"You are right about the Battle of Waterloo," said Mrs Polsue. "My great-uncle Robert was always positive that the French began it. He had that on the best authority. The Duke of Wellington, he said, had no choice but to resist: and it must have gone all the more against the grain because he was distantly connected with John Wesley, only for some reason or another they spelt their names differently. My great-uncle, in the room that he called his study, had two engravings, one on each side of the chimney-piece. One was John Wesley, when quite a child, being rescued from a burning house, with his father right in the foreground giving thanks to God in the old-fashioned knee-breeches that were then worn. The other represented the Duke of Wellington in a similar frame on his famous charger Copenhagen and in the act of saying in his racy way, 'Up, Guards, and at 'em!' My great-uncle would often point to these two pictures and spell out the names for us as children, 'W-e-s-l-e-y' and 'W-e-l-l-e-s-l-e-y,' he would say. 'What different destinies the Almighty can spell into the same word by sticking a few letters in the middle!'"
"It's to be wished we had more men of that stamp in these days," sighed Miss Oliver. "I should feel safer."
"I hear Lord Kitchener well spoken of," said her friend guardedly. "But I think we go too fast, my dear. It does not follow, because the Reserves are called up, that War is actually declared. It is sometimes done by way of precaution—though God forbid I should say a word in defence of a Government which taxes us for being patriotic enough to keep domestic servants. That doesn't, of course, apply to you, my dear; still—"
"It only makes matters worse," Miss Oliver declared hastily. "If they haven't declared War yet, there's the less hurry to gallivant these Reservists about in brakes when to-morrow's a Bank Holiday. And, as for patriotism, if I choose to fall downstairs taking up my own coals, surely I'm as patriotic as if I employed another person to do it: though for some reason best known to itself the Law doesn't compensate me."
"There's something in what you say," agreed Mrs Polsue, a little mollified, having caused her friend to rankle. "And the Law—or the Government, or whatever you choose to call it—could afford the money, too, if 'twould look sharper after compensating itself. . . . A perfectly scandalous sight I witnessed just now, by the bridge. There was that Nicholas Nanjivell called up to take his marching-orders, and—well, you know how the man has been limping these months past. The thing was so ridic'lous, the other men shouted with laughter; and prettily annoyed the Customs Officer, for he went the colour of a turkey-cock. ''Tis your own fault,' I had a mind to tell him, 'for not having looked after your business.' Pounds and pounds of public money that Nanjivell must have drawn first and last for Reservist's pay, and nobody takin' the trouble to report on him."
"I suppose," said Miss Oliver, "the man really is lame, and not shamming?"
"The Lord knows, my dear. 'Twas somebody's business to have a look at the man's leg, and not mine nor yours, I hope. . . . Put it now that the case had been properly reported and a doctor sent to see the man. If he's shamming—and unlikelier things have happened, now you mention it—the doctor finds him out. If the man's sick, and 'tis incurable, well, so much the worse for him: but anyway Government stops paying for a fighting man that can't fight—for that is what it amounts to."
"You can't make it less," Miss Oliver agreed. "But doctors are terribly skilful nowadays with the knife," went on Mrs Polsue. "Very likely this growth, or whatever it is, might have been removed months ago."
"He ought to be made to undergo an operation."
"And then, most like, he'd have gone off with the others to be fed at the country's expense and no housekeeping to worry him, instead of giving Mr Pamphlett trouble. For he has been giving Mr Pamphlett trouble. Three times this past week I've seen him call at the Bank, and if you tell me 'twas to put money on deposit—"
"If builder Gilbert is right," put in Miss Oliver with a sigh of envy, "I shall be able to see the Bank as well as you, when that house comes down: and I shan't want to use spectacles neither." She cut in with this stroke as the pair joined the small throng of worshippers entering the Chapel porch. Also she took care to speak the last seven words (as Queen Elizabeth danced) "high and disposedly," giving her friend no time for a riposte.
The Minister, Mr Hambly, gave his congregation a very short service that morning. He opened with three sentences from the Book of Common Prayer: "Rend your heart, and not your garments. . . . Enter not into judgement with thy servant, O Lord. . . . If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."
Then, after a little pause, he gave out the hymn that begins "On earth we now lament to see." . . . It had not been sung within those walls in the oldest folks' remembrance—nay, since the Chapel had been built; and many were surprised to find it in the book. But at the second verse they picked up the tune and sang it with a will:—
"As 'listed on Abaddon's side,
They mangle their own flesh and slay,
Tophet is moved and opens wide
Its mouth for its enormous prey;
And myriads sink beneath the grave
And plunge into the flaming wave."
"O might the universal Friend
This havoc of his creatures see!" . . .
They sang it lustily to the end. With a gesture of the hand Mr Hambly bade all to kneel, opened the Book of Common Prayer again, and instead of "putting up" an extempore prayer, recited that old one prescribed for use "In the Time of War and Tumults":—
"O Almighty God, King of all kings, and Governour of all things, whose power no creature is able to resist, . . . Save and deliver us, we humbly beseech thee, from the hands of our enemies; abate their pride, asswage their malice, and confound their devices; that we, being armed with thy defence, may be preserved evermore from all perils, to glorify thee, who art the only giver of all victory;" . . .
The voice, though creaking in tone and uttering borrowed words, impressed many among its audience with its accent of personal sincerity. Mrs Polsue knelt and listened with a gathering choler. This Hambly had no unction. He could never improve an occasion: the more opportunity it gave the more helplessly he fell back upon old formulae composed by Anglicans long ago. She had often enough resented the Minister's dependence on these out-of-date phrases, written (as like as not) by men in secret sympathy with the Mass.
Mr Hambly arose from his knees, opened the Book, and said: "The portion of Scripture I have chosen for this morning is taken from Paul's Letter to the Ephesians, vi. 10:—"
'My brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.'
He paused here, and for a moment seemed about to continue his reading; but, as if on a sudden compulsion, closed the book, and went on:
"My Brethren,—choose any of those words. They shall be my text; they and those I read to you just now: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.'
"In entering upon this War we may easily tell ourselves that we have no sin: for in fact not a man or a woman in this congregation—so far as I know—harbours, or has harboured a single thought of evil disposition against the people who, from to-morrow, are to be our enemies, in whose distress we shall have to exult. In a few days this will seem very strange to you; but it is a fact.
"So it might plausibly be said that not we, but our Government, make this war upon a people with whom you and I have no quarrel.
"But that will not do; for in a nation ruled as ours is, no Ministry can make war unless having the people behind it. That is certain. The whole people—not only of Great Britain, but of Ireland too— seems to be silently aware that a War has been fastened upon it, not to be shirked or avoided, and is arming; but still without hate. So far as, in this little corner of the world, I can read your hearts, they answer to my own in this—that they have harboured no hate against Germany, and indeed, even now, can hardly teach themselves to hate.
"None the less, the German Emperor protests, calling on God for witness, that the sword has been thrust into his hand: and, if he honestly believes this, there must be some great confusion of mind in this business. One party or the other must be walking under some terrible hallucination.
"The aged Austrian Emperor calls on his God to justify him. So does the German; while we in turn call on our God to justify us.
