Nicky-Nan, Reservist Part 27

"Nor me," said the farmer's son, discovering that his pipe was out and feeling in his pocket for a box of matches.

"There's no hurry for you, Mr Obed." "Isn't there? . . . Well, I suppose not, thank goodness! Here, take a fill o' baccy an' tell me what you think of it. I mean, o' course"--with a jerk of his hand towards the camp--"what you think o' that there?"

"I wish I could tell 'ee offhand," answered Seth after a pause, carefully filling his pipe. "I was puzzlin' it over as I came along."

"I see nothing to puzzle, for a man placed as you be," said Obed, drawing hard on his pipe. "If you had a father and a mother, now, both draggin' hard on your coat-tails--My G.o.d!" he broke off, staring at the sappers moving on the hillside. "What wouldn't I give to be like any o' those?"

"If you feel it like that," Seth encouraged him, "the way's plain, surely? Father nor mother--no, nor wife nor child, if I had 'em-- could hinder me."

"What hinders you then, lucky man?" Seth smoked for a while in silence. "I don't think as I'd answer 'ee," he said at length quietly, "if I thought my answerin' would carry weight in your mind.

_You_ to call me lucky!--when your way's clear, and all you want is the will."

"We'll pa.s.s that," said Obed. "To you, that have none at home to hinder, ben't the way clear?"

"Since you ask me, 'tis not; or if clear, clear contrary."

"How should that be, in G.o.d's name?"

"I'd rather you didn' ask."

"But I do. . . . Look here, Seth Minards, I'm in trouble: and I don't know how 'tis, but you're the sort o' chap one turns to. Sit down, now, like a friend."

Seth seated himself on the turf. "It's a strange thing, is War,"

said he after a pause. "All my life I've abominated it--yes, the very thought of it."

"All my life," said Obed, "I've reckoned it--I can't tell you why-- the only test of a man."

"'Tis an evil thing; yes, to be sure, and a devilish," said Seth, musing. "Men killing one another--and the widows left, an' the orphans, on both sides. War's the plainest evil in all the world; and if I join in it, 'tis to help evil with my eyes open. All my life, sir, I've held by the Sermon on the Mount."

"I've read it," said Obed Pearce. "Go on."

"Without it I'm lost. Then along comes this very worst evil," he gazed towards the camp on the slope, "and here it is, callin' me in the name o' my Country, tauntin', askin' me why I can't make up my mind to be a man!" Seth checked a groan. "You see," he went on, "we looks at it, sir, in different ways, but they both hurt. I be main sorry if my own trouble o' mind adds any weight to your'n. But th'

Bible says that, though one man's burden be 'most as heavy as another's, the pair may halve the whole load by sharin' it--or that's as I read the tex'."

Young Obed ground his teeth. "Maybe you haven't to endure _this_ sort o' thing!" On a fierce impulse he pulled an envelope from his pocket, seemed to repent, then hardened his courage, and slowly drew forth--three white feathers, "It came to me this morning, anonymous."

His face was crimson.

"Maybe I have," answered Seth tranquilly, and produced an envelope containing three feathers precisely similar. "But what signifies a dirty trick o' that sort? It only tells what be in some other unfort'nate person's mind. It don't affect what's in my own,"

"Hullo!" hailed a voice behind them. "Comparin' love-letters, you young men?"

The speaker was Nicky-Nan, come to survey the desolation of his 'taty-patch. Young Obed hastily crammed his envelope into his pocket. But Seth Minards turned about with a frank smile.

"You may see mine, Mr Nanjivell. Look what some kind friend sent me this mornin'!"

"Well, I s'wow!" exclaimed Nicky-Nan, after a silence of astonishment. "If _I_ didn' get such another Prince o' Wales's plume, an' this very mornin' too!"

"You?" cried the two young men together. "See here"--Nicky in his turn pulled forth an envelope. "But what do it signify at all?

'Tis all a heathen mystery to me."

