Bosom Friends Part 16

TEA WITH MR. BINKS.

"At many a statelier home we've had good cheer, But ne'er a kinder welcome found than here."

The tea-cosy, when finished, was a thing of beauty, and Isobel packed it up in sheets of white tissue paper with much pride and satisfaction.

Both the steaming teapot on the one side and the ecclesiastical-looking "B" on the other had given her a great deal of trouble, and she was not sorry that they were completed.

"Going to have tea with that vulgar old man we met in the train!"

exclaimed Belle, raising her eyebrows in astonishment when Isobel told her of their plans. "You really do the _funniest_ things! I thought him dreadful. I suppose, since he asked you, you couldn't get out of it, but I'm sorry for you to have to go. I shouldn't have been able to come to the island in any case to-morrow, because mother wants to take me to see the Oppenheims."

"Who are they?" asked Isobel.

"Oh, they're a family mother knows in London. They're ever so rich.

They've taken a lovely furnished house near the woods, with a tennis-court and a huge garden. They're to arrive this evening, and they're bringing their motor car and their chauffeur with them. The Wilsons and the Bardsleys are coming by the same train. Blanche Oppenheim is six months older than I am, and mother says she's sure I shall like her. It will be nice to have some more friends here; Silversands is getting rather dull. There's so little to do in such a quiet place. There never seems to be anything going on."

Isobel thought there had been a great deal going on of the kind of fun she enjoyed, though it might not be altogether to Belle's taste, and even her friend's depreciation of poor Mr. Binks could not spoil the pleasure with which she antic.i.p.ated her visit to the White Coppice. She was full of eagerness to start on Thursday afternoon, and was ready fully half an hour too soon, though her mother a.s.sured her they could not with decency arrive before four o'clock.

The White Coppice lay opposite to Silversands, at the other side of a narrow peninsula, and you could either reach it by going five miles round by the road, or by walking two miles across the hills. Mrs.

Stewart and Isobel naturally preferred the short cut, and leaving the little town behind them, were soon on the bare wind-swept heights, following a track which led over the heather-clad moor. It seemed no-man's land here, given up to the grouse and plovers, though now and then they pa.s.sed a rough sheep-fold, and once a whitewashed farmstead, the thatched roof of which was bound down with ropes to resist the autumn storms, and the few trees that sheltered the doorway, all pointing their struggling branches in the same direction, served to show how strong was the force of the prevailing wind. From the crest of the hill they could see the sea on either hand, and at the far end of the promontory could catch a glimpse of the pier at Ferndale, where a steamer was landing its cargo of excursionists to swell the already large crowd of cheap trippers, who seemed to swarm like ants upon the sh.o.r.e.

"I'm glad we're not staying there," said Isobel, who had been taken for an afternoon by Mrs. Chester in company with Charlie and Hilda; and though she had laughed at the n.i.g.g.e.rs and the pierrots, and enjoyed watching the Punch and Judy and the acrobats on the sh.o.r.e, and had put pennies into the peep-shows on the pier, had returned thankfully from the crowded promenade and streets full of holiday-makers to the peace and quiet of Silversands.

"It's rather amusing just for a day, but the people are even noisier than those we met in the train; they were throwing confetti all about the sands, and shouting to one another at the top of their voices. I like a place where we can go walks and pick flowers, and not meet anybody else. We shouldn't have found a desert island at Ferndale."

"You certainly wouldn't," said Mrs. Stewart. "If 'Rocky Holme' were there it would be covered with swings and gingerbeer stalls, and your little hut might probably have been turned into an oyster room or a penny show. It is delightful to find a spot that is still unspoilt.

Luckily the trippers don't appear to go far afield; they seem quite content with the attractions of the pier and band, and have not yet invaded these beautiful moors. How quickly we seem to have come across!

We're quite close to the sea again now, and I believe that gray old farmhouse nestling among the trees below will prove to be the end of our journey."

