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

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 48161
   :PG.Title: The Pennycomequicks (Volume 1 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 1 of 3)
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1889
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

===================================
THE PENNYCOMEQUICKS (VOLUME 1 OF 3)
===================================

.. clearpage::

.. pgheader::

.. container:: titlepage center white-space-pre-line

   .. vspace:: 4

   .. class:: xx-large bold

      THE PENNYCOMEQUICKS

   .. class:: large bold

      A Novel

   .. vspace:: 2

   .. class:: medium

      BY

   .. class:: medium

      \S. BARING GOULD

   .. class:: small

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

   .. vspace:: 3

   .. class:: medium

      IN THREE VOLUMES

   .. class:: medium

      VOL. I.

   .. vspace:: 3

   .. class:: medium

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

   .. class:: small

      [*All rights reserved*]

   .. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large bold

   CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

   CHAPTER

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

I.  `SHAKING THE TREE`_
II.  `SALOME`_
III.  `A TRUST`_
IV.  `ON THE TOWPATH`_
V.  `RIPE AND DROPPED`_
VI.  `A COTTAGE PIANO`_
VII.  `TAKING POSSESSION`_
VIII.  `IN ONE COMPARTMENT`_
IX.  `ARRIVAL`_
X.  `WITH A LOAF AND A CANDLE`_
XI.  `EXPECTATION`_
XII.  `SURPRISES`_
XIII.  `WHAT NEXT?`_
XIV.  `ADMINISTRATION`_
XV.  `THE WOMAN WITH A PIPE`_
XVI.  `WHO?  WHAT?`_

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`SHAKING THE TREE`:

.. class:: center x-large bold

   THE PENNYCOMEQUICKS.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

CHAPTER I.

.. class:: center medium bold

SHAKING THE TREE.

.. vspace:: 2

There is an aboriginal race in Borneo, of which it is
said that they dispose of their aged parents and
relatives in an interesting, novel, and altogether aboriginal
fashion.

They courteously, but withal peremptorily, require
them periodically to climb trees, and when they are
well up and grappling the branches, they shake the
trees.  If the venerable representatives of the earlier
generation hold on, they are pronounced to be still
green; but if they drop, they are adjudged ripe, are
fallen upon and eaten, the palms of the hands and the
soles of the feet being reserved as the prerogative of
the heir-at-law, as the richest morsels.

We do nothing of this sort in Christendom, least of
all in civilized England.  God, we thank Thee that
we are not as other men are, even as these Borneans,
for the conversion of whom we put prayer up at the
family altar, that is, the breakfast-table, or offer our
mite—a veritable mite, a microscopic fraction of our
income.  We look in England on our aged relatives
with reverence, not with greed, and if we butter them,
it is not because we desire to eat them, but because
they are susceptible to butter.  We never calculate
the number of pounds they weigh, we never look
hungrily at their palms, and never put the ladder
against the tree, and with hat off and professions of
respect and endearment invite them to climb.  The
Esquimaux act very differently from the Borneans;
they take their ancient relations, and put them out of
their huts in the cold, and leave them to freeze or
starve.  What a stride humanity has made with us!
We deal with our poor, meagre relatives in this way?
We!—as little do we turn them out in the cold as we
do fall upon and eat up our plump ones, like the
Borneans.

'One of the pleasures of having a rout, is the
pleasure of having it over,' said Tom Hood, in his
poem of Miss Killmansegg and her Golden Leg, and
he said truly—most truly, when that rout was one of
obligation or of interest, or of obligation and interest
combined, when it was not a spontaneous burst of
hospitality, but a laboured affair, and like a laboured
literary effort—heavy.

Mrs. Sidebottom, or as she was pleased to accentuate
her name, Siddy-bot-TOME, sat before the fire
with her silk evening skirt turned up over her knees
to prevent it from becoming scorched, and with her
neat little feet on the fender.

What tricks we do play with our names to deliver
them from the suspicion of vulgarity.  How we
double the capital F's, and convert the i's into y's, so
that common little Finches can strut as Ffinches and
insignificant Smiths can add a cubit to their stature
as Smythes!  How for distinction we canonize our
final syllables, and convert Singeons into St. John's,
and Slodgers into St. Ledgers; and elevate Mungy
into Mont Joye, and Gallicize our Mullens into
Molleynes, take the blackness out of Death by spelling it
De'Ath and even turn a Devil into De Ville!

The candles had been blown out on the chimney-piece,
in the sconces on the walls, and on the piano.
A savour of extinguished candles pervaded the room.

Mrs. Siddy-bot-TOME—her name is given as
pronounced once again, that it may stamp itself on the
memory of the reader—Mrs. Siddy-bot-TOME (the
third time is final)—sat by the fire with puckered
lips and brows.  She was thinking.  She was a lady
of fifty, well—very well—preserved, without a gray
hair or a wrinkle, with fair skin and light eyes, and
hair the colour of hemp.  Her eyelashes were lighter
still, so light as to be almost white—the white not in
fashion at the time, but about to come into fashion, of
a creamy tinge.

She was not a clever woman by any means, not a
woman of broad sympathies, but a woman who
generally had her own way through the force and energy
of her character, and as that force was always directed
in one direction, and her energy always exerted for
one purpose, she accomplished more than did many
far cleverer women.  She rarely failed to carry her
point, whatever that point was.

Whatever that point was, it was invariably one that
revolved about herself, as the moon about the earth in
the universe, as Papageno about Papagena, in the
'Magic Flute,' and as the cork attached to the cat's
tail in the nursery.

If Mrs. Sidebottom had been a really clever woman,
she would have concealed her ends and aims, as those
who are smuggling lace or silk, coil them about them,
and hide them in their umbrellas, under their cloaks,
and in their bosoms.  But she lacked this cleverness,
or failed to admit that selfish aims were contraband.
We are all selfish, from the smallest herb, that strives
to outrun and smother those herbs that grow about
it; through the robin Pecksy, that snaps the worm
from its sister Flapsy; and the dog that holds the
manger against the ox; to ourselves, the crown of
creation and the climax of self-seeking, but we do not
show it.  The snail has telescopic eyes, wherewith to
peer for something he may appropriate to himself;
but the snail, when he thinks himself observed,
withdraws his horns and conceals them behind a dimple.

Mrs. Sidebottom was either too eager or too careless,
or—for charity hopeth all things—too sincere, to
disguise her horns.  She thrust them this way, that
way; they went up to take bird's-eye views; they
dived beneath, to survey matters subterranean; they
went round corners, described corkscrews, to observe
things from every conceivable aspect.  They were thrust
down throats and into pockets, and, though small,
were of thousandfold magnifying power, like those
of a fly, and, like those of a prophet, saw into futurity,
and, like those of the historian, explored the past.

In a lounging chair, also near the fire, but not
monopolizing the middle like his mother, sat Captain
Pennycomequick, the son of Mrs. Sidebottom.  He
wore a smoking jacket, braided with red or brown;
and was engaged languidly on a cigarette-case,
looking for a suitable cigarette.

Mrs. Sidebottom's maiden name had been
Pennycomequick, and as she despised her married name,
even when accentuated past recognition, she had
persuaded her son to exchange his designation, by
royal licence, to Pennycomequick.

But euphony was not the sole or principal motive
in Mrs. Sidebottom that induced her to move her son
to make this alteration.  She was the daughter of a
manufacturer, now some time deceased, in the large
Yorkshire village or small town of Mergatroyd in the
West Riding, by his second wife.  Her half-brother by
the first wife now owned the mill, was the head and
prop of the family, and was esteemed to be rich.

She was moderately well provided for.  She had a
sort of lien on the factory, and the late Mr. Sidebottom,
solicitor, had left something.  But what is
four hundred per annum to a woman with a son
in the army dependent on her, and with a soul too
big for her purse, with large requirements, an ambition
that could only be satisfied on a thousand a year.
Would any stomach be content on half-rations that
had capacity for whole ones?  On the fringe of the
Arctic circle a song is sung that 'Iceland is the fairest
land that ever the sun beheld,' but it is only sung by
those who have never been elsewhere.  Now,
Mrs. Sidebottom had seen much more luxuriant and
snugger conditions of existence than that which can
be maintained on four hundred a year.  For instance,
her friend, Mrs. Tomkins, having six hundred, was
able to keep a little carriage; and Miss Jones, on a
thousand, had a footman and a butler.  Consequently
Mrs. Sidebottom was by no means inclined to
acquiesce in a boreal and glacial existence of four
hundred, and say that it was the best of states that
ever the sun beheld.

Mrs. Sidebottom's half-brother, Jeremiah Pennycomequick,
was unmarried and aged fifty-five.  She
knew his age to a day, naturally, being his sister, and
she sent him congratulations on his recurrent
birthdays—every birthday brought her nearer to his
accumulations.  She knew his temperament, naturally,
being his sister, and could reckon his chances of life
as accurately as the clerk in an Assurance Office.
To impress the fact of her relationship on Jeremiah,
to obtain, if possible, some influence over him, at all
events to hedge out others from exercising power
over his mind, Mrs. Sidebottom had lately migrated
to Mergatroyd, and had brought her son with her.
She was the rather moved to do this, as her whole
brother, Nicholas Pennycomequick, had just died.
There had been no love lost between Jeremiah and
Nicholas, and now that Nicholas was no more, it was
possible that his son Philip might be received into
favour, and acquire gradually such influence over his
uncle as to prejudice him against herself and her son.
To prevent this—prevent in both its actual and
its original significations—Mrs. Sidebottom had
pulled up her tentpegs, and had encamped at
Mergatroyd.

The captain wore crimson-silk stockings and glazed
pumps.  He had neat little feet, like his mother.
When he had lighted a cigarette, he blew a whiff of
smoke, then held up one of his feet and contemplated it.

'My dear Lambert,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'I wish
you could slip those red stockings of yours into your
uncle's beetle-crushers.'

'They would be too roomy for me,' said the captain.

'Not at all, Lamb.  Your feet would expand to fill
his shoes,' argued his mother.

'My feet are pinched enough now—certainly,'
sighed Lambert Pennycomequick.

'This dinner will not have cost us nothing,' mused
Mrs. Sidebottom, looking dreamily into the coals.
'The champagne was six-and-six a bottle, and three
bottles were drunk,' she also heaved a sigh.

'Almost a pound.  Surely, gooseberry would have done.'

'No, Lamb! it would not.  It never does to be
stingy in such matters.  Though how we are to pay
for it all——'  Mrs. Sidebottom left the sentence as
unsettled as the bill for the champagne was likely to
remain.

'I don't see why you should not tell Uncle Jeremiah
how crippled we are.'

'Never,' said his mother decisively.  'Man's heart
as naturally closes against impecunious relatives as
does a tulip against rain.  When you are bathing,
Lamb, you never voluntarily swim within reach of an
octopus.  If you see one coming, with its eyes fixed
on you, and its feelers extended, you strike out for
dear life.  It is so in the great sea of life, which is full
of these many-armed hungry creatures.  The waters
are alive with them, great as a needy relation, and
small as a begging letter.  It is insufficient to know
how to swim; one must know also how to kick out and
keep away from octopuses.  No, Jeremiah must not
suppose that we want anything of him.'

'It seems to me, mother,' said Lambert, 'that you
might just as well tell him we are in difficulties and
need his assistance.  I am sure he sees it; he was
very cold and reserved to-night.'

'Not on any account.  You are quite mistaken; he
has not a suspicion.  Let me see, the waiters were
half a guinea each, and the pheasants seven shillings
a pair.  We could not have sixpenny grapes—it
would never have done.'

'I hate reckoning on dead men's shoes,' said
Lambert.  'It is mean.  Besides, Uncle Jeremiah may
outlive us both.'

'No, Lamb, he cannot.  Consider his age; he is fifty-five.'

'And you, mother, are fifty, only five years' difference.'

Mrs. Sidebottom did not wince.

'You do not consider that his has been a sedentary
life, which is very prejudicial to health.  Besides, he
has rushes of blood to the head.  You saw how he
became red as a Tritoma when you made that
ill-judged remark about Salome.  Apoplexy is in the
family.  Our father died of it.'

'Well, I hate counting the years a fellow has to
live.  We must all hop some day.'

'I trust he enjoyed himself,' said Mrs. Sidebottom.
'He took one of the *anges-à-cheval*.  Did he touch
the ices?'

'I think not.'

'I am sorry—I mean, I am thankful, they are bad
for apoplectic persons, Lamb.  He pays income-tax
on twelve hundred.'

'He does not live at the rate of five hundred.'

'Not at the rate of three.'

'Perhaps eventually he may leave the mill to
Philip, and the savings to me.  I won't think of it, as
it may all turn out different; but that would be best
for me.'

'Not best, Lamb.  Both the savings and the mill
should be yours.'

'What should I do with the mill?  You would not
have me turn manufacturer?'

'No; but you could sell the business.'

'This is like selling the lion's skin before the
lion is killed,' said the captain with a little
impatience.

After a pause, during which Mrs. Sidebottom
watched a manufactory and a bank and much treasure
in the red-hot coals crumble down in the gradual
dissolution to ashes, she said:

'Lamb, you have no occasion to be uneasy about
your cousin Philip.'

'I am not.  I have not given him a thought.'

'Jeremiah can never forgive Nicholas for withdrawing
his money from the business at a critical moment,
and almost bringing about a catastrophe.  When
Nicholas did that I was as angry, and used as strong
remonstrance as Jeremiah, but all in vain.  Nicholas,
when he took an idea into his head, would not be
diverted from carrying it out, however absurd it was.
I did not suppose that Nicholas would be such a fool
as he proved, and lose his money.  He got into the
hands of a plausible scoundrel.'

'Schofield?'

'Yes; that was his name, Schofield, who turned his
head, and walked off with pretty nearly every penny.
But he might have ruined himself, and I would not
have grumbled.  What alarmed and angered me was
that he jeopardized my fortune as well as that of
Jeremiah.  A man has a right to ruin himself if he likes,
but not to risk the fortunes of others.'

The captain felt that he was not called upon to
speak.

'It is as well that we are come here,' pursued
Mrs. Sidebottom.  'Though we were comfortable at York,
we could not have lived longer there at our rate, and
here we can economize.  The society here is not
worth cultivation; it is all commercial, frightfully
commercial.  You can see it in the shape of their
shoulders and in the cut of their coats.  As for the
women——  But there, I won't be unkind.'

'Uncle Jeremiah winced at my joke about Salome.'

'Salome!' repeated his mother, and her mouth fell
at the corners.  'Salome!'  She fidgeted in her chair.
'I had not calculated on her when I came here.
Really, I don't know what to do about her.  You
should not have made that joke.  It was putting
ideas into your uncle's head.  It made the blood rush
to his face, and that showed you had touched him.
That girl is a nuisance.  I wish she were married or
shot.  She may yet draw a stroke across our reckoning.'

