CHAPTER VI

SUNDAY AT CHIPSTONE

_This zealot_

_Is of a mongrel, diverse kind;_

_Cleric before, and lay behind;_

_A lawless linsey-woolsey brother,_

_Half of one order, half another._

BUTLER, “Hudibras.”

I

AS old England has always been rich in “characters,” in those grotesque

or gnarled individualities that have escaped the common mould, the

superabundance of sects, which, in conjunction with the paucity of

sauces, amused Voltaire, has its natural explanation.

John Bull—himself a “character” among nationalities—could not long

endure the Papal leading-strings, and ever since the days of Wycliffe a

succession of free spirits has founded “heresies,” not a few based on

misunderstood mistranslations of Greek or Hebrew texts, torn from their

literary and, above all, their historical context. But why during these

five centuries Essex has been a breeding-place for Nonconformity, second

to no other county, is a problem to tempt the philosopher. For its

ministers have been silenced or ejected in numbers almost unparalleled;

some indeed merely for tippling, dicing, carding, and womanizing, but

the majority for the more serious offences of heresy or disrespect

towards Parliament; while simple peasants—men, women, and girls—for

their participation in seditious conventicles or practices, have been

fined, jailed, transported to “His Majesty’s plantations,” and even

nailed to stakes and burnt alive, clapping their hands the while with

joy. Some of the most moving scenes of “Foxe’s Book of Martyrs” and

Bloomfield’s “History of the Martyrs” are laid in Essex. Triumphant

descendants of these opinionated saints were now converging on Chipstone

from every quarter of the compass—it was but a toy-model of a town, yet

it held in its petty periphery chapels, meeting-houses, or

churches—ancient-towered or drably wooden or offering the image of a

tinned congregation, tightly packed—for Baptists (Particular or

General), Quakers, Wesleyans, Congregationalists, Peculiars, and

Primitive Methodists, as well as your everyday Churchgoer; nothing

indeed was wanting except an Ecclesia for the variation represented by

Martha. And as most of these structures were in the High Street, or just

off it, you beheld in that ancient thoroughfare of a Sunday a crowd of

Christians, as like to the naked eye as a flock of sheep, sorting

themselves into their denominational pigeon-holes, and disappearing as

suddenly to right or left as the pedestrians in “The Vision of Mirza”

vanished downwards through the trap-doors in the bridge.

Of all these types of Christian none seemed so indigenous to Essex as

that aptly christened “Peculiar”: it was as though peculiar to the

marshes, an emanation of the soil. Though the first apostolic fervour

was over in Chipstone, and the spirit was moving rather towards Woodham

and Southend, the sect was still young and persecuted enough to be a

devoted brotherhood, as Will soon realized from the greetings which his

father exchanged with fellow-pilgrims, who grew more and more frequent

as they drew nigh the outskirts of the theological town.

There was, among others, a cheerful-looking woman pushing a four-wheeled

baby-cart, which held an infant back and front, and a food-parcel

sandwiched between them. Caleb, addressing her as Sister, offered to

wheel it, but she replied that the children would cry at a stranger.

“Well, you’ll soon be comin’ to your destiny,” said Caleb. But before

Will and he had forged ahead of her, she had begun pouring out a

premature confession. Two or three were gathered together, and the

Spirit seemingly blew through her. That time last year she hadn’t

trusted the Lord: when they were wheeling the cart to chapel, she had

wondered to her husband how she could fit in the coming baby. And the

Lord had now made room by taking the prior baby, so that she was well

chastised: moreover they had “parsecuted” her husband before a

magistrate for not calling in a doctor for the child, but as it wasn’t

insured, they had only put him in prison for a little. All the same he

was “broke up,” having always been a “forthright” man. The Lord was

indeed trying him by fire.

“Ay, ’twas the same, Willie, when your brother what’s-a-name died,” said

Caleb as they drew ahead of the labouring baby-cart. “But the Brethren

now exhort one another not to insure their childer, Satan being swift to

cry child-murder.”

“But _isn’t_ it child-murder if a doctor might have saved it?” asked

Will coldly, for the woman’s story had shocked him.

Caleb looked pained. “Ef the Lord wouldn’t listen even to prayers, is it

likely He’d regard doctors? Howsomever the Brethren stand fast and

faithful—they goo to prison even at harvest-time when you’re worth

forever o’ money. But the Lord’s people are wunnerful good to one

another, and the Elders look arter the families. Oh, what a joyous

Harvest Thanksgivin’ we had two years agoo, time the martyrs came out o’

their cells. All in the open air it was, and Deacon Mawhood brought out

be-yu-tiful lessons. No matter you lost your harvest money, he says, you

won the palm and the crown, and ’tis the Second Harvest in the heavenly

fields with angels to squinch your thirst from golden wessels that shall

be yourn, says the Deacon.”

Will received the rat-catcher’s rhetoric with a snort, which put Caleb

again on the defensive.

“Oi’ve never took no medicine for ten year,” said Caleb. “And look at

me!”

“Well, I’ve taken plenty,” said Will. “And look at me!”

“Oi allow Oi ain’t a Samson like you,” admitted Caleb honestly, “nor

couldn’t carry a box that far. And when Oi say no medicine, Oi don’t

mean when Oi’m not ill. For same as Oi’m well, mother makes me take a

little pill afore meals, bein’ a wegeble as stops the gripes. There

ain’t naught about that in the Bible, seein’ as the text starts onny

when you git sick. And arter she lost your brother Jim—or maybe he was

Zecharoiah—she did fetch a doctor for the tothers, argufyin’ that when

the child’s too young to seek grace of itself, oil inside ain’t no wuss

than oil outside. And then they Christy Dolphins come along——”

“Who are they?” inquired Will.

But Caleb drew up with a sudden remembrance. “You’ll find that out for

yourself. They ain’t far from Daniel.”

“Live on the Common, do you mean?”

“Noa—there ain’t none near us—there was two in Long Bradmarsh, but

they’ve gone back to the Joanna prophet woman, so your poor mother ain’t

got—” he broke off again. “Oi don’t say ef mother was took real bad, Oi

shouldn’t goo and git Doctor Gory, seein’ as she threatens to goo for

him same as Oi’m ill. It ain’t the doctor, it’s the faith, says mother,

and so long as you don’t believe in the doctor, there ain’t no harm in

lettin’ him thump you about. So long as your heart turns to God, says

mother, the doctor can listen to it all he likes.”

“Then you do have the doctor!” Will was amused at these compromises

exacted by his masterful mother, whose heretical evolution after the

loss of offspring he could, however, well understand.

“Noa—noa, not for us—leastways not yet,” Caleb protested. “That was

onny for the childer. That made us feel free.”

“Free?” Will queried.

“Not responsible like.” He was somewhat embarrassed. “Faith-healin’

ain’t the main thing,” he expounded anxiously, “it’s faith-gittin’; it’s

lovin’ God and seekin’ His grace, just as you’re doin’ to-day.”

Will was silent.

“Bless me!” cried Caleb suddenly. “Ef that don’t look tempesty!”

Will’s eyes went skywards and found indeed a livid patch of gloom, like

a ghastly sag of sky, suddenly splotched in the warm blue. And as he

looked, a zigzag flash stabbed through it.

“Quick,” cried Caleb, indicating a fairly leafy oak, “git under that

tree!”

“No, no,” said Will, “it’s dangerous.” And a terrible peal of thunder

accentuated his words.

“Oi’ll hazard it,” said Caleb, hastening towards the shelter. “The Lord

is marciful—He can kill us when He pleases. He ain’t got no need o’

lightnin’. But that’s gooin’ to pour like billyho—and the rine falls

alike on the just and the unjust—unless the roighteous man’s got an

umberrella.”

Will smiled, though humour was as far as ever from Caleb’s intentions.

Unwilling to desert the old man, and perhaps weighing the improbability

of an electric stroke against the certainty of spoiling his jacket, and

the last surviving sheen of his boots, Will stood pluckily beside his

parent, while, after another celestial salvo, great drops began to

patter on the leaves and even to drip through them. “Lucky that thunder

dedn’t come in the middle o’ last night,” mused the old man gratefully

as it roared on. “It’s sech a bother dressin’ yourself agen to set up

till it stops. Hark at they Tommy Devils squealin’,” he cried,

indicating the startled swifts. But after a few minutes Caleb’s patience

gave out: the distant chiming of Chipstone Church bells, with which the

way had been piously enlivened, was now chillingly inaudible; the

thought that they would be late for chapel gnawed at his heart; and

dryness seemed a poor equivalent for those missed moments of spiritual

ecstasy. He was about to dash through the storm, when the rain ceased as

suddenly as it came, the blackbirds began to whistle and forage merrily,

and the sun, bursting out more brilliantly than ever, soon licked up the

modicum of moisture that had percolated to their Sunday exterior. But

Caleb’s apprehensions were justified. He had overrated the pace of his

aged legs, and despite the gain through Plashy Walk, he got no

compensation for the missed Half-Way Service, for when they arrived at

the little meeting-house, the Morning Service proper had begun.

II

The chapel of the Peculiars was one of the minor religious edifices that

did not aspire to the High Street. Behind an iron gate and a petty stone

courtyard, it displayed a gabled front, with a roof of pantiles, and a

row of dull windows of an ecclesiastical order on either side.

As Will passed through the door, all his tardily born sympathy vanished,

and a wave of the old insufferable boredom smote him like a breath of

the steerage on his Atlantic steamer. Almost ere his hat was off, his

eye had taken in the whole once-familiar scene, the painfully crude

walls, a little dingier with the passing of the years, the broad

table-desk at the head of the hall, at which Deacon Mawhood and the

Elders throned it in Sunday black, the rows of spruce wooden chairs

sexually divided by a gangway, and exhibiting in its left section a

desert of elderly females with a few oases of hobbledehoy girls. He

thought of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and calculated whimsically that if that

cost twopence to see, how much ought one not to pay to escape seeing

this!

