The Three Brothers

by Eden Phillpotts

CHAPTER X

Some few weeks after it was known that young Mark Baskerville would marry Cora Lintern, a small company drank beer at 'The White Thorn' and discussed local politics in general, and the engagement in particular. The time was three in the afternoon.

"They'll look to you for a wedding present without a doubt," said Mr. Gollop to Nathan, who stood behind his bar.

"And they'll be right," answered the innkeeper. "I'm very fond of 'em both."

"You'll be put to it to find rich gifts for all your young people, however."

"That's as may be. If the Lord don't send you sons, the Devil will send you nephews—you know the old saying. Not but what Vivian's boys and girls are a very nice lot—I like 'em all very well indeed. Mark's different—clever enough, but made of another clay. His mother was a retiring, humble woman—frightened of her own shadow, you might say. However, Cora will wake him into a cheerfuller conceit of himself."

There was an interruption, for Dennis Masterman suddenly filled the doorway.

"The very men I want," he said; then he entered.

"Fine sweltering weather for the harvest, your honour," piped an old fellow who sat on a settle by the window with a mug of beer beside him.

"So it is, Abel, and I hope there's another month of it to come. Give me half a pint of the mild, will you, Baskerville? 'Tis about the rehearsal I've looked in. Thursday week is the day—at seven o'clock sharp, remember. And I'm very anxious that everybody shall know their words. It will save a lot of trouble and help us on."

"I've got mine very near," said Nathan.

"So have I," declared Mr. Gollop. "Here I, the King of Egypt, boldly do appear; St. Garge, St. Garge, walk in, my only son and heir!"

"Yes, but you mustn't say 'heir'; the h isn't sounded, you know. Has anybody seen Ned Baskerville? I heard that he was in trouble."

"Not at all," said Nathan. "He's all right—a lazy rascal. 'Twas only another of his silly bits of work with the girls. Running after Mr. Chave's daughter. Like his cheek!"

Mr. Masterman looked astonished.

"I thought Mr. Chave——" he said.

"Exactly, vicar; you thought right. 'Tis just his handsome face makes my nephew so pushing. We be a yeoman race, we Baskervilles, though said to be higher once; but of course, as things are, Ned looking there was just infernal impudence, though his good old pig-headed father, my brother, couldn't see it. He's only blind when Ned's the matter."

"'Twas said he was going to jump in the river," declared the ancient Abel.

"Nonsense and rubbish!" declared Nathan. "Ned's not that sort. Wait till he sees himself in the glittering armour of St. George, and he'll soon forget his troubles."

"We must talk about the dresses after rehearsal. A good many can be made at home."

"Be you going to charge at the doors?" asked Mr. Gollop. "I don't see why for we shouldn't."

"Yes, certainly I am," answered Dennis. "The money will go to rehanging the bells. That's settled. Well, remember. And stir up Joe Voysey, Thomas. You can do anything with him, but I can't. Remind him about the French Eagle. He's only got to learn six lines, but he says it makes his head ache so badly that he's sure he'll never do it."

"I'll try and fire the man's pride," declared Mr. Gollop. "Joe's not a day over sixty-eight, and he's got a very fair share of intellect. He shall learn it, if I've got to teach him."

"That's right. Now I must be off."

When the vicar was gone Gollop reviewed the situation created by young Masterman's energy and tact.

"I never could have foreseen it, yet the people somehow make shift to do with him. It don't say much for him, but it says a lot for us—for our sense and patience. We'm always ready to lend the man a hand in reason, and I wish he was more grateful; but I shouldn't call him a grateful man. Of course, this here play-acting will draw the eyes of the country on us, and he'll get the credit, no doubt; yet 'twill be us two men here in this bar—me and you, Nathan—as will make or mar all."

"I'm very glad to help him. He's a good chap, and my sort. Lots of fun in the man when you know him."

"Can't say I look at him like that. He's not enough beholden to the past, in my opinion. However, I believe he's woke up a bit to who I am and what my sister is," answered Gollop.

"Not your fault if he hasn't."

"And another thing—he don't take himself seriously enough," continued the parish clerk. "As a man I grant you he has got nought to take seriously. He's young, and he's riddled with evil, modern ideas that would land the country in ruin if followed. But, apart from that, as a minister he ought to be different. I hate to see him running after the ball at cricket, like a school-child. 'Tisn't decent, and it lessens the force of the man in the pulpit come Sunday, just as it lessened the force of physician Dawe to Tavistock when he took to singing comic songs at the penny readings. Why, 'twas money out of the doctor's pocket, as he lived to find out, too late. When Old Master Trelawny lay dying, and they axed un to let Dawe have a slap at un, he wouldn't do it. 'Be that the man that sang the song about locking his mother-in-law into the coal-cellar?' he axed. 'The same,' said they; 'but he's a terrible clever chap at the stomach, and may save you yet if there be enough of your organs left for him to work upon.' 'No, no,' says old Trelawny. 'Such a light-minded feller as that couldn't be trusted with a dying man's belly.' I don't say 'twas altogether reasonable, because the wisest must unbend the bow now and again; but I will maintain that that minister of the Lord didn't ought to take off his coat and get in a common sweat afore the people assembled at a cricket match. 'Tis worse than David making a circus of himself afore the holy ark; and if he does so, he must take the consequences."

