Читать книгу Dariel: A Romance of Surrey - Blackmore Richard Doddridge - Страница 5

Some men there are whom it is a pleasure to observe at their daily work. How they swing their shoulders, and sway their arms, and strain the strong cordage of the bulky thigh, casting weight as well as muscle into the fight they are waging! And this pleasure should be made the most of, because it is growing very rare. I have heard my grandfather say, that when he was a boy, one man could do, ay and would insist on doing, more work in a day, than is now to be got out of three by looking hard at them – three men of the very same stock and breed, perhaps even that grandfather's own grandchildren. And the cause which he always assigned for this, though not a bad scholar himself, and even capable of some Latin, was the wild cram and pressure of pugnacious education. "The more a jug gurgles, the less it pours," was his simple explanation.

There is much to be said on the other side, especially as the things put into their heads are quick enough to go out again, and the Muses as yet have not turned the village-boy into a Ganymede; but the only man, on our little farm, who ever worked with might and main had never been at school at all, and his name was Robert Slemmick. To this man nothing came amiss, if only there was enough of it. He was not particularly strong, nor large of frame, nor well put together; but rather of a clumsy build and gait, walking always with a stoop, as if he were driving a full wheel-barrow, and swinging both arms at full speed with his legs. But set him at a job that seemed almost too heavy for him, and he never would speak, nor even grunt, nor throw down his tool and flap his arms, but tear away at it, without looking right or left, till you saw with surprise that this middle-sized man had moved a bigger bulk in the course of a day than a couple of hulking navvies.

But one fault he had, and a very sad fault, which had lost him many a good place ere now, and would probably bring him to the workhouse – he was what is called by those who understand such matters a "black buster." At the nearest approach I could make to this subject, sidling very carefully – for the British workman would be confidential rather to a ghost than to his own employer – it seems that there are two kinds of "busters." The white one, who only leaves work for a spree of a day or two, meaning to jollify, and to come back in a chastened vein, after treating all his friends, and then going upon trust; and the black, who is of a stronger mind. This man knows better than to waste his cash upon clinking glasses with a bubble at the top. He is a pattern for weeks and months together, pours every shilling on a Saturday night into the hands of his excellent wife – for it is his luck to have a good one – sits in a corner with his quiet pipe at home, and smiles the smile of memory when the little ones appeal to his wisdom. And so he goes on, without much regret for adventure, or even for beer, beyond the half-pint to which his wife coerces him.

Everybody says, "What a steady fellow Bob is! He is fit for a Guild, if he would only go to Church." He ties the Canary creeper up, and he sees to his cabbages, upon a Sunday morning. And the next-door lady shakes her head over the four-feet palings, with her husband upstairs roaring out for a fresher, after a tumble-down night of it. "Oh, if my Tom was like your Mr. Robert!" But Mrs. Bob also shakes her head. "Oh, yes, he is wonderful good just now."

Then comes the sudden break down, and breakaway. Without a word to any one, or whisper to his family, off sets Mr. Robert, on a Monday morning generally, after doing two good hours' work, before breakfast. Perhaps he has been touched on the virtuous road home, by a fine smell of beer at the corner, where the potboy was washing the pewters, and setting them in the sun for an airing; perhaps it was a flower that set him off, a scarlet Geranium, who can tell? Under some wild impulse he bolts and makes away; he is in the next parish, before his poor wife has given up keeping the tea-pot warm; and by the time she has knocked at the tool-house door, in the forlorn hope that he may be ill, he is rousing the dust of the adjoining county, still going straight ahead, as if the Devil were after him. And that last authority alone can tell how Bob lives, what he thinks of, where his legs and arms are, whence his beer flows down to him, for a month, or even half-a-year, or nobody knows how long it is.

This Robert Slemmick had been in our employment ever since last Candlemas, and had only broken out once as yet, in the manner above described. Excepting only that little flaw, his character was excellent, and a more hard-working, obliging, intelligent man never came on any premises. When I took him back after his escapade, I told him very plainly that it would not be done again; and he promised to stick to his work, and did so. But not a word to me, or anybody else, as to why he went away, or whither, or what he had been doing, or how he got his living. Knowing how peculiar the best men are – otherwise could they be good at all? – I tried not to intrude upon the romance of his Beerhaven, but showed myself rather cold to him, though I longed to know about it.

