LITTLE BILLY.
When he has refreshed his memory with the map of England, let any man
point out upon it, if he can deliberately, any two parishes he knows
well, which he can also certify to be exactly like each other, in the
character of their inhabitants. Do they ever take alike a startling
piece of news, about their most important people? Do they weigh in the
same balance the discourses of the parson, the merits of those in
authority, or the endeavours of the rich to help them? If a stranger
rides along the street, he is pretty sure to be stared at; but not with
quite the same expression, as in the last village he came through. Each
place has its own style, and tone, vein of sentiment, and lines of
attitude, deepened perhaps by the lore and store of many generations.
For instance, Perlycombe, Perlycross, and Perliton, are but as three
pearls on one string, all in a line, and contiguous. The string is the
stream; which arising at the eastern extremity of Perlycombe parish,
passes through the village, then westward through Perlycross, and
westward still through the much larger village of Perliton. At
Perlycombe it is a noisy little brook, at Perlycross a genial
trout-stream--anon of glassy wanderings, anon of flickered hurry--;
while Perliton, by the time it gets there, entitles it "the River
Perle," and keeps two boats upon it, which are not always more aground
than landsmen should desire.
Now any one would fancy, that these three adjoining parishes would, in
all their ways and manners, be as like each other as three peas
vertebrated in one pod. But the fancy would prove that he was only fit
for fiction, not for the clearer heights of history such as this. For
these three parishes are quite as distinct, one from another, as all
three taken together admit that they are, and deserve to be, from the
rest of England.
All three are simple, all old-fashioned, highly respectable, and
wonderfully quiet--except when lashed up by some outrage--slightly
contemptuous of one another, and decidedly so of the world outside the
valley. From it they differ widely, and from one another visibly, in
their facial expression, and figure, and walk; perceptibly also, in tone
of feeling, habits of thought (when they think at all), voices, pet
words, and proclivities of slouch. So that in these liberal times of
free disintegration, each of them has nature's right to be a separate
nation. And in proof of this, they beat their bounds, and often break
each other's heads, upon Saint Clement's day.
"What an extraordinary sound I hear!" said Christie to her brother, as
they turned to quit the hill. "Just listen a moment. I can't make it
out. It sounds like a frightful lot of people in the distance."
"Well, I declare, I had forgotten all about it! How very stupid I am
getting now!" cried Jemmy. "Why this is St. Clement's day, and no
mistake!"
"Who is he? I never heard of him. And, what right has he got to make
such a dreadful noise? He couldn't do it all by himself, Jemmy, even if
he was on a gridiron."
"But he has got half of Perlycross to help him. Come here, Chris. Here
is a nice dry hollow, away from the damp and the mist; and the noise
below follows the curve of it."
Fox led his sister into a little scarp of flint, with brows of grey
heather, and russet fern, quivering to the swell of funneled uproar.
"Don't be afraid," he said, "it is only our own parish. There ought to
be three of them; but this is only ours."
"Well, if your parish can make all that noise, what would all three of
them do together? Why ten packs of hounds couldn't equal it!"
"You have hit the very point; you have a knack of doing that;" answered
Jemmy, as he landed her upon a grey ledge. "We don't let the other two
in, any more. The business had always been triennial. But the fighting
grew more and more serious, till the stock of sticking-plaster could not
stand it. Then a man of peaceful genius suggested that each parish
should keep its own St. Clement's day, at intervals of three years as
before; but in succession, instead of all three at once; so that no two
could meet upon the frontier in force. A sad falling off in the spirit
of the thing, and threatening to be better for the lawyers, than for us.
Perlycombe had their time last year; and now Perlycross has to redress
it. Our eastern boundary is down in that hollow; and Perlycombe stole
forty feet from us last year. We are naturally making a little stir
about it."
"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."