Chapter II (3)

"Of course," said he, "if you should meet either of us in the village to-morrow, you will not recognise us."

The little man bowed. "I agree," said he, "with your mother, monsieur, that you must be educated at all costs."

THE DRAWN BLIND.

Silver trumpets sounded a flourish, and the javelin-men came pacing down Tregarrick Fore Street, with the sheriff's coach swinging behind them, its panels splendid with fresh blue paint and florid blazonry. Its wheels were picked out with yellow, and this scheme of colour extended to the coachman and the two lackeys, who held on at the back by leathern straps. Each wore a coat and breeches of electric blue, with a canary waistcoat, and was toned off with powder and flesh-coloured stockings at the extremities. Within the coach, and facing the horses, sat the two judges of the Crown Court and _Nisi Prius_, both in scarlet, with full wigs and little round patches of black plaister, like ventilators, on top; facing their lordships sat Sir Felix Felix-Williams, the sheriff, in a tightish uniform of the yeomanry with a great shako nodding on his knees, and a chaplain bolt upright by his side. Behind trooped a rabble of loafers and small boys, who shouted, "Who bleeds bran?" till the lackeys' calves itched with indignation.

I was standing in the archway of the Packhorse Inn, among the maids and stable-boys gathered to see the pageant pass on its way to hear the Assize sermon. And standing there, I was witness of a little incident that seemed to escape the rest.

At the moment when the trumpets rang out, a very old woman, in a blue camlet cloak, came hobbling out of a grocer's shop some twenty yards up the pavement, and tottered down ahead of the procession as fast as her decrepit legs would move. There was no occasion for hurrying to avoid the crowd; for the javelin-men had barely rounded the corner of the long street, and were taking the goosestep very seriously and deliberately. But she went by the Packhorse doorway as if swift horsemen were after her, clutching the camlet cloak across her bosom, glancing over her shoulder, and working her lips inaudibly. I could not help remarking the position of her right arm. She held it bent exactly as though she held an infant to her old breast, and shielded it while she ran.

A few paces beyond the inn-door she halted on the edge of the kerb, flung another look up the street, and darted across the roadway. There stood a little shop--a watchmaker's--just opposite, and next to the shop a small ope with one dingy window over it. She vanished up the passage, at the entrance of which I was still staring idly, when, half a minute later, a skinny trembling hand appeared at the window and drew down the blind.

I looked round at the men and maids; but their eyes were all for the pageant, now not a stone's-throw away.

"Who is that old woman?" I asked, touching Caleb, the head ostler, on the shoulder.

Caleb--a small bandy-legged man, with a chin full of furrows, and the furrows full of grey stubble--withdrew his gaze grudgingly from the sheriff's coach.

"What woman?"

"She that went by a moment since."

"She in the blue cloak, d'ee mean?--an old, ancient, wisht-lookin' body?"

"Yes."

"A timmersome woman, like?"

"That's it."

"Well, her name's Cordely Pinsent."

The procession reclaimed his attention. He received a passing wink from the charioteer, caught it on the volley and returned it with a solemn face; or rather, the wink seemed to rebound as from a blank wall. As the crowd closed in upon the circumstance of Justice, he turned to me again, spat, and went on--

"--Cordely Pinsent, widow of old Key Pinsent, that was tailor to all the grandees in the county so far back as I can mind. She's eighty-odd; eighty-five if a day. I can just mind Key Pinsent--a great, red, rory-cumtory chap, with a high stock and a wig like King George--'my royal patron' he called 'en, havin' by some means got leave to hoist the king's arms over his door. Such mighty portly manners, too--Oh, very spacious, I assure 'ee! Simme I can see the old Trojan now, with his white weskit bulgin' out across his doorway like a shop-front hung wi' jewels. Gout killed 'en. I went to his buryin'; such a stretch of experience does a young man get by time he reaches my age. God bless your heart alive, _I_ can mind when they were hung for forgery!"

"Who were hung?"

"People," he answered vaguely; "and young Willie Pinsent."

"This woman's son?"

"Ay, her son--her ewe-lamb of a child. 'Tis very seldom brought up agen her now, poor soul! She's so very old that folks forgits about it. Do 'ee see her window yonder, over the ope?"

He was pointing across to the soiled white blind that still looked blankly over the street, its lower edge caught up at one corner by a dusty geranium.

"I saw her pull it down."

"Ah, you would if you was lookin' that way. I've a-seed her do 't a score o' times. Well, when the gout reached Key Pinsent's stomach and he went off like the snuff of a candle at the age of forty-two, she was left unprovided, with a son of thirteen to maintain or go 'pon the parish. She was a Menhennick, tho', from t'other side o' the Duchy--a very proud family--and didn't mean to dip the knee to nobody, and all the less because she'd demeaned hersel', to start with, by wedding a tailor. But Key Pinsent by all allowance was handsome as blazes, and well-informed up to a point that he read Shakespeare for the mere pleasure o't.

"Well, she sold up the stock-in-trade an' hired a couple o' rooms--the self-same rooms you see: and then she ate less 'n a mouse an' took in needle-work, plain an' fancy: for a lot o' the gentry's wives round the neighbourhood befriended her--though they had to be sly an' hide that they meant it for a favour, or she'd ha' snapped their heads off. An' all the while, she was teachin' her boy and tellin' 'en, whatever happened, to remember he was a gentleman, an' lovin' 'en with all the strength of a desolate woman.

