It was the beginning of the Long Vacation, and Edward Beaumont was
asking himself how he should spend his holiday. Sam Storth had already
elected for Scotland, and had amused his partner by appearing at the
office in a tweed shooting suit, knicker-bockers and ribbed stockings
and stout boots complete. Sam was breaking his suit in, so that by the
time he reached the land of cakes it might be subtly suggestive of
honourable service on the moors.
“I don’t suppose you could hit a haystack if you tried, Sam,”
Edward had commented, with an amused smile. “Practising in a shooting
gallery at Huddersfield Fair at three shots a penny must be rather
different from popping at grouse on their native heath.”
“Well, I’m not going to pop at grouse on their native heath or
anywhere else. When I tackle that toothsome bird give me a knife and
fork, and I’m your man. But a fellow can’t go to Scotland, even if
he doesn’t get further North than Princess Street in Auld
Reekie—that’s the correct name for the town, isn’t it?—in a
frock-coat and top hat. But here’s a letter for you marked
‘Private.’ I’d nearly opened it with the office letters.”
Beaumont looked at the envelope. There was a crest and motto on the
flap. “_Forliter et leniter_, a lion rampant air scraping, I call it.
What rot this heraldic tomfoolery is? Who the deuce can it be from?”
“Better open it and see,” suggested Storth. Beaumont read the letter
rapidly, then more carefully, and finally handed it to his partner.
“Read it up, Sam. Who in the name of all that’s ecclesiastical is
Hugh St. Clair, Archdeacon?”
“The Vicarage,
Caistorholm,
Lincs.
August 10, 188
“DEAR SIR,—
I am strongly recommended by my esteemed friend, Mr. Fortescue, to
seek your advice and professional assistance in a somewhat
complicated matter in which I am very seriously concerned.
Unfortunately, the absence of the Bishop on the Continent has thrown
an unusual stress of diocesan work upon me, and I cannot very well
pay a visit to Yorkshire at this juncture. Moreover, if you should
be disposed to undertake the protection of my interests, the matter
is such as to render a visit by you—probably, indeed, many visits—to
this neighbourhood, indispensable. May I suggest, then, that you
should accept the modest hospitality of the Vicarage for a few days.
If you can come, I hope you can come at a very early day. You will
find the route by Doncaster a convenient one, and if you will
apprize me of the time of your arrival, I will send the carriage to
meet your train. Believe me, Mr. Fortescue has spoken to me of you
in such terms that I hope your many engagements will not preclude
you from giving your valued time and attention to the affair in
which I hope to have the benefit of your advice.
Yours faithfully,
HUGH ST. CLAIR,
Archdeacon.”
“Who’s ‘my friend Mr. Fortescue’?” queried Beaumont. “Never
heard of him in my life that I can remember. Tell you what, Sam, seems
to me this letter’s missed its way. St. Clairs and Fortescues and
crests and mottoes aren’t much in our line, eh? Memorandum heads from
Plover Mills, Telephone address No.—is more our form. Yet here it is
as plain as a pike-staff, ‘Edward Beaumont, Esq., solicitor,
Huddersfield.’”
“I fancy I’ve heard my reverend relative talk of a Fortescue he knew
at Cambridge. I daresay that’s the way it’s worked round. Anyhow,
assuming the letter’s for you, what do you mean to do? Go, of
course.”
“Well, no, Sam, I think not. You see, Archdeacons and I don’t
assimilate somehow. Who was it that wondered how the old augurs and
haruspices kept their faces when they saw each other? Well, I’m that
way with parsons. Not that I ever came across a live Archdeacon. But I
suppose he’ll be a cleric, double distilled. I think you’d better
write and offer your own valuable services. Besides, it looks like
chamber business, and that’s your department, you know.”
“Well, I’m not having any, thank you, Beaumont. I pass this deal.
I’ve no sort of fancy for passing a week in a country vicarage with a
parson double-distilled or diluted. I know the kind of thing; family
prayers at eight, croquet with the parsonettes till luncheon, cold
mutton and rice pudding and small beer, inspection of the village school
at three, yawn yourself to death till dinner, heavy joint, sodden
pudding, cheap claret, family prayers again at ten, no beer, no baccy,
no cards, unless its back-gammon or whist for penny points and no grog.
