IN A STATE OF NATURE.
Now all these things contributed, coming as they did so rapidly, to
arouse inside me a burning and almost desperate curiosity. It was in
vain that I said to myself, "these are no concerns of mine: let them
manage their own affairs: the less I meddle, the better for me: I seem
to be in a barbarous land, and I must expect things barbarous. And after
all, what does it come to, compared with the great things I have seen,
ay, and played my part in?" To reason thus, and regard it thus, and seek
only to be quit of it, was a proof of the highest wisdom any man could
manifest: if he could only stick to it. And this I perceived, and thus I
felt, and praised myself for enforcing it so; until it became not only
safe, but a bounden duty to reward my conscience by a little talk or so.
Hence I lounged into the stable-yard--for that terrible Chowne was not
yet come back, neither were maids to be got at for talking, only that
stony Steelyard--and there I found three or four shirt-sleeved fellows,
hissing at horses, and rubbing away, to put their sleeping polish on
them, before the master should return. Also three or four more were
labouring in the stalls very briskly, one at a sort of holy-stoning,
making patterns with brick and sand, and the others setting up the
hammocks for the nags to lie in, with a lashing of twisted straw aft of
their after-heels and taffrails, as the wake of a ship might be. And all
of it done most ship-shape. This amused me mightily; for I never had
seen such a thing before, even among wild horses, who have power to
manage their own concerns. But to see them all go in so snugly, and with
such a sweet, clean savour, each to his own oats or mashings, with the
golden straw at foot, made me think, and forced me to it, of those
wretched white barbarians (white, at least, just here and there), whom
good Parson Jack--as one might almost try to call him--had led me to
visit that same afternoon.
Perceiving how the wind sate, I even held back, and smoked a pipe,
exactly as if I were overseer, and understood the whole of it, yet did
not mean to make rash reproach. This had a fine effect upon them,
especially as I chewed a straw, by no means so as to stop my pipe, but
to exhibit mastery. And when I put my leg over a rail, as if I found it
difficult to keep myself from horseback, the head-man came to me
straightforward, and asked me when I had hunted last.
I told him that I was always hunting, week-days, and Sundays, and all
the year round, because it was our fashion; and that we hunted creatures
such as he never had the luck to set eyes on. And when I had told him a
few more things (such as flow from experience, when mixed with
imagination), a duller man than myself might see that he longed for me
to sup with him. And he spoke of things that made me ready, such as
tripe and onions.
However, this would never do. I felt myself strongly under orders; and
but for this paramount sense of duty, never could I have done the things
modestly mentioned as of yore; and those of hereafter tenfold as fine,
such as no modesty dare suppress. So, when I had explained to him
exactly how I stood about it, he did not refuse to fill his pipe with a
bit of my choice tobacco, and to come away from all idle folk, to a
place in the shelter of a rick, where he was sure to hear the hoofs of
his master's horse returning. I sate with him thus, and we got on well;
and as he was going to marry soon the daughter of a publican, who had as
good as fifty pounds, and nothing that could be set on fire, and lived
fifty miles away almost, he did not mind telling me all the truth,
because he saw that I could keep it; and at his age he could not enter
into the spirit of being kicked so. I told him I should like to see a
man kick me! But he said that I might come to it.
This was a very superior man, and I durst not contradict him; and having
arranged so to settle in life, how could he hope to tell any more lies?
For I have always found all men grow pugnaciously truthful, so to put
it, for a month almost before wedlock; while the women are doing the
opposite. However, not to go far into that, what he told me was much as
follows:--
Parson Chowne, in early life, before his mind was put into shape for
anything but to please itself, had been dreadfully vexed and thwarted.
Every matter had gone amiss, directly he was concerned in it; his
guardians had cheated him, so had his step-mother, so had his favourite
uncle, and of course so had his lawyers done. In the thick of that
bitterness, what did his sweetheart do but throw him over. She took a
great scare of his strange black eyes, when she found that his money was
doubtful. This was instinct, no doubt, on her part, and may have been a
great saving for her; but to him it was terrible loss. His faith was
already astray a little; but a dear wife might have brought it back, or
at any rate made him think so. And he was not of the nature which gropes
after the bottom of everything, like a twisting augur. Having a prospect
of good estates, he was sent to London to learn the law, after finishing
at Oxford, not that he might practise it, but to introduce a new element
to the county magistrates, when he should mount the bench among them.
