Doctor Syn, Russell Thorndyke [rainbow fish read aloud .TXT] 📗
- Author: Russell Thorndyke
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For I don’t fear my wife now she’s dead.
The captain, amused at the crude words, pushed open the casement and leaned into the room. Whether the sexton saw him or not the captain did not know, but the song changed immediately to a song of the sea:
There*s no swab Hke the captain,
There’s no swab Hke the captain.
Of all the swabs I’ve ever seen
With a diddle diddle diddle diddle diddle diddle dee
No swab like the captain.
“A very appropriate song, Master Sexton,” laughed the captain.
Mipps turned round and surveyed the intruder.
“Why, knock me up solid if it ain’t the good captain! The gold of the high noon to you, sir, though there ain’t much gold in the sky to-day. I take it as a very friendly piece of impertinence that you should come and look me up so unexpected. Had I knowed of your arrival I’d have had these grizzly relics stowed away, for some folk has a distinct dislike to lookin’ at these last dwellin’ houses.”
“You are used to ‘em, I suppose, by now?” said the captain.
“Oh, love you, yes, I don’t mind ‘em. Some undertakers has fearful superstitions about coffins. Some won’t get in ‘em to measure ‘em. Lord! I always does. I lies down inside ‘em and pops the lid on the top to see if it’s airtight.”
“Awkward if the lid was to stick.”
“You may well say that, ‘cos once it did. But it weren’t so much awkward as peaceful, for after I’d pushed and struggled for a power o’ time, I just resigned myself to my fate, feelin’ thankful that at any rate I had had the privilege of bein’ my own undertaker. I shall never forget my feelin’s when my last bit of breath came up and went out. It was just the sort o’ feelin’ you gets when you drowns, only more so. ‘Cos when you drowns you sees all the bad actions of your life atroopin’ before you, but gettin’ buried alive is different, ‘cos you sees all the good actions wot you’ve done. Mind you, things I’d clean forgot. Little acts of kindness wot I thought could never have been recorded anywhere. Why, they all walked out, and I seemed to be greatly comforted, ‘cos, you see, I thought as how I was quite in the runnin’ for heaven. In fact I was so pleased with my past self that I fairly kicked with delight, and that was the means of bringin’ me back to earth, ‘cos over went these trestles, and the jar I got knocked the stuck lid off. No, I’ve been near gone these many times, but never so near gone as that, for, as you see, I was finished with the undertaker having undertook myself, and I only had to be passed through the parson’s hands and get knocked over the sconce with the sexton’s shovel, as Shakespeare says in the play, to be a real ‘gonner,’ stiff and proper.”
“A horrible experience. Master Sexton,” returned the captain.
“It was in a sense. But I could tell you horribler. I takes a pride in my business, same as you might in yours. That’s why I went round the world.”
“Oh, you’ve been round the world, have you?” said the captain.
^*Not once nor twice, but many times, and do you know why?”
“Perhaps the life of the get-rich-quick buccaneers appealed to you?” remarked Captain Collyer casually.
“There you go—suspicious. Can’t you adapt yourself for five minutes? Can’t you make an effort w^hen you’re a-gossipin’ with honest folk to forget that there is dishonest ones? I never did see the like. Here we be chattin’ quite friendly, and forgettin’ our little differences, when you starts accusin’ me of bein’ a Captain Clegg or an England. Do I look like a bold pirate now'^ Lookin’ at me straight sittin’ up in this ‘ere coffin, could you say that I looked like a swaggerin’ gentleman o’ fortune. No, you couldn’t. Very well, then, why go and make unpleasant insinuations against a respectable sexton o’ the realm? Mind you, I don’t say as howl didn’t come across some of that breed durin’ my travels, and I don’t say as how circumstance, that fickle woman, didn’t at times make me work for ‘em. But not for long. I held no sort o’ likes with the likes o’ them, and though some of ‘em had most engagin* ways, it was easy to see that they was all of ‘em unadulterated sinners. And swear? God bless your eyes,
Captain, it made you blush like a damned woman to hear ‘em.”
“And if it was not for gold and adventure that you went, may I ask what tempted you abroad?”
“Certainly, Captain. It was the love of my work. The zeal to have a look at other sextons, vergers, and undertakers and see what they were a-doin’ with the business. But Lord love you, Captain, I soon found as how funerals was done on different plans abroad. Why, I could tell you some things I seed with regard to burials abroad what ‘ud make your flesh creep—aye, and now, too, though the sun is high in the heaven.”
“Well, IVe an hour to spare. Master Sexton. What do you say to coming along to the Ship and enjoying a drink and a friendly pipe?”
