Tales and Novels Volume II Part 5

"No! Won't you let me cut down some of those trees for you, that are spoiling one another in your wood?"

"Not a tree shall be cut down. Not a stick shall be stirred. Not a change shall be made, I say."

"Not a change for the better, cousin Goodenough?" said Wright.

"Not a change can be for the better, to my mind; I shall plough, and sow, and reap, as our forefathers did, and that's enough for me."

"What! will you not even try the new plough?" said Marvel.

"Not I; no new ploughs for me. No plough can be so good as the old one."

"How do you know, as you never tried it, or would see it tried?" said Wright: "I find it better than the old one."

"No matter; the old one will do well enough for me, as it did for my father before me." After having repeated these words in precisely the same tone several times, he went on slowly eating his supper, whilst Marvel, in detestation of his obstinate stupidity, turned his back upon him, and began to enumerate to Wright sundry of his own ingenious projects.

"My dear Wright," said he, "you are worth talking to, and you shall hear all my schemes."

"Willingly; but I do not promise to approve of them all."

"Oh! you will, you will, the moment you hear them; and I will let you have a share in some of them. In the first place, there's that fine rabbit-warren near Clover-hill. The true silver grey rabbits--_silver sprigs_, they call them--do you know that the skins of those _silver sprigs_ are worth any money?"

"Any money! what money?"

"Pooh! I don't know exactly: but I mean to buy that warren."

"Before you know what it is worth! Let us consider; each dozen of skins is worth, say, from ten to fifteen s.h.i.+llings."

"You need not trouble yourself to calculate now," interrupted Marvel, "for I have determined to have the warren. With the money that I shall get for my silver sprigs, I will next year make a decoy, and supply the London market with wild-fowl. Don't you remember the day that we met Simon Stubbs, the carrier, loaded with game and wild-fowl, he said that a decoy in Lincolns.h.i.+re must be a fortune to any man. I'll have the best decoy not only in Lincolns.h.i.+re but in all England. By-the-bye, there's another thing I must do, Wright; I'll exchange any part of Clover-hill you please with you, for as much land in Holland Fen."

"Take him at his word, cousin Wright," said Goodenough.

"No, no," replied Wright; "I know the value of land, and the difference between Clover-hill and Holland Fen, better than he does: I would not take him at his word, for that would be taking him in."

"I would not take anybody in," said Goodenough; "but if another man is a fool, that's no reason I should be one. Now, if a man offers me a good bargain, why should not I close with him, and say--Done?" "Then say done," cried Marvel, "and you shall have the bargain, Goodenough.

You have an undrained marsh of your own: I'll exchange with you, and welcome, ten acres of the marsh for five of Clover-hill."

"Done," said Goodenough.

"Done. I shall stock it with geese, and you'll see what the quills and feathers alone will bring me in. I've engaged with one already to sell them for me. But, Wright, here's another scheme I have. Wildmore common, you know, is covered with those huge thistles, which p.r.i.c.k the noses of the sheep so as to hinder them from feeding and fattening: I will take that common into my own hands."

"Ay," said Goodenough; "exchange the rest of Clover-hill for it:--that's like you!"

"And I will mow the thistles," pursued Marvel, without deigning to reply to Goodenough. "I will mow the thistles; their down I can contrive to work up into cotton, and the stalks into cordage: and, with the profit I shall make of these thistles, and of my decoy, and of my goose-quills and feathers, and of my silver sprig rabbits, I will buy jackets for my sheep, for my sheep shall all have jackets after shearing. Why should not Lincolns.h.i.+re sheep, if they have jackets, become as valuable as the Leicesters.h.i.+re breed? You'll see my sheep will be the finest in the whole county; and, with the profit I shall make of them, I will set up a fishery in Fen-lake; and with the profits of the fishery--now comes my grand scheme--I shall be the richest of you all! with the profits of the fishery, and the decoy, and the sheep, and the silver sprigs, and the quills and feathers, geese and thistles, I will purchase that fine heronry, near Spalding."

At these words, Goodenough laid down his knife and fork; and, sticking his arms a-kimbo, laughed contemptuously, if not heartily.

"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 s.h.i.+llings a dozen, provided he should send them properly dressed, and in time to be s.h.i.+pped 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 mult.i.tude 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 circ.u.mstances 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 Yorks.h.i.+re, 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 pa.s.sed 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 Lincolns.h.i.+re, and which he had hoped would set the fas.h.i.+on 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?"

"Yes; and I charged this boy always to keep them in fold till the dew was off," replied Marvel, turning with an angry countenance to the shepherd boy.

"I never heard nothing of it till this minute, I am sure, master," said the boy.

Marvel now recollected that, at the very moment when he was going to give this order to the boy, his attention had been drawn away by the sight of a new decoy in the fields adjoining to his sheep pasture. In his haste to examine the decoy, he forgot to give that order to his shepherd, on which the safety of his fine flock of sheep depended.

{Footnote: A General View of the Agriculture of the County of Lincoln, p. 330. "It well deserves noting that a shepherd, who, when young, was shepherd's boy to an old man, who lived at Netlam, near Lincoln, a place famous for the rot, told Mr. Neve that he was persuaded sheep took the rot only of a morning, before the dew was well off. At that time they folded, being open field: his master's shepherd kept his flock in fold always till the dew was gone; and, with no other attention, his sheep were kept sound, when all the neighbours lost their flocks."} Such are the negligences and blunders of those who endeavour to do half a dozen things at once.

