Jinny the Carrier

“What are you writing, Will?” said his mother, coming in to sun herself in his holy studies.

“Nothing.” He put his hand over the page of the copy-book, forgetting she could not read it.

“Are you writing to Jinny?” she inquired suspiciously.

“No, no—-it’s Daniel,” he corrected.

“Daniel!” she said in amaze. “About the Sabbath?”

“No, about the horn,” he blurted out petulantly.

“The Horn!” She was wildly excited. “Is it the Little Horn or the Great Horn?”

He was amazed. “Well it began with the little horn——”

Martha was radiant. She poured forth her own theory of the Beast in Daniel, and emboldened by his silent agreement—when his daze changed into comprehension of her misunderstanding—she proceeded to elaborate her interpretation of the two thousand three hundred days of sacrifice. He, meantime, was finally deciding to turn “Daniel” into “Miss” except in the address.

VI

But Will’s letter could not be posted—for many reasons. He possessed neither an envelope to vie with Jinny’s, nor one that was closed with outside devices, nor any sealing-wax to make his letter its own envelope; he could only fold it into a cocked-hat and deliver it himself. Apart from these material reasons, he could not well let Bundock carry an answer, when he had denied there would be any, and he shrank from conducting his affairs under that official inquisition: moreover, haste was imperative if he was to save the girl from that difficult and dangerous journey, for “superscribe” conveyed to him a sense of precipitation, and he saw her cart almost stampeding to Chelmsford. At any moment she might set out in quest of the Great Horn. That was why he abandoned the idea of toiling to Chipstone to emulate her refined writing materials. He must hie to Blackwater Hall that very afternoon and play postman. He would not, of course, enter the house, but would find a way of slipping the letter in.

The surreptitious deed he meditated gave him almost a skulking air as he neared the Common, and he shrank from the observation of all he met, though with the exception of Uncle Lilliwhyte in a corduroy sleeved waistcoat, driving cows with a weed-hook, and an old crone who stopped and muttered with twisted head, he saw only frightened partridges whirring above or rabbits and field-mice scurrying at his feet. Near Blackwater Hall he encountered two of Jinny’s milch-goats tethered, pasturing on the hedgerows, and their bleat had a cynical ring. The Common itself seemed almost to meet the sky, for clouds had gathered as suddenly as the crowd by the Silverlane Pump. He was feeling dispirited as he stole towards the house, but as he caught sight of the stables and barn at the rear, it seemed a happy idea to plant his note in some obtrusive coign. His heart beat like a raw burglar’s as he stood surveying from afar the primitive sheds whose roofs were thatch, whose gates palings, whose sides faggots, and in one of which he could see Methusalem’s head in a trough of oats. The stable-shed would be the surest place, he thought, or perhaps he could pin the note on to the harness he saw hanging in an adjoining shed from nails in the beams. Coming nearer to peer at Methusalem’s manger, he was startled by the sight of a brown smock-frocked figure crouched on the littered, dungy floor and belatedly brushing Methusalem’s fetlocks. Before he could escape he saw the wizened, snow-bearded, horn-spectacled face turned up at him, and heard himself recognized in a weakened but unmistakable voice.

“Why, bless my soul! Ef that bain’t little Willie Flynt!”

Daniel Quarles rose and straightened himself to his full height, but nothing in Little Bradmarsh had seemed to Will so pitifully shrunken. “Little” Willie Flynt indeed towered over the patriarch who had once seemed Herculean to him. Yet if the robustiousness that the old carrier had preserved in his eighties had vanished at last, there was still fire in his eye and a fang or two in his mouth.

“Hope you are well, Mr. Quarles,” said Will, recovering from the double shock of discovering and being discovered.

“No, you don’t, my lad,” piped the Gaffer. “Did, you’d a come sooner, seein’ as Time is gettin’ away from me.”

“Did Jin—did your granddaughter tell you I was back?”

“She ain’t scarcely told me nawthen else.”

Will’s cheeks burned.

“You ain’t come back improved, says she.”

Will’s flush grew redder.

“But Oi don’t agree with her—you’ve growed like a prize marrow. Come into the house and she shall make you a dish o’ tay—Oi don’t drink it myself, bein’ as Oi promised John Wesley.”

“No, thank you—I’d rather talk where we are.”

“Well, Oi can’t inwoite you in here—’tis too mucky.” He gave Methusalem’s tail a final flick with the brush. “And it’s blowin’ up for rine. We’ll goo into the barn.” And he led the way imperiously round by a great and ramifying apple-tree that hid a little black door secured by a padlock and infinite knots of string.

“One has to be witty,” he commented, patiently undoing the complications, “with so many thieves about to steal my dole hay.”

Will had not heard of these thieves, and thought Little Bradmarsh must be changed indeed, but he waited silently, wondering what to do with his note. And as he stood thus, there came from the cottage the sound of a girl’s singing. Fortunately it was not satirical, so Will could hear it with pleasure:

“Always jolly, my little mavis,” said the patriarch, fumbling on, and, unable to resist the infection, his sepulchral bass voice took up the Carters’ Chorus:

“Oi wouldn’t unlock the barn,” he broke off to explain as the door swung open, “ef Oi hadn’t such good company.” He stood peering suspiciously into the tall raftered and beamed glooms; redolent of old hay and punctuated with a few cobwebbed and rusty instruments amid the endless litter. Will’s eye was fascinated by an old wine-barrel flanked by a chaff-cutter and a turnip-cutter and covered with boards and weights. He divined it held corn and was thus closed against rats, and a whiff of aniseed came up in memory, and in a flash he saw the faces of Tony Flip and the Deacon—and himself flying after a carrier’s cart.

