Wenderholme Part 10

"Isaac, Isaac, you mun forgive us," said the mother; "we did it for your good."

"Partly for his good, mother," interposed Jacob, "but still more for th'

sake o' that child. What made him run away from Twistle Farm, Isaac Ogden? answer me that."

Isaac remained silent.

"Do you fancy, brother Isaac, that any consideration for your feelin's was to hinder us from doin' our duty by that little lad? What sort of a father is it as drives away a child like that with a horsewhip? Thou was no more fit to be trusted with him nor a wolf wi' a little white lamb.

If he'd been brought back to thee two days after, it 'ud a' been as much as his life was worth. And I'll tell thee what, Isaac Ogden, if ever it comes to my ears as you take to horse-whippin' him again, I'll go to law wi' you and get the guardians.h.i.+p of him into safer hands. There'd be little difficulty about that as it is. I've taken my measures--my witnesses are ready--I've consulted lawyers; and I tell you candidly, I mean to act at once if I see the least necessity for it. Little Jacob was miserable for many a week before you drove him out o' th' house, an'

if we'd only known, you would never have had the chance."

"Nay, Jacob," interposed Mrs. Ogden, "you're a bit too hard on Isaac; he's the child's own father, and he had a right to punish him within reason."

"Father! father!" cried Jacob, scornfully; "there isn't a man in Shayton as isn't more of a father to our little un than Isaac has been for many a month past. There isn't a man in Shayton but what would have been kinder to a nice little lad like that than he has been. What signifies havin' begotten a child, if fatherin' it is to stop there?"

At last Isaac Ogden lifted up his face and spoke.

"Brother Jacob, you have said nothing but what is right and true, and you have all acted right both by me and him. But let us start fresh.

I've turned over a new leaf; I'm not such as I used to be. I mean to be different, and to do different, and I will be a good father to that child. So help me G.o.d!"

He held out his hand, and Jacob took it and shook it heartily. The two brothers looked in each other's face, and there was more of brotherly affection in their look than there had ever been since the dissolution of their partners.h.i.+p in the cotton business, which had taken place some years before. Mrs. Ogden saw this with inexpressible pleasure. "That's right, lads--that's right, lads; G.o.d bless you! G.o.d bless both on you!"

The customs of Shayton were mighty, especially the custom of drinking a gla.s.s of port-wine on every imaginable occasion. If a Shayton man felt sorry, he needed a gla.s.s of port-wine to enable him to support his grief; but if he felt glad, there arose at once such a feeling of true sympathy between his heart and that joyous generous fluid, that it needed some great material impediment to keep them asunder, and such an impediment was not to be found in any well-to-do Shayton household, where decanters were always charged, and gla.s.ses ever accessible. So it was inevitable that on an occasion so auspicious as this Mr. Jacob Ogden should drink a gla.s.s--or, more probably, two gla.s.ses--of port; and his mother, who did not object to the same refreshment, bore him company.

"Now Isaac, lad, let's drink a gla.s.s to mother's good health."

Mr. Ogden had not made any positive vow of teetotalism, and though there might be some danger in allowing himself to experience afresh, however slightly, the seductive stimulus of alcohol, whole centuries of tradition, the irresistible power of prevalent custom, and the deep pleasure he felt in the new sense of brotherly fellows.h.i.+p, made his soul yearn to the wine.

"Here's mother's good health. Your good health, mother," he said, and drank. Jacob repeated the words, and drank also, and thus in a common act of filial respect and affection did these brothers confirm and celebrate their perfect reconciliation.

Isaac now began to show symptoms of uneasiness and restlessness. He walked to the front door, and listened eagerly for wheels. "How fidgety he is, th' old lad!" said Jacob; "it's no use frettin' an' fidgetin'

like that; come and sit thee down a bit, an' be quiet."

"How long will he be, mother?"

Before Mrs. Ogden could reply, Isaac's excited ear detected the Doctor's gig. He was out in the garden immediately, and pa.s.sed bareheaded through the gate out upon the public road. Two gig-lamps came along from the direction of Sootythorn. He could not see who was in the gig, but something told him that little Jacob was there, and his heart beat more quickly than usual.

Perhaps our little friend might have behaved himself somewhat too timidly on this occasion, but the Doctor had talked to him on the road.