The White Coppice was so called because it stood on the borders of a birch wood that lay in a gorge between the hills. It was protected by a bold cliff from the strong north and west winds, sheltered by a slightly lower crag from the east, and open only towards the south, where the garden sloped down to a sandy cove and a narrow creek that made a natural harbour for Mr. Binks's boat, which was generally moored to a small jetty under the wall. It was an ancient stone farmhouse, with large mullioned windows and hospitable, ever-open door, over which two tamarisk bushes had been trained into a rustic porch. The garden was gay with such hardy flowers as would flourish so near to the sea, growing in patches between the rows of potatoes and beans, and interspersed here and there with the figureheads of vessels, while at the end was a summer-house, evidently made from an upturned boat, and covered thickly with traveller's joy. Here Mr. Binks appeared to be taking an afternoon nap while awaiting the arrival of his visitors, but at the click of the opening gate he sprang up with a start, and advanced to meet them with brawny, outstretched hand.

"I'm reet glad to see you, I am!" he exclaimed cordially. "It's royal weather, too, though a trifle hotter nor suits me.--Missis!" (bawling through the doorway), "where iver are you a-gone? Here's company come, and waitin' for you!"

Mrs. Binks could not have been very far away, for she bustled into the front garden in a moment, her round, rosy, apple face smiling all over with welcome. She was a fine, tall, elderly woman, so stout that her figure reminded you of a large soft pillow tied in the middle. She wore an old-fashioned black silk dress, with a white muslin ap.r.o.n, and a black netted cap with purple ribbons over her smoothly parted gray hair.

"Well, now, I'm _that_ pleased!" she declared. "Come in, and set you down. You'll be fair tired out, mum, with your walk over the moor, havin' had a bad foot and all. It's a nasty thing to strain your ankle, it is that.--Come in, missy. Binks has talked a deal about you, he has--thinks you're the very moral of our Harriet's Clara over at Skegness; but, bless you, I don't see no likeness myself. The kettle's just on the boil, and you must take a cup of tea first thing to freshen you up like. It's a good step from Silversands, and a bit close to-day to come so far."

Seated in a corner of the high-backed oak settle, Isobel looked with eager curiosity round the old farm kitchen. Its flagged stone floor, the sliding cupboards in the walls, the great beams of the ceiling covered with hooks from which were suspended flitches of bacon, bunches of dried herbs, strings of onions, and even Mr. Binks's fishing-boots--all were new to her interested gaze, and her quick eyes took in everything from the gun-rack over the dresser to the china dogs on the chimney-piece.

The kitchen was so large that half of it seemed to be reserved as a parlour; there was a square of carpet laid down at one end, upon which stood a round table spread with Mrs. Binks's very best china tea-service, and a supply of dainties that would have feasted a dozen visitors at least. The long, low window was filled with scarlet geraniums, between the vivid blossoms of which you could catch a peep of the cove and the water beyond; and just outside hung a cage containing a pair of doves, which kept up an incessant cooing. Mrs. Binks made quite a picture, seated in a tall elbow chair, wielding her big teapot, and she pressed her m.u.f.fins and currant tea-cakes upon her guests with true north-country hospitality.

"You ought to be sharp set after a two-mile walk," she observed. "Take it through, missy, take it through! You must have 'the bishop' with 'the curate,' as we say in these parts; the top piece is nought but the poor curate, for all the b.u.t.ter runs to the bottom, and that's the bishop! Is your tea as you like it? You must taste our apple jelly, made of our own crabs as grows in the orchard out at back, unless you'd as lief try the damson cheese or the strawberry jam."

Mr. Binks seemed much undecided whether his position as host required him to join the party, or whether his presence in such select company would be an intrusion, and in spite of Mrs. Stewart's kindly-expressed hope that he would occupy his own seat at the table, he finally compromised the matter by carrying his tea to the opposite end of the kitchen, and taking it on the dresser, from whence he fired off remarks every now and then whenever Mrs. Binks, who was a hard talker and monopolized the conversation, gave him a chance to put in a word. It was amusing talk, Isobel thought, all about Mrs. Binks's children and grandchildren, and the many illnesses from which they had suffered, and the medicines they had tried, and the wonderful recoveries they had made, interspersed by offers of more tea and cake and jam, or lamentations over the small appet.i.te of her visitors, whom she seemed to expect to clear the plates like locusts.

"No more, missy? Why, you are soon done! And you haven't tasted my cranberry cake! You must have a bit of it, if you have to put it in your pocket. It's made by a recipe as I got from my great-aunt as lived up in Berwick, and a light hand she had, too, for a cake," laying a generous slice upon Isobel's plate, and seeming quite hurt by her refusal.

