“Ay! wi’ all my heart!” Lad would say. And they would leave the farmer’s team in mid-furrow in charge of the whimpering plowboy—tramp the six, ten or fifteen miles to the nearest recruiting station—take the Queen’s shilling, and be sent up to Regimental Headquarters with the very next draft.
A month of drill, a week at home to say “Good-by!” and then the rookies would be shipped to the distant land where very often there was not even the tough crust to gnaw for dinner; and you plowed your way, not amidst cleanly clods, but through deep and stinking mud, where dead bodies of men and beasts that had perished lay bloated and corrupting, until swine or dogs or ravens had picked their bones.
Arrived at his “little place,” the large pretentious country mansion standing in its brand-new shrubberies and experimental gardens on the outskirts of a rustic hamlet within a mile of Market Drowsing, the Contractor sent for his agent—who in a petty way was another Thompson Jowell, and went—thoroughly as was his wont—into his rents and dues.
His gross shadow loomed large upon the village, the greater part of which belonged to him, in virtue of his benevolent habit of advancing money upon mortgage to small freeholders who were in difficulties, and subsequently gulping down their land. His trail was upon the ancient Church—where the brazen pulpit-lamps by which the Parson read his sermon on winter evenings—the font in which infant pagans were made Christians—the harmonium that chased the flying choir to the last line of the hymn, the copper shovels upon which the Church wardens collected halfpennies and buttons—bore brazen plates, testifying that they had been presented by Thompson Jowell, Esq. And in the churchyard an imposing vault, containing the remains of his deceased mother, transferred from a remote burying-ground in the neighborhood of Shadwell—where the honest soul had kept a little tobacco-shop—awaited the hour when her son should condescend to die.
Death did not hover in the mind of Jowell at this particular juncture. He was happy as he issued mandates for Distraint upon the goods of non-paying cottage tenants, and indicated those mortgagors who were to have a little rope, and those others who were to be shown no quarter. Chief of these unfortunates was Sarah Horrotian, to whom her kinsman had, some seven years previously, lent cash upon her freehold of the Upper Clays.
“She’s letting the place go to rack and ruin,” said the agent. “For her own good, sir, you ought to foreclose!”
His master pondered, routing in the stiff upright hair that had perceptibly whitened lately. Then he roused himself with a snort, and said that as it was a fine morning after yesterday’s rain, and the Clays not two miles distant, he would walk over there, by Gosh, he would! and see the widow himself.
When he set out, a tussle was going on between the business side of him and the part that was paternal. The woman owed him money, but her son had saved his son.... One may suppose, that at first he had some vague idea of appearing before his debtor in the character of a grateful father. But as exercise quickened Jowell’s brain, he perceived that this would be wrong. People who had the impudence to borrow money without the means to pay it back, were presumptuous no less than improvident. Ergo, to waive his claim to arrears of interest, was to encourage Sarah Horrotian in presumption and improvidence. Moreover, other people in the same boat as the widow would hear, and expect Thompson Jowell to extend to them a similar benevolence. Further, it was the bounden duty of the trooper to have saved young Mortimer Jowell from the sea. In common Christianity he couldn’t have done otherwise. He ought to think himself lucky that he had got the chance.