“Well, an’ if we do have a kid wi’ yaller curls, what’s that to he?” grumbled the other. “Us have got brats enough of our own wi’out wantin’ strangers. I’ll have compensation for this. I bain’t a-goin’ to be assaulted and a-battered for nothin’.”
The nearest policeman, a portly personage, and jealous of his prerogative, now turning in a dignified manner, informed the malcontent that he didn’t know nothin’ o’ what he was talkin’ of—compensation didn’t apply to no such case as this, and finally ordered him sternly to move on.
Meanwhile Reed had somewhat recovered, and was looking about him with red, swollen eyes, and explaining huskily to the crowd as he hugged Johnny in his arms:—
“I thought I’d lost en, d’ye see?—that’s it. I thought I’d lost en.”
Rising presently, he prepared to leave the field, Johnny’s whilom protector walking besidehim, relating over and over again how he had come upon the child, how surprised he had been, how he had said to his mates that there was sure to be somebody in trouble about this, and how he had thought it best to come to the Fair at once. Reed, listening in a dazed kind of way, folded his arms tighter about Johnny, and stumbled along almost like a man in a dream.
“Shall I carry him?” said the other suddenly. “Ye do seem that upset I reckon ye’d get along easier.”
And then John woke up.
“Nay,” he said, “nay, sir. I thank ’ee kindly—I thank ’ee from my heart for findin’ en and all—but I can’t let go of en. I must have the feel of en, ye see.”
As they turned out of the gate a sudden rattle of wheels was heard and a trap came in sight, the horse proceeding at a kind of hobbling canter, and one of the occupants of the little vehicle actually standing upright and supporting herself by the shoulder of the driver.
“’Tis Mammy, I do believe,” said Reed. “See, Johnny—and there’s Maggie and Rosie at back. Call out to ’em, Sonny! Holler loud. I don’t know what’s come to me, I can’t seem to get my voice out.”
Johnny duly raised his shrill pipe, and in another moment, with a joyful whoop, Jim Fry had thrown the reins on the horse’s back, and the whole party had tumbled into the road.
Mrs. Reed and Rosie were beside Dada and his precious burden almost immediately, but Maggie hung back, looking at her father with piteous, appealing eyes.
“Come here, Maidy,” he said huskily, “come—all’s forgive and forgot—there be summat to forgive and forget on all sides. I were a bit rough to ’ee last night, but there, d’ye see, I were very nigh out o’ my mind.”
Maggie made a clutch at the nearest available portion of Johnny’s person, which happened to be a sturdy little mottled leg—for he was positively swamped by the caresses of his family—stooped, kissed it, and burst into tears.
Rosie followed suit, the mother had been long ago weeping, and now John Reed himself began to gulp and make contortions of the face as though in preparation for a fresh outburst of emotion.
Poor little Johnny looked from one to the other, utterly bewildered. The sight of his whole family simultaneously in tears was too much for him, and, lifting up his voice, hegave vent to his feelings in a volume of sound which left no doubt as to the unimpaired condition of his lungs even after a night under the stars.
Jim Fry had been circling round the group scratching his head, rubbing his nose, and screwing up his mouth in token of dissatisfaction. At this juncture he thought it was time to interfere.
“Well, I never,” he remarked irritably, “I never did see sich folk. Here we’ve all been a-trapesing over the county lookin’ for the child, and thinkin’ him dead or stole, or hurted some way; and now we’ve a-found en safe and sound, wi’out so much as a scratch on en, and ye must all begin a-cryin’ and a-sobbin’ enough to frighten en out of his wits. ’Tisn’t what ye’d like, be it, Johnny?”
“No,” said Johnny, with such a heave of his little chest that it very nearly lifted him out of his father’s arms. Again he looked from one to the other with tearful, bewildered eyes, and again the sense of his injuries was too much for him. “I’d like—summat—to eat!” he announced in a bellow of wrath and woe.
And thereupon the whole simple family fell a-laughing; and once again Johnny was huggedall round, and though eyes were still wet, and every now and then there would be a little catch in the voice of one or other speaker, the general equanimity was restored, and the party fell to discussing the little boy’s practical suggestion.
It was a very happy family that presently sat down to breakfast in a neighbouring cottage, Johnny being handed with respectful tenderness from one to the other, and being disposed before the meal was out to look upon himself quite in the light of a hero. And Maggie sat between her father and Jim Fry, and was perhaps the happiest of all.
Thelog fire burnt cheerily on the wide hearth, hissing and crackling every now and then, and sending showers of sparks dancing up the chimney; casting flickering shadows on the low ceiling, and sportively throwing little dots and rims of light from one to the other of Betty Sibley’s cherished treasures of crockery ware. But Betty herself looked very serious as she sat leaning forward in her arm-chair, her bony elbows resting on her knees, her pointed chin supported by her hands, her beady black eyes roving from one to the other of her two visitors.
They sat on the opposite side of the hearth. One a portly, middle-aged woman with a white apron much in evidence, and a little shawl crossed over her shoulders. The strings of her very flat straw bonnet were untied and thrown back, an infallible token of perturbation of mind in the class to which she belonged, her large fat hands tightly clasped together on the top of her apron, her woebegone facewith its lack-lustre eyes and loosely-dropping lower lip, the very picture of helpless despondency. Close beside her, on the extreme edge of his chair, sat a young man sufficiently like her to be recognisable as her son, but with considerably more intelligence in his face—intelligence dashed at this moment by a marked expression of sullenness.
“Well, Aunt Betty, if you can’t help us, I’m sure I can’t think whatever we be to do. You was always so clever—they do say down yonder in village there bain’t nothing as Betty Sibley haven’t got some way o’ gettin’ round. She can very nigh make the dead alive again.”
“Nay now, I never went so far as that,” said old Betty, throwing herself back in her chair. “But I’ve brought back them as has gone to the New House just for a minute like to ax a question. Sometimes the end comes so suddent there bain’t no time for things to get settled as they should be settled, and as them as is gone ud’ wish to have them settled—well, then, there’s ways o’ makin’ them come back.”
“Lor!” ejaculated Kate Hardy under her breath, looking in awe at her distinguished relative.
“’Ees, my dear, you mid be sure o’ that.D’ye mind when poor Jane Arnold was took off wi’ an impression on her chest—not so much time as to say where she’d like to be buried? Well, ye know, her daughter Mary was terrible upset. She know’d her mother had a lovely set o’ silver spoons put away safe somewhere, what was to be hers as she did tell her many a time when she was livin’, but not so much as one o’ them could she find; and Tom, the brother—a very rough fellow was Tom—gived her a week to put all to rights in the house and to pack up and go. Him and his missus didn’t get on at all with Mary. So poor Mary did come to I, the tears a-streaming down her face. ‘Mrs. Sibley,’ says she, ‘I don’t know what I’ll do without you’ll help me. I’ve lost my dear mother,’ she says, a-sobbin’ and a-cryin’ fit to break her heart, ‘and now it do really seem as if I was to lose the spoons too.”
“Eh—h—h, dear, dear,” groaned Mrs. Hardy sympathetically.