"This Willie Pinsent was a comely boy, too: handsome as old Key, an' quick at his books. He'd a bold masterful way, bein' proud as ever his mother was, an' well knowin' there wasn' his match in Tregarrick for head-work. Such a beautiful hand he wrote! When he was barely turned sixteen they gave 'en a place in Gregory's Bank--Wilkins an' Gregory it was in those aged times. He still lived home wi' his mother, rentin' a room extra out of his earnin's, and turnin' one of the bedrooms into a parlour. That's the very room you're lookin' at. And when any father in Tregarrick had a bone to pick with his sons, he'd advise 'em to take example by young Pinsent--'so clever and good, too, there was no tellin' what he mightn't come to in time.'

"Well-a-well, to cut it short, the lad was too clever. It came out, after, that he'd took to bettin' his employers' money agen the rich men up at the Royal Exchange. An' the upshot was that one evenin', while he was drinkin' tea with his mother in his lovin' light-hearted way, in walks a brace o' constables, an' says, 'William Pinsent, young chap, I arrest thee upon a charge o' counterfeitin' old Gregory's handwritin', which is a hangin' matter!'

"An' now, sir, comes the cur'ous part o' the tale; for, if you'll believe me, this poor woman wouldn' listen to it--wouldn' hear a word o't. 'What! my son Willie,' she flames, hot as Lucifer--'my son Willie a forger! My boy, that I've missed, an' reared up, an' studied, markin' all his pretty takin' ways since he learn'd to crawl! Gentlemen,' she says, standin' up an' facin' 'em down, 'what mother knows her son, if not I? I give you my word it's all a mistake.'

"Ay, an' she would have it no other. While her son was waitin' his trial in jail, she walked the streets with her head high, scornin' the folk as she passed. Not a soul dared to speak pity; an' one afternoon, when old Gregory hissel' met her and began to mumble that 'he trusted,' an' 'he had little doubt,' an' 'nobody would be gladder than he if it proved to be a mistake,' she held her skirt aside an' went by with a look that turned 'en to dirt, as he said. 'Gad!' said he, 'she couldn' ha' looked at me worse if I'd been a tab!' meanin' to say 'instead o' the richest man in Tregarrick.'

"But her greatest freak was seen when th' Assizes came. Sir, she wouldn' even go to the trial. She disdained it. An' when, that mornin', the judges had driven by her window, same as they drove to-day, what d'ee think she did?

"She began to lay the cloth up in the parlour yonder, an' there set out the rarest meal, ready for her boy. There was meats, roasted chickens, an' a tongue, an' a great ham. There was cheese-cakes that she made after a little secret of her own; an' a bowl of junket, an inch deep in cream, that bein' his pet dish; an' all kind o' knick-knacks, wi' grapes an' peaches, an' apricots, an' decanters o' wine, white an' red. Ay, sir, there was even crackers for mother an' son to pull together, with scraps o' poetry inside. An' flowers--the table was bloomin' with flowers. For weeks she'd been plannin' it: an' all the forenoon she moved about an' around that table, givin' it a touch here an' a touch there, an' takin' a step back to see how beautiful it looked. An' then, as the day wore on, she pulled a chair over by the window, an' sat down, an' waited.

"In those days a capital trial was kept up till late into the night, if need were. By-an'-by she called up her little servin' gal that was then (she's a gran'mother now), an' sends her down to the court-house to learn how far the trial had got, an' run back with the news.

"Down runs Selina Mary, an' back with word--

"'They're a-summin'-up,' says she.

"Then Mrs. Pinsent went an' lit eight candles. Four she set 'pon the table, an' four 'pon the mantel-shelf. You could see the blaze out in the street, an' the room lit up, wi' the flowers, an' fruit, an' shinin' glasses--red and yellow dahlias the flowers were, that bein' the time o' year. An' over each candle she put a little red silk shade. You never saw a place look cosier. Then she went back an' waited: but in half-an-hour calls to Selina Mary agen:

"'Selina Mary, run you back to the courthouse, an' bring word how far they've got.'

"So the little slip of a maid ran back, and this time 'twas--

"'Missis, the judge has done; an' now they're considerin' about Master Willie.'

"So the poor woman sat a while longer, an' then she calls:

"'Selina Mary, run down agen, an' as he comes out, tell 'en to hurry. They must be finished by now.'

"The maid was gone twenty minutes this time. The evenin' was hot an' the window open; an' now all the town that wasn' listenin' to the trial was gathered in front, gazin' cur'ously at the woman inside. She was tittivatin' the table for the fiftieth time, an' touchin' up the flowers that had drooped a bit i' the bowls.

"But after twenty minutes Selina Mary came runnin' up the street, an' fetched her breath at the front door, and went upstairs slowly and 'pon tip-toe. Her face at the parlour door was white as paper; an' while she stood there the voices o' the crowd outside began to take all one tone, and beat into the room like the sound o' waves 'pon a beach.

"'Oh, missis--' she begins.

"'Have they finished?'

"The poor cheald was only able to nod.

"'Then, where's Willie? Why isn't he here?'

"'Oh, missis, they're goin' to hang 'en!'

