HUSBAND AND WIFE.
When Lady Helena came back from London, she found the Wenderholme coach
already in full activity. It ran from Sootythorn to Wenderholme twice a
week regularly with many passengers, who, so far from contributing to
its maintenance, did but yet further exhaust the pocket of its
proprietor. It happened precisely that on the day of her ladyship's
return the Colonel had one of his frequent dinner-parties at the
Hall--parties composed almost exclusively of militia officers, and
already known in the regiment as the "Wenderholme mess." The Colonel had
thought it prudent to prepare Lady Helena for his new acquisition by
mentioning it in a letter, so that she experienced no shock of surprise
when the four-in-hand came swinging heavily round the drive in front of
the house, announcing itself with loud blasts from Ensign Featherby's
cornet-à-piston. They had such numbers of spare bedrooms at Wenderholme
that these hospitalities caused no perceptible inconvenience, except
that of getting up very early the next morning, which chiefly affected
the guests themselves, who had to be in time for early drill. On this
point the Colonel was inexorable, so that the Wenderholme mess was much
more popular on Saturday than on Thursday evening, as the officers
stayed at Wenderholme till after luncheon, going to the village church
in the morning with the people at the Hall, and returning to Sootythorn
in the course of the afternoon, so as to be in time for mess. It
happened that the day of Lady Helena's return was a Saturday, and the
Colonel thought, "She said nothing about the coach to-night, but I'm in
for it to-morrow morning." However, when Sunday morning came, beautiful
with full spring sunshine, her ladyship's countenance appeared equally
cloudless. Encouraged by these favorable appearances, John Stanburne
observed, a little before church-time,--
"I say, Helena, you haven't seen the Wenderholme coach. Come and look at
it; _do_ come, Helena--that's a good gell. It's in the coach-house."
But her ladyship replied that she had seen the coach the evening before
from the drawing-room window, when it arrived from Sootythorn.
"Well, but you can't have seen it properly, you know. You can't have
looked inside it. Come and look inside it, and see what comfortable
accommodation we've got for inside passengers. Inside passengers don't
often present themselves, though, and yet there's no difference in the
fare. You'll be an inside passenger yourself--won't you, now, Helena?"
Her ladyship was clearly aware that this coaxing was intended to extract
from her an official recognition of the new institution, and she was
resolutely determined to withhold it. So she looked at her watch, and
observed that it was nearly church-time, and that she must go at once
and put her things on.
As they walked to church, she said to one of the officers, "We always
walk to church from the Hall, even in rainy weather."
"Helena's a capital walker," said the Colonel.
"It is fortunate for ladies to be good walkers," replied her ladyship,
"when they have no carriage-horses."
Here was a stab; and the worst of it was, that it might clearly be
proved to be deserved. The Colonel had suggested in his letter to Lady
Helena that she would do well to come by way of Manchester to
Sootythorn, instead of going by Bradford to a little country station ten
miles on the Yorkshire side of Wenderholme. Her ladyship had not
replied to this communication, but had written the day before her return
to the housekeeper at Wenderholme, ordering her carriage, as usual, to
the Yorkshire station. The carriage had not come; the housekeeper had
only been able to send the pony carriage, a tiny basket that Lady Helena
drove herself, with seats for two persons, no place for luggage, and a
black pony a little bigger than a Newfoundland dog. Lady Helena had
driven herself from the station; there had been a smart shower, and,
notwithstanding a thin gray cloak, which was supposed to be waterproof,
she had been wet through. The Colonel had taken possession of all the
carriage-horses for his four-in-hand, and they were at Sootythorn. Her
ladyship would continue to be equally carriageless, since the Colonel
would take his whole team back with him, unless he sent back the horses
from Sootythorn on the day following. These things occupied John
Stanburne's mind when he should have been attending to the service. They
had always kept four carriage-horses since their marriage, but never
more than four; and though one of the two pairs had been often kept at
Sootythorn, when circumstances required them to go there frequently,
still her ladyship had never been left carriageless without being
previously consulted upon the subject, and then only for twenty-four
hours at the longest. The idea of setting up a four-in-hand with only
two pairs of horses, one of which was in almost daily requisition for a
lady's carriage, would indeed have been ridiculous if John Stanburne had
quite seriously entertained it; but, though admitting vaguely the
probable necessity of an increase, he had not yet recognized that
necessity in a clear and definite way. It came to his mind, however, on
that Sunday morning with much distinctness. "Well, hang it!" he thought,
as he settled down in his corner at the beginning of the sermon, "I have
as much right to spend my own money as Helena has. Every journey she
makes to town costs more than a horse. I spend nothing on
myself--really nothing whatever. Look at my tailor's bill! I positively
_haven't_ any tailor's bill. Helena spends more on dress in a month than
I do in a year. And then her jeweller's bill! She spends hundreds of
pounds on jewellery, and I never spend one penny. Every time she goes to
a Drawing-room she has all her old jewels pulled to pieces and set
afresh, and it costs nobody knows what--it does. I'll have my
four-in-hand properly horsed with horses of my own, by George! and none
of those confounded Sootythorn hacks any more; and Helena shall keep her
carriage-horses all to herself, and drive about all day long if she
likes. Of course I can't take her carriage-horses--she's right there."
