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The Mayor of Troy, a novel by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
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Chapter 10. Gunner Sobey Turns Loose The Millennium |
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_ CHAPTER X. GUNNER SOBEY TURNS LOOSE THE MILLENNIUM
Of all our company you will remember that Gunner Sobey passed for the readiest man. This reputation he now and instantly vindicated. For happening to be posted on the extreme left in the shadow of the western cliff, and hearing a sudden cry, "The French! The French!" he neither fell back with the rest of the crowd nor foolhardily resisted an enemy whose strength could not yet be measured: but leaping aside, and by great good luck finding foothold on the rocks to his left, he wriggled over the low ledge of the cliff and thence-- now clutching at the grass bents or clusters of the sea-pink, now digging his fingers into the turf, but always flat, or nearly flat, on his belly--he wormed his way at incredible speed up the slope, found covert behind a tall furze-bush, and surveyed for a few seconds the scene below him. The outcries which yet continued, the splashing as of men in desperate struggle at the water's edge, the hoarse words of command, the scurrying lanterns, the gleam of a hundred tossing sabres--all these told their own tale to Gunner Sobey. He arose and ran again; nor drew breath until he had gained the top of the rough brake and flung himself over a stone wall into the dry ditch of a vast pasture field that domed itself far above him against the starry heavens. Now let it be understood that what lent wings to Gunner Sobey's heels was not cowardice, but an overmastering desire to reach home with all speed. Let no reader mistake for panic what was in truth exceptional presence of mind. The Major, you must know, had drawn up, some months before, and issued in a General Order, certain _Instructions in Case of Invasion_--in case, that is to say, the enemy should momentarily break through our coast defence and effect an actual footing. The main body of the Gallants would then, converting itself into a rearguard, cover the town and keep the foe in check, while separate detachments fell back swiftly, each to execute its assigned duty. For example: Detachments A and B would round up and drive off the cattle. Detachment C would assist the escape of the women and children. Detachment D would collect and carry off provisions, and destroy what was left. Detachment E would set fire to the corn and the hayricks. Detachment F would horse themselves and ride inland to warn the towns and villages, and make all possible preparations for blowing up the bridges and otherwise impeding the enemy's advance after the rearguard's passage. And so on. Gunner Sobey, though but a volunteer, possessed that simplicity of intellect which we have come to prize as the first essential in a British soldier. It was not his to reason why; not his to ask how the French had gained a footing in Talland Cove, or how, having gained it, they were to be dislodged. Once satisfied of their arrival, he left them, as his soldierly training enjoined, severely alone. Deplorable as he might deem the occurrence, it had happened; and _ipso facto_, it consigned him, in accordance with general orders, to Detachment D, with the duties and responsibilities of that detachment. On these then--and at first on these, and these only--he bent his practical, resolute mind. It will be seen if he stopped short with them. Picking himself up from the dry ditch, intent only on heading for home, he was aware of a dark object on the brink above him; which at first he took for a bramble bush, and next, seeing it move, for a man. It is no discredit to Gunner Sobey that, taken suddenly in the darkness, and at so hopeless a disadvantage, he felt his knees shake under him for a moment. "Parley-voo?" he ventured. The proverb says that a Polperro jackass is surprised at nothing, and this one, which had been browsing on the edge of the ditch, merely gazed. "I--I ax your pardon," went on Gunner Sobey, still slightly unhinged. "The fact is, I mistook you for another person." The jackass drew back a little. It seemed to Gunner Sobey to be breathing hard, but otherwise it betrayed no emotion. "Soh, then! Soh, my beauty!" said Gunner Sobey, and having clambered the ditch, reached out a caressing hand. The donkey retreated, backing, step by step: and as Gunner Sobey stared a white blaze on the animal's face grew more and more distinct to him. "Eh? Why, surely--soh, then!