 Section IV. THE WRONG THING. A Truthful Song. The Brick Layer. I tell this tale, which is strictly true, just by way of convincing you how very little since things were made, things have altered in the building trade. A year ago, come the middle of March, we was built in flats near the marble arch when a thin young man with cold black hair came up to watch us working there. Now there wasn't a trick in brick or stone that this young man hadn't seen or known. Nor there wasn't a tool from trowel to maul, but this young man could use them all. Then up and spoke the plum year's bold, which was laying the pipes for the hot and cold. Since you with us have made so free, will you kindly say what your name might be? The young man kindly answered them. It might be Lot or Mothuselam, or it might be Moses, a man I hate, whereas it is Pharaoh, surname the great. Your glazing is new and your plumbing strange, but otherwise I perceive no change, and in less than a month, if you do as I bid, I'll learn you to build me a pyramid. The Sailor. I tell this tale which is stricter true, just by way of convincing you how very little since things were made things have altered in the shipwright's trade. In Blackwall Basin yesterday, a china-bark, refitting lay, when a fat old man with snow-white hair came up to watch us working there. Now there wasn't a knot which the rigors knew, but the old man made it, and better to. Nor there wasn't a sheet or lift or brace, but the old man knew its lead in place. Then up and spake the cock-ears bold, which was packing the pump in the after-hold. Since you with us have made so free, will you kindly tell what your name might be? The old man kindly answered them. It might be Jaffet, it might be Shem, or it might be Ham, though his skin was dark, whereas it is Noah commanding the ark. Your wheel is new, and your pumps are strange, but otherwise I perceive no change, and in less than a week, if she did not ground, I'd sail this hooker the wide world round. The wrong thing. The old man had gone in for building model boats, but after he had filled the school room with chips, which he expected Una to clear away, they turned him out of doors, and he took all his tools up the hill to Mr. Springett's yard, where he knew he could make as much mess as he chose. Old Mr. Springett was a builder, contractor, and sanitary engineer, and his yard, which opened off the village street, was always full of interesting things. At one end of it was a long loft, reached by a ladder, where he kept his iron-bound scaffold planks, tins of paints, pulleys and odds and ends he found in old houses. He would sit here by the hour, watching his carts as they loaded or unloaded in the yard below, while Dan gouged and grunted at the carpenter's bench near the loft window. Mr. Springett and Dan had always been particular friends. When Mr. Springett was so old, he could remember when railways were being made in the southern counties of England, and people were allowed to drive dogs and carts. One hot, still afternoon, the tar paper on the roof smelt like ships. Dan in his shirt sleeves was smoothing down a new schooner's bow, and Mr. Springett was talking of barns and houses he had built. He said he never forgot any stick or stone he had ever handled, or any man, woman or child he had ever met. Just then he was very proud of the village hall at the entrance of the village, which he had finished a few weeks before. "'And I don't mind telling you, Mr. Dan,' he said, "'that the hall will be my last job, top of this mortal earth. Oh, I didn't make ten pounds—no, nor yet five—out of the whole contract. My name's lettered on the foundation stone—Ralph Springett Builder. And the stone she's bedded on four-foot-good concrete. If she shifts any time these five hundred years, I'll surely turn in my grave. Oh, I told the London architect so when he came down to oversee my work.' "'What did he say?' Dan was sandpapering the schooner's port bow. "'Nothing. The hall ain't more than one of his small jobs for him, but taint small to me, and my name is cut and lettered, fronten the village street, all I do hope and pray, for time everlasting. You'll want the little roundfile for that holler-intervow.' "'Who's there?' Mr. Springett turned stiffly in his chair. A long pile of scaffold planks ran down the center of the loft. Then looked and saw Hall of the Draft's tousel head beyond them. See Hall of the Draft and Puck of Pooks Hill. "'Be you the builder of the village hall?' He asked of Mr. Springett. "'I be,' was the answer. "'But if you want a job,' Hall laughed. "'No faith,' he said. "'Only the hall is as good an honest a piece of work as I've ever run a rule over. So being born hereabouts, and being reckoned a master among masons, and accepted as a master-mason, I made bold to pay my brotherly respects to the builder.' "'A-yum!' Mr. Springett looked important. "'I be a bit rusty, but I'll try ye.' He asked Hall several curious questions, and the answers must have pleased him, for he invited Hall to sit down. Hall moved up, always keeping behind the pile of planks, so that only his head showed, and sat down on a trestle in the dark corner at the back of Mr. Springett's desk. He took no notice of Dan, but talked at once to Mr. Springett about bricks and cement and lead and glass, and after a while Dan went on with his work. He knew Mr. Springett was pleased, because he tugged his white sandy beard and smoked his pipe in short puffs. The two men seemed to agree about everything, but when grown-ups agree, they interrupt each other almost as much as if they were quarreling. Hall said something about workmen. "'Why, that's what I always say,' Mr. Springett cried. "'A man who can do only one thing, he's but next above fool to the man that can't do nothing. That's where the unions made their mistake.' "'My thought to the very dot,' Dan heard Hall slap his tight-hosed leg. "'I've suffered in my time from those same guilds. Unions, do you call them? All their precious talk are the mysteries of their trades. Why, what does it come to?' "'Northon, you just about hit it,' said Mr. Springett, and rammed his hot tobacco with his thumb. "'Take the art of wood-carving,' Hall went on. He reached across the planks, grabbed a wooden mallet, and moved his other hand as though he wanted something. Mr. Springett, without a word, passed him one of Dan's broad chisels. "'Ah, wood-carving, for example. If you can cut wood and have a fair draft of what you mean to do, a heaven's name take chisel him all, and let drive at it, say I. You'll soon find all the mystery-force sooth of wood-carving under your proper hand.' Whack, came the mallet on the chisel, and a sliver of wood curled up in front of it. Mr. Springett watched like an old raven. "'All art is one, man. One!' said Hall, between whacks. And to wait on another man to finish out? To finish out your work ain't no sense,' Mr. Springett cut in. "'That's what I'm always saying to the boy here,' he nodded towards Dan. "'That's what all I said when I put the new wheel into Brewster's mill in 1872. I reckoned I was mill-right enough for the job without bringing a man from Lennon. And besides, divided work eats up profits no bounds. How laughed is beautiful deep laugh!' And Mr. Springett joined in till Dan laughed, too. "'You handle your tools. I can see,' said Mr. Springett. "'I reckon, if you're any way like me, you've found yourself hindered by those—'Guilds, did you call them? Unions, we say.' "'You may say so,' Hall pointed to a white scar on his cheek-bone. "'This is a remembrance from the master-watching foreman of Masons on Magdalene Tower. Because, please, I dared to carve stone without their leave. They set a stone at slip from the cornice by accident. "'I know them accidents. There's no way to disprove them. The stones ain't the only things at slip,' Mr. Springett grunted. How went on? "'I've seen a scaffold-plank keckle and shoot at two clever workmen thirty-foot on to the cold chancel-floor below, and a rope can break. Yes, natural is nature, and lime will fly up in a man's eyes without any breath of wind sometimes,' said Mr. Springett. "'But who's to show, twas'nt an accident?' "'Who do these things?' Dan asked, and straightened his back at the bench as he turned the schooner end for end in the vice to get at her counter. "'Them which don't wish other men to work no better nor quicker than they do,' growled Mr. Springett. "'Don't pinch her so hard in the vise, Miss Dan. Put a piece of rag in the jaws, or you'll bruise her.' "'Mall than that,' he turned towards Hall. "'If a man has his private spite laid up against ya, the unions give him his excuse for working it off.' "'Well, I know it,' said Hall. "'Thou never let your go, them spiteful ones. I know De Plasterer in 1861, down to the Wills. He was a Frenchie, a bad enemy he was. I had mine, too. He was an Italian, called Benedetto. I met him first at Oxford on Magdalen Tower when I was learning my trade, or trades, I should say, a bad enemy