"Master Jarge," said this man one day, when he was treading a hayrick, and I was in the waggon with the fork below; and it must according to the times have been the very day after Jackson Stoneman came to me, "Master Jarge, what would 'e give to know summut as I could tell 'e?"

He had had a little beer, as was needful for the hay; and I looked at him very seriously; reminding him thus, without harshness, of my opinion of his tendencies. But he did not see it in that light.

"You shape the rick," I said. "I don't want to hear nothing." For you must use double negations if you wish them to understand you. We were finishing a little rick of very choice short staple, with a lot of clover in it, and Old Joe in the shafts was likely to think of it many a winter night. At such a juncture, it will not do to encourage even a silent man.

Bob went cleverly round and round, dealing an armful here and there, for a very small round rick is the hardest of all for scientific building, and then he came back to the brink close to me, till I thought he was going to slide down upon my knees.

"What would 'e give, Master Jarge," he whispered, making a tube of his brown, bristly hand, "to hear all about the most bootifullest maiden as ever come out of the heavens?"

Although I felt a tingle in my heart at this, I answered him very firmly. "Get on with your work. Don't talk rubbish to me."

"You be the steadiest of the steady. Every fool knows that. But I reckon, Master Jarge hath his turn to come, same as every young man the Lord hath made with a pair of eyes. Oh! our Miss Grace, she be bootiful enough. But this one over yonner – O Lord! O Lord!"

He waved his hand towards the valley in the distance, whose outline was visible from where we stood. And dignified as I tried to be, he saw my glance go wandering.

"Why, you knows all about it, Master Jarge! You be clapping your eyes upon the very place! Why, ne'er a man in England hath ever seed the like. And who could a'thought it, a'standing outside!"

"Nonsense!" I said. "Why, you must have been dreaming. Who knows what comes over you sometimes?"

This reference to his "busting" weakness was not in good taste, when the crime had been forgiven, and the subject was known to be hateful to him. But this was the sure way to let his tongue loose; and when a reserved man once breaks forth, he is like a teetotaller going on the spree.

"I could show 'e the place now just, Master Jarge; the place can't run away I reckon. All over ivy-leaves the same as a church-tower. You can't deny of they, when you sees them, can 'e? And the bootiful young gal – why, you've seed her, Master Jarge! By the twinkle of your eyes, I could swear to it."

"Robert Slemmick, you are off your head;" I answered with a very steadfast gaze at him, for his keen little eyes were ready to play "I spy" with mine. "I insist upon knowing where you have been, and what you have done, and what people you have met. If they knew that you were in Sir Harold Cranleigh's service, you may have done us great discredit."

With some indignation he told his tale, and finished it before the other men came back; for his tongue was as brisk as his arms and legs, which had rare gifts of locomotion. But I must fill in what he left out, for it would be neither just nor wise to expect him to inform against himself.

It seems that he was walking very fast, discharging himself from domestic bonds, and responsibility, and temperance, when he came to a black door in a big wall; and rapid as he was, this brought him up. His thoughts, if any, were always far in advance of him at such moments, and perhaps his main object was to overtake them. This he could not explain, and had never thought about it, but at any rate that door should not stop him. It was locked, or bolted, and without a bell, but he worked all his members together against it, as he alone of mankind could do, and what could withstand such progressive power? The door flew open, and in rushed Slemmick, like the London County Council.

But there are powers that pay no heed to the noblest psychical impulse. Two dogs of extraordinary bulk and stature had him prostrate between them in an instant, and stood over him, grinding enormous jaws. Dazed as he was, cold terror kept his restless members quiet, and perhaps he felt – though he did not so confess it – that conjugal law was vindicated. "I were in too terrible a funk to think," was his statement of the position.

But the two dogs appeared to enjoy the situation, and being of prime sagacity were discussing his character between them. If he had been a mere "white buster," that is to say a common tramp, they would have stopped his tramp for ever. But they saw that he was a respectable man, a sound home-liver in his proper state of mind; and although they would not hear of his getting up, they deliberated what they ought to do with him. Slemmick in the meanwhile was watching their great eyes, and their tails flourished high with triumphant duty, and worst of all their tremendous white fangs, quivering if he even dared to shudder.

