[a short tale]

TWO awful catastrophes have occurred. One Englishman in London is dead, and I have scandalised about twenty of his nearest and dearest friends. He was a man nearly seventy years old, engaged in the business of an architect, and immensely respected. That was all I knew about him till I began to circulate among his friends in these parts, trying to cheer them up and make them forget the fog.

“Hush!” said a man and his wife. “Don’t you know he died yesterday of a sudden attack of pneumonia? Isn’t it shocking?”

“Yes,” said I vaguely. “Aw’fly shocking. Has he left his wife provided for?”

“Oh, he’s very well off indeed, and his wife is quite old. But just think—it was only in the next street it happened!” Then I saw that their grief was not for Strangeways, deceased, but for themselves.

“How old was he?” I said.

“Nearly seventy, or maybe a little over.”

“About time for a man to rationally expect such a thing as death,” I thought, and went away to another house, where a young married couple lived.

“Isn’t it perfectly ghastly?” said the wife. “Mr. Strangeways died last night.”

“So I heard,” said I. “Well, he had lived his life.”

“Yes, but it was such a shockingly short illness. Why, only three weeks ago he was walking about the street.” And she looked nervously at her husband, as though she expected him to give up the ghost at any minute.

Then I gathered, with the knowledge of the length of his sickness, that her grief was not for the late Mr. Strangeways, and went away thinking over men and women I had known who would have given a thousand years in Purgatory for even a week wherein to arrange their affairs, and who were anything but well off.

I passed on to a third house full of children, and the shadow of death hung over their heads, for father and mother were talking of Mr. Strangeway’s “end.” “Most shocking,” said they. “It seems that his wife was in the next room when he was dying, and his only son called her, so she just had time to take him in her arms before he died. He was unconscious at the last. Wasn’t it awful?”

When I went away from that house I thought of men and women without a week wherein to arrange their affairs, and without any money, who were anything but unconscious at the last, and who would have given a thousand years in Purgatory for one glimpse at their mothers, their wives or their husbands. I reflected how these people died tended by hirelings and strangers, and I was not in the least ashamed to say that I laughed over Mr. Strangeways’ death as I entered the house of a brother in his craft.

“Heard of Strangeways’ death?” said he. “Most hideous thing. Why, he had only a few days before got news of his designs being accepted by the Burgoyne Cathedral. If he had lived he would have been working out the deails now—with me.” And I saw that this man’s fear also was not on account of Mr. Strangeways. And I thought of men and women who had died in the midst of wrecked work; then I sought a company of young men and heard them talk of the dead. “That’s the second death among people I know within the year,” said one. “Yes, the second death,” said another.

I smiled a very large smile.

“And you know,” said a third, who was the oldest of the party, “they’ve opened the new road by the head of Tresillion Road, and the wind blows straight across that level square from the Parks. Everything is changing about us.”

“He was an old man,” I said.

“Ye-es. More than middle-aged,” said they.

“And he outlived his reputation?”

“Oh, no, or how would he have taken the designs for the Burgoyne Cathedral? Why, the very day he died . . . ”

“Yes,” said I. “He died at the end of a completed work—his design finished, his prize awarded?”

“Yes; but he didn’t live to . . . ”

“And his illness lasted seventeen days, of twenty-four hours each?”

“Yes.”

“And he was tended by his own kith and Mn, dying with his head on his wife’s breast, his hand in his only son’s hand, without any thought of their possible poverty to vex him. Are these things so?”

“Ye-es,” said they. “Wasn’t it shocking?”

“Shocking?” I said. “Get out of this place. Go forth, run about and see what death really means. You have described such dying as a god might envy and a king might pay half his ransom to make certain of. Wait till you have seen men—strong men of thirty-five, with little children, die at two days’ notice, penniless and alone, and seen it not once, but twenty times; wait till you have seen the young girl die within a fortnight of the wedding; or the lover within three days of his marriage; or the mother—sixty little minutes—before her son can come to her side; wait till you hesitate before handling your daily newspaper for fear of reading of the death of some young man that you have dined with, drank with, shot with, lent money to and borrowed money from, and tested to the uttermost—till you dare not hope for the death of an old man, but, when you are strongest, count up the tale of your acquaintances and friends, wondering how many will be alive six months hence. Wait till you have heard men calling in the death hour on kin that cannot come; till you have dined with a man one night and seen him buried on the next. Then you can begin to whimper about loneliness and change and desolation.” Here I foamed at the mouth.

“And do you mean to say,” drawled a young gentleman, “that there is any society in which that sort of holocaust goes on?”

“I do,” said I. “It’s not society; it’s Life,” And they laughed.

But this is the old tale of Pharaoh’s chariot-wheel and flying-fish.

If I tell them yarns, they say: “How true! How true!” If I try to present the truth, they say: “What superb imagination!”

“But you understand, don’t you?’

A RAINY afternoon drove Dan and Una over to play pirates in the Little Mill. If you don’t mind rats on the rafters and oats in your shoes, the mill-attic, with its trap-doors and inscriptions on beams about floods and sweethearts, is a splendid place. It is lighted by a foot-square window, called Duck Window, that looks across to Little Lindens Farm, and the spot where Jack Cade was killed.

When they had climbed the attic ladder (they called it the mainmast tree, out of the ballad of Sir Andrew Barton, and Dan ‘swarved it with might and main,’ as the ballad says) they saw a man sitting on Duck Window-sill. He was dressed in a plum-coloured doublet and tight plum-coloured hose, and he drew busily in a red-edged book.

‘Sit ye! Sit ye!’ Puck cried from a rafter overhead. ‘See what it is to be beautiful! Sir Harry Dawe—pardon, Hal—says I am the very image of a head for a gargoyle.’

The man laughed and raised his dark velvet cap to the children, and his grizzled hair bristled out in a stormy fringe. He was old—forty at least—but his eyes were young, with funny little wrinkles all round them. A satchel of embroidered leather hung from his broad belt, which looked interesting.

‘May we see?’ said Una, coming forward.

‘Surely—sure-ly!’ he said, moving up on the window-seat, and returned to his work with a silver-pointed pencil. Puck sat as though the grin were fixed for ever on his broad face, while they watched the quick, certain fingers that copied it. Presently the man took a reed pen from his satchel, and trimmed it with a little ivory knife, carved in the semblance of a fish.

‘Oh, what a beauty!’ cried Dan.

‘’Ware fingers! That blade is perilous sharp. I made it myself of the best Low Country crossbow steel. And so, too, this fish. When his back-fin travels to his tail—so—he swallows up the blade, even as the whale swallowed Gaffer Jonah . . . . Yes, and that’s my ink-horn. I made the four silver saints round it. Press Barnabas’s head. It opens, and then——’ He dipped the trimmed pen, and with careful boldness began to put in the essential lines of Puck’s rugged face, that had been but faintly revealed by the silver-point.

The children gasped, for it fairly leaped from the page.

As he worked, and the rain fell on the tiles, he talked—now clearly, now muttering, now breaking off to frown or smile at his work. He told them he was born at Little Lindens Farm, and his father used to beat him for drawing things instead of doing things, till an old priest called Father Roger, who drew illuminated letters in rich people’s books, coaxed the parents to let him take the boy as a sort of painter’s apprentice. Then he went with Father Roger to Oxford, where he cleaned plates and carried cloaks and shoes for the scholars of a College called Merton.

‘Didn’t you hate that?’ said Dan after a great many other questions.

