Ch. 22: The Master of the Village - Page 2

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.

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