The reader may have inferred from previous pages of this history, that although Mr. Prigley may have been a blameless and earnest divine, he was not exactly the man best fitted to influence such a nature as that of Isaac Ogden. He hadlittle understanding either of its weakness or its strength—of its weakness before certain forms of temptation, or its strength in acknowledging unwelcome and terrible facts. After Mrs. Ogden had simply said, "Well, Isaac, there's no news of him yet," the clergyman tried to put a cheerful light on the subject by expressing the hope that the boy was safe in some farm-house. Mr. Ogden answered that every farm-house within several miles had been called at, and that Twistle Farm was the last of the farms on the moor side. It was most unlikely, in his opinion, that the child could have resisted the cold so long, especially as he had no provisions of any kind, and was not even sufficiently clothed to go out; and as he had certainly not called at any house within seven or eight miles of Twistle, Mr. Ogden could only conclude that he must have perished on the moor, and that the thick fall of snow was all that had prevented the discovery of his body.
Mrs. Ogden sat down and began to cry very bitterly. The sorrow of a person like Mrs. Ogden is at the same time quite frank in its expression, and perfectly monotonous. Her regrets expressed themselves adequately in three words, and the repetition of them made her litany of grief—"Poor little lad!" and then a great burst of weeping, and then "Poor little lad!" again, perpetually.
The clergyman attempted to "improve" the occasion in the professional sense. "The Lord hath given," he said, "and the Lord hath taken away;" then he paused, and added, "blessed be the name of the Lord." But this brought no solace to Ogden's mind. "It was not the Lord that took the lad away," he answered; "it was his father that drove him away."
The great agony came over him again, and he flung himself on his breast upon the sofa and buried his face in the cushions. Then his mother rose and came slowly to his side, and knelt down by him. Precious maternal feelings, that hadbeen, as it were, forgotten in her heart for more than twenty years, like jewels that are worn no more, shone forth once more from her swimming eyes. "Isaac, lad," she said, with a voice that sounded in his ears like a far-off recollection of childhood,—"Isaac, lad, it were none o' thee as did it,—it were drink. Thou wouldn't have hurt a hair of his head." And she kissed him.
It was a weary night at Twistle. Nobody had any hope left, but they felt bound to continue the search, and relays of men came up from Shayton for the purpose. They were divided into little parties of six or eight, and Mr. Jacob directed their movements. Each group returned to the house after exploring the ground allotted to it, and Mr. Ogden feverishly awaited its arrival. The ever-recurring answer, the sad shake of the head, the disappointed looks, sank into the heart of the bereaved father. About two in the morning he got a little sleep, and awoke in half an hour somewhat stronger and calmer.
It is unnecessary to pursue the detail of these sufferings. The days passed, but brought no news. Dr. Bardly came back from Wenderholme, and seemed less affected than would have been expected by those who knew his love and friendship for little Jacob. He paid, however, especial attention to Mr. Isaac, whom he invited to stay with him for a few weeks, and who bore his sorrow with a manly fortitude. The Doctor drank his habitual tumbler of brandy-and-water every evening before going to bed, and the first evening, by way of hospitality, had offered the same refreshment to his guest. Mr. Ogden declined simply, and the offer was not renewed. For the first week he smoked a great deal, and drank large quantities of soda-water, but did not touch any intoxicating liquor. He persevered in this abstinence, and declared his firm resolve to continue it as a visible sign of his repentance, and of his respect to the memory of his boy. He was very gentle and pleasant, and talked freely with the Doctor about ordinarysubjects; but, for a man whose vigor and energy had manifested themselves in some abruptness and rudeness in the common intercourse of life, this new gentleness was a marked sign of sadness. When the Doctor's servant, Martha, came in unexpectedly and found Mr. Ogden alone, she often observed that he had shed tears; but he seemed cheerful when spoken to, and his grief was quiet and undemonstrative.
The search for the child was still actively pursued, and his mysterious disappearance became a subject of absorbing interest in the neighborhood. The local newspapers were full of it, and there appeared a very terrible article in the 'Sootythorn Gazette' on Mr. Ogden's cruelty to his child. The writer was an inhabitant of Shayton, who had had the misfortune to have Mr. Jacob Ogden for his creditor, and had been pursued with great rigor by that gentleman. He got the necessary data from the policeman who had brought the whip back from the pond, and wrote such a description of it as made the flesh of the Sootythorn people creep upon their bones, and their cheeks redden with indignation. The Doctor happened to be out of the house when this newspaper arrived, and Mr. Isaac opened it and read the article. The facts stated in it were true and undeniable, and the victim quailed under his punishment. If he had ventured into Sootythorn, he would have been mobbed and pelted, or perhaps lynched. He was scarcely safe even in Shayton; and when he walked from the Doctor's to Milend, the factory operatives asked him where his whip was, and the children pretended to be frightened, and ran out of his way. A still worse punishment was the singular gravity of the faces that he met—a gravity that did not mean sympathy but censure. The 'Sootythorn Gazette' demanded that he should be punished—that an example should be made of him, and so on. The writer had his wish, without the intervention of the law.