"Mrs. Pinsent moved across the room, took her by the arm, led her downstairs, an' gave her a little push out into the street. Not a word did she say, but shut the door 'pon her, very gentle-like. Then she went back an' pulled the blind down slowly. The crowd outside watched her do it. Her manner was quite ord'nary. They stood there for a minute or so, an' behind the blind the eight candles went out, one by one. By the time the judges passed homeward 'twas all dark, only the blind showin' white by the street lamp opposite. From that year to this she has pulled it down whenever a judge drives by."

A GOLDEN WEDDING.

On the very spot which the railway station has usurped, with its long slate roof, wooden signal-box, and advertisements in blue and white enamel, I can recall a still pool shining between beds of the flowering rush; and to this day, as I wait for the train, the whir of a vanished water-wheel comes up the valley. Sometimes I have caught myself gazing along the curve of the narrow-gauge in full expectation to see a sagged and lichen-covered roof at the end of it. And sometimes, of late, it has occurred to me that there never was such a mill as I used to know down yonder; and that the miller, whose coat was always powdered so fragrantly, was but a white ghost, after all. The station-master and porters remember no such person.

But he was no ghost; for I have met him again this week, and upon the station platform. I had started at daybreak to fish up the stream that runs down the valley in curves roughly parallel to the railway embankment; and coming within sight of the station, a little before noon, I put up my tackle and strolled towards the booking-office. The water was much too fine for sport, and it seemed worth while to break off for a pipe and a look at the 12.26 train. Such are the simple pleasures of a country life.

I leant my rod against the wall, and was setting down my creel, when, glancing down the platform, I saw an old man seated on the furthest bench. Everybody knows how a passing event, or impression, sometimes appears but a vain echo of previous experience. Something in the lines of this old man's figure, as he leaned forward with both hands clasped upon his staff, gave me the sensation. "All this has happened before," I told myself. "He and I are playing over again some small and futile scene in our past lives. I wonder who he is, and what is the use of it?"

But there was something wanting in the picture to complete its resemblance to the scene for which I searched my memory.

The man had bent further forward, and was resting his chin on his hands and staring apathetically across the rails. Suddenly it dawned on me that there ought to be another figure on the bench--the figure of an old woman; and my memory ran back to the day after this railway was opened, when this man and his wife had sat together on the platform waiting to see the train come in--that fascinating monster whose advent had blotted out the very foundations of the old mill and driven its tenants to a strange home.

The mill had disappeared many months before that, but the white dust still hung in the creases of the miller's clothes. He wore his Sunday hat and the Sunday polish on his shoes; and his wife was arrayed in her best Paisley shawl. She carried also a bunch of cottage flowers, withering in her large hot hand. It was clear they had never seen a locomotive before, and wished to show it all respect. They had taken a smaller house in the next valley, where they attempted to live on their savings; and had been trying vainly and pitifully to struggle with all the little habits that had been their life for thirty-five years, and to adapt them to new quarters. Their faces were weary, but flushed with expectation. The man kept looking up the line, and declaring that he heard the rumble of the engine in the distance; and whenever he said this, his wife pulled the shawl more primly about her shoulders, straightened her back, and nervously re-arranged her posy.

When at length the whistle screamed out, at the head of the vale, I thought they were going to tumble off the bench. The woman went white to the lips, and stole her disengaged hand into her husband's.

"Startlin' at first, hey?" he said, bravely winning back his composure: "but 'tis wunnerful what control the driver has, they tell me. They only employ the cleverest men--"

A rattle and roar drowned the rest of his words, and he blinked and leant back, holding the woman's hand and tapping it softly as the engine rushed down with a blast of white vapour hissing under its fore wheels, and the carriages clanked upon each other, and the whole train came to a standstill before us.

The station-master and porter walked down the line of carriages, bawling out the name of the station. The driver leaned out over his rail, and the guard, standing by the door of his van, with a green flag under his arm, looked enquiringly at me and at the old couple on the bench. But I had only strolled up to have a look at the new train, and meant to resume my fishing as soon as it had passed. And the miller sat still, holding his wife's hand.

They were staring with all their eyes--not resentfully, though face to face with the enemy that had laid waste their habitation and swept all comfort out of their lives; but with a simple awe. Manifestly, too, they expected something more to happen. I saw the old woman searching the incurious features of the few passengers, and I thought her own features expressed some disappointment.

"This," observed the guard scornfully, pulling out his watch as he spoke, "is what you call traffic in these parts."

The station-master was abashed, and forced a deprecatory laugh. The guard--who was an up-country man--treated this laugh with contempt, and blew his whistle sharply. The driver answered, and the train moved on.

I was gazing after it when a woeful exclamation drew my attention back to the bench.

"Why, 'tis gone!"

"Gone?" echoed the miller's wife. "Of course 'tis gone; and of all the dilly-dallyin' men, I must say, John, you'm the dilly-dalliest. Why didn' you say we wanted to ride?"

"I thought, maybe, they'd have axed us. 'Twouldn' ha' been polite to thrust oursel's forrard if they didn' want our company. Besides, I thought they'd be here for a brave while--"

"You was always a man of excuses. You knew I'd set my heart 'pon this feat."

I had left them to patch up their little quarrel. But the scene stuck in my memory, and now, as I walked down the platform towards the single figure on the bench, I wondered, amusedly, if the woman had at length taken the ride alone, and if the procrastinating husband sat here to welcome her back.

As I drew near, I took note of his clothes for the first time. There was no white dust in the creases to-day. In fact, he wore the workhouse suit.

