THE log fire burnt cheerily on the wide hearth, hissing and crackling
every now and then, and sending showers of sparks dancing up the chimney;
casting flickering shadows on the low ceiling, and sportively throwing
little dots and rims of light from one to the other of Betty Sibley’s
cherished treasures of crockery ware. But Betty herself looked very
serious as she sat leaning forward in her arm-chair, her bony elbows
resting on her knees, her pointed chin supported by her hands, her beady
black eyes roving from one to the other of her two visitors.
They sat on the opposite side of the hearth. One a portly, middle-aged
woman with a white apron much in evidence, and a little shawl crossed
over her shoulders. The strings of her very flat straw bonnet were
untied and thrown back, an infallible token of perturbation of mind in
the class to which she belonged, her large fat hands tightly clasped
together on the top of her apron, her woebegone face with its lack-lustre
eyes and loosely-dropping lower lip, the very picture of helpless
despondency. Close beside her, on the extreme edge of his chair, sat a
young man sufficiently like her to be recognisable as her son, but with
considerably more intelligence in his face—intelligence dashed at this
moment by a marked expression of sullenness.
“Well, Aunt Betty, if you can’t help us, I’m sure I can’t think whatever
we be to do. You was always so clever—they do say down yonder in village
there bain’t nothing as Betty Sibley haven’t got some way o’ gettin’
round. She can very nigh make the dead alive again.”
“Nay now, I never went so far as that,” said old Betty, throwing herself
back in her chair. “But I’ve brought back them as has gone to the New
House just for a minute like to ax a question. Sometimes the end comes
so suddent there bain’t no time for things to get settled as they should
be settled, and as them as is gone ud’ wish to have them settled—well,
then, there’s ways o’ makin’ them come back.”
“Lor!” ejaculated Kate Hardy under her breath, looking in awe at her
distinguished relative.
“’Ees, my dear, you mid be sure o’ that. D’ye mind when poor Jane Arnold
was took off wi’ an impression on her chest—not so much time as to say
where she’d like to be buried? Well, ye know, her daughter Mary was
terrible upset. She know’d her mother had a lovely set o’ silver spoons
put away safe somewhere, what was to be hers as she did tell her many a
time when she was livin’, but not so much as one o’ them could she find;
and Tom, the brother—a very rough fellow was Tom—gived her a week to put
all to rights in the house and to pack up and go. Him and his missus
didn’t get on at all with Mary. So poor Mary did come to I, the tears
a-streaming down her face. ‘Mrs. Sibley,’ says she, ‘I don’t know what
I’ll do without you’ll help me. I’ve lost my dear mother,’ she says,
a-sobbin’ and a-cryin’ fit to break her heart, ‘and now it do really seem
as if I was to lose the spoons too.”
“Eh—h—h, dear, dear,” groaned Mrs. Hardy sympathetically.
“’E—es, my dear, it ’ud ha’ melted a heart o’ stone I do assure ye. So,
I gived her summat and I did tell her what to say—”
Here the young man who had been sitting moodily twirling his thumbs, only
changing his position once or twice to kick the burning logs with the
heel of his hob-nailed boot when the flames sunk low, looked up suddenly
with an expression of interest.
“What did ’ee give her?” he asked.
“Never you mind, Jim. It bain’t for nothin’ o’ that kind as you and your
mother be come here this evenin’: ’tis the livin’ as you wants to deal
wi’.”
“Maybe if I had my will it ’ud be the dead,” said Jim, kicking savagely
at the log.
“Sh—sh—sh,” said his mother reprovingly. “Don’t ’ee take no notice of
him, Aunt Betty; ’tis the best hearted bwoy in the world, but there, he
be druv’ very nigh distracted at the present time!”
“Well, Kate, my dear, as I was a-sayin’,” pursued the sibyl, pointedly
addressing herself to the elder of her visitors, “I did give the poor
creatur’ summat, and that very night about twelve o’clock she did set the
charm to work.”
Jim kicked at the log again, a little nervously, and Kate drew forward
her chair with a grating sound on the tiled floor.
“Jist as the clock did strike one,” went on Betty, in a sepulchral tone,
“the flame o’ the candle did jump up and then drop down again, and Mary
did hear her mother’s step on the floor.”
Murmurs of admiration mingled with trepidation from Mrs. Hardy, and a
sudden rigidity on Jim’s part.
“There she was, jist as she mid ha’ been in life, in her Sunday dress an’
little brooch an’ all, Mary said, an’ a nice clean apron, an’ wi’ a
beautiful fresh colour in her cheeks. She looked at Mary so reproachful
like, the very same, Mary did say, as if she was axin’ her, ‘Why have ye
brought me back?’ Poor Mary did go all white and twittery, an’ she did
say: ‘Oh, Mother dear, I’d never ha’ brought you back from your rest, but
just to ax ’ee the one thing: _where did ’ee put the spoons_?’ Well, the
figure did stand lookin’ at her so solemn, and then all at once did rise
its hand like this.”
Here Betty pointed upwards, and a dramatic pause ensued.
“Ah,” groaned Mrs. Hardy, “meanin’ to say as now she’d gone up’ards to
glory she couldn’t be expected to be took up wi’ spoons an’ sich like.”
“’Twas the very thing as Mary did think herself, Kate my dear,” responded
Betty solemnly. “She come to I next mornin’, an’ she did say them very
words, but I knowed better; I knowed that there charm what I gived her
was one as never failed. ‘Not at all, Mary,’ says I. ‘Your mother’s
sperrit warn’t a-tellin’ ’ee nought o’ the kind. It p’inted up’ards, ye
say? Well then, take my advice an’ go straight home and _search the
thatch_.’”
“Well, to be sure!” ejaculated her listeners; even the taciturn Jim was
constrained to express some interest.