Mrs. Sidebottom lapsed into thought, thought that
gave her no pleasure.  After a pause of some minutes,
Captain Lambert said:

'By the way, mother, what table-cloth did you
have on to-day?  I noticed Uncle Jeremiah looking
at it inquisitively.'

'Naturally he would look at it, and that critically,
as he is a linen manufacturer, and weaves fine
damasks.  I hate shop.'

'But—what table-cloth was it?'

'The best, of course.  One figured with oak-leaves
and acorns, and in the middle a wreath, just like
those thrown over one's head by urchins for a tip, on
the Drachenfels.'

'Are you sure, mother?'

'I gave it out this morning.'

'Would you mind looking at it?  I do not think
the table has been cleared yet.  When I saw Uncle
Jeremiah was professionally interested in it, I looked
also, but saw no acorns or oak-leaves.'

'Of course there were oak-leaves and acorns; it
was our best.'

'Then I must be blind.'

'Fiddlesticks!' said Mrs. Sidebottom.

However, she stood up and went into the dining-room.

A moment later the captain heard an exclamation.
Then his mother left the dining-room, and he heard
her ascend the stairs.  Shortly after she descended,
and re-entered the room with a face the colour of a
table-cloth, or, to be more exact, of the same tone as
her eyelashes.

'Well,' said the Captain languidly, 'have the
oak-leaves and acorns disappeared in the wash?'

'Oh, Lamb! what is to be done?  Jeremiah will
never forgive us.  He will feel this acutely—as an
insult.  That owl—that owl of a maid has ruined our
prospects.'

'What has she done?'

'And not one of the waiters, though paid half a
guinea each, observed it.'

'What was done?'

'She put a sheet on the table, and made up your
bed with the oak-leaves and acorns!'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`SALOME`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II.


.. class:: center medium bold

   SALOME.

.. vspace:: 2

I lay in bed this morning, musing on the feelings of
those aged Borneans as they approached ripeness, and
noticed the eyes of the rising generation fixed on them
with expectancy, saw their red tongues flicker out of
their mouths and stealthily lick their lips.  I lay in
bed considering whether my time had come to crawl
up the tree, whether, perhaps, I was already hanging
to one of the branches, and felt the agitation of the
trunk.  But the thought was uncomfortable, and I
turned back to the Borneans who live very remote
from us, and I considered how sensitive they must
have become in old age to every glance of eye, and
word let slip, and gesture of impatience observable in
the rising generation.  I mused over the little artifices
that would be adopted by them to disguise the
approach of ripeness; how, when extending their shaking
hands over the fire, they would endeavour to control
the muscles and disguise their tremble; how they
would give to them an unreal appearance of nervous
grip; how they would talk loud and deep out of their
quavering pipe; and how they would fill in the creases
in their brows and cheeks with tallow, and dance at
every festival with an affectation of suppleness long
lost.  And I considered further how that all these
little artifices would be seen through and jeered at,
and how they never for one minute would postpone
the fatal day when the tree would be indicated, and
the command given to ascend.

Then next, having felt my ribs and counted them,
and my thews and found them shrunk and with no
flesh on them, I thought of the Esquimaux, and the
way in which their elders were put out of doors and
exposed to die of cold; and after I had left my bed,
at breakfast, throughout the day, I remained mighty
touchy and keenly observant, and alarmed at every
slight, and fault of deference, and disregard of habitual
consideration, thinking it might be a premonition that
I was being considered fit to be turned out into the
cold.

Among barbarians it is customary to surfeit a
victim destined to become a sacrifice.  It almost
seemed as if the birthday-banquet given to Uncle
Jeremiah by his half-sister had been given with this
intent.  Mythologists tell us that Pluto, the god of
the nether world, and Plutus, the god of wealth, were
identical divinities, variously designated according to
the aspect in which viewed, whether from that of the
victims offered to the god, or from that of the
immolator.  The god of Death to one was the god of
Fortune to another.

Uncle Jeremiah Pennycomequick was not indeed
shaken by his half-sister and nephew whilst clinging
to the Tree of Life, but was apprised by them as to
his ripeness, and to his calibre, and was not unaware
that such was the case.  Indeed, as already intimated,
Mrs. Sidebottom was as incapable of concealing
her motives as is Mephistopheles of concealing his
hoof.  She flattered herself that it was not so, and
yet she wore her purposes, her ambitions, in her
face.

As Jeremiah walked homewards it was with much
the same consciousness that must weigh on the spirits
of a bullock that has been felt and measured by a
butcher.

He opened his door with a latch-key, and entered
his little parlour.  A light was burning there, and he
saw Salome seated on a stool by the fire, engaged in
needle-work.  The circle of light cast from above was
about her, irradiating her red-gold hair.  She turned
and looked up at Jeremiah with a smile, and showed
the cheek that had been nearest the fire glowing like
a carnation.

'What—not in bed?' exclaimed the old man, half
reproachfully, and yet with a tone of pleasure in his
voice.

'No, uncle; I thought you might possibly want
something before retiring.  Besides, you had not said
Good-night to me, and I couldn't sleep without that.'

'I want nothing, child.'

'Shall I fold up my work and go?'

'No—no,' he replied hesitatingly, and stood looking
at the fire, then at his chair, and then, with doubt
and almost fear, at her.  'Salome, I should like a
little talk with you.  I am out of sorts, out of spirits.
The Sidebottoms always irritate me.  Velvet is soft,
but the touch chills my blood.  I want to have my
nerves composed before I can sleep, and the hour is
not late—not really late.  I came away from the
Sidebottoms as soon as I could do so with decency.
Of course, it was very kind of my sister to give this
dinner in my honour, on my birthday, but——'  He
did not finish the sentence.

The girl took his hand and pressed him to sit down
in his chair.  He complied without resistance, but
drew away his hand from her with a gesture of
uneasiness, a shrinking that somewhat surprised her.

When in his seat, he sat looking at her, with his
elbows resting on the arms of his chair, and his palms
folded before his breast like the hands of a
monumental effigy.  Salome had resumed her place and
work.  As he did not speak, she presently glanced up
at him and smiled with her slight sweet smile, that
was not the motion of the lips, but the dimpling of
the pure cheek.  He did not return her smile; his
eyes, though on her, did not see her and notice the
inquiry in her countenance.

Jeremiah was aged that day fifty-five, or, as
Mrs. Sidebottom put it for her greater comfort, in his
fifty-sixth year.  The dinner party at his half-sister's had
been given entirely in his honour.  His health had
been drunk, and many good wishes for long years
had been expressed with apparent heartiness; but
what had been done to gratify him had been overdone
in some particulars, and underdone in others—overdone
in profession, underdone in sincerity; and he
returned home dissatisfied and depressed.

When the peacock unfurls his fan, he does not
persistently face you; if he did so, words would fail to
express your admiration, but the bird twirls about on
his feet, and foolishly exposes the ribbing of his
plumage, so as to provoke contemptuous laughter.
It is the same with selfish and with vain persons.
They make a prodigious effort to impose, and then,
still ruffling with expanded glories, they revolve on
their pivots, and in complete unconsciousness exhibit
the ignoble rear of sordid artifice, and falsity, and
mean pretence.

Joseph Cusworth had been at first clerk and then
traveller for the house of Pennycomequick, a
trustworthy, intelligent and energetic man.  Twenty-two
years ago, after the factory had fallen under the sole
management of Jeremiah, through the advanced age
of his father and his half-brother's disinclination for
business, master and man had quarrelled.  Jeremiah
had been suspicious and irascible in those days, and
he had misinterpreted the freedom of action pursued
by Cusworth as allowed him by old Pennycomequick,
and dismissed him.  Cusworth went to Lancashire,
where he speedily found employ, and married.  After
a few years and much vexation through the
incompetence or unreliability of agents, Jeremiah had
swallowed his pride and invited Cusworth to return
into his employ, holding out to him the prospect of
admission into partnership after a twelvemonth.
Cusworth had, accordingly, returned to Mergatroyd
and brought with him his wife and twin daughters.
The reconciliation was complete.  Cusworth proved
to be the same upright, reliable man as of old, and
with enlarged experience.  His accession speedily
made itself felt.  He was one of those men who
attract friends everywhere, whom everyone insensibly
feels can be trusted.

The deed of partnership was drawn up and engrossed,
and only lacked signature, when, in going
through the mill with Jeremiah, Cusworth was caught
by the lappet of his coat in the machinery, drawn in,
under the eye of his superior, and so frightfully
mangled that he never recovered consciousness, and
expired a few hours after.

From that time, Mrs. Cusworth, with the children,
was taken into the manufacturer's house, where she
acted as his housekeeper.  There the little girls grew
up, and made their way into the affections of the
solitary man who encouraged them to call him uncle,
though there was absolutely no relationship subsisting
between them.

Jeremiah had never been married; he had never
been within thought of such an event.  No woman
had ever made the smallest impression on his heart.
He lived for his business, which engrossed all his
thoughts; as for his affections, they would have
stagnated but for the presence of the children in the
house, the interest they aroused, the amusement they
caused, the solicitude they occasioned, and for the
thousand little fibres their innocent hands threw about
his heart, till they had caught and held it in a web of
their artless weaving.  He had lost his mother when
he was born, his father married again soon after, and
his life at home with his stepmother had not been
congenial.  He was kept away from home at school,
and then put into business at a distance, and his
relations with his half-sister and half-brother had
never been cordial.  They had been pampered and
he neglected.  When, finally, he came home to assist
his father, his half-sister was married, and his brother,
who had taken a distaste for business, was away.

One day of his life had passed much like another;
he had become devoted to his work, which he pursued
mechanically, conscientiously, but at the same time
purposelessly, for he had no one whom he loved or
even cared for to whom his fortune might go and for
whom, therefore, it would be a pleasure to accumulate.
And as for himself, he was without ambition.

When daily he returned from the mill after the
admission of the Cusworth family under his roof, the
prattle and laughter of the children had refreshed him;
their tender, winning ways had overmastered him and
softened his hitherto callous heart.  It was to him as
if the sun had suddenly broken through the clouds that
had overarched and chilled and obscured his life, and
was warming, glorifying, and vivifying his latter
days.

Time passed, and the little girls grew up into young
women.  They were much alike in face and in colour
of hair and eyes and complexion; but there the
likeness stopped.  In character they were not twins.
Their names were Salome and Janet.  Janet was
married.  A year ago, when she was barely nineteen,
the son of a manufacturer at Elboeuf, in Normandy,
had seen, loved, and made her his own.

This young man, Albert Victor Baynes, had been
born and bred in France, but his father had been a
manufacturer in Yorkshire, till driven to distraction
by strikes at times when he had taken heavy contracts,
he, like a score of others similarly situated, had
migrated with his plant and business to Normandy,
and opened in a foreign land a spring of wealth that
copiously irrigated a wide area, and which greed and
folly had banished from its proper home.  About
Rouen, Elboeuf, and Louviers are bristling factory
chimneys and busy manufactures, carried thither by
Yorkshire capitalists and employers, and where they
initiated, the French have followed, and have drained
away our English trade.

Young Baynes had come to Yorkshire and to Mergatroyd
to visit relatives, and he had at once lost his
heart to Janet Cusworth.  As he was the only son of
a man in good business, and as 'Uncle' Jeremiah was
prepared to act liberally towards the daughter of
Joseph Cusworth, no difficulties arose to cross the
course of love and delay union.  It was said that
Jeremiah Pennycomequick could hardly have behaved
more liberally had Janet been his daughter.  But
another reason urged him to generosity beside his
regard for the girl.  This was gratitude to Albert
Victor Baynes for choosing Janet instead of his special
favourite, Salome, who had chiefly wound herself about
his heart.  Janet was a lively, frolicsome little creature,
whom it was a relaxation to watch, and whose tricks
provoked laughter; but Salome was that one of the
twins who had depth of character, and who, as the
millfolk declared, had inherited all her father's
trustworthiness, thoughtfulness, and that magnetism which
attracts love.

Salome continued her needlework silently, with the
firelight flickering over her fair face and rich hair.
Her complexion was very delicate, and perhaps the
principal charm of her face consisted in the
transparency not of the skin only, but of the entire face,
that showed every change of thought and feeling by
a corresponding dance of blood and shift of colour in
it—and not colour only, for as a mirror takes the
lightest breath and becomes clouded by it, so was it
with her countenance; bright with an inner light, the
slightest breath of trouble, discouragement, alarm,
brought a cloud over it, dimming its usual brilliancy.

'Yours is a very tell-tale face,' her sister had often
said to her.  'Without your opening your eyes I can
read all that passes in your mind.'

At the time that young Baynes had stayed at
Mergatroyd, Jeremiah had been uneasy.  The young man
hovered round the sisters, and spoke to one as much
as to the other, and divided his attentions equally
between them.  The sisters so closely resembled each
other in features, complexion and hair, as well as in
height and frame, that only such as knew them could
distinguish the one from the other, and the distinction
consisted rather in expression than in aught else.
How anyone could mistake the one for the other was
a marvel to Jeremiah, who was never in doubt.  But
the resemblance was so close that Albert Victor
Baynes hung for some time in uncertainty as to which
he should take, and was only decided by the inner
qualities of Janet, whose vivacity and sparkle best
suited the taste of a man whose ideas of woman
showed they had been formed in France.

Whilst Baynes was in uncertainty, or in apparent
uncertainty, Jeremiah suffered.  He loved both the
girls, but he loved Salome infinitely better than her
sister; it would be to him a wrench to part with
brilliant Janet, but nothing like the wrench that would
ensue were he required to separate from Salome.

Those who from childhood have been surrounded
by an atmosphere of love, who have come to regard
it as their natural element, such have no conception
of the force with which love boils up in an old heart
that has been long arid and affectionless.  In the
limestone Western Hills there are riverless valleys,
tracts of moor and mountain without a rift, dead and
waterless, yet deep beneath, in secret channels, streams
are flowing, and mighty vaults form subterranean
reservoirs, by all who pass over the surface
unsuspected.  But suddenly from a cliff-side pours the
long-hidden water, not a spring, a rivulet, but a full-grown
river ready to turn millwheels and carry boats.  So is
it with certain human natures that have been long
passionless, without the token of soft affections: the
all-conquering stream of love breaks from their hearts
in mighty volume and unexpectedly.

There had been nothing of self-analysis in Jeremiah.
The children had sprung up under his care, and year
by year had seen them acquire an inch or a fraction of
an inch in height, their beauty develop, their
intelligences expand; imperceptibly they had stolen from
infancy into childhood, and from childhood in like
manner had crept unobserved into maidenhood, and
then flowered into full and perfect beauty; and each
stage of growth had carried them a stage further into
Jeremiah's affections, and had cast another and a
stronger tie about his heart.  He had loved them as
children, and he loved them as beautiful and intelligent
girls, as belonging to his house, as essential to his
happiness, as the living elements that made up to him
the idea of home.  The only sorrow he had—if that
could be called a sorrow which was no more than a
regret—was that they were not his own true nieces, or,
better still, his children.  When Janet was taken and
Salome left, he was thankful, and he put away from
him for the time the fear that Salome would also take
wing and leave him in the same manner as Janet had
gone.  How could he endure recurrence to the old
gloom, and relapse into purposeless gathering of
money?  How could he endure life deprived of both
Janet and Salome?  How can a man who has seen
the sun endure blindness?  Or a man whose ears
have drunk in music bear deafness?  Deafness and
blindness of heart would be his portion in that part of
life when most he needed ear and eye—deafness and
blindness after having come to understand the melody
of a happy home, and see the beauty of a
child-encircled hearth.

