Chapter 11

To begin with, there were those confounded pot-boys. It puzzled Master Simon almost as much as it annoyed him; he paid fair wages and passed for a good employer; but he could not keep a pot-boy for twelve months. As a matter of fact, I know the river to have been the bottom of the mischief--the river, and perhaps the talk of the ship-captains. It might satisfy Master Simon to sit and watch the salmon passing up in autumn towards their spawning beds, and rubbing, as they went, their scales against his landing-stage to clear them of the sea-lice; to watch them and their young passing seaward in the early spring; to watch and wait and spread his nets in the due season. But for the youngsters this running water was a constant lure--the song of it and the dimple on it. It coaxed them, as it coaxed the old galleon, to lean over and listen. And the moment that listening became intolerable, they were off. Only one of them--the poet before mentioned--had ever expressed any desire to return and revisit--

The shining levels and the dazzled wave Emerging from his covert, errant long, In solitude descending by a vale Lost between uplands, where the harvesters Pause in the swathe, shading their eyes to watch Some barge or schooner stealing up from sea; Themselves in sunset, she a twilit ghost Parting the twilit woods . .

Ah, loving God! Grant, in the end, this world may slip away With whisper of that water by the bows Of such a bark, bearing me home--thy stars Breaking the gloom like kingfishers, thy heights Golden with wheat, thy waiting angels there Wearing the dear rough faces of my kin!

I doubt if he meant it, any more than Virgil meant his "_flumina amem silvasque inglorius_." At any rate, the public knew what was due to itself, and when the time came, gave the man a handsome funeral in Westminster Abbey. Among his pall-bearers walked the Prime Minister, the Commander-in-Chief, the President of the Royal Academy of Arts, and (as representing rural life) the Chief Secretary of Foreign Affairs.

What else disturbed the placid current of Master Simon's cogitations? Why, this: he was the last of his race, and unmarried.

For himself, he had no inclination to marry. But sometimes, as he shaved his chin of a morning, the reflection in his round mirror would suggest another. Was he not neglecting a public duty?

Now there dwelt down at Ponteglos a Mistress Prudence Waddilove, a widow, who kept the "Pandora's Box" Inn on the quay--a very tidy business. Master Simon had known her long before she married the late Waddilove; had indeed sat on the same form with her in infants' school--she being by two years his junior, but always a trifle quicker of wit. He attended her husband's funeral in a neighbourly way, and, a week later, put on his black suit again and went down--still in a neighbourly way--to offer his condolence. Mistress Prudence received him in the best parlour, which smelt damp and chilly in comparison with the little room behind the bar. Master Simon remarked that she must be finding it lonely. Whereupon she wept.

Master Simon suggested that he, for his part, had tried pigeon-breeding, and found that it alleviated solitude in a wonderful manner. "There's my tumblers. If you like, I'll bring you down a pair. They're pretty to watch. Of course, a husband is different--"

"Of course," Mistress Prudence assented, her grief too recent to allow a smile even at the picture of the late Waddilove (a man of full habit) cleaving the air with frequent somersaults. She added, not quite inconsequently:

"He is an angel."

"Of course," said Master Simon, in his turn.

"But I think," she went on, quite inconsequently, "I would rather have a pair of carriers."

"Now, why in the world?" wondered Master Simon. He kept carrier pigeons, to be sure. He kept pigeons of every sort--tumblers, pouters, carriers, Belgians, dragons . . . the subdivisions, when you came to them, were endless. But the carriers were by no means his show-birds. He kept them mainly for the convenience of Ann the cook. Ann had a cunning eye for a pigeon, and sometimes ventured a trifle of her savings on a match; and though in his masculine pride he never consulted her, Master Simon always felt more confident on hearing that Ann had put money on his bird. Now, when a match took place at some distant town or flying-ground, Ann would naturally be anxious to learn the result as quickly as possible; and Master Simon, finding that the suspense affected her cookery, had fallen into the habit of taking a hamper of carriers to all distant meetings and speeding them back to "Flowing Source" with tidings of his fortune. Apart from this office--which they performed well enough--he took no special pride in them. The offer of a pair of his pet tumblers, worth their weight in gold, had cost him an effort; and when Mistress Prudence, ordinarily a clear-headed woman, declared that she preferred carriers, she could hardly have astonished him more by asking for a pair of stock-doves.

