INTERFERENCE OF A GUERNSEY MERCHANT.
A smaller man than Major Hymen--I allude to character rather than to
stature--had undoubtedly postponed a military manoeuvre on finding it
likely to clash with the Millennium, an event so incalculable and
conceivably so disconcerting to the best-laid plans: and, indeed, for
something like forty-eight hours the Major was in two minds about
writing to Captain Pond and hinting at a postponement.
But in the end he characteristically chose the stronger line.
I believe the handsome language of Captain Pond's last letter decided
him. His was no cheap imitation of the grand manner. Magnificently,
spaciously--too spaciously, perhaps, considering the width of our
streets--it enshrined a real conception of Man's proper dignity.
Here was an obligation in which honour met and competed with
politeness: and he must fulfil it though the heavens fell. Moreover,
he could not but be aware, during the month of April, that the town
had its eye on him, hoping for a sign. He and the Vicar and Mr.
Hansombody had bound each other to secrecy; nevertheless some inkling
of the secret had leaked out. The daily current of gossip in the
streets no longer kept its cheerful, equable flow. Citizens avoided
each other's eyes, and talked either in hushed voices or with an
almost febrile vehemence on any subject but that which lay closest to
their thoughts.
But never did our Mayor display such strength, such unmistakable
greatness, as during this, the last month--alas!--fate granted us to
possess him. Men eyed him on his daily walk, but he for his part
eyed the weather: and the weather continued remarkably fine for the
time of year.
So warm, so still, indeed, were the evenings, that in the third week
of April he began to take his dessert, after dinner, out of doors on
the terrace overlooking the harbour; and would sit and smoke there,
alone with a book, until the shadows gathered and it grew too dark to
read print.
"And you may tell Scipio to bring me out a bottle of the green-sealed
Madeira," he commanded, on the evening of the twentieth.
"The green-sealed Madeira?" echoed Miss Marty. "You know, of course,
that there is but a dozen or so left?"
"A dozen precisely; and to-day is the twentieth. That leaves"--the
Major drummed with his fingers on the mahogany--"a bottle a night and
one over. That last one I reserve to drink on the evening of May-day
if all goes well. One must risk something."
"Solomon!"
"Eh?" The Major looked up in surprise. Although a kinswoman, Miss
Marty had never before dared to address him by his Christian name.
"One must risk something; or rather, I should say, one must leave a
margin. If Hansombody calls, you may send out the brown sherry."
"Forgive me, cousin. I see you going about your daily business, calm
and collected, as though no shadow hung on us--"
"A man in my position has certain responsibilities, my dear Martha."
"Yes, yes; I admire you for it. Do not think that for one moment I
have failed in paying you that tribute. I often wish," pursued Miss
Marty, somewhat incoherently, "that I had been born a man. I trust
the aspiration is not unwomanly. I see you going about as if nothing
were happening or likely to happen, and me all the while half dead in
my bed, and hearing the clock strike and expecting it every moment.
As if the French weren't bad enough! And the Vicar may say what he
likes, but when I hear you ordering up the green-sealed Madeira I
know you're like me, and in your heart of hearts can't see much
difference between it and the end of the world, for all the brave
face you put on it. Oh, I dare say it's different when one happens
to be a man," wound up Miss Marty, "but what _I_ want to know is why
couldn't we be let alone and go on comfortably?"
The Major rose and flicked a crumb or two from the knees of his
pantaloons. For the moment he seemed about to answer her, but
thought better of it and left the room without speech, taking his
napkin with him.
To tell the truth, he had been near to giving way. In his heart he
echoed Miss Marty's protest; and it touched him with an accent of
reproach--faint indeed; an accent and no more--which yet he had
detected and understood. Was he not in some sort responsible?
