XVII

After passing the old mill and the deep, dark pool, she turned aside from her homeward path, and crossed to a cottage by the roadside. She entered the garden by a wicket in the hedge; oak-trees spread their broad boughs above the thatched roof, and the border of the garden was gaudy with tulips, wallflowers, and parti-coloured daisies. Every inch of the enclosed ground was green with some vegetable or other; a minute and microscopic care had evidently been spent on every spadeful of earth the garden contained. One would hardly believe that so small a plot could produce so great a variety.

The flagstones before the door were white and clean; there was no porch, and the door was open. Felise looked in, but there was no one within; she sat down, however, on a stool outside the door, and soon noticed something moving behind the screen of green which concealed the small extent of the garden.

An aged man, much bowed, supporting himself with a hoe and a walking-stick, slowly came towards her; he had been weeding.

“She bean’t at home, she bean’t,” he said, alluding to his wife. “I was a-trying to do a little bit of weeding. And how do Abner do, miss? Do he do now? A’ was a sprack boy. I hope he suits Mr. Goring.”

This hope he had expressed every time Felise had called these four years, during which his son, who was still a boy in his eyes, had assisted Mr. Goring in the garden. Felise petted the old people; Godwin, the estate-agent or land-steward, had been heard to say that she spoiled the whole village.

“Sit down,” said Felise, offering him the stool; but the old man, with trembling eagerness, refused it, and brought himself out another, upon which he crouched, his elbows on his knees.

“You didn’t have much luck a-fishing, now, did you?” he said. “Bless you, miss, there bean’t half the fish there was in the brook when I was a boy, and they bean’t so eager for the fly. As I was a-saying, I hopes Abner be useful now; I don’t know what we should do if it weren’t for he, for I can’t do no work, nor my old missus neither. She be gone to get some wood to bile the kettle; hope as Mr. Godwin won’t catch her. He be a hard man, Miss Goring; ’tis amazing how he can be so hard.”

“You are not allowed to gather the dead wood now, then?”

“Not since Lady Day, miss. No; Mr. Godwin he came round and give them all notice that he should summon any of them as took the wood. There was something I wanted to tell you, miss⁠—didn’t Abner tell ’ee? Maybe you haven’t seen him today. But as I was saying, I hoped to get about and do a bit of hoeing this spring⁠—but bless you, I can’t do it. I got out in the road, and I was obliged to sit down on the flint-heap. ’Tis hard to be old, miss, and be twisted with the rheumatism. Perhaps my missus will recollect what it was when she comes in, if you will wait a moment, miss.”

“The garden looks very nice,” said Felise.

“What a lot of trouble you take with it!”

“Ah, that I do,” said the old man brightly. “I bides in un a’most all the day, and I thinks about un most of the night⁠—I kind o’ lives by he. They will never take me away from my garden, will they, miss? They couldn’t do that now, surely.”

“I should think not, indeed.”

“How be the barley looking, miss? Did you notice as you was agoing along. There be generally some barley at the foot of the hill on Mr. Barnard’s land. A’be a likely young man, but they do say the farm bean’t looked after as it should be. Young blood is young blood, and what with riding about and sporting⁠—let me see, what was I going to say? You knows the barley, miss; it have got black knots on the stalk. Bless you, I could use to do everything with the barley⁠—I was a barleycorn man in my time. I could plough, that was the first thing; and sow the seed, miss; and hoe it, don’t you see, when it came up⁠—it be a pretty plant now the barley, bean’t it? And I could reap it, and thrash it when we used to have the flails, and malt it⁠—that’s what a-many couldn’t do. Many’s a winter I’ve spent a-malting⁠—there’s always a good fire. And I could brew the beer, and drink it too, afterwards⁠—ha! ha!”

The barleycorn man chuckled at the thought of his exploits with the beer.

“Have you got any ale for your dinner?” said Felise.

“Bless ’ee now, where should we get any ale from? Abner don’t bring any home, except what he carries in hisself.”

Felise opened her purse; there was a solitary half-crown in it. The coin had been there this month past, while she deliberated what she should do with it. Coins were very scarce at Beechknoll.

