The Honour of the Clintons Part 19

And yet no intellectual demands would have been made of a man like John Spence that would have shown him to disadvantage if he had not been able to meet them. His simple modesty would have fared better than Bobby Trench's superficial smartness, because he would never have tried to s.h.i.+ne, and, failing, made a parade of his ignorance. He would have been tried by other tests, and come through them.

It was by these other tests that Bobby Trench stood or fell with Mrs.

Clinton, not by his lack of intellectual interests.

What did he ask of life for himself?

A good time.

How did he stand with regard to the wealth and position which were the unacknowledged cause of his being where he was? Were they to be held as opportunities?

Yes, for giving him a good time.

What had he to bestow on others?

Luncheons, dinners, suppers, boxes at theatres, motor trips, yachting trips--all the material for a good time--on his equals; money tips, drinks, an occasional patronising cigar, on such of his inferiors as served or pleased him, so that he might imagine them also to be having a good time, according to their degree.

What did he demand from those of whom he made his friends?

a.s.sistance in the great aim of having a good time, which cannot be enjoyed alone. Nothing beyond that; no steadfastness in friends.h.i.+p, no character; only the power to amuse or to share amus.e.m.e.nt.

That was Bobby Trench, as he revealed himself from day to day to the woman whom he treated with almost patronising attention, and considered a nonent.i.ty. Whether he so revealed himself to Joan there was nothing yet to show; but it was unlikely that she would have so clear a vision, or indeed that a good time, if he could persuade her that it was in his power to offer it, would not appeal to her, at her age, as of more importance than her mother could have desired.

Joan scanned Nancy's face on her return home for signs of relenting, and of a story completed. Neither appeared. Nancy kissed her lightly, and said, "We've had an awfully cold journey." Joan's heart sank again.

"How did you enjoy yourself?" she asked.

"Oh, awfully. It is a splendid great house, bigger than this, and much older. There were a lot of people staying there. We danced in the ball-room every night, and had great fun. d.i.c.k's leg is pretty well right now, though he had to shoot from a pony. How is Mr. Trench?"

The bald sentences marked the gulf that had opened between them. And there had not been a word of John Spence.

He dined at Kencote that night. Joan saw how much in love he was with Nancy; and indeed it was plain to everybody. The Squire was in the highest state of good humour. He had had no more trouble with Joan, and no longer sulked with her, having frequently made a third or fourth in the society of the morning-room, and judged everything to be going on there as he would have had it. And now there was this other affair, going also exactly as he would have it. He felt that Providence was busily at work on his behalf, and showed that it had the welfare of the landed interest, in a general sort of way, at heart.

The landed interest, though, had to keep a look-out on its own account, if those responsible were to be properly treated by the rank and file partly concerned in its continuance. There was a slight set-back the next morning, which the Squire took more to heart than seemed warranted.

The under-keeper, Gotch, who had come to Humphrey's rescue in the wood, and behaved well in the affair generally, had been thanked, and told that some substantial recognition of his merits would be considered, and in due course certainly made.

The Squire now had the satisfaction of being able to see his way to a more handsome reward than he had at first thought of, or than was, indeed, called for in the case of a man who had merely acted well in the course of his duty. But he prided himself on taking an interest in the welfare of all his servants; he was accustomed to say that he was not like those who treated them as machines; and he was genuinely pleased that circ.u.mstances brought it about that he could do Gotch a very good turn, also at the prospect of telling him so.

Gotch came to see him, on summons, in his business room. He was a fine specimen of country-bred manhood, about thirty years of age, upright and clean of limb, with a resourceful look on his open, weather-tanned face, and speech quiet, but readier and more direct than is usual with men of his cla.s.s. He stood in his well-kept velveteens, cap in hand before his master, and looked him in the face when he addressed him.

"Well, Gotch," said the Squire, taking up his usual position in front of the fire. "I hear you've been making love, what?"

"Yes, sir," said Gotch, dropping his eyes for a moment.

"Clark, eh? Lady Susan Clinton's maid. Well, she seems a very respectable young woman, from what I've seen of her, and her ladys.h.i.+p tells me she's saved a bit of money, which is satisfactory, what? And I dare say you've saved a bit yourself."

"Yes, sir."

"When do you want to get married?"

The question was asked with business-like curtness, and was answered as shortly. "Soon as possible, sir."

"Yes. Well now, I've been turning things over in my mind, Gotch. I told you that I should do something for you, to mark my appreciation of the way you behaved in the affair with those scoundrels in Buckle Wood.

In one way, you only did your duty, as anybody in my employ is expected to do it; but that's not the way I look at things. Those who do well by me--I like to do well by them; and there's not much doubt that if you hadn't--or somebody hadn't--hit that ruffian on the head--and just at the moment you did, too, by George--it might have gone very hard for Mr. Humphrey. I don't like to think of what would have happened."

"Thank you, sir," said Gotch, as there came a pause in the flow of eloquence.

"Very well, then. You want to get married. In the ordinary way you couldn't just yet, because there isn't a cottage. Now, Gotch, I'll build you a cottage. I've been talking it over with Captain Clinton, and we've decided to do that. There's a site in Buckle Wood about a hundred yards in from the gate on the Bathgate Road that'll be the very thing. I dare say you know the place I mean--that clearing hard by the brook. You shall have a good six-roomed house and a nice bit of garden and so forth, and everything that you can want for bringing up a family. Ha! ha! must look forward a bit, you know, in these matters.