What must be the distress of him who has had a
well-furnished house to have an execution put in, and
everything sold away from before his eyes, nothing
left him but the bed on which to lie and gnash his
teeth?  How bald, how cold, how hateful the
dismantled home will seem without the thousand
comforts and beautifying objects to which his eyes have
been accustomed!  The children as they grew up had
furnished Jeremiah's house with pleasant fancies, had
hung the walls with bright remembrances, and filled
every corner with tender associations.  The floor was
strewn with their primrose homage.  The thought
that as he had lost Janet, so must he some day lose
Salome, rose up continually before Jeremiah, and
sickened him with fear.  He tried to steel himself in
expectation of it.  It was in the nature of things that
young girls should marry.  It was inevitable that a
closer and stronger tie should be formed, and then
that cord of reverential gratitude which now attached
Salome to him would dwindle imperceptibly, yet
surely, to a thread, and from a thread to a filament.
In proportion as from the new bond other ties arose,
so would that attaching her to him become attenuated
till it became formal only.

A great pain arose in Jeremiah's heart.

And now, this evening, he looked at the girl engaged
on her needlework, and observation returned into his
eyes.  Now he began that work of self-analysis, with
her before him, that he had never thought of engaging
in before, never dreamed would be requisite for him
to engage in.

As he looked steadily at Salome, his closed palms
trembled, and he separated them, put one to his lips,
for they were trembling also, and then to his brow,
which was wet.

Salome's soft brown eyes were lifted from her work,
and rested steadily on him.

'Dear uncle,' she said.  'My dear—dear, uncle!
You are unwell.'

She drew her stool close to him, and threw her
arms about him, to draw his quivering face towards
her own that she might kiss it.  But he started up
with a groan, backed from her arms, and paced the
room in agitation.  He dare not receive her embrace.
He dare not meet her eyes.  He had read his own
heart for the first time, helped thereto by a casual
joke from Captain Lambert Pennycomequick at table
that evening.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A TRUST`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III.


.. class:: center medium bold

   A TRUST.

.. vspace:: 2

During dinner that evening the conversation had
turned on modern music.  Yorkshire folk are, with
rare exceptions, musical, and those who are not
musical are expected, at all events, to be able to take
their part in a conversation about music.  Someone
had spoken about old English ballads, whereupon
Captain Lambert had said, as an aside to his uncle:

'No one can doubt what is your favourite song.'

'There you have the advantage of me,' said Jeremiah simply.

'"Sally in our Alley"—but I must say you take slow
time in getting to the last verse.'

Then he hummed the words:

   |  'And when my seven long years are out,
   |    Oh, then I'll marry Sally!
   |  And then how happily we'll live,
   |    But not in our Alley.'


Then it was that the blood had rushed into the
manufacturer's temples, a rush of blood occasioned
partly by anger at being made the subject of a joke,
and partly by the suggestion which startled him.

Never before that moment had the thought occurred
to him that it was possible for him to bind Salome to
him by the closest and surest of ties.  No, never before
had he imagined that this was possible.

How one word starts a train of ideas!  As a spark
falling on thatch may cause a conflagration, so may a
word carelessly dropped set blood on fire and drive a
man to madness.  That little remark had produced in
Jeremiah an effect greater than Lambert could have
calculated, and his mother went very near the truth
when she rebuked him for saying what he had.  From
thenceforth Jeremiah could no longer look at Salome
in the old light; she was no more a child to him, and
he no more an old man beyond the reach of that
flame that sweeps round the world and scorches all
men.  In Wagner's great opera of the 'Valkyrie,'
Brunnhild is represented asleep, engirdled by a ring
of fire, and Sigurd, who tries to reach her, can only
do so by passing through the flame, and to render it
innocuous he sings the wondrous fire-spell song, and
the flame leaps and declines, and finally goes out
to the cadences of the spell.  But Jeremiah now
found himself caught in the *Waberlohe* that enringed
Salome, knowing no incantation by which to abate
its ardour; whilst she sat unconscious of the peril
to which she subjected others, of the magic that
surrounded and streamed forth from her, guileless
of the pain which she occasioned him whom she
beckoned to her.  Jeremiah was caught by the flame,
it curled round him, and he writhed in its embrace.
He was an old, at all events an elderly, man, his age
five and fifty, and Salome was but twenty.  He had
passed the grand climateric when she was born.  Could
he, dare he, love her, except with the simple love of a
parent for a child?  But could he love her thus any
longer now that his eyes were opened, and he had
discovered the condition of his own heart?  When
Adam had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge his
child-like simplicity was gone, and he made himself
coverings to hide himself from himself and from others.
So now, this man in the decline of life had tasted also
and at once was filled with shame at himself, and he
sought out evasion of the truth, a disguise for his
feelings, lest Salome should suspect what was passing
within him.

'Salome, my child,' he said, 'those Sidebottoms vex
me beyond endurance.  What do you think!  They
served up a really sumptuous dinner on a table covered
with a sheet.'

'A sheet—from a bed!'

'A sheet, not a tablecloth.  It was characteristic.'

'Has that upset you?'

'No—not that.  But, Salome, I have been considering
how it would be, were this factory, after I am no
more, to fall into such hands as those of the ninny
captain.'

'There is Mr. Philip,' said the girl.

'Philip——!' the manufacturer paused.  'Philip—I
hardly consider him as one of the family.  His father
behaved outrageously.'

'But for all that he is your nephew.'

'Of course he is, by name and blood, but—I do not
like him.'

'You do not know him, uncle.'

'That is true; but——'

'But he is your nearest relative.'

Mr. Pennycomequick was silent.  He returned to
his chair and reseated himself; not now leaning back,
with his arms folded on his breast, but bent forward,
with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

He looked into the fire.  After full five minutes'
silence he said, in a tone of self-justification:

'I can never forgive my half-brother Nicholas.'

'Yet he is dead,' said the girl.

There was no accent of reproach in her voice;
nevertheless Jeremiah took her words as conveying a
reproach.

'I do not mean,' he said apologetically, 'that I
allowed him to die unforgiven, but that his conduct
was inexcusable.  I have pardoned the man, but I
cannot forgive his act.'

'Philip, however,' said Salome, 'is the son of the
man, and not of his mistake.'

Jeremiah was touched, and winced; but he would
not show it.

'My brother Nicholas acted in such a manner as to
produce an estrangement that has, and will have,
lastingly influenced our relations.  Philip I saw at his
father's funeral, which I attended—which,' he repeated
the sentence, 'which I attended.'

The girl said no more.  She knew that Jeremiah
was not a man to brook interference, and she was
well aware that this was a matter in which she had
no right to interfere.  But he was not satisfied with
so slight a word of self-justification; he returned to
the topic, with his face turned from her, looking into
the fire.

'It was thoughtless; it was wicked.  The mill was
left between us, burdened with a certain charge for
my half-sister; and Nicholas never took the smallest
interest in the business.  I did the work; he drew
his share.  He got into the hands of a swindling
speculator, who fired his imagination with a scheme
for converting the Desert of Sahara into a vast inland
sea, the company to have the monopoly of the trade
round its shores.  My brother's head was turned, and
he insisted on withdrawing his share from the mill.
He would sell his share—draw all his money out of
the concern, and pitch it wherever Schofield——I
mean wherever it was most likely to be engulfed and
yield no return.  I remonstrated.  I pointed out to
my brother the folly of the scheme, the danger to
me.  I had no wish to have some man, of whom I
knew nothing, thrust into partnership with me.  I
must buy my brother out myself.  I did this at a
moment when money was dear, and also at a time
when it was necessary to provide the mill with new
machinery, or be left in the lurch in the manufacture
of figured damasks.  I had to borrow the money.
Slackness set in, and—God knows!—I was as nearly
brought to bankruptcy as a man can be without
actually stopping.  Your father came to my aid.  But
I had several years of terrible struggle, during which
bitter resentment against my brother Nicholas grew
in my heart.  We never met again.  We no longer
corresponded.  As for his son, I knew nothing of him.
I had seen him as a boy.  I did not see him again till
he was a man, at his father's grave.  If Nicholas had
considered my prejudices, as I suppose he would call
them, he would not have put Philip in a solicitor's
office, knowing, as he must have known, my mistrust of
lawyers.  I will not say that I would not have given
him a place with me, had Nicholas asked for it; but
he was either too proud to stoop to request a favour
of me, or his old prejudice against trade survived his
ruin.'

'Philip may be good and sensible, and a nephew to
be proud of.  How can you tell, uncle, that he is not,
when you do not know him?'

'He has chosen his profession now.  He is a lawyer,
and so his line of life leads away from mine.'

Then ensued silence, broken at length by Salome.

'Uncle,' she said, 'I have had a letter from dear
Janet, and what do you think?  She is coming to
England, and most likely to us.  She does not say
when; but those dreadful Prussians are making their
way to Rouen, in spite of the wonderful stand made
by General Faidherbe and the heroic conduct of his
troops.  Janet says that she wonders how any soldiers
can stand against an army commanded by a man-devil,
for that is what the Prussian general is named.
She says that Albert Victor has felt it his duty to
volunteer to fight for the country of his nativity and
adoption, so dear Janet is alone, and Albert has
advised her to take refuge in England till the tyranny
be over.  But Janet says she is in hourly expectation
that the Prussians will be out-manoeuvred, surrounded,
and cut to pieces, and, much as she hates the enemies,
her chief anxiety is that the French may not forget
to act with humanity in the moment of victory.  She
says that the affair at Amiens was quite misrepresented
by the English papers, that Faidherbe obtained
a splendid victory, and only retired in pursuance of a
masterly plan he had conceived of drawing the
Prussians on, so as to envelop them and crush them
at one blow.  Moreover, Janet says that this blow is
expected to fall at any moment, and to show how
thorough a partisan she is—even to me she has begun
to spell her name in the French way, Jeannette.'

'Janet likely to come to us!' exclaimed Jeremiah.

'Only in the event, which she says is more than
problematical, of the enemy occupying Rouen.  She
tells me that the spirit of the French is superb.  The
way in which every man has flown to arms at the call
of his country is unparalleled.  She says that the
Emperor was the cause of the disasters that have
occurred hitherto, but that France has found a man
of almost superhuman genius, called Gambetta, who
is already causing consternation amongst the
Prussians.  She says that she has seen it stated in the
most trustworthy Paris papers that in Germany
mothers still their children with the threat that if they
cry, they will invoke Gambetta.'

'Janet will certainly be here shortly,' said
Jeremiah.  'The war can only go one way.'

'I shall be delighted to see my darling sister, and
yet sorry for the occasion of her visit.  She tells me
that the factories are all stopped.  The hands are now
engaged in the defence of their country.  Oh, uncle! what
would happen to Janet if anything befell Albert
Victor?  Do you think he was right to leave his wife
and take up arms as a franc-tireur?  He is not really a
Frenchman, though born at Elboeuf.'

To her surprise, Salome saw that her old friend was
not attending to what she was saying.  He was not
thinking of her sister any more.  He was thinking
about her.  When she asked what would happen to
Janet were her husband to be carried off, the question
forced itself upon his thought, What would become
of Salome were he to fall sick, and be unable to
defend himself against his half-sister.  He was perfectly
conscious of Mrs. Sidebottom's object in coming to
Mergatroyd, and he was quite sure that in the event
of paralysis, or any grievous sickness taking him, his
half-sister would invade his house and assume authority
therein.  He saw that this would happen inevitably;
and he was not at all certain how she would behave
to Salome.  Mrs. Cusworth was a feeble woman,
unable to dispute the ground with one so pertinacious,
and armed with so good a right, as Mrs. Sidebottom.
What friends had Salome?  She had none but
himself.  Her sister's house was about to be entered by
the enemy, her sister to be a refugee in England.
The factories at Elboeuf were stopped; it was
uncertain how the war, when it rolled away, would leave
the manufacturers, whether trade that had been stopped
on the Seine would return thither.  What if the
Baynes family failed?

Would it not be advisable to secure to Salome a
home and position by making her his wife?  Then,
whatever happened to him, she would be safe, in an
impregnable situation.

'Salome!'

'Yes, uncle.'

She looked up anxiously.  She had not let him see
that she was aware that he was in trouble of mind,
and yet she knew it, though she did not guess its
character.  Hers was one of those sympathetic natures
that feels a disturbance of equilibrium, as the needle
in a magnetometer vibrates and reels when to the
gross human eye there is naught to occasion it.  She
had watched Jeremiah's face whilst she spoke to him
of her sister, and was surprised and pained to notice
how little Janet's calamities and anxieties affected him.

What was the matter with him?  What were the
thoughts that preoccupied his mind?  Not a shadow
of a suspicion of their real nature entered her innocent
soul.

'Dear uncle,' she said, when she had waited for a
remark, after he had called her attention, and had
waited in vain, 'what is it?'

'Nothing.'

He had recoiled in time.  On the very verge of
speaking he had arrested himself.

'Uncle,' she said, 'I am sure you are not well, either
in body or in mind.'

He stood up, went out of the room, without a word.

Salome looked after him in surprise and alarm.
Was he going off his head?  She heard him ascend
the stairs to his study, and he returned from it almost
immediately.  He re-entered the room with a long
blue sealed envelope in his hand.

'Look at this, my child, and pay great attention
to me.  An unaccountable depression is weighing
on me—no, not altogether unaccountable, for I can
trace it back to the society in which I have been.  It
has left me with a mistrust of the honesty and
sincerity of everyone in the world, of everyone, that
is, but you; you'—he touched her copper-gold head
lightly with a shaking hand—'you I cannot mistrust;
you—it would kill me to mistrust.  I hold to life, to
my respect for humanity, through you as a golden
chain.  Salome, I have a great trust to confide to you,
and I do it because I know no one else in whom I
can place reliance.  This is my will, and I desire you
to take charge of it.  I commit it to your custody.
Put it where it may be safe, and where you may know
where to lay hand on it when it shall be wanted.'

'But, uncle, why not leave it with your lawyer.'

'I have no lawyer,' he answered sharply.  'I have
never gone to law, and thrown good money after bad.
You know my dislike for lawyers.  I wrote my will
with my own hand after your sister married, and I
flatter myself that no wit of man or rascality of
lawyers can pervert it.  I can set down in plain English
what my intentions are as to the disposal of my
property, so that anyone can understand my purpose,
and no one can upset its disposition.'