‘I never thought on’t. Half Oxford was building new colleges or beautifying the old, and she had called to her aid the master-craftsmen of all Christendie—kings in their trade and honoured of Kings. I knew them. I worked for them: that was enough. No wonder——’ He stopped and laughed.

‘You became a great man, Hal,’ said Puck.

‘They said so, Robin. Even Bramante said so.’

‘Why? What did you do?’ Dan asked.

The artist looked at him queerly. ‘Things in stone and such, up and down England. You would not have heard of ’em. To come nearer home, I re-builded this little St. Barnabas’ church of ours. It cost me more trouble and sorrow than aught I’ve touched in my life. But ’twas a sound lesson.’

‘Um,’ said Dan. ‘We had lessons this morning.’

‘I’ll not afflict ye, lad,’ said Hal, while Puck roared. ‘Only ’tis strange to think how that little church was re-built, reroofed, and made glorious, thanks to some few godly Sussex iron-masters, a Bristow sailor lad, a proud ass called Hal o’ the Draft because, d’you see, he was always drawing and drafting; and’—he dragged the words slowly—‘and a Scotch pirate.’

‘Pirate?’ said Dan. He wriggled like a hooked fish.

‘Even that Andrew Barton you were singing of on the stair just now.’ He dipped again in the ink-well, and held his breath over a sweeping line, as though he had forgotten everything else.

‘Pirates don’t build churches, do they?’ said Dan. ‘Or do they?’

‘They help mightily,’ Hal laughed. ‘But you were at your lessons this morn, Jack Scholar.’

‘Oh, pirates aren’t lessons. It was only Bruce and his silly old spider,’ said Una. ‘Why did Sir Andrew Barton help you?’

‘I question if he ever knew it,’ said Hal, twinkling. ‘Robin, how a’ mischief’s name am I to tell these innocents what comes of sinful pride?’

‘Oh, we know all about that,’ said Una pertly. ‘If you get too beany—that’s cheeky—you get sat upon, of course.’

Hal considered a moment, pen in air, and Puck said some long words.

‘Aha! that was my case too,’ he cried. ‘Beany—you say—but certainly I did not conduct myself well. I was proud of—of such things as porches—a Galilee porch at Lincoln for choice—proud of one Torrigiano’s arm on my shoulder, proud of my knighthood when I made the gilt scroll-work for the Sovereign—our King’s ship. But Father Roger sitting in Merton Library, he did not forget me. At the top of my pride, when I and no other should have builded the porch at Lincoln, he laid it on me with a terrible forefinger to go back to my Sussex clays and re-build, at my own charges, my own church, where us Dawes have been buried for six generations. “Out! Son of my Art!” said he. “Fight the Devil at home ere you call yourself a man and a craftsman.” And I quaked, and I went . . . . How’s yon, Robin?’ He flourished the finished sketch before Puck.

‘Me! Me past peradventure,’ said Puck, smirking like a man at a mirror. ‘Ah, see! The rain has took off! I hate housen in daylight.’

page 2

‘Whoop! Holiday!’ cried Hal, leaping up. ‘Who’s for my Little Lindens? We can talk there.’

They tumbled downstairs, and turned past the dripping willows by the sunny mill-dam.

‘Body o’ me,’ said Hal, staring at the hop-garden, where the hops were just ready to blossom. ‘What are these? Vines? No, not vines, and they twine the wrong way to beans.’ He began to draw in his ready book.

‘Hops. New since your day,’ said Puck. ‘They’re an herb of Mars, and their flowers dried flavour ale. We say—

’Turkeys, Heresy, Hops, and Beer
Came into England all in one year.’

‘Heresy I know. I’ve seen Hops—God be praised for their beauty! What is your Turkis?’

The children laughed. They knew the Lindens turkeys, and as soon as they reached Lindens orchard on the hill the full flock charged at them.

Out came Hal’s book at once. ‘Hoity-toity!’ he cried. ‘Here’s Pride in purple feathers! Here’s wrathy contempt and the Pomps of the Flesh! How d’you call them?’

‘Turkeys! Turkeys!’ the children shouted, as the old gobbler raved and flamed against Hal’s plum-coloured hose.

‘Save Your Magnificence!’ he said. ‘I’ve drafted two good new things to-day.’ And he doffed his cap to the bubbling bird.

Then they walked through the grass to the knoll where Little Lindens stands. The old farmhouse, weather-tiled to the ground, took almost the colour of a blood-ruby in the afternoon light. The pigeons pecked at the mortar in the chimneystacks; the bees that had lived under the tiles since it was built filled the hot August air with their booming; and the smell of the box-tree by the dairy-window mixed with the smell of earth after rain, bread after baking, and a tickle of wood-smoke.

The farmer’s wife came to the door, baby on arm, shaded her brows against the sun, stooped to pluck a sprig of rosemary, and turned down the orchard. The old spaniel in his barrel barked once or twice to show he was in charge of the empty house. Puck clicked back the garden-gate.

‘D’you marvel that I love it?’ said Hal, in a whisper. ‘What can town folk know of the nature of housen—or land?’

They perched themselves arow on the old hacked oak bench in Lindens garden, looking across the valley of the brook at the fern-covered dimples and hollows of the Forge behind Hobden’s cottage. The old man was cutting a faggot in his garden by the hives. It was quite a second after his chopper fell that the chump of the blow reached their lazy ears.

‘Eh—yeh!’ said Hal. ‘I mind when where that old gaffer stands was Nether Forge—Master John Collins’s foundry. Many a night has his big trip-hammer shook me in my bed here. Boom-bitty! Boom-bitty! If the wind was east, I could hear Master Tom Collins’s forge at Stockens answering his brother, Boom-oop! Boom-oop! and midway between, Sir John Pelham’s sledge-hammers at Brightling would strike in like a pack o’ scholars, and “Hic-haec-hoc” they’d say, “Hic-haec-hoc,” till I fell asleep. Yes. The valley was as full o’ forges and fineries as a May shaw o’ cuckoos. All gone to grass now!’

‘What did they make?’ said Dan.

‘Guns for the King’s ships—and for others. Serpentines and cannon mostly. When the guns were cast, down would come the King’s Officers, and take our plough-oxen to haul them to the coast. Look! Here’s one of the first and finest craftsmen of the Sea!’

He fluttered back a page of his book, and showed them a young man’s head. Underneath was written: ‘Sebastianus.’

‘He came down with a King’s Order on Master John Collins for twenty serpentines (wicked little cannon they be!) to furnish a venture of ships. I drafted him thus sitting by our fire telling Mother of the new lands he’d find the far side the world. And he found them, too! There’s a nose to cleave through unknown seas! Cabot was his name—a Bristol lad—half a foreigner. I set a heap by him. He helped me to my church-building.’

‘I thought that was Sir Andrew Barton,’ said Dan.

‘Ay, but foundations before roofs,’ Hal answered. ‘Sebastian first put me in the way of it. I had come down here, not to serve God as a craftsman should, but to show my people how great a craftsman I was. They cared not, and it served me right, one split straw for my craft or my greatness. What a murrain call had I, they said, to mell with old St. Barnabas’? Ruinous the church had been since the Black Death, and ruinous she should remain; and I could hang myself in my new scaffold-ropes! Gentle and simple, high and low—the Hayes, the Fowles, the Fenners, the Collinses—they were all in a tale against me. Only Sir John Pelham up yonder at Brightling bade me heart-up and go on. Yet how could I? Did I ask Master Collins for his timber-tug to haul beams? The oxen had gone to Lewes after lime. Did he promise me a set of iron cramps or ties for the roof? They never came to hand, or else they were spaulty or cracked. So with everything. Nothing said, but naught done except I stood by them, and then done amiss. I thought the countryside was fair bewitched.’

