Perlycross: A Tale of the Western Hills

"If that is a little stir, what would be a big one? But I want to see them; and the fogginess of the trees in that direction stops me. I should say there must be at least five hundred people there. I can't stop up here, like a dummy."

"Very well. If you love a row so much. But there are no five hundred there, because it is more than thirty miles round this parish, and the beaters start in two companies from Perle-Weir, one lot to the north and the other to the south, and they go round till they meet each other; somewhere at the back of Beaconhill. One churchwarden with each party, and the overseers divided, and the constables, and so on. The parson should be in the thickest of the fray; but I strictly forbade Mr. Penniloe, and told him to send Jakes as his deputy. Still I should not be surprised, if he turns up. He is hot upon the rights of his parish. Come round this way; there is no fear of missing them, any more than a pack of hounds in full cry."

Christie was quite up for it. She loved a bit of skirmish, and thought it might fetch her brother's spirits up again. So they turned the steep declivity, and after many scratches, crept along a tangled path, leading down to a wooded gully.

Here they found themselves, rather short of breath, but in a position to command fair view of the crowd, full of action in the dingle and the bramble-land. How it could matter to any sane humanity, whether the parish-bound ran even half a league, on this side or on that of such a desert wild, only those who dwell on human nature can explain.

However so it was; and even Mr. Penniloe had flouted the doctors, and was here, clad in full academicals according to the ancient rule, flourishing his black-varnished stick, and full of unfeigned wrath at some gross crime.

"Thou shalt not move thy neighbour's land-mark" – he was shouting, instead of swallowing pills; and as many of his flock as heard his text, smote right and left in accordance with it.

"What on earth is it all about?" asked Christie, peeping through a holly bush, and flushing with excitement.

"All about that stone down in the hollow, where the water spurts so. Don't be afraid. They can't see us." The girl looked again, and wondered.

Some fifty yards before them was a sparkling little watercourse, elbowing its way in hurried zig-zag down the steep; but where it landed in the fern-bed with a toss of tresses, some ungodly power of men had heaved across its silver foot a hugeous boulder of the hill, rugged, bulky, beetle-browed – the "shameless stone" of Homer. And with such effect, that the rushing water, like a scared horse, leaped aside, and swerving far at the wrongful impulse, cut a felonious cantel out of the sacred parish of Perlycross!

Even this was not enough. To add insult to injury, some heartless wag had chiselled, on the lichened slab of boulder, a human profile in broad grin, out of whose wicked mouth came a scroll, inscribed in deep letters – "P. combe Parish."

The Perlycrucians stood before this incredible sight, dumb-foundered. Thus far they had footed it in a light and merry mood, laughing, chaffing, blowing horns, and rattling bladders, thumping trees and gates and cowsheds, bumping schoolboys against big posts, and daubing every corner of contention, from kettles of tar or sheep-wash, with a big P. +.

But now as this outrage burst upon them, through a tall sheaf of yellow flags, their indignation knew no bounds, parochial or human. As soon as they could believe their eyes, they lifted their hands, and closed their lips; while the boys, who were present in great force – for Jakes could not help the holiday – put their fingers in their mouths, and winked at one another. Five or six otter-hounds, from the kennels of a sporting yeoman, had joined the procession with much goodwill; but now they recognised the check, and sat upon their haunches, and set up a yell with one accord, in the dismay of human silence.

Not an oath was uttered, nor a ribald laugh; but presently all eyes were turned upon the pale Mr. Penniloe, who stood at the side of Mr. Farrant, the junior Churchwarden, who had brought him in his four-wheeled chaise, as far as wheels might venture. Few were more pained by this crime than the parson; he nodded under his College cap, and said —

"My friends, abate this nuisance."

But this was easier said than done, as they very soon discovered. Some called for crowbars, and some for gunpowder, and some for a team of horses; but nothing of the sort was near at hand. Then Sergeant Jakes, as an old campaigner, came to the rescue, and borrowing a hatchet (of which there were plenty among them), cut down a sapling oak, hard and tough and gnarled from want of nourishment; therewith at the obnoxious rock they rushed, butting, ramming, tugging, levering, with the big pole below, and a lot of smaller staves above, and men of every size and shape trampling, and kicking out, and exhorting one another. But the boulder had been fanged into its socket so exactly, probably more by luck than skill, that there it stuck, like a gigantic molar, and Perlycross laboured in vain at it.

