<SPAN name="ch22"><!--Marker--></SPAN>
<h2> CHAPTER XXII </h2>
<h3> THE MASTER OF THE VILLAGE </h3>
<blockquote>
Moral effect of the great man—An orphaned
village—The masters of the village.—Elijah
Raven—Strange appearance and character—Elijah's
house—The owls—Two rooms in the
house—Elijah hardens with time—The village club
and its arbitrary secretary—Caleb dips the lambs and
falls ill—His claim on the club rejected—Elijah
in court
</blockquote>
<p>In my roamings about the downs it is always a relief—a
positive pleasure in fact—to find myself in a village
which has no squire or other magnificent and munificent
person who dominates everybody and everything, and, if he
chooses to do so, plays providence in the community. I may
have no personal objection to him—he is sometimes
almost if not quite human; what I heartily dislike is the
effect of his position (that of a giant among pigmies) on the
lowly minds about him, and the servility, hypocrisy, and
parasitism which spring up and flourish in his wide shadow
whether he likes these moral weeds or not. As a rule he likes
them, since the poor devil has this in common with the rest
of us, that he likes to stand high in the general regard. But
how is he to know it unless he witnesses its outward
beautiful signs every day and every hour on every countenance
he looks upon? Better, to my mind, the severer conditions,
the poverty and unmerited sufferings which cannot be
relieved, with the greater manliness and self-dependence when
the people are left to work out their own destiny. On this
account I was pleased to make the discovery on my first visit
to Caleb's native village that there was no magnate, or other
big man, and no gentleman except the parson, who was not a
rich man. It was, so to speak, one of the orphaned villages
left to fend for itself and fight its own way in a hard
world, and had nobody even to give the customary blankets and
sack of coals to its old women. Nor was there any very big
farmer in the place, certainly no gentleman farmer; they were
mostly small men, some of them hardly to be distinguished in
speech and appearance from their hired labourers.</p>
<p>In these small isolated communities it is common to find men
who have succeeded in rising above the others and in
establishing a sort of mastery over them. They are not as a
rule much more intelligent than the others who are never able
to better themselves; the main difference is that they are
harder and more grasping and have more self-control. These
qualities tell eventually, and set a man a little apart, a
little higher than the others, and he gets the taste of
power, which reacts on him like the first taste of blood on
the big cat. Henceforward he has his ideal, his definite
goal, which is to get the upper hand—to be on top. He
may be, and generally is, an exceedingly unpleasant fellow to
have for a neighbour—mean, sordid, greedy, tyrannous,
even cruel, and he may be generally hated and despised as
well, but along with these feelings there will be a kind of
shamefaced respect and admiration for his courage in
following his own line in defiance of what others think and
feel. It is after all with man as with the social animals: he
must have a master—not a policeman, or magistrate, or a
vague, far-away, impersonal something called the authorities
or the government; but a head of the pack or herd, a being
like himself whom he knows and sees and hears and feels every
day. A real man, dressed in old familiar clothes, a
fellow-villager, who, wolf or dog-like, has fought his way to
the mastership.</p>
<p>There was a person of this kind at Winterbourne Bishop who
was often mentioned in Caleb's reminiscences, for he had left
a very strong impression on the shepherd's mind—as
strong, perhaps, though in a disagreeable way, as that of
Isaac his father, and of Mr. Ellerby of Doveton. For not only
was he a man of great force of character, but he was of
eccentric habits and of a somewhat grotesque appearance. The
curious name of this person was Elijah Raven. He was a native
of the village and lived till extreme old age in it, the last
of his family, in a small house inherited from his father,
situated about the centre of the village street. It was a
quaint, old, timbered house, little bigger than a cottage,
with a thatched roof, and behind it some outbuildings, a
small orchard, and a field of a dozen or fifteen acres. Here
he lived with one other person, an old man who did the
cooking and housework, but after this man died he lived
alone. Not only was he a bachelor, but he would never allow
any woman to come inside his house. Elijah's one idea was to
get the advantage of others—to make himself master in
the village. Beginning poor, he worked in a small, cautious,
peddling way at farming, taking a field or meadow or strip of
down here and there in the neighbourhood, keeping a few
sheep, a few cows, buying and selling and breeding horses.
