As the months went by, Sir Antony Cobtree realized with growing satisfaction that there was no fear of his ever regretting the bestowal of his vicarage upon Dr. Syn. His only fear in connection with his old friend was that by virtue of his learning and popularity he would be tempted to accept some high preferment, and to counteract any such calamity he used his influence and got his favourite the extra and honourable appointment of Dean of the Peculiars, which not only gave the doctor the status of a dignitary, but substantially increased his income, and merely putting him under the obligations to occupy the principal pulpits of the Marsh for the delivery of an annual sermon, which expeditions were undertaken with quite a show of pomp, as Sir Antony invariably accompanied him, and ordered out his state coach for the purpose, so that it was not long before the fame of Cobtree's cleric was established near and far, which pleased the squire a great deal more than the doctor, who seemed perfectly content to remain an obscure village parson.
Under such patronage most men would have felt secure against the past, but Dr. Syn always kept his watch against calamity, and his first care was to conquer his own restless spirit.
Perhaps his hardest task in the part he had set himself to play was forcing himself to an indifference where Charlotte Cobtree was concerned. To add to his difficulty in this matter, the squire would always prove himself unsympathetic to the many young suitors who begged to be allowed to pay their addresses to his eldest daughter, especially since Charlotte invariably asserted that the young man in question was not for her. Then in a rage the squire would carry the story to his friend, beginning with, “Of all the pieces of impertinence” —and ending with, “I cannot understand Charlotte. It's my belief that she'll never marry anyone but you.” And Dr. Syn would exclaim again: “Why, Miss Charlotte is far too young and too good to waste herself on an old widower like me. It's impossible.” And all the time, there was Charlotte running in and out of the vicarage on this errand and that in the most natural manner, and at each visit Dr. Syn suffered more and more from the longing that she would stay with him for good.
And then on a bright spring morning Mr. Mipps came trundling along by the churchyard wall with his worldly possessions in a sea-chest which he pushed on a squeaky barrow that he had stolen in Hythe from the yard of the “Red Lion”.
Although for many years a stranger to Dymchurch anyone could have told that this quizzical little man was a mariner. Not only had he given his sea-chest a generous daubing but he had screwed his scanty hair into a sharp tarred queue, which stuck out beyond his broken three-cornered hat for all the world like a jigger-gaff. He wore a faded blue cloth coat with tails which hung too low behind his short, thin legs, and his dirty striped cotton bell trousers were furled up to show an ancient pair of thick shoes with brass buckles.
Although presenting a sorry appearance, his perky bearing gave the impression that Mr. Mipps was in excellent spirits. His clay pipe, with stem broken off close to the blackened bowl, puffed a continual smoke-stream into the nostrils of the long thin nose that roofed it. An economical pipe-man, Mr. Mipps, for the smoke that escaped from the bowl was sucked up through his nose to join the rest of it in his lungs.
He sat down his 'borrowed' barrow by the low wall of the churchyard and looked around. Having the most admirable opinion of himself, he was never above taking himself into his own confidence by the simple expedient of talking to himself aloud, which he then proceeded to do.
“Well, Mippsy, I never did see an anchorage so snug and trim as this 'ere village, all kept taut and Bristol fashion by that old sea-wall.” Mr. Mipps suddenly broke off his meditations, for he saw standing on the sea-wall, the black-garbed figure of Dr. Syn. “That's him,” he muttered. “Trim and alert, peculiar and odd as when he faced the mutineers on the deck of the old Imogene off Anastasia, and spit the ringleader through the neck with his small-sword. And here he is, settled down to his old trade of preaching same as he told me he would.” Dr. Syn had been watching the ships in the Fairway through his brass telescope. The sea-wall was his favourite walk, and up on it, behind Grove House, the squire had given him permission to re-erect Josiah Wraight's hut, that had been made from the bulkhead of the wreck's fo'c'sle. So upon the seawall behind Grove House it now stood, railed around to make it the more private, and one of the spars was erected as a flag-staff. Its windows faced the sea, so that the doctor's privacy was further assured. In this hut, fitted up inside as a cabin, the doctor would as often as not write his sermons, and after a time Charlotte went so far as to accuse him of liking it better than the vicarage.
Certainly, it was a snug retreat. On the wildest day he could sit there with the little stove alight and laugh at the spray lashing against the window panes.
Dr. Syn thrust the telescope under his arm and climbed down the steep grass bank of the sea-wall, and as he watched him, Mr. Mipps, becoming strangely nervous of a sudden, vaulted into the churchyard and took cover behind a tombstone. He heard the footsteps of his master crunching briskly over the gravel. Then they stopped abruptly. Dr. Syn was eyeing the sea-chest.
