Simon's Town

“ When Simon saw this he could not forbear weeping and began to tell her a dismal story concerning the stocks; but she wanted her money for the eggs: But Simon being deaf, could not hear her, which made her fall on him with such fury, that at last he was obliged to run upstairs and jump out of the chamber window which when she saw, she followed him down the town with an hundred boys and girls after them, Simon still crying out to the people people, You may see what it is to be married. ”

“ All the same, Simon, between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-two, had raked the town vigorously more than viciously, haunted Evans' supper-rooms, fallen madly in love with an actress, enjoyed life as only the young can enjoy life in the gorgeous, dazzling, deceitful country of Youth. ”

“ Many a time, so it came to the ears of Hopewell, had he denounced Master Simon, his garden and all that grew therein. From town to town he went, until all of New England began to stir uneasily under the lash of his bitter tongue.
“He may do good and he may do ill,” said their neighbour, Goodman Allen, to Mistress Radpath. “We are used to being called to account for our sins and there is no one among us, Heaven knows, that can be called perfect. ”

“ He was standing now in a road on the outskirts of the town. On the one hand it led into a dim expanse of darkened country; on the other the lights of the town twinkled. Across the road, a few villas stood back amidst trees, with gates opening on to a footpath, the outlying houses of the town; and the first lamp-post stood a little way down this path. The man crossed the road and turned townwards, walking slowly and apparently at his ease. What seemed to interest him now was not his own need for privacy but the houses and gates he was passing. ”

“ When Simon Rattar came to his present villa, he brought from his old house in the middle of the town (which had been his father's before him) a vast accumulation of old books and old papers. Being a man who never threw away an opportunity or anything else, and also a person of the utmost tidyness, he compromised by keeping this litter in the spare rooms at the top of the house. ”

“ He went to a friend and borrowed twenty-five dollars to help him out of town. He was considered good for a small short loan; and going to his hotel, he paid his bill, and mounting his dilapidated steed, started for his home, forty miles distant, at as great a speed as he could get out of his poor "Rosinante." In the South, men, women and children, always make short journeys on horseback. Simon travelled for two hours, when he reached the Coosa river, about fifteen miles from Montgomery. ”

“ Then Skerry came in haste to rouse the town, but before we could return with him the priest had taken alarm and was off and away again. Now we are searching everywhere for him and when we find him—” He chanced to catch Margeret’s horrified eyes fixed upon him in the lantern light and so concluded lamely, “It is no matter to be talked of before little maids.”
“It is no work for honest men,” rejoined Master Simon hotly, “to hunt a lost, frightened, old man up and down through the storm as though he were a wild thing. Have you no pity, Neighbour Allen, and no kindness of heart?” ”

“ All of the town knows of this great pine and of Master Simon who planted it. Not for a score of gold pieces would I lay axe to its trunk. So here is the money you gave us; we have altered our minds and will do no work for you this day.”
Having spoken, he shouldered his axe and trudged sturdily away, followed by his companion, neither of them regarding the heated remonstrances of Sergeant Branderby.
“A pest on you all,” he shouted. “A Spanish mule is not more stubborn than a New Englander. But think not your tree is to be spared. I will even hew it down myself.” ”

“ His brown head came out at last amid the thinner green at the very top, where he could feel the sun hot upon his neck and where he could look out across meadow and hillside, past the harbour and the headlands to the wide, blue, open sea. He could see, too, like a picture spread below him, Master Simon’s garden with its square flowerbeds, its green hedges and its winding paths. He saw the door of the house fly open and his mother, with flying skirts and ruffled hair, come running across the lawn. ”

“ A throng of black-faced servants, themselves decked out in livery and powdered wigs, would wait upon the company and later conduct them into the long white-panelled drawing-room whose open windows looked out across the garden to the sea. Or, if it were winter, the guests would gather about the fireplace which, although much of the house was new, was the same rough stone one built by Master Simon’s hands. Amid this gay crowd of friends moved Stephen, quiet-mannered and simply clad, the only ornament upon his dark coat a diamond star given him by the King of France. ”

“ To any person conversant with the simplest physiological relations of cause and effect, it is quite notorious that the decomposition of organic matter within a certain distance of human habitations unfailingly tends to produce disease; and every one who is competent by knowledge and impartiality to pronounce an opinion on the subject, must feel that no occupation which ordinarily leaves a putrid refuse, nor any which consists in the conversion or manufacture of putrescent material, ought, under any circumstances, to be tolerated within a town. ”

“ Their shoulders were turned to the sea, though in that lost world of the mist only the native could tell where the bay was supposed to lie. It was one of the dead hours, too, when even the salt goes out of the marsh-air, and no pulse in it warns you subconsciously of the miracle coming. Between the high-mounted hedges it was still and close, and beyond them the land rose until its dank green surface stood soft against the sky. All the way Simon looked at the land with a critical eye, the eye of the lover which loves and asks at the same time. ”

“ Wonderful things beyond the mere planting of flowers have been done by those who dwelt here. Of all the tales told me by my own grandfather and by Master Sheffield I like best the story of how Master Simon saved the French priest at such great risk to himself, yet would not flee from peril because, as he said, ‘I have planted a garden here in the wilderness and I must abide to see what sort of fruit it bears.’ Ah, such a garden as he planted in this new world, he and his kind, sowing the seeds of liberty and justice and freedom for all! ”