he was, as you say. But he came to be my singular good friend,' said Hall, as he put down the mallet, and settled himself comfortably. "'What might his trade have been?' Plasterin, Mr. Springett, asked. Plasterin never sought. He worked in Stucco. Fresco, we call it, made pictures on Plaster. Not but what he had a fine sweep of the hand in Drawin. He'd take the long sides of a cloister, trowel on his stuff, and rolled out his great all abroad pictures of saints and croppy-topped trees, quick as a Webster unrolling cloth almost. Oh, Benedetto could draw. But he was a little-minded man, professing to be full of secrets of color or Plaster, common tricks, all of them. And his one single talk was how Tom, Dick, or Harry had stole this or the other secret art from him. "'Oh, I knew that sort,' said Mr. Springett. "'There's no keeping peace or making peace with such. And they're mostly born and bone-idle.' "'True. Even his fellow countrymen laughed at his jealousy. We too came to loggerheads early on Magdalene Tower. I was a youngster then. Maybe I spoke my mind about his work.' "'You should never do that,' Mr. Springett shook his head. "'That's sort of laid up against you.' "'True enough. This Benedetto did most specially. Body of me. The man lived to hate me. But I always kept my eyes open on a plank or a scaffold. I was mighty glad to be shut to him when he quarreled with his guild foremen and went off news in air and paints under his arm. But how leaned forward? If you hate a man or a man hates you, I know you're ever lasted running across him,' Mr. Springett interrupted. "'Excuse me, sir.' He leaned out of the window and shouted to a carter who was loading a cart with bricks. "'Ain't you no more sense than to heap him up that way?' He said. "'Take and throw a hundred of them off. It's more than the team can compass. Throw them off, I tell you, and make another trip for what's left over.' "'Excuse me, sir. You were saying?' "'I was saying that before the end of the year I went to Bury to strengthen the leadwork in the great Abbey East window there. Now, that's just one of the things I've never done. But I mind there was a cheap excursion to Chichester in 1879, and all I went and watched them lead in a wonderful find of window in Chichester Cathedral. I stayed watch until it was time for us to go back. To know as I had two drinks perhaps all that day.' Hal smiled. "'At Bury, then, sure enough, I met my enemy Betadetto. He had painted a picture in plaster on the south wall of the refectory, a noble place for a noble thing, a picture of Jonah. Ah, Jonah and his whale! I've never been as far as Bury. You've worked about a lot,' said Mr. Springit, with his eyes on the carter below. "'No, not the whale. This was a picture of Jonah and the Pompeon that withered. But all that Betadetto had shown was a peevish greybeard, huggled up an angle-edged drapery beneath the Pompeon on a wooden trellis. This last, being a dead thing, he'd drawn it as toward to the life. But fierce old Jonah, bared in the sun, angry even to death that his cold prophecy was disproven, Jonah ashamed, and already hearing the children of Nineveh running to mock him. Ah, that was what Betadetto had not drawn. He had better as stuck to his wheel, then,' said Mr. Springit. "'He'd had done no better with that. He draws the damp cloth off the picture and shows it to me. I was a craftsman, too, D.C.' "'Tis good,' I said, but goes no deeper than the plaster.' "'What?' he said in a whisper. "'Be thine own judge, Betadetto,' I answered. Does it go deeper than the plaster?' He reeled against a piece of drywall. "'No,' he says. "'And I know it. I could not hate thee more than I have done these five years, but if I live, I will try, Hal. I will try.' Then he goes away. I pitied him, but I had spoken truth. His picture went no deeper than the plaster.' "'Ah!' said Mr. Springit, who had turned quite red. You was talking so fast, all I didn't understand what you was driving at. I've seen men, good workmen they was, tried to do more than they could do, and they couldn't compass it. They knowed it, and it nigh broke their hearts like. You was in your right, of course, sir, to say what you thought of his work. But if you'll excuse me, was you in your duty?' "'I was wrong to say it,' Hal replied. "'God forgive me. I was young. He was workmen enough himself to know where he had failed, but it all came evens in the long run, by the same token. Did you ever hear of one Torresiano, Torresani, we call him?' "'I can't say I ever did. Was he a Frenchie-like?' "'No, a hectoring, hard-mouth, long-sworded Italian builder. His vein is a peacock, and strong is a bull. But mark you, a master workman. More than that, he could get his best work out of the worst men. Which it's a gift. I had a foreman bricklayer like him once, said Mr. Spriggan. He used to prod him in the back, like with a pointing-trial, and they did wonders. I've seen our Torresani lay apprentice down with one buffet, and raise him up with another, to make a mason of him. I worked under him at building a chapel in London, a chapel in a tomb for the king. I never knew kings went to chapel much, said Mr. Spriggan. But I always hold with a man, don't care who he be, seen about his own grave before he dies. Didn't the sort of thing to leave to your family after the wheels read? I reckoned it was a fine vault. None finer in England this Torresiano had the contract for it, as you'd say. He picked master craftsmen from all parts, England, France, Italy, the Low Countries. No odds to him so long as they knew their work, and he drove them like pigs at Breitling Fair. He called us English all pigs. We suffered it because he was a master in his craft. If he misliked any work that a man had done, with his own great hands he'd rive it out and tear it down before us all. Ah, you pig, you English pig, he'd scream in the dumb wretches' face. You answer me, you look at me, you think at me. Come out with me into the cloisters. I will teach you carving myself. I will kill you all over. But when his passion had blown out, he'd slip his arm round the man's neck, and in part knowledge worth gold. To have done your heart good, Mr. Springett, to see the two hundred of us masons, jewelers, carvers, guilders, iron-workers, and the rest, all toiling like cock-angels, and this mad Italian hornet fleeing one to next up and down the chapel. Done your heart good it would. Oh, I believe you, said Mr. Springett. In 1854, oh, I mind, the railway was being made into Hastings. There was two thousand navies on it, all young, all strong, and all was one of them. Dear me, excuse me, sir, but was your enemy working with you? Benedetto? Be sure he was. He followed me like a lover. He'd painted pictures on the chapel's ceiling, slung from a chair. Torogiano made his promise not to fight till the work should be finished. We were both master-crassmen, do you see, and he needed us. Nonetheless, I never went aloft a car without testing all my ropes and knots each morning. We were never far from each other. Benedetto had sharpened his knife on his sole while he waited for his plaster to dry. I'd hear it where I hung chipping round the pillar-head, and we'd nod to each other, friendly like. Oh, he was a craftsman, was Benedetto. But his hate spoiled his eye and his hand. I mined the night I had finished the models for the bronze saints round the tomb. Torogiano embraced me before all the chapel, and bade me to supper. I met Benedetto when I came out. He was slobbering in the porch. Like a mad dog! Walkin' himself up to it, said Mr. Springer. Did he have it in ecchi that night? No, no. That night he kept his oath to Torogiano. But I pitied him. Well, now I come to my own follies. I had never thought too little of myself, but after Torosani had put his arm round my neck. I—I! How broken to a laugh! I lay there was not much oddstwicks me and a cocksperro in his pride. Oh, I was pretty middling young once on a time, said Mr. Springer. Then you know that a man can't drink and dice and dress fine, and keep company above his station, but his work suffers for it, Mr. Springer. Oh, I never held much with dressin' up, but you're right. The worst mistakes are ever made. They was made of a Monday mornin', Mr. Springer answered. We've all been one sort of fool or two other. Mr. Stan, Mr. Stan, take the smallest gouge, or you'll be spluttin' our stem-work's clean out. Can't you see the grain of the wood don't favor a chisel? I'll spare you some of my follies, but there was a man called Brigandine. Bob Brigandine. Clark of the King's ships. A little smooth bustling atomy. As clever as a woman to get work done for nothin'. A wonderful smooth-tongue pleader. He made much of me, and asked me to draft him out a drawing, a piece of carved and gilt scroll-work for the boughs of one of the King's ships. The sovereign was her name. Was she a man of war? asked Dan. She was a warship, and a woman called Catherine of Castile desired the King to give her the ship for a