Chapter 3

"Just so," admitted Jack. "Not for a moment do my opinion in itself matter to anybody, Farmer; but if I'm so positive sure that I'm right, then it becomes a duty to voice myself, though no man likes voicing himself less than me. And, because I'm so sure, after due consideration of the pair of 'em, I be come afore you to make suggestions."

"Perhaps you want her yourself, Jack?" suggested Nicholas, pulling his grey beard and shutting one eye.

"Me!" laughed Cobley, much amused. "Do a toad want a bird of Paradise? No, no. She's a lovely piece, and she's got a kindly nature; but she's the humble, gentle sort, and what your son wants, if he's going to be a successful husband and not a failure, is a woman who'll be his equal in strength of character and hold her own. He's wilful, to say it kindly, and he's fond of the girls, and no doubt, with such a handsome face as his, he finds they be easy prey. You know him better than I do and you very well know if he's to be worthy of you and Little Silver he must have a strong partner to guide him right."

Nicholas laughed.

"You've given a lot of thought to it, I see," he said.

"Nothing to do else for the minute," answered Jack. "And I'm not saying a word against your Richard. He's pleased with himself and he sits a horse so amazing fine that it's a treat to look at him, because I understand such things; but being of a mind that Milly Boon ain't the perfect partner for him, I'm here--in friendship. Mind you, I wouldn't have thrust in if I hadn't happened to find out the girl's got no use for him. If she wanted him, 'twould be different and I should have kept my mouth shut, of course; but she do not, and if she takes him it will be for one reason only--to save her aunt. And that ain't going to lay the foundation of a happy marriage--is it? So I've ordained to chip in. And even so, I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't a firm proposition to make."

"What proposition can you make, Jack?" asked Mr. Bewes, loading his pipe again. "My son be sure as death he's found the right one at last, and he may be so right in his opinion as you. And, be it as it will, how are you going to come between me and Dicky?"

"If your own conscience don't, I cannot," allowed the other. "But, it's like this. Supposing, first, you grant as an honest man it would be an ugly thing to sacrifice a harmless woman to your boy's passion. Then you say, if I ain't going to gain no political advantage out of leaving Mrs. Pedlar rent-free in a valuable house, where do I come in?

"Well, you rich men are pushed as often for money as the poor ones. I know that, and a man may have fifty thousand behind him and yet be bothered for a couple of hundred. And so I say this. Let any match between Dick and Milly go forward clean and not dirty. If they be meant for each other, let him win her fair, as a decent man wants to win a woman, or not at all. That won't do him no hurt. And, meantime, since it may be a thorn in your side having Mrs. Pedlar there, I'll buy the house. There's nothing on your conscience that can forbid you to sell, and you can leave the old woman's fate to me."

Mr. Bewes didn't answer very quick. He looked at Jack and his mind moved fast, though his tongue did not.

At length, however, he spoke. He'd felt surprised to hear Jack was a moneyed man, for the general conclusion ran that he'd come back with nought; then, being hopeful, Mr. Bewes jumped to the other extreme and guessed perhaps that Cobley was rich after all and keeping his savings hid.

"Of course," he said, "I've thought of that, and there's more than one would make me a price to-morrow if I felt minded to sell."

"I'm sure there is," answered Jack. "It's a very handy little property if it was attended to."

"And more than an acre of good ground to it."

"Just over an acre--ground that be run to waste for years, but could be made good."

"And what would you feel like paying, Jack, if I was to see your point about my boy?" asked Bewes.

"You do see that point, master," answered Cobley, "because you're clever and straight, else you wouldn't stand where you do. When you was young, you wouldn't have drove no woman into a corner for love, nor yet married her on a sacrifice. And I dare swear, if Dicky saw it like that, he'd be a lot too proud to carry on, but start again and start fair. As to what I'll pay, if you're a seller, the price lies with you."

"I've thought to auction it," answered Mr. Bewes, which was true, because he had done so.

Jack nodded.

