THE CHINA MAIL FRIDAY SUPPLEMENT, MAY 21, 1937
THE HANDMAIDEN
LOCAL histories of Canchester
record the Anthonite. re- bellion, the murders, the battle in the woods and the trial of the rebels, but hardly so much as the of Milly Thumb whom my name great-uncle Charles
"a Saint of God.”
called
All he saw of that sad business he told me when he was over eighty and I but fourteen, for it hap- pened nearly a hundred years ago,
In his high-backed chair by his hearth he told me, a queer burnt out old man in a green, gold-braid- long ed smoking cap, with his white beard stained carroty un- der the lips and his high beaked nose flanked by dull eyes peering like foxes from an earth hung over with dry bents of grass."
His mind went back to the past in those days so that his only joy was to talk of it till folk wearied of listening, but I don't believe he told anyone else about Door Milly Thumb.
With a long cherrywood held in his bony fist as a parrot grips a walnut he span this uneven yarn from the distaff of his memory, out the like a painter picking high lights or deepening a shadow in a canvas that he loves too much to leave.
"Boy,' " he began, "did you ever hear of the battle of Commission- ers' Woods?"
"I don't know much about it, uncle," I said. "Wasn't an officer killed there? There's a tablet-in the cathedral."
.of his
"Ensign Benedict," he said, "I heard the dying rattle breath."
His voice was loud and sonorous like a preacher's, even near his end as he was, and it scared me.
"Did you, uncle?" I asked thril- ling. "Do tell me. A man set up to be a prophet, didn't he?”
"Prophet," thundered my un- cle, "anti-Christ!"
His heat startled me for I had. never thought- of Great-uncle Charles as in any way religious though he used to take the collec- tion at St. Mary Bathgate. That seemed in the way of business for a tradesman in a cathedral city, as an earnest of right-mindedness and respectability.
For a time he smoked on in a sort of gusty rage and then began picking his phrases as memories came, little heeding me listening there with a bull's-eye in my cheek. "The great masterful eyes he had, and а
black fine curling beard," he gibed, "a voice like a bugle. I mind the first day he came to Canchester as a candidate for Parliament, with a band marching ahead of his carriage and smooth-faced devil! --- bow- ing right and left like royalty.”
"Wasn't he a knight, uncle?” I said. "It says in the cathedral *Sir Robert: Anthony,””
"As little might as prophet,” :said my great-uncle bitterly
Sir Robert of Malta, cries he, flashing his long black cloak with its silver cross on the shoulder, A knight of St. John.' He made his election speeches from the balcony of the Rose and Crown in plum coloured breeches and a feathered cap, scattering red hot shillings over the railing for the rag-tag to scramble after.”
"Wasn't that bribery uncle?" 1 asked.
"It's sixty years ago,"
" he said, wagging his beard. "Folk weren't so finicky."
"Was that why he was arrest ed?" I asked.
tablet in The soldier's
the nave says "Brutally murdered in Robert his effort to arrest Sir Anthony."
"Gammon, bay," returned my uncle harshly "His election japes were of no account, but making a God of himself, making simple folk.
His voice trailed off and he clawed at his beard, like
that the great "Moses"
Miche- langelo moulded, "No one voted for him bar those he paid," he went on at last. ***Mad as hatter, they said, Mad!" He pulled at his pipe and his eyes glowered "Dangerous madness!
a
He took a house at Beckton on the London road." The old man's "Blast voice went level and cold. him where he burns in hell."
I had never heard anyone in my family speak so wickedly.
"None, took any, count of him in Canchester," resumed my great- uncle Charles, "but I knew of his Milly Thumb. goings on from Amos Thumb farmed Thornfleet and Milly was his daughter. I worked for More, the draper, in Butter Market, then, and two days a week he sent me on the tally lay, one day Paston way and one day up the London Road on a pony with a stock of threads and ribbons. Just turned nine- teen, I was, and, in my frilled shirt and beaver, with my stock box on the pillion, a fine sprig of a gallant young haber-dasher."
I think that was sarcasm, for he grinned at me biting at his upper lip with his teeth.
"Your mother never told you that," he said, “and don't you tell her, my boy! No tallymen in the family this time of day."