Here he got rogued, as was only natural, and a great part of his land
fell from him, and therefore he took to the clerical line; and being of
a stern and decided nature, he married three wives, one after the other,
and thus got a good deal of property. It was said, of course, as it
always is of any man thrice a widower, that he or his manner had killed
his wives; a charge which should never be made without strong evidence
in support of it. At any rate there had been no children; and different
opinions were entertained whether this were the cause or effect of the
Parson's dislike and contempt of little ones. Moreover, as women usually
are of a tougher staple than men can be, Chowne's successive liberation
from three wives had added greatly to his fame for witchcraft, such as
first accrued from his commanding style, nocturnal habits, method of
quenching other people, and collection of pots and kettles. The
head-groom told me, with a knowing wink, that in his opinion the Parson
was now looking after wife No. 4, for he never had known him come out so
smart with silver heels and crested head-piece, and even the mark of the
saddle must not show upon his breeches. This was a sure sign, he
thought, that there was a young lady in the wind, possessing both money
and good looks, such as Chowne was entitled to, and always had insisted
on. Upon that point I could have thrown some light (if prudence had
permitted it), or at least I had some shrewd suspicions, after what
happened beside the river; however, I said nothing. But I asked him what
in his opinion first had soured the young man Chowne against the whole
of the world so sadly, as he seemed to retain it now. And he answered me
that he could not tell, inasmuch as the cause which he had heard given
seemed to him to be most unlikely, according to all that he saw of the
man. Nevertheless I bade him tell it, being an older man than he was,
and therefore more able to enter into what young folk call
"inconsistencies." And so he told me that it was this. Chowne, while
still a young boy, had loved, with all the force of his heart, a boy a
few years younger than himself, a cousin of his own, but not with
prospects such as he had. And this boy had been killed at school, and
the matter hushed up comfortably among all high authorities. But Stoyle
Chowne had made a vow to discover and hunt it out to the uttermost, and
sooner or later to have revenge. But when his own wrongs fell upon him,
doubtless he had forgotten it. I said that I did not believe he had done
so, or ever would, to the uttermost.
Then I asked about Parson Jack, and heard pretty much what I expected.
That he was a well-meaning man enough, although without much sense of
right or wrong, until his evil star led him into Parson Chowne's
society. But still he had instincts now and then, such as a horse has,
of the right road; and an old woman of his church declared that he did
feel his own sermons, and if let alone, and listened to, might come to
act up to them. I asked whether Parson Chowne might do the like, but was
told that he never preached any.
We were talking thus, and I had quite agreed to his desire of my company
for supper-time, when the sound of a horse upon stony ground, tearing
along at a dangerous speed, quite broke up our conference. The groom, at
the sound of it, damped out his pipe, and signified to me to do the
same.
"I have fired a-many of his enemies' ricks," he whispered, in his haste
and fright; "but if he were to smell me a-smoking near to a rick of his
own, good Lord!" and he pointed to a hay-rope, as if he saw his halter.
And though he had boasted of speedy marriage, and caring no fig for
Parson Chowne, he set off for the stables at a pace likely to prove
injurious to his credit for consistency.
On the other hand, I, in a leisurely manner, picked myself up from the
attitude natural to me when listening kindly, and calmly asserting my
right to smoke, approached the track by which I knew that the rider must
come into the yard; for all the dogs had no fear of me now, by virtue of
the whistle which I bore. And before I had been there half a minute, the
Parson dashed up with his horse all smoking, and himself in a heavy
blackness of temper, such as I somehow expected of him.
"No Jack here! not a Jack to be seen. Have the kindness to look for my
stable-whip. Ho, Llewellyn is it?"
"Yes, your Reverence, David Llewellyn, once of his Majesty's Royal Navy,
and now of----"
"No more of that! You have played me false. I expected it from a rogue
like you. Restore me that trust-guinea."
This so largely differed from what even Anthony Stew would dare to say
in conversation with me (much less at times of evidence), that I lifted
up my heart to heaven, as two or three preachers had ordered me; and
even our parson had backed it up, with lineage at least as good and
perhaps much better than Parson Chowne's, by right of Welsh blood under
it: the whole of this overcame me so, that I could only say, "What
guinea, sir?"
"What guinea, indeed! You would rob me, would you? Don't you know better
than that, my man? Come to me in two hours' time. Stop, give me that
dog's whistle!"
Taking that heed of me, and no more, he cast the reins to my friend the
head-groom, who came up, looking for all the world as if never had he
seen me, and wondered strangely who I could be. And this air of fright
and denial always pervaded the whole household. All of which was quite
against what I had been long accustomed to, wherever I deigned to go in
with my news to the servants' place, or the housekeeper's room, or
anywhere pointed out to me as the best for entertainment. Here, however,
although the servants seemed to be plentiful enough, and the horses and
the hounds to have as much as they could eat, there was not a trace of
what I may call good domestic comfort. When this prevails, as it ought
to do in every gentleman's household, the marks may be discovered in the
eyes and the mouth of everybody. Nobody thinks of giving way to
injudicious hurry when bells ring, or when shouts are heard, or horses'
feet at the front door. And if on the part of the carpeted rooms any
disquietude is shown, or desire to play, or feed, or ride, at times
outside the convenience of the excellent company down-stairs, there is
nothing more to be said, except that it cannot be done, and should never
in common reason have been thought of. For all servants must enjoy their
meals, and must have time to digest them with proper ease for
conversation and expansion afterwards. At Candleston Court it was always
so; and so it should be everywhere.