I sat down beside him, and asked if he remembered a certain small boy who had used to draw dace out of his mill-pond. With some difficulty he recalled my features, and by decrees let out the story of his life during the last ten years.

He and his wife had fought along in their new house, hiding their discomfort from each other, and abiding the slow degrees by which their dwelling should change into a home. But before that change was worked, the woman fell under a paralytic stroke, and their savings, on which they had just contrived to live, threatened to be swallowed up by the doctor's bill. After considering long, the miller wrote off to his only son, a mechanic in the Plymouth Dockyard, and explained the case. This son was a man of forty or thereabouts, was married, and had a long family. He could not afford to take the invalid into his house for nothing; but his daughters would look after their grandmother and she should have good medical care as well, if she came on a small allowance.

"So the only thing to be done, sir, was for my old woman to go."

"And you--?"

"Oh, I went into the 'House.' You see, there wasn' enough for both, livin' apart."

I stared down the line to the spot where the mill-wheel had hummed so pleasantly, and the compassionate sentence I was about to utter withered up and died on my lips.

"But to-day--Oh, to-day, sir--"

"What's happening to-day?"

"She's comin' down to see me for an hour or two; an' I've got a holiday to meet her. 'Tis our Golden Weddin', sir."

"But why are you meeting her at this station instead of Tregarrick? She can't walk, and you have no horse and trap; whereas there's always a 'bus at Tregarrick."

"Well, you see, sir, there's a very tidy little cottage below where they sell ginger-beer, an' I've got a whack o' vittles in the basket here, besides what William is bringin'--William an' his wife are comin' down with her. They'll take her back by the last train up; an' I thought, as 'twas so little a while, an' the benches here are so comfortable, we'd pass our day 'pon the platform here. 'Tis within sight o' the old home, too, or ruther o' the spot where the old home used to be: an' though 'tis little notice she seems to take o' things, one never can tell if poor creatures in that state _hain't_ pleased behind all their dazed looks. What do you think, sir?"

The whistle sounded up the valley, and mercifully prevented my answer. I saw the woman for an instant as she was brought out of the train and carried to the bench. She did not recognise the man she had married fifty years before: but as we moved out of the station, he was sitting beside her, his face transfigured with a solemn joy.

SCHOOL FRIENDS.

"What ho, there!"

At this feudal summons I turned, and spied the Bashaw elbowing his way towards me through the Fleet Street crowd, his hat and tie askew and his big face a red beacon of goodwill. He fell on my neck, and we embraced.

"Is me recreant child returned? Is he tired at last av annihilatin' all that's made to a green thought in a green shade? An' did he homesickun by the Cornish Coast for the Street that Niver Sleeps, an' the whirroo an' stink av her, an' the _foomum et opase strepitumké_--to drink delight av battle with his peers, an' see the great Achilles whom he knew--meanin' meself?" The Bashaw's style in conversation, as in print, bristles with allusion.

I shook my head.

"I go back to-morrow, I hope. Business brought me up, and as soon as it's settled I pack."

"Too quick despairer--but I take it ye'll be bound just now for the Cheese. Right y'are; and I'll do meself the honour to lunch wid ye, at your expense."

Everyone knows and loves the Bashaw, _alias_ the O'Driscoll, that genial failure. Generations of Fleet Street youths have taken advice and help from him: have prospered, grown reputable, rich, and even famous: and have left him where he stood. Nobody can remember the time when O'Driscoll was not; though, to judge from his appearance, he must have stepped upon the town from between the covers of an illustrated keepsake, such as our grandmothers loved--so closely he resembles the Corsair of that period, with his ripe cheeks, melting eyes, and black curls that twist like the young tendrils of a vine. The curls are dyed now-a-days, and his waist is not what it used to be in the picture-books; but time has worn nothing off his temper. He is perennially enthusiastic, and can still beat any journalist in London in describing a Lord Mayor's Show.

"You behould in me," he went on, with a large hand on my shoulder, "the victum av a recent eviction--a penniless outcast. 'Tis no beggar's petition that I'll be profferin', however, but a bargun. Give me a salad, a pint av hock, an' fill me pipe wid the Only Mixture, an' I'll repay ye across the board wid a narrative--the sort av God-forsaken, ord'nary thrifle that you youngsters turn into copy--may ye find forgiveness! 'Tis no use to me whatever. Ted O'Driscoll's instrument was iver the big drum, and he knows his limuts."

"Yes, me boy," he resumed, five minutes later, as he sat in the Cheshire Cheese, beneath Dr. Johnson's portrait, balancing a black-handled knife between his first and second fingers, and nodding good-fellowship to every journalist in the room, "the apartment in Bloomsbury is desolut; the furnichur'--what was lift av ut--disparsed; the leopard an' the lizard keep the courts where O'Driscoll gloried an' drank deep; an' the wild ass--meanin' by that the midical student on the fourth floor--stamps overhead, but cannot break his sleep. I've been evicted: that's the long and short av ut. Lord help me!--I'd have fared no worse in the ould country--here's to her! Think what immortal copy I'd have made out av the regrettable incident over there!" His voice broke, but not for self-pity. It always broke when he mentioned Ireland.

"Is it comfort ye'd be speakin'?" he began again, filling his glass. "Me dear fellow, divvle a doubt I'll fetch round tight an' safe. Ould Mick Sullivan--he that built the _Wild Girl_, the fastest vessel that iver put out av Limerick--ould Mick Sullivan used to swear he'd make any ship seaworthy that didn' leak worse than a five-barred gate. An' that's me, more or less. I'm an ould campaigner. But listen to this. Me feelin's have been wrung this day, and that sorely. I promised ye the story, an' I must out wid ut, whether or no."

