn, looking just like a wolf. The children went on. Two kestrels
hung bivvering and squealing above them. A gull flapped lazily along the
white edge of the cliffs. The curves of the Downs shook a little in the
heat, and so did Mr. Dudeney's distant head.
They walked toward it very slowly and found themselves staring into a
horse-shoe-shaped hollow a hundred feet deep, whose steep sides were
laced with tangled sheep-tracks. The flock grazed on the flat at the
bottom, under charge of Young Jim. Mr. Dudeney sat comfortably knitting
on the edge of the slope, his crook between his knees. They told him
what Old Jim had done.
'Ah, he thought you could see my head as soon as he did. The closeter
you be to the turf the more you see things. You look warm-like,' said
Mr. Dudeney.
'We be,' said Una, flopping down. '_And_ tired.'
'Set beside o' me here. The shadow'll begin to stretch out in a little
while, and a heat-shake o' wind will come up with it that'll overlay
your eyes like so much wool.'
'We don't want to sleep,' said Una indignantly; but she settled herself
as she spoke, in the first strip of early afternoon shade.
'O' course not. You come to talk with me same as your father used. _He_
didn't need no dog to guide him to Norton Pit.'
'Well, he belonged here,' said Dan, and laid himself down at length on
the turf.
'He did. And what beats me is why he went off to live among them messy
trees in the Weald, when he might ha' stayed here and looked all about
him. There's no profit to trees. They draw the lightning, and sheep
shelter under 'em, and _so_, like as not, you'll lose a half score ewes
struck dead in one storm. Tck! Your father knew that.'
'Trees aren't messy.' Una rose on her elbow. 'And what about firewood? I
don't like coal.'
'Eh? You lie a piece more up-hill and you'll lie more natural,' said
Mr. Dudeney, with his provoking deaf smile. 'Now press your face down
and smell to the turf. That's Southdown thyme which makes our Southdown
mutton beyond compare, and, my mother told me, 'twill cure anything
except broken necks, or hearts. I forget which.'
They sniffed, and somehow forgot to lift their cheeks from the soft
thymy cushions.
'You don't get nothing like that in the Weald. Watercress, maybe?' said
Mr. Dudeney.
'But we've water--brooks full of it--where you paddle in hot weather,'
Una replied, watching a yellow-and-violet-banded snail-shell close to
her eye.
'Brooks flood. Then you must shift your sheep--let alone foot-rot
afterward. I put more dependence on a dew-pond any day.'
'How's a dew-pond made?' said Dan, and tilted his hat over his eyes. Mr.
Dudeney explained.
The air trembled a little as though it could not make up its mind
whether to slide into the Pit or move across the open. But it seemed
easiest to go down-hill, and the children felt one soft puff after
another slip and sidle down the slope in fragrant breaths that baffed on
their eyelids. The little whisper of the sea by the cliffs joined with
the whisper of the wind over the grass, the hum of insects in the thyme,
the ruffle and rustle of the flock below, and a thickish mutter deep in
the very chalk beneath them. Mr. Dudeney stopped explaining, and went on
with his knitting.
They were roused by voices. The shadow had crept half-way down the steep
side of Norton's Pit, and on the edge of it, his back to them, Puck sat
beside a half-naked man who seemed busy at some work. The wind had
dropped, and in that funnel of ground every least noise and movement
reached them like whispers up a water-pipe.
'That is clever,' said Puck, leaning over. 'How truly you shape it!'
'Yes, but what does The Beast care for a brittle flint tip? Bah!' The
man flicked something contemptuously over his shoulder. It fell between
Dan and Una--a beautiful dark-blue flint arrow-head still hot from the
maker's hand.
The man reached for another stone, and worked away like a thrush with a
snail-shell.
'Flint work is fool's work,' he said at last. 'One does it because one
always did it, but when it comes to dealing with The Beast--no good!' He
shook his shaggy head.
'The Beast was dealt with long ago. He has gone,' said Puck.
'He'll be back at lambing-time. _I_ know him.' He chipped very
carefully, and the flints squeaked.
'Not he. Children can lie out on the Chalk now all day through and go
home safe.'
'Can they? Well, call The Beast by his True Name, and I'll believe it,'
the man replied.
'Surely!' Puck leaped to his feet, curved his hands round his mouth and
shouted: "Wolf! Wolf!"
Norton's Pit threw back the echo from its dry sides--'Wuff! Wuff!' like
Young Jim's bark.
'You see? You hear?' said Puck. 'Nobody answers. Grey Shepherd is gone.
Feet-in-the-Night has run off. There are no more wolves.'
'Wonderful!' The man wiped his forehead as though he were hot. 'Who
drove him away? You?'
'Many men through many years, each working in his own country. Were you
one of them?' Puck answered.
The man slid his sheepskin cloak to his waist, and without a word
pointed to his side, which was all seamed and blotched with scars. His
arms too were dimpled from shoulder to elbow with horrible white
dimples.
'I see,' said Puck. 'It is The Beast's mark. What did you use against
him?'
'Hand, hammer, and spear, as our fathers did before us.'
'So? Then how'--Puck twitched aside the man's dark-brown cloak--'how did
a Flint-worker come by _that_? Show, man, show!' He held out his little
hand.
The man slipped a long dark iron knife, almost a short sword, from his
belt, and after breathing on it, handed it hilt-first to Puck, who took
it with his head on one side, as you should when you look at the works
of a watch, squinted down the dark blade, and very delicately rubbed his
forefinger from the point to the hilt.
'Good!' said he, in a surprised tone.
'It should be. The Children of the Night made it,' the man answered.
'So I see by the iron. What might it have cost you?'
'This!' The man raised his hand to his cheek. Puck whistled like a Weald
starling.
'By the Great Rings of the Chalk!' he cried. 'Was _that_ your price?
Turn sunward that I may see better, and shut your eye.'
He slipped his hand beneath the man's chin and swung him till he faced
the children up the slope. They saw that his right eye was gone, and the
eyelid lay shrunk. Quickly Puck turned him round again, and the two sat
down.
