THE SORROWS OF WERTHER.
Oswald Pentreath, having set his father’s papers in order, and
reduced the dusty chaos of the old Squire’s private study into form,
found himself, comparatively speaking, a rich man. Those long years
of retirement in which Squire Pentreath had held himself aloof from
all social intercourse had not been spent in vain. They left their
fruit behind them in the shape of stock, and shares, and bonds, which
all meant money; for Mr. Pentreath had not speculated his savings
in wild ventures, but had cloven to safe investments, and had been
content with a reasonable percentage. Not even for the chance of
doubling his capital would he have risked it. His was not the genius
of the stockjobber, but rather the plodding temper of the village
miser, who puts coin to coin, and finds an all-sufficient joy in the
growth of his hoard.
The estate was in excellent order--every mortgage paid off--and the
rental was close to three thousand a year. The Squire’s investments
were worth another thousand, and brought Oswald’s income to an amount
which, to a young man who had seldom enjoyed the unfettered use of a
five-pound note, seemed inordinate wealth.
The Squire had made a will, dated the year of his son Arnold’s
flight, bequeathing twenty pounds a year to each of his old servants,
and all the rest of his property, real and personal, to Oswald. There
was no mention of the younger son. In the letter which informed
Arnold of his father’s death, Oswald affectionately urged his brother
to give up a seafaring life and return to Combhaven, where he should
have one of the farms and a thousand a year. ‘My father’s will was
evidently made in a fit of anger against you,’ wrote Oswald; ‘you
must not think that I could be so unjust as to take advantage of my
father’s injustice and keep all for myself. No, Arnold; I am sure you
know me better than to suppose me capable of such iniquity. I shall
be a rich man in any case. You must have had enough of the sea by
this time. Come back, my dear brother, for the sake of the good old
days when we were boys together. I want you more than I can say. I
love you as dearly as I did when we were children, and I was the
big brother. Do you remember that summer day when we lost ourselves
in Matcherly Wood, and you were so tired I was obliged to carry you
home? When we had got about half way you wanted to carry me, though
I was twice your size. I never pass that corner of the wood without
remembering what you said, and your clinging arms round my neck, and
your warm cheek next mine.’
* * * * *
The Squire being laid with his forefathers, and honoured with a
handsome funeral--which was attended by many people who had detested
him living, but reverenced him as a parochial institution dead--life
at the Grange fell back into its old quiet round, save that the door
was more frequently assailed by importunate tenants, who boldly asked
favours of the new lord which they would not have dared to hint at
to the old one. The old servants felt that the spirit of parsimony
was gone from the household, and kept a better table; but they had
been so long and severely trained in economy, that extravagance was
an impossibility for them, and Oswald had nothing to apprehend on
that score. For his own part, the new master had a curious feeling of
freedom as he paced the dull old rooms and rattled the money in his
pockets absently, wondering how it had come there.
He looked very handsome and melancholy in his sable suit, and the
young ladies who came to the parish church, where he worshipped alone
in his big pew on Sunday mornings, thought it a hard thing that he
should have engaged himself to a Methodist parson’s daughter.
He attended Little Bethel of an evening, they were informed, which
seemed an unmanly dallying with two creeds--to say nothing of chapel
being so much less genteel than church, and a mode of salvation
peculiarly adapted for the shopkeeping class, who did not mind
perspiring together in a limited space, and inhaling one another’s
breath.
Naomi’s wedding seemed a long way off in these days, when the
Squire’s funeral was still the newest topic in Combhaven, and when
people had not yet left off disputing in a friendly way as to the
number of the mourning coaches, or inveighing bitterly against those
tenants who ought to have attended the funeral and had not done so.
Shadowy and remote--the merest speck in a cloudy future--seemed that
marriage-day which had once been so near, the fair to-morrow of life.
Oswald was quite broken down by his father’s death--more grieved than
even Naomi, who best knew the softness of his nature, had expected
him to be. It was not likely that he could talk of marriage at such
a time, and Naomi was neither surprised nor offended at his silence
about the wedding that was to have been, and the far-off wedding
which was to be.