“’E—es, my dear, it ’ud ha’ melted a heart o’ stone I do assure ye. So, I gived her summat and I did tell her what to say—”
Here the young man who had been sitting moodily twirling his thumbs, only changing his position once or twice to kick the burninglogs with the heel of his hob-nailed boot when the flames sunk low, looked up suddenly with an expression of interest.
“What did ’ee give her?” he asked.
“Never you mind, Jim. It bain’t for nothin’ o’ that kind as you and your mother be come here this evenin’: ’tis the livin’ as you wants to deal wi’.”
“Maybe if I had my will it ’ud be the dead,” said Jim, kicking savagely at the log.
“Sh—sh—sh,” said his mother reprovingly. “Don’t ’ee take no notice of him, Aunt Betty; ’tis the best hearted bwoy in the world, but there, he be druv’ very nigh distracted at the present time!”
“Well, Kate, my dear, as I was a-sayin’,” pursued the sibyl, pointedly addressing herself to the elder of her visitors, “I did give the poor creatur’ summat, and that very night about twelve o’clock she did set the charm to work.”
Jim kicked at the log again, a little nervously, and Kate drew forward her chair with a grating sound on the tiled floor.
“Jist as the clock did strike one,” went on Betty, in a sepulchral tone, “the flame o’ the candle did jump up and then drop down again, and Mary did hear her mother’s step on the floor.”
Murmurs of admiration mingled with trepidation from Mrs. Hardy, and a sudden rigidity on Jim’s part.
“There she was, jist as she mid ha’ been in life, in her Sunday dress an’ little brooch an’ all, Mary said, an’ a nice clean apron, an’ wi’ a beautiful fresh colour in her cheeks. She looked at Mary so reproachful like, the very same, Mary did say, as if she was axin’ her, ‘Why have ye brought me back?’ Poor Mary did go all white and twittery, an’ she did say: ‘Oh, Mother dear, I’d never ha’ brought you back from your rest, but just to ax ’ee the one thing:where did ’ee put the spoons?’ Well, the figure did stand lookin’ at her so solemn, and then all at once did rise its hand like this.”
Here Betty pointed upwards, and a dramatic pause ensued.
“Ah,” groaned Mrs. Hardy, “meanin’ to say as now she’d gone up’ards to glory she couldn’t be expected to be took up wi’ spoons an’ sich like.”
“’Twas the very thing as Mary did think herself, Kate my dear,” responded Betty solemnly. “She come to I next mornin’, an’ she did say them very words, but I knowed better; I knowed that there charm what I gived her was one as never failed. ‘Not atall, Mary,’ says I. ‘Your mother’s sperrit warn’t a-tellin’ ’ee nought o’ the kind. It p’inted up’ards, ye say? Well then, take my advice an’ go straight home andsearch the thatch.’”
“Well, to be sure!” ejaculated her listeners; even the taciturn Jim was constrained to express some interest.
“Did she find ’em?” he asked quickly.
“I should think she did find ’em, Jim. She did find every one as safe as anything, tied up in an old stocking, jist in the very spot what her mother had p’inted out.”
This climax seemed to impress Jim even more than his mother; he leaned forward, his great red hands twitching as they rested one on each knee.
“I d’ ’low, Aunt Betty, if ye could do that, you could do anythin’. Can’t ye gi’ me summat as ’ll get the better o’ this here chap?”
“Well, Jim, I could give ’ee a love charm, but as you do tell I there’s no gettin’ near your young lady, I don’t see how you be to indooce her to wear it.”
“That’s true!” put in Jim’s mother dolefully. “There, I will say it do seem cruel hard. They were as good friends I do assure ’ee as a young man and a young lady need be.They’ve a-bin walkin’—how long have you an’ Chrissy bin a-walkin’, Jim?”
“Fifteen month,” growled Jim gloomily.
“Ah, fifteen month, Aunt Betty. An’ Chrissy have a nice bit of money laid by, mind ye. Her father was as pleasant as could be about it, an’ quite friendly, an’ the mother too. She did say to I not above a month ago, I d’ ’low,’ says she, ‘we may be expectin’ to hear banns give out soon,’ she says. Well, an now this young good-for-nothin’ chap must come and whip her up from under my Jim’s very nose. What she can see in him I can’t think, without it be hiskorkyjacket.TrooperWillcocks, as he calls himself—I’d troop him if I had my way. Why didn’t he stay out at the war then, if he be so set up about it?”
“Ah, he’s a soldier, is he?” commented Aunt Betty. “A soldier. Ah, my dear, Jim’s young lady bain’t the first to run after a red coat.”
“But he han’t got no more a red coat nor you have—nothin’ but what they do call korky—as ugly a colour as ever I see. An’ he bain’t a-goin’ to stop in the army neither. He bain’t a proper soldier at all—jist a common chap as they picked up somewhere and clapped on a horse and sent out.”
“He’s in the yeomanry,” explained Jim. “He don’t even come from these parts; he’s home on sick leave, an’ is here visitin’ his uncle, along of his own ’ome bein’ in town and not so healthy. But he’s no more sick than I am. I’d like to make him a bit sicker, I know. Couldn’t ’ee give me a charm for that, Aunt Betty?”
Betty rubbed her shrivelled hands together, and fixed her beady eyes meditatively on her great-nephew.
“There mid be things as can be done what mid be things a body midn’t like doin’,” she said oracularly. “You know the wax image—but there, I wouldn’t go for to advise such a thing. The power as is give us is give us for good, that’s what I do say. There’s a cure for everything in natur’, if one but knowed how to find it. Now with herbs—I’ve often found out wonderful things with herbs—folks as is troubled wi’ warts and corns could cure them in a minute if they knowed the right thing. The worst wart as ever was can be cured by a bit o’ milkwort. Pull it up, root an’ all, d’ye see, and give ’em a bit every day, pounded wi’ a drop o’ new milk, an’ when the time comes round that the plant, if it was growin’ outside, ’ud be dyin’ down, thewart ’ull just wither away—that’s mynotion, d’ye see?”
“But the image,” persevered Jim. “Did you ever try that? It seems a silly kind o’ thing too,” he added tentatively. “How could a dumb image do anything good or ill?”
“Hush—sh—sh, my dear, ye don’t know nothin’ about them things,” put in Mrs. Hardy with apologetic haste. “But they was known an’ tried by others afore ye was born. Ye make an image in the likeness of the person as you know is trying to do you harm, and ye put it down to roast at a slow fire. Dear yes, I’ve often heard of it.”
“Well, then ye don’t seem to have heard the rights on it,” interposed Aunt Betty, indignant at this encroachment on her peculiar province. “There’s a deal more to be done than just set it down to roast same’s a chicken.”
“Then what must ye do?” inquired Kate in awe-struck tones. “Ah,” seized by a sudden thought, “I can mind it now. Ye must stick the image full of pins first.”
“That’s it?” said old Betty, nodding reluctantly. “But there’s more than that too. There’s summat as must besaid.”
“I never heerd tell o’ nothin bein’ said, an’I can mind my cousin Lizzie castin’ a spell over her step-mother wi’ an image like that, an’ she were took wi’ the rheumatiz the next week an’ never looked up arter.”
“’Twarn’t on account of the spell then if she didn’t say nothin’,” retorted Betty contemptuously. “No spell would ever work wi’out the words. Why, did ye never hear tell o’ saying the Lard’s Prayer back’ards, beginnin’ with Amen?”