'It was for the sheep. The sheep are the people,' said the man, in an
ashamed voice. 'What else could I have done? _You_ know, Old One.'
Puck sighed a little fluttering sigh. 'Take the knife. I listen.'
The man bowed his head, drove the knife into the turf, and while it
still quivered said: 'This is witness between us that I speak the thing
that has been. Before my Knife and the Naked Chalk I speak. Touch!'
Puck laid a hand on the hilt. It stopped shaking. The children wriggled
a little nearer.
'I am of the People of the Worked Flint. I am the one son of the
Priestess who sells the Winds to the Men of the Sea. I am the Buyer of
the Knife--the Keeper of the People,' the man began, in a sort of
singing shout. 'These are my names in this country of the Naked Chalk,
between the Trees and the Sea.'
'Yours was a great country. Your names are great too,' said Puck.
'One cannot feed some things on names and songs'; the man hit himself on
the chest. 'It is better--always better--to count one's children safe
round the fire, their Mother among them.'
'Ahai!' said Puck. 'I think this will be a very old tale.'
'I warm myself and eat at any fire that I choose, but there is no _one_
to light me a fire or cook my meat. I sold all that when I bought the
Magic Knife for my people. It was not right that The Beast should master
man. What else could I have done?'
'I hear. I know. I listen,' said Puck.
'When I was old enough to take my place in the Sheepguard, The Beast
gnawed all our country like a bone between his teeth. He came in behind
the flocks at watering-time, and watched them round the Dew-ponds; he
leaped into the folds between our knees at the shearing; he walked out
alongside the grazing flocks, and chose his meat on the hoof while our
boys threw flints at him; he crept by night into the huts, and licked
the babe from between the mother's hands; he called his companions and
pulled down men in broad daylight on the Naked Chalk. No--not always did
he do so! _This_ was his cunning! He would go away for a while to let us
forget him. A year--two years perhaps--we neither smelt, nor heard, nor
saw him. When our flocks had increased; when our men did not always look
behind them; when children strayed from the fenced places; when our
women walked alone to draw water--back, back, back came the Curse of the
Chalk, Grey Shepherd, Feet-in-the Night--The Beast, The Beast, The
Beast!
'He laughed at our little brittle arrows and our poor blunt spears. He
learned to run in under the stroke of the hammer. I think he knew when
there was a flaw in the flint. Often it does not show till you bring it
down on his snout. Then--_Pouf!_--the false flint falls all to flinders,
and you are left with the hammer-handle in your fist, and his teeth in
your flank! I have felt them. At evening, too, in the dew, or when it
has misted and rained, your spear-head lashings slack off, though you
have kept them beneath your cloak all day. You are alone--but so close
to the home ponds that you stop to tighten the sinews with hands, teeth,
and a piece of driftwood. You bend over and pull--so! That is the minute
for which he has followed you since the stars went out. "Aarh!" he says.
"Wurr-aarh!" he says.' (Norton's Pit gave back the growl like a pack of
real wolves.) 'Then he is on your right shoulder feeling for the vein in
your neck, and--perhaps your sheep run on without you. To fight The
Beast is nothing, but to be despised by The Beast when he fights
you--that is like his teeth in the heart! Old One, why is it that men
desire so greatly, and can do so little?'
'I do not know. Did you desire so much?' said Puck.
'I desired to master The Beast. It is not right that The Beast should
master man. But my people were afraid. Even my Mother, the Priestess,
was afraid when I told her what I desired. We were accustomed to be
afraid of The Beast. When I was made a man, and a maiden--she was a
Priestess--waited for me at the Dew-ponds, The Beast flitted from off
the Chalk. Perhaps it was a sickness; perhaps he had gone to his Gods to
learn how to do us new harm. But he went, and we breathed more freely.
The women sang again; the children were not so much guarded; our flocks
grazed far out. I took mine yonder'--he pointed inland to the hazy line
of the Weald--'where the new grass was best. They grazed north. I
followed till we were close to the Trees'--he lowered his voice--'close
_there_ where the Children of the Night live,' He pointed north again.
'Ah, now I remember a thing,' said Puck. 'Tell me, why did your people
fear the Trees so extremely?'
'Because the Gods hate the Trees and strike them with lightning. We can
see them burning for days all along the Chalk's edge. Besides, all the
Chalk knows that the Children of the Night, though they worship our
Gods, are magicians. When a man goes into their country, they change his
spirit; they put words into his mouth; they make him like talking water.
But a voice in my heart told me to go toward the north. While I watched
my sheep there I saw three Beasts chasing a man, who ran toward the
Trees. By this I knew he was a Child of the Night. We Flint-workers fear
the Trees more than we fear The Beast. He had no hammer; he carried a
knife like this one. A Beast leaped at him. He stretched out his knife.
The Beast fell dead. The other Beasts ran away howling, which they would
never have done from a Flint-worker. The man went in among the Trees. I
looked for the dead Beast. He had been killed in a new way--by a single
deep, clean cut, without bruise or tear, which had split his bad heart.
Wonderful! So I saw that the man's knife was magic, and I thought how to
get it,--thought strongly how to get it.
'When I brought the flocks to the shearing, my Mother the Priestess
asked me, "What is the new thing which you have seen and I see in your
face?" I said, "It is a sorrow to me"; and she answered, "All new things
are sorrow. Sit in my place, and eat sorrow." I sat down in her place by
the fire, where she talks to the ghosts in winter, and two voices spoke
in my heart. One voice said, "Ask the Children of the Night for the
Magic Knife. It is not fit that The Beast should master man." I listened
to that voice.
'One voice said, "If you go among the Trees, the Children of the Night
will change your spirit. Eat and sleep here." The other voice said, "Ask
for the Knife." I listened to that voice.
'I said to my Mother in the morning, "I go away to find a thing for the
people, but I do not know whether I shall return in my own shape." She
answered, "Whether you live or die, or are made different, I am your
Mother."'
