Perlycross: A Tale of the Western Hills

All three are simple, all old-fashioned, highly respectable, and wonderfully quiet – except when lashed up by some outrage – slightly contemptuous of one another, and decidedly so of the world outside the valley. From it they differ widely, and from one another visibly, in their facial expression, and figure, and walk; perceptibly also, in tone of feeling, habits of thought (when they think at all), voices, pet words, and proclivities of slouch. So that in these liberal times of free disintegration, each of them has nature's right to be a separate nation. And in proof of this, they beat their bounds, and often break each other's heads, upon Saint Clement's day.

"What an extraordinary sound I hear!" said Christie to her brother, as they turned to quit the hill. "Just listen a moment. I can't make it out. It sounds like a frightful lot of people in the distance."

"Well, I declare, I had forgotten all about it! How very stupid I am getting now!" cried Jemmy. "Why this is St. Clement's day, and no mistake!"

"Who is he? I never heard of him. And, what right has he got to make such a dreadful noise? He couldn't do it all by himself, Jemmy, even if he was on a gridiron."

"But he has got half of Perlycross to help him. Come here, Chris. Here is a nice dry hollow, away from the damp and the mist; and the noise below follows the curve of it."

Fox led his sister into a little scarp of flint, with brows of grey heather, and russet fern, quivering to the swell of funneled uproar. "Don't be afraid," he said, "it is only our own parish. There ought to be three of them; but this is only ours."

"Well, if your parish can make all that noise, what would all three of them do together? Why ten packs of hounds couldn't equal it!"

"You have hit the very point; you have a knack of doing that;" answered Jemmy, as he landed her upon a grey ledge. "We don't let the other two in, any more. The business had always been triennial. But the fighting grew more and more serious, till the stock of sticking-plaster could not stand it. Then a man of peaceful genius suggested that each parish should keep its own St. Clement's day, at intervals of three years as before; but in succession, instead of all three at once; so that no two could meet upon the frontier in force. A sad falling off in the spirit of the thing, and threatening to be better for the lawyers, than for us. Perlycombe had their time last year; and now Perlycross has to redress it. Our eastern boundary is down in that hollow; and Perlycombe stole forty feet from us last year. We are naturally making a little stir about it."

"If that is a little stir, what would be a big one? But I want to see them; and the fogginess of the trees in that direction stops me. I should say there must be at least five hundred people there. I can't stop up here, like a dummy."

"Very well. If you love a row so much. But there are no five hundred there, because it is more than thirty miles round this parish, and the beaters start in two companies from Perle-Weir, one lot to the north and the other to the south, and they go round till they meet each other; somewhere at the back of Beaconhill. One churchwarden with each party, and the overseers divided, and the constables, and so on. The parson should be in the thickest of the fray; but I strictly forbade Mr. Penniloe, and told him to send Jakes as his deputy. Still I should not be surprised, if he turns up. He is hot upon the rights of his parish. Come round this way; there is no fear of missing them, any more than a pack of hounds in full cry."

Christie was quite up for it. She loved a bit of skirmish, and thought it might fetch her brother's spirits up again. So they turned the steep declivity, and after many scratches, crept along a tangled path, leading down to a wooded gully.

Here they found themselves, rather short of breath, but in a position to command fair view of the crowd, full of action in the dingle and the bramble-land. How it could matter to any sane humanity, whether the parish-bound ran even half a league, on this side or on that of such a desert wild, only those who dwell on human nature can explain.

However so it was; and even Mr. Penniloe had flouted the doctors, and was here, clad in full academicals according to the ancient rule, flourishing his black-varnished stick, and full of unfeigned wrath at some gross crime.

"Thou shalt not move thy neighbour's land-mark" – he was shouting, instead of swallowing pills; and as many of his flock as heard his text, smote right and left in accordance with it.

"What on earth is it all about?" asked Christie, peeping through a holly bush, and flushing with excitement.

"All about that stone down in the hollow, where the water spurts so. Don't be afraid. They can't see us." The girl looked again, and wondered.

Some fifty yards before them was a sparkling little watercourse, elbowing its way in hurried zig-zag down the steep; but where it landed in the fern-bed with a toss of tresses, some ungodly power of men had heaved across its silver foot a hugeous boulder of the hill, rugged, bulky, beetle-browed – the "shameless stone" of Homer. And with such effect, that the rushing water, like a scared horse, leaped aside, and swerving far at the wrongful impulse, cut a felonious cantel out of the sacred parish of Perlycross!

