In two days it was all over Ashbrook village that the vicar was going to get married. The servants at the Grange had told the news to their friends in confidence.
CHAPTER III.
EXHIBITS MORE PHILANTHROPY, OF A MIXED SORT,
PLUS A LITTLE FIGHTING—THE "ALLOTMENT"
CURE FOR HUNGER.
The village gossips were right. Lady Harriet Wiseman did find the vicar a wife, though not just then. The vicar's young zeal, his vague ideas, had first to be moderated or abandoned. Bit by bit he was brought down to the prosaic realities of parish life, which embraced obligations unheard of in Holy Writ. That says nothing about the necessity for upholding feudalism. A mere twelvemonths' labour at reforming the morals and refining the minds of the rustics by means of the schoolmaster was not quite enough to bring young Codling to a proper sense of his position. A few more vagaries, a little further indulgence in the pleasure of sowing religious wild oats, and then the vicar would be ready to contract that highly advantageous marriage, which forms the goal of so many a parson's ambition.
That accomplished, Codling might be considered tamed. The one further aberration of his which we have to notice was his plunge into the allotment agitation. As the excitement over teaching the rustics their alphabet and multiplication table began to die out in his mind, this new whim came handily to take its place and prevent him from feeling like a deserter. Here, he declared, was the true remedy for the miseries of the rural poor; he had become convinced that to educate them first was to begin at the wrong end. The first thing was to make them comfortable in their homes, and then they might learn to read with more advantage. The schoolmaster was by no means to be thrown over, but meanwhile Codling said the most important thing was that the labourers should have patches of land to grow cabbages and potatoes.
The vicar's new fad, as it was called, did not excite the same amount of hostility amongst the squirearchy of the neighbourhood as his effort at education, but the farmers liked it as ill. Squire Wiseman was indeed opposed to the experiment, and had there been no other landed proprietor of influence in the parish, the vicar's fuss would have left no results. But fortunately, in some respects, for the labourers, nearly all Ashbrook village, and a good deal of the rolling meadow land to the south of it, and that lay between wooded knolls, belonged to an eccentric old fellow, named Hawthorn. The people called him Captain Hawthorn, perhaps to distinguish him from the Squire, but he had never known more of military life than three months' service as a subaltern in a militia regiment. This Hawthorn was an oddity. A dry, withered, rather small man, of between 50 and 60, slovenly in dress, and full of a sardonic humour, he was constantly to be met walking in the country lanes, and as often as not conversing with waggoners, poachers, and such country people as came in his way. He was therefore distrusted by the other big people of his neighbourhood; but the common people loved him. The new vicar had hardly been a week in the parish ere he was warned by the gentry to beware of this old man. Old Polewhele of Middlebury roundly declared that Hawthorn was an infidel; and the Dowager-Countess of Leigholm, Lady Harriet Wiseman's mother, felt sure that he was in league with the Evil One, for he was always muttering to himself, or else talking to a one-eyed, mangy, tailless cur, that followed him everywhere, and which had more than once snarled at her in a very vicious manner. Her ladyship, however, had a private grudge against him, in that he had on several occasions been wicked enough to win money from her at cards, and take it too—a crime she was never known to forgive.
Whatever his relationship with, or belief in, the unseen powers, Hawthorn alone of the landed gentry furthered Codling's latest project, and made it a success in spite of the fact that the fitful zealot was at the point of throwing the whole thing at his heels in disgust. Codling felt that he had a right to be disheartened when his projects were not adopted forthwith, and moreover, he was getting under weigh as a lover, and that made other occupations irksome. He had done all he could, he said to himself, and yet nobody was converted. Wiseman laughed at him good humouredly as usual, and the farmers sent old Sprigg of Knebesley, as their spokesman, to tell him that in their opinion "'lotments would be the ruin of all honest labour. Gi'e the labourers land," he said, "and they'll skulk at home instead of doin' an honest day's work for us. They're the laziest vagabonds in creation, and the only thing you can do is to keep them dependent on the rates, and when ye want 'em to work, stop supplies. Hunger's the only prod for cattle o' that kidney."
The vicar was rapidly becoming convinced that he had made a mistake, but he had gone so far that he could hardly at once back out, so he resolved to make one final attempt to carry his point, in which he would obtain the aid of a brother parson. This device would, he thought, enable him to retreat gracefully from his false position. The man he summoned to his help was a Leicestershire rector, whose consuming zeal had induced him to become a sort of itinerant evangelist of the allotment system. What could be better than to get such a brilliant apostle to address a mass meeting at Ashbrook. With the failure of a prophet to convince landlords and farmers, Codling felt that his weak-kneedness might be justified.