Wenderholme: A Story of Lancashire and Yorkshire

by Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Lady Helena began to be alarmed. Nobody knew better than her ladyship that the prestige of aristocracy rested ultimately upon wealth, and that she could no more keep up her station without a good income than her strength without food. It had been a capital error of John Stanburne's from the beginning, not to consult his wife on every detail of his money transactions. She had always been perfectly prudent in not letting current expenses go beyond income, although, as they had only one child, there appeared to be no necessity for saving. She would have advised him well if he had invited her to advise him; but though he had always told her, with truth, that their income was four thousand a-year, he had not told her the history of the capital sum from which this income had, in consequence of some devices of his own, been drawn so unfailingly. The restoration of Wenderholme had been a very costly undertaking indeed. The whole outlay upon it John Stanburne had never dared to calculate; but we, who have no reason for that nervous abstinence from terrible totals, know that during the years immediately succeeding the great fire, he did not, in the restoration and adornment of his beautiful home, spend less than twenty-seven thousand pounds. The result, no doubt, was worth even so large an outlay as this; nor was the sum in itself very wildly extravagant, when one reflects that one of the Sootythorn cotton-spinners laid out fully as much on an ugly new house about half a mile beyond Chesnut Hill. But it diminished John Stanburne's funded property by more than one-half, and it therefore became necessary to invest the remainder more productively, to keep his income up to its old level.

Whilst he is telling these things to Lady Helena in his own way, let us narrate them somewhat more succinctly in ours. It had happened, about three years after the fire—that is, in the year 1856—that a new bank had been established in Sootythorn, called the Sootythorn District Bank, and some of the capitalists both in the immediate locality and in the neighboring country had invested in it rather largely. Amongst these was our acquaintance, Mr. Joseph Anison of Arkwright Lodge, near Whittlecup, who, not having a son to succeed him in his business, did not care to extend it, and sought another investment for his savings which might as nearly as possible approach in productiveness the ample returns of commerce. Mr. Anison was one of the original founders of the new bank, and if the idea had not positively its first source in his own mind, it was he who brought it to a practicable shape, and finally made it a reality. Colonel Stanburne had taken Joseph Anison into his confidence about his money matters—at least so far as to show him the present reduced state of his funded capital; and he added that, with his diminished income, it had become necessary to economize by a determined reduction of expenses, the most obvious means to which would be the resignation of his commission in the militia—which, directly or indirectly, cost him a clear thousand a-year—and the abandonment of the house in town, which had then recently been established for the gratification of Lady Helena, and furnished with the modern furniture saved at the burning of Wenderholme. Mr. Anison strongly dissuaded the Colonel from both these steps, urging upon him the popularity which he enjoyed both in the regiment and at Sootythorn, and even certain considerations of public duty to which an English gentleman is rarely altogether insensible. The Colonel liked the regiment, he liked his position, and it may even be said, without any exaggeration of his merits, that, independently of the consideration which it procured him, he felt an inward satisfaction in doing something which could be considered useful. To resign his commission, then, would have been difficult for another reason, if not altogether impossible. The regiment, instead of coming to Sootythorn for a month's training in the year, was on permanent garrison duty in Ireland, and he could not gracefully leave it.

The other project—the abandonment of his house in London—might have been agreeable enough to himself personally, but he was one of those husbands who, from weakness or some other cause, find it impossible to deprive a wife of any thing which she greatly cares for. This defect was due in his case, as it is in many others, to an inveterate habit of politeness towards all women, even towards his wife; and just as no gentleman would take possession of a chair or a footstool which a lady happened to be using, so John Stanburne could not turn Lady Helena out of that house in town which she liked so much, and which both of them looked upon as peculiarly her own. It is easy for rough and brutal men to do these things, but a gentleman will often get into money embarrassments out of mere delicacy. I don't mean to imply that the Colonel's way of dealing with his wife was the best way. It would have been far better to be frank with her from the beginning; but then a simple nature like John Stanburne's has such a difficulty in uniting the gentleness and the firmness which are equally necessary when one has to carry out measures which are sure to be disagreeable to a lady. The suaviter in modo, &c., is, after all, a species of hypocrisy—at least until it has become habitual; and when the Colonel was soft in manner, which he always was with women, he was soft in the matter also. In a word, though no one was better qualified to please a lady, he was utterly incapable of governing one—an incapacity which perhaps he shared with the majority of the sons of Adam.