'But, uncle—why should I have it who am so careless?'

'You are not careless.  I trust you.  I have perfect
confidence that what is committed to you you will
keep, whether the will concerns you or not.  I wish
you to have it, and you will obey my wishes.'

He put the paper into her reluctant hands, and
waited for her to say something.  Her cheeks were
flushed with mingled concern for him and fear for
herself.  Such a valuable deed she thought ought to
have been kept in his strong iron safe, and not
confided to her trembling hands.

He put his hand on her shoulder.

'Thank you, Salome,' he said.  'You have relieved
my mind of a great anxiety.'

'And now, uncle, you will go to bed?'

He stood, with his hand still on her shoulder,
hesitatingly.  'I don't know; I am not sleepy.'  He
thought further.  'Yes, I will go.  Good-night, my
child.'

Then he left the room, ascended the stairs, passed
through his study into his bedchamber beyond, where
he turned down the clothes, and threw off his dress
coat and waistcoat, and then cast himself on the bed.

His brain was in a whirl.  He could not retire to
rest in that condition of excitement.  He would toss
on his bed, which would be one of nettles to him.  He
left it, stood up, drew on a knitted cardigan jersey,
and then put his arms through his great-coat.

About a quarter of an hour after he had mounted
to his room he descended the stairs again, and then
he encountered Salome once more, leaving the little
parlour with the envelope that contained his will in
her hand.

'What!  You not gone to bed, Salome?'

'No, uncle, I have been dreaming over the fire.
But, surely, you are not going out?'

'Yes, I am.  There has been such a downpour of
rain all day that I have not taken my customary
constitutional.  I cannot sleep.  The night is fine,
and I shall go for a stroll on the canal bank.'

'But, uncle, it is past twelve o'clock.'

'High time for you to be in bed.  For me, it is
another matter.  My brain is on fire; I must take a
composing draught of fresh night air.'

'But, uncle——'

'Do not remain up longer.  I have acted inconsiderately
in keeping you from your bed so long.  Go
to sleep speedily, and do not trouble yourself about
me.  I have my latch-key, and will let myself in.  The
gas shall remain turned down in the hall.  I am
always upset unless I have a walk during the day, and
the sheets of rain that poured down have kept me a
prisoner.  I shall not be out for long.  I will cool my
head and circulate my blood, under the starry sky.'

'But you will find the roads sloppy, after the rain.'

'The towpath will be dry.  I am going there, by
the canal.  Good-night.'

She held up her innocent, sweet face for the kiss he
had neglected to give her a quarter of an hour ago,
when he left the room.  He half stooped, then turned
away without kissing her.

'Good-night, dear Salome.  Mind the will.  It is a
trust.'

Then he went out.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`ON THE TOWPATH`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   ON THE TOWPATH.

.. vspace:: 2

There are points, occasions on life's journey, when
our guides fail us, and these points and occasions are
neither few nor far between.  The signposts that
might instruct us are either illegible or have not been
set up.  The forming of a determination is of vital
importance, but the material on which to form a
determination is withdrawn from us, as the straw was taken
from the Israelites when they were ordered to make
bricks.

We buy a map and start on our journey, and come
to branch-roads which are not set down.  The map is
antiquated, and no longer serviceable.

We buy a legal compendium which is to obviate
having recourse to lawyers, and when we encounter a
difficulty, turn to it for enlightenment, and find that
precisely this question is passed over.

We purchase a manual of domestic medicine to cut
off the necessity of calling in a doctor at every hitch,
and when a hitch occurs we discover that precisely
this one is unnoted in our book.

We are provided with moral *vade-mecums* which are
to serve us in all contingencies, but are arrested at
every hundred paces by some knot which the instructions
in our *vade-mecum* do not assist us in untying.

Jeremiah now found himself in a predicament from
which he did not know how to escape, at a fork in life's
road, and he was unable to form a judgment whether
to turn to the left hand or to the right.

By his own generosity he had rendered his position
discouraging.  He had behaved to Janet with so great
liberality when she married, as to produce a deep and
general impression that Salome would be treated with
at least equal liberality in the event of her marriage.
An admirer might hesitate to offer for a portionless
girl, however charming in feature and perfect in mind,
not because necessarily mercenary in his ideas, but
because he would know that as single life is
impossible without means of supporting it, so double life,
containing in itself the promise of development into
a number of supplemental lives, is proportionately
impossible.

Jeremiah, might, accordingly, with almost certainty,
reckon on being left to a solitary and barren decline
of life, after he had come late to appreciate the warmth
and amenities of domestic association—after he had
enjoyed them a sufficient number of years to esteem
them indispensable.

He recalled the dead and meagre existence he had
led before he received the little girls and their mother
into his house, and he sickened at the prospect of
recurring to it.  He could not disguise from himself
that if he lost Salome, everything that gave zest and
interest to life would be taken away from him.  He
would be forced to revert to the hard uniformity of his
previous existence; but that thought was repugnant
to him.  Most men look back on their childhood or to
college days as a period of exuberant vitality and
unspoiled delight.  To but few is it not given to begin
their Book of Genesis with Paradise, flowing with
sparkling rivers whose beds are gold, rich with flowers,
redolent with odours.  Sooner or later all are cast out
through the gates, and there is no return—only a
reminiscence.  To some more than to others the smell
of the flowers clings through life.  The youth and
early manhood of Jeremiah had been joyless, spent
among briars and thorns, and only late had he found
the gates of Eden, and the cherub with a smile had
withdrawn his sword, and allowed him a look in.
What would be the end of life to him if Salome were
taken away?  As his health and powers of resistance
failed, his house would be invaded by the Sidebottoms,
perhaps also by the unknown Philip, and they would
wrangle over his savings, and hold him a prisoner
within his own walls.  But—dare he suggest to Salome
that she should be his wife?  He did not shut his eyes
to their disparity in age, to the fact that her regard for
him was of a totally different texture from such as a
man exacts of a wife.  Would it be possible to change
filial into marital love?  Was it not as preposterous
of him to expect it as was the infatuation of the
alchemist to transmute one metal into another?

Then, again, would not his proposal shake, if it did
not shatter, her respect, forfeit that precious love she
now tendered him with both hands without stint?
By asking for what she could not give, would he not
lose that which he had already, like the dog that
dropped the meat snapping at a shadow, and so leave
him in utter destitution?  The harbour of the thought
of a change of relations had affected the quality of his
intercourse with her, had clouded its serenity,
disturbed its simplicity.  It had prevented him from
meeting her frank eye, from receiving her embrace,
admitting the touch of her lips.  He shrank from her
innocent endearments as though he had no right to
receive them, tendered in one coinage and received in
another value.  Were he to communicate to her the
thought that fermented within him, would not the
yeasty microbe alter her and change her sweet affection
for him into something that might be repugnance?

He drew a laboured breath.

'I am in a sore strait,' he groaned; 'I know not
what to do.  Would to heaven that my course were
determined for me.'

He had reached the towpath beside the canal.

'Good-night, sir.'

He was startled.  The night watch had met him,
the man employed to walk around and through the
factories at all hours of the night, on the look-out
against fire, on guard against burglars.

'Good-night, sir.  Just been on the bank to look at
the river.  Very full, and swelling instead of going
down.  Lot of rain fallen of late.  Cold for the
goldfish yonder.'

'Good-night,' answered the manufacturer; 'I also
want to see the river.  There is more rain yonder.'

He pointed to the western sky.

'The river is rising rapidly,' said the man; 'but
there's no harm can take Pennyquick's—ligs too
high.'  Jeremiah's factory went by his surname, but
contracted by the people through the omission of a
syllable.

Then the man passed on his way, rattling his keys.
The gold-fish!  What did he mean?

Outside the wall of Mr. Pennycomequick's factory
was a pool, into which the waste steam and boiling
water from the engine discharged, and this pool was
always hot.  It swarmed with gold-fish.  At some
time or other, no one knew when, or by whom, a few,
perhaps only a pair, had been thrown in, and now the
little patch of water was thronged with fish.  They
throve, they multiplied therein.  The mill girls cast
crumbs to them from their breakfasts and dinners, and
were allowed to net some occasionally for their private
keeping in glass globes, but not to make of them an
article of traffic.  There was not a cottage in
Pennyquick's Fold that had not such a vessel in the window.

Jeremiah saw that the overflow from the river had
reached this little pool and converted it into a lake,
chilling the steamy waters at the same time.
Mergatroyd town or village stood on the slope of the hill
that formed the northern boundary of Keld-dale.
The Keld rose in that range of limestone mountains
that divides Lancashire from Yorkshire, and runs from
Derbyshire to the Scottish border.  After a tortuous
course between high and broken hills, folding in on
each other like the teeth of a rat-trap, leaving in
places scarce room in the bottom for road, rail, and
canal to run side by side, it burst forth into a broad
basin, banked on north and south by low hills of
yellow sandstone, overlying coal.  Some way down
this shallow trough, on the northern flank, built about
the hill-slope, and grouped about a church with an
Italian spire perched on pillars, stood Mergatroyd.
There the valley spread to the width of a mile, and
formed a great bed of gravelly deposit of unreckoned
depth.  A couple of spade-grafts below the surface,
water was reached; yet on this gravel stood most of
the factories and their tall chimneys.  The nature of
the soil forbade sinking for foundations.  Accordingly
these were laid on the surface, the walls, and even the
chimneys, being reared on slabs of sandstone laid on
the ground.  It might seem incredible that such fragile
stone-slates should support such superincumbent
masses; nevertheless it was so.  The pressure,
however, did not always fall on gravel equally compact;
this resulted in subsidences.  Few walls had not
cracked at some time, most were banded with iron,
and not a chimney stood exactly perpendicular.

The canal and the river ran side by side, with a
towpath along the former; but the high-road had
deserted the valley and ran on the top of the hill.
Neither canal nor river were of crystalline purity, or
of ordinary cleanness; for into them the mills and
dye-works discharged their odorous and discoloured
refuse water, dense with oil and pigment, with
impurities of every description and degree of nastiness.
Fish had long ago deserted these waters, and if an
occasional eel was caught it was inedible, so strongly
did it taste of oil and dye.

The Yorkshire towns and rivers have their special
'bouquet,' which does not receive favourable appreciation
by a stranger; it is not a fluctuating savour like
that pervading the neighbourhood of Crosse and
Blackwell's, in Oxford Street, which is at one time
redolent of raspberries and another pungent with
mixed pickles; summer and winter, spring and fall
alike, the same dyes, the same oil, and the same
horrible detergents are employed, and constitute a
permanent, all-pervading effluvium, that clings to the
garment, the hair, the breath of the inhabitants, as the
savour of petroleum belongs to Baku, and the spice of
orange flowers and roses is appropriate to the Riviera.

Far away in the north-west, above the boundary
hill, the sky throbbed with light, from the iron
furnaces seven miles distant, where the coal and iron were
dug out of the same beds, and the one served to fuse
the other, as in the human breast various qualities are
found which tend to temper, purify and turn to service
the one the other.  The flames that leaped up from
the furnaces as thirsty rolling tongues were not
visible from the Keld-dale bottom under Mergatroyd,
but the reflection was spread over a wide tract of
cloud, and shone with rhythmetic flash, as an auroral
display.  High up the river, at right angles to the
axis of the valley, stood a huge, gaunt, five-storied mill
for cloth and serge, commonly known as 'Mitchell's.'  Every
window in Mitchell's mill was alight this night,
for it was running incessantly.  Trade in cloth and
serge was brisk on account of the Franco-German
War.  What is one man's loss is another man's gain?
The rattle of guns in France produced the rattle of
the looms in Yorkshire; and every bullet put through
a Frenchman's or a German's uniform put a sovereign
into the pocket of a cloth-weaver in England.  Such
is the law of equilibrium in Nature.

Business was brisk among the cloth-workers, but
slack among the linen-weavers; the dead on the
battle-field were not buried in winding-sheets, least of
all in figured damasks.

An unusual downpour of rain had taken place,
lasting continuously forty-eight hours.  The very
windows of heaven seemed to have been opened; at
sunset the sky had partially cleared, but there were
still lumbering masses of cloud drifting over the face
of heaven, as icebergs detached from the mighty wall
of black vapour that still remained in the west, built
up half-way to the zenith over the great dorsal range,
a range that arrested the exhalations from the Atlantic
and condensed them into a thousand streams that
leaped in 'fosses,' and wriggled and dived among the
hills, and cleft themselves roads, to the east or to the
west, to reach the sea.

To-night the Keld was very full, so swollen as to
have overflowed, or rather to have dived under the
embankments, and to ooze up through the soil in all
directions in countless irrepressible springs,
transforming the paddocks into ponds, and the fields into
lagoons.

The towpath was the only walk that was not a
mass of mud or a sop of water.  It ran well above the
level of the fields, and the rain that had fallen on it
had drained—or, as the local expression had it, 'siped'
away.

Along this towpath Jeremiah walked with his
hands behind his back, brooding over his difficulties,
seeking a solution that escaped him.  If he remained
silent, he must be content in a year or two to surrender
Salome to another.  If he spoke, he might lose her
immediately and completely; for were she to refuse
him she must at once withdraw from under his roof
and remain estranged from him permanently.

But—what if she were to accept him?  He who
was nearly thrice her age?  And what if, in the event
of her accepting him, her heart were to wake up and
love another?  Had he any right to subject her to
such a risk, to impose on her such a trial?  Would
there not be a sacrifice of his own self-respect were he
to offer himself to her?  Would the love he would
demand of her, given hesitatingly, as a duty, forced
and uncertain, make up to him for the frank, ready,
spontaneous gush of love which surrounded him at
present?

'I am in a strait,' said Jeremiah Pennycomequick,
again.  'Would to Heaven that the decision were
taken out of my hands, and determined for me.'

He had reached the locks.  They were fast shut,
and the man in charge was away, in his cottage across
the field; there was no light shining from the window.
He was asleep.  No barges passed up and down at
night.  His duties ended with the daylight.  The field
he would have to cross next morning to the lock was
now submerged.  Mr. Pennycomequick halted at the
locks, and stood looking down into the lower level,
listening to the rush of the water that was allowed to
flow through the hatch.  He could just see, below in
the black gulf, a phosphorescent, or apparently
phosphorescent, halo; it was the foam caused by the fall
of the water-jet, reflecting the starlight overhead.

As Jeremiah thus stood, irresolute, looking at the
lambent dance of the foam, a phenomenon occurred
which roused his attention and woke his surprise.

The water in the canal, usually glassy and waveless,
suddenly rose, as the bosom rises at a long inhalation,
and rolled like a tidal wave over the top of the gates,
and fell into the gulf below with a startling crash, as
though what had fallen were lead, not water.

What was the cause of this?  Jeremiah had heard
that on the occasion of an earthquake such a wave
was formed in the sea, and rushed up the shore,
without premonition.

But he had felt no shock, and—really—a petty
canal could hardly be supposed to act in such events
like the ocean.

