THE COMPANY OF THE ROSE.
"Alway be merry if thou may,
But waste not thy good alway:
Have hat of floures fresh as May,
Chapelet of roses of Whitsonday
For sich array ne costneth but lyte."
_Romaunt of the Rose_.
_Somerset_. "Let him that is no coward
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me."
_First Part of King Henry VI_.
Early next morning I was returning, a rosebud in my hand, from the
neglected garden to the east of the house, when I spied my father
coming towards me along the terraces, and at once felt my ears
redden.
"Good morning, lad!" he hailed. "But where is mine?"
I turned back in silence and picked a bud for him. "So," said I,
"'twas you, sir, after all, that wrote the advertisement?"
"Hey?" he answered. "I? Certainly not. I noted it and sent you the
news-sheet in half a hope that you had been the advertiser."
"You were mistaken, sir."
He halted and rubbed his chin. "Then who the devil can he be, I
wonder? Well, we shall discover."
"You ride to Falmouth this morning?"
"We have an army to collect," he answered, gripping me not unkindly
by the shoulder.
We rode into Falmouth side by side in silence, Billy Priske following
by my father's command, and each with a red rose pinned to the flap
of his hat. Upon the way we talked, mainly of the Trappist Brothers,
and of Dom Basilio, who (it seemed) had at one time been an agent of
the British legation at Florence, and in particular had carried my
father's reports and instructions to and fro between Corsica and that
city, avoiding the vigilance of the Genoese.
"A subtle fellow," was my father's judgment, "and, as I gave him
credit, in the matter of conscience as null as Cellini himself: the
last man in the world to turn religious. But the longer you live the
more cause will you find to wonder at the divine spirit which bloweth
where it listeth. Take these Methodists, who are to preach in
Falmouth to-day. I have seen Wesley, and stood once for an hour
listening to him. For aught I could discover he had no great
eloquence. He said little that his audience might not have heard any
Sunday in their own churches. His voice was hoarse from overwork,
and his manner by no means winning. Yet I saw many notorious
ruffians sobbing about him like children: some even throwing
themselves on the ground and writhing, like the demoniacs of
Scripture. The secret was, he spoke with authority: and the secret
again was a certain kingly neglect of trifles--he appeared not to see
those signs by which other men judge their neighbours or themselves
to be past help. Or take these Trappists: Dom Basilio tells me that
more than half of them are ex-soldiers and rough at that. To be sure
I can understand why, having once turned religious, an old soldier
runs to the Trappist rule. He has been bred under discipline, and
has to rely on discipline. 'Tis what he understands, and the harder
he gets it the more good he feels himself getting--"
We were nearing the town by the way of Arwennack, and just here a
turn of the road brought us in sight of a whitewashed cottage and put
a period to my father's discourse, as a garden gate flew open and out
into the highway ran a lean young man with an angry woman in pursuit.
His shoulders were bent and he put up both hands to ward off her
clutch. But in the middle of the road she gripped him by the collar
and caught him two sound cuffs on the nape of the neck.
She turned as we rode up. "The villain!" she cried, still keeping
her grip. "Oh, protect me from such villains!"
"But, my good woman," remonstrated my father, reining up,
"it scarcely appears that you need protecting. Who is this man?"
"A thief, your honour! Didn't I catch him prowling into my garden?
And isn't it for him to say what his business was? I put it to your
honour"--here she caught the poor wretch another cuff--"what honest
business took him into my garden, and me left a widow-woman these
sixteen years?"
"Ai-ee!" cried the accused, still shielding his neck and cowering in
the dust--a thin ragged windlestraw of a youth, flaxen-headed,
hatchet-faced, with eyes set like a hare's. "Have pity on me sirs,
and take her off!"
"Let him stand up," my father commanded. "And you sir, tell me--
What were you seeking in this good woman's garden?"
"A rose, sir--hear my defence!--a rose only, a small rose!"
His voice was high and cracked, and he flung his hands out
extravagantly. "Oh, York and Lancaster--if you will excuse me,
gentlemen--that I should suffer this for a mere rose? The day only
just begun too! And why, sirs, was I seeking a rose? Ay, there's
the rub." He folded his arms dramatically and nodded at the woman.
"There's the gall and bitterness, the worm in the fruit, the peculiar
irony--if you'll allow me to say so--of this distressing affair.
