Menhardoc Part 15

"All right!" cried d.i.c.k eagerly, and he did not notice the deepening of the colour in his new friend's face, for Will felt guilty of a subterfuge. He was really alarmed as to the result of his invitation, and its effect upon his aunt, so he hoped by going round by the back to find his old uncle in the garden, according to his custom, planting, weeding, and fumigating his plants, whether they needed it or no.

Fortune favoured Will, for after a climb round by the narrow alley he let his companion in by the little top gate into the rough terrace garden on the steep slope of the cliff--a quaint little place full of rocks and patches of rich earth, and narrowed stony paths, but one blaze of bright colour, and full of promise of fruit.

"Why, how comical!" said d.i.c.k. "We're higher than the roof of your house!"

"Yes; it's all so steep here," replied Will. "Oh! here's uncle."

He turned down a narrow path, where, pipe in mouth, and emitting puffs of smoke, the old gentleman was busy with some strips of matting tying up the heavy blossoms of carnations to some neatly cut sticks. So intent was he upon his occupation that the two lads stood gazing at him for a few minutes before he rose up, emitting a long puff of smoke, and turned round to nod shortly at Will, and stare severely at the new-comer in a stolid manner peculiarly his own.

"What cheer?" he said slowly.

"Uncle, this is a young gentleman just come down from town."

"To Peter Churchtown, eh?" said the old gentleman, pulling down his buff waistcoat with the bra.s.s crown-and-anchor b.u.t.tons, and pa.s.sing one hand over his chin to make sure whether his grey beard did not look stubbly.

"Yes, sir; my father has come down on mining business," said the lad eagerly, "and we're going to stay."

"Glad to see you, sir, glad to see you," said the old gentleman, holding out an enormous gnarled hand, whose back was covered with great veins, and faintly showed through its ruddy-brown a blue tattooed figure of a mermaid.

"He's going fis.h.i.+ng with Josh and me this evening; we're going to lay the bolter from the boat."

"Quite right!" said the old gentleman, nodding. "Nice evening for fis.h.i.+ng. You'll get some flat-fish, I daresay."

"And," said Will, making an effort, and speaking hoa.r.s.ely in his eagerness to make a clean breast, "I asked him if he'd come home and have tea with me before we go."

The old gentleman winced for a moment, as he might have winced in the old days when, as purser, he inspected his stores on a long voyage, and feared that they were running short. It was but for a moment, and then he recovered himself.

"Asked him to tea? that's well, that's right, my lad. I'm glad to see you, sir. Do you like flowers?"

"I love them," cried the boy, who was gazing half wonderingly at the old man's florid face, and its frame of stiff grey hairs.

"Then you shall have one of my best clove-pinks," he went on, taking his great pruning-knife from his pocket. "Let me see," he continued, opening the blade slowly, "which is the best? Ah! that's a good one-- that's a beauty--there!"

He stooped down, and after a good deal of selection cut a splendid aromatic clove-pink, and handed it smiling to the boy, who smelt it and placed it in the b.u.t.ton-hole of his loose flannel jacket.

"It's a beauty," he cried.

"Yes, isn't it?" said the old man proudly. "Don't get such flowers as that in London, eh?"

"Only in Covent Garden," replied the visitor.

"What garden?--oh! ah! yes, I recollect, Covent Garden Market. Marrows growing well, sir, arn't they?" he continued, pointing to the great succulent plants trailing over the rocks. "My bees;" he pointed to five straw hives. "You shall taste our honey. Wild thyme honey off the cliff and moor. Very glad you've come, sir. But, I say," he added, stopping short in the middle of the path, taking his pipe from his lips, and sending a puff down first one nostril and then the other, "never mind him, I'm master. You shall be my visitor to-day, eh?"

He chuckled and clapped d.i.c.k on the shoulder, pus.h.i.+ng him half before him down the stony, steppy path, and as he did so he turned his great grey head and gave a most prodigious wink, accompanied by a screw up of the face at Will, a look full of secrecy and scheming, all of which, however, Will fully understood and felt relieved.

"It's very kind of you to a stranger," said the visitor.

"Not at all, my lad, not at all. You've come to live among us, and we're very glad to see you. Here we are, here's my good lady--Mrs Marion. I've got a visitor, my dear: Mr--Mr--what's your name?" he whispered hastily.

"Richard Temple," said the lad, in the same tone.

"Ah, to be sure! my memory's getting bad. Mr Richard Temple, my dear.

Young gentleman from London. Come to have a cup of tea with us to-night."

Aunt Ruth's first feeling was that it was a liberty to ask anyone to tea without first obtaining her consent; her second, one of annoyance that she had not put on her black silk that afternoon; her next, one of pleasure, for the lad went up to her in a pleasant, frank, gentlemanly way, and held out his hand, behaving towards the old lady with that natural chivalry and courtesy that you always see in a boy who has been much with a good mother and grown-up sisters.

