This joke was as old and mild as the ale itself, and hardly less to the general taste. Mykelborne told it to Shellett, and Shellett repeated it to Seth, so that everybody in the company enjoyed it three times over. Mr Bailey and Coachy himself, having tasted it in silence, exchanged a smile that testified to its unimpaired flavour. And finally, to make all safe, the old man summed the matter up.
‘Nay, not the last, God send. Twould be a martacious sad thing to drink up he.’
When this, too, had gone the rounds, Mykelborne resumed his story as though it had never been interrupted, ‘Yes, neighbours, I’ve been to heaven twice, tellee . . .’
‘And I’ve been three times,’ said Coachy, not to be outdone.
‘The first time tis in a manner of dream I goo,’ said Mykelborne. ‘And the second time tis a sart of swoond or trance same as Postle Paul did suffer on the road to some place or t’other, as it might be Glatting City. The first time tis in the church-litten, and I be setten on a toomy-stone, same as you, Coachy Timms, be a-setten on that bench. And while I be setten there and thinken of this and that, of the folks lyen dead abroad me and of whose turn twill be next to be putt in, there coom a trumpet blowen in the sky, a long shinen trumpet from here to Glatting City, and a man’s head begin poken up out of the grave I was setten by, and then the shoulders of un, and the broad hams and kicken legs. How do Dick Mykelborne, says he. And he do stand up in his bare body bright as a warmen-pan, and start picken the marl off his thighs and shanks. Seems he’ve grown a great head of yellow hair in the grave, and a bright beard bristlen out of him, so’s he do look like The Rising Sun at Medlock. But he bain’t no Rising Sun, neighbours. He be old Jaanathan Tribe, that twisted old scrap of a fellow that was almost my first carpse, and there he be standen straight on his legs and tossen the hair out of his eyes like a lion in the Holy Book.’
‘Never old Cobbler Tribe!’ exclaimed Mr Bailey in wonderment.
‘The same,’ said Mykelborne firmly. ‘And how’s Mus Tribe, I says. Seems us be dead, says he, and in heaven. And the next I do knaw, us be floaten across the grass, and there a-front of us, setten on our green downs, neighbours, be a parcel of blessed angels. Hugy gurt baastards they be, twenny feet or more from crown to anklebone, and some of ’em as black as a coal. They sets there on they downs, never sayen a word to no one, a long row on ’em stretchen away round the sky, from here, as it might be, to Squire Hewlett’s at Dyking Corner . . .’
‘Black?’ said Mr Bailey. ‘I never heard before of black angels.’
‘Black,’ insisted Mykelborne. ‘You’ve haply never heard tell of sech, Mus Bailey, because you be an ignorant sinful man same as I were till I did goo to heaven and take a look at un . . .’
‘When I did goo to heaven,’ said Coachy Timms reflectively, ‘twas on Lubin’s back I went. A rare young colt were that one, with some pretty mischief in’s eyeball. A took me along a winden road and brung me to a green valley the very spet of Hinchley Bottom, but it worn’t Hinchley Bottom; and as like as two hedgyhogs to Nightingale Roughs, but it worn’t Nightingale Roughs nuther. What place be this, Lubin? This be heaven, says Lubin, and us be in ut, says he. And with that he ups on his front legs and canted me into the grass, and so I set quiet thinken ut over, when what should I see but a young woman standing t’other side of a liddle river. Slim and brown she were, and bright as a marigold, and never a stitch on her; and she smiled across at me cool and quiet as you please. Eh, Tahm Shellett, you may cackle, my geek, but I dint think a thought of bawdry that time . . .’
‘How so?’ asked Tom Shellett. ‘Not a stitch on her, saista? I’ll ’low she were game for ee.’
‘Not a thought of sech did I think,’ repeated Coachy, ‘no more than when a man do watch a flight of swallows or a filly nuzzlen her dam. Come here, my coney, I says; come here, my dimple. But nay, quod she; you maun cross the water to find me. So in I goo splash . . . and then I were back in my bed.’
Intent on Coachy, the company had no attention to spare for Seth Shellett; and he, as became his years, which numbered but twenty-four, kept a bashful silence. Nor could he indeed have told his thoughts, which were, at this moment, tinged with a perplexing radiance. He was tall, fair, awkward, and rather sullen-looking. His mind moved slowly. But, slowly or not, it was moving now in an unexplored country. Coachy’s tale, with its chance allusion to Nightingale Roughs, fired a train of bright images in him. And the sudden splendour made him so lose touch with his surroundings that he even forgot to drink his ale.