A washed-out archdeaconess, gushing or prim daughters, a dozen of ’em,
a cub of a son home from the local grammar-school, a noodle of a curate,
and the devil and all to pay if you wink at the chambermaid. No thank
you, Beaumont, you’re the man asked for, and ought to go. You can talk
theology till you’re black in the face, and flirt mildly with the
saintly misses, take it out of the curate generally, and perhaps shoot a
rabbit or two if you fancy yourself with a gun,” concluded Sam,
viciously.
And so it came to pass that Edward Beaumont some three days later found
himself in a market train crawling between Doncaster and Caisterholm,
marvelling at the, to him, new and unaccustomed types he saw on the
platforms or had for companions in his department—gentlemen farmers,
with a horsey look, ponderous bucolics, farmers of their thousand acres,
and slouching, sleepy peasants, with occasional glimpses of country
Hebes, with tangled, tawny locks, blooming cheeks, cherry lips, dancing
eyes of azure hue, bidding noisy farewells or boisterous greetings to
bent and wrinkled parents as they left for or returned to their rural
homes from domestic service in the colliery towns, where so many leave
their roses and their innocency. As the train crept its leisurely way
into the heart of the fen country, with its thorpes and long spires or
hoary towers, its dykes and placid streams—the majestic Trent spanned
and left many miles behind—its hazel groves, its clustered copses, its
broad expanse of teeming soil, groaning in labour of the bearded barley
and the golden wheat, Beaumont could scarcely realise that but a few
hours’ journey had borne him from the rough, brown, bare, moor-crested
hills of his home, with their streams all foul with the waste of the
dye-pans, the sky greyed by the smoke of a legion of long and lean
mill-chimneys, sallow, gaunt, eager-visaged, restless mill hands, rude
and assertive of speech, clattering everywhere with clogged feet, all
nerve, hurry, impatience, and irreverence. When he asked his
whereabouts, and was told that the Parts of Holland lay to his left, he
could have well-believed that he had slept and awoke in the flat land of
Hans and Frau and schiedam. The talk, such as there was, of his
companions for the first few miles had been of mangols and
“’tates,” of beasts and calves, of tithes and rents, of bushels
and loads, and the dreadful low prices ruling at the Corn Exchange in
Doncaster. The farmers had talked with dreamy complacency of inevitable
ruin, and seemed to be sheathing themselves in fat as they progressed
comfortably to the Bankruptcy Court. There had been a good many
clergymen travelling by the same train for short distances, and they
seemed as learned in matters agricultural as their parishioners. One,
indeed, had spoken of chemistry and scientific agriculture, and certain
classes that were spoken of for the farmers, with professors from
London, and the farmers had listened with tolerant contempt, but with
the evident conviction that nothing was to be learned from gentlemen in
London.
“I went to one o’ the classes when I was staying with my missus’
brother, Selby way. An’ if he didn’t talk of oxides an’ nitrates.
If he’d ha’ talked about poor-rates and sheep scab there’d ha’
been some sense in it.”
Edward Beaumont did not anticipate his stay at Caistorholm Vicarage
without some inward trepidation. To begin with, he did not quite know
what manner of man an Archdeacon might be. He had a vague memory that
Lord Palmerston had defined an Archdeacon to be a priest who discharged
archidiaconal functions; but that did not seem to help him much. His own
acquaintance among ministers of religion lay chiefly among the
professors of dissenting doctrines with whom his political activities
had brought him into contact on the Liberal Two Hundred and on
platforms. He bethought him of two doctors of divinity of his own town,
one a pillar of Congregationalism, a Scotchman, long, lean, ascetic, but
a scholar; the other a Boanerges of the Baptist faith, loud, blatant,
pushing, with an American degree. A week of either in the enforced
companionship of a country house would be badly paid by any fee the most
indulgent taxing-master would be likely to approve. But an Archdeacon!
