I ■r.r.vr.f./ ( .' Wenderholme. A STOR Y OF LANCASHIRE AND YORKSHIRE, BY PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON, AUTHOR OF "the INTELLECTUAL LIFE," ETC. " It takes a deal o' sorts to make a world." Popular Proverb. i J 3 J i y t J 1 > J I J- BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1890, Author's Edition. 'i.iV fc I t C I I i University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. I r TO AN OLD LADY IN YORKSHIRE. You remember a time when the country in which this story is placed was quite different from what it is to-day ; when the old proprietors lived in their halls undisturbed by modern innovation, and neither enriched by building leases, nor humiliated by the rivalry of mighty manufacturers. You have seen wonderful changes come to pass, — the valleys filled with towns, and the towns connected by railways, and the fields covered with suburban villas. You have seen people become richer and more refined, though perhaps less merry, than they used to be ; till the simple, unpretending life of the poorer gentlefolks of the past has become an almost incredible tradition, which few have preserved in their memory. When this story was first written, some passages of it were read to ^ you, and they reminded you of those strong contrasts in the life of the V North of England which are now so rapidly disappearing. Wender- '^ HOLME is therefore associated with you in my mind as one of its first ly, hearers, and I dedicate it to you affectionately. 427805 PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. IT happened, some time before this story was originally composed, that the author had a conversation, about the sale of novels, with one of the most eminent publish- ers of iiction in London.* The result of his experience was, that in the peculiar conditions of the English market short novels did not pay, whilst long ones, of the same quality, were a much safer investment. Having incurred several successive losses on short novels, my friend, the publisher, had made up his mind never to have any thing more to do with them, and strongly recommended me, if I attempted a work of fiction, to go boldly into three volumes at once, and not discourage myself by making an experiment on a smaller scale, which would only make failure a certainty. The reader may easily imagine the effect of such a conversation as this upon an author who, whatever may have been his experience in other depart- ments of literature, had none at all in the publication cf novels. The practical consequence of it was, that, when the present story was written, commercial reasons pre- vailed, as they unhappily so often do prevail, over artistic • This publisher was not a member of the firm of Messrs. W. Black- wood & Sons, who afterwards purchased the copyritjht of Wcudfrholme, nor was the story ever offered to him ; but his opinion h.id grc.it influ- ence with the author on account of his large experience. viii Preface to the American Edition. reasons, and the book was made far longer than, as a work of art, it ought to have been. The present edition, though greatly abridged, is not by any means, from the author's point of view, a muti- lated edition. On the contrary, it rather resembles a building of moderate dimensions, from which excres- cences have been removed. The architect has been careful to preserve every thing essential, and equally careful to take away every thing which had been added merely for the sake of size. The work is therefore at the present time much nearer in character to the origi- nal conception of the designer than it has ever been before. Notwithstanding the defect of too great length, and the difficulty which authors often experience in obtain- ing recognition in a new field, Wenderholme was very extensively reviewed in England, and, on the whole, very favorably. Unfortunately, however, for the author's chances of profiting by the suggestions of his critics, it so happened that when any character or incident was selected for condemnation by one writer, that identical character or incident was sure to be praised enthusias- tically by another, who spoke with equal authority and decision, in some journal of equal importance. The same contradictions occurred in criticisms by private friends, people of great experience and culture. Some praised the first volume, but did not like the third ; whilst oth- ers, who certainly knew quite as much about such mat- ters, considered that the book began badly, but improved immensely as it went on, and finished in quite an admir- able manner, like a horse that has warmed to his work. These differences of opinion led me to the rather dis- couraging conclusion that there is nothing like an ac- Preface to the American Edition. ix cepted standard of right and wrong in the criticism of fiction ; that the critic praises what interests or amuses him, and condemns what he finds tiresome, with little reference to any governing laws of art. I may observe, however, that the book had an artistic intention, which was the contrast between two classes of society in Lan- cashire, and that the militia was used as a means of bringing these two classes together. I may here reply to one or two objections which have been made as to the manner in which this plan was carried out. Most of the local newspapers in the north of England at once recognized the truth of local character in the book ; but one Manchester critic, with a patriotism for his native county which is a most respectable senti- ment, felt hurt by my descriptions of intemperance, and treated them as a simple calumny, arguing that the best answer to them was the industry of the county, which would not have been compatible with such habits. I have never desired to imply that all Lancashire people were drunkards, but there are certain nooks and corners of the county where drinking habits were prevalent, in the last generation, to a degree which is not exaggerated in this book. Such places did not become prosperous until the energy of the better-conducted inhabitants pro- duced a change in the local customs ; and I need hardly say that the hard drinkers themselves were unable to follow business either steadily or long. Downright drunkenness is now happily no longer customary in the middle classes, and in the present day men use stimu- lants rather to repair temporarily the exhaustion pro- duced by over-work than for any bacchanalian pleasure. In this more modern form of the drinking habit I do not think that Lancashire men go farther than the X Preface to the America7i Editioii. inhabitants of other very busy counties, or countries, where the strain on human energy is so great that there is a constant temptation to seek help from some kind of stimulating beverage. The only other objection to the local truth of Wender- holme which seems to require notice is that which was advanced in the Saturday Review. The critic in that periodical thought it untrue to English character to represent a man in Colonel Stanburne's position as good-natured enough to talk familiarly with his infe- riors. Well, if modern literature were a literature of types, and not of persons, such an objection would un- doubtedly hold good. The typical Englishman, when he has money and rank, is certainly a very distant and reserved being, except to people of his own condition ; but there are exceptions to this rule, — I have known several in real life, — and I preferred to paint an excep- tion, for the simple reason that reserve and pride are the death of human interest. It would be possible enough to introduce a cold and reserved aristocrat in a novel of English life, — such personages have often been delineated with great skill and fidelity, — but I maintain that they do not excite sympathy and interest, and that it would be a mistake in art to place one of them in a central situation, such as that of Colonel Stanburne in this volume. They may be useful in their place, like a lump of ice on a dinner-table. On the first publication of Wenderhohne, the author received a number of letters /rom people who were quite convinced that they had recognized the originals of the characters. The friends and acquaintances of novelists always amuse themselves in this way ; and yet it seldom happens, I believe, that there is any thing like a real Preface to the American Edition. xi portrait in a novel. A character is suggested by some real person, but when once the fictitious character exists in the brain of the author, he forgets the source of the original suggestion, and simply reports what the imagi- nary personage says and does. It is narrated of an eminent painter, famous for the saintly beauty of his virgins, that his only model for them was an old man- servant, and this is a good illustration of the manner in which the imagination operates. Some of my corre- spondents made guesses which were very wide of the mark. One lady, whom I had never thought about in connection with the novel at all, recognized herself in Mrs. Prigley, confessed her sins, and promised amend- ment ; an illusion scarcely to be regretted, since it may have been productive of moral benefit. A whole town- ship fancied that it recognized Jacob Ogden in a wealthy manufacturer, whose face had not been present to me when I conceived the character. A correspondent rec- ognized Dr. Bardly as the portrait of a surgeon in Lan- cashire who was never once in my mind's eye during the composition of the novel. The Doctor was really suggested by a Frenchman, quite ignorant of the Lan- cashire dialect, and even of English. But, of all these guesses, one of the commonest was that Philip Stan- burne represented the author himself, probably because he was called Philip. There is no telling what may happen to us before we die ; but I hope that the sup- posed original of Jacob Ogden may preserve his sanity to the end of his earthly pilgrimage, and that the author of this volume may not end his days in a monastery. P. G. H CONTENTS. PART I. Chapter I. Manners and Customs of Shayton .... i II. Grandmother and Grandson 5 III. At the Parsonage i6 IV. Isaac Ogden becomes a Backslider .... 29 V. Father and Son 42 VI. Little Jacob is lost 52 VII. Isaac Ogden's Punishment 59 VIII. From Sootythorn to Wenderholme .... 69 IX. The Fugitive 87 X. Christmas at Milend 94 XI. The Colonel goes to Shayton 106 XII. Ogden's New Mill 119 XIII. Stanithburn Peel 130 XIV. At Sootythorn 136 XV. With the Militia I43 XVI. A Case of Assault 15° XVII. Isaac Ogden again ^S5 XVIII. Isaac's Mother comes 161 XIX. The Colonel at Whittlecup 170 XX. Philip Stanburne in Love I74 XXI. The Wenderholme Coach 179 XXII. Colonel Stanburne apologizes 185 XIV Contents. Chapter XXIII. Husband and Wife 193 XXIV. The Colonel as a Consoler 201 XXV. Wenderholme in Festivity 212 XXVI. More Fireworks 225 XXVII. The Fire 229 XXVIII. Father and Daughter 238 XXIX. Progress of the Fire 241 XXX. Uncle Jacob's Love Affair 249 XXXI. Uncle Jacob is accepted 252 XXXII. Mr. Stedman relents 258 XXXIII. The Saddest in the Book 265 XXXIV. Jacob Ogden free again 273 XXXV. Little Jacob's Education 280 XXXVI. A Short Correspondence 284 XXXVII. At Wenderholme Cottage 286 XXXVIII. Artistic Intoxication 290 XXXIX. Good-bye to Little Jacob ....... 301 PART II. L After Long Years 303 II. In the Dining- Room 318 III. In the Drawing-Room 322 IV. Alone 327 V. The Two Jacobs 331 VI. The Sale 336 VII. A Frugal Supper 340 VIII. At Chesnut Hill 345 IX. Ogden of Wenderholme 354 X. Young Jacob and Edith 357 Contents, xv Chapter XI. Edith's Decision 366 XII. Jacob Ogden's Triumph 374 XIII. The Blow-Out 380 XIV. Mrs. Ogden's Authority 389 XV. Lady Helena returns 393 XVI. The Colonel comes 400 XVII. A Morning Call 404 XVIII. Money on the Brain 409 XIX. The Colonel at Stanithburn 418 XX. A Simple Wedding 425 XXI. The Monk 431 WENDERHOLME. PART I. I CHAPTER I. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF SHAYTON. T was an immemorial custom in Sliayton for families to restrict themselves to a very few Christian names, usually taken from the Old Testament, and these were repeated, gen- eration after generation, from a feeling of respect to parents, very laudable in itself, but not always convenient in its con- sequences. Thus in the family of the Ogdens, the eldest son was always called Isaac, and the second Jacob, so that if they had had a pedigree, the heralds would almost have been driven to the expedient of putting numbers after these names, — as we say Henry VIII. or Louis XIV. The Isaac Ogden who appears in this history may have been, if collateral Isaacs in other branches were taken into account, perhaps Isaac the fortieth ; indeed, the tombstones in Shayton churchyard recorded a number of Isaac Ogdens that was perfectly bewil- dering. Even the living Isaac Ogdens were numerous enough to puzzle any new-comer ; and a postman who had not been accustomed to the place, but was sent there from Rochdale, solemnly declared that " he wished all them Hisaac Hogdens was deead, every one on 'em, nobbut just about five or six, an' then there'd be less bother about t' letters." This wish may seem hard and unchristian, — it may appear, to readers who have had no experience in the delivery of letters, that 2 Wenderholme. Part i. to desire the death of a fellow-creature merely because he happened to be called Isaac Ogden implied a fearful degree of natural malevolence; but the business of a postman culti- vates an eagerness to get rid of letters, whereof the lay mind has no adear.ate concepLion ; and when a bachelor Isaac Ogden got a letter from an affectionate wife, or an Isaac Ogden, who never owed a penny, received a pressing dun from an impatient and exasperated creditor, these epistles were returned upon the postman's hands, and he became morbidly anxious to get rid of them, or " shut on 'em," as he himself expressed it. Some annoying mistakes of this kind had occurred in reference to our Mr. Isaac Ogden at the time when he was engaged to Miss Alice Wheatley, whose first affectionate letter from her father's house at Eatherby had not only miscarried, but actually been opened and read by several Isaac Ogdens in Shayton and its vicinity; for poor Miss Alice, in the flurry of directing her first epistle to her lover, had quite forgotten to put the name of the house where he then lived. This was particularly annoying to Mr. Ogden, who had wished to keep his engagement secret, in order to avoid as long as possible the banter of his friends ; and he sware in his wrath that there were far too many Isaac Ogdens in the world, and that, however many sons he had, he would never add to their number. This declaration was regarded by his mother, and by the public opinion of the elder gene- ration generally, as little better than a profession of atheism ; and when our little friend Jacob, about whom we shall have much to say, was christened in Shayton church, it was believed that the misguided father would not have the hardihood to maintain his resolution in so sacred a place. He had, how- ever, the courage to resist the name of Isaac, though it was pressed upon him with painful earnestness ; but he did not dare to offend tradition so far as to resist that of Jacob also, though the objections to it were in truth equally cogent. On his rttirement to Twislle Farm, an out-of-the-way little Chap. I. Manner s and Customs of Shay ton. 3 estate up in the hill country near Shayton, Mr. Ogden, who was now a widower, determined, at least for the present, to educate his child himself. And so it was that, at the age of nine, little Jacob was rather less advanced than some other boys of his age. He had not begun Latin yet, but, on the other hand, he read English easily and with avidity, and wrote a very clear and legible hand. His friend Doctor Bardly, the Shayton medical man, who rode up to Twistle Farm very often (for he liked the fresh moorland air, and enjoyed a chat with Mr. Ogden and the child), used to exam- ine little Jacob, and bring him amusing books, so that his young friend had already several shelves in his bedroom which were filled with instructive histories and pleasant tales. The youthful student had felt offended one day at Milend, where his grandmother and his Uncle Jacob lived, when a matronly visitor had asked whether he could read. . " He can read well enough," said his grandmother. " Well, an' what can he read ? can he read i' th' Bible ? " The restriction of Jacob's reading powers to one book offended him. Could he not read all English books at sight, or the newspaper, or any thing? Indeed, few people in Shayton, except the Doctor, read as much as the little boy at Twistle Farm ; and when his uncle at Milend dis- covered one day what an appetite for reading the child had, he was not altogether pleased, and asked whether he could " cast accounts." Finding him rather weak in the elementary practice of arithmetic, Uncle Jacob made him "do sums" whenever he had an opportunity. Arithmetic (or " areth- mitic," as Uncle Jacob pronounced it) was at Milend consid- ered a far higher attainment than the profoundest knowledge of literature ; and, indeed, if the rank of studies is to be estimated by their influence on the purse, there can be no doubt that the Milend folks were right. Without intending a pun (for this would be a poor one), Uncle Jacob had never found any thing so interesting as interest, and the annual 4 WenderJiolme, Part i. estimate which he made of the increase of his fortune brought home to his mind a more intense sense of the delightfulness of addition than any school-boy ever experienced. But arith- metic, like every other human pursuit, has its painful or unpleasant side, and Uncle Jacob regarded subtraction and division with an indescribable horror and dread. Subtraction, in his vivid though far from poetical imagination, never meant any thing less serious than losses in the cotton trade ; and division evoked the alarming picture of a wife and eight children dividing his profits amongst them. Indeed, he never looked upon arithmetic in the abstract, but saw it in the successes of the prosperous and the failures of the unfortu- nate, — in the accumulations of rich and successful bachelors like himself, and the impoverishment of struggling mortals, for whom there was no increase save in the number of their children. And this concrete conception of arithmetic he endeavored to communicate to little Jacob, who, in conse- quence of his uncle's teaching, already possessed the theory of getting rich, and was so far advanced in the practice of it that, by keeping the gifts of his kind patrons and friends^ he had nearly twenty pounds in the savings bank. Chap, il Grandmother and Grandson. CHAPTER II. GRANDMOTHER AND GRANDSON. MRS. OGDEN, at the time when our story commences, was not much above sixty, but had reached an appear- ance of old age, though a very vigorous old age, which she kept without perceptible alteration for very many years afterward. Her character will develop itself sufficiently in the course of the present narrative to need no description here ; but she had some outward peculiarities which it may be well to enumerate. She is in the kitchen at Milend, making a potato-pie, or at least preparing the paste for one. Whilst she delib- erately presses the rolling-pin, and whilst the sheet of paste becomes wider and thinner under the pressure of it as it travels over the soft white surface, we perceive that Mrs. Ogden's arms, which are bare nearly to the elbow, are strong and muscular yet, but not rounded into any form that suggests reminiscences of beauty. There is a squareness and a rigidity in the back and chest, which are evidences rather of strength of body and a resolute character than of grace. The visage, too, can never have been pretty, though it must in earlier life have possessed the attractiveness of health ; indeed, although its early bloom is of course by this time altogether lost, there remains a firmness in the fleshy parts of it enough to prove that the possessor is as yet untouched by the insidious advances of decay. The cheeks are prominent, and the jaw is powerful ; but although the forehead is high, it suggests no ideas of intellectual development, and seems rather to have 6 Wenderholme. part i. grown merely as a fine vegetable-marrow grows, than to have been developed by any exercise of thought. The nose is slightly aquiline in outline, but too large and thick ; the lips, on the contrary, are thin and pale, and would be out of har- mony with the whole face if the eyes did not so accurately and curiously correspond with them. Those eyes are of an exceedingly light gray, rather inclining to blue, and the mind looks out from them in what, to a superficial observer, might seem a frank and direct way ; but a closer analyst of charac- ter might not be so readily satisfied with a first impression, and might fancy he detected some shade of possible insin- cerity or power of dissimulation. The hair seems rather scanty, and is worn close to the face ; it is gray, of that peculiar kind which results from a mixture of very fair hairs with perfectly white ones. We can only see a little of it, however, on account of the cap. Although Mrs. Ogden is hard at work in her kitchen, mak- ing a potato-pie, and although it is not yet ten o'clock in the morning, she is dressed in what in any other person would be considered rather an extravagant manner, and in a man- ner certainly incongruous with her present occupation. It is a theory of hers that she is so exquisitely neat in all she does, that for her there is no danger in wearing any dress she chooses, either in her kitchen or elsewhere ; and as she has naturally a love for handsome clothes, and an aversion to changing her dress in the middle of the day, she conies downstairs at five o'clock in the morning as if she had just dressed to receive a small dinner-party. The clothes that she wears just now have in fact done duty at past dinner- parties, and are quite magnificent enough for a-lady at the head of her table, cutting potato-pies instead of fabricating them, if only they were a little less shabby, and somewhat more in harmony with the prevailing fashion. Her dress is a fine-flowered satin, which a punster would at once acknowl- edge in a double sense if he saw the farinaceous scatterings Chap. II. Grandmother and Grandson. 7 which just now adorn it ; and her cap is so splendid in rib- bons that no writer of the male sex could aspire to describe it adequately. She wears an enormous cameo brooch, and a long gold chain whose fancy links are interrupted or con- nected by little glittering octagonal bars, like the bright glass bugles in her head-dress. The pattern of her satin is occa- sionally obscured by spots of grease, notwithstanding Mrs. Ogden's theory that she is too neat and careful to incur any risk of such accidents. One day her son Isaac had ventured to call his mother's attention to these spots, and to express an opinion that it might perhaps be as well to have two ser- vants instead of one, and resign practical kitchen-work ; or else that, if she would be a servant herself, she ought to dress like one, and not expose her fine things to injury ; but Mr. Isaac Ogden received such an answer as gave him no encouragement to renew his remonstrances on a subject so delicate. " My dresses," said Mrs. Ogden, " are paid for out of my own money, and I shall wear them when I like and where I like. If ever my son is applied to to pay my bills for me, he may try to teach me economy, but I 'm 'appy to say that I 'm not dependent upon him either for what I eat or for what I drink, or for any thing that I put on." The other brother, who lived under the same roof with Mrs. Ogden, and saw her every day, had a closer instinctive feel- ing of what might and might not be said to her, and would as soon have thought of suggesting any abdication, however temporary, of her splendors, as of suggesting to Queen Vic- toria that she might manage without the luxuries of her station. When the potato-pie stood ready for the oven, with an elegant little chimney in the middle and various ornaments of paste upon the crust, Mrs. Ogden made another quantity of paste, and proceeded to the confection of a roly-poly pudding. She was proud of her roly-polies, and, indeed, ot every thing she made or did ; but her roly-polies were really 8 WenderJiolme. Part i. good, for, as her pride was here more especially concerned, she economized nothing, and was liberal in preserves. She had friends in a warm and fertile corner of Yorkshire who were rich in apricots, and sent every year to Milend several large pots of the most delicious apricot preserve, and she kept this exclusively for roly-polies, and had won thereby a great fame and reputation in Shay ton, where apricot-puddings were by no means of everyday occurrence. The judicious reader may here criticise Mrs. Ogden, or find fault with the author, because she makes potato-pie and a roly-poly on the same day. Was there not rather too much paste for one dinner, — baked paste that roofed over the savory contents of the pie-dish, and boiled paste that en- closed in its ample folds the golden lusciousness of those Yorkshire apricots ? Some reflection of this kind may arise in the mind of Jacob Ogden when he comes back from the mill to his dinner. He may possibly think that for to-day the pie might have been advantageously replaced by a beef- steak, but he is too wise not to keep all such reflections within his own breast. No such doubts or perplexities will ever disturb his mother, simply because she is convinced that no man can eat too much of her pastry. Other people's pastry one might easily get too much of, but that is different. And there is a special reason for the pudding to-day. Lvttle Jacob is expected at dinner-time, and little Jacob loves pudding, especially apricot roly-poly. His grandmother, not a very affectionate woman by nature, is, nevertheless, dot- ingly fond of the lad, and always makes a little feast to welcome him and celebrate his coming. On ordinary days they never have any dessert at Milend, but, as soon as dinner is over. Uncle Jacob hastily jumps up and goes to the cupboard where the decanters are kept, pours himself two glasses of port, and swallows them one after the other, standing, after which he is off again to the mill. When little Jacob comes, what a difference ! There is a splendid dessert Chap. II. Grmicimot/ier and Grandson. 