THE CHANCES OF LIFE
Ralph had started so early that morning that he had had no time to get
breakfast. Now he began to feel the pangs of hunger most acutely.
"I expect mother will have kept something for me," he said to himself,
as he descended the slope. "I hope she is not worrying about what has
become of me."
He looked right and left for his father, expecting to find him at work
in the fields, but David was nowhere in evidence.
Ralph made a bee-line across the fields, and was soon in the shelter of
the little homestead. He found his father and mother and his sister Ruth
still seated at the breakfast-table. Ruth pushed back her chair at the
sound of his footsteps and rose to her feet.
"Why, Ralph," she said, "where have you been? Mother's been quite
worried about you."
"If that's all she has to worry her, she needn't worry much," he said,
with a laugh. "But has anything happened? You all look desperately
sober."
"We've heard some news that has made us all feel very anxious," David
answered wearily. "We've sat here talking about it for the last
half-hour."
"Then the news concerns us all?" Ralph questioned, with a catch in his
voice.
"Very closely, my boy--very closely. The truth is, Julian Seccombe has
got wounded out in Egypt."
"And he's the last life on the farm?" Ralph questioned, with a gasp.
"That is so, my boy. It seems strange that I should be so unfortunate in
the choice of lives, and yet I could not have been more careful. Who
could have thought that the parson's boy would become a soldier?"
"Life is always uncertain," Ralph answered, with a troubled look in his
eyes, "whether a man is a soldier or a farmer."
"That is so," David answered reflectively. "Yet my father held his
little place on only two lives, and one of them lived to be
seventy-five."
"But, even then, I've heard you say the lease ran only a little over
sixty years. It's a wicked gamble, is this leasehold system, with the
chances in favour of the landlord."
"Why a gamble in favour of the landlord, my boy?" David questioned,
lifting his mild eyes to his son's face.
"Why, because if all the 'lives' live out their threescore years and
ten, the lease is still a short one; for you don't start with the first
year of anyone's life."
"That is true," David answered sadly. "The parson's boy was ten, which I
thought would be balanced by the other two."
"And the other two did not live ten years between them."
"Of course, nobody could foresee that," David answered sadly. "They were
both healthy children. Our little Billy was three, and the healthiest
baby of the lot."
"But with all the ailments of children in front of him?"
"Well, no. He had had whooping-cough, and got through it easily. It was
the scarlet fever that carried him off. Poor little chap, he was gone in
no time."
"And so, within a year, and after you had spent the greater part of your
money, your farm hung upon two lives," Ralph said bitterly.
"But, humanly speaking, they were good lives. Not lives that would be
exposed to much risk. Lawyer Doubleday told me that he intended to bring
up his boy to the same profession, and Parson Seccombe told me he had
dedicated Julian to the Church in his infancy. What better lives,
humanly speaking, could you get? Neither parsons nor lawyers run any
risks to speak of."
"Yes; that's true enough. The system being what it is, you did the best
you could, no doubt."
"Nobody could foresee," David said sadly, "that Doubleday's boy would go
and get drowned. I nearly fainted when I heard the news."
"And now you say that young Seccombe has got shot out in Egypt."
"I don't know as to his being shot; but Tom Dyer, who was here this
morning, said that he had just seen the parson, who was in great
trouble, news having reached him last evening that Julian was wounded."
"Then if the parson's in great trouble, the chances are he's badly
wounded."
"I don't know. I thought of walking across to St. Goram directly, and
seeing the parson for myself; but I'm almost afraid to do so, lest the
worst should be true."
"We shall have to face it, whatever it is," Ralph said doggedly.
"But think of what it would mean to us if the parson's son should die!
Poor mother is that troubled that she has not been able to eat a
mouthful of breakfast!"
"She seems scarcely able to talk about it," Ralph said, glancing at the
door through which his mother and Ruth had disappeared.
"She's a little bit disposed to look on the dark side of things
generally," David said slowly. "For myself, I keep hoping for the best.
It doesn't seem possible that God can strip us of everything at a blow."
"It doesn't seem to me as though God had any hand in the business,"
Ralph answered doggedly.
"Hush, Ralph, my boy! The issues of life and death are in His hands."
"And you believe also that He is the author of the leasehold system that
obtains in this country?"
"I did not say that, Ralph; but He permits it."
"Just as He permits lying and theft, and murder and war, and all the
other evil things there are in the world. But that is nothing to the
point. You can't make me believe that the Almighty ever meant a few
people to parcel out the world among themselves, and cheat all the rest
out of their rights."
