Wenderholme Part 38

"Edith," Mrs. Stanburne said at last, "do you hear what Jacob says? He says he has left business. I think it is very imprudent; and when I say so, he tells me that he will never have any factories."

Edith lent the most languid attention to her grandmother's piece of information. Her whole conduct was just the reverse of her usual way of behaving. Formerly she had taken the liveliest interest in every thing that concerned her lover, so, to _make_ her listen, he blurted out the truth suddenly in one sentence.

"My uncle has disinherited me. I am going to be a doctor. I am going to learn the profession with Mr. Bardly in Shayton."

Mrs. Stanburne was more surprised by this news than Edith was. "But _why_?" she asked, emphatically; "_why_ has he disinherited you? I thought you were on the best possible terms. He spoke to you to-day as he was going out of church."

Young Jacob was silent for a minute. Mrs. Stanburne came back to the charge. "But _why_, I say--_why_?"

"My uncle wants me to marry a girl of his own choosing, called Sally Smethurst."

Here young Jacob paused, then he took courage and added,--"and I, Mrs.

Stanburne, have ventured for some years past to indulge dreams and hopes which may never be realized. You know what my dreams have been. I had hoped that perhaps my plain common name might have been forgotten, and that as you and Colonel Stanburne had always been very kind to me, and Miss Edith had never wounded me by any haughtiness or coldness, I had hoped that perhaps some day any difficulties which existed might be overcome, and that she would accept me with the consent of her parents."

Edith Stanburne rose from her seat and quietly left the room. There was no agitation visible in her face, but it was very pale.

"My dear Jacob," Mrs. Stanburne said decidedly, "we like you very much--we have always liked you very much, and you have always behaved honorably, and as a gentleman. But I am sure that Edith would not sacrifice your prospects. Every thing forbids it; our esteem for yourself forbids it, and our pride forbids it. Besides, I have not authority to allow you two young people to engage yourselves without the consent of the Colonel and Lady Helena."

"May I not speak to Miss Stanburne?"

"It would be better that you should not speak to her in private, but you may speak to her if you like in my presence."

"I should be glad to know what she herself really thinks."

Mrs. Stanburne left the room, and after ten minutes had elapsed, which seemed to young Jacob like a century, she returned, accompanied by her grand-daughter.

Edith was still pale, but she had a look of great self-possession. What was going on in her mind just then may be best expressed by the following little soliloquy:--

"Poor, dear Jacob, how I do love him! What a paradise it would be, that simple, quiet life with him--at Shayton, anywhere in the world! But I love him too much to ruin him, so I must be hard now." And then she acted her part.

Looking at her lover coldly, she was the first to speak. "Mr. Ogden,"

she said, "I may sink a good deal in your esteem by what I am going to say to you, but my own future must be considered as well as yours. We should be sorry to sacrifice your prospects, but I am thinking of myself also. I do not think that I could live contentedly as a surgeon's wife at Shayton."

Young Jacob was astounded. This from Edith! The very last thing he had ever antic.i.p.ated was an objection of the selfish kind from her. He had counted upon all obstacles but this; and all other obstacles were surmountable, but this was insurmountable. He saw at once that it would be madness to marry a young lady who despised his life, and the labors which he went through for her sake.

If he could only have known! She, poor thing, was new in this game of cruelty with a kind intention, and she played it with even more than necessary hardness. Perhaps she felt that without this overstrung hardness she could not deceive him at all; that the least approach to tenderness would be fatal to her purpose. She had imagination enough to conceive and act a part utterly foreign to her character, but not imagination enough to act a part only just sufficiently foreign to herself to serve her immediate end. So there was a harsh excess in what she did.

"Miss Stanburne," he said at last, "this gives me great pain."

The poor girl writhed inwardly, but she maintained a serene countenance, and, looking young Jacob full in the face, said, with a well-imitated sneer,--

"I may say with truth that it has latterly been agreeable to me to think that the daughter of Colonel Stanburne would one day live at Wenderholme.--But I confess I have not the sort of heroism which would consent to be a surgeon's wife in such a place as Shayton."

"If these are your reasons, Miss Stanburne, I have done. A man would be a fool to sacrifice his prospects, and slave at a profession all his life, for a woman who paid him with contempt. And I think I may say that you dismiss me with uncommon coolness. I've loved you these twelve years--I've loved you ever since I was a child. I never loved any other woman; and the reward of this devotion is, that I am sent away when my prospects are clouded, without a sign of emotion or a syllable to express regret. I think you might say you are sorry, at any rate."

"Very well, I will say that. I am sorry."

By a supreme effort of acting, Edith put an expression into her face which conveyed the idea that she considered emotion ridiculous, and young Jacob's own conduct as verging slightly upon the absurd. This stung him to the quick.

"Miss Stanburne," he said, after a pause, "this conversation is leading to no good. It is useless to prolong it."

"I quite agree with you."

And he was gone.

If he could have seen what pa.s.sed after his departure, he would have gone back to Shayton in a very different frame of mind. Edith had acted her part and held out bravely to the last, but when Jacob was once fairly out of the house, the faithful heart could endure its self-inflicted torture no longer, and she ran upstairs to her bedroom and locked the door, and burst into bitter tears. "How good and brave he is, and how he loves me! It is hard, it is _very_ hard, to have to throw away a heart like his. But I will not be his ruin--I never will be his ruin!" Then a thousand tender recollections came into her memory--recollections of the long years of his faithful love and service. It had begun in their childhood, when first she called him "Charley," giving him one of her own names; it had continued year after year until this very day, when he would have sacrificed all for her, and she had treated him with coldness and cruelty--_she_ who so loved him!

