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Sir John Constantine, a novel by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
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Chapter 7. The Company Of The Rose |
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_ CHAPTER VII. THE COMPANY OF THE ROSE
---Romaunt of the Rose.
---First Part of King Henry VI.
"Good morning, lad!" he hailed. "But where is mine?" I turned back in silence and picked a bud for him. "So," said I, "'twas you, sir, after all, that wrote the advertisement?" "Hey?" he answered. "I? Certainly not. I noted it and sent you the news-sheet in half a hope that you had been the advertiser." "You were mistaken, sir." He halted and rubbed his chin. "Then who the devil can he be, I wonder? Well, we shall discover." "You ride to Falmouth this morning?" "We have an army to collect," he answered, gripping me not unkindly by the shoulder. We rode into Falmouth side by side in silence, Billy Priske following by my father's command, and each with a red rose pinned to the flap of his hat. Upon the way we talked, mainly of the Trappist Brothers, and of Dom Basilio, who (it seemed) had at one time been an agent of the British legation at Florence, and in particular had carried my father's reports and instructions to and fro between Corsica and that city, avoiding the vigilance of the Genoese. "A subtle fellow," was my father's judgment, "and, as I gave him credit, in the matter of conscience as null as Cellini himself: the last man in the world to turn religious. But the longer you live the more cause will you find to wonder at the divine spirit which bloweth where it listeth. Take these Methodists, who are to preach in Falmouth to-day. I have seen Wesley, and stood once for an hour listening to him. For aught I could discover he had no great eloquence. He said little that his audience might not have heard any Sunday in their own churches. His voice was hoarse from overwork, and his manner by no means winning. Yet I saw many notorious ruffians sobbing about him like children: some even throwing themselves on the ground and writhing, like the demoniacs of Scripture. The secret was, he spoke with authority: and the secret again was a certain kingly neglect of trifles--he appeared not to see those signs by which other men judge their neighbours or themselves to be past help. Or take these Trappists: Dom Basilio tells me that more than half of them are ex-soldiers and rough at that. To be sure I can understand why, having once turned religious, an old soldier runs to the Trappist rule. He has been bred under discipline, and has to rely on discipline. 'Tis what he understands, and the harder he gets it the more good he feels himself getting--" We were nearing the town by the way of Arwennack, and just here a turn of the road brought us in sight of a whitewashed cottage and put a period to my father's discourse, as a garden gate flew open and out into the highway ran a lean young man with an angry woman in pursuit. His shoulders were bent and he put up both hands to ward off her clutch. But in the middle of the road she gripped him by the collar and caught him two sound cuffs on the nape of the neck. She turned as we rode up. "The villain!" she cried, still keeping her grip. "Oh, protect me from such villains!" "But, my good woman," remonstrated my father, reining up, "it scarcely appears that you need protecting. Who is this man?" "A thief, your honour! Didn't I catch him prowling into my garden? And isn't it for him to say what his business was? I put it to your honour"--here she caught the poor wretch another cuff--"what honest business took him into my garden, and me left a widow-woman these sixteen years?" "Ai-ee!" cried the accused, still shielding his neck and cowering in the dust--a thin ragged windlestraw of a youth, flaxen-headed, hatchet-faced, with eyes set like a hare's. "Have pity on me sirs, and take her off!" "Let him stand up," my father commanded. "And you sir, tell me-- What were you seeking in this good woman's garden?" "A rose, sir--hear my defence!--a rose only, a small rose!" His voice was high and cracked, and he flung his hands out extravagantly. "Oh, York and Lancaster--if you will excuse me, gentlemen--that I should suffer this for a mere rose? The day only just begun too! And why, sirs, was I seeking a rose? Ay, there's the rub." He folded his arms dramatically and nodded at the woman. "There's the gall and bitterness, the worm in the fruit, the peculiar irony--if you'll allow me to say so--of this distressing affair. Listen, madam! If I wanted a rose of you, 'twas for your whole sex's sake: your sex's, madam--every one of whom was, up to five or six months ago, the object with me of something very nearly allied to worship." "Lord help the creature!" cried the woman. "What's he telling about? And what have you to do with my sex, young man? which is what the Lord made it." "It is _not_, madam. Make no mistake about it: 'twere blasphemy to think so. But speaking generally, what I--as a man--have to do with your sex is to protect it." "A nice sort of protector you'd make!" she retorted, planting her knuckles on her hips and eyeing him contemptuously. "I am a beginner, madam, and have much to learn. But you shall not discourage me from protecting you, though you deny me the rose which was to have been my emblem. Every woman is a rose, madam, as says the poet Dunbar--
"I don't understand a word," said she, puzzled and angry. "He was a Scotsman: and you find it a far cry to Loch Awe. Well, well--to resume--
