Wenderholme Part 11

It was, of course, a great satisfaction to the Prigleys that the head of the Stanburnes should thus voluntarily renew a connection which, so far as personal intercourse was concerned, was believed to have been permanently severed. It was not simply because the Colonel was a man of high standing in the county that they were glad to become acquainted with him--there were certain clannish and romantic sentiments which now found a satisfaction long denied to them. Mrs. Prigley felt, in a minor degree, what a Highland gentlewoman still feels for the chief of her clan; and she was disposed to offer a sort of loyalty to the Colonel as the head of her house, which was very different from the common respect for wealth and position in general. The Stanburnes had never taken any conspicuous part in the great events of English history, but the successive representatives of the family had at least been present in many historical scenes, in conflicts civil and military, on the field, on the quarter-deck of the war-s.h.i.+p, in stormy Parliamentary struggles; and the present chief of the name, for other descendants of the family, inherited in an especial sense a place in the national life of England.

Not that Mrs. Prigley had any definite notions even about the history of her own family; the sentiment of birth is quite independent of historical knowledge, and many a good gentlewoman in these realms is in a general way proud of belonging to an old family, without caring to inquire very minutely into the history of it, just as she may be proud of her coat-of-arms without knowing any thing about heraldry.

The Colonel, in a very kind and graceful manner, expressed his regret that such near relations should have been separated for so long by an unfortunate dispute between their fathers. "I believe," he said, "that your side has most to forgive, since my father won the lawsuit, but surely we ought not to perpetuate ill-feeling, generation after generation." Mr. Prigley said that no ill-feeling remained; but that though he had often wished to see Wenderholme and its owner, he knew that, as a rule, poor relations were liked best at a distance, and that not having hitherto had the pleasure of knowing Colonel Stanburne, he must be held excusable for having supposed him to be like the rest of the world. John Stanburne was not quite satisfied with this somewhat formal and dignified a.s.surance, and was resolved to establish a more intimate footing before he left the parsonage. He exerted himself to talk about ecclesiastical matters and church architecture, and when Mr.

Prigley offered to show him the church, accompanied him thither with great apparent interest and satisfaction. The Doctor had patients to visit, and went his own way.

CHAPTER XII.

OGDEN'S NEW MILL.

Our Jacob, or big Jacob, or Jacob at Milend, as he now began to be called in the Ogden family, to distinguish him from his nephew and h.o.m.onym, had arrived at that point in the career of every successful cotton-spinner when a feeling of great embarra.s.sment arises as to the comparative wisdom of purchasing an estate or "laying down a new mill."

When his brother Isaac retired from the concern with ten thousand pounds, Jacob had not precisely cheated him, perhaps, but he had made a bargain which, considered prospectively, was highly favorable to his own interest; and since he had been alone, the profits from the mill had been so considerable that his savings had rapidly acc.u.mulated, and he was now troubled with a very heavy balance at his bankers, and in various investments, which, to a man accustomed to receive the large interest of successful cotton-spinning, seemed little better than letting money lie idle. Mrs. Ogden had three hundred a-year from five or six very small farms of her own, which she had inherited from her mother, and this amply sufficed for the entire expenses of the little household at Milend. Jacob spent about a hundred and fifty pounds a-year on himself personally, of which two-thirds were absorbed in shooting,--the only amus.e.m.e.nt he cared about. His tailor's bill was incredibly small, for he had the excuse, when in Shayton, of being constantly about the mill, and it was natural that he should wear old fustian and corduroy there; and as for his journeys to Manchester, it was his custom on these occasions to wear the suit which had been the Sunday suit of the preceding year. His mother knitted all his stockings for him, and made his s.h.i.+rts, these being her usual occupations in an evening. His travelling expenses were confined to the weekly journeys to Manchester, and as these were always on business, they were charged to the concern. If Jacob Ogden had not been fond of shooting, his personal expenses, beyond food and lodging (which were provided for him by his mother), would not have exceeded fifty pounds a-year; and it is a proof of the great firmness of his character in money matters that, although by nature pa.s.sionately fond of sport, he resolutely kept the cost of it within the hundred. His annual outlay upon literature was within twenty s.h.i.+llings; not that it is to be supposed that he spent so large a sum as one pound sterling in a regular manner upon books, but he had been tempted by a second-hand copy of Baine's 'History of Lancas.h.i.+re,' which, being much the worse for wear, had been marked by the bookseller at five pounds, and Jacob Ogden, by hard bargaining, had got it for four pounds nine s.h.i.+llings and ninepence. After this extravagance he resolved to spend no more "foolish money," as he called it, and for several years made no addition to his library, except a book on dog-breeding, and a small treatise on the preservation of game, which he rightly entered amongst his expenses as a sportsman. We are far from desiring to imply that Jacob Ogden is in this respect to be considered a representative example of the present generation of cotton-manufacturers, many of whom are highly educated men, but he may be fairly taken as a specimen of that generation which founded the colossal fortunes that excite the wonder, and sometimes, perhaps, awaken the envy, of the learned. When nature produces a creature for some especial purpose, she does not burden it with wants and desires that would scatter its force and impair its efficiency. The industrial epoch had to be inaugurated, the manufacturing districts had to be created--and to do this a body of men were needed who should be fresh springs of pure energy, and reservoirs of all but illimitable capital; men who should act with the certainty and steadiness of natural instincts which have never been impaired by the hesitations of culture and philosophy--men who were less nearly related to university professors than to the ant, and the beaver, and the bee. And if any cultivated and intellectual reader, in the thoughtful retirement of his library, feels himself superior to Jacob Ogden, the illiterate cotton-spinner, he may be reminded that he is not on all points Ogden's superior. We are all but tools in the hands of G.o.d; and as in the mind of a writer great delicacy and flexibility are necessary qualities for the work he is appointed to do, so in the mind of a great captain of industry the most valuable qualities may be the very opposite of these. Have we the energy, the directness, the singleness of purpose, the unflinching steadiness in the dullest possible labor, that mark the typical industrial chief? We know that we have not; we know that these qualities are not compatible with the tranquillity of the studious temperament and the meditative life. And if the Ogdens cannot be men of letters, neither can the men of letters be Ogdens.