Would the Millennium be imminent to-day--or, if imminent, would it be
wearing so momentous an aspect?--if at the last Mayor-choosing he had
modestly declined to be re-elected (for the fifth successive year),
and had stood aside in favour of some worthy but less eminent
citizen? Hansombody, for instance? Hansombody admired him, idolised
him, with a devotion almost canine. Yet Hansombody might be expected
to cherish hopes of the mayoral succession sooner or later, for one
brief year at any rate; and for a few moments after acceding for the
sixth time to the unanimous request of the burgesses, the Major had
almost fancied that Hansombody's feelings were hurt. Hansombody
would have made a competent mayor; provoking comparison, of course,
but certainly not provoking the jealousy of the gods. It is
notoriously the mountain top, the monarch oak that attracts the
lightning. Impossible to think of Hansombody attracting the
lightning, with his bedside manner!
The Major seated himself in his favourite chair on the terrace,
spread his napkin over his knees and mused, while Scipio set out the
decanters and glasses.
His gaze, travelling over the low parapet of the quay-wall, rested on
the quiet harbour, the ships swinging slowly with the tide, the
farther shore touched with the sunset glory. Evensong, the close of
day, the end of deeds, the twilit passing of man--all these the
scene, the hour suggested. And yet (the Major poured out a glass of
the green-sealed Madeira) this life was good and desirable.
The Major's garden (as I have said) was a narrow one, in width about
half the depth of his house, terminating in the "Terrace" and a
narrow quay-door, whence a ladder led down to the water. Alongside
this garden ran the rear wall of the Custom House, which abutted over
the water, also with a ladder reaching down to the foreshore, and not
five yards from the Mayor's. On the street side one window of the
Custom House raked the Mayor's porch; in the rear another and smaller
window overlooked his garden, and this might have been a nuisance had
the Collector of Customs, Mr. Pennefather, been a less considerate
neighbour. But no one minded Mr. Pennefather, a little, round,
self-depreciating official who, before coming to Troy, had served as
clerk in the Custom House at Penzance, and so, as you might say, had
learnt his business in a capital school: for the good feeling between
the Customs officials and the free-traders of Mount's Bay, and the
etiquette observed in their encounters, were a by-word throughout the
Duchy.
The Major, glancing up as he sipped his Madeira and catching sight of
Mr. Pennefather at his window, nodded affably.
"Ah! Good evening, Mr. Collector!"
"Good evening, Major! You'll excuse my seeming rudeness in
overlooking you. To tell the truth, I had just closed my books, and
the sight of your tulips--"
"A fair show this year--eh?" The Major took pride in his tulips.
"Magnificent! I was wondering how you will manage when the bulbs
deteriorate; for, of course, there's no renewing them from Holland,
nor any prospect of it while this war lasts."
The Major sipped his wine. "Between ourselves, Mr. Collector, I have
heard that forbidden goods find their way into this country somehow.
Eh?"
The Collector laughed. "But the price, Major? That is where it hits
us, even in the matter of tulips. War is a terrible business."
"It has been called the sport of kings," answered the Major, crossing
his legs with an air of careless greatness, and looking more like the
Prince Regent than ever.
"I have sometimes wondered, being of a reflective turn, on the--er--
far-reaching consequences of events which, to the casual eye, might
appear insignificant. An infant is born in the remote island of
Corsica. Years roll on, and we find our gardens denuded of a bulb,
the favourite habitat of which must lie at least eight hundred miles
from Corsica as the crow flies. How unlikely was it, sir, that you
or I, considering these tulips with what I may perhaps call our
finite intelligence--"
"Step around, Mr. Collector, and have a look at them. You can unfold
your argument over a glass of wine, if you will do me that pleasure."
The Major had a high opinion of Mr. Pennefather's conversation; he
was accustomed to say that it made you think.
"If you are sure, sir, it will not incommode you?"
"Not in the least. I expect Hansombody will join us presently.
Scipio, bring out the brown sherry."
Now the Major had not invited Dr. Hansombody; yet that he expected
him is no less certain than that, while he spoke, Dr. Hansombody was
actually lifting the knocker of the front door.
How did this happen? The Major--so used was he to the phenomenon--
accepted it as a matter of course. Hansombody (good soul!) had a
wonderful knack of turning up when wanted. But what attracted him?
Was it perchance that magnetic force of will which our Major, and all
truly great men, unconsciously exert? No; the explanation was a
simpler one, though the Major would have been inexpressibly shocked
had he suspected it.