"Well, and how are we getting along?" asked the Vicar two days later, as he entered the morning-room where his wife sat busily addressing circulars and notices of sub-committee meetings.

She looked up, with a small pucker on her forehead. "I suppose it is drudgery; but do you know, Robert," she confessed, "I really believe I could get to like this sort of thing in time?"

He laughed, a trifle wistfully. "And do you know, Agatha, why it is that clergymen and their wives so seldom trouble the Divorce Court-- in comparison, we'll say, with soldiers and soldiers' wives? . . .

No, you are going to answer wrong. It isn't because the parsons are better men--for I don't believe they are."

"Then it seems to follow that their wives must be better women!"

"You're wrong again. It's because the wife of a parish priest, even when she has no children of her own"--here the Vicar winced, flushed, and went on rapidly--"nine times out of ten has a whole parish to mother--clothing-clubs, Sunday-school cla.s.ses, mothers' meetings, children's outings, choir feasts,--it's all looking after people, clothing 'em, feeding 'em, patting 'em on the head or boxing their ears and telling 'em to be good--which is just the sort of business a virtuous woman delights in. _She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household and a portion to her maidens_.

'A portion to her maidens'; you see she used to measure out the b.u.t.ter in Solomon's time."

"It wouldn't do in this parish," she said with a laugh. "They'd give notice at once."

"G.o.d forgive me that I brought you to this parish, Agatha!"

"Now if you begin to talk like that--when I've really made a beginning!" She pointed in triumph to the stacks of missives on the writing-table.

"It's I who bungled, the other day, when I suggested your giving Mrs Polsue a duplicate list of the names and addresses. I thought it would please her and save you half the secretarial labour; and now it appears that you _like_ the secretarial labour!"

"What has happened?" Mrs Steele asked. "Well, young Obed Pearce rode over to see me yesterday. He's in great distress of mind, poor fellow; dying to enlist and serve his country, but held back by his parents, who won't hear of it. As if this wasn't torture enough, in the midst of it he gets an envelope by post--addressed in a feigned hand, and with no letter inside, but just three white feathers."

"Oh, hateful! Who could be so wicked?"

"I met Lippity-Libby at the gate this morning. 'Look here,' I said; 'this is a pretty poison you are sowing on your rounds': and I showed him the feathers which young Obed had left with me. 'I know you can't help it,' said I, 'but if the Post Office can stop and open suspected circulars, surely it can refuse to help this abomination!'

'I've delivered pretty well a score, sir,' said he; 'and I wish you or some person would write to the papers and stop it.' 'Well,' I said, 'it's not for me to ask if you have a guess who sends this sort of thing about?' He rubbed his chin for a while and then answered: 'No, Parson; nor 'tisn't for me to tell 'ee if I do: but if you _should_ happen to be strollin' down t'wards the Quay, you might take a look at Mrs Polsue's Cochin-China hens. The way them birds have been moultin' since the War started--'"

"Robert! You don't tell me that woman plucks the poor things alive!"

"Ay: and takes the bleeding quills to draw more blood from young men's hearts."

CHAPTER XIX.

I-SPY-HI!

At certain decent and regular intervals of time (we need not indicate them more precisely) Mrs Polsue was accustomed to order in from the Three Pilchards a firkin of ale. A firkin, as the reader probably knows, is the least compromising of casks, and Mr Latter regularly attended in person to "spile" it. Mrs Polsue as regularly took care to watch the operation.

"The newspaper tells me," said she, "that this is likely to be a teetotal War."

"Tell me another, ma'am!" answered Mr Latter in his unconventional way.

"It would be an excellent thing for our troops in the field: and, if you ask my opinion, a little mortifying of the spirit would do the working cla.s.ses of this country a deal of good. I take a gla.s.s of ale myself, under medical advice, because cold water disagrees with me, and I've never yet had the aerated drink recommended that wasn't followed by flatulence."

"There's neither mirth nor music in 'em" agreed Mr Latter.