The Pennycomequicks (Volume 3 of 3)

Mrs. Sidebottom found that her acquaintances were eager to make use of her, but then she had sufficient knowledge of the world to expect that.

'Have you secured through tickets, Lamb?'

'Yes, mother.'

'Then we are off to-morrow.'

CHAPTER XXXVI.

DEPOSED

Gone as a dream! – that brief period of hope and happiness and comfort. Philip had a disquieting prospect opening before him, as disquieting as that which drove Mrs. Sidebottom from England, but different in kind. Philip was ready enough to account for every penny, and return all the money undiminished which had come to his share. What troubled him was the fearful look-out of a return to furnished lodgings. He saw himself about to be cast forth from the elegancies, the conveniences of life, and cast down to its vulgarities and discomforts. He saw himself about to be transferred from the cushioned carriage on the smooth road, to a buggy on a corderoy way, all jolts and kicks and plunges and breakdowns. He was about to descend from succulent joints and savoury entremets to mutton-chops alternating into beef-steaks, from claret to bitter beer, from a place of authority to one of submission, from progress to stagnation, from a house of his own over which to range at pleasure to confinement within two rooms, one opening out of the other. He must go back to streaky forks, and spoons that at dinner recall the egg of breakfast, to knives with adhesive handles and tumblers frosted with finger-marks, to mirror frames encased in fly-proof snipped green paper and beaded flower-mats, a horsehair sofa, a cruet-stand with old crusted mustard and venerable Worcester sauce in it, to wax fruit under a glass shade, as covered with dust as a Peruvian island with guano, to folding-doors into the adjacent bedroom, and to curtains tied back with discarded bonnet-ribbons. But it would have been bad enough for Philip, now accustomed to better things, to have had the prospect before him of descending alone; but he was no longer alone, he had a wife, who, however, was absent, and about whose return he was uncertain. And he had with him the encumbrance of a baby; and the encumbrance of a baby drew with it a train of dissatisfied and departing nurses, one after another, like the procession of kings revealed to Macbeth in Hecate's cave.

A babe in a lodging-house is as out of place as was the ancestral Stanley found in an eagle's nest on the top of a pine, of which the family crest preserves a reminiscence.

Uncle Jeremiah was restored to strength, moral as well as physical. He no longer thought of his heart, he allowed it to manage its pulsations unconsidered. He was heartily glad that he had been saved committing an act of egregious folly, and he was prepared now to meet Salome without a twinge. Common-sense had resumed the place of upper hand; and the temporary disturbance was over for ever. To every man comes at some period after he has begun to decline a great horror of old age, an agonizing clutch at the pleasures and follies of youth, a time of intoxication when he is not responsible for his acts, an intoxication produced by fear lest life with its roses should have passed and left only thorns behind and decay. Men whose lives have been spent in business, subjected to routine, who have not thought of love and amusement, of laughter and idleness, are suddenly roused to find themselves old and standing out of the rush of merriment and the sunshine of happiness. Then they make a frantic effort to seize what hitherto they have despised, to hug to their hearts what they have formerly cast away. It is the St. Luke's summer, a faint reflex of the departed glory and warmth, a last smile before the arrival of the winter gales. No moment in life is so fraught with danger as this – at none is there more risk of shipwreck to reputation.

Now that Jeremiah had passed through this period, he could survey its risks with a smile and a sense of self-pity and a little self-contempt. He who had always esteemed himself strong had discovered that he could be weak, and, perhaps, this lesson had made him more lenient with the infirmities of others.

He returned to his friend John Dale, looking older by some years, but also more hale. He had touched the earth but had risen from it stronger than when he fell.

On reaching Bridlington, he learned from Dale the state of matters at Mergatroyd. Whilst there, a hasty note arrived for Mr. Dale from Salome to say that she was leaving, with her husband's consent, to be with her sister in Switzerland, and both thought they could read between the lines that there had been a fresh difference with Philip.

Thereupon Jeremiah went to Mergatroyd, and came in unexpectedly and unannounced on Philip.

Jeremiah Pennycomequick had not decided what course to pursue with regard to his sister and nephew. He was conscious that he had played them a trick, that he had put them to a test which he was not justified in applying to them.

He was angry with both – with his half-sister for the precipitation with which she had accepted and certified his death, and with Philip for his treatment of Salome. He did not disguise from himself that his interference in such a delicate matter as a quarrel, or an estrangement, between husband and wife, might make the breach worse.

When he arrived at Mergatroyd, he had not resolved what course to take. He sat up half the night with Philip.

'You will find,' said the latter with some pride, 'that I have maintained the business in a healthy condition; it is not in the condition it was during the Continental war which affected linen as well as other things, but that was of its nature ephemeral. It rests on a sound basis. Go through the books and satisfy yourself. My aunt,' there was a tone of bitterness when he added this – 'my aunt watched the conduct of the factory with a jealous eye, and did not trust my accounts without a scrutiny. As for what was in the bank, I can give an account of every penny, and the securities, such as came to me, are untouched.'