9 of gingerbread, nuts, apples, and fruits glacis; there are stately decanters of port and sherry, with a bottle of spark- ling elder-flower wine in the middle, and champagne-glasses to drink it from. There is plenty of real champagne in the cellars, but this home-made vintage is considered better for little Jacob, who feels no other effect from it than an almost irresistible sleepiness. He likes to see the sparkling bubbles rise ; and, indeed, few beverages are prettier or pleasanter to the taste than Mrs. Ogden's elder-flower wine. It is as clear as crystal, and sparkles like the most brilliant wit. But we are anticipating every thing ; we have jumped from the very fabrication of the roly-poly to the sparkling of the elder-flower, of that elder-flower which never sparkled at Milend, and should not have done so in this narrative, until the pudding had been fully disposed of. The reader may, however, take that for granted, and feel perfectly satisfied that little Jacob has done his duty to the pudding, as he is now doing it to the nuts and wine. He has a fancy for putting his kernels into the wine-glass, and fishing them out with a spoon, and is so occupied just now, whilst grandmother and Uncle Jacob sit patiently looking on. " Jerry likes nuts," says little Jacob ; " I wonder if he likes wine too." " It would be a good thing," said Mrs. Ogden, with her slow and distinct pronunciation, — " it would be a good thing if young men would take example by their 'orses, and drink nothing but water." "Nay, nay, mother," said Uncle Jacob, " you wouldn't wish to see our lad a teetotaller." " I see no 'arm in bein' a teetotaller, and I see a good deal of 'arm that 's brought on with drinking spirits. I wish the lad's father was a teetotaller. But come" (to little Ja- cob), " you '11 'ave another glass of elder-flower. Well, willn't ye now ? Then 'ave a glass of port ; it '11 do you no 'arm." Mrs. Ogden's admiration for teetotalism was entirely theo- lO Weiider holme, part i. retical. She approved of it in the abstract and in the dis- tance, but she could not endure to sit at table with a man who did not take his glass like the rest; the nonconformity to custom irritated her. There was a curate at Shayton who thought it his duty to be a teetotaller in order to give weight to his arguments against the evil habit of the place, and the curate dined occasionally at Milend without relaxing from the rigidity of his rule. Mrs. Ogden was always put out by his empty wine-glass and the pure water in his tumbler, and she let him have no peace ; so that for some time past he had declined her invitations, and only dropped in to tea, taking care to escape before spirits and glasses were brought forth from the cupboard, where they lay in wait for him. The reader need therefore be under no apprehensions that little Jacob was likely to be educated in the chilly principles of teetotalism ; or at least he may rest assured that, however much its principles might be extolled in his presence, the practice of it would neither be enforced nor even tolerated. "I say, I wish my son Isaac was a teetotaller. I hear tell of his coming to Shayton time after time without ever so much as looking at Milend. Wasn't your father in the town on Tuesday ? I know he was, I was told so by those that saw him ; and if he was in the town, what was to hinder him from coming to Milend to his tea ? Did he come down by himself, or did you come with him, Jacob ? " " I came with him, grandmother." " Well, and why didn't you come here, my lad ? You know you 're always welcome." " Father had his tea at the Red Lion. Well, it wasn't exactly tea, for he drank ale to it ; but I had tea with him, and we 'd a lobster." " I wish he wouldn't do so." "Why, mother," said Uncle Jacob, " 1 see no great 'arm in drinking a pint of ale and eating a lobster; and if he didn't come to Milend, most likely he 'd somebody to see ; very Chap. II. Grandmother and Grandson. 1 1 likely one of his tenants belonging to that row of cottages he bought. I wish he hadn't bought 'em ; he '11 have more bother with 'em than they're worth." " But what did he do keeping a young boy like little Jacob at the Red Lion t Why couldn't he send him here ? The lad knows the way, I reckon." Then to her grandson, — " What time was it when you both went home to Twistle Farm ? " " We didn't go home together, grandmother. Father was in the parlor at the Red Lion, and left me behind the bar, where we had had our tea, till about eight o'clock, when he sent a message that I was to go home by myself. So I went home on Jerry, and father stopped all night at the Red Lion." " Why, it was after dark, child ! and there was no moon ! " " I 'm not afraid of being out in the dark, grandmother ; I don't believe in ghosts." " What, hasn't th' child sense enough to be frightened in the dark ? If he doesn't believe in ghosts at his age, it 's a bad sign ; but he 's got a father that believes in nothing at all, for he never goes to church ; and there 's that horrid Dr. Bardly " — " He isn't horrid, grandmother," replied little Jacob, with much spirit ; "he 's very jolly, and gives me things, and I love him ; he gave me a silver horn." Now Dr. Bardly's reputation for orthodoxy in Shayton was greatly inferior to his renown as a medical practitioner ; but as the inhabitants had both Mr. Prigley and his curate, as well as several Dissenting ministers, to watch over the interests of their souls, they had no objection to allow Mr. Bardly to keep their stomachs in order ; at least so far as was com- patible with the freest indulgence in good living. His bad name for heterodoxy had been made worse by his favorite studies. He was an anatomist, and therefore was supposed to believe in brains rather than souls ; and a geologist, there- fore he assigned an unscriptural antiquity to the earth. 12 Wcndcrholme. I'art i. " I 'm sure it 's that Dr. Bardly," said Mrs. Ogden, " that 's ruined our Isaac." " Why, mother, Bardly 's one o' th' soberest men in Shayton ; and being a doctor beside, he isn't likely to encourage Isaac i' bad 'abits." " I wish Isaac weren't so fond on him. He sets more store by Dr. Bardly, and by all that he says, than by any one else in the place. He likes him better than Mr. Prigley. I 've heard him say so, sittin' at this very table. I wish he liked Mr. Prigley better, and would visit with him a little. He 'd get nothing but good at the parsonage ; whereas they tell me — and no doubt it's true — that there's many a bad book in Dr. Bardly's library. I think I shall ask Mr. Prigley just to set ceremony on one side, and go and call upon Isaac up at Twistle Farm ; no doubt he would be kind enough to do so." " It would be of no use, mother, except to Prigley's appe- tite, that might be a bit sharpened with a walk up to Twistle ; but supposin' he got there, and found Isaac at 'ome, Isaac 'ud be as civil as civil, and he 'd ax Prigley to stop his dinner; and Prigley 'ud no more dare to open his mouth about Isaac's goin's on than our sarvint lass 'ud ventur to tell you as you put too mich salt i' a potato-pie. It's poor folk as parsons talks to ; they willn't talk to a chap wi' ten thousand pound till he axes 'em, except in a general way in a pulpit." "Well, Jacob, if Mr. Prigley were only just to go and renew his acquaintance with our Isaac, it would be so much gained, and it might lead to his amendment." " Mother, I don't think he needs so much amendment. Isaac 's right enough. I believe he 's always sober up at Twistle; isn't he, little 'un ? " Little Jacob, thus appealed to, assented, but in rather a doubtful and reserved manner, as if something remained behind which he had not courage to say. His grandmother observed this. Chap. II. G^'andmotlier a^id Grandson. 1 3 " Now, my lad, tell me the whole truth. It can do your father no 'arm — nothing but good — to let us know all about what he does. Your father is my son, and I 've a right to know all about him. I 'm very anxious, and 'ave been, ever since I knew that he was goin' again to the Red Lion. I 'oped he 'd given that up altogether. You must tell me — I insist upon it." Little Jacob said nothing, but began to cry. " Nay, nay, lad," said his uncle, " a great felly like thee should never skrike. Thy grandmother means ndut. Mother, you 're a bit hard upon th' lad ; it isn't fair to force a child to be witness again' its own father." With this Uncle Jacob rose and left the room, for it was time for him to go to the mill ; and then Mrs. Ogden rose from her chair, and with the stiff stately walk that was habitual to her, and that she never could lay aside even under strong emotion, approached her grandson, and, bending over him, gave him one kiss on the forehead. This kiss, be it observed, was a very exceptional event. Jacob always kissed his grandmother when he came to Milend ; but she was invariably passive, though it was plain that the ceremony was agreeable to her, from a certain softness that spread over her features, and which differed from their habitual expression. So when Jacob felt the old lady's lips upon his forehead, a thrill of tenderness ran through his little heart, and he sobbed harder than ever. Mrs. Ogden drew a chair close to his, and, putting her hand on his brow so as to turn his face a little upwards that she might look well into it, said, " Come now, little un, tell granny all about it." What the kiss had begun, the word " granny " fully accom- plished. Little Jacob dried his eyes and resolved to tell his sorrows. "Grandmother," he said, "father is so — so" — " So what, my lad ? " " Well, he beats me, grandmother ! " > 14 Wenderholme. part i. Now IMrs. Ogden, though she loved Jacob as strongly as her nature permitted, by no means wished to see him entirely exempt from corporal punishment. She knew, on the au- thority of Scripture, that it was good for children to be beaten, that the rod was a salutary thing ; and she at once concluded that little Jacob had been punished for some fault which in her own code would have deserved such punishment, and would have drawn it down upon her own sons when they were of his age. So she was neither astonished nor indignant, and asked, merely by way of continuing the conversation, — " And when did he beat thee, child ? " If Jacob had been an artful advocate of his own cause, he would have cited one of those instances unhappily toe numerous during the last few months, when he had beew severely punished on the slightest possible pretexts, or eveh without any pretext whatever ; but as recent events occupy the largest space in our recollection, and as all troubles diminish by a sort of perspective according to the length of time that has happened since their occurrence, Jacob, of course, instanced a beating that he had received that very morning, and of which certain portions of his bodily frame, by their uncommon stiffness and soreness, still kept up the most lively remembrance. " He beat me this morning, grandmother." "And what for?" " Because I spilt some ink on my new trowsers that I 'd put on to come to Milend." " Well, then, my lad. all I can say is that you deserved it, and should take better care. Do you think that your father is to buy good trowsers for you to spill ink upon them the very first time you put them on? You '11 soon come to ruin at that rate. Little boys should learn to take care of their things \ your Uncle Jacob was as kerfle * as possible of his things ; indeed he was the kerflest boy I ever saw in all my * Careful. Chap. II. Grandmother mid Grandson. 15 life, and I wish you could take after him. It 's a very great thing is kerfleness. There 's people as thinks that when they 've worn * their money upon a thing, it 's no use lookin' after it, and mindin' it, because the money 's all worn and gone, and so they pay no heed to their things when once they 've got them. And what 's the consequence ? They find that they have to be renewed, that new ones must be bought when the old ones ought to have been quite good yet ; and so they spend and spend, when they might spare and have every thing just as decent, if they could only learn a little kerfleness." After this lecture, Mrs. Ogden slowly rose from her seat and proceeded to put the decanters into a triangular cupboard that occupied a corner of the room. In due course of time the apples, the gingerbread, and the nuts alike disappeared in its capacious recesses, and were hidden from little Jacob's eyes by folding-doors of dark mahogany, polished till they resembled mirrors, and reflected the window with its glimpse of dull gray sky. After this Mrs. Ogden went into the kitchen to look after some household affairs, and her grand- son went to the stable to see Jerry, and to make the acquaint- dlice of some puppies which had recently come into the world, but were as yet too blind to have formed any opinion of its beauties. * Spent. 1 6 IVender holme. Part i CHAPTER III. AT THE PARSONAGE. MRS. OGDEN'S desire to bring about a renewal of the acquaintance between her son Isaac and Mr. Prigley was not an unwise one, even if considered independently of his religious interests. Mr. Prigley, though by no means a man of first-rate culture or capacity, was still the only gentle- man in Shayton, — the only man in the place who resolutely kept himself up to the standard of the outer world, and refused to adopt the local dialect and manners. No doubt the Doctor was in a certain special sense a gentleman, and much more than a gentleman, — he was a man of high attain- ment, and had an excellent heart. But, so far from desiring to rise above the outward ideal of the locality, he took a perverse pleasure in remaining a little below it. His language was a shade more provincial than that of the neighboring manufacturers, and his manners somewhat more rugged and abrupt than theirs. Perhaps he secretly enjoyed the contrast between the commonplace exterior which he affected, and the elaborate intellectual culture which he knew himself to possess. He resembled the house he lived in, v/hich was, as to its exterior, so perfectly commonplace that every one would pass it without notice, yet which contained greater intellectual riches, and more abundant material for reflection, than all the other houses in Shayton put together. Therefore, if I say that Mr. Prigley was the only gentleman in the place, I mean externally, — in language and manner. The living of Shayton was a very meagre one, and Mr. Chap. III. At the Parsonage. 17 Prigley had great difficulty in keeping himself above water ; but there is more satisfaction in struggling with the difficul- -ties of open and avowed poverty than in maintaining deceitful appearances, and Mr. Prigley had long since ceased to think about appearances at all. It had happened some time ago that the carpets showed grievous signs of wear, and in fact were so full of holes as to be positively dangerous. They had been patched and mended over and over again, and an in- genious seamstress employed by Mrs. Prigley, and much valued by her, had darned them with variously colored wools in continuation of the original patterns, so that (unless on close inspection) the repairs were not very evident. Now, however, both Mrs. Prigley and the seamstress, notwithstand- ing all their ingenuity and skill, had reluctantly come to the conclusion that to repair the carpets in their present advanced stage of decay it would be necessary to darn nothing less than the whole area of them, and Mrs. Prigley declared that she would rather manufacture new ones with her knitting-needles. But if buying carpets was out of the question, so it was not less out of the question for Mrs. Prigley to fabricate objects of luxury, since her whole time was taken up by matters of pressing necessity ; indeed, the poor lady could only just keep up with the ceaseless accumulations of things that wanted mending j and whenever she was unwell for a day or two, and unable to work, there rose such a heap of them as made her very heart sink. In this perplexity about the carpets, nature was left to take her course, and the carpets were abandoned to their fate, but still left upon the floors ; for how were they ever to be re- placed ? By a most unfortunate coincidence, Mr. Prigley dis- covered about the same time that his shirts, though apparently very sound and handsome shirts indeed, had become deplor- ably weak in the tissue ; for if, in dressing himself in a hurry, his hand did not just happen to hit the orifice of the sleeve, it passed through the fabric of the shirt itself, and that with so little difficulty that he was scarcely aware of any impedi- 1 8 Wenderholme. Paki- i. ment ; whilst if once the hem were severed, the immediate consequence was a rent more than a foot long. Poor Mrs. Frigley had mended these patiently for a while ; but one day, after marvelling how it happened that her husband had become so violent in his treatment of his linen, she tried the strength of it herself, and, to use her own expressive phrase, " it came in two like a sheet of wet paper." It was characteristic of the Prigleys that they determined to renew the linen at once, and to abandon carpets for ever. Shayton is not in France, and to do without carpets in Shayton amounts to a confession of what, in the middle class, is looked upon as a pitiable destitution. Mr. Prigley did not care much about this ; but his wife was more sensitive to public opinion, and, long after that heroic resolution had been taken, hesitated to put it in execution. Day after day the ragged remnants remained upon the floor, and still did Mrs. Prigley procrastinate. Whilst things were in this condition at the parsonage, the conversation took place at Milend which we have narrated in the preceding chapter ; and as soon as Mrs. Ogden had seen things straight in the kitchen, she " bethought her," as she would have herself expressed it, that it might be a step to- wards intercourse between Isaac Ogden and the clergyman if she could make little Jacob take a fancy to the parsonage. There was a little boy there nearly his own age, and as Jacob was far too niuch isolated, the acquaintance would be equally desirable for him. The idea was by no means new to her ; indeed, she had long been anxious to find suitable playmates for her grandson, a matter of which Isaac did not sufficiently perceive the importance ; and she had often intended to take steps in this direction, but had been constantly deterred by the feelings of dislike to Mr. Prigley, which both her sons did not hesitate to express. What had Mr. Prigley done to them that they should never be able to speak of him without a shade of very perceptible aversion or contempt ? They had Chap. III. At the Parso7tage. 19 no definite accusation to make against him ; they did not attempt to justify their antipathy, but the antipathy did not disguise itself. In an agricultural district the relations between the parson and the squire are often cordial ; in a manu- facturing district the relations between the parson and the mill-owners are usually less intimate, and have more the character of accidental neighborship than of natural alliance. The intercourse between Milend and the parsonage had been so infrequent that Mrs. Prigley was quite astonished when Betty, the maid-of-all-work, announced Mrs. Ogden as she pushed open the door of the sitting-room. But she was much more astonished when Mrs. Ogden, instead of quietly advancing in her somewhat stiff and formal manner, fell for- ward on the floor with outstretched arms and a shriek. Mrs. Prigley shrieked too, little Jacob tried manfully to lift up his grandmother, and poor Betty, not knowing what to say under circumstances so unexpected, but vaguely feeling that she was likely to incur blame, and might possibly (though in some manner not yet clear to her) deserve it, begged Mrs. Ogden's pardon. Mr. Prigley was busy writing a sermon in his study, and being suddenly interrupted in the midst of what seemed to him an uncommonly eloquent passage on the spread of infidelity, rushed to the scene of the accident in a state of great mental confusion, which for some seconds prevented him from recognizing Mrs. Ogden, or Mrs. Ogden's bonnet, for the lady's face was not visible to him as he stood amazed in the doorway. " Bless me ! " thought Mr. Prigley, " here 's a woman in a fit ! " And then came a dim and somewhat unchristian feeling that women liable to fits need not just come and have them in the parlor at the parsonage. " It 's Mrs. Ogden, love," said Mrs. Prigley ; " and, oh dear, I am so sorry ! " By the united efforts of the parson and his wife, joined to those of Betty and little Jacob, Mrs. Ogden was placed upon the sofa, and Mr. Prigley went to fetch some brandy from the 20 Wenderholme. Part I, dining room. On his way to the door, the cause of the acci- dent became apparent to him in the shape of a yawning rent in the carpet, which was dragged up in great folds and creases several inches high. He had no time to do justice to the subject now, and so refrained from making any obser- vation ; but he fully resolved that, whether Mrs. Prigley liked it or not, all ragged old carpets should disappear from the parsonage as soon as Mrs. Ogden could be got out of it. When Mrs. Prigley saw the hole in her turn, she was over- whelmed with a sense of culpability, and felt herself to be little better than a murderess. " Betty, run and fetch Dr. Bardly as fast as ever you can." " Please let me go," said little Jacob ; " I can run faster than she can." The parson had a professional disapproval of Dr. Bardly because he would not come to church, and especially, per- haps, because on the very rare occasions when he did present himself there, he always contrived to be called out in time to escape the sermon ; but he enjoyed the Doctor's company more than he would have been willing to confess, and had warmly seconded Mrs. Prigley's proposal that, since Mrs. Ogden, in consequence of her accident, was supposed to need the restoration of " tea and something to it," the Doctor should stay tea also. The arrival of Isaac and Jacob gave a new turn to the matter, and promised an addition to the small tea-party already organized. It was rather stiff and awkward just at first for Isaac and Jacob when they found themselves actually in the parson's house, and forced to stop there to tea out of filial attention to their mother ; but it is wonderful how soon Mr. Prigley con- trived to get them over these difficulties. He resolved to take advantage of his opportunity, and warm up an acquaint- ance that might be of eminent service in certain secret projects of his. Shayton church was a dreary old building of the latest and most debased Tudor architecture; and, though Chap. III. At the Parso7ia^e. 21 i> it sheltered the inhabitants well enough in their comfortable old pews, it seemed to Mr. Prigley a base and degraded sort of edifice, unfit for the celebration of public worship. He therefore nourished schemes of reform ; and when he had nothing particular to do, especially during the singing of the hymns, he could not help looking up at the flat ceiling and down along the pew-partitioned floor, and thinking what might be done with the old building, — how it would look, for instance, if those octagon pillars that supported those hateful longitudinal beams were crowned with beautiful Gothic arches supporting a lofty clerestory above ; and how the organ, instead of standing just over the communion-table, and pre- venting the possibility of a creditable east window, might be removed to the west end, to the inconvenience, it is true, of all the richest people in the township, who held pews in a gallery at that end of the church, but to the general advance- ment of correct and orthodox principles. Once the organ removed, a magnificent east window might gleam gorgeously over the renovated altar, and Shayton church might become worthy of its incumbent. And now, as he saw, by unhoped-for good-luck, these three rich Ogdens in his own parlor, it became Mr. Prigley's earnest wish to keep them there as long as possible, and cultivate their acquaintance, and see whether there was not some vulnerable place in those hard practical minds of theirs. As for the Doctor, he scarcely hoped to get any money out of him ; he had preached at him over and over again, and, though the Doctor only laughed and took care to keep out of the way of these sermons, it was scarcely to be expected that he should render good for evil, — money for hard lan- guage. Nobody in Shayton precisely knew what