POLSUE V. PENHALIGON, NANJIVELL INTERVENING.
At breakfast, two days later, Dr Mant received a summons to visit
Polpier and pronounce upon the symptoms of Boatbuilder Jago's
five-year-old son Josey (Josiah), who had been feverish ever since
Tuesday evening. The Doctor's practice ranged over a wide district,
and as a rule (good easy man) he let the ailments of Polpier
accumulate for a while before dealing with them. Then he would
descend on the town and work through it from door to door--as Un'
Benny Rowett put it, "like a cross between a ferret an' a Passover
Angel." Thus the child and his temperature might have waited for
thirty-six hours--the mothers of Polpier being skilled in febrifuges,
from quinine to rum-and-honey, treacle posset, elder tea--to be dealt
with as preliminaries to the ambulance lecture, had it not been that
(1) the Doctor had recently replaced his old trap with a two-seater
car, which lifted him above old economies of time, and (2) he wished
to ascertain if the valley schoolhouse, in which he was to lecture,
possessed a wall-chart or diagram of the human frame; for it is a
useful rule to start an ambulance class with some brief information
on the body and its organs, their position and functions. Also he
remembered casually an official letter received from Troy, a couple
of days ago, concerning one Nicholas Nanjivell, a reservist.
The man, if he remembered rightly, had an epithelioma somewhere in
his leg, and was quite unfit for service. Nevertheless he must be
visited: for the letter was official.
First of all, then, the Doctor hied him to Boatbuilder Jago's: and it
was lucky he did so, for the child had developed measles--a
notifiable complaint. "Any other cases about?" he asked. Mrs Jago
did not know of another child sick or sorry in the whole of Polpier.
"Which," she went on to argue in an aggrieved tone, "it therefore
passes my understandin' why our Josey should be took, poor mite!
'Tisn't as if he was a naughty child, either."
"Everything must have a beginning, Mrs Jago," said the doctor in his
cheerful matter-of-fact way.
"You reckon as it will spread, then?"
"I don't know. I hope not. . . . It's a mercy that the schools are
closed for the holidays. When did they close, by the way?"
"Just a week ago."
"H'm. . . . I must step up and ask the Schoolmaster a few questions."
"I called you in to cure my Josey, not to talk about other folk's
children." (Mrs Jago was a resentful woman.)
"And I am doing my best for him. . . . Tut! in a week or so he'll be
running about as well as ever. But I'm the Medical Officer of
Health, ma'am."
"Well I know it; seein' that, four months back, as you happened to be
passin', I called you in an' asked you to look at the poor dear's
eyes an' give me a certificate that he was sufferin' from something
chronic. An' you flatly declined."
"If my memory serves me, I said he had a small stye in his eye, and I
was willing to certify that for what it was worth, if you didn't mind
paying me half-a-crown."
"If edication's free, as they call it, I don't see why a body should
pay half-a-crown to get off what can be had for nothing. That's how
I reasoned then, and always shall. In consikence o' which that
la-di-da of an Attendance Officer, that thinks all the maids be after
him an' looks sideways into every shop window he passes for a sight
of his own image--and if it rids us of a fella like that, I'm all
for Conscription--got me summonsed before the Tregarrick bench an'
fined another half-crown, with five shillin' costs. An' now, when
the mischief's done an' the tender dear one rash from head to foot"--
Mrs Jago mopped her eyes with the edge of her apron--"what better
can 'ee say than thank God the schools be closed! For my part, I
wish He'd close an' roll the great stone o' Daniel agenst 'em for
ever and ever!"
Doctor Mant sought up the valley to the Schoolmaster, Mr Rounsell,
whose quarters formed a part of the school buildings, and ended the
block on its southern or seaward side. One roof, indeed, covered him
in and out of school: and the Vicar, as one of the Managers, had been
heard to lament this convenient provision. "It never allows the
fellow to forget his chain: he talks to me as if I were a class of
forty."
