Home > Authors Index > Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch > Nicky-Nan, Reservist > This page
Nicky-Nan, Reservist, a novel by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
||
Chapter 7. "Quid Non Mortalia Pectora . . ." |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER VII. "QUID NON MORTALIA PECTORA . . ."
But, as we have recorded, Nicky-Nan, having suffered in early life from a woman, had been turned to a distrust of the sex; a general distrust which preoccupied with its shadow the bright exception that, on a second thought, he was ready enough to recognise in Mrs Penhaligon. This second thought came too late, however. He took one step towards the door, guided by the glimmer, beneath it, of her retreating candle. His hand even fumbled for the latch, and found it. But a sudden shyness seized him and he drew back. He heard her footsteps creaking on the party-stairs: heard the sound of her door softly closed, then the sound of a bolt thrust home in its socket; and turned to face darkness. His brain worked quite clearly. He guessed well enough what had happened. In his youth he had often listened, without taking note of their talk, while his elders debated how it came about that the Old Doctor had left, beyond some parcels of real estate--cottage property for the most part, the tenants of which were notoriously lax in paying their rents--but a very few personal effects. There were book debts in an inordinate mass; and the heirs found an inordinate difficulty in collecting them, since the inhabitants of Polpier--a hardy sea-faring race--had adopted a cheerful custom of paying for deliverance from one illness when they happened (if ever they did) to contract another: and this custom they extended even to that branch of medical service which by tradition should be rewarded in ready money. ("I always," explained a Polpier matron, "pays 'en ver one when I engages 'en ver the next; an' the laast I'll never pay ver"-- and she never did.) On top of this, Polpier folk argued that doctoring wasn't, like property, a gift which a man could pass on to his heirs, and most certainly not if they happened to be--as they were--a corn-factor and an aged maiden sister of independent but exiguous means. "As _I_ look at it," some one put this argument, on the Quay, "th' Old Doctor's mastery was a thing to hisself, and a proper marvel at that. Us brought nothin' into the world, my sons an' us can't carry nothin' out: but that don't mean as you can leave it behind--leastways, not when it takes the form of professional skill. . . . Why, put it to yourselves. Here's th' old man gone up for his reward: an' you can hear th' Almighty sayin', 'Well done, thou good an' faithful servant.'"--"Amen," from the listeners.-- "Yes, an' 'The labourer is worthy of his hire,' and what not. 'Well, then,' the Lord goes on, flatterin'-like, 'what about that there talent I committed to 'ee? For I d' know _you_'re not the sort to go hidin' it in a napkin.' An' d' 'ee reckon th' old chap'll be cuttin' such a figure as to own up, 'Lord, I left it to a corn-merchant'? Ridic'lous to suppose! . . . _The Lord giveth, an' the Lord taketh away_. . . . With cottage property, I grant 'ee, 'tis another thing. Cottage property don't go on all-fours." Nicky-Nan, then, guessed well enough what had happened. Almost in a flash he had guessed it. He had surprised the Old Doctor's secret, hidden all these years. Folks used to make hoards of their money in the bygone days, when Napoleon threatened to invade us and deposit banks were scarce. And the Doctor, by all that tradition told, was never a man to break a habit once formed. For more than the span of two generations this wealth had lain concealed; and now _he--he_, Nicholas Nanjivell--was a rich man, if only he played his cards well! With how sure an instinct he had clung to the old house!--had held on to this relic of a past gentility to which by rights he belonged! He was a rich man now, and would defy Pamphlett and all his works--
And yet . . . Although philosophers in all ages have descanted on the blessings of Hope, and the part played by Imagination in making tolerable the business of living--so that men in the mass not only carry life through with courage but will turn and fight desperately for it, like stags at bay--it is to be doubted if one in ten ever guesses how constantly he is sustained by this spirit scorning the substance, gallantly blind, with promises lifting him over defeat. I dare to say that, save for the strength of hope it put into him, this wealth, so suddenly poured at Nicky-Nan's feet, doubled his discomfort, physical and mental. Of his physical discomfort, just now, there could be no question. He could not find courage to leave his trove and climb the stairs back to his bedroom. Some one might rob him while he slept, and-- horror!--he would never even know of how much he had been robbed. The anguish in his leg forbade his standing sentry: the night wanted almost three hours of dawn. Shirt and trousers were his only garments. He knelt and groped on the stone floor to a corner clear of the fallen rubbish. On his way his fingers encountered a coin and clutched it--comfort, tangible proof that he had not been dreaming. He seated himself in the corner, propping his back there, and fell to speculating--sensing the coin in his palm, fingering it from time to time. The Old Doctor had always, in his lifetime, been accounted a well-to-do man. . . . Very likely he had started this hoard in Bonaparte's days, and had gone on adding to it in the long years of peace. . . . It would certainly be a hundred pounds. It might be a thousand. One thousand pounds! But no--not so fast! Put it at a hundred only, and daylight would be the unlikelier to bring disappointment. The scattered