Part 13

“Lor!” ejaculated Kate Hardy under her breath, looking in awe at her distinguished relative.

“’Ees, my dear, you mid be sure o’ that. D’ye mind when poor Jane Arnold was took off wi’ an impression on her chest—not so much time as to say where she’d like to be buried? Well, ye know, her daughter Mary was terrible upset. She know’d her mother had a lovely set o’ silver spoons put away safe somewhere, what was to be hers as she did tell her many a time when she was livin’, but not so much as one o’ them could she find; and Tom, the brother—a very rough fellow was Tom—gived her a week to put all to rights in the house and to pack up and go. Him and his missus didn’t get on at all with Mary. So poor Mary did come to I, the tears a-streaming down her face. ‘Mrs. Sibley,’ says she, ‘I don’t know what I’ll do without you’ll help me. I’ve lost my dear mother,’ she says, a-sobbin’ and a-cryin’ fit to break her heart, ‘and now it do really seem as if I was to lose the spoons too.”

“Eh—h—h, dear, dear,” groaned Mrs. Hardy sympathetically.

“’E—es, my dear, it ’ud ha’ melted a heart o’ stone I do assure ye. So, I gived her summat and I did tell her what to say—”

Here the young man who had been sitting moodily twirling his thumbs, only changing his position once or twice to kick the burning logs with the heel of his hob-nailed boot when the flames sunk low, looked up suddenly with an expression of interest.

“What did ’ee give her?” he asked.

“Never you mind, Jim. It bain’t for nothin’ o’ that kind as you and your mother be come here this evenin’: ’tis the livin’ as you wants to deal wi’.”

“Maybe if I had my will it ’ud be the dead,” said Jim, kicking savagely at the log.

“Sh—sh—sh,” said his mother reprovingly. “Don’t ’ee take no notice of him, Aunt Betty; ’tis the best hearted bwoy in the world, but there, he be druv’ very nigh distracted at the present time!”

“Well, Kate, my dear, as I was a-sayin’,” pursued the sibyl, pointedly addressing herself to the elder of her visitors, “I did give the poor creatur’ summat, and that very night about twelve o’clock she did set the charm to work.”

Jim kicked at the log again, a little nervously, and Kate drew forward her chair with a grating sound on the tiled floor.

“Jist as the clock did strike one,” went on Betty, in a sepulchral tone, “the flame o’ the candle did jump up and then drop down again, and Mary did hear her mother’s step on the floor.”

Murmurs of admiration mingled with trepidation from Mrs. Hardy, and a sudden rigidity on Jim’s part.

“There she was, jist as she mid ha’ been in life, in her Sunday dress an’ little brooch an’ all, Mary said, an’ a nice clean apron, an’ wi’ a beautiful fresh colour in her cheeks. She looked at Mary so reproachful like, the very same, Mary did say, as if she was axin’ her, ‘Why have ye brought me back?’ Poor Mary did go all white and twittery, an’ she did say: ‘Oh, Mother dear, I’d never ha’ brought you back from your rest, but just to ax ’ee the one thing: _where did ’ee put the spoons_?’ Well, the figure did stand lookin’ at her so solemn, and then all at once did rise its hand like this.”

Here Betty pointed upwards, and a dramatic pause ensued.

“Ah,” groaned Mrs. Hardy, “meanin’ to say as now she’d gone up’ards to glory she couldn’t be expected to be took up wi’ spoons an’ sich like.”

“’Twas the very thing as Mary did think herself, Kate my dear,” responded Betty solemnly. “She come to I next mornin’, an’ she did say them very words, but I knowed better; I knowed that there charm what I gived her was one as never failed. ‘Not at all, Mary,’ says I. ‘Your mother’s sperrit warn’t a-tellin’ ’ee nought o’ the kind. It p’inted up’ards, ye say? Well then, take my advice an’ go straight home and _search the thatch_.’”

“Well, to be sure!” ejaculated her listeners; even the taciturn Jim was constrained to express some interest.

“Did she find ’em?” he asked quickly.

“I should think she did find ’em, Jim. She did find every one as safe as anything, tied up in an old stocking, jist in the very spot what her mother had p’inted out.”

This climax seemed to impress Jim even more than his mother; he leaned forward, his great red hands twitching as they rested one on each knee.

“I d’ ’low, Aunt Betty, if ye could do that, you could do anythin’. Can’t ye gi’ me summat as ’ll get the better o’ this here chap?”

“Well, Jim, I could give ’ee a love charm, but as you do tell I there’s no gettin’ near your young lady, I don’t see how you be to indooce her to wear it.”

