‘Clever enough, and too clever! It’s your look-out, sir, of course,
and not mine; but I can’t help thinking that to give my friend Mr
Wilkins an estate to manage is uncommonly like turning a fox into a
poultry-yard to take care of the chickens.’
Such was Jasper Denzil’s remonstrance with his father, on hearing the
baronet’s announcement of his intention to transfer the reins of local
government to the willing hands of the City solicitor, _vice_ Pounce
and Pontifex superseded. Privately, Sir Sykes was of much the same
opinion as his son; but as he was merely seeking to put a good face on
what he felt to be really a surrender to a demand imperiously urged,
he shook his head, saying: ‘You are prejudiced against this person,
Jasper, and perhaps not unnaturally so. His manners, I admit, are not
prepossessing, and his moral code has probably been shaped in a rough
school of ethics; but I consider him to be one of those men whom it is
pleasanter to have for a friend than for an enemy.’
Jasper’s expressive upper lip wore a curl of disgust. It was to him
very disagreeable that Mr Wilkins, who had got the better of him, as
he resentfully felt, in many an encounter of wits, should be often
at Carbery, and right-hand man to its owner. He resolved on one more
attempt to dislodge the intruder.
‘I would not, were I you, sir,’ said he, ‘either trust Wilkins a
yard farther than I could see him, or be guided by his advice as to
the management of the estate. You yourself heard the fellow say, at
luncheon to-day, that he should not know turnips when he saw them
unless there were boiled mutton in the middle of them. Wilkins only
meant to raise a laugh when he hashed up that old joke against the
Cockney sportsmen who ride to hounds, but he was nearer the truth than
he was aware of.’
‘Ah, well,’ returned the baronet blandly, ‘I daresay his agricultural
knowledge is after all pretty much on a par with that of Messrs Pounce
and Pontifex.’
And then Jasper shrugged up his shoulders and was silent, for he
perceived that it was hopeless to deprecate a foregone conclusion. For
good or for ill, Sir Sykes had made up his mind to convert Mr Wilkins
into a grand-vizier over the broad acres that lay within the circuit of
his wide-stretching ring-fence.
Enoch Wilkins, gentleman, had on that morning reached Carbery Chase,
and was in a fair way of earning for himself any rather than golden
opinions from its inmates. Mr Wilkins, as he often and not untruly
boasted, knew the world, that is to say he had a minute and almost
microscopic acquaintance with one or two sections of the shady side
of it. He understood turf-men, as a smart prison-governor understands
convicts, and knew the natural history of the fast-living and
embarrassed young officer as well as some lecturer on entomology knows
the ways of beetle and butterfly. In a lower social grade, he was
deeply versed in the arcana of Loan Societies, and could apply the
thumbscrew of the County Court in nicely calculated proportions to a
struggling debtor. Of what he called swell society Mr Wilkins had but
a limited experience. He had shared, as the purveyors of welcome cash
often do share, in the costly banquets given at Greenwich or Richmond
hotels by wild young gentlemen of blood and fashion. He had even, at
the instance of some needy man about town who curried favour with any
dispenser of ready-money, received a card which entitled him, now and
again, to be crushed and jostled and trodden upon by distinguished
company at the maddening ‘At Home’ of some berouged and bewigged old
peeress.
There was, as Mr Wilkins felt with some inward misgivings, a difference
between forming part of a mob at Macbeth House or at the Baratarian
Embassy, and mixing on intimate terms with such a family as were the
Denzils. Yet, as the French idiomatically twist the phrase, he paid it
off with audacity, being greasily familiar with Sir Sykes; on terms of
brotherly frankness where Jasper was concerned; and for the benefit of
the young ladies, assuming the character of the facetious and agreeable
rattle, as he conceived incumbent on a regular Londoner and a bachelor
to boot, when on a visit in the country.
Blanche and Lucy Denzil scarcely knew whether to let amusement or
dislike predominate in their minds as Mr Wilkins rattled on, pouring
out miscellaneous anecdotes and jokes that, if worn threadbare in the
metropolis, would, he was convinced, retain enough of their original
gloss and sparkle to pass muster in the country. That the man was
coarse, pushing, and unscrupulous, was evident even to critics so
lenient as the baronet’s daughters; while Sir Sykes, behind his urbane
smile, suffered martyrdom from his new agent’s deportment.
There was one member of the family circle at Carbery whom Mr Wilkins
eyed with quite an exceptional interest. He rarely addressed himself in
conversation to the Indian orphan, Sir Sykes’s ward, but he watched her
narrowly, and the more he saw of her the harder he found it to adhere
to his original hypothesis as regarded the young lady whom Richard
Hold, master mariner, had recommended to his good offices.
‘If that demure manner and those downcast eyes do not belong to as
sly a puss as ever lived, write me down a greenhorn!’ was the mental
reflection of Enoch Wilkins, of St Nicholas Poultney, in the City of
London, gentleman. ‘That she sets her cap at the captain, Sir Sykes
Denzil’s hopeful heir, I take for granted. Her communicative friend,
the pirate fellow, implied as much. The Lancer does not seem, however,
disposed to come forward in a satisfactory style, and play Philemon to
her Baucis.’