The men he employed were those he could get at low
wages—poor labourers who were without a place and
wanted to fill up a vacant time, or men like the Targetts
described in a former chapter who could be imposed upon; also
gipsies who flitted about the country, working in a spasmodic
way when in the mood for the farmers who could tolerate them,
and who were paid about half the wages of an ordinary
labourer. If a poor man had to find money quickly, on account
of illness or some other cause, he could get it from Elijah
at once—not borrowed, since Elijah neither lent nor
gave—but he could sell him anything he
possessed—a horse or cow, or sheepdog, or a piece of
furniture; and if he had nothing to sell, Elijah would give
him something to do and pay him something for it. The great
thing was that Elijah had money which he was always willing
to circulate. At his unlamented death he left several
thousands of pounds, which went to a distant relation, and a
name which does not smell sweet, but is still remembered not
only at Winterbourne Bishop but at many other villages on
Salisbury Plain.</p>
<p>Elijah was short of stature, broad-shouldered, with an
abnormally big head and large dark eyes. They say that he
never cut his hair in his life. It was abundant and curly,
and grew to his shoulders, and when he was old and his great
mass of hair and beard became white it was said that he
resembled a gigantic white owl. Mothers frightened their
children into quiet by saying, "Elijah will get you if you
don't behave yourself." He knew and resented this, and though
he never noticed a child, he hated to have the little ones
staring in a half-terrified way at him. To seclude himself
more from the villagers he planted holly and yew bushes
before his house, and eventually the entire building was
hidden from sight by the dense evergreen thicket. The trees
were cut down after his death: they were gone when I first
visited the village and by chance found a lodging in the
house, and congratulated myself that I had got the quaintest,
old rambling rooms I had ever inhabited. I did not know that
I was in Elijah Raven's house, although his name had long
been familiar to me: it only came out one day when I asked my
landlady, who was a native, to tell me the history of the
place. She remembered how as a little girl, full of mischief
and greatly daring, she had sometimes climbed over the low
front wall to hide under the thick yew bushes and watch to
catch a sight of the owlish old man at his door or window.</p>
<p>For many years Elijah had two feathered tenants, a pair of
white owls—the birds he so much resembled. They
occupied a small garret at the end of his bedroom, having
access to it through a hole under the thatch. They bred there
in peace, and on summer evenings one of the common sights of
the village was Elijah's owls flying from the house behind
the evergreens and returning to it with mice in their talons.
At such seasons the threat to the unruly children would be
varied to "Old Elijah's owls will get you." Naturally, the
children grew up with the idea of the birds and the owlish
old man associated in their minds.</p>
<p>It was odd that the two very rooms which Elijah had occupied
during all those solitary years, the others being given over
to spiders and dust, should have been assigned to me when I
came to lodge in the house. The first, my sitting-room, was
so low that my hair touched the ceiling when I stood up my
full height; it had a brick floor and a wide old fireplace on
one side. Though so low-ceilinged it was very large and good
to be in when I returned from a long ramble on the downs,
sometimes wet and cold, to sit by a wood fire and warm
myself. At night when I climbed to my bedroom by means of the
narrow, crooked, worm-eaten staircase, with two difficult and
dangerous corners to get round, I would lie awake staring at
the small square patch of greyness in the black interior made
by the latticed window; and listening to the wind and rain
outside, would remember that the sordid, owlish old man had
slept there and stared nightly at that same grey patch in the
dark for very many years. If, I thought, that something of a
man which remains here below to haunt the scene of its past
life is more likely to exist and appear to mortal eyes in the
case of a person of strong individuality, then there is a
chance that I may be visited this night by Elijah Raven his
ghost. But his owlish countenance never appeared between me
and that patch of pale dim light; nor did I ever feel a
breath of cold unearthly air on me.</p>
<p>Elijah did not improve with time; the years that made him
long-haired, whiter, and more owl-like also made him more
penurious and grasping, and anxious to get the better of
every person about him. There was scarcely a poor person in
the village—not a field labourer nor shepherd nor
farmer's boy, nor any old woman he had employed, who did not
consider that they had suffered at his hands. The very
poorest could not escape; if he got some one to work for
fourpence a day he would find a reason to keep back a portion
of the small sum due to him. At the same time he wanted to be
well thought of, and at length an opportunity came to him to
figure as one who did not live wholly for himself but rather
as a person ready to go out of his way to help his
neighbours.</p>
<p>There had long existed a small benefit society or club in the
village to which most of the farm-hands in the parish
belonged, the members numbering about sixty or seventy.
