From that winter forth, however, the enthusiasm of the new vicar for education sensibly died away. Naturally fitful in disposition, he craved for immediate results, and, if they came not, his hopes were disappointed, and his efforts at once relaxed. The pressure of the upper powers of his parish was also beginning to tell on his unsophisticated mind. He met with little overt opposition, for that might have been both troublesome and impolitic. But quiet social forces worked on him continually to bring him round to a proper sense of his position as local priest of feudalism. When he dined out, which often happened, his host would chaff him on his attempts to make scholars of those loafing rascals of labourers. Squire Wiseman in particular gravely assured him that he was encouraging dangerous ideas among a very dissolute and indefinitely corrupt lot of pariahs. Educate them and they would altogether go to the devil.
"Tell you what it is, sir," shouted a half-drunk J.P. one evening as the vicar and some half dozen others sat over their wine after dinner at Squire Wiseman's: "Tell you what it is; we must get you a wife; blest if that wouldn't give you something better to do, my boy, than trying to make gentlemen of those damn'd skulking labourers."
The company ha ha'd with delight, and the parson blushed to the very root of his hair.
"Capital idea, 'pon my life!" said the host; "and I know just the girl for you, Codling—at least my wife does, for she was remarking only last night what a pity it was—"
"Please, sir," said the butler suddenly, after whispering for a short time with a maid who had entered the room, "Timms would like to speak wi' you. He says he's found poacher's snares in the Ashwood coppice, and he wants two or three fellows to help him watch the place."
"Damn the fellow! can't he let a man eat his dinner in peace! Tell him to go to the devil, Robins, and—and I'll see him to-morrow morning."
"Yes, sir. But, sir, Timms says—"
"Curse Timms, and you too! Do you hear what I say?" roared the squire, and Robins vanished.
The conversation did not get back to the subject of Codling's marriage; and the host, after playing absently with his glass for a minute or two, got up hastily, and muttering, "Excuse me, gentlemen, only I think I had better see Timms after all," left the room.
That night three poachers—a Warford villager and two shoemakers from Warwick—were caught in the coppice, and lodged in Warwick jail.