UNCLE JACOB IS ACCEPTED.
And this is the letter Jacob Ogden wrote:—
"Miss Margaret Anison.
"Miss,—When I was at your house this afternoon, I meant to say something to you, but could not find a chance, because other people came in just at the time. I wished to ask you to be so kind as to marry me. I believe I shall be a good husband—at any rate, I promise to do all I can to be one. My wife shall have every thing that a lady wants, and I will either build a new house or purchase one, as she may like best. There's a good one on sale near Shayton, but I don't mind building, if you prefer it. I am well able to keep my wife as a lady. I may say that I have always been very steady, and not in the habit of drinking. I never go into an ale-house, and I never spend any foolish money. I shall feel very anxious until I receive your answer, as you will easily understand; for my regard for you is such that I most sincerely wish your answer may be favorable.
"Yours truly,
Jacob Ogden."
Though rather a queer letter, and singularly devoid of the graces of composition and the tenderness of love, its purport, at least, was intelligible. The reply showed that the lover had made himself clearly understood.
"My dear Sir,—The proposal contained in your letter has rather surprised me, as we have seen so little of each other, but after consulting my parents I may say that I do not refuse, and they desire me to add that there will be a room for you here whenever your business engagements permit you to visit us. Sincerely yours,
"Margaret Anison."
It is to be supposed that Mr. Ogden felt sensations of profound happiness on reading this little perfumed note; but when a man is an old bachelor by nature, he does not become uxorious in a week or two; and we may confess that, after the unpleasantness of the first shock, a positive refusal would have left the lover's mind in a state of far more perfect happiness and calm. His pride was gratified, his passion was fortunate in dreaming of its now certain fruition, and he knew that such a woman as Margaret Anison would add greatly to his position in the world. He knew that she would improve it in one way, but then he felt anxiously apprehensive that she might deteriorate it in another. He would become more of a gentleman in society with a lady by his side, but a wife and family would be a hindrance to his pecuniary ambition. From the hour of his acceptance he saw this a good deal more clearly than he had done since this passion implanted itself in his being. He had seen it clearly enough before he knew Margaret Anison, but the strength of a new passion acting upon a nature by no means subtly self-conscious, had for a time obscured the normal keenness of his sight. After re-reading Margaret's note for the tenth time, Mr. Jacob Ogden said to himself: "She's a fine girl—there isn't a finer lass in all Manchester; but I'm a damned fool—that's what I am. What have I to do goin' courtin'? Howsomever, it's no good skrikin' over spilt milk—we mun manage as well as we can. We've plenty to live on, and she can have four or five servants, if she'll nobbut look well afther 'em." Then he went into the little sitting-room, where his mother sat mending his stockings.
"Mother," he said, abruptly, "there's news for you. Somebody's boun' to be wed."
The stocking was deposited in Mrs. Ogden's lap, and she looked at her son with fixed eyes.
"It's owther our Isaac or me, and it isn't our Isaac."
"Why, then, it's thee, Jacob."
"You're clever at guessin', old woman; you always was a 'cute un."
"What! are you boun' to wed somebody at Whittlecup?"
"She doesn't live a hundred mile off Whittlecup."
Mrs. Ogden rose from her seat and laid down her stocking, and made slowly for the door. She stopped, however, midway, and with a stately gesture pointed to the mended stocking. "Can she darn like that?"
"She 'appen can do, mother."
"Han you seen her do?"
"No."
"Nor nobody else nayther. But what I reckon you think you can do b'out havin' your stockin's mended when you get your fine wife into th' house, and you think servants 'll do every thing. But if you'd forty servants, you'd be badly off without somebody as knew how to look afther 'em all. And if they cannot do for theirselves, they cannot orther other folk—not right."
"Well, but, mother," said Jacob, deprecatingly. He was going to suggest consolatory considerations, founded upon the apparent order and regularity of the housekeeping at Arkwright Lodge, in the midst of which Miss Anison had been educated.
