Chapter 8

It came to this, however, that one evening, when she had not eaten for forty hours, her employer gave her a piece of embroidery to work against time. The fact is, my dear lady, that you are very particular about having your commissions executed to the hour, and your dressmakers are anxious to oblige, knowing that you never squabble over the price. To be sure, you have never heard of the flat-footed Jew man--how should you? And we may believe that your dressmakers knew just as little of the poor woman who had used to be the friend of the Small People. But the truth remains that, in the press of your many pleasures, you were pardonably twenty-four hours late in ordering the gown in which you were to appear an angel.

Ah, madam! will it comfort you to hear that _you_ were the one to reconcile the Small People with that poor sister of yours who had left them, twenty years before, and wanted them so sorely? The hospital doctor gave her complaint a long name, and I gather that it has a place by itself in books of pathology. But the woman's tale was that, after she had been stitching through the long night, the dawn came through the roof and found her with four marguerites still left to be embroidered in gold on the pieces of satin that lay in her lap. She threaded her needle afresh, rubbed her weary eyes, and began--when, lo! a miracle.

Instead of one hand, there were four at work--four hands, four needles, four lines of thread. _The four marguerites were all being embroidered at the same time!_ The piskies had forgiven, had remembered her at last, after these many years, and were coming to her help, as of old. Ah, madam, the tears of thankfulness that ran from her hot eyes and fell upon those golden marguerites of yours!

Of course her eyes were disordered. There was only one flower, really. There was only one embroidered in the morning, when they found her sobbing, with your bodice still in her lap, and took her to the hospital; and that is why the dressmakers failed to keep faith with you for once, and made you so angry.

Dear lady, the piskies are not easily summoned, in these days.

THE MAYOR OF GANTICK.

One of these days I hope to write a treatise on the Mayors of Cornwall--dignitaries whose pleasant fame is now night, remembered only in some neat by-word or saying of the country people. Thus you may hear, now and again, of "the Mayor of Falmouth, who thanked God when the town gaol was enlarged," "the Mayor of Market Jew, sitting in his own light," or "the Mayor of Calenich, who walked two miles to ride one." But the one whose history perplexed me most, till I heard the truth from an eye-witness, was "the mad Mayor of Gantick, who was wise for a long day, and then died of it."

It was an old tin-streamer who told me--a thin fellow with a shrivelled mouth, and a back bent two-double. And I heard it on the very hearthstone of the Mayor's cottage, one afternoon, as we sat and smoked in the shadow of the crumbling mud wall, with a square of blue sky for roof, and for carpet a tangle of brambles, nettles, and rank grass.

It seems that the village of Gantick, half a mile away, was used once in every year to purge itself of evil. To this end the villagers prepared a huge dragon of pasteboard and marched out with it to a sandy common, since cut up by tin-works, but still known as Dragon's Moor. Here they would choose one of their number to be Mayor, and submit to him all questions of conscience, and such cases of notorious evil living as the law failed to provide for. Summary justice waited on all his decisions; and as the village wag was usually chosen for the post, you may guess that the horse-play was rough at times. When this was over, and the public conscience purified, the company fell on the pasteboard dragon with sticks and whacked him into small pieces, which they buried in a small hollow called Dragon Pit; and so returned gladly to their homes to start on another twelve months of sin.

This feast of purification fell always on the 12th of July; and in the heyday of its celebration there lived in this cottage a widow-woman and her only son, a demented man about forty years old. There was no harm in the poor creature, who worked at the Lanihorne slate-quarries, six miles off, as a "hollibubber"--that is to say, in carting away the refuse slate. Every morning he walked to his work, mumbling to himself as he went; and though the children followed him at times, hooting and flinging stones, they grew tired at last, finding that he never resented it. His mother--a tall, silent woman with an inscrutable face--had supper ready for him when he returned, and often was forced to feed him, while he unlocked his tongue and babbled over the small adventures of the day. He was not one of those gifted idiots who hear voices in the wind and know the language of the wild birds. His talk was merely imbecile; and, for the rest, he had large grey eyes, features of that regularity which we call Greek, and stood six foot two in his shoes.

