The Pit Town Coronet Volume I Part 8

"Then he neglects his duties, that's all," replied the old gentleman with an indignant snort. "Of course, Pit Town's in the fas.h.i.+on," he continued, "for we hear about nothing but art now-a-days; but I should like to know where he benefits his race. His ambition is a purely selfish one, while mine is distinctly benevolent. The dream of my life, Reginald, is unrealizable. I know that I can never succeed in producing the being I see in my dreams, a perfectly boneless pig; a sort of animated sausage, where fat and lean shall be deliciously blended in the requisite proportions. I know I strive after the unattainable, but still every year I get nearer and nearer to the goal. When I remember, sir, what black pigs were when I was a boy, and what they are now, thanks to my efforts and those of the n.o.ble little band of enthusiasts like myself, I feel that I am leaving a lasting monument behind me. Why, only yesterday, sir, when Dr. Wolff pointed out to me what he called a specimen of George Morland's best manner, I felt what giant strides of progress we have made. There were the pigs of _his_ day, represented as great gaunt bony bristly creatures, wallowing at large, sir, in muck and mire. We never see such horrors now; and I actually envied Pit Town the possession of that picture. I should like to hang it up, sir, in my piggeries at The Priory, that the world might look upon what the animal was, and in contrasting him with the superb creatures I possess, appreciate what can be done by care, breeding, feeding, and proper selection. The time will come, Reginald, when every English speaking man or woman who puts a piece of pork or bacon into his mouth will bless the name of Haggard. But these are but ambitious dreams, Reginald, never perhaps to be realized."

The party at Walls End Castle, though its elements were decidedly heterogeneous, was a success. Everybody was sorry to go when they left, and their host regretted the departure of his visitors.

"The place seems quite dull without them, Wolff," he remarked. "I think I shall try to see more of my relatives, but we must make up for lost time, Wolff. Why, since the ladies have been here we have neglected work shamefully."

"It has been a pleasant time, Lord Pit Town, for me, for I love enthusiasm in the young. It has never yet been my fortune to meet with so delightful and innocent a thirst for information as that displayed by the charming Miss Warrender. The soul's confessions of that dear young lady were delightful in their nave innocence. She has learnt much during her stay here of the canons of true art; it will be to me an ever-to-be-remembered epoch."

The old lord looked up from the great ma.n.u.script catalogue _raisonne_ at the German doctor.

"So she made a fool of you too, Wolff, did she?"

"My lord, she respected me too much to attempt to make a fool of me.

She, the young neophyte, recognized in me a humble priest of art."

"Ah, Wolff," said the old lord with a look at the great portrait of Barbara Chudleigh, "there are some women who don't even respect doctors of philosophy."

CHAPTER IX.

ANASTATIA'S COURTs.h.i.+P.

The Reverend John Dodd drew back one morning from the breakfast-table with the air of a giant refreshed; his wife stared at him over the silver breakfast-kettle as she had stared at him for the last twenty years. For the last twenty years Mrs. Dodd had wondered at the plenteousness of her husband's breakfasts; she was astonished twenty years ago, and she still stared, an awed woman to the present day.

"John," she said, in a severe tone, "it is my duty." Whenever Mrs. Dodd differed from her husband she nailed her colours to the mast; she said it was her duty, and she invariably carried her point. "It's dogged as does it," is not only the maxim of agricultural labourers in remote country districts. It is the secret of success in every married lady's life; it is the talisman confided to the young wife by her more experienced mother, if she have one, if not her aunt tells her the secret, and it comes to the same thing.

"Well, my dear, if you look upon it in that light there is no more to be said," acquiesced the husband.

"It is my duty, and yours too, John; above all it is Anastatia's. What can cement the natural alliance between the squire and the vicar of the parish, more strongly than the former's union with that vicar's sister?

Besides, I have another reason. It is our bounden duty, Jack," here the vicar's wife relapsed into familiarity, as she always did when she meant to carry her point, "our bounden duty to rescue the squire from that designing woman."

"Good gracious, Cecilia, who is Anastatia's rival?"

"You may not have seen it, John, but I have observed it ever since the girls have been away. Miss Hood means to marry the old man!" This latter sentence was uttered in a sepulchral whisper.

"Nonsense, Cecilia, you're joking."

"Do I ever talk nonsense or joke, Mr. Dodd?" answered the wife in a judicial tone.

"Well, my dear," apologetically rejoined the vicar, "I don't think I ever remember your doing the latter," and he felt much as an unfortunate man would feel who had dared to accuse the Lord Chancellor himself of joking and talking nonsense.

"There can't be a doubt of it. Ever since those girls have gone Miss Hood has called here in The Warren brougham, never on foot or in the pony chair."

"But, my dear, the weather has been wet and cold."

"'Tis not the weather, John, it is that woman's arrogance, her way of preparing the minds of the neighbourhood for the catastrophe."

"Diggory Warrender, my dear, is no more thinking of marrying again than I am," said the vicar.

"The thought of marrying again, Mr. Dodd," retorted his wife severely, "is constantly occurring to the mind of every married man."

"I a.s.sure you it never occurred to mine, my dear."

"John, you're ungrateful," replied his wife, and burst into tears.

"If my thinking of marrying again, my dear, will prove my grat.i.tude to you, I will consider the matter at once," said the vicar of King's Warren, with a dreary smile.

