“I can’t help laughing at the conceit. Imagine me escorting this stiff and stony old Sir Roger through the streets of Leighstone, and introducing him to my relations and friends as my grandfather some six centuries removed. But the fancy sounds irreverent to one whom I doubt not was as loyal-hearted a gentleman as ever clove a Turk to the chine. Poor old Sir Roger! I must prevent Mattock making such constant use of his elbow. It is getting quite out of repair.”
“Who is Mattock, may I ask?”
“Mattock is a character in his way. He is the Leighstone grave-digger, and has been as long as I can remember. He claims a kind of fellowship with those he buries, and he has buried a whole generation of Leighstonites, till a contagious hump has risen on his back from the number of mounds he has raised. He is a cynic in his way, and can be as philosophic over a skull as Hamlet in the play. He has a wonderful respect, almost a superstitious regard, for Sir Roger. Whenever he strips for a burial, he commends his goods to the care of my ancestor, accompanied always by the same remark: ‘I wonder who laid thee i’ the airth? A weighty corpse thou, a warrant. A deep grave thine, old stone-beard. Well, lend’s your elbow, and here’s to ye, wherever ye may be.’ Mattock takes special care to fortify himself against possible contingencies with a dram. ‘Cold corpses,’ he says, ‘is unhealthy. They are apt to lie heavy on the stomick, if ye doant guard agin ’em; corpses doos. So doos oysters. A dram afore burial and another dram after keeps off the miasmys.’ Such is Mattock’s opinion, backed up by an experience of a quarter of a century. You are evidently a stranger in this neighborhood?”
“Yes, I was merely passing through. I am enjoying a walking tour, being a great walker. It is by far the best method of seeing a country. When in the course of my wanderings I come across an old tomb such as this, an old inscription, or anything at all that was wrought or writ by reverent hands centuries ago, and has survived through the changes of time, I am amply repaid for a day’s march. Doubly so in this instance, since it has been the fortunate means of bringing me in contact with one whose opinions I am happy to think run in many things parallel with my own. And now to step out of the past into the very vulgar present, I am staying at the ‘Black Bull.’ The ‘Black Bull,’ I am assured, is famous for his larder, so that, if you feel inclined to ripen the acquaintance begun by the grave of your ancestor, in the interior of the ‘Black Bull,’ Kenneth Goodal will consider that he has fallen on an exceptionally happy day.”
“Kenneth Goodal?” The name struck me as familiar; but I could not recollect at the moment where I had heard it before. I repeated it aloud.
“It sounds quite a romantic name, does it not? It was my absurd mother who insisted on the Kenneth, after a Scotch uncle of mine. For that matter I suppose it was she who also insisted on the Goodal. At least my father says so. But she is the sweetest of women to have her own way, Heaven bless her! Of course I had no voice in the matter at all, beyond the generic squeal of babyhood. Had I been consulted, I should have selected Jack, a jolly, rough-and-ready title. It carries a sort of slap-me-on-the-back sound with it. One is never surprised at a Jack getting into scrapes or getting out of them. But it would cause very considerable surprise to hear that a Kenneth had been caught in any wild enterprise. However, Kenneth I am, and Kenneth I must remain, as staid and respectable as a policeman on duty by very force of title.”
“Now I remember where I heard the name. There were traditions at Dr. Porteous’, at Kingsclere, of a Kenneth Goodal who had just left before I went there. But he can’t have been you.”
“No? Why not?”
“He was an awful scape-grace, they told me. He used to play all kinds of tricks on the masters, though as great a favorite with them as with the boys. He was a great mimic, and Dr. Porteous, who is as solemn as an undertaker at a rich man’s funeral, and as pompous as a parish beadle, surprised Kenneth Goodal one day, surrounded by a delighted crowd, listening with such rapt attention to a highly wrought discourse, after the doctor’s best manner, on the history and philosophy of Resurrection Pie, that it required the unmistakable ‘ahem!’ of the doctor at the close to announce to actor and audience the presence of the original. The doctor in the grand old-school manner congratulated the youthful Roscius on talents of whose existence he had been hitherto unaware, and hinted that a repetition of so successful a performance might encourage him to seek a wider field for so promising a pupil. And when the same Kenneth thrashed the Kingsclere Champion for beating one of the youngsters, bribing the policeman not to interfere until he had finished him, the doctor, who was a model of decorum, had him up before the whole college, and delivered an address that is not quite forgotten to this day; acknowledging the credit to the establishment of such a champion in their midst; a young gentleman who could mimic his superiors until his identity was lost, and pummel his inferiors until their identity was lost, was wasting his great natural gifts in so narrow an arena; and so on—all delivered in the doctor’s best Ciceronian style. It took a deputation of all the masters and all the boys together to beg the delinquent off a rustication or worse. In fact, the stories of him and his deeds are endless. How odd that you should have the same name!”
My new acquaintance laughed outright.