the Doctor's opinions were ; but when Mr. Prigley was writing his most energetic onslaughts on the infidel, it is certain that the type in the parson's mind had the Doctor's portly body and plain Socratic face. 2 2 Woiderholme. Part i Mrs. Prigley had rather hesitated about asking the man to stay tea at the parsonage, for her husband freely expressed his opinion of him in privacy, and when in a theological frame of mind spoke of him with much the same aversion that Mrs. Prigley herself felt for rats and toads and spiders. And as she looked upon the Doctor's face, it seemed to her at first the face of the typical "bad man," in whose existence she firmly believed. The human race, at the parsonage, was divided into sheep and goats, and Dr. Bardly was amongst the goats. Was he not evidently a goat? Had not nature herself stamped his badness on his visage I His very way of laughing had something suspicious about it ; he seemed always to be thinking more than he chose to express. What was he thinking? There seemed to be something doubtful and wrong even about his very whiskers, but Mrs. Prigley could not define it, neither can we. On the contrary, they were re- spectable and very commonplace gray whiskers, shaped like mutton-chops, and no doubt they would have seemed only natural to Mrs. Prigley, if they had been more frequently seen in Shayton church. It was a very pleasant-looking tea-table altogether. Mrs. Prigley, who was a Miss Stanburne of Byfield, a branch of the Stanburnes of Wenderholme, possessed a little ancestral plate, a remnant, after much subdivision, of the magnificence of her ancestors. She had a tea-pot and a coffee-pot, and a very quaint and curious cream-jug ; she also possessed a pair of silver candlesticks, of a later date, representing Corinthian columns, and the candles stood in round holes in their grace- ful acanthus-leaved capitals. Many clergymen can display articles of contemporary manufacture bearing the most flat- tering inscriptions, but Mr. Prigley had never received any testimonials, and, so long as he remained in Shayton, was not in the least likely to enrich his table with silver of that kind. Mrs. Prigley, whilst apparently listening with respectful at- tention to Mrs. Ogden's account of a sick cow of hers (in Chap. III. At the Parso7iaze. not a very novel or profound observation, but it soothed the wounded pride of Mrs. Ogden, and at the same time flattered a shade of jealousy of the old aristocracy which coexisted with much genuine sympathy and respect. " But we shouldn't say Mister Stanburne now," observed the Doctor ; " he 's Colonel Stanburne." "Do militia officers keep their titles when not on duty?" asked Mr. Isaac. " Colonels always do," said the Doctor, " but captains don't, in a general way, though there are some places where it is the custom to call 'em captain all the year round. I suppose Mr. Isaac here will be Captain Ogden some of these days." " I was not aware you intended to join the militia, Mr. Isaac," said the clergyman. " I am very glad to hear it. It will be a pleasant change for you. Since you left business, you must often be at a loss for occupation." " I 've had plenty to do until a year or two since in getting Twistle Farm into order. It 's a wild place, but I 've im- proved it a good deal, and it amused me. I sometimes wish it were all to be done over again. A man is never so happy as when he 's very busy about carrying out his own plans." "You made a fine pond there, didn't you?" said Mr. Prigley, who always had a hankering after this pond, and was resolved to improve his opportunity. " Yes, I need a small sheet of water. It is of use to me nearly the whole year round. I swim in it in summer, I skate on it in winter, and in the spring and autumn I can sail about on it in a little boat, though there is not much room for tacking, and the pond is too much in a hollow to have any regular wind." " Ah ! when the aquatic passion exists in any strong form," said Mr. Prigley, " it will have its exercise, even though on a Chap. III. At the Parsonage. 27 small scale. One of the great privauous ;o me m Shayton is that I never get any swimming." " My pond is very much at your service," said Mr. Isaac, politely. "I am sorry that it is so fai off, but one cannot send it down to Shayton in a cart, as one might send a shower-bath." Mrs. Ogden was much pleased to see her scheme realizing itself so naturally, without any ingerence of her own, and only regretted that it was not the height of summer, in order that Mr. Prigley might set off for Twistle Farm the very next morning. However enthusiastic he might be about swim- ming, he could scarcely be expected to explore the too cool recesses of the Twistle pond in the month of November, — at least for purposes of enjoyment; and Mrs. Ogden was not Papist enough to encourage the good man in any thing approaching to a mortification of the flesh. Little Jacob had been admitted to the ceremony of tea, and had been a model of good behavior, being "seen and not heard," which in Shayton comprised the whole code of eti- quette for youth when in the presence of its seniors and superiors. Luckily for our young friend, he sat between the Doctor and the hostess, who took such good care of him that by the time the feast was over he was aware, by certain feel- ings of tightness and distension in a particular region, that the necessities of nature were more than satisfied, although, like Vitellius, he had still quite appetite enough for another equally copious repast if only he had known where to put it. If Sancho Panza had had an equally indulgent physician at his side, one of the best scenes in Don Quixote could never have been written, for Dr. Bardly never hindered his little neighbor, but, on the other hand, actually encouraged him to do his utmost, and mentally amused himself by enumerating the pieces of tea-cake and buttered toast, and the helpings to crab and potted meat, and the large spoonfuls of raspberry- jam, which our hero silently absorbed. The Doctor, perhaps, 28 Wendcrholme. Part i acted faithfully by little Jacob, for if nature had not intended boys of his age to acomplish prodigies in eating, she would surely never have endowed them with such vast desires ; and little Jacob suffered no worse results from his present excesses than the uncomfortable tightness already alluded to, which, as his vigorous digestion operated, soon gave place to sensations of comparative elasticity and relief. The parson's children had not been admitted to witness and partake of the splendor of the festival, but had had their own tea — or rather, if the truth must be told, their meal of porridge and milk — in a nursery upstairs. They had been accustomed to tea in the evening, but of late the oatmeal- porridge which had always been their breakfast had been repeated at tea-time also, as the Prigleys found themselves compelled to measures of still stricter economy. People must be fond of oatmeal-porridge to eat it with pleasure seven hun- dred times a-year ; and whenever a change did come, the children at the parsonage relished it with a keenness of gastronomic enjoyment which the most refined epicure might envy, and which he probably never experienced. There were five little Prigleys, and it is a curious fact that the parson's children were the only ones in the whole parish that did not bear Biblical names. All the other households in Shayton sought their names in the Old Testament, and had a special predilection for the most ancient and patriarchal ones ; but the parson's boys were called Henry and William and Rich- ard, and his girls Edith and Constance — not one of which names are to be found anywhere in Holy Scripture, either in the Old Testament or the New. Chap. IV. Isaac Ogdeu becomes a Backslider. 29 CHAPTER IV. ISAAC OGDEN BECOMES A BACKSLIDER. ABOUT a month later in the year, when December reigned in all its dreariness over Shayton, and the wild moors were sprinkled with a thin scattering of snow, little Jacob began to be very miserable. His grandmother had gone to stay a fortnight with some old friends of hers beyond Manchester, and his father had declared that for the next two Sunda5'^s he should remain at Twistle, and not "go bothering his uncle at Milend." Mr. Prigley had walked up to the farm, and kindly offered to receive little Jacob at the parsonage during Mrs. Ogden's absence ; but Mr. Isaac had declined the proposal rather curtly, and, as Mr. Prigley thought, in a manner that did not sufficiently acknowledge the kindness of his intention. In- deed, the clergyman had not been quite satisfied with his reception ; for although Mr. Isaac had shown him the pond, and given him something to eat, there had been, Mr. Prigley thought, symptoms of secret annoyance or suppressed irrita- tion. Little Jacob's loneliness was rendered still more com- plete by the continued absence of his friend the Doctor, who, in consequence of a disease then very prevalent in the neigh- borhood, found his whole time absorbed by pressing profes- sional duties, so that the claims of friendship, and even the anxious interest which he took in Mr. Isaac's moral and physical condition, had for the time to be considered in abey- ance. We have already observed that Mr. Jacob Ogden of Milend never came to Twistle Farm at all, so that his absence 30 Wenderholme. Part i. was a matter of course ; and as he was not in the habit of writing any letters except about business, there was an entire cessation of intercourse with Milend. It had been a part of Mr. Isaac's plan of reformation not to keep spirits of any kind at the farm, but he had quite enough ale and wine to get drunk upon in case his resolution gave way. He had received such a lecture from the Doctor after that evening at the parsonage as had thoroughly fright- ened him. He had been told, with the most serious air that a doctor knows how to assume, that his nervous system was already shattered, that his stomach was fast becoming worth- less, and that, if he continued his present habits, his life would terminate in eighteen months. Communications of this kind are never agreeable, but they are especially difficult to bear with equanimity when the object of them has lost much of the combative and recuperative powers which belong to a mind in health ; and the Doctor's terrible sermon produced in Mr. Isaac not a manly strength of purpose that subdues and surmounts evil, and passes victoriously beyond it, but an abject terror of its consequences, and especially a nervous dread of the Red Lion. He would enter that place no more, he was firmly resolved upon that. He would stay quietly at Twistle Farm and occupy himself, — he would try to read, — he had often regretted that business and pleasure had together prevented him from cultivating his mind by reading, and now that the opportunity was come, he would seize it and make the most of it. He would qualify himself to direct little Jacob's studies, at least so far as English literature went. As for Latin, the little he ever knew had been forgotten many years ago, but he might learn enough to judge of his boy's progress, and perhaps help him a little. He knew no modern language, and had not even that pretension to read French which is so common in England, and which is more injurious to the character of the nation than perfect ignorance, whilst it is equally unprofitable to its intellect. If Mr. Isaac were an CHAP. IV. Isaac Ogden becomes a Backslider. 3 1 ignorant man, he had at least the great advantage of clearly knowing that he was so, but it might not even yet be too late to improve himself. Had he not perfect leisure ? could he not study six hours a day, if he were so minded ? This would be better than destroying himself in eighteen months in the parlor at the Red Lion. There were not many books at Twistle, but there were books. Mr. Isaac differed from his brother Jacob, and from the other men in Shayton, in having long felt a hankering after various kinds of knowledge, though he had never pos- sessed the leisure or the resolution to acquire it. There was a bookseller's shop in St. Ann's Square, in Manchester, which he used to pass when he was in the cotton business on his way from the exchange to a certain oyster-shop where it was his custom to refresh himself ; and he had been occasionally tempted to make purchases, — amongst the rest, the works of Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott, and the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica.' He had also bought Macaulay's ' History of England,' and subscribed to a library edition of the British poets in forty volumes, and a biographical work containing lives of eminent Englishmen, scarcely less voluminous. These, with several minor purchases, constituted the whole collection, — which, though not extensive, had hitherto much more than sufficed for the moderate wants of its possessor. He had read all the works of Dickens, having been enticed thereto by the pleasant merriment in ' Pickwick ; ' but the Waverley Novels had proved less attractive, and the forty volumes of British poets reposed uncut upon the shelf which they adorned. Even Macaulay's History, though certainly not less readable than any novel, had not yet been honored with a first perusal ; and, as Mr. Ogden kept his books in a bookcase with glass doors, the copy was still technically a new one. He resolved now that all these books should be read, all except perhaps the ' Encyclopedia Britannica ; ' for Mr. Ogden 32 Wendei'holme. Part i was not then aware of the fact, which a successful man has recently communicated to his species, that a steady reading of that work according to its alphabetical arrangement may be a road to fortune, though it must be admitted to be an ar- duous one. He would begin with Macaulay's History ; and he did begin one evening in the parlor at Twistle Farm after Sarah had removed the tea-things. He took down the first volume, and began to cut the leaves ; then he read a page oi two, but, in spite of the lucid and engaging style of the his- torian, he felt a difficulty in fixing his attention, — the diffi- culty common to all who are not accustomed to reading, and which in Mr. Ogden's case was perhaps augmented by the peculiar condition of his nervous system. So he read the page over again, but could not compel his mind to follow the ideas of the author: it would wz-ndex to matters of every- day interest and habit, and then there came an unutterable sense of blankness and dulness, and a craving — yes, an all but irresistible craving — for the stimulus of drink. There could be no harm in drinking a glass of wine, — everybody, even ladies, might do that, — and he had always allowed him- self wine at Twistle Farm. He would see whether there was any in the decanters. What ! not a drop ? No port in the port decanter, and in the sherry decanter nothing but a shal- low stratum of liquid which would not fill a glass, and was not worth drinking. He would go and fill both decanters himself : there ought always to be wine ready in case any one should come. Mr. Prigley might walk up any day, or the Doctor might come, and he always liked a glass or two of port. There was a nice little cellar at Twistle Farm, for no inhab- itant of Shayton ever neglects that when he builds himself a new house ; and Mr. Ogden had wine in it to the value of three hundred pounds. Some friends of his near Manches- ter, who came to see him in the shooting season and help him to kill his grouse, were connoisseurs in port, and he had been Chap. IV. Isaac Ogden becomes a Backslider. 33 careful to "lay down" a quantity of the finest he could get. He was less delicate in the gratification of his own palate, and contented himself with a compound of no particular vintage, which had the advantage of being exceedingly strong, and therefore allowed a sort of disguised dram-drinking. It need therefore excite little surprise in the mind of the reader to be informed that, when Mr. Isaac had drunk a few glasses of this port of his, the ner\'ous system began to feel more comfortable, and at the same time tempted him to a still warmer appreciation of the qualities of the beverage. His mind was clearer and brighter, and he read Macaulay with a sort of interest, which, perhaps, is as much as most authors may hope for or expect ; that is, his mind kept up a sort of double action, following the words of the historian, and even grasping the meaning of his sentences, and feeling their literary power, whilst at the same time it ran upon many subjects of personal concern which could not be altogether excluded or suppressed. Mr. Ogden was not very delicate in any of his tastes ; but it seemed to him, nevertheless, that clay tobacco-pipes consorted better with gin-and-water than with the juice of the grape ; and he took from a cupboard in the corner a large box of full-flavored havannas, which, like the expensive port in the cellar, he kept for the gratifica- tion of his friends. Now, although the first five or six glasses had indeed done no more than give a beneficial stimulus to Mr. Ogden's brain, it is not to be inferred, as Mr. Ogden himself appeared to infer, that the continuation of the process would be equally salutary. He went on, however, reading and sipping, at the late of about a glass to a page, smoking at the same time those full-flavored havannas, till after eleven at night. Little Jacob and the servants had long since gone to bed ; both decanters had been on the table all the evening, and both had been in equal requisition, for Mr. Ogden had been varying his pleasures by drinking port "and sherry alternately 34 Wenderholmc. Part i At 'as*. Jie eloquence of Macaulay became no longer intelli- gible, for though his sentences had no doubt been constructed originally in a perfectly workmanlike manner, they now seemed quite out of order, and no longer capable of holding together. Mr. Ogden put the book down and tried to read the Manchester paper, but the makers of articles and the penny-a-liners did not seem to have succeeded better than Macaulay, for their sentences were equally disjointed. The reader rose from his chair in some discouragement and looked at his watch, and put his slippers on, and began to think about going to bed, but the worst of it was he felt so thirsty that he must have something to drink. The decanters were empty, and wine would not quench thirst ; a glass of beer might, perhaps — but how much better and more efficacious would be a tall glass of brandy-and-soda-water ! Alas ! he had no brandy, neither had he any soda-water, at least he thought not, but he would go down into the cellar and see. He took a candle very deliberately, and walked down the cellar-steps with a steady tread, never staggering or swerving in the least. " Am I drunk ? " he thought ; " no, it is impos- sible that I should be drunk, I walk so well and so steadily. I 'm not afraid of walking down these stone steps, and yet if I were to fall I might hit my forehead against their sharp edges, sharp edges — yes, they have very sharp edges ; they are ver}' new steps, cut by masons ; and so are these walls new — good ashlar stones; and that arched roof — that arch is well made : there isn't a better cellar in Shayton." There was no soda-water, but there were bottles whose round, swollen knobs of corks were covered with silvery foil, that glittered as Mr. Ogden's candle approached them. The glitter caught his eye, and he pulled one of the bottles out. It wasn't exactly soda-water, but it would fizz ; and just now Mr. Ogden had a morbid, passionate longing for something that would "fizz," as he expressed it in his muttered soliloquy. So he marched upstairs with his prize, in that stately and Chav. IV. Isaac Ogden becomes a Backslider. 35 deliberate manner which marks his particular stage of intoxi- cation. " It 's good slekk ! " * said Mr. Ogden, as he swallowed a tumblerful of the sparkling wine, " and it can do me no harm — it's only a lady's wine." He held it up between his eye and the candle, and thought that really it looked very nice and pretty. How the little bubbles kept rising and spark- ling! how very clear and transparent it was! Then he sat down in his large arm-chair, and thought he might as well have another cigar. He had smoked a good many already, perhaps it would be better not ; and whilst his mind was re- solving not to smoke another, his fingers were fumbling in the box, and making a sort of pretence at selection. At last, for some reason as mysterious as that which decides the famous donkey between two equidistant haystacks, the lingers came to a decision, and the cigar, after the point had been duly amputated with a penknife, was inserted between the teeth. After this the will made no further attempt at resist- ance, and the hand poured out champagne into the tumbler, and carried the tumbler to the lips, with unconscious and in- stinctive regularity. Mr. Isaac was now drunk, but it was not yet proved to him that he was drunk. His expedition to the cellar had been perfecdy successful ; he had walked in the most unexcep- tionable manner, and even descended those dangerous stone steps. He looked at his watch — it was half-past twelve ; he read the hour upon the dial, though not just at first, and he replaced the watch in his fob. He would go to bed — it was time to go to bed ; and the force of habits acquired at the Red Lion, where he usually went to bed drunk at midnight, aided him in this resolution. But when he stood upon his legs this project did not seem quite so easy of realization as it * Slake; it is good slake — it slakes thirst well. The expression yras actually used by a carter, to whom a gentleman gave champagne in order to ask his opinion of the beverage. 36 Wenderhohne. Pari i. had done when viewed in theory from the arm-chair, " Go to bed ! " said Mr. Isaac ; " but how are we to manage it ? " There were two candles burning on the table. He blew one of them out, and took the other in his hand. He took up the volume of Macaulay, with an idea that it ought to be put somewhere, but his mind did not successfully apply itself to the solution of this difficulty, and he laid the book down again with an air of slight disappointment, and a certain sense of failure. He staggered towards the doorway, steadied himself with an effort, and made a shot at it with triumphant success, for he found himself now in the little entrance-hall. The staircase was a narrow one, and closed by a door, and the door of the cellar was next to it. Instead of taking the door that led up to his bedroom, Mr. Ogden took that of the cellar, descended a step or two, discovered his mistake, and, in the attempt to turn round, fell backwards heavily down the stone stair, and lay at last on the cold pavement, motionless, and in total darkness. He might have remained there all night, but there was a sharp little Scotch terrier dog that belonged to little Jacob, and was domiciled in a snug kennel in the kitchen. The watchful animal had been perfectly aware that Mr. Ogden was crossing the entrance on his way to his bedroom, but if Feo made any reflections on the subject they were probably confined to wonder that the master of the house should go to bed so unusually late. When, however, the heavy thud of Mr. Ogden's body on the staircase and the loud, sharp clatter of the falling candlestick came simultaneously to her ears, Feo quitted her lair at a bound, and, guided by her sure scent, was down in the dark cellar in an instant. A less intelligent dog than Feorach (for that was her Gaelic name in the far Highlands where she was born) would have known that something was wrong, and that the cold floor of the cellar was not a suitable bed for a gentleman ; and no sooner had Feorach ascertained the state of affairs than she rushed fo the upper regions. Chap. IV. Isaac Ogden becomes a Backslider. 