



Produced by James Rusk








IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND

By Charles Reade


This attempt at a solid fiction is, with their permission, dedicated to
the President, Fellows, and demies of St. Mary Magdalen College. Oxford,
by a grateful son of that ancient, learned, and most charitable house.



CHAPTER I.


George Fielding cultivated a small farm in Berkshire.

This position is not so enviable as it was. Years ago, the farmers
of England, had they been as intelligent as other traders, could have
purchased the English soil by means of the huge percentage it offered
them.

But now, I grieve to say, a farmer must be as sharp as his neighbors,
or like his neighbors he will break. What do I say? There are soils and
situations where, in spite of intelligence and sobriety, he is almost
sure to break; just as there are shops where the lively, the severe, the
industrious, the lazy, are fractured alike.

This last fact I make mine by perambulating a certain great street every
three months, and observing how name succeeds to name as wave to wave.

Readers hardened by the _Times_ will not perhaps go so far as to weep
over a body of traders for being reduced to the average condition of
all other traders. But the individual trader, who fights for existence
against unfair odds, is to be pitied whether his shop has plate glass
or a barn door to it; and he is the more to be pitied when he is sober,
intelligent, proud, sensitive, and unlucky.

George Fielding was all these, who, a few years ago, assisted by his
brother William, filled "The Grove"--as nasty a little farm as any in
Berkshire.

Discontented as he was, the expression hereinbefore written would have
seemed profane to young Fielding, for a farmer's farm and a sailor's
ship have always something sacred in the sufferer's eyes, though one
sends one to jail, and the other the other to Jones.

It was four hundred acres, all arable, and most of it poor sour land.
George's father had one hundred acres grass with it, but this had been
separated six years ago.

There was not a tree, nor even an old stump to show for this word
"Grove."

But in the country oral tradition still flourishes.

There had been trees in "The Grove," only the title had outlived the
timber a few centuries.

On the morning of our tale George Fielding might have been seen near his
own homestead, conversing with the Honorable Frank Winchester.

This gentleman was a character that will be common some day, but was
nearly unique at the date of our story.

He had not an extraordinary intellect, but he had great natural gayety,
and under that he had enormous good sense; his good sense was really
brilliant, he had a sort of universal healthy mind that I can't
understand how people get.

He was deeply in love with a lady who returned his passion, but she
was hopelessly out of his reach, because he had not much money or
expectations; instead of sitting down railing, or sauntering about
whining, what did me the Honorable Frank Winchester? He looked over
England for the means of getting this money, and not finding it there,
he surveyed the globe and selected Australia, where, they told him, a
little money turns to a deal, instead of dissolving in the hand like a
lozenge in the mouth, as it does in London.

So here was an earl's son (in this age of commonplace events) going
to Australia with five thousand pounds, as sheep farmer and general
speculator.

He was trying hard to persuade George Fielding to accompany him as
bailiff or agricultural adviser and manager.

He knew the young man's value, but to do him justice his aim was not
purely selfish; he was aware that Fielding had a bad bargain in "The
Grove," and the farmer had saved his life at great personal risk one
day that he was seized with cramp bathing in the turbid waters of Cleve
millpool, and he wanted to serve him in return. This was not his first
attempt of the kind, and but for one reason perhaps he might have
succeeded.

"You know me and I know you," said Mr. Winchester to George Fielding;
"I must have somebody to put me in the way. Stay with me one year,
and after that I'll square accounts with you about that thundering
millpool."

"Oh! Mr. Winchester," said George, hastily and blushing like fire,
"that's an old story, sir?" with a sweet little half-cunning smile that
showed he was glad it was not forgotten.

"Not quite," replied the young gentleman dryly; "you shall have five
hundred sheep and a run for them, and we will both come home rich and
consequently respectable."

"It is a handsome offer, sir, and a kind offer and like yourself, sir,
but transplanting one of us," continued George, "dear me, sir, it's like
taking up an oak tree thirty years in the ground--besides--besides--did
you ever notice my cousin, Susanna, sir?"

"Notice her! why, do you think I am a heathen, and never go to the
parish church? Miss Merton is a lovely girl; she sits in the pew by the
pillar."

