Chapter 7
Seven
James Bennet had not intended to spend more of the morning in Meryton than strict necessity required.
Yet necessity, once admitted into a market town, seldom confined itself to a single errand, and Longbourn—being a house in which six men and an active mistress, plus servants, were perpetually consuming, wearing out, or mislaying something—made claims upon his time with discouraging regularity.
The butcher had detained the footman over the question of a hind-quarter promised on Tuesday and delivered only that morning; the grocer’s boy had mistaken one order for another and sent inferior tea to the back entrance; and the coachman, having at last secured the proper joints and barrels, was now overseeing their stowage with that solemn absorption which men of his profession bestowed upon straps, weight, and balance, as if the prosperity of all Hertfordshire depended upon the proper disposition of each parcel.
James, having settled accounts at two shops, amended them at a third, and found that Mr. Philips’s clerk had not yet sent over the memorandum promised the day before, stood for a few minutes near the butcher’s yard with his gloves in one hand and his riding-crop in the other, watching, with composed impatience, the final loading of the goods.
Meryton was in one of its busiest humours.
Women came and went with baskets on their arms; a wagon of sacks lurched past toward the inn yard; two soldiers in light company jackets lounged by the pump with an air of practised idleness; and above all hung the mingled smells of raw meat, damp straw, leather, horse-sweat, and newly ground meal from the mill-stream beyond the town.
The eldest Bennet son might, in a more sentimental temper, have thought it a lively picture of English industry. In his present one, it was only delay.
He had just turned to see whether the footman had done at last with the butcher’s assistant when a man of sturdy build, whose coat and gaiters bore the floury signs of practical labour, approached with the careful respect of one who knew the distance between a tradesman and a landed gentleman, but had business strong enough to overcome hesitation.
He was near sixty, broad across the shoulders, weathered in the face, and carried that mixture of caution and resolution which belongs to a man not naturally forward, yet determined not to lose an opportunity once chosen.
“Mr. Bennet, sir,” he said, touching his hat, “I beg pardon for troubling you in the street, but if you could spare me a quarter of an hour, I believe I have a matter to lay before you that may be worth your hearing.”
James turned fully toward him and, after a moment’s consideration, recognised him. “Mr. Henley, is it not?”
“The same, sir. Of Henley’s Mill.”
James inclined his head. He knew the name very well.
Every man who had any concern with grain in that part of Hertfordshire knew it.
Henley’s mill stood on the stream below Meryton, somewhat beyond the lane that led toward Lucas Lodge, and had for years served not only the smaller farmers of the district, but several tenants connected with Longbourn itself.
It was not a grand concern, but it was a useful one, and, as James had often observed, the useful properties of a neighbourhood generally mattered more than the splendid ones.
“If this is a matter of business,” James Bennet said, “I had better hear it now, for once I leave the town I shall not return before next week.”
Mr. Henley glanced toward the bustle of the yard, then toward the side lane where the noise was somewhat less oppressive. “If you would walk but a little way, sir, I should be obliged. It is not a thing one names over the heads of butchers’ boys.”
There was enough gravity in the request to satisfy James that the matter was not trivial.
He gave a slight sign to the footman to wait where he was, told the coachman he should not be five minutes—though he knew, before the words were well out, that five was impossible—and then moved with the miller toward the quieter side of the street, where the wall of a cooper’s yard cast a strip of shade across the road.
“Well, Mr. Henley,” James said, when they had gained a little privacy, “what is it?”
The older man drew a breath, as if steadying himself against the impropriety of plain dealing with one above him. “After more than forty years of strenuous work, I mean to sell, sir.”
James’s brow altered scarcely at all; yet his attention sharpened instantly. “The mill, do you mean?”
“The mill, the dwelling-house, the granary, the wheel, the stones, the rights, and the custom, so far as custom can be passed from one hand to another. I am no longer equal to the whole of it, Mr. Bennet. I have held on longer than many in my place would have done, because a man does not willingly part from the work by which he has lived and raised his children; but I know my own strength, and I know as well when it has begun to fail me.”
