UNCLE JACOB IS ACCEPTED.
And this is the letter Jacob Ogden wrote:--
"MISS MARGARET ANISON.
"MISS,--When I was at your house this afternoon, I meant to
say something to you, but could not find a chance, because
other people came in just at the time. I wished to ask you
to be so kind as to marry me. I believe I shall be a good
husband--at any rate, I promise to do all I can to be one.
My wife shall have every thing that a lady wants, and I
will either build a new house or purchase one, as she may
like best. There's a good one on sale near Shayton, but I
don't mind building, if you prefer it. I am well able to
keep my wife as a lady. I may say that I have always been
very steady, and not in the habit of drinking. I never go
into an ale-house, and I never spend any foolish money. I
shall feel very anxious until I receive your answer, as you
will easily understand; for my regard for you is such that
I most sincerely wish your answer may be favorable.
"Yours truly,
JACOB OGDEN."
Though rather a queer letter, and singularly devoid of the graces of
composition and the tenderness of love, its purport, at least, was
intelligible. The reply showed that the lover had made himself clearly
understood.
"MY DEAR SIR,--The proposal contained in your letter has
rather surprised me, as we have seen so little of each
other, but after consulting my parents I may say that I do
not refuse, and they desire me to add that there will be a
room for you here whenever your business engagements permit
you to visit us. Sincerely yours,
"MARGARET ANISON."
It is to be supposed that Mr. Ogden felt sensations of profound
happiness on reading this little perfumed note; but when a man is an old
bachelor by nature, he does not become uxorious in a week or two; and we
may confess that, after the unpleasantness of the first shock, a
positive refusal would have left the lover's mind in a state of far more
perfect happiness and calm. His pride was gratified, his passion was
fortunate in dreaming of its now certain fruition, and he knew that such
a woman as Margaret Anison would add greatly to his position in the
world. He knew that she would improve it in one way, but then he felt
anxiously apprehensive that she might deteriorate it in another. He
would become more of a gentleman in society with a lady by his side, but
a wife and family would be a hindrance to his pecuniary ambition. From
the hour of his acceptance he saw this a good deal more clearly than he
had done since this passion implanted itself in his being. He had seen
it clearly enough before he knew Margaret Anison, but the strength of a
new passion acting upon a nature by no means subtly self-conscious, had
for a time obscured the normal keenness of his sight. After re-reading
Margaret's note for the tenth time, Mr. Jacob Ogden said to himself:
"She's a fine girl--there isn't a finer lass in all Manchester; but I'm
a damned fool--that's what I am. What have I to do goin' courtin'?
Howsomever, it's no good skrikin' over spilt milk--we mun manage as well
as we can. We've plenty to live on, and she can have four or five
servants, if she'll nobbut look well afther 'em." Then he went into the
little sitting-room, where his mother sat mending his stockings.
"Mother," he said, abruptly, "there's news for you. Somebody's boun' to
be wed."
The stocking was deposited in Mrs. Ogden's lap, and she looked at her
son with fixed eyes.
"It's owther our Isaac or me, and it isn't our Isaac."
"Why, then, it's thee, Jacob."
"You're clever at guessin', old woman; you always was a 'cute un."
"What! are you boun' to wed somebody at Whittlecup?"
"She doesn't live a hundred mile off Whittlecup."
Mrs. Ogden rose from her seat and laid down her stocking, and made
slowly for the door. She stopped, however, midway, and with a stately
gesture pointed to the mended stocking. "Can she darn like that?"
"She 'appen can do, mother."
"Han you seen her do?"
"No."
"Nor nobody else nayther. But what I reckon you think you can do b'out
havin' your stockin's mended when you get your fine wife into th' house,
and you think servants 'll do every thing. But if you'd forty servants,
you'd be badly off without somebody as knew how to look afther 'em all.
And if they cannot do for theirselves, they cannot orther other
folk--not right."
"Well, but, mother," said Jacob, deprecatingly. He was going to suggest
consolatory considerations, founded upon the apparent order and
regularity of the housekeeping at Arkwright Lodge, in the midst of which
Miss Anison had been educated.