He had explained to him, quite frankly, that Mr. Ogden's harshness had been wholly due to the irritable state of his nervous system, and that he would not be harsh any more, because he had given up drinking. He had especially urged upon little Jacob that he must not seem afraid of his father; and as our hero was of a bold disposition, and had plenty of a.s.surance, he was fully prepared to follow the Doctor's advice.

Isaac Ogden hails the gig; it stops, and little Jacob is in his arms.

"Please, papa, I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!"

Little Jacob's pony was sent for, and the next morning his father and he rode together up to Twistle Farm. Until the man came for the pony, old Sarah had not the faintest hope that little Jacob was in existence, and the shock had nearly been too much for her. The messenger had simply said, "I'm comed for little Jacob[10] t.i.t." "And who wants it?" Sarah said; for it seemed to her a desecration for any one else to mount that almost sacred animal. "Why, little Jacob wants it hissel, to be sure."

And this (with some subsequent explanations of the most laconic description) was his way of breaking the matter delicately to old Sarah.

The old woman had never spent an afternoon, even the afternoon of Christmas Day, so pleasantly as she spent that. How she did toil and bustle about? The one drawback to her happiness was that she did not possess a Christmas cake; but she set to work and made tea-cakes, and put such a quant.i.ty of currants in them that they were almost as good as a Christmas cake. She lighted a fire in the parlor, and another in little Jacob's room; and she took out the little night-gown that she had cried over many a time, and, strange to say, she cried over it this time too. And she arranged the small bed so nicely, that it looked quite inviting, with its white counterpane, and clean sheets, and bright bra.s.s k.n.o.bs, and pretty light iron work painted blue. When all was ready, it occurred to her that since it was Christmas time she would even attempt a little decoration; and as there were some evergreens at Twistle Farm, and some red berries, she went and gathered thereof, and attempted the adornment of the house--somewhat clumsily and inartistically, it must be confessed, yet not without giving it an air of festivity and rejoicing.

She had proceeded thus far, and could not "bethink her" of any thing else that needed to be done, when, suddenly casting her eye on her own costume, she perceived that it was of the deepest black; for, being persuaded that the dear child was dead, she had so clothed herself out of respect for his memory. She held her sombre skirt out with both her hands as if to push it away from her, and exclaimed aloud, "I'll be shut o' _thee_, onyhow, and sharply too;" and she hurried upstairs to change it for the brightest garment in her possession, which was of sky-blue, spotted all over with yellow primroses. She also put on a cap of striking and elaborate magnificence, which the present writer does not attempt to describe, only because such an attempt would incur the certainty of failure.

That cap had hardly been a.s.sumed and adjusted when it was utterly crushed and destroyed in a most inconsiderate manner. A sound of hoofs had reached old Sarah's ears, and in a minute afterwards the cap was ruined in Master Jacob's pa.s.sionate embraces. You may do almost any thing you like to a good-tempered old woman, so long as you do not touch her cap; and it is an undeniable proof of the strength of old Sarah's affection, and of the earnestness of her rejoicing, that she not only made no remonstrance in defence of her head-dress, but was actually unaware of the irreparable injury which had been inflicted upon it.

CHAPTER XI.

THE COLONEL GOES TO SHAYTON.

The next time the Doctor met Colonel Stanburne at Sootythorn, he gave such a good account of Mr. Isaac Ogden, that the Colonel, who took a strong interest in little Jacob, expressed the hope that Mr. Ogden would still join the regiment; though in the time of his grief and tribulation he had resigned his commission, or, to speak more accurately--for the commission had not yet been formally made out and delivered to him--he had withdrawn his name as a candidate for one. The Colonel, in his friendly way, declared that the Doctor was not a hospitable character.

