MAGDALEN—AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
Otho’s arrival had been in the early part of October. The intimacy
between him and Gilbert gradually increased, and the visits of the
friends were not by any means confined to one party of the alliance.
Otho was found as often seated in an old arm-chair in some one of the
now faded and shabby rooms of the Red Gables, as Gilbert was in the
statelier and better preserved apartments of Thorsgarth. Gilbert and his
father lived alone together. They had so lived ever since Michael,
having finished his medical studies, had come back and been made Dr.
Rowntree’s assistant. Mr. Langstroth was one of those men who
undoubtedly exist, who, by some means not to be accounted for by any
personal charm or fascination, always have either a devoted wife or a
friend who seems willing, nay, eager to give of his strength in order to
make up for their weaknesses. So long as his wife had been living, Mr.
Langstroth had had a prop. After her death, her place, as prop, had been
taken by Dr. Rowntree, an old ‘friend of the family,’ whose
yellow-washed house, with its green door and brass knocker, stood almost
opposite the Red Gables, on the other side of the broad old square which
formed the west end of Bradstane town. Dr. Rowntree had indeed been one
of those friends who stick closer than a brother, who get little and
give much, and who seem quite satisfied so long as they may go on
giving, and get an occasional word significative of trust or
appreciation. Sometimes it seems as if they could exist without even so
much aliment for their regard. It was at his instigation and by his
advice that Michael had adopted the medical profession as his calling in
life. Something had to be done; their fortunes no longer permitted
idleness on the part even of the eldest son of the house. Michael was
utterly disinclined for the church, and his father for the expense of
preparing him to enter it. For ‘doctoring,’ as they roughly and
ignorantly called the healing art, he had always shown a liking; and, as
most of his spare time had always been spent at the little Quaker
doctor’s house, it was considered that he had had ample opportunities of
judging whether this calling would suit him or not. He had elected to
follow it, greatly to the jubilation of his old friend, and, having
finished his student life, it had been decided that it would be to the
comfort and advantage of all if he were to take up his quarters with Dr.
Rowntree, instead of remaining at home.
‘You won’t really be separated from them, you know,’ said the doctor;
‘and, being on the premises, you’ll get so much better broken in to it.’
Mr. Langstroth agreed. In his heart he despised the doctor’s calling,
and was angry and ashamed that a son of his should have to live by it;
but, like many another before him, he took the benefits that he hated,
and was satisfied so long as they were not put before him too
prominently. He would have been best pleased if Michael could have
followed his ‘trade,’ as the elder man contemptuously called it, away
from Bradstane and his nobility; but the advantages of the present
arrangement were too great and too obvious to be thrown away; there were
no premiums to pay, no struggle to make. So Michael lived with Dr.
Rowntree, and began to make himself acquainted with the far from easy
life of a country doctor. His temper was sweet, and his spirit beyond
all idea of shame in his position, or complaint at having to work. He
said little, but went to work with a will.
Gilbert had all along, and as it were by a sort of tacit consent of all
parties, remained at home with his father, who was now a querulous
invalid with a heart-complaint. Incidentally, too, as has been said, he
devoted a good deal of his time and mind to the contemplation and
manipulation of their affairs, family and financial. While Michael had
been studying in London, letters had now and then come to him from
Gilbert, suggesting that it was advisable to sell this or that farm,
this or that lot of timber in the woods which still belonged to them. To
do so would lessen their debts by so much, would ease their father’s
mind, and increase their income by diminishing the amount they annually
had to pay away in interest. To all and each of which propositions,
Michael had been in the habit of yielding unqualified assent, saying
that he thought it very good of Gilbert to sit boring his eyes out over
accounts, in the days of his youth. He might as well have congratulated
an old spider on weaving webs so skilfully, or complimented a shark on
his kindness in following that which he best loved—prey, namely, or, in
short, have thanked any person warmly for being so disinterested as to
find pleasure in following his natural bent. Michael was very young, and
hated all such tasks as those in which Gilbert passed his time. He might
have had Gilbert’s office, and Gilbert his, had he so chosen; the option
had been given him; but he did not so choose, and it always seemed to
him that his best thanks were due to his brother for industriously doing
that which he would have so hated to do himself. Interested in his
studies, and seeing a good deal of society, in which he was popular, by
reason of his good looks, good birth, and entire absence of selfishness
or self-consciousness, Michael often thought what a good old man Gilbert
was, and what thanks he, Michael, would owe him, for thus sacrificing
the days of his youth to an invalid father and a complicated
account-book, in a quiet little country town at the world’s end.