"Now, there cannot be two Gods—two real Gods—president over the actions of men. That were unthinkable. Of two claimants to that sceptre, one must be a pretender, an Anti-Christ.
"Therefore our first duty in this dreadful business is to clear our minds, to make sure that ours is truly the right God. Let us not trouble—for it is too late—about any German's mind. Our business is to clear our own vision.
"I confess to you that, however we clear it, I anticipate that what we see in the end is likely to be damaging to what I will call 'official' Christianity. However you put it, the Churches of Europe (established or free) have been allowing at least one simulacrum of Christ to walk the earth, claiming holiness while devising evil. However you put it, the slaughter of man by man is horrible, and— more than that—our Churches exist to prevent it, by persuasion teaching peace on earth, good-will towards men.
"Disquieted, unable to sleep for this thought, I arose and dressed early this morning, and sat for a while on the wall opposite, gazing at this homely house of God across the roadway. It looked strange and unreal to me, there in the dawn; and (for Heaven knows I can never afford to slight the place it holds in my affection) I even dared in my fondness to reckon it with great and famous temples such as in our Westminster, in Paris, in Rheims—aye, and in Cologne—men have reared to the glory of God. I asked myself if these, too, looked impertinent as this day's sun took their towers, dawning so eventfully over Europe; if these, too, suffered in men's minds such a loss of significance by comparison with the eternal hills and the river that rushed at my feet refreshing this valley as night-long, day-long, it has run refreshing and sung unheeded for thousands upon thousands of years.
"Then it seemed to me, as the day cleared, that whatever of impertinence showed in this building was due to us—and to me, more than any—who in these few years past have believed ourselves to be working for good, when all the while we have never cleared our vision to see things in their right proportions.
"We are probably willing to accept this curse of War as a visitation on our sins. But for what sins? O, beware of taking the prohibitions of the Decalogue in a lump, its named sins as equivalent! In every one of you must live an inward witness that these sins do not rank equally in God's eye; that to murder, for instance, is wickeder than to misuse the Lord's name in a hasty oath; that to bear false witness against a neighbour is tenfold worse than to break the Sabbath. Yet we for ever in our Churches put these out of their right order; count ourselves righteous if we slander our neighbour, so it be on the way to worship; and in petty cruelties practice the lust of murder, interrupting it to shudder at a profane oath uttered by some good fellow outside in the street. To love God and your neighbour, summed up, for Christ, all the Law and the Prophets: and his love was for the harlot and the publican, as his worst word always for the self-deceiver who thanked God that he was not as other men.
"I verily believe that in this struggle we war with principalities and powers, with the rulers of darkness in this world, with spiritual wickedness in high places. But make no mistake: the men who are actually going out from England to brave the first brunt for us are men whom we have not taught to die like heroes, who have little interest in Church or Chapel or their differences, who view sins in an altogether different perspective from ours; whom we enlisted to do this work because they were hungry and at the moment saw no better job in prospect: whom we have taught to despise us while they protect us.
"The sins of our enemy are evident. But if We say we have no sin, we shall deceive ourselves and the truth will not be in us."
"Did you ever hear a feebler or a more idiotic sermon?" demanded Mrs
Polsue of Miss Oliver on their way home down the valley.
"If ever a man had his chance to improve an occasion—"
"Tut! I say nothing of his incapacity. There are some men that can't rise even when 'tis a question of all Europe at war. But did you hear the light he made, or tried to make, of Sabbath-breaking?"
"I didn't hear all that," Miss Oliver confessed: "or not to notice. It seemed so funny his getting up at that hour and dangling his legs on a wall."
"We will press to have a married man planned to us next time," said
Mrs Polsue. "A wife wouldn't allow it."
"Do you suppose he smoked?" asked Miss Oliver.
"I shouldn't wonder. . . . He certainly does it at home, for I took the trouble to smell his window-curtains; and at an hour like that, with nobody about—"
"There's an All-seeing Eye, however early you choose to dangle your legs," said Miss Oliver.
CHAPTER V.
THE ANONYMOUS LETTER.
Just about seven o'clock next morning Nicky-Nan, who had breakfasted early and taken post early in the porchway to watch against any possible ruse of the foe—for, Bank Holiday or no Bank Holiday, he was taking no risks—spied Lippity-Libby the postman coming over the bridge towards him with his dot-and-go-one gait.
Lippity-Libby, drawing near, held out a letter in his hand and flourished it.
"Now don't excite yourself," he warned Nicky-Nan. "When first I seed your name 'pon the address I said to myself 'What a good job if that poor fella's luck should be here at last, and this a fortun' arrived from his rich relatives in Canada!' That's the very words I said to myself."
"As it happens, I han't got no rich relatives, neither here nor in Canada," answered Nicky-Nan. "Is that letter for me? Or are you playin' me some trick?"
"A man of your descent," said Lippity-Libby, "can't help havin' relatives in great quantities dispersed about the world. I've figured it out, and the sum works like that old 'un we used to do on our slates about a horse-shoe. Your great-grandfather married your great-grandmother, and that set the ball rollin'—to go no farther back than the head will carry. Six sons an' daughters they had, for the sake of argyment, and each married and had six again. Why, damme, by that time there's not a quarter in Europe where a rich chap deceased mayn't be croppin' up and leavin' you his money, for no better reason than that you're a Nanjivell. That always seemed to me one of the advantages of good birth. For my part," the postman continued, "my father and mother never spoke of such matters, though she was a Collins and married in Lanteglos parish, where I daresay the whole pedigary could be looked up, if one wasn't a postman and could spare the time. But in the long evenings since my poor wife's death I often find time to think of you, Mr Nanjivell; bein' both of us lame of the right leg as it happens. Hows'ever 'tisn' no news o' riches for 'ee to-day, sorry as I be to say it: for the postmark's 'Polpier.'"
He tendered the letter. Nicky-Nan stretched out a hand, but drew it back on a sudden suspicion.
"No," he said. "You may take an' keep it. 'Tis a trick, I doubt."
"You can't mean that, surely?" Lippity-Libby eyed the letter almost greedily, holding it between finger and thumb. "Of course, if I thought you meant it—I don't remember gettin' more 'n three letters in all my life; that's if you don't count the trade they send me at election times, tellin' me where to put my cross. Three letters all told, and one o' they was after my poor Sarah died, threatenin' me about the rates, that had slipped out o' my head, she bein' in the habit of payin' them when alive. The amount o' fault she'd find in 'em, too, an' the pleasure she'd take in it, you'd never believe. I've often thought how funny she must be feelin' it up there—the good soul—with everything of the best in lighting an' water, an' no rates at all—or that's how I read the last chapter o' Revelations. . . . Yes, only three letters of my own, that have handed so many to other people, with births, marriages, an' deaths, shipwrecks an' legacies an' lovin' letters from every port in the world. Telegrams too—I'd dearly like to get a telegram of my own. . . . But Government be a terrible stickler. You may call it red tape, if you will: but if Mrs Pengelly caught me holdin' back any person's letter, even though I knowed it held trouble for 'en, she'd be bound to report me, poor soul, an' then like enough I'd lose place an' livelihood. So I thank 'ee, naybour, for bein' so forward to give me a bit o' pleasure; but 'twon't do—no, by the Powers Above it won't." He shook his head sadly. Then of a sudden his eye brightened. "I tell 'ee what, though. There's no rule of His Majesty's Service why I shouldn' stand by while you reads it aloud."