But if his entry meant ennui to himself, it was a most dramatic event to

the congregation. At first, indeed, this stranger in the fashionable

jacket was not associated with Caleb, whose return to the fold was a

separate thrill. It was believed for an instant that a veritable

gentleman had succumbed to the Truth, and even when it was perceived

that he was no other than Will Flynt, the news of whose home-coming had

reached the majority, the sensation did not abate, for was not God still

visibly with His peculiar flock, turning back the hearts of the

wanderers, whether of the old generation or the young? A breath of new

inspiration shook the hall, and the grey-haired Brother who had just

begun reading the thirteenth chapter of Acts faltered in his

mispronunciation of Cyrene. As he went on droning out the

chapter—surely the longest in the Bible, chosen maliciously to depress

him further, thought Will—its burden of the people of God, set for a

light to the Gentiles, evoked a mounting exaltation, and those who had

come with no thought of testifying, found themselves possessed of the

Spirit. There was in particular a man with mutton-chop whiskers, on the

bench in front of Will, whose body swayed with excitement, and who

punctuated the reading with breathless jerks of nasal interpolation.

“Be-yu-tiful!” “Yes!” “Amen!” “Thank Gord!” “Mercy!” and the like. And

when at last the chapter ended on the verse “And the disciples were

filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost,” it lifted the man to his feet

and he poured forth the story of his sinful past.

“Oi was Church of England—in the choir—and wore black and whoite

gowns—and rang the bells—and was confirmed and all—but Gord had never

pardoned my sins.”

Will stifled a yawn and looked towards the door. But the rest of the

audience hung upon the tale—the tale of a death-bed repentance of

Churchmanship and the miraculous recovery to lead the better life of the

Peculiar Brotherhood.

“Oi asked the Elder to howd up my hands, so that Oi might die praising

Gord for the revelation.”

Sobs came from the left benches, but they only fevered Will. He sat in a

dull fury, dazed by words that passed over his brain without leaving a

meaning.

“Oh, what a thronging boy and boy—a land where we shall never say ‘Good

noight’—engraved in eternal brass—the Lord shoines on your

heart—sheep and goats—streets paved with pure gold as it were

transparent glass!” It was not till he felt his arm clutched by Caleb in

the old man’s excitement at hearing this last phrase that Will connected

such words with reality at all, and they faded back into mere religion

till a sudden mention of “John in the oil of Patmos” shot up a quaint

picture of a too profuse anointment.

Other speakers followed with the same transcendental vocabulary, and

then hymns, in an interval between which, the black-garmented Deacon

with a royal gesture, that seemed to sweep away the remotest effluvium

of aniseed or moleskins, sent Will a hymn-book by a deferentially

wriggling Brother. It seemed an ironic revenge for the book he had flung

into the bushes, but it saved him from the oppressive proximity of his

father’s, which he had been sharing; for the old man, though he could

not read the book, liked to hold it as he had always held it with

Martha, and indeed could not have sung without feeling it at his

fingers’ ends. Will turned its pages with curiosity, thinking of

Bundock’s “village idiot,” and noting that it was still published by a

village barber. Then a gaunt, horn-spectacled man was seized of the

Spirit.

“I’ve been looking for a han’kercher,” he began, to Will’s surprise.

“I’ve been looking for a han’kercher,” he repeated. “I’ve been looking

for a han’kercher,” he recapitulated with rising rhetoric, “to wipe my

tears away.” But the thrilling level, of this exordium was not

maintained, and the stock phrases started again, merciless, unendurable,

beating on Will’s brain till they beat vainly against the depths of his

reverie—or was it his doze? Ah, surely that was Jinny’s horn at last!

No, it was only his father blowing emotionally into his red cotton

handkerchief—too huge to need looking for—a duplicate of that which

held their meals. Besides, Jinny wouldn’t be blowing her horn of a

Sunday. But why didn’t she come to chapel, the graceless minx? Was she

careering around with that Farmer Gale, or was it her grandfather’s

illness?

If flighty young girls, with hearts sound at bottom, would come here and

unfold the error of their independent ways, the practice of confession

might be justified, and chapel-service become both useful and exciting.

But these faded people, these ungainly men and fubsy females! Who on

earth cared for their drab histories? Ah, there was Mother Gander, not

so podgy as most—in the blue silk of auld lang syne—if only _she_

would get up—or even Charley Mott—there would be some spark of

interest. But no, the horn-spectacled bore held the floor pitilessly,

and the phrases beat on.

“Be-yu-tiful, be-yu-tiful words—I thought I should die!—Poor me! What

a comfort in them words!”

And the nasal voice, its fervour unallayed by its own outpouring, still

punctuated the other speeches with jerky interpolations. “Praise the

Lord!” or “Glory!” came with fiery iteration, and sometimes this saint

with the mutton-chop whiskers said “Lord bless me!” or “Lord bless my

soul!” and these frayed and almost meaningless ejaculations seemed full

of a startling significance in _his_ mouth and nose.

“Brother Bridges, they said to me, how’s your soul? I couldn’t give ’em

a straightforward answer.”

Will woke up again. It was not now the horn-spectacled speaker—he had

apparently been wiped off the floor at last, and was not even

visible—it was a man with a humorous twinkle and a red beard.

“But if they had asked me, how’s your body——?”

There was a faint snigger from a thick-set girl, instantly repressed by

her shocked mother; but after Will had extracted what relief he could

from this incident, he tried vainly to extract from the anecdote the

exciting edification it held for the others. “How can I go to Romford

and tell people I haven’t got salvation?” A dramatic crisis indeed for

all save Will, who did not even stifle his yawn. The man’s journey to

Romford seemed infinitely unimportant compared with journeys going on

every Tuesday and Friday, and despitefully checked on Sunday.

Once the door opened, but it was only for a shambling youth in his

teens, and Will did not share the satisfaction of the congregation at

this new, if belated, proof of their vitality.

“We’re not afeared, no, not the humblest of us,” pursued the red-bearded

man, catching fresh inspiration from this continuous rise in their

numbers. “And why? Because we don’t go to work without a Partner.”

Here at last was a definite image through the blur, and if Will in a

vivid flash saw a working-partner for himself in a less sublime

incarnation than the speaker had in mind, he was for once as a-quiver as

his father, who now, albeit with the stock exclamation of “Be-yu-tiful!”

proceeded to add real tears to the contents of his capacious

handkerchief.

When Will became attentive again, it was a new voice testifying, and the

matter seemed quite sensational.

“They used to be carried away and buried in a day. But when our Brother

Bundock’s boy got it, we had a special prayer-meeting, and even the

marks were light!”

Oh! So it was only the postman’s smallpox. He looked round in vain for

Her Majesty’s servant: indeed a general consciousness that the hero of

the story was ungratefully absent, damped its appeal—only the man with

the mutton-chop whiskers called out with unabated ardour, “Glory!” Will

felt that the glory was to Bundock, thus valiantly sticking to his lack

of convictions. More than even during the last week, life at Little

Bradmarsh seemed impossible, as impossible as in his boyhood; better had

he rushed with the mob of his mates to California; even now it was

probably the best thing to do with his ninety pounds, unmanly though it

were to flee and leave this girl carrier with her arrogance unbroken.

In her absence, if only one of the females would get up! That would be

at least a change. But no! The sex was shy to-day, though the forenoon

was, he remembered, the traditional time for its testifyings. Perhaps it

was the presence of this stalwart young stranger that tongue-tied it.

But the males seemed to be telling their soul-stories _at_ him,

challenging his eye, appealing to his black jacket—or was that only a

morbid impression of his? An outsider might have been touched by the

thread of spiritual poetry in these outwardly commonplace lives, but

Will, being of them, had the familiarity that breeds boredom, if not

contempt. And contempt, too, was not wanting to this elegantly clad and

much-travelled connoisseur of men and women and creeds, who had seen

even French cathedrals in Canada, and knew that Roman Catholics were not

the scarlet beasts his infancy had somehow imagined them. Once he caught

Mr. Charles Mott’s eye fixed upon him with a curious, wondering gaze,

which seemed to change to a wink as eye met eye. Will’s eye, however,

remaining serious, a flush overspread the ex-potboy’s face, and he

looked away.

But Will’s contempt passed into alarm when, at a sudden pause in the

testifyings, all other eyes unquestionably converged on him. He turned

as red as Charley Mott, and glued his eyes to his hymn-book, not daring

to look up till another voice indicated that the Spirit had found a more

willing tongue for its organ. But his relief was mixed with disgust, for

it was the dry voice of the original grey-haired reader, and it seemed

bent on a sermon which had not even the mitigated brightness of a

confession. Then, autobiography seemed suddenly to break through it, for

Will’s wandering thoughts were fixed by an anecdote about riding to

Rochester seven miles on a donkey on a winter’s evening. “Lord bless

me!” interpolated the nasal voice, so distracting Will that he never

understood how the story led up to a doctor’s remark: “I must have your

leg off,” a design the medical materialist appeared to have carried out.

Will tried to peer under the table to see the preacher’s peg, but

failing to perceive any signs of corkiness, concluded that the anecdote

was not personal. He gathered that after this melancholy amputation by

impotent Science, Faith had sufficed to keep the rest of the man

together. Medicine had subsequently proclaimed he was in a galloping

consumption, “but he ain’t dead yet—he’s still sound and whole,” cried

the preacher paradoxically, to the applausive “Glory!” of the tireless

commentator.

Another illustrious example of regeneration—the preacher kept Will

awake by recounting—had begun life as a parson. But none is beyond

hope; even in the sacristy one is not safe from the Spirit, and unable

to go any longer through the flummeries and mummeries of the Established

Church, he had given up his living and fallen—at one time—so low that

he was glad to become a potman in a public-house.

