第50章

'And I'd 've arned three-and-six here at brickmaking easy; that's what Iwuld. How's a poor man to live that way? They'll not cotch me at Barchester 'Sizes at that price; they may be sure of that. Look there--that's what I've got for my day.' And he put his hand into his breeches-pocket and fetched out a sixpence. 'How's a man to fill his belly out of that. Damnation!'

'Dan!'

'Well, what did I say? Hold your jaw, will you, and not be halloaing at me that way? I know what I am saying of, and what I'm a doing of.'

'I wish they'd given you something more with all my heart,' said Crawley.

'We knows that,' cried the woman from the bed. 'We is sure of that, your reverence.'

'Sixpence!' said the man, scornfully. 'If they'd have guv' me nothing at all but the run of my teeth at the public-house, I'd 've taken it better. But sixpence!'

Then there was a pause. 'And what have they given to me?' said Mr Crawley, when the man's ill-humour about his sixpence had so far subsided as to allow of his busying himself again about the premises.

'Yes, indeed;--yes, indeed,' said the woman. 'Yes, yes, we feel that;we do indeed, Mr Crawley.'

'I tell you what, sir; for another sixpence I'd have sworn you'd never guv' me the paper at all; and so I will now, if it bean't too late;--sixpence or no sixpence. What do I care? D--- them.'

'Dan!'

'And why shouldn't I? They hain't got brains enough among them to winny the truth from the lies--not among the lot of 'em. I'll swear afore the judge that you didn't give it me at all, if that'll do any good.'

'Man, do you think I would have you perjure yourself, even if that would do me a service? And do you think any man was ever served by a lie?'

'Faix, among them chaps it don't do to tell them too much of the truth.

Look at that!' And he brought out the sixpence again from his breeches-pocket. 'And look at your reverence. Only that they've let you out for a while, they've been nigh as hard on you as though you were one of us.'

'If they think that I stole it, they have been right,' said Mr Crawley.

'It's been along of that chap Soames,' said the woman. 'The lord would've paid the money out of his own pocket and never said not a word.'

'If they think that I've been a thief, they've done right,' repeated Mr Crawley. 'But how can they think so? How can they think so? Have I lived like a thief among them?'

'For the matter o' that, if a man ain't paid for his work by them as his employers, he must pay hisself. Them's my notions. Look at that!'

Whereupon he again pulled out the sixpence, and held it forth in the palm of his hand.

'You believe, then,' said Mr Crawley, speaking very slowly, 'that I did steal the money. Speak out, Dan; I shall not be angry. As you go you are an honest men, and I want to know what such of you think about it.'

'He don't think nothing of the kind,' said the woman, almost getting out of bed in her energy. 'If he' thought the like o' that in his head, I'd read 'un such a lesson he'd never think again the longest day he had to live.'

'Speak out, Dan,' said the clergyman, not attending to the woman. 'You can understand that no good can come of lie.' Dan Morris scratched his head. 'Speak out, man, when I tell you,' said Crawley.

'Drat it all,' said Dan, 'where's the use of so much jaw about it?'

'Say you know his reverence is as innocent as the babe as isn't born,' said the woman.

'No; I won't--say anything of the kind,' said Dan.

'Speak out the truth,' said Crawley.

'They do say, among 'em,' said Dan, 'that you picked it up, and then got woolgathering in your head till you didn't rightly know where it come from.' Then he paused. 'And after a bit you guv' it me to get the money.

Didn't you, now?'

'I did.'

'And they do say if a poor man had done it, it'd be stealing, for sartin.'

'And I'm a poor man--the poorest in all Hogglestock; and, therefore, of course, it is stealing. Of course I am a thief. Yes; of course I am a thief. When the world believe the worst of the poor?' Having so spoken, Mr Crawley rose from his chair and hurried out of the cottage, waiting for no further reply from Dan Morris or his wife. And as he made his way slowly home, not going there by the direct road, but by a long circuit, he told himself there could be no sympathy for him anywhere. Even Dan Morris, the brickmaker, thought that he was a thief.

'And am I a thief?' he said to himself, standing in the middle of the road, with his hands up to his forehead.