The Delectable Duchy Part 21

"Well-a-well, my dear, I'm sure I dunno. Three ha'af-crowns is a lot o' money to see piled in your palm, an' say 'Fare thee well; increase!' Store 's no sore, as my old mother used to say."

"But," argued a man, "when once you've made up your mind to the gallant speckilation, you never regret it--danged if you do!"

"Then why hasn't 'ee been took, Thomas, in all these years?"

"Because that little emmet o' doubt gets the better o' me every time.

'Tis like holdin' back from the Fifteen b.a.l.l.s: you feel sure in your own mind you'll be better wi'out the drink, but for your life you durstn't risk the disapp'intment. Over this matter I'll grant ye that I preaches what I can't practise. But my preachin' is sound.

Therefore, I bid ye all follow the example o' Cap'n Hosken here, who, bein' possessed wi' true love for 'Liza Saunders, is havin' her portrait took for to hang up in his narrow cabin out to sea, an'

remind hissel' o' the charms that bide at home a-languishin'."

"That's not my reason, though," said Captain Hosken, a sunburnt and serious man, at the painter's elbow.

"Then what may it be, makin' so bold?"

"I'll tell ye when the painting's done."

"A couple of strokes, and it's finished," said the artist, c.o.c.king his head on one side and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his blue eyes. "There, I'll tell you plainly, friend, that my skill is but a seven-and-sixpenny matter, or a trifle beyond. It does well enough what it pretends to do; but this is a subject I never ought to have touched. I know my limits. You'll see, sir," he went on, in a more business-like tone, "I've indicated your ship here in the middle distance. I thought it would give the portrait just that touch of sentiment you would desire."

The faces gathered closer to stare. 'Liza left the pillar, stretched herself to her full height, and came forward, tying the strings of her sun-bonnet.

"'Tis the very daps of her!" was Captain Hosken's comment as he pulled out his three half-crowns. "As for the _Rare Plant_, what you've put in might be took for a vessel; and if a man took it for a vessel, he might go on to take it for a schooner; but I'd be tolerable sorry if he took it for a schooner o' which I was master. Hows'ever, you've put in all 'Liza's good looks an' enticingness. 'Tis a picture I'm glad to own, an' be dashed to the sentiment you talked about!"

He took the portrait carefully from the easel, and held it before him, between his open palms.

"Neighbours all," he began, his rather stupid face overspread with an expression of satisfied cunning, "I promised to tell 'ee my reasons for havin' 'Liza's portrait took. They're rather out o' the common, an' 'Liza hersel' don't guess what they be, no more than the biggest fool here present amongst us."

He looked from the man Thomas, from whose countenance this last innuendo glanced off as from a stone wall, to 'Liza, who answered him with a puzzled scowl. Her foot began to tap the paving-stone impatiently.

"When I gazes 'pon 'Liza," he pursued, "my eyes be fairly dazzled wi'

the looks o' her. I allow that. She's got that build, an' them lines about the neck an' waist, an' them red-ripe lips, that I feels no care to look 'pon any other woman. That's why I took up wi' her, an'

offered her my true heart. But strike me if I'd counted 'pon her temper; an' she's got the temper of Old Nick! Why, only last evenin'--the very evenin' before I sailed, mark ye--she slapped my ear. She did, though! Says I, down under my breath, 'Right you are my lady! we'll be quits for that.' But, you see, I couldn' bear to break it off wi' her, because I didn' want to miss her beautiful looks."

The women began to t.i.tter, and 'Liza's face to flame, but her lover proceeded with great complacency:

"Well, I was beset in my mind till an hour agone, when--as I walked down here with 'Liza, half mad to take leave of her, and sail for Rio Grande, and likewise sick of her temper--I sees this gentleman a-doin'

pictures at seven-an'-six; and thinks I, 'If I can get 'en to make a copy of 'Liza's good looks, then I shall take off to sea as much as I want of her, an' the rest, temper included, can bide at home till I calls for it. That's all I've got to say. 'Liza's a beauty beyond compare, an' her beauty I worships, an' means to worship. But if any young man wants to take her, I tell him he's welcome. So long t' ye all!"

Still holding the canvas carefully a foot from his waistcoat, to avoid smearing it, he sauntered off to the quay-steps, and hailed his boat to carry him aboard the _Rare Plant_. As he pa.s.sed the girl he had thus publicly jilted, her fingers contracted for a second like a hawk's talons; but she stood still, and watched him from under her brows as he descended the steps. Then with a look that, as it travelled in a semi-circle, obliterated the sympathy which most of the men put into their faces, and the sneaking delight which all the women wore on theirs, she strode out of the fish-market and up the street.

Seven-an'-Six squeezed the paint out of his brushes, packed up his easel and j.a.panned box, wished the company good-day, and strolled back to his inn. He was sincerely distressed, and regretted a hundred times in the course of that evening that he had parted with the portrait and received its price before Captain Hosken had made that speech. He would (he told himself) have run his knife through the canvas, and gladly forfeited the money. As it was, he lingered long over the supper it procured, and ate heartily.

A mile beyond the town, next morning, Boutigo's van, in which he was the only pa.s.senger, pulled up in front of a roadside cottage. A bundle and a tin box were hoisted up by Boutigo, and a girl climbed in. It was 'Liza.

"Oh, good morning!" stammered the little painter.

"I'm going to stay with my aunt in Truro, and seek service," the girl announced, keeping her eye upon him, and her colour down with an effort. "Where are you bound?"

