BAD COUNSEL.
THERE are very few things that have the power to please us both in
heart and mind, even when they have the will to do it, which is very
seldom. Great events in our lives flash by without a word, and scarcely
seem to give us time to chuckle, or to sob, till afterwards. But the
little turns of time are more indulgent, and pass us with a sauntering
foot, more often dull than lightsome.
For the moment, I was glad to find that my Uncle Cornelius, in his
plain way, had taken a liking to my love. But I gave him little credit
for it, inasmuch as it seemed impossible to me that he could do
otherwise. Such was my petty jealousy that I did not even want to hear
him praise her, except in my own words. But he, in his solid way, would
take his own view of her character—as if he knew anything about it!
“I don’t care a farthing about all that,” I cried, when he had spoken
of some things, which tell the longest.
“I can see she is very quiet, and full of home affections,” he
persisted, as if I were a boy at school, and he were holding the
spelling book; “she is not extravagant, nor fond of waste; that I
saw by the way she went through a ‘Huling’s Superb,’ with a hole in
it. I could scarcely have done it any better myself. And she was
really grieved, which the lady-housekeeper had not the sense to be,
by the freedom—she called it recklessness—with which I picked those
Jeffersons, to find one in tip-top condition. And then when I offered
to make some tea, the housekeeper who had been stuffing for hours only
asked if the water was boiling. But your sweetheart began to buckle up,
and asked who could touch tea, after such delicious things.”
“Buckle up, indeed! Uncle Corny, you are outrageous. She had got
no such thing as a buckle near her. Her waist is done round with a
narrow blue ribbon, the colour of the sky, as her eyes are. And I will
thank you not to call her my sweetheart, if you please. I shall never
have such luck. And it sounds so common. There ought to be a better
expression for it. And such things are not made to be talked of.”
“Very well! You won’t hear me say another word. It will all come to
nothing; that’s one comfort. She goes back to London on Friday; and
you will very soon console yourself with Rasp’s young woman. I am told
that she has fine black eyes; and I am not sure that black don’t beat
blue ones, after all.”
This was so disgusting that I went away, and worked till dusk at a
heavy piece of trenching; and when it was dusk I lay in wait for three
felonious boys who came from Hampton, almost every evening, prowling
for our apples. I caught all three, and trounced them well—which is the
only proper plan—and the sound of their wailings, as they went home,
restored my faith in justice. For I had given them their choice—“a
licking or a summons”—and they said very justly, “Oh, a licking, if
you please, sir.” The world has now come to such a pass, that a father
would summon me for assault, if I so discharged his duty for him; but
thirty years ago a bit of common sense survived.
But in spite of that little satisfaction, I could not get much sleep
that night, for rolling, and pondering, and twisting in and out, the
tangle and the burden of a troubled mind. Turn it as I might, there was
no opening through it for another view of that perfect creature, with
whom my whole life seemed to flow. Terrible, terrible was the truth
that she would leave us all on Friday, and be swallowed up and no more
seen, in that great earthquake, London. A thousand wild ideas, and
schemes, for stealing yet one more interview, and countless crazy hopes
that she herself might try to compass it, all came thrilling through
my restless brain, but not one would stop there. None had any shape
or substance, such as could be worked upon, and brought to likelihood
of success. This was Tuesday night; last Saturday night how different
everything had been! Then I had only cared to know, that things in the
ground were doing well, that all the fruit which required gathering got
its due, and looked its best on its way to be devoured, that every man
pocketed his wages in good time to spend them, and that there was a
little hope of the weather taking up at last. Now there had been three
days without rain, and with touch of autumnal sunshine; heaven began
to look bright again, and the earth (which, like the dwellers therein,
lives only aright in view of it) was beginning to lift her sodden
crust, and fetch once more her storm-trampled breath and issue anew the
genial green in the midrib of mouldy foliage. In a word, the summer
which had failed the year, for want of a smile to lead it, was breaking
out at this last moment, better late than never.
Possessed as I was with my own troubles, and only a flickering
sunshine, I could not resist the contagious lightness of cheerful faces
all around. The workmen, who do (in spite of all British reserve,
and manly selfishness) take a deep interest in their employer’s
welfare, and stand up for him bravely, when any one abuses him,
except themselves—every man of them laid heel to spade, or hoisted
ladder on shoulder, with new briskness; because they could say to one
another—“The old buffer, who carries on this place, has fought against
long odds like a man; and now things look as if they was taking a
little turn in his favour.”
On the Wednesday morning glum however was my mind, and grim my face,
and Uncle Corny made some jokes, which may have seemed very good to
him. Our breakfast things were set as usual, and our breakfast cooked
and served by Mrs. Tabby Tapscott, that sage widow from the village,
whom we were often pleased to laugh at for her Devonshire dialect.
Also for her firm conviction, that nothing in these outlandish parts,
and none of our biggest men, were fit to compare with the products of
the West. There was one point however on which we gladly confessed the
truth that was in her—she could fry potatoes, not leathery chips, nor
the cake of pulpy fatness, but the crisp yet melting patin of brown
gold, so as none of the East may fry them. She turned them out of the
frying-pan upon a willow-pattern plate, and the man deserved to wear
the willow, who could think of weeping near them.
Now this good woman, who was a “cure,” as the slang boys of our village
said, took (though I knew it not as yet) a tender interest in my
affairs. For the last day or two, I had observed that she glanced at me
rather strangely, and once or twice behind my Uncle’s back, she had put
her finger on her lips, and then jerked her thumb over her shoulder, as
if to say—“Come and have a quiet word with me.”
But my frame of mind had appeared to me too noble and exalted to be
shared with her, until it was come to such a pitch that any aid would
be welcome.