That might mean anything from a prince of the Church, haughty, dignified
unconsciously patronizing, to a country vicar with a sounding title, but
differing only from an educated farmer in the necessity of preaching a
sermon a week to a sprinkling of clodhoppers and pensioners.
“Anyhow, I won’t be patronized!” resolved Edward, as he drew near
his destination. “If I find the place too much of a bore, or too much
against the grain, I can either chuck the thing altogether or send
Storth. He’s got a better stomach for spattle than I have, and if
there’s a decent inn in the place, with a respectable tap, Master Sam
will comfort himself o’ nights for the ennui of the days.”
The station at Caistorholm seemed to consist of a platform and a wooden
waiting-room, a porter’s-room, and a ticket-office. An aged
station-master received his portmanteau, and told him a carriage from
the Vicarage was waiting outside for a gent from Yorkshire. A steep
flight of wooden steps led from the top of the embankment, on which the
station stood, to the long, straight, chalky road outside—a Roman road
Edward learned later, straight as an arrow’s flight, running mile
after mile in undeviating line—“the shortest distance between two
extreme points,” ruminated Edward. A neat dogcart was at the foot of
the steps, a natty groom stood at the head of the mettlesome cob; the
aged porter, descending the steps with difficulty, placed Edward’s
portmanteau at the back of the phaeton, received a more liberal tip, as
he reflected subsequently, than he was accustomed to receive from
visitors to the Vicarage, and the mare, at a word, jumped to the collar,
and the carriage bowled away. On each side the road a broad, unfenced
ditch ran between the highway and the hedgerows that fenced the
spreading acres of potatoes, cabbage, and turnip that spread on either
side, far as the eye could reach, in one vast expanse of weary level,
unbroken save by an occasional windmill, whose great wheels turned
slowly with many a creak and groan in the warm autumn air.
“These roads must be dangerous on a dark night,” suggested Beaumont,
by way of breaking a silence that was becoming irksome.
“Not when you knows the road, sir.”
“The farmers hereabout must be a remarkably temperate sort of men!”
“’Taint the farmers, sir, it’s the hosses. Give a hoss his head if
you be o’ercome yourself, sir, an’ he’ll bring you home all right,
never fear. That’s my advice.”
“I don’t drive myself,” said Edward, smiling, “when I do I’ll
remember your advice. Though I’m more by way of giving advice than
taking it.”
“Doctor Gummidge, sir, the young ’un, he hasn’t been in these
parts above ten year or so. He take a deal aboard, he do, to be sure,
an’ he never had a spill yet that I heerd tell on. If you can’t
trust a hoss, sir, why, sell him or shoot him, that’s what I say.
That’s the Vicarage, sir, between the trees. If you’ll hold the
reins, I’ll open the gates of the drive. Woa, lass.”
A wide, well-kept carriage drive swept up between fields of what Edward
rightly surmised to be ancient glebe, in which a few sheep grazed
placidly, lifting drowsy heads to gaze unconcernedly at the high
stepping mare, a turkey, angrily suffused about the head, gobbled in
indignant protest, and a peacock, with outspread tail, strutted
resplendent. An Alderney whisked the flies from its back lazily as it
chewed its cud. A sunk fence divided the paddocks from a large lawn,
which, with flower beds of varied shape, rich in a declining bloom,
extended to the long French windows of a massive, square, two-storied
building of deep-toned, ruddy brick, about which the ivy and the
honeysuckle climbed and clustered in rich luxuriance. At the trellised
porch of the main entrance stood a tall, well-built, portly man of some
sixty years. His face was full and clean-shaven, his teeth perfect, his
hair, still abundant, snowy white. His broad shoulders, well thrown
back, enabled him to bear without loss of dignity a becoming fullness of
habit. The hand, which was extended in greeting to Edward, was plump,
white, and soft, the voice refined and mellow.
“You’re train was late, of course, Mr. Beaumont. If a train arrived
punctually at Caistorholm we should expect a revival of miracles in the
Church. You shall go to your room now, and we can have a chat in my
study before dinner. We dine early, six o’clock. I hope you won’t
find that too early for you; but you must try to put up with our country
ways.”