"I ask you to Wenderholme every time I see you, and you come and stay sometimes, though not half often enough, but you never ask me to your house; and, by Jove! if I want to be invited at all, I must invite myself." The Doctor, who liked John Stanburne better and better the more he knew of him, still retained the very erroneous notion that a certain state and style were essential to his happiness; and, notwithstanding many broad hints that he had dropped at different times on the subject, still hung back from asking him to a house where, though comfort reigned supreme, there was not the slightest pretension to gentility. The old middle-cla.s.s manner of living still lingered in many well-to-do houses in Shayton, and the Doctor faithfully adhered to it. Every thing about him was perfectly clean and decent, but he had not marched with the times; and whilst the attorneys and cotton-spinners in Sootythorn and elsewhere had the chairs of their dining-rooms covered with morocco leather, and their drawing-rooms filled with all manner of glittering fragilities, and Brussels carpets with pretty little tasteful patterns, and silver forks, and napkins, and a hundred other visible proofs of the advance of refinement, the worthy Doctor had not kept up with them at all, but lagged behind by the s.p.a.ce of about thirty years. He had no drawing-room; the chairs of his parlor were of an ugly and awkward pattern, and their seats were covered with horsehair; the carpet was cheap and coa.r.s.e, with a monstrous pattern that no artistic person would have tolerated for a single day; and though the Doctor possessed a silver punch-ladle and tea-pot, and plenty of silver spoons of every description, all the forks in the house were of steel! Indeed, the Doctor's knives and forks, which had belonged to his mother, or perhaps even to his grandmother, were quite a curiosity in their way. They had horn handles, of an odd indescribable conformation, supposed to adapt itself to the hollow of the hand, but which, from some misconception of human anatomy on the part of the too ingenious artificer, seemed always intended for the hand of somebody else. These handles were stained of such a brilliant green, that, in the slang of artists, they "killed"

every green herb on the plate of him who made use of them. The forks had spring guards, to prevent the pract.i.tioner from cutting his left hand with the knife that he held in his right; and the knife had a strange round projection at what should have been the point, about the size of a s.h.i.+lling, which (horrible to relate!) had been originally designed to convey gravy and small fragments of viands, not prehensible by means of the two-p.r.o.nged fork, into the human mouth! In addition to these strange relics of a bygone civilization the Doctor possessed two large rocking-chairs, of the same color as the handles of his knives. The Doctor loved a rocking-chair, in which he did but share a taste universally prevalent in Shayton, and defensible on the profoundest philosophical grounds. The human creature loves repose, but a thousand causes may hinder the perfect enjoyment of it, and torment him into restlessness at the very time when he most longs for rest. He may sit down after the business of the day, and some mental or bodily uneasiness may make the quiet of the ma.s.sive easy-chair intolerable to him. The easy-chair does not sympathize with him, does not respond to the fidgety condition of his nervous system; and yet he tries to sit down in it and enjoy it, for, though fidgety, he is also weary, and needs the comfort of repose. Now, the rocking-chair--that admirable old Lancas.h.i.+re inst.i.tution--and the rocking-chair alone, responds to both these needs.

If you are fidgety, you rock; if not, you don't. If highly excited, you rock boldly back, even to the extremity of danger; if pleasantly and moderately stimulated, you lull yourself with a gentle motion, like the motion that little waves give to a pleasure boat. It is true that the bolder and more emphatic manner of rocking has become impossible in these latter days, for the few upholsterers who preserve the tradition of the rocking-chair at all make it in such a highly genteel manner, that the rockers are diminished to the smallest possible arc; but the Doctor troubled himself little concerning these achievements of fas.h.i.+onable upholstery, and regarded his old rocking-chairs with perfect satisfaction and complacency--in which, without desiring to offend against the decisions of the fas.h.i.+onable world, we cannot help thinking that he was right.

A large green rocking-chair, with bold high rockers and a soft cus.h.i.+on like a small feather-bed, a long clay pipe quite clean and new, a bright copper spittoon, and a jug of strong ale,--these things, with the necessary concomitants of a briskly burning fire and an unlimited supply of tobacco, formed the ideal of human luxury and beat.i.tude to a generation now nearly extinct, but of which the Doctor still preserved the antique traditions. In substance often identical, but in outwardly visible means and appliances differing in every detail, the pleasures of one generation seem quaint and even ridiculous in comparison with the same pleasures as pursued by its successor. Colonel Stanburne smoked a pipe, but it was a short meerschaum, mounted in silver; and he also used a knife and fork, and used them skilfully and energetically, but they were not like the Doctor's grandmother's knives and forks.

And yet, when the Colonel came to Shayton, he managed to eat a very hearty dinner at one P.M. with the above-named antiquated instruments.