‘It was, sure-ly,’ said Puck, knees under chin. ‘Did you never suspect ary one?’

‘Not till Sebastian came for his guns, and John Collins played him the same dog’s tricks as he’d played me with my ironwork. Week in, week out, two of three serpentines would be flawed in the casting, and only fit, they said, to be remelted. Then John Collins would shake his head, and vow he could pass no cannon for the King’s service that were not perfect. Saints! How Sebastian stormed! I know, for we sat on this bench sharing our sorrows inter-common.

‘When Sebastian had fumed away six weeks at Lindens and gotten just six serpentines, Dirk Brenzett, Master of the Cygnet hoy, sends me word that the block of stone he was fetching me from France for our new font he’d hove overboard to lighten his ship, chased by Andrew Barton up to Rye Port.’

‘Ah! The pirate!’ said Dan.

‘Yes. And while I am tearing my hair over this, Ticehurst Will, my best mason, comes to me shaking, and vowing that the Devil, horned, tailed, and chained, has run out on him from the church-tower, and the men would work there no more. So I took ’em off the foundations, which we were strengthening, and went into the Bell Tavern for a cup of ale. Says Master John Collins: “Have it your own way, lad: but if I was you, I’d take the sinnification o’ the sign, and leave old Barnabas’ Church alone!” And they all wagged their sinful heads, and agreed. Less afraid of the Devil than of me—as I saw later.

page 3

‘When I brought my sweet news to Lindens, Sebastian was limewashing the kitchen-beams for Mother. He loved her like a son.

‘“Cheer up, lad,” he says. “God’s where He was. Only you and I chance to be pure pute asses. We’ve been tricked, Hal, and more shame to me, a sailor, that I did not guess it before! You must leave your belfry alone, forsooth, because the Devil is adrift there; and I cannot get my serpentines because John Collins cannot cast them aright. Meantime Andrew Barton hawks off the Port of Rye. And why? To take those very serpentines which poor Cabot must whistle for; the said serpentines, I’ll wager my share of new Continents, being now hid away in St. Barnabas’ church tower. Clear as the Irish coast at noonday!”

‘“They’d sure never dare to do it,” I said; “and for another thing, selling cannon to the King’s enemies is black treason—hanging and fine.”

‘“It is sure, large profit. Men’ll dare any gallows for that. I have been a trader myself,” says he. “We must be upsides with ’em for the honour of Bristol.”

‘Then he hatched a plot, sitting on the limewash bucket. We gave out to ride o’ Tuesday to London and made a show of taking farewells of our friends—especially of Master John Collins. But at Wadhurst Woods we turned; rode home to the watermeadows; hid our horses in a willow-tot at the foot of the glebe, and, come night, stole a-tiptoe up-hill to Barnabas’ church again. A thick mist, and a moon striking through.

‘I had no sooner locked the tower-door behind us than over goes Sebastian full length in the dark.

‘“Pest!” he says. “Step high and feel low, Hal. I’ve stumbled over guns before.”

‘I groped, and one by one—the tower was pitchy dark—I counted the lither barrels of twenty serpentines laid out on pease straw. No conceal at all!

‘“There’s two demi-cannon my end,” says Sebastian, slapping metal. “They’ll be for Andrew Barton’s lower deck. Honest—honest John Collins! So this is his warehouse, his arsenal, his armoury! Now, see you why your pokings and pryings have raised the Devil in Sussex? You’ve hindered John’s lawful trade for months,” and he laughed where he lay.

‘A clay-cold tower is no fireside at midnight, so we climbed the belfry stairs, and there Sebastian trips over a cow-hide with its horns and tail.

‘“Aha! Your Devil has left his doublet! Does it become me, Hal?” He draws it on and capers in the slits of window—moonlight-won’erful devilish-like. Then he sits on the stairs, rapping with his tail on a board, and his back-aspect was dreader than his front, and a howlet lit in, and screeched at the horns of him.

‘“If you’d keep out the Devil, shut the door,” he whispered. “And that’s another false proverb, Hal, for I can hear your tower-door opening.”

‘“I locked it. Who a-plague has another key, then?” I said.

‘“All the congregation, to judge by their feet,” he says, and peers into the blackness. “Still! Still, Hal! Hear ’em grunt! That’s more o’ my serpentines, I’ll be bound. One—two—three—four they bear in! Faith, Andrew equips himself like an admiral! Twenty-four serpentines in all!’

‘As if it had been an echo, we heard John Collins’s voice come up all hollow: “Twentyfour serpentines and two demi-cannon. That’s the full tally for Sir Andrew Barton.”

‘“Courtesy costs naught,” whispers Sebastian. “Shall I drop my dagger on his head?”

‘“They go over to Rye o’ Thursday in the wool-wains, hid under the wool packs. Dirk Brenzett meets them at Udimore, as before,” says John.

‘“Lord! What a worn, handsmooth trade it is!” says Sebastian. “I lay we are the sole two babes in the village that have not our lawful share in the venture.”

‘There was a full score folk below, talking like all Robertsbridge Market. We counted them by voice.

‘Master John Collins pipes: “The guns for the French carrack must lie here next month. Will, when does your young fool (me, so please you!) come back from Lunnon?”

‘“No odds,” I heard Ticehurst Will answer. “Lay ’em just where you’ve a mind, Mus’ Collins. We’re all too afraid o’ the Devil to mell with the tower now.” And the long knave laughed.

‘“Ah ! ’tis easy enow for you to raise the Devil, Will,” says another—Ralph Hobden of the Forge.

‘“Aaa-men!” roars Sebastian, and ere I could hold him, he leaps down the stairs—won’erful devilish-like—howling no bounds. He had scarce time to lay out for the nearest than they ran. Saints, how they ran! We heard them pound on the door of the Bell Tavern, and then we ran too.

‘“What’s next?” says Sebastian, looping up his cow-tail as he leaped the briars. “I’ve broke honest John’s face.”

‘“Ride to Sir John Pelham’s,” I said. “He is the only one that ever stood by me.”

‘We rode to Brightling, and past Sir John’s lodges, where the keepers would have shot at us for deer-stealers, and we had Sir John down into his justice’s chair, and when we had told him our tale and showed him the cow-hide which Sebastian wore still girt about him, he laughed till the tears ran.

‘“Wel-a-well!” he says. “I’ll see justice done before daylight. What’s your complaint? Master Collins is my old friend.”

‘“He’s none of mine,” I cried. “When I think how he and his likes have baulked and dozened and cozened me at every turn over the church”——and I choked at the thought.

‘“Ah, but ye see now they needed it for another use,” says he, smoothly.

‘“So they did my serpentines,” Sebastian cries. “I should be half across the Western Ocean by now if my guns had been ready. But they’re sold to a Scotch pirate by your old friend.’

page 4

‘“Where’s your proof?” says Sir John, stroking his beard.

‘“I broke my shins over them not an hour since, and I heard John give order where they were to be taken,” says Sebastian.

‘“Words! Words only,” says Sir John. “Master Collins is somewhat of a liar at best.”

‘He carried it so gravely that, for the moment, I thought he was dipped in this secret traffick too, and that there was not an honest ironmaster in Sussex.

‘“Name o’ Reason!” says Sebastian, and raps with his cow-tail on the table, “whose guns are they, then?”

