"Sir,—I am instructed by my client, Mr. Jacob Ogden, to lay before you the following statement of facts. Your daughter, Miss Margaret Anison, by a letter bearing date ——, and which is in our possession, accepted his proposal of marriage, and promised marriage; which promise she now, by a letter bearing date ——, refuses to execute. In consequence of her promise, and in conformity with her desires, our client hasbeen led into considerable expense, especially in the erection of a mansion, of which Miss Anison herself selected the site. The works were immediately stopped when it became known to our client that Miss Anison had determined upon a breach of promise, but a heavy sum had been already expended, which, so far as our client is concerned, is money utterly thrown away. We beg to call your attention to the fact that our client and his mother offered another most commodious and suitable residence to Miss Anison, situated at Milend, and that she declined this, and induced our client to commence the erection of a new and costly mansion on a site which he would never have selected for himself. We therefore claim for our client damages to the amount of one thousand pounds (£1,000), and beg to inform you, that unless this sum is paid before the expiration of one calendar month from this date, we shall institute a suit for breach of promise of marriage, and claim damages on that score to a far heavier amount. The present claim, we desire it to be understood, is not made on the ground of breach of promise, but is merely a claim for compensation on account of outlay which our client has been induced to incur. Our client has no desire to push matters to the extremity of a public exposure, but will not shrink from doing so if his present just claim is refused."I am, sir, your obedient servant,"Jonas Hanby."
"Sir,—I am instructed by my client, Mr. Jacob Ogden, to lay before you the following statement of facts. Your daughter, Miss Margaret Anison, by a letter bearing date ——, and which is in our possession, accepted his proposal of marriage, and promised marriage; which promise she now, by a letter bearing date ——, refuses to execute. In consequence of her promise, and in conformity with her desires, our client hasbeen led into considerable expense, especially in the erection of a mansion, of which Miss Anison herself selected the site. The works were immediately stopped when it became known to our client that Miss Anison had determined upon a breach of promise, but a heavy sum had been already expended, which, so far as our client is concerned, is money utterly thrown away. We beg to call your attention to the fact that our client and his mother offered another most commodious and suitable residence to Miss Anison, situated at Milend, and that she declined this, and induced our client to commence the erection of a new and costly mansion on a site which he would never have selected for himself. We therefore claim for our client damages to the amount of one thousand pounds (£1,000), and beg to inform you, that unless this sum is paid before the expiration of one calendar month from this date, we shall institute a suit for breach of promise of marriage, and claim damages on that score to a far heavier amount. The present claim, we desire it to be understood, is not made on the ground of breach of promise, but is merely a claim for compensation on account of outlay which our client has been induced to incur. Our client has no desire to push matters to the extremity of a public exposure, but will not shrink from doing so if his present just claim is refused.
"I am, sir, your obedient servant,"Jonas Hanby."
"You may decide for yourself, Margaret," said Mr. Anison, "whether you prefer that I should pay this out of your fortune, or stand an action for breach of promise. It is not usual to bring actions of this sort against women, but Ogden is a most determined fellow, and he doesn't care much for what people may say. He will bring his action if we don't send him a cheque, and I don't think such an action would be very pleasant to you. Considering circumstances, too, especially the building of that new house, I am inclined tothink that he would get rather heavy damages, certainly at least as much as he is asking for. Such an action would make a tremendous noise, and we should be in all the newspapers. We must consider your sisters, too, who wouldn't be much benefited by publicity of this kind. In short, my advice is to send the cheque."
The cheque was accordingly sent to Mr. Hanby, and duly acknowledged. The presents had been returned a few days before. These last had been purchased of a jeweller in St. Ann's Square, Manchester, who took them back in exchange for an excellent gentleman's watch and a big cameo brooch. The watch went into Jacob Ogden's own fob, and the brooch adorned his already sufficiently ornamented mother. All things considered, Jacob Ogden now felt that he could look back upon the whole business with a mind at ease. He had done his duty by himself. After deducting the outlay on the house, and the outlay necessary for restoring the field to its pristine verdure, he found that there remained to him a clear surplus of four hundred and fifteen pounds seven shillings and twopence, which he entered in the column of profits. "It's been rather a good business for once, has this courtin'," said Jacob to himself; "but it's devilish risky, and there's nobody'll catch me at it again. If she'd nobbut stuck to me, she'd 'ave wenly ruined me."
So, when the walls of the mansion that was to have been were levelled with the ground, and the foundations buried under the earth that they might be no more seen, Jacob Ogden buried with them the thought and idea of marriage; and the grass grew on the field that had been so torn, and cut, and burdened, and disturbed by the masons and laborers who had been there.
As the field grew level and green again just as it used to be, so flourished the mind of Jacob Ogden in serene and productive life. But asbeneaththe field—beneath the waving of the rich grass—there still lay the plan of the house thatwas to have been, traced out in stony foundations, so in the mind of its owner there lay hidden a stony memory of the plans of this strange year; and though the surface was perfectly restored, there were hard places under his happiness that had not been there before.
The rupture between Jacob Ogden and Miss Anison had an immediate effect upon the fortunes of a young friend of ours, who has for a long time been very much in the background. Little Jacob began to occupy a larger and larger place in his uncle's thoughts. For, though Uncle Jacob had formerly always intended, in a general way, to remain a bachelor, this had been nothing more than a sort of intellectual preference for bachelorhood, deduced from his general views of life, and especially from his dominant anxiety to make a fortune. But his objections to matrimony were no longer of this mild kind. Like a wild animal that has once felt the noose of the trapper round its neck, and yet succeeded in freeing itself, he had conceived a horror of the snare which was incomparably more active and intense than the vague alarms of the inexperienced. His former ideas about marriage had been purely negative. He had no intention to marry, and there was the end of his reflections on the matter. But now his preference for celibacy had taken the shape of a passionate and unalterable resolution.
The increase of his fortune, which might henceforth be surely relied on, led him to think a good deal about the little boy at Twistle Farm, who was most probably destined to inherit it; and he determined to use a legitimate influence over his brother Isaac, so that little Jacob might be educated in a manner suitable to his future position.
We have said that Jacob Ogden was perfectly satisfiedwith himself, and that knowledge was not his ideal. But although this is true, his views were really larger than the reader may have hitherto suspected. He considered himself perfect in his place; but as little Jacob would probably have a very different place in the world, he would need different perfections. The qualities needed for making a large fortune were, in Jacob Ogden's view, the finest qualities that a human being can possess, and he knew that he possessed them; but then there were certain ornaments and accomplishments which were necessary to a rich gentleman, and which the manufacturer had not had time to acquire. He was not foolish enough to torment himself with regrets that he did not know Latin and Greek; he had none of the silly humilities of weak minds that are perpetually regretting their "deficiencies." Whatever it was necessary for his main purpose that he should know, he always resolutely set himself to learn, and, by strenuous application, mastered; what was unnecessary for his purpose, he remained contentedly ignorant about. The customary pedantries of the world, its shallow pretension to scholarship, never humiliatedhim. He suspected, perhaps, that genuine classical acquirement was much rarer than the varnish of pseudo-scholarship, and he had not that deferential faith in gentlemen's Latin and Greek which is sometimes found in the uneducated. But, on the other hand, as he had learned every thing that was necessary to a plodding Shayton cotton-spinner, so he was determined that little Jacob should learn every thing necessary to a perfect English gentleman. He had not read the sentence of Emerson, "We like to see every thing do its office after its kind, whether it be a milk-cow or a rattlesnake;" but the sentiment in it was his own. His strong sense perceived that so long as men hold different situations in the world, their preparatory training must be different; and that, as a young pigeon must learn to fly, and a young terrier to catch rats, so the youthful heir of a splendid fortune, and the boywho has his fortune to make, ought to receive respectively a celestial and a terrestrial training.
