Corporal Sam and Other Stories Part 16

'No--o,' answered Mrs Salt, yet as one not altogether sure.

'And I dare say your bein' mayor makes you take a serious view.'

Breakfast over, the mayor took hat and walking-stick for his customary morning stroll along the street to Butcher Trengrove's to choose the joint for his dinner and pick up the town's earliest gossip. It is Troy's briskest hour; when the dairy carts, rattling homeward, meet the country folk from up-the-river who have just landed at the quays and begun to sell from door to door their poultry and fresh eggs, vegetables, fruit, and nosegays of garden flowers; when the tradesmen, having taken down their shutters, stand in the roadway, admire the effect of their shop-windows and admonish the apprentices cleaning the panes; when the children loiter and play at hop-scotch on their way to school, and the housewives, having packed them off, find time for neighbourly clack over the scouring of door-steps.

It might be the mayor's fancy and no more, but it certainly appeared to him that the children smiled with a touch of mockery as they met him and saluted. For aught he knew any one of these grinning imps-- confound 'em!--might be implicated in the plot. The townsmen gave him 'good-morning' as usual, and yet not quite as usual. He felt that news of the raid had won abroad; that, although shy of speaking, they were studying his face for a sign. He kept it carefully cheerful; but came near to losing his temper when he reached Trengrove's shop to find Mr Garraway already there and in earnest conversation with the butcher.

'Ah! good-mornin' again! I was just talkin' about you and your pigeons,' said Mr Garraway, frankly.

'Good-morning, y'r Worship,' echoed Butcher Trengrove. 'And what can I do for y'r Worship this fine morning? I was just allowin' to Mr Garraway here that, seein' the young dare-devils had left you a bird with their compliments, maybe you'd fancy a nice cut of rumpsteak to fill out a pie.'

'This isn't exactly a laughing matter, Mr Trengrove.'

'No, no, to be sure!' Butcher Trengrove composed his broad smile apologetically. But, after a moment, observing Mr Pinsent's face and that (at what cost he guessed not) it kept its humorous twist, he let his features relax. 'I was allowin' though, that if any man could get even with a bit of fun, it would be y'r Worship.'

'Oh, never fear but I'll get even with 'em,' promised his Worship, affecting an easiness he did not feel.

'Monstrous, though! monstrous!' pursued the butcher. 'The boys of this town be gettin' past all control. Proper young limbs, I call some of 'em.'

'And there's the fellow that's to blame,' put in Mr Garraway, with a nod at a little man hurrying past the shop, on the opposite pavement.

This was Mr Lupus, the schoolmaster, on his way to open school.

'Hi! Mr Lupus!'

Mr Lupus gave a start, came to a halt, and turned on the shop door a pair of mildly curious eyes guarded by moon-shaped spectacles.

Mr Lupus lived with an elderly sister who kept a bakehouse beside the Ferry Landing, and there in extra-scholastic hours he earned a little money by writing letters for seamen. His love-letters had quite a reputation, and he penned them in a beautiful hand, with flourishes around the capital letters; but in Troy he pa.s.sed for a person of small account.

'I--I beg your pardon, gentlemen! Were you calling to me?' stammered Mr Lupus.

'Good-morning, Lupus!' The mayor nodded to him. 'We were just saying that you bring up the boys of this town shamefully. Yes, sir, shamefully.'

'No, indeed, your Worship,' protested Mr Lupus, looking up with a timid smile, as he drew off his spectacles and polished them.

'Your Worship is pleasant with me. I do a.s.sure you, gentlemen, that my boys are very good boys, and give me scarcely any trouble.'

'That's because you sit at school in your daydreams, and don't take note of the mischief that goes on around you. A set of anointed young scoundrels, Mr Lupus!'

'You don't mean it, sir. Oh, to be sure you don't mean it! Your Worship's funny way of putting things is well known, if I may say so.

But they are good boys, on the whole, very good boys; and you should see the regularity with which they attend. I sometimes wish--meaning no offence--that you gentlemen of position in the town would drop in upon us a little oftener. It would give you a better idea of us, indeed it would. For my boys are very good boys, and for regularity of attendance we will challenge any school in Cornwall, sir, if you will forgive my boasting.'

Now this suggestion of Mr Lupus, though delicately put, and in a nervous flutter, ought by rights to have hit the mayor and Mr Garraway hard; the pair of them being trustees of the charity under which the Free Grammar School was administered. But in those days few public men gave a thought to education, and Mr Lupus taught school, year in and year out, obedient to his own conscience, his own enthusiasms; unencouraged by visitation or word of advice from his governors.

