Mat Coppinger's Lesson.

Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1549, 10 February 1874, Page 109

Mat Coppinger's Lesson.

ON Christmas Day, 18—, a son and lieir was born to Mr Coppinger, of Marsh Abbots. It was not only a son and heir, but an only child after ten years' marriage. Great were the rejoicings, though they were necessarily subdued as yet, and though they even tended to subdue the festivities of the season both in the dining-room and the servant's hall. Mrs Deer, the portly housekeeper, said she did not care a " pickle," though the forfeits and snapdragon were curtailed, now that there was a young master, at whose corning of age she would still hope to carry the keys of the store-room and linen-presses of Marsh Abbots. Mr Coppinger himself, an extremely reserved man, became almost demonstrative in the expression of his happiness. " It is the best Christmas gift I ever got," he said to his immarried sister, who resided with her brother and his wife at Marsh Abbots. " I hope it will be a gift to more than you, George, considering the day on which our child has been born," { answered Nunks Coppinger. She had been familiarly called Nunks, not only because her proper name was Unton, but because she was a namedaughter and remote descendant of the very Unton who, becoming the wife of a popular statesman of his clay, was termed Nunks by him, in heavy playfulness, in the letters which have since passed into national property. " I trust little Mat—he'll be named for our father, Nunks—will do no discredit to his name and antecedents," said Mr Coppinger, with a shade of dryness. He held that his sister, Nunks, though an excellent person, like most single women of her style, was zealous overmuch in good works. It was characteristic that Mr Coppinger called his son "little Mat" within an hour of his birth, while Mrs Coppinger clung to the fondling word " baby " after the child was a sturdy little fellow, running about, and progressing from petticoats to knickerbockers. But one reason for the mother's habit was, that as Mat had no : predecessor, so he had no successor of his own generation, The frosty, starry night closed in on the new, blessed element vouchsafed to what had been the somewhat stagnant peace and prosperity of the childless house. The use. and wont revels which hacl followed on the morning's attendance at church, received compensation for the cautious " hush!" whenever the mirth threatened to grow fast and furious, by the permission to drink the young squire's health in a special bumper, and by the announcement that Mr Coppinger, in addition to his express bounty to the poor on the occasion, was to allow a " thundering " donation to the ringers, who had, in spite of the holiday, made known the late event to an interested neighborhood. Mr Coppinger lingered over his coffee in the solitude of his dining-room, not caring to break the solitude by repairing to the drawingroom to the society of his sister. Already he had withdrawn into himself with his dreams and schemes, and at that moment he was better company for himself than any other mortal could have been for him. Little Mat would carry on the old name, and win for it fresh distinction. In his mind's eye Mr Coppinger did not see the pink morsel whose long flowing robes were so out of proportion to the small bit of humanity which they surrounded and setoff; but acmtbby boy learning to ride, an active lad, the captain of the cricket-field, a thoughtful young rnan, possibly a double first at Oxford, a more or less distinguished member of the bar, with a seat in Parliament as a further stepping-stone to his rising ambition—a seat provided by the influence and wealth \ possessed by Mr

Coppinger, not as the squire of Marsh Abbots alone, but as the proprietor of West Indian estates which had been in the family for three generations. All that Mr Coppinger had ever in his secret soul imagined that he himself might be, but had not been, except in a lame and impotent manner, he saw his late given son and heir triumphantly achieving.

If Mr Coppinger's views were in the least degree shared by his household, no wonder that in the spacious room overhead the great object of attention and admiration was not the glad, pale mother among her lace, cambric, and damask, but the unconscious infant with winking, unseeing eyes and ungrasping hands. The mother was the first in bestowing the homage. " My baby, my beautiful baby," the weak voice kept repeating; " are you sure he is all right, nurse? Is the pillow soft enough for him, and does the curtain shade ..him sufficiently? I must show him to his father again before I go to sleep for the night." Miss Coppinger put aside the last of her multiplied Christmas work in the big empty drawing-room, and looked out of the window nearest her on the pure whiteness of the hoar frost covering the earth below, and on the deep blue of the sky lit up by the stars above, while she listened to the regular footfall of her brother as he paced the din-ing-room in his happily-mounting fancies —to the muffled movements of the nurse in Mrs Coppinger's room, to the faint cheerings and rappings of the table from the servant's hall. She thought of the child born in Bethlehem who gave name and meaning to that day, how rude was his cradle, and in what a life of labor and sorrow as the ransom for many, the manger was the first resting place. The treatment bestowed on Mat Coppinger during succeeding Christmas days, and the numerous unmarked days between, took its color from the treatment bestowed on his first day. From his father he had what discipline he received, his mother gave the chief indulgence, and his aunt Nunks held up before him a higher standard. Mat was still a lad when his mother died. Her illness was sudden, and by the time he was brought home from school, she was barely able to recognize him and take leave of him. But she roused herself by a great effort ; the passion of mother-love swelling at her heart serving her for a stimulant. " Are you there, my boy ? Don't be frightened," she said, in her faint voice. " No, mamma," answered Mat, swallowing a sob manfully; " but oh ! ain't you any better?" lie questioned wistfully. " I'll never be better in this world," she answered, with conviction; "I'm going away from you all. Are you sorry to lose me, Mat?" she added quickly, with the human craving for sympathy. " To be sure I am," replied the bewildered boy, with boyish bluntness; " I would do anything to make you well again; you must get well, mamma." " No, no, it is not God's will; pray to Him, dear, that we may meet again." Her voice was sinking in exhaustion, and she looked feebly for help to her sister-in-law. " You bid him be a good man 'for Christ's sake and yours," prompted Nunks Coppinger, thinking for both mother and son through her own sorrow —above all thinking of Mat's future, how he would never forget this meeting and parting, and that a promise doubly sacred, because given at such a time, might be a help to him in the battle of life. "Yes, Mat," his mother assented, with all the strength left her. " Yes, mother," was Mat's subdued pledge. He was sent .on* of the room, not loth to be released from a position so strange and trying to him, that his mother might try to sleep—a sleep which proved that of death. Mat Coppinger took no honors at the university. He had fair abilities, but he did not work to win honors. He was not plucked j for just as he stopped short of being a reading man, he stopped short of being a fast man. Mr Coppinger had wished his son to study for the bar, and Mat entered his name and ate hi? dinners, and then discovered that he had no bent for the law. Mr Coppinger became a little more de* monstrative over this last contradiction on Mat's part, " Since you are disposed to be content with the modest position of a country gentleman, and find that you have no vocation for anything higher," he wrote to Ids son a little dryly, "I think you had better come home at once, and acquaint yourself with country matters-—I mean with what may be in justice looked for from you after you fill , my place, and with the management of the Marsh Abbots estate, on which your prospects will depend to a greater extent than I had at one time believed, not only from your abpdonement o,f the bar, but from losses which I am sorry to say have arisen in the Jamaica property. I propose going out to Rocca myself in about a month. Your residence at Marsh Abbots will be the more desirable because of my absence,