"I'd like none the less to buy it at a fair figure and save you the trouble. You'll be knowing, I expect, what would satisfy you in money down."

Then they talked for another solid hour, farmer trying to get Jack to name a price so as he might run it up, and Jacky determined not to do so.

In despair, at last, Nicholas said 'twas Cobley's for seven hundred pounds, well knowing the price ran about three hundred too high. In fact, Jack told him so; and then Bewes fetched his whisky bottle and they went at it again; and then they closed, and a good bit to farmer's astonishment, Cobley fetched a cheque-book out of his pocket and wrote a cheque on the spot as though to the manner born.

Four hundred and seventy-five pounds he paid, and as Nicholas Bewes confessed to Jack, 'twas only the money in his pocket put enough iron into him to stand up to his son, afterwards.

But what Nicholas might have to say to Richard didn't trouble Cobley over much. He got his receipt and Bewes promised the deed should be drawn when he saw his lawyer to Moreton next market-day.

So they parted tolerable good friends, and it was understood between 'em that Jack should tell Mrs. Pedlar how things stood at his own time and nobody should be told who the purchaser was.

It happened, however, that he did not tell Jane after all, for, going down from Bewes in the red of the sunset, Jack fell in with Milly Boon, whose gait was set for the farm. He passed her a good evening, then marked a world of woe in her face and the smudge of tears upon it, clear to see in the last of the light, so he bade her stand a moment and tell him why for she was going up the hill.

"'Tis private business, Mr. Cobley," she said, making to pass on; but he heard by the flutter in her speech she'd been weeping, and in his slow way held her back while he thought it out. He was got to know her tolerable well by now, so he commanded her to bide and listen.

"You don't pass, Milly," he said, "till you tell me why for you be going."

"To have tea along with Mrs. Bewes," she answered.

He didn't believe that, however.

"'Tis too late for tea," he said. "You'll be going up to tell Bewes you'll take his son if he'll let your aunt bide."

She didn't answer.

"So you can just turn round again and march home," went on Jack, "because the case is altered. 'Twas a very fine thought and worthy of you in a manner of speaking, Milly; but you can console yourself with your good intentions now; because, in a word, the house is sold, and it don't belong to farmer no more."

She stared and shook, and he touched her elbow and turned her back to the village.

"Go home and tell Mrs. Pedlar the house be sold," ordered Jack. "And you tell her also I've heard of the man that's bought it. She won't be called to do nought but stop there rent-free as before; and the man's pleased with his property and will work up the garden for his own purposes and mend the leaks and put on some fresh paint come spring."

Milly was too staggered to grasp it all at once, and by the time she began to see the blessed thing that was happening, Jack had gone.

So she went home light-foot with her sorrows beginning to fade and her heart beating happy again. And Mrs. Pedlar praised her God far into the night, though 'twas a full week before she could grasp the truth and wake care-free of a morning.

But she heard nought of the purchaser, and the mystery grew, because Mrs. Cobley heard nought either; and then there come a nice open sort of morning with just a promise of another spring in the air, and when Milly looked out of her chicket window, who should she see in their ruinous cabbage patch but Jack with his tools going leisurely to work to clean the dirty ground.

She told her aunt, and they talked a bit and come to a conclusion afore they asked him in to have a bite of breakfast.

"'Tis clear he's jobbing for the owner," said Jane Pedlar. "No doubt he'll very soon put a different face on the ground, such an orderly man as him, and such a lover of the soil; but I'm sorry in a way."

"Why for?" asked her niece. "A nicer man than Mr. Cobley don't walk."

"A very nice man indeed if it wasn't for his face," admitted the old woman, "and I've got to like even his face, because of his gentle and doggy eyes; but I'm sorry, because this shows only too clear the general opinion touching Mr. Cobley is the right one."

"And what's the general opinion?" inquired Milly.

"That he's come home so poor as he went off," answered Jane Pedlar. "Because if he'd saved a little money he wouldn't be doing rough work for another man."

