But what had become of the ‘bit of writing’ which Harry Verney, by the instigation of his evil genius, had put into the squire’s fly-book? Tregarva had waited in terrible suspense for many weeks, expecting the explosion which he knew must follow its discovery. He had confided to Lancelot the contents of the paper, and Lancelot had tried many stratagems to get possession of it, but all in vain. Tregarva took this as calmly as he did everything else. Only once, on the morning of the eclaircissement between Lancelot and Argemone, he talked to Lancelot of leaving his place, and going out to seek his fortune; but some spell, which he did not explain, seemed to chain him to the Priory. Lancelot thought it was the want of money, and offered to lend him ten pounds whenever he liked; but Tregarva shook his head.
‘You have treated me, sir, as no one else has done — like a man and a friend; but I am not going to make a market of your generosity. I will owe no man anything, save to love one another.’
‘But how do you intend to live?’ asked Lancelot, as they stood together in the cloisters.
‘There’s enough of me, sir, to make a good navigator if all trades fail.’
‘Nonsense! you must not throw yourself away so.’
‘Oh, sir, there’s good to be done, believe me, among those poor fellows. They wander up and down the land like hogs and heathens, and no one tells them that they have a soul to be saved. Not one parson in a thousand gives a thought to them. They can manage old folks and little children, sir, but, somehow, they never can get hold of the young men — just those who want them most. There’s a talk about ragged schools, now. Why don’t they try ragged churches, sir, and a ragged service?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why, sir, the parsons are ready enough to save souls, but it must be only according to rule and regulation. Before the Gospel can be preached there must be three thousand pounds got together for a church, and a thousand for an endowment, not to mention the thousand pounds that the clergyman’s education costs: I don’t think of his own keep, sir; that’s little enough, often; and those that work hardest get least pay, it seems to me. But after all that expense, when they’ve built the church, it’s the tradesmen, and the gentry, and the old folk that fill it, and the working men never come near it from one year’s end to another.’
‘What’s the cause, do you think?’ asked Lancelot, who had himself remarked the same thing more than once.
‘Half of the reason, sir, I do believe, is that same Prayer-book. Not that the Prayer-book ain’t a fine book enough, and a true one; but, don’t you see, sir, to understand the virtue of it, the poor fellows ought to be already just what you want to make them.’
‘You mean that they ought to be thorough Christians already, to appreciate the spirituality of the liturgy.’
‘You’ve hit it, sir. And see what comes of the present plan; how a navvy drops into a church by accident, and there he has to sit like a fish out of water, through that hour’s service, staring or sleeping, before he can hear a word that he understands; and, sir, when the sermon does come at last, it’s not many of them can make much out of those fine book-words and long sentences. Why don’t they have a short simple service, now and then, that might catch the ears of the roughs and the blowens, without tiring out the poor thoughtless creatures’ patience, as they do now?’
‘Because,’ said Lancelot — ‘because — I really don’t know why. — But I think there is a simpler plan than even a ragged service.’
‘What, then, sir?’
‘Field-preaching. If the mountain won’t come to Mahomet, let Mahomet go to the mountain.’
‘Right, sir; right you are. “Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in.” And why are they to speak to them only one by one? Why not by the dozen and the hundred? We Wesleyans know, sir — for the matter of that, every soldier knows — what virtue there is in getting a lot of men together; how good and evil spread like wildfire through a crowd; and one man, if you can stir him up, will become leaven to leaven the whole lump. Oh why, sir, are they so afraid of field-preaching? Was not their Master and mine the prince of all field-preachers? Think, if the Apostles had waited to collect subscriptions for a church before they spoke to the poor heathens, where should we have been now?’
Lancelot could not but agree. But at that moment a footman came up, and, with a face half laughing, half terrified, said —
‘Tregarva, master wants you in the study. And please, sir, I think you had better go in too; master knows you’re here, and you might speak a word for good, for he’s raging like a mad bull.’
‘I knew it would come at last,’ said Tregarva, quietly, as he followed Lancelot into the house.
