CHAPTER V

WILL AT HOME

_Is not this the merry month of May,_

_When love-lads masken in fresh array?_

_How falls it, then, we no merrier be’n,_

_Like as others, girt in gaudy green?_

SPENSER, “The Shepheards Calendar.”

I

TIME hung heavy on Will’s hands the first few days of his return, as

heavy as the meals heaped before him by the adoring Martha. There was as

much for “bever” as for breakfast, yet quantity did not suffice him. He

became almost as finnicking and fractious as Cousin Caroline, not

content, for example, to strain the pond-water through muslin for the

larger insects, but insisting on its being boiled: indeed hinting

preposterously that the mortality among his unknown brothers and sisters

might have been connected with potations on which Caleb and Martha had

patently flourished. He held views on the house-refuse, ignoring Caleb’s

plea that “the best drain be a pig,” and by making hinges the very first

evening for the lower windows to open by, he had raised such a draught

in the house that it was all they could do to keep their bedroom and

their kitchen air-tight, and even Martha was glad when on the Wednesday

afternoon he went off to get some fishing in the Brad, and the windows

could all be closed up again.

But the few dace and bull-heads that rewarded his rod left too many

intervals for reflection, and in the unsettlement of his thoughts,

before settling down to a judicious expenditure of his ninety pounds, he

felt he needed more deadening exertion. He tried poling against the

stream to that ancient faery island—somebody’s half-decked shooting

punt was doing no good rusting on the bank in the off-season, he

thought—but the process soon became automatic and his mind was still

restless, while after the islands of the St. Lawrence this enchanted

playground of his youth seemed tame and its prettiness trivial.

He fed his fancy on a salt-water expedition for the Thursday: recalled

the great catches of flat-fish he and his brothers had made, the sport

to be got out of the voracious if inedible “bull-rout,” but it would be

a very long walk, and what if when one arrived the tide should be too

low? So he walked inland around Bradmarsh Common. But though it was, he

told himself, the “old haunts” that he went out for to see, he omitted

to revisit that venerable landmark, Gaffer Quarles. Conscience adjured

him he ought to look up the old carrier, whether for respect or

reproof—and he actually did hover around Blackwater Hall—but pride

forbade his entering, lest he stumble upon the new Carrier. The Hall

appeared even more dwindled to him than Frog Farm as he stood surlily

surveying it; even the Common—after the Canadian prairie—seemed no

longer to roll towards the blue infinities. He had a strong impulse to

burst in on that careless old Daniel and give him a piece of his mind,

even at the risk of meeting his gadabout granddaughter; but the bleating

of the goats sounded forbidding, and as he was hesitating he found

himself under the gaze of another gaffer, the crown of whose battered

beaver tied on to its brim with coloured strings gave him a festal

grotesquerie. Will remembered this ancient, though despite his gay

headgear he now seemed inexpressibly grimy in his patched corduroys, his

two ragged coats, and the dirty towel wound round his throat. It was the

Quarles’s nearest neighbour, “Uncle” Lilliwhyte, who lived in a cottage

also on the Common; trading in cress, cherries, and mushrooms, driving

home obstreperous cows and doing other odd jobs. This worthy was now

exercising his equal right of gathering sticks on the Common, and the

sordid association seemed to reduce Jinny to the same shrunken

proportions as her cottage.

“Buy a nadder, sir?”

“Sir!” Yes, after all, his father had been a “looker,” not a mere

labourer, he himself had a waistcoat lined with bank-notes and cut by

Moses & Son, why should he expect a sense of dignity from a girl of so

lowly a status? Let her earn her livelihood as she wished—it was not

his affair, except in so far as she should have none of his custom. A

cock crew lustily, and it subtly heartened him up. Yes, he would go in

now, give her back her glove, professing to have just picked it up, and

wash his hands of her for ever.

“No, thank you, uncle,” he said, with an irrelevant memory of the

ancient’s blind mother, “what should I do with an adder?”

“But that’s a real loive nadder, just kitched, sir.” He cautiously

displayed its hissing head and darting tongue. “There’s many a slowworm

killed for a woiper, pore things. Onny fowrpence, sir!”

“Well, here’s sixpence,” said Will graciously. “No, no,” he explained

hastily, as the ancient began handing over the wriggling reptile. “Kill

the beggar.” And he hurried homewards. On second thoughts—inspired

perhaps by some dim impression of a female figure flitting among the

clothes-lines behind the Hall—he would not risk an encounter with

Jinny, but make a special call upon poor, lonely old Daniel on the

morrow. Jinny would then be out on her rounds. And if he took care to go

at about the hour she was due at Frog Farm, he could avoid her at both

places. Yes, that were tactics worthy of a man of the world.

Casual conversation with his elders reminded him, however, that Jinny

was not expected that Friday. She had already left the parcel of

groceries on the Tuesday. He was thus safe from her for eight days—he

had only to remain at home. But the discovery that the whole of Friday

was free from any possibility of her appearance at Frog Farm, and that

Blackwater Hall was equally immune from her presence, seemed to remove

the zest of his diplomacy. Neighbour Quarles remained unvisited, his

solitude unmitigated, and Will wandered aimlessly on the high road

between Bradmarsh and Chipstone.

The year was at its most beautiful moment. The hedges were white with

hawthorn, and the fresh young leaves on the trees gave an exquisite

sense of greenness without blurring the structural grace of the

branches, while the unspoiled cadence of the cuckoo’s cry came magically

over the sunny meadows. But Will could only swish viciously with his

stick at the hedges and litter the lanes with ruined blossom.

It was with no little surprise that, as he and his elders sat at high

tea on this same evening, they heard the windings of Jinny’s horn. The

three sprang up: then Will sat down again.

“Ain’t you comin’ out to see Jinny?” asked Caleb.

“Let the boy drink his tea,” said Martha.

“But you ain’t never spoke to her yet,” persisted Caleb. “And you used

to give her eggs.”

“Let the boy eat his eggs himself,” said Martha sternly.

“Oi dedn’t mean they eggs,” laughed Caleb.

“Do go and see what Jinny can want,” Martha commanded him. “I shouldn’t

be surprised if it _is_ eggs—now that Mr. Flippance has opened his show

he’ll be wanting them regularly.”

“Whatever for?” asked Will.

“He sucks ’em raw, like weasels, him and his darter,” explained Caleb.

“They should say it’s good for the woice, and by all accounts showmen

fares to have a mort o’ pieces to speak.”

“But why doesn’t Jinny sell him her own eggs?” asked Will.

“How do you know she has them?” asked Martha quickly.

“Hasn’t she?” he said lightly, reddening like the comb of the cock he

had heard crowing.

“Not enough. That old sinner eats her out of house and home.”

“Mr. Flippance?” murmured Will.

“No, no. Her grandfather. Why don’t you go, Caleb?”

Will sat on stolidly, helping himself to more tea and pouring the milk

into the slop-basin. Presently Caleb returned, announcing that Jinny had

brought something for Will—she could only legally deliver it to Mr.

Flynt, junior, she said.

Will turned redder than at the egg-talk. “But I never ordered anything,”

he said.

“You can’t prewent folks sendin’ you presents, same as they’re foolish

enough,” Caleb reminded him.

A fantastic fear that the blue-eyed girl of the train was discharging

some proof of devotion at him made him drum nervously with his teaspoon.

“But who knows I’m back home?” he answered Caleb.

Through the open house-door came the gay strains of a fresh young voice:

“_But still he’d sing fol de rol iddle ol!_”

“Don’t she sing pritty?” sighed Caleb.

“I’d sooner hear her singing about Zion,” said Martha. “She’s rather

flighty, to my thinking.”

“That’s the first time Oi heard ye say a word agen Jinny,” said Caleb,

“leastways behind her back.”

Will, tingling between the two tortures—the song without and the

table-talk within—sprang up brusquely. “Drat the girl—my tea’ll get

cold. Sit down, dad, I’ll see what she’s brought.”

II

Jinny sat stiffly on her seat, Nip clasped in her arms. The singing had

ceased. Despite himself Will felt an odd pleasure in the sight of the

trim figure so competently poised above Methusalem, and he was touched

to note Nip’s tail agitating itself amicably at the sight of him.

“Good evening,” she said politely. “I am glad to see it has not

developed.”

“What hasn’t developed?”

“Your hydrophobia. And I am keeping the dog tight, you notice.”

He winced. “Oh, I’m not afraid of him.”

“But I am—he’s already bitten you once: get the cages, please, while I

hold him.”

“The cages?” He had a confused idea that Nip was to be caged, was

dangerous after all.

“They’re near the tail-board. Nothing to pay.”

He went behind the cart, wondering, semi-incredulous; did indeed

perceive a couple of cages in the dusk, and reaching for one, drew back

his hand in a hurry from some darting, snapping, creamy, pink-eyed

yellowness.

“Oh!” he cried involuntarily.

“What’s the matter? Oh, I had forgotten they bite too.”

“What is this practical joke?” he cried angrily.

“Eh?” said Jinny. “Didn’t you order a pair of ferrets to be sent by the

Carrier?”

His eyes grew wide. “I beg your pardon—I’d quite forgotten.”

“I thought Deacon Mawhood wasn’t a likely joker. Polecats, he said. Have

you got the cages?” she asked, not looking back.

“I’m—I’m getting them,” he stammered, and began cautiously haling them

towards him.

“The Deacon asked me to say the hob and the jill must be kept apart.”

“I know,” he grunted, almost as shocked as over her mention of Maria’s

litter. The impudicity of her calling was again borne in on him.

“Anything else?” burst from him sardonically.

“No—except there’s no need to cope them. I don’t know what coping is.”

“It’s what you want,” he said brutally. “Muzzling.”

“Afraid of _my_ bite, too?” asked Jinny, and turning towards the

interior shelf that held the smaller parcels, she began to sing softly

to herself:

“_A dashing young lad from Buckingham._”

He had been expecting “Canada” at the end, and felt somehow disappointed

at its absence. “But when I gave the order,” he rejoined

notwithstanding, “I didn’t know that the Bradmarsh Carrier was a girl.”

“That didn’t prevent you using her when you did know,” she said quietly.

“When have I used her?” he cried hotly.

