Shining Ferry Part 20

"George!"

"How d'ye do, Jack? I had to turn out to listen, you see--_ecce quam sempiterna vox juventutis!_ You have improved on your old debating style, having, as I gather, found belief."

The Inspector flushed. "Ah, you gathered that?"

"Yes, I haven't lost the knack of understanding those I once understood.

Not that it needed anything of the sort. Man, you were admirably straight--and gentle, too--you that used to be intolerant. You mustn't think, though, that I'm convinced; I can't afford to be."

"You mean--?"

"I mean that, if you are right, I ought to be a sun worshipper, and sit daily at dawn on top of my tower yonder, warming my hands against the glow of children's faces, trooping to school. Whereas the little beggars run wild and rob my orchards, and I don't remember at this moment my parish schoolmaster's name."

The Inspector bethought him of the broken bridge in his friend's life--the bridge by which men cross over from self into love of a new generation-- and was silent.

"But look here," Sir George went on, "the fun was your preaching the doctrine in that temple. You didn't know the man who built it. He died a week or two ago; a man of character, I tell you, and a big fellow, too, in his way."

"I have heard of this Rosewarne. All I know of him is that he's to be thanked for the best-fitted school, for its size, in all Cornwall.

I'm not talking of expense merely; he used thought, down to the details.

When you begin to study these things, you recognise thought, down to the raising or lowering of a desk, or the screws in a cupboard. You don't get your fittings right by giving _carte blanche_ to a wholesale firm."

"Of course you don't. But what, think you, had the man in view? I tell you, Jack, you are a fossil beside him. You talk of making good citizens, quite in the old h.e.l.lenic style. Oh yes, I recognised the incurable Aristotle in your exhortation, though you _did_ address it to two score of rustic British children. But, my dear fellow, you are a philosopher in a barbarian's court, and your barbarian has been reading his Darwin.

Where you see a troop of little angels--"

"_Non Angeli sed Angli_," the Inspector put in, with a smile.

"Where you behold a vision, then, of little English citizens growing up to serve the State, he saw a horde of little struggle-for-lifers climbing on each other's backs; and these fellows--that son of his, and the parson-- will follow his line by instinct. They don't reason; but Darwin and the rest have flung them on the scent of selfishness, and they have a rare nose for self. Struggle-for-life or struggle-for-creed, the scent is the same, and they're hot upon it."

"Think of these last fifty years of n.o.ble reform. Is England going back upon herself--upon the spirit, for instance, that raised Italy, freed the slave, and cared for the factory child?"

"To be sure she will. She has found a creed to vindicate the human brute, and the next generation--mark my words--will be predatory. Within twenty years we shall be told that it is inevitable the weak should suffer to enrich the strong; we shall accept the a.s.surance, and our poets will hymn it pa.s.sionately."

"If that day should ever come, we can still die fighting it. But I trust to Knowledge to do her own work. You remember that sentence in the _Laws_, 'Many a victory has been and will be suicidal to the victors, but education is never suicidal'? Nor will you persuade me easily that the new mistress up yonder,"--the Inspector nodded back at the school building--"is going to train her children to be little beasts of prey."

"The girl with the Madonna face? No; you're right there. But the Managers will find a short way with her; she'll go."

"She turns out to be the daughter of an old friend of mine, Marvin of Warwick, the second-hand bookseller."

"Marvin? Jeremiah Marvin? Why, I must have received his catalogues by the score."

"Jeremy," his friend corrected him. "He was christened Jeremiah, to be sure, and told me once it was the handiest name on earth, and could be made to express anything, 'from the lugubrious, sir, to the rollicking.

In my young days, sir,'--for he had been a soldier in his time--'I was Corporal Jerry. Corporal Jerry Marvin! How's that for a name? Jeremiah I hold in reserve against the blows of destiny or promotion to a better world. But Jeremy, sir, as I think you'll allow, is the only wear for a second-hand bookseller.' A whimsical fellow!"

"He is dead, then?"

"Yes, he died a few weeks since; and poorly-off, I'm afraid. He had a habit of reading the books he vended. Look here, George,"--the Inspector halted in the middle of the roadway--"I want you to do me a favour, or rather, to promise one."

"What is it?"

"I want you to promise that, if these fellows get rid of Miss Marvin, you will see that she suffers no harsh treatment from them. I can find her another post, no doubt; but there may be an interval in which you can help."

"Very well," Sir George answered, after a pause. "I can manage that.

But they'll eject her, you may bet."

CHAPTER XIII.

TOM TREVARTHEN INTERVENES.