“They’ve stole my flail,” cried the Gaffer.

“Why, there it is, under that straw,” said Will.

“Oh, ay. But there was more logs, Oi’ll goo bail. Drat ’em, can’t they chop for theirselves? It’ll be that Uncle Lilliwhyte.”

“Oh, but he’s only too honest,” said Will incautiously.

“There ain’t nobody honest,” barked the Gaffer.

“But he sent me an adder——” he began.

“Not he. ’Twas Jinny told him to send the adder. He’d ha’ kept your sixpence and let you whistle for your sarpint. But next time you want an adder, you come to me.”

“Do you sell ’em too?” he murmured, surprised.

“Oi be an adder!”

“What do you mean?”

His spectacles glowed strangely. “Read your Bible, young man—Dan is an adder in the path, what biteth the horse’s heels, so that the rider should fall backwards—that’s the blessing of Jacob—and let no man try to ride roughshod over the likes o’ me.”

Will shrank back before the passion of his words. Indeed in that gloomy old barn he began to feel a bit nervous.

“I’ve brought a note for Jinny,” he said hastily. “Will you give it to her?”

The old man took the cocked-hat. “Mr. Daniel Quarles!” he read slowly. “But it’s for me!”

Will’s blush was now papaverous. “No—no!” he stammered. It was a conjuncture he had not foreseen.

The fire in the old eye leapt up at the contradiction, shot through the spectacles. “Plain as a pikestaff—Mr. Daniel Quarles! And then you has the imperence to say there ain’t no thieves. But ye can’t bamboozle me. Oi could read afore you could woipe your nose with a muckinger, ay, and my feyther afore me. Carriers ha’ we been for over a hundred year, and my big brother Sidrach he had his own pack-horses loaded up with waluable stuff and writ me a piece ten year ago come haysel, sayin’ as he hoped Oi should jarney to see him, and please God Oi will, he gittin’ old.”

“But where is he?” asked Will, glad that the Gaffer’s monologue had drifted from its angry beginning.

“In Babylon!”

“Babylon?” gasped Will, whose recent theological excursions had made him almost at home in that purpureal city.

“That’s my nickname for Che’msford, chuck-full o’ lewdness and Church-folk. But Oi’ve been meanin’ to goo and look Sidrach up and hear all about his travels, he bein’ a rare one for adwentures, but somehow what with my carryin’ work and one thing and the tother my days fly by—like the Book says—swifter than a weaver’s shuttle. Happen lucky, though, Oi’ll git over there to-year.”

“I hope so,” murmured Will vaguely.

“No you don’t, drat you!” said the veteran with sudden viciousness. “Tain’t your care whether Oi ever clap eyes on my beloved brother agen. A ’nation cowld day it was he had to goo away—the Brad all ice and they should be tellin’ of the Che’msford coach as come in without the driver, and he fallen down on the road, frozen stiff as a sparrow.”

“What year was that?” asked Will, to keep the conversation on this more agreeable level.

“It was the year my brother Sidrach went away,” said Daniel Quarles simply. “ ’Nation cowld. We heerd that in Lunnon the river was as froze as ourn, and flue-full o’ sports—booths and turnabouts and pigs roasted whole, and great crowds to see a young bear baited. But feyther’s cart went to and fro Chipstone just the same, and brought the news as how a woman was burned at Newgate for coinin’—it dedn’t seem wery dreadful in that weather. Waterloo year that was another cowld winter—all the marsh ditches was solid ice, and all the eels was found dead and frozen. Couldn’t eat ’em neither, not after the first day, they stank so. That numb was my fingers Oi could scarce howld the reins, and you’d ha’ thought by my breath Oi was a wicked smoker. But ’twas wunnerful times, and we heaped up a deadly great pile o’ fagots and bushes for the beacon, top o’ yonder rise where ye see Beacon Hill Farm.”

“Ah, the bonfire to celebrate the victory!” said Will, rejoiced to find irascibility cooled into reminiscence.

“Wictory! That was the name o’ Nelson’s ship as that silly old Dap should say he sarved in. Nay, this was but a bonfire to be lit when Bony landed. All along Blackwater we was ready for the inwasion, and when the beacon was fired, that was to be the signal. The soldiers was to goo to the coast and the ciwilians inland. But Bony never come, and ’twas a great waste. And Sidrach never come neither. ’Nation cowld the day he went away—Oi moind me gooin’ through a foot o’ snow across Chipstone poor-piece to the Church to see the Knight Templar what was dug up in the north aisle, pickled inside three coffins, but they’d put him back in the outer lead time Oi arrived. They should say it was a sort o’ mushroom ketchup as kept him together for the Resurrection Day—a bit blackish, but wellnigh as sound and good-lookin’ as you.”

It was a compliment that made the young man shudder again.

“Ah, there is the rain!” he exclaimed, with relief at the hearty patter on the apple-tree.

But the old man would not be fobbed off so enjoyable a topic. “Three coffins—lead, ellum, and a shell—’twas a witty way agin them body-snatchers—you ain’t safe agin thieves even in your tomb. And when you’re above ground they tries to steal your wery letters.” He pulled open the note.