Mr Rounsell himself answered the door. He had been gardening, and
was in his shirt-sleeves. At sight of his visitor he became
exceedingly prim and scholastic, with a touch of defiance. He was
short in stature, and, aware of this, often paused in the middle of a
sentence to raise himself on his toes. He made a special study of
what he called "Voice-Production," and regulated his most ordinary
conversation by the laws (as he understood them) of that agreeable
science.
"Doctor Mant?"
"Ah, it's yourself, is it?" chimed Dr Mant, whom the Schoolmaster's
accent always sent back, and instantly, to a native brogue.
"Well, and it's a fine row of sweet peas you have, Mr Rounsell, at
the edge of the garden by the stream. I note them every time I drive
by: and how in the world you contrive it, year after year, in the
same soil--"
"You take me at some disadvantage, sir," said Mr Rounsell stiffly.
"My daughter being from home on a holiday, and few people coming to
this door at any time, unless it be to ask a small favour."
"Well, and you've hit it: for myself's one of that same," Dr Mant
assured him cheerily. "But business first! Jago's child has the
measles. Had you any reason to suspect measles, or anything of the
sort, in your school before you closed it a week ago?"
Mr Rounsell, who had seemed to be arming himself against a very
different approach, sensibly relaxed his guard. He was punctilious
by habit in all official responsibilities. He considered for a
moment before answering.
"Had I done so, I should have reported my--er--suspicions. I cannot
tax my memory, Dr Mant, with having observed a symptom in any child
which pointed--er--in that direction. With regard to the child
Jago, I was the less likely to be forewarned of such an--er--shall we
say?--eventuality, seeing that he is the most irregular attendant of
my infant class, and, so far as my recollection serves me, his
attendances during the past quarter amount to but twenty-three point
four. I leave you to judge."
"Right--O! What about his attendance the week before breaking up?"
"I can look up the Register if you wish, sir. But, speaking at
off-hand, I should compute the child Josiah Jago's attendances during
the last week of July at _nil_, or thereabouts. You will understand,
Dr Mant, that at the very close of the school year many parents take
advantage, reasoning that they will not be prosecuted during the
holidays. I may say that I have drawn the attention of the School
Attendance Committee to this--er--propensity on the part of parents,
and have asked them to grapple with it: but, so far, without result."
"Hallelujah!" exclaimed Dr Mant. "Then there's hope we may isolate
the little devil. . . . Well, so far so good. But that wasn't my
only reason for calling. I have to give an ambulance lecture in your
schoolroom to-morrow evening: and I came to ask if you had a wall-map
or chart of the human body to help me along. Otherwise I shall have
to lug over a lot of medical books with plates and pass 'em around:
and the plates are mixed up with others. . . . Well, you understand,
they're not everybody's picture-gallery. That's to say, you can't
pass a lot of books around and say 'Don't turn the page, or maybe
you'll get more than you bargain for. '"
Mr Rounsell had stiffened visibly. "I will not conceal from you, Dr
Mant, that the matter on which you now approach me is--er--the
subject on which I--er--privately anticipated that you had called.
I have no _official_ knowledge of your lecturing here to-morrow--
instructive as I am sure it will be. The Managers have not consulted
me; they have not even troubled to give me official notice. But come
inside, sir."
Doctor Mant followed, to a little parlour lined with books; wherein
the little man turned on him, white with rage.
"I have heard, by a side wind," he foamed, "that a meeting was held,
two days ago, up at the Vicarage, when it was decided that you should
hold lectures in this school--_my_ school. I wasn't asked to attend.
. . . And of course you will jump to the conclusion that I am
over-sensitive, huffed for my own sake. It isn't that! . . . I _am_
huffed--maddened--if you will--for the sake of my calling.
