The Ship of Stars Part 17

He had modestly calculated on averaging a shilling a volume for his books; but discovered on leaving the shop at Truro that it worked out at one-and-threepence. He returned to Nannizabuloe that night with one box only--but it was packed full of tools--and a copy of Fuller's "Holy State," which at the last moment had proved too precious to be parted with--at least, just yet.

The woodwork of the old pews--painted deal for the most part, but mixed with a few boards of good red pine and one or two of teak, relics of some forgotten shipwreck--lay stacked in the belfry and around the font under the west gallery. Mr. Raymond and Taffy spent an hour in overhauling it, chose out the boards for their first pew, and fell to work.

At the end of another hour the pair broke off and looked at each other. Taffy could not help laughing. His own knowledge of carpentry had been picked up by watching Joel Hugh at work, and just sufficed to tell him that his father was possibly the worst carpenter in the world.

"I think my fingers must be all thumbs," declared Mr. Raymond.

The puckers in his face set Taffy laughing afresh. They both laughed and fell to work again, the boy explained his notions of the difficult art of mortising. They were rudimentary, but sound as far as they went, and his father recognised this. Moreover, when the boy had a tool to handle he did it with a natural deftness, in spite of his ignorance. He was Humility's child, born with the skill-of-hand of generations of lace-workers. He did a dozen things wrongly, but he neither fumbled, nor hammered his fingers, nor wounded them with the chisel--which was Humility's husband's way.

At the end of four days of strenuous effort, they had their first pew built. It was a recognisable pew, though it leaned to one side, and the door (for it had a door) fell to with a bang if not cautiously treated. The triumph was, the seat could be sat upon without risk.

Mr. Raymond and Taffy tested it with their combined weight on the Sat.u.r.day evening, and went home full of its praises.

"But look at your clothes," said Humility; and they looked.

"This is serious," said Mr. Raymond. "Dear, you must make us a couple of working suits of corduroy or some such stuff: otherwise this pew-making won't pay."

Humility stood out against this for a day or two. That _her_ husband and child should go dressed like common workmen! But there was no help for it, and on the Monday week Taffy went forth to work in moleskin breeches, blue guernsey, and loose white smock. As for Mr.

Raymond, the only badge of his calling was his round clerical hat; and as all the miners in the neighbourhood wore hats of the same soft felt and only a trifle higher in the crown, this hardly amounted to a distinction.

Humility's eyes were full of tears as she watched them from the door that morning. But Taffy felt as proud as Punch. A little before noon he carried out a board that required sawing, and rested it on a flat tombstone where, with his knee upon it, he could get a good purchase. He was sawing away when he heard a dog barking, and looked up to see Honoria coming along the path with George's terrier frisking at her heels.

She halted outside the lych-gate, and Taffy, vain of his new clothes, drew himself up and nodded.

"Good-morning," said Honoria. "I'm not allowed to speak to you and I'm not going to, after this." She swooped on the puppy and held him. "See what George brought home from Plymouth for me. Isn't he a beauty?"

Held so, by the scruff of his neck, he was not a beauty. Taffy had it on the tip of his tongue to tell her about the collar. He wished he had brought it.

"I wonder," she went on pensively, "your mother had the heart to dress you out in that style. But I suppose now you'll be growing up into quite a common boy."

Taffy decided to say nothing about the collar. "I like the clothes,"

he declared defiantly.

"Then you can't have the common instincts of a gentleman. Well, good-bye! Grandfather has salvation all right this time; he said he'd put the stick about me if I dared to speak to you."

"He won't know."

"Won't know? Why I shall tell him, of course, when I get back."

"But--but he _mustn't_ beat you!"

She eyed him for a moment or two in silence. "Mustn't he? I advise you to go and tell him." She walked away slowly, whistling; but by-and-by broke into a run and was gone, the puppy scampering behind her.

As the days grew longer and the weather milder, Taffy and his father worked late into the evenings; sometimes, if the job needed to be finished, by the light of a couple of candles.

One evening, about nine o'clock, the boy as he planed a bench paused suddenly. "What's that?"

They listened. The door stood open, and after a second or two they heard the sound of feet tiptoeing away up the path outside.

"Spies, perhaps," said his father. "If so, let them go in peace."