All eyes were here turned towards the unfortunate Charley Mott, and from

his squirming figure to Mother Gander, sitting so stern and stiff; but

the tension relaxed when the preacher—perhaps tactfully—went on to

mention that it was at “The White Hart” in Colchester: where the

landlord and landlady had both “parsecuted” him. They were now both

dead. (“Glory!” from the nasal punctuator.) “I am sorry they are dead,”

said the preacher magnanimously. “But the Lord’s arm is not short.” And

while they were well dead, Will learnt that their poor, persecuted

potman had now a chapel of his own, where he preached “Full Salvation.”

Twenty or thirty were, it appeared, saved regularly and punctually every

Sunday evening. “Glory!” trumpeted the nasal voice, and again Will,

sullen and glowering, felt that the whole congregation was palpitating

with expectation that he would leap to his feet and declare himself

similarly saved, or at least not lost during his long absence. But he

was not going to make a fool of himself, he told himself harshly. He

would sooner face the ordeal of escape, of running the gauntlet of the

Brothers and Sisters, and he looked round wildly towards the door,

perceiving with satisfaction that the late youth had left it slightly

ajar. Then, to his joy and the congregation’s disappointment, another

worshipper took the word, or was taken by it; Bidlake, the bargee, with

his dog-eyes now shining and his shaggy face sublimated, who declared

with touching fervour that he would praise God as long as breath was in

him, and with the death-rattle in his throat he would cry: “You can do,

Gord, what you like with me!” Ephraim recalled the coup by which he had

converted his wife, whom family sorrows had made an infidel. “Ef you

won’t goo to heaven with me, says Oi, Oi’ll goo to hell with you!” Now

they both pulled and poled together and were happy—so happy, despite

family losses and troubles. “Most men ain’t fit to live nor ready to

die. Just drifters. Throw ’em the life-line—the life-line afore they

drift away!” And with a vivid gesture he threw an imaginary rope. By

accident or design it was in Will’s direction, and again the poor young

man, with a stifling sense of being lassoed, became the cynosure of

every eye. But, fortunately for him, Ephraim Bidlake did not pause here,

and his rhapsody poured on; “Glorious truth”—“one generation to the

tother”—“the prayer of roighteousness”—“come as you are”—“wain to

trust in man”—a veritable cascade of phrases that, falling on Will’s

head, gradually lowered it in sleep. An impromptu speech is usually one

the speaker cannot wind up, and the worthy bargee went on tangling

himself up more and more, till it looked doubtful if he would ever have

come to a stop, had not something happened which stole even _his_ breath

away.

Through the interstice of the door came suddenly sidling a little white

dog. But this accession to the congregation produced no joy, merely a

sense of profanity as it pattered up the central parting, leaving,

moreover, wet prints of its paws. Springing without hesitation or

apology upon the sleeper’s best trousers, it curled itself up

comfortably with a grunt. Assuredly Will was not fated to-day to escape

the centre of the stage.

The young man recognized Nip instantly, and his yawn of awakening

changed into a gasp, and his somnolent pulse into a precipitate beat.

The animal’s leap was indeed sudden enough to startle the strongest

heart. Will turned his head instinctively towards the door—oblivious

even of his damped trousers—but there was no sign of Nip’s mistress.

Still, whether she was in the vicinity or not, the dog was clearly out

of place. Grasping his pretext of escape firmly by the collar and

clasping his struggling opportunity to his breast, he stole from the

meeting-house.

III

He expected to see Nip’s owner outside. In his reading of the situation

she had arrived so late that while she was hesitating whether to come

in, the shameless dog had burst through the door, attracted doubtless by

the aroma of all those dinner-packets, and this had made her still more

ashamed to enter. But the quaint little street was bare of Jinny. So

sunless did it appear without her, that he scarcely noticed that the sky

was actually overcast again, and that the black cloud had regathered. He

stood still, hesitating; in which relaxed mood of his the spasmodic

struggles of the animal were successful, and Will became painfully aware

that he was alone with his moist trousers and his London coat snowed

over with little hairs, while Nip, after some preliminary gambollings

and barkings at the recovery of the liberty he had himself abandoned,

was vanishing into the High Street. So assured were Nip’s movements that

Will divined at once he had only to follow him to restore him to his

mistress, and without waiting even to brush off the little white hairs,

he darted towards the street corner, and was happily just in time to see

the excellent creature trotting into the courtyard of “The Black Sheep.”

His pleasure was not, however, free from surprise. What was Jinny doing

at her business headquarters on the Lord’s Day? Or had she come in her

cart to chapel, and put it up there? He ran towards the picturesque

stable-yard. There were a good many chaises, gigs, dog-carts and even

carriages standing—the countryside drove to its churches—but there was

no trace of either Jinny or Methusalem, while Nip was standing with

hang-dog air by the doorstep, under a poster of “Duke’s Marionettes.”

But as Will drew nearer, he turned tail, sauntered down the passage,

surveyed the painted hand, and then with an air of decision bounded up

the stairs. Ah, she would be in the parlour! And Nip’s follower bounded

upstairs too, keeping closely to heel. But no! Nip was not on dining

bent, though the door was open. Rejecting all the appetizing scents that

already emanated from the eating-room, Nip pit-patted along the dusky

corridor and began whining and scrabbling outside a closed and numbered

door. Very soon it receded before his pleadings; and as he scampered in,

“You poor dog!” came out in the girlish voice that had so lacerated him

with “Fol de rols!” But not the worst of that musical torment could vie

with the jar to his heart-strings when, through the reclosing door, came

another unforgettable voice with the jovial interrogatory: “Well, Nip,

and what was the parson’s text?”

He remembered now—with a cold sick horror—that this was the very

bedroom from which indignant housemaids had excluded its tenant—yes,

there was Reynard opposite with his glassy eye and his erected brush.

Possibly Tony Flip was not even up. That was what came of minxes driving

Methusalems! Instead of being at divine service, like all God-fearing

humanity, she was coquetting—or worse—with a mountebank in an inn

bedroom. Yet he felt he must not spy upon her—any moment, too, she

might come out—and he hurried downstairs and stood on the step under

the ironwork lamp, louring like the great black cloud, which he now

perceived to be in heaven-sent harmony with his mood. And that

drivelling patriarch had foamed at the mouth when he had hinted that

woman’s place was not a cart!

But Jinny did not keep him more than five endless minutes.

“Hullo, Will,” she cried gaily, as she tripped from the passageway with

Nip in her arms. “What are you doing here?”

How the broad frame of her bonnet set off the picture of her face! Small

wonder a loose-living showman found it bewitching. Not so William

Flynt—with his high ideals of womanhood! Even to be called “Will” was

provoking rather than flattering: he felt it now less the perquisite of

the old friend than the proof of an indiscriminating levity.

“I’ve come for the dinner,” he said coldly. Nip gazed straight at him

with his mild brown eye, but although Will did not suppose that the

brute would open its mouth like Balaam’s ass and give him away, he could

not look it in the head. He turned his shoulder on dog and damsel and

stared at the poster.

“I wish I could have dinner with you,” replied Jinny frankly. “But I

must be off to feed Gran’fer. Farmer Gale’s trap should be here by now.”

“He drives you home too?” He turned towards her, startled.

“Within half a mile—it _is_ a treat for me to have another carrier.”

“But he isn’t a Peculiar,” he observed severely.

“No, he’s a Wesleyan like Gran’fer, who used to drive his father about.

He puts up at ‘The Chequers’ hard by his chapel—his service ought to be

over. I hope his horse hasn’t taken fright again—we had just got to the

High Street when the storm broke, and at the first flash the horse was

off, galloped miles beyond the town before he could be got to a

standstill.”

“He might have killed you, the silly!” cried Will, meaning the farmer.

“Yes,” said Jinny simply, meaning the animal. “By the time he was walked

warily back, it was too late to go in. But I don’t wonder Nip was

worried about me. You see he likes to run behind the trap, poor

fellow”—she wasted a kiss upon his unresponsive head—“and he always

comes up in time to say good-bye at the chapel door, where he hangs

about till I come out. But this time, of course, he must have been

wandering about in search of me. He wasn’t there when I passed just now.

Mr. Flippance declares he must have gone to Chipstone Church, in the

idea I’d suddenly joined it.”

And the girlish laugh rang out, dissipating some of his humours as much

by its joyousness as by the innocent mention of the Showman.

“But why shouldn’t you join it, Miss Quarles?” he said. “It can’t be

duller than chapel.”

“Now, now, Will.” She shook a serious finger. “You ought to have gone to

chapel yourself this morning. And don’t call me Miss Quarles.”

“But I prefer to call you Miss Quarles.”

“But why not Jinny?” Her voice was plaintive.

“Because everybody else calls you that.”

“Is that any reason why you should call me Miss Quarles?”

“If you can’t see it——!” he began.

“I can’t, and I hope you won’t call me Miss Quarles.”

“And why shouldn’t I?”

“Because I won’t answer to it.”

“And why not?”

“Because, Will, it’s not my name.”

He gasped. “Not your name?”

She laughed merrily at his discomfiture. “It’s a long story and Farmer

Gale will be here. Hulloa,” she went on, making his confusion worse

confounded, “how did Nip’s hairs get on you?”

He flushed, and flicked nervously at his coat. “There are other white

dogs,” he said evasively.

“Well, don’t let him spoil your coat.”

“And what about your bodice?”

“Oh, mine isn’t new and Londony.”

He was gratified at her perception: still more at her setting down Nip.

That animal, however, was in the rampageous mood which always followed

his restoration to freedom, and he began leaping up at his mistress’s

hand.

“Down, Nip, down! Oh, I do believe he’s bitten through my new glove!”

She pulled it off ruefully to examine the damage.

“Sensible dog!” Will growled. “He knows you oughtn’t to be wearing Mr.

Flippance’s gloves.”

