A week hence, and Simon Deg was the son-in-law of Mr. Spires. Though Mr. Spires had misunderstood Simon, and Simon had borne the aspect of opposition to his old friend, in defence of conscientious principles, the wife and daughter of the manufacturer had always understood him, and secretly looked forward to some day of recognition and re-union.
Simon Deg was now one of the richest men in Castleborough. His mother was still living to enjoy his elevation. She had been his excellent and wise housekeeper, and she continued to occupy that post still.
CHAPTER III.
THINGS AS THEY USED TO BE.
One of the first things which Simon Deg did after Mr. Spires had so indignantly refused him his daughter on account of his origin, was to conceive and to carry out a resolve that, however the brand of pauperism might attach to his ancestors, none of its obligations should lie on him. “Let past generations settle their own accounts,” he said; “but so far as this generation goes, there is not a man of it shall say that I owe the country, or rather this town, a farthing for life and growth. If my father ever received a bodle of parish-pay, which I know not, or his father or father’s father for him, it shall be repaid.” He went, therefore, successively to the committee of the poor in each parish, of which the town contained three, and desired permission to search the pay-books of each of these parishes for the last eighty years. “Beyond that period,” he said, “there can be no man living who ever paid a farthing to the poor-rates.” He did not conceal the object of his research. It was to ascertain, to a fraction, what amount had been paid during that period to any individual of the name of Deg. His position in the town readily secured him this opportunity, and he immediately employed an able accountant in each parish to trace down, through the books, items of these payments. He promised, moreover, to the stipendiary, or sub-overseers of the poor, a handsome honorarium, to assist the accountant in seeing that his work was done completely, and in aiding him in any difficulty. He himself frequently attended, and made tests, by going over certain extents of these accounts, of the accuracy with which they were done. It was a great labour, and was not completed much under a year. But it was accomplished at last, and the result was a statement of several thousand pounds as having been paid to persons of the name of Deg. This amount Simon Deg paid over with great satisfaction to the respective committees, and took receipts for it. The parish officers represented to him that there was no reason whatever that he should make so extraordinary a refundment to the parish, from which neither he himself nor his father in his own person could be shown to have derived a penny. Still more, they represented that Mr. Deg could not be descended from all the Degs; he could only have descended in one line, and from that specific line did he only incur even the shadow of an obligation to the parishes.
Simon Deg replied, that that was true; but, on the other hand, there was a female side to the line, the fathers and mothers of women who married Degs, and daughters of Degs who married and passed under other names, had swelled the account. He therefore requested to be allowed to pay the whole account, as it appeared under the name of Deg; and this was done. He observed, that he did not wish to dictate in any way the manner in which these sums should be expended, but he thought that the whole of them might with advantage be employed in extending and rendering more comfortable those parts of the workhouses where the aged paupers or the sick were accommodated; and this suggestion was fully and freely complied with.
This act of Simon Deg’s, demonstrating a feeling of such a profound sense of honour and integrity, made a grand impression on his townspeople, and raised him still higher in public estimation. In the course of his inquiry he made the discovery that the family name was in reality Degge, and had been thus spelled from the earliest period till within the last half of the last century. He therefore resumed the dropped letters, as giving a greater finish of the name to the eye; and saying pleasantly that, as he had now discharged the debts of his progenitors, at least to this generation, he thought he might be allowed to take the two last letters out of pawn. Henceforth, therefore, he and every one else wrote him Simon “Degge.”
Not long after his marriage, he bought a farm at Hillmartin, a village not far from Rockville. He was naturally of an active temperament, was fond of riding, and took a great fancy to farming and shooting. These divertisements were all afforded him by this little estate. After close confinement in his counting-house, he liked to get on his horse, and ride briskly out of town, over the old Trent Bridge, and up the winding way to his farm. Hillmartin was about three miles out, and stood on a fine, airy elevation, overlooking the country round, and from this side of it giving a full view of Castleborough. Simon’s farm lay a little over the hill beyond Hillmartin, and stretched in one direction towards Gotham, and in another towards the estate of Sir Benjamin Bullockshed.
Simon Degge’s purchase of this farm was a subject of great annoyance to Sir Benjamin, who was very anxious to have it, as it lay alongside of his woods and game preserves. The fact of seeing his pheasants, which had found a favourite, because a plentiful feeding-place, on this farm, shot down by Mr. Degge and his numerous friends from Castleborough, was, in truth, as great a misfortune as Sir Benjamin well could imagine to himself. For a quarter of a mile these woods of his ran along the corn-lands of this farm. The previous farmer had complained in vain of the depredations of the game—hares, rabbits and pheasants—which issued out of the preserves in legions. He was told that he must fence them out, but the fence was Sir Benjamin’s; and the farmer dared no more to put a stick into it to stop their runs, than he dared have taken a stick to Sir Benjamin himself. His growing corn was trodden down by the hares and rabbits; the hares, according to their habit, cut paths through it, and made playgrounds in it; the rabbits cropped it as fast as it grew for fifty yards, all along the woodsides. What escaped and went into ear was regularly eaten up by the pheasants. They sat on the hedges along the woodside as tame as barn-door fowls, knowing well that they were under powerful protection, and during harvest, if a daring waggoner snapped his whip at them, they disdained to move. On a fine afternoon, so long as there was anything to pick on the stubble, you might see them feeding in flocks of a hundred together, as quietly as fowls in a barn-yard.
The nuisance of this great game-manufactory, ruinous to the farmer, had compelled one tenant after another to throw the farm up. In fact, no one knowing the farm would take it; they were only men from a distance who did so, and were in terrible but vain trepidation when they discovered the real nature of the game-preserving incubus that lay upon the land. In itself the land was excellent, and, therefore, a stranger examining it, who had not already lived in a game-preserving country, was readily taken in by it. If the farmer, on discovering the alarming evil, complained, the answer from Sir Benjamin’s steward was, as I have said, “You can stop the runs in the hedges but if the farmer did stop them, he found the stoppage very soon removed by the keepers in their nocturnal rounds. One bold farmer had kept terriers to scour the woodsides; but he soon found his dogs, when they followed the game into the wood, shot, or trapped in the iron traps so freely used by our English gamekeepers, who are the greatest and most extensive animal torturers that the world ever knew.