.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 48162
   :PG.Title: The Pennycomequicks (Volume 2 of 3)
   :PG.Released: 2015-02-04
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: \S. Baring-Gould
   :DC.Title: The Pennycomequicks (Volume 2 of 3)
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1889
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE PENNYCOMEQUICKS (VOLUME 2 OF 3)
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      THE PENNYCOMEQUICKS

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      A Novel

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      BY

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      \S. BARING GOULD

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      AUTHOR OF
      'MEHALAH,' 'COURT ROYAL,' 'JOHN HERRING,' 'THE GAVEROCKS,' ETC.

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      IN THREE VOLUMES

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      VOL. II.

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      LONDON
      SPENCER BLACKETT & HALLAM
      MILTON HOUSE, 35, ST. BRIDE STREET, LUDGATE CIRCUS, E.C.
      1889

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      [*All rights reserved*]

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   CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

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   CHAPTER

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XVII.  `MISFORTUNES NEVER COME SINGLY`_
XVIII.  `JOHN DALE`_
XIX.  `BACKING OUT`_
XX.  `A FACE IN THE DARK`_
XXI.  `HYACINTH BULBS`_
XXII.  `YES OR NO?`_
XXIII.  `EARLE SCHOFIELD`_
XXIV.  `A RECOGNITION`_
XXV.  `WITHOUT BELLS`_
XXVI.  `HYMEN`_
XXVII.  `AN ALARM`_
XXVIII.  `THE SPARE ROOM`_
XXIX.  `RECOGNITION`_
XXX.  `EXEUNT`_
XXXI.  `ESTRANGEMENT`_
XXXII.  `THE FLIGHT OF EROS`_
XXXIII.  `EXILE`_

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.. _`MISFORTUNES NEVER COME SINGLY`:

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   THE PENNYCOMEQUICKS.

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   CHAPTER XVII.

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   MISFORTUNES NEVER COME SINGLY.

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Next morning Salome was agreeably surprised to
find her mother better, brighter, and without the
expression of mingled alarm and pain that her face
had worn for the last two days.  She refrained from
telling her about the mysterious nocturnal visitor,
because it was her invariable practice to spare the old
lady everything that might cause her anxiety and
provoke a relapse.  It could do no good to
unnecessarily alarm her, and Salome knew how to refrain
from speaking unnecessarily.

Before paying her mother her morning visit, Salome
made an attempt to get at the bottom of the matter
that puzzled her and rendered her uneasy.  It was
the duty of the housemaid to lock the doors at night.
Salome sent for her, and inquired about that which
gave admission to the garden.  The girl protested
that she had fastened up as usual, and had not
neglected any one of the doors.

Notwithstanding this assurance, Salome remained
unshaken in her conviction that the open doorway
was due to the neglect of the servant.  She knew
that in the class of domestics, truth is esteemed too
precious to be wasted by telling it, and that the
asseveration of a maid charged with misdemeanour is
to be read like morning dreams.  She did not pursue
the matter with the young woman, so as not to involve
her in fresh falsehoods; she, herself, remained of the
same opinion.

On her way across the hall to her mother's room,
Salome noticed that the garden-door was not only
locked, but that the key had been withdrawn from it.
This Philip had done last night, and he had not
replaced it.  It now occurred to her that she had
omitted taking a step which might, and probably
would, have led to the detection of the trespasser.
The door led into the garden, but egress from the
garden could only be had through the door in the
wall of the lower or vegetable garden, rarely used,
generally locked, through which manure was brought,
and the man occasionally employed in the garden
passed when there employed.  As this gate would
certainly be locked, the man who had gone out of
the house into the garden could only have escaped
thence with difficulty.  If he had been at once pursued,
he might have been captured before he could scale
the wall.  This had not occurred to her or to Philip
at the time.

'Salome, my dear,' said Mrs. Cusworth, after her
daughter had kissed her and congratulated her on her
improvement, 'I am thankful to say that I am better.
A load that has troubled and oppressed me for some
days has been lifted off my heart.'

'I am glad, mamma,' said the girl, 'that at last you
are reconciled to the change.  It was inevitable.  I
dare say you will feel better when we are settled at
Redstone.'

'My dear,' answered Mrs. Cusworth, 'I must
abandon the idea of going there.'

'Where?  To Redstone?'

'Yes.  The house is beyond my means.  I cannot
possibly afford it.'

'But—mamma.'  Salome was startled.  'I have
already secured the lodgings.'

'Only for a quarter, and it would be better to
sacrifice a quarter's rent than turn out again in three
months.  I could not endure the shift again, so
quickly following this dreadful change.'

'But—mamma!'  Salome was greatly taken aback.
'This is springing a surprise on me.  We have no
other house into which we can go.'

'A cottage, quite a cottage, such as the artisans
occupy, must content us.  We shall have to cut our
coat according to our cloth.'

'Mamma!  You allowed me to engage Redstone.'

'I did not then know how we were circumstanced.
To make both ends meet we shall have to pinch.'

'But why pinch?  You told me before that we had
enough on which to live quietly but comfortably.'

'I was mistaken.  I have had a great and
unexpected loss.'

'Loss, mamma!  What loss?'

'I mean—well,' the old lady stammered, 'I mean a
sore disappointment.  I am not so well off as I had
supposed.  I had miscalculated my resources.'

'Have you only just discovered what your means
really are?'

'You must not excite her,' said Janet reproachfully.

'I do not wish to do so,' explained Salome.  'But
I am so surprised, so puzzled—and this is such an
upset of our plans at the last moment, after I had
engaged the lodgings—I do not know what to think
about it.'  She paused, considered, and said with a
flush in her face: 'Mamma, you surely had not
reckoned on poor uncle's will?'

Mrs. Cusworth hesitated, then said: 'Of course, it
is a severe blow to me that no provision had been
made for you and me.  We might fairly have
reckoned on receiving something after what was done
for Janet, and you were his favourite.'

'Oh, mamma, you did not count on this?'

'Remember that you are left absolutely destitute.
What little I have saved will hardly support us both.
Janet can do nothing for us just now.'

'Because of the Prussians,' said Mrs. Baynes.
'Wait a bit; as soon as we have swept them from the
face of fair France, I shall make you both come to me
at Elboeuf.'

'Mamma,' said Salome, 'I am still puzzled.  You
knew very well that uncle's will was worthless when
you let me make arrangements for Redstone, and
now that I have settled everything you knock over
my plans.  If you had told me——'

'I could not tell you.  I did not know,' said the
widow.  'That is to say, I had misreckoned my
means.'

'Then there is no help for it.  I must try to get
out of the agreement for Redstone, if I can.  I am
afraid the agent will not let me off.  We shall have to
pay double rent, and there is little chance of
underletting Redstone at this time of the year.'

'Better pay double than have to make a double
removal; it will be less expense in the end.'

'Perhaps so,' answered Salome; then she left her
mother's room that she might go upstairs and think
over this extraordinary change of plans.  She was
painfully aware that she had been treated without due
consideration, subjected unnecessarily to much trouble
and annoyance.

In the hall she saw Mr. Philip Pennycomequick.
He beckoned to her to follow him to the garden-door,
and she obeyed.  He unlocked the door.

'I took away the key last night,' he said, 'and now
you see my reason.'

He pointed to the turf.

A slight fall of snow, that comminuted snow that is
like meal, had taken place at sundown, and it had
covered the earth with a fine film of white, fine as
dust.  No further fall had taken place during the night.

A track of human feet was impressed on the white
surface from the door to the steps that gave access to
the vegetable garden.

Without exchanging a word, both followed the
track, walking wide of it, one on each side.  A
footprint marked each step, and the track led, less
distinctly, down the lower garden to the door in the
wall at the bottom, through which it doubtless passed,
as there were no signs of a scramble.  The door was
locked.

'Have you the key?' asked Philip.

'I have not.  There is one on Mr. Pennycomequick's
bunch, and my mother has a second.'

'It matters not,' said Philip.  'Outside is a path
along which the mill people have gone this morning
to their work, and have trampled out all the traces of
our mysterious visitor.  The prints are those of
unshod feet.  The shape of the impression tells me that.'

They returned to the house.

'This unpleasant incident convinces me of one
thing,' said Philip.  'It will not do for me to live in
this place alone.  I can explain this mysterious affair
in one or other way.  Either one of the servants
having a brother, cousin, or lover, whom she wished
to favour with the pick of my uncle's clothes, that she
knew were laid out for distribution, allowed him to
come and choose for himself——'

'Or else——'

'Or else the gardener left the little door in the wall
ajar.  Some passing tramp, seeing it open, ventured
in, and finding nothing worth taking in the garden,
pursued his explorations to the house, where he was
fortunate enough to find another door open, through
which he effected his entrance and helped himself to
what he first laid hands on.  He would have taken
more had he not been disturbed by you.'

'He was not disturbed by me.'

'He may have seen you pass down the stairs, and
so have taken the alarm and decamped.  My second
explanation is the least probable, for it demands a
double simultaneous neglect of fastening doors by
two independent persons, the housemaid and the gardener.'

'The gardener has not been working for some weeks.'

'Then how this has occurred concerns me less than
the prevention of a recurrence,' said Philip.  'I must
have a responsible person in the house.  May I see
your mother?'

As he asked, he entered the hall, and Janet at the
same moment came out of her mother's sitting-room
with a beaming face.  She slightly bowed to Philip,
and said eagerly to her sister, 'Salome, the postman
is coming down the road.  I am sure he brings me
good news.  I am going to the door to meet him.'

Salome admitted Philip into the sitting-room.  She
would have withdrawn, but he requested her to stay.

'What I have to say to Mrs. Cusworth,' he said
shortly, 'concerns you as well as your mother.'

He took a chair at the widow's request, and then,
in his matter-of-fact business fashion, plunged at once
into the subject of his visit.

'I dare say that you have wondered, madam, that
neither Mrs. Sidebottom nor I have made any call on
you lately with a proposal.  The fact is that only
yesterday did my aunt and I arrive at a definite and
permanent settlement.  You are aware that she has
acted as administratrix of my uncle's property.  We
have, after some difference, come to an arrangement,
and by that arrangement I take the factory under my
management—that, however, is not a matter of interest
to you.  What does concern you is the agreement we
have struck about the house, which is become practically
mine, I shall live in it henceforth and conduct
the business so successfully carried on by my uncle,
and I hope and trust without allowing it to decline.
You are well aware that Mrs. Sidebottom gave you
formal notice to quit: this was a formality, because at
the time nothing was settled relative to the firm and
the house.  Please not to consider for a moment that
there was a slight intended.  As far as I am concerned,
nothing could have been more foreign to my wishes.
Do not allow that notice to affect your arrangements.'

'We accepted the notice, and have made our plans
to leave,' said Salome quietly.

'In the first uncertainty as to what would be done,'
said Philip, 'Mrs. Sidebottom came to you, Mrs. Cusworth,
and I fear spoke with haste and impetuosity.
She was excited, and at the time in a state of irritation
with me, who had withstood her wishes.  Since then
an arrangement has been concluded between us which
leaves me the house.  This house henceforth belongs
to me, and not to my aunt, who ceases to have
authority within its walls.  I am going to live here.
But, madam, as you may well believe, I am incapable
of managing domestic affairs.  I have been unused to
have such duties devolve on me.  I shall be engaged
in mastering new responsibilities which will occupy
my whole attention, and it is imperative that I should
be spared the distraction of housekeeping.  The event
of last night—the appearance of a man invading this
house——'

Mrs. Cusworth turned deadly pale, and a look of
fear came into her eyes.  Salome hastily turned to
Philip, and her appealing glance told him he must not
touch on a subject that would alarm and agitate her
mother.

'I mean,' said Philip hastily, 'that a man,
inexperienced like myself, entering a large house in which
there are domestics, of whose freaks and vagaries he
knows nothing, and desires to know less, is like a
colonist in Papua, of the natives of which nothing
certain has been revealed.  They may be cannibals;
they may, on the other hand, be inoffensive.  Of
landladies in lodging-houses I have had a long and bitter
experience.  I have run the gamut of them, from the
reduced gentlewoman to the wife of an artisan, and I
believe it is one of those professions which, like
vivisection, dries up the springs of moral worth.  It will
be essential to my happiness, I may say to my success
in the business, to have a responsible person to manage
the house for me.  You, madam, will relieve me from
grave embarrassments if you will consent to remain
here on the same terms as heretofore.  It will indeed
be conferring on me a lasting favour, which I know I
am not justified in asking.'

'It is very good of you to suggest this,' began the
widow.

'On the contrary,' interrupted Philip, 'it is selfish
of me to propose it—to wish to retain you in a place
where you must be surrounded by sorrowful reminiscences,
and tie you to work when you ought to be free
from every care.'

'I thank you,' said Mrs. Cusworth.  'It so happens
that I am distressed by pecuniary losses, and I am
therefore glad to accept your offer.'

'I am sorry, madam, that you have met with losses.
But I do not wish to force you to accept obligations
for which you do not feel yourself equal without
understanding exactly how matters stand.  Mrs. Sidebottom
and I have consulted together about the probable
wishes of my deceased uncle, and we unite in thinking
that he never intended to leave Miss Cusworth
unprovided for.  The will he had drawn out perhaps erred
on the side of excessive liberality to her and disregard
of the claims of his own relations.  That was
cancelled—how, we cannot say.  Suffice it to say, it was
cancelled, but without cancelling the obligation to do
something for Miss Cusworth.  We are quite sure
that Mr. Pennycomequick intended to provide for her,
and Mrs. Sidebottom and I agree in proposing for her
acceptance such a sum as was invested by my late
uncle for the benefit of Mrs. Baynes on her marriage
a twelve month ago.'

He was the lawyer—formal, cold, stiff—as he spoke,
measuring his sentences and weighing his words.
Even when he endeavoured to be courteous, as when
inviting the widow to stay on in his house, he spoke
without ease of manner, graciousness, and softness of
tone.

'Of course,' said Mrs. Cusworth, 'it has been a
great disappointment to us that we received nothing
from Mr. Pennycomequick——'

'Mother!' interrupted Salome, quivering, flushing
to the roots of her hair, then turning white.
Mrs. Cusworth was one of those ordinary women who
think it becomes them not to receive a favour as a
favour, but as a due.  Salome at once felt the grace
and kindness of the arrangement proposed for her
advantage by Philip, and had little hesitation in
attributing it to him, and freeing Mrs. Sidebottom
from the initiative, at least, in it.  But her mother
supposed it due to her dignity to receive it as a
concession to a legitimate claim.

Salome did not look in Philip's face.  Afraid that
her mother might say something further that was
unsuited to the situation, she interposed:

'Mr. Pennycomequick,' she said, in a low, gentle
voice, 'you said just now that you had no claim on
our services.  You have created such a claim.  Your
proposal is so generous, so kindly intentioned, and so
far transcending what we had any right to ask or to
expect, that you lay us under an obligation which it
will be a pleasure for us to discharge.  My dear
mother is not herself able to do much with her hands,
but she is like a general in a battlefield—on a
commanding eminence she issues her directions, and I am
her orderly who fly about carrying her commands.
We accept with gratitude and pleasure your offer to
continue in this house, at least for a while.  For that
other offer that concerns me alone, will you allow me
time to consider it?'

At that moment, before Philip could reply, the door
was burst open, and Janet rushed in, with a face of
despair, holding an open letter before her.

'Mamma!  Oh, mamma!  The Prussians have
killed him.  Albert—has been shot!'





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.. _`JOHN DALE`:

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   CHAPTER XVIII.


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   JOHN DALE.

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In the cabin of the *Conquering Queen*, Mr. Pennycomequick
had much time for thought before he was
sufficiently recovered to leave his berth.  He fell to
wondering what Salome and her mother, Mrs. Sidebottom
and his nephew, had thought of his disappearance.

'Can you get me a back newspaper, or some account
of the flood?' he asked of Ann Dewis.  'I am
interested to hear what happened, and whether I am
among those accounted to have fallen victims.'

After several trials, Mrs. Dewis procured what was
required in pamphlet form—a reprint from one of the
West Riding papers of its narrative of the inundation,
of the appearance of the country after it had subsided,
from its special correspondent, and full lists of the lost
and drowned.  Mr. Pennycomequick read this account
by the light that descended from the hatchway; read
about the havoc effected in Keld-dale, the walls thrown
down, the cottages inundated, the roads and the
embankments torn up, and then among the names of
those lost he read his own, with the surprising
information that the body had been recovered, and though
frightfully mutilated, had been identified.

This was news indeed.  That he was esteemed dead
did not surprise Mr. Pennycomequick when he learned
how long he had been ill, but that some other body
should have been mistaken for his was indeed
inexplicable.

'By this time,' said he to himself, 'Salome will have
proved my will and Louisa will have exhausted her
vituperation of my memory.'

It took him two days to digest what he had learned.
As he recovered, his mind recurred to those thoughts
which had engaged him on the night of the flood, as
he walked on the towpath by the canal.

If he were to return to Mergatroyd when supposed
to be dead, he was confident that Salome and her
mother would receive him with unfeigned delight, and
without reluctance surrender to him what they had
received through his bequest.  But he was by no
means sure of himself, that in the joy of his return
he would be able to control his feelings so as not to
show to Salome what their real nature was.

He recalled his prayer to Heaven, that he might
have the way pointed out to him which he should go,
and startlingly, in a manner unexpected, in a direction
not anticipated, the hand of Providence had flashed
out of the sky and had pointed out his course.  It had
snapped his tie to Mergatroyd—at all events
temporarily; had separated him from Salome, and set him
where he had leisure and isolation in which to
determine his conduct.  Jeremiah was a man of
religious mind, and this consideration profoundly
affected him.  He had been carried from his home, and
his name blotted out of the book of the living.

What would be the probable consequences were he
to return to Mergatroyd as soon as he was recovered?
The very desire he felt to be back, to see Salome again,
was so strong within him that it constituted evidence
to his mind that if he were at home, in the exuberant
joy of meeting her again he would let drop those
words which his judgment told him ought not to be
spoken.  Other thoughts besides these exercised his
mind.

He turned to the past, to his dead brother Nicholas,
and his conscience reproached him for having
maintained the feud so persistently and so remorselessly.
Nicholas had suffered for what he had done, and by
suffering had expiated his fault.  He, Jeremiah, had,
moreover, visited on the guiltless son the resentment
he bore to the father.  He endeavoured to pacify his
conscience by the reflection that he had made a
provision for Philip in his will; but this reflection did not
satisfy him.  Philip was the representative of the
family, and Jeremiah had no right to exclude him from
the firm without a trial of his worth.

Then he turned to another train of ideas connected
with his present condition.

Was his health likely to be sufficiently restored to
enable him to resume the old routine of work?  Would
a resumption of his duties conduce to the re-edification
of his health?  Would it not retard, if not prevent,
complete recovery?  Would it not be a better course for
him to shake himself free from every care—keep his
mind disengaged from business till his impaired
constitution had been given time to recover?  He knew
that rheumatic fever often seriously affected the heart,
and he asked himself whether he dare return to the
conflict of feeling, the inner struggle, sure to attend a
recurrence to the same condition as before.  Would
it not be the wisest course for him to go abroad for a
twelvemonth or more, to some place where his mind
might recover its balance, his health be re-established—and
he might acquire that perfect mastery over his
feelings which he had desired, but which he had lost.

What did he care about the fortune he had amassed—by
no means a large one, but respectable?  He was
a man of simple habits and of no ambition.  He was
interested in his business, proud of the good name the
firm had ever borne.  He would be sorry to think
that Pennycomequick should cease to be known in
Yorkshire as the title of an old-established reliable
business associated with figured linen damasks.  But
was his presence in the factory essential to its
continuance?

He looked at Ann Dewis squatted by the fire
smoking.  For seventeen years she had kept Earle
Schofield's pipe going, which he had put into her
mouth, and she had been faithful to a simple request.
He had put his mill into Salome's hands, and had
said, 'Keep it going.'  Was she less likely to fulfil his
wish than had been Ann Dewis to the desire of Earle
Schofield?

He was not concerned as to his means of subsistence
should he determine to remain as one dead.  He had
an old friend, one John Dale, at Bridlington, the only
man to whom he was not reserved and suspicious—the
only man of whom he took counsel when in doubt
and difficulty.

John Dale had a robust common-sense, and to him
Jeremiah resolved to apply.  When John Dale first
went to Bridlington he had been lent a considerable
sum of money by his friend, which had not been
repaid, but which, now that Dale had established a good
practice as a surgeon, he was ready and willing to
repay.  John Dale had been constituted trustee on
the occasion of Janet's marriage.  He had paid visits
to Mergatroyd, and Jeremiah had visited Bridlington;
but as both were busy men, such visits had been short
and few.  Though, however, they saw little of each
other, their mutual friendship remained unimpaired.

As soon as Mr. Pennycomequick was sufficiently
recovered to leave the barge, he provided himself with
a suit of clothes at a slop-shop, and settled into an inn
in the town of Hull, whence he wrote to Dale to come
to him.  He had his purse in his pocket when he was
carried away from Mergatroyd, and the purse contained
a few sovereigns, sufficient to satisfy his immediate
necessities.

''Pon my word, never was so astonished in my life!'
shouted John Dale, as he burst into the room occupied
by his friend, then stood back, looked at him from head
to foot, and roared.

Mr. Pennycomequick was strangely altered.  He had
been accustomed to shave his face, with the exception
of a pair of cutlets that reached no lower than the lobe
of his ears.  Now his face was frouzy with hair: lips,
jaws, cheeks, chin, throat, were overgrown, and the hair
had got beyond the primary stage of stubbledom.  He
had been wont to attire himself in black or Oxford
mixture of a dark hue, to wear a suit of formal cut,
and chiefly to affect a double-breasted frock coat that
gave a specially substantial mercantile look to the man.
The suit in which he was now invested was snuff-coloured
and cut away in stable fashion.

'Upon my word, this is a regeneration!  Dead as a
manufacturer, alive as a man on the turf.  Is the moral
transformation as radical?  What is the meaning of
this?  I saw your death in the papers.  I wrote to
Salome about it, a letter of condolence, and had her
reply.  How came you to life again, you impostor, and
in this guise?'

The doctor—he was really a surgeon—but everyone
called him Dr. Dale, was a stout, florid man, with his
hair cut short as that of a Frenchman, like the fur
on the back of a mole.  He was fresh, boisterous in
manner when out of the sick-room, but when engaged
on a patient, laid aside his roughness and noise.  His
cheeriness, his refusal to take a gloomy view of a case,
made him popular, and perhaps went some way towards
encouraging nature to make an effort to throw off
disease.

Jeremiah told him the story of his escape.

'And now,' said Dale, 'I suppose you are going
back.  By Jove, I should like to see the faces when
you reappear in the family circle thus dressed and behaired.'

'Before I consider about going back, I want you to
overhaul me,' said Jeremiah, 'and please to tell me
plainly what you find.  I'm not a woman to be
frightened at bad news.'

'At once, old man.  Off with those togs,' shouted
the surgeon.

When the medical examination was over, Dale told
Mr. Pennycomequick that his heart was weak, but that
there was no organic derangement.  He must be
careful of himself for some time to come.  He must
avoid climbing hills, ascending many stairs.

'As, for instance, the several flights of my factory.'

'Yes—you must content yourself with the office.'

'I might as well give up at once the entire management
if I may not go to the several departments and
see what is going on there.'

'You must economize the pulsations of your heart
for awhile.  You will find yourself breathless at every
ascent.  Your heart is at fault, not your lungs.  The
machine is weak, and you must not make an engine of
one-horse power undertake work that requires one of
five.  If you could manage to knock off work
altogether——'

'For how long?'

'That depends.  You are not a boy with
super-abundant vitality and any amount of recuperative
power.  After the age of fifty we have to husband our
strength; we get well slowly, not with a leap.  A child
is down to-day and up to-morrow.  An old man who
is down to-day is up perhaps that day month.  The
thing of all others for you would be to go abroad for
a bit, to—let us say, the South of France or Sicily,
or better still, Cairo, lead a *dolce far niente* life,
forget worries, neglect duties, disregard responsibilities,
and let Nature unassisted be your doctor and
nurse.'

'Now look here, Dale,' said Mr. Pennycomequick,
'your advice jumps with my own opinion.  I have
been considering whilst convalescent what was the good
of my drudging on at Mergatroyd.  I have made a
fortune—a moderate one, but one that contents
me—and have no need to toil through the last years of life,
to fag out the final straws of existence.'

'Fag out!' exclaimed Dale, 'you dog, you—why,
you have gone into the Caldron of Pelias, and have
come forth rejuvenated.'

'If I remember the story aright,' retorted
Jeremiah, 'Pelias never came out of the caldron.  I am
like Pelias in this, that I have gone into the waters of
Lethe.'

'Now, Jeremiah, old boy,' said the surgeon, 'let this
be a settled thing, you husband your strength for a
twelvemonth at least, and you will then be vigorous
as ever.  If you insist on going into harness at once,
in two years I shall be attending your funeral.'

'Very well,' said Jeremiah, 'if things are in order
at Mergatroyd, I will go, but I cannot allow the
business to fall into confusion.  To tell you the truth, I
have reasons which make me wish not to go back there
till I am quite restored, but I should like to know what
is going on there.'

'That I can perhaps tell you.  I have had a letter
from Salome.  Do you know, my friend, when I have
been away from Bridlington, on a holiday, I have been
on thorns, thinking that everything must be going out
of gear on account of my absence, that my *locum
tenens* has let patients slip and mismanaged difficult
cases; yet when I have returned I have found that I
was not missed—all has gone on swimmingly without
me.  You will find that it has been the same at
Mergatroyd.'

'But what says Salome?'

'In the first place that cricket, Janet, is back.  She
was sent home lest an Uhlan should fall in love with
her or she fall in love with an Uhlan, and now her
husband is dead.  Like a fool he served as a volunteer,
uncalled for, as he was an Englishman.'

'Albert Baynes dead!  Then you will have some
work on your hands as trustee.'

'So I shall.  Now about your affairs.  It seems
that the will you drew up against my advice, without
taking legal opinion, was so much waste-paper;
Salome says merely that it proved invalid, so
Mrs. Sidebottom had to take out letters of administration,
and divide your property between her and your
nephew Philip.'

'What!—Salome get nothing!  I shall go back at
once and send those two vultures to the right about.'

'Have patience; they came out better than you
might have expected.  It has been arranged that
Philip shall live in your house and undertake the
management of the factory, and he has asked
Mrs. Cusworth to remain on in the old place in the same
position as she occupied before.'

'I am glad they have had the grace not to turn her
out.'

'That is not all.  As it was clearly your wish that
Salome should be liberally provided for, your sister
and nephew have agreed to fund for her the same
amount that was invested for her sister Janet.  Now
I do not know what your will was, but it seems to me
that nothing could have been better, even if you had
the disposing of it.  Your natural heirs get their
rights, and your pet Salome is honourably and even
handsomely treated by them.'

Jeremiah said nothing; his chin fell on his breast.
He had not thought that Mrs. Sidebottom would do
a generous thing.  Of Philip he knew nothing; but
what he had just heard predisposed him in his
favour.

'Now take my advice, Jeremiah,' continued Dr. Dale.
'Let Philip go on where he is.  He has thrown
up his place in a solicitor's office at Nottingham, and,
as Salome writes, is devoting himself energetically to
the work of the mill, and learning all the ramifications
of the business.  You wanted someone to relieve you,
and you have the man—the right man, already in the
place.'

'He may get everything wrong.'

'I do not believe it.  You have an aversion to
lawyers, but let me tell you that a lawyer's office is
an excellent school; there men learn to know human
nature, how to deal with men, and get business habits.
The fellow must have a good heart, or he would not
have come to an arrangement with his aunt to part
with a large sum of money for Salome.  Besides,
Salome is no fool, and she writes of him in high
praise for his diligence, his regular habits, and his
kindness and consideration for her mother.'

John Dale paused for Jeremiah to say something;
but his friend remained silent, with his head down,
thinking.

'If you go back,' said the doctor, 'you will throw
everything wrong.  You will worry yourself and will
take the spirit out of Philip.  Trust him.  He is on
his mettle.  If he makes a blunder, that is natural,
and he will suffer for it; but he will commit none
that is fatal; he is too shrewd for that.'

'Dale,' said Mr. Pennycomequick, 'if I make up
my mind not to return to Mergatroyd, I make up my
mind at the same time to leave those there in ignorance
that I am still alive.'

'As you like.  It would not be amiss.  Then Philip
would work with better energy.  If things go wrong
I can always drop you a line and recall you, and you
can appear as *Deus ex machinâ*, and set all to rights.
I have often thought that half the aggravation of
leaving this world must be the seeing things going to
sixes and sevens without being able to right them, a
business we have got together being scattered, a
reputation we have built up being pulled down; to have
to see things going contrary to our intentions, and be
unable to put out a finger to mend them; to hear
ourselves criticised, and ill-natured, and false stories
told of us, and be incapable of saying a word in our
own defence.  I will tell you a story.  At one time
when I went to dinner-parties I was the first to go.
But on one occasion I stayed, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith
left before me.  No sooner were their backs turned
than the company fell to criticising the Smiths, their
pretensions, the airs they gave themselves, till the
Brownes departed, whereupon the conversation became
scandalous about the Brownes: then the Jones family
departed.  Thereupon I learned that the Joneses were
living beyond their means, and were on the verge of
bankruptcy.  So on till the last was gone.  After
that I have never been the first to leave; I try to be
last, so as to leave only my host and hostess behind
to discuss and blacken me.  Now, Jeremiah, you have
gone out quickly and unexpectedly, and if you could
steal back to Mergatroyd unperceived, then you will
find that the maxim *De mortuis nil nisi bonum* is not
being observed.  You are fortunate; you can return
at will and correct false estimates.  That is not given
save to the exceptionally privileged.'

