The odd chuckling sounds of merriment which were slowly jerked forth as it were from Peke’s husky windpipe, were droll enough in themselves to be somewhat infectious, and Helmsley laughed as he had not done for many days.
“Ay, there’s a mighty sight of tringum-trangums an’ nonsense i’ the world,” went on Peke, still occasionally giving vent to a suppressed “Hor — er — hor”— “an’ any amount o’ Tom Conys what don’t know a real cuckoo from a sham un’. Glory be good to me! Think o’ the numskulls as goes in for pendlecitis! There’s a fine name for ye! Pendlecitis! Hor — er — hor! All the fash’nables ‘as got it, an’ all the doctors ‘as their knives sharpened an’ ready to cut off the remains o’ the tail we ‘ad when we was all ‘appy apes together! Hor — er — hor! An’ the bit o’ tail ‘s curled up in our in’ards now where it ain’t got no business to be. Which shows as ‘ow Natur’ don’t know ‘ow to do it, seein’ as if we ‘adn’t wanted a tail, she’d a’ took it sheer off an’ not left any behind. But the doctors thinks they knows a darn sight better’n Natur’, an’ they’ll soon be givin’ lessons in the makin’ o’ man to the Lord A’mighty hisself! Hor — er — hor! Pendlecitis! That’s a precious monkey’s tail, that there! In my grandfather’s day we didn’t ‘ear ‘bout no monkey’s tails,— ’twas just a chill an’ inflammation o’ the in’ards, an’ a few yerbs made into a tea an’ drunk ‘ot fastin’, cured it in twenty-four hours. But they’ve so many new-fangled notions nowadays, they’ve forgot all the old ‘uns. There’s the cancer illness, — people goes off all over the country now from cancer as never used to in my father’s day, an’ why? ‘Cos they’se gittin’ too wise for Nature’s own cure. Nobody thinks o’ tryin’ agrimony, — water agrimony — some calls it water hemp an’ bastard agrimony— ’tis a thing that flowers in this month an’ the next, — a brown-yellow blossom on a purple stalk, an’ ye find it in cold places, in ponds an’ ditches an’ by runnin’ waters. Make a drink of it, an’ it’ll mend any cancer, if ‘taint too far gone. An’ a cancer that’s outside an’ not in, ‘ull clean away beautiful wi’ the ‘elp o’ red clover. Even the juice o’ nettles, which is common enough, drunk three times a day will kill any germ o’ cancer, while it’ll set up the blood as fresh an’ bright as iver. But who’s a-goin’ to try common stuff like nettles an’ clover an’ water hemp, when there’s doctors sittin’ waitin’ wi’ knives an’ wantin’ money for cuttin’ up their patients an’ ‘urryin’ ’em into kingdom-come afore their time! Glory be good to me! What wi’ doctors an’ ‘omes an’ nusses, an’ all the fuss as a sick man makes about hisself in these days, I’d rather be as I am, Matt Peke, a-wanderin’ by hill an’ dale, an’ lyin’ down peaceful to die under a tree when my times comes, than take any part wi’ the pulin’ cowards as is afraid o’ cold an’ fever an’ wet feet an’ the like, just as if they was poor little shiverin’ mice instead o’ men. Take ’em all round, the wimin’s the bravest at bearin’ pain, — they’ll smile while they’se burnin’ so as it sha’n’t ill-convenience anybody. Wonderful sufferers, is wimin!”
“Yet they are selfish enough sometimes,” said Helmsley, quickly.
“Selfish? Wheer was ye born, D. David?” queried Peke— “An’ what wimin ‘ave ye know’d? Town or country?”
Helmsley was silent.
“Arsk no questions an’ ye’ll be told no lies!” commented Peke, with a chuckle. “I sees! Ye’ve bin a gay old chunk in yer time, mebbe! An’ it’s the wimin as goes in for gay old chunks as ye’ve made all yer larnin of. But they ain’t wimin — not as the country knows ’em. Country wimin works all day an’ as often as not dandles a babby all night, — they’ve not got a minnit but what they aint a-troublin’ an’ a-worryin’ ‘bout ‘usband or childer, an’ their faces is all writ over wi’ the curse o’ the garden of Eden. Selfish? They aint got the time! Up at cock-crow, scrubbin’ the floors, washin’ the babies, feedin’ the fowls or the pigs, peelin’ the taters, makin’ the pot boil, an’ tryin’ to make out ‘ow twelve shillin’s an’ sixpence a week can be made to buy a pound’s worth o’ food, trapsin’ to market, an’ wonderin’ whether the larst born in the cradle aint somehow got into the fire while mother’s away,— ‘opin’ an’ prayin’ for the Lord’s sake as ‘usband don’t come ‘ome blind drunk, — where’s the room for any selfishness in sich a life as that? — the life lived by ‘undreds o’ wimin all over this ’ere blessed free country? Get ‘long wi’ ye, D. David! Old as y’ are, ye ‘ad a mother in yer time, — an’ I’ll take my Gospel oath there was a bit o’ good in ‘er!”