“That’s true!” put in Jim’s mother dolefully. “There, I will say it do seem cruel hard. They were as good friends I do assure ’ee as a young man and a young lady need be. They’ve a-bin walkin’—how long have you an’ Chrissy bin a-walkin’, Jim?”

“Fifteen month,” growled Jim gloomily.

“Ah, fifteen month, Aunt Betty. An’ Chrissy have a nice bit of money laid by, mind ye. Her father was as pleasant as could be about it, an’ quite friendly, an’ the mother too. She did say to I not above a month ago, I d’ ’low,’ says she, ‘we may be expectin’ to hear banns give out soon,’ she says. Well, an now this young good-for-nothin’ chap must come and whip her up from under my Jim’s very nose. What she can see in him I can’t think, without it be his _korky_ jacket. _Trooper_ Willcocks, as he calls himself—I’d troop him if I had my way. Why didn’t he stay out at the war then, if he be so set up about it?”

“Ah, he’s a soldier, is he?” commented Aunt Betty. “A soldier. Ah, my dear, Jim’s young lady bain’t the first to run after a red coat.”

“But he han’t got no more a red coat nor you have—nothin’ but what they do call korky—as ugly a colour as ever I see. An’ he bain’t a-goin’ to stop in the army neither. He bain’t a proper soldier at all—jist a common chap as they picked up somewhere and clapped on a horse and sent out.”

“He’s in the yeomanry,” explained Jim. “He don’t even come from these parts; he’s home on sick leave, an’ is here visitin’ his uncle, along of his own ’ome bein’ in town and not so healthy. But he’s no more sick than I am. I’d like to make him a bit sicker, I know. Couldn’t ’ee give me a charm for that, Aunt Betty?”

Betty rubbed her shrivelled hands together, and fixed her beady eyes meditatively on her great-nephew.

“There mid be things as can be done what mid be things a body midn’t like doin’,” she said oracularly. “You know the wax image—but there, I wouldn’t go for to advise such a thing. The power as is give us is give us for good, that’s what I do say. There’s a cure for everything in natur’, if one but knowed how to find it. Now with herbs—I’ve often found out wonderful things with herbs—folks as is troubled wi’ warts and corns could cure them in a minute if they knowed the right thing. The worst wart as ever was can be cured by a bit o’ milkwort. Pull it up, root an’ all, d’ye see, and give ’em a bit every day, pounded wi’ a drop o’ new milk, an’ when the time comes round that the plant, if it was growin’ outside, ’ud be dyin’ down, the wart ’ull just wither away—that’s my _notion_, d’ye see?”

“But the image,” persevered Jim. “Did you ever try that? It seems a silly kind o’ thing too,” he added tentatively. “How could a dumb image do anything good or ill?”

“Hush—sh—sh, my dear, ye don’t know nothin’ about them things,” put in Mrs. Hardy with apologetic haste. “But they was known an’ tried by others afore ye was born. Ye make an image in the likeness of the person as you know is trying to do you harm, and ye put it down to roast at a slow fire. Dear yes, I’ve often heard of it.”

“Well, then ye don’t seem to have heard the rights on it,” interposed Aunt Betty, indignant at this encroachment on her peculiar province. “There’s a deal more to be done than just set it down to roast same’s a chicken.”

“Then what must ye do?” inquired Kate in awe-struck tones. “Ah,” seized by a sudden thought, “I can mind it now. Ye must stick the image full of pins first.”

“That’s it?” said old Betty, nodding reluctantly. “But there’s more than that too. There’s summat as must be _said_.”

“I never heerd tell o’ nothin bein’ said, an’ I can mind my cousin Lizzie castin’ a spell over her step-mother wi’ an image like that, an’ she were took wi’ the rheumatiz the next week an’ never looked up arter.”

“’Twarn’t on account of the spell then if she didn’t say nothin’,” retorted Betty contemptuously. “No spell would ever work wi’out the words. Why, did ye never hear tell o’ saying the Lard’s Prayer back’ards, beginnin’ with Amen?”

“Lard no! that I didn’t! An’ it bain’t what I’d like to be doin’, Aunt Betty.”

“Neither should I, my dear—’tis just what I be a-tellin’ ’ee. But charm won’t work wi’out ye do.”

A pause ensued, after which Kate, rising disconsolately and crooking her arm into her heavy market-basket, remarked that it was time to be goin’. Jim rose too, and stood dismally facing his great-aunt.

“If ye like to come back in a few days I’ll get that love charm ready,” she remarked compassionately. “Bain’t there no maid as knows her as ye could get to sew it somewhere about her clothes?”