"Abashed I were to the last degree," he told me, and I could well believe it; "my last thought was to my poor wife Sally." A good partner, to whom his first thoughts should have been. But while he was thus truly penitent I hope, a clear sound as of a silver whistle came to his ears, and the dogs stood up, and took the crush of their paws from his breast, and one of them sat by him, in strict vigilance still, while the other bounded off for instructions.

Then, according to Slemmick, there appeared to him the most beautiful vision he had ever seen. "Straight from heaven. Don't tell me, Master Jarge, for never will I hear a word agin it. Straight from heaven, with the big hound a'jumping at her side, and him looking like an angel now. If you was to see her, you'd just go mad, and never care to look at any other maid no more."

"What was she like, Bob?" It had not been my intention to put any question of this kind, but Slemmick was in such a state of excitement, that I had a right to know the reason.

"Don't 'e ask me, sir; for good, don't 'e ask me. There never was no words in any Dixunary, and if there was, I couldn't lay to them. There then, you go and judge for yourself, Master Jarge."

"But she can't be there all by herself, my friend. Surely you must have seen some one else. And what language did she speak in?"

"Blowed if I can tell 'e, sir. All I know is, 't were a mixture of a flute and a blackbird, and the play-'em-out-of-Church pipes of the horgan. Not that she were singing, only to the ear, my meaning is; and never mind the words no more than folk does in a hanthem. Lor, to hear poor Sally's voice, after coming home from that – even in the wisest frame of mind, with all the wages in her lap!"

"But you did not come home, Bob Slemmick, for I know not how long. Did you spend the whole of your time in that enchanted valley?"

"Ah, a chant it were, by gum! A chant as I could listen to – why, Master Jarge, I'll take 'e there; for two skips of a flea I would. Won't 'e? Very well. Best not, I reckon. Never look at no English maids no more."

This was nearly all that I could get from Bob, without putting hundreds of questions; for instead of straight answers, he went off into ravings about this most ravishing young lady, who must have contrived to make out what he wanted, for after having saved him from the dogs, she led him directly to the lower door, and sped him on his way with half-a-crown. But that, as he assured me, was of no account in his estimate of her qualities. "You ask Farmer Ticknor, sir, if you think I be a'lying. Farmer Ticknor hath seed her, more at his comfort than ever I did; and Ticknor come hotter than I do. 'Hold your blessed jaw' – he say, when I goeth to ask about her, knowing as he were neighbourly – 'What call for you, Bob Slemmick?' he saith, 'to come running like a dog on end down here? I'll give you a charge of shot,' he saith, 'if I catch you in the little lane again. 'T is the Royal Family, and no mistake, that knoweth all about this here. And don't you make no palaver of it, to come stealing of my mushrooms.' As if we hadn't better as we kicks up every day!"

Now all this talk of Bob's, although it may have told upon my mind a little, was not enough to set me running straight away from my home and friends, at a very busy time of year, as Slemmick was so fond of doing. But betwixt the green and yellow, as our people call the times of hay and corn, it seemed to me that I might as well have a talk with that Farmer Ticknor, who was known to be a man of great authority about the weather and the crops, and had held land under us as long as he could afford to do so. He was rather crusty now, as a man is apt to be when he lives upon a crust for the benefit of foreigners, and receives his exchange in coloured tallow. It was two or three years since I had seen him now; for "Ticknor's Mew," as he called his place, was out of the general course of traffic, and as lonely among the woods as a dead fern-frond. I found him at home on a fine summer evening, and he put up my horse, and received me very kindly, for he was not a bad sort of man, though rough. And if any pleasure yet remained in Farmer's lane to workhouse, this man made the most of it by looking at the sky, as if it still could help him against the imbecility of the earth.