'You will go to Mergatroyd for me,' said
Mr. Pennycomequick, 'and see with your own eyes how
things are?'

'Certainly I will.  Do you know, old fellow,' said
Dale, with a twinkle in his eye, 'I have sometimes
feared for you, feared lest you should make a ghastly
fool of yourself, and make that dear little piece of
goods, Salome, your wife.  It would not do, old boy;
if you had done it I would have ceased to respect
you; you would have lost the regard and provoked
the ridicule of everyone in Mergatroyd.  Old boy, it
would never have done.'

'No,' said Mr. Pennycomequick, 'it would never
have done; you are right, it would never have done.'

'It would have been a cruelty to her,' pursued
Dale, 'for Nature never designed Winter to mate with
Spring, to bring a frost on all the sweet blossoms of
youth, and in checking the rising sap, perhaps to kill
the plant.'

'No,' said Jeremiah, 'it would never have done.'





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   CHAPTER XIX


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'You will dine with us to-night, Philip,' said
Mrs. Sidebottom.  'Now that we have settled our business,
it will be quite fascinating to have a bright and
cheerful evening together.  We will take the crape off our
heads and hearts.  Lamb shall sing us some of his
comic songs, and I will play you any music you like
on the piano.  You shall listen, and the *motif* of our
entertainment shall be "Begone, dull care."  I wish
there were anyone invitable in this place, but there is
not, and, moreover, though I do not care for the
opinion of these barbarians, it is too soon after the
funeral to have a dinner-party; we must mind the
proprieties wherever we are.'

Mrs. Sidebottom was in good spirits.  She had
managed for herself well.  The estate of
Mr. Pennycomequick had been divided between herself and
Philip, but as the business was already charged with
her jointure, he deducted this from the total before
dividing.  She still retained her hold on the factory,
remained as a sleeping partner in the firm, though, as
Philip found to his cost before long, she was a sleeping
partner given to walking in her sleep.  Philip was
to be the active member of the firm.  It was by no
means her wish that the mill should be sold and the
business pass away, because it was prosperous.  If it
had fallen into Lambert's hands it would have been
different, for she knew well that her son would have
been incompetent to conduct it.  She was cheerful
now that all was concluded, perfectly satisfied with
herself, for the terms she had made with her nephew
did not err on the side of generosity.

'And now,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'I really do
intend to get Lamb to insert a hyphen in his name,
and spell the final syllable with a capital Q.  I have
ascertained from a really learned man that our name
is most respectful; and, like all good names, is
territorial.  It is of ancient British origin, and means the
Wick or settlement as the head of a Combe, that is a
valley.  When you know this you feel that it has an
aristocratic flavour, and that is older than trade.  I
think that when written Penycombe-Quick it will have
an air, Philip, an air of such exalted respectability as
will entitle us to look on those who were entered on
the Roll of Battle Abbey as parvenus.  I intend to
have Lamb's cards printed thus.  I like the American
way of combining the paternal name with that acquired
at marriage.  If I call myself Mrs. Penycombe-Quick-Sidebottom
I flatter myself I shall carry weight.'

There is a characteristic of some persons, not so rare
as might be supposed, but subdued in England as a
token of ill-breeding, yet one which among foreigners,
judging from our experience, is not forbidden by the
social code.  This characteristic is the sudden
transformation of manner and behaviour at the touch of
money.  We meet with and enjoy ready hospitality,
suavity of manner, that lasts till some difference arises
about a coin, when all at once the graces we admired
give place to roughness, a coarseness and greed quite
out of proportion to the amount under dispute.  In
England we may feel aggrieved, but we strive to
conceal our chagrin; not so the foreigner, who
will fall into a paroxysm of fury over a sou or a
kreutzer.

Mrs. Sidebottom was a lady of this calibre.  Chatty,
cordial with those who did not cross her, she was
transformed, when her interests were touched, into a
woman pugnacious, unscrupulous and greedy.  A
phenomenon observed in certain religious revivals is the
impatience of wearing clothes that takes those seized
by spiritual frenzy.  In the ecstasy of devotion or
hysteria, they tear off their garments and scatter them
on the ground.  So, when Mrs. Sidebottom was
possessed by the spirit of greed, she lost control over
herself, she flung aside ordinary courtesy, divested
herself of every shred of politeness, stripped off every
affectation of disinterestedness, and showed herself in
bald, unblushing rapacity.  In dealing with Philip
about the inheritance of Jeremiah, her masterful
pursuit of her own advantage, her overbearing
manner, her persistency, had gained for her notable
advantages.  She had used the privileges of her age,
relationship, sex, to get the better of her nephew, and
only when her ends were gained did she smilingly,
without an apology, resume those trappings of
culture and good breeding which she had flung aside.

Now that all was settled, as she supposed, she was
again the woman of the world, and the agreeable,
social companion.

'Yes, aunt,' said Philip, 'I am glad we have come
to a settlement.  If it be not all that I could have
desired, it at all events leaves me vastly better off than
I was before the death of my uncle.  With the help of
Providence, and a good heart, I trust that the
respectable old house of Pennycomequick will maintain its
character and thrive continuously.'

'You like trade,' said his aunt.  'Lambert never
could have accustomed himself to it.  By the way,
there will be no necessity for you to change the
spelling of your name.'

'I have not an intention to do so.'

'Right.  Of course it is as well to keep on the name
of the firm unaltered.  With us, moving in a higher
and better sphere, it is other.'

'There is one matter, aunt, that has not yet been
definitely arranged, and that is the last about which I
need trouble you.'

'What matter?  I thought all was done.'

'That relative to Miss Cusworth.'

'What about Miss Cusworth?'

'You surely have not forgotten our compact.'

'Compact?  Compact?'

'The agreement we came to that she was to receive
acknowledgment from us.'

'Acknowledgment!  Fiddlesticks!'

'I am sorry to have to refresh your memory,' said
Philip harshly, 'but you may perhaps recall, now that
I speak of it, that I threatened to enter a *caveat* against
your taking out powers of administration, unless you
agreed to my proposition that the young lady should
be given the same sum as was invested for her sister,
which was the least that Uncle Jeremiah intended to
do for her.'

'Now—what nonsense, Philip!  I never heard such
stuff.  I refused to listen to your proposal.  I distinctly
recall my words, and I can swear to them.  I told you
emphatically that nothing in the world would induce
me to consent.'

'The threat I used did, however, dispose you to alter
your note and yield.'

'My dear Philip,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, assuming
an air of solemnity, 'I have taken out administrative
authority and have administered, or am in the
process of administering.'

'Exactly.  You have acted, but you were only
enabled to act because I held back from barring your
way.  You know that very well, aunt, and you know
on what terms I withdrew my opposition.  You
accepted my terms, and I look to you to fulfil your
part of the compact.'

'I do not find it in the bond,' said Mrs. Sidebottom.
'I can quote Shakespeare.  Come, Phil, I thought we
had done with wrangling over sordid mammon.  Let
us enjoy ourselves.  I did not ask you to stay for
dinner that we might renew our disputes.  The
tomahawk is buried and the calumet drawn forth.'

'It was a bond, not, indeed, drawn up in writing,
between us, because I relied on your honour.'

'My dear Phil, I gave no definite promise, but I had
to swear before the man at the Probate Court that I
would administer faithfully and justly according to
law, and the law was plain.  Not a word in it about
Cusworths.  I am in conscience bound to stand by my
oath.  I cannot forswear myself.  If there is one
thing in the world I pride myself on, it is my strict
conscientiousness.'

'The cow that lows loudest yields least milk,'
muttered Philip.  He was greatly incensed.  'Aunt,'
he said angrily, 'this is a quibble unworthy of you.
A perfectly clear understanding was come to between
us, by the terms of which you were to go halves with
me in raising four or five thousand pounds to fund,
or otherwise dispose of for the benefit of Miss Cusworth.'

'Four or five thousand fiddlesticks!'

'If I had opposed you,' said Philip grimly, 'some
awkward questions might have been asked relative to
the cancelled will.'

'What questions?' asked Mrs. Sidebottom, looking
him straight in the face with defiance.

'As to how that will came to have the signature
torn off.'

'They were perfectly welcome to ask that question,
but I defy you to find anyone who could answer it.'

She was right, and Philip knew it.  Whatever his
suspicions might be, he was without a grain of evidence
to substantiate an accusation against anyone.
Moreover, much as he mistrusted his aunt, he could not
bring himself to believe her capable of committing so
daring and wicked an act.

'I wish that the old witch-drowning days were back,'
said Mrs. Sidebottom.  'It is clear to me that Salome
has been exercising her fascinations upon you.  Oh,
that she could be pitched into a pool—that one of
scalding water, swarming with gold-fish, would suit
admirably, because of the colour of her hair.  Then
sink or swim would be all one—sink for innocence,
swim for guilt—clear of her anyway.'

'Do you seriously mean to evade the arrangement
come to between us?' asked Philip.  He would not
be drawn from his point to side issues.

'I never went into it.'

'I beg your pardon, you did agree to what I proposed.'

'Upon compulsion.  No, were I at the strappado,
or all the racks in the world, I would not yield on
compulsion.  There you have Shakspeare again,
Phil.  I wonder whether you can tell me from what
play I quote.  If you were a man of letters, you
would cap my quotations.'

'There can be no question as to what were the
intentions of Uncle Jeremiah.'

'Ah, there I agree with you.  Having made a preposterous
will, he tore it up, to show that he did not
intend to constitute Salome his heiress.'

What was Philip to say?  How bring his aunt to
her terms of agreement?  He remained silent, with
closed lips and contracted brows.

'Now, look here, Philip,' said Mrs. Sidebottom
good-humouredly, 'I have ordered shoulder of mutton
and onion sauce: also quenilles of macaroni and
forced-meat, and marmalade pudding.  Come and
discuss these good things with us, instead of mauling
these dry bones of business.'

'I have already spoken to Mrs. and Miss Cusworth.
Relying on your word, I told them what we purposed
doing for them.'

'Then you made a mistake, and must eat your
words.  What a pity it is, Philip, that we are
continually floundering into errors of judgment, or acts
that our common-sense reproves, so that we come out
scratched and full of thorns!  You will be wiser in
the future.  Never make promises—that is, in money
matters.  If you persist in paying the hussy the four
or five thousand pounds, I have no objection to the
sum coming out of your own pocket.  Excuse me, I
must laugh, to think how you, a lawyer, have allowed
yourself to be bitten.'

'I do not see how I am to pay the sum you mention
without jeopardizing the business.  I must have
money in hand wherewith to carry it on.  If you draw back——'

'There is no *if* in the case.  I do draw back.  Do
me the justice to admit that I never rushed into it.
You did, dazzled by the girl's eyes, drawn by her hair.'

Philip rose.

'What—are you going, Phil?  Lamb will be here
directly.  He is at the White Hart, I believe,
playing billiards.  It is disgusting that he can find no
proper gentlemen to play with, and no good players
either.  Come, sit down again.  You are going to
dine with us.  Some of your uncle's old port and
Amontillado sherry.  It must be drunk—we shall
hardly move it to York.'

'I cannot dine with you now.'

'Why not?'

'Under the circumstances I cannot.' he said coldly.
'I trusted to your honour—I trusted to you as a
lady, and,' he raised his head, 'as a Pennycomequick——'

'How spelled?' asked Mrs. Sidebottom laughingly.

'I cannot sit down with you now, with my respect
and confidence shaken.  I trust that you have spoken
in jest, and that to-morrow you will tell me so; but I
am not fond of jokes—such jokes as these leave a
scar.  I could not accept my share of Uncle
Jeremiah's property without making recognition of the
claims of the Cusworth family.  The father died in
my uncle's service; the mother and daughters have
devoted themselves to making uncle's life easy—and
now to be cast out!  If you hold back, and refuse to
pay your share of two thousand pounds, I must pay
the entire amount; and if the business suffers, well, it
suffers.  The responsibility will be yours, and the
loss yours also, in part.'

'Nonsense, Phil; you will not run any risk.'

'If you had taken your part, and I mine, we could
have borne the loss easily; but if I have the whole
thrown on me, the consequences may be serious.
Ready money is as necessary as steam to make the
mill run.'

'I don't believe—I cannot believe—that you, a man
of reason—you, a man with legal training—can act
such a quixotish part?' exclaimed Mrs. Sidebottom,
becoming for the moment alarmed.  Then she calmed
down again.  'I see through you, Philip,' she said.
'Having failed to persuade me, you seek to terrify
me.  It will not do.  I do not believe so badly of
humanity as to think that you will act so wickedly.
Come, think no more of this.  I hope you like sirloin?'

'I refuse to sit down with you,' said Philip angrily.

'Then go!' exclaimed his aunt, with an explosion
of spleen.  'Go as an impracticable lout to your
housekeeper's room, to sup on a bowl of gruel and
cottage-pie!'





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   CHAPTER XX.


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   A FACE IN THE DARK.

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Mrs. Sidebottom was not at ease in her mind after
the suggestion thrown out by Philip that the business
might suffer if so much capital were suddenly
withdrawn from it.  She recalled how it had been when
her brother Nicholas had insisted on taking out of it
his share—how angry Jeremiah had been; how, for
awhile, the stability of the firm had been shaken, and
how crippled it had been for some years.  She
remembered how that her share of the profits had been
reduced, and she had no desire to meet with a
recurrence of this shrinkage.  When Nicholas made
that great call on the resources of the firm, there was
Jeremiah in the office, thoroughly experienced, and
he was able, through his ability and knowledge, to
pull through; but it was another matter now with
Philip, a raw hand, in authority.

Then, again, Mrs. Sidebottom knew her brother
Jeremiah had contemplated a large outlay in new and
improved machinery.  To keep up with the times,
abreast with other competitors, it was necessary that
this costly alteration should be made.  But could it
be done if four or five thousand pounds were sacrificed
to a caprice?

'Philip is such a fool!' she muttered.  'He inherits
some of his father's obstinacy, as well as his
carelessness about money.  Nicholas no sooner got money in
his hands than he played ducks and drakes with it;
and Philip is bent on doing the same.  Four thousand
pounds to that minx, Salome!  There goes the
church bell.  When will Lamb be in?'

Mrs. Sidebottom lit a bedroom candle, and went
upstairs to dress for dinner.  Whilst ascending, she
was immersed in thought, and suddenly an idea
occurred to her which made her quicken her steps.
Instead of dressing for dinner, she put on her bonnet.
The church bell had diverted her thoughts into a new
channel.  When dressed to go out, she rang for the
parlourmaid.  'Susan,' she said, 'I had forgotten.
This is a holy day.  I believe, I am morally certain,
it is a saint's day, and appointed by the Church to
make us holy.  We must deny ourselves.  So put off
dinner half an hour.  I am going to church—to set an
example.'

Mrs. Sidebottom was not an assiduous church-goer.
She attended on Sundays to do the civil to the
parson, but was rarely or never seen within the sacred
walls on week days.  Consequently her announcement
to Susan, that she was about to assist at divine
worship that evening, and that dinner was to be
postponed accordingly, surprised the domestic and
surprised and angered the cook, who did not object
to unpunctuality in herself, but resented it in her
master and mistress.

'If Salome is not at church,' said Mrs. Sidebottom
to herself, 'I shall be taken with faintness; fan myself
with my pocket-handkerchief, to let the congregation
see I am poorly, and will come away at the *Nunc
Dimittis*.'

But Mrs. Sidebottom tarried in church through the
*Nunc Dimittis*, professed her adhesion to the Creed,
and declared her transgressions.  As she listened to
the lessons, her mind reverted to the quenilles.  'They
will be done to chips!' she sighed, and then forgetting
herself, intoned, 'A—men.'  At the prayers she
thought of the shoulder of mutton, and in the hymn
hovered in soul over the marmalade-pudding.  Probably,
if the hearts of other worshippers that evening
had been revealed, they would not have been
discovered more wrapped in devotion than that of
Mrs. Sidebottom.  In the life of St. Modwenna, Abbess of
Stoke-on-Trent, we read that this holy woman had
the faculty of seeing the prayers of her nuns dancing
like midges under the choir roof; they could not
pierce the vault, being deficient in the boring organ,
which is true devotion.  It is perhaps fortunate we
have not the same gift.  On that evening a row of
tittering girls sought to attract the attention and
engross the admiration of the choristers.  Five young
ladies, hating each other as rivals, sought by their
attendance to catch the curate, who was unmarried.
Old Bankes was there, because he hoped to sell two
bags of potatoes to the parson.  Mary Saunders was
there, because some unpleasant stories had circulated
concerning her character, and she hoped to smother
them by appearing at church on week days.  Mr. Gruff
was there, to find fault with the parson's conduct
of the service, and Mrs. Tomkins attended to see who
were present.

When the service was concluded, Mrs. Sidebottom
came out of church beside Salome, who had been
seated in front of her.  She at once addressed her.

'My dear Miss Cusworth, how soothing it is to have
week-day prayer.  I have had so much of the world
forced on me of late, that I felt I must for the good of
my soul to fly to the sanctuary.'

'There is always service on Thursday evening.'

'My goodness!—is this not a saint's day?  I
thought it was, and I have been so devout, too.  You
don't mean to tell me there is no special call for
it?—and these saints—they are perfectly fascinating
creatures.'

Mrs. Sidebottom could talk what she called 'goody'
when there was need for it; she generally talked it
when chance led her into a poor man's cottage.  As
children are given lollipops by their elders, so the
poor, she thought, must be given 'goody talk' by
their superiors.  She put on her various suits of talk
as occasion offered.  She had her scandal suit and
her pious suit, and her domestic-worry suit and her
political suit—just like those picture-books children
have, whose one face does for any number of
transformation garments, and the same head figures now
as a bronze, then as Nell Gwynne, as a Quakeress, or
as a tight-rope dancer.

The author at one time knew a bedridden man who
had two suits of conversation—the one profane, abusive,
brutal, the other pious, sanctified, and seasoned with
salt.  When his cottage-door was open, the passer
heard some such exclamations as these as he
approached, addressed to the wife: 'Now then, you ——
toad!'  Then a reference to her eyes best left
unquoted.  'If I could only get at you, I'd skin
you!'  Then a change.  'Fetch me my Boible; O my soul, be
joyful, raise the sacred hanthem!  Bah!  I thought
'twas the parson's step, and he'd give me a shilling!
Now then, you gallopading kangaroo!'  This, of
course, was an extreme case, and Mrs. Sidebottom
was far too well-bred to go to extremities.

'I was so glad you came in when you did,' said
Mrs. Sidebottom.  'I was really feeling somewhat
faint.  I feared I would have been forced to leave at
the *Nunc Dimittis*, and I was just fanning myself
with my handkerchief, on which was a drop of eau de
Cologne, when you came in, and a whiff of cool air
from the door revived me, so I was able to remain.  I
am so thankful!  The hymn afforded me such elevating
thoughts!  I felt as if I had wings of angels, which
I could spread, and upward fly!'

'I was late—I could not get away earlier.'

'And I am grateful to be able to walk back with
you.  You will allow me to take your arm.  I am still
shaken with my temporary faintness.  I have, I fear,
been overdone.  I have had so much to try me of late.
But when the bell rang, I was drawn towards the
sacred building.  Upon my word, I thought it was a
saint's day, and it was a duty as well as a pleasure to
be there.  I am so glad I went; and now I am able
to walk back with you, and after public worship—though
the congregation was rather thin—the mind is
turned to devotion, and the thoughts are framed, are,
in fact, just what they ought to be, you know.  I have
wanted for some time to speak to you, and tell you
how grieved I was that I was forced to give your
mother notice to leave.  I had no thought of being
inconsiderate and unkind.'

'I am aware of that,' answered Salome quietly.
'Mr. Philip Pennycomequick has already told mamma
that the notice was a mere formality.  The explanation
was a relief to us, as mamma was somewhat hurt.
She had tried to do her best for dear Mr. Pennycomequick.'

'You will have to induce her to forgive me.  What
is religion for, and churches built, and organs, and
hot-water apparatus, and all that sort of thing, but to
cultivate in us the forgiving spirit.  I am, myself, the
most placable person in the world, and after singing
such a hymn as that in which I have just joined, I
could forgive Susan if she dropped the silver spoons
on the floor and dinted them.'

No one would have been more astonished than
Mrs. Sidebottom if told that she was artificial, that
she affected interests, sympathies, to which she was
strange.  At the time that she talked she felt what
she said, but the feeling followed the expression, did
not originate it.

'My dear Miss Cusworth,' she went on, 'I am not
one to bear a grudge.  I never could.  When my
poor Sidebottom was alive, if there had been any
unpleasantness between us during the day—and all
married people have their tiffs—when you are married
you will have tiffs.  As I was saying, if there had
been any unpleasantness between us, I have shaken
him at night to wake him up, that he might receive
my pardon for an incivility said or done.'

'We had made our preparations to leave Mergatroyd,'
said Salome, 'but my mother has been ill
again, and my poor sister has heard of the death
of her husband, who fell in a skirmish with the
Germans.  So when Mr. Philip Pennycomequick
was so kind as to ask my mother to remain on in
the house, in the same capacity as heretofore, we were
too thankful——'

'What!  You stay?'

'Yes, my mother is not in a condition to move just
now, and my sister is broken down with grief.  But,
of course, this is only a temporary arrangement.'

Mrs. Sidebottom said nothing for a moment.  Presently,
however, she observed: 'No doubt this is best,
and I am very, very pleased to hear it.  Philip did
not mention it—I mean Mr. Pennycomequick.  I
must not any longer call him Philip, as he is now
head of the family, unless the captain be regarded
also as a head, then the family will be like the
Austrian eagle—one body with two heads.  But, my
dear Miss Cusworth, tell me, did Mr. Pennycomequick
say some foolish nonsense about three or four thousand
pounds?'

'He mentioned something of the sort to mamma.'

'It is all fiddlesticks,' said Mrs. Sidebottom
confidentially.  'He is the most inconsiderate and generous
fellow in the world.  His father was so before him.
But it won't do.  The mill will suffer, the business
fall to the ground; we shall all go into the bankruptcy
court.  I respect the memory of my darling brother
too highly to wish that the firm he managed should
collapse like a house of cards.  Philip is generous and
all that sort of thing, and he will try to press money
on you.  You must not consent to receive it, for two
reasons—first, because it would smash the whole
concern, and next, because people would talk in a way
you would not like about you.  Do you understand—you
could not receive a large allowance from a young
unmarried man.  However,' continued Mrs. Sidebottom,
'do not suppose I wish you to waive all
expectations of getting anything.  I ask you only to
trust me.  Lean on me and wait; I have your interests
at heart as much as my own.  I dare say you have
heard my brother say he would be driven to adopt
improved machinery?'

'Yes, I heard him say that.'

'Very well.  My nephew, Philip, must reconstruct
the mechanism of the factory at the cost of several
thousands.  Now, my dear brother did not leave
enough money to be used both on this and on satisfying
your just claims.  If you will wait, say till your
marriage—then you may be sure I and my son and
nephew will strain every nerve to make you comfortable.'

'Mrs. Sidebottom,' said Salome calmly, 'you are
very kind.  When Mr. Philip Pennycomequick made
the request to my mother that she should stay in the
house, she consented, but only temporarily, till he is
settled, and has had time to look about him for
someone who will be a more active housekeeper than my
mother can be; and at the same time it will be a
convenience to us, giving us breathing-time in which
to recover from the shock of Mr. Albert Baynes'
death, and consider in what manner my sister Janet's
future will be tied up with our own.  As for that
other very generous offer—we had no time to give it
a thought, as it came to us simultaneously with the
crushing news from France.'  Salome halted.  'You
have passed your door, Mrs. Sidebottom.'

'Bless me!  So I have—I was so interested in what
you were saying, and so charmed with your noble
sentiments.  Can I persuade you to enter and dine
with us—only shoulder of mutton, quenilles, and
marmalade-pudding.'

Salome declined: she must return immediately to
her mother.

'Why!' exclaimed Mrs. Sidebottom, 'bless my soul,
here is my nephew come to meet us—I cannot, however,
take the compliment as paid to me, for we have
parted in dudgeon.'

Philip had left his aunt's house in boiling indignation.
She had led him into a trap, from which escape
was difficult.  He felt himself in honour bound by the
proposal he had made to Miss Cusworth; he could
not withdraw from it, and yet at that time to have
to find the entire sum mentioned would severely
embarrass him.  He could not tell Salome that he
had been precipitate in making the offer, and crave
her indulgence to allow him to put off the fulfilment
to a convenient season.  The only way out of the
difficulty that commended itself to him was to offer
Salome an annual sum, charged on the profit of the
mill, till such time as it suited her to withdraw her
four thousand pounds and invest it elsewhere; in a
word, to take her into partnership.

Having come to this decision, he resolved on preparing
it for her acceptance at once, and he descended
to the rooms occupied by the Cusworths, there to
learn that she had gone to church.  He at once took
his hat and walked to meet her.

He was ill-pleased to see her returning with his
aunt hanging on her arm; he mistrusted this exhibition
of sudden affection in Mrs. Sidebottom for one
whom he knew she disliked.

'You see, Philip,' said his aunt, 'I thought it was a
saint's day, and the saints want encouragement; so
I went to the parish church.  I put dinner off—now
can I induce you and Miss Cusworth to come in and
pick a little meat with me?—not bones, Philip, these
we have pulled already together.  I was taken with
a little faintness in church, and Miss Cusworth has
kindly lent me support on my way home.'

The little group stood near the doorstep to the
house occupied by Mrs. Sidebottom.  A gaslight was
at the edge of the footway, a few paces lower down
the road.  Mrs. Sidebottom disengaged her hand from
the arm of Salome—then the girl started, shrank back,
and uttered an exclamation of terror.

'What is the matter?' asked Mrs. Sidebottom.

'I have seen it again,' said the girl, in a low tone.

'Seen what?' asked the lady.

'Never mind what,' interrupted Philip, divining
immediately from Salome's alarm and agitation what
she meant.  'We must not keep my aunt waiting in
the street.  The ground is damp and the wind cold.
Good-night, Aunt Louisa.  I will escort Miss Cusworth
home.'

When Philip was alone with Salome, he said:
'What was it?—what did you see?'

'I saw that same man, standing by the lamp-post,
looking at us.  He wore *his* hat and overcoat.  Again
I was unable to see any face, because the strong light
fell from above, and it was in shadow.  You had your
back to the lamp, and the figure was in your rear.
When you turned—it was gone.'





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.. _`HYACINTH BULBS`:

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   CHAPTER XXI


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   HYACINTH BULBS.

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The figure seen in the dark had diverted Philip from
his purpose of speaking to Salome about money.  He
was not particularly eager to make his proposal,
because that proposition had in it a smack of evasion
of an offer already made; as though he had speedily
repented of the liberality of the first.  In this there
was some moral cowardice, such as is found in all but
blunt natures, and induces them to catch at excuses
for deferring an unpleasant duty.  There exists a wide
gulf between two sorts of persons—the one shrinks
and shivers at the obligations to say or do anything
that may pain another; the other rushes at the chance
with avidity, like a hornet impatient to sting.  On
this occasion Philip had a real excuse for postponing
what he had come out to say, for Salome was not in a
frame of mind to attend to it; she was alarmed and
bewildered by this second encounter with a man
whose face she had not seen, and who was so
mysterious in his proceedings.

Accordingly Philip went to bed that night without
having discharged the unpleasant task, and with the
burden still weighing on him.

Next day, when he returned from the factory, in
ascending the stairs he met Salome descending with
her hands full of hyacinth glasses, purple, yellow and
green, and a pair tucked under her arms.

She smiled recognition, and the faintest tinge of
colour mounted to her face.  Her foot halted, held
suspended for a moment on the step, and Philip
flattered himself that she desired to speak to him, yet
lacked the courage to address him.

Accordingly he spoke first, volunteering his assistance.

'Oh, thank you,' she replied, 'I am merely taking
the glasses and bulbs to the Pummy cupboard again.'

'Thank you in English is the equivalent for *s'il vous
plait* and not of *merci*,' he said, 'so I shall carry some
of the glasses.  But—what is the Pummy cupboard?'

'You do not know the names of the nooks and
corners of your own house,' said Salome, laughing.
'My sister and I gave foolish names to different rooms
and closets when we were children, and they have
retained them, or we have not altered them.  I had
put the bulbs in a closet under the staircase till we
thought of changing quarters, and then I removed
them so as to pack them.  It was whilst I was thus
engaged that I saw that strange, inexplicable figure
for the first time.  Now that I know we are to remain
here, I have put them in glasses to taste water, and
am replacing them in the dark, in the cupboard.'

'Have you many?'

