Chapter VIII.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5760, 2 January 1897, Page 1

Chapter VIII.

THE CONSTABLE WHO NEVER HEARD OF DOGBERRY.

"A monstrous ungodly lot!" remarked Humphrey Dakin, the constable of Eyam, looking for approval toward Reuben Clegg, who sauntered up to the littlo crowd by the inn door as fche foreign procession with its muleteer-like attendants resumed its inarch, making for the Old Hall, which could be seen irom the village street among the half -stripped trees. "Way, everything seems ungodly to thee, Dakin, that thou canst not understand," said Clegg. " That's one for t' constable," said John Radford, the master of the Crown and Anchor, thrusting his big hands into the ample pockets of his long broidered vest. Radford was a burly fellow, with coarse features and a coarser laugh. He rolled in his gait and gurgled in his speech. Ho forced his good humour. It was his business to bo mirthful— so he thought, at least.

The bystanders laughed at his observation from sheer goodwill. They didn't love Clegg any more than they loved the constable; the first was something of a mystery to them, and the second was ostentatious in his office, an exaggerated imitation of the magisterial manner of Sir George Fanshawe Talbot. They remembered that the constable had once upon a time been wont to call Clegg ungodly, which Clegg had taken a subtie opportunity of resenting without seeming to do so. There had been a friendly wrestling match on the Green at the Feast, and Clegg, in a bout with Dakin, had flung him somewhat viciously, to the laming of the constable for half a year.

" Well, come, Master Reuben," said the constable, "if I say a thing's ungodly, ifs in a promiscuous way and moun'fc be taken as a matter of rebuke, though you do give forth opinions out of the common when the Catechism is considered, and such."

" There's no need to go far out of what thou calls the common to puzzle thee, old Dogberry," Clegg replied. " Why ' old Dogberry '?" said Dakin, pursing his lips and puffing out his buttoned cloak.

" Because thou'rt such a Solon, Dakin ; and Dogberry was a Avise constable who knew Ms office and was as pretty a piece of flesh as any in Messina, and comprehended the law, mark you."

" I never heard of the fellow," Dakin replied, " and I suspect thou'rt laughing at me in thy sleeve ; an' if thou art, beware if one day the laugh doth nor come to my turn, in. the course of Nature.

" I shall remember," Clegg replied ; and the bystanders winked knowingly one to the other as much as to say, " There will be things worth seeing when that comes about," little dreaming how soon the contable's turn might come.

"The law's not to be ridiculed contumaciously," said the constable, glaring upon the crowd. "And a constable's a constable, mark yon, whether his name be Dakin or Dogberry — a fellow that I say is unknown to me, and is of no account in the Hundred of the Peak, where there's no such, place as Messina, and nothing like it."

" Ho, ho ! Ha, ha !" gasped Radford, who felt that it was time to get a .laugh into the conversation. His guffaw met no response from the crowd.

" Whether they, be ungodly or no, Master Constable," said Clegg, '"I cannot say, but I agree with you in the remark that yonder strangers 'are a queer lot."

Then turning to Jacob Vicars, the tailor, he asked, "Marked you the woman with the shining robes, something after the Queen of Sheba."

"Indeed, and I did," replied Vicars, in mild voice and with deferential manner. He was thin and under the medium height, his face cleanly shaven, his hair oiled and curly, his costume a modification of the Cromwellian and the Royalist, a compromise to suit the tastes of his customers. He was the only tailor for miles round, and he had of late become a person of importance in the village, for ho had been employed by more than one visitor to the Old Hall. Once in two or three years he had been in the habit of receiving patterns and complete outfits all the way from the capital; recently he had given out that this would be an annual custom.

"And the gipsy took my attention also," said the constable, comforted somewhat by Clegg's endorsement of his opinion of the foreigners. "And when you came up we were sayin' that she might have been the Jezebel' of Scripture herself if she hadn't been sb much like what they call the Scarlet Lady of Rome."

" 1 see you desire to comprehend her," said Clegg, with jusfc the flicker of a cynical smile at the corners of his sensitive lips.

