“He was to have gone to Patagonia,” said Lord Rufford, endeavouring to come to himself after the sufferings of the morning.
“We should have seen him back in Washington, Sir. Whenever you have anything good in diplomacy you generally send him to us. Poor young lady! Was she talking about him?”
“Not particularly,” said his lordship.
“She must have remembered that when she was last here he was of the party, and it was but a few weeks ago—only a little before Christmas. He struck me as being cold in his manner as an affianced lover. Was not that your idea, Lady Penwether?”
“I don’t think I observed him especially.”
“I have reason to believe that he was much attached to her. She could be sprightly enough; but at times there seemed to come a cold melancholy upon her too. It is I fancy so with most of your English ladies. Miss Trefoil always gave me the idea of being a good type of the English aristocracy.” Lady Penwether and Miss Penge drew themselves up very stiffly. “You admired her, I think, my Lord.”
“Very much indeed,” said Lord Rufford, filling his mouth with pigeon-pie as he spoke, and not lifting his eyes from his plate.
“Will she be back to dinner?”
“Oh dear no,” said Lady Penwether. There was something in her tone which at last startled the Senator into perceiving that Miss Trefoil was not popular at Rufford Hall.
“She only came for a morning call,” said Lord Rufford.
“Poor young woman. She has lost her husband, and, I am afraid, now has lost her friends also. I am told that she is not well off;—and from what I see and hear, I fancy that here in England a young lady without a dowry cannot easily replace a lover. I suppose, too, Miss Trefoil is not quite in her first youth.”
“If you have done, Caroline,” said Lady Penwether to Miss Penge, “I think we’ll go into the other room.”
That afternoon Sir George asked the Senator to accompany him for a walk. Sir George was held to be responsible for the Senator’s presence, and was told by the ladies that he must do something with him. The next day, which was Friday, would be occupied by the affairs of Scrobby and Goarly, and on the Saturday he was to return to town. The two started about three with the object of walking round the park and the home farm—the Senator intent on his duty of examining the ways of English life to the very bottom. “I hope I did not say anything amiss about Miss Trefoil,” he remarked, as they passed through a shrubbery gate into the park.
“No; I think not.”
“I thought your good lady looked as though she did not like the subject.”
“I am not sure that Miss Trefoil is very popular with the ladies up there.”
“She’s a handsome young woman and clever, though, as I said before, given to melancholy, and sometimes fastidious. When we were all here I thought that Lord Rufford admired her, and that poor Mr. Morton was a little jealous.”
“I wasn’t at Rufford then. Here we get out of the park on to the home farm. Rufford does it very well—very well indeed.”
“Looks after it altogether himself?”
“I cannot quite say that. He has a land-bailiff who lives in the house there.”
“With a salary?”
“Oh yes; £120 a year I think the man has.”
“And that house?” asked the Senator. “Why, the house and garden are worth £50 a year.”
“I dare say they are. Of course it costs money. It’s near the park and had to be made ornamental.”
“And does it pay?”
“Well, no; I should think not. In point of fact I know it does not. He loses about the value of the ground.”
The Senator asked a great many more questions and then began his lecture. “A man who goes into trade and loses by it, cannot be doing good to himself or to others. You say, Sir George, that it is a model farm;—but it’s a model of ruin. If you want to teach a man any other business, you don’t specially select an example in which the proprietors are spending all their capital without any return. And if you would not do this in shoemaking, why in farming?”
“The neighbours are able to see how work should be done.”
“Excuse me, Sir George, but it seems to me that they are enabled to see how work should not be done. If his lordship would stick up over his gate a notice to the effect that everything seen there was to be avoided, he might do some service. If he would publish his accounts half-yearly in the village newspaper—”
“There isn’t a village newspaper.”
“In the Rufford Gazette. There is a Rufford Gazette, and Rufford isn’t much more than a village. If he would publish his accounts half-yearly in the Rufford Gazette, honestly showing how much he had lost by his system, how much capital had been misapplied, and how much labour wasted, he might serve as an example, like the pictures of The Idle Apprentice. I don’t see that he can do any other good—unless it be to the estimable gentleman who is allowed to occupy the pretty house. I don’t think you’d see anything like that model farm in our country, Sir.”
“Your views, Mr. Gotobed, are utilitarian rather than picturesque.”
“Oh!—if you say that it is done for the picturesque, that is another thing. Lord Rufford is a wealthy lord, and can afford to be picturesque. A green sward I should have thought handsomer, as well as less expensive, than a ploughed field, but that is a matter of taste. Only why call a pretty toy a model farm? You might mislead the British rustics.”
They had by this time passed through a couple of fields which formed part of the model farm, and had come to a stile leading into a large meadow. “This I take it,” said the Senator looking about him, “is beyond the limits of my Lord’s plaything.”
“This
