The Complete Uncle Silas Stories (24 page)

‘Allus ready for a bit o' fun,' my Uncle Silas said when they rolled three lighted tar-barrels into the middle of the mayor's parade on the Sunday of the Fifty-Feasts. ‘Loved a bit o' fun. Liked to enjoy we-selves. Wadn't a man who could stop us either.'

It was about this time that the parson died: an oldish, long-winded preacher, not necessarily killed, but then again not helped, by opening the Bible-class lecture on a quiet Sunday afternoon and seeing six demented ducks fly out to the tune of ‘Art thou weary, art thou languid, art thou sore distressed?'

In his place came a young man, fresh from Oxford I think, earnest and high-minded and rather short-sighted and with, as my Uncle Silas said, the mouth of a proper fly-catcher. My Uncle Silas had not much use for parsons. They roused the Saxon in him, or something else of that primitive, simple, earthy nature, with a parallel hatred of mealy, fly-catching mouths. Surplices and vestments inflamed him like red rags. Chanters and psalm-singers and Bible thumpers, of which the countryside was all too
full, turned him into a healthy fire-eater on the devil's side.

‘'Umbuggin' popery!' he used to rage darkly. ‘'Umbuggin' money-mekking game.'

In the course of a few weeks the young new parson began to speak darkly too.

There were, he said from the pulpit, evil forces abroad. The devil's forces and the devil's voices and devil's hands were at work in the town and everywhere the devil stalked unleashed and unafraid. After my Uncle Silas and Foghorn and Narrer had let the fire-horses out again and rung the Bede House bell at midnight and tied a chamber-pot on the weather-cock he preached, with pain and sorrow, of ‘the black trident that is pointed at the heart of this little town.'

‘We wur the trident he meant,' Silas said, ‘me an' old Foghorn and narrer-gutted Quincey.'

All this time the young new parson was to be seen flying open-mouthed across the small town square, under the chestnut trees, in vivid vestments that changed with flashing bewilderment from day to day, and even from morning to afternoon, according to the demands of the high ecclesiastical calendar. Stoles of gold and purple, glimpses of scarlet silk under long white surplices, beads and crosses—Rome, my Uncle Silas considered, had wormed its evil way into town.

‘Even had a hat on,' my Uncle Silas said: as if that, above all, were the crown of popishness. ‘A black 'un. Looked like a cross between a saucepan and what we tied a-top o' the Bede House weather-cock.'

‘Here's the old gal with his ambags on!' Foghorn would shout across the square. ‘Treacle trousers!'

Some time after this Silas had the misfortune, as he
came out of The Griffin, blood-shot eye gleaming, red lips wickedly wet and a certain absence of steering noticeable in his thick bow legs, to run into the flying figure of purple and gold and scarlet, complete with canonical chamber-pot, as it flashed across the square.

‘Ah! Silas, I have been wanting for some time to buttonhole you.'

‘Well, 'ere's me buttonhole,' Silas said. ‘Now you git hold on it good an' proper while you got the chance.'

‘I did not quite mean it like that. It was a sort of figure of speech—I——'

‘Well then,' Silas said, ‘you jis stop figurin' and speechin' and git on wi' your 'umbuggin' fancy-work while I goo an' 'ave a wet at The Dragon.'

‘I think it all too obvious you have had a wet already.'

‘Jis' washed me mouth out with a drop,' Silas said. ‘I don't deny it.'

He blew with magnificent and snotty indifference into his large red handkerchief and the young man said:

‘You are a menace to the town. You and Freeman and that Quincey fellow. People are going in terror. They dare not go out at nights.'

‘Dear oh! dear.'

‘I will not tolerate it. It has gone beyond all limits. Never the one of you is ever seen at church, in God's house, behaving in godly fashion—you take us back to the days of bear-baiting and cock-throwing and hooliganism of that kind.'

‘Dear oh! dear.'

‘You never lift a finger to show regret or mitigation. You glory in it!—that's worst of all.'

‘Yessir.' Silas had a way, sometimes, of lowering his eyes, of drawing half over them a pair of butter-smooth
lids as meek and bland as a child's. ‘If that's the way it is I'm very sorry, sir. What would you like us to do?'

‘I should not take it at all amiss if you came to church once in a while——'

‘Very well then, sir,' Silas said. ‘I ain't much of a church-going man. Nor yit ain't Foghorn and Quincey. But if we can git over there once in a while we will.'

