Here young Jacob paused, then he took courage and added,--"and I, Mrs.

Stanburne, have ventured for some years past to indulge dreams and hopes

which may never be realized. You know what my dreams have been. I had

hoped that perhaps my plain common name might have been forgotten, and

that as you and Colonel Stanburne had always been very kind to me, and

Miss Edith had never wounded me by any haughtiness or coldness, I had

hoped that perhaps some day any difficulties which existed might be

overcome, and that she would accept me with the consent of her

parents."

Edith Stanburne rose from her seat and quietly left the room. There was

no agitation visible in her face, but it was very pale.

"My dear Jacob," Mrs. Stanburne said decidedly, "we like you very

much--we have always liked you very much, and you have always behaved

honorably, and as a gentleman. But I am sure that Edith would not

sacrifice your prospects. Every thing forbids it; our esteem for

yourself forbids it, and our pride forbids it. Besides, I have not

authority to allow you two young people to engage yourselves without the

consent of the Colonel and Lady Helena."

"May I not speak to Miss Stanburne?"

"It would be better that you should not speak to her in private, but you

may speak to her if you like in my presence."

"I should be glad to know what she herself really thinks."

Mrs. Stanburne left the room, and after ten minutes had elapsed, which

seemed to young Jacob like a century, she returned, accompanied by her

grand-daughter.

Edith was still pale, but she had a look of great self-possession. What

was going on in her mind just then may be best expressed by the

following little soliloquy:--

"Poor, dear Jacob, how I do love him! What a paradise it would be, that

simple, quiet life with him--at Shayton, anywhere in the world! But I

love him too much to ruin him, so I must be hard now." And then she

acted her part.

Looking at her lover coldly, she was the first to speak. "Mr. Ogden,"

she said, "I may sink a good deal in your esteem by what I am going to

say to you, but my own future must be considered as well as yours. We

should be sorry to sacrifice your prospects, but I am thinking of myself

also. I do not think that I could live contentedly as a surgeon's wife

at Shayton."

Young Jacob was astounded. This from Edith! The very last thing he had

ever anticipated was an objection of the selfish kind from her. He had

counted upon all obstacles but this; and all other obstacles were

surmountable, but this was insurmountable. He saw at once that it would

be madness to marry a young lady who despised his life, and the labors

which he went through for her sake.

If he could only have known! She, poor thing, was new in this game of

cruelty with a kind intention, and she played it with even more than

necessary hardness. Perhaps she felt that without this overstrung

hardness she could not deceive him at all; that the least approach to

tenderness would be fatal to her purpose. She had imagination enough to

conceive and act a part utterly foreign to her character, but not

imagination enough to act a part only just sufficiently foreign to

herself to serve her immediate end. So there was a harsh excess in what

she did.

"Miss Stanburne," he said at last, "this gives me great pain."

The poor girl writhed inwardly, but she maintained a serene countenance,

and, looking young Jacob full in the face, said, with a well-imitated

sneer,--

"I may say with truth that it has latterly been agreeable to me to think

that the daughter of Colonel Stanburne would one day live at

Wenderholme.--But I confess I have not the sort of heroism which would

consent to be a surgeon's wife in such a place as Shayton."

"If these are your reasons, Miss Stanburne, I have done. A man would be

a fool to sacrifice his prospects, and slave at a profession all his

life, for a woman who paid him with contempt. And I think I may say that

you dismiss me with uncommon coolness. I've loved you these twelve

years--I've loved you ever since I was a child. I never loved any other

woman; and the reward of this devotion is, that I am sent away when my

prospects are clouded, without a sign of emotion or a syllable to

express regret. I think you might say you are sorry, at any rate."

"Very well, I will say that. I am sorry."

By a supreme effort of acting, Edith put an expression into her face

which conveyed the idea that she considered emotion ridiculous, and

young Jacob's own conduct as verging slightly upon the absurd. This

stung him to the quick.

"Miss Stanburne," he said, after a pause, "this conversation is leading

to no good. It is useless to prolong it."

"I quite agree with you."

And he was gone.

If he could have seen what passed after his departure, he would have

gone back to Shayton in a very different frame of mind. Edith had acted

her part and held out bravely to the last, but when Jacob was once

fairly out of the house, the faithful heart could endure its

self-inflicted torture no longer, and she ran upstairs to her bedroom

and locked the door, and burst into bitter tears. "How good and brave he

is, and how he loves me! It is hard, it is _very_ hard, to have to throw

away a heart like his. But I will not be his ruin--I never will be his

ruin!" Then a thousand tender recollections came into her

memory--recollections of the long years of his faithful love and

service. It had begun in their childhood, when first she called him

"Charley," giving him one of her own names; it had continued year after

year until this very day, when he would have sacrificed all for her, and

she had treated him with coldness and cruelty--_she_ who so loved him!

And to think that he would _never know the truth_--that the long dreary

future would wear itself gradually out until both of them were in their

graves, and that he would never know how her heart yearned to him, and

remained faithful to him always! That thought was the hardest and

bitterest of them all, _that he would never know_; that all his life he

would retain that misconception about her which she herself had so

carefully created! It is easy to bear the bad opinion of people we care

nothing about, but when those we most love disapprove, how eagerly we

desire their absolution!

Edith was not quite so strong as she herself believed. The late events

had tried her courage to the utmost, and outwardly she seemed to have

borne them well; but they had strained her nervous system a good deal,

and this last trial of her fortitude had been too much, even for her.

Her agony rapidly passed from mental grief into an uncontrollable crisis

of the nerves. She went through this alone, lying upon her bed, sobbing

and moaning, her face on the pillow, her hands convulsively agitated.

Then came utter vacancy, and after the vacancy a slow, painful awakening

to the new sadness of her life.

CHAPTER XII.

JACOB OGDEN'S TRIUMPH.

At length the great day arrived, towards the end of October, when the

new road from Shayton to Wenderholme was to be solemnly inaugurated.

Mr. Jacob Ogden had made all his arrangements with that administrative

ability which distinguished him. He had gone into every detail just as

closely as if the work of this great day had been the earning of money

instead of its expenditure. The main features of the programme were: 1.

A procession from Shayton to Wenderholme by the new route. 2. A grand

dinner at Wenderholme. 3. A ball.

The procession was to leave Shayton at noon precisely; and about

half-past eleven, a magnificent new carriage, ornamented with massive

silver, and drawn by two superb gray horses, whose new harness glittered

in the sunshine, rolled up to Mrs. Ogden's door. On the box sat a fine

coachman in livery, and a footman jumped down from behind to knock at

the Milend front door.

Just at the same moment Mr. Jacob Ogden walked quietly up the drive, and

when the door opened he walked in. The splendid servants respectfully

saluted him.

The Shayton tailor had surpassed himself for this occasion, and Mr.

Jacob looked so well dressed that anybody would have thought his clothes

had been made at Sootythorn. He wore kid gloves also.

But however well dressed a man may be, his splendor can never be

comparable to a lady's, especially such a lady as Mrs. Ogden, who had a

fearlessness in the use of colors like that which distinguished our

younger painters twenty years ago. She always managed to adorn herself

so that every thing about her looked bright, except her complexion and

her eyes. Behold her as the door opens! The Queen in all her glory is

not so fine as the mistress of Milend! What shining splendor! What

dazzling effulgence! A blind man said that he imagined scarlet to be as

the sound of a trumpet; but the vision of Mrs. Ogden was equal to a

whole brass band.

"Why, and whose cayridge is this 'ere, Jacob?"

"Cayridge, mother? It's nobbut a two-horse fly, fro' Manchester, new

painted."

The fact was, it was Mrs. Ogden's own carriage, purchased by her son

without her knowledge or consent; but, to avoid a scene before his new

domestics, he preferred the above amiable little fiction. So Mrs. Ogden

stepped for the first time into her carriage without being aware that

she had attained that great object of the _nouveau riche_. There was no

danger that she would recognize the armorial bearings which decorated

the panels and the harness. Jacob himself had not known them a month

before, but he had sent "name and county" to a heraldic establishment in

Lincoln's Inn Fields; and, as his letter had been duly accompanied by a

post-office order, three days afterwards he had received a very neat

drawing of his coat of arms, emblazoned in azure and gold. It was

cheaper than going to the College of Arms, and did just as well.

There was nobody in the new carriage except Mrs. Ogden and her son. Miss

Smethurst was invited, but she had a carriage and pair of her own, which

she used to do honor to the occasion. Many other friends of the Ogdens

(friends or business acquaintances) also came in their carriages, for

the tradesmen of those parts had generally adopted the custom of

carriage-keeping during the last few years. Even our friend the Doctor

now kept a comfortable brougham, in which he joined the procession. Mr.

Isaac Ogden of Twistle Farm, and Mr. Jacob Ogden, Jr., his son, joined

the procession on horseback, riding very fine animals indeed. A pack of

harriers was kept a short distance from Shayton, and it had been agreed

that all the gentlemen of the hunt who had invitations should be asked

to come as equestrians.

Jacob Ogden had contrived to give a public character to his triumph by

his gift of the new road to the township. The magistrates for the time

being were to be the trustees of it, hence the magistrates (including

one or two country gentlemen of some standing) found themselves

compelled to take part in the triumph. All men were that day compelled

to acknowledge Jacob Ogden's greatness, and to do him homage.

The telegraph was already established, and when the Shayton procession

started on its way, the fact was known instantaneously at Wenderholme.

At the same moment a counter-procession left Wenderholme on horseback to

meet the one coming from Shayton. The Yorkshire procession consisted

chiefly of the tenants of the estate on horseback, headed by the agent.

Most of them were in any thing but a congratulatory frame of mind, but

as they dreaded the anger of their landlord, they rode forth to meet him

to a man.

A holiday had been given at the mill, and all the mill hands were to

accompany the Shayton procession for two miles upon the road, after

which they were to return to Shayton, and there make merry at Mr.

Ogden's expense. Most of the hands belonged to benefit clubs such as the

Odd Fellows, the Druids, the Robin Hood, and so on; and they borrowed

for the occasion the banners used in the solemnities of these societies,

and their picturesque and fanciful costumes. These added immensely to

the effect, and gave the procession a richness and a variety which it

would otherwise have lacked.

The departure of the _cortège_ had been timed at the dinner-hour, when

all the mills were loosed, so that the whole Shayton population might

witness it. As it moved slowly along the streets, the crowd was as

dense as if Royalty itself had made a progress through the town. Mrs.

Ogden repeatedly recognized acquaintances in the crowd, and bowed and

smiled most graciously from her carriage-window--indeed a queen could

hardly have looked more radiant or more gracious. Seeing her good-humor,

Jacob ventured to inform her that she was "sitting in her own carriage."

"Sitting in my own cayridge! Well, then, stop th' horses, for I s'll get

out."

"Nay, nay, mother, you munnut do so--you munnut do so. You'll stop o'

th' procession. There's no stoppin' now. It's too latt for stoppin'."

"Well, if I'd known I'd never a coom! What is th' folk sayin', thinken

ye? Why, they're o' sayin,' one to another, 'There's Mistress Ogden in

her new cayridge, an' who's as fain[25] as fain.'"

"Well, mother, and what if they do say so? What means it?"

"Draw them there blinds down."

"Nay, but I willn't. We aren't goin' to a funeral."

After a while Mrs. Ogden began to look at the nice blue lining of her

carriage somewhat more approvingly. At last she said, "Jacob, I'n never

thanked thee. Thank ye, Jacob--thank ye. I shalln't live to use it for

long, but it'll do for little Jacob wife at afther."

When Mrs. Ogden had made this little speech, her son knew that the

carriage difficulty was at an end, and indeed she never afterwards

evinced any repugnance to entering that very handsome and comfortable

vehicle.