For Jacob Ogden, himself a terrestrial, knew that there was a heaven above him—the heaven of aristocracy!Theredwelt superior beings, in golden houses, like gods together, far above the ill-used race of men that cleave the soil and store their yearly dues. There is something ludicrous, if it were not pathetic and painful, in the self-abasement of a man so strong and resolute as Ogden before a heaven whose saints and angels were only titled ladies and gentlemen, mainly occupied in amusing themselves; but to him it was the World of the Ideal. And this religion had one great advantage—it kept him a little humbler than he ever would have been without it. Great was the successful cotton-spinner in his eyes, but there were beings cast by nature in a nobler mould. For Jacob Ogden actually believed, in all sincerity and simplicity, that there was the same natural difference between a lord and a plebeian that there is between a thorough-bred and a cart-horse. This superstition, though founded on a dim sense of the natural differences which do exist, erred in making them the obedient servants of the artificial differences. There are, no doubt, thorough-breds and cart-horses amongst mankind, and the popular phraseology would imply that there are also asses; but these natural differences seem to be independent of title altogether, and dependent even upon fortune only so far as it may help or hinder their development. The superstition that lords,quâlords, are wiser, and better, and braver, and more respectable than other people, was more prevalent in Shayton than it is in places where lords are more frequently seen.
Now, with this deeply rooted Anglican superstition about the heaven of aristocracy and the angels that dwell therein, Uncle Jacob naturally desired that his nephew should be qualified for admission there. And he had a devout belief that the states of probation for a young soul aspiring tocelestial bliss were terms of residence at Eton and at Oxford.
Little Jacob had continued his custom of staying at Milend every Sunday, that he might benefit by the services of our friend Mr. Prigley in the pew at Shayton Church. Isaac Ogden, though he had come to church three Sundays in succession after the recovery of little Jacob, and had attended divine service regularly as an officer of militia (being in that character compulsible thereunto by martial law), had, I regret to say, relapsed into his old habits of negligence at Twistle Farm, and spent the Sunday there in following his own devices. It must be admitted, however, that he did little harm, on that day or any other, to himself or anybody else. He remained religiously faithful to his vow of total abstinence, and spent several hours every day in giving a sound elementary education to his son.
"I'll tell you what it is, Isaac," said Uncle Jacob one day when his elder brother had come on one of his rare visits to Milend—"I'll tell you what it is; if you'll just let me have my own way about th' eddication o' th' young un, I'll leave him all my brass, and, what's more, I don't mind payin' for his schoolin' beside. I want nowt nobbut what's reet, but I'll make sich a gentleman on him as there isn't i' o Shayton nor i' o Manchester nother. And to start wi', I reckon nowt of his stoppin' up at Twistle Farm same as he is doin' an' idlin' away auve[19]his time. Let him live at Milend regular for a twelvemonth, and go to Prigley six hour every day, and then send him to Eton—that's where gentlefolk sends their lads to. And afther that, we'll send him to Hoxford College."
No sooner had Mr. Prigley got into the full swing of work with his young pupil, than he received a letter from our friend Colonel Stanburne of Wenderholme:—
"My dear Mr. Prigley,—It would give me great pleasure, and be of great use to me besides, if you could come over here and stay with me for a fortnight or three weeks. We got the house covered in just before the winter, and the works have been going forward since in some parts of the interior, but there are some points about internal fittings, especially in the principal rooms, that I and my architect don't agree about. Now, what I most want is, the advice of a competent unprofessional friend; and as I know that you have studied architecture much more deeply than I have ever done myself, I look to you to help me. It will probably be a long time before the house is finished, but now is the time to decide about the interior arrangements. Helena is at Lord Adisham's, and so I am left alone with the architect. I wish you would come. He seems to want me to adopt a different style for the finishing of the interior to that which was generally prevalent when Wenderholme was built. Now my notion is (puisque l'occasion se présente) to make the place as homogeneous as possible."Do come. You will stay here at the Cottage. I am living with my mother."Very faithfully yours,John Stanburne."
"My dear Mr. Prigley,—It would give me great pleasure, and be of great use to me besides, if you could come over here and stay with me for a fortnight or three weeks. We got the house covered in just before the winter, and the works have been going forward since in some parts of the interior, but there are some points about internal fittings, especially in the principal rooms, that I and my architect don't agree about. Now, what I most want is, the advice of a competent unprofessional friend; and as I know that you have studied architecture much more deeply than I have ever done myself, I look to you to help me. It will probably be a long time before the house is finished, but now is the time to decide about the interior arrangements. Helena is at Lord Adisham's, and so I am left alone with the architect. I wish you would come. He seems to want me to adopt a different style for the finishing of the interior to that which was generally prevalent when Wenderholme was built. Now my notion is (puisque l'occasion se présente) to make the place as homogeneous as possible.
"Do come. You will stay here at the Cottage. I am living with my mother.
"Very faithfully yours,John Stanburne."
To this letter, which offered to Mr. Prigley's mind the most tempting of all possible baits, for he dearly loved to dabble in architecture and restorations, the reverend gentleman, being bound by his engagement with the Ogdens, could only regretfully answer:—
"My dear Colonel Stanburne,—I should have accepted your kind invitation with the greatest pleasure, and the more so that I take a deep interest in the restoration of your noble old mansion, but unfortunately I have a private pupil whom I cannot leave. It is young Jacob Ogden, whose father is one of your militia officers."Yours most truly,E. Prigley."
"My dear Colonel Stanburne,—I should have accepted your kind invitation with the greatest pleasure, and the more so that I take a deep interest in the restoration of your noble old mansion, but unfortunately I have a private pupil whom I cannot leave. It is young Jacob Ogden, whose father is one of your militia officers.
"Yours most truly,E. Prigley."
But by return of post Mr. Prigley got the following short reply:—
"My dear Mr. Prigley,—The best solution of the difficulty will be, to bring little Jacob with you. I know little Jacob very well, and he knows me. Give my compliments to his father if you have to ask his permission, and tell him we will take good care of his little boy."Yours very faithfully,J. Stanburne."
"My dear Mr. Prigley,—The best solution of the difficulty will be, to bring little Jacob with you. I know little Jacob very well, and he knows me. Give my compliments to his father if you have to ask his permission, and tell him we will take good care of his little boy.
"Yours very faithfully,J. Stanburne."
So the end of it was, that little Jacob found himself suddenly removed to Wenderholme Cottage, where old Mrs. Stanburne lived. The change was highly agreeable to him—not the less agreeable that the companion of his leisure hours was the beautiful little Edith.
Wenderholme Cottage was in fact a very comfortable and commodious house. Its claims to the humble title which it bore, were, first, that its front was all gables, with projecting roofs, and carved or traceried barge-boards; and, secondly, that its rooms were small. But if they were small they were numerous; and when it pleased Mrs. Stanburne to receive visitors—and it often pleased that hospitable lady so to do—it was astonishing how many people the Cottage could be made to hold.