Jeremiah turned to retrace his steps along the path;
and he had not gone far before he saw something else
that equally surprised him.

In the valley, about two miles above, was, as already
said, Mitchell's Mill, lying athwart it, like a huge
stranded Noah's Ark.  It had five stories, and in each
story were twenty windows on the long sides; that
made just one hundred windows towards the east,
towards Jeremiah; one hundred yellow points of
light, against the sombre background of cloud that
enveloped the west.

The night was not absolutely dark; there was some
light in the sky above the clouds from stars, and a
crescent moon, which latter was hidden, but it was
not sufficient to have revealed Mitchell's without the
illumination from within.  Here and there a silvery
vaporous light fell through the interstices of the
clouds, sufficient to give perspective to the night
scene, insufficient to disclose anything.  Now Mitchell's
was distinguishable as five superimposed rows of
twenty stars of equal size and lustre.

All at once, suddenly as if a black curtain had
fallen over the scene, all these stars were eclipsed—not
one by one, not in rows, by turns, but altogether,
instantaneously and completely, snuffed out at one
snip, and with the extinction Mitchell's fell back into
the common obscurity, and was no more seen than if
it had been blotted out of existence.

'Stopped!' exclaimed Mr. Pennycomequick
involuntarily.  'That is queer.  I thought they were
at full-pressure, running night and day.'

What followed increased his perplexity.

He heard the steam whistle of Mitchell's shrill forth
in palpitating, piercing call, not briefly, as if to give
notice that work was over, not peremptorily, as
signalling for a new batch of hands to replace such as were
released; not insistingly, as calling out of sleep, but
with a prolonged and growing intensity, with full force
of steam, rising in volumes to the highest pitch, as
though Mitchell's great bulk were uttering a shriek of
infinite panic and acute pain.

And then, from the hillside, where stood another
mill, called Poppleton's, howled a 'syren'—another
contrivance invented by a perverse ingenuity to create
the greatest possible noise of the worst possible
quality.

'Surely there must be a fire,' said Jeremiah; 'only
bless me!  I see no flames anywhere.'

Then he heard a tramp, the tramp of a galloping
horse, on the towpath, and he stood aside so as not
to be ridden over.  A parting in the clouds let down
a soft gray light that made the surfaces of water into
sheets of steel, and converted the canal into a polished
silver skewer.  Along, down the towpath, came the
horse.  Jeremiah could just distinguish a black
travelling spot.  He waited, and presently saw that a man
was riding and controlling the horse, and this man
drew rein somewhat as he saw Jeremiah, and hallooed,
'Get back! get back!  Holroyd reservoir has burst.'

Then along the towpath he continued at accelerated
speed, and disappeared in the darkness in the direction
of the locks.

The alarm bell on the roof of 'Pennyquick's' began
to jangle.  The news had reached the night-watch,
and he was rousing the operatives who lived in the
mill-fold.  Then the 'buzzer' of the yarn-spinning
factory brayed, and the shoddy mill uttered a husky
hoot.  Lights started up, and voices were audible,
shouting, crying.

What was to be done?

Jeremiah Pennycomequick considered for a moment.
He knew what the bursting of the reservoir implied.
He knew that he had not time to retrace the path he
had taken to its junction with the road.  He was at
that point where the valley expanded to its fullest
width, and where the greatest space intervened
between him and the hillside.  Here the level fields
were all under water, and before he could cross them,
wading, maybe to his knee, the descending wave
would be upon him.  He looked towards the locksman's
cottage; that offered no security, even if he
could reach it in time, for it lay low and would be
immediately submerged.  He turned, and ran down
the path towards the locks, and as he ran he heard
behind him—not the roar, for roar there was none,
but the rumble of the descending flood, like the
rumble and mutter of that vast crowd that swept
along the road from Paris to Versailles on the
memorable fifth of October.  Then a wet blast sprang up
suddenly and rushed down the valley, swaying the
trees, and so chill that when it touched Jeremiah as
he ran, it seemed to penetrate to his bones and curdle
his blood.  It was a blast that travelled with the
advancing volume of water, a little forestalling it, as
the lightning forestalls the thunder.

Mr. Pennycomequick saw before him the shelter-hut
of the locksman on the embankment, a shelter-hut
that had been erected as a protection against rain
and wind and frost.  It was of brick, and the only
chance of escape that offered lay in a scramble to the
roof.

How mysterious is it with our wishes and our
prayers!  We labour for many a year with taut
nerve, and ambition keenly, unswervingly set on some
object.  We hope for it, we entreat for it, and it is as
though the heavens were brass, and our prayers could
not pierce them, or as if it were indifferent to our
desires; it is as though a perverse fate smote all our
efforts with paralysis, and took pleasure in thwarting
every wish, and frustrating every attempt to obtain
what we long for.  At another time, hardly knowing
what we say, not calculating how what we ask may be
accomplished, not lifting a little finger to advance its
fulfilment, we form a wish, vague and inarticulate, and
instantly, completely, in the way least expected, and
with a fulness hardly desired, the prayer is answered,
the wish is accomplished.

'Would to Heaven,' Jeremiah Pennycomequick had
said twice that night on the towpath, hardly meaning
what he said, saying it because he was in perplexity,
not because he desired extraneous help out of it;
'Would to Heaven,' he had said, 'that my course were
determined for me!' and at once, that same night,
within an hour, Heaven had responded to the call.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`RIPE AND DROPPED`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V.


.. class:: center medium bold

   RIPE AND DROPPED.

.. vspace:: 2

Mrs. Sidebottom slept soundly, only troubled by
the mistake about the tablecloth.  The captain slept
soundly, troubled by nothing at all.  The scream of
steam-whistle, the bray of buzzer and bawl of syren,
the jangle of alarm bells, and the hum of voices
outside their windows, did not rouse them.  They had
become accustomed to these discordant noises which
startled the ears every morning early, to rouse the
mill-hands and call them from their beds.  Moreover,
the whistles and buzzers and syrens were not in the
town, but were below in the valley, at some distance,
and distance modified some of the dissonance.

It is true that Mrs. Sidebottom dreamed, and to
dream is not to enjoy perfect rest.  She dreamt that
her brother Jeremiah was examining the tablecloth,
and that she was dribbling water over the sheet out
of a marrow-spoon, in patterns, to give it an
appearance of being figured with acorns and oak-leaves.
And she found in her dreams that Jeremiah was hard
to persuade that what he had before him was a figured
damask tablecloth and not a sheet.  And she thought
how she assured her brother on her word that what
he saw was a watered table-cover, and mightily pleased
she was with herself at her ingenuity in equivocation.

But towards morning the house was roused by
violent ringing at the front-door bell, and by calls
under the windows, and gravel thrown at the panes.
The watchman had come, at Salome's desire, to
inquire if by chance Mr. Pennycomequick was there.
He had gone out, after his return home, and had not
returned or been seen.  Fears were entertained that
he might have been swept away in the flood.

'Flood! what flood?' asked Mrs. Sidebottom.

'The valley is full of water.  Holroyd reservoir be
busted.'

'And—Mr. Pennycomequick has not been seen?'

'No, ma'am.  Miss Cusworth thought there might
be a chance he had come back here and was staying
talking.'

'He has not been here since he dined with us.'

'He said he was boun' to take a stroll on t' tow-path.
I see'd him there.  If he's not got off it afore
the flood came down he's lost.'

'Lost!  Fiddlesticks!  I mean—bless my
soul.'  Mrs. Sidebottom's heart stood still for a moment.
What!  Jeremiah ripe, and dropped from the tree
already.  Jeremiah gone down the river with the
*anges-à-cheval* inside him that he had enjoyed so
recently.

She ran upstairs and hammered at her son's door.
His window looked out on the valley, not into the
street, and he had not been roused at the same time
as his mother.  As she ran, the thought came to her
uncalled, like temptations, 'I needn't have had
champagne at six-and-six.  It does not matter after
all that the sheet and the tablecloth changed places.
I might just as well have had cheap grapes.'

'Lamb!' she called through the door, 'Lamb!  Do
get up.  Your uncle is drowned.  Slip into your
garments.  He has been swept away by the flood.
Don't stay to shave, you shaved before dinner; and
your prayers can wait.  Do come as quickly as
possible.  Not a minute is to be lost.'

She opened his door, and saw her son with a
disordered head and sleepy eyes, stretching himself.
He had tumbled out of his bed and into his dressing-gown.
There was gas in the room, turned down to a
pea when not required for light; and this the captain,
when roused, had turned up again.

'Oh, Lamb!  Do bestir yourself!  Do you hear
that your uncle is dead, and that he has been carried
away by a flood?  It is most advisable that we should
be in his house before the Cusworths or the servants
have made away with anything.  These are the critical
moments, when things disappear and cannot be traced
afterwards.  No one but the Cusworths know what
he had, there may be plate and jewellery that belonged
to his mother.  I cannot tell.  We do not know what
money there is in the house, and what securities he
has in his strong box.  My dear Lamb!  Yes, brush
your hair, and don't look stupid.  You may lose a
great deal by lack of promptitude.  Of course we
must be in charge.  The Cusworths have no *locus
standi*.  I shall dismiss them at the earliest
convenience.  Good gracious me, what things you men
are!  If you go to bed you get frouzy and rumpled
in a way women never do.  I have noticed, in crossing
the Channel, how a man who gets sea-sick breaks
up altogether and becomes disreputable; whereas a
woman may have been ten times as ill, yet when she
steps ashore she is decent and presentable.  I can
wait for you no longer.  I shall go on by myself.
When you are ready, follow.'

Mrs. Sidebottom ran back to her room, and was
equipped to start in an incredibly short time.  When
she again came forth she looked into her son's room
once more, and said, 'I do hope and trust, Lamb; that
your uncle took his keys with him.  It would be too
frightful to suppose that he had left them behind, and
that these Cusworths should have had the house to
themselves and the keys all this while.'

Mrs. Sidebottom hastened to the residence of her
half-brother, which stood on the slope of the hill a
few minutes' walk from the factory.  There was now
sufficient light for her to see that the whole basin of
the Keld was occupied by water, that not the fields
only, but the mill-yards as well were inundated.  The
entire population of Mergatroyd was awake and afoot,
and giving tongue like a pack of beagles.  The street
or road leading down the hill into the valley was
crowded with people, some hurrying down to the
water, others ascending, laden with goods from the
houses that had been invaded by water.  The cottagers
in the bottom had escaped, or were being rescued.
What had become of the workers in Mitchell's no one
knew, and fears were entertained for them.  The mill
itself stood above the water, but if the hands engaged
in it had attempted to leave it, they must have been
overtaken and carried away by the flood.  Fortunately
the majority of the mills were nearer the hillsides
than Mitchell's, so that escape from them was
comparatively easy.  The rush of the torrent had been
along the course of the river and canal, and though
the water surged against the wall that enclosed the
mill-folds, and even entered the walls and swamped
the basements of the houses therein, it was with
reduced force.

Mrs. Sidebottom gave little attention to the scenes
of havoc, to the distress and alarm that prevailed.
Her one dread was lest she should reach her brother's
house too late to prevent its pillage.

When she arrived there she found that Salome was
not in, that Mrs. Cusworth, a feeble and sickly woman,
was frightened and incapacitated from doing anything,
and that the servants were out in the streets.

'What made my brother go out?' asked Mrs. Sidebottom;
'why was he not in bed like a Christian?'

'He had been sitting up, talking with Salome,'
answered the widow, 'and as he had taken no exercise
for two days, and did not feel sleepy, he said he would
take a short walk.'

'What keys has he left, and where are they?  I do
not mean the key of the groceries, or of the cellar,
but of his papers and cash-box.'

Mrs. Cusworth did not know.  She had nothing to
do with these keys; she supposed that Mr. Pennycomequick
carried them about with him.

'Probably,' said Mrs. Sidebottom; 'but gentlemen
when going out to dinner sometimes forget to take
the keys out of their pockets and put them in those
of the dress suit.  I had a husband.  He did it, and
many a lecture I have given him for his want of
prudence.  Do you know where his everyday clothes
are?  I suppose he went abroad in his dress-coat and
smalls.  I had better have a look and make sure.'

Mrs. Cusworth thought, in reply, that probably the
clothes would be found in Mr. Pennycomequick's bedroom.

'There is a light in it, I suppose,' said his
half-sister.  'By-the-way, who had charge of the plate?'

'I have,' answered the widow.

'You have, then, the key of the plate-chest?'

'There is no plate-chest.  There is a cupboard.'

'Iron-plated?'

'Oh no; there is no silver, or very little—only
some teaspoons, all the rest is electro.  But do you
think, Mrs. Sidebottom, that dear Mr. Pennycomequick
is—is lost?'  The widow's eyes filled and she
began to cry.

'Lost! oh, of course.'

'But we cannot tell, we do not know, but he may
have taken refuge somewhere.'

'Fiddlesticks—I mean, hardly likely.  He was on
the towpath, and there is no place of refuge he could
reach from that.'

'Really dead! really dead!'  The poor widow
broke down.

'Dead, of course, he is dead, with all this water.
Bless me!  You would not call in the ocean to drown
him.  I have known a case of a man in the prime of
life who was smothered in six inches.'

'Yes, but he may have left the towpath in time,
and then, instead of returning home, have gone about
helping the poor creatures who have been washed out
of their houses, and some of them have not had time
to get into their clothes.  It would be like his kind
heart to remain out all night rendering every assistance
in his power.'

'There is something in that,' said Mrs. Sidebottom,
and her face became slightly longer.  'He has not
been found.'

'No, not yet.'

Mrs. Sidebottom mused.

'I don't see,' she said, 'how he can have got away
if he went on the towpath.  I have heard he was
seen going on to it.  The towpath is precisely where
the greatest danger lay.  It is exactly there that the
current of the descending flood would reach what
you would call its maximum of velocity.  Is not
Salome come in yet?  Why is she out?  What is she
doing?'

Then in came her son, in trim order; neither the
danger in which his uncle might be, nor his prospect
of inheriting that uncle's fortune, could induce
Lambert to appear partially dressed.  His mother drew
him aside into the dining-room.

'Lambert,' she said, 'there is no plate.  I am not
sorry for it, for if Jeremiah had laid out money
in buying silver, he would have gone in for King's
pattern, or Thread and Shell—which are both odious,
vulgar and ostentatious, only seen on the tables of
the *nouveaux riches*.'

'Is my uncle not returned?'

