Nicky-Nan, Reservist Part 23

the latest. 'Would you mind makin' yourself scarce, Mr Nanjivell, to oblige a lady as has lost confidence in her repitation?' Now look 'ee here, ma'am--what I said to that woman Polsue, just now, is no more than I'm able to abide by. If the shoe pinches at any time, you can come to me, and I'll reckon up wi' Sam Penhaligon when he comes back. What's more--though, to be sure, 'tis no affair o' mine--I reckon Sam Penhaligon's the only chap alive, savin' yourself, consarned in this repitation you've started to make such a fuss about. But you're playin' Pamphlett's game, ma'am, to turn me out,"

wound up Nicky-Nan wrathfully, turning away: "that's what you're doin': and I'll see you--"

He closed the oath upon a slam of the door.

"There was never a man in this world," sighed Mrs Penhaligon as she regained her own kitchen, "but hisself came afore all the world." She arrested her hand on the cover of the flour-barrel.

"He talked so confident of his money, too. . . . Funny thing if Nicky-Nan, that we've been pityin' all this time, should turn out to be a miser!"

An hour later, in the full light of the afternoon suns.h.i.+ne, Nicky-Nan emerged from the old house with a shovel on his arm and a bundle dangling from it. He had heard 'Bert Penhaligon say that the Boy Scouts were employed by night only for coast-watching. By day the pilots with their telescopes habitually commanded this whole stretch of coast, nor could the periscope of a submarine push itself above the insh.o.r.e water and not be detected.

At the corner of the Warren, where the cliff turns eastwardly with a sharp bend, Nicky-Nan almost ran into Policeman Rat-it-all, who pulled himself up for a chat as usual.

"I don't know what _you_ think," observed the Policeman, "but to my mind this here War gives us a great sense o' brotherhood. I read that on the newspaper this mornin', and it struck me as one o' the aptest things I'd seen for a long while."

"You said something o' the sort last time we met," answered Nicky-Nan.

"You're wrong there." Rat-it-all seemed to be slightly hurt in his feelings; "because I read it on the paper only this morning.

'Against War in the abstrac' much may be urged,' it said. 'But 'oo will deny as it begets a sense o' Brotherhood if it does nothin'

else?' That was the expression."

"I don't take much truck in this War, for my part," said Nicky-Nan, quartering on the narrow footpath to let Rat-it-all pa.s.s: "but it'll do a dam sight else afore we're through with it, if you want my opinion."

"To a man in the Force," said Rat-it-all pensively, "an expression like that, mixed up with photographs in the 'Daily Mirror,' strikes HOME. A man in the Force, as I'll put it, is in some ways unlike other men." He paused to let this sink in.

"Take your time," said Nicky-Nan. "But I'm not contradictin' 'ee."

"If they're a species, he's a specie--a man set apart, like a parson.

A parson tells you how you ought to behave, and I take you in charge if you don't."

"Like Satan," Nicky-Nan suggested.

"Rat it all! Not a bit like Satan!" said the Constable angrily.

"You've not been followin'. I never heard so foolish an interruption in all my born days. . . . What be you carryin' in that there bundle, makin' so bold?"

Nicky-Nan felt his heart stand still. "Just my waskit an' a few odds an' ends," he answered with affected nonchalance. Forcing himself to meet Rat-it-all's gaze, and perceiving it to be dreamy rather than suspicious, he added, "What makes 'ee ask?"

"Nothin', . . . nothin'. . . . Only you reminded me of a song I used to sing, back in the old days. It was called 'Off to Philadelphia in the mornin'.' A beautiful voice I used to have: tenor. I shouldn'

wonder if I had it yet; only"--with a wistful sigh--"in the Force you got to put that sort o' thing behind you, . . . which brings me back to what I was saying. In an ordinary way, a police-constable's life is like a parson's: they see more'n most men o' what's goin' on, but they don't _belong_ to it. You can't properly hobn.o.b with a chap that, like as not, you'll be called on to marry or bury to-morra, nor stand him a drink--nor be stood--when, quite as like, next time you'll be servin' a summons. There's a Jane on both sides."

"A who?"

"'Tisn' a ''oo,' 'tis an 'it': bein' an expression I got off an Extension Lecturer they had down to Bodmin, one time. I'd a great hankerin', in those days, to measure six foot two in my socks afore I finished growin', and I signed on for his lectures in that hope.

