The Delectable Duchy Part 12

I looked around. The children were staring with wide, admiring eyes.

Their mothers also watched, but listlessly, still suckling their babes as each waited its turn. Only 'Melia Penaluna winced and squeezed her hands together whenever a feeble wailing told that one of the vaccine points had made itself felt.

"Do 'ee think it hurts the poor mites?" the youngest mother asked.

"Not much, I reckon," answered the big woman.

Nevertheless her own child cried pitifully when its turn came. And as it cried, the childless woman in the corner got off her chair and ran forward tremulously.

"'Becca, let me take him. Do'ee, co!"

"'Melia Penaluna, you'm no better 'n a fool."

But poor, misnamed Amelia was already back in her corner with the child, hugging it, kissing it, rocking it in her arms, crooning over it, holding it tightly against the lump that hung down on her barren bosom. Long after the baby had ceased to cry she sat crooning and yearning over it. And the mothers watched her, with wonder and scornful amus.e.m.e.nt in their eyes.

FROM A COTTAGE IN GANTICK.

I.--THE MOURNER'S HORSE.

The Board Schoolmaster and I are not friends. He is something of a zealot, and conceives it his mission to weed out the small superst.i.tions of the countryside and plant exact information in their stead. He comes from up the country--a thin, clean-shaven town-bred man, whose black habit and tall hat, though considerably bronzed, refuse to harmonise with the scenery amid which they move. His speech is formal and slightly dogmatic, and in argument he always gets the better of me. Therefore, feeling sure it will annoy him excessively, I am going to put him into this book. He laid himself open the other day to this stroke of revenge, by telling me a story; and since he loves precision, I will be very precise about the circ.u.mstances.

At the foot of my garden, and hidden from my window by the clipt box hedge, runs Sanctuary Lane, along which I see the heads of the villagers moving to church on Sunday mornings. But in returning they invariably keep to the raised footpath on the far side, that brings the women's skirts and men's smallclothes into view. I have made many attempts to discover how this distinction arose, and why it is adhered to, but never found a satisfying explanation. It is the rule, however.

From the footpath a high bank (where now the primroses have given place to st.i.tchwort and ragged robin) rises to an orchard; so steeply that the apple-blossom drops into the lane. Just now the petals lie thickly there in the early morning, to be trodden into dust as soon as the labourers fare to work. Beyond and above the orchard comes a stretch of pastureland and then a young oak-coppice, the fringe of a great estate, with a few Scotch firs breaking the sky-line on top of all. The head gamekeeper of this estate tells me we shall have a hot summer, because the oak this year was in leaf before the ash, though only by a day. The ash was foliating on the 29th of April, the oak on the 28th. Up there the blue-bells lie in sheets of mauve, and the cuckoo is busy. I rarely see him; but his three notes fill the hot noon and evening. When he spits (says the gamekeeper again) it is time to be sheep-shearing. My talk with the gamekeeper is usually held at six in the morning, when he comes down the lane and I am stepping across to test the water in Scarlet's Well.

This well bubbles up under a low vault scooped in the bank by the footpath and hung with hart's-tongue ferns. It has two founts, close together; but whereas one of them oozes only, the other is bubbling perennially, and, as near as I have observed, keeps always the same.

Its specific gravity is that of distilled water--1.000; and though, to be sure, it upset me, three weeks back, by flying up to 1.005, I think that must have come from the heavy thunderstorms and floods of rain that lately visited us and no doubt imported some ingredients that had no business there. As for its temperature, I will select a note or two of the observations I made with a Fahrenheit thermometer this last year:--

_June 12th_.--Temperature in shade of well, 62; of water, 51.

_August 25th_.--In shade of well (at noon), 73; of water, 52.

_November 20th_.--In shade of well, 43; of water, 52.

_January 1st_.--External air, 56; enclosure, 53; water, 52.

_March 11th_.--A bleak, sunless day. Temperature in shade of well, at noon, 54; water, 51. The _Chrysosplenium Oppositiflorium_ in rich golden bloom within the enclosure.

But the spring has other properties besides its steady temperature. I was early abroad in my garden last Thursday week, and in the act of tossing a snail over my box hedge, when I heard some girls' voices giggling, and caught a glimpse of half-a-dozen sun-bonnets gathered about the well. Straightening myself up, I saw a group of maids from the village, and, in the middle, one who bent over the water.

Presently she scrambled to her feet, glanced over her shoulder and gave a shrill scream.

