“They want any work, miss—that they are sure of decent pay for—sure of it.”
She did understand. And she did not treat his implication as an impertinence. She knew it was not intended as one, and, indeed, she saw in it a sort of earnest of a possible practical quality in Buttle. Such work as the Court had demanded had remained unpaid for with quiet persistence, until even bills had begun to lag and fall off. She could see exactly how it had been done, and comprehended quite clearly a lack of enthusiasm in the presence of orders from the Great House.
“All work will be paid for,” she said. “Each week the workmen will receive their wages. They may be sure. I will be responsible.”
“Thank you, miss,” said Buttle, and he half unconsciously touched his forehead again.
“In a place like this,” the young lady went on in her mellow voice, and with a reflective thoughtfulness in her handsome eyes, “on an estate like Stornham, no work that can be done by the villagers should be done by anyone else. The people of the land should be trained to do such work as the manor house, or cottages, or farms require to have done.”
“How did she think that out?” was Buttle’s reflection. In places such as Stornham, through generation after generation, the thing she had just said was accepted as law, clung to as a possession, any divergence from it being a grievance sullenly and bitterly grumbled over. And in places enough there was divergence in these days—the gentry sending to London for things, and having up workmen to do their best-paying jobs for them. The law had been so long a law that no village could see justice in outsiders being sent for, even to do work they could not do well themselves. It showed what she was, this handsome young woman—even though she did come from America—that she should know what was right.
She took a notebook out and opened it on the rough table before her.
“I have made some notes here,” she said, “and a sketch or two. We must talk them over together.”
If she had given Joe Buttle cause for surprise at the outset, she gave him further cause during the next half- hour. The work that was to be done was such as made him open his eyes, and draw in his breath. If he was to be allowed to do it—if he could do it—if it was to be paid for—it struck him that he would be a man set up for life. If her ladyship had come and ordered it to be done, he would have thought the poor thing had gone mad. But this one had it all jotted down in a clear hand, without the least feminine confusion of detail, and with here and there a little sharply-drawn sketch, such as a carpenter, if he could draw, which Buttle could not, might have made.
“There’s not workmen enough in the village to do it in a year, miss,” he said at last, with a gasp of disappointment.
She thought it over a minute, her pencil poised in her hand and her eyes on his face
“Can you,” she said, “undertake to get men from other villages, and superintend what they do? If you can do that, the work is still passing through your hands, and Stornham will reap the benefit of it. Your workmen will lodge at the cottages and spend part of their wages at the shops, and you who are a Stornham workman will earn the money to be made out of a rather large contract.”
Joe Buttle became quite hot. If you have brought up a family for years on the proceeds of such jobs as driving a ten-penny nail in here or there, tinkering a hole in a cottage roof, knocking up a shelf in the vicarage kitchen, and mending a panel of fence, to be suddenly confronted with a proposal to engage workmen and undertake “contracts” is shortening to the breath and heating to the blood.
“Miss,” he said, “we’ve never done big jobs, Sim Soames an’ me. P’raps we’re not up to it—but it’d be a fortune to us.”
She was looking down at one of her papers and making pencil marks on it.
“You did some work last year on a little house at Tidhurst, didn’t you?” she said.
To think of her knowing that! Yes, the unaccountable good luck had actually come to him that two Tidhurst carpenters, falling ill of the same typhoid at the same time, through living side by side in the same order of unsanitary cottage, he and Sim had been given their work to finish, and had done their best.
“Yes, miss,” he answered.
“I heard that when I was inquiring about you. I drove over to Tidhurst to see the work, and it was very sound and well done. If you did that, I can at least trust you to do something at the Court which will prove to me what you are equal to. I want a Stornham man to undertake this.”
“No Tidhurst man,” said Joe Buttle, with sudden courage, “nor yet no Barnhurst, nor yet no Yangford, nor Wratcham shall do it, if I can look it in the face. It’s Stornham work and Stornham had ought to have it. It gives me a brace-up to hear of it.”
The tall young lady laughed beautifully and got up.
“Come to the Court to-morrow morning at ten, and we will look it over together,” she said. “Good-morning, Buttle.” And she went away.
In the taproom of The Clock, when Joe Buttle dropped in for his pot of beer, he found Fox, the saddler, and Tread, the blacksmith, and each of them fell upon the others with something of the same story to tell. The new young lady from the Court had been to see them, too, and had brought to each
her definite little notebook. Harness was to be repaired and furbished up, the big carriage and the old phaeton were to be put in order, and Master Ughtred’s cart was to be given new paint and springs.
“This is what she said,” Fox’s story ran, “and she said it so straightforward and businesslike that the conceitedest man that lived couldn’t be upset by it. `I want to see what you can do,’ she says. `I am new to the place and I must find out what everyone can do, then I shall know what to do myself.’ The way she sets them eyes on a man is a sight. It’s the sense in them and the human nature that takes you.”
“Yes, it’s the sense,” said Tread, “and her looking at you as if she expected you to have sense yourself, and understand that she’s doing fair business. It’s clear-headed like—her asking questions and finding out what Stornham men can do. She’s having the old things done up so that she can find out, and so that she can prove that the Court work is going to be paid for. That’s my belief.”
“But what does it all mean?” said Joe Buttle, setting his pot of beer down on the taproom table, round which they sat in conclave. “Where’s the money coming from? There’s money somewhere.”
Tread was the advanced thinker of the village. He had come—through reverses—from a bigger place. He read