You are aware that old Broderip is dead. Griffiths, the neiv steward, promises fairly, but has hardly had a trial. Even your aunt Nunks is affected by the spirit of change. She has agreed i to accompany her old friend, the late vicar's daughter, who has been ordered to Madeira as a last chance of her health." Mat did not dispute his father's will, though he exercised his Englishman's privilege of grumbling. " What am I to do poking down at Marsh Abbots, when my father and aunt Nunks are off? Had not he better have remained at home and entrusted me with the West India business ?" The idea had just struck Mat. He knew very little of the family's West Indian concerns. Neither had he, young man, though he was, any very burning curiosity to see how that tropical land lay. His long vacations had included as much travelling north, south, east, and west, from Norway to the Grecian Isles, with a run over to the United States, as would have appeased the wandering hunger of all save an ardent vagabond; but Mat Coppinger's defect was that ease and self-indulgence had robbed him early of ardour.

Marsh Abbots had a great mansionhouse of white stone, built in the days when no country house was held complete without pillar and portico. It was set down in its park-like paddock, in an old fen country abounding in sedgy pastures and willowy coppices. Mat's disgust was, like much about him, superficial. In however fault-finding a spirit, he meant to fulfil his part of the contract which his father had set him, he put his shoulder languidly to the wheel, and warmed a little to his work. Very soon he got into a regular track of occupations and amusements, and was tolerably well occupied and amused. He rode and walked by degrees over all the acres which were destined to belong to him. He examined crops and live-stock, and tried to settle to his own satisfaction the degree of cultivation which the land was receiving, and whether it would bear more with corresponding remuneration. He looked at every building and bit of fence ; he inquired into the drainage. He did not neglect the conditions of the tenants and laborers, as their prosperous condition seemed to him essential to the prosperity of the whole concern. He had consultations with the new steward on fresh systems of manure and cropping, on fresh applications of machinery to country operations.

Under the head of amusement Mat took what hunting was left him; he revived his personal interest in the rearing and breaking of colts and puppies. He even condescended to return to his boyish partiality for poultry, plagued the heart of his hen-wife by hi 3 stringent laws and requirements, and became fanatical on questions of spurs and hackles.

The neighbours were old friends of Mat's family, and he visited them faithfully (though not one of them was particularly congenial to his taste and temper), and his runs up town were brief and occasional. He spent an hour or two in the library every morning, and after he had studied the newspaper he took to brushing up his classics better than he had brushed them up in college. He was musical, and he had his aunt Nunk's old grand piano replaced by his own cottage piano of the latest and most approved construction, on which he could rattle, dash or meander, and bring himself into harmony with twilight and moonlight, cloudy gloom and brooding sunshine—while he said he detested sentiment.

f n conlusion, as Mat attended church regularly every Sunday morning, he had the reputation of being an exemplary, irreproachable young fellow. But without the sense of being a hypocrite, though a formalist must needs be a modified hypocrite, Mat had no more idea of taking prayers and lessons to himself, and seeking to act them out in his every-day life, than tens and hundreds of thousands of Christian worshippers of every crc.'d and denomi' nation. Ido not say that no effect was produced <vi Mat Coppinger by his nominal Christianity, Yet I cannot conceive that a man could be losing his life to save it, whose own profit and pleasure—grafting that they were lawfully vested so far—were his single consistent aim. He heard of the world lying in wickedness and misery, and whether he gave thorough credence to the fact or not, he never lifted a finger to deliver the world, unless by helping its material prosperity hi pursuing his owri. He was a man who knew nothing of repentance, of spiritual struggles, of aspirations which rose high above the world while they held the whole world within their grasp. (To lie emtinued.)