“It’s merely addressed to you as head of the business,” Will explained.

“Ay, that Oi be, though the youngest. He that is last shall be fust, says the Book, ay, and the Law too, though ’twasn’t fair to Sidrach to my thinkin’, bein’ agin nature. And next time a letter comes for me, do ye don’t bring it and play your tricks, but let it come natural through Bundock’s grandson. What’s this? ‘Mr. William Flynt thanks Miss Quarles for her esteemed epistle.’ And who is Miss Quarles, and what’s she been writin’ to you?”

“About—about business,” said Will.

“There ain’t no Miss Quarles in the business,” said the old man testily. “That be my business, and Oi lets Jinny amuse herself jauntin’ to and fro, pore gal, she bein’ that lonely on the Common and afeared o’ dangerous charriters. Rare mistakes, she makes, bein’ onny a gal, and costs me a pritty penny. But it ’ud cost me more ef Oi dedn’t stop at home and guard the house from thieves. And now she wastes more o’ my hard-earned dubs writin’ to you as is a neighbour—drat the child, ain’t that got a tongue? ‘A suitable horn?’ Dash my buttons! What do you be wantin’ with a horn—you bain’t a guard or a postman, be you?”

“No, but——!” he stammered. The explanation was not simple.

“ ‘Oi beseech you, however, not to superscroibe to Che’msford’ . . . ‘the righteous man regardeth his beast.’ Dang your imperence! Why shouldn’t Oi goo to Che’msford? Oi ain’t seen him these sixty year, and do ye don’t come interferin’ ’twixt brothers. Sidrach writ me a piece ten years agoo come haysel, arxin’ me to superscroibe to Che’msford, and Oi’ll not be put off by the likes o’ you. You look here, my lad, ef you’re come home to meddle or make, the sooner you goos furrin agen, the better.”

“But it’s not you—it’s Miss Quarles I don’t like journeying to Chelmsford. Look at the P.S.”

It was imprudent counsel, for, as the Gaffer followed it, his face became a black cloud, the fire in his eye was lightning, the odd fangs in his mouth showed like tigers’ tusks, and his beard seemed like a tempestuous besom sweeping all before it.

“ ‘Lewdness and abominations.’ You call my Jinny a Jezebel! Git out o’ my house!”

“I’m only in your barn,” Will reminded him, “and it’s raining, and you just said yourself that Chelmsford is a Babylon chock-full of abominations. And you’d let a young girl superscribe there all alone!”

“Jinny shall superscroibe where she pleases!” roared the Gaffer. “For over a hundred year the Quarleses have superscroibed in foul weather or foine, with none to say ’em nay, and it ain’t for a looker’s son to come here dictatin’.”

“I didn’t dictate,” said Will, with a fleeting schoolboy memory. “I wrote it with my own hand. Look here, Mr. Quarles,” he went on, trying another tack, “you’re a sensible old gent with great experience of the world, and it makes me frightened to see that grandchild of yours gadding about so far from home, and sometimes not getting back here till dark.”

“That ain’t timorsome—onny when she’s alone here,” he added cunningly.

“Maybe, but with such a pretty girl——!”

“Ay, she’s like a little bird with her little fitten—and allus singin’ like one too—all the day that goos about singin’, ‘Fol de rol——’ ”

“Yes, yes,” said Will, wincing.

“And Oi’d best tear up your letter—she don’t want to read about lewdness and abomination except in the Howly Book. And Oi count she has enough o’ that on Sunday with you Peculiars.”

“It is better she should read about it than scutter about seeing it. A cart ain’t a suitable place for a girl.”

“A cart’s as suitable for Jinny as a horn for you,” retorted the old man, bridling up again. “Oi suspicion you’re plottin’ to steal her away from me.”

“What!” Will’s cheeks burned with indignation.

“And Oi count you’ve got your eye on the cart too, like you bolted off to Harwich with your feyther’s wagon. There won’t be naught left for me but the poorhouse. But Oi’d die sooner.” He was almost blubbering now with self-pity.

“Oi saved a mort o’ money once,” he said, “though it took a deadly time scrapin’ the dubs together, what with the expense o’ dinner at “The Black Sheep” and the hoss’s feed—fower parcels or fowerty, Oi never stinted him o’ his peck o’ chaff, and three and a half pound o’ oats and the same o’ ground beans, and there’s folks as grumble to pay accordin’ to the soize and compass o’ the parcel, though there’s nights your hoss goos so lame and you’re that pierced with wind and snow you got to knock up a farm and borry a hoss to git home with, and them days it was the barges took away custom. Old Bidlake used to goo along canals and cricks as ain’t there no longer, thank the Lord, bein’ as they sea-walls have made a many willages high and droy. But Oi had to pay all my savin’s away to keep our name from disgrace, so as Emma should howd up her head in Kingdom Come. He hadn’t the bed he died in, for all his traipsin’ around in Tommy Devils; but time Oi went down to git Jinny, Oi made inquirations among the tradespeople and paid ’em to the last farden, aldoe soon as my back was turned, my own sister plots with her one-eyed little ship’s monkey to pay for a stone, as ef Oi’d neglected my own darter, and all spiled with wicked words—did you ever see such words in a Christian churchyard?”

