Wenderholme Part 43

MONEY ON THE BRAIN.

Immediately after the Colonel's return from France, Captain Ogden went back to his solitude at Twistle Farm, but his son spent a good deal of his time with old Mrs. Ogden at Wenderholme. Jacob Ogden, senior, came to Wenderholme frequently to look after the work-people on the estate, but did not mark his disapproval of his nephew's proceedings otherwise than by quietly excluding him from all partic.i.p.ation in his affairs.

Although the young man pa.s.sed a great deal more time at Wenderholme than his uncle did, he was never requested, and he never offered, to do any of the duties of an overlooker, and his uncle treated him strictly upon the footing of a visitor--a visitor, not to himself, but to his mother.

There is so much firmness in the character of the typical Lancashire man, that he can a.s.sume, and maintain for an indefinite length of time, an att.i.tude towards a friend or relation which would be impossible for more mobile temperaments; and young Jacob knew his uncle well enough to be aware that having once decided upon his line of conduct, there was every probability that he would follow it without deviation. Therefore, although young Jacob could have made himself of the greatest use at Wenderholme without interfering either with his amus.e.m.e.nt of shooting or his dutiful attendance upon Miss Edith; he paid no more attention to the work-people than if they had been employed by some proprietor entirely unknown to him. It is unnecessary to add, that when at Twistle Farm, where he spent about one week out of three, he never went near his uncle's factories.

And yet, notwithstanding the apparent indifference with which Jacob Ogden dispensed with his nephew's services, they were more than ever necessary to him. The great factories at Shayton were enough of themselves to absorb the whole time of a very active master; but, in addition to these, Jacob Ogden was now working the calico-printing establishment at Whittlecup, which had formerly belonged to Mr. Joseph Anison, and carrying out extensive improvements, not only upon the Wenderholme estate, but upon many other properties of his, scattered over the neighboring parishes, and often at a considerable distance from his headquarters at Milend. Though his const.i.tution was a strong one, he had always taxed its strength to the utmost; and his powers were not what they had been, nor what he still believed them to be. He might have gone on for many years in the old routine that he had been accustomed to--for a hard-worked man will endure labor that seems beyond his present strength if he merely continues the habits of his better time.

But a man already in the decline of life cannot _add_ to his labor without danger, if it is already excessive, and especially if the new labors require thought and study before they can be fully mastered. The improvements at Wenderholme, to an experienced land-owner like Jacob Ogden, required no new apprenticeship; but that was not the case with the calico-printing business at Whittlecup. It was a new trade that had to be learned, and not a very easy trade--not nearly so simple as cotton-spinning. He applied himself to it with that indomitable will and resolution which had hitherto overcome every obstacle in his career, and he rapidly acquired the new knowledge that he needed. But this effort, in addition to the enormous burden of his daily work--the daily work of a rich man who could not endure to be robbed, and would trust nothing to his agents--began to tell upon his cerebral system in a peculiar manner; and these effects were the more dangerous that Jacob Ogden had no conception of the terrible nature of the enemy that was invading him, but believed this enemy might be conquered by his will and perseverance, as every other obstacle had been. If he had frankly consulted Dr. Bardly on the appearance of the first symptoms, and followed the advice which Dr. Bardly would have given, the evil would have been checked in time; but he felt a certain hostility to the Doctor, which disinclined him to communications which he did not feel to be immediately necessary; and even if this could have been laid aside, a man so wilful as Jacob Ogden, and so accustomed to look after his own affairs, would scarcely have consented under present circ.u.mstances to give up the management of his business to his nephew, and retire to a premature and inglorious repose.

Hitherto he had gone through his work with great energy, in combination with perfect calm. The energy still remained, it even increased; but the calm did not remain--it was succeeded by a perpetual hurry and fever. In a short time after these symptoms first developed themselves, Jacob Ogden could not add up a column of figures without excitement; when he came to the totals his heart beat violently, and he began to make mistakes, which he perceived, and was afterwards nervously anxious to avoid. As his malady increased, he could not open a letter without emotion, or sign a cheque without a strong effort of self-control; in a word, the nervous system was rapidly giving way. And instead of taking rest, which could alone have restored him to health--rest at Wenderholme amongst his own fair fields in the beautiful months of spring--he persisted and persisted, and would not allow himself to be beaten.