A little kindness soon wins the affections of a child, and little Jacob had not been more than three or four days at Wenderholme before he began to be very fond of Mrs. Stanburne. Hers was just the sort of influence which is necessary to a young gentleman at that age—the influence of a woman of experience, who is at the same time a high-bred gentlewoman. No doubt his old grandmother loved little Jacob more than any thing else in the world; but she was narrow-minded, and despotic, and vulgar in all her ways. Mrs. Ogden, too, had moments of caprice and violence, in which, she was dangerous to oppose, and difficult to pacify; in short, she was one of those persons, too common in her class, of whom Matthew Arnold says that they are deficient in sweetness and light. The steady unfailing goodness of Mrs. Stanburne, her uniformly gentle manners, her open intelligent sympathy, produced on her young guest an effect made ten times more powerful by all his early associations. It was likecoming out of a chamber where every thing was rough and uncouth, into a pleasant drawing-room, full of light and elegance, where there are flowers, and music, and books. Such a change would not be agreeable to every one: whether it would be agreeable or not depends upon the instinctive preferences. Ladies like Mrs. Stanburne do not put everybody at his ease, and it proves much in little Jacob's favor that he felt happy in her presence. As Jacob Ogden, the elder, had been formed by nature for the rude contest with reluctant fortune, so his nephew had been created for the refinements of an attained civilization. Therefore, henceforth, though he still loved his grandmother, both from gratitude and habit, his young mind saw clearly that neither her precepts nor her example were to be accepted as authoritative, and he looked up to Mrs. Stanburne as his preceptress.
Little Jacob's healthy honest face and simple manners recommended him to the good lady from the first, and he had not been a week under her roof before she took a kind interest in every thing concerning him. The mere facts that he had no mother, no sister, no brother, and that he had lived alone with his father in such a place as Twistle Farm, were of themselves enough to attract attention and awaken curiosity; but the story of his arrival at Wenderholme in the preceding winter was also known to her, and she knew how unendurably miserable his lonely home had been. Mrs. Stanburne talked a good deal with Mr. Prigley about the boy, and learned with pleasure his father's wonderful and (as now might be hoped) permanent reformation.
"He does not seem to have neglected the little boy," she said; "he reads very well. I asked him to read aloud to me yesterday, and was surprised to hear how well he read—I mean, quite as if he understood it, and not in the sing-song way children often acquire."
"He's ten years old now, and he ought to read well," replied Mr. Prigley; "but he knows a great deal for a boyof his age. It's high time to send him to school, though; it's too lonely for him at the farm. I am preparing him for Eton."
Mrs. Stanburne expressed some surprise at this. "Boys in his rank in life don't often go to Eton, do they, Mr. Prigley?"
The clergyman smiled as he answered that little Jacob's rank in life was not yet definitively settled. Mrs. Stanburne replied that she thought it was, since his father was a retired tradesman.
"Yes, but his uncle, Mr. Jacob Ogden of Milend, has not left business; indeed he is greatly extending his business just now, for he has built an immense new factory. And this little boy is to be his heir—his uncle told me so himself three weeks since. This child will be a rich man—nobody can tell how rich. His uncle wishes him to be educated as a gentleman."
It is a great recommendation to a little boy to be heir to a large fortune, and Mrs. Stanburne's natural liking for little Jacob was by no means diminished by a knowledge of that fact. As he was going to Eton, too, she began to look upon him as already in her own rank of life, where boys were sent to Eton, and inherited extensive estates.
During Mr. Prigley's frequent absences with Colonel Stanburne at the Hall, Mrs. Stanburne undertook to hear little Jacob his lessons, and then the idea struck her that Jacob and Edith might both write together from her dictation. In this way the boy and the girl became class-fellows. Edith had a governess usually, but the governess had gone to visit her relations, and Miss Edith's education was for the present under the superintendence of her grandmamma.
So between these two children an intimacy rapidly established itself—an intimacy which affected the course of their whole lives.
One day when they had been left alone together in thedrawing-room, little Jacob asked the young lady some question, and he began by calling her "Miss Edith."
"Miss Edith!" said she, pouting; "why do you call me Miss? The servants may call me Miss, but you mayn't. We're school-fellows now, and you must call me Edith. And I shall call you Jacob. Why haven't you got a prettier name for me to call you by? Jacob isn't pretty at all. Haven't you another name?"
Poor little Jacob was obliged to confess his poverty in names. He had but one, and that one uncouth and unacceptable!
"Only one name. Why, you funny little boy, only to have one name! I've got four. I'm called Edith Maud Charlotte Elizabeth. But I'll tell you what I'll do. As I've got four names and you've only one, I'll give you one of mine. I can't call you Charlotte, you know, because you're not a girl; but I can call you Charley, and I always will do. So now I begin. Charley, come here!"
Little Jacob approached obediently.
"Ha, ha! he answers to his new name already!" she cried in delight, clapping her hands. "What a clever little boy he is! He's a deal cleverer than the pony was when we changeditsname! But then, to be sure, the pony never properly knew its first name either."
Suddenly she became grave, and put her fingers on the young gentleman's arm. "Charley," she said, "this must be a secret between us two, because if grandmamma found out, she might be angry with me, you know. But you like to be called Charley, don't you? isn't it nice?"
The London architect who was charged with the restoration of Wenderholme gave advice which could not be followed without a heavy outlay; but in this respect he was surpassed by Colonel Stanburne's amateur adviser, Mr. Prigley, whose imagination revelled in the splendors of an ideal Elizabethan interior, full of carving and tapestry, and all manner of barbaric magnificence. Where the architect would have been content with paper, Mr. Prigley insisted upon wainscot; and where the architect admitted plain panelling, the clergyman would have it carved in fanciful little arches, or imitations of folded napkins, or shields of arms, or large medallion portraits of the kings of England, or bas-reliefs of history or the chase.
Only consider what Mr. Prigley's tastes and circumstances had been, and what a painful contradiction had ever subsisted between them! He had an intense passion for art—not for painting or sculpture in their independent form, for of these he knew little—but Mr. Prigley loved architecture mainly, and then all the other arts as they could help the effect of architecture. With these tastes he lived in a degree of poverty which utterly forbade any practical realization of them, and surrounded by buildings of which it is enough to say that they represented the taste of the inhabitants of Shayton. The ugliest towns in the world are English towns—the ugliest towns in England are in the manufacturing district—the ugliest town in the manufacturing district was theone consigned to Mr. Prigley's spiritual care. Here his artistic tastes dwelt in a state of suppression, like Jack-in-the-box. Colonel Stanburne had imprudently unfastened the lid; it flew open, and Jack sprang up with a suddenness and an energy that was positively startling and alarming.
The fact is, Mr. Prigley lived in a condition of intoxication during the whole time of his stay at Wenderholme Cottage—an intoxication just as real as that which he denounced in Seth Schofield and Jerry Smethurst, and the other patrons of the Red Lion. A man may get tipsy on other things than ale or brandy; and it may be doubted whether any tipsiness is more complete, or more enjoyable whilst it lasts, than that which attends the realization of our ideas and the gratification of our tastes. And it has been kindly ordained that when we are not rich enough to realize our ideas for ourselves, we take nearly as much interest in seeing them realized by somebody else; so that critics who could not afford to build a laborer's cottage, get impassioned about Prince Albert's monument or the future Palace of Justice. How much the more, then, should Mr. Prigley excite himself about Wenderholme, especially seeing that Colonel Stanburne had done him the honor to consult his judgment, and expressed the desire to benefit by his extensive knowledge, his cultivated taste! Was it not a positive duty to interest himself in the matter, and to give the best advice he could? It was a duty, and it was a pleasure.