But Canon Drivel's daughter did not deign to answer, she merely rang for prayers. In filed the servants, the two grim housemaids and the parlour maid of portentous plainness, for Mrs. Dodd made it a rule in her austere household that the abigails should be unattractive. Mrs. Dodd opened the book--her father, the Canon's, well-known book of Family Prayers. Although it was the second Thursday in the month she turned to the portion appointed for the first Wednesday. Alas! her copy of the Canon's work opened almost mechanically at the first Wednesday in the month, for in that Wednesday's selection there was a phrase which was very dear to Mrs. Dodd; it was the following: "And if there be one among us whose heart is yet hard," &c., &c. This was Mrs. Dodd's _ultima ratio_, the last drop that invariably wore away any resistance on the part of the man who, to her mind, was stony-hearted. When the Reverend John Dodd heard the commencement of that prayer he trembled in his inmost soul; when his wife reached the favourite pa.s.sage she dwelt on the words with unction; and as the servants filed out of the room he, who had once been "Handsome Jack Dodd," felt himself a slave.

"I had better speak to Anastatia," said Mrs. Dodd.

"Do as you please, my dear," replied the vicar, "but I don't see how she's to propose to old Warrender, all the same."

"Men don't understand these things," sententiously remarked his wife, as she gave a vicious shake to the missionary box, which was always on the sideboard. Missionary boxes are not seen so often now as they used to be, but this old-fas.h.i.+oned engine of torture was clung to by the vicaress. Rosy-cheeked children had received many a bright sixpence from the vicar, their faces wreathed in smiles; the smiles had faded when Cecilia Dodd had proved to them, by chapter and verse, that the proper place for the bright silver was the drab sarcophagus on the sideboard.

Even the vicar's friends, at the termination of their rubber for threepenny points, dreaded the appearance of the box; they invariably contributed, the more daring among them sighing as they did so.

Anastatia Dodd, on the particular morning in question, had not appeared at breakfast. The fragile little lady was suffering from a cold in her head. She was in bed, perusing in undisturbed comfort a harmless novel.

But the novel disappeared under the clothes with amazing celerity as the voice of her sister-in-law demanded admission. The mistress of the house affectionately inquired if she felt equal to a short conversation. In some trepidation Anastatia signified her acquiescence. Her sister-in-law pointed out to her that old Mr. Warrender had been very attentive lately. Anastatia innocently answered that "He was a dear old man."

"Oh, my dear, I am so glad, so very glad, to hear you say so," said Mrs.

Dodd.

"But why glad, Cecilia?"

"My love, your brother and I thought it _was_ so, and that you encouraged him. Has he spoken to you yet? He has said nothing to John."

"Spoken, Cecilia, to me; about what?"

"This is affectation, dear; you can't pretend to be blind to what is apparent to all of us."

"Oh, Cecilia, how can you?" sobbed the vicar's sister, blus.h.i.+ng to her ears and burying her face in her pillows.

For forty years Anastatia Dodd had lived in maiden meditation fancy free. True, she had taken a lively interest in all her brother's curates, but it was always a professional interest and purely Platonic.

But now she blushed, blushed as she had never blushed before.

What woman is displeased at hearing that she has an admirer? Who among us would fail to believe what we have, perhaps, secretly wished for in our heart of hearts?

That arch Machiavel, the vicar's wife, did not leave her sister-in-law till she was thoroughly convinced that Diggory Warrender was only waiting a favourable opportunity to make her a formal offer of his hand and heart.

All this was sufficiently exciting to poor Miss Dodd, but what was her horror, her horror mingled with astonishment, when she heard that, like the heroines in the story books, she too had a detested rival. Till now Anastatia Dodd had not known what it was to detest anybody, but her sister-in-law pointed out to her that detestation was her duty; that Miss Hood was but a ravening and roaring lion seeking to devour the old squire, and then to pick his bones. Unconsciously, as she stood by her sister-in-law's bed, Cecilia Dodd a.s.sumed the awful pose, the statuesque att.i.tude, of the Judith at the bedside of Holofernes of her former days; her hand, as it grasped the bra.s.s ball at the foot of the bed, seemed to be clutching the head of her victim. Poor Anastatia, as a hare nestles in its form, had almost shrunk beneath the bed-clothes.

"It is your duty, my dear," said Judith, "to rescue this man from the hands of the harpy at The Warren. He has evidently loved you for years, Anastatia; _it is your duty_; and your brother feels deeply in the matter, more deeply than I do, my dear; we are but weak women, he is a clergyman, and, I regret to add, a man of the world. You must, of course, give Mr. Warrender every encouragement. And do not forget that your brother is the head of the family, the master of this house, a clergyman, and a man of the world. _He_ will not see you wronged."

The vicar's wife left the room and her trembling victim. The voice of duty called her to the kitchen, where her cook patiently awaited her inevitable, and always painful, audience.

In the meanwhile, Squire Warrender and Miss Hood pursued the even tenour of their ways at The Warren; frequent letters from his daughter, describing the delights of their foreign tour, cheered the old man. All unconsciously, the squire sent his hares and his pheasants to the vicar's wife, his peaches and his flowers to her sister-in-law. In his cracked old voice, he still paid his Grandisonian compliments to the two ladies. He was somewhat surprised perhaps to notice that Miss Dodd was by degrees abandoning her semi-religious garb; and that his visits to the two ladies invariably procured him the pleasure of _tete-a-tete_ interviews with the spinster. He noticed too that the vicar's sister now shook hands with him with an unwonted pressure. One afternoon he actually came home with a b.u.t.ton-hole, a white pa.s.sion flower, which the trembling fingers of Miss Dodd had placed in his coat.