SHORT STORIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3312, 5 September 1917, Page 66

SHORT STORIES.

A MODERN GALAHAD. By G. E. Burgin. (All Eight:; Reserved.) "You oudaeious young warmint! Come >*e out of that theer apple tree immejit." "Lcr!" said a shrill, mocking voice from the middle of the apple treo, and a pair of skimpy, black-stockinged little legs swung in perilous proximity to the purblind old constable's nose. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Dickie Hartburn, to talk to a lady like that!" The startled constable again peered up into the apple tree. " I should ha' known them pipestick legs anywheer," he muttered. "I'm main sorry it be you, missie; but I must do my dooty in that state of life to which I'm called, and

" You know very well you weren't called," said the shrill voice indignantly. " You called yourself when old Smithers died, and went round asking everyone to help you to get his place. If it hadn't been for papa, you wouldn't have got it." "I'm main sorry it be you, missie; but I must do my dooty," said Hartburn. " So 'm I," nonchallantly returned the ffirl. "Have an apple, Mr Hartburn, and et bygones be bygones." Without waiting for an answer, she shook the bough with such force that a particularly fine Bismarck descended with much expression on old Sjjckie Hartburn's prominent nose. Mr Hartburn impulsively uttered a word which rhymed with jam, then coughed in a vain attempt to hide his confusion.

" Swear word! I heard you. That's a fine of five shillings, Dickie," said the girl triumphantly. "Go home and try to be good, or I'll send down some more apples on you." The old constable scratched his head. " I dussent do it, Miss Patience. Them Bismarcks be wuth six shillin' a bushel. Last time I caught 'ee, 'ee promised never to do the like again." "It was only because you made me," said the shrill voice in the apple tree, "and you know very well that a promise isn't a promise if you can't help yourself."

" MLss Patience, parson to I, 'ee says, ' Next time any of my Bismarcks goes and you don't catch nobody, you lose your place,' 'ee says. What be I to do, missie? Do 'ee come down and be caught, and say no more about it. It's only a whippin' at the wust." She chuckled, and shook her thin legs tantalisingly just out of Dickie's reach. *' You'll have to come up if you want me, Dickie." "Me bein' an ancient man, I bain't good at climbing trees, I bain't," said Dickie, painfully preparing to take off his coat.

" I wouldn't if I were you," mocked the girl. "As the rector says, you'll only cover yourself with confusions." " These be the rector's apples, missie, and I'll ha' to haul 'ee along afore his Worship for judgment." " He shouldn't have bis orchard so near the road; it's enough to tempt any little girl," said the voice, with a slight quaver in it. Then coaxingly: " Dickie, I'll knit you a woollen comforter as red as your nose, and promise you, by my halidame, not to do it any more if you'll let me off this time."

The old man shook his head. " You come down, or I'll ha' to come up, nn'ssie," he said obstinately. "Very well, then." The girl's laughter showed that her fears were not very deeprooted. " Come along, Dickie. Only, I'm on a branch that won't bear your weight." " I'll get a pole and hook 'ee doAvn, mdssie," said the old man, ruefully beginning to shin up the apple tree. He was stopped by the sound of a pony's hoofs hammering along the hard, high road. The girl called out shrilly: "Cyril! Cyril! A Gaunt! A Gaunt!_ To the rescue! lam sore by this Saracen knave.''

A boy of twelve, who had been riding along the road -with a big bulldog at his pony's heels, pulled up and burst through the hedge with a joyous shout of "A Gaunt! ;A Gaunt! A Gaunt to the rescue! Who calls upon a Gaunt?" "A damsel in distress," shrilled the voice from the apple tree. " Wot ye will, Sir Knight, a foul dragon hath climbed halfway up this tree with intent to do mo grievous wrong, just because I shook a red apple down upon his old red nose." " Has he ? the blighter! I'll soon have him down again," said Cyril Gaunt, and made a rush at the common foe.

