BRINGS THE READER BACK TO THE RESPECTABILITIES OF THE PARSONAGE.
After the high-born Captain Cecil Wiseman had accomplished his purpose,
Sarah Wanless lost her attraction for him. With a fiendish guile he had
tracked her down, and now that the chase was over, the victory won, why
should he bother himself further? Sarah's beauty was not less; nay, was
rather enhanced by the new sadness that shaded her face; but the Captain
hardly looked at her again. These confounded wenches were so given to
whimpering, and this serene aristocrat hated "scenes." Had Sally been
bold and of brazen iniquity, like many of the stained ones he knew in
the greenrooms of London theatres, she might possibly have held this
lust-consumed reptile a little longer in her power, but being only a
simple village maiden slowly awakening to the horror of the fate that
had befallen her, the sight of her tearful face made him avoid her. What
had he to do with the consequences of sin and folly? Was not the world
bound to make his vices pleasant to him?
This thoroughbred captain in Her Majesty's Dragoon Guards left Sally
then, and sought other attractions, his appetite whetted by his success.
Even as he snared Sarah Wanless his roving eye had sighted other game.
The vicar's wife, Mrs. Codling, had several daughters whom, like a
judicious mother, she was anxious to marry well. These the Captain had
deigned to notice somewhat in the course of his long visits at the
Grange while Sally's destruction was in progress. At church more than
once his greedy eye had rested on the vicar's pew with a hard gaze of
admiration, and on week days his footsteps had begun to stray towards
the vicarage often enough to set Mrs. Codling's brain a-scheming. It
would be indeed a triumph, she felt, if the heir of Squire Wiseman could
be got to marry one of her daughters. But that was a job which needed
the most delicate handling, for if Lady Harriet got wind of her designs,
the consequences would be more than Mrs. Codling felt able to face. At
the best the parson's daughter would have been considered no fit match
for so great a personage as this ill-doing guardsman, but, as things
were, the very idea of such a marriage would have been received at the
Grange with unutterable scorn.
Times were in many ways changed with the vicar since that day now long
past, when his soft, fat hands were uplifted in holy repulsion of the
horrible rabbit-slaying criminal who stood before him doomed. For one
thing he had gathered a family around him, and for another he had been
overtaken by poverty--a poverty that came of greed. The living of
Ashbrook was worth in money about L250 a year, and there was a good
vicarage with a large garden and paddock, so that altogether Mr.
Codling was as well off in the country as he would have been with L500 a
year in town. To this income, itself above starvation point many
degrees, Mrs. Codling had added an income of nearly L2,000, which made
the home more than comfortable. A contented man would have been very
happy with such a provision, judged even by the standard of the
_Spectator_, which admires Christianity with a well filled purse, but
Mr. Codling wanted more, like most parsons. One would think from the
eagerness shown by such to possess themselves either of rich wives or of
large incomes made out of nothing, that somehow Christianity and poverty
are things that cannot exist together. Luxury is certainly essential to
the true faith of the majority of modern parsons. Without it they
shrivel up, grow morose, full of evil thoughts, such as envy and malice,
and instead of an example are a warning.
Parson Codling, then, took the common clerical fever. During the railway
mania he saw men spring suddenly from poverty to great wealth, and very
soon came to the conclusion that nothing would be easier than for him to
do as they did. Entirely ignorant of the game of speculation, Codling
took to speculating with the fearlessness of a master in the art, and
following a common rut of fortune, he for a time succeeded. One land
speculation in which he joined, and where the shareholders of a new line
of railway were fleeced of fabulous thousands, cleared him, it was said,
about L1800, and he did well with sundry purchases of shares. Naturally,
success made him bolder. He bought anything and everything, became an
expert user of stock exchange slang, and deeply versed in the "rigs"
and dodges of the share market. Some of the squires around began to envy
him, others cursed him for a nuisance, but still he made money, and no
doubt would have gone on making it indefinitely had somebody always been
found ready to buy when he wanted to sell. Unluckily for him, the day
came when he could not sell at any price, and as he had been lifted
clean off his feet by the elation of his early speculative successes, he
only came back to the hard earth to find himself ruined. The crisis of
1847 did not break out without much foreshadowing to prudent men, but to
the Rev. Josiah Codling it came like the trumpet of doom. Till the very
last he clung to the hope that a rise in the share markets would set him
free. That fatal October therefore passed like a whirlwind, leaving
Codling stripped of all he had previously made and some L40,000 in debt.
To save him from public exposure and disgrace, his wife had to part with
nearly all her property in Worcester, and they were glad, ultimately, to
escape with as much as yielded about L200 a-year beyond the value of the
living. Had all the creditors been fairly paid they would not have
retained a penny, but Codling struggled and wheedled, and, it is said,
shed copious floods of tears over his hard fate, until pitying people
let him go.
