In the meantime the vicar had eaten a hurried luncheon of bread and cheese in the master's room, and leaving the Union walked quickly down to the church. He had barely time to put on his surplus and stole when the mournful procession came in sight; and with a sad heart he went to meet it, reading, of course, as he went the opening sentences of our beautiful burial service for two more victims of the epidemic—a young girl and a child from Gravel-pit Lane.
After the service, when he once more emerged from the vestry, he was followed by the old man in whose person were embodied the three offices of verger, sexton, and clerk—"Jimmy the clerk," as the parish dubbed him.
If anybody had asked me to point out a few of the "characters" which are to be found in every village as well as in Willowton, I think, without hesitation, I should have begun with Jimmy Greenacre. I do not know if I shall be able to show you dear old Jimmy just as I saw him, because his quaintness was a great deal made up of a whimsical twist of his funny old face, a touch of humour in the turn of his sentences, and an absurd habit of gabbling his information like an eager child who has been given a few minutes only to say his say—a habit partly the result of having only three or four teeth left in his head, and partly from a laudable desire to use the best and most appropriate words in conversation with those he was pleased to look upon as his betters.
In person he was rather inclined to be tall, spare, and sinewy; his hair was thick, and still dark in spite of his seventy-three years; and being an economical gentleman, he was not as intimately acquainted with the barber as the vicar would have liked, but his rugged-lined old face was clean shaven, and tanned to a deep mahogany. He walked with the slow, rather shuffling gait of the agricultural labourer, and stooped a little from the shoulders with the stoop that comes of hard work in early youth. Jimmy had been born and bred in Willowton, and he was destined to die there. In his humble way he was a perfect walking De Brett: he knew the family history of every man, woman, and child in the place, and that of their forebears for the last two generations or more—some people said his memory was far too good! But if they had only known it, they themselves had benefited oftentimes by that same memory. To the vicar he was invaluable. The late incumbent had died very suddenly, and his wife had followed him within a few days. They had no children, and but for old Jimmy, Mr. Rutland would have had to find out everything for himself. But Jimmy knew the ropes, and taught the new vicar to put his hands on them. "Jimmy is as good as a curate to me any day!" the vicar would say with a kindly hand on the old man's shoulder when he introduced him to any of his friends; and old Jimmy would slip away with a pleased chuckle and a modest, "No, no, master; but I does my best, and a carn't due no more—so I carn't." Nor could he.
It was due to this passion for genealogies on the part of the old man that he took such a lively interest in Geo Lummis, the "laziest booy," as he termed him in his own mind, in Willowton.
"That there chap harn't got a chance, that he harn't," he would tell the vicar. "His fayther was jist sich another, and his grandfa' afore him—poochin', good-fur-noethin's booth on 'em! messin' about all day a' the bridge, and creepin' out a' nights after the trout—ticklin' of 'em, yer mind, and layin' abed the best o' ther mornin' afterwards. This here booy—why, Mr. Morse, he took a likin' tew 'um, and had 'um up here teachin' of 'um all manner a' things. He set 'im tew a trade along av a carpenter in Walden; but he was sune back agen, an' dun no good at all! And here he be, herdin' along a' that scum Corkam, and talkin' all manner a' rubbidge along a' him. His mother's ter blame, I say. She knew well enow how it was with her husband, and here's she a-lettin' a' the booy go th' same way. But there, what can yew expect a' her when yew cum to recollect that her mother, Mary Anne, was—" But when Jimmy went into the next generation the vicar was apt to interrupt him, for he was an impetuous, hasty young man, and not so good a listener as the old man would have wished him to be.
But on this occasion Jimmy's words commanded attention.
"Look yew there sir!" he exclaimed in a hollow tone, grasping the vicar's arm, and pointing with a gnarled old finger that shook partly from age and partly from excitement—"look you there, sir! There go Mosus to strike th' rock. 'Must we find you water?' he say; and yer know what happened tew 'um, yer know, and so dew he—well!" and Jimmy threw out both hands with a gesture that implied that he, at least, would have no traffic with such evil doings.
Mr. Wilman and his following had just come over the common, and were bearing down again on the village, and the vicar was all eagerness to join them. It was tiresome of Jimmy to detain him just now, and Jimmy was as difficult to shake off as a terrier with a rat.
"You'll be thankful enough to drink the clear water when we get it, I'll be bound. And as for the means, it isn't for you or me either to criticise Mr. Wilman. God has given him apparently an unusual gift, and he is going to use it for our good. Be off with you and cut the grass, you old goose."