"The world is what it is, my boy, and neither you nor I can alter it."
"And you think it is our duty to submit quietly and uncomplainingly to
whatever wrong or injustice is heaped upon us?"
"We must submit to the law, my boy, however hardly it presses upon us."
"But we ought to try, all the same, to get bad laws mended."
"You can't ladle the sea dry with a limpet-shell, Ralph, nor carry off a
mountain in your pocket. No, no; let us not talk about the impossible,
nor give up hope until we are forced to. Perhaps young Seccombe will
recover."
"But if he should die, father. What would happen then?"
"I don't know, my boy, and I can't bear to think."
"But we'd better face the possibility," Ralph answered doggedly, "so
that, if the worst should come to the worst, we may know just where we
are."
"'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,'" David answered, with a
far-away look in his eyes. And he got up from his seat and walked slowly
out of the house.
Ralph sat looking out of the window for several minutes, and then he
went off in search of his mother and Ruth.
"Do you know, mother," he said, as cheerily as he could, "that I have
had no breakfast yet? And, in spite of the bad news, I am too hungry for
words."
"Had no breakfast?" she said, lifting up her hands in surprise. "I made
sure you got something to eat before you went out."
"Well, then, you were wrong for once," he said, laughing. "Now, please
put me out of my misery as quickly as possible."
"Ah, Ralph," she answered, with a sigh, "if we had no worse misery than
hunger, how happy we should be!"
"That is so, mother," he said, with a laugh. "Hunger is not at all bad
when you have plenty to eat."
She sighed again.
"It is well that you young people don't see far ahead of you," she said
plaintively. "But come here and get your breakfast."
Two hours later, when in the home close hoeing turnips, he lifted his
head and saw his father coming across the fields from the direction of
St. Goram, he straightened his back at once and waited. He knew that he
had been to see the parson to get the latest and fullest news. David
came slowly on with his eyes upon the ground, as if buried in profound
thought.
"Well, father, what news?" Ralph questioned, when his father came within
speaking distance.
David started as though wakened out of a reverie, and came to a full
stop. Then a pathetic smile stole over his gentle face, and he came
forward with a quickened step.
"I waited for the parson to get a reply from the War Office, or I should
have been home sooner," he said, bringing out the words slowly and
painfully.
"Well?" Ralph questioned, though he felt sure, from his father's manner,
what the answer would be.
"The parson fears the worst," David answered, bringing out the words in
jerks. "Poor man! He's in great trouble. I almost forgot my own when I
thought of his."
"But what was the news he got from the War Office?" Ralph questioned.
"Not much. He's on the list of the dangerously wounded, that's all."
"But he may recover," Ralph said, after a pause.
"Yes, he may," David answered, with a sigh. "God alone knows, but the
parson gave me no comfort at all."
"How so?"
"He says that the swords and spears of the dervishes are often poisoned;
then, you see, water is scarce, and the heat is terrible, so that a sick
man has no chance like he has here."
Ralph did not reply. For a moment or two he looked at his father, then
went on with his hoeing. David walked by his side between the rows of
turnips. His face was drawn and pale, and his lips twitched incessantly.
"The world seems terribly topsy-turvy," he said at length, as if
speaking to himself. "I oughtn't to be idling here, but all the heart's
gone out of me somehow."
"We must hope for the best," Ralph said, without raising his head.
"The parson's boy is the last 'life,'" David went on, as though he had
not heard what Ralph had said. "The last life. Just a thread, a feeble
little thread. One little touch, and then----"
"Well, and what then?" Ralph questioned.
"If the boy dies, this little farm is no longer ours. Though I have
reclaimed it from the waste, and spent on it all my savings, and toiled
from dawn to dark for twelve long years, and built the house and the
barn and the cowsheds, and gone into debt to stock it; if that boy dies
it all goes."
"You mean that the squire will take possession?"
"I mean that Sir John will claim it as his."
Ralph did not speak again for several moments, but he felt his blood
tingling to his finger-tips.
"It's a wicked, burning shame," he jerked out at length.
"It is the law, my boy," David said sadly, "and you see there's no going
against the law."
Ralph hung his head, and began hoeing vigorously his row.
"Besides," David went on, "you see I was party to the arrangement--that
is, I accepted the conditions; but the luck has been on Sir John's
side."
"He took a mean advantage of you, father, and you know it, and he knows
it," Ralph snapped.
