Wenderholme: A Story of Lancashire and Yorkshire

by Philip Gilbert Hamerton

CHAPTER XVII.

A MORNING CALL.

Since we are obliged to leave the vicarage now, the reader must be told the exact truth about Mrs. Stanburne's condition. It continued to give great anxiety for several weeks, and all her friends, even including the doctors, gave her up over and over again, believing that she had not more than an hour or two to live; yet she always passed through these times of danger, and gradually, very gradually, began to feel rather stronger in the month of December. The season of the year was not favorable to her, but Dr. Bardly hoped that if she could be sustained till the return of spring, she would regain her strength, at least in a great measure, and probably have several years of life still before her. She bore the winter better than had been expected, though without quitting her room at the vicarage, and in the month of April entered upon a convalescence which astonished all around her.

The old lady's illness led to very important consequences. Since the period of her danger was protracted, her friends remained near her day after day, and week after week, always believing that they were performing the last duty by a deathbed. A great sadness reigned in the vicarage during all this season of watching, but it was sadness of the kind which is most favorable to sympathy and good feeling. The vicar and his good wife, so far from feeling the presence of the invalid and their other guests a burden, were glad that it was in their power to do any thing for her and for them; and whilst the old lady lay upon her bed of sickness she was producing happier and more important results, simply by throwing certain persons together by invisible bonds of mutual approval and a common anxiety, than she could ever have achieved by an active ingerence in their affairs. Everybody who loved old Mrs. Stanburne was grateful to everybody who gave proof of a real interest in her condition; and the majestic approach of death, whose shadow lay on the vicarage so long, subdued all its inhabitants into a more perfect spiritual harmony than they would ever have attained to amongst the distractions of gayer, though not happier, days. Lady Helena was admirable. There was a tenderness and a simplicity in her manner which pleased the Colonel greatly, and won the warm approval of the vicar. She devoted herself mainly to the care of Mrs. Stanburne, but, saying that exercise was necessary to enable her to do her duty as a nurse, made the Colonel walk out with her every day. These walks were delightful to both of them—for even though the scenery about the village of Wenderholme was full of painful associations, their sense of loss was more than balanced by the sense of a yet larger gain; and the future, though it could not have the external brilliance of the past, promised a deeper and more firm felicity. Sadness and unhappiness are two very different conditions of the mind, and it does not follow that because we are saddened we are incapable of being very happy in a certain quiet and not unenviable way. Indeed, it might even be asserted, that as

"Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought"—

so it is with life itself, as well as poetry, and that our sweetest hours are far from being our gayest.

It had become tacitly understood that neither Lady Helena nor Mrs. Ogden would offer any opposition to the marriage between Jacob and Edith. Whatever Mrs. Ogden determined to do, she did in a thorough and effectual manner; and as she had resolved that amends ought to be made to the Stanburnes for her son's conduct to the old lady, she considered that the best way to do this would be to receive Edith kindly into her family. In this resolution she was greatly helped by a genuine approval of the young lady herself. "There's some girls as brings fortunes," she said to young Jacob, "and there's other girls as is a fortune themselves, and I think Miss Stanburne will be as good as a fortune to any one who may marry her." Nor had this opinion been lightly arrived at, for during her frequent visits to the vicarage, Mrs. Ogden had studied Edith, much in the same way as an entomologist studies an insect under a microscope.

One day, when the weather became a little warmer, Lady Helena said to the Colonel, "Don't you think, dear, that we ought to go and call upon that old Mrs. Ogden at the Hall? She has been exceedingly kind in coming to sit with mamma. I would have suggested it sooner, but I was afraid it might be painful for you, dear, to go to the old house again."

So they set out and walked to the Hall together, both of them feeling very strange feelings, indeed, as they passed up the familiar avenue. When they came at last in sight of the great house, John Stanburne paused and gazed upon it for a long time without speaking. It stood just as he had left it—none of the carved Stanburne shields had been removed.