It is admitted, then, that Jacob Ogden was utterly and irreclaimably illiterate. He really never read a book in his life, except, perhaps, that book on dog-breaking. Whenever he tried to read, it was a task and a labor to him; and as literature is not of the least use in the cotton trade, the energy of his indomitable will had never been brought to bear upon the mastery of a book. And yet you could not meet him without feeling that he was very intelligent--that he possessed a kind of intelligence cultivated by the closest observation of the men and things within the narrow circle of his life. Has it never occurred to the reader how wonderfully the most illiterate people often impress us with a sense of their intelligence--how men and women who never learned the alphabet have its light on their countenance and in their eyes? In Ogden's face there were clear signs of that, and of other qualities also. And there was a keenness in the glance quite different from the penetration of the thinker or the artist--a keenness which always comes from excessively close and minute attention to money matters, and from the pa.s.sionate love of money, and which no other pa.s.sion or occupation ever produces.

In all that related to money Jacob Ogden acted with the pitiless regularity of the irresistible forces of nature. As the sea which feeds the fisherman will drown him without remorse--as the air which we all breathe will bury us under heaps of ruin--so this man, though his capital enabled a mult.i.tude to live, would take the bed from under a sick debtor, and, rather than lose an imperceptible atom of his fortune, inflict the utmost extremity of misery. Even Hanby, his attorney, who was by no means tender-hearted, had been staggered at times by his pitilessness, and had ventured upon a feeble remonstrance. On these occasions a shade of sternness was added to the keenness of Ogden's face, and he repeated a terrible maxim, which, with one or two others, guided his life: "If a man means to be rich, he must have no fine feelings;" and then he would add, "_I_ mean to be rich."

Perhaps he would have had fine feelings on a Sunday, for on Sundays he was religious, and went to church, where he heard a good deal about being merciful and forgiving which on week-days he would have attributed to the influence of the sentiments which he despised. But Ogden was far too judicious an economist of human activities to be ignorant of the great art of self-adaptation to the duties and purposes of the hour; and as a prudent lawyer who has a taste for music will take care that it shall not interfere with his professional work, so Jacob Ogden, who really had rather a taste for religion, and liked to sit in church with gloved hands and a clean face, had no notion of allowing the beautiful sentiments which he heard there to paralyze his action on a week-day.

Every Sunday he prayed repeatedly that G.o.d would forgive him his debts or trespa.s.ses as he forgave his debtors or those that trespa.s.sed against him; but that was no reason why he should not, from Monday morning to Sat.u.r.day night inclusively, compel everybody to pay what he owed, and distress him for it if necessary. After all, he acted so simply and instinctively that one can hardly blame him very severely. The truest definition of him would be, an incarnate natural force. The forces of wealth, which are as much natural forces as those of fire and frost, had incarnated themselves in him. His sympathy with money was so complete, he had so entirely subjected his mind to it, so thoroughly made himself its pupil and its mouth-piece, that it is less accurate to say that he _had_ money than that he _was_ money. Jacob Ogden was a certain sum of money whose unique idea was its own increase, and which acted in obedience to the laws of wealth as infallibly as a planet acts in obedience to the cosmic forces.

It is only natural that a man so endowed and so situated should grow rich. In all respects circ.u.mstances were favorable to him. He had robust health and indefatigable energy. His position in a little place like Shayton, where habits of spending had not yet penetrated, was also greatly in his favor, because it sheltered him in undisturbed obscurity.