“No,” retorted Jim sullenly. “I’ll not try no love charms. I’ll try my hand at gettin’ rid o’ _him_ first.”

Mother and son trudged away together in gloomy silence. The early dusk had closed in upon the autumnal landscape. In the little town they had left behind, lights were beginning to gleam forth, but before them there was only the dim glimmer of the wet road to guide them on their way. Now and then a van passed them, jogging downwards to the town, or a heavily-laden waggon with the carter slouching alongside, and growling out Good-night as he went by.

All at once Jim nudged his mother, and pointed with a trembling finger.

“It’s him,” he whispered hoarsely. Against the uncertain grey background of the road a broad-shouldered young figure came swinging into sight, the outline of the broad-brimmed cavalier hat which marked the yeoman being plainly perceptible. As he drew near to the couple he paused, peering through the dusk.

“Hullo, Jim Hardy!” he cried gaily, “any message for Chrissy? I’m glad to see you walking with a lady—I’ll tell her you’ve picked up another sweetheart.”

“Get out with ’ee, do!” cried Mrs. Hardy, further relieving her lacerated feelings by making a swoop at him with the market-basket.

Jim, however, pushed past her, and making a sudden dart at his supplanter, endeavoured to knock the picturesque hat from his head. But the yeoman was too quick for him: stepping swiftly to one side he allowed his assailant’s blow to expend itself on the empty air, and then closing with him, tripped him up and laid him neatly on his back in the miry road.

“Good trick that, ain’t it?” he inquired pleasantly over his shoulder as he pursued his way. “Picked it up from the Lancashires.”

Jim lay half stunned for a moment and then struggled up, foaming at the mouth. He would have rushed in pursuit of his adversary, but that before he was fairly on his feet his mother fell upon him, market-basket and all, and held him firmly embraced until the tantalising sound of Trooper Willcocks’ cheery whistle died away in the distance.

“Well, I tell you what it is,” grumbled the hapless lover, when he had at last extricated himself. “We’ll have a try at that there image to-night, or my name bain’t Jim Hardy.”

That evening accordingly, when the rheumatic old father had been hustled off to bed, and the younger members of the family disposed of for the night, Jim confronted his mother, holding a large slab of bees’ wax in his hand.

“Where be the pins?” he asked in a fierce whisper.

“Lard, it do make I go all flittery-twittery—folks do tell such tales! If ’twarn’t for sayin’ the words, I wouldn’t so much mind. But there—the notion do make I go quite cold down the back.”

Meanwhile Jim, kneeling in front of the fire, had melted the wax sufficiently to make it malleable, and now began to knead and mould it.

“Here be his legs,” he muttered to himself, “and now we must make thiccy hat stick out.”

With a kind of groan his mother went over to a chest of drawers in a corner of the room, and after fumbling for some time returned with a paper of pins.

“It be very nigh ready,” whispered Jim working away. “Ugh! I’d like to smash the cheeky face of ’en.” And with that he gave a fierce poke at the small knob which did duty for the gallant yeoman’s countenance.

The figure being completed Mrs. Hardy bent downwards handing Jim the pins one by one; her son viciously proceeding to insert as many as the effigy would hold, and beginning by driving a particularly large and crooked one into the middle of its chest. The blazing logs threw large grotesque shadows of the stooping forms of the mother and son upon walls and ceiling, and when presently Jim held out the bristling little image at arm’s length, its fantastic reproduction, naturally much magnified, did indeed appear to bear some weird resemblance to the person whom it was meant to represent.

“Now then, Mother, say the words,” ordered Jim, as he set down the figure on the hearth.

“Lard, I dursn’t!” whimpered Mrs. Hardy. “Say ’em yourself; I don’t wish the poor young man no ’arm.”

Her son, after casting on her a withering glance, indicative of supreme scorn at this despicable attempt to shirk responsibility, began slowly and resolutely to repeat his impious incantation. By the time he had finished, the miniature yeoman had considerably diminished in size, the broad-brimmed hat had toppled to one side, and several of the pins had dropped out. Jim straightened himself; his face was quite pale and his brow was wet.

“Get along to bed, Mother,” he remarked, “I reckon he’ll do now. I d’ ’low Trooper Willcocks ’ull not feel so very comfortable in the morning.”

But lo and behold! though on the following day nothing was left of the effigy but a sticky indistinguishable mass of wax and pins, the very first person whom Jim encountered on his way to work was Trooper Willcocks, apparently in the best of health and spirits. Jim was downcast, but not yet doubtful. He would give him a week, he thought; but at the end of the week Trooper Willcocks looked better than ever, and what was worse, was more frequently in Chrissy’s company.

