Chapter 10

The situation was awkward. At the back of the platform Mr. Rabling rose to it. He had once a tenor voice of moderate calibre which he was used to exert publicly in the days of Penny Readings. And the word "Tyrolean" now suggested to him a national song which had long reposed in his musical cabinet at home. He leaned forward, screened his mouth with one hand and whispered--

"Sir Felix--"

"Hey?" Sir Felix whipped round.

"Did a' say" (with sudden and piercing jodel) "_Lul-ul-i-e-tee! Lul-ul-i-ee! Lul-ul_--"

Sir Felix stamped his foot; and I think we all felt glad for Rabling at that moment that he held his cottage on a ninety-nine years' lease. But the lecture was spoilt before it began. The missionary piled his statistics to the moon, and turned down the gas, and showed us "The Child: What will he become?" But we took no interest in that question. The question for us was, What exactly did that simple Tyrolese shepherd say to Sir Felix? And that is just what we have been asking each other for a week past.

Sir Felix recovered himself towards the close of the address, and at the close acknowledged our vote of thanks in a pleasant little speech--in which, however, his Tyrolean friend was not so much as alluded to. It was pretty, too, to see the Little Knights of Abstinence afterwards, with their sashes and banners, marching uphill after the band, like so many children of Hamelin after the Pied Piper. Only, my dear Prince, what tune do you think the band was playing? Why--

Come where the booze is cheaper, Come where the pints hold more . . .!

The missionary, I am told, is already beginning to talk as if we disappointed him. But this was certain to befall a man of one idea in a place of so many varied interests.

LEGENDS.

I.--THE LEGEND OF SIR DINAR.

A puff of north-east wind shot over the hill, detached a late December leaf from the sycamore on its summit, and swooped like a wave upon the roofs and chimney-stacks below. It caught the smoke midway in the chimneys, drove it back with showers of soot and wood-ash, and set the townsmen sneezing who lingered by their hearths to read the morning newspaper. Its strength broken, it fell prone upon the main street, scattering its fine dust into fan-shaped figures, then died away in eddies towards the south. Among these eddies the sycamore leaf danced and twirled, now running along the ground upon its edge, now whisked up to the level of the first-storey windows. A nurse, holding up a three-year-old child behind the pane, pointed after the leaf--

"Look--there goes Sir Dinar!"

Sir Dinar was the youngest son and the comeliest of King Geraint, who had left Arthur's Court for his own western castle of Dingerein in Roseland, where Portscatho now stands, and was buried, when his time came, over the Nare, in his golden boat with his silver oars beside him. To fill his siege at the Round Table he sent, in the lad's sixteenth year, this Dinar, who in two years was made knight by King Arthur, and in the third was turned into an old man before he had achieved a single deed of note.

For on the fifth day after he was made knight, and upon the Feast of Pentecost, there began the great quest of the Sancgrael, which took Sir Lancelot from the Court, Sir Perceval, Sir Bors, Sir Gawaine, Sir Galahad, and all the flower of the famous brotherhood. And because, after their going, it was all sad cheer at Camelot, and heavy, empty days, Sir Dinar took two of his best friends aside, both young knights, Sir Galhaltin and Sir Ozanna le Coeur Hardi, and spoke to them of riding from the Court by stealth. "For," he said, "we have many days before us, and no villainy upon our consciences, and besides are eager. Who knows, then, but we may achieve this adventure of the Sancgrael?" These listened and imparted it to another, Sir Sentrail: and the four rode forth secretly one morning before the dawn, and set their faces towards the north-east wind.