Miss Marty and Dr. Hansombody were mutually enamoured.
They never told their love. To acknowledge it nakedly to one
another--nay, even to themselves--had been treason. What?
Could Miss Marty disturb the comfort, could her swain destroy the
confidence, could they together forfeit the esteem, of their common
hero? In converse they would hymn antiphonally his virtues, his
graces of mind and person; even as certain heathen fanatics, wounding
themselves in honour of their idol, will drown the pain by loud
clashings of cymbals.
They never told their love, and yet, as the old song says:
"But if ne'er so close ye wall him,
Do the best that ye may,
Blind Love, if so ye call him,
He will find out his way."
Miss Marty had found out a way.
The Major's house, as you have been told, looked down the length of
Fore Street; and on the left hand (the harbour side) of Fore Street,
at some seventy yards' distance, Dr. Hansombody resided over his
dispensary, or, as he preferred to call it, his "Medical Hall."
The house stood aligned with its neighbours but overtopped them by an
attic storey; and in the north side of this attic a single window
looked up the street to the Major's windows--Miss Marty's among the
rest--and was visible from them.
Behind this attic window the Doctor, when released from professional
labours, would sit and read, or busy himself in arranging his cases
of butterflies, of which he had a famous collection; and somehow--I
cannot tell you when or how, except that it began in merest
innocence--Miss Marty had learnt to signal with her window-blind and
the Doctor to reply with his. This evening, for instance, by
lowering her blind to the foot of the second pane from the top, Miss
Marty had telegraphed,--
"The Major requests you to call and take wine with him."
The Doctor drew his blind down rapidly and as rapidly raised it
again. This said, "I come at once," and Miss Marty knew that it
added, "On the wings of love!"
A slight agitation of the lower left-hand corner of her blind
supplemented the message thus,--
"There will be brown sherry."
"Then will I also call to-morrow," said the Doctor's blind,
roguishly, meaning that if the Major indulged in brown sherry (which
never agreed with him) this convivial visit would almost certainly be
followed by a professional one. Miss Marty, having no signal for the
green-sealed Madeira, postponed explanation, and drew her blind
midway down the window. The Doctor did the same with his.
This signal and its answer invariably closed their correspondence;
but what it meant, what tender message it conveyed, remained an
uncommunicated secret. By it Miss Marty--but shall I reveal the
arcana of that virgin breast? Let us be content to know that
whatever it conveyed was, on her part, womanly; on his, gallant and
even dashing.
The Doctor lost no time in fetching his hat and gold-topped cane.
He knew the Major's brown sherry; it had twice made a voyage to the
West Indies. He hied him up the street with alacrity.
The Collector, though he had the worse of the start, was not slow.
He also had tasted the Major's brown sherry. He closed his ledgers,
locked his desk, caught up his hat, and was closing the Custom House
door behind him when, from the top of the Custom House steps, he saw
the Major's door open to admit Dr. Hansombody.
Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy and pursue in
imagination the pleasures of hope, attend to the story of Dr.
Hansombody, Mr. Pennefather, and the brown sherry!
"Dr. Hansombody?" With her own hand Miss Marty opened the door, and
her start of surprise was admirably affected. (Ah, Miss Marty!
Who was it rated Lavinia this morning for a verbal fib, until the
poor child dropped her head upon the kitchen table and with sobs
confessed herself the chief of sinners?) But even as she welcomed
the apothecary, her gaze fell past him upon the form of a stranger
who, sauntering up the street, had paused at the gate to scan the
Major's house-front.
"I ask your pardon." The stranger, a long, lean, lantern-jawed man,
raised his hat and addressed her with a strong French accent.
"But does Mr. Hymen inhabit here?"
"Yes, sir; Major Hymen--that is to say the Mayor--lives here."
"Ah! he is also the Maire? So much the better." He drew out a card.
"Will it please you, mademoiselle, to convey this to him?"
Standing on the third step he held up the card. Miss Marty took it
and read, "M. Cesar Dupin."
"Of Guernsey," added M. Dupin, rubbing his long unshaven chin while
he stole a long look at the Doctor. "It is understood that I come
only to lodge a complaint."
