CHAPTER VI
The day of misfortunes brought about very much such results as Colonel George had foreseen. Old Sally Dart, it is true, recovered, though she was sadly shaken; and she declared, as soon as she could speak, that she was not going yet awhile, not at any rate till she had heard the full story of her Jan's death. But on the other hand the preacher's cow did die, and as the preacher himself was but a small farmer of eight or ten acres of land, the loss to him was very serious. Mrs. Mugford, too, was thoroughly converted to belief in witchcraft by the loss of her fowls; though since Tommy Fry's noise no longer disturbed her, and her fowls were no longer numerous enough to make havoc of Mrs. Fry's garden, she and Mrs. Fry lived for the present in comparative peace. Hoping therefore to do something to destroy the belief in witches and to soften the harsh feeling against them, Lady Eleanor wrote to the parson to speak on the subject in next Sunday's sermon.
Her hopes, however, were not very great. There was no parson living in the village, the parish being so small that it was joined to another and served by an old, old man, who wore his hair in powder and droned through one service only on Sundays in the little dark church at Ashacombe. The congregation was always small, and perhaps the three most enthusiastic members were Dick, Elsie, and the Corporal. For the Corporal had inherited a violoncello, or as it was always called in the village, a bass viol, from his father, and played it in the little gallery along with the two violins, flageolet and bassoon that formed the rest of the band. The notes that he could play were few, though sufficient for the humble needs of the church, but the children had no doubt that he was the finest performer in the world, and watched anxiously for the minute when he should begin sawing away at the strings, and the choir should break (very much through their noses) into the anthem, "I will arise, I will arise and goo tu my va-ther," with which the service always began.
The old parson, though he did attempt to fulfil Lady Eleanor's wishes in his sermon, only succeeded in being duller and longer than usual, and neither Dick nor Elsie could understand what he was talking about. Moreover they had been much distracted by a printed handbill which they had seen on the church door, headed in large letters by the word "Deserted," with the description of a deserter named Henry Bale from the Royal Marines, set forth in the usual terms—"Height five feet four inches, fair hair, grey eyes; when last seen was dressed in his regimentals," and so on. This had set Dick thinking very seriously, for the Corporal had always told him that no man was so bad as he that deserted his colours and ran away from the King's service; and he had hardly believed that such people could exist. And the bill had set other people thinking too, for a reward of two guineas was offered for this deserter, which made sundry poor mouths water; so that altogether the parson's long sermon was not much listened to, many heads being occupied with an attempt to remember some strange man five feet four inches in height, with fair hair and grey eyes, and dressed in regimentals.
When service was over, the Corporal solemnly packed up his bass viol in a bag of green baize, and was about to carry it off, when he was stopped by the village preacher, who begged the loan of it for the evening. But the Corporal, who as a soldier and Lady Eleanor's servant was a staunch supporter of Church and King, did not like the preacher, who was always railing against all authority and driving silly maids into hysterics with his ravings; so he answered him very civilly (for he never quarrelled with any one) that he was afraid he could not. The preacher, however, would not take no for an answer, and tried to wheedle the Corporal, who at last told him very decidedly that his father had played that viol in the church at Fitzdenys for forty years, and he himself at Ashacombe for near seven years more, and that he would be hanged if it should ever enter a chapel so long as he was alive. With which words he drew himself up to his full height and stalked away.
The preacher was not a little annoyed, for he wanted the viol for his own service at the chapel, where he was going to preach directly contrary to the old parson. Moreover at the close of his service there was to be a collection to make good to him the loss of his cow, so that it was important to him that all should go off as well as possible. However, notwithstanding the absence of the viol, his discourse was enough to gain for him a good collection, to strengthen the general belief in witches, and to influence the minds of the villagers against them; for he singled out those who dealt leniently with witches for punishment, either in the near or distant future, which was just what his congregation was glad to hear. Not that the preacher was a bad man, certainly not worse than his neighbours, but he was as ignorant and superstitious as any of them.
Great cackling there was among the women when the discourse was ended. It was Lady Eleanor who had delivered the witch and the idiot out of their hands; but the villagers could not suspect her of harm who was always so thoughtful and kind, and who had given more than any one towards replacing the preacher's cow. "But her ladyship's that tender-hearted, you see," they said, "and the best of folks is sometimes mistook;" and they shook their heads solemnly, each thinking in her heart that she knew of at least one excellent person who was never mistaken. But who was it that had excused the mazed man to her ladyship? The Corporal. Who had contrived to be out of the way, though in charge of the children, when the mazed man came to them? The Corporal again.
