Quiller-Couch / Nemo 7 best short stories by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-3-96858-150-7
Verlag: Tacet Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 122, 130 Seiten

Reihe: 7 best short stories

Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch was a Cornish writer who published using the pseudonym Q. Although a prolific novelist, he is remembered mainly for his literary criticism and short stories. With his vast number of short stories, Q shows his dynamic range of style and creativity with tales of the supernatural, Viking tales, satires, historical fiction, romantic adventures, tales of heroic swashbuckling, mystery and crime fiction, and sea-going adventures. The critic August Nemo has selected seven short stories by this author for your appreciation: - I Saw Three Ships. - The Haunted Dragoon. - A Blue Pantomime. - The Two Householders. - The Disenchantment of 'Lizabeth. - The Laird's Luck. - Captain Dick and Captain Jacka.

Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch was a Cornish writer who published using the pseudonym Q. Although a prolific novelist, he is remembered mainly for the monumental publication The Oxford Book Of English Verse 12501900 and for his literary criticism. He influenced many who never met him, including American writer Helene Hanff, author of 84, Charing Cross Road and its sequel, Q's Legacy. His Oxford Book of English Verse was a favourite of John Mortimer's fictional character Horace Rumpole.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Quiller-Couch, Arthur

Nemo, August

Leseproben

Beside the Plymouth road, as it plunges down-hill past Ruan Lanihale church towards Ruan Cove, and ten paces beyond the lych-gate — where the graves lie level with the coping, and the horseman can decipher their inscriptions in passing, at the risk of a twisted neck — the base of the churchyard wall is pierced with a low archway, festooned with toad-flax and fringed with the hart’s-tongue fern. Within the archway bubbles a well, the water of which was once used for all baptisms in the parish, for no child sprinkled with it could ever be hanged with hemp. But this belief is discredited now, and the well neglected: and the events which led to this are still a winter’s tale in the neighbourhood. I set them down as they were told me, across the blue glow of a wreck-wood fire, by Sam Tregear, the parish bedman. Sam himself had borne an inconspicuous share in them; and because of them Sam’s father had carried a white face to his grave. My father and mother (said Sam) married late in life, for his trade was what mine is, and ‘twasn’t till her fortieth year that my mother could bring herself to kiss a gravedigger. That accounts, maybe, for my being born rickety and with other drawbacks that only made father the fonder. Weather permitting, he’d carry me off to churchyard, set me upon a flat stone, with his coat folded under, and talk to me while he delved. I can mind, now, the way he’d settle lower and lower, till his head played hidey-peep with me over the grave’s edge, and at last he’d be clean swallowed up, but still discoursing or calling up how he’d come upon wonderful towns and kingdoms down underground, and how all the kings and queens there, in dyed garments, was offering him meat for his dinner every day of the week if he’d only stop and hobbynob with them — and all such gammut. He prettily doted on me — the poor old ancient! But there came a day — a dry afternoon in the late wheat harvest — when we were up in the churchyard together, and though father had his tools beside him, not a tint did he work, but kept travishing back and forth, one time shading his eyes and gazing out to sea, and then looking far along the Plymouth road for minutes at a time. Out by Bradden Point there stood a little dandy-rigged craft, tacking lazily to and fro, with her mains’le all shiny-yellow in the sunset. Though I didn’t know it then, she was the Preventive boat, and her business was to watch the Hauen: for there had been a brush between her and the Unity lugger, a fortnight back, and a Preventive man shot through the breast-bone, and my mother’s brother Philip was hiding down in the town. I minded, later, how that the men across the vale, in Farmer Tresidder’s wheat-field, paused every now and then, as they pitched the sheaves, to give a look up towards the churchyard, and the gleaners moved about in small knots, causeying and glancing over their shoulders at the cutter out in the bay; and how, when all the field was carried, they waited round the last load, no man offering to cry the Neck, as the fashion was, but lingering till sun was near down behind the slope and the long shadows stretching across the stubble. “Sha’n’t thee go underground today, father?” says I, at last. He turned slowly round, and says he, “No, sonny. ‘Reckon us’ll climb skywards for a change.” And with that, he took my hand, and pushing abroad the belfry door began to climb the stairway. Up and up, round and round we went, in a sort of blind-man’s-holiday full of little glints of light and whiff’s of wind where the open windows came; and at last stepped out upon the leads of the tower and drew breath. “There’s two-an’-twenty parishes to be witnessed from where we’re standin’, sonny — if ye’ve got eyes,” says my father. Well, first I looked down towards the harvesters and laughed to see them so small: and then I fell to counting the church-towers dotted across the high-lands, and seeing if I could make out two-and-twenty. ’Twas the prettiest sight — all the country round looking as if ’twas dusted with gold, and the Plymouth road winding away over the hills like a long white tape. I had counted thirteen churches, when my father pointed his hand out along this road and called to me — “Look’ee out yonder, honey, an’ say what ye see!” “I see dust,” says I. “Nothin’ else? Sonny boy, use your eyes, for mine be dim.” “I see dust,” says I again, “an’ suthin’ twinklin’ in it, like a tin can —” “Dragooners!” shouts my father; and then, running to the side of the tower facing the harvest-field, he put both hands to his mouth and called: “What have ‘ee? What have ‘ee?”