'No, Lamb! and, there is a good soul, run down
the road, bestir yourself, and ascertain whether the
towpath, to which your uncle Jeremiah said he was
going, is really submerged, and to what depth, and
ascertain also at what rate the current runs, and
whether it is likely to subside.  Mrs. Cusworth thinks
it not impossible that your uncle may be helping the
wretches who are getting out of their bedroom
windows, or are perched on the roofs of their houses.
Oh, Lamb! if your uncle were to turn up after the
agony of mind he has occasioned me, I could hardly
bear it; I would go into hysterics.  My dear Lamb! do
keep that old woman talking whilst I run upstairs
to Jeremiah's dressing-room.  I must get at his
everyday smalls, and see if he has left his keys in the
pocket; men do such inconsiderate things.  I must
do this as a precaution, you understand, lest the keys
should fall into improper hands, into the hands of
designing and unscrupulous persons, who have no
claim on my brother whatever, and no right to expect
more than a book or a teacup as a remembrancer.
Lamb! it looks suspicious that Salome should keep
out of the way now.  Goodness gracious! what if she
has been beforehand with me, and is out concealing
the spoils!  Go, Lamb, make inquiries after your
uncle, and keep an eye open for Salome.  The girl is
deep.  I will go and search the pockets of your
uncle's panjams, pepper and salt; I know them.  We
must not put or allow temptations to lie in the way
of the unconscientious.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A COTTAGE PIANO`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   A COTTAGE PIANO.

.. vspace:: 2

Mr. Pennycomequick had but just reached the hut
of the keeper of the locks when he saw a great wave
rushing down on him.  It extended across the valley
from bank to bank, it overswept the raised sides of
canal and river, and confounded both together, and,
as if impelled by the antagonism of modern socialism
against every demarcation of property, caused the
hedges of the several fields and bounding walls to
disappear, engulfed or overthrown.

The hut was but seven feet high on one side and
six on the other, and was small—a square brick
structure with a door on one side and a wooden
bench on that toward the locks.  Unfortunately the
hut had been run up on such economical principles
that the bricks were set on their narrow sides, instead
of being superimposed on their broad sides, and thus
made a wall of but two and a half inches thick,
ill-calculated to resist the impetus of a flood of water,
but serviceable enough for the purpose for which
designed—a shelter against weather.  It was roofed
with sandstone slate at a slight incline.  Fortunately
the door looked to the east, so that the current did
not enter and exert its accumulated strength against
the walls to drive them outwards.  The door had
been so placed because the west wind was that which
brought most rain on its wings.

Jeremiah put a foot on the bench, and with an
alacrity to which he had long been a stranger, heaved
himself upon the roof of the shelter, not before the
water had smitten it and swirled about the base and
foamed over his feet.  Had he not clung to the roof,
he would have been swept away.  To the west the
darkness remained piled up, dense and undiluted, as
though the clouds there contained in them another
forty-eight hours of rain.  A very Pelion piled on
Ossa seemed to occupy the horizon, but above this the
vault became gradually clearer, and the crescent moon
poured down more abundant light, though that was
not in itself considerable.

By this light Jeremiah could see how widespread
the inundation was, how it now filled the trough of
the Keld, just as it must have filled it in the remote
prehistoric age, when the western hills were sealed in
ice, and sent their frosty waters burdened with
icebergs down the valleys they had scooped out, and
over rocks which they furrowed in their passage.

Jeremiah looked at the lock-keeper's cottage, not
any longer as a possible place of refuge, but out of
compassion for the unfortunate man who was in it.
Not a sound issued thence; not a light gave token
that he had been roused in time to effect his escape,
if only to the roof.  Probably, almost certainly, he and
his wife were floating as corpses in their little room
on the ground floor.

Away on the ridge to the north, yellow lights were
twinkling, and thence came sounds of life.  The
steam calls had ceased to shrill; they had done their
work.  No one slept in Mergatroyd—no one in all
the towns, villages, and hamlets down the valley of
the Keld—any more that night, save those who,
smothered by the water, slept to wake no more.

Hard by the lock, growing out of the enbankment,
stood a Lombardy poplar.  The sudden blast of
wind accompanying the water had twisted and
snapped it, but had not wholly severed the top from
the stump.  It clung to this, attached by ligaments
of bark and fibres of wood.  The stream caught at
the broken tree-top that trailed on the causeway,
shook it impatiently, dragged it along with it, ripped
more of the nerves that fastened it, and seemed
intent on carrying it wholly away.

Notwithstanding his danger and extreme discomfort,
with his boots full of water, Jeremiah was unable
to withdraw his eyes for long from the broken tree,
the top of which whipped the base of his place of
refuge; for he calculated whether, in the event of the
water undermining the hut, he could reach the stump
along the precarious bridge of the broken top.

But other objects presented themselves, gliding
past, to distract his mind from the tree.  By the wan
and straggling light he saw that various articles of an
uncertain nature were being whirled past; and the
very uncertainty as to what they were gave scope to
the imagination to invest them with horror.

For a while the water roared over the sluice, but at
last the immense force exerted on the valves tore
them apart, wrenched one from its hinges, threw it
down, and the torrent rolled triumphantly over it; it
did not carry the door off, which held still to its lower
hinge, at least for a time, though it twisted the iron
in its socket of stone.

The water was racing along, now noiselessly, but
with remorseless determination, throwing sticks, straw,
and then a drowned pig at the obstructive hut.  At
one moment a boat shot past.  If it had but touched
the hut, Jeremiah would have thrown himself into it,
and trusted that it would be stranded in shallow
water.  He knew how insecure was the building that
sustained him.  There was no one in the boat.  It
had been moored originally by a rope, which was
snapped, and trailed behind it.

The moon flared out on the water, that looked like
undulating mercury, and showed a dimple on its
surface above the hut; a dimple formed by the water
that was parted by the obstruction; and about this
eddy sticks and strands were revolving.  Then there
approached a cradle in which whimpered a babe.  On
the cradle stood a cat that had taken refuge there
from the water, when it found no other spot dry
for its feet.  And now the cradle swung from side to
side, and as it tilted, the cat leaped to the upraised
side, mee-awing pitifully, and then, as the strange
boat lurched before a wave on the other side, the cat
skipped back again to where it was before, with tail
erect and plaintive cry, but, by its instinctive shiftings,
preserving the balance of the little craft.  The cradle
was drawn down between the walls where the sluice
had been, and whether it passed in safety beyond,
Jeremiah could not see.

Now his attention was arrested by a huge black
object sailing down stream, reeling and spinning as it
advanced.  What was it?  A house lifted bodily and
carried along?  Jeremiah watched its approach with
uneasiness; if it struck his brick hut it would
probably demolish it.  As it neared, however, he was
relieved to discover that it was a hayrick; and on it,
skipping from side to side, much as the cat had skipped
on the cradle, he observed a fluttering white figure.

Now he saw that a chance offered better than that
of remaining on the fragile hut.  The bricks would
give way, but the hayrick must float.  If he could
possibly swing himself on to the hay, he would be in
comparative safety, for it is of the nature of strong
currents to disembarrass themselves of the cumbrous
articles wherewith they have burdened themselves
and throw them away along their margins, strewing
with them the fields they have temporarily overflowed.
It was, however, difficult in the uncertain light to
judge distances, and calculate the speed at which the
floating island came on, and the rick struck the hut
before Jeremiah was prepared to leap.  He, however,
caught at the hay, and tried to scramble into the rick
that overtopped him, when he was thrown down,
struck by the white figure that leaped off the hay and
tumbled on the roof, over him.  In another instant,
before Jeremiah could recover his feet, the rick had
made a revolution and was dancing down the stream,
leaving a smell of hay in his nose, and the late tenant
of the stack sprawling at his side.

'You fool!' exclaimed Mr. Pennycomequick
angrily, 'what have you come here for?'

'I could hold on no longer.  I was giddy.  I
thought there was safety here.'

'Less chance here than on the rick you have
deserted.  You have spoiled your own chance of life
and mine.'

'I'm starved wi' caud,' moaned the half-naked man,
'I left my bed and got through t'door as t'water
came siping in, and I scram'led up on to t'rick.  I
never thowt t'rick would ha' floated away.'

'Here, then,' said Jeremiah, removing his great
coat, but with a bad grace, 'take this.'

'That's better,' said the man, without a word of
thanks, as he slipped into the warm overcoat.  'Eh! now,'
said he, 'if t'were nobbut for the way t'rick
spun aboot, I could na' ha' stuck there.  I wouldn't
ha' gone out o' life, spinning like a skoprill'
(tee-totum), 'not on no account; I'd a-gone staggering
into t'other world, and ha' been took for a drunkard,
and I'm a teetotaler, have been these fifteen years.
Fifteen years sin' I took t'pledge, and never bust out
but once.'

'You have water enough to satisfy you now,' said
Jeremiah grimly.

'Dost'a want to argy?' asked the man.  'Becos if
so, I'm the man for thee, Peter—one, three, twenty,
what dost'a say to that, eh?'

Jeremiah was in no mood to argue, nor was the time
or place suitable; but not so thought this fanatic, to
whom every time and place was appropriate for a
dispute about alcohol.

'I wonder whether the water is falling,' said the
manufacturer, drawing himself away from his
companion and looking over the edge into the current.
He saw apples, hundreds of apples swimming past; a
long wavering line of them coming down the stream,
like migrating ants, or a Rechabite procession,
turning over, bobbing, but all in sequence one behind the
other.  By daylight they would have resembled a
chain of red and yellow beads, but now they showed
as jet grains on silver.  They had come, no doubt,
from a farmer's store or out of a huckster's cart.

Jeremiah leaned over the eave of the hut to test the
distance of the water; then caught an apple and threw
it on the roof, whence it rolled over and rejoined the
procession on the further side.

''Tis a pity now,' muttered the man in nightshirt
and topcoat, ''tis a pity aboot my bullock, I were
bown to sell'n a Friday.'

Suddenly Jeremiah recoiled from his place, for,
dancing on the water was a human body, a woman,
doubtless, for there was a kerchief about the head, and
in the arms a child, also dead.  The woman's eyes
were open, and the moon glinted in the whites.  They
seemed to be looking and winking at Jeremiah.
Then a murky wave washed over the face, like a hand
passed over it, but it did not close the eyes, which
again glimmered forth.  Then, up rose the corpse,
lifted by the water, but seeming to struggle to gain its
feet.  It was caught in that swirl, that dimple
Jeremiah had noticed on the face of the flood above his
place of refuge.

How cruel the current was!  Not content with
drowning human beings, it romped with them after
the life was choked out of them, it played with them
ghastly pranks.  The undercurrent sucked the body
back, and then ran it against the bricks, using it as a
battering-ram.  Then it caught the head of the poplar
and whipped the corpse with it, as though whipping
it on to its work which it was reluctant to perform.
The manufacturer had gone out that night with his
umbrella, and had carried it with him to the roof of
the hut.  Now with the crook he sought to disengage
the dead woman and thrust her away from the wall
into the main current; he could not endure to see
the body impelled headlong against the bricks.

'What art a'doing?' asked the man, also looking
over.  Then, after a moment he uttered a cry, drew
back, clasped his hands, then looked again, and again
exclaimed: 'Sho's my own lass, and sho's a hugging
my bairn!'

'What do you mean?'

'It's my wife, eh! 'tis a pity.'

Mr. Pennycomequick succeeded in disengaging the
corpse and thrusting it into the stream; it was caught
and whirled past.  The man looked after it, and
moaned.

'It all comes o' them fomentations,' he said.
'Sho'd bad pains aboot her somewhere or other, and
owd Nan sed sho'd rub in a penn'orth o' whisky.  I
was agin it, I was agin it—my mind misgave me, and
now sho's taken and I'm left, 'cos I had nowt to do
wi' it.'

You may as well prepare to die,' said Jeremiah,
'whisky or no whisky.  This hut will not stand much
longer.'

'I shudn't mind so bad if I'd sold my bullock,'
groaned the man.  'I had an offer, but, like a fool, I
didn't close.  Now I'm boun' to lose everything.  'Tis
vexing.'

Just then a heavy object was driven against the
wall, and shook the hut to its foundations, shook it so
that one of the stone slates was dislodged and fell into
the water.  Jeremiah leaned over the eaves and looked
again.  He could make out that some piece of furniture,
what he could not distinguish, was thrust against
the wall of the hut.  He saw two legs of turned
mahogany, with brass castors at the ends that
glistened in the moonlight.  They were about four feet
and a half apart, and supported what might be a
table or secretaire.  The rushing water drove these
legs against the wall, and the castors ran and felt
about the bricks as groping for a weak joint where
they might knock a hole through.  Then, all at once,
the legs drew or fell back, and as they did so the
upper portion of the piece of furniture opened and
disclosed white and black teeth, in fact, revealed a
keyboard.  This was but for a moment, then the
instrument was heaved up by a wave, the lid closed over
the keys, and the two brass-armed legs were again
impelled against the fragile wall.

It is hardly to be wondered at that the ancients
attributed living souls to streams and torrents, or
peopled their waves with mischievous nixes, for they
act at times in a manner that seems fraught with
intelligence.  It was so now.  Here was this hut, an
obstruction to the flood, feeble in itself, yet capable
of resisting its first impetus, and likely to defy it
altogether.  The water alone could not dissolve it, so it
had called other means and engines of destruction to
its aid.  At first, in a careless, thoughtless fashion, it
had thrown a dead pig against it, then the corpse of a
woman weighted with her dead babe; and now,
having cast these away as unprofitable tools, it
brought up, at great labour—a cottage piano.  A
piano is perhaps the heaviest and most cumbrous
piece of furniture that the flood could have selected,
and, on the whole, the best adapted to serve its
purpose, as the deceased pig was the least.  What force
it must have exerted to bring up this instrument,
what judgment it must have employed in choosing
it!  And what malignity there was in the flood in its
persistent efforts to break down the frail substructure
on which stood the two men!  The iron framework
of the instrument in the wooden back was under
water, the base with the pedals rested against the
foot of the hut.  The water driving at the piano thus
lodged, partially heaved it, as though a shoulder had
been submitted to the back of the instrument, and
thus the feet were driven with sharp, impatient strokes
against the bricks.  Moreover, every time that the
piano fell back, the lid over the keys also fell back,
and the white line of keys laughed out in the
moonlight.  But whenever the wave heaved up the piano,
then the lid fell over them.  It was horrible to watch
the piano labouring as a willing slave to batter down
the wall, as it did so opening and shutting its mouth,
as though alternately gasping for breath and then
returning to its task with grim resolution.

The moon was now disentangled from cloud; it
shone with sharp brilliancy out of a wide tract of
cold gray sky, and the light was reflected by the
teeth of the keyboard every time they were disclosed.
Hark!  The clock of Mergatroyd church struck three.
The dawn would not break for two or three hours.

'I say, art a minister?' suddenly asked the man
in a nightshirt and great-coat.

'No; I am not,' answered the manufacturer impatiently.
'Never mind what I am.  Help me to get
rid of this confounded cottage-piano.'

'There, there!' exclaimed the man; 'now thou'rt
swearing when thou ought to be praying.  Why dost'a
wear a white tie and black claes if thou ba'nt a
minister?  Thou might as weel wear a blue ribbon
and be a drunkard.'

