Dan had gone in for building model boats; but after he had filled the
schoolroom with chips, which he expected Una to clear away, they turned
him out of doors and he took all his tools up the hill to Mr Springett’s
yard, where he knew he could make as much mess as he chose. Old Mr
Springett was a builder, contractor, and sanitary engineer, and
his yard, which opened off the village street, was always full of
interesting things. At one end of it was a long loft, reached by a
ladder, where he kept his iron-bound scaffold-planks, tins of paints,
pulleys, and odds and ends he had found in old houses. He would sit here
by the hour watching his carts as they loaded or unloaded in the yard
below, while Dan gouged and grunted at the carpenter’s bench near the
loft window. Mr Springett and Dan had always been particular friends,
for Mr Springett was so old he could remember when railways were being
made in the southern counties of England, and people were allowed to
drive dogs in carts.
One hot, still afternoon--the tar-paper on the roof smelt like
ships--Dan, in his shirt-sleeves, was smoothing down a new schooner’s
bow, and Mr Springett was talking of barns and houses he had built. He
said he never forgot any stick or stone he had ever handled, or any
man, woman, or child he had ever met. Just then he was very proud of the
Village Hall at the entrance of the village, which he had finished a few
weeks before.
‘An’ I don’t mind tellin’ you, Mus’ Dan,’ he said, ‘that the Hall will
be my last job top of this mortal earth. I didn’t make ten pounds--no,
nor yet five--out o’ the whole contrac’, but my name’s lettered on the
foundation stone--Ralph Springett, Builder--and the stone she’s bedded
on four foot good concrete. If she shifts any time these five hundred
years, I’ll sure-ly turn in my grave. I told the Lunnon architec’ so
when he come down to oversee my work.’
‘What did he say?’ Dan was sandpapering the schooner’s port bow.
‘Nothing. The Hall ain’t more than one of his small jobs for him, but
‘tain’t small to me, an’ my name is cut and lettered, frontin’ the
village street, I do hope an’ pray, for time everlastin’. You’ll want
the little round file for that holler in her bow. Who’s there?’ Mr
Springett turned stiffly in his chair.
A long pile of scaffold-planks ran down the centre of the loft. Dan
looked, and saw Hal o’ the Draft’s touzled head beyond them. [See ‘Hal
o’ the Draft’ in PUCK OF POOK’S HILL.]
‘Be you the builder of the Village Hall?’ he asked of Mr Springett.
‘I be,’ was the answer. ‘But if you want a job--’
Hal laughed. ‘No, faith!’ he said. ‘Only the Hall is as good and honest
a piece of work as I’ve ever run a rule over. So, being born hereabouts,
and being reckoned a master among masons, and accepted as a master
mason, I made bold to pay my brotherly respects to the builder.’
‘Aa--um!’ Mr Springett looked important. ‘I be a bit rusty, but I’ll try
ye!’
He asked Hal several curious questions, and the answers must have
pleased him, for he invited Hal to sit down. Hal moved up, always
keeping behind the pile of planks so that only his head showed, and sat
down on a trestle in the dark corner at the back of Mr Springett’s
desk. He took no notice of Dan, but talked at once to Mr Springett about
bricks, and cement, and lead and glass, and after a while Dan went on
with his work. He knew Mr Springett was pleased, because he tugged
his white sandy beard, and smoked his pipe in short puffs. The two
men seemed to agree about everything, but when grown-ups agree they
interrupt each other almost as much as if they were quarrelling. Hal
said something about workmen.
‘Why, that’s what I always say,’ Mr Springett cried. ‘A man who can only
do one thing, he’s but next-above-fool to the man that can’t do nothin’.
That’s where the Unions make their mistake.’
‘My thought to the very dot.’ Dan heard Hal slap his tight-hosed leg.
‘I’ve suffered ‘in my time from these same Guilds--Unions, d’you call
‘em? All their precious talk of the mysteries of their trades--why, what
does it come to?’
‘Nothin’! You’ve justabout hit it,’ said Mr Springett, and rammed his
hot tobacco with his thumb.
