Wenderholme Part 7

"Good morning, Dr. Bardly! you've a nice little piece of work before you. There are a lot of fellows here to be examined as to their physical const.i.tution--fellows, you know, who aspire to the honor of serving in the twentieth regiment of Royal Lancas.h.i.+re Militia."

"Perhaps I'd better begin with the hofficers," said the Doctor.

The Colonel looked alarmed, or affected to be so. "My dear Doctor, there's not the least necessity for examining officers--it isn't customary, it isn't legal; officers are always perfect, both physically and morally."

A theory of this kind came well enough from Colonel Stanburne. He was six feet high, and the picture of health. He brought forth the fruits of good living, not, as Mr. Garley did, in a bloated and rubicund face and protuberant corporation, but in that admirable balance of the whole human organism which proves the regular and equal performance of all its functions. Dr. Bardly was a good judge of a man, and he had the same pleasure in looking at the Colonel that a fox-hunter feels in contemplating a fine horse. Beyond this, he liked Colonel Stanburne's society, not precisely, perhaps, for intellectual reasons--for, intellectually, there was little or nothing in common between the two men--but because he found in it a sort of mental refreshment, very pleasant to him after the society at Shayton. The Colonel was a different being--he lived in a different world from the world of the Ogdens and their friends; and it amused and interested the Doctor to see how this strange and rather admirable creature would conduct itself under the conditions of its present existence. The Doctor, as the reader must already feel perfectly a.s.sured, had not the weakness of sn.o.bbishness or parasitism in any form whatever; and if he liked to go to Wenderholme with the Colonel, it was not because there was an earl's daughter there, and the sacred odor of aristocracy about the place, but rather because he had a genuine pleasure in the society of his friend, whether amongst the splendors of Wenderholme, or in the parlor of the inn at Sootythorn.

The Colonel, too, on his part, liked the Doctor, though he laughed at him, and mimicked him to Lady Helena. The mimicry was not, however, very successful, for the Doctor's Lancas.h.i.+re dialect was too perfect and too pure for any mere ultramontane (that is, creature living beyond the hills that guarded the Shayton valley) to imitate with any approximation to success. If the Colonel, however, notwithstanding all his study and effort, could not succeed in imitating the Doctor's happy selection of expressions and purity of style, he could at any rate give him a nickname--so he called him Hoftens, not to his face, but to Lady Helena at home, and to the adjutant, and to one or two other people who knew him, and the nickname became popular; and, after a while, the officers called Dr. Bardly Hoftens to his face, which he took with perfect good-nature. The first time that this occurred, the Doctor (such was the delicacy of his ear) believed he detected something unusual in the way an impudent ensign p.r.o.nounced the word _often_, and asked what he meant, on which the adjutant interposed, and said,--"Don't mind his impudence, Doctor; he's mimicking you." "Well," said the Doctor, simply, "I wasn't aware that there was hany thing peculiar in my p.r.o.nunciation of the word, but people _hoftens_ are unaware of their own defects." But we antic.i.p.ate.

They lunched at the Thorn with the adjutant, a fair-haired and delicate-looking little gentleman of exceedingly mild and quiet manners, whose acquaintance the Doctor had made very recently. Captain Eureton had retired a year or two before from the regular army, and was now living in the neighborhood of Sootythorn with his old mother whom he loved with his whole heart. He had never married, and now there was little probability of his ever marrying. The people of Sootythorn would have set him down as a milk-sop if he had not seen a good deal of active service in India and at the Cape; but a soldier who has been baptized in the fire of the battle-field has always that fact in his favor, and has little need to give himself airs of boldness in order to impose upon the imagination of civilians.

"I believe, Dr. Bardly," said Eureton, "that we are going to have an officer from your neighborhood, a Mr. Ogden. His name has been put down for a lieutenant's commission."

"Yes, he's a neighbor of mine," answered the Doctor, rather curtly.