She put away her wedding dress on the day of the Squire’s funeral,
while the sepulchral bell, which had rung out its solemn note for the
passing of his soul, tolled again in the windy April weather, while,
through changing lights and shadows, by fluttering young leaves, and
under the blue sky where the lark was singing above the dark-brown
earth newly pierced by the green corn-spears--came the black funeral
train--sable plumes, horses’ manes, mourners’ scarves tossing in the
fresh April breeze--slowly winding down the hilly road to Combhaven.
The funeral bell was in Naomi’s ears as she folded the
pretty pearl-gray silk--the first silk dress she had ever
possessed--shedding some quiet tears as she smoothed the folds, and
laid the garment in a drawer, wrapped in fresh white linen, with
a sprinkling of dried lavender, as beseemed so precious a fabric.
There was the serviceable brown cloth pelisse, too, which she was to
have worn on her journey to Cheltenham, where she and Oswald were
to have spent their honeymoon. That also must be put away for the
days to come. Naomi’s wear for the next six months was to be sombre
black. She had put on mourning for her betrothed’s father, as in duty
bound. Cynthia also wore black, and aunt Judith had produced a suit
of ancient sable, rusty but whole, not sorry to have this opportunity
of wearing out the surplus stock left from her mourning for her
sister-in-law, when Joshua, in his character of grief-stricken
widower, had been naturally liberal, and had allowed her to lay in
large supplies of bombazine and crape.
Oswald said little about the postponed wedding, but he came to Mr.
Haggard’s as often as before his father’s death; and even Judith, who
was lying in wait for a deterioration in his character now that he
had come into his fortune, could not yet put her finger on a flaw. He
was changed, nevertheless; but the change was sweet and commendable
in his nature, as it was in Hamlet, when that young prince gave way
to moodiness and despondency after the loss of his parent. He was
melancholy, and often absent-minded, his cheek paler than of old, his
eye heavier.
Never had Naomi loved him so tenderly as now, when, for the first
time since their betrothal, he needed sympathy and consolation. To
her who so deeply loved her father, this grief for a parent seemed
in no wise strained or unnatural. True that the Squire had not been
one’s ideal of a father--not a gracious and dignified figure like
that dead Hamlet who revisited the glimpses of the moon; but death
has a sanctifying influence--nay, even a fantastical power, which
lends new attributes to the image of the departed--and Oswald, whose
youth had been made a time of restraint and deprivation by his
father’s meanness, was soft-hearted enough to regret his tyrant.
Never did a man seem less inclined to take advantage of a loosened
rein and run into riot and extravagance. Day after day Oswald led
the same calm, orderly life--riding or reading in the mornings,
according to the weather; devoting his afternoons and evenings to
his betrothed. He had thoughts of buying, or building, a yacht; but
deferred even this indulgence in the hope of Arnold’s return.
‘We’ll build our yacht here, in Combhaven,’ he said; ‘and Arnold
shall superintend the work, and be skipper.’
Oswald looked forward to his brother’s coming with an almost feverish
impatience. It seemed as if there were some innate weakness in his
character which made him incapable of enjoying the privilege of
independence. Now that his father was gone, he wanted his brother
for a guide and adviser. Or it might be only the affection of the
elder brother for the younger, made a barren love by long years of
separation, which now yearned for the unforgotten companion of
boyhood. Whatever feeling it was that made him anxious, Oswald’s
anxiety was very evident; and Naomi sympathised with him in this
longing, and loved to hear him talk of his brother.
‘How fond I shall be of him!’ she said one evening, when they were
sitting on the old stone bench in the wilderness, talking of Arnold.
‘He is like you, Oswald; I have heard my father say so. He remembers
you both as boys.’
‘Yes, we were always considered very much alike. But Arnold is
stouter and stronger built than I--a man of tougher fibre altogether.
It seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to run away to
sea. You might have prophesied it of him when he was two years old.
Such a hardy, bold, uncompromising little vagabond, but brimming over
with affection.’