“Mipps—his chest,” he read quietly; then in sharp tones added: “Come out of that, and let's have a look at you.”
“All aboard, sir,” replied Mipps, jumping up and saluting.
“And what do you want with me?” The Doctor's long, thin face was inscrutable.
“Well, sir,” faltered Mipps, “knowing as 'ow you wished to settle down at your first profession, which you give up through no fault of your own, and hearing as 'ow a gentleman answering your description was beneficed 'ere, in my birthplace, I thought, sir, with all respects to your 'oly cloth, that you might be glad of a grateful old ship's carpenter what wants to settle down too.”
“And what if I prefer to forget the past, eh?” A fierceness had flashed into Dr. Syn's eyes. “Suppose I deny ever having seen you before. What then?”
“What then, sir?” repeated Mipps, swallowing his disappointment with an effort. “Why, no offence took, sir, and I'll steer for an anchorage elsewhere. But I'd like you to 'ave this before I goes, sir, as it weighs a bit heavy in my coattail pocket.” After executing a difficult contortion with the coat-tail in question, Mr. Mipps drew from the pocket something wrapped in a bandana kerchief.
“What's that?” demanded the doctor.
“Your Virgil, sir, what was stolen by that cross-eyed nigger at Panama, who thought it was a book o' magic. Remember? Well, I fetched up with him a year ago, and he won't steal no more Virgils, sir, he won't.” Dr. Syn took the book and opened it. “My notes. I made them at Oxford. A long time ago, Mr. Mipps. A long time. I am glad to get this back.”
“Glad you're glad. Good morning, sir.” And vaulting into the road, he picked up the barrow-shafts, turned it round, and started back the way he had come.
As Dr. Syn watched the quaint back view of the little sea-dog thus setting off without a grumble, his eyes grew kind. “Come back, you rascal,” he called.
Round came the barrow and back came Mipps.
“As I said, I am glad to get this volume once more. Steer your chest to the vicarage there and if we can come to a very definite understanding, I'll find you the means of settling down.”
“A job?” inquired Mipps hopefully.
Dr. Syn nodded. “But, remember this—I have never seen you before in my life. Got that?”
“Got it, sir.” Dr. Syn had taken the precaution of closing his study door behind the visitor.
“And what have you got in the chest, my good Mipps, that you hug it so tightly. The gold bar?”
Mipps shook his head. “No, Captain.”
“Don't call me 'captain'—'vicar',” said Dr. Syn sharply.
“Yes, Vicar. No, Vicar,” replied Mipps, putting the chest down onto the floor. “The gold bar got turned into guineas, and the guineas got turned into different things, what disappeared, much as drink, food and lodging. Then there come a sort of longing to be quit of travel, and I thought of home. I had no money for a passage, and merchantmen only employed men they knew, owing to fear of pirates, so I shanghaied a ship's carpenter in the Royal Navy and applied for his post for the voyage home. Had to get home, you see, Vicar, just as they had to have a carpenter. And what's more, Vicar, they got a better man than the one I detained, as the captain told me so.”
“And how did you enjoy your time with the Royal Navy?” asked the doctor.
“A well-run ship it was, Vicar, and the discipline good. Put me in mind of your old Imogene. So long as everything was just so and spitted and polished, all was happy. I only had one unpleasantness the whole voyage, and that come of contradicting the captain before his lieutenant. They was arguing about Clegg, you see, and the captain said he'd seen him. Had him pointed out to him in a tavern in San Juan, and then, if you please, he starts describing him as tall, thin, handsome and elegant, till I come all over in a cold sweat and said: 'Well, that weren't Clegg, sir,' I say, 'and your informant didn't know what he was talking about.' Then I told 'ow I'd been captured by this Clegg and got treated quite well till I was put ashore. I described him as a great barrel of a man, thick-set, arms and chest covered with obscene tattooin's, and a vocabulary unbeaten even in the British Navy. A real savage, I made him out, but on the whole a jolly savage. In plain words, sir, I described your enemy.” Dr. Syn nodded. “That was good. That was clever. You were always the man for me, and I believe still will be if you care to play a very different game.”
“I'm game for anything, Cap—Vicar,” replied Mipps.
“Aye, but you may be game for too much,” warned the doctor. “In other words, you may be too game to settle down.”
“But it's just what I want,” replied Mipps. “I never relished dying violent like most of 'em. A quiet settle down and a good long solitary chuckle about old days. That's me.”