Mr. Prigley had already half decided the Colonel, when a powerful ally came unexpectedly to his assistance. One morning at breakfast-time, when the Colonel read his letters, he said to Mrs. Stanburne, "Here's a letter from an acquaintance of ours who wants to come and stay here," and he handed her the following note:—
"My dear Colonel Stanburne,—Since I had the pleasure of seeing you at Wenderholme, I have often thoughtabout what you are doing there. Having had a good deal of experience with architects, restorations, &c., it has occurred to me that I might be of some use. Would you present my compliments to Mrs. Stanburne, and say that if it occasioned no inconvenience to her, I should very much like to spend a few days at Wenderholme Cottage? I would bring nobody with me except Thompson, my valet; and though our acquaintance is comparatively a recent one, I presume upon it so far as to hope that you will not allow my visit to make any difference—I mean, in asking people to meet me. I should like, on the contrary, to have you all to myself, so that we may talk about the restoration of Wenderholme in detail: it interests me greatly. With kind compliments to Mrs. Stanburne,"Yours very truly,Ingleborough."
"My dear Colonel Stanburne,—Since I had the pleasure of seeing you at Wenderholme, I have often thoughtabout what you are doing there. Having had a good deal of experience with architects, restorations, &c., it has occurred to me that I might be of some use. Would you present my compliments to Mrs. Stanburne, and say that if it occasioned no inconvenience to her, I should very much like to spend a few days at Wenderholme Cottage? I would bring nobody with me except Thompson, my valet; and though our acquaintance is comparatively a recent one, I presume upon it so far as to hope that you will not allow my visit to make any difference—I mean, in asking people to meet me. I should like, on the contrary, to have you all to myself, so that we may talk about the restoration of Wenderholme in detail: it interests me greatly. With kind compliments to Mrs. Stanburne,
"Yours very truly,Ingleborough."
"Well, dear," said Mrs. Stanburne, when she had read the note, "the Duke must come, of course. I like him very much—he is a very agreeable man. We needn't make any fuss."
So the Duke came; and as Colonel Stanburne had insisted that Mr. Prigley should stay to meet him, he and little Jacob prolonged their visit at the Cottage. "I look upon you, Mr. Prigley, as a necessary shield for my ignorance. Whenever you see that the Duke is puzzling me, you must divert the attack by drawing it on yourself.You'rea match for him—you know all the technical terms."
His Grace brought with him a heavy box of books, such as made Mr. Prigley's mouth water, and several portfolios of original designs for carvings, which had been executed for an old mansion of his own, contemporary with Wenderholme. He warmly supported Mr. Prigley's views; and in the long conversations which the three held together in the evenings, whilst the Colonel consumed his habitual allowance of tobacco, the books and portfolios were triumphantly appealed to,and it was proved in a conclusive manner that this thing ought to be done, and that this other thing was absolutely indispensable, till poor John Stanburne hardly knew what to think.
"It is an opportunity," said the Duke—"an opportunity such as, we hope, may never occur again; and it rests with you, Colonel Stanburne, whether your noble old mansion is to be restored, in the genuine sense of the word, so that it may have once again the perfect character of an Elizabethan house of the best class—or whether it is to be simply repaired so as to shelter you from the weather, like any other house in the neighborhood. You will never repent a liberal expenditure at the right moment. I say, be liberal now; it is an expense which will not occur twice, either in your lifetime or in that of your descendants for many generations. What are a few thousand pounds more or less in a matter of such importance? Make Wenderholme a perfect mansion of its kind. Restore all the wainscot, and tapestry, and glass; replace all the carved furniture that must have been there in Queen Elizabeth's time"—
"Thanks to Eureton's good management the night of the fire, all our furniture is safe."
The Duke made a little gesture of impatience. "Captain Eureton," he said, "did his duty most creditably on the night of the fire; but as the fire originated in the garrets, where all the old remnants were accumulated, the consequence was, that the most precious things in the house were destroyed, and the less precious were preserved."
"A good deal more useful, though, Duke, if less precious in the eyes of an antiquary."
"Useful? Yes, that is what makes them so dangerous. People admit incongruous things into their houses on the wretched pretext of utility. Do you know, in my opinion, it is a subject of regret that the furniture was saved that night?"
"You worked very hard yourself in saving it."
"Of course, it was my duty to take my share of the work;but circumstances will sometimes place us in such a position that duty compels us to act against what we believe to be the general interest of mankind. For instance, suppose I were out at sea in my yacht, and that I met with a boatful of Republicans, such as Mazzini, Garibaldi, Louis Blanc, and Ledru Rollin, all so hungry that they were just going to eat each other up, and so thirsty that they were just going to drink salt water and go raving mad, it would be my duty to pick up the rascals, and give them food, and land them on some hospitable shore, and I should do so because to save men from death is an elementary duty; but I should be rendering a far better service to mankind in letting the fellows eat each other, instead of assassinating their betters, and go raving mad out at sea rather than disseminate insane doctrines on the land."
The Colonel could not help laughing at this sally. "Do you mean to compare my furniture with a set of Republicans?"
"What Radicals and Republicans are in an ancient state, commonplace and ignoble furniture is in a fine old mansion; and your old remnants in the lumber-room were like men of refined education and ancient descent, who have been thrust out of their natural place in society to make room for vulgarparvenus."
"Well, but what on earth would you have me do with my furniture?"
"There are many ways of getting it out of Wenderholme. Why not furnish some other house with it? Why don't you have a house in London? yououghtto have a house in London. The furniture here is quite appropriate in a modern house, though it is incongruous in an old one. Or if you had a modern house anywhere, no matter where, you might furnish it with that furniture, and then Wenderholme would be free to receive things suitable for it."
Amongst other books that the Duke had brought with him was Viollet-le-Duc's valuable and comprehensive "Dictionnairedu Mobilier;" and the three gentlemen were soon as deep in the study of chairs andbahutsas they had before been in that of wainscots and stained glass. Colonel Stanburne was not by nature an enthusiast in matters of this kind, and would have lived calmly all his life amidst the incongruities of the Wenderholme of his youth; but nobody knows, until he has been exposed to infection, whether he may not catch some enthusiasm from others which never would have originated in himself. From the very beginning of his stay, Mr. Prigley had begun to indoctrinate John Stanburne in these matters; and after the arrival of the Duke's richly illustrated volumes, the pupil's progress had been remarkable for its rapidity. He now felt thoroughly persuaded that it would be wrong to miss such a rare opportunity, and that economy at such a moment would be unworthy of the owner of Wenderholme. He had a large sum of money in the Funds, entirely under his own control, and he resolved to appropriate a portion of this to the restoration of the mansion, in accordance with the advice of the Duke and Mr. Prigley.
One day at lunch, his Grace was lamenting the loss of the old carvings in the lumber-room, when little Jacob, who dined when his elders lunched, and was usually a model of good behavior, in that he observed a Trappistine silence during the repast, rather astonished the company by saying, "Please, I know where there's plenty of old oak."
