Aunt Barbree Furnace was a widow woman, and held Merry-Garden upon a
tenancy of a kind you don't often come across nowadays--and good riddance
to it!--though common enough when I was a boy. The whole lease was but
for three pounds a year for the term of three lives--her husband, William
John Furnace; her husband's younger sister Tryphena, that had married a
man called Jewell and buried him within six months; and Tryphena's only
child Ferdinando, otherwise known as Nandy. When the lease was drawn, all
three lives seemed good enough for another fifty years. The Furnaces came
of a long-lived stock, and William John with any ordinary care might hope
to reach eighty. His sister had been specially put into the lease on the
strength of her constitution; and six months of married life had given her
a distaste for it, which made things all the safer. As for Nandy, there's
always a risk, of course, with very young lives, 'specially with boys:
but if he did happen to pull through, 'twas like as not he might lengthen
out the lease for another thirty years.
At any rate Mr. and Mrs. Furnace took the risk with a cheerful mind.
The woman came from Saltash, where she and her mother had driven a
thriving trade in cockles and other shellfish, particularly with the Royal
Marines; and being a busy spirit and childless, she hit on the notion of
turning her old trade to account. Her husband, William John, had tilled
Merry-Garden and stocked it with fruits and sallets with no eye but to the
sale of them in Saltash market. But the house was handy for
pleasure-takers by water, and by and by the board she put up--
_Mrs. Barbree Furnace. Cockles and Cream in Season. Water Boiled and Tea
if You Wish_--attracted the picnickers by scores; and the picnickers began
to ask for fruit with their teas, till William John, at his wife's advice,
planted half an acre of strawberries, and laid out another half-acre in
currant and raspberry bushes. By this time, too, the cherry-trees were
beginning to yield. So by little and little, feeling sure of their lease,
they extended the business. William John, one winter, put up a brand-new
chimney, and bought three cows which he pastured up along in the meadow
behind the woods; and next spring the pair hung out a fresh board and
painted on it--_Furnace's Merry-Garden Tea-House. Patronised by the Naval
and Military. Teas, with Fruit and Cream, Sixpence per head_: and another
board which they hoisted in the mazzard-season, saying--_Sixpence at the
Gate, and eat so Much as you Mind to. All are Welcome_. With all this,
Aunt Barbree (as she came to be called) didn't neglect the cockles, which
were her native trade. In busy times she could afford to hire over one of
the Saltash fish-women--the Johnses or the Glanvilles; you'll have heard
of them, maybe?--to lend her a hand: but in anything like a slack season
she'd be down at low water, with her petticoat trussed over her knees,
raking cockles with her own hands. Yes, yes, a powerful, a remarkable
woman! and a pity it was (I've heard my mother say) to see such a healthy,
strong couple prospering in all they touched, and hauling in money
hand-over-fist, with neither chick nor child to leave it to.
Prosper they did, at any rate; and terrible popular the place became with
the Fleet and the Army, till by the year eighteen-nought-five--the same in
which Admiral Nelson fought the Battle of Trafalgar--there wasn't an
officer in either service that had ever found himself at Plymouth, but
could tell something of Merry-Garden and its teas, with their cockles and
cream and strawberries in June and mazzards in July month. By this time
the Furnaces had built a new landing-quay--the same to which your boat is
moored at this moment--and rigged up arbours and come-sit-by-me's in every
corner of the garden and under every plum-tree and laylock-bush: for
William John was extending his season by degrees, and had gone so far as
to set up a board in May-time by Admiral's Hard, down at Devonport, and on
it '_Officers of the United Services will Kindly take Notice that the Lay
locks in Merry-Garden are in Bloom. Cockles Warranted, and Cream from
best Channel Island Cows. Patronised also by the Nobility and Gentry of
Plymouth, Plymouth Dock, Saltash, and East Cornwall_.'
You may wonder that the Furnaces' success didn't encourage others to set
up in opposition? But a cherry-garden isn't grown in a day. Mrs. Furnace
had dropped into it (so to speak) when the trees that William John had
planted were already on the way to yield good profit. Also she was a
woman who knew how to keep a pleasure-garden decent, however near it might
lie to a great town and a naval port. Simple woman though she seemed, she
understood scandal.
But in the midst of life we are in death. One day, at the height of his
prosperity, William John drove over to Menheniot Churchtown (where his
sister Tryphena resided with her boy Nandy and kept a general shop) to
fetch them over to Merry-Garden for a visit. Aunt Barbree loved children,
you understand: besides which, Tryphena's husband had left her poor, and
'twas the first week in August after a good season, and the mazzards
wanted eating if they weren't to perish for want of it. . . . So William
John, who by this time was rich enough to set up a tax-cart, but
inexperienced to manage it, drove over to Menheniot and fetched his sister
and the boy: and on the way home the horse bolted and scattered the lot,
with the result that William John was flung against a milestone and sister
Tryphena across a hedge. The pair succumbed to their injuries: but the
boy Nandy (aged fourteen) was picked up with no worse than a stunning, and
a bump at the back of his head which hardened so that he was ever
afterwards able to crack nuts with it, and even Brazil nuts, by hammering
with his skull against a door or any other suitable object. Of course,
when they picked him up he hadn't a notion he possessed any such gift.
