Nicky-Nan, Reservist Part 3

HOW THE MEN WENT.

In the pa.s.sage he found Mrs Penhaligon standing, alone, rigid as a statue. By her att.i.tude she seemed to be listening. Yet she had either missed to hear or, hearing, had missed to understand Varco's call up the stairs. At Nicky-Nan's footstep she turned, with a face white and set.

"Sam's got to go," she said. Her lips twitched.

"Nonsense, woman! Some person's playin' a trick 'pon the town."

"They start from the bridge at ten-thirty. There's no trick about it. Go an' see for yourself." She motioned with her hand.

Nicky-Nan limped to the porch and peeked out (as they say at Polpier). Up the street the women stood clacking the news just as though it were a week-day and the boats had brought in a famous haul.

Feminine gossip in Polpier is not conducted in groups, as the men conduct theirs on the Quay. By tradition each housewife takes post on her own threshold-slate, and knits while she talks with her neighbours to right and left and across the road; thus a bit of news, with comment and embellishment zigzags from door to door through the town like a postal delivery. To-day being Sunday, the women had no knitting; but it was observable that while Mrs Trebilc.o.c.k, two doors away, led the chorus as usual, her hands moved as though plying imaginary needles: and so did the hands of Sarah Jane Johns over the way.

Down by the bridge-end two men in uniform sat side by side on the low parapet, sorting out a small pile of blue papers. They were Mr Irons, the chief officer of Coastguard at Troy, and a young custom-house officer--a stranger to Nicky-Nan. The morning sunlight played on their bra.s.s b.u.t.tons and cap-rims.

Nicky-Nan withdrew his head hastily.

"Where's Sam?" he asked.

"Gone down to Billy Bosistow's to fetch his sea-boots."

"I don't follow 'ee." Nicky-Nan rubbed his unshaven jaw with two fingers. "Is the world come to its end, then, that Billy Bosistow keeps open shop on a Sunday mornin'?"

"'Tisn' like that at all. . . . You see, Sam's a far-seein' man, or I've tried to make him so. I reckon there's no man in Polpier'll turn out in a kit smellin' stronger of camphor, against the moth.

Twice this week I've had it out an' brushed it, fingerin' (G.o.d help me) the clothes an' prayin' no sh.e.l.l to strike en, here or there.

. . . Well, an' last autumn, bein' up to Plymouth, he bought an extry pair of sea-boots, Yarmouth-made, off some Stores on the Barbican, an' handed 'em over to Billy to pickle in some sort o' grease that's a secret of his own to make the leather supple an' keep it from perishin'. He've gone down to fetch 'em; an' there's no Sabbath-breakin' in a deed like that, when a man's country calls en."

"'Tis terrible sudden, all this," said Nicky-Nan, ruminating.

"'Tis worse than sudden. Here we be, with orders to clear out before Michaelmas: and how be I to do that, with my man away? Think of all the great lerrupin' furnicher to be shifted an' (what's harder) stowed in a pokey little cottage that wasn' none too big for Aun'

Bunney when she lived. An' sixteen steps up to the door, with a turn in 'em! Do 'ee mind what a Dover-to-pay there was gettin' out the poor soul's coffin? An' then look at the size of my dresser. . . ."

"I can't think why you turn out, for my part. Pamphlett's served me with notice to quit by to-morra. You don't catch me, though."

"Why, Mr Nanjivell, you won't set yourself up to fly in the teeth of the law!"

"Just you wait. . . . And Pamphlett doesn' know all the law that's in the land, neither, if he reckons to turn me out 'pon a Bank Holiday."

Mrs Penhaligon stared. "Well, I s'wow! Bank Holiday to-morra, and I'd clean forgot it! . . . But, with the Lord's Sabbath standin' 'pon its head, 'tis excusable. The children, now--out an' runnin' the town in the Sunday clothes with never a thought o' breakfast; and how I'm to get their boots an' faces clean in time for Chapel, let alone washin'-up, I ask you!"

"Well, I'll go upstairs an' get a shave," said Nicky-Nan.

"_That_'ll feel like Sunday anyhow."

