Shining Ferry Part 7

"Eh? So 'tis you?" was Nicky's greeting. "Well, and I hope that you've enjoyed your holiday--not that I know, for my part, what a holiday means."

"It's time you took one, then," Rosewarne answered.

The old man chuckled. "Pretty things would happen if I did! 'Took a day off, one time, to marry my old woman, and another to bury her, and that's all in five-and-forty year. Not a day's sickness in all that time, thank the Lord!"

Rosewarne watched the old fellow's feeble digging stroke. "I preach capability," he said to himself, "and this is the sort of thing I allow!"

His gaze travelled from the oar to the oarsman. "You're getting past your work, all the same," he said aloud. "What does it feel like?"

"Eh?"

"To give up life little by little. Some men run till they drop--are still running strong, maybe, when the grave opens at their feet, and in they go.

With you 'tis more like the crumbling of rotten timber; a little dribble of sawdust day by day to show where the worms are boring. What does it feel like?"

"I don't feel it at all," Nicky answered cheerfully. "Folks tell me from time to time that I'm getting past. My own opinion is, they're in a greater hurry to get to market than of yore. 'Compet.i.tion '--that's a cry sprung up since my young days: it used to be 'Religion,' and 'Nicholas Vro, be you a saved man?' The ferry must ply, week-day or Sabbath: I put it to you, What time have I got to be a saved man? The Lord is good, says I. Now I'll tell you a fancy of mine about Him. One day He'll come down to the slip calling 'Over!' and whiles I put Him across--scores of times I've a-seen myself doing it, and 'tis always in the cool of the evening after a spell of summer weather--He'll speak up like a gentleman, and ask, 'Nicholas Vro, how long have you been a-working this here boat?'

'Lord,' I'll answer, 'for maybe a matter of fifty year, calm or blow, week-days and Sabbaths alike; and that's the reason your Honour has missed me up to church, as you may have noticed.' 'You must be middlin' tired of it,' He'll say: and I shall answer up, 'Lord, if you say so, I don't contradict 'ee; but 'tis no bad billet for a man given to chat with his naybours and talk over the latest news and be sociable, and warning to leave don't come from me.' 'You'd best give me over they oars, all the same,' He'll say; and with that I shall hand 'em over and be rowed across to a better world."

Rosewarne was not listening. "Surely, man, the tide's slack enough by this time!" he interrupted, his irritation again overcoming him.

"You needn't be fetching across sideways, like a crab."

Nicky Rested on his oars, and stared at him for a moment. As if Rosewarne or any man alive could teach _him_ how to pull the ferry! He disdained to argue.

"Talking about news," said he, resuming his stroke, "the _Virtuous Lady_ arrived yesterday, and began to unload this morning. You can see her top-m'sts down yonder, over the town quay."

"Has Mrs. Purchase been ash.o.r.e?" Mrs. Purchase was Rosewarne's only sister, who had married a merchant skipper and sailed with him ever since in the _Virtuous Lady_, in which she held a preponderance of the shares.

"Came ash.o.r.e this very afternoon in a bonnet as large as St. Paul's, with two-thirds of a great hummingbird a-top. She's balancing up the freight accounts at this moment with Peter Benny. Indeed, master, you'll find a plenty of folk have been inquiring for 'ee. There's the parson for one.

To my knowledge he've been down three times to ask when you'd be back, and if you'd forgotten the School Managers' meeting, that's fixed for to-morrow." Uncle Nicky brought his boat at length to sh.o.r.e.

"And there's Aun' Butson in terror that you'll be bringing in some stranger to teach the children, and at her door half the day listening for your footstep, to pet.i.tion 'ee."

Somehow Rosewarne had promised himself that the restlessness would leave him as soon as he reached his own side of the water. He stepped ash.o.r.e and began to walk up the slipway at a brisk pace; and then on a sudden his brain harked backward to Uncle Nicky's talk, to which a minute before he had listened so inattentively. In his hurry he had let an opportunity pa.s.s. The old man had talked of death; had been on the point of saying something important, perhaps--for all that concerned death and men's views of death had become important now. He halted and turned irresolutely.

But the moment had gone by.

"Good-night!" he called back, and resumed his way up the village street.

Uncle Nicky, bending to replace a worn thole-pin with a new one, dropped the pair with a clatter. In all his experience Rosewarne had never before flung him a salutation.

"And a minute ago trying to tell me how to work the ferry!" the old man muttered, staring after him. "The man must be ailing."

As a hunted deer puts the water between him and the hounds, Rosewarne had hoped to shake off his worry at the ferry-crossing. But no; it dogged him yet as he mounted the hill. Only, as a dreamer may suffer the horror of nightmare, yet know all the while that it is a dream, he felt the impatience and knew it for a vain thing. All his life he had been hurrying desperately, and all his life the true moments had offered themselves and been left ungrasped.

Before the doorway of a cottage halfway up the hill an old woman waited to intercept him--Aunt Butson, the village schoolmistress.

She was a spinster well over sixty, and lodged with a widow woman, Sarah Trevarthen, to whom the cottage belonged.

Rosewarne frowned at the sight of her. She wore her best cap and shawl, and her cheeks were flushed. Behind her in the doorway sat a young sailor, with a cage on the ground beside him and a parrot perched on his forefinger close against his cheek. He glanced up with a shy, very good-natured smile, touched his forelock to Rosewarne, and went on whispering to the bird.

Aunt Butson stepped out into the roadway. "Good-evening, Mr. Rosewarne, and glad to see you back and in health!" She dropped him a curtsey.