With a man callin' his-self by that name and advertisin' as he'd lecture on 'Measure for Measure,' I thought I'd a little bit of all right. But he ran right off the rails an' chatted away about the rummiest things, such as theatricals. I forget what switched 'en off an' on to that partic'lar line: but I well remember his openin'

remark. He said, 'To measure the true stature of a great man we must go down to the true roots. A certain Jane is bound to overtake us if we dig too long among the common 'taturs with their un-stopp'd lines an' weak endings and this or that defective early quest. Oh! all profitable, no doubt, an' worth cultivatin' so long as we do not look for taste.' When I woke up at the end 'twas with these words printed in mind same as they've remained. But I couldn' figure out how this here Jane got mixed up in the diet. So, bein' of a practical mind then, in my 'teens, same as I be to-day, I stopped behind and asked him--takin' care to look bright and intelligent--who might be this Jane he'd allooded to. If you'll believe me, it turned out to be no person at all, but a way the gentry have of sayin' they're uncomfortable; same as, through some writin' chap or other, all the papers was talkin' of your belly as your Little Mary."

"Mine?"

"When I say 'yours,' o' course I mean to say 'ours'--that's to say, every one's." Rat-it-all made a semicircular sweep of the hand in front of his person.

"Something of a liberty, I should say, however many you include.

What I object to in these newspapers is the publicity. . . . But, if you ask my opinion, that Extension fellow made a start with pullin'

your leg."

"You're wrong, then. For I tried the expression 'pon Parson Steele only two days ago. 'This here war, sir,' I took occasion to say, 'fairly gives me the Jane.' He reckernised the word at once, an'

lugged out his note-book. 'Do you know, constable,' says he, 'that you're talkin' French, an' it's highly interestin'?'

'I make no doubt as 'twould be, sir,' says I, 'if I was to hold on with it.' 'You don't understand,' says he. 'These Gallic turns o'

speech'--which, 'tween you an' me, I'd always thought o' Gallic as a kind of acid--'these Gallic turns o' speech,' says he, 'be engagin'

the attention of learned men to such an extent that I think o'

writin' a paper upon 'em myself,' says he, 'for the Royal Inst.i.tution o' Cornwall at their next Summer Meetin'.' . . . I was considerably flattered, as you may well understand. . . . But that brings me back to my point. Parsons an' constables, as I see the matter, be men set apart, an' lonely. So when I reads 'pon the paper that this here war has made us all brothers, it strikes HOME, an' I feel inclined to stop an' pa.s.s the time o' day with anybody. I don't care who he may be."

"Then why waste time danderin' along the cliffs, here?"

Policeman Rat-it-all lowered his voice. "Between you an' me, again,"

he confessed, "I got to do my four miles or so every day, for the sake o' my figger."

"'Tis unfortunate then," said Nicky-Nan, taking heart of grace and lying hardily: "for you've missed a lovely dog-fight."

"Where? Whose?" Rat-it-all panted, suddenly all alive and inquisitive.

"Dog-fights don't concern me. . . . It may ha' been Jago's bull-terrier an' that Airedale o' Latter's. Those two seldom meet without a sc.r.a.p."

"Is it over?" A sudden agitation had taken hold of Rat-it-all's legs.

"Very like," lied Nicky-Nan, now desperately anxious to be rid of him. "I heard somebody callin' for snuff or a pot o' pepper--either o' which they tell me--"

"An' you've kept me dallyin' all this while how-de-doin'?" Rat-it-all made a bolt down the path.

Nicky-Nan watched his disappearing figure, and collapsed upon a thyme-scented hillock in sudden revulsion from a long strain of terror.

He sat there for a good five minutes, staring out on the open waters of the Channel. An armed cruiser, that had been practising gunnery at intervals during the day, was heading home from Plymouth. A tug had come out and was fetching back her targets. Nicky-Nan arose very deliberately, made for his 'taty-patch in the hollow beyond the pilot house, laid his bundle on the ground, and began to dig in and cover his golden coins, fetching a handful at a time. He had buried them all, and was returning at shut of dusk, when he met young 'Bert Penhaligon coming up the path.

"This is the last night for us here," proclaimed young 'Bert, "and I can't say as I'm sorry. But maybe they'll move us."

"How so?" asked Nicky-Nan.

"Well, between you an' me," announced young 'Bert, who during the last week had seemed to put on stature with confidence, "there's a company of Royal Engineer Territorials ordered over from Troy to dig theirselves in an' camp here."

[1] Hysterics.

[2] Monotonous burthen.

CHAPTER XVI.

CORPORAL SANDERc.o.c.k.

Nicky-Nan arose with the dawn after a night of little sleep.