He brooded over the map and the papers, the fine lace of his shirt cuff casting a little shimmering pattern as he traced the boundaries of this man’s holding and that, his eye all the while as keen, as calculating as a butcher’s studying a carcass.
‘I think you may do very well, Wichard. Even if half your Waste fellows have a legal claim—and that would be most extwaordinary bad luck—you’d still do well because there are so few landowners for it to be divided among. Miss Parsons, Fred Clopton, Abel Shipton— they’re the only ones worth considering; the rest own so little that when the Waste is shared out pwoportionally they’ll only get an acre or two extwa, and that pwobwably wubbish if you draw weasonable commissioners and make yourself civil to them. There’s another hint—the commissioners allot the land and some is good and some
is bad–-Enough said?’
‘I will take pains with the commissioners,’ Richard
said.
‘But tactfully, my fwiend, tactfully,’ said Mr Montague, lifting an elegant finger. ‘Once every hundwed years an absolutely incowuptible fellow gets an appointment and will scweam “Bwibewy” at the top of his voice at the first opportunity. So tact is needed there.’ He looked down at the table again. ‘This Cawoline Amelia Parsons —not old Captain Parsons’ daughter? She must be a hundwed!’
‘She’s eighty. The rector says she is dotty.’
‘Ah … there now. There might be something for you there, Wichard. She might be just sane enough to sign in favour of enclosure but not sane enough to look out for her wights. Enclosure is like wevolution, you know; full of opportunities for the wide-awake. Well now, that completes our pweliminary reconnaissance, I think. Now you must dwaw up your notice and get the signatures of all the other people who own land. I pwesume that everybody is agweed.’
‘How could anybody not be? Fellows like Clopton and Shipton who are enclosed already stand to get a bit of the Waste; old what’s-his-name, Bowyer, and Wellman and Crabtree and Fuller surely will see that to have their land altogether, plus their small share of the Waste, is better than going on in this old-fashioned way.’
‘You can never be too sure,’ said Mr Montague sagely.
‘At Gweston I had just one old man who owned twelve acres—six in one field, six in the other—and make his mark he would not. I twied every persuasion, even offered him twice the market pwice for his land, to buy him out, you know. He wouldn’t budge.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘Just went ahead without his signature. It was a wisk. He could have gone popping off to the authorities and made a fuss, but he didn’t. They don’t know their own power. I should say the only one who could make difficulty for you if she wished is the old dame … but then, if she’s dotty … Now, shall we begin to make a list of those whose signatures you wequire?’
‘I think not,’ Richard said. The first signs of boredom were making themselves felt within him. The idea of becoming richer, of extending his land and increasing its value was attractive and had borne him along so far, but to ask him to sit down and copy out a list of names was too much.
‘I have a new bailiff fellow arriving tomorrow,’ he said; ‘he can do all that. Do him good to get familiar with their names and acreages and so on.’
‘Then let us take a wide awound and look at the land itself. I was never welcome here in your father’s time,’ said Mr Montague.
So they set off on the ride which warned Clevely of the Squire’s intentions and made Matt Ashpole get out his gun. Matt knew that he had no claim, save right of usage, to his cottage, his garden, his pasture on the Waste, and he was foresighted enough to visualise a time when his old horse would be homeless; but the Fullers, he reasoned, would always have a farm and Danny could never refuse house room to his father-in-law’s old horse.
By the first week in September Hadstock, the new bailiff, had written out in a clear firm hand the notice which was to be fixed to the church door; and he had also made a list of all the landowners in Clevely, large and small, who should sign the paper.
The notice read: ‘We the undersigned, being the Lord of the Manor, the tithe-holder, proprietors and freeholders of the Manor and Parish of Clevely in the County of Suffolk, do hereby give notice to whomsoever it may concern that we propose to approach His Majesty’s House of Commons through the good offices of Sir Thomas Blyborough M.P. for an order for the enclosing of the arable land, pasture and waste land of the aforesaid parish.’
