Chapter VI: Philip Falls

Philip Weekes considered that all men might be divided into two classes: those who knew their own minds, and those who did not. His wife and son both belonged to the smaller category; himself he numbered with the majority and confessed that there were occasions when he found himself not in two minds, but twenty.

With winter, Fate passing through Lydford, perceived the amazing prosperity of all who bore the famous local name of Weekes, and from her bitter lemon squeezed a little verjuice. Jarratt experienced some bad fortune and lost more than he could afford to lose in a copper mine on the east side of the Moor; while Philip himself fell ill. It was the attitude of Mrs. Weekes at the time of this latter unparalleled misfortune that served so greatly to bewilder the huckster. He had fought against his indisposition valiantly and only retired upon medical compulsion; but it was quite as much fear of the consequences, if he went to bed, as a valiant indifference to physical misery that kept him on his legs until the last moment.

He drove Mrs. Weekes to Lydford station as usual on a market day, and then returned home, feeling exceedingly unwell. A doctor called twice weekly at the village, and fortunately he might be seen at his surgery upon Saturdays. When Hephzibah came back her son Jarratt was waiting with the pony-trap, and she learnt the amazing news that the master was ill in bed.

"Guy Fawkes and good angels!" cried Mrs. Weekes. "Philip down! Push the pony along for the love of the Lord, Jar. Who's with him?"

"Mary runs in and out, and Susan, and Mrs. Taverner have been very kind."

"Poor lamb! poor helpless lamb!" said the wife.

Ever in extremes, she now poured forth a torrent of praise and extolled the immense virtues of Philip. She also dwelt on his practical value and her own imperishable affection and admiration for him.

"Such men go down to the grave with nobody but God Almighty and their wives to mark them," she said.

"'Twill be a case of 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant' if he goes. But it mustn't be. It shan't be!"

"He's not in the least danger, mother."

"Danger!--how can you dare to use the word? Oh, my God, to think of the staff and prop of my life tottering--and me not there! 'Danger'!--you ought to be a better son than to say it. Why for wasn't a telegram sent off? What do Mary know of sickness?"

Jarratt grunted.

"If she don't, she's a fool then. Another child coming and the first always got something wrong with it."

"There--to think--that poor martyr! I knowed there was something wrong--felt it in my bones all yesterday. 'God send Mary's all right,' I said again and again to myself in market. But little did I think of master. I fancied 'twas no more than just a running at the nose--and all the time he was suffering agonies, no doubt. The bravery of the man! Lash the pony, can't 'e, or I'll get out and go afoot. How long are we to take? I'm itching to be at him!"

Mrs. Weekes soon reached home, and swiftly swept the neighbours out of the house.

"He'm asking for you, Aunt Hepsy," said Susan. "He'm very peaceful, with his medicine, an' a Bible, an' the kettle 'pon the fire; and blacksmith have made a proper long spout for the kettle as the doctor ordained, so the steam can get to him."

"You go off, you chattering magpie," began Mrs. Weekes; then she hastened up to the head of the house, and found him pretty comfortable, but very crestfallen and full of the humblest apologies.

"Awful sorry," he croaked. "I blush for myself, I'm sure."

"Don't you talk--not a word. I'll do the talking for once, you poor fallen creature! It do tear me to pieces to see you thrust into your bed, in the full vigour of manhood, like this. And never a groan--you valiant boy! But now I be back, us shall soon have 'e on your feet again. You trust to me! Be you easy? Where's the pain? I'd sooner fight evils above the navel than below it, as I have always maintained. Don't say 'tis the stomach--don't say that. But your poor cracked voice tells me all I want to know."

"'Tis the breathing parts, my dear."

"And you brave as an army about it, and never told me, and let me desert you without a thought. You wonderful man! I wish to God there was more like you. Let me look in your face. Good! Don't you fear any harm, Philip. While the white of your eye be so clear, there's no danger. You'll come through all right."

"No danger, I'm sure. I can drink soup as easy as anything. But 'tis the ill-convenience of upsetting the bedroom so."

"Like your big mind to think of it; but what's a bedroom to me? I don't want no bedroom while you'm stricken down. Not a wink of sleep shall I have, till doctor says you can rise up again. And to think I never guessed, so quiet you kept it! When Jar showed hisself at the station--even then I didn't seem to know what had kept you. 'Where's that beetle of a man, Philip Weekes?' I asked, in my brisk, cheerful way. 'Struck down,' says Jarratt; and you could have flung me into the air. I was blowed out with sudden terror, like a balloon."

