Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts Part 24

"Well," said Billy, "I'm right glad to meet you, anyway, for--tell 'ee the truth--you're the very man I was looking for."

"Really?" says Abe, like one interested.

"You and no other. I don't mind telling 'ee I've been through a fire of temptation. You know why I jumped into that boat: it vexed you a bit, I dare say. And strickly speakin', mind you"--Billy took his friend by the b.u.t.ton-hole--"strickly speakin' I'd the right on my side. 'Let the best man win' was our agreement. But you needn' to fret yourself: _I_ ben't the man to take an advantage of an old friend, fair though it be.

Man, I ha'n't been to Ardevora--I turned back. So finish your beer and come'st along with me, and we'll walk down to Selina Johns together and ask her which of us she'll choose, fair and square."

Abe set down his mug and looked up, studying the signboard over the door.

"Well," says he, "'tis a real relief to my mind to know you've played so fair. For man and boy, Bill, I always thought it of you."

"Yes, indeed," says Billy, "man and boy, it always was my motto."

"But as consarnin' Selina Johns," Abe went on, "there ain't no such woman."

"You don't tell me she's dead!"

"No; 'tis her first husband that's dead. She's Selina Widlake now."

"How long have 'ee knowed that?"

"Maybe an hour, maybe only three-quarters. Her name's Selina Widlake, and she owns this here public. What's more, her name isn't going to be Selina Widlake, but Selina c.u.mmins. We've fixed it up, and she's to leave Nancledrea and take the Welcome Home over to Ardevora."

Billy Bosistow took a turn across the road, and, coming back, stuck his hands in his pockets and stared up at the sign overhead.

"Well! And I, that was too honourable--" he began.

"So you was," agreed Abe, pulling out his pipe. "You can't think what a comfort that is to me. But, as it turns out, 'twouldn't have made no difference. For she see'd you last evenin', and she was tellin' me just now that prison hadn't improved you. In fact she didn't like either your looks or your behaviour."

I've heard that he was just in time to pop inside and bolt the door after him. And now you know why Billy Bosistow and Abe c.u.mmins could never bear the sight of each other from that day. But there! you can't be first and last too, as the saying is.

[1] Givet in the Ardennes. The river, of course, is the Meuse.

[2] Probably Briancon in the Hautes Alpes.

[3] Performers in a Christmas Play.

A TOWN'S MEMORY

A PENDANT TO THE FOREGOING

The returned Emigrant was not one of those who sometimes creep back to Tregarrick and scan the folk wistfully and the names over the shops till they bethink themselves of stepping up the hill to take a look at the cemetery, and there find all they sought. This man stood under the archway of the Pack-horse Inn (by A. Walters), with his soft hat tilted over his nose, a cigar in his mouth, hands in his trouser pockets, and legs a-straddle, and smoked and eyed the pa.s.sers-by with a twinkle of humour.

He knew them all again, or nearly all. He had quitted Tregarrick for the Cape at the age of fifteen, under the wing of a cousin from the Mining District, had made money out there, and meant to return to make more, and was home just now on a holiday, with gold in his pocket and the merest trace of silver in his hair. He watched the people pa.s.sing, and it all seemed very queer to him and amusing.

They were one and all acting and behaving just as they had used to act and behave. Some were a trifle greyer, perhaps, and others stooped a bit; but they went about their business in the old fas.h.i.+on, and their occupations had not changed. It was just as if he had wound up a clockwork toy before leaving England, and had returned after many years to find it still working. Here came old Dymond, the postman, with the usual midday delivery, light as ever, and the well-remembered dot-and-go-one gait. The maids who came out to take the letters were different; in one of them the Emigrant recognised a little girl who had once sat facing him in the Wesleyan day-school; but the bells that fetched them out were those on which he had sounded runaway peals in former days, and with his eyes shut he could have sworn to old Dymond's double-knock. The cart that rattled its load of empty cans up the street belonged to Nicholas Retallack ("Old Nick"), the milkman, and that was Retallack beside it, returning from his morning round. The Emigrant took the cigar from his mouth and blew a lazy cloud. But for Retallack he might never have seen South Africa or known Johannesburg.

