Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts Part 27

"I knew you yesterday at once," she said. "You write novels."

"I wish," said I feebly, "the public were as quick at discovering me."

"Somebody printed an 'interview' with you in '--'s Magazine a month or two ago."

"There was not the slightest resemblance."

"Please don't be silly. There was a photograph."

"Ah, to be sure."

"You can help me--help us all--if you will."

"Is it about Fritz?"

She bent her head and signed to me to open the gate. Across the high-road a stile faced us, and a little church, with an acre framed in elms and set about with trimmed yews. She led the way to the low and whitewashed porch, and pushed open the iron-studded door. As I followed, the name of Van der Knoope repeated itself on many mural tablets. Almost at the end of the south aisle she paused and lifted a finger and pointed.

I read--

SACRED To the Memory of FRITZ OPDAM DE KEYSER VAN DER KNOOPE A Mids.h.i.+pman of the Royal Navy Who was born Oct. 21st MDCCCLXVII.

And Drowned By the Capsizing of H.M.S. Viper off the North Coast of Ireland On the 17th of January MDCCCLx.x.xV.

A youth of peculiar promise who lacked but the greater indulgence of an all-wise Providence to earn the distinction of his forefathers (of whom he was the last male representative) in his Country's service in which he laid down his young life

---------- Heu miserande puer! Si qua fata aspera rumpas Tu Marcellus eris.

"Uncle Melchior had it set up. I wonder what Fritz was really like."

"And your Uncle Peter still believes--?"

"Oh yes. I am to marry Fritz in time. That is where you must help us.

It would kill Uncle Peter if he knew. But Uncle Melchior gets puzzled whenever it comes to writing; and I am afraid of making mistakes.

We've put him down in the South Pacific station at present--that will last for two years more. But we have to invent the gossip, you know.

And I thought that you--who wrote stories--"

"My dear young lady," I said, "let me be Fritz, and you shall have a letter duly once a month."

And my promise was kept--until, two years ago, she wrote that there was no further need for letters, for Uncle Peter was dead. For aught I know, by this time Uncle Melchior may be dead also. But regularly, as the monthly date comes round, I am Fritz Opdam de Keyser van der Knoope, a young mids.h.i.+pman of Her Majesty's Navy; and wonder what my affianced bride is doing; and see her on the terrace steps with those b.u.t.terflies floating about her. In my part of the world it is believed that the souls of the departed pa.s.s into these winged creatures. So might the souls of those many pictured Admirals: but some day, before long, I hope to cross Skirrid again and see.

THE PENANCE OF JOHN EMMET.

I have thought fit in this story to alter all the names involved and disguise the actual scene of it: and have done this so carefully that, although the story has a key, the reader who should search for it would not only waste his time but miss even the poor satisfaction of having guessed an idle riddle. He whom I call Parson West is now dead. He was an entirely conscientious man; which means that he would rather do wrong himself than persuade or advise another man--above all, a young man--to do it. I am sure therefore that in burying the body of John Emmet as he did, and enlisting my help, he did what he thought right, though the action was undoubtedly an illegal one. Still, the question is one for casuists; and remembering how modest a value my old friend set on his own wisdom, I dare say that by keeping his real name out of the narrative I am obeying what would have been his wish. His small breach of the law he was (I know) prepared to answer for cheerfully, should the facts come to light. He has now gone where their discovery affects him not at all.

Parson West, then, when I made his acquaintance in 188-, had for thirty years been vicar of the coast-parish of Lansulyan. He had come to it almost fresh from Oxford, a young scholar with a head full of Greek, having accepted the living from his old college as a step towards preferment. He was never to be offered another. Lansulyan parish is a wide one in acreage, and the stipend exiguous even for a bachelor. From the first the Parson eked out his income by preparing small annotated editions of the Cla.s.sics for the use of Schools and by taking occasional pupils, of whom in 188- I was the latest. He could not teach me scholars.h.i.+p, which is a habit of mind; but he could, and in the end did, teach me how to win a scholars.h.i.+p, which is a sum of money paid annually. I have therefore a practical reason for thinking of him with grat.i.tude: and I believe he liked me, while despising my Latinity and discommending my precociousness with tobacco.

His pupils could never complain of distraction. The church-town--a single street of cottages winding round a knoll of elms which hide the Vicarage and all but the spire of St. Julian's Church--stands high and a mile back from the coast, and looks straight upon the Menawhidden reef, a fringe of toothed rocks lying parallel with the sh.o.r.e and half a mile distant from it. This reef forms a breakwater for a small inlet where the coombe which runs below Lansulyan meets the sea. Follow the road downhill from the church-town and along the coombe, and you come to a white-washed fis.h.i.+ng haven, with a life-boat house and short sea-wall.