Mr. Pennycomequick did not answer the fellow.
The man was crouched in squatting posture on the
roof, holding up one foot after another from the cold
slates that numbed them.  His nightshirt hung as a
white fringe below his great-coat.  To the eye of an
entomologist, he might have been taken for a gigantic
specimen of the Camberwell Beauty.

'If thou'd 'a been a minister, I'd 'a sed nowt.  As
thou'rt not, I knaw by thy white necktie thou must 'a
been awt to a dancing or a dining soiree.  And it were
all along of them soirees that the first Flood came.
We knaws it fra' Scriptur', t'folkes were eatin' and
drinkin'.  If they'd been drinkin' water, it hed never
'a come.  What was t'Flood sent for but to wash out
alcohol? and it's same naaw.'

Mr. Pennycomequick paid no heed to the man; he
was anxiously watching the effect produced by the
feet of the piano on the walls.

'It was o' cause o' these things the world was
destroyed in the time o' Noah, all but eight persons
as wore the blue ribbon.'

Again the forelegs of the piano crashed against the
bricks, and now dislodged them, so that the water
tore through the opening made.

'There's Scriptur' for it,' pursued the fellow.  'Oh,
I'm right! but my toes are mortal could.  Don't we
read that Noah and his family was saved by water?
Peter, one, two, three, twenty—answer me that.
That's a poser for thee—saved because they was
teetotalers.'

At that moment part of the wall gave way, and
some of the roof fell in.

'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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`TAKING POSSESSION`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   TAKING POSSESSION.

.. vspace:: 2

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.[#]  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.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[#] 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.

.. vspace:: 2

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 *n*
will 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.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`IN ONE COMPARTMENT`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   IN ONE COMPARTMENT.

.. vspace:: 2

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?

If we turn over the Holbein collection of portraits
of the Court of Henry VIII. we see among princes
and nobles the same faces that we find now in
farmhouses and factories.  The Wars of the Roses had
dissolved all restraints, and men of the first Tudor
reigns were the undisciplined children of an age of
domestic anarchy.  But it was otherwise later.  The
portraits of Van Dyck and Lely show us gentlemen
and ladies of perfect dignity and self-restraint.

What is also remarkable is that each age in the
past seems to have had its typal cast of countenance
and form of expression.  The cavaliers of Charles I. have
their special characteristics that distinguish them
as much from the courtiers of Elizabeth as from those
of Charles II.  With Queen Anne another phase of
portraiture set in, because the faces were different.
and again in the Hanoverian period how unlike were
the gentlemen of the Regency from those of the first
Georges!  Difference in dress does not explain this
difference of face.  The men and women in each
epoch had their distinct mode of thought, fashion in
morals and manners, and the face accommodated
itself to these.

And at the present day that which cleaves class
from class is the mode of thought in each, the rule of
association that governs intercourse in their several
planes; and these affect the character of face in each,
so that the classes are distinguished by their
countenances as they were by ages in the past.

When collier Jack calls bargee Jim a blackguard,
Jim replies with a curse on the collier's eyes, which
he damns to perdition.  But if collier Jack says the
same thing to gentleman Percy, the latter raises his
hat, bows, and passes on.

Education, if complete, does not merely sharpen the
intellect and refine the manners, but it gives such a
complete polish that affronts do not dint or adhere;
they glide off instead, leaving no perceptible trace of
impact.  To the outward appearance, Christianity and
culture produce an identical result, but only in outward
appearance, for the former teaches the control of the
emotions, whereas the latter merely forbids their
expression.

The face of the gentleman who sat opposite this
lady in the carriage was an intelligent, even clever
face, but was somewhat hard.  He looked at his
companion once when he entered the carriage, hesitating
whether to enter, and then glanced round to see
whether there was another passenger in the compartment
before he took a seat.  There was at the time
an elderly gentleman in the carriage, and this decided
him to set his valise and rugs on the seat, and finally
to take his place in the corner.  If he had not seen
that elderly man, with the repugnance single gentlemen
so generally entertain against being shut in with
a lady unattended, especially if young and pretty, he
would have gone elsewhere.  Where the carcase is
there will the vultures gather.  That is inevitable;
but no sane dromedary will voluntarily cast himself
into a cage with vultures.

The old gentleman left after a couple of stages, and
then, for the rest of the journey, these two were
enclosed together.  As the man left, Philip looked out
after him, with intent to descend, remove his baggage,
and enter the next compartment, before or behind;
but saw that one was full of sailor boys romping, and
the other with a family that numbered among it a
wailing baby.  He therefore drew back, with discontent
at heart, and all his quills ready to bristle at
the smallest attempt of the lady to draw him into
conversation.

The train was hardly in movement before that
attempt was made.

'You are quite welcome to use my footwarmer,' she
said.

'Thank you, my feet are not cold,' was the ungracious
reply.

'I have had it changed twice since I left town,' she
pursued, 'so that it is quite hot.  The porters have
been remarkably civil, and the guard looks in
occasionally to see that I am comfortable.'

'In expectation of a tip,' thought the gentleman,
but he said nothing.

'The French are believed to be the politest people
in the world,' continued the lady, not yet discouraged,
'but I must say that the English railway porter is far
in advance of the French one.  On a foreign line you
are treated as a vagabond, on the English as a
guest.'

Still he said nothing.  The lady cast an almost
appealing glance at him.  She had travelled a long
way for a great many hours, and was weary of her
own company.  She longed for a little conversation.

'I cannot read in the train,' she said plaintively,
'it makes me giddy, and—I started yesterday from
home.'

'In-deed,' said he in dislocated syllables.  He quite
understood that a hint had been conveyed to him, but
he was an armadillo against hints.

The pretty young lady had not opened the conversation,
if that can be called conversation which is one-sided,
without having observed the young man's face,
and satisfied herself that there was no more impropriety
in her talking to one of so staid an air than if
he had been a clergyman.

'What a bear this man is!' she thought.

He on his side said to himself, 'A forward missie!
I wish I were in a smoking-carriage, though I detest
the smell of tobacco.'

Pretty—uncommonly pretty the little lady was, with
perfectly made clothes.  The fit of the gown and the
style of the bonnet proclaimed French make.  She
had lovely golden-red hair, large brown eyes, and a
face of transparent clearness, with two somewhat
hectic fire-spots in her cheeks.  Her charming little
mouth was now quivering with pitiful vexation.

A quarter of an hour elapsed without another word
being spoken, and the gentleman was satisfied that
his companion had accepted the rebuff he had
administered, when she broke forth again with a
remark.

'Oh, sir! excuse my seeming rudeness, but—you
have been reading the newspaper, and I am on pins
and needles to hear the news from France.  It is true
that I have just crossed the Channel from that dear
and suffering—but heroic country; I am, however,
very ignorant of the news.  Unfortunately our journals
are not implicitly to be relied on.  The French are
such a patriotic people that they cannot bring
themselves to write and print a word that tells of
humiliation and loss to their country.  It is very natural,
very noble—but inconvenient.  That superb
Faidherbe—I do trust he has succeeded in crushing the
enemy.'

'He has been utterly routed.'

'Oh dear!  Oh dear!' the little lady was plunged
into real distress.  'This news was kept from me.
That was why I was hurried away.  I wanted to
bring my nieces with me, the Demoiselles Labarte,
but they clung to their mother and would not leave
her.  It was magnificent.'  Then, after a sigh, 'Now,
surely England will intervene.'

The gentleman shook his head.

'It is cruel.  Surely one sister should fly to the
assistance of the other.'

'The English nation is sister to the German.'

'Oh, how can you say so?  William the Conqueror
came from France.'

'From Normandy, which was not at the time and
for long after considered a part of France.'

Then the gentleman, feeling he had been inveigled
into saying more than he intended, looked out of the
window.

Presently he heard a sob.  The girl was crying.
He took no notice of her trouble.  He had made up
his mind that she was a coquette, and he was steeled
against her various tricks to attract attention and
enlist sympathy.  He would neither smile when she
laughed, nor drop his mouth when she wept.  His lips
closed somewhat tighter, and his brows contracted
slightly.  He had noticed throughout the journey the
petty attempts made by this girl to draw notice to
herself—the shifting of her shawls, the opening and
shutting of her valise, the plaintive sighs, the tapping of
the impatient feet on the footwarmer.  Though he had
studiously kept his eyes turned from her, nothing she
had done had escaped him, and all went to confirm
the prejudice with which he was inclined to regard her
from the moment of his entering the carriage.  He
rose from his place and moved to the further end of
the compartment.

'I beg your pardon,' said the young lady, 'I trust
I have not disturbed you.  You must excuse me, I
am unhappy.'

'Quite so, and I would not for the world trespass
on your grief.'

'I have a husband fighting under the Tricouleur,
and I am very anxious about him.'

The gentleman made a slight acknowledgment with
his head, which said unmistakably that he invited no
further confidences.

This she accepted, and turned her face to look out
of the opposite window.

At that moment the brake was put on, and sent a
thrill through the carriage.  Presently the train
stopped.  The face of the guard appeared at the
window, and the little lady at once lowered the
glass.

'How are you getting on, miss?'

'Very well, I thank you; but you must not call me
miss; I am a married woman.  I have left my husband
in France fighting like a lion, and I am sent away
because the Prussians are robbing and burning and
murdering wherever they go.  I know a lady near
Nogent from whose chateau they carried off an ormulu
clock.'  How unnecessary it was for her to enter into
these details to the guard, thought the gentleman.
He could not understand how a poor little heart full
of trouble would long to pour itself out; how that
certain natures can no more exist without sympathy
than can plants without water.

'Don't you think, guard, that the English
Government ought to interfere?'

'Well, ma'am, that depends on how it would affect
traffic—on the Midland.  Where are you going to, if
I may ask?'

'Mergatroyd.'

'There has been a flood, and the embankment of
the railway has been washed away.  For a day there
has not been any passing over the lines, and now we
are ordered to go along uncommon leisurely.'

'But oh! guard, there is, I trust, no danger.'

'No, ma'am, none in the least; I'll take care that
you come by no hurt.  The worst that can happen is
that we shall be delayed, and perhaps not be able to
proceed the whole way in the same train.  But rely
on me, ma'am, I'll see to you.'

'Oh, guard, would you—would you mind?  I have
here a little bottle of nice Saint Julien, and I have not
been able to touch it myself.  Would you mind taking
it?  Also, here—here, under the bottle.'

She slipped some money into his hand.

The guard's red face beamed broad and benignant.
He slipped the money into his waistcoat pocket, the
bottle he stowed away elsewhere; then thrusting his
head inside he said confidentially, 'Never fear.  I'll
make it all right for you, ma'am.'

When the lady, who was none other than Janet, the
twin sister of Salome, mentioned Mergatroyd as her
destination, the eyebrows of her fellow-passenger were
slightly lifted.  He was looking out of the opposite
window to that at which she conversed with the guard.
Now he knew that he would not be rid of his
companion for the rest of the journey, for he also was on
his way to Mergatroyd.  There was but a single
subject of comfort to him, that the distance to
Mergatroyd was no longer great, and the time taken over it,
in spite of the hint of the guard, which he discounted,
could not be great either.

The short November day had closed in; and the
remainder of the journey would be taken in the dark.
The lamps had not yet been lighted in the carriage.  To
the west he could see through the window the brown
light of the set day, the last rays of a wintry sun
arrested by factory smoke.  The gentleman was uneasy.
If the dromedary will not voluntarily enter the cage
of the vulture, he will not remain in it in darkness
with her without tremors.

'When do you think, sir, that I shall reach
Mergatroyd?' asked the young lady.

'That is a question impossible for me to answer,'
replied the gentleman; 'as you heard from your friend,'—he
emphasized this word and threw sarcasm into his
expression—'the guard, there are conditions, about
which I know nothing, which will interfere with the
punctuality of the train.'

Then he fumbled in his pocket, drew forth an orange-coloured
envelope, from this took a scrap of pink paper,
and by the expiring evening light read the telegraphic
message in large pencil-marks.

'Your uncle lost.  Come at once.  Salome.'

Salome!—who was Salome?

He replaced the paper in the envelope, which was
addressed Philip Pennycomequick, care of
Messrs. Pinch and Squeeze, Solicitors, Nottingham.

The message was a brief one—too brief to be intelligible.

Lost—how was Mr. Jeremiah Pennycomequick lost?

When the train drew up at a small station, the
young man returned to the down side, by the lady, let
down the glass and called the guard.

'Here! what did you say about the flood?  I have
seen it mentioned in the paper, but I did not
understand that it had been at Mergatroyd.'

'It has been in the Keld Valley.'

'And Mergatroyd is in that valley?'

'Where else would you have it, sir?'

'But—according to my paper the great damage was
done at Holme Bridge.'

'Well, so it was; and Holme Bridge is above Mergatroyd.'

Philip Pennycomequick drew up the glass again.
Now he understood.  He had never been to Mergatroyd
in his life, and knew nothing about its situation.
He had skimmed the account of the flood in his
paper, but had given most of his attention to the
narrative of the war in France.  It had not occurred to
him to connect the 'loss' of his uncle with the
inundation.  He had supposed the word 'loss' was an
euphemism for 'going off his head.'  Elderly gentlemen do
not get lost in England, least of all in one of its most
densely populated districts, as if they were in the
backwoods or prairies of America.

But who sent him the telegram?  He had no
relative of the name of Salome.  His aunt, Mrs. Sidebottom,
who was now resident, as he knew, at Mergatroyd,
was named Louisa, and she was the person
who, he supposed, would have wired to him if anything
serious had occurred requiring his presence.

His companion was going to Mergatroyd, and
probably knew people there.  If he asked her whether
she was aware of a person of the peculiar Christian
name of Salome at that place, it was possible she
might inform him.  But he was too reserved and
proud to ask.  He would not afford this flighty piece
of goods an excuse for opening conversation with him.
In half an hour he would be at his destination, and
would then have his perplexity cleared.

The train proceeded leisurely.  Philip's feet were
now very cold, and he would have been grateful for
the warmer, but could not now ask for permission to
use what he had formerly rejected.

As the train proceeded the engine whistled.

There were men working on the line; at intervals
coal fires were blazing and smoking in braziers.  The
train further slackened speed.  Philip Pennycomequick
could see that there was much water covering the
country.  The train had now entered the Valley of
the Keld, and was ascending it.

What a nuisance it would be were he stopped and
obliged to tarry for some hours till the road was
repaired, tarry in cold and darkness, without a lamp in
his carriage, caged in with that pretty, coquettish,
dangerous minx, and with no third party present to
serve as his protector.

The train came to a standstill.  The young lady was
uneasy.  She lowered the glass and leaned out; and
looked along the line at the flaming fires, the
half-illumined navvies, the steam trailing away and mingling
with the smoke, the fog that gathered over the
inundated fields.  A raw wind blew in at the open
window.

Then up came the guard, sharply turned the handle
and threw open the door.  'Everyone get out.  The
train can go no further.'