'True,' said Puck. 'The Old Ones themselves cannot change men's mothers
even if they would.'
'Let us thank the Old Ones! I spoke to my Maiden, the Priestess who
waited for me at the Dew-ponds. She promised fine things too.' The man
laughed. 'I went away to that place where I had seen the magician with
the knife. I lay out two days on the short grass before I ventured
among the Trees. I felt my way before me with a stick. I was afraid of
the terrible talking Trees. I was afraid of the ghosts in the branches;
of the soft ground underfoot; of the red and black waters. I was afraid,
above all, of the Change. It came!'
They saw him wipe his forehead once again, and his strong back-muscles
quivered till he laid his hand on the knife-hilt.
'A fire without a flame burned in my head; an evil taste grew in my
mouth; my eyelids shut hot over my eyes; my breath was hot between my
teeth, and my hands were like the hands of a stranger. I was made to
sing songs and to mock the Trees, though I was afraid of them. At the
same time I saw myself laughing, and I was very sad for this fine young
man, who was myself. Ah! The Children of the Night know magic.'
'I think that is done by the Spirits of the Mist. They change a man if
he sleeps among them,' said Puck. 'Had you slept in any mists?'
'Yes--but _I_ know it was the Children of the Night. After three days I
saw a red light behind the Trees, and I heard a heavy noise. I saw the
Children of the Night dig red stones from a hole, and lay them in fires.
The stones melted like tallow, and the men beat the soft stuff with
hammers. I wished to speak to these men, but the words were changed in
my mouth, and all I could say was, "Do not make that noise. It hurts my
head." By this I knew that I was bewitched, and I clung to the Trees,
and prayed the Children of the Night to take off their spells. They were
cruel. They asked me many questions which they would never allow me to
answer. They changed my words between my teeth till I wept. Then they
led me into a hut and covered the floor with hot stones and dashed water
on the stones, and sang charms till the sweat poured off me like water.
I slept. When I waked, my own spirit--not the strange, shouting
thing--was back in my body, and I was like a cool bright stone on the
shingle between the sea and the sunshine. The magicians came to hear
me--women and men--each wearing a Magic Knife. Their Priestess was their
Ears and their Mouth.
'I spoke. I spoke many words that went smoothly along like sheep in
order when their shepherd, standing on a mound, can count those coming,
and those far off getting ready to come. I asked for Magic Knives for my
people. I said that my people would bring meat, and milk, and wool, and
lay them in the short grass outside the Trees, if the Children of the
Night would leave Magic Knives for our people to take away. They were
pleased. Their Priestess said, "For whose sake have you come?" I
answered, "The sheep are the people. If The Beast kills our sheep, our
people die. So I come for a Magic Knife to kill The Beast."
'She said, "We do not know if our God will let us trade with the people
of the Naked Chalk. Wait till we have asked."
'When they came back from the Question place (their Gods are our Gods),
their Priestess said, "The God needs a proof that your words are true."
I said, "What is the proof?" She said, "The God says that if you have
come for the sake of your people you will give him your right eye to be
put out; but if you have come for any other reason you will not give it.
This proof is between you and the God. We ourselves are sorry."
'I said, "This is a hard proof. Is there no other road?"
'She said, "Yes. You can go back to your people with your two eyes in
your head if you choose. But then you will not get any Magic Knives for
your people."
'I said, "It would be easier if I knew that I were to be killed."
'She said, "Perhaps the God knew this too. See! I have made my knife
hot."
'I said, "Be quick, then!" With her knife heated in the flame she put
out my right eye. She herself did it. I am the son of a Priestess. She
was a Priestess. It was not work for any common man.'
'True! Most true,' said Puck. 'No common man's work, that. And,
afterwards?'
'Afterwards I did not see out of that eye any more. I found also that a
one eye does not tell you truly where things are. Try it!'
At this Dan put his hand over one eye, and reached for the flint
arrow-head on the grass. He missed it by inches. 'It's true,' he
whispered to Una. 'You can't judge distances a bit with only one eye.'
Puck was evidently making the same experiment, for the man laughed at
him.
'I know it is so,' said he. 'Even now I am not always sure of my blow. I
stayed with the Children of the Night till my eye healed. They said I
was the son of Tyr, the God who put his right hand in a Beast's mouth.
They showed me how they melted their red stone and made the Magic Knives
of it. They told me the charms they sang over the fires and at the
beatings. I can sing many charms.' Then he began to laugh like a boy.
'I was thinking of my journey home,' he said, 'and of the surprised
Beast. He had come back to the Chalk. I saw him--I smelt his lairs as
soon as ever I left the Trees. He did not know I had the Magic Knife--I
hid it under my cloak--the Knife that the Priestess gave me. Ho! Ho!
That happy day was too short! See! A Beast would wind me. "Wow!" he
would say, "here is my Flint-worker!" He would come leaping, tail in
air; he would roll; he would lay his head between his paws out of
merriness of heart at his warm, waiting meal. He would leap--and, oh,
his eye in mid-leap when he saw--when he saw the knife held ready for
him! It pierced his hide as a rush pierces curdled milk. Often he had no
time to howl. I did not trouble to flay any beasts I killed. Sometimes I
missed my blow. Then I took my little flint hammer and beat out his
brains as he cowered. He made no fight. He knew the knife! But The Beast
is very cunning. Before evening all The Beasts had smelt the blood on
my knife, and were running from me like hares. _They_ knew! Then I
walked as a man should--the Master of The Beast!
'So came I back to my Mother's house. There was a lamb to be killed. I
cut it in two halves with my knife, and I told her all my tale. She
said, "This is the work of a God." I kissed her and laughed. I went to
my Maiden who waited for me at the Dew-ponds. There was a lamb to be
killed. I cut it in two halves with my knife, and told her all my tale.
She said, "It is the work of a God." I laughed, but she pushed me away,
and being on my blind side, ran off before I could kiss her. I went to
the Men of the Sheepguard at watering-time. There was a sheep to be
killed for their meat. I cut it in two halves with my knife, and told
them all my tale. They said, "It is the work of a God." I said, "We talk
too much about Gods. Let us eat and be happy, and to-morrow I will take
you to the Children of the Night, and each man will find a Magic Knife."
