Where his hearts not concerned, Mrs. Waddy remarked of me flatteringly, hes shrewd as a little schoolmaster.
Heve a birds-nesting eye, said Mrs. Thresher, whose face I was studying.
John Thresher wagered I would be a man before either of them reached that goal. But whenever he spoke he suffered correction on account of his English.
More than his eating and his drinking, that childs father worrits about his learning to speak the language of a British gentleman, Mrs. Waddy exclaimed. Before that child your hs must be like the panting of an engineto please his father. He d stop me carrying the dinner-tray on meat-dish hot, and Im to repeat what I said, to make sure the child havent heard anything ungrammatical. The childs nursemaid hed lecture so, the poor girl would come down to me ready to bend double, like a bundle of nothing, his observations so took the pride out of her. Thats because he s a father who knows his duty to the child:Child! says he, man, maam. Its just as you, John, when you sow your seed you think of your harvest. So dont take it ill of me, John; I beg of you be careful of your English. Turn it over as youre about to speak.
Change loads on the road, you mean, said John Thresher. Na, na, hes come to settle nigh a weedy field, if you like, but his crop aint nigh reaping yet. Hark you, Mary Waddy, whore a widde, which s as much as say, an unoccpied mind, theres cockney, and theres country, and there s school. Mix the three, strain, and throw away the sediment. Now, yon s my view.
His wife and Mrs. Waddy said reflectively, in a breath, True!
Drink or no, thats the trick o brewery, he added.
They assented. They began praising him, too, like meek creatures.
What John says is worth listening to, Mary. You may be over-careful. A stews a stew, and not a boiling to shreds, and you want a steady fire, and not a furnace.
Oh, I quite agree with John, Martha: we must take the good and the evil in a world like this.
Then Im no scholar, and youre at ease, said John.
Mrs. Waddy put her mouth to his ear.
Up went his eyebrows, wrinkling arches over a petrified stare.
In some way she had regained her advantage. Art sure of it? he inquired.
Pray, dont offend me by expressing a doubt of it, she replied, bowing.
John Thresher poised me in the very centre of his gaze. He declared he would never have guessed that, and was reproved, inasmuch as he might have guessed it. He then said that I could not associate with any of the children thereabout, and my dwelling in the kitchen was not to be thought of. The idea of my dwelling in the kitchen seemed to be a serious consideration with Mrs. Martha likewise. I was led into the rooms of state. The sight of them was enough. I stamped my feet for the kitchen, and rarely in my life have been happier than there, dining and supping with John and Martha and the farm-labourers, expecting my father across the hills, and yet satisfied with the sun. To hope, and not be impatient, is really to believe, and this was my feeling in my fathers absence. I knew he would come, without wishing to hurry him. He had the world beyond the hills; I this one, where a slow full river flowed from the sounding mill under our garden wall, through long meadows. In Winter the wild ducks made letters of the alphabet flying. On the other side of the copses bounding our home, there was a park containing trees old as the History of England, John Thresher said, and the thought of their venerable age enclosed me comfortably. He could not tell me whether he meant as old as the book of English History; he fancied he did, for the furrow-track follows the plough close upon; but no one exactly could swear when that (the book) was put together. At my suggestion, he fixed the trees to the date of the Heptarchy, a period of heavy ploughing. Thus begirt by Saxon times, I regarded Riversley as a place of extreme baldness, a Greenland, untrodden by my Alfred and my Harold. These heroes lived in the circle of Dipwell, confidently awaiting the arrival of my father. He sent me once a glorious letter. Mrs. Waddy took one of John Threshers pigeons to London, and in the evening we beheld the bird cut the sky like an arrow, bringing round his neck a letter warm from him I loved. Planet communicating with planet would be not more wonderful to men than words of his to me, travelling in such a manner. I went to sleep, and awoke imagining the bird bursting out of heaven.
Meanwhile there was an attempt to set me moving again. A strange young man was noticed in the neighbourhood of the farm, and he accosted me at Leckham fair. I say, dont we know one another? How about your grandfather the squire, and your aunt, and Mr. Bannerbridge? Ive got news for you.
