THE SCARECROW RIDES (19 page)

And then Mipps came his way.

It was on a bright spring morning that Mr. Mipps came trundling
along by the churchyard wall with his worldly possessions in a
sea-chest which he pushed on a squeaky barrow that he had stolen in
Hythe from the yard of the 'Red Lion'.

Although for many years a stranger to Dymchurch, anyone could have
told that this quizzical little man was a mariner. He smelt of tar. He
was covered in it. Not only had he given his sea-chest a generous
daubing but he had screwed his scanty hair into a sharp tarred queue,
which stuck out beyond his broken three-cornered hat for all the world
like a jigger-gaff. He wore a faded blue cloth coat with tails which
hung too low behind his short thin legs, and his dirty striped cotton
bell trousers were furled up to show an ancient pair of thick shoes
with brass buckles.

Although presenting a sorry appearance, his perky bearing gave the
impression that Mr. Mipps was in excellent spirits. His clay pipe, with
stem broken off too close to the blackened bowl, puffed a continual
smoke-stream into the nostrils of the long thin nose that roofed it. An
economical pipe-man, Mr. Mipps, for the smoke that escaped from the
bowl was sucked up through his nose to join the rest of it in his
lungs.

He set down his borrowed barrow by the low wall of the churchyard
and looked around. Having the most admirable opinion of himself, he was
never above taking himself into his own confidence by the simple
expedient of talking to himself aloud, which he then proceeded to do.

“Well, Mippsy, I never did see an anchorage so snug and trim as this
'ere village, all kept taut and Bristol fashion by that old sea-wall,
and I raises my Blog to the 'ole collection.”

'Blog' was a word of his own orthography and referred no one quite
knew why, to the black patch which covered his right eye, and which he
now lifted in salutation to the place of his birth. It was significant
to his character that the eye thus uncovered was perfectly sound;
indeed, was more gimletty in its penetration that its fellow. He had a
strange theory that an eye kept in the dark was readier for action when
suddenly exposed to the light. He also found that its sudden lifting so
surprised people that it took them at a disadvantage, and after much
practice he found that he could finger his 'blog' with as much effect
as any dandy who aided his affectation with a quizzing glass.

“There's the sluice-gates,” he continued. “How are you,
sluice-gates? Quite well, thank you? And them gulls are the very spit
of their great-great-grandfathers I knew as a boy. Them rooks, too,
ain't done nothing for their sore throats. The 'Ship Inn', the Court
House and the church same as ever 'and not moved a blessed inch', as
the prodigal says in the fifth Act, but the 'Sea-Wall Tavern'
has—she's grown and painted up too. And, bury me like a lubber in a
coffin, if it ain't—”

Mr. Mipps suddenly broke off his meditations, for he saw standing on
the sea-wall, the black-garbed figure of Dr. Syn. “That's him,” he
muttered. “Trim and alert, peculiar and odd as when he faced the
mutineers on the deck of the old
Imogene
off Anastasia, and spit
the ringleader through the neck with his small-sword. He's a calm 'un,
he is. Calm as hoil. And here he is, settled down to his old trade of
preaching same as he told me he would.”

Dr. Syn had been watching ships in the Fairway through his brass
telescope. The sea-wall was his favourite walk, and up on it, behind
Grove House, the squire had given him permission to re-erect Josiah
Wraight's hut, that had been made from the bulkhead of the wreck's
fo'c'sle. So upon the sea-wall behind Grove House it now stood, railed
around to make it the more private, and one of the spars was erected as
a flag-staff. Its windows faced the sea, so that the doctor's privacy
was further assured. In this hut, fitted up inside as a cabin, the
doctor would as often as not write his sermons, and after a time
Charlotte went so far as to accuse him of liking it better than the
vicarage. Certainly, it was a snug retreat. On the wildest day he could
sit there with the little stove alight and laugh at the spray lashing
against the window panes.

Dr. Syn thrust his telescope under his arm and climbed down the
steep grass bank of the sea-wall, and as he watched him, Mr. Mipps,
becoming strangely nervous of a sudden, vaulted into the churchyard and
took cover behind a tombstone. He heard the footsteps of his master
crunching briskly over the gravel. Then they stopped abruptly. Dr. Syn
was eyeing the sea-chest.

