“Sure, ’tis the foine country ye have here,” quoth he presently, as, mounting a hill, they came out upon a road crossing an expanse of moorland. Gorse bushes bloomed golden against a background of grey sky and atmosphere, seen through a fine veil of rain.
“’Tis güd enuff,” said the man laconically. And Antony perceived that the beauties of nature held no particular interest for him.
He looked out at the wide expanses around him. Mist covered the farther distances, but through it, afar off, he fancied he could descry the grey line of the sea. To the right the moorland gave place to a distant stone wall, beyond which was a wheat field; to the left it stretched away into the mist, through which he saw the dim shapes of trees.
The man jerked his head to the left.
“’Tis over yonder is t’old Hall. Yü’m to be under-gardener there I heerd t’Doctor say. What they’ll want wi’ keeping up t’gardens now I doant knoaw, and t’old Squire gone. Carried off mighty suddint ’e was. Us said as t’journey tü Lunnon ud be the death o’ he. Never outside t’doors these fifteen year and more, and then one fine day Doctor takes he oop to Lunnon to see one o’ they chaps un calls a speshulist. Why t’speshulist didn’t come to he us can’t tell. Carried on a stretcher he was from t’carriage to t’train, for all the world like a covered corpse. Next thing Doctor coom home alone, and us hears as t’old Squire be dead. I doant rightly knoaw as who ’twas was the first to tell we, for Doctor, ’e doant like talking o’ the business. But there ’tis, and t’Lord only knows who’ll have t’old place now, seeing as ’ow ’e never ’ad no wife to bear un a son. Us heerd as ’twould be a chap from foreign parts. ’Twas Jane Ellen from Doctor’s as put that around, but us thinks her got the notion in a way her shouldn’t, for her’s backed out o’ the sayin’ o’t now. Says her never said nowt o’ the kind. But her did. ’Twas Jim Morris’s wife her told. S’pose Mr. Curtis’ll run t’show till t’heir turns oop. ’Twont make much difference to we. He’s run it the last ten year and more, and run it hard, I tell ’ee that. Doant yü go for to get the wrong side o’ Spencer Curtis, I warns ’ee. George Standing afore ’e worn’t much to boast on, but Spencer Curtis be a fair flint.”
“Will he be the agent?” demanded Antony, as the man paused.
“’Tis what ’e’s called. ’Tis master he is. T’old Squire oughtn’t never to have got a chap like ’e to do ’is jobs. ’Tis cast iron ’e is. And ’twasn’t never no use going to Squire for to stand between him and we. ’E’d never set eyes on nobody, ’e wouldn’t. If I’d my way I’d give every gentry what owns property a taste o’ livin’ on it same’s we. ’E’d know a bit more aboot the fair runnin’ o’ it then.”
Antony started. An idea, quick-born, presented itself before him. Was it possible, was it conceivable, that this very thought had been in the old Squire’s mind when he drew up those extraordinary conditions? Antony nearly laughed aloud. Verily it was an absurdity, though one that Nicholas Danver most assuredly could not have guessed. Yet that he—Antony—should require a further year’s enlightenment as to the shifts to which the poor were put to make both ends meet, as to the iron hand of agents and over-seers! Truly it was laughable!
He’d had experience enough and to spare,—he smiled grimly to himself,—experience such as an English farm-labourer earning a pound a week, even with a wife and children to keep, and all odds against him, could never in the remotest degree aided by the wildest flights of imagination, conceive. In England water at least is always obtainable. Antony had visions of the jealous husbanding of a few drops of hot moisture in a sunbaked leather bottle. In England the law at least protects you from bodily ill-treatment at the hands of agent or overseer. Antony had visions—But he dismissed them. There was a chapter or two in his life which it was not good to recall.
They were descending now, driving between the high banks and hedges of a true Devonshire lane. Primroses starred the banks, though in less profusion than they had been a fortnight earlier; bluebells and pink campion grew among them, and the feathery blossom of the cow-parsley. Turning to the left at the foot of the lane, the hedge on the right was lower. Over it, and across an expanse of sloping fields dotted here and there with snow-white hawthorn bushes, Antony saw the roofs of houses and cottages, and, beyond them, the sea. It lay grey and tranquil under an equally grey sky. A solitary fishing smack, red-sailed, made a note of colour in the neutral atmosphere of sea and sky. To the right was a gorse-crowned cliff; to the left, and across the estuary, a headland ran far out into the water.