“Well, what about this?” She produced from the shelf in the cart a long

parcel half enclosed by a string in broken, dirty paper, within which

showed a layer of grimy straw.

“But what is it?”

“That’s not my business.” She tendered it downwards.

“I never ordered this.”

“Hadn’t you better open it?” she asked with a twinkle. He dumped down

the cages violently, to the alarm of the ferrets, and tore it open, only

to shudder back before the clammy-looking coils.

“An adder as well?” said Jinny. “You going to open a menagerie?”

“It’s dead,” he said.

“Did you want a live one?”

“I didn’t want one at all—I never ordered it.”

“Why, Uncle Lilliwhyte told me he sold it to you for fourpence and you

gave him twopence extra to kill it.”

“I beg your pardon—he misunderstood.” It was his second apology. “But

what a dirty way to deliver it.”

“Did you expect me to nurse a viper in my bosom?”

Again this indelicate speech, hardly atoned for by its wit. “The old

ragamuffin!” he muttered furiously. “How did the idiot know it was me?”

“Fellow-feeling, I suppose,” said Jinny.

“Now you’re saucy again. You must have told him it was me.”

“Right for once. Honest uncle was upset at your forgetting to tell him

where to send your purchase. I was milking my goats and saw you hanging

about.”

Again he flushed uneasily. “And how much do I owe you?” he asked

hurriedly.

“Twopence for the viper, being only a short way. The Deacon says he

prefers to pay the freightage on the ferrets, and to collect it from you

himself.”

He put down the straw-entangled snake on top of one of the cages, and

pulled out a coin. “Have you got change for sixpence?”

“Not unless I loose Nip.” She fumbled with one hand in her pocket.

He glowered. “Oh, next time will do,” he said angrily.

“Oh, then, there _is_ to be a next time!”

“Not so far as I am concerned.”

“Sure you don’t want any more wild animals?”

“No,” he shouted.

“Don’t be so fierce. The drumstick is found, you will be glad to hear.”

He grunted.

“And the show is doing big business, Mr. Flippance tells me. He was so

set up he gave me a pair of new gloves.”

“That old braggart! What business had he to give you gloves?”

“Didn’t I lose one through his drumstick?”

“But then ’tis me ought to pay for them,” he protested.

“You? What nonsense! Why?”

“It was on my account you lost the glove—through trying to get a bite.”

She smiled. “You talk as if I were an angler.”

“I wish you were! Anything but a carrier.”

“Don’t say that. Would you like me to buy another pair of gloves—on

your account?”

“If you would!” he said eagerly.

“Thank you!

_But still he’d-sing fol de rol iddle ol._

“What size do you take?”

“Stow that fol-de-riddling—you know I don’t mean gloves for _me_.”

“Are you taking back the order?” she said, with feigned disappointment.

“I never gave you an order!” he said, goaded. “I’d cut my tongue out

sooner.”

“Keep your tongue between your teeth. You’ll want it to give me an order

with before you’re a week older.”

“Never! I’d as soon shoe a horse with a hairpin.” He snatched up his

cages decisively, one in each hand, and the adder rolled on to the

ground, bursting its strawy cerements.

The girl’s grey eyes flashed steel-like. “And can’t I drive as well as

Gran’fer? And don’t I know the roads?” And she uplifted her horn from

her girdle and blew a resounding blast of defiance. It set all the cocks

crowing behind the house and brought Caleb bustling from within it.

“Did you summon me, Jinny?” he asked. “Gracious, Will, whatever you got

there?” His eyes expanded to see the sinuous animals swirling fiercely

against their wires; in coming nearer to peer at them, he stumbled over

the snake and uttered a cry.

“It’s all right,” called Jinny. “It’s dead.”

“You killed it, Willie?” he asked.

“With a drumstick,” said Jinny gravely.

“Fiddlesticks, father!” said Will angrily.

“Oi don’t care what sort o’ stick you killed that with,” said Caleb, “so

long as it’s a dead corpse. But do ye come in now—mother’s grousin’

about the tea gittin’ cold.”

“I like cold tea. Go in, father. I’m just coming.” He harked back to her

blast of rebellion. “You may be able to drive, and you may know the

roads. But can’t you see how unnatural it is, you perched up there and

blowing a horn like Dick Burrage of the County Flyer?”

“And do I blow it as fine as he?” she asked eagerly.

“Anybody can blow a horn,” he answered curtly.

“Can they now?” She was piqued again. “I’d like to see anybody do it.

Why, Gran’fer can’t.”

“Gran’fer hasn’t got much breath left. I’m not talking of men in their

eighties.”

“He is in his nineties,” she corrected.

“Exactly. I meant anybody with proper lungs.”

“Can _you_ blow it?”

“Why shouldn’t I be able to blow it?”

“All right! Blow it!” said Jinny gravely. She unslung it with one arm

and held it down. He gazed at it, taken aback, sandwiched between his

cages.

“It’s no good opening your mouth,” she said. “I’m not going to stick it

in. You’ll have to put down those horrible beasts and do that yourself.

Why don’t they keep still? They make my head ache.”

He moved to the back of the house to place the ferrets out of the way,

kicking the poor adder before him—it was a needed relief to his

feelings. Returning, thus purged, he took the proffered horn—it was not

a professional coach-horn or post-horn, but just the little instrument

of a master of foxhounds curling into a circle above—and with but scant

misgiving put it to his mouth, and blew. But the silence remained

unbroken. He puffed on and on with solemn pertinacity. Not a sound

issued. His cheeks swelled to bursting-point, and grew redder and redder

with shame and vexation. But silence still reigned.

“You mustn’t put it inside your lips,” corrected Jinny. “Think you’re

tum-tumming into a comb.”

He readjusted it sullenly, but the music within was still coy.

“Slacken your lip,” she advised. “Try to splutter br-r-r-rr into it.”

But whatever he spluttered into it, nothing came out.

“I never realized it was quite so difficult, even the lipping,” said

Jinny simply. “Of course I didn’t expect you to do the double or treble

tonguing at once.”

“What do you mean, tonguing?” he inquired morosely.

“Dividing the notes. Say ‘Tucker, Tucker, Tucker’ into it.”

“But it’s blowing, not saying,” said Will obstinately.

But secretly he modified his methods, and at last a ghostly plangency or

a staccato squeak began to reward his apoplectic agonizings, and the

still prisoned Nip, who had been yawning in utter boredom, now

accompanied the music with a critical and lugubrious howling.

Upon this spectacle and situation reissued the guileless Caleb, and had

the Crystal City itself come down upon earth, his eyes could scarcely

have orbed themselves more spaciously.

“He _didn’t_ summon you,” observed the merciless Jinny.

“Go away, father! What are you staring at?” yapped the tortured young

man.

“You do be a fine musicianer!” And Caleb grinned. “But do ye don’t play

now—mother’s gittin’ into her tantarums over your tea.”

“The instrument must be out of order,” said Will, handing it up crossly

to Jinny. Remorselessly she drew from it a clarion call that made the

welkin ring and the poultry-yard respond in kind.

“How the cocks crow!” she observed artlessly.

“Thinks because she blows a horn she’s a devil of a fellow,” Will

remarked witheringly to his receding father. “Say, Jinny, why don’t you

wear the breeches?”

“Like those Bloomerites you told me of? I will,” she responded sweetly,

“if you think it more becoming.”

“Me! You don’t suppose _I_ notice what you wear.”

“Then how do you know I’m not wearing ’em now?”

“You have me there!” And he smiled despite himself. The smile lit up the

face under the aureole of red hair—it seemed to Jinny a sudden glimpse,

through a rift of Time, of the boy she had known. “All the same,” he

protested, “if I _had_ a horn, I could learn it in an hour.”

“Well, get one,” said Jinny.

“Where can I get one?” he retorted fretfully.

“Dearie! Your tea——!” It was Martha herself now.

“Oh, I’d get you one,” said Jinny carelessly, “but I’ll wager you won’t

blow it properly in a week, much less an hour!”

“A week! What nonsense! In a moment.”

“In a moment?”

“I was speaking to mother. What’ll you wager?”

“A pair of gloves,” said Jinny.

“Done!” said Will.

She clucked to Methusalem. “Good-bye,” she called to the couple as the

cart moved off. “I’ll deliver your order next Friday, Will—without

fail.”

“Dearie, whatever are you running after her for?” cried Martha.

He came back sheepishly: “I thought the gate wasn’t open.”

From the Bradmarsh road the sound of the “fol-de-rol” refrain came

sweetly on the quiet air.

“I wish she would sing of Zion,” repeated Martha wistfully.

III

The pair of polecat ferrets—creamy white albinos, pink of eye and black

of belly—hung in the cages on the back wall of the farmhouse, with a

spare cage beside them as a retiring-place when a hutch was turned out.

But only once—on the Saturday in the first ardour of possession—had

Will taken them out a-hunting: on which occasion they had refused to rat

or rabbit. Indeed their leaps and gambols persuaded Will that they

pursued—as he remembered the Deacon once maintaining sympathetically

about rats—their “private sports.” Why indeed should sensible

creatures, comfortably fed on chicken-head and blackbirds, and provided

with straw to cocoon themselves against cold, go squeezing into holes or

drains? Restored to captivity, these fainéant ferrets spent most of

their day in squirming with desperate restlessness from one end of the

cage to the other and perking their quivering noses and little black

claws through the wires. And their master’s own plight was much the

same, for after the prairie, Frog Farm was only a hutch to him: his

father, too, being so unexpectedly on the shelf, there was nothing that

really needed him, nor was there any land for sale in the vicinity on

which he might commence operations. Like his ferrets, if with a larger

run, he swayed restlessly to and fro; from farm to river, from river to

Common, from Common to Steeples Wood, from Steeples Wood to Frog Farm.

