Across the vale a broad cloud-shadow descends the hillside, is lost
in the hollow, and presently, without warning, slips over the edge,
crossing swiftly along the green tips. The sunshine follows--the
warmer for its momentary absence. Far, far down in a grassy combe
stands a solitary corn-rick, conical-roofed, casting a lonely
shadow--marked because so solitary--and beyond it, on the rising
slope, is a brown copse. The leafless branches take a brown tint in
the sunlight; on the summit above there is furze; then more
hill-lines drawn against the sky. In the tops of the dark pines at
the corner of the copse, could the glance sustain itself to see
them, there are finches warming themselves in the sunbeams. The
thick needles shelter them from the current of air, and the sky is
bluer above the pines. Their hearts are full already of the happy
days to come, when the moss yonder by the beech, and the lichen on
the fir-trunk, and the loose fibres caught in the fork of an
unbending bough, shall furnish forth a sufficient mansion for their
young. Another broad cloud-shadow, and another warm embrace of
sunlight. All the serried ranks of the green corn bow at the word of
command as the wind rushes over them.
There is largeness and freedom here. Broad as the down and free as
the wind, the thought can roam high over the narrow roofs in the
vale. Nature has affixed no bounds to thought. All the palings, and
walls, and crooked fences deep down yonder are artificial. The
fetters and traditions, the routine, the dull roundabout, which
deadens the spirit like the cold moist earth, are the merest
nothing. Here it is easy with the physical eye to look over the
highest roof, which must also always be the narrowest. The moment
the eye of the mind is filled with the beauty of things natural an
equal freedom and width of view comes to it. Step aside from the
trodden footpath of personal experience, throwing away the petty
cynicism bred of petty hopes disappointed. Step out upon the broad
down beside the green corn, and let its freshness become part of
life.
The wind passes and it bends--let the wind, too, pass over the
spirit. From the cloud-shadow it emerges to the sunshine--let the
heart come out from the shadow of roofs to the open glow of the sky.
High above, the songs of the larks fall as rain--receive it with
open hands. Pure is the colour of the green flags, the slender,
pointed blades--let the thought be pure as the light that shines
through that colour. Broad are the downs and open the aspect--gather
the breadth and largeness of view. Never can that view be wide
enough and large enough; there will always be room to aim higher. As
the air of the hills enriches the blood, so let the presence of
these beautiful things enrich the inner sense.
A KING OF ACRES
I.--JAMES THARDOVER
A weather-beaten man stood by a gateway watching some teams at
plough. The bleak March wind rushed across the field, reddening his
face; rougher than a flesh-brush, it rubbed the skin, and gave it a
glow as if each puff were a blow with the 'gloves.' His short brown
beard was full of dust blown into it. Between the line of the hat
and the exposed part of the forehead the skin had peeled slightly,
literally worn off by the unsparing rudeness of wintry mornings.
Like the early field veronica, which flowered at his feet in the
short grass under the hedge, his eyes were blue and grey. The petals
are partly of either hue, and so his eyes varied according to the
light--now somewhat more grey, and now more blue. Tall and upright,
he stood straight as a bolt, though both arms were on the gate, and
his ashen walking-stick swung over it. He wore a grey overcoat, a
grey felt hat, grey leggings, and his boots were grey with the dust
which had settled on them.
He was thinking: 'Farmer Bartholomew is doing the place better this
year; he scarcely hoed a weed last season; the stubble was a tangle
of weeds; one could hardly walk across it. That second team stops
too long at the end of the furrow--idle fellow that. Third team goes
too fast; horses will be soon tired. Fourth team--he's getting
beyond his work--too old; the stilts nearly threw him over there.
This ground has paid for the draining--one, at all events. Never saw
land look better. Looks brownish and moist--moist brownish red.
Query, what colour is that? Ask Mary--the artist. Never saw it in a
picture. Keeps his hedges well; this one is like a board on the top,
thorn-boughs molten together; a hare could run along it (as they
will sometimes with harriers behind them, and jump off the other
side to baffle scent). Now, why is Bartholomew doing his land better
this year? Keen old fellow! Something behind this. Has he got that
bit of money that was coming to him? Done something, they said, last
Doncaster; no one could get anything out of him. Dark as night. Sold
the trainer some oats--that I know. Wonder how much the trainer
pocketed over that transaction? Expect he did not charge them all.