The ordinary dinner-hour at Huddersfield was one o’clock. At the club
or hostelries at which Beaumont was fain to dine, if he wished for ought
more than the chop or steak beyond which the culinary skill of his
landlady seldom adventured, one o’clock was the sacred hour of dinner,
and at that time the manufacturers, merchants, and professional men took
their substantial mid-day meal. To be sure, there were occasional
dinner-parties at private houses of the more pretentious of the
_nouveaux riches_ of the neighbourhood, fixed for seven o’clock, at
which the gentlemen were expected to appear arrayed in the correct
glories of evening-dress, but Edward had always complied with an
ill-grace to this sacrifice to middle-class snobbishness. He thought it
ridiculous that people who, on three hundred and sixty days of the year,
sat down at noon with healthy appetites to their Yorkshire pudding and
roast beef, with pickled cabbage and apple-pie and cheese, and a glass
of Burton to wash it down, should, on festive days, don a garb they were
not used to, and in which they felt ill at ease, dine off kickshaws they
did not care for, drink wines of which they hardly knew the names, and
which they did not honestly like—all because, instead of dining, they
were giving a dinner. However, he had brought a dress suit with him
in—_utrurmque sortem paratus_, as he reflected with satisfaction. The
library at the Vicarage was a capacious room, furnished in oak, and did
service also as a smoke-room. It was a very choice Havana that the
Archdeacon handed to his guest, as the latter joined him in the pleasant
room, and stood to admire the prospect from the long French window
giving upon the trim lawn.
“I’m afraid you won’t find many books here much to your taste; but
my daughter will perhaps be able to find you some literature of a
lighter sort.”
“I confess, Archdeacon, to a weakness for fiction. The mistress of my
choice is, of course, law; but I flirt with divinity, or, should I say,
apologetics, and I am afraid to think how many novels I read in the
year.”
“Ah! well, _dulce est desipere_. Unhappily I neglect my books too much
in these latter days. And for some time now I have been unable to
concentrate my mind even on my sermons, I suppose it is a just judgment
on me. I preach to my poor flock on the sin of covetousness and the
blessedness of contentment, and yet I have myself, though blessed by
Providence with stores above my every need, have not known to be
content, and have sought to add to my sufficiency. I say _mea culpa_
with all my heart, and I promise you, Mr. Beaumont, if you can help me
out of this coil, never again to entangle myself with concerns I do not
understand, and which have brought me hitherto only anxious days and
sleepless nights.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Edward, “’t were as well that you should
give me an outline of the matter on which you desire my assistance. I
can afterwards consider the papers in detail, for I understand the
affair is one of complexity.”
“A perfect maze, I assure you, my dear sir. I was tenth wrangler of my
year, and one would have thought I should know something about figures.
But when I try to understand the books and accounts of the Skerne Iron
Works Company, of which I am a director, I am as utterly befogged as if
I had never heard of Todhunter or Colenso.”
“Ah, well! happily I know something of book-keeping, so we may be able
to unravel the skein. Now tell me all about it.”
“What do you say to a little whisky and seltzer to your cigar—unless
you prefer a dry smoke?”
“If you will join me, Archdeacon.”
“With all my heart. We have a couple of hours before the dressing-bell
sounds. If whisky and rheumatism had been known to St. Paul, and
Timothy’s complaint had not apparently been simply stomachic, no doubt
the Pauline injunction would have been more comprehensive. But I am not
for literal interpretation, Mr. Beaumont, are you?”
“Assuredly not! We will apply the _cy pres_ doctrine. ’tis merest
equity.”
The Archdeacon looked puzzled, but passed the decanter.
“It is some five years since I acquired my shares in the Skerne Iron
Works. The concern had, according to all seeming, been a prosperous one
for years. The three brothers who owned it were most respectable men,
good churchmen, justices for the borough of G——, and, in a word,
most respectable men. When they turned their business into a company,
and sold out the greater part of their interest, I was easily persuaded
to adventure a large part of my savings in the shares of the company. I
was only getting a beggarly 4 per cent. on mortgage securities, and had
often as much difficulty and delay in getting my interest as I still
have in getting my tithes. But the Skerne shares showed 7 per cent., and
the interest was to come as punctually as quarter-day itself. So it did
for a year or so, and I congratulated myself on my prescience in making
so excellent an investment. I assured myself that my dear daughter’s
welfare was now secured, die when I might. Of course, as you know, my
income with this living dies with me. My poor wife had some three
thousand pounds of her own, which, by her will, she left to our child,
and as I was sole trustee of it, I thought I could not do better than
invest it along with my own money, and my daughter, of course, assented
to my proposal.”