‘“Yours, manifestly,” says Sir John. “You come with the King’s Order for ’em, and Master Collins casts them in his foundry. If he chooses to bring them up from Nether Forge and lay ’em out in the church tower, why they are e’en so much the nearer to the main road and you are saved a day’s hauling. What a coil to make of a mere act of neighbourly kindness, lad!”

‘“I fear I have requited him very scurvily,” says Sebastian, looking at his knuckles. “But what of the demi-cannon? I could do with ’em well, but they are not in the King’s Order.”

‘“Kindness—loving-kindness,” says Sir John. “Questionless, in his zeal for the King and his love for you, John adds those two cannon as a gift. ’Tis plain as this coming daylight, ye stockfish!”

‘“So it is,” says Sebastian. “Oh, Sir John, Sir John, why did you never use the sea? You are lost ashore.” And he looked on him with great love.

‘“I do my best in my station.” Sir John strokes his beard again and rolls forth his deep drumming Justice’s voice thus: “But—suffer me!—you two lads, on some midnight frolic into which I probe not, roystering around the taverns, surprise Master Collins at his”—he thinks a moment—“at his good deeds done by stealth. Ye surprise him, I say, cruelly.”

‘“Truth, Sir John. If you had seen him run!” says Sebastian.

‘“On this you ride breakneck to me with a tale of pirates, and wool-wains, and cow-hides, which, though it hath moved my mirth as a man, offendeth my reason as a magistrate. So I will e’en accompany you back to the tower with, perhaps, some few of my own people, and three – four wagons, and I’ll be your warrant that Master John Collins will freely give you your guns and your demi-cannon, Master Sebastian.” He breaks into his proper voice—“I warned the old tod and his neighbours long ago that they’d come to trouble with their side-sellings and bye-dealings; but we cannot have half Sussex hanged for a little gun-running. Are ye content, lads?”

‘“I’d commit any treason for two demicannon,” said Sebastian, and rubs his hands.

‘“Ye have just compounded with rank treason-felony for the same bribe,“ says Sir John. “Wherefore to horse, and get the guns.”’

‘But Master Collins meant the guns for Sir Andrew Barton all along, didn’t he?’ said Dan.

‘Questionless, that he did,’ said Hal. ‘But he lost them. We poured into the village on the red edge of dawn, Sir John horsed, in half-armour, his pennon flying; behind him thirty stout Brightling knaves, five abreast; behind them four wool-wains, and behind them four trumpets to triumph over the jest, blowing: Our King went forth to Normandie. When we halted and rolled the ringing guns out of the tower, ’twas for all the world like Friar Roger’s picture of the French siege in the Queen’s Missal-book.’

‘And what did we—I mean, what did our village do?’ said Dan.

‘Oh! Bore it nobly—nobly,’ cried Hal. ‘Though they had tricked me, I was proud of them. They came out of their housen, looked at that little army as though it had been a post, and went their shut-mouthed way. Never a sign! Never a word! They’d ha’ perished sooner than let Brightling overcrow us. Even that villain, Ticehurst Will, coming out of the Bell for his morning ale, he all but runs under Sir John’s horse.

‘“Ware, Sirrah Devil!” cries Sir John, reining back.

‘“Oh!” says Will. “Market day, is it? And all the bullocks from Brightling here?”

‘I spared him his belting for that—the brazen knave!

‘But John Collins was our masterpiece! He happened along-street (his jaw tied up where Sebastian had clouted him) when we were trundling the first demi-cannon through the lych-gate.

‘“I reckon you’ll find her middlin’ heavy,” he says. “If you’ve a mind to pay, I’ll loan ye my timber-tug. She won’t lie easy on ary wool-wain.”

‘That was the one time I ever saw Sebastian taken flat aback. He opened and shut his mouth, fishy-like.

‘“No offence,” says Master John. “You’ve got her reasonable good cheap. I thought ye might not grudge me a groat if I helped move her.” Ah, he was a masterpiece! They say that morning’s work cost our John two hundred pounds, and he never winked an eyelid, not even when he saw the guns all carted off to Lewes.’

‘Neither then nor later?’ said Puck.

‘Once. ‘Twas after he gave St. Barnabas’ the new chime of bells. (Oh, there was nothing the Collinses, or the Hayes, or the Fowles, or the Fenners would not do for the church then! “Ask and have” was their song.) We had rung ’em in, and he was in the tower with Black Nick Fowle, that gave us our rood-screen. The old man pinches the bell-rope one hand and scratches his neck with t’other. “Sooner she was pulling yon clapper than my neck,” he says. That was all! That was Sussex—seely Sussex for everlastin’ !’

‘And what happened after?’ said Una.

‘I went back into England,’ said Hal, slowly. ‘I’d had my lesson against pride. But they tell me I left St. Barnabas’ a jewel—justabout a jewel! Wel-a-well! ‘Twas done for and among my own people, and—Father Roger was right—I never knew such trouble or such triumph since. That’s the nature o’ things. A dear—dear land.’ He dropped his chin on his chest.

‘There’s your Father at the Forge. What’s he talking to old Hobden about?’ said Puck, opening his hand with three leaves in it.

Dan looked towards the cottage.

‘Oh, I know. It’s that old oak lying across the brook. Pater always wants it grubbed.’

In the still valley they could hear old Hobden’s deep tones.

‘Have it as you’ve a mind to,’ he was saying. ‘But the vivers of her roots they hold the bank together. If you grub her out, the bank she’ll all come tearin’ down, an’ next floods the brook’ll swarve up. But have it as you’ve a mind. The mistuss she sets a heap by the ferns on her trunk.’

‘Oh! I’ll think it over,’ said the Pater.

Una laughed a little bubbling chuckle.

‘What Devil’s in that belfry?’ said Hal, with a lazy laugh. ‘That should be a Hobden by his voice.’

‘Why, the oak is the regular bridge for all the rabbits between the Three Acre and our meadow. The best place for wires on the farm, Hobden says. He’s got two there now,’ Una answered. ‘He won’t ever let it be grubbed!’

‘Ah, Sussex! Silly Sussex for everlastin’,’ murmured Hal; and the next moment their Father’s voice calling across to Little Lindens broke the spell as little St. Barnabas’ clock struck five.

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DAN had gone in for building model boats; but after he had filled the schoolroom with chips, which he expected Una to clear away, they turned him out of doors and he took all his tools up the hill to Mr Springett’s yard, where he knew he could make as much mess as he chose. Old Mr Springett was a builder, contractor, and sanitary engineer, and his yard, which opened off the village street, was always full of interesting things. At one end of it was a long loft, reached by a ladder, where he kept his iron-bound scaffold-planks, tins of paints, pulleys, and odds and ends he had found in old houses. He would sit here by the hour watching his carts as they loaded or unloaded in the yard below, while Dan gouged and grunted at the carpenter’s bench near the loft window. Mr Springett and Dan had always been particular friends, for Mr Springett was so old he could remember when railways were being made in the southern counties of England, and people were allowed to drive dogs in carts.One hot, still afternoon—the tar-paper on the roof smelt like ships—Dan, in his shirt-sleeves, was smoothing down a new schooner’s bow, and Mr Springett was talking of barns and houses he had built. He said he never forgot any stick or stone he had ever handled, or any man, woman, or child he had ever met. Just then he was very proud of the Village Hall at the entrance of the village, which he had finished a few weeks before.