‘I appreciate that,' the young man said. ‘I truly appreciate it. It only remains to be seen——'

‘Yessir,' Silas said. ‘It jis' remains to be seen.'

The following Sunday there were Foghorn and Quincey and my Uncle Silas sitting in the front pew at church like a row of innocent owls. ‘You never see sich 'umbuggin' palaver in all y' damn days,' my Uncle Silas said. ‘A-burnin' this and a-wavin' that and a-waterin' summat else. I never see sich 'umbuggin' gooin' on in me life. Wuss'n Sanger's Circus.'

‘Might think we were a lot o' bees,' Quincey said, ‘a-being smoked out of hive.'

During the sermon Quincey, Foghorn and Silas sat listening as if they were made of butter and wondering all the time how soon they could escape and, as Silas said, ‘nip over to The Dragon and git the taint on it outa we mouths.' My Uncle Silas had never dreamed of such popery. The puritan in him was inflamed as if by heresies. ‘Thought they wur never gooin' to be done a-sciencing round in night-shirts,' he said, ‘and cock-eyed hats and I don' know what. Never see sich bowin' and scrapin' and groanin' and fartin' about in all me days.'

But after the sermon came an announcement that caused my Uncle Silas to put his elbow in Quincey's ribs and made Foghorn begin to draw meditative hands slowly down his moustaches.

‘On the occasion of the celebration of the Jubilee of our dear Queen.' There followed a good deal about homage and prayer, services and singing, solemn thanks and the ringing of bells. And then: ‘Of course we shall indulge in secular celebration too. There is to be a tea-fight and a torch-light procession and, of course, a bonfire.'

‘You ought to ha' seen old Foghorn's eyes light up,' my Uncle Silas said. ‘It wur wuth bein' smoked out for.'

After the service the young parson came to shake hands with the converts to righteousness.

‘It has done my heart good. I cannot tell you how it has warmed me.'

‘Well, we'll try t' warm you a bit more yit,' Silas said. ‘We're learnt a lot today. Ain't we, Foghorn?'

‘Too true,' Foghorn said. ‘Too true.'

On the night of the Jubilee they lit the bonfire in the middle of the market square about eight o'clock. The square was packed with people and that, as my Uncle Silas said, ‘helped us a lot. In a crowd like that you hardly knowed t'other from which. Half on 'em a bit merry too.'

‘Course,' he said, ‘I ain't saying me an' Foghorn and Quincey hadn't had a drop o' neck-oil—but then, arter all, it wur the Jubilee. The old gal 'd bin on the throne five minutes and it wur the proper time for a bit of a warm up.'

But the most excited man on the square that night was not my Uncle Silas, or Foghorn Freeman, or Quincey. It was the young parson, carried away on waves of excessive and loyal zeal not merely for his gracious Sovereign the Queen but for that roaring tower of spark and flame lighting up the square and all the streets about the square.

‘Keep her going, Narrow,' he kept shouting. ‘Don't let her die down, you fellows! Keep the pot boiling. Splendid, Foghorn! That's a magnificent pile of faggots you have there. Pitch in!'

‘Well,' my Uncle Silas said, ‘we pitched in an' all good and proper. He kept ravin' for us to bring more wood for the fire and we kept a-bringin' on it. I reckon he must have had two wagon loads o' faggots in the rectory garden. Well, arter we'd got rid o' them and a couple old hen-places and a half a pig-sty——'

‘Pile on the agony!' the young parson kept shouting. ‘Pitch it on, you fellows, pitch it on!'

About eleven o'clock they started bringing out the furniture. ‘Just a few old chairs and things. Nothing much. A couple of old couches and a table,' Silas said. ‘Me and Quincey kept bringin' it out while Foghorn
looked arter the parson's maid in one o' the bedrooms.'

That, it always seemed to me, was something much more in my Uncle Silas's line; but he, it appears, had something else to do.

Soon he and Quincey were in another bedroom, rigging up the effigy. ‘Fust we got a coupla bolsters orf the bed and then we dressed it up, nightshirt and every mite o' 'umbuggin' palaver you could think on. I should think we put half a hundredweight o' bibs an' cassocks an' nightshirts an' fol-di-dols on that thing. In the finish they wadn't another mite o' popery left we could lay hands on.'

