But what had become of the 'bit of writing' which Harry Verney, by
the instigation of his evil genius, had put into the squire's fly-
book? Tregarva had waited in terrible suspense for many weeks,
expecting the explosion which he knew must follow its discovery. He
had confided to Lancelot the contents of the paper, and Lancelot had
tried many stratagems to get possession of it, but all in vain.
Tregarva took this as calmly as he did everything else. Only once,
on the morning of the eclaircissement between Lancelot and Argemone,
he talked to Lancelot of leaving his place, and going out to seek
his fortune; but some spell, which he did not explain, seemed to
chain him to the Priory. Lancelot thought it was the want of money,
and offered to lend him ten pounds whenever he liked; but Tregarva
shook his head.
'You have treated me, sir, as no one else has done--like a man and a
friend; but I am not going to make a market of your generosity. I
will owe no man anything, save to love one another.'
'But how do you intend to live?' asked Lancelot, as they stood
together in the cloisters.
'There's enough of me, sir, to make a good navigator if all trades
fail.'
'Nonsense! you must not throw yourself away so.'
'Oh, sir, there's good to be done, believe me, among those poor
fellows. They wander up and down the land like hogs and heathens,
and no one tells them that they have a soul to be saved. Not one
parson in a thousand gives a thought to them. They can manage old
folks and little children, sir, but, somehow, they never can get
hold of the young men--just those who want them most. There's a
talk about ragged schools, now. Why don't they try ragged churches,
sir, and a ragged service?'
'What do you mean?'
'Why, sir, the parsons are ready enough to save souls, but it must
be only according to rule and regulation. Before the Gospel can be
preached there must be three thousand pounds got together for a
church, and a thousand for an endowment, not to mention the thousand
pounds that the clergyman's education costs: I don't think of his
own keep, sir; that's little enough, often; and those that work
hardest get least pay, it seems to me. But after all that expense,
when they've built the church, it's the tradesmen, and the gentry,
and the old folk that fill it, and the working men never come near
it from one year's end to another.'
'What's the cause, do you think?' asked Lancelot, who had himself
remarked the same thing more than once.
'Half of the reason, sir, I do believe, is that same Prayer-book.
Not that the Prayer-book ain't a fine book enough, and a true one;
but, don't you see, sir, to understand the virtue of it, the poor
fellows ought to be already just what you want to make them.'
'You mean that they ought to be thorough Christians already, to
appreciate the spirituality of the liturgy.'
'You've hit it, sir. And see what comes of the present plan; how a
navvy drops into a church by accident, and there he has to sit like
a fish out of water, through that hour's service, staring or
sleeping, before he can hear a word that he understands; and, sir,
when the sermon does come at last, it's not many of them can make
much out of those fine book-words and long sentences. Why don't
they have a short simple service, now and then, that might catch the
ears of the roughs and the blowens, without tiring out the poor
thoughtless creatures' patience, as they do now?'
'Because,' said Lancelot,--'because--I really don't know why.--But I
think there is a simpler plan than even a ragged service.'
'What, then, sir?'
'Field-preaching. If the mountain won't come to Mahomet, let
Mahomet go to the mountain.'
'Right, sir; right you are. "Go out into the highways and hedges,
and compel them to come in." And why are they to speak to them only
one by one? Why not by the dozen and the hundred? We Wesleyans
know, sir,--for the matter of that, every soldier knows,--what
virtue there is in getting a lot of men together; how good and evil
spread like wildfire through a crowd; and one man, if you can stir
him up, will become leaven to leaven the whole lump. Oh why, sir,
are they so afraid of field-preaching? Was not their Master and
mine the prince of all field-preachers? Think, if the Apostles had
waited to collect subscriptions for a church before they spoke to
the poor heathens, where should we have been now?'
Lancelot could not but agree. But at that moment a footman came up,
and, with a face half laughing, half terrified, said,--
'Tregarva, master wants you in the study. And please, sir, I think
you had better go in too; master knows you're here, and you might
speak a word for good, for he's raging like a mad bull.'
'I knew it would come at last,' said Tregarva, quietly, as he
followed Lancelot into the house.
It had come at last. The squire was sitting in his study, purple
with rage, while his daughters were trying vainly to pacify him.