‘An’ I don’t mind tellin’ you, Mus’ Dan,’ he said, ‘that the Hall will be my last job top of this mortal earth. I didn’t make ten pounds—no, nor yet five—out o’ the whole contrac’, but my name’s lettered on the foundation stone—Ralph Springett, Builder—and the stone she’s bedded on four foot good concrete. If she shifts any time these five hundred years, I’ll sure-ly turn in my grave. I told the Lunnon architec’ so when he come down to oversee my work.’

‘What did he say?’ Dan was sandpapering the schooner’s port bow.

‘Nothing. The Hall ain’t more than one of his small jobs for him, but ’tain’t small to me, an’ my name is cut and lettered, frontin’ the village street, I do hope an’ pray, for time everlastin’. You’ll want the little round file for that holler in her bow. Who’s there?’ Mr Springett turned stiffly in his chair.

A long pile of scaffold-planks ran down the centre of the loft. Dan looked, and saw Hal o’ the Draft’s touzled head beyond them. [See ‘Hal o’ the Draft’ in Puck of Pook’s Hill.]

‘Be you the builder of the Village Hall?’ he asked of Mr Springett.

‘I be,’ was the answer. ‘But if you want a job—’

Hal laughed. ‘No, faith!’he said. ‘Only the Hall is as good and honest a piece of work as I’ve ever run a rule over. So, being born hereabouts, and being reckoned a master among masons, and accepted as a master mason, I made bold to pay my brotherly respects to the builder.’

‘Aa—um!’ Mr Springett looked important. ‘I be a bit rusty, but I’ll try ye!’

He asked Hal several curious questions, and the answers must have pleased him, for he invited Hal to sit down. Hal moved up, always keeping behind the pile of planks so that only his head showed, and sat down on a trestle in the dark corner at the back of Mr Springett’s desk. He took no notice of Dan, but talked at once to Mr Springett about bricks, and cement, and lead and glass, and after a while Dan went on with his work. He knew Mr Springett was pleased, because he tugged his white sandy beard, and smoked his pipe in short puffs. The two men seemed to agree about everything, but when grown-ups agree they interrupt each other almost as much as if they were quarrelling. Hal said something about workmen.

‘Why, that’s what I always say,’ Mr Springett cried. ‘A man who can only do one thing, he’s but next-above-fool to the man that can’t do nothin’. That’s where the Unions make their mistake.’

‘My thought to the very dot.’ Dan heard Hal slap his tight-hosed leg. ‘I’ve suffered in my time from these same Guilds—Unions, d’you call ’em? All their precious talk of the mysteries of their trades—why, what does it come to?’

‘Nothin’! You’ve justabout hit it,’ said Mr Springett, and rammed his hot tobacco with his thumb.

‘Take the art of wood-carving,’ Hal went on. He reached across the planks, grabbed a wooden mallet, and moved his other hand as though he wanted something. Mr Springett without a word passed him one of Dan’s broad chisels. ‘Ah! Wood-carving, for example. If you can cut wood and have a fair draft of what ye mean to do, a’ Heaven’s name take chisel and maul and let drive at it, say I! You’ll soon find all the mystery, forsooth, of wood- carving under your proper hand!’ Whack, came the mallet on the chisel, and a sliver of wood curled up in front of it. Mr Springett watched like an old raven.

‘All art is one, man—one!’ said Hal between whacks; ’and to wait on another man to finish out—’

‘To finish out your work ain’t no sense,’ Mr Springett cut in. ‘That’s what I’m always sayin’ to the boy here.’ He nodded towards Dan. ‘That’s what I said when I put the new wheel into Brewster’s Mill in Eighteen hundred Seventy-two. I reckoned I was millwright enough for the job ’thout bringin’ a man from Lunnon. An’ besides, dividin’ work eats up profits, no bounds.’

Hal laughed his beautiful deep laugh, and Mr Springett joined in till Dan laughed too.

‘You handle your tools, I can see,’ said Mr Springett. ‘I reckon, if you’re any way like me, you’ve found yourself hindered by those—Guilds, did you call ’em? —Unions, we say.’

‘You may say so!’ Hal pointed to a white scar on his cheekbone. ‘This is a remembrance from the Master watching-Foreman of Masons on Magdalen Tower, because, please you, I dared to carve stone without their leave. They said a stone had slipped from the cornice by accident.’

‘I know them accidents. There’s no way to disprove ’em. An’ stones ain’t the only things that slip,’ Mr Springett grunted. Hal went on:

‘I’ve seen a scaffold-plank keckle and shoot a too-clever workman thirty foot on to the cold chancel floor below. And a rope can break—’

‘Yes, natural as nature; an’ lime’ll fly up in a man’s eyes without any breath o’ wind sometimes,’ said Mr Springett. ‘But who’s to show ‘twasn’t a accident?’

‘Who do these things?’ Dan asked, and straightened his back at the bench as he turned the schooner end-for-end in the vice to get at her counter.

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‘Them which don’t wish other men to work no better nor quicker than they do,’ growled Mr Springett. ‘Don’t pinch her so hard in the vice, Mus’ Dan. Put a piece o’ rag in the jaws, or you’ll bruise her. More than that’—he turned towards Hal—‘if a man has his private spite laid up against you, the Unions give him his excuse for workin’ it off.’

‘Well I know it,’said Hal.

‘They never let you go, them spiteful ones. I knowed a plasterer in Eighteen hundred Sixty-one—down to the wells. He was a Frenchy—a bad enemy he was.’

‘I had mine too. He was an Italian, called Benedetto. I met him first at Oxford on Magdalen Tower when I was learning my trade—or trades, I should say. A bad enemy he was, as you say, but he came to be my singular good friend,’ said Hal as he put down the mallet and settled himself comfortably.

‘What might his trade have been—plastering’ Mr Springett asked.

‘Plastering of a sort. He worked in stucco—fresco we call it. Made pictures on plaster. Not but what he had a fine sweep of the hand in drawing. He’d take the long sides of a cloister, trowel on his stuff, and roll out his great all-abroad pictures of saints and croppy-topped trees quick as a webster unrolling cloth almost. Oh, Benedetto could draw, but ’a was a little-minded man, professing to be full of secrets of colour or plaster—common tricks, all of ’em—and his one single talk was how Tom, Dick or Harry had stole this or t’other secret art from him.’

‘I know that sort,’ said Mr Springett. ‘There’s no keeping peace or making peace with such. An’ they’re mostly born an’ bone idle.’

‘True. Even his fellow-countrymen laughed at his jealousy. We two came to loggerheads early on Magdalen Tower. I was a youngster then. Maybe I spoke my mind about his work.’

‘You shouldn’t never do that.’ Mr Springett shook his head. ‘That sort lay it up against you.’

‘True enough. This Benedetto did most specially. Body o’ me, the man lived to hate me! But I always kept my eyes open on a plank or a scaffold. I was mighty glad to be shut of him when he quarrelled with his Guild foreman, and went off, nose in air, and paints under his arm. But’—Hal leaned forward—‘if you hate a man or a man hates you—’

‘I know. You’re everlastin’ running acrost him,’ Mr Springett interrupted. ‘Excuse me, sir.’ He leaned out of the window, and shouted to a carter who was loading a cart with bricks.

‘Ain’t you no more sense than to heap ’em up that way?’ he said. ‘Take an’ throw a hundred of ’em off. It’s more than the team can compass. Throw ’em off, I tell you, and make another trip for what’s left over. Excuse me, sir. You was sayin’—’

‘I was saying that before the end of the year I went to Bury to strengthen the lead-work in the great Abbey east window there.’