Even this was not enough. To add insult to injury, some heartless wag had chiselled, on the lichened slab of boulder, a human profile in broad grin, out of whose wicked mouth came a scroll, inscribed in deep letters – "P. combe Parish."

The Perlycrucians stood before this incredible sight, dumb-foundered. Thus far they had footed it in a light and merry mood, laughing, chaffing, blowing horns, and rattling bladders, thumping trees and gates and cowsheds, bumping schoolboys against big posts, and daubing every corner of contention, from kettles of tar or sheep-wash, with a big P. +.

But now as this outrage burst upon them, through a tall sheaf of yellow flags, their indignation knew no bounds, parochial or human. As soon as they could believe their eyes, they lifted their hands, and closed their lips; while the boys, who were present in great force – for Jakes could not help the holiday – put their fingers in their mouths, and winked at one another. Five or six otter-hounds, from the kennels of a sporting yeoman, had joined the procession with much goodwill; but now they recognised the check, and sat upon their haunches, and set up a yell with one accord, in the dismay of human silence.

Not an oath was uttered, nor a ribald laugh; but presently all eyes were turned upon the pale Mr. Penniloe, who stood at the side of Mr. Farrant, the junior Churchwarden, who had brought him in his four-wheeled chaise, as far as wheels might venture. Few were more pained by this crime than the parson; he nodded under his College cap, and said —

"My friends, abate this nuisance."

But this was easier said than done, as they very soon discovered. Some called for crowbars, and some for gunpowder, and some for a team of horses; but nothing of the sort was near at hand. Then Sergeant Jakes, as an old campaigner, came to the rescue, and borrowing a hatchet (of which there were plenty among them), cut down a sapling oak, hard and tough and gnarled from want of nourishment; therewith at the obnoxious rock they rushed, butting, ramming, tugging, levering, with the big pole below, and a lot of smaller staves above, and men of every size and shape trampling, and kicking out, and exhorting one another. But the boulder had been fanged into its socket so exactly, probably more by luck than skill, that there it stuck, like a gigantic molar, and Perlycross laboured in vain at it.

"What muffs! As if they could do it, like that! Penniloe ought to know better; why the pressure is all the wrong way. But of course he is an Oxford man. Chris, you stay here, till I come back. Cambridge v. Oxford, any day, when it comes to a question of engineering."

Speaking too lightly, he leaped in like manner into the yellow-rib'd breast of the steep; while Christie communed with herself, like this.

"Oh, what a pity he left St. John's! He must have been senior-wrangler, if he had stayed on, instead of those horrible hospitals. And people would have thought so much more of him. But perhaps he would not have looked so bright; and he does more good in this line. Though nobody seems to thank him much. It would be ever so much better for him, and he would be valued more, if he did ever so much less good. But I like the look of Mr. Penniloe."

The man who should have been senior-wrangler – as every man ever yet sent to Cambridge should have been, if justice had been done him – went in a style of the purest mathematics along the conic sections of the very noble Hagdon. The people in the gully shouted to him, for a single slip would have brought him down upon their hats; but he kept his breath for the benefit of his legs, and his nerves were as sound as an oyster's, before its pearly tears begin. Christie watched him without fear; she had known the construction of his legs, from the days of balusters and rocking-horses.

"Give me up a good pole – not too heavy – you see how I have got to throw my weight; but a bit of good stuff with an elbow to it."

Thus spake Jemmy, and the others did their best. He stuck his heel and footside into a soft place he had found, and let the ledge of harder stuff overlap his boot-vamps, then he took the springy spar of ash which some one had handed up to him, for he stood about twelve feet above them, and getting good purchase against a scrag of flint, brought the convexity of his pole to bear on the topmost jag of boulder.

"Slew away as high as you can reach," he cried; "but don't touch it anywhere near the bottom." As they all put their weights to it, the rock began to sway, and with a heavy groan lurched sideways.

"Stand clear!" cried Jemmy, as the whole bunk swang, with the pillar of water helping it, and then settled grandly back into the other niche, with the volume of the fall leaping generously into the parish of Perlycombe.

"Hurrah!" shouted everybody young enough to shout; while the elder men leant upon their staves, and thanked the Lord. Not less than forty feet was recovered, and another forty added from the substance of big rogues. "'Tis the finest thing done ever since I were a boy," said the oldest man present, as he wiped his dripping face. "Measter Vox, come down, and shake hands round. Us will never believe any harm of thee no more."