"You mustn't make her ill, Mrs. Binks," laughed Mrs. Stewart, "though she fully appreciates your kindness.--Isobel, would you like to open the parcel we brought with us?"

"You worked this for us, honey? Well, I never did!" cried Mrs. Binks, touching the gorgeous tea-cosy gingerly, as if she feared her stout fingers might soil its beauty.--"Peter, come hither and look at this.--Use it for tea every day? Nay! that would be a sin and a shame.

It's a sight too pretty to use. I'll put it in the parlour, alongside of the cup Binks won at last show for the black heifer. You shall see for yourself, missy, how nice it'll stand on the sideboard, on top of a daisy mat as Harriet crocheted when she was down with a bad leg."

Mrs. Binks opened a door at the farther side of the kitchen, and proudly led the way into her best sitting-room. It was a close little room, with a mouldy smell as if the chimney were stopped up and the window never opened. One end of it was entirely filled by a gla.s.s-backed mahogany sideboard; a large gilt mirror hung over the fireplace, carefully swathed in white muslin to keep off the flies; the walls were adorned with photographs of the Binks family and its many ramifications, taken in their best clothes, which did not appear to sit easily upon them, to judge by the stiff unrest of their att.i.tudes; and opposite the door hung a wonderful German oleograph depicting a scene that might either have been a sunrise on the Alps or an eruption of Vesuvius, according to the individual fancy of the spectator. The square table was covered with a magenta cloth, in the centre of which stood a gla.s.s shade containing wax fruit, while several gorgeously bound volumes of poems and sermons were placed at regular intervals each upon a separate green wool-work mat.

It was so hot and airless in there that Isobel was quite glad when Mr.

Binks suggested they should adjourn to the garden, that he might show her the figureheads which stood among the flower-beds like a row of wooden statues. Each one was the record of some good ship gone to pieces upon that treacherous coast, and as he walked along pointing them out with his stick, the old man gave the histories of the wrecks, at many of which he had played an active part in saving the lives of the crews.

"That there's the _Arizona_--her with the broken nose; smashed up like matchwood she was, on the cliffs beyond Ferndale, and the captain drowned and the second mate. That there's the _Neptune_. The trident's gone, but you can see the beard and the wreath. She went down of a sudden on a sunken rock, and never a man left to tell as how it happened. This un's the _Admiral Seymour_, wrecked outside Silversands Bay; but we had the lifeboat out, and took all off safe. And this here's the _Polly Jones_, a coastin' steamer from Liverpool, as went clean in two amongst them crags by the lighthouse, and her cargo of oranges washed up along the sh.o.r.e next day till the beach turned yellow with 'em."

"You know a great deal about ships," said Isobel, to whom her host's reminiscences were as thrilling as a story-book.

"I should that. I've been sailin' for the best part of fifty year--leastways when I wasn't farmin'. I've not forgot as I promised to row you over to the balk. If your ma's willin', we'd best make a start now, whilst the tide's handy. It's worth your while to go; you'd not see such a sight again, maybe, in a far day's journey."

Mrs. Binks declined to join the expedition, so only Mrs. Stewart and Isobel stepped into the boat which Mr. Binks rowed over the bay with swift and steady strokes. Their destination was a narrow spit of land about a quarter of a mile distant, where the crumbling remains of an old abbey rose gray among the surrounding rocks. Long years ago the monks had fashioned the balk to catch their fish, and it still stood, a survival of ancient days and ancient ways, close under the ruined wall of the disused chapel. It consisted of a circle of stout oak staves, driven into the sand, so as to enclose a s.p.a.ce of about forty yards in diameter, the staves being connected by twisted withes, so that the whole resembled a gigantic basket. It was filled by the high tide, and the retreating water, running through the meshes, left the fish behind as in a trap, when they were very easily caught with the hands and collected in creels.

"You wouldn't see more than a couple like it in all England," said Mr.

Binks. "They calls it poachin' now, and no one mayn't make a fresh one; but this here's left, and goes with the White Coppice, and I've rented the two for a matter of forty year."

