Chapter 9

During the short passage to the coach house I had been trying to consider my course: but my state of famishment and the agitation into which I had been thrown had bereft me of all power of consecutive thought; so that when the gentleman called upon me, in no gentle tones, to give an account of myself, I stood like a stock fish before him. Then I was amazed to feel my legs giving way under me; I stretched forth my arms in an instinctive attempt to steady myself, and, clutching at empty air, fell heavily forward on to the stone floor.

When I came to myself, I saw a kind, motherly face bending over me, and was aware of a hot taste in my mouth.

"Are you better now?" said the lady, in tones the like of which I had seldom heard.

I smiled, and she held a spoon to my lips, and I swallowed its contents--a mixture of rum and milk, I think--as obediently as a baby.

"Poor boy! he must have been starving," said the lady.

"And what right had a fellow to be starving with a crown piece in his pocket?" said the gentleman behind.

"He will explain by and by," replied the lady. "He must not be vexed tonight, James. I have made up a bed in the loft, and Martha is preparing some food.

"Can you walk, my poor boy?" she asked me.

"I am quite well, ma'am," I said, staggering to my feet. "I don't know what came over me."

She told me that I had fainted, which surprised me mightily, though when I came to reflect it was not much to be wondered at, seeing that never in my life before had I been for more than four hours without food.

"The gentleman asked me to explain--" I began, remembering what had preceded my fall.

"Never mind about that now," said the lady. "You will go to bed, and when you have had some food you will sleep, and you can tell my husband all about it in the morning."

And then she directed the two stablemen who were standing at the door to help me up the ladder into the loft of the coach house. A bed, spread with linen as good as ever I lay on, was arranged at one end; and, dropping on to this, I was asleep immediately. They told me next morning that the mistress had herself brought up the posset which her servant had prepared; but, finding me in such deep slumber, had carried it away again, saying that sleep was as good as food to me then.

The sunlight, streaming in at the little window above my bed, wakened me early. I was at first perplexed at my unfamiliar surroundings, but, recollecting at length the happenings of the previous day, I got up and descended the stairs. At the door of the coach house one of the men I had already seen was swilling the wheel of a big coach with pails of water, whistling the while. He grinned when he saw me, and said:

"Mistress said you was to go straight to kitchen when you waked, and fill your stomick."

"I am mighty hungry, to be sure, but I should like to wash first," I replied.

"Why, you do look 'mazing grimy," he said with another grin. "Do ye feel better this marnin'? You went into a faint like as I never did see--a real female faint it was. I reckon as how you be overgrowed, young man."

"Where shall I find the pump?" I asked, restive under this reference to my unhappy attire.

"Ho, Giles!" he called, "take the young man to the poomp."

At this cry, Giles, in whom I recognized the second man whose skull I had threatened to crack, appeared from round the corner of the coach house. His face also wore a grin.

"Ay, true now, you do want the poomp," he said. "Come, and I'll show 'ee. It do make a young feller weak-like when he overgrows his strength. There was my sister Jane's Billy, to be sure, shot up like a weed, he did, was for ever falling into fits, and a bit soft in his noddle, too, poor soul.

"Here's the poomp; be 'ee strong enough to draw for yourself, think 'ee, or shall I do it for 'ee?"

I was strongly tempted to catch the fellow by the middle and give him a back throw which would enlighten him as to my physical aptitude; but I forbore, and allowed him to pump for me, which he did with great willingness, discoursing the while on the infirmities of all his kin. Refreshed by my ablutions, I was nothing loath to follow him to the kitchen, where a red-faced little dumpling of a cook set before me such a breakfast as would have made Mistress Pennyquick stare.

"Eat away," she said, setting her arms akimbo and eying me up and down as I ravenously began my meal. "Lawks! I don't wonder ye fainted if 'tis true, as they say, that ye hadn't had bite or sup for a week. You've a big body to keep a-goin', to be sure; overgrowed your strength seemingly. The likes of me don't faint."

And at this Susan the housemaid, who had just come in, giggled, and put her hand over her mouth, and I felt as if my ears had rims of fire. Would they never have done with their personal allusions? Mentally I cursed Job and Bill and Topper very heartily, and as heartily wished that my inches were a little less.