Milly saw the force of that and said no more at the time.

And then Cobley spoke to his mother one night and owned to a gathering dejection.

"I like to see a job through," he said, "and I'm casting around pretty far and wide for a man that might be good enough for that girl. She's a beautiful and simple character, in my opinion, and her heart's as fine as her face; but it won't do for her to get a fellow who is reckless and too fond of himself. She must have the right one, who puts her first, and though there's a few decent chaps in the running, now they know Dicky Bewes is down and out, yet I wouldn't say there's just the chap anybody would choose for her."

Well, Mrs. Cobley looked at him with a good bit of astonishment, for such modesty she couldn't believe ever dwelt in a male. She knew, under promise of secrecy, that Jack was a tolerable rich man; but he'd bade her not breathe the fact.

And Mary Cobley knew something else also, which she couldn't very well tell her son till now, so she'd kept her secret; but when she heard as he was busy finding somebody as might be good enough for Milly Boon, the woman in her broke loose and she said a thing she'd never said afore.

"Of all zanies, you be the biggest in the parish," said Mrs. Cobley; "and however you had the wits to win a fortune and make hard-headed men in the West Indies believe in you, I'm gormed if I know, Jack!"

He was put about at that.

"Would you say as I didn't ought to meddle in her affairs no more?" he asked. "You see, I've comed to feel very kindly to the lovely creature, and I'd work my fingers to the bone to find the man worthy of her; but if I'm too pushing--"

"Pushing!" she said. "God's light! You be a lot too retreating, Jack, and always was. Because you've got a face full of character, unlike other men's, why for should you suppose 'twas a bug-a-boo to frighten the woman? Don't your heart look out of your eyes, you silly man? How old are you?"

"Forty," answered Jack.

"And she's twenty-five, ain't she?"

"Who?" asked Jack.

"You did out to be put in an asylum, though, my son," said Mrs. Cobley. "Milly Boon is the woman I'm aiming at, and it may or may not interest you to larn that she loves you better than anything on earth--you--you she loves, you gert tomfool!"

Jack looked as if he'd been struck by lightning and his pipe fell out of his mouth and broke on the hearth.

"'Tis most any odds you're mistook," he said, with a voice that showed what a shock he'd suffered. "Such things be contrary to nature."

"Nought's contrary to nature where a woman's concerned," answered Mrs. Cobley as one who knew. "They be higher than nature, and a young woman in love defies all things but her Maker--if not Him."

"I'll see," said Jack; and he went to see instanter.

Mrs. Pedlar was keeping her bed for the moment with a tissick to the tubes, and when the man got there he found Milly busy over the ancient woman's supper. And, as he told her, he was glad she happed to be alone, though sorry for the reason.

And then in his direct, queer way he said:

"What's this I hear tell from my mother, Milly? She says you be got to love me?"

And something in his great, hungry eyes, and the very words in his question made it so plain as need be to Milly Boon that Jack was more than glad to hear the news. And she went up to him and kissed him; and then he very near throttled her.

'Twas a most happy and restful affair altogether; and when, about two hours after, poor Mrs. Pedlar croaked out over their heads for her soup, and axed Milly where she was got to be, the maiden cried out:

"I be in Jack Cobley's arms, Aunt Jane, and 'tis him owns the house, and us be going to get married direckly minute!"

No. III

JOHN AND JANE

If you be built on a grand scale, there's always people to feel the greatness, and though, when you hap to be a knave, their respect is a bit one-sided, still there it is: greatness will be granted.

In the case of John Warner, he weren't a knave, but his greatness, so to call it, took the form of such a complete and wondrous selfishness that you was bound to own a touch of genius in the masterful way he bent all things to his purpose and came out top over his neighbours. The man was an only son, and what might have been chastened in his youth was fostered by a silly mother, who fell in love with his fine appearance and never denied him a pleasure she could grant. And his father weren't no wiser, so when, at five-and-twenty, he found himself an orphan and Wych Elm Farm his own, lock, stock, and barrel, young John Warner come to his kingdom with a steadfast determination to get the best he could for himself out of life and make it run to his own pattern so far as unsleeping wit of man could do.