It was the hour when the benches of the Cheese begin to empty. My work was over for the day, and I disposed myself to listen.

"The first half I spent at the acadimy where they flagellated the rudiments av polite learnin' into me small carcuss, I made a friend. He was the first I iver made, though not the last, glory be to God! But first friendship is like first love for the sweet taste it puts in the mouth. Niver but once in his life will a man's heart dance to that chune. 'Twas a small slip of a Saxon lad that it danced for then: a son av a cursed agint, that I should say it. But sorra a thought had I for the small boccawn's nationality nor for his own father's trade. I only knew the friendship in his pretty eyes an' the sweetness that knit our two sowls togither, like David's an' Jonathan's. Pretty it was to walk togither, an' discourse, an' get the strap togither for heaven knows what mischief, an' consowl each other for our broken skins. He'd a wonderful gift at his books, for which I reverenced um, and at the single-stick, for which I loved um. Niver to this day did I call up the ould play-ground widout behowldin' that one boy, though all the rest av the faces (the master's included) were vague as wather--wather in which that one pair av eyes was reflected.

"The school was a great four-square stone buildin' beside a windy road, and niver a tree in sight; but pastures where the grass would cut your boot, an' stone walls, an' brown hills around, like the rim av a saucer. All belonged to the estate that Jemmy Nichol's father managed--a bankrupt property, or next door to that. It's done better since he gave up the place; but when I've taken a glance at the landscape since (as I have, once or twice) I see no difference. To me 'tis the naked land I looked upon the last day av the summer half, when I said good-bye to Jemmy; for he was lavin' the school that same afternoon for Dublin, to cross over to England wid his father.

"Sick at heart was I, an' filled already wid the heavy sense of solitariness, as we stood by the great iron gate wishin' one another fare-ye-well.

"'Jemmy avick,' says I, 'dull, dull will it be widout ye here. And, Jemmy--send some av my heart back to me when ye write, as ye promise to do.'

"'Wheniver I lay me down, Ned,' he answered me (though by nature a close-hearted English boy), 'I'll think o' ye; an' wheniver I rise up I'll think o' ye. May the Lord do so to me, an' more also, if I cease from lovin' ye till my life's end.'

"So we kissed like a pair av girls, and off he was driven, leavin' a great hollow inside the rim av the hills. An' I ran up to the windy dormitory, stumblin' at ivery third step for the blindin' tears, and watched um from the window there growin' small along the road. 'Ye Mountains av Gilboa,' said I, shakin' my fist at the hills, 'let there be no dew, neither let there be rain upon ye;' for I hated the place now that Jemmy was gone.

"Well, 'twas the ould story--letters at first in plenty, then fewer, then none at all. Long before I came over to try my luck I'd lost all news of Jem: didn't know his address, even. Nor till to-day have I set eyes on um. He's bald-headed, me boy, and crooked-faytured, to-day; but I knew him for Jemmy in the first kick av surprise.

"I was evicted this mornin', as I've towld ye. Six years I've hung me hat up in those same apartments in Bloomsbury; and, till last year, aisy enough I found me landlord over a quarter's rent or two overjue. But last midsummer year the house changed hands; and bedad it began to be 'pay or quit.' This day it was 'quit.' The new landlord came up the stairs at the head av the ejectin' army: I got up from breakfast to open the door to um. I'd never set eyes on um since I'd been his tenant. Bedad, it was Jemmy!"

O'Driscoll paused, and poured himself another glass of hock.

"So I suppose," I said, "you ran into each other's arms, and kissed again with tears?"

"Then you suppose wrong," said he, and sat for a moment or two silent, fingering the stem of his glass. Then he added, more gently--

"I looked in the face av um, and said to meself, 'Jemmy doesn't remember me. If I introduce meself, I wonder what'll he do? Will he love me still, or will he turn me out?' An' by the Lord I didn't care to risk ut! I couldn't dare to lose that last illusion; an' so I put on me hat an' walked out, tellin' him nothing at all."

PARENTS AND CHILDREN.

I.--THE FAMILY BIBLE

There lived a young man at Tregarrick called Robert Haydon. His father was not a native of the town, but had settled there early in life and became the leading solicitor of the place. At the age of thirty-seven he married the daughter of a county magistrate, and by this step bettered his position considerably. By the time that Robert was born his parents' standing was very satisfactory. They were living well inside an income of £1,200 a year, had about £8,000 (consisting of Mrs. Haydon's dowry and Mr. Haydon's bachelor savings) safely invested, and were on visiting terms with several of the lesser county families.

In other respects they were just as fortunate. They had a sincere affection for each other, and coincident opinions on the proper conduct of life. They were people into whose heads a misgiving seldom or never penetrated. Their religious beliefs and the path of social duty stood as plain before them as their front gate and as narrow as the bridge which Mohammedans construct over hell. They loved Bob--who of four children was their only son--and firmly intended to do their best for him; and as they knew what was best for him, it followed that Bob must conform. He was a light-coloured, docile boy, with a pleasantly ingenuous face and an affectionate disposition; and he loved his parents, and learned to lean on them.