“ Simon, do us the favour to tie us up in sacks and throw us into the river that we may give up our thieving ways and become the owners of flocks.’
‘I am ready,’ answered Simon, ‘to do what you please; there’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t do for you.’
So he took three strong sacks and put a man in each of them, and fastened them up so tightly that they couldn’t get out, and then he threw them all into the river; and that was the end of the three rogues. But Mr. Simon returned home to his faithful Nina rich in flocks and gold, and lived for many a year in health and happiness. ”

“ The French love not the English and have been stirring up the Indians to strike at the New England settlers, to destroy their towns where they can, and to cut off the outlying farms. You have heard of such deeds all about you: you knew that they were ordered by the French but do you know why you have been spared? It was because we who loved Monsieur Simon would not listen to evil counsel, because that garden of his has become, for us, a sacred spot, because when danger threatened, we ringed you round and held you safe. ”

“ At the studio the path turned and gave itself to a wood which had not expected a path or felt the need of a path, but, now that the path was there, courteously subordinated itself. This was not a trail, but was broad and trodden, a very path, magnetized by many feet to an aspect social, companionable.
Now Simon could look beyond the gleaming arch at the old well and to the broken bridge across Blacklocks Force. Still he divined no one riding down the path. "She may come through the upper grove," he thought, and strolled deeper into the green. ”

“ A garden such as his, that is planted in the hearts of his fellow men, can never perish. As I have sat at my cobbler’s bench through all these years, toiling for my living in an alien land, I have fought against the thought of Master Simon and of all the good he did to me and to others, but I have fought in vain. The memory grew and grew within my heart, choking out my evil and bitter thoughts, just as his clumps of blossoming plants used to grow until there was no room left for weeds. ”

“ The first time that I ever heard my comrade Black Simon laugh was in front of that door. I heard him once again when he slew a French squire with his teeth, he being unarmed and the Frenchman having a dagger.'
'And why did Simon laugh in front of the inn-door?' asked John.
'Simon is a hard and perilous man when he hath the bitter drop in him; and, by my hilt! he was born for war, for there is little sweetness or rest in him: This inn, the "Mouton d'Or," was kept in the old days by one François Gourval, who had a hard fist and a harder heart. ”

“ But surely it must have been a hundred years ago that he, with spade and basket full of nodding yellow flowers or tight-jacketed brown bulbs, had come to set out this little garden that was to grow and spread and fill the glade with sunshine long after he was dead. Wars had raged past them, three generations had come and gone, Indians and wild things had disappeared, forever, from these forest hills, but still the flowers bloomed and faded and bloomed again, silent proof that the work of such hands and hearts as Master Simon’s never died. ”

“ In his young days Simon had been one of the gayest and most active youths of the neighbourhood, but as he grew old and stiff he found it very difficult to walk, and his faithful servant urged him to get a horse so as to save his poor old bones. At last Simon gave way to the request and persuasive eloquence of his housekeeper, and betook himself one day to the market where he had seen a mule, which he thought would just suit him, and which he bought for seven gold pieces. ”

“ He grew graver, though the smile still hung about his lips.
[Pg 23]
"They gossip about you in the village, Simon," said he. "Take a friend's counsel, and don't be so much with the lady at the cottage. Come, I don't speak without reason." He nodded at me as a man nods who means more than he will say. Indeed, not a word more would he say, so that when I left him I was even more angry than when I parted from his daughter. And, the nature of man being such as Heaven has made it, what need to say that I bent my steps to the cottage with all convenient speed? ”

“ Then it was that of a sudden, Master Simon’s quiet manner dropped from him.
“Cease your preaching of death and destruction, Master Hapgood,” he cried, “and go, rather, up into your meeting-house yonder and pray. Pray with all your might to that God who once walked in a Garden, that He will spare me for this people’s need, so that they may learn that when they come hither to ask for help from Him and us, they do not ask in vain.” ”

“ He has for the present thrown by all his regular work, and suffered the breeches of the village to go unmade and unmended, while he is occupied in making garlands of party-coloured rags, in imitation of flowers, for the decoration of the May-pole.
Another of Master Simon’s counsellors is the apothecary, a short and rather fat man, with a pair of prominent eyes, that diverge like those of a lobster. He is the village wise man; very sententious, and full of profound remarks on shallow subjects. Master Simon often quotes his sayings, and mentions him as rather an extraordinary man ”

“ The old gabled tower, with the great bell in the clochard or belfry beside it, I had oftentimes laughed at with Simon Powell, as at a thing of more pretence than usage; the alarm not having been rung therefrom for nigh a hundred years. But now the sight of it brought tears to my eyes for the very peace which clung about it. For well I knew that I was come at the end of my time of quiet and was to adventure forth of my old home into regions full as strange and difficult as any of Simon's uncouth caves and elvish forests. ”

“ Master Simon is in fact the Caesar of the village. It is true the squire is the protecting power, but his factotum is the active and busy agent. He intermeddles in all its concerns, is acquainted with all the inhabitants and their domestic history, gives counsel to the old folks in their business matters, and the young folks in their love affairs, and enjoys the proud satisfaction of being a great man in a little world. ”

“ Yet he bade me go to London, since there a man, rubbing shoulders with all the world, learnt to appraise his own value, and lost the ignorant conceit of himself that a village greatness is apt to breed. Somewhat crestfallen, I thanked him for his kindness, and made bold to ask after Mistress Barbara.
"She is well enough," he answered, smiling. "And she is become a great lady. The wits make epigrams on her, and the fools address verses to her. But she's a good girl, Simon."
"I'm sure of it, my lord," I cried.
"He's a bold man who would be sure of it concerning anyone nowadays," he said dryly. ”