Not unwilling to hear him, I took his hand, leaving my companion, the millers little girl, Mabel Sweetwinter, at a toy-stand, while Bob, her brother and our guardian, was shying sticks in a fine attitude. Yes, and your father, too, said the young man; come along and see him; you can run? I showed him how fast. We were pursued by Bob, who fought for me, and won me, and my allegiance instantly returned to him. He carried me almost the whole of the way back to Dipwell. Women must feel for the lucky heroes who win them, something of what I felt for mine; I kissed his bloody face, refusing to let him wipe it. John Thresher said to me at night, Ay, now youve got a notion of boxing; and will you believe it, Master Harry, theres people fools enough to want to tread that ther first-rate pastime under foot? I speak truth, and my word for t, theyd better go in petticoats. Let clergymen preach as in duty bound; you and Ill uphold a manful sport, we will, and a cheer for Bob!
He assured me, and he had my entire faith, that boxing was Englands natural protection from the foe. The comfort of having one like Bob to defend our country from invasion struck me as inexpressible. Lighted by John Threshers burning patriotism, I entered the book of the History of England at about the pace of a carthorse, with a huge waggon at my heels in the shape of John. There was no moving on until he was filled. His process of receiving historical knowledge was to fight over again the personages who did injury to our honour as a nation, then shake hands and be proud of them. For where we aint quite successful were cunning, he said; and we not being able to get rid of William the Conqueror, because hes got a will of his own and he wont budge, why, we takes and makes him one of ourselves; and no disgrace in that, I should hope! He paid us a compliment, dont you see, Master Harry? he wanted to be an Englishman. Can you this? says we, sparrin up to him. Pretty middlin, says he, and does it well. Well then, says we, then youre one of us, and well beat the world; and did so.
John Thresher had a laborious mind; it cost him beads on his forehead to mount to these heights of meditation. He told me once that he thought ones country was like ones wife: you were born in the first, and married to the second, and had to learn all about them afterwards, ay, and make the best of them. He recommended me to mix, strain, and throw away the sediment, for that was the trick o brewery. Every puzzle that beset him in life resolved to this cheerful precept, the value of which, he said, was shown by clear brown ale, the drink of the land. Even as a child I felt that he was peculiarly an Englishman. Tales of injustice done on the Niger river would flush him in a heat of wrath till he cried out for fresh taxes to chastise the villains. Yet at the sight of the beggars at his gates he groaned at the taxes existing, and enjoined me to have pity on the poor taxpayer when I lent a hand to patch the laws. I promised him I would unreservedly, with a laugh, but with a sincere intention to legislate in a direct manner on his behalf. He, too, though he laughed, thanked me kindly.
I was clad in black for my distant mother. Mrs. Waddy brought down a young man from London to measure me, so that my mourning attire might be in the perfect cut of fashion. The childs papa would strip him if he saw him in a country tailors funeral suit, she said, and seemed to blow a wind of changes on me that made me sure my father had begun to stir up his part of the world. He sent me a prayer in his own handwriting to say for my mother in heaven. I saw it flying up between black edges whenever I shut my eyes. Martha Thresher dosed me for liver. Mrs. Waddy found me pale by the fireside, and prescribed iron. Both agreed upon high-feeding, and the apothecary agreed with both in everything, which reconciled them, for both good women loved me so heartily they were near upon disputing over the medicines I was to consume.
Under such affectionate treatment I betrayed the alarming symptom that my imagination was set more on my mother than on my father: I could not help thinking that for any one to go to heaven was stranger than to drive to Dipwell, and I had this idea when my father was clasping me in his arms; but he melted it like snow off the fields. He came with postillions in advance of him wearing crape rosettes, as did the horses. We were in the cricket-field, where Dipwell was playing its first match of the season, and a Dipwell lad, furious to see the elevens commit such a breach of the rules and decency as to troop away while the game was hot, and surround my father, flung the cricket-ball into the midst and hit two or three of the men hard. My father had to shield him from the consequences. He said he liked that boy; and he pleaded for him so winningly and funnily that the man who was hurt most laughed loudest.
Standing up in the carriage, and holding me by the hand, he addressed them by their names: Sweetwinter, I thank you for your attention to my son; and you, Thribble; and you, my man; and you, Baker; Rippengale, and you; and you, Jupp; as if he knew them personally. It was true he nodded at random. Then he delivered a short speech, and named himself a regular subscriber to their innocent pleasures. He gave them money, and scattered silver coin among the boys and girls, and praised John Thresher, and Martha, his wife, for their care of me, and pointing to the chimneys of the farm, said that the house there was holy to him from henceforth, and he should visit it annually if possible, but always in the month of May, and in the shape of his subscription, as certain as the cowslip. The men, after their fit of cheering, appeared unwilling to recommence their play, so he alighted and delivered the first ball, and then walked away with my hand in his, saying:
Yes, my son, we will return to them tenfold what they have done for you. The eleventh day of May shall be a day of pleasure for Dipwell while I last, and you will keep it in memory of me when I am gone. And now to see the bed you have slept in.