After a few weeks the mystery was decided to be insoluble, and dismissed from the columns of the newspapers. Eventhe ingenious professional detectives admitted that they were at fault, and could hold out no hopes of a discovery. Mr. Ogden had with difficulty been induced to remain at the Doctor's during the prosecution of these inquiries; but Dr. Bardly had represented to him that he ought to have a fixed address in case news should arrive, and that he need not be wholly inactive, but might ride considerable distances in various directions, which indeed he did, but without result.
Mrs. Ogden remained at Milend, but whether from the strength of her nature, or some degree of insensibility, she did not appear to suffer greatly from her bereavement, and pursued her usual household avocations with her accustomed regularity. Mr. Jacob went to his factory, and was absorbed in the details of business. No one put on mourning, for the child was still considered as possibly alive, and perhaps his relations shrank from so decided an avowal of their abandonment of hope. The one exception to this rule was old Sarah at Twistle, who clad herself in a decent black dress that she had by her. "If t' little un's deead," she said, "it's nobbut reight to put mysel' i' black for him; and if he isn't I'm so sore in my heart ovver him 'at I'm fit to wear nought else."
The next scene of our story is in the Thorn Hotel at the prosperous manufacturing town of Sootythorn, a place superior to Shayton in size and civilization and selected by the authorities as the headquarters Of Colonel Stanburne's regiment of militia.
Dr. Bardly arrived at the Thorn the morning after Isaac Ogden's relapse, having driven all the way from Shayton, through scenery which would have been comparable to any thing in England, if the valleys had not been spoiled by cotton-mills, rows of ugly cottages, and dismal-looking coal-pits.
"Colonel Stanburne's expecting you, Doctor," said Mr. Garley, the landlord of the Thorn: "he's in the front sitting-room."
The Colonel was sitting by himself, with the 'Times' and a little black pipe.
"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 constitution—fellows, you know, who aspire to the honor of serving in the twentieth regiment of Royal Lancashire 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 assured, had not the weakness of snobbishness 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 Lancashire 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 pronounced the wordoften, 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 pronunciation of the word, but peoplehoftensare unaware of their own defects." But we anticipate.
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 embarrassed, 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 nobody 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 youthought, 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 appetite 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 skillwhich 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 pass 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 "Yorkshire 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—yououghtto 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 controlof—the most gentle and persuasive kind, you're always slightly anxious, and sometimes you'reveryanxious. 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 hedidthink he saw the leader's ears. Well, damn it, then, if youdosee 'em, I said, keep your eye on 'em."
"And were you going fast?" asked the Doctor.
"Why, ofcoursewe 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?"
"Ofcoursewe did. Fyser and Ialwaysget 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 pass 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 insummer exceedingly beautiful; but as it passed 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 principal reception rooms on each sideon 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 substituted—what?—absolute emptinessand negation; for the heraldic oriels, sash-windows of the commonest glass; 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 ladyships—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 ladyships and ladyships, 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 ladyships in general, so much do our impressions of whole classes 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 ladyship 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 nobody 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 incumbent of his parish? certainly not; so he seemed to hesitate a little—and if he said "yes" he said it as if he meantno, 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 worship this mandidattend, 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 ladyship would probably have assumed 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.
"Mrs. Prigley's a relation of yours, Lady Helena,—rather a near relation,—perhaps you are not aware of it?"
Lady Helena looked, and was, very much surprised. "A relation ofmine, Dr. Bardly! you must be mistaken. I believe I know the names of all my relations!"
"I mean a relation of your husband—of Colonel Stanburne. Mrs. Prigley was a Miss Stanburne of Byfield, and her father was brother to Colonel Stanburne's father, and was born in this house."
"That's quite a near relationship indeed," said Lady Helena; "I wonder I never heard of it. John never spoke to me about Mrs. Prigley."
"There was a quarrel between Colonel Stanburne's father and his uncle, and there has been no intercourse between their families since. I daresay the Colonel does not even know how many cousins he had on that side, or what marriages they made." On this the Colonel came in.
"John, dear, Dr. Bardly has just told me that we have some cousins at Shayton that I knew nothing about. It's the clergyman and his wife, and their name is Prig—Prig"—
"Prigley," suggested the Doctor.
"Yes, Prigley; isn't it curious, John? did you know about them?"
