Wenderholme: A Story of Lancashire and Yorkshire

by Philip Gilbert Hamerton

The afternoon was exceedingly dull and disagreeable to Mr. Ogden. He walked out into his fields and round the pond. He had made a small footpath for his walks, which, after leaving the front-door first, went all round the pond, and then up to the rocks that overlooked the little valley, and from which he enjoyed a very extensive view. There were several springs in the little hollow, but before Mr. Ogden's settlement they had contented themselves with creating those patches of that emerald grass, set in dark heather, which are so preciously beautiful in the scenery of the moors. At each of these springs Mr. Ogden had made a circular stone-basin, with a water-duct to his pond, and it was his fancy to visit these basins rather frequently to see that they were kept clean and in order. He did so this afternoon, from habit, and by the time he had finished his round it was nearly dark.

He was intensely miserable. Twistle Farm had been sweet and dear to him because he had jealously guarded the purity of the associations that belonged to it. Neither in the house nor in the little undulating fields that he had made was there a single object to remind him of his weakness and his sin, and therefore the place had been a refuge and a sanctuary. It could never again be for him what it had been; this last lamentable failure had broken down the moral defences of his home, and invaded it and contaminated it for ever. Whatever the future might bring, the event of the past night was irrevocable; he had besotted himself with drink; he had brought the mire of the outer world into his pure dwelling, and defiled it. Isaac Ogden felt this the more painfully that he had little of the support of religion, and few of the consolations and encouragements of philosophy. A religious mind would have acknowledged its weakness and repented of its sin, yet in the depths of its humiliation hoped still for strength from above, and looked and prayed for ultimate deliverance and peace. A philosophic mind would have reflected that moral effort is not to be abandoned for a single relapse, or even for many relapses, and would have addressed itself only the more earnestly to the task of self-reformation that the need for effort had made itself so strikingly apparent. But Mr. Ogden had neither the faith which throws itself on the support of Heaven, nor the faculty of judging of his own actions with the impartiality of the independent intellect. He was simply a man of the world, so far as such a place as Shayton could develop a man of the world, and had neither religious faith nor intellectual culture. Therefore his misery was the greater for the density of the darkness in which he had stumbled and fallen. What he needed was light of some sort; either the beautiful old lamp of faith, with its wealth of elaborate imagery, or the plainer but still bright and serviceable gas-light of modern thought and science. Mr. Prigley possessed the one, and the Doctor gave his best labor to the maintenance of the other; but Mr. Ogden was unfortunate in not being able to profit by the help which either of these friends would have so willingly afforded.

No one except Dr. Bardly had suspected the deplorable fact that Mr. Ogden was no longer in a state of mental sanity. The little incident just narrated, in which he had mistaken one word for another, and insisted, with irritation, that the error did not lie with him, had been a common one during the last few weeks, whenever little Jacob read to him. If our little friend had communicated his sorrows to the Doctor, this fact would have been a very valuable one as evidence of his father's condition; but he never mentioned it to any one except his grandmother and old Sarah, who both inferred that the child had read inaccurately, and saw no reason to suspect the justice of Mr. Ogden's criticism. The truth was, that by a confusion very common in certain forms of brain-disease, a sound often suggested to Mr. Ogden some other sound resembling it, or of which it formed a part, and the mere suggestion became to him quite as much a fact as if he had heard it with his bodily ears. Thus, as we have seen, the word "old" had suggested "bold;" and when, as in that instance, the imagined word did not fit in very naturally with the sense of the passage, Mr. Ogden attributed the fault to little Jacob's supposed inaccuracy in reading. Indeed he had now a settled conviction that his son was unpardonably careless, and no sooner did the child open his book to read, than his father became morbidly expectant of some absurd mistake, which, of course, never failed to arrive, and to give occasion for the bitterest reproaches.

On his return to the house Mr. Ogden desired his son's attendance, and requested him to resume his reading. Little Jacob took up his book again, and this time, as it happened, Mr. Ogden heard the second line correctly, and expressed his satisfaction. But in the very next couplet—

"His withered cheek and tresses gray
Seemed to have known a better day"—

Mr. Ogden found means to imagine another error. "It seems to me curious," said he, "that Scott should have described the minstrel as having a 'withered cheek and tresses gay;' there could be little gayety about him, I should imagine."

"Please, papa, it isn't gay, but gray."

"Then why the devil do you read so incorrectly? I have always to be scolding you for making these absurd mistakes!"

If little Jacob had had an older head on his shoulders he would have acquiesced, and tried to get done with the reading as soon as possible, so as to make his escape. But it was repugnant to him to admit that he had made a blunder of which he was innocent, and he answered,—

"But, papa, I read it right—I said gray; I didn't say gay."