"The consequences be that everybody will think a lot better of him, as a manly and sensible chap, wishful to help the young men," declared Mr. Baskerville. "One thing I can bear witness to: I don't get the Saturday custom I used to get, and that's to the good, anyway." Then he looked at his watch and changed the subject.

"Mrs. Lintern's daughter is paying a sort of solemn visit to my brother to-day, and they are all a little nervous about it."

"He'll terrify her out of her wits," said Mr. Gollop. "He takes a dark delight in scaring the young people."

"'Tisn't that, 'tis his manner. He don't mean to hurt 'em. A difficult man, however, as I know only too well."

"If he can't get on with you, there's a screw loose in him," remarked the old man, sitting on the settle.

"I won't say that, Abel; but I don't know why 'tis that he's got no use for me."

"No loss, however," asserted Thomas. "A cranky and heartless creature. The likes of him couldn't neighbour with the likes of us—not enough human kindness in him."

"Like our father afore him, and yet harder," explained the publican. "I can see my parent now—dark and grim, and awful old to my young eyes. Well I remember the first time I felt the sting of him. A terrible small boy I was—hadn't cast my short frocks, I believe—but I'd sinned in some little matter, and he give me my first flogging. And the picture I've got of father be a man with a hard, set face, with a bit of a grim smile on it, and his right hand hidden behind him. But I knowed what was in it! A great believer in the rod. He beat us often—all three of us—till we'd wriggle and twine like a worm on a hook; but our uncle, the musicker, he was as different as you please—soft and gentle, like my nephew Mark, and all for spoiling childer with sweeties and toys."

Mr. Gollop rose to depart, and others entered. Then Nathan called a pot-man and left the bar.

"I promised Mrs. Lintern as I'd go down to hear what Cora had to say," he explained. "I'm very hopeful that she's had the art to win Humphrey, for 'twill smooth the future a good bit for the people at Undershaugh if my brother takes to the wench. You'd think nobody could help it—such a lovely face as she has. However, we shall know how it fell out inside an hour or so."

Meanwhile Cora, clad in her new muslin, had faced Humphrey Baskerville, and faced him alone. For her future father-in-law expressly wished this, and Mark was from home on the occasion of his sweetheart's visit. Cora arrived twenty minutes before dinner, and watched Susan Hacker dish it up. She had even offered to assist, but Susan would not permit it.

"Better you go into the parlour and keep cool, my dear," she said. "You'll need to be. Master's not in the best of tempers to-day. And your young man left a message. He be gone to Plympton, and will be back by four o'clock; so, when you take your leave, you are to go down the Rut and meet him at Torry Brook stepping-stones, if you please."

"Where's Mr. Baskerville?"

"Taking the air up 'pon top the tor. He bides there most mornings till the dinner hour, and he'd forget his meal altogether so often as not, but I go to the hedge and ring the dinner bell. Then he comes down."

"How can I best please him, Susan?"

"By listening first, and by talking afterwards. He don't like a chatterbox, but he don't like young folk to be too silent neither. 'Twill be a hugeous heave-up of luck if you can get on his blind side. Few can—I warn you of that. He's very fond of natural, wild things. If you was to talk about the flowers and show him you be fond of nature, it might be well. However, do as you will, he'll find out the truth of 'e."

"I'm all of a tremor. I wish you hadn't told me that."

"Mark might have told you. Still, for your comfort it may be said you're built the right way. You'll be near so full-blown as I be, come you pass fifty. He hates the pinikin,[[1]] pin-tailed sort. Be cheerful,

[[1]] Pinikin—delicate.

eat hearty, don't leave nothing on your plate, and wait for him to say grace afore and after meat. The rest must fall out according to your own sense and wit. Now I be going to ring the bell."

"I half thought that he might come part of the way to meet me."

"You thought wrong, then. He don't do that sort of thing."

"I wish Mark was here, Susan."

"So does Mark. But master has his own way of doing things, and 'tis generally the last way that other people would use."

Mrs. Hacker rang the bell, and the thin, black figure of Humphrey Baskerville appeared and began to creep down the side of the hill. He had, of course, met Cora on previous occasions, but this was the first time that he had spoken with the girl since her betrothal.

