‘“An arrow—an arrow from the blind god’s bow at last!”
‘I says nothing, but puts down my penny and comes away on tiptoe.
‘Well, sir, that puzzles me. And I asks my darter the school-mistress what he meant. All I can say is, sir, if that little god as she telled me of did shoot one o’ his arrows at Mr. Harris, he must ha’ got him right in the wes’cot. For from that moment he were a changed man.
‘He were properly in love and no mistake! He worn’t a bit ashamed o’ it. He went about smiling and blushing, and very proud. The news soon got abroad, and the girls, some jeered, some laughed. Things moved along quickly. Letters passes between ’em. He ’ad his picture took, smiling, in a long black coat and a flower in his button-hole and a book in his ’and. He sends over bottles o’ scent and sweet soaps and such truck from his shop. Then, one beautiful morning in the beginning o’ October, he dresses hisself very smart, with a white wes’cot and shiny boots and new straw hat, and embarks on Dark’s lugger to go to Lundy to call on his young lady.
‘Now, living as he did on the quay, no one ’adn’t partic’ly noticed that Mr. Harris never went on the watter. Still Dark were surprised when he tells him he ’ad never yet crossed Appledore Bar. There was no wind, and Dark drops down with the ebb to the Bar, just about where we be now, and then all of a sudden Mr. Harris begins to be sea-sick. Dark carries many passengers, and ’tis a queer bit o’ watter ’twixt here and Lundy, but he says he never see anyone so bad as Mr. Harris was that day. It fair tore the inside out o’ him. He gets in such a state that Dark, seeing the job would be a long ’un for want o’ wind, puts him in his dinghy and lands him on the golf-links. Mr. Harris crawls into one o’ they bunker things and there he lay, and I did ’ear that the gentlemen played their golf right on top o’ him afore he could move. In the evening he creeps back home and goes to bed.’
‘Poor Mr. Harris!’ I broke in, ‘that was rough luck. How did he take it?’
‘Well, he didn’t give in, sir. Twice more he tried, but he never even got to the Bar. The second time they had to call the doctor to him. The doctor says his heart were weak, and it were very onwise to put such a strain on it, and he mustn’t try them tricks again. Then the doctor puts a mustard plaster to him, and goes away.
‘After that no one would take him. Steamers from ’Coombe had stopped running or ’e might ha’ gone by them. He felt hisself beaten, and his pride were broken. ’Twas a melancholly affair altogether. He thought he ’ad made a fool o’ hisself, though how a man can be stronger than his stomach I can’t see.
‘And the wust o’ all was to come. Mirandy thought she were a laughing-stock, and wouldn’t help. She wouldn’t come to him. If he wanted her, ’e must fetch her. She wouldn’t leave Lundy by herself for any man, so she said. And everyone were laughing, and talking, and taking sides.
‘He goes about neat and particular as usual, but the life and sparkle had gone out o’ him. He were looked up to, and had ’is business and his nice house, but he didn’t want ’em. He wanted Mirandy by his fireside, and her ’and in his.