It had come at last. The squire was sitting in his study, purple with rage, while his daughters were trying vainly to pacify him. All the men-servants, grooms, and helpers, were drawn up in line along the wall, and greeted Tregarva, whom they all heartily liked, with sly and sorrowful looks of warning,
‘Here, you sir; you — look at this! Is this the way you repay me? I, who have kept you out of the workhouse, treated you like my own child? And then to go and write filthy, rascally, Radical ballads on me and mine! This comes of your Methodism, you canting, sneaking hypocrite! — you viper — you adder — you snake — you —!’ And the squire, whose vocabulary was not large, at a loss for another synonym, rounded off his oration by a torrent of oaths; at which Argemone, taking Honoria’s hand, walked proudly out of the room, with one glance at Lancelot of mingled shame and love. ‘This is your handwriting, you villain! you know it’ (and the squire tossed the fatal paper across the table); ‘though I suppose you’ll lie about it. How can you depend on fellows who speak evil of their betters? But all the servants are ready to swear it’s your handwriting.’
‘Beg your pardon, sir,’ interposed the old butler, ‘we didn’t quite say that; but we’ll all swear it isn’t ours.’
‘The paper is mine,’ said Tregarva.
‘Confound your coolness! He’s no more ashamed of it than — Read it out, Smith, read it out every word; and let them all hear how this pauper, this ballad-singing vagabond, whom I have bred up to insult me, dares to abuse his own master.’
‘I have not abused you, sir,’ answered Tregarva. ‘I will be heard, sir!’ he went on in a voice which made the old man start from his seat and clench his fist but he sat down again. ‘Not a word in it is meant for you. You have been a kind and a good master to me. Ask where you will if I was ever heard to say a word against you. I would have cut off my right hand sooner than write about you or yours. But what I had to say about others lies there, and I am not ashamed of it.’
‘Not against me? Read it out, Smith, and see if every word of it don’t hit at me, and at my daughters, too, by — worst of all! Read it out, I say!’
Lancelot hesitated; but the squire, who was utterly beside himself, began to swear at him also, as masters of hounds are privileged to do; and Lancelot, to whom the whole scene was becoming every moment more and more intensely ludicrous, thought it best to take up the paper and begin:—
‘A rough rhyme on a rough matter.
‘The merry brown hares came leaping
Over the crest of the hill,
Where the clover and corn lay sleeping
Under the moonlight still.
‘Leaping late and early,
Till under their bite and their tread
The swedes, and the wheat, and the barley,
Lay cankered, and trampled, and dead.
‘A poacher’s widow sat sighing
On the side of the white chalk bank,
Where under the gloomy fir-woods
One spot in the ley throve rank.
‘She watched a long tuft of clover,
Where rabbit or hare never ran;
For its black sour haulm covered over
The blood of a murdered man.
‘She thought of the dark plantation,
And the hares and her husband’s blood,
And the voice of her indignation
Rose up to the throne of God.
‘“I am long past wailing and whining —
I have wept too much in my life:
I’ve had twenty years of pining
As an English labourer’s wife.
‘“A labourer in Christian England,
Where they cant of a Saviour’s name,
And yet waste men’s lives like the vermin’s
For a few more brace of game.
‘“There’s blood on your new foreign shrubs, squire;
There’s blood on your pointer’s feet;
There’s blood on the game you sell, squire,
And there’s blood on the game you eat!”’
‘You villain!’ interposed the squire, ‘when did I ever sell a head of game?’
‘“You have sold the labouring man, squire,
Body and soul to shame,
To pay for your seat in the House, squire,
And to pay for the feed of your game.
‘“You made him a poacher yourself, squire,
When you’d give neither work nor meat;
And your barley-fed hares robbed the garden
At our starving children’s feet;
‘“When packed in one reeking chamber,
Man, maid, mother, and little ones lay;
While the rain pattered in on the rotting bride-bed,
And the walls let in the day;
‘“When we lay in the burning fever
On the mud of the cold clay floor,
Till you parted us all for three months, squire,
At the cursed workhouse door.
‘“We quarrelled like brutes, and who wonders?
What self-respect could we keep,
Worse housed than your hacks and your pointers,
Worse fed than your hogs and your sheep?”’
‘And yet he has the impudence to say he don’t mean me!’ grumbled the old man. Tregarva winced a good deal — as if he knew what was coming next; and then looked up reli............