GOING DOWNHILL
An aged man, coming out of an arable field into the lane, pauses to look
back. He is shabbily clad, and there is more than one rent in his coat;
yet it is a coat that has once been a good one, and of a superior cut to
what a labourer would purchase. In the field the ploughman to whom he has
been speaking has started his team again. A lad walks beside the horses,
the iron creaks, and the ploughman holding the handles seems now to press
upon them with his weight, and now to be himself bodily pulled along. A
dull November cloud overspreads the sky, and misty skits of small rain
sweep across the landscape. As the old man looks back from the gate, the
chill breeze whistles through the boughs of the oak above him, tearing off
the brown dry leaves, and shaking out the acorns to fall at his feet. It
lifts his grey hair, and penetrates the threadbare coat. As he turns to
go, something catches his eye on the ground, and from the mud in the
gateway he picks up a cast horse-shoe. With the rusty iron in his hand he
passes slowly down the lane, and, as he goes, the bitter wind drives the
fallen leaves that have been lying beside the way rustling and dancing
after him.
From a farmer occupying a good-sized farm he had descended to be a
farmer's bailiff in the same locality. But a few months since he was
himself a tenant, and now he is a bailiff at 15_s_. a week and a cottage.
There is nothing dramatic, nothing sensational, in the history of his
descent; but it is, perhaps, all the more full of bitter human
experiences. As a man going down a steep hill, after a long while finds
himself on the edge of a precipitous chalk pit, and topples in one fall to
the bottom, so, though the process of going downhill occupied so long, the
actual finish came almost suddenly. Thus it was that from being a master
he found himself a servant. He does not complain, nor appeal for pity. His
back is a little more bowed, he feels the cold a little more, his step is
yet more spiritless. But all he says about it is that 'Hard work never
made any money yet.'
He has worked exceedingly hard all his lifetime. In his youth, though the
family were then well-to-do, he was not permitted to lounge about in
idleness, but had to work with the rest in the fields. He dragged his
heavy nailed shoes over the furrows with the plough; he reaped and loaded
in harvest time; in winter he trimmed the hedgerows, split logs, and
looked after the cattle. He enjoyed no luxurious education--luxurious in
the sense of scientifically arranged dormitories, ample meals, and
vacations to be spent on horseback, or with the breechloader. Trudging to
and fro the neighbouring country town, in wind, and wet, and snow, to
school, his letters were thrashed into him. In holiday time he went to
work--his holidays, in fact, were so arranged as to fall at the time when
the lad could be of most use in the field. If an occasion arose when a lad
was wanted, his lessons had to wait while he lent a hand. He had his play,
of course, as boys in all ages have had; but it was play of a rude
character with the plough lads, and the almost equally rough sons of
farmers, who worked like ploughmen.
In those days the strong made no pretence to protect the weak, or to
abnegate their natural power. The biggest lad used his thews and sinews to
knock over the lesser without mercy, till the lesser by degrees grew
strong enough to retaliate. To be thrashed, beaten, and kicked was so
universal an experience that no one ever imagined it was not correct, or
thought of complaining. They accepted it as a matter of course. As he grew
older his work simply grew harder, and in no respect differed from that of
the labourers, except that he directed what should be done next, but none
the less assisted to do it.
Thus the days went on, the weeks, and months, and years. He was close upon
forty years old before he had his own will for a single day. Up to almost
that age he worked on his father's farm as a labourer among the labourers,
as much under parental authority as when he was a boy of ten. When the old
man died it was not surprising that the son, so long held down in
bondage--bondage from which he had not the spirit to escape--gave way for
a short period to riotous living. There was hard drinking, horse-racing,
and card-playing, and waste of substance generally.
But it was not for long, for several reasons. In the first place, the lad
of forty years, suddenly broken forth as it were from school, had gone
past the age when youth plunges beyond recall. He was a grown man, neither
wise nor clever; but with a man's sedateness of spirit and a man's hopes.
There was no innate evil in his nature to lead him into unrighteous
courses. Perhaps his fault rather lay in his inoffensive disposition--he
submitted too easily. Then, in the second place, there was not much money,
and what there was had to meet many calls.
The son found that the father, though reputed a substantial man, and a man
among farmers of high esteem and good family, had been anything but rich.
First there were secret debts that had run on for fully thirty years--sums
of from fifty to one hundred pounds--borrowed in the days of his youth,
when he, too, had at last been released in a similar manner from similar
bondage, to meet the riotous living in which he also had indulged. In
those earlier days there had been more substance in cattle and corn, and
he had had no difficulty in borrowing ready money from adjoining farmers,
who afterwards helped him to drink it away. These boon companions had now
grown old. They had never pressed their ancient comrade for the principal,
the interest being paid regularly. But now their ancient comrade was dead
they wanted their money, especially when they saw the son indulging
himself, and did not know how far he might go. Their money was paid, and
reduced the balance in hand materially.