"Yes, I have been a fine hand at it," he said, after sending for a jug of ale, and two bell-rummers; "there never was a cloud, but I know the meaning of 'un, though without they long names they has now. Bessie, my dear, fetch Ticknor's marks. Don't care much to do it now – nought to lose or gain of it. Not much odds to this land of England now, what weather God Almighty please to send. 'And when they shamed the Lord out of caring to mind the harvest, the Government goeth for to hirritate Him more, with a Hoffice to tell us what sort of hat to put upon our heads, when us can't pay for none. But I'll bet my Sunday beaver against his band of gold. What say to that, Mr. Cranleigh? I stuck 'un on the barn-door every marnin' as long as there was anything to care for in the whitfields. It covereth a whole year, don't it, Bessie? Cross stands for wrong, and straight line for right."

Ticknor's marks, as he called his calendar, certainly seemed to hit the mark more often than the men of science did. On a great blackboard were pasted in parallel columns the "Daily forecasts" and Farmer Ticknor's predictions entered at noon of each preceding day. His pretty daughter Bessie, the editor, no doubt, of his oracles, displayed them with no little pride.

"If you will be pleased to observe, Mr. Cranleigh" – Bessie had been at a boarding-school – "my father's predictions are in manuscript of course," – and much better than he could write, thought I, – "while the authorised forecasts are in type. Now the crosses on the manuscript are not quite five per cent; while those upon the printing exceed seventy-five. If there were any impartiality in politics, don't you think, Mr. Cranleigh, they would give father the appointment? And he would be glad to do it in these bad times, for less than half the money. Though we must not blame the gentlemen who have to do it all through the window."

"You never hear me boast," interrupted the farmer; "there never was that gift in our family. But I'll go bail to give that Meatyard man, or whatever they calls 'un, five pips out of ten – all this reckoning by scents hath come after my time – and give 'un twelve hours longer with his arrows and his dots; and then I'll name the day agin him, for the best joint in his yard. But bless your heart and mine too, Master Jarge, what odds for the weather now? Why, even the hay, they tell me now, is to come in little blocks from foreign parts. Make a ton of it they say they can by hyderaulic something come out not a morsel bigger than the parish-Bible. Well, well! Well, well!"

Knowing that if he once began upon "Free Trade," there would be many changes of weather before he stopped, I brought him back to the other subject, and contrived to lead him as far as the margin of the wood, where the clouds by which he made his divinations could be contemplated more completely; but he told me a great deal about their meanings, although he knew nothing of their names; all of which I forget, though I tried to attend.

It was not for any knowledge of clouds, or weather, or politics, or even harvest-prospects, that I was come to see this Prophet Ticknor in the woods. My mother's favourite subject was the "Fulfilment of Prophecy;" but what I cared for now, and thought myself bound to follow out, was the vision (seen by others as well as myself) of a foreign young maiden – if it must be so – unequalled by any of English birth. The prevalence of loose commercial ideas, and the prostitution of Britannia (so highly respected while she locked her own gate), had given me a turn against things foreign, though none but my enemies could call me narrow-minded. And here I was open to conviction, as usual, with a strong prepossession against my country, or, at any rate, against her girls, however lovely.

"I suppose you don't happen to know," I said to that excellent Ticknor, while still among his clouds, "whether anybody lives in that old place, where there seems to be such a lot of black stuff? What is it? Ivy it looks like. And old walls behind it, or something very old. I think I have heard of some old Monastery there; and it was part of our property long and long ago. Oh, Farmer Ticknor, how everything does change!"

The farmer afforded me a glance of some suspicion. Narrow trade-interests had got the better of him. "You be gone into the retail line," he said. "To think of the Cranleighs coming down to that. But you don't sell milk by the quart now, do 'e?"

Though I did not see how it could bear upon the subject, I assured him that most of our milk went to London, under contract with a great man, whose name I mentioned; and the rest we kept for making butter.

"Well, then, I does a good little stroke of business there. Though not much profit out of that, of course. They takes in a gallon-can every morning. And they asked the boy whether I didn't keep no goats."

"Goats! Why then they must be foreigners," I said. "No English people care about goat's milk. At least, unless their doctor orders it."

"They ha'n't got no doctor, and don't want none. A rare strong lot according to all I hear. Toorks I call them, and I put it on the bill, 'Toork Esquire, debtor to John Ticknor.' Having raised no objection, why it stands they must be Toorks."

"But people can't live on milk alone, Mr. Ticknor. And they must have some other name besides Turks. Even if they are Turks, which I scarcely can believe."