"No, no," said Nicky-Nan hastily. "Here, hold hard a moment—Is it in Pamphlett's hand-writin' by any chance?"
The question wounded Lippity-Libby's feelings, and he showed it.
"As if I shouldn' ha' told you!" he protested, gently reproachful.
"Nor his clerk's?"
"What, Hendy?—Hendy makes all his long letters straight up an' down, while these be made with loops. The writin's sloped backwards too, with a rake on it, same as was fash'nable on some o' the tea-clippers in my young days, but now 'tis seldom carried 'nless by a few steam-yachts."
"Well, hand me over the thing—I'll risk it," said Nicky-Nan.
He took the missive and glanced at the address—"Mr N. Nanjivell, Naval Reservist, Polpier R.S.O., Cornwall." The words "Naval Reservist" underlined gave him a tremor. But it was too late to draw back. He broke open the envelope, drew forth the letter, unfolded it, and ran his eye hurriedly overleaf, seeking the signature.
"Why, 'tisn' signed!"
"Not signed?" echoed Lippity-Libby. "That's as much as to say 'nonymous." Suddenly he slapped his thigh. "There now! O' course— why, what a forgetful head is mine! And simme I knew that hand, too, all the while."
"Eh?"
"Yes, to be sure—'tis the same that, up to two years ago, used to write an' send all the 'nonymous letters in Polpier. The old woman an' I, we tracked it down to one of two, an' both females. It lay between 'em, and I was for old Ann' Bunney—she bein' well known for a witch. But now that can't be, for the woman's gone to Satan these three months. . . . An' my missus gone too—poor tender heart—an' lookin' down on me, that was rash enough to bet her sixpence on it, an' now no means to pay up."
"Who was the other?" demanded Nicky-Nan, frowning over the letter, his face flushing as he frowned.
"You're goin' to read it to me, ben't you?"
"Damned if I do," answered Nicky-Nan curtly. "But I'd like to know who wrote it."
"It don't stand with Government reggilations, as I read 'em," said Lippity-Libby, "for a postman to be tellin' who wrote every 'nonymous letter he carries. . . . Well, I be wastin' time; but if you'll take my advice, Mr Nanjivell, and it isn' too late, you'll marry a woman. She'll probably increase your comfort, and—I don't care who she is— she'll work out another woman that writes 'nonymous. Like a stoat in a burrow she will, specially if she happens to take in washin' same as my lost Sarah did. She was shown a 'nonymous letter with 'Only charitable to warn' in it. Dang me, if she didn' go straight an' turn up a complaint about 'One chemise torn in wash,' an' showed me how, though sloped different ways, the letters were alike, twiddles an' all, to the very daps. I wouldn' believe it at the time, the party bein' a female in good position. But my wife was certain of it, an' all the more because she never allowed to her last breath that the woman's shimmy had been torn at all. Well, so long!"
Nicky-Nan carried the letter indoors to his small, dark sitting-room, and there spelled it through painfully, holding the paper close up to the window-pane. It ran:—
Sunday, 2/8/14.
Mr N. Nanjivell.
Sir,—As an inhabitant of Polpier, born in the town and anxious for its good name, besides being a ratepayer and one that pays taxes to His Majesty, I was naterally concerned to-day at your not taking your place along with the other men that went off to fight for their country. I am given to understand that you were served with a paper, same as the rest, and the Customs Officer was put out by your not going. I don't wonder at it. Such want of pluck.
Its no good your saying you are not Abel. If you are Abel to be a Reservist and draw pay, you are Abel to Fight thats how I look at it. I would let you to know the Public doesnt pay money for gamey legs that go about taking all they can get until the Pinch comes.
Theres a good many things want looking into in Polpier, It has reached me that until the present sistem came in and put a stop to it you drew pay for years for drills that you never atended.
This is a time when as Lord Nelson said England expects every
Man to Do his Duty. I think so bad of your case that I am
writing by same post to the Custom House at Troy about it.
So I warn you as
A Well-Wisher.
Nicky-Nan read this amiable missive through, and re-read it almost to the end before realising the menace of it. At the first perusal his mind was engaged with the mechanical task of deciphering the script and with speculating on its authorship. . . . He came to the end with no full grasp of the purport.
His wits were dulled, too, being preoccupied—in spite of Lippity-Libby—with suspicions of Mr Pamphlett. He recognised the hand of an enemy; and though conscious of possessing few friends in the world (none, maybe—he did not care how many or how few, anyway), he was aware of one only enemy—Pamphlett. He held this tenement which Pamphlett openly coveted: but what besides had he that any one could envy? Who else could wish him worse off than he was? His broken past, his present poverty and daily mental anguish, his future sans hope—any one who wanted these might take 'em and welcome!
But when, on the second reading, he reached the last paragraph but one, his heart stood still for a moment as if under a sudden stab.
Yes, . . . in the man or woman who had written this letter he had an enemy who indeed wished him worse off than he was, and not only worse but much worse; who would take from him not only the roof over his head, but even the dreadful refuge of the Workhouse; who would hunt him down even into jail. That talk about his not going to the War was all nonsense. How could all the Coastguard or Custom-house Officers in Christendom force a man to go to the War with a growth under his thigh as big as your fist? Damn the War!—he'd scarcely given a thought to it (being so worried with other matters) until last night. He hadn't a notion, at this moment, what it was all about. But anyhow that stuff about "want of pluck" was silly nonsense,—almost too silly to vex a man. He would have gone fast enough had he been able. In truth, Nicky-Nan's conscience had no nerve to be stung by imputations of cowardliness. He had never thought of himself as a plucky man—it wasn't worth while, and, for that matter, he wasn't worth while. He had, without considering it, always found himself able to take risks alongside of the other fellows. Moreover, what did he amount to, with his destinies, hopes, and belongings all told, to be chary of losing them or himself?
But it was a fact, as the letter hinted, that some years ago, and for two successive seasons, the Reservists' training happening to fall at a time when fish was plentiful and all hands making money, he, with one or two other men, had conspired with a knavish Chief Officer of Coastguard to put a fraudulent trick on the Government. It was the Chief Officer who actually played the trick, entering them up as having served a course which they had never attended, and he had kept their training pay as his price. What his less guilty conspirators gained was the retention of their names on the strength, to qualify them in due time for their pensions.
This and other abuses of the old system had been abolished when the Admiralty decided that every reservist must put in his annual spell of training at sea. The trick at the time had lain heavily upon Nicky-Nan's conscience: but with time he had forgotten it. Since the new order came into force, he had fulfilled his obligations regularly enough—until the year before last, by which time his leg really disabled him. It had fortuned, however, that one afternoon on the Quay, loafing around less on the chance of a job (for odd jobs are scarce at Polpier) than to wile away time, he had encountered Dr Mant, the easy-going practitioner from St Martin's. Dr Mant fancying an excursion after the mackerel, at that time swarming close inshore, Nicky-Nan had rowed him out and back along the coast to St Martin's. The bargain struck for half-a-crown, the doctor sent his trap back by road.