The procession moved at a walking pace for the first two miles, on

account of the people on foot. When these, however, had returned in the

direction of Shayton, the speed was somewhat increased, though, as the

road steadily ascended till it reached the Yorkshire border, the horses

could not go very fast. The road, too, being quite new, the macadam was

rather rough, though Jacob Ogden had sent a heavy iron roller, drawn by

fourteen powerful horses, from one end to the other.

The weather could not possibly have been more favorable, and it would be

difficult to imagine a more cheerful and exhilarating route. There had

been a slight frost during the night, and the air of the high moorland

was deliciously fresh and pure. The startled grouse frequently whirred

over the heads of the horsemen, and made not a few of them regret the

absence of their fowling-pieces, and the present necessity for marching

in military order. The view became gradually more and more extensive,

till at length, on approaching the border, a splendid prospect was

visible on both sides, stretching in Lancashire far beyond Shayton to

the level land near Manchester--and in Yorkshire, beyond Wenderholme and

Rigton to the hills near Stanithburn Peel. A landmark had been erected

on the border, and as the Shayton procession approached it, the body of

horsemen from Wenderholme were seen approaching it from the other side.

It had been arranged that they should meet at the stone.

When both processions had stopped, the Wenderholme agent came and

presented an address to Mrs. Ogden, which he read in a loud voice, and

then handed to her in the carriage. She was graciously pleased to say a

few words in reply, which were not audible to the people about. This

ceremony being over, the combined procession formed itself in order of

march, and began to descend the long slope towards Wenderholme.

The road entered the village, and therefore did not go quite directly to

the Hall. As it had been Jacob Ogden's intention from the first to play

the part of Public Benefactor in this matter, he guarded the privacy of

his mansion.

At the entrance of the village there was a triumphal arch made of

heather and evergreens, and decorated with festoons of colored calico.

Here the procession paused a second time, whilst the villagers came to

make their little offering to Mrs. Ogden.

The lord of Wenderholme was both surprised and offended by the absence

of Mr. Prigley. "I'll make him pay for't," he thought, "if he wants

out[26] doin' at his church, or any subscriptions, or the like o' that"

Indeed, the absence of Mr. Prigley was the more surprising that it was

contrary to the traditions of his caste, usually sufficiently ready to

do honor to the powers that be.

Also, Jacob Ogden thought that the church bells might have rung for him.

But they didn't ring. A hostile Prigley or Stanburne influence was

apparent there also. It was irritating to have the great triumph marred

by this pitiful ecclesiastical opposition. "He shall rue it," said

Jacob, inwardly--"he shall rue it!"

A table had been set in the middle of Wenderholme green, and on this

table was a large and massive silver inkstand, and in the inkstand a

gold pen with a jewelled penholder. Here Jacob Ogden descended from his

carriage, and, surrounded by all the chief personages in the procession,

sat down under a spreading oak, and signed the deed of gift by which the

road from Shayton to Wenderholme was transferred in trust to the Shayton

magistrates and their successors for ever and ever.

The inkstand bore an inscription, and was formally presented to Mr.

Ogden. And a great shout rose--all John Stanburne's former tenants

distinguishing themselves in the "hip, hip," &c.

After that the procession entered Wenderholme Park, and Mrs. Ogden

descended at the grand entrance, and moved across the hall, and up the

tapestried staircase.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE "BLOW-OUT."

The reader is not to suppose, from the parsimony which marked the

habitual life of Jacob Ogden and his mother, that when they had made up

their minds to what they called a "blow-out," there would be any

meanness or littleness in their proceedings. Under all circumstances

they acted with clear minds, knowing what they were doing; and when they

resolved to be extravagant, they _were_ extravagant. The fine principle

of that grand and really moral motto, "_Pecca fortiter_," was thoroughly

understood and consistently acted upon by the man who had won

Wenderholme by his industry and thrift. When he sinned, there was no

weak compromise with conscience--he did it manfully and boldly, and no

mistake. He never "muddled away" a sovereign, but his triumph cost him

many a hundred sovereigns, and he knew beforehand precisely what he was

going to spend. When it was all over he would pay the piper, and lock up

his cash-box again, and return to his old careful ways.

The Ogdens did not receive many visitors at Milend, and yet they had

rather an extensive acquaintance amongst people of their own class--rich

people belonging to trade, and living in the great manufacturing towns.

And to this festivity they had invited everybody they knew. The house of

Wenderholme, large as it was, was filled with Jacob Ogden's guests, and

his mother did the honors with a homely but genuine hospitality, which

made everybody feel kindly disposed to her; and though they could not

help laughing a little at her now and then, they did it without malice.

The reader will remember that, from a sort of pride which distinguished

her, she had refrained from visiting Wenderholme until the completion of

the new road; and as the chariot of the Olympic victor entered his city

by a breach in the wall, so Mrs. Ogden's carriage came to Wenderholme by

a route which no carriage had ever before traversed. It would have been

better, however, in some respects, if the good lady had familiarized

herself a little with the splendors of Wenderholme before she undertook

to receive so many guests therein, for it was quite foreign to the

frankness of her nature to act the _nil admirari_. Thus, on entering the

magnificent drawing-room, where many guests were already assembled, she

behaved exactly as she had done when, during a visit to Buxton, some

friends had taken her to see Chatsworth.

"Well!" she exclaimed, lifting up both her hands, "this _is_ a grand

room!" Nor was she contented with this simple exclamation, but she went

on examining and exclaiming, and walked all round, and lifted up the

curtains, and the heavy tassels of their cords, and touched the tapestry

on the chairs, and, in a word, quite forgot her dignity of hostess in

the novelty of the things about her.

"Those curtains must have cost thirty shillings a-yard!" she said,

appealing to the judgment of the elder ladies present, "and the stuff's

narrow beside."

Impressions of splendor depend very much upon contrast, so that

Wenderholme seemed very astonishing to a person coming directly from

Milend. But such impressions are soon obliterated by habit, and in a

week Mrs. Ogden will have lost the "fresh eye," to which she owes her

present sense of enchantment. How long would it take to get accustomed

to Blenheim, or Castle Howard, or Compiègne? Would it take a fortnight?

However, Mrs. Ogden had the advantage of a far fresher eye than _nous

autres_, who are so accustomed to gilding and glitter in public _cafés_

and picture-galleries, that we are all, as it were, princes, insensible

to impressions of splendor.

All that Mrs. Ogden said upon that memorable day it would be tedious to

relate. She thought aloud, and the burden of her thoughts, their

ever-recurring refrain, was her sense of the grandeur that surrounded

her. Jacob Ogden had bought a good deal of Colonel Stanburne's fine old

silver plate, and this formed the main subject of Mrs. Ogden's

conversation during dinner. "I think our Jacob's gone fair mad with

pride," she said to all the company, and in the hearing of the attentive

servants, "for we'd plenty of silver at Milend--quite plenty for any

one; we've all my uncle Adam's silver spoons, and my aunt Alice's, and

plenty of silver candlesticks, and a tea-service--and I cannot tell what

our Jacob would be at." Then she added, with serene complacency,

"However, it's all paid for."

She had not the art of avoiding a topic likely to be disagreeable either

to herself or anybody else, but would make other folks uncomfortable,

and torture her own mind by dwelling upon their sores and her own. I

don't think that in this she was altogether wrong, or that the most

delicate people are altogether right in doing exactly the contrary, for

it is as well to grasp nettles with a certain hardihood; but she carried

a respectable sort of courage to a very unnecessary excess. Thus, when

she had done about the silver and the general extravagance of "our

Jacob," the next topic she found to talk about was the absence of Mr.

and Mrs. Prigley. She launched forth into a catalogue of all the

benefits wherewith she had overwhelmed Mrs. Prigley in the days of her

poverty at Shayton, and represented that lady as a monster of

ingratitude. "Why, they were so poor," Mrs. Ogden said, "that they

couldn't even afford carpets to their floors; but now that they're

better off in the world, they turn their backs on those that helped

them. We were always helping them, and making them presents." Every one

saw that the Ogdens were dreadfully sore about the absence of the vicar

and his wife, and it was not very good policy on Mrs. Ogden's part to

draw attention to it in that way; for a parson, though ornamental, is

not absolutely indispensable to a good dinner, and they might have got

on very well without one.

The dinner was served in the great hall at five o'clock, and few of the

guests, as they sat at the feast, could help lifting their eyes to the

wainscot, and the frescoes, and the great armorial ceiling--few could

help thinking of the Colonel. No one present, however, was in such a

conflicting and contradictory state of mind as young Jacob, nor was any

one so thoroughly miserable. The whole triumph had disgusted him from

beginning to end, and he was not in a humor to be either charitable or

indulgent, or to see things on their amusing side. Ever since that last

interview with Edith, he had been moody and misanthropical, accepting

the position his uncle had made for him, but accepting it without one

ray of pleasure. Such a condition of mind, if prolonged for several

years, would end by making a man horribly cynical and sour, and probably

drive him to take refuge in the lowest pleasures and the lowest aims.

When the bark of love is wrecked, and the noble ambition of work and

independence lies feeble and half dead, and we allow others to arrange

all our life for us, what is the use of being young? what is the use of

having health and riches, and all sorts of fine prospects and

advantages?

When the banquet was over, the company returned to the drawing-room, and

young Jacob began to think that Sally Smethurst was the nicest-looking

young person there. His uncle was pleased to observe his polite

attentions to the young lady, and, taking him aside, said, "That's reet,

lad--that's reet; ax 'er to dance, and when you've been dancin' a good

bit, ax her summat elz. You'll never have such another chance. She's

quite fresh to this place, and she never saw out like Wendrum 'All;

she's just been tellin' my mother what a rare fine place it is."

"Well," thought young Jacob to himself, "as I cannot have Edith, why not

please my uncle and my grandmother? Sally Smethurst is a nice

honest-looking young woman, and I daresay she'd make a very good sort of

wife." The male nature is so constituted that, when not firmly anchored

in some strong attachment, it easily drifts away on the _fleuve du

tendre_, and this poor youth had been cut away from his moorings. What

wonder, then, if he drifted?

Sally thought him very nice, and handsome, and kind, and she promised to

dance with him most willingly. The dining-room had been prepared for

dancing, and it answered the purpose all the better as there was a dais

at one end of the room which afforded at once a safe retreat and a

convenient position for spectators, whilst at the other was a gallery

for musicians, now occupied by an excellent band of stringed instruments

from Manchester. In short, the dining-room at Wenderholme had been

arranged strictly on the principle of the old baronial hall. The gallery

was supported by fantastic pillars of carved oak, and decorated with

gigantic antlers which had been given to Colonel Stanburne by a friend

of his, a mighty hunter in South Africa.

The ball went on with great spirit till after midnight, when supper was

served in the long gallery. Even Mrs. Ogden, old as she was, had danced,

and danced well too, to the astonishment of the spectators. The host

himself had performed, though his proficiency might be questioned.

What with the dancing, and the negus, and the champagne, and the

splendors of the noble house, and the flattery of so many guests, and

the obsequious service of so many attendants, and the sense of their own

greatness and success, not only Jacob Ogden, senior, but all the Ogdens,

were a little elevated that night. Young Jacob did not escape this

infection--at his age, how could he?--and having taken Miss Smethurst up

the grand staircase to supper, rapidly approached that point which his

uncle desired him to attain.

Amidst the noise of the talk around him, the lad went further and

further. He talked about Wenderholme already almost as if it were his

own, and forgot, for the time, his old friend the Colonel and his

misfortunes in an exulting sense of his own highly promising position.

"He intended to live at Wenderholme a good deal," he said, and then

asked Miss Smethurst whether _she_ would like to live at Wenderholme.

But he did not hear her answer. A figure like a ghost, with pale, sad,

resolute face, approached silently, moving from the darker end of the

long gallery into the blaze of light about the supper-table.

It was Mr. Prigley.

The master of the house saw him, too, and as he approached said aloud,

and not very politely,--

"Better late than never, parson; come and sit down next to my mother and

get your supper."

