Читать книгу They Seek a Country - Francis Brett Young - Страница 9

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Within an hour Mr. Vizard’s congealed blood was beginning to thaw and expand. Though used to the ostentatious entertainment of aldermen and nabobs, and the luxury of their suburban mansions, he could still be thrilled to find himself received in the company and in the homes of landed gentry, the owners of wide acres (there was no possession like land) and the sole repository, in these degenerate days, of those traditions of the ancient regime that were the cause of his country’s greatness. Their condition was one to which he himself aspired; and his host, Colonel Abberley, a near spiritual kinsman of Sir Roger de Coverley, his favourite hero in fiction, was as perfect a representative of the type as could be imagined: a little, dry gentleman, with the obvious cut of an old soldier, whose studiously formal manners, combined with his un-selfconscious rusticity (and profanity) of speech, made him a veritable museum-piece. The rest of the cosy company of four was perfectly in keeping and might have been proposed as a conversation piece for Mr. Zoffany. There was the sister of his host, who had long been a widower, Miss Lavinia Abberley, whose antique graces and equally her attire made her nearer to the subjects of eighteenth-century canvases than to the frothy ladies of Regency society. There was also, as there should be in every properly regulated country house, a parson: no mere appanage or dependant, but a man of birth and breeding, a mature younger son of the neighbouring family of Ombersley whose lineage was almost (but not quite) as ancient as Colonel Abberley’s own, who could take his part in polite conversation and drink his bottle of wine like a man of the world.

Mr. Vizard smiled contentedly. It was almost worth while to have undergone the uncertainties, discomforts and privations of the last twenty hours for the sake of relishing more richly these contrasting luxuries: the elegance of that spacious dining-room over whose plaster ceiling the candles threw shadows that seemed, as one threw back one’s head, to bring the circling rout of opulent nymphs and rude satyrs to life; the warmth of the enormous wood fire that glowed so red and flared so eagerly; the deft movements, around the oval of lucent mahogany, of men-servants in bottle-green breeches and coats with claret facings; the benevolent scrutiny of authentic family portraits, which, having none of his own, he always found exhilarating; and, above all perhaps, the milky excellence of the claret with which this admirable meal of plump roast pheasant had been graced. Mr. Vizard felt not merely in tune with his surroundings but pleased with himself.

“And now,” Colonel Abberley said, “your news, sir!”

Mr. Vizard smiled and nodded. “The good news first. Allow me to congratulate you, sir. Our little Enclosure Bill will receive the Royal Assent. I think I may flatter myself, with your permission, that, for a private measure, the affair was managed with unusual smoothness and expedition: two readings without a word of discussion in three weeks. Upstairs, the Committee wasted no time. Your good friends in Parliament, Mr. Ombersley and Mr. Sheldon, were invaluable. Three commissioners are appointed: your cousin, Lord D’Abitot; our reverend friend here, representing the tithe-owners, and Mr. Thomas Collins, who, of course, is one of your tenants.”

“Ay, Tom Collins is all right,” Colonel Abberley said. “I can answer for him.”

Mr. Vizard bowed and smirked in agreement. “The three commissioners,” he went on, “will now proceed to meet, receive claims and publish an award. There is a provision that two of them constitute a quorum: so there is really no reason why your cousin and Mr. Ombersley should not settle most things between you to your own satisfaction without calling on Mr. Collins to intervene. Indeed”—Mr. Vizard generously replenished his wine-glass—“from what I have seen of the maps and know of the nature of the land, I think that you, sir, and this gentleman’s brother, will have added to your properties two tidy little estates of more than eight hundred acres apiece as the result of a remarkably modest expenditure.”

“That is by no means the way, if I may say so,” the parson broke in, “in which Colonel Abberley and my brother look at this Enclosure. What they want—and what all right-thinking people want—is to improve the land and eliminate wasteful husbandry for the good of the nation. As things are, sir, the energy of the community is going to waste and the morals of my parishioners are suffering. In looking after a brood of goslings, a few rotten sheep, a skeleton of a cow or a mangy horse, these fellows with rights of commonage lose more than they might have gained by an honest day’s work and, what is far worse, acquire the habit of independence and idleness. God did not create the earth, sir, to lie waste for feeding geese, but to be cultivated by man in the sweat of his brow.”