But Mrs. Ogden was not disposed to enter into a discussion which would
have involved the necessity of giving her son a hearing, and she cut
short his expostulation with a proverb, solemnly enunciated,--
"As they make their bed, so they must lie," and then she left the room.
"Th' old woman isn't suited," thought Jacob, "but it makes nothing who
it had been, she would have been just the same. She used always to
reckon she could like me to get wed, but I knew well enough that when it
came to the point I could never get wed so as to suit her. Whoever I
wedded, she'd always have said it should have been somebody else." The
fact was, that whilst Mrs. Ogden warmly and sincerely approved of
marriage as a sort of general proposition, and had even advised her son
for many years past to take unto himself a wife, her jealousy only
slumbered so long as the said wife remained a vague impersonal idea.
Mrs. Ogden had not much imagination, and the mere notion of a possible
wife for Jacob was very far from arousing in her breast the lively
sensations which were sure to be aroused there by a visible,
criticisable young woman, of flesh and blood, with the faults that flesh
is heir to. Now she had seen Margaret Anison, and she had thought at
Whittlecup, "She might happen do for our Jacob;" but when "our Jacob"
announced that he had decided to espouse Margaret Anison, that was quite
a different thing.
Matters had been in this condition for a month or two, when Jacob Ogden,
whose visits to his beloved one had been made rare by the exigencies of
business, became somewhat importunate about the fixing of his
wedding-day. It was not that he looked forward thereto with feelings of
very eager or earnest anticipation, but he had a business-like
preference for "fixtures" and dates over the vague promises of an
indefinite _avenir_. Miss Anison, on the contrary, seemed to have a
rooted objection to such rigid limitations of liberty; and, like a man
in debt whose creditor proposes to draw upon him for an inexorable
thirtieth of next month, felt that the vague intention of paying some
time was for the present less hard and harassing to the mind. And as the
debtor procrastinates, so did Margaret Anison procrastinate. Her heart
was not in this marriage, but her interest was; and, so far as she
avowed to herself any purpose at all, her purpose was to gain time, and
keep Jacob Ogden as a resource, when all chance of Philip Stanburne
should be lost finally and for ever.
Miss Anison, in a matter of this kind, was a great deal cleverer than
Jacob Ogden, who, though not easily taken in by a man in men's business,
had little experience of womankind, and none whatever of polite young
ladies and their ways. Margaret Anison had found a capital excuse for
delay in the necessity for building a new house, and she set Jacob Ogden
to work thereupon with an energy at least equal to that which he
lavished on the new mill. He wanted very much to have the house close to
the factory, but the young lady preferred the tranquillity of the
country, and went to Milend expressly to select a site. She chose a
little dell that opened into the Shayton valley; and though of all views
in the world the pleasantest for Mr. Ogden would have been a view of his
own mills, he was denied this satisfaction, and his windows looked out
upon nothing but green fields. "If they'd nobbut been my own fields,"
Jacob thought, "I wouldn't so much have cared. Not but what a good mill
is a prettier sight than the greenest field in Lancashire, but it's no
plezur to me to look out upon other folks' property." And the worst of
it was, that there was no chance of ever purchasing the said property,
for it belonged to an ancient Lancashire family, which had a wise
hereditary objection to parting with a single acre of land.
Mrs. Ogden, now that the engagement was a _fait accompli_, expressed the
most perfect readiness to quit Milend and go and live in "th'
Cream-pot," which, as the reader is already aware, was the expressively
rich appellative of the richest of her little farms. But such was the
amiable and truly filial consideration displayed by Margaret Anison
towards her future mother-in-law, that she would on no account hear of
such an arrangement. "Mrs. Ogden," she said, "had always been accustomed
to Milend, and it would be quite wrong to turn her out;" indeed she
"would not hear of such a thing." So the obedient Jacob hurried on the
construction of a mansion worthy of the young lady who had honored him
with her affections--a mansion to be replete with all modern comforts
and conveniences, such as abounded at Arkwright Lodge.