"I beg your pardon?" The Vicar, not for the first time, found it difficult to follow Miss Marty"s train of thought.
"Scipio never repeats what he hears at table: I"ll say that for him.
And I believe in feeding people up."
The Vicar turned to Major Hymen, who had pushed back his chair and was staring at the tablecloth from under a puckered brow.
"I fear this has come upon you somewhat suddenly: but my first thought, as soon as I had convinced myself--"
"Thank you, Vicar. I appreciate that, of course."
"And, after all--when you come to think of it--an event of this magnitude, happening in your mayoralty--"
"Will they knight him, do you think?" asked Miss Marty.
While the Vicar considered his answer, on top of this interruption came another--Scipio entering with the omelet. Now the entrance of the Major"s omelet was a daily ritual. It came on a silver dish, heated by a small silver spirit-lamp, on a tray covered by a spotless linen cloth. Scipio, its cook and compounder, bore it with professional pride, supporting the dish on one palm bent backwards, and held accurately level with his shoulder; whence, by a curious and quite indescribable turn of the wrist (Scipio was double-jointed), during which for one fearful tenth of a second they seemed to hang upside down, he would bring tray, lamp, dish and omelet down with a sweep, and deposit them accurately in front of the Major"s plate, at the same instant bringing his heels together and standing at attention for his master"s approval.
"Well done, Scipio!" the Major would say, nine days out of ten.
But to-day he pushed the tray from him pettishly, ignoring Scipio.
"You"ll excuse me"--he turned to the Vicar--"but if what you say is correct (you may go, Scipio) it puts me in a position of some responsibility."
"I felt sure you would see it in that light. It"s a responsibility for me, too."
"To-day is the twenty-fifth. We have little more than a month."
"What am I to say in church next Sunday?"
"Why, as for that, you must say nothing. Good Heavens! is this a time for adding to the disquietude of men"s minds?"
"I had thought," the Vicar confessed, "of memorialising the Government."
"Addington!" The Major"s tone whenever he had occasion to mention Mr.
Addington was a study in scornful expression. He himself had once memorialised the Prime Minister for a couple of nineteen-pounders which, with the two on the Old Fort, would have made our harbour impregnable. "Addington! It"s hard on you, I know," he went on sympathetically, "to keep a discovery like this to yourself. But we might tell Hansombody."
"Why Hansombody?" For the second time a suspicion crossed the Vicar"s mind that his hearers were confusing the Millennium with some infectious ailment.
"It is bound to affect his practice," suggested Miss Marty.
"To be sure," the Major chimed in. As a matter of fact, he attached great importance to the apothecary"s judgment, and was wont to lean on it, though not too ostentatiously. "It can hardly fail to affect his practice. I think, in common justice, Hansombody ought to be told; that is, if you are quite sure of your ground."
"Sure?" The Vicar opened his Testament afresh and plunged into an explanation. "And forty-two months," he wound up, "are forty-two months, unless you prefer to fly in the face of Revelation."
His demonstration fairly staggered the Major. "My good sir, _where_ did you say? Patmos? Now, if anyone had come to me a week ago and told me--Martha, ring for Scipio, please, and tell him to fetch me my hat."
Although the Major and the Vicar had as good as made solemn agreement to impart their discovery to no one but Mr. Hansombody; and, although Miss Marty admittedly (and because, as she explained, no one had forbidden her) imparted it to Scipio and again to Cai Tamblyn in the course of the morning; yet, knowing Troy, I hesitate to blame her that before noon the whole town was discussing the Millennium, notice of which (it appeared) had come down to the Mayor by a private advice and in Government cipher.
"But what _is_ a Millennium?" asked someone of Gunner Sobey (our readiest man).
"It means a thousand years," answered Gunner Sobey; "and then, if you"re lucky, you gets a pension accordin"."
Miss Marty confessed later that she had confided the secret to Scipio. Now Scipio, a sentimental soul, cherished a pa.s.sion.
In church every Sunday he sat behind his master and in full view of a board on the wall of the south aisle whereon in scarlet letters on a buff ground were emblazoned certain bequests and charities left to the parish by the pious dead. The churchwardens who had set up this list, with the date, September 1757, and attested it with their names, had prudently left a fair blank s.p.a.ce thereunder for additions. Often, during the Vicar"s sermons, poor Scipio"s gaze had dwelt on this blank s.p.a.ce. Maybe the scarlet lettering above it fascinated him. Negroes are notoriously fond of scarlet. But out upon me for so mean a guess at his motives! Scipio, regarding this board Sunday by Sunday, saw in imagination his own name added to that glorious roll. He had a few pounds laid by. He owned neither wife nor child. Why should it not be? He was black: but a black man"s money pa.s.sed current as well as a white man"s. Might not his name, Scipio Johnson, stand some day and be remembered as well as that of Joshua Milliton, A.M. (whatever A.M. might mean), who in 1714 had bequeathed moneys to provide, every Whit-Sunday and Christmas, "twelve white loaves of half a peck to as many virtuous poor widows"?