“Lard no! that I didn’t! An’ it bain’t what I’d like to be doin’, Aunt Betty.”
“Neither should I, my dear—’tis just what I be a-tellin’ ’ee. But charm won’t work wi’out ye do.”
A pause ensued, after which Kate, rising disconsolately and crooking her arm into her heavy market-basket, remarked that it was time to be goin’. Jim rose too, and stood dismally facing his great-aunt.
“If ye like to come back in a few days I’ll get that love charm ready,” she remarked compassionately. “Bain’t there no maid as knows her as ye could get to sew it somewhere about her clothes?”
“No,” retorted Jim sullenly. “I’ll not try no love charms. I’ll try my hand at gettin’ rid o’himfirst.”
Mother and son trudged away together in gloomy silence. The early dusk had closed in upon the autumnal landscape. In the little town they had left behind, lights were beginning to gleam forth, but before them there was only the dim glimmer of the wet road to guide them on their way. Now and then a van passed them, jogging downwards to the town, or a heavily-laden waggon with the carter slouching alongside, and growling out Good-night as he went by.
All at once Jim nudged his mother, and pointed with a trembling finger.
“It’s him,” he whispered hoarsely. Against the uncertain grey background of the road a broad-shouldered young figure came swinging into sight, the outline of the broad-brimmed cavalier hat which marked the yeoman being plainly perceptible. As he drew near to the couple he paused, peering through the dusk.
“Hullo, Jim Hardy!” he cried gaily, “any message for Chrissy? I’m glad to see you walking with a lady—I’ll tell her you’ve picked up another sweetheart.”
“Get out with ’ee, do!” cried Mrs. Hardy, further relieving her lacerated feelings by making a swoop at him with the market-basket.
Jim, however, pushed past her, and making a sudden dart at his supplanter, endeavoured to knock the picturesque hat from his head. But the yeoman was too quick for him: stepping swiftly to one side he allowed his assailant’s blow to expend itself on the empty air, and then closing with him, tripped him up and laid him neatly on his back in the miry road.
“Good trick that, ain’t it?” he inquired pleasantly over his shoulder as he pursued his way. “Picked it up from the Lancashires.”
Jim lay half stunned for a moment and then struggled up, foaming at the mouth. He would have rushed in pursuit of his adversary, but that before he was fairly on his feet his mother fell upon him, market-basket and all, and held him firmly embraced until the tantalising sound of Trooper Willcocks’ cheery whistle died away in the distance.
“Well, I tell you what it is,” grumbled the hapless lover, when he had at last extricated himself. “We’ll have a try at that there image to-night, or my name bain’t Jim Hardy.”
That evening accordingly, when the rheumatic old father had been hustled off to bed, and the younger members of the family disposed offor the night, Jim confronted his mother, holding a large slab of bees’ wax in his hand.
“Where be the pins?” he asked in a fierce whisper.
“Lard, it do make I go all flittery-twittery—folks do tell such tales! If ’twarn’t for sayin’ the words, I wouldn’t so much mind. But there—the notion do make I go quite cold down the back.”
Meanwhile Jim, kneeling in front of the fire, had melted the wax sufficiently to make it malleable, and now began to knead and mould it.
“Here be his legs,” he muttered to himself, “and now we must make thiccy hat stick out.”
With a kind of groan his mother went over to a chest of drawers in a corner of the room, and after fumbling for some time returned with a paper of pins.
“It be very nigh ready,” whispered Jim working away. “Ugh! I’d like to smash the cheeky face of ’en.” And with that he gave a fierce poke at the small knob which did duty for the gallant yeoman’s countenance.
The figure being completed Mrs. Hardy bent downwards handing Jim the pins one by one; her son viciously proceeding to insert as many as the effigy would hold, and beginning bydriving a particularly large and crooked one into the middle of its chest. The blazing logs threw large grotesque shadows of the stooping forms of the mother and son upon walls and ceiling, and when presently Jim held out the bristling little image at arm’s length, its fantastic reproduction, naturally much magnified, did indeed appear to bear some weird resemblance to the person whom it was meant to represent.
“Now then, Mother, say the words,” ordered Jim, as he set down the figure on the hearth.
“Lard, I dursn’t!” whimpered Mrs. Hardy. “Say ’em yourself; I don’t wish the poor young man no ’arm.”
Her son, after casting on her a withering glance, indicative of supreme scorn at this despicable attempt to shirk responsibility, began slowly and resolutely to repeat his impious incantation. By the time he had finished, the miniature yeoman had considerably diminished in size, the broad-brimmed hat had toppled to one side, and several of the pins had dropped out. Jim straightened himself; his face was quite pale and his brow was wet.
“Get along to bed, Mother,” he remarked, “I reckon he’ll do now. I d’ ’low Trooper Willcocks ’ull not feel so very comfortable in the morning.”
But lo and behold! though on the following day nothing was left of the effigy but a sticky indistinguishable mass of wax and pins, the very first person whom Jim encountered on his way to work was Trooper Willcocks, apparently in the best of health and spirits. Jim was downcast, but not yet doubtful. He would give him a week, he thought; but at the end of the week Trooper Willcocks looked better than ever, and what was worse, was more frequently in Chrissy’s company.
The despairing lover next resolved to try a more orthodox method of removing his obnoxious rival, and called upon the Rector, to whom he unfolded his case with some difficulty, and who listened in evident amusement, but not very great surprise.
“To tell you the truth, Hardy,” he remarked, throwing himself back in his chair, “you are not the only sufferer. I think about six men have already come to me on the very same errand.”
“Six chaps come to ye about Chrissy Baverstock?” stammered Jim, purple in the face with anguish.
“Not about Chrissy Baverstock—if I remember aright each had a complaint to make about a different young woman, but it wasalways the same man. He must be a redoubtable fellow, this yeoman of yours.”
“He bain’t none o’ mine,” retorted Jim, “an’ I can’t think whatever the maids do see in him. I didn’t know there was more nor one,” he added reflectively, while a ray of hope seemed to illuminate his visage.
“I am very sorry for you, but I’m afraid I can’t help you. You see Willcocks is no parishioner of mine. And though I have spoken to some of the girls in question, my words seem to have no effect. Their heads are turned, I think, by his tales of battles and dangers and hairbreadth escapes. They make a hero of him. But console yourself. After all there is safety in numbers.”
“’Ees,” agreed Jim meditatively. “If there’s six of us, we ought to be able to do summat.”
It was late when he left the rectory, and he bent his steps immediately to a small hostelry in the town, which he occasionally patronised, but which the condition of his spirits had not permitted him to frequent of late, dreading as he did the facetious remarks of his cronies.
On pushing open the swing door, he found himself at once in the midst of a party of heated disputants, and the first phrase which greeted his ears revealed that the subject ofthe argument was the very one which occupied his own thoughts.
“I d’ ’low I’d knock that there blasted, broad-brimmed hat off his head so soon as I’d look at en—and his head too if it comes to that.”
“Ah!” growled another, “I be pure sorry they Boers haven’t a-done it for en. I can’t believe they be such good shots as they do say, or they’d ha’ had it off afore now, wi’ their guns and their cannons. It be always a poppin’ up where it bain’t wanted.”