‘Now that’s just one of the things I’ve never done. But I mind there was a cheap excursion to Chichester in Eighteen hundred Seventy-nine, an’ I went an’ watched ’em leadin’ a won’erful fine window in Chichester Cathedral. I stayed watchin’ till ’twas time for us to go back. Dunno as I had two drinks p’raps, all that day.’

Hal smiled. ‘At Bury, then, sure enough, I met my enemy Benedetto. He had painted a picture in plaster on the south wall of the Refectory—a noble place for a noble thing—a picture of Jonah.’

‘Ah! Jonah an’ his whale. I’ve never been as far as Bury. You’ve worked about a lot,’ said Mr Springett, with his eyes on the carter below.

‘No. Not the whale. This was a picture of Jonah and the pompion that withered. But all that Benedetto had shown was a peevish grey-beard huggled up in angle-edged drapery beneath a pompion on a wooden trellis. This last, being a dead thing, he’d drawn it as ’twere to the life. But fierce old Jonah, bared in the sun, angry even to death that his cold prophecy was disproven—Jonah, ashamed, and already hearing the children of Nineveh running to mock him—ah, that was what Benedetto had not drawn!’

‘He better ha’ stuck to his whale, then,’ said Mr Springett.

‘He’d ha’ done no better with that. He draws the damp cloth off the picture, an’ shows it to me. I was a craftsman too, d’ye see?’

‘“Tis good,” I said, “but it goes no deeper than the plaster.”

‘“What?” he said in a whisper.

‘“Be thy own judge, Benedetto,” I answered. “Does it go deeper than the plaster?”

‘He reeled against a piece of dry wall. “No,” he says, “and I know it. I could not hate thee more than I have done these five years, but if I live, I will try, Hal. I will try.” Then he goes away. I pitied him, but I had spoken truth. His picture went no deeper than the plaster.’

‘Ah!’ said Mr Springett, who had turned quite red. ‘You was talkin’ so fast I didn’t understand what you was drivin’ at. I’ve seen men—good workmen they was—try to do more than they could do, and—and they couldn’t compass it. They knowed it, and it nigh broke their hearts like. You was in your right, o’ course, sir, to say what you thought o’ his work; but if you’ll excuse me, was you in your duty?’

‘I was wrong to say it,’ Hal replied. ‘God forgive me—I was young! He was workman enough himself to know where he failed. But it all came evens in the long run. By the same token, did ye ever hear o’ one Torrigiano—Torrisany we called him?’

‘I can’t say I ever did. Was he a Frenchy like?’

‘No, a hectoring, hard-mouthed, long-sworded Italian builder, as vain as a peacock and as strong as a bull, but, mark you, a master workman. More than that—he could get his best work out of the worst men.’

‘Which it’s a gift. I had a foreman-bricklayer like him once,’ said Mr Springett. ‘He used to prod ’em in the back like with a pointing-trowel, and they did wonders.’

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I’ve seen our Torrisany lay a ’prentice down with one buffet and raise him with another—to make a mason of him. I worked under him at building a chapel in London—a chapel and a tomb for the King.’

‘I never knew kings went to chapel much,’ said Mr Springett. ‘But I always hold with a man—don’t care who he be—seein’ about his own grave before he dies. ’Tidn’t the sort of thing to leave to your family after the will’s read. I reckon ’twas a fine vault?’

‘None finer in England. This Torrigiano had the contract for it, as you’d say. He picked master craftsmen from all parts—England, France, Italy, the Low Countries—no odds to him so long as they knew their work, and he drove them like—like pigs at Brightling Fair. He called us English all pigs. We suffered it because he was a master in his craft. If he misliked any work that a man had done, with his own great hands he’d rive it out, and tear it down before us all. “Ah, you pig—you English pig!” he’d scream in the dumb wretch’s face. “You answer me? You look at me? You think at me? Come out with me into the cloisters. I will teach you carving myself. I will gild you all over!” But when his passion had blown out, he’d slip his arm round the man’s neck, and impart knowledge worth gold. ’Twould have done your heart good, Mus’ Springett, to see the two hundred of us masons, jewellers, carvers, gilders, iron-workers and the rest—all toiling like cock-angels, and this mad Italian hornet fleeing one to next up and down the chapel. Done your heart good, it would!’

‘I believe you,’ said Mr Springett. ‘In Eighteen hundred Fifty-four, I mind, the railway was bein’ made into Hastin’s. There was two thousand navvies on it—all young—all strong—an’ I was one of ’em. Oh, dearie me! Excuse me, sir, but was your enemy workin’ with you?’

‘Benedetto? Be sure he was. He followed me like a lover. He painted pictures on the chapel ceiling—slung from a chair. Torrigiano made us promise not to fight till the work should be finished. We were both master craftsmen, do ye see, and he needed us. None the less, I never went aloft to carve ’thout testing all my ropes and knots each morning. We were never far from each other. Benedetto ’ud sharpen his knife on his sole while he waited for his plaster to dry—wheet, wheet, wheet. I’d hear it where I hung chipping round a pillar-head, and we’d nod to each other friendly-like. Oh, he was a craftsman, was Benedetto, but his hate spoiled his eye and his hand. I mind the night I had finished the models for the bronze saints round the tomb; Torrigiano embraced me before all the chapel, and bade me to supper. I met Benedetto when I came out. He was slavering in the porch Like a mad dog.’

‘Workin’ himself up to it?’ said Mr Springett. ‘Did he have it in at ye that night?’

‘No, no. That time he kept his oath to Torrigiano. But I pitied him. Eh, well! Now I come to my own follies. I had never thought too little of myself; but after Torrisany had put his arm round my neck, I—I’—Hal broke into a laugh—‘I lay there was not much odds ’twixt me and a cock-sparrow in his pride.’

‘I was pretty middlin’ young once on a time,’ said Mr Springett.

‘Then ye know that a man can’t drink and dice and dress fine, and keep company above his station, but his work suffers for it, Mus’ Springett.’

‘I never held much with dressin’ up, but—you’re right! The worst mistakes I ever made they was made of a Monday morning,’ Mr Springett answered. ‘We’ve all been one sort of fool or t’other. Mus’ Dan, Mus’ Dan, take the smallest gouge, or you’ll be spluttin’ her stem works clean out. Can’t ye see the grain of the wood don’t favour a chisel?’

‘I’ll spare you some of my follies. But there was a man called Brygandyne—Bob Brygandyne—Clerk of the King’s Ships, a little, smooth, bustling atomy, as clever as a woman to get work done for nothin’—a won’erful smooth-tongued pleader. He made much o’ me, and asked me to draft him out a drawing, a piece of carved and gilt scroll-work for the bows of one of the King’s Ships—the Sovereign was her name.’

‘Was she a man-of-war?’asked Dan.

‘She was a warship, and a woman called Catherine of Castile desired the King to give her the ship for a pleasure-ship of her own. I did not know at the time, but she’d been at Bob to get this scroll-work done and fitted that the King might see it. I made him the picture, in an hour, all of a heat after supper—one great heaving play of dolphins and a Neptune or so reining in webby-footed sea-horses, and Arion with his harp high atop of them. It was twenty-three foot long, and maybe nine foot deep—painted and gilt.’

‘It must ha’ justabout looked fine,’ said Mr Springett.

‘That’s the curiosity of it. ’Twas bad—rank bad. In my conceit I must needs show it to Torrigiano, in the chapel. He straddles his legs, hunches his knife behind him, and whistles like a storm-cock through a sleet-shower. Benedetto was behind him. We were never far apart, I’ve told you.

