I came by chance to the village—Norton, we will call it, just to call it something, but the county in which it is situated need not be named. It happened that about noon that day I planned to pass the night at a village where, as I was informed at a small country town I had rested in, there was a nice inn—"The Fox and Grapes"—to put up at, but when I arrived, tired and hungry, I was told that I could not have a bed and that the only thing to do was to try Norton, which also boasted an inn. It was hard to have to turn some two or three miles out of my road at that late hour on a chance of a shelter for the night, but there was nothing else to do, so on to Norton I went with heavy steps, and arrived a little after sunset, more tired and hungry than ever, only to be told at the inn that they had no accommodation for me, that their one spare room had been engaged! "What am I to do, then?" I demanded of the landlord. "Beyond this village I cannot go to-night—do you want me to go out and sleep under a hedge?" He called his spouse, and after some conversation they said the village baker might be able to put me up, as he had a spare bedroom in his house. So to the baker's I went, and found it a queer, ramshackle old place, standing a little back from the village street in a garden and green plot with a few fruit trees growing on it. To my knock the baker himself came out—a mild-looking, flabby-faced man, with his mouth full, in a very loose suit of pyjama-like garments of a bluish floury colour. I told him my story, and he listened, swallowing his mouthful, then cast his eyes down and rubbed his chin, which had a small tuft of hairs growing on it, and finally said, "I don't know. I must ask my wife. But come in and have a cup of tea—we're just having a cup ourselves, and perhaps you'd like one."

I could have told him that I should like a dozen cups and a great many slices of bread-and-butter, if there was nothing else more substantial to be had. However, I only said, "Thank you," and followed him in to where his wife, a nice-looking woman, with black hair and olive face, was seated behind the teapot. Imagine my surprise when I found that besides tea there was a big hot repast on the table—a ham, a roast fowl, potatoes and cabbage, a rice pudding, a dish of stewed fruit, bread-and-butter, and other things.

"You call this a cup of tea!" I exclaimed delightedly. The woman laughed, and he explained in an apologetic way that he had formerly suffered grievously from indigestion, so that for many years his life was a burden to him, until he discovered that if he took one big meal a day, after the work was over, he could keep perfectly well.

I was never hungrier than on this evening, and never, I think, ate a bigger or more enjoyable meal; nor have I ever ceased to remember those two with gratitude, and if I were to tell here what they told me—the history of their two lives—I think it would be a more interesting story than the one I am about to relate. I stayed a whole week in their hospitable house; a week which passed only too quickly, for never had I been in a sweeter haunt of peace than this village in a quiet, green country remote from towns and stations. It was a small rustic place, a few old houses and thatched cottages, and the ancient church with square Norman tower hard to see amid the immense old oaks and elms that grew all about it. At the end of the village were the park gates, and the park, a solitary, green place with noble trees, was my favourite haunt; for there was no one to forbid me, the squire being dead, the old red Elizabethan house empty, with only a caretaker in the gardener's lodge to mind it, and the estate for sale. Three years it had been in that condition, but nobody seemed to want it; occasionally some important person came rushing down in a motor-car, but after running over the house he would come out and, remarking that it was a "rummy old place," remount his car and vanish in a cloud of dust to be seen no more.

The dead owner, I found, was much in the village mind; and no wonder, since Norton had never been without a squire until he passed away, leaving no one to succeed him. It was as if some ancient landmark, or an immemorial oak tree on the green in whose shade the villagers had been accustomed to sit for many generations, had been removed. There was a sense of something wanting something gone out of their lives. Moreover, he had been a man of a remarkable character, and though they never loved him they yet reverenced his memory.