“Haw—haw,” chimed in a third voice, “I d’ ’low Trooper Willcocks’ head were a deal too nigh Rosie Adlam’s last night to suit ’ee, Tom. Ah, ’twas a very tender sight, goin’ along by the top of the hedge—d’you mind, Billy?”
“An’ poor Chrissy Baverstock standin’ all alone at the corner of the lane, fit to bu’st wi’ jealousy—why that’s Jim Hardy, bain’t it? We was just a-talkin’ o’ your girl, Jim; ’tis a pity you weren’t about last night—ye mid ha’ had a chance, for Trooper Willcocks was givin’ Rosie a turn.”
Jim breathed a benediction, equally applicable to all the parties in question, and elbowed his way to the front.
“He’s took up wi’ Rosie now, has he?” heinquired, “’twon’t last—nay, ’twon’t last, sure. She never were fit to hold a candle to Chrissy.”
Rosie’s discarded young man was still sufficiently susceptible where she was concerned to be disposed to take up the cudgels in her defence, and was opening his mouth to make some angry rejoinder, when he was prevented by the first speaker, who, removing a long clay pipe from his mouth, and waving it solemnly in the air, commanded silence.
“Boys,” he said, “this here bain’t no time for quarrelling. As we was a-sayin’ afore Jim Hardy come in, summat must be done. It bain’t only Chrissy and Rosie—it’s every maid in the whole countryside. So soon as ever that there chap comes in sight, in his old yaller coat and breeches, and them there bandaged legs, and cockin’ his hat so knowin’ over his eye, the maids goes fair silly. I’ve seen it myself,” he added feelingly.
“Poor Sam!” cried out a voice from the rear. “What? ye don’t mean to say as your Mary—”
“Never you mind my Mary,” interrupted Sam loftily, “the question’s this. This here man’s a public noosance, and as such must be removed; now, how be we to remove en?”
“Parson can’t make en shift,” murmured Tom dolefully.
“I d’ ’low a witch ’ud not have no power over he,” said Jim, thinking ruefully of his unsuccessful attempt with the bees’ wax.
“An’ it don’t seem to answer to go fightin’ of he, neither,” remarked Tom, who had a very noticeable black eye.
“I was a-wonderin’,” pursued Sam, “if we couldn’t someways ha’ the law on him. He mid be run in for trespassin’ maybe, or for makin’ away wi’ other folks’ property—meanin’ the maids’ ’earts, do ’ee see? ha! ha!”
“Lard, what a notion!” cried Jim. “Why the maids theirselves would take his part, sayin’ they gived ’em to en willin’. That’s no use. What I say is, Here be six on us, let’s go at en all together an’ duck en. That ’ud maybe cool en a bit.”
A young man who had for some time been standing on the outskirts of the group silently listening, now came forward, throwing out his hand to command attention. He was a sharp-featured youth with cunning little eyes and a sly smile.
“Beg pardon for interrupting,” he began, “but if you think of callin’ in the aid of the law, I shall be ’appy to advise ye.”
“Why, ’tis the lawyer chap,” said Tom. “He ought to know summat; he’s been apeggin’ away at a desk long enough.”
Mr. Samuel Cross, who had indeed been clerk to the Branston lawyer for two or three years, and who was occasionally not averse to giving a little legal advice on his own account, unknown to his principal, was hailed on the present occasion with respectful satisfaction. Seating himself on a corner of the deal table round which the group had gathered, and swinging his little legs backwards and forwards, he surveyed the party with twinkling eyes.
“First an’foremost,” he began, “your notion, Jim Hardy, must be dismissed at once. Duck a man who wears the Queen’s uniform? Why the whole country would be up in arms? Sam’s idea is better, but I don’t quite see how we could make it ‘trespass,’ nor yet ‘appropriation of property’. The young ladies, as Jim truly said, the young ladies would be against us there. We might do something in the way of ‘undue influence,’ perhaps,” meditatively, “but the best of all would be a ‘Breach of Prom.’.”
“What’s that?” cried several voices, while Tom, scratching his head, remarked, “I don’t quite take ’ee.”
“Why, look ’ere, this chap’s been making up to six gals at the same time—or perhaps they’ve bin a-makin’ up to him—anyhow, whichever way ye put it, every gal in the place is running after him. Well, he can’t possibly marry them all, don’t ye see? The thing ’ud be to induce one of these here disapp’inted gals to threaten to take an action against him for Breach of Promise of Marriage. Nothing in the world frightens a man so much as the notion of an action for ‘Breach’.”
The other Sam slapped his thigh and roared with laughter. “Well done,” he cried. “Rabbit me, it do take a lawyer to think of they things.”
The rest, however, looked dubious. Each one thought of his own sweetheart, and mentally resolved that she should never be permitted to sacrifice herself for the public weal.
“’Ees,” said Tom hesitatingly, voicing the general sentiment after a pause. “It do sound right enough, but the question is—which maid is it to be?”
“Oh, that’s easily answered,” returned Cross, waving his pipe airily. “Which is the staidest an’ ugliest?”
There was a simultaneous outcry; the maidens of Branston and the neighbourhoodwere apparently each and all in the flower of youth and beauty. Sharp words were exchanged, however. Tom, while defending Rosie from the imputed cast in her eye, took occasion to animadvert on Mary’s carroty locks, and the last-named damsel’s admirer nearly came to blows with Jim on the subject of Chrissy’s age, he asserting that she was a staid girl, while her lover stoutly declared that she was not yet five-and-twenty.
Just as the hubbub was at its height, an elderly man, who had been smoking in silent amusement in the corner of the room, remarked that if they were on the look-out for an ill-favoured sort o’ body, a bit on in years, they couldn’t do better than see what could be made of Anne Clarke of the “Roebuck”.
“I seed Trooper Willcocks wi’ his arm round her waist t’other day,” he added. “Him an’ a couple more young sparks come in for a glass—and Willcocks had had a drop too much already. He’d got into the way o’ love-making, d’ye see, and she was the only maid handy, so he made up to her, bein’ too far gone to see the difference. If he didn’t begin palaverin’, an’ tellin’ her cock-an’-bull stories about his adventures out there at the war, and how he longed for faymale love an’ sympathy. Hisarm was round her waist, I tell ’ee, before his first pint was drunk!”
Samuel Cross jumped off the table, his little eyes dancing in his head. “The very thing,” he cried rapturously. “Boys, we’ll make a grand job of this. It will work up to a lovely case. But Mum’s the word, remember—the game will be spoilt if a hint of it gets out. Cheer up, lovers all, you’ll get your sweethearts back, I promise you. If Trooper Willcocks doesn’t show a clean pair of heels before long, I’m a Dutchman.”
The Roebuck Inn was a somewhat dreary-looking little hostelry, about a mile away from the town of Branston. It was situated in a kind of fold in the downs, a hollow between two vast undulating tracts of green. A handful of thatched cottages flanked it, and the river ran so near that the premises of the Roebuck were regularly flooded once or twice a year when “the springs rose”.
The landlord of the little tumble-down place took these visitations very philosophically: indeed it was noticeable that his spirits were uplifted in proportion to the rising of the springs, knowing, as he had reason to do, that this watery rising habitually produced elevation of another kind among his customers. Forwhen one’s fields are flooded and one’s spirits damped, one is all the better able to appreciate an exhilarating glass, particularly when that glass is partaken of under peculiar and mirth-producing circumstances.