'A couple of dozen named bulbs, all good.'

'I will help you to carry down the glasses and roots.
Where are they?'

'In the drawing-room.  We kept the glasses there
all summer in the chiffonnier.'

'I hope you will be able to spare me one or two for
my study.'

'Of course you shall have a supply in your window.
They were procured partly for Mr. Pennycomequick
and partly for my mother.'

'You say "of course"; but I do not see the force of
the words.  Remember I have had a lodging-house
experience; my sense of the fitness of things is framed
on that model, and my landlady never said "of course"
to anything I suggested which would give me pleasure,
but cost her some trouble.  I am like Kaspar Hauser,
of whom you may have heard; he was brought up in
a solitary dark cell, and denied everything, except
bare necessaries; when he escaped and came among
men, he had no notion how to behave, and was lost in
amazement to find they were not all gaolers.  I had
on my chimney-piece two horrible sprigs of artificial
flowers, originally from a bridecake, that from length
of existence and accumulation of soot were become so
odious that at last I burnt them.  The landlady made
me pay for them as though they were choice orchids.'

'You must not make me laugh,' said Salome, 'or I
shall drop the glasses from under my arms.'

'Then let me take them,' said Philip promptly;
'you have two in your hands, that suffices.  I tire you
with my reminiscences of lodging-house life?'

'Not at all—they divert me.'

'It is the only subject on which my conversation
flows.  I do not know why it is that when I speak on
politics I have a difficulty in expressing my ideas, but
when I come on landlady-dom, the words boil out of
my heart, like the water from a newly-tapped artesian
well.  I have a great mind to tell you my Scarborough
experiences.'

'Do so.'

'Once when I was out of sorts I went to the
sea-coast for a change—but I am detaining you.'

'Well, I will put down the glasses and bulbs
in the Pummy cupboard and return to hear your
story.'

Instead of going downstairs with Salome, Philip,
though he had relieved her of two glasses, went with
them to the drawing-room, whence she had taken
them—which was in no way assisting her.  Moreover,
when he was there, he put down the glasses on the
table and began examining the names of the bulbs—double
pink blush, single china blue, the queen of the
yellows, and so on.  He had offered to help Salome,
but he was doing nothing of the kind; he waited till
she had filled the glasses with water, planted a couple
of bulbs in them, and consigned them to the depths of
the cupboard.  When she returned to the parlour, he
was still examining the names of the tubers.

'Now,' said he, 'I will tell you about my landlady
at Scarborough.'  He made no attempt to carry down
glasses, he detained the girl from prosecuting her
work.  'I was at Scarborough for a week, and when I
left my lodgings the landlady charged me thirty
shillings for a toilet set, because there was a crack in
the soap-dish.  I had not injured it.  I pointed out
the fact that the crack was gray with age, that the
discolouration betokened antiquity; but she was
inaccessible to reason, impossible to convince.  The injury
done to the soap-dish spoiled the whole set, she said,
and I must pay for an entire set.  I might have
contested the point at law; but it was hardly worth my
while, so I agreed to pay the thirty shillings, only I
stipulated that I should carry off the fractured
soap-dish with me.  Then she resisted; the soap-dish, she
argued, could be of no use to me.  I must leave it,
and at last, when I persisted in my resolve, she let me
off with a couple of shillings.'

'But why?'

'Because the cracked soap-dish was to her a source
of revenue.  Every lodger for years had been bled on
account of that crack to the tune of thirty shillings,
and that cracked soap-dish was worth many pounds
per annum to that wretched woman.'  Then, with a
sudden tightening of the muscles at the corners of his
mouth, he added, 'I know their tricks and their ways!
I have been brought up among landladies, as Romulus
was nursed by a wolf, and Jupiter was reared among
goats.'

'I suppose there are good lodging-house keepers as
well as bad ones,' said Salome, laughing.

'Charity hopeth all things,' answered Philip grimly,
'but I never came across one.  Just as colliers acquire
a peculiar stoop and walk, and horse-dealers a special
twist in conscience, and sailors a peculiar waddle,
engendered by their professions, so does lodging-house
keeping produce a warp and crick and callousness
in women with which they were not born.  You
do not know what it is, you cannot know what it is, to
be brought up and to form one's opinions among
landladies.  It forces one to see the world, to
contemplate life through their medium as through lenses that
break and distort all rays.  Do you recall what the
King of Israel said when the King of Syria sent to
him Naäman to be healed of his leprosy?'

'Yes,' answered Salome, '"See how he seeketh a
quarrel against me."'

'Exactly.  And those who live in furnished lodgings
are kept continually in the King of Israel's frame of
mind.  Whatever the landlady does, whatever she
leaves undone, when she rolls her eyes round the
room, when she sweeps with them the carpet, one is
always saying to one's self, see how this woman
seeketh a quarrel against me.  Landladies are the
cantharides of our nineteenth century civilization, the
great source of blister and irritation.  Even a man of
means, who has not to count his shillings, must feel
his wretchedness in lodgings; but consider the
apprehensions, the unrest that must possess a man, pinched
in his circumstances who lives among landladies.  Her
eye,' continued Philip, who had warmed to his subject,
'is ever searching for spots on the carpet, fraying of
sofa edges, tears in the curtains, scratches in the
mahogany, chips in the marble mantelpiece.  I think
it was among Quarles' emblems that I saw a picture
of man's career among traps and snares on every side.
In lodgings every article of furniture is a gin ready to
snap on you if you use it.'

Then Philip took up two hyacinth glasses, one
yellow, the other blue, but put down that which was
blue, and took up another that was yellow, not for
æsthetic predilection, but to prolong the time.  It
was a real relief to him to unburden his memory of
its gall, to go through his recollections, like a Jew on
the Paschal preparation, searching for and casting out
every scrap of sour leaven.

'I dare say you are wondering, Miss Cusworth,' he
said, 'to what this preamble on landladies is leading.'

Salome looked amused and puzzled; so perhaps is
the reader.

Philip had been, as he said, for so many years in
furnished lodgings, and had for so many years had
before his eyes nothing but a prospect of spending all
his days in them, and of expiring in the arms of
lodging-house keepers, that he had come to loathe
the life.  Now that his financial position was altered,
and before him opened a career unhampered and
unsoured by pecuniary difficulties, a desire woke up
in him to enjoy a more cheerful, social life than that
of his experience.  Now the difference between the
days in his uncle's house at Mergatroyd and those he
had spent in lodgings at Nottingham did not differ
radically.  It was true that he no longer had the
tongue of a landlady hanging over his head like the
sword of Damocles, but his day was no brighter, quite
as colourless.

He was beneath the same roof with an old lady
who belonged, as his suspicious eye told him, to the
same clay as that out of which the landlady is
modelled, only circumstances had not developed in her
the pugnacity and acridity of the class.  In herself, she
was an uninteresting person, whom only the love and
respect of her daughters could invest with any favour.
But those daughters were both charming.  His
prejudice against Salome was gone completely, that
against Janet almost gone.  As his suspicions of
Salome left, his dislike of Janet faded simultaneously.
He had conceived a mistrust of Salome because he
had conceived an aversion against Janet; now that
he began to like Salome, this liking influenced his
regard for the sister.

The society of his aunt was no gain to Philip.  He
disapproved of her lack of principle and disliked her
selfishness.  The tone of her mind and talk were
repugnant to him, and Lambert and he would never
become friends, because the cement of common
interests was lacking.

Philip discovered himself not infrequently during
the day looking at the office clock, and wishing that
worktime were over; not that he wearied of his work,
but that he was impatient to be home and have a
chance of a word with Salome.  When he returned
from the factory, if he did not meet her in the hall,
or on the stairs, or see her in the garden, he was
disappointed.  It was remarkable how many wants
he discovered that necessitated a descent to
Mrs. Cusworth's apartments, and how, when he entered and
found that one of the daughters was present, his visit
was prolonged, and the conversation was not confined
to his immediate necessity.  If on his entering, the
tea-table was covered, he was easily persuaded to
remain for a cup.  His reserve, his coldness, did not
wholly desert him, except when he was alone with
Salome, when her freshness and frankness exercised
on him a relaxing fascination; all his restraint fell
away at once, and he became natural, talkative, and
cheerful.

'The fact of the matter is,' said Philip, 'I have
been lifting the veil to you that covers furnished
lodging-house life, and exposing my wretchedness to
enlist your sympathy because I am about to ask a
considerable favour.'

'I am sure we need no persuasion to do what we
can for you.'

'It is this.  If your mother would not object, I
should like to have my meals with you all, just as my
uncle was wont.  Having everything served in my
room recalls my past with too great intensity.  I have
heard of a prisoner who had spent many years in the
Bastille, that in after-life, when free, he could not
endure to hear the clink of fireirons.  It recalled to
him his chains.  If there be things at which my soul
revolts it is steak, chops, cutlets.'

'Oh! it would indeed be a pleasure to us—such a
pleasure!' and Salome's face told Philip that what
she spoke she felt; the colour deepened in her cheeks,
and the dimples formed at the corners of her mouth.

'And now,' she said, still with the smile on her face,
playing about her lips; 'and now, Mr. Pennycomequick,
you will not be angry if I ask you a favour.'

'I angry!'

'Must I enlist your sympathy first of all, and
inveigle you into promising before you know what the
request is I am about to make?  I might tell you
that a young girl like me has a little absurd pride in
her, and that it is generous of a man to respect it, let
it stand, and not knock it over.'

'What is the favour?  I am too cautious—have
been too long in a lawyer's office to undertake
anything the particulars and nature of which I do not
know.'

'It is this, Mr. Pennycomequick.  I want you not
to say another word about your kind and liberal offer
to me.  I will not accept it, not on any account,
because I have no right to it.  So that is granted.'

'Miss Cusworth, I will not hear of this.'  Philip's
face darkened, though not a muscle moved.  'Why
do you ask this of me?  What is the meaning of
your refusal?'

'I will not take that to which I have no right,' she
replied firmly.

'You have a right,' answered Philip, somewhat
sharply.  'You know as well as I do that my uncle
intended to provide for you, at least as he did for
Mrs. Baynes.  It was not his wish that you should be
left without proper provision.'

'I know nothing of the sort.  What he put into my
hands was merely an evidence that he had at one
time purposed to do an unfair thing, and that he
repented of it in time.'

'Miss Cusworth, that cancelled will still remains to
me a mystery, and I do not see how I shall ever come
to an understanding of how it was that the signature
was gone.  From your account my uncle——'

'Never mind going over that question again.  As
you say, an understanding of the mystery will never
be reached.  Allow it to remain unattempted.  I am
content.'

'But, Miss Cusworth, we do not offer you a
handsome, but a moderate provision.'

'You cannot force me to take what I refuse to
receive.  Who was that king to whom molten gold
was offered?  He shut his teeth against the draught.
So do I.  I clench mine and you cannot force them
open.'

'What is the meaning of this?  Why do you
refuse to have my uncle's wishes carried out?  You
put us in an invidious position.'

Salome had shut her mouth.  She shook her head.
The pretty dimples were in her cheeks.  Her colour
had deepened.

'Someone has been talking to you,' said Philip.  'I
know there has.  Who was it?'

Salome again shook her head, with a provoking
smile dappling and dimpling her face; but seeing
that Philip was seriously annoyed, it faded, and she
broke silence.

'There is a real favour you can do us, Mr. Pennycomequick,
if you will.'

'What is that?' asked Philip.  His ease and
cheerfulness were gone.  He was angry, for he was
convinced that Mrs. Sidebottom had said something
to the girl which had induced her to refuse the
offer.

'It is this—mamma had all her money matters
managed for her by dear Mr. Pennycomequick.  She
did not consult us about them, and we knew and
know nothing about her property.  I do not know
how much she has, and in what investment it is.  She
did not, I believe, understand much about these affairs
herself, she trusted all to the management of
Mr. Pennycomequick.  He was so clever, so kind, and he
did everything for her without giving her trouble.
But now that he is gone, I fancy she is worried and
bewildered about these things.  She does not understand
them, and she has been fretting recently because
she supposes that she has encountered a great loss.
But that is impossible.  She has touched nothing
since Mr. Pennycomequick died, and what he had
invested for her must certainly have been invested
securely.  It is not conceivable that she has lost since
his death.  I have been puzzling my head about the
matter, and I suspect that some of her vouchers have
got among Mr. Pennycomequick's papers, and she
fancies they are lost to her.  It is of course possible
as he kept the management of her little moneys, that
some of her securities may have been taken with his.
If you would kindly look into this matter for her,
I am sure she will be thankful, and so—without
saying—will I.  If you can disabuse her mind of the
idea that she has met with heavy losses, you will
relieve her of a great, haunting trouble.'

'I will do this cheerfully.  But this does not affect
the obligation——'

'My teeth are set again.  But—see! you offered to
carry down my glasses, and you have not done so.
You have, moreover, hindered me in my work.'

The house-door bell was rung.

'My aunt,' muttered Philip.  'I know the touch of
her hand on knocker or bell-pull.  I am beginning to
entertain towards her some of the feelings I had
towards my landladies in the old unregenerate
lodging-house days.  Confound her!  Why should she come
now?'





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.. _`YES OR NO?`:

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   CHAPTER XXII.


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   YES OR NO?

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Philip was right.  He had recognised the ring of
Mrs. Sidebottom.  As soon as the door was opened
her voice was audible, and Philip used a strong
expression, which only wanted raising another stage to
convert it into an oath.

Salome caught up a couple of hyacinth glasses and
resumed her interrupted occupation; and Philip went
to the window to remove a spring-nail that
incommoded him.  There are certain voices which, when
coming unexpectedly on the ear, make the conscience
feel guilty, though it may be free from fault.  Such
was that of Mrs. Sidebottom.  If Philip had been
studying his Bible instead of talking to Salome, when
he heard her, he would have felt as though he had
been caught reading an improper French novel; and
if Salome had been engaged in making preserves in
the kitchen, she would have been conscious of inner
horror and remorse as though she had been concocting
poison.  The reason of this is that those who hear
the voice know that the owner of the voice is certain,
whatever they do, to believe them to be guilty of
some impropriety; and they are frightened, not at
what they have done, but at what they may be
supposed to have done.

'I suppose that Mr. Pennycomequick is in his room,'
said Mrs. Sidebottom, passing on, to the servant who
had admitted her.  'It is not his time to be at the
office.'

She ascended the stairs to the study door, and in
so doing passed Salome, who bowed, and was not
sorry to be unable to respond to the proffered hand,
having both of her own engaged, carrying glasses.

Philip heard his aunt enter the study, after a
premonitory rap, and remained where he was, hoping
that as she did not find him in his room she would
conclude he was out, and retire.  But Mrs. Sidebottom
was not a person to be evaded thus; and
after having looked round the room and called at his
bedroom door, she came out on the landing and
entered the drawing-room, when she discovered him,
penknife in hand, removing his spring-nail.

'Oh!' she said, with an eye on the bulbs and
flower-glasses.  'Adam and Eve in Paradise.'

'To whom entered the mischief-maker,' said Philip,
promptly turning upon her.

'Not complimentary, Philip.'

'You brought it on yourself.'

'It takes two to pick a quarrel,' said Mrs. Sidebottom,
'and I am in the most amiable mood to-day.
By the way, you might have inquired about my health
this morning, for you knew I was not well yesterday.
As you had not the grace to do so, I have come to
announce to you that I am better.'

'I did not suppose that you had been seriously ill.'

'Not seriously ill, but indisposed.  I nearly fainted
in church last night, as I told you; but you were
otherwise occupied than in listening to me.  Now, I want
to know, Philip, what was that rigmarole about
something or someone seen in the dark?'

'There was no rigmarole, as you call it.'

'Oh! do not pick faults in my language.  You
know what I mean.  What was the excuse made by
Miss Cusworth for taking your arm?'

'Miss Cusworth did not take my arm.'

'Because you had not the wit to offer it; and yet
the hint given was broad enough.'

'I am busy,' said Philip, in a tone of exasperation.
His aunt's manner angered him, so that he could not
speak or act with courtesy towards her.

'Oh yes.  Busy planting forget-me-not and love
in a mist.  Come, do not be cross.  What was the
meaning of that exclamation?  I want to know, for I
also saw someone standing by the lamp-post, looking on.'

'I will tell you, and then, perhaps, you will be
satisfied, Aunt Louisa.  And when satisfied, I trust
you will no longer detain me from my business.'

Then Philip shortly and plainly narrated to his aunt
what had happened.  He did so because he thought
it possible, just possible, that she might be able to
explain the apparition.

She was surprised and disconcerted by what she
heard, but not for long.

'Who has the garden key?' she inquired.

'My uncle had one on his bunch.'

'And that bunch is in your possession?'

'Yes, and has not been out of it.  It is locked up
in my bureau.'

'Very well, then, the fellow did not get in by that
means.  Had anyone else a key?'

'Yes, Mrs. Cusworth.'

'And is there a third?'

'No; that is all.'

'Where was Mrs. Cusworth's key on the night in
question?'

'I did not inquire.  It was unnecessary.'

'Not at all unnecessary.  If the man did not obtain
access by your key, he did that of by the housekeeper.'

'This is preposterous,' said Philip irritably.  'You
have made no allowance for another contingency—that
the door may have been left unlocked and ajar
by the gardener, when last at work.'

'That will not do.  The gardener has not been
about the place for a fortnight or three weeks.  You
say that the servants may have allowed a friend to take
the pick of Jeremiah's clothes.  That explains nothing:
for it does not account for the garden door being
unlocked, though it might for the house door being left
open.  Why should not the Cusworths have needy
relatives and hangers-on as well as the servant girls?
Needy relatives smelling of beer, with patched small
clothes and pimply faces, who fly about with the bats,
and to whom the cast-off clothing, the good hat and
warm overcoat, would be a boon.  Who are these
Cusworths?  Whence have they come?  Out of as
great an uncertainty as this mysterious figure.  They
are creations out of nothing, like the universe, but not,
like it, to be pronounced very good.  Now, Philip, is
not my solution of the riddle the only logical one?'

'This is enough on the subject,' said Philip,
especially chafed because his aunt's explanation really
was the simplest, and yet was one which he was
unwilling to allow.  'You charge high-minded,
honourable people with——'

'I charge them with doing no harm,' interrupted
Mrs. Sidebottom.  'The clothes were laid out to be
distributed to the needy; and Mrs. Cusworth was
given the disposal of them.  If she chose to favour a
relative, who is to blame her?  Not I.  She would
probably not care to have the sort of relative who
would touch his cap for Jeremiah's old suits, come
openly to the door in the blaze of day, and before the
eyes of the giggling maids.  No doubt she said to the
moulting relative, "Come in the dark; help yourself
to new plumage, but do not discredit us by
proclaiming kinship."'

Philip was too angry to answer his aunt.  To change
the subject he said, 'Miss Cusworth has refused to
receive anything from us.  That some influence has
been brought to bear on her to induce this, I have no
doubt, and I have as little doubt as to whose influence
was exerted.'  He looked fixedly at his aunt.

'I am glad she has had the grace to do so,' answered
Mrs. Sidebottom cheerily.  'No, Philip, you need not
drive your eyes into me, as if they were bradawls.  I
can quite understand that she has told you all, and
laid the blame on me.  I do not deny my part in the
transaction.  I am not ashamed of it; on the
contrary, I glory in it.  You were on the threshold of a
great folly, that jeopardized the firm of Pennycomequick,
and my allowance out of it as well.  I have
stepped in to stop you.  I had my own interests to
look after.  I have saved you four thousand pounds,
which you could not afford to lose.  Am not I an
aunt whose favour is worth cultivating; an aunt who
deserves to be treated with elementary politeness?'

Then Philip's anger boiled up.

'We see everything through opposite ends of the
telescope.  What is infinitely small to me and far
away, is to you present and immense; and what to
me is close at hand and overwhelming, is quite beyond
your horizon.  To my view of things we are
committing a moral wrong when technically right.  How
that will was cancelled, and by whom, will probably
never be known; but nothing in the world will
persuade me that Uncle Jeremiah swung from one
extremity of liberality to Miss Cusworth, coupled with
injustice to us, to the other extreme of generosity to
us and absolute neglect of her.  Such a thing could
not be.  He would turn in his grave if he thought
that she, an innocent, defenceless girl, was to be left
in this heartless, criminal manner, without a penny
in the world, contrary to his wishes.'

'Why did he not make another will, if he wished it
so much?'

'Upon my word,' said Philip angrily, 'I would give
up my share readily to have Uncle Jeremiah back,
and know the rights of the matter of the will.'  He
stood looking at his aunt with eyes that were full of
anger, and the arteries in his temples dark and
swollen.  'I shall take care,' he said, 'that she is not
defrauded of what is her due.'

Then he left the room, and slung the door after him
with violence, and certainly with discourtesy.  Never
before had he lost his self-control as he had lost it in
Mrs. Sidebottom's presence on this occasion, but
before he had reached the foot of the staircase he had
recovered his cold and formal manner.

As he saw Salome come from the cupboard where
she was arranging the hyacinths, he bade her in an
imperious manner attend him into the breakfast-room,
and she obeyed readily, supposing he had some
domestic order to give.

'Shut the door, please,' he said.  The anger raised
by Mrs. Sidebottom affected his address and
behaviour to Salome.  A sea that has been lashed
into fury beats indiscriminately against every object,
rock or sand-bank.  He stationed himself with his
back to the window, and signed to the girl to face him.

'Miss Cusworth,' he said, putting his hands behind
him, as though he were standing before the hearth and
not at a window, 'my aunt has imposed on your
ignorance, has taken a wicked advantage of your
generosity, in persuading you to decline the offer that
was made you.'

'I decline it from personal motives, uninfluenced by her.'

'Do you mean to tell me she has not been meddling
in the matter?  I know better.'

'I do not deny that she spoke to me yesterday, but
her words did not prompt, they only served to confirm
the resolution already arrived at.'

'But I will not allow you to refuse.  You shall have
the money.'

'I never withdraw a word once given,' said Salome,
with equal decision.

'Then you shall take a share in the mill—be a partner.'

'I cannot,' she said hastily, with a rush of colour.
'Indeed this is impossible.'

'Why so?'

'It cannot be.  I will not go back from my word.'

'I have my conscience, that speaks imperiously,'
said Philip.  'I cannot, I will not be driven by your
obstinacy to act dishonourably, unjustly.'

Salome said nothing.  She was startled by his
vehemence, by his roughness of manner, so unlike
what she had experienced from him.

'Very well,' said he hurriedly.  'You shall take
me, and with me my share of the mill, and so satisfy
every scruple.  That, I trust, will content you as it
does me.'

The girl was frightened, and looked up suddenly to
see if he meant what he said.  His back was toward
the window.  Had he occupied a reverse position she
would have seen that his eyes were not kindled with
the glow of love, that he spoke in anger, and to satisfy
his conscience, not because he had made up his mind
that she, Salome, was the only woman that could make
him happy.

The Rabbis say that the first man was made male-female,
and was parted asunder, and that the perfect
man is only to be found in the union of the two severed
halves.  So each half wanders about the world
seeking its mate, and gets attached to wrong halves,
and this is the occasion of much misery; only where
the right organic sections coalesce is there perfect
harmony.

It did not seem as if Philip and Salome were the
two halves gravitating towards each other, for the
attraction was small, and the thrust together came
from without—was due, in fact, to the uninviting hand
of Mrs. Sidebottom.

'Come,' said he, 'I wait for an answer.  I see no
other way of getting out of our difficulties.  What I
now propose will assure to you and your mother a right
in this house, and Mrs. Sidebottom will be able to obtain
admission only by your permission.  Do you see?  I
cannot, without a moral wound and breakdown of my
self-respect, accept a share of the mill without
indemnifying you, according to what I believe to have been
the intentions of my uncle.  You refuse to take
anything to which you have not a right.  Accept me, and
you have all that has fallen to me.'

Certainly Philip's proposal was not made in a tender
manner.  He probably perceived that it was unusual
and inappropriate, for he added in a quieter tone,
'Rely on it, that I will do my utmost to make you
happy; and I believe firmly that with you at my side
my happiness will be complete.  I am a strictly
conscientious man, and I will conscientiously give you all
the love, respect, and forbearance that a wife has a
right to demand.'

'You must give me time to consider,' said Salome
timidly.

'Not ten minutes,' answered Philip hastily.  'I
want an answer at once.  That woman upstairs—I
mean my aunt—I—I particularly wish to knock her
down with the news that she is checkmated.'

Again Salome looked up at him, trying to form her
decision by his face, by the expression of his eyes, but
she could not see whether real love streamed out of
them such as certainly did not find utterance by the
tongue.

Her heart was beating fast.  Did she love him?  She
liked him.  She looked up to him.  Some of the old
regard which had been lavished on the uncle devolved
on Philip with the inheritance, as his by right, as the
representative of the house.  Salome had been accustomed
all her life to have recourse to old Mr. Pennycomequick
in all doubt, in every trouble to look to
him as a guide, to lean on him as a stay, to fly to him
as a protector.  And now that she was friendless she
felt the need of someone, strong, trustworthy and
kind, to whom she could have recourse as she had of
old to Mr. Pennycomequick.  Mrs. Sidebottom had
been hostile, but Philip had been friendly.  Salome
recognised in him a scrupulously upright mind, and
with a girlish ignorance of realities, invested him with
a halo of goodness and heroism, which were not his
due.  There was in him considerable self-reliance; he
was not a vain, a conceited man; but he was a man
who knew his own mind and resolutely held to his
opinion—that Salome saw, or believed she saw; and
female weakness is always inclined to be attracted by
strength.

Moreover, her sister Janet had been strong in
expressing her disapproval of Philip, her dislike of his
formal ways, his wooden manner, his want of that ease
and polish which she had come in France to exact of
every man as essential.  Salome had combated the
ridicule, the detraction, with which her sister spoke of
Philip, and had become his champion in her little
family circle.

'I think—I really think,' said Salome, 'that you
must give me time to consider what you have said.'  She
moved to leave the room.

'No,' answered he,' you shall not go.  I must have
my answer in a Yes or a No, at once.  Come, give me
your hand.'

She hesitated.  It was a little wanting in consideration
for her, thus to press for an immediate answer.  He
had promised to show her the forbearance due to a wife,
he was hardly showing her that due to a girl at the
most critical moment of her life.  She stood steeped in
thought, and alternate flushes of colour and pauses of
pallor showed the changes of feeling in her heart.

Philip so far respected her hesitation that he kept
silence, but he was not inclined to suffer the hesitation
to continue long.

Love, Philip had never felt, nor had Salome; but
Philip was conscious of pleasure in the society of the
girl, of feeling an interest in her such as he entertained
for no one else.  He respected and admired her.  He
was aware that she exerted over him a softening,
humanizing influence, such as was exercised over him
by no one else.

Presently, doubtfully, as if she were putting forth
her fingers to touch what might scorch her, Salome
extended her right hand.

'Is that yes?' he asked.

'Yes.'

'And,' said he, 'I have your assurance that you
never go back from your word.  Now,' there recurred
his mind at that moment his aunt's sneer about his
lack of wit in not offering Salome his arm; 'and now,'
he said, 'let us go together and tell my aunt that you
take all my share, along with me.  Let me offer
you—my arm.'





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.. _`EARLE SCHOFIELD`:

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   CHAPTER XXIII.


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   EARLE SCHOFIELD.

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Philip Pennycomequick entered the hall, with
Salome on his arm, but she instantly disengaged her
hand as she saw Mrs. Sidebottom, and was conscious
that there was something grotesque in her appearance
hooked on to Philip.

As to Philip, he had been so long exposed to the
petrifying drip of legal routine, unrelieved by any
softening influences, that he was rapidly approaching
fossilization.

A bird's wing, a harebell, left to the uncounteracted
effect of silex in suspense, in time becomes stone, and
the drudgery of office and the sordid experience of
lodging-house life had encrusted Philip, and stiffened
him in mind and manner.  He had the feelings of a
gentleman, but none of that ease which springs out of
social intercourse; because he had been excluded from
intercourse with those of his class, men and women,
through the pecuniary straits in which his father had
been for many years.

When, therefore, Philip proposed to Salome, he knew
no better than to offer her his arm, as if to conduct
her to dinner, or convey her through a crowd from
the opera.

If he had been told that it was proper for him to
kiss his betrothed, he would have looked in the glass
and called for shaving-water, to make sure that his
chin and lip were smooth before delivering the salute
etiquette exacted.

The silicious drip had, as already said, encrusted
Philip, but he had not been sufficiently long exposed
to it to have his heart petrified.

Many clerks in offices keep fresh and green in spite
of the formality of business, because they have in their
homes everything necessary for counteracting the
hardening influence, or they associate with each other
and run out in mild Bohemianism.

Philip's father had existed, not lived, in lodgings,
changing them periodically, as he quarrelled with his
landlady, or the landlady quarrelled with him.
Mr. Nicholas Pennycomequick had been a grumbler,
cynical, finding fault with everything and every
person with which and with whom he came in
contact, as is the manner of those who have failed in
life.  Such men invariably regard the world of men as
in league to insult and annoy them; it never occurs to
them to seek the cause of their failure in themselves.