For twenty years, Dr Mant, I have opened this school every morning
with prayer, dismissed it with prayer every evening, and between
times laboured to preach many things that all in the end come to one
thing--the idea of a poor English schoolmaster. All over the country
other poor schoolmasters have been spending their lives teaching in
just the same way their notion of England--what she is, has been,
ought to be. Similarly, no doubt, teachers all over France and
Germany have been teaching--under the guise of grammar, arithmetic,
what not--_their_ ideas of what France or Germany has been, is, ought
to be. These nations are opposed and at length they come to a direct
conflict, in this War. Mark you what happens! At once we patient
teachers in England are brushed all aside. You call a chance
Committee of amateurs, and the man who has taught the boys whom,
within a fortnight, you will be clamouring to fight for you, has not
even the honour to be consulted. . . . Yes, I think well enough of
Great Britain to be pretty confident that she will win, letting us
slip; that is, she will win though fighting with a hand tied.
But Germany is no such fool. _She_ won't, in her hour of need,
despise the help of her teachers. They teach what is almost
diametrically opposed to our teaching: they teach it thoroughly, and
on my soul I believe it to be as nearly opposed as wrong can be to
right. But they have the honour to be trusted; therefore they will
succeed in making this war a long one. . . . Yes, I have a wall-map,
sir, of the human body. It does not belong to the school: I bought
it on my own account seven years ago, but the then Managers
considered it too naked to hang on the walls of a mixed school, and
disallowed the expense. You are very welcome to use it, and I am
only glad that at length it will serve a purpose."
"Touchy lot, these school-teachers!" mused Dr Mant on his way back
to the town. "I never can like 'em, somehow. . . . Maybe I ought to
have used a little tact and told him that, as I understood it, Mrs
Steele called the meeting; and it was for women-workers only.
That wouldn't quite account for Farmer Best though," he chuckled.
"And I suppose Best and the Vicar, as Managers--yes, and Mrs
Pamphlett's another--just put their heads together on the spot and
gave leave to use the schoolroom, without consulting the Head Teacher
at all. I don't suppose it ever crossed their minds. . . . No: on
the whole that poor little man is right. Nobody in England ever
_does_ take any truck in schoolmasters. They're just left out of
account. And I dare say--yes: I dare say--that means we don't, as a
people, take any real truck in Education. Well, and who's the worse
for it?--barring the teachers themselves, poor devils! Germany has
taken the other line, put herself in the hands of pedagogues, from
the Professors down: and a nice result it's going to be for her, and
for the rest of the world in the meantime! On the whole--"
On the whole, the Doctor decided--faithful to his habit of looking
questions in the face and so passing on--that these things worked out
pretty well as they were.
His reflections carried him to the bridge-end, where, in the porch of
the Old Doctor's house, he encountered Mrs Polsue.
"Ah! Good morning, ma'am! We are bound for the same door, it
appears? That's to say if, as I seem to remember, a man called
Nanjivell lives here?"
"He does," Mrs Polsue answered. "And if I may make bold to say so,
it's high time!"
"Eh? . . . Are you looking after him? I'd no idea that he was really
sick."
"No more haven't I," said Mrs Polsue. "But I'll say 'tis time
_somebody_ looked after him, if I say no more. In point of fact,"
she added, "I'm not seeing Nicholas Nanjivell, but a woman called
Penhaligon who lives in the other tenement here. Her husband was
called up last Saturday."
"What, are you ladies at work already?"
"Oh, _I_ don't let the grass grow under my feet," said Mrs Polsue.
"Damn the woman, I suppose that's a slap at _me_," muttered Dr Mant
to himself. But he tapped on the Penhaligons' door for her very
politely.
"Thank you," she said. "That's Nanjivell's door, at the end of the
passage."
He bowed and went on, came to the door, paused for a glance at the
padlock hitched loose on the staple, knocked, and--as his custom was
when visiting the poor--walked in briskly, scarce waiting for an
answer.
"Hullo!"
Between him and the small window, almost blocking the light--on a
platform constructed of three planks and a couple of chairs set face
to face--stood Nicky-Nan, with a trowel in one hand and a
bricklayer's board in the other, surprised in the act of plastering
his parlour ceiling.
