"Now Isaac, lad, let's drink a glass to mother's good health."
Mr. Ogden had not made any positive vow of teetotalism, and though there might be some danger in allowing himself to experience afresh, however slightly, the seductive stimulus of alcohol, whole centuries of tradition, the irresistible powerof prevalent custom, and the deep pleasure he felt in the new sense of brotherly fellowship, made his soul yearn to the wine.
"Here's mother's good health. Your good health, mother," he said, and drank. Jacob repeated the words, and drank also, and thus in a common act of filial respect and affection did these brothers confirm and celebrate their perfect reconciliation.
Isaac now began to show symptoms of uneasiness and restlessness. He walked to the front door, and listened eagerly for wheels. "How fidgety he is, th' old lad!" said Jacob; "it's no use frettin' an' fidgetin' like that; come and sit thee down a bit, an' be quiet."
"How long will he be, mother?"
Before Mrs. Ogden could reply, Isaac's excited ear detected the Doctor's gig. He was out in the garden immediately, and passed bareheaded through the gate out upon the public road. Two gig-lamps came along from the direction of Sootythorn. He could not see who was in the gig, but something told him that little Jacob was there, and his heart beat more quickly than usual.
Perhaps our little friend might have behaved himself somewhat too timidly on this occasion, but the Doctor had talked to him on the road. He had explained to him, quite frankly, that Mr. Ogden's harshness had been wholly due to the irritable state of his nervous system, and that he would not be harsh any more, because he had given up drinking. He had especially urged upon little Jacob that he must not seem afraid of his father; and as our hero was of a bold disposition, and had plenty of assurance, he was fully prepared to follow the Doctor's advice.
Isaac Ogden hails the gig; it stops, and little Jacob is in his arms.
"Please, papa, I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!"
Little Jacob's pony was sent for, and the next morning hisfather and he rode together up to Twistle Farm. Until the man came for the pony, old Sarah had not the faintest hope that little Jacob was in existence, and the shock had nearly been too much for her. The messenger had simply said, "I'm comed for little Jacob[10]tit." "And who wants it?" Sarah said; for it seemed to her a desecration for any one else to mount that almost sacred animal. "Why, little Jacob wants it hissel, to be sure." And this (with some subsequent explanations of the most laconic description) was his way of breaking the matter delicately to old Sarah.
The old woman had never spent an afternoon, even the afternoon of Christmas Day, so pleasantly as she spent that. How she did toil and bustle about? The one drawback to her happiness was that she did not possess a Christmas cake; but she set to work and made tea-cakes, and put such a quantity of currants in them that they were almost as good as a Christmas cake. She lighted a fire in the parlor, and another in little Jacob's room; and she took out the little night-gown that she had cried over many a time, and, strange to say, she cried over it this time too. And she arranged the small bed so nicely, that it looked quite inviting, with its white counterpane, and clean sheets, and bright brass knobs, and pretty light iron work painted blue. When all was ready, it occurred to her that since it was Christmas time she would even attempt a little decoration; and as there were some evergreens at Twistle Farm, and some red berries, she went and gathered thereof, and attempted the adornment of the house—somewhat clumsily and inartistically, it must be confessed, yet not without giving it an air of festivity and rejoicing. She had proceeded thus far, and could not "bethink her" of any thing else that needed to be done, when, suddenly casting her eye on her own costume, she perceived that it was of the deepest black; for, being persuaded that the dear child was dead, she had so clothed herself out of respect forhis memory. She held her sombre skirt out with both her hands as if to push it away from her, and exclaimed aloud, "I'll be shut o'thee, onyhow, and sharply too;" and she hurried upstairs to change it for the brightest garment in her possession, which was of sky-blue, spotted all over with yellow primroses. She also put on a cap of striking and elaborate magnificence, which the present writer does not attempt to describe, only because such an attempt would incur the certainty of failure.
That cap had hardly been assumed and adjusted when it was utterly crushed and destroyed in a most inconsiderate manner. A sound of hoofs had reached old Sarah's ears, and in a minute afterwards the cap was ruined in Master Jacob's passionate embraces. You may do almost any thing you like to a good-tempered old woman, so long as you do not touch her cap; and it is an undeniable proof of the strength of old Sarah's affection, and of the earnestness of her rejoicing, that she not only made no remonstrance in defence of her head-dress, but was actually unaware of the irreparable injury which had been inflicted upon it.
The next time the Doctor met Colonel Stanburne at Sootythorn, he gave such a good account of Mr. Isaac Ogden, that the Colonel, who took a strong interest in little Jacob, expressed the hope that Mr. Ogden would still join the regiment; though in the time of his grief and tribulation he had resigned his commission, or, to speak more accurately—for the commission had not yet been formally made out and delivered to him—he had withdrawn his name as a candidate for one. The Colonel, in his friendly way, declared that the Doctor was not a hospitable character. "I ask you to Wenderholme every time I see you, and you come and stay sometimes, though not half often enough, but you never ask me to your house; and, by Jove! if I want to be invited at all, I must invite myself." The Doctor, who liked John Stanburne better and better the more he knew of him, still retained the very erroneous notion that a certain state and style were essential to his happiness; and, notwithstanding many broad hints that he had dropped at different times on the subject, still hung back from asking him to a house where, though comfort reigned supreme, there was not the slightest pretension to gentility. The old middle-class manner of living still lingered in many well-to-do houses in Shayton, and the Doctor faithfully adhered to it. Every thing about him was perfectly clean and decent, but he had not marched with the times; and whilst the attorneys and cotton-spinners in Sootythorn and elsewhere had the chairs of their dining-roomscovered with morocco leather, and their drawing-rooms filled with all manner of glittering fragilities, and Brussels carpets with pretty little tasteful patterns, and silver forks, and napkins, and a hundred other visible proofs of the advance of refinement, the worthy Doctor had not kept up with them at all, but lagged behind by the space of about thirty years. He had no drawing-room; the chairs of his parlor were of an ugly and awkward pattern, and their seats were covered with horsehair; the carpet was cheap and coarse, with a monstrous pattern that no artistic person would have tolerated for a single day; and though the Doctor possessed a silver punch-ladle and tea-pot, and plenty of silver spoons of every description, all the forks in the house were of steel! Indeed, the Doctor's knives and forks, which had belonged to his mother, or perhaps even to his grandmother, were quite a curiosity in their way. They had horn handles, of an odd indescribable conformation, supposed to adapt itself to the hollow of the hand, but which, from some misconception of human anatomy on the part of the too ingenious artificer, seemed always intended for the hand of somebody else. These handles were stained of such a brilliant green, that, in the slang of artists, they "killed" every green herb on the plate of him who made use of them. The forks had spring guards, to prevent the practitioner from cutting his left hand with the knife that he held in his right; and the knife had a strange round projection at what should have been the point, about the size of a shilling, which (horrible to relate!) had been originally designed to convey gravy and small fragments of viands, not prehensible by means of the two-pronged fork, into the human mouth! In addition to these strange relics of a bygone civilization the Doctor possessed two large rocking-chairs, of the same color as the handles of his knives. The Doctor loved a rocking-chair, in which he did but share a taste universally prevalent in Shayton, and defensible on the profoundest philosophical grounds. The human creature lovesrepose, but a thousand causes may hinder the perfect enjoyment of it, and torment him into restlessness at the very time when he most longs for rest. He may sit down after the business of the day, and some mental or bodily uneasiness may make the quiet of the massive easy-chair intolerable to him. The easy-chair does not sympathize with him, does not respond to the fidgety condition of his nervous system; and yet he tries to sit down in it and enjoy it, for, though fidgety, he is also weary, and needs the comfort of repose. Now, the rocking-chair—that admirable old Lancashire institution—and the rocking-chair alone, responds to both these needs. If you are fidgety, you rock; if not, you don't. If highly excited, you rock boldly back, even to the extremity of danger; if pleasantly and moderately stimulated, you lull yourself with a gentle motion, like the motion that little waves give to a pleasure boat. It is true that the bolder and more emphatic manner of rocking has become impossible in these latter days, for the few upholsterers who preserve the tradition of the rocking-chair at all make it in such a highly genteel manner, that the rockers are diminished to the smallest possible arc; but the Doctor troubled himself little concerning these achievements of fashionable upholstery, and regarded his old rocking-chairs with perfect satisfaction and complacency—in which, without desiring to offend against the decisions of the fashionable world, we cannot help thinking that he was right.
