The Tale of Timber Town Part 34

"What d'you say to a song and dance 'all?"

"'Tain't so bad. But them places, William, I've always noticed, has a tendency to grow immoral. Now, a elderly gent, who's on the down-grade and 'as _'ad_ 'is experiences, don't exactly want _that_. No, I'm dead set on a public. I think that fills the bill completely."

"But we can't _all_ go into the grog business."

"I don't see why. 'Tain't as if we was a regiment of soldiers. There's but four of us."

"Oh, well, the liquor's finished. You can make a git, Garstang. But, if you ask me what I'll do with this pile as soon as it's made, I say I still have a hankerin' after the Crown Heads. They must be most interestin' blokes to talk to: you see, they've had such experience.

I'm dead nuts on Crown Heads."

"And they're dead nuts on the 'eads of the likes of you, William.

Good-night."

"So-long, Garstang. Keep good."

And with those words terminated the gathering of the four greatest rogues who ever were in Timber Town.

CHAPTER XX.

Gold and Roses.

The Pilot's daughter was walking in her garden.

The clematis which shaded the verandah was a rich ma.s.s of purple flowers, where bees sucked their store of honey; the rose bushes, in the glory of their second blooming, scented the air, while about their roots grew ma.s.ses of mignonette.

Along the winding paths the girl walked; a pair of garden scissors in one hand and a basket in the other. She pa.s.sed under a latticed arch over which climbed a luxuriant Cloth of Gold, heavy with innumerable flowers. Standing on tip-toe, with her arms above her head, she cut half-a-dozen yellow buds, which she placed in the basket. Pa.s.sing on, she came to the pink glory of the garden, Maria Pare, a ma.s.s of brown shoots and cl.u.s.ters of opening buds whose colour surpa.s.sed in delicacy the softest tint of the pink sea-sh.e.l.l. Here she culled barely a dozen roses where she might have gathered thirty. "Yellow and pink," she mused. "Now for something bright." She walked along the path till she came to M'sieu Cordier, brilliant with the reddest of blooms. She stole but six of the best, and laid them in the basket. "We want more scent,"

she said. There was La France growing close beside; its great petals, pearly white on the inside and rich cerise without, smelling deliciously. She robbed the bush of only its most perfect flowers, for though there were many buds but few were developed.

Next, she came to the type of her own innocence, The Maiden Blush, whose half-opened buds are the perfect emblem of maidenhood, but whose full-blown flowers are, to put it bluntly, symbolical of her who, in middle life, has developed extravagantly. But here again was no perfume.

The mistress pa.s.sed on to the queen of the garden, La Rosiere, fragrant beyond all other roses, its reflexed, claret-coloured petals soft and velvety, its leaves--when did a rose's greenery fail to be its perfect complement?--tinged underneath with a faint blush of its own deep colour.

She looked at the yellow, red, and pink flowers in her basket, and said, "There's no white." Now white roses are often papery, but there was at least one in the garden worthy of being grouped with the beauties in the basket. It was The Bride, typical, in its snowy chast.i.ty and by reason of a pale green tint at the base of its petals, of that purity and innocence which are the bride's best dowry.

Rose cut a dozen long-stemmed flowers from this lovely bush, and then--whether it was because of the sentiment conveyed by the blooms she had gathered, or the effect of the landscape, is a mystery unsolved--her eyes wandered from the garden to the far-off hills. With the richly-laden basket on her arm, she gazed at the blue haze which hung over mountain and forest. Regardless of her pleasant occupation, forgetful that the fragrant flowers in the basket would wither in the glaring sun, she stood, looking sadly at the landscape, as though in a dream.

What were her thoughts? Perhaps of the glorious work of the Master-Builder; perhaps of the tints and shades where the blue of the forest, the brown of the fern-clad foot-hills, the buff of the sun-dried gra.s.s, mottled the panorama which lay spread before her. But if so, why did she sigh? Does the contour of a hill suffuse the eye? Not a hundred-thousand hills could in themselves cause a sob, not even the gentle sob which amounted to no more than a painful little catch in Rose's creamy throat.

