Traffics and Discoveries
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"No, I haven't seen her either this evening, Miss Florence," I heard her say, "but that Turpin he says he wants to see you about his shed."
"Oh, Mr. Turpin must want to see me very badly. Tell him to come to the hall, Mrs. Madden."
I looked down into the hall whose only light was the dulled fire, and deep in the shadow I saw them at last. They must have slipped down while we were in the passages, and now thought themselves perfectly hidden behind an old gilt leather screen. By child's law, my fruitless chase was as good as an introduction, but since I had taken so much trouble I resolved to force them to come forward later by the simple trick, which children detest, of pretending not to notice them. They lay close, in a little huddle, no more than shadows except when a quick flame betrayed an outline.
"And now we'll have some tea," she said. "I believe I ought to have offered it you at first, but one doesn't arrive at manners somehow when one lives alone and is considered – h'm – peculiar." Then with very pretty scorn, "would you like a lamp to see to eat by?" "The firelight's much pleasanter, I think." We descended into that delicious gloom and Madden brought tea.
I took my chair in the direction of the screen ready to surprise or be surprised as the game should go, and at her permission, since a hearth is always sacred, bent forward to play with the fire.
"Where do you get these beautiful short faggots from?" I asked idly. "Why, they are tallies!"
"Of course," she said. "As I can't read or write I'm driven back on the early English tally for my accounts. Give me one and I'll tell you what it meant."
I passed her an unburned hazel-tally, about a foot long, and she ran her thumb down the nicks.
"This is the milk-record for the home farm for the month of April last year, in gallons," said she. "I don't know what I should have done without tallies. An old forester of mine taught me the system. It's out of date now for every one else; but my tenants respect it. One of them's coming now to see me. Oh, it doesn't matter. He has no business here out of office hours. He's a greedy, ignorant man – very greedy or – he wouldn't come here after dark."
"Have you much land then?"
"Only a couple of hundred acres in hand, thank goodness. The other six hundred are nearly all let to folk who knew my folk before me, but this Turpin is quite a new man – and a highway robber."
"But are you sure I sha'n't be – ?"
"Certainly not. You have the right. He hasn't any children."
"Ah, the children!" I said, and slid my low chair back till it nearly touched the screen that hid them. "I wonder whether they'll come out for me."
There was a murmur of voices – Madden's and a deeper note – at the low, dark side door, and a ginger-headed, canvas-gaitered giant of the unmistakable tenant farmer type stumbled or was pushed in.
"Come to the fire, Mr. Turpin," she said.
"If – if you please, Miss, I'll – I'll be quite as well by the door." He clung to the latch as he spoke like a frightened child. Of a sudden I realised that he was in the grip of some almost overpowering fear.
"Well?"
"About that new shed for the young stock – that was all. These first autumn storms settin' in … but I'll come again, Miss." His teeth did not chatter much more than the door latch.
"I think not," she answered levelly. "The new shed – m'm. What did my agent write you on the 15th?"
"I – fancied p'raps that if I came to see you – ma – man to man like, Miss.
But – "
His eyes rolled into every corner of the room wide with horror. He half opened the door through which he had entered, but I noticed it shut again – from without and firmly.
"He wrote what I told him," she went on. "You are overstocked already.
Dunnett's Farm never carried more than fifty bullocks – even in Mr.
Wright's time. And he used cake. You've sixty-seven and you don't cake.
You've broken the lease in that respect. You're dragging the heart out of the farm."
"I'm – I'm getting some minerals – superphosphates – next week. I've as good as ordered a truck-load already. I'll go down to the station to-morrow about 'em. Then I can come and see you man to man like, Miss, in the daylight… That gentleman's not going away, is he?" He almost shrieked.
I had only slid the chair a little further back, reaching behind me to tap on the leather of the screen, but he jumped like a rat.
"No. Please attend to me, Mr. Turpin." She turned in her chair and faced him with his back to the door. It was an old and sordid little piece of scheming that she forced from him – his plea for the new cowshed at his landlady's expense, that he might with the covered manure pay his next year's rent out of the valuation after, as she made clear, he had bled the enriched pastures to the bone. I could not but admire the intensity of his greed, when I saw him out-facing for its sake whatever terror it was that ran wet on his forehead.