Luckily I was not born without a certain sense of humor. It had deserted me under stress of what I had gone through during the last two days, but when my cavities had been well filled with Martha's excellent viands, I was suddenly able to see myself as I must appear to others, and I astonished the servants by laying down my knife and fork, leaning back in my chair, and emitting a long ripple of laughter.

"Goodness alive!" exclaimed Martha. "Giles said a' was a natural, and I believe a' spoke true."

"No, no," I spluttered. "My noddle's sound enough. I think; 'tis only that--that I'm overgrown!"

And with that I laughed again, and my merriment was infectious, for the round little cook laughed until she dropped exhausted into a chair, and the housemaid uttered shrill little titters from behind her hands, bending forward at each explosion, opening her hands to take a peep at me, and then "going off," as they say, again.

In the midst of this hilarity there sounded suddenly a jangling and creaking of wires in the neighborhood of the ceiling, followed by a clang.

"Measter's bell!" cried Susan, and, smoothing her apron, and settling her countenance to a wonderful demureness and sobriety, the little rascal tripped away. She was back in a minute.

"Measter wants to see tha," she said.

I got up and followed her from the room and up the stairs, comfortable in body and mind, for sure, I thought, such cheerfulness was of good augury: the master of such happy servants could not be a very terrible man. Susan showed me into a large and well-furnished room, where, though it was summer time, a big fire was crackling merrily in the grate. On one side of it sat the master in a deep chair, smoking a pipe of tobacco; on the other the kind mistress was knitting. She smiled at me as I approached, and I knew that she was not thinking of my strange garb. The master hummed and hawed, as if in embarrassment how to address me; then, in a jovial tone intended to set me at my ease he said:

"Had a good breakfast?"

I assured him that I had never made such a meal in my life.

"That's right. Now, we want you to tell us your story in your own way; but mind, no beating about the bush."

I had already resolved to tell just so much as was necessary, without naming names, so I began:

"I was on my way to Bristowe, sir, and two nights ago, being overtaken by the rain, I sought shelter in a decayed barn near the roadside, and slept among some hay. Before morning three men came in whom I soon discovered from their speech to be poachers. They found me, robbed me of my money--not a vast sum--and forced me to exchange garments with them."

Here the flicker of a smile crossed the gentleman's face.

"They left me tied hand and foot, and when I released myself I was in such a taking at the scarecrow figure I must cut that I shunned the sight of men, and kept to the fields. But I had not eaten since noon of the day of my misadventure, and, being desperately hungry, I entered your gate to beg a meal, purposing to pay for it by some service for you."

"Hum! What then of this crown piece which you confessed was yours? Why need ye starve with that in your pocket?"

"To that, sir, I have no answer, save that I would not spend it till the last extremity."

"Hum! How old are you?"

"Somewhat past seventeen, sir."

"Just the age of our Roger," said the lady.

"And what's your name?"

At this I hesitated. I could not be more than thirty miles from Shrewsbury, and if I told my name perchance it might travel back, and I was in no mind to have my mischances retailed in the town. The gentleman saw my hesitation.

"Well, well," he said, "no matter for that. You have run away, eh?"

"No, sir. I have no relatives, and I came with full consent of my friends."

"And what think you to do at Bristowe? Have you friends there?"

"No, sir. I purposed to find employment on a ship."

"The old story!" quoth the gentleman with a grunt. Then, with a shrewd look at me, he said: "Contra mercator, novem jactantibus austris."

"Militia est potior," I said, capping his tag from Flaccus' first satire, without reflecting whereto he was luring me.

"I knew it!" he cried, waving his pipe triumphantly at his wife. "And you haven't run away from school?"

"Indeed I have not, sir. I left school some months ago."

The lady smiled at his crestfallen look. It was plain that, in talking over myself and my situation, he had declared with the positiveness which I found was part of his character, that I had fallen into some trouble at school and fled the consequences.

There was a brief silence; then he said:

"You spoke of work. What can you do?"

"Little enough, sir," I replied. "But I lived for some years on a farm, and could do something in that kind."

Husband and wife glanced at each other, and the gentleman said:

"Well, well, go downstairs now; presently I will send for you again."