"I did ought to have a bowl of something to lap at about mid-day, according to doctor's orders--not that I want it if 'twill be troubling you," said Mr. Weekes.

"So you shall, then; an' the fat of the land shall you have, as becomes such a man; an' wine, if I've got to sell my shoes for it--good, black port wine--as good as Noah Pearn have got in the house--you shall drink--bottles and bottles--till your very blood be wine! There's nought makes blood like what port does."

She set to work from that moment and toiled unceasingly until Mr. Weekes had passed the crisis of his illness, and was pronounced convalescent. Then she nearly fed him to death, praised God for His mercies, and wearied the whole street of Lydford with nursing details, with symptoms and their treatment, with the particulars of diet, with enthusiastic comments on the majestic attitude of mind preserved by Philip throughout his sufferings.

Presently neighbours called, and were allowed to have speech with the invalid. Philip's eyes had been giving him some trouble, and during his illness the doctor had prescribed a pair of glasses. These were now made, and Mr. Weekes was proud of them, and pleased with the appearance of himself in them. Adam Churchward visited him, and admired his spectacles.

"It brings out the natural thoughtful bent of your countenance, if I may say so. You'll find them a great comfort and support without a doubt. For my part, strange though it may seem, I have to put on my glasses now--not only to see with, but to think with. My mind refuses to move freely until I feel them on the bridge of my nose."

"It clears print something wonderful," explained Philip, "and of late, for want of power to do anything useful, I've sunk down to reading the newspaper, and found it very interesting. I've had a good dash at the Word too; and 'tis curious to see that fighting was just as bloody a job in Old Testament days as it be now. The only difference is that then they always knowed which side the Lord was, afore they went to war; and now we never know till afterwards. If the Almighty took the same pleasure in England as He done in Israel, we should just walk over the earth."

"A very wise remark," declared Mr. Churchward; "I can see the glasses are steadying your mind already."

"He be so vain of 'em as a turkey-cock," said Mrs. Weekes, who sat beside her husband's bed. Why, it minds me of the time Jarratt was born. Then the airs and graces this man give himself! 'Twas every minute, 'Where's my son? Where's my boy Jarratt to?' And now 'tis 'Where's my glasses?' 'Here, let me get on my glasses!'

"I like a middle-aged face to look wise," declared Mr. Churchward. "There's no more shameful thing in nature than an elderly fool. Yet one meets them--people over whose heads life has passed and not brought a single thoughtful line. Poor, smooth-faced souls! Why, the very beasts that perish as doth the grass of the field look wiser, and undoubtedly are wiser, as they grow older."

"No good growing old if you don't grow artful, for certain," said Mrs. Weekes. "And another thing is that they fools are far more harmful than the knaves. A knave makes clean work, but a fool botches all. Everybody knows that. Why, you men--Lord bless you!--I see through the pack of you, like windows!"

"You do your best, as I do, to inculcate wisdom," answered the schoolmaster. "For my part I may say that I leave no stone unturned to implant it in the rising generation. Sow enough seed and some will undoubtedly germinate in a satisfactory manner. We never know how great a matter may be kindled by a flash of sense bursting in upon the youthful mind. And, in your case, you don't deny your immense fund of common sense to the humblest who asks for it. I suppose that nobody in Lydford gives more good advice in the course of a twelvemonth than you do, Mrs. Weekes. Nathaniel Spry is sound also."

"Him!" returned Hephzibah with contempt. "What does he know, more than how many penny stamps make twelve, or how to weigh a parcel, or write a gun license? How can he know anything, living out his life behind the counter in that stuffy little post-office?"

"I was going to admit that his experience of the world is rather limited; but he is a great reader, and has nourished his intellect on the learning of wiser men than himself. His advice generally comes out of a good book, and is therefore pretty well to be relied upon."

"As to advice," she answered. "'Tis taking it, not giving it that matters. If a man or woman agrees with you, and falls in with every word, and thanks you over and over again--then you may feel perfectly sure they won't follow a syllable and have only come to waste your time. 'Tis them that argue, and wrangle, and sulk, and ax your reasons, and go away in a temper with you--'tis them that be most likely to profit by what you've said."