pleasure ship of her own. I did not know at the time, but she'd been at Bob to get the scroll-work done, and fitted that the King might see it. I made him the picture in an hour, all of a heat after supper, one great heaving play of dolphins and a Neptune or so reigning in webby-footed seahorses, an Aryan with his harp high atop of them. It was twenty-three foot long, and maybe nine foot deep, painted in gilt. It must have just about looked fine, said Mr. Springer. That's the curiosity of it. It was bad. Rank bad. In my conceit I must need show it to Torresiano in the chapel. He straddles his legs, haunches his knife before him, and whistles like a storm-cock through a sleet-shower. Benedetto was behind him. We were never far apart, I've told you. That is Pig's work, says our master. Swine's work. You make any more such things, even after your fine court suppers, and you shall be sent away. Benedetto licks his lips like a cat. Is it so bad, then, master? He says. What a pity! Yes, says Torresiano. Scarcely you could do things so bad. I will condescend to show. He talks to me then and there. No shouting, no swearing. It was too bad for that. But good, memorable counsel, bitten in slowly. Then he sets me to draft out a pair of iron gates, to take, as he said, the taste of my naughty dolphins out of my mouth. Iron sweet stuff, if you don't torture her. And hammered work is all pure, truthful line, with a reason and a support for every curve and bar of it. A week at that settled my stomach hensomely, and the master let me put the work through the smithy, where I sweated out more of my foolish pride. Good stuffers, good iron, said Mr. Springett. Oh, I done a pair of lodge gates once in eighteen hundred sixty-three. Oh, I forgot to say, Bob Brigondine whipped away my draft of the ship's scroll work, and would not give it back to me to redraw. He said, twidoo well enough. How soever my lawful work kept me too busy to remember him. Body of me, but I worked that winter upon the gates and the bronzes for the tomb as I'd never worked before. I was leaner than a laugh, but I lived, I lived then. How looked at Mr. Springett with his wise, crinkled-up eyes, and the old man smiled back. Ouch! Dan cried. He had been hollowing out the schooner's after-deck. The little gouge had slipped and gashed the ball of his left thumb. An ugly, triangular tear. That came of not steadying your wrist, said Howell calmly. Don't bleed over the wood. Do your work with your heart's blood, but no need to let it show. He rose and peered into a corner of the loft. Mr. Springett had risen too and swept down a ball of cobwebs from a rafter. Clap that on, was all he said, and put your anchor chiff atop. Twill cake over in a minute. It don't hurt now, do it? No, said Dan indignantly. You know it has happened lots of times. I'll tie it up myself. Go on, sir. And it'll happen hundreds of times more, said Howell, with a friendly nod as he sat down again. But he did not go on till Dan's hand was tied up properly. Then he said, One dark December day. Too dark to judge color. We was all sitting and talking round the fires in the chapel. You heard good talk there. When Bob Bringendine bustles in and, Howell, you're sent for, he squeals. I was at Torrejano's feet on a pile of putlocks, as I might be here, toasting a herring on my knife's point. Which was the one English thing our master liked, salt herring. I'm busy about my art, I calls. Art, says Bob. What's art compared to your strollwork for the sovereign? Come. Be sure your sins will find you out, says Torrejano. Go with him and see. As I followed Bob out, I was aware of Benedetto, like a black spot, when the eyes are tired, slittering up behind me. Bob hurries through the streets in a raw fog, slips into a doorway, upstairs, along passages, and at last thrust me into a little cold room violently hung with Flemish tapestries, and no furnishing except a table, and my draft of the sovereign's scrollwork. Here he leaves me. Presently comes in a dark, long-nosed man in a fur cap. Master Harry Daw, said he. The same, I says. Where a plague is Bob Brigandine gone? His thin eyebrows surged up in a piece, and come down again in a stiff bar. He went to the king, he says. All one wears your pleasure with me, I says, shivering, for it was mortal cold. He lays his hand flat on my draft. Master Daw, he says. Do you know the present price of gold leaf for all this wicked gilding of yours? By that I guessed he was some cheese-pairing Clark or other of the king's ships, so I gave him the price. I forget it now, but it worked out to thirty pounds, carved, guilt, and fitted in place. Thirty pounds, he said, as though I had pulled a tooth of him. You talk as though thirty pounds was to be had for the asking. Nonetheless, he says, your draft's a fine piece of work. I'd been looking at it ever since I came in, and was vile or even than I judged it at first. My eye and hand had been purified the past months, do you see, by my iron work. I could do it better now, I said. The more I studied my squabby Neptune's the less I liked him, and Arian was a pure flaming shame atop of the unbalanced dolphins. I doubt it will be fresh expense to draft it again, he says. Bob never paid me for the first draft. I lay he'll never pay me for the second. Twill cost the king nothing if I redraw it, I says. There's a woman wishes it to be done quickly, he says. We'll stick to your first drawing, master-daw. But thirty pounds is thirty pounds. You must make it less. And all the while the false semi-draft fair leaped out and hit me between the eyes. At any cost, I thinks to myself, I must get it back and redraft it. He grunts at me impatiently, and a splendid thought comes to me which shall save me. By the same token, it was quite honest. The ain't always, says Mr. Springett. How did you get out of it? By the truth. I says to master fur cap, as am I to you here, I says. I'll tell you something, since you seem a knowledgeable man. Is the sovereign to lie in Thames River all her days, or will she take the high seas? Oh, he says quickly, the king keeps no cats that don't catch mice. She must sail the seas, master-daw. She'll be hired to merchants for the trade. She'll be out in all shapes and weathers. Does that make any odds? Why, then, says I. The first heavy sea she sticks her nose into, claw off half that scrollwork, and the next will finish it. If she's meant for a pleasure-ship, give me my draft again, and I'll porture you a pretty, light piece of scrollwork, good, cheap. If she's meant for the open sea, pitch the draft into the fire, she can never carry that weight on her boughs. He looks at me squintlings and plucks his underlip. Is this your honest, unsweet opinion, he says? Body of me, ask about, I says. Any seaman could tell you it is true. I'm advising you against my own profit, but why I do so is my concern. Not all together, he says, it's some of mine. You've saved me thirty pounds, master-daw, and you've given me good arguments to use against a woeful woman that wants my fine new ship for her own toy. We'll not have any scrollwork. His face shined with pure joy. Then see that the thirty pounds you saved on it are honestly paid to king, I says, and keep clear of women folk. I gathered up my draft and crumpled it under my arm. If that's all you'll need of me, I'll be gone, I says. I'm pressed. He turns him round and fumbles in a corner. Too pressed to be made a knight, sir Harry, he says, and comes at me smiling, with three quarters of a rusty sword. I pledge you my mark. I never guessed it was the king till that moment. I kneeled, and he tapped me on the shoulder. Rise up, sir Harry-daw, he says, and in the same breath I'm pressed, too, and slips to the tapestries, leaving me like a stuck calf. It come over me in a bitter wave-like that here was I, a master craftsman, who had worked no bounds, soul or body, to make the king's tomb and chapel a triumph and a glory for all time. And here at D.C. I was made knight, not for anything I'd slaved over, or given my heart and guts to, but expressly because I'd saved him 30 pounds and a tongue-lashing from Catherine of Castile, she that had asked for the ship. That thought shriveled me with insides while I was folded away my draft. On the heels of it—maybe you'll see why—I began to grin to myself. I thought of the earnest simplicity of the man—the king, I should say, because I'd saved him the money. His smile as though he'd won half France. I thought of my own silly pride and foolish expectations that some day he'd honour me as a master craftsman. I thought of the broken-tip sword he'd found behind the hangings, the dirt of the cold room, and his cold eye wrapped up in his own concerns, scarcely resting on me. Then I remembered the solemn chapel roof and the bronzes about the stately tomb he'd lie in, and, D.C., the unreason of it all—the mad high humour of it all—took hold on me till I sat me down on a dark stair-head in a passage, and laughed till I could laugh no more. What