Kitty Alone. Baring-Gould Sabine

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СКАЧАТЬ had the chance before of tasting venison--the meat of the rich man’s table.”

      “No means, you know,” said Pasco. “Without private means you can’t expect to eat chicken.”

      “Our old stag is hardly chicken,” said Zerah. “You see, now we’ve got a young stag, we didn’t want the old one any more.”

      “Solomon Puddicombe married my second cousin,” observed Pepperill. “Her name was Eastlake. Are you single?”

      “Yes, that is my forlorn condition.”

      “Well, look sharp and marry into the parish. It’s your only chance. You see, the farmers are all against you. They were partial to Puddicombe, and I hear he is intending to set up a private school. The farmers and better-class folk will send their children to him. They don’t approve of their sons and daughters associating with the labourers’ children, though they did send some to the National School so long as Solomon Puddicombe was there; but that was because he was so greatly respected.”

      “Do you mean to say that Mr. Puddicombe is still in Coombe-in-Teignhead?”

      “Certainly. When he returned from Waterloo, as the place was called where was that cock-fight, and he got into some sort of difficulty, he came back to his own house. He got it through his wife, who was an Eastlake--my cousin. It is his own now, and he has private means, so he intends setting up a school. It will be very select; only well-to-do parents’ children will be admitted. When they let Mr. Puddicombe out of gaol at Waterloo, which is somewhere in the Midlands,--leastways in England,--then the people here were for ringing a peal to welcome him home. The parson put the keys in his pocket and went off. They came to me. I am churchwarden, and I knocked open the belfry door. We gave Puddicombe a peal, and the rector wasn’t over-pleased. I am churchwarden, and that is something. You see, Mr. Puddicombe has means, and a house he got through my cousin Eastlake. I don’t know how the school will be kept up now that the rector has had Puddicombe turned out of it. None of the farmers will subscribe. We have no resident squire. He will have to make up your salary out of his own pocket. He is not married, so he can well afford it. If he don’t consult our feelings, I don’t see why we should consider his pocket. None of us wished to lose Solomon Puddicombe; everyone trusted him, and he was greatly respected.”

      Again the schoolmaster looked round him. A sense of helplessness had come over him. Again his eye encountered that of Kate, and he instinctively understood that this girl felt for him in his difficulties and humiliation, and understood how trying his position was.

      “Now for a bit of our old stag,” said Pasco.

      “Stag?” exclaimed Bramber; “that is fowl!”

      “What you call fowl, is stag to us. He crowed till his voice cracked. He may be tough because old, but he’s been long boiling.”

      “Oh, a cock!” Bramber learned that day that a cock in Devonshire is entitled stag.

      The meal ended, Pasco Pepperill stood up and said, “Mr. What’s-your-name, I daresay you would like to look over my stores. You’ll be wanting coals, and I sell coals by the bushel. You drink cider, I daresay; I can provide you with a hogshead--or half, if that will do. If you want to do shopping--I speak against my interests--but Whiteaway deals in groceries; you’ll find his shop up the street. If there be anything he hasn’t got, and you need to go into Teignmouth, why, this is the ferry, and we charge a penny to put you across, and it is a penny back. If you desire to be polite to friends, and would like to entertain them, there are cockles and winkles, tea or coffee, to be had here, six-pence a head; but if the number were over twenty, we might come to an arrangement at fourpence-ha’penny. And if you desire a conveyance at any time, I have a cob and trap I let out at a shilling a mile, and something for the driver. And if you smoke and drink, I have--I mean, I dare-say I could provide for you tobacco and spirits that--you know--haven’t seen the Customs, and are accordingly cheap. And if you should happen to know of a timber merchant who wants a lot of oak, I’ve dropped over a hundred pounds on some prime stuff I shall sell only to such as know good oak from bad. And if you’ve any friends in the weaving trade, I do some business in wool, and am getting first-class fleeces from Dartmoor. If you can oblige me in any way like this--well, I daresay I shan’t be so prejudiced for Mr. Puddicombe.”

      Pasco Pepperill conducted the schoolmaster about his premises in an ostentatious manner, showed him his stores, his stable, the platform on which tea and coffee, winkles and cockles were served. He named the prices he had paid, and gave the new-comer to understand that he was a man who had plenty of money at his disposal.

      Then an idea occurred to Pasco. Perhaps this schoolmaster might help him with his accounts. He himself could not disentangle them and balance his books. He was shy of letting anyone else see them; but this Bramber was a complete stranger, a man whom he could reduce to dependence on himself; he had no private means, no friends in the place; he had given the man a dinner, and might make of him a very serviceable slave.

      “Look here,” said Pepperill in a haughty tone, “Mr. Schoolmaster, I suppose you know something of accounts and book-keeping?”

      “Certainly I do.”

      “I shouldn’t mind now and then paying you a trifle, giving you a meal, and favouring you with my support--I am churchwarden, and consequently on the committee of the National School. Me and the bishop, and the archdeacon and rector, and Whiteaway as well. I mean, I’ll stand at your back, if you will oblige me now and then, and hold your tongue.”

      “I will do anything I can to oblige you,” said Bramber. “And as to holding my tongue, what is it you desire of me?”

      “Merely to help me with my accounts. My time is so occupied, and I do business in so many ways, that my books get somewhat puzzling--I mean to a man who is taken up with business.”

      “I am entirely at your service.”

      “But--you understand--I don’t want my affairs talked about. People say I have plenty of money, that I’m a man who picks it up everywhere; but I don’t desire that they should know how much I have, and what my speculations are, and what they bring in.”

      “I can hold my tongue.”

      “Would you look at my books now?”

      “Certainly.”

      Accordingly, Walter Bramber re-entered the house, and was given the books in a private sitting-room, and worked away at them for a couple of hours. The confusion was great: Pepperill might have had a genius for business, but this was not manifest in his books. Presently Pasco came in.

      “Well,” said he, “make ’em out, eh?”

      “You must excuse my saying it,” said Bramber; “but--if these are all--your affairs are in a very unsatisfactory condition.”

      “Unsatisfactory? oh, pshaw! Of course, I have other resources; there’s the Brimpts forest of oaks. There’s--oh, lots; winkles and cockles, tea and coffee not entered.”

      “Sixpence a head; over twenty, fourpence ha’penny,” said Walter Bramber drily.

      “Oh, lots--lots of other things. I haven’t entered all.”

      “I sincerely hope it is so.”

      “It is so, on my word.”

      “Because--you seem to me to be losing seriously СКАЧАТЬ