Helmsley stopped abruptly in his walk.
“You are right, man!” he said, “And I am wrong! You know women better than I do, and — you give me a lesson! One is never too old to learn,” — and he smiled a rather pained smile. “But — I have had a bad experience!”
“Well, if y’ave ‘ad it ivir so bad, yer ‘xperience aint every one’s,” retorted Peke. “If one fly gits into the soup, that don’t argify that the hull pot ‘s full of ’em. An’ there’s more good wimin than bad — takin’ ’em all round an’ includin’ ‘op pickers, gypsies an’ the like. Even Miss Tranter aint wantin’ in feelin’, though she’s a bit sour like, owin’ to ‘avin missed a ‘usband an’ all the savin’ worrity wear-an-tear a ‘usband brings, but she aint arf bad. Yon’s the lamp of ‘er ‘Trusty Man’ now.”
A gleam of light, not much larger than the glitter of one of the glow-worms in the grass, was just then visible at the end of the long field they were traversing.
“That’s an old cart-road down there wheer it stands,” continued Peke. “As bad a road as ivir was made, but it runs straight into Devonshire, an’ it’s a good place for a pub. For many a year ‘twornt used, bein’ so rough an’ ready, but now there’s such a crowd o’ motors tearin, over Countisbury ‘Ill, the carts takes it, keepin’ more to theirselves like, an’ savin’ smashin’. Miss Tranter she knew what she was a-doin’ of when she got a licence an’ opened ‘er bizniss. ’Twas a ramshackle old farm-’ouse, goin’ all to pieces when she bought it an’ put up ‘er sign o’ the ‘Trusty Man,’ an’ silly wenches round ’ere do say as ‘ow it’s ‘aunted, owin’ to the man as ‘ad it afore Miss Tranter, bein’ found dead in ’is bed with ’is ‘ands a-clutchin’ a pack o’ cards. An’ the ace o’ spades — that’s death — was turned uppermost. So they goes chatterin’ an’ chitterin’ as ‘ow the old chap ‘ad been playin’ cards wi’ the devil, an’ got a bad end. But Miss Tranter, she don’t listen to maids’ gabble, — she’s doin’ well, devil or no devil — an’ if any one was to talk to ‘er ‘bout ghosteses an’ sich-like, she’d wallop ’em out of ‘er bar with a broom! Ay, that she would! She’s a powerful strong woman Miss Tranter, an’ many’s the larker what’s felt ‘er ‘and on ’is collar a-chuckin’ ’im out o’ the ‘Trusty Man’ neck an’ crop for sayin’ somethin’ what aint ezackly agreeable to ‘er feelin’s. She don’t stand no nonsense, an’ though she’s lib’ral with ‘er pennorths an’ pints she don’t wait till a man’s full boozed ‘fore lockin’ up the tap-room. ‘Git to bed, yer hulkin’ fools!’ sez she, ‘or ye may change my ‘Otel for the Sheriff’s.’ An’ they all knuckles down afore ‘er as if they was childer gettin’ spanked by their mother. Ah, she’d ‘a made a grand wife for a man! ’E wouldn’t ‘ave ‘ad no chance to make a pig of hisself if she’d been anywheres round!”
“Perhaps she won’t take me in!” suggested Helmsley.
“She will, an’ that sartinly!” said Peke. “She’ll not refuse bed an’ board to any friend o’ mine.”
“Friend!” Helmsley echoed the word wonderingly.
“Ay, friend! Any one’s a friend what trusts to ye on the road, aint ’e? Leastways that’s ‘ow I take it.”
“As I said before, you are very kind to me,” murmured Helmsley; “and I have already asked you — Why?”
“There aint no rhyme nor reason in it,” answered Peke. “You ‘elps a man along if ye sees ’e wants ‘elpin’, sure-ly, �
�� that’s nat’ral. ’Tis on’y them as is born bad as don’t ‘elp nothin’ nor nobody. Ye’re old an’ fagged out, an’ yer face speaks a bit o’ trouble — that’s enuff for me. Hi’ y’ are! — hi’ y’ are, old ‘Trusty Man!’”