“Did she find ’em?” he asked quickly.
“I should think she did find ’em, Jim. She did find every one as safe as
anything, tied up in an old stocking, jist in the very spot what her
mother had p’inted out.”
This climax seemed to impress Jim even more than his mother; he leaned
forward, his great red hands twitching as they rested one on each knee.
“I d’ ’low, Aunt Betty, if ye could do that, you could do anythin’.
Can’t ye gi’ me summat as ’ll get the better o’ this here chap?”
“Well, Jim, I could give ’ee a love charm, but as you do tell I there’s
no gettin’ near your young lady, I don’t see how you be to indooce her to
wear it.”
“That’s true!” put in Jim’s mother dolefully. “There, I will say it do
seem cruel hard. They were as good friends I do assure ’ee as a young
man and a young lady need be. They’ve a-bin walkin’—how long have you
an’ Chrissy bin a-walkin’, Jim?”
“Fifteen month,” growled Jim gloomily.
“Ah, fifteen month, Aunt Betty. An’ Chrissy have a nice bit of money
laid by, mind ye. Her father was as pleasant as could be about it, an’
quite friendly, an’ the mother too. She did say to I not above a month
ago, I d’ ’low,’ says she, ‘we may be expectin’ to hear banns give out
soon,’ she says. Well, an now this young good-for-nothin’ chap must come
and whip her up from under my Jim’s very nose. What she can see in him I
can’t think, without it be his _korky_ jacket. _Trooper_ Willcocks, as
he calls himself—I’d troop him if I had my way. Why didn’t he stay out
at the war then, if he be so set up about it?”
“Ah, he’s a soldier, is he?” commented Aunt Betty. “A soldier. Ah, my
dear, Jim’s young lady bain’t the first to run after a red coat.”
“But he han’t got no more a red coat nor you have—nothin’ but what they
do call korky—as ugly a colour as ever I see. An’ he bain’t a-goin’ to
stop in the army neither. He bain’t a proper soldier at all—jist a
common chap as they picked up somewhere and clapped on a horse and sent
out.”
“He’s in the yeomanry,” explained Jim. “He don’t even come from these
parts; he’s home on sick leave, an’ is here visitin’ his uncle, along of
his own ’ome bein’ in town and not so healthy. But he’s no more sick
than I am. I’d like to make him a bit sicker, I know. Couldn’t ’ee give
me a charm for that, Aunt Betty?”
Betty rubbed her shrivelled hands together, and fixed her beady eyes
meditatively on her great-nephew.
“There mid be things as can be done what mid be things a body midn’t like
doin’,” she said oracularly. “You know the wax image—but there, I
wouldn’t go for to advise such a thing. The power as is give us is give
us for good, that’s what I do say. There’s a cure for everything in
natur’, if one but knowed how to find it. Now with herbs—I’ve often
found out wonderful things with herbs—folks as is troubled wi’ warts and
corns could cure them in a minute if they knowed the right thing. The
worst wart as ever was can be cured by a bit o’ milkwort. Pull it up,
root an’ all, d’ye see, and give ’em a bit every day, pounded wi’ a drop
o’ new milk, an’ when the time comes round that the plant, if it was
growin’ outside, ’ud be dyin’ down, the wart ’ull just wither away—that’s
my _notion_, d’ye see?”
“But the image,” persevered Jim. “Did you ever try that? It seems a
silly kind o’ thing too,” he added tentatively. “How could a dumb image
do anything good or ill?”
“Hush—sh—sh, my dear, ye don’t know nothin’ about them things,” put in
Mrs. Hardy with apologetic haste. “But they was known an’ tried by
others afore ye was born. Ye make an image in the likeness of the person
as you know is trying to do you harm, and ye put it down to roast at a
slow fire. Dear yes, I’ve often heard of it.”
“Well, then ye don’t seem to have heard the rights on it,” interposed
Aunt Betty, indignant at this encroachment on her peculiar province.
“There’s a deal more to be done than just set it down to roast same’s a
chicken.”
“Then what must ye do?” inquired Kate in awe-struck tones. “Ah,” seized
by a sudden thought, “I can mind it now. Ye must stick the image full of
pins first.”
“That’s it?” said old Betty, nodding reluctantly. “But there’s more than
that too. There’s summat as must be _said_.”
“I never heerd tell o’ nothin bein’ said, an’ I can mind my cousin Lizzie
castin’ a spell over her step-mother wi’ an image like that, an’ she were
took wi’ the rheumatiz the next week an’ never looked up arter.”
“’Twarn’t on account of the spell then if she didn’t say nothin’,”
retorted Betty contemptuously. “No spell would ever work wi’out the
words. Why, did ye never hear tell o’ saying the Lard’s Prayer
back’ards, beginnin’ with Amen?”
“Lard no! that I didn’t! An’ it bain’t what I’d like to be doin’, Aunt
Betty.”
“Neither should I, my dear—’tis just what I be a-tellin’ ’ee. But charm
won’t work wi’out ye do.”
A pause ensued, after which Kate, rising disconsolately and crooking her
arm into her heavy market-basket, remarked that it was time to be goin’.
Jim rose too, and stood dismally facing his great-aunt.
“If ye like to come back in a few days I’ll get that love charm ready,”
she remarked compassionately. “Bain’t there no maid as knows her as ye
could get to sew it somewhere about her clothes?”
“No,” retorted Jim sullenly. “I’ll not try no love charms. I’ll try my
hand at gettin’ rid o’ _him_ first.”
Mother and son trudged away together in gloomy silence. The early dusk
had closed in upon the autumnal landscape. In the little town they had
left behind, lights were beginning to gleam forth, but before them there
was only the dim glimmer of the wet road to guide them on their way. Now
and then a van passed them, jogging downwards to the town, or a
heavily-laden waggon with the carter slouching alongside, and growling
out Good-night as he went by.
