The Delectable Duchy | Page 4

responsibility. He
clambered out into the small boat astern, and, casting loose, pulled
towards a bright patch of colour in the grey shore wall: a blue
quay-door overhung with ivy. The upper windows of the cottage
behind it were draped with snowy muslin, and its walls, coated with
recent whitewash, shamed its neighbours to right and left.
As the boat dropped under this blue quay-door, its upper flap opened
softly, and a voice as softly said--
"Thank you kindly, John. And how d'ye do this May morning?"
"Charming," the man answered frankly. "Handsome weather 'tis, to be
sure."
He looked up and smiled at her, like a lover.
"I needn't to ask how you be; for you'm looking sweet as blossom," he
went on.
And yet the woman that smiled down on him was fifty years old at least.
Her hair, which usually lay in two flat bands, closely drawn over the
temples, had for this occasion been worked into waves by
curling-papers, and twisted in front of either ear, into that particular
ringlet locally called a kiss-me-quick. But it was streaked with grey,
and the pinched features wore the tint of pale ivory.
"D'ye think you can clamber down the ladder, Sarah? The tide's fairly
high."
"I'm afraid I'll be showing my ankles."
"I was hoping so. Wunnerful ankles you've a-got, Sarah, and a
wunnerful cage o' teeth. Such extremities 'd well beseem a king's
daughter, all glorious within!"
Sarah Blewitt pulled open the lower flap of the door and set her foot on
the ladder. She wore a white print gown beneath her cloak, and a small

bonnet of black straw decorated with sham cowslips. The cloak,
hitching for a moment on the ladder's side, revealed a beaded reticule
that hung from her waist, and clinked as she descended.
"I reckon there's scarce an inch of paint left on my front door," she
observed, as the man steadied her with an arm round her waist, and
settled her comfortably in the stern-sheets.
He unshipped his oars and began to pull.
"Ay. I heard 'em whackin' the door with a deal o' tow-row. They was
going it like billy-O when I came past the Town Quay. But one mustn'
complain, May-mornin's."
"I wasn' complaining," said the woman; "I was just remarking. How's
Maria?"
"She's nicely, thank you."
"And the children?"
"Brave."
"I've put up sixpennyworth of nicey in four packets--that's one
apiece--and I've written the name on each, for you to take home to
'em."
She fumbled in her reticule and produced the packets. The
peppermint-drops and brandy-balls were wrapped in clean white paper,
and the names written in a thin Italian hand. John thanked her and
stowed them in his trousers pockets.
"You'll give my love to Maria? I take it very kindly her letting you
come for me like this."
"Oh, as for that--" began John, and broke off; "I don't call to mind that
ever I saw a more handsome morning for the time o' year."
They had made this expedition together more than a score of times, and

always found the same difficulty in conversing. The boat moved easily
past the town, the jetties above it, and the vessels that lay off them
awaiting their cargoes; it turned the corner and glided by woods where
the larches were green, the sycamores dusted with bronze, the wild
cherry-trees white with blossom, and all voluble. Every little bird
seemed ready to burst his throat that morning with the deal he had to
say. But these two--the man especially--had nothing to say, yet ached
for words.
"Nance Treweek's married," the woman managed to tell him at last.
"I was thinking it likely, by the way she carried on last Maying."
"That wasn' the man. She've kept company with two since him, and
mated with a fourth man altogether--quite a different sort, in the
commercial traveller line."
"Did he wear a seal weskit?"
"Well, he might have; but not to my knowledge. What makes you ask?"
"Because I used to know a Johnny Fortnight that wore one in these
parts; and I thought it might be he, belike."
"Jim had a greater gift o' speech than you can make pretence to," said
the woman abruptly. "I often wonder that of two twin-brothers one
should be so glib and t'other so mum-chance."
"'Tis the Lord's ways," the man answered, resting on his oars. "Will you
be dabblin' your feet as usual, Sarah?"
"Why not?"
He turned the boat's nose to a small landing-place cut in the solid rock,
where a straight pathway dived between hazel-bushes and appeared
again twenty feet above, winding inland around the knap of a green hill.
Here he helped her to disembark, and waited with his back to the shore.
The spinster behind the hazel screen pulled off