The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Emmuska Orczy (non fiction books to read .TXT) 📗

“I thought you’d grown deaf in that kitchen of yours,” muttered Jimmy Pitkin, as he passed the back of his hand across his very dry lips.

“All ri’! all ri’!” laughed Sally, as she deposited the freshly-filled tankards upon the tables, “why, what a ‘urry to be sure! And is your gran’mother a-dyin’ an’ you wantin’ to see the pore soul afore she’m gone! I never see’d such a mighty rushin’” A chorus of good-humoured laughter greeted this witticism, which gave the company there present food for many jokes, for some considerable time. Sally now seemed in less of a hurry to get back to her pots and pans. A young man with fair curly hair, and eager, bright blue eyes, was engaging most of her attention and the whole of her time, whilst broad witticisms anent Jimmy Pitkin’s fictitious grandmother flew from mouth to mouth, mixed with heavy puffs of pungent tobacco smoke.

Facing the hearth, his legs wide apart, a long clay pipe in his mouth, stood mine host himself, worthy Mr. Jellyband, landlord of “The Fisherman’s Rest,” as his father had before him, aye, and his grandfather and great-grandfather too, for that matter. Portly in build, jovial in countenance and somewhat bald of pate, Mr. Jellyband was indeed a typical rural John Bull of those days—the days when our prejudiced insularity was at its height, when to an Englishman, be he lord, yeoman, or peasant, the whole of the continent of Europe was a den of immorality and the rest of the world an unexploited land of savages and cannibals.

There he stood, mine worthy host, firm and well set up on his limbs, smoking his long churchwarden and caring nothing for nobody at home, and despising everybody abroad. He wore the typical scarlet waistcoat, with shiny brass buttons, the corduroy breeches, and grey worsted stockings and smart buckled shoes, that characterised every self-respecting innkeeper in Great Britain in these days—and while pretty, motherless Sally had need of four pairs of brown hands to do all the work that fell on her shapely shoulders, worthy Jellyband discussed the affairs of nations with his most privileged guests.

The coffee-room indeed, lighted by two well-polished lamps, which hung from the raftered ceiling, looked cheerful and cosy in the extreme. Through the dense clouds of tobacco smoke that hung about in every corner, the faces of Mr. Jellyband’s customers appeared red and pleasant to look at, and on good terms with themselves, their host and all the world; from every side of the room loud guffaws accompanied pleasant, if not highly intellectual, conversation—while Sally’s repeated giggles testified to the good use Mr. Harry Waite was making of the short time she seemed inclined to spare him.

They were mostly fisher-folk who patronised Mr. Jellyband’s coffee-room, but fishermen are known to be very thirsty people; the salt which they breathe in, when they are on the sea, accounts for their parched throats when on shore, but “The Fisherman’s Rest” was something more than a rendezvous for these humble folk. The London and Dover coach started from the hostel daily, and passengers who had come across the Channel, and those who started for the “grand tour,” all became acquainted with Mr. Jellyband, his French wines and his home-brewed ales.

It was towards the close of September, 1792, and the weather which had been brilliant and hot throughout the month had suddenly broken up; for two days torrents of rain had deluged the south of England, doing its level best to ruin what chances the apples and pears and late plums had of becoming really fine, self-respecting fruit. Even now it was beating against the leaded windows, and tumbling down the chimney, making the cheerful wood fire sizzle in the hearth.

“Lud! did you ever see such a wet September, Mr. Jellyband?” asked Mr. Hempseed.

He sat in one of the seats inside the hearth, did Mr. Hempseed, for he was an authority and important personage not only at “The Fisherman’s Rest,” where Mr. Jellyband always made a special selection of him as a foil for political arguments, but throughout the neighborhood, where his learning and notably his knowledge of the Scriptures was held in the most profound awe and respect. With one hand buried in the capacious pockets of his corduroys underneath his elaborately-worked, well-worn smock, the other holding his long clay pipe, Mr. Hempseed sat there looking dejectedly across the room at the rivulets of moisture which trickled down the window panes.

“No,” replied Mr. Jellyband, sententiously, “I dunno, Mr. ‘Empseed, as I ever did. An’ I’ve been in these parts nigh on sixty years.”

“Aye! you wouldn’t rec’llect the first three years of them sixty, Mr. Jellyband,” quietly interposed Mr. Hempseed. “I dunno as I ever see’d an infant take much note of the weather, leastways not in these parts, an’ I‘ve lived ‘ere nigh on seventy-five years, Mr. Jellyband.”

The superiority of this wisdom was so incontestable that for the moment Mr. Jellyband was not ready with his usual flow of argument.

“It do seem more like April than September, don’t it?” continued Mr. Hempseed, dolefully, as a shower of raindrops fell with a sizzle upon the fire.

“Aye! that it do,” assented the worth host, “but then what can you ‘xpect, Mr. ‘Empseed, I says, with sich a government as we’ve got?”

Mr. Hempseed shook his head with an infinity of wisdom, tempered by deeply-rooted mistrust of the British climate and the British Government.

“I don’t ‘xpect nothing, Mr. Jellyband,” he said. “Pore folks like us is of no account up there in Lunnon, I knows that, and it’s not often as I do complain. But when it comes to sich wet weather in September, and all me fruit a-rottin’ and a-dying’ like the ‘Guptian mother’s first born, and doin’ no more good than they did, pore dears, save a lot more Jews, pedlars and sich, with their oranges and sich like foreign ungodly fruit, which nobody’d buy if English apples and pears was nicely swelled. As the Scriptures say—”

“That’s quite right, Mr. ‘Empseed,” retorted Jellyband, “and as I says, what can you ‘xpect? There’s all them Frenchy devils over the Channel yonder a-murderin’ their king and nobility, and Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox and Mr. Burke a-fightin’ and a-wranglin’ between them, if we Englishmen should ‘low them to go on in their ungodly way. ‘Let ‘em murder!’ says Mr. Pitt. ‘Stop ‘em!’ says Mr. Burke.”

