Читать книгу The 'Piping Times' - John Jeffery Farnol - Страница 23

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THE ‘Three Pilchards’ proved to be a smallish, plain, very Cornish structure in the middle of a small, plain village which seemed the more so by contrast with the natural beauty of its immediate surroundings: glory of rugged coast with noble headlands rising majestic from a blue sea that, just now, was flooding the narrow, rocky porth where fishing boats rode at their moorings.

“Marvellous!” said Tom again, pausing to look round upon this fair prospect. “No wonder Mrs. Penhallo loves her Cornwall. And, by the way ‘Penhallo’ is rather a lovely name, Mark; musical and so on.”

“Most Cornish names are, Tom.”

“I suppose you knew the country hereabout before I was born, eh, Mark?”

“Oh yes.”

“Mrs. Penhallo, that rather odd lady, told me she lived here in Merrion ... I wonder if we shall meet again? ‘Penhallo’—yes, it’s a musical, pretty name.”

“Well, now, what about ale, Tom?”

“That’s music too, Mark! And I’ll enjoy it out here. Have a pint sent out to me, old horse, and right speedily.”

“Verily Thomas, eftsoons. Meanwhile I’ll go and rid me of some of this Cornish dust, and you could do with a wash also.”

“Yes, b’Jingo! Trevore is all over me! Goliath, cut off indoors, find my bedroom, and have plenty of hot water ready for me while I drink in Cornwall with my ale.”

“Yessir,—a barf! Very good, Guv.”

Thus presently Tom sat refreshing his inner man with stout ale and delighting his outer with vision of the glories of sea and landscape until, roused by a hoarse sigh, he glanced thitherward, and beheld a small, bent old man seated on bench nearby, contemplating an empty tankard and the beauties of earth and sky now glorified by sunset, with the jaundiced eye of cold disparagement, sighing meanwhile so heavily that Tom, leaning near, questioned him at last:

“My dear, old sir, why so low-spirited? I mean to say—no joy, no gladness and what not—and why?”

“Well, young maister, I be a old, disapp’inted soul, that’s wot I be, and that be why.”

“Tough luck, old boy! But what’s your trouble?”

“Sussex!” replied the Ancient, with sigh deeper than ever, “Sussex be my trouble!”

“Oh?” enquired Tom. “I happen to know Sussex rather well,—how can Sussex trouble you so far away?”

“That’s jest it!” moaned the Aged One. “Sussex be theer an’ I be here, an’ both so fur from one another!”

“Oh?” said Tom again.

“Ar!” quoth Hoary Age. “Sussex be theeraway and I be here-along. And, wot’s more, my ale pot be empty as a drum, it be.”

“Why, then, of course it must be filled,” said Tom, rising.

“Thankee, sir, and set down, I’ll call John Pengelly drackly minute!” So saying, the old man lifted knotted staff and therewith rapped loudly on ledge of the open window beside him, until in answer to this insistent summons, out strode a smiling, ruddy fellow in jersey and long sea boots, to enquire:

“Eh, Jole—wot, another?”

“Ar! Me darter be away to Truro, so I be makin’ a bit of ’ay while the sun shines, b’kindness of this ’ere young feller.” The Aged Person’s tankard being duly recharged, he sipped, nodded, drank and thereafter spoke:

“Young feller, I be Joel Bates, that be ’oo I am! Sixty odd years ago, me bein’ then a innercent child o’ ten smilin’ summers, me lovin’ parients ups and brings me out o’ Sussex downalong ’ere into Cornwall! And wot, I axes ee, wot be the result?”

“Mr. Bates,” answered Tom, gravely, “I cannot say.”

“Then, young man, I’ll tell ee. The result be as I been wishing Cornwall were Sussex ever since! Ah, with arl me throbbin’ ’eart!”

“Then you hope and intend to go back to Sussex, I suppose?”

“Then you supposes wrong, young man! I bean’t ’opeing nor yet intendin’ no sich things no’ow.”

“Why not, Mr. Bates?”

“Because, young man, me bein’ ’ere by the will o’ Providence ’ere I bides till Providence sends me back. For lookee, young feller, I beant never nowise the man to fly in the face o’ Providence, not me—no! I never did and I never will no time under no carcumstance whatsoever, seein’ as ’ow——”

At this precise moment, from the immensities above them a shrill voice hailed:

“Ho, Guvnor, all’s ready! Water’s ready an’ waitin’, an’ me too!”

“Oo be callin’ so shrill and owdacious?” the Hoary One demanded, indignantly.

“Well,” replied Tom, finishing his ale, “so far as I have been able to judge up to now, yon was the urgent wail of a groom, a gardener, a barber, a carpenter, a boxer and a general factotum. So, Mr. Bates, I must bid you good evening and—hook it.”

“But, young man, ’e says ‘water’! So I says wheer’s the fule, says I, as wants water, I says?”

“Why, since you ask me, Mr. Bates, I says here, I says. So if you’ll excuse me I’ll pop along.”

So into the ‘Three Pilchards’ Tom ‘popped’, and up a narrow though scrupulously clean stair to find his Factotum waiting to guide him into a small, trim bedroom where stood a large earthenware vessel half full of steaming water which Goliath explained by saying:

“I thought while you was abaht it, sir, I’d better give ye a proper sloosh an’ rub dahn all over like, an’ then give ye clo’es a good brushin’—eh, Guv?”

“Extremely zealous of you, Go, my man, but I’ll ‘sloosh’ myself.”

“But wot about y’r back, sir?”

“Oh, I’ll manage it as usual. But I tell you what, you might go and bath Mr. Mark, after his dusty ride.”

“Very good, sir! Lock the door, sir, there’s women abaht—there always is!” With which, The Factotum sped away, leaving a chuckling Tom to his ablutions.

Going downstairs, after some while, Tom found himself in another small room, also clean and trim, where a pleasant-faced, motherly woman, evidently the presiding genius of this pervading orderliness, was laying table for supper.

“Good evening, sir,” said she, greeting Tom with a bobbing curtsey, “I’m Mary Pengelly, and I do hope as steak cut thick, wi’ onions, ’ll soot ee. Your little boy do say as you’m main partial to onions, so I’m doing a plenty. I do hope as steak, cut thick——”

“Marvellous!” said Tom for the third or fourth time that evening. “Mrs. Pengelly, my mouth waters at the very idea ... and ... yes, by Jupiter, I can smell ... those onions! Ha, most delectable and scrumptious!”

Mrs. Pengelly beamed, curtsied again and departed. Tom was at the window, gazing through glowing sunset at a golden headland rising in splendour from a purple sea, when came Mark, washed, brushed and actually laughing; at which unusual sight Tom chuckled also, with the question:

“What’s the joke, old boy?”

“Our Factotum! Tom, this amazing urchin came prepared and actually demanding to ... give me a bath! And in the hand-basin!”

“Zeal, Mark, zeal! Our Go is certainly a go-er!”

“Beyond question! Also he informed me he has been ‘towel boy’ in a Turkish Barf.”

Here, after brief rapping, the door opened and Goliah announced:

“Supper’s comin’ along, gen’lemen!”

Which it did, in fact, borne by a smiling Mary Pengelly on dish of generous proportions,—a steak like a joint, rimmed sufficiently with fat delicately browned and crisped, surrounded graciously with plenteous garnishment of savoury onions, the whole enriched with a thick, yet natural gravy ...

With which this chapter shall end.