“Was she of age?” asked Edward.
“H’m, well, no; not at the time.”
“Was the Skerne investment authorised by the terms of the will?”
“Really I cannot say, and I don’t see that it matters. Of course,
whatever I have is, or will be, my daughter’s some day.”
“Quite so,” assented Beaumont. “Well?”
“The shareholders made me a director,” continued the Archdeacon,
“and for a time I took quite an eager interest in the work of the
concern. It was quite delightful to drive over—it is but ten miles
from here—and see the various processes. But after the first twelve
months or so, instead of dividend warrants, I got calls, and that was
not so pleasant, you know.”
“Naturally,” agreed Edward. “What became of the three most
respectable brothers?”
“Two of them retired on the formation of the company. The elder
continued for a time as managing director; but gradually, as I have
ascertained, he, too, has almost entirely severed his connection, and
his financial interest in the works is very slender. In fact, whilst I
was eagerly acquiring more and more of the shares, Allcroft, that’s
his name, was quietly but steadily getting rid of his.”
“‘Unloading,’ I think it is called,” said Edward.
“And a very good term, too. The worst of it is, in a sense, I not only
put my own and my daughter’s money into the company, but persuaded a
number of my brother clergymen to do the same. You see, Mr. Beaumont, an
archdeacon has naturally a great deal of confidence reposed in him, and,
I’m sure I can’t tell why, my brethren credited me with an amount of
business capacity and astuteness, which it is quite clear I don’t
possess.”
“You ought to have smelt a rat when the Allcrofts unloaded. Depend
upon it, they knew what they were about.”
“Oh! they had very good reasons to give—family settlements, the
desire to retire from business, and so on.”
“You went into this thing, I suppose, largely on the advice of these
Allcrofts?”
“Entirely.”
“Well, if I had thought their advice good enough to lead me into it, I
think I should have considered their example still better to lead me
out. However, you aren’t out, so it’s no use talking about that. But
perhaps it’s not too late now. The shares will have fallen, but you
might clear at a trifling loss.”
“Rat, you mean?”
“If you like, yes. A sinking ship’s not the best quarters.”
“You forget, Mr. Beaumont, I told you many of my brother clergymen
have invested in the Skerne Iron Works through my advice and influence,
and, indeed, not a few others, widowed ladies chiefly of small means.
And I cannot leave them in the lurch. I wish you to investigate the
affairs of the Company, and to take such steps as may get me clear of it
with honour and with as little loss as may be.”
“I understand thoroughly, Archdeacon, and I shall have pleasure in
doing my best to protect both your interest and your honour.”
“And now, Mr. Beaumont, enough of business for to-day. It is time to
dress, and we shall, no doubt, find my daughter expecting us in the
drawing-room. Our neighbour, Squire Wright, is to dine with us to-day,
I think.”
Whilst the Vicar and his lawyer were in serious conference in the
library. Miss Eleanor St. Clair was whiling away the tedious quarter of
an hour before the dinner-bell with the only other guest of the evening.
She was the Archdeacon’s only child, and he a widower for some years,
and, since her mother’s death, the charge of the household had
devolved upon daughter. Perhaps that fact had given to Eleanor a
thoughtfulness and an air of authority beyond her years. Tall, raven of
hair, of pure, pale the complexion, with dark orbs, full of life and
intelligence, Eleanor moved with the easy grace of accustomed dignity.
_Incessit regina_. Related on her mother’s side to the noble house of
Yarborough, she did not forget that her grandfather was an earl, and it
is possible she was equally well aware that the coronet of a countess
would sit becomingly upon the smooth, white brow borne so proudly above
her long but rounded neck, and the white smooth shoulders her simple
costume of to-night rather hinted than revealed.