The failure of one undertaking never discouraged Marvel from beginning another; and it is a pity, that, with so much spirit and activity, he had so little steadiness and prudence. His sheep died, and he set out for Spalding full of the thoughts of the heronry. Now this heronry belonged to Sir Plantagenet Mowbray, an elderly gentleman, who was almost distracted with family pride: he valued himself upon never having parted with one inch of the landed property that had descended to him, through a long line of ancestors, from the Plantagenets. He looked down upon the whole race of farmers and traders as beings of a different species from himself; and the indignation with which he heard, from a Lincolns.h.i.+re farmer, a proposal to purchase his heronry, may perhaps be imagined, but cannot be described. It was in vain that Marvel rose in his offers; it was in vain that he declared he was ready to give any price that Sir Plantagenet would set upon the heronry. Sir Plantagenet sent word, by his steward, that not a feather of his birds should be touched; that he was astonished at the insolence of such a proposal; and that he advised Marvel to keep out of the way of _his people_, lest they should revenge the insult that had been offered to their master.

This haughty answer, and the disappointment of all his hopes and schemes respecting the heronry, threw Marvel into a degree of rage scarcely inferior to what was felt by Sir Plantagenet. As he was galloping down the avenue from Plantagenet-hall, he overtook a young man, of a shabby appearance, who was mounted upon a very fine horse. At first Marvel took it for granted that he was one of Sir Plantagenet's _people_, and he was riding past him, when he heard the stranger say, in a friendly tone, "Your horse gallops well, sir: but have a care; there's a carrion a little way farther on that may startle him."

Marvel pulled in his horse; the stranger rode up beside him, and they entered into conversation. "That carrion, sir," said he, pointing to the dead horse, which had just been shot for the baronet's son's hounds, "that carrion, sir, was in my opinion the best horse Sir Plantagenet, or his son either, were possessed of. 'Tis a shame for any man, who pretends to be a gentleman, and who talks this way and that so high of his family, should be so stingy in the article of horseflesh."

Marvel was not unwilling at this instant to hear the haughty baronet blamed and ridiculed; and his companion exactly fell in with his humour, by telling a variety of anecdotes to prove Sir Plantagenet to be every thing that was odious and contemptible. The history of his insolence about the heronry was now related by Marvel; and the stranger seemed to sympathize so much in his feelings, that, from a stranger, he began to consider him as a friend. Insensibly the conversation returned to the point at which it commenced; and his new friend observed that it was in vain to expect any thing good from any gentleman, or indeed from any man, who was stingy in the article of horseflesh.

A new sense of honour and of shame began to rise in our hero's mind; and he sat uneasy in his saddle, whilst he reflected that the horse upon which he was mounted, was perhaps as deservedly an object of contempt as any of Sir Plantagenet's stud. His new friend, without seeming to notice his embarra.s.sment, continued his conversation, and drew a tempting picture of the pleasures and glories of a horse-race: he said, "he was just training a horse for the York races, and a finer animal never was crossed. Sir Plantagenet's eldest son would have been the proudest and happiest of men, if his father would but have bought the horse for him: but he had refused, and the youth himself had not the price, or half the price, at his command."

Our hero was no judge of horses, but he was ambitious to prove that his spirit was superior to that of the haughty baronet; and that something good might be expected from him, as he was not stingy in horseflesh.

Besides, he was worked up to a high degree of curiosity to see the York races; and his companion a.s.sured him that he could not appear there without being well mounted. In short, the hour was not at an end before he had offered a hundred guineas for the finest horse that ever was crossed. He was charmed with the idea that he should meet Sir Plantagenet Mowbray's son and heir at the York races, and should show him that he was able and willing to pay for the horse, which his arrogant father could not afford to purchase.

From the anecdote of the heronry, his companion perceived that Marvel was a man fond of projects; and he proposed to him a scheme, which caught his fancy so much that it consoled him for his disappointment. It was the fault of our enterprizing hero's character always to think the last scheme for making a fortune the best. As soon as he reached home he was in haste to abandon some of his old projects, which now appeared to him flat, stale, and unprofitable. About a score of his flock, though tainted with the rot, were not yet dead; he was eager to sell them, but no one would buy sheep of such a wretched appearance. At last Wright took them off his hands. "I will throw the threescore jackets into the bargain," said Marvel; "for you are a generous fellow, to offer so handsomely for my poor sheep, and you deserve to be treated as you treat others. If I come in at the end of the ten years for the legacy, I shall remember you, as I told you before: as to my cousin Goodenough here, he thinks so much of himself, that there is no occasion for others to think of him. I asked him to join me in a bond, yesterday, for a hundred pounds, just to try him, and he refused me. When I come in for the legacy, I will cut him off with a s.h.i.+lling,--I will give him fair notice."

"Cut me off with what you will," said Goodenough, sullenly, "not a farthing of my money shall ever be lent to one that has a project for every day in the year. Get into what difficulties you may, I will never join you in any bond, I promise you. It is enough for me to take care of myself."

"Don't flatter yourself that I am getting into any difficulties,"

replied Marvel. "I wanted the hundred guineas only to pay for a horse; and the friend who sold him to me will wait my convenience."

"The _friend_" said Wright; "do you mean that man who rode home with you from Spalding?--I advise you not to make a friend of him, for he is a notorious jockey." "He will not take _me_ in, though," said Marvel; "I am as sharp as he is, and he sees that: so we understand one another very well. To my certain knowledge, a hundred and twenty guineas could be had to-morrow for the horse I bought from him; yet he let me have him for a hundred."

"And how can a man of your sense, cousin Marvel," said Wright, "believe that a person, who never saw you till within these three days, would be so much your friend as to make you a present of twenty guineas?"