Evening came, still he sat collapsed by the fireplace. From his window, among other objects, two dwellings were visible; one, distant four miles, was a whitewashed cottage, tiled instead of thatched, adorned with creepers and roses and very clean, but in other respects little superior to laborers' cottages.
The other, distant six long miles, was the Grassmere farmhouse, where the Mertons lived; the windows seemed burnished gold this evening.
In the small cottage lived a plain old woman—a Methodist. She was Meadows' mother.
She did not admire worldly people, still less envied them.
He was too good a churchman and man of business to permit conventicles or psalm-singing at odd hours in his house. So she preferred living in her own, which moreover was her own—her very own.
The old woman never spoke of her son, and checked all complaints of him, and snubbed all experimental eulogies of him.
Meadows never spoke of his mother, paid her a small allowance with the regularity and affectionate grace of clock-work; never asked her if she didn't want any more—would not have refused her if she had asked for double.
This evening, while the sun was shining with all his evening glory on Susan Merton's house, Meadows went slowly to his window and pulled down the blind, and drawing his breath hard shut the loved prospect out.
He then laid his hand upon the table, and he said: “I swear by the holy bread and wine I took last month that I will not put myself in the way of this strong temptation. I swear I will go no more to Grassmere Farm, never so long as I love Susan.” He added faintly, “Unless they send for me, and they won't do that, and I won't go of my own accord, I swear it. I have sworn it, however, and I swear it again—unless they send for me!”
Then he sat by the fire with his head in his hands—a posture he never was seen in before. Next he wrote a note and sent it hastily with a horse and cart to that small whitewashed cottage.
Old Mrs. Meadows sat in her doorway reading a theological work called “Believers' Buttons.” She took the note, looked at it. “Why, this is from John, I think; what can he have to say to me?” She put on her spectacles again, which she had taken off on the messenger first accosting her, and deliberately opened, smoothed and read the note. It ran thus:
“Mother, I am lonely. Come over and stay awhile with me, if you please.
“Your dutiful son, JOHN MEADOWS”
“Here, Hannah,” cried the old woman to a neighbor's daughter that was nearly always with her.
Hannah, a comely girl of fourteen, came running in.
“Here's John wants me to go over to his house. Get me the pen and ink, girl, out of the cupboard, and I'll write him a word or two any way.—Is there anything amiss?” said she quickly to the man.
“He came in with the black mare all in a lather, just after dinner, and he hasn't spoke to a soul since. That's all I know, missus. I think something has put him out, and he isn't soon put out, you know, he isn't.”
Hannah left the room, after placing the paper as she was bid.
“You will all be put out that trust to an arm of flesh, all of ye, master or man, Dick Messenger,” said the disciple of John Wesley somewhat grimly. “Ay, and be put out of the kingdom of heaven, too, if ye don't take heed.”
“Is that the news I'm to take back to Farnborough, missus?” said Messenger with quiet, rustic irony.
“No; I'll write to him.”
The old woman wrote a few lines reminding Meadows that the pursuit of earthly objects could never bring any steady comfort, and telling him that she should be lost in his great house—that it would seem quite strange to her to go into the town after so many years' quiet—but that if he was minded to come out and see her she would be glad to see him and glad of the opportunity to give him her advice, if he was in a better frame for listening to it than last time she offered it to him, and that was two years come Martinmas.
Then the old woman paused, next she reflected, and afterward dried her unfinished letter. And as she began slowly to fold it up and put it in her pocket—“Hannah,” cried she thoughtfully.
Hannah appeared in the doorway.
“I dare say—you may fetch—my cloak and bonnet. Why, if the wench hasn't got them on her arm. What, you made up your mind that I should go, then?”
“That I did,” replied Hannah. “Your warm shawl is in the cart, Mrs. Meadows.”
“Oh! you did, did you. Young folks are apt to be sure and certain. I was in two minds about it, so I don't see how the child could be sure,” said she, dividing her remark between vacancy and the person addressed—a grammatical privilege of old age.
“Oh! but I was sure, for that matter,” replied Hannah firmly.
“And what made the little wench so sure, I wonder?” said the old woman, now in her black bonnet and scarlet cloak.
“Why, la!” says Hannah, “because it's your son, ma'am—and you're his mother, Dame Meadows!”
CHAPTER VI.
JOHN MEADOWS had always been an active man, but now he was indefatigable. He was up at five every morning, and seemed ubiquitous; added a gray gelding to his black mare, and rode them both nearly off their legs. He surveyed land in half a dozen counties—he speculated in grain in half a dozen markets, and did business in shares. His plan in dealing with this ticklish speculation was simple. He listened to nothing anybody said, examined the venture himself, and, if it had a sound basis, bought when the herd was selling, and sold wherever the herd was buying. Hence, he bought cheap and sold dear.
He also lent money, and contrived to solve the usurers' problem—perfect security and huge interest.
He arrived at this by his own sagacity and the stupidity of mankind.
Mankind are not wanting in intelligence; but, as a body, they have one intellectual defect—they are muddle-heads.
Now these muddle-heads have agreed to say that land is in all cases five times a surer security for money lent than movables are. Whereas the fact is that sometimes it is and sometimes it is not. Owing to the above delusion the proprietor of land can always borrow money at four per cent, and other proprietors are often driven to give ten—twenty—thirty.
So John Meadows lent mighty little upon land, but much upon oat-ricks, wagons, advantageous leases and such things, solid as land and more easily convertible into cash.
Thus without risk he got his twenty per cent. Not that he appeared in these transactions—he had too many good irons in the fire to let himself be called a usurer.
He worked this business as three thousand respectable men are working it in this nation. He had a human money-bag, whose strings he went behind a screen and pulled.