The people about him did not know any thing of his condition. He was more irritable, he pushed everybody faster than he had formerly done, and he was constantly moving from one place to another; but his determination to control himself was so strong, and his power of _appearing_ well still so considerable, that such people as Mrs. Ogden and young Jacob (unaccustomed as they both were to that kind of suffering, and incapable of imagining it) had not the most distant suspicion that he had become unfit for work. Indeed, although an experienced London physician, who had made brain disease his particular study, would no doubt have seen at a glance that this was a case which needed the most watchful care, it may be doubted whether a country pract.i.tioner (even so clever, naturally, as Dr. Bardly) would have warned Jacob Ogden in time.

The overtasked brain translated its own dangerous condition by _anxiety_, and the anxiety was not about health, but, as often happens in such instances, about that subject which had most occupied the patient's mind before the approaches of disease--namely, money. With all his riches, Jacob Ogden grew more nervously anxious about money matters than the poorest laborer on his estate. His mind ran incessantly upon possible causes of loss; and as in the best-regulated property such causes are always infinitely numerous, he found them only too easily.

The thousands of details which, when in health, he had carried in his head as lightly as we carry the words of a thoroughly mastered language, began to torment him with the apprehension that they might escape his memory; and whereas, in his better days, no fact troubled him except just at the moment when he wanted it, they now importunately intruded upon his mind when they could only disturb and confuse it.

At length, as his disease advanced towards its sure and terrible development, the ANXIETY, which was the form it had taken, and the mental hurry and worry which accompanied it, arrived at such a pitch that the least delicate and acute observers remarked it in Jacob Ogden's face. His mother earnestly entreated him not to torment himself so much about his affairs, but to take a partner, and allow himself more rest.

The advice came too late. The tender cells of the cerebrum were in a state of fevered disturbance, which must now inevitably lead to one of the forms of madness.

It broke out one night at Wenderholme. He toiled till three o'clock in the morning, alone, at his accounts. There was nothing in them which he would not have mastered quite easily when in health, but the condition of his brain had led to many errors, and the attempt to correct these had only increased and multiplied them. He toiled and toiled till his brain could no longer stand the confusion, and he went mad.

First there came a sense of strangeness to every thing about him, and then a wild alarm--a _terror_ such as he had never known! For a few minutes Reason fiercely struggled to keep her seat, and would not be dispossessed. Those minutes were the most fearful the man had ever pa.s.sed through. He sprang from his place, and paced the room from wall to wall in violent agitation. "I'm very ill," he thought; "I cannot tell what's the matter with me. I believe I'm going to have a fit. No, it isn't that--it isn't that; I know what it is--I know now--_I'm going mad_!"

No visible external foe can ever be so terrible as the mysterious internal avengers. They come upon us we know not when nor where. They come when the doors are locked, the mansion guarded, and all the household sleeps. They come in their terrible invisibility, like devils taking possession. The strokes of mortal disease are dealt mysteriously _within_; and who would not rather meet a body of armed savages than invisible apoplexy or paralysis?

For five minutes Ogden wrestled with his invisible enemy. "I _will_ not go mad," he cried aloud--"I _will_ not!"

And a minute afterwards the struggle ceased, and he was another being, mad beyond hope of recovery.

A strange smile came over his face, and he pressed his hand upon his forehead. "I'll dodge them yet," he said; "they aren't as sharp as I am. I'm sharper than the best of them!"

He began to count the money in his purse. It was not much--five pounds eighteen exactly. He counted the sum quite correctly, over and over again; then he looked anxiously about for a place to hide it in. Whilst he was doing this, his mother, who had felt anxious about him all night, and had been unable to sleep, came to his room-door and listened. She heard him walking about and muttering to himself. Then she opened the door and went in.

He concealed his purse cunningly, and placed himself between the intruder and its hiding-place.

"Jacob," she said, "you ought to be in bed; why are you up like that?

It's three o'clock in the morning."

He began to talk very rapidly. He knew his mother perfectly well.

"Mother," he said, "when bailiffs comes you willn't tell 'em where I have hid my bra.s.s; see, I've hidden it here, but you willn't tell 'em, mother?" And then he lifted up a corner of the carpet and showed his little purse.

Mrs. Ogden trembled from head to foot. "Our Jacob's crazed," she said to herself--"our Jacob's gone crazed!"

She felt too weak to remain standing, and sat down, never taking her eyes off him. He put the purse back, and covered it again with great care. Then he took his memorandum-book, and seemed to be making an entry.

"Let me look at that book," Mrs. Ogden said.

It was as she had feared. The entry was a hopelessly illegible jumble of unmeaning lines and figures.

"Hadn't you better go to bed?"

"Go to bed, mother--not if I know it!" He said this with a smile of intense cunning, and then added, confidentially, "The bailiffs are comin' to-morrow, and Baron Rothschild has bought all my property, a large price, a million sterling--a million sterling; it's Baron Rothschild that bought it, mother, for a million sterling!"

