Next day, while Squire Blancove was superintending the laying down of
lines for a new carriage drive in his park, as he walked slowly up the
green slope he perceived Farmer Fleming, supported by a tall young
man; and when the pair were nearer, he had the gratification of noting
likewise that the worthy yeoman was very much bent, as with an acute
attack of his well-known chronic malady of a want of money.
The squire greatly coveted the freehold of Queen Anne's Farm. He had
made offers to purchase it till he was tired, and had gained for himself
the credit of being at the bottom of numerous hypothetical cabals to
injure and oust the farmer from his possession. But if Naboth came with
his vineyard in his hand, not even Wrexby's rector (his quarrel with
whom haunted every turn in his life) could quote Scripture against him
for taking it at a proper valuation.
The squire had employed his leisure time during service in church to
discover a text that might be used against him in the event of the
farmer's reduction to a state of distress, and his, the squire's, making
the most of it. On the contrary, according to his heathenish reading of
some of the patriarchal doings, there was more to be said in his favour
than not, if he increased his territorial property: nor could he,
throughout the Old Testament, hit on one sentence that looked like a
personal foe to his projects, likely to fit into the mouth of the rector
of Wrexby.
“Well, farmer,” he said, with cheerful familiarity, “winter crops
looking well? There's a good show of green in the fields from my
windows, as good as that land of yours will allow in heavy seasons.”
To this the farmer replied, “I've not heart or will to be round about,
squire. If you'll listen to me--here, or where you give command.”
“Has it anything to do with pen and paper, Fleming? In that case you'd
better be in my study,” said the squire.
“I don't know that it have. I don't know that it have.” The farmer
sought Robert's face.
“Best where there's no chance of interruption,” Robert counselled, and
lifted his hat to the squire.
“Eh? Well, you see I'm busy.” The latter affected a particular
indifference, that in such cases, when well acted (as lords of money can
do--squires equally with usurers), may be valued at hundreds of pounds
in the pocket. “Can't you put it off? Come again to-morrow.”
“To-morrow's a day too late,” said the farmer, gravely. Whereto
replying, “Oh! well, come along in, then,” the squire led the way.
“You're two to one, if it's a transaction,” he said, nodding to Robert
to close the library door. “Take seats. Now then, what is it? And if I
make a face, just oblige me by thinking nothing about it, for my gout's
beginning to settle in the leg again, and shoots like an electric
telegraph from purgatory.”
He wheezed and lowered himself into his arm-chair; but the farmer and
Robert remained standing, and the farmer spoke:--
“My words are going to be few, squire. I've got a fact to bring to your
knowledge, and a question to ask.”
Surprise, exaggerated on his face by a pain he had anticipated, made the
squire glare hideously.
“Confound it, that's what they say to a prisoner in the box. Here's a
murder committed:--Are you the guilty person? Fact and question! Well,
out with 'em, both together.”
“A father ain't responsible for the sins of his children,” said the
farmer.
“Well, that's a fact,” the squire emphasized. “I've always maintained
it; but, if you go to your church, farmer--small blame to you if you
don't; that fellow who preaches there--I forget his name--stands out
for just the other way. You are responsible, he swears. Pay your son's
debts, and don't groan over it:--He spent the money, and you're the
chief debtor; that's his teaching. Well: go on. What's your question?”
“A father's not to be held responsible for the sins of his children,
squire. My daughter's left me. She's away. I saw my daughter at
the theatre in London. She saw me, and saw her sister with me. She
disappeared. It's a hard thing for a man to be saying of his own flesh
and blood. She disappeared. She went, knowing her father's arms open to
her. She was in company with your son.”
The squire was thrumming on the arm of his chair. He looked up vaguely,
as if waiting for the question to follow, but meeting the farmer's
settled eyes, he cried, irritably, “Well, what's that to me?”
“What's that to you, squire?”
“Are you going to make me out responsible for my son's conduct? My son's
a rascal--everybody knows that. I paid his debts once, and I've finished
with him. Don't come to me about the fellow. If there's a greater curse
than the gout, it's a son.”
“My girl,” said the farmer, “she's my flesh and blood, and I must find
her, and I'm here to ask you to make your son tell me where she's to be
found. Leave me to deal with that young man--leave you me! but I want my
girl.”