Some way out at sea he inquired, "Hullo! what's wrong with that right knee of yours?"
"Ricked it," answered Nicky-Nan mendaciously, and added, "I was thinkin' to consult you, sir. I be due for trainin' with the Reserve in a fortni't's time."
"Want a certificate? Here, let me have a feel what's wrong." The Doctor interrupted his whiffing for a moment to reach forward and feel Nicky's knee professionally, outside the thick sea-cloth trousers. "Hurts, does it? You've a nasty swelling there, my man."
"It hurts a bit, sir, and no mistake. If I could only have a certificate now—"
"All right; I'll give you one," said the Doctor, and turned his attention again to the mackerel.
Before stepping ashore at St Martin's, he pulled out a fountain-pen and scribbled the certificate on a leaf torn from his note-book. Having with this and one shilling compounded for his trip, he said as he traced up his catch—
"There, stick that in an envelope and post it. You're clearly not fit for service afloat till that swelling goes down."
Nicky-Nan duly posted the certificate, which Dr Mant had characteristically forgotten to date. After a week it came back with an official note drawing Nicky's attention to this, and requesting that the date should be inserted.
"Red tape," said Nicky. He borrowed a pen from Mrs Penhaligon, and wrote the date quite accurately at the foot of the document.
Then, for some reason or other, his conscience smote him. He put off posting the letter; and at this point again fortune helped him. Word came to him by a chance wind that the staff of the Coastguard had been shifted, over at Troy. Also (though he never discovered this) the Chief Officer of Customs, after returning the certificate, had left for his summer holiday.
So Nicky-Nan kept it in his pocket; and nothing happened.
The next year—so easy is the slope of Avernus—Nicky-Nan, who had felt many qualms over filling in a date which (though accurate) should by rights have been filled in by the Doctor, felt none at all in adding a slight twiddle of the pen which changed "1912" into "1913"; by which he escaped again, and again went undetected.
It had all been contrived so easily, and had succeeded so easily! Everything said and done, his leg was worse. Any doctor alive, if brought in, would bear witness that it incapacitated him.
Also any man, who looks ahead, will fight for the pension which alone stands between him and the workhouse.
With such arguments Nicky-Nan had salved his conscience; and his conscience had slept under them.
Now in a moment, with eyes fixed on the fatal handwriting, he saw every bandage of false pretence, all his unguents of conscience, stripped away, laying his guilt bare to the world.
An enemy was on his track—one who knew and could call up fatal evidence.
The light in the window-pane had been growing darker for some minutes. The morning had broken squally, with intervals of sunshine. A fierce gust came howling up the little river between its leaning houses and broke in rain upon the bottle-glass quarrels of the window.
Nicky-Nan started, as though it were a hand arresting him.
CHAPTER VI.
TREASURE TROVE.
The rain—the last, for many weeks, to visit Polpier—cleared up soon after midday. At one o'clock or thereabouts Nicky-Nan, having dined on a stale crust and a slice of bacon, and recovered somewhat from his first alarm (as even so frugal a meal will put courage into a man), ventured to the porch again for a look at the weather. The weather and the set of the wind always come first in a Polpier man's interest. They form the staple of conversation on the Quay-side. Fish ranks next: after fish, religion: after religion, clack about boats and persons; and so we come down to politics, peace and war, the manner of getting to foreign ports and the kind of people one finds in them.
Nicky-Nan could read very few signs of the weather from his dark little parlour. The gully of the river deflected all true winds, and the overhanging houses closed in all but a narrow strip of sky, prolonged study of which was apt to induce a crick in the neck. To be sure, certain winds could be recognised by their voices: a southerly one of any consequence announced itself by a curious droning note which, if it westered a little, rose to a sharp whistle and, in anything above half-a-gale, to a scream. But to see what the weather was like, you must go to the front porch.
Nicky-Nan went to the front porch and gazed skyward. The wind—as the saying is—had "catched in," and was blowing briskly from the north-west, chasing diaphanous clouds across the blue zenith. The roofs still shone wet and dazzling, and there were puddles in the street. But he knew the afternoon was going to be a fine one. He took pleasure in this when, a few moments later, his ear caught the thudding of a distant drum. . . . Yes, yes—it was Bank Holiday, and the children would be assembling, up the valley, for the Anniversary Treat of the Wesleyan Sunday School. There would be waggons waiting to convey them up-inland to Squire Tresawna's pleasure-grounds—to high shaven lawns whereon, for once in the year, they could enjoy themselves running about upon the level. (In Polpier, as any mother there will tell you, a boy has to wear out his exuberance mostly on the seat of his breeches and bring it to a check by digging in his heels somewhere. And the wastage at these particular points of his tailoring persists when he grows up to manhood; for a crabber sits much on the thwart of a boat and drives with his heels against a stretcher. Thus it happens that three-fourths of Billy Bosistow's cobbling is devoted to the "trigging" of boot-heels, while the wives, who mend all the small clothes, have long ago and by consent given up any pretence of harmonising the patch with the original garment. At Troy and at St Martin's they will tell you that every Polpier man carries about his home-address on his person, and will rudely indicate where. Mrs Penhaligon put it one day in more delicate proverbial form. "In a rabbit-warren," she said, "you learn not to notice scuts.")
While Nicky-Nan—who, as we have said, had a fondness for children— stood and eyed the weather with approval, Mrs Penhaligon came bustling out, with her bonnet on.
"Lord sakes!" she exclaimed. "Be that the drum already? What a whirl one does live in!—and if there's one thing I hate more'n another, 'tis to be fussed."
"What about the children, ma'am?"
"The children? . . . Gone on this half-hour, I should hope. 'Beida's a good gel enough, when once ye've coaxed her into her best things. It sobers her you can't think. She'll look after 'Biades an' see that he don't put 'Lead us, Heavenly Father, lead us' into his mouth, though 'tis where he puts most things."
"But you're goin' to the Treat yourself, ma'am?" Nicky-Nan suggested.
"What, in this rig-out? Catch me!" answered Mrs Penhaligon, not with literal intention but idiomatically. "No, I'm but goin' up to see 'em off decent. But I wonder at you liggin' behind, when 'tis the only Bank Holiday randivoo this side o' Troy. . . ."
"'Tidn' for want o' will," Nicky-Nan answered ruefully and truthfully, with a downward glance, which reminded Mrs Penhaligon to be remorseful.
"Eh, but I forgot . . . and you with that leg on your mind!
But you'll forgive a body as has been these two days in a stirabout.
And if you're fittin' to take a stroll before I get back, maybe
you'll not forget to lock the house up."
Nicky-Nan promised. (He and the Penhaligons had separate keys of the main door.) He watched the good woman as she hurried on her way, tying her bonnet-strings as she went.
