Part 14

The landlord of the little tumble-down place took these visitations very philosophically: indeed it was noticeable that his spirits were uplifted in proportion to the rising of the springs, knowing, as he had reason to do, that this watery rising habitually produced elevation of another kind among his customers. For when one’s fields are flooded and one’s spirits damped, one is all the better able to appreciate an exhilarating glass, particularly when that glass is partaken of under peculiar and mirth-producing circumstances.

When Billy Clarke’s lower premises were under water, the topers were forced to migrate upstairs to the biggest bedroom, and there with a roaring fire in the tiny grate, packed themselves side by side upon the ancient four-post bed, and amid uproarious laughter devised every conceivable pretext for sending cross-grained Anne creaking down the slippery stairs, and clicking and sliding about on her pattens on the wet tiles below. The strife between her cupidity and her ill-temper was an endless source of amusement to her clients; Anne Clarke would walk a mile for twopence, it was said, but she took it out in “language”.

The dusk was gathering when Samuel Cross called upon this damsel, and, though “the water had been out” a few days before, it had now partially subsided. The “barton,” to be sure, was still more like a lake than a farm-yard, and Billy’s two cows, standing knee-deep in a dark slimy mess which once had been a manure heap of more than respectable dimensions, looked very forlorn and wretched. Anne, still clinking about on her pattens, wore a particularly forbidding expression on her frosty face as she paused on her way from the clothes-line, a basket of linen poised on her hip, to return the visitor’s salutation.

“’Tother way to the tap-room,” she added ungraciously.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Clarke. I come on a very different matter—a very delic_ate_ matter, and one which nearly concerns you.”

Anne fixed her most tractable eye upon him and considered; after a few minutes a light appeared to break in on her, and her face became almost pleasant.

“I d’ ’low ye be the lawyer feller, bain’t ye? Have ’ee come to say Father or me’s come in to a legacy?”

“Not exactly that, Miss Clarke, though I shouldn’t say there wasn’t money in it. You will find, Miss, that it will be to your advantage to place entire confidence in me.”

Anne hitched the basket a little higher up on her hip, assisting the operation by a jerk of her bony knee, and stared harder than ever; even the unmanageable eye assuming an expression of lively interest which was positively uncanny.

“What be to do?” she asked breathlessly.

Samuel came closer, laid one hand on the cold, damp, red arm which encircled the basket, and whispered mysteriously.

“It concerns your affections, Miss Clarke. Your woman’s ’eart, what have been cruelly trifled with.”

“Get out!” returned Miss Clarke succinctly and fiercely. “Don’t ’ee think ye can come a-gammonin’ o’ me. I’m up to ye an’ your tricks. Be off this minute, or I’ll—”

“Now, now, my good lady, be patient,” cried Samuel, starting back, well out of reach of the basket, which the irate damsel had lifted suspiciously high. “I have come here in your interest, I assure you. I have come to make a suggestion which is entirely to your advantage, and which will not only avenge your outraged feelin’s, but put money in your pocket. But you must listen to me—you must allow me to explain; moreover you must trust in me.”

Anne hitched up her basket again and jerked her thumb in the direction of the house.

“Will ’ee come in?” she inquired; and without waiting for a reply led the way through the yard, over a kind of wooden dam which had been placed across the doorway, and finally into the damp and deserted tap-room, where an evil-smelling paraffin lamp was already burning. Having set down her burden and closed the door, she turned and faced the lawyer’s clerk.

“Now then, what is it?”

“Miss Clarke,” began Samuel respectfully and mysteriously, “a rumour has reached me of the villainous way in which Trooper Willcocks has trifled with your feelin’s. Now wait a bit, now wait a bit—” uplifting one hand as Anne was about to make some wrathful rejoinder. “You’d be quite in the right to object to my intrudin’ on so delic_ate_ a matter if there weren’t a _business_ side to it, but ye see there is a business side and that’s what I’ve come about. There’s woman’s rights as well as woman’s feelin’s. Ah, if it wasn’t for that, Miss Clarke, maybe some of us gay young men would find your sex even more _un_resistible than we do already. But the notion of a Breach of Prom., Miss, is enough to steady the liveliest of us.” He leered at her out of his cunning little eyes, and continued emphatically: “Maybe you didn’t know, Miss Clarke, as when a good-for-nothing young chap same as Trooper Willcocks comes philandering arter a lady that lady can have the law on him if he goes too far. Now there’s a strange report in the town what says Trooper Willcocks’ arm were round your waist t’other night, Miss Clarke.”