"Oh, certainly," he answered, and went home and thought it over. Women were a puzzle; but he had a dim notion that if he could lay hand on the reason why Mistress Prudence preferred ordinary carriers to prize tumblers, he would hold the key to some of the secrets of the sex. He thought it over for three days, during which he smoked more tobacco than was good for him. At about four o'clock in the afternoon of the third day, a smile enlarged his face. He set down his pipe, smacked his thigh, stood up, sat down again, and began to laugh. He laughed slowly and deliberately--not loudly--for the greater part of that evening, and woke up twice in the night and shook the bedclothes into long waves with his mirth.

Next morning he took two carriers from the cote, shut them in a hamper, and rowed down to Ponteglos with his gift. But Mrs. Waddilove was not at home. She had started early by van for Tregarrick (said the waitress at the "Pandora's Box") on business connected with her husband's will. "No hurry at all," said Master Simon. He slipped a handful of Indian corn under the lid, and left the hamper "with his respects."

Then he rowed home, and spent the next two days after his wont; the only observable difference being the position of his garden chair. It stood as a rule under the shadow of the broad eaves, but now Master Simon ordered the tap-boy to carry it out and set it by a rustic table close to the river's brink, whence, as he smoked, he could keep comfortable watch upon the pigeon-cote.

"You'll catch a sunstroke," said Ann the cook. "I hope you're not beginning to forget how to take care of yourself."

"Well, I hope so too," Master Simon answered; but he did not budge.

On the morning of the third day, however, he saw that which made him step indoors and mount to the attic under the cote. Having opened with much caution a trap-door in the roof, he slipped an arm out and captured a carrier pigeon.

The bird carried a note folded small and bound under its wing with a thread of silk. Master Simon opened the note and read:

If you loves me as I loves you, No knife can cut our loves in two.

He had prepared himself for a hearty chuckle; but he broke out with a profuse perspiration instead. "Oh, this is hustling a man!" he ingeminated, staring round the empty attic like a rabbit seeking a convenient hole. "Not three weeks buried!" he added, with another groan, and began to loosen his neck-cloth.

While thus engaged, he heard a flutter above the trap-door, and a second pigeon alighted, with a second note, also bound with a silken thread.

"Lor-a-mercy!" gasped Master Simon.

But the second note was written in a different hand, and ran as follows:

"_I could die of shame. It was all that hussy of a girl. She did it for a joke. I'll joke her. But what will you be thinking?--P. W._"

Master Simon rowed down to Ponteglos that very afternoon, and the two carriers went back with him. Happiness seemed to have shaken its wings and quite departed from "Pandora's Box"; but a twinkle of something not entirely unlike hope lurked in the corners of the waitress's eyes--albeit their lids were red and swollen--as she ushered Master Simon into the best parlour.

"What can you be thinking of me?" began the widow. _Her_ eyes were red and swollen, too.

"I've brought back the pigeons."

"I can never bear the sight of them again!"

"You might begin different, you know," suggested Master Simon, affably. "Some little message about the weather, for instance. Have you given that girl warning to leave?"

"You see, I'm so lonely here . . ."

Some three months after this, and on an exceptionally fine morning in September, Master Simon put Harmony, his celebrated almond hen, into her travelling hamper, and marched over to the crossroads to take coach for Illogan, in the mining district, where the matches for the championship cup were to be flown that year.

Now Ann the cook had ventured no less than five pounds upon Harmony. Five pounds represented a half of her annual wage, and a trifle less than half of her annual savings. Therefore she spent the greater part of the following afternoon at her window, gazing westward in no small perturbation of spirit.

It wanted a few minutes to five when a carrier pigeon came travelling across the zenith, shot downwards suddenly, and alighted on the roof. Ann climbed to the trap-door and put out a hand. The bird was preening his feathers, and allowed himself to be taken easily.

In circumstances less agitating Ann had not failed to observe that the thread about the messenger's wing was not of the kind that Master Simon used. But her eyes opened wide as they fell on the handwriting, and still wider as she read:

"_It is all for the best, perhaps. If only people have not begun to talk_.--Prudence."