All at once Jim nudged his mother, and pointed with a trembling finger.
“It’s him,” he whispered hoarsely. Against the uncertain grey background
of the road a broad-shouldered young figure came swinging into sight, the
outline of the broad-brimmed cavalier hat which marked the yeoman being
plainly perceptible. As he drew near to the couple he paused, peering
through the dusk.
“Hullo, Jim Hardy!” he cried gaily, “any message for Chrissy? I’m glad
to see you walking with a lady—I’ll tell her you’ve picked up another
sweetheart.”
“Get out with ’ee, do!” cried Mrs. Hardy, further relieving her lacerated
feelings by making a swoop at him with the market-basket.
Jim, however, pushed past her, and making a sudden dart at his
supplanter, endeavoured to knock the picturesque hat from his head. But
the yeoman was too quick for him: stepping swiftly to one side he allowed
his assailant’s blow to expend itself on the empty air, and then closing
with him, tripped him up and laid him neatly on his back in the miry
road.
“Good trick that, ain’t it?” he inquired pleasantly over his shoulder as
he pursued his way. “Picked it up from the Lancashires.”
Jim lay half stunned for a moment and then struggled up, foaming at the
mouth. He would have rushed in pursuit of his adversary, but that before
he was fairly on his feet his mother fell upon him, market-basket and
all, and held him firmly embraced until the tantalising sound of Trooper
Willcocks’ cheery whistle died away in the distance.
“Well, I tell you what it is,” grumbled the hapless lover, when he had at
last extricated himself. “We’ll have a try at that there image to-night,
or my name bain’t Jim Hardy.”
That evening accordingly, when the rheumatic old father had been hustled
off to bed, and the younger members of the family disposed of for the
night, Jim confronted his mother, holding a large slab of bees’ wax in
his hand.
“Where be the pins?” he asked in a fierce whisper.
“Lard, it do make I go all flittery-twittery—folks do tell such tales!
If ’twarn’t for sayin’ the words, I wouldn’t so much mind. But there—the
notion do make I go quite cold down the back.”
Meanwhile Jim, kneeling in front of the fire, had melted the wax
sufficiently to make it malleable, and now began to knead and mould it.
“Here be his legs,” he muttered to himself, “and now we must make thiccy
hat stick out.”
With a kind of groan his mother went over to a chest of drawers in a
corner of the room, and after fumbling for some time returned with a
paper of pins.
“It be very nigh ready,” whispered Jim working away. “Ugh! I’d like to
smash the cheeky face of ’en.” And with that he gave a fierce poke at
the small knob which did duty for the gallant yeoman’s countenance.
The figure being completed Mrs. Hardy bent downwards handing Jim the pins
one by one; her son viciously proceeding to insert as many as the effigy
would hold, and beginning by driving a particularly large and crooked one
into the middle of its chest. The blazing logs threw large grotesque
shadows of the stooping forms of the mother and son upon walls and
ceiling, and when presently Jim held out the bristling little image at
arm’s length, its fantastic reproduction, naturally much magnified, did
indeed appear to bear some weird resemblance to the person whom it was
meant to represent.
“Now then, Mother, say the words,” ordered Jim, as he set down the figure
on the hearth.
“Lard, I dursn’t!” whimpered Mrs. Hardy. “Say ’em yourself; I don’t wish
the poor young man no ’arm.”
Her son, after casting on her a withering glance, indicative of supreme
scorn at this despicable attempt to shirk responsibility, began slowly
and resolutely to repeat his impious incantation. By the time he had
finished, the miniature yeoman had considerably diminished in size, the
broad-brimmed hat had toppled to one side, and several of the pins had
dropped out. Jim straightened himself; his face was quite pale and his
brow was wet.
“Get along to bed, Mother,” he remarked, “I reckon he’ll do now. I d’
’low Trooper Willcocks ’ull not feel so very comfortable in the morning.”
But lo and behold! though on the following day nothing was left of the
effigy but a sticky indistinguishable mass of wax and pins, the very
first person whom Jim encountered on his way to work was Trooper
Willcocks, apparently in the best of health and spirits. Jim was
downcast, but not yet doubtful. He would give him a week, he thought;
but at the end of the week Trooper Willcocks looked better than ever, and
what was worse, was more frequently in Chrissy’s company.
The despairing lover next resolved to try a more orthodox method of
removing his obnoxious rival, and called upon the Rector, to whom he
unfolded his case with some difficulty, and who listened in evident
amusement, but not very great surprise.
“To tell you the truth, Hardy,” he remarked, throwing himself back in his
chair, “you are not the only sufferer. I think about six men have
already come to me on the very same errand.”
“Six chaps come to ye about Chrissy Baverstock?” stammered Jim, purple in
the face with anguish.
“Not about Chrissy Baverstock—if I remember aright each had a complaint
to make about a different young woman, but it was always the same man.
He must be a redoubtable fellow, this yeoman of yours.”
“He bain’t none o’ mine,” retorted Jim, “an’ I can’t think whatever the
maids do see in him. I didn’t know there was more nor one,” he added
reflectively, while a ray of hope seemed to illuminate his visage.
“I am very sorry for you, but I’m afraid I can’t help you. You see
Willcocks is no parishioner of mine. And though I have spoken to some of
the girls in question, my words seem to have no effect. Their heads are
turned, I think, by his tales of battles and dangers and hairbreadth
escapes. They make a hero of him. But console yourself. After all
there is safety in numbers.”
“’Ees,” agreed Jim meditatively. “If there’s six of us, we ought to be
able to do summat.”
It was late when he left the rectory, and he bent his steps immediately
to a small hostelry in the town, which he occasionally patronised, but
which the condition of his spirits had not permitted him to frequent of
late, dreading as he did the facetious remarks of his cronies.
