“The Barnards are not very rich, then,” said Felise partly to herself, happy that at least there was not that obstacle between her and Martial, to whom she could bring no dowry.
“Bless ’ee, no; they bean’t rich—” But he was interrupted by a step on the path, and his “missus” came through the wicket in the hedge. “What, ain’t you got no wood?” said the old man.
“He’ve took it away,” said the old lady, curtsying to Felise. “I be terrable glad to see you, miss; there be something I wants to tell you—”
“I knowed there was something,” said the old man.
“Who took your wood away?” asked Felise.
“Why, Mr. Godwin, to be sure. Do you call that a gentleman, now? He took my faggot away from me hisself.”
“Not the dead sticks you had gathered?”
“Yes, he did; he took it away and throwed all the sticks in the hedge, and dared me to touch any more, or to step on his land or the Squire’s land after ’em.”
“It is very arbitrary,” said Felise.
The angry old lady ran on at great length, bitterly reproaching the steward. Mr. Godwin had forbidden them to touch the fallen branches; last autumn he forbade them to gather the acorns, though brought to him for sale. As they no longer worked upon the estate, being too old, they must not gather wood or acorns, or even mushrooms.
“He be the meanest man as ever lived,” said the old woman. “A’be as rich as ever can be. Now, you knows Martha—little Martha; she went a-blackberrying last year, and Godwin he met her and took her blackberries from her—that he did. I suppose the Squire doan’t know nothing about it, but Godwin says ’tis the Squire’s rights. But you come in, miss—you look here!” cried the old woman, rushing indoors and returning, before Felise could follow, with a letter in her hand.
The letter contained a formal notice to quit the cottage and garden. It seemed that the steward had several times warned the aged couple that they must leave; but, no notice being taken of his verbal orders, a legal instrument had at length been sent.
“Ah, I knowed there was something,” said the old man. “But, bless you, they won’t turn I out of my garden, now—will they?”
“That they will, you old fool!” said his wife, shaking him; “you’ll have to go. And there bean’t no place for us but the workus, as I knows on. There bean’t another cottage in this place; they be all full up to the roof.”
“Lodgings must be got for you somewhere,” said Felise, “and Abner will help.”
“But there bean’t no lodgings,” said the old woman; “and my old man, he won’t live away from his garden.”
“They may as well bury me,” said the old man, dropping on his stool. “They there peas be fine to-year; there’ll be another dish there soon. I thinks the apples be set well to-year.”
“I will speak to papa—to Mr. Goring,” said Felise. “Perhaps Abner has told him. We will do what we can for you, be certain. I cannot think Mr. Godwin really means—” she hesitated, for she knew the hardness of his character.
“Ah, yes, he do mean it!” said the old lady. “He be one of they as do mean things, and do ’em too; I hopes as his new horse will pitch him in the road and break his neck!”
“No—no.”
“Ah, but I do though! There’s the old man gone pottering down to they peas. It be shameful, bean’t it, how we be served! And after we have a-worked here all our lives—he have a-worked here nigh seventy years, and I have a-worked fifty-five afore I was took bad and couldn’t do no more. It be shameful, miss, it be! and thank you very much, but it ain’t no good you trying—old Godwin be a flint!”
Felise went on homewards, eager with the impetuosity of her nature to do something to right this wrong. I have, in part, literally translated the language in which the old couple spoke, that it might be more easily intelligible; they did not say “ah,” but “aw;” “un” for “him” and “it” indiscriminately; they pronounced “v” for “f,” “aä” for “a,” and so on.
Mr. Godwin was a very hard man, yet he had but slightly strained the unwritten laws of country life in ordering this aged and helpless couple to leave their dwelling. Nine out of ten cottages belong to the landowner, though the immediate supervision—the letting—is entrusted to the tenant on certain conditions. There are, as a rule, fewer cottages than are needed, so that there is a struggle for them, especially on the part of the young who wish to be married. From this scarcity of cottages most young couples reside for years with the parents of the wife or husband, an arrangement never very satisfactory.
The chief condition of cottage-occupation is that the cottager shall work for the farmer upon whose farm the cottage is situate. Or at least, if not for him, for someone on the estate. The moment any difference arises, the labourer has not only to leave his employment but his home. This, if he be a married man, generally means that he must leave the hamlet, because all the other cottages are full. The custom is the last relic of feudal times, for while this condition endures the labourer must still be a serf.
It is a custom fatal to the cottager’s social progress, in reality injurious to the interests of landowner and farmer—especially to the landowner—and diametrically opposed to the interest of the country at large, because it forces the agricultural population to be nomadic instead of settled.
Injurious as it is to those who maintain it, this feudal survival will probably be fought for with the utmost bitterness when the question comes before Parliament. Once abolished, and