But here my father cut him short. "My good Mrs. Ede," said he, turning to the woman, "I believe this young man intended no harm to you and very little to your garden. You are quits with him at any rate. Take this shilling, step inside, and choose him a fair red rose for the price and also in token of your forgiveness, while he picks up his hat which is lying yonder in the dust." "Hey?" The youth started back, for the first time perceiving the badges in our hats. "Are you too, sirs, of this company of the rose?" His face fell, but with an effort he recovered himself and smiled. "You are not disappointed, I hope?" inquired my father. "Why--to tell you the truth, sir--I had looked for a rendezvous of careless jolly fellows. For cavaliers of your quality it never occurred to me to bargain." He held up a flap of his ragged coat and shook it ruefully. My father frowned. "And I, sir, am disappointed. A moment since I took you for an original; but it appears you share our common English vice of looking at the world like a lackey." "I, sir?" The young man waved a hand. "I am original? Give me leave to assure you that this island contains no more servile tradesman. Why, my lord--for I take it I speak to a gentleman of title?--" "Of the very humblest, sir. I am a plain knight bachelor." The original cringed elaborately, rubbing his hands. "A title is a title. Well, sir, as I was about to say, I worship a lord, but my whole soul is bound up in a ledger: and hence (so to speak) these tears: hence the disreputable garb in which you behold me. If I may walk beside you, sir, after this good woman has fetched me the rose-- thank you, madam--and provided me with a pin from the _chevaux de frise_ in her bodice--and again, madam, I thank you: you wear the very cuirass of matronly virtue--I should enjoy, sir, to tell you my history. It is a somewhat curious one." "I feel sure, sir"--my father bowed to him from the saddle--"it will lose nothing in the telling." The young man, having fastened the rose in his hat, bade adieu to his late assailant with a bow; waved a hand to her; lifted his hat a second time; turned after us and, falling into stride by my father's stirrup, forthwith plunged into his story. THE TRAVELS OF PHINEAS FETT. "My name, sir, is Phineas Fett--" He paused. "I don't know how it may strike you: but in my infant ears it ever seemed to forebode something in the Admiralty--a comfortable post, carrying no fame with it, but moderately lucrative. In wilder flights my fancy has hovered over the Pipe Office (Addison, sir, was a fine writer; though a bit of a prig, between you and me)." "There was a Phineas Pett, a great shipbuilder for the Navy in King Charles the Second's time. I believe, too, he had a son christened after him, who became a commissioner of the Navy." "You don't say so! The mere accident of a letter . . . but it proves the accuracy of our childish instincts. A commissionership--whatever the duties it may carry--would be the very thing, or a storekeepership, with a number of ledgers: it being understood that shipping formed my background, in what I believe is nautically termed the offing. I know not what exact distance constitutes an offing. My imagination ever placed it within sight and sufficiently near the scene of my occupation to pervade it with an odour of hemp and tar." He paused again, glanced up at my father, and--on a nod of encouragement--continued-- "The nuisance is, I was born in the Midlands--to be precise, at West Bromicheham--the son of a well-to-do manufacturer of artificial jewellery. The only whiff of the brine that ever penetrated my father's office came wafted through an off-channel of his trade. He did an intermittent business in the gilding of small idols, to be shipped overseas and traded as objects of worship among the negroes of the American plantations. Jewellery, however, was his stand-by. In the manufacture of meretricious ware he had a plausibility amounting to genius, in the disposing of it a talent for hard bargains; and the two together had landed him in affluence. Well, sir, being headed off my boyhood's dream by the geographical inconvenience of Warwickshire--for a lad may run away to be a sailor, sir, but the devil take me if ever I heard of one running off to be a supercargo, and even this lay a bit beyond my ambition--I recoiled upon a passion to enter my father's business and increase the already tidy patrimonial pile. "But here comes in the cross of my destiny. My father, sir, had secretly cherished dreams of raising me above his own station. To him a gentleman--and he ridiculously hoped to make me one--was a fellow above working for his living. He scoffed at my enthusiasm for trade, and at length he sent for me and in tones that brooked no denial commanded me to learn the violin. "Never shall I forget the chill of heart with which I received that fatal mandate. I have no ear for music, sir. In tenderer years indeed I had made essay upon the Jew's harp, but had relinquished it without a sigh. "'The violin!' I cried, though the words choked me. 'Father, anything but that! If it were the violoncello, now--' "But he cut me short in cold incisive accents. 