On pushing open the swing door, he found himself at once in the midst of
a party of heated disputants, and the first phrase which greeted his ears
revealed that the subject of the argument was the very one which occupied
his own thoughts.
“I d’ ’low I’d knock that there blasted, broad-brimmed hat off his head
so soon as I’d look at en—and his head too if it comes to that.”
“Ah!” growled another, “I be pure sorry they Boers haven’t a-done it for
en. I can’t believe they be such good shots as they do say, or they’d
ha’ had it off afore now, wi’ their guns and their cannons. It be always
a poppin’ up where it bain’t wanted.”
“Haw—haw,” chimed in a third voice, “I d’ ’low Trooper Willcocks’ head
were a deal too nigh Rosie Adlam’s last night to suit ’ee, Tom. Ah,
’twas a very tender sight, goin’ along by the top of the hedge—d’you
mind, Billy?”
“An’ poor Chrissy Baverstock standin’ all alone at the corner of the
lane, fit to bu’st wi’ jealousy—why that’s Jim Hardy, bain’t it? We was
just a-talkin’ o’ your girl, Jim; ’tis a pity you weren’t about last
night—ye mid ha’ had a chance, for Trooper Willcocks was givin’ Rosie a
turn.”
Jim breathed a benediction, equally applicable to all the parties in
question, and elbowed his way to the front.
“He’s took up wi’ Rosie now, has he?” he inquired, “’twon’t last—nay,
’twon’t last, sure. She never were fit to hold a candle to Chrissy.”
Rosie’s discarded young man was still sufficiently susceptible where she
was concerned to be disposed to take up the cudgels in her defence, and
was opening his mouth to make some angry rejoinder, when he was prevented
by the first speaker, who, removing a long clay pipe from his mouth, and
waving it solemnly in the air, commanded silence.
“Boys,” he said, “this here bain’t no time for quarrelling. As we was
a-sayin’ afore Jim Hardy come in, summat must be done. It bain’t only
Chrissy and Rosie—it’s every maid in the whole countryside. So soon as
ever that there chap comes in sight, in his old yaller coat and breeches,
and them there bandaged legs, and cockin’ his hat so knowin’ over his
eye, the maids goes fair silly. I’ve seen it myself,” he added
feelingly.
“Poor Sam!” cried out a voice from the rear. “What? ye don’t mean to say
as your Mary—”
“Never you mind my Mary,” interrupted Sam loftily, “the question’s this.
This here man’s a public noosance, and as such must be removed; now, how
be we to remove en?”
“Parson can’t make en shift,” murmured Tom dolefully.
“I d’ ’low a witch ’ud not have no power over he,” said Jim, thinking
ruefully of his unsuccessful attempt with the bees’ wax.
“An’ it don’t seem to answer to go fightin’ of he, neither,” remarked
Tom, who had a very noticeable black eye.
“I was a-wonderin’,” pursued Sam, “if we couldn’t someways ha’ the law on
him. He mid be run in for trespassin’ maybe, or for makin’ away wi’
other folks’ property—meanin’ the maids’ ’earts, do ’ee see? ha! ha!”
“Lard, what a notion!” cried Jim. “Why the maids theirselves would take
his part, sayin’ they gived ’em to en willin’. That’s no use. What I
say is, Here be six on us, let’s go at en all together an’ duck en. That
’ud maybe cool en a bit.”
A young man who had for some time been standing on the outskirts of the
group silently listening, now came forward, throwing out his hand to
command attention. He was a sharp-featured youth with cunning little
eyes and a sly smile.
“Beg pardon for interrupting,” he began, “but if you think of callin’ in
the aid of the law, I shall be ’appy to advise ye.”
“Why, ’tis the lawyer chap,” said Tom. “He ought to know summat; he’s
been apeggin’ away at a desk long enough.”
Mr. Samuel Cross, who had indeed been clerk to the Branston lawyer for
two or three years, and who was occasionally not averse to giving a
little legal advice on his own account, unknown to his principal, was
hailed on the present occasion with respectful satisfaction. Seating
himself on a corner of the deal table round which the group had gathered,
and swinging his little legs backwards and forwards, he surveyed the
party with twinkling eyes.
“First an’ _foremost_,” he began, “your notion, Jim Hardy, must be
dismissed at once. Duck a man who wears the Queen’s uniform? Why the
whole country would be up in arms? Sam’s idea is better, but I don’t
quite see how we could make it ‘trespass,’ nor yet ‘appropriation of
property’. The young ladies, as Jim truly said, the young ladies would
be against us there. We might do something in the way of ‘undue
influence,’ perhaps,” meditatively, “but the best of all would be a
‘Breach of Prom.’.”
“What’s that?” cried several voices, while Tom, scratching his head,
remarked, “I don’t quite take ’ee.”
“Why, look ’ere, this chap’s been making up to six gals at the same
time—or perhaps they’ve bin a-makin’ up to him—anyhow, whichever way ye
put it, every gal in the place is running after him. Well, he can’t
possibly marry them all, don’t ye see? The thing ’ud be to induce one of
these here disapp’inted gals to threaten to take an action against him
for Breach of Promise of Marriage. Nothing in the world frightens a man
so much as the notion of an action for ‘Breach’.”
The other Sam slapped his thigh and roared with laughter. “Well done,”
he cried. “Rabbit me, it do take a lawyer to think of they things.”
The rest, however, looked dubious. Each one thought of his own
sweetheart, and mentally resolved that she should never be permitted to
sacrifice herself for the public weal.
“’Ees,” said Tom hesitatingly, voicing the general sentiment after a
pause. “It do sound right enough, but the question is—which maid is it
to be?”