‘Take the art of wood-carving,’ Hal went on. He reached across the
planks, grabbed a wooden mallet, and moved his other hand as though he
wanted something. Mr Springett without a word passed him one of Dan’s
broad chisels. ‘Ah! Wood-carving, for example. If you can cut wood and
have a fair draft of what ye mean to do, a’ Heaven’s name take chisel
and maul and let drive at it, say I! You’ll soon find all the mystery,
forsooth, of wood-carving under your proper hand!’ Whack, came the
mallet on the chisel, and a sliver of wood curled up in front of it. Mr
Springett watched like an old raven.
‘All art is one, man--one!’ said Hal between whacks; ‘and to wait on
another man to finish out--’
‘To finish out your work ain’t no sense,’ Mr Springett cut in. ‘That’s
what I’m always sayin’ to the boy here.’ He nodded towards Dan. ‘That’s
what I said when I put the new wheel into Brewster’s Mill in Eighteen
hundred Seventy-two. I reckoned I was millwright enough for the job
‘thout bringin’ a man from Lunnon. An’ besides, dividin’ work eats up
profits, no bounds.’
Hal laughed his beautiful deep laugh, and Mr Springett joined in till
Dan laughed too.
‘You handle your tools, I can see,’ said Mr Springett. ‘I reckon, if
you’re any way like me, you’ve found yourself hindered by those--Guilds,
did you call ‘em?---Unions, we say.’
‘You may say so!’ Hal pointed to a white scar on his cheekbone. ‘This
is a remembrance from the Master watching-Foreman of Masons on Magdalen
Tower, because, please you, I dared to carve stone without their leave.
They said a stone had slipped from the cornice by accident.’
‘I know them accidents. There’s no way to disprove ‘em. An’ stones ain’t
the only things that slip,’ Mr Springett grunted. Hal went on:
‘I’ve seen a scaffold-plank keckle and shoot a too-clever workman thirty
foot on to the cold chancel floor below. And a rope can break--’ ‘Yes,
natural as nature; an’ lime’ll fly up in a man’s eyes without any breath
o’ wind sometimes,’ said Mr Springett. ‘But who’s to show ‘twasn’t a
accident?’
‘Who do these things?’ Dan asked, and straightened his back at the bench
as he turned the schooner end-for-end in the vice to get at her counter.
‘Them which don’t wish other men to work no better nor quicker than they
do,’ growled Mr Springett. ‘Don’t pinch her so hard in the vice, Mus’
Dan. Put a piece o’ rag in the jaws, or you’ll bruise her. More than
that’--he turned towards Hal--‘if a man has his private spite laid up
against you, the Unions give him his excuse for workin’ it off.’
‘Well I know it,’ said Hal.
‘They never let you go, them spiteful ones. I knowed a plasterer in
Eighteen hundred Sixty-one--down to the wells. He was a Frenchy--a bad
enemy he was.’ ‘I had mine too. He was an Italian, called Benedetto.
I met him first at Oxford on Magdalen Tower when I was learning my
trade-or trades, I should say. A bad enemy he was, as you say, but he
came to be my singular good friend,’ said Hal as he put down the mallet
and settled himself comfortably.
‘What might his trade have been--plastering’ Mr Springett asked.
‘Plastering of a sort. He worked in stucco--fresco we call it. Made
pictures on plaster. Not but what he had a fine sweep of the hand in
drawing. He’d take the long sides of a cloister, trowel on his stuff,
and roll out his great all-abroad pictures of saints and croppy-topped
trees quick as a webster unrolling cloth almost. Oh, Benedetto could
draw, but ‘a was a little-minded man, professing to be full of secrets
of colour or plaster--common tricks, all of ‘em--and his one single talk
was how Tom, Dick or Harry had stole this or t’other secret art from
him.’
‘I know that sort,’ said Mr Springett. ‘There’s no keeping peace or
making peace with such. An’ they’re mostly born an’ bone idle.’
‘True. Even his fellow-countrymen laughed at his jealousy. We two came
to loggerheads early on Magdalen Tower. I was a youngster then. Maybe I
spoke my mind about his work.’
