Corporal Sam and Other Stories Part 18

Sir Felix, having somewhat rashly given his consent, in a cooler hour began to foresee difficulties, and drove into Troy to impart them to me. I know not why, on occasions of doubt and embarra.s.sment such as this, he ever throws himself (so to speak) on my bosom; but so it is.

The Regatta, he explained, ought to take place in August, and we were already arrived at the middle of the month, Tuesday the 24th had been suggested--a very convenient date for him: it was, as I might remember, the day before Petty Sessions, immediately after which he had as good as promised to visit his second son in Devonshire and attend the christening of an infant grandchild. But would ten days allow us time to organise the 'events,' hire a band, issue the necessary posters, etc.?

I a.s.sured him that, hard as it might drive us, the thing could be done. 'I shall feel vastly more confident,' he was good enough to say, 'if you will consent to join our Committee.' And I accepted, on the prospect of seeing some fun. But ah! could I have foreseen _what_ fun!

'You relieve my mind, indeed. . . . And--er--perhaps you might also help us by officiating as starter and--er--judge, or timekeeper?'

'Willingly,' said I; 'in any capacity the Committee may wish.'

'They will be more inclined to trust the decisions of one who--er-- does not live among them.'

'Is that so?' said I. 'In Kirris-vean, one would have thought--but, after all, I shall have to forgo whatever public confidence depends on the compet.i.tors being unacquainted with me, since two-thirds of them will come to you from Troy.'

'You are sure?'

'Quite. Has it not struck you, Sir Felix, that Kirris-vean--ideal spot for a regatta--has in itself neither the boats nor the men for one?'

'We might fill up with a launch of the lifeboat,' he hazarded.

'If one could only be certain of the weather.'

'And a public tea, and a procession of the school children.'

'Admirable,' I agreed. 'Never fear, we will make up a programme.'

'Oh, and--er--by the way, Bates of the Wheatsheaf came to me this morning for an Occasional Licence. He proposes to erect a booth in his back garden. You see no objection?'

'None at all.'

'A most trustworthy man. . . . He could not apply, you see, at our last Petty Sessions because he did not then know that a regatta was contemplated; and the 25th will, of course, be too late. But the licence can be granted under these circ.u.mstances by any two magistrates sitting together; and I would suggest that you and I--'

'Certainly,' said I, and accompanied Sir Felix to the small room that serves Troy for an occasional courthouse, where we solemnly granted Bates his licence.

There is a something about Sir Felix that tempts to garrulity, and I could fill pages here with an account of our preparations for the Regatta; the daily visits he paid me--always in a fuss, and five times out of six over some trivial difficulty that had a.s.sailed him in the still watches of the night; the protracted meetings of Committee in the upper chamber of the lifeboat-house at Kirris-vean.

But these meetings, and the suggestions Sir Felix made, and the votes we took upon them, are they not recorded in the minute-book of the First and Last Kirris-vean Regatta? Yes, thus I have to write it, and with sorrow: there will never be another Regatta in that Arcadian village.

Sir Felix, good man, started with a fixed idea that a regatta differed from a Primrose Fete, if at all, then only in being non-political. He could not get it out of his head that public speeches were of the essence of the festivity; and when, with all the tact at my command, I insisted on aquatics, he countered me by proposing to invite down a lecturer from the Navy League! As he put it in the heat of argument, 'Weren't eight _Dreadnoughts_ aquatic enough for anybody?' But in the voting the three young footmen supported me n.o.bly. _They_ wanted fireworks, and were not wasting any money on lecturers: also there was a feeling in Kirris-vean that, while a regatta could scarcely be held without boat-racing, the prizes should be just sufficient to attract compet.i.tors and yet on a scale provoking no one to grumble at the amount of subscribed money lost to the village. A free public tea was suggested. I resisted this largesse; and we compromised on 'No Charge for Bona-fide Schoolchildren'--whatever that might mean--and 'Fourpence a head for Adults.'

The weather prospects, as the moment drew near, filled us with anxious forebodings, for the anti-cyclonic spell showed signs of breaking, and the Sunday and Monday wore lowering faces. But Tuesday dawned brilliantly; and when after a hasty breakfast I walked over to Kirris-vean, I found Sir Felix waiting for me at the top of the hill in his open landau, with a smile on his face, a rose in his b.u.t.ton-hole, and a white waistcoat that put all misgivings to shame.

'A perfect day!' he called out with a wave of the hand.

'A foxy one,' I suggested, and pointed out that the wind sat in a doubtful quarter, that it was backing against the sun, that it was light and might at any time die away and cheat us of our sailing matches.

'Always the boats with you!' he rallied me; 'my dear sir, it is going to be perfect. As the song says, "We've got the ships, we've got the men, and we've got the money too." An entire success, you may take my word for it!'

We descended the hill to find the village gay with bunting, the competing boats lying ready off the pier, a sizeable crowd already gathered, and the Committee awaiting us at the beach-head. Each committee-man wore a favour of blue-and-white ribbon, and upon our arrival every hat flew off to Sir Felix, while the band played 'See the Conquering Hero Comes!'