The gentlemen took this for one of those remarks, usually so little to the point, which children are in the habit of making. Mrs. Stanburne kindly answered by inquiring "whether there was much old oak at Twistle Farm?"
"Oh no, I don't mean at papa's—I mean here," replied little Jacob, with great vivacity. John Stanburne said, "There used to be plenty, my boy, but it was all burnt in the fire."
"I don't mean that; I never saw that. I mean, what I have seen since I have been here this time,—real old oak, all carved with lions and tigers—at least, I believe they arelions and tigers—and pigs and wolves, too, and all sorts of birds and things."
There was not an atom of old oak in Wenderholme Cottage, and there was not an atom of furniture of any kind in Wenderholme Hall. What could the child mean? Had he been dreaming?
Everybody's attention was drawn to little Jacob, who, becoming very red and excited, reiterated his assertion with considerable boldness and emphasis. When called upon for an explanation, he said that when he had been playing in the great barn, amongst the hay, he had got into a long low garret over the pigsties and the hen-houses, and that it was full of old oak—"quite full of it," he reiterated.
Mrs. Stanburne's face assumed an expression of thought and reflection, as if she were seeking inwardly for something imperfectly remembered.
"It strikes me," she said, "that when my husband's father modernized the house, he must have put part of the old things into other lumber-rooms than those at the top of the house itself. There are places amongst the out-buildings which have not been opened for many years, and I believe we should find something there."
The Duke became eager with anticipation. "The merest fragments of the original furniture would be precious, Mrs. Stanburne. If we only had some specimens, as data, the rest might be reconstructed in the same taste. Let us go and look up whatever may remain. This little boy will be our guide."
Little Jacob, proud and excited, led the way to the great barn. It was fun to him to make the gentlemen follow him up the ladder, and over the hay, to a little narrow doorway that was about three feet above the hay-level. "That's the door," he said, and began to climb up the rough wall. He pushed it open by using all his force in frequent shoulder-thrusts, the rusty hinges gradually yielding. The adult explorers followed, and found themselves in total darkness.
"The old oak isn't here," said little Jacob; "it's a good bit further on."
The garret they were in served as a lumber-room for disused agricultural implements, and both the Duke and Mr. Prigley hurt their shins against those awkward obstacles. At last they came to a blank wall, and then to what seemed to be a sort of cupboard, so far as they could guess by touching.
Behind the cupboard was a small space, into which little Jacob insinuated himself, and afterwards cheerfully sang out, "I'm all right; here's the place!"
The gentlemen pushed the cupboard back a foot or two, and found the doorway behind it by which their guide had passed. They were in a long, low attic, very dimly lighted by a little hole in the wall at its remote extremity. It was full of obstacles, which the Duke's touch recognized at once as carved oak.
"We ought to have had lanterns," he said; "how tantalizing it is not to be able to see!"
"I would rather have a few slates taken off," John Stanburne answered; "that will make us a fine sky-light. I have a dread of fire."
Little Jacob was sent to fetch two or three men, who in half an hour had removed slates enough to throw full daylight on the scene—such daylight as had not penetrated there for many a long year. The old furniture of Wenderholme, gray, almost white, with age, filled the place from end to end in one continuous heap.
"But this is all white," said little Jacob, "and old oak ought to be brown, oughtn't it?"
"A little linseed-oil will restore the color," the Duke replied. Then he exclaimed, "By Jove! Colonel, we have found a treasure—we have indeed! Let us get every thing out into the yard, and then we can examine the things in detail."
The whole of the afternoon was spent in getting the old oak out. The gentlemen worked with the laborers, the Dukehimself as energetically as any one. His great anxiety was to prevent injury to the carvings, which were very picturesque and elaborate. When the things were all out of doors, and the garret finally cleared, it was astonishing what a display they made. There were six cabinets, of which four had their entablatures supported by massive griffins or lions, and their panels inlaid with ebony and satin-wood, or carved with bas-reliefs, which, though certainly far from accurate in point of design, produced a very rich effect; whilst even the plainest of the cabinets were interesting for some curious specimen of turner's work or tracery. Then there were portions of three or four state beds, with massive deeply panelled testers and huge columns, constructed with that disdain for mechanical necessity, and that emphatic preference of the picturesque, which marked the taste of the Elizabethan age. Thus, a single bed-post would in one place be scarcely thicker than a man's wrist, and in another thicker than his body; the weight of the whole being enormously out of proportion to its strength. There were a number of chairs of various patterns, but which agreed in uniting weight with fragility, and stateliness with discomfort. There were also innumerable fragments, difficult at first sight to classify, but amongst which might be recognized the legs of tables (constructed on the same principle as the bed-posts), and pieces that had been detached from chairs, and cabinets, and beds. In addition to all these things, there were quantities of old wainscot, some of it carved, or inlaid with various woods.
The men had come to the wainscot at last, for it was reared against the walls of the garret behind the barricade of furniture. As they were removing it, there was a crashing of broken glass. A piece of this glass was brought to the light, and it was found to be stained with the arms of the Stanburnes (or, a bend cottised sa.), simple old bearings like those of most ancient untitled houses. On this other fragments were carefully collected, and they all bore the arms ofStanburne impaled with those of families with which the Colonel's ancestors had intermarried. Mr. Prigley, who was rather strong in heraldry, and knew the genealogy of his wife's family and all its alliances much better than did John Stanburne himself, recognized the martlets of Tempest, the red lion of Mallory, the green lion of Sherburne, the black lion of Stapleton, the chevron and cinquefoils of Falkingham, the golden lozenges of Plumpton, charged with red scallop-shells, in fess on a field of azure. "This has been a great heraldic window, commemorating the alliances of the family!" cried Mr. Prigley, in ecstasy. "It must be restored, Colonel," said the Duke, "and brought down to the present time—down to you and Lady Helena."
Soon afterwards another discovery was due to the restless curiosity and boyish activity of little Jacob. He had found means to open one of the biggest of the cabinets, and had hauled out what seemed to him an old piece of carpet folded in many folds. He ran to inform the Duke of his discovery; but his Grace, eagerly unfolding the supposed piece of carpet, displayed a rich field of
"Arras green and blue,Showing a gaudy summer morn,Where with puffed cheek the belted hunter blewHis wreathéd bugle-horn."
"Arras green and blue,Showing a gaudy summer morn,Where with puffed cheek the belted hunter blewHis wreathéd bugle-horn."
Other pieces of tapestry followed, and the heaviest of the cabinets was found to be nearly full of them. They consisted almost exclusively of hunting scenes and pastorals, with landscapes and foliage, which, though seldom approaching correctness as a representation of nature, must have produced, nevertheless, a superbly decorative effect when hung in the halls of Wenderholme.
The Duke had said very little for nearly an hour, except in ordering the men to arrange the furniture in groups. When this had been accomplished to his satisfaction, he turned to the Colonel, and made him the following little speech:—
"Colonel Stanburne, I congratulate you upon a discovery which would be interesting to any intelligent person, but is so most especially to the representative of the Stanburnes. Here are specimens of the furniture used by your ancestors from the reign of Henry VII. to that of James I. We have here ample data for the complete restoration of Wenderholme, even in the details of wainscot and tapestry and glass. The minutest fragments in these heaps are valuable beyond price. It is getting late now, but to-morrow I will go through every bit of it and ticket every thing, and when I leave I will send you workmen capable of doing every thing that ought to be done."
