Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/280

 24, 1860.] In return for this speech, the waggoner favoured him with a stare, followed by the exclamation:

“Oh, no! dang that!”

“Why, what’s the matter?” quoth Evan.

“You en’t goin’ to be off, for to leave me and Garge in the lurch there, with that ther’ young woman, in that ther’ pickle!” returned the waggoner.

Evan made an appeal to his reason, but finding that impregnable, he pulled out his scanty purse to guarantee his sincerity with an offer of pledge-money. The waggoner waived it aside. He wanted no money, he said.

“Look heer,” he went on; “if you’re for a start, I tells ye plain, I chucks that ther’ young woman int’ the road.”

Evan bade him not to be a brute.

“Nack and crop!” the waggoner doggedly ejaculated.

Very much surprised that a fellow who appeared sound at heart, should threaten to behave so basely, Evan asked an explanation: upon which the waggoner demanded to know what he had eyes for: and as this query failed to enlighten the youth, he let him understand that he was a man of family experience, and that it was easy to tell at a glance that the complaint the young woman laboured under was one common to the daughters of Eve. He added that, should an emergency arise, he, though a family man, would be useless: that he always vacated the premises while those incidental scenes were being enacted at home; and that for him and George Stokes to be left alone with the young woman, why, they would be of no more service to her than a couple of babies new-born themselves. He, for his part, he assured Evan, should take to his heels, and relinquish waggon, and horses, and all; while George probably would stand and gape; and the end of it would be, they would all be had up for murder. He diverged from the alarming prospect, by a renewal of the foregoing alternative to the gentleman who had constituted himself the young woman’s protector. If he parted company with them, they would immediately part company with the young woman, whose condition was evident.

“Why, couldn’t you tall that?” said the waggoner, as Evan, tingling at the ears, remained silent.

“I know nothing of such things,” he answered, hastily, like one hurt.

I have to repeat the statement, that he was a youth, and a modest one. He felt unaccountably, unreasonably, but horribly, ashamed. The thought of his actual position swamped the sickening disgust at tailordom. Worse, then, might happen to us in this extraordinary world! There was something more abhorrent than sitting with one’s legs crossed, publicly stitching, and scoffed at! He called vehemently to the waggoner to whip the horses, and hurry a-head into Fallowfield; but that worthy, whatever might be his dire alarms, had a regular pace, that was conscious of no spur: the reply of “All right!” satisfied him at least; and Evan’s chaste sighs for the appearance of an assistant petticoat round a turn of the road, were offered up duly, to the measure of the waggoner’s steps.

Suddenly the waggoner came to a halt, and said: “Blest if that Garge bain’t a snorin’ on his pins!”

Evan lingered by him with some curiosity, while the waggoner thumped his thigh to, “Yes he be! no he bain’t!” several times, in eager hesitation.

“It’s a fellow calling from the downs,” said Evan.

“Ay, so!” responded the waggoner. “Dang’d if I didn’t think ’twere that Garge of our’n. Hark awhile.”

At a repetition of the call, the waggoner stopped his team. After a few minutes, a man appeared panting on the bank above them, down which he ran precipitately, knocked against Evan, apologised with the little breath that remained to him, and then held his hand as to entreat a hearing. Evan thought him half-mad; the waggoner was about to imagine him the victim of a midnight assault. He undeceived them by requesting, in rather flowery terms, conveyance on the road and rest for his limbs. It being explained to him that the waggon was already occupied, he comforted himself aloud with the reflection that it was something to be on the road again for one who had been belated, lost, and wandering over the downs for the last six hours.

“Walcome to git in, when young woman gits out,” said the waggoner. “I’ll gi’ ye my sleep on t’Hillford.”

“Thanks, worthy friend,” returned the new comer. “The state of the case is this—I’m happy to take from humankind whatsoever I can get. If this gentleman will accept of my company, and my legs hold out, all will yet be well.”

Though he did not wear a petticoat, Evan was not sorry to have him. Next to the interposition of the gods, we pray for human fellowship when we are in a mess. So he mumbled politely, dropped with him a little to the rear, and they all stepped out to the crack of the waggoner’s whip.

“Rather a slow pace,” said Evan, feeling bound to converse.

“Six hours on the downs, sir, makes it extremely suitable to me,” rejoined the stranger.

“You lost your way?”

“I did, sir. Yes; one does not court those desolate regions wittingly. I am for life and society. The embraces of Diana do not agree with my constitution. My belief—I don’t know whether you have ever thought on the point—but I don’t hesitate to say I haven’t the slightest doubt Endymion was a madman! I go farther: I say this: that the farmer who trusted that young man with his muttons was quite as bad. And if classics there be who differ from me, and do not reserve all their sympathy for those hapless animals, I beg them to take six hours on the downs alone with the moon, and the last prospect of bread and cheese, and a chaste bed, seemingly utterly extinguished. I am cured of my romance. Of course, sir, when I say bread and cheese, I speak figuratively. Food is implied.”

Evan stole a glance at his companion.

“Besides, sir,” the other continued, with an