James looked at him steadily, not with surprise, but with the thoughtful reserve of a man already calculating what had not yet been offered. “And your sons?”
“One dead in the fever at Portsmouth, sir, these seven years. Another has gone north to Manchester, where he has married into cotton and would not thank me for a wheel and mill-race if I put both into his hands tomorrow. My daughter is settled with her husband in Chatham. There is no one of my own blood to take it after me, and I would rather sell while the concern is sound than leave it to dwindle under a hired man who serves wages better than interest.”
The matter was sensible, and because of that, James trusted it more than if it had been dramatic. He shifted the crop lightly against his glove and said, “And what leads you to address yourself to me?”
Mr. Henley answered that question with more readiness than the rest, for he had likely rehearsed it.
“Because Longbourn is the best-established house in the neighbourhood after Netherfield, and because your family has tenants who already grind with me. You are a gentleman who understands accounts. If the thing is to remain local and be well managed, I would sooner see it in the hands of a Bennet than of a stranger out of Hertford or St. Albans, who would care nothing for the district so long as his toll be paid.”
James could not help a slight inward smile at being credited with so much discernment by a man whose chief desire was plainly to sell at a good price to a stable purchaser; but the compliment was not foolish, and the argument not unsound.
“What sort of stranger has been looking at it?” he asked.
“A meal dealer from Hertford has spoken to me,” said Henley, “and another man—one Pritchard, a brewer’s brother, with ready cash and no patience.
Either would buy for gain and squeeze every farmer within ten miles till they hated the stream itself.
I do not say a gentleman cannot be hard, sir; I have known some who were.
But a local gentleman must at least continue to live among those he pinches. ”
This time, James did smile, though faintly. “You argue your cause very sensibly, Mr. Henley. Yet you have not said what the concern is worth.”
The miller’s face took on that expression which belongs to a man approaching the decisive point of any negotiation. “I ask nineteen hundred pounds, sir, and we close the deal.”
James’s eyes remained on the miller, but within, the figure was already in motion. Nineteen hundred. Higher than he had expected, yet not absurdly so, if the concern were what it ought to be.
“That is no small sum,” he said.
“No, sir; nor is it no small business either. Properly valued, it is worth at least two thousand four hundred pounds. In a good year, it makes some three hundred pounds profit, or more. There are repairs, naturally, and wages, and the wheel must be watched; but the custom is steady, the road sound enough, and the water-right secure. Two pairs of stones—sound timbering. Granary dry as bone. Dwelling-house decent. The north sluice was mended last Michaelmas, and the southern bank shored up the spring before. I do not ask nineteen hundred for a ruin.”
James was silent for several moments. Men often name receipts when they ought to name profit, and name possibilities when they ought to name facts.
Still, there was something in Henley’s look—a practical self-respect, neither cringing nor inflated—which disposed him to believe that the figure was not invented.
“And what remains clear?”
“I am not attempting to fool you, sir. That depends upon the year, the harvest, and whether a fool has let the wheel go loose or allowed the stones to wear too far. But a prudent master may do very well. Better, I think, than upon many acres that look finer from the road.”
James turned that over. Better than many acres that look finer from the road.
There was more truth in that than in half the reports of stewards and valuers.
A mill of that sort, at that price, near enough to be inspected, established enough to yield at once, was no trifle.
It was not only profitable; it was useful.
Its income might help settle some future difficulty; might provide, one day, a tremendous advantage to the estate or an independence for one of his brothers; might stand as a buffer between Longbourn and those anxieties which had, of late, pressed more heavily upon his mind than he had ever allowed his mother to suspect.
He said at last, “If I were to consider such a purchase, I should wish to see the books, Mr. Henley.”
“You shall see them, sir.”
“The wheel, the races, the stones, the grain loft, the house, and the leases or understandings under which your regular farmers bring in their corn.”
“You shall see all of it, sir.”
“And any debts upon the concern?”
“None that are not ordinary trade accounts, and those current. The mill itself is clear.”