else could I have done? I never heard his feet behind me. He always walked like a cat. But his arms slid round my neck, pulling me back where I sat, till my head lay on his chest, and his left hand held the knife plumb over my heart—benedetto. Even so I laughed. The fit was behind my holding. Laughed while he ground his teeth in my ear. He was stark crazed for the time. Laugh, he says, finished the laughter. I'll not cut you short. Tell me now, he wrenched at my head, why the king chose to honour you, you, you licks-spittle Englishman! I am full of patience now. I have waited so long. Then he was off at score, about his Jonah and Barry Refectory, and what I'd said of it, and his pictures in the chapel which all men praised and none looked at twice, as if that were my fault, and a whole parcel of words and looks treasured up against me through years. Ease off your arm a little, I said. I cannot die by choking for I am just dubbed night, benedetto. Tell me and I'll confess ye, sa harry daw night. There's a long night before ye. Tell, says he. So I told him, his chin on my crown. Told him all. Told it as well, and with as many words as I have ever told a tale at a supper with Torjano. I knew benedetto would understand, for mad or sad, he was a craftsman. I believed it to be the last tale I'd ever tell, top of mortal earth, and I would not put out bad work before I left the lodge. All arts, one art, as I said. I bore benedetto no malice. My spirits, do ye see, were catched up in a high, solemn exaltation, and I saw all earth's vanities foreshortened and little, laid out below me like a town from a cathedral scaffolding. I told him what befell, and what I thought of it. I gave him the king's very voice at, Master Daw, you save me thirty pounds! His peevish grunt while he looked for the sword, and how the badger-eyed figures of glory and victory leered at me from the Flemish hangings. But he a mate was a fine noble tale, and as I thought, my last work on earth. That is how I was honoured by the king, I said. They'll hang ye for killing me, benedetto. And since you've killed in the king's palace they'll draw and quarter ye, but you're too mad to care. Grant me, though, ye never heard a better tale. He said nothing, but I felt him shake. My head on his chest shook. His right arm fell away. His left dropped the knife. And he leaned with both hands on my shoulder, shaking, shaking. I turned me round. No need to put my foot on his knife. The man was speechless with laughter. Honest craftsman's mirth. The first time I'd ever seen him laugh. You know the mirth that cuts off the very breath while you stamp and snatch at the short ribs? That was benedetto's case. When he began to roar and bay and whoop in the passage, I hailed him out into the street, and there we leaned against the wall and had it all over again, waving our hands and wagging our heads till the watch came to know if we were drunk. Benedetto says to him, solemn as an owl, You have saved me thirty pounds, Mr. Dahl. Huffy peeled. In some sort we were mad drunk. I, because dear life had been given back to me, and he because, as he said afterwards, because the old crust of hatred round his heart was broke up and carried away by laughter. His very face had changed, too. Hal, he cries, I forgive thee. Forgive me, too, Hal. Oh, you English, you English! Did it gall thee, Hal, to see the rust on the dirty sword? Tell me again, Hal, how the king grunted with joy. Let us tell the master. So we reeled back to the chapel, arms round each other's necks, and when we could speak, he thought we'd been fighting. We told the master. Yes, we told Giorgiano, and he laughed till he rolled on the new cold pavement. Then he knocked our heads together. Ah, you English, he cried. You are more than pigs. You are English. Now you are well punished for your dirty fishes. Put the draft in the fire, and never do so any more. You are a fool, Hal, and you are a fool, Benedetto, but I need your works to please this beautiful English king. And I meant to kill Hal, said Benedetto. Master, I meant to kill him because the English king had made him a knight. Ah, says the master, shaking his finger. Benedetto, if you had killed my Hal, I should have killed you in the cloister. But you are a craftsman, too, so I should have killed you like a craftsman. Very, very slowly. In an hour, if I could spare the time. That was Torgiano the Master. Mr. Springett sat quite still for some time after Hal had finished. Then he turned dark red. Then he rocked to and fro. Then he coughed and wheezed till the tears ran down his face. Dan knew by this that he was laughing, but it surprised Hal at first. Excuse me, sir, said Mr. Springett. But I was thinking of some stables I built for a gentleman in 1874. They were stables in blue brick, very particular work. Dano is they weren't the best job which ever I'd done. But the gentleman's lady, she'd come from London, new-married. She was all for building what was called Ha Ha, what you and me would call a dick, right across this park. A midland big job which I'd have had the contract of, before she spoke to me in the library about it. But I told her there was a line of springs just where she wanted to dig her ditch, and she'd flood the park if she went on. Were there any springs at all? Said Hal. Bound to be springs everywhere if you'd dig deep enough, ain't there? But what I said about the springs put her out a conceit of digging Ha Ha's, and she'd took and build a white-tiled terry instead. But when I sent him my last bill for the stables, the gentleman he paid it without even looking at it. I hadn't forgotten nothing I'd do assure you. More than that, he slips two five-pound notes into my hand in the library, and Ralph, he says, he always called me by name. Ralph, he says, you save me a heap of expense and trouble this autumn. I didn't say nothing, of course. I know he didn't want any Ha Ha's digged across this park no more than I did, but I never said nothing. No more he didn't say nothing about my blue brick stables, which was really the best and honestest piece of work I'd done in quite a while. He gave me ten pounds for saving him a ham of a deal of trouble at home. I reckon things are pretty much alike at times in all places. Howlin' he laughed together. Dan couldn't quite understand what they thought so funny, and went on with his work for some time without speaking. When he looked up, Mr. Springett, alone, was wiping his eyes with his green and yellow pocket handkerchief. Bless me, Mustadana, all I've been asleep, he said, and all I've dreamed a dream which has made me laugh. Laugh as all I ain't laughed in a long day. I can't remember what it was all about. But they do say that when old men take the laughin' in their sleep, they're middling right for the next world. Have you been workin' honest, Mustadana? Rather, said Dan, unclamping the schooner from the vice, and look how I've cut myself with a small gouge. Yes. You'll want a lump of cobwebs to that, said Mr. Springett. Oh, I see you put it on already. That's right, Mustadana. King Henry VII and the shipwrights. Harry, our king, and England from London-town is gone, and come on to Harnell on the hoak in the county of Southampton. For there lay the merry other tower, his ship of war so strong, and he would discover, certainly, if his shipwrights did him wrong. He told not none of his setting forth nor yet where he would go, but only my Lord of Arundel, and, meanly, did he show, in an old jerkin and patched hose that no man might him mark, with his freeze hood and cloak about, he looked like any clerk. He was at Hamill on the hoak about the hour of the tide, and saw the merry hailed into dock the winter to abide, with all her tackle and the billaments which are the king his own, but then ran on his false shipwrights and stripped her to the bone. They heaved the main mast overboard, that was of a trusty tree, and they wrote down it was spent and lost by force of weather at sea. But they saw on it to planks and streaks as far as it might go, to make in beds for their own wives and little children also. There was a nave called Slingaway. He croaked beneath the deck, crying, Good fellows, come and see, the ship is nigh a wreck, for the storm that took our tall main mast it blew so fierce and fell, alack it hath taken the kettles and pans, and this brass pot as well. With that he set the pot on his head and hide him up the hatch, while all the shipwrights ran below to find what they might snatch. All except Bob Brigandine, and he was a yeoman good, he caught Slingaway round the waist and threw him on to the mud. I have taken plank and rope and nail without the king his leave, after the custom of port's mouth, but I will not suffer a thief. Nay, never lift up thy hand at me, there's no clean hands in the trade, steel in measure, quote Brigandine, there's measure in all things made. Grammarcy yeoman, said our king, like counsel liketh me, and he pulled a whistle out of his neck, and whistled