It occurred to him that, leg or no leg, he felt lonely, and would be all the better for a stroll. So, having fetched his stick and locked the house-door behind him, he dandered down towards the Quay. The street was empty, uncannily silent. "It's queer now," thought Nicky-Nan, "what a difference childern make to a town, an' you never noticin' it till they're gone." All the children had departed—the happy little Wesleyans to climb on board the waggons, the small Church of England minority to watch them, and solace their envy with expectation of their own Treat, a more select one, promised for this-day-fortnight. Then would be their turn, and some people would live to be sorry that they went to Chapel. But a fortnight is a long time, and weather in the West is notoriously uncertain. Of course you cannot eat your cake and have it: but Mrs Penhaligon arrived just in time to stop a fight between 'Bert and Matthey Matthew's ugly boy, who sang in the Church choir, and hoped it would rain. (Odium theologicum.)
The most of the mothers had departed also, either to "assist" at the Treat or to watch the embarkation: while those of the men whom the War had not claimed had tramped it over to Troy, which six weeks ago—and long before the idea of a European War had occurred to any one—had advertised a small regatta for Bank Holiday, with an afternoon's horse-racing.
The tunding of the drum up the valley seemed to Nicky-Nan to emphasise the loneliness all about him. But down by the Quay-head he came in sight of Policeman Rat-it-all (so named from his only and frequent expletive), seated on a bollard and staring up at the sky.
Nicky-Nan hesitated: hung, indeed, for a moment, on the edge of flight. This was Bank Holiday, and until to-morrow's sunrise a constable was powerless as Satan in a charmed circle. Still, the man might have the ejectment order in his pocket—would, if not already furnished with it, almost certainly know about it. On the other hand there was a chance—it might be worth while—to discover how much Rat-it-all knew. Forewarned is forearmed. Moreover, when your country is at war, and silence holds the city, there is great comfort in a chat. Nicky-Nan advanced with a fine air of nonchalance.
"Lookin' at the sky?" said he. "Wind's back in the nor'-west again. Which, for settled weather, I'd rather it took off-shore a bit later in the afternoon. It'll last though, for all that, I shoudn' wonder."
Policeman Rat-it-all withdrew his gaze from the firmament.
"I wasn' thinkin' of the wind," said he. "I take no account of the elements, for my part. Never did; and now never shall—havin' been born up to Bodmin, where the prison is."
"Oh!" said Nicky-Nan suspiciously. "What's it like?"
"Bodmin?" Policeman Rat-it-all seemed to reflect for a moment. "Well, I wouldn't just say it's altogether like any place in particular. There's a street, of course, . . . and there's the prison, and the barracks, and an asylum where they keep the lunatics, and a workhouse and what-not. But if you put to me, in so many words, what it's like—"
"I—I meant the prison," explained Nicky-Nan; that being the only feature of Bodmin in which he felt any instant concern.
"It's a place," answered Policeman Rat-it-all with painful lucidity, "where they shut people up. Sometimes there's an execution. But not often; not very often; once in a while, as you might say. There's a monument, too,—upon a hill they call the Beacon. I'm very fond of Bodmin. It's the County Town, you know; and with these little things going on, in one way and another, why, that enlarges the mind."
"Does it so?" asked Nicky-Nan, a trifle puzzled.
"It do indeed," the constable assured him with conviction. "Take me, now, at this present moment, for instance. You comes upon me suddent, and what do you catch me doin'? You catches me,"—here his voice became impressive—"you catches me lookin' up at the sky. And why am I lookin' up at the sky? It is to say to you, 'Nicholas Nanjivell, the wind is sot in the sou'-west?'"
"Not if you expect me to believe 'ee. 'Tisn' a point off north-an-by-west."
"—Or," the constable continued, lifting a hand, "is it to say to you, 'It is sot in the north-west,' as the case may be? Or is it I was wastin' the day in idleness, same as some persons I could mention in the Force if there wasn' such a thing as discipline? Not so. I was lookin' up in the execution of my duty. An' what do you suppose I was lookin' for?"
"I'm sure I can't tell 'ee," answered Nicky-Nan after a painful effort at guessing. "It couldn' be for obscene language; nor yet for drunks."
Policeman Rat-it-all leant forward and touched him on the top button of his waistcoat.
"Zepp-a-lins!" he said mysteriously.
"Eh?"
"Zepp-a-lins!"
"Oh!"—Nicky-Nan's brow cleared—"You mean them German balloon things the papers make so much fuss about."
"Die-rigitable," added Rat-it-all. "That's the point."
"Well? . . . Have 'ee seen any?" Nicky-Nan lifted his gaze skyward.
"I won't go so far as to say that I've seen anything answerin' to that description knockin' about—not up to the present. But these are times when a man must keep his eyes liftin' if he doesn' want Old England to be taken with what the newspapers call a Bolt from the Blue."
"I've come across the expression," said Nicky-Nan.
"Well, what I say is, Down here, in this corner of the world—though, mind you, I'm not sayin' anything against it—you don't reelise things: you reely don't. Now I come from Bodmin, as I think I must have told you."
"You did."
"Where you see the soldiers goin' about with the stripes down their trowsers: but they've done away with that except for the Yeomanry (which is black, or dark blue, I forget which), and that's how you know the difference. So your mind gets enlarged almost without your knowin' it, and you feel what's at stake."
"I wonder you didn' want to enlist," said Nicky-Nan.
"I did: but I was too tall—too tall and too strong," sighed the policeman, bending his arm and causing his biceps to swell up mountainously. "You haven't a notion how strong I am—if, for instance, I took it into my head to catch you up and heave you over the Quay here. Yes, yes, I am wonderfully well made! And on top of that, Mother picked up some nonsense against soldiering off a speaker at a Pleasant Sunday Afternoon. There was nothing for it but the Force. So here I AM. But give me the wings of a dove, and I'd join the Royal Flyin' Corps to-morrow, where they get higher pay because of the risk, same as with the submarines. If you ask me, every Englishman's post at this moment is in the firing line."
Nicky-Nan winced, and changed the subject in haste.
"Well, it must be a great consolation to have such strength as yours," he said pleasantly. "But I wonder—with nothing else doin', and on a Bank Holiday too—you could manage to stay away from the School Treat."
"Rat it all!" broke out the constable, and checked himself. "I thought I was igsplaining to you," he went on as one who reasons patiently with an infant, "that a man has to think of something above an' beyond self in these days."
"I never found time to think out the rights an' wrongs o' warfare, for my part," said Nicky-Nan.
"Ah, I daresay not." Policeman Rat-it-all blew out his chest.
"It's a deep subject," he added, wagging his head solemnly.
"A very deep subject; and I quite understand your not having time for
it lately. How about that Ejectment Order?"
Nicky-Nan jumped like a man shot. "Ha—have you got the—the thing about 'ee?" he twittered. "Don't tell me that Pamphlett has got 'em to send it down? . . . But there, you can't do anything on a Bank Holiday, anyway."
"Have I got the thing about me?" echoed the policeman slowly. "You talk as if 'twas a box o' matches. . . . Well, I may, or I mayn't; but anyways I've followed the case before Petty Sessions; and if you haven't a leg to stand on, the only thing is to walk out peaceably. Mind, I'm puttin' it unofficial, as between friends."
"And what if I don't?"