Well here, as you might say, was a pretty kettle of fish for Aunt Barbree.
Here not only was a loving husband killed, and a sister-in-law, but at one
stroke two out of the three healthy lives on which the whole lease of
Merry-Garden depended. She mourned William John for his own sake,
because, as husbands go, she had reason to regret him; and Tryphena
Jewell, for a poor relation, had never been pushing. Tryphena's fault
rather had been that she gave herself airs. Having no money to speak of,
she stood up against Aunt Barbree's riches by flaunting herself as a
mother: "though," as Aunt Barbree would complain to her husband, "I can't
see what she finds uncommon in the child, unless 'tis the number of his
pimples: and I've a mind, the next time, to recommend Wessel's
Antiscorbutic Drops. The boy looks unhealthy: and, come to think of it,
with his life in the lease, 'tis only due to ourselves to advise the
woman." She only said this to ease her feelings: but the truth was (and
William John knew it) she yearned for a child of her own, even to the
extent sometimes of wanting to adopt one.
Well, this terrible accident not only widowed the poor soul, but brought
all her little jealousies, as you might say, home to roost. She couldn't
abide Nandy, and Nandy had reached an age when boys aren't at their best.
But adopt him she had to; and, what tried her worse, she was forced to
look after his health with more than a mother's care. For, outside of a
stockingful of guineas, all her capital was sunk in Merry-Garden, and all
Merry-Garden hung now on the boy's life.
The worst trial of all was that, somehow or other, Nandy got to know his
value and the reason of it, and from that day he gave Aunt Barbree no
peace. He wouldn't go to school; study gave him a headache. His mother
had taught him to read and write, but under Aunt Barbree's roof he learned
no more than he was minded to, and among the things he taught himself was
a tolerable imitation of a hacking cough. With this and the help of a
hollow tooth he could spit blood whenever he wanted a shilling.
He played this game for about six months, until the poor woman--who was
losing flesh with lying awake at night and wondering what would happen to
her when cast out in the cold world--fixed up her courage to know the
worst, and carried him off to a Plymouth doctor. The doctor advised her
to take the boy home and give him the strap.
Aunt Barbree applied this treatment for a time, but dropped it in the end.
The boy was growing too tall for it. The visit to the doctor, however,
worked like a miracle in one way.
"Auntie," said the penitent one day, "I'm feeling a different boy
altogether, this last week or two."
"I reckoned you would," said Aunt Barbree.
"My appetite's improving. Have you noticed my appetite?"
"Heaven is my witness!" said Aunt Barbree. The cherry season was
beginning. She had consulted with a friend of hers in Saltash, the wife
of a confectioner. It seems that apprentices in the confectionery trade
are allowed to eat pastry and lollypops without let or hindrance, until
they take a surfeit and are cured for ever after. Aunt Barbree was
beginning to wonder why the cure worked so slow in the case of fresh
fruit. "Heaven is my witness, I _have!_" said Aunt Barbree.
"There's a complete change coming over my constitution," said Nandy,
pensive-like. "I feel it hardening every day: and as for my skull, why--
talk about Brazil nuts!--I believe I could crack cherry-stones with it."
"I beg you won't try," pleaded Aunt Barbree, for this trick of Nandy's
always gave her the shivers.
"A head like mine was meant for something worthier than civil life.
I've been turnin' it over--"
"Turnin' _what_ over?"
"Things in general," said Nandy; "and the upshot is, I've a great mind to
'list for a sojer."
"The good Lord forbid!" cried Aunt Barbree.
"The Frenchies might shoot me, to be sure," Nandy allowed. "That's one
way of looking at it. But King George would take the risk o' that, and
give me a shilling down for it."
"O Nandy, Nandy--here's a shillin' for 'ee, if that's what you want!
But be a good boy, and don't talk so irreligious!"
Well, sir, the lad knew he had the whip-hand of the poor woman, and the
taller he grew the more the lazy good-for-nothing used it. Enlistment was
his trump card, and he went to the length of buying a drill-book and
practising the motions in odd corners of the garden, but always so that
his aunt should catch him at it. If she was slow in catching him, the
young villain would draw attention by calling out words from the manual in
a hollow voice, mixed up with desperate ones of his own composing--
"_At the word of command the rear rank steps back one pace, the whole
facing to the left, the left files then taking a side step to the left and
a pace to the rear. Ready, p'sent! Ha, what do I see afore me? Is't the
hated foeman?_"--and so on, and so on. Aunt Barbree, with tears in her
eyes, would purse out sums varying from sixpence to half a crown, coaxing
him to dismiss such murderous thoughts from his mind; and thereupon he'd
take another turn and mope, saying that it ill became a lad of his inches,
let alone his tremenjous spirit, to idle out his days while others were
dying for their country; to oblige his aunt he would stand it as long as
he could, but nobody need be surprised if he ended by drowning himself,
And this frightened Aunt Barbree almost worse than did his talk of
enlisting, and drove her one day, when Nandy had just turned seventeen,
to take a walk up the valley to consult Dr. Clatworthy.