‘And fond of you, Oswald?’
‘Fond of me! Bless his loving little heart! He used to run after
me like an affectionate puppy when he first began to toddle; such
a round fat little thing in those baby days; always ready for
fisticuffs in my defence, though I was twice his size. There was a
time when he would not go to sleep of a night unless I sat on the
edge of his bed and told him stories. Yes, I have good reason to love
him, dear fellow; and the strongest claim he has upon my love is my
latest memory of my mother, when I saw the sweet pale face lying on
the pillow, and Arnold’s baby eyes looking up at it.’
The tears came to his eyes as he spoke of that sad memory, almost
dreamlike in its remoteness. Naomi put her hand in his without a
word. Only by that gentle touch did she remind him that it was her
mission to share all his griefs, even the old unforgotten sorrows of
his earliest days.
It was a mild May evening--an evening on the edge of summer, with a
perfect calmness in atmosphere and sky--an evening on which the soul
broods on sad, sweet thoughts. The lovers had been sitting alone
for an hour or more, talking by fits and starts, with lengthening
intervals of silence.
‘My father has been dead five weeks, hasn’t he, Naomi?’ Oswald asked,
after a long pause, during which Naomi’s needle had been methodically
travelling along a fine linen wristband, leaving a line of pearly
stitches behind it. The manufacture of a shirt for her father was a
work of high art with Naomi.
‘Yes, dear; five weeks yesterday.’
‘Then in seven weeks more we must be married, Naomi,’ said Oswald, as
seriously as he had spoken of his mother’s death.
This was his first word about the postponed marriage, and it startled
Naomi as if it had been the most unlikely subject for a lover’s
discourse.
‘So soon, dear?’
‘Three months, Naomi. Surely that is long enough to wait out of
respect to the dead. It is not as if we meant to have a grand
wedding. We will just walk quietly into the old parish church some
morning, with your father and his wife, and aunt Judith and Jim, and
there shall be a post-chaise at the lych gate, ready to drive us to
Cheltenham. Let me see, this is the twenty-fourth of May. We might be
married early in July. Why should we wait any longer?’
‘Dear Oswald, you must know I have hardly a wish that is not yours,’
Naomi began earnestly.
‘I know you are all goodness.’
‘But--’
‘But what, love?’
‘I have fancied--it may be nothing more than fancy perhaps, but you
must not be angry with me for speaking of it--I have fancied lately
that there was some change in your feeling for me; it is not that you
have been less kind or affectionate, yet I have felt the change. You
remember how my father wished that we should be very sure of each
other’s sincerity. That is why he wanted us to wait two years before
we were even engaged. The two years are not gone yet; and if--if the
change has come--the change he thought likely, he who knows the human
heart and its weakness--let us loosen the bond, dear Oswald. There
shall be no word of complaint from me--I should neither blame you nor
think ill of you, dear love--I should honour you for being frank and
truthful with me--and keep the memory of our happy days as the most
sacred part of my life--and be your affectionate friend to my death.’
‘Best, noblest, dearest, you are only too good for me!’ cried
Oswald, clasping his betrothed to his breast, moved to a rapture of
reverence and regard by her generous kindness. ‘No, I have never
changed to you--no, I could never change in my esteem, my admiration
for all that is highest in woman. Do you remember those verses of
Waller’s, dear:
‘Amoret! as sweet and good
As the most delicious food,
Which, but tasted, does impart
Life and gladness to the heart.’
You are my Amoret, dearest. What do I want with Sacharissa’s beauty,
“which to madness doth incline”?’
‘But you ought to go to London now that you are free and rich; you
ought to see the world, Oswald, and in London you may meet your
Sacharissa,’ suggested Naomi, radiant with happiness.
She had said what had long been in her mind to say. She had made her
offer of self-sacrifice, in all good faith, and it had been rejected.
She had no further fear or hesitation.