Her companion, Squire Wright, was the largest landowner, except perhaps
the noble family aforesaid, for miles around. He said, and believed,
that when Norman William came to the fens, a Wright was a Saxon Thane,
and lord of many a wide-spreading demense, and that, from that day to
this, Thoresby Manor had never been without a squire of his family
sprung in direct line from the stout old Thane, who had dealt his shrewd
knocks against the mailed warriors on Senlac’s fatal field. One felt
little disposed to question the genealogy, looking at the present
representative of the ancient line. George Wright was a well-set,
stalwart man, of some thirty summers. His hair was flaxen, and curled
closely to his head, his short beard and moustache were of flax, rudded
by the sun, his shoulders were broad, his chest deep, his cheeks full,
his eye of pale blue—a healthy, manly young Saxon, and good to look
upon. For the rest, was he not in the commission of the peace, had a
troop in the Yeomanry, riding to the annual inspection at the head of
his own tenantry, could give a good account of himself among the
partridges, and was so good a judge of a horse or a bullock that he was
one of the judges at the County Cattle Show, and if not especially
brilliant, was also not especially stupid; and if he had sowed any wild
oats had sowed them discreetly and without scandal; was regular in his
church-going, a steady supporter of the Crown, the Church, and the
finest constitution in the world, and had no silly fads. He was an easy
landlord, and, therefore, popular; his estate was unencumbered, and
there were no sisters or younger brothers to provide for, and as it was
now full time in everybody’s opinion, his own included, that he should
marry and settle down, he told himself to-night for the thousandth time,
that the country for once was right when it declared that no more
gracious nor more beautiful nor more worthy a mistress for Thoresby
Grange could be found, search where he might, than the Archdeacon’s
queenly daughter.
“We have a visitor, George, from Yorkshire. Papa thought he could not
very well do otherwise than ask him to stay at the Vicarage; though,
I’m sure, if he’s at all like that horrid Mr. Shaw, he would have
been much more at home at the ‘Marquis of Granby’ than with us.”
“And why should he be like ‘that horrid Shaw,’ Eleanor? Though
Shaw is right enough for anything I can see. What’s the matter with
Shaw, and why should your visitor be like him?”
“Mr. Shaw always smells of gin and tobacco, and our visitor, like him,
is a solicitor.”
“Phew! a solicitor, and from Yorkshire? But, then, there are no doubt
solicitors and solicitors; though I confess I don’t like the breed. No
trouble of the Archdeacon’s, I hope.”
“Something to do with the Iron Works, I fancy. Papa, I know, has been
very much troubled about them. You know I hate business, and understand
it as little as I dislike it much. Whatever could have induced papa to
meddle with those dirty works I can’t conceive.”
“Well come to that I’ve got a few shares in the Iron Works myself,
Eleanor. The Archdeacon said it would be a good thing. I’m not in very
deep, but I’m afraid your father has invested pretty considerably in
the shares. Indeed, I know he has taken over shares from people who
bought on his recommendation, and very foolishly insisted on giving them
the price they gave, though the shares are down in the market.”
“Well, I only hope this Mr. Beaumont, I think they call him, will take
some of the creases out of papa’s brow. He may smell of gin and
tobacco as much as he likes, and I’ll be monstrous civil to him, if
he’ll do that, and I expect you to be the same, sir. But here they
come.”
If either Eleanor St. Clair or Squire Wright had any idea of being
condescendingly polite to the lawyer from Yorkshire, the idea was
banished as Edward Beaumont acknowledged the Archdeacon’s introduction
to his daughter, and made his bow before his hostess. If Edward had not
mixed much in polite society—as the world counts polite society—he
knew its usages. Without being conceited, he knew himself to be as well
educated, in the broad sense of the word, as most men, and he was very
far from feeling disposed to cringe before either Church dignitary or
landed magnate. The Archdeacon, indeed, accustomed to the smooth
deference of the suave attorneys of the cathedral town who did the
business of the clergy of the county, had been surprised and pleased to
find in his guest not only a shrewd, well-informed lawyer, but a scholar
and a gentleman, who took it for granted that he would be received in
the Archdeacon’s house on the footing of any other guest.