They sent him in time to Marlborough, where he wrote Latin verses of slightly unusual merit, and bowled with a break from the off which meant that there lay a thin vein of genius somewhere inside of him. When once collared, his bowling became futile; success made it deadly, and on one occasion in a school match against the M.C.C. he did things at Lord's which caused a thin gathering of spectators--the elderly men who never miss a match--to stare at him very attentively as he returned to the pavilion. They thought it worth while to ask, "Which 'Varsity was he bound for?"

Bob was bound for neither. He had to inherit, and consented to inherit, his father's practice without question. His consuming desire to go up to Oxford he hinted at once, and once only, in a conversation with his father; but Mr. Haydon "did not care to expose his son to the temptations which beset young men at the Universities"--this was the very text--and preferred to keep him under his own eye in the seclusion of Tregarrick.

To a young man who is being shielded from temptation in a small provincial town there usually happens one of two things. Either he takes to drink or to discreditable essays in love-making. It is to Bob's credit that he did neither; a certain delicate sanity in the fellow kept him from these methods of killing time. Instead, he spent his evenings at home; listened to his parents' talk; accepted their opinions on human conduct and affairs; and tumbled honourably into love with his sisters' governess.

Ethel Ormiston, the governess, was about a year older than Bob, good to look at, and the only being who understood what ailed Bob's soul during this time. She was in prison herself, poor woman. Mrs. Haydon asserted afterwards that Miss Ormiston had "deliberately set herself to inveigle" the boy; but herein Mrs. Haydon was mistaken. As a matter of fact Bob, having discovered someone obliging and intelligent enough to listen, dinned the story of his aspirations into the girl's ear with the persistent egoism of a hobbedehoy. It must be allowed, however, that the counsel she gave him would have annoyed his parents excessively.

"But I do sympathise with you," she said after listening to an immoderately long and peevish harangue; "and I should advise you to go to your father, as a first step, and ask to be paid a very small salary for the work you do--enough to set up in lodgings alone. At present you are pauperising yourself."

Bob did not quite understand--so she explained:

"You are twenty-one, and still receiving food and lodging from your parents as a dole. At your age, if a man receives anything at all from father or mother, he should be earning it as a right."

She spoke impatiently, and longed to add that he was also impoverishing his intellect. She felt a touch of contempt for him; but a touch of contempt may go with love, and, indeed, competent observers have held that this mixture makes the very finest cement. Certain it is that when Bob answered pathetically, "But I don't want to leave this roof, I--I _can't_, Miss Ormiston, you know!" she missed her opportunity of pointing out that this confession stultified every one of his previous utterances. She began a sentence, indeed, but broke off, with her grey eyes fixed on the ground; and when at length she lifted them, Bob felt something take him by the throat. The few words he proceeded to blurt out stunned him much as if a grenade had exploded close at hand. But when Miss Ormiston burst into tears and declared she must go upstairs at once and pack her box, he recovered, and, looking about, found the aspect of the world bewilderingly changed. There were valleys where hills had stood a moment before.

"I'll go at once and tell my father," he said, drawing a full breath and looking like the man he was for the moment.

"And," sobbed Miss Ormiston, "I'll go at once and pack my box."

Herein she showed foresight, for as soon as Bob's interview with his father was over, she was commanded to leave the premises in time to catch the early train next morning.

Then the Haydon family sat down and talked to Bob.

They began by pooh-poohing the affair. Then, inconsequently, they talked of disgrace, and of scratching his name out of the Family Bible, and said they would rather follow him to his grave than see him married to Miss Ormiston. Lastly, Mrs. Haydon asked Bob who had nursed him, and taught him to walk, and read and know virtue when he saw it. Bob, in the words of the poet, replied, "My mother." "Very well then," said Mrs. Haydon.

After forty-eight hours of this Bob wrote to Miss Ormiston, saying, "My father's indignation is natural, and can only be conquered by time. But I love you always."

Miss Ormiston replied, "Your father's indignation is natural, perhaps. But if you love me, it might be conquered by something else," or words to that effect. At any rate, her letter implied that as it was Bob, and not his father, who proposed to make her a wife, it was on Bob, and not on his father, that she laid the responsibility of fulfilling the promise.

But Bob was weak as water. Love had given him one brief glimpse of the real world: then his father and mother began to talk, and the covers of the Family Bible closed like gates upon his prospect. At the end of a week he wrote--"Nothing shall shake me, dear Ethel. Still, some consideration is due to them; for I am their only son."

To this Ethel Ormiston sent no answer; but reflected "And what consideration is due to me? for you are my only lover."

For a while Bob thought of enlisting, and then of earning an honest wage as a farm-labourer; but rejected both notions, because his training had not taught him that independence is better than respectability--yea, than much broadcloth. It was not that he hankered after the fleshpots, but that he had no conception of a world without fleshpots. In the end his father came to him and said--

"Will you give up this girl?"

And Bob answered--

"I'm sorry, father, but I can't."

"Very well. Rather than see this shame brought on the family, I will send you out to Australia. I have written to my friend Morris, at Ballawag, New South Wales, three hundred miles from Sydney, and he is ready to take you into his office. You have broken my heart and your mother's, and you must go."

And Bob--this man of twenty-one or more--obeyed his father in this, and went. I can almost forgive him, knowing how the filial habit blinds a man. But I cannot forgive the letter he wrote to Miss Ormiston--whom he wished to make his wife, please remember. Nevertheless she forgave him. She had found another situation, and was working on. Her parents were dead.