"He knew that I had set my heart on a bit of land that I could call my
own; that I wanted a sort of resting-place in my old age, and that I
desired to end my days in the parish in which I was born."
"And so he put the screw on. It's always been a wonder to me, since I
could think about it at all, that you accepted the conditions. I would
have seen Sir John at the bottom of the sea first."
"I did try to get better terms," David answered, looking wistfully
across the fields, "and I mentioned ninety-nine years as the term of the
lease, and he nearly turned me out of his office. 'Three lives or
nothing,' he snarled, 'and be quick about it.' So I had to make up my
mind there and then."
"You'd have been better off, father, if you'd dropped all your money
down a mine shaft, and gone to work on a farm as a day labourer," Ralph
said bitterly.
"I shouldn't have had to work so hard," David assented.
"And you would have got more money, and wouldn't have had a hundredth
part of the anxiety."
"You see, I thought the land was richer than it has turned out to be,
and the furze roots have kept sprouting year after year, and that has
meant ploughing the fields afresh. And the amount of manure I have had
to put in has handicapped me terribly. But I have kept hoping to get
into smooth waters by and by. The farm is looking better now than ever
it did before."
"But the ground rent, father, is an outrage. Did you really understand
how much you were paying?"
"He wouldn't consent to any less," David said wistfully. "You see things
were good with farmers at the time, and rents were going up. And then I
thought I should be allowed to work the quarry down in the delf, and
make some money out of the stone."
"And you were done in that as in other things?"
"Well, yes. There's no denying it. When I got to understand the
deed--and it took me a goodish time to riddle it out--I found out that I
had no right to the stone or the mineral, or the fish in the stream, or
to the trees, or to the game. Do you know he actually charged me for the
stone dug out of my own farm to build the house with?"
"And ever since has been working the quarry at a big profit, which would
never have been unearthed but for you, and destroying one of your fields
in the process?"
"I felt that about the quarry almost more than anything," David went on.
"But he's never discovered the tin lode, and I shall never tell him."
"Is there a tin lode on the farm?" Ralph questioned eagerly.
"Ay, a beauty! It must be seven years ago since I discovered it, and
I've kept it to myself. You see, it would ruin the farm to work it, and
I should not get a penny of the dues; they'd all go to the squire."
"Everything gets back to the rich in the long-run," Ralph said bitterly.
"There's no chance for the poor man anywhere."
"Oh, well, in a few years' time it won't matter to any of us," David
said, looking with dreamy eyes across the valley to the distant range of
hills. "In the grave we shall all be equal, and we shall never hear
again the voice of the oppressor."
"That does not seem to me anything to the point," Ralph said, flashing
out the words angrily. "We've got as good a right to live as anybody
else. I don't ask favours from anybody, but I do want justice and fair
play."
"It's difficult to know what justice is in this world," David said
moodily. "But there, I've been idling long enough. It's time I went back
and fetched my hoe and did a bit of work." And he turned slowly on his
heel and walked away toward the house.
Ralph straightened his back and looked after him, and as he did so the
moisture came into his eyes.
"Poor old father!" he said to himself, with a sigh. "He's feeling this
much more deeply than anyone knows. I do hope for all our sakes that
Julian Seccombe will recover."
For the rest of the day Ralph's thoughts hovered between the possible
loss of their farm and the chances of Dorothy Hamblyn's recovery. He
hardly knew why he should worry himself about the squire's daughter so
much. Was it solely on the ground that he had refused to open the gate,
or was it because she was so pretty?
He felt almost vexed with himself when this thought suggested itself to
his mind. What did it matter to him whether she was fair or plain? She
was Sir John Hamblyn's daughter, and that ought to be sufficient for
him. If there was any man on earth he hated and despised it was John
Hamblyn; hence to concern himself about the fate of his daughter because
she was good to look upon seemed the most ridiculous folly.
It must surely be the other consideration that worried him. If he had
opened the gate the accident would not have happened; but neither would
it if she had ridden home the other way. She was paying the penalty of
her own wilfulness and her own imperiousness. He was not called on to be
the hack of anybody.
But from whatever cause his anxiety might spring, it was there,
deep-rooted and persistent.
He was glad when night came, so that he might forget himself, forget the
world, and forget everybody in it in the sweet oblivion of sleep.
He hoped that the new day would bring better news, but in that he was
disappointed. The earlier part of the day brought no news at all, and
neither he nor his father went to seek it. But as the afternoon began to
wane, a horse-dealer from St. Goram left word that the parson's son was
dead, and that the squire's daughter was not likely to get better.