The dinner-gong sounded as the introductions ended, and Edward with Miss
St. Clair on his arm, followed his host and the Squire into the
dining-room.
“You’ve not seen enough of our county, yet, to tell us how it
impresses you, Mr. Beaumont, and I don’t know anything of Yorkshire,
except that it is mostly moors and mills. Huddersfield, I suppose, is
all smoke and mills?”
“We’ve mills enough in and about the town, but we haven’t much to
complain about in the matter of smoke. For one thing, the surrounding
hills are so lofty, and the moors on their summits so extensive, that
the breezes sweep down the valleys or over our heads, and of a summer
day you can stand in the main street of the town and see above your head
sky as blue and as little obscured by smoke as looks down upon your fat
pastures and rustling cornfields. You must go to Sheffield for smoke,
not Huddersfield.”
“But your people,” said the Squire. “They’re a rascally set of
malcontents, I have always understood—Chartists, atheists, and
Communists.”
Edward laughed pleasantly.
“I am by way of telling our people they are the most intelligent and
the most independent in the world. I’ve no doubt, though, there are
some Chartists among them, or those who were Chartists in their youth.
As for Republicans, well, you know, we go in for practical measures up
our way and leave Utopias to the dreamers. As Pat at Donnybrook Fair, if
he sees a head he hits it; so we just hit the abuses we see.”
“But aren’t the mill-hands, generally speaking, a very godless set
of men?” asked the Archdeacon. “I have always looked on my brother
clergymen who accept livings or curacies in the West Riding more as
missionaries than incumbents, and, indeed, they tell fearful tales of
the irreverence and slackness of the common people in the manufacturing
towns. Dissent, we know, is simply rampant in the West Riding.”
“I should scarcely have regarded dissent as a sign of want of
spirituality,” said Edward, with a quiet smile. “I have always
regarded it as a rather disagreeable sign of excessive
spirituality—religion run mad.”
“But the mills, Mr. Beaumont,” interposed Miss St. Clair, who,
perhaps, thought the conversation was tending in a direction best
avoided. “One reads stories of the awful lives of the factories. It
must be so wretched to live all the weary days amid the din of the
wheels and the fluff and dirt and grease of the wool.”
“If you were to stand, Miss St. Clair, as I have often stood, of a
dark and wintry night on the ridge of one of our valleys, and looked
down upon the great mills, their windows all glowing with light, and
heard from within the deep voices of the men, and the sweet, pure,
trained notes of the women and the girls, blended in some well-known
hymn, or even taking their parts in some familiar and more complex song,
you would not think the weaver’s lot a very wretched one. Depend upon
it, there’s a lot of poetry in a mill, only we haven’t yet been
happy enough to produce a poet. But I profess it is strange to find you
commiserating our mill-hands. We in the West Riding have always thought
it was the poor hinds of the country who called for commiseration. I
don’t know that we regard Huddersfield as an Athens of the North, but
we certainly have thought of parts of Lincolnshire as a sort of Baotia.
I’m afraid we have been wasting a lot of very genuine sympathy.
Perhaps I don’t know much about Hodge. I hope to know more before I
leave Lincolnshire. May I hope Miss St. Clair will be my
instructress?”
“Confound his impudence!” thought the Squire. “Do you hunt, Mr.
Beaumont?”
“No! our’s is not a hunting district. Besides, I haven’t the time
for it.”
“You shoot, of course?”
“Oh! I’ve knocked over a grouse or a hare or two. But, to tell the
truth, I am no sportsman. When I go on the moors I’d rather lie down
in the sun and admire the view than blaze away at the birds. And as for
sport, rather badger a witness than hunt a fox, any day.”
“We can’t all badger a witness,” suggested Eleanor.
“Besides, a fox likes the run as much as the hounds do.”
“So I’ve heard,” conceded Edward; “but never from the lips of
Monsieur Reynard. I never heard of a witness enjoying badgering. But,
there, I’m no sportsman, only because I can’t get sport
conveniently—I’m no sentimentalist.”