“No, of course not,” soothingly murmured Will, to whom the long rigmarole conveyed nothing except: a sense of pathetic and loquacious senility.

“Ha!” said the Gaffer with satisfaction. “Oi says to Dap, says Oi, ‘A Churchman like you may not see the blarsphemy, but think what John Wesley would ha’ said to it.’ ‘Sir,’ Oi says to the old gentleman, ‘you jump into my cart,’ says Oi, ‘and not a sowl here shall harm a hair o’ your wig’; and with that Oi wheeled round my whip, and bein’ then an able-bodied young man (’twas the wery fust year arter feyther died), them as was throwin’ stones and cryin’ ‘Knock his brines out’ slunk away like blackbeadles, which was a pity, seein’ as they missed the be-yutiful words he preached from my cart. From Chipstone to Che’msford Oi carried him—a dogged piece out o’ my way, bein’ as he wanted to preach there and his own hoss had gone lame—’twas the wile o’ that great old murderer, Satan, says he, but the Almoighty sent you to confound his knavish tricks. That was a man of God, my lad, never out of heart, roighteous and bold as a lion, would preach even in front of a gin-shop where ’twas writ up: ‘Drunk a penny, dead-drunk twopence, clean straw for nawthen.’ Pounded glass mixed with mud the sons of Bellal threw in his face, but his eye-soight was not dimmed, nor his nat’ral force abated. Used to preach as much as foive times a day, gittin’ up at fower o’ the clock, and travellin’ a bigger round than me, but wunnerful healthy, slept like a baby in my cart, and that saintly he said all his life he’d never done naught as ’ud bear lookin’ at. He made me sing a hume with him and we was singin’ it as we come into Babylon:

As the sepulchral bass quavered out the tune, Jinny’s fresh voice could be heard from the back door calling “Gran’fer! Gran’fer! Where are you?”

“She thinks Oi’m out in the rine,” chuckled the old man, “but let her come and find me. His blessin’ he gave me at partin’, did John Wesley, and do ye don’t never smoke nor drink that pison stuff, tay, says he. ‘Oi’ll promise ye tay and gin too,’ says Oi, bein’ as Oi liked beer best. ‘But to give up baccy, that’s main hard,’ Oi says. ‘There’s harder,’ says he, lightning-like. ‘Promise me as ye won’t be friends with a woman as is younger than your wife, for there’s unhowly sperrits about,’ says he, ‘as brings gales and earthquakes and tempitations, and the best o’ men may git capsoized same as the Royal George, our best ship, t’other year.’ Lord, that fair capsoized me, for how could this furrin ole gen’leman in his eighties know about Annie, as wasn’t seventeen yet for all her wunnerful fine buzzom, and the missus older than me, in looks Oi mean, bein’ as she was two years younger the fust time that worritin’ census paper come along.”

“When was that?”

“That would be the year Oi put new thatch on this wery barn for the new century.”

“And what year did you meet John Wesley?”

“Ye’d best git Jinny to work that out. But it couldn’t be many year afore the Jew Mendoza boxed Dick Humphreys for the Championship, for Oi wouldn’t goo, ne yet bet on it, bein’ as my sowl was saved, and when Oi lifted up my woice at the camp-meetin’s and chapels in praise and repentance and shouted ‘Glory! Glory!’ dancin’-like, with the tears for my sins runnin’ down my cheeks, that was more joy to me than Annie and the prize-ring and cock-foightin’ rolled into one. And Oi ain’t never backslided, praise the Lord, bein’ as Annie married a sedan-chair man and was hiked away to Cowchester, and Oi hope for your immortal sowl’s sake, my lad, you bain’t like what Oi was at your age.”

“I hope so,” said Will, not without uneasiness.

The patriarch shook his head. “There’s the old Adam in you, plain to discern. Ye won’t be safe till ye’re married. But do ye don’t marry an old gander of a widow like that potboy they should be tellin’ of,”—he began to cackle—“that’ll onny lead to wuss mischief. Wait till you happen on a clean little lass, rosy and untapped.”

“A girl like your granddaughter, you mean?” Will heard himself saying.

The cackle ceased abruptly and the grin was replaced by a glare. “That ain’t gooin’ to be married! That’s got to goo out with my cart, whenever Oi’m too busy workin’. Ef a rich man like Farmer Gale as drives her to chapel Sundays should be wantin’ her all the week, Oi don’t say Oi wouldn’t goo with her to the big house, but that ain’t likely, and she can’t have nawthen to say to a rollin’ stone as mebbe left a pack o’ wives among they Mormons.”

Will was nettled. “And who asked for your granddaughter?” he retorted. “Besides, you’re quite right. I married dozens of wives in America—all widows too!”

The veteran chuckled afresh. “Dash my buttons! How you do mind me o’ your feyther when he was your age—always had his little joke. Not that Oi count him growed up yet, he havin’ never cut his wisdom teeth, but gooin’ off as skittish as a colt arter peculiar doctrines and seducin’ sperrits.”

“Oh, there you are, Gran’fer!” And pat as to a cue a most “seducin’ sperrit” flashed, like a shaft of sunshine, through the half-open door into the gloomy old barn. But she was aproned and bare-armed to the elbow, and rain-spotted, and a ringlet of hair was blown almost across her mouth, and the instant she perceived Will, she drew back in confusion, patting her hair tidy.

“Sorry, Gran’fer. I didn’t know you had visitors.”