He shook hands and hoped that her mother was well.

"A harvest to make up for last year," he said. "You ought to be lending a hand by rights."

"I don't think Mr. Baskerville would like for Polly and me to do that. 'Tis too hot," she said.

"Nathan wouldn't? Surely he would. Many hands make light work and save the time. You're a strong girl, aren't you?"

"Strong as a pony, sir."

"Don't call me 'sir.' And you're fond of wild nature and the country—so Mark tells me."

"That I am, and the wild flowers."

"Why didn't you wear a bunch of 'em then? Better them than that davered[[2]] rose stuck in your belt. Gold by the look of it—the belt I mean."

[[2]] Davered—withered.

She laughed.

"I'll let you into the secret," she said. "I wanted to be smart to-day, and so I took one of my treasures. You'll never guess where this gold belt came from, Mr. Baskerville?"

"Don't like it, anyway," he answered.

"Why, 'twas the hat-band round my grandfather's hat! He was a beadle up to some place nigh London; and 'twas an heirloom when he died; and mother gived it to me, and here it is."

He regarded the relic curiously.

"A funny world, to be sure," he said. "Little did that bygone man think of such a thing when he put his braided hat on his head, I'll warrant."

He relapsed into a long silence, and Cora's remarks were rewarded with no more than nods of affirmation or negation. Then, suddenly, he broke out on the subject of apparel long after she thought that he had forgotten it.

"Terrible tearing fine I suppose you think your clothes are, young woman—terrible tearing fine; but I hate 'em, and they ill become a poor man's wife and a poor man's daughter. My mother wore her hair frapped back light and plain, with a forehead cloth, and a little blue baize rochet over her breast, and a blue apron and short gown and hob-nailed shoon; and she looked ten thousand times finer than ever you looked in your life—or ever can in that piebald flimsy, with those Godless smashed birds on your head. What care you for nature to put a bit of a dead creature 'pon top of your hair? A nasty fashion, and I'm sorry you follow it."

She kept her temper well under this terrific onslaught.

"We must follow the fashion, Mr. Baskerville. But I'll not wear this hat again afore you, since you don't like it."

"Going to be married and live up to your knees in clover, eh? So you both think. Now tell me what you feel like to my son, please."

"I love him dearly, I'm sure, and I think he's a very clever chap, and quite the gentleman in all his ways. Though he might dress a bit smarter, and not be so friendly with the other bellringers. Because they are commoner men than him, of course."

"'Quite the gentleman'—eh? What's a gentleman?"

"Oh, dear, Mr. Baskerville, you'll spoil my dinner with such a lot of questions. To be a gentleman is to be like Mark, I suppose—kind and quick to see what a girl wants; and to be handsome and be well thought of by everybody, and all the rest of it."

"You go a bit too high at instep," he said. "You're too vain of your pretty face, and you answer rather pertly. You don't know what a gentleman is, for all you think yourself a fine lady. And I'll tell you this: very few people do know what a gentleman is. You can tell a lot about people by hearing them answer when you ask them what a gentleman is. Where would you like to live?"

"Where 'twould please Mark best. And if the things I say offend you, I'm sorry for it. You must make allowances, Mr. Baskerville. I'm young, and I've not got much sense yet; but I want to please you—I want to please everybody, for that matter."

This last remark much interested her listener. He started and looked at the girl fixedly. Then his expression changed, and he appeared to stare through her at somebody or something beyond. Behind Cora the old man did, indeed, see another very clearly in his mind's eye.

After a painful silence she spoke again, and her tone was troubled.

"I want to say the thing that will please you, if I can. But I must be myself. I'm sorry if you don't like me."

"You must be yourself, and so must I," he answered; "and if I'm not liking you, you're loathing me. But we're getting through our dinner very nicely. Will you have any more of this cherry tart?"

"No, I've done well."

"You've eaten nought to name. I've spoiled your appetite, and you—well, you've done more than you think, and taught me more than you know yourself."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Mark says puzzling things like that sometimes."

There was another silence.

"You ride a pony, don't you?" he asked presently; and the girl brightened up. Mr. Baskerville possessed some of the best ponies on Dartmoor, and sold a noted strain of his own raising.

"He's going to make it up with a pony!" thought sanguine Cora.

"I do. I'm very fond of riding."

"Like it better than walking, I dare say?"

"Yes, I do."

"And you'd like driving better still, perhaps?"

"No, I wouldn't."

"What are the strangles?" he asked suddenly and grimly.

"It's something the ponies get the matter with them."

"Of course; but what is it? How does it come, and why? Is it infectious? Is it ever fatal to them?"

She shook her head.

"I don't know nothing about things like that."