“Of course, sir, of course,” Mr. Vizard said smoothly, “we are all of the same opinion. Unfortunately, some of the labouring poor fail to realize that it is better to work for a steady two shillings a day for a benevolent employer than to pick up a miserable and uncertain living in that way. The Reform agitation and the last Revolution in France have gone to their heads. To-day everyone talks of ‘rights’ and nobody of ‘duties.’ More than one Enclosure Bill has lately been wrecked by misguided sentimentality. The whole country is suffering from an epidemic of morbid sensibility. All this fussing and fuming over the Slave Trade, for instance. To abolish slavery in England was all very well. We are a Christian nation, sir, and should be above reproach. But to lug in the Cape of Good Hope and the West Indian possessions, where heathens are in the majority, is not only unnecessary but foolish. In tropical climes the slave is not a luxury but a necessity. The West Indies, I’m told, will rebel, and none can blame them. Why, even in England members of Parliament allow their reason to be swayed by the sentiments of their constituents. In the case of this little Enclosure Act of ours, I don’t mind telling you, we had an anxious moment in committee when one of your self-constituted village Hampdens bobbed up and claimed to be heard.”

“A man from my parish? Impossible!” Mr. Ombersley was shocked.

Colonel Abberley laughed. “Control your feelings, George. Mr. Vizard says it’s all over. But I think I can guess whom you mean. Was the fellow’s name Oakley?”

“John Oakley, sir. That was the name.”

“I know the fellow quite well, and I’ve had my eye on him. He’s the grandson, and heir-at-law I suppose, of old Joe Barley whom you buried two years ago, George. He was born and bred over Dulston way, where all bad things come from, and brought up as a nail-maker. When Joe Barley died, this fellow gave up his calling and came to settle down here and loaf in the old man’s cottage—you know that very well, or ought to—on the edge of the common.”

“I remember Joe Barley quite well: a most respectful old man,” the parson grumbled; “but this other fellow ...”

“Oblige me by passing the port, George. Another glass, Mr. Vizard. I hope the wine’s to your taste, it’s the year of Coruña. This other fellow is anything but respectful: a regular ‘Brummagem Radical,’ as we call them down here. But if the Bill’s through I reckon we shall soon see the last of him, and a damned good riddance. His ‘rights,’ as he chooses to call them, are squatter’s rights. The cottage was thrown up—you can hardly call it a building—about eighteen years ago, just before I succeeded.”

“And encroachments of less than twenty years’ date,” Mr. Vizard put in, “have no standing whatever nor any claims when it comes to redistribution. The commissioners can pull this man’s house down to-morrow if they see fit.”

“As they assuredly shall see fit,” Mr. Ombersley muttered. “I don’t want any Methodists putting ideas into my parishioners’ heads!”

“Behold the Church Militant, Mr. Vizard! None the less, I agree with him. The sooner a saucy fellow like this Oakley is brought to his senses the better. As soon as his house is pulled down there will be no difficulty in clearing him out. My parish officer will refuse him a certificate and send him back to his radical friends in Dulston before he does any more harm. These factory-workers will be the ruin of us. The overseer mentioned to me the other day that this fellow actually talked of starting an evening school! What does a labourer who works twelve hours a day for his daily bread want with learning to read? And what will he read when he’s learnt? I can tell you, sir: that damned devil Cobbett’s Political Register! As a matter of fact,” the Colonel went on, “these ‘encroachments,’ as you lawyers call them, are the curse of agriculture. People have the idea that if they can manage to run up a roof and get a fire burning between sunrise and sunset they can stay there till doomsday. I’m afraid that those who have lived in their hovels for more than twenty years may be able to claim an allotment in place of their common rights. That is so, Mr. Vizard?”

“That is so ... unfortunately.”

“But the others will have to go and go double quick, and the first I clear off my common will be Master Oakley. How did the fellow strike you?”

Mr. Vizard deliberated. “On the surface, sir, I must admit, he struck me as a personable young man, tall and dark, one might almost say handsome: much above his station in bearing and dress, if you take my meaning, with considerable powers of expression and force of character which, if properly directed and disciplined ...”

“Ah, there you have it!” Colonel Abberley broke in. “Discipline! That is what this age lacks, sir. But what can you expect when the Court itself sets the Nation such a humiliating example? If I had a fellow like that in my regiment for eighteen months, I could make a man of him. What this unhappy country needs is another war! But if once I start that hare I shall never finish. What had Oakley to say for himself?”

“An oration, sir: a harangue; a positive philippic! Of course, like all fellows of his kind, our village Hampden could never keep to his point, and showed pitiable ignorance of the law. Yet the man has passion and fervour, and spoke as though he were used to it.”

“Used to ranting in his conventicles, no doubt. Every Methodist learns to do that,” Mr. Ombersley said contemptuously.