“Oh, that’s easily answered,” returned Cross, waving his pipe airily.
“Which is the staidest an’ ugliest?”
There was a simultaneous outcry; the maidens of Branston and the
neighbourhood were apparently each and all in the flower of youth and
beauty. Sharp words were exchanged, however. Tom, while defending Rosie
from the imputed cast in her eye, took occasion to animadvert on Mary’s
carroty locks, and the last-named damsel’s admirer nearly came to blows
with Jim on the subject of Chrissy’s age, he asserting that she was a
staid girl, while her lover stoutly declared that she was not yet
five-and-twenty.
Just as the hubbub was at its height, an elderly man, who had been
smoking in silent amusement in the corner of the room, remarked that if
they were on the look-out for an ill-favoured sort o’ body, a bit on in
years, they couldn’t do better than see what could be made of Anne Clarke
of the “Roebuck”.
“I seed Trooper Willcocks wi’ his arm round her waist t’other day,” he
added. “Him an’ a couple more young sparks come in for a glass—and
Willcocks had had a drop too much already. He’d got into the way o’
love-making, d’ye see, and she was the only maid handy, so he made up to
her, bein’ too far gone to see the difference. If he didn’t begin
palaverin’, an’ tellin’ her cock-an’-bull stories about his adventures
out there at the war, and how he longed for faymale love an’ sympathy.
His arm was round her waist, I tell ’ee, before his first pint was
drunk!”
Samuel Cross jumped off the table, his little eyes dancing in his head.
“The very thing,” he cried rapturously. “Boys, we’ll make a grand job of
this. It will work up to a lovely case. But Mum’s the word,
remember—the game will be spoilt if a hint of it gets out. Cheer up,
lovers all, you’ll get your sweethearts back, I promise you. If Trooper
Willcocks doesn’t show a clean pair of heels before long, I’m a
Dutchman.”
The Roebuck Inn was a somewhat dreary-looking little hostelry, about a
mile away from the town of Branston. It was situated in a kind of fold
in the downs, a hollow between two vast undulating tracts of green. A
handful of thatched cottages flanked it, and the river ran so near that
the premises of the Roebuck were regularly flooded once or twice a year
when “the springs rose”.
The landlord of the little tumble-down place took these visitations very
philosophically: indeed it was noticeable that his spirits were uplifted
in proportion to the rising of the springs, knowing, as he had reason to
do, that this watery rising habitually produced elevation of another kind
among his customers. For when one’s fields are flooded and one’s spirits
damped, one is all the better able to appreciate an exhilarating glass,
particularly when that glass is partaken of under peculiar and
mirth-producing circumstances.
When Billy Clarke’s lower premises were under water, the topers were
forced to migrate upstairs to the biggest bedroom, and there with a
roaring fire in the tiny grate, packed themselves side by side upon the
ancient four-post bed, and amid uproarious laughter devised every
conceivable pretext for sending cross-grained Anne creaking down the
slippery stairs, and clicking and sliding about on her pattens on the wet
tiles below. The strife between her cupidity and her ill-temper was an
endless source of amusement to her clients; Anne Clarke would walk a mile
for twopence, it was said, but she took it out in “language”.
The dusk was gathering when Samuel Cross called upon this damsel, and,
though “the water had been out” a few days before, it had now partially
subsided. The “barton,” to be sure, was still more like a lake than a
farm-yard, and Billy’s two cows, standing knee-deep in a dark slimy mess
which once had been a manure heap of more than respectable dimensions,
looked very forlorn and wretched. Anne, still clinking about on her
pattens, wore a particularly forbidding expression on her frosty face as
she paused on her way from the clothes-line, a basket of linen poised on
her hip, to return the visitor’s salutation.
“’Tother way to the tap-room,” she added ungraciously.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Clarke. I come on a very different matter—a
very delic_ate_ matter, and one which nearly concerns you.”
Anne fixed her most tractable eye upon him and considered; after a few
minutes a light appeared to break in on her, and her face became almost
pleasant.
“I d’ ’low ye be the lawyer feller, bain’t ye? Have ’ee come to say
Father or me’s come in to a legacy?”
“Not exactly that, Miss Clarke, though I shouldn’t say there wasn’t money
in it. You will find, Miss, that it will be to your advantage to place
entire confidence in me.”
Anne hitched the basket a little higher up on her hip, assisting the
operation by a jerk of her bony knee, and stared harder than ever; even
the unmanageable eye assuming an expression of lively interest which was
positively uncanny.
“What be to do?” she asked breathlessly.
Samuel came closer, laid one hand on the cold, damp, red arm which
encircled the basket, and whispered mysteriously.
“It concerns your affections, Miss Clarke. Your woman’s ’eart, what have
been cruelly trifled with.”
“Get out!” returned Miss Clarke succinctly and fiercely. “Don’t ’ee
think ye can come a-gammonin’ o’ me. I’m up to ye an’ your tricks. Be
off this minute, or I’ll—”
“Now, now, my good lady, be patient,” cried Samuel, starting back, well
out of reach of the basket, which the irate damsel had lifted
suspiciously high. “I have come here in your interest, I assure you. I
have come to make a suggestion which is entirely to your advantage, and
which will not only avenge your outraged feelin’s, but put money in your
pocket. But you must listen to me—you must allow me to explain; moreover
you must trust in me.”
Anne hitched up her basket again and jerked her thumb in the direction of
the house.
“Will ’ee come in?” she inquired; and without waiting for a reply led the
way through the yard, over a kind of wooden dam which had been placed
across the doorway, and finally into the damp and deserted tap-room,
where an evil-smelling paraffin lamp was already burning. Having set
down her burden and closed the door, she turned and faced the lawyer’s
clerk.
“Now then, what is it?”