A large green rocking-chair, with bold high rockers and a soft cushion like a small feather-bed, a long clay pipe quite clean and new, a bright copper spittoon, and a jug of strong ale,—these things, with the necessary concomitants of a briskly burning fire and an unlimited supply of tobacco, formed the ideal of human luxury and beatitude to a generation now nearly extinct, but of which the Doctor still preserved the antique traditions. In substance often identical, but in outwardly visible means and appliances differing in every detail, the pleasures of one generation seem quaint and even ridiculousin comparison with the same pleasures as pursued by its successor. Colonel Stanburne smoked a pipe, but it was a short meerschaum, mounted in silver; and he also used a knife and fork, and used them skilfully and energetically, but they were not like the Doctor's grandmother's knives and forks.
And yet, when the Colonel came to Shayton, he managed to eat a very hearty dinner at onep.m.with the above-named antiquated instruments. After the celery and cheese, Dr. Bardly took one of the rocking-chairs, and made the Colonel sit down in the other; and Martha brought a fresh bottle of uncommonly fine old port, which she decanted on a table in the corner that did duty as a sideboard. When they had done full justice to this, the Doctor ordered hot water; and Martha, accustomed to this laconic command, brought also certain other fluids which were hot in quite a different sense. She also brought a sheaf of clay tobacco-pipes, about two feet six inches long, and in a state of the whitest virginity—emblems of purity! emblems, alas! at the same time, of all that is most fragile and most ephemeral!
"Nay, Martha," said the Doctor, "we don't want them clay pipes to-day. Colonel Stanburne isn't used to 'em, I reckon. Bring that box of cigars that I bought the other day in Manchester."
The Colonel, however, would smoke a clay pipe, and he tried to rock as the Doctor did, and soon, by the effect of that curious sympathy which exists between rocking-chairs (or their occupants), the two kept time together like musicians in a duet, and clouds of the densest smoke arose from the two long tobacco-pipes.
It had been announced to the inhabitants of the parsonage that the representative of the house of Stanburne intended to call there that afternoon; and though it would be an exaggeration to state that the preparations for his reception were on a scale of magnificence, it is not an exaggeration todescribe them as in every respect worthy of Mrs. Prigley's skill as a manager, and her husband's ingenuity and taste. New carpets they couldnotbuy, so it was no use thinking about them; and though Mrs. Prigley had indulged the hope that Mrs. Ogden's attention would be drawn to the state of her carpets by that accident with which the reader is already acquainted, so as to lead, it might be, to some act of generosity on her part, this result had not followed, and indeed had never suggested itself to Mrs. Ogden, who had merely resolved to look well to her feet whenever she ventured into the parlor at the parsonage, as on dangerous and treacherous ground. Under these circumstances Mrs. Prigley gradually sank into that condition of mind which accepts as inevitable even the outward and visible signs of impecuniosity; and though an English lady must indeed be brought low before she will consent to see the boards of her floors in a condition of absolute nakedness, poor Mrs. Prigley had come down to this at last; and she submitted without a murmur when her husband expressed his desire that "that old rag" on the floor of the drawing-room might be removed out of his sight. When the deal boards were carpetless, Mrs. Prigley was proceeding with a sigh to replace the furniture thereon; but her husband desired that it might be lodged elsewhere for a few days, during which space of time he kept the door of the drawing-room locked, and spent two or three hours there every day in the most mysterious seclusion, to the neglect of his parochial duties. Mrs. Prigley in vain endeavored to discover the nature of his occupation there. She tried to look through the key-hole, but a flap of paper had been adapted to it on the inside to defeat her feminine curiosity; she went into the garden and attempted to look in at the window, but the blind was down, and as it was somewhat too narrow, slips of paper had been pasted on the glass down each side so as to make the interstice no longer available. The reverend master of the house endeavored to appear as frank and communicative asusual, by talking volubly on all sorts of subjects except the mystery of the drawing-room; but Mrs. Prigley did not consider it consistent with her self-respect to appear to take any interest in his discourse, and during all these days she preserved, along with an extreme gentleness of manner, the air of a person borne down by secret grief. An invisible line of separation had grown up between the two; and though both were perfectly courteous and polite, each felt that the days of mutual confidence were over. There was a difference, however, in their respective positions; for the parson felt tranquil in the assurance that the cloud would pass away, whereas his wife had no such assurance, and the future was dark before her. It is true, that, notwithstanding the outward serenity of her demeanor, Mrs. Prigley was sustained by the inward fires of wrath, which enable an injured woman to endure almost any extremity of mental misery and distress.
We have seen that the Shayton parson had that peculiar form of eccentricity which consists in the love of the Beautiful. He had great projects for Shayton Church, which as yet lay hidden in the privacy of his own breast; and he had also projects for the parsonage, of which the realization, to the eye of reason and common-sense, would have appeared too remote to be entertained for an instant. But the enthusiasm for the Beautiful does not wait to be authorized by the Philistines,—if itdid, it would wait till the end of all things; and Mr. Prigley, poor as he was, determined to have such a degree of beauty in his habitation as might be consistent with his poverty. Without being an artist, or any thing approaching to an artist, he had practised the drawing of the simpler decorative forms, and was really able to combine them very agreeably. He could also lay a flat tint with a brush quite neatly, though he could not manage a gradation. When it had been finally decided that carpets could no longer be afforded, Mr. Prigley saw that the opportunity had come for the exercise of his talents; but he was far too wise a man toconfide to his wife projects so entirely outside the orbit of her ideas. He had attempted, in former days, to inoculate her mind with the tastes that belong to culture, but he had been met by a degree of impenetrability which proved to him that the renewal of such attempts, instead of adding to his domestic happiness by creating closer community of ideas, might be positively detrimental to it, by proving too plainly the impossibility of such a community. Mrs. Prigley, like many good women of her class, was totally and absolutely devoid of culture of any kind. She managed her house admirably, and with a wonderful thrift and wisdom; she was an excellent wife in a certain sense, though more from duty than any great strength of affection; but beyond this and the Church Service, and three or four French phrases which she did not know how to pronounce, her mind was in such a state of darkness and ignorance as to astonish even her husband from time to time, though he had plenty of opportunities for observing it.
