Читать книгу The Parson O' Dumford - George Manville Fenn - Страница 7

“Look here, parson,” cried the young workman, in a voice husky with emotion; and as he spoke he dashed his cap upon the ground and began to roll up his sleeves, displaying arms fit, with their sturdy rolls of muscle, for a young Hercules. “Look here, parson. You’re a straanger here, and I’ll tell ’ee. That’s my master, that is, and I shall kill him afore I’ve done.”

“Hush, man, hush!” cried the young vicar.

“I don’t keer, I shall. Why ain’t I at work, eh? Never another stroke will I do for him; wish that my hammer may come on my head if I do. Look here, parson,” he went on, catching the other’s arm hard in a grasp of iron, “that’s his lass, that is—that’s his young lady—Miss Eve Pelly; God bless her for a perfect angel, and too good for him. He’s engaged to her, he is—engaged to be married, and he’s got thousands and thousands of his own, and the Foundry, and horses to hunt wi’, and he ain’t satisfied. No, no; I ain’t done yet. Look here, ain’t all that enough for any man? You know what’s right, and what ain’t. What call’s he got to come between me and she?”

He jerked one fist in the direction taken by Daisy, and went on.

“Things ran all right between us before he steps in with his London dandy air, and his short coot hair, and fine clothes. Old Joe Banks was willing; and as for Missus Banks, why, bless her, she’s always been like a mother to me. I’d saved up a hundred and sixty pun’ ten, all hard earnings, and we was soon to be married, and then he comes between us and turns the girl’s head. You come on to me when I’d gone up the hill-side there, to chew it all over, after she’d huffed me this morning, and I coot up rough. I say, warn’t it enough to make any man coot up rough?”

“It was, indeed, Podmore,” said the vicar, kindly.

“But I wean’t stand it, that I wean’t,” roared the young man, like an angry bull. “A man’s a man even if he is a master. I’ll fight fair; but if I don’t break every bone in his false skin, my name ain’t Tom Podmore.”

This burst over, he resumed his cap and snatched down his sleeves, looking half ashamed of his effusion in the presence of a stranger, and he shrank away a little as the vicar laid his hand upon his arm.

“Look here, Podmore,” he said kindly; “when I went first to school they used to give me for a copy to write, ‘Do nothing rashly.’ Don’t you do anything rashly, my friend, because things done in haste are repented of at leisure. I have come down here to be a friend, I hope, to everybody, and as you were the first man I met in Dumford, I shall look upon you as one of the first to have a call upon me.”

“Thanky, sir, thanky kindly,” said Podmore, in a quieter tone. “I don’t know how it is, but you’ve got a kind of way with you that gets over a fellow.”

“She seems a nice, pretty, well-behaved girl, that Daisy Banks,” said the vicar.

“There isn’t a better nor a truer-hearted girl nor a prettier nowhere for twenty miles round,” cried the young fellow, flushing up with a lover’s pride. “Why look at her, sir, side by side with Miss Eve, that’s a born lady. Why, Miss Eve’s that delicate and poor beside my Daisy, as there ain’t no comparison ’tween ’em. My Daisy, as was,” he added, sorrowfully. “Something’s come over her like of late, and it’s all over now.”

The great strong fellow turned his back, and resting one hand upon the stile, his broad shoulders gave a heave or two.

“I shan’t take on about it,” he said, roughly, as he turned round with a sharp, defiant air of recklessness. “I ain’t the first fool that’s been jilted by a woman, ay, parson—hundred and sixty pound ’ll buy a sight o’ gills o’ ale. Don’t you take no heed o’ what I said.”

He was turning away, but a strong hand was upon his shoulder.

“Look here, Podmore,” said the vicar, firmly, “you said something about fools just now. You are not a fool, and you know it. You leave the ale alone—to the fools—and go back and get to work as hard, or harder, than you ever worked before. I shall see you again soon, perhaps bowl to you in the cricket field. As for your affairs, you leave them to me. Do you know why Englishmen make the best soldiers?”

“Do I know why Englishmen make the best soldiers, parson?” said Podmore, staring. “No: can’t say I do.”

“Because, my lad, they never know when they are beaten. Now, you are not beaten yet. Good-bye.”

He held out his hand, and the great grimy, horny palm of the workman came down into it with a loud clap, and the grip that ensued from each side would have been unpleasant to any walnut between their palms.

Then they parted, taking different routes, and ten minutes later the Reverend Murray Selwood was walking quietly through the empty town street, quite conscious though that head after head was being thrust out to have a look at the stranger.

There was the usual sprinkling of shops and private houses, great blank red-brick dwellings, which told their own tale of being the houses of the lawyer, the doctor, and their newer opponents. Then there was the factory-looking place, with great gates to the yard, and a time-keeper’s lodge inside, surmounted by a bell in its little wooden hutch. The throb of machinery could be heard, and the shriek of metal being tortured into civilised form came painfully to the ear from time to time. Smoke hung heavily in the air—smoke tinged with lurid flame; and above all came the roar of the reverberating furnaces, where steel or some alloy was being fused for the castings which had made out-of-the-way, half-savage Dumford, with its uncouth, independent people, famous throughout the length and breadth of the land.

There were very few people visible, for the works had not yet begun to pour forth their masses of working bees, but there were plenty of big rough lads hanging about the corners of the streets.

“I wonder what sort of order the schools are in,” said the new vicar to himself, as he neared the church, towards which he was bending his steps, meaning to glance round before entering the vicarage. “Yes, I wonder what sort of a condition they are in. Bad, I fear. Very bad, I’m sure,” he added.

For at that moment a great lump of furnace refuse, or glass, there known as slag, struck him a heavy blow in the back.

He turned sharply, but not a soul was visible, and he stooped and picked up the lump, which was nearly equal in size to his fist.

“Yes, no doubt about it, very bad,” he said. “Well, I’ll take you to my new home, and you shall have the first position in my cabinet of specimens, being kept as a memorial of my welcome to Dumford.”

“Well,” he said, as he reached the church gate, “I’ve made two friends already, and—perhaps—an enemy. By Jove, there’s another brick.”