‘I don’t care about London, love. It is nothing but a den of thieves,
according to my poor father’s description. When I see it we will see
it together, and go to the Tower, and St. Paul’s, and the wax-works,
and Westminster Abbey, like regular country cousins. Come, Naomi, let
us be serious and talk about the future. There is the old house to
be brightened and smartened a little before I take my wife home to
it. I should have had much ado to screw a new carpet and a coat of
whitewash out of my father; but I am the master now, and I can pull
down the Grange and build an Italian villa after Palladio, if you
like.’
‘Dear Oswald, you must know that I would not have you disturb a stone
of the old house.’
‘In good faith, dear, I shouldn’t care to do it. It is the house my
mother lived and died in, the first house my eyes saw, the house
where my brother was born, the only house that has ever been home to
me, though, Heaven knows, it has been but a cheerless home at times.
No, we won’t alter, Naomi; we will only beautify. I have been too
idle all this time. I’ll send to Exeter for an architect, and put the
business in hand at once.’
The architect arrived on the scene about a week later, and made
a somewhat supercilious inspection of the good old house, which
had seemed to its occupiers solid enough to last for another three
hundred years, but which, according to the architect, was in a
very perilous condition. He tapped the oak panels contemptuously,
pronounced the flooring of the upper stories too worm-eaten for
anything save entire reinstatement, feared that the whole fabric
required under-pinning, and took an altogether despondent view of the
matter.
‘You want the thing done thoroughly, I suppose, Mr. Pentreath,’ he
said.
‘I should like the drawing-room painted, and the sitting-room
up-stairs; and if you could build a greenhouse anywhere--’
‘Of course, of course--you must have a conservatory opening out of
the drawing-room. If we were to glaze that western end, now, and
throw out a rotunda at the end for tropical plants, palms and so on,
you know. I did the same thing for Sir Brydges Baldrick’s place on
the other side of Exeter, and it had a charming effect. I’ll make you
a sketch if you like.’
‘You are very good,’ said Oswald dubiously; ‘but I don’t think my
father would have liked--’
He had conscientious scruples about spending so much
money--squandering hundreds of pounds upon fanciful improvements--not
that he set undue value upon the money himself, but from the thought
of what an agony of indignation such an outlay would have caused
his father. Rotundas, forsooth! Could that lean old miser lie quiet
in his grave while his beloved guineas were being wasted on such
trumpery?
‘Really, now, Mr. Pentreath,’ said the architect, with the easy
assurance of a professional man employed by the best families, ‘I
should imagine the question was not so much what your father would
have liked, were he living to enjoy his opinion, but what will please
your wife when you bring her home here. Rather a dismal house for a
young lady, I should think. A domed conservatory, now, at the end of
this drawing-room, would have an enlivening effect. As it is, there
is a meanness about the room; long and narrow, no variety, no relief.
But you must please yourself. Shall we go to the boudoir?’
The room which the architect insisted on calling a boudoir was the
pretty parlour on the first floor which Mrs. Pentreath had used. Here
the professional adviser suggested so many improvements--a marble
mantelpiece and a more civilised stove, French windows and a balcony,
an alcove built out at the end for a statue, with a painted glass
window behind it--that Oswald felt as if the Grange were going to
be improved off the face of the earth unless he made a bold stand
against the improver.
‘This was my mother’s room,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t alter it for the
world.’
The architect shrugged his shoulders and felt inclined to ask, ‘Then
what do you want me for, sir, if you have made up your mind to keep
your money in your pockets?’ But there were certain things about
which the architect was arbitrary--flooring which must be taken up,
warped and shrunken oaken panels which must be replaced by new ones,
passages and servants’ offices which must be altered and improved to
adapt them to the requirements of a more civilised form of life.
‘Think of the change which has taken place in our habits,’ exclaimed
the architect conclusively.
Oswald submitted, and a voluminous specification was the result of
this interview. This in due course was submitted to a builder of
Barnstaple and a builder of Exeter; whereupon the Exeter builder,
as the man of more advanced views and larger capital, or credit,
won the day; and about a fortnight afterwards sent a small army of
white-jacketed men to Pentreath Grange, who took the place in hand,
and made haste to render it utterly odious and uninhabitable. Oswald
contrived to sleep in the old house, shifting his quarters as the
men followed him from room to room, now taking out his windows, anon
cutting a rotten patch out of his ceiling, and descending upon him,
like Jove, in a shower of plaster.