whistles three. Then came my lord of Arendelle, pricking across the down, and behind him the mayor and burgesses of Mary Suthampton town. They drew the naughty shipwrights up with the kettles in their hands, and bound them round the forecastle to wait the king's commands. But since ye made ye beds, said the king, ye needs much lie thereon, for the sake of ye wives and little ones, fellows, get ye gone. When they had beaten Slingaway out of his own lips, our king appointed Brigandine to be a clerk of all his ships. Nay, never lift up thy hands to me, there's no clean hands in the trade, but steel in measure, said Harry, our king, there's measure in all things made. God speed the merry of the tower, the sovereign, and graced ye. The sweeps takes and the merry fortune, and the Henry of Bristol, too. All tall ships that sail on the sea, or in our harbors stand, that they might keep measure with Harry, our king, and peace in Engeland. End of Part Four. Section Five of Rewards and Ferries This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Peter Eastman. Rewards and Ferries by Rudyard Kipling. Section Five. Mark Lake Witches. The Way Through the Woods. They shut the road through the woods seventy years ago. Weather and rain have undone it again, and now you would never know. There was once a road through the woods, before they planted the trees. It is underneath the coppers and teeth, and the thin anemones. Only the keeper sees that where the ringed of broods and the badgers roll at ease. There was once a road through the woods. Yet if you enter the woods of a summer evening late, when the night air cools on the trout-ringed pools, or the otter whistles his mate. They fear not men in the woods, because they see so few. You will hear the beat of a horse's feet, and the swish of a skirt in the dew. Steadily cantering through the misty solitudes, as though they perfectly knew the old lost road through the woods. But there is no road through the woods. Mark Lake Witches. When Dan took up boat-building, Una coaxed Mrs. Vincy, the farmer's wife at Little Linden's, to teach her to milk. Mrs. Vincy milks in the pasture in summer. Which is different from milking in the shed, because the cows are not tied up, and until they know you they will not stand still. After three weeks, Una could milk red cow or kitty short horn quite dry without her wrist-saking, and then she allowed Dan to look. But milking did not amuse him, and it was pleasanter for Una to be alone in the quiet pastures with quiet spoken Mrs. Vincy. So evening after evening, she slipped across to Little Linden's, took her stool from the fern clump beside the fallen oak, and went to work, her pale between her knees, and her head pressed hard into the cow's flank. As often as not, Mrs. Vincy would be milking cross pansy at the other end of the pasture, and would not come near till it was time to strain and pour off. Once, in the middle of a milking, kitty short horn boxed Una's ear with her tail. You old pig! said Una, nearly crying, for a cow's tail can hurt. Why didn't you tie it down, child? said a voice behind her. I meant to, but the flies are so bad I let her off, and this is what she's done. Una looked round, expecting puck, and saw a curly-haired girl, not much taller than herself, but older, dressed in a curious, high-waisted, lavender-colored riding habit, with a high-hunched collar and a deep cape, and a belt fastened with a steel clasp. She wore a yellow velvet cap and tan gauntlets, and carried a real hunting crop. Her cheeks were pale, except for two pretty pink patches in the middle, and she talked with little gasps at the end of her sentences, as though she had been running. You don't milk so badly, child, she said, and when she smiled her teeth showed small and even and pearly. Can you milk? Una asked, and then flushed, for she heard puck's chuckle. He stepped out of the fern and sat down, holding Kitty Shorthorn's tail. There isn't much, he said, but Miss Philadelphia doesn't know about milk, or, for that matter, butter and eggs. She's a great housewife. Oh, said Una, I'm sorry I can't shake hands, mine are all milky, but Mrs. Vincy is going to teach me butter-making this summer. Ah, I'm going to London this summer, the girl said, to my aunt in Bloomsbury. She coughed as she began to hum. Oh, what a town, what a wonderful metropolis. You've got a cold, said Una. No, only my stupid cough, but it's vastly better than it was last winter. It will disappear in London air, everyone says so. Do you like doctor's child? I don't know any, Una replied, but I'm sure I shouldn't. Think yourself lucky, child. I beg your pardon. The girl laughed, for Una frowned. I'm not a child, and my name's Una, she said. Mine's Philadelphia, but everybody except Renee calls me Phil. I'm Squire Bucksteed's daughter, over at Marclake Yonder. She jerked her little round chin towards the south behind Dullington. Surely you know Marclake. We went a picnic to Marclake Green once, said Una. It's awfully pretty. I like all those funny little rows that don't lead anywhere. They lead over our land, said Philadelphia stiffly, and the coach rode is only four miles away. One can go anywhere from the Green. I went to the Assize ball at Luz last year. She spun round and took a few dancing steps, but stopped with her hand to her side. It gives me a stitch, she explained. No odds, we'll go away in London air. That's the latest French stepchild Renee taught at me. Do you hate the French chai- Una? Well, I hate French, of course, but I don't mind Bamselle. She's rather decent. Is Renee your French governess? Philadelphia laughed till she caught her breath again. Oh no, Renee's a French prisoner on parole. That means he's promised not to escape till he has been properly exchanged for an Englishman. He's only a doctor, so I hope they won't think him worth exchanging. My uncle captured him last year in the Ferdinand privateer off Belle Isle, and he cured my uncle of a raging toothache. Of course, after that we couldn't let him lie among the common French prisoners at Rye, and so he stays with us. He's a very old family. A breadon, which is nearly next door to being a troop ridden, my father says, and he wears his hair clubbed, not powdered. Much more becoming, don't you think? I don't know what your Una began. But Puck, the other side of the pale, winked, and she went on with her milking. He's going to be a great French physician when the war is over. He makes me bobbins for my lace pillow now. He's very clever with his hands, but he'd doctor our people on the green if they would let him. Only our doctor, Dr. Brake, says he's an imp, or imp something? Worse than imposter. But my nurse says, Nurse, you're ever so old. What have you got a nurse for? Una finished milking and turned round on her stool as Kitty Shorthorn grazed off. Because I can't get rid of her, old Sissy nursed my mother, and she says she'll nurse me till she dies. The idea. She never lets me alone. She thinks I'm delicate. She has grown infirm in her understanding, you know. Mad, quite mad, poor Sissy. Really mad? Said Una, or just silly. Crazy, I should say, from the things she does. Her devotion to me is terribly embarrassing. You know, I have all the keys of the hall, except the brewery and the tenants' kitchen. I give out all stores and the linen and plate. How jolly! I love storerooms and giving things out. It's a great responsibility, you'll find, when you come to my age. Last year, Dad said I was fatiguing myself with my duties, and he actually wanted me to give up the keys to Old Amour, our housekeeper. I wouldn't. I hate her. I said, no, sir, I, a mistress of Marclay Call, just as long as I live, because I'm never going to be married, and I shall give out stores and linen till I die. And what did your father say? Oh, I threatened to pin a dish for you. I threatened to pin a dishclout to his coattail. He ran away. Everyone's afraid of Dad except me. Philadelphia stamped her foot. The idea. If I can't make my own father happy in his own house, I'd like to meet the woman that can, and, and I'd have the living hide off her. She cut with her long-thonged whip. It cracked like a pistol shot across the still pasture. Kitty Shorthorn threw up her head and trotted away. I beg your pardon, Philadelphia said, but it makes me furious. Don't you hate those ridiculous old quizzes with their feathers and fronts who come to dinner and call you child in your own chair at your own table? I don't always come to dinner, said Una, but I hate being called child. Please tell me about storerooms and giving out things. Ah, it's a great responsibility, particularly with that old cat Amour looking at the lists over your shoulder. And such a shocking thing happened last summer. Poor, crazy sissy, my nurse that I was telling you of. She took three solid silver tablespoons. Took, but isn't that stealing? Una cried. Shh, said Philadelphia, looking round at Puck. All I say is she took them without my leave. I made it right