But Mr. Prigley still remained standing. However, he approached the

table. Still he would not sit down.

Every one looked at him, and no one who had looked once took his eyes

off Mr. Prigley again. There was that in his face which fixed attention

irresistibly. The roar of the conversation was suddenly hushed, and a

silence succeeded in which you might have heard the breaking of a piece

of bread.

Mr. Prigley went straight to Mrs. Ogden, not noticing anybody else. He

spoke to her, not loudly, but audibly enough for every one to hear him.

"I have come to tell you, Mrs. Ogden, that Mrs. Stanburne, mother of

Colonel Stanburne of Wenderholme, is now lying in a dying state at the

vicarage."

Mrs. Ogden did not answer at once. When she had collected her ideas, she

said, "I thought Mrs. Stanburne had been in her own house and well in

health. If I'd known she was dyin', you may be sure, Mr. Prigley, as

there should 'ave been no dancin' i' this house, though she's not a

relation of ours. We're only plain people, but we know what's fittin'

and seemly."

"Then you cannot be aware, Mrs. Ogden, of what has happened at

Wenderholme Cottage. Mrs. Stanburne's illness has been brought on by the

suddenness with which the present owner of Wenderholme ordered her to

quit her cottage on this estate. She was an old lady, in feeble health,

and the trouble of a sudden eviction has proved too much for her. If

there is any surgeon here, let him follow me."

This said, Mr. Prigley quitted the table without bowing to anybody, and

his gaunt figure and pale grave face passed along the gallery to the

great staircase. Dr. Bardly left his place at the supper-table, and

followed him.

Miss Smethurst's young partner made no more soft speeches to her that

night. A great pang smote him in his breast. Had he forgotten those dear

friends who had been so good to him in the time of their prosperity? And

what was this horrible story of an eviction? Mrs. Stanburne turned out

of Wenderholme Cottage! Could it be possible that his uncle had gone to

such a length as that?

The boy was down the staircase in an instant, and overtook the Doctor

and Mr. Prigley as they were crossing the great hall. They walked

swiftly and silently to the vicarage.

"You'd better wait here, little Jacob," said Dr. Bardly; "I'll go

upstairs." And he put Jacob into a small sitting-room, which was empty.

The lad had been there five minutes when the door opened, and Edith came

in. She looked very ill and miserable.

All the old tenderness came back into Jacob's heart as he felt for her

in this trial. "Miss Stanburne," he said, "dear Miss Stanburne, what

does he say?" Weak and shattered as she was by the trials of these last

days, that word of tenderness made any farther acting impossible. She

went to him, took both his hands in hers, and the tears came.

"There's no hope; she's dying. Come upstairs--she wants to see you."

Mrs. Stanburne was lying in a state of extreme exhaustion, with

occasional intervals of consciousness, in which the mind was clear. When

Jacob entered the sick-room, she was in one of her better moments.

"Go quite near to her," said Mr. Prigley; "she can only speak in a

whisper."

There had always existed a great friendship between the youth and the

old lady now lying on the brink of the grave. He bent down over her, and

tenderly kissed her forehead.

"God bless you!" she whispered, "it is very kind of you to come."

Then she said, in answer to his enquiries,--

"I shall not live long, but I shall live rather longer than they think.

I shan't die to-night. I want my son--my son!"

After this supervened a syncope, which Jacob and Edith believed to be

death. But the Doctor, with his larger experience, reassured them for

the present. "She will live several hours," he said.

Jacob told them that she had asked for Colonel Stanburne, and added, "I

have not the slightest idea where he is."

Then Edith made a sign to him to follow her, and led him downstairs

again to the little sitting-room. "Papa is a long way off; he is in

France. He must be telegraphed for." And she took a writing-case and

wrote an address.

Now, although there was a telegraph from Wenderholme to Ogden's Mill at

Shayton, there was none from Shayton to Sootythorn, which was the

nearest town of importance. So the best way appeared to be for Jacob to

ride off at once with the despatch to the station, which was ten miles

off.

"And you must telegraph for mamma at the same time." And Edith wrote

Lady Helena's address.

A little delay occurred now, because Jacob's horse had to be sent for to

Wenderholme Hall. Edith went upstairs, and soon came down again with

rather favorable news. The syncope had not lasted long, and the patient

seemed to rally from it somewhat more easily than she had done from the

preceding ones.

"Miss Stanburne!" said Jacob, "will you give me a word of explanation?

You were hard and unkind the last time we spoke to each other."

"I did very wrong. I thought I was sacrificing myself for your good. I

told you nothing but lies."

Half an hour since Miss Smethurst was within a hair's-breadth of being

lady of Wenderholme; but her chances are over now, and she will not

bring her fortune to this place--her coals to this Newcastle. As her

late partner in the dance rides galloping, galloping through the wooded

lanes to the telegraph station, his brain is full of other hopes, and of

a far higher, though less brilliant, ambition. He will free himself from

the Milend slavery, and work for independence--and for Edith!

CHAPTER XIV.

Mrs. Ogden's Authority.

After the apparition of Mr. Prigley, the supper in the long gallery

changed its character completely. Until he came it had been one of the

merriest of festivals; after he went away, it became one of the dullest.

A sense of uncomfortableness and embarrassment oppressed everybody

present, and though many attempts were made to give the conversation

something of its old liveliness, the guests soon became aware that for

that time it was frozen beyond hope of recovery. It had been intended to

resume the dancing after supper, but the dancing was not resumed, and

the guests who intended to return to Shayton that night became suddenly

impressed with so strong a sense of the distance of that place from

Wenderholme, that all the pressing hospitality of the Ogdens availed not

to retain them.

Notwithstanding the Philistinism of Mrs. Ogden's character, and the

external hardness which she had in common with most of her

contemporaries in Shayton, she was not without heart; and when she heard

that her son had turned old Mrs. Stanburne out of the Cottage, she both

felt disapproval and expressed it. "Jacob," she said, "you shouldn't

'ave done so." And she repeated many a time to other people in the room,

"Our Jacob shouldn't 'ave done so."

And when the carriages had departed, although there were still many

people in the house, Mrs. Ogden put her bonnet on, and had herself

conducted to the vicarage.

The situation there might have been embarrassing for some people, but

Mrs. Ogden was a woman who did not feel embarrassment under any

circumstances. She did what was right, or she did what was wrong, in a

simple and resolute way, and her very immunity from nervous

reflectiveness often enabled her to do the right thing when a

self-conscious person would hardly have ventured to do it. So she

knocked at Mrs. Prigley's door.

It happened that the person nearest the door at that moment was Edith,

who was crossing the passage from one room to another. So Edith opened

the door.

Mrs. Ogden walked in at once, and asked very kindly after Mrs.

Stanburne. Edith was pleased with the genuine interest in her manner,

and showed her into the little sitting-room.

The news was rather more favorable than might have been hoped for. Mrs.

Stanburne had had no return of unconsciousness; and though the Doctor

still thought she was gradually sinking, he began to be of opinion that

her illness might be much longer than was at first anticipated, and

thought that she would live to see the Colonel.

"You don't know me," said Mrs. Ogden; "but as you speak of Mrs.

Stanburne as your grandmamma, I know who you are. You're Miss Edith. I'm

little Jacob's grandmamma--Mrs. Ogden of Milend, whom no doubt you've

heard speak of."

Edith bowed slightly, and then there was rather an awkward pause.

"My son Jacob did very wrong about your grandmother in turning her out

of her house. I wish we could make amends."

Edith tried to say something polite in acknowledgment of Mrs. Ogden's

advance, but it ended in tears. "I'm afraid it is too late," she said,

finally.

The young lady's evident love for her grandmother won the heart of Mrs.

Ogden, who was herself a grandmother. "Tell me what has been done, my

dear. I know nothing about it; I only heard about it to-night. Has Mrs.

Stanburne removed her furniture?"

"Not quite all yet. Most of it is here, in Mr. Prigley's out-houses. It

was the hurry of the removal that brought on grandmamma's illness."

"Well, my dear," said the old lady, laying her hand upon Edith's, "let

us pray to God that she may live. And we'll have all the furniture put

back into the Cottage."

"I don't think grandmamma would consent to that."

"But I'll make my son come and beg her pardon. I'll make him come!"

Edith could not resist Mrs. Ogden's earnestness. "I will try to bring

grandmamma round, if she lives. You are very kind, Mrs. Ogden."

"Now, if you'd like me to sit up with Mrs. Stanburne, if you and Mrs.

Prigley was tired, you know? I'm an old woman, but I'm a strong one, and

I can sit up well enough. I've been used to nursing. I nursed our Isaac

wife all through her last illness."

"Mrs. Prigley and I can do very well for to-night; but to-morrow, in the

day-time, we shall need a little rest, and if you would come we should

be much obliged."

"And if there was any thing I could send from the great 'ouse--any

jellies or blomonge?"

"Thank you; if we want any thing we will send for it to the Hall."

Mrs. Ogden rose to take her leave, which she did very affectionately. "I

am very sorry for you, my dear," she said, "and I am angry at our Jacob.

He shouldn't 'ave done so--he shouldn't 'ave done so."

She had no notion of abdicating parental authority--no idea that,

because a lad happened to be twenty-one, or thirty-one, or forty-one, he

was to be free to do exactly as he liked. And when she got back to the

Hall, and the guests were in bed, she treated "our Jacob" _en petit

garçon_, just as if he had been fifteen. She informed him that Mrs.

Stanburne's furniture would be reinstated in Wenderholme Cottage

immediately, and that if she recovered he would have to go there and eat

humble-pie. "An' if who doesn't get better, it'll be thee as has

murdered her; and thou'll desarve to be hanged for't, same as Bill o'

great John's[27] as shot old Nanny Suthers wi' a pistil."

CHAPTER XV.

LADY HELENA RETURNS.

Mrs. Ogden returned to the vicarage the next day, and found Mrs.

Stanburne in the same condition of extreme exhaustion. The Rigton doctor

had arrived in the interval, and relieved Dr. Bardly, who returned to

Shayton. The two medical men had expressed the same opinion--namely,

that the old lady was gradually, but quite surely, sinking.

Mrs. Ogden took her place by the bedside, and relieved Mrs. Prigley and

Edith. The patient being perfectly conscious, and in possession of all

her mental faculties, Edith had told her about Mrs. Ogden's first visit;

and when she came near the bedside, Mrs. Stanburne held out her hand, or

rather attempted to do so--for she had not strength to lift it--and it

fell upon the counterpane. Then she whispered a few words of thanks and

welcome. "My son Jacob shouldn't have done so--he shouldn't have done

so," said Mrs. Ogden; and in reply there came faint syllables of

forgiveness. Then Mrs. Ogden asked Mrs. Stanburne if she would prove her

forgiveness by going back to Wenderholme Cottage.

"If I live, I will."

"Live! why you're sure to live. You're quite a young woman. Look at me,

how strong I am, and I'm older than you are. It's nothing but the hurry

and worry of leaving your 'ouse that you was accustomed to that's

brought you down in this way. You'll get well again--I'm sure you will;

only, we must take care of you. Now we've had enough talking for the

present, and I'll get my sewing; and if you want any thing, I'll fetch

it for you."

Then the strong old woman sat down by the bedside of the weaker one, and

from that time forth established herself as one of her recognized

nurses, and by no means the least efficient. In one essential point she

was superior both to Edith and Mrs. Prigley--she was less melancholy and

more encouraging. The others could not help crying, and the patient saw

that they had been crying, which made her feel as if she were assisting

at her own funeral; whereas Mrs. Ogden kept a cheerful countenance, and,

though as gentle as a woman could be, had nevertheless a fine firmness

and courage which made Mrs. Stanburne feel that she could rely upon her.

