Stories of Comedy - - (best book club books of all time TXT) 📗

I've heard just one sensible word, and that was to recommend a cast-iron pulpit, in preference to a wooden 'un. As to a church-rate to repair th' owd steeple-house, why, my advice is to pull th' owd thing down, stick and stone, and mend your roads with it. It's a capital heap o' stone in it, that one must allow,—and your roads are pestilent bad. Down with the old daw-house, I say, and mend th' roads wi' 't, and set th' parson here up for a guide-post. Oh! it's a rare 'un he'd make; for he's always pointing th' way to the folks, but I never see that he moves one inch himself."

"Mr. Darbyshire," exclaimed the clergyman, in high resentment, "that is very uncivil in my presence, to say the least of it."

"Civil or uncivil," returned Johnny; "it's the truth, lad, and thou can take it just as thou likes. I did not come here to bandy compliments; so I may as well be hanged for an old sheep as for a lamb,—we'll not make two mouthfuls of a cherry; my advice is then to have a cast-iron pulpit, by all means, and while you are about it, a cast-iron parson, too. It will do just as well as our neighbor Diggory Dyson here, and a plaguy deal cheaper, for it will require neither tithes, glebe, Easter-dues, nor church-rates!"

Having delivered himself of this remarkable oration, to the great amusement of his fellow-parishioners, and the equal exasperation of the clergyman, Johnny ordered himself to be again hoisted into his cart, and rode home in great glory, boasting that he had knocked all the wind out of the parson, and if he got enough again to preach his sermon on Sunday, it would be all.

It was only on such occasions as these that Johnny Darbyshire ever appeared under the church roof. Once, on the occasion of the funeral of an old neighbor, which, for a wonder, he attended, he presented himself there, but with as little satisfaction to the clergyman, and less to himself.

He just marched into the church with his hat on, which, being removed by the clergyman's orders, Johnny declared that he had a good mind to walk out of that well of a place, and would do so only out of respect to his old neighbor. With looks of great wrath he seated himself at a good distance from the clergyman; and as this gentleman was proceeding, in none of the clearest tones, certainly, to read the appropriate service, Johnny suddenly shouted out, "Speak up, man, speak up! What art mumbling at there, man? We canna hear what thou says here!"

"Who is that?" demanded the clergyman, solemnly, and looking much as if he did not clearly perceive who it was. "Who is that who interrupts the service? I will not proceed till he be removed."

The beadle approached Johnny, and begged that he would withdraw.

"Oh!" said Johnny, aloud, so as to be heard through all the church, "I'll sit i' th' porch. I'd much rather. What's the use sitting here where one can hear nothing but a buzzing like a bee in a blossom?"

Johnny accordingly withdrew to the porch, where some of his neighbors, hurrying to him when the funeral was about to proceed from the church to the grave, said, "Mr. Darbyshire, what have you done? You'll as surely be put into th' spiritual court, as you're a living man. You'd better ax the parson's pardon, and as soon as you can."

Accordingly, as soon as the funeral was over, and the clergyman was about to withdraw, up marched Johnny to him, and said, "What, I reckon I've affronted thee with bidding thee speak up. But thou should speak up, man; thou should speak up, or what art perched up aloft there for. But, however, as you scollards are rayther testy, I know, in being taken up before folks, I mun beg thy pardon for 't'arno." [C]

[C] For what I know.

"O, Mr. Darbyshire," said the clergyman, with much dignity, "that will not do, I assure you. I cannot pass over such conduct in such a manner. I shall take another course with you."

"O, just as tha' woot. I've axed thy pardon, haven't I? and if that wunna do, why, thou mun please thysen!"

Johnny actually appeared very likely to get a proper castigation this time; but, however it was, he certainly escaped. The parishioners advised the clergyman to take no notice of the offence,—everybody, they said, knew Johnny, and if he called him into the spiritual court, he would be just as bold and saucy, and might raise a good deal of public scandal. The clergyman, who, unfortunately, was but like too many country clergymen of the time, addicted to a merry glass in the village public-house, thought perhaps that this was only too likely, and so the matter dropped.

For twenty years did Johnny Darbyshire thus give free scope to tongue and hand in his parish. He ruled paramount over wife, children, house, servants, parish, and everybody. He made work go on like the flying clouds of March; and at fair and market, at meeting and vestry, he had his fling and his banter at the expense of his neighbors, as if the world was all his own, and would never come to an end. But now came an event, arising, as so often is the case, out of the merest trifle, that more than all exhibited the indomitable stiffness and obstinacy of his character.