Philip had met with no love, none of the emollient
elements which constitute home.  He belonged, or
thought he belonged, socially and intellectually, to a
class superior to that from which his fellow-clerks
were drawn.  The reverses from which his father had
suffered had made Philip proud, and had restrained
him from association with the other young men.
Thrown on himself, he had become self-contained,
rigid in his views, his manners, and stiff in his
movements.  When he offered his arm to Salome, she did
not like to appear ungracious and decline it.  She
touched it lightly, and readily withdrew her hand, as
she encountered the eye of Mrs. Sidebottom.

'Oh!' said that lady, 'I was only premature, Philip,
in saying that your arm was taken last night.'

'Only premature,' replied Philip; 'I have persuaded
Miss Cusworth out of that opinion which you forced
on her when you took her arm.'

'She is, perhaps, easily persuaded,' said Mrs. Sidebottom,
with a toss of her head.

'I have induced her to agree to enter into partnership.'

'How?  I do not understand.  Is the firm to be in
future Pennycomequick and Co.—the Co. to stand for
Cusworth?'

'You ask how,' said Philip.  'I reply, as my wife.'

He allowed his aunt a minute to digest the
information, and then added:

'I am unable to ask you to stay longer at present,
as I must inform Mrs. Cusworth of the engagement.'

'Let me tender my congratulations,' said
Mrs. Sidebottom; 'and let me recommend a new lock
on the garden-door, lest And Co. should bring in
through it a train of rapacious out-at-elbow relatives,
who would hardly be satisfied with a great-coat and
a hat.'

Philip was too incensed to answer.  He allowed his
aunt to open the front-door unassisted.

When she was gone, he said to Salome:

'I am not in a humour to see your mother now.
Besides, it is advisable, for her sake, that the news
should be told her through you.  I am so angry with
that insolent—I mean with Mrs. Sidebottom, that I
might frighten your mother.  I will come later.'

He left Salome and mounted to his study, where
he paced up and down, endeavouring to recover his
composure, doubly shaken by his precipitation in
offering marriage without premeditation, and by
his aunt's sneer.  He had been surprised into
taking the most important step in life, without
having given a thought to it before.  He was
astonished at himself, that he, schooled as he had
been, should have acted without consideration on an
impulse.  He had been carried away, not by the
passion of love, but of anger.

In the story of the Frog-Prince, the faithful Eckhard
fastened three iron bands round his heart to prevent it
from bursting with sorrow when his master was
transformed into a loathsome frog.  When, however, the
Prince recovered his human form, then the three iron
bands snapped in succession.  One hoop after another
of hard constraint had been welded about the heart of
Philip, and now, in a sudden explosion of wrath, all
had given way like tow.

When Philip was alone, and had cooled, he became
fully aware of the gravity of his act; and, as a natural
result, a reaction set in.

He knew little of Salome, nothing of her parentage;
and though he laid no store on pedigree, he was keenly
aware that a union with one who had, or might have,
objectionable and impecunious relatives, as difficult to
drive away as horseflies, might subject him to much
annoyance.

In a manufacturing district, little is thought of a
man's ancestors so long as he is himself respectable
and his pockets are full.  Those who begin life as
millhands often end it as millheads, and the richest
men are sometimes the poorest in social qualifications.

Mrs. Sidebottom, with feminine shrewdness and
malice, had touched Philip where she knew he would
feel the touch and would wince.  She had put her
finger at once on the weak point of the situation he
was creating for himself.

Philip was vexed at his own weakness; as vexed
as he was surprised.  He could not charge Salome
with having laid a trap for him, nevertheless he felt
as if he had fallen into one.  He had sufficient
consciousness of the course he had taken to be aware
that Mrs. Sidebottom had given the impetus which
had shot him, unprepared, into an engagement.  He
certainly liked Salome.  There was not a girl he
knew whom he esteemed more highly.  He respected
her for her moral worth, and admired her for her
beauty.  She was not endowed with wealth by
fortune, and yet, if she came to him, she would not
come poor, for she was jointured with the four
thousand pounds which he had undertaken to set apart
for her.

That he could be happy with Salome he did not
question; but he was not partial to her mother, whom
he regarded, not as a vulgar, but as an ordinary
woman.  She had not the refinement of Salome, nor
the vivacity of Janet.  How two such charming girls
should have been turned out from such a mould as
Mrs. Cusworth was a marvel to Philip; but then it is
precisely the same enigma that all charming girls
present to young men who look at them, and then at their
mothers, and cannot believe that these girls will in
time be even as their mothers.  The glow-worm is
surrounded by a moony halo till mated, and then appears
but an ordinary grub, and the birds assume rainbow
tints whilst thinking of nesting, and then hop about
as dowdy, draggle-feathered fowls.

It was true that Philip had requested Mrs. Cusworth
to remain in his house before he proposed to her
daughter; it was true also that he had asked to be
received at her table before he thought of an
alliance; but it was one thing to have this old creature
as a housekeeper, and another thing to be saddled
with her as mother-in-law.  Moreover, it was by no
means certain but that Mrs. Cusworth might develop
new and unpleasant peculiarities of manner or temper,
as mother-in-law, which would be held in control so
long as she was housekeeper, just as change of climate
or situation brings out humours and rashes which
were latent in the blood, and unsuspected.  Some
asthmatic people breathe freely on gravel, but are
wheezy on clay; and certain livers become torpid
below a hundred feet from the sea-level, and are
active above that line.  So Mrs. Cusworth might
prove amiable and commonplace in a situation of
subordination, but would manifest self-assertion
and cock-a-hoopedness when lifted into a sphere of
authority.

According to the classic fable, Epimetheus—that is,
Afterthought—filled the world with discomfort and
unrest; whereas Prometheus—that is, Forethought—shed
universal blessing on mankind.

For once, Philip had not invoked Prometheus, and
now, in revenge, Epimetheus opened his box and sent
forth a thousand disquieting considerations.  But it
is always so—whether we act with forethought
or without.  Epimetheus is never napping.  He is sure
to open his box when an act is beyond recall.

In old English belief, the fairies that met men and
won their love were one-faced beings, convex as seen
from the front, concave when viewed from the rear.
It is so with every blessing ardently desired, every
object of ambition.  We are drawn towards it, trusting
to its solidity; and only when we have turned
round it do we perceive its vanity.  No man has ever
taken a decided step without a look back and a bitter
laugh.  Where he saw perfection he sees defect,
everything on which he had reckoned is reversed to his
eyes.

In Philip Pennycomequick's case there had been
no ardent looking forward, no idealization of Salome,
no painting of the prospect with fancy's brush;
nevertheless, now when he had committed himself, and
fixed his fate, he stood breathless, aghast, fearful
what next might be revealed to his startled eyes.
His past life had been without charm to him, it had
inspired him with disgust; but the ignorance in which
he was as to what the future had in store, filled him
with vague apprehension.

He was alarmed at his own weakness.  He could
no longer trust himself; his faith in his own prudence
was shaken.  It is said that the stoutest hearts fail in
an earthquake, for then all confidence in stability
goes; but there is something more demoralizing than
the stagger of the earth under our feet, and that is
the reel and quake of our own self-confidence.  When
we lose trust in ourselves, our faith in the future is
lost.

There are moments in the night when the
consequences of our acts appear to us as nightmares,
oppressing and terrifying us.  A missionary put a
magnifying-glass into the hand of a Brahmin, and
bade him look through it at a drop of water.  When
the Hindu saw under his eye a crystal world full of
monsters, he put the glass aside, and perished of thirst
rather than swallow another animated drop of fluid.
Fancy acts to us like that inconsiderate missionary,
shows us the future, and shows it to us peopled with
horrors, and the result is sometimes the paralysis of
effort, the extinction of ambition.  There are moments
in the day, as in the night, when we look through the
lens into the future, and see forms that smite us with
numbness.  Such a moment was that Philip
underwent in his own room.  He saw Mrs. Cusworth
develop into a prodigious nuisance; needy kinsfolk
of his wife swimming as sponges in the crystal element
of the future, with infinite capacity for suction; Janet's
coquetry break through her widow's weeds.  He saw
more than that.  He had entered on a new career,
taken the management of a thriving business, to
which he had passed through no apprenticeship, and
which, therefore, with the best intentions, he might
mismanage and bring to failure.  What if he should
have a family, and ruin come upon him then?

Philip wiped his brow, on which some cold moisture
had formed in drops.  Was he weak?  What man is
not weak when he is about to venture on an untried
path, and knows not whither it may lead?  Only
such as have no sense of the burden of responsibilities
are free from moments of depression and alarm such
as came on Philip now.

It is not the sense of weakness and dread of the
future stealing over the heart that makes a man weak;
it is the yielding to it, and, because of the possible
consequences, abandoning initiative.

With Philip the dread passed quickly.  He had
youth, and youth is hopeful; and he had a vast
recuperative force of self-confidence, which speedily
rallied after the blow dealt his assurance.  When he
had recovered his balance of mind and composure of
manner, he descended the stairs to call on Mrs. Cusworth.

He found Janet in the room with her.  Salome had
retired to her own chamber, to solitude, of which she
felt the need.

Philip spoke cheerfully to the old lady, and accepted
Janet's sallies with good humour.

'You will promise to be kind to Salome,' said
Mrs. Cusworth.  'Indeed she deserves kindness; she is so
good a child.'

'Of that have no doubt.'

'And you will really love her?'

'I ought to be a hearty lover,' said Philip, with a
slight smile, 'for I am a hearty hater, and proverbially
the one qualifies for the other.  Love and hatred are
the two poles of the magnet; a weakly energized
needle that hardly repels at one end, will not
vigorously attract at the other.'

'But surely you hate no one!'

'Do I not?  I have been driven to the verge of it
to-day, by my aunt; but I pardon her because of the
consequences that sprang out of her behaviour.  She
exasperated me to such a degree that I found courage
to speak, and but for the stimulus applied to me,
might have failed to make a bid for what I have now
secured.'

'I am sorry to think that you hate anyone,' said
the old lady.  'We cannot command our likes and
dislikes, but we can hold hatred in check, which is an
unchristian sentiment.'

'Then in hatred I am a heathen.  I shall become
a good Christian in time under Salome's tuition.  I
shall place myself unreservedly at her feet as a catechumen.'

'Sometimes,' said Janet, laughing, 'love turns to
hate, and hate to love.  A bishop's crosier is
something like your magnetic needle.  At one end is a
pastoral crook, and at the other a spike, and in a
careless hand the crook that should reclaim the
errant lamb may be turned, and the spike transfix it.'

'I can no more conceive of love for Salome altering
its quality than I can imagine my detestation—no, I
will call it hate, for a certain person becoming
converted to love.'

'But whom do you hate—not your aunt?'

'No; the man who ruined my father, made his life
a burden to him, turned his heart to wormwood, lost
him his brother's love, and his sister's regard—though
that latter was no great loss—deprived him of his
social position, threw him out of the element in which
alone he could breathe, and bade fair to mar my life
also.'

'I never heard of your troubles,' said Mrs. Cusworth;
'Mr. Pennycomequick did not speak to us of
your father.  He was very reserved about family
matters.'

'He never forgave my father so long as the breath
was in him.  That was like a Pennycomequick.  We
are slow in forming attachments or dislikes, but when
formed we do not alter.  And I—I shall never forgive
the man who spoiled my father's career, and
well-nigh spoiled mine.'

'Who was that, and how did he manage it?' asked Janet.

'How did he manage it?  Why, he first induced
my father to draw his money out of this business,
and then swindled him out of it—out of almost every
pound he had.  By his rascality he reduced my poor
father from being a man comfortably off to one in
straitened circumstances; he deprived him of a home,
drove him—can you conceive of a worse fate?—to
live and die in furnished lodgings.'

Mrs. Cusworth did not speak.  She was a little
shocked at his bitterness.  His face had darkened as
with a suffusion of black blood under the skin, and a
hard look came into his eyes, giving them a metallic
glitter.  He went on, noticing the bad impression he
had made—he went on to justify himself.  'My father's
heart was broken.  He lost all hope, all joy in life, all
interest in everything.  I think of him as a wreck,
over which the waves beat and which is piecemeal
broken up—partly by the waves, partly by wreckers.
That has soured me.  Hamilcar brought up his son
Hannibal to swear hatred to the Romans.  I may
almost say that I was reared in the same manner;
not by direct teaching, but by every privation, every
slight, every discouragement—by the sight of my
father's crushed life, and by the hopelessness that
had come on my own, to sear a bitter implacable
hatred of the name of Schofield.'

'Of whom?'

'Schofield—Earle Schofield.  Earle was his Christian
name—that is, his forename.  He had not anything
Christian about him.'

Philip detected a look—a startled, terrified exchange
of glances—between mother and daughter.

'I see,' continued Philip, 'that I have alarmed you
by the strength of my feelings.  If you had endured
what my father and I have endured, knowing that it
was attributable to one man, then, also, you would be
a heathen in your feelings towards him and all
belonging to him.'

The old lady and her daughter no longer exchanged
glances; they looked on the ground.

'However,' said Philip, in a lighter tone, and the
shadow left his face, 'it is an innocuous feeling.  I
know nothing more of the man since he robbed my
father.  I do not know where he is, whether he be
still alive.  He is probably dead.  I have heard no
tidings of him since a rumour reached us that he had
gone to America, where, if he has died, I have
sufficient Christianity in me to be able to say, "Peace to
his ashes!"

He looked at Mrs. Cusworth.  The old woman was
strangely agitated, her face of the deadly hue that
flesh assumes when the blood has retreated to the
heart.

Janet was confused and uneasy—but that was
explicable.  Her mother's condition accounted for it.

'Mr. John Dale!'  The maid opened the door and
introduced the doctor from Bridlington.

'Mr. Dale!'  Janet and her mother started up and
drew a long breath, as though relieved by his
appearance from a situation embarrassing and painful.

'Oh, Mr. Dale! how glad, how heartily glad we are
to see you!'

Then turning, first to Philip and next to the surgeon,
Janet said, with a smile: 'Now I must introduce you—my
guardian and my brother-in-law prospective.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A RECOGNITION`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   A RECOGNITION.

.. vspace:: 2

Jeremiah Pennycomequick remained quietly at
his friend's house at Bridlington for some weeks.

'As so much time has slipped away since your
disappearance,' said John Dale, 'it does not much matter
whether a little more be sent tobogganing after it.  I
can't go to Mergatroyd very well just now; I am busy,
and have a delicate case on my hands that I will not
entrust to others.  If you can and will wait my
convenience, I promise you I will go.  If not—go
yourself.  But, upon my word, I should dearly like to be
at Mergatroyd to witness your resurrection.'

Jeremiah waited.  He had been weakened by his
illness, and had become alarmed about himself.  He
shrank from exertion, from strong emotion, fearing for
his heart.  In an amusing story by a Swiss novelist, a
man believes that he has a fungus growing on his
heart, and he comes to live for this fungus, to eat only
such things as he is convinced will disagree with the
fungus, to engage in athletic sports, with the hope of
shaking off the fungus, to give up reading the
newspapers, because he ceases to take interest in politics,
being engrossed in his fungus, and finally to discover
that he has been subjected to a delusion, the fungus
existing solely in his imagination.

Mr. Pennycomequick had become alarmed about
his heart; he put his finger periodically to his pulse
to ascertain its regularity, imagined himself subject
to spasms, to feel stabs; he suspected numbness,
examined his lips and eyelids at the glass to discover
whether he were more or less bloodless than the day
before, and shunned emotion as dangerous to a heart
whose action was abnormal.  The rest from business,
the relief from responsibility, were good for him.  The
even life at his friend's house suited him.  But he did
not rapidly gain strength.

He walked on the downs when the weather permitted,
not too fast lest he should unduly distress his
heart, nor too slowly lest he should catch cold.  He
was dieted by his doctor, and ate docilely what was
meted to him; if he could have had his sleep and
wakefulness measured as well, he would have been
content, but sleep would not come when called,
banished by thoughts of the past, and questions
concerning the future.

John Dale was a pleasant man to be with; fond of
a good story, and able to tell one; fond of a good
dinner, and—being a bachelor—able to keep a cook
who could furnish one; fond of good wine, and with a
cellar stocked with it.  He was happy to have his old
comrade with him; and Jeremiah enjoyed being the
guest of John Dale, enjoyed discussing old acquaintances,
reviewing old scenes, refreshing ancient jokes.

Thus time passed, and passed pleasantly, though
not altogether satisfactorily to Jeremiah, who was
impatient at being unwell, and uneasy about his
heart.

At length John Dale fulfilled his undertaking; he
went to Mergatroyd to see how matters progressed
there.  He arrived, as has already been stated, at a
moment when his appearance afforded relief to the
widow.  He talked with Janet, and with Salome; but
he had not many hours at his disposal, and his
interviews with the Cusworths were necessarily brief.  He
was obliged to consult with Janet about her affairs,
and that occupied most of his time.  From Salome he
learned nothing concerning the will more than what
he had already heard.  She told him no particulars;
and, indeed, considered it unnecessary to discuss it, as
her engagement to Philip altered her prospects.

'But, bless me, this must have been a case of love
at first sight!' said Mr. Dale.  'Why, Salome, you did
not know him till the other day!'

'No; I had not seen him till after the death of my
dear uncle, but I, somehow, often thought of and a
little fretted about him.  I was troubled that dear
uncle had not made friends with his brother, and that
he kept his nephew at arm's length.  I pitied
Mr. Philip before I knew him.  I could not hear that he
had done anything to deserve this neglect; and what
little was told me about the cause of difference between
uncle and his brother did not make me think that the
estrangement ought to last and be extended to the
next generation.  In my stupid way I sometimes tried
to bring uncle to another mind, and to think more
kindly of them.  I was so grieved to think that
Mr. Philip should grow up in ignorance of the nobility and
worth of his uncle's character.  Do you
know—Mr. Dale—one reason why I am glad that I am going to
marry Philip is that I may have a real right to call
Mr. Pennycomequick my uncle?  Hitherto I called
him so to himself, and mamma, and one or two others,
but I knew that he was no relation.'

'How about the identification of Mr. Jeremiah's
body?' asked the surgeon.

'With that I had nothing to do.  I was not called
on to give my opinion.  Mrs. Sidebottom swore to it.
The body wore the surtout that I know belonged to
Mr. Pennycomequick, but that was all.  How he
came by it I cannot explain.  Mrs. Sidebottom was
so convinced that her view was correct that she had
an explanation to give why the corpse wore hardly
any other clothes.  I did not believe when it was
found, and I do not believe now, that the body was
that of uncle.'

'But you do not doubt that Mr. Pennycomequick is
dead?'

'Oh no! of course not.  If he had been alive he
would have returned to us.  There was nothing to
hinder him from doing so.'

'Nothing of which you are aware.'

John Dale heard a favourable account of Philip
from everyone to whom he spoke, except Janet, who
did not appreciate his good qualities, and was keenly
alive to his defects.  He could not inquire at the
factory, but he was a shrewd man, and he picked up
opinions from the station-master, from some with
whom he walked up the hill, from a Mergatroyd
tradesman who travelled with him in the same
railway-carriage.  All were decidedly in Philip's favour.
The popular voice was appreciative.  He was regarded
as a man of business habits and integrity of character.

John Dale returned to Bridlington.

'News for you, old boy!' shouted he, as he entered
his house, and then looked steadily at Jeremiah to see
how he would receive the news he brought.  'What do
you think?  Wonders will never cease.  Salome——'

'Well, what about Salome?'

Jeremiah's mouth quivered.  John Dale smiled.
'Young people naturally gravitate towards each other.
There is only one commandment given to men that
receives general and cheerful acceptance, save from a
few perverse creatures such as you and me—and that
commandment is to be fruitful and multiply and
replenish the earth.  Salome is engaged to be married.'

Jeremiah's face became like chalk.  He put his
hand over his eyes, then hastily withdrew it.  Dale
saw his emotion, and went on talking so as to cover
it and give him time to master it.  'I have read
somewhere, that in mediæval times in the German cities
the marriageable young men were summoned before
the Burgomaster on New Year's Day, and ordered to
get married before Easter on pain of expulsion from
the city.  Bachelorhood was regarded as unpatriotic
if not criminal.  It is a pity this law was not in force
here a few years ago—and that you and I were not
policed into matrimony.  Now it is too late; both of
us have acquired bachelor habits, and it would be
cruelty to force us into a condition which we have
eschewed, and for which we have ceased to be fitted.'

'Whom is she going to marry?' asked Jeremiah,
controlling his emotions by an effort.

'No other than your nephew Philip.  I will tell you
what I know.'

Then John Dale gave his friend a succinct account
of what he had heard.  He told him what he had
learned of Philip.

'Do you grudge her to your nephew?' asked Dale.

'I do not know Philip,' answered Jeremiah curtly.

'I heard nothing but golden opinions of him,' said
Dale.  'The only person to qualify these was that
puss, Janet, and she of course thinks no one good
enough for her dear sister Salome.'

Jeremiah's heart swelled.  How easy it would be
for him to spoil all the schemes that had been hatched
since his disappearance.  Philip was reckoning on
becoming a well-to-do manufacturer; on founding a
household; was looking forward to a blissful domestic
life enriched with the love of Salome.  Jeremiah had
but to show himself; and all these plans would
disappear as the desert mirage; Philip would have to
return to his lawyer's clerkship and abandon every
prospect of domestic happiness and commercial
success.

'One thing more,' said Dale, 'I do not quite like
the looks of my little pet, Janet.  Her troubles have
worn her more than I suspected.  Besides she never
had the robustness of her sister.  It is hard that wits
and constitution should go to one of the twins, and
leave the other scantily provided with both.'

Jeremiah said no more.  He was looking gloomily
before him into vacancy.  John Dale declared he
must visit his patients, and left his friend.

Jeremiah continued for some minutes in a brown
study; and then he, also, rose, put on his overcoat
and muffler, and went forth to the cliffs, to muse on
what he had heard, and to decide his future course.

The tidings of Salome's engagement were hard to
bear.  He thought he had taught himself to think of
her no longer in the light of a possible wife.  His
good sense had convinced him that it would be
unwise for him to think of marriage with her; it told
him also that he was as yet too infirm of purpose to
trust himself in her presence.

Could he now return?  If he did, in what capacity?—as
the maker or marrer of Philip's fortunes?  If he
took him into partnership, so as to enable him to
marry, could he—Jeremiah—endure the daily spectacle
of his nephew's happiness?—endure to witness the
transfer to another of that love and devotion which
had been given to him?  And if he banished Philip,
what would be the effect on Salome?  Would she not
resent his return, and regret that he had not died in the
flood?  If he were to allow those in Mergatroyd to know
that he was alive it would be almost the same thing
as returning into their midst, as it would disconcert
their arrangements effectually.  The wisest course for
himself, and the kindest to them, would be for him to
depart from England for a twelvemonth or more,
without giving token that he still existed, and then
on his return he would be able to form an
unprejudiced opinion of his nephew, and act accordingly.
If he found him what, according to Dale's account,
he promised to become—a practical, hardworking,
honourable manager—he would leave the conduct of
the business in his hands, only reclaiming that share
which had been grasped by Mrs. Sidebottom, which,
moreover, he would feel a——perhaps malicious
pleasure in taking from her.

He seated himself on one of the benches placed at
intervals on the down for the convenience of visitors,
and looked out to sea.  The sun shone, and the day,
for a winter's day, was warm.  Very little air stirred,
and Jeremiah thought that to rest himself on the
bench could do him no harm, so long as he did not
remain there till he felt chilled.

As he sat on the bench, immersed in his troubled
thoughts, a gentleman came up, bowed, and took a
place at his side.

'Beautiful weather! beautiful weather!' said the
stranger, 'and such weather, I am glad to say, is
general at Bridlington.  Of the three hundred and
sixty-five days in the year the average of days on
which the sun shines is two hundred and seventy-three
decimal four.  When we get an interruption of
what we regard as bad weather, oh! what murmurers,
sad murmurers we are against a beneficent Providence.
The so-called bad weather dissipates the insalubrious
gases and brings in a fresh supply of invigorating
ozone, life-sustaining oxygen, and the other
force-stimulating elements—elements.'

Jeremiah nodded.  He was not well pleased to be
drawn into conversation at this moment, when
occupied with his own thoughts.

'"La santé avant tout," say the French,' continued
the gentleman, 'with that terseness which characterizes
the Gallic tongue—the tongue, sir.'  When he
repeated a word he ruffled and swelled and turned
himself about like a pluming turkey, and as though
believing that he had said a good thing.  'I agree
with them; I would subordinate every consideration
to health, every consideration, sir, except religion,
which towers, sir, steeples and weather-cocks high
above every other mundane con—sid—er—ation.'  As
he pronounced each syllable apart, as though each
was a pearl he dropped from his lips, he turned
himself about, scattering his precious particles, till he
faced Jeremiah.  'You, yourself, sir, I perceive, are
in search of that inestimable prize, health—Hygiene,
I mean.'

Mr. Pennycomequick was startled at this random
shot, and looked more closely at his interlocutor.  He
saw a man of about his own height, with long hair,
whiskers that were elaborately curled, and perhaps
darkened with antimony; a handsome man, but with
a mottled face and a nose inclined to redness.  There
was a something—Jeremiah could not tell what, it
was in his face—that made him suspect he had seen
the man before; or, if he had not seen him before,
had seen someone like him.  He looked again at his
face, not steadily, lest he should seem discourteous,
but hastily, and withal searchingly.  No, he had not
seen him previously, and yet there was certainly
something in his face that was familiar.

'You are not, I presume, aware,' continued the
gentleman, 'that there is a very remarkable and
unique feature of this bay which points it out specially
as the sanatorium of the future.  The iodine in the
seaweed here—the i-o-dine, sir—reaches a percentage
unattained elsewhere.  It has been analysed, and,
whereas along the seaside resorts on the English
Channel it is two decimal four to five decimal one of
potass, there is a steady accession of iodine in the
seaweed, as you mount the east coast—the east coast,
sir—till it reaches its maximum at the spot where we
now are; where the proportions are almost reversed,
the iodine standing at five, or, to be exact, four
decimal eight, and the potass at three decimal two.
This is a very interesting fact, sir, and as important as
it is interesting—as it is in-ter-est-ing.'

The gentleman worked his elbows, as though
uncomfortable in his overcoat, that did not fit him.

'The iodine is suspended in the atmosphere, as
also is the ozone; but it is concentrated in the algae.
Conceive of the advantage to humanity, and
contemplate the beneficence of Providence, not only in
gathering into one focus the distributed iodine of the
universe, but also in discovering this fact to me, and
enabling me and a few others to whom I confide the
secret, to realize out of the iodine, I will not say
a competence, but a colossal fortune.'

'And pray,' said Jeremiah, with a tone of sarcasm
in his voice, 'what is the good of iodine when you
have it?'

'What is the good—the good of iodine?'

The gentleman turned round solidly and looked at
Mr. Pennycomequick from head to foot.  'Do you
mean to tell me, sir, that you do not know for what
purpose an all-wise Providence has put iodine in the
world?  Why, it is one of the most potent, I may say
it is the *only* agent for the reduction of muscular,
vascular, osseous, abnormal secretions.'  From the
way in which he employed such words as vascular,
osseous, abnormal, and secretions, it was apparent that
they gave the speaker thorough enjoyment to use
them.  'For any and every form of disorder of the
cartilaginous system it is sovereign—sov-er-eign.'

'For the heart also?' asked Jeremiah, becoming
interested in iodine.

'For all cardiac affections—supreme.  It is known
as yet to very few—only to such as know it through
me—that Bridlington is a spot so abounding in iodine,
so marked out by nature as a resort for all those who
suffer from glandular affections, stiff joints, rickets,
cardial infirmities—and, according to a system I am
about to make public—tubercular phthisis.'

He turned himself about and shook his mouth, as
shaking comfits out of a bag, 'tu-ber-cular phthi-sis!'

After a pause, in which he smiled, well pleased
with himself, he said, 'Perhaps you will condescend
to take my card, and if I can induce you to take a
share in Iodinopolis——'

'Iodinopolis?'

'The great sanatorium of the future.  A company
is being formed to buy up land, to erect ranges of
beautiful marine villas, to rear palatial hotels.  There
is a low church here already, and if we can persuade
his grace the Archbishop to help us to a high church
also, the place will be ready, the nest prepared for the
birds.  Then we propose to give a bonus to every
physician who recommends a patient to Bridlington,
for the first three or four years, till the tide of fashion
has set in so strong that we can dispense with bonuses,
the patients themselves insisting on being sent here.
What said Ledru Rollin?  "I am the leader of the
people, therefore I must follow them."  He handed
his card to Mr. Pennycomequick, who looked at it and saw:

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   'MR. BEAPLE YEO,
        Financier.'

.. vspace:: 2

Every now and then there came in the stranger's
voice an intonation that seemed familiar to Jeremiah;
in itself nothing decided, but sufficient, like a scent,
to recall something, yet not pronounced enough to
enable him to determine what it was in the past that
was recalled.  Again Jeremiah looked at the gentleman,
and his attention was all at once directed to his
great-coat.

'How odd—how strange!' he muttered.

'What, sir? what is strange?' asked the gentleman.
'That such a splendid opportunity of making
a fortune should lie at our feet—lie literally at our
feet, without figure of speech—for there it is, in the
seaweed, here it is, in the air we inhale, now humming
in the grass of the down?  Perhaps you may like——'
he fumbled in his great-coat pocket.