37 Feorach went to the door of little Jacob's chamber, and there set up such a barking and scratching as awoke even him from the sound sleep of childhood. Old Sarah came into the passage with a lighted candle, where Jim joined her, rubbing his eyes, still heavy with interrupted sleep. " There 's summat wrong," said old Sarah ; " I 'm feared there 's sum- mat wrong." " Stop you here," said Jim, " I '11 wake master : he 's gotten loaded pistols in his room. If it 's thieves, it willn't do to feis:ht 'em wi' talk and a tallow candle." Jim knocked at his master's door, and, having waited in vain a second or two for an answer, determined to open it. There was no one in the room, and the bed had not been slept upon. " Hod thy din, dog," said Jim to Feorach ; and then, with a grave, pale face, said, " It isn't thieves ; it 's summat 'at 's happened to our master." Now Lancashire people of the class to which Jim and Sarah belonged never, or hardly ever, use the verb to die, but in the place of it employ the periphrase of something happening ; and, as he chanced to use this expression now, the idea conveyed to Sarah's mind was the idea of death, and she believed that Jim had seen a corpse in the room. He perceived this, and drew her away, whispering, " He isn't there : you stop wi' little Jacob." So the man took the candle, and left Sarah in the dark with the child, both trembling and wondering. Feorach led Jim down into the cellar, and he saw the dark inert mass at the bottom of the steps. A chill shudder seized him as he recognized the white, inanimate face. One of Mr. Ogden's hands lay upon the floor; Jim ventured to touch it, and found it deadly cold. A little blood oozed from the back of the head, and had matted the abundant brown hair. Perhaps the hand may have been cold simply from contact with the stone flag, but Jim did not reflect about this, 437805 38 Wcnderliolme. Part i. and concluded that Mr. Ogden was dead. He went hastily back to old Sarah. " Master Jacob," he said, " you must go to bed." " No, I won't go to bed, Jim ! " " My lad," said old Sarah, "just come into your room, and I '11 light you a candle." So she lighted a candle, and then left the child, and Jim quietly locked the door upon him. The lock was well oiled, and Jacob did not know that he was a prisoner. " Now what is 't? " said old Sarah, in a whisper. " Master 's deead : he 's fallen down th' cellar-steps and killed hisself." Old Sarah had been fully prepared for some terrible com- munication of this kind, and did not utter a syllable. She simply followed the man, and between them they lifted Mr. Ogden, and carried him, not without difficulty, up the cellar- steps. Sarah carried the head, and Jim the legs and feet, and old Sarah's bed-gown was stained with a broad patch ol blood. It is one of the most serious inconveniences attending a residence in the country that on occasions of emergency it is not possible to procure prompt medical help ; and Twistle Farm was one of those places where this inconvenience is felt to the uttermost. When they had got Mr. Ogden on the bed, Jim said, "I mun go an' fetch Dr. Bardly, though I reckon it 's o' no use ; " and he left Sarah alone with the body. The poor woman anticipated nothing but a dreary watch of several hours by the side of a corpse, and went and dressed herself, and lighted a fire in Mr. Ogden's 100m. Old Sarah was not by any means a woman of a pusillani- mous disposition ; but it may be doubted whether, if she had had any choice in the matter, a solitary watch of this kind would have been exactly to her taste. However, when the fire was burning briskly, she drew a rocking-chair up to it, Chap. IV. Isaac Ogdeu becojnes a Backslider. 39 and, in order to keep up her courage through the remauider of the night, fetched a certain physic-bottle from the kitchen, and her heavy lead tobacco-pot, for like many old women about Shayton she enjoyed the solace of a pipe. She did not attempt to lay out the body, being under the impression that the coroner might be angry with her for having done so when the inquest came to be held. The physic-bottle was full of rum, and Sarah made herself a glass of grog, and lighted her pipe, and looked into the fire. She had drawn the curtains all round Mr. Ogden's bed ; ample curtains of pale-brown damask, with an elabo- rate looped valance, from whose deep festoons hung multi- tudes of little pendants of turned wood covered with flossy silk. The movement communicated to these pendants by the act of drawing the curtains lasted a very long time, and Sarah was startled more than once when on looking round from her arm-chair she saw them swinging and knocking against each other still. As soon as the first shock of alarm was past, the softer emotions claimed their turn, and the old woman began to cry, repeating to herself incessantly, " And quite yoong too, quite yoong, quite a yoong man 1 " Suddenly she was aware of a movement in the room. Was it the little dog ? No ; Feorach had elected to stay with his young master, and both little Jacob and his dog were fast asleep in another room. She ventured to look at the great awful curtained bed. The multitudinous pendants had not ceased to swing and vibrate, and yet it was now a long time since Sarah had touched the curtains. She wished they would give up and be still ; but whilst she was looking at them and thinking this, a little sharp shock ran round the whole valance, and the pendants rattled against each other with the low dull sound which was all that their muffling of silk permitted; a low sound, but an audible one, — audible especially to ears in high excitement ; a stronger shock, a visible agitation, not only of the tremulous pendants, but 40 Wenderholme. Part i even of the heavy curtain-folds themselves. Then they open, and Mr. Ogden's pale face appears. " Well, Sarah, I hope you 've made yourself comfortable, you damned old rum-drinking thief ! D'ye think I can't smell rum t Give me that bottle." Sarah was much too agitated to say or do any thing what- ever. She had risen from her chair, and stood looking at the bed in speechless amazement. Mr. Ogden got up, and walked towards the fire with an unsteady pace. Then he possessed himself of the rum-botde, and, putting it to his lips, began to swallow the contents. This brought Sarah to herself. "Nay, nay, master: you said as you wouldn't drink no sperrits at Twistle Farm upo' no 'count." But the rum had been tasted, and the resolution broken. It had been broken before as to the intention and meaning of it, and was now broken even as to the letter. Isaac Ogden had got drunk at Twistle Farm ; and now he was drinking spirits there, not even diluting them with water. After emptying old Sarah's bottle, which fortunately did not contain enough to endanger, for the present, his existence, Mr. Ogden staggered back to his bed, and fell into a drunken sleep, which lasted until Dr. Bardly's arrival. The Doctor found the wound at the back of the head exceedingly slight ; there was abrasure of the skin and a swelling, but nothing more. The blood had ceased to flow soon after the accident ; and there would be no worse results from it than the tempo- rary insensibility, from which the patient had already recovered. The most serious results of what had passed were likely, for the present, to be rather moral than physical. Dr. Bardly greatly dreaded the moral depression which must result from the breaking down of the only resolution which stood between his friend and an utter abandonment to his propensity. Twistle Farm would no longer be a refuge for him against the demon, for the demon had been admitted, had crossed the threshold, had taken possession. «jHAi'. IV. Isaac Ogden becomes a Backslider. 41 Mr. Ogden was not in a condition to be advised, for he was not yet sober, and, if he had been, the Doctor felt that advice was not likely to be of any use : he had given enough of it already. The parson might try, if he liked, but it seemed to the Doctor that the case had now become one of those incurable cases which yield neither to the desire of self- preservation nor to the fear of hell ; and that if the warnings of science were disregarded by a man intelligent enough to ap- preciate the certainty of the data on which they were founded, those of religion were not likely to have better success. 42 WenderJiolme. tart i. CHAPTER V. FATHER AND SON. MR. OGDEN came downstairs in the middle of the day, and ordered breakfast and dinner in one meal. He asked especially for Sarah's small-beer, and drank two or three large glasses of it. He did not eat much, and used an unusual quantity of pepper. He was extremely taciturn, contrarily to his ordinary habit, for he commonly talked very freely with old Sarah whilst she served him. When his repast was fin- ished, he expressed a wish to see little Jacob. '•' Good morning, papa ! I hope you are better. Sarah says you were poorly last night when Feorach barked so." " Oh, she says I was poorly, does she ? Then she lies : I wasn't poorly, — I was drunk. I want you to read to me." " Must I read in that book Mr. Prigley gave me when he came ? " " Read what you please." So little Jacob opened for the first time a certain volume which will be recognized by every reader when he begins : — " ' The way was long, the wind was cold, The minstrel was infirm and old.' " " That would be difficult," said Mr. Ogden. "What, papa?" " I say, it would be difficult." Little Jacob felt rather frightened. He did not understand in what the supposed difficulty consisted, and yet felt that he was expected to understand it. He did not dare to ask a second time for enlightenment on the point, so he stood quite Chap. V. Father and Son. 43 still and said nothing. His father waited a minute in perfect silence, and then burst out, — " Why, you little confounded blockhead, I mean that it would be difficult for a man to be infirm and bold at the same time ! Infirm people are timid, commonly." "Please, papa, it doesn't say infirm and bold — it says infirm and old — see, papa;" and little Jacob pointed with his finger to the place. "Then you read damned badly, for you read it 'bold,' and it 's ' old.' I expect you to read better than that — you read badly, damned badly." " Please, papa, I read it * old ' the first time, and not ' bold.' " " Then you mean to say I cannot trust my own ears, you little impertinent monkey. I say you read it ' bold,' and I heard you." An elder person would have perceived that Mr. Ogden was ill, and humored him ; and a child of a more yielding dispo- sition would have submitted to the injustice, and acquiesced. But little Jacob had an instinctive hatred of injustice, and his whole nature rose in revolt. He had also made up his mind never to tell lies — less perhaps from principle than from a feeling that it was cowardly. The present was an occasion which roused these feelings in all their energy. He was re- quired to utter a falsehood, and submit to an injustice. " No, papa, I said ' old.' I didn't say ' bold ' at all. It was you that heard wrong." Mr. Ogden became white with anger. " Oh, / was mis- taken, was I ? Do you mean to say that I am deaf ? " " No, papa." " Well, then, if I 'm not deaf I have been lying. I am a liar, am I ? " The state of extreme nervous depression, in combination with irritability, under which Mr. Ogden's system was labor- ing that day, made him a dangerous man to contradict, and 44 Weitderholme. Part i not by any means a pleasant antagonist in argument. But he was not altogether lost ; he still kept some control over him- self, in proof of which may be mentioned the fact that he simply dismissed little Jacob without even a box on the ear. " He deserves a good thrashing," said Mr. Ogden ; " but if I were to begin with him I should nearly kill him, the little impudent scoundrel ! " The afternoon was exceedingly dull and disagreeable to Mr. Ogden. He walked out into his fields and round the pond. He had made a small footpath for his walks, which, after leaving the front-door first, went all round the pond, and then up to the rocks that overlooked the little valley, and from which he enjoyed a very extensive view. There were several springs in the little hollow, but before Mr. Ogden's settlement they had contented themselves with creating those patches of that emerald grass, set in dark heather, which are so preciously beautiful in the scenery of the moors. At each of these springs Mr. Ogden had made a circular stone-basin, with a water-duct to his pond, and it was his fancy to visit these basins rather frequently to see that they were kept clean and in order. He did so this afternoon, from habit, and by the time he had finished his round it was nearly dark. He was intensely miserable. Twistle Farm had been sweet and dear to him because he had jealously guarded the purity of the associations that belonged to it. Neither in the house nor in the little undulating fields that he had made was there a single object to remind him of his weakness and his sin, and therefore the place had been a refuge and a sanctuary. It could never again be for him what it had been ; this last lamentable failure had broken down the moral defences of his home, and invaded it and contaminated it for ever. What- ever the future might bring, the event of the past night was irrevocable; he had besotted himself with drink; he had brought the miie of the outer world into his pure dwelling, and defiled it. Isaac Ogden fell this tlie more painfully that CuAP. V. Father ajzd So?^. 45 he had little of the support of religion, and few of the con- solations and encouragements of philosophy. A religious mind would have acknowledged its weakness and repented of its sin, yet in the depths of its humiliation hoped still for strength from above, and looked and prayed for ultimate deliverance and peace. A philosophic mind would have re- flected that moral effort is not to be abandoned for a single relapse, or even for many relapses, and would have addressed itself only the more earnestly to the task of self-reformation that the need for effort had made itself so strikingly appare.it. But Mr. Ogden had neither the faith which throws itself on the support of Heaven, nor the faculty of judging of his own actions with the impartiality of the independent intellect. He was simply a man of the world, so far as such a place as Shayton could develop a man of the world, and had neither religious faith nor intellectual culture. Therefore his misery was the greater for the density of the darkness in which he had stumbled and fallen. What he needed was light of some sort ; either the beautiful old lamp of faith, with its wealth of elaborate imagery, or the plainer but still bright and service- able gas-light of modern thouglit and science. Mr. Prigley possessed the one, and the Doctor gave his best labor to the maintenance of the other ; but Mr. Ogden was unfortu- nate in not being able to profit by the help which either of these friends would have so willingly afforded. No one except Dr. Bardly had suspected the deplorable fact that Mr. Ogden was no longer in a state of mental sanity. The little incident just narrated, in which he had mistaken one word for another, and insisted, with irritation, that the error did not lie with him, had been a common one during the last few weeks, whenever little Jacob read to him. If our little friend had communicated his sorrows to the Doctor, this fact would have been a very valuable one as evidence of his father's condition ; but he never mentioned it to any one except his grandmother and old Sarah, who both inferred that 46 JVeftderkolme. Pakt i, the child had read inaccurately, and saw no reason to suspect the justice of Mr. Ogden's criticism. The truth was, that by a confusion very common in certain forms of brain-disease, a sound often suggested to Mr. Ogden some other sound re- sembling it, or of which it formed a part, and the mere sug- gestion became to him quite as much a fact as if he had heard it with his bodily ears. Thus, as we have seen, the word " old " had suggested " bold ; " and when, as in that instance, the imagined word did not fit in very naturally with the sense of the passage, Mr. Ogden attributed the fault to little Jacob's supposed inaccuracy in reading. Indeed he had now a settled conviction that his son was unpardonably careless, and no sooner did the child open his book to read, than his father became morbidly expectant of some absurd mistake, which, of course, never failed to arrive, and to give occasion for the bitterest reproaches. On his return to the house Mr. Ogden desired his son's attendance, and requested him to resume his reading. Little Jacob took up his book again, and this time, as it happened, Mr. Ogden heard the second line correctly, and expressed his satisfaction. But in the very next couplet — " His withered cheek and tresses gray Seemed to have known a better day " — Mr. Ogden found means to imagine another error. " It seems to me curious," said he, " that Scott should have de- scribed the minstrel as having a ' withered cheek and tresses gay ; ' there could be little gayety about him, I should imagine." " Please, papa, it isn't gay, but gray." " Then why the devil do you read so incorrectly ? I have always to be scolding you for making these absurd mistakes I " If little Jacob had had an older head on his shoulders he would have acquiesced, and tried to get done with the read- ing as soion as possible, so as to make his escape. But it was repugnant to him to admit that he had made a blunder of which he was innocent, and he answered, — Chap. V. Father and Son. 47 " But, papa, I read it right — I said gray; I didn't say^<^;'." Mr. Ogden made a violent effort to control himself, and said, with the sort of calm that comes of the intensest emo- tion, — " Then you mean to say I am deaf." Little Jacob had really been thinking that his father might be deaf, and admitted as much. " Fetch me my riding-whip." Litde Jacob brought the whip, expecting an immediate ap- plication of it, but Mr. Ogden, still keeping a strong control over himself, merely took the whip in his hands, and began to play with it, and look at its silver top, which he rubbed a little with his pocket-handkerchief. Then he took a candle in his right hand, and brought the flame quite close to the silver ornament, examining it with singular minuteness, so as .apparently to have entirely ceased to pay attention to his son's reading, or even to hear the sound of his voice. " Is this my whip ? " " Yes, papa." " Well, then, I am either blind or I have lost my memory. My whip was precisely like this, except for one thing — my initials were engraved upon it, and I can see no initials here." Little Jacob began to feel very nervous. A month before the present crisis he had taken his father's whip to ride with, and lost it on the moor, after dark, where he and Jim had sought for it long and vainly. Litde Jacob had since con- sulted a certain saddler in Shayton, a friend of his, as to the possibility of procuring a whip of the same pattern as the lost one, and it had fortunately happened that this saddler had received two precisely alike, of which Mr. Isaac Ogden had bought one, whilst the other remained unsold. There was thus no difficulty in replacing the whip so as to deceive Mr. Ogden into the belief that it had never been lost, or rather so as to prevent any thought or suspicion from pre- senting itself to his mind. When the master of a house has 48 VVenderJiolme. Pari- r. given proofs of a tyrannical disposition, or of an uncontrol- lable and unreasonable temper, a system of concealment naturally becomes habitual in his household, and the most innocent actions are hidden from him as if they were crimes. Some trifling incident reveals to him how sedulously he is kept in ignorance of the little occurrences which make up the existence of his dependants, and then he is vexed to find him- self isolated and cut off from their confidence and sympathy. Mr. Ogden continued. "This is not my whip ; it is a whip of the same pattern, that some people have been buying to take me in. Fetch me my own whip — the one with my initials." Little Jacob thought the opportunity for escaping from the room too good to be thrown away, and vanished. Mr. Ogden waited quietly at first, but, after ten minutes had escaped, became impatient, and rang the bell violently. Old Sarah presented herself. " Send my son here." On his reappearance, little Jacob was in that miserable state of apprehension in which the most truthful child will lie if it is in the least bullied or tormented, and in which indeed it is not possible to extract pure truth from its lips without great delicacy and tenderness. " Have you brought my whip ? " " Please, papa," said little Jacob, who began to get very red in the face, as he always did when he told a downright fib — "please, papa, that's your whip." There was a mental reser- vation here, slightly Jesuitical ; for the boy had reflected, during his brief absence, that since he had given that whip to Mr. Ogden, it now, of course, might strictly be said to belong to him. "What has become of my whip with I. O. upon it.? " " It 's that whip, papa; only you — you told Jim to clean the silver top, and — and perhaps he rubbed the letters off." "You damned little lying sneaking scoundrel, this whip is Chap, V. Father mid Son. 49 perfectly new; but it will not be new long, for I will lay it about you till it isn't worth twopence." The sharp switching strokes fell fast on poor little Jacob. Some of them caught him on the hands, and a tremendous one came with stinging effect across his lips and cheek ; but it was not the first time he had endured an infliction of this sort, and he had learned the art of presenting his body so as to shield the more sensitive or least protected places. On former occasions Mr. Ogden's anger had always cooled after a score or two of lashes, but this time it rose and rose with an ever-increasing violence. Little Jacob began to find his powers of endurance exhausted, and, with the nimble ingenu- ity of his years, made use of different articles of furniture as temporary barriers against his enemy. For some time he managed to keep the table between Mr. Ogden and himself, but his father's arm was long, and reached far, and the child received some smarting cuts about the face and neck, so then he tried the chairs. Mr. Ogden, who was by this time a furi- ous madman, shivered his whip to pieces against the furniture, and then, throwing it with a curse into the fire, looked about him for some other means of chastisement. Now there hung a mighty old hunting-whip in a sort of trophy with other memorials of the chase, and he took this down in triumph. The long knotted lash swung heavily as he poised it, and there was a steel hammer at the end of the stick, considered as of possible utility in replacing lost nails in the shoes of hunters. A great terror seized little Jacob, a terror of that utterly hopeless and boundless and unreasoning kind that will some- times take possession of the nervous system of a child — a terror such as the mature man does not feel even before imminent and violent death, and which he can only conceive or imagine by a reference to the dim reminiscences of his infancy. The strong man standing there menacing, armed with a whip like a flail, his eyes glaring with the new and 4 50 Wender holme. part i. baleful light of madness, became transfigured in the child's imagination to something supernatural. How tall he seemed, how mighty, how utterly irresistible ! When a Persian trav- els alone in some wide stony desert, and sees a column of dust rise like smoke out of the plain and advance rapidly towards him, and believes that out of the column one of the malignant genii will lift his colossal height, and roll his voice of thunder, and wield his sword of flame, all that that Persian dreads in the utmost wildness of his credulous Oriental imagination this child felt as a present and visible fact. The Power before him, in the full might and height of manhood, in the fury of madness, lashing out the great thong to right and left till it cracked like pistol-shots — with glaring eyes, and foaming lips out of which poured curses and blasphemies — was this a paternal image, was it civilized, was it human ? The aspect of it paralyzed the child, till a sharp intolerable pain came with its fierce stimulus, and he leaped out from behind his barricade and rushed towards the door. The lad had thick fair hair in a thousand natural curls. He felt a merciless grip in it, and his forehead was drawn vio- lently backwards. Well for him that he struggled and writhed ! for the steel hammer was aimed at him now, and the blows from it crashed on the furniture as the aim was continually missed. The man-servant was out in the farm-buildings, and old Sarah had been washing in an out-house. She came in first, and heard a bitter cry. Many a time her heart had bled for the child, and now she could endure it no longer. She burst into the room, she seized Ogden's wrist and drove her nails into it till the pain made him let the child go. She had left both doors open. In an instant litde Jacob was out of the house. Old Sarah was a strong woman, but her strength was feebleness to Ogden's. He disengaged himself quite easily, and at every place where his fingers touched her there was a Chap. V. Father and Son. 5 1 mark on her body for days. The child heard curses follow- ing him as he flew over the smooth grass. The farm was bounded by a six-foot wall. The curses came nearer and nearer ; the wall loomed black and high. " I have him now," cried Ogden, as he saw the lad struggling to get over the wall. Little Jacob felt himself seized by the foot. An infinite terror stimulated him, and he wrenched it violently. A sting of anguish crossed his shoulders where the heavy whip-lash fell, — a shoe remained in Ogden's hand. Wejiderholme. part i. CHAPTER VI. LITTLE JACOB IS LOST. /'~\GDEN flung the shoe down with an imprecation, and the ^-^ whip after it. He then climbed the wall and tried to run, but the ground here was rough moorland, and he ftll repeatedly. He saw no trace of little Jacob. He made his way back to the house, sullen and savage, and besmeared with earth and mud. "Give me a lantern, damn you," he said to old Sarah, " and look sharp ! " ^ Old Sarah took down a common candle-lantern, and pur- posely selected one with a hole in it. She also chose the shortest of her candle-ends. Ogden did not notice these particulars in his impatience, and went out again. Just then Jim came in. "Well," said old Sarah, "what d'ye think master's done? He 's licked little Jacob while * he 's wenly f kilt him, but t' little un 's reight enough now. He '11 never catch him." " What ! has little Jacob run away .'' " " Ay, that he has ; and he can run, can little Jacob ; and he knows all th' places about. I 've no fears on him. Master's gone after him wi' a lantern wi' a hoile in it, and auve a hinch o' cannle. It 's like catchin' a bird wi' a pinch o' salt." " Little un 's safe enough, I 'se