Yeast: a Problem Part 4

went on old Harry, 'and see if I don't nab him. It won't lay long under the plantation afore he picks it up. You mind to snare me a hare to-night, now!'

'I'll do no such thing, nor help to bring fake accusations against any man!'

'False accusations!' answered Harry, in his cringing way. 'Look at that now, for a keeper to say! Why, if he don't happen to have a snare just there, he has somewhere else, you know. Eh? Ain't old Harry right now, eh?'

'Maybe.'

'There, don't say I don't know nothing then. Eh? What matter who put the snare down, or the hare in, perwided he takes it up, man?

If 'twas his'n he'd be all the better pleased. The most notoriousest poacher as walks unhung!' And old Harry lifted up his crooked hands in pious indignation.

'I'll have no more gamekeeping, Harry. What with hunting down Christians as if they were vermin, all night, and being cursed by the squire all day, I'd sooner be a sheriff's runner, or a negro slave.'

'Ay, ay! that's the way the young dogs always bark afore they're broke in, and gets to like it, as the eels does skinning. Haven't I bounced pretty near out of my skin many a time afore now, on this here very bridge, with "Harry, jump in, you stupid hound!" and "Harry, get out, you one-eyed tailor!" And then, if one of the gentlemen lost a fish with their clumsiness--Oh, Father! to hear 'em let out at me and my landing-net, and curse fit to fright the devil!

Dash their sarcy tongues! Eh! Don't old Harry know their ways?

Don't he know 'em, now?'

'Ay,' said the young man, bitterly. 'We break the dogs, and we load the guns, and we find the game, and mark the game,--and then they call themselves sportsmen; we choose the flies, and we bait the spinning-hooks, and we show them where the fish lie, and then when they've hooked them, they can't get them out without us and the spoonnet; and then they go home to the ladies and boast of the lot of fish they killed--and who thinks of the keeper?'

'Oh! ah! Then don't say old Harry knows nothing, then. How nicely, now, you and I might get a living off this 'ere manor, if the landlords was served like the French ones was. Eh, Paul?' chuckled old Harry. 'Wouldn't we pay our taxes with pheasants and grayling, that's all, eh? Ain't old Harry right now, eh?'

The old fox was fis.h.i.+ng for an a.s.sent, not for its own sake, for he was a fierce Tory, and would have stood up to be shot at any day, not only for his master's sake, but for the sake of a single pheasant of his master's; but he hated Tregarva for many reasons, and was daily on the watch to entrap him on some of his peculiar points, whereof he had, as we shall find, a good many.

What would have been Tregarva's answer, I cannot tell; but Lancelot, who had unintentionally overheard the greater part of the conversation, disliked being any longer a listener, and came close to them.

'Here's your gudgeons and minnows, sir, as you bespoke,' quoth Harry; 'and here's that paternoster as you gave me to rig up.

Beautiful minnows, sir, white as a silver spoon.--They're the ones now, ain't they, sir, eh?'

'They'll do!'

'Well, then, don't say old Harry don't know nothing, that's all, eh?' and the old fellow toddled off, peering and twisting his head about like a starling.

'An odd old fellow that, Tregarva,' said Lancelot.

'Very, sir, considering who made him,' answered the Cornishman, touching his hat, and then thrusting his nose deeper than ever into the eel-basket.

'Beautiful stream this,' said Lancelot, who had a continual longing- -right or wrong--to chat with his inferiors; and was proportionately sulky and reserved to his superiors.

'Beautiful enough, sir,' said the keeper, with an emphasis on the first word.

'Why, has it any other fault?'

'Not so wholesome as pretty, sir.'

'What harm does it do?'

'Fever, and ague, and rheumatism, sir.'

'Where?' asked Lancelot, a little amused by the man's laconic answers.

'Wherever the white fog spreads, sir.'

'Where's that?'

'Everywhere, sir.'

'And when?'

'Always, sir.'

Lancelot burst out laughing. The man looked up at him slowly and seriously.

'You wouldn't laugh, sir, if you'd seen much of the inside of these cottages round.'

'Really,' said Lancelot, 'I was only laughing at our making such very short work of such a long and serious story. Do you mean that the unhealthiness of this country is wholly caused by the river?'

'No, sir. The river-damps are G.o.d's sending; and so they are not too bad to bear. But there's more of man's sending, that is too bad to bear.'

'What do you mean?'

'Are men likely to be healthy when they are worse housed than a pig?'

'No.'

'And worse fed than a hound?'

'Good heavens! No!'

'Or packed together to sleep, like pilchards in a barrel?'

'But, my good fellow, do you mean that the labourers here are in that state?'

'It isn't far to walk, sir. Perhaps some day, when the May-fly is gone off, and the fish won't rise awhile, you could walk down and see. I beg your pardon, sir, though, for thinking of such a thing.

They are not places fit for gentlemen, that's certain.' There was a staid irony in his tone, which Lancelot felt.

'But the clergyman goes?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And Miss Honoria goes?'

'Yes, G.o.d Almighty bless her!'

'And do not they see that all goes right?'

The giant twisted his huge limbs, as if trying to avoid an answer, and yet not daring to do so.

'Do clergymen go about among the poor much, sir, at college, before they are ordained?'

Lancelot smiled, and shook his head.