“Miss Clarke,” began Samuel respectfully and mysteriously, “a rumour has
reached me of the villainous way in which Trooper Willcocks has trifled
with your feelin’s. Now wait a bit, now wait a bit—” uplifting one hand
as Anne was about to make some wrathful rejoinder. “You’d be quite in
the right to object to my intrudin’ on so delic_ate_ a matter if there
weren’t a _business_ side to it, but ye see there is a business side and
that’s what I’ve come about. There’s woman’s rights as well as woman’s
feelin’s. Ah, if it wasn’t for that, Miss Clarke, maybe some of us gay
young men would find your sex even more _un_resistible than we do
already. But the notion of a Breach of Prom., Miss, is enough to steady
the liveliest of us.” He leered at her out of his cunning little eyes,
and continued emphatically: “Maybe you didn’t know, Miss Clarke, as when
a good-for-nothing young chap same as Trooper Willcocks comes
philandering arter a lady that lady can have the law on him if he goes
too far. Now there’s a strange report in the town what says Trooper
Willcocks’ arm were round your waist t’other night, Miss Clarke.”
Anne squinted down sideways at the singularly unattractive portion of her
person just alluded to, as though wondering how Trooper Willcocks’ arm
had ever got there; and indeed such a proceeding indicated an almost
sublime degree of courage on the part of the gallant yeoman.
“’Twas a very tender act,” pursued Cross, “but a tender act don’t count
for nothin’ by itself without the words are compromisin’. Now, can you
call to mind anythin’ as Trooper Willcocks _said_, Miss Clarke?”
“An’ supposin’ I did I’d maybe have no fancy for repeatin’ of ’em,”
retorted the lady with a faint increase of colour in her sallow cheeks.
“He’d had a drop too much, Trooper Willcocks had, and he did give I a lot
of impidence. _I_ didn’t take no notice of ’em—he did make I laugh at
the time I d’ ’low, but—”
Cross pricked up his ears. Anne’s admission denoted that the impression
produced by the warrior had been even greater than he had supposed, for
she was not as a rule given to seeing the humorous side of things.
“’Tis this way, d’ye see,” he said, insinuatingly. “If we can prove as
Trooper Willcocks went beyond a certain p’int in his lovin’ speeches we
can take a action again him.”
“An’ what ’ud be the good o’ that?”
“Wait a bit, Miss, wait a bit!” said Samuel, sawing the air again with
his lean forefinger. “We can take a action again him, as I say, what
will force him either to lead you to the altar or to pay you a
substantial sum of money as damages.”
A slow smile broke over Anne’s ill-favoured face.
“D’ye mean him an’ me ’ud have to get married?” she inquired.
“Either that or, supposin’ the villain wasn’t willin’—an’ he _is_ a
villain, Miss Clarke, a low deceivin’ rascal—he’d have to put his hand in
his pocket and _fork_ out, Miss. Either way, d’ye see, you’d be the
gainer. But all _de_pends upon your memory. Now, in confidence, Miss
Clarke, in strict confidence to a _h_onourable man, tell me, what did
Trooper Willcocks say to you?”
“He called I a beauty two or three times,” returned Anne, after
cogitating for a moment.
“Ah,” said Cross, “a—a nat’ral remark of course, but not compromising.
He said more than that, I’m sure, Miss Clarke.”
“He said,” she went on, knitting her brows in the effort to recall the
trooper’s blandishments, “he said he wondered I’d remained single till
now. The bwoys didn’t know what they was about, he said.”
“That’s more like it!” cried Samuel, snapping his fingers joyfully.
“Let’s follow up that tack, Miss Clarke, if _you_ please. Did he chance
to say now as _he_ had better taste? That ’ud be a very likely remark
for him to make, ye know. Don’t you recollect somethin’ of that sort,
now?”
“Nay,” said Anne, shaking her head, “I can’t call to mind as he did. He
said as if my eyes was a pair there wouldn’t be their match in the
country.”
“Depend upon it you’ve made a mistake there, Miss,” said Cross, leaning
forward and speaking with increased earnestness. “I dessay, bein’ a bit
flurried at the time, you didn’t take reg’lar notice; but that ’ud be a
silly thing for any one to say. You might be sure his remark really was
somethin’ like this: ‘You an’ I should be a pair, Miss; I’ve come to make
a match in the country.’ You see he _has_ come down to the country, and
what more likely than that he’s come on purpose to find a wife?”
Anne, fixing her interlocutor with one of the eyes alluded to in the
gallant speech she had quoted, and rubbing her hands together, began to
think it was very likely.
“He—he kissed you, I s’pose, Miss Clarke?” went on the inquisitor
presently. “He! he! he! ’Tis most unfair to ax such questions, but—”
“He went for to do it once, but I did smack his face for ’en an’ he
didn’t try no more,” put in Anne a trifle regretfully. “’Twould ha’ been
better, I s’pose, if he had?”
“Well, it would have been more compromising, but the great thing to go on
is what he _said_. Try and remember that, Miss. He told you about the
war an’ how lonesome he was out there, didn’t he? ‘No lovin’ faymales
there,’ he said; so they tell me.”
“’E-es,” agreed Anne. “He did say, ‘Little did I think out there on the
veldt as I should so soon have my arm about a little charmer like you’.”
“Did he?” said Cross eagerly.
“’E-es. ‘Lucky wound,’ says he, ‘to give I this chance!’ An’ he did say
as if he were sent out again I should have to go too, for he couldn’t
never stand the thought of sayin’ good-bye to I.”
“That ’ull do!” shouted Samuel, leaping from his chair and positively
crowing with glee. “Now we’ve got him. He said you must go too—meanin’,
of course, as his bride. That’s enough. Shake hands, Miss Clarke! We
have got him fairly cornered now. Marriage or money—one or t’other. If
I was you I’d go in for the money, Miss Clarke.”
