A Close Run Thing

dear. You must read the Thirty-Nine Articles as an affirmation of the doctrine of the Fathers of the Church, not as a Protestant tract — which latter is all that people seem to do today. As you read they will be a revelation to you! Lancelot Andrewes and the other Caroline divines were wholly lucid on this matter — poor Laud went to the scaffold because of it. We have drifted into Protestantism. It needs younger men of integrity and energy, however, to recall the Church to its proper destiny!’

‘And I believe your elder son to have been one of these, Mr Hervey,’ John Keble replied in a tone approaching ardour. ‘You should have heard his sermons at Oriel and seen his ministry in the hovels of Cowley. He was worthy indeed of taking up Andrewes’s torch.’

But Hervey’s mother had become likewise agitated: ‘Then are we to throw vipers at the Methodists again, Mr Keble?’

John Keble looked at her with polite but evident incomprehension.

‘Mr Keble,’ Elizabeth interjected sheepishly, ‘some years ago a Methodist was preaching outdoors in Warminster and a townsman threw an adder at him.’

‘“O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”’ Keble replied, hoping that the gospel after whom her younger son had been named might deflect them.

‘Just so, Mr Keble,’ said Mrs Hervey, equally opaquely. ‘And now, Matthew, turning to lighter matters, will you be going to see the marquess tomorrow?’

‘Well, Mother,’ he began hesitantly, ‘perhaps not tomorrow; but, yes, I shall pay my respects.’

‘I think if you knew whom you might also see at Longleat you would not long delay,’ she added with a smile.

‘Oh, Mother!’ sighed Elizabeth. ‘Do you have no artfulness?’

Hervey looked bemused, and all the more so for Elizabeth’s prim reprimand.

‘Henrietta Lindsay is come back to Longleat, Matthew; that is all,’ his sister explained.

Hervey felt his gut twist, and he fought hard not to show it. ‘Well, that is agreeable, Mother. No, you are quite right, it is very agreeable to hear. I have not seen Henrietta Lindsay in years. I expect she is quite grown now.’ He looked at Elizabeth, who looked down at her plate, and he searched for some way by which to change the subject. ‘But I thought that first I should go to see Daniel Coates!’

‘Coates!’ exclaimed the vicar of Horningsham, suddenly come back to consciousness. ‘The only man with any idea at all how to deal with those rick-burners!’

‘And how is that, Father?’ asked Elizabeth kindly, laying her hand on his forearm. But her father had slipped peacefully back into upright yet profound sleep.

Daniel Coates — rick-burners? What was the connection? wondered Hervey. Coates was not a violent man — at least, he had not been when last Hervey had seen him before leaving for Spain. Had the unrest at home taken its toll of yeoman fortitude? But Coates was a tenant sheepfarmer: why might he be troubled by rick-burners?

‘Daniel is a churchwarden now, and a magistrate,’ revealed his mother. ‘At Upton Scudamore. Your father holds the benefice in commendam.’

Daniel Coates a churchwarden and a magistrate! Hervey could only wonder at the change in the country these past few years. Daniel Coates — old soldier, his childhood hero, a poor tenant farmer who had once been shepherd on the Longleat estate: it had been he who had taught him to ride cavalry-fashion, to shoot straight and use a sword so well that on joining the Sixth he had been dismissed riding school and skill-at-arms quicker than anyone could remember. Hervey could not present himself unannounced to Henrietta Lindsay, but he most certainly could to Daniel Coates! And in Coates was, perhaps, his best chance of gaining a reliable secular opinion of what the country had become while he had been away; in John Keble he knew he had such a mentor in the clerical view. ‘Mr Keble,’ he said, with sudden resolution, ‘may we take a turn about the garden? I should be obliged for your opinion on this country to which I return, it would seem, as something of a stranger.’

CHAPTER SIX. THE YEOMEN OF WILTSHIRE

Salisbury Plain, Midsummer Day

His father’s cob knew the way to Upton Scudamore well enough, and the pace at which the vicar of Horningsham liked to cover the five or so miles of rutted lanes which crossed the vale, skirted the prehistoric mystery that was Cley Hill, and connected the handsome estate village with the rougher settlement by the great west scarp of Salisbury Plain. Daniel Coates’s farm lay on the edge of the downs, virtually under the scarp. When he had taken the tenancy fifteen years earlier it had been nothing but a few dilapidated buildings and three acres of poor pasture, with a hundred or so more of common land on the Westbury side. He had rebuilt it stone by stone, brick by brick — Hervey had carried many of them himself. There was nothing poor-looking about the place now, however.

Coates received him with an easy combination of deference and familiarity, but ‘Master Hervey’, and soon thereafter simply ‘Matthew’, was subjected to a veritable cannonade of questions, a bombardment lasting a full half-hour without respite. Finally, Coates seemed to become aware of his insensibility and was then much abashed: ‘My dear Matthew, how could I ’ave been so inhospitable — your glass is empty, and you have not spoken except for to speak back,’ he said, reaching for a jug of purl.

‘Dan, I have so keenly imagined this time for many months, but I want more than anything to ride on the downs again, as we have done together since I was on the leading-rein. There I promise I shall answer every enquiry you have a care to make!’

‘And so shall it be, Matthew; so shall it be!’ Coates replied with the broadest of smiles, and he summoned his housemaid to take word to the stables.

Hervey had never known a groom before at Drove Farm: when first he had gone to Spain there had not been so much as a labourer, and certainly no housemaid. Now as they went into the stableyard there was a smart- looking fellow holding a fine pair of bay hunters. Prosperity indeed, thought Hervey. But their discourse did not immediately resume on leaving the yard, for Daniel Coates took Hervey at his word and waited until they had reached the downs before pressing him once more to the details of his campaigning. So with scarcely an exchange they rode out along the empty expanse of Warminster Bottom, past Dirtley Wood and up the steep scarp of the great plain on to Knapp Down, both men happy to let the memories stir in silence.

To Hervey’s mind the plain had no rival for both bleakness and beauty. In winter, with a strong, cutting north-east wind, and sleet, hail or heavy rain driven in sheets over the lonely plateau, the scene, broken here and there by a few clumps of dripping trees or a misty barrow, was dismal — desolate even. He had been as cold here — more so even — as on the retreat to Corunna. But in fine weather (and that midsummer morning was as fine as they came) the air was as pure as in the Pyrenees and the sun, high and directly ahead, as warm as in Gascony. The turf was soft and yielding (it had cushioned many a fall in his youth), and the whole face of the down was carpeted with flowers whose names he was surprised to be able to recall: harebells, centaury, dark blue campanula, scabias, milkworts, orchids and meadowsweet. And where there were no flowers there was broom and furze.

Still they rode on without speaking until, cresting the rise of Summer Down, Hervey saw, and heard, the source of Daniel Coates’s wealth: sheep — many, many more than he could ever remember, so many that for the best part of a mile it was scarcely possible to see the carpet of turf and flowers. ‘Yes, they’re all mine,’ said Coates, guessing his thoughts. ‘Every bale of wool these past five years has gone to clothe His Majesty’s troops. The war has upped demand beyond anything I could’ve imagined. The flock’s grown a hundredfold, and I’ve five shepherds tending ’em. I’ve been sole agister on these downs for three summers now. I’m a rich man, Matthew!’

Hervey nodded: he could find no words adequate for his admiration.

‘But I doubt demand’ll remain high now that regiments and ships are being paid off. I shall sell ’em all before winter.’

This last was perhaps the true measure of Coates’s acumen: energy and good fortune alone might promote