'I will look into these matters at my leisure,' said Jeremiah, 'and if I find that matters are as you say, I will let you down lightly; only, I forewarn you, let down you will be. And now a word about Salome.'

'My wife,' said Philip shortly.

'Your wife – exactly – but – '

'With regard to my wife, I brook no interference,' said Philip haughtily. 'The mill is your affair, my domestic relations are my own.'

'You cry out before you are hurt,' retorted Jeremiah; 'I am not about to interfere. I know that you are greatly disconcerted at the discovery as to the parentage of your wife.'

Philip held up his head stiffly and closed his lips tightly. He said nothing.

'I am not intermeddling,' continued Jeremiah, 'but I wish you to understand this: that I have some claim to speak a word for Salome, whom I have always – that is to say – whom I have looked upon with fatherly regard. The two little girls grew up in my house, not a day passed but I saw them; I rode them as infants at my knee, I bought them toys. They ran to meet me – cupboard love, of course – when I came from the mill, because I had oranges or sweet things in my pocket. I took pride in them as they became blooming girls, I saw that they were well taught. After dinner they soothed me with their music, and when I was dull enlivened me with their prattle. Have I, then, no right to speak a word for one or the other? I have been to them more than a father. Their father deserted them as soon as they were born, but I have nurtured and clothed them, and seen to the development of their minds and the disciplining of their characters. It is absurd of you to deny me the right to speak. To interfere is not my purpose.'

'Very well, I will listen.'

'Then let me tell you this – I know who their father was. When Mrs. Cusworth came into this house she very honestly told me the truth about them, and by my advice she kept her counsel. It could do them only harm – cloud their joys – to know that they had a disreputable father. We knew nothing of the man's subsequent history. He had disappeared, and might be – as we hoped – dead. But, even if alive, we did not suppose he would care to come in quest of his twin daughters, and we trusted, should he do this, that he would not find them. We hoped that he might not conjecture that the children had been adopted by their aunt, and that she had moved into Yorkshire to Mergatroyd. Neither Salome nor Janet knew who their father was, or rather both supposed him to be that worthy man who perished so lamentably in my service. By what means he made the discovery and got on their track I do not know, and I hardly care to know. If I could take into my house the children of such a man, it hardly becomes you – '

Philip interrupted his uncle.

'That fellow Schofield never injured you as he did my father. He not only ruined him, but he also was the cause of his estrangement from you, or rather, yours from him.'

'Bear the man what grudge you will,' said Jeremiah hastily, 'but do not visit his offences on the head of his unoffending child.'

Philip stood up. He was angry, but not to be moved from his stiffness of manner.

'I think,' said he, 'you will be tired. I am, and probably bed is the best place for both. As this is now your house, and I am an intruder in it, I must ask permission to occupy my room for to-night.'

Jeremiah laughed. 'And you – a lawyer! Why, you are in legal possession, and till there is a reversal of the sentence of the Probate Court, I have no more rights than a ghost. No – I am your guest.'

Philip retired to his room. The words of Jeremiah, charging him with visiting the offences of the father on the unoffending child, were but the repetition of his own self-reproach, but for that very reason less endurable. It is the truth of a charge which gives it its sting. A man will endure to say to himself what he will not tolerate to be said to him by another.

He went to his room, but not to bed. He sat at the window, where Salome had sat, in the same chair, thinking with dark brow and set lips. In one thing, his self-esteem was encouraged. His uncle would see and be forced to acknowledge how thoroughly he had mastered the technicalities of the business, and with what order and prudence he had carried it on. He need not shrink from the closest examination into his conduct of the factory. Everything was in order, the books well kept, several contracts in hand. His uncle might dismiss him, but he could not say a word against his integrity and business habits. He had taken to himself nothing but what Mrs. Sidebottom, as administratrix, had passed over to him. And as to his uncle's disappearance, he had done nothing as to the identification of the wrong body; he had held himself neutral, as incapable of forming an opinion from inadequate acquaintance with his uncle. If blame was to be cast, it must fall heavily on Mrs. Sidebottom, but none would rest on him.

But – how about the future? Philip now recalled the discomfiture, the monotonies, the irritations of lodging-house life. Could he go back to that? If his uncle offered to retain him in his house, could he consent? His pride counselled him to go, his love of comfort to remain.

