The Pennycomequicks (Volume 1 of 3)

'Yes, but you intervene. Such is the law.'

Mrs. Sidebottom was silent for a moment. Then she said irritably: 'I wish now, heartily, that there had been a will. I know what Jeremiah's intentions were, and I would grieve to my heart's core to have them disregarded. In conscience, I could not act differently from his wishes. If he omitted to make a will, it was because he knew nothing of law, and supposed that everything would devolve to me, his sister. Philip, knowing the rectitude of your principles, I am sure you will decline to touch a penny of your uncle's inheritance. You know very well that he never forgave your father, and that he always regarded his leaving the business as an acquittal of all further obligations towards him.'

'I must put you out of doubt at once,' said Philip. 'I shall most certainly take my share.'

'I do not believe that my brother died without a will. I never will believe it. It will turn up somehow. These old fogies have their odd ways. Perhaps it is at the mill in his office desk. What a world of contrarieties we do live in! Those persons to whom we pin our faith as men of principle are just those who fail us. However, to turn to another matter. I presume that I am in authority here. You have no caveat to offer against that?'

'None at all.'

'Then out go the Cusworths, and at once.'

'Not at once. That is indecent. If you will have it so, after the funeral give them notice. You must act with humanity.'

'The girl is insolent. She has the temerity to dispute my assertion that the dead man is Jeremiah.'

'She is justified in forming her own opinion and expressing it.'

'Of course, you take her part. She has been ogling you with good effect. Lamb, will you go down and call her up? I must have a word with her at once, and ascertain the amount of wages her mother has received, and how much is due.'

'Remember,' said Philip, 'that Mrs. Baynes has come here from Normandy, and that Mrs. Cusworth is ill, and that houses are scarce at present in Mergatroyd.'

'Then let them go elsewhere. To Jericho, for all I care.'

Philip was very angry. He was offended at his aunt's insinuations about himself, and indignant at her want of feeling towards those who had been companions and friends to his uncle.

Lambert had left the room as desired.

'Aunt Louisa,' said Philip, 'I insist upon your acting with courtesy and consideration towards the Cusworths. I do not mean to threaten you; but I shall not tolerate conduct that appears to me as ill-judged as unjust. As you said yourself, we must remember and act upon the wishes of the deceased; and it would be contrary to them that the old lady and her daughters should be treated with disrespect and unkindness.'

'You leave me to deal with them,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, somewhat cowed by his manner.

'You know my opinion. You will find it not to your advantage to disregard it,' said Philip haughtily.

Mrs. Sidebottom shuffled her feet, and arranged her skirts, frowned, and examined her pocket-handkerchief, where she discovered an iron-mould.

Then Lambert reappeared with Salome, and as they entered the door, Philip turned towards it and took up his position near the girl, facing his aunt, as if to protect Salome from insolence and injustice. Mrs. Sidebottom understood the signification of the movement, bit her lips, and said with constraint, looking on the ground: 'May I ask you, Miss Cusworth, to favour us by taking a chair? There is no occasion for you to stand in my presence. I have taken the liberty to send for you, because my poor dear brother is dead, and as no reasonable doubt remains in any unprejudiced mind that his body has been found – '

Salome's lips closed. She looked at Philip, but said nothing. She had made her protest. One on this occasion would be superfluous.

'We desire in every way to act according to the wishes of my darling brother, whom it has pleased a beneficent Providence' – she wiped her eyes – 'to remove from this vale of tears. As his sister, knowing his inmost thoughts, the disposition of his most sacred wishes, his only confidant in the close of life, I may say I know what his intentions were as well as if he had left a will.'

'There is a will,' said Salome quietly.

'A will! – Where?'

'In my workbox.'

A silence ensued. Mrs. Sidebottom looked very blank.

'On the very night he died he gave it me to keep, and I put it away in my workbox, as I had nothing else that locked up. My workbox is in my room upstairs. Shall I fetch the will?'

'No,' said Philip, 'let it stay where it is till after the funeral.'

CHAPTER XII.

SURPRISES

When the funeral was over, and the family of Pennycomequick was assembled in the house of the deceased, or assumed to be deceased, manufacturer, Mrs. Sidebottom sent her compliments to Salome, with a request that she would favour her with an interview in the dining-room.

Mrs. Sidebottom was dressed in fresh black satin and crape that became her well, as her hair and face were fair. Of this she was aware, and she took the opportunity of surveying herself in every mirror that she passed. Really in her mourning she looked young again. The black seemed to produce on her much the same effect as the photographer's stipple, wherewith he effaces the wrinkles of the negative. It was as though the life of Pennycomequick were a capital of which, when Jeremiah lost hold, his heirs had taken possession. Not Mrs. Sidebottom only, but also her son seemed to have come in for a bequest of vitality. The captain looked brighter, less languid than he had for long.

Philip's suspicious nature had been displeased by the statement of Salome that the will was in her possession. It appeared to him strange that the old man should have entrusted so important a document to the care of a girl of nineteen or twenty. It roused in his mind that mistrust which had been laid. He asked whether the fact of this consignment did not show that the Cusworth family were deeply interested in the will; whether this taking possession of it were not the conclusion of a conspiracy to get the old man to make a testament altogether in their favour.