Here little Jacob whispered to Mr. Prigley, "It was I that found it out, wasn't it, Mr. Prigley?" to which piece of self-assertion his tutor replied by the repressive monosyllable "Hush!"
But his Grace had overheard both of them, and said, "Indeed we are very much obliged to you, my little boy—very much obliged indeed. I should like to make you a little present of some sort for the pleasure you have afforded me this afternoon. You are going to Eton, I hear. Have you got a watch?"
Little Jacob pulled out a silver watch, of the old-fashioned kind popularly known as turnips, from their near approach to the spherical conformation. The Duke smiled as he looked at it, and asked what time it was. Little Jacob's watch was two hours late. "But it ticks yet," he said.
The Duke said no more just then, but when little Jacob was dressed to go down to dessert, his Grace's valet, Thompson, knocked at the door, and brought a gold watch with a short chain, wherewith the young gentleman proudly adorned himself. One of the first things he did was to go to the Duke and thank him; and he did it so nicely that the nobleman was pleased to say that when little Jacob went to Eton he might "show his watch to the fellows, and tell 'em who gave it him."
Little Jacob was in luck's way, for the day he left Wenderholme Cottage the Colonel tipped him with a five-pound note. He had a private interview, too, with Miss Edith, and there was quite a little scene between the infantine lovers.
"Are you really going away to-day, Charley?" she said, using the name she had given him.
"Yes; Mr. Prigley says he must go back on account of Shayton Church. It will be Sunday to-morrow, you know."
"And when will you come back to us again?"
"I don't know. Perhaps never."
"Perhaps never!" exclaimed Miss Edith; "and aren't you very sorry?"
"Yes, very sorry. I have been very happy here."
"Well, then, you must come again. I wish you would. I like you very much. You are a nice boy," and the frank young lady made him a small present—a little gold pin with a turquoise in it. "Keep that; you must never lose it, you know—it is a keepsake."
When little Jacob left with Mr. Prigley, Mrs. Stanburne was very kind to him, and said he must come again some time. This cheered Edith's heart considerably, but still there was a certain moisture in her eyes as she bade farewell to her boy-friend.
And in the same way I, who write this, feel a sadness coming over me which is not to be resisted. Childrenneverlive long. When they are not carried away in little coffins, and laid for ever in the silent grave, they become transformed so rapidly that we lose them in another way. The athletic young soldier or Oxonian, the graceful heroine of the ball-room, may make proud the parental heart, but can they quite console it for the eternal loss of the little beings who plagued and enlivened the early years of marriage? A father may sometimes feel a legitimate and reasonable melancholy as he contemplates the most promising of little daughters, full of vivacity and health. How long will the dear child remain to him? She will be altered in six months; in six years she will be succeeded by a totally different creature—a creature new in flesh and blood and bone, thinking other thoughts and speaking another language. There is a sadness even in that change which is increase and progression; for the glory of noon-day has destroyed the sweet delicacy of the dewy Aurora, and the wealth of summer has obliterated the freshness of the spring.
In saying good-bye to little Jacob and his friend Miss Edith, now, I am like some father who, under the fierce sun of India, sends his children away from him, that they may live. He expects to meet them again, yet these children he will never meet. In their place he will see men and women in the vigor of ripened adolescence. And when he quits the deck before the ship sails, and the little arms cling round him for the last time, and for the last time he hears the lisping voices, the dear imperfect words, a great grief comes like ice upon his heart, and he feels a void, and a loss, and a vain longing, only less painful than what we feel at the grave's brink, when the earth clatters down on the coffin, and the clergyman reads his farewell.
If the reader has ever been absent for many years from some neighborhood where he has once lived—where many faces were familiar to him, and the histories that belonged to the faces—where he once knew the complex relations of the inhabitants towards each other, and was at least in some measure cognizant of the causes which were silently modelling their existence in the future, as masons build houses in which some of us will have to live—if, after knowing the life of a neighborhood so intimately as this, he has left that place for long years, and come back to it again to visit it, that he may renew the old sensations, and revive his half-forgotten ancient self, he has learned a lesson about human life which no other experience can teach. The inhabitants who have never gone away for long, the parson who preaches every Sunday in the church, the attorney who goes to his office every day after breakfast, the shop-keepers who daily see the faces of their customers across the counter, perceive changes, but not change. To them every vicissitude has the air of a particular accident, and it always seems that it might have been avoided. But the great universal change has that in its aspect which tells you that it cannot be avoided; and he who has once seen it face to face knows that all things are moving and flowing, and that the world travels fast in a sense other than the astronomical.
I have endeavored to enlist the reader's interest in a set of persons who lived at Shayton and Sootythorn at the time of the establishment of the militia. The first training of Colonel Stanburne's regiment took place in the month of May, 1853—to be precise, it met for the first time on the 23d of that month; and the 15th of the month following will long be remembered in the neighborhood on account of the great fire at Wenderholme Hall, which, as the reader is already aware, took place under circumstances of the most exceptional publicity. It is probable that on no occasion, from the times of the Tudors to our own, were so many people collected in the park and garden of Wenderholme as on that memorable night.
It is the misfortune of certain positions that the virtues which are necessary to those who occupy them have to be translated into a money outlay before they can be adequately appreciated. Colonel Stanburne was not an extravagant man by nature; he was simple in all his habits and tastes, liked to live quietly at his own house, hated London, and indulged himself only in an innocent taste for tandem-driving, which certainly did not cost him two hundred a-year. But this was John Stanburne's character in his private capacity; as a leader of men—as the head of a regiment—his nature was very different. Whether his surroundings excited him, and so caused him to lose the mental balance which is necessary to perfect prudence, or whether he acted at first in ignorance of the wonderful accumulativeness of tradesmen's bills, and afterwards went on from the force of established habit, it is certain that from the 23d of May, 1853, when his regiment assembled for the first time, Colonel Stanburne entered upon a new phase of his existence. Hitherto he had lived strictly within his income, whilst from the year 1853 he lived within it no longer.
His whole style of living had been heightened and increased by his position in the militia. The way he drove outwas typical of every thing else. Before his colonelcy he had been contented with a tandem, and his tandem was horsed from the four ordinary carriage-horses which were regularly kept at Wenderholme. But since it had seemed convenient—nay, almost indispensably necessary—to have a commodious vehicle of some kind, that he might convey his officers from Sootythorn to Wenderholme every time he asked them to dinner—and since he had naturally selected a drag as the proper thing to have, and the pleasantest thing for himself to drive—there had been an increase in his stable expenses, and a change in his habits, which lasted all the year round. Besides, his natural kindliness and generosity of disposition, which had formerly found a sufficing expression in a general heartiness and good-nature, now began to express themselves in a much more expensive way—namely, by more frequent and more profuse hospitality.
In the year 1865 Colonel Stanburne was still at the head of his regiment of militia, and during the annual trainings the Wenderholme coach has never ceased to run. Wenderholme had become quite a famous place, and tourists knowing in architecture came to see it from distant counties. It is a perfect type now of a great Elizabethan mansion: the exterior, especially the central mass over the porch, is enriched with elaborate sculpture; there are great mullioned windows everywhere, and plenty of those rich mouldings and copings which diversify the fronts of great houses of that age, and crown their lofty walls. There are globes and pinnacles on the completed gables, and at the intersections of the roofing rise fantastic vanes of iron-work, gilded, and glittering in the sunshine against the blue of the summer sky.