Johnny Darbyshire had some fine, rich meadow-land, on the banks of the river Derwent, where he took in cattle and horses to graze during the summer. Hither a gentleman had sent a favorite and valuable blood mare to run a few months with her foal. He had stipulated that the greatest care should be taken of both mare and foal, and that no one, on any pretence whatever, should mount the former. All this Johnny Darbyshire had most fully promised. "Nay, he was as fond of a good bit of horse-flesh as any man alive, and he would use mare and foal just as if they were his own."

This assurance, which sounded very well indeed, was kept by Johnny, as it proved, much more to the letter than the gentleman intended. To his great astonishment, it was not long before he one day saw Johnny Darbyshire come riding on a little shaggy horse down the village where he lived, leading the foal in a halter.

He hurried out to inquire the cause of this, too well auguring some sad mischief, when Johnny, shaking his head, said, "Ill luck, my friend, never comes alone; it's an old saying, that it never rains but it pours; and so it's been with me. T' other day I'd a son drowned, as fine a lad as ever walked in shoe-leather; and in hurrying to th' doctor, how should luck have it, but down comes th' mare with her foot in a hole, breaks her leg, and was obligated to be killed; and here's th' poor innocent foal. It's a bad job, a very bad job; but I've the worst on't, and it canna be helped; so, prithee, say as little as thou can about it,—here's the foal, poor, dumb thing, at all events."

"But what business," cried the gentleman, enraged, and caring, in his wrath, not a button for Johnny Darbyshire's drowned son, in the exasperation of his own loss,—"but what business had you riding to the doctor, or the devil, on my mare? Did not I enjoin you, did you not solemnly promise me, that nobody should cross the mare's back?"

Johnny shook his head. He had indeed promised "to use her as his own," and he had done it to some purpose; but that was little likely to throw cold water on the gentleman's fire. It was in vain that Johnny tried the pathetic of the drowning boy; it was lost on the man who had lost his favorite mare, and who declared that he would rather have lost a thousand pounds,—a hundred was exactly her value,—and he vowed all sorts of vengeance and of law.

And he kept his word too. Johnny was deaf to paying for the mare. He had lost his boy, and his summer's run of the mare and foal, and that he thought enough for a poor man like him, as he pleased to call himself. An action was commenced against him, of which he took not the slightest notice till it came into court. These lawyers, he said, were dear chaps, he'd have nothing to do with them. But the lawyers were determined to have to do with him, for they imagined that the Quaker had a deep purse, and they longed to be poking their long, jewelled fingers to the bottom of it.

The cause actually came into court at the assizes, and the counsel for the plaintiff got up and stated the case, offering to call his evidence, but first submitted that he could not find that any one was retained on behalf of the defendant, and that, therefore, he probably meant to suffer the cause to go by default. The court inquired whether any counsel at the bar was instructed to appear for Darbyshire, in the case Shiffnal v. Darbyshire, but there was no reply; and learned gentlemen looked at one another, and all shook their learned wigs; and the judge was about to declare that the cause was forfeited by the defendant, John Darbyshire, by non-appearance at the place of trial, when there was seen a bustle near the box of the clerk of the court; there was a hasty plucking off of a large hat, which somebody had apparently walked into court with on; and the moment afterwards a short man, in a Quaker dress, with his grizzled hair hanging in long locks on his shoulders, and smoothed close down on the forehead, stepped, with a peculiar air of confidence and cunning, up to the bar. His tawny, sunburnt features, and small dark eyes, twinkling with an expression of much country subtlety, proclaimed him at once a character. At once a score of voices murmured,—"There's Johnny Darbyshire himself!"

He glanced, with a quick and peculiar look, at the counsel, sitting at their table with their papers before them, who, on their part, did not fail to return his survey with a stare of mixed wonder and amazement. You could see it as plainly as possible written on their faces,—"Who have we got here? There is some fun brewing here, to a certainty."

But Johnny raised his eyes from them to the bench, where sat the judge, and sent them rapidly thence to the jury-box, where they seemed to rest with a considerable satisfaction.

"Is this a witness?" inquired the judge. "If so, what is he doing there, or why does he appear at all, till we know whether the cause is to be defended?"

"Ay, Lord Judge, as they call thee, I reckon I am a witness, and the best witness too, that can be had in the case, for I'm the man himself; I'm John Darbyshire. I didn't mean to have anything to do with these chaps i' their wigs and gowns, with their long, dangling sleeves; and I dunna yet mean to have anything to do wi' 'em. But I just heard one of 'em tell thee, that this cause was not going to be defended; and that put my monkey up, and so, thinks I, I'll e'en up and tell 'em that it will be defended though; ay, and I reckon it will too; Johnny Darbyshire was never yet afraid of the face of any man, or any set of men."

"If you are what you say, good man," said the judge, "defendant in this case, you had