CHAPTER II

THE HEIR PROPOSES TO VISIT HIS COUSIN

It was full summer at Belton, and the sweet scene of the new hay filled the porch of the old house with fragrance, as Clara sat there alone with her work.  Immediately before the house door, between that and the old tower, there stood one of Farmer Stovey’s hay-carts, now empty, with an old horse between the shafts looking as though he were asleep in the sun.  Immediately beyond the tower the men were loading another cart, and the women and children were chattering as they raked the scattered remnants up to the rows. tinder the shadow of the old tower, but in sight of Clara as she sat in the porch, there lay the small beer-barrels of the hay-makers, and three or four rakes were standing erect against the old grey wall.  It was now eleven o’clock, and Clara was waiting for her father, who was not yet out of his room.  She had taken his breakfast to him in bed, as was her custom; for he had fallen into idle ways, and the luxury of his bed was, of all his remaining luxuries, the one that he liked the best.  After a while he came down to her, having an open letter in his hand.  Clara saw that he intended either to show it to her or to speak of it, and asked him therefore, with some tone of interest in her voice, from whom it had come.  But Mr Amedroz was fretful at the moment, and instead of answering her began to complain of his tenant’s ill-usage of him.

’What has he got his cart there for?  I haven’t let him the road up to the hall door.  I suppose he will bring his things into the parlour next.’

‘I rather like it, papa.’

’Do you?  I can only say that you’re lucky in your tastes.  I don’t like it, I can tell you.’

’Mr Stovey is out there.  Shall I ask him to have the things moved farther off?’

’No, my dear no.  I must bear it, as I do all the rest of it.  What does it matter?  There’ll be an end of it soon.  He pays his rent, and I suppose he is right to do as he pleases.  But I can’t say that I like it.’

‘Am I to see the letter, papa?’ she asked, wishing to turn his mind from the subject of the hay-cart.

’Well, yes.  I brought it for you to see; though perhaps I should be doing better if I burned it, and said nothing more about it.  It is a most impudent production; and heartless very heartless.’

Clara was accustomed to such complaints as these from her father.  Everything that everybody did around him he would call heartless.  The man pitied himself so much in his own misery, that he expected to live in an atmosphere of pity from others; and though the pity doubtless was there, he misdoubted it.  He thought that Farmer Stovey was cruel in that he had left the hay-cart near the house, to wound his eyes by reminding him that he was no longer master of the ground before his own hall door.  He thought that the women and children were cruel to chatter so near his ears.  He almost accused his daughter of cruelty, because she had told him that she liked the contiguity of the hay-making.  Under such circumstances as those which enveloped him and her, was it not heartless in her to like anything?  It seemed to him that the whole world of Belton should be drowned in woe because of his misery.