As retrenchment had appeared impossible, or, at least, too difficult to be undertaken so long as there was the alternative of a change of investments, the Colonel begged Mr. Anison, as an experienced man of business, to look out for something good in that way; and Mr. Anison, who, with his brother capitalists, had just started the Sootythorn District Bank, honestly represented to his friend that a better and a safer investment was not likely to be found anywhere. As he preached not merely by precept but by example, and showed that he had actually staked every thing which he possessed on the soundness of the speculation—he, the father of a family—Colonel Stanburne was easily persuaded, and became one of the largest shareholders. The bank was soon in a very flourishing condition—in fact it was really prosperous, and exceeded the most sanguine hopes of its originators. The manager was both an honorable man and a man of real ability as a financier. The dividends were very large, and not paid out of capital.

After five or six years of this prosperity, during which the Colonel's aggregate income had been higher than it ever was during his best days as a fund-holder, he began to conceive the idea of replacing, by economy, the sum of £27,000, which had been withdrawn from his funded capital for the restoration and embellishment of Wenderholme. To do this he prudently began by saving the surplus of his income; but as this did not seem to accumulate fast enough for his desires, he thought that, without permanently alienating his estate, he might mortgage some portion of it, and invest the money so procured at the higher interest received by the shareholders of the Sootythorn District Bank. The mere surplus of interest would of itself redeem the mortgage after a few years, leaving the money borrowed in his own hands as a clear increase of capital. In this way he mortgaged a great part of the estate of Wenderholme to our friend Mr. Jacob Ogden of Milend.

All these things were done clam Helenâ—unknown to her ladyship. She was not supposed to understand business, and probably the Colonel, from the first, had apprehended her womanish fears of the glorious uncertainties of speculation. His conscience, however, was perfectly at ease. At the cost of a degree of risk which he set aside as too trifling to be dwelt upon, he was gradually—nay, even rapidly—replacing the money sunk in Wenderholme; and every day brought him nearer to the time when he might live in his noble mansion without the tormenting thought that it had been paid for out of his inherited capital. At the same time, so far from withdrawing from the world's eyes into the obscurity which is usually one of the most essential conditions of retrenchment, he actually filled a higher place in the county than he had ever occupied before. The taste for society grows upon us and becomes a habit, so that the man who a year or two since bore solitude with perfect ease, may to-morrow find much companionship a real want, though an acquired one. The more sociable John Stanburne became, the more he felt persuaded that the house in London was a proper thing to keep up, and there came to be quite an admirable harmony between him and Lady Helena. She had always loved him very much, but in the days when he had a fancy for retirement, she had felt just a shade of contempt for the rusticity of his tastes. As this rusticity wore off, her ladyship respected her husband more completely; and the coolness which had existed between them in the year 1853 was succeeded by an affectionate indulgence on both sides, which was entirely satisfactory to Lady Helena, and was only a little less so to the Colonel, because he knew it to be a sacrifice of firmness.

He began to feel this very keenly at the time our story reopens, because some very heavy misfortunes had befallen the Sootythorn District Bank, and the Colonel began to doubt whether, after all, his financial operations (successful as they had hitherto appeared) were quite so prudent as he and Mr. Anison had believed. Mr. Stedman had been against the enterprise from the very first, and had openly attempted to dissuade both Mr. Anison and the Colonel from any participation in it; but then Mr. Stedman, who had neither the expenses of a family nor the drain of a high social position, could afford the utmost extremity of prudence, and could literally have lived in his accustomed manner if his money had been invested at one per cent. However, the Bank had kept up the Colonel's position by giving him an easy income for several years; and by enabling him to put by a surplus, had compensated, by the mental satisfaction which is the reward of those who save, any little anxiety which from time to time may have disturbed the tranquillity of his mind. But now the anxiety was no longer a light one, to be compensated by thinking about savings. A private meeting of the principal shareholders had been held the day before, and it had become clear to them that the position of the Sootythorn Bank (and consequently their own individual position, for their liability was unlimited) was perilous in the extreme. Immense sums had been advanced to cotton firms which were believed to be sound, but which had gone down within the preceding fortnight; and many other loans were believed to be very doubtful. Under these circumstances, the chief shareholders—Colonel Stanburne amongst the number—bound themselves by a mutual promise not to attempt to sell, as any unusual influx of shares upon the market would at once provoke their depreciation, and probably create a panic.

Whilst the Colonel had been telling all these things to Lady Helena, he had not dared to look once upon her face; but when he had come to an end, a silence followed—a silence so painful that he could not bear it, and turned to her that she might speak to him. She was not looking in his direction. She was not looking at Wenderholme, nor on any portion of the fair estate around it; but her eyes were fixed on the uttermost line of the far horizon. She was very pale; her lips were closely compressed, and there was a tragic sternness and severity in her brow that John Stanburne had never before seen.

For a whole minute—for sixty intolerable seconds—not one word escaped her.

"Helena, speak to me!"