But whatwashe doing in the drawing-room? He was doing things unheard of in the Shayton valley. In the days of his youth and extravagance he had bought a valuable book on Etruscan design; and though, as we have said elsewhere, his taste and culture, though developed up to a certain point, were yet by no means perfect or absolutely reliable, still he could not but feel the singular simplicity and grace of that ancient art, and he determined that the decoration of his drawing-room should be Etruscan. On the wide area of the floor he drew a noble old design, and stained it clearly in black and red; and, when it was dry, rubbed linseed-oil all over it to fix it. The effect was magnificent! the artist was delighted with his performance! but on turning his eye from the perfect unity of the floor, with its centre and broad border, to the old paper on the walls, which was covered with a representation of a brown angler fishing in a green river, with a blue hill behind him, and an equally blue church-steeple,and a cow who had eaten so much grass that it had not only fattened her but colored her with its own greenness—and when the parson counted the number of copies of this interesting landscape that adorned his walls, and saw that they numbered sixscore and upwards—then he felt that he had too much of it, and boldly resolved to abolish it. He looked at all the wall-papers in the shop at Shayton, but the endurable ones were beyond his means, and the cheap ones were not endurable—so he purchased a quantity of common brown parcel-paper, of which he took care to choose the most agreeable tint; and he furtively covered his walls withthat, conveying the paper, a few sheets at a time, under his topcoat. When the last angler had disappeared, the parson began to feel highly excited at the idea of decorating all that fresh and inviting surface. He would have a frieze—yes, he would certainly have a frieze; and he set to work, and copied long Etruscan processions. Then the walls must be divided into compartments, and each compartment must have its chosen design, and the planning and the execution of this absorbed Mr. Prigley so much, that for three weeks he did not write a single new sermon, and, I am sorry to say, scarcely visited a single parishioner except in cases of pressing necessity. As the days were so short, he took to working by candle-light; and when once he had discovered that it was possible to get on in this way, he worked till two o'clock in the morning. He made himself a cap-candlestick, and with this crest of light on the top of his head, and the fire of enthusiasm inside it, forgot the flying hours.
The work was finished at last. It was not perfect; a good critic might have detected many an inaccuracy of line, and some incongruousness in the juxtaposition of designs, which, though all antique and Etruscan, were often of dissimilar epochs. But, on the whole, the result justified the proud satisfaction of the workman. The room would be henceforth marked with the sign of culture and of taste: it was a little Temple of the Muse in the midst of a barbarian world.
But what would Mrs. Prigley say? The parson knew that he had done a bold deed, and he rather trembled at the consequence. "My love," he said, one morning at breakfast-time, "I've finished what I was doing in the drawing-room, and you can put the furniture back when you like; but I should not wish to have any thing hung upon the walls—they are sufficiently decorated as it is. The pictures" (by which Mr. Prigley meant sundry worthless little lithographs and prints)—"the pictures may be hung in one of the bedrooms wherever you like."
Mrs. Prigley remained perfectly silent, and her husband did not venture to ask her to accompany him into the scene of his artistic exploits. He felt that in case she did not approve what he had done, the situation might become embarrassing. So, immediately after breakfast, he walked forth into the parish, and said that he should probably dine with Mr. Jacob Ogden, who (by his mother's command) had kindly invited him to do so whenever he happened to pass Milend about one o'clock in the day. And in this way the parson managed to keep out of the house till tea-time. It was not that Mr. Prigley dreaded any criticism, for to criticise, one must have an opinion. Mrs. Prigley on these matters had not an opinion. All that Mr. Prigley dreaded was the anger of the offended spouse—of the spouse whom he had not even gone through the formality of seeming to consult.
He was punished, but not as he had expected to be punished. Mrs. Prigley said nothing to him on the subject; but when they went into the drawing-room together at night, she affected not to perceive that he had done any thing whatever there. Not only did she not speak about these changes, but, though Mr. Prigley watched her eyes during the whole evening to see whether they would rest upon his handiwork, they never seemed to perceive it, even for an instant. She played the part she had resolved upon with marvellous persistence and self-control. She seemed precisely as she hadalways been:—sulky? not in the least; there was not the slightest trace of sulkiness, or any thing approaching to sulkiness in her manner—the Etruscan designs were simply invisible for her, that was all.
They were not so invisible for the Colonel when he came to pay his visit at the parsonage, and, in his innocence, he complimented Mrs. Prigley on her truly classical taste. He had not the least notion that the floor was carpetless because the Prigleys could not afford a carpet—the degree of poverty which could not afford a carpet not being conceivable by him as a possible attribute of one of his relations or friends. He believed that this beautiful Etruscan design was preferred by Mrs. Prigley to a carpet—to the best of carpets—on high æsthetic grounds. Ah! if he could have read her heart, and seen therein all the shame and vexation that glowed like hidden volcanic fires! All these classical decorations seemed to the simple lady a miserable substitute for the dear old carpet with its alternate yellow flourish and brown lozenge; and she regretted the familiar fisherman whose image used to greet her wherever her eyes might rest. But she felt a deeper shame than belongs to being visibly poor or visibly ridiculous. The room looked poor she knew, and in her opinion it looked ridiculous also; but there was something worse than that, and harder far to bear. How shall I reveal this bitter grief and shame—how find words to express the horror I feel for the man who was its unpardonable cause! Carried away by his enthusiasm for a profane and heathen art, Mr. Prigley had actually introduced, in the frieze and elsewhere, several figures which—well, were divested of all drapery whatever! "And he a clergyman, too!" thought Mrs. Prigley. True, they were simply outlined; and the conception of the original designer had been marvellously elegant and pure, chastened to the last degree by long devotion to the ideal; but there they were, these shameless nymphs and muses, on the wall of a Christian clergyman!John Stanburne, who had travelled a good deal, and who had often stayed in houses where there were both statues and pictures, saw nothing here but the evidence of cultivated taste. "Whatwillhe think of us?" said Mrs. Prigley to herself; and she believed that his compliments were merely a kind way of trying to make her feel less uncomfortable. She thought him very nice, and he chattered as pleasantly as he possibly could, so that the Doctor, who had come with him, had no social duty to perform, and spent his time in studying the Etruscan decorations. Colonel Stanburne apologized for Lady Helena, who had intended to come with him; but her little girl was suffering from an attack of fever—not a dangerous fever, he hoped, though violent.
The Doctor, who had not before heard of this, was surprised; but as he did not visit Wenderholme professionally (for Wenderholme Hall was, medically speaking, under the authority of the surgeon at Rigton, whose jealousy was already awakened by our Doctor's intimacy with the Colonel), he reflected that it was no business of his. The fact was, that little Miss Stanburne was in the enjoyment of the most perfect health, but her mother thought it more prudent to let the Colonel go to Shayton by himself in the first instance, so as to be able to regulate her future policy according to his report. Mr. Prigley came in before the visitor had exhausted the subject of the fever, which he described with an accuracy that took in these two very experienced people; for he described from memory—his daughter having suffered from such an attack about six months earlier than the very recent date the Colonel found it convenient to assign to it.