Another immense advantage was, that in the presence of this hale and

active example of a vigorous old age, Mrs. Stanburne altogether ceased

to feel the burden of her years, and began to consider herself simply as

a sick person in a state of temporary exhaustion, instead of an old

woman whose thread of life had come to its inevitable end. Indeed, Mrs.

Ogden had not been long with the invalid before both of them had given

up the theory that she was gradually sinking, and replaced it by more

hopeful views.

Young Jacob's interest in Mrs. Stanburne's health proved to be so strong

that he could hardly absent himself from the vicarage; yet though Mrs.

Ogden must have been perfectly well aware that he passed a good deal of

his time there with Miss Edith, she showed no sign of displeasure, but

when she found them together, seemed to consider it perfectly natural,

and spoke to Edith always affectionately, calling her "my dear," and

putting an unaccustomed tenderness even into the very tones of her

voice. The lord of Wenderholme and his remaining guests left for Shayton

in the course of the afternoon, but Mrs. Ogden declared her intention of

remaining until her patient was out of danger; and though her son had

suggested that young Jacob was not absolutely necessary as a nurse,

Mrs. Ogden asserted that it was "a great comfort" to her to have him

near her, and that he should go back to Milend with his grandmother at

such times as she might see fit to return thither. Jacob Ogden was a

wilful and a mighty man; but either from habit or some genuine filial

sentiment, or perhaps because no man can be really happy unless he is

governed by a woman of some sort--either a wife, or a mother, or a

maiden aunt--this hard and terrible master-spirit submitted to "the old

woman" without question, and whatever _she_ willed was done.

In saying that all Jacob Ogden's guests went back with him to Shayton,

an exception must be made in the case of his elder brother. Captain

Ogden, as he was now generally called (for the people had gradually got

into the habit of giving militia officers their titles), remained at

Wenderholme, for reasons of his own. He knew that Colonel Stanburne had

been telegraphed for, and wished to see him. Perhaps, too, he thought it

might be agreeable to John Stanburne to find a sincere friend in his old

place, and that he might be able in some degree to mitigate the

painfulness of an unavoidable return to scenes which could not be

revisited without awakening many regretful associations.

As all the Prigley children were at school except Conny, now a young

lady who was supposed to have "come out," though in fact no such

ceremony had taken place, from the want of any society to come out in,

the vicarage was able to accommodate a good many guests, and the

Prigleys were only too happy to place it at the disposal of the family

to whom they owed their recent advancement in the world. It was a

pleasant and spacious, though not a very elegant, house; and there was a

large garden, and an orchard, and a glebe of two or three fields, with

sufficient stabling and out-houses. They had set up a small

pony-carriage, or rather continued that which belonged to the late

vicar, which they had purchased at the sale, with pony and harness

complete, for the moderate sum of nine guineas; and Conny Prigley set

off in this machine to await the train by which Lady Helena was expected

to arrive. This arrangement was made without Mrs. Ogden's knowledge, and

when she came to be aware of it, she exclaimed, "Well, now, I wish I'd

known--I do indeed, I _wish_ I'd known--for there's my cayridge at the

'All, which is quite at your service. Our Jacob's gone back with Miss

Smethurst, and he's left me my cayridge, which you would have been quite

welcome to." But the Prigleys had tact enough to know, that although her

ladyship rather liked to be magnificent, she might not particularly care

for it to be Mrs. Ogden's magnificence; and that the little green

pony-carriage, driven by Conny Prigley, was a more suitable vehicle to

bring her ladyship to the vicarage than the sumptuous chariot in which

Mrs. Ogden had triumphed the day before.

Lady Helena duly arrived. It did not require much explanation from Edith

to make the whole situation quite clear to her perspicuous mind. She

went upstairs to see Mrs. Stanburne, who was grateful to her for coming

so soon, and the first person she saw in the room was Mrs. Ogden.

There was a little stiffness at first, but it did not last long. Lady

Helena and Mrs. Ogden got into conversation about the state of the

patient, and then about other matters connected with what might be

called the diocese of the Lady of Wenderholme. Had Mrs. Ogden been one

of the examples, so numerous in these days, of amazingly refined

ladyhood in the middle classes, Lady Helena might have been jealous of

her; but how was it possible for her ladyship to feel jealous of a

simple old woman like Mrs. Ogden, who spoke broad Lancashire, and in

every movement of her body, and every utterance of her lips, proclaimed

the humility of her birth? Lady Helena, moreover, had a keen sense of

humor, and it was impossible not to feel interested and amused, as soon

as the first anxiety about Mrs. Stanburne was at least temporarily

tranquillized, by Mrs. Ogden's quaint turns of expression, and her

wonderful reliance on her own wisdom and experience. Even Mrs.

Stanburne, ill as she was, could not help smiling, as she lay in her bed

of sickness, when Mrs. Ogden came out with some of those sayings which

were peculiarly her own.

The condition of the invalid had become less distressing and less

alarming, though the Doctor still held out no hopes of a recovery. Mrs.

Ogden, however, had succeeded in making the patient believe that she

would get better because she believed it herself, and she believed it

herself because the idea of a person dying of mere weakness at the early

age of seventy-two was not admissible to her patriarchal mind. It was a

great thing for Mrs. Stanburne to have somebody near her who did not

consider that she was used up, and she began to regard Mrs. Ogden with

the partiality which human nature always feels for those who preach

comfortable doctrine.

As there were so many ladies to nurse Mrs. Stanburne, and as the invalid

now gave comparatively little immediate anxiety, Edith easily got Lady

Helena to herself for half an hour.

The young lady was firmly resolved upon one thing--namely, that this

opportunity for a reconciliation between her father and mother should

not be lost through any pusillanimity of hers.

"Mamma," she said boldly, "why did you leave papa when he was ruined?"

"Because he ordered me to leave him; because he turned me out of the

house."

"But why did he do so? It is quite contrary to his character to turn

anybody out. When he dismissed the servants, he did it very kindly, and

only because he could not afford to keep them."

Lady Helena remained silent.

"Do tell me, mamma, why he behaved so. It isn't like him; you know it

isn't like him."

"There are people, Edith," said her ladyship, "who commit great follies;

and then, when the misfortunes come which they themselves have caused,

they cannot endure to hear one word of blame. They must be pitied and

sympathized with, and then they are very nice and amiable; but if you

express the least censure, they fly into a passion and insult you."

"You mean that you censured papa for his imprudence, and that he got

angry."

"I said very little to him. I said a few words which were strictly true.

I never scold."

"No, mamma, you never scold; but scolding would be easier to bear than

your blame. I see how it all was; you blamed papa in two or three

terribly just and severe words, and then, after that, you said nothing

to console him in his misery, and he became irritable, and said

something hasty."

Lady Helena said nothing to this, but she did not look displeased; and

she showed no inclination either to leave the room or to change the

subject.

"Dear mamma, I don't think you did wrong in blaming papa's imprudence;

but if you had given him one word of kindness afterwards, you would

never have lost him."

"Is not this rather"--

"Impertinent from a daughter, you mean to say. You know I don't want to

be impertinent, mamma; but I'm old enough to be of some use, and I mean

to be, too, whether your ladyship is quite satisfied or not. Are you

aware that papa will be here to-morrow?"

"It is natural that he should come here, as his mother is ill."

"And when he comes, we must do what we can to help him to bear his

afflictions, I suppose."

"Certainly."

"Well, we won't pass any more votes of censure, mamma, will we? And we

shall forgive him his trespasses, shall we not?"

To this Lady Helena made no reply; but her face wore a new and a softer

expression. This encouraged Edith, who continued:--

"He has suffered enough. He has been living all by himself in a

miserable little French town on the Loire. I have a whole heap of his

letters. He told me every thing about his situation. Grandpapa has been

allowing him three hundred a-year--he has never touched a penny of it;

it is paid regularly to grandmamma Stanburne, who does not know that she

is ruined, and who fancies that papa has an allowance, and lives abroad

for his pleasure. His letters to her are all about amusements, but he

writes to me sincerely, and _I_ know what his life has been. He has got

a post as English master in a school, and they pay him twenty-five

francs a-week, but he gives lessons in the town, and gets two francs a

lesson, only he has not many of these. He is _en pension_ in an inn. It

is a miserably lonely life. I would have gone to him, but I could not

leave grandmamma."

Lady Helena's eyes glistened in the firelight. They were brimming with

tears. "You should have told me this sooner, Edith," she said, at last.

"Would you have gone to him? Would you have gone to live with him there,

in his lodgings, and cheer him after his day's work?"

"I have been less happy, Edith, during these last months, than I should

have been with him, wherever he is, however poor he is."

After this avowal of her ladyship, the chances are great, I think, that

the Colonel will be agreeably received at the vicarage. Miss Edith

communicated as much to the worthy vicar himself, who, though with

Anglican discretion he would have avoided intruding in the character of

peacemaker, thought it a duty to encourage Lady Helena in the path of

charity and forgiveness.

"Forgive him heartily and entirely any thing you may have to forgive. Go

to him at once when he comes. All your days will be blessed for this."

CHAPTER XVI.

THE COLONEL COMES.

In the evening came a telegram from the Colonel, dated from Dover, and

announcing his arrival for the following morning. "What a pity it is,"

said Lady Helena, "that he did not give us a London address! we might

have spared him a whole night of anxiety." She was thinking about him

just as she used to think about him in their happiest years.

On reference to the time-table, it appeared that the Colonel would

arrive at the station at about eight o'clock in the morning. When

Captain Ogden heard of this, he said he would go to meet him, and so did

young Jacob; and Mrs. Ogden offered her carriage, and, in short, there

was a general fuss, to which Lady Helena suddenly put an end by

declaring her intention of going to meet him herself in the little

pony-carriage that belonged to the vicarage. Mr. Prigley smiled

approbation, and assured her ladyship that he would lend her that humble

equipage with great pleasure, meaning a great deal more than he said.

So Lady Helena drove off in the little green carriage at six o'clock in

the morning; for the station, as the reader may remember, was ten miles

from Wenderholme, and it was necessary to bait the pony before he came

back. It was a rude little equipage altogether, not very well hung, and

by no means elegant in its proportions. The pony, too, in anticipation

of winter, was beginning to put on his rough coat, and his harness had

long since lost any brilliance it might have once possessed. The morning

was cold and raw, and a chilly gray dawn was in the east--an aurora of

the least encouraging kind, which one always feels disposed to be angry

at for coming and disturbing the more cheerful darkness. Some people at

the vicarage were astonished that Mr. Prigley should allow her ladyship

to drive off alone in this dreary way at six o'clock in the morning; but

then these people did not know all that Mr. Prigley knew. When Lady

Helena got into the carriage, the vicar shook hands with her in an

uncommonly affectionate manner, just as if she had been leaving him for

a very long time, and then he said something to her in a very low tone.

"Dear Lady Helena," he said, "God bless you!" and it is my firm belief

that if Mrs. Prigley had not been within sight, that vicar would have

given Lady Helena a kiss.

Away went the pony through the darkling lanes, with the rattling machine

after him. Poor pony! he had often done that long journey to the

station, and done it with reasonable celerity, but he had never trotted

so fast as he trotted now. Can it be the early morning air that so

exhilarates her ladyship? Her face is so bright and cheerful that it

conquers the dreariness of the hour, and brings a better sunshine than

the gray October dawn. How little we know under what circumstances we

shall enjoy the purest and sweetest felicity! This little woman had been

in lordly equipages, in all sorts of splendid pleasures and stately

ceremonies; she had been drawn by magnificent horses, with a powdered

coachman on the box, and a cluster of lacqueys behind; she had gone in

diamonds and feathers to St. James's; better still, she had driven

through the fairest scenery under cloudless skies, when all nature

rejoiced around her. All the luxury that skilled craftsmen can produce

in combination had been hers; carriages hung so delicately, and

cushioned so softly, that they seemed to float on air; harness that

seemed as if its only purpose were to enhance the beauty of the horses

which it adorned; liveries, varnish, silver, and the rest of it. And

yet, of all the drives that Lady Helena had ever taken in her whole

life, _this_ was the most delightful, this drive in the dreary dawn of

an October morning in a rattling little carriage with stiff springs,

painted like a park paling, and drawn by a shaggy pony at the rate of

six miles an hour!