But Mrs. Ogden was not disposed to enter into a discussion which would have involved the necessity of giving her son a hearing, and she cut short his expostulation with a proverb, solemnly enunciated,—
"As they make their bed, so they must lie," and then she left the room.
"Th' old woman isn't suited," thought Jacob, "but it makes nothing who it had been, she would have been just the same. She used always to reckon she could like me to get wed, but I knew well enough that when it came to the point I could never get wed so as to suit her. Whoever I wedded, she'd always have said it should have been somebody else." The fact was, that whilst Mrs. Ogden warmly and sincerely approved of marriage as a sort of general proposition, and had even advised her son for many years past to take unto himself a wife, her jealousy only slumbered so long as the said wife remained a vague impersonal idea. Mrs. Ogden had not much imagination, and the mere notion of a possible wife for Jacob was very far from arousing in her breast the lively sensations which were sure to be aroused there by a visible, criticisable young woman, of flesh and blood, with the faults that flesh is heir to. Now she had seen Margaret Anison, and she had thought at Whittlecup, "She might happen do for our Jacob;" but when "our Jacob" announced that he had decided to espouse Margaret Anison, that was quite a different thing.
Matters had been in this condition for a month or two, when Jacob Ogden, whose visits to his beloved one had been made rare by the exigencies of business, became somewhat importunate about the fixing of his wedding-day. It was not that he looked forward thereto with feelings of very eager or earnest anticipation, but he had a business-like preference for "fixtures" and dates over the vague promises of an indefinite avenir. Miss Anison, on the contrary, seemed to have a rooted objection to such rigid limitations of liberty; and, like a man in debt whose creditor proposes to draw upon him for an inexorable thirtieth of next month, felt that the vague intention of paying some time was for the present less hard and harassing to the mind. And as the debtor procrastinates, so did Margaret Anison procrastinate. Her heart was not in this marriage, but her interest was; and, so far as she avowed to herself any purpose at all, her purpose was to gain time, and keep Jacob Ogden as a resource, when all chance of Philip Stanburne should be lost finally and for ever.
Miss Anison, in a matter of this kind, was a great deal cleverer than Jacob Ogden, who, though not easily taken in by a man in men's business, had little experience of womankind, and none whatever of polite young ladies and their ways. Margaret Anison had found a capital excuse for delay in the necessity for building a new house, and she set Jacob Ogden to work thereupon with an energy at least equal to that which he lavished on the new mill. He wanted very much to have the house close to the factory, but the young lady preferred the tranquillity of the country, and went to Milend expressly to select a site. She chose a little dell that opened into the Shayton valley; and though of all views in the world the pleasantest for Mr. Ogden would have been a view of his own mills, he was denied this satisfaction, and his windows looked out upon nothing but green fields. "If they'd nobbut been my own fields," Jacob thought, "I wouldn't so much have cared. Not but what a good mill is a prettier sight than the greenest field in Lancashire, but it's no plezur to me to look out upon other folks' property." And the worst of it was, that there was no chance of ever purchasing the said property, for it belonged to an ancient Lancashire family, which had a wise hereditary objection to parting with a single acre of land.
Mrs. Ogden, now that the engagement was a fait accompli, expressed the most perfect readiness to quit Milend and go and live in "th' Cream-pot," which, as the reader is already aware, was the expressively rich appellative of the richest of her little farms. But such was the amiable and truly filial consideration displayed by Margaret Anison towards her future mother-in-law, that she would on no account hear of such an arrangement. "Mrs. Ogden," she said, "had always been accustomed to Milend, and it would be quite wrong to turn her out;" indeed she "would not hear of such a thing." So the obedient Jacob hurried on the construction of a mansion worthy of the young lady who had honored him with her affections—a mansion to be replete with all modern comforts and conveniences, such as abounded at Arkwright Lodge.