When he was not thus oscillating on the landscape, he was sweating in

intellectual indecision in the parlour: trying to write a little note to

Jinny to inform her that she was to come to Frog Farm no more, inasmuch

as he intended to go into Chipstone himself once or twice a fortnight,

and could easily bring home whatever was necessary. He had thought that

when he had found a feather dropped by a green goose, cut his quill,

concocted an ink out of soot and water, and discovered a piece of white

paper wrapped round his bank-notes, that his difficulties were over. But

the worst now remained, for he could not satisfy himself as to the

phraseology of this note, being, as he had truly pleaded, no great

shakes at letter-writing. Such glibness as he could muster in

conversation was paralysed in fact by a pen. There was not even one of

those word-books he had seen scholarly people use to ensure the

spelling, and one must not unnecessarily afford material to a minx

who—having obviously to do with bills and accounts—might conceivably

be literate. He had a vague remembrance of her reading texts quite

easily at the Sunday-school, young as she was. Even if she could spell

no better than he, she might possess one of these spelling-protectors.

The only book at Frog Farm being his mother’s Bible, he tried to secure

accuracy by limiting himself to its words. But its vocabulary seemed

strangely lacking. He had decided, for example, to begin with “Maddam.”

One could not call such a stranger as the new Jinny “_Dear_ Miss,” he

thought, and “Miss” alone sounded thin and abrupt. No, “Maddam” was the

mouth-filling resonance necessary: it struck a note of massive dignity.

But did it really have two “d’s”? And to his amazement and anguish

neither “Maddam” nor “Madam” was to be discovered from Genesis to

Revelation. Adam, the nearest analogue, who came in his reference volume

with welcome promptitude, even precipitateness, had, he found, only one

“d,” but was he a sure guide to the orthography of the creature formed

out of his spare rib? This and the many other curious and amazing

passages that beguiled him on his route—presented thus to a fresh and

world-experienced eye—ran away with so much time that Martha would be

summoning him to the next of his many meals before he had even dipped

his quill into the soot.

“Mr. William Flynt presents his complements” was another promising

start—he had got a debt-demanding letter once at a boarding-house with

this austerely courteous overture—but alas!—marvel on marvel—there

did not appear to be a single “complement,” whether in the Old Testament

or the New. Not a very courteous people, the Jews, he thought, under

either dispensation. This happy-go-lucky hunt for words—an exciting

steeplechase in which one skipped over spacious histories and major

prophets with the chance of tumbling on the very word—began to be an

absorbing substitute for ratting.

“The Epistles of James” suddenly caught his eye. Ah, here was a complete

guide to letter-writing, he felt hopefully; what was good enough for

James would do for William. But when written out, “William, the son of

Caleb, of Frog Farm, to Jinny Quarles of Blackwater Hall, Little

Bradmarsh, greeting” did not seem quite the correct opening. An Epistle

of John was, even more misguiding. “The Elder to the Elect or

Well-Beloved!” Clearly inappropriate to the point of absurdity!

Still, with modifications, Epistles must surely be valid models. So he

started writing and re-writing, wrestling and hunting and polishing. But

the word-chase had now to be supplemented by a paper-chase. How keep

pace in paper with this orgy of penmanship? Every corner of the house

was ransacked, with meagre results: he even meditated stealing back his

own letter from his mother, knowing it had a blank fly-sheet, but it was

always jealously guarded. It was not till he came on Farmer Gale’s

boy—schoolward bound—and paid him twopence for the remains of a penny

copy-book that he could surrender himself freely to the labours of the

file. An hour before this large laying-in of material, he had gone

through a curious crisis. He had found in his purse, in a last desperate

quest, a piece of paper which, unfolded, afforded a welcome white

surface. He was composing quite a successful letter upon it when, on

turning it over, he came upon the address of the forgotten blue-eyed

charmer of the Chelmsford train. With frowning brow he tore it into

small pieces. It was not merely that the letter was spoilt for sending:

it was the juxtaposition with Jinny—back to back—that seemed suddenly

profane.

IV

After several days’ gestation, many words and turns of expression having

to be rejected and replaced by phrases whose spelling could be

ascertained from the Bible, the letter emerged as hereunder in a pale

and aqueous ink:

“William Flynt to the Damsel of Blackwater Hall greeting. This

epistle doth proclaim in the name of the generations of Frog

Farm that Methuselah shall not come to pass here henceforward,

inasmuch as behold here am I to purchase whatsoever is verily to

be desired from Chipstone, be it candles or oil or spice or any

manner of thing whatsoever, nor shall you carry forth aught

hence, for lo! we will make no further covenant with you or

aught that is yours. Peace be with you, as thank God it leaves

me at present.

“Yours truly,

“WILLIAM FLYNT.

“P.S.—Let not your horn be exalted, nor speak with a stiff

neck, for surely this is not the way to find grace in the eyes

of the discerning.”

But even this exalted effusion did not survive the first glow of

satisfaction, for although it was treasured up as too good to destroy,

and did not sound unlike the language that the Brothers and Sisters held

in the meeting-house, he could not remember ever seeing a letter thus

couched. It was succeeded by a homelier version, in which the word

“Epistle” stood out as the only connecting-link. With a composition

playing now for safety, and mainly monosyllabic, it would be a poor

diplomacy not to work in one high-class word, of whose spelling he was

sure.

“This Epistle is to say,” the new version began abruptly, “that we don’t

need you to call on Frydays——”

Good heavens! Even Friday was not to be found in the Bible. Pursuing

this astonishing line of investigation, he realized that Sunday itself

was absent from its pages. The Bible without Sunday! O incredible

discoveries of the illuminated!

He altered it, following Genesis, to the “sixth day,” but then came a

paralysing doubt whether it was not the fifth, for how could you rest on

Sunday if that was not the seventh? He casually remarked to his mother

that it was odd they did not rest on the seventh day, as commanded in

Genesis. She explained to him that Sunday was the Lord’s Day, but he

seemed dissatisfied with the argument. Perhaps Moses & Son were not so

wrong, he remarked, repenting of his resentment against them for being

closed that Saturday.

He woke up the next morning with the solution of dodging the mention of

the day and merely relieving Jinny of the duty of “markiting” for them.

He felt sure that this word could be found, remembering a text about two

sparrows being sold for a farthing. But to his chagrin it was not in the

“markit” that they were sold. In steeplechasing for the word, he tumbled

on a text in Hosea: “Blow ye the cornet in Gibeah, and the trumpet in

Ramah,” and that seemed like an omen. Yes, he _would_ blow it in

Bradmarsh, if not in Ramah. Let him wait till she came with the horn;

then after whelming her with the wonder of his execution, he could, face

to face and free of orthography, bid her trouble Frog Farm no more. And

the postscript of his great letter, “Let not your horn be exalted, nor

speak with a stiff neck,” rang through his mind again, like a prophetic

warning against overweening damsels.

“He’s come back a new soul,” Martha reported to Caleb, with shining

eyes. “He’s found God.”

Caleb shook his head sceptically. “He’s too boxed up for that—he don’t

open his heart enough.”

“But he opens the Bible,” urged Martha, “and he won’t close it even for

meals. I can never get it for myself nowadays.”

“Dedn’t you read me as the Devil can spout Scripture?” said Caleb

shrewdly.

“For shame, Caleb. Anybody can see how changed the boy is—the only

thing that makes me anxious is his Sabbatarian leanings. Suppose he

should go and join the Seventh-Day Baptists.”

“Dip hisself o’ Saturdays?”

“No, no—’tis those that keep Sunday on Saturday. There’s two in Long

Bradmarsh, but I hope Will won’t go straying into strange paths.”

“You better enlighten him,” said Caleb. “Them as is powerful enough to

carry boxes from Chipstone ain’t allus bright in the brain-pan. Oi count

it ’ud be aukard if he fared to keep Sunday on Saturday, bein’ as he’d

want the Sunday dishes fust and we’d get ’em cold.”

“There’s higher considerations than the stomach,” said Martha severely.

“The stomach ain’t low and it ain’t high,” maintained Caleb. “The Lord

put the stomach in the middle so as we shouldn’t neither worship it nor

forgit it.”

“The only Sunday meal that matters,” persisted Martha, “is the bread and

the wine, and though there’s no Lord’s table nigh, such as I could find

dozens of in London, nor nobody to worship with except you, yet if you

go on scoffing, my duty to my Brethren and Sisters of the synagogue will

be to withdraw from you.”

“And where will you goo?” he asked in alarm.

“I won’t go anywhere—‘withdraw’ only means that it is forbidden to

break bread with you.”

He was relieved. “Oi don’t mind so long as you don’t goo away.”

“And what will you do in the day of Ezekiel thirty-eight, when Gog and

Magog dash themselves to pieces against Israel? And when the eighth of

Daniel comes to pass, and the Great Horn is broken and the Little Horn

stamps upon the host of heaven?”

“Oi count it won’t be just yet,” he said uneasily.

“You count wrong. To my reckoning the two thousand three hundred days of

Daniel are nigh up. In the great day of Isaiah four, when the Tabernacle

rises again with the cloud and smoke and the flaming fire, the people of

God shall rise too from their graves while the others sleep.”

“Then you can wake me up, dear heart,” he said, “bein’ as you’re sure to

be up.”

She shook her head. “_You_ were always up first, sweetheart, but that

day you’ll sleep on and I’ll have no power to rouse you—unless, says

Isaiah, you ‘look unto me and be saved.’ ‘Dust to dust’—that shows

we’re not immortal by nature.”

“But ef it’s comin’ so soon, Oi shan’t be in my grave at all,” he urged

anxiously, “and Oi can push into the Tabernacle.”

“No more easy than for wasps to push into the hive. You’ve seen the bees

push ’em back.”

“But one or two does get in and Oi reckon Oi’ll take hold o’ your skirt,

same as you been readin’ me.”

“I read you there’ll be ten men to take hold of it,” she said.

“Nine other men!” he cried angrily. “But they won’t have no right to

take hold o’ my wife’s skirt.”

“That’s what Zechariah says—‘ten men of all languages.’”

Caleb’s gloom relaxed. “He was thinkin’ o’ Che’msford and sech-like

great places full o’ furriners,” he said decisively. “Here there’s onny

Master Peartree, and the shepherd ain’t a Goloiath. Oi’ll soon get riddy

o’ him, happen he don’t hook hisself to you with his crook.”

“But I’ll pull in Will too,” said Martha.

V

But Jinny did not appear on Friday with the musical instrument. Only the

unexpected arrived—in the shape of Bundock. That royal messenger was

visibly hipped as he delivered the letter to Will.

“A woman’s writing!” he observed reproachfully. “That means dragging me

here time and again!”