"Then, rat it all!—I mean," the constable corrected himself to a tolerant smile and gazed down on his mighty hands and arms—"then I got to put you into the street."
Nicky-Nan leaned on his stick and the stick shook with his communicated fury. "Try it—try it—try it!" he blazed out. "Try it, you Bodmin fathead!"
He shuffled away, nodding his head with wrath. He roamed the cliff-paths for an hour, pausing now and again to lean his back against an out-cropping mass of rock and pass the back of his hand across his eyes, that at first were bloodshot with fury. He had a great desire to kill Policeman Rat-it-all. As his passion died down and he limped forward, to pause and again limp forward, his gait and the backward cast of his eye were not unlike those of a hunted hare.
He reached the house door at nightfall, just as Mrs Penhaligon came shepherding her offspring home down the dusky street, 'Biades had yielded to the sleep of exhaustion, and lay like a log in his mother's arms. 'Bert, for no other reason than that he had tired himself out, was sulky and uncommunicative. But 'Beida—whose whole manner ever changed when once she had been persuaded into fine clothes—wore an air of sustained gentility.
"Squire Tresawna keeps seven gardeners," she reported. "He has three motor-cars and two chauffeurs. The gardeners keep the front lawn so short with their mowing-machines that 'Biades couldn't possibly have made the front of his blouse in the mess it is unless he had purposely crawled on his stomach to lower me in the eyes of all. When it got to a certain point I pretended to have no connection with him. There was nothing else to do. Then he felt sorry and wanted to hug me in front of everybody. . . . Oh, thank you . . . yes, I've enjoyed myself very much! Mrs Tresawna wears a toque: but I suppose that when you get to a certain position you can carry on with toques long after every one else has given them up. She has two maids; one of them in a grey velours dress that must have been one of Mrs Tresawna's cast-offs, for it couldn't possibly have come out of her wages; though, by the fit, it might have been made for her."
A little before ten o'clock Nicky-Nan climbed the stairs painfully to his bedroom, undressed in part, and lay down—but not to sleep. For a while he lay without extinguishing the candle—his last candle. He had measured it carefully, and it reached almost to an inch beyond the knuckle of his forefinger. It would last him a good two hours at least, perhaps three.
He lay for a while almost luxuriously, save for the pain in his leg, and watched the light flickering on the rafters. They had a few more days to abide, let Pamphlett's men be never so sharp: but this was his last night under them. His enemies—some of them until this morning unsuspected—were closing in around him. They had him, now, in this last corner.
But that was for to-morrow. The very poor live always on the edge of to-morrow; and for that reason the night's sleep, which parts them from it, seems a long time.
After all, what could his enemies do to him? If he sat passive, the onus would rest on them. If Policeman Rat-it-all flung him into the street, why then in the street he would sit, to the scandal of Polpier. If, on the other hand, Government claimed him for a deserter, still Government would have to fetch a cart to convey him to jail: his leg would not allow him to walk. Of wealth and goods God Almighty had already eased him. Cantat vacuus . . . He slid a hand under the bed-clothes and rubbed the swelling on his leg, softly, wondering if condemned men felt as little perturbed—or some of them—on the eve of execution.
He ceased rubbing and lay still again, staring up at the play of light on the rafters. Fine old timbers they were . . . solid English oak. Good old families they had sheltered in their time; men and women that feared God and honoured the King—now all gone to decay in churchyard, all as cold as homeless fellows. The Nanjivells had been such a family, and now—what would his poor old mother think of this for an end? Yet it was the general fate. Pushing men, your Pamphletts, rise in the world. Old families go down, . . . it couldn't be worked else. If he had only been born with push, now! If it could only be started over again, . . . if he had been put to a trade, instead of being let run to sea—
He broke off to wonder at the different things the old beams had looked down upon. Marriages, births—and deaths. The Old Doctor (he knew) had died in the fore-room, for convenience—the room where the Penhaligons slept: and even so, the family had been forced to lift the coffin in and out of the window, because of that twist in the stairs. There wasn't that difficulty with people's coming into the world. No doubt in its time this room must have seen a mort of births too. . . . And the children? All gone, the same way! Drizzle o' rain upon churchyard graves. . . . "And you, too,"—with a flicker of his closing eyelids threatening the flicker on the beams— "you, too, doomed, my billies! Pamphlett'll take me to-morrow, you the day after; as in time the Devil'll take him and his!"
Nicky-Nan rolled over on his side and, perceiving the candle to be burnt down to a short inch, hastily blew it out. Almost in the act of relaxing the elbow on which he had raised himself for this effort he dropped asleep to his pillow.
For three hours he lay like a log. Then his troubled brain began to reassert itself. At about two in the morning he sat bolt upright in his bed. For twenty minutes or so he had been thinking rather than dreaming, yet with his thought held captive by sleep.
He reached for his matchbox and struck a light. . . . The whole world was after him, hunting him down, tearing down the house above his head! . . . Well, he would go down with the house. Pamphlett, or Government, might take his house: but there was the old hiding-cupboard to the right of the chimney-breast. . . .
When they summoned him to-morrow, he would have vanished. Only by uncovering his last shelter should they discover what was left of him. He would perish with the house.
He lit the candle and carried it to the cupboard; opened this, and peered into the well at his feet: lifted one of the loose bottom-boards, and, holding himself steady by a grip on the scurtain, thrust a naked leg down, feeling into vacancy.
The ball of his foot touched some substance, hard and apparently firm. He supposed it to be a lower ceiling of the hole, and, after pressing once or twice to make sure, put all his weight upon it.
With a creak and a rush of masonry the whole second flooring of the cupboard gave way beneath him, leaving his invalid leg dangling, in excruciating pain. But that the crook of his elbow caught across the scurtain (shooting darts as of fire up the jarred funny-bone), he had made a part of the avalanche, the noise of which was enough to wake the dead. Luckily, too, he had set his candle on the planching floor, just wide of the cupboard entrance, and it stood burning as though nothing had happened.
With pain which surely must be worse than any pain of death, he heaved himself back and on to the bedroom floor again. The cascade of plaster, timber, masonry, must (he judged) have shot itself straight down into his parlour below.
He picked up the candle, and warily—while his leg wrung him with torture at every step—crept down the stairs to explore.
The parlour door opened inwards. He thrust it open for a short way quite easily. Then of a sudden it jammed: but it left an aperture through which he could squeeze himself. He did so, and held the candle aloft.
While he stared, first at a hole in the ceiling, then at the "scree" which had broken through it and lay spread, fan-shaped, on the solid floor at his feet, he heard a footstep, and Mrs Penhaligon's voice in the passage without.
"Mr Nanjivell! Is that Mr Nanjivell?"
"Yes, ma'am!"
"Oh, what has happened?"
"Nothing, ma'am. Only a downrush of soot in the chimney," answered Nicky-Nan, gasping: for the heap of dust and mortar at his feet lay scattered all over with golden coins!
"But the noise was terrible. I—I thought for sure it must be the
Germans," came in Mrs Penhaligon's voice.
"Nothing of the sort. You exaggerate things," answered Nicky-Nan, commanding his voice. "A rush of soot down the chimney, that's all. I've been expectin' it for weeks."