‘You shouldn’t never do that.’ Mr Springett shook his head. ‘That sort
lay it up against you.’
‘True enough. This Benedetto did most specially. Body o’ me, the
man lived to hate me! But I always kept my eyes open on a plank or a
scaffold. I was mighty glad to be shut of him when he quarrelled with
his Guild foreman, and went off, nose in air, and paints under his arm.
But’--Hal leaned forward--‘if you hate a man or a man hates you--’
‘I know. You’re everlastin’ running acrost him,’ Mr Springett
interrupted. ‘Excuse me, sir.’ He leaned out of the window, and shouted
to a carter who was loading a cart with bricks.
‘Ain’t you no more sense than to heap ‘em up that way?’ he said. ‘Take
an’ throw a hundred of ‘em off. It’s more than the team can compass.
Throw ‘em off, I tell you, and make another trip for what’s left over.
Excuse me, sir. You was sayin’-’
‘I was saying that before the end of the year I went to Bury to
strengthen the lead-work in the great Abbey east window there.’
‘Now that’s just one of the things I’ve never done. But I mind there was
a cheap excursion to Chichester in Eighteen hundred Seventy-nine, an’
I went an’ watched ‘em leadin’ a won’erful fine window in Chichester
Cathedral. I stayed watchin’ till ‘twas time for us to go back. Dunno as
I had two drinks p’raps, all that day.’
Hal smiled. ‘At Bury, then, sure enough, I met my enemy Benedetto. He
had painted a picture in plaster on the south wall of the Refectory--a
noble place for a noble thing--a picture of Jonah.’
‘Ah! Jonah an’ his whale. I’ve never been as far as Bury. You’ve worked
about a lot,’ said Mr Springett, with his eyes on the carter below.
‘No. Not the whale. This was a picture of Jonah and the pompion that
withered. But all that Benedetto had shown was a peevish grey-beard
huggled up in angle-edged drapery beneath a pompion on a wooden trellis.
This last, being a dead thing, he’d drawn it as ‘twere to the life. But
fierce old Jonah, bared in the sun, angry even to death that his cold
prophecy was disproven--Jonah, ashamed, and already hearing the children
of Nineveh running to mock him--ah, that was what Benedetto had not
drawn!’
‘He better ha’ stuck to his whale, then,’ said Mr Springett.
‘He’d ha’ done no better with that. He draws the damp cloth off the
picture, an’ shows it to me. I was a craftsman too, d’ye see?’
‘“Tis good,” I said, “but it goes no deeper than the plaster.”
‘“What?” he said in a whisper.
‘“Be thy own judge, Benedetto,” I answered. “Does it go deeper than the
plaster?”
‘He reeled against a piece of dry wall. “No,” he says, “and I know it.
I could not hate thee more than I have done these five years, but if I
live, I will try, Hal. I will try.” Then he goes away. I pitied him, but
I had spoken truth. His picture went no deeper than the plaster.’
‘Ah!’ said Mr Springett, who had turned quite red. ‘You was talkin’ so
fast I didn’t understand what you was drivin’ at. I’ve seen men--good
workmen they was--try to do more than they could do, and--and they
couldn’t compass it. They knowed it, and it nigh broke their hearts
like. You was in your right, o’ course, sir, to say what you thought o’
his work; but if you’ll excuse me, was you in your duty?’
‘I was wrong to say it,’ Hal replied. ‘God forgive me--I was young!
He was workman enough himself to know where he failed. But it all
came evens in the long run. By the same token, did ye ever hear o’ one
Torrigiano--Torrisany we called him?’
‘I can’t say I ever did. Was he a Frenchy like?’
‘No, a hectoring, hard-mouthed, long-sworded Italian builder, as vain as
a peacock and as strong as a bull, but, mark you, a master workman. More
than that--he could get his best work out of the worst men.’
‘Which it’s a gift. I had a foreman-bricklayer like him once,’ said Mr
Springett. ‘He used to prod ‘em in the back like with a pointing-trowel,
and they did wonders.’
I’ve seen our Torrisany lay a ‘prentice down with one buffet and raise
him with another--to make a mason of him. I worked under him at building
a chapel in London--a chapel and a tomb for the King.’