"Not very accurately. I knew one of my cousins had married a clergyman somewhere in that neighborhood, but was not aware that he was the incumbent of Shayton. I don't know my cousins at all. There was a lawsuit between their father and mine, and the two branches have never eaten salt together since. I haven't the least ill-will to any of them, but there's an awkwardness in making a first step—one never can tell how it may be received. What do you say, Doctor? How would Mrs. Prig—Prigley and her husband receive me if I were to go and call upon them?"
"They'd give you cake and wine."
"Would they really, now? Then I'll go and call upon them. I like cake and wine—always liked cake and wine."
The conversation about the Prigleys did not end here. The Doctor was well aware that it would be agreeable to Mrs. Prigley to visit at Wenderholme, and be received there as a relation; and he also knew that the good-nature of the Colonel and Lady Helena might be relied upon to make such intercourse perfectly safe and pleasant. So he made the most of the opportunity, and that so successfully, that by the time dinner was announced both John Stanburne and his wife had promised to drive over some day to Shayton from Sootythorn, and lunch with the Doctor, and call at the parsonage before leaving.
Colonel Stanburne's conversation was not always very profound, but his dinners were never dull, for hewouldtalk, and make other people talk too. He solemnly warned the Doctor not to allow himself to be entrapped into giving gratuitous medical advice to Lady Helena. "She thinksshe's got fifteen diseases, she does, upon my word; and she's a sort of notion that because you're the regimental doctor, she has a claim on you for gratuitous counsel and assistance. Now I consider that Ihavesuch a claim—if a private has it, surely a colonel has it too—and when we come up for our first training I shall expect you to look at my tongue, and feel my pulse, and physic me as a militia-man, at her Majesty's expense. But it is by no means so clear to me that my wife has any right to gratuitous doctoring, and mind she doesn't extort it from you. She's a regular screw, my wife is; and she loses no opportunity of obtaining benefits for nothing." Then he rattled on with a hundred anecdotes about ladies and doctors, in which there was just enough truth to give a pretext for his audacious exaggerations.
When they returned to the drawing-room, the Colonel made Lady Helena sing; and she sang well. The Doctor, like many inhabitants of Shayton, had a very good ear, and greatly enjoyed music. Lady Helena had seldom found so attentive a listener; he sought old favorites of his in her collection of songs, and begged her to sing them one after another. It seemed as if he never would be tired of listening. Her ladyship felt pleased and flattered, and sang with wonderful energy and feeling. The Doctor, though in his innocence he thought only of the pure pleasure her music gave him, could have chosen no better means of ingratiating himself in her favor; and if there had not, unhappily, been that dark and dubious question about church attendance, which made her ladyship look upon him as a sort of Dissenter, or worse, the Doctor would that night have entered into relations of quite frank and cordial friendship with Lady Helena. English ladies are very kind and forgiving on many points. A man may be notoriously immoral, or a gambler, or a drinker, yet if he be well off they will kindly ignore and pass over these little defects; but the unpardonable sin is failure in church attendance, and they will not pass overthat.Lady Helena, in her character of inquisitor, had discovered this symptom of heresy, and would have been delighted to find a moral screw of some kind by which the culpable Doctor might be driven churchwards. If the law had permitted it, I have no doubt that she would have applied material screws, and pinched the Doctor's thumbs, or roasted him gently before a slow fire, or at least sent him to church between two policemen with staves; but as these means were beyond her power, she must wait until the moral screw could be found. A good practical means, which she had resorted to in several instances with poor people, had been to deprive them of their means of subsistence; and all men and women whom her ladyship's little arm could reach knew that they must go to church or leave their situations; so they attended with a regularity which, though exemplary in the eyes of men, could scarcely, one would think (considering the motive), be acceptable to Heaven. But Lady Helena acted in this less from a desire to please God than from the instinct of domination, which, in her character of spiritual ruler, naturally exercised itself on this point. It seldom happens that the master of a house is the spiritual ruler of it; he is the temporal power, not the spiritual. Colonel Stanburne felt and knew that he had no spiritual power.
This matter of the Doctor's laxness as a church-goer had been rankling in Lady Helena's mind all the time she had been singing, and when she closed the piano she was ready for an attack. If the Doctor had been shivering blanketless in a bivouac, and she had had the power of giving him a blanket or withholding it, she would have offered it on condition he promised to go to church, and she would have withheld it if he had refused compliance. But the Doctor had blankets of his own, and so could not be touched through a deprivation of blanket. She might, however, deprive the old woman he had recommended, and at the same time give the Doctor a lesson, indirectly.
"I forgot to ask you, Dr. Bardly, whether the old woman you recommended for a blanket was a churchwoman, and regular in her attendance."
"Two questions very easily answered," replied that audacious and unhesitating Doctor; "she is a Wesleyan Methodist, and irregular in her attendance."