Her own little white teeth flashed out in a mocking smile: “Lucky you

are going to buy me another pair!”

“Me! Why, you wouldn’t let me when I offered.”

“Of course not. I’m thinking of the pair you’ll be owing me.”

“Owing you?”

“You don’t suppose you’ll win the wager, do you?”

“Oh, that!” He was disconcerted again. “Of course I’ll win it,” he said

defiantly in a bombastic burst. “It won’t take me a day’s practice to

blow down the walls of Jericho.”

She laughed. “So you do remember your Bible. Well, I’ll be satisfied if

you blow Nip back from a rabbit.”

“We shall see. Have you superscribed again?” he asked pompously, assured

of his accuracy this time.

“Not yet—I expect the horn’ll be at Chipstone by Tuesday—you shall

have it the same evening.”

“And the next day I’ll be wanting gloves,” he said loftily.

“We shall see—or rather hear. What size do you take, though?”

“Oh, I don’t know—twice yours, I suppose.”

“Oh, not twice!”

“Why, sure!” And he suddenly prisoned her little ungloved hand between

his brawny palms. “I could easily crush it,” he said, with a strange

desire to do so, pressing it indeed almost to hurting-point. At that

instant a far-palpitating blueness transfigured the courtyard, and from

above-stairs came a terrific racket as if all the plates and dishes in

the dining-room were hurling themselves at one another. Will felt the

girl’s fingers curl spasmodically round his and hold them tight: her

face went white, and he seemed to hear her heart thumping.

“Don’t be frightened!” he said, with his first manly satisfaction in

her. Surely she was clinging to him for protection.

“That’ll be a fireball down the chimney,” she observed with

disappointing coolness. “There was one came down last year in Long

Bradmarsh and killed a poor little chimney-sweep who had got stuck in

the flue. It’ll set the chimney on fire, I expect.”

“This rain will put it out,” he said, still cheerfully conscious of her

warm fingers, and feeling a joy in the deluge that had been so damp in

his father’s company. She drew back, however, into the passage to avoid

the big plopping and ricochetting rain-drops and her hand got

disentangled. “What fun if it’s fallen down Mr. Flippance’s chimney,”

she laughed. “Make him get up early.”

Her laughter seemed to ring untrue, hysterical.

“Isn’t he up yet?” he asked, trying to speak lightly.

“Oh, he never gets up on a Sunday—not properly, I mean. I saw him half

up, but he’s gone back to bed and is already snoring—I heard him.”

“But how could you hear him?” he asked, with careful carelessness.

“Oh, I was in his daughter’s room, whiling away the time of

waiting—she’s got ten times his sense—when, woke up by our voices, I

suppose, in he trails through the communicating door in his fancy

dressing-gown, yawning like a mouse-trap, and asks me to buy him a horse

at the fair.”

“A horse at the fair!” Scarcely had he enjoyed the relief of working out

that he had taken the harmless adjoining bedroom for the Showman’s, when

this new blow struck him, like hooves on his chest.

“Of course I wouldn’t listen to him,” she said.

“Of course not!” His breast expanded again. “How can a woman understand

buying horses?”

“Oh, I don’t mean that.” Jinny was distinctly colder. “I mean it’s the

Lord’s Day. He’ll have to repeat his order on Tuesday.”

“But surely you wouldn’t go to a horse fair?”

“Why not?”

“Because—it’s—it’s so horsey.”

She laughed again. “And so fairish, too, isn’t it?”

“What does he want a horse for?” he asked sullenly.

“I don’t suppose it’s for dinner—he isn’t a Frenchy. But he’s got a

caravan, hasn’t he?—and he has to begin his summer tour soon.”

“And why can’t he buy his own horses?”

“That infant? Why his last horse died of old age at four!”

“And what about that sensible daughter of his?”

“She hasn’t got horse-sense,” said Jinny, smiling.

“Well, I don’t see how it comes into your business.”

“A carrier has to buy whatever she’s asked.”

“Whatever she can carry. You can’t carry a horse.”

“No, but it can carry me. Besides, I’ve often carried a calf or a pig,

and where am I to draw the line?”

“You’ll be buying elephants next,” he said, with a bitter remembrance of

Mr. Flippance’s story.

“I’m too old for gingerbread,” she replied unexpectedly. “But I haven’t

forgotten the one you gave me once.” He trembled under her radiant

gratitude, with its evocation of the poetry of childhood. But a

convulsive bound forward on the part of Nip broke up the argument. “Ah,

here’s Farmer Gale coming along,” she said cheerfully.

Just like the fellow, he thought, to come just at that moment. And his

resentment at the arrival of the dog-cart was not even mitigated by the

watery spectacle presented by its red-faced driver, whose personable and

still youthful figure rose from a streaming tarpaulin, to which a hat

with an unremoved mourning-band contributed its drippings.

“You can’t go in that rain,” Will protested. “Let him go without

you—I’ll order a trap myself.”

“But you said you were dining here—I can’t wait.”

He winced—his white lie had come home like a curse to roost.

“You can dine with me!”

“And what about Gran’fer?”

“Well, I can dine at home.” But she scarcely heard him. She was already

fastening a handkerchief over her Sunday bonnet—a fascinating process.

“There’s a good cover—I’ll snuggle right in.”

Shameless, he thought, riding about cheek by jowl and skirt by trouser

with a young man not even of her own faith. That thin tiny boy

sandwiched between was no real separation: why, the tarpaulin almost

swallowed him under! They ought at least to sit back to back, and if

there was any chivalry in the pudding-faced lout, he would transfer the

tarpaulin to the back seat. How could Jinny forget that the magnate of

Little Bradmarsh—cursèd Cornish interloper—was no fit company for the

likes of her? He wondered that people did not warn her: but they were

inured to her vagaries, he supposed. And even if the man meant

honourably, in his reckless passion, how dare a widower with a great

thumping boy approach a rosebud? Ah, now she was talking to this

second-hand, warmed-up aspirant, who had already killed off one wife;

inquiring sweetly about his animal’s behaviour under the recent flash.

“Steady as a plough-horse!” came the cheery reply. “My eye, Jinny, you

did handle him wonderful. I reckon you saved my life!”

“And what about my own?” With a laugh whose gaiety stabbed, she sprang

upon the step. “Good-bye, Will. Hope you’ll enjoy your dinner.”

“Good-bye, Miss Quarles,” he said coldly. “I mean, Miss——” But before

he had realized he could not fill up the blank, the trap had started,

and he could not even bound behind, like the joyous-barking Nip. Nothing

tangible was left of the whole delectable and distressing episode except

some white hairs on the fashionable fabric of Moses & Son.

IV

“Hope you’ll enjoy your dinner!” Her last words still rang in his ear.

His dinner! Cold meat wrapped in a “muckinger,” and consumed on chapel

benches among drab Elders and elderly Sisters and better-lost Brothers

and dismal rat-catching Deacons. No, sooner a crust and cheese at the

bar. But why not roast beef and Yorkshire pudding in the parlour—why

not make his lie true? Yes, lies were reprehensible: truth was always

best, and his chaps began to water with ethical excitement. But alas,

with a sudden misgiving he put his hand in his pocket. Not a farthing!

In the agitation of his chapel-going, he had forgotten to transfer his

purse to the Sunday suit—nay, even the ninety pounds were left in the

discarded waistcoat, he remembered with an unreasonable chill. He was to

be nailed to his lie, then. True, he might possibly get credit, but it

was an awkward situation at best. No, better go back to his cold

meat—besides, his poor old father would be wondering and waiting. It

would be cruel to desert and distract him, and, the rain appearing

somewhat thinner, he turned up his coat-collar and started out, almost

colliding at the archway with the Mott couple, lovingly entwined under a

spacious umbrella. They at least had no need to dine in chapel. Mr.

Charles Mott looked at him again with the same curious wonder. “You’re

not going back?” he cried involuntarily.

“I can’t desert my dad!” Will answered, somewhat shamefacedly.

“And he must eat, Charley darling,” Mother Gander intervened. “You know

how bad our Sunday dinners are.”

“I haven’t even got any money with me,” he cried, with a last wild hope.

But Mother Gander did not respond to his longing for truth. “Lend him

the umbrella, dearest,” she said ruthlessly. “We’ve another for the

afternoon service.”

Accepting it with mitigated gratitude—the umbrella he was trusted with

was worth more than the dinner, he thought bemusedly—he moved more

slowly to the chapel; wondering, too, how hotel-keeping could be

reconciled with the Sabbatarian conscience.

He found the meeting-house now turned into an eating-house. The

congregation had, however, visibly thinned: only those who had no hosts

or homes in Chipstone remaining for this love-feast, with the exception

of Deacon Mawhood, who, rather than go home to his wife, remained at the

table as presiding dignitary, flanked by great glass jugs of water. The

ravages in the ranks appeared to Will an eloquent testimony to the

spread of the doctrine in Chipstone proper: in his young days the sect

had been more suburban and rural, and the chapel at that hour had

seethed with hungry pilgrims. Still, there was quite a happy hubbub, and

the spectacle, with its real sense of brotherhood, struck from him more

sympathy than anything in the service; and when a Sister told her cherub

not to “goffle” so, he was mysteriously touched by the old word, and the

memories it roused, to a sincerer respect for the creed which satisfied

Jinny. What fun the boys had had in the wagon, driving home with her!

Caleb was chewing a hunk of bread and meat. The

handkerchief-parcel—shrunk like the congregation—incarnadined the

bench. “Oi had to begin,” he explained apologetically, “seein’ as Oi’d

said grace, expectin’ you back every second, and it seemed foolin’ with

the Lord to wait more than ten minutes. Pity that dog worrited you.

Be-yu-tiful things were brought out when you was gone. Where did you git

to?”

He evaded the question. “I’m not hungry.”

“Not arter that walk of ourn!” cried Caleb incredulously. “Oi count

you’ve had your dinner somewhere else.”

