FullReads

‘The wind’s doing.’

‘When you know the weather has been flat calm for a week past!’

‘There’s an extraordinary eddy just here, at the turn of the valley; I have often observed a puff of wind–you might almost call it a gust–spring up with no apparent reason.’

‘Well, you’re a man of science,’ Captain Minards replied doggedly, ‘and if you tell me this puff o’ wind carried your pearmains all the way to Tregarrick and entered ’em at the show under some other body’s name, I’m bound to believe you. But I wonder you don’t put it into a book. It’s interestin’ enough.’

With this Parthian shot he departed. But two nights later he was awakened in his bedroom, which overlooked the doctor’s orchard, by a strange rustling among the apple trees. Thud–thud!–there as he lay he listened for half a minute to the sounds of the dropping fruit.

The night was calm. . . . On the wall facing the bed’s foot there hung an old gun. Captain Minards arose, reached it down, loaded it with a charge of powder, and, stepping to the window, let bang at the trees. . . . After listening awhile he replaced the gun and retired to rest.

Next morning Doctor Unonius was called away from his breakfast to visit Sarah Puckey, an aged market woman or ‘regrater,’ whom he found in a state of prostration following (it was alleged) upon a severe nervous shock. He attended the old woman for the remainder of her days, which were few; and while they lasted she remained–in the language of Polpeor–a ‘bedrider.’ She never confided to him the nature of the shock which had laid her low; but at the last, satisfied of her own salvation, she worried herself sadly over the doctor and his defenceless life.

‘I’m a saved woman,’ she declared, ‘and a dyin’ old woman, and these things be clear to my eyes. A wife–that’s what you want. Your laudanums and your doldadums and your nummy-dummies[1] may be all very well–‘

‘What are they?’ asked the doctor.

‘Latin,’ she answered promptly. ‘I be a dyin’ woman, I tell ‘ee, an’ got the gift o’ tongues. . . . And your ‘natomies and fishes’ innards may be all very well, but you want a wife to look after the money an’ tell the men to wipe their sea-boots ‘pon the front mat. When it comes to their unpickin’ a trawl in your very drawin’-room, an’ fish scales all over the best Brussels, as I’ve a-see’d ’em before now–‘ Mrs Puckey paused for breath.

‘Have ‘ee ever had a mind to the widow Tresize?’ she asked.

‘Certainly not,’ the doctor answered.

‘That’s a pity, too: for Landeweddy Farm’s her own freehold, an’ I’ve heard her say more’n once how sorry she feels for you, livin’ alone as you do. I don’t everyways like Missus Tresize, but she’s a bowerly woman an’ nimble for her age–which can’t be forty, not by a year or two. Old Tresize married her for her looks. I mind goin’ to the weddin’, an’ she brought en no more’n her clothes an’ herself inside of ’em: an’ now she’ve a-buried th’ old doter, an’ sits up at Landeweddy in her own parlour a-playin’ the pianner with both hands. What d’ee reckon a woman does that for?’

‘Maybe because she is fond of music,’ said Doctor Unonius dryly.

The invalid chuckled, until her old head in its white mob-cap nodded against the white pillow propping it.

‘I married three men mysel’ in my time, as you d’ know; an’ if either wan had been rich enough to leave me a pianner, I’d ha’ married three more. . . . What tickles me is you men with your talk o’ spoort. Catchin’ fish for a business I can understand: you got to do that for money, which is the first thing in life; an’ when you’re married, the woman sees that you don’t shirk it. But you make me laugh, puttin’ on airs an’ pretendin’ to do it for spoort–“Wimmen ha’n’t got no sense o’ spoort,” says you, all solemn as owls. Soon as a boy turns fourteen he takes up the trick. “Wimmen ha’n’t got no sense o’ spoort,” says he, sticking his hands in his breeches pockets; an’ off he goes to hook fish, an’ comes swaggerin’ back to be taken, catch an’ all, by a young ‘ooman that has been sayin’ naught but markin’ him down all the time. Spoort? This world, doctor, is made up of hooks an’ eyes: an’ you reckon–do ‘ee–the best spoort goes to the hooks? Ask the eyes and the maidens that make ’em.’