Having no home of his own at this period of disruption, he spent his
days in the house of his betrothed, sharing the minister’s homely
fare, hearing all aunt Judith’s complaints against the general
incapacity of her subordinates, and spending long and quiet hours
talking or reading aloud in the neat parlour where Naomi and her
stepmother sat at work.
‘What women you are for plain needlework!’ he exclaimed one warm
afternoon in a sudden burst of impatience, wearied by the rhythmical
movement of the two needles methodically stitching on, no matter how
passionate the subject of his reading--whether Rebecca was standing
on the verge of the castle parapet, or Constance de Beverley left to
perish in her living grave. ‘I never saw anything like your perpetual
industry. One would suppose it were a kind of feminine treadmill, by
which you do penance for your sins.’
‘We have nothing else to do,’ said Cynthia, with a faint sigh. ‘Naomi
is teaching me to make her father’s shirts; if I could not do that, I
could do nothing for him. But I’m afraid my stitching will never be
so good as Naomi’s.’
Oswald looked out of the window listlessly across the row of stocks
and carnations in red flower-pots. It was a midsummer afternoon,
warm to oppressiveness. There was a perfume of newly-cut hay from
the meadows behind the First and Last, a faint breath from distant
bean-fields in flower, the warm air heavy as with the incense Earth
offers to her goddess Summer. The bricklayers were hard at work up at
the Grange, and there was a run upon that thin and sour cider which
had been the old Squire’s household beverage, and which nothing less
than very warm weather and honest toil could render acceptable to the
human palate.
Oswald had an air of being tired of life this afternoon as he threw
himself back in his chair, and sighed, and stifled a yawn, and looked
far away across the haycocks yonder. Naomi glanced up at him now and
then from her work with grave observant eyes. It seemed to her that
there was a jarring chord somewhere. He was not happy. And how was
it, and why was it? Not grief for his father’s death, surely; that
cloud had passed. Impatience for his brother Arnold’s return perhaps;
that seemed more likely.
There was no idea now of the marriage being early or late in July.
The improvements and reparations at the Grange would not be finished
till October at the earliest, and Oswald must have his house ready
before he could take to himself a wife. Naomi felt that the wedding
was still far off.
‘I shall bring you a new book to-morrow afternoon,’ said Oswald,
rousing himself from his reverie.
‘By the author of _Waverley_?’
‘No; you cannot have a new novel by the author of _Waverley_ every
day, though he writes two, and sometimes three, a year. This is
quite a different kind of book--a study of the human heart--a
man’s great sorrow described by himself. He was coward enough to
let the sorrow make an end of him, instead of making an end of
his sorrow--strangling it as Hercules strangled the snakes in his
cradle--as a brave man would have done, no doubt,’ with a short
laugh, half scorn, half bitterness.
‘Is it a book that a Christian may read?’ asked Naomi. ‘But I am sure
you would not bring us any book in which there were evil thoughts.’
‘There are no evil thoughts in this--only an irresistible fate
governing a weak soul. There is no sin in the book--only foolishness
and an overmastering sorrow.’
‘What is it called?’
‘The _Sorrows of Werther_, a translation from the German of Goethe--a
book that set Germany in a blaze many years ago, but which I never
saw till the other day. I bought the volume at a bookstall in Exeter,
when I went over to settle with the builders.’
The reading of _Werther_ began on the following afternoon, in the
wilderness. Naomi and her lover were alone, Cynthia having gone to
sit with an old woman of the flock, whose frame was a kind of museum
for the exhibition of interesting varieties in the rheumatic line.
Oswald looked disappointed at losing one of his auditors.
‘I thought Mrs. Haggard would have liked _Werther_,’ he said.
