A KING OF ACRES.

BY RICHARD JEFFERIES, AUTHOR OF THE ‘GAMEKEEPER AT HOME,’ ETC.

I.—JAMES THARDOVER.

A weather-beaten man stood by a gateway watching some teams at plough. The bleak March wind rushed across the field, reddening his face; rougher than a flesh-brush, it rubbed the skin, and gave it a glow as if each puff were a blow with the ‘gloves.’ His short brown beard was full of dust blown into it. Between the line of the hat and the exposed part of the forehead, the skin had peeled slightly, literally worn off by the unsparing rudeness of wintry mornings. Like the early field veronica, which flowered at his feet in the short grass under the hedge, his eyes were blue and gray. The petals are partly of either hue, and so his eyes varied according to the light—now somewhat more gray, and now more blue. Tall and upright, he stood straight as a bolt, though both arms were on the gate and his ashen walking-stick swung over it. He wore a gray overcoat, a gray felt hat, gray leggings, and his boots were gray with the dust which had settled on them.

He was thinking: ‘Farmer Bartholomew is doing the place better this year; he scarcely hoe’d a weed last season; the stubble was a tangle of weeds; one could hardly walk across it. That second team stops too long at the end of the furrow—idle fellow that. Third team goes too fast; horses will be soon tired. Fourth team—he’s getting beyond his work—too old; the stilts nearly threw him over there. This ground has paid for the draining—one, at all events. Never saw land look better. Looks brownish and moist; moist brownish red. Query, what colour is that? Ask Mary—the artist. Never saw it in a picture. Keeps his hedges well; this one is like a board on the top, thorn-boughs molten together; a hare could run along it (as they will sometimes with harriers behind them, and jump off the other side to baffle scent). Now, why is Bartholomew doing his land better this year? Keen old fellow. Something behind this. Has he got that bit of money that was coming to him? Done something, they said, last Doncaster; no one could get anything out of him. Dark as night. Sold the trainer some oats; that I know; wonder how much the trainer pocketed over that transaction? Expect he did not charge them all. Still, he’s a decent fellow. Honesty is uncertain—never met an honest man. Doubt if world could hang together. Bartholomew is honest enough; but either he has won some money, or he really does not want the drawback at audit. Takes care his horses don’t look too well. Notice myself that farmers do not let their teams look so glossy as a few years ago. Like them to seem rough and uncared for—can’t afford smooth coats, these hard times. Don’t look very glossy myself; don’t feel very glossy. Hate this wind—hang kings’ ransoms. People who like these winds are telling falsehoods. That’s broken’ (as one of the teams stopped); ‘have to send to blacksmith; knock off now; no good your pottering there. Next team stops to go and help potter. Third team stops to help second. Fourth team comes across to help third. All pottering. Wants Bartholomew among them. That’s the way to do a morning’s work. Did any one ever see such idleness! Group about a broken chain—link snapped. Tie it up with your leathern garter—not he; no resource. What patience a man needs, to have anything to do with land. Four teams idle over a snapped link. Rent!—of course they can’t pay rent. Wonder if a gang of American labourers could make anything out of our farms? There they work from sunrise to sunset. Suppose import a gang and try. Did any one ever see such a helpless set as that yonder! Depression—of course. No go-ahead in them.’

‘Mind opening the gate, you?’ said a voice behind; and turning, the thinker saw a dealer in a trap, who wanted the gate opened, to save him the trouble of getting down to do it himself. The thinker did as he was asked, and held the gate open. The trap went slowly through.

‘Will you come on and take a glass?’ said the dealer, pointing with the butt-end of his whip. ‘Crown.’ This was sententious for the Crown in the hamlet; country-folk speak in pieces, putting the principal word in a sentence for the entire paragraph.

The thinker shook his head and shut the gate, carefully hasping it. The dealer drove on.

‘Who’s that?’ thought the gray man, watching the trap jolt down the rough road. ‘Wants veal, I suppose; no veal here, no good.—Now, look!’