“Mipps—his chest,” he read quietly; then in sharp tones added:
“Come out of that, and let's have a look at you.”

“All aboard, sir,” replied Mipps, jumping up and saluting.

“And what do you want with me?” The doctor's long, thin face was
inscrutable.

“Well, sir,” faltered Mipps, “knowing as 'ow you wished to settle
down at your first profession, which you give up through no fault of
your own, and hearing as 'ow a gentleman answering your description was
beneficed 'ere, in my birthplace, I thought, sir, with all respects to
your 'oly cloth, that you might be glad of a grateful old ship's
carpenter what wants to settle down too.”

“And what if I prefer to forget the past, eh?” A fierceness had
flashed into Dr. Syn's eyes. “Suppose I deny ever having seen you
before. What then?”

“What then, sir?” repeated Mipps, swallowing his disappointment with
an effort. “Why, no offence took, sir, and I'll steer for an anchorage
elsewhere. But I'd like you to 'ave this before I goes, sir, as it
weighs a bit heavy in my coat-tail pocket.”

After executing a difficult contortion with the coat-tail in
question, Mr. Mipps drew from the pocket something wrapped in a bandana
kerchief.

“What's that?” demanded the doctor.

“Your Virgil, sir, what was stolen by that cross-eyed nigger at
Panama, who thought it was a book o' magic. Remember? Well, I fetched
up with him a year ago, and he won't steal no more Virgils, sir, he
won't.”

Dr. Syn took the book and opened it. “My notes. I made them at
Oxford. A long time ago, Mr. Mipps. A long time. I am glad to get this
back.”

“Glad you're glad. Good morning, sir.” And vaulting into the road,
he picked up the barrow-shafts, turned it round, and started back the
way he had come.

As Dr. Syn watched the quaint back view of the little sea-dog thus
setting off without a grumble, his eyes grew kind. “Come back, you
rascal,” he called.

Round came the barrow and back came Mipps.

“As I said, I am glad to get this volume once more. Steer your chest
to the vicarage there, and wait for me. And take no heed if Mrs. Fowey,
the housekeeper, should be short-tempered, as she usually is with
sailor-men. She'll no doubt send you to the right-about, but I trust
you to be sufficiently insistent to gain an interview with the reverend
gentleman, eh? Then, if we can come to a very definite understanding,
I'll find you the means of settling down.”

“A job?” inquired Mipps hopefully.

Dr. Syn nodded. “Now off with you, for here comes the squire, and I
want a word with him. But, remember this—I have never seen you before
in my life. Got that?”

“Got it, sir.” And Mr. Mipps squeaked his barrow towards the
vicarage.

Had Mrs. Fowey seen Dr. Syn as he shut the front door behind him,
after laughing so pleasantly with the squire, she would have marvelled
at the sudden change in his expression, and would, no doubt, have
guessed that there was something troubling his peace of mind, for no
sooner had he hung his large three-cornered hat upon its peg than the
divine benignity which ever shone from his saintly face and had gained
for the kindly cleric the love of the country side faded utterly as the
lines about his mouth and eyes set hard and grim. He pushed back the
clerical wig from his classical high forehead which puckered into a
deep frown, while into his large eyes crept a look as of one hunted.

His gaze travelled across the spacious hall which formed the main
living-room of the vicarage, and he took in every detail. The door to
his left, leading to the servants' quarters was shut. Directly opposite
was his study door—also shut. To the right of this was the large open
fireplace where crackled a wood fire, for although spring weather, the
sea air was sharp. From the fireplace he glanced up the stairway which
led to the bedrooms. The landing door at the top was open, but the
bedroom doors were fast, and there was no sign of his housekeeper up
there. No, she was in the wash-house at the back of the kitchen. The
large casement window to his right was shut, and he could see no one
outside on the lawn which sloped down to the dyke and the glebe field
beyond, one which great Romney Marsh sheep were bleating to their
young, for it was lambing time. In the dark corner to the right of the
deep-set window was the large livery cupboard in which the glass was
kept when not set out for company on the heavy refectory table which
occupied the centre of the hall.