But Will had broken open the high-class adhesive envelope and was

already absorbed in the letter.

“SIR,—Mr. Quarles thanks Mr. William Flynt for his esteemed

order, but regrets to inform him that a coach-horn of suitable

size for a man is not to be had in Chipstone. They have not even

got a little hunting-horn like mine. I will, however,

superscribe to Chelmsford and get you one without fail. Trusting

for your further patronage,

“Yours truly,

“DANIEL QUARLES.

“N.B.—All orders carried out—or in—with punctuality and

dispatch. Goods sent off without fail to any part of Europe,

America, and Australia.

“P.S.—Please inform your hond. parents that as she brought q.f.

of groceries that Tuesday I shall not call again till I deliver

your instrument.”

So Jinny had got in first in the pen-fight! And her letter bowled him

over, not only by its bland assumption that she was already established

as his carrier, but by the fluency and scholarship of its style, with

its incomprehensible “superscribe” and “q.f.” He felt baffled too and

even snubbed by the signature, which gave her a businesslike remoteness,

and even a legitimate status as a mere representative of the masculine,

besides making him feel he had lost a chance by not sending off one of

his many scrawls to the address of this same “Daniel Quarles.” His

answer would now require the profoundest excogitation, he felt, as he

adjusted her missive between the bank-notes and the glove. There was,

moreover, the material problem of vying with this real and fashionable

correspondence paper. Ultimately he became conscious that Bundock was

still standing at attention.

“Do you want anything?” he asked tartly.

“I’m waiting for the answer,” said Bundock nobly, “or you won’t catch a

post till to-morrow night unless you trudge to Long Bradmarsh.”

“Oh, there’s no answer—none at all! Thank you all the same.”

“Thank _you_!” said Bundock. “It’s not often folks consider me

nowadays—especially when there’s a woman in the case. They just go on

shuttlecocking letters till my feet are sore.”

“But it isn’t a woman!” said Will stiffly. “It’s just a business letter

from Gaffer Quarles.” And he pulled it out, and the little glove fell

out with it: which did not lessen his annoyance.

“Daniel Quarles never put his fist to a pen this ten year,” asserted

Bundock. “He was glad to be done with writing, says my father, for

Daniel was never brought up to be a carrier, his parents never dreaming

he’d inherit the business.”

“Why not, isn’t he the eldest?”

“The contrairy. Blackwater Hall and the bit of land is one of those

queer properties that go to the youngest, if you die without a will.”

“The youngest?”

“Ay, and that’s what Daniel was. Borough English, ’tis called by

scholars,” said Bundock impressively. “However, he picked up a little

from his brother Sidrach, who had already set up as a carrier on his own

account round about Harwich, and a pretty business he did, old Sidrach,

says my father, before he was discovered to be an owler and had to fly

to America.”

“Were they so persecuted?” murmured Will.

“And didn’t they deserve it—smuggling our good English wool into

France! Pack-horses they loaded with it, the rascals.”

“Oh, I thought they were a sect!”

Bundock laughed. “That’s with an aitch; though I dare say many a man

owled all the week and howled on Sunday—he, he, he! Do you

know—between you and I—who it is writes the hymns?”

“The village idiot!” answered Will smartly. “You told me so when I was a

boy,” he added, seeing the postman’s disconcerted expression.

Bundock brightened up. “Ah, I thought ’twas too clever for you. But as

for this letter o’ yours, it’s clearly a woman’s handwriting, and if

Jinny once begins writing to her customers, it’s a bad look-out for me.”

Bundock might well feel a grievance, for this was the first letter Jinny

had ever written to a client, indeed to anybody with the exception of

old Commander Dap, who, clinging to the friendship struck up at his

wife’s funeral, sent her birthday presents and the gossip of the Watch

Vessel. To him she had written as her heart and her illiteracy prompted,

but the elegant epistle received by Will Flynt was not achieved without

considerable pains. She had the advantage, however, of not being limited

to the Bible for her vocabulary, possessing as she did an almost modern

guide in the shape of an _olla podrida_ of a Spelling-Book, whose first

edition dated no further back than 1755, the year of the Lisbon

Earthquake. “The Universal Spelling-Book” had originally belonged to the

“owler,” and it was from the almost limitless resources of this quaint

reservoir that, with a pardonable desire not to be outshone by her

much-travelled neighbour, she culled both the “superscribe” defined as

“to write over” and the q.f. (given in the “List of Abbreviations” as

standing for the Latin of “a sufficient quantity”), except that she

misread the long “s” for an “f.” The immaculate spelling was, however,

no mean feat, for the book’s vocabulary was very incomplete and devoid

of order, so that she had almost as much steeplechasing to do as her

rival letter-writer. Moreover, she must fain study whole columns of

traps for the unwary, where the terms of her own occupation appeared

with disconcerting frequency. If there was not in the letter any

necessity for distinguishing between “glutinous” and “gluttonous,”

“rheum” and “Rome,” or any risk of confusing a “widow” with a “relic,”

still “seller,” “fare,” “due”—any of which she might have needed—all

had their dangerous doubles, and she did not write “call” without

carefully discriminating it from “Cawl, of a Wig or Bowels.”

“Punctuality and dispatch” was lifted bodily from Miss Gentry’s

billheads, and if she did not offer to send off goods to Asia and

Africa, it was because only “Europe, America, and Australia” figured on

Mr. Flippance’s posters.

The recipient of this impressive communication was staggered by the

strides in female education made since his boyhood. He betook himself at

once—to his mother’s joy—to the Bible, like a Cromwell before a great

battle. Martha had stolen the book back to the kitchen and was pondering

texts anxiously when he wandered in to hunt for it.

“Who sent you a letter?” she inquired uneasily.

“Old Quarles,” he answered readily. “It’s about an order he can’t

supply, and he asks me to tell you his granddaughter won’t be coming

to-day.”

Martha’s face lit up. “What a pity!” she cried. “She might have taken my

bonnet to Miss Gentry to be re-trimmed.” Martha had become reconciled to

this minor vanity, now it was strategically unnecessary. “However, your

young legs can do that, dearie, now they’re back, can’t they?”

“With pleasure, mother,” he said, all unconscious of the lapsed plan.

“Why waste money on carriers?”

She kissed him passionately, but seeing his anxiety to be at the Bible,

she released him.

“I should look at Revelation, one, ten, Willie,” she advised, “and

you’ll understand why the Sabbath——”

“Yes, yes,” he interrupted soothingly.

“Also Colossians, two, sixteen and seventeen—the seventh day is but a

shadow of things to come.”

“I see,” he said, escaping.

It took hours of hard theological study—indeed till Saturday

morning—before the reply to Jinny shaped itself:

“SIR,—Mr. William Flynt thanks Mr. Daniel Quarles for his

esteemed epistle, and regrets to learn that a coach-horn of

suitable size for a gentelman is not to be had in Chipstone. I

beseech you, however, not to superscribe to Chelmsford as

Methuselah cannot fetch such a compass, and the righteous man

regardeth his beast. Neither do I require a horn at her hand now

or henceforwards.

“Yours truly,

“WILLIAM FLYNT.

“P.S.—Do you think that a maiden of your years aught to

superscribe alone to Chelmsford, a city full of lewdness and

abominations, where men use deceit with their tongues and the

poison of asps is under their lips?”

“What are you writing, Will?” said his mother, coming in to sun herself

in his holy studies.

“Nothing.” He put his hand over the page of the copy-book, forgetting

she could not read it.

“Are you writing to Jinny?” she inquired suspiciously.

“No, no—-it’s Daniel,” he corrected.

“Daniel!” she said in amaze. “About the Sabbath?”

“No, about the horn,” he blurted out petulantly.

“The Horn!” She was wildly excited. “Is it the Little Horn or the Great

Horn?”

He was amazed. “Well it began with the little horn——”

Martha was radiant. She poured forth her own theory of the Beast in

Daniel, and emboldened by his silent agreement—when his daze changed

into comprehension of her misunderstanding—she proceeded to elaborate

her interpretation of the two thousand three hundred days of sacrifice.

He, meantime, was finally deciding to turn “Daniel” into “Miss” except

in the address.

VI

But Will’s letter could not be posted—for many reasons. He possessed

neither an envelope to vie with Jinny’s, nor one that was closed with

outside devices, nor any sealing-wax to make his letter its own

envelope; he could only fold it into a cocked-hat and deliver it

himself. Apart from these material reasons, he could not well let

Bundock carry an answer, when he had denied there would be any, and he

shrank from conducting his affairs under that official inquisition:

moreover, haste was imperative if he was to save the girl from that

difficult and dangerous journey, for “superscribe” conveyed to him a

sense of precipitation, and he saw her cart almost stampeding to

Chelmsford. At any moment she might set out in quest of the Great Horn.

That was why he abandoned the idea of toiling to Chipstone to emulate

her refined writing materials. He must hie to Blackwater Hall that very

afternoon and play postman. He would not, of course, enter the house,

but would find a way of slipping the letter in.

The surreptitious deed he meditated gave him almost a skulking air as he

neared the Common, and he shrank from the observation of all he met,

though with the exception of Uncle Lilliwhyte in a corduroy sleeved

waistcoat, driving cows with a weed-hook, and an old crone who stopped

and muttered with twisted head, he saw only frightened partridges

whirring above or rabbits and field-mice scurrying at his feet. Near

Blackwater Hall he encountered two of Jinny’s milch-goats tethered,

pasturing on the hedgerows, and their bleat had a cynical ring. The

Common itself seemed almost to meet the sky, for clouds had gathered as

suddenly as the crowd by the Silverlane Pump. He was feeling dispirited

as he stole towards the house, but as he caught sight of the stables and

barn at the rear, it seemed a happy idea to plant his note in some

obtrusive coign. His heart beat like a raw burglar’s as he stood

surveying from afar the primitive sheds whose roofs were thatch, whose

gates palings, whose sides faggots, and in one of which he could see

Methusalem’s head in a trough of oats. The stable-shed would be the

surest place, he thought, or perhaps he could pin the note on to the

harness he saw hanging in an adjoining shed from nails in the beams.