“But I can't give her to you,” roared the squire, afflicted by his two
great curses at once. “Why do you come to me? I'm not responsible for
the doings of the dog. I'm sorry for you, if that's what you want to
know. Do you mean to say that my son took her away from your house?”
“I don't do so, Mr. Blancove. I'm seeking for my daughter, and I see her
in company with your son.”
“Very well, very well,” said the squire; “that shows his habits; I can't
say more. But what has it got to do with me?”
The farmer looked helplessly at Robert.
“No, no,” the squire sung out, “no interlopers, no interpreting here.
I listen to you. My son--your daughter. I understand that, so far. It's
between us two. You've got a daughter who's gone wrong somehow: I'm
sorry to hear it. I've got a son who never went right; and it's no
comfort to me, upon my word. If you were to see the bills and the
letters I receive! but I don't carry my grievances to my neighbours. I
should think, Fleming, you'd do best, if it's advice you're seeking, to
keep it quiet. Don't make a noise about it. Neighbours' gossip I find
pretty well the worst thing a man has to bear, who's unfortunate enough
to own children.”
The farmer bowed his head with that bitter humbleness which
characterized his reception of the dealings of Providence toward him.
“My neighbours 'll soon be none at all,” he said. “Let 'em talk. I'm
not abusing you, Mr. Blancove. I'm a broken man: but I want my poor lost
girl, and, by God, responsible for your son or not, you must help me
to find her. She may be married, as she says. She mayn't be. But I must
find her.”
The squire hastily seized a scrap of paper on the table and wrote on it.
“There!” he handed the paper to the farmer; “that's my son's address,
'Boyne's Bank, City, London.' Go to him there, and you'll find him
perched on a stool, and a good drubbing won't hurt him. You've my hearty
permission, I can assure you: you may say so. 'Boyne's Bank.' Anybody
will show you the place. He's a rascally clerk in the office, and
precious useful, I dare swear. Thrash him, if you think fit.”
“Ay,” said the farmer, “Boyne's Bank. I've been there already. He's
absent from work, on a visit down into Hampshire, one of the young
gentlemen informed me; Fairly Park was the name of the place: but I came
to you, Mr. Blancove; for you're his father.”
“Well now, my good Fleming, I hope you think I'm properly punished for
that fact.” The squire stood up with horrid contortions.
Robert stepped in advance of the farmer.
“Pardon me, sir,” he said, though the squire met his voice with a
prodigious frown; “this would be an ugly business to talk about, as you
observe. It would hurt Mr. Fleming in these parts of the country, and he
would leave it, if he thought fit; but you can't separate your name
from your son's--begging you to excuse the liberty I take in mentioning
it--not in public: and your son has the misfortune to be well known
in one or two places where he was quartered when in the cavalry. That
matter of the jeweller--”
“Hulloa,” the squire exclaimed, in a perturbation.
“Why, sir, I know all about it, because I was a trooper in the regiment
your son, Mr. Algernon Blancove, quitted: and his name, if I may take
leave to remark so, won't bear printing. How far he's guilty before Mr.
Fleming we can't tell as yet; but if Mr. Fleming holds him guilty of
an offence, your son 'll bear the consequences, and what's done will be
done thoroughly. Proper counsel will be taken, as needn't be said. Mr.
Fleming applied to you first, partly for your sake as well as his own.
He can find friends, both to advise and to aid him.”
“You mean, sir,” thundered the squire, “that he can find enemies of
mine, like that infernal fellow who goes by the title of Reverend, down
below there. That'll do, that will do; there's some extortion at the
bottom of this. You're putting on a screw.”
“We're putting on a screw, sir,” said Robert, coolly.
“Not a penny will you get by it.”
Robert flushed with heat of blood.
“You don't wish you were a young man half so much as I do just now,” he
remarked, and immediately they were in collision, for the squire made a
rush to the bell-rope, and Robert stopped him. “We're going,” he said;
“we don't want man-servants to show us the way out. Now mark me, Mr.