'I was glad to smell our sheep again; to see the broad sky from edge to
edge, and to hear the sea. I slept beneath the stars in my cloak. The
men talked among themselves.
'I led them, the next day, to the Trees, taking with me meat, wool, and
curdled milk, as I had promised. We found the Magic Knives laid out on
the grass, as the Children of the Night had promised. They watched us
from among the Trees. Their Priestess called to me and said, "How is it
with your people?" I said, "Their hearts are changed. I cannot see
their hearts as I used to." She said, "That is because you have only one
eye. Come to me and I will be both your eyes." But I said, "I must show
my people how to use their knives against The Beast, as you showed me
how to use my knife." I said this because the Magic Knife does not
balance like the flint. She said, "What you have done, you have done for
the sake of a woman, and not for the sake of your people." I asked of
her, "Then why did the God accept my right eye, and why are you so
angry?" She answered, "Because any man can lie to a God, but no man can
lie to a woman. And I am not angry with you. I am only very sorrowful
for you. Wait a little, and you will see out of your one eye why I am
sorry." So she hid herself.
'I went back with my people, each one carrying his knife, and making it
sing in the air--_tssee-sssse_. The Flint never sings. It
mutters--_ump-ump_. The Beast heard. The Beast saw. _He_ knew!
Everywhere he ran away from us. We all laughed. As we walked over the
grass my Mother's brother--the Chief on the Man's Side--he took off his
Chief's necklace of yellow sea-stones.'
'How? Eh? Oh, I remember! Amber,' said Puck.
'And would have put them on my neck. I said, "No, I am content. What
does my one eye matter if my other eye sees fat sheep and fat children
running about safely?" My Mother's brother said to them, "I told you he
would never take such things." Then they began to sing a song in the
Old Tongue--_The Song of Tyr_. I sang with them, but my Mother's brother
said, "This is _your_ song, oh, Buyer of the Knife. Let _us_ sing it,
Tyr."
'Even then I did not understand, till I saw that--that no man stepped on
my shadow; and I knew that they thought me to be a God, like the God
Tyr, who gave his right hand to conquer a Great Beast.'
'By the Fire in the Belly of the Flint, was that so?' Puck rapped out.
'By my Knife and the Naked Chalk, so it was! They made way for my shadow
as though it had been a Priestess walking to the Barrows of the Dead. I
was afraid. I said to myself, "My Mother and my Maiden will know I am
not Tyr." But _still_ I was afraid with the fear of a man who falls into
a steep flint-pit while he runs, and feels that it will be hard to climb
out.
'When we came to the Dew-ponds all our people were there. The men showed
their knives and told their tale. The sheepguards also had seen The
Beast flying from us. The Beast went west across the river in
packs--howling! He knew the Knife had come to the Naked Chalk at
last--at last! _He_ knew! So my work was done. I looked for my Maiden
among the Priestesses. She looked at me, but she did not smile. She made
the sign to me that our Priestesses must make when they sacrifice to the
Old Dead in the Barrows. I would have spoken, but my Mother's brother
made himself my Mouth, as though I had been one of the Old Dead in the
Barrows for whom our Priests speak to the people on Midsummer mornings.'
'I remember. Well I remember those Midsummer mornings!' said Puck.
'Then I went away angrily to my Mother's house. She would have knelt
before me. Then I was more angry, but she said, "Only a God would have
spoken to me thus, a Priestess. A man would have feared the punishment
of the Gods." I looked at her and I laughed. I could not stop my unhappy
laughing. They called me from the door by the name of Tyr himself. A
young man with whom I had watched my first flocks, and chipped my first
arrow, and fought my first Beast, called me by that name in the Old
Tongue. He asked my leave to take my Maiden. His eyes were lowered, his
hands were on his forehead. He was full of the fear of a God, but of
_me_, a man, he had no fear when he asked. I did not kill him. I said,
"Call the maiden." She came also without fear--this very one that had
waited for me, that had talked with me by our Dew-ponds. Being a
Priestess, she lifted her eyes to me. As I look on a hill or a cloud, so
she looked at me. She spoke in the Old Tongue which Priestesses use when
they make prayers to the Old Dead in the Barrows. She asked leave that
she might light the fire in my companion's house--and that I should
bless their children. I did not kill her. I heard my own voice, little
and cold, say, "Let it be as you desire," and they went away hand in
hand. My heart grew little and cold, a wind shouted in my ears; my eye
darkened. I said to my Mother, "Can a God die?" I heard her say, "What
is it? What is it, my son?" and I fell into darkness full of
hammer-noises. I was not.'
'Oh, poor--poor God!' said Puck. 'And your wise Mother?'
'_She_ knew. As soon as I dropped she knew. When my spirit came back I
heard her whisper on my ear, "Whether you live or die, or are made
different, I am your Mother." That was good--better even than the water
she gave me and the going away of the sickness. Though I was ashamed to
have fallen down, yet I was very glad. She was glad too. Neither of us
wished to lose the other. There is only the one Mother for the one son.
I heaped the fire for her, and barred the doors, and sat at her feet as
before I went away, and she combed my hair, and sang.
'I said at last, "What is to be done to the people who say that I am
Tyr?"
'She said, "He who has done a God-like thing must bear himself like a
God. I see no way out of it. The people are now your sheep till you die.
You cannot drive them off."
'I said, "This is a heavier sheep than I can lift." She said, "In time
it will grow easy. In time perhaps you will not lay it down for any
maiden anywhere. Be wise--be very wise, my son, for nothing is left you
except the words, and the songs, and the worship of a God."'
'Oh, poor God!' said Puck. 'But those are not altogether bad things.'
'I know they are not; but I would sell them all--all--all for one small
child of my own, smearing himself with the ashes of our own house-fire.'
He wrenched his knife from the turf, thrust it into his belt and stood
up.