"Had an accident here?" asked Dr Mant, eyeing the job critically.
"Old house tumbling about your ears?"
"No . . . yes--that's to say--" stammered Nicky-Nan; then he seemed
to swallow down something, and so to make way for a pent-up fury.
"Who sent for 'ee? Who told 'ee to walk in like that without
knockin'? . . . _That's_ what I ask--Who sent for 'ee here?
_I_ didn!"
"What in thunder's wrong with ye?" asked the Doctor, very coolly
taking a third chair, seating himself astraddle on it, and crossing
his arms over the top. "No harm to be taken patching up a bit of
plaster, is there?" Again he eyed the ceiling.
"I--I beg your pardon, Doctor," answered Nicky-Nan, recollecting
himself. "But I live pretty lonely here, and the children--"
"So _that's_ why you put a padlock on the door? . . . Well, I'm not a
child. And though you didn't send for me, somebody else did.
Mr Johns, the Custom House Officer at Troy. He wants to know why you
didn't go with the rest of the Reserve last Sunday."
Nicky-Nan blazed up again. "Then you can tell 'en I can't nor I
won't--not if he cuts me in little pieces, I won't! Curse this War,
an' Johns 'pon the top of it! Can't you _see_--"
"No," put in the Doctor, "that's just what I can't, while you stand
up there spitting like a cat on the tiles between me and the light.
What fly has stung ye I can't think; unless you want to get off by
passing yourself on me for a lunatic; and I can't certify to that
without calling in a magistrate. . . . Here, man, don't be a fool,
but get down!"
Nicky-Nan laid aside trowel and board on the platform, and lowered
himself to the floor, very painfully.
"Sit ye down here!" Doctor Mant jumped up and turned his chair about.
"Wait a moment, though, and let me have a look at you. No! not that
way, man--with your back to the light!" He caught Nicky-Nan by the
two shoulders, faced him about to the window, and took stock of him.
"H'm . . . you look pretty bad."
Nicky-Nan, in fact, had spent half the previous night in crawling
upstairs and downstairs, between parlour and bedroom, or in kneeling
by the bedroom cupboard, hiding his wealth. He had thrown himself at
last on his bed, to sleep for a couple of hours, but at daybreak had
turned out again to start upon the plastering and work at it
doggedly, with no more sustenance than a dry biscuit. It had all
been one long-drawn physical torture; and the grey plaster smeared on
his face showed it ghastly even beyond nature.
"Here, sit down; strip your leg, and let me have a look at it."
The examination took some fifteen minutes, perhaps; the Doctor
kneeling and inspecting the growth with the aid of a pocket
magnifying-glass.
"Well," said he, rising and dusting his knees, "it's a daisy, and
I'll bet it hurts. But I don't believe it's malignant, for all that.
If you were a rich man, now--but you're not; so we won't discuss it.
What you'll have to do is to lie up, until I get you a ticket for the
South Devon and East Cornwall Hospital."
"No hospital for me," said Nicky-Nan, setting his jaw.
"Don't be a fool. I let slip in my haste that I don't reckon the
thing malignant; and I don't--as yet. But it easily may be; and
anyhow you're going to have trouble with it."
"I've had trouble enough with it already. But, mortal or not, I
ben't goin' to stir out o' Polpier nor out o' this house. . . .
Doctor, don't you ask it!" he wound up, as with a cry extorted by
pain.
"Why, man, what are you afraid of? An operation for _that_, what is
it? A whiff of chloroform--and in a week or so--"
"But--," interrupted Nicky-Nan sharply, and again recollected
himself. "To tell 'ee the truth, Doctor--that's to say, if what
passes between patient an' doctor goes no farther--"
"That's all right. I'm secret as houses."
"To tell 'ee the truth, then, there's a particular reason why I don't
want to leave Polpier--not just for the present."
Dr Mant stared at him. "You are going to tell me that reason?"
But Nicky-Nan shook his head. "I'd rather not say," he confessed
lamely.