On her own part, her ladyship was steadily resolved not to be deprived
of any of those belongings which naturally appertained to a person of
her rank and consideration; and there had existed in her mind for
several years a feeling of jealous watchfulness, which scrutinized at
the same time John Stanburne's projects of economy and his projects of
expense. It had happened several times within the experience of this
couple that the husband had taken little fits of parsimony, during which
he attacked the expenditure he least cared for, but which, by an
unfortunate fatality, always seemed to his wife to be most reasonable
and necessary. It might perhaps have been more favorable to his
tranquillity to ally himself with some country girl acclimatized to the
dulness of a thoroughly provincial existence, and satisfied with the
position of mistress of Wenderholme Hall, who would have let him spend
his money in his own way, and would never have dragged him beyond the
circle of his tastes and inclinations. He hated London, especially
during the season; and though he enjoyed the society of people whom he
really knew something about, he disliked being in a crowd. Lady Helena,
on the other hand, was fond of society, and even of the spectacle of the
court. John Stanburne had regularly accompanied his wife on these
annual visits to the metropolis until this year, when the militia
afforded an excellent pretext for staying in the country; but every year
he had given evidence of an increasing disposition to evade the
performance of his duties; and it had come to this at last, that Lady
Helena was obliged to go about with the Adisham family, since John
Stanburne could not be made to go to parties any more. He grumbled, too,
a good deal about the costliness of these London expeditions, and
sometimes talked of suppressing them altogether. There was another
annual expedition that he disliked very much, namely, a winter
expedition to Brighton; and it had come to pass that a coolness had
sprung up between John Stanburne and the Adisham family (who went to
Brighton every year), because his indisposition to meet them there had
been somewhat too openly manifested. His old mother was the confidant of
these rebellious sentiments. She lived in a picturesque cottage situated
in Wenderholme Park, which served as a residence for dowagers. She came
very regularly to Wenderholme church, and sat there in a small pew of
her own, which bore the same relation to the big family pew that the
cottage bore to the Hall. John Stanburne had objected very strongly to
his mother's removal to the cottage, and he had also objected to the
separate pew, but his mother maintained the utility of both
institutions. She said it was good for an old woman, who found some
difficulty in fixing her attention steadily, not to be disturbed in her
devotions by the presence of too many strangers in the same pew; and as
there would often be company at the Hall, she would stick to her own
seat. So she sat there as usual on this particular Sunday, looking very
nice in her light summer dress. The Colonel's little daughter, Edith,
had slipped into her grandmamma's pew, as she often did, when they were
walking up the aisle. She had been staying at the cottage during her
mother's absence, as was her custom when Lady Helena went to London; and
it had cost her, as usual, a little pang to leave the old lady by
herself again. Besides, she felt that it would be pleasanter to sit with
her grandmother than with all those strange militia officers. She would
have felt, in the family pew, as a very young sapling may be supposed to
feel when it is surrounded by over-poweringly big trees--sufficiently
protected, no doubt, but more than sufficiently overshadowed.