When Billy Clarke’s lower premises were under water, the topers were forced to migrate upstairs to the biggest bedroom, and there with a roaring fire in the tiny grate, packed themselves side by side upon the ancient four-post bed, and amid uproarious laughter devised every conceivable pretext for sending cross-grained Anne creaking down the slippery stairs, and clicking and sliding about on her pattens on the wet tiles below. The strife between her cupidity and her ill-temper was an endless source of amusement to her clients; Anne Clarke would walk a mile for twopence, it was said, but she took it out in “language”.
The dusk was gathering when Samuel Cross called upon this damsel, and, though “the water had been out” a few days before, it had now partially subsided. The “barton,” to be sure, was still more like a lake than a farm-yard, and Billy’s two cows, standing knee-deep in a dark slimy mess which once had been a manure heap of more than respectable dimensions, looked very forlorn and wretched. Anne, stillclinking about on her pattens, wore a particularly forbidding expression on her frosty face as she paused on her way from the clothes-line, a basket of linen poised on her hip, to return the visitor’s salutation.
“’Tother way to the tap-room,” she added ungraciously.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Clarke. I come on a very different matter—a very delicatematter, and one which nearly concerns you.”
Anne fixed her most tractable eye upon him and considered; after a few minutes a light appeared to break in on her, and her face became almost pleasant.
“I d’ ’low ye be the lawyer feller, bain’t ye? Have ’ee come to say Father or me’s come in to a legacy?”
“Not exactly that, Miss Clarke, though I shouldn’t say there wasn’t money in it. You will find, Miss, that it will be to your advantage to place entire confidence in me.”
Anne hitched the basket a little higher up on her hip, assisting the operation by a jerk of her bony knee, and stared harder than ever; even the unmanageable eye assuming an expression of lively interest which was positively uncanny.
“What be to do?” she asked breathlessly.
Samuel came closer, laid one hand on the cold, damp, red arm which encircled the basket, and whispered mysteriously.
“It concerns your affections, Miss Clarke. Your woman’s ’eart, what have been cruelly trifled with.”
“Get out!” returned Miss Clarke succinctly and fiercely. “Don’t ’ee think ye can come a-gammonin’ o’ me. I’m up to ye an’ your tricks. Be off this minute, or I’ll—”
“Now, now, my good lady, be patient,” cried Samuel, starting back, well out of reach of the basket, which the irate damsel had lifted suspiciously high. “I have come here in your interest, I assure you. I have come to make a suggestion which is entirely to your advantage, and which will not only avenge your outraged feelin’s, but put money in your pocket. But you must listen to me—you must allow me to explain; moreover you must trust in me.”
Anne hitched up her basket again and jerked her thumb in the direction of the house.
“Will ’ee come in?” she inquired; and without waiting for a reply led the way through the yard, over a kind of wooden dam which had been placed across the doorway, and finally into the damp and deserted tap-room, wherean evil-smelling paraffin lamp was already burning. Having set down her burden and closed the door, she turned and faced the lawyer’s clerk.
“Now then, what is it?”
“Miss Clarke,” began Samuel respectfully and mysteriously, “a rumour has reached me of the villainous way in which Trooper Willcocks has trifled with your feelin’s. Now wait a bit, now wait a bit—” uplifting one hand as Anne was about to make some wrathful rejoinder. “You’d be quite in the right to object to my intrudin’ on so delicatea matter if there weren’t abusinessside to it, but ye see there is a business side and that’s what I’ve come about. There’s woman’s rights as well as woman’s feelin’s. Ah, if it wasn’t for that, Miss Clarke, maybe some of us gay young men would find your sex even moreunresistible than we do already. But the notion of a Breach of Prom., Miss, is enough to steady the liveliest of us.” He leered at her out of his cunning little eyes, and continued emphatically: “Maybe you didn’t know, Miss Clarke, as when a good-for-nothing young chap same as Trooper Willcocks comes philandering arter a lady that lady can have the law on him if he goes too far. Now there’s a strangereport in the town what says Trooper Willcocks’ arm were round your waist t’other night, Miss Clarke.”
Anne squinted down sideways at the singularly unattractive portion of her person just alluded to, as though wondering how Trooper Willcocks’ arm had ever got there; and indeed such a proceeding indicated an almost sublime degree of courage on the part of the gallant yeoman.
“’Twas a very tender act,” pursued Cross, “but a tender act don’t count for nothin’ by itself without the words are compromisin’. Now, can you call to mind anythin’ as Trooper Willcockssaid, Miss Clarke?”
“An’ supposin’ I did I’d maybe have no fancy for repeatin’ of ’em,” retorted the lady with a faint increase of colour in her sallow cheeks. “He’d had a drop too much, Trooper Willcocks had, and he did give I a lot of impidence.Ididn’t take no notice of ’em—he did make I laugh at the time I d’ ’low, but—”
Cross pricked up his ears. Anne’s admission denoted that the impression produced by the warrior had been even greater than he had supposed, for she was not as a rule given to seeing the humorous side of things.
“’Tis this way, d’ye see,” he said,insinuatingly. “If we can prove as Trooper Willcocks went beyond a certain p’int in his lovin’ speeches we can take a action again him.”
“An’ what ’ud be the good o’ that?”
“Wait a bit, Miss, wait a bit!” said Samuel, sawing the air again with his lean forefinger. “We can take a action again him, as I say, what will force him either to lead you to the altar or to pay you a substantial sum of money as damages.”
A slow smile broke over Anne’s ill-favoured face.
“D’ye mean him an’ me ’ud have to get married?” she inquired.
“Either that or, supposin’ the villain wasn’t willin’—an’ heisa villain, Miss Clarke, a low deceivin’ rascal—he’d have to put his hand in his pocket andforkout, Miss. Either way, d’ye see, you’d be the gainer. But alldepends upon your memory. Now, in confidence, Miss Clarke, in strict confidence to ahonourable man, tell me, what did Trooper Willcocks say to you?”
“He called I a beauty two or three times,” returned Anne, after cogitating for a moment.
“Ah,” said Cross, “a—a nat’ral remark of course, but not compromising. He said more than that, I’m sure, Miss Clarke.”
“He said,” she went on, knitting her brows in the effort to recall the trooper’s blandishments, “he said he wondered I’d remained single till now. The bwoys didn’t know what they was about, he said.”
“That’s more like it!” cried Samuel, snapping his fingers joyfully. “Let’s follow up that tack, Miss Clarke, ifyouplease. Did he chance to say now ashehad better taste? That ’ud be a very likely remark for him to make, ye know. Don’t you recollect somethin’ of that sort, now?”
“Nay,” said Anne, shaking her head, “I can’t call to mind as he did. He said as if my eyes was a pair there wouldn’t be their match in the country.”
“Depend upon it you’ve made a mistake there, Miss,” said Cross, leaning forward and speaking with increased earnestness. “I dessay, bein’ a bit flurried at the time, you didn’t take reg’lar notice; but that ’ud be a silly thing for any one to say. You might be sure his remark really was somethin’ like this: ‘You an’ I should be a pair, Miss; I’ve come to make a match in the country.’ You see hehascome down to the country, and what more likely than that he’s come on purpose to find a wife?”
