Those who do not understand human nature would have expected a strenuous opposition to be offered to these changes. Very likely they will, too, repeat the satisfied remark we so often hear about our successful system of self-government.
Our towns are governed by servility or clique; true self-government is totally unknown.
“Where’s the mill?” was the old man’s next inquiry.
The mill which stood under the elms and rookery, and was remarkable for a curious wheel, was gone too.
“Where’s the dove-cot?” said he.
The dove-cot, which the monks had erected four hundred years since, had disappeared.
Letitia had succeeded in forming a clear sweep round the mansion, and its privacy was now complete. It was absolutely isolated, and guarded by lodge-keepers in every direction.
High walls shut in the view, and led the intruder, like a covered way, to a narrow passage, damp and cold even on a summer’s day, in which was a door and bell. On justice-room days if you rang the bell you were admitted to the justice-room.
When people saw how Letitia was enclosing the mansion, making all things modern and taking an iron grip of Maasbury, they said, “Capital thing for Cornleigh! Just the wife for Cornleigh!”
It took Felise full a quarter of an hour to get the old man along from the iron gate to the door in the damp passage, so exercised was he over these changes. They seemed to quite turn his brain, and set his mind upside down—as the world had been turned since his day.
Inside the door they mounted a flight of dark steps, and emerged in the justice-room.
There were two large windows in it looking on the “offices” which covered the site of the ancient church; a large table in the centre at which were two chairs, one an armchair; a bookcase, and a form against the wall. About the table there was a carpet: that part of the room where the public stood was carpetless.
The bookcase, curiously enough, stood near the door by which the public entered. It was filled from the top to the bottom shelf with a set of volumes exactly alike, bound in morocco; and Felise, as she passed it, noticed that the backs of the books were lettered in gold, The Sporting Calendar.
Cornleigh Cornleigh was very exact in this particular: The Sporting Calendar was specially bound for him year after year in the same style, and deposited in this bookcase. One would have fancied that a favourite work would have been kept in the library, or in the Squire’s private study, not in a semi-public apartment, bare and comfortless.
This was one of the Cornleigh Cornleigh anomalies; and yet perhaps it was not so singular, as the Squire never entered the library, and had no private study, nor did he ever open these sporting volumes he so carefully accumulated. He had been to racecourses, and had heard the slang of the ring from his youth up; but he had never made a bet in his life.
The Sporting Calendar was absolutely useless to him. You may frequently observe analogous cases—valuable volumes on the shelves of persons who never consult them, while genuine students can scarcely obtain an extract. Why Cornleigh Cornleigh put so much stress upon the possession of The Sporting Calendar, why he did this and many other things, is not to be easily come at.
“T’ Squire!” ejaculated old Abner, as he caught sight of the magistrate at the table.
“Silence!” cried a constable; then seeing Felise, his aggressive voice dropped, and he motioned them to a hard wooden form placed against the wall opposite the table. There they sat down—Felise and the ancient labourer—side by side, like Beauty and the Beast.
Some uninteresting cases were being disposed of; they must wait till public business was finished.
VIII
Cornleigh Cornleigh sat sideways in his armchair, facing a little towards the window, and apparently listened with the deepest attention to the details of the prosecution. His whole mind seemed to be concentrated upon the business before him.
His youthful face was rather prepossessing; he was a blonde man, and his features had an expression of ingenuousness, such as is proper to youth. The countenance of eighteen had been carried on through the years, and remained set on the shoulders of the man of fifty. The face had not grown with time.
His light hair was parted at the side, and brushed back precisely as his fond mother had parted it and brushed it back in his schooldays. It had never obtained a distinctive set and character. Nor was there the least trace of beard or moustache.
A line—one single thin line—ran up his forehead, and remained there always, the groove of effort, of mental labour. A little mind has to work harder than a great one, and such work leaves traces behind it. His chin was the best part, being well cut, and somewhat indicative of will, an indication it so far fulfilled that although he was the worst hand at speechmaking in the world, he never shrank from the task, and it was whispered that even Letitia had discovered he could not be driven beyond a certain point.
A habit of always looking downwards, as if listening to a sermon, concealed very good blue eyes, which, half-closed in this way, were conspicuously fringed with whitish eyelashes.
You saw nothing but the eyelids and the whitish eyelashes.
It was his way to sit sideways in this manner, his hands folded, ingenuously looking downwards, in a state of the profoundest attention—or of the most perfect indifference.
Not a trace of his fifty years appeared in his countenance or hair; he looked not a day over thirty. His dress was faultless, marked with a red-silk handkerchief, the corner of which always projected from the breast-pocket. Only long practice and great skill could have so folded the inevitable red-silk handkerchief, that precisely the same extent of its edge should invariably be visible. In this particular, as in “The Sporting Calendar,” the Squire was very exact.
Nothing in his attitude
