News from the Duchy

News from the Duchy

The Project Gutenberg eBook, News from the Duchy, by Sir Arthur
Thomas Quiller-Couch
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Title: News from the Duchy
Author: Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Release Date: June 13, 2006 [eBook #18577]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEWS
FROM THE DUCHY***
E-text prepared by Lionel Sear

NEWS FROM THE DUCHY.
by

A. T. Quiller-Couch (Q).

To My Friend AUSTIN M. PURVES of Philadelphia and Troy Town.

Contents.

PART I.
PIPES IN ARCADY.
OUR LADY OF GWITHIAN.
PILOT MATTHEY'S CHRISTMAS.
THE MONT-BAZILLAC.
THE THREE NECKLACES.
THE WREN.
NOT HERE, O APOLLO.
FIAT JUSTITIA RUAT SOLUM.
THE HONOUR OF THE SHIP.
LIEUTENANT LAPENOTIERE
THE CASK ASHORE.

PART II.

YE SEXES, GIVE EAR.
FRENCHMAN'S CREEK.


PART I.

PIPES IN ARCADY.
I hardly can bring myself to part with this story, it has been such a
private joy to me. Moreover, that I have lain awake in the night to
laugh over it is no guarantee of your being passably amused.
Yourselves, I dare say, have known what it is to awake in irrepressible
mirth from a dream which next morning proved to be flat and
unconvincing. Well, this my pet story has some of the qualities of a
dream; being absurd, for instance, and almost incredible, and even a
trifle inhuman. After all, I had better change my mind, and tell you
another--
But no; I will risk it, and you shall have it, just as it befel.
I had taken an afternoon's holiday to make a pilgrimage: my goal being
a small parish church that lies remote from the railway, five good miles
from the tiniest of country stations; my purpose to inspect--or say,
rather, to contemplate--a Norman porch, for which it ought to be widely
famous. (Here let me say that I have an unlearned passion for Norman
architecture--to enjoy it merely, not to write about it.)
To carry me on my first stage I had taken a crawling local train that
dodged its way somehow between the regular expresses and the
"excursions" that invade our Delectable Duchy from June to October.
The season was high midsummer, the afternoon hot and drowsy with
scents of mown hay; and between the rattle of the fast trains it seemed
that we, native denizens of the Duchy, careless of observation or

applause, were executing a tour de force in that fine indolence which
has been charged as a fault against us. That we halted at every station
goes without saying. Few sidings--however inconsiderable or, as it
might seem, fortuitous--escaped the flattery of our prolonged sojourn.
We ambled, we paused, almost we dallied with the butterflies lazily
afloat over the meadow-sweet and cow-parsley beside the line; we
exchanged gossip with station-masters, and received the
congratulations of signalmen on the extraordinary spell of fine weather.
It did not matter. Three market-women, a pedlar, and a local policeman
made up with me the train's complement of passengers. I gathered that
their business could wait; and as for mine--well, a Norman porch is by
this time accustomed to waiting.
I will not deny that in the end I dozed at intervals in my empty smoking
compartment; but wish to make it clear that I came on the Vision (as I
will call it) with eyes open, and that it left me staring, wide-awake as
Macbeth.
Let me describe the scene. To the left of the line as you travel westward
there lies a long grassy meadow on a gentle acclivity, set with three or
four umbrageous oaks and backed by a steep plantation of oak saplings.
At the foot of the meadow, close alongside the line, runs a brook,
which is met at the meadow's end by a second brook which crosses
under the permanent way through a culvert. The united waters continue
the course of the first brook, beside the line, and maybe for half a mile
farther; but, a few yards below their junction, are partly dammed by the
masonry of a bridge over which a country lane crosses the railway; and
this obstacle spreads them into a pool some fifteen or twenty feet wide,
overgrown with the leaves of the arrow-head, and fringed with
water-flags and the flowering rush.
Now I seldom pass this spot without sparing a glance for it; first
because of the pool's still beauty, and secondly because many rabbits
infest the meadow below the coppice, and among them for two or three
years was a black fellow whom I