CHAPTER XVII
SEA-SIDE LODGINGS
To set a dog barking is easier than to stop him by the soundestreasoning. Even if the roof above his honest head, growing loose on itsnails, is being mended, he comes out to ask about the matter, and instrong terms proclaims his opinion to the distance.
After this kind behaved the people about to be protected by thisbattery. They had dreamed of no danger till they saw their housesbeginning to be protected, and for this--though it added to theirimportance--they were not truly thankful. They took it in various ways,according to their rich variety of reflection; but the way in whichnobody took it was that of gratitude and humility.
"Everything upside down," they said, "everything gone clean topsy-turvy!And the deep meaning of it is to rob our fishing, under pretence of theNationals. It may bring a good bit of money to the place, for the liningof one or two pockets, such as John Prater's and Cheeseman's; but Inever did hold so much with money, when shattery ways comes along of it.No daughter of mine stirs out-of-doors after sundown, I can tell them."
Thus were the minds of the men disturbed, or at any rate those of theelder ones; while the women, on the whole, were pleased, although theypretended to be contemptuous. "I'll tell you what I think, ma'am," Mrs.Cheeseman said to Widow Shanks quite early, "if you take a farthing lessthan half a guinea a week for your dimity-parlour, with the window upthe hill, and the little door under the big sweet-briar, I shall thinkthat you are not as you used to be."
"And right you would be, ma'am, and too right there;" Mrs. Shanks sigheddeeply as she thought of it. "There is nobody but you can understandit, and I don't mind saying it on that account to you. Whenever I havewanted for a little bit of money, as the nature of lone widows generallydoes, it has always been out of your power, Mrs. Cheeseman, to obligeme, and quite right of you. But I have a good son, thank the Lord,by the name of Harry, to provide for me; and a guinea a week is theagreement now for the dimity-parlour, and the three leg'd bed, and colddinner to be paid for extra, such as I might send for to your good shop,with the money ready in the hand of my little girl, and jug below herapron for refreshment from the Darling."
"Well, I never! My dear soul, you have taken all my breath away. Why,it must be the captain of all the gunners. How gunpowder do pay, to besure!"
"Lor, ma'am, why, don't you know," replied Mrs. Shanks, with somecontempt, "that the man with three ribs is the captain of thegunners--the man in my back sitting-room? No dimity-parlour for him withhis family, not for a guinea and a half a week. But if I was to tellyou who the gentleman is, and one of the highest all round these parts,truthful as you know me, Mrs. Cheeseman, you would say to yourself, whata liar she is!"
"Mrs. Shanks, I never use coarse expressions, even to myself in private.And perhaps I could tell you a thing or two would astonish you more thanme, ma'am. Suppose I should tell you, to begin with, who your guinealodger is?"
"That you could never do, Mrs. Cheeseman, with all your time a-countingchanges. He is not of the rank for a twopenny rasher, or a wedge ofcheese packed in old petticoat."
These two ladies now looked at one another. They had not had a quarrelfor almost three months, and a large arrear of little pricks on eitherside was pending. Sooner or later it would have to be fought out (likea feud between two nations), with a houseful of loss and woe to eitherside, but a thimbleful of pride and glory. Yet so much wiser were thesewomen than the most sagacious nations that they put off to a cheapertime their grudge against each other.
"His rank may be royal," said the wife of Mr. Cheeseman, "though agoing-downhill kind of royalty, perhaps, and yet he might be glad, Mrs.Shanks, to come where the butter has the milk spots, and none is in thecheese, ma'am."
"If such should be his wish, ma'am, for supper or for breakfast, or evenfor dinner on a Sunday when the rain comes through the Castle, you maytrust me to know where to send him, but not to guarantee him at all ofhis money."
"They high ones is very apt to slip in that," Mrs. Cheeseman answered,thoughtfully; "they seem to be less particular in paying for a thingthan they was to have it good. But a burnt child dreads the fire, asthey say; and a young man with a castleful of owls and rats, by reasonof going for these hundred years on credit, will have it brought hometo him to pay ready money. But the Lord be over us! if I don't see hima-going your way already! Good-by, my dear soul--good-by, and preserveyou; and if at any time short of table or bed linen, a loan from an oldfriend, and coming back well washed, and it sha'n't be, as the childrensing, 'A friend with a loan has the pick of your bone, and he won't letyou very long alone.'"
