Simon Degge, meantime, did not trouble himself about these wrathful comments upon him in the neighbouring great houses. He had the pleasure of hearing all throughout Hillmartin, that the people there were highly pleased with the check he had given to Sir Benjamin Bullockshed, whose injustice to the farmers of this farm had been a subject of indignant comment for years. As his crops grew, he fenced off what he wanted to secure from the game, with a wire fencing, which he found perfectly effectual, leaving a considerable strip along the woodsides to the depredations of these creatures. When the harvest was got, he removed his wire-fence, and allowed the game to wander anywhere, and all autumn and winter he found an abundant supply for himself and friends, who had thus a great inducement to come out from Castleborough for a good day’s shooting every now and then. This was not less irritating to the Bullocksheds and Rockvilles, than it was delightful to the people and farmers all round, who not daring to open their mouths, yet saw with evident satisfaction this poetical justice executed on men who had never shown the least sense of justice in their own conduct whenever game was concerned.
The objects of social improvement which interested Mr. and Mrs. Degge in Castleborough, were introduced by them into the little arena of Hillmartin. The condition of the poor was looked into, and their distresses relieved. Their children were afforded a good school, and many a comfort flowed unostentatiously into the homes of the aged or the sick that was never known before.
Thus a new link was established between town and country, which, though it did not extend to the Bullocksheds and Rockvilles, did extend to the Woodburns, the Claverings, and some other county families. By the intercourse of the Degges, the Woodburns, the Heritages, and the Claverings, Sir Emanuel and his brother Thomas, the rector of Cotmanhaye, his wife and son, a very charming little circle was formed, in which English country life presented its most genial aspect. After a few formal visits and dinings, Mr. and Mrs. Degge began by degrees, one or other of them, or both together, to drop in at Woodburn Grange unceremoniously, and the Woodburns at Hillmartin. Simon Degge was glad to have something regarding his farm or country concerns to ask Mr. Woodburn about, and to take a ride with Leonard Woodburn when he went to superintend his own farm. Sometimes they extended their ride to Cotmanhaye Manor, and had a chat with Sir Emanuel, or, if he were absent, with the rector, who was a zealous farmer himself, and rented a large farm of his brother, on which his only son, Charles, resided, a couple of miles off. They always found Sir Emanuel extremely affable and even jocosely kind, and always familiar with all the topics of the day, whether political or concerning the affairs of the country round. His peeps into the worlds of the heavens did not seem to render him in the least indifferent to or unobservant of what passed in this. He never obtruded the display of his extensive knowledge of foreign countries, or of men and things in the great world of London and the nation at large, but these were frequently showing themselves in incidental remarks on the topics under discussion. Frequently he ordered his horse and accompanied them in their ride, and during the winter he invited them to join him in snipe and woodcock shooting, these birds abounding in some swampy places on his property, as did wild geese and ducks about the reedy back-waterings of the river. On these occasions he not only showed himself a dead shot, but careless of weather and capable of enduring amazing exertion.
The festivities of the winter brought these families much together. Woodburn Grange presented all the genial and gay abundance of fare—fat turkeys and geese, mince-pies, pork-pies, possets, and a world of light delicacies, blazing fires, and country sports and dances, even blind-man’s-buff, turn-trencher, and other romps, which had been preserved at the Grange from father to son as essential customs of country-life. These had a novelty, and, therefore, a greater charm for the young people from the town, than the more ordinary dinner-parties and dances of the great halls. Even Sir Emanuel Clavering became a laughing boy again at the rural revels of the Grange, and vied with the lightsome, butterfly gaiety of Letty, amid these domestic saturnalia. Sir Emanuel even opened his house to several gay parties, and embellished his handsome suite of rooms with a display of arms of richest and quaintest workmanship, caskets of ivory of most delicate carvings, and others inlaid with jewels and gold, with silken draperies of richest colours and strange devices, and china jars and vessels, some of stupendous size, and most superb forms, and painted enamelings. He himself moved everywhere amongst his guests, as affable, kind, gracefully courteous and cordial, as if he, too, never studied anything but to enjoy his fortune and position as a finished gentleman. Except his brother and his brother’s wife, he was now alone in his house, for his son was and had been some time abroad. All were charmed with Sir Emanuel, and wondered that he had spent so secluded a life in the country. Perhaps the cause was not far to seek, when it was recollected that Sir Roger Rockville, the Bullocksheds, and Tenterhooks had been his chief neighbours.
As the winter passed, and the spring days grew in warmth and pleasantness, the intercourse of these families grew too. Mr. and Mrs. Degge would call and join the young people of the Grange in their walks or rides, and Mrs. Degge would drop in and have a pleasant chat with Mrs. Woodburn, Ann, and Letty, as they went on with their different concerns. The great concern of Letty, indeed, seeming to be to laugh and chatter, as if there were no such things as care or matter-of-fact duty in the world. She had to show Mrs. Degge the herds of young ducks and chickens, the birds’ nests in curious places in the garden, the dogs, and the rabbits kept in the hutches, as if she had been an actual boy, and to the evident delight of their visitor, while a flood of intervening small-talk produced bursts of merry laughter, which, reaching the house, made the graver mother exclaim, “What can that girl be about?”
A great variety in this little circle was furnished by the Friends’ family of the Heritages. It was not the custom of these worthy Friends to give festive parties, nor did they frequent those of their neighbours, if there was to be much worldly amusement, especially of dancing, cards, or the like. They preferred to make familiar calls during the day, on which occasions they were always extremely friendly, and as pleasantly cheerful as any people in the world, but always with a certain substratum of gravity and soberness. These visits were generally made by Mrs. Heritage and her daughter Millicent. The mother was sure to ask about what she saw going on in farming household affairs. In winter she was very much interested in Betty Trapps’s spinning-wheel, which, when she had nothing else very pressing, was sure to be humming away in the warm, clean house-place, as it was called, a sort of intermediate room between the kitchen and the parlour, where the farm-men and the servants took their meals, and where Mr. Woodburn furnished them with suitable books for their evening’s reading in winter, but where the men generally stretched their legs before the blazing fire, and dropped asleep, and then stole off to bed. Betty Trapps greatly amused the Heritage ladies, mother and daughter, with her country shrewdness and plain-spokenness.
“Dost thou manage to get good tow?” asked Mrs. Heritage, one day.
“Oh, yes,” Betty said, “as good as I expect.”
“Dost thou not expect it to be good, then?” asked Mrs. Heritage.
“Yes, I expect it,” said Betty, “because I look pretty sharp after it. They wunna readily find a norp[1] in me.”