LONG-PIPE TIMES
Daily now the roar and clank of war grew loud and louder, across the
narrow seas, and up the rivers, and around the quiet homes of England.
If any unusual cloud of dust, any moving shade, appeared afar, if the
tramp of horses in the lane were heard, or neigh of a colt from the
four-cross roads, people at dinner would start up and cry, “The French,
the French have landed!” while the men in the fields would get nearer
the hedge to peep through it, and then run away down the ditch.
But the nation at large, and the governing powers, certainly were not
in any great fright. Nay, rather they erred, if at all, on the side
of tranquillity and self-confidence; as one who has been fired at with
blank-cartridge forgets that the click of the trigger will not tell him
when the bullet has been dropped in. The bullet was there this time; and
it missed the heart of Britannia, only through the failure of the powder
to explode all at once.
It was some years before all this was known; even Nelson had no
perception of it; and although much alarm was indulged in on the sly,
the few who gave voice to it were condemned as faint-hearted fellows
and “alarmists.” How then could Springhaven, which never had feared
any enemies, or even neighbours, depart from its habits, while still
an eye-witness of what had befallen the Frenchman? And in this state of
mind, having plenty to talk of, it did not (as otherwise must have been
done) attach any deep importance to the strange vagaries of the London
Trader.
That great Institution, and Royal Exchange, as well as central embassy
of Fashion, had lately become most uncertain in its dates, which for
years had announced to loose-reckoning housewives the day of the week
and the hour to buy candles. Instead of coming home on a Saturday eve,
in the van of all the fishing fleet, returning their cheers and those of
customers on the beach, the London Trader arrived anywhen, as often in
the dark as daylight, never took the ground at all, and gave a very wide
berth to Captain Zeb Tugwell, his craft, and his crews. At times she
landed packages big and bulky, which would have been searched (in spite
of London bills of lading) if there had been any Custom-house here,
or any keen Officer of Customs. But these were delivered by daylight
always, and carted by Mr. Cheeseman's horse direct to his master's
cellars; and Cheeseman had told everybody that his wife, having come
into a little legacy, was resolved in spite of his advice to try a bit
of speculation in hardware, through her sister miles away at Uckfield.
Most of the neighbours liked Mrs. Cheeseman, because she gave good
weight (scarcely half an ounce short, with her conscience to her family
thrown in against it), as well as the soundest piece of gossip to be had
for the money in Springhaven. And therefore they wished her well, and
boxed their children's ears if they found them poking nose into her
packages. Mrs. Cheeseman shook her head when enquired of on the subject,
and said with grave truth that the Lord alone can tell how any of poor
people's doings may turn out.
Some other things puzzled the village, and would in more sensible times
have produced a sensation. Why did Mr. Cheeseman now think nothing of as
much as three spots on his white linen apron, even in the first half of
the week? Why was he seldom at John Prater's now, and silent in a corner
even when he did appear? What was become of the ruddy polish, like that
of a Winter Redstrake, on his cheeks, which made a man long for a slice
of his ham? Why, the only joke he had made for the last three months was
a terrible one at his own expense. He had rushed down the street about
ten o'clock one morning, at a pace quite insane for a middle-aged man,
with no hat on his head and no coat on his back, but the strings of
his apron dashed wild on the breeze, and his biggest ham-carver making
flashes in his hand. It was thought that some boy must have run off with
a penny, or some visitor changed a bad shilling; but no, there was no
such good reason to give for it.
The yearning of all ages, especially dotage, is for a relapse to the
infantile state when all playthings were held in common. And this wisest
of all places (in its own opinion) had a certain eccentric inclination
towards the poetic perfection when it will be impossible to steal,
because there will be nothing left worth stealing. Still everybody
here stuck to his own rights, and would knock down anybody across them,
though finding it very nice to talk as if others could have no such
standing-point. Moreover, they had sufficient common-sense to begin with
the right end foremost, and to take a tender interest in one another's
goods, moveable, handy, and divisible; instead of hungering after hungry
land, which feeds nobody, until itself well fed and tended, and is as
useless without a master as a donkey or a man is. The knowledge of these
rudiments of civilization was not yet lost at Springhaven; and while
everybody felt and even proved his desire to share a neighbour's
trouble, nobody meddled with any right of his, save his right to be
assisted.