And it was a fact that since the morning which had witnessed the drive
to High Tor and the visit to the pheasantry, the snares of Miss Ruth
Willis had been vainly set for the capture of that bird of dubious
feather, Jasper Denzil.
Why Jasper, who had so much to gain by the match on which his father’s
mind was inexplicably bent, should hang back and prove recalcitrant,
it was hard to say. His was not an independent soul. He was free from
any trammels of a too scrupulous delicacy, and would have fingered any
money got through the grimiest channels, without fear of soiling those
white useless hands of his, the manliest work of which had hitherto
been to grasp a bridle-rein. Yet Jasper had been very remiss of late in
his attentions towards Ruth Willis, and apparently indifferent to the
bribe of an income and establishment to be earned by marrying her.
‘Now look here, Sir Sykes!’ said the lawyer after dinner, as he edged
his chair nearer to that of his host, refilled his glass, and assumed
a tone of waggish confidence—‘look here, Sir Sykes! You want brushing
up down here at Carbery, you do indeed; ay and a little fresh air let
in upon you. In an old estate like this, and under such management as
those of Pounce and Proser—beg his pardon; I mean Pontifex; ha, ha,
ha!’—pursued Mr Wilkins, having his laugh out, without so much as a
sympathetic titter from Jasper or a smile from Sir Sykes—‘in an estate
of this kind matters are apt to stagnate, and all sorts of abuses and
jobs to grow up, like the green duckweed on the surface of a pool. Your
head-gamekeeper now, Sir Sykes, I never saw him, but I’m sure that he’s
a rogue.’
‘Leathers is an old servant,’ answered Sir Sykes coldly; ‘I have had no
reason to think ill of him.’
‘I’ll go bail that he’s a rogue, for all that,’ returned the unabashed
lawyer, holding up his glass to the light, to admire the ruby claret
before he swallowed it. ‘The head-keeper of an easy-going, moneyed
gent of your standing—excuse me, Sir Sykes—must be a saint, if he’s
not a sinner. Think of the temptations! Why, the rabbits alone must
be a cool two hundred a year to the man; and then the pheasants, and
the black-mail from the tenants for keeping the ground-game within
reasonable numbers, and the percentage on watchers’ wages. I’ll get
you a contract with a London poulterer, Sir Sykes, that shall stand
you in something handsome, provide you with a keeper twice as useful
as Leathers, and insure your having a hot corner for your friends at
battue-time. I’m a new broom, and sweep clean.’
‘You promise well, at anyrate!’ said Jasper with a languid sneer.
‘And did you ever know me not ready to implement when I had once
promised?’ briskly retorted the solicitor. ‘I merely mention the
gamekeeper to shew that all’s fish that comes to my net, and that I am
not above attending to such minor fry as a fellow in velveteen with a
dog-whistle at his button-hole. We must go on commercial principles,
Sir Sykes, if we want to manage an estate so as to make it pay,
nowadays. All that feudal nonsense of an affectionate tenantry and a
liberal lord of the manor is about as dead as Queen Anne. You should
get a new steward as well as a new gamekeeper, Sir Sykes.’
The baronet stirred restlessly in his chair. He did not at all like
this. Carbery, and the fair estate that went with it, had never yet
been administered on commercial principles, especially when applied
by so sweeping a reformer as Mr Wilkins of St Nicholas Poultney. ‘Mr
Cornish keeps his accounts very correctly,’ he said in a hesitating
tone. ‘Old Lord Harrogate gave him the stewardship, which his father
had had before him, and his tenure of it has satisfied me.’
‘Because you can afford, or fancy you can, to be robbed right and
left,’ said the lawyer, gulping down his wine. ‘It is your plausible
hereditary steward, that has fattened and battened on the plunder of
successive generations, who sucks the very marrow out of the land.
Don’t tell _me_! I’ll overhaul Mr Cornish’s accounts in a way he’s
little used to. But first you must introduce me to the farmers, Sir
Sykes, and give me time to worm out of them what they pay, in kind
or money, by way of fines, good-will, premium, and so forth, for the
honour of tilling your under-rented acres. I’ll raise your rent-roll,
never fear me, but not with a native chawbacon for prime-minister.’
‘So the steward must be flung overboard, it seems, as well as poor old
Leathers the keeper,’ observed Jasper, half amused, but half annoyed.
‘And I’ve got another peg to fit into the vacant hole,’ said the
lawyer, again addressing himself to the claret. ‘With your permission,
Sir Sykes, to-morrow we’ll wire for him to run down from London
for your approval. A sharp fellow is Abrahams. You won’t mind his
persuasion? Jew as he is, he’s thoroughly at home in a farmhouse,
counts every sheaf of wheat in the barn, and every house-lamb in the
kitchen on frosty days, and wheedles out of the women what the husbands
are too dogged to tell.—This is delicious claret, but no one except
myself seems to drink it. Suppose we join the ladies?’
‘What has the governor done,’ groaned Jasper, as he lit his cigar, ‘to
be under the thumb of such a man as this?’