No man who is born to wealth, and has lived from his infancy in the upper cla.s.s, will confine his expenditure during the best years of manhood to the pittance which sufficed for Ogden. It was an advantage to him, also, that his mind should be empty, because he needed all the room in it for the endless details concerning his property and his trade. No fact of this nature, however minute, escaped him. His knowledge of the present state of all that belonged to him was so clear and accurate, and his foresight as to probable changes so sure, that he antic.i.p.ated every thing, and neutralized every cause of loss before it had time to develop itself.

That a man whose daily existence proved the fewness of his wants should have an eager desire for money, may appear one of the inconsistencies of human nature; but in the case of Jacob Ogden, and in thousands of cases similar to his, there is no real inconsistency. He did not desire money in order to live luxuriously; he desired it because the mere possession of it brought increased personal consideration, and gave him weight and importance in the little community he lived in. And when a man relies on wealth _alone_ for his position--when he is, obviously, not a gentleman--he needs a great quant.i.ty of it. Another reason why Jacob Ogden never felt that he had enough was because the men with whom he habitually compared himself, and whom he wished to distance in the race, did not themselves remain stationary, but enriched themselves so fast that it needed all Jacob Ogden's genius for money-getting to keep up with them; for men of talent in every order compare themselves with their equals and rivals, and not with the herd of the incapable. It was his custom to go to Manchester in the same railway carriage with four or five men of business, who talked of nothing but investments, and it would have made Jacob Ogden miserable not to be able to take a share in these conversations on terms of perfect equality.

"I'm sure," thought Mrs. Ogden, "that our Jacob's got something on his mind. He sits and thinks a deal more than he used doin'. He's 'appen[11]

fallen in love, an' doesn't like to tell me about it, because it's same as tellin' me to leave Milend."

Mrs. Ogden was confirmed in her suspicions that very evening by the fact that "our Jacob" shut himself up in the little sitting-room with a builder. "If it's to build himself a new 'ouse and leave me at Milend, I willn't stop; and if it's to build me a new 'ouse, I shall never live there. I shall go an' live i' th' Cream-pot."

The idea of Mrs. Ogden living in a cream-pot may appear to some readers almost as mythical as the story of that other and much more famous old lady who lived in a shoe; but although a cream-pot would not be a bad place to live in if one were a mouse, and the rich fluid not dangerously deep, it is not to be supposed that Mrs. Ogden entertained such a project in an obvious and literal sense. Her intentions were rational, but they need a word of explanation. She possessed a small farm called the Cream-pot; and of all her small farms this was her best beloved.

Therefore had she resolved, years and years before, that when Jacob married she would go to the Cream-pot, and dwell there for the days that might remain to her.

She waited till the builder had gone, and then went into the little room. Jacob was busy examining a plan. "I wish you wouldn't trouble yourself about that buildin', Jacob," said Mrs. Ogden; "there needs no buildin', for as soon as ever you get wed I shall go to th' Cream-pot."

Her son looked up from his plan with an air of the utmost astonishment.

Mrs. Ogden continued,--

"I think you might have told me about it a little sooner. I don't even know her name, not positively, though I may guess it, perhaps. There's no doubt about one thing--you'll have time enough to repent in. As they make their bed, so they must lie."

"What the devil," said Jacob, thinking aloud and _very_ loudly,--"what the devil is th' ould woman drivin' at?"

"Nay, if I'm to be sworn at, I've been too long i' this 'ouse already."

And Mrs. Ogden, with that stately step which distinguished her, made slowly for the door.

In cases where the lady of a house acts in a manner which is altogether absurd, the male or males, whose comfort is in a great degree dependent upon her good temper, have a much better chance of restoring it than when she is but moderately unreasonable. They are put upon their guard; they are quite safe from that most fatal of errors, an attempt to bring the lady round by those too direct arguments which are suggested by masculine frankness; they are warned that judicious management is necessary. Thus, although Jacob Ogden, in the first shock of his astonishment, had not replied to his mother in a manner precisely calculated to soothe her, he at once perceived his error, and saw that she must be brought round. In politer spheres, where people beg pardon of each other for the most trifling and even imaginary offences, the duty of begging pardon is so constantly practised that (like all well-practised duties) it is extremely easy. But it was impossible for Jacob Ogden, who had never begged pardon in his life.

"I say, mother, stop a bit. You've gotten a bit o' bra.s.s o' your own, an' I'm layin' down a new mill, and I shall want o' th'[12] bra.s.s I can lay my hands on. I willn't borrow none, out of this 'ouse, not even of my brother Isaac; but if you could lend me about four thousand pound, I could give a better finish to th' new shed."