However, to return to my groom, whose cordiality revived at the moment
his master turned the corner, perceiving that Chowne had some matter on
hand which would not allow him to visit the stables, just for the
present at any rate, he turned the black mare over to the care of an
understrapper, and with a wink and a smack of his lips, gave me to know
that his supper was toward. Neither were we disappointed, but found it
all going on very sweetly, in a little private room used for cleaning
harness. And he told me that this young cook maid, of unusual abilities,
had attached herself to him very strongly, with an eye to promotion, and
having no scent of his higher engagement: neither would he have been
unwilling to carry out her wishes if she could only have shown a
sixpence against the innkeeper's daughter's shilling. I told him that he
was too romantic, and he said with a sigh that he could not help it; but
all would come right in the end, no doubt.
This honest affection impressed me not a little in his favour, and in
less than half an hour I found him a thoroughly worthy fellow: while he
perceived, through a square-stalked rummer, that my character was
congenial. I told him therefore some foreign stories, many of which were
exceedingly true, and he by this time was ready to answer almost
anything that I chose to ask, even though he knew nothing about it. As
for the people that wore no clothes, but lived all together in the old
mud-house, there need be and could be no mystery. Every one knew that
his Reverence had picked them up in his early days, and been pleased
with their simple appearance and dislike of cultivation. Perceiving even
then how glad he might be, in after-life, to annoy his neighbours, what
did he do but bring these people (then six in number, and all of them
wives and husbands to one another) and persuade them to dig themselves
out a house, and by deed of gift establish them on forty acres of their
own land, so that, as Englishmen love to say, their house was now their
castle. Not that these were perhaps English folk, but rather of a Gipsy
cross, capable, however, of becoming white if a muscular man should
scrub them. The groom said that nobody durst go near them, except Parson
Chowne and Parson Jack, and that they seemed to get worse and worse, as
they began to be persecuted by clothes-wearing people. I asked him what
their manners were; and he said he believed they were good enough, so
long as not interfered with; and who could blame them for maintaining
that whether they wore clothes or not was entirely their own concern:
also, that if outer strangers intruded, from motives of low curiosity,
upon their unclad premises, it was only fair to point out to them the
disadvantages of costume, by making it very hard to wash? There was some
sense in this, because the main anxiety of mankind is to convert one
another; and the pelting of mud is usually the beginning of such
overtures. And these fine fellows having recurred (as Parson Chowne
said) to a natural state, their very first desire would be to redeem all
fellow-creatures from the evils of civilisation. Whereof the foremost
perhaps is clothes, and the time we take in dressing--a twelfth part of
their waking life, with even the wisest women, and with the unwise
virgins, often not less than three-quarters; and with many men not much
better.--But to come back to my savages. I asked this good groom how it
came to pass that none of the sheriffs, or deputies, or even magistrates
of the shire, put down this ungoodly company. He said that they had
tried, but failed, according to the laws of England, on the best
authority. Because these men of the ancient Adam went back to the time
before the beasts had come to Adam to get their names. They brought up
their children without a name, and now all names were dying out, and
they agreed much better in consequence. And how could any writ, warrant,
or summons, run against people without a name? It had once been tried
with a "Nesho Kiss," the meaning of which was beyond me; but Parson
Chowne upset that at once; and the bailiff was fit to make bricks of.
At this I shook my head and smiled; because we put up with many evils on
our side of the water, but never with people so unbecoming in their
manner of life and clothes. And I thought how even mild Colonel Lougher
would have behaved upon such a point, and how sharp Anthony Stew would
have stamped when they began to pelt him; and how I wished him there to
try it!
Nevertheless I desired to know what victuals these good barbarians had;
because, although like the Indian Jogis (mentioned by some great
traveller) they might prove their right to go without clothes, which
never were born upon them, they could not to my mind prove their power
to do so well without victuals. He answered that this was a clever thing
on my part to inquire about; but that I was so far wrong that these
people would eat anything. His Reverence sent them every week the refuse
of his garden, as well as of stable-yard and kennel, and they had a gift
of finding food in everything around them. Their favourite dish--so to
say, when they had never a dish among them--was what they discovered in
the pasture-land; and this they divided carefully; accounting it the
depth of shame, and the surest mark of civilisation, to cheat one
another. But they could not expect to get this every day, in a
neighbourhood of moorland; therefore, instead of grumbling, they did
their best to get on without it. And Providence always sends thousands
of victuals for all whose stomachs have not been ruined by thinking too
much about them; or very likely through the women beginning to make them
delicate. So when a man is sea-sick, he thinks of and hates almost
everything.
