Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli (book recommendations website TXT) 📕

the head with a hammer once. That was a blow! I fell away that time. When I came to, master had stopped the blood with some fur off his hat. I had to go on with my work immediately; master said I should do my stint if I worked till twelve o’clock at night. Many’s the ash stick he has broken on my body; sometimes the weals remained on me for a-week; he cut my eyelid open once with a nutstick; cut a regular hole in it, and it bled all over the files I was working at. He has pulled my ears sometimes that I thought they must come off in his hand. But all this was a mere nothin to this here cut; that was serous; and if I hadn’t got thro’ that they do say there must have been a crowner’s quest; though I think that gammon, tor old Tugsford did for one of his prentices, and the body was never found. And now you ask me if I know Hatton? I should think I did!” And the lank, haggard youth laughed merrily, as if he had been recounting a series of the happiest adventures.

“But is there no redress for such iniquitous oppression?” said Morley, who had listened with astonishment to this complacent statement. “Is there no magistrate to apply to?”

“No no,” said the filer with an air of obvious pride, “we don’t have no magistrates at Wodgate. We’ve got a constable, and there was a prentice who coz his master laid it on, only with a seat rod, went over to Ramborough and got a warrant. He fetched the summons himself and giv it to the constable, but he never served it. That’s why they has a constable here.”

“I am sorry,” said Morley, “that I have affairs with such a wretch as this Hatton.”

“You’ll find him a wery hearty sort of man,” said the filer, “if he don’t hap to be in drink. He’s a little robustious then, but take him all in all for a master, you may go further and fare worse.

“What! this monster!”

“Lord bless you, it’s his way, that’s all, we be a queer set here; but he has his pints. Give him a lock to make, and you won’t have your box picked; he’s wery lib’ral too in the wittals. Never had horseflesh the whole time I was with him; they has nothin’ else at Tugsford’s; never had no sick cow except when meat was very dear. He always put his face agin stillborn calves; he used to say he liked his boys to have meat what was born alive and killed alive. By which token there never was any sheep what had bust in the head sold in our court. And then sometimes he would give us a treat of fish, when it had been four or five days in town and not sold. No, give the devil his due, say I. There never was no want for anything at meals with the Bishop, except time to eat them in.”

“And why do you call him the Bishop?”

“That’s his name and authority; for he’s the governor here over all of us. And it has always been so that Wodgate has been governed by a bishop; because as we have no church, we will have as good. And by this token that this day sen’night, the day my time was up, he married me to this here young lady. She is of the Baptist school religion, and wanted us to be tied by her clergyman, but all the lads that served their time with me were married by the Bishop, and many a more, and I saw no call to do no otherwise. So he sprinkled some salt over a gridiron, read ‘Our Father’ backwards, and wrote our name in a book: and we were spliced; but I didn’t do it rashly, did I, Suky, by the token that we had kept company for two years, and there isn’t a gal in all Wodgate what handles a file, like Sue.”

“And what is your name, my good fellow?”

“They call me Tummas, but I ayn’t got no second name; but now I am married I mean to take my wife’s, for she has been baptised, and so has got two.”

“Yes sir,” said the girl with the vacant face and the back like a grasshopper; “I be a reg’lar born Christian and my mother afore me, and that’s what few gals in the Yard can say. Thomas will take to it himself when work is slack; and he believes now in our Lord and Saviour Pontius Pilate who was crucified to save our sins; and in Moses, Goliath, and the rest of the Apostles.”

“Ah! me,” thought Morley, “and could not they spare one Missionary from Tahiti for their fellow countrymen at Wodgate!”

V

The summer twilight had faded into sweet night; the young and star-attended moon glittered like a sickle in the deep purple sky; of all the luminous host, Hesperus alone was visible; and a breeze, that bore the last embrace of the flowers by the sun, moved languidly and fitfully over the still and odorous earth.

The moonbeam fell upon the roof and garden of Gerard. It suffused the cottage with its brilliant light, except where the dark depth of the embowered porch defied its entry. All around the beds of flowers and herbs spread sparkling and defined. You could trace the minutest walk; almost distinguish every leaf. Now and then there came a breath, and the sweet-peas murmured in their sleep; or the roses rustled, as if they were afraid they were about to be roused from their lightsome dreams. Farther on the fruit-trees caught the splendour of the night; and looked like a troop of sultanas taking their gardened air, when the eye of man could not profane them, and laden with jewels. There were apples that rivalled rubies; pears of topaz tint: a whole paraphernalia of plums, some purple as