Such an untoward end of the glorious visions in which the vicar had
indulged naturally embittered his home circle. Mrs. Codling could not
forgive her lord for ruining her, and took to reviling the poor wretch
early and late. The miserable fellow would have borne his misfortunes
ill enough even if sympathised with. Being reviled, he bore them not at
all. He drowned them in drink. At first he stupified himself with
brandy; but that proving too dear for his means, he relapsed to gin, and
led a sodden existence.
All too late his wife saw the blunder she had made, and tried to wean
him back to sobriety. Failing in that, her pride and cunning came to the
rescue. She smothered her tears and veiled her sorrows before the world,
hiding at the same time her husband's infirmity as much as possible from
the public eye. The lot was hard, her punishment severe, but she braced
herself to it with a woman's patient courage, and straightway opened her
heart to new hopes and dreams of better days to come. Henceforth the aim
of her life must be to get her four daughters settled in life. Alas! the
settlements would need to be humbler now than those she had once dreamed
of. The tables of the great ones of the parish were not now open to them
as they had been before her money had gone, and before Codling took to
drink. There was not even a barrack in the neighbourhood, with its
successive bevies of foolish young officers to prey upon--only
Leamington with its dawdling crowds of nobodies. Ah, well, the most had
to be made of the opportunities that offered.
These being the circumstances of the family at the vicarage, this the
mental attitude of Mrs. Codling, who could wonder that her soured spirit
rose once more within her with a feeling akin to gratitude towards a
merciful providence, when Captain Wiseman came in her way? Despair had
sometimes nearly marked her down for his prey, and lo! here was the
Prince of the fairy tale. Dresses were forthwith obtained for the girls
such as they had not worn for years, for happily their mother had still
a few jewels left which she could pawn or sell. And being handsome
girls--two of them particularly so--they soon attracted a good deal of
the roving guardsman's attention. At first a little flirtation with them
gave a pleasant variety to his existence, rendered just a little
monotonous by the labour of stalking down Sally Wanless. The shrewd
mother contrived that his opportunities should be frequent. The old pony
chaise was furbished up anew and the girls took to driving the fat,
wheezy, old pony about the country in a manner new and far from
agreeable to it. In this way they managed to cross the Captain's trail
much after his own style with Sally. During that winter he hunted a good
deal, and the Codling girls developed an enthusiasm for the sport which
made them haunt meets far and near. Months before the Captain flung
Sarah from him he had thus become familiar with the sight of these
girls, and no sooner was she well destroyed than he began to develop a
preference for the youngest but one--Adelaide or Adela Codling. Miss
Adela was a buxom, roystering, kind of girl, of handsome features, light
brains, and abundant animal spirits. Already, though but nineteen, she
had a reputation amongst her acquaintances of being what the pump-room
gossip of Leamington styled "fastish." She affected _outre_ fashion in
dress, and was always ready to lead a revolt against established
proprieties. To play the boisterous hoyden at a harvest home or
farmer's Christmas dance, where she could scandalise all the sober
domestic virtue of the parish and make every buxom farmer's lass wild
with jealousy by her extravagant flirtations with the young men,
delighted Miss Adelaide beyond measure.
This free young lady was most to the Captain's taste of all the four,
but her mother felt disappointed at the preference. It not only left the
eldest girl out in the cold, but made Mrs. Codling's task more
dangerous. Adela had no prudence, and unripe plans might become known to
Lady Harriet through her folly. Besides, her ladyship would probably be
harder to persuade into accepting Adela as a daughter-in-law than any of
the other three.
So thought the prudent, anxious mother; but she was too wise to
interfere. A risk must be taken in any case, and she resolved to let the
captain have his way, bracing herself to greater vigilance and higher
flights of matrimonial diplomacy than ever. And she found a much more
efficient ally in the Captain than she had expected. Men, in her
opinion, were never prudent in love matters, but this man was as
cautious as a diplomat on a secret mission. It did not suit him any more
than Mrs. Codling that his mother should scent danger in his visits to
the vicarage. In such a place as Ashbrook and in ordinary circumstances
all their care would have gone for nothing; but, happily for their
plans, her ladyship did not go out much now, and called seldom on any of
her neighbours. Her husband, the estate, her miserable son, any one of
them would have given her grief or work enough to keep her well at home.
When she went abroad, therefore, it was generally for an hour's drive
out and home, or to Leamington or Warwick on business.
Just now she was struggling hard not to lose the dream of hope that had
for a short time gladdened her heart about her boy, and was failing in
the effort. Notwithstanding his long visits to the Grange, his demands
for money continued to be insatiable. He always put his necessities down
to the bad conduct of the Jews. They had got him fast, he said, and
would give him no peace. But as bill after bill got paid, only to be
succeeded by a new crop, Lady Harriet began to doubt the truth of this
tale, and in her unhappiness shut herself up more than ever. The Captain
had only to spend a little of the money wrung from his mother in bribing
her maid, and he was free to destroy all the women of the parish if he
chose.