It was, of course, a great satisfaction to the Prigleys that the head of the Stanburnes should thus voluntarily renew a connection which, so far as personal intercourse was concerned, was believed to have been permanently severed. It was not simply because the Colonel was a man of high standing in the county that they were glad to become acquaintedwith him—there were certain clannish and romantic sentiments which now found a satisfaction long denied to them. Mrs. Prigley felt, in a minor degree, what a Highland gentlewoman still feels for the chief of her clan; and she was disposed to offer a sort of loyalty to the Colonel as the head of her house, which was very different from the common respect for wealth and position in general. The Stanburnes had never taken any conspicuous part in the great events of English history, but the successive representatives of the family had at least been present in many historical scenes, in conflicts civil and military, on the field, on the quarter-deck of the war-ship, in stormy Parliamentary struggles; and the present chief of the name, for other descendants of the family, inherited in an especial sense a place in the national life of England. Not that Mrs. Prigley had any definite notions even about the history of her own family; the sentiment of birth is quite independent of historical knowledge, and many a good gentlewoman in these realms is in a general way proud of belonging to an old family, without caring to inquire very minutely into the history of it, just as she may be proud of her coat-of-arms without knowing any thing about heraldry.
The Colonel, in a very kind and graceful manner, expressed his regret that such near relations should have been separated for so long by an unfortunate dispute between their fathers. "I believe," he said, "that your side has most to forgive, since my father won the lawsuit, but surely we ought not to perpetuate ill-feeling, generation after generation." Mr. Prigley said that no ill-feeling remained; but that though he had often wished to see Wenderholme and its owner, he knew that, as a rule, poor relations were liked best at a distance, and that not having hitherto had the pleasure of knowing Colonel Stanburne, he must be held excusable for having supposed him to be like the rest of the world. John Stanburne was not quite satisfied with this somewhat formal anddignified assurance, and was resolved to establish a more intimate footing before he left the parsonage. He exerted himself to talk about ecclesiastical matters and church architecture, and when Mr. Prigley offered to show him the church, accompanied him thither with great apparent interest and satisfaction. The Doctor had patients to visit, and went his own way.
Our Jacob, or big Jacob, or Jacob at Milend, as he now began to be called in the Ogden family, to distinguish him from his nephew and homonym, had arrived at that point in the career of every successful cotton-spinner when a feeling of great embarrassment arises as to the comparative wisdom of purchasing an estate or "laying down a new mill." When his brother Isaac retired from the concern with ten thousand pounds, Jacob had not precisely cheated him, perhaps, but he had made a bargain which, considered prospectively, was highly favorable to his own interest; and since he had been alone, the profits from the mill had been so considerable that his savings had rapidly accumulated, and he was now troubled with a very heavy balance at his bankers, and in various investments, which, to a man accustomed to receive the large interest of successful cotton-spinning, seemed little better than letting money lie idle. Mrs. Ogden had three hundred a-year from five or six very small farms of her own, which she had inherited from her mother, and this amply sufficed for the entire expenses of the little household at Milend. Jacob spent about a hundred and fifty pounds a-year on himself personally, of which two-thirds were absorbed in shooting,—the only amusement he cared about. His tailor's bill was incredibly small, for he had the excuse, when in Shayton, of being constantly about the mill, and it was natural that he should wear old fustian and corduroy there; andas for his journeys to Manchester, it was his custom on these occasions to wear the suit which had been the Sunday suit of the preceding year. His mother knitted all his stockings for him, and made his shirts, these being her usual occupations in an evening. His travelling expenses were confined to the weekly journeys to Manchester, and as these were always on business, they were charged to the concern. If Jacob Ogden had not been fond of shooting, his personal expenses, beyond food and lodging (which were provided for him by his mother), would not have exceeded fifty pounds a-year; and it is a proof of the great firmness of his character in money matters that, although by nature passionately fond of sport, he resolutely kept the cost of it within the hundred. His annual outlay upon literature was within twenty shillings; not that it is to be supposed that he spent so large a sum as one pound sterling in a regular manner upon books, but he had been tempted by a second-hand copy of Baine's 'History of Lancashire,' which, being much the worse for wear, had been marked by the bookseller at five pounds, and Jacob Ogden, by hard bargaining, had got it for four pounds nine shillings and ninepence. After this extravagance he resolved to spend no more "foolish money," as he called it, and for several years made no addition to his library, except a book on dog-breeding, and a small treatise on the preservation of game, which he rightly entered amongst his expenses as a sportsman. We are far from desiring to imply that Jacob Ogden is in this respect to be considered a representative example of the present generation of cotton-manufacturers, many of whom are highly educated men, but he may be fairly taken as a specimen of that generation which founded the colossal fortunes that excite the wonder, and sometimes, perhaps, awaken the envy, of the learned. When nature produces a creature for some especial purpose, she does not burden it with wants and desires that would scatter its force and impair its efficiency. The industrial epoch hadto be inaugurated, the manufacturing districts had to be created—and to do this a body of men were needed who should be fresh springs of pure energy, and reservoirs of all but illimitable capital; men who should act with the certainty and steadiness of natural instincts which have never been impaired by the hesitations of culture and philosophy—men who were less nearly related to university professors than to the ant, and the beaver, and the bee. And if any cultivated and intellectual reader, in the thoughtful retirement of his library, feels himself superior to Jacob Ogden, the illiterate cotton-spinner, he may be reminded that he is not on all points Ogden's superior. We are all but tools in the hands of God; and as in the mind of a writer great delicacy and flexibility are necessary qualities for the work he is appointed to do, so in the mind of a great captain of industry the most valuable qualities may be the very opposite of these. Have we the energy, the directness, the singleness of purpose, the unflinching steadiness in the dullest possible labor, that mark the typical industrial chief? We know that we have not; we know that these qualities are not compatible with the tranquillity of the studious temperament and the meditative life. And if the Ogdens cannot be men of letters, neither can the men of letters be Ogdens.
It is admitted, then, that Jacob Ogden was utterly and irreclaimably illiterate. He really never read a book in his life, except, perhaps, that book on dog-breaking. Whenever he tried to read, it was a task and a labor to him; and as literature is not of the least use in the cotton trade, the energy of his indomitable will had never been brought to bear upon the mastery of a book. And yet you could not meet him without feeling that he was very intelligent—that he possessed a kind of intelligence cultivated by the closest observation of the men and things within the narrow circle of his life. Has it never occurred to the reader how wonderfully the most illiterate people often impress us with asense of their intelligence—how men and women who never learned the alphabet have its light on their countenance and in their eyes? In Ogden's face there were clear signs of that, and of other qualities also. And there was a keenness in the glance quite different from the penetration of the thinker or the artist—a keenness which always comes from excessively close and minute attention to money matters, and from the passionate love of money, and which no other passion or occupation ever produces.