Amongst the officers in the Wenderholme pew was Lieutenant Ogden, and by
his side a young gentleman whose presence has not hitherto been
mentioned, namely, little Jacob. Little Jacob's curious eyes wandered
over the quaint old church during the sermon, and they fixed frequently
upon the strange hatchments and marble monuments in the chapel of the
Stanburnes. He had never seen such things before in his life (for there
were no old families at Shayton), and he marvelled greatly thereat.
Advancing, however, from the known to the unknown, he remembered the
royal arms which decorated the front of the organ gallery in Shayton
church, and finding a similar ornament at Wenderholme, proceeded to the
inference that the hatchments were something of the same kind, in which
he was not far wrong. Gradually his eyes fell upon Mrs. Stanburne's pew,
and rested there. A vague new feeling crept into his being; Edith
Stanburne seemed very nice, he thought. It was pleasant to look upon her
face.
Here the more rigid of my readers may exclaim, "Surely he is not going
to make little Jacob fall in love at _that_ age!" Well, not as you would
fall in love, respected reader, if that good or evil fortune were to
happen to you; but a child like little Jacob is perfectly capable of
falling in love in his own way. The loves of children bear about the
same proportion to the great passion which rules the destiny of men,
that their contests in fisticuffs do to the bloody work of the bayonet;
but as we may many of us remember having given Bob or Tom an
ugly-looking black eye, or perchance remember having received one from
Tom or Bob, so also there may linger amongst the recollections of our
infancy some vision of a sweet little child-face that seemed to us
brighter than any other face in the whole world. In this way did Edith
Stanburne take possession of Master Jacob's honest little heart, and
become the object of his silent, and tender, and timid, and exceedingly
respectful adoration. He intensely felt the distance between himself and
the heiress of Wenderholme Hall, and so he admired her as some young
officer about a court may admire some beautiful princess whom it is his
dangerous privilege to see. Children are affected by the externals of
ancient wealth to a degree which the mature mind, dwelling amongst
figures, is scarcely capable of realizing; and the difference between
Wenderholme and Twistle Farm, or Wenderholme and Milend, seemed to
little Jacob's imagination an utterly impassable abyss. But there was
steam in Ogden's mill, and there was a leak in John Stanburne's purse,
and the slow months and years were gradually bringing about great
changes.
Little Jacob's adventure on the moor, and his fortunate arrival at the
Hall, had given him a peculiar footing there. Colonel Stanburne had
taken a marked fancy to the lad; and Lady Helena--who, as the reader may
perhaps remember, had lost two little boys in their infancy--was always
associating him with her tenderest regrets and recollections, so that
there was a sad kindness in her ways with him that drew him very
strongly towards her. Isaac Ogden spoke the Lancashire dialect as
thoroughly, when it suited him, as any cotton-spinner in the county; but
he could also speak, when he chose, a sort of English which differed
from aristocratic English by greater hardness and body, rather than by
any want of correctness, and he had always strictly forbidden little
Jacob to speak the Lancashire dialect in his presence. The lad spoke
Lancashire all the more energetically for this prohibition when his
father was not within hearing; but the severity of the paternal law had
at least given him an equal facility in English, and he kept the two
languages safely in separate boxes in his cranium. It is unnecessary to
say that at Wenderholme Hall the box which contained the Lancashire
dialect was shut up with lock and key, and nothing but the purest
English was produced, so that her ladyship thought that the little boy
"spoke very nicely--with a northern accent, of course, but it was not
disagreeable."
When they came out of church Lady Helena said to Lieutenant Ogden, "Of
course you will bring your little boy here on Thursday for the
presentation of colors;" and then, whilst Mr. Ogden was expressing his
acknowledgments, she interrupted him: "Why not let him remain with us
till then? We will try to amuse him, and make him learn his lessons."
Mr. Ogden said he would have been very glad, but--in short, his mother
was staying at Sootythorn, and might wish to keep her little grandson
with her. Colonel Stanburne came up just then, and her ladyship's answer
was no doubt partially intended for his ear. "Let me keep little Jacob
till to-morrow at any rate. I have several people to see in Sootythorn,
and must go there to-morrow. I scarcely know how I am to get there,
though, for I have no carriage-horses."