The Delectable Duchy Part 24

He slammed down his fist on the rickety deal table, which promptly collapsed flat on the floor, with its four legs splayed under the circular cover.

"Bein' a carpenter--" Geake began to stammer apologetically, and in a totally different tone.

For a second--two seconds--the issue hung between tears and laughter.

An hysterical merriment twinkled in Naomi's eyes.

But the strength of Geake's pa.s.sion saved the situation. He stepped up to Naomi, laid a hand on each shoulder, and shook her gently to and fro.

"Listen to me! As I hold 'ee now, so I take your fate in my hands.

Naomi Bricknell, you've got to be my wife, so make up your mind to that."

She cowered a little under his grasp; put out a hand to push him off; drew it back; and broke into helpless sobbing. But this time she did not command him to go away.

Fifteen minutes later William Geake left Vellan's Rents with joy on his face and a broken table under his arm.

And two days later Naomi's face wore a look of demure happiness when Long Oliver stopped her on the staircase and asked,

"Is it true, what I hear?"

"It is true," she answered.

"An' when be the banns called?"

"There ain't goin' to be no banns."

"Hey?"

"There ain't goin' to be no banns; leastways, there ain't goin' to be none called. We'm goin' to the Registry Office. You look all struck of a heap. Was you hopin' to be best man?"

"Well, I reckoned I'd take a hand in the responses," he answered; and seemed about to say more, but turned on his heel and went back to his room, shutting the door behind him.

III.

We pa.s.s to a Sat.u.r.day morning, two years later, and to William Geake's cottage at the western end of Gantick village.

Naomi had plucked three fowls and trussed them, and wrapping each in a white napkin, had packed them in her basket with a dozen and a half of eggs, a few pats of b.u.t.ter, and a nosegay or two of garden-flowers--Sweet Williams, marigolds, and heart's-ease: for it was market-day at Tregarrick. Then she put on boots and shawl, tied her bonnet, and slung a second pair of boots across her arm: for the roads were heavy and she would leave the muddy pair with a friend who lived at the entrance of the town, not choosing to appear untidy as she walked up the Fore Street. These arrangements made, she went to seek her husband, who was busy planing a coffin-lid in the workshop behind the cottage, and ruminating upon to-morrow's sermon.

"You'll be about startin'," he said, lifting his head and pushing his spectacles up over his eye-brows.

Naomi set her basket down on his work-table, and drew her breath back between her teeth--which is the Cornish mode of saying "Yes." "I want you to make me a couple of skivers," she said. "Aun' Hambly sent over word she'd a brace o' chicken for me to sell, an' I was to call for 'em: an' I'd be ashamed to sell a fowl the way she skivers it."

William set down his plane, picked up an odd sc.r.a.p of wood and cut out the skewers with his pocket-knife; while Naomi watched with a smile on her face. Whether or no William had recovered her soul, as he promised, she had certainly given her heart into his keeping. The love of such a widow, he found, is as the surrender of a maid, with wisdom added.

The skewers finished, he walked out through the house with her and down the garden-path, carrying the basket as far as the gate. The scent of pine-shavings came with him. Half-way down the path Naomi turned aside and picking a sprig of Boy's Love, held it up for him to smell. The action was trivial, but as he took the sprig they both laughed, looking in each other's eyes. Then they kissed; and the staid woman went her way down the road, while the staid man loitered for a moment by the gate and watched her as she went.

Now as he took his eyes away and glanced for an instant in the other direction, he was aware of a man who had just come round the angle of the garden hedge and, standing in the middle of the road, not a dozen yards off, was also staring after his wife.

This stranger was a broad-shouldered fellow in a suit of blue seaman's cloth, the trousers of which were tucked inside a pair of Wellington boots. His complexion was brown as a nut, and he wore rings in his ears: but the features were British enough. A perplexed, ingratiating and rather silly smile overspread them.

The two men regarded each other for a bit, and then the stranger drew nearer.

