CHAPTER V.
BETTY TRAPPS COMES TO NOTICE.
The life of Rockville, Woodburn, and their vicinities presented little to chronicle for some time. Simon Degge was angrily commented upon by the neighbouring squirearchy, for having thrown open the game on his estate to the farmers. “This is the way,” they said at their mutual dinners, “with these plebeians. Having no taste for gentlemanly sport themselves, they would like to see it annihilated, and the landed proprietors reduced for amusement to flocking to Castleborough, and winding cotton-balls, or manufacturing stockings.” This idea was very much applauded, and made the ladies of the county very merry. “We must all go to help the gentlemen,” they said, “and seam hose, and help to ‘take in.’” Mr. Markham, the rector of Rockville, though agreeing with his landed friends in the main idea, said he was bound to say that Mr. Degge was rather a keen sportsman, and a prodigious good shot. He had seen him drop his birds right and left in a most masterly way; where he had picked up the skill rather puzzled him. Certainly, it could not come by nature, as Dogberry thought reading and writing did; but it must be admitted that he was a prodigiously clever man. And, in fact, unless he had been, how could he have got on so?
“How do good-looking fellows manage to marry rich heiresses?” asked Sir Benjamin Bullockshed.
“Ah, well; but that was not altogether the way that Mr. Degge had mounted into such fortune. No, no; it was too well known that he had got rich before he got the rich wife. He was not going to be the panegyrist of Degge; he did not approve of letting either farmers or hosiers loose on the game. By no means; and, besides, Degge had no taste at all for coursing, nor for hunting.”
“How should he?” asked Sir Thomas Tenterhook. “Probably, in his younger days he might manage to leap over a counter, but I should like to see him take a good hawthorn fence with a ditch on the other side, or a five-barred gate.”
“But he could do it; nay, I have seen him do it,” said Mr. Markham, “in riding over his farm one day; and if he had hunted all his life, he could not have shown himself more at home in the saddle.”
“Gad! Markham,” said Sir Thomas, “but Degge has turned your head marvellously in a very little time. Why, you are a regular trumpeter for him. By your account he is possessed of all the graces and endowments of a specimen man.”
“Oh! don’t you believe it, Sir Thomas. It is nonsense,” replied Mr. Markham; “it is useless to deny what is plain to everybody; but I join you in all you say of Degge’s vulgar impudence in presuming to snatch a property, as it were, out of the hands of such a gentleman as Sir Benjamin Bullockshed, and in letting loose half the hosiers of Castleborough on Sir Benjamin’s game.”
“On Sir Benjamin’s game!” said Sir Roger Rockville; “on all our game. He has encouraged the poachers to an audacity never known before. They all say, ‘There, Mr. Degge has shown his sense. He knows that game is everybody’s.’ Our keepers have now no rest day nor night. The fields, the woods, the copses swarm with poachers. After them, and they are over the hedges into Degge’s land, and touch ’em there who dare. Sooner than we should convict them, he would give every man of them a keeper’s licence. That arch scamp, Joe Scammell, I am told, sends cart-loads of hares and pheasants to Castleborough every week. Can no one lay hold of that fellow? His offences are now so many, he might be transported.”
“But what matters half-a-dozen Scammells being sent out of the country,” said Sir Thomas Tenterhook, “when every labourer or artizan is encouraged by the example of Degge, who is only a poacher on a larger scale? They preach that all must live. Now let me tell you something. Close to my estate, and by the high road to Castleborough, there lives a shoemaker, in a village, who was had up and fined for shooting a hare in his garden last winter but one. That fellow the very next season took out a licence, for the right of a shot over his own garden, and he could not be turned out of it. So Degge made him one of his keepers, and thus qualified him; and all this last autumn and winter, he has sat at his window and shot my hares and pheasants. Not content with daylight, he has kept this fine game by moonlight. Gad! the fellow is making a little fortune out of it.”