I ceased to tap the leather – was, indeed, calculating the cost of the shed – when I felt my relaxed hand taken and turned softly between the soft hands of a child. So at last I had triumphed. In a moment I would turn and acquaint myself with those quick-footed wanderers…
The little brushing kiss fell in the centre of my palm – as a gift on which the fingers were, once, expected to close: as the all faithful half- reproachful signal of a waiting child not used to neglect even when grown-ups were busiest – a fragment of the mute code devised very long ago.
Then I knew. And it was as though I had known from the first day when I looked across the lawn at the high window.
I heard the door shut. The woman turned to me in silence, and I felt that she knew.
What time passed after this I cannot say. I was roused by the fall of a log, and mechanically rose to put it back. Then I returned to my place in the chair very close to the screen.
"Now you understand," she whispered, across the packed shadows.
"Yes, I understand – now. Thank you."
"I – I only hear them." She bowed her head in her hands. "I have no right, you know – no other right. I have neither borne nor lost – neither borne nor lost!"
"Be very glad then," said I, for my soul was torn open within me.
"Forgive me!"
She was still, and I went back to my sorrow and my joy.
"It was because I loved them so," she said at last, brokenly. "That was why it was, even from the first – even before I knew that they – they were all I should ever have. And I loved them so!"
She stretched out her arms to the shadows and the shadows within the shadow.
"They came because I loved them – because I needed them. I – I must have made them come. Was that wrong, think you?"
"No – no."
"I – I grant you that the toys and – and all that sort of thing were nonsense, but – but I used to so hate empty rooms myself when I was little." She pointed to the gallery. "And the passages all empty. … And how could I ever bear the garden door shut? Suppose – "
"Don't! For pity's sake, don't!" I cried. The twilight had brought a cold rain with gusty squalls that plucked at the leaded windows.
"And the same thing with keeping the fire in all night. I don't think it so foolish – do you?"
I looked at the broad brick hearth, saw, through tears I believe, that there was no unpassable iron on or near it, and bowed my head.
"I did all that and lots of other things – just to make believe. Then they came. I heard them, but I didn't know that they were not mine by right till Mrs. Madden told me – "
"The butler's wife? What?"
"One of them – I heard – she saw. And knew. Hers! Not for me. I didn't know at first. Perhaps I was jealous. Afterwards, I began to understand that it was only because I loved them, not because – … Oh, you must bear or lose," she said piteously. "There is no other way – and yet they love me. They must! Don't they?"
There was no sound in the room except the lapping voices of the fire, but we two listened intently, and she at least took comfort from what she heard. She recovered herself and half rose. I sat still in my chair by the screen.
"Don't think me a wretch to whine about myself like this, but – but I'm all in the dark, you know, and you can see."
In truth I could see, and my vision confirmed me in my resolve, though that was like the very parting of spirit and flesh. Yet a little longer I would stay since it was the last time.
"You think it is wrong, then?" she cried sharply, though I had said nothing.
"Not for you. A thousand times no. For you it is right… I am grateful to you beyond words. For me it would be wrong. For me only…"
"Why?" she said, but passed her hand before her face as she had done at our second meeting in the wood. "Oh, I see," she went on simply as a child. "For you it would be wrong." Then with a little indrawn laugh, "and, d'you remember, I called you lucky – once – at first. You who must never come here again!"
She left me to sit a little longer by the screen, and I heard the sound of her feet die out along the gallery above.
MRS. BATHURST
FROM LYDEN'S "IRENIUS"
ACT III. Sc. IIGow. – Had it been your Prince instead of a groom caught in this noose there's not an astrologer of the city —
PRINCE. – Sacked! Sacked! We were a city yesterday.
Gow. – So be it, but I was not governor. Not an astrologer, but would ha' sworn he'd foreseen it at the last versary of Venus, when Vulcan caught her with Mars in the house of stinking Capricorn. But since 'tis Jack of the Straw that hangs, the forgetful stars had it not on their tablets.
PRINCE. – Another life! Were there any left to die? How did the poor fool come by it?
Gow. —Simpliciter thus. She that damned him to death knew not that she did it, or would have died ere she had done it. For she loved him. He that hangs him does so in obedience to the Duke, and asks no more than "Where is the rope?" The Duke, very exactly he hath told us, works God's will, in which holy employ he's not to be questioned. We have then left upon this finger, only Jack whose soul now plucks the left sleeve of Destiny in Hell to overtake why she clapped him up like a fly on a sunny wall. Whuff! Soh!
PRINCE. – Your cloak, Ferdinand. I'll sleep now.
FERDINAND. – Sleep, then.. He too, loved his life?
