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!”
CHAPTER IX.
A DOG VIOLATE
A great observer of these latter days has advised us to abstain from deep research into the origin of our own names. Otherwise we might become convinced of a lamentable want of lofty tone among those, without whom we could not have been here, to show our superiority. A vein of fine thought is at once set flowing; but for “Ragless” it would have flowed in vain, as dogs have no surname to dwell upon.
His case was a strange one, and not without interest. Nobody in our parish had any knowledge of his ancestry, although he had won very high repute by biting many people who got over it. Any other dog would have become the victim of an injudicious outcry; but “Ragless,” by making some other good bites, established his legal right to do it, and was now considered a very wholesome dog, though he might have a temper of his own. But even if he had, who was to blame?
Some seven, or it may have been eight years since, Miss Coldpepper was “rolling in her carriage” down Feltham hill, when the coachman pulled up very sharply, and just in time to save mishap. All the boys in the village were let loose from school, and with one accord had found a genial pastime, which they were pursuing with the vigour of our race. They had got a poor dog, with no father, or mother, or even policeman to defend him, and they had put him in a barrel near a garden-gate, and tacked in the head so that no escape was left. This