Two Knapsacks Part 23

"My ends, Mr. Coristine, are public, not private, nor are they infamous, but for the good of the community and the individuals composing it. I know your firm, Tylor, Woodruff and White, and your firm knows me, Internal Revenue Detective Nash."

"What! are you the celebrated Mr. Nash of the Penetang Bush Raid?" asked the lawyer, curiosity, and admiration of the man's skill and courage, overcoming his aversion to the latest detective trick.

"The same at your service, and, as the best thing I can do for you is to take you to your Inn, a dry way out of the dew, you can get on my beast, and I'll walk for a rest," replied the detective, alighting.

Coristine was tired, so, after a little pressing, he accepted the mount, and, of course, found it impossible to refuse his confidence to the man whose horse he was riding.

"What did you do with your clerical garb?" he asked.

"Have it on," replied Nash; "it's a great make up. This coat of black cord has a lot of turned up and turned down tag ends, the same with the vest, and the soft hat can be knocked into any shape with a dift of the fist. With these, and three collars, and moustache, beard, and whiskers, that I carry in my pocket, I can a.s.sume half-a-dozen characters and more."

"How do you justify your a.s.sumption of the priestly character?"

"I want information, and a.s.sume any character to get it, in every case being guilty of deception. You think my last role unjustifiable because of the confessional. Had I simulated a Methodist parson, or a Presbyterian minister, or a Church of England divine, you would have thought much less of it; and yet, if there is any bad in the thing, the one is as bad as the other. Personally, I regard the confessional as a piece of superst.i.tious ecclesiastical machinery, and am ready to utilize it, like any other superst.i.tion, for the purpose of obtaining information. Talk about personating the clergy; I have even been bold enough to appear as a lawyer, a quaker, a college professor, a sailor, and an actress."

"You have certainly led me to modify my opinion of your last performance."

"Which nearly gave me away. So you won't send me to the penitentiary; thanks! And now, as I said at first, how's Toner?"

"Oh, Toner's all right, with the fieriest skin on him that ever lay between two sheets. He has promised to give up drinking."

"It's very likely he'll have to."

"Why so?"

"They don't allow refreshments so strong in gaol."

"Be as easy as you can with the poor fellow, Mr. Nash."

"All depends on his future behaviour, and, in some other capacity, I shall let him know his danger."

As the two figures came down the road toward the Inn, a voice hailed them, the voice of the dominie. "Is Mr. Coristine there?" it shouted.

"Yes; here am I," came from the back of the horse.

"What bones are broken or wounds received?" was the pitiful but correct question.

"Not a bone nor a wound. Mr. Nash has treated me to a ride."

"Aw ca!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Pierre, "M'syae Nasha homme treh subtil, treh ruse, conneh tout le monde, fait pear aux mauveh sujah."

"What is he?" asked the schoolmaster, speaking English, in his eagerness; and the landlord replied in the same.

"Ee is vat you call detecteur, police offisare vis no close on 'im.

Anysing vas to go in ze custom house and goes not, he find it out. O, a veray clevaire mann!"

Coristine dismounted for the purpose of introducing his companion.

Personally, he would as readily have performed this office on horseback, but he knew that the schoolmaster was a stickler for ceremony. While the introduction was going on, Pierre took Mr. Nash's horse by the bridle, and led the procession home. There, Madame stood in the porch eagerly waiting for news of "ce jeune homme si courageux, si benveillont," and was delighted to hear that he was safe, and that Mr. Nash, an old acquaintance, was with him. When the party entered the house, Wilkinson looked at the detective, and then, with a start, said: "Why, you are Dowling, the Dowling who came to the Sacheverell Street School, with a peremptory letter from the trustees, to take the lower division boys, and disappeared in ten days."

"The same, Mr. Wilkinson; I knew you as soon as I heard your voice."

"You disarranged our work pretty well for us, Mr. Dow--Nash. What were you after there, if it is a fair question?"

"I was after the confidence of some innocent youngsters, who could give me pointers on grindstones and their relation to the family income. As I know you both, and our friends of the hotel are not listening, I may say that I am so interested in this problem as to have made up my mind to go into grindstones myself."