"Why, it's old Hartburn," he said in astonishment. "Come down, Hartburn, or I'll hike you out of it," he added to the old constable, who, after much puffing and blowing, had shinned halfway up the trunk of the apple tree. "Can't you 6ee it's Miss Pennifeather ?" The old constable respectfully shook his "head. " Beggin' your pardon, Muster Cyril, it be the rector's orders I be to apprehend all apple-stealers, respectful of their sex."

" Regardless, you mean," said the boy. " It's not very respectful to Mies Patience -to worry her like this. Come down at once." The old man shook his head and bra-ced himself for a further climb. "You won't?" asked the boy incredu-

lously. The constable worked himself a few inches higher. " This slimy dragon, vomiting forth sulphurous flames', declines to come down," Cvril Gaunt said to the girl, whose blue eyes again peered mischievously through she leaves. "Hath not a'lance wherewith to prod

the life out of him, Sir Knight?" she asked.

" Not even a clothes prop," paid the boy; " but," he added cheerfully, " 0 damsel in distress, my bloodhound is with difficulty held in leash." The girl looked anxiously down. "If you think you can tree him with the dear old Mrs Bully, I'll droy from this bough, and make a bolt for it."

The boy nodded. "My charger waits beyond the hedge." He turned to the brindle bulldog. "Now, Mrs Bully, keep old Hartburn up there till we've a good staut. I'll catch you, Patience, if you'll let yourself down from the end of the bough and then drop." There was a rustle amid the leaves, and the girl's skinny legs began to kick convulsively in mid-air as she suspended herself from the extreme end of the bough. ( " You be a harbourin' and a fosterin of a law-breaker, Muster Cyril," said the old constable in anguished tones. ' Call off that theer danged dog of yours afore the bough breaks, and I'll come down and catch her." But he shouted to unheeding ears, for the next moment a little black figure followed by. half a dozen fine apples dropped into the boy's arms and bore him to the ground. " Me thinks 'twas a shrewd shock, Sir Knight." Patience scrambled to her feet. "Besides, I've twisted my ankle. If that malapert knave descends from yonder bough I'm done for." . " It's all right, Patience. He shan t descend," said the boy confidently. "Mrs Bully, keep your eye on him till we re well away. As the bulldog wrinkled back her lips into an affable smile, Cyril Gaunt turned to the little girl. "Now put your arms round my neck and I'll carry you through the hedge. My pony's just outside.' The girl put her thin arms round his neck, and he gallantly carried her to what he called his " palfrey "—a stocky little black Dartmoor pony. Wi:h some difficulty he lifted her into the saddle and led the pony at a walking pace in the direction of Dr Pennifeather's. They were within a hundred yards of the doctor's when the girl uttered a cry of alarm. "All's lost. We are discovered, Sir Knight. Here comes your recreant sire." The rector strolled along toward them. "What's all this about?" he inquired, stopping to survey them with deep-rooted suspicion. . ' ,f She's twisted her ankle," said Cyril hastily, "and I'm just taking her home. By the wav, sir, there's someone in your best apple tree. I told Mrs Bully to keep him there until you could identify him." As the rector waddled off toward the orchard the girl looked after him somewhat apprehensively. " I don't like your father, Cyril. He's what my father calls a clerical error in a" white tie. He'll ( be back before we can get to the house." The boy swung,himself up behind her, and put his strong arms round the thin form. " You poor little motherless kid! Shut your eyes and hold on like blue blazes." In his excitement he quite forgot to be mediaeval. " We'll do him yet." He pushed the old pony into a handgallop, and lifted Patience off at her father's gate just as Mrs Bully lolled after them along the road. As the boy lifted Patience down, though it hurt her to put her foot to the ground, she bore the pain without wincing. " You just crawl into the house, and I'll make myself scarce until this has blown over," said the lad. " Come on, Mrs Bully. We'll have to spend my last day here on the downs." He (rave the pony a whack on his flank and galloped off, throwing a coin to the girl as he did so. "I had it made into a brooch for you," he shouted, turning in the saddle. * " It wouldn't run to more than sixpence. Send me this token by some trusty messenger in your hour of need, and I will come, sword in hand, to vour Tescue." "Don't go, Cyril—don't go!" the girl cried after him. "I don't believe I shall ever see you again." The boy wheeled his -pony, galloped back to the sorrowful child, bent down, and kissed her. " Some day I'll come back and carry you off," he said earnestly; " and we'll 'never be parted any more." She kissed him again and again. " Flee, Sir Knight, the enemy approach," she cried, and the boy once more galloped away, followed at a distance by the indomitable Mrs Bully. The girl limped painfully up to the house, holding the cherished coin against her heart. "It's a sixpence with ' Mizpah' on it," she said; 'and he's going away to-morrow, and I shall never see him any more."