"What muffs! As if they could do it, like that! Penniloe ought to know better; why the pressure is all the wrong way. But of course he is an Oxford man. Chris, you stay here, till I come back. Cambridge v. Oxford, any day, when it comes to a question of engineering."

Speaking too lightly, he leaped in like manner into the yellow-rib'd breast of the steep; while Christie communed with herself, like this.

"Oh, what a pity he left St. John's! He must have been senior-wrangler, if he had stayed on, instead of those horrible hospitals. And people would have thought so much more of him. But perhaps he would not have looked so bright; and he does more good in this line. Though nobody seems to thank him much. It would be ever so much better for him, and he would be valued more, if he did ever so much less good. But I like the look of Mr. Penniloe."

The man who should have been senior-wrangler – as every man ever yet sent to Cambridge should have been, if justice had been done him – went in a style of the purest mathematics along the conic sections of the very noble Hagdon. The people in the gully shouted to him, for a single slip would have brought him down upon their hats; but he kept his breath for the benefit of his legs, and his nerves were as sound as an oyster's, before its pearly tears begin. Christie watched him without fear; she had known the construction of his legs, from the days of balusters and rocking-horses.

"Give me up a good pole – not too heavy – you see how I have got to throw my weight; but a bit of good stuff with an elbow to it."

Thus spake Jemmy, and the others did their best. He stuck his heel and footside into a soft place he had found, and let the ledge of harder stuff overlap his boot-vamps, then he took the springy spar of ash which some one had handed up to him, for he stood about twelve feet above them, and getting good purchase against a scrag of flint, brought the convexity of his pole to bear on the topmost jag of boulder.

"Slew away as high as you can reach," he cried; "but don't touch it anywhere near the bottom." As they all put their weights to it, the rock began to sway, and with a heavy groan lurched sideways.

"Stand clear!" cried Jemmy, as the whole bunk swang, with the pillar of water helping it, and then settled grandly back into the other niche, with the volume of the fall leaping generously into the parish of Perlycombe.

"Hurrah!" shouted everybody young enough to shout; while the elder men leant upon their staves, and thanked the Lord. Not less than forty feet was recovered, and another forty added from the substance of big rogues. "'Tis the finest thing done ever since I were a boy," said the oldest man present, as he wiped his dripping face. "Measter Vox, come down, and shake hands round. Us will never believe any harm of thee no more."

This reasoning was rather of the heart than head; but it held good all round, as it generally does. And now as the sound of the water went away into its proper course, with the joy of the just pursuing it, Miss Fox, who had watched all proceedings from the ridge, could hear how the current of public opinion was diverted and rushing in her brother's favour. So she pinned up a torn skirt, and smoothed out another, and putting back her bright hair, tripped down the wooded slope, and stood with a charming blush before them. The labourers touched their hats, and the farmers lifted theirs, and every one tried to look his best; for Perlycross being a poetical parish is always very wide awake to beauty.

"My sister!" explained Dr. Fox with just pride. "My sister, Mr. Penniloe! My sister, Mr. Farrant! Sergeant Jakes, my sister! Miss Christie Fox will be glad to know you all."

"And I am sure that everybody will be glad to know Miss Fox," said the Parson, coming forward with his soft sweet smile. "At any time she would be welcome; but now she is come at the time of all times. Behold what your brother has done, Miss Fox! That stream is the parish boundary."

"He maketh the river to run in dry places;" cried Channing the clerk, who had been pulling at his keg, "and lo, he hath taken away the reproach of his people, Israel!"

"Mr. Channing! Fie, Mr. Channing!" began the representative of the upper desk, and then suddenly checked himself, lest he should put the old man to shame, before the children of the parish.

"By the by," said Mr. Farrant, coming in to fill the pause; "Dr. Fox is the likeliest person to tell us what this curious implement is. It looks like a surgical instrument of some sort. We found it, Doctor, in this same watercourse, about a furlong further down, where the Blackmarsh lane goes through it. We were putting our parish-mark on the old tree that overhangs a deep hole, when this young gent who is uncommon spry – I wish you luck of him, I'm sure, Mr. Penniloe – there he spies it, and in he goes, like an otter, and out with it, before he could get wet, almost."