warrant him." "We mun just stop quite t till th' ould un 's i' bedd, and then we '11 go and seech § little Jacob." In a quarter of an hour Ogden came back again. His * Till. t Almost. X Quiet. § Seek. Chap. VI. Little Jacob is Lost. 53 light had gone out, and he threw the lantern down on the kitchen-floor without a word, and shut himself up in his sitting-room. The furniture was in great disorder. The chairs were all overturned, the mahogany table bore deep indentations from the blows of the hammer. Some pieces of old china that had ornamented the chimney-piece lay scattered on the hearth. He lifted up a chair and sat upon it. The disorder was rather pleasing to him than otherwise ; he felt a bitter satisfaction in the harmony between it and the state of his own mind. A large fragment of broken china lay close to his foot. It be- longed to a basin, which, having been broken only into three or four pieces, was still repairable. Ogden put it under his heel and crushed it to powder, feeling a sort of grim satisfac- tion in making repair out of the question. He sat in perfect inaction for about a quarter of an hour, and then rang the bell. " Bring me hot water, and, stop — put these things in their places, will you ? " Old Sarah restored some order in the room, removed the broken china, and brought the hot water. " Now, bring me a bottle of rum." " Please, Mestur Ogden, you 've got no rum in the house." " No, but you have." " Please, sir, I 've got very little. I think it 's nearly all done." "D'ye think I want to rob you? I'll pay ye for't, damn you ! " " Mestur Ogden, you don't use drinkin' sperrits at Twisde Farm." Ogden gave a violent blow on the table with his fist, and shouted, " Bring me a bottle of rum, a bottle of rum ! D 'ye think you 're to have all the rum in the world to yourself, you drunken old witch?" There was that in his look which cowed Sarah, and she reflected that he might be less dangerous if he were drunk. So she brought the rum. 54 Wender holme. Part i. Ogden was pouring himself a great dose into a tumbler, when a sudden hesitation possessed him, and he flung the bottle from him into the fireplace. There was a shivering crash, and then a vast sheet of intolerable flame. The intense heat drove Ogden from the hearth. He seized the candle, and went upstairs into his bedroom. Sarah and Jim waited to see whether he would come down again, but he remained in his room, and they heard the boards creak as he walked from wall to wall. This continued an hour. At last old Sarah said, — "I cannot bide no longer. Let's go and seech th' childt ;" and she lighted two lanterns, which, doubtless, were in better condition, and better provided with candles, than the one she had lent to Mr, Ogden. They went into the stable and cowhouse (or mistle as it was called in that country), and called in the softest and most win- ning tones their voices knew how to assume. "Little Jacob, little Jacob, come, my lad, come; it's nobbut old Sarah an' Jim. Mestur 's i' bedd." They went amongst the hay with their lanterns, in spite of the risk of setting it on fire, but he v/as not there. He was not to be found in any of the out-buildings. Suddenly an idea struck Jim. " If we 'd nobbut his bit of a dog, who 'd find him, sure enough." But Feorach had disappeared. Feorach was with her young master. They began to be rather alarmed, for it was very cold, and intensely dark. The lad was certainly not on the premises. They set off along the path that led to the rocks. They ex- amined every nook and cranny of the huge masses of sand- stone, and their lanterns produced the most unaccustomed effects, bringing out the rough projections of the rock against the unfathomable black sky, and casting enormous shadows from one rock to another. Wherever their feet could tread Chap. VI. Little Jacob is Lost. 55 they went, missing nothing ; but the lad was not amongst the rocks. It began to be clear to them that he could not even be in a place of such shelter as that. He must be out on the open moor. "We mun go and tell Mestur," said Jim. " If he's feared about th' childt, he willn't be mad at him." So they returned straight to the house, and went to Mr. Ogden's room. He had gone to bed, but was not asleep. If he thought about little Jacob at all, his reflections were prob- ably not of an alarming kind. The child would come back, of course. " Please, sir," said Jim, " Master Jacob isn 't come back, and we can't find him." " He 11 come back," said Ogden. " Please, sir, I 'm rather feared about him," said Jim ; " it 's nearly two hours sin' he left the house, and it 's uncommon cold. We 've been seekin' him all up and down, old Sarah and me, and he 's nowhere about th' premises, and he isn't about th' rocks neither." Mr. Ogden began to feel rather alarmed. The paroxysm of his irritation was over by this time, and he had become rational again ; indeed his mind was clearer, and, in a certain sense, calmer, than it had been for two or three days. For the last half-hour he had been suffering only from great pros- tration, and a feeling of dulness and vacancy, which this new anxiety effectually removed. Notwithstanding the violence of his recent treatment of his son — a violence which had fre- quently broken out during several months, and which had culminated in the scene described in the last chapter, when it had reached the pitch of temporary insanity — he really had the deepest possible affection for his child, and this paternal feeling was more powerful than he himself had ever con- sciously known or acknowledged. When once the idea was realized that little Jacob might be suffering physically from the cold, and mentally from a dread of his father, which the 56 Wender holme. Part i. events of the night only too fully justified, Mr. Ogden began to feel the tenderest care and anxiety. " I '11 be down with you in a moment," he said. " See that the lanterns are in good order. Have the dogs ready to go with us — they may be of some use." He came downstairs with a serious but quite reasonable expression on his face. He spoke quite gently to old Sarah, and said, with a half-smile, " You needn't give me a lantern with a hole in it this time ;" and then he added, " I wasted all that rum you gave me." " It 'ud 'ave been worst wasted if you 'd swallowed it, Mestur." '* It would — it would ; but we may need a little for the lad if we find him — very cold, you know. Give a little to Ji'n. if you have any ; and take a railway rug, or a blanket from my bed, to wrap him in if he should need it." The dogs were in the kitchen now — a large mastiff and a couple of pointers. Mr. Ogden took down a little cloak that belonged to Jacob, and made the dogs smell at it. Then he seemed to be looking about for something else. " Are ye seekin' something, Mr. Ogden ? " " I want something to make a noise with, Sarah." She fetched the little silver horn that had been the Doctor's last present to his young friend. " That 's it," said Mr. Ogden ; " he '11 know the sound of that when he hears it." The little party set out towards the moor. Mr. Ogden led it to the place where Jacob had crossed the wall ; and as Jim was looking about with his lantern he called out, " Why, master, here 's one of his shoes, and — summat else." The " summat else " was the great whip. Mr. Ogden took the shoe up, and the whip. They were within a few yards of the pond, and he went down to the edge of it. A slight splash was heard, and he came back without the whip. The weight of the steel hammer had sunk it, and hidden it from his eyes for ever. He carried the little shoe in his right hand. Chap. VI. Little Jacob is Lost. 57 When they had crossed the wall, Mr. Ogden bent down and put the shoe on the ground, and called the dogs. The pointers understood him at once, and went rapidly on the scent, whilst the little party followed them as fast as they could. It led out upon the open moor. When they were nearly a mile from the house, Mr. Ogden told Sarah to go back and make a fire in little Jacob's room, and warm his bed. The two men then went forward in silence. It was bitterly cold, and the wind began to rise, whistling over the wild moor. It was now eleven o'clock ; Mr. Ogden looked at his watch. Suddenly the dogs came to a stand- still ; they had reached the edge of a long sinuous bog with a surface of treacherous green, and little black pools of peat-water and mud. Mr. Ogden knew the bog perfectly, as he knew every spot on the whole moor that he was accus- tomed to shoot over, and he became terribly anxious. "We must mark this spot," he said ; but neither he nor Jim carried a stick, and there was no wood for miles round. The only resource was to make a little cairn of stones. When this was finished, Mr. Ogden stood looking at the bog a few minutes, measuring its breadth with his eye. He concluded that it was impossible for a child to leap over it even at the narrowest place, and suggested that little Jacob must have skirted it. But in which direction — to the right hand or the left ? The dogs gave no indication ; they were off the scent. Mr. Ogden followed the edge of the bog to the right, and after walking half a mile, turned the extremity of it, and came again on the other side till he was opposite the cairn he had made. The dogs found no fresh scent j they were perfectly useless. " Make a noise," said Mr. Ogden to Jim ; " make a noise with that horn." Jim blew a loud blast. There came no answering cry. The wind whistled over the heather, and a startled grouse ^vhirred past on her rapid wings. 58 Wenderholme. Part i. An idea was forcing its way into Mr. Ogden's mind— 7 a hateful, horrible, inadmissible idea — that the foul black pit before him might be the grave of his only son. How ascer- tain it ? They had not the necessary implements ; and what would be the use of digging in that flowing, and yielding, and unfathomable black mud ? He could not endure the place, or the intolerable supposition that it suggested, and went wildly on, in perfect silence, with compressed lips and beating heart, stumbling over the rough land. Old Sarah warmed the little bed, and made a bright fire in Jacob's room. When Ogden came back, he went there at once, and found the old woman holding a small night-gown to the fire. His face told her enough. His dress was covered with snow. " Th' dogs is 'appen mistaken," she said ; " little Jacob might be at Milend by this time." Mr. Ogden sent Jim down to Shayton on horse-back, and returned to the moor alone. They met again at the farm at three o'clock in the morning. Neither of them had any news of the child. Jim had roused the household at Milend, and awakened everybody both at the parsonage and the Doctor's. He had given the alarm, and he had done the same at the scattered cottages and farm-houses between Twistle Farm and Shayton. If Jacob were seen anywhere, news would be at once sent to his father. Dr. Bardly was not at home ; he had left about noon for Sootythorn on militia business, and expected to go on to Wenderholme with Colonel Stanburne, where he intended to pass the night. Chap. VII. Isaac Ogdeiis PunishrneiU. 59 CHAPTER VII. ISAAC OGDEN'S PUNISHMENT. DURING what remained of the night, it is unnecessary to add that nobody at Twistle Farm had rest. The search was continually renewed in various directions, and always with the same negative result. Mr. Ogden began to lose hope, and was more and more confirmed in his supposi- tion that his son must have perished in the bog. Jim returned to Shayton, where he arrived about half-past four in the morning. When the hands assembled at Ogden's mill, Mr. Jacob told them that the factory would be closed that day, but that he would pay them their full wages ; and he should feel grateful to any of the men who would help him in the search for his little nephew, who had unfortunately disap- peared from Twistle on the preceding evening, and had not been since heard of. He added, that a reward of a hundred pounds would be given to any one who would bring him news of the child. Soon after daylight, handbills were posted in every street in Shayton ofiFering the same reward. Mr. Jacob returned to Milend from the factory, and prepared to set out for Twistle. The sun rose in clear frosty air, and the moors were cov- ered with snow. Large groups began to arrive at the farm about eight o'clock, and at nine the hill was dotted with searchers in every direction. It was suggested to Mr. Ogden by a ^policeman that if he had any intention of having the pond dragged, it would be well that it should be done at once, as there was already a thin coat of ice upon it, and it 6o Wenderholme. Part i. would probably freeze during the whole of the day and fol- lowing night, so that delay would entail great additional labor in the breaking of the ice. An apparatus was sent up from Shayton for this purpose. Mr. Ogden did not superintend this operation, but sat alone in his parlor waiting to hear the re- sult. There was a tap at the door, and the policeman entered. "We 've found nothing in the pond, Mr. Isaac, except — " " Except what .? " " Only this whip, sir, that must belong to you ; " and he produced the whip with the steel hammer. " It may be an important hindication, sir, if it could be ascertained whether your little boy had been playin' with it yesterday evenin'. You don't remember seein' him with it, do you, sir.? " Mr. Ogden groaned, and covered his face with his hands. Then his whole frame shook convulsively. Old Sarah came in. " I was just askin' Mr. Ogden whether he knew if the little boy had been playin' with this 'ere whip yesterday — we've found it in the pond ; and as I was just sayin', it might be a useful hindication." Old Sarah looked at the whip, which lay wet upon the table. "I seed that whip yistady, but I dunnot think our little lad played wi' it. He didn't use playin' wi' that whip. That there whip belongs to his father, an' it 's him as makes use on it, and non little Jacob." Mr. Ogden removed his hands from his face, and said, *' The whip proves nothing. I threw it into the pond yester- day myself." The policeman looked much astonished. " It 's a fine good whip, sir, to throw away." " Well, take it, then, if you admire it. I 'II make ye a pres- ent of it." " I 've no use for it, sir." " Then, I reckon," said old Sarah, " as you 'aven't got a little lad about nine year old ; such whips as that is consith- ered useful for thrashin' little lads about nine year old," Chap. VII. Isaac Ogdens Punishment. 6i Mr. Ogden could bear this no longer, and said he would gc down to the pond. When he had left the room, old Sarah took up the whip and hung it in its old place, over the silver spurs. The policeman lingered. Old Sarah relieved her mind by recounting what had passed on the preceding even- ing. " I am some and glad * as you brought him that there whip. 'J'h' sight of it is like pins and needles in 'is een. You 've punished 'im with it far worse than if you 'd laid it ovver his shoulthers." Mr. Ogden gave orders that every one who wanted any thing to eat should be freely supplied in the kitchen. One of old Sarah's great accomplishments was the baking of oat- cake, and as the bread in the house was soon eaten up, old Sarah heated her oven, and baked two or three hundred oat- cakes. When once the mixture is prepared, and the oven heated, a skilful performer bakes these cakes with surprising rapidity, and old Sarah was proud of her skill. If any thing could have relieved her anxiety about little Jacob, it would have been this beloved occupation — but not even the pleas- ure of seeing the thin fluid mixture spread over the heated sheet of iron, and of tossing the cake dexterously at the proper time, could relieve the good heart of its heavy care. Even the very occupation itself had saddening associations, for when old Sarah pursued it, little Jacob had usually been a highly interested spectator, though often very much in the way. She had scolded him many a time for his " plagui- ness ; " but, alas ! what would she have given to be plagued by that small tormentor now ! The fall of snow had been heavy enough to fill up the smaller inequalities of the ground, and the hills had that aspect of exquisite smoothness and purity which would be degraded by any comparison. Under happier circumstances, the clear atmosphere and brilliant landscape would have been * " Some and glad " is a common Lancashire expression, meaning " consideralily glad." 62 Wenderhobne. pakt i. in the highest degree exhilarating ; but I suppose nobody at Twistle felt that exhilaration now. On the contrary, there seemed to be something chilling and pitiless in that cold splendor and brightness. No one could look on the vast sweep of silent snow without feeling that somewhere under its equal and unrevealing surface lay the body of a beloved child. The grave-faced seekers ranged the moors all day, after a reg- ular system devised by Mr. Jacob Ogden. The circle of their search became wider and wider, like the circles from a splash in water. In this way, before nightfall, above thirty square miles had been thoroughly explored. At last, after a day that seemed longer than the longest days of summer, the sun went down, and one by one the stars came out. The heav- ens were full of their glittering when the scattered bands of seekers met together again at the farm. The fire was still kept alive in little Jacob's room. The little night-gown still hung before it. Old Sarah changed the hot water in the bed-warmer regularly every hour. Alas ! alas ! was there any need of these comforts now ? Do corpses care to have their shrouds warmed, or to have hot- water bottles at their icy feet ? Mr. Ogden, who had controlled himself with wonderful success so long as the sun shone, began to show unequivocal signs of agitation after nightfall. He had headed a party on the moor, and came back with a sinking heart. He had no hope left. The child must certainly have died in the cold. He went into little Jacob's bedroom and walked about alone for a few minutes, pacing from the door to the window, and looking out on the cold white hills, the monotony of which was relieved only by the masses of black rock that rose out of them here and there. The fire had burnt very briskly, and it seemed to Mr. Ogden that the little night-gown was rather too near. As he drew back the chair he gazed a minute at the bit of linen ; his chest heaved with violent emotion, and then there came a great and terrible agony. He Chap. VII. Isaac Ogden s Punishment. 63 sat down on the low iron bed, his strong frame shook and quiv- ered, and with painful gasps flowed the bitter tears of his vain repentance. He looked at the smooth little pillow, un- touched during a whole night, and thought of the dear head that had pressed it, and might never press it more. Where was it resting now ? Was the frozen snow on the fair cheek and open brow, or — oh horror, still more horrible! — had he been buried alive in the black and treacherous pit, and were the dear locks defiled with the mud of the bog, and the bright eyes filled with its slimy darkness for ever ? Surely he had not descended into that grave ; they had done what they could to sound the place, and had found nothing but earth; soft and yielding — no fragment of dress had come up or their boat-hooks. It was more endurable to imagine the child asleep under the snow. When the thaw came they would find him, and bring him to his own chamber, and lay him again on his own bed, at least for one last night, till the coffin came up from Shayton. How good the child had been ! how brutally Ogden felt that he had used him ! Litde Jacob had been as forgiving as a dog, and as ready to respond to the slightest mark of kind- ness. He had been the light of the lonely house with his innocent prattle and gayety. Ogden had frightened him into silence lately, and driven him into the kitchen, where he had many a time heard him laughing with old Sarah and Jim, and been unreasonably angry with him for it. Ogden began to see these things in a different light. " I used him so badly," he thought, "that it was only natural he should shun and avoid me." And then he felt and knew how much sweet and pure companionship he had missed. He had not half en- joyed the blessing he had possessed. He ought to have made himself young again for the child's sake. W'ould it have done him any harm to teach little Jacob cricket, and play at ball with him, or at nine-pins ? The boy's life had been ter- ribly lonely, and his father had done nothing to dissipate or 64 Wcnderholme. Part i. mitigate its loneliness. And then there came a bitter sense that he had really loved the child with an immense affection, but that the coldness and roughness and brutality of his out- ward behavior had hidden this affection from his son. In this, however, Mr. Ogden had not been quite so much to blame as in the agony of his repentance he himself believed. His self-accusation, like all sincere and genuine self-accusa- tion, had a touch of exaggeration in it. The wrong that he had done was attributable quite as much to the temper of the place he lived in as to any peculiar evil in himself as an in- dividual man. He had spoiled his temper by drinking, but every male in Shayton did the same ; he had been externally hard and unsympathetic, but the inhabitants of Shayton car- ried to an excess the English contempt for the betrayal of the softer emotions. In all that Ogden had done, in the whole tenor of his life and conversation, he had merely obeyed the great human instinct of conformity. Had he lived anywhere else — had he even lived at Sootythorn — he would have been a different man. Such as he was, he was the product of the soil, like the hard pears and sour apples that grew in the dismal garden at Milend. He had been sitting more than an hour on the bed, when he heard a knock at the door. It was old Sarah, who an- nounced the arrival of Mr. Prigley and Mrs. Ogden. Mr. Prigley had been to fetch her from the place where she was visiting, and endeavored to oflfer such comfort to her during the journey as his heart and profession suggested. As on their arrival at Milend there had been no news of a favor- able or even hopeful kind, Mrs. Ogden was anxious to pro- ceed to Twistle immediately, and Mr. Prigley had kindly accompanied her. The reader may have inferred from previous pages of this history, that although Mr. Prigley may have been a blameless and earnest divine, he was not exactly the man best fitted to influence such a nature as that of Isaac Ogden. He had Chap. VII. Isauc Ogdens P2mishment. 05 little understanding either of its weakness or its strength — of its weakness before certain forms of temptation, or its strength in acknowledging unwelcome and terrible facts. After Mrs. Ogden had simply said, " Well, Isaac, there 's no news of him yet," the clergyman tried to put a cheerful light on the subject by expressing the hope that the boy was safe in some farmhouse. Mr. Ogden answered that every farm- house within several miles had been called at, and that Twistle Farm was the last of the farms on the moor side. It was most unlikely, in his opinion, that the child could have re- sisted the cold so long, especially as he had no provisions of any kind, and was not even sufficiently clothed to go out ; and as he had certainly not called at any house within seven or eight miles of Twistle, Mr. Ogden could only conclude that he must have perished on the moor, and that the thick fall of snow was all that had prevented the discovery of his body. Mrs. Ogden sat down and began to cry very bitterly. The sorrow of a person like Mrs. Ogden is at the same time quite frank in its expression, and perfectly monotonous. Her regrets expressed themselves adequately in three words, and the repetition of them made her litany of grief — "Poor little lad \ " and then a great burst of weeping, and then " Poor little lad ! " again, perpetually. The clergyman attempted to " improve " the occasion in the professional sense. " The Lord hath given," he said, " and the Lord bath taken away ; " then he paused, and added, " blessed be the name of the Lord." But this brought no solace to Ogden's mind. " It was not the Lord that took the lad away," be answered ; " it was his father that drove him away." The great agony came over him again, and he flung himself on his breast upon the sofa and buried his face in the cush- ions. Then his mother rose and came slowly to his side, and knelt down by him. Precious maternal feelings, that had s 66 Wenderholme. Part i. been, as it were, forgotten in her heart for more than twenty years, like jewels that are worn no more, shone forth once more from her swimming eyes. " Isaac, lad," she said, with a voice that sounded in his ears like a far-off recollection of childhood, — " Isaac, lad, it were none o' thee as did it, — it were drink. Thou wouldn't have hurt a hair of his head." Atid she kissed him. It was a weary night at Twistle. Nobody had any hope let'.", but they felt bound to continue the search, and relays of men came up from Shayton for the purpose. They were divided into little parties of six or eight, and Mr. Jacob directed their movements. Each group returned to the house after exploring the ground allotted to it, and Mr. Ogden fe- verishly awaited its arrival. The ever-recurring answer, the sad shake of the head, the disappointed looks, sank into the heart of the bereaved father. About two in the morning he got a little sleep, and awoke in half an hour somewhat stronger and calmer. It is unnecessary to pursue the detail of these sufferings. The days passed, but brought no news. Dr. Bardly came back from Wenderholme, and seemed less affected than would have been expected by those who knew his love and friend- ship for little Jacob. He paid, however, especial attention to Mr. Isaac, whom he invited to stay with him for a few weeks, and who bore his sorrow with a manly fortitude. The Doctor drank his habitual tumbler of brandy- and-water every evening before going to bed, and the first evening, by way of hospi- tality, had offered the same refreshment to his guest. Mr. Ogden declined simply, and the offer was not renewed. For the first week he smoked a great deal, and drank large quan- tities of soda-water, but did not touch any intoxicating liquor. He persevered in this abstinence, and declared his firm re- solve to continue it as a visible sign of his repentance, and of his respect to the memory of his boy. He was very gentle and pleasant, and talked freely with the Doctor about ordi- Chap. VII. Isaac O^deiis PunisJniieiit. 