This mysterious conversation was carried on with a human head, which peeped above the water, its arms supporting from beneath the growling cur--such a visage as only worn-out poachers, or trampling drovers, or London chiffonniers carry; pear-shaped and retreating to a narrow peak above, while below, the bleared cheeks, and drooping lips, and peering purblind eyes, perplexed, hopeless, defiant, and yet sneaking, bespeak THEIR share in the "inheritance of the kingdom of heaven."--Savages without the resources of a savage--slaves without the protection of a master--to whom the cart-whip and the rice-swamp would be a change for the better--for there, at least, is food and shelter.
Slowly and distrustfully a dripping scarecrow of rags and bones rose from his hiding-place in the water, and then stopped suddenly, and seemed inclined to dash through the river; but Tregarva held him fast.
"There"s two on ye! That"s a shame! I"ll surrender to no man but you, Paul. Hold off, or I"ll set the dog on ye!"
"It"s a gentleman fishing. He won"t tell--will you, sir?" And he turned to Lancelot. "Have pity on the poor creature, sir, for G.o.d"s sake--it isn"t often he gets it."
"I won"t tell, my man. I"ve not seen you doing any harm. Come out like a man, and let"s have a look at you."
The creature crawled up the bank, and stood, abject and shivering, with the dog growling from between his legs.
"I was only looking for a kingfisher"s nest: indeed now, I was, Paul Tregarva."
"Don"t lie, you were setting night-lines. I saw a minnow lie on the bank as I came up. Don"t lie; I hate liars."
"Well indeed, then--a man must live somehow."
"You don"t seem to live by this trade, my friend," quoth Lancelot; "I cannot say it seems a prosperous business, by the look of your coat and trousers."
"That Tim G.o.ddard stole all my clothes, and no good may they do him; last time as I went to gaol I gave them him to kep, and he went off for a navvy meantime; so there I am."
"If you will play with the dogs," quoth Tregarva, "you know what you will be bit by. Haven"t I warned you? Of course you won"t prosper: as you make your bed, so you must lie in it. The Lord can"t be expected to let those prosper that forget Him. What mercy would it be to you if He did let you prosper by setting snares all church- time, as you were last Sunday, instead of going to church?"
"I say, Paul Tregarva, I"ve told you my mind about that afore. If I don"t do what I knows to be right and good already, there ain"t no use in me a d.a.m.ning myself all the deeper by going to church to hear more."
"G.o.d help you!" quoth poor Paul.
"Now, I say," quoth Crawy, with the air of a man who took the whole thing as a matter of course, no more to be repined at than the rain and wind--"what be you a going to do with me this time? I do hope you won"t have me up to bench. "Tain"t a month now as I"m out o"
prizzum along o" they fir-toppings, and I should, you see--" with a look up and down and round at the gay hay-meadows, and the fleet water, and the soft gleaming clouds, which to Lancelot seemed most pathetic,--"I should like to ha" a spell o" fresh air, like, afore I goes in again."
Tregarva stood over him and looked down at him, like some huge stately bloodhound on a trembling mangy cur. "Good heavens!"
thought Lancelot, as his eye wandered from the sad steadfast dignity of the one, to the dogged helpless misery of the other--"can those two be really fellow-citizens? fellow-Christians?--even animals of the same species? Hard to believe!"
True, Lancelot; but to quote you against yourself, Bacon, or rather the instinct which taught Bacon, teaches you to discern the invisible common law under the deceitful phenomena of sense.
"I must have those night-lines, Crawy," quoth Tregarva, at length.
"Then I must starve. You might ever so well take away the dog.
They"re the life of me."
"They"re the death of you. Why don"t you go and work, instead of idling about, stealing trout?"
"Be you a laughing at a poor fellow in his trouble? Who"d gie me a day"s work, I"d like to know? It"s twenty year too late for that!"
Lancelot stood listening. Yes, that wretch, too, was a man and a brother--at least so books used to say. Time was, when he had looked on a poacher as a Pariah "hostem humani generis"--and only deplored that the law forbade him to shoot them down, like cats and otters; but he had begun to change his mind.