"Then I'm—very sorry—Dr. Bardly, but I cannot give her a blanket, as I had promised. I can only give them to our—own people, you know; and I make it essential that they should begoodchurch-people—I mean, very regular church-people."
"Very well; I'll give her a blanket myself."
The opportunity was not to be neglected, and her ladyship fired her gun. She had the less hesitation in doing so, that it seemed monstrously presumptuous in a medical man to give blankets at all! What right had he to usurp the especial prerogative of great ladies? And then to give a blanket to this very woman whom, for good reasons, her ladyship had condemned to a state of blanketlessness!
"I quite understand," she said, with much severity of tone, "that Dr. Bardly, who never attends public worship himself, should have a fellow-feeling with those who are equally negligent."
It is a hard task to fight a woman in the presence of her husband, who is at the same time one's friend. The Doctorthought, "Would the woman have me offer premiums on hypocrisy as she does?" but he did not say so, because there was poor John Stanburne at the other end of the hearth-rug in a state of much uncomfortableness. So the Doctor said nothing at all, and the silence became perfectly distressing. Lady Helena had a way of her own out of the difficulty. Though it was an hour earlier than the usual time for prayers, she rang the bell and ordered all the servants in. When they were kneeling, each before his chair, her ladyship read the prayersherself, and accentuated with a certain severity a paragraph in which she thanked God that she was not as unbelievers, who were destined to perish everlastingly. It was a satisfaction to Lady Helena to have the Doctor there down upon his knees, with no means of escape from the expression of spiritual superiority.
"I say, Doctor," said John Stanburne, when her ladyship was fairly out of hearing, and half-way in her ascent of the great staircase—"I say, Doctor, I hope you don't mind what Helena says about you not being—you know some women are so—indeed I do believe all women are so. They seem laudably anxious to keep us all in the right path, but perhaps they're just a littletooanxious."
The Doctor said he believed Lady Helena meant to do right, but—and then he hesitated.
"But you don't see the sense of bribing poor people into sham piety with blankets."
"Well, no, I don't."
"Neither do I, Doctor. There's a Roman Catholic family about three miles off, and the lady there gives premiums on going to mass, and still higher premiums on confession. She has won a great many converts; and there's a strong antagonism between her and Helena—a most expensive warfare it is too, I assure you, this warfare for souls. However, it's an ill wind that blows nobody good, and the poor profit by it, which is a consolation, only it makes them sneaks—it makes them sneaks and hypocrites. Doctor, come into my study, will you, and let's have a weed?"
The "study," as John Stanburne called it, was a cosey little room, with oak wainscot that his grandfather had painted white. It contained a small bookcase, and the bookcase contained a good many novels, some books of poetry, a treatiseon dog-breaking, a treatise on driving, and a treatise on fishing. The novels were very well selected, and so was the poetry; and John Stanburne had read all these books, many of them over and over again. Such literary education as he possessed had been mainly got out of that bookcase; and though he had no claim to erudition, a man's head might be worse furnished than with such furniture as that. There was a splendid library at Wenderholme—a big room lined with the backs of books as the other rooms were lined with paper or wainscot; and when Stanburne wanted to know something he went there, and disturbed his ponderous histories and encyclopædias; but heusedthe little bookcase more than the big library. He could not read either Latin or Greek. Few men can read Latin and Greek, and of the few who can, still fewer do read them; but his French was very much above the usual average of English French—that is, he spoke fluently, and would no doubt have spoken correctly if only he could have mastered the conjugations and genders, and imitated the peculiar Gallic sounds.
The society of ladies is always charming, but it must be admitted that there is an hour especially dear to the male sex, and which does not owe its delightfulness to their presence. It is the hour of retirement into the smoking-room. When the lady of the house has a tendency to make the weight of her authority felt (and this will sometimes happen), the male members of her family and their guests feel a schoolboyish sense of relief in escaping from it; but even when she is very genial and pleasant, and when everybody enjoys the light of her countenance, it must also be confessed that the timely withdrawal of that light, like the hour of sunset, hath a certain sweetness of its own.