Coming nearer to peer at Methusalem’s manger, he was startled by the

sight of a brown smock-frocked figure crouched on the littered, dungy

floor and belatedly brushing Methusalem’s fetlocks. Before he could

escape he saw the wizened, snow-bearded, horn-spectacled face turned up

at him, and heard himself recognized in a weakened but unmistakable

voice.

“Why, bless my soul! Ef that bain’t little Willie Flynt!”

Daniel Quarles rose and straightened himself to his full height, but

nothing in Little Bradmarsh had seemed to Will so pitifully shrunken.

“Little” Willie Flynt indeed towered over the patriarch who had once

seemed Herculean to him. Yet if the robustiousness that the old carrier

had preserved in his eighties had vanished at last, there was still fire

in his eye and a fang or two in his mouth.

“Hope you are well, Mr. Quarles,” said Will, recovering from the double

shock of discovering and being discovered.

“No, you don’t, my lad,” piped the Gaffer. “Did, you’d a come sooner,

seein’ as Time is gettin’ away from me.”

“Did Jin—did your granddaughter tell you I was back?”

“She ain’t scarcely told me nawthen else.”

Will’s cheeks burned.

“You ain’t come back improved, says she.”

Will’s flush grew redder.

“But Oi don’t agree with her—you’ve growed like a prize marrow. Come

into the house and she shall make you a dish o’ tay—Oi don’t drink it

myself, bein’ as Oi promised John Wesley.”

“No, thank you—I’d rather talk where we are.”

“Well, Oi can’t inwoite you in here—’tis too mucky.” He gave

Methusalem’s tail a final flick with the brush. “And it’s blowin’ up for

rine. We’ll goo into the barn.” And he led the way imperiously round by

a great and ramifying apple-tree that hid a little black door secured by

a padlock and infinite knots of string.

“One has to be witty,” he commented, patiently undoing the

complications, “with so many thieves about to steal my dole hay.”

Will had not heard of these thieves, and thought Little Bradmarsh must

be changed indeed, but he waited silently, wondering what to do with his

note. And as he stood thus, there came from the cottage the sound of a

girl’s singing. Fortunately it was not satirical, so Will could hear it

with pleasure:

“_Of all the horses in the merry greenwood_

_The bob-tailed mare bears the bells away._”

“Always jolly, my little mavis,” said the patriarch, fumbling on, and,

unable to resist the infection, his sepulchral bass voice took up the

Carters’ Chorus:

“_There is Hey, there is Ree,_

_There is Hoo, there is Gee——_”

“Oi wouldn’t unlock the barn,” he broke off to explain as the door swung

open, “ef Oi hadn’t such good company.” He stood peering suspiciously

into the tall raftered and beamed glooms; redolent of old hay and

punctuated with a few cobwebbed and rusty instruments amid the endless

litter. Will’s eye was fascinated by an old wine-barrel flanked by a

chaff-cutter and a turnip-cutter and covered with boards and weights. He

divined it held corn and was thus closed against rats, and a whiff of

aniseed came up in memory, and in a flash he saw the faces of Tony Flip

and the Deacon—and himself flying after a carrier’s cart.

“They’ve stole my flail,” cried the Gaffer.

“Why, there it is, under that straw,” said Will.

“Oh, ay. But there was more logs, Oi’ll goo bail. Drat ’em, can’t they

chop for theirselves? It’ll be that Uncle Lilliwhyte.”

“Oh, but he’s only too honest,” said Will incautiously.

“There ain’t nobody honest,” barked the Gaffer.

“But he sent me an adder——” he began.

“Not he. ’Twas Jinny told him to send the adder. He’d ha’ kept your

sixpence and let you whistle for your sarpint. But next time you want an

adder, you come to me.”

“Do you sell ’em too?” he murmured, surprised.

“Oi _be_ an adder!”

“What do you mean?”

His spectacles glowed strangely. “Read your Bible, young man—Dan is an

adder in the path, what biteth the horse’s heels, so that the rider

should fall backwards—that’s the blessing of Jacob—and let no man try

to ride roughshod over the likes o’ me.”

Will shrank back before the passion of his words. Indeed in that gloomy

old barn he began to feel a bit nervous.

“I’ve brought a note for Jinny,” he said hastily. “Will you give it to

her?”

The old man took the cocked-hat. “Mr. Daniel Quarles!” he read slowly.

“But it’s for _me_!”

Will’s blush was now papaverous. “No—no!” he stammered. It was a

conjuncture he had not foreseen.

The fire in the old eye leapt up at the contradiction, shot through the

spectacles. “Plain as a pikestaff—Mr. Daniel Quarles! And then you has

the imperence to say there ain’t no thieves. But ye can’t bamboozle me.

Oi could read afore you could woipe your nose with a muckinger, ay, and

my feyther afore me. Carriers ha’ we been for over a hundred year, and

my big brother Sidrach he had his own pack-horses loaded up with

waluable stuff and writ me a piece ten year ago come haysel, sayin’ as

he hoped Oi should jarney to see him, and please God Oi will, he gittin’

old.”

“But where is he?” asked Will, glad that the Gaffer’s monologue had

drifted from its angry beginning.

“In Babylon!”

“Babylon?” gasped Will, whose recent theological excursions had made him

almost at home in that purpureal city.

“That’s my nickname for Che’msford, chuck-full o’ lewdness and

Church-folk. But Oi’ve been meanin’ to goo and look Sidrach up and hear

all about his travels, he bein’ a rare one for adwentures, but somehow

what with my carryin’ work and one thing and the tother my days fly

by—like the Book says—swifter than a weaver’s shuttle. Happen lucky,

though, Oi’ll git over there to-year.”

“I hope so,” murmured Will vaguely.

“No you don’t, drat you!” said the veteran with sudden viciousness.

“Tain’t your care whether Oi ever clap eyes on my beloved brother agen.

A ’nation cowld day it was he had to goo away—the Brad all ice and they

should be tellin’ of the Che’msford coach as come in without the driver,

and he fallen down on the road, frozen stiff as a sparrow.”

“What year was that?” asked Will, to keep the conversation on this more

agreeable level.

“It was the year my brother Sidrach went away,” said Daniel Quarles

simply. “’Nation cowld. We heerd that in Lunnon the river was as froze

as ourn, and flue-full o’ sports—booths and turnabouts and pigs roasted

whole, and great crowds to see a young bear baited. But feyther’s cart

went to and fro Chipstone just the same, and brought the news as how a

woman was burned at Newgate for coinin’—it dedn’t seem wery dreadful in

that weather. Waterloo year that was another cowld winter—all the marsh

ditches was solid ice, and all the eels was found dead and frozen.

Couldn’t eat ’em neither, not after the first day, they stank so. That

numb was my fingers Oi could scarce howld the reins, and you’d ha’

thought by my breath Oi was a wicked smoker. But ’twas wunnerful times,

and we heaped up a deadly great pile o’ fagots and bushes for the

beacon, top o’ yonder rise where ye see Beacon Hill Farm.”

“Ah, the bonfire to celebrate the victory!” said Will, rejoiced to find

irascibility cooled into reminiscence.

“Wictory! That was the name o’ Nelson’s ship as that silly old Dap

should say he sarved in. Nay, this was but a bonfire to be lit when Bony

landed. All along Blackwater we was ready for the inwasion, and when the

beacon was fired, that was to be the signal. The soldiers was to goo to

the coast and the ciwilians inland. But Bony never come, and ’twas a

great waste. And Sidrach never come neither. ’Nation cowld the day he

went away—Oi moind me gooin’ through a foot o’ snow across Chipstone

poor-piece to the Church to see the Knight Templar what was dug up in

the north aisle, pickled inside three coffins, but they’d put him back

in the outer lead time Oi arrived. They should say it was a sort o’

mushroom ketchup as kept him together for the Resurrection Day—a bit

blackish, but wellnigh as sound and good-lookin’ as you.”

It was a compliment that made the young man shudder again.

“Ah, there _is_ the rain!” he exclaimed, with relief at the hearty

patter on the apple-tree.

But the old man would not be fobbed off so enjoyable a topic. “Three

coffins—lead, ellum, and a shell—’twas a witty way agin them

body-snatchers—you ain’t safe agin thieves even in your tomb. And when

you’re above ground they tries to steal your wery letters.” He pulled

open the note.

“It’s merely addressed to you as head of the business,” Will explained.

“Ay, that Oi be, though the youngest. He that is last shall be fust,

says the Book, ay, and the Law too, though ’twasn’t fair to Sidrach to

my thinkin’, bein’ agin nature. And next time a letter comes for me, do

ye don’t bring it and play your tricks, but let it come natural through

Bundock’s grandson. What’s this? ‘Mr. William Flynt thanks Miss Quarles

for her esteemed epistle.’ And who is Miss Quarles, and what’s she been

writin’ to you?”

“About—about business,” said Will.

“There ain’t no Miss Quarles in the business,” said the old man testily.

“That be my business, and Oi lets Jinny amuse herself jauntin’ to and

fro, pore gal, she bein’ that lonely on the Common and afeared o’

dangerous charriters. Rare mistakes, she makes, bein’ onny a gal, and

costs me a pritty penny. But it ’ud cost me more ef Oi dedn’t stop at

home and guard the house from thieves. And now she wastes more o’ my

hard-earned dubs writin’ to you as is a neighbour—drat the child, ain’t

that got a tongue? ‘A suitable horn?’ Dash my buttons! What do you be

wantin’ with a horn—you bain’t a guard or a postman, be you?”

“No, but——!” he stammered. The explanation was not simple.

“‘Oi beseech you, however, not to superscroibe to Che’msford’ . . . ‘the

righteous man regardeth his beast.’ Dang your imperence! Why shouldn’t

Oi goo to Che’msford? Oi ain’t seen him these sixty year, and do ye

don’t come interferin’ ’twixt brothers. Sidrach writ me a piece ten

years agoo come haysel, arxin’ me to superscroibe to Che’msford, and

Oi’ll not be put off by the likes o’ you. You look here, my lad, ef

you’re come home to meddle or make, the sooner you goos furrin agen, the

better.”

“But it’s not you—it’s Miss Quarles I don’t like journeying to

Chelmsford. Look at the P.S.”