“It’s marvellous,” said the Archdeacon, “what a lot of
‘anti-everything’ people there are. You have nothing to do nowadays
but declare you like something, and a society is sure to be formed to
put it down. There are people who won’t smoke, or drink a glass of
good wine, or honest beer, or eat flesh meat, or play a hand at whist,
or go near a racecourse, or handle a gun, or touch a cue. It is
Puritanism run mad.”
“They’re generally a set of low Radical Methodists,” opined the
Squire. “You never find such absurd fads among Church people.”
“Of course not,” agreed the Archdeacon. “All the same,” demurred
Edward, “I don’t see the connection between sound doctrine and roast
beef, or between Church polity and a hand at whist.”
“It’s a mental habit, my dear sir,” explained the cleric. “A man
begins by dissenting from the Church of his fathers, and by a natural
process begins to question their diet.”
“Depend upon it,” said Wright, with conviction, the battles of Old
England were never fought, nor its empire built, on carrots and cold
water. Look at your Frenchman.”
“I’ve known some very charming French-women,” protested Edward.
“We spent a month in Paris last autumn,” said the Archdeacon, “and
I hadn’t a decent meal all the time I was there.”
“Oh! Papa!” protested Eleanor. “The cooking is exquisite.”
“A woman doesn’t understand cooking,” declared her father. “It
is well known that if the matter had been left to Eve, we should never
have progressed beyond tea and bread and butter.”
“At any rate, Eve invented costumes,” suggested Edward. “The
Palais-Royal was founded in Eden.”
“Don’t speak disrespectfully of Eden,” said the Archdeacon.
“I don’t. ’tis there we meet the first lawyer.”
“You mean the serpent.”
“_Teste_ Coleridge,” said Beaumont. “You remember the lines, Miss
St. Clair?—
‘Cain and his brother Abel.’”
“I never knew before how much we have to reproach you with, Mr.
Beaumont.”
“But if there had been no lawyers there would have been
no—Archdeacons, shall we say?”
“Oh, then, we’ll forgive them for the sake of the Archdeacons. You
won’t keep me sitting by myself in the drawing-room too long, papa,”
and Miss St. Clair swept through the door which Beaumont opened. “I
declare we women have always to leave the table by the time men find
their tongues.”
“’Tis a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance,”
quoted Edward, as he bowed before her.
“Fill up your glass, Wright,” said the Archdeacon. “That
Burgundy’s all right, if you prefer it. But I’m for the
vintage—what does our Lincolnshire bard sing?—
‘Whose father grape grew fat
In Lusitanian summers.’
Did you see the _Standard_ this morning, Mr. Beaumont? I see the rumour
grows more persistent that Gladstone may dissolve any day. He will go to
the country, of course, on the Extension of the Franchise?”
“And Parish Councils,” added Beaumont.
“Cursed rot,” muttered the Squire. “That man will ruin the
country. See if he don’t disestablish and disendow you, Archdeacon,
before he dies.”
“Mr. Gladstone’s a good Churchman, I always understood,” demurred
Edward.
“He’d rob his grandmother for power,” vowed the Squire.
“Perhaps Mr. Beaumont is an admirer of his?” queried his host.
“My grandfather was a Whig, my father a Liberal, and you may write me
down a——”
“‘Not an ass,’ that’s the correct quotation, I believe.”
“No! a Radical.”
“That’s worse!” said the Squire, with emphasis.
“Radical lawyers are _raræaves_ are they not, Mr. Beaumont?” asked
the Archdeacon.
“Black swans. Black enough, I suppose, Mr. Wright thinks. Well, yes,
in the country, men of my branch of the profession are generally
Conservative. I don’t know why, except it be that they have the sense
to know on which side their bread is buttered.”
“Of course,” said the Squire; “the law and the land.”
“But in my town,” said Edward, “there’s only one landlord and we
can’t all live on him. But we manage to butter our bread pretty well
all the same.”
“No more wine, Mr. Beaumont? Then we’ll see if Miss St. Clair can
give us a cup of tea.”