The despairing lover next resolved to try a more orthodox method of removing his obnoxious rival, and called upon the Rector, to whom he unfolded his case with some difficulty, and who listened in evident amusement, but not very great surprise.

“To tell you the truth, Hardy,” he remarked, throwing himself back in his chair, “you are not the only sufferer. I think about six men have already come to me on the very same errand.”

“Six chaps come to ye about Chrissy Baverstock?” stammered Jim, purple in the face with anguish.

“Not about Chrissy Baverstock—if I remember aright each had a complaint to make about a different young woman, but it was always the same man. He must be a redoubtable fellow, this yeoman of yours.”

“He bain’t none o’ mine,” retorted Jim, “an’ I can’t think whatever the maids do see in him. I didn’t know there was more nor one,” he added reflectively, while a ray of hope seemed to illuminate his visage.

“I am very sorry for you, but I’m afraid I can’t help you. You see Willcocks is no parishioner of mine. And though I have spoken to some of the girls in question, my words seem to have no effect. Their heads are turned, I think, by his tales of battles and dangers and hairbreadth escapes. They make a hero of him. But console yourself. After all there is safety in numbers.”

“’Ees,” agreed Jim meditatively. “If there’s six of us, we ought to be able to do summat.”

It was late when he left the rectory, and he bent his steps immediately to a small hostelry in the town, which he occasionally patronised, but which the condition of his spirits had not permitted him to frequent of late, dreading as he did the facetious remarks of his cronies.

On pushing open the swing door, he found himself at once in the midst of a party of heated disputants, and the first phrase which greeted his ears revealed that the subject of the argument was the very one which occupied his own thoughts.

“I d’ ’low I’d knock that there blasted, broad-brimmed hat off his head so soon as I’d look at en—and his head too if it comes to that.”

“Ah!” growled another, “I be pure sorry they Boers haven’t a-done it for en. I can’t believe they be such good shots as they do say, or they’d ha’ had it off afore now, wi’ their guns and their cannons. It be always a poppin’ up where it bain’t wanted.”

“Haw—haw,” chimed in a third voice, “I d’ ’low Trooper Willcocks’ head were a deal too nigh Rosie Adlam’s last night to suit ’ee, Tom. Ah, ’twas a very tender sight, goin’ along by the top of the hedge—d’you mind, Billy?”

“An’ poor Chrissy Baverstock standin’ all alone at the corner of the lane, fit to bu’st wi’ jealousy—why that’s Jim Hardy, bain’t it? We was just a-talkin’ o’ your girl, Jim; ’tis a pity you weren’t about last night—ye mid ha’ had a chance, for Trooper Willcocks was givin’ Rosie a turn.”

Jim breathed a benediction, equally applicable to all the parties in question, and elbowed his way to the front.

“He’s took up wi’ Rosie now, has he?” he inquired, “’twon’t last—nay, ’twon’t last, sure. She never were fit to hold a candle to Chrissy.”

Rosie’s discarded young man was still sufficiently susceptible where she was concerned to be disposed to take up the cudgels in her defence, and was opening his mouth to make some angry rejoinder, when he was prevented by the first speaker, who, removing a long clay pipe from his mouth, and waving it solemnly in the air, commanded silence.

“Boys,” he said, “this here bain’t no time for quarrelling. As we was a-sayin’ afore Jim Hardy come in, summat must be done. It bain’t only Chrissy and Rosie—it’s every maid in the whole countryside. So soon as ever that there chap comes in sight, in his old yaller coat and breeches, and them there bandaged legs, and cockin’ his hat so knowin’ over his eye, the maids goes fair silly. I’ve seen it myself,” he added feelingly.

“Poor Sam!” cried out a voice from the rear. “What? ye don’t mean to say as your Mary—”

“Never you mind my Mary,” interrupted Sam loftily, “the question’s this. This here man’s a public noosance, and as such must be removed; now, how be we to remove en?”

“Parson can’t make en shift,” murmured Tom dolefully.

“I d’ ’low a witch ’ud not have no power over he,” said Jim, thinking ruefully of his unsuccessful attempt with the bees’ wax.

“An’ it don’t seem to answer to go fightin’ of he, neither,” remarked Tom, who had a very noticeable black eye.

“I was a-wonderin’,” pursued Sam, “if we couldn’t someways ha’ the law on him. He mid be run in for trespassin’ maybe, or for makin’ away wi’ other folks’ property—meanin’ the maids’ ’earts, do ’ee see? ha! ha!”

