John Durham raised his hand with a silencing gesture.
“Yes, he had, Sam!” he answered. “He had orders from his own brave soul and conscience. Yes,—I knew that! And, Sam!—let me tell you this!—if you once get that kind of orders you cannot—you dare not—disobey them!”
Sam looked faintly surprised and by no means convinced. He returned doggedly to the point.
“’Merriker ’adn’t no business to come in,” he said. “’Merriker’s got enough to do with her own affairs. Why, I knows a chap that went out to ’Merriker an’ got naturalised, so he shouldn’t ’ave to fight!—an’ he’s divorced his wife that’s over ’ere an’ ain’t done nothin’ to deserve it an’ he’s livin’ the life of a free Injun with a blanket an’ a tub, an’ as many wimin as he can take on! Catch ’im fightin’!”
Durham smiled.
“Well! I suppose he’s happy in his own way,” he said. “And after all, Sam, happiness is what every man is after. It’s a kind of fly-fishing—you think you’ve got something at the end of your line, but when you pull in you find nothing! But we go on fishing all our lives long. It often seems rather a useless business!”
He sighed and passed his hand through his grey hair. Sam looked at him sympathetically.
“It do, sir, it do!” he agreed. “And there’s worse troubles than either you or I ’ave ’ad to put up with. There’s a pal o’ mine in the village wot is stiff as a poker with rheumaticks an’ ’is wife’s gone off it in a ’sylum—yet he was as straight an’ smart as you make ’em, an’ she was the merriest lass alive once on a time! Some of us do get it ’ot from the Almighty! nor knows we the reason why! That’s wot beats me! If the Lord would be pleased to speak a bit an’ say, ‘Look ’ere, Sam, you’re a no-good anyway an’ once or twice you’ve been as drunk as a profiteer an’ I’m goin’ to punish ye for all ye’re worth!’ why then I’d answer ‘Quite right too!’—an’ suffer the worst willin’ an’ joyful—but when you ain’t done nothin’ as you knows on, an’ ye gits beat black an’ blue, it’s a bit perplexin’. Perplexin’s the word—that it is now!”
Durham sighed again, and watched his garrulous companion draw in the fishing-boat to shore and fasten it to the moss-green and rickety stump which served as a sort of anchorage near his cottage. He was beginning to find his favourite sport monotonous, and his rather wearied mind was stimulated by a sudden thrill of excitement when “Riverside Sam” went on slowly:
“There’s that little lady up yonder at the Manor frettin’ ’er ’art out an’ makin’ ’er eyes red with cryin’ on the quiet, an’ we all knows wot it’s for though ’tain’t our place to say wot we thinks. But you knows as well as I knows wot’s the trouble! Ah, he wor a fine-lookin’ lad!—there, don’t mind me, sir!—I’m sorry I spoke if it ’urts ye, onny I can’t abide to think o’ that pretty soul ’avin’ to marry the old clever chap with a pipe wot’s always ’angin’ round old Doctor Maynard—”