"You mustn't mind my bein' easily alarmed—left alone as I be with a family—"
"Not in the least, ma'am." Nicky-Nan resolutely closed the door and lifted his candle to confirm the miracle.
The candle, which had been guttering, shot up one last flame and died on a flicker of gold.
CHAPTER VII.
"QUID NON MORTALIA PECTORA . . ."
A moment later Nicky-Nan took a step to the door, half-repentant, on an impulse to call Mrs Penhaligon back and bid her fetch a candle. God knows how much of subsequent trouble he might have spared himself by obeying that impulse: for Mrs Penhaligon was a woman honest as the day; and withal had a head on her shoulders, shrewd enough—practised indeed—in steering the clumsy male mind for its good.
But, as we have recorded, Nicky-Nan, having suffered in early life from a woman, had been turned to a distrust of the sex; a general distrust which preoccupied with its shadow the bright exception that, on a second thought, he was ready enough to recognise in Mrs Penhaligon.
This second thought came too late, however. He took one step towards the door, guided by the glimmer, beneath it, of her retreating candle. His hand even fumbled for the latch, and found it. But a sudden shyness seized him and he drew back. He heard her footsteps creaking on the party-stairs: heard the sound of her door softly closed, then the sound of a bolt thrust home in its socket; and turned to face darkness.
His brain worked quite clearly. He guessed well enough what had happened. In his youth he had often listened, without taking note of their talk, while his elders debated how it came about that the Old Doctor had left, beyond some parcels of real estate—cottage property for the most part, the tenants of which were notoriously lax in paying their rents—but a very few personal effects. There were book debts in an inordinate mass; and the heirs found an inordinate difficulty in collecting them, since the inhabitants of Polpier—a hardy sea-faring race—had adopted a cheerful custom of paying for deliverance from one illness when they happened (if ever they did) to contract another: and this custom they extended even to that branch of medical service which by tradition should be rewarded in ready money. ("I always," explained a Polpier matron, "pays 'en ver one when I engages 'en ver the next; an' the laast I'll never pay ver"— and she never did.) On top of this, Polpier folk argued that doctoring wasn't, like property, a gift which a man could pass on to his heirs, and most certainly not if they happened to be—as they were—a corn-factor and an aged maiden sister of independent but exiguous means. "As I look at it," some one put this argument, on the Quay, "th' Old Doctor's mastery was a thing to hisself, and a proper marvel at that. Us brought nothin' into the world, my sons an' us can't carry nothin' out: but that don't mean as you can leave it behind—leastways, not when it takes the form of professional skill. . . . Why, put it to yourselves. Here's th' old man gone up for his reward: an' you can hear th' Almighty sayin', 'Well done, thou good an' faithful servant.'"—"Amen," from the listeners.— "Yes, an' 'The labourer is worthy of his hire,' and what not. 'Well, then,' the Lord goes on, flatterin'-like, 'what about that there talent I committed to 'ee? For I d' know you're not the sort to go hidin' it in a napkin.' An' d' 'ee reckon th' old chap'll be cuttin' such a figure as to own up, 'Lord, I left it to a corn-merchant'? Ridic'lous to suppose! . . . The Lord giveth, an' the Lord taketh away. . . . With cottage property, I grant 'ee, 'tis another thing. Cottage property don't go on all-fours."
Nicky-Nan, then, guessed well enough what had happened. Almost in a flash he had guessed it.
He had surprised the Old Doctor's secret, hidden all these years. Folks used to make hoards of their money in the bygone days, when Napoleon threatened to invade us and deposit banks were scarce. And the Doctor, by all that tradition told, was never a man to break a habit once formed. For more than the span of two generations this wealth had lain concealed; and now he—he, Nicholas Nanjivell—was a rich man, if only he played his cards well!
With how sure an instinct he had clung to the old house!—had held on to this relic of a past gentility to which by rights he belonged!
He was a rich man now, and would defy Pamphlett and all his works—
How pleasant it is to have money, heigho!
How pleasant it is to have money!—
if only he knew how much!
And yet . . . Although philosophers in all ages have descanted on the blessings of Hope, and the part played by Imagination in making tolerable the business of living—so that men in the mass not only carry life through with courage but will turn and fight desperately for it, like stags at bay—it is to be doubted if one in ten ever guesses how constantly he is sustained by this spirit scorning the substance, gallantly blind, with promises lifting him over defeat. I dare to say that, save for the strength of hope it put into him, this wealth, so suddenly poured at Nicky-Nan's feet, doubled his discomfort, physical and mental.
Of his physical discomfort, just now, there could be no question. He could not find courage to leave his trove and climb the stairs back to his bedroom. Some one might rob him while he slept, and— horror!—he would never even know of how much he had been robbed. The anguish in his leg forbade his standing sentry: the night wanted almost three hours of dawn. Shirt and trousers were his only garments.
He knelt and groped on the stone floor to a corner clear of the fallen rubbish. On his way his fingers encountered a coin and clutched it—comfort, tangible proof that he had not been dreaming. He seated himself in the corner, propping his back there, and fell to speculating—sensing the coin in his palm, fingering it from time to time.
The Old Doctor had always, in his lifetime, been accounted a well-to-do man. . . . Very likely he had started this hoard in Bonaparte's days, and had gone on adding to it in the long years of peace. . . . It would certainly be a hundred pounds. It might be a thousand. One thousand pounds!
But no—not so fast! Put it at a hundred only, and daylight would be the unlikelier to bring disappointment. The scattered coins he had seen by that one brief flash of the candle danced and multiplied themselves before his eyes like dots of fire in the darkness. Still he resolutely kept their numbers down to one hundred.
A hundred pounds! . . . Why, that, or even fifty, meant all the difference in life to him. He could look Pamphlett in the face now. He would step down to the Bank to-morrow, slap seven sovereigns down on the counter—but not too boldly; for Pamphlett must not suspect— and demand the change in silver, with his receipt. Full quittance— he could see Pamphlett's face as he fetched forth the piece of paper and made out that quittance, signing his name across a postage stamp.
Not once in the course of his vision-building did it cross Nicky-Nan's mind that the money was—that it could be—less than legitimately his. Luck comes late to some men; to others, never. It had come late to him, yet in the nick of time, as a godsend. His family and the Old Doctor's had intermarried, back along, quite in the old days; or so he had heard. . . . Nicky-Nan knew nothing of any law about treasure-trove. Wealth arrived to men as it befell or as they deserved; and, any way, "findings was keepings." His notion of other folks' concern in this money reached no further than a vague fear of folks in general—that they might rob him or deprive him of it in some way. He must go to work cautiously.
Thus out of despair Fortune lifted him and began to install him in fear.