"You should have brought him with you, Doctor," said Colonel Stanburne, "that we might make his acquaintance. I've never seen him, you know, and he gets his commission on your recommendation. I should like, as far as possible, to know the officers personally before we meet for our first training. What sort of a fellow is Mr. Ogden? Tell us all about him."

The Doctor felt slightly embarra.s.sed, and showed it in his manner. Any true description of Isaac Ogden, as he was just then, must necessarily seem very unfavorable. Dr. Bardly had been to Twistle that very morning before daylight, and had found Mr. Ogden suffering from the effects of that fall down the cellar-steps in a state of drunkenness. The Doctor had that day abandoned all hope of reclaiming Isaac Ogden, and saving him from the fate that awaited him.

"I've nothing good to tell of Mr. Ogden, Colonel Stanburne. I wish I hadn't recommended him to you. He's an irreclaimable drunkard!"

"Well, if you'd known it you wouldn't have recommended him, of course.

You found it out since, I suppose. You must try and persuade him to resign. Tell him there'll be some awfully hard work, especially for lieutenants."

"I knew that he drank occasionally, but I believed that it was because he had n.o.body to talk to except a drunken set at the Red Lion at Shayton. I thought that if he came into the regiment it would do him good, by bringing him into more society. Shayton's a terrible place for drinking. There's a great difference between Shayton and Sootythorn."

"What sort of a man is he in other respects?" asked the Colonel.

"He's right enough for every thing else. He's a good-looking fellow, tall, and well-built; and he used to be pleasant and good-tempered, but now his nervous system must be shattered, and I would not answer for him."

"If you still think he would have sufficient control over himself to keep sober for a month we might try him, and see whether we cannot do him some good. Perhaps, as you thought, it's only want of society that drives him to amuse himself by drinking. Upon my word, I think I should take to drinking myself if I lived all the year round in such a place as Sootythorn--and I suppose Shayton's no better."

Captain Eureton, who was simple and even abstemious in his way of living, and whose appet.i.te had not been sharpened, like that of the Doctor, by a long drive in the morning, finished his lunch in about ten minutes, and excused himself on the plea that he had an appointment with a joiner about the orderly-room, which had formerly been an infant-school of some Dissenting persuasion, and therefore required remodelling as to its interior fittings. We shall see more of him in due time, but for the present must leave him to the tranquil happiness of devising desks and pigeon-holes in company with an intelligent workman, than which few occupations can be more delightful.

"Perhaps, unless you've something to detain you in Sootythorn, Doctor, we should do well to leave here as early as possible. It's a long drive to Wenderholme--twenty miles, you know; and I always make a point of giving the horses a rest at Rigton."

As the Doctor had nothing to do in Sootythorn, the Colonel ordered his equipage. When he drove alone, he always preferred a tandem, but when Lady Helena accompanied him, he took his seat in a submissive matrimonial manner in the family carriage. As Wenderholme was so far from Sootythorn, the Colonel kept two pairs of horses; and one pair was generally at Wenderholme and the other in Mr. Garley's stables, where the Colonel had a groom of his own permanently. The only inconvenience of this arrangement was that the same horses had to do duty in the tandem and the carriage; but they did it on the whole fairly well and the Colonel contented himself with the carriage-horses, so far as driving was concerned.

The Doctor drove his own gig with the degree of skill which results from the practice of many years; but he had never undertaken the government of a tandem, and felt, perhaps, a slight shade of anxiety when John Stanburne took the reins, and they set off at full trot through the streets of Sootythorn. A manufacturing town, in that particular stage of its development, is one of the most awkward of all possible places to drive in--the same street varies so much in breadth that you never can tell whether there will be room enough to pa.s.s when you get round the corner; and there are alarming noises of many kinds--the roar of a cotton mill in the street itself, or the wonderfully loud hum of a foundry, or the incessant clattering hammer-strokes of a boiler-making establishment--which excite and bewilder a nervous horse, till, if manageable at all, he is manageable only with the utmost delicacy and care. As Colonel Stanburne seemed to have quite enough to do to soothe and restrain his leader, the Doctor said nothing till they got clear of the last street; but once out on the broad turnpike, or "Yorks.h.i.+re Road," the Colonel gave his team more freedom, and himself relaxed from the rigid accuracy of seat he had hitherto maintained. He then turned to the Doctor, and began to talk.

