GEORGE SHAW - The Complete Works

“Thrown down the wall!” exclaimed Lady Brandon, scarlet with indignation and pale with apprehension by turns. “What a disgraceful thing! Where are the police? Chester, will you come with me and see what they are doing? Sir Charles is no use. Do you think there is any danger?”

“There’s two police,” said the old man, “an’ him that lives at Sallust’s dar’d them stop him. They’re lookin’ on. An’ there’s a parson among ‘em. I see him pullin’ away at the wall with his own han’s.”

“I will go and see the fun,” said Chester.

Lady Brandon hesitated. But her anger and curiosity vanquished her fears. She overtook the bicycle, and they went together through the gates and by the highroad to the scene the old man had described. A heap of bricks and mortar lay in the roadway on each side of a breach in the newly built wall, over which Lady Brandon, from her eminence on horseback, could see, coming towards her across the pleasure ground, a column of about thirty persons. They marched three abreast in good order and in silence; the expression of all except a few mirthful faces being that of devotees fulfilling a rite. The gravity of the procession was deepened by the appearance of a clergyman in its ranks, which were composed of men of the middle class, and a few workmen carrying a banner inscribed THE SOIL or ENGLAND THE BIRTHRIGHT OF ALL HER PEOPLE. There were also four women, upon whom Lady Brandon looked with intense indignation and contempt. None of the men of the neighborhood had dared to join; they stood in the road whispering, and occasionally venturing to laugh at the jests of a couple of tramps who had stopped to see the fun, and who cared nothing for Sir Charles.

He, standing a little way within the field, was remonstrating angrily with a man of his own class, who stood with his back to the breach and his hands in the pockets of his snuff-colored clothes, contemplating the procession with elate satisfaction. Lady Brandon, at once suspecting that this was the man from Sallust’s House, and encouraged by the loyalty of the crowd, most of whom made way for her and touched their hats, hit the bay horse smartly with her whip and rode him, with a clatter of hoofs and scattering of clods, right at the snuff-colored enemy, who had to spring hastily aside to avoid her. There was a roar of laughter from the roadway, and the man turned sharply on her. But he suddenly smiled affably, replaced his hands in his pockets after raising his hat, and said:

“How do you do, Miss Carpenter? I thought you were a charge of cavalry.”

“I am not Miss Carpenter, I am Lady Brandon; and you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Smilash, if it is you that have brought these disgraceful people here.”

His eyes as he replied were eloquent with reproach to her for being no longer Miss Carpenter. “I am not Smilash,” he said; “I am Sidney Trefusis. I have just had the pleasure of meeting Sir Charles for the first time, and we shall be the best friends possible when I have convinced him that it is hardly fair to seize on a path belonging to the people and compel them to walk a mile and a half round his estate instead of four hundred yards between two portions of it.”

“I have already told you, sir,” said Sir Charles, “that I intend to open a still shorter path, and to allow all the well-conducted workpeople to pass through twice a day. This will enable them to go to their work and return from it; and I will be at the cost of keeping the path in repair.”

“Thank you,” said Trefusis drily; “but why should we trouble you when we have a path of our own to use fifty times a day if we choose, without any man barring our way until our conduct happens to please him? Besides, your next heir would probably shut the path up the moment he came into possession.”

“Offering them a path is just what makes them impudent,” said Lady Brandon to her husband. “Why did you promise them anything? They would not think it a hardship to walk a mile and a half, or twenty miles, to a public-house, but when they go to their work they think it dreadful to have to walk a yard. Perhaps they would like us to lend them the wagonette to drive in?”

“I have no doubt they would,” said Trefusis, beaming at her.

“Pray leave me to manage here, Jane; this is no place for you. Bring Erskine to the house. He must be—”

“Why don’t the police make them go away?” said Lady Brandon, too excited to listen to her husband.

“Hush, Jane, pray. What can three men do against thirty or forty?”

“They ought to take up somebody as an example to the rest.”

“They have offered, in the handsomest manner, to arrest me if Sir Charles will give me in charge,” said Trefusis.

“There!” said Lady Jane, turning to her husband. “Why don’t you give him — or someone — in charge?”

“You know nothing about it,” said Sir Charles, vexed by a sense that she was publicly making him ridiculous.

“If you don’t, I will,” she persisted. “The idea of having our ground broken into and our new wall knocked down! A nice state of things it would be if people were allowed to do as they liked with other peoples’ property. I will give every one of them in charge.”

“Would you consign me to a dungeon?” said Trefusis, in melancholy tones.

“I don’t mean you exactly,” she said, relenting. “But I will give that clergyman into charge, because he ought to know better. He is the ringleader of the whole thing.”

“He will be delighted, Lady Brandon; he pines for martyrdom. But will you really give him into custody?”

“I will,” she said vehemently, emphasizing the assurance by a plunge in the saddle that made the bay stagger.

“On what charge?” he said, patting the horse and looking up at her.

“I don’t care what charge,” she replied, conscious that she was being admired, and not displeased. “Let them take him up, that’s all.”

Human beings on horseback are so far centaurs that liberties taken with their horses are almost as personal as liberties taken with themselves. When Sir Charles saw Trefusis patting the bay he felt as much outraged as if Lady Brandon herself were being patted, and he felt bitterly towards her for permitting the familiarity. He uas relieved by the arrival of the procession. It halted as the leader came up to Trefusis, who said gravely:

“Gentlemen, I congratulate you on the firmness with which you have this day asserted the rights of the people of this place to the use of one of the few scraps of mother earth of which they have not been despoiled.”

“Gentlemen,” shouted an excited member of the procession, “three cheers for the resumption of the land of England by the people of England! Hip, hip, hurrah!”

The cheers were given with much spirit, Sir Charles’s cheeks becoming redder at each repetition. He looked angrily at the clergyman, now distracted by the charms of Lady Brandon, whose scorn, as she surveyed the crowd, expressed itself by a pout which became her pretty lips extremely.

Then a middleaged laborer stepped from the road into the field, hat in hand, ducked respectfully, and said: “Look ‘e here, Sir Charles. Don’t ‘e mind them fellers. There ain’t a man belonging to this neighborhood among ‘em; not one in your employ or on your land. Our dooty to you and your ladyship, and we will trust to you to do what is fair by us. We want no interlopers from Lunnon to get us into trouble with your honor, and—”

“You unmitigated cur,” exclaimed Trefusis fiercely, “what right have you to give away to his unborn children the liberty of your own?”

“They’re not unborn,” said Lady Brandon indignantly. “That just shows how little you know about it.”

“No, nor mine either,” said the man, emboldened by her ladyship’s support. “And who are you that call me a cur?”