67 cb nary subjects ; but, for a man whose vigor and energy had manifested themselves in some abruptness and rudeness in the common intercourse of life, this new gentleness was a marked sign of sadness. When the Doctor's servant, Martha, came in unexpectedly and found Mr. Ogden alone, she often observed that he had shed tears ; but he seemed cheerful when spoken to, and his grief was quiet and undemonstrative. The search for the child was still actively pursued, and his mysterious disappearance became a subject of absorbing interest in the neighborhood. The local newspapers were full of it, and there appeared a ver}' terrible article in the ' Sooty- thorn Gazette ' on Mr. Ogden's cruelty to his child. The writer was an inhabitant of Shayton, who had had the mis- fortune to have Mr. Jacob Ogden for his creditor, and had been pursued with great rigor by that gentleman. He got the necessary data from the policeman who had brought the whip back from the pond, and wrote such a description of it as made the flesh of the Sooty thorn people creep upon their bones, and their cheeks redden with indignation. The Doc- tor happened to be out of the house when this newspaper arrived, and Mr. Isaac opened it and read the article. The facts stated in it were true and undeniable, and the victim quailed under his punishment. If he had ventured into Sootythorn, he would have been mobbed and pelted, or per- haps lynched. He was scarcely safe even in Shayton ; and when he walked from the Doctor's to Milend, the factory operatives asked him where his whip was, and the children pretended to be frightened, and ran out of his way. A still worse punishment was the singular gravity of the faces that he met — a gravity that did not mean sympathy but censure. The ' Sootythorn Gazette ' demanded that he should be pun- ished — that an example should be made of him, and so on. The writer had his wish, without the intervention of the law. After a few weeks the mystery was decided to be insoluble, and dismissed from the columns of the newspapers. Even 68 Wenderholme. part i. the ingenious professional detectives admitted that they were at fault, and could hold out no hopes of a discovery. Mr. Ogden had with difficulty been induced to remain at the Doc- tor's during the prosecution of these inquiries ; but Dr. Bardly had represented to him that he ought to have a fixed address in case news should arrive, and that he need not be wholly inactive, but might ride considerable distances in various directions, which indeed he did, but without result. Mrs. Ogden remained at Milend, but whether from the strength of her nature, or some degree of insensibility, she did not appear to suffer greatly from her bereavement, and pur- sued her usual household avocations with her accustomed regularity. Mr. Jacob went to his factoiy, and was absorbed in the details of business. No one put on mourning, for the child was still considered as possibly alive, and perhaps his relations shrank from so decided an avowal of their abandon- ment of hope. The one exception to this rule was old Sarah at Twistle, who clad herself in a decent black dress that she had by her. " If t' little un 's deead," she said, " it's nobbut reight to put mysel' i' black for him ; and if he isn't I 'm so sore in my heart ovver him 'at I 'm fit to wear nought else." Chap. VIII. From Sooty tJiorn to Wender holme. 69 CHAPTER VIII. FROM SOOTYTHORN TO WENDERHOLME. THE next scene of our story is in the Thorn Hotel at the prosperous manufacturing town of Sootythorn, a place superior to Shayton in size and civilization and selected by the authorities as the head-quarters of Colonel Stanburne's regiment of militia. Dr. Bardly arrived at the Thorn the morning after Isaac Ogden's relapse, having driven all the way from Shayton, through scenery which would have been comparable to any thing in England, if the valleys had not been spoiled by cot- ton-mills, rows of ugly cottages, and dismal-looking coal-pits. "Colonel Stanburne's expecting you, Doctor," said Mr. Garley, the landlord of the Thorn ; " he 's in the front sitting- room." The Colonel was sitting by himself, with the * Times ' and a little black pipe. " Good morning. Dr. Bardly ! you 've a nice little piece of work before you. There are a lot of fellows here to be exam- ined as to their physical constitution — fellows, you know, who aspire to the honor of serving in the twentieth regiment of Royal Lancashire Militia." " Perhaps I 'd better begin with the hofficers," said the Doctor. The Colonel looked alarmed, or affected to be so. " My dear Doctor, there's not the least necessity for examining officers — it isn't customary, it isn't legal ; officers are always perfect, both physically and morally." 70 Wenderholmc. part i. A theory of this kind came well enough from Colonel Stanburne. He was six feet high, and the picture of health. He brought forth the fruits of good living, not, as Mr. Garley did, in a bloated and rubicund face and protuberant corpo- ration, but in that admirable balance of the whole human organism which proves the regular and equal performance of all its functions. Dr. Bardly was a good judge of a man, and he had the same pleasure in looking at the Colonel that a fox-hunter feels in contemplating a fine horse. Beyond this, he liked Colonel Stanburne's society, not precisely, perhaps, for intellectual reasons — for, intellectually, there was little or nothing in common between the two men — but because he found in it a sort of mental refreshment, very pleasant to him after the society at Shayton. The Colonel was a dif- ferent being — he lived in a different world from the world of the Ogdens and their friends ; and it amused and inter- ested the Doctor to see how this strange and rather admirable creature would conduct itself under the conditions of its present existence. The Doctor, as the reader must already feel perfectly assured, had not the weakness of snobbishness or parasitism in any form whatever ; and if he liked to go to Wenderholme with the Colonel, it was not because there was an earl's daughter there, and the sacred odor of aristocracy about the place, but rather because he had a genuine pleasure in the society of his friend, whether amongst the splendors of Wenderholme, or in the parlor of the inn at Sootythorn. The Colonel, too, on his part, liked the Doctor, though he laughed at him, and mimicked him to Lady Helena. The mimicry was not, however, very successful, for the Doctor's Lancashire dialect was too perfect and too pure for any mere ultramontane (that is, creature living beyond the hills that guarded the Shayton valley) to imitate with any approxima tion to success. If the Colonel, however, notwithstanding all his study and effort, could not succeed in imitating the Doctor's happy selection of expressions and purity of style, Chap. VIII. From Sootythorn to Wenderkolme. 71 he could at any rate give him a nickname — so he called him Hoftens, not to his face, but to Lady Helena at home, and to the adjutant, and to one or two other people who knew him, and the nickname became popular ; and, after a while, the officers called Dr. Bardly Hoftens to his face, which he took with perfect good-nature. The first time that this occurred, the Doctor (such was the delicacy of his ear) believed he detected something unusual in the way an impu- dent ensign pronounced the word often, and asked what he meant, on which the adjutant interposed, and said, — "Don't mind his impudence. Doctor ; he 's mimicking you." " Well," said the Doctor, simply, " I wasn't aware that there was hany thing peculiar in my pronunciation of the word, but people hoftens are unaware of their own defects." But we anticipate. They lunched at the Thorn with the adjutant, a fair-haired and delicate-looking little gentleman of exceedingly mild and quiet manners, whose acquaintance the Doctor had made very recently. Captain Eureton had retired a year or two before from the regular army, and was now living in the neighborhood of Sootythorn with his old mother whom he loved with his whole heart. He had never married, and now there was little probability of his ever marr)-ing. The people of Sootythorn would have set him down as a milk-sop if he had not seen a good deal of active service in India and at the Cape ; but a soldier who has been baptized in the fire of the battle-field has always that fact in his favor, and has little need to give himself airs of boldness in order to impose upon the imagination of civilians. " I believe, Dr. Bardly," said Eureton, " that we are going to have an officer from your neighborhood, a Mr. Ogden. His name has been put down for a lieutenant's commission." " Yes, he 's a neighbor of mine," answered the Doctor, rather curtly. " You should have brought him with you, Doctor," said Colonel Stanburne, "that we might make his acquaintance. 72 Wender holme, part i. I 've never seen him, j'ou know, and he gets his commission on your recommendation. I should like, as far as possible, to know the officers personally before we meet for our first training. What sort of a fellow is Mr. Ogden? Tell us all about him." The Doctor felt slightly embarrassed, and showed it in his manner. Any true description of Isaac Ogden, as he was just then, must necessarily seem very unfavorable. Dr. Bardly had been to Twistle that very morning before day- light, and had found Mr. Ogden suffering from the effects of that fall down the cellar-steps in a state of drunkenness. The Doctor had that day abandoned all hope of reclaiming Isaac Ogden, and saving him from the fate that awaited him. " I 've nothing good to tell of Mr. Ogden, Colonel Stan- burne. I wish I hadn't recommended him to you. He 's an irreclaimable drunkard ! " " Well, if you 'd known it you wouldn't have recommended him, of course. You found it out since, I suppose. You must try and persuade him to resign. Tell him there '11 be some awfully hard work, especially for lieutenants." "I knew that he drank occasionally, but I believed that it was because he had nobody to talk to except a drunken set at the Red Lion at Shayton. I thought that if he came into the regiment it would do him good, by bringing him into more society. Shayton 's a terrible place for drinking. There 's a great difference between Shayton and Sootythorn." " What sort of a man is he in other respects .'' " asked the Colonel. " He 's right enough for every thing else. He 's a good- looking fellow, tall, and well-built ; and he used to be pleas- ant and good-tempered, but now his nervous system must be shattered, and I would not answer for him." "If you still think he would have sufficient control over himself to keep sober for a month we might try him, and see whether we cannot do him some good. Perhaps, as you Chap. VIII. From Sooty tJiorn to Wendevholme. 73 thought, it 's only want of society that drives him to amuse himself by drinking. Upon my word, I think I should take to drinking myself if I lived all the year round in such a place as Sootythorn — and I suppose Shayton 's no better." Captain Eureton, who was simple and even abstemious in his way of living, and whose appetite had not been sharpened, like that of the Doctor, by a long drive in the morning, fin- ished his lunch in about ten minutes, and excused himself on the plea that he had an appointment with a joiner about the onlerly-room, which had formerly been an infant-school of some Dissenting persuasion, and therefore required re- modelling as to its interior fittings. We shall see more of him in due time, but for the present must leave him to the tranquil happiness of devising desks and pigeon-holes in company with an intelligent workman, than which few occu- pations can be more delightful. " Perhaps, unless you 've something to detain you in Sooty- thorn, Doctor, we should do well to leave here as early as possible. It 's a long drive to Wenderholme — twenty miles, you know ; ancT I always make a point of giving the horses a rest at Rigton." As the Doctor had nothing to do in Sootythorn, the Colonel ordered his equipage. When he drove alone, he always pre- ferred a tandem, but when Lady Helena accompanied him, he took his seat in a submissive matrimonial manner in the family carriage. As Wenderholme was so far from Sooty- thorn, the Colonel kept two pairs of horses ; and one pair was generally at Wenderholme and the other in Mr. Garley's stables, where the Colonel had a groom of his own perma- nently. The only inconvenience of this arrangement was that the same horses had to do duty in the tandem and the carriage ; but they did it on the whole fairly well, and the Colonel contented himself with the carriage-horses, so far as driving was concerned. The Doctor drove his own gig with the degree of skill 74 Wendcr holme. part i. which results from the practice of many years ; but he had never undertaken the government of a tandem, and felt, per- haps, a slight shade of anxiety when John Stanburne took the reins, and they set off at full trot through the streets of Sooty- thorn. A manufacturing town, in that particular stage of its development, is one of the most awkward of all possible places to drive in — the same street varies so much in breadth that you never can tell whether there will be room enough to pass when you get round the corner ; an?t there are alarming noises of many kinds — the roar of a cotton-mill in the street itself, or the wonderfully loud hum of a foundry, or the incessant clattering hammer-strokes of a boiler-making estab- lishment — which excite and bewilder a nervous horse, till, if manageable at all, he is manageable only with the utmost delicacy and care. As Colonel Stanburne seemed to have quite enough to do to soothe and restrain his leader, the Doctor said nothing till they got clear of the last street ; but once out on the broad turnpike, or " Yorkshire Road," the Colonel gave his team more freedom, and himself relaxed from the rigid accuracy of seat he had hitherto maintained. He then turned to the Doctor, and began to talk. " I say. Doctor, why don't you drive a tandem ? You — you ought to drive a tandem. Ton my word you ought, seriously, now." The Doctor laughed. He didn't see the necessity or the duty of driving a tandem, and so begged to have these points explained to him. " Well, because, don't you see, when you 've only got one horse in your dog-cart, or gig, or whatever two-wheeled vehicle you may possess, you 've no fun, don't you see ? " The Doctor didn't see, or did not seem to see. " I mean," proceeded the Colonel, explanatorily, " that you haven't that degree of anxiety which is necessary to give a zest to existence. Now, when you've a leader who is almost perfectly free, and over whom you can only exercise a control Chav. V ill. From Soolyikorn 1 Wenderholnie. 75 of — the most gentle and persuasive kind, you're always slightly anxious, and sometimes you 're very anxious. For instance, last time we drove back from Sootythorn it was pitch dark, — wasn't it, Fyser ? " Here Colonel Stanburne turned to his groom, who was sitting behind ; and Fyser, as might be expected, muttered something confirmatory of his master's statement. " It was pitch dark ; and, by George ! the candles in the lamps were too short to last us ; and that confounded Fyser forgot to provide himself with fresh ones before he left Sooty- thorn, and — didn't you, Fyser ? " Fyser confessed his negligence. " And so, when the lamps were out, it was pitch dark ; so dark that I couldn't tell the road from the ditch — upon my word, I couldn't ; and I couldn't see the leader a bit, I could only feel him with the reins. So I said to Fyser, ' Get over to the front seat, and then crouch down as low as you can, so as to bring the horses' heads up against the sky, and tell me if you can see them.' So Fyser crouched down as I told him ; and when I asked him if he saw any thing, he said he did think he saw the leader's ears. Well, damn it, then, if you do see 'em, I said, keep your eye on 'em." " And were you going fast ? " asked the Doctor. " Why, of course we were. We were trotting at the rate of, I should say, about nine miles an hour ; but after a while, Fyser, by hard looking, began to see rather more distinctly — so distinctly that he clearly made out the difference between the horses' heads and the hedges ; and he kept calling out ' right, sir,' ' left, sir,' ' all right, sir,' and so he kept me straight. If he 'd been a sailor he 'd have said ' starboard ' and ' port ; ' but Fyser isn't a sailor." " And did you get safe to Wenderholme ? " " Of course we did. Fyser and I always get safe to Wen- derholme." " I shouldn't recommend you to try that experiment hoftens." 76 Wender holme. Part i. "Well, but you see the advantage of driving tandem. If you 've only one horse you know where he is, however dark it is — he 's in the shafts, of course, and you know where to find him : but when you 've got a leader you never exactly know where he is, unless you can see him." The Doctor didn't see the advantage. The reader will have gathered from this specimen of Colonel Stanburne's conversation that he was a pleasant and lively companion ; but if he is rather hasty in forming his opinion of people on a first acquaintance, he may also infer that the Colonel was a man of somewhat frivolous character and very moderate intellectual powers. He certainly was not a genius, but he conveyed the impression of being less intelligent and less capable of serious thought than nature had made him. His predominant characteristic was simple good-nature, and he possessed also, notwithstanding a sort of swagger in his manner, an unusual share of genuine intellectual humility, that made him contented to pass for a less able and less informed man than he really was. The Doctor's perception of charac- ter was too acute to allow him to judge Colonel Stanburne on the strength of a superficial acquaintance, and he clearly perceived that his friend was in the habit of wearing, as it were, his lighter nature outside. Some ponderous Philistines in Sootythorn,.who had been brought into occasional contact with the Colonel, and who confounded gravity of manner with mental capacity, had settled it amongst themselves that he had no brains ; but as the most intelligent of quadrupeds is at the same time the most lively, the most playful, the most good-natured, and the most affectionate, — so amongst human "beings it does not always follow that a man is empty because he is lively and amusing, and seems merry and careless, and says and does some foolish things. An hour later they reached Rigton, a little dull village quite out of the manufacturing district, and where it was the Colonel's custom to bait. The remainder of the drive was in QnKv.viw. Froifi Sooty thorn to We7ider holme. "j"] summer exceedingly beautiful ; but as it passed through a rich agricultural country, whose beauty depended chiefly on luxuri- ant vegetation, the present time of the year was not favorable to it. All this region had a great reputation for beauty amongst the inhabitants of the manufacturing towns, and no doubt fully deserved it ; but it is probable that their faculties of appre- cialion were greatly sharpened by the stimulus of contrast. To get fairly clear of factory-smoke, to be in the peaceful quitit country, and see no buildings but picturesque farms, was a definite happiness to many an inhabitant of Sootythorn. There were fine bits of scenery in the manufacturing district itself — picturesque glens and gorges, deep ravines with hid- den rivulets, and stretches of purple moorland \ but all this scenery lacked one quality — amenity. Now the scenery from Rigton to Wenderholme had this quality in a very high degree indeed, and it was instantly felt by every one who came from the manufacturing district, though not so perceptible by trav- ellers from the south of England. The Sootythorn people felt a soothing influence on the nervous system when they drove through this beautiful land ; their minds relaxed and were relieved of pressing cares, and they here fell into a state very rare indeed with them — a state of semi-poetical reverie. The reader is already aware that Wenderholme is situated on the opposite side of the hills which separate Shayton from this favored region, and close to the foot of them. Great alterations have been made in the house since the date at which our story begins, and therefore we will not describe it as it exists at present, but as it existed when the Colonel drove up the avenue with the Doctor at his side, and the faith- ful Fyser jumped up behind after opening the modest green gate. A large rambling house, begun in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but grievously modernized under that of King George the Third, it formed three sides of a quadrangle, and, as is usual in that arrangement of a mansion, had a great hall in the middle, and the principal reception rooms on each side yS WenderJiolme. Part i on the ground floor. The house was three stories high, and there were great numbers of bedrooms. An arched porch in the centre, preceded by a flight of steps, gave entrance at once to the hall ; and over the porch was a projection of the same breadth, continued up to the roof, and terminated in a narrow gable. This had been originally the centre of enrich- ment, and there had been some good sculpture and curious windows that went all round the projection, and carried it en- tirely upon their mullions ; but the modernizer had been at work and inserted simple sash-windows, which produced a deplorable effect. The same owner, John Stanburne's grand- father, had ruthlessly carried out that piece of Vandalism over the whole front of the mansion, and, except what architects call a string-course (which was still traceable here and there), had effaced every feature that gave expression to the original design of the Elizabethan builder. The entrance-hall was a fine room fifty feet long, and as high as two of the ordinary stories in the mansion. It had, no doubt, been a splendid specimen of the Elizabethan hall ; but the modernizer had been hard at work here also, and had put himself to heavy expense in order to give it the aspect of a thoroughly modern interior. The wainscot which had once adorned the walls, and which had been remarkable for its rich and fanciful carving, the vast and imaginative tapestries, the heraldic blazonries in the flaming oriels, the gallery for the musicians on twisted pillars of sculptured chestnut, — all these glories had been ruthlessly swept away. The tapestries had been used as carpets, and worn out ; the wainscot had been made into kitchen cupboards, and painted lead-color ; and the magnificent windows had been thrown down on the floor of a garret, where they had been trodden under foot and crushed into a thousand fragments: and in place of these things, which the narrow taste of the eighteenth century had condemned as barbarous, and destroyed without either hesita- tion or regret, it had substituted — what t — absolute emptiness QnKv.Miw. From Sootythorn to Wenderholme. 