Gow. – He was born of woman … but at the end threw life from him, like your Prince, for a little sleep … "Have I any look of a King?" said he, clanking his chain – "to be so baited on all sides by Fortune, that I must e'en die now to live with myself one day longer?" I left him railing at Fortune and woman's love.
FERDINAND. – Ah, woman's love!
(Aside) Who knows not Fortune, glutted on easy thrones, Stealing from feasts as rare to coneycatch, Privily in the hedgerows for a clown With that same cruel-lustful hand and eye, Those nails and wedges, that one hammer and lead, And the very gerb of long-stored lightnings loosed Yesterday 'gainst some King.
MRS. BATHURST The day that I chose to visit H.M.S. Peridot in Simon's Bay was the day that the Admiral had chosen to send her up the coast. She was just steaming out to sea as my train came in, and since the rest of the Fleet were either coaling or busy at the rifle-ranges a thousand feet up the hill, I found myself stranded, lunchless, on the sea-front with no hope of return to Cape Town before five P.M. At this crisis I had the luck to come across my friend Inspector Hooper, Cape Government Railways, in command of an engine and a brake-van chalked for repair.
"If you get something to eat," he said, "I'll run you down to Glengariff siding till the goods comes along. It's cooler there than here, you see."
I got food and drink from the Greeks who sell all things at a price, and the engine trotted us a couple of miles up the line to a bay of drifted sand and a plank-platform half buried in sand not a hundred yards from the edge of the surf. Moulded dunes, whiter than any snow, rolled far inland up a brown and purple valley of splintered rocks and dry scrub. A crowd of Malays hauled at a net beside two blue and green boats on the beach; a picnic party danced and shouted barefoot where a tiny river trickled across the flat, and a circle of dry hills, whose feet were set in sands of silver, locked us in against a seven-coloured sea. At either horn of the bay the railway line, cut just above high water-mark, ran round a shoulder of piled rocks, and disappeared.
"You see there's always a breeze here," said Hooper, opening the door as the engine left us in the siding on the sand, and the strong south-easter buffeting under Elsie's Peak dusted sand into our tickey beer. Presently he sat down to a file full of spiked documents. He had returned from a long trip up-country, where he had been reporting on damaged rolling- stock, as far away as Rhodesia. The weight of the bland wind on my eyelids; the song of it under the car roof, and high up among the rocks; the drift of fine grains chasing each other musically ashore; the tramp of the surf; the voices of the picnickers; the rustle of Hooper's file, and the presence of the assured sun, joined with the beer to cast me into magical slumber. The hills of False Bay were just dissolving into those of fairyland when I heard footsteps on the sand outside, and the clink of our couplings.
"Stop that!" snapped Hooper, without raising his head from his work. "It's those dirty little Malay boys, you see: they're always playing with the trucks…"
"Don't be hard on 'em. The railway's a general refuge in Africa," I replied.
"'Tis – up-country at any rate. That reminds me," he felt in his waistcoat- pocket, "I've got a curiosity for you from Wankies – beyond Buluwayo. It's more of a souvenir perhaps than – "
"The old hotel's inhabited," cried a voice. "White men from the language.
Marines to the front! Come on, Pritch. Here's your Belmont. Wha – i – i!"
The last word dragged like a rope as Mr. Pyecroft ran round to the open door, and stood looking up into my face. Behind him an enormous Sergeant of Marines trailed a stalk of dried seaweed, and dusted the sand nervously from his fingers.
"What are you doing here?" I asked. "I thought the Hierophant was down the coast?"
"We came in last Tuesday – from Tristan D'Acunha – for overhaul, and we shall be in dockyard 'ands for two months, with boiler-seatings."
"Come and sit down," Hooper put away the file.
"This is Mr. Hooper of the Railway," I exclaimed, as Pyecroft turned to haul up the black-moustached sergeant.
"This is Sergeant Pritchard, of the Agaric, an old shipmate," said he. "We were strollin' on the beach." The monster blushed and nodded. He filled up one side of the van when he sat down.
"And this is my friend, Mr. Pyecroft," I added to Hooper, already busy with the extra beer which my prophetic soul had bought from the Greeks.
"Moi aussi" quoth Pyecroft, and drew out beneath his coat a labelled quart bottle.
"Why, it's Bass," cried Hooper.
"It was Pritchard," said Pyecroft. "They can't resist him."
"That's not so," said Pritchard, mildly.