But Will, to whom the sense she conveyed of brooms and dusters was sweetly reassuring of a still unsubmerged femininity, cried out as hastily:

“No, I was just going. You’ll get drowned.”

And he tried to pass her.

But the old man dramatically extended the uncocked hat.

“Howd hard, sonny.”

Will, disconcerted, found his feet sticking to the floor.

“He’s writ me a letter, imperent little Willie, and brought it hisself.” Then a flash of amusement toned down the asperity. “Aldoe he had his tongue with him!” And the old man chuckled.

“Shall I read it?” murmured Jinny, putting forth her hand.

“Nay, nay!” He snatched the note back and tore it into careful pieces. “Ain’t fit to be seen.”

“No more am I,” said Jinny with an uneasy laugh, and again she essayed to escape.

“Stop!” commanded the ancient, kindled afresh. “Willie’s got to tell you what’s in they scraps.”

Will was silent.

“Don’t stand gawmin’. Out with the abomination.”

But no sound issued from the young man’s lips. It was not merely that this new housemaidenly figure seemed safe enough even in Chelmsford, wrapped in its own sweet domesticity, and that adjurations designed for the minx bade fair to blunt themselves against this sober angelhood; but that the girl’s radiance against the littered gloom within and the rainfall without, robbed him literally of breath.

“Speak out, Willie!” said the Gaffer, softened to contempt by his obvious confusion.

“Perhaps he hasn’t brought his tongue,” suggested Jinny, recovering herself.

“Then Oi’ll lend him mine. You ain’t to goo to Che’msford, he says.”

“But I don’t want to go to Chelmsford, Gran’fer. Why should I go to Chelmsford?”

“To get his horn, you baggage. And he don’t be wantin’ it.”

“Oh, but he ordered it—it’s too late now.”

“Ay,” said Daniel Quarles, “and goo you shall to git it ef the adder has to bite Methusalem’s heels.”

“But I don’t have to go to Chelmsford for it!”

“You said you’d go to Chelmsford,” burst out Will at last.

“Nothing of the sort.”

“But I’ve got your letter!” He pulled it out, and again that awkward glove fell out. “Ah, there’s your glove I’ve found on the road,” he said, crimsoning furiously.

“Thank you!” She took both letter and glove placidly. “Now I shall have two pairs! But where do I say anything about going to Chelmsford?”

Thus invited, he came and looked down at the paper she held, and gripped an end of it himself, very conscious of her near fingers, and her bared arm, and her bending head. He was about to cry: “Why, there!” when a horrible doubt lest “superscribe” did not mean dashing away, or stampeding, or scurrying, or driving, or even going, checked the exclamation.

“I must ha’ misread it,” he said. “I beg your pardon.”

“Spoken like a Christian!” said the Gaffer. “And Oi count John Wesley ’ud a said let bygones be bygones. Sow bring out the beer, Jinny.”

“Thank you—I’m afraid I can’t stay,” said Will. He had a sullen sense of defeat, which the loss of the glove seemed to accentuate and symbolize. “My folks’ll expect me home to tea.”

“Your Mormon wives? Ay, Jinny, you may well blush,” the Gaffer chuckled. “Willie’s been and married a pack o’ widows in America.”

“And left them there!” said Will, permitting himself a faint smile.

“Left all those widows!” laughed Jinny. “How deadly dead you must be!”

But despite the merriment in which the episode had so unexpectedly ended, and despite the rain which had now grown torrential, he tore himself obstinately away, even refusing the “umberella” which the old man suggested and Jinny offered to fetch; though as he stepped under the plashing apple-boughs, he felt himself doubly foolish to refuse what would have been a literal handle for a return visit. And now that he had caught a glimpse of what he told himself was the real Jinny, not the Tuesday and Friday swashbuckler, but the Saturday-cleaning-up-for-Sunday house-angel, he did not despair of inducing her to shed these husks of bravado. But he had said “no,” and “no” to his great annoyance it must be.

“When do you propose to superscribe?” he asked with crafty lightness, as he raised his hat.

“Oh, but I have superscribed,” said Jinny. “But of course if it doesn’t come soon, I shall write over to Chelmsford again.”

VII

The first Sunday of Will’s home-coming, nothing had been said about chapel. That, his elders thought, might be still a sore subject with the boy whose resentment at sacrificing his buttons on the altar had driven him “furrin.” Still more delicate was the theological position into which the couple themselves had gradually drifted, and of which they now—before a spectator and critic—grew uneasily conscious. Martha’s Ecclesia in Long Bradmarsh having collapsed almost as soon as she had been converted to it, she had no meeting-house to go to, and, almost simultaneously, Caleb, whose farm-wagons had recently been shifted to the new “looker’s” headquarters, ceased to attend his Chipstone Chapel. This was partly to keep his wife company of a Sunday, partly because so many miles there and back was getting too much for his legs. In consequence the pair had arrived by compromise at a Sunday ritual of their own, a sort of Peculiar Christadelphianism, and Uncle Lilliwhyte, who never entered any of the many houses of God—it was popularly supposed he would not or could not remove his gay-stringed beaver—would often loiter outside Frog Farm in Church hours, listening to their loudly trolled and hybrid hymnology in a sort of pious eavesdropping. That was Uncle Lilliwhyte’s individual contribution to the chaos of creeds that reigned in Bradmarsh.