This reasoning was rather of the heart than head; but it held good all round, as it generally does. And now as the sound of the water went away into its proper course, with the joy of the just pursuing it, Miss Fox, who had watched all proceedings from the ridge, could hear how the current of public opinion was diverted and rushing in her brother's favour. So she pinned up a torn skirt, and smoothed out another, and putting back her bright hair, tripped down the wooded slope, and stood with a charming blush before them. The labourers touched their hats, and the farmers lifted theirs, and every one tried to look his best; for Perlycross being a poetical parish is always very wide awake to beauty.

"My sister!" explained Dr. Fox with just pride. "My sister, Mr. Penniloe! My sister, Mr. Farrant! Sergeant Jakes, my sister! Miss Christie Fox will be glad to know you all."

"And I am sure that everybody will be glad to know Miss Fox," said the Parson, coming forward with his soft sweet smile. "At any time she would be welcome; but now she is come at the time of all times. Behold what your brother has done, Miss Fox! That stream is the parish boundary."

"He maketh the river to run in dry places;" cried Channing the clerk, who had been pulling at his keg, "and lo, he hath taken away the reproach of his people, Israel!"

"Mr. Channing! Fie, Mr. Channing!" began the representative of the upper desk, and then suddenly checked himself, lest he should put the old man to shame, before the children of the parish.

"By the by," said Mr. Farrant, coming in to fill the pause; "Dr. Fox is the likeliest person to tell us what this curious implement is. It looks like a surgical instrument of some sort. We found it, Doctor, in this same watercourse, about a furlong further down, where the Blackmarsh lane goes through it. We were putting our parish-mark on the old tree that overhangs a deep hole, when this young gent who is uncommon spry – I wish you luck of him, I'm sure, Mr. Penniloe – there he spies it, and in he goes, like an otter, and out with it, before he could get wet, almost."

"Not likely I was going to leave it there," young Peckover interrupted; "I thought it was a clot of eels, or a pair of gloves, or something. Though of course a glove would float, when you come to think of it. Perhaps the young lady knows – she looks so clever."

"Hopper, no cheek!" Dr. Fox spoke sharply, for the youth was staring at his sister. "Mr. Farrant, I can't tell you what it is; for I never saw a surgical instrument like it. I should say it was more like a blacksmith's, or perhaps a turner's tool; though not at all a common one, in either business. Is Crang here, or one of his apprentices?"

"No, sir. Joe is at home to-day – got a heavy job," answered someone in the crowd; "and the two prentices be gone with t'other lot of us."

"I'll tell you what I'll do;" volunteered the Hopper, who was fuming at the slowness of parochial demarcation, for he would have been at the back of Beacon Hill by this time; "I'll go straight with it to Susscot, and be back again before these old codgers have done a brace of meadows. It is frightful cold work to stand about like this. I found it, and I'll find out what it is too."

The tool was handed to him, and he set off, like a chamois, in a straight line westward; while two or three farmers, who had suffered already from his steeplechase tracks, would have sent a brief word after him, but for the parson's presence. Fox, who was amused with this specimen of his county, ran part way up the hill to watch his course, and then beckoned to his sister, to return to the Old Barn by the footpath along the foot of Hagdon.

They had scarcely finished dinner, which they had to take in haste, by reason of the shortness of the days, and their intended visit to Walderscourt, when Joe Crang the blacksmith appeared in the yard, pulling his hat off, and putting it on again, and wiping his face with a tongs-swab.

Fox saw that the man was in a state of much excitement, and made him come in, while Miss Christie went upstairs, to prepare for their drive to Walderscourt.

"What's the matter, Crang? Take a chair there. You needn't be nervous," said the Doctor kindly; "I have no grudge against you for saying what you believe. It has done me a world of harm, no doubt; but it's no fault of yours. It's only my bad luck, that some fellow very like me, and also a Jemmy, should have been in that black job that night. But I wish you had just shown a little more pluck, as I told you the other day. If you had just gone round the horse and looked; or even sung out – 'Is that you, Doctor?' why you might have saved me from – from knowing so much about my friends."

"Oh sir, 'twaz an awesome night! But what I be come for to say, sir, is just this. I absolve 'e, sir; I absolve 'e, Measter Vox. If that be the right word, – and a' cometh from the Baible, I absolve 'e, Measter Vox."

"Absolve me from what, Crang? I have done nothing. You mean, I suppose, that you acquit me?"

"Well now, you would never believe – but that's the very word of discoorse that have been sticking in my throat all the way from the ford. You never done it, sir, – not you. You never done it, sir! You may put me on my oath."

"But you have been very much upon your oath, ever since it happened, that I was the man, and no other man, that did the whole of it, Joseph Crang. And the ale you have had on the strength of it!"