CHAPTER XII
Wherein Miss Betty Modeyne wins more Hearts
Itwas a month or more before the boy was allowed to go into the country; so that it was early summer by the time they sent him away with Netherby—the small Betty being added to mother the party at the last moment, there having arisen doubts as to the quality of the housekeeping owing to the absent-mindedness of the bear-leader. So for a fortnight there was a happy party at the old inn by Burford Bridge.
Where the Major slept during the fourteen nights was never known; but city wags to this day aver that it was beside the wine-cooler under the sideboard atThe Cock and Bullin Fleet Street. There are discrepancies, but the weight of evidence lies near the wine-cooler....
The fresh air of the Surrey uplands soon had the lad Oliver strung to the full pitch of devilment that is nature’s questionable gift to boyhood; and he rapidly regained what Netherby Gomme, with meaning accent, called his “habitual rude health.”...
Whilst Netherby Gomme filled the morning hours with the winning of bread in his little room at the inn, Noll and Betty loitered by the river and watched the shadowy grey trout lying along the trailing weeds with blunt noses up stream below the stilly waters of the sluggish flood; or they wandered in the meadows where the high whispering poplars line the margin of the babbling rivulet, their gossip leafage never ceasing the tattling of secrets with the gadding winds amongst the passing rumours of the high heavens; or they climbed the long green slope of Box Hill up to the swinging sky a-top, until it seemed that they might touch the clouds by mere uplifting of outstretched hands, all England lying like a pleasant garden at their feet; or, topping the hill, they would clamber down its steep wooded side, and so out upon the road at foot to the little stone bridge, where they would lean over the parapet and watch the enamelled dragon-fly hang quivering above the glassy pond, scintillant in gay attire with all his silver armour on, bedecked in splendour of green and purple jewellery; or they would flirt pebbles at the shy black water-hen that bobbed up to her quaint swimmings; and so, strolling round by Dorking town, as the sun topped itsascent and blazed hottest to its first hour of decline, they would make for their inn, to drag Netherby out of his den for luncheon, and get them into the breezy dining-room that gave on to the grassy garden where the butterflies fluttered amongst the roses, and the lurching flycatchers swooped down upon such of the gadding beauties as were least bitter to their dainty palates, and drowsy bees buzzed at their honey-gathering amongst the fragrant white trumpets of the tobacco-plants, and the fantastic box-trees that hedged their ken danced in the sunny glare that shimmered upwards from the panting earth. And all the careless world was full of balladry.
The mid-day meal done, they would roam out on to the green lawn and sit in the shade, reading some thrilling adventure, or, dragging Netherby with them, break the law and invade the kitchen, where the jolly hostess of the inn would point to the written word above the chimney-place but scarce enforce the law, nay, even dust chairs instead to hold them there; and the cook would pin a kitchen clout to each of their shoulders to display their shame; so they would sit and gossip of the little world about them; and the big-hearted busy woman would discover little stores of hardbake and shortbread and suchlike delightful evils for young stomachs, for she had a soft heart and was fond of her joke—and Netherby came out ridiculously well on such occasions, and the others were not wholly demure. The gay banter would go a-tossing.
Or they would wander round to the stables to call upon their friend Sim Crittenden—the prize-fighting ostler with the gentle eyes and the temper that nought might ruffle and a singing voice like a baritone god—who, leaning on the long wooden handle of his pitchfork, his shirt-sleeves rolled up, and his braces hanging looped against his breeches’ flanks, would stand at the end of the stables and sing to them songs from Handel and the masters—Ruddier than the CherryandToreadorandNazareth, even descending, with apologies, occasionally toIt’s a Great Big Shameor other latest music-hall lilt.
Netherby, who began to fear a too poetic pastoral atmosphere at the inn, was to have satisfaction in the life of action that he adored, and a lively descent to vigorous prose.
The hard-hitting ostler was to strike the dramatic note.
Adventure came with the rougher element that rattled down in hired carriages to the inn, chi-hiking and using squalid language along the highroad on their week-end outing from London city. Cockney youth, with fantastic picturesque tendencies as to dress, and crude love in the wagonettes, descended to the ground, alighting before the inn, and swarmed into the drinking-bar, thirsty with the swallowing of dust and much shouting, buxom beauty hanging upon their arms with proud gaze boldly cast upon their noisy lords from under the heavy hair that shaded their frankly vulgar eyes, and with ear-racking laughings from their full red lips to greet all their swaggering gentlemen’s uttermost ribaldries.
Inflamed by beauty, cockney youth was on the strut, well-inclined to debauch; and much beer did the rest.
They made the inn a riot of vulgarity.
Yet, all had gone well till twilight, and had as likely enough gone well to the hour of their home-going—and they were already foregathering in the tap-room for the drinking of the last glass—had it not been for the garrulous and boastful habit of the gardener of the inn, a red-bearded fellow of weak knees and splay feet, who got to bragging about the inn’s ostler. However, a cockney youth, a clean-limbed, quick-eyed cub, being grown something tongue-loosed by reason of the beer, at once brought out his conceit and paraded it—it also had to do with some little parochial honour in which he was held with regard to the skilful use of his naked hands—he had made some tough fellow’s nose bleed or arrived at the like godlike achievement. He thought himself a match, he said, for any fellow that messed about horses. This with prodigious blasphemies. Whereat the red-bearded gardener laughed loudly; and the cockney youth, fired with wrath, hit at the centre of the laugh, and missing the gardener’s mouth, the which was no such difficult job for the tangled thicket of red hair about the laugh, got his clumsy knuckles somewhere in the region of the gardener’s nose and set the blood flowing.
