THE COLONEL GOES TO SHAYTON.
The 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had withdrawn his name as a candidate for one.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 Wenderholme every time I see you, and you come and stay
sometimes, 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,
still hung back from asking him to a house where, though comfort reigned
supreme, there was not the slightest pretension 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 Sootythorn and
elsewhere had the chairs of their dining-rooms 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 napkins, 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 monstrous pattern that no artistic person would
have tolerated for a single day; and though the Doctor possessed a
silver punch-ladle and tea-pot, 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 repose, but a thousand
causes may hinder the perfect enjoyment 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 excited, 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 achievements of
fashionable upholstery, and regarded his old rocking-chairs with perfect
satisfaction and complacency--in which, without desiring to offend
against the decisions of the fashionable 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 outwardly
visible means and appliances differing in every detail, the pleasures of
one generation seem quaint and even ridiculous 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 musicians 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 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 generosity 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
proceeding 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 usual, by
talking volubly on all sorts of subjects except the mystery of the
drawing-room; but Mrs. Prigley did not consider it consistent with her
self-respect to appear to take any interest in his discourse, and during
all these days she preserved, 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 tranquil in the assurance that
the cloud would pass away, whereas his wife had no such assurance, and
the future was dark before her. It is true, that, notwithstanding the
outward serenity 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 Beautiful. 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 enthusiasm 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 approaching 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 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 plainly 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 admirably, 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 husband from time to
time, though he had plenty of opportunities 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 elsewhere, 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 border, 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-steeple, and a cow who had eaten so much grass
that it had not only fattened her but colored her with its own
greenness--and when the parson 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
necessity. 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 enthusiasm 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.
But what would Mrs. Prigley say? 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 bedrooms 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 embarrassing. 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 criticise, 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 punished. 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 whatever 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 persistence and self-control. She seemed
precisely as she had always been:--sulky? not in the least; there was
not the slightest 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 poverty 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 carpets--on high æsthetic 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
decorations 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 unpardonable 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 divested 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 devotion to the ideal; but
there they were, these shameless nymphs and muses, on the wall of a
Christian clergyman! 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. She 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 apologized 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 surprised; 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 perfect
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
described 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 concerned, 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 acquainted
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 history 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 separated 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 distance, 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 Stanburne was not quite satisfied with this somewhat
formal and 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 architecture, 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.