"My wife's always very good about letting me sit here, and smoke and talk as long as I like with my friends, after she's gone to bed," said Colonel Stanburne. "You smile because I seem to value a sort of goodness that seems only natural,but that's on account of your old-bachelorish ignorance of womankind. There are married men who no more dare sit an hour with a cigar when their wives are gone to bed than they dare play billiards on Sunday. Now, for instance, I was staying this autumn with a friend of mine in another county, and about ten o'clock his wife went to bed. He and I wanted to talk over a great many things. We had been old school-fellows, and we had travelled together when we were both bachelors, and we knew lots of men that his wife knew nothing about, and each of us wanted to hear all the news that the other had to tell; so he just ventured, the first night I was there, to ask me into his private study and offer me a cigar. Well, we had scarcely had time to light when his wife's maid knocks at the door and says, 'Please, sir, Missis wishes to see you;' so he promised to go, and began to look uncomfortable, and in five minutes the girl came again, and she came three times in a quarter of an hour. After that came the lady herself, quite angry, and ordered her husband to bed, just as if he had been a little boy; and though he seemed cool, and didn't stir from his chair, it was evident that he was afraid of her, and he solemnly promised to go in five minutes. At the expiration of the five minutes in she bursts again (she had been waiting in the passage—perhaps she may have been listening at the door), and held out her watch without one word. The husband got up like a sheep, and said 'Good-night, John,' and she led him away just like that; and I sat and smoked by myself, thinking what a pitiable spectacle it was. Now my wife is not like that; she will have her way about her blankets, but she's reasonable in other respects."
They sat very happily for two hours, talking about the regiment that was to be. Suddenly, about midnight, a large watch-dog that inhabited a kennel on that side of the house began to bark furiously, and there was a cry, as of some woman or child in distress. The Colonel jumped out of his chair, and threw the window open. The two men listenedattentively, but it was too dark to see any thing. At length Colonel Stanburne said, "Let us go out and look about a little—that was a human cry, wasn't it?" So he lighted a lantern, and they went.
There was a thick wood behind the house of Wenderholme, and this wood filled a narrow ravine, in the bottom of which was a little stream, and by the stream a pathway that led up to the open moor. This moor continued without interruption over a range of lofty hills, or, to speak more strictly, over a sort of plateau or table-land, till it terminated at the enclosed pasture-lands near Shayton. John Stanburne and the Doctor walked first along this pathway. The watch-dog's kennel was close to the path, at a little green wooden gate, where it entered the garden.
The dog, hearing his master's step, came out of his kennel, much excited with the hope of a temporary release from the irksomeness of his captivity; but his master only caressed and spoke to him a little, and passed on. Then he began to talk to the Doctor. The sound of his voice reached the ears of a third person, who came out of the wood, and began to follow them on the path.
The Doctor became aware that they were followed, and they stopped. The Colonel turned his lantern, and the light of it fell full upon the intruder.
"Why, it's a mere child," said the Colonel. "But what on earth's the matter with the Doctor?"
Certainly that eccentric Doctordidbehave in a most remarkable manner. He snatched the lantern from the Colonel's hand without one word of apology, and having cast its beams on the child's face, threw it down on the ground, and seized the vagrant in his arms. "The Doctor's mad," thought the Colonel, as he picked up the lantern.
"Why,it's little Jacob!" cried Dr. Bardly.
But this conveyed nothing to the mind of the Colonel. What did he know about little Jacob?
Meanwhile the lad was telling his tale to his friend. Father had beaten him so, and he'd run away. "Please, Doctor, don't send me back again." The child's feet were bare, and icy cold, and covered with blood. His clothes were wet up to the waist. His little dog was with him.
"It's a little boy that's a most particular friend of mine," said the Doctor; "and he's been very ill-used. We must take care of him. I must beg a night's lodging for him in the house."
They took him into the Colonel's study, before the glowing fire. "Now, what's to be done?" said the Colonel. "It's lucky you're a doctor."
"Let us undress him and warm him first. We can do every thing ourselves. There is a most urgent reason why no domestic should be informed of his being here. His existence here must be kept secret."
The Colonel went to his dressing-room and brought towels. Then he set some water on the fire in a kettle. The Doctor took the wet things off, and examined the poor little lacerated feet. He rubbed little Jacob all over with the towels most energetically. The Colonel, whose activity was admirable to witness, fetched a tub from somewhere, and they made arrangements for a warm bath.
"One person must be told about this," said Dr. Bardly, "and that's Lady Helena. Go and tell her now. Ask her to get up and come here, and warn her not to rouse any of the servants."
Her ladyship made her appearance in a few minutes in a dressing-gown. "Lady Helena," said the Doctor, "you're wanted as a nurse. This child requires great care for the next twenty-four hours, and you must do every thing for him with your own hands. Is there a place in the house where he can be lodged out of the way of the servants?"
Lady Helena had no boys of her own. She had had one little girl at the beginning of her married life, who had lived, and was now at Wenderholme, comfortably sleeping in theprettiest of little beds, in a large and healthy nursery in the left wing of the building. She had had two little boys since, buttheywere both sleeping in Wenderholme churchyard. When she saw little Jacob in his tub, the tears came into her eyes, and she was ready to be his nurse as long as ever he might have need of her.
"I'll tell you all about him, Lady Helena, when we've put him to bed."