“Lard, what a notion!” cried Jim. “Why the maids theirselves would take his part, sayin’ they gived ’em to en willin’. That’s no use. What I say is, Here be six on us, let’s go at en all together an’ duck en. That ’ud maybe cool en a bit.”

A young man who had for some time been standing on the outskirts of the group silently listening, now came forward, throwing out his hand to command attention. He was a sharp-featured youth with cunning little eyes and a sly smile.

“Beg pardon for interrupting,” he began, “but if you think of callin’ in the aid of the law, I shall be ’appy to advise ye.”

“Why, ’tis the lawyer chap,” said Tom. “He ought to know summat; he’s been apeggin’ away at a desk long enough.”

Mr. Samuel Cross, who had indeed been clerk to the Branston lawyer for two or three years, and who was occasionally not averse to giving a little legal advice on his own account, unknown to his principal, was hailed on the present occasion with respectful satisfaction. Seating himself on a corner of the deal table round which the group had gathered, and swinging his little legs backwards and forwards, he surveyed the party with twinkling eyes.

“First an’ _foremost_,” he began, “your notion, Jim Hardy, must be dismissed at once. Duck a man who wears the Queen’s uniform? Why the whole country would be up in arms? Sam’s idea is better, but I don’t quite see how we could make it ‘trespass,’ nor yet ‘appropriation of property’. The young ladies, as Jim truly said, the young ladies would be against us there. We might do something in the way of ‘undue influence,’ perhaps,” meditatively, “but the best of all would be a ‘Breach of Prom.’.”

“What’s that?” cried several voices, while Tom, scratching his head, remarked, “I don’t quite take ’ee.”

“Why, look ’ere, this chap’s been making up to six gals at the same time—or perhaps they’ve bin a-makin’ up to him—anyhow, whichever way ye put it, every gal in the place is running after him. Well, he can’t possibly marry them all, don’t ye see? The thing ’ud be to induce one of these here disapp’inted gals to threaten to take an action against him for Breach of Promise of Marriage. Nothing in the world frightens a man so much as the notion of an action for ‘Breach’.”

The other Sam slapped his thigh and roared with laughter. “Well done,” he cried. “Rabbit me, it do take a lawyer to think of they things.”

The rest, however, looked dubious. Each one thought of his own sweetheart, and mentally resolved that she should never be permitted to sacrifice herself for the public weal.

“’Ees,” said Tom hesitatingly, voicing the general sentiment after a pause. “It do sound right enough, but the question is—which maid is it to be?”

“Oh, that’s easily answered,” returned Cross, waving his pipe airily. “Which is the staidest an’ ugliest?”

There was a simultaneous outcry; the maidens of Branston and the neighbourhood were apparently each and all in the flower of youth and beauty. Sharp words were exchanged, however. Tom, while defending Rosie from the imputed cast in her eye, took occasion to animadvert on Mary’s carroty locks, and the last-named damsel’s admirer nearly came to blows with Jim on the subject of Chrissy’s age, he asserting that she was a staid girl, while her lover stoutly declared that she was not yet five-and-twenty.

Just as the hubbub was at its height, an elderly man, who had been smoking in silent amusement in the corner of the room, remarked that if they were on the look-out for an ill-favoured sort o’ body, a bit on in years, they couldn’t do better than see what could be made of Anne Clarke of the “Roebuck”.

“I seed Trooper Willcocks wi’ his arm round her waist t’other day,” he added. “Him an’ a couple more young sparks come in for a glass—and Willcocks had had a drop too much already. He’d got into the way o’ love-making, d’ye see, and she was the only maid handy, so he made up to her, bein’ too far gone to see the difference. If he didn’t begin palaverin’, an’ tellin’ her cock-an’-bull stories about his adventures out there at the war, and how he longed for faymale love an’ sympathy. His arm was round her waist, I tell ’ee, before his first pint was drunk!”

Samuel Cross jumped off the table, his little eyes dancing in his head. “The very thing,” he cried rapturously. “Boys, we’ll make a grand job of this. It will work up to a lovely case. But Mum’s the word, remember—the game will be spoilt if a hint of it gets out. Cheer up, lovers all, you’ll get your sweethearts back, I promise you. If Trooper Willcocks doesn’t show a clean pair of heels before long, I’m a Dutchman.”

The Roebuck Inn was a somewhat dreary-looking little hostelry, about a mile away from the town of Branston. It was situated in a kind of fold in the downs, a hollow between two vast undulating tracts of green. A handful of thatched cottages flanked it, and the river ran so near that the premises of the Roebuck were regularly flooded once or twice a year when “the springs rose”.