"Well, you knows more about them than I do, sir. I never form an opinion, so long as they pays me good English money. But they never has no butcher's meat, nor no beer; and that proves that they bain't English folk. If you want to know more about them, Mr. Cranleigh, the one as can teach you is my dog Grab. Grab feeleth great curiosity about them, because of the big dogs inside the old wall. He hath drashed every other dog in the parish; and it goeth very hard with him to have no chance to drash they. Never mind, old boy, your time will come."

An atrocious bull-dog of the fiercest fighting type, who had followed us from the farmhouse, was nuzzling into his master's grey whiskers. Now I love nearly all dogs, and, as a rule, they are very good to me; but that surly fellow, who is supposed to be the type of our national character, does not appear to me, by any means, adorable. Very faithful he may be, and consistent, and straightforward, and devoted to his duty. But why should he hold it a part of his duty to kill every gentle and accomplished dog he meets, unless the other dips his tail, the canine ensign, to him? And of all the bull-dogs I have ever seen, this Grab was the least urbane and polished. A white beast with three grisly patches destroying all candour of even blood-thirstiness, red eyes leering with treacherous ill-will, hideous nostrils, like ulcers cut off, and enormous jowls sagging from the stark white fangs. He saw that I disliked him, and a hearty desire to feel his tusks meet in my throat was displayed in the lift of his lips, and the gleam of his eyes.

"Wonnerful big hounds they furriners has, according to what my milk-boy says," the farmer continued, with a plaintive air; "but they never lets them free of the big wall hardly, to let Grab see what they be made of. But come back to house, and have a bit of supper with us, before you go home, Mr. Cranleigh. 'T is a roughish ride even in summer-time."

"Thank you; not a bit to eat; but perhaps before I go, another glass of your very fine home-brewed. But I see a tree down in the valley there, that I should like to know more about. I'll follow you back to the house in a few minutes. But how long did you say that those strangers have been here? It seems such an odd thing that nobody appears to know anything about them."

"Well, a goodish long while they must have been there now. And they don't seem to make no secret of it. Bakes their own bread, if they have any; never has any carriage-folk to see them, never comes out with a gun to pot a hare; don't have no fishmonger, butcher, grocer, nor any boy to call out 'papper' at the door. My boy Charlie is uncommon proud, because he have got into their 'Good-morning.' They says it like Christians, so far as he can judge, and naturally he sticketh up for them. You can ask him, Master Jarge, if you think fit. Nothing clandestical about Ticknor's Mew. But none of them Inspectors to pump into our milk, and swear as we did it. That's why I keep you, Grab."

Farmer Ticknor made off with this little grumble, lifting his hat to me, until I should return. For he did not look down upon the "Gentry of the land," for being out at elbows. After thinking for a minute of all that I had heard, which was not very much to dwell upon, I twirled my riding-crop (which I had brought from habit, and been glad to have when I watched Grab's teeth), and set off with a light foot, to explore that lonely valley.

I was now on the opposite side from that by which I had entered it to the tune of the nightingale, and at first I could scarcely make out my bearings. For though I had seen it afar with Tom Erricker, something prevented me from letting him come near it. Tom was an excellent fellow in his way; but of reverence and lofty regard for women no decent Englishman could have much less. Decent I say, because if such sentiments are cast by, and scoffed at – as fools think it clever to do – the only thing left is indecency.

This valley was not like many places, that are tempting only at a distance. The deeper I found myself in it, the more I was filled with its gentleness and beauty. It has never been in my line at all to be able to convey what comes across me, – when I see things that look as if they called upon us to be grateful for the pleasure they contribute to our minds. Certain people can do this, as some can make fine after-dinner speeches, while others are more fitted to rejoice inside. And if I were to fail in depicting a landscape, such as any Surrey man may see by walking a few miles, how would you care to follow me into the grandest scenery the Maker of the earth has made anywhere, unless it be in His own temple of the heavens?