"Poor lonely creatur'!" thought Mrs Penhaligon, who always pitied bachelors. On an impulse she said, "An' when you've done, Mr Nanjivell, there'll be fried eggs an' bacon, if you're not above acceptin' the compliment for once."

When Nicky-Nan came downstairs again, clean-shaven and wearing his Sunday suit of threadbare sea-cloth, he found the Penhaligon children seated at the board, already plying their spoons in bowls of bread-and-milk. As a rule, like other healthy children, they ate first and talked afterwards. But to-day, with War in the air, they chattered, stirring the sop around and around. 'Beida's eyes were bright and her cheeks flushed.

"War's a funny thing," she mused. "Where do _you_ feel it, Mother?"

"Don't clacky so much, that's a darlin', but go on with your breakfast." But Mrs Penhaligon heaved a sigh that was answer enough.

"Well, I wanted to know, because down by Quay-end I heard old Aun'

Rundle say it made her feel like the bottom of her stomach was fallin' out. I suppose it takes people differ'nt as they get up in years."

"I know azackly where I feel it!" announced 'Biades. "It's _here_."

He set down his spoon and pointed a finger on the third b.u.t.ton of his small waistcoat. "An' it keeps workin' up an' down an' makin' noises just like Billy Richard's key-bugle."

"Then it's a mercy it ben't real," commented his brother.

"'Biades is right, all the same." 'Beida regarded the child and nodded slowly. "It do feel very much like when you hear a band comin' up the street. It catches you--" She broke off and laid her open palm on her chest a little below the collar. "An' then it's creepin' up the back of your legs an' along your arms, an' up your backbone, right into the roots o' your hair. But the funniest thing of all is, the place looks so differ'nt--an' all the more because there's so little happenin' differ'nt. . . . I can't tell just what I mean," she owned candidly, turning to Nicky-Nan; "but it don't seem we be _here_ somehow, nor the houses don't seem real, somehow.

'Tis as if your real inside was walkin' about somewhere else, listenin' to the band."

"Nonsense your tellin'," 'Bert interrupted. "Father's put on his uniform. How can you make it that things ben't differ'nt, after that?"

"An' _he_'s here!" 'Biades nodded, over his half-lifted spoon, at Nicky-Nan.

"Oh!" said 'Bert, "that isn' because of the War. That's to say Good-bye, because he's turnin' out this week."

"For goodness, children, eat up your meal, an' stop talkin'!"

Mrs Penhaligon returned from the hearth to the table and set down a dish of eggs and sizzling bacon. "Wherever you pick up such notions!

. . . You must excuse their manners, Mr Nanjivell."

But Nicky-Nan was staring at young 'Bert from under fiercely bent eyebrows.

"Who told you that I was turnin' out this week?" he demanded.

"I heard Mr Pamphlett say it, day before yesterday. He was round with Squinny Gilbert--"

"Fie now, your manners get worse and worse!" his mother reproved him.

"Who be you, to talk of the builder-man without callin' him 'Mister'?"

"Well then, he was round with Mister Squinny Gilbert, lookin' over the back o' the house. I heard him say as you was done for, and would have to clear inside the next two or three days--"

"He did--did he?" Nicky-Nan was arising in ungovernable rage; but Mrs Penhaligon coaxed him to sit down.

"There now!" she said soothingly. "Take un' eat, Mr Nanjivell!

The Good Lord bids us be like the lilies o' the field, and I can vouch the eggs to be new-laid. Sufficient for the day. . . .

An' here 'tis the Sabbath, an' to-morrow Bank Holiday. Put the man out o' your thoughts, an' leave the Lord to provide."

"If I had that man here--"

Nicky-Nan was sharp set; indeed he had been hungry, more or less, for weeks. But now, with the eggs and bacon wooing his nostrils, his choler arose and choked him. He stared around the cleanly kitchen.

"And on quarter-day, ma'am, 'twill be your turn. It beats me how you can take it so quiet."

"I reckon," said Mrs Penhaligon simply, looking down on the dish of eggs (which maybe suggested the image to her)--"I reckon as the hen's home is wherever she can gather the chickens under her wings.

Let's be thankful we're not like they poor folk abroad, to have our homes overrun by this War."