coins he had seen by that one brief flash of the candle danced and multiplied themselves before his eyes like dots of fire in the darkness. Still he resolutely kept their numbers down to one hundred. A hundred pounds! . . . Why, that, or even fifty, meant all the difference in life to him. He could look Pamphlett in the face now. He would step down to the Bank to-morrow, slap seven sovereigns down on the counter--but not too boldly; for Pamphlett must not suspect-- and demand the change in silver, with his receipt. Full quittance-- he could see Pamphlett's face as he fetched forth the piece of paper and made out that quittance, signing his name across a postage stamp. Not once in the course of his vision-building did it cross Nicky-Nan's mind that the money was--that it could be--less than legitimately his. Luck comes late to some men; to others, never. It had come late to him, yet in the nick of time, as a godsend. His family and the Old Doctor's had intermarried, back along, quite in the old days; or so he had heard. . . . Nicky-Nan knew nothing of any law about treasure-trove. Wealth arrived to men as it befell or as they deserved; and, any way, "findings was keepings." His notion of other folks' concern in this money reached no further than a vague fear of folks in general--that they might rob him or deprive him of it in some way. He must go to work cautiously. Thus out of despair Fortune lifted him and began to install him in fear. He must go to work _very_ cautiously. Being all unused to the possession of money, but accustomed to consider it as a weapon of which fortunate men obtained a hold to employ it in "besting" others less fortunate, he foresaw endless calls upon his cunning. But this did not forbid his indulging in visions in which--being also at bottom good-natured--he pictured himself as playing the good genius in his native town, earning general gratitude, building in a large-handed way the new pier that was so badly needed, conferring favours right and left, departing this life amid the mourning of the township, perchance (who could tell?) surviving for the wonder of generations to come in a carved statue at the Quay-head. He had observed, in the ports he had visited abroad, such statues erected in memory of men he had never heard tell of. It would be a mighty fine thing--though a novelty in Polpier--to have one's memory kept alive in this fashion. . . . He would lord it in life too, as became a Nanjivell--albeit the last of the race. To the Penhaligon family he would be specially kind. . . . Upon other deserving ones he would confer surprising help by stealth. . . . He wished now that, in spite of experience, he had married and begotten children--an heir at least. It would be a fine thing to restore the stock to a prospect of honour. He wondered that in the past he had never realised his plain duty in this light and taken the risk. As it was, the old name could only be preserved in a commonalty's gratitude. The flagged floor galled him cruelly; for he was of lean build. Shift his posture or his weight as he might, after a few seconds' ease his haunch-pins were pressing again upon the pavement, with no cushion of flesh but a crushed nerve or two that kept telephoning misery to his knee and fetching fierce darts of pain for response. A quick succession of these, running into one as though a red-hot iron had been applied under the thigh, searing it to the very bone, stabbed suddenly into his brain with a new terror. He had forgotten the anonymous letter and its threat! He was a rich man now. The business of a rich man was to stay at home and preserve his riches while making use of them-like Pamphlett. Who in this world ever heard of a rich man being hauled off to serve in the Navy as a common seaman? The thing was unprecedented. He could buy himself out; at the worst by paying up the money he had drawn. Yes, but this would involve disclosing his wealth, and the source of it. . . . He was terribly afraid of publicity. He had enemies, as the letter proved: he suspected that the law itself might be another enemy--you could never predict which side the law would take--and between them, if they got to know his secret, they would despoil him. . . . On the other hand if, covering his secret, he opposed but a passive resistance, they might carry him off to jail, and then all this money would be laid bare to the world. Intolerable exposure! He must hide it. . . . He must count it, and then--having staved off Pamphlett--hide it tomorrow with all speed and cunning. When would the dawn come? The sun, in the longitude of Polpier, was actually due to rise a few minutes before five o'clock. But Polpier (as I have told) lies in a deep cleft of the hills. Nicky-Nan's parlour looked out on a mere slit at the bottom of that cleft; and, moreover, the downfall of plaster blocked half the lower portion of its tiny dirty window. What with one hindrance and another, it was almost a quarter past five before daylight began to glimmer in the parlour. It found him on his knees--not in prayer, nor in thanksgiving, but eagerly feeling over the grey pile of rubbish and digging into it with clawed fingers. An hour later, with so much of daylight about him as the window permitted, he was still on his knees. Already he had collected more than a hundred golden coins, putting them together in piles of twenty. The dawn had been chilly: but he was warm enough by this time. Indeed, sweat soaked his shirt; beads of sweat gathered on his grey eyebrows, and dripped, sometimes on his hands, sometimes on the pile of old plaster--greyish-white, and fine almost as wood-ash--into which they dug and dug, tearing the thin lathes aside, pouncing on each coin brought to the surface. Once only--though the kneeling cost him torture, and the sweat came no less from anguish than from exertion--did he pause and straighten himself up to listen. Upstairs the Penhaligon children had awakened with the daylight and were talking--chirruping like sparrows--before they left their beds--