These remarks led to an animated triangular conversation over the Grinstun man, in which the two pedestrians gave the detective all the information they possessed regarding that personage. They urged that an immediate effort should be made to hinder his acquiring the hand and property of Miss Du Plessis, and, thereafter, that united action should be taken to break up his injurious commerce. Mr. Nash prepared to accompany them on their walk to church in Flanders, and asked the lawyer if he had any objection to ride his horse part of the way, with a bundle behind him, if he, the detective, would carry his knapsack. Coristine consented, on condition that his new friend would also lend him his riding gaiters. Madame produced the wherewithal to spend a social half-hour before retiring, and, in answer to the detective, said: "Ze sack ees in ze commode in ze chombre of M'syae." Mr. Nash laughed, and over his gla.s.s and clay pipe, confided to his fellow-conspirators that he had a few little properties in that bag, and was much afraid that some of them would compel him to desecrate the Sabbath. "You are used to my religious performances, Mr Coristine; I hope your friend, and my old princ.i.p.al, Mr. Wilkinson, will not be as hard on me as you were."

Then the dominie was informed of the events of the evening, and the parties separated for the night.

Sunday morning dawned clear and cloudless, giving promise of a glorious day. Everybody in the inn was up before six o'clock; for at seven it was the intention of the three guests to take the road for a place of wors.h.i.+p in Flanders. Ben Toner was waiting on the verandah for the appearance of Coristine; and, when that gentleman came out to taste the morning air, greeted him with clumsy effusion, endeavouring, at the same time, to press a two-dollar bill upon his acceptance. The lawyer declined the money, saying that he had no license to practise, and would, consequently, be liable to a heavy fine should he receive remuneration for his services. He enquired after Ben's health, and was pleased to learn that, while his heroic remedies had left the patient "as rayd as a biled lobister," externally, he was otherwise all right, except for a little stiffness. Mr. Nash came down-stairs, dressed in a well-fitting suit of tweed, and sporting a moustache and full beard that had grown up as rapidly as Jonah's gourd. Going up to the man whom he had confessed the night before, he asked him: "Do you know me again, Toner?" to which Ben replied: "You bet your life I do; you're the curous c.o.o.n as come smellin' round my place with a sayrch warnt two weeks ago Friday." Satisfied that his ident.i.ty in Ben's eye was safe, the detective led him away on to the bridge, and engaged in earnest conversation with him, which made Mr. Toner start, and wriggle, and back down, and impart information confirmatory of that extorted the night before, and give large promises for the future. The two returned to the verandah, and, before the lawyer went in to breakfast, his patient bade him an affectionate farewell, adding, "s'haylp me, Mr. Corstine, ef I don't be true to my word to you and the old woman about that blamed liquor. What I had I turned out o' doors this mornin', fust thing, and I shaant take in no more. That there bailiff's done me a good turn, and I won't ferget him, nor you nuther, Doctor, ef so be it's in my power to haylp you any." Coristine took his leave of the simple-hearted fellow, and went to join the company at the breakfast table. Mr. Nash was there, but, for convenience of eating and not to astonish the host and hostess, he had placed his beard and moustache in his pocket. It was handy, however, and could be replaced at a moment's warning.

Batiste brought round the detective's horse, and the lawyer, in borrowed riding gaiters, bestrode him, hooking on to the back of the saddle a bundle somewhat larger than a cavalry man's rolled-up cloak. The bundle contained Mr. Nash's selected properties. That gentleman allowed Madame to fasten the straps of Coristine's knapsack on his shoulders, while Pierre did the same for Wilkinson. The dominie had paid the bill the night before, as he objected to commercial transactions on Sunday, so there was nothing to do but to say good bye, bestow a trifle on Batiste and take to the road. The detective, after they had done half a mile's pleasant walking, took command of the expedition, and ordered The Cavalry, as Coristine called himself, to trot forward and make a reconnoisance. His instructions were to get to the Carruthers' house in advance of the pedestrians, to find out exactly who were there, and to return with speed and report at headquarters, which would be somewhere on the road. Saluting his friend and his superior officer, the lawyer trotted off, his steed as well pleased as himself to travel more speedily through the balmy atmosphere of the morning. The dominie and his quondam a.s.sistant were thus left to pursue their journey in company.