But even this minimum of religion was denied the honest snake-seller when Will returned. The first Sunday, Caleb and Martha held their services furtively in their hermetically sealed bedroom, hardly daring to hum what they had so lustily intoned: by a common instinct they shrank from obtruding their departure from that straitness of doctrine in which Will had been reared. They were indeed secretly relieved that he made no reference to religion, nor seemed to expect them to go to the old chapel, nor even noted the Sundayness of the dishes that Martha served up with the same careful everyday air with which Caleb consumed them. They were equally relieved, however, that he did not go out rabbiting on the holy day with his new pet ferrets. “Oi’ve known some as dedn’t consider that work,” said Caleb, as they discussed this dread possibility. “But to my thinkin’, if ye goo out with a spade, ye might as well be ploughin’.”

That was what they said in bed on the first Saturday night. Very different was their conversation on the eve of the next Sunday. The problems all came now from Will’s over-interest in religion. True, the Sabbatarian peril had not yet materialized: he had neither worn his best clothes on the Saturday nor demanded priority in the Sabbath dishes. But he had dropped more than one perturbing remark. Old Quarles, he supposed, was now too old to worship at his Wesleyan Chapel in Long Bradmarsh, to which Caleb had replied naïvely: “Ay, he sleeps at home Sunday mornings.” Presumably, then, Jinny would not leave the old man alone on Sunday as well as on Tuesday and Friday: to which Caleb had answered cautiously—and without admitting that his observations were not up to date—that doubtless Jinny could only worship occasionally with the Peculiars and it depended on her getting a lift, Methusalem being a strict Sunday observer. Yes, he had heard Farmer Gale sometimes gave her a lift—who had told Willie? he wondered—but he supposed it was because the farmer, like her grandfather, was a Wesleyan. Later, Will had remarked casually to his mother that he didn’t suppose Miss Quarles would be able to get to chapel on the morrow, as he had happened on her old grandfather, who seemed quite breaking up. Martha, murmuring sympathetically that Mr. Quarles must be getting old, was likewise compelled to gloss over her inacquaintance with Jinny’s latest Sunday habits: she shocked and surprised herself by remarking that one’s grandfather would hardly count against Farmer Gale, and hastened to add—especially as Will seemed shocked too—that such was Jinny’s devotion to her grandfather that not for some years had she been able to stay longer than the Morning Service. Rejoiced though the old woman was at Will’s mingled concern for the religion of the young and the weal of the old, she was a little uneasy at this personal turn of his theological thinking, and she quickly changed the conversation to the Great Horn and the Beast, a discussion which in her eagerness she hardly noticed was practically a monologue.

By nightfall that Saturday Caleb had gathered, with a sinking of the heart, that Will designed to accompany his elders on the morrow—and to Early Service! The boy had apparently failed to remark the breach in the old chapel routine the previous Sabbath: the Sunday had been hushed up only too successfully. It was as far as Caleb dared go, in the first plunge of confession, to say that, in the absence of a vehicle, Early Service at Chipstone was out of the question nowadays.

Such was the situation that faced the old couple in the sleepless watches of the second Saturday night, and dimmed even Martha’s joy in the prodigal’s return to religion.

“Best go with him, like when he was little,” she decided. “We mustn’t unsettle him so soon, now he’s found God again.”

“Ain’t so sure he’s found God,” said Caleb shrewdly. “God ain’t in a goose-quill, and writin’ a piece about Daniel ain’t the road to heaven, else where would me and most o’ the Brethren be? To my thinkin’ Will’s onny lost the Devil.”

“It’s the same thing. What else does he want to go to chapel for, and Early Service at that?”

“To make trouble,” said Caleb fretfully. “We was all so happy till he come—and you had Maria.”

“Oh, Caleb, you don’t deserve the Lord should give him back to you! And if you don’t go to-morrow, I’ll withdraw from you.”

“That ain’t right,” said poor Caleb, puzzled by the unscrupulous threat. “But ef it’s onny for Morning Sarvice he’ll expect you to goo too.”

“He knows about my rheumatics, dear heart,” she said casuistically. “He knows I couldn’t walk even to get my bonnet cleaned.”

“But ef you were to tell him about the New Jerusalem——?”

“He’d best find that himself, now he’s on the way. It’s not far from Daniel.”

VIII

Thus it was that Uncle Lilliwhyte was again defrauded of his ritual and that after a still more furtive and still earlier service in the sanctity of their airless bedroom, with hymns muted and prayers guiltily whispered, the couple appeared at an eight o’clock breakfast with an air of devotions unpaid, and Caleb, hurrying the meal, remarked that ’twas time to get ready for chapel or they would miss even the Morning Service.

At this, Will, who was in his fashionable London jacket—to the admiring awe of his elders—sprang up, and rushing to the back of the house near the water-barrel, brushed away hastily at a dull speck on his boot where a spurt from the boiling kettle had blotted out the shine he had so laboriously imparted. The male ferret, caged just above his stooping head, awoke at the agitation, and started rubbing itself under the neck as if in parody, but far more swiftly and persistently; then it jerked its nose and its thin whiskers through the wires.

“Not to-day,” laughed Will, jabbing its nose with the blacking-brush. He felt very gentlemanly and happy, for the brief rain of the evening before had dried up, and the day was as fine as his clothes. As Caleb came out in quest of Will, the ferret was just snuggling back to slumber, and the old man, yawning with the loss of his Sunday morning sleep, looked enviously at the creature coiling itself so voluptuously in its straw.