Among them throve the old English feeling of respect for ancient
families, which is nowadays called “toadyism” by those whom it baulks
of robbery. To trade upon this good-will is almost as low a thing as any
man can do, even when he does it for good uses. But to trade upon it,
for the harm of those who feel it, and the ruin of his country, is
without exception the very lowest--and this was what Caryl Carne was at.
He looked at the matter in a wholly different light, and would have
stabbed any man who put it as above; for his sense of honour was as
quick and hot as it was crooked and misguided. His father had been
a true Carne, of the old stamp--hot-blooded, headstrong, stubborn,
wayward, narrow-minded, and often arrogant; but--to balance these faults
and many others--truthful, generous, kind-hearted, affectionate, staunch
to his friends, to his inferiors genial, loyal to his country, and
respectful to religion. And he might have done well, but for two sad
evils--he took a burdened property, and he plunged into a bad marriage.
His wife, on the other hand, might have done well, if she had married
almost anybody else. But her nature was too like his own, with feminine
vanity and caprice, French conceit, and the pride of noble birth--in the
proudest age of nobility--hardening all her faults, and hammering the
rivets of her strong self-will. To these little difficulties must be
added the difference of religion; and though neither of them cared two
pins for that, it was a matter for crossed daggers. A pound of feathers
weighs as much as (and in some poise more than) a pound of lead, and
the leaden-headed Squire and the feather-headed Madame swung always at
opposite ends of the beam, until it broke between them. Tales of rough
conflict, imprisonment, starvation, and even vile blows, were told about
them for several years; and then “Madame la Comtesse” (as her husband
disdainfully called her) disappeared, carrying off her one child, Caryl.
She was still of very comely face and form; and the Squire made known to
all whom it concerned, and many whom it did not concern, that his French
wife had run away with a young Frenchman, according to the habit of
her race and kind. In support of this charge he had nothing whatever to
show, and his friends disbelieved it, knowing him to be the last man in
the world to leave such a wrong unresented.
During the last three generations the fortunes of the Carnes had been
declining, slowly at first, and then faster and faster; and now they
fell with the final crash. The lady of high birth and great beauty had
brought nothing else into the family, but rather had impoverished it by
her settlement, and wild extravagance afterwards. Her husband Montagu
Carne staved off the evil day just for the present, by raising a large
sum upon second mortgage and the security of a trustful friend. But this
sum was dissipated, like the rest; for the Squire, being deeply wounded
by his wife's desertion, proved to the world his indifference about it
by plunging into still more reckless ways. He had none to succeed him;
for he vowed that the son of the adulteress--as he called her--should
never have Carne Castle; and his last mad act was to buy five-and-twenty
barrels of powder, wherewith to blow up his ancestral home. But ere he
could accomplish that stroke of business he stumbled and fell down the
old chapel steps, and was found the next morning by faithful Jeremiah,
as cold as the ivy which had caught his feet, and as dead as the stones
he would have sent to heaven.
No marvel that his son had no love for his memory, and little for the
land that gave him birth. In very early days this boy had shown that
his French blood was predominant. He would bite, and kick, and scratch,
instead of striking, as an English child does, and he never cared for
dogs or horses, neither worshipped he the gamekeeper. France was the
proper land for him, as his mother always said with a sweet proud smile,
and his father with a sneer, or a brief word now condemned. And France
was the land for him (as facts ordained) to be nourished, and taught,
and grown into tall manhood, and formed into the principles and habitude
and character which every nation stamps upon the nature of its members.
However, our strong point--like that of all others--is absolute freedom
from prejudice; and the few English people who met Caryl Carne were
well pleased with his difference from themselves. Even the enlightened
fishermen, imbued with a due contempt for Crappos, felt a kindly will
towards him, and were touched by his return to a ruined home and a
lonely life. But the women, romantic as they ought to be, felt a tender
interest in a young man so handsome and so unlucky, who lifted his hat
to them, and paid his way.
Among the rising spirits of the place, who liked to take a larger
view, on the strength of more education, than their fathers had found
confirmed by life, Dan Tugwell was perhaps the foremost. In the present
days he might have been a hot radical, even a socialist; but things were
not come to that pass yet among people brought up to their duty. And
Dan's free sentiments had not been worked by those who make a trade of
such work now. So that he was pleased and respectful, instead of carping
and contradictory, when persons of higher position than his own would
discuss the condition of the times with him. Carne had discovered this,
although as a rule he said little to his neighbours, and for reasons of
his own he was striving to get a good hold upon this young fellow.
