"I've been turned off, sir," he said. "Told to leave the farm, with no notice at all and my crops all in the ground. I'll admit I'm a little behind on my rent, but not many landlords around here collect as closely as Mr. Crawford does; they get all their money at the end of the season and don't haggle over it month by month when the farmer has nothing coming in. And what can you do on land that's never improved? He lets the place run down and then turns me out because I can't make a fortune for him on it. I—I was wondering if you couldn't do something for me, sir."
"Do something for you?" echoed Jasper Peyton. "I can't use any influence with Anthony Crawford, if that is what you wish."
"I don't understand it," the man persisted. "Three years ago you were my landlord and none of us ever had dealings with Anthony Crawford except that we used to know him when he was a boy. The whole bottom land along the river was yours and all your tenants were farming it for a fair rent and every one was satisfied. But then—he comes, and the upper half is his, we hear, and it is bad luck for us, as we soon know. Everything runs down, no one is treated fairly, and here I am, turned off at a word, and all his doing. Couldn't you make room for me farther down the river somewhere, sir, where the land is yours?"
He looked so red and anxious and unhappy that Janet's heart was fairly wrung for him. His wife was ailing, she knew, the season was backward, and here he stood, facing the loss of all his work and the necessity of beginning all over again. She waited eagerly to hear what offer Cousin Jasper would make.
"I—I can't help you, John," he said at last, very slowly and heavily. "Even if I made room for you on one of the lower farms, it would only stir up trouble, and you might wake up some day to find that Anthony Crawford was your landlord again, after all. I can give you the money to pay your rent, if you wish to stay where you are, but that is all that I can do. There are times when we are none of us free agents, or masters of our own affairs."
"I don't care to stay on, sir," John Massey returned. "I've had too many words with Anthony Crawford for things ever to go easy again. I've been patching up the dike with my own spare time, and maybe the farm has suffered by my doing it; anyway he says so and calls me a fool. I thought perhaps you would help me, since I'd been your tenant so long before he came." His voice, dragging with disappointment, trailed lower and lower. "I don't seem to know just where to turn. Well, good night to you, sir." He turned and walked heavily away.
They sat very silent after he was gone. Oliver was leaning against the terrace rail, Janet in her big chair was clenching her hands in her lap, Cousin Jasper, with his hands on the railing, stood in absolute quiet, staring out over the garden. The light of the house came through the long windows, falling on his face that was so pale and tired. He had seemed weary and unhappy for some time, but to-night he looked desperate. The minutes passed, but still he stood in silence, staring straight before him.
The sight of his distress seemed more than either of the two could bear. Oliver could think of nothing to say, but stood dumbly helpless, while Janet moved closer to their cousin and spoke with shy hesitation:
"Couldn't we help you? Won't you tell us what you are thinking?"
"I was only thinking," Cousin Jasper answered very slowly, "I was wondering, as I do sometimes lately, how strangely life can change and twist itself and make things seem other than they should be. If you have lived all your years following your own sense of honor, if you have tried, in everything you do, to be fair and just, how can it be, when the years have passed, that suddenly all the results of honest dealing should be swept away? How can it be that a man who has disgraced himself, whose ways are known to be everything that is devious and unfair, how can he gain power over you, threaten to take from you everything that is yours, even say that he can destroy your good name? How can every effort you make toward a fair settlement only render matters worse? Is there really something so wrong with the world that a dishonest man can work more harm than a man of honor can ever undo? Do you think so?" he concluded, turning to regard them from under his knitted brows as if he must, in his distress, find some word of reassurance somewhere.