Still, he's a decent fellow. Honesty is uncertain--never met an
honest man. Doubt if world could hang together. Bartholomew is
honest enough; but either he has won some money, or he really does
not want the drawback at audit. Takes care his horses don't look too
well. Notice myself that farmers do not let their teams look so
glossy as a few years ago. Like them to seem rough and uncared
for--can't afford smooth coats these hard times. Don't look very
glossy myself; don't feel very glossy. Hate this wind--hang kings'
ransoms! People who like these winds are telling falsehoods. That's
broken (as one of the teams stopped); have to send to blacksmith.
Knock off now; no good your pottering there. Next team stops to go
and help potter. Third team stops to help second. Fourth team comes
across to help third. All pottering. Wants Bartholomew among them.
That's the way to do a morning's work. Did anyone ever see such
idleness! Group about a broken chain--link snapped. Tie it up with
your leathern garter--not he; no resource. What patience a man needs
to have anything to do with land! Four teams idle over a snapped
link! Rent!--of course they can't pay rent. Wonder if a gang of
American labourers could make anything out of our farms? There they
work from sunrise to sunset. Suppose import a gang and try. Did
anyone ever see such a helpless set as that yonder? Depression--of
course. No go-ahead in them.'
'Mind opening the gate, you?' said a voice behind; and, turning, the
thinker saw a dealer in a trap, who wanted the gate opened, to save
him the trouble of getting down to do it himself. The thinker did as
he was asked, and held the gate open. The trap went slowly through.
'Will you come on and take a glass?' said the dealer, pointing with
the butt-end of his whip. 'Crown.' This was sententious for the
Crown in the hamlet. Country-folk speak in pieces, putting the
principal word in a sentence for the entire paragraph.
The thinker shook his head and shut the gate, carefully hasping it.
The dealer drove on.
'Who's that?' thought the grey man, watching the trap jolt down the
rough road. 'Wants veal, I suppose. No veal here--no good. Now,
look!'
The group by the broken chain beckoned to the trap; a lad went
across to it with the chain, got up, and was driven off, so saving
himself half a mile on his road to the forge.
'Anything to save themselves exertion. Nothing will make them move
faster--like whipping a carthorse into a gallop; it soon dies away
in the old jog-trot. Why, they have actually started again--actually
started!'
He watched the teams a little longer, heedless of the wind, which he
abused, but which really did not affect him, and then walked along
the hedgerow downhill. Two men were sowing a field on the slope,
swinging the hand full of grain from the hip regular as time itself,
a swing calculated to throw the seed so far, but not too far, and
without jerk. The next field had just been manured, and he stopped
to glance at the crowds of small birds which were looking over the
straw--finches and sparrows, and the bluish grey of pied wagtails.
There were hundreds of small birds. While he stood, a hedge-sparrow
uttered his thin, pleading song on the hedge-top, and a
meadow-pipit, which had mounted a little way in the air, came down
with outspread wings, with a short 'Seep, seep,' to the ground. Lark
and pipit seem near relations; only the skylark sings rising,
descending, anywhere, but the pipits chiefly while slowly
descending. There had been a rough attempt at market-gardening in
the field after this, and rows of cabbage gone up to seed stood
forlorn and ragged. On the top of one of these a skylark was
perched, calling at intervals; for though classed as a non-percher,
perch he does sometimes. Meadows succeeded on the level ground; one
had been covered with the scrapings of roads, a whitish, crumbling
dirt, dry, and falling to pieces in the wind. The grass was pale,
its wintry hue not yet gone, and the clods seemed to make it appear
paler. Among these clods four or five thrushes were seeking their
food; on a bare oak a blackbird was perched, his mate no doubt close
by in the hedgerow; at the margin of a pond a black-and-white
wagtail waded in the water; a blue tit flew across to the corner.
Brown thrushes, dark blackbird, blue tit, and wagtail gave a little
colour to the angle of the meadow. A gleam of passing sunlight
brightened it. Two wood-pigeons came to a thick bush growing over a
grey wall on the other side--for ivy-berries, probably.