79 and negation ; for the heraldic oriels, sash-windows of the commonest glass ; for the tapestry and carving, a bare wall of yellow-washed plaster ; for the carved beams of the roof, a blank area of whitewash. The Doctor found Lady Helena in the drawing-room ; a little woman, who sometimes looked very pretty, and some- times exceedingly plain, according to the condition of her health and temper, the state of the weather, and a hundred things beside. Hence there were the most various and con- tradictory opinions about her ; the only approach to unanim- ity being amongst certain elderly ladies who had formed the project of being mother-in-law to John Stanburne, and failed in that design. The Doctor was not much accustomed to ladyships — they did not come often in his way ; indeed, if the truth must be told, Lady Helena was the only specimen of the kind he had ever enjoyed the opportunity of studying, and he had been rather surprised, on one or two preceding visits to Wenderholme, to find that she behaved so nicely. But there are ladyships and ladyships, and the Doctor had been for- tunate in the example which chance had thrown in his way. For instance, if he had known Lady Eleanor Griffin, who lived about ten miles from Wenderholme, and came there occasionally to spend the day, the Doctor would have formed quite a different opinion of ladyships in general, so much do our impressions of whole classes depend upon the individual members of them who are personally known to us. Lady Helena asked the Doctor a good many questions about Shayton, which it is quite unnecessary to report here, because the answers to them would convey no information to the reader which he does not already possess. Her ladyship inquired very minutely about the clergyman there, and whether the Doctor "liked" him. Now the verb "to like," when ap- plied to a clergyman, is used in a special sense. Everybody knows that to like a clergyman and to like gooseberry-pie are ver}' difTerent things ; for nobody in England eats clergyman, 8o WenderJiolme. Part i. though the natives of New Zealand are said to appreciate cold roast missionary. But there is yet another distinction — there is a distinction between liking a clergyman and liking a layman. If you say you like a clergyman, it is understood that it gives you a peculiar pleasure to hear him preach, and that you experience feelings of gratification when he reads prayers. And in this sense could Dr, Bardly say that he liked the reverend incumbent of his parish ? certainly not ; so he seemed to hesitate a little — and if he said "yes" he said it as if he meant no^ or a sort of vague, neutral answer, neither negative nor affirmative. " I mean," said Lady Helena, " do you like him as a preacher ? " " Upon my word, it 's so long since I heard him preach that I cannot give an opinion." " Oh ! I thought you attended his church. There are other churches in Shayton, I suppose." " No, there 's only one," said the imprudent and impolitic Doctor. Lady Helena began to think he was some sort of a Dissenter. She had heard of Dissenters — she knew that such people existed — but she had never been brought into contact with one, and it made her feel rather queer. She felt strongly tempted to ask what place of worship this man did attend, since by his own confession he never went to his parish church ; but curiosity, and the natural female tendency to be an inquisitor, were kept in check by politeness, and also, perhaps, a little restrained by the perfectly fearless aspect of the Doctor's face. If he had seemed in the least alarmed or apologetic, her ladyship would probably have assumed the functions of the inquisitor at once ; but he looked so cool, and so very capable of a prolonged and vigorous resistance, that Lady Helena retired. When she began to talk about Mrs. Prigley, the Doctor knew that she was already in full retreat. Chap. VIII. From Sooty thorn to Wcnderholme. 8i A little relieved, perhaps (for it is always disagreeable to quarrel with one's hostess, even though one has no occasion to be afraid of her), the Doctor gladly told Lady Helena all about Mrs. Prigley, and even narrated the anecdote about the hole in the carpet, and its consequences to Mrs. Ogden, •which put Lady Helena into good humor, for nothing, is more amusing to rich people than the ludicrous consequences of a certain kind of poverty. The sense of a pleasant contrast, all in their own favor, is delightful to them • and when the Doctor had told this anecdote, Lady Helena became agree- ably aware that she had carpets, and that her carpets had no holes in them — two facts of which use and custom had made her wholly unconscious. Her eye wandered with pleasure over the broad soft surface of dark pomegranate color, with its large white and red flowers and its nondescript ornaments of imitated gold, and the ground seemed richer, and the flowers seemed whiter and redder, because poor Mrs. Prig- ley's carpets were in a condition so lamentably different. " Mrs. Prigley 's a relation of yours, Lady Helena, — rather a near relation, — perhaps you are not aware of it ? " Lady Helena looked, and was, very much surprised. " A relation of mine. Dr. Bardly ! you must be mistaken. I believe I know the names of all my relations ! " "I mean a relation of your husband — of Colonel Stan- burne. Mrs. Prigley was a Miss Stanburne of Byfield, and her father was brother to Colonel Stanburne's father, and was born in this house." "That's quite a near relationship indeed," said Lady Helena ; " I wonder I never heard of it. John never spoke to me about Mrs. Prigley." " There was a quarrel between Colonel Stanburne's father and his uncle, and there has been no intercourse between their families since. I daresay the Colonel does not even know how many cousins he had on that side, or what mar- riages they made." On this the Colonel came in. 6 82 Wenderholme. Part i. " John, dear, Dr. Bardly has just told me that we have some cousins at Shayton that I knew nothing about. It 's the clergyman and his wife, and their name is Prig — Prig" — " Prigley," suggested the Doctor. "Yes, Prigley; isn't it curious, John? did you know about them ? " " Not very accurately. I knew one of my cousins had married a clergyman somewhere in that neighborhood, but was not aware that he was the incumbent of Shayton. I don't know my cousins at all. There was a lawsuit between their father and mine, and the two branches have never eaten salt together since. I haven't the least ill-will to any of them, but there's an awkwardness in making a first step — one never can tell how it may be received. What do you say. Doctor? How would Mrs. Prig — Prigley and her husband receive me if I were to go and call upon them ? " " They 'd give you cake and wine." "Would they really, now? Then I'll go and call upon them. I like cake and wine — always liked cake and wine." The conversation about the Prigleys did not end here. The Doctor was well aware that it would be agreeable to Mrs. Prigley to visit at Wenderholme, and be received there as a relation ; and he also knew that the good-nature of the Colonel and Lady Helena might be relied upon to make such intercourse perfectly safe and pleasant. So he made the most of the opportunity, and that so successfully, that by the time dinner was announced both John Stanburne and his wife had promised to drive over some day to Shayton from Sootythorn, and lunch with the Doctor, and call at the parsonage before leaving. Colonel Stanburne's conversation was not always very pro- found, but his dinners were never dull, for he would talk, and make other people talk too. He solemnly warned the Doctor not to allow himself to be entrapped into giving gratuitous medical advice to Lady Helena. " She thinks Chap. VIII. Froiu Sooiytliom to Wenderholme. 83 she 's got fitteen diseases, she does, upon my word j and she 's a sort of notion that because you 're the regimental doctor, she has a claim on you for gratuitous counsel and assistance. Now I consider that I have such a claim — if a private has it, surely a colonel has it too -r- and when we come up for our first training I shall expect you to look at my tongue, and feel my pulse, and physic me as a militiaman, at her Majesty's expense. But it is by no means so clear to me that my wife has any right to gratuitous doctoring, and mind she doesn't extort it from you. She 's a regular screw, my wife is ; and she loses no opportunity of obtaining benefits for nothing." Then he rattled on with a hundred anecdotes about ladies and doctors, in which there was just enough truth to give a pretext for his audacious exaggerations. When they returned to the drawing-room, the Colonel made Lady Helena sing; and she sang well. The Doctor, like many inhabitants of Shayton, had a very good ear, and greatly enjoyed music. Lady Helena had seldom found so attentive a listener ; he sought old favorites of his in her collection of songs, and begged her to sing them one after another. It seemed as if he never would be tired of listen- ing. Her ladyship felt pleased and flattered, and sang with wonderful energy and feeling. The Doctor, though in his innocence he thought only of the pure pleasure her music gave him, could have chosen no better means of ingratiating himself in her favor ; and if there had not, unhappily, been ti'iat dark and dubious question about church attendance, which made her ladyship look upon him as a sort of Dis- senter, or worse, the Doctor would that night have entered into relations of quite frank and cordial friendship with Lady Helena. English ladies are very kind and forgiving on many points. A man may be notoriously immoral, or a gambler, or a drinker, yet if he be well off they will kindly ignore and pass over these little defects ; but the unpardonable sin is failure in church attendance, and they will not pass over that. 84 Wenderhohte. Paut i. Lady Helena, in her character of inquisitor, had discovered this symptom of heresy, and would have been delighted to find a moral screw of some kind by which the culpable Doctor might be driven churchwards. If the law had per- mitted it, I have no doubt that she would have applied mate- rial screws, and pinched the Doctor's thumbs, or roasted him gently before a slow fire, or at least sent him to church be- tween two policemen with staves ; but as these means were beyond her power, she must wait until the moral screw could be found. A good practical means, which she had resorted to in several instances with poor people, had been to deprive them of their means of subsistence ; and all men and women whom her ladyship's little arm could reach knew that they must go to church or leave their situations ; so they attended with a regularity which, though exemplary in the eyes of men, could scarcely, one would think (considering the motive), be acceptable to Heaven. But Lady Helena acted in this less from a desire to please God than from the instinct of domi- nation, which, in her character of spiritual ruler, naturally exercised itself on this point. It seldom happens that the master of a house is the spiritual ruler of it ; he is the tem- poral power, not the spiritual. Colonel Stanburne felt and knew that he had no spiritual power. This matter of the Doctor's laxness as a church-goer had been rankling in Lady Helena's mind all the time she had been singing, and when she closed the piano she was ready for an attack. If the Doctor had been shivering blanketless in a bivouac, and she had had the power of giving him a blanket or withholding it, she would have offered it on condi- tion he promised to go to church, and she would have with- held it if he had refused compliance. But the Doctor had blankets of his own, and so could not be touched through a deprivation of blanket. She might, however, deprive the old woman he had recommended, and at the same time give the Doctor a lesson, indirectly. Chap. vin. From Sootythorn to Wenderholme. 85 " I forgot to ask you, Dr. Bardly, whether the old woman you recommended for a blanket was a churchvvoman, and regular in her attendance." " Two questions very easily answered," replied that auda- cious and unhesitating Doctor ; " she is a Wesleyan Metho- dist, and irregular in her attendance." "Then I'm — very sorry — Dr. Bardly, but I cannot give her a blanket, as I had promised. I can only give them to our — own people, you know ; and I make it essential that they should be ^ood church-people — I mean, very regular church-people." " Very well ; I '11 give her a blanket myself." The opportunity was not to be neglected, and her ladyship fired her gun. She had the less hesitation in doing so, that it seemed monstrously presumptuous in a medical man to give blankets at all ! What right had he to usurp the especial prerogative of great ladies ? And then to give a blanket to this very woman whom, for good reasons, her ladyship had condemned to a state of blanketlessness ! " I quite understand," she said, with much severity of tone, " that Dr. Bardly, who never attends public worship himself, should have a fellow-feeling with those who are equally negligent." It is a hard task to fight a woman in the presence of her husband, who is at the same time one's friend. The Doctor thought, " Would the woman have me offer premiums on hypoc- risy as she does ? " but he did not say so, because there was poor John Stanburne at the other end of the hearth-rug in a state of much uncomfortableness. So the Doctor said nothing at all, and the silence became perfectly distressing. Lady Helena had a way of her own out of the difficulty. Though it was an hour earlier than the usual time for prayers, she rang the bell and ordered all the servants in. When they were kneeling, each before his chair, her ladyship read the prayers 86 Wenderholme. Part i. .lerself, and accentuated with a certain severity a paragraph in which she thanked God that she was not as unbelievers, who were destined to perish everlastingly. It was a satisfac- tion to Lady Helena to have the Doctor there down upon his knees, with no means of escape from the expression of spir- itual superiority. Chap. IX. The Fugitive. 87 CHAPTER IX. THE FUGITIVE. *' T SAY, Doctor," said John Stanburne, when her ladyship -I- was fairly out of hearing, and half-way in her ascent of the great staircase — "I say, Doctor, I hope you don't mind what Helena says about you not being — you know some women are so — indeed I do believe all women are so. They seem laudably anxious to keep us all in the right path, but perhaps they 're just a little too anxious." The Doctor said he believed Lady Helena meant to do right, but — and then he hesitated. " But you don't see the sense of bribing poor people into sham piety with blankets." "Well, no, I don't." " Neither do I, Doctor. There 's a Roman Catholic family about three miles off, and the lady there gives premiums on going to mass, and still higher premiums on confession. She has won a great many converts ; and there 's a strong antag- onism between her and Helena — a most expensive warfare it is too, I assure you, this warfare for souls. However, it's an ill wind that blows nobody good, and the poor profit by it, which is a consolation, only it makes them sneaks — it makes them sneaks and hypocrites. Doctor, come into my study, will you, and let 's have a weed 1 " The "study," as John Stanburne called it, was a cosey little room, with oak wainscot that his grandfather had painted white. It contained a small bookcase, and the bookcase con- tained a good many novels, some books of poetry, a treatise 88 Wender holme. Part i. on dog-breaking, a treatise on driving, and a treatise on fish- ing. The novels were very well selected, and so was the poetry ; and John Stanburne had read all these books, many of them over and over again. Such literary education as he possessed had been mainly got out of that bookcase ; and though he had no claim to erudition, a man's head might be worse furnished than with such furniture as that. There was a splendid library at Wenderholme — a big room lined with the backs of books as the other rooms were lined with paper or wainscot ; and when Stanburne wanted to know something he went there, and disturbed his ponderous histories and en- cyclopaedias ; but he used the little bookcase more than the big library. He could not read either Latin or Greek. Few men can read Latin and Greek, and of the few who can, still fewer do read them ; but his French was very much above the usual average of English French — that is, he spoke flu- ently, and would no doubt have spoken correctly if only he could have mastered the conjugations and genders, and imi- tated the peculiar Gallic sounds. The society of ladies is always charming, but it must be admitted that there is an hour especially dear to the male sex, and which does not owe its delightfulness to their presence. It is the hour of retirement into the smoking-room. When the lady of the house has a tendency to make the weight of her authority felt (and this will sometimes happen), the male mem- bers of her family and their guests feel a schoolboyish sense of relief in escaping from it ; but even when she is very genial and pleasant, and when everybody enjoys the light of her counte- nance, it must also be confessed that the timely withdrawal of that light, like the hour of sunset, hath a certain sweetness of its own. " My wife 's always very good about letting me sit here, and smoke and talk as long as I like with my friends, after she's gone to bed," said Colonel Stanburne. " You smile because I seem to value a sort of goodness that seems only natural, Chai». IX. The Fugitive. 89 but that 's on account of your old-bachelorish ignorance of womankind. There are married men who no more dare sit an hour with a cigar when their wives are gone to bed than they dare play billiards on Sunday. Now, for instance, I was staying this autumn with a friend of mine in another county, and about ten o'clock his wife went to bed. He and I wanted to talk over a great many things. We had been old school- fellows, and we had travelled together when we were both bachelors, and we knew lots of men that his wife knew nothing about, and each of us wanted to hear all the news that the other had to tell ; so he just ventured, the first night I was there, to ask me into his private study and offer 'me a cigar. Well, we had scarcely had time to light when his wife's maid knocks at the door and says, ' Please, sir. Missis wishes to see you ; ' so he promised to go, and began to look uncomfortable, and in five minutes the girl came again, and she came three times in a quarter of an hour. After that came the lady her- self, quite angry, and ordered her husband to bed, just as if he had been a little boy ; and though he seemed cool, and didn't stir from his chair, it was evident that he was afraid of her, and he solemnly promised to go in five minutes. At the expiration of the five minutes in she bursts again (she had been waiting in the passage — perhaps she may have been listening at the door), and held out her watch without one word. The husband got up like a sheep, and said ' Good- night, John,' and she led him away just like that ; and I sat and smoked by myself, thinking what a pitiable spectacle it was. Now my wife is not like that ; she will have her way about her blankets, but she 's reasonable in other respects." They sat very happily for two hours, talking about the regiment that was to be. Suddenly, about midnight, a large watch-dog that inhabited a kennel on that side of the house began to bark furiously, and there was a cry, as of some woman or child in distress. The Colonel jumped out of his chair, and threw the window open. The two men listened 90 WenderJiolme. Part i. attentively, but it was too dark to see any thing. At length Colonel Stanburne said, "Let us go out and look about a. little — that was a human cry, wasn 't it?" So he lighted a lantern, and they went. There was a thick wood behind the house of Wenderholme, and this wood filled a narrow ravine, in the bottom of which was a little stream, and by the stream a pathway that led up to the open moor. This moor continued without interruption over a range of lofty hills, or, to speak more strictly, over a sort of plateau or table-land, till it terminated at the enclosed pasture-lands near Shayton. John Stanburne and the Doctor walked first'along this pathway. The watch-dog's kennel was close to the path, at a little green wooden gate, where it entered the garden. The dog, hearing his master's step, came out of his kennel, much excited with the hope of a temporary release from the irksomeness of his captivity ; but his master only caressed and spoke to him a little, and passed on. Then he began to talk to the Doctor. The sound of his voice reached the ears of a third person, who came out of the wood, and began to follow them on the path. The Doctor became aware that they were followed, and they stopped. The Colonel turned his lantern, and the light of it fell full upon the intruder. " Why, it 's a mere child," said the Colonel. " But what on earth 's the matter with the Doctor ? " Certainly that eccentric Doctor did behave in a most remarkable manner. He snatched the lantern from the Colonel's hand without one word of apology, and having cast its beams on the child's face, threw it down on the ground, and seized the vagrant in his arms. " The Doctor's mad," thought the Colonel, as he picked up the lantern. " Why, // 'j little Jacob I" cried Dr. Bardly. But this conveyed notliing to the mind of the Colonel. What did he know about little Jacob? Chap. IX. The Fugitive. 9 1 Meanwhile the lad was telling his tale to his friend. Father had beaten him so, and he 'd run away. " Please, Doctor, don't send me back again." The child's feet were bare, and icy cold, and covered with blood. His clothes were wet up to the waist. His little dog was with him. " It 's a little boy that 's a most particular friend of mine," said the Doctor ; " and he 's been very ill-used. We must take care of him. I must beg a night's lodging for him in the house." They took him into the Colonel's study, before the glowing fire. " Now, what 's to be done ? " said the Colonel. " It 's lucky you 're a doctor." " Let us undress him and warm him first. We can do eveiy thing ourselves. There is a most urgent reason why no domes- tic should be informed of his being here. His existence here must be kept secret." The Colonel went to his dressing-room and brought towels. Then he set some water on the fire in a kettle. The Doctor took the wet things off, and examined the poor little lacerated feet. He rubbed little Jacob all over with the towels most energetically. The Colonel, whose activity was admirable to witness, fetched a tub from somewhere, and they made arrangements for a warm bath. " One person must be told about this," said Dr. Bardly, " and that 's Lady Helena. Go and tell her now. Ask her to get up and come here, and warn her not to rouse any of the servants." Her ladyship made her appearance in a few minutes in a dressing-gown. " Lady Helena," said the Doctor, " you 're wanted as a nurse. This child requires great care for the next twenty-four hours, and you must do every thing for him with your own hands. Is there a place in the house where he can be lodged out of the way of the servants ? " Lady Helena had no boys of her own. She had had one little girl at the beginning of her married life, who had lived, and was now at Wenderholme, comfortably sleeping in the 92 Wender holme. Part i prettiest of little beds, in a large and healthy nursery in the left wing of the building. She had had two little boys since, but they were both sleeping in Wenderholme churchyard. When she saw little Jacob in his tub, the tears came into her eyes, and she was ready to be his nurse as long as ever he might have need of her. " I '11 tell you all about him. Lady Helena, when we 've put him to bed." Little Jacob sat in his tub looking at the kind, strange lady, and feeling himself in a state of unrealizable bliss. " You must be very tired and very hungry, my poor child," she said. Little Jacob said he was very hungry, but he didn't feel tired now. He had felt tired in the wood, but he didn't feel tired now in the tub. The boy being fairly put to bed, female curiosity could not wait till the next day, and she sought out the Doctor, who was still with the Colonel in his study. " I beg to be excused, gentlemen," she said, " for intruding in this room in an unauth- orized manner, but I want to know all about that little boy." The Doctor told his history very minutely, and the history of his father. Then he added, " I believe the only possible chance of saving his father from killing himself with drinking is to leave him for some time under the impression that the boy, having been driven away by his cruelty, has died from exposure on the moor. This may give him a horror of drink- ing, and may effect a permanent cure. There is another thing to be considered, the child's own safety. If we send him back to his father, I will not answer for his life. The father is already in a state of hirritability bordering on insan- ity — in fact he is partially insane; and if the child is put under his power before there has been time to work a thorough cure, it is likely that he will beat him frequently and severely — he may even kill him in some paroxysm of rage. If Isaac Ogden knew that the child were here, and claimed him to- morrow, I believe it would be your duty not to give him up, and Chap. IX. The Fugitive. 93 I should urge his uncle to institute legal proceedings to deprive the father of the guardianship. A man in Isaac Ogden's state is not fit to have a child in his power. He has beaten him very terribly already, — his body is all bruises; and now if we send him back, he will beat him again for having run away." These reasons certainly had great weight, but both the Colonel and Lady Helena foresaw much difficulty in keeping the child at Wenderholme without his presence there becom- ing immediately known. His disappearance would make a noise, not only at Shayton, but at Sootythorn, and every- where in the neighborhood. The relations of the child were in easy circumstances, and a heavy reward would probably be offered, which the servants at Wenderholme Hall could scarcely be expected to resist, still less the villagers in the neighboring hamlet. It would be necessary to find some very solitary person, living in great obscurity, to whose care little Jacob might be safely confided — at any rate, for a few days. Lady Helena suggested two old women who lived together in a sort of almshouse of hers on the estate, but the Colonel said they were too fond of gossip, and received too many visitors, to be trusted. At last the Doctor's countenance suddenly brightened, and he said that he knew where to hide little Jacob, but where that was he positively refused to tell. All he asked for was, that the child should be kept a close prisoner in the Colonel's sanctum for the next twenty-four hours, and that the Colonel would lend him a horse and gig — not a tandem. 