'And yet, what else could I have done?' he said. 'The sheep are the
people.'
'It is a very old tale,' Puck answered. 'I have heard the like of it not
only on the Naked Chalk, but also among the Trees--under Oak, and Ash,
and Thorn.'
* * * * *
The afternoon shadows filled all the quiet emptiness of Norton's Pit.
The children heard the sheep bells and Young Jim's busy bark above them,
and they scrambled up the slope to the level.
'We let you have your sleep out,' said Mr. Dudeney, as the flock
scattered before them. 'It's making for tea-time now.'
'Look what I've found,' said Dan, and held up a little blue flint
arrow-head as fresh as though it had been chipped that very day.
'Oh,' said Mr. Dudeney, 'the closeter you be to the turf the more you're
apt to see things. I've found 'em often. Some says the fairies made 'em,
but I says they was made by folks like ourselves--only a goodish time
back. They're lucky to keep. Now, you couldn't ever have slept--not to
any profit--among your father's trees same as you've laid out on Naked
Chalk--could you?'
'One doesn't want to sleep in the woods,' said Una.
'Then what's the good of 'em?' said Mr. Dudeney. 'Might as well set in
the barn all day. Fetch 'em 'long, Jim boy!'
The Downs, that looked so bare and hot when they came, were full of
delicious little shadow-dimples; the smell of the thyme and the salt
mixed together on the south-west drift from the still sea; their eyes
dazzled with the low sun, and the long grass under it looked golden. The
sheep knew where their fold was, so Young Jim came back to his master,
and they all four strolled home, the scabious-heads swishing about their
ankles, and their shadows streaking behind them like the shadows of
giants.
SONG OF THE MEN'S SIDE
Once we feared The Beast--when he followed us we ran,
Ran very fast though we knew
It was not right that The Beast should master Man;
But what could we Flint-workers do?
The Beast only grinned at our spears round his ears--
Grinned at the hammers that we made;
But now we will hunt him for the life with the Knife--
And this is the Buyer of the Blade!
_Room for his shadow on the grass--let it pass!
To left and right--stand clear!
This is the Buyer of the Blade--be afraid!
This is the great god Tyr!_
Tyr thought hard till he hammered out a plan,
For he knew it was not right
(And it _is_ not right) that The Beast should master Man;
So he went to the Children of the Night.
He begged a Magic Knife of their make for our sake.
When he begged for the Knife they said:
'The price of the Knife you would buy is an eye!'
And that was the price he paid.
_Tell it to the Barrows of the Dead--run ahead!
Shout it so the Women's Side can hear!
This is the Buyer of the Blade--be afraid!
This is the great god Tyr!_
Our women and our little ones may walk on the Chalk,
As far as we can see them and beyond.
We shall not be anxious for our sheep when we keep
Tally at the shearing-pond.
We can eat with both our elbows on our knees, if we please,
We can sleep after meals in the sun;
For Shepherd of the Twilight is dismayed at the Blade,
Feet-in-the-Night have run!
Dog-without-a-Master goes away (Hai, Tyr aie!),
Devil-in-the-Dusk has run!
Then:
_Room for his shadow on the grass--let it pass!
To left and right--stand clear!
This is the Buyer of the Blade--be afraid!
This is the great god Tyr!_
Brother Square-Toes
PHILADELPHIA
If you're off to Philadelphia in the morning,
You mustn't take my stories for a guide.
There's little left indeed of the city you will read of
And all the folk I write about have died.
Now few will understand if you mention Talleyrand,
Or remember what his cunning and his skill did.
And the cabmen at the wharf do not know Count Zinnendorf,
Nor the Church in Philadelphia he builded.
It is gone, gone, gone with lost Atlantis
(Never say I didn't give you warning).
In Seventeen Ninety-three 'twas there for all to see,
But it's not in Philadelphia this morning.
If you're off to Philadelphia in the morning,
You mustn't go by everything I've said.
Bob Bicknell's Southern Stages have been laid aside for ages,
But the Limited will take you there instead.
Toby Hirte can't be seen at One Hundred and Eighteen,
North Second Street--no matter when you call;
And I fear you'll search in vain for the wash-house down the lane
Where Pharaoh played the fiddle at the ball.
It is gone, gone, gone with Thebes the Golden
(Never say I didn't give you warning).
In Seventeen Ninety-four 'twas a famous dancing-floor--
But it's not in Philadelphia this morning.
If you're off to Philadelphia in the morning,
You must telegraph for rooms at some Hotel.
You needn't try your luck at Epply's or the 'Buck,'
Though the Father of his Country liked them well.
It is not the slightest use to inquire for Adam Goos,
Or to ask where Pastor Meder has removed--so
You must treat as out of date the story I relate,
Of the Church in Philadelphia he loved so.
He is gone, gone, gone with Martin Luther,
(Never say I didn't give you warning).
In Seventeen Ninety-five he was (rest his soul!) alive.
But he's not in Philadelphia this morning.
If you're off to Philadelphia this morning,
And wish to prove the truth of what I say,
I pledge my word you'll find the pleasant land behind
Unaltered since Red Jacket rode that way.
Still the pine-woods scent the noon; still the catbird sings his tune;
Still autumn sets the maple-forest blazing.
Still the grape-vine through the dusk flings her soul-compelling musk;
Still the fire-flies in the corn make night amazing.
They are there, there, there with Earth immortal
(Citizens, I give you friendly warning).
The things that truly last when men and times have passed
They are all in Pennsylvania this morning!
Brother Square-Toes
It was almost the end of their visit to the seaside. They had turned
themselves out of doors while their trunks were being packed, and
strolled over the Downs towards the dull evening sea. The tide was dead
low under the chalk cliffs, and the little wrinkled waves grieved along
the sands up the coast to Newhaven and down the coast to long, grey
Brighton, whose smoke trailed out across the Channel.
They walked to The Gap where the cliff is only a few feet high. A
windlass for hoisting shingle from the beach below stands at the edge of
it. The Coastguard cottages are a little farther on, and an old ship's
figure-head of a Turk in a turban stared at them over the wall.