It was imprudent counsel, for, as the Gaffer followed it, his face

became a black cloud, the fire in his eye was lightning, the odd fangs

in his mouth showed like tigers’ tusks, and his beard seemed like a

tempestuous besom sweeping all before it.

“‘Lewdness and abominations.’ You call my Jinny a Jezebel! Git out o’ my

house!”

“I’m only in your barn,” Will reminded him, “and it’s raining, and you

just said yourself that Chelmsford is a Babylon chock-full of

abominations. And you’d let a young girl superscribe there all alone!”

“Jinny shall superscroibe where she pleases!” roared the Gaffer. “For

over a hundred year the Quarleses have superscroibed in foul weather or

foine, with none to say ’em nay, and it ain’t for a looker’s son to come

here dictatin’.”

“I didn’t dictate,” said Will, with a fleeting schoolboy memory. “I

wrote it with my own hand. Look here, Mr. Quarles,” he went on, trying

another tack, “you’re a sensible old gent with great experience of the

world, and it makes me frightened to see that grandchild of yours

gadding about so far from home, and sometimes not getting back here till

dark.”

“That ain’t timorsome—onny when she’s alone here,” he added cunningly.

“Maybe, but with such a pretty girl——!”

“Ay, she’s like a little bird with her little fitten—and allus singin’

like one too—all the day that goos about singin’, ‘Fol de rol——’”

“Yes, yes,” said Will, wincing.

“And Oi’d best tear up your letter—she don’t want to read about

lewdness and abomination except in the Howly Book. And Oi count she has

enough o’ that on Sunday with you Peculiars.”

“It is better she should read about it than scutter about seeing it. A

cart ain’t a suitable place for a girl.”

“A cart’s as suitable for Jinny as a horn for you,” retorted the old

man, bridling up again. “Oi suspicion you’re plottin’ to steal her away

from me.”

“What!” Will’s cheeks burned with indignation.

“And Oi count you’ve got your eye on the cart too, like you bolted off

to Harwich with your feyther’s wagon. There won’t be naught left for me

but the poorhouse. But Oi’d die sooner.” He was almost blubbering now

with self-pity.

“Oi saved a mort o’ money once,” he said, “though it took a deadly time

scrapin’ the dubs together, what with the expense o’ dinner at “The

Black Sheep” and the hoss’s feed—fower parcels or fowerty, Oi never

stinted him o’ his peck o’ chaff, and three and a half pound o’ oats and

the same o’ ground beans, and there’s folks as grumble to pay accordin’

to the soize and compass o’ the parcel, though there’s nights your hoss

goos so lame and you’re that pierced with wind and snow you got to knock

up a farm and borry a hoss to git home with, and them days it was the

barges took away custom. Old Bidlake used to goo along canals and cricks

as ain’t there no longer, thank the Lord, bein’ as they sea-walls have

made a many willages high and droy. But Oi had to pay all my savin’s

away to keep our name from disgrace, so as Emma should howd up her head

in Kingdom Come. He hadn’t the bed he died in, for all his traipsin’

around in _Tommy Devils_; but time Oi went down to git Jinny, Oi made

inquirations among the tradespeople and paid ’em to the last farden,

aldoe soon as my back was turned, my own sister plots with her one-eyed

little ship’s monkey to pay for a stone, as ef Oi’d neglected my own

darter, and all spiled with wicked words—did you ever see such words in

a Christian churchyard?”

“No, of course not,” soothingly murmured Will, to whom the long

rigmarole conveyed nothing except: a sense of pathetic and loquacious

senility.

“Ha!” said the Gaffer with satisfaction. “Oi says to Dap, says Oi, ‘A

Churchman like you may not see the blarsphemy, but think what John

Wesley would ha’ said to it.’ ‘Sir,’ Oi says to the old gentleman, ‘you

jump into my cart,’ says Oi, ‘and not a sowl here shall harm a hair o’

your wig’; and with that Oi wheeled round my whip, and bein’ then an

able-bodied young man (’twas the wery fust year arter feyther died),

them as was throwin’ stones and cryin’ ‘Knock his brines out’ slunk away

like blackbeadles, which was a pity, seein’ as they missed the

be-yutiful words he preached from my cart. From Chipstone to Che’msford

Oi carried him—a dogged piece out o’ my way, bein’ as he wanted to

preach there and his own hoss had gone lame—’twas the wile o’ that

great old murderer, Satan, says he, but the Almoighty sent you to

confound his knavish tricks. That was a man of God, my lad, never out of

heart, roighteous and bold as a lion, would preach even in front of a

gin-shop where ’twas writ up: ‘Drunk a penny, dead-drunk twopence, clean

straw for nawthen.’ Pounded glass mixed with mud the sons of Bellal

threw in his face, but his eye-soight was not dimmed, nor his nat’ral

force abated. Used to preach as much as foive times a day, gittin’ up at

fower o’ the clock, and travellin’ a bigger round than me, but wunnerful

healthy, slept like a baby in my cart, and that saintly he said all his

life he’d never done naught as ’ud bear lookin’ at. He made me sing a

hume with him and we was singin’ it as we come into Babylon:

_Oi the chief of sinners am,_

_But Jesus died for me._”

As the sepulchral bass quavered out the tune, Jinny’s fresh voice could

be heard from the back door calling “Gran’fer! Gran’fer! Where _are_

you?”

“She thinks Oi’m out in the rine,” chuckled the old man, “but let her

come and find me. His blessin’ he gave me at partin’, did John Wesley,

and do ye don’t never smoke nor drink that pison stuff, tay, says he.

‘Oi’ll promise ye tay and gin too,’ says Oi, bein’ as Oi liked beer

best. ‘But to give up baccy, that’s main hard,’ Oi says. ‘There’s

harder,’ says he, lightning-like. ‘Promise me as ye won’t be friends

with a woman as is younger than your wife, for there’s unhowly sperrits

about,’ says he, ‘as brings gales and earthquakes and tempitations, and

the best o’ men may git capsoized same as the _Royal George_, our best

ship, t’other year.’ Lord, that fair capsoized me, for how could this

furrin ole gen’leman in his eighties know about Annie, as wasn’t

seventeen yet for all her wunnerful fine buzzom, and the missus older

than me, in looks Oi mean, bein’ as she was two years younger the fust

time that worritin’ census paper come along.”

“When was that?”

“That would be the year Oi put new thatch on this wery barn for the new

century.”

“And what year did you meet John Wesley?”

“Ye’d best git Jinny to work that out. But it couldn’t be many year

afore the Jew Mendoza boxed Dick Humphreys for the Championship, for Oi

wouldn’t goo, ne yet bet on it, bein’ as my sowl was saved, and when Oi

lifted up my woice at the camp-meetin’s and chapels in praise and

repentance and shouted ‘Glory! Glory!’ dancin’-like, with the tears for

my sins runnin’ down my cheeks, that was more joy to me than Annie and

the prize-ring and cock-foightin’ rolled into one. And Oi ain’t never

backslided, praise the Lord, bein’ as Annie married a sedan-chair man

and was hiked away to Cowchester, and Oi hope for your immortal sowl’s

sake, my lad, you bain’t like what Oi was at your age.”

“I hope so,” said Will, not without uneasiness.

The patriarch shook his head. “There’s the old Adam in you, plain to

discern. Ye won’t be safe till ye’re married. But do ye don’t marry an

old gander of a widow like that potboy they should be tellin’ of,”—he

began to cackle—“that’ll onny lead to wuss mischief. Wait till you

happen on a clean little lass, rosy and untapped.”

“A girl like your granddaughter, you mean?” Will heard himself saying.

The cackle ceased abruptly and the grin was replaced by a glare. “That

ain’t gooin’ to be married! That’s got to goo out with my cart, whenever

Oi’m too busy workin’. Ef a rich man like Farmer Gale as drives her to

chapel Sundays should be wantin’ her all the week, Oi don’t say Oi

wouldn’t goo with her to the big house, but that ain’t likely, and she

can’t have nawthen to say to a rollin’ stone as mebbe left a pack o’

wives among they Mormons.”

Will was nettled. “And who asked for your granddaughter?” he retorted.

“Besides, you’re quite right. I married dozens of wives in America—all

widows too!”

The veteran chuckled afresh. “Dash my buttons! How you do mind me o’

your feyther when he was your age—always had his little joke. Not that

Oi count him growed up yet, he havin’ never cut his wisdom teeth, but

gooin’ off as skittish as a colt arter peculiar doctrines and seducin’

sperrits.”

“Oh, there you are, Gran’fer!” And pat as to a cue a most “seducin’

sperrit” flashed, like a shaft of sunshine, through the half-open door

into the gloomy old barn. But she was aproned and bare-armed to the

elbow, and rain-spotted, and a ringlet of hair was blown almost across

her mouth, and the instant she perceived Will, she drew back in

confusion, patting her hair tidy.

“Sorry, Gran’fer. I didn’t know you had visitors.”

But Will, to whom the sense she conveyed of brooms and dusters was

sweetly reassuring of a still unsubmerged femininity, cried out as

hastily:

“No, I was just going. You’ll get drowned.”

And he tried to pass her.

But the old man dramatically extended the uncocked hat.

“Howd hard, sonny.”

Will, disconcerted, found his feet sticking to the floor.

“He’s writ me a letter, imperent little Willie, and brought it hisself.”

Then a flash of amusement toned down the asperity. “Aldoe he had his

tongue with him!” And the old man chuckled.

“Shall I read it?” murmured Jinny, putting forth her hand.

“Nay, nay!” He snatched the note back and tore it into careful pieces.

“Ain’t fit to be seen.”

“No more am I,” said Jinny with an uneasy laugh, and again she essayed

to escape.

“Stop!” commanded the ancient, kindled afresh. “Willie’s got to tell you

what’s in they scraps.”

Will was silent.

“Don’t stand gawmin’. Out with the abomination.”

But no sound issued from the young man’s lips. It was not merely that

this new housemaidenly figure seemed safe enough even in Chelmsford,

wrapped in its own sweet domesticity, and that adjurations designed for

the minx bade fair to blunt themselves against this sober angelhood; but

that the girl’s radiance against the littered gloom within and the

rainfall without, robbed him literally of breath.

“Speak out, Willie!” said the Gaffer, softened to contempt by his

obvious confusion.