Five years passed, and Bob's mother died--twelve years, and his father died also, leaving him the lion's share of the money. During this time Bob had worked away at Ballawag and earned enough to set up as lawyer on his own account. But because a man cannot play fast and loose with the self-will that God gave him and afterwards expect to do much in the world, he was a moderately unsuccessful man still when the inheritance dropped in. It gave him a fair income for life. When the letter containing the news reached him, he left the office, walked back to his house, and began to think. Then he unlocked his safe and took out Ethel Ormiston's letters. They made no great heap; for of late their correspondence had dwindled to an annual exchange of good wishes at Christmas. She was still earning her livelihood as a governess.

Bob thought for a week, and then wrote. He asked Ethel Ormiston to come out and be his wife. You will observe that the old curse still lay on him. A man--even a poor one--that was worth kicking would have gone and fetched her; and Bob had plenty of money. But he asked her to come out and begged her to cable "Yes" or "No."

She cabled "Yes." She would start within the month from Plymouth, in the sailing-ship _Grimaldi_. She chose a sailing-ship because it was cheaper.

So Bob travelled down to Sydney to welcome his bride. He stepped on the _Grimaldi's_ deck within five minutes of her arrival, and asked if a Miss Ormiston were on board. There advanced a middle-aged woman, gaunt, wrinkled and unlovely--not the woman he had chosen, but the woman he had made.

"Ethel?" was all he found to say.

"Yes, Bob; I am Ethel. And God forgive you."

Of the change in him she said nothing; but held out her hand with a smile.

"Marry me, Bob, or send me back: I give you leave to do either, and advise you to send me back. Twelve years ago you might have been proud of me, and so I might have helped you. As it is, I have travelled far, and am tired. I can never help you now."

And though he married her, she never did.

II.--BOANERGES.

"Bill Penberthy's come back, I hear."

The tin-smith was sharpening his pocket-knife on the parapet of the bridge, and, without troubling to lift his eyes, threw just enough interrogation into the remark to show that he meant it to lead to conversation. Every one of the dozen men around him held a knife, so that a stranger, crossing the bridge, might have suspected a popular rising in the village. But, as a matter of fact, they were merely waiting for their turn. There is in the parapet one stone upon which knives may be sharpened to an incomparable edge; and, for longer than I can remember, this has supplied the men of Gantick with the necessary excuse for putting their heads together on fine evenings and discussing the news.

"Ay, he's back."

"Losh, Uncle, I'd no idea you was there," said the tin-smith, wheeling round. "And how's your lad looking?"

"Tolerable--tolerable. 'A's got a black suit, my sonnies, and a white tie, and a soft hat that looks large on the head, but can be folded and stowed in your tail pocket." Complacency shone over the speaker's shrivelled cheeks, and beamed from his horn-spectacles. "You can tell 'en at a glance for a Circuit-man and no common Rounder."

"'A's fully knowledgeable by all accounts; learnt out, they tell me."

"You shall hear 'en for yourselves at meeting to-morrow. He conducts both services. Now don't tempt me any more, that's good souls: for when he'd no sooner set foot in th' house and kissed his mother than he had us all down on our knees giving hearty thanks in the most beautiful language, I said to myself, 'many's the time I've had two minds about the money spent in making ye a better man than your father;' but fare thee well, doubt! I don't begrudge it, an' there's an end."

A small girl came running down the street to the bridge-end.

"Uncle Penberthy," she panted, "your tall son--Mr. William--said I was to run down and fetch 'ee home at once."

"Nothin' wrong with 'en, I hope?"

"I think he's going to hold a prayer."

The little man looked at the blade of his knife for a moment, half regretfully: then briskly clasped it, slipped it into his pocket, and hobbled away after the messenger.

The whitewashed front of the Meeting House was bathed, next evening, with soft sunset yellow when Mr. Penberthy the elder stole down the stairs between the exhortations, as his custom was, and stood bareheaded in the doorway respiring the cool air. As a deacon he temperately used the privileges of his office, and one of these was a seat next the door. The Meeting House was really no more than a room--a long upper chamber over a store; and its stairway descended into the street so sharply that it was possible, even for a short-armed man, to sit on the lowest step and shake hands with a friend in the street.

The roadway was deserted for a while. Across the atmosphere there reigned that hush which people wonder at on Sundays, forgetting that nature is always still and that nine-tenths of the week's hubbub is made by man. Down the pale sky came a swallow, with another in chase: their wings were motionless as they swept past the doorway, but the air whizzed with the speed of their flight, and in a moment was silent again. Then from the upper room a man's voice began to roar out upon the stillness. It roared, it broke out in thick sobs that shook the closed windows in their fastenings, it wrestled with emotion for utterance, and, overcoming it, rose into a bellow again; but, whether soaring or depressed, the strain upon it was never relaxed. Uncle Penberthy, listening to his son, felt an oppression of his own chest and drew his breath uneasily.

The tin-smith came round the corner and halted by the door.

"That son o' yours is a boundless man," he observed with an upward nod.

"How did he strike ye this morning?"

"I don't remember to have been so powerfully moved in my life. Perhaps you and me being cronies for thirty year, and he your very son, may have helped to the more effectual working; but be that as it may, I couldn't master my dinner afterwards, and that's the trewth. Ah, he's a man, Uncle; and there's no denying we wanted one of that sort to awaken us to a fit sense. What a dido he do kick up, to be sure!"

