第23章

"He told us more yarns than we ever before heard spun in the same length of time. He is seventy-seven, and says he was a teetotaler until he was sixty-nine, but has been trying to make up time ever since. From his condition last evening, I should say he was likely to do it. He was so mellow, I asked him how he could manage to walk down the staircase. 'Oh, I can walk down neat enough,' he said, 'when I'm in good sailing trim, as I am now, feeling just good enough, but not too good, your honour; but when I'm half seas over or three sheets in the wind, I roll down, your honour!' He spends three shillings a week for his food and the same for his 'rummidge.' He was thrilling when he got on the subject of the awful wreck just outside this harbour, 'the fourth of October, seventy-one years ago, two-and-thirty men drowned, your honour, and half of 'em from Clovelly parish. And I was one of the three men saved in another storm twenty-four years agone, when two-and-twenty men were drowned; that's what it means to plough the great salt field that is never sown, your honour.' When he found we'd been in Scotland, he was very anxious to know if we could talk 'Garlic,' said he'd always wanted to know what it sounded like."

Somehow, in the days that followed, Tommy was always with his particular friends, the fishermen, on the beach, at the Red Lion, or in the shop of a certain boat-builder, learning the use of the calking-iron. Mr. and Mrs. Jack, Aunt Celia, and I unexpectedly found ourselves a quartette for hours together, while Egeria and Atlas walked in the churchyard, in the beautiful grounds of Clovelly Court, or in the deer park, where one finds as perfect a union of marine and woodland scenery as any in England.

Atlas may have taken her there because he could discuss single tax more eloquently when he was walking over the entailed estates of the English landed gentry, but I suspect that single tax had taken off its hat, and bowing profoundly to Egeria, had said, "After you, Madam!" and retired to its proper place in the universe; for not even the most blatant economist would affirm that any other problem can be so important as that which confronts a man when he enters that land of Beulah, which is upon the borders of Heaven and within sight of the City of Love.

Atlas was young, warm of heart, high of mind, and generous of soul.

All the necessary chords, therefore, were in him, ready to be set in vibration. No one could do this more cunningly than Egeria; the only question was whether love would "run out to meet love," as it should, "with open arms."

We simply waited to see. Mrs. Jack, with that fine lack of logic that distinguished her, disclaimed all responsibility. "He is awake, at least," she said, "and that is a great comfort; and now and then he observes a few very plain facts, mostly relating to Egeria, it is true. If it does come to anything, I hope he won't ask her to live in a college settlement the year round, though I haven't the slightest doubt that she would like it. If there were ever two beings created expressly for each other, it is these two, and for that reason I have my doubts about the matter. Almost all marriages are made between two people who haven't the least thing in common, so far as outsiders can judge. Egeria and Atlas are almost too well suited for marriage."

The progress of the affair had thus far certainly been astonishingly rapid, but it might mean nothing. Egeria's mind and heart were so easy of access up to a certain point that the traveller sometimes overestimated the distance covered and the distance still to cover. Atlas quoted something about her at the end of the very first day, that described her charmingly:

"Ordinarily, the sweetest ladies will make us pass through cold mist and cross a stile or two, or a broken bridge, before the formalities are cleared away, to grant us rights of citizenship.

She is like those frank lands where we have not to hand out a passport at the frontier and wait for dubious inspection." But the description is incomplete. Egeria, indeed, made no one wait at the frontier for a dubious inspection of his passport; but once in the new domain, while he would be cordially welcomed to parks, gardens, lakes, and pleasure grounds, he would find unexpected difficulty in entering the queen's private apartments, a fact that occasioned surprise to some of the travellers.

We all took the greatest interest, too, in the romance of Phoebe and Jem, for the course of true love did not run at all smooth for this young couple. Jack wrote a ballad about her, and Egeria made a tune to it, and sang it to the tinkling, old-fashioned piano of an evening:-"Have you e'er seen the street of Clovelly?

The quaint, rambling street of Clovelly, With its staircase of stone leading down to the sea, To the harbour so sleepy, so old, and so wee, The queer, crooked street of Clovelly.

"Have you e'er seen the lass of Clovelly?

The sweet little lass of Clovelly, With kirtle of grey reaching just to her knee, And ankles as neat as ankles may be, The yellow-haired lass of Clovelly.