Now came a still more serious matter. The old man, years ago, when corn
farming paid so handsomely, had been induced by the prospect of profit to
take a second and yet larger farm, nearly all arable. To do this he was
obliged, in farming phrase, to 'take up'--_i.e._ to borrow--a thousand
pounds, which was advanced to him by the bank. Being a man of substance,
well reputed, and at that date with many friends, the thousand pounds was
forthcoming readily, and on favourable terms. The enterprise, however, did
not prosper; times changed, and wheat was not so profitable. In the end he
had the wisdom to accept his losses and relinquish the second farm before
it ate him up. Had he only carried his wisdom a little farther and repaid
the whole of the bank's advance, all might yet have been well. But he only
repaid five hundred pounds, leaving five hundred pounds still owing. The
bank having regularly received the interest, and believing the old
gentleman upright--as he was--was not at all anxious to have the money
back, as it was earning fair interest. So the five hundred remained on
loan, and, as it seemed, for no very definite purpose.
Whether the old gentleman liked to feel that he had so much money at
command (a weakness of human nature common enough), or whether he thought
he could increase the produce of his farm by putting it in the soil, it is
not possible to say. He certainly put the five hundred out of sight
somewhere, for when his son succeeded him it was nowhere to be found.
After repaying the small loans to his father's old friends, upon looking
round the son saw cattle, corn, hay, and furniture, but no five hundred
pounds in ready money. The ready money had been muddled away--simply
muddled away, for the old man had worked hard, and was not at all
extravagant.
The bank asked for the five hundred, but not in a pressing manner, for the
belief still existed that there was money in the family. That belief was
still further fostered because the old friends whose loans had been repaid
talked about that repayment, and so gave a colour to the idea. The heir,
in his slow way, thought the matter over and decided to continue the loan.
He could only repay it by instalments--a mode which, to a farmer brought
up in the old style, is almost impossible, for though he might meet one he
would be sure to put off the next--or by selling stock (equivalent to
giving up his place), or by borrowing afresh. So he asked and obtained a
continuation of the loan of the five hundred, and was accommodated, on
condition that some one 'backed' him. Some one in the family did back him,
and the fatal mistake was committed of perpetuating this burden. A loan
never remains at the same sum; it increases if it is not reduced. In
itself the five hundred was not at all a heavy amount for the farm to
carry, but it was the nucleus around which additional burdens piled
themselves up. By a species of gravitation such a burden attracts others,
till the last straw breaks the camel's back. This, however, was not all.
The heir discovered another secret which likewise contributed to sober
him. It appeared that the farm, or rather the stock and so on, was really
not all his father's. His father's brother had a share in it--a share of
which even the most inquisitive gossips of the place were ignorant. The
brother being the eldest (himself in business as a farmer at some
distance) had the most money, and had advanced a certain sum to the
younger to enable him to start his farm, more than a generation since.
From that day to this not one shilling of the principal had been repaid,
and the interest only partially and at long intervals. If the interest
were all claimed it would now amount to nearly as much as the principal.
The brother--or, rather, the uncle--did not make himself at all unpleasant
in the matter. He only asked for about half the interest due to him, and
at the same time gave the heir a severe caution not to continue the
aforesaid riotous living. The heir, now quite brought down to earth after
his momentary exaltation, saw the absolute necessity of acquiescence. With
a little management he paid the interest--leaving himself with barely
enough to work the farm. The uncle, on his part, did not act unkindly; it
was he who 'backed' the heir up at the bank in the matter of the
continuation of the loan of the five hundred pounds. This five hundred
pounds the heir had never seen and never would see: so far as he was
concerned it did not exist; it was a mere figure, but a figure for which
he must pay. In all these circumstances there was nothing at all
exceptional.
At this hour throughout the width and breadth of the country there are
doubtless many farmers' heirs stepping into their fathers' shoes, and at
this very moment looking into their affairs. It may be safely said that
few indeed are those fortunate individuals who find themselves clear of
similar embarrassments. In this particular case detailed above, if the
heir's circumstances had been rigidly reduced to figures--if a
professional accountant had examined them--it would have been found that,
although in possession of a large farm, he had not got one scrap of
capital.