The tin-smith shifted his footing uneasily as if he had something to add.

"I hope you won't think it onneighbourly or disrespectful that I didn' come agen this evenin'," he begun, after a pause.

"Not at all, Jem, not at all."

"Because, you see--"

"Yes, yes, I quite see."

"I wouldn' have ye think--but there, I'm powerful glad you see." His face cleared. "Good evenin' to ye, Uncle!"

He went on with a brisker step, while Uncle Penberthy drew a few more lingering breaths and climbed the stairs again to the close air of the meeting-room.

"I'm afraid, father, that something in my second exhortation displeased you," said the Rev. William Penberthy as he walked home from service between his parents. He was a tall fellow with a hatchet-shaped face and eyes set rather closely together.

"Not at all, my son. What makes ye deem it?" The little man tilted back his bronzed top-hat and looked up nervously.

"Because you went out in the middle of service."

"'Tis but father's habit, William," old Mrs. Penberthy made haste to explain, laying a hand on his arm. She was somewhat stouter of build and louder of voice than her husband, but stood in just the same awe of her son. "He's done it regular since he was appointed deacon."

"Why?" asked William, stonily.

Uncle Penberthy pulled off his hat to extract a red handkerchief from its crown, removed his spectacles, and wiped them hurriedly.

"Them varmints of boys," he stammered, "be so troublesome round the door--occasion'lly, that is."

"Was that so to-night?"

"Why, no."

"But you were absent at least twenty minutes--all through the silent prayer and half way through the third exhortation." He gazed sternly at the amiable old man. "You didn't hear me treat that difficulty in Colossians, two, twenty to twenty-three? If you have time, we'll discuss it after private worship to-night. If I can make you see it in what I am sure is the right light, it will lead you to think more seriously of that glass of beer you have fallen into the habit of taking with your supper."

It is but a fortnight since the Rev. William Penberthy came home; but in that fortnight his father and mother have aged ten years. The old man, when I took him my watch to regulate the other day--for on week-days he is a watch-maker--began to ask questions, as eagerly as a child, about the village news. It turned out that, for a whole week, he had not been down to sharpen his knife upon the bridge. He has given up his glass of beer, too, and altogether the zeal of his house is eating him up.

This morning the new minister climbed into the van with his carpet-bag. He is off to some Conference or other, and will be back again the day after to-morrow. Ten minutes after he had gone his father and mother shut up the shop and went out together. They mean to take a whole holiday and hear all the news. It was pitiful to see their fumbling haste as they helped one another to put up the shutters; and almost more pitiful to mark, as they hurried down the street arm in arm, their conscientious but feeble endeavour to look something more staid than a couple of children just out of school.

TWO MONUMENTS.

MY DEAR YOUNG LADY,--

Our postman here does not deliver parcels until the afternoon--which nobody grumbles at, because of his infirmity and his long and useful career. The manuscript, therefore, of your novel, _Sunshine and Shadow_, has not yet reached me. But your letter--in which, you beg me to send an opinion upon the work, with some advice upon your chances of success in literature--I found on my breakfast-table, as well as the photograph which you desire (perhaps wisely) to face the title-page. I trust you will forgive the slight stain in the lower left-hand corner of the portrait, which I return: for it is the strawberry-season here, and in course of my reflections I had the misfortune to let the cardboard slip between my fingers and fall across the edge of the plate.

I have taken the resolution to send my advice before it can be shaken by a perusal of _Sunshine and Shadow_. But it is difficult nevertheless. I might say bluntly that, unless the camera lies, your face is not one to stake against Fame over a game of hazard. You remember John Lyly's "Cupid and my Campaspe"?--and how Cupid losing,

"_down he throws
The coral of his lip, the rose
Growing on's cheek (but none lenows how)_ ..."

--and so on, with the rest of his charms, one by one? I might assure you that when maidens play against Fame they risk all these treasures and more, without hope of leniency from their opponent, who (you will note) is the same sex. But you will answer by return of post, that this is no business of mine, and that I exhibit the usual impertinence of man when asked to consider woman's serious aspiration. You will protest that you are ready to stake all this. Very well, then: listen, if you have patience, to a little story that I came upon, a week since, about a man who spent his days at this game of hazard. It was called _The Two Monuments_.

When the Headmaster of the Grammar-School came to add up the marks for the term's work and examination--which he always did without a mistake--it was discovered that in the Upper Fourth (the top form) Thompson had beaten Jenkins _major_ by sixteen. So Thompson received a copy of the _Memoirs of Eminent Etonians_, bound in tree-calf, and took it home under his arm, wondering what "Etonians" were, but too proud to ask. And Jenkins _major_ received nothing; and being too weak to punch Thompson's head (as he desired) waylaid him opposite the cemetery gate on his way home, and said--

"_Parvenu!_"

--which was doubly insulting; for, in the first place, French was Thompson's weakest subject, and secondly, his father was a haberdasher in a small way, who spoke with awe of the Jenkinses as a family that had practised law in the town for six generations. Thompson himself was aware of the glamour such a lineage conferred. It was wholly due to his ignorance of French that he retorted--

"You're another!"

Young Jenkins explained the term, with a wave of his hand towards the cemetery gate.

"You'll find my family in there, and inside a rail of their own. And you needn't think I wanted that prize. _I_'ve got a grandfather."