he said. "My son he be a sailor."
"I wish him a happy voyage," said the Captain. "And I'll sing you a song about the first sailor there ever was in the world; and who (as Lord Ivywood acutely observes) lived before the time of rum."
He sat down on a wooden chair and lifted his loud voice once more, beating on the table with the broken tea-cup.
"Old Noah, he had an ostrich farm, and fowls on the
greatest scale; He ate his egg with a ladle in an egg-cup big as a pail, And the soup he took was Elephant Soup and the fish he took was Whale; But they all were small to the cellar he took when he set out to sail; And Noah, he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine, 'I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine.'
"The cataract of the cliff of heaven fell blinding off the
brink, As if it would wash the stars away as suds go down a sink, The seven heavens came roaring down for the throats of hell to drink, And Noah, he cocked his eye and said, 'It looks like rain, I think, The water has drowned the Matterhorn as deep as a Mendip mine, But I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine.'
"But Noah he sinned, and we have sinned; on tipsy feet we
trod, Till a great big black teetotaller was sent to us for a rod, And you can't get wine at a P.S. A. or chapel or Eisteddfod; For the Curse of Water has come again because of the wrath of God, And water is on the Bishop's board and the Higher Thinker's shrine, But I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine."
"Lord Ivywood's favourite song," concluded Mr. Patrick Dalroy, drinking. "Sing us a song yourself."
Rather to the surprise of the two humourists, the old gentleman actually began in a quavering voice to chant,
"King George that lives in London Town, I hope they will defend his crown, And Bonyparte be quite put down On Christmas Day in the morning."Old Squire is gone to the Meet today All in his--"
It is perhaps fortunate for the rapidity of this narrative that the old gentleman's favourite song, which consists of forty-seven verses, was interrupted by a curious incident. The door of the cottage opened and a sheepish-looking man in corduroys stood silently in the room for a few seconds and then said, without preface or further explanation,
"Four ale."
"I beg your pardon?" inquired the polite Captain.
"Four ale," said the man with solidity; then catching sight of Humphrey seemed to find a few more words in his vocabulary.
"Morning, Mr. Pump. Didn't know as how you'd moved 'The Old Ship.'"
Mr. Pump, with a twist of a smile, pointed to the old man whose song had been interrupted.
"Mr. Marne's seeing after it now, Mr. Gowl," said Pump with the strict etiquette of the country side. "But he's got nothing but this rum in stock as yet."
"Better'nowt," said the laconic Mr. Gowl; and put down some money in front of the aged Marne, who eyed it wonderingly. As he was turning with a farewell and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, the door once more moved, letting in white sunlight and a man in a red neckerchief.
"Morning, Mr. Marne; Morning, Mr. Pump; Morning, Mr. Gowl," said the man in the red neckerchief.
"Morning, Mr. Coote," said the other three, one after another.
"Have some rum, Mr. Coote?" asked Humphrey Pump, genially. "That's all Mr. Marne's got just now."
Mr. Coote also had a little rum; and also laid a little money under the rather vague gaze of the venerable cottager. Mr. Coote was just proceeding to explain that these were bad times, but if you saw a sign you were all right still; a lawyer up at Grunton Abbot had told him so; when the company was increased and greatly excited by the arrival of a boisterous and popular tinker, who ordered glasses all round and said he had his donkey and cart outside. A prolonged, rich and confused conversation about the donkey and cart then ensued, in which the most varied views were taken of their merits; and it gradually began to dawn on Dalroy that the tinker was trying to sell them.
An idea, suited to the romantic opportunism of his present absurd career, suddenly swept over his mind, and he rushed out to look at the cart and donkey. The next moment he was back again, asking the tinker what his price was, and almost in the same breath offering a much bigger price than the tinker would have dreamed of asking. This was considered, however, as a lunacy specially allowed to gentlemen; the tinker had some more rum on the strength of the payment, and then Dalroy, offering his excuses, sealed up the cask and took it and the cheese to be stowed in the bottom of the cart. The money, however, he still left lying in shining silver and copper before the silver beard of old Marne.
No one acquainted with the quaint and often wordless camaraderie of the English poor will require to be told that they all went out and stared at him as he loaded the cart and saw to the harness of the donkey --all except the old cottager, who sat as if hypnotised by the sight of the money. While they were standing there they saw coming down the white, hot road, where it curled over the hill, a figure that gave them no pleasure, even when it was a mere marching black spot in the distance. It was a Mr. Bullrose, the agent of Lord Ivywood's estates.
Mr. Bullrose was a short, square man with a broad, square head with ridges of close, black curls on it, with a heavy, froglike face and starting, suspicious eyes; a man with a good silk hat but a square business jacket. Mr. Bullrose was not a nice man. The agent on that sort of estate hardly ever is a nice man. The landlord often is; and even Lord Ivywood had an arctic magnanimity of his own, which made most people want, if possible, to see him personally. But Mr. Bullrose was petty. Every really practical tyrant must be petty.
He evidently failed to understand the commotion in front of Mr. Marne's partly collapsed cottage, but he felt there must be something wrong about it. He wanted to get rid of the cottage altogether, and had not, of course, the faintest intention of giving the cottager any compensation for it. He hoped the old man would die; but in any case he could easily clear him out if it became suddenly necessary, for he could not possibly pay the rent for this week. The rent was not very much; but it was immeasurably too much for the old man who had no conceivable way of borrowing or earning it. That is where the chivalry of our aristocratic land system comes in.
"Good-bye, my friends," the enormous man in the fantastic uniform was saying, "all roads lead to rum, as Lord Ivywood said in one of his gayer moments, and we hope to be back soon, establishing a first class hotel here, of which prospectuses will soon be sent out."
The heavy froglike face of Mr. Bullrose, the agent, grew uglier with astonishment; and the eyes stood out more like a snail's than a frog's. The indefensible allusion to Lord Ivywood would in any case have caused a choleric intervention, if it had not been swallowed up in the earthquake suggestion of an unlicensed hotel on the estate. This again would have effected the explosion, if that and everything else had not been struck still and rigid by the sight of a solid, wooden sign-post already erected outside old Marne's miserable cottage.
"I've got him now," muttered Mr. Bullrose. "He can't possibly pay; and out he shall go." And he walked swiftly towards the door of the cottage, almost at the same moment that Dalroy went to the donkey's head, as if to lead it off along the road.
"Look here, my man," burst out Bullrose, the instant he was inside the cottage. "You've cooked yourself this time. His lordship has been a great deal too indulgent with you; but this is going to be the end of it. The insolence of what
