Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
[Illustration: THE PRIZE OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE.]
THE
GOLDEN FLEECE;
OR,
Who Wins the Prize?
BY
A.L.O.E.
_Author of "The Shepherd of Bethlehem," "The Young Pilgrim,"_
_"Wings and Stings," &c._
[Illustration]
London:
T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW.
EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK.
——————————
1897
Contents.
[Illustration]
Chapter.
I. OWLS AND EAGLES
II. LADIES IN COUNCIL
III. A SHOT AT THE OWL
IV. AIM HIGHER
V. WILL IT STRIKE?
VI. A SLACKENED BOW
VII. A GOLDEN STRING
VIII. SOMETHING TO BEAR
IX. RANDOM SHOTS
X. WHO WINS THE PRIZE?
List of Illustrations.
[Illustration]
THE PRIZE OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE, _Frontispiece_
MEREDITH AND CALEB
PHILOMEL'S FIRST SOVEREIGN
PHILOMEL'S VISIT TO HER UNCLE
CALEB STATING THE CONDITIONS
THE FIRST TRESS CUT
MEETING OF PHILOMEL AND MISS ECCLES
THE GOLDEN FLEECE.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I.
OWLS AND EAGLES.
"OWLS have, no doubt, their proper place in the social as well as the
natural world, but of all birds under the sun—or moon—they are the
last that I should have chosen as types of wisdom; unless it be wisdom
to prefer darkness to light, and to see, by choice, the night-side
of everything in creation! To my mind, the lark that soars singing
towards the sun in summer, or the robin that whistles his merry lay in
the winter, is more emblematic of wisdom than all the owls that ever
hooted!" Such were the reflections of Meredith, as he quitted Burnesbey
Abbey, and sauntered along the broad avenue bordered with ancient
beeches.
"There goes one of your eagle-spirits, always for mounting and soaring,
and leaving comfort and common sense a long way behind him!" This
was the comment of Caleb Coffin upon his late visitor, as the new
proprietor of Burnesbey Abbey stirred his fire (no matter what the
weather might be, Caleb had always a fire), and then leaned back in his
easy-chair, and rubbed his lean wrinkled hands.
Caleb Coffin was an elderly man, wrapt in a gray dressing-gown, with
a black velvet cap on his head, and a large pair of tortoise-shell
spectacles resting upon a hooked nose. That beak-like nose, the goggle
glasses, the round contour of the face, and the peculiar expression
which it wore, gave Caleb a whimsical resemblance to the bird of
Minerva. Though Mr. Coffin liked his fire, his warm dressing-gown, and
his easy-chair, he was no valetudinarian, but a man in full vigour
of body and mind—one disposed to enjoy life, much as an owl might be
supposed to enjoy it, wrapping himself up in his feathery mantle, and
screeching at the follies of the rest of the world. A sneer lurked in
the corner of the lip overshadowed by the beak, a satirical gleam in
the keen gray eyes that peered through the glasses, that bespoke the
cynic. But if Caleb was a modern Diogenes, he had learned at least to
line his tub with down.
The owner of Burnesbey Abbey had nothing of the air of a country
gentleman, and had looked much more in his natural sphere at his
office-desk in Threadneedle Street, than in the ancient mansion which
he had lately inherited from a distant relation. The lord of the manor
appeared as little suited to his new position, as his dusty ledger
books would have been to one in his study panelled with carved oak, or
a pane of ground glass from his office window to a place amongst the
fine-stained diamonds of the mullioned casement behind him.
Meredith had been Coffin's ward, and had from childhood been familiar
with the eccentric humour of the merchant; but this had been his first
visit to the landed proprietor since, by a singular coincidence,
each of the two men had come by inheritance into possession of a
large estate. Characters are often so much influenced and altered by
circumstances that Meredith had felt some curiosity to see how the
shrewd money-making, money-loving merchant of Threadneedle Street,
would play the new part assigned him in the drama of life. Would Caleb
Coffin exemplify the lesson taught to Parnell's hermit of the effect of
sudden prosperity upon a selfish, niggardly nature?—
"Thus artists melt the sullen ore of lead
By heaping coals of fire upon its head:
In the kind warmth the metal learns to glow,
And, free from dross, the silver runs below."
But Meredith had found nothing changed in Caleb except his
surroundings: it was the old picture in a new frame, and one that did
not harmonize with it. Mr. Coffin did not rise from his easy-chair to
welcome his guest, but holding out to him two thin fingers, nodded to
Meredith to take a seat. The following conversation then passed between
them:—
_Caleb._—An odd twirl of Fortune's wheel this, Meredith, that has
landed me in a romantic old abbey—and you in a coal-pit! Matters would
have been better had we exchanged places. I should have squeezed gold
out of coal-dust without minding blacking my fingers; and you would
have played the grand signor to perfection, throwing away your money
like a cavalier of old, entertaining ragged villagers by the hundred,
and building scores of picturesque cottages for grateful tenants—he!
he! he! (Mr. Coffin's laugh was peculiar, being usually accompanied by
a hiss uttered between his closed teeth.)