Anne squinted down sideways at the singularly unattractive portion of her person just alluded to, as though wondering how Trooper Willcocks’ arm had ever got there; and indeed such a proceeding indicated an almost sublime degree of courage on the part of the gallant yeoman.

“’Twas a very tender act,” pursued Cross, “but a tender act don’t count for nothin’ by itself without the words are compromisin’. Now, can you call to mind anythin’ as Trooper Willcocks _said_, Miss Clarke?”

“An’ supposin’ I did I’d maybe have no fancy for repeatin’ of ’em,” retorted the lady with a faint increase of colour in her sallow cheeks. “He’d had a drop too much, Trooper Willcocks had, and he did give I a lot of impidence. _I_ didn’t take no notice of ’em—he did make I laugh at the time I d’ ’low, but—”

Cross pricked up his ears. Anne’s admission denoted that the impression produced by the warrior had been even greater than he had supposed, for she was not as a rule given to seeing the humorous side of things.

“’Tis this way, d’ye see,” he said, insinuatingly. “If we can prove as Trooper Willcocks went beyond a certain p’int in his lovin’ speeches we can take a action again him.”

“An’ what ’ud be the good o’ that?”

“Wait a bit, Miss, wait a bit!” said Samuel, sawing the air again with his lean forefinger. “We can take a action again him, as I say, what will force him either to lead you to the altar or to pay you a substantial sum of money as damages.”

A slow smile broke over Anne’s ill-favoured face.

“D’ye mean him an’ me ’ud have to get married?” she inquired.

“Either that or, supposin’ the villain wasn’t willin’—an’ he _is_ a villain, Miss Clarke, a low deceivin’ rascal—he’d have to put his hand in his pocket and _fork_ out, Miss. Either way, d’ye see, you’d be the gainer. But all _de_pends upon your memory. Now, in confidence, Miss Clarke, in strict confidence to a _h_onourable man, tell me, what did Trooper Willcocks say to you?”

“He called I a beauty two or three times,” returned Anne, after cogitating for a moment.

“Ah,” said Cross, “a—a nat’ral remark of course, but not compromising. He said more than that, I’m sure, Miss Clarke.”

“He said,” she went on, knitting her brows in the effort to recall the trooper’s blandishments, “he said he wondered I’d remained single till now. The bwoys didn’t know what they was about, he said.”

“That’s more like it!” cried Samuel, snapping his fingers joyfully. “Let’s follow up that tack, Miss Clarke, if _you_ please. Did he chance to say now as _he_ had better taste? That ’ud be a very likely remark for him to make, ye know. Don’t you recollect somethin’ of that sort, now?”

“Nay,” said Anne, shaking her head, “I can’t call to mind as he did. He said as if my eyes was a pair there wouldn’t be their match in the country.”

“Depend upon it you’ve made a mistake there, Miss,” said Cross, leaning forward and speaking with increased earnestness. “I dessay, bein’ a bit flurried at the time, you didn’t take reg’lar notice; but that ’ud be a silly thing for any one to say. You might be sure his remark really was somethin’ like this: ‘You an’ I should be a pair, Miss; I’ve come to make a match in the country.’ You see he _has_ come down to the country, and what more likely than that he’s come on purpose to find a wife?”

Anne, fixing her interlocutor with one of the eyes alluded to in the gallant speech she had quoted, and rubbing her hands together, began to think it was very likely.

“He—he kissed you, I s’pose, Miss Clarke?” went on the inquisitor presently. “He! he! he! ’Tis most unfair to ax such questions, but—”

“He went for to do it once, but I did smack his face for ’en an’ he didn’t try no more,” put in Anne a trifle regretfully. “’Twould ha’ been better, I s’pose, if he had?”

“Well, it would have been more compromising, but the great thing to go on is what he _said_. Try and remember that, Miss. He told you about the war an’ how lonesome he was out there, didn’t he? ‘No lovin’ faymales there,’ he said; so they tell me.”

“’E-es,” agreed Anne. “He did say, ‘Little did I think out there on the veldt as I should so soon have my arm about a little charmer like you’.”

“Did he?” said Cross eagerly.