"Not verbatim per'aps, but the look in the eye came to the same thing."
"Where was it?" I demanded.
"Just on beyond here – at Kalk Bay. She was slappin' a rug in a back verandah. Pritch hadn't more than brought his batteries to bear, before she stepped indoors an' sent it flyin' over the wall."
Pyecroft patted the warm bottle.
"It was all a mistake," said Pritchard. "I shouldn't wonder if she mistook me for Maclean. We're about of a size."
I had heard householders of Muizenburg, St. James's, and Kalk Bay complain of the difficulty of keeping beer or good servants at the seaside, and I began to see the reason. None the less, it was excellent Bass, and I too drank to the health of that large-minded maid.
"It's the uniform that fetches 'em, an' they fetch it," said Pyecroft. "My simple navy blue is respectable, but not fascinatin'. Now Pritch in 'is Number One rig is always 'purr Mary, on the terrace' —ex officio as you might say."
"She took me for Maclean, I tell you," Pritchard insisted. "Why – why – to listen to him you wouldn't think that only yesterday – "
"Pritch," said Pyecroft, "be warned in time. If we begin tellin' what we know about each other we'll be turned out of the pub. Not to mention aggravated desertion on several occasions – "
"Never anything more than absence without leaf – I defy you to prove it," said the Sergeant hotly. "An' if it comes to that how about Vancouver in '87?"
"How about it? Who pulled bow in the gig going ashore? Who told Boy Niven…?"
"Surely you were court martialled for that?" I said. The story of Boy Niven who lured seven or eight able-bodied seamen and marines into the woods of British Columbia used to be a legend of the Fleet.
"Yes, we were court-martialled to rights," said Pritchard, "but we should have been tried for murder if Boy Niven 'adn't been unusually tough. He told us he had an uncle 'oo'd give us land to farm. 'E said he was born at the back o' Vancouver Island, and all the time the beggar was a balmy Barnado Orphan!"
"But we believed him," said Pyecroft. "I did – you did – Paterson did – an' 'oo was the Marine that married the cocoanut-woman afterwards – him with the mouth?"
"Oh, Jones, Spit-Kid Jones. I 'aven't thought of 'im in years," said Pritchard. "Yes, Spit-Kid believed it, an' George Anstey and Moon. We were very young an' very curious."
"But lovin' an' trustful to a degree," said Pyecroft.
"Remember when 'e told us to walk in single file for fear o' bears? 'Remember, Pye, when 'e 'opped about in that bog full o' ferns an' sniffed an' said 'e could smell the smoke of 'is uncle's farm? An' all the time it was a dirty little out-lyin' uninhabited island. We walked round it in a day, an' come back to our boat lyin' on the beach. A whole day Boy Niven kept us walkin' in circles lookin' for 'is uncle's farm! He said his uncle was compelled by the law of the land to give us a farm!"
"Don't get hot, Pritch. We believed," said Pyecroft.
"He'd been readin' books. He only did it to get a run ashore an' have himself talked of. A day an' a night – eight of us – followin' Boy Niven round an uninhabited island in the Vancouver archipelago! Then the picket came for us an' a nice pack o' idiots we looked!"
"What did you get for it?" Hooper asked.
"Heavy thunder with continuous lightning for two hours. Thereafter sleet- squalls, a confused sea, and cold, unfriendly weather till conclusion o' cruise," said Pyecroft. "It was only what we expected, but what we felt, an' I assure you, Mr. Hooper, even a sailor-man has a heart to break, was bein' told that we able seamen an' promisin' marines 'ad misled Boy Niven. Yes, we poor back-to-the-landers was supposed to 'ave misled him! He rounded on us, o' course, an' got off easy."
"Excep' for what we gave him in the steerin'-flat when we came out o' cells. 'Eard anything of 'im lately, Pye?"
"Signal Boatswain in the Channel Fleet, I believe – Mr. L.L. Niven is."
"An' Anstey died o' fever in Benin," Pritchard mused. "What come to Moon?
Spit-Kid we know about."
"Moon – Moon! Now where did I last…? Oh yes, when I was in the Palladium! I met Quigley at Buncrana Station. He told me Moon 'ad run when the Astrild sloop was cruising among the South Seas three years back. He always showed signs o' bein' a Mormonastic beggar. Yes, he slipped off quietly an' they 'adn't time to chase 'im round the islands even if the navigatin' officer 'ad been equal to the job."
"Wasn't he?" said Hooper.
