Inside the enclosure the reverend gentleman himself reclines in an arm-chair of cane-work placed under the shade of the verandah, just without the glass door or window opening from the drawing-room upon the lawn. His head has fallen back and a little to one side, and an open book lies on his knee; his soft felt hat is bent and crumpled; he has yielded to the heat and is slumbering. The blinds are partly down the window, but a glimpse can be obtained of a luxurious carpet, of tables in valuable woods and inlaid, of a fine piano, of china, and the thousand and one nicknacks of highly civilised life. The reverend gentleman's suit of black, however, is not new; it is, on the contrary, decidedly rusty, and the sole of one of his boots, which is visible, is much worn. Over his head the roses twine round the pillars of the verandah, and there is a parterre of brilliant flowers not far from his feet.
His wife sits, a few yards distant, under a weeping ash, whose well-trained boughs make a perfect tent, and shield her from the sun. She has a small table before her, and writing materials, and is making notes with the utmost despatch from some paper or journal. She is no longer young, and there are marks of much care and trouble on her forehead; but she has still a pleasing expression upon her features, her hands are exquisitely white, and her figure, once really good, retains some of the outline that rendered it beautiful. Wherever you saw her you would say, That is a lady. But her dress, tasteful though it be, is made of the cheapest material, and looks, indeed, as if it had been carefully folded away last summer, and was now brought out to do duty a second time.
The slow rumble of waggon wheels goes down the road, close to the lawn, but concealed by the trees, against whose boughs the sheaves of the load rustle as they go past. Wealth rolling by upon the waggon, wealth in the well-kept garden, in the smart lawn, in the roses, the bright flowers, the substantial well-furnished house, the luxurious carpet, and the china; wealth, too, all around in the vast expanse of ripening wheat. He has nothing to do but to slumber in the cane chair and receive his tithe of the harvest. She has nothing to do but to sit under the shadow of the weeping ash and dream dreams, or write verses. Such, at least, might be the first impression.
The publication from which she is so earnestly making notes is occupied with the management of bees, and she is so busy because the paper is only borrowed, and has to be returned. Most of the papers and books that come to the vicarage have to be hastily read for the same reason. Mrs. F—— is doing her very best and hardest to increase the Rev. F——'s income—she has tried to do so for some years, and despite repeated failures is bravely, perhaps a little wearily, still trying. There is not much left for her to experiment with. The goat surreptitiously nibbling the valuable shrubs outside the palings is a member of a flock that once seemed to promise fair. Goats at one time (she was persuaded) were the means of ready wealth—they could live anywhere, on anything (the shrubs to wit), and yielded such rich milk; it far surpassed that of the shorthorn; there was the analysis to prove it! Such milk must of course be worth money, beside which there were the kids, and the cheese and butter.
Alas! the goats quickly obtained so evil a reputation, worse than that of the rabbits for biting off the shooting vegetation, that no one would have them on the land. The milk was all the analysis declared it, but in that outlying village, which did not contain two houses above the quality of a farmstead, there was no one to buy it. There was a prejudice against the butter which could not be got over; and the cheese—well, the cheese resembled a tablet of dark soap. Hodge would not eat it at a gift; he smelt it, picked a morsel off on the tip of his clasp knife, and threw it aside in contempt. One by one the goats were got rid of, and now but two or three remained; she could not make up her mind to part with all, for living creatures, however greatly they have disappointed, always enlist the sympathies of women.
Poultry was the next grand discovery—they ate their heads off, refused to lay eggs, and, when by frequent purchase they became numerous and promised to pay, quietly died by the score, seized with an epidemic. She learnt in visiting the cottagers how profitable their allotment gardens were to them, and naturally proceeded to argue that a larger piece of ground would yield proportionately larger profit if cultivated on the same principle. If the cottagers could pay a rent for an acre which, in the aggregate, was three times that given by the ordinary farmer, and could even then make a good thing of it, surely intelligence and skill might do the same on a more extended scale. How very foolish the farmers were! they might raise at least four times the produce they did, and they might pay three times the rent. As the vicar had some hundred and fifty acres of glebe let at the usual agricultural rent, if the tenants could be persuaded or instructed to farm on the cottager's system, what an immense increase it would be to his income! The tenants, however, did not see it. They shrugged their shoulders, and made no movement The energetic lady resolved to set an example, and to prove to them that they were wrong.
She rented an acre of arable land (at the side of the field), giving the tenant a fair price for it. First it had to be enclosed so as to be parted off from the open field. The cost of the palings made the vicar wince; his lady set it duly down to debit. She planted one-half potatoes, as they paid thirty pounds per acre, and on the rest put in hundreds of currant bushes, set a strawberry bed and an asparagus bed, on the principle that luxuries of that kind fetch a high price and occupy no more space than cabbages. As the acre was cultivated entirely by the spade, the cost of the labour expended upon it ran up the figures on the debit side to an amount which rather startled her. But the most dispiriting part of the commencement was the length of time to wait before a crop came. According to her calculations that represented so much idle capital sunk, instead of being rapidly turned over. However, she consoled herself with the pig-sty, in which were half a dozen animals, whose feeding she often personally superintended.
The potatoes failed, and did not pay for the digging; the currant bushes were blighted; the strawberries were eaten by snails, and, of course, no asparagus could be cut for three years; a little item, this last, quite overlooked. The pigs returned exactly the sum spent upon them; there was neither profit nor loss, and there did not appear any chance of making a fortune out of pork. The lady had to abandon the experiment quite disheartened, and found that, after all her care and energy, her books showed a loss of fifteen pounds. It was wonderful it was not more; labour was so expensive, and no doubt she was cheated right and left.
She next tried to utilise her natural abilities, and to turn her accomplishments to account. She painted; she illuminated texts; she undertook difficult needlework of various kinds, in answer to advertisements which promised ample remuneration for a few hours' labour. Fifteen hours' hard work she found was worth just threepence, and the materials cost one shilling: consequently she laboriously worked herself poorer by ninepence.
Finally, she was studying bees, which really seemed to hold out some prospect of success. Yonder were the hills where they could find thyme in abundance; the fields around supplied clover; and the meadows below were full of flowers. So that hot summer day, under the weeping ash, she was deep in the study of the 'Ligurian queen,' the 'super' system, the mysteries of 'driving,' and making sketches of patent hives. Looking up from her sketch she saw that her husband had fallen asleep, and stayed to gaze at him thoughtfully.