The interior has but one defect—it seems to require, in its inhabitants, the costume of Sir Walter Raleigh and the great ladies of his time. It has become like a poem or a dream, and one would hardly be surprised to find Edmund Spenser there reading the "Faëry Queene" to the nobleSurrey, or imagining, in the solitude of one of its magnificent rooms, some canto still to be written.
Let us pause here, and look at the place simply as in a picture, or series of pictures, before the current of events hurries us on till we have no time left to enjoy beautiful things, nor mental tranquillity enough to feel in tune with this perfect peace.
It is noon in summer. Under every oak in the great avenues lies a dark patch of shadow, and on the rich expanse of the open park the sunshine glows and darkens as the thin white clouds sail slowly in the blue aerial ocean. How rich and stately is the rounded foliage—how perfect the fulness of the protected trees! In the midst of them stands the house of Wenderholme, surrounded by soft margins of green lawn and wide borders of gleaming flowers.
It is pleasant this hot day to enter the great cool hall, to walk on its pavement of marble (white marble and black, in lozenges), and rest the eye in the subdued light which reigns there, even at noon.
Under pretext of restoration, Wenderholme had been made a great deal more splendid, and incomparably more comfortable, than it ever was in the time of its pristine magnificence. In the wainscot and the furniture the architect had lavishly used a great variety of strange and beautiful woods, quite unknown to our ancestors; and not contented with the stones and marbles of the British islands, he had brought varieties from Normandy, and Sicily, and Spain, and the Mediterranean shores of Africa. As for the arrangements that regarded comfort and convenience, John Stanburne's architect had learned the extent of a rich Englishman's exigence when he erected the mansions of five or six great cotton-manufacturers, and, strong in this experience, had made Wenderholme a model place for elaborately perfect housekeeping.
What had been done with the modern furniture that hadbeen saved on the night of the fire? We may learn this, and some other matters also, when the Colonel comes in to lunch.
He crosses his great hall, and goes straight to the dining-room. The twelve years that have passed by have aged him even more than so many dozens of months ought to have done. His hair is getting prematurely gray, and his step, though still firm and manly, has lost a good deal of its elasticity, and something of its grace. The expression on his countenance does not quite correspond with all the glory of the paradise that is his, with the sunshine on the broad green park and vast shade-bestowing trees, with the rich peace of these cool and silent halls. When he is with other people, his face is very much as it used to be; but when he is alone, as he is now, it looks weary and haggard, as if to live were an effort and a care—as if some hateful anxiety haunted him, and wore him hour after hour.
"Tell her ladyship that I have come in to lunch; and stay—you need not wait upon us to-day."
Lady Helena comes with her scarcely audible little step, and quietly takes her place at the table.Sheis not very much changed by the lapse of these last twelve years. She is still rather pretty, and she looks as intelligent as ever, though not perhaps quite so lively. But as for liveliness, she has nothing to encourage her vivacity just now, for the Colonel eats his slice of cold beef in silence, and scarcely even looks in her direction. When he looks up at all, it is at the window,—not that there is any thing particular to be seen there—only the sunny garden with the fountain, fed from the hills behind.
"My dear," said Lady Helena, "as the regiment is disbanded now, I suppose we have no longer any reason to remain at Wenderholme? Suppose we went up to town again for the end of the season? There are several people that you promised to see, and didn't call upon before you came away. There's old Lady Sonachan's ball on the 15th,and I think we ought to do something ourselves in Grosvenor Square—you know we meant to do, if the training of the regiment had not been a fortnight earlier than we expected."
"I think it would be as well to stop quietly at Wenderholme."
"I'm afraid, dear," said Lady Helena, caressingly, "that you're losing your good habits, and going back to the ideas you had many years ago, before the militia began. You've been so very nice for a long time now that it would be a pity to go back again to what you used to be before you were properly civilized. For you know, dear, you werenotquite civilized then—you weresauvage, almost a recluse; and now you like society, and it does you good—doesn't it, dear? Everybody ought to go into society—we all of us need it.Docome with me to town, dear, and after that I will go with you wherever you like."
"Helena," the Colonel answered, gravely, "that's the sort of game we have been playing for many years. 'Do indulge me in my fancy, and then I will indulge you in some fancy of your own.' It is time to put a stop to that sort of thing."
"It would be a pity, I think. Have we not been very happy, my love, all these years together?"
"Yes, no doubt, of course. But I'll tell you what it is, Helena—we made a great mistake."
Lady Helena's face flushed, and her eyes filled. "A mistake! I am grieved if you think your marriage was a mistake, John. I never think so of mine."
"It isn't that; I don't mean the marriage. I mean something since the marriage. But it's no use talking about that just now. I say, put your shawl on and take a little walk with me, will you?"
They went in silence by the path that rose towards the moors behind the house. When they came to the pond, the Colonel seemed to pause and hesitate a little; then he said, "No, not here—on the open moor."
They came to the region of the heather, and the park of Wenderholme, with all the estate around it, lay spread like a great map beneath them.
"Sit down here, Helena, and let us talk together quietly. It may be better for both of us." Then came a long pause of silence, and when Lady Helena looked in the Colonel's face, she perceived that his eyes were wandering over the land from one field to another, with a strange expression of lingering and longing and regret. Evidently he had forgotten that she was with him.
"Dear," she said at last, "what was that great mistake you talked about?"
He started and looked round at her suddenly. Then, laying his hand very gently on her shoulder, said with strange tenderness, "You won't be hurt, will you? It was mutual, you know."
"Do you recollect, Helena," he went on, after a little while, "the time when I first began to drive four horses? You didn't approve of it—of course I know you didn't—and there were a good many other things that you didn't approve of either, and your opinion was plain enough in your way with me. Well, then, there were some things that you either did or wanted to do, you know, which didn't quite suit me, and seemed to me as unnecessary as my fancy for driving four horses seemed to you. But I found out that I could keep you in a good temper, and make you indulge me in my fancies, by indulging you in corresponding fancies of your own. So whenever I resolved upon an extravagance, I stopped your criticisms by some bribe; and the biggest bribe of all—the one that kept you indulgent to me year after year—was that house in Grosvenor Square."
"It was your own proposing."
"That's just what I am saying. I proposed the house in town to keep you quiet—to keep you from criticising me. You had got into a way of criticising me about the time ofthe fire, and I hated being criticised. So I thought, 'She shall have her own way if she'll only let me have mine;' and it seems you thought something of the same kind, for you became very indulgent with me. That has been our mistake, Helena."
"Butwasit such a mistake after all, darling? Have we not been very happy all these years? I remember we were not so happy just when the militia began. You were not so nice with me as you have been since."
"Perhaps not—and you weren't as nice with me either, Helena; but we were nearer being right then than we ever have been during the last few years. I mean to say that, if we had said plainly to each other then—in a kind sort of way, of course—what each was thinking, we should have spared each other a great deal of suffering."
"We have suffered very little, love; we have been very happy."
"The punishment is yet to come. I've been punished, in my mind, for years past, and said nothing about it to you, because I wanted partly to spare you, and partly to screen myself, for I thought I could bring things round again."
"Do you mean about money?"
"Yes."
"Well, but, dear, you always told me that there had been no diminution in our income. Did you not tell me the truth?"
