the following day my uncle was near himself again, and we left the flask inn and took lodging with the widow puddephatt. the playstow was a little green, about half-way down the village, where the villagers reared their may-pole on may-day, and built their fires on midsummer’s eve, and caroused in september on the harvest-largesse won from passers-by. round about, in a little square, were cottages, detached and exclusive, the élite of dunberry; and to one side was the church—but now in process of completion—in whose porch the daring would seat themselves on st. mark’s eve to see, at midnight, the wraiths of the year’s pre-doomed come and knock at the door. mr. sant had, however, limited that custom, as well as some others less reputable; and the fact that he was able to do so spoke volumes for his persuasiveness. at the present time the villagers, under his stimulus, were transferring, stone by stone, to the long unfinished fabric and its adjoining school-house, the less sacred parts of the ruined foundation on the hill.
mrs. puddephatt, though dunberry-born, was a comparative acquisition to the village, to which she had been summoned, and to her natural succession in no. 3, the playstow, through the death of an only sister without encumbrances. she had, in fact, gone very young, a great many years ago, into service in london, and had never set foot again in her native place until this inheritance, now two years old, had called her. she brought with her an ironic atmosphere of the great world, and a disdainful tolerance towards the little, in which her lot was now to vegetate. she had, in her high experience, “’tweenied,” “obliged,” scullery-maided, kitchen-maided, house-maided, parlour-maided, and old-maided; and she had somehow emerged from this five-fold chrysalis of virginity the widow puddephatt—no one knew by what warrant, other than that of a sort of waspish charity-girl cap, with a knuckle-bone frill round her face. but then her knowledge of men was so matrimonial that it was admitted nothing but a husband could have inspired it. her dictums, in respect to this mystic experience, were merum sal to the wives of dunberry.
“look in the pot for your new gownd,” and “the way to a man’s purse is through his mouth,” may be bracketed for utterances cryptic to the “general,” but not to their delighted understandings.
“a hopen ’and comes empty ’ome.”
“a man shuts his sweet’art’s mouth with a kiss, but his wife’s heyes.”
“be careful of a saturday morning to mend the ’ole in your man’s pocket.”
“when your ’usband talks of his hage, be sure he means yours.”
such and the like shrewd axioms served the widow puddephatt at least as well as marriage lines; and, if more were needed, her mastery of the exact science of nagging and of the conquering resource of hysterics supplied it. sometimes, it was whispered, she was to be seen in her front garden viciously dusting a man’s coat with a stick; and on this moral implication alone, late tavern roysterers, lurching home after closing-time past the little wicket where she was often to be seen watching spectral and ironic, had been known to slink by, meanly conscious of deserting, and surrendering into her gloating hands a purely imaginary puddephatt, their late boon companion.
this tremendous lady undertook the care of us with infinite condescension, and, hearing that we were londoners bred, gathered us at once under the protection of her maternal and metropolitan wing.
“lork, fancy-maria!” she would say, with an air of amused tolerance towards the little suffolk rawbones who “generalled” for her; “we don’t breathe on the knives and polish ’em in our haprons in london!” or, “that won’t do, fancy-maria! we know better in london than to dust the ’ot plates with our helbers.”
with this shibboleth of sarcastic comparison, she had won, not only fancy-maria, but all feminine dunberry to a perspiring emulation of her gentility, so that in the course of her two years the social code had grown quite elevated, and it was no longer fashionable to dine in one’s shirt-sleeves.
fancy-maria was her adoring, but unable lieutenant. she tried hard, and breathed very hard; yet her fervour led to frequent disaster. it was the management of trays that tested her most severely. if she rose with one from the depths, she invariably struck it against the lintel of the parlour door, and shot everything from it into the hall. if she descended with one from the heights, she tripped at the corner where the stairs turned, and tobogganed down on it the rest of the way, preceded by an avalanche of cups and dishes. she always did her best to keep the contents steady with her thumbs; but her thumbs, though large, were not universal, and were generally occupied in holding secure the bread and butter, for choice, on one side, and the fried fish on the other. some people make a point of leaving a little piece on each dish “for manners.” we always cut out and left fancy-maria’s thumb-marks for that mysterious retainer of our childhood.
it was not long before uncle jenico questioned mrs. puddephatt about the earthquake. she turned up her nose at the first mention of it, and tittered the shrillest sarcasm.
“lork, sir!” she said, “you’ve never abin took hin by that stuff! and you a londoner!”
“stuff, is it?” said uncle jenico, genially. “and why, now?”
she cocked her head and folded her arms across her chest, like a tricksy saint in an old woodcut.
“i wouldn’t a’ believed it of you,” she said; “no, not if you’d gone and took me by the ears and battered my ’ed on the table.”
“but, my good woman,” began my uncle, “mr. sant——”
“bless ’im for a hinnercent suckling-dove o’cooing among the sarpints!” she interrupted, with a tight little laugh.
we looked at her quite bewildered, and uncle jenico was evidently at a loss for an answer.
“what ’e wants, that ’e believes,” said mrs. puddephatt, nodding her head many times. “but he ain’t a londoner, and hi ham!”
the advantage, one would have thought, lay with the untainted clergyman.
“herthquake, indeed!” exclaimed mrs. puddephatt, with withering contempt. “and grace took hout of it? no, sir; not more than what elijah looked to find in his’n, and was deceived in the almighty. a fine show convert we’ve got in our mr. rampick, haven’t we? ho, yes! tee-hee! and i ’opes as he makes it pay, sinst the loss of his liveli’ood by the herthquake.”
the amount of scorn she got each time into the word was simply blasting.
“he lost——” began my uncle, surprised.
“ah! what would he lose, now?” interrupted the lady, acridly humorous. “that’s just hit, sir. talked of the wicked smugglers to master bowen here, didn’t he? well, supposin’ he were hisself the most howtdacious of the lot? i don’t say he was, you know. i wouldn’t so commit myself. i merely states as a curious fact that this rampick, as was formerly as warm and dangerous a man as the best in the place, is, sinst the herthquake, become a loafer, without any visible means of substance. ho, yes! a pretty convert, i don’t think!”
“you believe him to be at heart a smuggler still?” said my uncle. “now, now, mrs. puddephatt!”
“sir,” she answered, with dignity, “i thank you for the himplication; but whatever my apperient greenness, i wasn’t born yesterday. we may have our faults in london, but to be suffolk paunches isn’t among them. once a smuggler, sir, is halways a smuggler.”
“indeed?” said uncle jenico, much abashed.
“yes, sir,” said mrs. puddephatt; “just as to be born a gipsy is to laugh at the rates. a ’ottentot, sir, isn’t ashamed of his own nekkedness, nor a smuggler of his smugness. reform, hindeed!”
“well, well,” said uncle jenico. “but what makes you suppose it wasn’t an earthquake?”
the landlady laughed sarcastic.
“in london, sir,” she said, “herthquakes—as is p’raps beknownst to you—sends out sulfurious perfumes, and not the heffluvium of brandy.”
“good heavens!” exclaimed my uncle. “but what——?”
“i reveal nothing, mr. paxton,” she interrupted him, “but what my nose tells me. you may smell it yet, sir, begging your pardon, about the mitre.”
“but——”
“i’ve ’eard tell, sir, of ile wells, but never of brandy. i may be wrong; and halso i may be wrong in doubting that gunpowder forms of itself in the ’oller places of the herth,” and with these enigmatic words she left us.
but it must be said that, for all her withering gentility, she made us an excellent landlady, as we had full opportunity of proving. for—i may as well out with it at once—we had come to dunberry to stay.
