The Pennycomequicks (Volume 1 of 3)

'Our only chance is to reach the poplar-stump, said Jeremiah. 'Come along with me.'

'Nay, not I,' answered the man. 'The ships o' Tarshish was saved because Jonah was cast overboard. Go, then, and I'll stay here and be safe. I'll no be any mair i' t' same box wi' an alcohol-drinker.'

He drew up his feet under him, and put his fingers into his mouth to warm them.

Mr. Pennycomequick did not delay to use persuasion. If the man was fool enough to stay, he must stay. He slipped off the top of the hut, and planted one foot on the piano, then the other; his only chance was to reach the broken poplar, scramble up it, and lodge in its branches till morning. To do this he must reach it by the broken top that at present was caught between the legs of the piano, so that the water brushed up over the twigs. Jeremiah sprang among the boughs, and tried to scramble along it. Probably his additional weight was all that was required to snap the remaining fibres that held the portions together, for hardly was Mr. Pennycomequick on it than the strands yielded, and down past the crumbling hut rushed the tree-top, laden with its living burden, entangled, laced about with the whip-like branches, and as he passed he saw the frail structure dissolve like a lump of sugar in boiling water and disappear.

CHAPTER VII.

TAKING POSSESSION

The valley of the Keld for many miles above and below Mergatroyd presented a piteous spectacle when day dawned. The water had abated, but was not drained away. The fields were still submerged. Factories stood as stranded hulls amidst shallow lagoons, and were inaccessible, their fires extinguished, their mechanism arrested, their stores spoiled. The houses in the 'folds' were deserted, or were being cleared of their inhabitants.[1 - For the enlightenment of the uninitiated it will be as well to describe a fold. About some mills are yards, and the enclosing walls of these yards form the backs of cottages facing inwards on the mill, which are occupied by operatives working in the factory.] From the windows of some of these houses men and women were leaning and shouting for help. They had been caught by the water, which invaded the lower story, locally called the 'ha'ase,' when asleep in the bedrooms overhead, and now, hungry and cold and imprisoned, they clamoured for release. Boats were scarce. Such as had been possessed by manufacturers and others had been kept by the river, and these had been broken from their moorings and carried away. Rafts were extemporized out of doors and planks; and as the water was shallow and still in the folds, they served better than keels. One old woman had got into a 'peggy' tub and launched herself in it, to get stranded in the midst of a wide expanse of water, and from her vessel she screamed to be helped, and dared not venture to move lest she should upset her tub and be shot out.

Not many lives, apparently, had been lost in the parish of Mergatroyd. Mr. Pennycomequick was missing, and the man at the locks with his wife had not been seen, and their cottage was still inaccessible. But great mischief had been wrought by the water. Not only had the stores in the mills been damaged, and the machinery injured by water and grit getting into it, and boilers exploded by the shock, but also because the swirl of the torrent had disturbed the subsoil of gravel and undermined the walls. Fissures formed with explosions like the report of guns; one chimney that had leaned before was now so inclined and overbalanced that its fall was inevitable, and was hourly expected.

All the gas jets fed from the main that descended into the valley were extinguished, and it was apparent that the rush of water had ploughed up the ground to the depths of the main, and had ruptured it. Walls that had run across the direction of the stream had been thrown over; the communication between the two sides of the valley was interrupted. It was uncertain whether the bridge was still in existence. The railway had been overflowed, and the traffic stopped. The canal banks and locks had suffered so severely that it would be useless for the barges for many months.

Tidings arrived during the day from the upper portion of the valley, and it appeared that the destruction of life and property had been greatest where the wave burst out from between the confining hills, before it had space in which to spread, and in spreading to distribute its force. Heartrending accounts came in, some true, some exaggerated, some false, but all believed.

That night of terror and ruin did not see the roll of death made up. Such catastrophes have far-reaching effects. The wet, the exposure, the shock, were sure to produce after-sickness and succeeding mortality.

With ready hospitality, the parsonage, the inns, the houses of the well-to-do, were thrown open to receive those temporarily homeless, and food, warmth and clothing were forced upon them. But such as were received felt that they could not protract their stay and burden unduly their hosts, and insisted on returning prematurely to their sodden houses, there to contract rheumatic fevers and inflammations.

Twenty years ago, the author of this story wrote an account of such a disaster in a novel, the first on which he essayed his pen. Time has rolled away, and like the flood, has buried much; and amongst the things it has swept off and sunk in oblivion is that book. Probably not a dozen copies of it exist. He may now be permitted to repeat what was there written, when the impression produced by the cataclysm was fresh and vivid; and let not the rare possessor of the lost novel charge him with plagiarism if he repeats something of his former description.