--you're Jowter Puckey's naggur? And if so--and I'll be sworn to you, seein' you close--what's become of th' old mare I sold him last Marti'mas?" The beast still retreated. But Gunner Sobey's wits were now working rapidly. If Jowter Puckey pastured his jackass here, why here then (it was reasonable to surmise) he also pastured the old mare, Pleasant: and if Pleasant browsed anywhere within earshot, why the chances were she would remember and respond to her former master's call. I repeat that Gunner Sobey was a ready man and a brave. Without pausing to reflect that the French might hear him, he put two fingers in his mouth and whistled into the night. For a while there came no reply. He had his two fingers in his mouth to repeat the call when, happening to glance at the jackass, he perceived the beast's ears go up and its head slew round towards the ridge. Doubtless it had caught the distant echo of hoofs; for half a minute later a low whinny sounded from the summit of the dark slope, and a grey form came lumbering down at a trot, halted, and thrust forward its muzzle to be caressed. "Pleasant! Oh, my dear Pleasant!" stammered Gunner Sobey, reaching out a hand and fondling first her nose, then her ears. He could have thrown both arms around her ewe neck and hugged her. "How did I come to sell 'ee?" To be sure, if he had not, this good fortune had never befallen him. Neither Gunner Sobey nor the mare--nor, for that matter, the jackass--had ever read the eighteenth book of Homer's Iliad; and this must be their excuse for letting pass the encounter with less eloquence than I, its narrator, might have made a fortune by reporting. For once Gunner Sobey's readiness failed him, under emotion too deep for words. He laid a hand on the mare's withers and heaved himself astride, choosing a seat well back towards the haunches, and so avoiding the more pronounced angles in her framework. Then leaning forward and patting her neck he called to her. "Home, my beauty! I'll stick on, my dear, if you'll but do the rest. Cl'k!" She gathered up her infirm limbs and headed for home at a canter. For a while the jackass trotted beside them; but coming to the gate and dismounting to open it, Gunner Sobey turned him back. Possibly the mare had a notion she was being stolen, for no sooner had her rider remounted than she struck off into a lane on the right hand, avoiding the road to Polperro where her present owner dwelt; and so, fetching a circuit by a second lane--this time to the left-- clattered downhill past the sleeping hamlet of Crumplehorn, and breasted the steep coombe and the road that winds up beside it past the two Kellows to Mabel Burrow. Here on the upland she pulled herself together, and reaching out into a gallant stride, started on the long descent towards Troy at a pace that sent the night air whizzing by Gunner Sobey's ears. Past Carneggan she thundered, past Tredudwell; and thence, swinging off into the road for the Little Ferry, still down hill by Lanteglos Vicarage, by Ring of Bells, to the ford of Watergate in the valley bottom, where now a bridge stands; but in those days the foot-passengers crossed by a plank and a hand-rail. Splashing through the ford and choosing unguided the road which bore away to the right from the silent smithy, and steeply uphill to Whiddycross Common, she took it gamely though with fast failing breath. She had been foaled in Troy parish, and marvellously she was proving, after thirty years (her age was no less), the mettle of her ancient pasture. While he owned her, Gunner Sobey--who in extra-military hours traded as a carrier and haulier between Troy and the market-towns to the westward--had worked her late and fed her lean; but the most of us behold our receding youth through a mist of romance, and it may be that old worn-out Pleasant conceived herself to be cantering back to fields where the grass grew perennially sweet and old age was unknown. At any rate, she earned her place this night among the great steeds of romance--Xanthus, Bucephalus, Harpagus, Black Auster, Sleipnir and Ilderim, Bayardo and Brigliadoro, the Cid's Babieca, Dick Turpin's Black Bess; not to mention the two chargers, Copenhagen and Marengo, whom Waterloo was yet to make famous. As she mounted the last rise by Whiddycross Green her ribs were heaving sorely, her breath came in short quick coughs, her head lagged almost between her bony knees; but none the less she held on down the steep hill, all strewn with loose stones, to the ferry slip; and there, dropping her haunches, slid, checked herself almost at the water's edge, and stood quivering. Billy Bates, the ferryman at Little Ferry, had heard the clatter of hoofs, and tumbled out to unchain his boat; a trifling matter for him, since he habitually slept in his clothes. "Hallo!" said he, holding his lantern high and taking stock of the gunner's regimentals. "I allowed you'd be a messenger from Sir Felix. They tell me her leddyship is expectin'." "I pity her then," gasped Gunner Sobey, and waved an arm. "Man, the French be landed, an' the country's ablaze!" Billy Bates set down his lantern on the slip and ran two trembling hands through his scanty locks. "If that's so," he answered, "you don't get no boat of mine. There's Hosken's blue boat; you'll find her moored off by a shoreline. Take _she_ if you will; he's a single man." "Darn your old carcass!" swore Gunner Sobey. "I wish now I'd waited to cross over before tellin' 'ee!" "I dare say you do. Well, good night, soce. I'm off to tell the old woman." Man is a selfish animal. As Gunner Sobey hauled Hosken's blue boat to shore, poor Pleasant came down the slip-way and rubbed her muzzle against his sleeve, dumbly beseeching him to fetch the horse-boat that she too might cross. He struck her sharply across the nose, and, jumping aboard, thrust off from the shore.