Blancove, you've insulted an old man in his misery: you shall suffer
for it, and so shall your son, whom I know to be a rascal worthy of
transportation. You think Mr. Fleming came to you for money. Look at
this old man, whose only fault is that he's too full of kindness; he
came to you just for help to find his daughter, with whom your rascal of
a son was last seen, and you swear he's come to rob you of money. Don't
you know yourself a fattened cur, squire though you be, and called
gentleman? England's a good place, but you make England a hell to men
of spirit. Sit in your chair, and don't ever you, or any of you cross my
path; and speak a word to your servants before we're out of the house,
and I stand in the hall and give 'em your son's history, and make Wrexby
stink in your nostril, till you're glad enough to fly out of it. Now,
Mr. Fleming, there's no more to be done here; the game lies elsewhere.”
Robert took the farmer by the arm, and was marching out of the enemy's
territory in good order, when the squire, who had presented many
changeing aspects of astonishment and rage, arrested them with a call.
He began to say that he spoke to Mr. Fleming, and not to the young
ruffian of a bully whom the farmer had brought there: and then asked in
a very reasonable manner what he could do--what measures he could adopt
to aid the farmer in finding his child. Robert hung modestly in the
background while the farmer laboured on with a few sentences to explain
the case, and finally the squire said, that his foot permitting (it was
an almost pathetic reference to the weakness of flesh), he would go down
to Fairly on the day following and have a personal interview with his
son, and set things right, as far as it lay in his power, though he was
by no means answerable for a young man's follies.
He was a little frightened by the farmer's having said that Dahlia,
according to her own declaration was married, and therefore himself the
more anxious to see Mr. Algernon, and hear the truth from his estimable
offspring, whom he again stigmatized as a curse terrible to him as
his gouty foot, but nevertheless just as little to be left to his own
devices. The farmer bowed to these observations; as also when the squire
counselled him, for his own sake, not to talk of his misfortune all over
the parish.
“I'm not a likely man for that, squire; but there's no telling where
gossips get their crumbs. It's about. It's about.”
“About my son?” cried the squire.
“My daughter!”
“Oh, well, good-day,” the squire resumed more cheerfully. “I'll go down
to Fairly, and you can't ask more than that.”
When the farmer was out of the house and out of hearing, he rebuked
Robert for the inconsiderate rashness of his behaviour, and pointed out
how he, the farmer, by being patient and peaceful, had attained to the
object of his visit. Robert laughed without defending himself.
“I shouldn't ha' known ye,” the farmer repeated frequently; “I shouldn't
ha' known ye, Robert.”
“No, I'm a trifle changed, may be,” Robert agreed. “I'm going to claim a
holiday of you. I've told Rhoda that if Dahlia's to be found, I'll find
her, and I can't do it by sticking here. Give me three weeks. The land's
asleep. Old Gammon can hardly turn a furrow the wrong way. There's
nothing to do, which is his busiest occupation, when he's not
interrupted at it.”
“Mas' Gammon's a rare old man,” said the farmer, emphatically.
“So I say. Else, how would you see so many farms flourishing!”
“Come, Robert: you hit th' old man hard; you should learn to forgive.”
“So I do, and a telling blow's a man's best road to charity. I'd forgive
the squire and many another, if I had them within two feet of my fist.”
“Do you forgive my girl Rhoda for putting of you off?”
Robert screwed in his cheek.
“Well, yes, I do,” he said. “Only it makes me feel thirsty, that's all.”
The farmer remembered this when they had entered the farm.
“Our beer's so poor, Robert,” he made apology; “but Rhoda shall get you
some for you to try, if you like. Rhoda, Robert's solemn thirsty.”
“Shall I?” said Rhoda, and she stood awaiting his bidding.
“I'm not a thirsty subject,” replied Robert. “You know I've avoided
drink of any kind since I set foot on this floor. But when I drink,” he
pitched his voice to a hard, sparkling heartiness, “I drink a lot, and
the stuff must be strong. I'm very much obliged to you, Miss Rhoda, for
what you're so kind as to offer to satisfy my thirst, and you can't give
better, and don't suppose that I'm complaining; but your father's right,
it is rather weak, and wouldn't break the tooth of my thirst if I drank
at it till Gammon left off thinking about his dinner.”
With that he announced his approaching departure.
The farmer dropped into his fireside chair, dumb and spiritless.
A shadow was over the house, and the inhabitants moved about their
domestic occupations silent as things that feel the thunder-cloud.
Before sunset Robert was gone on his long walk to the station, and Rhoda
felt a woman's great envy of the liberty of a man, who has not, if it
pleases him not, to sit and eat grief among familiar images, in a home
that furnishes its altar-flame.