In all that related to money Jacob Ogden acted with the pitiless regularity of the irresistible forces of nature. As the sea which feeds the fisherman will drown him without remorse—as the air which we all breathe will bury us under heaps of ruin—so this man, though his capital enabled a multitude to live, would take the bed from under a sick debtor, and, rather than lose an imperceptible atom of his fortune, inflict the utmost extremity of misery. Even Hanby, his attorney, who was by no means tender-hearted, had been staggered at times by his pitilessness, and had ventured upon a feeble remonstrance. On these occasions a shade of sternness was added to the keenness of Ogden's face, and he repeated a terrible maxim, which, with one or two others, guided his life: "If a man means to be rich, he must have no fine feelings;" and then he would add, "Imean to be rich."
Perhaps he would have had fine feelings on a Sunday, for on Sundays he was religious, and went to church, where he heard a good deal about being merciful and forgiving which on week-days he would have attributed to the influence of the sentiments which he despised. But Ogden was far too judicious an economist of human activities to be ignorant of the great art of self-adaptation to the duties and purposes of the hour; and as a prudent lawyer who has a taste for music will take care that it shall not interfere with his professional work, so Jacob Ogden, who really had rather a taste forreligion, and liked to sit in church with gloved hands and a clean face, had no notion of allowing the beautiful sentiments which he heard there to paralyze his action on a week-day. Every Sunday he prayed repeatedly that God would forgive him his debts or trespasses as he forgave his debtors or those that trespassed against him; but that was no reason why he should not, from Monday morning to Saturday night inclusively, compel everybody to pay what he owed, and distress him for it if necessary. After all, he acted so simply and instinctively that one can hardly blame him very severely. The truest definition of him would be, an incarnate natural force. The forces of wealth, which are as much natural forces as those of fire and frost, had incarnated themselves in him. His sympathy with money was so complete, he had so entirely subjected his mind to it, so thoroughly made himself its pupil and its mouth-piece, that it is less accurate to say that hehadmoney than that hewasmoney. Jacob Ogden was a certain sum of money whose unique idea was its own increase, and which acted in obedience to the laws of wealth as infallibly as a planet acts in obedience to the cosmic forces.
It is only natural that a man so endowed and so situated should grow rich. In all respects circumstances were favorable to him. He had robust health and indefatigable energy. His position in a little place like Shayton, where habits of spending had not yet penetrated, was also greatly in his favor, because it sheltered him in undisturbed obscurity. No man who is born to wealth, and has lived from his infancy in the upper class, will confine his expenditure during the best years of manhood to the pittance which sufficed for Ogden. It was an advantage to him, also, that his mind should be empty, because he needed all the room in it for the endless details concerning his property and his trade. No fact of this nature, however minute, escaped him. His knowledge of the present state of all that belonged to him was so clear andaccurate, and his foresight as to probable changes so sure, that he anticipated every thing, and neutralized every cause of loss before it had time to develop itself.
That a man whose daily existence proved the fewness of his wants should have an eager desire for money, may appear one of the inconsistencies of human nature; but in the case of Jacob Ogden, and in thousands of cases similar to his, there is no real inconsistency. He did not desire money in order to live luxuriously; he desired it because the mere possession of it brought increased personal consideration, and gave him weight and importance in the little community he lived in. And when a man relies on wealthalonefor his position—when he is, obviously, not a gentleman—he needs a great quantity of it. Another reason why Jacob Ogden never felt that he had enough was because the men with whom he habitually compared himself, and whom he wished to distance in the race, did not themselves remain stationary, but enriched themselves so fast that it needed all Jacob Ogden's genius for money-getting to keep up with them; for men of talent in every order compare themselves with their equals and rivals, and not with the herd of the incapable. It was his custom to go to Manchester in the same railway carriage with four or five men of business, who talked of nothing but investments, and it would have made Jacob Ogden miserable not to be able to take a share in these conversations on terms of perfect equality.
"I'm sure," thought Mrs. Ogden, "that our Jacob's got something on his mind. He sits and thinks a deal more than he used doin'. He's 'appen[11]fallen in love, an' doesn't like to tell me about it, because it's same as tellin' me to leave Milend."
Mrs. Ogden was confirmed in her suspicions that very evening by the fact that "our Jacob" shut himself up in the little sitting-room with a builder. "If it's to build himself a new'ouse and leave me at Milend, I willn't stop; and if it's to build me a new 'ouse, I shall never live there. I shall go an' live i' th' Cream-pot."
The idea of Mrs. Ogden living in a cream-pot may appear to some readers almost as mythical as the story of that other and much more famous old lady who lived in a shoe; but although a cream-pot would not be a bad place to live in if one were a mouse, and the rich fluid not dangerously deep, it is not to be supposed that Mrs. Ogden entertained such a project in an obvious and literal sense. Her intentions were rational, but they need a word of explanation. She possessed a small farm called the Cream-pot; and of all her small farms this was her best beloved. Therefore had she resolved, years and years before, that when Jacob married she would go to the Cream-pot, and dwell there for the days that might remain to her.
She waited till the builder had gone, and then went into the little room. Jacob was busy examining a plan. "I wish you wouldn't trouble yourself about that buildin', Jacob," said Mrs. Ogden; "there needs no buildin', for as soon as ever you get wed I shall go to th' Cream-pot."
Her son looked up from his plan with an air of the utmost astonishment. Mrs. Ogden continued,—
"I think you might have told me about it a little sooner. I don't even know her name, not positively, though I may guess it, perhaps. There's no doubt about one thing—you'll have time enough to repent in. As they make their bed, so they must lie."
"What the devil," said Jacob, thinking aloud andveryloudly,—"what the devil is th' ould woman drivin' at?"
"Nay, if I'm to be sworn at, I've been too long i' this 'ouse already."
And Mrs. Ogden, with that stately step which distinguished her, made slowly for the door.
In cases where the lady of a house acts in a manner whichis altogether absurd, the male or males, whose comfort is in a great degree dependent upon her good temper, have a much better chance of restoring it than when she is but moderately unreasonable. They are put upon their guard; they are quite safe from that most fatal of errors, an attempt to bring the lady round by those too direct arguments which are suggested by masculine frankness; they are warned that judicious management is necessary. Thus, although Jacob Ogden, in the first shock of his astonishment, had not replied to his mother in a manner precisely calculated to soothe her, he at once perceived his error, and saw that she must be brought round. In politer spheres, where people beg pardon of each other for the most trifling and even imaginary offences, the duty of begging pardon is so constantly practised that (like all well-practised duties) it is extremely easy. But it was impossible for Jacob Ogden, who had never begged pardon in his life.
"I say, mother, stop a bit. You've gotten a bit o' brass o' your own, an' I'm layin' down a new mill, and I shall want o' th'[12]brass I can lay my hands on. I willn't borrow none, out of this 'ouse, not even of my brother Isaac; but if you could lend me about four thousand pound, I could give a better finish to th' new shed."
"Why, Jacob, you never told me as you were layin' down a new mill."
"No, but I should a' done if you'd a' waited a bit I never right made up my mind about it while last night."
