CHAPTER XXXV. A WRESTLING BOUT.
Valentine's Day was on Sunday that year, and a violent gale from the south and west set in before daylight, and lasted until the evening, without bringing any rain. Anxiety was felt about the Chancel roof, which had only been patched up temporarily, and waterproofed with thick tarpaulins; for the Exeter builders had ceased work entirely during that December frost, and as yet had not returned to it. To hurry them, while engaged elsewhere, would not have been just, or even wise, inasmuch as they might very fairly say, "let us have a little balancing of books first, if you please."
However, the old roof withstood the gale, being sheltered from the worst of it, and no further sinking of the wall took place; but at the Abbey, some fifty yards eastward, a very sad thing came to pass. The south-western corner and the western end (the most conspicuous part remaining) were stripped, as if by a giant's rip-hook, of all their dark mantle of ivy. Like a sail blown out of the bolt-ropes, away it all went bodily, leaving the white flint rough and rugged, and staring like a suburban villa of the most choice effrontery. The contrast with the remainder of the ruins and the old stone church was hideous; and Mr. Penniloe at once resolved to replace and secure afresh as much of the fallen drapery as had not been shattered beyond hope of life. Walter Haddon very kindly offered to supply the ladders, and pay half the cost; for the picturesque aspect of his house was ruined by this bald background. This job was to be put in hand on Thursday; but worse things happened before that day.
"Us be going to have a bad week of it," old Channing, the clerk, observed on Monday, as he watched the four vanes on the tower (for his eyes were almost as keen as ever) and the woodcock feathers on the western sky; "never knowed a dry gale yet, but were follered by a wet one twice as bad; leastways, if a' coom from the Dartmoor mountains."
However, things seemed right enough on Tuesday morning, to people who seldom think much of the sky; and the rustics came trooping in to the Fair, as brave as need be, and with all their Sunday finery. A prettier lot of country girls no Englishman might wish, and perhaps no other man might hope to see, than the laughing, giggling, blushing, wondering, simpering, fluttering, or bridling maidens, fresh from dairy, or churn, or linhay, but all in very bright array, with love-knots on their breasts, and lavender in their pocket-handkerchiefs. With no depressing elegance perhaps among them, and no poetic sighing for impossible ideals; and probably glancing backwards, more than forwards on the path of life, because the rule and the practice is, for the lads of the party to walk behind.
Louts are these, it must be acknowledged, if looked at from too high a point; and yet, in their way, not by any means so low, as a topper on the high horse, with astral spurs, and a banner of bad Latin, might condemn them for to be. If they are clumsy, and awkward, and sheepish, and can only say—"Thank 'e, sir! Veyther is quite well," in answer to "How are you to-day, John?"—some of it surely is by reason of a very noble quality, now rarer than the great auk's egg; and known, while it was a noun still substantive, as modesty. But there they were, and plenty of them, in the year 1836; and they meant to spend their money in good fairing, if so be their girls were kind.
Mr. Penniloe had a lot of good heart in him; and when he came out to stand by the bellman, and trumpeter who thrilled the market-place, his common sense, and knowledge of the darker side, had as much as they could do to back him up against the impression of the fair young faces, that fell into the dumps, at his sad decree. The strong evil-doers were not come yet, their time would not begin till the lights began to flare, and the dark corners hovered with temptation. Silence was enjoined three times by ding-dong of bell and blare of trump, and thrice the fatal document was read with stern solemnity and mute acceptance of every creature except ducks, whom nothing short of death can silence, and scarcely even that when once their long valves quiver with the elegiac strain.