The day of their departure was that next after Christmas, the same being the Feast of Saint Stephen the Martyr. And as they rode through a thick wood, it came into Sir Dinar's mind that upon this day it was right to kill any bird that flew, in remembrance that when Saint Stephen had all but escaped from the soldiers who guarded him, a small bird had sung in their ears and awakened them. By this, the sky was growing white with the morning, but nothing yet clear to the sight: and while they pressed forward under the naked boughs, their horses' hoofs crackling the frosted undergrowth, Sir Dinar was aware of a bird's wing ruffling ahead, and let fly a bolt without warning his companions; who had forgotten what morning it was, and drew rein for a moment. But pressing forward again, they came upon a gerfalcon lying, with long lunes tangled about his feet and through his breast the hole that Sir Dinar's bolt had made. While they stooped over this bird the sun rose and shone between the tree-trunks, and lifting their heads they saw a green glade before them, and in the midst of the glade three pavilions set, each of red sendal, that shone in the morning. In the first pavilion slept seven knights, and in the second a score of damsels, but by the door of the third stood a lady, fair and tall, in a robe of samite, who, as they drew near to accost her, inquired of them--

"Which of you has slain my gerfalcon?"

And when Sir Dinar confessed and began to make his excuse, "Silly knight!" said she, "who couldst not guess that my falcon, too, was abroad to avenge the blessed Stephen. Or dost think that it was a hawk, of all birds, that sang a melody in the ears of his guards?"

With that she laughed, as if pacified, and asked of their affairs; and being told that they rode in search of the Sancgrael, she laughed again, saying--

"Silly knights all, that seek it before you be bearded! For three of you must faint and die on the quest, and you, sir," turning to Sir Dinar, "must many times long to die, yet never reach nearer by a foot."

"Let it be as God will," answered Sir Dinar. "But hast thou any tidings, to guide us?"

"I have heard," said she, "that it was seen latest in the land of Gore, beyond Trent Water." And with her white finger she pointed down a narrow glade that led to the north-west. So they thanked her and pricked on, none guessing that she herself was King Urience' wife, of Gore, and none other than Queen Morgan le Fay, the famous enchantress, who for loss of her gerfalcon was lightly sending Sir Dinar to his ruin.

So all that day they rode, two and two, in the strait alley that she had pointed out; and by her enchantments she made the winter trees to move with them, serried close on either hand, so that, though the four knights wist nothing of it, they advanced not a furlong for all their haste. But towards nightfall there appeared close ahead a blaze of windows lit and then a tall castle with dim towers soaring up and shaking to the din of minstrelsy. And finding a great company about the doors, they lit down from their horses and stepped into the great hall, Sir Dinar leading them. For a while their eyes were dazed, seeing that sconces flared along the walls and the place was full of knights and damsels brightly clad, and the floor shone. But while they were yet blinking, a band of maidens came and unbuckled their arms and cast a shining cloak upon each; which was hardly done when a lady came towards them out of the throng, and though she was truly the Queen Morgan le Fay, they knew her not at all, for by her necromancy she had altered her countenance.

"Come, dance," said she, "for in an instant the musicians will begin."

The other three knights tarried awhile, being weary with riding; but Sir Dinar stepped forward and caught the hand of a damsel, and she, as she gave it, looked in his eyes and laughed. She was dressed all in scarlet, with scarlet shoes, and her hair lay on her shoulders like waves of burnished gold. As Sir Dinar set his arm about her, with a crash the merry music began; and floating out with him into the dance, her scarlet shoes twinkling and her tossed hair shaking spices under his nostrils, she leaned back a little on his arm and laughed again.

Sir Galhaltin was leaning by the doorway, and he heard her laugh and saw her feet twinkle like blood-red moths, and he called to Sir Dinar. But Sir Dinar heard only the brassy music, nor did any of the dancers turn their heads, though Sir Galhaltin called a second time and more loudly. Then Sir Sentrail and Sir Ozanna also began to call, fearing they knew not what for their comrade. But the guests still drifted by as they were clouds, and Sir Dinar, with the red blood showing beneath the down on his cheeks, smiled always and whirled with the woman upon his arm.

By and by he began to pant, and would have rested: but she denied him.

"For a moment only," he said, "because I have ridden far to-day."

But "No" she said, and hung a little more heavily upon his arm, and still the music went on. And now, gating upon her, he was frightened; for it seemed she was growing older under his eyes, with deep lines sinking into her face, and the flesh of her neck and bosom shrivelling up, so that the skin hung loose and gathered in wrinkles. And now he heard the voices of his companions calling about the door, and would have cast off the sorceress and run to them. But when he tried, his arm was welded around her waist, nor could he stay his feet.