“Lucky Jinny brought me sech a noice Sunday neckercher,” he said, “or Oi’d ha’ been ashamed to walk with ye. Ye look like our Member o’ Parlyment.” He himself looked, however, a respectable figure enough in his tall hat and finely stitched and patterned Sunday smock, his high-lows and gaiters, and it was not till they were getting over the stile that led to the short cut through the Green Lane that Will observed that his senior carried, like a tramp, a bundle in his handkerchief.

“What’s that?” he inquired fretfully, becoming aware too that the Green Lane, even at its best, offered perils to his boot-polish.

“That’s my hume-book and our dinner and tea. There’s two packets for each on us, and we must be home for supper. Don’t, your poor mother will be lonely.”

Will had forgotten these meals: they had, in his boyhood, been carried decorously in the wagon. But the sunshine of the mid-May morning did not permit ill-humours, and they strode happily along the dappled by-ways, bounding over the shrunken sloughs, the son uplifted even beyond boot-polish by the intoxication of the Spring, and the father by the intoxication of the Spirit. For, the moment Caleb had crossed the stile, the old rapture of fellow-worship had returned, and the absence of Martha seemed to lift the shadow of her criticism; while doubts of his son’s regeneration could hardly survive the sight of his springy step chapelwards.

Will was indeed living over again his childish memories of these Sunday journeys, and, somewhat to his surprise, something fresh and delicious seemed to emanate from them. It had after all been a pleasant change in the weekly round, this family jaunt with the big double-lidded provision basket, while the congregational picnicking in the chapel had not been without its jollity.

But Caleb did not leave him long to his memories. The old Peculiar was anxious to have a problem solved that had been weighing upon him these two years. In the New Jerusalem, whose descent to earth—ready-made and complete—was, according to Martha, imminent, to the impending confusion of disbelievers, there was to be “A street of pure gold, as it were transparent glass.” Martha—as if to immunize him against his visit to the old Peculiar Meeting-house—had read out the text that very morning at their surreptitious service. And his ear had always heard “brass” instead of “glass.” But how could gold be brass or either transparent? He did not like to shock her by questioning the letter of a text—his differences from her turned merely on the relative importance and significance of her texts as compared with those he had picked up from the Peculiars. Yet this puzzle was perhaps what really prevented him making the final plunge into Christadelphianism. It is true he might have demanded her solution of it—often through those long months of controversy as he looked at her saintly face so quiet on the pillow beside him, it was borne in upon him that in that bookish brain, under that frilled cotton nightcap, lay the explanation of the holy mystery. But possibly, with the subterranean obstinacy of the peasant, he shrank from an elucidation which might have left him irremediably at her mercy. A vindication of the text by Will, on the other hand, would give him time to turn round, take his new bearings. And a young man who was capable of composing a thesis upon the Little Horn and the Great Horn, could surely wrestle with this mystery.

“Oi hear you writ a piece about Daniel,” he began tactfully, as they crossed the bridge.

Will frowned. He had forgotten Martha’s misunderstanding. “Has he been round telling you?” he asked angrily.

“Me!” Caleb stared. “Oi bain’t howly enough for wisions.”

Will was puzzled in his turn. “You mean he can’t walk so far!”

“Oi wouldn’t say that: happen he can fly if he wants to.”

“Fly!”

“Surely! A man so howly in his life—him what——”

Dead! So suddenly! Will stood still. This altered many things. The winged image of the Gaffer faded before the picture of a lonely Jinny. “When did he die?”

“You know that better than me,” said Caleb meekly.

At this the thought that his “epistle” had over-excited the patriarch and stilled that aged heart, shot up, agitating the young man. That was why relief mingled with a vague disappointment when Caleb went on: “They lions couldn’t kill him, but Oi reckon he had to die some time. But many of them what sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, he tells us, and maybe”—he added with a flash—“they’ll wake up in that golden city.”

Will grunted a vague “Maybe.”

“Touching that there city,” said Caleb, “the gold of the street thereof will be transparent.”

“I know,” murmured Will, suppressing a yawn.

He knew! And the contradiction did not strike him! Instantly, as by another flash, the text solved itself in the old man’s mind—gold in those millennial days, while it retained its sacred splendour would also lose its gross opaqueness, becoming rarefied, disembodied, spiritualized, so that gold was as brass since both were like glass, making thus a harmony of light with the jasper wall, clear as crystal, and the twelve giant pearls of the gates.

“It’ll be a pritty sight!” he mused aloud.

“Yes, like the Crystal Palace,” sneered Will.

“You seen that?” asked Caleb eagerly.

“A man couldn’t be in London and escape seeing it,” said Will. “Every cad drags you into his omnibus bound for Hyde Park. Such a crowd!”

“Yes, the chimney-sweep got his pocket picked, Bundock’s buoy-oy was a-tellin’,” said Caleb, “but the streets thereof, be they of gold?”

“The streets of London?” said Will, smiling.

“Noa, the streets of the Crystal City?”

“No, of course not, father.”

“Then they can’t be brass neither?”

“More like grass,” Will laughed. “For there’s real trees left standing inside.”

