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 headquarters Of
Colonel Stanburne's regiment of militia.
Dr. Bardly arrived at the Thorn the morning after Isaac Ogden's relapse,
having driven all the way from Shayton, through scenery which would have
been comparable to any thing in England, if the valleys had not been
spoiled by cotton-mills, rows of ugly cottages, and dismal-looking
coal-pits.
"Colonel Stanburne's expecting you, Doctor," said Mr. Garley, the
landlord of the Thorn: "he's in the front sitting-room."
The Colonel was sitting by himself, with the 'Times' and a little black
pipe.
"Good morning, Dr. Bardly! you've a nice little piece of work before
you. There are a lot of fellows here to be examined as to their physical
constitution--fellows, you know, who aspire to the honor of serving in
the twentieth regiment of Royal Lancashire Militia."
"Perhaps I'd better begin with the hofficers," said the Doctor.
The Colonel looked alarmed, or affected to be so. "My dear Doctor,
there's not the least necessity for examining officers--it isn't
customary, it isn't legal; officers are always perfect, both physically
and morally."
A theory of this kind came well enough from Colonel Stanburne. He was
six feet high, and the picture of health. He brought forth the fruits of
good living, not, as Mr. Garley did, in a bloated and rubicund face and
protuberant corporation, but in that admirable balance of the whole
human organism which proves the regular and equal performance of all its
functions. Dr. Bardly was a good judge of a man, and he had the same
pleasure in looking at the Colonel that a fox-hunter feels in
contemplating a fine horse. Beyond this, he liked Colonel Stanburne's
society, not precisely, perhaps, for intellectual reasons--for,
intellectually, there was little or nothing in common between the two
men--but because he found in it a sort of mental refreshment, very
pleasant to him after the society at Shayton. The Colonel was a
different being--he lived in a different world from the world of the
Ogdens and their friends; and it amused and interested the Doctor to see
how this strange and rather admirable creature would conduct itself
under the conditions of its present existence. The Doctor, as the reader
must already feel perfectly assured, had not the weakness of
snobbishness or parasitism in any form whatever; and if he liked to go
to Wenderholme with the Colonel, it was not because there was an earl's
daughter there, and the sacred odor of aristocracy about the place, but
rather because he had a genuine pleasure in the society of his friend,
whether amongst the splendors of Wenderholme, or in the parlor of the
inn at Sootythorn.
The Colonel, too, on his part, liked the Doctor, though he laughed at
him, and mimicked him to Lady Helena. The mimicry was not, however, very
successful, for the Doctor's Lancashire dialect was too perfect and too
pure for any mere ultramontane (that is, creature living beyond the
hills that guarded the Shayton valley) to imitate with any approximation
to success. If the Colonel, however, notwithstanding all his study and
effort, could not succeed in imitating the Doctor's happy selection of
expressions and purity of style, he could at any rate give him a
nickname--so he called him Hoftens, not to his face, but to Lady Helena
at home, and to the adjutant, and to one or two other people who knew
him, and the nickname became popular; and, after a while, the officers
called Dr. Bardly Hoftens to his face, which he took with perfect
good-nature. The first time that this occurred, the Doctor (such was the
delicacy of his ear) believed he detected something unusual in the way
an impudent ensign pronounced the 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 marrying. The people of Sootythorn would
have set him down as a milk-sop if he had not seen a good deal of active
service in India and at the Cape; but a soldier who has been baptized in
the fire of the battle-field has always that fact in his favor, and has
little need to give himself airs of boldness in order to impose upon the
imagination of civilians.
"I believe, Dr. Bardly," said Eureton, "that we are going to have an
officer from your neighborhood, a Mr. Ogden. His name has been put down
for a lieutenant's commission."
"Yes, he's a neighbor of mine," answered the Doctor, rather curtly.
"You should have brought him with you, Doctor," said Colonel Stanburne,
"that we might make his acquaintance. I've never seen him, you know,
and he gets his commission on your recommendation. I should like, as far
as possible, to know the officers personally before we meet for our
first training. What sort of a fellow is Mr. Ogden? Tell us all about
him."