He drew up the boat under the old abbey wall, and helping his guests to land, led them down the beach to the enclosure, where the wet sand was covered with leaping shining fish, some gasping their last in the sunshine, and some seeking the temporary shelter of a deeper pool in the middle. Bob, Mr. Binks's grandson, was busy collecting them and putting them into large baskets, a.s.sisted by a clever little Irish terrier, which ran hither and thither catching the fish in its mouth, and carrying them to its master like a retriever, much to Isobel's amus.e.m.e.nt, for she had certainly never seen a dog go fishing before.

It was a pretty sight, and a much easier way, Isobel thought, of earning your living than venturing out with nets and lines; and she resolved to tell the Sea Urchins about it, so that they might make a small balk for themselves on their desert island, if the colonel would allow them. She and her mother wandered round the old abbey, while Mr. Binks was engaged in giving some directions to Bob; but there was nothing to be seen except a few tumble-down walls and a fragment of what might once have been part of an east window. They were lifting away the thick ivy which had covered a corner stone, when, looking up, Isobel suddenly caught sight of a familiar figure coming towards them across the rough broken flags of the transept.

"O mother," she whispered, "it's Colonel Smith!" and advancing rather shyly a step or two, she met him with a beaming face.

"Why, it's my little friend again!" cried the colonel. "Hunting for more antiquities? I wish you would find them. This is surely your mother"

(raising his hat).--"Your daughter will, no doubt, have told you, madam, what an interesting discovery she made on my island. I feel I am very much indebted to her."

"She was equally delighted," replied Mrs. Stewart. "She has talked continually about this wonderful stone and its runic inscription. I am hoping to be able to take a sketch of it before we leave. I hear there is carving on the lower portion, as well as the runes."

"So there is, but it's half hidden by the soil. I'm taking some of my men to-morrow to dig it out of the ground and raise it up, and am sending for a photographer to take several views of it. It is of special value to me, owing to the particular Norse dialect employed, which is similar to that on several monuments in the Isle of Man, and shows that the same race of invaders must have swept across the north, and probably penetrated as far as Ireland."

"I have seen runic crosses in Ireland," said Mrs. Stewart. "There's a beautifully ornamented one near Ballymoran, though the carving is more like Celtic than Teutonic work--those strange interlacing animals which you find in ancient Erse ma.n.u.scripts. I am very interested in old Celtic remains, and have a good many sketches of them at home."

"You couldn't take up a more fascinating study," said the colonel eagerly. "It's a very wide field, and one that has not been too much explored. I've done a little in that way myself, and I am collecting materials for a book on the subject of Celtic and runic crosses, but it needs both time and patience to sort one's knowledge. It's worth the trouble, though, for the sake of the pleasure one gets out of it."

"I am sure it is," replied Mrs. Stewart, with ready sympathy. "To love such things is a kind of 'better part' that cannot be taken away from us, however much the uninitiated may laugh at our enthusiasm."

"You're right," said the colonel. "We can afford to let them laugh. We antiquarians have the best of it, after all. I should have liked to have seen your picture of the Irish cross. I wish I could sketch. You are fortunate to have that talent at your disposal; it's a great help in such work, and one which I sadly lack. Why, here's Binks!--Do you want anything, Peter?"

"No, sir," answered Mr. Binks, touching his cap. "Only to say as how the tide's runnin' out fast, and we ought to be startin' back now, or I'll have to carry the boat down the sands; she's only in a foot of water as it is."

"We must indeed go," said Mrs. Stewart, consulting her watch. "It's time we were walking home again.--Thank you" (turning to the colonel) "for your kindness to my little girl and her companions in allowing them to play on your island. I hope they are careful and do no damage there."

"Not in the least. There's nothing to hurt. Good-evening, madam. It has given me great pleasure to meet one with whom I have such a congenial subject in common. You must come, by all means, and sketch the stone, and I wish you every success in your study of both Celtic and runic antiquities."

"What an interesting old gentleman!" said Mrs. Stewart, when, having bid many farewells to Mr. and Mrs. Binks, she and Isobel at last turned their steps homeward over the moors. "It was, as he said, quite a pleasure to meet. I suppose there's a freemasonry between antiquarians.

I should like to have a copy of his book when it's published. I wonder if he would find my sketches of the Irish crosses useful. I think I must venture to send them to him when I return home. We don't know his address, but no doubt Colonel Smith, Silversands, would find him. We've had a delightful afternoon, Isobel, and not the least part of it, to me, has been to make the acquaintance of your friend of the desert island."