THE MAN IN POSSESSION
One morning, two or three months after Henry had left home, old Mr.
Lingard came to him as he sat bent, drearily industrious, over some
accounts, and said that he wished him in half-an-hour's time to go with
him to a new client; and presently the two set out together, Henry
wondering what it was to be, and welcoming anything that even exchanged
for a while one prison-house for another.
"I am taking you," said the old man, as they walked along together, "to
a firm of carriers and carters whose affairs have just come into our
hands; there is a dispute arisen between the partners. We represent
certain interests, as I shall presently explain to you, and you are to
be _our_ representative,--our man in possession," and the old gentleman
laughed uncannily.
"You never expected to be a man in possession, did you?"
Henry thrilled with a sense of awful intimacy, thus walking and even
jesting with his august employer.
"It may very likely be a long business," the old man continued; "and I
fear may be a little dull for you. For you must be on the spot all day
long. Your lunch will be served to you from the manager's house; I will
see to that. Actually, there will be very little for you to do, beyond
looking over the day-book and receipts for the day. The main thing is
for you to be there,--so to say, the moral effect of your
presence,"--and the old gentleman laughed again. Then, with an amused
sympathy that seemed almost exquisite to Henry, he chuckled out, looking
at him, from one corner of his eye, like a roguish skeleton--
"You'll be able to write as much poetry as you like. I see you've got a
book with you. Well, it will keep you awake. I don't mind that,--or even
the poetry,--so long as you don't forget the day-book."
"Thank you, sir," said Henry, almost hysterically.
"I suppose," the old man continued, presently, and in all he said there
was a tone of affectionate banter that quite won Henry's heart, "that
you're still as set on literature as ever. Well, well, far be it from me
to discourage you; but, my dear boy, you'll find out that we can't live
on dreams." (Henry thought, but didn't dare to say, that it was dreams
alone that made it possible to live at all.) "I suppose you think I'm a
dried-up old fellow enough. Well, well, I've had my dreams too. Yes,
I've had my dreams,"--Henry thought of what he had discovered that day
in the old man's diary,--"and I've written my verses to my lady's
eyebrow in my time too. Ah, my boy, we are all young and foolish once in
our lives!" and it was evident what a narrow and desperate escape from
being a poet the old man had had.
They had some distance to walk, for the stables to which they were bound
were situated in an old and rather disreputable part of the town. "It's
not a nice quarter," said Mr. Lingard, "not particularly salubrious or
refined," as bad smells and dirty women began to cross their path; "but
they are nice people you've got to deal with, and the place itself is
clean and nice enough, when you once get inside."
"Here we are," he said, presently, as they stopped short of an
old-fashioned house, set in a high red-brick wall which seemed to
enclose quite a considerable area of the district. In the wall, a yard
or two from the house, was set a low door, with a brass bell-pull at the
side which answered to Mr. Lingard's summons with a far-off clang. Soon
was heard the sound of hob-nailed boots, evidently over a paved yard,
and a big carter admitted them to the enclosure, which immediately
impressed them with its sense of country stable-yard cleanliness, and
its country smell of horses and provender. The stones of the courtyard
seemed to have been individually washed and scoured, and a small space
in front of a door evidently leading to the house was chalked over in
the prim, old-fashioned way.
"Is Mr. Flower about?" asked Mr. Lingard; and, as he asked the question,
a handsome, broad-shouldered man of about forty-five came down the yard.
It was a massive country face, a little heavy, a little slow, but
exceptionally gentle and refined.
"Good-morning, Mr. Lingard."
"Good-morning, Mr. Flower. This is our representative, Mr. Mesurier, of
whom I have already spoken to you. I'm sure you will get on well
together; and I'm sure he will give you as little trouble as possible."
Henry and Mr. Flower shook hands, and, as men sometimes do, took to each
other at once in the grasp of each other's hands, and the glances which
accompanied it.
Then the three walked further up the yard, to the little office where
Henry was to pass the next few weeks; and as Mr. Lingard turned over
books, and explained to Henry what he was expected to do, the sound of
horses kicking their stalls, and rattling chains in their mangers, came
to him from near at hand with a delightful echo of the country.
When Mr. Lingard had gone, Mr. Flower asked Henry if he'd care to look
at the horses. Henry sympathetically consented, though his knowledge of
horse-flesh hardly equalled his knowledge of accounts. But with the
healthy animal, in whatever form, one always feels more or less at home,
as one feels at home with the green earth, or that simple creature
the sea.
Mr. Flower led the way to a long stable where some fifty horses
protruded brown and dappled haunches on either hand. It was all
wonderfully clean and sweet, and the cobbled pavement, the straw beds,
the hay tumbling in sweet-scented bunches into the stalls from the loft
overhead, made you forget that around this bucolic enclosure swarmed and
rotted the foulest slums of the city, garrets where coiners plied their
amateur mints, and cellars where murderers lay hidden in the dark.
"It's like a breath of the country," said Henry, unconsciously striking
the right note.
"You're right there," said Mr. Flower, at the same moment heartily
slapping the shining side of a big chestnut mare, after the approved
manner of men who love horses. To thus belabour a horse on its
hinder-parts would seem to be equivalent among the horse-breeding
fraternity to chucking a buxom milkmaid under the chin.
"You're right there," he said; "and here's a good Derbyshire lass for
you," once more administering a sounding caress upon his sleek
favourite.
The horse turned its head and whinnied softly at the attention; and it
was evident it loved the very sound of Mr. Flower's voice.
"Have you ever been to Derbyshire?" asked Mr. Flower, presently, and
Henry immediately scented an idealism in the question.
"No," he answered; "but I believe it's a beautiful county."
"Beautiful's no name for it," said Mr. Flower; "it's just a garden."
And as Henry caught a glance of his eyes, he realised that Derbyshire
was Mr. Flower's poetry,--the poetry of a countryman imprisoned in the
town,--and that when he died he just hoped to go to Derbyshire.
"Ah, there are places there,--places like Miller's Dale, for
instance,--I'd rather take my hat off to than any bishop,"--and Henry
eagerly scented something of a thinker; "for God made them for sure, and
bishops--well--" and Mr. Flower wisely left the rest unsaid.
Thus they made the tour of the stables; and though Henry's remarks on
the subject of slapped horse-flesh had been anything but those of an
expert, it was tacitly agreed that Mr. Flower and he had taken to each
other. Nor, as he presently found, were Mr. Flower's interests limited
to horses.
"You're a reader, I see," he said, presently, when they had returned to
the office. "Well, I don't get much time to read nowadays; but there's
nothing I enjoy better, when I've got a pipe lit of an evening, than to
sit and listen to my little daughter reading Thackeray or
George Eliot."
Of course Henry was interested.
"Now there was a woman who knew country life," Mr. Flower continued.
"'Silas Marner,' or 'Adam Bede.' How wonderfully she gets at the very
heart of the people! And not only that, but the very smell of
country air."
And Mr. Flower drew a long breath of longing for Miller's Dale.
Henry mentally furbished up his George Eliot to reply.
"And 'The Mill on the Floss'?" he said.
"And 'Scenes from Clerical Life,'" said Mr. Flower. "There are some rare
strokes of nature there."
And so they went on comparing notes, till a little blue-eyed girl of
about seventeen appeared, carrying a dainty lunch for Henry, and telling
Mr. Flower that his own lunch was ready.
"This is my daughter of whom I spoke," said Mr. Flower.
"She who reads Thackeray and George Eliot to you?" said the Man in
Possession; and, when they had gone, he said to himself "What a bright
little face!"