“’E-es. ‘Lucky wound,’ says he, ‘to give I this chance!’ An’ he did say as if he were sent out again I should have to go too, for he couldn’t never stand the thought of sayin’ good-bye to I.”

“That ’ull do!” shouted Samuel, leaping from his chair and positively crowing with glee. “Now we’ve got him. He said you must go too—meanin’, of course, as his bride. That’s enough. Shake hands, Miss Clarke! We have got him fairly cornered now. Marriage or money—one or t’other. If I was you I’d go in for the money, Miss Clarke.”

Anne turned to him with a simper that sent a cold shiver down his back. “I’m not so sure o’ that,” she said.

“Good Lord,” muttered Cross to himself, “I wish she’d smile like that at Willcocks. The job ’ud be done then. It ’ud be enough to rout an army. Well, you leave the matter in my hands,” he continued aloud. “I’ll pull it through, you’ll see. You’ll hear from me before long, Miss Clarke.”

With that he took his leave, and was presently swallowed up in the darkness without. As he walked he cogitated:—

“I’ve half a mind to let it come to a action after all; there really seems to be the makin’s of it, and it ’ud give me a lift with the guv’nor. Lord, the old gal’s a caution. Trooper Willcocks ’ll shake in his shoes.”

He grinned to himself at the recollection of Anne’s face, and mimicked her last speech aloud: “‘I’m not so sure o’ that’. He! he! . . . It ’ud be the best joke ever known in Branston if it did come off, and the guv’nor ’d make the most of it. He’s uncommon tightfisted, the guv’nor is, though”—here his face clouded over—“none of the profits ’ud come my way I don’t think; best see what can be made out o’ the other chaps, p’r’aps. Come, we’ll work it some way. Blest if I’m going to have my long walk an’ my long talk for nothin’.”

A very anxious little group gathered round Mr. Cross when he entered the bar of the Three Choughs.

“Well?” cried Jim Hardy breathlessly.

“Well,” echoed Cross, wagging his head, “I think we’ve got our gentleman in a tight place, jest about! There he’ve been triflin’ with that tender young creetur yonder at the Roebuck that shameful that she’s determined to bring him to book. Called her his little charmer, he did—”

Here there was a roar of laughter.

“And invited her to go back to South Africa with him,” resumed Samuel. “Yes, she’s got a good case, no doubt o’ that. But the question is, how far any o’ you ’ull be the better for it?”

“How’s that?” cried Jim, while the other love-sick swains nudged each other, and murmured indignantly.

“Why, I think she’s fair bent on taking out that action,” responded their legal adviser, “and that o’ course will keep him in the neighbourhood. Poor chap, it ’ull take your young ladies all their time to console him, I should think.”

The listeners stared at him in blank dismay; he wagged his head again, very knowingly, and crossed one leg over the other. “Yes,” he repeated reflectively, “Anne Clarke has got about as good a case as ever I heard on, and I advised her to follow it up.”

“You advised her,” shouted Tom indignantly. “Come, that’s a pretty thing. I thought you was on our side, Sam’el Cross.”

“A lawyer,” returned Samuel sententiously, “a lawyer is on the side what pays best; an’ this here job ought to be good for a rise for me. ’Twill be but fair that I should share some of the governor’s pickings, and he’ll make a good thing out of it, you might be sure.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” said one of the lovers dolefully. “He be uncommon near, your boss be, and it do seem ’ard o’ you, Sam’el, to go a-desertin’ of we, arter leadin’ us on, so to speak. You could stop Anne Clarke from takin’ out this here summons or whatever it be, so soon as look at her, couldn’t ’ee now?”

“I dessay I could,” said Cross calmly.

“And if you was to go and threaten Willcocks with the notion of it, he’d be off like a shot, that’s easy seen.”

“So ’tis,” agreed the clerk. “I reckon he’d skip if I was to tell him all that his little charmer said to-day. He! He!”

“Well then,” said Jim, and paused—“that’s how it is,” he added lamely. “The job ’ud be easy done.”

“Jus’ so,” responded Cross. “The easiest thing in the world. But I’m not for undertaking no jobs as are not worth my while. Now I might get rid o’ Trooper Willcocks for a five-pun’ note, not less.”

A pause of consternation ensued; then Jim Hardy thumped the table with his fist. “I think it ’ud be easier and cheaper to break the feller’s boanes straight off,” he shouted.

