I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales Part 11

He took the two hands gently from her face, and forced her to look at him. His eyes were alight with the most beautiful smile.

"For pity's sake," she cried out, "don't look at me like that.

You've looked me through and through--you understand me. Don't lie with your eyes, as you're lying now."

"My dear girl, yes--I understand you. But you're wrong. I lied to get you: I'm not lying now."

"I think you must be Satan himself."

The stranger laughed. "Surely _he_ needn't to have taken so much trouble. Smile back at me, Ruby, for I played a risky stroke to get you, and shall play a risky game for many days yet."

He balanced himself on the arm of her chair and drew her head towards him.

"Tell me," he said, speaking low in her ear, "if you doubt I love you.

Do you know of any other man who, knowing you exactly as you are, would wish to marry you?"

She shook her head. It was impossible to lie to this man.

"Or of another who would put himself completely into your power, as I am about to do? Listen; there is no lead mine at all on Sheba farm."

Ruby drew back her face and stared at him. "I a.s.sure you it's a fact."

"But the ore you uncovered--"

"--Was a hoax. I lied about it."

"The stuff you melted in this very fire, last night--wasn't that lead?"

"Of course it was. I stole it myself from the top of the church tower."

"Why?"

"To gain a footing here."

"Again, why?"

"For love of you."

During the silence that followed, the pair looked at each other.

"I am waiting for you to go and tell your father," said the stranger at length.

Ruby s.h.i.+vered.

"I seem to have grown very old and wise," she murmured.

He kissed her lightly.

"That's the natural result of being found out. I've felt it myself.

Are you going?"

"You know that I cannot."

"You shall have twenty minutes to choose. At the end of that time I shall pa.s.s out at the gate and look up at your window. If the blind remain up, I go to the vicarage to put up our banns before I set off for Plymouth. If it be drawn down, I leave this house for ever, taking nothing from it but a suit of old clothes, a few worthless specimens (that I shall turn out of my pockets by the first hedge), and the memory of your face."

It happened, as he unlatched the gate, twenty minutes later, that the blind remained up. Ruby's face was not at the window, but he kissed his hand for all that, and smiled, and went his way singing. The air was the very same he had whistled dumbly that morning, the air that Ruby had speculated upon. And the words were--

"'Soldier, soldier, will you marry me, With the bagginet, fife and drum?'

'Oh, no, pretty miss, I cannot marry you, For I've got no coat to put on.'

"So away she ran to the tailor's shop, As fast as she could run, And she bought him a coat of the very very best, And the soldier clapped it on.

"'Soldier, soldier, will you marry me--'"

His voice died away down the lane.

CHAPTER VII.

THE "JOLLY PILCHARDS."

On the following Sat.u.r.day night (New Year's Eve) an incident worth record occurred in the bar-parlour of the "Jolly Pilchards" at Porthlooe.

You may find the inn to this day on the western side of the Hauen as you go to the Old Quay. A pair of fish-scales faces the entrance, and the jolly pilchards themselves hang over your head, on a signboard that creaks mightily when the wind blows from the south.

The signboard was creaking that night, and a thick drizzle drove in gusts past the door. Behind the red blinds within, the landlady, Prudy Polwarne, stood with her back to the open hearth. Her hands rested on her hips, and the firelight, that covered all the opposite wall and most of the ceiling with her shadow, beat out between her thick ankles in the shape of a fan. She was a widow, with a huge, pale face and a figure nearly as broad as it was long; and no man thwarted her. Weaknesses she had none, except an inability to darn her stockings. That the holes at her heels might not be seen, she had a trick of pulling her stockings down under her feet, an inch or two at a time, as they wore out; and when the tops no longer reached to her knee, she gartered--so gossip said--half-way down the leg.

Around her, in as much of the warmth as she spared, sat Old Zeb, Uncle Issy, Jim Lewarne, his brother, and six or seven other notables of the two parishes. They were listening just now, and though the mug of eggy-hot pa.s.sed from hand to hand as steadily as usual, a certain restrained excitement might have been guessed from the volumes of smoke ascending from their clay pipes.

"A man must feel it, boys," the hostess said, "wi' a rale four-poster hung wi' yaller on purpose to suit his wife's complexion, an' then to have no wife arter all."

"Ay," a.s.sented Old Zeb, who puffed in the corner of a settle on her left, with one side of his face illuminated and the other in deep shadow, "he feels it, I b'lieve. Such a whack o' dome as he'd a-bought, and a weather-gla.s.s wherein the man comes forth as the woman goes innards, an' a dresser, painted a bright liver colour, engaging to the eye."

"I niver seed a more matterimonial outfit, as you might say," put in Uncle Issy.

"An' a warmin'-pan, an' likewise a lookin'-gla.s.s of a high pattern."

"An' what do he say?" inquired Calvin Oke, drawing a short pipe from his lips.

"In round numbers, he says nothing, but takes on."

"A wisht state!"

"Ay, 'tis wisht. Will 'ee be so good as to frisk up the beverage, Prudy, my dear?"

Prudy took up a second large mug that stood warming on the hearthstone, and began to pour the eggy-hot from one vessel to the other until a creamy froth covered the top.