'This time to-morrow we shall be at home, thank goodness,' said Una. 'I
hate the sea!'
'I believe it's all right in the middle,' said Dan. 'The edges are the
sorrowful parts.'
Cordery, the coastguard, came out of the cottage, levelled his telescope
at some fishing-boats, shut it with a click and walked away. He grew
smaller and smaller along the edge of the cliff, where neat piles of
white chalk every few yards show the path even on the darkest night.
'Where's Cordery going?' said Una.
'Half-way to Newhaven,' said Dan. 'Then he'll meet the Newhaven
coastguard and turn back. He says if coastguards were done away with,
smuggling would start up at once.'
A voice on the beach under the cliff began to sing:
'The moon she shined on Telscombe Tye--
On Telscombe Tye at night it was--
She saw the smugglers riding by,
A very pretty sight it was!'
Feet scrabbled on the flinty path. A dark, thin-faced man in very neat
brown clothes and broad-toed shoes came up, followed by Puck.
'Three Dunkirk boats was standin' in!'
the man went on.
'Hssh!' said Puck. 'You'll shock these nice young people.'
'Oh! Shall I? Mille pardons!' He shrugged his shoulders almost up to his
ears--spread his hands abroad, and jabbered in French. 'No comprenny?'
he said. 'I'll give it you in Low German.' And he went off in another
language, changing his voice and manner so completely that they hardly
knew him for the same person. But his dark beady-brown eyes still
twinkled merrily in his lean face, and the children felt that they did
not suit the straight, plain, snuffy-brown coat, brown knee-breeches,
and broad-brimmed hat. His hair was tied in a short pig-tail which
danced wickedly when he turned his head.
'Ha' done!' said Puck, laughing. 'Be one thing or t'other,
Pharaoh--French or English or German--no great odds which.'
'Oh, but it is, though,' said Una quickly. 'We haven't begun German yet,
and--and we're going back to our French next week.'
'Aren't you English?' said Dan. 'We heard you singing just now.'
'Aha! That was the Sussex side o' me. Dad he married a French girl out
o' Boulogne, and French she stayed till her dyin' day. She was an
Aurette, of course. We Lees mostly marry Aurettes. Haven't you ever come
across the saying:
'Aurettes and Lees,
Like as two peas.
What they can't smuggle,
They'll run over seas?'
'Then, are you a smuggler?' Una cried; and, 'Have you smuggled much?'
said Dan.
Mr. Lee nodded solemnly.
'Mind you,' said he, 'I don't uphold smuggling for the generality o'
mankind--mostly they can't make a do of it--but I was brought up to the
trade, d'ye see, in a lawful line o' descent on'--he waved across the
Channel--'on both sides the water. 'Twas all in the families, same as
fiddling. The Aurettes used mostly to run the stuff across from
Boulogne, and we Lees landed it here and ran it up to London town, by
the safest road.'
'Then where did you live?' said Una.
'You mustn't ever live too close to your business in _our_ trade. We
kept our little fishing smack at Shoreham, but otherwise we Lees was all
honest cottager folk--at Warminghurst under Washington--Bramber way--on
the old Penn estate.'
'Ah!' said Puck, squatted by the windlass. 'I remember a piece about the
Lees at Warminghurst, I do:
'There was never a Lee to Warminghurst
That wasn't a gipsy last and first.
I reckon that's truth, Pharaoh.'
Pharaoh laughed. 'Admettin' that's true,' he said, 'my gipsy blood must
be wore pretty thin, for I've made and kept a worldly fortune.'
'By smuggling?' Dan asked.
'No, in the tobacco trade.'
'You don't mean to say you gave up smuggling just to go and be a
tobacconist!' Dan looked so disappointed they all had to laugh.
'I'm sorry; but there's all sorts of tobacconists,' Pharaoh replied.
'How far out, now, would you call that smack with the patch on her
foresail?' He pointed to the fishing-boats.
'A scant mile,' said Puck after a quick look.
'Just about. It's seven fathom under her--clean sand. That was where
Uncle Aurette used to sink his brandy kegs from Boulogne, and we fished
'em up and rowed 'em into The Gap here for the ponies to run inland. One
thickish night in January of '93, Dad and Uncle Lot and me came over
from Shoreham in the smack, and we found Uncle Aurette and the
L'Estranges, my cousins, waiting for us in their lugger with New Year's
presents from mother's folk in Boulogne. I remember Aunt Cecile she'd
sent me a fine new red knitted cap, which I put on then and there, for
the French was having their Revolution in those days, and red caps was
all the fashion. Uncle Aurette tells us that they had cut off their King
Louis' head, and, moreover, the Brest forts had fired on an English
man-o'-war. The news wasn't a week old.
'"That means war again, when we was only just getting used to the
peace," says Dad. "Why can't King George's men and King Louis' men do on
their uniforms and fight it out over our heads?"
'"Me too, I wish that," says Uncle Aurette. "But they'll be pressing
better men than themselves to fight for 'em. The press-gangs are out
already on our side: you look out for yours."
'"I'll have to bide ashore and grow cabbages for a while, after I've run
this cargo; but I do wish"--Dad says, going over the lugger's side with
our New Year presents under his arm and young L'Estrange holding the
lantern--"I just do wish that those folk which make war so easy had to
run one cargo a month all this winter. It 'ud show 'em what honest work
means."
'"Well, I've warned ye," says Uncle Aurette. "I'll be slipping off now
before your Revenue cutter comes. Give my love to sister and take care
o' the kegs. It's thicking to southward."
'I remember him waving to us and young Stephen L'Estrange blowing out
the lantern. By the time we'd fished up the kegs the fog came down so
thick Dad judged it risky for me to row 'em ashore, even though we could
hear the ponies stamping on the beach. So he and Uncle Lot took the
dinghy and left me in the smack playing on my fiddle to guide 'em back.