"I say, Doctor, why don't you drive a tandem? You--you _ought_ to drive a tandem. 'Pon my word you ought, seriously, now."

The Doctor laughed. He didn't see the necessity or the duty of driving a tandem, and so begged to have these points explained to him.

"Well, because, don't you see, when you've only got one horse in your dog-cart, or gig, or whatever two-wheeled vehicle you may possess, you've no fun, don't you see?"

The Doctor didn't see, or did not seem to see.

"I mean," proceeded the Colonel, explanatorily, "that you haven't that degree of anxiety which is necessary to give a zest to existence. Now, when you've a leader who is almost perfectly free, and over whom you can only exercise a control of--the most gentle and persuasive kind, you're always slightly anxious, and sometimes you're _very_ anxious. For instance, last time we drove back from Sootythorn it was pitch dark,--wasn't it, Fyser?"

Here Colonel Stanburne turned to his groom, who was sitting behind; and Fyser, as might be expected, muttered something confirmatory of his master's statement.

"It was pitch dark; and, by George! the candles in the lamps were too short to last us; and that confounded Fyser forgot to provide himself with fresh ones before he left Sootythorn, and--didn't you, Fyser?"

Fyser confessed his negligence.

"And so, when the lamps were out, it was pitch dark; so dark that I couldn't tell the road from the ditch--upon my word, I couldn't; and I couldn't see the leader a bit, I could only feel him with the reins. So I said to Fyser, 'Get over to the front seat, and then crouch down as low as you can, so as to bring the horses' heads up against the sky, and tell me if you can see them.' So Fyser crouched down as I told him; and when I asked him if he saw any thing, he said he _did_ think he saw the leader's ears. Well, d.a.m.n it, then, if you _do_ see 'em, I said, keep your eye on 'em."

"And were you going fast?" asked the Doctor.

"Why, of _course_ we were. We were trotting at the rate of, I should say, about nine miles an hour; but after a while, Fyser, by hard looking, began to see rather more distinctly--so distinctly that he clearly made out the difference between the horses' heads and the hedges; and he kept calling out 'right, sir,' 'left, sir,' 'all right, sir,' and so he kept me straight. If he'd been a sailor he'd have said 'starboard' and 'port;' but Fyser isn't a sailor."

"And did you get safe to Wenderholme?"

"Of _course_ we did. Fyser and I _always_ get safe to Wenderholme."

"I shouldn't recommend you to try that experiment hoftens."

"Well, but you see the advantage of driving tandem. If you've only one horse you know where he is, however dark it is--he's in the shafts, of course, and you know where to find him: but when you've got a leader you never exactly know where he is, unless you can see him."

The Doctor didn't see the advantage.

The reader will have gathered from this specimen of Colonel Stanburne's conversation that he was a pleasant and lively companion; but if he is rather hasty in forming his opinion of people on a first acquaintance, he may also infer that the Colonel was a man of somewhat frivolous character and very moderate intellectual powers. He certainly was not a genius, but he conveyed the impression of being less intelligent and less capable of serious thought than nature had made him. His predominant characteristic was simple good-nature, and he possessed also, notwithstanding a sort of swagger in his manner, an unusual share of genuine intellectual humility, that made him contented to pa.s.s for a less able and less informed man than he really was. The Doctor's perception of character was too acute to allow him to judge Colonel Stanburne on the strength of a superficial acquaintance, and he clearly perceived that his friend was in the habit of wearing, as it were, his lighter nature outside. Some ponderous Philistines in Sootythorn, who had been brought into occasional contact with the Colonel, and who confounded gravity of manner with mental capacity, had settled it amongst themselves that he had no brains; but as the most intelligent of quadrupeds is at the same time the most lively, the most playful, the most good-natured, and the most affectionate,--so amongst human beings it does not always follow that a man is empty because he is lively and amusing, and seems merry and careless, and says and does some foolish things.