‘I never knew kings went to chapel much,’ said Mr Springett. ‘But I
always hold with a man--don’t care who he be--seein’ about his own grave
before he dies. ‘Tidn’t the sort of thing to leave to your family after
the will’s read. I reckon ‘twas a fine vault?’
‘None finer in England. This Torrigiano had the contract for it, as
you’d say. He picked master craftsmen from all parts--England, France,
Italy, the Low Countries--no odds to him so long as they knew their
work, and he drove them like--like pigs at Brightling Fair. He called us
English all pigs. We suffered it because he was a master in his craft.
If he misliked any work that a man had done, with his own great hands
he’d rive it out, and tear it down before us all. “Ah, you pig--you
English pig!” he’d scream in the dumb wretch’s face. “You answer me? You
look at me? You think at me? Come out with me into the cloisters. I
will teach you carving myself. I will gild you all over!” But when
his passion had blown out, he’d slip his arm round the man’s neck, and
impart knowledge worth gold. ‘Twould have done your heart good, Mus’
Springett, to see the two hundred of us masons, jewellers, carvers,
gilders, iron-workers and the rest--all toiling like cock-angels, and
this mad Italian hornet fleeing one to next up and down the chapel. Done
your heart good, it would!’
‘I believe you,’ said Mr Springett. ‘In Eighteen hundred Fifty-four, I
mind, the railway was bein’ made into Hastin’s. There was two thousand
navvies on it--all young--all strong--an’ I was one of ‘em. Oh, dearie
me! Excuse me, sir, but was your enemy workin’ with you?’
‘Benedetto? Be sure he was. He followed me like a lover. He painted
pictures on the chapel ceiling--slung from a chair. Torrigiano made
us promise not to fight till the work should be finished. We were both
master craftsmen, do ye see, and he needed us. None the less, I never
went aloft to carve ‘thout testing all my ropes and knots each morning.
We were never far from each other. Benedetto ‘ud sharpen his knife on
his sole while he waited for his plaster to dry--wheet, wheet, wheet.
I’d hear it where I hung chipping round a pillar-head, and we’d nod to
each other friendly-like. Oh, he was a craftsman, was Benedetto, but his
hate spoiled his eye and his hand. I mind the night I had finished the
models for the bronze saints round the tomb; Torrigiano embraced me
before all the chapel, and bade me to supper. I met Benedetto when I
came out. He was slavering in the porch Like a mad dog.’
‘Workin’ himself up to it?’ said Mr Springett. ‘Did he have it in at ye
that night?’
‘No, no. That time he kept his oath to Torrigiano. But I pitied him. Eh,
well! Now I come to my own follies. I had never thought too little of
myself; but after Torrisany had put his arm round my neck, I--I’--Hal
broke into a laugh--‘I lay there was not much odds ‘twixt me and a
cock-sparrow in his pride.’
‘I was pretty middlin’ young once on a time,’ said Mr Springett.
‘Then ye know that a man can’t drink and dice and dress fine, and keep
company above his station, but his work suffers for it, Mus’ Springett.’
‘I never held much with dressin’ up, but--you’re right! The worst
mistakes I ever made they was made of a Monday morning,’ Mr Springett
answered. ‘We’ve all been one sort of fool or t’other. Mus’ Dan, Mus’
Dan, take the smallest gouge, or you’ll be spluttin’ her stem works
clean out. Can’t ye see the grain of the wood don’t favour a chisel?’
‘I’ll spare you some of my follies. But there was a man called
Brygandyne--Bob Brygandyne--Clerk of the King’s Ships, a little, smooth,
bustling atomy, as clever as a woman to get work done for nothin’--a
won’erful smooth-tongued pleader. He made much o’ me, and asked me to
draft him out a drawing, a piece of carved and gilt scroll-work for the
bows of one of the King’s Ships--the SOVEREIGN was her name.’
‘Was she a man-of-war?’ asked Dan.