'Presently I heard guns. Two of 'em sounded mighty like Uncle Aurette's
three-pounders. He didn't go naked about the seas after dark. Then come
more, which I reckoned was Captain Giddens in the Revenue cutter. He was
open-handed with his compliments, but he _would_ lay his guns himself. I
stopped fiddling to listen, and I heard a whole skyful o' French up in
the fog--and a high bow come down on top o' the smack. I hadn't time to
call or think. I remember the smack heeling over, and me standing on the
gunwale pushing against the ship's side as if I hoped to bear her off.
Then the square of an open port, with a lantern in it, slid by in front
of my nose. I kicked back on our gunwale as it went under and slipped
through that port into the French ship--me and my fiddle.'
'Gracious!' said Una. 'What an adventure!'
'Didn't anybody see you come in?' said Dan.
'There wasn't any one there. I'd made use of an orlop-deck port--that's
the next deck below the gun-deck, which by rights should not have been
open at all. The crew was standing by their guns up above. I rolled on
to a pile of dunnage in the dark and I went to sleep. When I woke, men
was talking all round me, telling each other their names and sorrows
just like Dad told me pressed men used to talk in the last war. Pretty
soon I made out they'd all been hove aboard together by the press-gangs,
and left to sort 'emselves. The ship she was the _Embuscade_, a
thirty-six gun Republican frigate, Captain Jean Baptiste Bompard, two
days out of Le Havre, going to the United States with a Republican
French Ambassador of the name of Genêt. They had been up all night
clearing for action on account of hearing guns in the fog. Uncle Aurette
and Captain Giddens must have been passing the time o' day with each
other off Newhaven, and the frigate had drifted past 'em. She never knew
she'd run down our smack. Seeing so many aboard was total strangers to
each other, I thought one more mightn't be noticed; so I put Aunt
Cecile's red cap on the back of my head, and my hands in my pockets like
the rest, and, as we French say, I circulated till I found the galley.
'"What! Here's one of 'em that isn't sick!" says a cook. "Take his
breakfast to Citizen Bompard."
'I carried the tray to the cabin, but I didn't call this Bompard
"Citizen." Oh no! "Mon Capitaine" was my little word, same as Uncle
Aurette used to answer in King Louis' Navy. Bompard, he liked it; he
took me on for cabin servant, and after that no one asked questions; and
thus I got good victuals and light work all the way across to America.
He talked a heap of politics, and so did his officers, and when this
Ambassador Genêt got rid of his land-stomach and laid down the law
after dinner, a rook's parliament was nothing compared to their cabin. I
learned to know most of the men which had worked the French Revolution,
through waiting at table and hearing talk about 'em. One of our
forecas'le six-pounders was called Danton and t'other Marat. I used to
play the fiddle between 'em, sitting on the capstan. Day in and day out
Bompard and Monsieur Genêt talked o' what France had done, and how the
United States was going to join her to finish off the English in this
war. Monsieur Genêt said he'd justabout make the United States fight for
France. He was a rude common man. But I liked listening. I always helped
drink any healths that was proposed--specially Citizen Danton's who'd
cut off King Louis' head. An all-Englishman might have been
shocked--that's where my French blood saved me.
'It didn't save me from getting a dose of ship's fever though, the week
before we put Monsieur Genêt ashore at Charleston; and what was left of
me after bleeding and pills took the dumb horrors from living 'tween
decks. The surgeon, Karaguen his name was, kept me down there to help
him with his plasters--I was too weak to wait on Bompard. I don't
remember much of any account for the next few weeks, till I smelled
lilacs, and I looked out of the port, and we was moored to a wharf-edge
and there was a town o' fine gardens and red-brick houses and all the
green leaves in God's world waiting for me outside.
'"What's this?" I said to the sick-bay man--old Pierre Tiphaigne he was.
"Philadelphia," says Pierre. "You've missed it all. We're sailing next
week."
'I just turned round and cried for longing to be amongst the laylocks.
'"If that's your trouble," says old Pierre, "you go straight ashore.
None'll hinder you. They're all gone mad on these coasts--French and
American together. 'Tisn't _my_ notion o' war." Pierre was an old King
Louis man.
'My legs was pretty tottly, but I made shift to go on deck, which it was
like a fair. The frigate was crowded with fine gentlemen and ladies
pouring in and out. They sung and they waved French flags, while Captain
Bompard and his officers--yes, and some of the men--speechified to all
and sundry about war with England. They shouted, "Down with
England!"--"Down with Washington!"--"Hurrah for France and the
Republic!" _I_ couldn't make sense of it. I wanted to get out from that
crunch of swords and petticoats and sit in a field. One of the gentlemen
said to me, "Is that a genuine cap o' Liberty you're wearing?" 'Twas
Aunt Cecile's red one, and pretty near wore out. "Oh yes!" I says,
"straight from France." "I'll give you a shilling for it," he says, and
with that money in my hand and my fiddle under my arm I squeezed past
the entry-port and went ashore. It was like a dream--meadows, trees,
flowers, birds, houses, and people _all_ different! I sat me down in a
meadow and fiddled a bit, and then I went in and out the streets,
looking and smelling and touching, like a little dog at a fair. Fine
folk was setting on the white stone doorsteps of their houses, and a
girl threw me a handful of laylock sprays, and when I said "Merci"
without thinking, she said she loved the French. They was all the
fashion in the city. I saw more tricolour flags in Philadelphia than
ever I'd seen in Boulogne, and every one was shouting for war with
England. A crowd o' folk was cheering after our French ambassador--that
same Monsieur Genêt which we'd left at Charleston. He was a-horseback
behaving as if the place belonged to him--and commanding all and sundry
to fight the British. But I'd heard that before. I got into a long
straight street as wide as the Broyle, where gentlemen was racing
horses. I'm fond o' horses. Nobody hindered 'em, and a man told me it
was called Race Street o' purpose for that. Then I followed some black
niggers, which I'd never seen close before; but I left them to run after
a great, proud, copper-faced man with feathers in his hair and a red
blanket trailing behind him. A man told me he was a real Red Indian
called Red Jacket, and I followed him into an alley-way off Race Street
by Second Street, where there was a fiddle playing. I'm fond o'
fiddling. The Indian stopped at a baker's shop--Conrad Gerhard's it
was--and bought some sugary cakes. Hearing what the price was I was
going to have some too, but the Indian asked me in English if I was
hungry. "Oh yes!" I says. I must have looked a sore scrattel. He opens a
door on to a staircase and leads the way up. We walked into a dirty
little room full of flutes and fiddles and a fat man fiddling by the
window, in a smell of cheese and medicines fit to knock you down. I
_was_ knocked down too, for the fat man jumped up and hit me a smack in
the face. I fell against an old spinet covered with pill-boxes and the
pills rolled about the floor. The Indian never moved an eyelid.
