“Now, look you here, Trooper Joshua Horrotian,” said the wrong man, “it’s confounded lucky for you that these opinions of yours—and the private soldier with opinions is a man we don’t want in the Army and would a great deal rather be without!—have been blown off to a person who—having a regard for that decent woman your mother—who I’m not above acknowledging, in a distant sort of way, as a relation of my own—isn’t likely to report them in quarters where they would breed trouble for you, and maybe a taste of the Black Hole.” The speaker held up a large fur-gloved hand as the trooper seemed about to speak. “Don’t you try my patience, though! I’ve listened to you long enough.... Discontented, that’s what you are! And Discontent leads to Murmuring, and Murmuring to Mutiny. And Mutiny to the Gallows—in your case I hope it won’t!—but I shouldn’t be at all surprised if it did. So beware of being discontented, Joshua!”
“I may be what you say, a grumbling soldier, though I don’t recognize myself in the picture you draw of me,” returned the trooper; “but if the time came to prove whether I’d be willing to lay down my life for the Old Shop, I’d be found as ready as any other man. And I have cause for discontent outside the Army, Mr. Jowell.” And the speaker squared his broad shoulders and drew himself to his full height, looking boldly in the bullying eyes of the great man. “While I have been a-sogering my mother’s farm has been going to rack and ruin. Some little-knowing or ill-meaning person has advised her, Mr. Jowell, for these three years past, to turn down the low-lying gore meadow-lands of hers beside the Drowse in clover and beans and vetch. Grazing cows is all they’re good for, being flooded regularly in November and February, and Aprils extra-wet. And what with the cold, rainy summers we’ve had, and the rainy, cold summer we may look to, sure my mother has suffered in pocket, and worse she will suffer yet! For if her having borrowed money on mortgage to throw after what has already been lost beyond recall is going to bring her any good of—I’m a Dutchman!”
“Now, I’ll tell you what, Trooper Horrotian,” said Thompson Jowell, purple to the rim of his sporting parson’s hat with something more stinging than the bitter February wind, “I don’t pretend not to know what you’re driving at, because Aboveboard is my name. If my distant relation, Mrs. Sarah Horrotian, is pleased to drive over from Market Drowsing sometimes on her egg-and-butter days, for the purpose of asking advice from a man who, like myself, is accustomed to be looked up to and consulted, supposing I happen to be at home at my little place”—which was a huge, ornate and showy country mansion, with a great deal of avenue, shrubbery, glass, and experimental garden-ground about it—“I am not the man to gainsay her, to gratify her long-legged puppy of a son.”
“I’m obliged to you, I’m sure!” said Josh, reddening to his red hair, and angrily gnawing, in his desire to restrain himself from incautious speech, the shiny black strap by which the idiotic little muffin-shaped forage-cap of German pattern approved by Government, was sustained in a perilously slanting position on the side of his head.
“My name being Plump and Plain,” said Thompson Jowell, once more extracting the large fur-gloved hand from under the leather apron of the phaeton, “I’m damned if I care this snap of my fingers”—he clumsily snapped them—“whether you are obliged to me or whether you ain’t! Is that clear to you?”
The groom who occupied the driving seat beside his master laughing dutifully at this, Thompson Jowell’s righteous indignation was somewhat appeased, as he proceeded:
“If the river flooded those gore-lands of your mother’s, and the rainy season finished what the river began, I’m not the Clerk of the Weather Office, I suppose? Call Providence to account for the bad season, if you must blame somebody.... Though, if you do, and should happen to be struck dead by lightning as a punishment for your wickedness, don’t expect Me to pity you, that’s all! Granted I gave a pound or so for Sarah Horrotian’s mildewed clover and stinking beans, and barley that had sprouted green in the ear, to burn for top-dressing; and let her have a bit of money at easy interest on her freehold of Upper Clays;—I suppose, as it’s her property, having been left her for her sole use and benefit by her father (who was an uncle of my own, and don’t my admitting that prove to you how little proud I am?), she’s free to borrow on it if it pleases her. You are not the master yet, my good fellow!”
“And won’t be, please God!—for many a year to come!” said Mr. Jowell’s good fellow, with unaffected sincerity. “Nor will be ever, Mr. Jowell, supposing my mother not able to pay off your interest. You’ve foreclosed on too many of the small freeholders in this neighborhood, for me to believe that you’ll be more generous and mercifuller with your poor relation, than you’ve been with them you’ve called your good friends!”
The groom who drove, forgetting himself so far as to chuckle at this, Thompson Jowell damned his impertinence with less of dignity and more of flustered bumptiousness than an admirer of the great man’s would have expected.
“And poor as my mother is, and hard as she has been put to it,” went on the trooper, pursuing his sore subject, “if she had dreamed that the spoiled fodder she sold you for the price such unwholesome rubbish was worth, was not to be burned for top-dressing, but dried in them kilns that are worked in another name than yours at Little Milding—and mixed with decent stuff, and sold as first-class fare for Army horses, poor beasts!—she’d have seen you at Jerusalem beyond the Jordan before she’d ha’ parted with a barrow-load of the rot-gut stuff, or she’s not the woman I take her for!”