The Dead Alive | Page 9

they were laborers on the farm. Silas was swinging a stout beechen
stick in his hand, and was speaking to Jago, coarsely and insolently
enough, of his moonlight meeting with Naomi on the previous night.
"Next time you go courting a young lady in secret," said Silas, "make
sure that the moon goes down first, or wait for a cloudy sky. You were
seen in the garden, Master Jago; and you may as well tell us the truth
for once in a way. Did you find her open to persuasion, sir? Did she say
'Yes?'"
John Jago kept his temper.
"If you must have your joke, Mr. Silas," he said, quietly and firmly, "be
pleased to joke on some other subject. You are quite wrong, sir, in what
you suppose to have passed between the young lady and me."
Silas turned about, and addressed himself ironically to the three
laborers.
"You hear him, boys? He can't tell the truth, try him as you may. He
wasn't making love to Naomi in the garden last night--oh dear, no! He
has had one wife already; and he knows better than to take the yoke on
his shoulders for the second time!"
Greatly to my surprise, John Jago met this clumsy jesting with a formal

and serious reply.
"You are quite right, sir," he said. "I have no intention of marrying for
the second time. What I was saying to Miss Naomi doesn't matter to
you. It was not at all what you choose to suppose; it was something of
quite another kind, with which you have no concern. Be pleased to
understand once for all, Mr. Silas, that not so much as the thought of
making love to the young lady has ever entered my head. I respect her;
I admire her good qualities; but if she was the only woman left in the
world, and if I was a much younger man than I am, I should never think
of asking her to be my wife." He burst out suddenly into a harsh,
uneasy laugh. "No, no! not my style, Mr. Silas--not my style!"
Something in those words, or in his manner of speaking them, appeared
to exasperate Silas. He dropped his clumsy irony, and addressed
himself directly to John Jago in a tone of savage contempt.
"Not your style?" he repeated. "Upon my soul, that's a cool way of
putting it, for a man in your place! What do you mean by calling her
'not your style?' You impudent beggar! Naomi Colebrook is meat for
your master!"
John Jago's temper began to give way at last. He approached defiantly a
step or two nearer to Silas Meadowcroft.
"Who is my master?" he asked.
"Ambrose will show you, if you go to him," answered the other.
"Naomi is his sweetheart, not mine. Keep out of his way, if you want to
keep a whole skin on your bones."
John Jago cast one of his sardonic side-looks at the farmer's wounded
left hand. "Don't forget your own skin, Mr. Silas, when you threaten
mine! I have set my mark on you once, sir. Let me by on my business,
or I may mark you for a second time."
Silas lifted his beechen stick. The laborers, roused to some rude sense
of the serious turn which the quarrel was taking, got between the two

men, and parted them. I had been hurriedly dressing myself while the
altercation was proceeding; and I now ran downstairs to try what my
influence could do toward keeping the peace at Morwick Farm.
The war of angry words was still going on when I joined the men
outside.
"Be off with you on your business, you cowardly hound!" I heard Silas
say. "Be off with you to the town! and take care you don't meet
Ambrose on the way!"
"Take you care you don't feel my knife again before I go!" cried the
other man.
Silas made a desperate effort to break away from the laborers who were
holding him.
"Last time you only felt my fist!" he shouted "Next time you shall feel
this!"
He lifted the stick as he spoke. I stepped up and snatched it out of his
hand.
"Mr. Silas," I said, "I am an invalid, and I am going out for a walk.
Your stick will be useful to me. I beg leave to borrow it."
The laborers burst out laughing. Silas fixed his eyes on me with a stare
of angry surprise. John Jago, immediately recovering his
self-possession, took off his hat, and made me a deferential bow.
"I had no idea, Mr. Lefrank, that we were disturbing you," he said. "I
am very much ashamed of myself, sir. I beg to apologize."
"I accept your apology, Mr. Jago," I answered, "on the understanding