There was a universal murmur of indignation at such an instance of unheard-of audacity.
“Yes,” said Sir Benjamin Bullockshed, “that is precisely the case in point. My game is drained off by constantly getting into some one of Degge’s fields, and being killed by one of his stocking-weaver acquaintances. I say, Mr. Markham, spite of your praises of Simon Degge, the man is a nuisance, a sheer, intolerable unmitigated nuisance.”
“Hear! hear!” resounded round the dinner-table, in which Mr. Markham, rather alarmed for his reputation, joined; and the ladies rose, to retire to the drawing-room, expressing their hearty approbation.
Simon Degge, meantime, did not trouble himself about these wrathful comments upon him in the neighbouring great houses. He had the pleasure of hearing all throughout Hillmartin, that the people there were highly pleased with the check he had given to Sir Benjamin Bullockshed, whose injustice to the farmers of this farm had been a subject of indignant comment for years. As his crops grew, he fenced off what he wanted to secure from the game, with a wire fencing, which he found perfectly effectual, leaving a considerable strip along the woodsides to the depredations of these creatures. When the harvest was got, he removed his wire-fence, and allowed the game to wander anywhere, and all autumn and winter he found an abundant supply for himself and friends, who had thus a great inducement to come out from Castleborough for a good day’s shooting every now and then. This was not less irritating to the Bullocksheds and Rockvilles, than it was delightful to the people and farmers all round, who not daring to open their mouths, yet saw with evident satisfaction this poetical justice executed on men who had never shown the least sense of justice in their own conduct whenever game was concerned.
The objects of social improvement which interested Mr. and Mrs. Degge in Castleborough, were introduced by them into the little arena of Hillmartin. The condition of the poor was looked into, and their distresses relieved. Their children were afforded a good school, and many a comfort flowed unostentatiously into the homes of the aged or the sick that was never known before.
Thus a new link was established between town and country, which, though it did not extend to the Bullocksheds and Rockvilles, did extend to the Woodburns, the Claverings, and some other county families. By the intercourse of the Degges, the Woodburns, the Heritages, and the Claverings, Sir Emanuel and his brother Thomas, the rector of Cotmanhaye, his wife and son, a very charming little circle was formed, in which English country life presented its most genial aspect. After a few formal visits and dinings, Mr. and Mrs. Degge began by degrees, one or other of them, or both together, to drop in at Woodburn Grange unceremoniously, and the Woodburns at Hillmartin. Simon Degge was glad to have something regarding his farm or country concerns to ask Mr. Woodburn about, and to take a ride with Leonard Woodburn when he went to superintend his own farm. Sometimes they extended their ride to Cotmanhaye Manor, and had a chat with Sir Emanuel, or, if he were absent, with the rector, who was a zealous farmer himself, and rented a large farm of his brother, on which his only son, Charles, resided, a couple of miles off. They always found Sir Emanuel extremely affable and even jocosely kind, and always familiar with all the topics of the day, whether political or concerning the affairs of the country round. His peeps into the worlds of the heavens did not seem to render him in the least indifferent to or unobservant of what passed in this. He never obtruded the display of his extensive knowledge of foreign countries, or of men and things in the great world of London and the nation at large, but these were frequently showing themselves in incidental remarks on the topics under discussion. Frequently he ordered his horse and accompanied them in their ride, and during the winter he invited them to join him in snipe and woodcock shooting, these birds abounding in some swampy places on his property, as did wild geese and ducks about the reedy back-waterings of the river. On these occasions he not only showed himself a dead shot, but careless of weather and capable of enduring amazing exertion.