A cart passed at a little distance, laden with red mangolds, fresh
from the pit in which they had been stored; the roots had grown out
a trifle, and the rootlets were mauve. A goldfinch perched on a dry
dead stalk of wild carrot, a stalk that looked too slender to bear
the bird. As the weather-beaten man moved, the goldfinch flew, and
the golden wings outspread formed a bright contrast with the dull
white clods. Crossing the meadow, and startling the wood-pigeons,
our friend scaled the grey walls, putting his foot in a hole left
for the purpose. Dark moss lined the interstices between the
irregular and loosely placed stones. Above, on the bank, and
greener than the grass, grew moss at the roots of ash-stoles and
wherever there was shelter. Broad, rank, green arum leaves crowded
each other in places. Red stalks of herb-robert spread open. The
weather-beaten man gathered a white wild violet from the shelter of
a dead dry oak-leaf, and as he placed it in his buttonhole, paused
to listen to the baying of hounds. Yowp! yow! The cries echoed from
the bank and filled the narrow beechwood within. A shot followed,
and then another, and a third after an interval. More yowping. The
grey-brown head of a rabbit suddenly appeared over the top of the
bank, within three yards of him, and he could see the creature's
whiskers nervously working, as its mind estimated its chances of
escape. Instead of turning back, the rabbit made a rush to get
under an ash-stole, where was a burrow. The yowping went slowly
away; the beeches rang again as if the beagles were in cry. Two
assistant-keepers were working the outskirts, and shooting the
rabbits which sat out in the brushwood, and so were not to be
captured by nets and ferrets. The ground-game was strictly kept
down; the noise was made by half a dozen puppies they had with
them. Passing through the ash-stoles, and next the narrow
beechwood, the grey man walked across the open park, and after
awhile came in sight of Thardover House. His steps were directed
to the great arched porch, beneath which the village folk boasted
a waggon-load could pass. The inner door swung open as if by
instinct at his approach. The man who had so neighbourly opened the
gate to the dealer in the trap was James Thardover, the owner of
the property. Historic as was his name and residence, he was
utterly devoid of affectation--a true man of the land.
II.--NEW TITLE-DEEDS
Deed, seal, and charter give but a feeble hold compared with that
which is afforded by labour. James Thardover held his lands again by
right of labour; he had taken possession of them once more with
thought, design, and actual work, as his ancestors had with the
sword. He had laid hands, as it were, on every acre. Those who work,
own. There are many who receive rent who do not own; they are
proprietors, not owners; like receiving dividends on stock, which
stock is never seen or handled. Their rights are legal only; his
right was the right of labour, and, it might be added, of
forbearance. It is a condition of ownership in the United States
that the settler clears so much and brings so many acres into
cultivation. It was just this condition which he had practically
carried out upon the Thardover estate. He had done so much, and in
so varied a manner, that it is difficult to select particular acts
for enumeration. All the great agricultural movements of the last
thirty years he had energetically supported. There was the draining
movement. The undulating contour of the country, deep vales
alternating with moderate brows, gave a sufficient supply of water
to every farm, and on the lower lands led to flooding and the
formation of marshes. Horley Bottom, where the hay used to be
frequently carried into the river by a June freshet, was now safe
from flood. Flag Marsh had been completely drained, and made some of
the best wheat-land in the neighbourhood. Part of a bark canoe was
found in it; the remnants were preserved at Thardover House, but
gradually fell to pieces.
Longboro' Farm was as dry now as any such soil could be. More or
less draining had been carried out on twenty other farms, sometimes
entirely at his expense. Sometimes the tenant paid a small
percentage on the sum expended; generally this percentage fell off
in the course of a year or two. The tenant found he could not pay
it. Except on Flag Marsh, the drainage did not pay him L50. Perhaps
it might have done, had the seasons been better; but, as it had
actually happened, the rents had decreased instead of increasing.
Tile-pipes had not availed against rain and American wheat. So far
as income was concerned, he would have been richer had the money so
expended been allowed to accumulate at the banker's. The land as
land was certainly improved in places, as on Bartholomew's farm.