Richard, with the deadly depression of boredom rising in him, set out to collect the necessary signatures. He would gladly have deputed this task to Hadstock, but Mr Montague—and one must always remember that his enclosure had been superbly successful—had said, ‘It, is infinitely better, Wichard, to pweserve the personal touch in such affairs. Fellows who might easily be disposed to say ‘No’ to a mere bailiff will sign at a nod fwom you. We’re losing gwound every day, as everybody knows, but it still takes a bwave man to defy us to our faces.’
Richard started his round with a call at Flocky Hall, where Fred Clopton, though not defiant, showed himself to be dubious and reluctant. ‘I’ve no wish to stand in your way, sir,’ he said, ‘but I’ve got to think of myself.’
Restraining his impatience and forcing himself to speak amiably, Richard said, ‘In what way, Clopton?’
Tm benefiting now by being enclosed,’ Clopton said slowly. ‘Sounds selfish maybe, but we’re all selfish when you get to the root of us. I can grow turnips, I can grow clover, I can winter-feed my beasts, just because I am enclosed and free to do as I like. When everybody is the same I shan’t get the price I do now for the things I have to sell and everybody don’t.’
‘With more land, which would cost you nothing except the fencing, and with your experience in the new methods you’d still be well ahead of the others,’ Richard said. ‘More land?’
‘As a landowner you would get a share of the Waste; it might be quite considerable.’
‘Are you sure of that? I don’t mean,’ he added quickly in answer to Richard’s swift scowl, ‘I don’t mean to doubt
what you say, but it sounds peculiar. You see, my freehold never carried any rights to the Waste. Not that I minded —I wouldn’t want my beasts to run with all those poor ill-conditioned creatures.’
‘Naturally not. But if you sign this petition, as a landowner you will get a proportional share, enclosed; and not necessarily Waste, if you understand that. An increase of your acreage, in proportion. It would be for the commissioners to decide where it was.”
‘Well, in that case, of course, I’ll sign gladly, sir.’
The next three farmers on the list were all small proprietors, owning strips in the open fields. Bert Crabtree signed with alacrity. ‘I allust wanted it, but I never reckoned it’d come in my lifetime,’ he said. ‘If you’ll be so kind as to write my name, sir, I’ll put my mark to it. I bain’t no scholar.’ Clem Bowyer listened to Richard’s explanation and then said, ‘I’d be for it, sir, tooth and nail, if I was twenty years younger; but I be old and I don’t fancy no changes and upheavals at my time of life.’ The third man, Ricky Wellman, was more forthright; he was, in fact, Mr Montague’s ‘bwave man’. ‘I’m agin it, same as the old Squire allust was; and when I’m agin a thing I’m agin it,’ he said. To Richard’s casual eye, Bowyer and Wellman looked stupid, bovine creatures, only very slightly the intellectual superiors of the beasts they reared; and remembering Monty’s story of his obstinate old man, he decided that their opposition was not worth bothering about, so he wasted no eloquence on them but rode on to Bridge Farm to interview Abel Shipton.
‘But that don’t-er concern me-er, sir,’ Shipton said. ‘I am-er enclosed. This farm-er was fenced-er around-er at the same time as Flocky.’
‘I know, I know. The point is …” And he repeated, in a voice of poisonous patience, the argument he had laid before Fred Clopton. Shipton listened, looking more and more uncomfortable and glancing now and then in the direction of the kitchen door. Finally he said:
‘Only owners sign-er? Then it wouldn’t be right-er for me to. To tell you the truth-er, I ain’t owned this land-er
this last four years-er.’ ‘Oh. Who does then?’
Shipton shot another uneasy glance at the kitchen door and then told his tale. He’d been in what he called a muddle and at his wits’ end for ready money four years previously, and he couldn’t sell the farm because Mrs Shipton had put the whole of her dowry into it when they married; he hadn’t even dared to tell her what a muddle he was in. Then one day ‘somebody’ had offered to buy his farm and let him stay on at a ridiculously small rent on condition that the change of ownership remained a secret. ‘And that-er,’ Shipton ended, ‘seemed like a miracle to me-er; an answer to prayer if ever there was one-er.’