It certainly was a very quiet little town, as it is now, and probably
always has been.
‘Castle Bradstane,’ says an old chronicler, ‘standeth stately upon
Tese.’ At the time of which he wrote, he probably literally meant the
castle, the grim brown pile which stood on the Durham side of the
stream, cunningly planted just at an outward sweep of one of its many
curves. Gradually it had fallen into decay; other houses and a small
town had gathered about its feet. Ivy and other creepers and climbers
now clung about its fierce old towers. Wallflowers, ragwort, and the
ivy-leaved snapdragon peeped and nodded in at the narrow little slits of
windows; kindly Nature did all in her power to beautify what had been so
cruel and so hideous, till now the grim old fastness sat harmless aloft,
and the river rushed and murmured far below, as of yore.
Any one who chooses, may learn how Walter Scott, with the seer’s eye of
genius, pictured Bradstane Castle, and the prospects which from its
‘watch-tower high gleamed gradual on the warder’s eye;’ and to this day,
the prospect upon which it looks is little changed. Though the stream
sweeps by beneath it, laden with the tale of several centuries more,
their woe and bloodshed, grief and tragic story, yet the outlines of the
land itself, the woods, the hills, must be similar to what they were
when old Leland, looking upon it, recorded, ‘Castle Bradstane standeth
stately upon Tese.’ The inhabitants, who gradually built houses, and
clustered about the old pile and beyond it, to the east, had been, taken
all in all, a wild race of people, a border race. To this day they are
bold, sturdy, and independent. Strange tales are sometimes told of the
old families of the vicinity, gentle and simple—tales in which both
gentleness and simpleness are conspicuous by their absence. Great cities
have their great sins, their great faults, wrongs, and iniquities; and
we are very much in the habit of speaking in condemnatory terms of them,
and of lauding the beauties of the country, and the simpleness and
gentleness, and, above all, the naturalness and absence of pretension in
the life there. And, certainly, city life, carried to excess, has in it
a morbid feverishness and unrest which is no true life. But in country
life, when it is lived in out-of-the-way spots—moorland farms, secluded
dales, places far from railways and traffic—there is often a certain
morbidness, as well as in the life of a town. The very solitude and
loneliness tend to foster and bring out any peculiarities, any morbid
characteristics, and to confirm and strengthen eccentricities and
idiosyncrasies. One of the good things that much-abused progress will do
in time, will be to sweep away some of these ugly old country habits of
indolence and cloddishness, and selfish, soulless sensuality, which
still exist, and that sometimes amidst the sweetest and most exquisite
natural surroundings.
At this later time of which I write, Bradstane was more the abode of
confirmed Philistinism than of anything else. There were a few wealthy
and well-born families, who possessed seats in the neighbourhood—Halls,
Parks, Courts, Houses—and who shut themselves up in them, and led their
own lives, on no evil terms with the shopkeepers and dissenters of the
village itself, but quite apart and distinct from them. The only one of
these houses which stood within the precincts of the town was the Red
Gables, Mr. Langstroth’s dwelling-place. It was a large old house,
rising straight out of the street. The land that belonged to it
consisted chiefly of farms in the vicinity, and some woods, more distant
still.