Little Jacob sat in his tub looking at the kind, strange lady, and feeling himself in a state of unrealizable bliss. "You must be very tired and very hungry, my poor child," she said. Little Jacob said he was very hungry, but he didn't feel tired now. He had felt tired in the wood, but he didn't feel tired now in the tub.
The boy being fairly put to bed, female curiosity could not wait till the next day, and she sought out the Doctor, who was still with the Colonel in his study. "I beg to be excused, gentlemen," she said, "for intruding in this room in an unauthorized manner, but I want to know all about that little boy."
The Doctor told his history very minutely, and the history of his father. Then he added, "I believe the only possible chance of saving his father from killing himself with drinking is to leave him for some time under the impression that the boy, having been driven away by his cruelty, has died from exposure on the moor. This may give him a horror of drinking, and may effect a permanent cure. There is another thing to be considered, the child's own safety. If we send him back to his father, I will not answer for his life. The father is already in a state of hirritability bordering on insanity—in fact he is partially insane; and if the child is put under his power before there has been time to work a thorough cure, it is likely that he will beat him frequently and severely—he may even kill him in some paroxysm of rage. If Isaac Ogden knew that the child were here, and claimed him to-morrow, I believe it would be your duty not to give him up, andI should urge his uncle to institute legal proceedings to deprive the father of the guardianship. A man in Isaac Ogden's state is not fit to have a child in his power. He has beaten him very terribly already,—his body is all bruises; and now if we send him back, he will beat him again for having run away."
These reasons certainly had great weight, but both the Colonel and Lady Helena foresaw much difficulty in keeping the child at Wenderholme without his presence there becoming immediately known. His disappearance would make a noise, not only at Shayton, but at Sootythorn, and everywhere in the neighborhood. The relations of the child were in easy circumstances, and a heavy reward would probably be offered, which the servants at Wenderholme Hall could scarcely be expected to resist, still less the villagers in the neighboring hamlet. It would be necessary to find some very solitary person, living in great obscurity, to whose care little Jacob might be safely confided—at any rate, for a few days. Lady Helena suggested two old women who lived together in a sort of almshouse of hers on the estate, but the Colonel said they were too fond of gossip, and received too many visitors, to be trusted. At last the Doctor's countenance suddenly brightened, and he said that he knew where to hide little Jacob, but where that was he positively refused to tell. All he asked for was, that the child should be kept a close prisoner in the Colonel's sanctum for the next twenty-four hours, and that the Colonel would lend him a horse and gig—nota tandem.
It is quite unnecessary to inform the reader where Dr. Bardly had determined to hide little Jacob. His resolution being decidedly taken, the Colonel and he waited till the next night at half-past twelve, and then, without the help of a single servant, they harnessed a fast-trotting mare to a roomy dog-cart. Little Jacob and Feorach were put where the dogs were kept on shooting expeditions. And both fell asleep together. It was six o'clock in the morning when the Doctor arrived at his destination.
Mr. Isaac Ogden, whose wretchedness the reader pities perhaps as much as the Doctor did, continued his researches for some weeks in a discouraged and desultory way, but little Jacob was perfectly well hidden. Mrs. Ogden had been admitted into the secret by the Doctor, and approved of his policy of concealment. Under pretext of a journey to Manchester with Dr. Bardly, to consult an eminent physician there, she absented herself two days from Milend and went to visit her grandson. The truth was also known to Jacob Ogden, senior, who supported his mother's resolution, which would certainly have broken down without him. It pained her to see her son Isaac in the misery of a bereavement which he supposed to be eternal. The Doctor took a physiological view of the case, and argued that time was a necessary condition of success. "We aren't sure of having saved him yet," said the Doctor: "we must persevere till his constitution has got past the point of craving for strong drink altogether."
Matters remained in this state until Christmas Eve. Periodical festivals are highly agreeable institutions for happy people, who have the springs of merriment within them, ready to gush forth on any pretext, or on the strength of simple permission to gush forth; but it is difficult for a man oppressed by a persistent weight of sorrow to throw it off because the almanac has brought itself to a certain date, and it is precisely at the times of general festivity that such a man feels his burden heaviest. It may be observed also, that as a man, or a society of men, approaches the stage of maturity and reflection, the events of life appear more and more to acquire the power of coloring the whole of existence; so that the faculty of being merry at appointed times, and its converse, the faculty of weeping at appointed times, both give place to a continual but quiet sadness, from which we never really escape, even for an hour, though we may still be capable of a manly fortitude, and retain a certain elasticity, or the appearance of it. In a word, our happiness and misery are no longer alternative and acute, but coexist in a chronic form, so that it has ceased to be natural for men to wear sackcloth and heap ashes on their heads, and sit in the dust in their wretchedness; and it has also ceased to be natural for them to crown themselves with flowers, and anoint themselves with the oil of gladness, and clothe themselves in the radiance of purple and cloth-of-gold. No hour of life is quite miserable enough or hopeless enough for the sackcloth and the ashes—no hour of life is brilliant enough for the glorious vesture and the flowery coronal.
