CHAPTER III
PRATTLE
The one street of the village contained only two shops. One of these,the forepart of a simple cottage, was post office and general store,whose window displayed groceries, sweetstuffs, stockings, reels ofcotton, and other articles of a miscellaneous stock. A few yards beyondit stood a larger, newer, and uglier building, the lower storey of whichwas a double-fronted shop, exhibiting on the one side a heterogeneousheap of old iron, on the other a few agricultural implements, aramshackle bicycle, a mangle, tin tea-pots, a can of petrol, aconcertina, and various oddments. Above the door, in crude letterspainted yellow, ran the description: "Samuel Blevins, General Dealer."
"We must try the post office," said Warrender. "But I don't expect we'llfind anything up to much. Still, there'll be some local views."
They entered the little shop, filling the space in front of the counter,and began to examine picture-postcards. The shopkeeper, a middle-agedwoman in a widow's cap, was in the act of handing packets ofbaking-powder to a customer--a small man who turned quickly about as theboys went in, showing a plump, brown face decorated with a tiny, blackmoustache and dark, vivacious eyes.
"And how be your missus?" the woman was saying.
"She is ver' vell," said the man, swinging round again. "Zat is, notbad--not bad. She have a cold--yes, shust a leetle cold."
"I be main glad 'tis nothing worse," said the shopkeeper, drily."Rogers did say only this morning as he hadn't seed or heard anything ofher for a week or more--and her his own sister, too, and not thatbreadth between 'em. She might as well be in foreign parts. 'Twasnever thoughted when she married you, Mr. Rod; my meaning is, Rogersbelieved her'd always be in and out, being so near; whereas the truth ishe sees no more of her than if she lived at t'other end of the kingdom."
"And now ze isinglass," said the man, with the obvious intention ofturning the conversation. "Vat! No isinglass? Zis is terrible country.Vell, zat is all, madame. You put every'ing in ze book?"
"Trust me for that, Mr. Rod. Remember me to Mary, and I hope she'llsoon be rid of her cold."
The man gathered up his purchases, and left the shop, darting a glanceat each of the boys as he passed them.
They bought a few postcards and some postage stamps, and issued forthinto the street. Blevins, the general dealer, standing at his shop-doorwith his hands under his coat-tails, gave them a hard look.
"These country folk are as inquisitive as moths," remarked Armstrong.
"Take us for strolling minstrels, I dare say," rejoined Pratt. "Lucky Ididn't bring my banjo."
"Our blazers make us a trifle conspicuous," said Warrender. "I say, aswe've plenty of time before dark, and I don't want to run into thatcrowd at the inn again, suppose we stroll on."
They passed the general dealer's, soon left the last of the cottagesbehind them, and rambled along the grassy bank of the road, which woundacross a wide and barren heath land. About half a mile from the villagethey came to narrower cross-roads, leading apparently to the fewscattered farmsteads of the neighbourhood. A few yards beyond this theysaw, rounding a bend, a girl on a bicycle coasting down a slight hilltowards them.
"The fair maid in white!" said Pratt. "I think my banjo ought to havebeen a guitar, or a lute, whatever that is."
A loud report startled them all. The bicycle wobbled, stopped, and thegirl sprang lightly from her saddle, and bent down to examine the fronttyre. She rose just before the boys reached her, gave them a fleetingglance, and started to wheel the machine down the road.
After a brief hesitation Warrender turned towards her, lifting his cap.
"Can I be of any assistance?" he asked.
"Oh, please don't trouble," replied the girl. "It's a frightfully badpuncture, and I haven't very far to go."
"Some distance across the ferry?"
"Well, yes; but this will take a long time, and I really couldn't thinkof----"
"It's no trouble--if you have an outfit."
"Yes, I have, but----"
"He's a dab at mending tyres, I assure you," Pratt broke in. "Also atall sorts of tinkering old jobs. Our engine broke down the otherday--that's our motor-boat, down at the ferry, you know--I dare say yousaw it when you passed an hour ago--or was it two? It seems a jollylong time. Do let him try his hand; he'll be heartbroken if you don't.Besides, wheeling a bicycle is no joke; I know from experience; and fora lady--why, there's a smudge on your dress already. Really----"
Like many loquacious persons, Pratt was apt to let his tongue run awaywith him. The girl had shown more and more amusement with everysentence that bubbled from his glib lips, and here she broke into afrank laugh, and surrendered the bicycle to Warrender, who laid it downon the grass bordering the road, opened the tool pouch and set to work.
