And to delay foreclosing would be to wrong this same son Mortimer, who had won distinction as he had promised his old Governor, and through whom the name of Jowell was to strike deep root in the County and spread wide and tower high. Whether the boy wanted it or not, he should have The Clays for a stud-farm and hunting-box. Tip-top nobs needed these things. And, by Gosh! Jowell’s son was going to be a tip-top nob.
Baron Jowell of Drowsing, K.C.B., Lord-Lieutenant of Sloughshire. He said the words to himself over and over, chewing them, ruminating over them, extracting their juice. And set his face—by dint of their constant repetition—into so coarse a cast of greed and mercilessness, that when his squat shadow fell over the half-door of the farm-kitchen, Sarah Horrotian looked up from the tub of clothes she was washing, and the feeble spark of hope that had kindled in her gaunt black eyes at the sight of her great kinsman died out there and then.
Things had gone ill at The Clays since the Second Exodus of Joshua Horrotian. Betsey Twitch, the half-widow, having been taken on as dairymaid in place of Nelly, had, in company with the pigman, Digweed, been detected in scarlet doings, and, with her fellow sinner, incontinently cast forth. And without even such clumsy supervision as the departed Jason’s, Sarah’s laborers had ceased laboring and her weeders took their rest.
Stock had to be sold ere long, to pay up interest due on Jowell’s mortgage. The stately hayricks vanished one by one. After the Declaration of War, read by the Mayor from the balcony of the Town Hall in Market Drowsing, Sarah ceased to sell her eggs, chickens and butter on Thursdays in the shadow of the civic edifice. She even left off attending the local Bethesda, where the Mayor was regarded as a shining light.
For the Almighty would judge the man, she prophesied, for bringing on the War between England and Russia. If he had set his foot down firmly, the Lord Mayor of London and Queen Victoria might have been led to see the error of their ways.
She preached this belief of hers unceasingly, in tones that clanged like beaten fire-irons. It was no use to argue.—Sarah knew best.... Ere long, when Tudd Dowsall and Joe Chinney took the Queen’s shilling and trudged away in the wake of the recruiting sergeant, flying ribbons of patriotic colors, Sarah made no attempt to fill their vacant places. The last beast had been sold to pay the poor-rates. Her purse was as empty as the heart behind her wedge-shaped apron-bib, when Thompson Jowell threw open the half-door, and rolled into the kitchen, keeping his curly-brimmed, low-topped hat upon his pear-shaped head, and flourishing his gold-mounted cane.
“What’s this I hear?” he said blusteringly. “Now what does this mean, Mrs. Horrotian? Here have I come marching up your muddy lane to know! You’re a religious woman and you don’t pay your debts! Do you call that a-keeping up of your profession? Four hundred pounds of my money has gone to bolster up this here farming-business of yours, and two years’ interest will be due in a week. You may tell me that Juffkins has taken stock and what-not from time to time, on account of my Twenty-five per cent. Ay! and he may have—but Cash Payments should be made in cash. Those cows and pigs and that hay of yours fetched nothing—I’m a loser by the sum I allowed you for ’em. I am, and by Gosh! ma’am, what have you got to say?”
“It is the will of the Lord,” returned Sarah Horrotian, returning Jowell’s stare unflinchingly, though her thin face was as white as chalk between her graying hair-loops, and her heart beat in sickening thumps. “Though, if my son were here he would find a word to say for the mother that suckled him, and the farm be his, take it how you like it. He have been of age these ten years, and ought to ha’ been considered. There would be lawyers should say as I ought never to ha’ borrowed money on th’ property wi’out his written name!”
She had put her bony finger on the weak place in Thompson Jowell’s mortgage. If he had for a moment intended to spare her, the flicker of pity died out in him as he stood rolling his moist eyes and blowing at her in his walrus-style. His mind was made up. He would foreclose at once, in case the bumptious ne’er-do-well of a son should live to come home, and—taking dishonest advantage of the flaw—rob his son Mortimer of his hunting-box. There should be no delay.