"Not likely I was going to leave it there," young Peckover interrupted; "I thought it was a clot of eels, or a pair of gloves, or something. Though of course a glove would float, when you come to think of it. Perhaps the young lady knows – she looks so clever."

"Hopper, no cheek!" Dr. Fox spoke sharply, for the youth was staring at his sister. "Mr. Farrant, I can't tell you what it is; for I never saw a surgical instrument like it. I should say it was more like a blacksmith's, or perhaps a turner's tool; though not at all a common one, in either business. Is Crang here, or one of his apprentices?"

"No, sir. Joe is at home to-day – got a heavy job," answered someone in the crowd; "and the two prentices be gone with t'other lot of us."

"I'll tell you what I'll do;" volunteered the Hopper, who was fuming at the slowness of parochial demarcation, for he would have been at the back of Beacon Hill by this time; "I'll go straight with it to Susscot, and be back again before these old codgers have done a brace of meadows. It is frightful cold work to stand about like this. I found it, and I'll find out what it is too."

The tool was handed to him, and he set off, like a chamois, in a straight line westward; while two or three farmers, who had suffered already from his steeplechase tracks, would have sent a brief word after him, but for the parson's presence. Fox, who was amused with this specimen of his county, ran part way up the hill to watch his course, and then beckoned to his sister, to return to the Old Barn by the footpath along the foot of Hagdon.

They had scarcely finished dinner, which they had to take in haste, by reason of the shortness of the days, and their intended visit to Walderscourt, when Joe Crang the blacksmith appeared in the yard, pulling his hat off, and putting it on again, and wiping his face with a tongs-swab.

Fox saw that the man was in a state of much excitement, and made him come in, while Miss Christie went upstairs, to prepare for their drive to Walderscourt.

"What's the matter, Crang? Take a chair there. You needn't be nervous," said the Doctor kindly; "I have no grudge against you for saying what you believe. It has done me a world of harm, no doubt; but it's no fault of yours. It's only my bad luck, that some fellow very like me, and also a Jemmy, should have been in that black job that night. But I wish you had just shown a little more pluck, as I told you the other day. If you had just gone round the horse and looked; or even sung out – 'Is that you, Doctor?' why you might have saved me from – from knowing so much about my friends."

"Oh sir, 'twaz an awesome night! But what I be come for to say, sir, is just this. I absolve 'e, sir; I absolve 'e, Measter Vox. If that be the right word, – and a' cometh from the Baible, I absolve 'e, Measter Vox."

"Absolve me from what, Crang? I have done nothing. You mean, I suppose, that you acquit me?"

"Well now, you would never believe – but that's the very word of discoorse that have been sticking in my throat all the way from the ford. You never done it, sir, – not you. You never done it, sir! You may put me on my oath."

"But you have been very much upon your oath, ever since it happened, that I was the man, and no other man, that did the whole of it, Joseph Crang. And the ale you have had on the strength of it!"

"The ale, sir, is neither here nor there" – the blacksmith looked hurt by this imputation – "it cometh to-day, and it goeth to-morrow, the same as the flowers of the field. But the truth is the thing as abideth, Measter Jemmy. Not but what the ale might come, upon the other view of it. Likewise, likewise – if the Lord in heaven ordereth it, the same as the quails from the sky, sir."

"The miracle would be if it failed to come, wherever you are, Joseph. But what has converted you from glasses against me, to glasses in my favour?"

"Nothing more than this, sir. Seemeth to a loose mind neither here nor there. But to them that knoweth it, beyond when human mind began, perhaps afore the flood waz, there's nought that speaks like Little Billy."

"Why this," exclaimed Fox, as he unrolled the last new leathern apron of the firm of Crang and wife, "this is the thing they found to-day in beating the bounds of the parish. Nobody could make out what it was. What can it have to do with me, or the sad affair at Perlycross?"

"Little Billy, sir," replied the blacksmith, dandling the tool with honest love, as he promptly recovered it from Fox, "have been in our family from father to son, since time runneth not to the contrary. Half her can do is unbeknown to me, not having the brains as used to be. Ah, we was clever people then, afore the times of the New Covenant. It runneth in our race that there was a Joe Crang did the crafty work for the Tabernacle as was set up in the wilderness. And it might a' been him as made Little Billy."

