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A Fray
Puff‑puff! puff‑puff! hum‑m‑m! as the flywheel whizzed round with a sudden ease in working.
“I detest these ploughing engines,” said Squire Thorpe, looking over the gate and leaning his arms on it, as country people always do.
“But if the tenants find deep ploughing and manuring better, I suppose that’s the point,” said Valentine.
“For the tenant, yes,” said the Squire, as he shouldered his gun and turned away from the gate. “For me, it is another matter. It is a question with me if this deep ploughing will not exhaust the earth.”
“But the artificial manure,” said Valentine, who was inclined to argue with anyone.
“Rubbish! Why, it’s only used like dust—not an eighth of an inch thick; and they take all that out again quick enough. Then these deep drains; they carry away as much of the richness of the soil as water.”
“You don’t think much of unexhausted improvements,” said Geoffrey.
“The greatest nonsense ever talked,” said the Squire, working himself into a temper. “It’s simply a device to suck every atom out of the soil, and leave me as dry as a dead hemlock. What profit do you suppose I get out of the land? I’m pestered to put up cattle-stalls and sheds, to sink wells and rebuild farmhouses, to put in drains—confound the drains! Then I must make reductions because the labourers want higher wages, and take off ten percent, because the weather’s been bad! As if the weather had not always been wrong these three hundred years! I’m perfectly sick of science and superphosphates, shorthorns, and steam tackle. Then they bring public opinion, forsooth, on me, and say I must disgorge! (Intense disgust.) Disgorge! Let them take the land, and welcome, and give me an equivalent in Consols, I should be twenty times better off. No; I’ll be shot if they shall! (With energetic inconsistency.) I would sooner be flayed alive than part with a square inch! I love the land next to my mother! There! But I’ll be let alone. I’ll plant the whole place with oaks. My woods are the only things that pay me—except the rabbits, and that rascally Guss Basset poaches and nets them by the score. Look out!”
A covey of partridges rose, and Valentine, who was a little in advance, fired both barrels without effect.
“Mark!” said the Squire. “Gone to the turnips of course, the only place left for the poor things; this short stubble makes them as wild as hawks. Val, your nerves are shaky this afternoon, and, by Jove, that horse dying was enough!”
“My nerves are not at all shaken,” said Valentine, as he reloaded.
He affected a stoical indifference, though really hit hard. His temper had been boiling like molten lead under the surface, and it wanted but little to make him explode. His losses and vexation, his jealousy of Geoffrey, the unfortunate suspicions that had been aroused in his mind about the night on the Downs—all had combined to irritate him to the last degree.
“Well, we’ve all lost money,” said the Squire; “and what a terrible thing about poor old Fisher! May will stay at Greene Ferne, I suppose; she can never return alone to that gloomy house. Ah, that’s more to my taste,”—pointing to a middle-aged labourer who was sowing corn broadcast. “Now watch his steps; regular as clockwork. See, his hand springs from his hip, and describes an exact segment of a circle—no, a parabola, I suppose—every time, so as to make the seed spread itself equally. That’s higher than science—that’s art, art handed down these thousand years.”
A man now overtook them with a message from the house: the Squire was wanted about a summons.
“If you cross the turnips,” he said, as he turned to leave them, “you may find the covey again; and then try the meadows at the edge of the wood; and if you see that rascally Basset at my rabbits, just—” he kicked a clod to pieces illustratively.
The Squire returned homewards; Geoffrey and Valentine entered the turnips, making for the narrow belt of meadow by the wood. It was not a regular shooting expedition: they had simply strolled out for an hour, and were not accompanied by a keeper. The moment the Squire left, the conversation dropped. Valentine was bitter against his old friend: Geoffrey had not forgotten the contretemps at the nutting. It had been long before Margaret accepted his protestations of regret for his hasty words. Now no man, who is a man, likes the part of penitence. He considered that Valentine had forced him into that unpleasant position, and his wrath smouldered against him.
After the turnips, they got through a gap into the meadow land, which, being of poor quality, as is often the case near a wood, was dotted with dead thistles, rushes in the hollows, and bunches of tussocky grass. Out from one of these sprang a hare, as nearly as possible midway between them. They both fired—so exactly simultaneously that it sounded as one report; and for the moment neither knew that the other had pulled the trigger. But when they saw what had happened, each turned away from the dead hare—neither would touch it. Each, biased by previous irritation, accused the other in his mind of taking the shot from him. This little accident added to the sullen bitterness.
They now came to an immense double-mound hedge, into which the spaniels rushed. Valentine took the near side, Geoffrey the off, with the hedge between them. It was so