"How will you have it? In gold, Captain Gaunt?" asked the obliging cashier, as he scooped up a heap of sovereigns with a dexterity born of long practice. "With a pound's worth of silver?" " Yes, I'll take some silver, thanks," said the bronzed young officer, and gazed round at the familiar furniture of the Dumbledon Bonk. "Does anything ever change here?" he asked wonderingly. "Fifteen years ago it all looked exactly the same." The cashier, altln/.igh ordinarily the soul, of good nature, was almost offended at this iconoclastic remark. "It was repapered eight years ago," he said with modest pride, "and the ceiling whitewashed." " Seems to me it's the same pattern on the walls," hazarded the young officer after another look round at the dingy old room, bisected by a dinted mahogany counter which was guarded by a strong wire netting. " I suppose someone comes and lets you out of this cage at meal times?"

" The pattern's always the same," said the cashier, ignoring the last remark. " Don't they do things like that in the unchanging East?" Captain" Gaunt shook his head. "No such luck, Mr Warber. Just when you've

got to know a house and the pet snakes in the roof, someone comes and burns you and them out, and you have to begin aJI over again."'

The cashier paused to hold a sixpence up to the light; then -put it aside with a frown. "I'd always heard tho East is the land of romance." \

The young soldier laughed. " There's just as much romance in Dumbledon as anywhere else if you know where to look for it," he said, picking up his silver. "What's the matter with that sixpence? Someone let you in for a bad one? I thought you could smell out bad money in your dreams." " 'Tisn't bad," Mr Warber explained, "but it's, not a legal tender. Someone's defaced it by having the word 'Mizpah' engraved on one side. Besides, there's a hole in it."

"I'll give you a new sixpence for it," said the captain. "I've no doubt there's a romance in this. See, it's been used as a brooch. Here's the mark where the pin has rubbed off."

"If I may take the liberty of presenting you with it?" hazarded the cashier. "First time anyone ever apologised for giving me money." The young soldier stretched out his hand for the battered coin, and put it in his pocket. "A good many changes in the village," he said casually. "I see poor old Dr Pennifeather has gone." "We gave him a very popular funeral," said the cashier. "If he'd been alive at the time, he'd have enjoyed it thoroughly. He always did like funerals, and the arrangements were quite recherche." The captain was engrossed in his own thoughts. "Were they ? And pretty little Miss Pennifeather? What of her?" he asked. "Many's the time we raided my father's orchard together." He rubbed himself reminiscently. The cashier shook his head. "Everything was sold up at the doctor's death to pay his debts. The poor girl hadn't a farthing to bless herself with, and was forced to go to her aunt's at Penn Hall. She's the poor relation of fiction. They work her like a horse, make her go up the back stairs, teach the children, mend her aunt's dresses, attend to all the social arrangements, and —dine in the schoolroom, when they don't give her high tea."

"The blighters!" The captain fell back on a familiar expression of his boyhood. "Why, I'm dining at Penn Hall to-night. I only accepted the invitation because I wanted to meet her again." "I'm afraid you won't meet her," said the cashier sympathetically. The captain shook hands with Mr Warber and swung out of the bank. Unconsciously, Gaunt's steps bore him down the sunny village street toward the old orchard which had once been his father's. He was staying with the new rector and settling up his fathers affairs, and the visit was a flying one "Warber hit the mark," he thought, as he came to the old unmended hole in the hedge. "Wonder how my' friend Bismarck is getting on." He began to smile at the memory of the past. "Poor little Patience! She must be sweetly pretty by this time. I remember those skimpy legs of Lers."