This morning, as half of her fine work remained on my plate neglected,
she could no longer contain herself, but pinched my sleeve and
whispered, while my Uncle was going to the window, “Come out in
gearden, I want to spake to ’e.”
“Speak away,” I answered, “there is nothing to stop you, Mrs.
Tapscott;” but she looked at me and muttered that I was just a fool,
and she had a mind to have nought to do with me.
By the common law of nature, this made me long to hear what on earth
she could have to say, and I gave her the chance, while she washed up
the things, to see where I was, and to come out if she pleased. She
might do exactly as she pleased, for I did not intend to encourage her.
She came out, and began without asking me.
“I can’t abide to zee ’e look so crule weist and peaky. The toorn of
your nose bain’t the zame as her was, and you don’t zim at home with
your vittels, Measter Kit. Lor’ bless ’e, I been droo the zame my zen,
and I knaws arl about ’en.”
At first I was inclined to walk away; but it would have been shabby
to be rude to her, and a look of good-will and kindly pity was in her
hard-worn eyes and face. “What can you have to say to me?” I asked.
“You be young, and I be old,” she took my coat to stop me; “you be
peart and nimble, and I be a’most crippled with rheumatics and rumbago.
But the Lord hath made us arl alike, though He have given us different.
I knows as wull what ails ’e now, as if it arl coom droo my own heart.
And what you be zaying to yourzelf is—‘How be I to goo on with it’?”
This was a wonderfully accurate description of my present state of
mind. I looked at Mrs. Tapscott, with the admiration she deserved, and
said—“Well then, how be I to goo on with it?”
“I’ve athought ’un out,” she made answer bravely; “what you be bound
to do, Measter Kit, is never to let she goo back to Lunnon, wi’out
zettling zummat.”
Here was the whole of it in a nutshell. But how was I to settle
anything?
“Oh, Tabby, dear Tabby!” I cried, with some loss of dignity, but much
gain of truth; “how can I even get the chance of saying a word to her
again? This is Wednesday, and she goes back on Friday, and perhaps
she never comes again, and there are millions of people between us.
Everybody knows what Miss Coldpepper is, as proud as Punch, and as
stiff as starch. If I even dared to go near the house, she’d just tell
the gamekeeper to shoot me.”
“Wull, a young man as have vallen in love must take his chance of
shot-guns. But if so be you latts her goo awai wi’out so much as
anoother ward, you desarves to have no tongue in the head of ’e.”
“How easy it is to talk!” I replied, making ready to leave her, and
think by myself. “But how hard and impossible, Tabby, to find any
chance of doing anything. I must make up my mind not to see her any
more; but to think of her always, as long as I live.”
“Boddledicks!” cried Mrs. Tapscott, her favourite interjection of
contempt—what it meant we knew not, and probably not she. “Boddledicks,
where be the brains of they men? I could tull ’e what to do in half
a zecond, lad, to vetch old Coldpepper, and the young leddy too, and
every mortial ’ooman in thic there ouze, to hum eartr’e, the zame as if
they zighted ’e a burning to the muckpit, with all their Zunday vainery
under thee arm.”
I looked at Tabby Tapscott with some surprise; for she was giving
greater force to her description by using leg and arm as if she bore a
share in all of it. And the vigour of her countenance made me smile.
But the old woman laughed with a superior air. “Tak’th a bit o’ time,
for volks with slow brains to vollew my maind up—don’t her now? Goo up
to ’ouze, young man, and stale old Ragless.”
“Steal old Regulus!” I cried in great amazement, “why, what good on
earth would that do me? And if it would do any good, how am I to manage
it? I have not been brought up to that profession.”
“I zeed a man to Barrinarbor, vaive and vorty year agone, the most
wonnerful cliver chap, I ever zee. He coom a-coortin’ of me, the taime
as I wor ruckoned the purtiest maid in arl the parish of Westdown. But
I wadn’t have none of ’un, because a’ wor so tricksy. Howsomever I
didn’t zay ‘noo’ to wance, for a’ wor the most wonnerful chap I ever
zee. The Lord had been and given he every zort o’ counsel. A’ could
churm a harse out of any vield or linhay, a’ could mak’ the coos hurn
to ’un, when the calves was zuckin’, a’ could vetch any dog a’ took
a vancy to from atwane his owner’s legs or from’s own zupper. And
a’ zhowed me a trick or two I han’t vorgotten yet. I could tull ’e
purty smart how to vetch old Ragless, and kape ’un so long as you was
mainded.”
Now I might have paid little attention to this, and indeed had begun
to reject the suggestion of a stratagem far below the dignity of love,
till suddenly a queer dream came to my remembrance, a dream of last
Sunday night, the very night after that little adventure at the timber
bridge. In that enchanting vision, I had seen Miss Fairthorn smiling
as she came to me, through a lovely meadow enamelled with primrose,
and cowslip, and bluebell, herself of course the fairest of all the
flowers. And when I approached her, behold, she was led by this same
dog, old Regulus, who conducted her gracefully to my longing arms, by
means of the long gold chain which had reposed on the stately bosom
of Mrs. Jenny Marker. I am not superstitious—as everybody vows when
recounting his dreams—but still it did seem strange.
“Lave it arl to me,” Mrs. Tapscott went on, as she saw my hesitation.
“Nort for ’e to do, but to gie me a zhillin’, vor to buy the stuff, and
nobody no wiser. Then goo avore zunrise, and vetch old Ragless. Putt
’un in a barg, and keep ’un znug in thic there old root-ouze. My stars
and garters, what a bit o’ vun ’twill be!”