“Am I to understand, my good fellow, that the ship, which at least you allow to be wrecked, may have been or might have been something like a foreigner?”
“Therein lies the point whereon your worship cannot follow me, any more than could the Coroner. Neither he, nor his clerk, nor the rest of the jury, would listen to common sense about it. That ship no more came from Appledore than a whale was hatched from a herring’s egg.”
“I knew it; I knew it,” broke in Sir Philip. “They have only small coasters at Appledore. I said that the newspaper must be wrong. However, for the sake of my two poor sons, I am bound to leave no clue unfollowed. There is nothing more to be done, Mr. Stew, except to express my many and great obligations for your kindness.” Herewith he made a most stately bow, and gave even me a corner of it.
“Stay, Sir Philip; one moment more. This fellow is such a crafty file. Certain I am that he never would look so unnaturally frank and candid unless he were in his most slippery mood. You know the old proverb, I daresay, ‘Put a Taffy on his mettle, he’ll boil Old Nick in his own fish-kettle.’ Dyo, where did your boat come from?”
This question he put in a very sudden, and I might well say vicious, manner, darting a glance at me like the snake’s tongues in the island of Das Cobras. I felt such contempt that I turned my back, and gave him a view of the “boofely buckens” admired so much by Bardie.
“Well done!” he cried. “Your resources, Dyo, are an infinite credit to you. And, do you know, when I see your back, I can almost place some faith in you. It is broad and flat and sturdy, Dyo. Ah! many a fine hare has swung there head downwards. Nevertheless, we must see this boat.”
Nothing irritates me more than what low Englishmen call “chaff.” I like to be pleasant and jocular upon other people; but I don’t like that sort of thing tried upon me when I am not in the humour for it. Therefore I answered crustily,
“Your worship is welcome to see my boat, and go to sea in her if you please, with the plug out of her bottom. Under Porthcawl Point she lies; and all the people there know all about her. Only, I will beg your worship to excuse my presence, lest you should have low suspicions that I came to twist their testimony.”
“Well said, David! well said, my fine fellow! Almost I begin to believe thee, in spite of all experience. Now, Sir Philip.”
“Your pardon, good sir; I follow you into the carriage.”
So off they set to examine my boat; and I hoped to see no more of them, for one thing was certain—to wit, that their coachman never would face the sandhills, and no road ever is, or ever can be, to Porthcawl; so that these two worthy gentlemen needs must exert their noble legs for at least one-half of the distance. And knowing that Squire Stew’s soles were soft, I thought it a blessing for him to improve the only soft part about him.
XXII
Another Disappointment
Highly pleased with these reflections, what did I do but take a pipe, and sit like a lord at my own doorway, having sent poor Bunny with a smack to bed, because she had shown curiosity: for this leading vice of the female race cannot be too soon discouraged. But now I began to fear almost that it would be growing too dark very soon for me to see what became of the carriage returning with those two worships. Moreover, I felt that I had no right to let them go so easily, without even knowing Sir Philip’s surname, or what might be the especial craze which had led them to honour me so. And sundry other considerations slowly prevailed over me; until it would have gone sore with my mind, to be kept in the dark concerning them. So, when heavy dusk of autumn drove in over the notch of sandhills from the faraway of sea, and the green of grass was gone, and you hardly could tell a boy from a girl among the children playing, unless you knew their mothers; I rejoicing in their pleasures, quite forgot the justices. For all our children have a way of letting out their liveliness, such as makes old people feel a longing to be in with them. Not like Bardie, of course; but still a satisfactory feeling. And the better my tobacco grew, the sweeter were my memories.
Before I had courted my wife and my sweethearts (a dozen and a-half perhaps, or at the outside say two dozen) anything more than twice apiece, in the gentle cud of memory; and with very quiet sighs indeed, for echoes of great thumping ones; and just as I wondered what execution a beautiful child, with magnificent legs, would do when I lay in the churchyard—all of a heap I was fetched out of dreaming into common sense again. There was the great yellow coach at the corner of the old grey wall that stopped the sand; and all the village children left their “hide-and-seek” to whisper. Having fallen into a different mood from that of curiosity, and longing only for peace just now, or tender styles of going, back went I into my own cottage, hoping to hear them smack whip and away. Even my hand was on the bolt—for a bolt I had now on account of the cats, who understand every manner of latch, wherever any fish be—and perhaps it is a pity that I did not shoot it.
But there came three heavy knocks; and I scarcely had time to unbutton my coat, in proof of
