Yeast: a Problem

‘God bless her for a kind soul!’ whispered the wan weather-beaten field drudges, as they crowded round the body.

‘Get out of the way, my men!’ quoth the colonel.  ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth.’  And he packed off one here and another there for necessaries, and commenced trying every restorative means with the ready coolness of a practised surgeon; while Lancelot, whom he ordered about like a baby, gulped down a great choking lump of envy, and then tasted the rich delight of forgetting himself in admiring obedience to a real superior.

But there Tregarva lay lifeless, with folded hands, and a quiet satisfied smile, while Honoria watched and watched with parted lips, unconscious of the presence of every one.

Five minutes!—ten!

‘Carry him to the house,’ said the colonel, in a despairing tone, after another attempt.

‘He moves!’  ‘No!’  ‘He does!’  ‘He breathes!’  ‘Look at his eyelids!’

Slowly his eyes opened.

‘Where am I?  All gone?  Sweet dreams—blessed dreams!’

His eye met Honoria’s.  One big deep sigh swelled to his lips and burst.  She seemed to recollect herself, rose, passed her arm through Argemone’s, and walked slowly away.

CHAPTER IV: AN ‘INGLORIOUS MILTON’

Argemone, sweet prude, thought herself bound to read Honoria a lecture that night, on her reckless exhibition of feeling; but it profited little.  The most consummate cunning could not have baffled Argemone’s suspicions more completely than her sister’s utter simplicity.  She cried just as bitterly about Mops’s danger as about the keeper’s, and then laughed heartily at Argemone’s solemnity; till at last, when pushed a little too hard, she broke out into something very like a passion, and told her sister, bitterly enough, that ‘she was not accustomed to see men drowned every day, and begged to hear no more about the subject.’  Whereat Argemone prudently held her tongue, knowing that under all Honoria’s tenderness lay a volcano of passionate determination, which was generally kept down by her affections, but was just as likely to be maddened by them.  And so this conversation only went to increase the unconscious estrangement between them, though they continued, as sisters will do, to lavish upon each other the most extravagant protestations of affection—vowing to live and die only for each other—and believing honestly, sweet souls, that they felt all they said; till real imperious Love came in, in one case of the two at least, shouldering all other affections right and left; and then the two beauties discovered, as others do, that it is not so possible or reasonable as they thought for a woman to sacrifice herself and her lover for the sake of her sister or her friend.  Next morning Lancelot and the colonel started out to Tregarva’s cottage, on a mission of inquiry.  They found the giant propped up in bed with pillows, his magnificent features looking in their paleness more than ever like a granite Memnon.  Before him lay an open Pilgrim’s Progress, and a drawer filled with feathers and furs, which he was busily manufacturing into trout flies, reading as he worked.  The room was filled with nets, guns, and keepers’ tackle, while a well-filled shelf of books hung by the wall.

‘Excuse my rising, gentlemen,’ he said, in his slow, staid voice, ‘but I am very weak, in spite of the Lord’s goodness to me.  You are very kind to think of coming to my poor cottage,’

‘Well, my man,’ said the colonel, ‘and how are you after your cold bath?  You are the heaviest fish I ever landed!’

‘Pretty well, thank God, and you, sir.  I am in your debt, sir, for the dear life.  How shall I ever repay you?’

‘Repay, my good fellow?  You would have done as much for me.’

‘May be; but you did not think of that when you jumped in; and no more must I in thanking you.  God knows how a poor miner’s son will ever reward you; but the mouse repaid the lion, says the story, and, at all events, I can pray for you.  By the bye, gentlemen, I hope you have brought up some trolling-tackle?’

‘We came up to see you, and not to fish,’ said Lancelot, charmed with the stately courtesy of the man.

‘Many thanks, gentlemen; but old Harry Verney was in here just now, and had seen a great jack strike, at the tail of the lower reeds.  With this fresh wind he will run till noon; and you are sure of him with a dace.  After that, he will not be up again on the shallows till sunset.  He works the works of darkness, and comes not to the light, because his deeds are evil.’

