DAN’L COOMBE

Old Dan’l was a character indeed, and for many years a mystery as well. He was a man of one object in life, and what that object was no one knew for thirty-five years.

He was by trade a tailor, and throughout the hours of daylight he sat cross-legged on his table near a very large window, viewed by all who passed along the road, but scarce looking away from his work to exchange a nod with a passer-by.

He shaved his face clean, that is to say he shaved it occasionally clean, but this was once a week only, on Saturday, and during the ensuing week a dusky shadow stole over cheek and chin that made Dan’l look anything but clean-shaved. He wore his hair short, but had thick and very protruding eyebrows.

He was a reticent man.

The tailor’s shop is often a place where many villagers congregate to have a chat, and the tailor is able to go on with his needlework in a mechanical fashion whilst conversing. But Daniel Coombe did not affect gossip and prattle; what he undertook he carried through with an almost grim persistency.

As the gamekeeper said: “Bless you, old Coombe, he do lay hold on and stick to a job just as a ferret do to a rabbit. There ain’t no gettin’ him to quit it.”

Coombe had a wife—the ugliest woman he could have picked up, but they lived contentedly enough together. They had no children. Had they possessed a family, a little more brightness and laughter would have entered into the household. Mrs. Coombe was a grumbler; she grumbled over her husband, over her house, over her work, over every thing and every person with which and with whom she was brought in contact. But Dan’l did not appear to mind it. He lived in a world of his own—his thoughts, his aspirations; and the mutter of discontent rumbled around him and rolled over his head, almost without his hearing it, certainly without his being moved by it.

No sooner was the sun set, and Dan’l could no longer ply his needle, than he put up his shutters. In these were two round orifices, and till late at night lamplight streamed forth into the road through these holes, that were as a pair of eyes glaring down the village street. What was he doing in his workshop at night? Certainly he was not cutting out and sewing. It was a well-known saying of his that with the set of sun was the set aside of work.

“I ain’t a-going to try my eyes and wear ’em out with needlework by lamplight,” said he.

Then what was his occupation after nightfall? Into his workshop he retired and bolted the door from within as soon as he had taken his evening meal.

Did he read? Was he a student of English literature? Was he a politician? He was no buyer of books, and subscribed to no other paper than the local weekly gazette.

It puzzled the parish. It roused curiosity. Then some boys climbed up outside the window to peer in through the holes in the shutters, but the noise of their scrambling, perhaps the appearance of their visages in the openings, showed Dan’l that he was having his privacy peered into, and before the urchins were able to observe what his occupation was, out went the lamp. He had extinguished it. The married women of the parish endeavoured to extract the secret from Mrs. Coombe; but she was either ignorant or uncommunicative.

“How should I know?” said she. “He has his megrims. I don’t meddle wi’ they. All I know is, he ain’t doing nothin’ as is good to nobody. But if it keeps him out o’ mischief and away from the public-house, naught I’ll say.”

Then the idea took hold that Dan’l was a wise man and could charm, stanch blood by his blessing, drive away warts, cure milk that would not turn to butter, and counteract ill wishes.

And to this he lent himself. He had not sought it. It was forced upon him. It might do good, he argued; it could do no harm. So his fame grew, and he was regarded with reverential awe. Whether he believed in his own efficacy as a healer, I cannot say; his gifts of healing were bruited about, his failures passed into the limbo of oblivion. He did not set store on his reputed powers, he rather disparaged them, or shrugged his shoulders and professed scepticism over them, and he always said: “Well, if good comes of it, it is not from me—you must know that—but from the great Healer of all. Some cures wi’ drugs, and some wi’ their touch. There are differences of administration.”

Dan’l Coombe was a regular churchgoer.

Woe betide the parson if, in preaching without a book, he quoted Scripture inaccurately. He became in time accustomed to find the tailor standing at the foot of the church steps awaiting him after service. Then would come the familiar touch of the hat, and, “I beg your pardon, sir, but did you not put in a the where there oughtn’t to be, in that there text from St. Paul to the Corinthians?”

Or else: “Please, sir, did you use the right word in that there quotation from the Acts?”

“Dear Mr. Coombe, I took the marginal rendering.”

“Oh, the margin. I don’t hold by that.”

Mr. Coombe was very much perplexed when the new version of the Scriptures was issued. It happily was not read in the parish church. I verily believe it would have driven him from it. “Nasty, lumpy thing,” he said; “it is like eatin’ bad-made porridge. Nothin’ smooth about it. Bits come in your mouth and teeth at every moment.”

He resented it as an immoral thing. “And to think,” said he, “that Christian money should ha’ been spent by Government out of our pockets to put this here stumbling-block in the way of the blind! It’s wicked, and I’ll vote against Government next ’lection.”

As already said, there had been an attempt made by scaling to peer in at the holes in Coombe’s shutter, to see him at his nightly occupation. It had failed. After that he pasted two pieces of oiled paper over the openings, and thus prevented any further observations being made.

