The Squire's Daughter Part 47

"And have you any idea what you will do next?" she questioned, after a pause.

"Not the ghost of an idea, Ruth. If I had not you to think of, I would go abroad and try my fortune in a freer air."

"Don't talk about going abroad," she said, with a little gasp.

"Yet it may have to come to it," he answered. "One feels bound hand and foot in a country like this."

"But are other countries any better?"

"The newer countries of the West and our own Colonies do not seem quite so hidebound. What with our land laws and our mineral dues, and our leasehold systems, and our patent laws, and our precedents, and our rights of way and all the bewildering entanglements of red-tapeism, one feels as helpless as a squirrel in a cage. One cannot walk out on the hills, or sit on the cliffs, or fish in the sea without permission of somebody. All the streams and rivers are owned; all the common land has been appropriated; all the minerals a hundred fathoms below the surface are somebody's by divine right. One wonders that the very atmosphere has not been staked out into freeholds."

"But things are as they have always been, dear," Ruth said quietly.

"No, not always," he said, with a laugh.

"Well, for a very long time, anyhow. And, after all, they are no worse for us than for other people."

He did not reply to this remark. Getting angry with the social order did not mend things, and he had no wish to carp and cavil when no good could come of it.

Within the little cottage everything was ready for the evening meal. The kettle was singing on the hob, the table was laid, the food ready to be brought in.

"It is delightful to be home again," Ralph said, throwing himself into his easy-chair. "After all, there's no place like home."

"And did you like London?"

"Yes and no," he answered meditatively. "It is a very wonderful place, and I might grow to be fond of it in time. But it seemed to be so terribly lonely, and then one's vision seemed so cramped. One could only look down lines of streets--you are shut in by houses everywhere. The sun rose behind houses, set behind houses. You wanted to see the distant s.p.a.ces, to look across miles of country, to catch glimpses of the far-off hills, but the houses shut out everything. Oh, it is a lonely place!"

"And yet it is crowded with people?"

"And that adds to the feeling of loneliness," he replied. "You are jostled and b.u.mped on every side, and you know n.o.body. Not a face in all the thousands you recognise."

"I should like to see it all some day."

"Some day you shall," he said. "If ever I grow rich enough you shall have a month there. But let us not talk of London just now. Has anything happened since I went away?"

"Nothing at all, Ralph."

"And has n.o.body been to see you?"

"n.o.body except Mary Telfer. She has come in most days, and always like a ray of sunshine."

"She is a very cheerful little body," Ralph said, and then began to attack his supper.

A few minutes later he looked up and said--

"Did you ever hear the old saying, Ruth, that one has to go from home to hear news?"

"Why, of course," she said, with a laugh. "Who hasn't?"

"I had rather a remarkable ill.u.s.tration of the old saw this morning."

"Indeed?"

"I had to go to London to learn that Hillside Farm is for sale."

"For sale, Ralph?"

"So Sir John Liskeard told me. I warrant that n.o.body in St. Goram knows."

"Are you very sorry?" she questioned.

"Not a bit. The squire squeezed his tenants for all they were worth, and now the money-lenders are squeezing him. It's only poetic justice, after all."

"Yet surely he is to be pitied?"

"Well, yes. Every man is to be pitied who fools away his money on the Turf and on other questionable pursuits, and yet when the pinch comes you cannot help saying it serves him right."

"But n.o.body suffers alone, Ralph."

"I know that," he answered, the colour mounting suddenly to his cheeks.

"But as far as his son Geoffrey is concerned, it may do him good not to have unlimited cash."

"I was not thinking of Geoffrey. I was thinking of Miss Dorothy."

"It may do her good also," he said, a little savagely. "Women are none the worse for knowing the value of a sovereign."

For several minutes there was silence; then Ruth said, without raising her eyes--

"I wish we were rich, Ralph."

"For why?" he questioned with a smile, half guessing what was in her mind.

"We would buy Hillside Farm."

"You would like to go back there again to live?"

"Shouldn't I just! Oh, Ralph, it would be like heaven!"

"I'm not so sure that I should like to go back," he said, after a long pause.

"No?" she questioned.

"Don't you think the pain would outweigh the pleasure?"

"Oh no. I think father and mother wander through the orchard and across the fields still, and I should feel nearer to them there; and I'm sure it would make heaven a better place for them if they knew we were back in the old home."

"Ah, well," he said, with a sigh, "that is a dream we cannot indulge in.

Sir John Liskeard asked me why I did not buy it."