"I do believe that was Na'mi," he said, nodding his head after the woman's figure, that had not yet pa.s.sed out of sight.

William Geake opened his eyes wide and answered curtly, "Yes: that's my wife--Naomi Geake. What then?"

The man scratched his head, contemplating William as he might some illegible sign-post set up at an unusually bothersome cross-road.

"She keeps very han'some, I will say." His smile grew still more ingratiating.

"Was you wishin' to speak wi' her?"

"Well, there! I was an' yet I wasn't. 'Tis terrible puzzlin'. You don't know me, I dessay."

"No, I don't."

"I be called Abe Bricknell--A-bra-ham Bricknell. I used to be Na'mi's husband, one time. There now"--with an accent of genuine contrition--"I felt sure 'twould put you out."

The tongue grew dry in William Geake's mouth, and the sunlight died off the road before him. He stared at a blister in the green paint of the garden-gate and began to peel it away slowly with his thumb-nail: then, pulling out his handkerchief, picked away at the paint that had lodged under the nail, very carefully, while he fought for speech.

"I be altered a brave bit," said Naomi's first husband, still with his silly smile.

"Come into th' house," William managed to say at last; and turning, led the way to the door. On his way he caught himself wondering why the hum of the bees had never sounded so loudly in the garden before: and this was all he could think about till he reached the doorstep.

Then he turned.

"Th' Lord's ways be past findin' out," he said, pa.s.sing a hand over his eyes.

"That's so: that's what _I_ say mysel'," the other a.s.sented cheerfully, as if glad to find their wits jumping together.

"Man!" William rounded on him fiercely. "What's kept 'ee, all these years? Aw, man, man! do 'ee know what you've done?"

"I'd a sun-stroke," said the wanderer, tapping his head and still wearing his deprecatory smile; "a very bad sun-stroke. I sailed in the _John S. Hanc.o.c.k_. I dessay Na'mi told you about that, eh?"

"Get on wi' your tale."

"Pete Hanc.o.c.k was cap'n. The vessel was called after his uncle, you know, an' the Hanc.o.c.ks had a-bought up most o' the shares in her.

That's how Pete came to be cap'n. We sailed on a Friday--unlucky, I've heard that is. But Pete said them that laid th' Atlantic cable had started that day an' broke the spell. Pete had a lot o' tales, but he made a poor cap'n; no head."

"Look here," put in "William with desperate calm," I don't want to know about Peter Hanc.o.c.k."

"There's not much to know if you did. He made a very poor cap'n, though it don't become one to say so, now he's gone. An affectionate man, though, for all his short-comin's. The last time he brought his vessel home from New Orleans he was in that pore to get back to his wife an' childer, he ripped along the Gulf Stream and pretty well ribbed the keelson out of her. Thought, I reckon, that since all the shareholders belonged to his family th' expense wouldn' be grudged.

But I guess it made her tender. That's how she came to go down so suddent."

"She foundered?"

"I'm comin' to that. We'd just run our nose into the tropics an' was headin' down for Kingston Harbour--slippin' along at five knots easy an' steady, an' not a sign of trouble. The time, so far as I can tell, was somewhere near five bells in the middle watch. I'd turned in, leavin' Pete on deck, an' was fast asleep; when all of a suddent a great jolt sent me flyin' out o' the berth. As soon as I got my legs an' wits again I was up on deck, and already the barque was settlin'

by the head like a burst crock. She'd crushed her breastbone in on a sunken tramp of a derelict--a dismasted water-logged lump, that maybe had been washin' about the Atlantic for twenty year' an' more before her app'inted time came to drift across our fair-way an' settle the hash o' the _John S. Hanc.o.c.k_. Sir, I reckon she went down inside o'

five minutes. We'd but bare time to get out one boat and push clear o' the whirl of her. All hands jumped in; she was but a sixteen foot boat, an' we loaded her down to the gun'l a'most. There was a brave star-shine, but no moon. Cruel things happen 'pon the sea."