Lancelot laughed.  ‘He does but follow his kind, poor fellow.’

‘No doubt, sir, no doubt; all the Lord’s works are good: but it is a wonder why He should have made wasps, now, and blights, and vermin, and jack, and such evil-featured things, that carry spite and cruelty in their very faces—a great wonder.  Do you think, sir, all those creatures were in the Garden of Eden?’

‘You are getting too deep for me,’ said Lancelot.  ‘But why trouble your head about fishing?’

‘I beg your pardon for preaching to you, sir.  I’m sure I forgot myself.  If you will let me, I’ll get up and get you a couple of bait from the stew.  You’ll do us keepers a kindness, and prevent sin, sir, if you’ll catch him.  The squire will swear sadly—the Lord forgive him—if he hears of a pike in the trout-runs.  I’ll get up, if I may trouble you to go into the next room a minute.’

‘Lie still, for Heaven’s sake.  Why bother your head about pike now?’

‘It is my business, sir, and I am paid for it, and I must do it thoroughly;—and abide in the calling wherein I am called,’ he added, in a sadder tone.

‘You seem to be fond enough of it, and to know enough about it, at all events,’ said the colonel, ‘tying flies here on a sick-bed.’

‘As for being fond of it, sir—those creatures of the water teach a man many lessons; and when I tie flies, I earn books.’

‘How then?’

‘I send my flies all over the country, sir, to Salisbury and Hungerford, and up to Winchester, even; and the money buys me many a wise book—all my delight is in reading; perhaps so much the worse for me.’

‘So much the better, say,’ answered Lancelot warmly.  ‘I’ll give you an order for a couple of pounds’ worth of flies at once.’

‘The Lord reward you, sir,’ answered the giant.

‘And you shall make me the same quantity,’ said the colonel.  ‘You can make salmon-flies?’

‘I made a lot by pattern for an Irish gent, sir.’

‘Well, then, we’ll send you some Norway patterns, and some golden pheasant and parrot feathers.  We’re going to Norway this summer, you know, Lancelot—’

Tregarva looked up with a quaint, solemn hesitation.

‘If you please, gentlemen, you’ll forgive a man’s conscience.’

‘Well?’

‘But I’d not like to be a party to the making of Norway flies.’

‘Here’s a Protectionist, with a vengeance!’ laughed the colonel.  ‘Do you want to keep all us fishermen in England? eh? to fee English keepers?

‘No, sir.  There’s pretty fishing in Norway, I hear, and poor folk that want money more than we keepers.  God knows we get too much—we that hang about great houses and serve great folks’ pleasure—you toss the money down our throats, without our deserving it; and we spend it as we get it—a deal too fast—while hard-working labourers are starving.’

‘And yet you would keep us in England?’

‘Would God I could!’

‘Why then, my good fellow?’ asked Lancelot, who was getting intensely interested with the calm, self-possessed earnestness of the man, and longed to draw him out.

The colonel yawned.

‘Well, I’ll go and get myself a couple of bait.  Don’t you stir, my good parson-keeper.  Down charge, I say!  Odd if I don’t find a bait-net, and a rod for myself, under the verandah.’

‘You will, colonel.  I remember, now, I set it there last morning; but the water washed many things out of my brains, and some things into them—and I forgot it like a goose.’

‘Well, good-bye, and lie still.  I know what a drowning is, and more than one.  A day and a night have I been in the deep, like the man in the good book; and bed is the best of medicine for a ducking;’ and the colonel shook him kindly by the hand and disappeared.

Lancelot sat down by the keeper’s bed.

‘You’ll get those fish-hooks into your trousers, sir; and this is a poor place to sit down in.’

‘I want you to say your say out, friend, fish-hooks or none.’

The keeper looked warily at the door, and when the colonel had passed the window, balancing the trolling-rod on his chin, and whistling merrily, he began,—