Mrs. Jericho raised her finger; forbidding any remark upon any probable meaning of such a person. And the old woman dropt herself upon a stair and, heedless of hearers—as though she eased her heart with the utterance—she answered, while the tears ran down her face—“Alive! Aye, and it be alive, more alive than some flesh and blood. Dear! dear! dear! An’ I’ve seen them folks look at the squire, as though it was bread and meat to ’em; and cosset and coax him, as if they could ha’ put their necks under his shoe-leather: and now to stand afore the Hall—in the trouble it’s in—and to grin and to make game—eh, dear! dear!—it’s like laughing in the face of a corpse.” And Widow Blanket—for it was the old village school-dame, removed from her seat of learning to dwell awhile in the Hall, before her final removal to the Poor-house—Widow Blanket sighed heavily; and as though to comfort her sorrow, seemed to fold it in her arms, and rock it to and fro.
The tread of the visitors—echoed loudly by the empty walls—sounded hollowly, heavily above. At the sound the old woman shivered a sigh, raised her eyes, and then continued to swing backwards and forwards, as though she would hear nothing more. Will the reader—for two or three minutes—mount the staircase?
“A very noble house,” said Jericho, his eye sweeping the reception-rooms.
“And what a lovely prospect,” said Mrs. Jericho, approaching a window. “What an undulation of hill and meadow! What a prospect!”
“This, Mrs. Jericho,” said the Monied Man, “is my prospect. This I can make my own; this is property: in its essence, I may say, property. But where’s the property in what you call a lovely prospect; that any beggar may look at as well as I? Any vagabond tinker—or poet or any ragamuffin of that sort—may pitch his tent, and boil his kettle, and smoke his pipe, and take his pleasure of the prospect, quite as if it was his own—upon lawful parchment, his own. This, I own it—this interferes with my righteous sense of property. What belongs to a man, belongs to him. If the sun goes down upon my property, I’ve a clear title to that sunset; if the clouds over my land are remarkably fine, they are my clouds; and it’s a sort of moral larceny—though unhappily there’s no law for it—but a moral larceny it is to all intents and purposes—for any beggar at his pleasure to enjoy what is over my land; to have—as the term is—the usufruct of that sunset—of those clouds.”
Mr. Candituft pulled up to his face a look of strong conviction. “The question, my dear sir, in its whole breadth and depth, never struck me before. There is great primitive truth in what you say.”
“A law could meet it,” cried Hodmadod. “Couldn’t a law meet it? At all events, if you can’t secure the clouds and sunsets, of course the landlord has a clear right to all the thunderbolts.”
“Ass!” was at the lips of Mr. Jericho; but he swallowed the word, possibly to treasure it for another time. Stalking through the apartments, and looking about him, he flowed in speech; and Mrs. Jericho was too wise to stay the stream. “A very fine house—very fine; but it wants a great deal—a very great deal done.”
“How fortunate, Solomon!” at length observed Mrs. Jericho. “Were it otherwise, there would be no opportunity for the development of your taste.”
After a due examination of the upper house, the party descended the stairs, Dame Blanket slowly rising from her seat to make them way. “There is one room that is locked. Have you the key?” asked Mrs. Jericho.