‘“That is pig’s work,” says our Master. “Swine’s work. You make any more such things, even after your fine Court suppers, and you shall be sent away.”

‘Benedetto licks his lips like a cat. “It is so bad then, Master?” he says. “What a pity!”

‘”Yes,” says Torrigiano. “Scarcely you could do things so bad. I will condescend to show.”

‘He talks to me then and there. No shouting, no swearing (it was too bad for that); but good, memorable counsel, bitten in slowly. Then he sets me to draft out a pair of iron gates, to take, as he said, the taste of my naughty dolphins out of my mouth. Iron’s sweet stuff if you don’t torture her, and hammered work is all pure, truthful line, with a reason and a support for every curve and bar of it. A week at that settled my stomach handsomely, and the Master let me put the work through the smithy, where I sweated out more of my foolish pride.’

‘Good stuff is good iron,’ said Mr Springett. ‘I done a pair of lodge gates once in Eighteen hundred Sixty-three.’

‘Oh, I forgot to say that Bob Brygandyne whipped away my draft of the ship’s scroll-work, and would not give it back to me to re-draw. He said ’twould do well enough. Howsoever, my lawful work kept me too busied to remember him. Body o’ me, but I worked that winter upon the gates and the bronzes for the tomb as I’d never worked before! I was leaner than a lath, but I lived—I lived then!’ Hal looked at Mr Springett with his wise, crinkled-up eyes, and the old man smiled back.

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‘Ouch!’ Dan cried. He had been hollowing out the schooner’s after-deck, the little gouge had slipped and gashed the ball of his left thumb,—an ugly, triangular tear.

‘That came of not steadying your wrist,’ said Hal calmly. ‘Don’t bleed over the wood. Do your work with your heart’s blood, but no need to let it show.’ He rose and peered into a corner of the loft.

Mr Springett had risen too, and swept down a ball of cobwebs from a rafter.

‘Clap that on,’ was all he said, ’and put your handkerchief atop. ’Twill cake over in a minute. It don’t hurt now, do it?’

‘No,’ said Dan indignantly. ‘You know it has happened lots of times. I’ll tie it up myself. Go on, sir.’

‘And it’ll happen hundreds of times more,’ said Hal with a friendly nod as he sat down again. But he did not go on till Dan’s hand was tied up properly. Then he said:

‘One dark December day—too dark to judge colour—we was all sitting and talking round the fires in the chapel (you heard good talk there), when Bob Brygandyne bustles in and—“Hal, you’re sent for,” he squeals. I was at Torrigiano’s feet on a pile of put-locks, as I might be here, toasting a herring on my knife’s point. ’Twas the one English thing our Master liked—salt herring.

‘“I’m busy, about my art,” I calls.

‘“Art?” says Bob. “What’s Art compared to your scroll-work for the Sovereign? Come.”

‘“Be sure your sins will find you out,” says Torrigiano. “Go with him and see.” As I followed Bob out I was aware of Benedetto, like a black spot when the eyes are tired, sliddering up behind me.

‘Bob hurries through the streets in the raw fog, slips into a doorway, up stairs, along passages, and at last thrusts me into a little cold room vilely hung with Flemish tapestries, and no furnishing except a table and my draft of the Sovereign’s scrollwork. Here he leaves me. Presently comes in a dark, long-nosed man in a fur cap.

‘“Master Harry Dawe?” said he.

‘“The same,” I says. “Where a plague has Bob Brygandyne gone?”

‘His thin eyebrows surged up in a piece and come down again in a stiff bar. “He went to the King,” he says.

‘“All one. Where’s your pleasure with me?” I says, shivering, for it was mortal cold.

‘He lays his hand flat on my draft. “Master Dawe,” he says, “do you know the present price of gold leaf for all this wicked gilding of yours?”

‘By that I guessed he was some cheese-paring clerk or other of the King’s Ships, so I gave him the price. I forget it now, but it worked out to thirty pounds—carved, gilt, and fitted in place.

‘“Thirty pounds!” he said, as though I had pulled a tooth of him. “You talk as though thirty pounds was to be had for the asking. None the less,” he says, “your draft’s a fine piece of work.”

‘I’d been looking at it ever since I came in, and ’twas viler even than I judged it at first. My eye and hand had been purified the past months, d’ye see, by my iron work.

‘“I could do it better now,” I said. The more I studied my squabby Neptunes the less I liked ’em; and Arion was a pure flaming shame atop of the unbalanced dolphins.

‘“I doubt it will be fresh expense to draft it again,” he says.

‘“Bob never paid me for the first draft. I lay he’ll never pay me for the second. ’Twill cost the King nothing if I re-draw it,” I says.

‘“There’s a woman wishes it to be done quickly,” he says. “We’ll stick to your first drawing, Master Dawe. But thirty pounds is thirty pounds. You must make it less.’

‘And all the while the faults in my draft fair leaped out and hit me between the eyes. At any cost, I thinks to myself, I must get it back and re-draft it. He grunts at me impatiently, and a splendid thought comes to me, which shall save me. By the same token, It was quite honest.’

‘They ain’t always,’ says Mr Springett. ‘How did you get out of it?’

‘By the truth. I says to Master Fur Cap, as I might to you here, I says, “I’ll tell you something, since you seem a knowledgeable man. Is the Sovereign to lie in Thames river all her days, or will she take the high seas?”

‘“Oh,” he says quickly, “the King keeps no cats that don’t catch mice. She must sail the seas, Master Dawe. She’ll be hired to merchants for the trade. She’ll be out in all shapes o’ weathers. Does that make any odds?”

‘“Why, then,” says I, “the first heavy sea she sticks her nose into’ll claw off half that scroll-work, and the next will finish it. If she’s meant for a pleasure-ship give me my draft again, and I’ll porture you a pretty, light piece of scroll-work, good cheap. If she’s meant for the open-sea, pitch the draft into the fire. She can never carry that weight on her bows.

‘He looks at me squintlings and plucks his under-lip.

‘“Is this your honest, unswayed opinion?” he says.

‘”Body o’ me! Ask about!” I says. “Any seaman could tell you ’tis true. I’m advising you against my own profit, but why I do so is my own concern.

‘“Not altogether”, he says. “It’s some of mine. You’ve saved me thirty pounds, Master Dawe, and you’ve given me good arguments to use against a willful woman that wants my fine new ship for her own toy. We’ll not have any scroll-work.” His face shined with pure joy.

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‘“Then see that the thirty pounds you’ve saved on it are honestly paid the King,” I says, “and keep clear o’ women-folk.” I gathered up my draft and crumpled it under my arm. “If that’s all you need of me I’ll be gone,” I says. “I’m pressed.”

‘He turns him round and fumbles in a corner. “Too pressed to be made a knight, Sir Harry?” he says, and comes at me smiling, with three-quarters of a rusty sword.

‘I pledge you my Mark I never guessed it was the King till that moment. I kneeled, and he tapped me on the shoulder.

‘“Rise up, Sir Harry Dawe,” he says, and, in the same breath, “I’m pressed, too,” and slips through the tapestries, leaving me like a stuck calf.