Uncle Jeremiah had not invited him to remain, but Philip thought it likely that he might. His pride was galled in many ways. It would be most painful to him to continue at the factory, in which he had been a master, henceforth in a subordinate position. Should he return to the solicitor's firm at Nottingham, in which he had been before? That his services there were valued he was well aware, that his resignation of a clerkship therein had caused annoyance he was well aware; he knew, however, that his place was filled, and that if he returned to the office, he would be obliged to take a lower desk. He might, and probably would be, advanced, but that would require patience, and he must wait till a vacancy occurred. Besides, it would be a humiliation to have to solicit readmission, after he had left the office on stilts, as one who had come into a fortune.

Then – what was to be done about his wife? He could not maintain her and her child on a junior clerk's wage. Moreover, he had sent her away when he occupied a lofty moral platform, because connection with her sullied the fair name of Pennycomequick, and might injure the firm; and now that he no longer belonged to the firm, but was a poor clerk of no consequence in the world, was he to write to her a letter of humble apology, and ask her to return and share the beggary of a clerk's life in furnished lodgings with him, to unite with him in the long doleful battle against landladies? He had little doubt that Uncle Jeremiah would propose to make Salome an allowance, and that on this allowance together with his salary they might be able to rub along. But to accept such relief from Uncle Jeremiah, granted through his wife – his wife whom he had snubbed and thrust away – was not pleasant to contemplate.

Whatever way Philip considered the meal set before him, he saw only humble-pie, and humble-pie is the least appetizing of dishes. Philip approached it as a sulky child does a morsel which his nurse requires him to eat, without consuming which he must expect no pudding. He walked round it; he looked at it from near, then he drew back and considered it at long range, then he touched it, then smelt it, then turned his back on it, then – with a grumble – began to pick a few crumbs off it and put them between his lips.

He went to bed at last, unresolved, angry with himself, angry with Salome, angry with his uncle, and angry with the baby who was sobbing in the nursery.

Philip's experiences had all been made in spiral form; they were ever turning about himself, and though each revolution attained a higher level, it was still made about the same centre. There is a family likeness in minds as well as in noses and eyes and hair; and in this Philip resembled his aunt, but with the difference that he was governed by a strong sense of rectitude, and that nothing would induce him to deviate from what he believed to be just, whereas his aunt's principles were flexible, and governed only by her own interests.

In these days in which we live, socialism is in the air, that is to say, it is talked of and professed, but whether by any is practised I am inclined to question. For socialism I take to mean everyone for everyone else, and no one for himself, and this is a condition contrary to the nature of man, for men are all more or less waterspouts, vortices, attracting to themselves whatever comes within their reach, and to be actuated by a centrifugal, not a centripetal force is the negative of individuality.

We stalk our way over the ocean, drawing up through our skirts every drop of water, every seaweed, and crab and fish and mollusc that we can touch, and whirl them round and round ourselves, and only cast them away and distribute them to others when they are of no more use to ourselves.

Every climatic zone through which Philip had passed had served to feed and build up the column of his self-esteem; the rugged weather in furnished lodgings, and the still seas into which he had entered by his uncle's death, and by his marriage. Nothing had broken it down, dissolved its continuity, dissipated its force.

At sea, when a vessel encounters a waterspout, it discharges ordnance, and the vibration of the atmosphere caused by the explosion snaps the column and it goes to pieces. But would the shock caused by the return of Uncle Jeremiah, and the loss of position and wealth that this entailed, suffice to break the pillar of self-esteem that constituted Philip Pennycomequick? Hardly; for though touched in many ways, he could hold up his head conscious of his rectitude; he had managed the mill admirably, kept the accounts accurately, adapted himself to the new requirements perfectly. He could, when called upon, give up his place, but he would march forth with all the honours of war.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

ON THE LAKE

Mrs. Sidebottom had reached Lucerne very rumpled and dirty and out of temper, having travelled all night from Brussels, and having had to turn out and have her boxes examined at Thionville and Basle. She had scrambled through a wretched breakfast off cold coffee and a roll at Strasburg, at four o'clock in the morning, and then had been condemned to crawl along by a slow train from Strasburg to Basle, and by another, still slower, from Basle to Lucerne. A night in a comfortable hotel had restored her wonderfully; and when she took her place under the awning in the lake steamer, with a ticket in her glove for Fluelen, which she insisted on calling Flew-ellen, she was in a contented mood, and inclined to patronize the scenery.

The day was lovely, the water blue, Pilatus without his cap, and the distant Oberland peaks seen above the Brunig Pass were silver against a turquoise sky.

'This,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, dipping into 'Murray's Handbook' to ascertain what it was proper to say – 'this is distinguished above every lake in Switzerland, and perhaps in Europe, by the beauty and sublime grandeur of its scenery.'

Then past her drifted a party of English tourists, also with 'Murray' in their hands and on their lips. 'Oh, mamma!' exclaimed a young lady, 'this lake is of very irregular shape, assuming near its west extremity the form of a cross. Do you see? There is one arm, we are approaching another, and there is the leg.'