England, serenely unaware of his symbolic importance, acknowledged the squeeze with a pressure of the elbow. ‘Splendid!’ he said, heartily. ‘Piano solo, Miss Twitterton-we mustn’t miss that, on any account. Song by the Reverend Simon Goodacre, “Hybrias the Cretan”-strong, he-man stuff, padre. Folk-songs and sea-shanties by the choir…’
(He took his wife’s caress to indicate that she shared his appreciation of the programme. And, indeed, their minds were not far apart, for he was thinking: How these old boys run true to form! ‘Hybrias the Cretan’! When I was a kid, the curate used to sing it-‘With my good sword I plough, I reap, I sow’-a gentle creature who wouldn’t have harmed a fly… Merton, I think, or was it Corpus?… with a baritone bigger than his whole body… he fell in love with our governess…)
‘Shenandoah’, ‘Rio Grande’, ‘Down in Demerara’. He glanced round the dust-sheeted room. ‘That’s exactly how we feel. That’s the song for us, Harriet.’ He lifted his voice:
‘Here we sit like birds in the wilderness-’
All mad together, thought Harriet, joining in:
‘Birds in the wilderness-’
Mr Puffett could not bear it and exploded with a roar:
‘birds in the wilderness-’
The vicar opened his mouth:
‘Here we sit like birds in the wilderness,
Down in Demerara!’
Even Miss Twitterton added her chirp to the last line.
‘Now this old man, he took and died-a-lum,
Took and died-a-lum,
Took and died-a-lum,
This old man, he took and died-a-lum,
Down in Demerara!’
(It was just like that poem by someone or other: ‘Everyone suddenly burst out singing.’)
‘So here we sit like birds in the wilderness,
Birds in the wilderness,
Birds in the wilderness!
Here we sit like birds in the wilderness,
Down in Demerara!’
‘Bravo!’ said Peter.
‘Yes,’ said Mr Goodacre, ‘we rendered that with great spirit.’ ‘Ah!’ said Mr Puffett. ‘Nothing like a good song to take your mind off your troubles. Is there, me lord?’
‘Nothing!’ said Peter. ‘Begone, dull care! Eructavit cor meum.’
‘Come, come,’ protested the vicar, ‘it’s early days to talk about troubles, my dear young people.’
‘When a man’s married,’ said Mr Puffett, sententiously, ‘his troubles begin. Which they may take the form of a family. Or they may take the form of sut.’
‘Soot?’ exclaimed the vicar, as though for the first time he was asking himself what Mr Puffett was doing in the domestic chorus. ‘Why, yes, Tom-you do seem to be having a little trouble with Mr Noakes’s-I should say. Lord Peter’s chimney. What’s the matter with it?’
‘Something catastrophic, I gather,’ said the master of the house.
‘Nothing like that,’ dissented Mr Puffett, reprovingly. ‘Just sut. Corroded sut. Doo to neglect.’
‘I’m sure-’ bleated Miss Twitterton.
‘No call to blame present company,’ said Mr Puffett. ‘I’m sorry for Miss Twitterton, and I’m sorry for his lordship. It’s corroded that ’ard you can’t get the rods through.’
‘That’s bad, that’s bad,’ ejaculated the vicar. He braced himself, as the vicar should, to deal with this emergence occurring in his parish. ‘A friend of mine had sad trouble with corroded soot. But I was able to assist him with an old fashioned remedy. I wonder now-I wonder-is Mrs Ruddle here? The invaluable Mrs Ruddle?’
Harriet, receiving no guidance from Peter’s politely impassive expression, went to summon Mrs Ruddle, of whom the vicar instantly took charge. ‘Ah, good morning, Martha. Now, I wonder if you could borrow your son’s old shot-gun for us. The one he uses for scaring the birds.’
‘I could pop over and see, sir,’ said Mrs Ruddle dubiously.
‘Let Crutchley go for you,’ suggested Peter. He turned abruptly as he spoke and began to fill his pipe. Harriet, studying his face, saw with apprehension that he was brimming over with an awful anticipatory glee. Whatever cataclysm impended, he would not put out a finger to stop it, he would let the heavens fall and tread the antic hay or the ruins.
‘Well,’ conceded Mrs Ruddle, ‘Frank’s quicker on his feet nor what I am.’
‘Loaded, of course,’ cried the vicar after her, as she vanished through the door. ‘There’s nothing,’ he explained to the world at large, ‘like one of these old duck-guns, discharged up the chimney, for clearing corroded soot. This friend of mine-’
‘I don’t ’old with that, sir,’ said Mr Puffett, every bulge in his body expressing righteous resentment and a sturdy independence of judgement. ‘It’s the power be’ind the rods as does it.’
‘I assure you, Tom,’ said Mr Goodacre, ‘the shotgun cleared my friend’s chimney instantly. A most obstinate case.’
That may be, sir,’ replied Mr Puffett, ‘but it ain’t a remedy as I should care to apply.’ He stalked gloomily to the spot where he had piled his cast-off sweaters and picked up the top one. ‘If the rods don’t do it, then it’s ladders you want, not ’igh explosive.’
‘But, Mr Goodacre,’ exclaimed Miss Twitterton anxiously, ‘are you sure it’s quite safe? I’m always very nervous about guns in the house. All these accidents.’
The vicar reassured her. Harriet, perceiving that the owners of the house, at any rate, were to be relieved of all responsibility for their own chimneys, nevertheless thought it well to placate the sweep. ‘Don’t desert us, Mr Puffett,’ she pleaded. ‘One can’t hurt Mr Goodacre’s feelings. But if anything happens-’
‘Have a heart, Puffett,’ said Peter.
Mr Puffett’s little twinkling eyes looked into Peter’s, which were like twin grey lakes of limpid clarity and wholly deceptive depth. ‘Well,’ said Mr Puffett, slowly, ‘anything to oblige; But don’t say I didn’t warn you, m’lord. It’s a thing I don’t ’old with.’
‘It won’t bring the chimney down, will it?’ inquired Harriet.
‘Oh, it won’t bring the chimney down,’ replied Mr Puffett. ‘If you likes to ’umour the old gentleman, on your ’ead be it. In a manner of speaking, m’lady.’
Peter had succeeded in getting his pipe to draw, and, with both hands in his trouser-pockets, was observing the actors in the drama with an air of pleased detachment. At the entrance of Crutchley and Mrs Ruddle with the gun, however, he began to retreat, noiselessly and backwards, like a cat who has accidentally stepped in a pool of spilt perfume. ‘My God!’ he breathed delicately. ‘Waterloo year!’
‘Splendid!’ cried the vicar. ‘Thank you, thank you, Martha. Now we are equipped.’
‘You have been quick, Frank!’ said Miss Twitterton. She eyed the weapon nervously. ‘You’re sure it won’t go off of its own accord?’
‘Will an army mule go off of its own accord? queried Peter, softly.
‘I never like the idea of fire-arms,’ said Miss Twitterton.
‘No, no,’ said the vicar. ‘Trust me; there will be no ill effects.’ He possessed himself of the gun and examined the lock and trigger mechanism with the air of one to whom the theory of ballistics was an open book.
‘It’s all loaded and ready, sir,’ said Mrs Ruddle, proudly conscious of her Bert’s efficiency.
Miss Twitterton gave a faint squeak, and the vicar, thoughtfully turning the muzzle of the gun away from her, found himself covering Bunter, who entered at that moment from the passage.