On the other hand, these noble fellows hated nothing that could be
chewed. Twenty-one sorts of toad-stool, with the insects which inhabit
them; three varieties of eft, and of frogs no less than seven; also
slugs six inches long, too large to have a house built; moles that live
in lines of decks, like a man-of-war's-man; also rats, and brindled
hedgehogs, and the grubs of hornets (which far surpass all
oysters)--these, and other little things, like goat-moths, leopards, and
money-grubs, kept them so alive as never to come down on the parish.
Neither was there any hen-roost, rick-yard, apple-room, or dairy, on the
farms around them, but in it they found nourishment. Into all this I
could enter, while the groom only showed the door of it.
But while we were talking thus, I heard the stable-clock strike eight,
which brought Hezekiah to my mind, and my own church-clock at Newton. It
struck in such a manner, that I saw the door of my own cottage, also
Bunny in bed, with her nostrils ready to twitch for snoring, and Mother
Jones, with a candle, stooping to ease her by means of a drop of hot
grease; and inside, by the wall, lay Bardie, sleeping (as she always
slept) with a smile of high-born quietude. And what would all three say
to me if ever I got back again?
Thanking this excellent groom for all his hospitality to me, and
promising at his desire to keep it from his master, I took my way (as
pointed out) to the room where his Reverence might be found. I feared
that his temper would be black, unless he had dined as I had supped, and
taken a good glass afterwards. And I could not believe what the groom
had told me concerning one particular. There is a most utterly pestilent
race arising, and growing up around us, whose object is to destroy old
England, by forbidding a man to drink. St Paul speaks against them, and
all the great prophets; and the very first thing that was done by our
Lord, after answering them in the Temple, was to put them to shame with
a great many firkins. Also one of the foremost parables is concerning
bottles, as especially honest things (while bushels are to the
contrary), and the tendency of all Scripture is such--whichever
Testament you take--that no man in his wits can doubt it. And though I
never read the Koran, and only have heard some verses of it, I know
enough to say positively, that Mahomet began this movement to establish
Antichrist.
However, my groom said that Parson Chowne, though not such a fool as to
stop other people, scarcely ever took a drop himself; and his main
delight was to make low beasts of the clergy who had no self-command.
And two or three years ago he had played a trick on his brother parsons,
such as no man would ever have tried who took his own glass in
moderation and enjoyed it heartily, as Scripture even commands us to do,
to promote good-fellowship and discretion. Having a power of visitation,
from some faculty he enjoyed, he sent all round to demand their presence
at a certain time, for dinner. All the parsons were glad enough,
especially as their wives could not, in good manners, be invited,
because there was now no Mrs Chowne. And they saw a rare chance to tell
good stories, and get on without the little snaps which are apt to occur
among ladies. Therefore they all appeared in strength, having
represented it as a high duty, whatever their better halves might think.
When a parson says this, his wife must knock under, or never go to
church again. Being there, they were treated well, and had the good
dinner they all deserved, and found their host very different from what
they had been led to expect of him. He gave them as much wine as they
needed, and a very good wine too. He let them tell their stories, though
his own taste was quite different; and he even humoured them so as to
laugh the while he was despising them. And though he could not bear
tobacco, that and pipes were brought in for them.
All went smoothly until one of them, edged on by the others, called for
spirits and hot water. This Master Chowne had prepared for, of course,
and meant to present the things in good time; but now being gored thus
in his own house, the devil entered into him. His dark face grew of a
leaden colour, while he begged their pardon. Then out he went to Mother
Steelyard, and told her exactly what to do. Two great jacks of brown
brandy came in, and were placed upon the table, and two silver kettles
upon the hobs. He begged all his guests to help themselves, showing the
lemons and sugar-caddy, the bottles, and kettles, and everything: and
then he left them to their own devices, while he talked with Parson
Jack, who had dropped in suddenly.
Now, what shall I tell you came to pass--as a very great traveller
always says--why, only that these parsons grew more drunk than despair,
or even hope. Because, in the silver kettles was not water, but whisky
at boiling-point, and the more they desired to weaken their brandy, the
more they fortified it: until they tumbled out altogether, in every
state of disorder. For this he had prepared, by placing at the foot of
his long steps half-a-dozen butts of liquid from the cleaning of his
drains, meant to be spread on the fields next day. And into the whole of
this they fell, and he bolted the doors upon them.
This made a stir in the clerical circles, when it came to be talked
about; but upon reference to the bishop, he thought they had better say
nothing about it, only be more considerate. And on the whole it
redounded greatly to the credit of Parson Chowne.