It was, not to put too fine a point on the description, an atrocious band. It had come from afar, from one of the inland china-clay villages, and in hiring it the Committee had been constant to its principle that no more money than was necessary should be allowed to go out of Kirris-vean. Report--malicious, I feel sure--reached me later, that, at the first note of it, an aloe in Sir Felix's gardens, a mile away--a plant noted for blossoming once only in a hundred years-burst into profuse and instantaneous bloom. Sir Felix himself, who abounded all day in happy turns of speech, said the best thing of this band. He said it was _sui generis_.

He was magnificent throughout. I am not going to describe the Regatta, for sterner events hurry my pen forward. So let me only say that the weather completely justified his cheery optimism; that the breeze, though slight, held throughout the sailing events, and then dropped, leaving the bay gla.s.sy as a lake for the rowers; that sports ash.o.r.e--three-legged races, egg-and-spoon races, sack races, races for young men, races for old women, donkey races, a tug-of-war, a greasy pole, a miller-and-sweep combat--filled the afternoon until tea-time; that at tea the tables groaned with piles of saffron cake and cream 'splitters'; and that when the company had, in Homeric phrase--the only fit one for such a tea--put aside from them the desire of meat and drink, Sir Felix stood up and made a speech.

'It was an admirable speech too. It began with 'My dear friends,'

and the exordium struck at once that paternal note which makes him, with all his foibles, so lovable. 'They' must excuse him if he now took his departure; for he had arrived at an age to feel the length of a long day--even of a happy summer's day such as this had been.

To be innocently happy--that had used to be the boast of England, of "Merry England "; and he had ever prized happy living faces in Kirris-vean above the ancestral portraits--not all happy, if one might judge from their expressions--hanging on his walls at home.'

(Prolonged applause greeted this; and deservedly, for he spoke no more than he meant.) He became reminiscential, and singling out a school-child here and there, discoursed of their grandparents, even of their great-grandparents; recalled himself to pay a series of graceful tributes to all who had contributed to make the day a success; and wound up by regretting that he could not stay for the fireworks.

Dear honest Sir Felix! I can see him now, bareheaded, his white hairs lightly fluttered by the evening breeze that fluttered also the flags above Mr Bates's booth immediately in his rear; the sunset light on his broad immaculate waistcoat; the long tea-tables, with their rows of faces all turned deferentially towards him; the shadows slanting from the trees; the still expanse of the bay, and far across the bay a bank of clouds softly, imperceptibly marshalling.

We cheered him to the echo, of course. At his invitation I walked some way up the hill with him, to meet his carriage. He halted three or four times in the road, still talking of the day's success.

He was even somewhat tremulous at parting.

'I shall see you to-morrow, at Tregantick?'--Tregantick is the centre of the eight parishes included in our Petty Sessional Division, and the seat of such justice as I and seven others help Sir Felix to administer.

'Oh, a.s.suredly,' said I.

I watched his carriage as it rounded the bend of the road, and so faced about to return to the village. But I took second thought at sight of the clouds ma.s.sing across the bay and coming up--as it seemed to me against the wind. They spelt thunder. In spite of my early forebodings I had brought no mackintosh; my duties as a Committee-man were over: and I have reached an age when fireworks give me no more pleasure than I can cheerfully forgo or take for granted. I had, having coming thus far on my homeward way, already more than half a mind to pursue it, when the band started to render the 'Merry d.u.c.h.ess' waltz, with reed instruments a semitone below the bra.s.s. This decided me, and I reached my door as the first raindrops fell.

When I awoke next morning it was still raining, and raining hard.

The thunderstorm had pa.s.sed; but a westerly wind, following hard on it, had collected much water from the Atlantic, and the heavens were thick as a blanket. A tramp in the rain, however, seldom comes amiss to me, and I trudged the three miles to the court-house in very cheerful mood, now smoking, now pocketing my pipe to inhale those first delicious scents of autumn, stored up by summer for a long day of downpour.

Our Court meets at 11.15, and I timed myself (so well I know the road in all weathers) to reach the magistrates' door on the stroke of the quarter. Now Sir Felix, as Chairman, makes a point of arriving ten or fifteen minutes ahead of time, for a preliminary chat with the Clerk over the charge-sheet and any small details of business.

I was astonished, therefore, when, turning at the sound of wheels, I beheld Sir Felix's carriage and pair descending the street behind me.

'Truly the Regatta must have unsettled his habits,' I murmured; and then, catching the eye of one of the pair of constables posted at the door, I gazed again and stood, as some of my fellow-novelists say, 'transfixed.' For the driver on the box was neither Sir Felix's coachman, nor his second coachman, nor yet again one of his stablemen; but a gardener, and a tenth-down under-gardener at that; in fact, you could scarcely call him even an under-gardener, though he did odd jobs about the gardens. To be short, it was Tommy Collins a hydrocephalous youth generally supposed to be half-baked, or, as we put it in Cornwall, 'not exactly'; and on his immense head, crowning a livery suit which patently did not belong to him, Tommy Collins wore a dilapidated billyc.o.c.k hat.