"To be sure--to be sure," agreed the Doctor, hurriedly. "A Guernsey
merchant," he whispered. . . . "You will convey my excuses to the
Major; an unexpected visitor--I quite understand."
He made a motion to retire. At the same moment the Collector, after
scanning the stranger from the Custom House porch, himself unseen,
unlocked his door again without noise, re-entered his office and
delicately drew down the blind of the little window overlooking the
Major's garden.
"There is the parlour," Miss Marty made answer in an undertone.
"This gentleman may not detain the Major long." She turned to the
stranger. "Your business, sir, is doubtless private?"
"I should prefer."
"Quite so." She raised her voice and called, "Scipio! Scipio!
Ah, there you are! Take this gentleman's card out to the terrace and
inform the Major that he desires an interview."
"Why, hallo!" exclaimed the Major, glancing up at the sound of a
blind being drawn above, in the Custom House window. "What the deuce
is delaying Pennefather?"
While he speculated, Scipio emerged from the house, bearing in one
hand a decanter of brown sherry, and in the other a visitor's card.
"Eh--what? M. Cesar Dupin?" The Major, holding the card almost at
arm's length, conned it with a puzzled frown.
"From Guernsey, Major."
"Good Lord! And I've just invited Pennefather!" The Major rose
half-way from his chair with a face of dismay.
Scipio glanced up at the Custom House window. He, too, had caught
the sound of the drawn blind.
"Mas' Pennefather, Major, if you'll excuse me, he see a hole t'ro' a
ladder, but not t'ro' a brick wall. Shall I show the genelman in?"
"I fear," began Miss Marty, as the Doctor took a seat in the parlour,
"I greatly fear that Scipio has carried the brown sherry out to the
terrace."
Dr. Hansombody smiled as a lover but sighed as a connoisseur.
"There is the Fra Angelico, however." She stepped to a panelled
cupboard on the right of the chimney-piece. "Made from my own
recipe," she added archly.
The Doctor lifted a hand in faint protest; but already she had set a
glass before him. He knew the Fra Angelico of old. It was a
specific against catarrh, and he had more than once prescribed it for
Scipio.
"Wine is wine," continued Miss Marty, reaching down the bottle.
"And, after all, when one knows what it is made of, as in this case--
that seems to me the great point."
"You mustn't think--" began the Doctor.
"I must plead guilty"--Miss Marty poured out a glassful--"if its name
suggests a foreign origin. You men, I know, profess a preference for
foreign wines; and so, humorously, I hit on the name of Fra Angelico,
from the herb angelica, which is its main ingredient. In reality, as
I can attest, it is English to the core."
The Doctor lifted his glass and set it down again.
"You will join me?" he asked, pointing to the decanter and
temporising.
"Pardon me. I indulge but occasionally: when I have a cold."
"And the Major?"
"He pleads habit. He says he is wedded to the vintages of France and
Spain. 'What?' I rally him, 'when those two nations are at war with
us? And you call yourself a patriot?' He permits these railleries."
"He is a man in a thousand!"
"There is no man like him!"
"If we exclude a certain resemblance--"
"You refer to the Prince Regent? But I was thinking only of _moral_
grandeur."
"True. All else, if one may say so without disloyalty, is but
skin-deep."
"Superficial."
"Thank you, the expression is preferable, and I ask your leave to
substitute it."
"Solomon, my kinsman, is the noblest of men."
"And you, Miss Marty, the best of women!" cried the Doctor, taking
fire and a sip of the Fra Angelico together, and gulping the latter
down heroically. "I drink to you; nay, if I dared, I would go even
farther--
"No, no, I beg of you!" Her eyes, downcast before this sudden
assault, let fall two happy tears, but a feeble gesture of the hand
besought his mercy. "Let us talk of _him_," she went on
breathlessly. "His elevation of character--"
"If he were to marry, now?" the Doctor suggested. "Have you thought
of that?"
"Sometimes," she admitted, with a flutter of the breath, which
sounded almost like a sigh.
"It would serve to perpetuate--"
"But where to find one worthy of him? She must be capable of rising
to his level; rather, of continuing there."