Caleb joined in the boy’s laugh. Though he had never really believed that the Crystal Palace represented the Millennial City, it was well to have the danger finally cleared away. And, abandoning the gold-brass puzzle, his mind flew back illogically but passionately to his Peculiar Brethren and the joy of the awaiting ritual.

“Ah, here’s Plashy Hall!” said Will. “And the dog seems having his Sunday nap.” He threw open the white gate marked “No thoroughfare!”

“But that’s closed.”

“Closed!” said Will in fiery accents. “I shan’t even close it after us.”

“I count they won’t mind you in your Parlyment coat, but——”

“Go along, dad.” And Will pushed the old man into Plashy Walk and strode forward like a village Hampden. Within a minute he missed Caleb, and looking back, saw him hurrying back from the gate.

“Must allus shut ga-aites!” he apologized with his rising accent.

“I’ll burn it next time,” said Will. “Why, this saves us a mile.”

“But we’ll miss the Early Sarvicers,” complained Caleb. “You’ve forgot how they walk out to meet the Brethren, what come footin’ it from afar, and have an extry sarvice at a half-way house back o’ Long Bradmarsh.”

“Surely the regular services will be enough.”

“But ’tis noice to git an extry snack,” said Caleb wistfully. “Many’s the Sunday Oi’ve had foive sarvices.” He sighed voluptuously.

“Well, better luck next time,” said Will lightly.

The tone was not unkindly, but Caleb took it in full earnest, and his long secret grievance against Martha began to ooze into speech under the spell of his son’s sympathy. Her warning against unsettling the boy was forgotten in this natural gravitation of male to male against female fantasy.

“Yes,” he said, “I’ve allus been fast and faithful all along. ’Tis mother that’s allus gooin’ forrard. And woundily wilful—Oi never met nobody loike her, barrin’ old Quarles. When we married we was both Sprinklers, but scarcely had we got six childer afore she says she must be baptoized. Wait till the summer, says Oi, for ’twas a black Feb’ary. But no—sow headlong is her natur’ they had to break the ice. She give a deep soigh when the water took her—it a’most unhinged me. But she would have it she felt sow happy and contented. She drilled me hard to make me take the total immersion too—’nation obstinate is mother, but Oi’ve allus stood out stubborn for the Truth. Fast and faithful,” he repeated, as if to reassure himself.

“Well, but you changed too!” Will reminded him less kindly. “You weren’t born a Faith-Healer.”

“That ain’t my fault, bein’ as the truth wasn’t found out in my young days, though they warses o’ Jeames was there all the time. But the fust day Oi met the Brethren Oi knowed they were the people for me. There was one on ’em among my own labourers. When Oi said as we didn’t know ’zactly what God was, he said, says he: ‘God’s like you and me, bein’ as He made man in His own image.’ That was an eye-opener to me. But the others parsecuted him and called him Brother Jerusalem as a rewoilin’ word. He had a fork to pitch a high load—cost foive shillin’s, fancy what a good fork that must ha’ been—and they went and broke it. Oi was grieved, but naught grieved him except to grieve the Lord. He dedn’t drink neither, and you look so odd if you don’t drink. But when they wanted to stand treat, he said he’d take bread and cheese. ‘Goo to hell,’ says they. ‘There ain’t no hell, even for you,’ he answers soft; ‘you’ll be in the same darkness as now, that’s all.’ That was another eye-opener. Oi was taken with that hell—not bright and burnin’, but all black and cowld—so Oi came out o’ my darkness and jined the Brethren, and gave up beer, barrin’ harvest-time, which rejoiced mother and was money saved for the childer. Be-yu-tiful things were brought to pass and be-yu-tiful things were said the day Oi went to my fust sarvice, and ef the Lord is with you to-day when you speak o’ your experiences, Oi count be-yu-tiful things will be brought out agen.”

Will shuddered. He stopped abruptly and was nigh turning back. He had forgotten that the Brethren would expect his soul-experiences and confessions—especially after this spacious and adventurous interval.

“What’s-a-matter?” asked Caleb.

“Nothing, nothing,” he said, remembering his own power of sullen silence. And to say something, he asked, as he walked on: “And what’s wrong with mother now?”

“Wrong?” Caleb was shocked at this crude interpretation. “Oi don’t be meanin’ she ain’t in her rights to hunt out new texts, she bein’ a scholard. There was allus a bran-span-new one, Oi mind me, the Sundays I used to goo a-courtin’ her. A wery long way she lived—they talk broad and careless where she comes from, not moist and proper like here—and Oi had to git up early and goo along the sea-wall—deadly dark and lonesome it was winter nights and mornin’s, but her face was allus with me like the moon.”

“Why, was she pretty then?” asked Will.

“Can’t you see?” replied Caleb, with a faint surprise. “She ain’t changed much, she havin’ allus the peace of God in her heart.”

Will was touched and astonished by this revelation of romance in the two elderly people foisted upon him as parents, whom he had all his life taken as eternally elderly. But still more surprising was the realization forced upon him that the religion which to him was a bore was to them a thrill.

“Shall I carry the parcel, father?” he asked gently.

“Nay, nay, that don’t goo with Parlyment clothes. And it ain’t as sizeable as the box you carried from Chipstone.” He chuckled in freshly admiring glee.

Passing adown the long hawthorn avenue, they now issued from Plashy Walk, the rights of leg vindicated, and soon they began to see signs of other pilgrims faring towards Chipstone, that great gathering-place of faiths and creeds.