But he was in possession of the farm, and upon that simple fact of
possession he henceforth lived, like so many, many more of his class. He
returned to the routine of labour, which was a part of his life. After
awhile he married, as a man of forty might naturally wish to, and without
any imputation of imprudence so far as his own age was concerned. The wife
he chose was one from his own class, a good woman, but, as is said to be
often the case, she reflected the weakness of her husband's character. He
now worked harder than ever--a labourer with the labourers. He thus saved
himself the weekly expense of the wages of a labourer--perhaps, as
labourers do not greatly exert themselves, of a man and a boy. But while
thus slaving with his hands and saving this small sum in wages, he could
not walk round and have an eye upon the other men. They could therefore
waste a large amount of time, and thus he lost twice what he saved. Still,
his intention was commendable, and his persistent, unvarying labour really
wonderful. Had he but been sharper with his men he might still have got a
fair day's work out of them while working himself. From the habit of
associating with them from boyhood he had fallen somewhat into their own
loose, indefinite manner, and had lost the prestige which attaches to a
master. To them he seemed like one of themselves, and they were as much
inclined to argue with him as to obey. When he met them in the morning he
would say, 'Perhaps we had better do so and so,' or 'Suppose we go and do
this or that.' They often thought otherwise; and it usually ended in a
compromise, the master having his way in part, and the men in part. This
lack of decision ran through all, and undid all that his hard work
achieved. Everything was muddled from morn till night, from year's end to
year's end. As children came the living indoors became harder, and the
work out of doors still more laborious.
If a farmer can put away fifty pounds a year, after paying his rent and
expenses, if he can lay by a clear fifty pounds of profit, he thinks
himself a prosperous man. If this farmer, after forty years of saving,
should chance to be succeeded by a son as thrifty, when, he too has
carried on the same process for another twenty years, then the family may
be, for village society, wealthy, with three or even four thousand pounds,
besides goods and gear. This is supposing all things favourable, and men
of some ability, making the most of their opportunities. Now reverse the
process. When children came, as said before, our hard-working farmer found
the living indoors harder, and the labour without heavier. Instead of
saving fifty pounds a year, at first the two sides of the account (not
that he ever kept any books) about balanced. Then, by degrees, the balance
dropped the wrong way. There was a loss, of twenty or thirty pounds on the
year, and presently of forty or fifty pounds, which could only be made
good by borrowing, and so increasing the payment of interest.
Although it takes sixty years--two generations--to accumulate a village
fortune by saving fifty pounds a year, it does not occupy so long to
reduce a farmer to poverty when half that sum is annually lost. There was
no strongly marked and radical defect in his system of farming to amount
for it; it was the muddling, and the muddling only, that did it. His work
was blind. He would never miss giving the pigs their dinner, he rose at
half-past three in the morning, and foddered the cattle in the grey dawn,
or milked a certain number of cows, with unvarying regularity. But he had
no foresight, and no observation whatever. If you saw him crossing a
field, and went after him, you might walk close behind, placing your foot
in the mark just left by his shoe, and he would never know it. With his
hands behind his back, and his eyes upon the ground, he would plod across
the field, perfectly unconscious that any one was following him. He
carried on the old rotation of cropping in the piece of arable land
belonging to the farm, but in total oblivion of any advantage to be
obtained by local change of treatment. He could plan nothing out for next
year. He spent nothing, or next to nothing, on improved implements; but,
on the other hand, he saved nothing, from a lack of resource and
contrivance.
As the years went by he fell out of the social life of the times; that is,
out of the social life of his own circle. He regularly fed the pigs; but
when he heard that the neighbours, were all going in to the town to attend
some important agricultural meeting, or to start some useful movement, he
put his hands behind his back and said that he should not go; he did not
understand anything about it. There never used to be anything of that
sort. So he went in to luncheon on bread and cheese and small ale. Such a
course could only bring him into the contempt of his fellow-men. He became
a nonentity. No one had any respect for or confidence in him. Otherwise,
possibly, he might have obtained powerful help, for the memory of what his
family had been had not yet died out.
Men saw that he lived and worked as a labourer; they gave him no credit
for the work, but they despised him for the meanness and churlishness of
his life. There was neither a piano nor a decanter of sherry in his house.
He was utterly out of accord with the times. By degrees, after many years,
it became apparent to all that he was going downhill. The stock upon the
farm was not so large nor of so good a character as had been the case. The
manner of men visibly changed towards him. The small dealers, even the
very carriers along the road, the higglers, and other persons who call at
a farm on petty business, gave him clearly to know in their own coarse way
that they despised him. They flatly contradicted him, and bore him down
with loud tongues. He stood it all meekly, without showing any spirit;
but, on the other hand, without resentment, for he never said ill of any
man behind his back.
It was put about now that he drank, because some busybody had seen a jar
of spirits carried into the house from the wine merchant's cart. A jar of
spirits had been delivered at the house at intervals for years and years,
far back into his father's time, and every one of those who now expressed
their disgust at his supposed drinking habits had sipped their tumblers in
that house without stint. He did not drink--he did not take one-half at
home what his neighbours imbibed without injury at markets and auctions
every week of their lives. But he was growing poor, and they called to
mind that brief spell of extravagance years ago, and pointed out to their
acquaintances how the sin of the Prodigal was coming home to him.