The three knights now, seeing the sweat upon his white face and the looks he cast towards them, would have broken in and freed him: but they, too, were by enchantment held there in the doorway. So, with their eyes starting, they must needs stay there and watch; and while they stood the boards became as molten brass under Sir Dinar's feet, and the hag slowly withered in his embrace; and still the music played, and the other dancers cast him never a look as he whirled round and round again. But at length, with never a stay in the music, his partner's feet trailed heavily, and, bending forward, she shook her white locks clear of her gaunt eyes, and laughed a third time, bringing her lips close to his. And the poison of death was in her lips as she set them upon his mouth. With that kiss there was a crash. The lights went out, and the music died away in a wail: and the three knights by the door were caught away suddenly and stunned by a great wind.

Awaking, they found themselves lying in the glade where they had come upon the three red pavilions. Their horses were cropping at the turf, beside them, and Sir Dinar's horse stood in sight, a little way off. But Sir Dinar was already deep in the forest, twirling and spinning among the rotten leaves, and on his arm hung a corrupting corpse. For a whole day they sought him and found him not (for he heard nothing of their shouts), and towards evening mounted and rode forward after the Sancgrael; on which quest they died, all three, each in his turn.

But Sir Dinar remained, and twirled and skipped till the body he held was a skeleton; and still he twirled, till it dropped away piecemeal; and yet again, till it was but a stain of dust on his ragged sleeve. Before this his hair was white and his face wizened with age.

But on a day a knight in white armour came riding through the forest, leaning somewhat heavily on his saddle-bow: and was aware of an old decrepit man that ran towards him, jigging and capering as if for gladness, yet caught him by the stirrup and looked up with rheumy tears in his eyes.

"In God's name, who art thou?" asked the knight. He, too, was past his youth; but his face shone with a marvellous glory.

"I am young Sir Dinar, that was made a knight of the Round Table but five days before Pentecost. And I know thee. Thou art Sir Galahad, who shouldst win the Sancgrael: therefore by Christ's power rid me of this enchantment."

"I have not won it yet," Sir Galahad answered, sighing. "Yet, poor comrade, I may do something for thee, though I cannot stay thy dancing."

So he stretched out his hand and touched Sir Dinar: and by his touch Sir Dinar became a withered leaf of the wood. And when mothers and nurses see him dancing before the wind, they tell this story of him to their children.

II.--"FLOWING SOURCE."

Master Simon's inn, the "Flowing Source"--"Good Entertainment for Man and Beast"--leant over the riverside by the ferry, a mile and a half above Ponteglos town. The fresh water of Cuckoo River met the salt Channel tide right under its windows, by the wooden ladder where Master Simon chained his ferry-boat. Fourteen miles inland, a brown trout-stream singing down from the moors, plunged over a ledge of rock into the cool depths of Cuckoo Valley. Thenceforward it ran by beds of sundew, water-mint and asphodel, under woods so steeply converging that the traveller upon the ridges heard it as the trickle of water in a cavern. But just above Master Simon's inn the valley widened out into arable and grey pasture land, and the river, too, widened and grew deep enough to float up vessels of small tonnage at the spring tides. In summer, from the bow-window of his coffee-room, Master Simon could follow its course down through the meadows to the church-tower of Ponteglos and the shipping congregated there about the wharves, and watch in the middle distance the sails of a barge or shallow trading-ketch moving among the haymakers. But from November to March, when the floods were out, the "Flowing Source" stood above an inland sea, with a haystack or two for lesser islets. Then the river's course could be told only by a line of stakes on which the wild fowl rested. The meadows were covered. Only a few clumps of reed rose above the clapping water and shook in the northerly gales. And then, when no guests came for weeks together, and the salt spray crusted the panes so thickly that looking abroad became a weariness of the spirit, Master Simon would reach down his long gun from the chimney-piece and polish it, and having pulled on his wading-boots and wrapped a large woollen comforter round his throat and another round his head, would summon his tap-boy, unmoor the ferry-boat, and go duck-shooting. For in winter birds innumerable haunt the riverside here--wild duck, snipe, teal, and widgeon; curlews, fieldfares, and plovers, both green and golden; rooks, starlings, little white-rumped sandpipers; herons from the upper woods and gulls from seaward. Master Simon had fine sport in the short days, and the inn might take care of itself, which it was perfectly well able to do. Its foundations rested on sunken piles of magnificent girth--"as stout as myself," said Master Simon modestly--and on these it stood so high that even the great flood of 'fifty-nine had overlapped the kitchen threshold but once, at the top of a spring tide with a north-westerly gale behind it; and then had retreated within the hour. "It didn't put the fire out," boasted Master Simon.