But he was not altogether easy. There had been strange doings up at the Bryanite Chapel of late. He still visited a few of his parishioners regularly--hill farmers and their wives for the most part, who did not happen to be tenants of Squire Moyle, and on whom his visits therefore could bring no harm; and one or two had hinted of strange doings, now that the Bryanites had hold of the old Squire.

They themselves had been up--just to look; they confessed it shamefacedly, much in the style of men who have been drinking overnight. Without pressing them and showing himself curious, the Vicar could get at no particulars. But as the summer grew he felt a moral sultriness, as it were, growing with it. The people were off their balance, restless; and behind their behaviour he had a sense, now of something electric, menacing, now of a hand holding it in check. Slowly in those days the conviction deepened in him that he was an alien on this coast, that between him and the hearts of the race he ministered to there stretched an impalpable, impenetrable veil. And all this while the faces he pa.s.sed on the road, though shy, were kindlier than they had been in the days before his self-confidence left him--it seemed not so long ago.

On a Sat.u.r.day night early in May, the footsteps were heard again, and this time in the porch itself. While Mr. Raymond and Taffy listened the big latch went up with a creak, and a dark figure slipped into the church.

"Who is there?" challenged Mr. Raymond from the chancel where he stood peering out of the small circle of light.

"A friend. Pa.s.s, friend, and all's well!" answered a squeaky voice.

"Bless you, I've sarved in the militia before now."

It was Jacky Pascoe, with his coat-collar turned up high about his ears.

"What do you want?" Mr. Raymond demanded sharply.

"A job."

"We can pay for no work here."

"Wait till thee'rt asked, Parson, dear. I've been spying in upon 'ee these nights past. Pretty carpenters you be! T'other night, as I was a-peeping, the Lord said to me, 'Arise, go, and for goodness'

sake show them chaps how to do it fitty.' 'Dear Lord,' I said, 'Thou knowest I be a Bryanite.' The Lord said to me, 'None of your back answers! Go and do as I tell 'ee.' So here I be."

Mr. Raymond hesitated. "Squire Moyle is your friend, I hear, and the friend of your chapel. What will he say if he discovers that you are helping us?"

Jacky scratched his head. "I reckon the Lord must have thought o'

that, too. Suppose you put me to work in the vestry? There's only one window looks in on the vestry: you can block that up with a curtain, and there I'll be like a weevil in a biscuit."

When this screen was fixed, the little Bryanite looked round and rubbed his hands. "Now I'll tell 'ee a prabble," he said--"a prabble about this candle I'm holding. When G.o.d Almighty said '_let there be light_,' He gave every man a candle--to some folks, same as you, long sixes perhaps and best wax; to others, a farthing dip. But they all helps to light up; and the beauty of it is, Parson"--he laid a hand on Mr. Raymond's cuff--"there isn't one of 'em burns a ha'porth the worse for every candle that's lit from en.

Now sit down, you and the boy, and I'll larn 'ee how to join a board."

CHAPTER XIV.

VOICES FROM THE SEA.

Before winter and the long nights came around again, Taffy had become quite a clever carpenter. From the first his quickness fairly astonished the Bryanite, who at the best was but a journeyman and soon owned himself beaten.

"I doubt," said he, "if you'll ever make so good a man as your father; but you can't help making a better workman." He added, with his eyes on the boy's face, "There's one thing in which you might copy en. He hasn't much of a gift: _but he lays it 'pon the altar_."

By this time Taffy had resumed his lessons. Every day he carried a book or two in his satchel with his dinner, and read or translated aloud while his father worked. Two hours were allowed for this in the morning, and again two in the afternoon. Sometimes a day would be set apart during which they talked nothing but Latin.

Difficulties in the text of their authors they postponed until the evening, and worked them out at home, after supper, with the help of grammar and dictionary.

The boy was not unhappy, on the whole; though for weeks together he longed for sight of George Vyell, who seemed to have vanished into s.p.a.ce, or into that limbo where his childhood lay like a toy in a lumber room. Taffy seldom turned the key of that room. The stories he imagined now were not about fairies or heroes, but about himself.

He wanted to be a great man and astonish the world. Just how the world was to be astonished he did not clearly see; but the triumph, in whatever shape it came, was to involve a new gown for his mother, and for his father a whole library of books.

Mr. Raymond never went back to his books now, except to help Taffy.

The Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews was laid aside.

"Some day!" he told Humility. The Sunday congregation had dwindled to a very few, mostly farm people; Squire Moyle having threatened to expel any tenant of his who dared to set foot within the church.