"Isn't she, sir?" said George.

Mr. Winchester endeavored to turn this adverse topic in his favor; he
made a remark that produced no effect at the time. He said, "People
don't go to Australia to die--they go to Australia to make money, and
come home and marry--and it is what you must do--this "Grove" is a
millstone round your neck. Will you have a cigar, farmer?"

George consented, premising, however, that hitherto he had never got
beyond a yard of clay, and after drawing a puff or two he took the cigar
from his mouth, and looking at it said, "I say, sir! seems to me the
fire is uncommon near the chimbly." Mr. Winchester laughed; he then
asked George to show him the blacksmith shop. "I must learn how to shoe
a horse," said the honorable Frank.

"Well, I never!" thought George. "The first nob in the country going to
shoe a horse," but with his rustic delicacy he said nothing, and led Mr.
Winchester to the blacksmith's shop.

While this young gentleman is hammering nails into a horse's hoof,
and Australia into an English farmer's mind, we must introduce other
personages.

Susanna Merton was beautiful and good. George Fielding and she were
acknowledged lovers, but marriage was not spoken of as a near event, and
latterly old Merton had seemed cool whenever his daughter mentioned the
young man's name.

Susanna appeared to like George, though not so warmly as he loved her;
but at all events she accepted no other proffers of love. For all that
she had, besides a host of admirers, other lovers besides George;
and what is a great deal more singular (for a woman's eye is quick as
lightning in finding out who loves her), there was more than one of
whose passion she was not conscious.

William Fielding, George's brother, was in love with his brother's
sweetheart, but though he trembled with pleasure when she was near him,
he never looked at her except by stealth; he knew he had no business to
love her.

On the morning of our tale Susan's father, old Merton, had walked over
from his farm to "The Grove," and was inspecting a field behind George's
house, when he was accosted by his friend, Mr. Meadows, who had seen
him, and giving his horse to a boy to hold had crossed the stubbles to
speak to him.

Mr. Meadows was not a common man, and merits some preliminary notice.

He was what is called in the country "a lucky man"; everything he had
done in life had prospered.

The neighbors admired, respected, and some of them even hated this
respectable man, who had been a carter in the midst of them, and now at
forty years of age was a rich corn-factor and land-surveyor.

"All this money cannot have been honestly got," said the envious ones
among themselves; yet they could not put their finger on any dishonest
action he had done. To the more candid the known qualities of the man
accounted for his life of success.

This John Meadows had a cool head, an iron will, a body and mind alike
indefatigable, and an eye never diverted from the great objects of sober
industrious men--wealth and respectability. He had also the soul of
business--method!

At one hour he was sure to be at church; at another, at market; in his
office at a third, and at home when respectable men should be at home.

By this means Mr. Meadows was always to be found by any man who
wanted to do business; and when you had found him, you found a man
superficially coy perhaps, but at bottom always ready to do business,
and equally sure to get the sunny side of it and give you the windy.

Meadows was generally respected; by none more than by old Merton, and
during the last few months the intimacy of these two men had ripened
into friendship; the corn-factor often hooked his bridle to the old
farmer's gate, and took a particular interest in all his affairs.

Such was John Meadows.

In person he was a tall, stout man, with iron gray hair, a healthy,
weather-<DW52> complexion, and a massive brow that spoke to the depth
and force of the man's character.

"What, taking a look at the farm, Mr. Merton? It wants some of your
grass put to it, doesn't it?"

"I never thought much of the farm," was the reply, "it lies cold; the
sixty-acre field is well enough, but the land on the hill is as poor as
death."

Now this idea, which Merton gave out as his, had dropped into him from
Meadows three weeks before.

"Farmer," said Meadows, in an undertone, "they are thrashing out new
wheat for the rent."

"You don't say so? Why I didn't hear the flail going."

"They have just knocked off for dinner--you need not say I told you, but
Will Fielding was at the bank this morning, trying to get money on their
bill, and the bank said No! They had my good word, _too_. The people of
the bank sent over to me."

They had his good word! but not his good tone! he had said. "Well,
their father was a safe man;" but the accent with which he eulogized the
parent had somehow locked the bank cash-box to the children.

