It Is Never Too Late to Mend Part 1

It Is Never Too Late to Mend.

by Charles Reade.

CHAPTER I.

George Fielding cultivated a small farm in Berks.h.i.+re.

This position is not so enviable as it was. Years ago, the farmers of England, had they been as intelligent as other traders, could have purchased the English soil by means of the huge percentage it offered them.

But now, I grieve to say, a farmer must be as sharp as his neighbors, or like his neighbors he will break. What do I say? There are soils and situations where, in spite of intelligence and sobriety, he is almost sure to break; just as there are shops where the lively, the severe, the industrious, the lazy, are fractured alike.

This last fact I make mine by perambulating a certain great street every three months, and observing how name succeeds to name as wave to wave.

Readers hardened by the _Times_ will not perhaps go so far as to weep over a body of traders for being reduced to the average condition of all other traders. But the individual trader, who fights for existence against unfair odds, is to be pitied whether his shop has plate gla.s.s or a barn door to it; and he is the more to be pitied when he is sober, intelligent, proud, sensitive, and unlucky.

George Fielding was all these, who, a few years ago, a.s.sisted by his brother William, filled "The Grove"--as nasty a little farm as any in Berks.h.i.+re.

Discontented as he was, the expression hereinbefore written would have seemed profane to young Fielding, for a farmer's farm and a sailor's s.h.i.+p have always something sacred in the sufferer's eyes, though one sends one to jail, and the other the other to Jones.

It was four hundred acres, all arable, and most of it poor sour land.

George's father had one hundred acres gra.s.s with it, but this had been separated six years ago.

There was not a tree, nor even an old stump to show for this word "Grove."

But in the country oral tradition still flourishes.

There had been trees in "The Grove," only the t.i.tle had outlived the timber a few centuries.

On the morning of our tale George Fielding might have been seen near his own homestead, conversing with the Honorable Frank Winchester.

This gentleman was a character that will be common some day, but was nearly unique at the date of our story.

He had not an extraordinary intellect, but he had great natural gayety, and under that he had enormous good sense; his good sense was really brilliant, he had a sort of universal healthy mind that I can't understand how people get.

He was deeply in love with a lady who returned his pa.s.sion, but she was hopelessly out of his reach, because he had not much money or expectations; instead of sitting down railing, or sauntering about whining, what did me the Honorable Frank Winchester? He looked over England for the means of getting this money, and not finding it there, he surveyed the globe and selected Australia, where, they told him, a little money turns to a deal, instead of dissolving in the hand like a lozenge in the mouth, as it does in London.

So here was an earl's son (in this age of commonplace events) going to Australia with five thousand pounds, as sheep farmer and general speculator.

He was trying hard to persuade George Fielding to accompany him as bailiff or agricultural adviser and manager.

He knew the young man's value, but to do him justice his aim was not purely selfish; he was aware that Fielding had a bad bargain in "The Grove," and the farmer had saved his life at great personal risk one day that he was seized with cramp bathing in the turbid waters of Cleve millpool, and he wanted to serve him in return. This was not his first attempt of the kind, and but for one reason perhaps he might have succeeded.

"You know me and I know you," said Mr. Winchester to George Fielding; "I must have somebody to put me in the way. Stay with me one year, and after that I'll square accounts with you about that thundering millpool."

"Oh! Mr. Winchester," said George, hastily and blus.h.i.+ng like fire, "that's an old story, sir?" with a sweet little half-cunning smile that showed he was glad it was not forgotten.

"Not quite," replied the young gentleman dryly; "you shall have five hundred sheep and a run for them, and we will both come home rich and consequently respectable."

"It is a handsome offer, sir, and a kind offer and like yourself, sir, but transplanting one of us," continued George, "dear me, sir, it's like taking up an oak tree thirty years in the ground--besides--besides--did you ever notice my cousin, Susanna, sir?"

"Notice her! why, do you think I am a heathen, and never go to the parish church? Miss Merton is a lovely girl; she sits in the pew by the pillar."

"Isn't she, sir?" said George.

Mr. Winchester endeavored to turn this adverse topic in his favor; he made a remark that produced no effect at the time. He said, "People don't go to Australia to die--they go to Australia to make money, and come home and marry--and it is what you must do--this "Grove" is a millstone round your neck. Will you have a cigar, farmer?"

George consented, premising, however, that hitherto he had never got beyond a yard of clay, and after drawing a puff or two he took the cigar from his mouth, and looking at it said, "I say, sir! seems to me the fire is uncommon near the chimbly." Mr. Winchester laughed; he then asked George to show him the blacksmith shop. "I must learn how to shoe a horse," said the honorable Frank.

"Well, I never!" thought George. "The first n.o.b in the country going to shoe a horse," but with his rustic delicacy he said nothing, and led Mr.

Winchester to the blacksmith's shop.

While this young gentleman is hammering nails into a horse's hoof, and Australia into an English farmer's mind, we must introduce other personages.

Susanna Merton was beautiful and good. George Fielding and she were acknowledged lovers, but marriage was not spoken of as a near event, and latterly old Merton had seemed cool whenever his daughter mentioned the young man's name.

Susanna appeared to like George, though not so warmly as he loved her; but at all events she accepted no other proffers of love. For all that she had, besides a host of admirers, other lovers besides George; and what is a great deal more singular (for a woman's eye is quick as lightning in finding out who loves her), there was more than one of whose pa.s.sion she was not conscious.

William Fielding, George's brother, was in love with his brother's sweetheart, but though he trembled with pleasure when she was near him, he never looked at her except by stealth; he knew he had no business to love her.

On the morning of our tale Susan's father, old Merton, had walked over from his farm to "The Grove," and was inspecting a field behind George's house, when he was accosted by his friend, Mr. Meadows, who had seen him, and giving his horse to a boy to hold had crossed the stubbles to speak to him.

Mr. Meadows was not a common man, and merits some preliminary notice.

He was what is called in the country "a lucky man"; everything he had done in life had prospered.

The neighbors admired, respected, and some of them even hated this respectable man, who had been a carter in the midst of them, and now at forty years of age was a rich corn-factor and land-surveyor.

"All this money cannot have been honestly got," said the envious ones among themselves; yet they could not put their finger on any dishonest action he had done. To the more candid the known qualities of the man accounted for his life of success.

This John Meadows had a cool head, an iron will, a body and mind alike indefatigable, and an eye never diverted from the great objects of sober industrious men--wealth and respectability. He had also the soul of business--method!

At one hour he was sure to be at church; at another, at market; in his office at a third, and at home when respectable men should be at home.

By this means Mr. Meadows was always to be found by any man who wanted to do business; and when you had found him, you found a man superficially coy perhaps, but at bottom always ready to do business, and equally sure to get the sunny side of it and give you the windy.

Meadows was generally respected; by none more than by old Merton, and during the last few months the intimacy of these two men had ripened into friends.h.i.+p; the corn-factor often hooked his bridle to the old farmer's gate, and took a particular interest in all his affairs.

Such was John Meadows.

In person he was a tall, stout man, with iron gray hair, a healthy, weather-colored complexion, and a ma.s.sive brow that spoke to the depth and force of the man's character.

"What, taking a look at the farm, Mr. Merton? It wants some of your gra.s.s put to it, doesn't it?"

"I never thought much of the farm," was the reply, "it lies cold; the sixty-acre field is well enough, but the land on the hill is as poor as death."

Now this idea, which Merton gave out as his, had dropped into him from Meadows three weeks before.

"Farmer," said Meadows, in an undertone, "they are thras.h.i.+ng out new wheat for the rent."