"You are sure that is necessary? Now, in my experience," the Doctor
inclined his head to one side and rubbed his chin softly between
thumb and forefinger--a favourite trick of his when diagnosing a
case--"in my observation, rather, some disparity of temper, taste,
character, may almost be postulated of a completely happy alliance;
as in chemistry you bring together an acid and an alkali, and, always
provided they don't explode--"
"_He_ would never be satisfied with that. Believe me, the woman he
condescends upon must, in return for that happy privilege, surrender
her whole fate into his hands. Beneath his deference to our sex he
carries an imperious will, and would demand no less."
"There _is_ a little bit of that about him, now you mention it,"
assented the Doctor.
"But let us not cheat--" Miss Marty checked herself suddenly.
"Let us not vex ourselves with any such apprehensions. He will never
marry, I am convinced. I cannot imagine him in the light of a
parent--with offspring, for instance. Rather, when I see him in his
regimentals, or, again, in his mayoral robe and chain--you have
noticed how they become him?--"
The Doctor admitted, with a faint sigh, that he had.
"Well, then, he puts me in mind of that--what d'you call it, which
the poets tell us is reproduced but once in several hundred years?"
"The blossoming aloe?" suggested the Doctor.
Miss Marty shook her head. "It's not a plant--it's a kind of bird.
It begins with 'P, h,'--and you think of Dublin."
"Let me see--Phelim? No, I have it! Phoenix."
"That's it--Phoenix. And when it's going to die it lights a fire and
sits down upon it and another springs up from the ashes."
"But I don't see how that applies to the Major."
"No-o?" queried Miss Marty, dubiously. "Well, not in every
particular; but the point is, there's only one at a time."
"The same might be said," urged the Doctor, delicately, "of other
individual members of the Town Council; with qualifications, of
course."
"And somehow I feel--I can't help a foreboding--that if ever we lose
him it will be in some such way."
"Miss Marty!" The Doctor stood up, with horror-stricken face.
"There, now! You may call me fanciful, but I can't help it.
And you've spilled the Fra Angelico! Let me pour you out another
glassful."
"We must all die," answered the Doctor inconsequently, not yet master
of himself.
"Except a few Bible characters," said Miss Marty, filling his glass.
"But what the town would do without _him_ I can't think. In a sense
he _is_ the town."
A moment before the Doctor had all but denied it; but now, overcome
by the thought of a world without the Major, he hid his face. For a
moment, if but in thought, he had been disloyal to his friend, his
hero!
Miss Marty said afterwards that, although not accustomed to prophesy
and humbly aware that it was out of her line, she must have spoken
under inspiration. She was wont also, when she recalled her
forebodings and the events that followed and so signally fulfilled
them, to regret that when the Guernsey merchant took his leave, an
hour later, she omitted to take note of his boots; it being an
article of faith with her that, in his traffic with mortals, the
Prince of Darkness could not help betraying himself by his cloven
hoof.
In the garden meanwhile the Major and his guest were making very good
weather of it, as we say in Troy; the one with his Madeira, the other
with the brown sherry. I leave the reader to discern the gist of
their talk from its technicalities.
"Three gross of ankers, you say?" queried the Major.
"At four gallons the anker, and six francs the gallon."
"It is a large venture."
"And, for that reason, dirt cheap. To my knowledge there is not a
firm in Guernsey at this moment doing trade at less than seven francs
the gallon in parcels under five hundred gallons."
"Yes, yes." The Major lit his pipe and puffed meditatively. "I am
not denying that. Only, you see, on our side these large operations
rather heighten the expense than diminish it, while they heighten the
risk enormously."
"I do not see." M. Dupin crossed his legs and awaited an explanation.
"It is simple. So many more tubs, so many more carriers; so many
more carriers, so much the more risk of including an informer.
One hundred carriers, say, I can lay hands on, knowing them all for
tried men. Beyond that number I rely on recommendations, often
carelessly given. The risk is more than trebled. And then, the fact
of my being Mayor--"
"I should have thought it lessened the risk."