And to think that he would _never know the truth_--that the long dreary future would wear itself gradually out until both of them were in their graves, and that he would never know how her heart yearned to him, and remained faithful to him always! That thought was the hardest and bitterest of them all, _that he would never know_; that all his life he would retain that misconception about her which she herself had so carefully created! It is easy to bear the bad opinion of people we care nothing about, but when those we most love disapprove, how eagerly we desire their absolution!

Edith was not quite so strong as she herself believed. The late events had tried her courage to the utmost, and outwardly she seemed to have borne them well; but they had strained her nervous system a good deal, and this last trial of her fort.i.tude had been too much, even for her.

Her agony rapidly pa.s.sed from mental grief into an uncontrollable crisis of the nerves. She went through this alone, lying upon her bed, sobbing and moaning, her face on the pillow, her hands convulsively agitated.

Then came utter vacancy, and after the vacancy a slow, painful awakening to the new sadness of her life.

CHAPTER XII.

JACOB OGDEN'S TRIUMPH.

At length the great day arrived, towards the end of October, when the new road from Shayton to Wenderholme was to be solemnly inaugurated.

Mr. Jacob Ogden had made all his arrangements with that administrative ability which distinguished him. He had gone into every detail just as closely as if the work of this great day had been the earning of money instead of its expenditure. The main features of the programme were: 1.

A procession from Shayton to Wenderholme by the new route. 2. A grand dinner at Wenderholme. 3. A ball.

The procession was to leave Shayton at noon precisely; and about half-past eleven, a magnificent new carriage, ornamented with ma.s.sive silver, and drawn by two superb gray horses, whose new harness glittered in the suns.h.i.+ne, rolled up to Mrs. Ogden's door. On the box sat a fine coachman in livery, and a footman jumped down from behind to knock at the Milend front door.

Just at the same moment Mr. Jacob Ogden walked quietly up the drive, and when the door opened he walked in. The splendid servants respectfully saluted him.

The Shayton tailor had surpa.s.sed himself for this occasion, and Mr.

Jacob looked so well dressed that anybody would have thought his clothes had been made at Sootythorn. He wore kid gloves also.

But however well dressed a man may be, his splendor can never be comparable to a lady's, especially such a lady as Mrs. Ogden, who had a fearlessness in the use of colors like that which distinguished our younger painters twenty years ago. She always managed to adorn herself so that every thing about her looked bright, except her complexion and her eyes. Behold her as the door opens! The Queen in all her glory is not so fine as the mistress of Milend! What s.h.i.+ning splendor! What dazzling effulgence! A blind man said that he imagined scarlet to be as the sound of a trumpet; but the vision of Mrs. Ogden was equal to a whole bra.s.s band.

"Why, and whose cayridge is this 'ere, Jacob?"

"Cayridge, mother? It's n.o.bbut a two-horse fly, fro' Manchester, new painted."

The fact was, it was Mrs. Ogden's own carriage, purchased by her son without her knowledge or consent; but, to avoid a scene before his new domestics, he preferred the above amiable little fiction. So Mrs. Ogden stepped for the first time into her carriage without being aware that she had attained that great object of the _nouveau riche_. There was no danger that she would recognize the armorial bearings which decorated the panels and the harness. Jacob himself had not known them a month before, but he had sent "name and county" to a heraldic establishment in Lincoln's Inn Fields; and, as his letter had been duly accompanied by a post-office order, three days afterwards he had received a very neat drawing of his coat of arms, emblazoned in azure and gold. It was cheaper than going to the College of Arms, and did just as well.

There was n.o.body in the new carriage except Mrs. Ogden and her son. Miss Smethurst was invited, but she had a carriage and pair of her own, which she used to do honor to the occasion. Many other friends of the Ogdens (friends or business acquaintances) also came in their carriages, for the tradesmen of those parts had generally adopted the custom of carriage-keeping during the last few years. Even our friend the Doctor now kept a comfortable brougham, in which he joined the procession. Mr.

Isaac Ogden of Twistle Farm, and Mr. Jacob Ogden, Jr., his son, joined the procession on horseback, riding very fine animals indeed. A pack of harriers was kept a short distance from Shayton, and it had been agreed that all the gentlemen of the hunt who had invitations should be asked to come as equestrians.

Jacob Ogden had contrived to give a public character to his triumph by his gift of the new road to the towns.h.i.+p. The magistrates for the time being were to be the trustees of it, hence the magistrates (including one or two country gentlemen of some standing) found themselves compelled to take part in the triumph. All men were that day compelled to acknowledge Jacob Ogden's greatness, and to do him homage.

The telegraph was already established, and when the Shayton procession started on its way, the fact was known instantaneously at Wenderholme.

At the same moment a counter-procession left Wenderholme on horseback to meet the one coming from Shayton. The Yorks.h.i.+re procession consisted chiefly of the tenants of the estate on horseback, headed by the agent.

Most of them were in any thing but a congratulatory frame of mind, but as they dreaded the anger of their landlord, they rode forth to meet him to a man.