He knew that it could not be done in a moment, nor by any common
corruption; the mind of the youth being keen, clear-sighted, and
simple--by reason of soundness. Then Carne accidentally heard of
something, which encouraged and helped him in his design upon Dan.
Business was slack upon the sea just now, but unusually active upon
land, a tide of gold having flowed into Springhaven, and bubbled up in
frying-pans and sparkled in new bonnets. The fishing fleet had captured
the finest French frigate--according to feminine history--that ever
endeavoured to capture them. After such a prisoner, let the fish go
free, till hunger should spring again in the human breast, or the part
that stands up under it. The hero of the whole (unlike most heroes) had
not succeeded in ruining himself by his services to his country, but was
able to go about patting his pocket, with an echo in his heart, every
time it tinkled, that a quantity more to come into it was lying
locked up in a drawer at home. These are the things that breed present
happiness in a noble human nature, all else being either of the future
or the past; and this is the reason why gold outweighs everything that
can be said against it.
Captain Tugwell, in his pithy style, was wont to divide all human life
into two distinctive tenses--the long-pipe time and the short-pipe time.
The long-pipe time was of ease and leisure, comfort in the way of hot
victuals and cool pots, the stretching of legs without strain of muscle,
and that ever-fresh well-spring of delight to the hard worker, the
censorial but not censorious contemplation of equally fine fellows,
equally lazy, yet pegging hard, because of nothing in their pockets to
tap. Such were the golden periods of standing, or, still better, sitting
with his back against a tree, and a cool yard of clay between his gently
smiling lips, shaving with his girdle-knife a cake of rich tobacco, and
then milling it complacently betwixt his horny palms, with his resolute
eyes relaxing into a gentle gaze at the labouring sea, and the part
(where his supper soon would be) warming into a fine condition for it,
by good-will towards all the world. As for the short-pipe times, with
a bitter gale dashing the cold spray into his eyes, legs drenched with
sleet, and shivering to the fork, and shoulders racked with rheumatism
against the groaning mast, and the stump of a pipe keeping chatter with
his teeth--away with all thought of such hardship now, except what would
serve to fatten present comfort.
But fatherly feeling and sense of right compelled Captain Zeb to check
idle enjoyment from going too far--i. e., further than himself. Every
other member of his family but himself, however good the times might
be, must work away as hard as ever, and earn whatever victuals it should
please the Lord to send them. There was always a job to be found, he
knew that, if a young man or maid had a mind for it; and “no silver no
supper” was the order of his house. His eldest son Dan was the first to
be driven--for a good example to the younger ones--and now he was set to
work full time and overtime, upon a heavy job at Pebbleridge.
Young Daniel was not at all afraid of work, whenever there was any kind
of skill to be shown, or bodily strength to be proved by it. But the
present task was hateful to him; for any big-armed yokel, or common
wood-hewer, might have done as much as he could do, and perhaps more,
at it, and could have taken the same wage over it. Mr. Coggs, of
Pebbleridge, the only wheelwright within ten miles of Springhaven, had
taken a Government contract to supply within a certain time five hundred
spoke-wheels for ammunition tumbrils, and as many block-wheels for small
artillery; and to hack out these latter for better men to finish was the
daily task of Dan Tugwell.
This job swelled his muscles and enlarged his calves, and fetched away
all the fat he had been enabled to form in loftier walks of art; but
these outward improvements were made at the expense of his inner and
nobler qualities. To hack and hew timber by the cubic foot, without any
growing pleasure of proportion or design, to knit the brows hard for a
struggle with knots, and smile the stern smile of destruction; and
then, after a long and rough walk in the dark--for the equinox now was
impending--to be joked at by his father (who had lounged about all
day), and have all his money told into the paternal pocket, with narrow
enquiries, each Saturday night. But worst of all to know that because he
was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he had no heart--no heart
that he could offer where he laid it; but there it must lie, and
be trodden on in silence, while rakish-looking popinjays--But this
reflection stopped him, for it was too bitter to be thought out, and
fetched down his quivering hand upon his axe. Enough that these things
did not tend to a healthy condition of mind, or the proper worship of
the British Constitution. However, he was not quite a Radical yet.