After one or two conversations of this kind Woodburn thought Mr. Drury would say no more to him on this subject, but he was greatly mistaken; for Mr. Trant Drury was one of those people that we now and then come across, who carry their hobbies to a perfect monomania. They are always on the same subject, in all places and with all persons. Though they may have told you the same thing fifty times, they never seem to recollect it, but treat it as perfectly new, and go over the whole ground with merciless pertinacity. After a few inflictions of the all-profit and threadbare country doctrine, Mr. Woodburn began to wince visibly, and to say rather crustily, “Oh! Mr. Drury, you have told us all that again and again.”
“But you don’t benefit by it,” Mr. Drury would say.
“No, nor ever shall, so far as I am concerned,” Mr. Woodburn would reply.
To George Woodburn and Elizabeth Drury, who had become deeply attached to each other, and with the mutual consent of parents on both sides, this disagreement of tastes in their fathers was a subject of the greatest concern and anxiety. George quietly begged of Mr. Drury not to say anything to his father on agricultural topics, for that nothing would induce him to adopt any new notions; but then Mr. Trant Drury’s whole thought, feeling, taste, and conversation were agricultural. New modes of tillage, new implements, new manures, new kinds of vegetables for winter feed,—these made up the furniture, stock, and staple of his mind. His imagination stood as thickly planted with those ideas as his rick-yard with ricks, his fold-yard with cattle, or his fields with crops. George Woodburn listened patiently to his perpetual talk on these subjects, and admitted to a certain extent the value of them: but as to cutting down hawthorn hedges and hedge-row trees, he stood out as firmly as his father. When Mr. Drury was riding his indefatigable hobby in that direction, he remained quiet and let the stream flow over him. His after-conversations with Elizabeth were a rich compensation for this otherwise rather severe martyrdom. Every day showed Elizabeth in a more loveable character. Her lively, cheerful manner, combined with a beautifully intellectual and religious sentiment, and great intelligence, made her the beloved friend of Ann and Mrs. Woodburn; and Mr. Woodburn looked on her with pride as his future daughter-in-law. He only regretted that such a woman should be the daughter of what he began in his own house to term such an unmitigated bore.
Mr. Trant Drury went to work vigorously on his own farm to exemplify his peculiar code of agriculture, and, as he said, to set an example to the benighted farmers around. His landlady, who lived in London, readily granted him permission to pare down his fences and fell hedge-row trees as he pleased. As the property was her own, but would go, at her death, for want of direct issue, to another branch of the family, she was at liberty to do this. The very first autumn and winter, Mr. Drury had men cutting close the fences, and felling all the trees but the oaks, which must stand till the proper season for peeling, in spring. Part of this timber he was allowed to employ in extending his outbuildings, and in making new gates, gateposts, hurdles, &c. Part went to the wood-merchant, its proceeds to be remitted to the landlady.
Mr. Woodburn saw with indignation the destruction of these hedges and trees, the wide, bare gap in the general beauty of the landscape thus created, and his feelings were partaken by many others of the neighbouring country and town, who denounced Mr. Drury as a Goth, and hoped there would be no imitators of this unloveable sort of thrift. Mr. Woodburn could not restrain himself, on the next visit of Elizabeth Drury, from speaking in a sarcastically jeering manner of this frightful system, as he called it, of her father. Elizabeth, to whose ideas of beauty it was as great an outrage as to Mr. Woodburn’s, burst into tears; and Mrs. Woodburn intreated her husband to desist, saying, that Miss Drury was not responsible for the acts of her father, and did all in her power, by affectionate kindness, to make Elizabeth forget it. Mr. Woodburn’s own natural goodness of heart caused him to express his regret for having hurt her feelings, and adding that certainly Elizabeth must as much regret it as he did. But there was a poisoned arrow fixed into her sensitive heart, which nothing could effectually extract. She had begged and entreated that the but thinly scattered trees on the farm might be spared, but in vain. She witnessed their fall with grief, which she could not conceal, and had thus incurred a considerable degree of anger from her father. She had heard the mortifying remarks of the Heritages and other friends; but the ground of painful feeling and of comment which it had laid in the mind of all the Woodburns, and especially of Mr. Woodburn, was a source of real unhappiness. She felt afraid to go to the Grange when Mr. Woodburn was in the house, and when she did meet him there, or elsewhere, she thought he looked coldly on her. She was conscious that her very presence brought to his mind this piece of Vandalism—the blot on the face of the country, as he termed it. She heard of his by no means measured remarks upon it amongst his neighbours; for though a quiet and courteous man, he was strong in his feelings.
George never alluded to the subject in her company, and never omitted one of his usual visits to the farm. He even sat and heard Mr. Drury’s conversation on the subject, for nothing could prevent him continually introducing it, and remained passive, and making but now and then an incidental reply, endeavouring to divert the discussion to something more agreeable to the ladies. But nothing could turn Mr. Trant Drury long. He would say, “Well, I find my plans don’t meet with the approbation of my neighbours, eh? They would like all to live in a wood, and pay rent, where they do pay rent, for growing their landlord’s timber. Ah! they shall see in a while! They shall see by my rick-yards how the matter stands.”
To George, as to Elizabeth, this was a bitter drop which had fallen into their cup. They saw that a strong antagonism would assuredly grow up betwixt their fathers. All their ideas of rural economy were so totally and irreconcileably opposed. Bitterly did Elizabeth deplore their ever coming into such close and permanent contact; bitterly did she repent having proposed their removal hither. By her marriage with George, she would have come amongst her friends here without one painful circumstance. But the change was made, and these two faithful hearts resolved that no family dissension which might arise should break or weaken the sacred tie of their own souls. They endeavoured, each of them, so to arrange their visits to each other’s house, as to come as little in the way of each other’s father as possible, without seeming to make an actual coldness or breach. But this was a most difficult plan of operations to manage. If Mr. Drury did not see George for several days, he would say—
“Well, George Woodburn seems to avoid us. He is like his father, I suppose. He takes part with him, and can’t forgive this ridding my farm of its lumber and rubbish.”
“No, dear father,” Elizabeth would say, “George does not concern himself about it; but he is very busy—and I wish, however, you would not mention the subject so often to him. It looks as though you wished to remind him of his father’s vexation. Oh, do, dear father, let the matter be a tabooed subject. There is plenty to talk of besides.”