No man drinks the bitter cup of poverty to the dregs like the declining
farmer. The descent is so slow; there is time to drain every drop, and to
linger over the flavour. It may be eight, or ten, or fifteen years about.
He cannot, like the bankrupt tradesman, even when the fatal notice comes,
put up his shutters at once and retire from view. Even at the end, after
the notice, six months at least elapse before all is over--before the farm
is surrendered, and the sale of household furniture and effects takes
place. He is full in public view all that time. So far as his neighbours
are concerned he is in public view for years previously. He has to rise in
the morning and meet them in the fields. He sees them in the road; he
passes through groups of them in the market-place. As he goes by they look
after him, and perhaps audibly wonder how long he will last. These people
all knew him from a lad, and can trace every inch of his descent. The
labourers in the field know it, and by their manner show that they know
it.
His wife--his wife who worked so hard for so many, many years--is made to
know it too. She is conspicuously omitted from the social gatherings that
occur from time to time. The neighbours' wives do not call; their
well-dressed daughters, as they rattle by to the town in basket-carriage
or dog-cart, look askance at the shabby figure walking slowly on the path
beside the road. They criticise the shabby shawl; they sneer at the slow
step which is the inevitable result of hard work, the cares of maternity,
and of age. So they flaunt past with an odour of perfume, and leave the
'old lady' to plod unrecognised.
The end came at last. All this blind work of his was of no avail against
the ocean steamer and her cargo of wheat and meat from the teeming regions
of the West. Nor was it of avail against the fall of prices, and the
decreased yield consequent upon a succession of bad seasons. The general
lack of confidence pressed heavily upon a man who did not even attempt to
take his natural place among his fellow-men. The loan from the bank had
gradually grown from five to seven or eight hundred by thirties, and
forties, and fifties added to it by degrees; and the bank--informed,
perhaps, by the same busybodies who had discovered that he drank--declined
further assistance, and notified that part, at least, of the principal
must be repaid. The landlord had long been well aware of the state of
affairs, but refrained from action out of a feeling for the old family.
But the land, from the farmer's utter lack of capital, was now going from
bad to worse. The bank having declined to advance further, the rent began
to fall into arrear. The landlord caused it to be conveyed to his tenant
that if he would quit the farm, which was a large one, he could go into a
smaller, and his affairs might perhaps be arranged.
The old man--for he was now growing old--put his hands behind his back and
said nothing, but went on with his usual routine of work. Whether he had
become dulled and deadened and cared nothing, whether hope was extinct, or
he could not wrench himself from the old place, he said nothing. Even then
some further time elapsed--so slow is the farmer's fall that he might
almost be excused for thinking that it would never come. But now came the
news that the old uncle who had 'backed' him at the bank had been found
dead in bed of sheer old age. Then the long-kept secret came out at last.
The dead man's executors claimed the money advanced so many, many years
ago.
This discovery finished it. The neighbours soon had food for gossip in the
fact that a load of hay which he had sold was met in the road by the
landlord's agent and turned back. By the strict letter of his agreement he
could not sell hay off the farm; but it had been permitted for years. When
they heard this they knew it was all over. The landlord, of course, put in
his claim; the bank theirs. In a few months the household furniture and
effects were sold, and the farmer and his aged wife stepped into the
highway in their shabby clothes.
He did not, however, starve; he passed to a cottage on the outskirts of
the village, and became bailiff for the tenant of that very arable farm to
work which years ago his father had borrowed the thousand pounds that
ultimately proved their ruin. He made a better bailiff than a farmer,
being at home with every detail of practice, but incapable of general
treatment. His wife does a little washing and charing; not much, for she
is old and feeble. No charity is offered to them--they have outlived old
friends--nor do they appeal for any. The people of the village do not heed
them, nor reflect upon the spectacle in their midst. They are merged and
lost in the vast multitude of the agricultural poor. Only two of their
children survive; but these, having early left the farm and gone into a
city, are fairly well-to-do. That, at least, is a comfort to the old folk.
It is, however, doubtful whether the old man, as he walks down the lane
with his hands behind his back and the dead leaves driven by the November
breeze rustling after, has much feeling of any kind left. Hard work and
adversity have probably deadened his finer senses. Else one would think he
could never endure to work as a servant upon that farm of all others, nor
to daily pass the scenes of his youth. For yonder, well in sight as he
turns a corner of the lane, stands the house where he dwelt so many, many
years; where the events of his life came slowly to pass; where he was
born; where his bride came home; where his children were born, and from
whose door he went forth penniless.
Seeing this every day, surely that old man, if he have but one spark of
feeling left, must drink the lees of poverty to the last final doubly
bitter dregs.