94 Wenderholme. Tart i CHAPTER X. CHRISTMAS AT MILEND. IT is quite unnecessary to inform the reader where Dr. Bardly had determined to hide little Jacob. His resolution be- ing decidedly taken, the Colonel and he waited till the next night at half-past twelve, and then, without the help of a single servant, they harnessed a fast-trotting mare to a roomy dog- cart. Little Jacob and Feorach were put where the dogs were kept on shooting expeditions. And both fell asleep together. It was six o'clock in the morning when the Doctor arrived at his destination. Mr. Isaac Ogden, whose wretchedness the reader pities perhaps as much as the Doctor did, continued his researches for some weeks in a discouraged and desultory way, but little Jacob was perfectly well hidden. Mrs. Ogden had been admitted into the secret by the Doctor, and approved of his policy of concealment. Under pretext of a journey to Man- chester with Dr. Bardly, to consult an eminent physician there, she absented herself two days from Milend and went to visit her grandson. The truth was also known to Jacob Ogden, senior, who supported his mother's resolution, which would certainly have broken down without him. It pained her to see her son Isaac in the misery of a bereavement which he supposed to be eternal. The Doctor took a physiological view of the case, and argued that time was a necessary condi- tion of success. " We aren't sure of having saved him yet," said the Doctor: "we must persevere till his constitution has got past the point of craving for strong drink altogether." Chap. X. Christmas at Milcnd. 95 Matters remained in this state until Christmas Eve. Pe- riodical festivals are highly agreeable institutions for happy people, who have the springs of merriment within them, ready to gush forth on any pretext, or on the strength of simple permission to gush forth ; but it is difficult for a man oppressed by a persistent weight of sorrow to throw it off because the almanac has brought itself to a certain date, and it is precisely at the times of general festivity that such a man feels his burden heaviest. It may be observed also, that as a man, or a society of men, approaches the stage of matui ty and reflection, the events of life appear more and more to acquire the power of coloring the whole of existence ; so that the faculty of being merry at appointed times, and its converse, the faculty of weeping at appointed times, both give place to a continual but quiet sadness, from which we never really escape, even for an hour, though we may still be capable of a manly fortitude, and retain a certain elasticity, or the appearance of it. In a word, our happiness and misery are no longer alternative and acute, but coexist in a chronic form, so that it has ceased to be natural for men to wear sackcloth and heap ashes on their heads, and sit in the dust in their wretchedness ; and it has also ceased to be natural for them to crown themselves with flowers, and anoint themselves with the oil of gladness, and clothe themselves in the radiance of purple and cloth-of-gold. No hour of life is quite miserable enough or hopeless enough for the sackcloth and the ashes — no hour of life is brilliant enough for the glorious vesture and the flowery coronal. A year before, Isaac. Ogden would have welcomed the Christmas festivities as a legitimate occasion for indulgence in his favorite vice, without much meditation (and in this perhaps he may have resembled some other very regular observers of the festival) on the history of the Founder of Christianity. But as it was no longer his desire to celebrate either this or any other festival of the Church by exposing 96 WenderJiolme. Part l himself to a temptation which, for him, was the strongest and most dangerous of all temptations — and as the idea of a purely spiritual celebration was an idea so utterly foreign to the whole tenor of his thoughts and habits as never even to suggest itself to him — he had felt strongly disposed to shun Christmas altogether, — that is, to escape from the outward and visible Christmas to some place where the days might pass as merely natural days, undistinguished by any sign of national or ecclesiastical commemoration. He had determined, therefore, to go back to Twistle Farm, from which it seemed to him that he had been too long absent, and had announced this intention to the Doctor. But when the Doctor repeated it to Mrs. Ogden, she would not hear of any such violation of the customs and traditions of the family. Her sons had always spent Christmas Eve together ; and so long as she lived, she was firmly resolved that they always should. The pertinacity with which a determined woman will uphold a custom that she cherishes is simply irresistible — that is, unless the rebel makes up his mind to incur her perpetual enmity ; and Isaac Ogden was less than ever in a condition of mind either to brave the hostility of his mother or wound her tenderer feelings. So it came to pass that on Christmas Eve he went to Milend to tea. Now on the tea-table there were some little cakes, and Mrs. Ogden, who had not the remotest notion of the sort of delicacy that avoids a subject because it may be painful to somebody present, and who always simply gave utterance to her thoughts as they came to her, observed that these little cakes were of her own making, and actually added, " They 're such as I used makin' for little Jacob — he was so fond on 'em." Isaac Ogden's feelings were not very sensitive, and he could bear a great deal ; but he could not bear this. He set down his cup of tea untasted, gazed for a few seconds at the plateful of little cakes, and left the room. Chap. X. Christmas at Milcnd. 97 The Doctor was there, but he said nolhhig. Jacob Ogderj did not feel under any obligation to be so reticent. " Mother," he said, " I think you needn't have mentioned little Jacob — our Isaac cannot bear it ; he knows no other but what th* little un 's dead, and he 's as sore as sore." This want of delicacy in Mrs. Ogden arose from an all but total lack of imagination. She could sympathize with others if she suffered along with them — an expression which might be criticised as tautological, but the reader will understand what is meant by it. If Mrs. Ogden had had the toothache, she would have sympathized with the sufferings of another person similarly afflicted so long as her own pangs lasted ; but if a drop of creosote or other powerful remedy proved efficacious in her own case, and released her from the tortur- ing pain, she would have looked upon her fellow-sufiferer as pusillanimous, if after that she continued to exhibit the out- ward signs of torment. Therefore, as she herself knew that little Jacob was safe it was now incomprehensible by her that his father should not feel equally at ease about him, though, as a matter of fact, she was perfectly well aware that he supposed the child to be irrecoverably lost. Mrs. Ogden, therefore, received her son Jacob's rebuke with unfeigned surprise. She had said nothing to hurt Isaac that she knew of — she " had only said that little Jacob used being fond o' them cakes, and it was quite true." Isaac did not return to the little party, and they began to wonder what had become of him. After waiting some time in silence, Mrs. Ogden left her place at the tea-tray, and went to a little sitting-room adjoining — a room the men were more accustomed to than any other in the house, and where indeed they did every thing but eat and sleep, Mr. Ogden had gone there from habit, as his mother expected, and there she found him sitting in a large rocking-chair, and gazing abstractedly into the fire. The chair rocked regularly but gently, and its occupant seemed wholly unconscious — 7 98 Wenderholme. Part i. not only of its motion, but of every other material circum- stance that surrounded him. Mrs. Ogden laid her hand upon his shoulder, and said, " Isaac, willn't ye come to your tea ? we 're all waiting for you." The spell was broken, and Ogden suddenly started to his feet. " Give me my hat," he said, " and let me go to my own house. I 'm not fit to keep Christmas this year. How is a man to care about tea and cakes when he 's murdered his own son ? I 'm best by myself ; let me go' up to Twistle Farm. D 'ye expect me to sing songs at supper, and drink rum-punch ? " " There '11 be no songs, and you needn't drink unless you like, but just come and sit with us, my lad — yoo always used spendin' Christmas Eve at Milend, and Christmas Day too." " It signifies nought what I used doin'. Isaac Ogden isn't same as he used to be. He 'd have done better, I reckon, if he 'd altered a month or two sooner. There 'd have been a little lad here then to make Christmas merry for us all." " Well, Isaac, I 'm very sorry for little Jacob ; but it cannot be helped now, you know, and it 's no use frettin' so much over it." " Mother," said Isaac Ogden, sternly, " it seems to me that you We not likely to spoil your health by frettin' over my little lad. You take it very easy it seems to me, and my brother takes it easy too, and so does Dr. Bardly — but then Dr. Bardly was nothing akin to him. Folk says that grand- mothers care more for chilther than their own parents does ; but you go on more like a stepmother nor a grandmother." This was hard for Mrs. Ogden to bear, and she was strongly tempted to reveal the truth, but she forebore and remained silent. Ogden resumed, — " I cannot tell how you could find in your heart to bake them little cakes when th' child isn't here to eat 'em." The effort to restrain herself was now almost too much for Chav. X. Christmas at Milend. 99 Mrs. Ogden, since it was the fact that she had baked the said little cakes, or others exactly like them, and prepared various other dainties, for the especial enjoyment of Master Jacob, who at that veiy minute was regaling himself therewith in the privacy of his hiding-place. Still she kept silent. After another pause, a great paroxysm of passionate regret seized Ogden — one of those paroxysms to which he was subject at intervals, but which in the presence of witnesses he had hitherto been able to contend against or postpone. "Oh, my little lad ! " he cried aloud, "oh, my little innocent lad, that I drove away from me to perish ! I'd give all I 'm worth to see thee again, little 'un ! " He suddenly stopped, and as the tears ran down his cheeks, he looked out of the window into the black night. " If I did but know," he said, slowly, and with inexpressible sadness — "mother, mother, if I did but know where his bits o' bones are lying ! " It was not possible to witness this misery any longer. All Dr. Bardly's solemn injunctions, all dread of a possible re- lapse into the terrible habit, were forgotten. The mother had borne bitter reproaches, but she could not bear this agony of grief. " Isaac,'' she said, " Isaac, my son, listen to me : thy little lad is alive — he 's alive and he 's well, Isaac." Ogden did not seem to realize or understand this commu- nication. At last he said, " I know what you mean, mother, and I believe it. He 's alive in heaven, and he can ail nothing, and want nothing, there." "I hope he'll go there when he 's an old man, but a good while after we go there ourselves, Isaac." A great change spread over Ogden's face, and he began to tremble from head to foot. He laid his hand on his mother's arm with a grasp of iron. His eyes dilated, the room swam round him, his heart suspended its action, and in a low hiss- ing whisper, he said, " Mother, have they found him "i " " Yes — and he 's both safe and well." Ogden rushed out of the house, and paced the garden-walk loo WenderJiolme. Part i. hurriedly from end to end. The intensity of his excitement produced a commotion in the brain that needed the counter- stimulus of violent physical movement. It seemed as if the roof of his skull must be lifted off, and for a few minutes there was a great crisis of the whole nervous system, to which probably his former habits may have more especially exposed him. When this was over, he came back into the house, feeling unusually weak, but incredibly calm and happy. Mrs. Ogden had told the Doctor and Mr. Jacob what had passed, and the Doctor without hesitation set off at once for his own house, where he ordered his gig, and drove away rapidly on the Sootythorn road. " Mother," said Isaac, when he came in, " give me a cup of tea, will you ? " " A glass of brandy would do you more good." " Nay, mother, we 've had enough of brandy, it will not do to begin again now." He sat down in evident exhaustion and drank the tea slowly, looking rather vacantly before him. Then he laid his head back upon the chair and closed his eyes. The lips moved, and two or three tears ran slowly down the cheeks. At last he started suddenly, and, looking sharply round him, said, " Where is he, where is he, mother } where is little Jacob, my little lad, my lad, my lad ? " "Be quiet, Isaac — try to compose yourself a little; Dr. Bardly 's gone to fetch him. He '11 be with us very soon." Mr. Ogden remained quietly seated for some minutes with- out speaking, and then, as his mind began to clear after the shock of the great emotion it had passed through, he asked who had found his boy. and where they had found him, and when. These questions were, of course, somewhat embarrassing to his mother, and she would probably have sheltered herself behind some clumsy invention, but her son Jacob interposed. " The fact is, Isaac, the loss of your little 'un seemed to be Chap. X. Chvistmas at Milend. i o i doin' you such a power o' good 'at it seemed a pity to spoil it by tellin' you. And it 's my opinipji as .mother 's leJ:, th' cat out o' th' bag three week too soon as it is.'.' u " Do you mean to tell me," said Isaac,;-' th^t- you ;knew the child was found, and hid him from-his i)wn fittiier ? '' ■ » ■ "Isaac, Isaac, you mun forgive us," said the mother; "we did it for your good." " Partly for his good, mother," interposed Jacob, " but still more for th' sake o' that child. What made him run away from Twistle Farm, Isaac Ogden ? answer me that." Isaac remained silent. " Do you fancy, brother Isaac, that any consideration for your feelin's was to hinder us from doin' our duty by that little lad ? What sort of a father is it as drives away a child like that with a horsewhip? Thou was no more fit to be trusted with him nor a wolf wi' a little white lamb. If he 'd been brought back to thee two days after, it 'ud a' been as much as his life was worth. And I '11 tell thee what, Isaac Ogden, if ever it conies to my ears as you take to horse- whippin' him again, I '11 go to law wi' you and get the guardi- anship of him into safer hands. There 'd be little difficulty about that as it is. I 've taken my measures — my witnesses are ready — I 've consulted lawyers ; and I tell you candidly, I mean to act at once if I see the least necessity for it. Little Jacob was miserable for many a week before you drove him out o' th' house, an' if we 'd only known, you would never have had the chance." " Nay, Jacob," interposed Mrs. Ogden, " you 're a bit too hard on Isaac; he's the child's own father, and he had a right to punish him within reason." " Father ! father ! " cried Jacob, scornfully ; " there isn't a man in Shayton as isn't more of a father to our little un than Isaac has been for many a month past. There isn't a man in Shayton but what would have been kinder to a nice little lad like that than he has been. What signifies havin' begotten a child, if fatherin' it is to stop there?" I02 Wender holme. Part I. At last Isaac Ogden lifted up his face and spoke. " Brother Jacob, you .have said nothing but what is right and true, and you have' all acted right both by me and him. But If-t us itart fresh.. , I.'ve turned over a new leaf ; I 'm not such as I used to be. I mean to be different, and to do dif- ferent, and I will be a good father to that child. So help me God ! " He held out his hand, and Jacob took it and shook it heartily. The two brothers looked in each other's face, and there was more of brotherly affection in their look than there had ever been since the dissolution of their partnership in the cotton business, which had taken place some years before. Mrs. Ogden saw this with inexpressible pleasure. "That's right, lads — that's right, lads; God bless you! God bless both on you ! " The customs of Shayton were mighty, especially the cus- tom of drinking a glass of port-wine on every imaginable occasion. If a Shayton man felt sorry, he needed a glass of port-wine to enable him to support his grief ; but if he felt glad, there arose at once such a feeling of true sympathy be- tween his heart and that joyous generous fluid, that it needed some great material impediment to keep them asunder, and such an impediment was not to be found in any well-to-do Shayton household, where decanters were always charged, and glasses ever accessible. So it was inevitable that on an occasion so auspicious as this Mr. Jacob Ogden should drink a glass — or, more probably, two glasses — of port ; and his mother, who did not object to the same refreshment, bore him company. " 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 power Chap. X. Christmas at Mileiid. 103 of 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 recon- ciliation. 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 j " 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 inmiediately, 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 some- thing told him that little Jacob was there, and his heart beat more quickly than usual. Perhaps our little friend might have behaved himself some- what 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 irri- table 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 disposi- tion, 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 his 1 04 Wendcrholme. Part i. father 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* 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 ever- greens 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 for * The possessive is omitted in the genuine Lancashire dialect. Chap. X. Christmas at Milend. 105 his memory. She held her sombre skirt out with both her hands as if to push it away from her, and exclaimed aloud, " I '11 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. io6 WenderJiolme. Part i CHAPTER XI. THE COLONEL GOES TO SHAYTON. *" I ^HE 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 Wen- derholme every time I see you, and you come and stay some times, 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, siill hung back from asking him to a house where, though comfort reigned supreme, there was not the slightest preten- sion 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 Sooty- thorn and elsewhere had the chairs of ihcir dining rooms Chap. XL The Colonel goes to Sliayton. 107 covered 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 nap- kins, 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 mon- strous pattern that no artistic person would have tolerated for a single day ; and though the Doctor possessed a silver punch-ladle and teapot, 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 loves io8 Wender holme. Part i. repose, but a thousand causes may hinder the perfect enjoy- ment 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 ex- cited, 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 achieve- ments of fashionable upholstery, and regarded his old rocking- chairs with perfect satisfaction and complacency — in which, without desiring to ofifend against the decisions of the fashion- able 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 out- wardly visible means and appliances differing in every detail, the pleasures of one generation seem quaint and even ridicu- Chap. XI. The Colonel goes to Shay ton. 109 lous in 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 one p.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 mu- sicians 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 to iio Wenderhohne. Part i describe them as in every respect worthy of Mrs. Prigley's skill as a manager, and her husband's ingenuity and taste. New carpets they could not buy, 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 gener- osity 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 pro- ceeding 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 as Chap. XI. The Colond goes to Shay ton. 1 1 1 usual, by talking volubly on all sorts of subjects except the mystery of the drawing-room ; but Mrs. Prigley did not con- sider it consistent with her self-respect to appear to take any interest in his discourse, and during all these days she pre- served, 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 tran- quil in the assurance that the cloud would pass away, where- as his wife had no such assurance, and the future was dark before her. It is true, that, notwithstanding the outward se- renity 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 Beau- tiful. 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 enthu- siasm for the Beautiful does not wait to be authorized by the Philistines, — if it did, 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 approach- ing 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 to 1 1 2 WenderJiolme. Part i. confide 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 pi linly 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 ad- mirably, 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 hus- band from time to time, though he had plenty of opportuni- ties for observing it. But what was he 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 else- where, 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 bor- der, 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- Chap. XI. The Colonel gocs to Shay ton. i 13 steeple, and a cow who had eaten so much grass that it had not only fattened her but colored her with its own green- ness — and when the parsoa 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 with that, 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 neces- sit}^ 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 enthusi- asm 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. 8 1 1 4 Wender holme. Part i But what would Mrs. Prigleysay? 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 bed- rooms 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 embar- rassing. 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 criti- cise, 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 pun- ished. 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 what- ever 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 per- sistence and self-control. She seemed precisely as she had Chap. XI. The Colonel goes to Shayto7i. 115 always been : — sulky ? not in the least ; there was not the slight- est 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 pov- erty 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 car- pets — on high aesthetic 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 deco- rations 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 unpardon- able 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 di- vested 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 de- votion to the ideal ; but there they were, these shameless nymphs and muses, on the wall of a Christian clergyman ! 1 1 6 Wenderholme. Part i 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. " What will he 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. Siie 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 apolo- gized 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 sur- prised ; 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 per- fect 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 de- scribed 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 con- cerned, 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 ac- Chap. XL The Colonel goes to Shay ton. iiy quainted with 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 historj?^ 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 sepa- rated 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 dis- tance, 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 Stan- burne was not quite satisfied with this somewhat formal and 1 1 8 Wenderkolme. Part i, dignified 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 archi- tecture, 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. Chap. XII. Ogden s New Mill, 119 CHAPTER XIL OGDEN'S NEW MILL. /^UR 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 j 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 natu- ral that he should wear old fustian and corduroy there ; and I20 Wenderholme. Part i as 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 occupa- tions 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 persona] 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 shil- lings \ 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 nvnepence. After this extrava- gance 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 repre- sentative example of the present generation of cotton-manu- facturers, 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 had Chap. XII. OQ:dens New Mill. 1 2 1