"I? Oh, I travel about, now in one place, next day in another--always moving. It's the breath of life to me, moving around."

"That must be nice! I often wonder why men tie themselves up to a wife when they might be free to move about like you, and see the world.

What does a man want to tack a wife on to him when he can always carry her image about?" She laughed, without much bitterness.

"But--" began the amiable painter, and checked himself. He had been about to confess that he himself owned a wife and four healthy children. He saw this family about once in two months, and it existed by letting out lodgings in a small unpaintable town. He was sincerely fond of his wife, who made every allowance for his mercurial nature; but it suddenly struck him that her portrait hung in the parlour at home, and had never accompanied him on his travels.

He was silent for a minute or two, and then began to converse on ordinary topics.

THE REGENT'S WAGER.

Boutigo's van--officially styled _The Vivid_--had just issued from the Packhorse Yard, Tregarrick, a leisurely three-quarters of an hour behind its advertised time, and was scaling the acclivity of St.

Fimbar's Street in a series of short tacks. Now and then it halted to take up a pa.s.senger or a parcel; and on these occasions Boutigo produced a couple of big stones from his hip-pockets and slipped them under the hind-wheels, while we, his patrons within the van, tilted at an angle of 15 upon cushions of American cloth, sought for new centres of gravity, and earnestly desired the summit.

It was on the summit, where the considerate Boutigo gave us a minute's pause to rearrange ourselves and our belongings, that we slipped into easy and general talk. An old countryman, with an empty poultry-basket on his knees, and a battered top-hat on the back of his head, gave us the cue.

"When Boutigo's father had the accident--that was back in 'fifty-six,'

and it broke his leg an' two ribs--the van started from close 'pon the knap o' the hill here, and scat itself to bits against the bridge at the foot just two and a half minutes after."

I suggested that this was not very fast for a runaway horse.

"I dessay not," he answered; "but 'twas pretty spry for a van slippin'

_backwards_, and the old mare diggin' her toes in all the way to hold it up."

One or two of the pa.s.sengers grinned at my expense, and the old man pursued--

"But if you want to know how fast a hoss _can_ get down St. Fimbar's hill, I reckon you've lost your chance by not axin' Dan'l Best, that died up to the 'Sylum twelve years since; though, poor soul, he'd but one answer for every question from his seven-an'-twentieth year to his end, an' that was 'One, two, three, four, five, sis, seven."

"Ah, the poor body! his was a wisht case," a woman observed from the corner furthest from the door.

"Ay, Selina, and fast forgotten, like all the doin's and sufferin's of the men of old time." He reached a hand round his basket, and touching me on the knee, pointed back on Tregarrick. "There's a wall," he said, and I saw by the direction of his finger that he meant the wall of the county prison, "and beneath that wall's a road, and across that road's a dismal pool, and beyond that pool's a green hillside, with a road athurt it that comes down and crosses by the pool's head. Standin'

'pon that hillside you can see a door in the wall, twenty feet above the ground, an' openin' on nothing. Leastways, you could see it once; an' even now, if ye've good eyesight, ye can see where they've bricked it up."

I could, in fact, even at our distance, detect the patch of recent stone-work; and knew something of its history.

"Now," the old man continued, "turn your looks to the right and mark the face of Tregarrick town-clock. You see it, hey?"--and I had time to read the hour on its dial before Boutigo jolted us over the ridge and out of sight of it--"Well, carry them two things in your mind: for they mazed Dan'l Best an' murdered his brother Hughie."

And, much as I shall repeat it, he told me this tale, pausing now and again to be corroborated by the woman in the corner. The history, my dear reader, is accurate enough--for Boutigo's van.

There lived a young man in Tregarrick in the time of the French War.

His name was Dan'l Best, and he had an only brother Hughie, just three years younger than himself. Their father and mother had died of the small-pox and left them, when quite young children, upon the parish: but old Walters of the Packhorse--he was great-grandfather of the Walters that keeps it now--took a liking to them and employed them, first about his stables and in course of time as post-boys. Very good post-boys they were, too, till Hughie took to drinking and wenching and cards and other devil's tricks. Dan'l was always a steady sort: walked with a nice young woman that was under-housemaid up to the old Lord Bellarmine's at Castle Cannick, and was saving up to be married, when Hughie robbed the mail.

Hughie robbed the mail out of doubt. He did it up by Tippet's Barrow, just beyond the cross-roads where the scarlet gig used to meet the coach and take the mails for Castle Cannick and beyond to Tolquite.

Billy Phillips, that drove the gig, was found in the ditch with his mouth gagged, and swore to Hughie's being the man. The Lord Chief Justice, too, summed up dead against him, and the jury didn't even leave the box. And the moral was, "Hughie Best, you're to be taken to the place whence you come from, ancetera, and may the Lord have mercy upon your soul!"

You may fancy what a blow this was to Dan'l; for though fine and vexed with Hughie's evil courses, he'd never guessed the worst, nor anything like it. Not a doubt had he, nor could have, that Hughie was guilty; but he went straight from the court to his young woman and said, "I've saved money for us to be married on. There's little chance that I can win Hughie a reprieve; and, whether or no, it will eat up all, or nearly all, my savings. Only he's my one brother. Shall I go?" And she said, "Go, my dear, if I wait ten years for you." So he borrowed a horse for a stage or two, and then hired, and so got to London, on a fool's chase, as it seemed.