“Yes, off the dog!” he said a bit crossly.

Caleb smiled. “Oi’ll not believe that,” he said with an air of infinite

cuteness.

“I’ll have a drink,” condescended Will.

“Do!” Caleb passed him a large tin mug of water. “And there’s plenty

more where that come from.” Will knew it was Brother Quint—the “snob”

or shoemaker who lived next door—who supplied these limitless streams.

“Ain’t she beautifully polished?” Caleb went on naïvely, when his

thirsty son set the mug down. “Holds noigh a quart—Oi never see sech

mugs nowhere else! And Brother Quint’ll fill it with biling for our tea.

There, Will! There’s your favourite sausages mother put in for you,

special. None o’ your dogs in that!” And he chuckled, brimming over with

holy glee.

Cooled by the long draught, Will allowed himself to be seduced by the

veal sausages, and, finding with surprise that the first slid down his

throat in a twinkling, he was soon depleting the parcel into a mere

“muckinger.” And at this Caleb’s innocent happiness was complete.

But the fate that stalks mortals at their culminating felicities now

sped its arrow. In excavating a pickled walnut from the remains of the

parcel, Caleb loosed a minute cardboard box, which sprang maliciously to

the floor and then, to the agitation of the neighbours, rolled round and

round towards the table under the very eyes of the rat-catcher.

The Deacon stooped down zealously to pick it up, and then held it on

high. It was a pill-box! “Who brought this?” he cried in stern prophetic

accents, across the table.

The happy hubbub ceased, the holy glee was frozen. In a tense silence

all eyes were turned on the profane symbol. Will saw his wretched

father’s face go red and white, and his scraggy throat work painfully

below the ragged white beard. Both the Flynts guessed at once that the

careful Martha had slipped into the packet her husband’s usual pill

before meals!

It was a dreadful moment. For a space in which all nature seemed to hold

its breath, Caleb sat rigid and dumb.

“Whose propity is this?” asked the Deacon still more sternly, and Will

divined the mighty struggle going on in his father’s quaint conscience;

casuistic questions as to how far a pill-box conveyed unconsciously had

been “brought” by him, or in what sense pills administered to him

remorselessly from without could be said to be his “property.”

Then suddenly Caleb’s lips opened. “Oi count ’twas in my parcel,” he

said in tremulous accents.

The sublimity of the confession thrilled Will: he even felt a curious

moisture at his eyes. But before the Deacon, sitting there like a judge

about to pronounce sentence, could say a word, a blinding glare,

followed almost instantaneously by an appalling crashing and smashing

right overhead, showed that nature had indeed held its breath and had

now spoken in flame and thunder. Will’s first reflection when the daze

had passed away, and the congregation found itself and its building

providentially safe, was that it was indeed lucky his father had spoken

first; otherwise his confession might have seemed extorted by terror.

But Joshua Mawhood was not the Deacon to let such a situation pass

without profit. “The Lord havin’ spoke, brethren,” said he, “there ain’t

no need for _my_ opinion. The thing Oi hate most in this lower world is

hypocrisy and dissemblin’. ‘Roight up and down, Jo Perry,’ as the sayin’

goos. Ef we ain’t been destroyed, as we sat here guzzlin’ and guttlin’,

’tain’t no merit of the congregation, ’tis because the Lord bein’

marciful don’t destroy Sodom and Gomorrah so long as there’s one

roighteous man.” He rose majestically and drew himself up to his full

height, and held the pill-box even higher. “Brother Flynt, if you’ll

kindly step out, Oi’ll hand you back your propity.”

No fiercer punishment could have been devised for Caleb’s gentle soul:

the sinner, isolated, passing through his shrinking Brethren and

Sisters, must come forward as to a confession table. No wonder the poor

man held back.

“Oi don’t need it now, Deacon,” he said, with lips almost as white as

his hair. “You can throw it away ef you like.”

With malicious enjoyment the Deacon slowly and solemnly lifted the lid

of the pill-box and dipped in his fingers, to hold up the impious

contents to the public execration. Then his face changed.

“Why, it’s salt!” he cried in angry disappointment. It was as if the

devil were playing thimblerig with him.

“Oi was thinkin’ the missus had ought to put some in,” said Caleb,

beaming again.

The woman of the baby-cart now found herself possessed of the Spirit.

She sprang to her feet, a baby on either arm.

“We are the salt of the earth,” she shrilled, “wherewith the others

shall be salted.”

“Hallelujah!” burst from the mutton-chop whiskers.

“Hallelujah!” responded the congregation, and a great anthem rolled out,

outshouting the thunder.

V

To the disappointment of his father, who still hoped he would testify,

Will would not stay for the Afternoon Service. But his worthy sire could

bear a disappointment after the revulsion in his favour, he thought. He

had to take back the umbrella to the Motts, he insisted, or, with this

weather, the good Samaritans might be unable to return to their

worshipping: in any case he had to see somebody at “The Black Sheep” on

urgent business: business, he corrected hastily, of a spiritual nature,

calculated to save certain souls from temptation.

“Well, Oi’m glad the Sperrit’s workin’!” said Caleb, “and do ye git back

to mother quick as you can, for it ain’t fair as she should be left at

home, time Oi’m enjoyin’ myself. Not that ’tis my fault there ain’t no

chapel for Christy Dolphins—!” He checked himself and added hurriedly:

“Do ye don’t tell her about the pill-box: happen she’d think Oi was

wexed.”

“And do ye don’t say you can’t carry a box to Chipstone!” mocked Will

gaily, glad to be released. “And of a Sunday too—you old

Sabbath-breaker!”

Caleb did not smile: the episode had left too deep a scar. “Oi count the

Deacon’s in the roight,” he said. “’Tis hypocrisy and dissemblin’ to

take pills at home and salt in public. Oi count Oi’ll testify to the

truth this arternoon.”

“But you only take pills to keep off the indigestion, not to cure it,”

urged Will, giving him his own plea back. “Besides, salt is a sort of

medicine too: without it you might get scurvy and goodness knows what.”

Caleb shook his head. “Lot’s wife wasn’t turned into a medicine. Any man

in his seven senses knows the difference ’twixt puttin’ salt or medicine

on his wounds.”

Leaving his father to execute his sublime purpose, Will went off on his

own mission under protection of the big Mott umbrella. In returning it,

he learnt that even its great ribbed dome had not saved Mr. Mott from a

wetting, in consequence of which and his delicate health he was now

imbibing stiff glasses of grog in his bedroom, hovered over by the

anxious Mother Gander. It was pathetically out of the question, Will

gathered, for Brother Mott to attend chapel again that day. Will’s

“urgent business” lay, however, with Mr. Anthony Flippance: the soul to

be saved being Jinny’s, now menaced with still further soilure from the

gross contacts of horse-copers, cadgers, kidders, butchers, drovers,

shepherds, swineherds, touts, tramps, and all the tricksters and

pickpockets of the cattle-market.

The mission did not loom unpleasant, for although he resented the

fiction about the Crystal Palace and the stuffed elephant, the tall talk

was harmless enough—he had heard taller in America—and he was not

indisposed for ungodly society after the reek of the chapel. That the

genial Showman would instantly see the matter from his point of view he

did not doubt.

But Tony Flip was not in the dining-room even in dishabille, and the

waiter was still so occupied with late or leisurely diners as apparently

to be unable to conjure him up. “I’ve just taken him up his breakfast,”

he said, with an envious sigh. “No. 42. You’ll find him.”

But to intrude thus on the Showman’s privacy seemed indelicate: he

waylaid a chambermaid in the corridor and asked her to tell Mr.

Flippance a gentleman would be glad to see him when he had finished his

meal. She brought back a mysterious answer as from Miss Flippance that

he never saw clean-shaven gents.

Will fired up as at an insult. Evidently the rogue was not going to be

so malleable: that daughter of his, too, he remembered, had no proper

respect for Jinny. “Tell ’em I’ll wait here till my beard grows!” he

commanded.

The chambermaid hung back, giggling. He felt in his pocket for a

sixpence—again encountering only lining. “If you don’t take my message,

I’ll kiss you,” he menaced. It was a jest that never failed him, and it

did not fail now, though the fleeing “tucker-in” giggled more than ever.

He watched her enter the lion’s den, but hardly had she done so, when

the noble animal himself padded forth, grinning like a Cheshire cat, his

fork protruded like a claw, and just-spluttered coffee dripping from his

great jaws over the breast of his flamboyant hundred-stained hide.

“Where is he?” he roared genially to the dark corridor. “Come in! Come

in!”

Will advanced defiantly.

“So it’s you! I was wondering what wit heaven had dropped with the

thunder! Yankee yumour—I ought to ha’ guessed it.” And he nearly

spitted Will on his fork in his enthusiastic effort to shake hands.

“‘I’ll wait till my beard grows’—ha, ha, ha! That goes in this very

night—no, there’s no show to-night, hang it! Don’t go, Polly,” he

called, as he pulled Will into the room over a barrier of Bluchers and

Wellingtons and even Hessian boots with silken tassels, “we must get

that into _Hamlet_. When I say to Ophelia, ‘Get thee to a nunnery; go,

farewell’— I’ll wind up ‘Until thy beard grows.’ That’ll be your new

cue, Polly.”

“But that’ll spoil the scene,” Miss Flippance protested, poised in a

morning wrapper in the open doorway between the two rooms. She was

mysteriously mantled in aromatic clouds, like the spirit in _The

Mistletoe Bough_, yet her father did not seem to be smoking.

“Not at all, Polly,” he persisted, “it’s just the right grotesque

spirit.”

“There’ll be a laugh.”

“The one thing _Hamlet_ needs. Even the ghost don’t carry it off.”

“You’d better give _me_ the line,” persisted Miss Flippance. “It’ll come

better in the mad scene.”

