Nicky-Nan, Reservist Part 36

On his homeward road, and half-way up the hill, Mr Pamphlett at the same moment turned, looked aloft, and accused Providence.

"What blisters me," said Mr Pamphlett to the welkin, "is the thought that I subscribed no less than two guineas to the Boy Scouts Movement!"

CHAPTER XXIII.

ENLIGHTENMENT, AND RECRUITING.

"Was there ever a woman on this earth so tried?" demanded Mrs Penhaligon, lifting her eyes to two hams and a flitch of bacon she had just suspended from the rafters, and invoking them as Cleopatra the injurious G.o.ds. "As if 'twasn' enough to change the best kitchen in all Polpier for quarters where you can't swing a cat, but on top of it I must be afflicted with a child that's taken wi' the indoors habit; and in the middle of August month, too, when every one as means to grow up a comfort to all concerned is out stretchin' his legs an' makin' himself scarce an' gettin' a breath o' nice fresh air into his little lungs."

"What's lungs?" asked 'Biades.

"There was a boy in the south of Ireland somewhere," his mother answered, collecting a few wash-cloths she had hung to dry on the door of the cooking apparatus, "as took to his bed with nothing the matter at the age o' fourteen. Next day, when his mother called him to get up, he said he wasn't took very well. An' this went on, day after day, until now he's forty years old an' the use of his limbs completely gone from him. That's a fact, for I read it on the newspaper with names an' dates, and only three nights ago I woke up dreamin' upon that poor woman, workin' her fingers to the bone an'

saddled with a bed-riding son. Little did I think at the time--"

Mrs Penhaligon broke off and sighed between desperation and absent-mindedness.

"I like this stove," answered 'Biades. "It's got a s.h.i.+ny k.n.o.b on the door, 'stead of a latch."

"How the child does take notice! . . . Yes, a nice s.h.i.+ny k.n.o.b it is, and if you won't come out to the back-yard an' watch while I pin these things on the clothes-line, you must stay here an' study your disobedient face in it. The fire's out, so you can't tumble in an'

be burnt to a coal like the wicked children in Nebuchadnezzar: which is a comfort, so far as it goes. Nor I can't send you out to s'arch for your sister, wi' the knowledge that it'll surely end in her warmin' your little sit-upon. . . . I'd do it myself, this moment,"-- the mother grew wrathful only to relent,--"if I could be sure you weren't sickenin' for something. You're behavin' so unnatural."

She eyed him anxiously. "If it should turn out to be a case o'

suppressed measles, now, I'd hate to go to my grave wi' the thought that I'd banged 'em in."

So Mrs Penhaligon, having picked up her clothes, issued forth into the sunlight of the back-yard. 'Biades watched her through the narrow kitchen window. He watched her cunningly.

As soon as he saw her busy with the clothes-pegs, Master 'Biades crept to a small iron door in the wall, a foot or two from the range, and stealthily lifted the latch. The door opened on a deep, old-fas.h.i.+oned oven, disused since the day when the late Mrs Bunney (misguided woman) had blocked up her open hearth with a fire-new apparatus.

The child peered ("peeked" as they say in Polpier) into the long narrow chamber, so awesomely dark at its far end, and s.n.a.t.c.hed a fearful joy. In that cavity lay the treasure. Gold--untold gold!

He thrust his head into the aperture, and gloated. But it was so deep that even when his eyes became used to the darkness he could see nothing of the h.o.a.rd. He wanted to gloat more.

Tingling premonitions ran down his small spine; thrills that, reaching the region of the lower vertebrae, developed an almost painful activity. . . . None the less, 'Biades could never tell just how or at what moment his shoulders, hips, legs, found themselves inside the oven; but in they successively went, and he was crawling forward into the pitch-gloom on hands and knees, regretting desperately (and too late) that he had forgotten to sneak a box of matches, when afar behind him he heard a sound that raised every hair on the nape of his young neck--the lifting of the back-door latch and the letting-in of voices.

"You never _did!_" said the voice of 'Bert.

"Leave me to tell her," said the voice of 'Beida. "The way you're goin', she'll have the palpitations afore you begin. . . . Mother, dear--if you'll but take a seat. Is't for the tenth or the twelfth time we'm tellin' 'ee that father's neither killed nor wounded?"

"Then what is it, on earth?" demanded the voice of Mrs Penhaligon.

"An' why should Mr Nanjivell be followin' you, of all people?

An' where's my blessed latest, that has been a handful ever since you two left me, well knowin' the straits I'm put to?"