He was proud of his inn, and for some very good reasons. To begin with, you would not find another such building if you searched England for a year. It consisted almost wholly of wood; but of such wood! The story went that on a blowing afternoon, in the late autumn of 1588, two Spanish galleons from the Great Armada--they had been driven right around Cape Wrath--came trailing up the estuary and took ground just above Ponteglos. Their crews landed and marched inland, and never returned. Some say the Cornishmen cut them off and slew them. For my part, I think it more likely that these foreigners found hospitality, and very wisely determined to settle in the country. Certain it is, you will find in the upland farms over Cuckoo Valley a race of folks with olive complexions, black curling hair and beards, and Southern names--Santo, Hugo, Jago, Bennett, Jose. . . .

At all events, the Spanyers (Spaniards) never came back to their galleons, which lay in the ooze by the marsh meadows until the very birds forgot to fear them, and built in their rigging. By the Roles d'Oleron--which were, in effect, the maritime laws of that period-- all wrecks or wreckage belonged to the Crown when neither an owner nor an heir of a late owner could be found for it. But in those days the king's law travelled lamely through Cornwall; so that when, in 1605, these galleons were put up to auction and sold by the Lord of the Manor--who happened to be High Sheriff--nobody inquired very closely where the money went. It is more to the point that the timber of them was bought by one Master Blaise--never mind the surname; he was an ancestor of Master Simon's, and a well-to-do wool-comber of Ponteglos.

This Master Blaise already rented the ferry-rights by Flowing Source, and certain rights of fishery above and below; and having a younger son to provide for, he conceived the happy notion of this hostelry beside the river. For ground-rent he agreed to carry each Michaelmas to the Lord of the Manor one penny in a silk purse; and the lord's bailiff, on bringing the receipt, was to take annually of Master Blaise and his heirs one jack of ale of the October brewing and one smoke-cured salmon of not less than fifteen pounds' weight. These conditions having been duly signed, in the year 1606 Master Blaise laid the foundations of his inn upon the timbers of one galleon and set up the elm keelson of the other for his roof-tree. Its stout ribs, curving outwards and downwards from this magnificent balk, supported the carvel-built roof, so that the upper half of the building appeared--and indeed was--a large inverted hull, decorated with dormer windows, brick chimneys, and a round pigeon-house surmounted by a gilded vane. The windows he took ready-made from the Spaniard's bulging stern-works. And for signboard he hung out, between two bulging poop-lanterns, a large bituminous painting on panel, that had been found on board the larger galleon, and was supposed to represent the features of her patron, Saint Nicholas Prodaneli. But the site of the building had always been known as Flowing Source, and by this name and no other Master Blaise's inn was called for over two hundred years.