One hot morning--it was the 12th of July--he was starting for his work when an indescribable hubbub sounded up the road, and presently came by the whole rabble of Gantick with cow-horns and instruments of percussion, and in their midst the famous dragon--all green, with fiery, painted eyes, and a long tongue of red flannel. Behind it the prisoners were escorted--a pale woman or two with dazed, terrified eyes, an old man suspected of egg-stealing, a cow addicted to trespass, and so on.

The Mayor was not chosen yet, this ceremony being deferred by rule till the crowd reached Dragon's Moor. But drawing near the cottage door and catching sight of the half-witted man with his foot on the threshold, a village wit called out and proposed that they should take "the Mounster" (as he was called) along with them for Mayor.

It hit the mob's humour, and they cheered. The Mounster's mother, standing in the doorway, went white as if painted.

"Man in the lump's a hateful animal," she said to herself, hoarsely. "Come indoors, Jonathan, an' let 'em go by."

"Come an' rule over us," the crowd invited him, and a gleam of proud delight woke in his silly face.

"The heat--his head won't stand it." The woman looked up at the cloudless sky. "For God's sake take your fun elsewhere!" she cried.

The women who were led to judgment looked at her stupidly. They too suffered, without understanding, the heavy sport of men. At last one said--

"Old woman, let him come. We'll have more mercy from a mazed man."

"Sister, you've been loose, they tell me," answered the old woman, "an' must eat the bitter fruit o't. But my son's an innocent. Jonathan, they'll look for you at the works."

"There's prouder work for me 'pon Dragon's Moor," the Mounster decided, with smiling eyes. "Come along, mother, an' see me exalted."

The crowd bore him off at their head, and the din broke out again. The new Mayor strutted among them with lifted chin and a radiant face. He thought it glorious. His mother ran into the cottage, fetched a bottle and followed after the dusty tail of the procession. Once, as they were passing a running stream, she halted and filled the bottle carefully, emptying it again and again until the film outside the glass was to her liking. Then she followed again, and came to Dragon's Moor.

They sat the Mayor on a mound, took off his hat, placed a crown on his head and a broomstick in his hand, and brought him the cases to try.

The first was a grey mare, possessed (they alleged) with a devil. Her skin hung like a sack on her bones.

"'Tis Eli Thoms' mare. What's to be done to cure her?" they asked.

"Let Eli Thoms buy a comb, an' comb his mare's tail while she eats her feed. So Eli'll know if 'tis the devil or no that steals oats from his manger."

They applauded his wisdom and brought forward the woman who had pleaded just now with his mother.

"Who made her?" he asked, having listened to the charge.

"God, 'tis to be supposed."

"God makes no evil."

"The Devil, then."

"Then whack the Devil."

They fell on the pasteboard dragon and belaboured him. The sun poured down on the Mayor's throne; and his mother, who sat by his right hand wondering at his sense, gave him water to drink from the bottle. They brought a third case--a boy who had been caught torturing a cow. He had taken a saw, and tried to saw off one of her horns while she was tethered in her stall.

The Mayor leapt up from his seat.

"Kill him!" he shouted, "take him off and kill him!" His face was twisted with passion, and he lifted his stick. The crowd fell back for a second, but the old woman leant forward and touched her son softly on the leg. He stopped short: the anger died out of his face, and he shivered.

"No," he said, "I was wrong, naybours. The boy is mad, I think; an' 'tis a terrible lot, to be mad. This is the Devil's doing, out o' doubt. Beat the Devil."

"Simme," said one in the crowd, "the sins o' Gantick be wearin' out the smoky man at a terrible rate."

"Ay," answered another, "His Naughtiness bain't ekal to Gantick." And this observation was the original of a proverb, still repeated-- "As naughty as Gantick, where the Devil struck for shorter hours."