Listen, madam! If I wanted a rose of you, 'twas for your whole sex's
sake: your sex's, madam--every one of whom was, up to five or six
months ago, the object with me of something very nearly allied to
worship."
"Lord help the creature!" cried the woman. "What's he telling
about? And what have you to do with my sex, young man? which is what
the Lord made it."
"It is _not_, madam. Make no mistake about it: 'twere blasphemy to
think so. But speaking generally, what I--as a man--have to do with
your sex is to protect it."
"A nice sort of protector you'd make!" she retorted, planting her
knuckles on her hips and eyeing him contemptuously.
"I am a beginner, madam, and have much to learn. But you shall not
discourage me from protecting you, though you deny me the rose which
was to have been my emblem. Every woman is a rose, madam, as says
the poet Dunbar--
"'Sweet rose of vertew and of gentilness,
Richest in bonty and in bewty clear
And every vertew that is werrit dear,
Except only that ye are merciless--"
"You take me? 'Merciless,' madam?"
"I don't understand a word," said she, puzzled and angry.
"He was a Scotsman: and you find it a far cry to Loch Awe.
Well, well--to resume--
"'Into your garth this day I did pursue--'"
"by 'garth' meaning 'garden': a good word, and why the devil it
should be obsolescent is more than I can tell you--"
But here my father cut him short. "My good Mrs. Ede," said he,
turning to the woman, "I believe this young man intended no harm to
you and very little to your garden. You are quits with him at any
rate. Take this shilling, step inside, and choose him a fair red
rose for the price and also in token of your forgiveness, while he
picks up his hat which is lying yonder in the dust."
"Hey?" The youth started back, for the first time perceiving the
badges in our hats. "Are you too, sirs, of this company of the
rose?" His face fell, but with an effort he recovered himself and
smiled.
"You are not disappointed, I hope?" inquired my father.
"Why--to tell you the truth, sir--I had looked for a rendezvous of
careless jolly fellows. For cavaliers of your quality it never
occurred to me to bargain." He held up a flap of his ragged coat and
shook it ruefully.
My father frowned. "And I, sir, am disappointed. A moment since I
took you for an original; but it appears you share our common English
vice of looking at the world like a lackey."
"I, sir?" The young man waved a hand. "I am original? Give me
leave to assure you that this island contains no more servile
tradesman. Why, my lord--for I take it I speak to a gentleman of
title?--"
"Of the very humblest, sir. I am a plain knight bachelor."
The original cringed elaborately, rubbing his hands. "A title is a
title. Well, sir, as I was about to say, I worship a lord, but my
whole soul is bound up in a ledger: and hence (so to speak) these
tears: hence the disreputable garb in which you behold me. If I may
walk beside you, sir, after this good woman has fetched me the rose--
thank you, madam--and provided me with a pin from the _chevaux de
frise_ in her bodice--and again, madam, I thank you: you wear the
very cuirass of matronly virtue--I should enjoy, sir, to tell you my
history. It is a somewhat curious one."
"I feel sure, sir"--my father bowed to him from the saddle--"it will
lose nothing in the telling."
The young man, having fastened the rose in his hat, bade adieu to his
late assailant with a bow; waved a hand to her; lifted his hat a
second time; turned after us and, falling into stride by my father's
stirrup, forthwith plunged into his story.
THE TRAVELS OF PHINEAS FETT.
"My name, sir, is Phineas Fett--"
He paused. "I don't know how it may strike you: but in my infant
ears it ever seemed to forebode something in the Admiralty--a
comfortable post, carrying no fame with it, but moderately lucrative.
In wilder flights my fancy has hovered over the Pipe Office (Addison,
sir, was a fine writer; though a bit of a prig, between you and me)."
"There was a Phineas Pett, a great shipbuilder for the Navy in King
Charles the Second's time. I believe, too, he had a son christened
after him, who became a commissioner of the Navy."
"You don't say so! The mere accident of a letter . . . but it proves
the accuracy of our childish instincts. A commissionership--whatever
the duties it may carry--would be the very thing, or a
storekeepership, with a number of ledgers: it being understood that
shipping formed my background, in what I believe is nautically termed
the offing. I know not what exact distance constitutes an offing.
My imagination ever placed it within sight and sufficiently near the
scene of my occupation to pervade it with an odour of hemp and tar."