“Well, we’ll talk about it—I think you’ve seen our American friend

before.”

“Before and behind,” said Miss Flippance viciously, a scowl traversing

her pockmarks. “And since he left me in the lurch, I wasn’t sorry to

think I’d seen the back of him.”

“But as Miss Quar—as the Carrier hadn’t got your drumstick, there was

nothing to return for,” apologized Will.

“Then why _have_ you?” she snapped, and closed the door behind her with

a similar snap.

VI

“Polly’s in a pet,” commented her parent. “She don’t like being worried

by actors in search of jobs, specially on Sundays. It’s your hairless

phiz, you know.”

“But I’m not an actor.”

“Of course not—she ought to have seen you haven’t the face—only the

razor: ha, ha, ha!”

Will was vaguely resentful. “But I dare say I could black my face.”

“There’s more to the drama than Othello, and more to Othello than burnt

cork.” And Mr. Flippance laughed again as he dropped into his wooden

arm-chair and resumed his breakfast at a little table ’twixt the

bed-canopy and the window. “Sit down, won’t you? Excuse my back—I can

hear all you say behind it. Ha, ha! That’s another good gag, eh?”

Will, glancing round, saw that the chair not occupied by his host was

hopelessly littered by his garments, mixed with papers: he therefore

dropped on the high four-poster—it was now made—and cleared his throat

for action.

“You’ll have a drop of something,” Mr. Flippance threw backwards,

mistranslating the sounds.

“No, thank you!” He must not be bribed or drugged, Will felt: he had

stern work before him. It was as well, however, to placate the

adversary. “Glad to hear the show’s a big draw,” he said.

“And who told you that?”

“Er—the Bradmarsh Carrier!”

“Bless her—she carries all the lies I tell her.”

“Aren’t things rosy then?”

“I never lie on Sundays. Ha, ha, ha! Perhaps it’s just as well Jinny

won’t do business with me to-day. No, old man, I ought to be middling

mollancholy, as they say here. But I’m as happy as the day is long—and

it’s getting longer every day.” He drained his coffee-cup voluptuously.

“Never mind my business—what’s yours?”

“Mine? I haven’t come on business.”

“Then you _must_ have a brandy.” He reached out and pulled the green

bell-rope.

“No thank you. You see—” Will swung his legs hesitatingly. “Surely you

don’t think she ought to carry lies——?”

“Who?”

“The Bradmarsh Carrier.”

“Jinny! She has to carry anything—at the proper tariff.”

“But is it fair to her?”

“If you mean our doing bumper business, she don’t know it’s a lie, and

her telling it helps to make it true. Why, you were itching to see the

show yourself, as soon as you heard other fools were flocking.” He

turned a grinning face. “Come now, confess.”

“I didn’t come to see the show,” Will contradicted, feeling vaguely

baffled.

“Of course not, being Sunday. But what _did_ you come for? Cut the

cackle and come to the ’osses.”

“I will,” he said eagerly. “I hear you want to buy one.”

Mr. Flippance swung round, chair and all. “Then you _have_ come on

business!”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Well, have you got a horse?”

“No, but I could get one.”

“And you don’t call that business!”

“I didn’t mean to—!” Will was getting embarrassed. “It just slipped

out. What I want to ask of you is——”

“Where the devil is that waiter?” broke in the Showman, reaching for the

cord again.

“What I mean is,” said Will, determined to get it out before the waiter

popped up, “that there’s a girl you’re leading into brazen courses!”

“A girl! Me!” Mr. Flippance pulled himself angrily to his feet, and

stood glaring at Will, with the snapped bell-cord in his hand like a

green serpent. “You son of Ananias, if you’ve listened to any of those

scandal-mongering swine you ought to be jolly well ashamed of yourself.

There isn’t a cleaner man—for a widower—in all the circuit. Why, I

could pile up the dollars—as you call it—if I’d only darken my tent a

bit, so that the lovers of the drama could go rubbing their noses and

licking one another like the calves in the next field. But there isn’t a

brighter show this side of the Atlantic. Besides, my girls are all

wood—there’s not a flesh and blood female with me except Polly, and

she’s my own daughter, born on the right side of the blanket, too. Which

is more than can be said for all of us. What may be _your_ name, now?”

“What has my name to do with it?” He got off the bed.

“What has his name to do with it?” asked Mr. Flippance of the waiter,

who now shot in with a well-divined bottle and appurtenances.

“Beg pardon, sir?”

“And so you may, you son of a slug. Here, take this rope and hang

yourself with it! So you won’t tell your name, you son of a flea,” he

went on, when the waiter had spirited off the breakfast-tray. “Well,

here’s my back—bite away.” And with a high tragic gesture he turned to

open the brandy-bottle.

“I’m not a backbiter,” said Will angrily. “I’m a front-puncher, and my

name is——”

“Never mind your name. I accepted you. You came like the spirit of the

May Day—mixed with the _Mayflower_. I opened my heart to you. I gave

you three names. I was Duke, I was Anthony Flippance, I was Tony Flip.”

He gurgled the brandy into his glass. “I demanded no references. I

entrusted you with posters for my daughter.”

“Which I delivered honestly.”

“But anonymously.”

“My name is——”

“Hush! Not for a million pounds would I hear it now. But the girl’s

name?” he turned round, glass in hand. “That at least I beg.”

“I’ve mentioned it already. It’s—it’s the Carrier.”

“Jinny!” Tony Flip burst into an explosive laugh of relief. “Fancy

calling Jinny a girl!”

“And what else would you call her?”

“What _you_ just called her—the Carrier.”

“Then if she is a carrier, why should you degrade her into a

horse-broker?”

“Oh, that’s all you mean, is it?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“Don’t be an idiot. Here, have a drink.”

Will waved the glass away.

“Would you like to send your daughter bargaining among a lot of rough

men?”

Tony grinned. “I don’t think Polly ’ud mind the men. It’s the horse

she’d come a cropper over. Jinny’s had a long experiance of horses, and

she’s smart enough to buy anything. If I wanted the moon, she’d get it

for me—and cheap too!”

“And why can’t you buy your own horses?”

“Why? Because I’m a child of nature—a simple player—who wears his

heart on his sleeve for daws to peck at. My last mare crocked up in a

week in the flower of her youth—seems to have been bought in a

knacker’s yard, shaved and singed and brushed and combed till she was as

shiny as a Derby winner. They gingered her ears and jaws and

cayenne-peppered her nostrils till she seemed clothed in thunder, like

the war-horse in the Bible.”

Will smiled despite himself. “And you expect a girl to see through all

that! Look here, I’ll buy your horse.”

Mr. Flippance paused in the act of imbibing. “Oh, _there_ we are,” he

said, looking shrewd. “Want to cut out Jinny’s business!”

Will’s cheeks became chromatically indistinguishable from his hair.

“Me! Do you think I want your dirty commission?”

“And do you think I want your stinking horse? Why the devil do you come

interfering?”

Will was silent. Tony finished his glass like a victor.

“If it ain’t the commission, what _are_ you after?”

“That’s my business,” said Will sullenly.

“Just what I said!” crowed Tony. “But I’d rather pay Jinny a quid than

you a bob. She’s got her old grandfather to keep!”

“Yes, and he’s as selfish and inconsiderate as you. But she _shan’t_ get

you a horse, and there’s an end of it.”

“Oho!” Brandy had made him genial again. “Who’s going to prevent it? Now

don’t say ‘_I_ will,’ because that’s in our dramas—attitude and all.

Though judging by the way you’ve been going on, Mr. Anon, I’m not so

sure you _wouldn’t_ make an actor! Perhaps Polly smelt right and you

_are_ one after all. But don’t you come disturbing my peace of mind, you

son of a star. Wild horses wouldn’t drag me back to the legitimate.”

“We’re talking of caravan horses,” said Will, at once mystified and

mollified.

“You seem to know all about it. I guess you ran a show yourself in the

States.”

Will smiled darkly. “That’s not your affair.”

“But it might be. I’m not above a partner with capital. Duke’s

Marionettes are getting shabby. The ghost is nearly black; Ophelia wants

a new coat of paint. Harlequin is out of joint and the Clown’s cheeks

are worn white. And we’ve got too few characters and too many plays. The

public are on to it when they see Hamlet turning up again in _The Beggar

of Bethnal Green_. Some new scenery too would smarten up the show. I

shan’t expect you to pull the strings—just put up the chinkers and

we’ll divvy up, you and me and Polly. Now don’t say ‘No’ too quick.

Drink it over.” And, beaming beneficence, he again tendered Will the

other glass.

This time Will took it, hearing himself clink it against Tony’s through

a daze, as he asked himself whether, after all, this notion—utterly

fantastic and unexpected as it was—mightn’t be as good a way as any

other of investing his ninety pounds: he would certainly be in a

position then to stop Jinny from buying the horse!

“Well, what do you say?” cried Tony.

“But you don’t know my name?” murmured Will, with the stir of adventure

and brandy in his veins.

“Pooh! What’s in a name? A nose by any other name would swell as red.”

And, laughing, he clapped Will on the shoulder. “We’ll spruce up the

tent too, and slick up the caravan—a dingy old hearse ain’t the best

advertisement on a tour. And why shouldn’t you take some of the parts?

Pity to waste your twang. We’d get some American figures made—cowboys

and slave-dealers and such—and spice our ghosts and goblins with

Colonel Bowie knives and Yankee yumour. We might even turn the

bridegroom in _The Mistletoe Bough_ into a rich New-Yorker, and make the

bride moulder away in an American trunk. There’s a fortune in it. I

don’t mean in the trunk—ha, ha, ha!”

With a last instinct of sanity Will observed maliciously that it was

Sunday. He merely meant to remind Tony that that was his day for truth.

But the Showman’s glass nearly fell from his fingers.

“You too!” he said. “And that Jinny—as lively a girl as ever stepped.