A second messenger arrived towards evening with word of Harmony's success. But the news hardly relaxed Ann's brow, which kept a pensive contraction even when her master arrived next evening and poured out her winnings on the table from the silver challenge cup.

She wore this frown at intervals for a fortnight, and all the while maintained an unusual silence which puzzled Master Simon. Then one morning he heard her in the kitchen scolding the tap-boy with all her pristine heartiness. That night, after mulling her master's ale, she turned at the door, saucepan in hand, and coughed to attract attention.

"Well, Ann; what is it?"

"You've been philanderin'."

"Hey! Upon my word, Ann--"

Ann produced the Widow Waddilove's note and flattened it out under Master Simon's eyes. And Master Simon blushed painfully.

"Are you goin' to marry the woman?" Ann demanded.

"I think not."

"I reckon you will."

"Well, you see, there has been a hitch. She won't leave the 'Pandora's Box,' and I'm not going to budge from 'Flowing Source.' If a woman won't put herself out to that extent--Besides, she cooks no better than you."

"Not so well. You wasn't thinking, by any chance, o' marrying _me_?"

"Ann, you're perfectly brazen! Well, no; to tell you the plain truth, I wasn't."

"That's all right; because I've gone and promised myself to a young farmer up the valley."

"What's his name?"

"I shan't tell you; for the reason that I've a second to fall back on, if I find on acquaintance that the first won't do. But first or second, I'll marry one or t'other at the month-end, and so I give you notice."

Master Simon sighed. "Well! well! I must get on as best I can with Tom for a while." Tom was the tap-boy.

"Tom's going, too. I bullied him so this morning that he means to give notice to-morrow; that is, if he don't save himself the trouble by running off to sea."

"The twelfth in five years!" ejaculated Master Simon, stopping his pipe viciously.

"And small blame to them! Married man or mariner--that's what a boy is born for. Better dare wreck or wedlock than sit here and talk about both. Take my advice, master, and marry the widow!"

Ann carried out her own matrimonial programme, at any rate, with spirit and determination. Finding the first young farmer satisfactory, she espoused him at the end of the month, and turned her back on "Flowing Source." And Tom the tap-boy fulfilled her prophecy and ran away to sea. And the old inn leaned after him until its timbers creaked. And the autumn floods rose and covered the meadows.

Master Simon sat and smoked, and made his own bed, and accomplished some execrable cookery in the intervals of oiling his duck-gun. Even duck-shooting becomes a weariness when a man has to manage gun and punt single-handed. One afternoon he abandoned the sport in an exceedingly bad temper, and pulled up to the jaws of Cuckoo Valley. Here he landed, and after an hour's trudge in the marshy bottoms had the luck to knock over two couple of woodcock.

He rowed back with his spoil, and was making fast to the ferry steps, when a thought struck him. He shipped the paddles again, and pulled down to Ponteglos. The short day was closing, and already a young moon glimmered on the floods.

The woodcock were cooked to a turn; juicier birds never reclined on toast. The waitress removed the cloth and returned with a kettle; retired and returned again with a short-necked bottle, a glass and spoon, sugar, a nutmeg, and a lemon; retired with a twinkle in her eye.

"To fortify you!" said Mistress Prudence, rubbing a lump of sugar gently on the lemon-rind.

"The night air," Master Simon murmured.

"--Against the damp house you're going back to," the lady corrected.

"You talk without giving it a trial."

"As you talk, in your parlour, of deep-sea voyages."

"As a ship's captain you would respect me perhaps?"

"No, for you haven't the head. But I should like your pluck. If I saw you setting off for sea in earnest, I would run out and give you a chance to steer a woman instead of a ship. You would find her safer."

Master Simon emptied his glass, rose, and wound his great comforter about his neck. The widow saw him to the door.

"You're a very obstinate woman," he said.

And with this he unmoored his boat and rowed resolutely homewards. A strong wind came piping down on the back of a strong tide, and Master Simon arched his shoulders against it.

"Married man or mariner!" it piped, as he rounded the first bend.

"I know my own mind, I believe," said Master Simon to himself. "There's as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it; and for salmon, 'Flowing Source' will beat Christchurch any day, I've always maintained."