Subscriptions were paid quarterly, but the rules were not
strict, and any member could take a week or a fortnight
longer to pay; when a member fell ill he received half the
amount of his wages a week from the funds in hand, and once a
year they had a dinner. The secretary was a labourer, and in
time he grew old and infirm and could not hold a pen in his
rheumaticky fingers, and a meeting was held to consider what
was to be done in the matter. It was not an easy one to
settle. There were few members capable of keeping the books
who would undertake the duty, as it was unpaid, and no one
among them well known and trusted by all the members. It was
then that Elijah Raven came to the rescue. He attended the
meeting, which he was allowed to do owing to his being a
person of importance—the only one of that description
in the village; and getting up on his legs he made the offer
to act as secretary himself. This came as a great surprise,
and the offer was at once and unanimously accepted, all
unpleasant feelings being forgotten, and for the first time
in his life Elijah heard himself praised as a disinterested
person, one it was good to have in the village.</p>
<p>Things went on very well for a time, and at the yearly dinner
of the club, a few months later, Elijah gave an account of
his stewardship, showing that the club had a surplus of two
hundred pounds. Shortly after this trouble began; Elijah, it
was said, was making use of his position as secretary for his
own private interests and to pay off old scores against those
he disliked. When a man came with his quarterly subscription
Elijah would perhaps remember that this person had refused to
work for him or that he had some quarrel with him, and if the
subscription was overdue he would refuse to take it; he would
tell the man that he was no longer a member, and he also
refused to give sick pay to any applicant whose last
subscription was still due, if he happened to be in Elijah's
black book. By and by he came into collision with Caleb, one
of the villagers against whom he cherished a special grudge,
and this small affair resulted in the dissolution of the
club.</p>
<p>At this time Caleb was head-shepherd at Bartle's Cross, a
large farm above a mile and a half from the village. One
excessively hot day in August he had to dip the lambs; it was
very hard work to drive them from the farm over a high down
to the stream a mile below the village, where there was a
dipping place, and he was tired and hot, and in a sweat when
he began the work. With his arms bared to the shoulders he
took and plunged his first lamb into the tank. When engaged
in dipping, he said, he always kept his mouth closed tightly
for fear of getting even a drop of the mixture in it, but on
this occasion it unfortunately happened that the man
assisting him spoke to him and he was compelled to reply, but
had no sooner opened his mouth to speak than the lamb made a
violent struggle in his arms and splashed the water over his
face and into his mouth. He got rid of it as quickly as he
could, but soon began to feel bad, and before the work was
over he had to sit down two or three times to rest. However,
he struggled on to the finish, then took the flock home and
went to his cottage. He could do no more. The farmer came to
see what the matter was, and found him in a fever, with face
and throat greatly swollen. "You look bad," he said; "you
must be off to the doctor." But it was five miles to the
village where the doctor lived, and Bawcombe replied that he
couldn't go. "I'm too bad—I couldn't go, master, if you
offered me money for it," he said.</p>
<p>Then the farmer mounted his horse and went himself, and the
doctor came. "No doubt," he said, "you've got some of the
poison into your system and took a chill at the same time."