An hour later they reached Rigton, a little dull village quite out of the manufacturing district, and where it was the Colonel's custom to bait. The remainder of the drive was in summer exceedingly beautiful; but as it pa.s.sed through a rich agricultural country, whose beauty depended chiefly on luxuriant vegetation, the present time of the year was not favorable to it. All this region had a great reputation for beauty amongst the inhabitants of the manufacturing towns, and no doubt fully deserved it; but it is probable that their faculties of appreciation were greatly sharpened by the stimulus of contrast. To get fairly clear of factory-smoke, to be in the peaceful quiet country, and see no buildings but picturesque farms, was a definite happiness to many an inhabitant of Sootythorn. There were fine bits of scenery in the manufacturing district itself--picturesque glens and gorges, deep ravines with hidden rivulets, and stretches of purple moorland; but all this scenery lacked one quality--_amenity_. Now the scenery from Rigton to Wenderholme had this quality in a very high degree indeed, and it was instantly felt by every one who came from the manufacturing district, though not so perceptible by travellers from the south of England. The Sootythorn people felt a soothing influence on the nervous system when they drove through this beautiful land; their minds relaxed and were relieved of pressing cares, and they here fell into a state very rare indeed with them--a state of semi-poetical reverie.

The reader is already aware that Wenderholme is situated on the opposite side of the hills which separate Shayton from this favored region, and close to the foot of them. Great alterations have been made in the house since the date at which our story begins, and therefore we will not describe it as it exists at present, but as it existed when the Colonel drove up the avenue with the Doctor at his side, and the faithful Fyser jumped up behind after opening the modest green gate. A large rambling house, begun in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but grievously modernized under that of King George the Third, it formed three sides of a quadrangle, and, as is usual in that arrangement of a mansion, had a great hall in the middle, and the princ.i.p.al reception rooms on each side on the ground floor. The house was three stories high, and there were great numbers of bedrooms. An arched porch in the centre, preceded by a flight of steps, gave entrance at once to the hall; and over the porch was a projection of the same breadth, continued up to the roof, and terminated in a narrow gable. This had been originally the centre of enrichment, and there had been some good sculpture and curious windows that went all round the projection, and carried it entirely upon their mullions; but the modernizer had been at work and inserted simple sash-windows, which produced a deplorable effect. The same owner, John Stanburne's grandfather, had ruthlessly carried out that piece of Vandalism over the whole front of the mansion, and, except what architects call a string-course (which was still traceable here and there), had effaced every feature that gave expression to the original design of the Elizabethan builder.

The entrance-hall was a fine room fifty feet long, and as high as two of the ordinary stories in the mansion. It had, no doubt, been a splendid specimen of the Elizabethan hall; but the modernizer had been hard at work here also, and had put himself to heavy expense in order to give it the aspect of a thoroughly modern interior. The wainscot which had once adorned the walls, and which had been remarkable for its rich and fanciful carving, the vast and imaginative tapestries, the heraldic blazonries in the flaming oriels, the gallery for the musicians on twisted pillars of sculptured chestnut,--all these glories had been ruthlessly swept away. The tapestries had been used as carpets, and worn out; the wainscot had been made into kitchen cupboards, and painted lead-color; and the magnificent windows had been thrown down on the floor of a garret, where they had been trodden under foot and crushed into a thousand fragments: and in place of these things, which the narrow taste of the eighteenth century had condemned as barbarous, and destroyed without either hesitation or regret, it had subst.i.tuted--what?--absolute emptiness and negation; for the heraldic oriels, sash-windows of the commonest gla.s.s; for the tapestry and carving, a bare wall of yellow-washed plaster; for the carved beams of the roof, a blank area of whitewash.

