THE TENTS OF SHEM

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 45, 3 December 1949, Page 7

THE TENTS OF SHEM

By Grace Jones Morgan

Serial Story

(Copyright)

_...-.,. B « l ., BaB . aDaaaBBBBBBBBB . aaBHBaDBBBBBBBBBHSBB CHAPTER VII. FANCHEE MEETS THE NOTABLES' The doctor told her to her face she was ail upstart, but tenderly, laughingly, and for him it was a blessing. Otherwise sick people would have waited a sympathetic ear. He’d have said rheumatism in the hike winters was inevitable and people should grin and bear it. He’d have asked mothers what they supposed their grandmothers did about measles and whooping-cough when Qrchardville was an Indian village and the only doctors were squaws and medicine men. He bought bunches of slippery - elm bark and endless dried herbs from squaws as it was, and brewed his own cures on the kitchen stove. He bought empty bottles from children just be-! fore Queen’s Birthday, Hirst of July and Christmas, when young things

needed a bit of pocket money, Heaven | was aware! Without Nellie swinging on his coattails the doctor would have spent hours with old Patrick Byrne, son of Sir William Byrne, and himself a Pellow of the Royal' College of Dublin. Pat Byrne kept body and soul together and whisky in the jug by writing and printing a four-sheet pamphlet which he peddled on the streets each week. He lived in a room over the drug store, in squalor. There the doctor would sit for hours of an even-

ing discussing the stars and earth and waters about the earth.* There came Ralph the druggist, who did taxidermy as a side line; Trelevan the Welshman, who set the place agog by a lec-

ture on evolution at the Literary Society, and Ardrus the minister, who had to cloak his foregatherings with that circle by what pretence it flaunted of reforming them. Ofchardville was shocked and scandalised at the

■suspicion of an atheist like Trelevan in their midst, but Trevelan never clashed with Ardrus; he laughed when Doctoi; Benton Avent about breathingwrath in his defence. There were no more ardently respectful Avorshippers of nature in the world than this crowd, but they were unorthodox. They were also the only friends left to Major D’Arcy. When .spring fields were fresh ploughed along the river they came down to look for Indian arroAv and spear-heads, pipe bowls, pottery, relics of Attiwandrons and Iroquois camp-fires, and of the older,

more mysterious Mound-Builders. And Major D’Arcy joined them. They came in a body, driven in the doctor’s phaeton, to call on the Major’s grand-daughter on the Sunday after she arrived. i ; Fanchee tfore her white-frilled silk

dresfe, freshly Washed and ironed, her

short socks and strapped slippers. She gravely shook hands with the elderly men and sat on the edge of a chair beaming at their flattering attention. Bridget shared the flattery. A woman from San Francisco, California. Well, well, wouldn’t she tell them about the place? They remembered about the Forty-niners, the gold rush, the prairie schooners, and buffaloes. Gad, it wasn’t long since buffalo hides sold for a dollar and a quarter, for. buggyrobes. Now they were gone, killed off, like the Indians. The pity of it, the shame of slaughter. And Bridget talked. Wide blue sky, mountains, the ocean, the summers with never a drop of rain let alone thunder and lightning. It was good to talk, and like Fanchee, she 'felt in good company. Fanchee was thinking of the day at the wharves with her father. ...

“I want my daddy. I don’t like this place,” she pleaded with-her fingers gripping the hand of Ardrus the minister. He blew his nose and lifted her to his knee; He made a 'rabbit of his handkerchief which jumped under the table, and Fanchee leaped for it. “A lovely little child, D’Arcy. She ha'3 imagination. You’ll need to watch over her tenderly.” Fanchee had imagination. For a week it had been fed with tales bf battle, of D’Arcys fighting, of deeds of daring. The following week Bridget was shrieking at the top of her lungs and punctuating her summons with “landgwidge.” That little devil of a Fanchee cantered unconcerned on the swaying , bough of an old apple tree in the yard next door, leading the Life Brigade “into the jaws of death.” ft did not matter that the Life Brigade was history more than a century hor that Bridget paid out her rapidly dwindling patience and rattled the gate in a capacious hand—as a warning. Fanchee knew Bridget would not come through the gate. She was barefoot. Her feet had been aching her, and the good earth was the best cure for aching feet a body could find. To-day was Monday. Airy’s garden was primly pretty, green rows of feathery carrot-tops, ruby-red be;et leaves, hard cabbage heads. Robins had twittered under the fruit trees, a sweet fluting threnody like boys whistling the unrest of adolescence but not so boldly. Bridget had lain in bed watching robins tugging at worms, laughing when the worm broke in two

and the birds tilted backwards. Watching sun checkers on the rank grass, then appraising the great four-poster bed and dusty hangings. She must clean the place, but, dear God, what a task. -And she was tired. There was Fanchee to look after. e A feckless family, the D’Arcys, but fine. The Major, Lord deal gentle with him, walked about the yard that dawn, leonine silver head .held high as if the pantry wasn’t getting bare after the donations of the neighbours onithat day Fanchee came home. That was how poverty-stricken the D’Arcys were. The Major had only his pension* and he was an old man. With-

out it, God save them! There was a deep and poignant reason Bridget should try to preserve the failing strength of the Major. She meant to patch and air his flannels, and feed him a bit between meal times,' because, dear Lord, he was worth more alive than dead! When he died his pension stopped. What would Fanchee <l6 then? The young divil didn’t dream of tragedy over her. She laughed and danced for those old cronies of the Major and told of the ships in San Francisco. She had laughed and danced for the boy next door and enveigled him to the apple-tree branch as the handful of cannon fodder she led “into the jaws of death.” Lord, love ye; it was worse than that. Mouth of death; jaws of hell! And dancing and bad words were forbidden the boy next dpor.

(To be continued).