The illness lasted six weeks, and then the shepherd resumed
work, although still feeling very shaky. By and by when the
opportunity came, he went to claim his sick pay—six
shillings a week for the six weeks, his wages being then
twelve shillings. Elijah flatly refused to pay him; his
subscription, he said, had been due for several weeks and he
had consequently forfeited his right to anything. In vain the
shepherd explained that he could not pay when lying ill at
home with no money in the house and receiving no pay from the
farmer. The old man remained obdurate, and with a very heavy
heart the shepherd came out and found three or four of the
villagers waiting in the road outside to hear the result of
the application.</p>
<p>They, too, were men who had been turned away from the club by
the arbitrary secretary. Caleb was telling them about his
interview when Elijah came out of the house and, leaning over
the front gate, began to listen. The shepherd then turned
towards him and said in a loud voice: "Mr. Elijah Raven,
don't you think this is a tarrible hard case! I've paid my
subscription every quarter for thirty years and never had
nothing from the fund except two weeks' pay when I were bad
some years ago. Now I've been bad six weeks, and my master
giv' me nothing for that time, and I've got the doctor to pay
and nothing to live on. What am I to do?"</p>
<p>Elijah stared at him in silence for some time, then spoke: "I
told you in there I wouldn't pay you one penny of the money
and I'll hold to what I said—in there I said it
indoors, and I say again that indoors I'll never pay
you—no, not one penny piece. But if I happen some day
to meet you out of doors then I'll pay you. Now go."</p>
<p>And go he did, very meekly, his wrath going down as he
trudged home; for after all he would have his money by and
by, although the hard old man would punish him for past
offences by making him wait for it.</p>
<p>A week or so went by, and then one day while passing through
the village he saw Elijah coming towards him, and said to
himself, Now I'll be paid! When the two men drew near
together he cried out cheerfully, "Good morning, Mr. Raven."
The other without a word and without a pause passed by on his
way, leaving the poor shepherd gazing crestfallen after him.</p>
<p>After all he would not get his money! The question was
discussed in the cottages, and by and by one of the villagers
who was not so poor as most of them, and went occasionally to
Salisbury, said he would ask an attorney's advice about the
matter. He would pay for the advice out of his own pocket; he
wanted to know if Elijah could lawfully do such things.</p>
<p>To the man's astonishment the attorney said that as the club
was not registered and the members had themselves made Elijah
their head he could do as he liked—no action would lie
against him. But if it was true and it could be proved that
he had spoken those words about paying the shepherd his money
if he met him out of doors, then he could be made to pay. He
also said he would take the case up and bring it into court
if a sum of five pounds was guaranteed to cover expenses in
case the decision went against them.</p>
<p>Poor Caleb, with twelve shillings a week to pay his debts and
live on, could guarantee nothing, but by and by when the
lawyer's opinion had been discussed at great length at the
inn and in all the cottages in the village, it was found that
several of Bawcombe's friends were willing to contribute
something towards a guarantee fund, and eventually the sum of
five pounds was raised and handed over to the person who had
seen the lawyer.</p>
<p>His first step was to send for Bawcombe, who had to get a day
off and journey in the carrier's cart one market-day to
Salisbury. The result was that action was taken, and in due
time the case came on. Elijah Raven was in court with two or
three of his friends—small working farmers who had some
interested motive in desiring to appear as his supporters.
He, too, had engaged a lawyer to conduct his case. The judge,
said Bawcombe, who had never seen one before, was a tarrible
stern-looking old man in his wig. The plaintiff's lawyer he
did open the case and he did talk and talk a lot, but
Elijah's counsel he did keep on interrupting him, and they
two argued and argued, but the judge he never said no word,
only he looked blacker and more tarrible stern. Then when the
talk did seem all over, Bawcombe, ignorant of the forms, got
up and said, "I beg your lordship's pardon, but may I speak?"
He didn't rightly remember afterwards what he called him, but
'twere your lordship or your worship, he was sure. "Yes,
certainly, you are here to speak," said the judge, and
Bawcombe then gave an account of his interview with Elijah
and of the conversation outside the house.</p>
<p>Then up rose Elijah Raven, and in a loud voice exclaimed,
"Lord, Lord, what a sad thing it is to have to sit here and
listen to this man's lies!"</p>
<p>"Sit down, sir," thundered the judge; "sit down and hold your
tongue, or I shall have you removed."</p>
<p>Then Elijah's lawyer jumped up, and the judge told him he'd
better sit down too because he knowed who the liar was in
this case. "A brutal case!" he said, and that was the end,
and Bawcombe got his six weeks' sick pay and expenses, and
about three pounds besides, being his share of the society's
funds which Elijah had been advised to distribute to the
members.</p>
<p>And that was the end of the Winterbourne Bishop club, and
from that time it has continued without one.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
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