A year before, Isaac Ogden would have welcomed the Christmas festivities as a legitimate occasion for indulgence in his favorite vice, without much meditation (and in this perhaps he may have resembled some other very regular observers of the festival) on the history of the Founder of Christianity. But as it was no longer his desire to celebrate either this or any other festival of the Church by exposinghimself to a temptation which, for him, was the strongest and most dangerous of all temptations—and as the idea of a purely spiritual celebration was an idea so utterly foreign to the whole tenor of his thoughts and habits as never even to suggest itself to him—he had felt strongly disposed to shun Christmas altogether,—that is, to escape from the outward and visible Christmas to some place where the days might pass as merely natural days, undistinguished by any sign of national or ecclesiastical commemoration. He had determined, therefore, to go back to Twistle Farm, from which it seemed to him that he had been too long absent, and had announced this intention to the Doctor. But when the Doctor repeated it to Mrs. Ogden, she would not hear of any such violation of the customs and traditions of the family. Her sons had always spent Christmas Eve together; and so long as she lived, she was firmly resolved that they always should. The pertinacity with which a determined woman will uphold a custom that she cherishes is simply irresistible—that is, unless the rebel makes up his mind to incur her perpetual enmity; and Isaac Ogden was less than ever in a condition of mind either to brave the hostility of his mother or wound her tenderer feelings. So it came to pass that on Christmas Eve he went to Milend to tea.
Now on the tea-table there were some little cakes, and Mrs. Ogden, who had not the remotest notion of the sort of delicacy that avoids a subject because it may be painful to somebody present, and who always simply gave utterance to her thoughts as they came to her, observed that these little cakes were of her own making, and actually added, "They're such as I used makin' for little Jacob—he was so fond on 'em."
Isaac Ogden's feelings were not very sensitive, and he could bear a great deal; but he could not bear this. He set down his cup of tea untasted, gazed for a few seconds at the plateful of little cakes, and left the room.
The Doctor was there, but he said nothing. Jacob Ogden did not feel under any obligation to be so reticent. "Mother," he said, "I think you needn't have mentioned little Jacob—our Isaac cannot bear it; he knows no other but what th' little un's dead, and he's as sore as sore."
This want of delicacy in Mrs. Ogden arose from an all but total lack of imagination. She could sympathize with others if she suffered along with them—an expression which might be criticised as tautological, but the reader will understand what is meant by it. If Mrs. Ogden had had the toothache, she would have sympathized with the sufferings of another person similarly afflicted so long as her own pangs lasted; but if a drop of creosote or other powerful remedy proved efficacious in her own case, and released her from the torturing pain, she would have looked upon her fellow-sufferer as pusillanimous, if after that she continued to exhibit the outward signs of torment. Therefore, as she herself knew that little Jacob was safe it was now incomprehensible by her that his father should not feel equally at ease about him, though, as a matter of fact, she was perfectly well aware that he supposed the child to be irrecoverably lost. Mrs. Ogden, therefore, received her son Jacob's rebuke with unfeigned surprise. She had said nothing to hurt Isaac that she knew of—she "had only said that little Jacob used being fond o' them cakes, and it was quite true."
Isaac did not return to the little party, and they began to wonder what had become of him. After waiting some time in silence, Mrs. Ogden left her place at the tea-tray, and went to a little sitting-room adjoining—a room the men were more accustomed to than any other in the house, and where indeed they did every thing but eat and sleep. Mr. Ogden had gone there from habit, as his mother expected, and there she found him sitting in a large rocking-chair, and gazing abstractedly into the fire. The chair rocked regularly but gently, and its occupant seemed wholly unconscious—notonly of its motion, but of every other material circumstance that surrounded him.
Mrs. Ogden laid her hand upon his shoulder, and said, "Isaac, willn't ye come to your tea? we 're all waiting for you."
The spell was broken, and Ogden suddenly started to his feet. "Give me my hat," he said, "and let me go to my own house. I'm not fit to keep Christmas this year. How is a man to care about tea and cakes when he's murdered his own son? I'm best by myself; let me go up to Twistle Farm. D 'ye expect me to sing songs at supper, and drink rum-punch?"
"There'll be no songs, and you needn't drink unless you like, but just come and sit with us, my lad—you always used spendin' Christmas Eve at Milend, and Christmas Day too."
"It signifies nought what I used doin'. Isaac Ogden isn't same as he used to be. He'd have done better, I reckon, if he'd altered a month or two sooner. There'd have been a little lad here then to make Christmas merry for us all."
"Well, Isaac, I'm very sorry for little Jacob; but it cannot be helped now, you know, and it's no use frettin' so much over it."