As the carriage drew up I noted with a lesser shock that the harness was wrongly crossed: and with that, as one constable stepped forward to open the carriage door, I saw the other wink and make a sign to Tommy, who--quick-witted for once--s.n.a.t.c.hed off his billyc.o.c.k and held it low against his thigh on the off-side, pretending to shake off the rain, but in reality using this device to conceal the horrid thing. At the same time the other constable, receiving an umbrella which Sir Felix thrust forth, opened it with remarkable dexterity, and held it low over my friend's venerable head, thus screening from sight the disreputable figure on the box. As a piece of smuggling it was extremely neat; but as I turned to follow I heard Tommy Collins ask, and almost with a groan,--

'Wot's the use?'

Four of our fellow-magistrates were already gathered in the little room at the rear of the court-house: of whom the first to greet our Chairman was Lord Rattley. Lord Rattley, a peer with very little money and a somewhat indecorous past, rarely honours the Tregantick bench by attending sessions; but for once he was here, and at once started to banter Sir Felix on his unpunctuality.

'Very sorry, gentlemen; very sorry--most inexplicable,' stuttered Sir Felix, who suffers from a slight impediment of the speech when hurried. 'Servants at home seemed--conspired--detain me. Jukes'-- Jukes is Sir Felix's butler, an aged retainer of the best pattern-- 'Jukes would have it, weather too inclement. Poof! I am not too old, I hope, to stand a few drops of rain. Next he brings word that Adamson'--Adamson is (or was) Sir Felix's trusted coachman-- 'is indisposed and unable to drive me. "Then I'll have Walters,"

said I, losing my temper, "or I'll drive myself." Jukes must be failing: and so must Walters be, for that matter. We might have arrived ten minutes ago, but he drove execrably.'

'Reminds me--' began Lord Rattley, when Sir Felix--who is ever nervous of that n.o.bleman's reminiscences, and had by this time divested himself of his Inverness cape, turned to the Clerk and demanded news of a lad discharged at the last Sessions on his own and parents' recognisances, to be given another chance under the eye of our new Probation Officer.

'--Of a coachman I once had called Oke--William Oke,' continued Lord Rattley imperturably. 'Drunken little sot he was, but understood horses. One night I had out the brougham and drove into Bodmin to mess with the Militia. The old Royal Cornwall Rangers messed at the hotel in those days, in the long room they used for a.s.semblies.

About eleven o'clock I sent for my carriage, and along it came in due course. Well, I dare say at that hour I wasn't myself in a condition to be critical of Oke's--'

Sir Felix pulled out his watch, and asked me what I made the time.

'Off we drove,' pursued Lord Rattley, ignoring this hint, 'and I must have dropped asleep at once. When I awoke the blessed vehicle had come to a standstill. I called to Oke--no answer: so by-and-by I opened the carriage door and stepped out. The horses had slewed themselves in towards the hedge and were cropping peaceably: but no Oke was on the box and still no Oke answered from anywhere when I shouted. He had, as a fact, tumbled clean off the box half a mile astern, and was lying at that moment in the middle of the road.

At that hour I had no mind to look for him, so I collected the reins somehow, climbed up in front, and drove myself home. I had a butler then by the name of Ibbetson--a most respectable man, with the face of a Bible Christian minister; and, thought I, on my way up the drive, "I'll give Ibbetson a small scare." So coming to the porch, when Ibbetson heard the wheels and cast the door open, I kept my seat like a rock. Pretty well pitch dark it was where I sat behind the lamps. Ibbetson comes down the steps, opens the carriage door and stands aside. After a moment he begins to breathe hard, pops his head into the brougham, then his arm, feels about a bit, and comes forward for a lamp. "My G.o.d, Bill!" says Ibbetson, looking up at me in the dark. "What have you done with th' ould devil?"'

'I really think,' suggested Sir Felix hurriedly, 'we ought not to keep the Court waiting.'

So in we filed, and the Court rose respectfully to its feet and stood while we took our seats. The Superintendent of Police--an officer new to our Division--gazed at me with a perfectly stolid face across the baize-covered table. Yet somehow it struck me that the atmosphere in Court was not, as usual, merely stuffy, but electrical; that the faces of our old and tried constabulary twitched with some suppressed excitement; and that the Clerk was fidgeting with an attack of nerves.

'Certain supplementary cases, your Worship,' said he, taking a small sheaf of papers from the hands of his underling, 'too late to be included on the charge-sheet issued.'

'Eh?--Oh, certainly--certainly!' Sir Felix drew his spectacle case from his waistcoat pocket and laid it on the table; took the paper handed to him, and slipped it methodically beneath the sheet of agenda; resumed the business of extracting his spectacles, adjusted them, and gravely opened business.