Social values meant nothing to me then, but I did think it strange that my
grave and venerable great-uncle should ever have been dashing and alive,
Soon he went on. "It's a pret- ty country in apple-blossom' time, and gayer still courting Milly at the orchard edge, like a bit of blossom, like the queen of the blossom herself in her sprigged muslin dress. You should have seen me, boy, sweeping off my beaver and making a leg, as fine as Mr. Jenner, who kept the dan- cing school.”
I found it hard to picture so I asked, "How do you make leg?" instead..
no
2
"It's a way there's said he,
The story ambled on.
of bowing, but fine manners left."
-Farmer
Thumb was content enough with the prospects of Mr. More's clav- er and industrious young man. Indeed, my great-uncle Charles did well out of the business after- wards, though I only knew him as an old gentleman with a big house and a garden full of rasp berries and nothing to do but at- tend Council meetings and smoke the green fly off his roses.
"Why didn't you marry Milly of Thumb?" I interrupted, for, course, I knew that my great-aunt Lizzie was granfather's sister.
“Antichrist," he said and pull- ed at his pipe so fiercely that his cheeks hollowed, his lips pouted and his moustache bristled that, boylike, I had much ado to keep from laughing. He looked such a queer old guy.
80,
"The devil was at his tricks again, but he had given up thought of parliament. The Pro- phet of the Lord he called him- self. Beckton folk stayed away
Short Story
from church to hear him preach on Heron Hill Green. Such wick- ed flummery. A new world and plenty for all, he offered them, the Brotherhood of Man and no more taxes. Men have gulped at that fly since Wat Tyler beheaded the tanners in Canchester. Butter Market. Ah, and before that, if you read history, boy."
I
remember being surprised that Great-uncle Charles spoke of Wat Tyler as a real man, for to me Wat was only something to learn in history, and for the first time in my life I saw how man- kind walks ever in a long proces- sion past a saluting base which is "now" ́ ́ We all come up to it and pass, and I thought how I myself must soon make my salute and march away after my great-uncle into the ineffectual shades,"
"Amos Thumb and his wi said the old man," "that fiend's fine tongue made slaves of, and little Milly too. The whirl of the fellow's words swept souls into the sky like leaves at a cross-roads when the autumn winds blow. Myself, I heard him."
He shook his head slowly like a man amazed.
"Some truth there was in it, but truth is over strong for us,
by
boy. We only live together agreeing on the comfortable lies." That made me feel frightened and ashamed.
"But, bless you lad, Whig, Tory, or Anthonite, chapel or church, hadn't mattered a jot to Milly and me till he set her tender heart afire with pity for the sadness of earth. “Think, Charlie,' said she. No hunger nor want nor sickness, no gaols nor hangings, but all the world hale and hearteasy when the Day of the Redeemer dawns.' Her soul shone with a clear white flame like a lamp too new and clean to burn up red and smoky." I wondered that the draper's tallyman had so much poetry in him, but he spoke out of the full- ness of his heart.
"At last folk began to talk, for not Beckton alone, but Hobble- don, Heron Hill, Old Man's Meads even, and Sele, gathered to him, mainly the poorer sort with a farmer here and there. He laid
By MICHAEL KENT
hands on an old chap of Denge and who - had gone nid-nodding shambling all his life, and he grew instantly still and hale as a nut, folk, said. Lord alone knows all the tales they told."
shook My great-uncle Charles his head long over that till, clack- ing his tooth plates together, he cried out, Antichrist!” -
His pipe was cold, and he sat so long clawing at the bosses of his chair, staring ahead like a man steering a boat, that I was almost resolved to call my aunt Lizzie, when he went on-
Weeks it was before I could- learn what ailed sweet Milly, half fearful and half wondering pridis, and loving me and holding the aloof. Sometimes she would-be- gin a question, Did I think what was wrong for a common man to do could be right for a holy one? Would I still love her if she did the will of God? Poor child, poor child! She would never let me answer. She would hang on my arm and ask, with her eyes mouth glistening, and stop my and talk of something else. could make little of it, for I knew At last one she was true to me. day she said, 'Charlie, it is God's
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