Hodge and His Masters | Page 7

boom!--splash and hiss, as the hail rushed
along the narrow street.
CHAPTER II

LEAVING HIS FARM
A large white poster, fresh and glaring, is pasted on the wall of a barn
that stands beside a narrow country lane. So plain an advertisement,
without any colour or attempt at 'display,' would be passed unnoticed
among the endless devices on a town hoarding. There nothing can be
hoped to be looked at unless novel and strange, or even
incomprehensible. But here the oblong piece of black and white
contrasts sufficiently in itself with red brick and dull brown wooden
framing, with tall shadowy elms, and the glint of sunshine on the
streamlet that flows with a ceaseless murmur across the hollow of the
lane. Every man that comes along stays to read it.
The dealer in his trap--his name painted in white letters on the
shaft--pulls up his quick pony, and sits askew on his seat to read. He
has probably seen it before in the bar of the wayside inn, roughly hung
on a nail, and swaying to and fro with the draught along the passage.
He may have seen it, too, on the handing-post at the lonely cross-roads,
stuck on in such a manner that, in order to peruse it, it is necessary to
walk round the post. The same formal announcement appears also in
the local weekly papers--there are at least two now in the smallest
place--and he has read it there. Yet he pauses to glance at it again, for
the country mind requires reiteration before it can thoroughly grasp and
realise the simplest fact. The poster must be read and re-read, and the
printer's name observed and commented on, or, if handled, the
thickness of the paper felt between thumb and finger. After a month or
two of this process people at last begin to accept it as a reality, like
cattle or trees--something substantial, and not mere words.

The carter, with his waggon, if he be an elderly man, cries 'Whoa!' and,
standing close to the wall, points to each letter with the top of his
whip--where it bends--and so spells out 'Sale by Auction.' If he be a
young man he looks up at it as the heavy waggon rumbles by, turns his
back, and goes on with utter indifference.
The old men, working so many years on a single farm, and whose
minds were formed in days when a change of tenancy happened once in
half a century, have so identified themselves with the order of things in
the parish that it seems to personally affect them when a farmer leaves
his place. But young Hodge cares nothing about his master, or his
fellow's master. Whether they go or stay, prosperous or decaying, it
matters nothing to him. He takes good wages, and can jingle some
small silver in his pocket when he comes to the tavern a mile or so
ahead; so 'gee-up' and let us get there as rapidly as possible.
An hour later a farmer passes on horseback; his horse all too broad for
his short legs that stick out at the side and show some inches of
stocking between the bottom of his trousers and his boots. A sturdy,
thick-set man, with a wide face, brickdust colour, fringed with close-cut
red whiskers, and a chest so broad he seems compelled to wear his coat
unbuttoned. He pulls off his hat and wipes his partly bald head with a
coloured handkerchief, stares at the poster a few minutes, and walks his
horse away, evidently in deep thought. Two boys--cottagers'
children--come home from school; they look round to see that no one
observes, and then throw flints at the paper till the sound of footsteps
alarms them.
Towards the evening a gentleman and lady, the first middle-aged, the
latter very young--father and daughter--approach, their horses seeming
to linger as they walk through the shallow stream, and the cool water
splashes above their fetlocks. The shooting season is near at hand,
Parliament has risen, and the landlords have returned home. Instead of
the Row, papa must take his darling a ride through the lanes, a little
dusty as the autumn comes on, and pauses to read the notice on the wall.
It is his neighbour's tenant, not his, but it comes home to him here. It is
the real thing--the fact--not the mere seeing it in the papers, or the

warning hints in the letters of his own steward. 'Papa,' is rather quiet for
the rest of the ride. Ever since he was a lad--how many years ago is
that?--he has shot with his neighbour's party over this farm, and
recollects the tenant well, and with that friendly feeling that grows up
towards what we see year after year. In a day or two