The Doctor felt slightly embarrassed, and showed it in his manner. Any
true description of Isaac Ogden, as he was just then, must necessarily
seem very unfavorable. Dr. Bardly had been to Twistle that very morning
before daylight, and had found Mr. Ogden suffering from the effects of
that fall down the cellar-steps in a state of drunkenness. The Doctor
had that day abandoned all hope of reclaiming Isaac Ogden, and saving
him from the fate that awaited him.
"I've nothing good to tell of Mr. Ogden, Colonel Stanburne. I wish I
hadn't recommended him to you. He's an irreclaimable drunkard!"
"Well, if you'd known it you wouldn't have recommended him, of course.
You found it out since, I suppose. You must try and persuade him to
resign. Tell him there'll be some awfully hard work, especially for
lieutenants."
"I knew that he drank occasionally, but I believed that it was because
he had nobody to talk to except a drunken set at the Red Lion at
Shayton. I thought that if he came into the regiment it would do him
good, by bringing him into more society. Shayton's a terrible place for
drinking. There's a great difference between Shayton and Sootythorn."
"What sort of a man is he in other respects?" asked the Colonel.
"He's right enough for every thing else. He's a good-looking fellow,
tall, and well-built; and he used to be pleasant and good-tempered, but
now his nervous system must be shattered, and I would not answer for
him."
"If you still think he would have sufficient control over himself to
keep sober for a month we might try him, and see whether we cannot do
him some good. Perhaps, as you 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, finished his lunch in about ten
minutes, and excused himself on the plea that he had an appointment with
a joiner about the orderly-room, which had formerly been an
infant-school of some Dissenting persuasion, and therefore required
remodelling as to its interior fittings. We shall see more of him in due
time, but for the present must leave him to the tranquil happiness of
devising desks and pigeon-holes in company with an intelligent workman,
than which few occupations can be more delightful.
"Perhaps, unless you've something to detain you in Sootythorn, Doctor,
we should do well to leave here as early as possible. It's a long drive
to Wenderholme--twenty miles, you know; and I always make a point of
giving the horses a rest at Rigton."
As the Doctor had nothing to do in Sootythorn, the Colonel ordered his
equipage. When he drove alone, he always preferred a tandem, but when
Lady Helena accompanied him, he took his seat in a submissive
matrimonial manner in the family carriage. As Wenderholme was so far
from Sootythorn, the Colonel kept two pairs of horses; and one pair was
generally at Wenderholme and the other in Mr. Garley's stables, where
the Colonel had a groom of his own permanently. The only inconvenience
of this arrangement was that the same horses had to do duty in the
tandem and the carriage; but they did it on the whole fairly well and
the Colonel contented himself with the carriage-horses, so far as
driving was concerned.
The Doctor drove his own gig with the degree of skill which results
from the practice of many years; but he had never undertaken the
government of a tandem, and felt, perhaps, a slight shade of anxiety
when John Stanburne took the reins, and they set off at full trot
through the streets of Sootythorn. A manufacturing town, in that
particular stage of its development, is one of the most awkward of all
possible places to drive in--the same street varies so much in breadth
that you never can tell whether there will be room enough to pass when
you get round the corner; and there are alarming noises of many
kinds--the roar of a cotton mill in the street itself, or the
wonderfully loud hum of a foundry, or the incessant clattering
hammer-strokes of a boiler-making establishment--which excite and
bewilder a nervous horse, till, if manageable at all, he is manageable
only with the utmost delicacy and care. As Colonel Stanburne seemed to
have quite enough to do to soothe and restrain his leader, the Doctor
said nothing till they got clear of the last street; but once out on the
broad turnpike, or "Yorkshire Road," the Colonel gave his team more
freedom, and himself relaxed from the rigid accuracy of seat he had
hitherto maintained. He then turned to the Doctor, and began to talk.
"I say, Doctor, why don't you drive a tandem? You--you _ought_ to drive
a tandem. 'Pon my word you ought, seriously, now."