So the whisper went round that the Corporal was in league with the witch; and the preacher, who had not forgotten about the bass viol, though he said only a few mysterious words, seemed rather to agree. Then Mrs. Fry revealed the fact that she had suspected the Corporal from the first; for to begin with he was a soldier.
"And what drove he to 'list?" she asked indignantly. "No good, I'll warrant mun. 'Tisn't good that drives men to 'list. There was Jan Dart that 'listed twenty year agone, and 'ticed away Lucy Clatworthy to follow mun, her that was only child of Jeremiah Clatworthy up to Loudacott; and the old Jeremiah got drinking and died after she left mun. And there's Jan's old mother, poor soul, that loved mun as the apple of her eye, waiting here alone, and I reckon her time's short. No! I knows what it is when men go for sojers."
It was perhaps fortunate that Mrs. Mugford was not at chapel that evening or there might have been angry words; but the rest of the women, having no interest in soldiers, with perfect honesty agreed with Mrs. Fry, and lamented that her ladyship should be so misguided as to employ a man like the Corporal, for it would surely end in no good,—sojers never did. Look at Mrs. Mugford's boy that went for a marine, and came back with the shakums so bad that you could hear his teeth chattering a mile away when the fit was on him. The conversation would have lingered long on the symptoms of "shakums," or in other words of ague, had not some one called to mind the bill on the church-door about the deserter. Then the tongues were set wagging afresh. Two guineas were a lot of money, they said, but soldiers was often badly served, and 'twas no wonder they runned away. But it wasn't well to have strange men about the place, least of all sojers, for they never learned no good.
The mention of strange men about the place of course brought back the subject of the idiot, and then the thought occurred to one of the women that he might be the deserter in question. The idea was at once taken up by her companions, and the more they talked, the more likely it seemed to them. The man had been driven from his regiment probably because of his evil doings, and was come to Ashacombe to plague them; and all agreed that it would be very pleasant to earn two guineas by the catching of him. Mrs. Fry went home brimful of this new notion and poured it out to Mrs. Mugford, who listened with unusual interest, and without either contradiction or interruption, which was a most unusual thing. But at last she broke out with much earnestness:
"You'm right, you may depend, Mrs. Fry; you'm right. That mazed man is the man that they'm a-sarching for; and it's my belief that he isn't mazed at all but so well in his head as you and I be,—just pretending like. And you'm right about that Brimacott too, and I do hope that every one will let mun know that he's not welcome in Ashacombe. He's a prying man and a tale-bearing man, that's what I believe he is, and all to deceive her ladyship and keep friends with the witch. But we'll catch that mazed man for all his pretending, and there there will be two guineas for you and me."
Any one else but Mrs. Fry might have thought it strange for the Corporal to be called a tale-bearer by the very woman who had told tales against her; but Mrs. Fry was not a clever woman, and after all she had suffered under Lady Eleanor's tongue through the Corporal's report. Lady Eleanor knew that if the Corporal told her anything that went on in the village, which he very rarely did, it was right that she should know it; but that was not Mrs. Fry's opinion. So the two agreed that the Corporal was an enemy to the village, though, as is usually the way, they never thought of complaining to Lady Eleanor of him.
But had Mrs. Fry stayed at home instead of going to chapel, she would have understood better the meaning of Mrs. Mugford's words. For having packed off her husband, who was a feeble creature, to take the children out for a walk, Mrs. Mugford stationed herself at a window from which she could see any one that came down from the woods at the back of the house; and after a time she saw a shortish man, fair-haired and blue-eyed, walk stealthily down to her. He was a miserable-looking fellow, with a pinched white face, matted hair and new-grown beard, and dressed only in a shirt and a pair of light-blue soldier's trousers. She smuggled him quickly into the house and locked the door; and when after a quarter of an hour the door opened again, and after due looking round the man was let out, he was dressed like an ordinary labourer. He carried bread and bacon tied up in a handkerchief in his hand, and disappeared into the wood as quickly as he could; and as soon as he was gone Mrs. Mugford very solemnly put the trousers and shirt, that he had worn when he came in, upon the fire and burned them.