"He may be nervous, and fumble a bit, you know," said Pratt, "if we lookat him. I used to be like that myself, when I was young. Don't youthink we'd better walk on? Perhaps you'd like to be shown over ourboat?"
"I think I'd prefer to wait for my bicycle," said the girl, demurely.
"Warrender's quite to be trusted," rejoined Pratt. "He isn't just anordinary tramp or tinker. We've none of us chosen our professions yet.We _have_ been called 'The Three Musketeers' in some quarters."
"At school, I suppose," the girl put in.
"Because we're always together, you know," Pratt continued. "We came upthe river to-day--on a holiday cruise--all the joys of nauticaladventure without any of the discomforts. Of course, there aredisappointments; bound to be. We thought of camping on the banks--one ofthe banks, I mean--but, as Armstrong said, it might be the Congo, it'sso frightfully overgrown, and as we didn't bring axes or dynamite, orany of the old things that explorers use, we had to reconcile ourselvesto the shattering of our dreams.... Whew! That was a near thing!"
At the cross-roads just below, a motor-car, carrying two men, hademerged suddenly from the right, and run into a country cart which hadbeen lumbering along the high road from the direction of the village.The chauffeur had clapped his brakes on in time to avoid a seriouscollision, but two spokes of the cart's near wheel had been smashed, andthe wing of the car crumpled. Springing out of the car, the chauffeur, adark-skinned little man, rushed up to the carter, who had been trudgingon the off-side at the horse's head, and began to berate him excitedly,with much play of hands.
"Vy you not have care?" he shouted, so rapidly that the monosyllablesseemed to form one word. "You take up all ze road; you sink all ze roadbelong to you; you not look round ze corner; no, you blind fool, youcrash bang into my car, viss I not know how many pounds of damage."
"Bain't my fault," said the carter, stoutly. "Can _you_ see round thecorner? Then why didn't you blow your horn?"
The chauffeur retorted with a torrent of abuse, in which broken Englishand expletives in some foreign tongue seemed equally mingled, the carterkeeping up a monotonous chant of "Bain't my fault, I tell 'ee."
The former appealed to his passenger, a tall man of fair complexion andstraw-coloured moustache and beard. A lull in the altercation betweenthe other two enabled him to declare that the carter was in the wrong,and his clear measured words rang with a distinctly foreign intonationin the ears of the four spectators above. The squabble revived, and wasended only when the passenger got out of the car, laid a soothing handon the chauffeur, and persuaded the carter to give his name, which hewrote down in a pocket-book. A few seconds later the car snorted awayinto the cross-road on the left-hand side.
Warrender had looked up from his task only for a moment, but the otherthree had watched the whole scene in silent amusement.
"Can you tell us," said Pratt to the girl, "whether the Tower of Babelis anywhere in this neighbourhood? We've seen four foreigners since welanded at the ferry an hour or two ago, and, if accent is any guide,they all hail from different parts."
"It is funny, isn't it?" said the girl. "And the explanation is funny,too. They
are all servants of a strange old gentleman who lives in abig house near the river. Some people say he is mad, but I think he'sonly very bad-tempered."
"Very likely the old buffer we saw. But go on, please."
"His English servants went to him one day in a body and asked him toraise their wages. It was quite reasonable, don't you think, with allthe labourers and people earning twice as much as they did before thewar? But they say he stormed at them, using the most dreadful language,dismissed them all, and vowed he would never have an English servantagain. Frightfully, silly of him, but my father says that there's notelling what extremes a hot-tempered lunatic like Mr. Pratt will----"
"Who?" ejaculated Pratt.
"That's his name--Mr. Ambrose Pratt. Perhaps you have heard of him? Hewas a great traveller--quite famous, I believe."
"My aunt! I mean--I'm rather taken by surprise, you know; but--well,the fact is," stammered Pratt, "he's--he's my uncle."
"Mr. Pratt is! Oh, I'm so sorry!"
"So am I!"
"For calling him such names, I mean."
