Kitty Alone. Baring-Gould Sabine

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      CHAPTER X

       THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER

       Table of Contents

      One day, when her uncle was at home busy about his accounts, which engaged him frequently without greatly enlightening him, but serving rather to involve his mind in confusion, Kate was assisting her aunt in preparing for the early dinner, when a tap at the door announced a caller.

      Pasco shouted to the person outside to come in, and a young man entered--tall, with fair hair, and clear, steady grey eyes.

      “I am the new schoolmaster,” said he frankly. “I have thought it my duty to come and see you, as you are church-warden and one of the managers of the National School.”

      “Quite right; sit down. I have been busy. I am a man of the commercial world. This is our meal-time. I am disengaged from my accounts; you can sit and eat, and we will converse whilst eating.”

      Mrs. Pepperill entered, and her hard eye rested on the young man.

      “The new schoolmaster,” she said. “Do you come from these parts?”

      “No; I am a stranger to this portion of England.”

      “That’s a misfortune. If you could be born again, and in the west country, it would be a mercy for you. From where do you come?”

      “From Hampshire.”

      “That’s right up in the north.”

      The schoolmaster raised his eyebrows. “Of course--in the south of England.”

      “It doesn’t follow,” said Zerah; “by your speech I took you to be foreign.”

      “And what may your name be,” said Pasco, “if I may be so bold as to ask? I have heard it, but it sounded French, and I couldn’t recollect it.”

      “My name is very English--Walter Bramber.”

      “Never heard anyone so called before. Brambles, and Bramptons, and Branscombes. It don’t sound English to our ears. I may as well tell you--sit down, and take a fork--that we liked our last schoolmaster uncommon much. He was just the right sort of man for us; but the rector took against him.”

      “I thought he was rather given to the”--

      “Well, what of that? We have, all of us, our failings. A trout is an uncommon good fish, but it has bones like needles. You have your failings, my wife has hers. I will say this for Mr. Solomon Puddicombe--he never got tight in our parish. When he was out for a spree, he went elsewhere--to Newton, or Teignmouth, and sometimes to Ashburton. He couldn’t help it. Some folks have fits, others have bilious attacks. When he wasn’t bad, he was very good; the children liked him, the parents liked him. I liked him, and I’m the churchwarden. He had means of his own, beside the school pence and his salary. A man has a right to spend his money as he chooses. If he had got tight on the school pence, I can understand that there might have been some kind of objection; but when it was on his private means, then I don’t see that we have anything to do with it. Have you means of your own?”

      “I am sorry to say--none.”

      “We always respect those who have means. If you have none, of course you can’t go on the spree anywhere, and oughtn’t to do so. It would be wrong and immoral. Take my advice, and call on the old schoolmaster. The parish will be pleased, as it has been terribly put about at the rector giving him his dismissal.”

      “But--I thought there had been an unhappy scandal; that, in fact, he had been committed to”--

      “Well, well, he was locked up,” said Pasco. “There was a cock-fight somewhere up country. Not in this country, but at a place called Waterloo.”

      “There is no such place in England,” said Bramber. “Waterloo is in Belgium; it lies about five miles from Brussels.”

      “You are a schoolmaster, and ought to know. But of this I am quite sure--it was in England where he got into trouble, and the name of the place was Waterloo.”

      “He may have been at some inn called the Waterloo, but positively there is no place in England so designated,” said Bramber.

      “I know very well the place was Waterloo, and that Mr. Solomon Puddicombe got into trouble there. We are all liable to troubles. I have lost my daughter. Troubles are sent us; the parson himself has said so. Puddicombe got locked up. You see, cock-fighting is a pursuit to which he was always very partial. You go and call on him, and he’ll sing you his song. It begins--

      ‘Come all you cock-fighters from far and near,

      I’ll sing you a cock match when and where,

      On Aspren Moor, as I’ve heard say,

      A charcoal black and a bonny bonny grey.’

      That is how the song begins. But it is about another cock-fight; not that at Waterloo. Cock-fighting is Mr. Puddicombe’s pursuit. We have all got our pursuits, and why not? There’s a man just outside Newton is wonderful hot upon flowers. His garden is a picture; he makes it blaze with various kinds of the finest coloured--foreign and English plants: that’s his pursuit. Then there is a doctor at Teignmouth who goes out with a net catching butterflies, and he puts ale and treacle on the trees in the evening for catching moths: that’s his pursuit. And our parson likes dabbling with a brush and some paints: that’s his pursuit. And business is mine: that’s my pursuit and my pleasure--and it’s profit too.”

      “Sometimes; not often,” threw in Zerah.

      “Well, I don’t know what your pursuits be, Mr. Schoolmaster,” said Pepperill. “Let us hope they’re innocent as those of Mr. Puddicombe.”

      The young man glanced round him, staggered at his reception, and caught the eye of Kate. She was looking at him intently, and in her look were both interest and pity.

      “We won’t argue any more,” said Pasco. “I suppose you can eat starigazy pie?”

      “I am ashamed to say I never heard of it.”

      “Never heard of it? And you set to teach our children! Zerah, tell Mr. Schoolmaster what starigazy pie is.”

      “There is nothing to tell,” said Zerah ungraciously. It was her way to be ungracious in all she said and all she did. “It is fish pie--herrings or pilchards--with their heads out of the crust looking upwards. That is what they call star-gazing in the fishes, and, in short, starigazy pie. But if you don’t like it, there is our old stag coming on presently.”

      “Do you know, I shall have made two experiences to-day that are new to me. In the first place, I shall make acquaintance with starigazy pie, that promises to be excellent; and in the next place, I may add that it never has been my luck hitherto to taste venison.”

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