Enough that it was a very lovely valley, winding wherever it ought to wind, and timbered just where it should be, with the music of a bright brook to make it lively, and the distance of the hills to keep it sheltered from the world. And towards the upper end where first the stream came wimpling into it, that ancient wall, which had baffled me, enclosed a large piece of land as well as some length of watercourse, but gave no other token of its purpose. This was what I cared most about; for stupid and unreasonable as it must appear, a sharp spur had been clapped to my imagination by the vague talk of Slemmick and Ticknor. And not only that, but to some extent, the zeal and the ardour of Jackson Stoneman, and his downright policy, had set me thinking that poor as I was, while he was rolling in money, the right of my manhood was the same as his – to pursue by all honest means the one fair image which a gracious power had disclosed to me. Therefore, after looking at the tree to soothe my conscience, I followed the course of that wandering wall, by no means in a sneaking manner, but showing myself fairly in the open meadows, and walking as one who takes exercise for health.

The wall was on my left hand, all the way from the track (in which the steep road ended after crossing the brook) and although I would rather sink into a bog than seek to be spying impertinently, nothing could have come upon that wall, and no one could have peeped over it without my taking it in at a side-flick. But I only had sense of one thing moving throughout all my circuit, and that was but little to comfort me. Just as I was slipping by the upper door (which Slemmick had burst open), and taking long strides – for if some one had opened it and asked what I wanted there, how could I, as a gentleman, tell the whole truth? – suddenly there appeared within a square embrasure, and above the parapet among the ivy, the most magnificent head I ever saw. Mighty eyes, full of deep intelligence, regarded me, noble ears (such as no man is blest with) quivered with dignified inquiry, while a majestic pair of nostrils, as black as night, took sensitive quest of the wind, whether any of the wickedness of man were in it.

Knowing that I only intended for the best, though doubtful if that would stand me in much stead, supposing that this glorious dog took another view of it, I addressed him from below with words of praise, which he evidently put aside with some contempt. He was considering me impartially and at leisure; and if I had moved he would have bounded down upon me. Luckily I had the sense to stand stock-still, and afford him every facility for study of my character. At the same time I looked at him, not combatively, but as if I felt similar interest in him, which I had excellent reason for doing. To my great relief his eyes assumed a kind expression; by the pleasant waving of his ears I could tell that his tail was wagging, and he showed a bright dimple beneath his black whiskers, and smiled with the humour which is far beyond our ken. Whereupon I nodded to him, and made off.

When I came to think of him, in that coarser frame of mind in which we explain everything so meanly, it occurred to me that those noble nostrils, curving like the shell of Amphitrite, were scarcely moved so much perhaps by the influence of my goodness, as by the fragrance of my sister's spaniel, Lady Silky, who had nestled in my hairy jacket, while I was casting up accounts that day. However, be his motive large or small, he had formed a friendly opinion of me, and when I disappeared among the trees, a low whine followed me as if the place had grown more lonely.

Upon the whole I had made some progress towards the solution of this strange affair. Within those walls there must be living a settlement of foreigners, an establishment of some size, to judge by the quantity of milk they used. Some of them could speak English, but they did not seem to associate with any of their neighbours, and probably procured from London the main part of what they needed. To Farmer Ticknor, as to most of the rustics round about us, all who were not of British birth were either Turks or Frenchmen. To my mind these were neither; and the possession of those noble dogs – a breed entirely new to me – showed that they were not dwelling here to conceal their identity, or to retrench from poverty. For there were at least two dogs, perhaps more, worth a hundred guineas each to any London dealer at the lowest computation, and not by any means qualified to live on scanty rations. Another point I had ascertained – that the old Mill, out of use for many years, was now at work again. This had been built, no one knows how long ago, among the monastic ruins upon the never-failing Pebblebourne. And while I was counting the moments for that gigantic dog to spring down on me, I heard very clearly the plash of the wheel, and the boom and murmur of the works inside.

As a last chance of picking up something more, when I was getting on my horse, I said across his mane to the fair Bessie Ticknor, that "highly-cultured" maiden, – "A little bird has told me, though I would not listen to him, that a young lady almost as pretty as Miss Ticknor lives in a valley not a hundred miles from here." Bessie raised her jet-black eyes, and blushed, and simpered, and whispered, so that her father could not hear it: —

"Oh, I 'd give anything to know! It is such a romantic mystery! Culture does put such a cruel curb upon curiosity. But it does not take much to surpass me, Mr. Cranleigh."

"We are not all quite blind in this world, Miss Ticknor; though some may try to contradict their looking-glass."