He must go to work very cautiously. Being all unused to the possession of money, but accustomed to consider it as a weapon of which fortunate men obtained a hold to employ it in "besting" others less fortunate, he foresaw endless calls upon his cunning. But this did not forbid his indulging in visions in which—being also at bottom good-natured—he pictured himself as playing the good genius in his native town, earning general gratitude, building in a large-handed way the new pier that was so badly needed, conferring favours right and left, departing this life amid the mourning of the township, perchance (who could tell?) surviving for the wonder of generations to come in a carved statue at the Quay-head. He had observed, in the ports he had visited abroad, such statues erected in memory of men he had never heard tell of. It would be a mighty fine thing—though a novelty in Polpier—to have one's memory kept alive in this fashion. . . . He would lord it in life too, as became a Nanjivell—albeit the last of the race. To the Penhaligon family he would be specially kind. . . . Upon other deserving ones he would confer surprising help by stealth. . . . He wished now that, in spite of experience, he had married and begotten children—an heir at least. It would be a fine thing to restore the stock to a prospect of honour. He wondered that in the past he had never realised his plain duty in this light and taken the risk. As it was, the old name could only be preserved in a commonalty's gratitude.
The flagged floor galled him cruelly; for he was of lean build. Shift his posture or his weight as he might, after a few seconds' ease his haunch-pins were pressing again upon the pavement, with no cushion of flesh but a crushed nerve or two that kept telephoning misery to his knee and fetching fierce darts of pain for response. A quick succession of these, running into one as though a red-hot iron had been applied under the thigh, searing it to the very bone, stabbed suddenly into his brain with a new terror. He had forgotten the anonymous letter and its threat!
He was a rich man now. The business of a rich man was to stay at home and preserve his riches while making use of them-like Pamphlett. Who in this world ever heard of a rich man being hauled off to serve in the Navy as a common seaman? The thing was unprecedented. He could buy himself out; at the worst by paying up the money he had drawn.
Yes, but this would involve disclosing his wealth, and the source of it. . . . He was terribly afraid of publicity. He had enemies, as the letter proved: he suspected that the law itself might be another enemy—you could never predict which side the law would take—and between them, if they got to know his secret, they would despoil him. . . . On the other hand if, covering his secret, he opposed but a passive resistance, they might carry him off to jail, and then all this money would be laid bare to the world. Intolerable exposure!
He must hide it. . . . He must count it, and then—having staved off Pamphlett—hide it tomorrow with all speed and cunning. When would the dawn come?
The sun, in the longitude of Polpier, was actually due to rise a few minutes before five o'clock. But Polpier (as I have told) lies in a deep cleft of the hills. Nicky-Nan's parlour looked out on a mere slit at the bottom of that cleft; and, moreover, the downfall of plaster blocked half the lower portion of its tiny dirty window.
What with one hindrance and another, it was almost a quarter past five before daylight began to glimmer in the parlour. It found him on his knees—not in prayer, nor in thanksgiving, but eagerly feeling over the grey pile of rubbish and digging into it with clawed fingers.
An hour later, with so much of daylight about him as the window permitted, he was still on his knees. Already he had collected more than a hundred golden coins, putting them together in piles of twenty.
The dawn had been chilly: but he was warm enough by this time. Indeed, sweat soaked his shirt; beads of sweat gathered on his grey eyebrows, and dripped, sometimes on his hands, sometimes on the pile of old plaster—greyish-white, and fine almost as wood-ash—into which they dug and dug, tearing the thin lathes aside, pouncing on each coin brought to the surface.
Once only—though the kneeling cost him torture, and the sweat came no less from anguish than from exertion—did he pause and straighten himself up to listen. Upstairs the Penhaligon children had awakened with the daylight and were talking—chirruping like sparrows—before they left their beds—
Hey! now the day dawis;
The joly cock crawis . . .
—but Nicky-Nan toiled on in his dim parlour, collecting wealth.
By eight o'clock he had picked up and arranged—still in neat piles of twenty—some eight hundred coins of golden money. His belly was fasting: but he had forgotten the crust in the cupboard. Had he not here enough to defray a king's banquet?
Some one tapped on the door. Nicky-Nan, startled, raised himself upright on his knees and called in a tremor—
"No admittance!"
As he staggered up and made for the door, to press his weight against it, Mrs Penhaligon spoke on the other side.
"Mr Nanjivell!"
"Ma'am?"
"The postman, with a letter for you! I'll fetch it in, if you wish: but the poor fellow 'd like a clack, I can see."
It jumped to his tongue to bid her fetch and pass it in to him under the door. The outside of a letter would not tell her much, and anyhow would excite less curiosity than his own corporal envelope, begrimed as it was just now with dust and plaster and cobwebs. But the end of her message alarmed him with misgivings more serious. "Why should Lippity-Libby want a clack with him? . . . Just for gossip's sake?—or to convey a warning?" Lippity-Libby knew, or averred that he knew, the author of yesterday's anonymous letter. . . .
"Tell him I'll be out in a moment!"
Nicky-Nan beat his hands together softly to rid them of the worst of the plaster, then smoothed them briskly down his chest in a hasty effort to remove the cobwebs that clung there. The result—two damning smears on the front of his shirt—was discouraging.
He opened the door with great caution, peered out into the passage, and found to his great relief that Mrs Penhaligon, that discreet woman, had withdrawn to her own premises.
He would have reconnoitred farther, but in the porch at the end of the passage Lippity-Libby stood in plain view, with the street full of sunshine behind him. So Nicky-Nan contented himself with closing the door carefully and hasping it.
"If," began Lippity-Libby, "you go on gettin' letters at the rate o' one a day, there's only two ways to it. Either you'll practise yourself not to keep the King's postman waitin', or you'll make it up afterwards in the shape of a Christmas-box. . . . I ought in fairness to tell you," Lippity-Libby added, "that there is a third way— though I hate the sight of it—and that's a letter-box with a slit in the door. Parson Steele has one. When I asked en why, he laughed an' talked foolish, an' said he'd put it up in self-defence. Now, what sort o' defence can a letter-box be to any man's house? And that was six months afore the War, too!"
"Another letter for me?" Nicky-Nan hobbled forward, blinking against the sunlight.
"'Ho-Haitch-Hem-Hess'—that means 'On His Majesty Service'; post-mark, Troy. . . . Hullo!—anything wrong wi' the house?"
"Eh?"
"Plasterin' job?"
Nicky-Nan understood. "What's that to you?" he asked curtly.
"I don' know how it should happen," mused Lippity-Libby after a pause of dejection; "but the gettin' of letters seems to turn folks suspicious-like all of a sudden. You'd be surprised the number that puts me the very question you've just asked. An' they tell me that 'tis with money the same as with letters. I read a tract one time, about a man that found hisself rich of a sudden, and instead o' callin' his naybours together an' sayin' 'Rejoice with me,' what d'ye think he went an' did?"
"Look here," said Nicky-Nan, eyeing the postman firmly. "If you're hidin' something behind this clack, I'll trouble you to out with it."
"If you don't want the story, you shan't have it," said Lippity-Libby, aggrieved. "'Tis your loss, too; for it was full of instruction, an' had a moral at the end in different letterin'. . . . You're upset this mornin', that's what you are: been up too early an' workin' too hard at that plasterin' job, whatever it is." The little man limped back into the roadway and cricked his head back for a gaze up at the chimneys. "Nothing wrong on this side, seemin'ly. . . . Nor, nor there wasn't any breeze o' wind in the night, not to wake me. . . . Anyways, you're a wonderful forgivin' man, Nicholas Nanjivell."