Chapter 15. The 'Taty-Patch

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_ CHAPTER XV. THE 'TATY-PATCH

Nicky-Nan went back to his parlour, closed the door carefully, mounted the platform again, and resumed his plastering. He felt vexed with himself over that little speech of bravado. It had been incautious, with all those women listening.

Still it might be explained away, and easily enough. That woman Polsue put everybody's back up. His words had been just a piece of bluff to get rid of her.

He had succeeded, too. He chuckled, recalling Mrs Polsue's discomfiture; how with a final sniff she had turned and passed out between the ironical files that drew aside for her in the porchway. . . . For a burden had fallen from his heart: his little mistake, just now, weighed as nothing against the assurance that Dr Mant would write a certificate and settle these meddlesome idiots at the Troy Custom-house. . . . Moreover Dr Mant, who passed for a knowledgeable fellow in his profession, had as good as assured him that his leg was nothing to die of; not just yet anyway. Well, he would have it attended to, sometime; his life was valuable now. But he wasn't going to hurry about it, if a sound leg meant his being taken and ordered off to this dam-fool War. Nicky-Nan pursed up his lips as he worked, whistling to himself a cheerful, tuneless ditty. Some one tapped on the door. "Who's there?"

"It's me," answered the voice of Mrs Penhaligon. "Can I come in?"

"No, you can't!" he shouted. "Here, wait a minute! . . . And what might be the matter now?" he asked, as he opened the door a very little way. "I'm sorry, ma'am, that I can't ask 'ee to step inside; but there's a tidyin'-up goin' forward."

"I'd as lief speak to 'ee here, in the passage. Indeed I'd rather," said Mrs Penhaligon as he emerged, trowel in hand. "Well, what is it?"

She hesitated a moment. "'Tis a hard thing for a woman to say. . . . But maybe 'tis turnin' out you are?" she suggested brightly. "Turnin' out?"

"That would simplify things, o' course. And everybody knowin' that Pamphlett's served you with a notice to quit--"

But thereupon Nicky-Nan exploded. "Served me with a notice, did he? Pamphlett! . . . Well, yes he did, if you want to know. But never you fret: I'm upsides with Pamphlett. This is my house, ma'am: an' here I bide till it pleases me to quit."

"O-oh!" sighed Mrs Penhaligon dejectedly, "then it puts me in a very awkward position, if you don't mind my sayin' so."

"How is it awkward, ma'am?" asked Nicky-Nan, rubbing his unshaven chin with the point of the trowel.

"Well, Mr Nanjivell, I dare say you meant it well enough. But I have my reputation to think about; an' the children, God bless 'em! I grant that Polsue body to be a provokin' woman. She 'ave a way with her that drives me mad as a sheep. But, if you don't mind me tellin' 'ee, you men have no sense--not a mother's son of 'ee. Not a doubt my Sam'd ha' spoke up just as fierce as you did. But then, you see, he's my Sam."

"Very like 'tis my dulness, ma'am," said Nicky-Nan, still delicately scraping his jaw-bristles with the trowel; "but I don't catch your drift, even now."

"Then I'll speak plainer. Where was the sense to blurt out afore a lot o' naybours as _you_'d see I didn' come to want? Be I the kind o' woman to take any help but my own man's?--even if you had it to give, which 'tis well be-known as you haven't."

"Oh, damn!" He swore as if a wasp had stung him: and indeed he had jabbed the point of the trowel into his jaw. After a pause he added, "The naybours know--do they?--as I couldn' act up to what I promised that woman, not if I tried. Very well, then. Where's the harm done? . . . I cleared her out, anyway."

Mrs Penhaligon eyed him with pity for a moment. "Yes," she sighed, "that's just the plumb-silly way my Sam would talk: and often enough he've a-driven me just wild with it. Men be all of one mould. . . . Mr Nanjivell, you've no great experience o' women. But did 'ee ever know a woman druv to the strikes[1] by another woman? An' did 'ee ever know a woman, not gone in the strikes, that didn' keep some wit at the back of her temper? . . . _I_ was dealin' with Mrs Polsue, don't you make any mistake."

"It struck me that she had been distressin' you, an' you'd be glad to get the rids of her."

"So I _was_ in distress. But I had th' upper hand, 'specially wi' those women hearkenin' and every one hatin' her. . . . What must happen, but forth you steps with a 'Leave this to me. _I_'ll look after Mrs Penhaligon. _I_'ll see _she_ don't come to want'--all as bold as a fire-hose. '_I_'ll clear 'ee out o' this house, which is _our_ house,' says you--or to that effect. I wasn' so mad but, when I heard 'ee, there was time to glimpse mother Climoe's face. Oh yes! I know what you'll be sayin'. 'Talk, is it?' you'll be sayin', just like my Sam: an' 'Let them talk. What's talk?'--an' talk, all the time, two-thirds of every decent woman's life!"

"I never heard such dratted nonsense in all my born days."