It was not Jacob Ogden's custom to be confidential with his mother about money matters, and she on her part had been too proud to seek a confidence that was never offered; but many little signs had of late led her to the conclusion that Jacob was in a period of unusual prosperity. He had bought one or two small estates for three or four thousand poundseach, and then had suddenly declared that he would lay out no more money in "potterin' bits o' property like them, but keep it while he'd a good lump for summat o' some use." The decision about the new mill proved to Mrs. Ogden that the "lump" in question was already accumulated.
"Jacob," she said, "how much do you reckon to put into th' new mill?"
"Why, 'appen about forty thousand; an' if you'll lend me four, that'll be forty-four."
This was a larger sum than Mrs. Ogden had hoped; but she showed no sign of rejoicing beyond a quiet smile.
"And where do you think of buildin' it?"
"Well, mother, if you don't mind sellin' me Little Mouse Field, it's the best mill-site in all Shayton. There's that water-course so handy; and it'll increase the valley[13]of our land round about it."
Mrs. Ogden was perfectly soothed by this time. Jacob wanted to borrow four thousand pounds of her. She had coal under her little farms, of which the accumulated produce had reached rather more than that amount; and she promised the loan with a facetious hope that the borrower would be able to give her good security. As to Little Mouse Field, he was quite welcome to it, and she begged him to accept it as a present.
"Nay, mother; you shouldn't give me no presents bout[14]givin' summat to our Isaac. But I reckon it's all one; for all as I have, or shall have, 'll go to little Jacob."
"Eh, how you talk, lad! Why, you'll get wed an' have chilther of your own. You're young enough, an' well off beside."
"There's no need for me to get wed, mother, so long as th' old woman lasts, an' who'll last a long while yet, I reckon. There's none o' these young ladies as is kerfle enough to do for a man like me as has been accustomed to see his housewell managed. Why, they cannot neither make a shirt nor a puddin'."
These disparaging remarks concerning the "Girl of the Period" filled (as they were designed to fill) Mrs. Ogden's mind with tranquillity and satisfaction. To complete her good-humor, Jacob unrolled the plans and elevation of his new mill. The plans were most extensive, but the elevation did not strike the spectator by its height; for as the site was not costly, Jacob Ogden had adopted a system then becoming prevalent in the smaller towns of the manufacturing districts, where land was comparatively cheap—the system of erecting mills rather as sheds than on the old five-storied model. His new mill was simply a field walled in and roofed over, with a tall engine house and an enormous chimney at one end. People of æsthetic tastes would see nothing lovely in the long straight lines of roofs and rows of monotonously identical windows which displayed themselves on the designs drawn by Ogden's architect; but to Ogden's eyes there was a beauty here greater than that of the finest cathedral he had ever beheld. He was not an imaginative person; but he had quite enough imagination to realize the vista of the vast interior, the roar of the innumerable wheels, the incessant activity of the living makers of his wealth. He saw himself standing in the noble engine-room, and watching the unhurried see-saw of the colossal beams; the rise and fall of the pistons, thicker than the spear of Goliath, and brighter than columns of silver; the revolution of the enormous fly-wheel; the exquisite truth of motion; the steadiness of man's great creature, that never knows fatigue. That engine-room should be the finest in all Shayton. It should have a plaster cornice round its ceiling, and a great moulded ornament in the middle of it; the gas-lights should be in handsome ground-glass globes; and about the casings of the cylinders there should be a luxury of mahogany and brass.
"But, Jacob," said his mother, when she had duly adjustedher spectacles, and gradually mastered the main features of the plan, "it seems to me as you've put th' mill all o' one side, and th' engine nobbut half-fills th' engine-house."
Ogden had never heard of Taymouth Castle and the old Earl of Breadalbane, who, when somebody asked him why he built his house at the extremity of his estate, instead of in the middle of it, answered that he intended to "brizz yint."[15]But, like the ambitious Earl, Ogden was one of those who "brizz yint."
"Why, mother," he said, "this 'ere's nobbut half the new mill. What can you do with forty-five thousand?"
"Helena!" said Colonel Stanburne one morning when he came down to breakfast, "I've determined on a bold stroke. I'm going to take the tandem this morning to Stanithburn Peel, to see young Philip Stanburne and get him to accept a captaincy in the new regiment."
Her ladyship did not see why this should be called a bold stroke, so she asked if the road were particularly dangerous to drive upon, and suggested that, if it were, one horse would be safer than two.
"That's not it. The sort of courage wanted on the present occasion, my dear Helena, is moral courage and not physical courage, don't you see? Did you never hear the history of the Stanburnes of Stanithburn? Surely female ignorance does not go so far as to leave you uninformed about such a distinguished family as ours?"
"I know the history of its present representative, or at least as much of it as he chooses to tell me."
"Error added to ignorance! I am not the representative of the family. We of Wenderholme are only a younger branch. The real representative is Philip Stanburne, of Stanithburn Peel."
"I scarcely ever heard of him before. I had some vague notion that such a person existed. Why does he never come here?"
"It's a long story, but you will find it all in the county histories. In Henry the Eighth's time Sir Philip Stanburne was a rebel and got beheaded, some people say hanged, for treason, so his estates were confiscated. Wenderholme and Stanithburn Tower were given back to the family in the next generation, but the elder branch had only Stanithburn, which is a much smaller estate than this. Since then they married heiresses, but always regularly spent their fortunes, and now young Philip Stanburne has nothing but the tower with a small estate of bad land which brings him in four or five hundred a-year."
"Not much certainly; but why does he never come here?"
"My father used to say that there had been no intercourse between Stanithburn and Wenderholme for three hundred years. Most likely the separation was a religious quarrel, to begin with. The elder branch always remained strictly Roman Catholic; but the Wenderholme branch was more prudent, and turned Protestant in Queen Elizabeth's time."
"All this is quite a romantic story, but those county histories are so full of archæology that one does not venture to look into them. Would it not be better to write to Mr. Philip Stanburne? There is no knowing how he may receive you."
The Colonel thought it better to go personally. "I'm not clever, Helena, at persuading people with a pen; but I can generally talk them round, when I have a chance of seeing them myself."
The distance from Wenderholme to Stanithburn Peel was exactly twenty-five miles; but the Colonel liked a long drive, and the tandem was soon on its way through the narrow but well-kept lanes that traversed the stretch of fertile country which separated the two houses. The Colonel lunched and baited his horses at a little inn not often visited by such a stylish equipage, and it was nearly three o'clock in the afternoon when he began to enter the hilly country near the Peel.The roads here were not so good as those in the plain, and instead of being divided from the fields by hedges they passed between gray stone walls. The scenery became more and more desolate as the horses advanced. There was little sylvan beauty left in it except that of the alders near a rapid stream in the valley, and the hills showed the bare limestone in many places through a scanty covering of grass. At length a turn of the road brought the Colonel in sight of the Tower or Peel of Stanithburn itself, an edifice which had little pretension to architectural beauty, and lacked altogether that easily achieved sublimity which in so many Continental buildings of a similar character is due to the overhanging ofmachicoulisandtourelles. It possessed, however, the distinguishing feature of a battlement, which, still in perfect preservation, entirely surrounded the leads of the flat roof. Beyond this the old Tower retained no warlike character, but resembled an ordinary modern house, with an additional story on the top of it. There were, alas! some modern sash-windows, which went far to destroy the character of the edifice; yet whatever injury the Philistinism of the eighteenth century might have inflicted upon the building itself, it had not been able to destroy the romantic beauty of its site. The hill that separates Shayton from Wenderholme is of sandstone; and though behind Twistle Farm and elsewhere there are groups of rocks of more or less picturesque interest, they are not comparable to the far grander limestone region about the Tower of Stanithburn. The Tower itself is situated on a bleak eminence, half surrounded by a curve of the stream already mentioned; but a mile below the Tower the stream passes through a ravine of immense depth, and in a series of cascades reaches the level of the plain below. Above Stanithburn Peel, on the other hand, the stream comes from a region of unimaginable desolation—where the fantastic forms of the pale stone lift themselves, rain-worn, like a council of rude colossi, and no sound is heardbut the wind and the stream, and the wild cry of the plover.