‘She always reads to old Mrs. Pincote on Wednesday afternoons. She
said you were to begin the book all the same--she would enjoy hearing
any part of it. But if you would rather not begin to-day--’
‘My unselfish Naomi! No, dear, I shall read to you. It is of your
pleasure I think at all times, you know, Naomi.’
‘You are too good to me.’
Oswald began rather lazily, and dawdled so much over the
pages--stopping to talk now and then, and stopping to yawn very
often--that he got no farther than the threshold of the story when
five o’clock struck from the old gray tower, and it was time to go
back to the house for tea.
‘I’m afraid you don’t find it very interesting so far,’ said Oswald.
‘It is not like _Ivanhoe_ or the _Antiquary_,’ replied Naomi; ‘but
it is very pretty. The young man seems kind and amiable--fond of
children--warmly attached to his friend--fond of picturesque scenery.’
‘Yes, he is all that. It is a picture painted in delicate half tints
at the beginning--the strong colouring comes afterwards.’
They went into the woods next day for their afternoon ramble, Cynthia
accompanying them, and Oswald carrying _Werther_ in his pocket.
They peeped in at the Grange on their way. It looked a chaos of raw
plaster and new deal, and did not invite a long inspection. Oswald
had consented to the rotunda for tropical plants, and one end of the
long drawing-room was open to the daylight.
‘You are going to be mistress of quite a handsome mansion, Naomi,
and will have to play the great lady,’ said Oswald, laughing at the
look of consternation with which his betrothed contemplated the
improvements.
‘That I shall never be able to do, Oswald.’
‘There I can’t agree with you. Nature intended you for a person of
importance. There are only a few details to be learnt--how to issue
invitations, the precedence of your guests, to drive a pair of
ponies, to play the Lady Bountiful with discretion, and so on. I have
more to learn as country squire than you as the squire’s wife.’
‘I wish Providence had not made you so rich, Oswald. It seems
ungrateful to repine at blessings, but if you had been my equal in
birth and fortune I should have been the happiest of women.’
‘It will be very ungrateful of you if you are not the happiest of
women with that rotunda,’ said Oswald gaily; and then they went
across the park--it was to be really a park in future, and Oswald was
eager to introduce a herd of deer--and from the park into the tangle
of greenery, amid the ever-shifting lights and shadows of the wood.
Here they found a ferny bank, more luxurious than any sofa, on which
the two girls sat down to work, while Oswald lay on the grass at
their feet, and resumed the story of Werther. He read long, and read
well, losing his own identity in that of the melancholy hero. He came
to the pretty house on the skirts of the forest, and the picture
of Charlotte cutting hunches of black bread for the eager little
brothers and sisters before setting out for the ball. That innocent
image of youth and beauty was something new to the listeners. Not
even in the pages of Scott had they met with so pure and perfect a
picture of womanhood.
Then came the rustic dance, and the thrill of rapture that moved
Werther’s breast when his hand touched the maiden’s for the first
time, and he floated in the waltz with her, and felt a lightness
he had never known before, as if he no more belonged to grovelling
humanity; the consciousness of sorrow and loss when he heard that
she was pledged to another--the thunderstorm--the simple, childish
games by which Charlotte beguiled the terrors of her companions--the
whole description as artless as Goldsmith’s pictures of the Primrose
family, but with a ground-swell of passion below the placid surface
which Goldsmith knew not.
‘And since that time sun, moon, and stars may go their ways; I know
not day from night: the world around me has vanished.’
Cynthia’s work dropped on her lap. She sat with her large blue eyes
fixed on the reader, her lips slightly parted; all her soul in that
listening look. For the first time she heard the story of a love
that was fatal--not like Rebecca’s unrequited passion, elevating
and strengthening the soul by the ordeal of a silent sorrow--but an
overmastering love taking possession of a weak nature, and holding it
as the seven devils held their fated prey.
