"What would 'e give, Master Jarge," he whispered, making a tube of his brown, bristly hand, "to hear all about the most bootifullest maiden as ever come out of the heavens?"
Although I felt a tingle in my heart at this, I answered him very firmly. "Get on with your work. Don't talk rubbish to me."
"You be the steadiest of the steady. Every fool knows that. But I reckon, Master Jarge hath his turn to come, same as every young man the Lord hath made with a pair of eyes. Oh! our Miss Grace, she be bootiful enough. But this one over yonner—O Lord! O Lord!"
He waved his hand towards the valley in the distance, whose outline was visible from where we stood. And dignified as I tried to be, he saw my glance go wandering.
"Why, you knows all about it, Master Jarge! You be clapping your eyes upon the very place! Why, ne'er a man in England hath ever seed the like. And who could a'thought it, a'standing outside!"
"Nonsense!" I said. "Why, you must have been dreaming. Who knows what comes over you sometimes?"
This reference to his "busting" weakness was not in good taste, when the crime had been forgiven, and the subject was known to be hateful to him. But this was the sure way to let his tongue loose; and when a reserved man once breaks forth, he is like a teetotaller going on the spree.
"I could show 'e the place now just, Master Jarge; the place can't run away I reckon. All over ivy-leaves the same as a church-tower. You can't deny of they, when you sees them, can 'e? And the bootiful young gal—why, you've seed her, Master Jarge! By the twinkle of your eyes, I could swear to it."
"Robert Slemmick, you are off your head;" I answered with a very steadfast gaze at him, for his keen little eyes were ready to play "I spy" with mine. "I insist upon knowing where you have been, and what you have done, and what people you have met. If they knew that you were in Sir Harold Cranleigh's service, you may have done us great discredit."
With some indignation he told his tale, and finished it before the other men came back; for his tongue was as brisk as his arms and legs, which had rare gifts of locomotion. But I must fill in what he left out, for it would be neither just nor wise to expect him to inform against himself.
It seems that he was walking very fast, discharging himself from domestic bonds, and responsibility, and temperance, when he came to a black door in a big wall; and rapid as he was, this brought him up. His thoughts, if any, were always far in advance of him at such moments, and perhaps his main object was to overtake them. This he could not explain, and had never thought about it, but at any rate that door should not stop him. It was locked, or bolted, and without a bell, but he worked all his members together against it, as he alone of mankind could do, and what could withstand such progressive power? The door flew open, and in rushed Slemmick, like the London County Council.
But there are powers that pay no heed to the noblest psychical impulse. Two dogs of extraordinary bulk and stature had him prostrate between them in an instant, and stood over him, grinding enormous jaws. Dazed as he was, cold terror kept his restless members quiet, and perhaps he felt—though he did not so confess it—that conjugal law was vindicated. "I were in too terrible a funk to think," was his statement of the position.
But the two dogs appeared to enjoy the situation, and being of prime sagacity were discussing his character between them. If he had been a mere "white buster," that is to say a common tramp, they would have stopped his tramp for ever. But they saw that he was a respectable man, a sound home-liver in his proper state of mind; and although they would not hear of his getting up, they deliberated what they ought to do with him. Slemmick in the meanwhile was watching their great eyes, and their tails flourished high with triumphant duty, and worst of all their tremendous white fangs, quivering if he even dared to shudder.
"Abashed I were to the last degree," he told me, and I could well believe it; "my last thought was to my poor wife Sally." A good partner, to whom his first thoughts should have been. But while he was thus truly penitent I hope, a clear sound as of a silver whistle came to his ears, and the dogs stood up, and took the crush of their paws from his breast, and one of them sat by him, in strict vigilance still, while the other bounded off for instructions.
Then, according to Slemmick, there appeared to him the most beautiful vision he had ever seen. "Straight from heaven. Don't tell me, Master Jarge, for never will I hear a word agin it. Straight from heaven, with the big hound a'jumping at her side, and him looking like an angel now. If you was to see her, you'd just go mad, and never care to look at any other maid no more."
"What was she like, Bob?" It had not been my intention to put any question of this kind, but Slemmick was in such a state of excitement, that I had a right to know the reason.
"Don't 'e ask me, sir; for good, don't 'e ask me. There never was no words in any Dixunary, and if there was, I couldn't lay to them. There then, you go and judge for yourself, Master Jarge."
"But she can't be there all by herself, my friend. Surely you must have seen some one else. And what language did she speak in?"
"Blowed if I can tell 'e, sir. All I know is, 't were a mixture of a flute and a blackbird, and the play-'em-out-of-Church pipes of the horgan. Not that she were singing, only to the ear, my meaning is; and never mind the words no more than folk does in a hanthem. Lor, to hear poor Sally's voice, after coming home from that—even in the wisest frame of mind, with all the wages in her lap!"
"But you did not come home, Bob Slemmick, for I know not how long. Did you spend the whole of your time in that enchanted valley?"
"Ah, a chant it were, by gum! A chant as I could listen to—why, Master Jarge, I'll take 'e there; for two skips of a flea I would. Won't 'e? Very well. Best not, I reckon. Never look at no English maids no more."
This was nearly all that I could get from Bob, without putting hundreds of questions; for instead of straight answers, he went off into ravings about this most ravishing young lady, who must have contrived to make out what he wanted, for after having saved him from the dogs, she led him directly to the lower door, and sped him on his way with half-a-crown. But that, as he assured me, was of no account in his estimate of her qualities. "You ask Farmer Ticknor, sir, if you think I be a'lying. Farmer Ticknor hath seed her, more at his comfort than ever I did; and Ticknor come hotter than I do. 'Hold your blessed jaw'—he say, when I goeth to ask about her, knowing as he were neighbourly—'What call for you, Bob Slemmick?' he saith, 'to come running like a dog on end down here? I'll give you a charge of shot,' he saith, 'if I catch you in the little lane again. 'T is the Royal Family, and no mistake, that knoweth all about this here. And don't you make no palaver of it, to come stealing of my mushrooms.' As if we hadn't better as we kicks up every day!"
Now all this talk of Bob's, although it may have told upon my mind a little, was not enough to set me running straight away from my home and friends, at a very busy time of year, as Slemmick was so fond of doing. But betwixt the green and yellow, as our people call the times of hay and corn, it seemed to me that I might as well have a talk with that Farmer Ticknor, who was known to be a man of great authority about the weather and the crops, and had held land under us as long as he could afford to do so. He was rather crusty now, as a man is apt to be when he lives upon a crust for the benefit of foreigners, and receives his exchange in coloured tallow. It was two or three years since I had seen him now; for "Ticknor's Mew," as he called his place, was out of the general course of traffic, and as lonely among the woods as a dead fern-frond. I found him at home on a fine summer evening, and he put up my horse, and received me very kindly, for he was not a bad sort of man, though rough. And if any pleasure yet remained in Farmer's lane to workhouse, this man made the most of it by looking at the sky, as if it still could help him against the imbecility of the earth.
"Yes, I have been a fine hand at it," he said, after sending for a jug of ale, and two bell-rummers; "there never was a cloud, but I know the meaning of 'un, though without they long names they has now. Bessie, my dear, fetch Ticknor's marks. Don't care much to do it now—nought to lose or gain of it. Not much odds to this