"No use having a pony if you don't understand it. The strangles are infectious and sometimes fatal. Don't forget that."

Cora felt her temper struggling to break loose. She poured out a glass of water.

"I promise not to forget it," she answered. "Shall I put the cheese on the table for you??

"No, I thank you—unless you'll eat some."

"Nothing more, I'm sure."

"We'll walk out in the air, then. With your love of nature, you'll like the growing things up on top of my hill. Mark will be back for tea, I think. But maybe you'll not stop quite so long as that."

"I'll stop just as long as you like," she said. "But I don't want to tire you."

"You've got your mother's patience, and plenty of it, I see. That's a good mark for you. Patience goes a long way. You can keep your temper, too—well for you that you can. Though whether 'tis nature or art in you——"

He broke off and she followed him out of doors.

Upon the tor he asked her many things concerning the clouds above them, the cries of the birds, and the names of the flowers. The ordeal proved terrible, because her ignorance of these matters was almost absolute. At last, unable to endure more, she fled from him, pleaded a sudden recollection of an engagement for the afternoon, and hastened homeward as fast as she could walk. Once out of sight of the old man she slowed down, and her wrongs and affronts crowded upon her and made her bosom pant. She clenched her hands and bit her handkerchief. She desired to weep, but intended that others should see her tears. Therefore she controlled them until she reached home, and then she cried copiously in the presence of her mother, her sister, and Nathan Baskerville, who had come to learn of her success.

The directions of Mark, to meet him at Torry stepping-stones, Cora had entirely forgotten. Nor would she have kept the appointment had she remembered it. In her storm of passion she hated even Mark for being his father's son.

Nathan was indignant at the recital, and Mrs. Lintern showed sorrow, but not surprise.

"'Twas bound to be difficult," she said. "He sent Mark away, you see. He meant to get to the bottom of her."

"A very wanton, unmanly thing," declared Nathan. "I'm ashamed of him."

"Don't you take it too much to heart," answered the mother. "Maybe he thought better of Cora than he seemed to do. He's always harsh and hard like that to young people; but it means nought. I believe that Cora's a bit frightened, that's all."

"We must see him," said Nathan. "At least, I must. I make this my affair."

"'Twill be better for me to do so."

"I tried that hard to please the man," sobbed Cora; "but he looked me through—tore me to pieces with his eyes like a savage dog. Nothing was right from my head to my heels. Flouted my clothes—flouted my talk—was angered, seemingly, because I couldn't tell him how to cure a pony of strangles—wanted me to tell the name of every bird on the bough, and weed in the gutter. And not a spark of hope or kindness from first to last. He did say that I'd got my mother's patience, and that's the only pat on the back he gave me. Patient! I could have sclowed his ugly face down with my nails!"

Her mother stroked her shoulder.

"Hush!" she said. "Don't take on about it. We shall hear what Mark has got to tell."

"I don't care what he's got to tell. I'm not going to be scared out of my life, and bullied and trampled on by that old beast!"

"No more you shall be," cried Nathan. "He'll say 'tis no business of mine, but everything to do with Undershaugh is my business. I'll see him. He's always hard on me; now I'll be hard on him and learn him how to treat a woman."

"Don't go in heat," urged Mrs. Lintern after Cora had departed with the sympathetic Phyllis. "There's another side, you know. Cora's not his sort. No doubt her fine clothes—she would go in 'em, though I advised her not—no doubt they made him cranky; and then things went from bad to worse."

"'Tis not a bit of use talking to me, Hester. I'm angered, and naturally angered. In a way this was meant to anger me, I'm afraid. He well knows how much you all at Undershaugh are to me. 'Twas to make me feel small, as much as anything, that he snubbed her so cruel. No—I'll not hear you on the subject—not now. I'll see him to-day."

"I shouldn't—wiser far to wait till you are cool. He'll be more reasonable too, to-morrow, when he's forgotten a little."

"What is there to forget? The prettiest and cleverest girl in Shaugh—or in the county, for that matter. Don't stop me. I'm going this instant."

"It's dangerous, Nat. He'll only tell you to mind your own business."

"No, he won't. Even he can't tax me with not doing that. Everything is my business, if I choose to make it so. Anyway, all at Undershaugh are my business."

He left her; but by the time he arrived at Beatland Corner, on the way to Hawk House, Nathan Baskerville had changed his mind. Another aspect of the case suddenly presented itself to him, and, as he grew calmer, he decided to keep out of this quarrel, though natural instincts drew him into it.

A few moments later, as thought progressed with him, he found himself wishing that Humphrey would die. But the desire neither surprised nor shocked him, for he had often wished it before. Humphrey's life was of no apparent service to Humphrey, while to certain other people it could only be regarded in the light of a hindrance.