“Pearl Garnet were the name I ‘earʼd on, and that ainʼt a very common name, leastways to my experience. Now, could it ‘ave ‘appened by a haxident that her good fatherʼs name were Bull Garnet?”
Amy drew back, for Mr. Jupp, in his triumph and excitement, had laid down his pipe, and was stretching out his unpeeled crate of a hand, as if to take her by the shoulder, and shake the whole truth out of her. It was his fashion with Rachel, and he quite forgot the difference. Mrs. Jupp cried, “Zakey, Zakey!” in a tone of strong remonstrance. But he was not abashed very seriously.
“It couldnʼt be now, could it, miss; it wornʼt in any way possible that Pearl Garnetʼs father was ever known by the name of Bull Garnet?”
“But indeed that is his name, Mr. Jupp. Why should you be so incredulous?”
“Oncredulous it be, miss; oncredulous, as I be a sinner. Rachey, whoʼd ha’ thought it? How things does come about, to be sure! Now please to tell me, miss—very careful, and not passinʼ lightly of anything; never you mind how small it seem—every word you knows about Pearl Garnet and that there—job there; and all you knows on her father too.”
“You must prove to me first, Mr. Jupp, that I have any right to do so.”
Issachar now was strongly excited, a condition most unusual with him, except when his wife rebelled, and that she had, years ago, ceased to do. He put his long black face, which was working so that the high cheek–bones almost shut the little eyes, quite close to Amyʼs little white ear, and whispered,
“If ye dunna tell me, yeʼll cry for it arl the life long, yeʼll never right the innocent, and yeʼll let the guilty ride over ye. I canna tell no more just now, but every word is gospel. I be no liar, miss, though I be rough enough, God knows. Supposes He made me so.”
Then Amy, trembling at his words, and thinking that she had hurt his feelings, put her soft little hand, for amends, into Zakeyʼs great black piece of hold, which looked like the bilge of a barge; and he wondered what to do with it, such a sort of chap as he was. He had never heard of kissing a hand, and even if he had it would scarcely be a timely offering, for he was having a chaw to compose himself—yet he knew that he ought not, in good manners, to let go her hand in a hurry; so what did he do but slip off a ring (one of those so–called galvanic rings, in which sailors and bargemen have wonderful faith as an antidote to rheumatics, tick dolorous, and the Caroline Morgan), and this ring he passed down two of her fingers, for all females do love trinkets so. Amy kept it carefully, and will put it on her chatelaine, if ever she institutes one.
Then, being convinced by his words and manner, she told him everything she knew about the Garnet family—their behaviour in and after the great misfortune; the strange seclusion of Pearl, and Mr. Garnetʼs illness. And then she recurred to some vague rumours which had preceded their settlement in the New Forest. To all this Issachar listened, without a word or a nod, but with his narrow forehead radiant with concentration, his lips screwed up in a serrate ring, after the manner of a medlar, and a series of winks so intensely sage that his barge might have turned a corner with a team of eight blind horses, and no nod wanted for one of them.