'Excuse me,' said Jeremiah, 'that overcoat bears
the most extraordinary resemblance to——' but he
checked himself.

'Made by my tailor in New Bond Street,' said Mr. Yeo.
'Here, sir, is the prospectus.  This is a speculation
on which not only large capitalists may embark,
but also the widow can contribute her mite, and reap
as they have sown, the capitalist receiving in
proportion as the widow—*as* the widow.  I myself, guarantee
eighteen and a half per cent.  That I guarantee on
my personal security—but I reckon that the return
will be at the rate of twenty-four decimal three—the
decimal is important, because the calculation has been
strict.'

Mr. Pennycomequick ran his eye over the list of
managers.

'You will see,' said Mr. Yeo, 'that our chairman is
the Earl of Schofield.  His lordship has taken up a
hundred and twenty shares of £10 each—the first call
is for five shillings per share.'

'Earl Schofield!' murmured Mr. Pennycomequick.
'Earl Schofield!  Earl Schofield!  I do not know
much of the peerage—not in my line—but the name
is familiar to me.  Earl Schofield!—Excuse me, but
there was a great scoundrel——'

'Hah!' interrupted Mr. Yeo, and waved his cane,
'there is my secretary signalling to me from away
yonder on the dunes.  Excuse me—I must go to him.'

He rose and walked hastily away.

'How very odd!' said Jeremiah.  'I could swear he
was in my great-coat.' He watched the man as he
strode away.  'And that hat!—surely I know that also.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WITHOUT BELLS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   WITHOUT BELLS.

.. vspace:: 2

Virgilius, Bishop of Salzburg in the eighth century,
condemned the erroneous doctrine held by some that
we have antipodes.  It was, no doubt, true that men in
the Middle Ages had not their antipodes, but it is
certainly otherwise now.  Where our fathers' heads
were, there now are our feet.  Everything is the reverse
in this Generation of what it was in the last.  Medicine
condemns those things which medicine did enjoin, and
enjoins those things which were forbidden.  What our
parents revered that we turn into burlesque, and what
they cast aside as worthless that we collect and treasure.
Maxims that moulded the conduct in the last generation
are trampled underfoot in this, and principles thought
immutable are broken by the succeeding age, as royal
seals are broken on the death of the sovereign.  If
we were bred up by our fathers in high Toryism,
when of age we turn a somersault and pose as Social
Democrats; if we learned the Gospel at our mother's
knee we profess Buddhism with the sprouting of our
whiskers.  The social and moral barriers set up by our
fathers we throw down, and just as pigs when driven
in one direction turn their snouts the other way, so do
we—so do our children; which is an evidence in favour
of Darwinianism, showing that the porcine character
still inheres.

It was regarded of old as a canon by romance
writers, that the final chapter of the last volume, be it
the seventh as in the days of Richardson, or the third
as in these of Mudie and Smith, should end with the
marriage of the hero and heroine.  A cruel and
wayward Fate held the couple apart through the entire
story, but they came together in the end.  And there
was a reason for this.  Marriage is the climax of the
romance of life.  It concludes one epoch and opens
another, and that which it opens is prosaic.  It was
concluded, and concluded with some show of reason
that a romance should deal with the romantic period
of life and finish when that reaches its apogee.

The Parliament of Love at Toulouse in the twelfth
century laid down that love and marriage were mutually
exclusive terms; that romance died to the sound of
wedding-bells, or at longest lingered to the expiration
of the honeymoon.  This law has governed novelists
ever since.  The ingenuity of the author has consisted
in devising impediments to the union of the lovers, and
in knocking them out of their way as the story neared
its conclusion.

But in this revolutionary age we have discarded the
rule; and carried away by the innovating stream the
author of this tale has ventured to displace the
marriage.  Had he been completely lost to reverence for
the ancient canons, in his desire to be original, he
would have opened his novel with a wedding procession,
strutting to the carriages over strewn flowers,
holding bouquets, with the pealing of wedding-bells,
whilst the bridegroom's man circulates, tipping the
parson, the curate, the pewopener, the sexton, the
clerk, the bellringers, and all the other sharks that
congregate about a bridegroom, as the fish congregate
about a ship on board of which is a corpse.  But, as
the author is still held in check by old rule, or
prejudice, and yet yields somewhat to the modern spirit of
relaxation, he compromises between the extremes,
and introduces the marriage in the middle of his tale.

In a novel, a marriage is always built up of much
romantic and picturesque and floral adjunct.  It is
supposed necessarily to involve choral hymns, white
favours, bridal veils, orange blossoms, tears in the
bride, flaming cheeks in the bridegroom, speeches at
the breakfast, an old slipper, and a shower of rice.
Without these condiments a wedding is a very insipid dish.

But here we are forced to innovate.

The marriage of Philip Pennycomequick and Salome
Cusworth was hurried on; there was no necessity for
delay, and it was performed in a manner so prosaic as
to void it of every feature of romance and refinement.

In the parish church there was morning prayer
every day at nine, and this service Salome frequently
attended.

On one morning—as it happened, a gray one, with
a spitting sky—Philip also attended matins, from 'the
wicked man' to the final 'Amen.'  When, however,
the service was concluded—a service attended by five
Sisters of Mercy and three devout ladies—the vicar,
instead of leaving the desk, coughed, blew his nose,
and glowered down the church.

Then the clerk began to fumble among some books,
the five Sisters of Mercy perked up, the devout ladies
who had moved from their seats towards the church
door were seized with a suspicion that something
unusual was about to take place, and hastily returned
to their places.  The Sisters of Mercy had with them
one penitent, whom with sugar-plums they were
alluring into the paths of virtue.  It at once occurred
to these religious women that to witness a wedding
would have an elevating, healthy effect on their
penitent, and they resolved to stay—for her sake, for her
sake only; they, for their parts, being raised above
all mundane interests.  Also, the servants of the
vicarage, which adjoined the churchyard, by some
means got wind of what was about to occur, and slipped
ulsters over their light cotton gowns, and tucked their
caps under pork-pie hats, and tumbled into church
breathing heavily.

Then Philip, trying to look as if nothing was about
to happen, came out of his pew, and in doing so
stumbled over a hassock, knocked down his umbrella
which leaned against the pew, and sent some hymnals
and church services about the floor.  Then he walked
up the church, and was joined by Salome and her sister
and mother.  No psalm was sung, no 'voice breathed
o'er Eden,' but the Sisters of Mercy intoned the
responses with vociferous ardour, and the penitent took
the liveliest interest in the ceremonial, expressing her
interest in giggles and suppressed 'Oh my's!'

Finally, after 'amazement,' the parson, clerk, bride
and bridegroom, and witnesses adjourned to the vestry,
where the vicar made his customary joke about the
lady signing her surname for the last time.

The bellringers knew nothing about the wedding,
and having been unforewarned were not present to ring
a peal.  No carriage with white favours to horses and
driver was at the door of the church—no cab was kept
at Mergatroyd—no rice was thrown, no slipper cast.

The little party walked quietly and unobserved
back to their house under umbrellas, and on reaching
home partook of a breakfast that consisted of fried
fish, bacon, eggs, toast, butter, and home-made
marmalade.  No guests were present, no speeches were
made, no healths drunk.  There was to be no wedding
tour.  Philip could not leave the mill, and the
honeymoon must be passed in the smoky atmosphere of
Mergatroyd, and without the intermission of the daily
routine of work.

As Philip walked home with Salome under the same
umbrella, from the points of which the discoloured
water dropped, he said in a low tone to her, 'I have,
as you desired, offered your mother to manage her
affairs for her.  She has accepted my offer, and I
have looked through her accounts.  She has very
little money.'

'I do not suppose she can have much; my poor
father died before he was in a position to save any
considerable sum.'

'She has about five hundred pounds in Indian
railway bonds, and a couple of hundred in a South
American loan, and some three hundred in home
railways—about fifteen to sixteen hundred pounds in
all—that is to say, she had this a little while ago.'

'And has it still, no doubt.'

'No; you yourself told me she had met with losses.'

'She informed me that she had, but I cannot understand
how this can have been.  I doubt entirely that
she met with losses.'

'But she allowed me to see her book, and she has
sold out some stock—in fact, between two and three
hundred pounds' worth.  She did that almost
immediately after my uncle's death.'

'But she has the money realized, I suppose.'

'Not at all.  It is gone.'

'Gone!'

'She cannot and will not account for it to me,
except by the vague explanation that she had a sudden
and unexpected call upon her which she was forced to
meet.'

'But—she said nothing about this to me.  It is very odd.'

'It is, as you say, odd.  It is, of course, possible
that Janet may have had something to do with it, but
I cannot say; your mother will not enlighten me.'

'I cannot understand this,' said Salome musingly.

'I regret my offer,' said Philip.  'I would not have
made it if I had not thought I should be met with
candour, and given the information I desired.'

When Mrs. Sidebottom heard that the marriage
had actually taken place, then her moral sense reared
like a cob unaccustomed to the curb.

'It is a scandal!' she exclaimed, 'and so shortly
after my sweet brother's death.  A bagman's daughter,
too!'

'Uncle Jeremiah died in November,' said the captain.

'Well, and this is March.  To marry a bagman's
daughter in March!  It is a scandal, an outrage on
the family.'

'My uncle would have had no objections, I suppose.
Philip is as good as Mr. Baynes.'

'As good!  How you talk, Lamb! as if all the
brains in your skull had gone to water.  Philip is a
Pennycomequick, and Baynes is—of course, a Baynes.'

'What of that?'

'Mr. Baynes was a manufacturer.'

'So is Philip.'

'Well, yes; for his sins.  But then he is allied to
us who have dropped an *n*, and capitalized a Q, and
adopted and inserted a hyphen.  Mr. Baynes was not
in the faintest degree related to us.  Philip has behaved
with gross indecency.  A bagman's daughter within
five months of his uncle's death!  Monstrous.  If she
had been his social equal we could have waived the
month—but, a bagman's daughter!  I feel as if allied
to blackbeetles.'

'Her father was about to be taken into partnership
when he died,' argued the captain.

'If he had been a partner, that would have been
another matter, and I should not have been so pained
and mortified; but he was not, and a man takes his
position by the place he occupied when he died, not
by that which he might have occupied had he lived.
Why, if Sidebottom had lived and been elected
Mayor of Northingham in the year of the Prince's
visit he might have been knighted, but that does not
make me Lady Sidebottom.'

'You call him a bagman,' said Captain Lambert.
'But I should say he was a commercial traveller.'

'And how does that mend matters?  Do seven
syllables make a difference?  A dress-improver is no
other than a bustle, and an influenza than a cold in
the head.'

'All I know is,' said the captain, 'that his daughters
are deuced pretty girls, and as good a pair of ladies as
you will meet anywhere.  I've known some of your
grand ladies say awfully stupid things, and I can't
imagine Janet doing that; and some do rather mean
things, and Salome could not by any chance do what
was unkind or ungenerous.  I've a deuce of a mind
to propose to Janet, as I have been chiselled out of
my one hundred and fifty.'

'Chiselled out!'

'Yes, out of my annuity.  If the will had been valid
I should have had that of my own; but now I have
nothing, and am forced to go to you for every penny
to buy tobacco.  It is disgusting.  I'll marry Janet.
I am glad she is a widow and available.  She has a
hundred and fifty per annum of her own, and is
certainly left something handsome by Baynes.'

'Fiddlesticks!' exclaimed Mrs. Sidebottom.

'I will, indeed, unless I am more liberally treated.
I hate to be dependent on you for everything.  I wish
I had served a *caveat* against your getting administration
of the property, and done something to get the
old will put to rights.'

Mrs. Sidebottom turned green with anger and alarm.

'I will go to Philip's wedding breakfast, or dinner, or
dance, or whatever he is going to have, and snatch a
kiss from little Janet, pull her behind the window-curtains
and propose for her hundred and fifty, I will.'

Lambert's mother was very angry, but she said no
more.  She knew the character of her son; he would
not bestir himself to do what he threatened.  His
bark was worse than his bite.  He fumed and then
turned cold.

But Philip gave no entertainment on his wedding-day,
invited no one to his house; consequently Lambert
had not the opportunity he desired for pulling
Janet behind the window-curtains, snatching a kiss
and proposing for her hundred and fifty pounds.

'I shall refuse to know them,' said Mrs. Sidebottom.

'And return to York?' asked her son.

'I can't leave at once,' answered his mother.  'I
have the house on my hands.  Besides, I must have
an eye on the factory.  Lamb, if you had any spirit
in you, you would learn book-keeping, so as to be
able to control the accounts.  I do not trust Philip;
how can I, when he marries a bagman's daughter?
It is a proof of deficiency in common sense, and a
lack of sense of rectitude.  Who was Salome's mother?
We do not know her maiden name.  These sort of
people are like diatoms that fill the air, and no one
can tell whence they came and what they are.  They
are everywhere about us and all equally insignificant.'

Mrs. Sidebottom had but the ears of her son into
which to pour her discontent, for she had no
acquaintances in Mergatroyd.

On coming there she had been met by the manufacturers'
wives in a cordial spirit.  Her brother was
highly respected, and they hastened to call on her
and express their readiness to do her any kindness
she might need as a stranger in the town.  She would
have been received into the society there—a genial
one—had she been inclined.  But she was supercilious.
She allowed the ladies of Mergatroyd to understand
that she belonged to another and a higher order of
beings, and that the days in which the gods and
goddesses came down from Olympus to hold converse
with men were over.

The consequence was that she was left to herself,
and now she grumbled at the dulness of a place which
was only dull to her, because of her own want of tact.
No more kindly, friendly people are to be found in
England than the north country manufacturers; but
the qualities of frankness, directness, which are
conspicuous in them, were precisely those qualities which
Mrs. Sidebottom was incapable of appreciating, were
qualities which to her mind savoured of barbarism.

And yet Mrs. Sidebottom belonged, neither by
birth nor by marriage nor by acceptance, to a superior
class.  She was the daughter of a manufacturer, and
the widow of a small country attorney.  As the
paralytic in the sheep-market waited for an angel to put
him into the pool, so did Mrs. Sidebottom spend her
time and exhaust her powers in vain endeavours to
get dipped in the cleansing basin of county society,
in which she might be purged of the taint of trade.
And, like the paralytic of the story, she had to wait,
and was disappointed annually, and had the mortification
of seeing some neighbour or acquaintance step
past her and enter the desired circle, whilst she was
making ready and beating about for an introducer.

She attended concerts, public balls, went to
missionary meetings; she joined working parties for
charitable objects, took stalls at bazaars, hoping by
these means to get within the vortex of the
fashionable world and be drawn in, but was always
disappointed.  Round every eddy may be seen sticks
and straws that spin on their own axes; they make
dashes inwards, and are repelled, never succeeding in
being caught by the coil of the whirlpool.  So was
she ever hovering on the outskirts of the aristocratic
ring, ever aiming to pierce it, and always missing her
object.

A poem by Kenrick, written at the coronation of
George III., represents that celebrated beauty and
toast, the Countess of Coventry, recently deceased,
applying to Pluto for permission to return to earth
and mingle in the entertainments of the Coronation.
Pluto gives his consent; she may go—but as a ghost
remain unseen.

Then says the Countess:

   |  'A fig for fine sights, if unseen one's fine face,
   |  What signifies seeing, if one's self is not seen?'
   |

So Mrs. Sidebottom found that it was very little
pleasure to her to hover about genteel society, and
see into it, without herself being seen in it.  Her
descent to Mergatroyd was in part due to a rebuff
she had met with at York, quite as much as to her
desire to conciliate her half-brother.  She trusted
that when she returned to York she would be so
much richer than before that this would afford her
the requisite momentum which might impel her within
the magic circle, within which, when once rotating,
she would be safe, confident of being able to maintain
her place.

'My dear Lamb,' said she, 'I may inform you, in
the strictest confidence, that I see my way to becoming
wealthy, really wealthy.  There is a speculation on
foot, of which I have received information through
my York agent, to buy up land and build a great
health resort near Bridlington, to be called Iodinopolis
or Yeoville, the name is not quite fixed.  No one is
to know anything about it but the few who take
preference shares.  I am most anxious to realize some of
the securities that came to me through my darling
brother's death, so as to invest.  The manager is
called Beaple Yeo.'

'Never heard of him.'

'And the chairman is the Earl of Schofield.
Mr. Beaple Yeo and the Earl together guarantee
seventeen per cent—think of that, Lamb!—on their own
guarantee!—an Earl, too—and the funds are only
three or three and a half!'





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.. _`HYMEN`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   HYMEN.

.. vspace:: 2

A twelvemonth slipped away, easily, happily; to
none more so than to Philip Pennycomequick.

To the Fates, how strange must seem the readiness
with which women plunge into matrimony, and the
shyness with which some men look at it! for
matrimony is emphatically an institution designed for the
comfort of man irrespective of the interests of the
woman.  The married man ceases to have care about
his meals, they come to him; he gives no thought to
his servants, they are managed for him; he is not
troubled about his clothing, it now hangs together,
whereas formerly it fell to pieces.

When the married man prepares to shave, the soap-dish
is full, his tidy is clean, his razors in order; the
bachelor finds all in confusion.  Before marriage, he
who had a cook was served with India-rubber; after
it, he gets his meat succulent and well cooked.  Before
marriage, the linen went to the wash, and only half
returned, silk handkerchiefs returned as cotton,
stockings came odd, jerseys in holes, sheets in rags, and
shirt-fronts enamelled with iron-mould; after marriage,
everything returns in good condition and in proper
number.

But to the woman, matrimony is by no means a
relief from cares.  On the contrary, the woman passes
through the ring into an arena of battle.  We are
told by anthropologists that in the primitive
condition of society a subdivision of tasks took place;
one set of men undertook to till the earth and
manage the domestic animals, whilst another girded
on their arms and defended the infant community.
These latter, for their services, were fed by the tillers,
housed, and clothed with food they had not grown,
houses they had not builded, clothing they had not
woven.  The same subdivision of labour continues
still in the family, where the man is the tiller and
toiler, and the woman is the military element.  She
marches round the confines of his house, fights daily
battles with those foes of domestic felicity—the
servants.  When they oversleep themselves, she
routs them out of their beds; when they neglect
the dusting, she flies in pursuit to bring them to their
duties; when they are impudent, she drives them out
of the house.

With what unflagging zeal does she maintain her
daily conflicts!  How she countermines, discovers
ambushes, circumvents, throws open the gates, and charges
the foe!

Now consider what was the life of the girl before
she married.  She had no worries, no warfare; she
was petted, admired; she enjoyed herself, indulged
her caprices unrestrained, gave way to her humours
unrebuked.  Her bonnets, her dresses were given
to her, she had no care what she might eat, any
more than the lilies of the field, only, unlike them,
devoting herself to the thoughts of her clothing, for
which, however, she had not to pay.  Unmarried
girls were anciently termed spinsters, and are so
derisively still in the banns, for they formerly spun
the linen for their future homes; now they toil not,
neither do they spin.

Then comes marriage, and all is changed.  They
enter into a world of discords and *désagréments*.
They have to grow long nails and to sharpen their
teeth; they have to haggle with shopkeepers, fight
their servants; whereas the husbands, those sluggard
kings of creation, smack their lips over their dinners,
and lounge in their easy-chairs, and talk politics with
their friends, and smile, and smile, unconscious of the
struggles and passions that rage downstairs.

The eyes that, in the girl, looked at the beauties of
creation, in the married woman search out
delinquencies in their domestics, and defects in the
household furniture.  The eyes that looked for violets now
peer for cobwebs; that lingered lovingly on the sunset
glow, now examine the coal-bill; and the ear that
listed to the song of Philomel, is now on the alert for
a male voice in the kitchen.  The nose that of old
inhaled the perfume of the rose, now pokes into pots
and pans in quest of dripping.

From what has been said above, the reader may
conclude that the position of the wife, though a
belligerent one, is at all events regal.  She is queen of
the house, and if she has trouble with her servants, it
is as a sovereign who has to resist revolutionary
movements among her subjects.

No more mistaken idea can well be entertained.  As
the Pope writes himself, 'Servant of the servants of
Heaven,' so does the lady of the house subscribe
herself servant of the servants of the establishment.  If
she searches into their shortcomings, remonstrates,
and resents them, it is as the subject criticising,
murmuring at, and revolting personally against the tyranny
of her oppressors.  So far from being the head of the
house, she is the door-mat, trampled on, kicked, set at
nought, obliged to swallow all the dirt that is brought
into the house.

Marriage had produced a change in Philip.  It had
made him less stony, angular, formal.  Matrimony
often has a remarkable effect on those who enter into
it, reducing their peculiarities, softening their
harshnesses, and accentuating those points of similarity
which are to be found in the two brought into
close association, so that in course of time a
singular resemblance in character and features is
observable in married folk.  In an old couple there is to be
seen occasionally a likeness as that of brother and
sister.  This is caused by their being exposed to the
same caresses and the same strokes of fortune; they
are weathered by the same breezes, moistened by the
same rains.  In addition to the exterior forces moulding
a couple, comes the reciprocal action of the inner
powers—their passions, prejudices—so that they
recoil on each other.  They come to think alike,
to feel alike, as well as to look alike.  The man
unconsciously loses some of his ruggedness, and the
woman acquires some of his breadth and strength.
They become in some measure reflectors to each other,
the light one catches is cast on and brightens the
other, and they mirror whatever passes along the face
of the other.

The subtle, mysterious modelling process had begun
on Philip, although but recently married.  Janet was
no longer in the house; she had returned to France,
and as her constitution was delicate had followed
advice, and gone to the South for the winter.

Mrs. Sidebottom and the captain had shaken off
the dust from their feet against Mergatroyd, and had
returned to their favourite city, York, where they
resumed the interrupted gyrations about the whirlpool
of fashionable life, and Mrs. Sidebottom made her
usual rushes, still ineffectual, at its centre.

Consequently, Philip was left to the undisturbed
influence of Salome, and this influence affected him
more than he was conscious of, and would have allowed
was possible.  He was very happy, but he was not
the man to confess it, least of all to his wife.  As a
Canadian Indian deems it derogatory to his dignity
to express surprise at any wonder of civilization shown
him, so did Philip consider that it comported with his
dignity to accept all the comforts, the ease, the love
that surrounded him as though familiar with them
from the beginning.  Englishmen who have been
exposed to tropic suns in Africa, have their faces
shrivelled and lined.  When they returned to England,
in the soft, humid atmosphere the flesh expands, and
drinks in moisture at every pore.  The lines fade out,
and the flesh becomes plump.  So did the sweet,
soothing influence of Salome, equable as it was gentle,
fill, relax, refresh the spirit of Philip, and restore to
him some of the lost buoyancy of youth.  Salome
was admirably calculated to render him happy, and
Philip was not aware of the rare good fortune which
had given him a wife who had the self-restraint to
keep her crosses to herself.  That is not the way with
all wives.  Many a wife makes a beast of burden of
her husband, lading him with crosses, heaping on his
shoulders not only her own, great or small, but also
all those of her relatives, friends and acquaintances.
Such a wife cracks a whip behind her good man;
drives him through the town, stopping at every house
and calling, 'Any old crosses!  Old crosses!  Old
crosses!  Chuck them on; his back is broad to bear
them!' precisely as the scavenger goes through the
streets with his cart and burdens it with the refuse of
every house.  Many a wife takes a pride in thus
breaking the back, and galling the sides, and
knocking together the knees of her husband with the
crosses she piles on his shoulders.

As we walk through the wilderness of life, burrs
adhere to the coat of Darby and to the skirts of Joan.
Why should not each carry his or her own burrs, if
they refuse to be picked off and thrown away?  Why
should Joan collect all hers and poke them down the
neck of Darby, and expect him to work them down
his back from the nape to the heel?  Little thought
had Philip how, unperceived and by stealth, Salome
sought the burrs that adhered to him, removed them
and thrust them into her own bosom, bearing them
there with a smiling face, and leaving him
unconscious that he had been delivered from any, and that
they were fretting her.

We men are sadly regardless of the thousand little
acts of forethought that lighten and ease our course.
We give no thanks, we are not even aware of what
has been done for us.  Nevertheless, our wives do not
go unrewarded, though unthanked, for what they have
done or borne; their gentle attentions have served to
give us a polish and a beauty we had not before we
came into their tender hands.

A bright face met Philip when he returned from
the factory every day.  If Salome saw that he was
downcast, she exerted herself to cheer him; if that he
was cheerful, she was careful not to discourage him.
Always neat in person, fresh in face, and pleasant in
humour, keeping out of Philip's way whatever might
annoy him, she made him as happy as he could
well be.

Perfectly happy Philip could not be, because unable
to shake off the sense of insecurity that attended
his change of fortune.  Constitutionally suspicious,
habituated to the shade, he was dazzled and frightened
when exposed to the light.  The access of good luck
had been too sudden and too great, for him to trust
its permanency.  The fish that has its jaws transfixed
with broken hooks mistrusts the worm that floats down
the stream unattached to a line.  The expectation of
disappointment had been bred in him by painful and
repeated experience, and had engendered a sullen
predetermination to mistrust Good Fortune.  He
regarded her as a treacherous goddess, and when she
smiled, he was sure that she meditated a stab with a
hidden dagger.

Such as are born in the lap of fortune, from which
they have never been given a fall, or where they have
never been dosed with quassia through a drenching
spoon, such persons look on life with equanimity.
Nothing would surprise them more than a reverse.
But with the step-sons of fortune, the Cinderellas in
the great household of humanity, who have encountered
heart-break after heart-break, it is otherwise.  When
Fortune comes their way offering gifts, they mistrust
them as the gifts of the Danai.  It is with them as
with him who is haunted.  He knows that the spectre
lurks at hand, and when he is about to close his eyes,
will start up and scare him; when he is merry will
rise above the table and echo his laugh with a jeer.
So do those who have been unlucky fear ever lest
misfortune should spring on them from some
unforeseen quarter, at some unprepared moment.

The dread lest there should be a revulsion in his
affairs never wholly left Philip, and took the edge off
his happiness.  He had found little difficulty in
acquiring the requisite understanding of the business,
and obtaining a firm hold over the conduct of the
factory.  There was no prospect of decline in the
trade.  Since the conclusion of the European war, it
had become brisk.  Peace had created a demand for
figured damasks.  He had no reason to dread a
cessation of orders, a slackness in the trade.





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.. _`AN ALARM`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   AN ALARM.

.. vspace:: 2

Within a twelvemonth of his marriage Philip had
been given one of the purest and best of the joys that
spring out of matrimony—a child, a boy called after
his own name, Philip; and the father loved his first-born,
was proud of him, and was fearful lest the child
should be snatched from him.  As Polycrates was
rendered uneasy because he was so powerful, rich,
and happy, and cast his most costly jewel into the
sea as a gift to the Fates, so was Philip inwardly
disturbed with a suspicion that the gloomy, envious
Fates which had harassed him so long were now only
playing with him, and would exact of him some
hostage.  What would satisfy them?  His commercial
prosperity?—his child?—his health?  In vain did
Polycrates seek to propitiate the Fates by casting
from him his most precious ring.  The ring was
returned to him in the belly of a fish, and kingdom
and life were exacted of him.

'I never did understand what became of part of
your mother's little property,' said Philip one evening
when alone with Salome; 'and I think it odd that
your mother should be reserved about it to me.'

'Oh, Philip!  It does not matter.  After all, it is
only two hundred and fifty pounds, and the loss is
mamma's, not yours.'

'It does matter, Salome.  Two hundred and fifty
pounds cannot have made themselves wings and
flown away without leaving their address.  Bo Peep's
sheep left their tails behind them.  This money ought
to be accounted for.  One thing I do know—the
name of the person to whom it passed.'

'Who was that?'

'One Beaple Yeo.  Have you any knowledge of
the man?  Who is he?  What had your mother to
do with him?'

'I never heard his name before.'

'The money was drawn and paid to Beaple Yeo
directly after the death of Uncle Jeremiah.  I made
inquiries at the bank, and ascertained this.  Who
Beaple Yeo is your mother will not say, nor why she
paid this large sum of money to him.  I would not
complain of this reticence unless she had called me in
to examine her affairs.'

'No, Philip, it was I who asked you to be so kind
as to do for her the same as Uncle Jeremiah.'

'She is perfectly welcome to do what she likes with
her money: but if she complains of a loss, and then
seeks an investigation into her loss, and all the time
throws impediments in the way of inquiry—I say
that her conduct is not right.  It is like a client
calling in a solicitor and then refusing to state his
case.'

'I was to blame,' said Salome meekly.  'Mamma
has her little store—the savings she has put by—and
a small sum left by my father, and I ought not to
have interfered.  She did not ask me to do so, and
it was meddlesome of me to intervene unsolicited;
but I did so with the best intentions.  She had told
me that she suffered from a loss which crippled her,
and I assumed that her money matters had become
confused, because no longer supervised.  I ought
to have asked her permission before speaking to you.'

'When I made the offer, she might have refused.
I would not have been offended.  What I do object
to is the blowing of hot and cold with one breath.'

'I dare say she thought it very kind of you to
propose to take the management; and there may
have been a misunderstanding.  She wished you to
manage for the future and not inquire into the
past.'