That good man, it is perhaps superfluous to say, had not sought his bed. He was a widower, and had no one to dissuade him from keeping vigil until daybreak. At ten o'clock, therefore, having seen to the trimming of his lamp and dismissed the servants to rest, he lit his study fire, set the kettle upon it, and having mixed himself a bowl of brandy-punch (in the concoction of which all Troy acknowledged him to be an expert), drew his arm-chair close to the genial blaze, and sat alternately sipping his brew and conning for the thousandth time the annotated pamphlet in which he had demonstrated exhaustively, redundantly, irrefutably, beyond possibility of disbelief or doubt, that with the morrow the world's great age must be renewed and the Millennium dawn upon earth. For an hour and a half, or maybe three-quarters, he sat reading and reassuring himself that the armour of his proof was indeed proof-armour and exposed no chink to assault; and then-- The Vicar was a man of clean conscience and regular habits. He closed his eyes to review the argument. By and by his chin dropped forward on his chest. He slept. He dreamt. His dreams were formless, uneasy; such as one might expect who deserts his bed and his course of habit to sleep upright in an arm-chair. A vague trouble haunted them; or, rather, a presentiment of trouble. It grew and grew; and almost as it became intolerable, a bell seemed to clang in his ears, and he started up, awake, gripping his chair, his brow clammy with a sudden sweat. He glanced around him. The fire was cold, his lamp burned low, his book had fallen to the floor. Was it this that had aroused him? No; surely a bell had clanged in his ears. His brain kept the echo of it yet. He listened. The clang was not repeated; but gradually his ears became aware of a low murmuring, irregular yet continuous; a sound, it seemed, of voices, yet not of human voices; a moaning, and yet not quite a moaning, but rather what the French would call a _mugissement_. Yes, it resembled rather the confused lowing of cattle than any other sound known to him. But that was inconceivable. . . . He stepped to the window-curtains through which the pale dawn filtered; pulled them aside and started back with a cry of something more than dismay. The Vicarage faced upon the churchyard; and the churchyard was filled--packed--with cattle! Oxen and cows, steers, heifers, and young calves; at least thirty score were gathered there, a few hardier phlegmatic beasts cropping the herbage on the graves; but the mass huddled together, rubbing flanks, swaying this way and that in the pressure of panic as corn is swayed by flukes of summer wind. The Vicar was no coward. Recovering himself, he ran to the passage, caught his hat down from the peg, and flung wide the front door. A little beyond his gate a lime-tree walk led down through the churchyard to the town. But gazing over the chines of the herd beyond his garden railing, he saw that through this avenue he could not hope to force a passage; it was crowded so densely that dozen upon dozen of the poor brutes stood with horns interlocked, unable to lift or lower their heads. To the right a line of cottages bounded the churchyard and overlooked it; and between them and the churchyard wall there ran a narrow cobbled lane known as Pease Alley (_i.e., pis aller_, the Vicar was wont to explain humorously). Through this he might hope to reach the Lower Town and discover some interpretation of the portent. He opened the gate boldly. It was obvious, whatever might be the reason, that terror possessed the cattle. At the creaking of the gate the nearest brutes retreated, pressing back against their fellows, lowering their heads; and yet not viciously, but as though to meet an unknown danger. "Soh!" called the Vicar. "Soh, then! . . . upon my word," he went on whimsically, answering the appeal in their frightened, liquid eyes, "it's no use your asking me. You can't possibly be worse puzzled than I am!" He thrust a passage between them and hurried down Pease Alley. Twice he paused, each time beneath the windows of a sleeping cottage, and hailed its occupants by name. No one answered. Only, on the other side of the alley, a few of the beasts ceased their lowing for a while, and, thrusting their faces over the wall, gazed at him with patient wonder. At the lower end of the alley, where it makes an abrupt bend around the hinder premises of the "Ship" Inn before giving egress upon the street, the Vicar lifted his head and sniffed the morning air. Surely his nose detected a trace of smoke in it--not the reek of chimneys, but a smoke at once more fragrant and more pungent. . . . Yes, smoke was drifting high among the elms above the church. The rooks, too, up there, were cawing loudly and wheeling in circles. He dropped his gaze to his feet, and