He had learnt, and learnt rightly, the self-indulgence, the danger, the cruelty, of indiscriminate alms. It looked well enough in theory, on paper. "But--but--but," thought Lancelot, "in practice, one can"t help feeling a little of that un-economic feeling called pity. No doubt the fellow has committed an unpardonable sin in daring to come into the world when there was no call for him; one used to think, certainly, that children"s opinions were not consulted on such points before they were born, and that therefore it might be hard to visit the sins of the fathers on the children, even though the labour-market were a little overstocked--"mais nous avons change tout cela," like M. Jourdain"s doctors. No doubt, too, the fellow might have got work if he had chosen--in Kamschatka or the Cannibal Islands; for the political economists have proved, beyond a doubt, that there is work somewhere or other for every one who chooses to work. But as, unfortunately, society has neglected to inform him of the state of the Cannibal Island labour-market, or to pay his pa.s.sage thither when informed thereof, he has had to choose in the somewhat limited labour-field of the Whitford Priors"
union, whose workhouse is already every winter filled with abler- bodied men than he, between starvation--and this--. Well, as for employing him, one would have thought that there was a little work waiting to be done in those five miles of heather and snipe-bog, which I used to tramp over last winter--but those, it seems, are still on the "margin of cultivation," and not a remunerative investment--that is, to capitalists. I wonder if any one had made Crawy a present of ten acres of them when he came of age, and commanded him to till that or be hanged, whether he would not have found it a profitable investment? But bygones are bygones, and there he is, and the moors, thanks to the rights of property--in this case the rights of the dog in the manger--belong to poor old Lavington--that is, the game and timber on them; and neither Crawy nor any one else can touch them. What can I do for him? Convert him? to what? For the next life, even Tregarva"s talisman seems to fail. And for this life--perhaps if he had had a few more practical proofs of a divine justice and government--that "kingdom of heaven"
of which Luke talks, in the sensible bodily matters which he does appreciate, he might not be so unwilling to trust to it for the invisible spiritual matters which he does not appreciate. At all events, one has but one chance of winning him, and that is, through those five senses which he has left. What if he does spend the money in gross animal enjoyment? What will the amount of it be, compared with the animal enjoyments which my station allows me daily without reproach! A little more bacon--a little more beer--a little more tobacco; at all events they will be more important to him than a pair of new boots or an extra box of cigars to me."--And Lancelot put his hand in his pocket, and pulled out a sovereign. No doubt he was a great goose; but if you can answer his arguments, reader, I cannot.
"Look here--what are your night-lines worth?"
"A matter of seven shilling; ain"t they now, Paul Tregarva?"
"I should suppose they are."
"Then do you give me the lines, one and all, and there"s a sovereign for you.--No, I can"t trust you with it all at once. I"ll give it to Tregarva, and he shall allow you four shillings a week as long as it lasts, if you"ll promise to keep off Squire Lavington"s river."
It was pathetic, and yet disgusting, to see the abject joy of the poor creature. "Well," thought Lancelot, "if he deserves to be wretched, so do I--why, therefore, if we are one as bad as the other, should I not make his wretchedness a little less for the time being?"
"I waint come a-near the water. You trust me--I minds them as is kind to me"--and a thought seemed suddenly to lighten up his dull intelligence.
"I say, Paul, hark you here. I see that Bantam into D * * * t"other day."
"What! is he down already?"
"With a dog-cart; he and another of his pals; and I see "em take out a silk flue, I did. So, says I, you maunt be trying that ere along o" the Whitford trout; they kepers is out o" nights so sure as the moon."
"You didn"t know that. Lying again!"
"No, but I sayed it in course. I didn"t want they a-robbing here; so I think they worked mainly up Squire Vaurien"s water."
"I wish I"d caught them here," quoth Tregarva, grimly enough; "though I don"t think they came, or I should have seen the track on the banks."
"But he sayed like, as how he should be down here again about pheasant shooting."
"Trust him for it. Let us know, now, if you see him."
"And that I will, too. I wouldn"t save a feather for that "ere old rascal, Harry. If the devil don"t have he, I don"t see no use in keeping no devil. But I minds them as has mercy on me, though my name is Crawy. Ay," he added, bitterly, ""tain"t so many kind turns as I gets in this life, that I can afford to forget e"er a one."
And he sneaked off, with the deaf dog at his heels.
"How did that fellow get his name, Tregarva?"
"Oh, most of them have nicknames round here. Some of them hardly know their own real names, sir." ("A sure sign of low civilisation," thought Lancelot.) "But he got his a foolish way; and yet it was the ruin of him. When he was a boy of fifteen, he got miching away in church-time, as boys will, and took off his clothes to get in somewhere here in this very river, groping in the banks after craw-fish; and as the devil--for I can think no less-- would have it, a big one catches hold of him by the fingers with one claw, and a root with the other, and holds him there till Squire Lavington comes out to take his walk after church, and there he caught the boy, and gave him a thrashing there and then, naked as he stood. And the story got wind, and all the chaps round called him Crawy ever afterwards, and the poor fellow got quite reckless from that day, and never looked any one in the face again; and being ashamed of himself, you see, sir, was never ashamed of anything else--and there he is. That dog"s his only friend, and gets a livelihood for them both. It"s growing old now; and when it dies, he"ll starve."
"Well--the world has no right to blame him for not doing his duty, till it has done its own by him a little better."
"But the world will, sir, because it hates its duty, and cries all day long, like Cain, "Am I my brother"s keeper?""
"Do you think it knows its duty? I have found it easy enough to see that something is diseased, Tregarva; but to find the medicine first, and to administer it afterwards, is a very different matter."
"Well--I suppose the world will never be mended till the day of judgment."
"In plain English, not mended till it is destroyed. Hopeful for the poor world! I should fancy, if I believed that, that the devil in the old history--which you believe--had had the best of it with a vengeance, when he brought sin into the world, and ruined it. I dare not believe that. How dare you, who say that G.o.d sent His Son into the world to defeat the devil?"
Tregarva was silent a while.
"Learning and the Gospel together ought to do something, sir, towards mending it. One would think so. But the prophecies are against that."