When the company had departed Hester arranged her small troop at their desks--boys and girls and 'infants'--and made them a speech. It was a very short speech, asking for their affection, and somehow she found herself addressing it to Myra, whose dark eyes rested on her with a stare of unyielding suspicion. On hearing that the two children were to attend the Board School, Aunt Purchase had broken out into vehement protest, the exact purport of which Myra did not comprehend. But she gathered that a wrong of some kind was being done to her and (this was more important) to Clem, and she connected it with the loss of their liberty. Until this moment she had known no schooling. Her grandmother in stray hours had taught her the alphabet and some simple reading, and the rest of her knowledge she had picked up for herself. She well remembered the last of these stray hours. It fell on a midsummer evening, three years before, when she and Clem--then a child of four--had spent a long day riding to and fro in the hay waggons. Now Mrs. Rosewarne for the last few years of her life, and indeed ever since Myra could remember, had been a cripple, confined to the house or to her small garden, save only when she entered an ancient covered vehicle (called 'the Car') and was jogged into Liskeard to visit her dressmaker, or over to Damelioc to attend one of Lady Killiow's famous rose fetes. It was the hour of sunset, then, and in the shadow of the hedge old Pleasant, the waggon-horse, having Clem on his back, stood tethered, released from his work, contentedly cropping the rank gra.s.s between the cl.u.s.ters of meadow-sweet, and whisking his tail to brush off the flies. The horse-flies had been pestilent all day, and Myra was weaving a frontlet of green hazel twigs to slip under Pleasant's headstall, when she happened to turn and caught sight of her grandmother standing by the upper gate, leaning on her ivory-headed staff, and shading her eyes against the level sun. No one ever knew how the old lady had found strength to walk the distance from the house--for walked it she had.

It may have been that some sudden fright impelled her; some unreasoning panic for the children's safety. Old Rosewarne, seated on horseback and watching the rick-makers in the far corner, caught sight of her, cantered across to the gate, dismounted there, and led her home on his arm; and the children had followed. So far as Myra could remember, nothing came of this apparition--nothing except that she found herself, a little later, seated in her grandmother's dressing-room and reading aloud; and this must have happened soon after they reached home, for while she read she heard the fowls settling themselves to roost in the hen-house beneath the open window. Three weeks later Mrs. Rosewarne was dead--had faded out like a shadow; and since then the children had run wild, no one constraining them to tasks.

She sat with eyes fixed sullenly on Hester, and fingers ready at any moment to make the sign of the cross. To the other children she paid no heed; they were merely so many victims entrapped, ready to be changed into birds and put into cages, as in _Jorinda and Jorindel_. "Why was this woman separating the girls from the boys? She should not take away Clem.

Let her try!" Hester had too much tact. Having marshalled the others, she set a pen and copy-book before Myra, and bending over Clem, asked him in the gentlest voice to sit and wait; she would come back to him in a moment (she promised) and with a pretty game for him to play.

"Don't you listen to a single word she says," Myra whispered; but Clem had already taken his seat.

Hester had sent for a book of letters in raised type for the blind boy.

Before setting him down to this, however, she wished to try the suppleness and accuracy of his touch with some simple reed-plaiting.

The reeds lay within the cupboard across the room. She went to fetch them, and at this moment the schoolroom door opened behind her.

She heard the lift of the latch, and turned with a smile. But the smile faded almost at once as she recognised her visitor. It was Tom Trevarthen, and he entered with a grin and a defiant, jaunty swagger which did not at all become him.

In an instant she scented danger, and felt her cheeks paling; but she lifted her head none the less, looking him straight in the eyes.

"I beg your pardon. Are you in search of someone?"

"Seems I'm too late for the speechifying," said the young sailor, avoiding her gaze, and winking at two or three elder boys on the back benches.

"Well, never mind; must do a little speechifyin' of my own, I suppose.

By your leave, miss," he added, seating himself on the end of a form and fanning himself with his seaman's cap, which he had duly doffed on entering.

"I think," said Hester quietly, and prayed that he might not hear the tremble in her voice, "I think you have come on purpose to annoy, and that you do not like the business."

"It's this way, miss. I've no grudge at all against _you_, except to wonder how such a gentle-spoken young lady can have the heart to come here ruinin' an old 'ooman that never done you a ha'p'orth of harm in her life." He was looking at her firmly now, with a rising colour in his tan cheeks, and Hester's heart sank as she noted his growing confidence.

"But I've told 'ee that a'ready," he said, and turned to the boys again.

"What I wonder at more is _you_, Billy Sweet--an' _you_, Dave Polseath-- an' _you_, Rekkub Johns--that'll be growin' up for men in a year or two.

Seems to me there's some spirit gone out o' this here parish since I used to be larrupped for minchin'. Seems to me a pa.s.sel o' boys in my day would have had summat to say afore they sat here quiet, helpin' to steal the bread out of an old 'ooman's mouth, an' runnin' to heel for a furriner."

The boys glanced at one another and grinned, then at the intruder, lastly at Hester. Her look held them, and some habit of discipline learnt from the old woman they were being invited to champion. One or two began shuffling in their seats.

But it was Myra who led the rebellion. She stepped to Tom's side at once, and cried she, pointing a finger at Hester, "She's a witch! Look at her--she's a witch! I know now why Aunt Hannah called it a burning shame.

She's robbing Mother Butson, and she's a witch and ought to be burnt.

Come along, Clem!"

Hester, turning from the child between pain and disgust, intent only on holding the bigger boys in check while she could, did not note that Clem made no movement to obey his sister.