The Doctor found Lady Helena in the drawing-room; a little woman, who sometimes looked very pretty, and sometimes exceedingly plain, according to the condition of her health and temper, the state of the weather, and a hundred things beside. Hence there were the most various and contradictory opinions about her; the only approach to unanimity being amongst certain elderly ladies who had formed the project of being mother-in-law to John Stanburne, and failed in that design. The Doctor was not much accustomed to ladys.h.i.+ps--they did not come often in his way; indeed, if the truth must be told, Lady Helena was the only specimen of the kind he had ever enjoyed the opportunity of studying, and he had been rather surprised, on one or two preceding visits to Wenderholme, to find that she behaved so nicely. But there are ladys.h.i.+ps and ladys.h.i.+ps, and the Doctor had been fortunate in the example which chance had thrown in his way. For instance, if he had known Lady Eleanor Griffin, who lived about ten miles from Wenderholme, and came there occasionally to spend the day, the Doctor would have formed quite a different opinion of ladys.h.i.+ps in general, so much do our impressions of whole cla.s.ses depend upon the individual members of them who are personally known to us.

Lady Helena asked the Doctor a good many questions about Shayton, which it is quite unnecessary to report here, because the answers to them would convey no information to the reader which he does not already possess. Her ladys.h.i.+p inquired very minutely about the clergyman there, and whether the Doctor "liked" him. Now the verb "to like," when applied to a clergyman, is used in a special sense. Everybody knows that to like a clergyman and to like gooseberry-pie are very different things; for n.o.body in England eats clergyman, though the natives of New Zealand are said to appreciate cold roast missionary. But there is yet another distinction--there is a distinction between liking a clergyman and liking a layman. If you say you like a clergyman, it is understood that it gives you a peculiar pleasure to hear him preach, and that you experience feelings of gratification when he reads prayers. And in this sense could Dr. Bardly say that he liked the reverend inc.u.mbent of his parish? certainly not; so he seemed to hesitate a little--and if he said "yes" he said it as if he meant _no_, or a sort of vague, neutral answer, neither negative nor affirmative.

"I mean," said Lady Helena, "do you like him as a preacher?"

"Upon my word, it's so long since I heard him preach that I cannot give an opinion."

"Oh! I thought you attended his church. There are other churches in Shayton, I suppose."

"No, there's only one," said the imprudent and impolitic Doctor.

Lady Helena began to think he was some sort of a Dissenter. She had heard of Dissenters--she knew that such people existed--but she had never been brought into contact with one, and it made her feel rather queer. She felt strongly tempted to ask what place of wors.h.i.+p this man _did_ attend, since by his own confession he never went to his parish church; but curiosity, and the natural female tendency to be an inquisitor, were kept in check by politeness, and also, perhaps, a little restrained by the perfectly fearless aspect of the Doctor's face.

If he had seemed in the least alarmed or apologetic, her ladys.h.i.+p would probably have a.s.sumed the functions of the inquisitor at once; but he looked so cool, and so very capable of a prolonged and vigorous resistance, that Lady Helena retired. When she began to talk about Mrs.

Prigley, the Doctor knew that she was already in full retreat.

A little relieved, perhaps (for it is always disagreeable to quarrel with one's hostess, even though one has no occasion to be afraid of her), the Doctor gladly told Lady Helena all about Mrs. Prigley, and even narrated the anecdote about the hole in the carpet, and its consequences to Mrs. Ogden, which put Lady Helena into good humor, for nothing is more amusing to rich people than the ludicrous consequences of a certain kind of poverty. The sense of a pleasant contrast, all in their own favor, is delightful to them and when the Doctor had told this anecdote, Lady Helena became agreeably aware that she had carpets, and that her carpets had no holes in them--two facts of which use and custom had made her wholly unconscious. Her eye wandered with pleasure over the broad soft surface of dark pomegranate color, with its large white and red flowers and its nondescript ornaments of imitated gold, and the ground seemed richer, and the flowers seemed whiter and redder, because poor Mrs. Prigley's carpets were in a condition so lamentably different.