There was no cruelty that day on Dragon's Moor. All the afternoon the mad Mayor sat in the sun's eye and gave judgment, while his mother from time to time wiped away the froth that gathered on his lips, and moistened them with water from her bottle. From first to last she never spoke a word, but sat with a horror in her eyes, and watched the flushed cheeks of this grown-up, bearded son. And all the afternoon the men of Gantick brayed the Devil into shreds.

I said there was no cruelty on Dragon's Moor that day. But at sundown the Mayor turned to his mother and said--

"We've been over-hasty, mother. We ought to ha' found out who made the Devil what he is." At last the sun dropped; a shadow fell on the brown moors and crept up the mound where the mother and son sat. The brightness died out of the Mayor's face.

Three minutes after, he flung up his hands and cried, "Mother--my head, my head!"

She rose, still without a word, pulled down his arms, slipped one within her own, and led him away to the road. The crowd did not interfere; they were burying the broken dragon, with shouts and rough play.

A woman followed them to the road, and tried to clasp the Mayor's knees as he staggered. His mother beat her away. "Off wi' you!" she cried; "'tis your reproach he's bearin'."

She helped him slowly home. In the shadow of the cottage the inspired look that he had worn all day returned for a moment. Then a convulsion took him, casting him on the floor.

At nine o'clock he died, with his head on her lap.

She closed his eyes, smoothed the wrinkles on his tired face, and sat watching him for some time. At length she lifted and laid him on the deal table at full length, bolted the door, put the heavy shutter on the low window, and began to light the fire.

For fuel she had a heap of peat-turves and some sticks. Having lit it, she set a crock of water to warm, and undressed the man slowly. Then, the water being ready, she washed and laid him out, chafing his limbs and talking to herself all the while.

"Fair, straight legs," she said; "beautiful body that leapt in my side, forty years back, and thrilled me! How proud I was! Why did God make you beautiful?"

All night she sat caressing him. And the smoke of the peat-turves, finding no exit and no draught to carry them up the chimney, crept around and killed her quietly beside her son.

THE DOCTOR'S FOUNDLING.

There are said to be many vipers on the Downs above the sea; but it was so pleasant to find a breeze up there allaying the fervid afternoon, that I risked the consequences and stretched myself at full length, tilting my straw hat well over my nose.

Presently, above the _tic-a-tic-tick_ of the grasshoppers, and the wail of a passing gull, a human sound seemed to start abruptly out of the solitude--the voice of a man singing. I rose on my elbow, and pushed the straw hat up a bit. Under its brim through the quivering atmosphere, I saw the fellow, two hundred yards away, a dark obtrusive blot on the bronze landscape. He was coming along the track that would lead him down-hill to the port; and his voice fell louder on the still air--

"Ho! the prickly briar, It prickles my throat so sore-- If I get out o' the prickly briar, I'll never get in any more."

"Ho! just loosen the rope"--

At this point I must have come within his view, for he halted a moment, and then turned abruptly out of the track towards me,-- a scare-crow of a figure, powdered white with dust. In spite of the weather, he wore his tattered coat buttoned at the throat, with the collar turned up. Probably he possessed no shirt; certainly no socks, for his toes protruded from the broken boots. He was quite young.

Without salutation he dropped on the turf two paces off and remarked--

"It's bleedin' 'ot."

There was just a pause while he cast his eyes back on the country he had travelled; then, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the port, he inquired--

"'Ow's the old lot?"

Said I, "Look here; you're Dick Jago. How far have you walked to-day?"

He had turned on me as if ready with a sharp question, but changed his mind and answered doggedly--

"All the way from Drakeport."

"Very well; then it's right-about-face with you and back to Drakeport before I let you go. Do you see this stick? If you attempt to walk a step more towards the port, I'll crack your head with it."

He gulped down something in his throat. "Is the old man ill?" he asked.

"He's dead," said I, simply.

The fellow turned his eyes to the horizon, and began whistling the air of "The Prickly Briar" softly to himself. And while he whistled, my memory ran back to the day when he first came to trouble us, and play the fiend's mischief with a couple of dear honest hearts.