Sam extended a forefinger in his direction, “You look out, Jim! You should know better nor say such things in the hearin’ o’ them whose dooty it is to uphold the law. If any harm comes to Trooper Willcocks, I shall be bound in conscience to give my evidence. Now, gentlemen, what be all looking so glum for? Five pound ain’t such a terror! It needn’t be paid in a note if it comes to that, nor all at the one time. Half within the week, say, an’ t’other half at the end o’ the month. I wouldn’t be hard with you, an’ Trooper Willcocks would certainly be a good riddance.”

They gathered round him again and after much argument, some laughter, and a good deal of swearing, came to terms with Samuel, who carried away with him that night a curious document, signed by half a dozen names, and drawn up entirely to his own satisfaction.

Trooper Willcocks was swaggering about just outside the church door on the following Sunday, when he was accosted by Samuel Cross.

“I was looking for you,” began the latter, drawing him aside. “I have a word or two to say to you, Mr. Willcocks.”

“Won’t another day do?” returned the yeoman. “The service will be over in a few minutes, and I’m waitin’ for a young lady.”

“_Indeed_,” said Sam, “might I make so bold as to inquire if the lady’s name is Miss Anne Clarke?”

“Anne Clarke,” repeated the trooper vacantly; the name awakened no response in his memory.

“Why, don’t you know,” cried Sam, “your _little charmer_ of the Roebuck Inn—a regular _beauty_, Mr. Willcocks. _Your_ beauty, you know. Why I understood you was a-going to take her to South Africa wi’ you.”

“What the devil are you at?” cried Willcocks irritably. “What do you mean by talking all that rubbish to me?”

“No you don’t,” cried Sam, “I’m not to be put off like that, Trooper Willcocks. I’m here on behalf of that very lady—if the matter can be settled private, so much the better; if not, she’s determined to take it into court.”

A sudden pallor overspread the yeoman’s visage, perceptible even beneath its tan; he was a soft young fellow in spite of all his daring, and the very name of the law-courts terrified him.

“The fact is,” said Cross jovially, “you haven’t no very clear rec’lection of it, I dessay—you’re such a one with the ladies aren’t you? But sometimes a chap goes too far—an’ when it comes to making a reg’lar proposal of marriage—you’ll find you’ll have to stick to it, or else be let in for more than you bargained for.”

“But really,” said the other, almost piteously, “I’ve no notion at all o’ what you’re drivin’ at. Who is Anne Clarke, an’ where did I meet her?”

Sam drew nearer and button-holed him confidentially.

“You know the Roebuck Inn, over the downs yonder? You went there last Toosday with one or two friends—an’ you carried on fearful with the old man’s daughter—a beauty, I tell ye. You was a bit on at the time, but you must remember.”

“I remember goin’ there,” admitted Willcocks, “but I can’t call to mind no young gal.”

“That’s a pity,” returned Sam. “She knows all about you, I can tell you, and she have it settled in her own mind to consult our guv’nor to-morrow, without you come to some amicable arrangement first. ‘Money or Matrimony,’ says she.”

“Matrimony?” ejaculated Willcocks, his jaw dropping.

“Ye-es, matrimony,” repeated Sam, darting a sidelong glance at his victim, and meditatively scratching his jaw. “I rather think the lady’s fancy is set that way. You should ha’ seen her smile when we talked on it.”

“What in the name of fortun’ am I to do?” inquired the yeoman, with a helpless glance; a mouse might as profitably have appealed to the cat in whose claws it found itself.

“The folks are comin’ out o’ church now,” cried Cross eagerly. “Just you step in under this here archway, Trooper, an’ look out cautious, but keep out o’ sight yourself. I shouldn’t wonder if Miss Clarke was here—I’ll p’int her out to you.”

The distracted yeoman obeyed, and presently a stream of people issued from the porch on the opposite side of the road, breaking up for the most part into little knots of twos and threes, though a few figures made their way homewards unescorted. While anxiously on the look out for the mysterious damsel of the Roebuck, Trooper Willcocks witnessed one or two little episodes which filled him with rage and mortification. Pretty Chrissy Baverstock, for instance, after loitering on the steps for quite five minutes, craning a slender neck and tossing her fair curls, was accosted by a bluff-looking labouring fellow, Jim Hardy in fact, who, after a few minutes’ parley, drew her arm through his, and walked away with her. Rosy-cheeked Mary Miles went through the same preliminary period of waiting and head-tossing, but departed alone, her handkerchief to her eyes. The over-soft heart of Trooper Willcocks was wrung within him at the sight.