'Then she should have said so.  She complained of
a loss, and became reticent and evasive when pressed
as to the particulars of this alleged loss.'

'I think the matter may be dropped,' said Salome.

'By all means—only, understand—I am dissatisfied.'

'Hush!' exclaimed Salome.  'I hear baby crying.'

Then she rose to leave the room.

'Now look here,' said Philip, 'would it be fair to
the doctor whom you call in about baby to withhold
from him the particulars of the ailments you expect
him to cure.'

'Never mind that now,' said Salome, and she kissed
her husband to silence him.  'Baby is awake and is
crying for me.'

This brief conversation will serve to let the reader
see an unlovable feature in Philip's character.  He
possessed a peculiarity not common in men, that of
harbouring a grievance and recurring to it.  Men
usually dismiss a matter that has annoyed them, and
are unwilling to revert to it.  It is otherwise with
women, due to the sedentary life they lead at their
needlework.  Whilst their fingers are engaged with
thread or knitting-pins, their minds turn over and
over again little vexations, and roll them like
snowballs into great grievances.  Probably the solitary
life Philip had led had tended to develop the same
feminine faculty of harbouring and enlarging his
grievances.

The front-door bell tingled.  Salome did not leave
the room to go after baby till she heard who had
come.  The door was thrown open upon them, and
Mrs. Sidebottom burst in.

This good lady had thought proper to swallow her
indignation at the marriage of Philip, because it was
against her interest to be on bad terms with her
nephew; and after the first ebullition of bad temper
she changed her behaviour towards Philip and Salome,
and became gracious.  They accepted her overtures
with civility but without cordiality, and a decent
appearance of friendship was maintained.  She pressed
Salome to visit her at York, with full knowledge that
the invitation would be declined.  Occasionally she
came from York to see how the mill was working and
what business was being transacted.

As she burst in on Philip and his wife, both noticed
that she was greatly disturbed; her usual assurance
was gone.  She was distressed and downcast.  Almost
without a word of recognition cast to Salome, she
pushed past her at the door, entered the room, ran to
her nephew and exclaimed, 'Oh, Philip!  You alone
can help me.  Have you heard?  You do not know
what has happened?  I am sure you do not, or you
would have come to York to my rescue.'

'What is the matter?  Take a chair, Aunt Louisa.'

'What is the matter!  Oh, my dear!  I cannot sit,
I am in such a nervous condition.  It is positively
awful.  And poor Lamb a director.  I am afraid it
will damage his prospects.'

'But what has happened?'

'Oh—everything.  Nothing so awful since the Fire
of London and the Earthquake of Lisbon.  And
Smithies recommended it.'

'What—Smithies, whom you sent here to investigate
the books?' asked Philip dryly.

'Oh, my dear!  It is always best to do business in
a business way.  Of course, I don't distrust you, but
I am sure it gratifies you that I should send my
agent to run through the books.'

'Well, and what has your agent, Smithies, done now?'

'Oh, Smithies has done nothing himself.  Smithies
is as much concerned as myself.  But he is to blame
for advising me to sell my bonds in Indian railways
and put the money into iodine or decimals, or
something of that sort, and persuading Lamb to become a
director of the company.'

'What company?'

'Oh! don't you know?  The Iodinopolis Limited
Liability Company.  It promised to be a most successful
speculation.  It had an earl at the head.  The
company proposed to open quarries for stone, others
for lime, erect houses, hotels, and churches, high and
low, make a great harbour, and Beaple Yeo——'

'Who?'

'Beaple Yeo, the chief promoter and secretary, and
treasurer *pro tem*.  The speculation was certain to
bring in twenty-five per cent., and he gave his personal
security for seventeen.'

'And have you much capital in this concern?'

'Well—yes.  The decimals grow thicker on this
part of the coast than anywhere else in the world, and
the decimals have an extraordinary healing effect in
disease.  They are cast up on the shore, and exhale a
peculiar odour which is very stimulating.  I have
smelt the decimals myself—no, what am I saying, it
is iodine, not decimals, but on my soul, I don't know
exactly what the decimals are, but this I can tell you,
they have run away with some good money of mine.'

'I do not understand yet.'

'How dense you are, Philip!  For the sake of the
iodine, we were going to build a city at or near
Bridlington, to which all the sick people in Europe
who could afford it, would troop.  There was a
crescent to be called after Lamb.'

'Well, has the land been bought on which to build
and open the quarries?'

'No; that is the misfortune.  Mr. Yeo has been
unable to induce the landowners to sell, and so he has
absconded with the money subscribed.'

'And is there no property on which to fall back?'

'Not an acre.  What is to be done?'

Philip smiled.  Now he understood what Mrs. Cusworth
had done with her two hundred and fifty pounds.
She also had been induced to invest in iodine or
decimals.

'What is to be done?' repeated Philip.  'Bear your
loss.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE SPARE ROOM`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVIII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE SPARE ROOM.

.. vspace:: 2

Philip insisted on Mrs. Sidebottom seating herself,
and giving him as connected and plain an account of
the loss she had met with, as it was in her power to
give.  But to give a connected and plain account of
anything affecting the interests deeply is not more
easy for some persons than it is for a tipsy man to
walk straight.  They gesticulate in their narration,
lurch and turn about in a whimsical manner.  But
Philip had been in a solicitor's office, and knew how
to deal with narrators of their troubles.  Whenever
Mrs. Sidebottom swayed from the direct path, he
pulled her back into it; when she attempted to turn
round, or retrace her steps, he took her by the
shoulders—metaphorically, of course—and set her
face in the direction he intended her to go.
Mr. Smithies was a man in whom Mrs. Sidebottom
professed confidence, and whom she employed professionally
to watch and worry her nephew; to examine the
accounts of the business, so as to ensure her getting
from it her share to the last farthing.

Introduced by Mr. Smithies, Mr. Beaple Yeo had
found access to her house, and had gained her ear.
He was a plausible man, with that self-confidence
which imposes, and with whiskers elaborately
rolled—themselves tokens and guarantees of respectability.
He pretended to be highly connected, and to have
intimate relations with the nobility.  When he
propounded his scheme, and showed how money was to
be made, when, moreover, he assured her that by
taking part in the speculations of Iodinopolis she
would be associated with the best of the aristocracy,
then she entered eagerly, voraciously, into the scheme.
She not only took up as many shares as she was
able, but also insisted on the captain becoming a
director.

'I have,' Mr. Beaple Yeo had told her, 'a score of
special correspondents retained, ready, when I give
the signal, to write up Iodinopolis in all the leading
papers in town and throughout the north of England.
I have arranged for illustrations in the pictorial
periodicals, and for highly-coloured and artistic
representations to be hung in the railway waiting-rooms.
Success must crown our undertaking.'

When Philip heard the whole story, he was
surprised that so promising a swindle should have
collapsed so suddenly.  He expressed this opinion to
his aunt.

'Well,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'you see the
managers could get hold of no land.  If they could
have done that, everything would have gone well.
They intended to build a great harbour, and import
their own timber, to open their own quarries for
building-stone, and burn their own lime, and have
their own tile-yards, so that they would have cut off
all the profits of timber-merchants, quarry-owners,
lime-burners, tile-makers, and gathered them into the
pocket of the company.'

'And they have secured no land?'

'Not an acre.  Mr. Beaple Yeo did his best, but
when he found he could get no land, then he ran
away with the money that had been paid up for shares.'

'And what steps have been taken to arrest him?

'I don't know.  I have left that with Smithies.'

'And how many persons have been defrauded?'

'I don't know.  Perhaps Smithies does.'

'This is what I will do for you,' said Philip.
'Your loss is a serious one, and no time must be
let slip without an attempt to stop the rascal with his
loot.  I will go at once to York, see Smithies, who,
I suspect, has had his finger in the pie, and taken
some of the plums to himself, and then on to
Bridlington and see what can be done there.  The police
must be put on the alert.'

'In the meanwhile, if you and Salome have no
objection, I will remain here,' said Mrs. Sidebottom.
'I am terribly cut up, am rendered ill.  My heart, you
know, is subject to palpitations.  When you return, I
shall see you directly, and learn the result.'

'Very well,' said Philip, 'stay here.  The spare
room is vacant, and at your service.'

Then he went off, packed his portmanteau, and left
the house.  He was vexed with his aunt for her folly,
but he could not deny her his assistance.

Mrs. Sidebottom shook her head when her nephew
mentioned the spare bedroom, but said nothing about
it till he had left the house.  Then she expressed her
views to Salome.

'No, thank you,' she said; 'no, indeed—indeed not.
I could not be induced to sleep in that chamber.  No;
not a hot bottle and a fire combined could drive the
chill out of it.  Remember what associations I have
connected with it.  It was in that apartment that
poor Jeremiah was laid after he had been recovered
from the bottom of the canal.  I could not sleep
there.  I could not sleep there, no, not if it were to
insure me the recovery of all I have sunk on Iodinopolis
and its decimals.  I am a woman of finely-strung
nature, with a perhaps perfervid imagination.  Get
me ready Philip's old room; I was in that once
before, and it is very cosy—inside the study.  No one
occupies it now?'

'No; no one.'

'I shall be comfortable there.  But—as for that
other bed—remembering what I do——' she
shivered.

Salome admitted that her objection was justifiable,
if not reasonable, and gave orders that the room
should be prepared according to the wishes of
Mrs. Sidebottom.

'A preciously dull time I shall have here,' said this
lady, when alone in the room.  'I know no one in
Mergatroyd, and I shall find no entertainment in the
society of that old faded doll, Mrs. Cusworth, or in
that of Salome, who, naturally, is wrapped up in her
baby, and capable of talking of nothing else.  I wonder
whether there are any novels in the house?'

She went in search of Salome, and asked for some
light reading.

'Oh, we have heaps of novels,' answered Salome.
'Janet has left them; she was always a novel-reader.
I will bring you a basketful.  But what do you say
to a stroll?  I must go out for an hour; the doctor
has insisted on my taking a constitutional every day.'

'No, thank you,' said Mrs. Sidebottom.  'The wind
is blowing, and your roads are stoned with glass
clinkers ground into a horrible dust of glass needles
that stab the eyes.  I remember it.  Besides, I am
tired with my journey from York.  I will sit in the
arm-chair and read a novel, and perhaps doze.'

A fire was burning in the bedroom, another in the
study.  The former did not burn freely at first; puffs
of wind occasionally sent whiffs of smoke out of the
grate into the study.  Mrs. Sidebottom moved from
one room to the other, grumbling.  One room was
cold and the other smoky.  Finally she elected to sit
in the study.  By opening the door on to the landing
slightly, a draught was established which prevented
the smoke from entering the room.

She threw herself into a rocking-chair, such as is
found in every Yorkshire house, from that of the
manufacturer to that of the mechanic.

'Bah!' groaned Mrs. Sidebottom, 'most of these
books are about people that cannot interest me;
low-class creatures such as one encounters daily in the
street, and stands aside from.  I don't want them in
the boudoir.  Oh! here is one to my taste—a military
novel, by a lady, about officers, parades, and
accoutrements.'

So she read languidly, shut her eyes, woke, read a
little more, and shut her eyes again.

'I hear the front-door bell,' she said.  'No one to
see me, so I need not say, "Not at home."'

Presently she heard voices in the room beneath
her—the room given up to Mrs. Cusworth—one voice,
distinctly that of a man.

The circumstance did not interest her, and she read
on.  She began to take some pleasure in the story.
She had come on an account of a mess, and the colonel,
some captains and lieutenants were introduced.  The
messroom conversation was given in full, according to
what a woman novelist supposes it to be.  Infinitely
comical to the male reader are such revelations.  The
female novelist has a system on which she constructs
her dialogue.  She takes the talk of young girls in
their coteries, and proceeds to transpose their thin,
insipid twaddle into what she believes to be virile,
pungent English, which is much like attempting to
convert milk and water into rum punch.  To effect
this, to the stock are added a few oaths, a pinch of
profanity, a spice of indecency, and then woman is
grated over the whole, till it smacks of nothing else.

Out of kindness to fair authoresses, we will give
them the staple topics that in real life go to make up
after-dinner talk, whether in the messroom, or at the
bencher's table, or round the squire's mahogany.  And
they shall be given in the order in which they stand
in the male mind:

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

  \1.  Horses.
  \2.  Dogs.
  \3.  Game.
  \4.  Guns.
  \5.  Cricket.
  \6.  Politics.
  \7.  'Shop.'

.. vspace:: 2

Where in all this is Woman?  Echo answers
Where?  Conceivably, when every other topic fails,
she may be introduced, just in the same way as when
all game is done, even rabbits, a trap and clay pigeons
are brought out to be knocked over; so, possibly, a
fine girl may be introduced into the conversation,
sprung out of a trap—but only as a last resource, as a
clay pigeon.

The house-door opened once more, this time
without the bell being sounded—opened by a
latch-key—and immediately Mrs. Sidebottom heard Salome's
step in the hall.  Salome did not go directly upstairs
to remove her bonnet and kiss baby, but entered her
mother's room.

Thereat a silence fell on the voices below—a silence
that lasted a full minute, and then was broken by the
plaintive pipe of the widow lady.  She must have a
long story to tell, thought Mrs. Sidebottom, who now
put down her book, because she had arrived at three
pages of description of a bungalow on the spurs of the
Himalayas.  Then she heard a cry from below, a cry
as of pain or terror; and again the male voice was
audible, mingled with that of the widow, raised as in
expostulation, protest, or entreaty.  At times the voices
were loud, and then suddenly drowned.

Mrs. Sidebottom laid the book open on the table,
turned down to keep her place.

'The doctor, I suppose,' she thought; 'and he has
pronounced unfavourably of baby.  Can't they accept
his verdict and let him go?  They cannot do good by
talk.  I never saw anything so disagreeable as mothers,
except grandmothers.  What a fuss they are making
below about that baby!'

Presently she took up the book again and tried to
read, but found herself listening to the voices below,
and only rarely could she catch the tones of Salome.
All the talking was done by her mother and the
man—the doctor.

Then Mrs. Sidebottom heard the door of the widow's
apartment open, and immediately after a tread on the
stairs.  Salome was no doubt ascending to the nursery,
but not hurriedly—indeed, the tread was unlike that
of Salome.  Mrs. Sidebottom put the novel down
once more at the description of a serpent-charmer,
and went outside her door, moved by inquisitiveness.

'Is that the doctor below?' she asked, as she saw
that Salome was mounting the stairs.  'What opinion
does he give of little Phil?'

Then she noticed that a great change had come
over her hostess.  Salome was ascending painfully,
with a hand on the banisters, drawing one foot up
after the other as though she were suffering from
partial paralysis.  Her face was white as chalk, and
her eyes dazed as those of a dreamer suddenly roused
from sleep.

'What is it?' asked Mrs. Sidebottom again.  'Is
baby worse?'

Salome turned her face to her, but did not answer.
All life seemed to have fled from her, and she did not
apparently hear the questions put to her.  But she
halted on the landing, her hand still on the banisters
that rattled under the pressure, showing how she was
trembling.

'You positively must tell me,' said Mrs. Sidebottom.
'What has the doctor said?'

But Salome, gathering up her energy, made a rush
past her, ran up two or three steps, then relaxed her
pace, and continued to mount, ascending the last
portion of the stair as one climbing the final stretch
of an Alpine peak, fagged, faint, doubtful whether his
strength will hold out till he reach the apex.

Mrs. Sidebottom was offended.

'This is rude,' she muttered.  'But what is to be
expected of a bagman's daughter?'  She tossed her
head and retreated to the study.

Reseating herself, she resumed her novel, but found
no further interest in it.

'Why,' she exclaimed suddenly, 'the doctor has
not been upstairs; he has not seen baby.  This is
quaint.'

Mrs. Cusworth did not appear at dinner.  Salome
told Mrs. Sidebottom that her mother was very, very
ill, and prayed that she might be excused.

'Oh!' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'I suppose the doctor
called to see your mother, and not the baby.  You are
not chiefly anxious about the latter?'

'Baby is unwell, but mamma is seriously ill,'
answered Salome, looking down at her plate.

'Her illness does not seem to have affected her
conversational powers,' said Mrs. Sidebottom.  'I
heard her talking a great deal to the doctor; but
perhaps that is one of the signs of fever—is she
delirious?'

Salome made no reply.  She maintained her place
at table, deadly pale; and though, during dinner, she
endeavoured to talk, it was clear that her mind was
otherwise engaged.

Mrs. Sidebottom was thankful when dinner was
over.  'Mrs. Philip will never make a hostess,' she
said to herself.  'She is heavy and dull.  You can't
make lace out of stocking yarn.'

When Salome rose, Mrs. Sidebottom said, 'Do not
let me detain you from your mother; and, by the
way, I don't know if you have family prayers,
like them; they are good for the servants, and are
a token of respectability—but you will excuse me
if I do not attend.  I am awfully interested in
my novel, and tired after my journey—I shall go
to bed.'

Mrs. Sidebottom did not, however, go to bed; she
remained by the fire in the study, trying to read, and
speculating on Philip's chances of recovering part if
not all of her lost money—chances which she admitted
to herself were remote.

'There,' said she, 'the servants and the whole
household are retreating to their roosts.  They keep
early hours here.  I suppose Salome sleeps below
with her mother.  Goodness preserve me from
anything happening to either the old woman or the baby
whilst I am in the house.  These sort of things upset
the servants, and they send up at breakfast the eggs
hardboiled, the toast burnt, and the tea made with
water that has not been on the boil.'

Mrs. Sidebottom heaved a sigh.

'This is a stupid book after all,' she said, and laid
down the novel.  'I shall go to bed.  Bother
Mr. Beaple Yeo.'

Beaple Yeo stood between Mrs. Sidebottom just
now and every enjoyment.  As she read her book
Beaple Yeo forced himself into the story.  At meals
he spoiled the flavour of her food with iodine, and
she knew but too surely that he would strew her bed
with decimals and banish sleep.

Mrs. Sidebottom drew up the blind of her bedroom
window and looked forth on the garden and the vale
of the Keld, bathed in moonlight, a scene of peace
and beauty.  Mrs. Sidebottom was not a woman
susceptible to the charms of nature.  She was one of
those persons to whom nothing is of interest, nothing
has charm, virtue, or value, unless it affects themselves
beneficially.  She had not formulated to herself such
a view of the universe, but practically it was
this—the sun rises and sets for Mrs. Sidebottom; the moon
pursues her silver path about Mrs. Sidebottom; for
her all things were made, and all such things as do
not revolve about, enrich, enliven, adorn, and nourish
Mrs. Sidebottom are of no account whatever.

Now, as Mrs. Sidebottom looked forth she saw a
dark figure in the garden; saw it ascend the steps
from the lower garden, cross the lawn, and disappear
as it passed in the direction of the house out of the
range of her vision.  The figure was that of a man in
a hat and surtout, carrying a walking-stick.

'Well, now,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'this is comical.
That man must have obtained admission through the
locked garden door, like that other mysterious visitant,
and he is coming here after everyone is gone to bed.
Of course he will enter by the glass door.  I suppose
he is the doctor, and they let him come this way to
visit the venerable fossil without disturbing the maids.
I do hope nothing will happen to her.  I should not,
of course, wear mourning for her, but for baby I
should have to make some acknowledgment, I
suppose.  Bother it.'

Mrs. Sidebottom went to bed.  But, as Beaple Yeo
had disturbed her day, so did he spoil her night.
She slept indifferently.  Beaple Yeo came to her in
her dreams, and rubbed her with decimals, and woke
her.  But other considerations came along with Beaple
Yeo to fret and rouse her.  Mrs. Sidebottom was a
woman of easy conscience.  That which was good for
herself was, therefore, right.  But there are moments
when the most obtuse and obfuscated consciences
stretch themselves and open their eyes.  And now,
as she lay awake in the night, she thought of her
brother Jeremiah, of the readiness with which she
had identified his body, on the slenderest evidence.
She might have made a mistake.  Then, at once, the
thought followed the course of all her ideas, and
gravitated to herself.  If she had made a mistake,
and it should come out that she had made a wrong
identification—would it hurt her?

On this followed another thought, also disquieting.
How came Jeremiah's will to be without its signature?
Should it ever transpire that this signature had been
surreptitiously turn away, what would be the
consequences to herself?

As she tossed on her bed, and was tormented, now
by Beaple Yeo with his speculation, then by Jeremiah
asking about his will, she thought that she heard
snoring.

Did the sound issue from the room downstairs,
tenanted by Mrs. Cusworth, or from the spare
chamber?

Mrs. Sidebottom attempted to feel unconcern, but
found that impossible.  The snoring disturbed her,
and it disturbed her the more because she could not
satisfy herself whence the sound came.

'Perhaps it is the cook,' she said.  'She may be
occupying the room overhead, and cooks are given to
stertorous breathing.  Standing over the stoves
predisposes them to it.'

Finally, irritated, resolved to ascertain whence the
sound proceeded, Mrs. Sidebottom left her bed.  Her
fire was burning.  She did not light a candle.  She
drew on a dressing-gown, and stole into the study,
and thence through the door (which, on account of
the smoke; had been left ajar) upon the landing-place.

There she halted and listened.

The gaslight in the hall below was left burning but
lowered all night, and the moon shone in through a
window.

'I do believe the sound proceeds from the spare
room,' she said, and softly she stole to the door and
turned the handle.

'There can be no one there,' she thought, 'because
I was offered the room, and yet the snoring certainly
seems to proceed from it.  No one can be there—this
must be an acoustic delusion.'

Noiselessly, timidly, she half opened the door.  The
hinges did not creak.  She looked in inquisitively.
The blind was drawn down, but the moon, shining
through it, filled the room with suffused light.

Mrs. Sidebottom's eyes sought the bed.  On it,
where had lain the body found in the canal, and
much in the same position as that had been placed
there, lay the figure of a man, black against the white
coverlet, in a great-coat.  The face was not
visible—the curtain interposed and concealed it.

Mrs. Sidebottom's heart stood still.  A sense of
sickness and faintness stole over her.  She dared not
take a step further to obtain a glimpse of the face,
and she feared to see it.

With trembling hand she closed the door, and
stood on the landing with beating heart, recovering
herself.  'What a fool I am to be frightened!' she
said, after a minute, and with a sigh of relief.  'Of
course—the doctor.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`RECOGNITION`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIX.


.. class:: center medium bold

   RECOGNITION.

.. vspace:: 2

In one of his essays, Goldsmith relates the anecdote
of a painter who set up a picture in the market-place,
with a pot of black paint and a brush beside it, and
the inscription, 'Please indicate faults.'

When in the evening he revisited his picture, he
found it smudged out eventually, as everyone had
discovered and marked out a blemish.  Next day he set
up a replica of the picture, with paint and brush as
before, and the inscription, 'Please indicate beauties.'

By evening, the entire canvas was covered with
black.  Everyone had found a beauty, where
previously everyone had detected a fault.

The modern novelist sends his work into the great
forum, and without inviting, expects criticism.  The
printer's ink is always available wherewith to draw
attention to his defects.  In Goldsmith's apologue
the critics found beauties, in the present they see only
blemishes, which they dab at venomously, and the
sorrowful author sits at evening over his despised and
bespattered production, bewildered, and ashamed to
find that his earnest work, that has called out his
most generous feelings, over which he has fagged and
worn himself, is a mass of blunders, a tissue of faults.

Now, one of the salient defects in the work of the
author of this story, according to his reviewers, is that
he makes his personages talk more smartly than they
would naturally.  But, he asks, would it be tolerable
to the reader, would it be just to the printer—to force
upon them the literal transcript of the ordinary
conversation that passes between people every day?
When we were schoolboys we had a pudding served
to us on Wednesdays which we call milestone
pudding, not because it was hard, but because it was a
plum-pudding with a mile between the plums.  Is
there not a good mile between our *bon mots*?  Is it
legitimate art, is it kind, to make the reader pursue a
conversation through several pages of talk void of
thought, stuffed with matter of everyday interest?  Is
it not more artistic, and more humane, to steam the
whole down to an essence, and then—well, add a
grain of salt and a pinch of spice?

The reader shall be the judge.  We will take the
morning dialogue between Mrs. Sidebottom and
Salome at breakfast.

'Good-morning, Mrs. Sidebottom.'

'I wish you good-morning, Salome.'

Author: Cannot that be taken for granted?  May it
not be struck out with advantage?

'I hope you slept well,' said Salome.

'Only so so.  How is your poor mother?'

'Not much better, thank you.'

'And darling baby?'

'About the same.  We have, indeed, a sick house.
Tea or coffee, please?'

'Tea, please.'

'Sugar?'

'Sugar, please.'

'How many lumps?'

'Two will suffice.'

'I think you will find some grilled rabbit.  Would
you prefer buttered egg?'

'Thank you, rabbit,' said Mrs. Sidebottom.  'I will
help myself.'

'I hope your room was comfortable.  You must
excuse us, we are all much upset in the house, servants
as well as the rest.  We have had a good deal to
upset us of late, and when we are upset it upsets the
servants too.'

Author: Now, there!  Because we have dared to
copy down, word for word, what was said at breakfast,
our heroine has revealed herself as tautological.  There
were positively four upsets in that one little sentence.
And we are convinced that if the reader had to express
the same sentiment he or she would not be nice as to
the literary form in which the sentence was couched,
would not cast it thus—'We have been much upset;
we have had much of late to disturb our equilibrium,
and when we are thrown out of our balance then the
servants as well are affected.'  That would be better,
no doubt, but the reader would not speak thus, and
Salome did not.

The author must be allowed to exercise his judgment
and give only as much of the conversation as is
necessary, and not be obliged to record the grammatical
slips, the clumsy constructions, the tedious repetitions
that disfigure our ordinary conversation.

The English language is so simple in structure that
it invites a profligate usage of it; it allows us to
pour forth a flood of words without having first
thought out what we intended to say.  The sentences
tumble higgledy-piggledy from our lips like children
from an untidy nursery—some unclothed, one short
of a shoe, and another over-hatted.  Do we get the
Parliamentary debates as they were conducted?  Where
are the 'hems' and 'haws,' the 'I means' and 'you
knows'?  What has become in print of the vain
repetitions and the unfinished sentences?  Is not all
that put into order by the judicious reporter?  In like
manner the novelist is armed with the reporter's
powers, and exercising the same discretion passes the
words of his creations through the same mill.  Using,
therefore, the privilege of a reporter, we will once
more enter the gallery and take down the conversation
that ensued at the breakfast-table between
Mrs. Sidebottom and Salome.

'My dear Mrs. P.,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'I hope that
you were not obliged to call up the doctor in the night.'

'No,' answered Salome, raising her eyebrows.

'But what is the matter with your mother?'

'She has long suffered from heart complaint, and
recently she has had much to trouble her.  She has
had a great shock and is really very unwell, and so is
dear baby also; and between both and—and—other
matters, I hardly know what I am about.'

'So I perceive,' said Mrs. Sidebottom; 'you have
upset the cream.'

Salome had a worn and scared look.  Her face had
lost every particle of colour the day before.  It
remained as pale now.  She looked as if she had not
slept.  Her eyes were sunken and red.

'My dear,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'never give in.
If I had given in to all the trials that have beset me
I should have been worn to fiddle-strings.  My first
real trial was the loss of Sidebottom, and the serious
reduction of my income in consequence; for though
he called a house an 'ouse, yet he was in good practice.
There is a silver lining to every cloud.  I don't suppose
I could have got into good society so long as Sidebottom
lived, with his dissipated habits about his *h*'s.
His aspirate stood during our married life as a wall
between us, like that—like that which separated
Pyramus from Thisbe.'

Salome made no answer.

'You can have no idea,' continued Mrs. Sidebottom,
'how startled I was in the night by the snoring of the
doctor.'

'The doctor?'  Salome looked up surprised.

'Yes—he slept, you know, in the spare room.'

A rush of crimson mounted to Salome's cheeks,
and then faded from them, leaving them such an ashy
gray as succeeds the Alpengluth on the snow peaks at
sundown.

'Do you know?—well, really, I must confess my
weakness—I was made quite nervous by the snoring.
I was so anxious, naturally so anxious for your poor
dear mother, and I thought the sounds might proceed
from her, and if so I trembled lest they portended
apoplexy.  Then again, I could not make out whence
the snoring proceeded.  So, being of an inquiring
mind—my dear, if we had not inquiring minds we
should not have made Polar expeditions, and
discovered the electric telegraph, and measured the
distances of the planets—I was resolved to satisfy
myself as to those sounds, and I stole out of my room
and listened on the landing; and when I was satisfied
that the snoring issued from the spare apartment,
which I had supposed to be empty, I had the
boldness to open the door and peep in.'

'At what o'clock?' asked Salome faintly.

'Oh! gracious goodness, I cannot tell.  Somewhere
in the small hours.  You must know that as I looked
out of my window before going to bed I saw the doctor
coming through the garden.  The moon was shining,
and I adore the moon, so I stood at my window in
quite a poetic frame.  I suppose you told him to
come through the garden so as not to disturb the household.'

Salome hesitated.  She was trying to pour out a
second cup of tea for Mrs. Sidebottom, but her hand
shook, and she was obliged to set down the pot.  She
breathed painfully, and looked at Mrs. Sidebottom
with a daze of terror in her eyes.

