A Drake by George! - The Original Classic Edition. Trevena John

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СКАЧАТЬ to allow him more than twelve; he presented himself with ten years, and then he did not die from natural causes. The Dismal Gibcat had his revenge at last. He murdered Captain Drake before the eyes of the village, in the full light of two oil lamps; and, instead of being hanged for it, he stepped into the dead man's place, and ruled the parish with his scowl as he had done in the good old days when a pair of old cottages had occupied the site whereon Windward House now stood; although he had the decency to attend his victim's funeral, and to declare he had always respected the Captain, who undoubtedly belonged to that class of mortals, none of whom are ever likely to be seen again.

       War for a right of way led up to the murder. The Dismal Gibcat owned a field, across which people had walked since the world began, according to the testimony of the Yellow Leaf, who was the final court of appeal in all such matters. When a stone coffin was disinterred, or a few Roman coins were turned up, the Yellow Leaf was invariably summoned to decide the question of ownership. He might confess that the stone coffin had been made before his time, although he would give the name of the mason, and narrate

       a few anecdotes concerning the eccentric parishioner who had preferred this method of burial. While he would possess a clear recollection of the thriftless farmer who had dropped the money while ploughing through a hole in his pocket. The Yellow Leaf declared he had crossed that field thousands of times when he was a mere bud, and went on to state that, if the people allowed the Dismal Gibcat to triumph over them, they would find themselves back in the dark ages, bereft of all the privileges which Magna Charta, the post office, and Captain Drake had obtained for them.

       The Dismal Gibcat began by ploughing the field and planting it with potatoes. Then he lay in wait for the first trespasser, who chanced to be the vicar on his way to baptise a sick baby. Undismayed by the importance of his capture, the Dismal Gibcat informed the vicar he was committing an unfriendly act by trespassing across his vested property.

       The vicar, with some warmth, asserted there was a path. The Dismal Gibcat, with exceeding dullness, replied that a man who had received his education at a public school and an ancient university ought to be able to distinguish between tilled land and thoroughfare.

       The vicar declared that, if there was at the moment no path, it could only be because the Dismal Gibcat had maliciously removed it, although he did not use the word maliciously in an offensive manner. The Dismal Gibcat replied that, as there was no path, the vicar could not walk along it; and, as he was obviously trying to make one--with a pair of boots quite suitable for the purpose--he was committing an act of trespass, and by the law of England a trespasser might be removed by force.

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       The vicar explained that he could not stay to argue the matter lest, while they were quarrelling, the poor little baby should become an unbaptised spirit. The Dismal Gibcat declared that his vested rights were more to him than baptised babies, and ordered the vicar to get off his potatoes by the way he had come.

       Finally the vicar abandoned a portion of his Christianity and threatened to hit the Dismal Gibcat upon the head with his toy font. Civil war having thus broken out, the entire population of military age, headed by Captain Drake and the Yellow Leaf, promenaded

       across the field and trampled out a new pathway. The Dismal Gibcat replied by putting up barbed wire entanglements.

       Then the Captain called a meeting of the Parish Council, to be held at seven-thirty in the schoolroom; little dreaming, when he set

       out a few minutes after eight to take the chair, that he was about to perform his last public duty.

       The Dismal Gibcat attended the meeting without any idea of doing murder: he brought no weapon except his scowl, which was possibly a birthmark, and a tongue which disagreed with everybody out of principle. He presented his case to the meeting and asked for justice. The chairman promised he should have it, and went on to inquire whether the Dismal Gibcat would give an undertaking to remove the entanglements and allow the public to make free use of the pathway.

       The Dismal Gibcat replied that, by so doing, he would be committing an injustice which must fall most heavily upon all those of his dismal blood who might come after him.

       "Then, sir," the chairman cried in his most tremendous voice, "the matter must pass from our hands into those of a higher tribunal. We shall appeal to the District Council, and that body will, if necessary, carry the case further, even to the Court of County Council itself."

       Silence followed, during which every parishioner save one in that crowded schoolroom felt thankful Highfield had a leader capable

       of carrying their grievances to the foot of the Throne if necessary. About the District Council little was known, beyond the fact that it had never yet interfered in any parochial affairs; while the Dumpy Philosopher seemed to be the only person primed with information concerning the County Council.

       "It make roads and builds asylums," he explained. "The gentlemen what belong to it are called Esquire; and they'm mostly in Parliament."

       The Dismal Gibcat had the wickedness to declare that he defied all Councils. There never had been a right of way across his field, and there never should be. Out of simple goodness of heart he had refrained from interfering with the homeward progress of a few weary labourers, although they had not asked permission to trample down his pasture; and now he was to be rewarded for this mistaken kindness by having a strip of territory snatched from him by a person--a fat, vulgar person--one he was sorry to call an Englishman--whom they had been foolish enough to elect as their chairman--a man who had written a book about himself--a common creature who claimed to be a descendant of Sir Francis Drake--a man who styled himself Captain because he had once stolen a fishing boat--a coarse bullying brute of a gasbag.

       The chairman had been struggling to find breath for some moments. At last he found it, and released such thunders as had never been heard before. Even the Dismal Gibcat quailed before the volume of that tempest, while a few nervous parishioners left the schoolroom with a dazed look upon their faces. George detached himself from the wall and implored his uncle to be calm, but his words of warning were lost in that great tumult. The shocking nature of the scene was considerably enhanced by the fact that the Dismal Gibcat, for the first time within living memory, actually tried to smile.

       "A right of way has existed time out of mind across that field. Sir Francis Drake and Queen Elizabeth walked there arm in arm," the

       Captain shouted, magnanimously ignoring the insults, and fighting for the people to his last gasp.

       "Path warn't hardly wide enough, Captain," piped the Yellow Leaf, who was for accuracy at any price.

       "I tell the chairman to his face he's a liar. He has never spoken a word of truth since he came to Highfield," cried the Dismal Gibcat.

       Again the Captain opened his mouth, but no sounds came. He stretched out an arm, tried to leave the chair, then gasped, fell against George, and bore him to the floor. The leader of the people, the great reformer, the defender of liberty, lay motionless beneath the map of the British Empire like Caesar at the foot of Pompey's statue; murdered by the Dismal Gibcat's smile in the village schoolroom, upon the fifth of April, in the seventy-fourth year of his age.

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       At the inquest it was shown by one of the discredited doctors that his heart had really given way a long time ago, and nothing but indomitable courage had preserved him in a state of nominal existence: he sought to impress it upon the jury that the Captain, from a medical point of view, had been a dead man for the last ten years; but, as everybody knew, this statement was made by an arrangement with the coroner to prevent a verdict of wilful murder against the Gibcat.

       "'Tis like this right o' way business," commented Squinting Jack. "He ploughs up the СКАЧАТЬ