By this time its timber roof had clothed itself with moss upon the north side, and on the west the whole framework inclined over the river, as though the timbers of the old galleon regretted their proper element and strained towards it tenderly, quietly, persistently. But careful patching and repairing had kept the building to all appearance as stout as ever; and any doubts of its stability were dispelled in a moment by a glance at Master Simon, the landlord. Master Simon's age by parish register fell short of forty, but he looked at least ten years older: a slow man with a promising stomach and a very satisfactory balance at the bank; a notable breeder of pigeons and fisher of eels. He could also brew strong ale, and knew exactly how salmon should be broiled. He had heard that the world revolves, and decided to stand still and let it come round to him. Certainly a considerable number of its inhabitants found their way to the "Flowing Source" sooner or later. Marketers crossed the ferry and paused for a morning drink. In the cool of the day quiet citizens rambled up from Ponteglos with rod and line, or brought their families by boat on the high evening tide to eat cream and junket, and sit afterwards on the benches by the inn-door, watching the fish rise and listening to the song of the young people some way up stream. Painters came, too, and sketched the old inn, and sometimes stayed for a week, having tasted the salmon. Pigeon-breeders dropped in and smoked long pipes in the kitchen with Master Simon, and slowly matured bets and matches. And once or twice in the summer months a company of pilgrims would arrive--queer literary men in velveteen coats, who examined all the rooms and furniture as though they meant to make a bid for the inn complete; who talked with outlandish tongues and ordered expensive dinners, and usually paid for them next morning, rather to Master Simon's surprise. It appeared that there had been once, in the time of Master Simon's grandfather, a certain pot-boy at the "Flowing Source" who ran off into the world and became a great poet; and these pilgrimages were made in his honour. Master Simon found this story somehow very creditable to himself, and came in time to take almost as much pride in it as in his pigeons and broiled salmon. Regularly after dinner on these occasions he would exhibit an old pewter pint-pot to the pilgrims, and draw their attention to the following verse, scratched upon it--as he asserted--by the poet's own hand:

Who buys beef buys bones, Who buys land buys stones, Who buys eggs buys shels, But who buys ale buys nothing els.

And the pilgrims feigned credulity according as they valued Master Simon's opinion of their intelligence.

But most welcome of all were the merchant-captains from Ponteglos, among whom custom had made it a point of honour to report themselves at the "Flowing Source" within twenty-four hours after dropping anchor by Ponteglos Quay. When or why or how the custom arose nobody was old enough to remember; but a master mariner would as soon have thought of sailing without log or leadline as of putting in and out of Ponteglos without tasting Master Simon's ale--"calling for orders," as they put it. Master Simon had never climbed a sea-going ship except to shake hands with a friend and wish him good passage and return to shore with the pilot; but the teak walls of his parlour were lined with charts of such very remote parts of the globe, and his shelves with such a quantity of foreign china and marine curiosities, and he spoke so familiarly of Galapagos, Batavia, Cape Verde, the Horn, the Straits of Magellan, and so forth, and would bring his telescope so knowingly to bear on the gilt weathercock over Ponteglos church tower, that until you knew the truth you would have sworn half his life had been spent on the quarter-deck. And while the sea-captains--serious men, attired in blue cloth, wearing rings in their ears--sat and smoked canaster and other queer tobaccos in painted china pipes, and talked of countries whose very names conjured up visions of parrots, and carved idols, and sharks, and brown natives in flashing canoes, Master Simon would put a shrewd question or two and wag his head over the answers as a man who hears just what he expected. And sometimes towards the close of the sitting, if he knew his company very well, he would reward them with his favourite and only song, "The Golden Vanitee":

A ship I have got in the North Countree, And I had her christened the Golden Vanitee; O, I fear she's been taken by a Spanish Gal-a-lee, As she sailed by the Lowlands low!

In some hazy way he had persuaded himself that the Spanish galleon of the ballad was the very ship whose timbers over-arched him and his audience; and for the moment, being himself inverted (so to speak) by the potency of his own singing, he blew out his chest and straddled out his thick calves and screwed up his eyes, quite as if his roof-tree were right-side-up once more in blue water, and he on deck beside the weather-rail. But the mood began to pass as soon as he bolted the front door behind his guests, and Ann the cook poured him out his last cup of mulled ale and withdrew with the saucepan. And another noon would find him seated under his leaning house-front, his eyes half-closed, his attention divided between the whisper of the tide and the murmur in the pigeon-cotes overhead, his body at ease and his soul content. His was a happy life--or had been, but for two crumpled rose-leaves.