"Married man or mariner!" piped the wind in the words of Ann the cook.

Master Simon pulled his left paddle hard and rounded the second bend.

"Married man or mar--"

Crash!

His heels flew up and his head struck the bottom-boards. Then, in a moment, the boat was gone, and a rush of water sang in his ears and choked him. He saw a black shadow overhanging, and clutched at it.

Mistress Prudence stood in her doorway on the quay, as Master Simon had left her. In the room above, the waitress blew out her candle, drew up the blind, and opened her window to the moonlight.

"Selina!" the mistress called.

Selina thrust out her head.

"What's that coming down the river?"

A black, unshapely mass was moving swiftly down towards the quay.

"I think 'tis a haystack," Selina whispered, and then, "Lord save us all, there's a man on it!"

"A man?" cried the widow, shrilly. "What man?"

A voice answered the question, calling for help out of the river--a voice that she knew.

"What is it?" she called back.

"I think," quavered Master Simon, "I think 'tis the roof o' 'Flowing Source'!"

Mistress Prudence ran down the quay steps, cast off the first boat that lay handy, and pulled towards the dark mass sweeping seaward. As it crossed ahead of her bows, she dropped the paddles, ran to the painter, and flung it forward with all her might.

The "Pandora's Box" Inn stands on Ponteglos Quay to this day. And all that is left of "Flowing Source" hangs on the wall of its best parlour--four dark oak timbers forming a frame around a portrait, the portrait of a woman of middle age and comfortable countenance. In the right-hand top corner of the picture, in letters of faded gold, runs the legend--VXOR BONA INSTAR NAVIS.

EXPERIMENTS.

I.--A YOUNG MAN'S DIARY.

_Monday, Sept. 7th_, 189-. I am one year old to-day.

I imagine that most people regard their first birthday as something of an event; a harvest-home of innocence, touched with I know not how delicate a bloom of virginal anticipation; of emotion too volatile for analysis, or perhaps eluding analysis by its very simplicity. But whatever point the festival might have had for me was rudely destroyed by my parents, who chose this day for jolting me back to London in a railway-carriage. We have just arrived home from Newquay, Cornwall, where we have been spending the summer holidays for the sake of my health, as papa has not scrupled to blurt out, once or twice, in my presence.

There is a strain of coarseness in papa; or perhaps I should say--for the impression it leaves is primarily negative, as of something _manque_--an incompleteness in the sensitive equipment. As yet it can hardly be said to embarrass me; though I foresee a time when I shall have to apologise for it to strangers. There is nothing absurd in this. If a man may take pride in his ancestry, why may he not apologise for his papa? My papa will be forgiven, for he is so splendidly virile! He left our compartment at Bristol and did not return again until the train stopped at Swindon for him to eat a bun. In the interval, mamma took me from nurse and endeavoured to hush me by singing--

Father's gone a-hunting. . . .

Which was untrue, for he had lit a pipe and withdrawn to a smoking compartment. My nurse--an egregious female--had previously remarked, "The dear child _do_ take such notice of the puff-puff!" As a matter of fact, I took no interest in the locomotive; but I had observed it sufficiently to be sure that it offered no facilities for hunting. A few months ago I might have accepted the explanation: for our family has affinity with what is vulgarly termed the upper class, and my father inherits its crude and primitive instincts; among them a passion for the chase. His appearance, as he returned to our compartment, oppressed me for the hundredth time with a sense of its superabundant and even riotous vitality. His cheeks were glowing, and his whiskers sprouted like cabbages on either side of his otherwise clean-shaven face. An indefinable flavour of the sea mingled with the odour of tobacco which he diffused about the carriage. It seemed as if the virile breezes of that shaggy Cornish coast still blew about him; and I felt again that constriction of the chest from which I had suffered during the past month.