Near the spot where the Keld left the hills had stood a public-house called the Horse and Jockey. The full violence of the descending wave fell on it and effaced it utterly. The innkeeper's body was never found; the child's cradle, with the child in it, had gone down the stream, kept from overbalancing by the kitchen cat, and so escaped destruction. The beer casks floated ashore some miles down, were never claimed, and were tapped and drunk dry by some roughs. The sign of Horse and Jockey came to land twenty miles away, unhurt; it was the most worthless article the house had possessed. About a mile and a half above Mergatroyd was a row of new cottages, lately erected on money borrowed from a building society. They were of staring red brick, with sandstone heads to doors and windows; the flood carried away three out of the four.

In the first lived a respectable wool-picker with wife and children, all Wesleyans. He and his wife and child were swept from life in a moment, and supplied the preacher at their chapel with a topic for his next Sunday's discourse.

In the second lived a widow, who sold 'spice,' that is to say, sweets, together with sundry articles in the grocery line; a mighty woman, rotund and red, with a laugh and a joke for everyone; a useful woman to mothers in their troubles, and to children with the toothache, whooping cough, and other maladies. Black bottle and peppermint drops, Mother Bunch's syrup, soothing powders, porous plasters, embrocations, and heal-alls various, and of various degrees of mischievousness, were her specifics, and when the doses were nasty her lemon-drops and sugar-candy were freely given to cleanse the mouth of the taste of medicine. Now, she was gone down the river, her lollipops dissolved, her medicines dispersed. Away she had gone, floundering and spluttering, till her lungs were filled with the fluid she involuntarily imbibed, and then she sank and was caught among some sunken tree-snags, and her body was afterwards recovered from among them.

In the third cottage resided a musical shoemaker, a man with one love, and that the love of his bass viol. A wiry, solemn man, greatly in request at all concerts, able to conduct a band, or take almost any instrument himself, but loving best – a viol.

Now, he was gone, and grit had been washed into the sacred case of the cherished instrument, ruined along with its master.

In the last cottage of the row lived a drunken, good-for-nothing fellow, who did odd jobs of work; a fellow who had driven his own wife with her bairns from the house, and lived with another woman, as intemperate as himself, and with a mouth as foul as his own. This house and those within were spared.

'Well, now,' said an elder to the preacher, after the sermon at Providence Chapel next Sunday, 'ah, did think thou wer't boun' to justify the ways o' Providence.'

'So I would if I could,' answered the preacher, 'but they b'aint justifiable.'

Where the folds and fields were not too deep in water, lads waded, collecting various articles that had drifted no one knew whence. Some oranges lodged in a corner were greedily secured and sucked. One man ran about displaying a laced lady's boot at the end of a walking-stick, which boot had been carried into his kitchen, and was useless unless he could discover the fellow. There was much merriment in spite of disaster. Yorkshire folk must laugh whatever happens, and jokes were bandied to and fro between those who rowed and waded and those who were prisoners in their upper chambers.

The pariahs of society were alive to their opportunities, and were descending the stream, claiming everything of value that was found as being their own lost property. In many cases their claims were allowed; in others the finder of some article, rather than surrender it to a man whom he suspected, would cast it back into the water and bid him go further to recover it.

A higher type of pariah started subscriptions for the sufferers, and took many a toll on the sums accumulated for the purpose of relieving the distress.

What had become of Mr. Pennycomequick? That was the question in every mouth in Mergatroyd. Salome knew that he had left the house just after midnight to take a walk by the canal, and the watchman had seen him a little later on the towpath. Since then he had not been seen at all. It was probable that, hearing the alarm signals, he might have taken refuge somewhere; but where? That depended on where he was when the alarm was given. If he had ascended the canal he might have made his way into Mitchell's mill; that was a hope soon dispelled, for news came that he had not been seen there. If he had descended the canal it was inconceivable that he could have escaped, as there was no place of refuge to which he could have flown.

Mrs. Sidebottom had not a shadow of doubt that Jeremiah was dead. Not dead! Fiddlesticks! Of course he was dead. She acted on this conviction. She moved into her half-brother's house. It would not do, she argued, to leave it unprotected to be pillaged by those Cusworths. A death demoralized a house. It was like the fall of a general, all order, respect for property, sense of duty, ceased. Lambert should remain at home, where he had his comforts, his own room, and his clothes. There was no necessity for his moving.