All the men-servants, grooms, and helpers, were drawn up in line
along the wall, and greeted Tregarva, whom they all heartily liked,
with sly and sorrowful looks of warning,
'Here, you sir; you--, look at this! Is this the way you repay me?
I, who have kept you out of the workhouse, treated you like my own
child? And then to go and write filthy, rascally, Radical ballads
on me and mine! This comes of your Methodism, you canting, sneaking
hypocrite!--you viper--you adder--you snake--you--!' And the
squire, whose vocabulary was not large, at a loss for another
synonym, rounded off his oration by a torrent of oaths; at which
Argemone, taking Honoria's hand, walked proudly out of the room,
with one glance at Lancelot of mingled shame and love. 'This is
your handwriting, you villain! you know it' (and the squire tossed
the fatal paper across the table); 'though I suppose you'll lie
about it. How can you depend on fellows who speak evil of their
betters? But all the servants are ready to swear it's your
handwriting.'
'Beg your pardon, sir,' interposed the old butler, 'we didn't quite
say that; but we'll all swear it isn't ours.'
'The paper is mine,' said Tregarva.
'Confound your coolness! He's no more ashamed of it than--Read it
out, Smith, read it out every word; and let them all hear how this
pauper, this ballad-singing vagabond, whom I have bred up to insult
me, dares to abuse his own master.'
'I have not abused you, sir,' answered Tregarva. 'I will be heard,
sir!' he went on in a voice which made the old man start from his
seat and clench his fist but he sat down again. 'Not a word in it
is meant for you. You have been a kind and a good master to me.
Ask where you will if I was ever heard to say a word against you. I
would have cut off my right hand sooner than write about you or
yours. But what I had to say about others lies there, and I am not
ashamed of it.'
'Not against me? Read it out, Smith, and see if every word of it
don't hit at me, and at my daughters, too, by--, worst of all! Read
it out, I say!'
Lancelot hesitated; but the squire, who was utterly beside himself,
began to swear at him also, as masters of hounds are privileged to
do; and Lancelot, to whom the whole scene was becoming every moment
more and more intensely ludicrous, thought it best to take up the
paper and begin:--
'A ROUGH RHYME ON A ROUGH MATTER.
'The merry brown hares came leaping
Over the crest of the hill,
Where the clover and corn lay sleeping
Under the moonlight still.
'Leaping late and early,
Till under their bite and their tread
The swedes, and the wheat, and the barley,
Lay cankered, and trampled, and dead.
'A poacher's widow sat sighing
On the side of the white chalk bank,
Where under the gloomy fir-woods
One spot in the ley throve rank.
'She watched a long tuft of clover,
Where rabbit or hare never ran;
For its black sour haulm covered over
The blood of a murdered man.
'She thought of the dark plantation,
And the hares and her husband's blood,
And the voice of her indignation
Rose up to the throne of God.
'"I am long past wailing and whining--
I have wept too much in my life:
I've had twenty years of pining
As an English labourer's wife.
'"A labourer in Christian England,
Where they cant of a Saviour's name,
And yet waste men's lives like the vermin's
For a few more brace of game.
'"There's blood on your new foreign shrubs, squire;
There's blood on your pointer's feet;
There's blood on the game you sell, squire,
And there's blood on the game you eat!"'
'You villain!' interposed the squire, 'when did I ever sell a head
of game?'
'"You have sold the labouring man, squire,
Body and soul to shame,
To pay for your seat in the House, squire,
And to pay for the feed of your game.
"'You made him a poacher yourself, squire,
When you'd give neither work nor meat;
And your barley-fed hares robbed the garden
At our starving children's feet;
'"When packed in one reeking chamber,
Man, maid, mother, and little ones lay;
While the rain pattered in on the rotting bride-bed,
And the walls let in the day;
'"When we lay in the burning fever
On the mud of the cold clay floor,
Till you parted us all for three months, squire,
At the cursed workhouse door.
"'We quarrelled like brutes, and who wonders?
What self-respect could we keep,
Worse housed than your hacks and your pointers,
Worse fed than your hogs and your sheep?"'
'And yet he has the impudence to say he don't mean me!' grumbled the
old man. Tregarva winced a good deal--as if he knew what was coming
next; and then looked up relieved when he found Lancelot had omitted
a stanza--which I shall not omit.
'"Our daughters with base-born babies
Have wandered away in their shame;
If your misses had slept, squire, where they did,
Your misses might do the same.