afterwards. So, as Dad says, and he's a magistrate, it wasn't a legal offense. It was only compounding a felony. It sounds awful, said Una. It was, my dear, I was furious. I had had the keys for ten months and I'd never lost anything before. I said nothing at first, because a big house offers so many chances of things being mislaid and coming to hand later. Fetching up in the lease cupers, my uncle calls it. But next week I spoke to old sissy about it when she was doing my hair at night and she said I wasn't to worry my heart for trifles. Isn't it like them? Una burst out. They say you're worried over something that really matters and they say don't worry, as if that did any good. I quite agree with you, my dear. I quite agree with you. I told Siss the spoons were solid silver and were forty shillings, so if the thief were found he'd be tried for his life. Hanged, do you mean? Una said. They ought to be, but Dad says no jury will hang a man nowadays for a forty shilling theft. They transport him into penal servitude at the uttermost ends of the earth beyond the seas for the term of their natural life. I told Sissie that and I saw her tremble in my mirror. Then she cried and caught hold of my knees and I couldn't for my life understand what it was all about. She cried so. Can you guess, my dear, what that poor crazy thing had done? It was midnight before I pieced it together. She had given the spoons to Jerry Gamm, the witchmaster on the green, so that he might put a charm on me. Me? Put a charm on you? Why? That's what I asked and then I saw how mad poor Sissie was. You know this stupid little cough of mine? It will disappear as soon as I go to London. She was troubled about that and about my being so thin, and she told me Jerry had promised her if she would bring him three silver spoons that he'd charm my cough away and make me plump. Flesh up, she said. I couldn't help laughing, but it was a terrible night. I had to put Sissie into my own bed and stroke her hand till she cried herself to sleep. What else could I have done? When she woke and I coughed, I suppose I can cough in my own room, if I please. She said that she'd killed me and asked me to have her hanged at Luz sooner than sent her to the uttermost ends of the earth away from me. How awful! What did you do, Phil? Do? I rode off at five in the morning to talk to Master Jerry with a new lash on my whip. Oh, I was furious! Witchmaster or no witchmaster I meant to! Ah, what's a witchmaster? A master of witches, of course. I don't believe there are witches, but people say every village has a few, and Jerry was the master of all ours at Mark Lake. He has been a smuggler and a man of war's man, and now he pretends to be a carpenter and joiner. He can make almost anything, but he really is a white wizard. He cures people by herbs and charms. He can cure them after Dr. Break has given them up, and that's why Dr. Break hates him so. He used to make me toy carts and charm off my warts when I was a child. Philadelphia spread out her hands with the delicate, shiny little nails. It isn't counted lucky to cross him. He has his ways of getting even with you, they say, but I wasn't afraid of Jerry. I saw him working in his garden, and I leaned out of my saddle and double-thonged him between the shoulders over the hedge. Well, my dear, for the first time since Dad gave him to me, my troubadour—I wish you could see the sweet creature— shied across the road, and I spilled out into the hedge-top. Most undignified, Jerry pulled me through to his side and brushed the leaves off me. I was horribly pricked, but I didn't care. Now, Jerry, I said, I'm going to take the hide off you first and send you to lose afterwards. You well know why. Oh, he said, and he sat down among his beehives. Then I reckon you've come about old Sissy's business, my dear. I reckon I just about have, I said. Stand away from these hives. I can't get at you there. That's why I be where I be, he said. If you'll excuse me, Miss Phil, I don't hold with being flogged before breakfast at my time of life. He's a huge big man, but he looked so comical squatting among the hives that I know I oughtn't to. I laughed, and he laughed. I always laugh at the wrong time. But I soon recovered my dignity, and I said, then give me back what you made poor Sissy's steel. You're poor Sissy, he said. She's a hatful of trouble. But you shall have a, Miss Phil. They're already put by for you. And would you believe it? The old sinner pulled my three silver spoons out of his dirty pocket and polished them on his cuff. Here they be, he says, and he gave them to me, just as cool as though I'd come to have my warts charmed. That's the worst of people having known you when you were young. But I preserved my composure. Jerry, I said, what in the world are we to do? If you'd been caught with these things on you, you'd have been hanged. I know it, he said, but they're yours now. But you made my Sissy steel them, I said. That I didn't, he said. Your Sissy, she was picking at me and terrifying me all the long day and every day for weeks to put a charm on you, Miss Phil, and take away your little spitty cough. Yes, I knew that, Jerry, and to make me flesh up, I said, I much obliged you, but I'm not one of your pigs. Ah, I reckon she've been talking to you then, he said. Yes, she'd give me no peace and be in terrified, for I don't hold with old women. I laid a task on her, which I thought had silenced her. I never reckoned the old scrabble and risk her neck bone at lose of sizes for your sake, Miss Phil. But she did. She up and stole, I tell you, as cheerful as a tinker. You might have knocked me down with any one of them little spoons when she brung him in her apron. Did you mean to say then that you did it to try my poor Sissy? I screamed at him. What else for, dearie? He said. I don't stand in need of hedge dealings. I'm a freeholder with money in the bag. And now I won't trust women no more. Silly old bassem, I'd do beleth she to stole the squires being fob watch if I'd required her. Thittin' you're a wicked, wicked old man, I said, and I was so angry that I couldn't help crying. And of course that made me cough. Jerry was in a fearful taking. He picked me up and carried me into his cottage. It's full of foreign curiosities. And he got me something to eat and drink, and he said he'd be hanged by the neck any day if it pleased me. He said he'd even tell old Sissy he was sorry. That's a great come down for a witch master, you know. I was ashamed of myself for being so silly, and I dabbed my eyes and said, the least you can do now is to give poor Siss some sort of a charm for me. Yes, that's only fair dealings, he said. You know the names of the twelve apostles, dearie. You say them names, one by one, before your open window, rain or storm, wet or shine, five times a day fasting. But mind you, twist every name, you draw in your breath through your nose, right down to your pretty little toes, as long and as deep as you can, and let it out slow through your pretty little mouth. There is virtue for your cough, and those names spoke that way. And I'll give you something you can see more over. Here's a stick of maple, which is the warmest tree in the wood. That's true, Una interrupted. You can feel it almost as warm as yourself when you touch it. It's cut one inch long for your every year, Jerry said. That's sixteen inches. You set it in your window, so that it holds up the sash, and thus you keep it, rain or shine or wet or fine day and night. I've said words over it, which will have virtue on your complaints. I haven't any complaints, Jerry. I said it's only to please Sissy. I know that as well as you do, dearie. He said, and that was all that came of my going to give him a flogging. I wonder whether he made Port Troubadour shy when I lashed at him. Jerry has his ways of getting even with people. I wonder, said Una. Well, did you try the charm? Did it work? What nonsense! I told Rene about it, of course, because he's a doctor. He's going to be a most famous doctor. That's why our doctor hates him. Rene said, Oh, oh, you're a master gamb. He is worth knowing. And he put up his eyebrows like this. He made joke of it all. He can see my window from the carpenter's shed where he works. And if ever the maple stick fell down, he pretended to be in a fearful taking till I propped the window up again. He used to ask me whether I had said my apostles properly and how I took my deep breaths. Oh, yes, and the next day, though he had been there ever so many times before, he put on his new hat and paid Jerry Gamm a visit of state as a fellow physician. Jerry never guessed Rene was making fun of him. And so he told Rene about the sick people in the village and how he cured them with herbs after Dr. Brake had given them up. Jerry could talk smuggler's French, of course, and I had taught Rene plenty of English, if only he wasn't so shy. They called each other Monsieur Gamm and Monsieur Lenarch, just like gentlemen. I suppose it amused poor