Anne turned to him with a simper that sent a cold shiver down his back.
“I’m not so sure o’ that,” she said.
“Good Lord,” muttered Cross to himself, “I wish she’d smile like that at
Willcocks. The job ’ud be done then. It ’ud be enough to rout an army.
Well, you leave the matter in my hands,” he continued aloud. “I’ll pull
it through, you’ll see. You’ll hear from me before long, Miss Clarke.”
With that he took his leave, and was presently swallowed up in the
darkness without. As he walked he cogitated:—
“I’ve half a mind to let it come to a action after all; there really
seems to be the makin’s of it, and it ’ud give me a lift with the
guv’nor. Lord, the old gal’s a caution. Trooper Willcocks ’ll shake in
his shoes.”
He grinned to himself at the recollection of Anne’s face, and mimicked
her last speech aloud: “‘I’m not so sure o’ that’. He! he! . . . It ’ud
be the best joke ever known in Branston if it did come off, and the
guv’nor ’d make the most of it. He’s uncommon tightfisted, the guv’nor
is, though”—here his face clouded over—“none of the profits ’ud come my
way I don’t think; best see what can be made out o’ the other chaps,
p’r’aps. Come, we’ll work it some way. Blest if I’m going to have my
long walk an’ my long talk for nothin’.”
A very anxious little group gathered round Mr. Cross when he entered the
bar of the Three Choughs.
“Well?” cried Jim Hardy breathlessly.
“Well,” echoed Cross, wagging his head, “I think we’ve got our gentleman
in a tight place, jest about! There he’ve been triflin’ with that tender
young creetur yonder at the Roebuck that shameful that she’s determined
to bring him to book. Called her his little charmer, he did—”
Here there was a roar of laughter.
“And invited her to go back to South Africa with him,” resumed Samuel.
“Yes, she’s got a good case, no doubt o’ that. But the question is, how
far any o’ you ’ull be the better for it?”
“How’s that?” cried Jim, while the other love-sick swains nudged each
other, and murmured indignantly.
“Why, I think she’s fair bent on taking out that action,” responded their
legal adviser, “and that o’ course will keep him in the neighbourhood.
Poor chap, it ’ull take your young ladies all their time to console him,
I should think.”
The listeners stared at him in blank dismay; he wagged his head again,
very knowingly, and crossed one leg over the other. “Yes,” he repeated
reflectively, “Anne Clarke has got about as good a case as ever I heard
on, and I advised her to follow it up.”
“You advised her,” shouted Tom indignantly. “Come, that’s a pretty
thing. I thought you was on our side, Sam’el Cross.”
“A lawyer,” returned Samuel sententiously, “a lawyer is on the side what
pays best; an’ this here job ought to be good for a rise for me. ’Twill
be but fair that I should share some of the governor’s pickings, and
he’ll make a good thing out of it, you might be sure.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” said one of the lovers dolefully. “He be uncommon
near, your boss be, and it do seem ’ard o’ you, Sam’el, to go a-desertin’
of we, arter leadin’ us on, so to speak. You could stop Anne Clarke from
takin’ out this here summons or whatever it be, so soon as look at her,
couldn’t ’ee now?”
“I dessay I could,” said Cross calmly.
“And if you was to go and threaten Willcocks with the notion of it, he’d
be off like a shot, that’s easy seen.”
“So ’tis,” agreed the clerk. “I reckon he’d skip if I was to tell him
all that his little charmer said to-day. He! He!”
“Well then,” said Jim, and paused—“that’s how it is,” he added lamely.
“The job ’ud be easy done.”
“Jus’ so,” responded Cross. “The easiest thing in the world. But I’m
not for undertaking no jobs as are not worth my while. Now I might get
rid o’ Trooper Willcocks for a five-pun’ note, not less.”
A pause of consternation ensued; then Jim Hardy thumped the table with
his fist. “I think it ’ud be easier and cheaper to break the feller’s
boanes straight off,” he shouted.
Sam extended a forefinger in his direction, “You look out, Jim! You
should know better nor say such things in the hearin’ o’ them whose dooty
it is to uphold the law. If any harm comes to Trooper Willcocks, I shall
be bound in conscience to give my evidence. Now, gentlemen, what be all
looking so glum for? Five pound ain’t such a terror! It needn’t be paid
in a note if it comes to that, nor all at the one time. Half within the
week, say, an’ t’other half at the end o’ the month. I wouldn’t be hard
with you, an’ Trooper Willcocks would certainly be a good riddance.”
They gathered round him again and after much argument, some laughter, and
a good deal of swearing, came to terms with Samuel, who carried away with
him that night a curious document, signed by half a dozen names, and
drawn up entirely to his own satisfaction.
Trooper Willcocks was swaggering about just outside the church door on
the following Sunday, when he was accosted by Samuel Cross.
“I was looking for you,” began the latter, drawing him aside. “I have a
word or two to say to you, Mr. Willcocks.”
“Won’t another day do?” returned the yeoman. “The service will be over
in a few minutes, and I’m waitin’ for a young lady.”
“_Indeed_,” said Sam, “might I make so bold as to inquire if the lady’s
name is Miss Anne Clarke?”
“Anne Clarke,” repeated the trooper vacantly; the name awakened no
response in his memory.
“Why, don’t you know,” cried Sam, “your _little charmer_ of the Roebuck
Inn—a regular _beauty_, Mr. Willcocks. _Your_ beauty, you know. Why I
understood you was a-going to take her to South Africa wi’ you.”
“What the devil are you at?” cried Willcocks irritably. “What do you
mean by talking all that rubbish to me?”
“No you don’t,” cried Sam, “I’m not to be put off like that, Trooper
Willcocks. I’m here on behalf of that very lady—if the matter can be
settled private, so much the better; if not, she’s determined to take it
into court.”