She reached the station half an hour before the train came, and sat a

little in the waiting-room, and walked about on the platform, in a state

of nervous fidgetiness and anxiety. At length the bell rang, and the

engine came round a curve, and grew bigger and bigger, and her heart

beat faster and faster. "There he is, poor John, getting out of a

third-class carriage!" Lady Helena had been seeking him amongst the

well-to-do first-class passengers.

She ran to him, and took his hand in both hers, and said, "She's better,

love--a good deal better since yesterday." And the tears ran down her

cheeks.

The Colonel looked at her for a moment, and took both her hands, and

would have said something, or perhaps gone so far as to give her just

one little kiss on the forehead--which is a wonderful thing for an

Englishman to achieve in a railway station--but these good intentions

were frustrated by the guard, who, in rather a peremptory way, demanded

to know whether he had any luggage.

John Stanburne felt like a man in a dream. Going back to Wenderholme, no

longer his, with Helena, his own Helena once more! It was not in his

nature to cherish the least vindictive feeling, and that one word of his

wife had wiped away every evil recollection. When they got into the

little pony-carriage, and were out of hearing of the hostler, the

Colonel turned to her ladyship, and said,--

"I owe you a great many apologies, dear. I behaved very badly the last

time we were together, but I was upset, you know. You are a good woman

to come and meet me in this way, and forgive me. I have meant to write

to you many a time and say how sorry I was, but I put it off

because--because"--

It is well that the pony was quiet, and knew its own way to Wenderholme,

for when they got into an uncommonly retired lane, with very high

hedges, her ladyship, who was driving, threw the reins down, and

embraced the gentleman by her side in an extraordinary manner. Then came

passionate tears, and after that she grew calmer.

"What geese we were to fancy we could live separately!" she said.

And then they talked incessantly the whole way. She asked him a thousand

questions about his life abroad,--how he passed his evenings, whether he

had found any society, and so on. As the Colonel told her about his

humble, lonely life, she listened with perfect sympathy; and when he

said that some people had been kind to him, and got him pupils, she

wanted to know all about them. "I'm getting on famously," said the

Colonel. "I'm earning nearly sixty francs a-week, and I pronounce French

better than I used to do."

CHAPTER XVII.

A MORNING CALL.

Since we are obliged to leave the vicarage now, the reader must be told

the exact truth about Mrs. Stanburne's condition. It continued to give

great anxiety for several weeks, and all her friends, even including the

doctors, gave her up over and over again, believing that she had not

more than an hour or two to live; yet she always passed through these

times of danger, and gradually, very gradually, began to feel rather

stronger in the month of December. The season of the year was not

favorable to her, but Dr. Bardly hoped that if she could be sustained

till the return of spring, she would regain her strength, at least in a

great measure, and probably have several years of life still before her.

She bore the winter better than had been expected, though without

quitting her room at the vicarage, and in the month of April entered

upon a convalescence which astonished all around her.

The old lady's illness led to very important consequences. Since the

period of her danger was protracted, her friends remained near her day

after day, and week after week, always believing that they were

performing the last duty by a deathbed. A great sadness reigned in the

vicarage during all this season of watching, but it was sadness of the

kind which is most favorable to sympathy and good feeling. The vicar and

his good wife, so far from feeling the presence of the invalid and their

other guests a burden, were glad that it was in their power to do any

thing for her and for them; and whilst the old lady lay upon her bed of

sickness she was producing happier and more important results, simply by

throwing certain persons together by invisible bonds of mutual approval

and a common anxiety, than she could ever have achieved by an active

ingerence in their affairs. Everybody who loved old Mrs. Stanburne was

grateful to everybody who gave proof of a real interest in her

condition; and the majestic approach of death, whose shadow lay on the

vicarage so long, subdued all its inhabitants into a more perfect

spiritual harmony than they would ever have attained to amongst the

distractions of gayer, though not happier, days. Lady Helena was

admirable. There was a tenderness and a simplicity in her manner which

pleased the Colonel greatly, and won the warm approval of the vicar. She

devoted herself mainly to the care of Mrs. Stanburne, but, saying that

exercise was necessary to enable her to do her duty as a nurse, made the

Colonel walk out with her every day. These walks were delightful to both

of them--for even though the scenery about the village of Wenderholme

was full of painful associations, their sense of loss was more than

balanced by the sense of a yet larger gain; and the future, though it

could not have the external brilliance of the past, promised a deeper

and more firm felicity. Sadness and unhappiness are two very different

conditions of the mind, and it does not follow that because we are

saddened we are incapable of being very happy in a certain quiet and not

unenviable way. Indeed, it might even be asserted, that as

"Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought"--

so it is with life itself, as well as poetry, and that our sweetest

hours are far from being our gayest.

It had become tacitly understood that neither Lady Helena nor Mrs. Ogden

would offer any opposition to the marriage between Jacob and Edith.

Whatever Mrs. Ogden determined to do, she did in a thorough and

effectual manner; and as she had resolved that amends ought to be made

to the Stanburnes for her son's conduct to the old lady, she considered

that the best way to do this would be to receive Edith kindly into her

family. In this resolution she was greatly helped by a genuine approval

of the young lady herself. "There's some girls as brings fortunes," she

said to young Jacob, "and there's other girls as _is_ a fortune

themselves, and I think Miss Stanburne will be as good as a fortune to

any one who may marry her." Nor had this opinion been lightly arrived

at, for during her frequent visits to the vicarage, Mrs. Ogden had

studied Edith, much in the same way as an entomologist studies an insect

under a microscope.

One day, when the weather became a little warmer, Lady Helena said to

the Colonel, "Don't you think, dear, that we ought to go and call upon

that old Mrs. Ogden at the Hall? She has been exceedingly kind in coming

to sit with mamma. I would have suggested it sooner, but I was afraid it

might be painful for you, dear, to go to the old house again."

So they set out and walked to the Hall together, both of them feeling

very strange feelings, indeed, as they passed up the familiar avenue.

When they came at last in sight of the great house, John Stanburne

paused and gazed upon it for a long time without speaking. It stood just

as he had left it--none of the carved Stanburne shields had been

removed.

"I'm glad they've altered nothing, Helena," he said.

Then they met their old gardener, who spoke to them with the tears in

his eyes. "It's different for us to what it used to be, my lady," he

said; "not but what Mrs. Ogden is a good woman, but her son is a hard

master."

"We were coming to see Mrs. Ogden," said Lady Helena; "do you know if

she is at home?"

"You won't find her in the house, my lady; but if you will come this

way, I'll take you to where she is."

Nature always puts some element of comedy into the most touching

circumstances, and saves us from morbid feelings by glimpses of the

ludicrous side of life. Thus, although the gardener had had tears in

his eyes when he saw the Colonel and Lady Helena, there was a smile upon

his face as he led them in the direction of the stables.

"Your ladyship will find Mrs. Ogden in that carriage," he said, pointing

to the magnificent Ogden chariot, which stood, as if to air itself,

without horses, in the middle of the yard. When he had said this, the

gardener made his bow and disappeared, smiling with keen satisfaction at

what he had just done.

The visitors were much surprised, but, as the gardener well knew,

curiosity alone was strong enough to make them go up to the carriage and

see whether there was anybody inside it. The Colonel peeped in at the

window, and saw Mrs. Ogden sitting in the vehicle, apparently in quite a

settled and permanent way, for she had her knitting.

"Eh, well, it's the Colonel and her ladyship, I declare!" cried Mrs.

Ogden, opening the carriage-door. "Come and get in--do get in--it's very

comfortable. I often come and sit here a bit of an afternoon with my

knitting. But what perhaps you'd rather go and sit a bit i' th' 'ouse?"

They got inside the carriage with the old lady, and their amusement at

this circumstance quite relieved those feelings of melancholy which had

naturally taken possession of them on revisiting Wenderholme. The

conversation was quite agreeable and animated, and half an hour passed

very rapidly. After that, the callers proposed to depart.

"Nay," said Mrs. Ogden, "you willn't be going away so soon, will you?

Come into th' 'ouse, now--_do_ come and have a glass of wine."

Lady Helena promised that they would come to the house another day, but

said that she wished to go back to Mrs. Stanburne. On this Mrs. Ogden

said, "Well, then, if you _will_ go back, sit you still." And she let

down the glass and called out in a loud voice for the horses.

The horses were put to the carriage, and the visitors shortly found

themselves in motion towards the vicarage, which proves the advantage

of receiving friends in a small drawing-room on four wheels. The

incident created a great deal of amusement, and even old Mrs. Stanburne

laughed at it very heartily. Very trifling and absurd things are often

of great use in putting people in a good temper, and chasing melancholy

ideas; and Mrs. Ogden's fancy for sitting in her carriage developed a

wonderful amount of kindly humor at the vicarage. Nothing does people

more good than laughing at their neighbors, and they love their

neighbors all the better for having laughed at them; so Mrs. Ogden's

popularity at the vicarage was increased by this incident, and I dare

say it accelerated Mrs. Stanburne's recovery in an appreciable, though

not ascertainable, degree.

CHAPTER XVIII.

MONEY ON THE BRAIN.

Immediately after the Colonel's return from France, Captain Ogden went

back to his solitude at Twistle Farm, but his son spent a good deal of

his time with old Mrs. Ogden at Wenderholme. Jacob Ogden, senior, came

to Wenderholme frequently to look after the work-people on the estate,

but did not mark his disapproval of his nephew's proceedings otherwise

than by quietly excluding him from all participation in his affairs.

Although the young man passed a great deal more time at Wenderholme than

his uncle did, he was never requested, and he never offered, to do any

of the duties of an overlooker, and his uncle treated him strictly upon

the footing of a visitor--a visitor, not to himself, but to his mother.

There is so much firmness in the character of the typical Lancashire

man, that he can assume, and maintain for an indefinite length of time,

an attitude towards a friend or relation which would be impossible for

more mobile temperaments; and young Jacob knew his uncle well enough to

be aware that having once decided upon his line of conduct, there was

every probability that he would follow it without deviation. Therefore,

although young Jacob could have made himself of the greatest use at

Wenderholme without interfering either with his amusement of shooting or

his dutiful attendance upon Miss Edith; he paid no more attention to the

work-people than if they had been employed by some proprietor entirely

unknown to him. It is unnecessary to add, that when at Twistle Farm,

where he spent about one week out of three, he never went near his

uncle's factories.

And yet, notwithstanding the apparent indifference with which Jacob

Ogden dispensed with his nephew's services, they were more than ever

necessary to him. The great factories at Shayton were enough of

themselves to absorb the whole time of a very active master; but, in

addition to these, Jacob Ogden was now working the calico-printing

establishment at Whittlecup, which had formerly belonged to Mr. Joseph

Anison, and carrying out extensive improvements, not only upon the

Wenderholme estate, but upon many other properties of his, scattered

over the neighboring parishes, and often at a considerable distance from

his headquarters at Milend. Though his constitution was a strong one, he

had always taxed its strength to the utmost; and his powers were not

what they had been, nor what he still believed them to be. He might have

gone on for many years in the old routine that he had been accustomed

to--for a hard-worked man will endure labor that seems beyond his

present strength if he merely continues the habits of his better time.