And striding across a dry ditch which formed a kind of entrenchment between the field and the road, Peke guided his companion round a dark corner and brought him in front of a long low building, heavily timbered, with queer little lop-sided gable windows set in the slanting, red-tiled roof. A sign-board swung over the door and a small lamp fixed beneath it showed that it bore the crudely painted portrait of a gentleman in an apron, spreading out both hands palms upwards as one who has nothing to conceal, — the ideal likeness of the “Trusty Man” himself. The door itself stood open, and the sound of male voices evinced the presence of customers within. Peke entered without ceremony, beckoning Helmsley to follow him, and made straight for the bar, where a tall woman with remarkably square shoulders stood severely upright, knitting.
“‘Evenin’, Miss Tranter!” said Peke, pulling off his tattered cap. “Any room for poor lodgers?”
Miss Tranter glanced at him, and then at his companion.
“That depends on the lodgers,” she answered curtly.
“That’s right! That’s quite right, Miss!” said Peke with propitiatory deference. “You ‘se allus right whatsoever ye does an’ sez! But yer knows me, — yer knows Matt Peke, don’t yer?”
Miss Tranter smiled sourly, and her knitting needles glittered like crossed knives as she finished a particular row of stitches on which she was engaged before condescending to reply. Then she said: —
“Yes, I know you right enough, but I don’t know your company. I’m not taking up strangers.”
“Lord love ye! This aint a stranger!” exclaimed Peke. “This ‘ere’s old David, a friend o’ mine as is out o’ work through gittin’ more years on ’is back than the British Gov’ment allows, an’ ‘e’s trampin’ it to see ’is relations afore ’e gits put to bed wi’ a shovel. ‘E’s as ‘armless as they makes ’em, an’ I’ve told ’im as ‘ow ye’ don’t take in nowt but ‘spectable folk. Doant ‘ee turn out an old gaffer like ’e be, fagged an’ footsore, to sleep in open — doant ‘ee now, there’s a good soul!”
Miss Tranter went on knitting rapidly. Presently she turned her piercing gimlet grey eyes on Helmsley.
“Where do you come from, man?” she demanded.
Helmsley lifted his hat with the gentle courtesy habitual to him.
“From Bristol, ma’am.”
“Tramping it?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you going?”
“To Cornwall.”
“That’s a long way and a hard road,” commented Miss Tranter; “You’ll never get there!”
Helmsley gave a slight deprecatory gesture, but said nothing.
Miss Tranter eyed him more keenly.
“Are you hungry?”
He smiled.
“Not very!”
“That means you’re half-starved without knowing it,” she said decisively. “Go in yonder,” and she pointed with one of her knitting needles to the room beyond the bar whence the hum of male voices proceeded. “I’ll send you some hot soup with plenty of stewed meat and bread in it. An old man like you wants more than the road food. Take him in, Peke!”
“Didn’t I tell ye!” ejaculated Peke, triumphantly looking round at Helmsley. “She’s one that’s got ‘er ‘art in the right place! I say, Miss Tranter, beggin’ yer parding, my friend aint a sponger, ye know! ’E can pay ye a shillin’ or two for yer trouble!”
Miss Tranter nodded her head carelessly.
“The food’s threepence and the bed fourpence,” she said. “Breakfast in the morning, threepence, — and twopence for the washing towel. That makes a shilling all told. Ale and liquors extra.”
With that she turned her back on them, and Peke, pulling Helmsley by the arm, took him into the common room of the inn, where there were several men seated round a long oak table with “gate-legs” which must have been turned by the handicraftsmen of the time of Henry the Seventh. Here Peke set down his basket of herbs in a corner, and addressed the company generally.
“‘Evenin’, mates! All well an’ ‘arty?”
Three or four of the party gave gruff response. The others sat smoking silently. One end of the table was unoccupied, and to this Peke drew a couple of rush-bottomed chairs with sturdy oak backs, and bade Helmsley sit down beside him.
“It be powerful warm to-night!” he said, taking off his cap, and showing a disordered head of rough dark hair, sprinkled with grey. “Powerful warm it be trampin’ the road, from sunrise to sunset, when the dust lies thick and ‘eavy, an’ all the country’s dry for a drop o’ rain.”
“Wal, you aint got no cause to grumble at it,” said a fat-faced man in very dirty corduroys. “It’s your chice, an’ your livin’! You likes the road, an’ you makes your grub on it! ‘Taint no use you findin’ fault with the gettin’ o’ your victuals!”
