The Young Physician

by Francis Brett Young

Emerging from this easy contest, the landlord, or perhaps his agent, moved on to the next. It was unfortunate for him, and fortunate for the villagers, that he now pitched on the cottage of Thomas Ingleby, the dowser, Edwin’s grandfather. The old man had this in his favour: that he was a man of two trades, that even when the mining had failed him he could make a living with the divining rod, and the consciousness of this power no doubt stiffened his resistance. Another eviction was decreed, but this time things did not go so easily. When the landlord’s men arrived from the manor to empty the house, another party appeared from the Cold Harbour mines, and as soon as the furniture was dragged out at the front door it was seized and taken in again at the back.

“It were a proper field-day,” said Uncle Will quietly, “I do remember it well. I can see your father now, John, standing over beyond the road with his back to the wall, not speakin’ a word, just smokin’ of his pipe.”

The landlord’s men saw that this sort of thing might go on for ever and none the better for it, so they just gave it up, but old Ingleby (Edwin had already canonised him as a “village Hampden”) had shown the rest of the Highberrow people what could be done, and gradually stirred them into combined action.

It was a little, pitiful attempt. He himself put into it all his savings, a matter of a few pounds, and to this were added as many shillings as could be scraped together in the village. He took the money to a lawyer in Axcombe—Bayliss was his name—an honest man with a sense of justice and, one suspects, some admiration for the sturdiness of his client. Bayliss worked the matter up and made a case of it, and no further attempts at eviction were made in Highberrow in the meantime. The village even regained a little of its former confidence, and for some time the landlord did not show his face in it. But once more luck was against Highberrow. Bayliss, the good lawyer, died. He had been careful to keep the matter in his own hands, and when it came to be considered by his successor, a partner with social ambitions, the new man would not touch it: partly because there appeared to be no more money in it (as was probably the case), and partly because he was in the habit of meeting the Lord of the Manor in the hunting-field, and was on card-playing terms with the agent.

There followed an exodus of despair. The people of Highberrow, who had no more money to fight with, packed up their pitiable belongings and left their houses rather than face the trouble of eviction. Not so Thomas Ingleby. The agent returned to the attack. There were threats: a stormy interview, in which the dowser faced the landlord himself. A final week’s notice was given, and Ingleby made sure once more of the support of his friends from the neighbouring villages. But no further attempt at eviction was made. At the last moment the landlord climbed down. He arranged another interview, and at this the terms for the whole village were settled. For the lives of the present occupants, or for a period of sixty years, the cottages should remain rent-free. It was not everything, but ’twas a famous victory. “That is why Aunt Lydia do be still living up to the Holloway to this day,” said Aunt Sarah Jane.

“And I suppose grandfather lived there till he died,” said Edwin.

“No, the poor dear. When he did grow very aged your uncle and I went up to Highberrow and persuaded en that he weren’t fit to look after himself. You should ’a seed the dirt in that house! And he comed down to live along of we. But he were never happy, were he, Will?”

“Noa . . . he were never happy.”

“He were a quare old man. Us seed very little of en. Arften people would come for en from a distance that wanted water found, and he did spend the day roving the country cutting blackthorns for his dowsing. Right up to the day when he took to his bed, poor soul.”

“I should like to have seen him dowsing,” said Edwin. “I haven’t even seen the twigs that they use.”