But now Samuel Cross recalled his wandering attention by an admonitory dig: “That’s her,” he murmured.

Willcocks peered cautiously out and presently drew his head inwards with a jerk, his face as white as ashes.

“That one,” he gasped. “That old, skinny, squinting—good Lord, surely I never said anything in the way o’ sweetheartin’ to her.”

“You only axed her to marry you—before witnesses,” returned the implacable Samuel. “There’s no way out of it, man. She’ll have the law on you without you lead her to the altar.”

“I was awful far gone on Toosday night I remember,” groaned the luckless yeoman, wiping a clammy brow. “But a man shouldn’t be held accountable for what he says when he’s that way.”

“Lor’ bless you,” returned Cross cheerfully, “the law don’t take no account of such excuses. You weren’t incapable, you see; you was able to walk about, an’ put your arm round her waist an’ that.”

“Ugh! I must ha’ been far gone.”

“I don’t know about that. Says you, ‘My beauty,’ says you, ‘my little charmer, you an’ me must be a pair,’ says you; ‘I’ve come to the country to look for my match,’ says you.’”

“I couldn’t have said that,” interrupted Willcocks. “’Tisn’t true to begin with. I am going out to the front in a few weeks.”

“Ah,” commented Sam, “you told her that, an’ you asked her to go back with you.”

“But hang it, man, the thing’s impossible—ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous! I should just think it was. You’ll be the laughin’-stock of the countryside! What will Chrissy Baverstock say—an’ Mary an’ Rosie, an’ the rest of them, and all their fellows when it comes out in court? And it certainly will, without you marry her.”

“Good Lord,” cried poor Willcocks, now quite unnerved, “is there no way out of it? Look here, I know you’re a good chap—I—I’d make it worth your while. I’ve got a few pounds. Couldn’t you just—just hush it up?”

Sam pursed up his mouth into whistling form.

“It might be done—but it’s a bit dangerous,” he said dubiously. “If my governor was to get on the scent—but there, I’ll try and keep him off it, and if you’ll hand over them few pounds, I dessay I could stop old Anne Clarke’s mouth.”

“And what—what must I do?” queried the trooper, his teeth chattering in his head.

“Cut,” said Sam briefly. “Cut off home, an’ never let yourself be seen in this part of the country again—else as sure as I’m alive, Anne Clarke will have you!”

* * * * *

There was jubilee and surprise in Branston on the following day when it became known, through the medium of Mr. Samuel Cross, that Trooper Willcocks had flown; and many were the surmises among the uninitiated as to the cause of his sudden departure. Some opined that he had been ordered again to the front, others that he was engaged to a young lady at Capetown. Anne Clarke became a trifle more sour as to face, and short as to temper than before, but whatever means the lawyer’s clerk employed for stopping her mouth, it is certain that Trooper Willcocks’ few pounds never found their way to her pocket.

HOW GRANFER VOLUNTEERED.

FARMER Sampson rolled slowly homewards after church one wintry Sunday, full of a comfortable sense of righteousness, and looking forward to a reposeful hour before the midday meal. He exchanged greetings with his neighbours, discussed with them the probability of “snow-stuff” coming, or the likelihood of “its taking up” that night. Being an affable man his opinion invariably coincided with that of the last person who spoke to him.

Arrived at his own substantial dwelling and pausing a moment on passing through the kitchen to inhale the fragrance of the roasting joint, he proceeded first to the best parlour—an awe-inspiring room, never used save for a christening or a funeral; a shrine for stuffed birds, wax fruits and flowers, unopened books, and the family’s best wearing apparel. Mrs. Sampson’s Sunday bonnet reposed in the bandbox beneath the sofa; the accompanying gown was stowed away on one of the shelves of the bureau; other garments belonging respectively to children and grandchildren were hidden beneath silver paper in various receptacles; and the master of the house, now divesting himself of his broad-cloth coat, hung it carefully on the back of a chair, and restored his hat to the peg allotted to it behind the door. Then, making his way to the family living-room, he assumed his white pinner—a clean one, which had been laid ready for him on the table—took up the newspaper, sat down in the wide arm-chair by the hearth which his substantial figure filled to a nicety, drew his spectacles from his pocket and began to read.