Nicky-Nan, Reservist Part 5

Some ten minutes after the brakes had departed, Mrs Polsue and Miss Oliver, bound for divine service, encountered at the corner where Jolly Hill unites with Bridge Street, and continued their way together up the Valley road.

"Good-morning! This is terrible news," said Miss Oliver, panting a little, for she had tripped down the hill in a great hurry.

"I have been expecting it for a long while," responded Mrs Polsue darkly. Like some other folks in this world, she produced much of her total effect by suggesting that she had access to sources of information sealed to the run of mankind. She ever managed to convey the suggestion by phrases--and, still more cleverly, by silences-- which left the evidence conveniently vague. To be sure, a great-uncle of hers had commanded in his time a Post-Office Packet plying between Falmouth and Surinam, and few secrets of the Government had been withheld from him: but he was now, as Mrs Polsue had to confess, "no more," and when you came to reflect on it (as you sometimes did after taking leave of her), the sort of knowledge she had been intimating could hardly have been telegraphed from another and better world. She had also a cousin in London, "in a large way of drapery business," who communicated to her--or was supposed to communicate--"what was wearing": an advantage which she used, however, less to refresh her own toilettes than to discourage her neighbours'. Moreover, there was a brother-in-law somewhere "in the Civil Service," to whom she made frequent allusion. But the knowledge she derived from him concerning State secrets or high politics could, at the best, but be far from recent, because as a fact the pair had not been on terms of intercourse by speech or letter since her husband's decease twelve years ago. (There had been some unpleasantness over the Will.)

"I have been expecting it for a long while," a.s.severated Mrs Polsue.

"Gracious! Why?"

"You are panting. You are short of breath. You should be more careful of yourself than to come hurrying down the hill at such a rate, at your time of life," said Mrs Polsue. "It reddens the face, too: which is a consideration if you insist on wearing that bit of crimson in your hat. The two shades don't go together."

"It is not crimson. It is cherry," said Miss Oliver.

"Which, dear?"

"The ribbon, Mary-Martha. You should wear gla.s.ses. . . . But I started late," Miss Oliver confessed. "I didn't like to show myself walking to Chapel, and so many of the men-folk pa.s.sing in the opposite direction. It seemed so _marked_." She might have confessed further (but did not) that she had waited, peeping over her blind, to see the brakes go by. "But _you_ were late too," she added.

"If you will use your reason, Cherry Oliver, it might tell you that I couldn't get past the crowd on the bridge, and was _forced_ to wait."

"Dear me, now! Was it so thick as all that? . . . You know, I can't see the bridge from my back window--only a bit of the Old Doctor's house past the corner of Climoe's: and I shan't see the bridge even when the old house comes down. But I called in builder Gilbert last Monday on pretence that the back launder wanted repairing; and when he'd examined it and found it all right, I asked him how pulling down that house would affect the view: and he said that in his opinion it would open up a bit of the street just in front of the Bank, so that I shall be able to see all the customers going in and out."

This was news to Mrs Polsue, and it did not please her at all.

Her own bow-window enfiladed the Bank entrance (as well as that of the Three Pilchards by the Quay-head), and so gave her a marked advantage over her friend. To speak in military phrase, her conjectures upon other folks' business were fed by a double line of communication.

"Well, my dear, you won't pry on _me_ going in and out there," she answered tartly, with a sniff. "Whenever I wish to withdraw some of my balance, to invest it, I send for Mr Pamphlett, and he calls on me and advises--I am bound to say--always most politely."

But here Miss Oliver put in her shot. (And Mrs Polsue indeed should have been warier: for the pair were tried combatants. But a tendency to lose her temper, and, losing it, to speak in haste, was ever her fatal weakness.)

"Why; of course, . . . and _that_ accounts for it," Miss Oliver murmured.

"Accounts for what?"

"Oh, nothing. . . . There was a visitor here last summer--I forget her name, but she used to go about making water-colours in a mushroom hat you might have bought for sixpence--quite a simple good creature: and one day, drinking tea at the Minister's, she raised quite a laugh by being so much concerned over your health. She said she'd seen the doctor calling at your house almost every day with a little black bag, and made sure there must have been an operation. She mistook Mr Pamphlett for the doctor, if you ever heard tell of such simple-mindedness."