“I thinks I can do one better than that, thankin’ you kindly,” said the sexton, vaulting with marvellous dexterity out of the lofty coffin to the floor, “for IVe baccy, pipes, and good brandy all to hand, and if you’d care to spend an hour with Sexton Mipps and listen to his babbles, why, light your ^strike me dead’ and gulp your spirits and settle your hulk in that there coffin, what hasn’t got no passenger inside—so don’t be frightened — and we’ll shut the window, for it’s a-blowin’ the fire out; and if you ain’t cozy, well, it’s not the fault of the sexton, is it now?” And then Mr. Mipps, after busily providing his guest with the requisites for smoke and drink, and after splitting up a coffin plank to renew the fire, sprang back into the coffin, sitting snug with a glass of brandy and his clay pipe. The captain also was ensconced on a coffin in the corner, and to the crackle of the split coffin plank upon the fire the sexton began to yarn.
FUNERALS may be divided into three classes, for there be solemn funerals, there be grizzly funerals, and there be funny ‘uns. The funniest funeral I ever did see was in China. Do you know, Captain, they very seldom buries out there? They leaves the blasted coffins above ground. The whole of the countryside is a-littered with ‘em. For untidy burials China waves the flag, and they has other very funny customs about funerals out there, too. When a fellow goes and dies out there it’s a devil of a business he has to go through before he gets fixed up final. Every family out there ‘as their own very particular priest, you understand, and this very particular priest is always a very sly sort o’ dog. The dead ‘un is put into the coffin, and then the family pays their sly dog a considerable sum o’ money in exchange for very hard prayers wot the sly dog makes for ‘em to his gods. He goes away and prays for weeks on end, askin’ his gods just where exactly the family ought to bury their dead ‘un to enable him to get into heaven by the most convenient route. And as the sly dog gets paid all the time he’s a-prayin’, you can bet your wig that he pretends to string them prayers out to some length. And I can tell you those Chinese parsons were up to one or two smart wrinkles. I’ll tell you about a certain Ling Fu Quong. Well, if I hadn’t rung the curtain down, as the stage players say, upon that gent’s httle comedy, I believes he’d be drawin’ in a salary now for a fellow what died some forty years ago. You see it happened like this: I had had business deals on with a smugfaced Chinese merchant wot did business at Shanghai. Well, when I was about to sail for the old country, old smug face came to say how sorry he was I was a-goin’ to leave, and hoped he’d have the pleasure of doin’ business with me again when I come back. Well, we started talkin’ and I told him that I should very much like to see a Chinese funeral, and old smug face said that he would gladly oblige me, because a very particular old uncle of his had died and his funeral was shortly to take place. Well, the upshot of it all was that I was invited to go up the river on smug face’s boat to Soochow, where he lived and where his uncle had died, a city some sixty miles away or thereabouts. So there I accordingly went. Have you ever been on one o’ them large sampans. Captain? No? Well, it’s a long sort o’ boat, fitted up very snug indeed, with flowers all trailin’ over the side, and all fixed up to look like an old homestead sailin’ on the river. After a very pleasant trip—and. Lord love you, I did make that old Chinaman laugh tellin’ him things, for I could speak their lingo very well, you understand—well, after a very pleasant trip we gets to Soochow, and a rummy old place it was. It stood right on top of the river, with its old walls runnin’ straight down into the muddy water. It was a strong town and important, a town of fighters and wealthy merchantmen. Well, they was all very pleased to see me and received me very proper. Most of ‘em was a-lookin’ over the wall a-wavin’ flags at me, and them as ‘adn’t got none w^ere a-wavin’ their pigtails. I might ‘ave been the great Cham for all the fuss they made o’ me. O’ course, mind you, I had my enemies. There was a sort o’ lord mayor o’ the place wot I could see didn’t quite approve of me bein’ the nine days’ wonder, but he was one of them self-centred sort o’ coves wot don’t like any one to have a fling but hisself. But I didn’t mind him, for, although I was only a little fellow, I had an eye like a vulture, a nose like a swordfish, and when I was put out, a way of lashin’ myself about like a tiger’s tail wot used to scare them natives. O’ course, mind you, it wasn’t pleasant when you come to think of it, ‘cos there I was the only Englishman amongst them millions of yellow jacks. But an Englishman’s an Englishman all the world over, ain’t he. Captain? and he wants a bit of squashin’, and so that lord mayor discovered, ‘cos one day I walked right up to him in the street and I clacked my teeth at him so very loud that he ran home and never annoyed me no more. But I was a-goin’ to tell you about that funeral. When we got to the front door of old smug face’s house we discovered his uncle’s coffin reposin’ upon the doorstep very peaceful but in a most awkward sort of position, ‘cos you had to crawl over the blarsted thing to get in or out o’ the door.”
“ Lord love you, my most excellent Mipps,’ cried old smug face when he saw it, ‘why, this’ll never do, now will it, for my late lamented uncle’—I forget the uncle’s name but it was Ling something—is fairly blocking up the entrance, ain’t it?’
“*Ling Fu Quong,’ I
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