CHAPTER VIII.
IT IS ALL OWING TO LETTY.
Our history may wind itself up in comfort. The dark cloud which fell on the happy home at Woodburn has thoroughly dispersed. Though there is no longer such a cluster of young life there as made its old shady rooms, and its garden alleys, and its pleasant fields ring with laughter and merriment in the days of our great hayfield fête, a sober happiness rests on that now familiar Grange. Mr. and Mrs. Woodburn live a life of quiet enjoyment, only interrupted by frequent invasions of children and friends that send a fresh tide of pleasure around them, and make even the old times seem pale in comparison.
From the breezy hill of Cotmanhaye come Sir Henry and Lady Clavering, from Bilts’ Farm walks down the sunny and sensible Elizabeth, whilst George is ever to and fro, superintending both farms at the same time. Every few days Letty Thorsby comes driving over with her children. Children? Yes, did I not tell you that she has a little fairy-like daughter, bright Ann Woodburn Thorsby, as well as that sturdy growing Leonard, who is always wanting to go to Fair Manor, to hear Tom Boddily play on that wonderful pipe and lark whistle? and on Sundays, over comes Thorsby, and there is a life in the house with the young people, and children and nurses, comers and goers, that is better than any of the old times. Thorsby has always some pleasant story of somebody or other to relate, and the other day he was amusing them with an account of an old aunt of his, who says it is a lucky thing her memory fails so. She had heard of a man who had written a book about the pleasures of memory, but for her part she thought it was a pleasure to forget. “It is a pleasure that old age brings,” she says, “for then things come new again to us. It is because people forget that they tell their old stories over again, and read their old books. Not to forget would be to be poor; to forget is to enjoy twice, and sometimes much oftener.”
But a word about Thorsby and forgetting. There are things that he has not yet learned to forget, and they keep him sober. Cheerful and even joyous, as he often seems in his own intimate circle of friends, there are dark thoughts that often come across him; and at times he is low, very low and desolate in heart, and it then requires all Letty’s genial glow of nature’s and affection’s sunshine to keep him up and keep him going. The days of his folly and his guilt come back upon him, and he remembers the dark, estranged and even contemptuous bearing of his most respected townsmen towards him; and he knows, that if he had not had a Letty Woodburn for his wife, but some proud and indignant dame who would have spurned the dust of his threshold from her, and abandoned him to the more than seven devils that were in his blood, he would now have been a lost man, lost body and soul for ever.
It was because of this noble-heartedness of his wife, because she had drawn him back, and soothed and attracted, instead of exasperating him, and driving him headlong down the precipice of perdition on which he was already staggering, that he felt the keenest shame and remorse at his treatment of her. There was a time, he felt, when a few words of just reproach from her would have stung him to a ruinous desperation, and these words had never been spoken. Oh! in those dreary winter days and nights at Tunckhannock in the far-off American forests, how these thoughts had come in upon him, and scorched and wrung him, and made him cry out aloud, “Fool! fool!” And yet with the spring came the loving letter of that ever-faithful wife, reminding him of the Redeemer’s heavenly words, “Gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost!” Nothing, not even a fragment of anything belonging to that immortal God-derived thing—the soul—was to be lost, if any effort, any faith could save it; and Thorsby had then made a vow, that he would devote his life, his strength, his everything to make a recompense to God and to that faithful woman. And he had kept it.
It was long before he could regain the favourable opinion of his townsmen; and especially of those more noble-minded ones whose esteem he especially coveted. Dark, cold looks, estranged faces, that did not deign even a recognition: a leaving out and passing over him, in all public and benevolent works and subscriptions in the town, as if his very money were contamination. Yet his wife had prepared the way for his reception at Woodburn, and had induced her father and family to meet him in a friendly manner. In his own house in Castleborough, there was always a bright look, and a pleasant word, and a cheery hearth, and all the news of the place that could cast a lively spell over the dinner or the tea-table was detailed in Letty’s happiest manner. It was like stepping from winter to summer, out of the streets where some bitter cut had been experienced, or where some side-long glance of the passer by, had said plainly, “Oh, there goes that abandoned Thorsby, and he dares to show his face here again!”
Nothing but this firm, fast, heart-strengthening anchorage of home could have made Thorsby stand out this time of justly incurred contempt and reproach. He knew that many said that Thorsby had no ballast in him, and that some day he would break down again as intolerably as ever. It was this consciousness, combined with his sense of the love that had saved him, and that cared for no scorn, no malicious misconstruction of her actions; no taunts that she was trying to make a bulrush into a stable tree, so that she could save him still, that made him resolve to stand firm by the help of God, and thus give her the reward of a conquest so dearly and nobly striven after.
Thorsby found that his affairs, under the careful and conscientious management of Thomas Barnsdale and Letty, had flourished. The trade in London had greatly expanded under the judicious control of the agent whom Mr. Barnsdale had put there, and whom, in the days of his folly, Thorsby would have dismissed, if the American crisis had allowed him time. Since his return from New York, his business had equally prospered in the hands of the new house with which he had entrusted it. Worldly strength was, therefore, given to him to enable him to persevere; and even whilst his own character was at a very low estimate in his native town, he was busily engaged in schemes for the safeguard of the character of others.
Whilst he was absent, and Letty attended the warehouse and counting-house, she observed that in the lobby of the warehouse there were continually people waiting, who were bringing in work, or expecting it being given out. There was a considerable number of young women amongst these, who had to remain there for hours sometimes amongst men and youths, who did not appear the most suitable companions for them. On speaking to Thomas Barnsdale about this, he said that he had long thought they ought to do something to amend this state of things. He had heard complaints from young women of the language and conduct of some young men there, and had dismissed one or two for their doings.