“So, then, the end of all this turmoil is to purchase a heronry! Much good may it do you, cousin Marvel. You understand your own affair best: you will make great improvements, I grant, and no doubt will be the richest of us all. The ten thousand pounds will be yours for certain: for, as we all know, cousin Marvel, you are a genius!—But why a genius should set his fancy upon a heronry, of all things in this mortal world, is more than I can pretend to tell, being no genius myself.”
“Look here, Wright,” continued Marvel, still without vouchsafing any direct reply to Goodenough: “here’s a description, in this last newspaper, of the fine present that the grand seignior has made to his majesty. The plume of herons’ feathers alone is estimated at a thousand guineas! Think of what I shall make by my heronry! At the end of ten years, I shall be so rich that it will hardly be worth my while,” said Marvel, laughing, “to accept of my uncle’s legacy. I will give it to you, Wright; for you are a generous fellow, and I am sure you will deserve it.”
In return for this liberal promise, Wright endeavoured to convince Marvel, that if he attempted such a variety of schemes at once, they would probably all fail; and that to ensure success, it would be necessary to calculate, and to make himself master of the business, before he should undertake to conduct it. Marvel, however, was of too sanguine and presumptuous a temper to listen to this sage advice: he was piqued by the sneers of his cousin Goodenough, and determined to prove the superiority of his own spirit and intellect. He plunged at once into the midst of a business which he did not understand. He took a rabbit-warren of two hundred and fifty acres into his hands; stocked ten acres of marsh land with geese; and exchanged some of the best part of Clover-hill for a share in a common covered with thistles. He planted a considerable tract of land, with a degree of expedition that astonished all the neighbourhood: but it was remarked that the fences were not quite sufficient; especially as the young trees were in a dangerous situation, being surrounded by land stocked with sheep and horned cattle. Wright warned him of the danger; but he had no time this year, he said, to complete the fences: the men who tended his sheep might easily keep them from the plantation for this season, and the next spring he purposed to dig such a ditch round the whole as should secure it for ever. He was now extremely busy, making jackets for his sheep, providing willows for his decoy, and gorse and corn for his geese: the geese, of which he had a prodigious flock, were not yet turned into their fen, because a new scheme had occurred to Marvel, relative to some reeds with which a part of this fen was covered; on these reeds myriads of starlings were accustomed to roost, who broke them down with their weight. Now Marvel knew that such reeds would be valuable for thatching, and with this view he determined to drive away the starlings; but the measures necessary for this purpose would frighten his friends, the geese, and therefore he was obliged to protect and feed them in his farm-yard, at a considerable expense, whilst he was carrying on the war with the starlings. He fired guns at them morning and evening, he sent up rockets and kites with fiery tails, and at last he banished them; but half his geese, in the mean time, died for want of food; and the women and children, who plucked them, stole one quarter of the feathers, and one half of the quills, whilst Marvel was absent letting up rockets in the fen.
The rabbit-warren was, however, to make up for all other losses: a furrier had engaged to take as many silver sprigs from him as he pleased, at sixteen shillings a dozen, provided he should send them properly dressed, and in time to be shipped for China, where these silver grey rabbit skins sold to the best advantage. As winter came on, it was necessary to supply the warren with winter food: and Marvel was much astonished at the multitude of unforeseen expenses into which his rabbits led him. The banks of the warren wanted repair, and the warrener’s house was not habitable in bad weather: these appeared but slight circumstances when Marvel made the purchase; but, alas! he had reason to change his opinion in the course of a few months. The first week in November, there was a heavy fall of snow; and the warren walls should have been immediately cleared of snow, to have kept the rabbits within their bounds: but Marvel happened this week to be on a visit in Yorkshire, and he was obliged to leave the care of the warren entirely to the warrener, who was obliged to quit his house during the snow, and to take shelter with a neighbour: he neglected to clear the walls; and Marvel upon his return home, found that his silver sprigs had strayed into a neighbouring warren. The second week in November is the time when the rabbits are usually killed, as the skins are then in full prime: it was in vain that Marvel raised a hue and cry after his silver sprigs; a fortnight passed away before one-third of them could be recovered. The season was lost, and the furrier sued him for breach of contract; and what was worse, Goodenough laughed at his misfortunes. The next year he expected to retrieve his loss: he repaired the warrener’s house, new faced the banks, and capped them with furze; but the common grey rabbit had been introduced into the warren, by the stragglers of the preceding year; and as these grey rabbits are of a much more hardy race than the silver sprigs, they soon obtained and kept possession of the land. Marvel now pronounced rabbits to be the most useless and vexatious animals upon earth; and, in one quarter of an hour, thoroughly convinced himself that tillage was far more profitable than rabbits. He ploughed up his warren, and sowed it with corn; but, unluckily, his attention had been so much taken up by the fishery, the decoy, the geese, the thistles, and the hopes of the heronry, that he totally forgot his intention of making the best of all possible ditches round his plantation. When he went to visit this plantation, he beheld a miserable spectacle: the rabbits which had strayed beyond their bounds during the great snow, and those which had been hunted from their burrows, when the warren was ploughed up, had all taken shelter in this spot; and these refugees supported themselves, for some months, upon the bark and roots of the finest young trees.
Marvel’s loss was great, but his mortification still greater; for his cousin Goodenough laughed at him without mercy. Something must be done, he saw, to retrieve his credit: ad the heronry was his resource.
“What will signify a few trees, more or less,” thought he, “or the loss of a few silver sprigs, or the death of a few geese, or the waste of a few quills and feathers? My sheep will sell well, my thistles will bring me up again; and as soon as I have sold my sheep at Partney fair, and manufactured my thistles, I will set out with my money in my pocket for Spalding, and make my bargain for the heronry. A plume of herons’ feathers is worth a thousand guineas! My fortune will be made when I get possession of the Spalding heronry.”
So intent was Marvel upon the thoughts of the Spalding heronry, that he neglected every thing else. About a week before the fair of Partney, he bethought himself of his sheep, which he had left to the care of a shepherd boy: he now ordered the boy to drive them home, that he might see them. Their jackets hung upon them like bags: the poor animals had fallen away in the most deplorable manner. Marvel could scarcely believe that these were his sheep; or that these were the sheep which he had expected to be the pride of Lincolnshire, and which he had hoped would set the fashion of jackets. Behold, they were dying of the rot!
“What an unfortunate man I am!” exclaimed Marvel, turning to his cousin Wright, whom he had summoned along with Goodenough, in the pride of his heart, to view, value, and admire his sheep. “All your sheep, Wright, are fat and sound: mine were finer than yours when I bought them: how comes it that I am so unlucky?”
“Jack of all trades, and master of none!” said Goodenough, with a sneer.
“You forgot, I am afraid, what I told you, when first you bought these sheep,” said Wright, “that you should always keep them in fold, every morning, till the dew was off: if you had done so, they would now be as well and thriving as mine. Do not you remember my telling you that?”