The Doctor laughed. He didn't see the necessity or the duty of driving a
tandem, and so begged to have these points explained to him.
"Well, because, don't you see, when you've only got one horse in your
dog-cart, or gig, or whatever two-wheeled vehicle you may possess,
you've no fun, don't you see?"
The Doctor didn't see, or did not seem to see.
"I mean," proceeded the Colonel, explanatorily, "that you haven't that
degree of anxiety which is necessary to give a zest to existence. Now,
when you've a leader who is almost perfectly free, and over whom you can
only exercise a control 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 Sootythorn, and--didn't you, Fyser?"
Fyser confessed his negligence.
"And so, when the lamps were out, it was pitch dark; so dark that I
couldn't tell the road from the ditch--upon my word, I couldn't; and I
couldn't see the leader a bit, I could only feel him with the reins. So
I said to Fyser, 'Get over to the front seat, and then crouch down as
low as you can, so as to bring the horses' heads up against the sky, and
tell me if you can see them.' So Fyser crouched down as I told him; and
when I asked him if he saw any thing, he said 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 Wenderholme."
"I shouldn't recommend you to try that experiment hoftens."
"Well, but you see the advantage of driving tandem. If you've only one
horse you know where he is, however dark it is--he's in the shafts, of
course, and you know where to find him: but when you've got a leader you
never exactly know where he is, unless you can see him."
The Doctor didn't see the advantage.
The reader will have gathered from this specimen of Colonel Stanburne's
conversation that he was a pleasant and lively companion; but if he is
rather hasty in forming his opinion of people on a first acquaintance,
he may also infer that the Colonel was a man of somewhat frivolous
character and very moderate intellectual powers. He certainly was not a
genius, but he conveyed the impression of being less intelligent and
less capable of serious thought than nature had made him. His
predominant characteristic was simple good-nature, and he possessed
also, notwithstanding a sort of swagger in his manner, an unusual share
of genuine intellectual humility, that made him contented to pass for a
less able and less informed man than he really was. The Doctor's
perception of character was too acute to allow him to judge Colonel
Stanburne on the strength of a superficial acquaintance, and he clearly
perceived that his friend was in the habit of wearing, as it were, his
lighter nature outside. Some ponderous Philistines in Sootythorn, who
had been brought into occasional contact with the Colonel, and who
confounded gravity of manner with mental capacity, had settled it
amongst themselves that he had no brains; but as the most intelligent of
quadrupeds is at the same time the most lively, the most playful, the
most good-natured, and the most affectionate,--so amongst human beings
it does not always follow that a man is empty because he is lively and
amusing, and seems merry and careless, and says and does some foolish
things.
An hour later they reached Rigton, a little dull village quite out of
the manufacturing district, and where it was the Colonel's custom to
bait. The remainder of the drive was in summer exceedingly beautiful;
but as it passed through a rich agricultural country, whose beauty
depended chiefly on luxuriant vegetation, the present time of the year
was not favorable to it. All this region had a great reputation for
beauty amongst the inhabitants of the manufacturing towns, and no doubt
fully deserved it; but it is probable that their faculties of
appreciation were greatly sharpened by the stimulus of contrast. To get
fairly clear of factory-smoke, to be in the peaceful quiet country, and
see no buildings but picturesque farms, was a definite happiness to many
an inhabitant of Sootythorn. There were fine bits of scenery in the
manufacturing district itself--picturesque glens and gorges, deep
ravines with hidden rivulets, and stretches of purple moorland; but all
this scenery lacked one quality--_amenity_. Now the scenery from Rigton
to Wenderholme had this quality in a very high degree indeed, and it was
instantly felt by every one who came from the manufacturing district,
though not so perceptible by travellers from the south of England. The
Sootythorn people felt a soothing influence on the nervous system when
they drove through this beautiful land; their minds relaxed and were
relieved of pressing cares, and they here fell into a state very rare
indeed with them--a state of semi-poetical reverie.
