Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/72

64 heads of the Parisians by her daring style of performance. Surely this must be Regine again? But Lenoir-Boisfleury? Is my police friend at her side then—giving her the protection of his name—and receiving her salary in return? It is not impossible.

“Well, I have written to Wilford. I spend Christmas in the old Manor Farm-house. There is to be more mirth they promise themselves than they have known for some years past.

“New Year’s Day—we are all to be fêted at the Grange. That good Mrs. Stephen! she has already decided which of her daughters is to be married to little Wilford, and which of her young gentlemen is to give his hand to my little god-daughter. She is a good woman; and she has been scheming too, I know, as to another wedding, to take place at an earlier date I presume. She thinks dear old Mr. Fuller’s second daughter and that Mr. Martin are quite cut out for each other!

“Who can tell how this will end?

“I will go to the farmhouse—I will look carefully into the dear child’s sweet face—if I see one glance that seems to bid me speak, I

“But I must stop for to-night. Past two o’clock, and the lamp going out. Let me close my book!”

caused my husband and myself to settle on a property of which we had rather unexpectedly become possessed in one of the largest counties in the north of England. Wild and extensive, remote from the county-town, or indeed any town, the sea and the moors cutting it off from society on one hand, and an enormous property in the hands of an unsocial proprietor as effectually doing so on the other, our children and ourselves looked forward with some dismay to the loss of the agreeable and varied society we had enjoyed in a very different part of England. Our new home was aptly described by one of them as “ten miles from everywhere.” However they as well as we fully responded to the now somewhat trite saying that “Property has its duties as well as its rights,” and we set forth in no desponding mood to take possession—perhaps even with some little feeling of pride in becoming landed proprietors and members of the genuine squirearchy. We had a very old and rambling house to make inhabitable, a wilderness to form into a trim garden, and, last not least, a tenantry whom we were very sincerely anxious to attach to us and to benefit. In this last we were successful; and I do not think the little history of the means we pursued can be uninteresting in these days, when such real zeal exists for benefiting the lower classes of society. All landed proprietors cannot build model cottages and mediæval schools, but all may exert an influence of a most beneficial character, with even small pecuniary means at their command. The day in which we are living is one of peculiar difficulty as regards the dealings of classes with each other. The acknowledged tendency of all European nations is towards democracy, though our insular position has staved off this evil—if we may venture to call that evil which seems, in the order of Providence, to be at least one of the phases through which the nations must pass in their progress to the unknown Hereafter—the old feudal feeling of the poor towards the upper classes has all but disappeared, though it is retained to a certain extent in the higher classes towards them. Antagonism is too often the consequence of this divergence on their part, and irritation arises in the mind of a landlord when he finds his schemes for benefiting his people received at best with indifference, and too often thwarted altogether, his schools unattended, and a disheartening ingratitude his sole return for much honest effort. Sometimes, again, a great return is expected for small mercies, and much subserviency required for doles of broth and flannel—one altogether disproportionate to the benefit conferred.

I determined from the beginning to take these people in hand in my own way. But I must begin at the beginning of my little history.

We brought with us from the south a staff of servants on whom we thought our comfort depended—treasures who, one and all, gave warning when they saw the wilderness we had brought them to, and that all was not exactly ready to their hands, and, as I learnt afterwards, frightened by there being a well-authenticated ghost-story attaching to the house. Their places were soon supplied by natives; the gardener we found there had been retained from the first.

The expenses of taking possession of this neglected property were enormous. In addition to our own house, every farm-house and its buildings required repairing, and the whole of the land wanted draining, and I felt that we must give up London and every expense that would take us from the place. We determined to throw our whole minds into the business we had undertaken, and to find our happiness in doing our duty in the position we were placed in. I was told that the village had been entirely spoiled by our predecessors, that its inhabitants were a dishonest, ungrateful crew, and had always had the habit of living on the Hall and pilfering all they could lay their hands on, and that, far from being as I supposed an unsophisticated set, they were up to all sorts of tricks. I had always had my own idea of how the power of influencing the poor should be obtained, and I determined to take these people in hand my own way. I argued thus: Human nature is the same in all classes; if I wished to obtain the affection of people in my own rank in life, how should I set about it? Should I not see them frequently, to become thoroughly acquainted with them, in the first instance, and then, by sympathy in their joys and sorrows, obtain their regard? I determined from the first never to give money when I visited in my village. It must act in two ways. I felt sure, in the first place, not being rich, it would make my visits fewer, and if I was looked upon as a mere doler of half-crowns, the expectation of this donation would, on their part, unconsciously perhaps, give them the feeling that they must give the money’s worth in flattery and humbug. A physician’s feeling, when he knows you have your guinea in your hand, will best explain what I mean, all but