Sir John Constantine Part 11

He halted and rubbed his chin. "Then who the devil can he be, I wonder? Well, we shall discover."

"You ride to Falmouth this morning?"

"We have an army to collect," he answered, gripping me not unkindly by the shoulder.

We rode into Falmouth side by side in silence, Billy Priske following by my father's command, and each with a red rose pinned to the flap of his hat. Upon the way we talked, mainly of the Trappist Brothers, and of Dom Basilio, who (it seemed) had at one time been an agent of the British legation at Florence, and in particular had carried my father's reports and instructions to and fro between Corsica and that city, avoiding the vigilance of the Genoese.

"A subtle fellow," was my father's judgment, "and, as I gave him credit, in the matter of conscience as null as Cellini himself: the last man in the world to turn religious. But the longer you live the more cause will you find to wonder at the divine spirit which bloweth where it listeth. Take these Methodists, who are to preach in Falmouth to-day. I have seen Wesley, and stood once for an hour listening to him. For aught I could discover he had no great eloquence. He said little that his audience might not have heard any Sunday in their own churches. His voice was hoa.r.s.e from overwork, and his manner by no means winning. Yet I saw many notorious ruffians sobbing about him like children: some even throwing themselves on the ground and writhing, like the demoniacs of Scripture. The secret was, he spoke with authority: and the secret again was a certain kingly neglect of trifles--he appeared not to see those signs by which other men judge their neighbours or themselves to be past help. Or take these Trappists: Dom Basilio tells me that more than half of them are ex-soldiers and rough at that. To be sure I can understand why, having once turned religious, an old soldier runs to the Trappist rule. He has been bred under discipline, and has to rely on discipline. 'Tis what he understands, and the harder he gets it the more good he feels himself getting--"

We were nearing the town by the way of Arwennack, and just here a turn of the road brought us in sight of a whitewashed cottage and put a period to my father's discourse, as a garden gate flew open and out into the highway ran a lean young man with an angry woman in pursuit.

His shoulders were bent and he put up both hands to ward off her clutch. But in the middle of the road she gripped him by the collar and caught him two sound cuffs on the nape of the neck.

She turned as we rode up. "The villain!" she cried, still keeping her grip. "Oh, protect me from such villains!"

"But, my good woman," remonstrated my father, reining up, "it scarcely appears that you need protecting. Who is this man?"

"A thief, your honour! Didn't I catch him prowling into my garden?

And isn't it for him to say what his business was? I put it to your honour"--here she caught the poor wretch another cuff--"what honest business took him into my garden, and me left a widow-woman these sixteen years?"

"Ai-ee!" cried the accused, still s.h.i.+elding his neck and cowering in the dust--a thin ragged windlestraw of a youth, flaxen-headed, hatchet-faced, with eyes set like a hare's. "Have pity on me sirs, and take her off!"

"Let him stand up," my father commanded. "And you sir, tell me-- What were you seeking in this good woman's garden?"

"A rose, sir--hear my defence!--a rose only, a small rose!"

His voice was high and cracked, and he flung his hands out extravagantly. "Oh, York and Lancaster--if you will excuse me, gentlemen--that I should suffer this for a mere rose? The day only just begun too! And why, sirs, was I seeking a rose? Ay, there's the rub." He folded his arms dramatically and nodded at the woman.

"There's the gall and bitterness, the worm in the fruit, the peculiar irony--if you'll allow me to say so--of this distressing affair.

Listen, madam! If I wanted a rose of you, 'twas for your whole s.e.x's sake: your s.e.x's, madam--every one of whom was, up to five or six months ago, the object with me of something very nearly allied to wors.h.i.+p."

"Lord help the creature!" cried the woman. "What's he telling about? And what have you to do with my s.e.x, young man? which is what the Lord made it."

"It is _not_, madam. Make no mistake about it: 'twere blasphemy to think so. But speaking generally, what I--as a man--have to do with your s.e.x is to protect it."

"A nice sort of protector you'd make!" she retorted, planting her knuckles on her hips and eyeing him contemptuously.

"I am a beginner, madam, and have much to learn. But you shall not discourage me from protecting you, though you deny me the rose which was to have been my emblem. Every woman is a rose, madam, as says the poet Dunbar--

"'Sweet rose of vertew and of gentilness, Richest in bonty and in bewty clear And every vertew that is werrit dear, Except only that ye are merciless--"

"You take me? 'Merciless,' madam?"

"I don't understand a word," said she, puzzled and angry.

"He was a Scotsman: and you find it a far cry to Loch Awe.

Well, well--to resume--

"'Into your garth this day I did pursue--'"

"by 'garth' meaning 'garden': a good word, and why the devil it should be obsolescent is more than I can tell you--"

But here my father cut him short. "My good Mrs. Ede," said he, turning to the woman, "I believe this young man intended no harm to you and very little to your garden. You are quits with him at any rate. Take this s.h.i.+lling, step inside, and choose him a fair red rose for the price and also in token of your forgiveness, while he picks up his hat which is lying yonder in the dust."