Farther out, at a fine old place higher up the river, situated like
Thorsgarth, on one of its many ‘reaches,’ and called Balder Hall, lived
an old maiden lady, Miss Martha Strangforth, at whose death, which, said
wise report, could not be very far off, seeing that she was older than
the century, and a martyr to rheumatic gout, her estate and fortune
would pass to a nephew of the same name. Four years ago had come to live
with her an orphan grand-niece, one Magdalen Wynter by name; a cold,
handsome, self-contained girl of eighteen, who made no friends, and was
seldom seen walking outside her aunt’s grounds, but who sometimes passed
through Bradstane town, driving in one of the Balder Hall carriages,
dressed with a perfection of simple elegance which the Philistine
inhabitants called ‘plainness,’ and looking as if, for aught they could
say to the contrary, all the world belonged to her. Sometimes she
stopped at one of the shops, and then she was treated with respect, as
the niece of rich old Miss Strangforth. On these occasions, she was wont
to give very clear, concise orders, in a very clear, decided voice, low
and gentle, but too monotonous to be called musical. Her beautiful young
face was seldom, if ever, seen to smile; and yet, one could hardly have
said that she looked unhappy, though she might have been accused of
appearing indifferent.
Once, some few weeks after her arrival, stopping at the stationer’s and
bookseller’s shop kept by Mr. Dixon, in the main street of the town, the
footman opened the door, and she got out and went into the shop. Mrs.
Dixon came forward to attend to her wants, and was followed by a pretty
little girl of some ten years old, a child with a delicate skin, small,
oval face, straight little nose, brown hair and eyes—all very neat and
clear, and clean and pretty. She hid rather shyly behind her mother.
‘Is that your child?’ asked Miss Wynter, pointing with her parasol at
the girl.
‘Yes, miss, this is Ada, our only one.’
‘Oh, indeed! How old is she?’
‘Ten, was a month last Sunday.’
‘Ah, she is a pretty little creature. Does she go to school?’
‘Yes, miss; but it’s her holiday-time now.’
‘I wish you’d let her come home with me, and I’ll show her some pretty
things. I am very lonely.’
The last words were spoken in the quiet, uninterested tone in which one
says, ‘What a dull day it is!’ as if they hardly referred to herself,
but to something outside her.
‘Oh yes, miss, she may go. I’m sure it’s very good of you. But I fear
she’ll be a trouble to you.’
‘Not at all, or I should not have asked her. Would you like to come with
me, little Ada?’ asked Miss Wynter, turning to the child neither coldly
nor unkindly, but with no change of expression at all—no lighting up of
her soft, dark, quiet eyes; not the ghost of a smile upon her tranquil
sculptured lips.
At first, Ada hung back; and her mother began to expostulate with her,
saying how good it was of the lady to invite her to go with her.
The lady, in the same soft and gentle tone, remarked presently—
‘Oh, she won’t understand that, of course. If you will come with me,
Ada, I will give you a pretty necklace, and a ribbon.’
At this prospect, all hesitation fled. Ada submitted at once to be made
ready, Mrs. Dixon remarking admiringly—
‘Eh, but you have found the right road to her heart, miss, and that
cleverly.’
‘I will sit here, and wait till she is ready. Don’t put on her best
frock, or anything of that kind, you know. She will do just as she is.’
Miss Wynter furthermore promised to restore Ada to her home and friends
later in the evening, but Mrs. Dixon said she had to send her servant to
the Balder Hall farm for butter, and she should call for the little girl
and bring her back. Ada was perched in the carriage beside Miss Wynter,
in which position she was seen of sundry comrades as she drove away.
They called to her; asked her where she was going, and cried—
‘Eh, but, Ada, what a grand lady you are, to be sure!’
Ada took no manner of notice of them, but looked straight before her.
‘Why do you not kiss your hand to your friends, and say good-bye to
them?’ asked Magdalen, turning indifferently, as she lay back, also
indifferently, and looked with languid curiosity at the little flushed
face and small figure, bristling with importance, beside her.
‘’Cause I’m a young lady, and they are little common village girls,’ was
the reply, so unexpected, that even Miss Wynter’s eyes were opened wide,
and her eyebrows were raised, as she heard it.
‘Indeed?’ she said. ‘And do you think you are really a young lady?’
‘Not like you, yet,’ was the reply, ‘because I’m not old enough; but I
shall be some time. Mamma says I’m so pretty I shall be sure to marry a
gentleman; and I’m going to learn French and music.’