'Thank you,' said the lady, 'I said I would have
a little more tea.  Bless me!  How your feelings have
overcome you.  Family affection is charming, idyllic,
but—don't spill the tea as you did the cream.'

'Would you kindly pour out for yourself?' asked
Salome.  'It is true that my hand shakes.  I am not
very well this morning.'

'Delighted.  As I was saying,' pursued Mrs. Sidebottom,
drawing the teapot, sugar-basin, and cream-jug
to herself—'as I was saying, in the small hours
of the night I was aroused by the snoring and could
not sleep.  So I rose, and opened the spare room
door and looked in.'

Salome's frightened eyes were riveted on her.

'I looked in, and saw a man lying on the bed.  I
could not see his face.  The curtain was in the way,
and there was no light save that of the moon.  At
first I was frightened, and inclined to cry out for
sal-volatile, I was so faint.  But after a moment or two I
recovered myself.  This man had on more clothing
than—that other one.  He wore boots and so on.
After the first spasm of dismay I recovered myself,
for I said, "It is the doctor sleeping in the house
because Mrs. Cusworth is ill."  It was the doctor, was
it not?'

Salome's scared face, her strange manner, now for
the first time inspired Mrs. Sidebottom with the
suspicion that she had not hit on the true solution of the
mystery.

'But, goodness gracious me!' she exclaimed, 'if it
was not the doctor, who could it be?  And in the
house at night—as on that former occasion—and when
Philip is absent, too!'

Salome started from her seat.

'Excuse me,' she said hastily, 'I am—I am unwell.'

She tottered to the door.

Mrs. Sidebottom, with kindled suspicion, rose also,
and deserted an unfinished egg and some buttered
toast to go after her.  Salome had opened the door
and passed through.  Before she could close it behind
her, Mrs. Sidebottom had grasped it and was at her
heels, asking if she really were ill, and if she needed
help.

At the same moment that both entered the hall, they
saw a man descending the stairs, a man in hat and
great-coat, with a leather bag in one hand and a cane
in the other.  He wore his hair long, and had dark
whiskers, curled, but not in the freshest of curls.  His
nose was red, and his face mottled.

'Mr. Beaple Yeo!' shrieked Mrs. Sidebottom.  'My
money!  I want—I will have my money!'

The man stood for a moment irresolute on the stairs.

Then a key was turned in the front-door lock, and
Philip appeared from the street—returned by an early
train.

'Oh, Philip!' screamed Mrs. Sidebottom.  'Here is
the man—Beaple Yeo himself!  Has been hiding in
the spare bedroom all night.  He has my money.'

In an instant, the man darted into Mrs. Cusworth's
room, and locked the door behind him.





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.. _`EXEUNT`:

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   CHAPTER XXX.


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   EXEUNT.

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The man descending the stairs had hesitated, and his
hesitation had lost him.  Had he made a dash at
Mrs. Sidebottom and Salome, swept them aside and gone
down the passage to the garden door, he would have
escaped before Philip entered.  But the sight of
Mrs. Sidebottom, her vehement demand for her money,
made him turn from her and fly into Mrs. Cusworth's
room.  Thence he, no doubt, thought to escape to the
garden, through the window.

For some moments, after Philip appeared and
Mrs. Sidebottom had told him that the swindler was in his
house, all three—he, Salome, and Mrs. Sidebottom,
stood in the hall, silent.

Then a servant, alarmed by the cry, appeared from
the kitchen, and Philip at once bade her hasten after
a policeman.

Salome laid her hand on his arm and said supplicatingly,
'No, Philip; no, please!'

But he disregarded her intervention, and renewed
the command to the servant, who at once disappeared
to obey it.

Then he strode towards the door leading to
Mrs. Cusworth's apartments, but Salome, quick as thought,
threw herself in his way, and stood against the door,
with outstretched arms.

'No, Philip; not—not, if you love me.'

'Why not?'—spoken sternly.

'Because——'  She faltered, her face bowed on
her bosom; then she recovered herself, looked him
entreatingly in the eyes, and said, 'I will tell you
afterwards—in private.  I cannot now.  Oh, Philip—I
beseech you!'

'Salome,' said her husband very gravely, 'that man
is in there.'

'I know, I know he is,' she answered timorously.

'Oh, Philip, don't mind her.  He will get away, and
he has my money!' entreated Mrs. Sidebottom on
her part.

'Why do you seek to shelter him?' asked Philip of
his wife, ignoring the words of his aunt.

'I cannot tell you now.  Will you not trust me?
Do allow him to escape.'

'Salome!' exclaimed Philip, in such a tone as made
her shiver, it expressed so much indignation.

She could say no more in urgence of what she had
asked, but looked at him steadily with her great
imploring eyes.

Mrs. Sidebottom was not silent; she poured in a
discharge of canister, and was cut short by Philip, who,
turning sternly to her, said:

'I request your silence.  The scoundrel cannot
escape.  The windows of both rooms are barred,
because on the ground floor.  He cannot break forth.
I have him as in a trap.  It is merely a question with
me—which my wife must help me to decide—whether
to burst open the door now, or wait till the arrival of
the constable.'

Then Salome slowly, with heaving breast, and without
taking her eyes off her husband's face, let fall her
arms and stood back.  But even then, as he put his
foot against the door, she thrust forth her hand against
Mrs. Sidebottom, and said: 'Not she!  No, Philip, as
you honour me!  If you love me—not she!'

Then he turned and said to Mrs. Sidebottom: 'Aunt,
I must ask you to remain in the hall.  When the maid
rings the front door bell, open and let her and the
constable in, and bring them at once into Mrs. Cusworth's
apartments.  Do not enter before.'

He did not burst open the door till he had knocked
thrice, and his knock had remained unnoticed.  Then,
with foot and shoulder against it, he drove it in, and
the lock torn off fell on the floor.  Instantly, Salome
entered after him and shut the door behind her, and
stood against it.

The old suspicion, sullenness, and doggedness which
Philip had nurtured in him through long years of
discouragement and distress, evil tempers that had been
laid to sleep for a twelvemonth, rose full of energy to
life again.  He was angered at the thought that the
wretch whom he was pursuing should have taken refuge
under his own roof, and worst of all, that his own wife
should spread out her arms to protect him.

The hero of a story should be without such blemishes
that take from him all lustre and rob him of sympathy.
But the reader must consider these evil passions in
him as bred of his early experience.  They grew
necessarily in him, because the seed was sown in him
when his heart was receptive, and rich to receive
whatever crop was sown there.  And again, we may
ask: Is the reader free from evil tempers,
constitutional or acquired?  The history of life is the
history of man mastering or being mastered by these;
and such is the history of Philip.

In the sitting-room stood a scared group, looking at
one another.  Mrs. Cusworth by the fireplace, pale as
chalk, hardly able to stand, unable to utter a word of
explanation or protect, and Beaple Yeo, with his hat
on, wearing a great-coat that Philip knew at once—that
of his deceased uncle, holding a leather bag in his
hand, to which a strap was attached that he was
endeavouring to sling over his shoulder, but was
incommoded by his cane, of which he did not let go.
His face was mottled and his nose very purple—but he
had not, like Mrs. Cusworth, lost his presence of mind.

Philip looked hard at him, then his face became hard
as marble, and he said, 'So—we meet—Schofield.'

The man had forgotten to remove his hat when
attempting to put the strap over his head, and so failed;
he at once hastily passed the cane into the hand that
held the bag, and said with an air of forced joviality, as
he extended his right palm, 'How d'y' do, my boy? glad
to see you.'

'Put down that bag,' ordered Philip, ignoring the
offered hand.  'Or, here, give it me.'

'No, thank y', my son; got my night togs in
there—comb and brush and whisker-curlers.'

'Schofield,' said Philip grimly, 'I have sent for the
constable.  He will be here in two or three minutes.
Give me up that bag.  I shall have you arrested in
this room.'

'No, you won't, my dear boy,' answered the fellow.
'But, by jove, it isn't kindly—not kindly—hardly
what we look for in our children.  But, Lord bless
you! bless you, the world is becoming frightfully
neglectful of the commandment with promise—with
promise, my son.'

The impudence of the man, his audacity, and his
manner, worked Philip into anger; not the cold bitter
anger that had risen before, but hot and flaming.

'Come, no nonsense.  Give me that bag now, or I'll
take it from you.  There is a warrant out for your
arrest as Beaple Yeo.'  He put his hand forward to
snatch the bag from the fellow, but Beaple Yeo—or
Schofield quickly brought his stick round.

'My pippin!' said he, 'take care; I have a needle
in this, that will run you through if you touch
me—though you are my son.'

Philip closed with him, wrenched the stick from
him and placed it behind him.  But Beaple would not
be deprived of his weapon without an effort to recover
it, and he made a rush at Philip to beat him aside, as
he drew back, which would have led to a fresh test of
strength, had not Salome thrown herself between
them, and clinging to her husband said.  'Oh, Philip!
Philip!  He is my father!'

Philip stood back, and he and Schofield faced each
other in silence, the latter with his eye on Philip to
note how he received the news.  Philip grew grayer
in tint; and every line in his face deepened; his eyes
became more like Cairngorm stones than ever—cold,
hard, almost inanimate.

'It is true,' said Schofield; 'my chuck has told you
the fact—the very fact.  Why should it have been
kept from you so long?—so long?  The Schofields
are a family as good as the Pennycomequicks, and
the name is not so much of a mouthfiller, which, at
least, is a consolation—a consolation.  Now, perhaps,
son-in-law, you will allow me to step by?  No?
Upon my word there would be something un-Christian—something
to shock the moral sense even of an old
Roman—a classic Roman—for a son-in-law to suffer
his father to be arrested beneath his own roof.  Besides,
dear fellow, there are other considerations.  You
would hardly wish to have Pennycomequick's firm
mixed up with Beaple Yeo, Esquire.  It might, you
know—you know—injure, compromise, and all that
sort of thing—you understand——'

Philip turned to Mrs. Cusworth and asked her, 'Is
it true, or—a lie?'

But the old lady was in no condition to answer.
She opened her mouth and shut it, like a gasping fish,
but no sound issued from her lips.

Then Salome recovered her composure and said,
'Philip!  It is indeed true.  He is my father.  I am
not, nor is Janet, her daughter.  We are the twin
children of her sister, who was married to—and then
who was deserted by—this—this man Schofield.  She
took us, she and her dear good husband, and cared
for us as their own—we did not know that we were
not her children—that we were her nieces—we were
not told.'

'Is this really true?' asked Philip, again looking at
Mrs. Cusworth, and his face clouded with the blood
that suffused it, but so far beneath the skin that it did
not colour, it only darkened it.  'Is this true—or is it
a lie told to persuade me to let this scoundrel escape?
Either way it will lose its effect.  I am just.  I will
give him over to suffer the consequences of his acts.'

Again Mrs. Cusworth tried to speak, but could not.
She grasped at the mantelshelf; she could hardly
stay herself from falling.

'Very well,' said Philip, looking fixedly at Schofield.
'Let us suppose that it is true; that I have been
trifled with, deceived, dishonoured.  Very well.  We
will suppose it is so.  Then let it come out.  I will be
no party to lying, dissimulation, to the screening of
swindlers and scoundrels of any sort.  My house is
not a receiving house for stolen goods.  I will return
to the robbed that of which they have been despoiled.
Hand me the bag.'

He spoke with a hard, metallic voice; scarce a
trace of feeling was in it, save of the grate of
animosity; his strong eye had no yielding in it, no
light, only a sort of phosphorescent glimmer passing
over it.  He stooped, picked up the cane, and held it
in his right hand, like a quarter-staff, and in his firm,
knotted fist, cane though it was, it had the appearance
of being a weapon capable of being used with deadly emphasis.

'Now, then,' said Philip, 'put down that bag;
there, on the chair near me.  Instantly.'

Schofield looked into his face and did not venture
to disobey.  The iron resolution, the forceful, earnest,
the remorseless determination there were not to be
trifled with.  Schofield put down the bag as desired.

'The key.'

Sulkily, the fellow drew it from his trousers-pocket
and flung it on the ground.

'Pick it up.'

Schofield hesitated.  He would not stoop.  He
dreaded a blow on the head; on the back of the
head, which would fell him if he stooped, such a blow
as he would himself deal the man before him if he
had a stick in his hand, and could induce him to bend
at his feet.

As he hesitated, and a spark appeared in the eye
of Philip, Salome stooped, rose, and handed the key
to her husband.

He did not thank her.  He did not look at her.
He kept his eye steadily on Schofield—scarcely
glancing at the bag as he opened it, and then only
rapidly and cursorily at its contents—never for more
than a second allowing it to be off his opponent,
never allowing him to move a muscle unobserved,
never to frame a thought unread.  But, for all the
speed with which he glanced at the contents of the
bag, he saw that it contained a great deal of money.
It was stuffed with bank-notes, and the figures on
these notes were high.  Philip leisurely reclosed and
relocked the bag, put the key in his pocket and
passed the strap over his own head.

Then only did a slight, almost cruel smile, stir the
corners of his lips as he saw the blankness of Schofield
and the break-up of his assurance.

'Now, I suppose, I may go?' said the rogue.

'No,' answered Philip, 'I do nothing by half.  I
have my old scores against Schofield as well as the
new scores—which are not my own—against Beaple Yeo.'

'But,' said the man, in a shaking voice, 'it will be
so terribly bad for you to have the concern here mixed
up with me—and you should consider that—the
Bridlington scheme was a famous one, and was honest
as the daylight.  It must have rendered twenty-five
per cent.—twenty-five as I am an honest man—and I
should have become a millionaire.  Then wouldn't
you have been proud of me, eh?—it was a good
scheme and must have answered, only who was to
dream that no land could be bought?'

He eyed Philip craftily, then looked at the door,
then again at Philip—as soon expect to find yielding
in him as to see honey distil out of flint.  So he
turned to Salome.  'Speak a word for your father,
child!' he said in a low tone.

Salome shrank from him and turned to Philip, who
put out his steady hand and thrust her back, not
roughly but firmly, towards Schofield.

Then in a sudden frenzy of fear and anger the
fellow screamed, 'Will you let me pass?'

'The constable will be here directly, and then I
will; not till then,' said Philip.

'Bah! the constable!' scoffed Schofield.  'You
have sent to have a constable summoned.  But where
is he?  Looking for a policeman is like searching for
a text.  You know he's somewhere, but can't for the
life of you put your thumb on him.  Look here,
Philip,' he lowered his voice to a sort of whine, 'I'm
awfully penitent for what I have done.  Cut to the
heart, gnawing of conscience, and all that sort of
thing.  It is a case of the prodigal father returning to
the discreet and righteous son, and instead of running
to meet me and help me, and giving me a good
dinner—a good dinner, you know, and all that sort of
thing, you threaten me with constables and
conviction.  I couldn't do it myself.  'Pon my word I
couldn't.  I suppose it is in us.  I'm too much of a
Christian—a true Christian, not a mere professor.
I'm ashamed of you, Philip; I'm sorry for you.  I
sincerely am.  I'm terribly afraid for you that you
are the Pharisee despising me the humble, penitent
Publican.'  The fellow was such a rascal that he could
adapt himself to any complexion of man with whom
he was, and he tried on this miserable cant with
Philip in the hope that it would succeed.  But as he
watched his face, and saw no sign of alteration of
purpose in it, he changed his tone, and said sullenly,
with a savagery in the sullenness: 'Come, let me go;
if I am brought to trial, I can tell you there will be
pretty things come out, which neither you nor your
wife will like to hear, and which will not suffer her to
hold up her head very stiffly—eh?'

He saw that he had made Philip wince.

At that moment the house door-bell rang, and he
heard that the police-constable had arrived.

He turned, went to the fireplace, grasped the poker,
and swinging it above his head rushed upon Philip.
Salome uttered a cry.  Mrs. Cusworth's hand let go
its grasp of the chimney-piece and she fell.

All happened in a moment—a blow of the poker on
Philip's arm—and Schofield was through the door and
down the passage to the garden.

'Run after him, policeman, run!' screamed
Mrs. Sidebottom, as she admitted the constable.

But Schofield had gained the start, and when the
policeman reached the door in the wall of the lower
garden he found it locked, and had to retrace his
steps to the house.  Time had been gained.  No
sooner was Schofield outside the garden than he
relaxed his steps, and sauntered easily along the path
till he reached the canal.  He followed that till he
arrived at a barge laden with coal, over the side of
which leaned a woman, with a brown face, smoking a
pipe.

'My lass!' said Schofield, 'I've summat to tell
thee—in private;' and he jumped on board and went
down the ladder into the little cabin.

The woman, Ann Dewis, slowly drew her pipe out
of her mouth and went after him to the hatch, looked
in, and said, 'What be 't, lad?  Eh, Earle!  Tha'rt
come.  Tak' t' pipe, I've kept it aleet a' these years.
Ah sed ah would, and ah've done it.'





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.. _`ESTRANGEMENT`:

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   CHAPTER XXXI.


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   ESTRANGEMENT.

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One!  Two!  Three!

Hark! on the church bell: then, again—

One!  Two!  Three!

'It is a woman or a little girl,' said those listening.

Then again—

One!  Two!  Three!

'A woman.  Who can she be?  Who is ill?  But—how
old?'  Then, again, the bell—

One!  Two!  Three!————up to forty-six.

'Aged forty-six!  Who can it be?'

Many faces appeared at the windows and doors of
the street at Mergatroyd, and when the sexton
emerged from the belfry, he was saluted with inquiries
of, 'Who is dead?  Forty-six years old—who can
she be?'

'Mrs. Cusworth.  Dropped dead with heart complaint.'

Now, in Yorkshire, when a man dies, then the bell
tolls, Four, four, four; when a boy, then Four, four,
two; when a woman dies, then as above, Thrice three;
and when a girl, Three, three, two; after which, in
each case, the age is tolled.

'Fiddlesticks!—you may say what you will, it is
fiddlesticks,' said Mrs. Sidebottom impatiently.  She
was in the study with Philip.  'I never heard of
anything so monstrous, so inhuman.  I could not have
believed it of you.  And yet—after what I have seen,
I can believe anything of you.'

Philip was unmoved.  'The plunder of that wretched
fellow,' he said unconcernedly, 'shall be placed in
proper hands.  How much there is I cannot now say,
and I do not know how many persons he has defrauded,
and to what an extent.  Whether all will get back
everything is not certain; probably they will receive
a part, perhaps a large part, but not all.'

'It is preposterous!' burst in Mrs. Sidebottom, 'I
have been the means of catching him.  No one would
have had a farthing back but for my promptitude, my
energy, and my cleverness.  Did not I track him here,
and act as his gaoler, and drive him into a corner
whilst you secured the money?  And you say that I
am to share losses equally with the rest!  No such a
thing.  I shall have my money back in full; and the
rest may make the best of what remains, and thank
me for getting them that.  As for what you say, Philip,
I don't care who hears me, I say it is fiddlesticks—it
is fiddlestick-ends.'

'I should have supposed, Aunt Louisa, that by this
time you would have known that when I say a thing I
mean it, and if I mean a thing I intend to carry it out
unaltered.'  Then after a pause: 'And now I am
sorry to seem inhospitable, but under the painful
circumstances—with death again in this house, and
with my child ill, I am obliged to recommend you to
return at once to York, and when there, not again to
consult Mr. Smithies.  It is more than probable that
this reliable man of business of yours, whom you set
to watch me, has sold you to that rascal Beaple
Yeo—or whatever his name be.'

'Oh, gracious goodness!' exclaimed Mrs. Sidebottom.
'To be sure I will return to York.  I
wouldn't for the world incommode you in a house of
mourning.  I know what it is; the servants off such
heads as they have, which are heads of hair and
nothing else, and everything in confusion, and only
tongues going.  I wouldn't stay with you at this most
trying time, Philip, not for worlds.  I shall be off by
the next train.'

Philip was left to himself.

His wife was either upstairs with the baby, or was
below with the corpse of one whom she had looked up
to and loved as a mother.  Surely it was his place to
go to her, draw her into the room where they could be
by themselves, put his arm about her, and let her rest
her head on his breast and weep, to the relief of
her burdened heart.

But Philip made no movement to go to his wife.

She was alone, without a friend in the house.  Her
sister was away, her baby was ill.  A death entails
many things that have to be considered, arranged, and
provided.  Philip knew this.  He sent word to the
registrar of the death; he did nothing more to assist
Salome.  He rang the bell, and when after a long
time a servant replied to the summons, he gave orders
that clean sheets should be put on the bed lately
occupied by Mrs. Sidebottom.  He would, he said for
awhile, sleep there.

Did it occur to Philip that there was cruelty in
leaving his young wife alone at night, with a sick baby,
and with the body of the woman, who had been to her
as a mother, lying waiting for burial downstairs?  Did
it occur to him that she might feel infinite desolation
at night, if he were away from her?  He thought only
of himself, of the wrong done to him.

'She married me, and never told me who she was.
She married me, lying under a false name.'

Salome had not realized, indeed, had not perceived,
how deep and fatal a rift had been cloven in her
relations with Philip.  The fall of her mother, the efforts
to restore life, the arrival of the doctor, the conviction
struggled against but finally submitted to that life
was extinct, had concentrated and engrossed all her
faculties.  Then, when she knew that death was again
in the house, there sprang out of that knowledge
many imperious duties that exacted of Salome full
attention and much thought.  Mrs. Sidebottom had
volunteered no help.  Upon Salome everything
depended.  She had not the time to consider how
Philip would take the startling revelation made to
him.  Salome was not one to give up herself to
emotion.  She braced herself to the discharge of
the duties that devolved on her.  Quiet, very pale,
and hollow-eyed, she went about the house.  From
the nursery she found that the nurse had escaped,
deserting the baby, that she might talk over the
events that had occurred in the kitchen.  The cook,
Salome found, had made the pastry with washing
instead of baking powder, and the housemaid had
found too much to talk about to make the beds by
four o'clock in the afternoon.

Only, when everything in the house had been seen
to, a woman provided to attend to the dead, and all
the trains off their lines set on them again, only then
could Salome sit down and write to her sister of their
common loss.

After this was done she wrote a few notes to friends,
and then, lacking stamps, came with the packet to
Philip's door.

He was seated at his secretaire writing, or pretending
to write, with his brows bent, when he heard her
distinct and gentle tap at the door.  He knew her
tap, it was like that of no one else, and he called to
her to enter.

'My dear,' she said, 'I have not been able to come
to you before.  I have had so much to do; and—dear,
I have wanted to speak to you; but, as you
know, in such a case as this, personal wants must be
set aside.  Have you any stamps?  I require a foreign one.'

He hardly looked up from the desk, but signed
with the quill that she should shut the door.  He was
always somewhat imperious in his manner.

She shut the door, and came over to him, and laid
the letters on his desk.

'You will stamp them for me, dear?' she said, and
rested her hand lightly on his shoulder.

Then she saw how stern and set his face was, and
a great terror came over her.

'Oh, Philip!' she said; and then, 'I know what
you are taking to heart, but there is no changing the
past, Philip.'

Sometimes we have seen the reflection of the sun
in rippled waters out of doors sent within on the
ceiling.  How it dances; is here and there; now
extinct, then once more it flashes out in full
brilliancy.  So was it with the colour in Salome's face;
it started to one cheek, burnt there a moment, then
went to the temples, then died away wholly, and in
another moment was full in her face, the next to
leave it ashy pale.  Her voice also quivered along
with the colour in her face, in rhythmic accord.  Philip
withdrew his shoulder from the pressure of her hand,
and slowly stood up.

'I shall be obliged if you will take a chair,' said he
formally, 'as I desire an interview, but will undertake
to curtail it as much as possible, as likely to be painful
to both.'

She allowed her hand to fall back, and then drew
away a step.  She would not take a chair, as he had
risen from his.

'Philip,' she said, 'I am ready to hear all you have
to say.'

She spoke with her usual self-possession.  She
knew that they must have an explanation about
what had come out.  There was always something
in her voice that pleased; it was clear and soft, and
the words were spoken with distinctness.  In nothing,
neither in dress, in movement, nor in speech, was
there any slovenliness in Salome.  There was some
perceptible yet indefinable quality in her voice which
at once reached the heart.

Philip felt this, but put the feeling from him, as he
had her hand.

'Salome,' said he, not looking at her, except
momentarily, 'a cruel trick has been played on me.'

'Philip,' said she quietly but pleadingly, 'that man,
as I told you, is my father, but I did not know it till
yesterday.  I had no idea but that I was the daughter
of those who had brought me here, and who gave
themselves out to be my parents.  I will tell you what
I know, but that is not much.  He—I mean that man—had
married my mother, who was the sister of her
who is below, dead.  He got into trouble somehow;
I do not know what kind of trouble it was, but it was,
I suppose, a disgraceful one, for he had to leave the
country, and it was thought he would not venture back
to England.  My real mother, grieved at the shame,
died and left us to her sister, who with her husband,
Mr. Cusworth, cheerfully undertook the care of us,
adopted us as their own, and when they came here
shortly after, gave out that we were their children,
partly to save us the pain of knowing that our father
had been a——well, what he was, partly also to screen
us from his pursuit should he return, and also, no
doubt, the more to attach us to themselves.  As you
know, shortly before Mr. Cusworth, our reputed father,
was to be taken into partnership, a terrible accident
happened and he was killed.  Janet and I do not
remember him.  Since then mamma—I mean my
aunt—and we children lived in this house with dear,
kind, Uncle Jeremiah.  Whether he knew the truth
about us I have not been told.  We never had any
doubt that she whom we loved and respected as a
mother was our real mother.  Then, on the occasion
of the terrible flood and the death of Uncle Jeremiah'
or just after, he—I mean our father—reappeared
suddenly, and without having let mamma know that
he was yet alive.  He came here in great destitution,
wanted money, and even clothing.  Mamma—you
know whom I mean, really aunt—she was in great
straits what to do.  She did not venture openly to
allow him to appear, and she suffered him to visit her
secretly through the lower garden-door, and to come
to her sitting-room; she gave him money and he went
away.  That was how her two hundred and fifty
pounds went, about which you asked so many
questions, and which she was afraid of your inquiring too
much about.  My father had then assumed the name
of Beaple Yeo.  She also allowed him to take uncle's
great-coat and hat, which were laid out in the spare
room for distribution.  You told her to dispose of
them as she saw fit.'

Philip hastily raised his hand.

Mrs. Sidebottom had hit the right nail on the head
in her explanation of that mysterious visit to his
house—and then he had scouted her explanation.  He
lowered his hand again, and Salome, who had
supposed that he desired to speak, and had stopped,
resumed what she was relating.  'Mamma heard
nothing more of him after that till yesterday, when
he reappeared.  He was, he said, again in trouble,
which meant, this time, that he must leave the country
to avoid imprisonment.  But he was not in a hurry to
leave too hastily; he would wait till the vigilance of
the police was relaxed, nor would he go in the
direction they expected him to take.  He had come, he
said, to ascertain Janet's address.  He intended, he
said, to go to her.  My mother refused to give it.  I
trust she remained firm in her refusal, but of that I
am not sure.  He said that if I had not been married
he would have carried me off with him; it would not
be so dull for him if he had a daughter as a
companion.  Janet knew about him and her relationship
to him.  I did not.  When he came here first of all,
Janet was in my mother's room, and the matter could
not be concealed from her.'

'Do you mean seriously to tell me that till
yesterday you were ignorant of all this?'

'Yes.'

'Ignorant when you married me that your name
was Schofield, and not Cusworth?'

'Of course, Philip; of course.'  She spoke with a
leap of surprise in her tone and in her eyes.  It was a
surprise to her that he should for a moment suppose
it possible that she was capable of deceiving him, that
he could think her other than truthful.

'Then at that first visit you were told nothing; only
Janet was let into the secret?'

'Yes, dear Philip.'

'What! the giddy, light-hearted Janet was made a
confidante in a matter of such importance, and you the
clear of intellect, prompt in action, close of counsel,
were left in the dark?  It is incredible.'

'But it is true, Philip.'

Thereupon ensued silence.

She looked steadily at him with her frank eyes.

'Surely, Philip, you do not doubt my word?
Mamma only told Janet because the secret could not
be kept from her.  At that time my sister slept in
mamma's room, and spent the greater part of the day
with her, so that it was not possible to keep from her
the sudden arrival of—of him.'  She shuddered at the
thought of the man who was her father.  She put her
hands over her face that burnt with an instantaneous
blaze, but withdrew them again directly, to say
vehemently, 'But, Philip, surely it cannot be.  You
do not doubt me?'  She looked searchingly at him.  '*Me!*'

He made no reply.  His face was set.  Not a
muscle moved in it.

'Philip!' she said, with a catch of pain—a sudden
spasm in her heart and throat.  'Philip, the sense of
degradation that has come on me since I have known
the truth has been almost more than I could bear
Not because of myself.  What God sends me, that I
shall find the strength to bear.  I am nobody, and if
I find that I am the child of someone worse than
nobody—I must endure it.  What crushes me is the
sense of the shame I have brought on you, Philip, and
the sorrow that a touch of dishonour should come to
you through me.  But I cannot help it.  There is no
way out of it.  It has come on us without fault of
ours, and we must bear it—bear it together.  I'—she
spread out her hands—'I would lay down my life to
save you from anything that might hurt you, that
might grieve your proud and honourable spirit.  But,
Philip, I can do nothing.  I cannot unmake the fact
that I am his daughter and your wife.'

