The farm, belonging to a gentleman of Lincolnshire, he had, by the frequent change of tenants, grown out of love with it, and had offered it to Sir Benjamin at a moderate price; but Sir Benjamin, who did not believe any one thereabout would dare to come between him and the vendor, was standing out in the secure expectation of getting it at a very low figure, when Simon Degge, who was inquiring for such a farm, not far from town, heard of it from a lawyer in Castleborough who had carried on the negotiations with Sir Benjamin for the owner. This gentleman was much disgusted with the gross selfishness, the many delays, and haughty conduct of Sir Benjamin, and was delighted at the opportunity of putting the property at once and for ever out of his power. Mr. Degge closed with the conditions of sale at once, and as the whole of the purchase-money was ready, in a month the farm was fully conveyed to him, and put into his possession.
The consternation and indignation of Sir Benjamin on receiving this intelligence may be imagined. He saw at once that the tables were now most completely turned against him. He had no longer a half-informed and comparatively poor farmer to contend with, but a young man of great acknowledged ability and wealth, as well as activity of character. Instead of telling Mr. Degge to put sticks and bushes into the runs of the hares, rabbits, and pheasants, which his keepers could pull out again, he himself ordered the fences all along Mr. Degge’s farm to be made game-tight. A fence, inside the hawthorn-fence, of stakes about two feet long, which were driven down nearly in contact, side by side, was made to prevent egress from the preserves to the farm. But all this did not avail. The pheasants, as the corn ripened, flew over the fences, and fed freely on Mr. Degge’s corn. The hares travelled round and squatted themselves down thickly in the green crops of corn, grass, and clover; and the rabbits burrowed under, requiring continually the stopping of their holes: for although the rabbits were less cared for by Sir Benjamin, they were more cared for by his keepers, who made a profitable perquisite out of them.
On his part, Mr. Degge did not trouble himself at all about a certain amount of damage done by this game to his crops along the woodside; for the money value did not distress him, and he looked on that part of the farm as a nursery for the game which he meant to invite his Castleborough friends in the autumn to shoot.
But the annoyance to Sir Benjamin and his friends did not end here. Scattered about on that side of the country lay the estates of a number of squires—the Tenterhooks, Sheepshanks, Otterbrooks, Swagsides, &c.—who were of a thoroughly countryfied school. They were men not destitute of a certain amount of education, but who had no tastes beyond those of living on their property, and being the lords paramount as far as it extended. To be the great men of their little ancestral spots of earth; to rule over the farmers; to rear and destroy game; to officiate as magistrates, and convict poachers and petty culprits—that was the extent of their ambition. They seldom frequented the metropolis, or mixed in the society of the more elevated and refined aristocracy. They formed a circle of society of their own, looking proudly down on the moneyed men of the market town, on the farmers and villagers around them—at once ignorant of all superior knowledge, proud, and arbitrary.
That a man of the manufacturing town should have dared to step in, and catch away a valuable farm from before Sir Benjamin Bullockshed’s very nose, and, as they said, in actually gasping astonishment, whilst he was in negotiation for it, was a piece of audacity which really took away their breath. It was ominous of fresh attempts of the kind. The sanctity of the country and of game was no longer secure from the unhallowed inroads of plebeian audacity. Sir Roger Rockville, whose property also at one point came up to Mr. Degge’s farm, was in a state of most imbecile exasperation at this event. The dreaded manufacturing town was thus already marching into the very heart of the country; and of the manufacturing town, the very worst in his eyes of its odious population. For who was this Degge? he asked. A pauper, and the last of a long line of paupers. It mattered not that Mr. Degge had most fully discharged the pauper debt so far as this generation was concerned. To Sir Roger it was only another proof of the upstart pride and abundance of money of this dangerous class.
The sensation which this shocking event, as it was called, created in the whole circle of this squirearchy was visible at the meetings of these men of the earth, earthy, at their dinner-parties at each other’s houses, and at their meetings at the justice-rooms, and their morning rides to one another’s houses. A feeling of strange inveteracy was entertained against Simon Degge. If any of them met him on the highway as they rode to or from Castleborough, they scowled at him as though he had been a most suspicious character. More than once, when two of them were together, he had heard them remark to one another—for it was done loud enough for him to hear it—“That is that upstart pauper, Degge.” If any labourer of his could be caught on any pretence, and brought before them, as magistrates, he was sure to be handled with the utmost severity and the least possible modicum of justice; and when Mr. Degge went forward to speak a word in his defence, he was sure to be treated with a marked contempt, and even incivility.
This proceeding did not tend on Mr. Degge’s part to excite any pleasant feelings in his bosom towards these lords of the soil; but he maintained a demeanour of true gentlemanliness and self-respect. At the same time that he certainly felt a great satisfaction in the idea of the sweeping devastation of the game which he and his friends would make in the autumn, and which he was sure no precautions could prevent making its way to his fields so long as there was a better pasture there, or whilst he scattered a quantity of barley on his stubbles, after the corn naturally shed on them had been gathered off by the pheasants.
Such was the state of feelings all round Simon Degge’s new farm. So far as he himself was concerned, it seemed only to amuse him and his town friends, but to the whole squiral group, including Sir Roger Rockville, it was an acute, and promised to become a chronic condition of gall and wormwood. Mr. Degge brought his mother to live at the house belonging to the farm, for she delighted in the country;—not at the farm-house, for there he had a bailiff, but in a large old house at the village of Hillmartin itself, with a fine old-fashioned garden; and there himself and Mrs. Degge spent a great deal of the fine summer weather.
Simon Degge had also removed William Watson from his cottage by the farm meadow, and from his trade, and he was now acting as a sort of orderly at Mr. Degge’s chief manufactory. He occupied the lodge, and walked about, and saw that all was safe, and moving as it should do.
There were several wealthy and intelligent families in the neighbourhood of Mr. Degge’s farm, who, however, at once acknowledged the distinguished merit and virtues of this young man, and who did not hesitate to call on him and Mrs. Degge, much to the disgust of the class of country gentlemen of whom I have spoken. These, it must be admitted, had indeed little in common with men of game and warrants, and did not stand very highly in their favour before. Let us see whether they may not present a more agreeable aspect to us.