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.