His companion, a head shorter than himself, was Sherebiah Minshull, clad in the sober brown of ordinary country wear, and trudging along steadily under the weight of a fair-sized valise. Winter or summer, his appearance never varied: his firm round cheeks were always ruddy, his blue eyes always bright; and his expression, now as always, was that of placid self-content, well becoming "a man of peace".
The two drew nearer to the inn, where the group had by this time been enlarged by the accession of the greater part of the village population, women and children, workers and loafers, mingled in one interested throng. As Giles Appleyard was at that moment explaining to the passenger at his side, he had never seen such a crowd at Winton St. Mary before, though he had driven the coach, good weather and bad, for fifteen years come Christmas. It reminded him of the crowd at Salisbury Fair.
"And seein' as how I've been laid up wi' a bad leg for two months," he added, "I'm behind the times, I be; news travels slow to them as don't drive coaches, and, i' feck, I know no more than the dead what this mortal big crowd do mean, i' feck I don't."
But many voices were ready to tell him when, having pulled up his four steaming horses at the inn door, he descended with grave deliberation from his perch, saluted Mistress Joplady with the gallantry of the road, and entered her house "to warm his nattlens", as he said, with a tankard of her home-brewed. Young pa'son was a-gwine to Lun'on town! It seemed a slight cause for such an unwonted scene; in reality it was a momentous event in the life of Harry Rochester and in the history of his village. Small things bulk large in the imagination of rustic folk; a journey to London came within the experience of few of them; and the departure of young pa'son, following so closely upon two such notable events as the cricket match and the attack on the Lord High Treasurer, had already furnished unfailing material for gossip, and would be the theme of comment and speculation for a year to come.
It was all along of old Squire, they said; and the coachman, for the first and only time in his career, delayed his departure for some minutes after the horses had been watered, in order to listen to the story. A few days after Lord Godolphin's flying visit, Squire Berkeley had fenced in a piece of land which time out of mind had been regarded as part of the village common. Old Gaffer Minshull, whose memory went back fifty years, was called up to tell how in the year '53, just before Christmas, the then parson had held a prayer-meeting on that very spot to celebrate the making of Noll Crum'ell Lord Protector; he remembered it well, for it lasted five hours, and old Jenny Bates fainted on the ground and took to her bed from that day.
"Ay, 'twas a holy spot, an' Squire med ha' feared to touch un, as the old ancient folk feared to lay hands on the Lord's holy ark; but, bless 'ee, Squire bean't afeard o' nothen, nay, not o' the still small voice pa'son do zay be inside on us all."
When the ground was fenced in the good parson was disposed to carry the matter to law. But though he had already won one case (a matter of right of way) in the courts, the only result was that the squire had carried it to appeal, trusting in the power of the purse. The angry villagers therefore determined to take the law into their own hands. Without consulting the rector, they assembled one evening towards the end of October, and hastening in a body to the disputed space, began to make short work of the new fencing. But the squire had got wind of their intention, by some witchcraft of his own, they believed: he soon appeared on the scene at the head of a gang of his own men. There was a fight; heads were broken, and the squire's party were getting badly mauled when the rector suddenly arrived and rushed between the combatants.
"Ay, poor pa'son, I zee un now, I do," said Gaffer Minshull feelingly, "goen headlong into the rout wi' all his petticoats flyen! A fine upstanden man was pa'son, as ought to ha' been a man o' war. A' stood in the eye of Squire, an' Squire opened on un, gave tongue to a deal o' hot an' scorchen words, a' did. But pa'son took no heed to'n, not he: he spoke up fair an' softly to Squire's men, and wi' that way o' his a' made 'em feel all fashly like; a' had a won'erful way wi' 'n, had pa'son; an' they made off wi' their broken heads, they did; an' Squire was left a-frothen an' cussen as he were a heathen Frenchman or Turk. Ah, poor pa'son! Such a fine sperit as he had, his frame were not built for 't; wi' my own aged eyes I seed un go blue at the lips, and a' put his hand on his bosom, a' did, an' seemed as if all the breath was blowed out of his mortal body; and a' went home-along a stricken soul, and two days arter his weak heart busted, an' young pa'son had no feyther—ay, poor soul, no feyther, an' my boy Sherebiah be nigh varty-vour, and here I be. 'Tis strange ways Them above has wi' poor weak mortals—strange ways, ay sure!"
Mr. Berkeley took advantage of the rector's death to pay off old scores. The legal actions which Mr. Rochester had taken, on behalf of his flock, collapsed for want of further funds; he had already seriously impoverished himself by his open-hearted generosity; and when the squire came down on the dead man's estate for the law costs, Harry found that, after all debts were paid, he was possessed of some twenty guineas in all wherewith to start life.
His project of going to Oxford was necessarily abandoned. He was at a loss to find a career. Educated by his father with a view to entering the Church, he was fairly well grounded in classics and mathematics, and had in addition a good acquaintance with French, and a great stock of English poetry; but his knowledge was not marketable. He was too young for a tutor's place, and had no influence to back him; friendless and homeless, he was at his wits' end.