After the celery and cheese, Dr. Bardly took one of the rocking-chairs, and made the Colonel sit down in the other; and Martha brought a fresh bottle of uncommonly fine old port, which she decanted on a table in the corner that did duty as a sideboard. When they had done full justice to this, the Doctor ordered hot water; and Martha, accustomed to this laconic command, brought also certain other fluids which were hot in quite a different sense. She also brought a sheaf of clay tobacco-pipes, about two feet six inches long, and in a state of the whitest virginity--emblems of purity! emblems, alas! at the same time, of all that is most fragile and most ephemeral!

"Nay, Martha," said the Doctor, "we don't want them clay pipes to-day.

Colonel Stanburne isn't used to 'em, I reckon. Bring that box of cigars that I bought the other day in Manchester."

The Colonel, however, would smoke a clay pipe, and he tried to rock as the Doctor did, and soon, by the effect of that curious sympathy which exists between rocking-chairs (or their occupants), the two kept time together like musicians in a duet, and clouds of the densest smoke arose from the two long tobacco-pipes.

It had been announced to the inhabitants of the parsonage that the representative of the house of Stanburne intended to call there that afternoon; and though it would be an exaggeration to state that the preparations for his reception were on a scale of magnificence, it is not an exaggeration to describe them as in every respect worthy of Mrs.

Prigley's skill as a manager, and her husband's ingenuity and taste. New carpets they could _not_ buy, so it was no use thinking about them; and though Mrs. Prigley had indulged the hope that Mrs. Ogden's attention would be drawn to the state of her carpets by that accident with which the reader is already acquainted, so as to lead, it might be, to some act of generosity on her part, this result had not followed, and indeed had never suggested itself to Mrs. Ogden, who had merely resolved to look well to her feet whenever she ventured into the parlor at the parsonage, as on dangerous and treacherous ground. Under these circ.u.mstances Mrs. Prigley gradually sank into that condition of mind which accepts as inevitable even the outward and visible signs of impecuniosity; and though an English lady must indeed be brought low before she will consent to see the boards of her floors in a condition of absolute nakedness, poor Mrs. Prigley had come down to this at last; and she submitted without a murmur when her husband expressed his desire that "that old rag" on the floor of the drawing-room might be removed out of his sight. When the deal boards were carpetless, Mrs. Prigley was proceeding with a sigh to replace the furniture thereon; but her husband desired that it might be lodged elsewhere for a few days, during which s.p.a.ce of time he kept the door of the drawing-room locked, and spent two or three hours there every day in the most mysterious seclusion, to the neglect of his parochial duties. Mrs. Prigley in vain endeavored to discover the nature of his occupation there. She tried to look through the key-hole, but a flap of paper had been adapted to it on the inside to defeat her feminine curiosity; she went into the garden and attempted to look in at the window, but the blind was down, and as it was somewhat too narrow, slips of paper had been pasted on the gla.s.s down each side so as to make the interstice no longer available. The reverend master of the house endeavored to appear as frank and communicative as usual, by talking volubly on all sorts of subjects except the mystery of the drawing-room; but Mrs. Prigley did not consider it consistent with her self-respect to appear to take any interest in his discourse, and during all these days she preserved, along with an extreme gentleness of manner, the air of a person borne down by secret grief. An invisible line of separation had grown up between the two; and though both were perfectly courteous and polite, each felt that the days of mutual confidence were over. There was a difference, however, in their respective positions; for the parson felt tranquil in the a.s.surance that the cloud would pa.s.s away, whereas his wife had no such a.s.surance, and the future was dark before her. It is true, that, notwithstanding the outward serenity of her demeanor, Mrs. Prigley was sustained by the inward fires of wrath, which enable an injured woman to endure almost any extremity of mental misery and distress.