'Besides,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'I could never trust a man, especially with women. Talk of men as lords of creation! Why, they are wheedled and humbugged by women with the greatest facility. If Lambert were here, the Cusworths, the maids, would sack the house under his nose, and he perceive nothing. I know how it was when I was newly married. Then, if anything went wrong among my domestics I sent Sidebottom down the kitchen-stairs to them. He returned crestfallen and penitent, convinced that he had wrongfully accused them, and that he was himself, in some obscure manner, to blame.'

Mrs. Sidebottom gave orders that her brother's room should be made ready for her.

'Uncle Jeremiah's room, mother!' exclaimed Lambert, in astonishment.

'Of course,' answered she. 'I am not going to leave that unwatched; why, that is the focus and centre of everything. What do I care if they steal the sugar, and pull some of the French plums out of the bag in the store-closet? I must sit at my post, keep my hand on the strong box and the bureau.'

'But suppose Uncle Jeremiah were to return?'

'He won't return. He cannot. He is drowned.'

'But the body has not been recovered.'

'Nor will it be; it has been washed down into the ocean.'

'Rather you than I sleep in his room,' said Lambert.

After a slight hesitation Mrs. Sidebottom said, in a low, confiding tone, 'I have found his keys. He left them in his dress-coat pocket. Now you see the necessity there is for me to be on the spot. I must have a search for the will.' Then she drew a long breath, and said, 'Now, Lamb, there is some chance of my heart's desire being accomplished. You will be able to drop one of your n's.'

'Drop what, mother?'

'Drop one of the n's in the spelling of your name. I have never liked the double n in Pennycomequick. It will seem more distinguished to spell the name with one n.'

The captain yawned and walked to the door.

'That is all one to me. I don't suppose that one nwill bring me more money than two. By the way, have you written to Philip?'

'Philip!' echoed Mrs. Sidebottom. 'Of course not. This is no concern of his. If he grumbles, we can say that we hoped against hope, and did not like to summon him till we were sure poor Jeremiah was no more. No, Lamb, we do not want Philip here, and if he comes he will find nothing to his advantage. Jeremiah very properly would not forgive his father, and he set us all an example, for in this nineteenth century we are all too disposed to leniency. I shall certainly not write to Philip.'

'I beg your pardon,' said Salome, who at this juncture appeared at the door. 'Were you mentioning Mr. Philip Pennycomequick?'

'Yes, I was,' answered Mrs. Sidebottom shortly.

Salome stood in the doorway, pale, with dark hollows about her eyes, and looking worn and harassed. She had been up and about all the night and following day.

'Were you speaking about sending for Mr. Philip Pennycomequick?' she asked.

'We were mentioning him; hardly yet considering about sending for him,' said Mrs. Sidebottom.

'Because,' said Salome, 'I have telegraphed for him. I thought he ought to be here.'

CHAPTER VIII.

IN ONE COMPARTMENT

In a second-class carriage on the Midland line sat a gentleman and a lady opposite each other. He was a tall man, and was dressed in a dark suit with a black tie. His face had that set controlled look which denotes self-restraint and reserve. The lips were thin and closed, and the cast of the features was stern. The eyes, large and hazel, were the only apparently expressive features he possessed. There is nothing that so radically distinguishes those who belong to the upper and cultured classes from such as move in the lower walks of life as this restraint of the facial muscles. It is not the roughness of the hand that marks off the manual worker from the man who walks in the primrose path of ease, but the cast of face, and that is due in the latter to the constant inexorable enforcement of self-control. In the complexity of social life it is not tolerable that the face should be the index of the mind. Social intercourse demands disguise, forbids frankness, which it resents as brusquerie, and the child from infancy is taught to acquire a mastery over expression. As the delicate hand-artificer has to obtain complete control over every nerve of his hand, so as to make no slurs or shakes, so also has the man admitted into the social guild to hold every muscle of his face in rigid discipline. This is specially the case with the priest and the lawyer and the doctor. Conceive what a hitch would ensue in conversation should the lady of the house allow a visitor to discern in the countenance that she was unwelcome, or for a man of taste to allow his contempt to transpire when shown by an amateur his artistic failures, or for the host to wince when an incautious guest has exposed the family skeleton! It is said that the late Lady Beaconsfield endured her finger to be jammed in the carriage-door without wince or cry, and continued listening or pretending to listen to her husband's conversation whilst driving to the House. All members of the cultured classes are similarly trained to smile and not change colour, to listen, perhaps to sing, when pinched and crushed and trodden on and in torture. Would a priest be endured in his parish if he did not receive every insult with a smile, or a barrister gain his cause if he suffered his face to proclaim his disbelief in its justice, or a doctor keep his patients if his countenance revealed what he thought of their complaints?