"A month, your honour!" I cried in dismay. "I never could stop in this country a month. Why, a week of it would be enough to drive me out of my mind almost."
"You will stay as long as I please, Llewellyn. That second guinea, which you pouched so promptly, is to enable you to come to me, by day or by night, on the very moment you see anything worth reporting. You are afraid of the dogs? Yes, all rogues are. Here, take this whistle. They are trained to obey it—they will crouch and fawn to you when you blow it." He gave me a few more minute instructions, and then showed me out by a little side-door; and all the way back such a weight was upon me, and continual presence of strange black eyes, and dread of some hovering danger, that I answered the driver to never a word, nor cared for any of his wondrous stories about the naked people (whose huts we beheld in a valley below us); nay, not even—though truly needing it, and to my own great amazement—could I manage a drop of my pittance of rum. So the driver got it after all, or at least whatever remained of it, while I wished myself back at Old Newton Nottage, and seemed to be wrapped in an evil dream. Both horse and driver, however, found themselves not only thankful, but light-hearted, at getting away from Nympton Moor. Jack even sang a song when five miles off, and in his clumsy way rallied me. But finding this useless, he said that it was no more than he had expected; because it was known that it always befell every man who forgot his baptism, and got into dealings with Parson Chowne.
[CHAPTER XXX.]
ON DUTY.
There are many people who cannot enter into my meaning altogether. This I have felt so often that now I may have given utterance to it once or possibly twice before. If so, you will find me consistent wholly, and quite prepared to abide by it. In all substantial things I am clearer than the noon-day sun itself; and, to the very utmost farthing, righteous and unimpeachable. Money I look at, now and then, when it comes across me; and I like it well enough for the sake of the things it goes for. But as for committing an action below the honour of my family and ancestors (who never tuned their harps for less than a mark a-night), also, and best of all, my own conscience—a power that thumps all night like a ghost if I have not strictly humoured it,—for me to talk of such things seems almost to degrade the whole of them.
Therefore, if any one dreams, in his folly, that I would play the spy upon that great house over the river, I have no more to say, except that he is not worthy to read my tale. I regard him with contempt, and loathe him for his vile insinuations. Such a man is only fit to take the place of a spy himself, and earn perhaps something worth talking of, if his interest let him talk of it. For taking friendly observation of Narnton Court, for its inmates' sake, I was to have just five shillings a-week!
It became my duty now to attend to the getting out of the limestone; and I fetched it up with a swing that shook every leaf of the Rose of Devon. Fuzzy attempted to govern me; but I let him know that I would not have it, and never knocked under to any man. And if Parson Chowne had come alongside, I would have said the same to him.
Nevertheless, as an honest man, I took good care to earn my money, though less than the value of one good sewin, or at any rate of a fine turbot, each week. No craft of any sort went up or down that blessed river without my laying perspective on her, if there chanced to be light enough; or if she slipped along after dark—which is not worth while to do, on account of the shoals and windings—there was I, in our little dingy, not so far off as they might imagine. And I could answer for it, even with disdainful Chowne looking down through me, that nothing larger than a row-boat could have made for Narnton Court. But I have not said much of the river as yet; and who can understand me?
This river bends in graceful courtesies to the sweet land it is leaving, and the hills that hold its birth. Also with a vein of terror at the unknown sea before it, back it comes, when you grieve to think that it must have said "good-bye" for ever. Such a lovely winding river, with so many wilful ways, silvery shallows, and deep, rich shadows, where the trees come down to drink; also, beautiful bright-green meadows, sloping to have a taste of it, and the pleaches of bright sand offered to satisfy the tide, and the dark points jutting out on purpose to protect it! Many rivers have I seen, nobler, grander, more determined, yet among them all not one that took and led my heart so.