Читать книгу Kitty Alone - Baring-Gould Sabine - Страница 4

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With a voice like that of a crow, and singing with full lungs also like a crow, came Jason Quarm riding in his donkey-cart to Coombe Cellars.

Jason Quarm was a short, stoutly-built man, with a restless grey eye, with shaggy, long, sandy hair that burst out from beneath a battered beaver hat. He was somewhat lame, wherefore he maintained a donkey, and drove about the country seated cross-legged in the bottom of his cart, only removed from the bottom boards by a wisp of straw, which became dissipated from under him with the joltings of the conveyance. Then Jason would struggle to his knees, take the reins in his teeth, scramble backwards in his cart, rake the straw together again into a heap, reseat himself, and drive on till the exigencies of the case necessitated his going through the same operations once more.

Coombe Cellars, which Jason Quarm approached, was a cluster of roofs perched on low walls, occupying a promontory in the estuary of the Teign, in the south of Devon. A road, or rather a series of ruts, led direct to Coombe Cellars, cut deep in the warm red soil; but they led no farther.

Coombe Cellars was a farmhouse, a depôt of merchandise, an eating-house, a ferry-house, a discharging wharf for barges laden with coal, a lading-place for straw, and hay, and corn that had to be carried away on barges to the stables of Teignmouth and Dawlish. Facing the water was a little terrace or platform, gravelled, on which stood green benches and a green table.

The sun of summer had blistered the green paint on the table, and persons having leisure had amused themselves with picking the skin off these blisters and exposing the white paint underneath, and then, with pen or pencil, exercising their ingenuity in converting these bald patches into human faces, or in scribbling over them their own names and those of the ladies of their heart. Below the platform at low water the ooze was almost solidified with the vast accumulation of cockle and winkle shells thrown over the edge, together with bits of broken plates, fragments of glass, tobacco-pipes, old handleless knives, and sundry other refuse of a tavern.

Above the platform, against the wall, was painted in large letters, to be read across the estuary--

PASCO PEPPERILL,

Hot Cockles and Winkles,

Tea and Coffee Always Ready.

Some wag with his penknife had erased the capital H from “Hot,” and had converted the W in “Winkles” into a V, with the object of accommodating the written language to the vernacular. One of the most marvellous of passions seated in the human heart is that hunger after immortality which, indeed, distinguishes man from beast. This deep-seated and awful aspiration had evidently consumed the breasts of all the “’ot cockle and vinkle” eaters on the platform, for there was literally not a spare space of plaster anywhere within reach which was not scrawled over with names by these aspirants after immortality.

Jason Quarm was merciful to his beast. Seeing a last year’s teasel by the wall ten yards from Coombe Cellars’ door, he drew rein, folded his legs and arms, smiled, and said to his ass--

“There, governor, enjoy yourself.”

The teasel was hard as wood, besides being absolutely devoid of nutritious juices, which had been withdrawn six months previously. Neddy would have nothing to say to the teasel.

“You dratted monkey!” shouted Quarm, irritated at the daintiness of the ass. “If you won’t eat, then go on.” He knelt up in his cart and whacked him with a stick in one hand and the reins in the other. “I’ll teach you to be choice. I’ll make you swaller a holly-bush. And if there ain’t relish enough in that to suit your palate, I’ll buy a job lot of old Perninsula bayonets and make you munch them. That’ll be chutney, I reckon, to the likes of you.”

Then, as he threw his lame leg over the side of the cart, he said, “Steady, old man, and hold your breath whilst I’m descending.”

No sooner was he on his feet, than, swelling his breast and stretching his shoulders, with a hand on each hip, he crowed forth--

“There was a frog lived in a well,

Crock-a-mydaisy, Kitty alone!

There was a frog lived in a well,

And a merry mouse lived in a mill,

Kitty alone and I.”

The door opened, and a man stood on the step and waved a salutation to Quarm. This man was powerfully built. He had broad shoulders and a short neck. What little neck he possessed was not made the most of, for he habitually drew his head back and rested his chin behind his stock. This same stock or muffler was thick and folded, filling the space left open by the waistcoat, out of which it protruded. It was of blue strewn with white spots, and it gave the appearance as though pearls dropped from the mouth of the wearer and were caught in his muffler before they fell and were lost. The man had thick sandy eyebrows, and very pale eyes. His structure was disproportioned. With such a powerful body, stout nether limbs might have been anticipated for its support. His thighs were, indeed, muscular and heavy, but the legs were slim, and the feet and ankles small. He had the habit of standing with his feet together, and thus presented the shape of a boy’s kite.