Retallack had caught him surrept.i.tiously milking the Alderney into a battered straw hat, and had threatened a summons. There had been a previous summons with a conviction, and the Mayor had hinted at the Reformatory, so the Emigrant had been packed off. And here he was, back again; and here was Retallack trudging around, the same as ever.

In the window across the road a saddler sat cutting out a strap, and reminding the Emigrant of a certain First of April when he had ventured in and inquired for half a pint of strap-oil. It might almost be the same strap, as it certainly was the same saddler.

Down at the street corner, by the clock, a couple of Town Councillors stood chatting. While the Emigrant looked there came round the corner a ruck of boys from school chivvying and shouting after an ungainly man, who turned twice and threatened them with a stick. The Town Councillors did not interfere, and the rabble pa.s.sed bawling by the Pack-horse. Long before it came the Emigrant had recognised the ungainly man. It was d.i.c.ky Loony, the town b.u.t.t. He had chivvied the imbecile a hundred times in just the same fas.h.i.+on, yelling "Black Cat!"

after him as these young imps were yelling--though why "Black Cat"

neither he nor the imps could have told. But d.i.c.ky had always resented it as he resented it now, wheeling round, shaking his stick, and sputtering maledictions. A stone or two flew harmlessly by.

The Emigrant did not interfere.

As yet no one had recognised him. He had arrived the night before, and taken a room at the Pack-horse, n.o.body asking his name; had sat after supper in a corner of the smoking-room and listened to the gossip there, saying nothing.

"Who's he travellin' for?" somebody had asked of Abel Walters, the landlord. "He ain't a commercial. He han't got the trunks, only a kit-bag. By the soft hat he wears I should say _a_ agent in advance.

Likely we'll have a circus before long."

His father and mother were dead these ten years. He had sent home money to pay the funeral expenses and buy a substantial headstone. But he had not been up to the cemetery yet. He was not a sentimental man.

Still, he had expected his return to make some little stir in Tregarrick, and now a shade of disappointment began to creep over his humour.

He flung away the end of his cigar and strolled up the sunny pavement to a sweetshop where he had once bought ha'porths of liquorice and cinnamon-rock. The legend, "E. Hosking, Maker of Cheesecakes to Queen Victoria," still decorated the window. He entered and demanded a pound of best "fairing," smiling at the magnificence of the order.

Mrs. Hosking--her white mob--cap and ap.r.o.n clean as ever--offered him a macaroon for luck, and weighed out the sweets. Her hand shook more than of old.

"You don't remember me, Mrs. Hosking?"

"What is it you say? You must speak a little louder, please, I'm deaf."

"You don't remember me?"

"No, I don't," she said composedly. "I'm gone terrible blind this last year or two."

The Emigrant paid for his sweets and walked out. He had bought them with a purpose, and now bent his steps down Market Street. At the foot of the hill he paused before a row of white-washed cottages. A green fence ran along their front, and a pebbled path; and here he found a stout, matronly woman bent over a wash-tub.

"Does Mrs. Best live here?" he asked.

The woman withdrew about a dozen pins from her mouth and answered all in one breath:--

"She isn't called Best any longer; she married agen five year ago; second husbing, he died too; she doesn' live here any more."

With this she stuck the pins very deliberately, one by one, in the bosom of her print gown, and plunged her hands into the wash-tub again.

The Emigrant stood nonplussed for a moment and scratched the back of his head, tilting his soft hat still further forward on his nose.

"She used to be very fond of me when I was a boy," he said lamely.

"Yes?" The tone seemed to ask what business that could be of hers.

"She came as nurse to my mother when I was born. I suppose that made her take a fancy to me."

"Ah, no doubt," replied the woman vaguely, and added, while she soaped a long black stocking, "she did a lot o' that, one time and another."

"She had a little girl of her own before I left Tregarrick," the Emigrant persisted, not because she appeared interested--she did not, at all--but with some vague hope of making himself appear a little less trivial. "Lizzie she called her. I suppose you don't know what has become of the old woman?"

"Well, considerin' that I'm her daughter Elizabeth"--she lengthened the name with an implied reproof--"I reckon I ought to know."