The day I travelled back to was one in the prime of May, when the lilacs were out by Dr. Jago's green gate, and the General from Drakeport Barracks, with the red and white feathers in his cocked-hat, had just cantered up the street, followed by a dozen shouting urchins, on his way to the Downs. For it was the end of the militia-training, when the review was always held; and all the morning the bugles had been sounding at the head of every street and lane where the men were billeted.

When the gold-laced General disappeared, he left the streets all but empty; for the townspeople by this time had flocked to the Downs. Only by Dr. Jago's gate there stood a small group in the sunshine. Kitty, the doctor's mare that had pulled his gig for ten years, was standing saddled in the roadway, with a stable-boy at her head; just outside the gate, the little doctor himself in regimentals and black cocked-hat with black feathers, regarding her; behind, the pleasant old face of his wife, regarding _him_; and, behind again, the two maid-servants regarding the group generally from behind their mistress's shoulder.

"Maria, I shall never do it," said the doctor, measuring with his eye the distance between the ground and the stirrup.

"Indeed, John, I don't think you will."

"There was a time when I'd have vaulted it. I'm abominably late as it is, Maria."

"Shall I give master a leg up?" suggested one of the maids.

"No, Susan, you will do nothing of the kind." Mrs. Jago paused, her brow wrinkled beneath her white lace cap. Then an inspiration came-- "The chair--a kitchen chair, Susan!"

The maid flew; the chair was brought; and that is how the good old doctor mounted for the review. Three minutes later he was trotting soberly up the street, pausing twice to kiss his hand to his wife, who watched him proudly from the green gate, and took off her spectacles and wiped them, the better to see him out of sight.

By the time Dr. Jago reached the Downs, the review was in full swing. The colonel shouted, the captains shouted, the regiment formed, re-formed, marched, charged at the double, and fired volleys of blank cartridges. The General and orderlies galloped from spot to spot without apparent object; and all was very martial. At last the doctor grew tired of trotting up and down without being wanted. He thought with longing of some pools, half a mile away, in a hollow of the Downs, that contained certain freshwater shells about which he held a theory. The afternoon was hot. He glanced round--no one seemed to want him: so he turned Kitty into a grassy defile that led to the pools, and walked her leisurely away.

Half an hour later he stood, ankle-deep in water, groping for his shells and oblivious of the review, the firing that echoed far away, the flight of time--everything. Kitty, with one fore-leg through the bridle, was cropping on the brink. Minutes passed, and the doctor raised his head, for the blood was running into it. At that moment his eye was caught by a scarlet object under a gorse-bush on the opposite bank. He gave a second look, then waded across towards it.

It was a baby: a baby not a week old, wrapped only in a red handkerchief.

The doctor bent over it. The infant opened its eyes and began to wail. At this instant an orderly appeared on the ridge above, scanning the country. He caught sight of the doctor and descended to the opposite shore of the pool, where he saluted and yelled his message. It appeared that some awkward militiaman had blown his thumb off in the blank cartridge practice and surgical help was wanted at once.

Doctor Jago dropped the corner of the handkerchief, returned across the pool, was helped on to Kitty's back and cantered away, the orderly after him.

In an hour's time, having put on a tourniquet and bandaged the hand, he was back again by the pool. The baby was still there. He lifted it and found a scrap of paper underneath. . . .

The doctor returned by devious ways to his home, a full hour before he was expected. He rode in at the back gate, where to his secret satisfaction he found no stable-boy. So he stabled Kitty himself, and crept into his own house like a thief. Nor was it like his habits to pay, as he did, a visit to the little cupboard (where the brandy-bottle was kept) underneath the stairs, before entering the drawing-room, with his face full of guilt and diplomacy.

"Gracious, John!" cried out Mrs. Jago, dropping her knitting. "Is the review over already?"

"No, I don't think it is--at least, I don't know," stammered the doctor.

"John, you have had another attack of that vertigo."

"Upon my honour I have not, Maria." The doctor was vehement; for the vertigo necessitated brandy, and a visit to the little cupboard below the stairs meant hideous detection.

So he sat up and tried to describe the review to his wife, and made such an abject mess of it, that after twenty minutes she made up her mind that he _must_ have a headache, and, leaving the room quietly, went to the little cupboard below the stairs. She found the door ajar. . . .