"Hey?" The youth started back, for the first time perceiving the badges in our hats. "Are you too, sirs, of this company of the rose?" His face fell, but with an effort he recovered himself and smiled.

"You are not disappointed, I hope?" inquired my father.

"Why--to tell you the truth, sir--I had looked for a rendezvous of careless jolly fellows. For cavaliers of your quality it never occurred to me to bargain." He held up a flap of his ragged coat and shook it ruefully.

My father frowned. "And I, sir, am disappointed. A moment since I took you for an original; but it appears you share our common English vice of looking at the world like a lackey."

"I, sir?" The young man waved a hand. "I am original? Give me leave to a.s.sure you that this island contains no more servile tradesman. Why, my lord--for I take it I speak to a gentleman of t.i.tle?--"

"Of the very humblest, sir. I am a plain knight bachelor."

The original cringed elaborately, rubbing his hands. "A t.i.tle is a t.i.tle. Well, sir, as I was about to say, I wors.h.i.+p a lord, but my whole soul is bound up in a ledger: and hence (so to speak) these tears: hence the disreputable garb in which you behold me. If I may walk beside you, sir, after this good woman has fetched me the rose-- thank you, madam--and provided me with a pin from the _chevaux de frise_ in her bodice--and again, madam, I thank you: you wear the very cuira.s.s of matronly virtue--I should enjoy, sir, to tell you my history. It is a somewhat curious one."

"I feel sure, sir"--my father bowed to him from the saddle--"it will lose nothing in the telling."

The young man, having fastened the rose in his hat, bade adieu to his late a.s.sailant with a bow; waved a hand to her; lifted his hat a second time; turned after us and, falling into stride by my father's stirrup, forthwith plunged into his story.

THE TRAVELS OF PHINEAS FETT.

"My name, sir, is Phineas Fett--"

He paused. "I don't know how it may strike you: but in my infant ears it ever seemed to forebode something in the Admiralty--a comfortable post, carrying no fame with it, but moderately lucrative.

In wilder flights my fancy has hovered over the Pipe Office (Addison, sir, was a fine writer; though a bit of a prig, between you and me)."

"There was a Phineas Pett, a great s.h.i.+pbuilder for the Navy in King Charles the Second's time. I believe, too, he had a son christened after him, who became a commissioner of the Navy."

"You don't say so! The mere accident of a letter . . . but it proves the accuracy of our childish instincts. A commissioners.h.i.+p--whatever the duties it may carry--would be the very thing, or a storekeepers.h.i.+p, with a number of ledgers: it being understood that s.h.i.+pping formed my background, in what I believe is nautically termed the offing. I know not what exact distance const.i.tutes an offing.

My imagination ever placed it within sight and sufficiently near the scene of my occupation to pervade it with an odour of hemp and tar."

He paused again, glanced up at my father, and--on a nod of encouragement--continued--

"The nuisance is, I was born in the Midlands--to be precise, at West Bromicheham--the son of a well-to-do manufacturer of artificial jewellery. The only whiff of the brine that ever penetrated my father's office came wafted through an off-channel of his trade.

He did an intermittent business in the gilding of small idols, to be s.h.i.+pped overseas and traded as objects of wors.h.i.+p among the negroes of the American plantations. Jewellery, however, was his stand-by.

In the manufacture of meretricious ware he had a plausibility amounting to genius, in the disposing of it a talent for hard bargains; and the two together had landed him in affluence.

Well, sir, being headed off my boyhood's dream by the geographical inconvenience of Warwicks.h.i.+re--for a lad may run away to be a sailor, sir, but the devil take me if ever I heard of one running off to be a supercargo, and even this lay a bit beyond my ambition--I recoiled upon a pa.s.sion to enter my father's business and increase the already tidy patrimonial pile.

"But here comes in the cross of my destiny. My father, sir, had secretly cherished dreams of raising me above his own station.

To him a gentleman--and he ridiculously hoped to make me one--was a fellow above working for his living. He scoffed at my enthusiasm for trade, and at length he sent for me and in tones that brooked no denial commanded me to learn the violin.

"Never shall I forget the chill of heart with which I received that fatal mandate. I have no ear for music, sir. In tenderer years indeed I had made essay upon the Jew's harp, but had relinquished it without a sigh.

"'The violin!' I cried, though the words choked me. 'Father, anything but that! If it were the violoncello, now--'

"But he cut me short in cold incisive accents. 'The violin, or you are no son of mine.'

"I fled from the house, my home no longer. On the way to the front door I had sufficient presence of mind, and no more, to make a _detour_ to the larder and possess myself of the longest joint; which my heated judgment, confusing temporal with linear measurement, commended to me as the most lasting. It proved to be a s.h.i.+n of beef: unnutritious except for soup (and I carried no tureen), useless as an object of barter. With this and two half-crowns in my pocket I slammed the front-door behind me and faced the future."