"Mother," said Isaac Ogden, sternly, "it seems to me thatyou'renot likely to spoil your health by frettin' over my little lad. You take it very easy it seems to me, and my brother takes it easy too, and so does Dr. Bardly—but then Dr. Bardly was nothing akin to him. Folk says that grandmothers care more for chilther than their own parents does; but you go on more like a stepmother nor a grandmother."
This was hard for Mrs. Ogden to bear, and she was strongly tempted to reveal the truth, but she forebore and remained silent. Ogden resumed,—
"I cannot tell how you could find in your heart to bake them little cakes when th' child isn't here to eat 'em."
The effort to restrain herself was now almost too much forMrs. Ogden, since it was the fact that she had baked the said little cakes, or others exactly like them, and prepared various other dainties, for the especial enjoyment of Master Jacob, who at that very minute was regaling himself therewith in the privacy of his hiding-place. Still she kept silent.
After another pause, a great paroxysm of passionate regret seized Ogden—one of those paroxysms to which he was subject at intervals, but which in the presence of witnesses he had hitherto been able to contend against or postpone. "Oh, my little lad!" he cried aloud, "oh, my little innocent lad, that I drove away from me to perish! I'd give all I'm worth to see thee again, little 'un!" He suddenly stopped, and as the tears ran down his cheeks, he looked out of the window into the black night. "If I did but know," he said, slowly, and with inexpressible sadness—"mother, mother, if I did but know where his bits o' bones are lying!"
It was not possible to witness this misery any longer. All Dr. Bardly's solemn injunctions, all dread of a possible relapse into the terrible habit, were forgotten. The mother had borne bitter reproaches, but she could not bear this agony of grief. "Isaac," she said, "Isaac, my son, listen to me: thy little lad is alive—he's alive and he's well, Isaac."
Ogden did not seem to realize or understand this communication. At last he said, "I know what you mean, mother, and I believe it. He's alive in heaven, and he can ail nothing, and want nothing, there."
"I hope he'll go there when he's an old man, but a good while after we go there ourselves, Isaac."
A great change spread over Ogden's face, and he began to tremble from head to foot. He laid his hand on his mother's arm with a grasp of iron. His eyes dilated, the room swam round him, his heart suspended its action, and in a low hissing whisper, he said, "Mother, have they found him?"
"Yes—and he's both safe and well."
Ogden rushed out of the house, and paced the garden-walkhurriedly from end to end. The intensity of his excitement produced a commotion in the brain that needed the counter-stimulus of violent physical movement. It seemed as if the roof of his skull must be lifted off, and for a few minutes there was a great crisis of the whole nervous system, to which probably his former habits may have more especially exposed him. When this was over, he came back into the house, feeling unusually weak, but incredibly calm and happy. Mrs. Ogden had told the Doctor and Mr. Jacob what had passed, and the Doctor without hesitation set off at once for his own house, where he ordered his gig, and drove away rapidly on the Sootythorn road.
"Mother," said Isaac, when he came in, "give me a cup of tea, will you?"
"A glass of brandy would do you more good."
"Nay, mother, we've had enough of brandy, it will not do to begin again now."
He sat down in evident exhaustion and drank the tea slowly, looking rather vacantly before him. Then he laid his head back upon the chair and closed his eyes. The lips moved, and two or three tears ran slowly down the cheeks. At last he started suddenly, and, looking sharply round him, said, "Where is he, where is he, mother? where is little Jacob, my little lad, my lad, my lad?"
"Be quiet, Isaac—try to compose yourself a little; Dr. Bardly's gone to fetch him. He'll be with us very soon."
Mr. Ogden remained quietly seated for some minutes without speaking, and then, as his mind began to clear after the shock of the great emotion it had passed through, he asked who had found his boy, and where they had found him, and when.
These questions were, of course, somewhat embarrassing to his mother, and she would probably have sheltered herself behind some clumsy invention, but her son Jacob interposed.
"The fact is, Isaac, the loss of your little 'un seemed to bedoin' you such a power o' good 'at it seemed a pity to spoil it by tellin' you. And it's my opinion as mother's let th' cat out o' th' bag three week too soon as it is."
"Do you mean to tell me," said Isaac, "that you knew the child was found, and hid him from his own father?"
"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 guardianship 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 God!"
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 partnership 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; God bless you! God bless both on you!"
The customs of Shayton were mighty, especially the custom of drinking a glass of port-wine on every imaginable occasion. If a Shayton man felt sorry, he needed a glass 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 glasses ever accessible. So it was inevitable that on an occasion so auspicious as this Mr. Jacob Ogden should drink a glass—or, more probably, two glasses—of port; and his mother, who did not object to the same refreshment, bore him company.