As time advanced, and he became more imbued with avarice, more expert in meanness, he cut and shaved and clipped here and there and everywhere, until he had reduced his expenditure to about a thousand a year.
But he did not rest content with cutting down his own expenses; he was fully as careful to increase his income by every means in his power.
When leases expired they were renewed only on payment of heavy fines. His care was not so much to inflate the rent-roll as to get in all the ready-money he could. He had, he calculated, only a few years, if so long, to live, and the rent-roll would then be the concern of that William Midharst whom he had never seen and whom he wished never to see.
He cut down and sold all the timber as far as his right to do so extended; and all the trimming and underwood, which had previously been allowed to go as perquisites to the men or as gleaning among the poor, he took possession of and sold.
He let the right of shooting over his land and the right of fishing in his streams and rivers. He sold off all he might of the more modern furniture at the Castle.
He sold all his personal plate and jewels, and all the pictures he had acquired in his lifetime. When he was young he had made a collection of coins; this, too, he converted into cash.
At one time he contemplated letting one wing of the Castle to a rich tallow-chandler of the city, and was absolutely in treaty with him, when with a shudder of shame he drew back and broke off the negotiations.
When he commenced his scheme of economy and exactions, he had said to himself that if he pursued it for one year, and sold off all the things he then contemplated, he should be able to leave his baby-girl close on forty thousand pounds. At the end of twelve months he found he had put more money together than he had anticipated. There was no new cause of anxiety with regard to his health, and he made up his mind to continue upon the track he had adopted. He might live a year, ay, two years yet; if he lasted two years more the leases of Garfield estate would fall in, and he should reap a harvest out of renewals. Give him two years more, that is, three from the beginning, and he should be able to leave his only child close upon one hundred thousand pounds.
At the end of the three years he found he had not come within several thousand pounds of his limit; so he resolved to complete the hundred thousand before he changed his manner of living or of dealing with the property.
When the end of the fourth year was reached he had saved more than the hundred thousand pounds. By this time he had become accustomed to the loss of all his old associations, had grown to love the new, and, above all, had become the slave of avarice, that most inflexible and enduring of all the passions. Therefore, he threw all idea of change to the winds, and resolved as long as he lived, whether for a week or twenty years, to save all the money he could, in order that the descendants of his side of the family might be able to hold up their heads hereafter.