Anne, fixing her interlocutor with one of the eyes alluded to in the gallant speech she had quoted, and rubbing her hands together, began to think it was very likely.
“He—he kissed you, I s’pose, Miss Clarke?” went on the inquisitor presently. “He! he! he! ’Tis most unfair to ax such questions, but—”
“He went for to do it once, but I did smack his face for ’en an’ he didn’t try no more,” put in Anne a trifle regretfully. “’Twould ha’ been better, I s’pose, if he had?”
“Well, it would have been more compromising, but the great thing to go on is what hesaid. Try and remember that, Miss. He told you about the war an’ how lonesome he was out there, didn’t he? ‘No lovin’ faymales there,’ he said; so they tell me.”
“’E-es,” agreed Anne. “He did say, ‘Little did I think out there on the veldt as I should so soon have my arm about a little charmer like you’.”
“Did he?” said Cross eagerly.
“’E-es. ‘Lucky wound,’ says he, ‘to give I this chance!’ An’ he did say as if he were sent out again I should have to go too, for he couldn’t never stand the thought of sayin’ good-bye to I.”
“That ’ull do!” shouted Samuel, leaping from his chair and positively crowing with glee. “Now we’ve got him. He said you must go too—meanin’, of course, as his bride. That’s enough. Shake hands, Miss Clarke! We have got him fairly cornered now. Marriage or money—one or t’other. If I was you I’d go in for the money, Miss Clarke.”
Anne turned to him with a simper that sent a cold shiver down his back. “I’m not so sure o’ that,” she said.
“Good Lord,” muttered Cross to himself, “I wish she’d smile like that at Willcocks. The job ’ud be done then. It ’ud be enough to rout an army. Well, you leave the matter in my hands,” he continued aloud. “I’ll pull it through, you’ll see. You’ll hear from me before long, Miss Clarke.”
With that he took his leave, and was presently swallowed up in the darkness without. As he walked he cogitated:—
“I’ve half a mind to let it come to a action after all; there really seems to be the makin’s of it, and it ’ud give me a lift with the guv’nor. Lord, the old gal’s a caution. Trooper Willcocks ’ll shake in his shoes.”
He grinned to himself at the recollection of Anne’s face, and mimicked her last speechaloud: “‘I’m not so sure o’ that’. He! he! . . . It ’ud be the best joke ever known in Branston if it did come off, and the guv’nor ’d make the most of it. He’s uncommon tightfisted, the guv’nor is, though”—here his face clouded over—“none of the profits ’ud come my way I don’t think; best see what can be made out o’ the other chaps, p’r’aps. Come, we’ll work it some way. Blest if I’m going to have my long walk an’ my long talk for nothin’.”
A very anxious little group gathered round Mr. Cross when he entered the bar of the Three Choughs.
“Well?” cried Jim Hardy breathlessly.
“Well,” echoed Cross, wagging his head, “I think we’ve got our gentleman in a tight place, jest about! There he’ve been triflin’ with that tender young creetur yonder at the Roebuck that shameful that she’s determined to bring him to book. Called her his little charmer, he did—”
Here there was a roar of laughter.
“And invited her to go back to South Africa with him,” resumed Samuel. “Yes, she’s got a good case, no doubt o’ that. But the question is, how far any o’ you ’ull be the better for it?”
“How’s that?” cried Jim, while the otherlove-sick swains nudged each other, and murmured indignantly.
“Why, I think she’s fair bent on taking out that action,” responded their legal adviser, “and that o’ course will keep him in the neighbourhood. Poor chap, it ’ull take your young ladies all their time to console him, I should think.”
The listeners stared at him in blank dismay; he wagged his head again, very knowingly, and crossed one leg over the other. “Yes,” he repeated reflectively, “Anne Clarke has got about as good a case as ever I heard on, and I advised her to follow it up.”
“You advised her,” shouted Tom indignantly. “Come, that’s a pretty thing. I thought you was on our side, Sam’el Cross.”
“A lawyer,” returned Samuel sententiously, “a lawyer is on the side what pays best; an’ this here job ought to be good for a rise for me. ’Twill be but fair that I should share some of the governor’s pickings, and he’ll make a good thing out of it, you might be sure.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” said one of the lovers dolefully. “He be uncommon near, your boss be, and it do seem ’ard o’ you, Sam’el, to go a-desertin’ of we, arter leadin’ us on, so to speak. You could stop Anne Clarke from takin’ outthis here summons or whatever it be, so soon as look at her, couldn’t ’ee now?”
“I dessay I could,” said Cross calmly.
“And if you was to go and threaten Willcocks with the notion of it, he’d be off like a shot, that’s easy seen.”
“So ’tis,” agreed the clerk. “I reckon he’d skip if I was to tell him all that his little charmer said to-day. He! He!”
“Well then,” said Jim, and paused—“that’s how it is,” he added lamely. “The job ’ud be easy done.”
“Jus’ so,” responded Cross. “The easiest thing in the world. But I’m not for undertaking no jobs as are not worth my while. Now I might get rid o’ Trooper Willcocks for a five-pun’ note, not less.”
A pause of consternation ensued; then Jim Hardy thumped the table with his fist. “I think it ’ud be easier and cheaper to break the feller’s boanes straight off,” he shouted.
Sam extended a forefinger in his direction, “You look out, Jim! You should know better nor say such things in the hearin’ o’ them whose dooty it is to uphold the law. If any harm comes to Trooper Willcocks, I shall be bound in conscience to give my evidence. Now, gentlemen, what be all looking so glumfor? Five pound ain’t such a terror! It needn’t be paid in a note if it comes to that, nor all at the one time. Half within the week, say, an’ t’other half at the end o’ the month. I wouldn’t be hard with you, an’ Trooper Willcocks would certainly be a good riddance.”
They gathered round him again and after much argument, some laughter, and a good deal of swearing, came to terms with Samuel, who carried away with him that night a curious document, signed by half a dozen names, and drawn up entirely to his own satisfaction.
Trooper Willcocks was swaggering about just outside the church door on the following Sunday, when he was accosted by Samuel Cross.
“I was looking for you,” began the latter, drawing him aside. “I have a word or two to say to you, Mr. Willcocks.”
“Won’t another day do?” returned the yeoman. “The service will be over in a few minutes, and I’m waitin’ for a young lady.”
“Indeed,” said Sam, “might I make so bold as to inquire if the lady’s name is Miss Anne Clarke?”
“Anne Clarke,” repeated the trooper vacantly; the name awakened no response in his memory.
“Why, don’t you know,” cried Sam, “yourlittle charmerof the Roebuck Inn—a regularbeauty, Mr. Willcocks.Yourbeauty, you know. Why I understood you was a-going to take her to South Africa wi’ you.”
“What the devil are you at?” cried Willcocks irritably. “What do you mean by talking all that rubbish to me?”
“No you don’t,” cried Sam, “I’m not to be put off like that, Trooper Willcocks. I’m here on behalf of that very lady—if the matter can be settled private, so much the better; if not, she’s determined to take it into court.”
