Dariel: A Romance of Surrey. Blackmore Richard Doddridge

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СКАЧАТЬ for him, and he never would speak, nor even grunt, nor throw down his tool and flap his arms, but tear away at it, without looking right or left, till you saw with surprise that this middle-sized man had moved a bigger bulk in the course of a day than a couple of hulking navvies.

      But one fault he had, and a very sad fault, which had lost him many a good place ere now, and would probably bring him to the workhouse – he was what is called by those who understand such matters a "black buster." At the nearest approach I could make to this subject, sidling very carefully – for the British workman would be confidential rather to a ghost than to his own employer – it seems that there are two kinds of "busters." The white one, who only leaves work for a spree of a day or two, meaning to jollify, and to come back in a chastened vein, after treating all his friends, and then going upon trust; and the black, who is of a stronger mind. This man knows better than to waste his cash upon clinking glasses with a bubble at the top. He is a pattern for weeks and months together, pours every shilling on a Saturday night into the hands of his excellent wife – for it is his luck to have a good one – sits in a corner with his quiet pipe at home, and smiles the smile of memory when the little ones appeal to his wisdom. And so he goes on, without much regret for adventure, or even for beer, beyond the half-pint to which his wife coerces him.

      Everybody says, "What a steady fellow Bob is! He is fit for a Guild, if he would only go to Church." He ties the Canary creeper up, and he sees to his cabbages, upon a Sunday morning. And the next-door lady shakes her head over the four-feet palings, with her husband upstairs roaring out for a fresher, after a tumble-down night of it. "Oh, if my Tom was like your Mr. Robert!" But Mrs. Bob also shakes her head. "Oh, yes, he is wonderful good just now."

      Then comes the sudden break down, and breakaway. Without a word to any one, or whisper to his family, off sets Mr. Robert, on a Monday morning generally, after doing two good hours' work, before breakfast. Perhaps he has been touched on the virtuous road home, by a fine smell of beer at the corner, where the potboy was washing the pewters, and setting them in the sun for an airing; perhaps it was a flower that set him off, a scarlet Geranium, who can tell? Under some wild impulse he bolts and makes away; he is in the next parish, before his poor wife has given up keeping the tea-pot warm; and by the time she has knocked at the tool-house door, in the forlorn hope that he may be ill, he is rousing the dust of the adjoining county, still going straight ahead, as if the Devil were after him. And that last authority alone can tell how Bob lives, what he thinks of, where his legs and arms are, whence his beer flows down to him, for a month, or even half-a-year, or nobody knows how long it is.

      This Robert Slemmick had been in our employment ever since last Candlemas, and had only broken out once as yet, in the manner above described. Excepting only that little flaw, his character was excellent, and a more hard-working, obliging, intelligent man never came on any premises. When I took him back after his escapade, I told him very plainly that it would not be done again; and he promised to stick to his work, and did so. But not a word to me, or anybody else, as to why he went away, or whither, or what he had been doing, or how he got his living. Knowing how peculiar the best men are – otherwise could they be good at all? – I tried not to intrude upon the romance of his Beerhaven, but showed myself rather cold to him, though I longed to know about it.

      "Master Jarge," said this man one day, when he was treading a hayrick, and I was in the waggon with the fork below; and it must according to the times have been the very day after Jackson Stoneman came to me, "Master Jarge, what would 'e give to know summut as I could tell 'e?"

      He had had a little beer, as was needful for the hay; and I looked at him very seriously; reminding him thus, without harshness, of my opinion of his tendencies. But he did not see it in that light.

      "You shape the rick," I said. "I don't want to hear nothing." For you must use double negations if you wish them to understand you. We were finishing a little rick of very choice short staple, with a lot of clover in it, and Old Joe in the shafts was likely to think of it many a winter night. At such a juncture, it will not do to encourage even a silent man.

      Bob went cleverly round and round, dealing an armful here and there, for a very small round rick is the hardest of all for scientific building, and then he came back to the brink close to me, till I thought he was going to slide down upon my knees.

      "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 СКАЧАТЬ