And Mother Gander—as buxom a landlady as ever bussed a bagman. What’s

come over the East Anglian circuit? And I took you for a man of the

world.”

Unwilling to repudiate that status, Will remarked flabbily that

precisely as a man of the world he didn’t see any money in marionettes.

“No money!” Mr. Flippance swelled with indignation as he pointed out

that Drury Lane and the mines of Golconda were not in it with

marionettes, properly equipped and spring-cleaned; the public was simply

panting for high-class puppets.

It goaded Will to emphasize his meaning. “Is this your Sunday talk or

your week-day talk?” he interrupted dryly. “Didn’t you just tell me that

you’re doing badly?”

Mr. Flippance admitted it almost without a wince. And had he not given

the reason? To take money out you must put money in. “I tell you there’s

a fortune in it,” he repeated.

“Sunk?” asked Will blandly. He added vengefully that he would consider a

partnership when the stuffed elephant came home from the Crystal Palace.

Tony, in crimson comprehension, rushed at the litter on the spare chair

and dragged out a newspaper from under the neckties. “Read that!” he

said sublimely, “the _Essex County Chronicle_!” And his semi-gilded

forefinger indicated a heavily blued passage. “Our readers will be

interested to know,” read Will, “that it is a local showman who supplied

the great stuffed elephant that holds Her Majesty’s gorgeous howdah in

Mr. Paxton’s marvellous glass——”

He dropped the paper. “I beg your pardon!” he said, too disconcerted to

realize that the “local” showman need not necessarily be Tony Flip. “But

I really would rather not talk business to-day, and I don’t know

anything about yours—that wasn’t my line in the States. I never even

saw a puppet-show in my life, outside Punch and Judy. A real live drama

now——” he concluded vaguely, meaning that he had at least seen real

plays, and utterly unforeseeing the effect the remark would have upon

his host.

For Tony Flip bounded like a large mechanical toy, plumped down again in

his chair, turned its back and his own to his guest, and stuffing

jewelled forefingers into both his ears cried out: “Get thee behind me,

Satan! Avaunt! Avaunt!”

VII

“Me, Satan!” said Will, astonished. “Who ever heard of Satan refusing to

do business on Sunday?”

If his last innocent remark had produced convulsive effects in a

perpendicular direction, this set Tony Flip rolling from side to side in

his chair. “Yankee yumour,” he gasped between the spasms. “Lord!” he

said at last. “You’ll drive me to set up a minstrel show, only to get

that in.”

Will, though puzzled, could hardly help being flattered by these proofs

of his facetious talents. It was strange, he thought, how different the

conversation went when he was with Jinny. Then the laugh seemed always

at his expense.

“I should think a minstrel show would be more fun,” he observed.

Tony veered round with his arm-chair, ceased to laugh, and regarded Will

with large, reproachful eyes. “And you cant about Sunday!” he said. “And

then to come tempting me back to that Witches’ Sabbath of a profession.”

“Nigger minstrels?” Will murmured, more dazed than ever.

“As if nigger minstrels weren’t half-way to your _Othello_. No, you son

of Satan. To hell with your capital! Didn’t you hear me say ditto to the

rat-catcher? They _are_ dens of the devil—theatres.”

“Then why do you run one?”

“Me! I don’t class my show as a theatre. Marionettes keep themselves to

themselves.”

“But you play Shakespeare.”

Tony held up his fat glittering forefinger. “We pull Shakespeare’s

strings—Polly and me. But there’s no actors the public can drag before

the curtain.”

Will admitted the difference, but not the moral distinction.

“You ever met any actors and actresses?” said Tony.

Will could not pretend to that privilege—if Mr. Flippance and his

daughter refused to be counted—and there was a long silence, in which

Tony seemed to the outer eye to keep sips of brandy-and-water lingering

on his palate, though he was really—it transpired—chewing the cud of

bitter memories. For suddenly he burst out: “I lived all my life with

’em. I’ve managed ’em for years—or, rather, failed to manage ’em. Born

in a Green Room, rocked in a Witches’ Cauldron, and baptized in

grease-paint. My ma was a leading lady—she played heroines and my

father wrote the melodramas. And they know a good melodrama at the

‘Eagle.’”

“Yes—I’ve heard of the ‘Eagle’ in London,” said Will.

“Ah, you know it by the song, perhaps:

_Up and down the City Road,_

_In and out the ‘Eagle.’_

_That’s the way the money goes,_

_Pop goes the weasel!_”

“I never heard a weasel go pop,” Will laughed. “It was the mouse, if

anything, though I did once see a stoat crack up before a cat.”

Tony’s mien relaxed in a faint smile.

The weasel was a tailor’s iron, he explained, pawned by the reckless

snip to raise money for treating the damsels who danced with him on that

open-air platform to which the “Eagle’s” audience streamed out betwixt

the drama and the farce. He added simply: “That’s where my Don Juan of a

dad first clapped eyes on a girl, pretty, of course, but with no more

acting in her than Mother Gander. Yet, would you believe it, he shoved

her into the lead instead of ma, and wrote a piece all for her, and what

was worse it was a big go. That was the last straw, and clasping me to

her wounded bosom, she left him, poor ma.”

“I should have thought she’d ha’ left him sooner,” murmured Will,

vaguely uncomfortable under these frank domestic revelations.

“It isn’t so easy to leave a man you’re not married to!” said Tony.

Will gasped.

“Ah, that surprises you?” said the Showman complacently. With a cautious

glance at his daughter’s door of communication, he produced two cigars

furtively from his washstand drawer—was he forbidden to smoke, Will

wondered. “You’ll find that good,” he said, pressing one upon his guest.

“You see,” he explained, as they puffed at these excellent weeds in a

new intimacy, “if a woman leaves her husband it makes a scandal he don’t

like, whereas a man that’s not tied is only too glad to be rid of her.

Oh, I ain’t defending ma, mind you—it only shows she was a born

actress. I dare say she’d only sucked up to pa to get parts. But when he

unstarred her, fine emotional actress as she was, she could never get

her foot in again in London, to play leads I mean, for she was too proud

to play anything else. ‘I can play anything except second fiddle,’ she

used to say, and rather than cave in, she married a fifth-rate manager,

called Jim Flippance, who had only a fit-up theatre (carries its own

props, scenery, and proscenium, but not open-air, you know), and made

him put up pieces with a kid in ’em to keep me out of mischief, but it

wasn’t long before I soared out of the parental nest, and by the time

they both joined the majority, poor old birds, I’d been leading man or

manager or both in half a dozen theatres, two of ’em London houses.”

Will receiving this information with a silent curl of his smoke, as

though it were another elephantine claim, Mr. Flippance added

vehemently: “Real London theatres, mind you, not those swindling gaffs

for paying amateurs described by Boz—that’s Charles Dickens, you know.

You’ve read Dickens?”

Will shook his head. “Too heavy and high-class for me. They don’t like

him in the States either—I’ve heard he wrote a piece against them——”

“Ah, but you should hear him read his ‘Christmas Carol!’ There’s a

wasted actor for you! Lord, if I’d had the running of that chap!”

Will was more interested in the girl who cut out Mr. Flippance’s ma. “I

hope your father—your pa—” he substituted politely, “married his new

flame,” he said. Even through the glow of the brandy and the blur of the

smoke he was dismayed by this dishevelled life.

“How could he? He had a wife in Cork. Yes, I forgot to say pa was Irish.

I’ve always gone by my mother’s married name, but you can have my

father’s name if you wish!”

“Not for a million pounds,” said Will.

“You Yankee yumorist!” Tony blew a playful puff of smoke at him. “Well,

you’ll see it if you come across the old ‘Eagle’ playbills or those of

Flippance’s Fit-Up for that matter, for we did all pa’s plays—ma had

played them so long she knew all the parts. Pa sent her a lawyer’s

letter—for she didn’t even trouble to change the titles or the author’s

name—but she defied him to wash his dirty linen in court, knowing how

virtuous his ‘Eagle’ public was, and that it might ha’ ruined him and

his moral melodramas.”

“They seem a funny lot—stage folk,” Will commented.

“Bless you, there’s no bearing of ’em.”

Will, relieved, said he was glad Mr. Flippance didn’t approve of such

morals.

“Morals!” Tony glared at him. “Who’s talking of morals? Men will be men

and women women whether they’re pro’s or public. You didn’t find America

a Sunday-school, I reckon?”

Will, coughing over his liquor, supposed a man could have his fun

anywhere.

“That’s what I say!” said the Showman. “And on the other hand I’ve known

actors as respectable as your rat-catcher. I’m one of ’em myself, as I

told you just now. I’d seen too many dead flies in the honey—and my

Polly’s as pure as her poor dead mother. No, it ain’t their morals that

bother me, it’s their ways. Holy Moses! To think of the time I had

travelling round managing these sons of dragons and hell-cats! I envied

ma and Flippance in the churchyard under their favourable stone notices.

The jealousies! The cat-and-dog bickerings! The screams and hysterics!

Who should play this or that, who should be largest on the programmes

and posters, who should stand in the limelight, who should take the

call—they never quarrelled who should take the bird: that’s the hiss in

our lingo. They were always hissing at one another, or at the poor

manager, that’s me! I’ve seen the leading man and the leading lady take

their call hand in hand, and the moment the curtain was down resume

spitting fire at each other. It wasn’t that they had any vanity, they

said, it was only that their position demanded they should take calls

singly or be printed larger than each other. Cocks and catamarans! I

tell you if I hadn’t swopped with Duke for his marionettes, I should

have had little rose-bushes growing out of me now, and that favourable

stone notice over me. Oh, the peace of it—it’s Sunday all the week!”

“I can see marionettes would be easier to manage,” said Will, smiling.

“Ah, but to feel it as I do, you must have lived through it.” Mr.