He paused again, glanced up at my father, and--on a nod of
encouragement--continued--
"The nuisance is, I was born in the Midlands--to be precise, at West
Bromicheham--the son of a well-to-do manufacturer of artificial
jewellery. The only whiff of the brine that ever penetrated my
father's office came wafted through an off-channel of his trade.
He did an intermittent business in the gilding of small idols, to be
shipped overseas and traded as objects of worship among the negroes
of the American plantations. Jewellery, however, was his stand-by.
In the manufacture of meretricious ware he had a plausibility
amounting to genius, in the disposing of it a talent for hard
bargains; and the two together had landed him in affluence.
Well, sir, being headed off my boyhood's dream by the geographical
inconvenience of Warwickshire--for a lad may run away to be a sailor,
sir, but the devil take me if ever I heard of one running off to be a
supercargo, and even this lay a bit beyond my ambition--I recoiled
upon a passion to enter my father's business and increase the already
tidy patrimonial pile.
"But here comes in the cross of my destiny. My father, sir, had
secretly cherished dreams of raising me above his own station.
To him a gentleman--and he ridiculously hoped to make me one--was a
fellow above working for his living. He scoffed at my enthusiasm for
trade, and at length he sent for me and in tones that brooked no
denial commanded me to learn the violin.
"Never shall I forget the chill of heart with which I received that
fatal mandate. I have no ear for music, sir. In tenderer years
indeed I had made essay upon the Jew's harp, but had relinquished it
without a sigh.
"'The violin!' I cried, though the words choked me. 'Father,
anything but that! If it were the violoncello, now--'
"But he cut me short in cold incisive accents. 'The violin, or you
are no son of mine.'
"I fled from the house, my home no longer. On the way to the front
door I had sufficient presence of mind, and no more, to make a
_detour_ to the larder and possess myself of the longest joint; which
my heated judgment, confusing temporal with linear measurement,
commended to me as the most lasting. It proved to be a shin of beef:
unnutritious except for soup (and I carried no tureen), useless as an
object of barter. With this and two half-crowns in my pocket I
slammed the front-door behind me and faced the future."
Mr. Fett paused impressively.
"And you call me an original, sir!" he went on in accents of
reproach; "me, who started in life with two half-crowns in my pocket,
the conventional outfit for a career of commercial success!"
"They have carried you all the way to Falmouth!"
"The one of them carried me so far as to Coventry, sir: where,
finding a fair in progress as I passed through the town, and falling
in with three bridesmaids who had missed their wedding-party in the
crowd, I spent the other in treating them to the hobby-horses at one
halfpenny a ride. Four halfpennies--there were four of us--make
twopence, and two's into thirty are fifteen rides; a bold investment
of capital, and undertaken (I will confess it) not only to solace the
fair ones but to ingratiate myself with the fellow who turned the
handle of the machine. To him I applied for a job. He had none to
offer, but introduced me to a company of strolling players who (as
fortune would have it) were on the point of presenting _Hamlet_ with
a _dramatis_ personae decimated by Coventry ale. They cast me for
'Polonius' and some other odds and ends. You may remember, sir, that
at one point the Prince of Denmark is instructed to 'enter reading.'
That stage direction I caught at, and by a happy 'improvisation'
spread it over the entire play. Not as 'Polonius' only, but as
`Bernardo' upon the midnight platform, as 'Osric,' as 'Fortinbras,'
as the 'Second Gravedigger,' as one of the odd Players--always I
entered reading. In my great scene with the Prince we entered
reading together. They killed me, still reading, behind the arras;
and at a late hour I supped with the company on Irish stew; for,
incensed by these novelties, the audience had raided a greengrocer's
shop between the third and fourth acts and thereafter rained their
criticism upon me in the form of cabbages and various esculent roots
which we collected each time the curtain fell.
"Every cloud, sir, has a silver lining. I continued long enough with
this company to learn that in our country an actor need never die of
scurvy. But I weary you with my adventures, of which indeed I am yet
in the first chapter."
"You shall rehearse them on another occasion. But will you at least
tell us how you came to Falmouth?"
"Why, in the simplest manner in the world. A fortnight since I
happened to be sitting in the stocks, in the absurd but accursed town
of Bovey Tracey in Devonshire. My companion--for the machine
discommodated two--was a fiddler, convicted (like myself) of
vagrancy; a bottle-nosed man, who took the situation with such phlegm
as only experience can breed, and munched a sausage under the
commonalty's gaze. 'Good Lord,' said I to myself, eyeing him,
'and to think that he with my chances, or I with his taste for music,
might be driving at this moment in a coach and pair!'
