The American Senator Part 76

"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 pa.s.sed 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 is Shugborough," said Sir George, "and there is John Runce, the occupier, on his pony. He at any rate is a model farmer." As he spoke Mr. Runce slowly trotted up to them touching his hat, and Mr. Gotobed recognized the man who had declined to sit next to him at the hunting breakfast. Runce also thought that he knew the gentleman. "Do you hunt to-morrow, Mr. Runce?" asked Sir George.

"Well, Sir George, no; I think not. I b'lieve I must go to Rufford and hear that fellow Scrobby get it hot and heavy."

"We seem all to be going that way. You think he'll be convicted, Sir?"

"If there's a juryman left in the country worth his salt, he'll be convicted," said Mr. Runce, almost enraged at the doubt. "But that other fellow;--he's to get off. That's what kills me, Sir George."

"You're alluding to Mr. Goarly, Sir?" said the Senator.

"That's about it, certainly," said Runce, still looking very suspiciously at his companion.

"I almost think he is the bigger rogue of the two," said the Senator.

"Well," said Runce; "well! I don't know as he ain't. Six of one and half a dozen of the other! That's about it." But he was evidently pacified by the opinion.

"Goarly is certainly a rascal all round," continued the Senator.

Runce looked at him to make sure whether he was the man who had uttered such fearful blasphemies at the breakfast-table. "I think we had a little discussion about this before, Mr. Runce."

"I am very glad to see you have changed your principles, Sir."

"Not a bit of it. I am too old to change my principles, Mr. Runce.

And much as I admire this country I don't think it's the place in which I should be induced to do so." Runce looked at him again with a scowl on his face and with a falling mouth. "Mr. Goarly is certainly a blackguard."

"Well;--I rather think he is."

"But a blackguard may have a good cause. Put it in your own case, Mr.

Runce. If his Lordship's pheasants ate up your wheat--"

"They're welcome;--they're welcome! The more the merrier. But they don't. Pheasants know when they're well off."

"Or if a crowd of hors.e.m.e.n rode over your fences, don't you think--"

"My fences! They'd be welcome in my wife's bedroom if the fox took that way. My fences! It's what I has fences for,--to be ridden over."

"You didn't exactly hear what I have to say, Mr. Runce."

"And I don't want. No offence, sir, if you be a friend of my Lord's;--but if his Lordship was to say hisself that Goarly was right, I wouldn't listen to him. A good cause,--and he going about at dead o'night with his pockets full of p'ison! Hounds and foxes all one!--or little childer either for the matter o' that, if they happened on the herrings!"

"I have not said his cause was good, Mr. Runce."

"I'll wish you good evening, Sir George," said the farmer, reining his pony round. "Good evening to you, sir." And Mr. Runce trotted or rather ambled off, unable to endure another word.

"An honest man, I dare say," said the Senator.

"Certainly;--and not a bad specimen of a British farmer."

"Not a bad specimen of a Briton generally;--but still, perhaps, a little unreasonable." After that Sir George said as little as he could, till he had brought the Senator back to the hall.

"I think it's all over now," said Lady Penwether to Miss Penge, when the gentlemen had left them alone in the afternoon.

"I'm sure I hope so,--for his sake. What a woman to come here by herself, in that way!"

"I don't think he ever cared for her in the least."

"I can't say that I have troubled myself much about that," replied Miss Penge. "For the sake of the family generally, and the property, and all that, I should be very very sorry to think that he was going to make her Lady Rufford. I dare say he has amused himself with her."

"There was very little of that, as far as I can learn;--very little encouragement indeed! What we saw here was the worst of it. He was hardly with her at all at Mistletoe."

"I hope it will make him more cautious;--that's all," said Miss Penge. Miss Penge was now a great heiress, having had her lawsuit respecting certain shares in a Welsh coal-mine settled since we last saw her. As all the world knows she came from one of the oldest Commoner's families in the West of England, and is, moreover, a handsome young woman, only twenty-seven years of age. Lady Penwether thinks that she is the very woman to be mistress of Rufford, and I do not know that Miss Penge herself is averse to the idea. Lord Rufford has been too lately wounded to rise at the bait quite immediately; but his sister knows that her brother is impressionable and that a little patience will go a long way. They have, however, all agreed at the hall that Arabella's name shall not again be mentioned.