But a man already in the decline of life cannot _add_ to his labor

without danger, if it is already excessive, and especially if the new

labors require thought and study before they can be fully mastered. The

improvements at Wenderholme, to an experienced land-owner like Jacob

Ogden, required no new apprenticeship; but that was not the case with

the calico-printing business at Whittlecup. It was a new trade that had

to be learned, and not a very easy trade--not nearly so simple as

cotton-spinning. He applied himself to it with that indomitable will and

resolution which had hitherto overcome every obstacle in his career, and

he rapidly acquired the new knowledge that he needed. But this effort,

in addition to the enormous burden of his daily work--the daily work of

a rich man who could not endure to be robbed, and would trust nothing to

his agents--began to tell upon his cerebral system in a peculiar

manner; and these effects were the more dangerous that Jacob Ogden had

no conception of the terrible nature of the enemy that was invading him,

but believed this enemy might be conquered by his will and perseverance,

as every other obstacle had been. If he had frankly consulted Dr. Bardly

on the appearance of the first symptoms, and followed the advice which

Dr. Bardly would have given, the evil would have been checked in time;

but he felt a certain hostility to the Doctor, which disinclined him to

communications which he did not feel to be immediately necessary; and

even if this could have been laid aside, a man so wilful as Jacob Ogden,

and so accustomed to look after his own affairs, would scarcely have

consented under present circumstances to give up the management of his

business to his nephew, and retire to a premature and inglorious repose.

Hitherto he had gone through his work with great energy, in combination

with perfect calm. The energy still remained, it even increased; but the

calm did not remain--it was succeeded by a perpetual hurry and fever. In

a short time after these symptoms first developed themselves, Jacob

Ogden could not add up a column of figures without excitement; when he

came to the totals his heart beat violently, and he began to make

mistakes, which he perceived, and was afterwards nervously anxious to

avoid. As his malady increased, he could not open a letter without

emotion, or sign a cheque without a strong effort of self-control; in a

word, the nervous system was rapidly giving way. And instead of taking

rest, which could alone have restored him to health--rest at Wenderholme

amongst his own fair fields in the beautiful months of spring--he

persisted and persisted, and would not allow himself to be beaten.

The people about him did not know any thing of his condition. He was

more irritable, he pushed everybody faster than he had formerly done,

and he was constantly moving from one place to another; but his

determination to control himself was so strong, and his power of

_appearing_ well still so considerable, that such people as Mrs. Ogden

and young Jacob (unaccustomed as they both were to that kind of

suffering, and incapable of imagining it) had not the most distant

suspicion that he had become unfit for work. Indeed, although an

experienced London physician, who had made brain disease his particular

study, would no doubt have seen at a glance that this was a case which

needed the most watchful care, it may be doubted whether a country

practitioner (even so clever, naturally, as Dr. Bardly) would have

warned Jacob Ogden in time.

The overtasked brain translated its own dangerous condition by

_anxiety_, and the anxiety was not about health, but, as often happens

in such instances, about that subject which had most occupied the

patient's mind before the approaches of disease--namely, money. With all

his riches, Jacob Ogden grew more nervously anxious about money matters

than the poorest laborer on his estate. His mind ran incessantly upon

possible causes of loss; and as in the best-regulated property such

causes are always infinitely numerous, he found them only too easily.

The thousands of details which, when in health, he had carried in his

head as lightly as we carry the words of a thoroughly mastered language,

began to torment him with the apprehension that they might escape his

memory; and whereas, in his better days, no fact troubled him except

just at the moment when he wanted it, they now importunately intruded

upon his mind when they could only disturb and confuse it.

At length, as his disease advanced towards its sure and terrible

development, the ANXIETY, which was the form it had taken, and the

mental hurry and worry which accompanied it, arrived at such a pitch

that the least delicate and acute observers remarked it in Jacob Ogden's

face. His mother earnestly entreated him not to torment himself so much

about his affairs, but to take a partner, and allow himself more rest.

The advice came too late. The tender cells of the cerebrum were in a

state of fevered disturbance, which must now inevitably lead to one of

the forms of madness.

It broke out one night at Wenderholme. He toiled till three o'clock in

the morning, alone, at his accounts. There was nothing in them which he

would not have mastered quite easily when in health, but the condition

of his brain had led to many errors, and the attempt to correct these

had only increased and multiplied them. He toiled and toiled till his

brain could no longer stand the confusion, and he went mad.

First there came a sense of strangeness to every thing about him, and

then a wild alarm--a _terror_ such as he had never known! For a few

minutes Reason fiercely struggled to keep her seat, and would not be

dispossessed. Those minutes were the most fearful the man had ever

passed through. He sprang from his place, and paced the room from wall

to wall in violent agitation. "I'm very ill," he thought; "I cannot tell

what's the matter with me. I believe I'm going to have a fit. No, it

isn't that--it isn't that; I know what it is--I know now--_I'm going

mad_!"

No visible external foe can ever be so terrible as the mysterious

internal avengers. They come upon us we know not when nor where. They

come when the doors are locked, the mansion guarded, and all the

household sleeps. They come in their terrible invisibility, like devils

taking possession. The strokes of mortal disease are dealt mysteriously

_within_; and who would not rather meet a body of armed savages than

invisible apoplexy or paralysis?

For five minutes Ogden wrestled with his invisible enemy. "I _will_ not

go mad," he cried aloud--"I _will_ not!"

And a minute afterwards the struggle ceased, and he was another being,

mad beyond hope of recovery.

A strange smile came over his face, and he pressed his hand upon his

forehead. "I'll dodge them yet," he said; "they aren't as sharp as I

am. I'm sharper than the best of them!"

He began to count the money in his purse. It was not much--five pounds

eighteen exactly. He counted the sum quite correctly, over and over

again; then he looked anxiously about for a place to hide it in. Whilst

he was doing this, his mother, who had felt anxious about him all night,

and had been unable to sleep, came to his room-door and listened. She

heard him walking about and muttering to himself. Then she opened the

door and went in.

He concealed his purse cunningly, and placed himself between the

intruder and its hiding-place.

"Jacob," she said, "you ought to be in bed; why are you up like that?

It's three o'clock in the morning."

He began to talk very rapidly. He knew his mother perfectly well.

"Mother," he said, "when bailiffs comes you willn't tell 'em where I

have hid my brass; see, I've hidden it here, but you willn't tell 'em,

mother?" And then he lifted up a corner of the carpet and showed his

little purse.

Mrs. Ogden trembled from head to foot. "Our Jacob's crazed," she said to

herself--"our Jacob's gone crazed!"

She felt too weak to remain standing, and sat down, never taking her

eyes off him. He put the purse back, and covered it again with great

care. Then he took his memorandum-book, and seemed to be making an

entry.

"Let me look at that book," Mrs. Ogden said.

It was as she had feared. The entry was a hopelessly illegible jumble of

unmeaning lines and figures.

"Hadn't you better go to bed?"

"Go to bed, mother--not if I know it!" He said this with a smile of

intense cunning, and then added, confidentially, "The bailiffs are

comin' to-morrow, and Baron Rothschild has bought all my property, a

large price, a million sterling--a million sterling; it's Baron

Rothschild that bought it, mother, for a million sterling!"

The poor old woman burst into tears. "O Jacob!" she said, "I wish you

wouldn't talk so!"

"Why, mother," he replied, with an injured air, and a look of intense

penetration, "you know well enough what I failed for. I never should

have failed if it hadn't been for that Sootythorn Bank; but they came to

borrow money of me at Milend, and I took up shares for a hundred

thousand, and then the smash came, and I failed. But never you mind,

mother. Baron Rothschild bought my estates for a million sterling. That

shows I was a millionnaire. Doesn't it, mother? for if I hadn't been

worth a million, Baron Rothschild wouldn't have given a million for my

property. He willn't give more for property than what it's worth."

"O Jacob! you do make me miserable with talking so."

She did not know what to do with him. Young Jacob and her son Isaac were

both at Twistle Farm. At last she thought of Colonel Stanburne, who was

staying at Wenderholme Cottage. She left her son for a few minutes, and

sent a messenger for the Colonel. On returning to Jacob's room, she

found him busy counting his money over again. He had taken the purse

from its hiding-place.

The strength of her own nervous system was such that she bore even this

appalling event with firmness. She was grieved beyond power of

expression, but she was not overcome.

Happily there was no violence in Jacob Ogden's madness; he was not in

the least dangerous. He simply kept repeating that story about his

supposed failure, which he always attributed to the Sootythorn Bank, and

the purchase of his property by Baron Rothschild. When the Colonel came,

he told him the same story in the same words.

"You are mistaken on one point," the Colonel said. "It was I, Colonel

Stanburne, who was ruined by the failure of the Sootythorn Bank, not

you. You were never ruined. You purchased Wenderholme."

Mr. Ogden looked at him with the air of a professional man when a layman

has advanced something which he knows to be absurd. Then he shook his

head, and repeated the story about Baron Rothschild.

The Colonel kindly remained with him till morning, and bravely watched

him through the dreary hours. A messenger had been despatched on

horseback to Twistle Farm and to Dr. Bardly. Isaac Ogden and his son

were at Wenderholme by breakfast-time, and the Doctor's brougham drove

up very shortly afterwards.

Dr. Bardly tried to be encouraging. "He has been working too much," he

said, "and made himself too anxious; he may get round again with rest

and care. Give him good roast-meat and plenty of physical work."

But about ten o'clock Jacob Ogden became anxious to quit Wenderholme,

being full of apprehension about the bailiffs. "Better let him have his

own way," said the Doctor; so he was taken to Milend.

At Milend, however, there were other causes of anxiety. The bailiffs

tormented him at Wenderholme; the idea of Baron Rothschild haunted him

at Milend.

The experiment was tried of showing him the factory and the

counting-house, but with most discouraging results. The factory produced

a degree of excitement which, if continued, would probably lead to

madness of an aggravated and far more dangerous kind.

Specialists were telegraphed for from Manchester and from London, and a

consultation was held. They agreed that the patient must be kept out of

the way of every thing that might remind him of his former career,

recommending extreme tranquillity, good but simple diet, and as much

physical exercise as the patient could be induced to take.

These might be had conveniently in Mrs. Ogden's favorite little farm,

the Cream-pot. It was situated in a glen or clough, out of sight of the

Shayton factory-chimneys.

So the old lady went there to live with her afflicted son. She could

manage him better than anybody else, and he was never dangerous.

After a time, a happy discovery was made. He counted the money in his

purse several times a-day, and Mrs. Ogden told him that if he would dig

their little garden, she would pay him wages. He seized upon this idea

with great joy and eagerness, and she paid him a sovereign on the

Saturday night. The week following he worked very hard, and counted the

days, and spoke of his anticipated earnings with delight. So his mother

paid him another sovereign, and ever afterwards this became the rule,

and she employed him at a pound a-week.

He kept all the sovereigns in his purse, and they were his joy and

treasure. His physical health became excellent, and though his intellect

gave no hope of restoration, his days passed not unhappily. His mother

tended him with the most touching devotion, and a self-sacrifice so

absolute that she ceased to visit her friends, and abandoned all the

little amusements and varieties of her life.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE COLONEL AT STANITHBURN.

The long illness and slow convalescence of Mrs. Stanburne, and the

deplorable mental affliction which fell upon Jacob Ogden, and threw a

cloud of lasting sadness over the whole Ogden family, produced long

delays in the projects of young Jacob and Edith, and were the cause of

much indecision on the part of the Colonel and Lady Helena. Mrs.

Stanburne returned to Wenderholme Cottage in the earliest days of

spring, but the Colonel and his wife had already stayed there for many

weeks, being anxious not to abuse the kind hospitality of the vicarage.

The vicar's sentiments when they left him were of a mixed kind. He was

glad, and he was sorry. In his gladness there was no selfish

calculation--the Stanburnes were welcome to every thing he could offer

them; but in his warm approval of Lady Helena's conduct towards the

Colonel, he had been a little too demonstrative to be quite agreeable to

Mrs. Prigley, and therefore Mrs. Prigley had thought it incumbent upon

her, as a British matron of unspotted virtue, to make his life as

miserable as she could. Mrs. Ogden, too, had inflamed Mrs. Prigley's

jealousy in another way by coming and nursing Mrs. Stanburne. What right

had one of those "nasty Ogdens" to come and nurse Mrs. Stanburne? Mrs.