"That's because you was never married. You'd have heard it from a wife, half your time: though I dare say"--Mrs Penhaligon sighed-- "'twould ha' been with you like the rest. . . . 'A nice cauch Mr Nanjivell's made of it,' said I to myself, getting back to the kitchen: 'but he's under notice to quit: and if he quits quick an' delicate, mebbe there's no great harm done.' So I came along to ask you about it."

At this point Nicky-Nan fairly lost command of his temper.

"So you're one wi' the rest, eh? All in one blasted conspiracy to turn me to doors! One comes threatenin', t'other comes carneyin', but all endin' in the same lidden.[2] 'Your health ben't the best, Nanjivell: let me recommend a change of air.' 'Nanjivell, you're a fine upstandin' fellow, an' young for your age. Why don't 'ee leg it off to the War?' 'These be hard times, Nanjivell; so I'm forced to ask 'ee for your rent, or out you go.' An' now along you come wi' the latest. 'Would you mind makin' yourself scarce, Mr Nanjivell, to oblige a lady as has lost confidence in her repitation?' Now look 'ee here, ma'am--what I said to that woman Polsue, just now, is no more than I'm able to abide by. If the shoe pinches at any time, you can come to me, and I'll reckon up wi' Sam Penhaligon when he comes back. What's more--though, to be sure, 'tis no affair o' mine--I reckon Sam Penhaligon's the only chap alive, savin' yourself, consarned in this repitation you've started to make such a fuss about. But you're playin' Pamphlett's game, ma'am, to turn me out," wound up Nicky-Nan wrathfully, turning away: "that's what you're doin': and I'll see you--"

He closed the oath upon a slam of the door.

"There was never a man in this world," sighed Mrs Penhaligon as she regained her own kitchen, "but hisself came afore all the world." She arrested her hand on the cover of the flour-barrel.

"He talked so confident of his money, too. . . . Funny thing if Nicky-Nan, that we've been pityin' all this time, should turn out to be a miser!"

An hour later, in the full light of the afternoon sunshine, Nicky-Nan emerged from the old house with a shovel on his arm and a bundle dangling from it. He had heard 'Bert Penhaligon say that the Boy Scouts were employed by night only for coast-watching. By day the pilots with their telescopes habitually commanded this whole stretch of coast, nor could the periscope of a submarine push itself above the inshore water and not be detected.

At the corner of the Warren, where the cliff turns eastwardly with a sharp bend, Nicky-Nan almost ran into Policeman Rat-it-all, who pulled himself up for a chat as usual.

"I don't know what _you_ think," observed the Policeman, "but to my mind this here War gives us a great sense o' brotherhood. I read that on the newspaper this mornin', and it struck me as one o' the aptest things I'd seen for a long while."

"You said something o' the sort last time we met," answered Nicky-Nan.

"You're wrong there." Rat-it-all seemed to be slightly hurt in his feelings; "because I read it on the paper only this morning. 'Against War in the abstrac' much may be urged,' it said. 'But 'oo will deny as it begets a sense o' Brotherhood if it does nothin' else?' That was the expression."

"I don't take much truck in this War, for my part," said Nicky-Nan, quartering on the narrow footpath to let Rat-it-all pass: "but it'll do a dam sight else afore we're through with it, if you want my opinion."

"To a man in the Force," said Rat-it-all pensively, "an expression like that, mixed up with photographs in the 'Daily Mirror,' strikes HOME. A man in the Force, as I'll put it, is in some ways unlike other men." He paused to let this sink in.

"Take your time," said Nicky-Nan. "But I'm not contradictin' 'ee."

"If they're a species, he's a specie--a man set apart, like a parson. A parson tells you how you ought to behave, and I take you in charge if you don't."

"Like Satan," Nicky-Nan suggested.

"Rat it all! Not a bit like Satan!" said the Constable angrily. "You've not been followin'. I never heard so foolish an interruption in all my born days. . . . What be you carryin' in that there bundle, makin' so bold?"

Nicky-Nan felt his heart stand still. "Just my waskit an' a few odds an' ends," he answered with affected nonchalance. Forcing himself to meet Rat-it-all's gaze, and perceiving it to be dreamy rather than suspicious, he added, "What makes 'ee ask?"

"Nothin', . . . nothin'. . . . Only you reminded me of a song I used to sing, back in the old days. It was called 'Off to Philadelphia in the mornin'.' A beautiful voice I used to have: tenor. I shouldn' wonder if I had it yet; only"--with a wistful sigh--"in the Force you got to put that sort o' thing behind you, . . . which brings me back to what I was saying. In an ordinary way, a police-constable's life is like a parson's: they see more'n most men o' what's goin' on, but they don't _belong_ to it. You can't properly hobnob with a chap that, like as not, you'll be called on to marry or bury to-morra, nor stand him a drink--nor be stood--when, quite as like, next time you'll be servin' a summons. There's a Jane on both sides."

