_Wherein Miss Betty Modeyne wins more Hearts_
It was 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 at _The Cock and Bull_ in 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 its ascent 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 Cherry_
and _Toreador_ and _Nazareth_, even descending, with apologies,
occasionally to _It’s a Great Big Shame_ or 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 of _Nazareth_, 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-world _Ruddier than the Cherry_ whilst 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 sing _Nazareth_ like 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 the
_Victory_, 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 the party, 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.