“Perhaps, sir. I found myself interested, all the same. It is my business, as a lawyer, to see both sides in other people’s cases if I only see one in my own; and if Oakley failed to make out a case for himself—he admitted, hands down, that the squatter’s standing was doubtful—he drew an affecting picture—ay, I’ll go so far as that—of the general results of enclosure on the commoners in your parish.”

“The general results, sir, are obvious,” Colonel Abberley said sharply; “they will be to improve the common land several hundred per cent and ensure its being cultivated tidily, without waste. The men who formerly worked for themselves haphazard and struggled to live from hand to mouth, will now work for me or Ombersley’s brother or Tom Collins for a regular and generous wage. Why, sir, in England, in these days the labouring poor are pampered, sir, positively pampered!”

“Oh, no doubt, no doubt! ...” Mr. Vizard bowed to the storm. “I am merely defining this young man’s thesis which, naturally, did not dwell on what the commoner stood to gain but on what he would lose. First the pride of feeling he had something of his own: his own cottage, his own patch of soil, his own cow, his own geese or what not. Then his rights: the right to cut fern and to glean and to gather manure and firewood ...”

“And scare every pheasant of mine within a mile of the common! You might add the right to poach and the right to pilfer! Ask my head-gamekeeper, Ballance.”

“Mr. Oakley, I hardly need say, did not mention these. But shall I go on?”

“Ay, go on, go on,” Abberley grunted.

“As a result of this, he suggested, the ejected commoner would have no incentive to thrift or decency. ‘Go to any ale-house,’ he said, ‘in any parish lately enclosed, and you will see for yourself the origin of poverty and poor-rates. For whom are men to be sober, for whom are they to save? For the parish? If they are diligent, will they get leave to build a cottage? If they are sober, will they get land for a cow and milk for their children? If they are frugal, will they get half an acre of land to plant potatoes and leave to cut fuel? You say they will have wages from the farmers to pay for these things. Two-and-threepence a day, if they’re lucky! If they pay for their food, what can the belly spare for the back? You offer them no motives for decency, gentlemen,’ he says, ‘you take their land and you give them nothing in return but a parish officer and a workhouse. What reason have they to care for anything but a pot of beer? It helps them to forget.’ ”

Parson Ombersley wagged his head. “I am inclined to think for my own part that even ale is less pernicious than tea. It is excessive tea-drinking that frays the nerves of these unfortunate people and makes them pernickety. As for the practice of gleaning to which you referred: in spite of the oft-quoted warrant of Scripture I have long been convinced that it should be stopped. Any custom that throws together uneducated people of opposite sexes whose carnal passions are apt to be ill-controlled is demoralizing.”

Colonel Abberley, brushing aside these reflections, rose impatiently.

“We have heard all this stuff—Oakley’s stuff, not yours, George—before. It is the sort of reward any public-spirited landowner must expect to receive. Happily for all of us, it weighed no more heavily with the Committee of Parliament than it does with me. Our Bill has gone through, and no talk will alter it now. What is more, there’s no time to be wasted if we are to break up any quantity of land and sow winter wheat this autumn. You and I, George, will have to get busy to-morrow. I’ll send Collins word to meet us.”

Mr. Vizard smiled. “Mr. Collins, I feel sure, will be at your service, sir. The Act allows each commissioner two guineas a day.”

“All the more reason for getting the business settled,” Colonel Abberley went on. “What about the other encroachments, Mr. Vizard? I should like to see the last of them.”

“Any cottage of more than twenty years’ standing carries with it a right to a certain allotment of land but no right to the common. But the cottager, mind you, must pay his share of the legal costs of enclosure and fence his allotment. Speaking from my own experience, I think you are likely to find that most of your cottagers will be only too glad to sell you their land and relieve themselves of legal responsibility. They don’t understand it. Offer them five pounds an acre. That is about the usual figure, and by far the most satisfactory way of dealing with the matter.”

“Five pounds an acre.... Well, it’s worth more than that to me. I can buy in the lot for less than two hundred pounds. And what about Oakley? That fellow’s insolence sticks in my gizzard still; but I have to keep on the right side of the law all the same.”

“Your position in his case is perfectly clear, sir: he has no claim whatever.”

“I can eject him and do what I like with the house he is living in?”

“Whatever you like.”

“In that case, I’ll see that damned hovel pulled down to-morrow. Suppose we join Miss Abberley?” Colonel Abberley moved to the window and gazed out. “The fog’s thicker than ever,” he said. “I never knew the like of it. And I had hoped to take our visitor to shoot a pheasant to-morrow....”