The reader is already aware that Wenderholme is situated on the opposite
side of the hills which separate Shayton from this favored region, and
close to the foot of them. Great alterations have been made in the house
since the date at which our story begins, and therefore we will not
describe it as it exists at present, but as it existed when the Colonel
drove up the avenue with the Doctor at his side, and the faithful Fyser
jumped up behind after opening the modest green gate. A large rambling
house, begun in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but grievously modernized
under that of King George the Third, it formed three sides of a
quadrangle, and, as is usual in that arrangement of a mansion, had a
great hall in the middle, and the principal reception rooms on each
side 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
enrichment, and there had been some good sculpture and curious windows
that went all round the projection, and carried it entirely upon their
mullions; but the modernizer had been at work and inserted simple
sash-windows, which produced a deplorable effect. The same owner, John
Stanburne's grandfather, had ruthlessly carried out that piece of
Vandalism over the whole front of the mansion, and, except what
architects call a string-course (which was still traceable here and
there), had effaced every feature that gave expression to the original
design of the Elizabethan builder.
The entrance-hall was a fine room fifty feet long, and as high as two of
the ordinary stories in the mansion. It had, no doubt, been a splendid
specimen of the Elizabethan hall; but the modernizer had been hard at
work here also, and had put himself to heavy expense in order to give it
the aspect of a thoroughly modern interior. The wainscot which had once
adorned the walls, and which had been remarkable for its rich and
fanciful carving, the vast and imaginative tapestries, the heraldic
blazonries in the flaming oriels, the gallery for the musicians on
twisted pillars of sculptured chestnut,--all these glories had been
ruthlessly swept away. The tapestries had been used as carpets, and worn
out; the wainscot had been made into kitchen cupboards, and painted
lead-color; and the magnificent windows had been thrown down on the
floor of a garret, where they had been trodden under foot and crushed
into a thousand fragments: and in place of these things, which the
narrow taste of the eighteenth century had condemned as barbarous,
and destroyed without either hesitation or regret, it had
substituted--what?--absolute emptiness 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 sometimes exceedingly plain, according
to the condition of her health and temper, the state of the weather, and
a hundred things beside. Hence there were the most various and
contradictory opinions about her; the only approach to unanimity being
amongst certain elderly ladies who had formed the project of being
mother-in-law to John Stanburne, and failed in that design. The Doctor
was not much accustomed to ladyships--they did not come often in his
way; indeed, if the truth must be told, Lady Helena was the only
specimen of the kind he had ever enjoyed the opportunity of studying,
and he had been rather surprised, on one or two preceding visits to
Wenderholme, to find that she behaved so nicely. But there are ladyships
and ladyships, and the Doctor had been fortunate in the example which
chance had thrown in his way. For instance, if he had known Lady Eleanor
Griffin, who lived about ten miles from Wenderholme, and came there
occasionally to spend the day, the Doctor would have formed quite a
different opinion of ladyships in general, so much do our impressions of
whole classes depend upon the individual members of them who are
personally known to us.
Lady Helena asked the Doctor a good many questions about Shayton, which
it is quite unnecessary to report here, because the answers to them
would convey no information to the reader which he does not already
possess. Her ladyship inquired very minutely about the clergyman there,
and whether the Doctor "liked" him. Now the verb "to like," when applied
to a clergyman, is used in a special sense. Everybody knows that to like
a clergyman and to like gooseberry-pie are very different things; for
nobody in England eats clergyman, though the natives of New Zealand are
said to appreciate cold roast missionary. But there is yet another
distinction--there is a distinction between liking a clergyman and
liking a layman. If you say you like a clergyman, it is understood that
it gives you a peculiar pleasure to hear him preach, and that you
experience feelings of gratification when he reads prayers. And in this
sense could Dr. Bardly say that he liked the reverend incumbent of his
parish? certainly not; so he seemed to hesitate a little--and if he said
"yes" he said it as if he 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.