"'Sir,' said I, 'are you attached to that instrument of yours?'
'So deeply,' he answered, 'that, like Nero, I could fiddle if Bovey
Tracey were burning at this moment.' 'You can perform on it
creditably?' I asked. 'In a fashion to bring tears to your eyes,' he
answered me, and offered to prove his words. 'Not for worlds,' said
I; 'but it grieves me to think how Fortune distributes her favours.'
I told him of my father. 'I should like to make the acquaintance of
such a man,' said he. 'You shall,' said I; and fetching a pencil and
a scrap of paper out of my pocket, I wrote as follows:--
"_To Mr. Jonathan Fett, Manufacturer of Flams,
W. Bromicheham_."
"The Public Stocks, Bovey Tracey, Devon.
June 21st (longest day)."
"DEAR FATHER,
Adopt bearer, in lieu of
Your affectionate son,
PHINEAS."
"The fiddler at first suspected a jest: but on my repeated assurances
took the letter thankfully, and at parting, on our release, pressed
on me the end of his sausage wrapped in a piece of newspaper.
I ate the sausage moodily and was about to throw the paper away when
my eye caught sight of an advertisement in the torn left-hand corner.
I read it, and my mind was made up. I am here, and (thanks to you,
sir) with a rose in my hat."
By the time Mr. Fett concluded his narrative we had reached the
outskirts of the town, and found ourselves in a traffic which,
converging upon the Market Strand from every side-street and alley,
at once carried us along with it and constrained us to a walking
pace. My father, finding the throng on the Market Strand too dense
for our horses, turned aside to the Three Cups Inn across the street,
gave them over to the ostler, and led us upstairs to a window which
overlooked the gathering.
The Market Strand at Falmouth is an open oblong space, not very wide,
leading off the main street to the water's edge, and terminating in
steps where as a rule the watermen wait to take off passengers to the
Packets. A lamp-post stands in the middle of it, and by the base of
this the preachers--a grey-headed man and two women in ugly bonnets--
were already assembled, with but a foot or two dividing them from the
crowd. Close behind the lamp-post stood a knot of men conversing
together one of whom stepped forward for a word with the grey-headed
preacher. He wore a rose in his hat, and at sight of him my heart
gave a wild incredulous leap. It was Nat Fiennes!
I pushed past my father and flung the open window still wider.
The grey-haired preacher had opened the Bible in his hand and was
climbing the stone base of the lamp-post when a handful of filth
struck the back of the book and bespattered his face. I saw Nat whip
out his sword and swing about angrily in the direction of the shot,
while the two women laid hands on either arm to check him; and at the
same moment my father spoke up sharply in my ear.
"Tumble out, lad," he commanded. "We are in bare time."
I vaulted over the window-ledge and dropped into the street; my
father after me, and Mr. Fett and Billy close behind. Indeed, that
first shot had but given the signal for a general engagement; and as
we picked ourselves up and thrust our way into the crowd, a whole
volley of filth bespattered the group of Methodists. In particular I
noted the man with whom Nat Fiennes, a minute since, had been
conversing--a little bald-headed fellow of about fifty-five or sixty,
in a suit of black which, even at thirty paces distant, showed rusty
in the sunshine. An egg had broken against his forehead, and the
yellow of it trickled down over his eyes; yet he stood, hat in hand,
neither yielding pace nor offering to resist. Nat, less patient, had
made a rush upon the crowd, which had closed around and swallowed him
from sight. By its violent swaying he was giving it something to
digest. One of the two women shrank terrified by the base of the
lamp-post. The other--a virago to look at, with eyes that glared
from under the pent of her black bonnet--had pulled the grey-headed
preacher down by his coat-tails, and, mounting in his room, clung
with an arm around the lamp-post and defied the persecutors.
"Why am I here, friends?" she challenged them. "O generation of
vipers, why am I here? Answer me, you men of Belial--you, whose
fathers slew the prophets! Because I glory to suffer for the right;
because to turn the other cheek is a Christian's duty, and as a
Christian woman I'll turn it though you were twice the number, and
not be afraid what man can do unto me."
Now, my father was well known in Falmouth and pretty generally held
in awe. At sight of him advancing, the throng fell back and gave us
passage in a sudden lull which reached even to where Nat Fiennes
struggled in the grasp of a dozen longshoremen who were hailing him
to the quay's edge, to fling him over. He broke loose, and before
they could seize him again came staggering back, panting and
dishevelled.