The festivities of the winter brought these families much together. Woodburn Grange presented all the genial and gay abundance of fare—fat turkeys and geese, mince-pies, pork-pies, possets, and a world of light delicacies, blazing fires, and country sports and dances, even blind-man’s-buff, turn-trencher, and other romps, which had been preserved at the Grange from father to son as essential customs of country-life. These had a novelty, and, therefore, a greater charm for the young people from the town, than the more ordinary dinner-parties and dances of the great halls. Even Sir Emanuel Clavering became a laughing boy again at the rural revels of the Grange, and vied with the lightsome, butterfly gaiety of Letty, amid these domestic saturnalia. Sir Emanuel even opened his house to several gay parties, and embellished his handsome suite of rooms with a display of arms of richest and quaintest workmanship, caskets of ivory of most delicate carvings, and others inlaid with jewels and gold, with silken draperies of richest colours and strange devices, and china jars and vessels, some of stupendous size, and most superb forms, and painted enamelings. He himself moved everywhere amongst his guests, as affable, kind, gracefully courteous and cordial, as if he, too, never studied anything but to enjoy his fortune and position as a finished gentleman. Except his brother and his brother’s wife, he was now alone in his house, for his son was and had been some time abroad. All were charmed with Sir Emanuel, and wondered that he had spent so secluded a life in the country. Perhaps the cause was not far to seek, when it was recollected that Sir Roger Rockville, the Bullocksheds, and Tenterhooks had been his chief neighbours.
As the winter passed, and the spring days grew in warmth and pleasantness, the intercourse of these families grew too. Mr. and Mrs. Degge would call and join the young people of the Grange in their walks or rides, and Mrs. Degge would drop in and have a pleasant chat with Mrs. Woodburn, Ann, and Letty, as they went on with their different concerns. The great concern of Letty, indeed, seeming to be to laugh and chatter, as if there were no such things as care or matter-of-fact duty in the world. She had to show Mrs. Degge the herds of young ducks and chickens, the birds’ nests in curious places in the garden, the dogs, and the rabbits kept in the hutches, as if she had been an actual boy, and to the evident delight of their visitor, while a flood of intervening small-talk produced bursts of merry laughter, which, reaching the house, made the graver mother exclaim, “What can that girl be about?”
A great variety in this little circle was furnished by the Friends’ family of the Heritages. It was not the custom of these worthy Friends to give festive parties, nor did they frequent those of their neighbours, if there was to be much worldly amusement, especially of dancing, cards, or the like. They preferred to make familiar calls during the day, on which occasions they were always extremely friendly, and as pleasantly cheerful as any people in the world, but always with a certain substratum of gravity and soberness. These visits were generally made by Mrs. Heritage and her daughter Millicent. The mother was sure to ask about what she saw going on in farming household affairs. In winter she was very much interested in Betty Trapps’s spinning-wheel, which, when she had nothing else very pressing, was sure to be humming away in the warm, clean house-place, as it was called, a sort of intermediate room between the kitchen and the parlour, where the farm-men and the servants took their meals, and where Mr. Woodburn furnished them with suitable books for their evening’s reading in winter, but where the men generally stretched their legs before the blazing fire, and dropped asleep, and then stole off to bed. Betty Trapps greatly amused the Heritage ladies, mother and daughter, with her country shrewdness and plain-spokenness.
“Dost thou manage to get good tow?” asked Mrs. Heritage, one day.
“Oh, yes,” Betty said, “as good as I expect.”
“Dost thou not expect it to be good, then?” asked Mrs. Heritage.
“Yes, I expect it,” said Betty, “because I look pretty sharp after it. They wunna readily find a norp[1] in me.”
“Surely,” said Mrs. Heritage, “there cannot be much cheating in tow?”
“There are tricks in all trades,” said Betty, dryly, “and there are tricks in tow. I get mine from Widow Pechell, in Hillmartin, and as I scrutinised it pretty closely when I first went to her shop, says Mrs. Pechell, ‘Ay, thou may look, lass, but nobody is ever deceived in my tow, for they awlis expect a bit of bad in the middle, and they are sure to find it there.’”
“That was candid,” said Miss Millicent Heritage, laughing gently.
“But didst thou find some bad in the middle?” asked Mrs. Heritage.