The mayor, to be sure, flushed red for a moment; but Mr Garraway's withers were unwrung.

'That don't excuse their committing burglary and stealing his Worship's pigeons,' said he. Briefly he told what had happened.

Mr Lupus adjusted and readjusted his spectacles, still in a nervous flurry.

'You surprise me, gentlemen. It is unlike my boys--unlike all that I have ever believed of them. You will excuse me, but if this be true, I shall take it much to heart. So regular in attendance, and-- stealing pigeons, you say? Oh, be sure, sirs, I will give them a talking-to--a severe talking-to--this very morning.'

The little schoolmaster went his way down the street in a flutter.

Mr Pinsent stared after him abstractedly.

'That man,' said he, after a long pause, 'ought to employ some one to use his cane for him.'

With this, for no apparent reason, his eye brightened suddenly.

But the source of his inspiration he kept to himself. His manner was jocular as ever as he ordered his steak.

On his way home he knocked at the door of the town sergeant, Thomas Trebilc.o.c.k, a septuagenarian, more commonly known as Pretty Tommy.

The town sergeant was out in the country, picking mushrooms; but his youngest granddaughter, who opened the door, promised to send him along to the mayor's office as soon as ever he returned.

At ten o'clock, or a little later, Pretty Tommy presented himself, and found Mr Pinsent at his desk engaged in complacent study of a sheet of ma.n.u.script, to which he had just attached his signature.

'I think this will do,' said Mr Pinsent, with a twinkle, and he recited the composition aloud.

Pretty Tommy, having adjusted his horn spectacles, took the paper and read it through laboriously.

'You want me to cry it through the town?'

'Certainly. You can fetch your bell, and go along with it at once.'

'Your Worship knows best, o' course.' Pretty Tommy appeared to hesitate.

'Why, what's wrong with it?'

'Nothin',' said Tommy, after a slow pause and another perusal, 'only 'tis unusual--unusual, and funny at the same time; an' that's always a risk.' He paused again for a moment, and his face brightened.

'But there!' he said, ''tis a risk you're accustomed to by this time.'

Half an hour later the sound of the town sergeant's bell at the end of the street called tradesmen from their benches and housewives from their kitchens to hear the following proclamation, to which Tommy had done honour by donning his official robe (of blue, gold-laced) with a scarlet pelisse and a c.o.c.ked hat. A majestic figure he made, too, standing in the middle of the roadway with spectacles on nose, and the great handbell tucked under his arm--

'O YES! O YES! O YES!

'Take you all notice: that whereas some evil-disposed boys did last night break into the premises of Samuel Pinsent, Worshipful Mayor of this Borough, and did rob His Worship of several valuable pigeons; His Worship hereby offers a reward of Five Shillings to the parent or parents of any such boy as will hand him over, that the Mayor may have ten minutes with him in private. Amen.

'G.o.d SAVE THE KING!'

Mr Pinsent, seated in his office, heard the bell sounding far up the street, and chuckled to himself. He chuckled again, peering through his wire blinds, when Pretty Tommy emerged upon the square outside and took his stand in the middle of it to read the proclamation.

It collected no crowd, but it drew many faces to the windows and doorways, and Mr Pinsent observed that one and all broke into grins as they took the humour of his offer.

He rubbed his hands together. He had been angry to begin with; yes-- he would confess it--very angry. But he had overcome it and risen to his reputation. The town had been mistaken in thinking it could put fun on him. It was t.i.t-for-tat again, and the laugh still with Samuel Pinsent.

He ate his dinner that day in high good humour, drank a couple of gla.s.ses of port, and retired (as his custom was on warm afternoons) to his back-parlour, for an hour's siesta. Through the open window he heard the residue of his pigeons murmuring in their cotes, and the sound wooed him to slumber. So for half an hour he slept, with an easy conscience, a sound digestion, and a yellow bandanna handkerchief over his head to protect him from the flies. A tapping at the door awakened him.

'There's a woman here--Long Halloran's wife, of Back Street--wishes to see you, sir,' announced the voice of Mrs Salt.

'Woman!' said the mayor testily. 'Haven't you learned by this time that I'm not to be disturbed after dinner?'

'She said her business was important, sir. It's--it's about the pigeons,' explained Mrs Salt.

And before he could protest again, Mrs Halloran had thrust her way into the room and stood curtseying, with tears of recent weeping upon her homely and extremely dirty face. Behind her shuffled a lanky, sheepish-eyed boy, and took up his stand at her shoulder with a look half-sullen, half-defiant.