He came to the tree. The only change in it was that a huge branch, which had cracked beneath old Hartburn's weight, now nearly touched the ground, and formed a sort of leafy tent. The captain took the sixpence out of his pocket. "It reminds me of the one I gave her. Poor little Mizpah Maid! I promised to come to her aid if she ever sent it to me," he said sorrowfully. 'l'll not go back to India till I've seen her. I wonder why she stopped writing to me!"

The leaves shook a little as he put the sixpence to his lips. " The Lord watch between me and thee when we are parted." Something like that it runs. I wonder why she wouldn't answer my letters. Perhaps she saw that I was getting too fond of her. Why, I'm dashed if it isn't the same sixpence!" he said abruptly. "There's the hole I punched in it with a bradawl before I had it made into a brooch for her. How did lose it? Someone must have picked it up, wrenched off the pin, and passed it off on poor old Warber." The boughs of the Bismarck were gently parted, • and a beautiful face, the lips smiling, but tears in the eyes, looked out. "A Gaunt! A Gaunt to the rescue! Some malapert knave hath stolen my Mizpah brooch."

The sixpence dropped from Gaunt's hands. "You!" he said, with a little catch in his breath. "You! A Gaunt to the rescue! A Gaunt! A Gaunt!" And before Patience knew it he had taken both her little hands in his, and was looking down into her exquisite blue eyes. "Patience! Patience! You! At last!"

"Yes/' she said, vainly endeavouring to free herself from his grip. "Yes. A damsel in distress. I thought you would ride away without seeing me, and so I came down and hid myself in the old apple tree on the chance of your revisiting the place. This time," and she looked at her skirt, "I preferred not to climb." "You!" he repeated, still holding her hands.- "You! Patience! How did you know I would come here?" "I don't know how I knew it, but I knew. Aunt Pennifeather would be very angry with me if she heard of my doing anything so unladylike." By this time she had succeeded in freeing herself. "You're not as gentle as of old. Cyril." "I'm awfully sorry !" Gaunt took her hands again. "Now. look here," he said squarely, "I've bullied you all my life, Patience, and I'm going to begin again. Answer my questions, or it will be the worse for you." "That doesn't sound very much like a Galahad coming to the rescue of a maiden in distress." "I'm sorry, but my time's short and life is long," he said incoherently. "Little Mizpah Maid, why did you leave off writing to me a couple of years ago? Was

it because yoiir dear old dad died and you had suddenly become poor, or was it because " He hesitated.

"Because " Her colour deepened. "But you've no right to ask. I can't tell you." "Do you want me to set the ghost of Mrs Bully at you?" She shook her head. "You —you —were

"I know I was. And I'm just as bad as ever. So that was the reason?"

"Yes," she said defiantly. "I am poor, and—that was the reason."

He still held her hands. "Anyone else?" "No —no." Her eyes flashed in the old indignant fashion he remembered so well. "Of course there wasn't anyone else." "Then you've forgotten all this." He looked comprehensively around him. "You've forgotten when I took your lickings for you, when I shared everything with you, when I gave you the Mizpah sixpence on the last day, and you went crying into the house. You've forgotten, Patience.—forgotten all our plans, all we were going to do —the dragons we would slay together some day?" "No," she said, her colour deepening and the sweet eyes looking frankly up into his brown ones. "I haven't forgotten; but we were only children. Since then I have grown up and the world has been very hard and cruel to me. There are no knights to come to my rescue now—no one to help me lam a drudge at Penn Hall."

"Poor child! Poor child! But if you didn't wish to remember, why did vou come here?"

" I wanted to see you ride away and take with you the closing leaf in the life of a child. We were happy then, Cyril. If we had only known it, we were happy then."