A sudden pallor overspread the yeoman’s visage, perceptible even beneath
its tan; he was a soft young fellow in spite of all his daring, and the
very name of the law-courts terrified him.
“The fact is,” said Cross jovially, “you haven’t no very clear
rec’lection of it, I dessay—you’re such a one with the ladies aren’t you?
But sometimes a chap goes too far—an’ when it comes to making a reg’lar
proposal of marriage—you’ll find you’ll have to stick to it, or else be
let in for more than you bargained for.”
“But really,” said the other, almost piteously, “I’ve no notion at all o’
what you’re drivin’ at. Who is Anne Clarke, an’ where did I meet her?”
Sam drew nearer and button-holed him confidentially.
“You know the Roebuck Inn, over the downs yonder? You went there last
Toosday with one or two friends—an’ you carried on fearful with the old
man’s daughter—a beauty, I tell ye. You was a bit on at the time, but
you must remember.”
“I remember goin’ there,” admitted Willcocks, “but I can’t call to mind
no young gal.”
“That’s a pity,” returned Sam. “She knows all about you, I can tell you,
and she have it settled in her own mind to consult our guv’nor to-morrow,
without you come to some amicable arrangement first. ‘Money or
Matrimony,’ says she.”
“Matrimony?” ejaculated Willcocks, his jaw dropping.
“Ye-es, matrimony,” repeated Sam, darting a sidelong glance at his
victim, and meditatively scratching his jaw. “I rather think the lady’s
fancy is set that way. You should ha’ seen her smile when we talked on
it.”
“What in the name of fortun’ am I to do?” inquired the yeoman, with a
helpless glance; a mouse might as profitably have appealed to the cat in
whose claws it found itself.
“The folks are comin’ out o’ church now,” cried Cross eagerly. “Just you
step in under this here archway, Trooper, an’ look out cautious, but keep
out o’ sight yourself. I shouldn’t wonder if Miss Clarke was here—I’ll
p’int her out to you.”
The distracted yeoman obeyed, and presently a stream of people issued
from the porch on the opposite side of the road, breaking up for the most
part into little knots of twos and threes, though a few figures made
their way homewards unescorted. While anxiously on the look out for the
mysterious damsel of the Roebuck, Trooper Willcocks witnessed one or two
little episodes which filled him with rage and mortification. Pretty
Chrissy Baverstock, for instance, after loitering on the steps for quite
five minutes, craning a slender neck and tossing her fair curls, was
accosted by a bluff-looking labouring fellow, Jim Hardy in fact, who,
after a few minutes’ parley, drew her arm through his, and walked away
with her. Rosy-cheeked Mary Miles went through the same preliminary
period of waiting and head-tossing, but departed alone, her handkerchief
to her eyes. The over-soft heart of Trooper Willcocks was wrung within
him at the sight.
But now Samuel Cross recalled his wandering attention by an admonitory
dig: “That’s her,” he murmured.
Willcocks peered cautiously out and presently drew his head inwards with
a jerk, his face as white as ashes.
“That one,” he gasped. “That old, skinny, squinting—good Lord, surely I
never said anything in the way o’ sweetheartin’ to her.”
“You only axed her to marry you—before witnesses,” returned the
implacable Samuel. “There’s no way out of it, man. She’ll have the law
on you without you lead her to the altar.”
“I was awful far gone on Toosday night I remember,” groaned the luckless
yeoman, wiping a clammy brow. “But a man shouldn’t be held accountable
for what he says when he’s that way.”
“Lor’ bless you,” returned Cross cheerfully, “the law don’t take no
account of such excuses. You weren’t incapable, you see; you was able to
walk about, an’ put your arm round her waist an’ that.”
“Ugh! I must ha’ been far gone.”
“I don’t know about that. Says you, ‘My beauty,’ says you, ‘my little
charmer, you an’ me must be a pair,’ says you; ‘I’ve come to the country
to look for my match,’ says you.’”
“I couldn’t have said that,” interrupted Willcocks. “’Tisn’t true to
begin with. I am going out to the front in a few weeks.”
“Ah,” commented Sam, “you told her that, an’ you asked her to go back
with you.”
“But hang it, man, the thing’s impossible—ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous! I should just think it was. You’ll be the laughin’-stock
of the countryside! What will Chrissy Baverstock say—an’ Mary an’ Rosie,
an’ the rest of them, and all their fellows when it comes out in court?
And it certainly will, without you marry her.”
“Good Lord,” cried poor Willcocks, now quite unnerved, “is there no way
out of it? Look here, I know you’re a good chap—I—I’d make it worth your
while. I’ve got a few pounds. Couldn’t you just—just hush it up?”
Sam pursed up his mouth into whistling form.
“It might be done—but it’s a bit dangerous,” he said dubiously. “If my
governor was to get on the scent—but there, I’ll try and keep him off it,
and if you’ll hand over them few pounds, I dessay I could stop old Anne
Clarke’s mouth.”
“And what—what must I do?” queried the trooper, his teeth chattering in
his head.
“Cut,” said Sam briefly. “Cut off home, an’ never let yourself be seen
in this part of the country again—else as sure as I’m alive, Anne Clarke
will have you!”
* * * * *
There was jubilee and surprise in Branston on the following day when it
became known, through the medium of Mr. Samuel Cross, that Trooper
Willcocks had flown; and many were the surmises among the uninitiated as
to the cause of his sudden departure. Some opined that he had been
ordered again to the front, others that he was engaged to a young lady at
Capetown. Anne Clarke became a trifle more sour as to face, and short as
to temper than before, but whatever means the lawyer’s clerk employed for
stopping her mouth, it is certain that Trooper Willcocks’ few pounds
never found their way to her pocket.