Martha Thresher showed him the bed, showed him flowers I had planted, and a Spanish chestnut tree just peeping.
Ha! said he, beaming at every fresh sight of my doings: madam, I am your life-long debtor and friend! He kissed her on the cheek.
John Thresher cried out: Why, dame, you trembles like a maid.
She spoke very faintly, and was red in the face up to the time of our departure. John stood like a soldier. We drove away from a cheering crowd of cricketers and farm-labourers, as if discharged from a great gun. A royal salvo! said my father, and asked me earnestly whether I had forgotten to reward and take a particular farewell of any one of my friends. I told him I had forgotten no one, and thought it was true, until on our way up the sandy lane, which offered us a last close view of the old wall-flower farm front, I saw little Mabel Sweetwinter, often my playfellow and bedfellow, a curly-headed girl, who would have danced on Sunday for a fairing, and eaten gingerbread nuts during a ghost-story. She was sitting by a furze-bush in flower, cherishing in her lap a lamb that had been worried. She looked half up at me, and kept looking so, but would not nod. Then good-bye, thought I, and remembered her look when I had forgotten that of all the others.
CHAPTER IV. I HAVE A TASTE OF GRANDEUR
Though I had not previously seen a postillion in my life, I gazed on the pair bobbing regularly on their horses before me, without a thought upon the marvel of their sudden apparition and connection with my fortunes. I could not tire of hearing the pleasant music of the many feet at the trot, and tried to explain to my father that the men going up and down made it like a piano that played of itself. He laughed and kissed me; he remembered having once shown me the inside of a piano when the keys were knocked. My love for him as we drove into London had a recognized footing: I perceived that he was my best friend and only true companion, besides his being my hero. The wicked men who had parted us were no longer able to do harm, he said. I forgot, in my gladness at their defeat, to ask what had become of Shylocks descendant.
Mrs. Waddy welcomed us when we alighted. Do not imagine that it was at the door of her old house. It was in a wide street opening on a splendid square, and pillars were before the houses, and inside there was the enchantment of a little fountain playing thin as whipcord, among ferns, in a rock-basin under a window that glowed with kings of England, copied from boys history books. All the servants were drawn up in the hall to do homage to me. They seemed less real and living than the wonder of the sweet-smelling chairs, the birds, and the elegant dogs. Richest of treats, a monkey was introduced to me. It s your papas whim, Mrs. Waddy said, resignedly; he says he must have his jester. Indeed it is no joke to me.
Yet she smiled happily, though her voice was melancholy. From her I now learnt that my name was Richmond Roy, and not Harry Richmond. I said, Very well, for I was used to change. Everybody in the house wore a happy expression of countenance, except the monkey, who was too busy. As we mounted the stairs I saw more kings of England painted on the back-windows. Mrs. Waddy said: It is considered to give a monarchical effect,she coughed modestly after the long word, and pursued: as it should. I insisted upon going to the top floor, where I expected to find William the Conqueror, and found him; but that strong connecting link between John Thresher and me presented himself only to carry my recollections of the Dipwell of yesterday as far back into the past as the old Norman days.
And down go all the kings, downstairs, I said, surveying them consecutively.
Yes, she replied, in a tone that might lead one to think it their lamentable fate. And did the people look at you as you drove along through the streets, Master Richmond?
I said Yes, in turn; and then we left off answering, but questioned one another, which is a quicker way of getting at facts; I know it is with boys and women. Mrs. Waddy cared much less to hear of Dipwell and its inhabitants than of the sensation created everywhere by our equipage. I noticed that when her voice was not melancholy her face was. She showed me a beautiful little pink bed, having a crown over it, in a room opening to my fathers. Twenty thousand magnificent dreams seemed to flash their golden doors when I knew that the bed was mine. I thought it almost as nice as a place by my fathers side.
Dont you like it, Mrs. Waddy? I said.
She smiled and sighed. Like it? Oh! yes, my dear, to be sure I do. I only hope it wont vanish. She simpered and looked sad.
I had too many distractions, or I should have asked her whether my amazing and delightful new home had ever shown symptoms of vanishing; it appeared to me, judging from my experience, that nothing moved violently except myself, and my principal concern was lest any one should carry me away at a moments notice. In the evening I was introduced to a company of gentlemen, who were drinking wine after dinner with my father. They clapped their hands and laughed immoderately on my telling them that I thought those kings of England who could not find room on the windows must have gone down to the cellars.