"WHAT?"

"And the awkward part of it was," Miss Oliver continued in a musing voice, searching her memory--"the awkward part was, poor Mrs Pamphlett's being present."

"And you never told me, Cherry Oliver, until this moment!" exclaimed the widow.

"One doesn't go about repeating every little trifle. . . . And, for that matter, Mrs Pamphlett was just as much amused as everybody else.

'Well, the bare idea!' she cried out. 'I must speak to Pamphlett about this! And Mary-Martha Polsue, of all women!' These were her very words. But of course one had to say _something_ to explain to the other innocent woman and stop her running on. So I told who you were; and that, as everybody knew, you were a well-to-do woman, and no doubt would feel a desire to consult your banker oftener than the most of us."

"If you had money of your own, Cherry Oliver, you'd know how vulgar it feels to have the thing paraded like that."

"But I haven't," said Miss Oliver cheerfully. "And, anyway, you weren't there, and I did my best for you. . . . Well, now, I'm glad sure enough to know _from you_ that 'tis vulgar to make much of your wealth, and I'll remember it against the time my ship comes home.

. . . Somebody did explain--now I come to think of it--that maybe you'd be all the more dependent on Pamphlett's advice, seein' that you hadn't been used to handle money before you were married, and it all came from your husband." ("There! And I don't think she'll mention my cherry ribbon again in a hurry," thought Miss Oliver.)

After a moment's silence Mrs Polsue rallied. "I was saying that this War didn't surprise me. The wonder to me is, the Almighty's wrath hasn't descended on this nation long before. He must be more patient than you or me, Charity Oliver; or else more blind, which isn't to be supposed. Take Polpier, now. The t.i.ttle-tattle that goes about, as you've just been admitting; and the drinking habits amongst the men-- I saw Zeb Mennear come out his doorway, not fifteen minutes since, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve; and him just about to board the brake and go off to be shot by the Germans!"

"Maybe 'twas after kissin' his wife good-bye," Miss Oliver suggested.

"_I_ should!"

"There's no accounting for tastes, as you say. . . . But I've had good reason to know for some time that they order a supply into the house and drink when n.o.body is looking. I've seen the boy from the Pilchards deliver a bottle there almost every Sat.u.r.day. . . . So, the publics being closed this morning, he can't help himself but go off with (I dare say) a noggin of Plymouth gin for a stiffener; and might, for all we know, be called to the presence of his Maker with it still inside him."

"What hurries me," confessed Miss Oliver, "is the Government's being so inconsistent. It closes the public-houses on a six-days' licence and then goes and declares War on the very day the magistrates have taken the trouble to hallow." She shook her head. "I may be mistaken--Heaven send that I am!--but I can't see on any Christian principles how a nation can look to prosper that declares war on a Sabbath. If it's been coming this long while; as everybody seems to say now; why couldn't we have waited until the clocks had finished striking twelve to-night--or else done it yesterday, if there was all that hurry?"

"The Battle of Waterloo was fought on a Sunday," Mrs Polsue put in.

"I've often heard my great uncle Robert mention it as a remarkable fact."

"Then you may be sure the French began it, with their Continental ideas of Sunday observance. I suppose we mustn't speak ill of the French, now that we're allies with them. But I couldn't, when I heard the news, help fearing that our King and his Cabinet had been led away by them in this matter: and once you begin tampering with the Lord's Day--" Miss Oliver shivered. "We shall have the shops open next, I shouldn't wonder."

"You are right about the Battle of Waterloo," said Mrs Polsue.

"My great-uncle Robert was always positive that the French began it.