"If you've a minute to spare, sir."--

Confound the woman!--he had no minutes to spare. Still frowning, he looked over her head at the young sailor, Sarah Trevarthen's boy Tom, home from his Baltic voyage in the _Virtuous Lady_. Yes, it was Tom Trevarthen, now a man grown. Rosewarne remembered him as a child in frocks, tumbling about the roadway; as an urchin straddling a stick; as a lad home (with this same parrot) from his first voyage. Who, in a world moving at such a pace, could have a minute to spare?

Aunt Butson had plunged into her pet.i.tion, and was voluble. It concerned the new schools, of course. "She had taught reading, writing, and ciphering for close on forty years. All the children in the village, and nine-tenths of their parents for that matter, owed their education to her.

A little she could do, too, in navigation--as Mr. Rosewarne well knew: enough to prepare a lad for schoolmaster Penrose across the water.

Mr. Penrose would rather teach two boys from her school than one from any other parish. Surely--surely--the new Board wouldn't take the bread out of an old woman's mouth and drive her to the workhouse? She didn't believe, as some did, in this new-fangled education, and wouldn't pretend to. Arithmetic up to practice-sums and good writing and spelling-- anything up to five syllables--were education enough to her mind for any child that knew his station in life. The rest of it only bred Radicals.

Still, let her have a trial at least; let them decide to-morrow to give her a chance; 'twould be no more than neighbourly. Her ways might be old-fas.h.i.+oned; but she could learn. And with Mrs. Trevarthen to keep the grand new schoolroom dusted--if they would give her the job--and look after the fires and lighting."--

Rosewarne pretended to listen. The poor soul was inefficient, and he knew it: beneath all her flow of speech ran an undercurrent of wrath against the new learning and all its works. Poverty--sheer terror of a dwindling cupboard and the workhouse to follow--drove her to plead with that which she hated worse than the plague. He heard, and all the while his mind was miles away from her pet.i.tion; for some chance word or words let fall by her had seemed for an instant to offer him a clue. Somewhere in the past these words had made part of a phrase or sentence which, could he but find it again, would resolve all this brooding trouble. He searched his memory--in vain; the words drew together like dancers in a figure, and then, on the edge of combining, fell apart and were lost.

Aloud he kept saying, "You mustn't count on it. Some provision will be made for you, no doubt--in these days one must march with the times."

This was all the comfort she could win from him, and the poor old creature gazed after him forlornly when at length he broke from her and went his way up the hill.

He reached the entrance-gate. As it clashed behind him, two children at play in the garden lifted their heads. The girl whispered to the boy, and the pair stole away out of sight. From the porch the small greyhound caught sight of him, and, bounding to him, fawned about his feet.

In the counting-house he found his sister closeted with Mr. Benny, and a pile of bills on the table between. Mrs. Purchase rose and greeted him with a little pecking kiss. She was a cheerful body, by some five or six years his junior, with a handsome weather-tanned face, eyes wrinkled at the corners like a seaman's, and two troubles in the world--the first being that she had borne no children. She shared her husband's voyaging, kept the s.h.i.+p's accounts, was known to all on board as "The Bos'un," and when battened under hatches in foul weather spent her time in tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the most wonderful bonnets. Her coquetry stopped short at bonnets.

To-day indeed--the weather being warm--in lieu of bodice she had slipped on a grey alpaca coat of her husband's.

"Good-evening, John!" She plunged at once into a narrative of the pa.s.sage home--how they had picked up a slant off Heligoland and carried it with them well past the Wight; how on this side of Portland they had met with slight and baffling head-winds, and for two days had done little more than drift with the tides. The vessel was foul with weed, and must go into dock. "You could graze a cow on her for a fortnight," Mrs. Purchase declared. "Benny and I have just finished checking the bills.

You'd like to run through them?"

"Let be," said Rosewarne. "I'll cast an eye over them to-night maybe."

He stepped to the bell-rope and rang for his jug of cider.

Some touch of fatigue in the movement, some slight greyness in his face, caught Mrs. Purchase's sisterly eye.

"It's my belief you're unwell, John."

"Weary, my dear Hannah--weary; that's all." He turned to the little clerk. "That will do for to-night, Benny. You can leave all the papers as they are, just putting these bills together in a heap. Is that the correspondence? Very well; I'll deal with it."

"In all my life I never heard you own to feeling tired," persisted Mrs.

Purchase, as Mr. Benny closed the door behind him. "You may take my word for it, you're unwell; been sleeping in some damp bed, belike."

Rosewarne moved to the window and gazed out across the garden.

Down by the yew-hedge, where a narrow path of turf wound in and out among beds of tall Madonna lilies and Canterbury bells, the two children were playing a solemn game of follow-my-leader, the blind boy close on his sister's heels, she turning again and again to watch that he came to no harm.

"I wonder if that boy could be trained and made fit for something?" mused Rosewarne aloud.

"Eh? Is it Clem?" She had followed and stood now by his elbow.

"My dear man, he has the brains of the family! Leave Myra to teach him for a while. See how she's teaching him now, although she doesn't know it; and that goes on from morning to night."

"Where's the use of it? What's a blind man, at the best?"

"What G.o.d means him to be. If G.o.d means him to do better--ay, or to see clearer--than other men, 'tisn't a pair of darkened eyes will prevent it."

"Woman's argument, Hannah. I take you on your own ground--G.o.d could cure the child's eyes; but G.o.d doesn't, you see. On the contrary, G.o.d chose to blind 'em. If I'd your religion, it would teach me that Clem's misfortune was a punishment designed--the sins of the fathers."--

"Ay, you're a hard man, like your father and mine. Haven't I cause to know it? Hadn't _she_ cause to know it--the mother of that pretty pair?"

"She made her bed."

"--And lies in it, poor soul. But I tell you, John, there's a worse blindness than Clem's, and you and father have suffered from it.