“Yes, sure enough I did,” said Betty; “but I just took it out of the rock, and laid it on the counter, and said, ‘Now, weigh it, missis,’ and since then I never find any bad in the middle, because Mother Pechell knows it’s just no use. She may try that on with norps.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Heritage, rising, “when I want to buy tow, Betty, I will get thee to do it for me.”
Betty turned her wheel more briskly at this compliment to her sagacity, and added, “You might do worse, Mrs. Heritage; and yet I think Sukey Priddo can help you in such bargains quite as well.” Sukey Priddo was Mrs. Heritage’s housekeeper, and a sister Methodist of Betty’s.
“Oh! Sukey Priddo is a good, careful, managing soul,” said Mrs. Heritage, turning round and smiling as she went out; “but not half so sharp as thee, I think. Farewell, Betty.”
The Heritages, though they rarely gave parties, were always glad to see any of their friends at tea at five o’clock, and after that, in summer, to a walk in the grounds, and supper at eight, soon after which they liked their friends to depart, as they had family reading at nine, and all the house in bed at ten. It was a hospitable, abundant house. No good things of life were ever wanting there, for though the Friends have always been a temperate people, and have had a horror of drunkenness as actually degrading, they have always maintained luxurious tables—a luxury wedded to moderate indulgence—and have, combined with their avoidance of agitative passions, the great and healthy longevity they display.
At the simple but plenteous board of Fair Manor, our friends of Woodburn and even of Cotmanhaye—for Sir Emanuel had gradually been drawn out to occasional visits as far as there, and seemed as if he could not sufficiently admire the grave wisdom of Mr. Heritage, and the oriental beauty of the fair Millicent—have met quite another class and circle of persons. These were inhabitants of Castleborough, chiefly Friends, and their habits of thought, speech, and opinion, were a curious study to the more general denizens of the every-day world. There was a tone of what might be called practical and moral economy about them. Their plain dresses and simple manners were accompanied by a mode of looking at everything so different from that of the world—even the religious world in general—as made it rather a piquant study to those not intimate with them. Having abandoned all the usual amusements of society, as vain, frivolous, and often very immoral, and, therefore, unbecoming true Christians,—hunting, racing, theatres, balls, concerts, cards, and other games of hazard, or of skill employed for gain,—even abstaining from music, singing, or other things which might lead to lightness and dissipation, they were thrown greatly upon trade for a resource against ennui almost as much as for profit. In the domestic life, books of the most moral and grave kind, and the discussion of the great topics of philanthropy, of opposition to war, slavery, and political religions, and plans for prison discipline, and the relief of distress, and the spread of education amongst the people: these were their favourite topics; but of these their conversation was of the simplest kind. There was often a childlike character about it. In all great moral points they were simple, direct, substantial, and without grace or ornament,—grand. Brave and able must have been the man who could compete with them on any of these heads, for they were on the rock of eternal truth, and no human force could push them from it. Outside of this they could find amusement in the most simple of simplicities. You might see them at the tea-table at Fair Manor amuse themselves—that is, the young people, the elder ones looking on—with endeavouring to lift, by a close application of fingers and thumb to their smooth backs, the small dessert or tea-table plates which they used; or riddles and sober conundrums, could maintain a very innocent mirth for a whole evening.