She was standing on the top of the bank, which was surmounted by a white fence; her knee resting on the garden-seat upon which she had placed her basket, whilst in reverie her spirit was carried beyond the blue mountains. But there appeared behind her the bulky form of her father, who walked in carpet slippers upon the gravel of the path.

"Rosebud, my gal." The stentorian tones of the old sailor's voice woke her suddenly from her day-dream. "There's a party in the parlour waitin'

the pleasure of your company, a party mighty anxious for to converse with a clean white woman by way of a change."

The girl quickly took up her flowers.

"Who can it possibly be, father?"

"Come and see, my gal; come and see."

The old fellow went before, and his daughter followed him into the house. There, in the parlour, seated at the table, was Captain Sartoris.

Rose gave way to a little exclamation of surprise and pleasure; and was advancing to greet her visitor, when he arrested her with a gesture of his hand.

"Don't come too nigh, Miss Summerhayes," he said, with mock gravity. "I might ha' got the plague or the yaller fever. A man out o' currantine is to be approached with caution. Jest stand up agin' the sideboard, my dear, and let me look at you." The girl put down her roses, and posed as desired.

"Very pretty," said Sartoris. "Pink-and-white, pure bred, English--which, after being boxed in with a menag'ry o' Chinamen and Malays, is wholesome and rea.s.suring."

"Are you out for good, Captain?"

"They can put me aboard who can catch me, my dear. I'd run into the bush, and live like a savage. I'm not much of a mountaineer, but you would see how I could travel."

"But what was the disease?" asked the Pilot.

"Some sort of special Chinese fever; something bred o' dirt and filth and foulness; a complaint you have to live amongst for weeks, before you'll get it; a kind o' beri-beri or break-bone, which was new to the doctors here. I've been disinfected and fumigated till I couldn't hardly breathe. Races has their special diseases, just the same as they has their special foods: this war'n't an English sickness; all its characteristics were Chinee, and it killed the Captain because he'd lived that long with Chinamen that, I firmly believe, his pigtail had begun to shoot. Furrin crews, furrin crews! Give me the British sailor, an' I'll sail my s.h.i.+p anywhere."

"And run her on the rocks, at the end of the voyage," growled the Pilot.

"I never came ash.o.r.e to argify," retorted the Captain. "But if it comes to a matter of navigation, there _are_ points I could give any man, even pilots."

Seeing that the bone of contention was about to be gnawed by the sea-dogs, Rose interposed with a question.

"Have you just come ash.o.r.e, Captain?"

"In a manner o' speakin' he has," answered her father, who took the words out of his friend's mouth, "and in a manner o' speakin' he hasn't.

You see, my dear, we went for a little preliminary cruise."

"The first thing your father told me was about this here robbery of mails. 'When was that?' I asked. 'On the night of the 8th or early morning of the 9th,' he says. That was when the captain of the barque died. I remembered it well. 'Summerhayes,' I said, 'I have a notion.'

And this is the result, my dear."

From the capacious pocket of his thick pilot-jacket he pulled a brown and charred piece of canvas.

"What's that?" he asked.

"I haven't the least idea," replied Rose.

"Does it look as though it might be a part of a mail-bag?" asked Sartoris. "Look at the sealing-wax sticking to it. Now look at _that_."

He drew from the deep of another pocket a rusty knife.

"It was found near the other," he said. "Its blade was open. And what's that engraved on the name-plate?--your eyes are younger than mine, my dear." The sailor handed the knife to Rose, who read the name, and exclaimed, "B. Tresco!"

"That's what the Pilot made it," said Sartoris. "And it's what I made it. We're all agreed that B. Tresco, whoever he may be, was the owner of that knife. Now this is evidence: that knife was found in conjunction with this here bit of brown canvas, which I take to be part of a mail-bag; and the two of 'em were beside the ashes of a fire, above high water-mark. On a certain night I saw a fire lighted at that spot: that night was the night the skipper of the barque died and the night when the mails were robbed. You see, when things are pieced together it looks bad for B. Tresco."

"I know him quite well," said Rose: "he's the goldsmith. What would he have to do with the delivery of mails?"

"Things have got this far," said the Pilot. "The postal authorities say all the bags weren't delivered on board. They don't accuse anyone of robbery as yet, but they want the names of the boat's crew. These Mr.