“And so it do—darn’d small;” looking at me as if he thought the epithet suited me as much as the potatoes.
When Matthew had pneumonia and lay in extremis, his friends came round to console him with the assurance that he would die at the turn of the tide.
“What time, Matthew, do ’en begin to turn?” they said.
“At seven o’clock, ezzactly,” whispered the inveterate old humorist. And it was not till the next morning they discovered that he had defrauded them of one whole hour of pleasant anticipation.
In his sober moments Matthew was a brilliant story-teller (in both senses, I fear); though his brilliancy now is limited to occasional flashes of wit. The following is one of his best reminiscences. I have selected it out of many because I have since discovered that it was founded on fact. Not only was it authenticated by a clergyman in whose neighbourhood it was enacted, but it was told and re-told by one of the actors in the tragedy, though he had passed to a land from which no testimony is available long before I heard the story at second-hand from Matthew.
“’Twas in December, 1824, that it happened. So Joseph told I.” (This, at any rate, was Matthew’s recognised formula.) “’Tis true he were a great liar, and I didn’t take no count o’ the main o’ his tales; for he’d tell you most anything, he would; ’specially if he see’d the price of a glass of fourpenny for tellin’ it. But, in proof ’tis true, they’d tell it to the childer at night time, when they was obstrepulous and wouldn’t go to bed—just for a joke like, to fright ’em to sleep.
“’Twas in December, 1824; and not likely he were to forget it. For ’twas the year of the great gale (the ‘Outrage’ they calls it hereabouts), when the sea broke clean over Rudge and washed away th’ old church, all but the chancel. Joseph never took kindly-like to the new church they built for ’en higher up i’ the valley, out o’ reach o’ the sea. ’Twas too spick and span, he said, to suit he—all white and glitterin’ like chalk—though ’twere built of the best Portland stone, and a sight prettier to my thinkin’ than the tumble down old barn that’s all that’s left o’ th’ old un. But the visitors and gentry, they takes after Joseph, and for one what goes to see the new church there’s hundreds ’ll bring their vittles and sit and peant th’ old ’un—studyin’ all the tombstones, and what’s writ on ’em—mostly shipwrecks it be, for I doubt if there’s half-a-dozen stones in th’ old grave-yard but what tells of someone or t’other who was drownded at sea. In that one gale of ’24 ’twas thousands that perished, and all that was found on ’em Joseph buried there, when the sea gived back her dead, and he could get at his grave-yard. Though, to be sure, nought was left but the chancel, so you could scarce say as how, poor souls, they got a decent buryin’.
“Anyhow ’twas in that very month, just arter the ‘Outrage,’ that one Price—a farmer he called hisself—was livin’ high up yonder among they hills that you can see faint-like in the distance, nigh agin they ricks. A bleak and dreary place it were at the best o’ times, and a job to get at it at all when a strong so’wester were blowin’. And most every November it do blow cruel strong along they high downs, wi’ no cover to speak on’t ’cept scraps of fuz and heather, and a small thorn tree, may be, now and agin, wi’ ’is branches all leanin’ to the nor’-east, as though ’twas an old man a holdin’ out his arms for shelter. And the road to Price’s farm were no better nor a sheep run. A godless man Price were, as you’d expect wi’ a man who lived so far from all we decent folks. And he never com’d nigh no church. Passon, he said, didn’t suit he, and he weren’t a goin’ to trapeze over hill and dale—not he—when chance ’twas he’d find no passon and no service at t’other end. And if passon went to he—as he did now and agin—he’d find the door shut in his face. And for vittles—not a bite nor a sup of anything did he offer ’en, though passon was a rare ’un at that kind of work. Sunday after Sunday he’d look in reg’lar nigh about dinner time, and savour by his nose, he would, where there was a chance for ’en of summat enticin’. Not but what ’twere bad for the childer where he did settle hisself, for ’twas little of the pudden was left for they when he’d a’ had his turn on’t.
“Howsomever, ’twas there Price lived, wi’ hisself for his company. So no wonder strange tales got abroad about ’m. ’Twas said, though Joseph never gived no heed to ’t, that three wives had entered his doors, and never one of ’em had come out agin—no, not for buryin’. And Joseph must have known on’t if so be they had, seein’ he were clerk and sexton and grave-digger, let alone the head o’ the choir. ’Twas thought that he’d buried ’em in another parish, more nigher to the house he lived in, and wi’ a better road ’long which to carry ’em. But, Lord save us! tweren’t nothin’ of the kind.
“One morning, early in December, ’twas nine o’ the clock, may be, or thereabouts—for Joseph had just been out to pen the sheep in the church-yard—a tall fine old genelman called at the door, and he knowed by his dress ’twere the Bishop. Not that he’d cast eyes on ’en before, for our youngsters are confirmed a way off; there baint enough of them to claim a Bishop for theirselves. But he knowed ’twere the Bishop, what wi’ his gaiters, fittin’ as though they’d grow’d to his legs, and his broad hat as shiny as if you’d smoothed it wi’ a flat iron.