After all, it is good to be back in London! Newquay, with its obvious picturesqueness, its violent colouring, its sands, rocks, breakers and by-laws regulating the costume of bathers, merely exasperated my nerves. How far more subtle the appeal of these grey and dun-coloured opacities, these tent-cloths of fog pressed out into uncouth, dumbly pathetic shapes by the struggle for existence that seethes below it always--always! Decidedly I must begin to-morrow to practise walking. It seems a necessary step towards acquainting myself with the inner life of these inchoate millions, which must be well worth knowing. Papa, on arriving at our door, plunged into an altercation with a cab-tout. What a man! And yet sometimes I could find it in my heart to envy his robustness, his buoyancy. A Huntley and Palmer's Nursery Biscuit in a little hot water has somewhat quieted my nerves, which suffered cruelly during the scene. I believe I shall sleep to-night.

_Tuesday, 8th_. The beginning of _Sturm und Drang_; I am learning to walk. Moreover I have surprised in myself, during the day, a tendency to fall in love with my nurse. On the pretence that walking might give me bandy legs she caught me up and pressed me to her bosom. We have no affinities; indeed, beyond cleanliness and a certain unreasoning honesty, she can be said to possess no attributes at all. I am convinced that a serious affection for her could only flourish on an intellectual atrophy; and yet for a while I abandoned myself. We went out into the bright streets together, and it was delicious to be propelled by her strong arms. We halted, on our way to Kensington Gardens, to listen to a German band. The voluptuous waltz-music affected me strangely, and I was sorry that, owing to my position in the vehicle, her face was hidden from me. In the midst of my ecstasy, a square object on wheels came round the street corner. It was painted a bright vermilion and bore the initials of K.V.--"Kytherea Victrix!" I cried in my heart; but as it passed, at a slow pace, it rained a flood of tears upon the dusty road-way. For some time after I sat in a strange calm, but with a sensation in the region of the diaphragm as if I had received a severe blow; and in truth I had. But the shock was salutary, and by the time that nurse and I were seated together by the Round Pond, I was able to listen to her talk without a quiver of the eyelids. Poor soul! What malefic jest of Fate led her to select the story of Georgie-Porgie?

Georgie-Porgie, pudding and pie. . . .

It is as irrelevant as life itself.

Georgie-Porgie, pudding and pie, Kissed the girls and made them cry. . . .

Why pudding? Why pie? Why--if you ask this--why _any_ realism? These concrete accidents solidify a thin and abstract love-story for our human comprehension. Or are they, perchance, symbolical? Georgie-Porgie's promises, like pie-crust, were made to be broken. He--

Kissed the girls and made them cry. When the girls came out to play, Georgie-Porgie ran away.

--Simple solution of the difficulty! And I am already learning to walk! Poor woman!

_Wednesday, 9th_. I am troubled whenever I reflect on the subject of heredity. It terrifies me to think that I may grow up to resemble papa. Mamma, too, is hardly less a savage: she wore diamonds in her hair when she came up to the nursery, late last night, to look at me. She believed that I was asleep; but I wasn't, and I never in my life felt so sorry that I couldn't speak. The appalling barbarism of those trinkets! I got out of the cradle and rocked myself to sleep.

It is raining this afternoon--the sky weeping like a Corot--and I am forced to stay indoors and affect an interest in Noah and his ark! Nurse's father came up and accosted her in the Gardens this morning. He is one of the Submerged Tenth, and extremely interesting. On the threat of running off with me and pitching me neck and crop into the Round Pond, he extracted half a crown from her. She gave him the coin docilely. I found myself almost hoping that he would raise his price, that I might discover how much the poor creature was ready to sacrifice for my sake. She is looking pale this afternoon; but this may be because I cried half the night and kept her awake. The fact is, I was cutting a tooth. I have given up learning to walk; but have some idea of trying somnambulism instead.

_Thursday, 10th_. To-day I was spanked for the first time. When I have stopped crying, I mean to analyse my sensations. Sometimes, in Kensington Gardens, I feel like a boy who is never growing up. . .

II.--THE CAPTAIN FROM BATH.

Extract from the Memoirs of GABRIEL FOOT, Highwayman.

Our plan of attack upon Nanscarne House was a simple one.

The old baronet, Sir Harry Dinnis, took a just pride in his silver-ware. Some of it dated from Elizabeth: for Sir Harry's great-great-grandfather, as the unhappy alternative of melting it down for King Charles, had taken arms against his Majesty and come out of the troubles of those times with wealth and credit.