We have seen that the Shayton parson had that peculiar form of eccentricity which consists in the love of the Beautiful. He had great projects for Shayton Church, which as yet lay hidden in the privacy of his own breast; and he had also projects for the parsonage, of which the realization, to the eye of reason and common-sense, would have appeared too remote to be entertained for an instant. But the enthusiasm for the Beautiful does not wait to be authorized by the Philistines,--if it _did_, it would wait till the end of all things; and Mr. Prigley, poor as he was, determined to have such a degree of beauty in his habitation as might be consistent with his poverty. Without being an artist, or any thing approaching to an artist, he had practised the drawing of the simpler decorative forms, and was really able to combine them very agreeably. He could also lay a flat tint with a brush quite neatly, though he could not manage a gradation. When it had been finally decided that carpets could no longer be afforded, Mr. Prigley saw that the opportunity had come for the exercise of his talents; but he was far too wise a man to confide to his wife projects so entirely outside the orbit of her ideas. He had attempted, in former days, to inoculate her mind with the tastes that belong to culture, but he had been met by a degree of impenetrability which proved to him that the renewal of such attempts, instead of adding to his domestic happiness by creating closer community of ideas, might be positively detrimental to it, by proving too plainly the impossibility of such a community. Mrs. Prigley, like many good women of her cla.s.s, was totally and absolutely devoid of culture of any kind. She managed her house admirably, and with a wonderful thrift and wisdom; she was an excellent wife in a certain sense, though more from duty than any great strength of affection; but beyond this and the Church Service, and three or four French phrases which she did not know how to p.r.o.nounce, her mind was in such a state of darkness and ignorance as to astonish even her husband from time to time, though he had plenty of opportunities for observing it.

But what _was_ he doing in the drawing-room? He was doing things unheard of in the Shayton valley. In the days of his youth and extravagance he had bought a valuable book on Etruscan design; and though, as we have said elsewhere, his taste and culture, though developed up to a certain point, were yet by no means perfect or absolutely reliable, still he could not but feel the singular simplicity and grace of that ancient art, and he determined that the decoration of his drawing-room should be Etruscan. On the wide area of the floor he drew a n.o.ble old design, and stained it clearly in black and red; and, when it was dry, rubbed linseed-oil all over it to fix it. The effect was magnificent! the artist was delighted with his performance! but on turning his eye from the perfect unity of the floor, with its centre and broad border, to the old paper on the walls, which was covered with a representation of a brown angler fis.h.i.+ng in a green river, with a blue hill behind him, and an equally blue church-steeple, and a cow who had eaten so much gra.s.s that it had not only fattened her but colored her with its own greenness--and when the parson counted the number of copies of this interesting landscape that adorned his walls, and saw that they numbered sixscore and upwards--then he felt that he had too much of it, and boldly resolved to abolish it. He looked at all the wall-papers in the shop at Shayton, but the endurable ones were beyond his means, and the cheap ones were not endurable--so he purchased a quant.i.ty of common brown parcel-paper, of which he took care to choose the most agreeable tint; and he furtively covered his walls with _that_, conveying the paper, a few sheets at a time, under his topcoat. When the last angler had disappeared, the parson began to feel highly excited at the idea of decorating all that fresh and inviting surface. He would have a frieze--yes, he would certainly have a frieze; and he set to work, and copied long Etruscan processions. Then the walls must be divided into compartments, and each compartment must have its chosen design, and the planning and the execution of this absorbed Mr. Prigley so much, that for three weeks he did not write a single new sermon, and, I am sorry to say, scarcely visited a single paris.h.i.+oner except in cases of pressing necessity. As the days were so short, he took to working by candle-light; and when once he had discovered that it was possible to get on in this way, he worked till two o'clock in the morning. He made himself a cap-candlestick, and with this crest of light on the top of his head, and the fire of enthusiasm inside it, forgot the flying hours.

The work was finished at last. It was not perfect; a good critic might have detected many an inaccuracy of line, and some incongruousness in the juxtaposition of designs, which, though all antique and Etruscan, were often of dissimilar epochs. But, on the whole, the result justified the proud satisfaction of the workman. The room would be henceforth marked with the sign of culture and of taste: it was a little Temple of the Muse in the midst of a barbarian world.

But what would Mrs. Prigley say? The parson knew that he had done a bold deed, and he rather trembled at the consequence. "My love," he said, one morning at breakfast-time, "I've finished what I was doing in the drawing-room, and you can put the furniture back when you like; but I should not wish to have any thing hung upon the walls--they are sufficiently decorated as it is. The pictures" (by which Mr. Prigley meant sundry worthless little lithographs and prints)--"the pictures may be hung in one of the bedrooms wherever you like."