A voice cried from below stairs.

"Can Valentine come up to see father?"

"He can," answered Mr. Weekes; and a moment later old Huggins creaked upstairs, followed by Jarratt.

"You'd better go, schoolmaster. You've had your turn," said Hephzibah. "Philip mustn't see too much company all at once."

Adam, therefore, withdrew, and Mr. Huggins took his place.

"I heard the joyful news as you was your own man again, and soon to come down house," said the patriarch; "therefore nothing would do but what I must walk up and have a look at you. Not changed a hair, thank God."

"He's fatter," said Mrs. Weekes. "The idleness have put flesh on him--round as a tub he have grown. You'm inches deep in lard, ban't you, my old dear?"

"I believe I am," answered Philip. "But I'll work it off again so soon as I get on my legs. It shows how little us be wanted, Val, that though we may be struck down, the world goes on just the same. Now I've often thought, in my vainglorious way, what would become of all my Indian game birds if anything happened to me. Yet they was never better, and be laying as free as Nature can make 'em, so missis tells me."

"'Tis this here wonderful woman," said Huggins. "You'm one of the fortunates, you are. 'Be dashed if Hephzibah Weekes don't know how to be in two places to once!' I said not long since to Noah Pearn. And he answered 'twas the cleverest thing he'd ever heard me say."

"Philip's going to be let out of bed to-morrow," said Mrs. Weekes. "And he'll come down house the day after."

"The spring weather will soon set him up."

"Spring be here without a doubt," she answered. "That dear angel boy of Sarah Jane's comed in along with his father yester-eve; and he fetched as fine a bunch of primrosen as you could wish to see. But the darling had picked 'em without stalks, as childer will, so they was flinged away so soon as his li'l back was turned."

"A very promising start to the year, I do think," said Mr. Huggins. "A good deal of prosperity in the country, and very great promise of hay--so John Prout tells me."

"What was the news of Mr. Woodrow?"

"I named him. He've wintered pretty well--ban't worse nor better. Daniel Brendon be going down to him for a few days, and 'tis hoped he'll come home first week in June."

"Good luck all round, then."

"You forget me," said Jarratt, who had been standing with his hands in his pockets, looking out of the window. "But one man's ill-fortune don't matter, I suppose."

"I heard as Wheal Cosdon was looking up again," answered Mr. Huggins.

"You heard wrong. 'Tis as like as not 'twill be knacked in autumn. 'Twas a damned swindle; but they promoters be on the windy side o' the law, as usual, and us, who put in our hard-earned savings, get nought."

"Can't you have the law of nobody about it?" asked his father.

"No, I can't. The rogues be safe enough. The law's their side."

"I'd like to poison the traitors with the arsenic they've digged out of the place," cried Hephzibah. "To steal the bread from the mouths of men and women and children; and eat it themselves--the anointed robbers! 'Tis a shameful thing to think in a Christian land the laws should all be made with an eye to the comfort of the rich."

"Can't be otherwise--so long as the rich make 'em," ventured Philip.

"With all your natural needs and requirements in the big life you lead, it must be a terrible crash to have to put down your servant, as they tell me you think of doing," said Huggins to Jarratt Weekes.

"I must face it. I like ease and comfort as well as anybody--especially since I earned it by my own hard work. But we must cut the coat as the cloth allows. Ban't no good thirsting for half a pint, if you haven't got three-halfpence."

Valentine, however, doubted the philosophy of this sentiment.

"Don't say so. You'm leaving out of your reckoning all the Good Samaritans that be about the world, and the beauty of human nature in general."

"Human nature's all rot. Anyway, it isn't the thirsty folks that human nature asks to drink."

"Yet I've had scores and scores gratis and for nothing in my time," declared Mr. Huggins. "Eighty year old am I, and if I could tell 'em up, I make no doubt that I should find I'd had barrels over one counter and another--all out of the goodness of my fellow-creatures, without a thought of any return. Not but what I haven't stood oceans of drink in my time too. But gratitude's the thing--an' rarer even than generosity. I'm exceedingly grateful for all the free beer I've had, and I won't hear you tell that human nature's rot, just because you are a bit under the weather. Your luck will come uppermost presently--then you'll think different."

"Good sense, Val. Cheer him up if you can," said Mrs. Weekes. "And now you men had best to get off, for Philip must have his dinner."