"Very hard indeed to prove. Harder still to disprove. But giving you the benefit of the doubt, Master Crang, how have you used this magic tool yourself?"

"That's where the very pint of the whole thing lies; that's what shows them up so ungrateful, sir. Not a soul in the parish to remember what Little Billy hath been to them! Mind, I don't say as I understand this tool, though I does a'most anything with her. But for them not to know! For them to send to ax the name of 'un, when there bain't one in ten of 'em as hathn't roared over 'un, when her was screwed to a big back tooth."

"The ungrateful villains! It is really too bad. So after all, it proves to be what Mr. Farrant thought it was – a genuine surgical instrument. But go on, Crang; will you never tell me how this amounts to any proof, either of my guilt or innocence?"

"Why according of this here, sir, and no way out of it. Little Billy were took off my shelf, where her always bideth from father to son, by the big man as come along of the lame horse and the cart, that night. When I was a kneeling down, I zeed 'un put his hand to it, though I dussn't say a word for the life of me. And he slipped 'un into his pocket, same as he would a penny dolly."

"Come now, that does seem more important," said the Doctor cogitating. "But what could the fellow have wanted it for?"

"Can't tell 'e, sir," replied the blacksmith. "For some of his unchristian work, maybe. Or he might have thought it would came in handy, if aught should go amiss with the poor nag again. Many's the shoe I've punched off with Little Billy."

"A Billy of all trades it seems to be. But how does the recovery of this tool show that you made a mistake about me, Crang?"

"By reason of the place where her was cast away. You can't get from Old Barn to Blackmarsh lane with wheels, sir, any way, can you? You know how that is, Doctor Jemmy."

"Certainly I do. But that proves nothing to my mind at all conclusive."

"To my mind it do prove everything conclusive. And here be the sign and seal of it. As long as I spoke again' you, Dr. Vox, I was forced to go without my Little Billy. Not a day's work hath prospered all that time, and two bad shillings from chaps as rode away. But now I be took to the right side again, here comes my Little Billy, and an order for three harries!"

"But it was the Little Billy that has made you change sides. It came before, and not in consequence of that."

"And glad I be to see 'un, sir, and glad to find you clear of it. Tell 'e what I'll do, Doctor Jemmy. You draw a table up as big as Ten Commandments, and three horse shoes on the top for luck, in the name of the Lord, and King William the Fourth, and we'll have it on Church-door by next Sunday, with my mark on it, and both 'prentices. You put it up, sir, like Nebuchadnezzar; beginning – 'I, Joseph Crang, do hereby confess, confirm, and convince all honest folk of this here parish – '"

"No, no; nothing of that, Joe. I am quite satisfied. Let people come round, or not; just as they like. I am having a holiday, and I find it very pleasant."

"Meaning to say, as it have spoiled your trade? Never would I forgive a man as did the like to me. But I see you be going for a trip somewhere, sir, with a pretty lady. Only you mind one thing. Joe Crang will shoe your horses, as long as you bide in Perlycrass, for the wholesale price of the iron, Doctor Jemmy; time, and labour, and nails thrown in, free gratis and for nothing."

CHAPTER XVII.

CAMELIAS

While at the Old Barn, and Rectory also, matters were thus improving, there was no lifting of the clouds, but even deeper gloom at Walderscourt. The house, that had been so gay and happy, warm and hospitable, brisk with pleasant indoor amusement; or eager to sally forth upon some lively sport, whenever the weather looked tempting; the house that had been the home of many joyful dogs – true optimists, and therefore the best friends of man – and had daily looked out of its windows, and admired (with noddings of pretty heads, and glances of bright eyes) the manner a good horse has of saying – "by your leave, I want to see a little bit of the world. Two days looking at my own breath, and your nasty whitewash! It would grieve me very much to pitch you off. But remember you have seventy years, and I about seventeen, for seeing God's light, and the glories of the earth."

None of these high-mettled things happened now. If a horse had an airing, it was with a cloth on, and heels of no perception sticking under him, like nippers; instead of the kind and intelligent approach of a foot that felt every step, and went with it – though thankful for being above the mud – or better still, that stroking of his goodness with the grain, which every gentlemanly horse throws up his head to answer, when a lady of right feeling floats upon the breeze to please him.