And this was what love meant sometimes in the world; not a
reverential affection, not gratitude, esteem, respect, such as she
had given to Joshua, and which had made marriage with him seem the
highest honour that Providence could bestow--but blind, unreasoning
passion--a fire kindled in a moment, and consuming the soul. She
knew that Werther would never be happy again. She longed intensely
to follow that devious path of his; to know if he struggled and
conquered, or yielded and fell. She found herself wishing that some
evil fate--at least a convenient fever or merciful consumption--would
remove Charlotte’s excellent betrothed.
‘No. I do not deceive myself! I read in her eyes a deep interest in
me and my fate. Yes, I feel, and in this I will trust my own heart,
that she--O, dare I, can I, breathe the heaven in those words?--I
feel that she loves me!’
At these words Oswald closed the book suddenly, with a sigh.
‘Will you read to us again after tea?’ Cynthia asked eagerly, when
the inexorable church-clock warned them that they had but just time
to be punctual in their attendance at the tea-table.
‘I thought you would like the book,’ said Oswald.
‘It is beautiful,’ she sighed.
He looked up at her, and their eyes met. Dangerous for such eyes so
to meet, such thoughts in the minds of each, such disquiet in either
heart. Cynthia’s delicate colour had faded to ivory pale before that
lingering look had ended. Fatal book, which told them what was amiss
in their lives!
They walked home for the most part in silence, though Oswald tried to
be merry about the rotunda, and the tremendous things that the Exeter
architect was doing with the Grange, half against its owner’s will.
His gaiety had a forced sound, and Naomi looked at him wonderingly.
Why was it that since his father’s death he had been so unlike his
old self--so fitful and variable?
After tea they went to the wilderness, and sat there while the soft
summer light faded gently into gray evening, and the bats skimmed to
and fro above their heads, and distant nightingales called to each
other in the woods. Oswald read into the heart of the book--read
until Werther’s passion had grown from dawn to mid-day--from a
rose-coloured dream of innocence and beauty, pure as morning, to the
lurid gloom of a thunder-charged sky.
The earliest stars were up, silver pale, when he shut the book
without a word. Joshua Haggard came through the little orchard and
looked at the group with a grave smile.
‘Reading all this time, Oswald!’ he exclaimed, ‘and some foolish
fiction, I’ll be bound. How much of your life you waste upon fancies!’
‘Fancy is sometimes sweeter than reality,’ answered Oswald, ‘and real
life has given me very little to do.’
‘A pity,’ said the minister.
‘We cannot all have our mission. One man is born a preacher, like
you; another a soldier, like Wellington; or a lawyer and defender of
the oppressed, like Brougham. I was born nothing; born to enjoy the
hunting in winter, and the sunshine in summer; to lie in Pentreath
woods and read Byron; to do no harm, I hope, and any good that I can.’
The minister sighed.
‘The blessings Providence gives us are charges,’ he said. ‘We shall
have to account for them.’
They went back to the house together, and Oswald took his place at
the usual assembling of the household for evening prayer. To-night
the preacher chose the parable of the Talents for his reading and
exposition. Oswald felt that the moral drawn therefrom was intended
for his admonition. His house, gardens, park, farm, woods, shares,
and stocks were the ten talents for which he was at present in no
wise able to give a satisfactory account. So far he had done nothing
to improve the condition of the labourer upon his land; to let in
the light of Gospel truth, or the free air of heaven to those stone
cabins in which the hind and his family pigged in the company of
their pigs. He had thought of improving his own house, but not of
draining those stifling dens. He had been too easy a landlord, ready
to grant any favour his tenants asked; but had taken no trouble to
discover the state of the toil-bowed tiller of the soil and his
half-starved wife and children, the husbandman who was compelled to
receive two shillings of the nine that made his weekly wage in the
shape of sour cider.
The time had been when Oswald Pentreath’s mind was full of plans for
doing good to his fellow-men, and when he had looked upon the day of
his independence as the dawning of a new era for the labourers on
his land, but since his father’s death he had been the victim of a
distraction which had put all philanthropic intentions out of his
mind.
‘When Arnold comes back I shall be able to set things going in a good
way. Arnold has more energy than I have,’ he thought, expecting every
good thing as a consequence of his brother’s return.