Mrs. Prigley remained perfectly silent, and her husband did not venture to ask her to accompany him into the scene of his artistic exploits. He felt that in case she did not approve what he had done, the situation might become embarra.s.sing. So, immediately after breakfast, he walked forth into the parish, and said that he should probably dine with Mr.

Jacob Ogden, who (by his mother's command) had kindly invited him to do so whenever he happened to pa.s.s Milend about one o'clock in the day. And in this way the parson managed to keep out of the house till tea-time.

It was not that Mr. Prigley dreaded any criticism, for to criticise, one must have an opinion. Mrs. Prigley on these matters had not an opinion.

All that Mr. Prigley dreaded was the anger of the offended spouse--of the spouse whom he had not even gone through the formality of seeming to consult.

He was punished, but not as he had expected to be punished. Mrs. Prigley said nothing to him on the subject; but when they went into the drawing-room together at night, she affected not to perceive that he had done any thing whatever there. Not only did she not speak about these changes, but, though Mr. Prigley watched her eyes during the whole evening to see whether they would rest upon his handiwork, they never seemed to perceive it, even for an instant. She played the part she had resolved upon with marvellous persistence and self-control. She seemed precisely as she had always been:--sulky? not in the least; there was not the slightest trace of sulkiness, or any thing approaching to sulkiness in her manner--the Etruscan designs were simply invisible for her, that was all.

They were not so invisible for the Colonel when he came to pay his visit at the parsonage, and, in his innocence, he complimented Mrs. Prigley on her truly cla.s.sical taste. He had not the least notion that the floor was carpetless because the Prigleys could not afford a carpet--the degree of poverty which could not afford a carpet not being conceivable by him as a possible attribute of one of his relations or friends. He believed that this beautiful Etruscan design was preferred by Mrs.

Prigley to a carpet--to the best of carpets--on high aesthetic grounds.

Ah! if he could have read her heart, and seen therein all the shame and vexation that glowed like hidden volcanic fires! All these cla.s.sical decorations seemed to the simple lady a miserable subst.i.tute for the dear old carpet with its alternate yellow flourish and brown lozenge; and she regretted the familiar fisherman whose image used to greet her wherever her eyes might rest. But she felt a deeper shame than belongs to being visibly poor or visibly ridiculous. The room looked poor she knew, and in her opinion it looked ridiculous also; but there was something worse than that, and harder far to bear. How shall I reveal this bitter grief and shame--how find words to express the horror I feel for the man who was its unpardonable cause! Carried away by his enthusiasm for a profane and heathen art, Mr. Prigley had actually introduced, in the frieze and elsewhere, several figures which--well, were divested of all drapery whatever! "And he a clergyman, too!"

thought Mrs. Prigley. True, they were simply outlined; and the conception of the original designer had been marvellously elegant and pure, chastened to the last degree by long devotion to the ideal; but there they were, these shameless nymphs and muses, on the wall of a Christian clergyman! John Stanburne, who had travelled a good deal, and who had often stayed in houses where there were both statues and pictures, saw nothing here but the evidence of cultivated taste. "What _will_ he think of us?" said Mrs. Prigley to herself; and she believed that his compliments were merely a kind way of trying to make her feel less uncomfortable. She thought him very nice, and he chattered as pleasantly as he possibly could, so that the Doctor, who had come with him, had no social duty to perform, and spent his time in studying the Etruscan decorations. Colonel Stanburne apologized for Lady Helena, who had intended to come with him; but her little girl was suffering from an attack of fever--not a dangerous fever, he hoped, though violent.

The Doctor, who had not before heard of this, was surprised; but as he did not visit Wenderholme professionally (for Wenderholme Hall was, medically speaking, under the authority of the surgeon at Rigton, whose jealousy was already awakened by our Doctor's intimacy with the Colonel), he reflected that it was no business of his. The fact was, that little Miss Stanburne was in the enjoyment of the most perfect health, but her mother thought it more prudent to let the Colonel go to Shayton by himself in the first instance, so as to be able to regulate her future policy according to his report. Mr. Prigley came in before the visitor had exhausted the subject of the fever, which he described with an accuracy that took in these two very experienced people; for he described from memory--his daughter having suffered from such an attack about six months earlier than the very recent date the Colonel found it convenient to a.s.sign to it.