By eight o'clock he had picked up and arranged--still in neat piles of twenty--some eight hundred coins of golden money. His belly was fasting: but he had forgotten the crust in the cupboard. Had he not here enough to defray a king's banquet? Some one tapped on the door. Nicky-Nan, startled, raised himself upright on his knees and called in a tremor-- "No admittance!" As he staggered up and made for the door, to press his weight against it, Mrs Penhaligon spoke on the other side. "Mr Nanjivell!" "Ma'am?" "The postman, with a letter for you! I'll fetch it in, if you wish: but the poor fellow 'd like a clack, I can see." It jumped to his tongue to bid her fetch and pass it in to him under the door. The outside of a letter would not tell her much, and anyhow would excite less curiosity than his own corporal envelope, begrimed as it was just now with dust and plaster and cobwebs. But the end of her message alarmed him with misgivings more serious. "Why should Lippity-Libby want a clack with him? . . . Just for gossip's sake?--or to convey a warning?" Lippity-Libby knew, or averred that he knew, the author of yesterday's anonymous letter. . . . "Tell him I'll be out in a moment!" Nicky-Nan beat his hands together softly to rid them of the worst of the plaster, then smoothed them briskly down his chest in a hasty effort to remove the cobwebs that clung there. The result--two damning smears on the front of his shirt--was discouraging. He opened the door with great caution, peered out into the passage, and found to his great relief that Mrs Penhaligon, that discreet woman, had withdrawn to her own premises. He would have reconnoitred farther, but in the porch at the end of the passage Lippity-Libby stood in plain view, with the street full of sunshine behind him. So Nicky-Nan contented himself with closing the door carefully and hasping it. "If," began Lippity-Libby, "you go on gettin' letters at the rate o' one a day, there's only two ways to it. Either you'll practise yourself not to keep the King's postman waitin', or you'll make it up afterwards in the shape of a Christmas-box. . . . I ought in fairness to tell you," Lippity-Libby added, "that there _is_ a third way-- though I hate the sight of it--and that's a letter-box with a slit in the door. Parson Steele has one. When I asked en why, he laughed an' talked foolish, an' said he'd put it up in self-defence. Now, what sort o' defence can a letter-box be to any man's house? And that was six months afore the War, too!" "Another letter for me?" Nicky-Nan hobbled forward, blinking against the sunlight. "'Ho-Haitch-Hem-Hess'--that means 'On His Majesty Service'; post-mark, Troy. . . . Hullo!--anything wrong wi' the house?" "Eh?" "Plasterin' job?" Nicky-Nan understood. "What's that to you?" he asked curtly. "I don' know how it should happen," mused Lippity-Libby after a pause of dejection; "but the gettin' of letters seems to turn folks suspicious-like all of a sudden. You'd be surprised the number that puts me the very question you've just asked. An' they tell me that 'tis with money the same as with letters. I read a tract one time, about a man that found hisself rich of a sudden, and instead o' callin' his naybours together an' sayin' 'Rejoice with me,' what d'ye think he went an' did?" "Look here," said Nicky-Nan, eyeing the postman firmly. "If you're hidin' something behind this clack, I'll trouble you to out with it." "If you don't _want_ the story, you shan't have it," said Lippity-Libby, aggrieved. "'Tis your loss, too; for it was full of instruction, an' had a moral at the end in different letterin'. . . . You're upset this mornin', that's what you are: been up too early an' workin' too hard at that plasterin' job, whatever it is." The little man limped back into the roadway and cricked his head back for a gaze up at the chimneys. "Nothing wrong on this side, seemin'ly. . . . Nor, nor there wasn't any breeze o' wind in the night, not to wake me. . . . Anyways, you're a wonderful forgivin' man, Nicholas Nanjivell." "Why so?" "Why, to be up betimes an' workin' yourself cross, plasterin' at th' old house, out o' which--if report's true--you'll be turned within a week." "Don't you listen to reports; no, nor spread 'em. Here, hand me over my letter. . . . 'Turn me out,' will they? Go an' tell 'em they can't do it--not if they was to bring all the king's horses and all the king's men!" "And _they_ be all gone to France. There! there! As I said to myself only last night as I got into bed--'What a thing is War!' I said, 'an' o' what furious an' rummy things consistin'--marches to an' fro, short commons, shootin's of cannon, rapes, an' other bloodthirsty goin's-on; an' here we be in the midst thereof! That's calkilated to make a man _think_.' . . . But I must say," said Lippity-Libby, eyeing the sky aloft, "the glass is goin' up stiddy, an' _that's_ always a comfort." As the old man took his departure, Nicky-Nan broke the seal of his letter, opened it, and read--
I am advised that you have failed to join the Royal Naval Reserve Force called into Active Service under the Act 22 and 23 Vict. c. 40; nor have you reported yourself at the Custom-House, St Martin's, Cornwall, as required on the Active Service Paper, R.V. 53. duly delivered to you. Before filling up your description on Form R.V. 26a (R.N.R. Absentees and Deserters) I desire that you will let me know the cause of your non-compliance with H.M. summons; and, if the cause be sickness or other disablement, that you will forward a medical certificate _immediately_, as evidence of same, to |
||