A very simple gateway led from the public to a private road, which climbed the hill till it ended in a sort of farm-yard between the Peel and its out-buildings. When the Colonel arrived here, he was received by a farm-servant, who showed the way to the stable, and said that his master was out fishing. By following the stream, the Colonel would be sure to find him.
John Stanburne set off on foot, not without some secret apprehension. "Perhaps Helena was right," he thought; "perhaps I ought to have written. They say he is a strange, eccentric sort of fellow, and there is no telling how he may receive me."
Philip Stanburne, of the Peel, was in fact reputed to be morbid and misanthropic, with as much justice as there usually is in such reports. After his father's death he had been left alone with his mother, and the few years that he lived in this way with her had been the sweetest and happiest of his life. When he lost her, his existence became one of almost absolute solitude, broken only by a weekly visit to a great house ten miles from Stanithburn, where a chaplain was kept, and he could hear mass—or by the occasional visits of the doctor, and one or two by no means intimate neighbors. In country places a difference of religion is a great impediment to intercourse; and though people thought it quite right that Philip Stanburne should be a Catholic, they never could get over a feeling of what they called "queerness" in the presence of a man who believed in transubstantiation, and said prayers to the Virgin Mary. Like many other recluses, he was credited with a dislike to society far different from his real feeling, and much less creditable to his good sense. Habit had made solitude endurable to him, and there was something agreeable, no doubt, in the sense of his independence, but there was not the slightest taint of misanthropyin his whole nature. He naturally shrank from the society of Sootythorn because it was so strongly Protestant; and there were no families of his own creed in his immediate neighborhood. His way of living was too simple for the entertainment of guests. Having no profession by which money might be earned, he was reduced to mere economy, which got him a reputation for being stingy and unsociable.
The Colonel walked a mile along the stream without perceiving anybody, but at length he saw Philip Stanburne, very much occupied with his fly-book, and accompanied only by a dog, which began to bark vigorously as soon as he perceived the presence of a stranger. A quarter of an hour afterwards the two new acquaintances were talking easily enough, and the recluse of the Tower began to feel inclined to join the militia, though he had asked for time to consider.
"I have heard," said the Colonel, "that the name which your house still keeps, and from which our own name comes, is due to some stone in your stream—stone in the burn, or stane i' th' burn, and so to Stanithburn and Stanburne. Is there any particular stone here likely to give a ground for the theory, or is it only a tradition?"
"I have no doubt," said Philip Stanburne, "of the accuracy of tradition in this instance. Come and look at the stone itself."
He turned aside from the direct path to the Tower, and they came again to the brink of the stream, which had here worn for itself two channels deep in the limestone. Between these channels rose an islanded rock about thirty feet above the present level of the water. A fragment of ruined building was discernible on its narrow summit.
As the two men looked together on the stone from which their race had taken its name centuries ago, both fell under the influence of that mysterious sentiment, so different from the pride of station or the vanity of precedence, which bindsus to the past. Neither of them spoke, but it is not an exaggeration to say that both felt their relationship then. Had not the time been when Stanburne of the Peel and Stanburne of Wenderholme were brothers? A fraternal feeling began to unite these two by subtle, invisible threads.
Not many days after the little events narrated in the preceding chapter, Mr. Philip Stanburne awoke in a small bedroom on the second floor of the Thorn Inn, or Thorn Hotel, at Sootythorn. It was a disagreeable, stuffy little room; and an extensive four-poster covered fully one-half the area of the floor. There was the usual wash-hand stand, and close to the wash-hand stand a chair, and on the chair the undress uniform of a militia officer. Philip Stanburne lay in the extensive four-poster, and contemplated the military equipment, of which the most brilliant portions were the crimson sash, and the bright, newly gilded hilt of a handsome sword. As it was only the undress uniform, there was nothing particularly striking in the dress itself, which consisted of a plain dark-blue frock-coat, and black trowsers with narrow red seam. Nevertheless, Captain Stanburne felt no great inclination to invest his person with what looked very like a disguise. His instincts were by no means military; and the idea of marching through the streets of Sootythorn with a drawn sword in his hand had little attraction for him.
When he drew up his blind, the view from the window was unpleasantly different from the view that refreshed his eye every morning at Stanithburn Peel. The Thorn Inn was higher than most of the houses in Sootythorn, and Philip Stanburne had a view over the roofs. Very smoky they allwere, and still smokier were the immense chimney-stalks of the cotton-mills. "One, two, three, four," began Philip, aloud, as he counted the great chimneys, and he did not stop till he had counted up to twenty-nine. The Thorn Inn was just in the middle of the town, and there were as many on the other side—a consideration which occurred to Philip Stanburne's reflective mind, as it sometimes occurs to very philosophical people to think about the stars that are under our feet, on the other side of the world.
"What a dirty place it is!" thought Philip Stanburne. "I wish I had never come into the militia. Fancy me staying a month in such a smoky hole as this! I wish I were back at the Peel. And just the nicest month in the year, too!" However, there he was, and it was too late to go back. He had to present himself at the orderly-room at half-past nine, and it was already a quarter to nine.
On entering the coffee-room of the hotel he found half-a-dozen gentlemen disguised like himself in military apparel, and engaged in the business of breakfast. He did not know one of them. He knew few people, especially amongst the Protestant gentry; and he literally knew nobody of the middle class in Sootythorn except Mr. Garley the innkeeper, and one or two tradesmen.
Philip had no sooner entered the coffee-room than Mr. Garley made his appearance with that air of confidence which distinguished him. Mr. Garley was not Philip Stanburne's equal in a social point of view, but he was immensely his superior inaplomband knowledge of the world. Thus, whilst Captain Stanburne felt slightly nervous in the presence of the gentlemen in uniform, and disguised his nervousness under an appearance of lofty reserve, Mr. Garley, though little accustomed to the sight of military men, or of gentlemen wearing the appearance of military men, was no more embarrassed than in the presence of his old friends the commercials. "Good morning, Captain Stanburne," saidMr. Garley; "good morning toyou, sir; 'ope you slep well; 'ope you was suited with your room."
Philip muttered something about its being "rather small."