Rene. He hasn't much to do, except to fiddle about in the carpenter's shop. He's like all the French prisoners, always making knickknacks. And Jerry had a little lay that is cottage and so, and so Rene took to being with Jerry much more than I approved of. The hall is so big and empty when dad's away, and I will not sit with Old Amour. She talks so horribly about everyone, especially about Rene. I was rude to Rene, I'm afraid, but I was properly served out for it. One always is. You see, dad went down to Hastings to pay his respects to the general who commanded the brigade there, and to bring him to the hall afterwards. Dad told me he was a very brave soldier from India. He was Colonel of dad's regiment, the thirty-third foot after dad left the army, and then he changed his name from Wesley to Wellesley, or else the other way about. And dad said I was to get out all the silver for him, and I knew that meant a big dinner. So I went down to the sea for early mackerel, and had such a morning of the kitchen and the storerooms. Old Amour nearly cried. However, my dear, I made all my preparations in ample time, but the fish didn't arrive. It never does. And I wanted Rene to ride to Pevensey and bring it himself. He had gone over to Jerry, of course, as he always used unless I requested his presence beforehand. I can't send for Rene every time I want him. He should be there. Now, don't you ever do what I did, child, because it's in the highest degree unladylike, but one of our woods runs up to Jerry's garden, and if you climb, it's ungentile, but I can climb like a kitten. There's an old hollow oak just above the pigsty, where you can hear and see everything below. Truthfully, I only went to tell Rene about the mackerel, but I saw him and Jerry sitting on the seat playing with wooden toy trumpets. So I slipped into the hollow and choked down my cough and listened. Rene had never shown me any of these trumpets. Trumpets? Aren't you too old for trumpets? Said Una. They weren't real trumpets because Jerry opened his shirt collar, and Rene put one end of his trumpet against Jerry's chest and put his ear to the other. Then Jerry put his trumpet against Rene's chest and listened, while Rene breathed and coughed. I was afraid I would cough too. This Hollywood one is the best, said Jerry. It is wonderful, like hearing a man's soul whispering in his innards. But unless I've a buzzin' in my ears, Mr. Lenark, you make much about the same kind of noises as old Gaffer Macklin, but not quite so loud as young Copper. It sounds like breakers on a reef. Long way off. Compreny? Perfectly, said Rene. I drive on the breakers. But before I strike I shall save hundreds, thousands, millions, perhaps, by my little trumpets. Now tell me what sounds the old Gaffer Macklin have made in his chest, and what the young Copper also. Jerry talked for nearly a quarter of an hour about sick people in the village, while Rene asked questions. Then he sighed and said, You explain very well, Mr. Gamm, but if only I had your opportunities to listen for myself. Do you think these poor people would let me listen to them through my trumpet? For a little money? No? Rene's as poor as a church mouse. They'd kill you, Mishore. It's all I can do to coax them to abide it, and I'm Jerry Gamm. Said Jerry. He's very proud of his attainments. Then these poor people are alarmed, no? Said Rene. They've added in at me for some time back because of my trying your trumpets on their sick, and I reckon by the talk at the alehouse they won't stand much more. Tom Dunch and some of his kidney was drinking themselves riot-right when I passed long afternoon. Charms and mutterings and bits of red wool and black hens is in the way of nature to these fools, Mishore, but anything likely to do in real service is devil's work by their estimation. If I was you, I'd go home before they come. Jerry spoke quite quietly, and Rene shrunk his shoulders. I am prisoner on parole, Mr. Gamm. He said, I have no home. Now that was unkind of Rene. He's often told me that he looked on England as his home. I suppose it's French politeness. Then we'll talk of something that matters. Said Jerry. Not to name no names, Mishore Lenark, but what might be your own opinion, someone who ain't old Gaffer Macklin nor young Copper, is that person better or worse? Better, for time that is, said Rene. He meant for the time being, but I never could teach him some phrases. I thought so too, said Jerry, but how about time to come? Rene shook his head, and then he blew his nose. You don't know how odd a man looks blowing his nose when you are sitting directly above him. I've thought that too, said Jerry. He rumbled so deep I could scarcely catch. It don't make much odds to me, because I'm old, but you're young, Mishore, you're young. And he put his hand on Rene's knee, and Rene covered it with his hand. I didn't know they were such friends. Thank you, mon ami, said Rene. I am much obliged. Let us return to our trumpet making. But I forget. He stood up. It appears that you've received this afternoon. You can't see into Gam's lane from the oak, but the gate opened, and fat little Dr. Brake stumped in, mopping his head and half a dozen of our people following him, very drunk. You ought to have seen Rene bow. He does it beautifully. Oh, word with you, Leneck, said Dr. Brake. Jerry has been practicing some devilry or other on these poor wretches, and they've asked me to be arbiter. Whatever that means, I reckon it's safer than asking you to be Dr., said Jerry, and Tom Dunge, one of our carters, laughed. That ain't right feeling of you, Tom, Jerry said, seeing how clever Dr. Brake put away your thorn in the flesh last winter. Tom's wife had died at Christmas, though Dr. Brake bled her twice a week. Dr. Brake danced with rage. This is all beside to the mark, he said. These good people are willing to testify that you've been impudently prying into God's secrets by means of some papistical contrivance, which this person, he pointed to poor Rene, has furnished you with. Why, here are the things themselves. Rene was holding a trumpet in his hand. Then all the men talked at once. They said Old Gaffer Macklin was dying from stitches in his side, where Jerry had put the trumpet. They called it the Devil's Earpiece. And they said it left round red witch marks on people's skins and dried up their lights and made them spit blood and threw them into sweats. Terrible things, they said. You never heard such a noise. I took advantage of it to cough. Rene and Jerry were standing with their backs to the pigsty. Jerry fumbled in his big flat pockets and fished up a pair of pistols. You ought to have seen the men give back when he cocked his. He passed one to Rene. Wait, wait, said Rene. I will explain to the doctor if he permits. He waved a trumpet at him. And the men at the gate shouted, Don't touch it, doctor. Don't lay a hand to the thing. Come, come, said Rene. You aren't thought so big fool as you pretend. No. Dr. Brake backed toward the gate, watching Jerry's pistol, and Rene followed him with his trumpet like a nurse trying to amuse a child, and put the ridiculous thing to his ear to show how it was used, and talked of la gloire and l'humanité and la science. Well, Dr. Brake watched Jerry's pistol and swore. I nearly laughed aloud. No, listen, no, listen, said Rene. This will be monies in your pockets, my dear confrére. You will become rich. Then Dr. Brake said something about adventurers who could not earn an honest living in their own country, creeping into decent houses, and taking advantage of gentlemen's confidence to enrich themselves by base intrigues. Rene dropped his absurd trumpet and made one of his best bows. I knew he was angry from the way he rolled his Rs. Very good, said he. For that I shall have much pleasure to kill you now and here. Monsieur Argan, another bow to Jerry. You will please lend him your pistol, or he shall have mine. I give you my word. I know not which is best. And if he will choose a second from his friends over there, another bow to our drunken yokels at the gate, we will commence. That's fair enough, said Jerry. Tom Dunge, you owe it to the doctor to be his second, placed her man. No, said Tom. No mixing in gentry's quarrels for me. And he shook his head and went out, and the others followed him. Hold on, said Jerry. You forgot what you set out to do up at the alehouse just now. You was going to search me for witch marks. You was going to duck me in the pond. You was going to drag all my bits of sticks out of my little cottage here. What's the matter with you? Wouldn't you like to be with your old woman tonight, Tom? But they didn't even look back, much less come. They ran to the village alehouse like hairs. No matter for these can I, said Rene, butting up his coat so as not to show any linen. All gentlemen do that before a dual dad says, and he's been out five times. You shall be his second, Monsieur Dame. Give him the pistol. Dr. Brake took it as if it was red hot, but he said