So much was he in their minds that I could not be in the village and not hear the story of his life—the story which, I said, interested me less than that of the good baker and his wife. On his father's death at a very advanced age he came, a comparative stranger, to Norton, the first half of his life having been spent abroad. He was then a middle-aged man, unmarried, and a bachelor he remained to the end. He was of a reticent disposition and was said to be proud; formal, almost cold, in manner; furthermore, he did not share his neighbours' love of sport of any description, nor did he care for society, and because of all this he was regarded as peculiar, not to say eccentric. But he was deeply interested in agriculture, especially in cattle and their improvement, and that object grew to be his master passion. It was a period of great depression, and as his farms fell vacant he took them into his own hands, increased his stock and built model cowhouses, and came at last to be known throughout his own country, and eventually everywhere, as one of the biggest cattle-breeders in England. But he was famous in a peculiar way. Wise breeders and buyers shook their heads and even touched their foreheads significantly, and predicted that the squire of Norton would finish by ruining himself. They were right, he ruined himself; not that he was mentally weaker than those who watched and cunningly exploited him; he was ruined because his object was a higher one than theirs. He saw clearly that the prize system is a vicious one and that better results may be obtained without it. He proved this at a heavy cost by breeding better beasts than his rivals, who were all exhibitors and prizewinners, and who by this means got their advertisements and secured the highest prices, while he, who disdained prizes and looked with disgust at the overfed and polished animals at shows, got no advertisements and was compelled to sell at unremunerative prices. The buyers, it may be mentioned, were always the breeders for shows, and they made a splendid profit out of it.

He carried on the fight for a good many years, becoming more and more involved, until his creditors took possession of the estate, sold off the stock, let the farms, and succeeded in finding a tenant for the furnished house. He went to a cottage in the village and there passed his remaining years. To the world he appeared unmoved by his reverses. The change from mansion and park to a small thatched cottage, with a labourer's wife for attendant, made no change in the man, nor did he resign his seat on the Bench of Magistrates or any other unpaid office he held. To the last he was what he had always been, formal and ceremonious, more gracious to those beneath him than to equals; strict in the performance of his duties, living with extreme frugality and giving freely to those in want, and very regular in his attendance at church, where he would sit facing the tombs and memorials of his ancestors, among the people but not of them—a man alone and apart, respected by all but loved by none.

Finally he died and was buried with the others, and one more memorial with the old name, which he bore last was placed on the wall. That was the story as it was told me, and as it was all about a man who was without charm and had no love interest it did not greatly interest me, and I soon dismissed it from my thoughts. Then one day coming through a grove in the park and finding myself standing before the ancient, empty, desolate house—for on the squire's death everything had been sold and taken away—I remembered that the caretaker had begged me to let him show me over the place. I had not felt inclined to gratify him, as I had found him a young man of a too active mind whose only desire was to capture some person to talk to and unfold his original ideas and schemes, but now having come to the house I thought I would suffer him, and soon found him at work in the vast old walled garden. He joyfully threw down his spade and let me in and then up to the top floor, determined that I should see everything. By the time we got down to the ground floor I was pretty tired of empty rooms, oak panelled, and passages and oak staircases, and of talk, and impatient to get away. But no, I had not seen the housekeeper's room—I must see that!—and so into another great vacant room I was dragged, and to keep me as long as possible in that last room he began unlocking and flinging open all the old oak cupboards and presses. Glancing round at the long array of empty shelves, I noticed a small brown-paper parcel, thick with dust, in a corner, and as it was the only movable thing I had seen in that vacant house I asked him what the parcel contained. Books, he replied—they had been left as of no value when the house was cleared of furniture. As I wished to see the books he undid the parcel; it contained forty copies of a small quarto-shaped book of sonnets, with the late squire's name as author on the title page. I read a sonnet, and told him I should like to read them all. "You can have a copy, of course," he exclaimed. "Put it in your pocket and keep it." When I asked him if he had any right to give one away he laughed and said that if any one had thought the whole parcel worth twopence it would not have been left behind. He was quite right; a cracked dinner—plate or a saucepan with a hole in it or an earthenware teapot with a broken spout would not have been left, but the line was drawn at a book of sonnets by the late squire. Nobody wanted it, and so without more qualms I put it in my pocket, and have it before me now, opened at page 63, on which appears, without a headline, the sonnet I first read, and which I quote:—

This has a fault that doth offend the reader of modern verse, and there are many of the eighty sonnets in the book which do not equal it in merit. He was manifestly an amateur; he sometimes writes with labour, and he not infrequently ends with the unpardonable weak line. Nevertheless he had rightly chosen this difficult form in which to express his inner self. It suited his grave, concentrated thought, and each little imperfect poem of fourteen lines gives us a glimpse into a wise, beneficent mind. He had fought his fight and suffered defeat, and had then withdrawn himself silently from the field to die. But if he had been embittered he could have relieved himself in this little book. There is no trace of such a feeling. He only asks, in one sonnet, where can a balm be found for the heart fretted and torn with eternal cares; when we have thought and striven for some great and good purpose, when all our striving has ended in disaster? His plan, he concludes, is to go out in the quiet night-time and look at the stars.

