Tono-Bungay by H. G. Wells (diy ebook reader txt) 📕

“They have some intelligent people in their ranks, I am told,” said the vicar, “writers and so forth. Quite a distinguished playwright, my eldest daughter was telling me⁠—I forget his name.

“Milly, dear! Oh! she’s not here. Painters, too, they have. This Socialist, it seems to me, is part of the Unrest of the Age.⁠ ⁠… But, as you say, the spirit of the people is against it. In the country, at any rate. The people down here are too sturdily independent in their small way⁠—and too sensible altogether.”⁠ ⁠…

“It’s a great thing for Duffield to have Lady Grove occupied again,” he was saying when my wandering attention came back from some attractive casualty in his wife’s discourse. “People have always looked up to the house and considering all things, old Mr. Durgan really was extraordinarily good⁠—extraordinarily good. You intend to give us a good deal of your time here, I hope.”

“I mean to do my duty by the Parish,” said my uncle.

“I’m sincerely glad to hear it⁠—sincerely. We’ve missed⁠—the house influence. An English village isn’t complete⁠—People get out of hand. Life grows dull. The young people drift away to London.”

He enjoyed his cigar gingerly for a moment.

“We shall look to you to liven things up,” he said, poor man!

My uncle cocked his cigar and removed it from his mouth.

“What you think the place wants?” he asked.

He did not wait for an answer. “I been thinking while you been talking⁠—things one might do. Cricket⁠—a good English game⁠—sports. Build the chaps a pavilion perhaps. Then every village ought to have a miniature rifle range.”

“Ye-ees,” said the vicar. “Provided, of course, there isn’t a constant popping.”⁠ ⁠…

“Manage that all right,” said my uncle. “Thing’d be a sort of long shed. Paint it red. British colour. Then there’s a Union Jack for the church and the village school. Paint the school red, too, p’raps. Not enough colour about now. Too grey. Then a maypole.”

“How far our people would take up that sort of thing⁠—” began the vicar.

“I’m all for getting that good old English spirit back again,” said my uncle. “Merrymakings. Lads and lasses dancing on the village green. Harvest home. Fairings. Yule Log⁠—all the rest of it.”

“How would old Sally Glue do for a May Queen?” asked one of the sons in the slight pause that followed.

“Or Annie Glassbound?” said the other, with the huge virile guffaw of a young man whose voice has only recently broken.

“Sally Glue is eighty-five,” explained the vicar, “and Annie Glassbound is well⁠—a young lady of extremely generous proportions. And not quite right, you know. Not quite right⁠—here.” He tapped his brow.

“Generous proportions!” said the eldest son, and the guffaws were renewed.

“You see,” said the vicar, “all the brisker girls go into service in or near London. The life of excitement attracts them. And no doubt the higher wages have something to do with it. And the liberty to wear finery. And generally⁠—freedom from restraint. So that there might be a little difficulty perhaps to find a May Queen here just at present who was really young and er⁠—pretty.⁠ ⁠… Of course I couldn’t think of any of my girls⁠—or anything of that sort.”

“We got to attract ’em back,” said my uncle. “That’s what I feel about it. We got to Buck-Up the country. The English country is a going concern still; just as the Established Church⁠—if you’ll excuse me saying it, is a going concern. Just as Oxford is⁠—or Cambridge. Or any of those old, fine old things. Only it wants fresh capital, fresh idees and fresh methods. Light railways, f’rinstance⁠—scientific use of drainage. Wire fencing machinery⁠—all that.”

The vicar’s face for one moment betrayed dismay. Perhaps he was thinking of his country walks amids the hawthorns and honeysuckle.

“There’s great things,” said my uncle, “to be done on mod’un lines with Village Jam and Pickles⁠—boiled in the country.”

It was the reverberation of this last sentence in my mind, I think, that sharpened my sentimental sympathy as we went through the straggling village street and across the trim green on our way back to London. It seemed that afternoon the most tranquil and idyllic collection of creeper-sheltered homes you can imagine; thatch still lingered on a whitewashed cottage or two, pyracanthus, wallflowers, and daffodils abounded, and an unsystematic orchard or so was white with blossom above and gay with bulbs below. I noted a row of straw beehives, beehive-shaped, beehives of the type long since condemned as inefficient by all progressive minds, and in the doctor’s acre of grass a flock of two whole sheep was grazing⁠—no doubt he’d taken them on account. Two men and one old woman made gestures of abject vassalage, and my uncle replied with a lordly gesture of his great motoring glove.⁠ ⁠…

“England’s full of bits like this,” said my uncle, leaning over the front seat and looking back with great satisfaction. The black glare of his goggles rested for a time on the receding turrets of Lady Grove just peeping over the trees.

“I shall have a flagstaff, I think,” he considered. “Then one could show when one is in residence. The villagers will like to know.”⁠ ⁠…

I reflected. “They will,” I said. “They’re used to liking to know.”⁠ ⁠…

My aunt had been unusually silent. Suddenly she spoke. “He says Snap,” she remarked; “he buys that place. And a nice old job of housekeeping he gives me! He sails through the village swelling like an old turkey. And who’ll have to scoot the butler? Me! Who’s got to forget all she ever knew and start again? Me! Who’s got to trek from Chiselhurst and be a great lady? Me!⁠ ⁠… You old Bother! Just when I was settling down and beginning to feel at home.”

My uncle turned his goggles to her. “Ah! This time it is home, Susan.⁠ ⁠… We got there.”

It seems to me now but a step from the buying of Lady Grove to the beginning of Crest Hill, from the days when the former was a stupendous achievement to the days