“Perhaps he _hasn’t_ brought his tongue,” suggested Jinny, recovering

herself.

“Then Oi’ll lend him mine. You ain’t to goo to Che’msford, he says.”

“But I don’t want to go to Chelmsford, Gran’fer. Why should I go to

Chelmsford?”

“To get his horn, you baggage. And he don’t be wantin’ it.”

“Oh, but he ordered it—it’s too late now.”

“Ay,” said Daniel Quarles, “and goo you shall to git it ef the adder has

to bite Methusalem’s heels.”

“But I don’t have to go to Chelmsford for it!”

“You said you’d go to Chelmsford,” burst out Will at last.

“Nothing of the sort.”

“But I’ve got your letter!” He pulled it out, and again that awkward

glove fell out. “Ah, there’s your glove I’ve found on the road,” he

said, crimsoning furiously.

“Thank you!” She took both letter and glove placidly. “Now I shall have

two pairs! But where do I say anything about going to Chelmsford?”

Thus invited, he came and looked down at the paper she held, and gripped

an end of it himself, very conscious of her near fingers, and her bared

arm, and her bending head. He was about to cry: “Why, there!” when a

horrible doubt lest “superscribe” did not mean dashing away, or

stampeding, or scurrying, or driving, or even going, checked the

exclamation.

“I must ha’ misread it,” he said. “I beg your pardon.”

“Spoken like a Christian!” said the Gaffer. “And Oi count John Wesley

’ud a said let bygones be bygones. Sow bring out the beer, Jinny.”

“Thank you—I’m afraid I can’t stay,” said Will. He had a sullen sense

of defeat, which the loss of the glove seemed to accentuate and

symbolize. “My folks’ll expect me home to tea.”

“Your Mormon wives? Ay, Jinny, you may well blush,” the Gaffer chuckled.

“Willie’s been and married a pack o’ widows in America.”

“And left them there!” said Will, permitting himself a faint smile.

“Left all those widows!” laughed Jinny. “How deadly dead you must be!”

But despite the merriment in which the episode had so unexpectedly

ended, and despite the rain which had now grown torrential, he tore

himself obstinately away, even refusing the “umberella” which the old

man suggested and Jinny offered to fetch; though as he stepped under the

plashing apple-boughs, he felt himself doubly foolish to refuse what

would have been a literal handle for a return visit. And now that he had

caught a glimpse of what he told himself was the real Jinny, not the

Tuesday and Friday swashbuckler, but the Saturday-cleaning-up-for-Sunday

house-angel, he did not despair of inducing her to shed these husks of

bravado. But he had said “no,” and “no” to his great annoyance it must

be.

“When do you propose to superscribe?” he asked with crafty lightness, as

he raised his hat.

“Oh, but I _have_ superscribed,” said Jinny. “But of course if it

doesn’t come soon, I shall write over to Chelmsford again.”

VII

The first Sunday of Will’s home-coming, nothing had been said about

chapel. That, his elders thought, might be still a sore subject with the

boy whose resentment at sacrificing his buttons on the altar had driven

him “furrin.” Still more delicate was the theological position into

which the couple themselves had gradually drifted, and of which they

now—before a spectator and critic—grew uneasily conscious. Martha’s

Ecclesia in Long Bradmarsh having collapsed almost as soon as she had

been converted to it, she had no meeting-house to go to, and, almost

simultaneously, Caleb, whose farm-wagons had recently been shifted to

the new “looker’s” headquarters, ceased to attend his Chipstone Chapel.

This was partly to keep his wife company of a Sunday, partly because so

many miles there and back was getting too much for his legs. In

consequence the pair had arrived by compromise at a Sunday ritual of

their own, a sort of Peculiar Christadelphianism, and Uncle Lilliwhyte,

who never entered any of the many houses of God—it was popularly

supposed he would not or could not remove his gay-stringed beaver—would

often loiter outside Frog Farm in Church hours, listening to their

loudly trolled and hybrid hymnology in a sort of pious eavesdropping.

That was Uncle Lilliwhyte’s individual contribution to the chaos of

creeds that reigned in Bradmarsh.

But even this minimum of religion was denied the honest snake-seller

when Will returned. The first Sunday, Caleb and Martha held their

services furtively in their hermetically sealed bedroom, hardly daring

to hum what they had so lustily intoned: by a common instinct they

shrank from obtruding their departure from that straitness of doctrine

in which Will had been reared. They were indeed secretly relieved that

he made no reference to religion, nor seemed to expect them to go to the

old chapel, nor even noted the Sundayness of the dishes that Martha

served up with the same careful everyday air with which Caleb consumed

them. They were equally relieved, however, that he did not go out

rabbiting on the holy day with his new pet ferrets. “Oi’ve known some as

dedn’t consider that work,” said Caleb, as they discussed this dread

possibility. “But to my thinkin’, if ye goo out with a spade, ye might

as well be ploughin’.”

That was what they said in bed on the first Saturday night. Very

different was their conversation on the eve of the next Sunday. The

problems all came now from Will’s over-interest in religion. True, the

Sabbatarian peril had not yet materialized: he had neither worn his best

clothes on the Saturday nor demanded priority in the Sabbath dishes. But

he had dropped more than one perturbing remark. Old Quarles, he

supposed, was now too old to worship at his Wesleyan Chapel in Long

Bradmarsh, to which Caleb had replied naïvely: “Ay, he sleeps at home

Sunday mornings.” Presumably, then, Jinny would not leave the old man

alone on Sunday as well as on Tuesday and Friday: to which Caleb had

answered cautiously—and without admitting that his observations were

not up to date—that doubtless Jinny could only worship occasionally

with the Peculiars and it depended on her getting a lift, Methusalem

being a strict Sunday observer. Yes, he _had_ heard Farmer Gale

sometimes gave her a lift—who had told Willie? he wondered—but he

supposed it was because the farmer, like her grandfather, was a

Wesleyan. Later, Will had remarked casually to his mother that he didn’t

suppose Miss Quarles would be able to get to chapel on the morrow, as he

had happened on her old grandfather, who seemed quite breaking up.

Martha, murmuring sympathetically that Mr. Quarles must be getting old,

was likewise compelled to gloss over her inacquaintance with Jinny’s

latest Sunday habits: she shocked and surprised herself by remarking

that one’s grandfather would hardly count against Farmer Gale, and

hastened to add—especially as Will seemed shocked too—that such was

Jinny’s devotion to her grandfather that not for some years had she been

able to stay longer than the Morning Service. Rejoiced though the old

woman was at Will’s mingled concern for the religion of the young and

the weal of the old, she was a little uneasy at this personal turn of

his theological thinking, and she quickly changed the conversation to

the Great Horn and the Beast, a discussion which in her eagerness she

hardly noticed was practically a monologue.

By nightfall that Saturday Caleb had gathered, with a sinking of the

heart, that Will designed to accompany his elders on the morrow—and to

Early Service! The boy had apparently failed to remark the breach in the

old chapel routine the previous Sabbath: the Sunday had been hushed up

only too successfully. It was as far as Caleb dared go, in the first

plunge of confession, to say that, in the absence of a vehicle, Early

Service at Chipstone was out of the question nowadays.

Such was the situation that faced the old couple in the sleepless

watches of the second Saturday night, and dimmed even Martha’s joy in

the prodigal’s return to religion.

“Best go with him, like when he was little,” she decided. “We mustn’t

unsettle him so soon, now he’s found God again.”

“Ain’t so sure he’s found God,” said Caleb shrewdly. “God ain’t in a

goose-quill, and writin’ a piece about Daniel ain’t the road to heaven,

else where would me and most o’ the Brethren be? To my thinkin’ Will’s

onny lost the Devil.”

“It’s the same thing. What else does he want to go to chapel for, and

Early Service at that?”

“To make trouble,” said Caleb fretfully. “We was all so happy till he

come—and you had Maria.”

“Oh, Caleb, you don’t deserve the Lord should give him back to you! And

if you don’t go to-morrow, I’ll withdraw from you.”

“That ain’t right,” said poor Caleb, puzzled by the unscrupulous threat.

“But ef it’s onny for Morning Sarvice he’ll expect you to goo too.”

“He knows about my rheumatics, dear heart,” she said casuistically. “He

knows I couldn’t walk even to get my bonnet cleaned.”

“But ef you were to tell him about the New Jerusalem——?”

“He’d best find that himself, now he’s on the way. It’s not far from

Daniel.”

VIII

Thus it was that Uncle Lilliwhyte was again defrauded of his ritual and

that after a still more furtive and still earlier service in the

sanctity of their airless bedroom, with hymns muted and prayers guiltily

whispered, the couple appeared at an eight o’clock breakfast with an air

of devotions unpaid, and Caleb, hurrying the meal, remarked that ’twas

time to get ready for chapel or they would miss even the Morning

Service.

At this, Will, who was in his fashionable London jacket—to the admiring

awe of his elders—sprang up, and rushing to the back of the house near

the water-barrel, brushed away hastily at a dull speck on his boot where

a spurt from the boiling kettle had blotted out the shine he had so

laboriously imparted. The male ferret, caged just above his stooping

head, awoke at the agitation, and started rubbing itself under the neck

as if in parody, but far more swiftly and persistently; then it jerked

its nose and its thin whiskers through the wires.

“Not to-day,” laughed Will, jabbing its nose with the blacking-brush. He

felt very gentlemanly and happy, for the brief rain of the evening

before had dried up, and the day was as fine as his clothes. As Caleb

came out in quest of Will, the ferret was just snuggling back to

slumber, and the old man, yawning with the loss of his Sunday morning

sleep, looked enviously at the creature coiling itself so voluptuously

in its straw.

“Lucky Jinny brought me sech a noice Sunday neckercher,” he said, “or

Oi’d ha’ been ashamed to walk with ye. Ye look like our Member o’

Parlyment.” He himself looked, however, a respectable figure enough in

his tall hat and finely stitched and patterned Sunday smock, his

high-lows and gaiters, and it was not till they were getting over the

stile that led to the short cut through the Green Lane that Will

observed that his senior carried, like a tramp, a bundle in his

handkerchief.

“What’s that?” he inquired fretfully, becoming aware too that the Green

Lane, even at its best, offered perils to his boot-polish.

