There is a swifter step on the lead-covered staircase, and a clerk appears, coming from the upper rooms. He has a telegram and a letter in one hand, and a bundle of papers in the other. He shows the telegram and the letter to his fellow clerks—even the grave senior just glances at the contents silently, elevates his eyebrows, and returns to his work. After a few minutes' talk and a jest or two the clerk rushes upstairs again.
Another caller comes. It is a stout, florid man, a young farmer or farmer's son, riding-whip in hand, who produces a red-bound rate-book from a pocket in his coat made on purpose to hold the unwieldy volume. He is a rate-collector for his parish, and has called about some technicalities. The grave senior clerk examines the book, but cannot solve the difficulties pointed out by the collector, and, placing it on one side, recommends the inquirer to call in two hours' time. Steps again on the stairs, and another clerk comes down leisurely, and after him still another. Their only business is to exchange a few words with their friends, for pastime, and they go up again.
As the morning draws on, the callers become more numerous, and it is easy to tell the positions they occupy by the degree of attention they receive from the clerks. A tradesman calls three or four times, with short intervals between—he runs over from his shop; the two juniors do not trouble to so much as look over the screen, and barely take the trouble to answer the anxious inquiry if the principal is yet disengaged. They know, perhaps, too much about his bills and the state of his credit. A builder looks in—the juniors are tolerably civil and explain to him that it is no use calling for yet another hour at least. The builder consults his watch, and decides to see the chief clerk (who is himself an attorney, having passed the examination), and is forthwith conducted upstairs. A burly farmer appears, and the grave senior puts his head up to answer, and expresses his sorrow that the principal is so occupied. The burly farmer, however, who is evidently a man of substance, thinks that the chief clerk can also do what he wants, and he, too, is ushered upstairs. Another farmer enters—a rather rougher-looking man—and, without saying a word, turns to the advertisement boards on which the posters of farms to be let, &c., are displayed. These he examines with the greatest care, pointing with his forefinger as he slowly reads, and muttering to himself. Presently he moves to go. 'Anything to suit you, sir?' asks the senior clerk. 'Aw, no; I knows they be too much money,' he replies, and walks out.
A gentleman next enters, and immediately the juniors sink out of sight, and scribble away with eager application; the senior puts down his pen and comes out from his desk. It is a squire and magistrate. The senior respectfully apologises for his employer being so occupied. The gentleman seems a little impatient. The clerk rubs his hands together deprecatingly, and makes a desperate venture. He goes upstairs, and in a few minutes returns; the papers are not ready, but shall be sent over that evening in any case. With this even the squire must fain be satisfied and depart. The burly farmer and the builder come downstairs together amicably chatting, and after them the chief clerk himself. Though young, he has already an expression of decision upon his features, an air of business about him; in fact, were he not thoroughly up to his work he would not remain in that office long. To hold that place is a guarantee of ability. He has a bundle of cheques, drafts, &c., in his hand, and after a few words with the grave senior at the desk, strolls across to the bank.
No sooner has the door closed behind him than a shoal of clerks come tripping down on tip-toe, and others appear from the back of the house. They make use of the opportunity for a little gossip. Voices are heard in the passage, and an aged and infirm labouring man is helped in by a woman and a younger man. The clerks take no notice, and the poor old follow props himself against the wall, not daring to take a chair. He is a witness. He can neither read nor write, but he can recollect 'thuck ould tree,' and can depose to a fact worth perhaps hundreds of pounds. He has come in to be examined; he will be driven in a week or two's time from the village to the railway station in a fly, and will talk about it and his visit to London till the lamp of life dies out.
A footman calls with a note, a groom brings another, the letters are carelessly cast aside, till one of the juniors, who has been watching from the peephole, reports that the chief clerk is coming, and everybody scuttles back to his place. Callers come still more thickly; another solicitor, well-to-do, and treated with the utmost deference; more tradesmen; farmers; two or three auctioneers, in quick succession; the well-brushed editor of a local paper; a second attorney, none too well dressed, with scrubby chin and face suspiciously cloudy, with an odour of spirits and water and tobacco clinging to his rusty coat. He belongs to a disappearing type of country lawyer, and is the wreck, perhaps, of high hopes and good opportunities. Yet, wreck as he is, when he gets up at the Petty Sessions to defend some labourer, the bench of magistrates listen to his maundering argument as deferentially as if he were a Q.C. They pity him, and they respect his cloth. The scrubby attorney whistles a tune, and utters an oath when he learns the principal is engaged. Then he marches out, with his hat on one side of his head, to take another 'refresher.'
Two telegrams arrive, and are thrown aside; then a gentleman appears, whom the senior goes out to meet with an air of deference, and whom he actually conducts himself upstairs to the principal's room. It is a local banker, who is thus admitted to the directors' consultation. The slow hand of the clock goes round, and, sitting wearily on the hard chair, you wonder if ever it will be possible to see this much-sought man. By-and-by a door opens above, there is a great sound of voices and chatting, and half a dozen gentlemen—mostly landed proprietors from their appearance—come downstairs. They are the directors, and the consultation is over. The senior clerk immediately goes to the principal, and shortly afterwards reappears and asks you to come up.
As you mount the lead-covered stairs you glance down and observe the anxious tradesman, the ancient labourer, and several others who have crowded in, all eyeing you with jealous glances. But the senior is holding the door open—you enter, and it closes noiselessly behind you. A hand with a pen in it points to a chair, with a muttered 'Pardon—half a moment' and while the solicitor just jots down his notes you can glance round the apartment. Shelves of calf-bound law books; piles of japanned deed-boxes, some marked in white letters 'Trustees of,' or 'Executors of' and pigeon-holes full of papers seem to quite hide the walls. The floor is covered with some material noiseless to walk on (the door, too, is double, to exclude noise and draught); the furniture is solid and valuable; the arm-chair you occupy capacious and luxurious. On the wall hangs a section of the Ordnance map of the district. But the large table, which almost fills the centre of the room, quickly draws the attention from everything else.
It is on that table that all the business is done; all the energies of the place are controlled and directed from thence. At the first glance it appears to support a more chaotic mass of papers. They completely conceal it, except just at the edge. Bundles of letters tied with thin red tape, letters loose, letters unopened; parchment deeds with the seals and signature just visible; deeds with the top and the words, 'This indenture,' alone glowing out from the confusion; deeds neatly folded; broad manuscript briefs; papers fastened with brass fasteners; papers hastily pinned together; old newspapers marked and underlined in red ink; a large sectional map, half unrolled and hanging over the edge; a small deed-box, the lid open, and full of blue paper in oblong strips; a tall porcupine-quill pen sticking up like a spire; pocket-books; books open; books with half a dozen papers in them for markers; altogether an utter chaos. But the confusion is only apparent; the master mind knows the exact position of every document, and can lay his hand on it the moment it is wanted.
The business is such that even the master mind can barely keep pace with it. This great house can hardly contain it; all the clerks we saw rushing about cannot get through the work, and much of the mechanical copying or engrossing goes to London to be done. The entire round of country life comes here. The rolling hills where the shepherd watches his flock, the broad plains where the ploughman guides the share, the pleasant meadows where the roan cattle chew the cud, the extensive parks, the shady woods, sweet streams, and hedges overgrown with honeysuckle, all have their written counterpart in those japanned deed-boxes. Solid as is the land over which Hodge walks stolid and slow, these mere written words on parchment are the masters of it all. The squire comes here about intricate concerns of family settlements which in their sphere are as hard to arrange as the diplomatic transactions of Governments. He comes about his tenants and his rent; he comes to get new tenants.