"'Can your lady patch hearts that are breaking
With handfuls of coals and rice,
Or by dealing out flannel and sheeting
A little below cost price?
"'You may tire of the gaol and the workhouse,
And take to allotments and schools,
But you've run up a debt that will never
Be repaid us by penny-club rules.
'"In the season of shame and sadness,
In the dark and dreary day
When scrofula, gout, and madness,
Are eating your race away;
"'When to kennels and liveried varlets
You have cast your daughters' bread;
And worn out with liquor and harlots,
Your heir at your feet lies dead;
"'When your youngest, the mealy-mouthed rector,
Lets your soul rot asleep to the grave,
You will find in your God the protector
Of the freeman you fancied your slave."
'She looked at the tuft of clover,
And wept till her heart grew light;
And at last, when her passion was over,
Went wandering into the night.
'But the merry brown hares came leaping
Over the uplands still,
Where the clover and corn lay sleeping
On the side of the white chalk hill.'
'Surely, sir,' said Lancelot, 'you cannot suppose that this latter
part applies to you. or your family?'
'If it don't, it applies to half the gentlemen in the vale, and
that's just as bad. What right has the fellow to speak evil of
dignities?' continued he, quoting the only text in the Bible which
he was inclined to make a 'rule absolute.' 'What does such an
insolent dog deserve? What don't he deserve, I say?'
'I think,' quoth Lancelot, ambiguously, 'that a man who can write
such ballads is not fit to be your gamekeeper, and I think he feels
so himself;' and Lancelot stole an encouraging look at Tregarva.
'And I say, sir,' the keeper answered, with an effort, 'that I leave
Mr. Lavington's service here on the spot, once and for all.'
'And that you may do, my fine fellow!' roared the squire. 'Pay the
rascal his wages, steward, and then duck him soundly in the weir-
pool. He had better have stayed there when he fell in last.'
'So I had, indeed, I think. But I'll take none of your money. The
day Harry Verney was buried I vowed that I'd touch no more of the
wages of blood. I'm going, sir; I never harmed you, or meant a hard
word of all this for you, or dreamt that you or any living soul
would ever see it. But what I've seen myself, in spite of myself,
I've set down here, and am not ashamed of it. And woe,' he went on
with an almost prophetic solemnity in his tone and gesture--'woe to
those who do these things! and woe to those also who, though they
dare not do them themselves, yet excuse and defend them who dare,
just because the world calls them gentlemen, and not tyrants and
oppressors.'
He turned to go. The squire, bursting with passion, sprang up with
a terrible oath, turned deadly pale, staggered, and dropped
senseless on the floor.
They all rushed to lift him up. Tregarva was the first to take him
in his arms and place him tenderly in his chair, where he lay back
with glassy eyes, snoring heavily in a fit of apoplexy.
'Go; for God's sake, go,' whispered Lancelot to the keeper, 'and
wait for me at Lower Whitford. I must see you before you stir.'
The keeper slipped away sadly. The ladies rushed in--a groom
galloped off for the doctor--met him luckily in the village, and, in
a few minutes, the squire was bled and put to bed, and showed
hopeful signs of returning consciousness. And as Argemone and
Lancelot leant together over his pillow, her hair touched her
lover's, and her fragrant breath was warm upon his cheek; and her
bright eyes met his and drank light from them, like glittering
planets gazing at their sun.
The obnoxious ballad produced the most opposite effects on Argemone
and on Honoria. Argemone, whose reverence for the formalities and
the respectabilities of society, never very great, had, of late,
utterly vanished before Lancelot's bad counsel, could think of it
only as a work of art, and conceived the most romantic longing to
raise Tregarva into some station where his talents might have free
play. To Honoria, on the other hand, it appeared only as a very
fierce, coarse, and impertinent satire, which had nearly killed her
father. True, there was not a thought in it which had not at some
time or other crossed her own mind; but that made her dislike all
the more to see those thoughts put into plain English. That very
intense tenderness and excitability which made her toil herself
among the poor, and had called out both her admiration of Tregarva
and her extravagant passion at his danger, made her also shrink with
disgust from anything which thrust on her a painful reality, which
she could not remedy. She was a staunch believer, too, in that
peculiar creed which allows every one to feel for the poor, except
themselves, and considers that to plead the cause of working-men is,
in a gentleman, the perfection of virtue, but in a working-man
himself, sheer high treason. And so beside her father's sick-bed
she thought of the keeper only as a scorpion whom she had helped to
warm into life; and sighing assent to her mother, when she said,
'That wretch, and he seemed so pious and so obliging! who would have
dreamt that he was such a horrid Radical?' she let him vanish from
her mind and out of Whitford Priors, little knowing the sore weight
of manly love he bore with him.