"Do you enjoy Wordsworth, Mr. Nash?" asked Wilkinson.

"Oh yes," replied the detective, "the poet, you mean, We are seven, and the primrose by the river's brim. Queer old file in the stamp business he must have been. Wish I could make $2,500 a year like him, doing next to nothing."

"There is a pa.s.sage that seems to my mind appropriate. It is:--

Us humbler ceremonies now await; But in the bosom with devout respect, The banner of our joy we will erect, And strength of love our souls shall elevate; For, to a few collected in His name.

The heavenly Father will incline His ear.

Hallowing Himself the service which they frame.

Awake! the majesty of G.o.d revere!

Go--and with foreheads meekly bow'd, Present your prayer: go--and rejoice aloud-- The Holy One will hear!"

"You should have been a parson, Mr. Wilkinson; you do that well. I'd like to take lessons from you; it would help me tremendously in my profession. But I find it mighty hard to do the solemn. That time in your school was almost too much for me, and your friend twigged my make-up last night."

"I find it hard," said the schoolmaster, "not to be solemn in such scenery as this on such a morning. All nature seems to wors.h.i.+p, giving forth in scent and song its tribute of adoration to the Creator, to whose habitation made with hands we are on our way as wors.h.i.+ppers."

"'Fraid I shan't do much wors.h.i.+pping, church or no church. You see, Mr.

Wilkinson, my business is a very absorbing one. I'll be looking for notes, and spotting my men, and working up my clues all the time the parson's b.u.mming away."

"Ah, you have read Tennyson's 'Northern Farmer'?"

"Never heard tell of it; but I've got my eyes on some northern farmers, and they'll have my attention soon."

"Your expression, 'b.u.mming away,' occurs in it, so I thought you had found it there. It is rather a severe way in which to characterize the modern preacher, who, take him on the whole, deserves credit for what I regard as a difficult task, the presentation of some fresh subject of religious thought every Sunday all the year round."

"My mind works too fast for most of them. I can see where the conclusion is before they have half got started. There's no fun in that, you know."

"Do you not sometimes meet with clergymen that interest you?"

"Now and then. The learned bloke who cuts his text into three, and expounds them in detail, I can't stand; nor the wooden logical machine that makes a proposition and proceeds to prove it; nor the unctuous fellow that rambles about, and says, 'dear friends,' and makes you wish he had studied his sermon. But, now and then, I fall in with a man who won't let me do any private thinking till he's done. You hear his text and his introduction, and wonder, how the d.i.c.kens he is going to reconcile the two. He carries you on and on and on, till he does it in a grand whirl at the end, that lifts you up and away with it, like the culminating arguments of the counsel for the prosecution, or the peeler's joyful run in of a long-sought gaol-bird. I like that sort of a parson; the rest are jackdaws."

"Perhaps they suit the average mind?"

"If they did, we ought to have graded churches as well as graded schools. But they don't, except, in this way, that people have got accustomed to the b.u.mming. The preachers I like would keep up the interest of a child. There was one I heard on the text, 'I form the light and create darkness.' His introduction was, 'G.o.d is light and in Him is no darkness at all.' He jerked us up into the light and banged us down into the darkness, almost laughing one minute and crying the next. Then he went to hunt up his man, and found him in the devil and the devil's own, all fallen creations of G.o.d. Any schoolboy could follow that sermon and take its lessons home with him. There was a logical bloke, at least he thought himself logical, who took for his text Joseph's coat of many colours, a sort of plaid kilt I should think; and said, 'I shall now proceed to prove that this was a sacerdotal or priestly garment. First, it occupies a prominent position in the narrative; second, it excited the enmity of Joseph's brethren; and third, they dipped it in blood when they sold their younger brother.' I could have proved it as logically to be Stuart tartan, and, at the same time, the original of the song 'Not for Joe,' because he lost it before he became steward to Pharaoh. Bah! that's what makes people sick of going to church. I've pretty nigh quit it."