A sudden pallor overspread the yeoman’s visage, perceptible even beneath its tan; he was a soft young fellow in spite of all his daring, and the very name of the law-courts terrified him.
“The fact is,” said Cross jovially, “you haven’t no very clear rec’lection of it, I dessay—you’re such a one with the ladies aren’t you? But sometimes a chap goes too far—an’ when it comes to making a reg’lar proposal of marriage—you’ll find you’ll have to stick to it, or else be let in for more than you bargained for.”
“But really,” said the other, almost piteously, “I’ve no notion at all o’ what you’re drivin’ at.Who is Anne Clarke, an’ where did I meet her?”
Sam drew nearer and button-holed him confidentially.
“You know the Roebuck Inn, over the downs yonder? You went there last Toosday with one or two friends—an’ you carried on fearful with the old man’s daughter—a beauty, I tell ye. You was a bit on at the time, but you must remember.”
“I remember goin’ there,” admitted Willcocks, “but I can’t call to mind no young gal.”
“That’s a pity,” returned Sam. “She knows all about you, I can tell you, and she have it settled in her own mind to consult our guv’nor to-morrow, without you come to some amicable arrangement first. ‘Money or Matrimony,’ says she.”
“Matrimony?” ejaculated Willcocks, his jaw dropping.
“Ye-es, matrimony,” repeated Sam, darting a sidelong glance at his victim, and meditatively scratching his jaw. “I rather think the lady’s fancy is set that way. You should ha’ seen her smile when we talked on it.”
“What in the name of fortun’ am I to do?” inquired the yeoman, with a helpless glance;a mouse might as profitably have appealed to the cat in whose claws it found itself.
“The folks are comin’ out o’ church now,” cried Cross eagerly. “Just you step in under this here archway, Trooper, an’ look out cautious, but keep out o’ sight yourself. I shouldn’t wonder if Miss Clarke was here—I’ll p’int her out to you.”
The distracted yeoman obeyed, and presently a stream of people issued from the porch on the opposite side of the road, breaking up for the most part into little knots of twos and threes, though a few figures made their way homewards unescorted. While anxiously on the look out for the mysterious damsel of the Roebuck, Trooper Willcocks witnessed one or two little episodes which filled him with rage and mortification. Pretty Chrissy Baverstock, for instance, after loitering on the steps for quite five minutes, craning a slender neck and tossing her fair curls, was accosted by a bluff-looking labouring fellow, Jim Hardy in fact, who, after a few minutes’ parley, drew her arm through his, and walked away with her. Rosy-cheeked Mary Miles went through the same preliminary period of waiting and head-tossing, but departed alone, her handkerchief to her eyes. The over-soft heart of TrooperWillcocks was wrung within him at the sight.
But now Samuel Cross recalled his wandering attention by an admonitory dig: “That’s her,” he murmured.
Willcocks peered cautiously out and presently drew his head inwards with a jerk, his face as white as ashes.
“That one,” he gasped. “That old, skinny, squinting—good Lord, surely I never said anything in the way o’ sweetheartin’ to her.”
“You only axed her to marry you—before witnesses,” returned the implacable Samuel. “There’s no way out of it, man. She’ll have the law on you without you lead her to the altar.”
“I was awful far gone on Toosday night I remember,” groaned the luckless yeoman, wiping a clammy brow. “But a man shouldn’t be held accountable for what he says when he’s that way.”
“Lor’ bless you,” returned Cross cheerfully, “the law don’t take no account of such excuses. You weren’t incapable, you see; you was able to walk about, an’ put your arm round her waist an’ that.”
“Ugh! I must ha’ been far gone.”
“I don’t know about that. Says you, ‘My beauty,’ says you, ‘my little charmer, you an’me must be a pair,’ says you; ‘I’ve come to the country to look for my match,’ says you.’”
“I couldn’t have said that,” interrupted Willcocks. “’Tisn’t true to begin with. I am going out to the front in a few weeks.”
“Ah,” commented Sam, “you told her that, an’ you asked her to go back with you.”
“But hang it, man, the thing’s impossible—ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous! I should just think it was. You’ll be the laughin’-stock of the countryside! What will Chrissy Baverstock say—an’ Mary an’ Rosie, an’ the rest of them, and all their fellows when it comes out in court? And it certainly will, without you marry her.”
“Good Lord,” cried poor Willcocks, now quite unnerved, “is there no way out of it? Look here, I know you’re a good chap—I—I’d make it worth your while. I’ve got a few pounds. Couldn’t you just—just hush it up?”
Sam pursed up his mouth into whistling form.
“It might be done—but it’s a bit dangerous,” he said dubiously. “If my governor was to get on the scent—but there, I’ll try and keep him off it, and if you’ll hand over them few pounds, I dessay I could stop old Anne Clarke’s mouth.”
“And what—what must I do?” queried the trooper, his teeth chattering in his head.
“Cut,” said Sam briefly. “Cut off home, an’ never let yourself be seen in this part of the country again—else as sure as I’m alive, Anne Clarke will have you!”
* * * * *
There was jubilee and surprise in Branston on the following day when it became known, through the medium of Mr. Samuel Cross, that Trooper Willcocks had flown; and many were the surmises among the uninitiated as to the cause of his sudden departure. Some opined that he had been ordered again to the front, others that he was engaged to a young lady at Capetown. Anne Clarke became a trifle more sour as to face, and short as to temper than before, but whatever means the lawyer’s clerk employed for stopping her mouth, it is certain that Trooper Willcocks’ few pounds never found their way to her pocket.
FarmerSampson rolled slowly homewards after church one wintry Sunday, full of a comfortable sense of righteousness, and looking forward to a reposeful hour before the midday meal. He exchanged greetings with his neighbours, discussed with them the probability of “snow-stuff” coming, or the likelihood of “its taking up” that night. Being an affable man his opinion invariably coincided with that of the last person who spoke to him.
Arrived at his own substantial dwelling and pausing a moment on passing through the kitchen to inhale the fragrance of the roasting joint, he proceeded first to the best parlour—an awe-inspiring room, never used save for a christening or a funeral; a shrine for stuffed birds, wax fruits and flowers, unopened books, and the family’s best wearing apparel. Mrs. Sampson’s Sunday bonnet reposed in the bandbox beneath the sofa; the accompanying gownwas stowed away on one of the shelves of the bureau; other garments belonging respectively to children and grandchildren were hidden beneath silver paper in various receptacles; and the master of the house, now divesting himself of his broad-cloth coat, hung it carefully on the back of a chair, and restored his hat to the peg allotted to it behind the door. Then, making his way to the family living-room, he assumed his white pinner—a clean one, which had been laid ready for him on the table—took up the newspaper, sat down in the wide arm-chair by the hearth which his substantial figure filled to a nicety, drew his spectacles from his pocket and began to read.
As he slowly spelt out line after line, his forefinger moving along the column in pace with his eyes, the air of contentment with which he had at first settled to his task gave way, first to an expression of puzzled astonishment, then to one of irresolution, and finally to absolute consternation. After, however, reading and re-reading the paragraph which had attracted his attention in the weekly sheet, scratching his head, rubbing his nose, drumming with his fingers on the table, and in fact availing himself to the full of every recognised aid to thought, his brow cleared, and bringingone mighty clenched hand down on the open palm of the other, he exclaimed aloud:—
“I’ll do it! I’m blest if I don’t do it—my dooty do stare me in the face.”
