Andrew, and meaning the jug of weak gin-and-water which he kept constantly by him to sip.
“Let un bide.”
Felix St. Bees came into the room. He had ridden up to ask for the hand of May, his darling. It was not a reception to encourage a lover.
“Good afternoon, sir,” said Felix.
“Arternoon to ee.” To Jane, “Who be it?”
“Dunno.”
“What’s your wull wi’ I?”
“I want a little private conversation with you, sir.”
“Get out, you!” to the ancient hag, who reluctantly walked from the room, but left the door ajar.
“Wull ee shut the door?”
Felix went and closed it. “This is a fine old house,” he began, trying to get en rapport before opening his mission.
“Aw, eez.”
“And a beautiful view.”
“Mebbe.”
“You have had great experience of life, sir.”
“Likely zo.”
Andrew had had a good education in his youth, but lapsed two generations ago into broad provincialism. Now it had got about (as such things will) that Andrew was backing Val Browne’s dark horse heavily, and May was anxious about her grandfather’s intercourse with the trainer, who, except in his employer’s eyes, was far from perfect. She dreaded lest he should be cheated and lose the money—not so much for the sake of the amount, but because at his age and with his terrible temper it was impossible to say what effect it might have upon his health. So Felix, as a clergyman, wished to warn the aged man; but a little nervous (as might be pardoned under the circumstances) he did not, perhaps, go about it the right way.
“And you have seen, sir, how uncertain everything is—even the crops.”
“Wheat be vine to year.”
“Well, even your mill-wheel stops sometimes from accidents, I suppose.”
“Aw, a’ reckon ull last my time. Wull ee drenk?”
“No, thank you. The fact is I’m anxious to warn you about betting on Mr. Browne’s horse. He is upright—but—”
“Hum!”
In the depths of his beehive chair the glitter of the old man’s grey eye was not observed by Felix.
“As you cannot get about and see for yourself, it seemed my duty to say something—for Miss Fisher’s sake.”
“Aw!” ominously low and deep.
“I say for Miss Fisher’s sake, because I am in hopes, with your permission, to visit her as her—her future husband, and as I am sure her happiness and—”
Crash!
The blackthorn whizzed by St. Bees’ head and smashed the jug on the table.
“Jim! Bill! Jane! Jack!” shouted the old man, starting out of his chair, purple in the face. “Drow this veller out! Douse un in th’ hog-vault! Thee nimity-pimity odd-me-dod! (Little contemptible scarecrow) I warn thee’d like my money! Drot thee and thee wench!”
Poor Felix could do nothing but beat a retreat with half a dozen grinning chawbacons watching him over the bridge. On hearing their master’s angry voice in the porch, they ran together from the rick-yard in the rear. For some distance Felix could hear the old man howling and telling the men to “zet th’ dogs at un.” When he got fairly out of sight of the mill his indignation disappeared in his sense of the ludicrous, and he burst into a hearty fit of laughter, and then sobered down again. “For,” thought he, “it is a wholesome doctrine—reverence for old age; and yet how little there is to revere! Ask this aged man’s advice—you would suppose he would tell you of the vanity of the world, and instruct you to turn your mind to higher things. Not at all; he would say, ‘Get money; dismiss all generous feelings: get money.’ In the last decade of a century of life his avarice prompts him to risk heavy sums on this horse. But I must write and explain that I do not want his hoards.”
Calling at Greene Ferne on the way home to see May, he found everyone discussing the attitude of the labourers on the farm, who seemed inclined to neglect the haymaking, or even to leave it altogether. As the weather was fine and a large quantity of grass had been cut, it was a serious matter. Next morning Geoffrey Newton called on Felix at his cottage in Kingsbury to tell him that the men had actually struck work, and that Mrs. Estcourt was anxious for his advice. For Felix, besides being a friend, was known to possess great influence among the working classes. Kingsbury town, though situate in the midst of a purely agricultural country, and not more than four or five miles distant from the oaks at Greene Ferne, was the seat of a certain manufacturing industry, which had immensely increased its population. It was the high wages paid in the factories and workshops there that made the agricultural labourers discontented; many walked miles daily to and fro to receive them. There was unfortunately a reverse side to the medal, for the overcrowded town had become notorious for disease, drunkenness, and misery. Now this was why Felix, with many opportunities of preferment, chose to remain a simple curate, in order that he might work among that grimy and boisterous people. Rude and brutal as they were, the little figure in black penetrated everywhere without risk, and was treated with the utmost respect.
It chanced to be his morning for visiting certain purlieus, so Geoffrey went with him. They were to go over to Greene Ferne in the evening. Down in the back streets they found that Melting-Pot, the pewter tankard, in full operation. Men and women were busy keeping it full, while their children, with naked feet, played in the gutter among the refuse of the dust heap, decayed cabbage, mangy curs, and filth. The ancient alchemists travailed to transmute the baser metals into gold; in these days whole townships are at work transmuting gold and silver into pewter. All the iron foundries, patent blasts, and Bessemer processes in the world cannot equal the melting power of the pewter tankard. When honest labour takes its well-earned draught it is one thing, or when friendship shares the glass; but the drinking for drinking’s sake is another. Side by side with the Melting-Pot the furniture marts did a roaring business—marts where everything is sold, from a towel-horse to a piano or a cockatoo—sold beyond recall, all in the way of trade, and therefore quite legitimately. Is it not strange that while the law imposes fine and penalty on the pawnbroker, and strict supervision, the furniture mart, where the wretched drunkard’s goods are sold for ever, seems to flourish without let or hindrance? “Money advanced on goods for absolute sale,” is the notice prominently displayed, which to the poor artisan, being interpreted, reads, “ ‘Walk into my parlour,’ says the spider to the fly.” Geoffrey, who had been to Australia, found he was mistaken in thinking that he had seen the world. There were things here, close to the sweet fields of lovely England, not to be surpassed in the darkest corners of the earth. At the end of a new street hastily “run up cheap” and “scamped,” they found a large black pool, once a pond in the meadow, now a slough of all imaginable filth, at whose precipitous edge the roadway stopped abruptly, without rail, fence, or wall. Little children playing hare and hounds, heedless of their steps, fell in, and came out gasping, almost choked with foul mud. Drunken men staggered in occasionally, and came out stiff, ghastly, with slime in the greedy mouths that had gorged at the Melting-Pot. Yet this horrible slough was on the very verge of beauty; it was the edge and outpost of the town. Across this dark pit were green meadows, hawthorn hedges, and trees. The sweet breeze played against the dead red brick; odours of clover were blown against the windows; rooks came over now and then with their noisy caw-cawing. Shamefully “scamped” was the row of six-roomed houses—doors that warped and would not shut, and so on. Upstairs, in one of these, they found a tall young fellow lying on his bed in the middle of the summer day. The sickly fetid smell of the close room told of long confinement. Poor fellow, he had been sore beset; unmarried, untended; no woman to potter about him, nursed anyhow, only the strength of his constitution carried him through; and now he lay there, weak and helpless, in