‘She was a warship, and a woman called Catherine of Castile desired the
King to give her the ship for a pleasure-ship of her own. I did not
know at the time, but she’d been at Bob to get this scroll-work done and
fitted that the King might see it. I made him the picture, in an hour,
all of a heat after supper--one great heaving play of dolphins and a
Neptune or so reining in webby-footed sea-horses, and Arion with his
harp high atop of them. It was twenty-three foot long, and maybe nine
foot deep--painted and gilt.’
It must ha’ justabout looked fine,’ said Mr Springett.
‘That’s the curiosity of it. ‘Twas bad--rank bad. In my conceit I must
needs show it to Torrigiano, in the chapel. He straddles his legs,
hunches his knife behind him, and whistles like a storm-cock through a
sleet-shower. Benedetto was behind him. We were never far apart, I’ve
told you.
‘“That is pig’s work,” says our Master. “Swine’s work. You make any more
such things, even after your fine Court suppers, and you shall be sent
away.”
‘Benedetto licks his lips like a cat. “It is so bad then, Master?” he
says. “What a pity!”
‘“Yes,” says Torrigiano. “Scarcely you could do things so bad. I will
condescend to show.”
‘He talks to me then and there. No shouting, no swearing (it was too bad
for that); but good, memorable counsel, bitten in slowly. Then he sets
me to draft out a pair of iron gates, to take, as he said, the taste
of my naughty dolphins out of my mouth. Iron’s sweet stuff if you don’t
torture her, and hammered work is all pure, truthful line, with a reason
and a support for every curve and bar of it. A week at that settled
my stomach handsomely, and the Master let me put the work through the
smithy, where I sweated out more of my foolish pride.’
‘Good stuff is good iron,’ said Mr Springett. ‘I done a pair of lodge
gates once in Eighteen hundred Sixty-three.’
‘Oh, I forgot to say that Bob Brygandyne whipped away my draft of the
ship’s scroll-work, and would not give it back to me to re-draw. He said
‘twould do well enough. Howsoever, my lawful work kept me too busied to
remember him. Body o’ me, but I worked that winter upon the gates and
the bronzes for the tomb as I’d never worked before! I was leaner than
a lath, but I lived--I lived then!’ Hal looked at Mr Springett with his
wise, crinkled-up eyes, and the old man smiled back.
‘Ouch!’ Dan cried. He had been hollowing out the schooner’s after-deck,
the little gouge had slipped and gashed the ball of his left thumb,--an
ugly, triangular tear.
‘That came of not steadying your wrist,’ said Hal calmly. ‘Don’t bleed
over the wood. Do your work with your heart’s blood, but no need to let
it show.’ He rose and peered into a corner of the loft.
Mr Springett had risen too, and swept down a ball of cobwebs from a
rafter.
‘Clap that on,’ was all he said, ‘and put your handkerchief atop. ‘Twill
cake over in a minute. It don’t hurt now, do it?’
‘No,’ said Dan indignantly. ‘You know it has happened lots of times.
I’ll tie it up myself. Go on, sir.’
‘And it’ll happen hundreds of times more,’ said Hal with a friendly nod
as he sat down again. But he did not go on till Dan’s hand was tied up
properly. Then he said:
‘One dark December day--too dark to judge colour--we was all sitting and
talking round the fires in the chapel (you heard good talk there), when
Bob Brygandyne bustles in and--“Hal, you’re sent for,” he squeals. I
was at Torrigiano’s feet on a pile of put-locks, as I might be here,
toasting a herring on my knife’s point. ‘Twas the one English thing our
Master liked--salt herring.
‘“I’m busy, about my art,” I calls.
‘“Art?” says Bob. “What’s Art compared to your scroll-work for the
SOVEREIGN? Come.”
‘“Be sure your sins will find you out,” says Torrigiano. “Go with him
and see.” As I followed Bob out I was aware of Benedetto, like a black
spot when the eyes are tired, sliddering up behind me.
‘Bob hurries through the streets in the raw fog, slips into a doorway,
up stairs, along passages, and at last thrusts me into a little cold
room vilely hung with Flemish tapestries, and no furnishing except a
table and my draft of the SOVEREIGN’s scrollwork. Here he leaves me.