"No, Master Clegg, I had no thought of it. God forbid she should come into my hands ! An' if I had the locking of her up in the round-house I'd expect her to vanish through the key-hole, for I misdoubt me she's no better than a witch, with hair as black as a crow, and eyes that are full of tho Evil One, and such ! "

"Nonsense, Dakin; nonsense, neighbours," Clegg replied, addressing all the bystanders. "If I said the strangers seemed a queer lot, I had.no meaning of such rank disparagement as the constable. Yonder woman, look you, come 3 from a land where the sun always shines, aud the common people speak poetry better than the songs of Jasper, the minstrel of Hallamshire; it's natural to them. And the village children, in their country, play better music than Eyam, with its psalters and its sackbuts and viols, makes on Sundays iv the church. I've been speaking with Sir George. They are Italians, he tells me, come to paint the Old Hall and fill ifc with pictures of what you call angels and what poets call gods and goddesses ; so that yonder house of Chatsworfch, iv the valley, and all old Bess of Hardwick's fanciful architecture and decoration shall bo eclipsed, as the sun . eclipses the moon, by tho Staftbrd-Bradshaws."

The constable, Radford, Vicars and the rest looked at each other with bewildered and enquiring glances.

Theyknewnothingof gods and goddesses. One God they knew, and no other. The Rector took care, so far as he was concerned, they should not forget Him, and his ejected contemporary, who still lived in the village to supplement his worthy brother's endeavours.

To most of the company Clegg's speech sounded Papistical; but the master of the Winship Mine was known not to favour any outward and visible sign of faith, and he held strangely unorthodox, not to say atheistical opinions of the future life. "Man makes his own heaven and hell upon earth," was one of his mottoes. Furthermore, he had declared that neither the Presbyterians, the Independents, the Catholics, nor any other professional gospellers had any patent for saving souls. They had all at one time or another heard him say these things, and they felt that if there was anything occult or unholy, schismatic or treasonable going on at the Old Hall that was to be exemplified in Pagan pictures or otherwise, it was Lady Stafford who would be to blame.

" What Master Bradshaw could have been thinkin' about to espouse the woman, Anne Stafford, is a marvel to me," said Joshua Longstaffe, the cobbler-politician of the village, voicing the thought that was passing through the minds of most of the by-standers.

" You've found your tongue at last, eh, Joshue ? " said Clegg. " I've been thinking, Reuben. lam not willing, thou seest, to have thee carry off the iiame of 'Old Thoughtful' without a contest." "No need to think much to understand yonder marriage, and nobody does ; but it's one thing to think in Eyam, and another to say what you think." " It's cost many a better man than thou hishead, Reuben Clegg," said the constable, without his usual circumlocutory flourish. " Lady Stafford was possessed of a quarter of a million sterling coin of the •realm — — " " And the devil to boot," remarked the cobbler. "Which is enough to make even the devil himself welcome in some households," said Clegg; "and Bradshaw's Presbyterianism wasn't strong enough to resist what you call the other, and at that price. Besides, and mark you this, if the man loved the woman, what in the name of all you folk hold sacred does it matter to him, whether she believes the Mother of God to be a more important partner in the heavenly partnership than the Son " " Blasphemy !" exclaimed Long3taffe. " No. Love !" retorted Clegg ; " the love that Nature, as you call God, has planted in the human heart, that the world might be worth man's living in." " Profanation !" said Longstaffe. " Friends, neighbours!" exclaimed Vicars, "all this is beside the mark. What's it got to do with what we was talking of, the travellers to the Old Hall ?" " Ay, that's the point," said Radford. " A queer lot, said you, Master Constable ? I never see aught like them out of a Morris dance, and I'd be sorry to meet 'era beyond the gates on a dark night."

"Hello!" squeaked the tailor. "Master Radford's serious."

"Damnation! A man can't be always bursting of his sides with laughter," the landlord replied, scowling at Vicars, who sidled up to the constable.

" Let Radford alone," said Clegg. "He is not so wise as he looks, but he's handsomer than the Queen of Sheba yonder would think him."

The crowd sniggered at this, and the constable said a man never knew how to take Clegg.