"Prosper!" he cried, catching sight of me, and grinning delightedly
all over his muddied face. "I knew you would come! And your father,
too? Splendid, lad, splendid?"
"Ye men of Falmouth"--the woman by the lamp-post lifted her voice
more shrilly--"what shall I testify of the hardness of your hearts?
Shall I testify that your Mayor sending his crier round, has
threatened to whip us through Falmouth streets at the cart-tail?
Shall I testify--"
But here my father lifted a hand. "Gently, madam; gently, I am not
defending his Worship if he issued any such proclamation; but 'tis an
ancient punishment for scolds, and I advise you to lend him no colour
of excuse."
"And who may _you_ be, sir?" she demanded, looking down, angry, but
checked in spite of herself by my father's air of authority.
"One," he answered, "who has come to see fair play, and who has--as
you may see--for the moment some little influence with this rabble.
I will continue to exert it while I can, if you on your part will
forbear to provoke; for the tongue, madam, has its missiles as well
as the hands."
"I thank you, sir," said the grey-headed preacher, stepping forward
and thrusting a book into my father's hands. "We had best begin with
a hymn, I think. I have some experience of the softening power of
music on these occasions."
"We will sing," announced the woman, "that beautiful hymn beginning,
'Into a world of ruffians sent.' Common metre, my friends, and
Sister Tresize will give the pitch:
"Into a world of ruffians sent,
I walk on hostile ground--"
My father bared his head and opened the hymn-book; the rest of us,
bareheaded too, ranged ourselves beside him; and so we stood facing
the mob while the verses were sung in comparative quiet. The words
might be provocative, but few heard them. The tune commanded an
audience, as in Cornwall a tune usually will. The true secret of the
spell, however, lay in my father's presence and bearing. A British
crowd does not easily attack one whom it knows as a neighbour and
born superior; and it paid homage now to one who, having earned it
all his life, carelessly took it for granted.
"Begad, sir," said Mr. Fett in my ear, "and the books say that the
feudal system is dead in England! Why, here's the very flower of it!
Damme, though, the old gentleman is splendid; superlative, sir;
it's ten to one against Coriolanus, and no takers. Between
ourselves, Coriolanus was a pretty fellow, but talked too much.
Phocion, sir? Did I hear you mention Phocion?"
"You did not," I answered.
"And quite right," said he; "with your father running, I wouldn't
back Phocion for a place. All the same," Mr. Fett admitted, "this is
what Mr. Gray of Peterhouse, Cambridge, would call a fearful joy, and
I'd be thankful for a distant prospect of the way out of it."
"Indeed, sir"--my father, overhearing this, turned to him affably--
"you touch the weak spot. For the moment I see no way out of the
situation, nor any chance but to prolong it; and even this," he
added, "will not be easy unless the lady on the lamp-post sensibly
alters the tone of her discourse."
Indeed, at the conclusion of the singing she had started again to
address the crowd, albeit--acting on my father's hint--in more
moderate tones, and even, as I thought, somewhat tepidly. Her theme
was what she called convictions of sin, of which by her own account
she had wrestled with a surprising quantity; but in the rehearsal of
them, though fluent, she seemed to lose heart as her hearers relaxed
their attention.
"Confound the woman!" grumbled my father. "She had done better,
after all, to continue frantic. The crowd came to be amused, and is
growing restive again."
"Sir," interposed Mr. Fett, "give me leave to assure you that an
audience may be amused and yet throw things. Were this the time and
place for reminiscences, I could tell you a tale of Stony Stratford
(appropriately so-called, sir), where, as 'Juba' in Mr. Addison's
tragedy of _Cato_, for two hours I piled the Pelion of passion upon
the Ossa of elocutionary correctness, still without surmounting the
zone of plant life; which in the Arts, sir, must extend higher than
geographers concede. And yet I evoked laughter; from which I may
conclude that my efforts amused. The great Demosthenes, sir,
practised declamation with his mouth full of pebbles--for retaliatory
purposes, I have sometimes thought."
Here my father, who had been paying no attention to Mr. Fett's
discourse, interrupted it with a sharp but joyful exclamation; and
glancing towards him I saw his face clear of anxiety.
"We are safe," he announced quietly, nodding in the direction of the
Three Cups. "What we wanted was a fool, and we have found him."