The barman called for order, and the cockney youth, forgetting the impiety of mishandling the authority of the chair, got his five fingers into the potman’s neck-cloth.
Then it was seen that Sim Crittenden, the ostler, stopping in the midst of the deep note ofNazareth, walked blithely out of the stables on light springy feet, passed along the highroad before the inn, and swung open the outer door of the drinking-bar.
He stood before them that brawled in the tavern and grimly eyed the riot.
“Who undid the potman’s necktie?” he asked in a deep growl.
The cockney youth turned and put out his chin. He said he didn’t give a ruddy geranium who did it, but he was sober enough to take the whole responsibility of the humours of his particular wagonette on his own naked shoulders. He personally detested the potman’s taste in ties.
The ostler knocked him down.
The cockney youth got up again and lashed out with his hands—London breeds courage when it is not cowardice, to the full pitch; every cockney is a potential hero when he is not a whining thief—he was knocked down again.
He scrambled up, and began to feel about dazedly for the ostler’s face, but was grown vague as to the object of his hate.
The ostler put down his hands and said that the other might now walk out into the lane with the honours of war if he so willed it; and he added that he hoped he would go out like a gentleman, as he, the ostler, had a deep-seated distaste to making a mess of the bar with anyone from London. He opened the door for him with the polish of a courtier.
The cockney youth honestly thought of a dignified exit, but beauty nudged at his elbow and whispered a mean design that he should kick the ostler in the waistcoat.
He made the effort to this base end; was parried; and forthwith kicked for his iniquity through the door into the road, receiving a violent blow under the ear as he went.
They all rose up and rushed at the ostler. But they went to their undoing. There was no refuge in retreat, no backing into the room from the smite of the great hands, for the red-bearded gardener assailed from behind—he had a heavy foot. One by one they joined him who stood in the dusk on the King’s highway. And the road was strewn with their hats.
The ostler came to the doorstep and touched his forelock:
“Shall I put in the horses, gentlemen?” said he.
They gathered together in the grey of the twilight muttering mean vengeance, but the cockney youth who had brought them to it said commandingly, “Chuck it!” which being interpreted meant that the vulgarities were at an end.
He went up and held out a hand to the ostler:
“I know a better man than me,” said he—“when he hits me hard enough; and you ain’t the one I’d choose to slap my face. Hold out your olive-branch.”
The ostler held out a great paw and they shook hands; the ostler’s grip, said the cockney youth, made his teeth ache.
The gardener strolled about and restored the scattered hats.
The ostler stood in the twilight and smiled.
The sulky fellows put aside evil desire and came and gripped the great hand that made their knuckles creak.
Then he sang them old-worldRuddier than the Cherrywhilst their women led their cockney loves aside to the dark shadows under the trees and furtively comforted them.
It all struck the small Betty that it was an indecent sight. Yet there was a thrill of contentment in her heart that it should have fallen to the man who could singNazarethlike a god to do the blood-letting.
On the days when it rained, the little party, Betty and Noll and Netherby, would sit in the small parlour of the inn where Nelson and his Emma had spent those pitiful hours many years ago, the night before the great Admiral posted to the sea-coast to hoist his flag aboard theVictory, being at the beginning of that journey that ended in his splendid death at the triumph of Trafalgar—his frail Emma going from the little room, a broken woman, to Neglect, and Worse....
So the happy days went by, until the hour struck for departure. The good hostess kissed Betty on the doorstep, the dainty little lady being dressed for travel—and had to go indoors for the tears that would run, fleeing from the distress of further good-byes.
The glorious sun found them at last, with their pathetically small packages, at the little railway-station, the prize-fighting ostler carrying Miss Betty’s little bag, and hovering about theparty, a drag at the corners of his mouth. He was sadly lacking as to his wonted tuneful gaiety.
As the train came in he found an empty carriage for them.
Betty, stepping forward, held out a dainty hand.
The ostler took it, and, stooping down, stroked it between his mighty palms:
“Look ye here, Miss Betty,” said he—“you’ll be a great lady some day—I haven’t been chucked out of a markiss’s stables without spottin’ the breed when I see it—but it may likely enough take some nasty days getting there.... Now, missee, if you ever wants anythink in my line of business,” he added significantly, “this address will always find me—it’s where my old mother lives. And if so be that you ever wants physical assistance, jest you go to the nearest telegraph-office. You’ve only got to say the word, and wheresoever it be in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland or the parts lying adjacent thereto, Sim Crittenden will spoil the handsomest face the Lord ever made—so help me God!”
He took off his hat and held it in his hand, and they each in turn shook his great fist.
He blew his nose strenuously as the train moved out of the station, Betty, where she sat in the window, biting her handkerchief, the tears streaming down the child’s face.
The prize-fighting ostler sang no song for several days.