"Well, sir, itisrather small, as you say, sir. I could have wished to have given you a better, but you see, sir, I kep the best room in the 'ouse for the Curnle; and then there was the majors, and his lordship here, Captain Lord Henry Ughtred, had bespoke a good room more than six weeks ago; so you see, sir, I wasn't quite free to serve you quite so well as I could have wished. Sorry we can't contentallgentlemen, sir. What will you take to breakfast, Captain Stanburne? Would you like a boiled hegg, new-laid, or a little fried 'am, or shall I cut you some cold meat; there's four kinds of cold meat on the sideboard, besides a cold beefsteak-pie?"
As he finished his sentence, Mr. Garley drew a chair out, the seat of which had been under the table, and, with a mixture of servility and patronage (servility because he was temporarily acting the part of a waiter, patronage because he still knew himself to be Mr. Garley of the Thorn Hotel), he invited Philip Stanburne to sit down. The other gentlemen at the table had not been engaged in a very animated conversation, and they suspended it by mutual consent to have a good stare at the new-comer. For it so happened that these men were the swell clique, which had for its head Captain Lord Henry Ughtred, and for its vice-captain the Honorable Fortunatus Brabazon; and the swell clique had determined in its own corporate mind that it would have as little to do with the snobs of Sootythorn as might be. It was apprehensive of a great influx of the snob element into the regiment. There was a belief or suspicion in the clique that there existed cads even amongst the captains; and as the officers had not yet met together, a feeling of great circumspection predominated amongst the members of the clique. Philip Stanburne ventured to observe that it was afine morning; but although his next neighbor admitted that fact, he at once allowed the conversation to drop. Mr. Garley had given Philip his first cup of tea; but, in his temporary absence, Philip asked a distinguished member of the swell clique for a second. The liquid was not refused, yet there was something in the manner of giving it which might have turned the hottest cup of tea in Lancashire to a lump of solid ice. At length Lord Henry Ughtred, having for a length of time fixed his calm blue eyes on Philip (they were pretty blue eyes, and he had nice curly hair, and a general look of an overgrown Cupid), said,—
"Pray excuse me; did I not hear Mr. Garley say that your name was Stanburne?"
"Yes, my name is Stanburne."
"Are you Colonel Stanburne's brother, may I ask?"
"No; the Colonel has no brothers."
"Ah, true, true; I had forgotten. Ofcourse, I knew Stanburne had no brothers. Indeed, he told me he'd no relations—or something of the kind. You're not a relation of his, I presume; you don't belong to his family, do you?"
Philip Stanburne, in these matters, had very much of the feeling of a Highland chief. He was the representative of the Stanburnes, and the Colonel was head of a younger branch only. So when he was asked in this way whether he belonged to the Colonel's family, he at once answered "no," seeing that the Colonel belonged tohisfamily, not he to the Colonel's. He was irritated, too, by the tone of his questioner; and, besides, such a relationship as the very distant one between himself and Colonel Stanburne was rather a matter for poetical sentiment than for the prose of the outer world.
Mr. Garley only made matters worse by putting his word in. "Beg pardon, Captn Stanburne, but I've always 'eard say that your family was a younger branch of the Wendrum family."
"Then you were misinformed, for it isn't."
"Perhaps it isn't just clearly traced out, sir," said Mr. Garley, intending to make himself agreeable; "but all the old people says so. If I was you, sir, I'd have it properly traced out. Mr. Higgin, the spinner here, got his pedigree traced out quite beautiful. It's really a very 'andsome pedigree, coats of arms and all. Nobody would have thought Mr. Higgin 'ad such a pedigree; but there's nothin' like tracin' and studyin', and 'untin' it all hup."
Philip Stanburne was well aware that his position as chief of his house was very little known, and that he was popularly supposed to descend from some poor cadet of Wenderholme; but it was disagreeable to be reminded of the popular belief about him in this direct way, and in the hearing of witnesses before whom he felt little disposed to abate one jot of his legitimate pretensions. However, pride kept him silent, even after Mr. Garley's ill-contrived speech, and he sought a diversion in looking at his watch. This made the others look at their watches also; and as it was already twenty-five minutes after nine, they all set off for the orderly-room, the swell clique keeping together, and Philip Stanburne following about twenty yards in the rear.
The streets of Sootythorn were seldom very animated at ten o'clock in the morning, except on a market-day; and though there was a great deal of excitement amongst the population of the town on the subject of the militia, that population was safely housed in the fifty-seven factories of Sootythorn, and an officer might pass through the streets in comparative comfort, free from the remarks which would be likely to assail him when the factories loosed. With the exception of two or three urchins who ran by Philip's side, and stared at him till one of them fell over a wheelbarrow, nothing occurred to disturb him. As the orderly-room was very near, Captain Stanburne thought he had time to buy a pocket-book at the bookseller's shop, and entered it for that purpose.
Whilst occupied with the choice of his pocket-book he heard a soft voice close to him.
"Papa wishes to know if you have got Mr. Blunting's Sermons on Popery."
"No, Miss Stedman, we haven't a copy left, but we can order one for Mr. Stedman if he wishes it. Perhaps it would be well to order it at once, as there has been a great demand for the book, and it is likely to be out of print very soon, unless the new edition is out in time to keep up the supply. Four editions are exhausted already, and the book has only been out a month or two. We are writing to London to-day; shall we order the book for you, Miss Stedman?"
The lady hesitated a little, and then said, "Papa seemed to want it very much—yes, you can order it, please."
There was something very agreeable to Philip Stanburne's ear in what he had heard, and something that grated upon it harshly. The tone of the girl's voice was singularly sweet. It came to him as comes a pure unexpected perfume. It was amongst sounds what the perfume of violets is amongst odors, and he longed to hear it again. What had grated upon him was the word "Popery;" he could not endure to hear his religion called "Popery." Still, it was only the title of some Protestant book the girl had mentioned, and she was not responsible for it—she could not give the book any other title than its own. Philip Stanburne was examining a quantity of morocco contrivances (highly ingenious, most of them) in a glass case in the middle of the shop, and he turned round to look at the young lady, but she had her back to him. She was now choosing some note-paper on the counter. Her dress was extremely simple—white muslin, with a little sprig; and she wore a plain straw bonnet—for in those days womendidwear bonnets. It was evident that she was not a fashionable young lady, for her whole dress showed a timid lagging behind the fashion.
When she had completed her little purchases Miss Stedman left the shop, and Captain Stanburne was disappointed, for she had given him no opportunity of seeing her face; butjust as he was leaving she came back in some haste, and they met rather suddenly in the doorway. "I beg your pardon," said the Captain, making way for her—and then he got a look at her face. The look must have been agreeable to him, for when he saw a little glove lying on the mat in the doorway, he picked it up rather eagerly and presented it to the fair owner. "Is this your glove, Miss—Miss Stedman?"
Now Miss Stedman had never in her life been spoken to by a gentleman in military uniform, with a sword by his side, and the fact added to her confusion. It was odd, too, to hear him call her Miss Stedman, but it was not disagreeable, for he said it very nicely. There is an art of pronouncing names so as to turn the commonest of them into titles of honor; and if Philip had said "your ladyship," he could not have said it more respectfully. So she thanked him for the glove with the warmth which comes of embarrassment, and she blushed, and he bowed, and they saw no more of each other—that day.