‘Then I must starve. You might ever so well take away the dog. They’re the life of me.’
‘They’re the death of you. Why don’t you go and work, instead of idling about, stealing trout?’
‘Be you a laughing at a poor fellow in his trouble? Who’d gie me a day’s work, I’d like to know? It’s twenty year too late for that!’
Lancelot stood listening. Yes, that wretch, too, was a man and a brother—at least so books used to say. Time was, when he had looked on a poacher as a Pariah ‘hostem humani generis’—and only deplored that the law forbade him to shoot them down, like cats and otters; but he had begun to change his mind.
He had learnt, and learnt rightly, the self-indulgence, the danger, the cruelty, of indiscriminate alms. It looked well enough in theory, on paper. ‘But—but—but,’ thought Lancelot, ‘in practice, one can’t help feeling a little of that un-economic feeling called pity. No doubt the fellow has committed an unpardonable sin in daring to come into the world when there was no call for him; one used to think, certainly, that children’s opinions were not consulted on such points before they were born, and that therefore it might be hard to visit the sins of the fathers on the children, even though the labour-market were a little overstocked—“mais nous avons changé tout cela,” like M. Jourdain’s doctors. No doubt, too, the fellow might have got work if he had chosen—in Kamschatka or the Cannibal Islands; for the political economists have proved, beyond a doubt, that there is work somewhere or other for every one who chooses to work. But as, unfortunately, society has neglected to inform him of the state of the Cannibal Island labour-market, or to pay his passage thither when informed thereof, he has had to choose in the somewhat limited labour-field of the Whitford Priors’ union, whose workhouse is already every winter filled with abler-bodied men than he, between starvation—and this—. Well, as for employing him, one would have thought that there was a little work waiting to be done in those five miles of heather and snipe-bog, which I used to tramp over last winter—but those, it seems, are still on the “margin of cultivation,” and not a remunerative investment—that is, to capitalists. I wonder if any one had made Crawy a present of ten acres of them when he came of age, and commanded him to till that or be hanged, whether he would not have found it a profitable investment? But bygones are bygones, and there he is, and the moors, thanks to the rights of property—in this case the rights of the dog in the manger—belong to poor old Lavington—that is, the game and timber on them; and neither Crawy nor any one else can touch them. What can I do for him? Convert him? to what? For the next life, even Tregarva’s talisman seems to fail. And for this life—perhaps if he had had a few more practical proofs of a divine justice and government—that “kingdom of heaven” of which Luke talks, in the sensible bodily matters which he does appreciate, he might not be so unwilling to trust to it for the invisible spiritual matters which he does not appreciate. At all events, one has but one chance of winning him, and that is, through those five senses which he has left. What if he does spend the money in gross animal enjoyment? What will the amount of it be, compared with the animal enjoyments which my station allows me daily without reproach! A little more bacon—a little more beer—a little more tobacco; at all events they will be more important to him than a pair of new boots or an extra box of cigars to me.’—And Lancelot put his hand in his pocket, and pulled out a sovereign. No doubt he was a great goose; but if you can answer his arguments, reader, I cannot.
‘Look here—what are your night-lines worth?’
‘A matter of seven shilling; ain’t they now, Paul Tregarva?’
‘I should suppose they are.’
‘Then do you give me the lines, one and all, and there’s a sovereign for you.—No, I can’t trust you with it all at once. I’ll give it to Tregarva, and he shall allow you four shillings a week as long as it lasts, if you’ll promise to keep off Squire Lavington’s river.’
It was pathetic, and yet disgusting, to see the abject joy of the poor creature. ‘Well,’ thought Lancelot, ‘if he deserves to be wretched, so do I—why, therefore, if we are one as bad as the other, should I not make his wretchedness a little less for the time being?’