A little relieved, perhaps (for it is always disagreeable to quarrel
with one's hostess, even though one has no occasion to be afraid of
her), the Doctor gladly told Lady Helena all about Mrs. Prigley, and
even narrated the anecdote about the hole in the carpet, and its
consequences to Mrs. Ogden, which put Lady Helena into good humor, for
nothing is more amusing to rich people than the ludicrous consequences
of a certain kind of poverty. The sense of a pleasant contrast, all in
their own favor, is delightful to them and when the Doctor had told this
anecdote, Lady Helena became agreeably aware that she had carpets, and
that her carpets had no holes in them--two facts of which use and custom
had made her wholly unconscious. Her eye wandered with pleasure over the
broad soft surface of dark pomegranate color, with its large white and
red flowers and its nondescript ornaments of imitated gold, and the
ground seemed richer, and the flowers seemed whiter and redder, because
poor Mrs. Prigley's carpets were in a condition so lamentably different.
"Mrs. Prigley's a relation of yours, Lady Helena,--rather a near
relation,--perhaps you are not aware of it?"
Lady Helena looked, and was, very much surprised. "A relation 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 Stanburne. Mrs. Prigley
was a Miss Stanburne of Byfield, and her father was brother to Colonel
Stanburne's father, and was born in this house."
"That's quite a near relationship indeed," said Lady Helena; "I wonder I
never heard of it. John never spoke to me about Mrs. Prigley."
"There was a quarrel between Colonel Stanburne's father and his uncle,
and there has been no intercourse between their families since. I
daresay the Colonel does not even know how many cousins he had on that
side, or what marriages they made." On this the Colonel came in.
"John, dear, Dr. Bardly has just told me that we have some cousins at
Shayton that I knew nothing about. It's the clergyman and his wife, and
their name is Prig--Prig"--
"Prigley," suggested the Doctor.
"Yes, Prigley; isn't it curious, John? did you know about them?"
"Not very accurately. I knew one of my cousins had married a clergyman
somewhere in that neighborhood, but was not aware that he was the
incumbent of Shayton. I don't know my cousins at all. There was a
lawsuit between their father and mine, and the two branches have never
eaten salt together since. I haven't the least ill-will to any of them,
but there's an awkwardness in making a first step--one never can tell
how it may be received. What do you say, Doctor? How would Mrs.
Prig--Prigley and her husband receive me if I were to go and call upon
them?"
"They'd give you cake and wine."
"Would they really, now? Then I'll go and call upon them. I like cake
and wine--always liked cake and wine."
The conversation about the Prigleys did not end here. The Doctor was
well aware that it would be agreeable to Mrs. Prigley to visit at
Wenderholme, and be received there as a relation; and he also knew that
the good-nature of the Colonel and Lady Helena might be relied upon to
make such intercourse perfectly safe and pleasant. So he made the most
of the opportunity, and that so successfully, that by the time dinner
was announced both John Stanburne and his wife had promised to drive
over some day to Shayton from Sootythorn, and lunch with the Doctor, and
call at the parsonage before leaving.
Colonel Stanburne's conversation was not always very profound, but his
dinners were never dull, for 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 she's
got fifteen diseases, she does, upon my word; and she's a sort of notion
that because you're the regimental doctor, she has a claim on you for
gratuitous counsel and assistance. Now I consider that I _have_ such a
claim--if a private has it, surely a colonel has it too--and when we
come up for our first training I shall expect you to look at my tongue,
and feel my pulse, and physic me as a militia-man, at her Majesty's
expense. But it is by no means so clear to me that my wife has any right
to gratuitous doctoring, and mind she doesn't extort it from you. She's
a regular screw, my wife is; and she loses no opportunity of obtaining
benefits for nothing." Then he rattled on with a hundred anecdotes about
ladies and doctors, in which there was just enough truth to give a
pretext for his audacious exaggerations.