"In a way, yes. But in case of miscarriage, the consequences must be
more severe. I will own that you tempt me. The tubs, you say, would
be ready slung."
"Ready slung for carriage, man or horse, whichever you prefer, with
ropes, stones and six anchors for sinking in case of emergency.
We will allow for these if they are returned."
"To tell the truth, since becoming chief magistrate of this borough,
I have rather set my face against these operations. It has seemed to
me more consonant. . . . And an operation on the scale you propose
could not be conducted without some degree of--er--audacity."
"It means a forced run," assented M. Dupin.
"If, on reflection--" the Major hesitated.
"Excuse me, but there is no time. For reasons of our own, my firm
must clear the stuff before the end of April; that is why we offer it
at the price. Three gross, with six ankers of the colouring stuff
gratis--and the tubs ready slung. It must be 'yes' or 'no'; if you
decline, then I have another customer on the string."
"The end of April, you say?" The Major refilled his glass and mused,
holding it up against the last gleam of daylight.
"We could ship it on the 27th or 28th. The moon serves then.
Say that you run it on the night of the 30th?"
"Of the 30th?" echoed the Major. "But on that night, of all others,
my hands are full. To begin with, we are half-expecting the
Millennium."
"The Millennium, _hein_?" echoed M. Dupin in his turn. "I do not
know her."
"It's not a boat," the Major explained. "It's a--well, in fact, we
are not altogether sure what it may turn out to be. But, setting
this aside, I am engaged to conduct a military operation on the night
of the 30th."
"_Hein_?" M. Dupin eyed his host with interest. "A counter-stroke
to the First Consul--is that so?"
"Well, not exactly a downright counter-stroke; although, if I had my
way . . . but in fact (and I mention it in confidence, of course) our
Artillery here is planning a surprise upon our neighbours of Looe,
the descent to be made upon Talland Cove."
M. Dupin set down his glass. "But I am in luck to-night!" said he.
"You--I--we are all in luck!"
"Forgive me, I do not see--"
"Oh, decidedly, I am in very great luck! If only your neighbours of
Looe--they, too, have a corps of Artillery, I suppose?" M. Dupin
felt in his breast pocket and drew out a paper. "Quick! their
officer's name?"
"A Captain Pond commands them: Captain Aeneas Pond."
"Pond? Pond? See now, and I have an introduction to him! And you
have arranged to surprise him on the night of April 30th--and at
Talland Cove--when there will be no moon! Oh, damgood!"
"But even yet I do not see," the Major protested.
"Not quite. For the moment you do not see, quite; but in a little
while." M. Dupin leaned forward and tapped the Major's knee.
"Your Artillery? You can count on them?"
"To the death."
"How many?"
"Nine score, without reckoning uniforms or stretcher-bearers."
"Stretcher-bearers?"
"For the wounded. And, of course--during the operation you propose--
we expect our corps to be depleted."
"By the crews? But they will be _there_! It is of the essence of
your surprise that they, too, will return from Guernsey and join you
in time. Next, of the Looe Artillery, how many?"
"You may put them down at seventy, all told."
"One hundred and eighty, and seventy--that makes two hundred and
fifty; and the cognac at six francs a gallon; and this Captain Pond
commended to me for the deepest man in Looe! It is you--it is he--it
is I--it is all of us together that are in luck's way!" M. Dupin
leapt up, snapped his bony fingers triumphantly; then, thrusting his
hands beneath his coat-tails and clasping them, strode to and fro in
front of the Major, for all the world like a long-legged chanticleer.
Ah, but wait a moment! Vainglorious bird of Gaul, or of the island
contiguous, wait a moment ere you crow before the Mayor of Troy!
For a moment the Major lay back in his chair, to all appearance
stupefied, confounded. Then he too rose, his lips working, his hand
shaking for one instant only as with his pipe-stem he traced a
magnificent curve upon the evening sky.
"Sit down!" he commanded. "Your plan is clever enough; but I have
another worth ten of it."
And, laying down his pipe, this extraordinary man lifted the decanter
and refilled his glass to the brim without spilling a drop.
What was the Major's plan? Wait again, and you shall see it evolved
in operation.