“Hallo, Pasco--brother-in-law!” shouted Quarm, as he threw the harness off the ass; “look here, and see what I have been a-doing.”

He turned the little cart about, and exhibited a plate nailed to the backboard, on which, in gold and red on black, figured, “The Star and Garter Life and Fire Insurance.”

“What!” exclaimed Pepperill; “insured Neddy and the cart, have you? That I call chucking good money away, unless you have reasons for thinking Ned will go off in spontaneous combustion.”

“Not so, Pasco,” laughed Jason; “it is the agency I have got. The Star and Garter knows that I am the sort of man they require, that wanders over the land and has the voice of a nightingale. I shall have a policy taken out for you shortly, Pasco.”

“Indeed you shall not.”

“Confiscate the donkey if I don’t. But I’ll not trouble you on this score now. How is the little toad?”

“What--Kate?”

“To be sure, Kitty Alone.”

“Come and see. What have you been about this time, Jason?”

“Bless you! I have hit on Golconda. Brimpts.”

“Brimpts? What do you mean?”

“Don’t you know Brimpts?”

“Never heard of it. In India?”

“No; at Dart-meet, beyond Ashburton.”

“And what of Brimpts? Found a diamond mine there?”

“Not that, but oaks, Pasco, oaks! A forest two hundred years old, on Dartmoor. A bit of the primæval forest; two hundred--I bet you--five hundred years old. It is not in the Forest, but on one of the ancient tenements, and the tenant has fallen into difficulties with the bank, and the bank is selling him up. Timber, bless you! not a shaky stick among the lot; all heart, and hard as iron. A fortune--a fortune, Pasco, is to be picked up at Brimpts. See if I don’t pocket a thousand pounds.”

“You always see your way to making money, but never get far for’ard along the road that leads to good fortune.”

“Because I never have had the opportunity of doing more than see my way. I’m crippled in a leg, and though I can see the road before me, I cannot get along it without an ass. I’m crippled in purse, and though I can discern the way to wealth, I can’t take it--once more--without an ass. Brother-in-law, be my Jack, and help me along.”

Jason slapped Pasco on the broad shoulders.

“And you make a thousand pounds by the job?”

“So I reckon--a thousand at the least. Come, lend me the money to work the concern, and I’ll pay you at ten per cent.”

“What do you mean by ‘work the concern’?”

“Pasco, I must go before the bank at Exeter with money in my hand, and say, I want those wretched scrubs of oak and holm at Brimpts. Here’s a hundred pounds. It’s worthless, but I happen to know of a fellow as will put a five pound in my pocket if I get him some knotty oak for a bit of fancy-work he’s on. The bank will take it, Pasco. At the bank they will make great eyes, that will say as clear as words, Bless us! we didn’t know there was oak grew on Dartmoor. They’ll take the money, and conclude the bargain right on end. And then I must have some ready cash to pay for felling.”

“Do you think that the bank will sell?”

“Sell? it would sell anything--the soil, the flesh off the moors, the bones, the granite underneath, the water of heaven that there gathers, the air that wafts over it--anything. Of course, it will sell the Brimpts oaks. But, brother-in-law, let me tell you, this is but the first stage in a grand speculative march.”

“What next?”

“Let me make my thousand by the Brimpts oaks, and I see waves of gold before me in which I can roll. I’ll be generous. Help me to the oaks, and I’ll help you to the gold-waves.”

“How is all this to be brought about?”

“Out of mud, old boy, mud!”

“Mud will need a lot of turning to get gold out of it.”

“Ah! wait till I’ve tied up Neddy.”

Jason Quarm hobbled off with his ass, and turned it loose in a paddock. Then he returned to his brother-in-law, hooked his finger into the button-hole of Pepperill, and said, with a wink--

“Did you never hear of the philosopher’s stone, that converts whatever it touches into gold?”

“I’ve heard some such a tale, but it is all lies.”

“I’ve got it.”

“Never!” Pasco started, and turned round and stared at his brother-in-law in sheer amazement.

“I have it. Here it is,” and he touched his head. “Believe me, Pasco, this is the true philosopher’s stone. With this I find oaks where the owners believed there grew but furze; with this I bid these oaks bud forth and bear bank-notes. And with this same philosopher’s stone I shall transform your Teign estuary mud into golden sovereigns.”

“Come in.”

“I will; and I’ll tell you how I’ll do it, if you will help me to the Brimpts oaks. That is step number one.”