"It's very kind of you to welcome me like this," he said; and, to Will's great relief, Aunt Ruth smiled and felt ready to purr, and as if she really had been welcoming the visitor very warmly. "Don't think me rude," continued the lad, whose eager eyes kept wandering about, "but I've just come from London, where everything seems so dark and grim; and your cottage does look so beautiful, and clean, and snug."

"Well said, youngster!" cried Uncle Abram; "so it does. Our skipper won't have a spot on anything or a bit of dust anywhere; eh, Will?"

"Oh no! aunt likes the place to look nice," echoed Will.

"Don't you listen to them, my dear," said Aunt Ruth; "but I'm very glad to see you, and you must excuse me now."

She slipped out of the room, and Uncle Abram gave his nephew another look full of intelligence before proceeding to show his young guest his collection in the best room while the tea was being prepared.

For the best room was quite a museum of trophies brought by Uncle Abram's own hands from what he called "furren lands;" and d.i.c.k was excitement itself over the inspection.

"This here's the grains," said the old gentleman, pointing to a five-p.r.o.nged spear, on a long slight pole, with a cord attached to the shaft. "We uses this to take bonito and dolphin out in the hot seas.

Strikes 'em as they play under the bobstay, you know."

"And what's this?" said d.i.c.k eagerly.

"Backbone of a shark, twelve foot long, as we hooked and drew aboard o'

the _Princess_ off Barbadoes, Jennywury sixteen, eighteen hundred forty-nine."

"You caught it with a hook?" cried d.i.c.k.

"Baited with a bit o' very bad salt pork," said the old man. Then, pointing with the stem of his pipe: "His jaws."

Then from the lancet-toothed jaws to a sea-snake in a large bottle of spirits--an unpleasant looking little serpent, said to be poisonous. In a gla.s.s case was the complete sh.e.l.l of a lobster, out of which the crustacean had crawled; and beside this were some South Sea bows and arrows, pieces of coral from all parts of the world, a New Zealand paddle on the wall, opposite to a couple of Australian spears. Hanks of sea-weed hung from nails. There was a caulking hammer that had been fished up from the bottom of some dock, all covered with acorn barnacles, and an old bottle incrusted with oyster-sh.e.l.ls, the gla.s.s having begun to imitate the iridescent lining of the oyster. Under the side-table was a giant oyster from off the coast of Java. Over the chimney-gla.s.s the snout of a sword-fish. A cannon-ball--a thirty-two pounder--rested in a wooden cup, a ball that had no history; and close by it, in a gla.s.s case, was a very ill-shaped cannon-ball, about one-fourth its size, which had a history, having been picked out of the wall of Saint Anthony's Church on the cliff, into which it had been fired by the Spaniards in the days of "good Queen Bess."

There were curiosities enough to have taken the young visitor hours more to see, only while they were in the midst of them Aunt Ruth came in smiling, and in a state of compromise--that is to say, there had been no time to change her dress, but she had mounted her best cap and put on her black watered-silk ap.r.o.n, two pieces of confectionery that it would take half a chapter to properly describe, so they may go with the simple announcement that they were wonders.

"Tea is ready," said the old lady; and she smiled more graciously still when d.i.c.k stepped forward and offered his arm to walk the four steps across to the second best room, where meals were always spread.

Everything was very homely and simple, but to the boy fresh from London the table was a delight. Right in the centre there was a blue jug full of the old purser's choicest flowers scenting the room. The best tea-tray covered one end, with its paraphernalia of best china, the battered old silver pot and very much worn silver tea-spoons; while at the other end was a ham in cut, a piece of ornamental preservation, all pinky fat and crimson lean, marbled throughout. A n.o.ble-looking home-baked loaf, a pat of yellow b.u.t.ter--real cow's b.u.t.ter--ornamented with a bas-relief of the swing-tailed horned lady who presumably was its author, and on either side a dish of raspberry jam, and another containing a piece of virgin honey-comb, from which trickled forth the pale golden sweetness.

"Allus make it a rule here, sir," said the old purser, "o' having a good bit o' salt provision in cut. Let me give you a bit o' 'am."

d.i.c.k raised no objection, and then, as soon as he was helped, and saw the cup of tea with a veined pattern of rich lumpy cream running over it, he sighed involuntarily.

"There, I am sorry," cried Aunt Ruth, "it isn't to your liking. I knew that ham would be too salt."

d.i.c.k Temple flushed like a girl.

"Oh no!" he cried; "it wasn't that."

"Then it's the b.u.t.ter!" cried the old lady, in mortified tones.