Wandering Heath Part 20

But the second note was written in a different hand, and ran as follows:

"_I could die of shame. It was all that hussy of a girl. She did it for a joke. I'll joke her. But what will you be thinking?--P. W._"

Master Simon rowed down to Ponteglos that very afternoon, and the two carriers went back with him. Happiness seemed to have shaken its wings and quite departed from "Pandora's Box"; but a twinkle of something not entirely unlike hope lurked in the corners of the waitress's eyes--albeit their lids were red and swollen--as she ushered Master Simon into the best parlour.

"What can you be thinking of me?" began the widow. _Her_ eyes were red and swollen, too.

"I've brought back the pigeons."

"I can never bear the sight of them again!"

"You might begin different, you know," suggested Master Simon, affably. "Some little message about the weather, for instance.

Have you given that girl warning to leave?"

"You see, I'm so lonely here . . ."

Some three months after this, and on an exceptionally fine morning in September, Master Simon put Harmony, his celebrated almond hen, into her travelling hamper, and marched over to the crossroads to take coach for Illogan, in the mining district, where the matches for the championship cup were to be flown that year.

Now Ann the cook had ventured no less than five pounds upon Harmony.

Five pounds represented a half of her annual wage, and a trifle less than half of her annual savings. Therefore she spent the greater part of the following afternoon at her window, gazing westward in no small perturbation of spirit.

It wanted a few minutes to five when a carrier pigeon came travelling across the zenith, shot downwards suddenly, and alighted on the roof.

Ann climbed to the trap-door and put out a hand. The bird was preening his feathers, and allowed himself to be taken easily.

In circ.u.mstances less agitating Ann had not failed to observe that the thread about the messenger's wing was not of the kind that Master Simon used. But her eyes opened wide as they fell on the handwriting, and still wider as she read:

"_It is all for the best, perhaps. If only people have not begun to talk_.--Prudence."

A second messenger arrived towards evening with word of Harmony's success. But the news hardly relaxed Ann's brow, which kept a pensive contraction even when her master arrived next evening and poured out her winnings on the table from the silver challenge cup.

She wore this frown at intervals for a fortnight, and all the while maintained an unusual silence which puzzled Master Simon. Then one morning he heard her in the kitchen scolding the tap-boy with all her pristine heartiness. That night, after mulling her master's ale, she turned at the door, saucepan in hand, and coughed to attract attention.

"Well, Ann; what is it?"

"You've been philanderin'."

"Hey! Upon my word, Ann--"

Ann produced the Widow Waddilove's note and flattened it out under Master Simon's eyes. And Master Simon blushed painfully.

"Are you goin' to marry the woman?" Ann demanded.

"I think not."

"I reckon you will."

"Well, you see, there has been a hitch. She won't leave the 'Pandora's Box,' and I'm not going to budge from 'Flowing Source.'

If a woman won't put herself out to that extent--Besides, she cooks no better than you."

"Not so well. You wasn't thinking, by any chance, o' marrying _me_?"

"Ann, you're perfectly brazen! Well, no; to tell you the plain truth, I wasn't."

"That's all right; because I've gone and promised myself to a young farmer up the valley."

"What's his name?"

"I shan't tell you; for the reason that I've a second to fall back on, if I find on acquaintance that the first won't do. But first or second, I'll marry one or t'other at the month-end, and so I give you notice."

Master Simon sighed. "Well! well! I must get on as best I can with Tom for a while." Tom was the tap-boy.

"Tom's going, too. I bullied him so this morning that he means to give notice to-morrow; that is, if he don't save himself the trouble by running off to sea."

"The twelfth in five years!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Master Simon, stopping his pipe viciously.

"And small blame to them! Married man or mariner--that's what a boy is born for. Better dare wreck or wedlock than sit here and talk about both. Take my advice, master, and marry the widow!"

Ann carried out her own matrimonial programme, at any rate, with spirit and determination. Finding the first young farmer satisfactory, she espoused him at the end of the month, and turned her back on "Flowing Source." And Tom the tap-boy fulfilled her prophecy and ran away to sea. And the old inn leaned after him until its timbers creaked. And the autumn floods rose and covered the meadows.

Master Simon sat and smoked, and made his own bed, and accomplished some execrable cookery in the intervals of oiling his duck-gun.

Even duck-shooting becomes a weariness when a man has to manage gun and punt single-handed. One afternoon he abandoned the sport in an exceedingly bad temper, and pulled up to the jaws of Cuckoo Valley.

Here he landed, and after an hour's trudge in the marshy bottoms had the luck to knock over two couple of woodc.o.c.k.

He rowed back with his spoil, and was making fast to the ferry steps, when a thought struck him. He shipped the paddles again, and pulled down to Ponteglos. The short day was closing, and already a young moon glimmered on the floods.

The woodc.o.c.k were cooked to a turn; juicier birds never reclined on toast. The waitress removed the cloth and returned with a kettle; retired and returned again with a short-necked bottle, a gla.s.s and spoon, sugar, a nutmeg, and a lemon; retired with a twinkle in her eye.

"To fortify you!" said Mistress Prudence, rubbing a lump of sugar gently on the lemon-rind.

"The night air," Master Simon murmured.

"--Against the damp house you're going back to," the lady corrected.

"You talk without giving it a trial."

"As you talk, in your parlour, of deep-sea voyages."

"As a ship's captain you would respect me perhaps?"

"No, for you haven't the head. But I should like your pluck.

If I saw you setting off for sea in earnest, I would run out and give you a chance to steer a woman instead of a ship. You would find her safer."

Master Simon emptied his gla.s.s, rose, and wound his great comforter about his neck. The widow saw him to the door.