'I shall never, never forgive that the truth was kept
from me.  The marriage was a fraud practised on me.'

'My dear mother—you know whom I mean—acted
with the kindest intentions, but I cannot excuse her
for not speaking.'

'Janet knew, as you tell me, and she said nothing.'

'Mamma urged her to remain silent.'

'I was sacrificed,' said Philip bitterly.  'Upon my
word, this is a family that transmits from one
generation to another the fine art of hoaxing the
unsuspicious.'

'Philip!'  A rush of indignant blood mantled her
face, and then left it again.  She heaved a sigh, and
said, 'If I had known before I married you whose
daughter I was I would on no account have taken
you.  I would have taken no honest man for his own
sake, no other for my own.'

'You know what Schofield was to me—to me above
every man.  I can recall when I told you and Janet
and your mother how he had embittered my life, how
he had ruined my father—and you all kept silence.'

'Philip, you are mistaken; I never heard that.'

'At all events your mother and Janet heard me—heard
me when they knew I was engaged to you, and
they told me nothing.  It was infamous, unpardonable.
They knew how I hated that man before I was
married.  They knew that I would rather have become
allied to a Hottentot than to such an one as he.  They
let me marry you in ignorance—it was a fraud; and
how, I ask'—he raised his voice in boiling anger—'how
can I trust *you* when you profess your ignorance?'  He
sprang to his feet and walked across the room.  'I
don't believe in your innocence.  It was a base, a vile
plot hatched between you all, Schofield and the rest
of you.  Here am I—just set on my feet and pushing
my way in an honest business, and find myself bound
by an indissoluble bond to the daughter of the biggest
scoundrel on the face of the globe.'

Salome did not speak.  To speak would be in vain.

He was furious; he had lost his trust in her.

She began to tremble, as she had trembled when
Mrs. Sidebottom had seen her on the stairs—a convulsive
shivering extending from the shuddering heart
outwards to the extremities, so that every hair on her
head quivered, every fold in her gown.

'And now,' pursued Philip, 'the taint is transmitted
to my child.  It might have been endurable
had I stood alone.  It is intolerable now.  These
things run in the blood like maladies.'

She was nigh on fainting; she lifted one hand
slightly in protest; but he was too angry to attend to
any protest.

'Can I doubt it?  The clever swindler defrauded
my father, and the clever daughter uses the inherited
arts and swindles the son.  How do I know but that
the same falsehood, low, cunning, and base propensities
may not lurk inherent in my child, to break out
in time and make me curse the day that I gave to the
world another edition of Beaple Yeo, alias Schofield,
bearing my hitherto untarnished name?'

Then she turned and walked to the door, with her
hands extended as one blind, stepping slowly, stiffly,
as if fearful of stumbling over some unseen obstacle.
She went out, and he, looking sullenly after her, saw
of her only the white fingers holding the door, and
drawing it ajar, and trying vainly to shut it, pinching
them in so doing, showing how dazed she was—instinctively
trying to shut the door, and too lost to
what she was about to see how to do it.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE FLIGHT OF EROS`:

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   CHAPTER XXXII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE FLIGHT OF EROS.

.. vspace:: 2

The funeral of Mrs. Cusworth was over.

The blinds were drawn up at last.

When the service at the grave was concluded,
Philip and Salome returned to their home, if that may
be called home from which the elements that go to
make up home—trust, sympathy, pity, forgiveness—have
fled.

The sun streamed in at the windows, broke in with
a rude impatience, as the blinds mounted, and revelled
on the floors again, and reflected itself in glass and
gilding and china, brought out into bloom again the
faded flowers on the carpets, and insisted on the
bunches of roses and jessamine and nondescripts on
the wall-papers putting on their colours and pretence
of beauty.

But there was no sunshine streaming into the
shadowed hearts of Philip and Salome, because over
both the hand of Philip held down the blinds.

Philip, always cold, uncommunicative, allowing no
one to lay finger on his pulse, resenting the slightest
allusion to his life apart from business—Philip had
made no friend in Mergatroyd, only acquaintances—drew
closer about him the folds of reserve.

At one time much fuss was made about the spleen,
but we have come now to disregard it, to hold it as
something not to be reckoned with; and Philip
regarded the heart as we do our spleens.

Philip was respected, but was not popular with his
own class, and was respected, but not popular, among
the operatives of his mill.  Some men, however
self-contained, are self-revealing in their efforts after
concealment.  So was it with Philip.

Shrewd public opinion in Mergatroyd had gauged
and weighed him before he supposed that it was
concerned about him.  It pronounced him proud and
honest, and capable, through integrity of purpose, of
doing a cruel, even a mean, thing.  He had been
brought up apart from those modifying forces which
affect, or ought to affect, the conduct governed by
principle.  Principle is a good thing as a direction of the
course of conduct, but principle must swerve
occasionally to save it from becoming a destructive force.
In the solar system every planet has its orbit, but
every orbit has its deflections caused by the presence
of fellow planets.  Philip as a child had never lain
with his head on a gentle bosom, from which, as from
a battery, love had streamed, enveloping him, vivifying,
warming the seeds of good in him.  He reckoned with
his fellow-men as with pieces of mechanism, to be
used or thrown aside, as they served or failed.  He
had been treated in that way himself, and he had come
to regard such a cold, systematic, material manner of
dealing with his brother men as the law of social life.

That must have been a strange experience—the
coming to life of the marble statue created by
Pygmalion.  How long did it take the veins in the
alabaster to liquefy?  How long before the stony
breast heaved and pulsation came into the rigid
heart?  How long before light kindled in the blank
eye, and how long before in that eye stood the
testimony to perfect liquefication, a tear?

There must have been in Galatea from the outset
great deficiency in emotion, inflexibility of mind,
absence of impulse; a stony way of thinking of others,
speaking of others, dealing with others; an
ever-present supposition that everyone else is, has been,
or ought to be—stone.

Philip had only recently begun to mollify under the
influence of Salome.  But the change had not been
radical.  The softening had not extended far below the
surface, had not reached the hard nerves of principle.

In the society of his wife, Philip had shown himself
in a light in which no one else saw him.  As the sun
makes certain flowers expand, and these flowers close
the instant the sun is withdrawn, so was it with him.
He was cheerful, easy, natural with her, talked and
laughed and showed her attentions; but when he
came forth into the outer world again he exhibited no
signs of having unfurled.

Now that his confidence in his wife was shaken,
Philip was close, undemonstrative, in her presence as
in that of his fellows.  He was not the man to make
allowances, to weigh degrees of fault.  Allowances
had not been made for his shortcomings in his past
life, and why should he deal with Salome as he had
not been dealt by?  Fault is fault, whether in the
grain or in the ounce.

When Philip said the prayer of prayers at family
devotions, and came to the petition, 'Forgive us our
trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against
us,' he had no qualms of conscience, not a suspicion
that his conduct was ungenerous.

He forgave Salome—most certainly he forgave her.
He bore no malice against her for having deceived
him.  He was ready to make her an allowance of
forty pounds per annum for her clothing, and thirty
pounds for pocket or pin money.  Should she fall ill,
he would call in a specialist regardless of expense; if
she wanted to refurnish the drawing-room he would
not grudge the cost.  Would a man be ready to do
all this unless he forgave a trespass against him?  He
could not take her head, and lay it on his shoulder,
and stroke the golden hair, and kiss the tears from
her eyes—but then he did not ask of Heaven to pet
and mollycoddle him, only to forgive him, and he did
forgive Salome.

He saw that his wife's heart ached for her mother;
that she felt keenly the loss of her who had been to
her the representative of all maternal tenderness and
consideration.  That was natural and inevitable.  But
everyone has to undergo some such partings; it is the
lot of humanity, and Salome must accommodate
herself to her bereavement.  He saw that she was without
an intimate friend in the place, to whom she could
pour out her heart, and of whom take counsel; but
then, he also had been friendless, till he came not to
require a friend and to value human sympathy.  What
he did not appreciate, she must learn to do without.

He saw that she was distressed and in agony of mind
because he was offended with her; but this afforded
him no regret.  She had sinned against him and must
accept the consequences.  It was a law of nature that
sin should meet with punishment, and the sinner must
accept his chastisement as his due.  What were the
consequences in comparison with the weight of her
transgression?

Procrustes had a bed on which he tied travellers,
and if their length exceeded that of the bed he cut
off their extremities; but if they were shorter, he had
them stretched to equal it.  Philip had his iron bed
of principle, on which he extended himself, and to this
he would fit his poor, tender, suffering wife.

As he and Salome returned together from the
funeral they hardly spoke to each other on the way.
Her hand was on his arm, trembling with grief and
mute, disregarded appeal.  He knew that she was
crying, because she continually put her kerchief to
her eyes.  Tears are a matter of course at funerals, as
orange-blossoms are a concomitant of weddings.
Mrs. Cusworth, though not Salome's mother, had
stood to her for eighteen years in the relation of one;
tears, therefore, thought Philip, were proper on this
occasion—very proper.

He did not blame her for crying—God forbid!

For his own part, Philip had regarded Mrs. Cusworth
with dislike; he had seen how commonplace,
unintellectual a woman she was; but it was of course
right, quite right and proper, that Salome should see
the good side of the deceased.

Philip wore his stereotyped business face at the
funeral, the face he wore when going through his
accounts, hearing a sermon, reprimanding a clerk,
paying his rates.  He was somewhat paler than usual,
but the most attentive observer could not say that this
was caused by feeling and was not the effect of
contrast to his new suit of glossy black mourning.  Not
once did he draw the little hand on his arm close to
his side and press it.  He let it rest there with as
much indifference as if it were his paletôt.

On reaching the house, he opened the door with his
latchkey, and stood aside to allow Salome to enter.
Then he followed, hung his hat on the stand, and blew
his nose.  He had avoided blowing his nose at the
grave or in the street, lest it should give occasion to
his being supposed to affect a grief he did not feel;
and Philip was too honest to pretend what was
unreal, and afraid to be thought to pretend.

He followed Salome upstairs.

On reaching the landing where was his study door,
Salome turned to look at him before ascending
further.  Her face was white, her eyes red with
weeping.  Wondrously beautiful in colour and reflected
light was her ruddy gold hair bursting out from under
the crape bonnet above her pallid face.

She said nothing, but waited expectantly, with her
brown eyes on his face.  He received the look with
imperturbable self-restraint, opened his door, and
without a word went into his study.

Salome's bosom heaved, a great sob broke from it;
and then she hastily continued her ascent.  She had
made her final appeal, and it had been rejected.

Mrs. Cusworth had died worth an inconsiderable
sum, and that she had left to Janet, as more likely to
need it than Salome.

And now that the last rites had been paid to the
kindhearted, if stupid and illiterate old woman, who
had loved Salome as her own child, Salome turned to
her baby to pour forth upon it, undivided, the rich
torrent of her love, gushing tinged with blood from a
wounded heart.

There exists a sympathetic tie in nature and in
human relations of which Philip had never thought—that
between the mother and the babe.  And now the
wrong done to the mother reacted, revenged itself on
her child.  The little one had been ailing for a while,
now it became seriously ill.  The strain to which
Salome had been put made itself felt in the weak
frame of the infant that clung to her breast.  Salome
would allow no one to nurse her darling but herself
whilst its precious life was in danger, and the child
would, on its part, allow no one else to touch it.  It
sobbed and cried and demanded of its mother infinite
patience and pity, unwearied rocking in her arms and
hugging to her heart, a thousand kisses, and many
tears, words of infinite love and soothing addressed to
it, soft sighs breathed over it from an utterly weary
bosom, and earnest prayers, voiceless often, but ever
ascending, as the steam of the earth to heaven.

For awhile, care for the babe excluded all other
thoughts, devoured all other cares.  Through the long
still night Salome was by her child; she did not go to
bed, she sat in the room by its crib, sometimes taking
it on her lap, in her arms, then, when it was composed
to sleep, laying it again in its cradle.  She heard every
stroke of the clock at every hour.  She could not
sleep, she could but watch and pray.

Every hour or two Philip came to inquire after his
child.  He stood by the cradle when it was sleeping
there, stooped and looked at the flushed face and the
little clenched hands; but when it was on Salome's
lap or in her arms he did not come so near, he stood
apart, and instead of examining the child himself,
asked about it.  Salome controlled herself from
giving way to feeling; her composure, the confidence
with which she acted, impressed Philip with the idea
that she had got over all other troubles except that
caused by the child's illness; and were this to pass
that she would be herself again.

But, through all her thought for the child ran the
burning, torturing recollection of what Philip had
said concerning it.  She was not sure that he desired
that it should live—live to grow up a Beaple Yeo—a
Schofield.  The house was perfectly still.  All the
servants were asleep.  Only Salome was awake
upstairs, when at four o'clock in the morning, as the day
was beginning to break raw and gray in the east, and
to look wanly in through the blind into the sick
room—Philip entered.

Salome was kneeling by the crib—a swing crib of
wood on two pillars.  She knelt by it, she had been
rocking, rocking, rocking, till she could no more stir
an arm.  Aching in all her joints, with her pulses
hammering in her weary brain, she had laid both
hands on the crib side, and her brow against it also.
Was she asleep, or was she only fagged out and had
slidden into momentary unconsciousness through
exhaustion of power?  Her beautiful copper hair,
burnished in every hair, reflected the light of the
lamp on the dressing-table.  On one delicate white
finger was the golden hoop.  She did not hear Philip
as he entered.  Hitherto, whenever he had come
through the door, she had looked up at him wistfully.
Now only she did not, she remained by the crib,
holding to it, leaning her brow on it, and tilting it
somewhat on one side.

He stood by her, and looked down on her, and for
a while a softness came over his heart, a stirring in its
dead chambers as of returning life.  He saw how
worn out she was.  He saw that she who had been so
hearty, so strong, in a few days had become thin and
frail in appearance, that the fresh colour had gone
from her cheek, the brightness from her eye, that the
sweet dimple had left her mouth.  He saw her love
and self-devotion for her child, the completeness with
which her soul was bound up in it.  And he saw how
lonely she now was without her mother to talk to
about the maladies, the acquirements, and the beauty
of her darling.

She did not glance up at that moment, or she
would have seen tokens of melting in his cold eye.

He remained standing by her, and he looked at the
child now sleeping quietly.  It was better, he trusted.
It could hardly be so still unless it was better.

Then, all at once.  Salome recovered consciousness,
saw him, and said, 'Oh, Philip, you do not want him
to die?'

Philip drew himself up.

'You have the crib too much tilted,' he said.  He
put his hands to it to counterbalance her weight, but
she raised her head from the side and the crib righted
itself.  He still kept his hand where he had placed it,
without any reason for so doing.

'Philip,' she said again, with passionate entreaty in
her voice, 'you do not wish my darling to die?'

'How can you ask such a foolish question?' he
answered.  'I am afraid the long night-watching has
been too much for you.'

'Oh, Philip—you do love him?  You do love
him—although there is something of me in him.  But——'
she said hastily, 'he is mostly yours.  He is like you,
he has dark hair and eyes, and his name is Philip, and
of course he *is*, he is a Pennycomequick!  Oh, Philip!
You love him dearly?'

'Of course I love him; he is my child.  Why do
you doubt?'

'Because,' she said, 'I—I am his mother.  But
that is all—I am only a sort of superior nurse.  He is
a Pennycomequick through and through, and there is
no—no—nothing of what you dread in him.'

'Yes, he is a Pennycomequick.'

'He can, he will be no other than a good and
noble man.  He can, he will be that, if God spares
him.'

'So I trust.'

'Oh, Philip—he is better, so much better.  I am
sure there is a turn.  I thank God—indeed, indeed I
do.  Look at his dear little face; it is cool again.'

He had his hand on the side of the crib, and he
stooped to look at the sleeping babe.  And, as he
was so doing, Salome, who still knelt, put her lips
timidly to his hand and kissed it—kissed it as it
rested on the side of her babe's crib.

Then he withdrew his hand.  He took his kerchief
out of his pocket, wiped it, said coldly, 'Yes, the child
is better,' and left the room.

Philip went to bed.  He had not asked Salome if
she were going to rest, he had not called up the
nurse to relieve her, though he saw and admitted that
she was worn out.  He had withdrawn his hand from
her lips not with intention to hurt her, but to show
her that he was opposed to sentimentality, and not
inclined to be cajoled into a renewal of confidence by
such arts.  That which angered and embittered him
chiefly was the fact that he was tied to a woman of
such disreputable parentage.  Then, in the next
place, he could not forgive the fraud practised on him
in making him marry her in ignorance of her real
origin.  He did not investigate the question whether
Salome were privy to it.  He thought that it was
hardly possible she could have been kept in complete
ignorance of the truth.  It was known to her sister.
Some suspicion of it at least must have been
entertained by her.  A fraud, a scandalous one, had been
perpetrated—on her own showing by her sister and
reputed mother—and even supposing she were not
guilty of taking share in it, she must reap the
consequences of the acts of her nearest relatives.
Mrs. Cusworth and Mrs. Baynes were beyond the reach of
his anger, therefore it must fall on the one accessible.

Salome had acquired by marriage with him a good
position and a comfortable home, and it was conceivable
that for the sake of these prospective advantages
she would have acquiesced, if not actually concurring,
in the wretched mean plot which had led to his
connection with her—the daughter of the most
despicable of men, and his own personal enemy.

Philip went to bed and fell asleep, satisfied with
himself that he had acted aright, and that suffering
was necessary to Salome to make her feel the
baseness of her conduct.

Salome finding that the child fretted, took it out of
the cot, drew it to her bosom, and seated herself by
the window.  She had raised the blind and looked
out at the silvery morning light breaking in the east,
and the pale east was not more wan than her own
face.  When Psyche let fall the drop of burning wax
on the shoulder of Cupid, the god of Love leaped up,
spread his wings and fled.  Psyche stood at the
window watching his receding form, not knowing
whither he went, but knowing that he went from her
without prospect of return.  So now did Salome look
from the window gazing forth into the cold sky,
looking after lost love—gone—gone, apparently, past
recall.





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.. _`EXILE`:

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   CHAPTER XXXIII.


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   EXILE.

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Days passed, and the house had settled into formal
ways.  The meals were at the usual hours, to the
minute.  Philip went to the office at the usual time,
and at the usual time returned from it; everything
had again entered into its routine as before.  But the
relations between husband and wife were not
improved.  They met at meals, rarely else.  At table a
conventional conversation was maintained.  Philip
occupied his bachelor apartments, and expressed no
intention of leaving them.  Beyond the formal
inquiries after Salome's health in the morning, he took
no interest in her condition of mind and body.  He
did not perceive that she still suffered, was becoming
thin, pale, and worn.  He could not have invented a
more cruel torture than this daily life of chill
intercourse between them, and Salome felt that it was
becoming insupportable.  She attended to the household
duties.  She looked after his comforts, saw that
his room was properly dusted, that his papers, his
books were always in the same place, that his clothing
was in order, that strict punctuality was observed
in all that concerned him—he accepted this as of
course, and was unaware that every element that
conduced to his well-being was not present naturally.
He did not know that his wife entered his room when
he was away and rectified the little neglects and
transpositions of the housemaid; he did not know
how much time, and how many tears were given to
his shirts and his socks and collars.  He was
unaware of the patient consideration devoted to the
dinner, to ensure that he should have an appetizing
meal after his work in the office during the day.  He
did not entertain the suspicion that the regularity of
the house was only effected by constant urgency and
supervision.

That there was a change in the relations of Philip
and his wife did not strike the outer world, which had
not been invited by him previously to consider the
nature and closeness of those relations.  In the
presence of others Philip was courteous and formal towards
his wife now, but he had been courteous and formal
towards her in public before.  He had not called upon
the neighbours and acquaintances to rejoice with him
because he had found domestic happiness; he did not
invite them now to lament with him because he had
discovered it to be chimerical.

He refused to Salome none of those attentions which
are required by common politeness; what she missed
were those which spring out of real affection.  His
behaviour to her in public was unchanged, and he
carried this manner into his private interviews with
her.  Such interviews were now brief and business-like.
He no longer spoke to her about what was
past, he never referred to her father.  He never
allowed her to entertain the smallest hope that his
behaviour would change.

Philip rarely spoke to a servant, never except on
business; and he was surprised one day when the nurse
ventured to intrude on his privacy and ask leave to
say something to him.

Philip gave the required permission ungraciously.

Then the woman said:

'Please, sir, the missus be that onconsiderate about
hersen that she'd never think o' telling nobody about
nowt that was wrong with her.  And so, I dare say,
you don't know, sir, that it is not all well wi' her.
Shoo has sudden faintive's, and they come on ow'er
often.  Shoo makes light o't, but don't better of it.
I sed to her, shoo ought to tell you, but shoo wouldn't.
And, please sir, shoo's a good missus, and too precious
to be let slip through the fingers for not looking after
what's amiss i' time.  So—sir—I've made bould to
say a word aboot it.'

Philip was surprised, even shocked.

'I will see to it,' he said; and then, 'That will do.'

He took occasion to speak with Salome about her
health, and now his eyes were opened to see how
delicate she had become.  She admitted her fainting-fits,
but made light of them.

'I have been overtaxed, that is all, Philip.  I shall
soon be quite myself again.'

'You have had a good deal of anxiety, no doubt,
and that may account for it.  Still—it would be
a satisfaction to have an opinion.  Do you care for
Mr. Knight?'

'Oh no, Philip—he is very clever, but too young.
I should not like to have Mr. Knight here about me.
But I assure you, it is nothing!—I mean there is
nothing really the matter with me.  It used to be
said that I had all the *physique* of us two sisters, and
Janet all the *verve*.'

'I wish you to have proper advice.  You understand.
I wish it.'

'Then, Philip, I will let anyone you like come and
see me, or I will go to anyone you recommend.'

'I have no knowledge of doctors,' he said almost
contemptuously.

'If I might have a choice——' she hesitated.

'Of course you may—in reason.'

'There is Mr. John Dale; he was dear Uncle
Jeremiah's best friend, and he is Janet's guardian.  I
always liked him, and he knows about us sisters.
Besides, I do want to see him and ask him what
he thinks about Janet; but he is a long way off,
he is at Bridlington.  If you think it would be
extravagant sending so far, I would go myself gladly
and see him.  Indeed, I dare say the journey would
do me good.'

'Very well,' said Philip, 'I'll telegraph for Mr. Dale.'

'And then,' added Salome, 'if you do not object, he
can overhaul baby and see that the darling is sound
as a bell.  But—there is no need at all to telegraph.
I know quite well what is the matter with me.  It is
nothing that any doctor can cure.'

'What is it?'

'I have had a good deal to worry me, to make me
unhappy.  I cannot sleep, I am always thinking.  I
can see no way out of the trouble.  If there were the
tiniest thread to which I could lay hold, then I should
soon be well—but there is none.  It reminds me of
what I have read about the belief the North American
Indians have concerning their origin.  They were,
they say, once in a vast black abyss in the centre
of the earth, and there were tiny fibres hanging from
the roof, and some of them laid hold of these fibres,
and crawled up them, and following them came to the
surface of earth and saw the sun, but others never
touched a depending thread, and they wander on in
timeless darkness, without a prospect, and without
cognizance of life.'

'Well——'

'And I am like these, only with this pang, that I
have been in the light.  No—there is no fibre hanging
down for me.'

She spoke timidly, and in a tone of half inquiry.

He did not answer.

'Philip, you must believe my word when I say that
I never knew till the night before you heard it, that I
was not what it had been given out I was.'

'We will not debate that matter again,' said Philip
sharply.  'It can lead to nothing.'

'There is, then, no fibre,' she said sadly, and withdrew.

John Dale arrived, bluff, good-natured, boisterous.

'Hallo! what is the matter with you?' was his
first salutation; and when he had heard what her
ailments of body were—she made light of them to
him—he shook his head and said bluntly, 'That's not
all—it is mental.  Now, then, what is it all about?'

'Mamma was taken suddenly ill and died; it was a
dreadful shock to me.  Then baby was unwell, and I
had to watch him night and day; he would let no
one else be with him.'

'But the expression of your face is changed, and
neither your mother nor baby has done that.  You
are in some trouble.  A doctor is a confessor.  Come,
what is up?'

Then she told him—not all, but a good deal.  She
told him who she was, and how she had discovered her
origin—that her father was the man who had started
the swindle about Iodinopolis, but that Beaple Yeo
was not his real name; he had assumed that in place
of his true name, Schofield.

'What—the scoundrel who did for Nicholas Pennycomequick?'

Salome bowed her head.

'I see it all,' said Dale.  'I never met that fellow
Schofield, but I knew Nicholas Pennycomequick, and
I know how he was ruined.  I had no idea that the
fellow Yeo, whom I met at Bridlington, was the same.
Now, my dear child, I understand more than you have
told me.  I shall not give you any medicine, but order
you away from Mergatroyd.'

'I cannot—I cannot leave baby.'

'Then take baby with you.'

Salome shook her head.

She also saw that nothing would do her good save
an escape from the crushing daily oppression of
Philip's coldness and stiff courtesy.

A day or two later she received a letter with a
foreign postmark, and she tore it open eagerly, for
she recognised her sister's handwriting.

The letter was short.  Janet complained of not
getting any better; her strength was deserting her.
And she added: 'Oh, Salome, come to me, come to
me if you can, and at once.  He is here.'

There was no explanation as to who was implied,
but Salome understood.  Her sister was ill, weak,
and was pestered by the presence of that man—that
horrible man who was their father.

She went to Philip's door and tapped.  She was at
once admitted.

'Philip,' she said, 'I refused to take Mr. Dale's
advice on Tuesday, I will take it now if you will
allow me.  I have heard from Janet.  She is ill.'  The
tears came into her eyes.  'She is very ill, and
entreats me to fly to her without delay.'

She said nothing to him of who she had heard was
with her sister.

'I am quite willing that you should go,' he said.

The words were hard.  The lack of feeling in them
touched her to the quick.

'Very well, Philip,' she said; 'with your consent I
will go.  Baby must do without me for a while,
unless,' she brightened, 'unless you will allow me to
take baby and nurse with me.'

'No,' answered Philip, 'on no account.  Go
yourself, but I cannot entertain that other proposal.'

She sighed.

'Where is Janet?' he asked.

'At Andermatt—on the St. Gothard.  The air is
bracing there.'

'Very well.  You will want money.  You shall
have it.'

'And how long may I stay?'

'That entirely remains with yourself.  As far as I
am concerned, I am indifferent.'

So Salome was to go.  She was now filled with a
feverish impatience to be off—not that she cared for
herself, that the change might do her good—but
because the leaving home would be to her agony, and
she was desirous to have the pang over.

She felt that she could not endure to live as she
had of late, under the same roof with her husband
and yet separated from him, loving him with her
faithful, sincere heart, and meeting with rebuff only;
guiltless, yet regarded as guilty, her self-justification
disregarded, her word treated as unworthy of credence.
No—she could not endure the daily mortification, and
she knew that it would be well for her to leave; but
for all that she knew that the leaving home would be
to her the acutest torture she could suffer.  She must
leave her dear child, uncertain when she would see it
again.  She did not hide from herself that if she left,
she left not to return till some change had taken
place in Philip's feelings towards her.  She could not
return to undergo the same freezing process.  But
she raised no hopes on what she knew of Philip's
character.  As far as she was acquainted with it—it
was unbending.  Salome had that simple faith which
leads one to take a step that seems plain, without too
close a questioning as to ultimate consequences.  She
had been told by the doctor whom she trusted that
she must go away from Mergatroyd, and immediately
came the call of her sister.  To her mind, this was a
divine indication as to the course she must take, and
she prepared accordingly to take it.

At the best of times it is not without misgiving and
heartache that we leave home, if only for a holiday,
and only for a few weeks; we discover fresh beauties
in home, new attractions, things that require our
presence, and obstruct our departing steps.  A certain
vague fear always rises up, lest we should never return,
at least, that when we return something should be
changed that we value, something going wrong that
we have left right, some one face be missing that we
hold to with infinite love.  It is a qualm bred of the
knowledge of the uncertainty of all things in this
most shifting world, a qualm that always makes itself
felt on the eve of departure.  With Salome this was
more than a qualm; she was going, she knew not to
what; she was going, she knew not for how long;
and the future drew a gray impenetrable veil before
her eyes—she could not tell, should she return, to
what that return would be.  She did not reckon about
her child.  She could not, she would not be
separated from it—but whether Philip would let the child
go to her, or insist on her return to the child, that
she did not ask.  The future must decide.  Whatever
she saw to be her duty, that she would do.  That was
Salome's motive principle.  She would do her duty
anywhere, at any sacrifice: when she saw what her
duty was.

A cab was procured from the nearest town, four
miles distant, to take Salome to the station.

Oh the last clasp of her babe!  The tearful eyes,
the quivering mouth, the beating heart, the inner
anguish; and then——as she ran downstairs, with
her veil drawn over her face, Philip encountered her
un the landing, and offered her—not his cheek, not
his heart—but his arm to take her to the cab.

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   END OF VOL. II.

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   BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.

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