So time went on, and his neighbours became accustomed to the two yellow eyes, and no longer actively concerned themselves about his doings, though still a good deal of puzzlement remained about his nightly doings.

“To my knowing,” said Mrs. Bacon to Mrs. Jones, “he had his lamp burning till half-past ten at night. Now he don’t burn a lamp all that time for the sake of wasting oil.”

“I’ll tell you something more,” said Mrs. Jones; “it isn’t oil only as he consumes, it is ink as well. He has bought ten penny ink-pots, and one wi’ red ink, at Miss Buck’s shop in a twelvemonth. What do he want wi’ so much ink? He can’t drink it.”

“He is writing a book. Take my word for it.”

“A book! What about? He don’t know nothing.”

“Poetry, perhaps. A man may write that with his head empty. Every fool knows that.”

“He don’t look like a poet—not when he’s unshaved.”

“I’ll tell you what—it may be his cures, and the way to strike wounds and white swellings.”

“Ah! there, that is more likely.”

And this purchase of penny pots of ink continued for thirty-five years. At the rate of ten a year, that would be three hundred and fifty pots of black ink. It was amazing. For what could he want so much ink? It was also ascertained that he sent by the carrier periodically to the market town for copy-books, and had them out in packets of a dozen at a time. What could he be putting into all those copy-books?

At last the mystery came out—not indeed to the whole parish, but into the ear of the rector was it revealed.

One Saturday evening the parson was informed that Mr. Coombe desired to speak with him very privately. The tailor was shown into the study. He brought with him a huge parcel strapped to his back.

Of this he relieved himself and placed it on the table.

“There, sir,” said he, “my life’s labour is accomplished. Now it is for the world.”

“What is it, Mr. Coombe?”

“You shall see, sir, you shall see. For thirty-five years have I been engaged on it every night. I have gone over the work most carefully three and four times, and I am quite certain that there is not an error in it. It has been my great labour to be strictly correct. I do not believe there is a the wrong. I began it thirty-five years agone last Friday, and last Friday I concluded it. Every man has his proper vocation and work to do. I found mine thirty-five years ago, and I have laboured at it unflaggingly since. It is done, and when the Lord pleases to call me, I shall be ready to go. But, sir—I don’t mean to deny it—I should ha’ been terrible sorry to ha’ submitted to be called away before I’d done the job.”

“I congratulate you on having accomplished what I am sure is a useful task. But what is it, Mr. Coombe?”

“You shall see, sir. You shall see.”

He went to his parcel and undid the string. There appeared an enormous pile of copy-books. He took from the heap two of them, and brought them to the rector.

“There, sir,” said he, “if you’d had this you would not have made—you’ll excuse my saying it—such a terrible lot o’ mistakes in quoting Scripture. It is, sir—IT IS—IT IS”—he raised himself and rubbed his hair up, then smoothed his fresh-shaven chin—“it is, sir, a dictionary of every word in Scripture, so that you have but to look out the word, and then you find where it comes in any book of the whole Bible.”

His face glowed with triumph.

“Just think, sir, what a boon to ministers of the Gospel! Just think what a help to teachers! How ever can English folk have got along for all this time without such an aid as this? It is better, sir, this, than conquering the Russians and taking of Sebastopol. It is grander this than Columbus discovering the New World. Now, what do you think, sir?”

“But, my dear Mr. Coombe——!”

“One moment, sir, and I shall have done. I intend to get it printed. It shall be ‘Coombe’s Dictionary of Bible Words,’ and will become a handbook in every library of God-fearing and Scripture-loving men and women. As for any profits from the sale, of that I care not—that’s no odds to me. It is the good it will do that I think of.”

“But, my dear Mr. Coombe——”

The rector rose and went to his shelf.

“The thing has already been done. Here it is: ‘Cruden’s Concordance to the Holy Scriptures.’ It was published in 1761, and has gone through innumerable editions since.”

The old man stood as though turned to stone.

“The thing already done!” he gasped.

The rector had no heart to say more. He bitterly regretted that he had blurted out the truth so abruptly.

“The thing already done! Thirty-five years spent for naught.”

Then he did up his packet again. But the tears dropped on it. This was to him a blow more crushing than he could bear.

He hoisted his parcel on his back, touched his forehead, but held the parson’s hand and wrung it, as speechlessly he left the house. His heart was too full for mere words.

The old man broke down rapidly after that. The object of his life was gone. The great ambition of his days was extinguished.

One day when he was being visited by the rector, as he lay on his death-bed, he said—

“Sir, I ha’ been thinking and worriting over my work o’ thirty-five years, and axing of myself whether it were all labour lost and time thrown away. It have fretted me terrible. But I seems to see now as it was not lost—not to me anyhow, for I got the Scriptur’ that into me that it became to me like the blood in my veins and the marrow in my bones—and it is my stand-by now.”