He married a pretty woman with a bit of money and he altered a good few of his father's ways and used Jane Slowcombe's dowry to buy up a hundred acres alongside his own. The land had been neglected and wanted patience and cash; but where his lasting interests were concerned, John never lacked for one, nor stinted the other. He was a clever man and a charming man, and his cleverness and his charm appeared in many ways. Over the steel hand of sleepless selfishness John drew the velvet glove of good manners and nice speech. He created the false idea that he never wanted to do more than give and take in the properest spirit you could wish. He spoke the comfortablest words ever a farmer did speak to his fellow-creatures, and many a man was lost afore he knew it when doing business with John Warner, and never realised, till it came to the turn, how a bargain which sounded so well had somehow gone against him after all.

Of course, John prospered exceeding, for amongst his other gifts, he weren't afraid of work. He knew his business very well indeed, and always understood that it was worth his while to take pains with a beginner and paid him in the long run so to do. People felt a good bit interested in him, and though they knew there was a lot to hate in the man, yet they couldn't give a name to it exactly. When a fallen foe was furious and bearded John and shook a fist in his face, as sometimes happened, he'd look the picture of sorrow and amazement and express his undying regrets. But he never went back on nothing, and near though he might sail to the wind, none ever had a handle by which to drag him before the Law. 'Twas just the very genius of selfishness that sped him on his way victorious every time.

He never took no hand in public affairs, nor offered for the Borough Council, nor nothing like that. He might have been a useful man in Little Silver, where we didn't boast more brains than we needed, nor yet enough; but John Warner said he weren't one of the clever ones and felt very satisfied with them that were, and applauded such men as did a bit of work for nothing out of their public spirit. For praise, though cheap, is always welcome, and he had a great art to be generous with what cost him nothing.

He'd pay a man a thought above his market value if he judged him worth it, and he often said that on a farm like Wych Elm, where everything was carried out on the highest grade of farming, 'twas money in any young man's pocket to come to him at all. And nobody could deny that either. And he never meddled in his neighbour's affairs, or offered advice, or unfavourably criticised anything that happened outside his own boundaries.

One daughter only John Warner had, and that was all his family, and her mother struck the first stroke against his happiness and content, for she died and left him a widower at five-and-forty. She fell in a consumption, much to his regret, after they'd been wedded fifteen years; and their girl was called Jane after her, and 'twas noted that though sprung of such handsome parents, Jane didn't favour either but promised to be a very homely woman--a promise she fulfilled.

Her father trained her most industrious to be his right hand, and she grew up with a lively admiration for him and his opinions. Farming interested her a lot, and men mildly interested her; but among the hopeful young blades with an eye on the future who offered to keep company and so on, there was none Jane saw who promised to be a patch on her parent, and after his worldly wisdom and grasp of life and shrewd sense, she found the boys of her own age no better than birds in a hedge. Indeed she had no use for any among 'em, but made John Warner her god, as he meant she should do; for, as she waxed in strength and wits, he felt her a strong right hand. In fact, he took no small pains to identify her with himself for his own convenience, and secretly determined she shouldn't wed if he could help it. Little by little he poisoned her mind against matrimony, praised the independent women and showed how such were better off every way, with no husband and family to fret their lives and spoil their freedom.

Jane was one, or two-and-twenty by now--a pale, small-eyed maiden with a fine, strong body and a great appetite for manual work. There was no taint from her mother in her and she lived out of doors for choice and loved a hard job. She'd pile the dry-built, granite walls with any man, and do so much as him in a day; and folk, looking on her, foretold that she'd be rich beyond dreams, but never know how to get a pennyworth of pleasure out of all her money.

But Jane's one and only idol was her father, and for him she would have done anything in her power. She counted on him being good to live for ever, along of his cautious habits, and she'd give over all thought of any change in the home when the crash came and the even ripple of their lives was broke for her by a very unexpected happening.