Thereupon, wheeling round slowly in his chair so as to face the door—a matter of some little difficulty—he proceeded to call, or rather to bellow at the top of his voice.
“Missus! Grandma! Come here, will ’ee? Polly, Annie—be there any one about? Here little uns—go an’ fetch Grandma, one on you. Mis—sus!”
Presently there was a rush of feet, and Mrs. Sampson entered, followed by her married daughter, Polly, with three or four children clinging to her skirts, while Maidy Annie, the father’s favourite, hastened in from the rear.
“Bless me, Granfer! whatever be the matter?” enquired his wife anxiously.
Good old Sampson had been known as “Father” in the family circle for many a year, until Polly and her husband had taken up their abode at the farm, when the title of “Granfer,” naturally used by the children, had come to be universally adopted.
“There be matter enough for one while,” he now responded gloomily, and yet with a certain air of dignified triumph.
“Dear heart alive, they Boers bain’t a-comin’ to fight us over here, be they?” cried Annie, who was an imaginative young person.
“There’s no knowin’ what they’ll be a-thinkin’ on if we don’t look out,” responded her father importantly. “It bain’t so much the Boers,” he continued, with a superior air, “’tis the French as we must be on our guard against—an’ the Germans—and the Roosians!” he cried emphatically, his eyes growing wider and wider as he named each nationality. “They do say that they do all hate us worse nor p’ison, an’ is only lookin’ for an opportunity for attackin’ us.”
“Dear, dear, you don’t say so!” groaned Mrs. Sampson. “’Tis worse nor in Boney’s time. Lard! I can mind my father tellin’ me as when he was a boy they was expectin’ for sure as Boney ’ud land, and the country very near went mad wi’ fright. An’ now ye say there be more nor the French agen us?”
“What ever is to be done,” put in Polly. “I can’t think as there can be many soldiers a-left i’ the country wi’ them great ships full goin’ out week after week. Who’s to defend us if any o’ them folks from abroad do come?”
Granfer looked slowly round from one anxious face to the other, rolled his head fromside to side, heaved a deep sigh, and finally remarked in a sepulchral tone:—
“There’s summat goin’ to be done, ye mid be sure.” He paused, nodded, smoothed out the paper on his knee, and finally handed it with a tragic air to Annie. “See, here, my maid,” he said, indicating a certain paragraph with his broad thumb, “read this here to your mother an’ all on us. Then ye’ll see what’s a-goin’ to be done.”
He threw himself back in his chair, while Annie, somewhat mystified and a good deal alarmed, read the following:—
“Her Majesty the Queen has been graciously pleased to invite her old soldiers to return to service again for one year, in defence of the country during the absence of her armies in South Africa.“The text of the proclamation posted at the War Office will be found in another column. Such an appeal will be warmly responded to by many a loyal British heart; our veterans will rejoice at the opportunity thus afforded them of proving their devotion to Queen and Country.”
“Her Majesty the Queen has been graciously pleased to invite her old soldiers to return to service again for one year, in defence of the country during the absence of her armies in South Africa.
“The text of the proclamation posted at the War Office will be found in another column. Such an appeal will be warmly responded to by many a loyal British heart; our veterans will rejoice at the opportunity thus afforded them of proving their devotion to Queen and Country.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Sampson in a relieved tone, “think o’ that now! I’m sure there be a good few old soldiers about, an’ it ’ull be very nice for ’em to get a chance o’ doin’ summat.”
“Very nice!” shouted her lord, with unaccountable fierceness. “Very nice, do you say? That be your notion, be it? Well, I did look for a bit more feelin’ from you. A man may be willin’ to do his dooty, an’ yet he mid find it oncommon hard work!”
“Why, Granter, what be talkin’ about? I’m sure I never—”
“Do you suppose, Missus, as us old folks won’t find it a bit agen us to go shootin’, an’ drillin’, an’ manoverin’ an’ sich like, at our time o’ life? Wi’ the best heart in the world I reckon we be like to find it a bit stiff.”
“Bless me, Sampson, don’t tell I asyou’vea-got a notion o’ j’inin’ the army at your time o’ life. Lard save us!” she continued with gathering irritation, “I do believe you’ve a-took leave o’ your senses!”
“My dear woman,” returned the farmer, “I d’ ’low it will have gived ye a bit of a turn, but there, ’tis wrote plain for all to read. ‘Her Majesty the Queen have invited heroldsoldiers to serve’—if Her Majesty have a-made up her mind as ’tisoldsoldiers she wants, it bain’t for the likes of us to go agen it. I’ve al’ays heard tell as the Queen were an oncommon sensible woman, an’ she’ve a-found out, most like, as these here youngsters bain’tto be trusted—ye can’t expect old heads on young shoulders—I never did hold wi’ them there notions o’ shart service, an’ havin’ nothin’ but lads in the army, an’ Her Majesty, d’ye see, Her Majesty do very like agree wi’ I.”
“Well, but Granfer,” said Polly doubtfully, “d’ye think the Queen did mean soldiers as had—as had left off practising so long as you?”
“An’ besides,” put in Annie quickly, “’tisn’t same as if you was ever a regular soldier in barracks an’ that. Ye did only go out wi’ the Yeomanry, didn’t ye?”
“Well,” returned her father, indignantly, “an’ will ’ee go for to tell I as a man as was twenty year a trooper in the Darset Yeomanry bain’t a soldier? Why, what else be he then? Ye be a voolish maid, my dear, very voolish!”
“Well, but,” gasped poor Mrs. Sampson, recovering her breath at last, “’tis thirty year an’ more, I’m sure, since ye did go out wi’ ’em! Ah! I’m sure ’tis thirty year—’twas when poor Harry was a baby as ye did give up, ’an long afore Polly was born.”
“Now I tell ’ee what, Missus, this here kind o’ talk isn’t the talk for them as loves Queen an’ Country. What do the papers say? Readfor yourself an’ see. If every old soldier in the country was to go makin’ excuses, an’ thinkin’ this, that, an’ t’other, who’s to defend England? Now, I’m a old man, an’ a bit stiff in the j’ints, an’ a bit heavy on my legs, but I can get on a harse, and pull a trigger yet. An’ I’m not the man to go and disapp’int the Queen! There, my mind be made up, an’ ye may tark till midnight wi’out changin’ it.”
“Well, to be sure,” said poor Grandma, dropping into a chair, “I must say as I didn’t think as I should live to see this day. When a body comes to your time o’ life I didn’t look for ye to be tarkin’ o’ goin’ off to the war, jist at our busiest time o’ year, too, when we may be lookin’ out for new calves any day, an’ the lambin’ season not half over!”
“’Tis a bit a’k’ard that, I must agree,” returned Sampson, his face falling as he spoke. “Ah, I could ha’ wished as Her Majesty hadn’t a-called upon us in the midst o’ lambin’ time. We must do the best we can, that’s all. Tom must see to things. I d’ ’low other folks find it jist so hard to leave their business. But when ye come to tarkin’ o’ my years, Missus, you do make a mistake. ’Tis my years as makes my services valuable. Now, Annie, read what’s wrote here about the men comin’ up.”