"Many thanks to you for friendly meaning, ma'am," said the widow, as shetook up her basket to go home, "and glad I may be to profit by it, withthe time commanding. But as yet I have had neither sleepers or feedersin my little house, but the children. Though both of them reservesthe right to do it, if nature should so compel them--the three-ribbedgentleman with one ear, at five shillings a week, in the sitting-room,and the young man up over him. Their meaning is for business, andstudying, and keeping of accounts, and having of a quiet place in badweather, though feed they must, sooner or later, I depend; and then whois there but Mr. Cheeseman?"
"How grand he do look upon that black horse, quite as solid as if he wasglued to it!" the lady of the shop replied, as she put away the money;"and to do that without victuals is beyond a young man's power. Helooks like what they used to call a knight upon an errand, in thepicture-books, when I was romantic, only for the hair that comes underhis nose. Ah! his errand will be to break the hearts of the young ladiesthat goes down upon the sands in their blue gowns, I'm afraid, if theycan only manage with the hair below his nose."
"And do them good, some of them, and be a judgment from the Lord, forthe French style in their skirts is a shocking thing to see. What shouldwe have said when you and I were young, my dear? But quick step is theword for me, for I expect my Jenny home on her day out from the Admiral,and no Harry in the house to look after her. Ah! dimity-parlours is athing as may happen to cut both ways, Mrs. Cheeseman."
Widow Shanks had good cause to be proud of her cottage, which was theprettiest in Springhaven, and one of the most commodious. She had foughta hard fight, when her widowhood began, and the children were too youngto help her, rather than give up the home of her love-time, and thecradle of her little ones. Some of her neighbours (who wanted the house)were sadly pained at her stubbornness, and even dishonesty, as they putit, when she knew that she never could pay her rent. But "never is along time," according to the proverb; and with the forbearance ofthe Admiral, the kindness of his daughters, and the growth of her ownchildren, she stood clear of all debt now, except the sweet one ofgratitude.
And now she could listen to the moaning of the sea (which used to makeher weep all night) with a milder sense of the cruel woe that it haddrowned her husband, and a lull of sorrow that was almost hope; untilthe dark visions of wrecks and corpses melted into sweet dreams of herson upon the waters, finishing his supper, and getting ready for hispipe. For Harry was making his own track well in the wake of his dearfather.
Now if she had gone inland to dwell, from the stroke of her greatcalamity--as most people told her to make haste and do--not only thesympathy of the sea, but many of the little cares, which are the antsthat bury heavy grief, would have been wholly lost to her. And amongstthese cares the foremost always, and the most distracting, was thatof keeping her husband's cottage--as she still would call it--tidy,comfortable, bright, and snug, as if he were coming on Saturday.
Where the brook runs into the first hearing of the sea, to defer its ownextinction it takes a lively turn inland, leaving a pleasant breadth ofgreen between itself and its destiny. At the breath of salt the largertrees hang back, and turn their boughs up; but plenty of pretty shrubscome forth, and shade the cottage garden. Neither have the cottage wallsany lack of leafy mantle, where the summer sun works his own defeat byfostering cool obstruction. For here are the tamarisk, and jasmin, andthe old-fashioned co
rchorus flowering all the summer through, as wellas the myrtle that loves the shore, with a thicket of stiff young sprigsarising, slow of growth, but hiding yearly the havoc made in its headand body by the frost of 1795, when the mark of every wave upon thesands was ice. And a vine, that seems to have been evolved from amiller, or to have prejected him, clambers with grey silver pointrelsthrough the more glossy and darker green. And over these you behold thethatch, thick and long and parti-coloured, eaved with little windows,where a bird may nest for ever.
