His pride was shocked. The feeling that he could buy everything was shaken. He was not accustomed to crosses, except such as his wealth or his energy could overcome; and his sense of injured honour, too, was touched.
“I would not have you do anything that is mean, Dick; there is nothing mean in being generous and open-handed; and there are two powers, it appears, at Oxford,—money and blood; don’t be afraid to hold your own; you have no reason to be ashamed of your birth, and you can make them ashamed of their poverty, the sneaks! Don’t spare them one jot, Dick; punish them, and show them what talents of silver invested in iron can do—the miserable sneaks!”
Thus all the merchant’s practical wisdom and his just pride were thrown to the winds; but he is not the only man of his class who, chafing at the arrogance of “gentle blood,” has sought revenge on Society at the shrine of Mammon, and obtained nothing in return but “a crown of golden sorrow.”
CHAPTER III.
BRINGS US TO THE HALL FARM, WHERE THE READER MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF THE SOMERTONS AND A CERTAIN LANDSCAPE PAINTER.
It lay on the western border of the park, and comprised about eight hundred acres of arable and pasture land.
The buildings were red brick, with white dressed corner stones and facings. There were model cow-houses, cattle-sheds, piggeries, barns, corn-lofts, and poultry pens, that would have satisfied even Mr. Mechi’s critical eye. An agricultural writer of considerable repute had, in truth, written an essay upon these model buildings, and it had been printed in an important agricultural and scientific review; for there were no better arranged buildings in the country.
Mr. Tallant, you know, would have the best of everything, and his bailiff encouraged him in having all the best things at his farm. There were carts from Crosskill, ploughs from Ransomes, threshing-machines from Clayton and Shuttleworth, reapers from America, clod-crushers, drills, rakes, hoes, harrows, and other implements from Banbury, Lincoln, Beverley, Worcester, Yorkshire, and Bristol.
Mr. Tallant had built these model farm-buildings himself. The Hall Farm had been an especial feature of the estate when he purchased it, but the buildings did not come up to his notions, and the result is before us.
Mr. Tallant brought all his commercial experience to bear upon the cultivation and management of the land. His bailiff, Mr. Luke Somerton, had been a Lincolnshire lord’s right hand in the management of a great farm on the Wolds, and he was the very man of all others to enter into Mr. Tallant’s idea of looking upon a farm in the same light as he would a manufactory.
The merchant maintained that good land would, in a very few years, amply repay a man for all he put into it; and Mr. Somerton was a thoroughgoing disciple of high cultivation. He had studied agricultural chemistry under a professor, and Mr. Tallant often said it was quite a treat to chat with him about Liebig’s theories, the value of agricultural statistics, tenant right, and leases. Richard Tallant did not agree with his father, and thought Luke Somerton’s talk a good deal of it “rot:” not that the bailiff cared for Mr. Richard’s opinion, or feared his father’s.