Taken at the flood.

Otago Witness, Issue 1158, 7 February 1874, Page 19

Taken at the flood.

A NEW NOVEL.

[by the author of "lady audley's secret.'']

Chapter XXIV. sir Aubrey's land steward.

Once having taken the desperate leap which a few days ago he would have hardly "believed it possible for him to take, Sir Aubrey was like a man caught in the web of some mystic enchantment. He was in feverish haste to make his bondage secure. The inward conviction that all the world — or all his world, which comes to the same tiling — would secretly disapprove his now scheme of life goaded him on to the completion of that act begun in a weak moment of bewilderment. Upon the path •which he had taken delay seemed impossible.

" If I give these Hedingham and Monkhampton people time to talk about me, they will torment me to death," he said to himself. ' ' The only plan is to be beforehand with them. My marriage cannot take place too soon." Sir Aubrey's world was a very small one, almest as small as Sylvia Carew's. Yet there were some people in that small world about whose opinion he concerned himself not a little, notwithstanding that they were creatures of an inferior rank, whose approval or disapproval ought to have weighed lightly with him. The two people of whom he thought most at this important crisis of his life were people whose very lives were, in their manner, dependent upon the light of his countenance. One was Shadrach Bain, his solicitor and land steward. The other was Jean Ohapelain, his valet. Half a century ago the family solicitors of the house of Perriam had been an oldestablished firm in Lincoln's Inn, men ■who ranked among the aristocracy of _ the legal profession, who did everything in a grand, slow way, kept the title deeds, ■wills, and marriage settlements of their, clients in large iron safes that seemed inaccessible to man, so reluctantly were they opened, and who were altogether ponderous and respectable. Half a century ago, therefore, the Lord of Perriam would have been outraged by the idea of employing a local solicitor. He had his land steward, or bailiff, a gentleman by birth and education, but not a lawyer ; and all leases and contracts of whatever kind connected with the Perriam estate weie drawn tip and executed in their own tardy style Toy Messrs. Ferret and Tape, of Lincoln's Inn. Sir Andrew Perriam, however, Sir Aubrey's father, had brought about these things. Ho was a gentleman of close, and even miserly disposition, and soon after inheriting the property had discovered that the keenest pleasure he could derive from its possession would be fouud in its extension. He added a slip of woodland here, a field or two there, aud, as years crept by, aud his last map showed a widening boundary line to the lands of Perriam, felt that lie had not lived in vain.

Sir Andrew speedily discovered that the gentleman land -steward, who hunted three days a week in the season, and kept a pony carriage for his wife and daughters, wn s a mistake. He was not half sharp enough dip his hand into his employer's pocket ■with the tenant?, was much too ready to for repairs and improvements, instead of squeezing every thing out of the lessees ; in fact, demoralised by his own easy life, he had become perniciously indulgent, and criminally indifferent to the interests of his employers. His salary was liberal, and he had thus an assured income, which underwent no diminution onaccounfc of a tenantless farm, or a bankrupt tenant. This, Sir Andrew argued, was a radical error in the relations of master and ste ward. He had also a house rent free, and that the Perriam dower-house, a roomy old mansion of the Elizabethan order, which, with its ample gardens, orchards, and meadows, might have been let for two hundred a yoar. This, thought Sir AndreAv, •was a still greater mistake. Having discovered this weakness in his business arrangements Sir Andrew cast about him for a remedy, and was not slow to find one. The gentleman-steward was dismissed without a quarter's notice ; the Dower House was let to a retired Monkhampton grocer ; and Sir Andrewentrusted the collection of his rents, and the drawing up of leases and agreements to Mr. Bain, an attorney at Monkhampton. This gentleman, shrewd, active, conciliating, and indefatigable, speedily contrived to establish a powerful influence over his employer. The Lincoln's Inn lawyers were ousted from their hold on the Perriam estate, — the title-deeds, leases, and covenants wrested from their unwilling hands, and all the business that Sir Andrew had to give was given to Mr. Bain. When Sir Andrew made his will, it was Mr. Bain who drew up that document, Mr. Bain's clerk who witnessed ita signature. The uneventful years went by, and Sir Andrew slept the sleep of his forefathers, very well satisfied to his last hour with Mr. Bain's administration of tho estate.

Ten years after the death of his patron — the man who, in Mdnkhampton parlance, had made him — Mr. Bain was also gathered to his fathers, in their unpretending rest-ing-place in the cemetery at Monkhampton. His son, a man of thirty, succeeded to the Perriam stewardship, and Sir Aubrey, who, with something of his fathers love of money, had not inherited his father's business capacity, was glad to put his trust in an administrator whose management seemed always profitable to his employer. Shadrach Bain, the son, was, if anything, a better administrator than his father ; for, from the time he left the Monkhampton Grammar School, at fourteen years of age, the Perriam estate had been the one all-absorbing thought of his mind. He knew it was the chief heritage to which he was to succeed. He knew that whatever his father might have saved out of his income had to be divided among a family of live, two sons and three daughters, while the Perriam stewardship was to descend, intact, to him the eldest. There could be no division of that stewardship. Peter, the younger son, had been educated at a local college for Baptist preacher, was an advanced Baptist, and aspired to the honorable position of minister in the little chapel in Water-lane, one of the by streets of Monkhampton. The Bains had been Baptists almost from the establishment of that sect.