_Meredith._—I shall have tenants enough in Northumberland. There are
more than two thousand souls on the Pitsmouth property.
_Caleb._—And you'll look upon all these black diamonds as your
especial care to polish and preserve—he! he! he! I'll be bound you've
wasted quires of foolscap already in planning houses and schools,
lecture-rooms, libraries, and that sort of thing; that you mean to be
a protector, pastor, parent, patron, and pattern to every one of your
grimy friends, and spend at least twelve hours out of the twenty-four
groping underground like a mole. Have you not some such mad schemes as
these in your brain?
[Illustration: MEREDITH AND CALEB.]
_Meredith._—Of course, I shall endeavour to look after the wants of my
people.
_Caleb._—Don't I know you as you've been from your boyhood—with your
philanthropic Quixotism, your mania for night schools and ragged
schools, your dashing at misery, vice, and dirt, as the Knight of
the rueful countenance went full-tilt at the wind mills—I daresay
with much the same result—he! he! he! I know how you'll go at them at
Pitsmouth—reforming here, building there, trying to manufacture poets,
philosophers, and saints out of grimy miners, till—till you get a wife,
and she'll tether you down, and tame you down from a soaring eagle into
a quiet domestic barn-door fowl.
_Meredith (smiling)._—Perhaps I shall find a wife who will rise higher
far than myself as regards these same plans and projects for usefulness
which seem to you so Quixotic.
_Caleb._—Wheugh! Don't believe it, Meredith. I don't mean to say that a
fellow of your inches, with a good deal of the manner that takes with
women, and plenty of the cash which constitutes "an eligible," will
have any difficulty in finding a girl willing to go to Pitsmouth, or
to Kamtschatka itself, as your wife. Ay, and ready to enter into every
freak and fancy of yours—building all her air-castles of coal—willing
to go down with you in a bucket to the deepest depths that ever were
dug, declaring that she really prefers black to white, and that miners,
to her mind, are the most interesting beings in creation. Of course
your fair lady will say all this, and may believe that she feels
it,—there's no more accounting for a girl's fancies than for those of a
philanthropic mine-owner.
But wait a bit, my dear fellow, and see how the coal-castle in the
air goes off into smoke! When the good lady finds that she must be
perpetually changing her curtains, and covering up her butter from
coal-dust; when she sees that her geraniums will not flourish, and
discovers that her own pretty face is always wanting washing; when
friends think Northumberland much too far off for a visit; and
even miners do not appear thankful for being taught, tutored, and
trained;—why, then, you'll find matters changed. Your wife will not
say, mark ye, "I wash my hands of the whole concern;" but she'll find
that Northumberland air don't suit her health, or the health of her
squalling baby, and she'll rush up to London by train—pay a round of
visits—do no end of shopping—see the exhibitions, and half a score
of doctors, and get the opinions of the faculty that she, or baby,
can't possibly live so far north as Northumberland; that Mentone, or
Florence, or Algiers, or Patagonia, is the only place in the world for
her—or the precious brat.
And so—coaxing woman in one scale, Pitsmouth plans, projects, and
philanthropy in the other—you will find, as plenty of husbands have
found, that a man can't do good unless his wife will let him; and that
had Quixote himself married Dulcinea, he would soon have settled down
into a sober, sensible, family man.
_Meredith._—I think that you do injustice to the fair sex, Mr. Coffin.
In every work of beneficence, woman is found ready to lend effectual
aid. In her labours, she is usually more devoted and more disinterested
than man.
_Caleb._—My dear fellow, you know little of the world, least of all
of the female half of it. There are two motives which sway the human
race—interest and vanity, the love of gold and the love of praise. Now
woman, I grant ye, has, as a rule, less of the money-making quality
than we have; but of the vanity, the love of praise, woman has a
thousand times more. It comes out in everything that she does; it is
her very mainspring of action. Not "What will it be?" but "How will it
look?" is woman's perpetual question. Depend on't, woman invented the
vile Russian dinner, such as Lady Macaw gave yesterday to introduce me
as lord of the manor to the society of Thwayte. There was everything to
please the eye no doubt—plenty of plate, glass, and flowers (one can't
eat plate, glass, and flowers)—but the dishes handed round were but
so-so, and the cheap wines handed round but so-so; I'd have had a much
better dinner at home, bating of course the company, the plate, the
glass, and the flowers.
_Meredith._—Lady Macaw has no great fortune.