She gave the old man the silver, and told him to buy a pound or so of beefsteak and a little ale.

The poor old fellow was dried up for lack of blood in his veins; his stiffened joints cracked as he moved; his cheeks were a dull yellow like creased parchment; he was alive, but there was scarcely a drop of blood in him. Good juicy meat and the ale to which he had been accustomed in his youth was what he needed. He thanked her, but very quietly, with a subdued voice, very different to the high squeaky treble in which he had been talking; and, after thanking her, he remained silent. His chatter came from his head, which was growing feeble; his silence from his heart, which was yet alive.

“What is it they say about Mr. Barnard’s farm?” said Felise.

“He be young blood, you see, miss,” began the old man, glad to be garrulous again, and to escape from feeling to gossip. “They do say he be short of money; some say he have had to borrow.”

“The Barnards are not very rich, then,” said Felise partly to herself, happy that at least there was not that obstacle between her and Martial, to whom she could bring no dowry.

“Bless ’ee, no; they bean’t rich⁠—” But he was interrupted by a step on the path, and his “missus” came through the wicket in the hedge. “What, ain’t you got no wood?” said the old man.

“He’ve took it away,” said the old lady, curtsying to Felise. “I be terrable glad to see you, miss; there be something I wants to tell you⁠—”

“I knowed there was something,” said the old man.

“Who took your wood away?” asked Felise.

“Why, Mr. Godwin, to be sure. Do you call that a gentleman, now? He took my faggot away from me hisself.”

“Not the dead sticks you had gathered?”

“Yes, he did; he took it away and throwed all the sticks in the hedge, and dared me to touch any more, or to step on his land or the Squire’s land after ’em.”

“It is very arbitrary,” said Felise.

The angry old lady ran on at great length, bitterly reproaching the steward. Mr. Godwin had forbidden them to touch the fallen branches; last autumn he forbade them to gather the acorns, though brought to him for sale. As they no longer worked upon the estate, being too old, they must not gather wood or acorns, or even mushrooms.

“He be the meanest man as ever lived,” said the old woman. “A’be as rich as ever can be. Now, you knows Martha⁠—little Martha; she went a-blackberrying last year, and Godwin he met her and took her blackberries from her⁠—that he did. I suppose the Squire doan’t know nothing about it, but Godwin says ’tis the Squire’s rights. But you come in, miss⁠—you look here!” cried the old woman, rushing indoors and returning, before Felise could follow, with a letter in her hand.

The letter contained a formal notice to quit the cottage and garden. It seemed that the steward had several times warned the aged couple that they must leave; but, no notice being taken of his verbal orders, a legal instrument had at length been sent.

“Ah, I knowed there was something,” said the old man. “But, bless you, they won’t turn I out of my garden, now⁠—will they?”

“That they will, you old fool!” said his wife, shaking him; “you’ll have to go. And there bean’t no place for us but the workus, as I knows on. There bean’t another cottage in this place; they be all full up to the roof.”

“Lodgings must be got for you somewhere,” said Felise, “and Abner will help.”

“But there bean’t no lodgings,” said the old woman; “and my old man, he won’t live away from his garden.”

“They may as well bury me,” said the old man, dropping on his stool. “They there peas be fine to-year; there’ll be another dish there soon. I thinks the apples be set well to-year.”

“I will speak to papa⁠—to Mr. Goring,” said Felise. “Perhaps Abner has told him. We will do what we can for you, be certain. I cannot think Mr. Godwin really means⁠—” she hesitated, for she knew the hardness of his character.

“Ah, yes, he do mean it!” said the old lady. “He be one of they as do mean things, and do ’em too; I hopes as his new horse will pitch him in the road and break his neck!”

“No⁠—no.”

“Ah, but I do though! There’s the old man gone pottering down to they peas. It be shameful, bean’t it, how we be served! And after we have a-worked here all our lives⁠—he have a-worked here nigh seventy years, and I have a-worked fifty-five afore I was took bad and couldn’t do no more. It be shameful, miss, it be! and thank you very much, but it ain’t no good you trying⁠—old Godwin be a flint!”