The group by the broken chain beckoned to the trap; a lad went across to it with the chain, got up, and was driven off, so saving himself half a mile on his road to the forge.

‘Anything to save themselves exertion. Nothing will make them move faster—like whipping a carthorse into a gallop; it soon dies away in the old jog-trot. Why—they have actually started again! actually started!’

He watched the teams a little longer, heedless of the wind, which he abused, but which really did not affect him, and then walked along the hedgerow down hill. Two men were sowing a field on the slope, swinging the hand full of grain from the hip regular as time itself, a swing calculated to throw the seed so far, but not too far, and without jerk. The next field had just been manured, and he stopped to glance at the crowds of small birds which were looking over the straw—finches and sparrows, and the bluish gray of pied wagtails. There were hundreds of small birds. While he stood, a hedge-sparrow uttered his thin pleading song on the hedge-top, and a meadow-pipit which had mounted a little way in the air, came down with outspread wings with a short ‘Seep, seep,’ to the ground. Lark and pipit seem near relations; only the skylark sings rising, descending, anywhere; but the pipits chiefly while slowly descending. There had been a rough attempt at market-gardening in the field after this, and rows of cabbage gone up to seed stood forlorn and ragged. On the top of one of these, a skylark was perched, calling at intervals; for though classed as a non-percher, perch he does sometimes. Meadows succeeded on the level ground—one had been covered with the scrapings of roads, a whitish, crumbling dirt, dry and falling to pieces in the wind. The grass was pale, its wintry hue not yet gone, and the clods seemed to make it appear paler. Among these clods, four or five thrushes were seeking their food; on a bare oak, a blackbird was perched, his mate no doubt close by in the hedgerow; at the margin of a pond, a black-and-white wagtail waded in the water; a blue tit flew across to the corner. Brown thrushes, dark blackbird, blue tit, and wagtail, gave a little colour to the angle of the meadow. A gleam of passing sunlight brightened it. Two wood-pigeons came to a thick bush growing over a gray wall on the other side; for ivy-berries, probably.

A cart passed at a little distance, laden with red mangolds, fresh from the pit in which they had been stored; the roots had grown out a trifle, and the rootlets were mauve. A goldfinch perched on a dry dead stalk of wild carrot, a stalk that looked too slender to bear the bird. As the weather-beaten man moved, the goldfinch flew, and the golden wings outspread formed a bright contrast with the dull white clods. Crossing the meadow, and startling the wood-pigeons, our friend scaled the gray wall, putting his foot in a hole left for the purpose. Dark moss lined the interstices between the irregular and loosely placed stones. Above, on the bank, and greener than the grass, grew moss at the roots of ash-stoles and wherever there was shelter. Broad rank green arum leaves crowded each other in places. Red stalks of herb-Robert spread open. The weather-beaten man gathered a white wild violet from the shelter of a dead dry oak-leaf, and as he placed it in his button-hole, paused to listen to the baying of hounds. Yowp! yow! The cries echoed from the bank and filled the narrow beechwood within. A shot followed, and then another, and a third after an interval. More yowping. The gray-brown head of a rabbit suddenly appeared over the top of the bank, within three yards of him, and he could see the creature’s whiskers nervously working, as its mind estimated its chances of escape. Instead of turning back, the rabbit made a rush to get under an ash-stole where was a burrow. The yowping went slowly away; the beeches rang again as if the beagles were in cry. Two assistant-keepers were working the outskirts, and shooting the rabbits which sat out in the brushwood, and so were not to be captured by nets and ferrets. The ground-game was strictly kept down; the noise was made by half-a-dozen puppies they had with them. Passing through the ash-stoles, and next the narrow beechwood, the gray man walked across the open park, and after awhile came in sight of Thardover House. His steps were directed to the great arched porch, beneath which the village-folk boasted a waggon-load could pass. The inner door swung open as if by instinct at his approach. The man who had so neighbourly opened the gate to the dealer in the trap was James Thardover, the owner of the property. Historic as was his name and residence, he was utterly devoid of affectation; a true man of the land.