once more started back in alarm. A gutter crossed the alley here, and along it rushed and foamed a dark copper-coloured flood which, in an instant, his eye had traced up to the back doorstep of the "Ship," over which it poured in a cascade. Beer? Yes; patently, to sight and smell alike, it was beer. With a cry, the Vicar ran towards the doorway, wading ankle-deep in beer as he crossed the threshold and broke in to the kitchen. The whole house swam with beer, but not with beer only; for when, no inmate answering his call, he followed the torrent up through yet another doorway and found himself in the inn cellar, in the dim light of its iron-barred window he halted to gaze before one, two, three, a dozen casks of ale, port, sherry, brandy, all pouring their contents in a general flood upon the brick-paved floor. Here, as he afterwards confessed, his presence of mind failed him; and small blame to him, I say! Without a thought of turning off the taps, he waded back to the doorway and leaned there awhile to recover his wits with his breath. While he leaned, gasping, with a hand against the door-jamb, the clock in the church tower above him chimed and struck the hour of five. He gazed up at it stupidly, saw the smoke drifting through the elm-tops beyond, heard the rooks cawing over them, and then suddenly bethought himself of the bell which had clanged amid his dreams. Yes, it had been the clang of a real bell, and from his own belfry. But how could anyone have gained entrance into the church, of which he alone kept the keys? How? Why, by the little door at the east end of the south aisle, which stood ajar. Across the alley he could see it, and that it stood ajar; and more by token a heifer had planted her forefoot on the step and was nosing it wider. Someone had forced the lock. Someone was at this moment within the church! The Vicar collected his wits and ran for it; thrust his way once more through the crowd of cattle, and through the doorway into the aisle, shouting a challenge. A groan from the belfry answered him, and there, in the dim light, he almost stumbled over a man seated on the cold flags of the pavement and feebly rubbing the lower part of his spine. It is notoriously dangerous to ring a church bell without knowing the trick of it. Gunner Sobey, having broken into the belfry and laid hands on the first bell-rope (which happened to be that of the tenor), had pulled it vigorously, let go too late, and dropped a good ten feet plumb in a sitting posture. "Good Lord!" The Vicar peered at him, stooping. "Is that Sobey?" "It _was_," groaned Sobey. "I'll never be the same man again." "But what has happened?" "Happened? Why, I tumbled off the bell-rope. You might ha' guessed _that_." "Yes, yes; but why?" "Because I didn' know how it worked." Gunner Sobey turned his face away wearily and continued to rub his hurt. "I didn't know till now, either, that a man could be stunned at this end," he added. "Man, I see you're suffering, but answer me for goodness' sake! What's the meaning of all these cattle outside, and the taps running, and the smoke up yonder on the hill? And why--?" "I done my best," murmured Gunner Sobey drowsily. "Single-handed I done it, but I done my best." "Are you telling me that all this has been _your_ doing?" "A man can't very well be ten detachments at once, can he?" demanded the Gunner, sitting erect of a sudden and speaking with an air of great lucidity. "At least not in the Artillery. The liquor, now-- I've run it out of every public-house in the town; that was Detachment D's work. And the hayricks; properly speakin', _they_ belonged to Detachment E, and I hadn' time to fire more than Farmer Coad's on my way down wi' the cattle. _And_ the alarm bell, you may argue, wasn' any business of mine; an' I wish with all my heart I'd never touched the dam thing! But with the French at your doors, so to speak--" "The French?" "Didn' I tell you? Then I must have overlooked it. Iss, iss, the French be landed at Talland Cove, and murderin' as they come! And the Troy lads be cut down like a swathe o' grass; and I, only I, escaped to carry the news. And you call this a Millenyum, I suppose?" he wound up with sudden inconsequent bitterness. But the Vicar apparently did not hear. "The French? The French?" he kept repeating. "Oh, Heaven, what's to be done?" "If you was something more than a pulpit Christian," suggested Gunner Sobey, "you'd hoist me pickaback an' carry me over to hospital; for I can't walk with any degree of comfort, an' that's a fact. And next you'd turn to an' drive off the cattle inland, an' give warning as you go. 'Tis a question if I live out this night, an' 'tis another question if I want to; but, dead or alive, it sha'n't be said of me that I hadn' presence of mind." _ |
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