Presently comes in a dark, long-nosed man in a fur cap.
‘“Master Harry Dawe?” said he.
‘“The same,” I says. “Where a plague has Bob Brygandyne gone?”
‘His thin eyebrows surged up in a piece and come down again in a stiff
bar. “He went to the King,” he says.
‘“All one. Where’s your pleasure with me?” I says, shivering, for it was
mortal cold.
‘He lays his hand flat on my draft. “Master Dawe,” he says, “do you know
the present price of gold leaf for all this wicked gilding of yours?”
‘By that I guessed he was some cheese-paring clerk or other of the
King’s Ships, so I gave him the price. I forget it now, but it worked
out to thirty pounds--carved, gilt, and fitted in place.
‘“Thirty pounds!” he said, as though I had pulled a tooth of him. “You
talk as though thirty pounds was to be had for the asking. None the
less,” he says, “your draft’s a fine piece of work.”
‘I’d been looking at it ever since I came in, and ‘twas viler even than
I judged it at first. My eye and hand had been purified the past months,
d’ye see, by my iron work.
‘“I could do it better now,” I said. The more I studied my squabby
Neptunes the less I liked ‘em; and Arion was a pure flaming shame atop
of the unbalanced dolphins.
‘“I doubt it will be fresh expense to draft it again,” he says.
‘“Bob never paid me for the first draft. I lay he’ll never pay me for
the second. ‘Twill cost the King nothing if I re-draw it,” I says.
‘“There’s a woman wishes it to be done quickly,” he says. “We’ll stick
to your first drawing, Master Dawe. But thirty pounds is thirty pounds.
You must make it less.”
‘And all the while the faults in my draft fair leaped out and hit me
between the eyes. At any cost, I thinks to myself, I must get it back
and re-draft it. He grunts at me impatiently, and a splendid thought
comes to me, which shall save me. By the same token, It was quite
honest.’
‘They ain’t always,’ says Mr Springett. ‘How did you get out of it?’
‘By the truth. I says to Master Fur Cap, as I might to you here, I says,
“I’ll tell you something, since you seem a knowledgeable man. Is the
SOVEREIGN to lie in Thames river all her days, or will she take the high
seas?”
‘“Oh,” he says quickly, “the King keeps no cats that don’t catch mice.
She must sail the seas, Master Dawe. She’ll be hired to merchants for
the trade. She’ll be out in all shapes o’ weathers. Does that make any
odds?”
‘“Why, then,” says I, “the first heavy sea she sticks her nose into’ll
claw off half that scroll-work, and the next will finish it. If she’s
meant for a pleasure-ship give me my draft again, and I’ll porture you a
pretty, light piece of scroll-work, good cheap. If she’s meant for the
open--sea, pitch the draft into the fire. She can never carry that
weight on her bows.”
‘He looks at me squintlings and plucks his under-lip.
‘“Is this your honest, unswayed opinion?” he says.
‘“Body o’ me! Ask about!” I says. “Any seaman could tell you ‘tis
true. I’m advising you against my own profit, but why I do so is my own
concern.”
‘“Not altogether “, he says. “It’s some of mine. You’ve saved me thirty
pounds, Master Dawe, and you’ve given me good arguments to use against
a willful woman that wants my fine new ship for her own toy. We’ll not
have any scroll-work.” His face shined with pure joy.
‘“Then see that the thirty pounds you’ve saved on it are honestly paid
the King,” I says, “and keep clear o’ women-folk.” I gathered up my
draft and crumpled it under my arm. “If that’s all you need of me I’ll
be gone,” I says. “I’m pressed.”
‘He turns him round and fumbles in a corner. “Too pressed to be made
a knight, Sir Harry?” he says, and comes at me smiling, with
three-quarters of a rusty sword.
‘I pledge you my Mark I never guessed it was the King till that moment.
I kneeled, and he tapped me on the shoulder.
‘“Rise up, Sir Harry Dawe,” he says, and, in the same breath, “I’m
pressed, too,” and slips through the tapestries, leaving me like a stuck
calf.