II.—NEW TITLE-DEEDS.

Deed, seal, and charter give but a feeble hold compared with that which is afforded by labour. James Thardover held his lands again by right of labour; he had taken possession of them once more with thought, design, and actual work, as his ancestors had with the sword. He had laid hands, as it were, on every acre. Those who work, own. There are many who receive rent who do not own; they are proprietors, not owners; like receiving dividends on stock, which stock is never seen or handled. Their rights are legal only; his right was the right of labour, and it might be added, of forbearance. It is a condition of ownership in the United States that the settler clears so much and brings so many acres into cultivation. It was just this condition which he had practically carried out upon the Thardover estate. He had done so much, and in so varied a manner, that it is difficult to select particular acts for enumeration. All the great agricultural movements of the last thirty years he had energetically supported. There was the draining movement. The undulating contour of the country, deep vales alternating with moderate brows, gave a sufficient supply of water to every farm, and on the lower lands led to flooding and the formation of marshes. Horley Bottom, where the hay used to be frequently carried into the river by a June freshet, was now safe from flood. Flag Marsh had been completely drained, and made some of the best wheat-land in the neighbourhood. Part of a bark canoe was found in it; the remnants were preserved at Thardover House, but gradually fell to pieces.

Longboro’ Farm was as dry now as any such soil could be. More or less draining had been carried out on twenty other farms, sometimes entirely at his expense; sometimes the tenant paid a small percentage on the sum expended; generally this percentage fell off in the course of a year or two. The tenant found that he could not pay it. Except on Flag Marsh, the drainage did not pay him fifty pounds. Perhaps it might have done, had the seasons been better; but, as it had actually happened, the rents had decreased instead of increasing. Tile-pipes had not availed against rain and American wheat. So far as income was concerned, he would have been richer had the money so expended been allowed to accumulate at the banker’s. The land as land was certainly improved in places, as on Bartholomew’s farm. Thardover never cared for the steam-plough; personally, he disliked it. Those who represented agricultural opinion at the farmers’ clubs and in the agricultural papers, raised so loud a cry for it, that he went halfway to meet them. One of the large tenants was encouraged to invest in the steam-plough by a drawback on his rent, on condition that it should be hired out to others. The steam-plough, Thardover soon discovered, was not profitable to the landowner. It reduced the fields to a dead level; they had previously been thrown into ‘lands,’ with a drain-trench on each side. On this dead level, water did not run off quickly, and the growth of weeds increased. Tenants got into a habit of shirking the extirpation of the weeds. The best farmers on the estate would not use it at all. To very large tenants, and to small tenants who could not keep enough horses, it was profitable at times. It did not appear that a single sack more of wheat was raised, nor a single additional head of stock maintained, since the steam-plough arrived.

Paul of Embersbury, who occupied some of the best meadow and upland country, a man of some character and standing, had taken to the shorthorns before Thardover succeeded to the property. Thardover assisted him in every way, and bought some of the best blood. There was no home-farm; the House was supplied from Bartholomew’s dairy, and the Squire did not care to upset the old traditionary arrangements by taking a farm in hand. What he bought went to Embersbury, and Paul did well. As a consequence, there were good cattle all over the estate. The long prices formerly fetched by Paul’s method had much fallen off; but substantial sums were still paid. Paul had faced the depression better than most of them. He was bitter, as was only natural, against the reaction in favour of black-cattle. The upland tenants, though, had a good many of the black, despite of Paul’s frowns and thunders after the market ordinary at Barnboro’ town. He would put down his pipe, bustle upon his feet, lean his somewhat protuberant person on the American leather of the table, and address the dozen or so who stayed for spirits-and-water after dinner, without the pretence of a formal meeting. He spoke in very fair language, short, jerky sentences, but well-chosen words. He who had taken the van in improvements thirty years ago, was the bitterest against any proposed change now. Black-cattle were thoroughly bad.