Thardover never cared for the steam-plough; personally, he disliked
it. Those who represented agricultural opinion at the farmers' clubs
and in the agricultural papers raised so loud a cry for it that he
went half-way to meet them. One of the large tenants was encouraged
to invest in the steam-plough by a drawback on his rent, on
condition that it should be hired out to others. The steam-plough,
Thardover soon discovered, was not profitable to the landowner. It
reduced the fields to a dead level. They had previously been thrown
into 'lands,' with a drain-trench on each side. On this dead level
water did not run off quickly, and the growth of weeds increased.
Tenants got into a habit of shirking the extirpation of the weeds.
The best farmers on the estate would not use it at all. To very
large tenants, and to small tenants who could not keep enough
horses, it was profitable at times. It did not appear that a single
sack more of wheat was raised, nor a single additional head of stock
maintained, since the steam-plough arrived.
Paul of Embersbury, who occupied some of the best meadow and upland
country, a man of some character and standing, had taken to the
shorthorns before Thardover succeeded to the property. Thardover
assisted him in every way, and bought some of the best blood. There
was no home-farm; the house was supplied from Bartholomew's dairy,
and the Squire did not care to upset the old traditionary
arrangements by taking a farm in hand. What he bought went to
Embersbury, and Paul did well. As a consequence, there were good
cattle all over the estate. The long prices formerly fetched by
Paul's method had much fallen off, but substantial sums were still
paid. Paul had faced the depression better than most of them. He
was bitter, as was only natural, against the reaction in favour of
black cattle. The upland tenants, though, had a good many of the
black, in spite of Paul's frowns and thunders after the market
ordinary at Barnboro' town. He would put down his pipe, bustle upon
his feet, lean his somewhat protuberant person on the American
leather of the table, and address the dozen or so who stayed for
spirits and water after dinner, without the pretence of a formal
meeting. He spoke in very fair language, short, jerky sentences, but
well-chosen words. He who had taken the van in improvements thirty
years ago was the bitterest against any proposed change now. Black
cattle were thoroughly bad.
Another of his topics was the hiring fair, where servant-girls stood
waiting for engagements, and which it was proposed to abolish. Paul
considered it was taking the bread and cheese out of the poor
wenches' mouths. They could stand there and get hired for nothing,
instead of having to pay half a crown for advertising, and get
nothing then. But though the Squire had supported the shorthorns,
even the shorthorns had not prevented the downward course things
agricultural were following.
Then there was the scientific movement, the cry for science among
the farmers. He founded a scholarship, invited the professors to his
place, lunched them, let them experiment on little pieces of land,
mournful-looking plots. Nothing came of it. He drew a design for a
new cottage himself, a practical plain place. The builders told him
it was far dearer to put up than ornamental but inconvenient
structures. Thardover sunk his money his own way, and very
comfortable cottages they were. Ground-game he had kept down for
years before the Act. Farm-buildings he had improved freely. The
education movement, however, stirred him most. He went into it
enthusiastically. Thardover village was one of the first places to
become efficient under the new legislation. This was a piece of
practical work after his own heart. Generally, legislative measures
were so far off from country people. They affected the condition of
large towns, of the Black Country, of the weavers or miners, distant
folk. To the villages and hamlets of purely agricultural districts
these Acts had no existence. The Education Act was just the reverse.
This was a statute which came right down into the hamlets, which was
nailed up at the cross-roads, and ruled the barn, the plough, and
scythe. Something tangible, that could be carried out and made into
a fact--something he could do. Thardover did it with the
thoroughness of his nature. He found the ground, lent the money, saw
to the building, met the Government inspectors, and organized the
whole. A committee of the tenants were the ostensible authority, the
motive-power was the Squire. He worked at it till it was completely
organized, for he felt as if he were helping to mould the future of
this great country. Broad-minded himself, he understood the immense
value of education, looked at generally; and he thought, too, that
by its aid the farmer and the landowner might be enabled to compete
with the foreigner, who was driving them from the market. No
speeches and no agitation could equal the power concentrated in that
plain school-house; there was nothing from which he hoped so much.
