In a Quiet Village

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.