‘It come over me, in a bitter wave like, that here was I, a master craftsman, who had worked no bounds, soul or body, to make the King’s tomb and chapel a triumph and a glory for all time; and here, d’ye see, I was made knight, not for anything I’d slaved over, or given my heart and guts to, but expressedly because I’d saved him thirty pounds and a tongue-lashing from Catherine of Castille—she that had asked for the ship. That thought shrivelled me with insides while I was folding away my draft. On the heels of it—maybe you’ll see why—I began to grin to myself. I thought of the earnest simplicity of the man—the King, I should say—because I’d saved him the money; his smile as though he’d won half France! I thought of my own silly pride and foolish expectations that some day he’d honour me as a master craftsman. I thought of the broken-tipped sword he’d found behind the hangings; the dirt of the cold room, and his cold eye, wrapped up in his own concerns, scarcely resting on me. Then I remembered the solemn chapel roof and the bronzes about the stately tomb he’d lie in, and—d’ye see? —the unreason of it all—the mad high humour of it all—took hold on me till I sat me down on a dark stair-head in a passage, and laughed till I could laugh no more. What else could I have done?

‘I never heard his feet behind me—he always walked like a cat—but his arm slid round my neck, pulling me back where I sat, till my head lay on his chest, and his left hand held the knife plumb over my heart—Benedetto! Even so I laughed—the fit was beyond my holding—laughed while he ground his teeth in my ear. He was stark crazed for the time.

‘“Laugh,” he said. “Finish the laughter. I’ll not cut ye short. Tell me now”—he wrenched at my head—“why the King chose to honour you,—you—you—you lickspittle Englishman? I am full of patience now. I have waited so long.” Then he was off at score about his Jonah in Bury Refectory, and what I’d said of it, and his pictures in the chapel which all men praised and none looked at twice (as if that was my fault!), and a whole parcel of words and looks treasured up against me through years.

‘“Ease off your arm a little,” I said. “I cannot die by choking, for I am just dubbed knight, Benedetto.”

‘“Tell me, and I’ll confess ye, Sir Harry Dawe, Knight. There’s a long night before ye. Tell,” says he.

‘So I told him—his chin on my crown—told him all; told it as well and with as many words as I have ever told a tale at a supper with Torrigiano. I knew Benedetto would understand, for, mad or sad, he was a craftsman. I believed it to be the last tale I’d ever tell top of mortal earth, and I would not put out bad work before I left the Lodge. All art’s one art, as I said. I bore Benedetto no malice. My spirits, d’ye see, were catched up in a high, solemn exaltation, and I saw all earth’s vanities foreshortened and little, laid out below me like a town from a cathedral scaffolding. I told him what befell, and what I thought of it. I gave him the King’s very voice at “Master Dawe, you’ve saved me thirty pounds!”; his peevish grunt while he looked for the sword; and how the badger-eyed figures of Glory and Victory leered at me from the Flemish hangings. Body o’ me, ’twas a fine, noble tale, and, as I thought, my last work on earth.

‘“That is how I was honoured by the King,” I said. “They’ll hang ye for killing me, Benedetto. And, since you’ve killed in the King’s Palace, they’ll draw and quarter you; but you’re too mad to care. Grant me, though, ye never heard a better tale.” ‘He said nothing, but I felt him shake. My head on his chest shook; his right arm fell away, his left dropped the knife, and he leaned with both hands on my shoulder—shaking—shaking! I turned me round. No need to put my foot on his knife. The man was speechless with laughter—honest craftsman’s mirth. The first time I’d ever seen him laugh. You know the mirth that cuts off the very breath, while ye stamp and snatch at the short ribs? That was Benedetto’s case.

‘When he began to roar and bay and whoop in the passage, I haled him out into the street, and there we leaned against the wall and had it all over again—waving our hands and wagging our heads—till the watch came to know if we were drunk.

‘Benedetto says to ’em, solemn as an owl: “You have saved me thirty pounds, Mus’ Dawe,” and off he pealed. In some sort we were mad-drunk—I because dear life had been given back to me, and he because, as he said afterwards, because the old crust of hatred round his heart was broke up and carried away by laughter. His very face had changed too.

‘“Hal,” he cries, “I forgive thee. Forgive me too, Hal. Oh, you English, you English! Did it gall thee, Hal, to see the rust on the dirty sword? Tell me again, Hal, how the King grunted with joy. Oh, let us tell the Master.”

‘So we reeled back to the chapel, arms round each other’s necks, and when we could speak—he thought we’d been fighting—we told the Master. Yes, we told Torrigiano, and he laughed till he rolled on the new cold pavement. Then he knocked our heads together.

‘“Ah, you English!” he cried. “You are more than pigs. You are English. Now you are well punished for your dirty fishes. Put the draft in the fire, and never do so any more. You are a fool, Hal, and you are a fool, Benedetto, but I need your works to please this beautiful English King.”

‘“And I meant to kill Hal,” says Benedetto. “Master, I meant to kill him because the English King had made him a knight.”

‘“Ah!” says the Master, shaking his finger. “Benedetto, if you had killed my Hal, I should have killed you—in the cloister. But you are a craftsman too, so I should have killed you like a craftsman, very, very slowly—in an hour, if I could spare the time!” That was Torrigiano—the Master!’

Mr Springett sat quite still for some time after Hal had finished. Then he turned dark red; then he rocked to and fro; then he coughed and wheezed till the tears ran down his face. Dan knew by this that he was laughing, but it surprised Hal at first.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Mr Springett, ‘but I was thinkin’ of some stables I built for a gentleman in Eighteen hundred Seventy-four. They was stables in blue brick—very particular work. Dunno as they weren’t the best job which ever I’d done. But the gentleman’s lady—she’d come from Lunnon, new married—she was all for buildin’ what was called a haw-haw—what you an’ me ’ud call a dik—right acrost his park. A middlin’ big job which I’d have had the contract of, for she spoke to me in the library about it. But I told her there was a line o’ springs just where she wanted to dig her ditch, an’ she’d flood the park if she went on.’

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‘Were there any springs at all?’ said Hal.

‘Bound to be springs everywhere if you dig deep enough, ain’t there? But what I said about the springs put her out o’ conceit o’ diggin’ haw-haws, an’ she took an’ built a white tile dairy instead. But when I sent in my last bill for the stables, the gentleman he paid it ’thout even lookin’ at it, and I hadn’t forgotten nothin’, I do assure you. More than that, he slips two five-pound notes into my hand in the library, an’ “Ralph, he says—he allers called me by name—“Ralph,” he says, “you’ve saved me a heap of expense an’ trouble this autumn.” I didn’t say nothin’, o’ course. I knowed he didn’t want any haws-haws digged acrost his park no more’n I did, but I never said nothin’. No more he didn’t say nothin’ about my blue-brick stables, which was really the best an’ honestest piece o’ work I’d done in quite a while. He give me ten pounds for savin’ him a hem of a deal o’ trouble at home. I reckon things are pretty much alike, all times, in all places.’

Hal and he laughed together. Dan couldn’t quite understand what they thought so funny, and went on with his work for some time without speaking.

When he looked up, Mr Springett, alone, was wiping his eyes with his green-and-yellow pocket-handkerchief.

‘Bless me, Mus’ Dan, I’ve been asleep,’ he said. ‘An’ I’ve dreamed a dream which has made me laugh—laugh as I ain’t laughed in a long day. I can’t remember what ’twas all about, but they do say that when old men take to laughin’ in their sleep, they’re middlin’ ripe for the next world. Have you been workin’ honest, Mus’ Dan?’

‘Ra-ather,’ said Dan, unclamping the schooner from the vice. ‘And look how I’ve cut myself with the small gouge.’

‘Ye-es. You want a lump o’ cobwebs to that,’ said Mr Springett. ‘Oh, I see you’ve put it on already. That’s right, Mus’ Dan.’