'The violin, or you are no son of mine.' "I fled from the house, my home no longer. On the way to the front door I had sufficient presence of mind, and no more, to make a _detour_ to the larder and possess myself of the longest joint; which my heated judgment, confusing temporal with linear measurement, commended to me as the most lasting. It proved to be a shin of beef: unnutritious except for soup (and I carried no tureen), useless as an object of barter. With this and two half-crowns in my pocket I slammed the front-door behind me and faced the future." Mr. Fett paused impressively. "And you call me an original, sir!" he went on in accents of reproach; "me, who started in life with two half-crowns in my pocket, the conventional outfit for a career of commercial success!" "They have carried you all the way to Falmouth!" "The one of them carried me so far as to Coventry, sir: where, finding a fair in progress as I passed through the town, and falling in with three bridesmaids who had missed their wedding-party in the crowd, I spent the other in treating them to the hobby-horses at one halfpenny a ride. Four halfpennies--there were four of us--make twopence, and two's into thirty are fifteen rides; a bold investment of capital, and undertaken (I will confess it) not only to solace the fair ones but to ingratiate myself with the fellow who turned the handle of the machine. To him I applied for a job. He had none to offer, but introduced me to a company of strolling players who (as fortune would have it) were on the point of presenting _Hamlet_ with a _dramatis_ personae decimated by Coventry ale. They cast me for 'Polonius' and some other odds and ends. You may remember, sir, that at one point the Prince of Denmark is instructed to 'enter reading.' That stage direction I caught at, and by a happy 'improvisation' spread it over the entire play. Not as 'Polonius' only, but as 'Bernardo' upon the midnight platform, as 'Osric,' as 'Fortinbras,' as the 'Second Gravedigger,' as one of the odd Players--always I entered reading. In my great scene with the Prince we entered reading together. They killed me, still reading, behind the arras; and at a late hour I supped with the company on Irish stew; for, incensed by these novelties, the audience had raided a greengrocer's shop between the third and fourth acts and thereafter rained their criticism upon me in the form of cabbages and various esculent roots which we collected each time the curtain fell. "Every cloud, sir, has a silver lining. I continued long enough with this company to learn that in our country an actor need never die of scurvy. But I weary you with my adventures, of which indeed I am yet in the first chapter." "You shall rehearse them on another occasion. But will you at least tell us how you came to Falmouth?" "Why, in the simplest manner in the world. A fortnight since I happened to be sitting in the stocks, in the absurd but accursed town of Bovey Tracey in Devonshire. My companion--for the machine discommodated two--was a fiddler, convicted (like myself) of vagrancy; a bottle-nosed man, who took the situation with such phlegm as only experience can breed, and munched a sausage under the commonalty's gaze. 'Good Lord,' said I to myself, eyeing him, 'and to think that he with my chances, or I with his taste for music, might be driving at this moment in a coach and pair!' "'Sir,' said I, 'are you attached to that instrument of yours?' 'So deeply,' he answered, 'that, like Nero, I could fiddle if Bovey Tracey were burning at this moment.' 'You can perform on it creditably?' I asked. 'In a fashion to bring tears to your eyes,' he answered me, and offered to prove his words. 'Not for worlds,' said I; 'but it grieves me to think how Fortune distributes her favours.' I told him of my father. 'I should like to make the acquaintance of such a man,' said he. 'You shall,' said I; and fetching a pencil and a scrap of paper out of my pocket, I wrote as follows:-- "The Public Stocks, Bovey Tracey, Devon.
By the time Mr. Fett concluded his narrative we had reached the outskirts of the town, and found ourselves in a traffic which, converging upon the Market Strand from every side-street and alley, at once carried us along with it and constrained us to a walking pace. My father, finding the throng on the Market Strand too dense for our horses, turned aside to the Three Cups Inn across the street, gave them over to the ostler, and led us upstairs to a window which overlooked the gathering. The Market Strand at Falmouth is an open oblong space, not very wide, leading off the main street to the water's edge, and terminating in steps where as a rule the watermen wait to take off passengers to the Packets. A lamp-post stands in the middle of it, and by the base of this the preachers--a grey-headed man and two women in ugly bonnets-- were already assembled, with but a foot or two dividing them from the crowd. Close behind the lamp-post stood a knot of men conversing together one of whom stepped forward for a word with the grey-headed preacher. He wore a rose in his hat, and at sight of him my heart gave a wild incredulous leap. It was Nat Fiennes! I pushed past my father and flung the open window still wider. The grey-haired preacher had opened the Bible in his hand and was climbing the stone base of the lamp-post when a handful of filth struck the back of the book and bespattered his face. I saw Nat whip out his sword and swing about angrily in the direction of the shot, while the two women laid hands on either arm to check him; and at the same moment my father spoke up sharply in my ear. "Tumble out, lad," he commanded. "We are in bare time." I vaulted over the window-ledge and dropped into the street; my father after me, and Mr. Fett and Billy close behind. Indeed, that first shot had but given the signal for a general engagement; and as we picked ourselves up and thrust our way into the crowd, a whole volley of filth bespattered the group of Methodists. In particular I noted the man with whom Nat Fiennes, a minute since, had been conversing--a little bald-headed