Only one held aloof and showed hostility to the movement, or rather
to the form it took. His youngest and favourite daughter, Mary, the
artist, rebelled against it. Hitherto she had ruled him as she
choose. She had led in every kind act--acts too kind to be called
charity. She had been the life of the place. Perhaps it was the
strong-minded women whom the cry of education brought to Thardover
House that set ajar some chord in her sensitive mind. Strident
voices checked her sympathies, and hard rule-and-line work like this
repelled her. Till then she had been the constant companion of the
Squire's walks; but while the school was being organized she would
not go with him. She walked where she could not see the plain
angular building; she said it set her teeth on edge.
When the strident voices had departed, when time had made the
school-house part and parcel of the place, like the cottages, Mary
changed her ways, and occasionally called there. She took a class
once a week of the elder girls, and taught them in her own fashion
at home--most unorthodox teaching it was--in which the works of the
best poets were the chief subjects, and portfolios of engravings
were found on the table. Long since father and daughter had resumed
their walks together.
It was in this way that James Thardover made his estate his own--he
held possession by right of labour. He was resident ten months out
of twelve, and after all these public and open works he did far more
in private. There was not an acre on the property which he had not
personally visited. The farm-houses and farm-buildings were all
known to him. He rode from tenancy to tenancy; he visited the men at
plough, and stood among the reapers. Neither the summer heat nor the
winds of March prevented him from seeing with his own eyes. The
latest movement was the silo system, the burying of grass under
pressure, instead of making it into hay. By these means the clouds
are to be defied, and a plentiful supply of fodder secured. Time
alone can show whether this, the latest invention, is any more
powerful than steam-plough or guano to uphold agriculture against
the shocks of fortune. But James Thardover would have tried any plan
that had been suggested to him. It was thus that he laid hold on his
lands with the strongest of titles--the work of his own hands. Yet
still the tenants were unable to pay the former rent. Some had
failed or left, and their farms were vacant; and nothing could be
more discouraging than the condition of affairs upon the property.
III.--A RING-FENCE: CONCLUSION
There were great elms in the Out-park, whose limbs or boughs, as
large as the trunk itself, came down almost to the ground. They
touched the tops of the white wild parsley; and when sheep were
lying beneath, the jackdaws stepped from the sheep's back to the
bough and returned again. The jackdaws had their nests in the hollow
places of these elms; for the elm as it ages becomes full of
cavities. These great trees often divided into two main boughs,
rising side by side, and afar off visible as two dark streaks among
the green. For many years no cattle had been permitted in the park,
and the boughs of the trees had grown in a drooping form, as they
naturally do unless eaten or broken by animals pushing against them.
But since the times of agricultural pressure, a large part of the
domain had been fenced off, and was now partly grazed and partly
mown, being called the Out-park. There were copses at the farther
side, where in spring the may flowered; the purple orchis was drawn
up high by the trees and bushes--twice as high as its fellows in the
mead, where a stray spindle-tree grew; and from these copses the
cuckoos flew round the park.
But the thinnest hedge about the wheat-fields was as interesting as
the park or the covers; and this is the remarkable feature of
English scenery--that its perfection, its beauty, and its interest
are not confined to any masterpiece here and there, walled in or
enclosed, or at least difficult of access and isolated, but it
extends to the smallest portion of the country. Wheatfield hedges
are the thinnest of hedges, kept so that the birds may find no
shelter, and that the numerous caterpillars may not breed in them
more than can be helped. Such a hedge is so low it can be leaped
over, and so narrow that it is a mere screen of twisted hawthorn
branches which can be seen through, like screens of twisted stone in
ancient chapels. But the sparrows come to it, and the finches, the
mice, and weasles, and now and then a crow, who searches along, and
goes in and out and quests like a spaniel. It is so tough, this
twisted screen of branches, that a charge of shot would be stopped
by it; if a pellet or two slid through an interstice, the majority
would be held as if by a shield of wicker-work. Old Bartholomew, the
farmer, sent his men once or twice along with reaping-hooks to clear
away the weeds that grew up here under such slight shelter; but
other farmers were not so careful. Then convolvulus grew over the
thin screen, a corncockle stood up taller than the hedge itself; in
time of harvest, yellow St. John's wort flowered beside it, and
later on, bunches of yellow-weed.