He did not, on this occasion, move to meet Salome when she entered the room, but took his position apart, with arms folded, and face imperturbable, and set hard, as if a frost had congealed it.

Philip was not by any means unconcerned as to the disposition of his uncle's property. He would have been raised above the passions and ambitions of human nature had he been unconcerned, for the disposition was likely to affect materially his whole after-life.

Philip was now aged thirty-four years, and was only a solicitor's clerk. The utmost he could expect, without a windfall, would be when well advanced in years to be taken into the firm of Pinch and Squeeze for his mastery of the details of the business. He would be incapable of purchasing a partnership, as he was wholly without capital. What means his father had possessed had been thrown away, and therewith his prospects.

Philip's only chance of recovering his proper position was through a bequest from the uncle whose will was about to be read.

If Jeremiah had died intestate, he would have come in for a share of the business, and for a good lump sum of money, for it is quite certain that his uncle had saved money. He might then have either purchased a partnership in a good legal house, or carried on the factory, remaining at Mergatroyd.

It was true that he knew nothing of the technique of linen weaving, but his training had taught him business habits, and he was confident that in a short time he would be able to master the ramifications of the business. There is a tool sold by ironmongers that contains in the handle, saw, file, gimlet, turnscrew, chisel, bradawl, and punch. The nozzle of the handle is provided with a grip that holds or discharges such of the tools as are required or done with. Thus the instrument can be converted at pleasure into whatever is desired.

A business education makes a man into such a convertible tool, ready, as required, to be saw, file, turnscrew, or punch. Philip was conscious of his mental flexibility, and confident that if he resolved to make a new departure, he could fit himself to it. The knowledge that he had been without means had not soured him as it had his father, but had hardened him. His profession had conduced, as this profession does in many cases, to foster in him a strong and touchy sense of rectitude. Brought into contact with mankind in its ignoble aspects, seeing its sordidness, selfishness, laxity of principle where self-interest is concerned, he had framed for himself a rigorous code of honour, from which nothing would make him swerve by a hair's-breadth.

In the past he had made no calculation on receiving anything from his uncle, but now that the possibility of his getting something was presented to him, he could not contemplate the decisive moment with equanimity. The tiger that has tasted human blood, ever after disdains the food that previously satisfied its maw; and the young lady who has been through a London season, or only ventured into a first ball, will not afterwards return to the sobriety and monotony of country life. If Philip had been left to plod on at Nottingham without expectations, he would have accommodated himself to his situation with dull resignation; but now that a prospect of independence had been dangled before his eyes, he could not return to his old career without intensified distaste.

Yet he was far from forming great hopes. He knew that Jeremiah had been a vindictive old man, never forgiving his brother a mistake which had cost that brother more suffering than it had Jeremiah. It was more probable that the old manufacturer would leave everything to his sister and her son, with whom he had always maintained unbroken connection, than that he should favour him. Whether Jeremiah liked and trusted his sister and her son, and to what extent he liked and trusted them, Philip had not the means of judging, that alone could be revealed by the will.

If he should be disappointed, his disappointment would be more grievous to bear than he cared to acknowledge to himself. He was, indeed, angry with himself for feeling any flutter of hope. If he should be disappointed, he would return to Nottingham, to his former routine of life, and spend the rest of it in a subordinate position, destitute of that brightness and ease for which a man of education craves as an atmosphere in which his soul can breathe and expand. He did not desire ease because indolent, but to obtain scope for his faculties to develop in other directions than those to which they were professionally turned; and to polish the other facets of the inner self than those exposed to the daily grindstone. He would like to buy books, to take a holiday on the Continent, to purchase small artistic treasures, to be able to rise out of the contracted circle of petty clerk-life, with all its small prejudices and narrow interests.

For fifteen years he had lived this life that was uncongenial, and unless his uncle's money gave him wings to rise out of it, he must remain in this Stymphalian bog. Consequently it was with a beating heart, and with inward fluctuations of hope and fear, that he awaited the decision; but none of this unrest could be seen in his face, that did not bear in it a sign of expectation.

As Salome entered, Mrs. Sidebottom waved to her to take a seat. The girl, however, with a slight acknowledgment, stepped up to Philip, and extending to him the will, said: 'It was given to me to keep safely, should anything occur. I cannot even now resign it absolutely, as Mr. Pennycomequick told me that I was to keep it and prove it.'

'You prove it!' exclaimed Philip, glancing at her suspiciously.

'You!' cried Mrs. Sidebottom. 'Fiddlesticks! That is to say, impossible.'

'You must remain in the room, Miss Cusworth,' said Philip, 'whilst the will is read, after which we will remit it to your charge.'

'I object to such as are not of the family being present,' said Mrs. Sidebottom.

'Your objection must be put aside,' answered Philip. 'As Miss Cusworth has been entrusted with the document, and required to prove it, she must remain.'

Mrs. Sidebottom tossed her head.