'"Pick up the pills! Pick up the pills!" the fat man screeches.
'I started picking 'em up--hundreds of 'em--meaning to run out under the
Indian's arm, but I came on giddy all over and I sat down. The fat man
went back to his fiddling.
'"Toby!" says the Indian after quite a while. "I brought the boy to be
fed, not hit."
'"What?" says Toby, "I thought it was Gert Schwankfelder." He put down
his fiddle and took a good look at me. "Himmel!" he says. "I have hit
the wrong boy. It is not the new boy. Why are you not the new boy? Why
are you not Gert Schwankfelder?"
'"I don't know," I said. "The gentleman in the pink blanket brought me."
'Says the Indian, "He is hungry, Toby. Christians always feed the
hungry. So I bring him."
'"You should have said that first," said Toby. He pushed plates at me
and the Indian put bread and pork on them, and a glass of Madeira wine.
I told him I was off the French ship, which I had joined on account of
my mother being French. That was true enough when you think of it, and
besides I saw that the French was all the fashion in Philadelphia. Toby
and the Indian whispered and I went on picking up the pills.
'"You like pills--eh?" says Toby.
'"No," I says. "I've seen our ship's doctor roll too many of 'em."
'"Ho!" he says, and he shoves two bottles at me. "What's those?"
'"Calomel," I says. "And t'other's senna."
'"Right," he says. "One week have I tried to teach Gert Schwankfelder
the difference between them, yet he cannot tell. You like to fiddle?" he
says. He'd just seen my kit on the floor.
'"Oh yes!" says I.
'"Oho!" he says. "What note is this?" drawing his bow acrost.
'He meant it for A, so I told him it was.
'"My brother," he says to the Indian. "I think this is the hand of
Providence! I warned that Gert if he went to play upon the wharves any
more he would hear from me. Now look at this boy and say what you
think."
'The Indian looked me over whole minutes--there was a musical clock on
the wall and dolls came out and hopped while the hour struck. He looked
me over all the while they did it.
'"Good," he says at last. "This boy is good."
'"Good, then," says Toby. "Now I shall play my fiddle and you shall sing
your hymn, brother. Boy, go down to the bakery and tell them you are
young Gert Schwankfelder that was. The horses are in Davy Jones's
locker. If you ask any questions you shall hear from me."
'I left 'em singing hymns and I went down to old Conrad Gerhard. He
wasn't at all surprised when I told him I was young Gert Schwankfelder
that was. He knew Toby. His wife she walked me into the back yard
without a word, and she washed me and she cut my hair to the edge of a
basin, and she put me to bed, and Oh! how I slept--how I slept in that
little room behind the oven looking on the flower garden! I didn't know
Toby went to the _Embuscade_ that night and bought me off Dr. Karaguen
for twelve dollars and a dozen bottles of Seneca Oil. Karaguen wanted a
new lace to his coat, and he reckoned I hadn't long to live; so he put
me down as "discharged sick."'
'I like Toby,' said Una.
'Who was he?' said Puck.
'Apothecary Tobias Hirte,' Pharaoh replied. 'One Hundred and Eighteen,
Second Street--the famous Seneca Oil man, that lived half of every year
among the Indians. But let me tell my tale my own way, same as his brown
mare used to go to Lebanon.'
'Then why did he keep her in Davy Jones's locker?' Dan asked.
'That was his joke. He kept her under David Jones's hat shop in the
"Buck" tavern yard, and his Indian friends kept their ponies there when
they visited him. I looked after the horses when I wasn't rolling pills
on top of the old spinet, while he played his fiddle and Red Jacket sang
hymns. I liked it. I had good victuals, light work, a suit o' clean
clothes, a plenty music, and quiet, smiling German folk all around that
let me sit in their gardens. My first Sunday, Toby took me to his church
in Moravian Alley; and that was in a garden too. The women wore
long-eared caps and handkerchiefs. They came in at one door and the men
at another, and there was a brass chandelier you could see your face in,
and a nigger-boy to blow the organ bellows. I carried Toby's fiddle, and
he played pretty much as he chose all against the organ and the singing.
He was the only one they let do it, for they was a simple-minded folk.
They used to wash each other's feet up in the attic to keep 'emselves
humble: which Lord knows they didn't need.'
'How very queer,' said Una.
Pharaoh's eyes twinkled. 'I've met many and seen much,' he said; 'but I
haven't yet found any better or quieter or forbearinger people than the
Brethren and Sistern of the Moravian Church in Philadelphia. Nor will I
ever forget my first Sunday--the service was in English that week--with
the smell of the flowers coming in from Pastor Meder's garden where the
big peach tree is, and me looking at all the clean strangeness and
thinking of 'tween decks on the _Embuscade_ only six days ago. Being a
boy, it seemed to me it had lasted for ever, and was going on for ever.
But I didn't know Toby then. As soon as the dancing clock struck
midnight that Sunday--I was lying under the spinet--I heard Toby's
fiddle. He'd just done his supper, which he always took late and heavy.
"Gert," says he, "get the horses. Liberty and Independence for ever! The
flowers appear upon the earth and the time of the singing of birds is
come. We are going to my country seat in Lebanon."
'I rubbed my eyes, and fetched 'em out of the "Buck" stable. Red Jacket
was there saddling his, and when I'
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