_Caleb._—But she must make a great display—that's the point. She must
keep her carriage; she must entertain; she must be the leader in
society; she must manage everything and everybody;—she tried to manage
"me"—he! he! he! I guess she'll find that a tough job!
_Meredith._—What course did she take?
_Caleb._—Not a straight one. Her ladyship tacked towards every point
in the compass, sounding carefully as she went. She could not well
work upon my self-interest, so she'd get round me by means of my love
of praise. I was soon well-informed as to what a country gentleman of
large property—one of an ancient honourable family—is expected to do
when he comes to take possession. I believe that Lady Macaw would have
him cut a hole in his pocket, and strut about dropping gold guineas at
every step that he takes. Amongst other things, she tried to nail me
down to patronizing her stall at the fancy-fair to be held at G— for
some nonsensical object. I suppose that when she and the pretty girls
of her working-party constrain old bachelors to buy their bibs and pink
socks, pincushions, pinafores, and parrots, they fancy that they are
doing a deed of charity—I would simply call it pocket-picking.
_Meredith._—But we have wandered somewhat from the point from which we
started, the disinterested beneficence of woman.
_Caleb._—That it "is" disinterested is just what I deny. I tell you
that every woman, plying her fingers to work, or her tongue to beg,
looks for payment in pleasure or praise. There's my little niece
Philomel Lamb, the parson's daughter, as good a creature as lives, and
as deep as you yourself could desire in schools, and savings' banks,
and cottage visiting—a philanthropist over head and ears! Why, where's
the self-denial in this? She sets to her work because she likes it,
and because the world says that it becomes a parson's daughter to look
after her father's flock. She likes all the curtseying and bobbing of
the village children, and the name of being clever, active, and good.
I don't say that there's harm in her liking it,—if she hadn't a bit of
vanity, she wouldn't be a woman—he! he! he!
_Meredith (to himself)._—What a blind owl this is; and yet he fancies
himself clearer sighted than the rest of the world!
_Caleb._—Why, that merry black-eyed damsel, Lucy Langton, who sat next
to me yesterday evening, can play at charity when she has nothing
better to play at, hunt out "cases" when there's no other game to hunt,
and I daresay cuts and snips and stitches for Lady Macaw's fancy-fair,
as energetically as she would whirl round and round in a polka. And
her pretty sister, Miss Delia, with her perpetual simper, will think
herself doing a mighty good deed when showing off her taper fingers and
jewelled rings selling frippery behind a counter.
Folk must mount their hobbies; and charity with most of your good
people, especially the ladies, is an easy-going hack that carries bells
on its harness and trots all the better for the jingle—he! he! he!
With fiery philanthropists, like yourself, it may be like a hunter,
that bears you right over hedge and ditch, but I suppose that you find
pleasure in the excitement, and on neither hack nor hunter is the rider
likely to take the leap of Quintus Curtius.
_Meredith._—But surely, Mr. Coffin, you cannot so close your eyes to
facts as to deny that real sacrifices, great sacrifices, are made for
the sake of charity by women.
_Caleb._—No one denies it, my good friend, so you need not look so
indignant as a champion of the sex. Woman sometimes will, and does
sacrifice, money, time, strength, and a good deal besides, for the
sake of being, or of seeming, charitable; don't shake your head so
impatiently—the two things are closely connected. All that I argue
for is, that there is one thing which woman does not, and will not
sacrifice, and that is her vanity, her love of being admired. She'll
go anywhere with that wind in her sails, but she can't beat up channel
against it.
Find me a girl who will do good in the dark, prove that she cares not
a straw for what the world says of her doings, that she wants neither
praises nor thanks, and I'll believe in the phœnix, or mermaids, or
anything else that you will; I'll believe that you've chosen a wife who
will help, not hinder you, in making a paradise of Pitsmouth; you shall
have a rare gift for your nonpareil bride, and I'll dance myself at the
wedding!
_Meredith (rising)._—Take care what you promise, Mr. Coffin; I may one
day hold you to your word.
_Caleb._—Mind you, I must have the choice of the test, and be satisfied
that the metal has fairly stood it; I must look through my own good
spectacles, and not through your lover's eyes.
And so the companions parted, as we saw at the commencement of the
chapter; the eagle to make bitter reflections on the dull cynicism of
the owl, and the owl to hoot ridicule at the romantic flights of the
eagle. The remarks of Caleb Coffin had, however, disturbed the serenity
of the young owner of Pitsmouth more than he chose to own. Meredith had
seen in his own family the power of a domestic tether to keep down an
ardent spirit; he had seen a woman's influence divert into channels of
ostentation what had once flowed in that of charity. And the thought
had often crossed his mind that the philanthropist who would soar high
must be content to soar alone.