fellow of about fifty-five or sixty, in a suit of black which, even at thirty paces distant, showed rusty in the sunshine. An egg had broken against his forehead, and the yellow of it trickled down over his eyes; yet he stood, hat in hand, neither yielding pace nor offering to resist. Nat, less patient, had made a rush upon the crowd, which had closed around and swallowed him from sight. By its violent swaying he was giving it something to digest. One of the two women shrank terrified by the base of the lamp-post. The other--a virago to look at, with eyes that glared from under the pent of her black bonnet--had pulled the grey-headed preacher down by his coat-tails, and, mounting in his room, clung with an arm around the lamp-post and defied the persecutors. "Why am I here, friends?" she challenged them. "O generation of vipers, why am I here? Answer me, you men of Belial--you, whose fathers slew the prophets! Because I glory to suffer for the right; because to turn the other cheek is a Christian's duty, and as a Christian woman I'll turn it though you were twice the number, and not be afraid what man can do unto me." Now, my father was well known in Falmouth and pretty generally held in awe. At sight of him advancing, the throng fell back and gave us passage in a sudden lull which reached even to where Nat Fiennes struggled in the grasp of a dozen longshoremen who were hailing him to the quay's edge, to fling him over. He broke loose, and before they could seize him again came staggering back, panting and dishevelled. "Prosper!" he cried, catching sight of me, and grinning delightedly all over his muddied face. "I knew you would come! And your father, too? Splendid, lad, splendid?" "Ye men of Falmouth"--the woman by the lamp-post lifted her voice more shrilly--"what shall I testify of the hardness of your hearts? Shall I testify that your Mayor sending his crier round, has threatened to whip us through Falmouth streets at the cart-tail? Shall I testify--" But here my father lifted a hand. "Gently, madam; gently, I am not defending his Worship if he issued any such proclamation; but 'tis an ancient punishment for scolds, and I advise you to lend him no colour of excuse." "And who may _you_ be, sir?" she demanded, looking down, angry, but checked in spite of herself by my father's air of authority. "One," he answered, "who has come to see fair play, and who has--as you may see--for the moment some little influence with this rabble. I will continue to exert it while I can, if you on your part will forbear to provoke; for the tongue, madam, has its missiles as well as the hands." "I thank you, sir," said the grey-headed preacher, stepping forward and thrusting a book into my father's hands. "We had best begin with a hymn, I think. I have some experience of the softening power of music on these occasions." "We will sing," announced the woman, "that beautiful hymn beginning, 'Into a world of ruffians sent.' Common metre, my friends, and Sister Tresize will give the pitch:
"Begad, sir," said Mr. Fett in my ear, "and the books say that the feudal system is dead in England! Why, here's the very flower of it! Damme, though, the old gentleman is splendid; superlative, sir; it's ten to one against Coriolanus, and no takers. Between ourselves, Coriolanus was a pretty fellow, but talked too much. Phocion, sir? Did I hear you mention Phocion?" "You did not," I answered. "And quite right," said he; "with your father running, I wouldn't back Phocion for a place. All the same," Mr. Fett admitted, "this is what Mr. Gray of Peterhouse, Cambridge, would call a fearful joy, and I'd be thankful for a distant prospect of the way out of it." "Indeed, sir"--my father, overhearing this, turned to him affably-- "you touch the weak spot. For the moment I see no way out of the situation, nor any chance but to prolong it; and even this," he added, "will not be easy unless the lady on the lamp-post sensibly alters the tone of her discourse." Indeed, at the conclusion of the singing she had started again to address the crowd, albeit--acting on my father's hint--in more moderate tones, and even, as I thought, somewhat tepidly. Her theme was what she called convictions of sin, of which by her own account she had wrestled with a surprising quantity; but in the rehearsal of them, though fluent, she seemed to lose heart as her hearers relaxed their attention. "Confound the woman!" grumbled my father. "She had done better, after all, to continue frantic. The crowd came to be amused, and is growing restive again." "Sir," interposed Mr. Fett, "give me leave to assure you that an audience may be amused and yet throw things. Were this the time and place for reminiscences, I could tell you a tale of Stony Stratford (appropriately so-called, sir), where, as 'Juba' in Mr. Addison's tragedy of _Cato_, for two hours I piled the Pelion of passion upon the Ossa of elocutionary correctness, still without surmounting the zone of plant life; which in the Arts, sir, must extend higher than geographers concede. And yet I evoked laughter; from which I may conclude that my efforts amused. The great Demosthenes, sir, practised declamation with his mouth full of pebbles--for retaliatory purposes, I have sometimes thought." Here my father, who had been paying no attention to Mr. Fett's discourse, interrupted it with a sharp but joyful exclamation; and glancing towards him I saw his face clear of anxiety. "We are safe," he announced quietly, nodding in the direction of the Three Cups. "What we wanted was a fool, and we have found him." _ |
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