CHAPTER XV.

SCROBBY'S TRIAL.

Rufford was a good deal moved as to the trial of Mr. Scrobby. Mr.

Scrobby was a man who not long since had held his head up in Rufford and had the reputation of a well-to-do tradesman. Enemies had perhaps doubted his probity; but he had gone on and prospered, and, two or three years before the events which are now chronicled, had retired on a competence. He had then taken a house with a few acres of land, lying between Rufford and Rufford Hall,--the property of Lord Rufford, and had commenced genteel life. Many in the neighbourhood had been astonished that such a man should have been accepted as a tenant in such a house; and it was generally understood that Lord Rufford himself had been very angry with his agent. Mr. Scrobby did not prosper greatly in his new career. He became a guardian of the poor and quarrelled with all the Board. He tried to become a munic.i.p.al counsellor in the borough, but failed. Then he quarrelled with his landlord, insisted on making changes in the grounds which were not authorised by the terms of his holding, would not pay his rent, and was at last ejected,--having caused some considerable amount of trouble. Then he occupied a portion of his leisure with spreading calumnies as to his Lordship, and was generally understood to have made up his mind to be disagreeable. As Lord Rufford was a sportsman rather than anything else Scrobby studied how he might best give annoyance in that direction, and some time before the Goarly affair had succeeded in creating considerable disturbance. When a man will do this pertinaciously, and when his selected enemy is wealthy and of high standing, he will generally succeed in getting a party round him. In Rufford there were not a few who thought that Lord Rufford's pheasants and foxes were a nuisance,--though probably these persons had never suffered in any way themselves. It was a grand thing to fight a lord,--and so Scrobby had a party.

When the action against his Lordship was first threatened by Goarly, and when it was understood that Scrobby had backed him with money, there was a feeling that Scrobby was doing rather a fine thing. He had not, indeed, used his money openly, as the Senator had afterwards done; but that was not Scrobby's way. If Goarly had been ill-used any help was legitimate, and the party as a party was proud of their man.

But when it came to pa.s.s that poison had been laid down, "wholesale"

as the hunting men said, in Dillsborough Wood, in the close vicinity of Goarly's house, then the party hesitated. Such strategy as that was disgusting;--but was there reason to think that Scrobby had been concerned in the matter? Scrobby still had an income, and ate roast meat or boiled every day for his dinner. Was it likely that such a man should deal in herrings and strychnine?

Nickem had been at work for the last three months, backed up by funds which had latterly been provided by the lord's agent, and had in truth run the matter down. Nickem had found out all about it, and in his pride had resigned his stool in Mr. Masters' office. But the Scrobby party in Rufford could not bring itself to believe that Nickem was correct. That Goarly's hand had actually placed the herrings no man either at Rufford or Dillsborough had doubted. Such was now Nickem's story. But of what avail would be the evidence of such a man as Goarly against such a man as Scrobby? It would be utterly worthless unless corroborated, and the Scrobby party was not yet aware how clever Nickem had been. Thus all Rufford was interested in the case.

Lord Rufford, Sir George Penwether, his Lordship's agent, and Mr.

Gotobed, had been summoned as witnesses,--the expenditure of money by the Senator having by this time become notorious; and on the morning of the trial they all went into the town in his Lordship's drag. The Senator, as the guest, was on the box-seat with his Lordship, and as they pa.s.sed old Runce trotting into Rufford on his nag, Mr. Gotobed began to tell the story of yesterday's meeting, complaining of the absurdity of the old farmer's anger.

"Penwether told me about it," said the Lord.

"I suppose your tenant is a little crazy."

"By no means. I thought he was right in what he said, if I understood Penwether."