There were, however, a number of curious, and one or two remarkable characters amongst the kind visitors from Castleborough, whom we shall occasionally meet there. Not the least striking figures in these parties, however, were David and Dorothy Qualm, and Sylvanus Crook. These were part and parcel, as it were, of the Fair Manor circle. David Qualm, as I have said, was the brother-in-law of Joseph Heritage, Dorothy Qualm being Jasper’s sister. This worthy couple lived, as we have said, at Still Lodge, just outside the grounds of Fair Manor. Still Lodge!—a most appropriate name. The very element of David and Dorothy Qualm was silence. So far as could be observed, they managed to understand and communicate with each other at the least expense of words conceivable. Their movements were as quiet as their words. What they did, said, thought of, what was their specialty, no one had ever been able to discover. And yet their specialty was huge, prominent, unavoidable—it was quietude. No passion, except it were a passion for peaceful inertia, marked, much less disturbed, their days. Their house was small and modest, but always exquisitely neat. It seemed a sin to tread on those bright, nice, unfaded, unworn carpets. On the mat at the entrance-door you read the large-lettered admonition, “Please, wipe thy shoes.” The garden was always neatness itself—staid and tempered in the very colours of its flowers. Dorothy Qualm had once been seen ordering the gardener to dig up and throw out some gorgeously red peonies, as too un-Friendly and gaudy in hue. David Qualm never was seen to garden, to engage in anything active, or visible even, except in tranquilly smoking his pipe, and in riding out on a small, stout Welsh pony, called Taffy, by the side of his tall, portly brother-in-law, Jasper Heritage, who rode, as befitted him, a large black horse. The high and substantial apparition of Jasper Heritage, and the little figure of pony and rider inevitably at his side, were familiar objects around Woodburn. Their striking difference in bulk and stature had inspired some wag to name them David and Goliath. Once Sylvanus Crook was greatly scandalised by finding chalked on the wall of the entrance-lodge where he lived, as he went out early one summer morning,—
David was a little man,
Goliath he was tall,
And you may see them any day
At Fair Manor Hall.
Sylvanus hurried in for a sponge and bucket of water, and perhaps never showed more adroitness in his life than in wiping out the offensive rhyme before his wife could get a glimpse of it. But many an earlier riser than Sylvanus had already read it, and it had entered into the oral curiosities of Woodburn, and even travelled to Castleborough.
In company David Qualm preserved the same solid reticence, the same inexhaustible capacity for silence as in his own domicile. At home, his pipe was his constant companion even more inseparable than his equally quiescent wife. What was he? He was the companion of Jasper Heritage, and that was all, so far as the most inquisitive mortal ever knew. Did he and brother Jasper ever converse at home, or in their rides? No one lives to tell us. Probably, in their own phrase, they were brought into nearness with each other, as Oliver the Protector said to George Fox at Whitehall, “Come again, George, come often; for if thou and I were oftener together, we should be nearer to each other.” David Qualm, in his brown Quaker suit, with his brown wig and his cocked hat, with the ample brim suspended by silk cords in the most orthodox style of that day of Quakerism, was a figure to be carved in stone, for no stone could surpass him in the abundance and perpetuity of silence.
Sylvanus Crook, the lodge inhabiter—his wife was the gate-keeper—Sylvanus, the overlooker of the grounds and gardeners, the house-steward, the purveyor of all necessaries, and bearer of all important messages—in a word, the factotum of Fair Manor—was a middle-sized man of forty, of light build, and clad in light drab, with short knee-breeches and grey ribbed stockings. His hat, too, was three-cocked, but had a less precise and more weather-beaten air than that of David Qualm, but was generally believed to be David’s, which in due course had descended on Sylvanus. In mind, in manner, in all else, Sylvanus, however, was the antithesis of David. Sylvanus had talk enough and busy mind enough for anybody. He read—having the run of Mr. Heritage’s library, but foraged most amongst Friends’ books: the histories of their trials, persecutions, and the expositions of their opinions. Sylvanus was a sturdy champion of Quaker principles and customs, and skilful must the polemical acrobat be who ventured a wrestle with him on that familiar and sacred ground. Many a combat had Sylvanus and Betty Trapps on the comparative merits of Quakerism and Methodism, and on sundry topics besides. Betty often turned the laugh against Sylvanus, but he was like a true Englishman, as described by Napoleon—he never knew when he was beaten. Sylvanus was the indispensable man at Fair Manor, and was one of those who, though servants, are acknowledged as brothers, and was admitted frequently to the society which frequented that great resort of Castleborough Friends.