I went down, and found my way, by the back of the house, the door standing open, into the garden. I had not taken more than half a dozen paces down the middle path when a big dog of the retriever kind came barking towards me. Stooping down, I patted his head and tickled his ears, a thing which all animals love, and then went on, the dog trotting by my side in most friendly wise.

And at a turn of the walk I came without warning upon the girl who had interposed to save me from a thrashing and had then gone scornfully away, thinking me a liar. The consciousness of my ridiculous appearance rushed upon me in a flood, and, having but small experience of womankind save as represented by Mistress Pennyquick and our maids, I must stand stock still, red to the roots of my hair.

The girl had been walking towards me, swinging by its riband a garden hat, for the air was hot. The dog ran to her, with a bark that might have been of reassurance. She stopped, and, with a pretty shyness far short of embarrassment, said:

"Are you better now, poor man?"

I mumbled something, I know not what, and she smiled and passed on.

Then I felt I would have given anything to live that moment again.

"Dolt! Fool! Jackass!" I called myself. "What a baby she must think me! 'Poor man!' she said. Good heavens! Does she think I am forty?"

And thus fuming at my tongue-tied awkwardness, I went along the path.

I walked up and down for some time, and was still pacing along with my back to the house, when I heard a light footstep behind me, and for a foolish moment fancied it was the girl whose aspect and kind words had lately put me in such a commotion. But on turning about, I felt relief and disappointment mingled (the disappointment was, I think, the greater) to see that it was only Susan.

"Measter wants tha," she said.

I stepped along in silence beside her, she taking three steps for my one, and giggling to sicken a man.

"Tha'lt never get a sweetheart," she said by and by.

"Oh! and why not?" I asked.

"'Cos tha'rt such a great big feller," she said.

"What in the name of all that's wonderful has that to do with it?"

The minx looked archly up into my face.

"Tha'rt too high for a maid to kiss," says she.

To this I made no answer, being no whit inclined to bandy words with this pert young housemaid. And so we came to the house.

"We have been considering your case," said the master, when I again stood before him. "Are you still set on going to Bristowe?"

"Truly, sir, I have seen nought to change my mind."

"You know you are miles out of your road?"

"'Tis through coming over the fields," I said.

"Well, if you are bent upon it, I will furnish you with money enough to take you there, and trust to you to repay me in good time."

"'Tis good of you, sir," I said, guessing, and not wrongly, I think, at whose persuasion he made that offer.

Then I was silent. The name "charity brat," bestowed on me years before by Cyrus Vetch, still rankled in my soul, and though, now that I look back upon it, there was nothing that need have wounded my pride in accepting the proffered loan, I was loath to be beholden to any man. Maybe my feeling on this point was complicated with another of which I was as yet hardly conscious; but certain it is that, after standing silent for a brief space, I said suddenly:

"I thank you heartily, sir, but I had liever earn the money."

"Pish, lad!" cried the gentleman. "'Tis easy to see you are not of laboring rank, and as for the money, I shall not break if I never see it again."

That was the worst argument he could have devised. My pride was up in arms now, in good sooth, and I said firmly:

"With your leave, sir, I will earn what money I need."

"Didst ever see such an obstinate youth?" said he testily, turning to his wife. "Well, as you will. I warrant you will soon sing another tune. Go and see my steward, one of the men will take you to him, and tell him what you know of husbandry; 'tis no more, I warrant, than you have learned out of Vergil's Georgics.

"Stay," he added, as I turned to go, "we must have a name for you. You can not be a mere cipher in my estate books."

"Call me Joe, sir," I said, he thinking me of my friend Punchard.

"Joseph in the house of bondage," says he with a laugh, "Well, Joe it shall be."

I was some paces towards the door when remembrance came to me.

"May I have my crown piece, sir?" I said, turning back.

"God bless the boy! Here, take it; 'tis the same that jumped from your pocket. And now I bethink me, those poachers' tatters sit very ill on your long carcass.

"We must find something better suited to his frame, mistress."

"We will have, a clothier from Bridgenorth," said the lady.

"I trust you will be very happy with us the short while you stay, Joe," she added with her gentle smile, and I went from the room with my heart very warm towards her.