"Nothing to what I've called him, I assure you. He gave me an awfullicking once. Not that that matters, of course; we men don't thinkanything of a licking; no--what I meant was I'm sorry an uncle of mineis bringing the ancient and honourable name of Pratt into disrepute.Why, he must be a regular laughing-stock. Fancy having a menagerie offoreigners!"
"But didn't you know? Aren't you staying with him, then?"
"Rather not. We're not on speaking terms."
"I remember--you said you were thinking of camping out."
"Yes; and our dream was shattered. We've had to take beds at the inn.It's terrible to lose your illusions, isn't it? We all thought nobly ofour fellow-men till this afternoon, and now our hearts are seared, andwe'll be frightful cynics till the end of the chapter. I don't supposeyou know him, but there's a bullet-headed brute of a fellow in a redchoker and a velveteen coat who sits on a tree-stump down the river----"
"Oh, yes," said the girl. "That's Rush. Every one knows him. I believehe has been in prison for poaching."
"Well, it seems to be his business in life now to delude unhappymariners; a regular siren luring them to their doom. We asked him todirect us to a camping-place. At first he protested there was nosuitable spot, but his malignant spirit prompted him to tell us of aglade where the sward was like velvet, under a charming canopy ofumbrageous foliage. We had just got our tent up, and I was boiling thekettle for tea, when there broke upon our solitude a man and adog--detestable, unnatural creatures both; the dog hadn't a bark inhim--it was all transferred to the man. The old buffer barked andbellowed and bullied and brow-beat and bundled us off."
A ripple of laughter from the girl's lips brought Pratt up short. Helooked at her reproachfully.
"Do forgive me," she said, "but do you know, I'm sure that--oldbuffer--was my father!"
Even the ebullient Pratt was rendered speechless; as Armstrongafterwards put it, in boxing parlance, "he was fairly fibbed in thewind."
"Father is a little hasty, but quite a dear, really," the girlcontinued. "He has been frightfully annoyed by trespassers--that manRush, for one, and some of Mr. Pratt's servants. But don't you thinkperhaps we had better say no more about our relations?"
"Certainly," said Armstrong, with a solemn air of conviction. It wasthe first word he had spoken, and the girl gave him a quick, amusedglance.
"Umpire gives us both out!" remarked Pratt, his equanimity quiterestored. "We are now back in the _status quo_, Miss Crawshay, withthis difference: that we know each other's name. The Bard of Avonwouldn't have asked 'What's in a name?' if he had been here five minutesago. If you had known my name, and I had known that you were thedaughter of----"
"That's forbidden ground, Mr. Pratt."
"Well, is there any ground that isn't forbidden?" Pratt rejoined. "Forour camp, I mean?"
"Why not try No Man's Island?"
"Siren Rush told us it's a mere wilderness, 'long heath, brown furze,'and so on."
"Oh! That's quite wrong; he must know better than that. There's anexcellent camping place on the narrower channel. We often picnickedthere before my father quarrelled with Mr. P----"
Smiling, she caught herself up.
"Call 'em X and Y," suggested Pratt. "It is a sort of simultaneousequation, isn't it? But the island can't belong to Y unless Y isgenerally recognised in the neighbourhood as no man at all."
"Nobody knows whose it is. The owner died years ago; his cottage thereis falling to ruin; they say it belongs now to a distant relative in thecolonies."
"Then there's no one to chevy us away, as soon as we've got thingsshipshape?"
"Unless you're afraid of ghosts. There are all sorts of queer tales;the country folk shake their heads when the island is mentioned; not oneof them will have the courage to set foot on it."
"A haunted island! How jolly! I've always wanted to meet a spook.That's an additional attraction, I assure you. Perhaps I can soothe theperturbed spirits with my banjo. I admit it has the opposite effect onArmstrong, but----"
The girl turned suddenly away towards Warrender, who had finished hisjob and was pumping up the tyre.
"You frightful ass!" muttered Armstrong in a savage undertone, heard byPratt alone. "You've done nothing but drivel for the last half-hour."
"All right, old mule," retorted Pratt, grinning.
"Yes, it will carry you home," Warrender was saying, "but I'm afraidyou'll have to get a new tyre."
"Thanks so much. It is really awfully good of you," replied the girl.
"I'm sorry I've been such a time."
"I've been very well entertained. It hasn't seemed long at all. Thankyou again. Good-bye."
She mounted the bicycle, beamed an impartial smile upon the three, andsped away down the road.