Still Dr Mant stared. "Look here, Nanjivell. You've a beast of a
lump on your leg, and I can certify at once that it unfits you for
service. You couldn't even crawl up a ladder aboard ship, let alone
work a gun. But the people over at Troy have asked the question;
and, what is more, it sticks in my head that, two days ago, I got a
letter about you--an anonymous letter, suggesting that you were just
a malingerer, who nursed an ailment rather than go to the War and
take your chance with the others. As a rule I put that kind of
letter in the fire, and so I did with this one. As a rule, also, I
put it right out of my head. . . . But I've a conscience, in these
times; and if I thought you to be nursing a trouble which I pretty
well know to be curable, just to avoid your honest share in this
War--" Dr Mant paused.
"Cuss the War!" said Nicky-Nan wearily. "It looks to me as if
everybody was possessed with it."
Dr Mant still gazed at him curiously, then whipped about with a
sudden "Hey! What's _that?_"
_That_ was the voice of Mrs Penhaligon uplifted without, voluble and
frenzied: and the Doctor hurried forth, Nicky-Nan hobbling after, to
find Mrs Penhaligon waving her arms like a windmill's, and Mrs
Polsue, as before the blast of them, flat-backed against the wall of
the passage.
"--And there you'll stay," Mrs Penhaligon threatened, "while I teach
your proud flesh! S'pose now I ventured on _you_, as you've been
venturin' on _me!_ S'pose now that, without so much as a visitin'
card, I nosed in on you with--'So that's your poor dear husban's
portrait, that you nagged to his grave--and a speakin' image of him
too, afore he took to the drink as the better way--An' what little
lux'ries might _you_ have cookin' in the apparatus, such as a barren
woman might reas'nably afford? Yes, yes--it must be a great savin',
havin' no children of your own, but do it warrant pig's liver an'
bacon of a Saturday?' Oh, my Gor, _I'll_ make your two ends meet
afore I've done with 'ee! _I'll_ tell 'ee the savin' of lard 'pon
butter! _I'll_ tell 'ee about nettle-broth an' bread-crumbs for a
child's diet! _I'll_--"
The noise had attracted a group of women to the porchway; among them,
Mrs Climoe--"good at the war-cry," as Homer says of Diomede.
They huddled forward, obscuring the light.
Mrs Polsue, feeling the wall firm against her back, collected her
dignity. "I wish all _respectable_ people here," she appealed to Dr
Mant, as he came hurrying up the passage, "to take note of this
woman's language."
"'Woman?'" panted Mrs Penhaligon. "No more of a woman than yourself:
and less of a lady, thank God! Out! OUT! afore I soil my hands upon
'ee!"
"You would hardly believe, Dr Mant"--Mrs Polsue addressed him with an
air of fine gentility, as the one person present who could
understand--"but I called on this poor body to advise and, if
necessary, procure her some addition to her income from the Emergency
Fund."
"Oh, take her away!" sobbed Mrs Penhaligon, suddenly breaking down.
"Isn't it enough to lie awake at night with your man at the wars?
You're a gentleman, sir, an' a doctor, an' can understand.
Do 'ee take her away!"
But Nicky-Nan had pushed forward. "You mean well, ma'am, I don't
doubt," he said, addressing Mrs Polsue. "But this here War has got
upon everybody's nerves, in a manner o' speaking."
"It doesn't seem to trouble yours," retorted Mrs Polsue, at bay and
vicious; "or maybe it has, and that's why you're not with the
Reserve."
Nicky-Nan flushed to the roots of his hair. But he answered
pacifically--"Until I go, ma'am, you may take it from me that Mrs
Penhaligon shan't want. I fixed all that up with her husband afore
he left. So there's not need for you callin' again, if you don't
mind."
He said it firmly, yet quite respectfully. One or two of the women
in the porch murmured approval.
Not so Mrs Climoe.
"O-oh!" said Mrs Climoe, half aloud and all unheeded for the moment.
"So that's the way the wind blows, sure enough!"