'Wunnerful brandy, Sir John!' said old Squire Morshead.
He said this regularly as he dined at Penalune when, after dinner and
wine and songs, the hour came for the 'brandy-mixing' before the
guests dispersed. Sir John was a widower and confined his
hospitality to men. He had adored his wife and lost her young; and
thereafter, though exquisitely courteous to ladies when he met them--
on the hunting-field, for example--he could not endure one within the
walls of Penalune. As he put it to himself, quoting an old by-word,
'What the eye don't see the heart don't grieve.' It scarcely needs
to be added that the heart _did_ grieve; but this was his way, albeit a
strange one, of worshipping what he had lost.
For the rest, he was a hale, cheerful, even jovial gentleman, now
well past fifty; clear of eye, sound of wind and limb, standing six
feet two in his stockings; fearing no man, on good terms with all,
but liking his neighbours best, and no more eccentric than a country
squire has the right, if not even the obligation to be. Unless it
were in the saddle, you could scarcely see him to better advantage
than at this ceremony of brandy-mixing--for a ceremony it was; no
pushing of a decanter, but a slow solemn ladling by the host himself
from an ample bowl. Moreover, the Penalune brandy was famous.
'It has lain,' said he--'let me see--thirty-five years in cellar, to
my own knowledge. My father never told me how or when he came by it.
Smuggled, you may be sure.'
The talk ran on smuggling and its decline. A Mr St Aubyn, of
Clowance, lamented this decline as symptomatic--'the national fibre's
deteriorating, mark my words.' A Mr Trelawny was disposed to agree
with him. 'And, after all,' he said, 'the game was a venial one; a
kind of sport. Hang it, a Briton must be allowed his sporting
instincts!' 'By the same argument, no doubt, you would justify
poaching?' put in Sir John, with a twinkle. Mr Trelawny would by no
means allow this. 'It would interest me, sir, to hear you define the
moral difference between smuggling and poaching,' said Doctor
Unonius. 'I don't go in for definitions, sir,' Mr Trelawny answered.
'I'm a practical man and judge things by their results. Look at your
Polpeor folk--smugglers all, or the sons of smugglers--a fine
upstanding, independent lot as you would wish to see; whereas your
poacher nine times out of ten is a sneak, and looks it.' 'Because,'
retorted the doctor, but gently, 'your smuggler lives in his own
cottage, serves no master, and has public opinion--by which I mean
the only public opinion he knows, that of his neighbours--to back
him; whereas your poacher lives by day in affected subservience to
the landowner he robs by night, and because you take good care that
public opinion is against him.' 'To be sure I do,' affirmed Mr
Trelawny, and would have continued the argument, but here old Squire
Morshead struck in and damned the Government for its new coastguard
service. 'I don't deny,' he said, 'it's an improvement on anything
we've seen yet under the Customs, or would be, if there was any real
smuggling left to grapple with. But the "trade" has been dwindling
now for these thirty years, and to invent this fire-new service to
suppress what's dying of its own accord is an infernal waste of
public money.' 'I doubt,' Sir John demurred, 'if smuggling be quite
so near death's door as you fancy. Hey, doctor--in Polpeor now?'
The doctor opined that very little smuggling survived nowadays; the
profits were not worth the risk. 'Though, to be sure,' he added,
'public opinion in Polpeor is still with the trade. For an
illustration, not a soul in the town will let the new coast-guardsmen
a house to live in, and I hear the Government intends to send down a
hulk from Plymouth Dock and moor it alongside the quay.' He paused.
'But,' he went on, with a glance over his spectacles at Sir John,
'our host, who owns two-thirds of the cottages in Polpeor, may
correct me and say that Government never offered a fair rent?'
Sir John threw back his head and laughed. 'My heir, when he succeeds
me,' he said, 'may start new industries in Polpeor; but I'll not
build new houses to worry my sitting tenants.'
It was now eleven o'clock, and by-and-by the company dispersed--which
they did almost simultaneously and from the stable-yard, amid a
tremendous clattering of hoofs, rumbling of wheels, calls of
stablemen, 'gee's' and 'woa's,' buttoning of overcoats, wrapping of
throats in comforters, 'good-nights,' and invitations to meet again.
Sir John himself moved up and down in the throng, speeding his
parting guests, criticising their horseflesh, offering an extra wrap
to one, assuring himself that another had his pocket-flask charged
for a long night ride.
In the press Doctor Unonius--whether because he never stinted a vail
to the grooms, or because they felt a natural kindness for one who
had brought their wives through confinement and ushered their
children into the world; and anyway there was sense in standing well
with a man who might at any time in this transitory world have to
decide the important question of your living or dying--managed to get
old Dapple harnessed in the gig, and the lamps lit, and to jog off
with the earliest. The drive of Penalune extends for a mile, and
along it, ahead of him and behind him, the voices of his
fellow-guests challenged one another in song, rising clear on the
frosty air,--
'In the month of November, in the year 'fifty-two,
Three jolly fox-hunters, all sons of the Blue,
Sing fol-de-rol, lol-de-rol--'
Beyond the lodge gates came the high-road, and here half a dozen of
the chorusers shouted goodnight, and rode away northward and by east
in the teeth of the wind; but the greater number bowled along with
the doctor south-west to the cross-roads under Barrow Down.
There the Polpeor road struck off to the left, and, swinging into it,
he found himself alone.