“Who’s findin’ fault, Mister Dubble?” asked Peke soothingly. “I on’y said ’twas powerful warm.”
“An’ no one but a sawny ‘xpects it to be powerful cold in July,” growled Dubble— “though some there is an’ some there be what cries fur snow in August, but I aint one on ’em.”
“No, ’e aint one on ’em,” commented a burly farmer, blowing away the foam from the brim of a tankard of ale which was set on the table in front of him. “’E alluz takes just what cooms along easy loike, do Mizter Dubble!”
There followed a silence. It was instinctively felt that the discussion was hardly important enough to be continued. Moreover, every man in the room was conscious of a stranger’s presence, and each one cast a furtive glance at Helmsley, who, imitating Peke’s example, had taken off his hat, and now sat quietly under the flickering light of the oil lamp which was suspended from the middle of the ceiling. He himself was intensely interested in the turn his wanderings had taken. There was a certain excitement in his present position, — he was experiencing the “new sensation” he had longed for, — and he realised it with the fullest sense of enjoyment. To be one of the richest men in the world, and yet to seem so miserably poor and helpless as to be regarded with suspicion by such a class of fellows as those among whom he was now seated, was decidedly a novel way of acquiring an additional relish for the varying chances and changes of life.
“Brought yer father along wi’ ye, Matt?” suddenly asked a wizened little man of about sixty, with a questioning grin on his hard weather-beaten features.
“I aint up to ‘awkin’ dead bodies out o’ their graves yet, Bill Bush,” answered Peke. “Unless my old dad’s corpsy’s turned to yerbs, which is more’n likely, I aint got ’im. This ‘ere’s a friend o’ mine, — Mister David — e’s out o’ work through the Lord’s speshul dispensation an’ rule o’ natur — gettin’ old!”
A laugh went round, but a more favourable impression towards Peke’s companion was at once created by this introduction.
“Sorry for ye!” said the individual called Bill Bush, nodding encouragingly to Helmsley. “I’m a bit that way myself.”
He winked, and again the company laughed. Bill was known as one of the most daring and desperate poachers in all the countryside, but as yet he had never been caught in the act, and he was one of Miss Tranter’s “respectable” customers. But, truth to tell, Miss Tranter had some very odd ideas of her own. One was that rabbits were vermin, and that it was of no consequence how or by whom they were killed. Another was that “wild game” belonged to everybody, poor and rich. Vainly was it explained to her that rich landowners spent no end of money on breeding and preserving pheasants, grouse, and the like, — she would hear none of it.
“Stuff and nonsense,” she said sharply. “The birds breed by themselves quite fast enough if let alone, — and the Lord intended them so to do for every one’s use and eating, not for a few mean and selfish money-grubs wh
o’d shoot and sell their own babies if they could get game prices for them!”
And she had a certain sympathy with Bill Bush and his nefarious proceedings. As long as he succeeded in evading the police, so long would he be welcome at the “Trusty Man,” but if once he were to be clapped into jail the door of his favourite “public” would be closed to him. Not that Miss Tranter was a woman who “went back,” as the saying is, on her friends, but she had to think of her licence, and could not afford to run counter to those authorities who had the power to take it away from her.
“I’m a-shrivellin’ away for want o’ suthin’ to do,” proceeded Bill. “My legs aint no show at all to what they once was.”
And he looked down at those members complacently. They were encased in brown velveteens much the worse for wear, and in shape resembled a couple of sticks with a crook at the knees.
“I lost my sitiwation as gamekeeper to ’is Royal ‘Ighness the Dook o’ Duncy through bein’ too ‘onest,” he went on with another wink. “‘Orful pertikler, the Dook was, — nobuddy was ‘llowed to be ‘onest wheer ’e was but ‘imself! Lord love ye! It don’t do to be straight an’ square in this world!”
Helmsley listened to this bantering talk, saying nothing. He was pale, and sat very still, thus giving the impression of being too tired to notice what was going on around him. Peke took up the conversation.
“Stow yer gab, Bill!” he said. “When you gits straight an’ square, it’ll be a round ‘ole ye’ll ‘ave to drop into, mark my wurrd! An’ no Dook o’ Duncy ‘ull pull ye out! This ’ere old friend o’ mine don’t unnerstand ye wi’ yer fustian an’ yer galligaskins. ‘E’s kinder eddicated — got a bit o’ larnin’ as I ‘aves myself.”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 658