I, too, looked up the lane and saw, a stone's throw off, the schoolmaster advancing with long and nervous strides. He was furiously angry.

"Thomasine Slade," said he, "you are as shameless as you are ignorant!"

The girl tossed her chin and was silent, with a warm blush on her cheek and a lurking imp of laughter in her eye. The schoolmaster frowned still more darkly.

"Shameless as well as ignorant!" he repeated, bringing the ferule of his umbrella smartly down upon the macadam; "and you, Jane Hewitt, and you, Lizzie Polkinghorne!"

"Why, what's the matter?" I asked, stepping out into the road.

At sight of me the girls broke into a peal of laughter, gathered up their skirts and fled, still laughing, down the road.

"What's the matter?" I asked again.

"The matter?" echoed the schoolmaster, staring blankly after the retreating skirts; then more angrily--"The matter? come and look here!" He took hold of my shirt-sleeve and led me to the well.

Stooping, I saw half-a-dozen pins gleaming in its brown depths.

"A love-charm."

The schoolmaster nodded.

"Thomasine Slade has been wishing for a husband. I see no sin in that.

When she looked up and saw you coming down the lane--"

I paused. The schoolmaster said nothing. He was leaning over the well, gloomily examining the pins.

"--your aspect was enough to scare anyone," I wound up lamely.

"I wish," the schoolmaster hastily began, "I wish to Heaven I had the gift of humour! I lose my temper and grow positive. I'd kill these stupid superst.i.tions with ridicule, if I had the gift. It's a great gift. My G.o.d, I do hate to be laughed at!"

"Even by a fool?" I asked, somewhat astonished at his heat.

"Certainly. There's no comfort in comparing the laugh of fools with the crackling of thorns under a pot, if you happen to be inside the pot and in process of cooking."

He took off his hat, brushed it on the sleeve of his coat, and resumed in a tone altogether lighter--

"Yes, I hate to be laughed at; and I'll tell you a tale on this point that may amuse you at my expense.

"I am London-bred, as you know, and still a c.o.c.kney in the grain, though when I came down here to teach school I was just nineteen and now I'm over forty. It was during the summer holidays that I first set foot in this neighbourhood--a week before school re-opened. I came early, to look for lodgings and find out a little about the people and settle down a bit before beginning work.

"The vicar--the late vicar, I mean--commended me to old Retallack, who used to farm Rosemellin, up the valley, a widower and childless. His sister, Miss Jane Ann, kept house for him, and these were the only two souls on the premises till I came and was boarded by them for thirteen shillings a week. For that price they gave me a bedroom, a fair-sized sitting-room and as much as I could eat.

"A month after my arrival, Farmer Retallack was put to bed with a slight attack of colic. This was on a Wednesday, and on Sat.u.r.day morning Miss Jane Ann came knocking at my door with a message that the old man would like to see me. So I went across to his room and found him propped up in the bed with three or four pillows and looking very yellow in the gills, though clearly convalescent.

"'Schoolmaster,' said he, 'I've a trifling favour to beg of ye. You give the children a half-holiday, Sat.u.r.days--hey? Well, d'ye think ye could drive the brown hoss, Trumpeter, into Tregarrick this afternoon?

The fact is, my old friend Abe Walters, that kept the Packhorse Inn is lying dead, and they bury 'en at half after two to-day. I'd be main glad to show respect at the funeral and tell Mrs. Walters how much deceased 'll be missed, ancetera; but I might so well try to fly in the air. Now if you could attend and just pa.s.s the word that I'm on my back with the colic, but that you've come to show respect in my place, I'd take it very friendly of ye. There'll be lashins o' vittles an'

drink. No Walters was ever interred under a kilderkin.'" Now the fact was, I had never driven a horse in my life and hardly knew (as they say) a horse's head from his tail till he began to move. But that is just the sort of ignorance no young man will readily confess to. So I answered that I was engaged that evening. We were just organising night-cla.s.ses for the young men of the parish, and the vicar was to open the first, with a short address, at half-past six.

"'You'll be back in lashins o' time,' the farmer a.s.sured me.

"This put me fairly in a corner. 'To tell you the truth,' said I, 'I'm not accustomed to drive much.' But of course this was wickedly short of the truth.

"He declared that it was impossible to come to grief on the way, the brown horse being quiet as a lamb and knowing every stone of the road.

And the end was that I consented. The brown horse was harnessed by the farm-boy and led round with the gig while Miss Jane Ann and I were finishing our midday meal. And I drove off alone in a black suit and with my heart in my mouth.