‘Oh, indeed!’ drawled Magdalen. ‘You are going to marry a gentleman.
What is a gentleman? Did your mother tell you that, too?’
‘She didn’t tell me, but I know,’ replied Ada.
‘Well, suppose you tell me. Then I shall know, too.’
‘A gentleman is rich, and has a large house, and——’
‘Does a gentleman keep a shop?’
‘No.’
‘Then what is your father?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’
Magdalen proceeded, in a languid, indifferent way, to draw her out. In a
very short time she had gauged the depths, or rather the shallows, of
Ada Dixon’s mind. It contained nothing but shallows then; it was
destined never to contain anything else, henceforth and for evermore.
From that day she was more or less Miss Wynter’s _protegée_ and
plaything. Sometimes the connection flagged; sometimes when the winter
weather was bitter, or the summer heats overpowering, when Miss Wynter
was indolent, and when Ada was promoted to a boarding-school, there were
gaps in the intercourse; but the acquaintance was never broken off, and
it was not without its influence in both lives, and on more destinies
than theirs alone.
The Dixons were well-to-do, prosperous, conventional tradespeople, more
retail than wholesale in every sense of the words. He had grown fat by
charging sixpence where other people charged fivepence, by a consistent
practice of telling many lies during the week, and diligently repenting
him of his transgressions and bewailing his sins twice every Sunday in
the parish church. That is, he bewailed his sins with his mouth, and
whenever bewailing happened to be printed in the Prayer-book; but he
knew much better than the Prayer-book what was the way in which to get
on in the world, and perhaps, if he had spoken out his whole mind,
cleanly and honestly, would have said that since the Lord, by putting so
much competition into the world, had made it such a hard business for
folk to hold their heads above water, He must even excuse them from
doing it in the best way they could.
Mrs. Dixon, like a faithful and loyal wife, had aided and abetted him in
his praiseworthy efforts to get on in the world. They had succeeded in
their aim, and were respected and looked up to by all who knew them. He
was vicar’s warden, an overseer of the poor, one of the best-known men
in public and parochial affairs in all the district. He could afford to
send his daughter to school, to keep her out of the shop; to dress her
‘stylishly,’ as they called it; to give her a piano, and buy pieces of
music for her to play upon it; and all these things he did with a good
grace, and looked to Ada to form an alliance which should be to the
credit of the family and her own glory.
There were other well-to-do tradesmen in Bradstane, and many who were
but ill-to-do. There was the lawyer, Mr. Coningsby, who lived not far
away from the Langstroths; there was Dr. Rowntree; there was the vicar,
Mr. Johnson, with Mrs. Johnson, his wife, and their numerous progeny.
They lived in an old brown house, in a kind of close, near the church,
with a walled garden containing apricot and plum trees. Other religious
bodies were represented by two dissenting ministers and their flocks,
and by a Friends’ Meeting, the head and front of which was Dr. Rowntree.
These denominations, of course, had churches and chapels in which they
worshipped. There were some curious old houses in the main street, and
there was a long and unlovely thoroughfare called Bridge Street, more
like a slum than anything else, where the women were pale, and the
children stunted, and the inhabitants of which, taken all in all, did
not enjoy the best of reputations. One side of this street was built to
the river-bank overhanging the stream; and in the spring and autumn, or
when thunderstorms prevailed, the lower rooms of those houses would be
flooded. Going along Bridge Street, one did not guess how near the river
one was, till one came upon an opening here and there—a gully, or a
tunnel, or a narrow, dark passage—and looking down it, one could see the
rushing brown waters flowing ceaselessly on, without haste and without
rest, from the fastnesses whence they had sprung—
‘Where Tees in tumult leaves his source,
Thundering o’er Cauldron and High Force.’
Such was, superficially, the outward aspect of Bradstane town, when Otho
Askam and the two Langstroths met after their many years’ separation;
such it had been for years back. It is not what is called ‘a growing
town,’ and whatever drama might be played within its precincts, its
exterior, objective side, was not likely to change very much.