CHRISTMAS AT MILEND.
It is quite unnecessary to inform the reader where Dr. Bardly had
determined to hide little Jacob. His resolution being 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 Manchester 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 condition 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."
Matters remained in this state until Christmas Eve. Periodical 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 maturity 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 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.
The Doctor was there, but he said nothing. Jacob Ogden 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 torturing pain, she would have looked
upon her fellow-sufferer as pusillanimous, if after that she continued
to exhibit the outward 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--not only of its motion, but of every other material
circumstance 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'll be no songs, and you needn't drink unless you like, but just
come and sit with us, my lad--you 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're_ 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
grandmothers 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 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 very 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 relapse 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 communication. 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 hissing whisper, he said, "Mother, have they found
him?"
"Yes--and he's both safe and well."
Ogden rushed out of the house, and paced the garden-walk 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'll be with us very soon."
Mr. Ogden remained quietly seated for some minutes without 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 doin' you
such a power o' good 'at it seemed a pity to spoil it by tellin' you.
And it's my opinion as mother's let th' cat out o' th' bag three week
too soon as it is."
"Do you mean to tell me," said Isaac, "that you knew the child was
found, and hid him from his own father?"
"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'll tell thee what, Isaac Ogden, if ever it
comes to my ears as you take to horse-whippin' him again, I'll go to law
wi' you and get the guardianship 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?"
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 let us start 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 different, 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 custom 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 between 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 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 reconciliation.
Isaac now began to show symptoms of uneasiness and restlessness. He
walked to the front door, and listened eagerly for wheels. "How fidgety
he is, th' old lad!" said Jacob; "it's no use frettin' an' fidgetin'
like that; come and sit thee down a bit, an' be quiet."
"How long will he be, mother?"
Before Mrs. Ogden could reply, Isaac's excited ear detected the Doctor's
gig. He was out in the garden immediately, and passed bareheaded through
the gate out upon the public road. Two gig-lamps came along from the
direction of Sootythorn. He could not see who was in the gig, but
something told him that little Jacob was there, and his heart beat more
quickly than usual.
Perhaps our little friend might have behaved himself somewhat too
timidly on this occasion, but the Doctor had talked to him on the road.
He had explained to him, quite frankly, that Mr. Ogden's harshness had
been wholly due to the irritable state of his nervous system, and that
he would not be harsh any more, because he had given up drinking. He had
especially urged upon little Jacob that he must not seem afraid of his
father; and as our hero was of a bold disposition, and had plenty of
assurance, he was fully prepared to follow the Doctor's advice.
Isaac Ogden hails the gig; it stops, and little Jacob is in his arms.
"Please, papa, I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!"
Little Jacob's pony was sent for, and the next morning his 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[10] tit." "And who wants it?" Sarah
said; for it seemed to her a desecration for any one else to mount that
almost sacred animal. "Why, little Jacob wants it hissel, to be sure."
And this (with some subsequent explanations of the most laconic
description) was his way of breaking the matter delicately to old Sarah.
The old woman had never spent an afternoon, even the afternoon of
Christmas Day, so pleasantly as she spent that. How she did toil and
bustle about? The one drawback to her happiness was that she did not
possess a Christmas cake; but she set to work and made tea-cakes, and
put such a quantity of currants in them that they were almost as good as
a Christmas cake. She lighted a fire in the parlor, and another in
little Jacob's room; and she took out the little night-gown that she had
cried over many a time, and, strange to say, she cried over it this time
too. And she arranged the small bed so nicely, that it looked quite
inviting, with its white counterpane, and clean sheets, and bright brass
knobs, and pretty light iron work painted blue. When all was ready, it
occurred to her that since it was Christmas time she would even attempt
a little decoration; and as there were some evergreens at Twistle Farm,
and some red berries, she went and gathered thereof, and attempted the
adornment of the house--somewhat clumsily and inartistically, it must be
confessed, yet not without giving it an air of festivity and rejoicing.
She had proceeded thus far, and could not "bethink her" of any thing
else that needed to be done, when, suddenly casting her eye on her own
costume, she perceived that it was of the deepest black; for, being
persuaded that the dear child was dead, she had so clothed herself out
of respect for his memory. She held her sombre skirt out with both her
hands as if to push it away from her, and exclaimed aloud, "I'll be shut
o' _thee_, onyhow, and sharply too;" and she hurried upstairs to change
it for the brightest garment in her possession, which was of sky-blue,
spotted all over with yellow primroses. She also put on a cap of
striking and elaborate magnificence, which the present writer does not
attempt to describe, only because such an attempt would incur the
certainty of failure.
That cap had hardly been assumed and adjusted when it was utterly
crushed and destroyed in a most inconsiderate manner. A sound of hoofs
had reached old Sarah's ears, and in a minute afterwards the cap was
ruined in Master Jacob's passionate embraces. You may do almost any
thing you like to a good-tempered old woman, so long as you do not touch
her cap; and it is an undeniable proof of the strength of old Sarah's
affection, and of the earnestness of her rejoicing, that she not only
made no remonstrance in defence of her head-dress, but was actually
unaware of the irreparable injury which had been inflicted upon it.