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
gentleman 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
attainment, 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, which 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.
Prigley had great difficulty in keeping himself above water; but there
is more satisfaction in struggling with the difficulties 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 ingenious
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,
notwithstanding 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; 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 replaced? By a most unfortunate
coincidence, Mr. Prigley discovered about the same time that his shirts,
though apparently very sound and handsome shirts indeed, had become
deplorably 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 impediment; whilst if once
the hem were severed, the immediate consequence was a rent more than a
foot long. Poor Mrs. Prigley 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 towards 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 much
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 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 manufacturing 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 forward 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 dining-room. On his way to
the door, the cause of the accident 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 observation; 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
overwhelmed 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, perhaps, 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 contrived to get them over these
difficulties. He resolved to take advantage of his opportunity, and warm
up an acquaintance 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 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 preventing
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 advancement 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 language. 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.
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! 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 respectable 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
graceful acanthus-leaved capitals. Many clergymen can display articles
of contemporary manufacture bearing the most flattering 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 attention to Mrs. Ogden's account of a sick cow of hers (in
which Mrs. Ogden seemed to consider that she herself, and not the
suffering animal, was the proper object of sympathy), had in fact been
debating in her own mind whether she ought to display her plate on a
mere chance occasion like the present; but the common metal tea-pot was
bulged and shabby, and the thistle in electro-plate, which had once
decorated its lid, had long since been lost by one of the children, who
had fancied it as a plaything. The two brass candlesticks were scarcely
more presentable; indeed, one of them would no longer stand upright, and
Mrs. Prigley had neglected to have it repaired, as one candle sufficed
in ordinary times; and when her husband wrote at night, he used a tin
bed-candlestick resembling a frying-pan, with a tin column, _not_ of the
Corinthian order, sticking up in the middle of it, and awkwardly
preventing those culinary services to which the utensil seemed naturally
destined. As these things were not presentable before company, Mrs.
Prigley decided to bring forth her silver, but in justice to her it is
necessary to say that she would have preferred something between the
two, as more fitted to the occasion. For similar reasons was displayed a
set of old china, of whose value the owner herself was ignorant; and so
indeed would have been the present writer, if he had not recognized Mrs.
Prigley's old cups and saucers in Jacquemart's 'Histoire de la
Porcelaine.'
The splendor of Mrs. Prigley's tea-table struck Mrs. Ogden with a degree
of surprise which she had not art enough to conceal, for the manners and
customs of Shayton had never inculcated any kind of reticence as
essential to the ideal of good-breeding. The guests had scarcely taken
their places round this brilliant and festive board when Mrs. Ogden
said,--
"You've got some very '_andsome_ silver, Mrs. Prigley. I'd no idea you'd
got such 'andsome silver. Those candlesticks are taller than any we've
got at Milend."
A slight shade of annoyance passed across the countenance of the hostess
as she answered, "It came from Wenderholme; there's not much of it
except what is on the table; there were six of us to divide it amongst."
"Those are the Stanburne arms on the tea-pot," said the Doctor; "I've
hoftens noticed them at Wendrum 'all. They have them all up and down.
Young Stanburne's very fond of his coat-of-arms, but he's a right to be
proud of it, for it's a very old one. He's quite a near relation of
yours, isn't he, Mrs. Prigley?"
"My father and his grandfather were brothers, but there was a coolness
between them on account of a small estate in Yorkshire, which each
thought he'd a right to, and they had a lawsuit. My father lost it, and
never went to Wenderholme again; and they never came from Wenderholme to
Byfield. When my Uncle Reginald died, my father was not even asked to
the funeral, but they sent him gloves and a hatband."
"Have you ever been at Wenderholme, Mrs. Prigley?" said Isaac.
"Never! I've often thought I should like to see it, just once; it's said
to be a beautiful place, and I should like to see the house my poor
father was born in."
"Why, it's quite close to Shayton, a great deal nearer than anybody
would think. It isn't much more than twelve or fourteen miles off, and
my house at Twistle is within nine miles of Wenderholme, if you go
across the moor. There is not a single building of any kind between. But
it's thirty miles to Wenderholme by the turnpike. You have to go through
Sootythorn."
"It's a very nice estate," said Uncle Jacob; and, to do him justice, he
was an excellent judge of estates, and possessed a great fund of
information concerning all the desirable properties in the neighborhood,
for he made it his business to acquire this sort of knowledge
beforehand, in case such properties should fall into the market. So that
when Uncle Jacob said an estate was "very nice," you may be sure it was
so.
"There are about two thousand acres of good land at Wendrum," he
continued, "all in a ring-fence, and a very large moor behind the house,
with the best shooting anywhere in the whole country. Our moors join up
to Mr. Stanburne's, and, if the whole were put together, it would be a
grand shooting."
"That is," said Mr. Prigley, rather maliciously, "if Mr. Stanburne were
to buy your moor, I suppose. Perhaps he might feel inclined to do so if
you wished to sell."
Mrs. Ogden could not endure to hear of selling property, even in the
most remote and hypothetical manner. Her back was generally as straight
as a stone wall, but it became, if possible, straighter and stiffer, as,
with a slight toss of the head, she spoke as follows:--
"We don't use selling property, Mr. Prigley; we're not sellers, we are
buyers."
These words were uttered slowly, deliberately, and with the utmost
distinctness, so that it was not possible for any one present to
misunderstand the lady's intention. She evidently considered buying to
be the nobler function of the two, as implying increase, and selling to
be a comparatively degrading operation,--a confession of poverty and
embarrassment. This feeling was very strong, not only in Shayton, but
for many miles round it, and instances frequently occurred of owners who
clung to certain properties against their pecuniary interest, from a
dread of it being said of them that they had sold land. There are
countries where this prejudice has no existence, and where a rich man
sells land without hesitation when he sees a more desirable investment
for his money; but in Shayton a man was married to his estate or his
estates (for in this matter polygamy was allowed); and though the law,
after a certain tedious and expensive process, technically called
conveyancing, permitted divorce, public opinion did _not_ permit it.
Mr. Prigley restored the harmony of the evening by admitting that the
people who sold land were generally the old landowners, and those who
bought it were usually in trade,--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 improved 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 small scale. One
of the great privations to me in 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 far 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 swimming, 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 etiquette 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 feelings 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,
acted faithfully by little Jacob, for if nature had not intended boys of
his age to accomplish 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 hundred 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 Richard, 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.