The Porth is its only name. On the whole, if one has to live in Lansulyan parish the Porth is gayer than the church-town, where from the Vicarage windows you look through the trees southward upon s.h.i.+ps moving up or down Channel in the blue distance and the white water girdling Menawhidden; northward upon downs where herds of ponies wander at will between the treeless farms, and a dun-coloured British earthwork tops the high sky-line. Dwellers among these uplands, wringing their livelihood from the obstinate soil by labour which never slackens, year in and year out, from Monday morning to Sat.u.r.day night, are properly despised by the inhabitants of the Porth, who sit half their time mending nets, cultivating the social graces, and waiting for the harvest which they have not sown to come floating past their doors.

By consequence, if a farmer wishes to learn the spiciest gossip about his nearest neighbour, he must travel down to the Porth for it.

And this makes it the more marvellous that what I am about to tell, happening as it did at the very gates of the Porth, should have escaped the sharpest eyes in the place.

The Vicar's custom was to read with me for a couple of hours in the morning and again for an hour and a half before dinner. We had followed this routine rigidly and punctually for three months or so when, one evening in June, he returned from the Porth a good ten minutes late, very hot and dusty, and even so took a turn or two up and down the room with his hands clasped behind his coat-tails before settling down to correct my iambics.

"John Emmet is dead," he announced, pausing before the window with his back towards me and gazing out upon the ill-kept lawn.

"Wasn't he the c.o.xswain of the life-boat?" I asked.

"Ah, to be sure, you never saw him, did you? He took to his bed before you came . . . a long illness. Well, well, it's all over!" Parson West sighed. "He saved, or helped to save, a hundred and fifteen lives, first and last. A hundred and fifteen lives!"

"I've heard something of the sort down at the Porth. A hundred and fifty, I think they said. They seemed very proud of him down there."

"Why?" The Vicar faced round on me, and added after a moment abruptly-- "He didn't belong to them: he was not even born in this parish."

"Where then?"

He disregarded the question. "Besides, the number was a hundred and fifteen: that's just the pity."

I did not understand: but he had seated himself at table and was running through my iambics. In the third verse he underlined a false quant.i.ty with blue pencil and looked up for an explanation. While I confessed the fault, his gaze wandered away from me and fell upon his fingers drumming upon the table's edge. A slant of red suns.h.i.+ne touched the signet-ring on his little finger, which he moved up and down watching the play of light on the rim of the collet. He was not listening.

By-and-by he glanced up, "I beg your pardon--" stammered he, and leaving the rest of my verses uncorrected, pointed with his pencil to the concluding one. "That's not Greek," he said.

"It's in Sophocles," I contended: and turning up the word in "Liddell and Scott," I pushed the big lexicon under his nose.

For a moment he paid no heed to the action; did not seem to grasp the meaning of it. Then for the first and last time in my acquaintance with him he broke into a pa.s.sion of temper.

"What do you mean, Sir? It's offensive, I tell you: a downright offensive, ungentlemanly thing to do! Yes, Sir, ungentlemanly!"

He crumpled up my verses and tossed them into the waste-paper basket.

"We had better get on with our Tacitus." And "Offensive!" I heard him muttering once more, as he picked up the book and found his place.

I began to construe. His outburst had disconcerted me, and no doubt I performed discreditably: but glancing up in some apprehension after a piece of guess-work which even to me carried no conviction, I saw that again he was not attending. After this, by boldly skipping each difficulty as it arose I managed to cover a good deal of ground with admirable fluency.

We dined together in silence that evening, and after dinner strolled out to the big filbert-tree under which, for a few weeks in the year, Parson West had his dessert laid and sipped his thin port--an old common-room fas.h.i.+on to which he clung. To the end of his days he had the white cloth removed before dessert, and the fruits and the one decanter set out upon polished mahogany.

I glanced at him while helping myself to strawberries and cream. He sat nervously folding and refolding the napkin on his knee. By-and-by he spoke, but without looking at me.

"I lost my temper this afternoon, and I beg your pardon, my boy."

I began to stammer my contrition for having offended him: but he cut me short with a wave of the hand. "The fact is," he explained, "I was worried by something quite different."

"By John Emmet's death," I suggested. He nodded, and looked at me queerly while he poured out a gla.s.s of Tarragona.

"He was my gardener years ago, before he set up market-gardening on his own account."

"That's queer too," said I.

"What's queer?" He asked it sharply.

"Why, to find a gardener c.o.x'n of a life-boat."