So when Miss Marty confided the news to him in the pantry where, as always at ten in the morning, he was engaged in cleaning the plate, Scipio"s hand shook so violently that the silver sugar-basin slipped from his hold and, crashing down upon the breakfast-tray, broke two cups and the slop-basin into small fragments.
"Oh, Scipio!" Miss Marty"s two hands went up in horrified dismay.
"How could you be so careless!"
"The Millennium, miss!"
"We can never replace it--never!"
Scipio gazed at the tray: but what he saw was a shattered dream--a cracked board strewn with fragmentary scarlet letters and flourishes, "brief flourishes."--"Ole man Satan is among us sho "nuff, Miss Marty: among us and kickin" up Saint"s Delight, because his time is short. I was jes" thinkin" of the widows, miss."
"You have spoilt the set . . . eh? _what_ widows? You don"t mean to tell me that Satan--?"
Miss Marty broke off and gazed at Scipio with dawning suspicion, distrust, apprehension. She had never completely reconciled herself with the poor fellow"s colour. The Major, in moments of irritation, would address him as "You black limb of Satan." He came from the Gold Coast, and she had heard strange stories of that happily distant, undesirable sh.o.r.e; stories of devil-worship, and--was it there they practised suttee? What did he mean by that allusion to widows? And why had he turned pale--yes, pale--when she announced the Evil One"s approaching overthrow?
Miss Marty left him to pick up the pieces, and withdrew in some haste to the kitchen. Then, half an hour later, while rolling out the paste for a pie-crust, she imparted the news to Lavinia.
"It"s to happen on May-day, Lavinia. The Major had word of it this morning, and--only think!--Satan is to be bound for a thousand years."
"Law, miss!" said Lavinia. "Apprentice?"
Cai Tamblyn heard of it in the garden, which was really a small flagged courtyard leading to the terrace, which again was really a small, raised platform with a table and a couple of chairs, where the Major sometimes smoked his pipe and overlooked the harbour and the shipping. Along each side of the courtyard ran a flower-bed, and in these Cai Tamblyn grew tulips and verbenas, according to the season, and kept them scrupulously weeded. He was stooping over his tulips when Miss Marty told him of the Millennium.
"What"s that?" he asked, picking up a slug and jerking it across the harbour wall.
"It"s a totally different thing from the end of the world. To begin with, Satan is to be taken and bound for a thousand years."
"Oh!" said Cai Tamblyn with fine contempt. "_Him!_"
CHAPTER IV.
HOW THE TROY GALLANTS CHALLENGED THE LOOE DIEHARDS.
That it was the Major"s idea goes without saying. At Looe they had neither the originality for it nor the enterprise.
I have already told you with what sardonic emphasis he quoted the saying that "twas hardly worth while for Great Britain to go to war merely to prove that she could put herself in a good posture for defence. The main secret of strategy, he would add, is to impose your idea of the campaign on your enemy; to take the initiative out of his hands; to throw him on the defensive and keep him nervously speculating what move of yours may be a feint and what a real attack.
If the Ministry had given the Major his head, so to speak, Agincourt at least might have been repeated.
But since it enforced him to wait on the enemy"s movements, at least (said he) let us be sure that our defence is secure. Concerning the Troy battery he had not a doubt; but over the defences of Looe he could not but feel perturbed. To be sure, Looe"s main battery stood out of reach of harm, but with the compensating disadvantage of being able to inflict none. This seemed to him a grave engineering blunder: but to impart his misgivings to an officer so sensitive as Captain Aeneas Pond of the East and West Looe Volunteer Artillery was a delicate matter, and cost him much anxious thought.
At length he hit on a plan at once tactful and so bold that it concealed his tact. Between Looe and Troy, but much nearer to Looe, lies Talland Cove, a pretty recess of the coast much favoured in those days by smugglers as being lonely and well sheltered, with a nicely shelving beach on which, at almost any state of the tide, an ordinary small boat could be run and her cargo discharged with the greatest ease. A shelving ridge on the eastern side of the cove had only to be known to be avoided, and the run of sea upon the beach could be disregarded in any but a strong southerly wind.