"If I'm introodin', ma'am--" said the voice of Nicky-Nan.

"Oh, no . . . not at all, Mr Nanjivell!--so long as you realise how I'm situated. . . . An' whoever left that oven door open, I'll swear I didn't."

'Beida stepped swiftly to the oven, swung the door wide enough to allow a moment's glance within, and shut with a merciless clang.

She lifted her voice. "Mebbe," she announced, "'twas I that left it on the hasp before runnin' out. I was thinkin' what a nice oven 'twas, an' how much better if you wanted to make heavy-cake in a hurry, to celebrate our movin'-in. 'Bert agreed with me when I told him," she continued, still lifting her voice, "and unbeknown to you we cut an' fetched in a furze-bush, there bein' nothin' to give such a savour to bread, cake, or pie. So if you're willin', Mother, we'll fire it up while Mr Nanjivell tells his business."

"What's _that?_" asked Mrs Penhaligon, sitting erect, as her ears caught the sound of a howl, m.u.f.fled but prolonged.

'Beida set her back firmly against the oven. "Bread takes longer than cakes," she announced, making her voice carry. "Cakes is soonest over. We might try the old place first with a heavy cake, if Mr Nanjivell don't mind waitin' for a chat, an' will excuse the flavour whatever it turns out."

"We're bewitched!" cried Mrs Penhaligon starting to her feet as the wailing was renewed, with a faint tunding on the iron door.

'Beida flung it open. "Which I hope it has been a lesson to you,"

she began, thrusting herself quickly in front of the aperture, and heading off the culprit before he could clamber out and run to his mother's lap. "No, you don't! The first thing _you_ have to do, to show you're sorry, is to creep back all the way you can go, an' fetch forth what you can find at the very end."

"You won't shut the door on me again?" pleaded 'Biades.

"That depends on how slippy you look. I make no promises," answered 'Beida sternly. "'Twas you that first stole Mr Nanjivell's money, and if you ben't doin' it again, well I can only say as appearances be against him--eh, 'Bert?"

"Fetch it out, you varmint!" 'Bert commanded.

"But I don't understand a word of this!" protested the mother.

"My precious worm! What for be you two commandin' him to wriggle up an' down an oven on his tender little belly like a Satan in Genesis, when all the time I thought he'd taken hisself off like a good boy, to run along an' mess his clothes 'pon the Quay. . . . Come 'ee forth, my cherub, an' tell your mother what they've a-been doin' to 'ee? . . . Eh? Why, what's that you've a-got clinched in your hand?"

"Sufferin's!" sobbed 'Biades, still shaken by an after-gust of fright.

"_What?_"

"Sufferin's!" echoed 'Beida excitedly. "Real coined an' golden sufferin's! Unclinch your hand, 'Biades, an' show the company!"

As the child opened his palm, Mrs Penhaligon fell back, and put out a hand against the kitchen table for support.

"The good Lord in Heaven behear us! . . . Whose money be this, an'

where dropped from?"

"There piles of it--" panted 'Beida.

"Las.h.i.+n's of it--" echoed 'Bert.

"An' it all belongs to Mr Nanjivell, that we used to call Nicky-Nan, an' wonder if we could get a pair o' father's old trousers on to him with a little tact--an' him all the while as rich as Squire Tresawna!"

"--Rich as Squire Tresawna an' holy Solomon rolled into one,"

corroborated 'Bert, nodding vigorously. "Pinch it 'tween your fingers, mother, if you won't believe."

But to her children's consternation Mrs Penhaligon, after a swift glance at the gold, turned about on Nicky-Nan as he backed shamefacedly to the doorway, and opened on him the vials of unintelligible fury.

"What d'ee mean by it?" she demanded. "As if I hadn' suffered enough in mind a'ready, but you must come pokin' money into my oven and atween me an' my children! Be you mad, or only wicked? Or is it witchcraft you'd be layin' on us? . . . Take up your gold, however you came by it, an' fetch your shadow off my doorstep, or I'll--"

She advanced on poor Nicky-Nan, who backed out to the side gate and into the lane before her wrath, and found himself of a sudden taken on both flanks: on the one by Mrs Climoe, who had spied upon his visit and found her malicious curiosity too much for her; on the other by gentle old Mr Hambly returning from a stroll along the cliffs.

"Hullo! Tut--tut--what is this?" exclaimed Mr Hambly.

"A neighbours' quarrel, and between folks I know to be so respectworthy? . . . Oh, come now--come, good souls!"

"A little nigher than naybours, Minister," put in Mrs Climoe.