Shadrach Bain knew every rood of ground within the bouudary of Sir Aubrey's land. From the summit of a distant hill, he could point with his whip-handle to every bush, or knoll, or bank, or poplar that indicated the dividing line between the property of Sir Aubrey and his neighbouring landowners. "My father negotiated the purchase of yonder fallow," he would say proudly ; " sixteen acres two roods and three perches, and bought it uncommonly cheap. You see three poplars at the corner 1 That's our boundary. Nothing like \ oplars to mark your linegrow quick aud cast very little shadow." He was a good farmer, Mr. Bain, though his direct and personal experience _of agriculture was confined to the cultivation of a neat kitchen garden, orchard, and meadow in the rear of his square, substantial dwelling-house in the High street of Monkhampton. But he had read all the best books upon agriculture ; before he was twenty he had made himself thoroughly acquainted with' every improvement in agricultural implements ; he had surveyed every farm within a day's journey of Monkhampton ; he had gone the round of the Perrium estate with his father as often as opportunity permitted ; and, in keenness of vision, and clearness of comprehension and knowledge of the subject, was as good a farmer as he was a lawyer. This man was now, for all practical purposes, master of the Perriam Manor. Sir Aubrey knew about as much of farming or the capabilities of the estate as ho knew of the buried relics of Troja. So long as there was no fluctuation or falling off fn his income, he was tolerably satis fied. His eye was pleased with the neat arid picturesque appearance of the estate, as he rode his brown cob Splinter between the green bauks of those sheltered lanes, which intersected his domain. In one thing only did he and Mr. Bain differ, Sir Aubrey forbade the cutting down_ of a single tree, while Shadrach was, in his heart of hearts, for the stabbing up system, and grumbled sorely at the fine old oaks and spreading beeches which made the beauty of the landscape, and soured the land beneath their dense leafage. Things had gone well with Shadrach Bain. He had married young, and emineutly to his own advantage ; though the i Bain family affected to consider that 1 Shadrach had condescended somewhat when he married Miss Dawker, eldest daughter of William Dawker, the Monkhampton grocer and provision dealer, who supplied all the surrounding unions and public institutions, and whose trade was altogether rather wholesale than retail. Mr. Dawker had died shortly after his daughter's marriage, and Mrs. Bain inherited her portion of six thousand pounds sterling ; which, judiciously invested in cottage property, produced five hundred a year. Shadrach was therefore in some measure, an independent man, and Monkhampton esteemed him accordingly. His house was one of the best in the town ; his garden a pattern of neatness ; his dogcart fresh and bright as if newly come from the coachbuilder's, his horses — he never drove the same two days running — were well groomed and cared for. His servants stayed with him year after year ; his children were well-dressed in a plain, substantial style, but with small regard to the mutations of fashion. His family pew in the Water Lane Chapel presented a picture of which Monkhampton Baptists were proud. Now, when Sir Aubrey Perriam thought of Shadrach Bain, with his hard, com-mon-place method of coming at things, his rooted objection to the Ornamental, his utter indifference to the Beautiful, and thought how such a man would re-

| ceive the tidings of an intended marriage | between a gentleman fifty-seven years of age and a young lady of nineteen, whose sule distinction, for vulgar minds, was her lovely face, his heart sank within him, and he felt that he would have a disagreeable business to go through when he announced to Mr. Bain the fact of his engagement with Sylvia Carew. Yet, it would be necessary to acquaint his steward and solicitor with that fact before the marriage took place. Some kind of settlement there must be, though Sylvia was penniless. Mr. Bain was the person to draw up that settlement. Jean Chapelain, the valet, was another individual who exercised a stronger influence over the mind of his master than Sir Aubrey would have cared to admit. An elderly bachelor, who keeps very little company, and passes some months of every year in the close quarters of a Parisian entresol, is apt to make his bodyservant something of a companion. Chapelain's education was in advance of his position. He had read a good deal in a desultory way, took a warm interest in European politics, and was, on the whole, a good deal better informed than his master. If Sir Aubrey wanted to talk he i could hardly talk to any one better J worthy to be honoured with his conversation than the valet. Thus, for the last* twenty years, Jean Chapelain and his master had lived in close companionship. Jnto Jean's sympathetic cars Sir Aubrey had poured the elderly bachelor's philosophical reflections upon life and humanity. To Jean he had | declared not once, but many times, that ,he valued the privileges of a single man far too well to barter tht-m for the unknown joys of married life. Jean and he had laughed together at the folly of elderly Benedicks, the cynical laugh of men who had both drawn their views of life from that deep well of worldly wit and worldly wisdom, the writings of the most brilliant worldling the light ever shone ! upon, Voltaire. To confess to Joan Chapelain that he had fallen in love and was going to marry the object of his affection would be more humiliating even than to make the same confession to Shadrach Bain.

But happily, reflected Sir Aubrey, Chapelain need know nothing of the marriage till it was an accomplished fact. He could hardly grumble much then.