Prigley looked upon the invalid as exclusively her own property. Edith,

being young and insignificant, might sit a little with her

grandmother--but Mrs. Ogden!

If Lady Helena had not come just in time to take upon herself a good

deal of this now inflamed and awakened jealousy, the consequence would

have been that poor Mr. Prigley would have incurred grave suspicions of

an amorous intrigue with the old lady of Milend; but as Lady Helena was

younger than Mrs. Prigley, and Mrs. Ogden a good deal her senior, the

vicaress paid her husband the compliment of believing that he had placed

his sinful affections on the more eligible of the two ladies. So soon,

therefore, as she had ascertained to her own satisfaction the

culpability of the guilty pair (and when the commonest politeness was

evidence, proofs were not far to seek), the vicaress treated her

ladyship with the haughty coldness which is the proper behavior of a

virtuous and injured woman towards her sinful rival, and she treated her

husband as his abominable wickedness deserved. In a word, she made life

utterly insupportable for Mr. Prigley.

Lady Helena saw the true situation of affairs before the parson did (for

he in his masculine simplicity attributed his wife's behavior to any

cause but the right one), and she migrated at once to the Cottage with

the Colonel. When Mrs. Stanburne was well enough to bear the removal,

she was brought back to her old house, and continued steadily to

improve. Still her health was far from being strong enough to make the

idea of leaving her an admissible one, so the Colonel and Lady Helena

remained at Wenderholme a long time. Young Jacob came frequently to see

Edith, but the marriage, though now agreed upon by all parties, was

indefinitely postponed.

Whilst matters were in this state of suspension, the relation between

Mr. Jacob Ogden and his family had to be legally settled. His brother

Isaac received the factories and estates, in trust, conjointly with his

mother, with the usufruct thereof, £500 a-year being set aside for the

patient's maintenance. On account of the urgency of the situation, but

much against the grain of his now acquired habits, Mr. Isaac Ogden

quitted his solitude at Twistle Farm, and resumed, at Milend, the life

of a cotton-manufacturer, in partnership with his son.

Meanwhile Colonel Stanburne's position was, from the financial point of

view, any thing but brilliant. He had no income, after paying the

allowance to his mother, except a share in the £300 a-year remaining to

his wife. He was anxious to return to France and resume the humble

profession which he had found for himself there. Lady Helena said that

wherever he went she would go too, and nothing but the slowness of Mrs.

Stanburne's recovery prevented them from leaving England.

They were in this state--being, as things in life often are, in a sort

of temporary but indefinite lull and calm--when an event occurred which

produced the most important changes.

Mr. John Stedman being on a visit to his friend at Stanithburn Peel,

took one of his customary long walks amongst the wild rocky hills in

that neighborhood, and was caught--not for the first time--in a sudden

storm of rain. By the time the storm was over he was wet through, but

being interested in the search for a plant, went on wandering till

rather late in the evening. If he had kept constantly in movement it is

probable that no harm would have resulted from this little imprudence,

but unfortunately he found the plant he was in search of, and this led

him to do a little botanical anatomy with a microscope which he carried

in his pocket. Absorbed in this occupation, he sat down on the bare

rock, and forgot the minutes as they passed. He spent more than an hour

in this way, and rose from his task with a feeling of chill, and a

slight shiver, which, however, disappeared when his pedestrian exercise

was resumed. On returning to the Peel he thought no more of the matter,

and ate a hearty dinner, sitting rather late afterwards with Philip

Stanburne, and drinking more than his usual allowance of

brandy-and-water. The next day he did not go out, and towards evening

complained of a slight pain or embarrassment in the chest. The symptoms

gradually became alarming, a doctor was sent for, and Mr. Stedman's

illness was discovered to be a congestion of both lungs.

Of this malady he died. In his will, after various legacies, liberal but

not excessive, to all the poor people who were his relations, and the

relations of his deceased wife, he named "his dear friend and son,

Philip Stanburne," residuary legatee, "both in token of his own

friendship and gratitude towards the said Philip Stanburne, and also

because in making this bequest the testator believes that he is best

fulfilling the wishes of his beloved daughter, Alice."

But, notwithstanding John Stedman's affectionate friendship for the man

whom Alice had loved, there still remained in him much of the resolution

of a stalwart enemy of Rome, and the resolution dictated a certain

codicil written not long before his death. In this codicil he provided

that, "in case the said Philip Stanburne should enter any order of the

Church of Rome, whether secular or ecclesiastical, or endow the said

Church of Rome with any portion of his wealth, then the foregoing will

and testament should be void, and of none effect. And further, that the

said Philip Stanburne should solemnly promise never to give or bequeath

to the Church of Rome any portion of this bequest, and in case of his

refusal to make such promise," the money should be disposed of as we

will now explain.

The testator proceeded to affirm that it was still his desire to leave

part of his property in such a manner as to testify his gratitude to

Philip Stanburne; and therefore, if the latter took orders in the Church

of Rome, Mr. Stedman's bequest should still pass to a person of the name

of Stanburne, but professing the Protestant religion--namely, to John

Stanburne, formerly of Wenderholme. In this case, however, a large

deduction would be made from the legacy in favor of an intimate friend

of the testator, Joseph Anison, formerly of Arkwright Lodge, near

Whittlecup. All this was set forth with that minute and tedious detail

which is necessary, or is supposed to be necessary, in every legal

document.

Now for several years past Philip Stanburne had been firmly resolved, on

the death of Mr. Stedman (which would release him from his promise to

Alice), to enter a monastic order remarkable for industry and simplicity

of life, founded by the celebrated Father Muard, but since affiliated to

the Benedictines; and it was a suspicion of this resolve, or perhaps

more than a suspicion, which had dictated Mr. Stedman's codicil. The

will made no difference in Philip Stanburne's plans, and he was

delighted that the Colonel should inherit what would probably turn out

to be a fortune. When the question was formally put to him, he affirmed

his intention of being a monk of _La Pierre qui Vire_.

In consequence of this declaration, the codicil took effect. The factory

in Sootythorn, the house at Chesnut Hill, and a capital sum of £20,000,

went to Mr. Joseph Anison; but even after all the legacies to poor

relations, there still remained a residue of £35,000, which passed

directly to the Colonel. Mr. Stedman had been much richer than any one

believed, and his fortune, already considerable in the lifetime of his

daughter, had doubled since her death.

Philip Stanburne, who had been occasionally to Wenderholme since the

Colonel's return, to inquire after Mrs. Stanburne, and pass an hour or

two with an old friend, now proposed to sell him Stanithburn Peel. "It

would make me miserable," he said, "to sell it to anybody else, but to

you it's different. Buy it, and go to live there."

But he did not really sell the Peel itself. He sold the land, and gave

the strong old tower. The place was valued by friends, mutually

appointed, who received a hint from Philip that they were not to count

the Peel. The Colonel knew nothing about this, but gave £20,000 for the

estate, and invested the remainder of his capital in something better

than the Sootythorn Bank.

As Mrs. Stanburne was now well enough to be left, the Colonel and Lady

Helena set off one fine day for Stanithburn. The Peel had been admirably

restored, though with great moderation, in Philip Stanburne's quiet and

persevering way, and all its incongruities and anachronisms had been

removed. When they came to the front door, who should open it

but--Fyser!

"Please, sir," he said, "would you be so kind as to take me on again?"

The Colonel said not a word in answer, but he gave honest Fyser's hand

such a shake that it was perfectly natural the tears should come into

his eyes. The tears would come into anybody's eyes if his hand was

squeezed like that.

Whilst her ladyship went to take her things off, Fyser said, "Would you

like to step this way, sir?" The Colonel followed obediently.

"This will be your den, I suppose, sir, unless you would like to have it

in another part of the 'ouse."

John Stanburne felt like a man in a dream. There was every scrap of his

old den-furniture in the place. Philip Stanburne had bought it all at

the Wenderholme sale--every atom of it, even to his old boot-jack. And

as Mr. Fyser had had the arrangement of it, you may be sure that it was

in the old convenient and accustomed order.

But the Colonel and Lady Helena were still more surprised to find in the

principal rooms of the house various cabinets and other things of value

which had formerly been at Wenderholme, and especially a museum of

family relics which had occupied the centre of the great hall. In these

cabinets and cases little plates of silver were discovered, on

examination, to be inlaid, and each of these little plates was engraved

with the inscription, "Presented to Colonel Stanburne by the Officers of

the Twentieth Royal Lancashire Militia."

The regiment happened to be just then up for its annual training under a

major-commanding, no new colonel having as yet been appointed. And one

day there came rather a solemn deputation of officers to Stanithburn

Peel, all in full uniform.

The spokesman of the deputation was our old acquaintance, Captain

Eureton. He began by informing Colonel Stanburne that, although the

lieutenant-colonelcy had been offered to the senior major, he had begged

the lord-lieutenant to permit him to remain at the head of the regiment

as major-commanding; and that now he and all the officers unanimously

joined in entreating Colonel Stanburne to withdraw his resignation, and

resume his old position amongst them. There was no mistaking the

earnestness and sincerity of this petition, and John Stanburne

consented. He was received at Sootythorn at a great banquet given by the

officers just before the disbanding of the regiment; and at the review

which concluded the training, it was John Stanburne who commanded.

CHAPTER XX.

A SIMPLE WEDDING.

"I could so like to go to little Jacob weddin'," said Mrs. Ogden one day

in her little home at the Cream-pot, "but I'm like as if I were 'feard

to leave our Jacob for one single day. He's just same as a childt, an'

to-morrow's his pay-day, an' I couldn't like anybody else to pay him his

week's wage. But what I suppose they'll be just as well wed as if I'd

been there, for that matter."

It seems to us quite a pity that Mrs. Ogden could not contrive to be at

Wenderholme church on the wedding-day, for she would have been well

received by Mrs. Stanburne at the breakfast given by that lady at

Wenderholme Cottage, but ever since "our Jacob misfortin'" no power on

earth could get her away from the Cream-pot, and all reasoning on the

subject was trouble thrown away. Little Jacob's wedding-day passed like

all other monotonous days for Mrs. Ogden, so far as action or variety

was concerned, but she thought of him from morning till night. As for

the elder Jacob, he tranquilly pursued his digging in the garden,

looking forward with eager anticipation to the payment of his week's

wages on the same evening, for he had some consciousness of the lapse of

time, especially towards the close of the week. On Thursdays he began to

ask if it were not Saturday, on Fridays the question became frequent,

and on Saturday itself his mother had to promise a hundred times that

she would pay his wages at six o'clock. His old habits of energy and

perseverance were still visible in his daily work. He labored

conscientiously to make the garden produce as much as spade labor could

do for it, he carefully economized every inch of ground, and did all

that mere physical labor could for its advantage. On the other hand,

wherever the intelligence of a gardener was necessary, his shattered

intellect was constantly at fault, and he committed the wildest havoc.

He rooted up the garden-flowers as weeds, and could only recognize one

or two of the most familiar and most productive plants. He knew the

carrot, for example, and the potato, and these he cultivated in his own

strange way. His mother sacrificed the little Cream-pot garden to him

entirely, and got the vegetables for house use from Milend, and the

fruit from Wenderholme, so that he could destroy or cultivate at his own

absolute will and pleasure, and this he did with the cunning and

self-satisfaction of the insane.

The evening of that day when little Jacob was married, his grandmother

had a new idea about her afflicted son. "Jacob," she said to him when

the time for payment came, and his eyes were glistening as he clutched

the golden coin, "Jacob, thou shouldn't let thy money lie by same as

that without gettin' interest for it. There's twenty pound in thy purse

by this. Lend me thy twenty pound, an' I'll give thee five per cent,

that'll make a pound a-year interest for thee."