When, after a long absence, she reappeared in the drawing-room, she had forgotten to bring the brandy, and wore a look as guilty as her husband's. So they sat together and talked in the twilight on trivial matters; and each had a heart insufferably burdened, and each was waiting desperately for an opportunity to lighten it.

"John," said Mrs. Jago at last, "we are getting poor company for each other.

"Maria!"

The doctor leapt to his feet: and these old souls, who knew each other so passing well, looked into each other's eyes, half in terror.

At that instant a feeble wail smote on their ears. It came from the cupboard underneath the stairs.

"Maria! I put it there myself, two hours ago. I picked it up on the downs. I've been--"

"_You!_ I thought it was some beggar-woman's doing. John, John--why didn't you say so before!"

And she rushed out of the room.

This seedy scamp who reclined beside me was the child that she brought back with her from the little cupboard. They had adopted him, fed him, educated him, wrapped him round with love; and he had lived to break their hearts. Possibly there was some gipsy blood in him that defied their nurture. But the speculation is not worth going into. I only know that I felt the better that afternoon as I watched his figure diminishing on the road back to Drakeport. He had a crown of mine in his pocket, and was still singing--

"Ho! just loosen the rope, If it's only just for a while; I fancy I see my father coming Across from yonder stile."

I had lied in telling him that the old doctor was dead. As a matter of fact he lay dying that afternoon. Half-way down the hill I saw the small figure of Jacobs, the sexton, turn in at the church-gate. He was going to toll the passing-bell.

THE GIFTS OF FEODOR HIMKOFF.

It is just six years ago that I first travelled the coast from Gorrans Haven to Zoze Point.

Since then I have visited it in fair weather and foul; and in time, perhaps, shall rival the coastguardsmen, who can walk it blindfold. But to this day it remains in my recollection the coast I trod, without companion, during four dark days in December. It was a rude introduction. The wind blew in my face, with scuds of cold rain; a leaden mist hung low on the left, and rolled slowly up Channel. Now and then it thinned enough to reveal a white zigzag of breakers in front, and a blur of land; or, far below, a cluster of dripping rocks, with the sea crawling between and lifting their weed. But for the most part I saw only the furze-bushes beside the path, each powdered with fine raindrops, that in the aggregate resembled a coat of grey frieze, and the puffs of spray that shot up over the cliff's lip and drenched me.

Just beyond the Nare Head, where the path dipped steeply, a bright square disengaged itself from the mist as I passed, and, around it, the looming outline of a cottage, between the footpath and the sea. A habitation more desolate than this odd angle of the coast could hardly have been chosen; on the other hand, the glow of firelight within the kitchen window was almost an invitation. It seemed worth my while to ask for a drink of milk there, and find out what manner of folk were the inmates.

An old woman answered my knock. She was tall, with a slight stoop, and a tinge of yellow pervading her face, as if some of the complexion had run into her teeth and the whites of her eyes. A clean white cap, tied under the chin with tape, concealed all but the edge of her grey locks. She wore a violet turnover, a large wrapper, a brown stuff gown that hardly reached her ankles, and thick worsted stockings, but no shoes.

"A drink o' milk? Why not a dish o' tea?"

"That will be troubling you," said I, a bit ashamed for feeling so little in want of sustenance.

"Few they be that troubles us, my dear. Too few by land, an' too many by sea, rest their dear souls! Step inside by the fire. There's only my old man here, an' you needn't stand 'pon ceremony wi' _he_: for he's stone-deaf an' totelin'. Isaac, you poor deaf haddock, here's a strange body for 'ee to look at; tho' you'm past all pomp but buryin', I reckon." She sighed as I stepped past into the warmth.

The man she called Isaac was huddled and nodding in a chair, before the bluish blaze of a wreck-wood fire. He met me with an incurious stare, and began to doze again. He was clearly in the last decline of manhood, the stage of utter childishness and mere oblivion; and sat there with his faculties collapsed, waiting for release.