第22章

Here there are bedrooms, a sort of quiet tap-room of very great respectability, and the kitchens. As the dining-room is in house number one, the matter of serving dinner might seem to be attended with difficulty, but it is not apparent. The maids run across the narrow street with platters and dishes surmounted by great Britannia covers, and in rainy weather they give the soup or joint the additional protection of a large cotton umbrella. The walls of every room in the inn are covered with old china, much of it pretty, and some of it valuable, though the finest pieces are not hung, but are placed in glass cabinets. One cannot see an inch of wall space anywhere in bedrooms, dining- or sitting-rooms for the huge delft platters, whole sets of the old green dragon pattern, quaint perforated baskets, pitchers and mugs of British lustre, with queer dogs, and cats, and peacocks, and clocks of china. The massing of colour is picturesque and brilliant, and the whole effect decidedly unique. The landlady's father and grandfather had been Bideford sea-captains and had brought here these and other treasures from foreign parts. As Clovelly is a village of seafolk and fisher-folk, the houses are full of curiosities, mostly from the Mediterranean. Egeria had no china in her room, but she had huge branches of coral, shells of all sizes and hues, and an immense coloured print of the bay of Naples. Tommy's landlady was volcanic in her tastes, and his walls were lined with pictures of Vesuvius in all stages of eruption. My room, a wee, triangular box of a thing, was on the first floor of the inn. It opened hospitably on a bit of garden and street by a large glass door that wouldn't shut, so that a cat or a dog spent the night by my bed-side now and then, and many a donkey tried to do the same, but was evicted.

Oh, the Clovelly mornings! the sunshine, the salt air, the savour of the boats and the nets, the limestone cliffs of Gallantry Bower rising steep and white at the head of the village street, with the brilliant sea at the foot; the walks down by the quay pool (not key pool, you understand, but quaay puul in the vernacular), the sails in a good old herring-boat called the Lorna Doone, for we are in Blackmore's country here.

We began our first day early in the morning, and met at nine-o'clock breakfast in the coffee-room. Egeria came in glowing. She reminds me of a phrase in a certain novel, where the heroine is described as always dressing (seemingly) to suit the season and the sky. Clad in sea-green linen with a white collar, and belt, she was the very spirit of a Clovelly morning. She had risen at six, and in company with Phoebe, daughter of her house (the yellow-haired lassie mentioned previously), had prowled up and down North Hill, a transverse place or short street much celebrated by painters. They had met a certain bold fisher-lad named Jem, evidently Phoebe's favourite swain, and explored the short passage where Fish Street is built over, nicknamed Temple Bar.

Atlas came in shortly after and laid a nosegay at Egeria's plate.

"My humble burnt-offering, your ladyship," he said.

Tommy: "She has lots of offerings, but she generally prefers to burn 'em herself. When Egeria's swains talk about her, it is always 'ut vidi,' how I saw, succeeded by 'ut perii,' how I sudden lost my brains."

Egeria: "YOU don't indulge in burnt-offerings" (laughing, with slightly heightened colour); "but how you do burn incense! You speak as if the skeletons of my rejected suitors were hanging on imaginary lines all over the earth's surface."

Tommy: "They are not hanging on 'imaginary' lines."

Mrs. Jack: "Turn your thoughts from Egeria's victims, you frivolous people, and let me tell you that I've been 'up-along' this morning and found--what do you think?--a library: a circulating library maintained by the Clovelly Court people. It is embowered in roses and jasmine, and there is a bird's nest hanging just outside one of the open windows next to a shelf of Dickens and Scott. Never before have young families of birds been born and brought up with similar advantages. The snails were in the path just as we saw them yesterday evening, Atlas; not one has moved, not one has died! Oh, I certainly must come and live here. The librarian is a dear old lady; if she ever dies, I am coming to take her place. You will be postmistress at the Fairy Cross then, Egeria, and we'll visit each other. And I've brought Dickens'

'Message from the Sea' for you, and Kingsley's 'Westward Ho!' for Tommy, and 'The Wages of Sin' for Atlas, and 'Hypatia' for Egeria, 'Lorna Doone' for Jack, and Charles Kingsley's sermons for myself.

We will read aloud every evening."

"I won't," said Tommy succinctly. "I've been down by the quay pool, and I've got acquainted with a lot of A1 chaps that have agreed to take me drift-fishing every night, and they are going to put out the Clovelly lifeboat for exercise this week, and if the weather is fine, Bill Marks is going to take Atlas and me to Lundy Island. You don't catch me round the evening lamp very much in Clovelly."

"Don't be too slangy, Tommy, and who on earth is Bill Marks?" asked Jack.

"He's our particular friend, Tommy's and mine," answered Atlas, seeing that Tommy was momentarily occupied with bacon and eggs.