"A who?"

"'Tisn' a ''oo,' 'tis an 'it': bein' an expression I got off an Extension Lecturer they had down to Bodmin, one time. I'd a great hankerin', in those days, to measure six foot two in my socks afore I finished growin', and I signed on for his lectures in that hope. With a man callin' his-self by that name and advertisin' as he'd lecture on 'Measure for Measure,' I thought I'd a little bit of all right. But he ran right off the rails an' chatted away about the rummiest things, such as theatricals. I forget what switched 'en off an' on to that partic'lar line: but I well remember his openin' remark. He said, 'To measure the true stature of a great man we must go down to the true roots. A certain Jane is bound to overtake us if we dig too long among the common 'taturs with their un-stopp'd lines an' weak endings and this or that defective early quest. Oh! all profitable, no doubt, an' worth cultivatin' so long as we do not look for taste.' When I woke up at the end 'twas with these words printed in mind same as they've remained. But I couldn' figure out how this here Jane got mixed up in the diet. So, bein' of a practical mind then, in my 'teens, same as I be to-day, I stopped behind and asked him--takin' care to look bright and intelligent--who might be this Jane he'd allooded to. If you'll believe me, it turned out to be no person at all, but a way the gentry have of sayin' they're uncomfortable; same as, through some writin' chap or other, all the papers was talkin' of your belly as your Little Mary."

"Mine?"

"When I say 'yours,' o' course I mean to say 'ours'--that's to say, every one's." Rat-it-all made a semicircular sweep of the hand in front of his person.

"Something of a liberty, I should say, however many you include. What I object to in these newspapers is the publicity. . . . But, if you ask my opinion, that Extension fellow made a start with pullin' your leg."

"You're wrong, then. For I tried the expression 'pon Parson Steele only two days ago. 'This here war, sir,' I took occasion to say, 'fairly gives me the Jane.' He reckernised the word at once, an' lugged out his note-book. 'Do you know, constable,' says he, 'that you're talkin' French, an' it's highly interestin'?' 'I make no doubt as 'twould be, sir,' says I, 'if I was to hold on with it.' 'You don't understand,' says he. 'These Gallic turns o' speech'--which, 'tween you an' me, I'd always thought o' Gallic as a kind of acid--'these Gallic turns o' speech,' says he, 'be engagin' the attention of learned men to such an extent that I think o' writin' a paper upon 'em myself,' says he, 'for the Royal Institution o' Cornwall at their next Summer Meetin'.' . . . I was considerably flattered, as you may well understand. . . . But that brings me back to my point. Parsons an' constables, as I see the matter, be men set apart, an' lonely. So when I reads 'pon the paper that this here war has made us all brothers, it strikes HOME, an' I feel inclined to stop an' pass the time o' day with anybody. I don't care who he may be."

"Then why waste time danderin' along the cliffs, here?"

Policeman Rat-it-all lowered his voice. "Between you an' me, again," he confessed, "I got to do my four miles or so every day, for the sake o' my figger."

"'Tis unfortunate then," said Nicky-Nan, taking heart of grace and lying hardily: "for you've missed a lovely dog-fight."

"Where? Whose?" Rat-it-all panted, suddenly all alive and inquisitive.

"Dog-fights don't concern me. . . . It may ha' been Jago's bull-terrier an' that Airedale o' Latter's. Those two seldom meet without a scrap."

"Is it over?" A sudden agitation had taken hold of Rat-it-all's legs.

"Very like," lied Nicky-Nan, now desperately anxious to be rid of him. "I heard somebody callin' for snuff or a pot o' pepper--either o' which they tell me--"

"An' you've kept me dallyin' all this while how-de-doin'?" Rat-it-all made a bolt down the path.

Nicky-Nan watched his disappearing figure, and collapsed upon a thyme-scented hillock in sudden revulsion from a long strain of terror.

He sat there for a good five minutes, staring out on the open waters of the Channel. An armed cruiser, that had been practising gunnery at intervals during the day, was heading home from Plymouth. A tug had come out and was fetching back her targets. Nicky-Nan arose very deliberately, made for his 'taty-patch in the hollow beyond the pilot house, laid his bundle on the ground, and began to dig in and cover his golden coins, fetching a handful at a time. He had buried them all, and was returning at shut of dusk, when he met young 'Bert Penhaligon coming up the path.

"This is the last night for us here," proclaimed young 'Bert, "and I can't say as I'm sorry. But maybe they'll move us."

"How so?" asked Nicky-Nan.

"Well, between you an' me," announced young 'Bert, who during the last week had seemed to put on stature with confidence, "there's a company of Royal Engineer Territorials ordered over from Troy to dig theirselves in an' camp here."

[1] Hysterics.

[2] Monotonous burthen. _

Read next: Chapter 16. Corporal Sandercock

Read previous: Chapter 14. Polsue 5. Penhaligon, Nanjivell Intervening

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