VII

The old man walked very slowly with two sticks, and paused each step to look about him. He was puzzled; he had not been into the town for years, and the place was so altered he did not know it.

“Why, this lane,” he said presently, speaking in his own dialect which I translate, “used to be a public road, and that side was the park; it was all open then. What, won’t they let nobody go in the park, then? That side there was a row of big elms; they be cut down then, and that there wall builded. Well, to be sure! Where’s the church?” he asked, as they came to a turning. “Be he gone, then?”

He had forgotten that he had heard all about the changes from others. To the very aged, as to children, to hear of a thing is very different to seeing it; they do not realise it till they see it.

The church was gone, sure enough, and nothing left to mark the site; tombs, stones, all moved out of the way. It dated from the twelfth century, and was considered an architectural treasure; it was, too, pleasant to look at, with its ivy, the great elms adjacent, and the rookery in them, where the rooks in springtime caw, caw, and the jackdaws jack, jack, daw⁠—made such a noise to compensate for the silence of the dead under them.

Wood-pigeons came to the elms sometimes; thrushes sang in the ancient gnarled hawthorns, old as the days of matchlocks; they came, too, to the walls of the old church for the ivy-berries. There were grey buttresses propping up the bank of the graveyard, and in these grey buttresses the blue tits had nests deep in the cavities. Old Abner minded taking a tit’s nest there when he was a boy⁠—seventy years ago.

The church was gone; the graveyard clean dug away, buttresses and all; the elms down, and the site occupied by the various “offices” common to the precincts of a mansion.

Letitia did not like the church⁠—that grey antiquity⁠—so near the drawing-room; there were funerals in churches, babies brought to be christened, and bells were rung. Besides, it obstructed that clear sweep which ought to be found round a mansion; in short, it was in the way: there could be no ring-fence while it stood there with the public road leading up to it.

Her shaven advisers hailed the idea of removing it⁠—which entailed building a new one elsewhere⁠—with vast delight. To build a great new church was to them an immense profit⁠—the profit of the personal social influence which repays those who “labour” in these movements. Such is the secret motive in half the church restorations throughout the country⁠—the glorification of the “labourer” who sets all this afoot.

Those who understand human nature will readily perceive that the town subscribed liberally to this work which was to deprive it of its chief feature, to shut up its park, and to close a valuable right of way.

Many a painter had come to look at and sketch the ancient building. Therein reposed the entire history of Maasbury town. The births, the marriages, the deaths of six hundred years were enclosed in it like a casket. All the associations of the old families of the town were bound up in it.

The children for hundreds of years had played in the park, gathering the buttercups, inhaling the fresh sweet air, building up their little frames with store of health.

The open lane gave access to one side of the town⁠—the only access for vehicles without going round a long distance.

To deprive themselves of these advantages the inhabitants subscribed most liberally; they held public meetings to give the necessary sanction to the enterprise; they signed petitions and memorials, and never ceased to agitate till it was accomplished. Nor were they satisfied till the very bones of their ancestors had been shovelled away and stables built on the site of their ancient altar. Such is Public Spirit.

Those who do not understand human nature would have expected a strenuous opposition to be offered to these changes. Very likely they will, too, repeat the satisfied remark we so often hear about our successful system of self-government.

Our towns are governed by servility or clique; true self-government is totally unknown.

“Where’s the mill?” was the old man’s next inquiry.

The mill which stood under the elms and rookery, and was remarkable for a curious wheel, was gone too.

“Where’s the dove-cot?” said he.

The dove-cot, which the monks had erected four hundred years since, had disappeared.

Letitia had succeeded in forming a clear sweep round the mansion, and its privacy was now complete. It was absolutely isolated, and guarded by lodge-keepers in every direction.

High walls shut in the view, and led the intruder, like a covered way, to a narrow passage, damp and cold even on a summer’s day, in which was a door and bell. On justice-room days if you rang the bell you were admitted to the justice-room.

When people saw how Letitia was enclosing the mansion, making all things modern and taking an iron grip of Maasbury, they said, “Capital thing for Cornleigh! Just the wife for Cornleigh!”

It took Felise full a quarter of an hour to get the old man along from the iron gate to the door in the damp passage, so exercised was he over these changes. They seemed to quite turn his brain, and set his mind upside down⁠—as the world had been turned since his day.

Inside the door they mounted a flight of dark steps, and emerged in the justice-room.

There were two large windows in it looking on the “offices” which covered the site of the ancient church; a large table in the centre at which were two chairs, one an armchair; a bookcase, and a form against the wall. About the table there was a carpet: that part of the room where the public stood was carpetless.

The bookcase, curiously enough, stood near the door by which the public entered. It was filled from the top to the bottom shelf with a set of volumes exactly alike, bound in morocco; and Felise, as she passed it, noticed that the backs of the books were lettered in gold, The Sporting Calendar.

Cornleigh Cornleigh was very exact in this particular: The Sporting Calendar was specially bound for him year after year in the same style, and deposited in this bookcase. One would have fancied that a favourite work would have been kept in the library, or in the Squire’s private study, not in a semi-public apartment, bare and comfortless.

This was one of the Cornleigh Cornleigh anomalies; and yet perhaps it was not so singular, as the Squire never entered the library, and had no private study, nor did he ever open these sporting volumes he so carefully accumulated. He had been to racecourses, and had heard the slang of the ring from his youth up; but he had never made a bet in his life.

The Sporting Calendar was absolutely useless to him. You may frequently observe analogous cases⁠—valuable volumes on the shelves of persons who never consult them, while genuine students can scarcely obtain an extract. Why Cornleigh Cornleigh put so much stress upon the possession of The Sporting Calendar, why he did this and many other things, is not to be easily come at.

“T’ Squire!” ejaculated old Abner, as he caught sight of the magistrate at the table.

“Silence!” cried a constable; then seeing Felise, his aggressive voice dropped, and he motioned them to a hard wooden form placed against the wall opposite the table. There they sat down⁠—Felise and the ancient labourer⁠—side by side, like Beauty and the Beast.

Some uninteresting cases were being disposed of; they must wait till public business was finished.