Because, much to his own astonishment, John Warner found his mind dwelling on a wife once more--the last thing as ever he expected to happen to him. Indeed the discovery flustered the man not a little, and he set himself to consider such an upheaval most careful and weigh it, as he weighed everything, in the scales of his own future comfort and success. He was a calculating man in all things, and yet it came over him gradual and sure that Mrs. Bascombe had got something to her which made a most forcible appeal and awakened fires he thought were gone out for ever when his wife died. As for Nelly Bascombe, she was a widow and kept a shop-of-all-sorts in Little Silver and did well thereat, and Bascombe had been dead two years when his discovery dropped like a bolt out of a clear sky on John Warner.

It vexed him a bit at first and he put it away, after considering what an upstore a second wife would make in the snug and well-ordered scheme of his existence; but there it was and Nelly wouldn't be put away. So John examined the facts and came to the interesting conclusion that, in a manner of speaking, his own daughter was responsible for his fix. Because, being such a wintry fashion of female, she made all others of the sex shine by contrast, and her father guessed it was just her manly, hard, bustling way that showed up the feminine softness and charming voice and general appealing qualities of Nelly Bascombe.

Nelly was a tall, fine woman of forty years old. Her hair was thick and dark, her eyes a wondrous big pair and so grey as the mist, and her voice to poor Jane's was like a blackbird against a guinea-fowl. Farmer, he dropped in the shop pretty often to pass the time of day and measure her up; and for her part being a man-loving sort of woman, who had lost a good husband, but didn't see no very stark cause why she shouldn't find another, she discovered after a bit what was lurking in the farmer's mind. Then, like the rest of the parish, she wondered, for 'twas never thought that such an own-self man as Warner, and one so well suited by his daughter, would spoil his peace with another wife.

But nobody's cleverer to hide his nature than a lover, and Warner found himself burrowing into Nelly's life a bit and sizing up her character, though full of caution not to commit himself; and she was very near as clever as him, and got to weigh up his points, good and bad, and to feel along with such a man that life might be pleasant enough for a nature like hers. For she was a good manager with a saving disposition. She liked John's handsome appearance and reckoned the fifteen year between 'em would work to suit her. And, more than that, she hated her business, because a shop-of-all-sorts have got a smell to it like nothing else on earth, and Nelly found it cast her spirits down a bit as it always had done. She made no secret of this, and John Warner presently got to see she was friendly disposed towards him and might easily be had for the asking if he asked right. He took his time, however, and sounded Jane, where he well knew the pinch would come.

He gleaned her opinion casual on the subject of a woman here and there, and he found Jane thought well enough of Mrs. Bascombe, whose shop was useful and her prices well within reason. But it was a long time before he made up his mind, the problem being whether to tell Jane of the thing he was minded to do before he done it, or take the step first and break it to her after. In the end he reckoned it safer to do the deed and announce it as an accomplished fact; because he very well knew that she would take it a good bit to heart and hate with all her might any other female reigning at Wych Elm but herself.

And meanwhile, all unknown to farmer, Jane chanced to be having a bit of very mild amusement with a male on her own account.

Martin Ball was known as 'the busy man of Little Silver,' and none but had a good word for him. He was a yellow-whiskered, stout, red-faced and blue-eyed chap with enough energy to drive a steamship. The folk marvelled how he found time for all he undertook. He was Portreeve of the district--an ancient title without much to it nowadays--and he was huckster to a dozen farms for Okehampton Market. He also kept bees and coneys and ran a market-garden of two acres. He served on the Parish Council and he was vicar's warden. And numberless other small chores with money to 'em he also undertook and performed most successful. And then, at forty-two years of age, though not before, he began to feel a wife might be worked into his life with advantage, and only regretted the needful time to find and court the woman.

And even so, but for the temper of his old aunt, Mary Ball, who kept house for him, he would have been content to carry on single-handed.