But it was not for this outward beauty that Widow Shanks, stuck to herhouse, and paid the rent at intervals. To her steadfast and well-managedmind, the number of rooms, and the separate staircase which a solventlodger might enjoy, were the choicest grant of the household gods. Thetimes were bad--as they always are when conscientious people thinkof them--and poor Mrs. Shanks was desirous of paying her rent, by thepayment of somebody. Every now and then some well-fed family, hungering(after long carnage) for fish, would come from village pastures or townshambles, to gaze at the sea, and to taste its contents. For in thosedays fish were still in their duty, to fry well, to boil well, and togo into the mouth well, instead of being dissolute--as nowadays thebest is--with dirty ice, and flabby with arrested fermentation. In thepleasant dimity-parlour then, commanding a fair view of the lively seaand the stream that sparkled into it, were noble dinners of sole, andmackerel, and smelt that smelled of cucumber, and dainty dory, andpearl-buttoned turbot, and sometimes even the crisp sand-lance, happilyfor himself, unhappily for whitebait, still unknown in London. Then,after long rovings ashore or afloat, these diners came back with a newlight shed upon them--that of the moon outside the house, of the suppercandles inside. There was sure to be a crab or lobster ready, and a dishof prawns sprigged with parsley; if the sea were beginning to get coolagain, a keg of philanthropic oysters; or if these were not hospitablyon their hinges yet, certainly there would be choice-bodied creatures,dried with a dash of salt upon the sunny shingle, and lacking ofperfection nothing more than to be warmed through upon a toasting-fork.
By none, however, of these delights was the newly won lodger tempted.All that he wanted was peace and quiet, time to go through a great trunkfull of papers and parchments, which he brought with him, and a breathof fresh air from the downs on the north, and the sea to the south,to enliven him. And in good truth he wanted to be enlivened, as WidowShanks said to her daughter Jenny; for his eyes were gloomy, and hisface was stern, and he seldom said anything good-natured. He seemed toavoid all company, and to be wrapped up wholly in his own concerns, andto take little pleasure in anything. As yet he had not used the bed athis lodgings, nor broken his fast there to her knowledge, though he rodedown early every morning and put up his horse at Cheeseman's, and neverrode away again until the dark had fallen. Neither had he cared to makethe acquaintance of Captain Stubbarb, who occupied the room beneathhis for a Royal Office--as the landlady proudly entitled it; nor hadhe received, to the best of her knowledge, so much as a single visitor,though such might come by his private entrance among the shrubsunnoticed. All these things stirred with deep interest and wonder theenquiring mind of the widow.
"And what do they say of him up at the Hall?" she asked her daughterJenny, who was come to spend holiday at home. "What do they say of mynew gentleman, young Squire Carne from the Castle? The Carnes and theDarlings was never great friends, as every one knows in Springhaven.Still, it do seem hard and unchristianlike to keep up them old enmities;most of all, when the one side is down in the world, with the owls andthe bats and the coneys."
"No, mother, no. They are not a bit like that," replied Jenny--a maidof good loyalty; "it is only that he has not called upon them. Allgentlefolks have their proper rules of behaviour. You can't be expectedto understand them, mother."
"But why should he go to them more than they should come to him,particular with young ladies there? And him with only one horse totheir seven or eight. I am right, you may depend upon it, Jenny; andmy mother, your grandmother, was a lady's-maid in a higher family thanDarling--it depends upon them to come and look him up first, and he haveno call to knock at their door without it. Why, it stands to reason,poor young man! And not a bit hath he eaten from Monday."
"Well, I believe I am right, but I'll ask Miss Dolly. She is that sharp,she knows everything, and I don't mind what I say to her, when shethinks that she looks handsome. And it takes a very bad dress, I cantell you, to put her out of that opinion."
"She is right enough there:" Mrs. Shanks shook her head at her daughterfor speaking in this way. "The ugliest frock as ever came from Francecouldn't make her any but a booty. And the Lord knows the quality havecome to queer shapes now. Undecent would be the name for it in our ranksof women. Why, the last of her frocks she gave you, Jenny, how much didI put on, at top and bottom, and you three inches shorter than she is!And the slips they ties round them--oh dear! oh dear! as if that was tohold them up and buckle them together! Won't they have the groanings bythe time they come to my age?"
Springhaven: A Tale of the Great War Page 17