Neither was there any dog about. Volumes of description close with a bang, the moment such a thing is said. Any lawn, where dogs have played, and any gravel-walk, – whereon they have sauntered, with keener observation than even Shakespeare can have felt, or rushed with headlong interest into the life-history of some visitor – lawn, and walk, and even flower-beds (touchy at times about sepulture of bones) wear a desolate aspect, and look as if they are longing to cry, too late – "Oh bark again, as thou wast wont to bark!"

The premises may not have felt it thus; or if they did, were too mute to tell it. But an air of desolation broods over its own breath; and silence is a ghost that grows bigger at each stalk. There were no leaves left, to make a little hush by dropping, as a dead man does from the human tree; for the nip of early frost had sent them down, on the night of their Master's funeral, to a grave more peaceful and secure than his. Neither had men worked over hard, to improve the state of things around them. With true philosophy, they had accepted the sere and yellow leaf; because nobody came to make them sweep it up. The less a man labours, the longer will he last, according to general theory; and these men though plentiful, desired to last long. So that a visitor of thoughtful vein might form a fair table of the course of "earth-currents," during the last three weeks, from the state of the big lawn at Walderscourt; where Sir Thomas used to lean upon his stick, and say – "that man is working almost too hard. He looks as if he ought to have a glass of beer."

But the gentleman, now coming up the drive, was not in the proper frame of mind for groundling observation. Not that he failed to look about him, as if to expand or improve his mind; but the only result upon his nervous system was to make it work harder upon his own affairs. He was visited with a depressing sense of something hanging over him – of something that must direct, and shape, the whole course of his future life; and whether it might be for good or evil, he was hurrying to go through with it.

"I don't care; I don't care," he kept saying to himself; but that self was well aware that he did care very much; as much as for all the rest of the world put together. "I've a great mind to toss up about it," he said, as he felt a lucky sixpence in his pocket; but his sense of the fitness of things prevailed; so he put on a fine turn of speed, and rang the bell.

The old house looked so different, and everything around so changed, that our friend Fox had a weak impression, and perhaps a strong hope, that the bell would prove to be out of its duty, and refuse to wag. But alas, far otherwise; the bell replied with a clang that made him jump, and seek reassurance in the flavour of his black kid glove. He had plenty of time to dwell fully upon that, and even write a report upon the subject, ere ever door showed any loyalty to bell; and even then, there was stiffness about it. For one of the stiffest of mankind stood there, instead of the genial John, or Bob – Mr. Binstock himself, a tall man of three score, Major of the cellar, and commander of the household. He, in a new suit of black, and bearing a gold chain on his portly front, looked down upon the vainly upstanding Jemmy, as if in need of an introduction.

But Dr. Fox was not the man to cave in thus. The door was a large one, with broad aperture; and this allowed the visitor to march in, as if he had failed to see the great Binstock. Taking his stand upon a leopard's skin, in the centre of the entrance hall, he gazed around calmly, as if he were the stranger contemplated by the serving-man.

"You will have the goodness to take this card up. No thank you, my man, I will stay where I am."

The butler's face deepened from the tint of a radish to that of the richest beet-root; but he feared to reply, and took the card without a word. "My turn will come very soon," was in his eyes.

Acquainted as he was with the domestic signs and seasons, Fox had not a shadow of a doubt about his fate, so far as the lady of the house could pronounce it. But for all that he saw no reason to submit to rudeness; and all his tremors vanished now at this man's servile arrogance. How many a time had that fat palm borne the impress of a five-shilling piece, slipped into it by the sympathetic Jemmy! And now, to think that this humbug did not know him, and looked at him as a young man aiming at the maids, but come to the wrong door! If anything is wormwood to an Englishman, – that a low, supercilious, ungrateful lacquey – well, here he comes again! Now for it.

Binstock descended the old oak staircase, in a very majestic manner, with the light from a long quarled window playing soft hop-scotch, upon his large countenance. The young doctor, as in absent mood, felt interest in the history, value, and probable future, of the beings on the panels, – stags, otters, foxes, martens, polecats, white hares, badgers, and other noble members of West county suffrage; some entire, and too fat to live, some represented by a very little bit.