As he crossed to this cupboard and opened one of the top doors, his
face set with a fierce determination. From a shelf he selected a bottle
and without waiting to select a glass, removed the stopper. He looked
towards the doors one by one as he put the bottle to his lips. Then he
tilted it up, gulping the raw spirit down his throat. This he did with
three separate jerks, and at each jerk much of the trouble cleared from
his face, until with a sigh of great satisfaction, he held the bottle
away at arm's length. He smiled and straightening his back nodded his
head towards the bottle, as if to thank it for helping him to come to
some momentous decision.

Now, had Mrs. Fowey seen all this she might have suspected that her
master had been upset by the same individual who had been upsetting her
for the past few minutes, for she had found it utterly impossible to
get rid of the garrulous little sea-dog who had had the impertinence to
set down his luggage on her nice clean doorstep. After much hard talk,
during which she was unable to shut the door in the scamp's face by
reason of one of his brass-buckled feet which he had firmly planted
over the door-sill, she went to her master's study to complain.

Whenever she got flustered, Mrs. Fowey's vowels had a habit of
slipping back to the wild part of England in which she had been bred.
Nobody knew exactly its whereabouts upon the map, for she was not given
to confidences, so that her past as well as her daughter's remained a
riddle to the village.

“Moi dear vicar,” she said, after curtseying to Dr. Syn, whom she
found calmly doing parochial accounts at his table, “there's a filthoi,
dirtoi scamp of a thing at the door who says he will see you
willoi-nilloi.”

The doctor looked over the top of his horn-rimmed reading spectacles
and translated in a tone of kindly reproof: “Oh, so there's a filthee,
dirtee scamp at the door who will see me willee-nillee. Is that it,
Mrs. Fowey?”

“That's it, moi dear vicar,” the housekeeper answered, ignoring the
correction to her vowels. “And oi says, 'No,' oi says. 'The reverend
gentleman is too busoi to meddle with the loikes of you, you dirtoi
grub,' oi says. 'Look at thoi hands,' oi says. 'Tar,' oi says. 'Do you
want our clean house to stink as a ship-yeard?' oi says.”

“Tar, eh?” commented the vicar. “Then your scamp is a sailor, no
doubt.”

“Oh, he's a sailor o' sorts right enough, but what ship would let
him on it, oi don't know, for the scarecrow in the field yonder cuts a
better figure, and oi told him so. 'And oi'm busoi,' oi says, 'with moi
washings-up.' And he looks at moi dirtoi china and says: 'Oi'll wash
them for you, moi gal,' he says, and oi says: 'Wash yerself, if ever
you do wash,' oi says, 'and don't you moi gal me,' oi says, 'you
cheekoi old fellow,' oi says. 'You run and tell the reverend gentleman
oi'm here,' he says. 'Oi won't,' says oi. 'You will,' says he, and he
ups with his filthoi chest on to his shoulder and pushes in, wriggling
his tarred fingers at me, and being afraid for moi clean apron, oi did
what he wanted, 'cos here oi be.”

“Well, Mrs. Fowey, rather than waste any more of your time, the best
thing you can do is to show him in. After all, I don't think a
clergyman should refuse to see anybody. Perhaps he has come to put the
banns up.” The idea made the doctor chuckle.

“When they have women scarecrows, oi don't doubt,” she snapped.

“No, they don't have women scarecrows, do they?” said Dr. Syn
gravely. “I never thought of that. I wonder why? Respect to the sex, no
doubt. Does he know me? Did he say what his business might be?”

“He said something about having heard your reverence preach the
Gospel in America, but that since the church was full, it is as like
you won't remember him, but that he would like to thank you for a
sermon which had helped him in his life. Oi must say, he don't look the
kind to be helped by no sermon. Neither him nor his sea-chest. Oi told
him not to bring the dirtoi thing in.”

“I dare swear he's none so bad as you think, and remember a sailor's
chest is his home. I warrant it's tidy enough inside. Mipps is his
name?”

“He never told moi. Then you remember him?”

“I dare say I may when I see him, though his name means nothing. I
saw a sea-chest on a barrow by the churchyard wall a while ago.”

“That's it, sir. Sea-chest and all, as though he'd come to stay. I
see letters on it, but being no scholar, it meant nothing.”

“And what if he has come to stay, Mrs. Fowey? Who are we to turn
away the poor wayfarer? We should not care to be turned away
ourselves.”