As soon as Lancelot could leave the Priory, he hastened home to find
Tregarva. The keeper had packed up all his small possessions and
brought them down to Lower Whitford, through which the London coach
passed. He was determined to go to London and seek his fortune. He
talked of turning coal-heaver, Methodist preacher, anything that
came to hand, provided that he could but keep independence and a
clear conscience. And all the while the man seemed to be struggling
with some great purpose,--to feel that he had a work to do, though
what it was, and how it was to be done, he did not see.
'I am a tall man,' he said, 'like Saul the son of Kish; and I am
going forth, like him, sir, to find my father's asses. I doubt I
shan't have to look far for some of them.'
'And perhaps,' said Lancelot, laughing, 'to find a kingdom.'
'May be so, sir. I have found one already, by God's grace, and I'm
much mistaken if I don't begin to see my way towards another.'
'And what is that?'
'The kingdom of God on earth, sir, as well as in heaven. Come it
must, sir, and come it will some day.'
Lancelot shook his head.
Tregarva lifted up his eyes and said,--
'Are we not taught to pray for the coming of His kingdom, sir? And
do you fancy that He who gave the lesson would have set all mankind
to pray for what He never meant should come to pass?'
Lancelot was silent. The words gained a new and blessed meaning in
his eyes.
'Well,' he said, 'the time, at least, of their fulfilment is far
enough off. Union-workhouses and child-murder don't look much like
it. Talking of that, Tregarva, what is to become of your promise to
take me to a village wake, and show me what the poor are like?'
'I can keep it this night, sir. There is a revel at Bone-sake,
about five miles up the river. Will you go with a discharged
gamekeeper?'
'I will go with Paul Tregarva, whom I honour and esteem as one of
God's own noblemen; who has taught me what a man can be, and what I
am not,'--and Lancelot grasped the keeper's hand warmly. Tregarva
brushed his hand across his eyes, and answered,--
'"I said in my haste, All men are liars;" and God has just given me
the lie back in my own teeth. Well, sir, we will go to-night. You
are not ashamed of putting on a smock-frock? For if you go as a
gentleman, you will hear no more of them than a hawk does of a covey
of partridges.'
So the expedition was agreed on, and Lancelot and the keeper parted
until the evening.
But why had the vicar been rambling on all that morning through
pouring rain, on the top of the London coach? And why was he so
anxious in his inquiries as to the certainty of catching the up-
train? Because he had had considerable experience in that wisdom of
the serpent, whose combination with the innocence of the dove, in
somewhat ultramontane proportions, is recommended by certain late
leaders of his school. He had made up his mind, after his
conversation with the Irishman, that he must either oust Lancelot at
once, or submit to be ousted by him, and he was now on his way to
Lancelot's uncle and trustee, the London banker.
He knew that the banker had some influence with his nephew, whose
whole property was invested in the bank, and who had besides a deep
respect for the kindly and upright practical mind of the veteran
Mammonite. And the vicar knew, too, that he himself had some
influence with the banker, whose son Luke had been his pupil at
college. And when the young man lay sick of a dangerous illness,
brought on by debauchery, into which weakness rather than vice had
tempted him, the vicar had watched and prayed by his bed, nursed him
as tenderly as a mother, and so won over his better heart that he
became completely reclaimed, and took holy orders with the most
earnest intention to play the man therein, as repentant rakes will
often do, half from a mere revulsion to asceticism, half from real
gratitude for their deliverance. This good deed had placed the
banker in the vicar's debt, and he loved and reverenced him in spite
of his dread of 'Popish novelties.' And now the good priest was
going to open to him just as much of his heart as should seem fit;
and by saying a great deal about Lancelot's evil doings, opinions,
and companions, and nothing at all about the heiress of Whitford,
persuade the banker to use all his influence in drawing Lancelot up
to London, and leaving a clear stage for his plans on Argemone. He
caught the up-train, he arrived safe and sound in town, but what he
did there must be told in another chapter.