CHAPTER VII. BETURNING HOME.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 245, 11 January 1878, Page 5

CHAPTER VII. BETURNING HOME.

My first week at Oakbam was given to my family. I had to be introduced to my new brother-in-law, Oswald, who had brought Mary over from Kxdale Manor, that we might all be once more together. The duke had been called away to Scotland, and, to tell the truth, I waa not sorry to have time and opportunity for rectifying my ideas on the new order of things before meeting him, My father praised him highly, for was he not a Leven 1 That single fact sufficed for him ; lior would I have disturbed the simplicity of his loyalty to the representative,: of the old family by so much as a question. My mother had a special kindness for him, only regretting that he had never married. M.r. Edwards, as courteous and harmonious as ever, fully seconded her regrets, and suggested that the influence of a refined and affectionate wife might have softened something of that austerity of character which he humbly conceived was out of tune with the century. His curate, the Rev. Wilfred Knowles, who happened to be present, said nothing, but I thought he kwiu-d a good deal, and on inquiry, I found that the curate held more advanced views than the vicar, and was supposed to have what Mrs. Edwards termed " monastic tendencies." All this explained but little. Oswald informed me the general impression in the county was that his politics were revolutionary ; but the solitary fact in support of this theory appeared to be that his first act on coming to Oakham had been to lower his farmers' rents on condition that they raised the rate of their labourers' wages. Mary said it was all malice, and that they did not understand him. She evidently was his warm friend, and her husband declared that she did what she liked with him. On the third day after my arrival, I strolled up to the park in company with Oswald, and could not help observing with a little surprise that the pineries and forcing-houses kept their ground, and had even apparently received some additions. I inquired for my old friend Jones, but found he had departed, apd that bis place was filled by one of a younger generation,

" I half expected lie would have made a clean sweep of all this." I said " he used to inveigh against it all as though grapes in June had been one of the deadly sins." "."''., "Ah !" said Oswald, that was Mary's doing. She suggested to him .that if he did not choose to grow grapes and apricots for Mb owa table, he would be doing a good work to grow them for other people an'd-that they would be like gifts from paradise if he sent them to the hospitals. Bo now every week they arc packed up and sent to the Exbbrpugh Infirmary, and the County Hospital, and half-a-doEen ' other institutions, not to speak of his own affair that he has founded at Bradford." .. '• .^fteajlly that was a bright idea of old Mary's," I said; "who -woulde^er hare thought of her taking the command in that style ? " Krj&Y^'jSlfa she gets her own pcrquisities, I believe," paid Oswald, makes happy all the bick people of the neighbourthe orchids? '" I asked, rather maliciously. T -vf'*'- 1 « Oh, as to them, you had better ask Verney." And so saying, he led the wayto a small enclosure where a young and intelligent-look-ing man was superintending the packing of various cases of fruit and flowers. I looked at the rich fruit, no longer grown for show or luxury, and felt pleased to think ut' its altered destination. " And the flowers ?" I asked, amazed at the quantity which were being delicately packed in a cool moss, about to be carried oil to the fetation. " To Bradford, sir. and Homchcster." replied Verney, the head gardener, " and one or two other minion*. Thursday will be Corpus Christi, and they use a wonderful quantity of flowers." " Urn ! " I thought ; " I see all about it ; what used to go to the dinner-table and the ball-room he scuds to the hospital .i,id the altar. Well, that is like old Grant ; " and it gave me a glow of pleasure. I soon found that Verney was a Catholic, as were several of the men now employed about the pi are, and I heard from him that a private chapel had been added to the house, which sufficed for the wants of the few Oakham Catholics. But a magnificent church had replaced the old and miserable erection at Bradford ; and there was a convent with nuns who worked the schools and served the hospital ; and, besides that, half the town had been rebuilt, and the wretched dens which formerly abounded were replaced by model lodginghouses. ' '• The duke himself has a house at Bradford," said Oswald, " and spends a good deal of time there : how he can endure it. I don't know, but he sees to all manner of things himself, for at heart, you know, he likes business." " I suspect aKo, Oswald," said I, " that be has a liking for rovls." 1 " Well, I should have thought Bradford about the last place to have supplied him with that commodity," said Oswald ; very queer style of souls he must find among the colliers, and not the most responsive, for just now they seem greatly disposed to stono him by way of showing their gratitude." '• How so ? Is he not popular .' " " Not with all. You see, he attempts to limit their means of making beasts of themselves, and many resent it like true-born Britons. They've got a fellow named Degg to lead them now, who posseshes a tongue, and a quite remarkable gift of slander, of which he gives the duke a weekly benefit in a rascally penny paper, which he edits, and which he sells by thousands. It's a grand thing is_ our education movement ; it enables each man now-a-days to read his Degg." '• Would you like to see the chapel, sir ? " said Verney. '• Immensely," I replied. And leaving his flowers in charge of one of the men iv attendance, he led the way towards the building. It had an approach through the shrubberies as well as from the hou^e for the convenience of the congregation ; and Verney, hvring found means of informing the chaplain of my presence, left me in the hands of that gentleman and returned to his green-houses. The Oakham chapel wns small in size, and my first impression of it was rather devotional than magnificent. Except iv the cast window there was no painted glass ; but through the open casements came the sound of waving branches, and the green and pleasant light which falls through summer foliage. After * few minutes, I began to take in bomo of the details. Though the chapel was Gothic in style, the architect had contrived to find places for Hereral pictures, some of which struck my eye as familiar. I remarked it to the chaplain. " Probably," he replied, " you may remember them formerly in the Bradford collection; the Crucifixion which you see there used to hang in the great diningroom. It had been a Spanish altar-piece I think, and the duke said it was a sacrilege to put euch a painting over a gentleman's sideboard." " And at the same time that he removed it," whispered Oswald, "he burned half-a-dozen Venuses and Adonises, which had been the glory of old Bradford's gallery : a fact, I assure you ; and at Christie's they would have brought their thousands." The paintings had, in fact, been taken from various parts of the ducal mansion : all, with one exception, a singular picture, painted, as the chaplain told me, by a young German artist, under the duke's personal direction, 'it waa a single figure, representing a young man m poor and squalid attire, lying on a bed of straw, and clasping a crucifix. The back-ground waa dark, and there were few or no pictorial adjuncts ; only in one corner of the picture appeared something like a ladder or ilight of steps above the head of the principal figure. All the beauty of the painting was in that head ; wasted, sweet, fcuperhuinan in its expression, carrying me back to the description which Grant had once given of old Father Henry Young's countenance, in which the pride of flesh and blood had all been destroyed and obliteterated. " What a singular picture," said Oswald. " Who is it ? a saint ? " " It i.s Ht. Alexis," replied the chaplain, and Oswald evidently was not greatly the wiser. But I looked, and thought and looked again, and I fancied I had understood its meaning. The noble youth who fled the world, who despised pleasure, and held riches as a curse, the prince who chose, in his own father's house, to live unknown, and to die as a beggar, was, doubtless, one whose story might have a deep attraction for a man made rich against his will> and ever-fighting with wealth and its temptations.