The poor old woman burst into tears. "O Jacob!" she said, "I wish you wouldn't talk so!"

"Why, mother," he replied, with an injured air, and a look of intense penetration, "you know well enough what I failed for. I never should have failed if it hadn't been for that Sootythorn Bank; but they came to borrow money of me at Milend, and I took up shares for a hundred thousand, and then the smash came, and I failed. But never you mind, mother. Baron Rothschild bought my estates for a million sterling. That shows I was a millionnaire. Doesn't it, mother? for if I hadn't been worth a million, Baron Rothschild wouldn't have given a million for my property. He willn't give more for property than what it's worth."

"O Jacob! you do make me miserable with talking so."

She did not know what to do with him. Young Jacob and her son Isaac were both at Twistle Farm. At last she thought of Colonel Stanburne, who was staying at Wenderholme Cottage. She left her son for a few minutes, and sent a messenger for the Colonel. On returning to Jacob's room, she found him busy counting his money over again. He had taken the purse from its hiding-place.

The strength of her own nervous system was such that she bore even this appalling event with firmness. She was grieved beyond power of expression, but she was not overcome.

Happily there was no violence in Jacob Ogden's madness; he was not in the least dangerous. He simply kept repeating that story about his supposed failure, which he always attributed to the Sootythorn Bank, and the purchase of his property by Baron Rothschild. When the Colonel came, he told him the same story in the same words.

"You are mistaken on one point," the Colonel said. "It was I, Colonel Stanburne, who was ruined by the failure of the Sootythorn Bank, not you. You were never ruined. You purchased Wenderholme."

Mr. Ogden looked at him with the air of a professional man when a layman has advanced something which he knows to be absurd. Then he shook his head, and repeated the story about Baron Rothschild.

The Colonel kindly remained with him till morning, and bravely watched him through the dreary hours. A messenger had been despatched on horseback to Twistle Farm and to Dr. Bardly. Isaac Ogden and his son were at Wenderholme by breakfast-time, and the Doctor's brougham drove up very shortly afterwards.

Dr. Bardly tried to be encouraging. "He has been working too much," he said, "and made himself too anxious; he may get round again with rest and care. Give him good roast-meat and plenty of physical work."

But about ten o'clock Jacob Ogden became anxious to quit Wenderholme, being full of apprehension about the bailiffs. "Better let him have his own way," said the Doctor; so he was taken to Milend.

At Milend, however, there were other causes of anxiety. The bailiffs tormented him at Wenderholme; the idea of Baron Rothschild haunted him at Milend.

The experiment was tried of showing him the factory and the counting-house, but with most discouraging results. The factory produced a degree of excitement which, if continued, would probably lead to madness of an aggravated and far more dangerous kind.

Specialists were telegraphed for from Manchester and from London, and a consultation was held. They agreed that the patient must be kept out of the way of every thing that might remind him of his former career, recommending extreme tranquillity, good but simple diet, and as much physical exercise as the patient could be induced to take.

These might be had conveniently in Mrs. Ogden's favorite little farm, the Cream-pot. It was situated in a glen or clough, out of sight of the Shayton factory-chimneys.

So the old lady went there to live with her afflicted son. She could manage him better than anybody else, and he was never dangerous.

After a time, a happy discovery was made. He counted the money in his purse several times a-day, and Mrs. Ogden told him that if he would dig their little garden, she would pay him wages. He seized upon this idea with great joy and eagerness, and she paid him a sovereign on the Sat.u.r.day night. The week following he worked very hard, and counted the days, and spoke of his antic.i.p.ated earnings with delight. So his mother paid him another sovereign, and ever afterwards this became the rule, and she employed him at a pound a-week.

He kept all the sovereigns in his purse, and they were his joy and treasure. His physical health became excellent, and though his intellect gave no hope of restoration, his days pa.s.sed not unhappily. His mother tended him with the most touching devotion, and a self-sacrifice so absolute that she ceased to visit her friends, and abandoned all the little amus.e.m.e.nts and varieties of her life.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE COLONEL AT STANITHBURN.

The long illness and slow convalescence of Mrs. Stanburne, and the deplorable mental affliction which fell upon Jacob Ogden, and threw a cloud of lasting sadness over the whole Ogden family, produced long delays in the projects of young Jacob and Edith, and were the cause of much indecision on the part of the Colonel and Lady Helena. Mrs.

Stanburne returned to Wenderholme Cottage in the earliest days of spring, but the Colonel and his wife had already stayed there for many weeks, being anxious not to abuse the kind hospitality of the vicarage.