‘It come over me, in a bitter wave like, that here was I, a master
craftsman, who had worked no bounds, soul or body, to make the King’s
tomb and chapel a triumph and a glory for all time; and here, d’ye see,
I was made knight, not for anything I’d slaved over, or given my heart
and guts to, but expressedly because I’d saved him thirty pounds and a
tongue-lashing from Catherine of Castille--she that had asked for the
ship. That thought shrivelled me with insides while I was folding away
my draft. On the heels of it--maybe you’ll see why--I began to grin
to myself. I thought of the earnest simplicity of the man--the King, I
should say--because I’d saved him the money; his smile as though
he’d won half France! I thought of my own silly pride and foolish
expectations that some day he’d honour me as a master craftsman. I
thought of the broken-tipped sword he’d found behind the hangings; the
dirt of the cold room, and his cold eye, wrapped up in his own concerns,
scarcely resting on me. Then I remembered the solemn chapel roof and
the bronzes about the stately tomb he’d lie in, and--d’ye see?---the
unreason of it all--the mad high humour of it all--took hold on me till
I sat me down on a dark stair-head in a passage, and laughed till I
could laugh no more. What else could I have done?
‘I never heard his feet behind me--he always walked like a cat--but his
arm slid round my neck, pulling me back where I sat, till my head lay
on his chest, and his left hand held the knife plumb over my
heart--Benedetto! Even so I laughed--the fit was beyond my
holding--laughed while he ground his teeth in my ear. He was stark
crazed for the time.
‘“Laugh,” he said. “Finish the laughter. I’ll not cut ye short. Tell
me now”--he wrenched at my head--“why the King chose to honour
you,--you--you--you lickspittle Englishman? I am full of patience now.
I have waited so long.” Then he was off at score about his Jonah in Bury
Refectory, and what I’d said of it, and his pictures in the chapel which
all men praised and none looked at twice (as if that was my fault!), and
a whole parcel of words and looks treasured up against me through years.
‘“Ease off your arm a little,” I said. “I cannot die by choking, for I
am just dubbed knight, Benedetto.”
‘“Tell me, and I’ll confess ye, Sir Harry Dawe, Knight. There’s a long
night before ye. Tell,” says he.
‘So I told him--his chin on my crown--told him all; told it as well
and with as many words as I have ever told a tale at a supper with
Torrigiano. I knew Benedetto would understand, for, mad or sad, he was a
craftsman. I believed it to be the last tale I’d ever tell top of mortal
earth, and I would not put out bad work before I left the Lodge. All
art’s one art, as I said. I bore Benedetto no malice. My spirits, d’ye
see, were catched up in a high, solemn exaltation, and I saw all earth’s
vanities foreshortened and little, laid out below me like a town from a
cathedral scaffolding. I told him what befell, and what I thought of it.
I gave him the King’s very voice at “Master Dawe, you’ve saved me thirty
pounds!”; his peevish grunt while he looked for the sword; and how the
badger-eyed figures of Glory and Victory leered at me from the Flemish
hangings. Body o’ me, ‘twas a fine, noble tale, and, as I thought, my
last work on earth.
‘“That is how I was honoured by the King,” I said. “They’ll hang ye for
killing me, Benedetto. And, since you’ve killed in the King’s Palace,
they’ll draw and quarter you; but you’re too mad to care. Grant me,
though, ye never heard a better tale.” ‘He said nothing, but I felt him
shake. My head on his chest shook; his right arm fell away, his
left dropped the knife, and he leaned with both hands on my
shoulder--shaking--shaking! I turned me round. No need to put my foot
on his knife. The man was speechless with laughter--honest craftsman’s
mirth. The first time I’d ever seen him laugh. You know the mirth that
cuts off the very breath, while ye stamp and snatch at the short ribs?
That was Benedetto’s case.
‘When he began to roar and bay and whoop in the passage, I haled him
out into the street, and there we leaned against the wall and had it all
over again--waving our hands and wagging our heads--till the watch came
to know if we were drunk.
