More Bywords

‘What?  He won’t part with the land you want?’

‘No; I wrote to him and got no answer.  Then I wrote again, and I got a peaked-hand sort of note that his wife wrote, I should think.  “Mr. Grice presented his compliments” (compliments indeed!), “and had no intention of parting with any part of Spragg’s portion.”  Well, then I called to represent what a benefit it would be to the parish and his own cattle, and what do you think the old brute said?—that “there was a great deal too much done for the parish already, and he wouldn’t have no hand in setting up the labourers, who were quite impudent enough already.”  Well, I saw it was of no use to talk to an old wretch like that about social movements and equal rights, so I only put the question whether having pure water easily accessible would not tend to make them better behaved and less impudent as he called it, upon which he broke out into a tirade.  “He didn’t hold with cold water and teetotal, not he.  Why, it had come to that—that there was no such thing as getting a fair day’s work out of a labouring man with their temperance, and their lectures, and their schools, and their county councils and what not!”  Really I had read of such people, but I hardly believed they still existed.’

‘Grice is very old, and the regular old sort of farmer,’ said Bessie.

‘But could not the Admiral persuade him, or Mr. Doyle?’

‘Oh no,’ said Susan, ‘it would be of no use.  He was just as bad about a playground for the boys, though it would have prevented their being troublesome elsewhere.’

‘Besides,’ added Bessie, ‘I am sure papa would say that there is no necessity.  He had the water analysed, and it is quite good, and plenty of it.’

‘Well, I shall see what can be done.’

‘She thinks us as bad as old Grice,’ said Susan, as they saw her walking away in a determined manner.

The next thing that was heard was the Admiral coming in from the servants’ hall, whither he had been summoned by ‘Please, sir, James Hodd wishes to speak to you.’

‘What is this friend of yours about, Bessie?’

‘What friend, papa?’

‘Why, this Miss Arthur—what d’ye call her?’ said the Admiral (who on the whole was much more attracted by her than were his daughters).  ‘Here’s a deputation from her tenant, James Hodd, with “Please, sir, I wants to know if ’tis allowed to turn folks out of their houses as they’ve paid rent for reg’lar with a week’s notice, when they pays by the year.”’

‘You don’t mean it!’ exclaimed Mrs. Merrifield and Susan together.

‘Poor old Mrs. West,’ said the mother.

‘And all the Tibbinses!’ exclaimed Susan.  ‘She can’t do it, can she, papa?’

‘Certainly not, without the proper notice, and so I told James, and that the notice she had sent down to him was so much waste-paper.’

‘So at least she has created a village Hampden,’ said Bessie, ‘though, depend upon it, she little supposes herself to be the petty tyrant.’

‘I must go and explain to her, I suppose, to-morrow morning,’ said the Admiral.

However, he had scarcely reached his own gate before the ulstered form was seen rushing up to him.

‘Oh!  Admiral Merrifield, good-morning; I was coming to ask you—’

‘And I was coming to you.’

‘Oh!  Admiral, is it really so—as that impudent man told me—that those horrid people can’t be got out of those awful tumbledown, unhealthy places for all that immense time?’

‘Surely he was not impudent to you?  He was only asserting his right.  The cottages were taken by the year, and you have no choice but to give six months’ notice.  I hope he was not disrespectful.’

‘Well, no—I can’t say that he was, though I don’t care for those cap-in-hand ways of your people here.  But at any rate, he says he won’t go—no, not any of them, though I offered to pay them up to the end of the time, and now I must put off my beautiful plans.  I was drawing them all yesterday morning—two model cottages on each side, and the drinking fountain in the middle.  I brought them up to show you.  Could you get the people to move out?  I would promise them to return after the rebuilding.’

‘Very nice drawings.  Yes—yes—very kind intentions.’

‘Then can’t you persuade them?’

‘But, my dear young lady, have you thought what is to become of them in the meantime?’

‘Why, live somewhere else!  People in Smokeland were always shifting about.’

‘Yes—those poor little town tenements are generally let on short terms and are numerous enough.  But here—where are the vacant cottages for your four families?  Hodd with his five children, Tibbins with eight or nine, Mrs. West and her widow daughter and three children, and the Porters with a bedridden father?’

‘They are dreadfully overcrowded.  Is there really no place?’

‘Probably not nearer than those trumpery new tenements at Bonchamp.  That would be eight miles to be tramped to the men’s work, and the Wests would lose the washing and charing that maintains them.’

‘Then do you think it can never be done?  See how nice my plans are!’

‘Oh yes! very pretty drawings, but you don’t allow much outlet.’

‘I thought you had allotments, and that they would do, and I mean to get rid of the pig-sties.’

‘A most unpopular proceeding, I warn you.’

‘There’s nothing more unsanitary than a pig-sty.’

‘That depends on how it is kept.  And may I ask, do you mean also to dispense with staircases?’

‘Oh!  I forgot.  But do you really mean to say that I can never carry out my improvements, and that these people must live all herded together till everybody is dead?’

‘Not quite that,’ said the Admiral, laughing; ‘but most improvements require patience and a little experience of the temper and habits of the people.  There are cottages worse than these.  I think two of them have four rooms, and the Wests and Porters do not require so much.  If you built one or two elsewhere, and moved the people into them, or waited for a vacant one, you might carry out some of your plans—gradually.’

‘And my fountain?’

‘I am not quite sure, but I am afraid your cottages are on that stratum where you could not bring the water without great expense.’

Arthurine controlled herself enough for a civil ‘Good-morning!’ but she shed tears as she walked home and told her pitying mother that she was thwarted on every side, and that nobody could comprehend her.

The meetings for German reading were, however, contrived chiefly—little as Arthurine guessed it—by the influence of Bessie Merrifield.  The two Greville girls and Mr. Doyle’s sister, together with the doctor’s young wife, two damsels from the next parish, and a friend or two that the Arthurets had made at Bonchamp, formed an imposing circle—to begin.

‘Oh, not on Wilhelm Tell!’ cried Arthurine.  ‘It might as well be the alphabet at once.’

However, the difficulties in the way of books, and consideration for general incompetency, reduced her to Wilhelm Tell, and she began with a lecture first on Schiller, and then upon Switzerland, and on the legend; but when Bessie Merrifield put in a word of such history and criticisms as were not in the High School Manual, she was sure everything else must be wrong—‘Fraülein Blümenbach never said so, and she was an admirable German scholar.’

Miss Doyle went so far as to declare she should not go again to see Bessie Merrifield so silenced, sitting by after the first saying nothing, but only with a little laugh in her eyes.

‘But,’ said Bessie, ‘it is such fun to see any person having it so entirely her own way—like Macaulay, so cock-sure of everything—and to see those Bonchamp girls—Mytton is their name—so entirely adoring her.’

‘I am sorry she has taken up with those Myttons,’ said Miss Doyle.

‘So am I,’ answered Susan.

‘You too, Susie!’ exclaimed Bessie—‘you, who never have a word to say against any one!’