Wenderholme: A Story of Lancashire and Yorkshire

by Philip Gilbert Hamerton

AT THE PARSONAGE.

Mrs. Ogden's desire to bring about a renewal of the acquaintance between her son Isaac and Mr. Prigley was not an unwise one, even if considered independently of his religious interests. Mr. Prigley, though by no means a man of first-rate culture or capacity, was still the only gentleman in Shayton,—the only man in the place who resolutely kept himself up to the standard of the outer world, and refused to adopt the local dialect and manners. No doubt the Doctor was in a certain special sense a gentleman, and much more than a gentleman,—he was a man of high attainment, and had an excellent heart. But, so far from desiring to rise above the outward ideal of the locality, he took a perverse pleasure in remaining a little below it. His language was a shade more provincial than that of the neighboring manufacturers, and his manners somewhat more rugged and abrupt than theirs. Perhaps he secretly enjoyed the contrast between the commonplace exterior which he affected, and the elaborate intellectual culture which he knew himself to possess. He resembled the house he lived in, which was, as to its exterior, so perfectly commonplace that every one would pass it without notice, yet which contained greater intellectual riches, and more abundant material for reflection, than all the other houses in Shayton put together. Therefore, if I say that Mr. Prigley was the only gentleman in the place, I mean externally,—in language and manner.

The living of Shayton was a very meagre one, and Mr.

Prigley had great difficulty in keeping himself above water; but there is more satisfaction in struggling with the difficulties of open and avowed poverty than in maintaining deceitful appearances, and Mr. Prigley had long since ceased to think about appearances at all. It had happened some time ago that the carpets showed grievous signs of wear, and in fact were so full of holes as to be positively dangerous. They had been patched and mended over and over again, and an ingenious seamstress employed by Mrs. Prigley, and much valued by her, had darned them with variously colored wools in continuation of the original patterns, so that (unless on close inspection) the repairs were not very evident. Now, however, both Mrs. Prigley and the seamstress, notwithstanding all their ingenuity and skill, had reluctantly come to the conclusion that to repair the carpets in their present advanced stage of decay it would be necessary to darn nothing less than the whole area of them, and Mrs. Prigley declared that she would rather manufacture new ones with her knitting-needles. But if buying carpets was out of the question, so it was not less out of the question for Mrs. Prigley to fabricate objects of luxury, since her whole time was taken up by matters of pressing necessity; indeed, the poor lady could only just keep up with the ceaseless accumulations of things that wanted mending; and whenever she was unwell for a day or two, and unable to work, there rose such a heap of them as made her very heart sink. In this perplexity about the carpets, nature was left to take her course, and the carpets were abandoned to their fate, but still left upon the floors; for how were they ever to be replaced? By a most unfortunate coincidence, Mr. Prigley discovered about the same time that his shirts, though apparently very sound and handsome shirts indeed, had become deplorably weak in the tissue; for if, in dressing himself in a hurry, his hand did not just happen to hit the orifice of the sleeve, it passed through the fabric of the shirt itself, and that with so little difficulty that he was scarcely aware of any impediment; whilst if once the hem were severed, the immediate consequence was a rent more than a foot long. Poor Mrs. Prigley had mended these patiently for a while; but one day, after marvelling how it happened that her husband had become so violent in his treatment of his linen, she tried the strength of it herself, and, to use her own expressive phrase, "it came in two like a sheet of wet paper." It was characteristic of the Prigleys that they determined to renew the linen at once, and to abandon carpets for ever.

Shayton is not in France, and to do without carpets in Shayton amounts to a confession of what, in the middle class, is looked upon as a pitiable destitution. Mr. Prigley did not care much about this; but his wife was more sensitive to public opinion, and, long after that heroic resolution had been taken, hesitated to put it in execution. Day after day the ragged remnants remained upon the floor; and still did Mrs. Prigley procrastinate.

Whilst things were in this condition at the parsonage, the conversation took place at Milend which we have narrated in the preceding chapter; and as soon as Mrs. Ogden had seen things straight in the kitchen, she "bethought her," as she would have herself expressed it, that it might be a step towards intercourse between Isaac Ogden and the clergyman if she could make little Jacob take a fancy to the parsonage. There was a little boy there nearly his own age, and as Jacob was far too much isolated, the acquaintance would be equally desirable for him. The idea was by no means new to her; indeed, she had long been anxious to find suitable playmates for her grandson, a matter of which Isaac did not sufficiently perceive the importance; and she had often intended to take steps in this direction, but had been constantly deterred by the feelings of dislike to Mr. Prigley, which both her sons did not hesitate to express. What had Mr. Prigley done to them that they should never be able to speak of him without a shade of very perceptible aversion or contempt? They had no definite accusation to make against him; they did not attempt to justify their antipathy, but the antipathy did not disguise itself. In an agricultural district the relations between the parson and the squire are often cordial; in a manufacturing district the relations between the parson and the mill-owners are usually less intimate, and have more the character of accidental neighborship than of natural alliance.

The intercourse between Milend and the parsonage had been so infrequent that Mrs. Prigley was quite astonished when Betty, the maid-of-all-work, announced Mrs. Ogden as she pushed open the door of the sitting-room. But she was much more astonished when Mrs. Ogden, instead of quietly advancing in her somewhat stiff and formal manner, fell forward on the floor with outstretched arms and a shriek. Mrs. Prigley shrieked too, little Jacob tried manfully to lift up his grandmother, and poor Betty, not knowing what to say under circumstances so unexpected, but vaguely feeling that she was likely to incur blame, and might possibly (though in some manner not yet clear to her) deserve it, begged Mrs. Ogden's pardon. Mr. Prigley was busy writing a sermon in his study, and being suddenly interrupted in the midst of what seemed to him an uncommonly eloquent passage on the spread of infidelity, rushed to the scene of the accident in a state of great mental confusion, which for some seconds prevented him from recognizing Mrs. Ogden, or Mrs. Ogden's bonnet, for the lady's face was not visible to him as he stood amazed in the doorway. "Bless me!" thought Mr. Prigley, "here's a woman in a fit!" And then came a dim and somewhat unchristian feeling that women liable to fits need not just come and have them in the parlor at the parsonage. "It's Mrs. Ogden, love," said Mrs. Prigley; "and, oh dear, I am so sorry!"

By the united efforts of the parson and his wife, joined to those of Betty and little Jacob, Mrs. Ogden was placed upon the sofa, and Mr. Prigley went to fetch some brandy from the dining-room. On his way to the door, the cause of the accident became apparent to him in the shape of a yawning rent in the carpet, which was dragged up in great folds and creases several inches high. He had no time to do justice to the subject now, and so refrained from making any observation; but he fully resolved that, whether Mrs. Prigley liked it or not, all ragged old carpets should disappear from the parsonage as soon as Mrs. Ogden could be got out of it. When Mrs. Prigley saw the hole in her turn, she was overwhelmed with a sense of culpability, and felt herself to be little better than a murderess.

"Betty, run and fetch Dr. Bardly as fast as ever you can."