"Yes," he said a little brokenly, "we were happy then, Patience. In spite of the dragons, life was all joy; we slew them so easily. They come again and again and empower us. Do you know why, little Mizpah Maid? Do you know why?" Patience shook her head. The tears, again filled her eyes. " Because we find them singly. You call to me and I am far away; I call to you, you answer not. Little Mizpah Maid, life is a sorrowful business for both of us. But I am going to change all that." "You!" She looked at him wonderingly. "You! HoWwill you do that?" "Like this." He took her in his arms. "Little Mizpah Maid, life has been sad for us because we fought our dragons alone. Now we will fight them together." 111. "Captain Gaunt," announced the old butler as he ushered the young warrior into the drawing room of Penn Hall, and that tyrannical lady of the manor, Mrs Pennifeather, swam forward with effusion to meet him. "I was afraid you were not coming," she said graciously. "I can assure you, Mrs Pennifeather, I wouldn't have missed it for anything. I made up my mind that nothing should stop my being here to-night." " I'm so glad, the more especially as I have not been unmindful of your interests." She looked at him archly. "That's very good of you; but I don't understand."

'' There's Miss "Worthall, the rich brewer's daughter. She's specially invited to meet you. I want you to take her into dinner."

"That's very nice of you, my dear Mrs Pennifeather; but I was going to ask you to let me take in my fiancee," said the captain, searching the room with eager eyes. "Your fiancee! I didn't know." For once Mrs Pennifeather was at a disadvantage. "But there's no other unmarried girl here than Miss Worthall. I don't know of " '

" Oh, yes ! —that is—of course." Mrs Pennifeather touched the bell. " James, let Miss Patience know that we are waiting- for her." Then in a hurried whisper : " Tell her to scramble into her best frock, and have another place set for her." " Yes, madam," said the bewildered old butler without moving ; " but they've taken Miss Patience's tea to the schoolroom long ago." " Go and do as you're told," Mrs Pennifeather said furiously. " There's some mistake," she blandly explained to Gaunt. " The dear child has a bad headache, and is evidently staying in the schoolroom." "With your permission," Gaunt bowed over her hand. "I'll find my way to the schoolroom in search of her." Mrs Pennifeather waited a quarter of an hour; but the captain did not return. " I thought I heard carriage wheels on the drive," said the worried hostess. "I didn't expect anyone else." The sound of the carriage wheels faded away, and the old butler came back with a letter on a silver salver. "For you, madam," he said. "I found it in the schoolroom." "Excuse me." Mis Pennifeather tore open the letter. Dear Aunt Pennifeather, —So sorry that I cannot accept your somewhat belated invitation for dinner; but Captain Gaunt has brought his aunt to fetch me to stay with her, as, owing to his sudden return to India, we are to be married almost immediately. In my ch.fdtsh days he was always accustomed to come to my rescue, and he has not failed me now." He asks me to apologise if his absence disarranges the dinner table.— Your niece, Patience Pennifeather. "There is no answer!" Mrs Pennifeather dropped the letter to the floor. "He is suddenly called back to India," she "whispered to Miss Worthall. "We must find you someone else, my dear. After all *-" She paused significantly. " He's very handsome," said Miss Worthall disconsolately. The carriage pulled up as it passed the ancient orchard. "Do you mind stopping

a moment?" said Patience to a sweetfaced, silver-haired old lady who sat opposite the young couple. "Certainly not, my dear; but remember the London train."

"I won't keep you a moment." The girl slipped out, made her way to the old apple tree. The next moment her voice rose high and clear. " A Gaunt! A Gaunt to the rescue!" "It's an old game we ueed to play," said Gaunt. "Sit tight, auntie, and I'll bring her back." He went to the hole in the hedge. "A Gaunt! A Gaunt to the rescue! Who calls upon a Gaunt?" "A damsel in distress," shrilled the voice from the apple tree. Gaunt pushed his way through tho hedge, carrying Patience in his arms. "To the station as hard as you can go," he said rapturously; and the coachman set off at a gallop. The old lady began to cry softly.