"All that was perfectly true. The income was not diminished, but the new investments weren't as safe as the old ones. Don't you see, we had less capital to get our income from, and our expenses were even heavier than they used to be. So I invested at higher interest, to make up the difference in our income, and I've been carrying that on to an extent you know nothing about."
Lady Helena began to be alarmed. Nobody knew better than her ladyship that theprestigeof aristocracy rested ultimately upon wealth, and that she could no more keep up herstation without a good income than her strength without food. It had been a capital error of John Stanburne's from the beginning, not to consult his wife on every detail of his money transactions. She had always been perfectly prudent in not letting current expenses go beyond income, although, as they had only one child, there appeared to be no necessity for saving. She would have advised him well if he had invited her to advise him; but though he had always told her, with truth, that their income was four thousand a-year, he had not told her the history of the capital sum from which this income had, in consequence of some devices of his own, been drawn so unfailingly. The restoration of Wenderholme had been a very costly undertaking indeed. The whole outlay upon it John Stanburne had never dared to calculate; but we, who have no reason for that nervous abstinence from terrible totals, know that during the years immediately succeeding the great fire, he did not, in the restoration and adornment of his beautiful home, spend less than twenty-seven thousand pounds. The result, no doubt, was worth even so large an outlay as this; nor was the sum in itself very wildly extravagant, when one reflects that one of the Sootythorn cotton-spinners laid out fully as much on an ugly new house about half a mile beyond Chesnut Hill. But it diminished John Stanburne's funded property by more than one-half, and it therefore became necessary to invest the remainder more productively, to keep his income up to its old level.
Whilst he is telling these things to Lady Helena in his own way, let us narrate them somewhat more succinctly in ours. It had happened, about three years after the fire—that is, in the year 1856—that a new bank had been established in Sootythorn, called the Sootythorn District Bank, and some of the capitalists both in the immediate locality and in the neighboring country had invested in it rather largely. Amongst these was our acquaintance, Mr. Joseph Anison of Arkwright Lodge, near Whittlecup, who, not having a son to succeedhim in his business, did not care to extend it, and sought another investment for his savings which might as nearly as possible approach in productiveness the ample returns of commerce. Mr. Anison was one of the original founders of the new bank, and if the idea had not positively its first source in his own mind, it was he who brought it to a practicable shape, and finally made it a reality. Colonel Stanburne had taken Joseph Anison into his confidence about his money matters—at least so far as to show him the present reduced state of his funded capital; and he added that, with his diminished income, it had become necessary to economize by a determined reduction of expenses, the most obvious means to which would be the resignation of his commission in the militia—which, directly or indirectly, cost him a clear thousand a-year—and the abandonment of the house in town, which had then recently been established for the gratification of Lady Helena, and furnished with the modern furniture saved at the burning of Wenderholme. Mr. Anison strongly dissuaded the Colonel from both these steps, urging upon him the popularity which he enjoyed both in the regiment and at Sootythorn, and even certain considerations of public duty to which an English gentleman is rarely altogether insensible. The Colonel liked the regiment, he liked his position, and it may even be said, without any exaggeration of his merits, that, independently of the consideration which it procured him, he felt an inward satisfaction in doing something which could be considered useful. To resign his commission, then, would have been difficult for another reason, if not altogether impossible. The regiment, instead of coming to Sootythorn for a month's training in the year, was on permanent garrison duty in Ireland, and he could not gracefully leave it.
The other project—the abandonment of his house in London—might have been agreeable enough to himself personally, but he was one of those husbands who, from weakness or some other cause, find it impossible to deprive a wife of anything which she greatly cares for. This defect was due in his case, as it is in many others, to an inveterate habit of politeness towards all women,eventowards his wife; and just as no gentleman would take possession of a chair or a footstool which a lady happened to be using, so John Stanburne could not turn Lady Helena out of that house in town which she liked so much, and which both of them looked upon as peculiarly her own. It is easy for rough and brutal men to do these things, but a gentleman will often get into money embarrassments out of mere delicacy. I don't mean to imply that the Colonel's way of dealing with his wife was the best way. It would have been far better to be frank with her from the beginning; but then a simple nature like John Stanburne's has such a difficulty in uniting the gentleness and the firmness which are equally necessary when one has to carry out measures which are sure to be disagreeable to a lady. Thesuaviter in modo, &c., is, after all, a species of hypocrisy—at least until it has become habitual; and when the Colonel was soft in manner, which he always was with women, he was soft in the matter also. In a word, though no one was better qualified to please a lady, he was utterly incapable of governing one—an incapacity which perhaps he shared with the majority of the sons of Adam.
As retrenchment had appeared impossible, or, at least, too difficult to be undertaken so long as there was the alternative of a change of investments, the Colonel begged Mr. Anison, as an experienced man of business, to look out for something good in that way; and Mr. Anison, who, with his brother capitalists, had just started the Sootythorn District Bank, honestly represented to his friend that a better and a safer investment was not likely to be found anywhere. As he preached not merely by precept but by example, and showed that he had actually staked every thing which he possessed on the soundness of the speculation—he, the father of a family—Colonel Stanburne was easily persuaded, and becameone of the largest shareholders. The bank was soon in a very flourishing condition—in fact it was really prosperous, and exceeded the most sanguine hopes of its originators. The manager was both an honorable man and a man of real ability as a financier. The dividends were very large, andnotpaid out of capital.
After five or six years of this prosperity, during which the Colonel's aggregate income had been higher than it ever was during his best days as a fund-holder, he began to conceive the idea of replacing, by economy, the sum of £27,000, which had been withdrawn from his funded capital for the restoration and embellishment of Wenderholme. To do this he prudently began by saving the surplus of his income; but as this did not seem to accumulate fast enough for his desires, he thought that, without permanently alienating his estate, he might mortgage some portion of it, and invest the money so procured at the higher interest received by the shareholders of the Sootythorn District Bank. The mere surplus of interest would of itself redeem the mortgage after a few years, leaving the money borrowed in his own hands as a clear increase of capital. In this way he mortgaged a great part of the estate of Wenderholme to our friend Mr. Jacob Ogden of Milend.
All these things were doneclam Helenâ—unknown to her ladyship. She was not supposed to understand business, and probably the Colonel, from the first, had apprehended her womanish fears of the glorious uncertainties of speculation. His conscience, however, was perfectly at ease. At the cost of a degree of risk which he set aside as too trifling to be dwelt upon, he was gradually—nay, even rapidly—replacing the money sunk in Wenderholme; and every day brought him nearer to the time when he might live in his noble mansion without the tormenting thought that it had been paid for out of his inherited capital. At the same time, so far from withdrawing from the world's eyes into the obscuritywhich is usually one of the most essential conditions of retrenchment, he actually filled a higher place in the county than he had ever occupied before. The taste for society grows upon us and becomes a habit, so that the man who a year or two since bore solitude with perfect ease, may to-morrow find much companionship a real want, though an acquired one. The more sociable John Stanburne became, the more he felt persuaded that the house in London was a proper thing to keep up, and there came to be quite an admirable harmony between him and Lady Helena. She had always loved him very much, but in the days when he had a fancy for retirement, she had felt just a shade of contempt for the rusticity of his tastes. As this rusticity wore off, her ladyship respected her husband more completely; and the coolness which had existed between them in the year 1853 was succeeded by an affectionate indulgence on both sides, which was entirely satisfactory to Lady Helena, and was only a little less so to the Colonel, because he knew it to be a sacrifice of firmness.