He had that on the best authority. The Duke of Wellington, he said, had no choice but to resist: and it must have gone all the more against the grain because he was distantly connected with John Wesley, only for some reason or another they spelt their names differently. My great-uncle, in the room that he called his study, had two engravings, one on each side of the chimney-piece. One was John Wesley, when quite a child, being rescued from a burning house, with his father right in the foreground giving thanks to G.o.d in the old-fashioned knee-breeches that were then worn. The other represented the Duke of Wellington in a similar frame on his famous charger Copenhagen and in the act of saying in his racy way, 'Up, Guards, and at 'em!' My great-uncle would often point to these two pictures and spell out the names for us as children, 'W-e-s-l-e-y' and 'W-e-l-l-e-s-l-e-y,' he would say.

'What different destinies the Almighty can spell into the same word by sticking a few letters in the middle!'"

"It's to be wished we had more men of that stamp in these days,"

sighed Miss Oliver. "I should feel safer."

"I hear Lord Kitchener well spoken of," said her friend guardedly.

"But I think we go too fast, my dear. It does not follow, because the Reserves are called up, that War is actually declared. It is sometimes done by way of precaution--though G.o.d forbid I should say a word in defence of a Government which taxes us for being patriotic enough to keep domestic servants. That doesn't, of course, apply to _you_, my dear; still--"

"It only makes matters worse," Miss Oliver declared hastily.

"If they haven't declared War yet, there's the less hurry to gallivant these Reservists about in brakes when to-morrow's a Bank Holiday. And, as for patriotism, if I choose to fall downstairs taking up my own coals, surely I'm as patriotic as if I employed another person to do it: though for some reason best known to itself the Law doesn't compensate _me_."

"There's something in what you say," agreed Mrs Polsue, a little mollified, having caused her friend to rankle. "And the Law--or the Government, or whatever you choose to call it--could afford the money, too, if 'twould look sharper after compensating _itself_.

. . . A perfectly scandalous sight I witnessed just now, by the bridge. There was that Nicholas Nanjivell called up to take his marching-orders, and--well, you know how the man has been limping these months past. The thing was so ridic'lous, the other men shouted with laughter; and prettily annoyed the Customs Officer, for he went the colour of a turkey-c.o.c.k. ''Tis your own fault,' I had a mind to tell him, 'for not having looked after your business.'

Pounds and pounds of public money that Nanjivell must have drawn first and last for Reservist's pay, and n.o.body takin' the trouble to report on him."

"I suppose," said Miss Oliver, "the man really _is_ lame, and not shamming?"

"The Lord knows, my dear. 'Twas _somebody's_ business to have a look at the man's leg, and not mine nor yours, I hope. . . . Put it now that the case had been properly reported and a doctor sent to see the man. If he's shamming--and unlikelier things have happened, now you mention it--the doctor finds him out. If the man's sick, and 'tis incurable, well, so much the worse for him: but anyway Government stops paying for a fighting man that can't fight--for that is what it amounts to."

"You can't make it less," Miss Oliver agreed. "But doctors are terribly skilful nowadays with the knife," went on Mrs Polsue.

"Very likely this growth, or whatever it is, might have been removed months ago."

"He ought to be made to undergo an operation."

"And then, most like, he'd have gone off with the others to be fed at the country's expense and no housekeeping to worry him, instead of giving Mr Pamphlett trouble. For he has been giving Mr Pamphlett trouble. Three times this past week I've seen him call at the Bank, and if you tell me 'twas to put money on deposit--"

"If builder Gilbert is right," put in Miss Oliver with a sigh of envy, "I shall be able to see the Bank as well as you, when that house comes down: and I shan't want to use spectacles neither."

She cut in with this stroke as the pair joined the small throng of worshippers entering the Chapel porch. Also she took care to speak the last seven words (as Queen Elizabeth danced) "high and disposedly," giving her friend no time for a _riposte_.

The Minister, Mr Hambly, gave his congregation a very short service that morning. He opened with three sentences from the Book of Common Prayer: "Rend your heart, and not your garments. . . . Enter not into judgement with thy servant, O Lord. . . . If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."

Then, after a little pause, he gave out the hymn that begins "On earth we now lament to see." . . . It had not been sung within those walls in the oldest folks' remembrance--nay, since the Chapel had been built; and many were surprised to find it in the book. But at the second verse they picked up the tune and sang it with a will:--