Another of his topics was the hiring-fair, where servant-girls stood waiting for engagements, and which it was proposed to abolish. Paul considered it was taking the bread-and-cheese out of the poor wenches’ mouths. They could stand there and get hired for nothing, instead of having to pay half-a-crown for advertising, and get nothing then. But though the Squire had supported the shorthorns, even the shorthorns had not prevented the downward course things agricultural were following.

Then there was the scientific movement, the cry for science among the farmers. He founded a scholarship, invited the professors to his place, lunched them, let them experiment on little pieces of land, mournful-looking plots. Nothing came of it. He drew a design for a new cottage himself, a practical plain place; the builders told him it was far dearer to put up than ornamental but inconvenient structures. Thardover sunk his money his own way, and very comfortable cottages they were. Ground-game he had kept down for years before the Act. Farm-buildings he had improved freely. The education movement, however, stirred him most. He went into it enthusiastically. Thardover village was one of the first places to become efficient under the new legislation. This was a piece of practical work after his own heart. Generally, legislative measures were so far off from country-people. They affected the condition of large towns, of the Black Country, of the weavers or miners, distant folk. To the villages and hamlets of purely agricultural districts these Acts had no existence. The Education Act was just the reverse. This was a statute which came right down into the hamlets, which was nailed up at the crossroads, and ruled the barn, the plough, and scythe. Something tangible, that could be carried out and made into a fact; something he could do. Thardover did it with the thoroughness of his nature. He found the ground, lent the money, saw to the building, met the government inspectors, and organised the whole. A Committee of the tenants were the ostensible authority, the motive-power was the Squire. He worked at it till it was completely organised, for he felt as if he were helping to mould the future of this great country. Broad-minded himself, he understood the immense value of education, looked at generally; and he thought, too, that by its aid the farmer and the landowner might be enabled to compete with the foreigner, who was driving them from the market. No speeches and no agitation could equal the power concentrated in that plain school-house; there was nothing from which he hoped so much.

Only one held aloof and showed hostility to the movement, or rather to the form it took. His youngest and favourite daughter, Mary, the artist, rebelled against it. Hitherto, she had ruled him as she chose. She had led in every kind act; acts too kind to be called charity; she had been, the life of the place. Perhaps it was the strong-minded women whom the cry of education brought to Thardover House, that set ajar some chord in her sensitive mind. Strident voices checked her sympathies, and hard rule-and-line work like this repelled her. Till then, she had been the constant companion of the Squire’s walks; but while the school was being organised, she would not go with him. She walked where she could not see the plain angular building; she said it set her teeth on edge.

When the strident voices had departed, when time had made the school-house part and parcel of the place, like the cottages, Mary changed her ways, and occasionally called there. She took a class once a week of the elder girls, and taught them in her own fashion at home—most unorthodox teaching, it was—in which the works of the best poets were the chief subjects, and portfolios of engravings were found on the table. Long since, father and daughter had resumed their walks together.

It was in this way that James Thardover made his estate his own—he held possession by right of labour. He was resident ten months out of twelve; and after all these public and open works, he did far more in private. There was not an acre on the property which he had not personally visited. The farmhouses and farm-buildings were all known to him. He rode from tenancy to tenancy, he visited the men at plough and stood among the reapers. Neither the summer heat nor the winds of March prevented him from seeing with his own eyes. The latest movement was the silo-system, the burying of grass under pressure, instead of making it into hay. By these means, the clouds are to be defied, and a plentiful supply of fodder secured. Time alone can show whether this, the latest invention, is any more powerful than steam-plough or guano to uphold agriculture against the shocks of fortune. But James Thardover would have tried any plan that had been suggested to him. It was thus that he laid hold on his lands with the strongest of titles, the work of his own hands. Yet still the tenants were unable to pay the former rent; some had failed or left, and their farms were vacant; and nothing could be more discouraging than the condition of affairs upon the property.