— very loud and long. “A neck — a neck!” came back from the field, like as if all shouted at once — dear, the sweet sound! And then a gun was fired, and craning forward over the coping I saw a dozen men running across the stubble and out into the road towards the Hauen; and they called as they ran, “A neck — a neck!” “Iss,” says my father, “’tis a neck, sure ‘nuff. Pray God they save en! Come, sonny —” But we dallied up there till the horsemen were plain to see, and their scarlet coats and armour blazing in the dust as they came. And when they drew near within a mile, and our limbs ached with crouching — for fear they should spy us against the sky — father took me by the hand and pulled hot foot down the stairs. Before they rode by he had picked up his shovel and was shovelling out a grave for his life. Forty valiant horsemen they were, riding two-and-two (by reason of the narrowness of the road) and a captain beside them — men broad and long, with hairy top-lips, and all clad in scarlet jackets and white breeches that showed bravely against their black war-horses and jet-black holsters, thick as they were wi’ dust. Each man had a golden helmet, and a scabbard flapping by his side, and a piece of metal like a half-moon jingling from his horse’s cheek-strap. 12 D was the numbering on every saddle, meaning the Twelfth Dragoons. Tramp, tramp! they rode by, talking and joking, and taking no more heed of me — that sat upon the wall with my heels dangling above them — than if I’d been a sprig of stonecrop. But the captain, who carried a drawn sword and mopped his face with a handkerchief so that the dust ran across it in streaks, drew rein, and looked over my shoulder to where father was digging. “Sergeant!” he calls back, turning with a hand upon his crupper; “didn’t we see a figger like this a-top o’ the tower, some way back?” The sergeant pricked his horse forward and saluted. He was the tallest, straightest man in the troop, and the muscles on his arm filled out his sleeve with the three stripes upon it — a handsome red-faced fellow, with curly black hair. Says he, “That we did, sir — a man with sloping shoulders and a boy with a goose neck.” Saying this, he looked up at me with a grin. “I’ll bear it in mind,” answered the officer, and the troop rode on in a cloud of dust, the sergeant looking back and smiling, as if ’twas a joke that he shared with us. Well, to be short, they rode down into the town as night fell. But ’twas too late, Uncle Philip having had fair warning and plenty of time to flee up towards the little secret hold under Mabel Down, where none but two families knew how to find him. All the town, though, knew he was safe, and lashins of women and children turned out to see the comely soldiers hunt in vain till ten o’clock at night. The next thing was to billet the warriors. The captain of the troop, by this, was pesky cross-tempered, and flounced off to the “Jolly Pilchards” in a huff. “Sergeant,” says he, “here’s an inn, though a damned bad ’un, an’ here I means to stop. Somewheres about there’s a farm called Constantine, where I’m told the men can be accommodated. Find out the place, if you can, an’ do your best: an’ don’t let me see yer face till to-morra,” says he. So Sergeant Basket — that was his name — gave the salute, and rode his troop up the street, where — for his manners were mighty winning, notwithstanding the dirty nature of his errand — he soon found plenty to direct him to Farmer Noy’s, of Constantine; and up the coombe they rode into the darkness, a dozen or more going along with them to show the way, being won by their martial bearing as well as the sergeant’s very friendly way of speech. Farmer Noy was in bed — a pock-marked, lantern-jawed old gaffer of sixty-five; and the most remarkable point about him was the wife he had married two years before — a young slip of a girl but just husband-high. Money did it, I reckon; but if so, ’twas a bad bargain for her. He was noted for stinginess to such a degree that they said his wife wore a brass wedding-ring, weekdays, to save the genuine article from wearing out. She was a Ruan woman, too, and therefore ought to have known all about him. But woman’s ways be past finding out. Hearing the hoofs in his yard and the sergeant’s stram-a-ram upon the door, down comes the old curmudgeon with a candle held high above his head. “What the devil’s here?” he calls out. Sergeant Basket looks over the old man’s shoulder; and there, halfway up the stairs, stood Madam Noy in her night rail — a high-coloured ripe girl, languishing for love, her red lips parted and neck all lily-white against a loosened pile of dark-brown hair. “Be cussed if I turn...