Here let me quote two more sonnets written in contemplative mood, just to give the reader a fuller idea not of the verse, as verse, but of the spirit in the old squire. There is no title to these two:—

Bad enough as verse, the critic will say; refined, confined, find—what poor rhymes are these! and he will think me wrong to draw these frailties from their forgotten abode. But I like to think of the solitary old man sitting by his wood fire in the old house, not brooding bitterly on his frustrate life, but putting his quiet thoughts into the form of a sonnet. The other is equally good—or bad, if the critic will have it so:—

A "slight incident" and a beautiful thought. But all I have so far said about the little book is preliminary to what I wish to say about another sonnet which must also be quoted. It is perhaps, as a sonnet, as ill done as the others, but the subject of it specially attracted me, as it happened to be one which was much in my mind during my week's stay at Norton. That remote little village without a squire or any person of means or education in or near it capable of feeling the slightest interest in the people, except the parson, an old infirm man who was never seen but once a week—how wanting in some essential thing it appeared! It seemed to me that the one thing which might be done in these small centres of rural life to brighten and beautify existence is precisely the thing which is never done, also that what really is being done is of doubtful value and sometimes actually harmful.

Leaving Norton one day I visited other small villages in the neighbourhood and found they were no better off. I had heard of the rector of one of these villages as a rather original man, and went and discussed the subject with him. "It is quite useless thinking about it," he said. "The people here are clods, and will not respond to any effort you can make to introduce a little light and sweetness into their lives." There was no more to be said to him, but I knew he was wrong. I found the villagers in that part of the country the most intelligent and responsive people of their class I had ever encountered. It was a delightful experience to go into their cottages, not to read them a homily or to present them with a book or a shilling, nor to inquire into their welfare, material and spiritual, but to converse intimately with a human interest in them, as would be the case in a country where there are no caste distinctions. It was delightful, because they were so responsive, so sympathetic, so alive. Now it was just at this time, when the subject was in my mind, that the book of sonnets came into my hands—given to me by the generous caretaker—and I read in it this one on "Innocent Amusements":—

What wise and kindly thoughts he had—the old squire of Norton! Surely, when telling me the story of his life, they had omitted something! I questioned them on the point. Did he not in all the years he was at Norton House, and later when he lived among them in a cottage in the village—did he not go into their homes and meet them as if he knew and felt that they were all of the same flesh, children of one universal Father, and did he not make them feel this about him—that the differences in fortune and position and education were mere accidents? And the answer was: No, certainly not! as if I had asked a preposterous question. He was the squire, a gentleman—any one might understand that he could not come among them like that! That is what a parson can do because he is, so to speak, paid to keep an eye on them, and besides it's religion there and a different thing. But the squire!—their squire, that dignified old gentleman, so upright in his saddle, so considerate and courteous to every one—but he never forgot his position—never in that way! I also asked if he had never tried to establish, or advocated, or suggested to them any kind of reunions to take place from time to time, or an entertainment or festival to get them to come pleasantly together, making a brightness in their lives—something which would not be cricket or football, nor any form of sport for a few of the men, all the others being mere lookers-on and the women and children left out altogether; something which would be for and include everyone, from the oldest grey labourer no longer able to work to the toddling little ones; something of their own invention, peculiar to Norton, which would be their pride and make their village dearer to them? And the answer was still no, and no, and no. He had never attempted, never suggested, anything of the sort. How could he—the squire! Yet he wrote those wise words:—

Why are we lacking in that which others undoubtedly have, a something to complete the round of homely happiness in our little rural centres; how is it that we do not properly encourage the things which, albeit childlike, are essential, which sweetly recreate? It is not merely the selfishness of those who are well placed and prefer to live for themselves, or who have light but care not to shed it on those who are not of their class. Selfishness is common enough everywhere, in men of all races. It is not selfishness, nor the growth of towns or decay of agriculture, which as a fact does not decay, nor education, nor any of the other causes usually given for the dullness, the greyness of village life. The chief cause, I take it, is that gulf, or barrier, which exists between men and men in different classes in our country, or a considerable portion of it—the caste feeling which is becoming increasingly rigid in the rural world, if my own observation, extending over a period of twenty-five years, is not all wrong.