“And let ‘em murder, says I, and be demmed to ‘em.” said Mr. Hempseed, emphatically, for he had but little liking for his friend Jellyband’s political arguments, wherein he always got out of his depth, and had but little chance for displaying those pearls of wisdom which had earned for him so high a reputation in the neighbourhood and so many free tankards of ale at “The Fisherman’s Rest.”

“Let ‘em murder,” he repeated again, “but don’t lets ‘ave sich rain in September, for that is agin the law and the Scriptures which says—”

“Lud! Mr. ‘Arry, ‘ow you made me jump!”

It was unfortunate for Sally and her flirtation that this remark of hers should have occurred at the precise moment when Mr. Hempseed was collecting his breath, in order to deliver himself one of those Scriptural utterances which made him famous, for it brought down upon her pretty head the full flood of her father’s wrath.

“Now then, Sally, me girl, now then!” he said, trying to force a frown upon his good-humoured face, “stop that fooling with them young jackanapes and get on with the work.”

“The work’s gettin’ on all ri’, father.”

But Mr. Jellyband was peremptory. He had other views for his buxom daughter, his only child, who would in God’s good time become the owner of “The Fisherman’s Rest,” than to see her married to one of these young fellows who earned but a precarious livelihood with their net.

“Did ye hear me speak, me girl?” he said in that quiet tone, which no one inside the inn dared to disobey. “Get on with my Lord Tony’s supper, for, if it ain’t the best we can do, and ‘e not satisfied, see what you’ll get, that’s all.”

Reluctantly Sally obeyed.

“Is you ‘xpecting special guests then to-night, Mr. Jellyband?” asked Jimmy Pitkin, in a loyal attempt to divert his host’s attention from the circumstances connected with Sally’s exit from the room.

“Aye! that I be,” replied Jellyband, “friends of my Lord Tony hisself. Dukes and duchesses from over the water yonder, whom the young lord and his friend, Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, and other young noblemen have helped out of the clutches of them murderin’ devils.”

But this was too much for Mr. Hempseed’s querulous philosophy.

“Lud!” he said, “what do they do that for, I wonder? I don’t ‘old not with interferin’ in other folks’ ways. As the Scriptures say—”

“Maybe, Mr. ‘Empseed,” interrupted Jellyband, with biting sarcasm, “as you’re a personal friend of Mr. Pitt, and as you says along with Mr. Fox: ‘Let ‘em murder!’ says you.”

“Pardon me, Mr. Jellyband,” feebly protested Mr. Hempseed, “I dunno as I ever did.”

But Mr. Jellyband had at last succeeded in getting upon his favourite hobby-horse, and had no intention of dismounting in any hurry.

“Or maybe you’ve made friends with some of them French chaps ‘oo they do say have come over here o’ purpose to make us Englishmen agree with their murderin’ ways.”

“I dunno what you mean, Mr. Jellyband,” suggested Mr. Hempseed, “all I know is—”

“All I know is,” loudly asserted mine host, “that there was my friend Peppercorn, ‘oo owns the ‘Blue-Faced Boar,’ an’ as true and loyal an Englishman as you’d see in the land. And now look at ‘im!—‘E made friends with some o’ them frog-eaters, ‘obnobbed with them just as if they was Englishmen, and not just a lot of immoral, Godforsaking furrin’ spies. Well! and what happened? Peppercorn ‘e now ups and talks of revolutions, and liberty, and down with the aristocrats, just like Mr. ‘Empseed over ‘ere!”

“Pardon me, Mr. Jellyband,” again interposed Mr. Hempseed feebly, “I dunno as I ever did—”

Mr. Jellyband had appealed to the company in general, who were listening awe-struck and open-mouthed at the recital of Mr. Peppercorn’s defalcations. At one table two customers—gentlemen apparently by their clothes—had pushed aside their half-finished game of dominoes, and had been listening for some time, and evidently with much amusement at Mr. Jellyband’s international opinions. One of them now, with a quiet, sarcastic smile still lurking round the corners of his mobile mouth, turned towards the centre of the room where Mr. Jellyband was standing.

“You seem to think, mine honest friend,” he said quietly, “that these Frenchmen,—spies I think you called them—are mighty clever fellows to have made mincemeat so to speak of your friend Mr. Peppercorn’s opinions. How did they accomplish that now, think you?”

“Lud! sir, I suppose they talked ‘im over. Those Frenchies, I’ve ‘eard it said, ‘ave got the gift of gab—and Mr. ‘Empseed ‘ere will tell you ‘ow it is that they just twist some people round their little finger like.”

“Indeed, and is that so, Mr. Hempseed?” inquired the stranger politely.

“Nay, sir!” replied Mr. Hempseed, much irritated, “I dunno as I can give you the information you require.”

“Faith, then,” said the stranger, “let us hope, my worthy host, that these clever spies will not succeed in upsetting your extremely loyal opinions.”

But this was too much for Mr. Jellyband’s pleasant equanimity. He burst into an uproarious fit of laughter, which was soon echoed by those who happened to be in his debt.

“Hahaha! hohoho! hehehe!” He laughed in every key, did my worthy host, and laughed until his sided ached, and his