"Why, Jacob, you never told me as you were layin' down a new mill."

"No, but I should a' done if you'd a' waited a bit I never right made up my mind about it while last night."

It was not Jacob Ogden's custom to be confidential with his mother about money matters, and she on her part had been too proud to seek a confidence that was never offered; but many little signs had of late led her to the conclusion that Jacob was in a period of unusual prosperity.

He had bought one or two small estates for three or four thousand pounds each, and then had suddenly declared that he would lay out no more money in "potterin' bits o' property like them, but keep it while he'd a good lump for summat o' some use." The decision about the new mill proved to Mrs. Ogden that the "lump" in question was already acc.u.mulated.

"Jacob," she said, "how much do you reckon to put into th' new mill?"

"Why, 'appen about forty thousand; an' if you'll lend me four, that'll be forty-four."

This was a larger sum than Mrs. Ogden had hoped; but she showed no sign of rejoicing beyond a quiet smile.

"And where do you think of buildin' it?"

"Well, mother, if you don't mind sellin' me Little Mouse Field, it's the best mill-site in all Shayton. There's that water-course so handy; and it'll increase the valley[13] of our land round about it."

Mrs. Ogden was perfectly soothed by this time. Jacob wanted to borrow four thousand pounds of her. She had coal under her little farms, of which the acc.u.mulated produce had reached rather more than that amount; and she promised the loan with a facetious hope that the borrower would be able to give her good security. As to Little Mouse Field, he was quite welcome to it, and she begged him to accept it as a present.

"Nay, mother; you shouldn't give me no presents bout[14] givin' summat to our Isaac. But I reckon it's all one; for all as I have, or shall have, 'll go to little Jacob."

"Eh, how you talk, lad! Why, you'll get wed an' have chilther of your own. You're young enough, an' well off beside."

"There's no need for me to get wed, mother, so long as th' old woman lasts, an' who'll last a long while yet, I reckon. There's none o' these young ladies as is kerfle enough to do for a man like me as has been accustomed to see his house well managed. Why, they cannot neither make a s.h.i.+rt nor a puddin'."

These disparaging remarks concerning the "Girl of the Period" filled (as they were designed to fill) Mrs. Ogden's mind with tranquillity and satisfaction. To complete her good-humor, Jacob unrolled the plans and elevation of his new mill. The plans were most extensive, but the elevation did not strike the spectator by its height; for as the site was not costly, Jacob Ogden had adopted a system then becoming prevalent in the smaller towns of the manufacturing districts, where land was comparatively cheap--the system of erecting mills rather as sheds than on the old five-storied model. His new mill was simply a field walled in and roofed over, with a tall engine house and an enormous chimney at one end. People of aesthetic tastes would see nothing lovely in the long straight lines of roofs and rows of monotonously identical windows which displayed themselves on the designs drawn by Ogden's architect; but to Ogden's eyes there was a beauty here greater than that of the finest cathedral he had ever beheld. He was not an imaginative person; but he had quite enough imagination to realize the vista of the vast interior, the roar of the innumerable wheels, the incessant activity of the living makers of his wealth. He saw himself standing in the n.o.ble engine-room, and watching the unhurried see-saw of the colossal beams; the rise and fall of the pistons, thicker than the spear of Goliath, and brighter than columns of silver; the revolution of the enormous fly-wheel; the exquisite truth of motion; the steadiness of man's great creature, that never knows fatigue. That engine-room should be the finest in all Shayton. It should have a plaster cornice round its ceiling, and a great moulded ornament in the middle of it; the gas-lights should be in handsome ground-gla.s.s globes; and about the casings of the cylinders there should be a luxury of mahogany and bra.s.s.

"But, Jacob," said his mother, when she had duly adjusted her spectacles, and gradually mastered the main features of the plan, "it seems to me as you've put th' mill all o' one side, and th' engine n.o.bbut half-fills th' engine-house."

Ogden had never heard of Taymouth Castle and the old Earl of Breadalbane, who, when somebody asked him why he built his house at the extremity of his estate, instead of in the middle of it, answered that he intended to "brizz yint."[15] But, like the ambitious Earl, Ogden was one of those who "brizz yint."

"Why, mother," he said, "this 'ere's n.o.bbut half the new mill. What can you do with forty-five thousand?"

CHAPTER XIII.

STANITHBURN PEEL.

"Helena!" said Colonel Stanburne one morning when he came down to breakfast, "I've determined on a bold stroke. I'm going to take the tandem this morning to Stanithburn Peel, to see young Philip Stanburne and get him to accept a captaincy in the new regiment."

Her ladys.h.i.+p did not see why this should be called a bold stroke, so she asked if the road were particularly dangerous to drive upon, and suggested that, if it were, one horse would be safer than two.