When they returned to the drawing-room, the Colonel made Lady Helena
sing; and she sang well. The Doctor, like many inhabitants of Shayton,
had a very good ear, and greatly enjoyed music. Lady Helena had seldom
found so attentive a listener; he sought old favorites of his in her
collection of songs, and begged her to sing them one after another. It
seemed as if he never would be tired of listening. Her ladyship felt
pleased and flattered, and sang with wonderful energy and feeling. The
Doctor, though in his innocence he thought only of the pure pleasure her
music gave him, could have chosen no better means of ingratiating
himself in her favor; and if there had not, unhappily, been that dark
and dubious question about church attendance, which made her ladyship
look upon him as a sort of Dissenter, or worse, the Doctor would that
night have entered into relations of quite frank and cordial friendship
with Lady Helena. English ladies are very kind and forgiving on many
points. A man may be notoriously immoral, or a gambler, or a drinker,
yet if he be well off they will kindly ignore and pass over these little
defects; but the unpardonable sin is failure in church attendance, and
they will not pass over _that_. Lady Helena, in her character of
inquisitor, had discovered this symptom of heresy, and would have been
delighted to find a moral screw of some kind by which the culpable
Doctor might be driven churchwards. If the law had permitted it, I have
no doubt that she would have applied material screws, and pinched the
Doctor's thumbs, or roasted him gently before a slow fire, or at least
sent him to church between two policemen with staves; but as these means
were beyond her power, she must wait until the moral screw could be
found. A good practical means, which she had resorted to in several
instances with poor people, had been to deprive them of their means of
subsistence; and all men and women whom her ladyship's little arm could
reach knew that they must go to church or leave their situations; so
they attended with a regularity which, though exemplary in the eyes of
men, could scarcely, one would think (considering the motive), be
acceptable to Heaven. But Lady Helena acted in this less from a desire
to please God than from the instinct of domination, which, in her
character of spiritual ruler, naturally exercised itself on this point.
It seldom happens that the master of a house is the spiritual ruler of
it; he is the temporal power, not the spiritual. Colonel Stanburne felt
and knew that he had no spiritual power.
This matter of the Doctor's laxness as a church-goer had been rankling
in Lady Helena's mind all the time she had been singing, and when she
closed the piano she was ready for an attack. If the Doctor had been
shivering blanketless in a bivouac, and she had had the power of giving
him a blanket or withholding it, she would have offered it on condition
he promised to go to church, and she would have withheld it if he had
refused compliance. But the Doctor had blankets of his own, and so could
not be touched through a deprivation of blanket. She might, however,
deprive the old woman he had recommended, and at the same time give the
Doctor a lesson, indirectly.
"I forgot to ask you, Dr. Bardly, whether the old woman you recommended
for a blanket was a churchwoman, and regular in her attendance."
"Two questions very easily answered," replied that audacious and
unhesitating Doctor; "she is a Wesleyan Methodist, and irregular in her
attendance."
"Then I'm--very sorry--Dr. Bardly, but I cannot give her a blanket, as I
had promised. I can only give them to our--own people, you know; and I
make it essential that they should be _good_ church-people--I mean, very
regular church-people."
"Very well; I'll give her a blanket myself."
The opportunity was not to be neglected, and her ladyship fired her gun.
She had the less hesitation in doing so, that it seemed monstrously
presumptuous in a medical man to give blankets at all! What right had he
to usurp the especial prerogative of great ladies? And then to give a
blanket to this very woman whom, for good reasons, her ladyship had
condemned to a state of blanketlessness!
"I quite understand," she said, with much severity of tone, "that Dr.
Bardly, who never attends public worship himself, should have a
fellow-feeling with those who are equally negligent."
It is a hard task to fight a woman in the presence of her husband, who
is at the same time one's friend. The Doctor _thought_, "Would the woman
have me offer premiums on hypocrisy as she does?" but he did not say so,
because there was poor John Stanburne at the other end of the hearth-rug
in a state of much uncomfortableness. So the Doctor said nothing at all,
and the silence became perfectly distressing. Lady Helena had a way of
her own out of the difficulty. Though it was an hour earlier than the
usual time for prayers, she rang the bell and ordered all the servants
in. When they were kneeling, each before his chair, her ladyship read
the prayers herself, and accentuated with a certain severity a
paragraph in which she thanked God that she was not as unbelievers, who
were destined to perish everlastingly. It was a satisfaction to Lady
Helena to have the Doctor there down upon his knees, with no means of
escape from the expression of spiritual superiority.