“That’s my hume-book and our dinner and tea. There’s two packets for

each on us, and we must be home for supper. Don’t, your poor mother will

be lonely.”

Will had forgotten these meals: they had, in his boyhood, been carried

decorously in the wagon. But the sunshine of the mid-May morning did not

permit ill-humours, and they strode happily along the dappled by-ways,

bounding over the shrunken sloughs, the son uplifted even beyond

boot-polish by the intoxication of the Spring, and the father by the

intoxication of the Spirit. For, the moment Caleb had crossed the stile,

the old rapture of fellow-worship had returned, and the absence of

Martha seemed to lift the shadow of her criticism; while doubts of his

son’s regeneration could hardly survive the sight of his springy step

chapelwards.

Will was indeed living over again his childish memories of these Sunday

journeys, and, somewhat to his surprise, something fresh and delicious

seemed to emanate from them. It had after all been a pleasant change in

the weekly round, this family jaunt with the big double-lidded provision

basket, while the congregational picnicking in the chapel had not been

without its jollity.

But Caleb did not leave him long to his memories. The old Peculiar was

anxious to have a problem solved that had been weighing upon him these

two years. In the New Jerusalem, whose descent to earth—ready-made and

complete—was, according to Martha, imminent, to the impending confusion

of disbelievers, there was to be “A street of pure gold, as it were

transparent glass.” Martha—as if to immunize him against his visit to

the old Peculiar Meeting-house—had read out the text that very morning

at their surreptitious service. And his ear had always heard “brass”

instead of “glass.” But how could gold be brass or either transparent?

He did not like to shock her by questioning the letter of a text—his

differences from her turned merely on the relative importance and

significance of her texts as compared with those he had picked up from

the Peculiars. Yet this puzzle was perhaps what really prevented him

making the final plunge into Christadelphianism. It is true he might

have demanded her solution of it—often through those long months of

controversy as he looked at her saintly face so quiet on the pillow

beside him, it was borne in upon him that in that bookish brain, under

that frilled cotton nightcap, lay the explanation of the holy mystery.

But possibly, with the subterranean obstinacy of the peasant, he shrank

from an elucidation which might have left him irremediably at her mercy.

A vindication of the text by Will, on the other hand, would give him

time to turn round, take his new bearings. And a young man who was

capable of composing a thesis upon the Little Horn and the Great Horn,

could surely wrestle with this mystery.

“Oi hear you writ a piece about Daniel,” he began tactfully, as they

crossed the bridge.

Will frowned. He had forgotten Martha’s misunderstanding. “Has he been

round telling you?” he asked angrily.

“Me!” Caleb stared. “Oi bain’t howly enough for wisions.”

Will was puzzled in his turn. “You mean he can’t walk so far!”

“Oi wouldn’t say that: happen he can fly if he wants to.”

“Fly!”

“Surely! A man so howly in his life—him what——”

Dead! So suddenly! Will stood still. This altered many things. The

winged image of the Gaffer faded before the picture of a lonely Jinny.

“When did he die?”

“You know that better than me,” said Caleb meekly.

At this the thought that his “epistle” had over-excited the patriarch

and stilled that aged heart, shot up, agitating the young man. That was

why relief mingled with a vague disappointment when Caleb went on: “They

lions couldn’t kill him, but Oi reckon he had to die some time. But many

of them what sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, he tells us,

and maybe”—he added with a flash—“they’ll wake up in that golden

city.”

Will grunted a vague “Maybe.”

“Touching that there city,” said Caleb, “the gold of the street thereof

will be transparent.”

“I know,” murmured Will, suppressing a yawn.

He knew! And the contradiction did not strike him! Instantly, as by

another flash, the text solved itself in the old man’s mind—gold in

those millennial days, while it retained its sacred splendour would also

lose its gross opaqueness, becoming rarefied, disembodied,

spiritualized, so that gold was as brass since both were like glass,

making thus a harmony of light with the jasper wall, clear as crystal,

and the twelve giant pearls of the gates.

“It’ll be a pritty sight!” he mused aloud.

“Yes, like the Crystal Palace,” sneered Will.

“You seen that?” asked Caleb eagerly.

“A man couldn’t be in London and escape seeing it,” said Will. “Every

cad drags you into his omnibus bound for Hyde Park. Such a crowd!”

“Yes, the chimney-sweep got his pocket picked, Bundock’s buoy-oy was

a-tellin’,” said Caleb, “but the streets thereof, be they of gold?”

“The streets of London?” said Will, smiling.

“Noa, the streets of the Crystal City?”

“No, of course not, father.”

“Then they can’t be brass neither?”

“More like grass,” Will laughed. “For there’s real trees left standing

inside.”

Caleb joined in the boy’s laugh. Though he had never really believed

that the Crystal Palace represented the Millennial City, it was well to

have the danger finally cleared away. And, abandoning the gold-brass

puzzle, his mind flew back illogically but passionately to his Peculiar

Brethren and the joy of the awaiting ritual.

“Ah, here’s Plashy Hall!” said Will. “And the dog seems having his

Sunday nap.” He threw open the white gate marked “No thoroughfare!”

“But that’s closed.”

“Closed!” said Will in fiery accents. “I shan’t even close it after us.”

“I count they won’t mind _you_ in your Parlyment coat, but——”

“Go along, dad.” And Will pushed the old man into Plashy Walk and strode

forward like a village Hampden. Within a minute he missed Caleb, and

looking back, saw him hurrying back from the gate.

“Must allus shut ga-aites!” he apologized with his rising accent.

“I’ll burn it next time,” said Will. “Why, this saves us a mile.”

“But we’ll miss the Early Sarvicers,” complained Caleb. “You’ve forgot

how they walk out to meet the Brethren, what come footin’ it from afar,

and have an extry sarvice at a half-way house back o’ Long Bradmarsh.”

“Surely the regular services will be enough.”

“But ’tis noice to git an extry snack,” said Caleb wistfully. “Many’s

the Sunday Oi’ve had foive sarvices.” He sighed voluptuously.

“Well, better luck next time,” said Will lightly.

The tone was not unkindly, but Caleb took it in full earnest, and his

long secret grievance against Martha began to ooze into speech under the

spell of his son’s sympathy. Her warning against unsettling the boy was

forgotten in this natural gravitation of male to male against female

fantasy.

“Yes,” he said, “I’ve allus been fast and faithful all along. ’Tis

mother that’s allus gooin’ forrard. And woundily wilful—Oi never met

nobody loike her, barrin’ old Quarles. When we married we was both

Sprinklers, but scarcely had we got six childer afore she says she must

be baptoized. Wait till the summer, says Oi, for ’twas a black Feb’ary.

But no—sow headlong is her natur’ they had to break the ice. She give a

deep soigh when the water took her—it a’most unhinged me. But she would

have it she felt sow happy and contented. She drilled me hard to make me

take the total immersion too—’nation obstinate is mother, but Oi’ve

allus stood out stubborn for the Truth. Fast and faithful,” he repeated,

as if to reassure himself.

“Well, but you changed too!” Will reminded him less kindly. “You weren’t

born a Faith-Healer.”

“That ain’t my fault, bein’ as the truth wasn’t found out in my young

days, though they warses o’ Jeames was there all the time. But the fust

day Oi met the Brethren Oi knowed they were the people for me. There was

one on ’em among my own labourers. When Oi said as we didn’t know

’zactly what God was, he said, says he: ‘God’s like you and me, bein’ as

He made man in His own image.’ That was an eye-opener to me. But the

others parsecuted him and called him Brother Jerusalem as a rewoilin’

word. He had a fork to pitch a high load—cost foive shillin’s, fancy

what a good fork that must ha’ been—and they went and broke it. Oi was

grieved, but naught grieved him except to grieve the Lord. He dedn’t

drink neither, and you look so odd if you don’t drink. But when they

wanted to stand treat, he said he’d take bread and cheese. ‘Goo to

hell,’ says they. ‘There ain’t no hell, even for you,’ he answers soft;

‘you’ll be in the same darkness as now, that’s all.’ That was another

eye-opener. Oi was taken with that hell—not bright and burnin’, but all

black and cowld—so Oi came out o’ my darkness and jined the Brethren,

and gave up beer, barrin’ harvest-time, which rejoiced mother and was

money saved for the childer. Be-yu-tiful things were brought to pass and

be-yu-tiful things were said the day Oi went to my fust sarvice, and ef

the Lord is with you to-day when you speak o’ your experiences, Oi count

be-yu-tiful things will be brought out agen.”

Will shuddered. He stopped abruptly and was nigh turning back. He had

forgotten that the Brethren would expect his soul-experiences and

confessions—especially after this spacious and adventurous interval.

“What’s-a-matter?” asked Caleb.

“Nothing, nothing,” he said, remembering his own power of sullen

silence. And to say something, he asked, as he walked on: “And what’s

wrong with mother now?”

“Wrong?” Caleb was shocked at this crude interpretation. “Oi don’t be

meanin’ she ain’t in her rights to hunt out new texts, she bein’ a

scholard. There was allus a bran-span-new one, Oi mind me, the Sundays I

used to goo a-courtin’ her. A wery long way she lived—they talk broad

and careless where she comes from, not moist and proper like here—and

Oi had to git up early and goo along the sea-wall—deadly dark and

lonesome it was winter nights and mornin’s, but her face was allus with

me like the moon.”

“Why, was she pretty then?” asked Will.

“Can’t you see?” replied Caleb, with a faint surprise. “She ain’t

changed much, she havin’ allus the peace of God in her heart.”

Will was touched and astonished by this revelation of romance in the two

elderly people foisted upon him as parents, whom he had all his life

taken as eternally elderly. But still more surprising was the

realization forced upon him that the religion which to him was a bore

was to them a thrill.

“Shall I carry the parcel, father?” he asked gently.

“Nay, nay, that don’t goo with Parlyment clothes. And it ain’t as

sizeable as the box you carried from Chipstone.” He chuckled in freshly

admiring glee.

Passing adown the long hawthorn avenue, they now issued from Plashy

Walk, the rights of leg vindicated, and soon they began to see signs of

other pilgrims faring towards Chipstone, that great gathering-place of

faiths and creeds.