In the other bedroom Foghorn was all this time very successful in keeping the maid quiet and the maid, it seemed, did not mind at all.

‘And then Quincey dropped it,' Silas said. ‘The pot I mean. We had it on the parson's head and Quincey dropped it. Jist as we was gittin' him down the stairs.'

The pot was china; and up in the bedroom the maid, hearing it crash downstairs, started screaming there were thieves about, but Foghorn—who was a good soldier of the Queen, my Uncle Silas said, with experience both at home and abroad—kept her quiet by telling her it was a cat with a milk-jug.

‘Any rate, I found another,' Silas said. ‘A beauty. With roses on it. And we put it on the parson's head and took him out into the square. We musta looked jis' like one o' them 'umbuggin' fancy church processions.'

In the square there was so much shouting and singing, so much spark and fire, so much excitement and jollity in celebration for England, the Jubilee and the Queen that the guy with its load of vestments was on the fire and in
full flame before the young parson, all merriment suddenly extinguished, saw himself burning away in mockery.

‘Burned beautiful too,' my Uncle Silas used to say, in the dreamy regretful way he kept for these occasions. ‘Burned beautiful. Pot an' all.'

It was, I used to say to my Uncle Silas in due course, a very successful evening for everybody, not counting the parson, but on the whole, perhaps, a little drastic.

His answer to this was quite pained.

‘They wur drastic days,' he said, ‘dammit, man! if you never liked somebody you 'umbuggin' well said so. You let 'em know. Bless me heart an' life everybody's gittin' too soft be half nowadays.'

But burning furniture, I used to say, burning a man's clothing, the very cloth and emblems of his calling, with a pot on his head. Not that I minded the pot so much; but the going was altogether a little rough, I thought, a little rough and rude.

To answer which my Uncle Silas used to turn on me his one good eye, the other closed and bloodshot, and say with that bland mock innocence, combined with a certain crooked sternness of his mouth, that he always kept for the finish of some taller tale:

‘We enjoyed we-selves, didn't we? Dammit, man, what's wrong wi' enjoying we-selves? I enjoyed it. Foghorn enjoyed it. Quincey enjoyed it. The maid enjoyed it—I know she did, onaccountable well an' all, because Foghorn told me so. Everybody enjoyed it——'

‘All except the parson.'

‘Oh! yis, well, I know,' Silas said. ‘But dammit, it wur only a few bushes and old kitchen chairs and rags we burnt. Don't forgit it ain't bin so long since they'd a' burnt
him
too. You ain't goin' to deny that now, are you?'

No, I said, I wasn't going to deny that. But still, burning people out of house and home—that was a bit much, I thought, perhaps a bit too much.

‘Dammit, man,' he said, ‘you're gittin' as bad as all the rest on 'em. I don't know what the 'nation's coming over everybody nowadays. Everybody's stopped enjoyin' theirselves. Everybody's gittin' too 'umbuggin' soft by half.'

He fixed me with a stare of solemn tartness and disapproval from which for the life of me I could not tell whether he were serious or not, until suddenly he dropped a wicked lid.

‘It's about time you had a mouthful o' wine,' he said. ‘Git the bottle down.'

My uncle Silas, all his life, was very fond of a baked potato. Whenever I walked over to see him on cold midwinter nights, when roadsides were crisp and white with hoarfrost and you could hear cold owl-cry haunting the woods, his first words were almost always: ‘You git the taters, boy, while I git the wine.'

He was always very particular, I noticed, about how the potatoes were cooked. ‘Course they're better in a twitch fire,' he often said, ‘when it's died down a bit and you can poke 'em into that hot ash. You git that burnt taste in 'em then and it teks a bit o' beatin.'

But in the absence of twitch fires he did the next best thing. At the side of his kitchen fireplace there used to be one of those big baking ovens, large enough to hold a side of mutton, where in the old days faggots were lit for baking bread. When the fired faggots had died down the big pink-and-white kidney potatoes, pricked all over with a fork, went into the bed of ash and soon the little kitchen was sweet and warm with the smell of their cooking.

‘Ever tell you about Pouchy Reeves and the baked taters? Bin a minute—very like I never did. The
smell on 'em allus brings it back.'

In winter time we almost always drank elderberry wine, sometimes slightly mulled if the nights were very cold, and it was generally at about the third or fourth glass that some reminiscence, far out of the past, began.