that if Rene resigned his pretensions in certain quarters he would pass over the matter. Rene bowed deeper than ever. As for that, he said, if you were not the ignorant which you are, you would have known long ago that the subject of your remarks is not for any living man. I don't know what the subject of his remarks might have been, but he's spoken a simply dreadful voice, my dear, and Dr. Brake turned quite white and said Rene was a liar. And then Rene caught him by the throat and choked him black. Well, my dear, as if this wasn't deliciously exciting enough. Just exactly at that minute I heard a strange voice on the other side of the hedge say, What's this? What's this, Bucksteed? And there was my father and Sir Arthur Wesley on horseback in the lane. And there was Rene kneeling on Dr. Brake. And there was I up in the oak, listening with all my ears. I must have leaned forward too much, and the voice gave me such a start that I slipped. I had only time to make one jump onto the pigsty roof, another before the tiles broke onto the pigsty wall, and then I bounced down into the garden just behind Jerry with my hair full of bark. Imagine the situation. Oh, I can! Una laughed till she nearly fell off the stool. Dad said, Phil Adelphia! And Sir Arthur Wesley said, Good Ged! And Jerry put his foot on the pistol Rene had dropped. But Rene was splendid. He never even looked at me. He began to untwist Dr. Brake's neckcloth as fast as he'd twisted it and asked him if he felt better. What's happened? What's happened? Said Dad. A fit! Said Rene. I fear my confrere has had a fit. Do not be alarmed. He recovers himself. Shall I plead you a little, my dear doctor? Dr. Brake was very good, too. He said, I am vastly obliged, Mr. Leneck, but I am restored now. And as he went out of the gate he told Dad it was a syncope? I think. Then Sir Arthur said, Quite right, Bucksteed, not another word. They are both gentlemen. And he took off his cocked hat to Dr. Brake and Rene. But poor Dad wouldn't let well alone. He kept saying, Phil Adelphia, what does all this mean? Well, Sir, I said, I've only just come down. As far as I could see, it looked as though Dr. Brake had had a sudden seizure. That was quite true. If you'd seen Rene seize him, Sir Arthur laughed. Not much changed there, Bucksteed. He said, She's a lady, a thorough lady. Heaven knows she doesn't look like one. Said poor Dad. Go home, Phil Adelphia. So I went home, my dear. I don't laugh, so. Right under Sir Arthur's nose. A most enormous nose. Feeling as though I were twelve years old going to be whipped. Oh, I beg your pardon, child. It's all right, said Una. I'm getting on for thirteen. I've never been whipped, but I know how you felt. All the same it must have been funny. Funny? If you'd heard Sir Arthur jerking out, Good get, Bucksteed, every minute as they rode behind me. And poor Dad sang, Pardon my honour, Arthur. I can't account for it. Oh, how my cheeks tangled when I reached my room. But Sissy had laid out my very best evening dress, the white saddened one, van dyked at the bottom with spots of more own foil, and the pearl knots, you know, touching up the drapery from the left shoulder. I had poor Mother's lace-tucker and her coronet comb. Oh, you lucky! Una murmured, and gloves. French kid, my dear. Philadelphia padded her shoulder, and marooned saddened shoes, and a marooned and gold-craped fan. That restored my calm. Nice things always do. I wore my hair banded on my forehead with a little curl over the left ear. And when I descended the stairs, on grand tenue, all the more curtsy to me without my having to stop and look at her. Which, alas, is too often the case. Sir Arthur highly approved of the dinner, my dear. The mackerel did come in time. We had all the marclake silver out, and he toasted my health, and he asked me where my little bird's nesting sister was. I know he did it to quiz me, so I looked him straight in the face, my dear, and I said, I always send her to the nursery, Sir Arthur, when I receive guests at Marclay Call. Oh, Ho Chi! Clever of you! What did he say? Una cried. He said, Not much change there, Bucksteed. Get, I deserved it. And he toasted me again. They talked about the French and what a shame it was that Sir Arthur only commanded a brigade at Hastings, and he told that of a battle in India at a place called Asai. Dad said it was a terrible fight, but Sir Arthur described it as though it had been a wist party, I suppose, because a lady was present. Of course you were the lady. I wish I'd seen you, said Una. I wish you had, child. I had such a triumph after dinner. Renee and Dr. Brake came in. They had quite made up their quarrel, and they told me they had the highest esteem for each other, and I laughed and said, I heard every word of it up in the tree. You never saw two men so frightened in your life, and when I said, What was the subject of your remarks, Renee? Neither of them knew where to look. Oh, I quizzed them unmercifully. They'd seen me jump off the pink-styed roof, remember. What was the subject of their remarks? Said Una. Oh, Dr. Brake said it was a professional matter, so the laugh was turned on me. I was horribly afraid it might have been something unladylike and indelicate. But that wasn't my triumph. Dad asked me to play on the harp. Between just you and me, child, I had been practicing a new song from London. I don't always live in trees for weeks, and I gave them for a surprise. What was it? Said Una. Sing it. I have given my heart to a flower, not very difficult fingering, but a ravishing sentiment. Philadelphia coughed and cleared her throat. I've a deep voice for my age and size, she explained. Contralto, you know, but it ought to be stronger. And she began, her face all dark against the last of the soft pink sunset. I have given my heart to a flower, though I know it is fading away, though I know it will live but an hour, and will leave me to mourn its decay. Isn't that touchingly sweet? Then the last verse, I wish I had my harp, dear, goes as low as my register will reach. She drew in her chin and took a deep breath. Ye desolate whirlwinds that rave, I charge you be good to my dear. She is all, she is all that I have, and the time of our parting is near. Beautiful! said Una. And did they like it? Like it? They were overwhelmed. Occable, as Rene says. My dear, if I hadn't seen it, I shouldn't have believed that I could have drawn tears, genuine tears, to the eyes of four grown men. But I did. Rene simply couldn't endure it. He's all French sensibility. He hid his face and said, I say, Marmoselle, c'est plus fort que moi, I say. And Sir Arthur blew his nose and said, Good get, this is worse than a sigh. Well, dad sat with the tears simply running down his cheeks. And what did Dr. Brake do? He got up and pretended to look out of the window. But I saw his little fat shoulders jerk as if he had the hiccows. That was a triumph. I never suspected him of sensibility. Oh, I wish I'd seen. I wish I'd been you. Said Una, clasping her hands. Puck rustled and rose from the fern. Just as a big, blundering cockchaffer flew smack against Una's cheek. When she had finished rubbing the place, Mrs. Vincy called to her that Pansy had been fractious, or she would have come long before to help her strain and pour off. It didn't matter, said Una. I just waited. Is that old Pansy barging about the lower pasture now? No, said Mrs. Vincy, listening. It sounds more like a horse being galloped middling quick through the woods. But there's no road there. I reckon it's one of Gleason's cold sluice. Shall I see you up to the house, Miss Una? Gracious, no. Thank you. What's going to hurt me? Said Una. And she put her stool away behind the oak, and strolled home through the gaps that old Hobdon kept open for her. Brooklyn Road I was very well pleased with what I knowed. I reckoned myself no fool, till I met with a maid on the Brooklyn Road that turned me back to school. Low down, low down, where the little green lanterns shine. Oh, maids, I've done with thee all but one, and she can never be mine. It was right in the midst of a hot June night with thunder dunking round, and I seed her face by the fairy light that beats from off the ground. She only smiled, and she never spoke. She smiled and went away. But when she'd gone, my heart was broke, and my wits was clean astray. Oh, stop your ringing, and let me be. Let be, O Brooklyn bells. You'll ring old Goodman out of the sea before I wed one else. Old Goodman's farm is rank sea sand, and was this thousand year, but it shall turn to rich plow land before I change my deer. Oh, Fairfield Church is waterbound from autumn to the spring. But it shall turn to high hillground before my bells do ring. Oh, leave me walk on the Brooklyn Road in the thunder and warm rain. Oh, leave me look where my love go'd, and perhaps I'll see her again. Low down, low down, where the little green lanterns shine. Oh, maids, I've done with thee all but one, and she can never be mine. End of section five.