And there you'll be till the time comes when--well, I won't make any promises, and Rattray isn't an old man yet--but when he comes to the end of his time, if you go on as you've begun, you take his place as head-keeper. And let me tell you that head-keeper on a place like Kencote is about as good a job as any man has a right to look forward to. You'll follow some good men--men that have been written about in books, amongst them--and I believe you'll fill the place as well as any of them. You've got that to look forward to, Gotch, and in the meantime you'll be very nearly as well off as Rattray. In fact, your house will be a better house than his. We did think of moving him there and putting you into his cottage, but decided not. Now what have you got to say, Gotch? Will that meet your views?"

Gotch turned his cap in his hands. "Well, sir," he said. "I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you and Captain Clinton too. It's a handsome return for what I done, and kindly thought of."

"Well, we think kindly of you, Gotch," said the Squire. "I hope we think kindly of all the people on the place, and do what we can for their happiness. But we owe you something special, and it's right that we should _do_ something special."

It was not, in fact, anything remarkably self-sacrificing that the Squire intended to do. There was a dearth of cottages at Kencote, as there is on so many otherwise well-managed country estates. Young people who wished to marry were sometimes prevented from doing so for years, and there were cases of overcrowding in existing cottages, which, while not amounting to a scandal, might possibly be worked up into one by hostile critics. A new medical officer of health, residing outside the sphere of the Squire's social influence, and more than suspected of Radical tendencies, had caused notices to be served during the past year; and, worse than that, a London journalist spending his holidays at a farmhouse just outside the manor of Kencote had poked his nose in where he had no business to take it, and written a very one-sided article on the depopulation of rural England, with Kencote and its owner as a text. The Squire had been greatly scandalised, and would have rushed instantly into print had not d.i.c.k's cooler head restrained him. Unfair and ill-informed as both of them judged the article to be, there was enough truth in it to give the enemy a handle.

There _was_ overcrowding, though not to any serious extent; and there _was_ a dearth of cottage accommodation.

"Much better build a few, and stop their mouths," said d.i.c.k.

"It doesn't pay to build cottages," said the Squire. "It can't pay, with these ridiculous bye-laws."

"Can't be helped," said d.i.c.k. "We can afford to make this property a model one up to a point, and we'd much better take the bone out of their mouths. It isn't a very big one. It will only cost us a few hundreds to satisfy everybody. And they'll like our doing it less than anything. Besides, we've got to do something. That fellow Moxon has a wife and five children sleeping in two rooms, and that sort of thing simply doesn't do now-a-days."

The Squire looked at him suspiciously. "I think Virginia has been putting some of her American notions into your head," he said. "It did well enough in my grandfather's time, and he was much ahead of his time in that sort of thing. He built model cottages before anybody, almost, and Kencote has always been considered----"

"Oh, well, we needn't go into all that," interrupted d.i.c.k. "Moxon has been served with a notice, and if we don't do something for him we shall lose him. Let's be ahead of _our_ time. There hasn't been a brick laid on the place for fifty years or more, except at the home farm and the stables here. It won't do any harm to improve the property in that way, and we've got the money in hand. We might begin with another keeper's cottage. We ought to have somebody in Buckle Wood."

And that was how it all came to fit in so nicely with the reward due to Gotch, turning his cap round in his hands in front of his master.

"Well, sir," said Gotch, "if I was thinking of keeping to what I've been doing--and comfortable enough at it under you and Captain Clinton--for the rest of my life, nothing wouldn't have suited me better, and I take leave to thank you for it. But as you was so good as to say you was going to do something substantial for me, me and 'er talked it over, and we were going to ask you if you'd help us to get over to Canada, to start farming. She's got a brother there what's doing well, and I'd look to do as well as him if I could get a fair start."

The Squire heard him out, but his heavy brows came together, and by the end of the speech had met in a frown of displeasure. One of the points made by the London journalist had been that the best blood and muscle of the countryside was being drafted overseas, because by the selfishness of landowners there was no room for them in rural England; and here was a man for whom room was being made in the most generous manner, who wished to join in the altogether unnecessary stampede.

"Canada!" he echoed impatiently. "I think you fellows think that the soil is made of gold in Canada. What do _you_, of all people, want to go dancing off to Canada for? You're not a practical farmer, and even if you were there'd be better chances for you in the old country than in all the Canadas in the world."

"Well, you know more about these things than I do, sir," said Gotch respectfully. "And I don't say as I should want to go if it was all in the air like. But there's 'er brother's offer open to me. He'll put me into the way of doing as well as he done himself, if I can take a bit of money out with me. He's a well-to-do man, and he wasn't no better than me when he went over there ten years ago."

"Well, and ain't I giving you the offer of being a well-to-do man, without pulling up stakes and starting again in a new country? What more can a man want than to have a good home and situation secured to him, on which he can marry and bring up a family, and work that he's fitted for and likes? You do like your work, don't you?"

"Yes, sir, I should like it better than anything, if----"

"If what?"

"Well, I hope you won't take it amiss what I says, sir; but every man what's worth anything likes to be his own master, sir. It don't mean that he's any complaint to make of them as he serves; and I haven't no complaint--far otherwise. I've done my best by you, sir, and knowed as I should get credit for it, and be well treated, as I 'ave been most handsome, by your kind offer. But it isn't just what I want, sir, and I make bold to say so, hoping not to be misunderstood."

"Oh, you're not misunderstood," said the Squire, unsoftened by this straightforward speech. "The fact is that you've got some pestilent socialistic notion in your head that I'm very sorry to see there. I didn't think it of you, Gotch, and I don't like it. I don't like it at all. It's ungrateful."

"I'm sure I shouldn't wish to be that, sir."