‘Benedetto says to ‘em, solemn as an owl: “You have saved me thirty
pounds, Mus’ Dawe,” and off he pealed. In some sort we were mad-drunk--I
because dear life had been given back to me, and he because, as he said
afterwards, because the old crust of hatred round his heart was broke up
and carried away by laughter. His very face had changed too.
‘“Hal,” he cries, “I forgive thee. Forgive me too, Hal. Oh, you English,
you English! Did it gall thee, Hal, to see the rust on the dirty sword?
Tell me again, Hal, how the King grunted with joy. Oh, let us tell the
Master.”
‘So we reeled back to the chapel, arms round each other’s necks, and
when we could speak--he thought we’d been fighting--we told the Master.
Yes, we told Torrigiano, and he laughed till he rolled on the new cold
pavement. Then he knocked our heads together.
‘“Ah, you English!” he cried. “You are more than pigs. You are English.
Now you are well punished for your dirty fishes. Put the draft in the
fire, and never do so any more. You are a fool, Hal, and you are a fool,
Benedetto, but I need your works to please this beautiful English King.”
‘“And I meant to kill Hal,” says Benedetto. “Master, I meant to kill him
because the English King had made him a knight.”
‘“Ah!” says the Master, shaking his finger. “Benedetto, if you had
killed my Hal, I should have killed you--in the cloister. But you are a
craftsman too, so I should have killed you like a craftsman, very, very
slowly--in an hour, if I could spare the time!” That was Torrigiano--the
Master!’
Mr Springett sat quite still for some time after Hal had finished.
Then he turned dark red; then he rocked to and fro; then he coughed and
wheezed till the tears ran down his face. Dan knew by this that he was
laughing, but it surprised Hal at first.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Mr Springett, ‘but I was thinkin’ of some stables
I built for a gentleman in Eighteen hundred Seventy-four. They was
stables in blue brick--very particular work. Dunno as they weren’t the
best job which ever I’d done. But the gentleman’s lady--she’d come
from Lunnon, new married--she was all for buildin’ what was called
a haw-haw--what you an’ me ‘ud call a dik--right acrost his park. A
middlin’ big job which I’d have had the contract of, for she spoke to me
in the library about it. But I told her there was a line o’ springs just
where she wanted to dig her ditch, an’ she’d flood the park if she went
on.’
‘Were there any springs at all?’ said Hal.
‘Bound to be springs everywhere if you dig deep enough, ain’t there?
But what I said about the springs put her out o’ conceit o’ diggin’
haw-haws, an’ she took an’ built a white tile dairy instead. But when
I sent in my last bill for the stables, the gentleman he paid it ‘thout
even lookin’ at it, and I hadn’t forgotten nothin’, I do assure you.
More than that, he slips two five-pound notes into my hand in the
library, an’ “Ralph,” he says--he allers called me by name--“Ralph,” he
says, “you’ve saved me a heap of expense an’ trouble this autumn.” I
didn’t say nothin’, o’ course. I knowed he didn’t want any haws-haws
digged acrost his park no more’n I did, but I never said nothin’. No
more he didn’t say nothin’ about my blue-brick stables, which was really
the best an’ honestest piece o’ work I’d done in quite a while. He
give me ten pounds for savin’ him a hem of a deal o’ trouble at home. I
reckon things are pretty much alike, all times, in all places.’
Hal and he laughed together. Dan couldn’t quite understand what they
thought so funny, and went on with his work for some time without
speaking.
When he looked up, Mr Springett, alone, was wiping his eyes with his
green-and-yellow pocket-handkerchief.
‘Bless me, Mus’ Dan, I’ve been asleep,’ he said. ‘An’ I’ve dreamed a
dream which has made me laugh--laugh as I ain’t laughed in a long day.
I can’t remember what ‘twas all about, but they do say that when old
men take to laughin’ in their sleep, they’re middlin’ ripe for the next
world. Have you been workin’ honest, Mus’ Dan?’
‘Ra-ather,’ said Dan, unclamping the schooner from the vice. ‘And look
how I’ve cut myself with the small gouge.’
‘Ye-es. You want a lump o’ cobwebs to that,’ said Mr Springett. ‘Oh, I
see you’ve put it on already. That’s right, Mus’ Dan.’