"Not so. Accordin' to Quigley the Astrild spent half her commission rompin' up the beach like a she-turtle, an' the other half hatching turtles' eggs on the top o' numerous reefs. When she was docked at Sydney her copper looked like Aunt Maria's washing on the line – an' her 'midship frames was sprung. The commander swore the dockyard 'ad done it haulin' the pore thing on to the slips. They do do strange things at sea, Mr. Hooper."
"Ah! I'm not a tax-payer," said Hooper, and opened a fresh bottle. The Sergeant seemed to be one who had a difficulty in dropping subjects.
"How it all comes back, don't it?" he said. "Why Moon must 'ave 'ad sixteen years' service before he ran."
"It takes 'em at all ages. Look at – you know," said Pyecroft.
"Who?" I asked.
"A service man within eighteen months of his pension, is the party you're thinkin' of," said Pritchard. "A warrant 'oose name begins with a V., isn't it?"
"But, in a way o' puttin' it, we can't say that he actually did desert," Pyecroft suggested.
"Oh, no," said Pritchard. "It was only permanent absence up country without leaf. That was all."
"Up country?" said Hooper. "Did they circulate his description?"
"What for?" said Pritchard, most impolitely.
"Because deserters are like columns in the war. They don't move away from the line, you see. I've known a chap caught at Salisbury that way tryin' to get to Nyassa. They tell me, but o' course I don't know, that they don't ask questions on the Nyassa Lake Flotilla up there. I've heard of a P. and O. quartermaster in full command of an armed launch there."
"Do you think Click 'ud ha' gone up that way?" Pritchard asked.
"There's no saying. He was sent up to Bloemfontein to take over some Navy ammunition left in the fort. We know he took it over and saw it into the trucks. Then there was no more Click – then or thereafter. Four months ago it transpired, and thus the casus belli stands at present," said Pyecroft.
"What were his marks?" said Hooper again.
"Does the Railway get a reward for returnin' 'em, then?" said Pritchard.
"If I did d'you suppose I'd talk about it?" Hooper retorted angrily.
"You seemed so very interested," said Pritchard with equal crispness.
"Why was he called Click?" I asked to tide over an uneasy little break in the conversation. The two men were staring at each other very fixedly.
"Because of an ammunition hoist carryin' away," said Pyecroft. "And it carried away four of 'is teeth – on the lower port side, wasn't it, Pritch? The substitutes which he bought weren't screwed home in a manner o' sayin'. When he talked fast they used to lift a little on the bed plate. 'Ence, 'Click.' They called 'im a superior man which is what we'd call a long, black-'aired, genteely speakin', 'alf-bred beggar on the lower deck."
"Four false teeth on the lower left jaw," said Hooper, his hand in his waistcoat pocket. "What tattoo marks?"
"Look here," began Pritchard, half rising. "I'm sure we're very grateful to you as a gentleman for your 'orspitality, but per'aps we may 'ave made an error in – "
I looked at Pyecroft for aid, Hooper was crimsoning rapidly.
"If the fat marine now occupying the foc'sle will kindly bring 'is status quo to an anchor yet once more, we may be able to talk like gentlemen – not to say friends," said Pyecroft. "He regards you, Mr. Hooper, as a emissary of the Law."
"I only wish to observe that when a gentleman exhibits such a peculiar, or I should rather say, such a bloomin' curiosity in identification marks as our friend here – "
"Mr. Pritchard," I interposed, "I'll take all the responsibility for Mr. Hooper."
"An' you'll apologise all round," said Pyecroft. "You're a rude little man, Pritch."
"But how was I – " he began, wavering.
"I don't know an' I don't care. Apologise!"
The giant looked round bewildered and took our little hands into his vast grip, one by one. "I was wrong," he said meekly as a sheep. "My suspicions was unfounded. Mr. Hooper, I apologise."
"You did quite right to look out for your own end o' the line," said Hooper. "I'd ha' done the same with a gentleman I didn't know, you see. If you don't mind I'd like to hear a little more o' your Mr. Vickery. It's safe with me, you see."
"Why did Vickery run," I began, but Pyecroft's smile made me turn my question to "Who was she?"
"She kep' a little hotel at Hauraki – near Auckland," said Pyecroft.
"By Gawd!" roared Pritchard, slapping his hand on his leg. "Not Mrs.
Bathurst!"
Pyecroft nodded slowly, and the Sergeant called all the powers of darkness to witness his bewilderment.