Felise went on homewards, eager with the impetuosity of her nature to do something to right this wrong. I have, in part, literally translated the language in which the old couple spoke, that it might be more easily intelligible; they did not say “ah,” but “aw;” “un” for “him” and “it” indiscriminately; they pronounced “v” for “f,” “aä” for “a,” and so on.

Mr. Godwin was a very hard man, yet he had but slightly strained the unwritten laws of country life in ordering this aged and helpless couple to leave their dwelling. Nine out of ten cottages belong to the landowner, though the immediate supervision⁠—the letting⁠—is entrusted to the tenant on certain conditions. There are, as a rule, fewer cottages than are needed, so that there is a struggle for them, especially on the part of the young who wish to be married. From this scarcity of cottages most young couples reside for years with the parents of the wife or husband, an arrangement never very satisfactory.

The chief condition of cottage-occupation is that the cottager shall work for the farmer upon whose farm the cottage is situate. Or at least, if not for him, for someone on the estate. The moment any difference arises, the labourer has not only to leave his employment but his home. This, if he be a married man, generally means that he must leave the hamlet, because all the other cottages are full. The custom is the last relic of feudal times, for while this condition endures the labourer must still be a serf.

It is a custom fatal to the cottager’s social progress, in reality injurious to the interests of landowner and farmer⁠—especially to the landowner⁠—and diametrically opposed to the interest of the country at large, because it forces the agricultural population to be nomadic instead of settled.

Injurious as it is to those who maintain it, this feudal survival will probably be fought for with the utmost bitterness when the question comes before Parliament. Once abolished, and people will wonder why it ever existed.

This aged and helpless couple broke the unwritten law, for having grown old they could no longer work. They occupied a cottage without giving any return in the shape of labour upon the estate. They were in the way⁠—there was the workhouse for them⁠—they could not want a home at their time of life.

Many a warmhearted old farmer has such a couple in a cottage on his farm, and permits them to linger there till death. The unwritten law is not always so harshly interpreted. Still, it exists, and Godwin, a man of the hardest character, interpreted it according to his nature.

But the occupants of the cottage had broken the law in another manner; their son, Abner, worked for Mr. Goring, who was not a tenant of the Squire, and consequently while Abner lived in a landlord’s cottage he took the power (horsepower if you like) of his muscles off the estate. Someone else had the benefit of his strength.

There was, too, the possibility of Abner marrying and taking his wife home to his parents, after the country fashion. By-and-by he would become the actual occupant, while his horsepower was expended on another’s land. Those who occupied houses on the estate must work for the estate; if not, they must go.

To go, to an aged and helpless couple of eighty-four and seventy, meant the workhouse.

By the most cruel and iniquitous rule it is possible to imagine, it is not permitted to give assistance from the poor-rates to the oldest, the most helpless, and deserving of the population if they dare to live at home. They must go to the poorhouse, that abomination of desolation. This most brutal regulation would arouse the indignation of every educated person in the country if what it means could be plainly exhibited.

Abner’s crime was unpardonable⁠—he was living in a house belonging to the estate, and working for a man independent of the estate. Mr. Goring owned the land he occupied; he was not only independent, but a resolute upholder of every species of independence. He was paying Abner about two shillings a week more than he would have earned if in the employment of a farmer.

The young man was intelligent, and had a loyal manner⁠—I do not know how else to describe it⁠—he took an interest in what he was doing, and therefore to Mr. Goring he was worth more than an ordinary labourer. But this was an extremely unpopular arrangement both with farmers and labourers. The labourers hated to see one of their own class paid better than themselves; the farmers objected because it was an example which might lead other men to ask for more.

Felise knew little of these matters⁠—she had of course heard of them, but you could hardly expect her to enter into such affairs. She was, however, well aware of Godwin’s hardness, and his character for harsh interference. Godwin and her uncle had had many and many a set-to; in fact, quarrels were continually occurring between them. Godwin had frequently threatened litigation, but had never resorted to it, yet with curious inconsistency called once a month on an average to invite Goring and Felise to his house, which was not more than half a mile distant. They had never accepted the invitation.