Flippance rose in his emotion and paced animatedly. “You must have had a

hornets’ nest for your seat and a brood of vipers in your bosom, and

shared diggings with the Furies. Oh, my radiant juvenile, your

sun-coloured hair would have been snow if you had gone through what I

have! If you’d had Ophelia in hysterics and Hamlet in liquor and even

the ghost hardly able to walk, and the call-boy crying the curtain was

up, and the audience stamping and whistling, and short-tempered people

at the box-office demanding their money back, you’d be able to measure

the feeling of thankfulness that comes over the cockles of my heart when

I stand in my theatre and see my leading lady sitting so angelic on her

wires unable to move hand or foot without me, or when I jerk my leading

man out of the centre of the stage all in a heavenly calm; And to see

the curtain come up and down with nobody scuffling behind it to bob and

smirk—oh, the Jerusalem restfulness! There mayn’t be as much rhino in

marionettes as in flesh and blood——”

“You just said there was more,” Will reminded him, unkindly.

“I meant compared with the capital put in,” said Tony, without turning a

hair. “You don’t risk much when you don’t have to pay your actors. But

Duke wasn’t mercenary, and it was the glory that appealed to him, poor

man. He’d inherited the business, like me, but he’d always been

ambitious after high art, he told me, and Flippance’s Fit-Up was his

boyhood’s dream. We did the swop over mulled claret last Christmas Eve

in this very inn. Peace and goodwill, thinks I, as we clinked tumblers

on the deal. You’ve got the goodwill, but peace, no, that you’ll never

see again.”

Will smiled. “I’ll really have to come and see those blessèd puppets,”

he said, as the Showman replenished the glasses.

Tony replied that he should see the whole boiling of them either before

or after the show, neatly packed in their big box. “And if there’s any

you’d like to kick, you’re welcome,” he said.

“What! Damage your property?”

“It would work off my bitter memories.”

“But they’re not the real live actors.”

“No—there’s the pity!” said Tony. “But they look so real—they’re

life-size, you know—that I sometimes yell at ’em and abuse ’em just for

the satisfaction of their not answering back. And the leading lady looks

as if she had a tongue to her—I promise you. A tongue—but thank the

Lord it can only talk Shakespeare or noble sentiments—can’t even nag

the management for a new dress. As for the juvenile lead, I can’t help

tweaking his nose sometimes for the sake of auld lang syne. Polly can’t

understand my spoiling his beauty—I can’t make her see I’m getting a

bit of my own back—and when she catches me punching the low comedian’s

head with a boxing-glove she saucers her eyes, as though I was going

dotty. But she never had to manage ’em. And I had to travel ’em

too—don’t forget that. Fancy carting around a menagerie, all in the

same cage! But I have my revenge when I travel ’em now—into the box

they go—leads below and the heavy man sitting on their heads, ha, ha,

ha!—and utilities and supers on top of all! And it don’t raise a

whisper. Talk of the lion lying down with the lamb. Believe me, old

cock, that there millennium will never come till we’re all on wires.” He

drew vigorously at the cigar his eloquence had all but extinguished.

“There’s a lot of the brutes,” he mused between the puffs, “that don’t

know Tony Flip’s escaped out of hell, and they write and call for

engagements—same as Polly thought you did—and if it isn’t Sunday I

take ’em to see my company and rub their noses into ’em, so to speak.

Look at ’em, I say, every man and woman knowing their place, and when to

speak and when to hold their blooming tongue, every one knowing their

parts too, which is more than you ever did, I’ll be bound. No wigs, no

make-ups, no dresses, no young bloods or decrepit dandies coming behind,

no prompter, nobody missing their cue, or unpunctual or hysterical. No

Bardell _versus_ Pickwick. Nobody drunk, married, divorced, deceased,

laid up, locked up, or run over, between the dress rehearsal and the

first night. No understudies, eating their heads off: in the way when

they’re not wanted, and missing their cues when they are. No sore

throats, no funerals to go to, no babies to get—if there’s a baby

wanted, I order it from the makers. And above all, my boy, say I to ’em,

no treasury.”

“What’s that?” inquired Will.

“What’s that? Well I’m blowed. That’s pay-day. And kindly note, I say to

’em, that lead don’t get more than utility, nor responsibles than

walking gentlemen. It’s Owenism, you sons of Mammon, I tell ’em, sheer

Owenism. Everybody getting the same nothing, and nobody coming carneying

for advance half-crowns. As for curtain-calls, the singing chambermaid’s

got the same chance as Lady Macbeth. And when it is a leading man that’s

come for a berth, I take him to the front of the booth where there’s a

retired village idiot I picked up, banging the drum. Look there, says I,

he’s not got much brains but he isn’t wood, and that’s the only

flesh-and-blood job I’ve got left in this blooming shop. If you like to

take it, why, in recognition of your position, I’ll throw in an extra

naphtha flare.”

“And what do they say?” laughed Will.

“It can’t be repeated on a Sunday! But you can picture ’em black in the

face—all except the nose. That gets redder than ever! Hullo, Charley!

Come in! Come in!”

Through the open door he had caught sight of the landlord in the

corridor.

“Can’t stop, Tony.” Mr. Mott was, in fact, hurrying to take advantage of

his spouse’s return to chapel.

“Gander-pecked again, I suppose,” laughed the Showman. “Ah, Charley,

you’d be much happier if you had a wife on wires.”

“There you go again!” And Mr. Mott, eager to join old pals at their

fishing, sniggered past, leaving a reek of hair-oil.

“Poor chap!” sighed Tony. “But there’s always hope for a man whose wife

won’t call in a doctor.”

Will laughed, and cunningly took advantage of all this expansive

geniality to escape from the room and the threatened transaction and to

call from the doorstep as he took his farewell, “Then it’s settled—_I_

get the horse.”

“If you bring it into the partnership,” cried Tony after him, “not

otherwise.”

Will found himself waylaid by Polly as he passed her doorway. She

beckoned him within with a mysterious, masterful forefinger, and he,

seeing the moreen curtains of her four-poster discreetly drawn, entered,

though not without Puritan misgivings. She drew another curtain over the

closed door communicating with her father’s room, and turned the key.

“Don’t waste my cigar,” she said as he held it behind him. “I can see

pa’s given you one of mine.” And taking up her glowing fag-end from the

ash-tray, she resumed her suction of it, sipping in the intervals at a

glass of milk. “I suppose you won’t share my drink,” she said simply.

“No, thank you,” he said, hardly believing his eyes, though he now

understood whence came the clouds in which he had found her mantled.

Perhaps she was really a man in disguise, despite her long ear-rings.

But then, would ever a male take milk with his cigar? What with tobacco

and horsiness, what was the sex coming to? And yet there seemed

something symbolic in this combination of stimulants, this masculinity

mitigated by milk! “What do you want to say to me?” he asked, keeping

the front door open with his hand.

“What’s this about a partnership?” she said softly. “I couldn’t help

hearing.”

“Don’t ask me,” said Will in tones hushed as cautiously. “Mr. Flippance

did speak of it, but I’ve never thought of the theatre as a business,

only as a spree.”

“Did he want you to take a theatre?” she asked anxiously.

“Good heavens, no! He called it hell!”

Miss Flippance smiled sadly. “That’s his way of consoling himself. He’s

dying to get a stock company again. But he _mustn’t_ have even a theatre

for amateurs. I’d fight it tooth and nail.”

“It’s bad for him, I know.”

“It’s bad for _me_,” said Miss Flippance. She puffed out a cloud. “You

see, there’d be no place for me. I can wipe most actresses off the

stage, but I’m not pretty—at least, not since my illness—and the

public won’t have me—except at the piano where I turn my back on them.

Plain actresses must be heard and not seen.”

“Oh!” Will was taken aback by such candour.

“Besides, one of the women would probably entangle him into marriage. I

don’t mind his having a wife on wires!” And a smile came travelling over

the pits of her face.

“You don’t mean to say he really wants to go back to hell?” said Will,

dazed.

“Don’t the moths after you’ve saved ’em from the lamp? And it was no

easy task saving him. Christmas after Christmas I used to jest: ‘Peace

and goodwill indeed! You’ll never have peace till you’ve got rid of your

goodwill.’”

“But that’s what he says himself,” said Will naïvely. “So he can’t be

craving to go back—it’s the marionettes he wanted me to stand in with.”

“That’s all my eye. He don’t know how happy he really is nowadays,

playing all the men’s parts. That was always the trouble in a real

theatre, especially when he was cock-of-the-walk—he never could make up

his mind which part he wanted. First he’d try one, and then think

another was better and throw it up in the middle and take away the other

man’s part. Nobody likes to give up a half-digested part, and it doesn’t

make things easier when, after all, you get it back again. Imagine the

ructions he was always making, and I’m not going to have it all over

again. He’s got _all_ the parts now, and so it’s going to stay.” With

which ultimatum she held out her hand and gripped him with what he felt

a manly clasp, and an honest. “Don’t you be his partner,” she

counselled. “He’s lost all his own money and it’s not likely he’d

multiply yours. He might have been a big London actor or manager, but

the Bible sized him up before he was born. ‘Unstable as water, thou

shalt not excel.’ If only at least one can _keep_ him to water! No, you

stick to your cash. There’s no money in the show for more than him and

me—my last jewellery will have to go for the horse—and if you’ve

really got the dollars, he’d have a theatre, with you as juvenile lead,

before you could say Jack Robinson, and then he’d steal your part and

drive you to drink.”

Will replied firmly, still holding her hand, that he was going to put

his money into farming, and by the way, would she countermand that order

to the Carrier for the horse?

“Oh, but we must have a horse,” said Polly.

“Quite so, but why through Jinny?” He was prepared himself, he

explained, to get them the best animal at the lowest price.

“And for what commission?” she queried.

“For love!” said Will.

Polly withdrew her hand. “No, thank you. We’d best let it go through

Jinny—like everything else.”