“Suppose, then, that I give you a snug berth here as parish sexton, can you keep your mouth shut? Can you forget that we two went adventuring together? Can you forget that you ever saluted me as your captain on the poop deck of the Imogene? Can you forget that I was anything other than Parson Syn, Doctor of Divinity by degree of Oxford University?” Mipps closed his eyes tight, and holding up his right hand, responded: “All them things I solemnly forgets.” Dr. Syn once more picked up his recovered copy of Virgil and began to turn the pages lovingly.
“Digging graves, now,” he said casually. “I suppose you can manage that?”
“I've had to dig one or two in my time, sir, and quickly. Don't you remember that time when you and me—?” Dr. Syn slammed the volume like the crack of a pistol. “No, Mr. Mipps, I do not remember,” he said sharply. “I only remember to forget.” Mipps reproved himself by hitting his thigh with his clenched fist and biting his lip.
Dr. Syn opened the volume once more and continued in a casual voice. “You can pull the bell for service?”
“Ain't I handled ropes and rung watches all my life?” Dr. Syn frowned.
“In the Royal Navy, sir,” added Mipps with a wink.
“And since our village carpenter, dear old Josiah Wraight, has more than he can do as foreman to the Lords of the Level, he has lately refused to make coffins, a work he has never stomached, as he says, and our dead have to be accommodated by an undertaker from New Romney, which is not right, since I take it that Dymchurch is the centre of the Marsh.”
“And should have its own undertaker, most certainly,” nodded Mipps. “And in mentioning me with such a job, I think you show great wisdom. No one couldn't knock up a coffin quicker, solider, nor more reliable. A ship's carpenter of the Royal Navy is, I 'ope, qualified to measure up any corpse at the double as they say. I'll make inquiries this very day from the local doctor as to the names and addresses of his most likely patients, and when he thinks he'll finish 'em off. I could make tactful suggestions to the poor sufferers and find out in the course of conversation whether they can run to oak, and if they has any fancies as regards handles.”
“You will not be jocular on such a subject,” reproved the vicar.
“Not when addressing my ruler to the corpse, sir. Oh no. Solemn as an owl.”
“And understand that in my parochial factotum there must be no strong language, and not much strong liquor. I shall expect you to set an example to the parish.”
“And I'll set it,” said Mipps with assurance. “You'll hear mothers telling their babies to do as Mr. Mipps does, and be good children.”
“And remember—we have not been colleagues in America.”
“No mention of it,” replied Mipps solemnly.
“I'll bespeak a cottage for you. There's one available called 'Old Tree' at the other end of the village, and next door there is a small barn that will do for your workshop. Your position as sexton and verger will entitle you to sit at the lowest desk of the pulpit, and since you can both read and write, you can not only lead the Responses and Amens during service, but will earn a little more helping me to keep the parochial books and registers.”
“That makes me sexton, undertaker, verger, bell-pull and clerk.”
“A great responsibility, Mr. Mipps. You see then that your conduct must be exemplary.”
“The blessed Archbishop himself won't look no 'olier than me, I gives you my word, sir.”
“And one thing more,” said Dr. Syn, “and perhaps the most important.”
“Something else for me to do?”
“No. Something else you must never do. Wait here a minute and I'll tell you.” Dr. Syn went into the hall and opened the livery cupboard in the far corner.
He returned with two glasses and a bottle.
“French brandy, Mr. Mipps. I drink to our better acquaintance and to our settling down.”
“And I drinks my respecks, sir.”
“Thank you. And talking of French brandy, Mr. Sexton—I hope you find it to your taste?”
“Very nice and mellow, thankee, sir,” said Mipps, passing his glass for more.
“The Frenchmen are up to other tricks than fighting,” went on Dr. Syn, “and I warn you, Mr. Sexton, not to traffic in any way with their brandy-runners, for that smuggling goes on, I have no doubt. This part of the country being independent and lying so handy to the French coast, there is a good deal of illegal money to be made with comparative safety. But it will not be so for long.
Romney Marsh holds its independence only on its good behaviour. She is pledged against smuggling. She has promised and vowed to maintain the excise laws of England, and periodically suspicious Government officers show themselves inquisitive. That is the danger always. That is why I am ever exhorting my flock, for whom I feel responsible, not to traffic in any way with those devils across the water.”
“But surely, Vicar, no Frenchman dares to venture over the Channel these days?”
“I have every reason to believe that they do occasionally,” replied Dr. Syn.
“But first of all, just for the sake of old times, which we'll remember to forget, we'll finish the bottle, eh, old friend?”
“To our settling down, Vicar,” toasted Mipps.