When the magical word "interest" sounded in his ear for the first time

since the break-down of his mental faculties, uncle Jacob's face assumed

a look of intelligence which startled his mother and gave her a gleam of

hope. "Interest, interest!" he said, and paused as if lost in thought;

then he added, "Compound interest! doubles up, compound interest,

doubles up fast!" These words, however, must have been mere

reminiscences of his former state, for he proved utterly incapable of

understanding the nature of even simple interest as a weekly payment.

Mrs. Ogden offered him sixpence as a week's interest for his money, but

he asked for a sovereign being accustomed to weekly payments of one

pound, and he seemed troubled and irritated when it was not given to

him. He understood the pound a week for his digging, but he could not

grasp any more complicated idea. His constant secret occupation, when

not at work, was to handle his accumulating sovereigns. In this way,

notwithstanding his insanity and his incapability of imagining the great

fortune he had heaped up when in health, he enjoyed money as much as

ever, for the mere quantity has really very little to do with the

delight of the passion of avarice. It is the _increase_ which gives

delight, not the quantity, and Jacob Ogden's private store was

incessantly increasing, so much indeed that his mother had to give him a

money-box. When the weekly sovereigns became numerous, he was incapable

of counting them, but he had a certain sense of quantity and a keen

satisfaction in the evident increase of his store.

Little Jacob's marriage was strangely simple, considering the wealth of

one of the two families and the station of the other; but the elder

Jacob's condition, and recent events in the life of Colonel Stanburne,

had so sobered everybody that there was not the slightest desire on

either side for any demonstration or display. As it concerned Lady

Helena, this simplicity was not displeasing to her, for reasons of her

own. She was glad, in her own mind, that Mrs. Ogden did not come, for

she keenly dreaded the old lady's strange sayings on a semi-public

occasion like the present, and the privacy of the marriage was a good

excuse for not inviting many of her own noble friends. The bridesmaids

were the Prigley girls and a young sister of Lady Helena. Mr. Prigley

performed the ceremony, and there was not a stranger in the little

Wenderholme church, except a reporter for the "Sootythorn Gazette," who

furnished a brilliant account of this "marriage in high life," which we

have no disposition to quote.

If Mrs. Ogden had chosen to bring to bear upon poor Edith all the weight

of her terrible critical power as a supreme judge of housekeeping

accomplishments, I am afraid that the young lady would have come out of

the ordeal ignominiously for she could neither darn a stocking properly

nor make a potato-pie, but criticism is often mollified by personal

favor and partiality; and the old lady never goes farther in the

severity of censure than to say, "Little Jacob wife is not much of a

housekeeper, but she was never brought up to it you know; and they'll

have plenty to live upon, so it willn't matter so much as it would 'ave

done if they'd been poorer people."

Poverty is certainly not the evil which the young couple need apprehend,

for the condition of Jacob Ogden the elder being considered permanent, a

judicial decision transferred his income to his brother Isaac, after

deducting £1,000 a year for his maintenance, which was paid to his

mother; an entirely superfluous formality, as she accumulated the whole

of it for her grandson, and kept Jacob Ogden well supplied with all that

he needed, or had intelligence to desire, out of her own little

independent fortune. Isaac Ogden was now charged with the management of

the business and estates. It then became apparent how splendidly

successful the life of the cotton-manufacturer had been. At the time of

the opening of this history, he was already earning, or rather

_netting_, since the operatives earned it for him, an income larger than

the salary of a Prime Minister, and successive years raised him to a

pecuniary equality with the Lord Chancellor, the Archbishop of

Canterbury, and the Governor-General of India. At the time of his

cerebral catastrophe, he was at the height of his success; and his

numerous rills and rivers of income, flowing from properties of all

kinds, from shares, from the print-works at Whittlecup, and from his

enormous mill at Shayton, made, when added together, an aggregate far

surpassing the national allowance to princes of royal blood. In a word,

at the time of what Mrs. Ogden always called "our Jacob's misfortin',"

"our Jacob" had just got past £50,000 a year, and was beginning to

encourage the not improbable anticipation that his income would get up

to the hundred thousand before he died. Such as it was already, it

exceeded by exactly one thousand times the pittance for which, as the

slave of his own disordered imagination, he was now toiling from morning

till night.

Nothing is more difficult than to get rid of a great business. Such

mills as Jacob Ogden's are very difficult to let, and to close them

entirely would be to throw a whole neighborhood out of work and diminish

the value of property within a considerable radius. There was nothing

for it, therefore, but to keep the business going, so Mr. Isaac Ogden

threw aside his habits of leisure at Twistle Farm and came to live at

Milend. He managed the work for some time with considerable energy; but

he had been so long unused to the employment, that this business life,

with its incessant claims upon time and attention, required a constant

effort of the will, and he felt himself incapable of continuing it

indefinitely. Young Jacob helped him energetically; but the vast concern

which his uncle had established, with the addition of the print-works at

Whittlecup, required more looking after than even he was equal to; so in

order that Isaac Ogden might have some leisure at Twistle Farm, and be

able to join the militia at the annual training, the calico business at

Whittlecup had to be given up. It could not be sold during old Jacob

Ogden's life; but it was let, together with Arkwright Lodge, to Mr.

Joseph Anison, on terms exceedingly advantageous to the latter, who will

be able, after all, to give handsome dowries to his younger daughters,

and to leave Miss Margaret the richest old maid in Whittlecup.

Young Jacob and his wife established themselves at Wenderholme, but she

soon complained that he was too much away on business, and declared her

intention of accompanying him on his journeys to Milend, which she has

ever since been in the habit of doing. When at Milend (which has been

much beautified and improved), they go a great deal to the Cream-pot,

where old Mrs. Ogden still devotes herself to the care of her

unfortunate son. "I'm thankful to God," she says, "that our Jacob is so

'appy with his misfortin'. Every time I give him his sovereign of a

Saturday night he's as 'appy and proud as a little lad ten year old. And

he's as well in 'ealth as anybody could wish for." Young Jacob and Edith

are both very attentive to him, but it is thought better not to bring

him to Wenderholme again, nor even to Milend. This makes it a great tie

for poor Mrs. Ogden, but she fulfils her duty with a noble

self-abnegation, and tends "our Jacob" with the most minute and

unrelaxing care. As for her fine carriage, she made a wedding-present of

it to Edith, and has never been in it since, not even to do a little

knitting. Her life is the simple old life that she was accustomed to in

her youth, and it suits her health so well, that if all old women that

one hears of did not finish some day by dying, one might almost expect

her to prolong her sojourn permanently upon the earth, in the green

"Cream-pot" fields. But the recent death of old Sarah at Twistle Farm

has been a serious warning, and the new Shayton clergyman is a frequent

visitor at the Cream-pot. Dr. Bardly is not so much in request, on

account of his heterodox views, and because Mrs. Ogden's physical

condition is still excellent, whatever may be her spiritual state.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE MONK.

The Colonel and Lady Helena made a tour on the continent in the autumn,

and visited the little French city where he had earned his living as a

teacher of English.

Young Jacob and Edith accompanied them as far as Geneva, and on their

way from Paris it was decided that they should stop at Auxerre, and go

thence to Avallon, which was not very far from the monastery of _La

Pierre qui Vire_. The Colonel desired to see Philip Stanburne once

again.

Through narrow and rocky valleys, indescribably picturesque, and full of

a deep melancholy poetry of their own, they journeyed a whole day, and

came at last to the confines of the monastery, in a wild stony desert

amongst the hills, through which flowed a rapid stream. The ladies could

not enter, but young Jacob and the Colonel passed through the simple

gateway. A monk received them in silence, and, in answer to a question

of the Colonel, put his finger upon his lips. He then went to ask

permission to speak from his superior.

The monk promised to lead the Colonel to Philip Stanburne. They passed

along wild paths cut in the rock and the forest, with rudely carved

bas-reliefs of the chief scenes of the Passion erected at stated

distances. They saw many monks engaged in the most laborious manual

occupations: some were washing linen in the clear river; others were

road-making, with picks and wheel-barrows; others were hard at work as

masons, building the walls of some future portion of the monastery, or

the enclosures of its fields. All worked and were silent, not even

looking at the strangers as they passed. At length the three came to a

little wood, and, having passed through the wood, to a small field on

the steep slope of a hill. In the field two monks were ploughing in

their monastic dress, with a pair of white oxen.

Suddenly the Angelus rang from the belfry of the monastery, and its

clear tones filled the quiet valley where these monks had made their

home. All the monks heard it, and all who heard it fell instantaneously

on their knees in the midst of their labor, wherever they might happen

to be. The masons dropped their stones and trowels, the washermen prayed

with the wet linen still in their grasp, the ploughman knelt between the

handles of his plough, and the driver with the goad in his right hand.

The Colonel's guide dropped upon the ploughed earth, and prayed. All in

the valley prayed.

When this was over, the two Englishmen were led forward towards the

oxen, and before the slow animals had resumed their toil, the Colonel

had recognized their driver. So this was the life he had chosen--a life

of rudest labor, with the simplest food and the severest discipline--a

life of toil and silence. He knew the Colonel at once, but dared not

speak to him, and placed his fingers on his lips, and goaded his oxen

forward, and resumed his weary march.

A special permission having been procured, the monk talked with John

Stanburne freely, saying that he loved his new life and the hardships of

it, dwelling with quiet enthusiasm on the beautiful discipline of his

order, and leading him over the rude and picturesque lands which had

been reclaimed by the industry of his brethren.

But when they parted, there came a great pang of regret in Philip

Stanburne's heart for the free English life that he had lost--a pang of

regret for Stanithburn, and that Alice should not be mistress there

instead of Lady Helena.

And after the service in the humble chapel of the monastery--a service

singularly devoid of the splendors of the Catholic worship--a monk lay

prostrate across the threshold, doing penance. And all his brethren

passed over him, one by one.

Cambridge: Press of John Wilson & Son.

* * * * *

MR. HAMERTON'S WORKS.

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'painful mystery of brute [Transcriber's note: This is where the text

ends.]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This publisher was not a member of the firm of Messrs. W. Blackwood

& Sons, who afterwards purchased the copyright of _Wenderholme_, nor was

the story ever offered to him; but his opinion had great influence with

the author on account of his large experience.

[2] Careful.

[3] Spent.

[4] Slake; it is good slake--it slakes thirst well. The expression was

actually used by a carter, to whom a gentleman gave champagne in order

to ask his opinion of the beverage.

[5] Till.

[6] Almost.

[7] Quiet.

[8] Seek.

[9] "Some and glad" is a common Lancashire expression, meaning

"considerably glad."

[10] The possessive is omitted in the genuine Lancashire dialect.

[11] Perhaps.

[12] All the. In Lancashire the word _all_ is abbreviated, as in

Scotland, to a', but pronounced _o_.

[13] Value.

[14] Without.

[15] Push beyond.

[16] For the information of some readers, it may be well to explain that

the epaulettes of flank companies, which were of a peculiar shape, used

to be called wings.

[17] The reader who cares to attain the perfection of Mrs. Ogden's

pronunciation will please to bear in mind that she pronounced the _d_

well in "soldiers" (thus, sol-di-ers), and did not replace it with a

_g_, according to the barbarous usage of the polite world.

[18] The reader will please to bear in mind that _who_ means _she_ in

the pure Lancashire dialect.

[19] Half.

[20] The reader will remember that the best part of the estate had been

mortgaged to Mr. Jacob Ogden.

[21] Where hast thou been.

[22] Nothing but what is right.

[23] Have.

[24] The engraved copper rollers used in calico-printing. The larger

printing firms sink immense sums in these rollers, far surpassing the

above estimate for Mr. Anison, who was only in a moderate way of

business.

[25] Fain is a combination of happy and proud. It answers very nearly to

a certain sense of the French word "content."

[26] Any thing.

[27] A common form of sobriquet in Lancashire.