All the passengers were obliged to descend, dragging
with them their rugs and bags, their cloaks, umbrellas,
novels, buns and oranges—all the piles of *impedimenta*
with which travellers encumber themselves on a
journey, trusting to the prompt assistance of mercenary
porters.

But on this night, away from any station, there
were no porters.  The descent from the carriage was
difficult and dangerous.  It was like clambering down
a ladder of which some of the rungs were broken.  It
was rendered doubly difficult by the darkness in which
it had to be effected, and the difficulty was quadrupled
by the passengers having to scramble down burdened
with their effects.  It was not accordingly performed
in silence, but with screams from women who lost
their footing, and curses and abuses launched against
the Midland from the men.

Mr. Philip was obliged by common humanity to
assist the young lady out of the carriage, and to collect
and help to carry her manifold goods; for the civil
guard was too deeply engaged to attend to her.  He
had received his fee, and was, therefore, naturally
lavishing his attention on others, in an expectant
mood.

Mr. Philip Pennycomequick somewhat ungraciously
advised the companion forced on his protection to
follow him.  He engaged to see her across the
dangerous piece of road and return for those of her
wraps and parcels which he and she were together
unable to transport to the train awaiting them beyond
the faulty portion of the line.

The walk was most uncomfortable.  It was properly
not a walk but a continuous stumble.  To step in the
dark from sleeper to sleeper was not easy, and the
flicker of the coal fires dazzled and confused rather
than assisted the sight.  The wind, moreover, carried
the dense smoke in volumes across the line, suddenly
enveloping and half stifling, but wholly blinding for
the moment, the unhappy, bewildered flounderers who
passed through it.  In front glared the two red lights
of an engine that waited with carriages to receive the
dislodged passengers.

'You must take my arm,' said Mr. Philip to his
companion.  'This is really dreadful.  One old lady
has, I believe, dislocated her ankle.  I hope she will
make a claim on the company.'

'Oh, dear!  And Salome!—what will she say?'

'Salome?'

'Yes—my sister, my twin-sister.'

When Philip Pennycomequick did finally reach his
destination, it was with a mind that prejudged Salome,
and was prejudiced against her.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`ARRIVAL`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX.


.. class:: center medium bold

   ARRIVAL.

.. vspace:: 2

'What—no cabs?  No cabs?' asked Philip
Pennycomequick, on reaching the Mergatroyd Station.
'What a place this must be to call itself a town and
have no convenience for those who arrive at it, to
transport them to their destinations.  Can one hire a
wheelbarrow?'  Philip was, as may be seen, testy.
The train had not deposited him at the station till
past seven, instead of four-eighteen, when due.  He
had been thrown into involuntary association with a
young lady, whom he had set down to belong to
a category of females that are to be kept at a
distance—that is, those who, as he contemptuously described
them, run after a hearth-brush because it wears
whiskers.  He misjudged Janet Baynes, as men of a
suspicious temper are liable to misjudge simple and
frank natures.  There are men who, the more forward
a woman is, so much the more do they recoil into
their shells, to glower out of them at those who
approach them, like a mastiff from its kennel, with a
growl and a display of teeth.

Who this woman was with whom he had been
thrown, Philip only knew from what she had told
him and the guard.  He was aware that she was the
sister of his correspondent Salome, but he was
ignorant as before who Salome was, less only the fact
that she must be young, because the twin-sister of his
fellow-passenger.  If like her—and twins are usually
alike—she must be pretty, and as mental characteristics
follow the features, like her coquettish, and
ready to make love—as Philip put it—to the
hearth-brush because of its whiskers.

At the station he had reckoned on finding a cab
and driving to his destination, whilst his companion
went off in another.  But to his vexation he found
that there were no cabs.  He must engage a porter
to carry his traps on a truck.  He resolved to go first
of all to his uncle's house and inquire whether he was
lost in the flood and if he had been heard of since the
telegram was despatched.  Then he would put up for
the night at the inn, and his future movements would
be regulated by the information he received.

'By the way,' said he to the porter, 'I suppose you
have a decent hotel in the place, though it is deficient
in cabs.'

'There are three inns,' answered the man, 'but all
full as an excursion train on Good Friday.  The poor
folks that ha' been turned o't haase by t' water ha'
been ta'en into 'em.  Where art 'a going, sir?'

'To the house of Mr. Pennycomequick,' answered
Philip.

'Right you are,' said the porter, 'Mrs. Baynes is
also boun' to t'same, and I can take t'whole
bag-o'-tricks on one barrow.'

Philip turned to Janet Baynes with an impatient
gesture, which with all his self-control he was unable
to repress, and said:

'You are going to Mr. Pennycomequick's, I
understand, madam.'

There was no avoiding it.  The tiresome association
could not be dissolved at once, it threatened to
continue.

'Yes,' answered Janet, 'I spent all my life there
till I married, and my mother and sister are there
now.'

'Not relations of Mr. Pennycomequick?'

'Oh dear no.  He has been like a father to us,
because our own father was killed by an accident in
his service.  That was a long time ago, I cannot
remember the circumstance.  Ever since then we
have lived in the house.  We always call Mr. Pennycomequick
our uncle, but he is no real relative.'

Philip strode forward, ahead of the porter; from
the station the road ascended at a steep gradient, and
the man came on slowly with the united luggage.
Janet quickened her pace, and came up beside Philip.

It was like being beset by a fly in summer.

'Are you going to Mr. Pennycomequick's?' asked
Janet, panting.  She was a little out of breath with
walking to keep up with her companion.

'Yes.'

'I am not strong.  My breath goes if I hurry,
especially in going up-hill.'

'Then, madam, let me entreat you to spare your
lungs and relax your pace.'

'But then—we shall be separated, and we are going
to the same house.  Would you mind going just a
wee bit slower?'

Philip complied without a word.

He questioned for a moment whether he should
inform his fellow-passenger of the news that the
uncle was lost.  But he reflected that he knew nothing
for certain.  The message he had received could
hardly have been couched in vaguer terms.  It was
quite possible that his explanation of it was false; it
was also not at all improbable that the alarm given
was premature.  If Salome were like the young
scatter-brain walking at his side, she would be
precisely the person to cry 'Wolf!' at the first alarm.
He might have inquired of the porter whether
Mr. Pennycomequick had met with an accident, or whether
anything had occurred at his house; but he preferred
to wait, partly because he was too proud to inquire of
a porter, and partly because he was given no
opportunity to questioning him out of hearing of his
companion.

'Are you going to stay at uncle's?' asked Janet.

'I really am unable to answer that question.'

'But, as you have heard, all the inns are full.  Have
you any friends in Mergatroyd?'

'Relations—not friends.'

'What a delightful thing it must be to have plenty
of relations!  Salome and I have none.  We were
quite alone in the world, except for mother.  Now I
have, of course, all my husband's kindred, but Salome
has no one.'

There was no shaking this girl off.  She stuck to
him as a burr.  In all probability he would be housed
at his uncle's that night, and so he would be brought
into further contact with this person.  She herself
was eminently distasteful to him—but a sister
unmarried!—Philip resolved to redouble his testy
manner towards her.  He would return to Nottingham
on the morrow, unless absolutely compelled by
circumstances to remain.

There was—there always had been—a vein of
suspicion, breeding reserve of manner, in the
Pennycomequick family.  It was found chiefly in the
men—in the women, that is, in Mrs. Sidebottom, it
took a different form.  As forces are co-related,
so are tempers.  It chilled their manner, it made
them inapt to form friendships, and uncongenial in
society.

Uncle Jeremiah had it, and that strongly.  Towards
his own kin he had never relaxed.  The conduct
of neither sister nor brother had been such as to inspire
confidence.  To the last he was hard, icy and
suspicious towards them.  But the warm breath of the
little children had melted the frost in his domestic
relations, and their conspicuous guilelessness had
disarmed his suspicions.  To them he had been a very
different man to what he had appeared to others.
Philip's father had behaved foolishly, withdrawn his
money from the firm, and in a fit of credulity had
allowed himself to be swindled out of it by a
smooth-tongued impostor, Schofield.  That loss had reduced
him to poverty, and had soured him.  Thenceforth,
the Pennycomequick characteristics which had been
in abeyance in Nicholas ripened rapidly.  Philip had
learned from his father to regard the bulk of mankind
as in league against the few, as characterized by
self-seeking, and as unreliable in all that affected their
own interests.  Philip was aged thirty-four, but looked
older than his years.  The experiences he had passed
through had prematurely fixed the direction of his
tendencies, and had warped his views of life.  In
photography, impressions made on the sensitive plate
rapidly fade unless dipped in a solution which gives
them permanency.  So is it with the incidents of life;
pictures are formed in our brains and pass unnoticed,
unregistered, till something occurs to fix them.  The
great misfortune which had befallen his father had
acted as such a bath to Philip's mind, leaving on it
the indelible impression of universal rascality.  He
could remember the comfort in which his childhood
had been passed, and the grinding penury afterwards.
Obliged to work for his livelihood, he had chosen the
law, a profession ill calculated to counteract the
tendency in him, inherent, and already declared, to
regard all men as knaves or fools.

Nicholas's last years had been spent in useless
repinings over his loss, in grumbling at his brother
and sister for not coming to his aid, and in hatred of
the man who had ruined him.

He had been too proud to appeal to his half-brother,
and was angry with Jeremiah for not coming forward
unsolicited to relieve him.  Had he gone to his
brother, even written to him to express regret for his
injudicious conduct, it is probable, nay, certain, that
Jeremiah would have forgiven him; but the false
pride of Nicholas prevented him taking this step, and
Jeremiah would not move to his assistance without it.

Thus a mutual misunderstanding kept the half-brothers
apart, and embittered their minds against
each other.

Mrs. Sidebottom had been of as little help to her
brother as had Jeremiah.  Mr. Sidebottom had, indeed,
taken Philip into his office as a clerk, but no
Sidebottom contributions came to relieve the necessities
of Nicholas.  His sister was profuse in regrets and
apologies for not doing anything for him, always
weighting these apologies with a lecture on his
wrong-doing in withdrawing his money from the firm; but
she gave him nothing save empty words.  Nicholas
entertained but little love for his sister; and Philip
grew up with small respect for his aunt.

By the time that Philip had reached the Pennycomequick
door he was in as unamiable a temper as
he had ever been during the thirty-four years of his
life.  He was damp, hungry, cold.  He more than
half believed that he had been brought to Mergatroyd
on a fool's errand; he did not know where he was to
sleep that night, and what he would get to eat.  The
inns, as he had heard, were full; no more trains would
leave the station that night, owing to the condition of
the line; there was not a cab in Mergatroyd, so that
he could escape from the place only on foot, and that
without his baggage.

Moreover, he was in doubt with what face he could
appear before his uncle, were Jeremiah at home.  His
uncle, whom he had only once seen, and that at his
father's funeral, had on that occasion shown him not
the smallest inclination to make his acquaintance.
Would it not appear as if, on the first rumour or
suspicion of disaster, he had rushed to the spot without
decorum, to seize on his uncle's estate, and with no
better excuse than a vague telegram received from an
irresponsible girl.

'Here is the door,' said the porter.  Janet ran up
the steps with alacrity and knocked.

Mr. Pennycomequick's house was formal as himself,
of red brick without ornament; half-way up the hill,
with its back to the road, and without even that
mellow charm which old red brick assumes in the
country, for this was red begrimed with soot, on which
not a lichen or patch of moss would grow.  The ugly
back was towards the street; the uglier face looked
into a garden that ran down the slope to the valley
bottom.  There were two square-headed windows on
one side of the door, two similar windows on the other
side, over each an exactly similar window, and over
the door one with a round head that doubtless lighted
the staircase.  Above these was another story similar,
but the windows less tall.  Who does not know this
kind of house?  They are scattered in hundreds of
thousands over the face of England, and who, with a
grain of taste, would not a thousand times rather
snuggle into a thatched cottage, with windows broad
and low, winking out from under the brown eaves?
Not if one lived to the age of the Wandering Jew
could one become attached to one of these gaunt,
formal, dingy mansions.  The door was opened in
answer to the bell and knocker, and Philip, after
paying the railway porter, requested him to wait five
minutes till he ascertained whether he was to spend
the night there or go in quest of a bed.

Then he entered the gas-lighted hall, to see his
travelling comrade locked in the arms of her sister, a
young girl of the same age and height and general
appearance, with the same red-gold hair, and the same
clear complexion, who was flushed with excitement at
meeting Janet.

A pretty sight it was—those lovely twins clinging
to each other in an ecstasy of delight, laughing,
kissing, fondling each other, with the tears of exuberant
pleasure streaming over their cheeks.

But Philip remained unmoved or contemptuous.
He saw his Aunt Louisa and Captain Lambert on the
stairs.

'I know well what this bit of pantomime means,'
thought Philip.  'The girls are showing off before two
young men.'

'What!  Philip here!' exclaimed Mrs. Sidebottom,
who hastened down the stairs to greet her nephew.
'Oh, Philip! how good of you to come!  I made sure
you would the moment you heard the news, and yet
I was not sure but that you would shrink from it—as
you were on such bad terms with your uncle.  I am
so glad you have arrived to assist us with your
professional advice.  This is a sad, a very sad
case.'

'Mr. Philip Pennycomequick!' exclaimed Salome
disengaging herself from her sister's embrace and
standing before the young man.  She lifted her great
searching eyes to his face and studied it, then dropped
them, ashamed at her audacity, and perhaps a little
disappointed at what she had seen; for the moment
he came towards her he assumed his most
uncompromising expression.

'I beg your pardon,' said he stiffly.  'Whom have
I the honour——'

'I am Salome Cusworth, who telegraphed to you.'

He bowed haughtily.  'I am glad.'

Then Salome, abashed, caught her sister's hand, and
said to Mrs. Sidebottom: 'Oh, please, let me take
Janet away first—she knows nothing, and you must
allow me to break the terrible news to her myself.'

She drew her sister aside, with her arm round her
waist, into a room on the ground-floor, where she
could tell her privately the great sorrow that had
fallen on them.

Philip looked inquiringly after them, and when the
door had closed, said to his aunt: 'Who are they?
What are they?'

'You may well ask,' said Mrs. Sidebottom.  'They
are the petted and spoiled daughters of your uncle's
housekeeper.  He has brought them up beyond their
station, and now they will be unfit to do anything
when turned adrift.'

'But,' said Philip, 'one is married.'

'Oh yes, of course.  She has caught her man.  I
know nothing of her husband, or how he was tackled.
I dare say, however, he is respectable, but only a
manufacturer.'

'And the unmarried sister is Salome.'

'Yes, an officious pert piece of goods.'

'Like her sister.'

'Now,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'what are you going
to do?  In this house you cannot well be
accommodated.  There are rooms—but everyone's head is
turned, servants and all.  No toast sent up at
breakfast.  Your best way will be to go to Lambert's
quarters in my house.  Here you would be amidst a
party of tedious women——'

'I want to be as far as possible from those young
ladies,' said Philip.  'One has been in the train with
me for many hours, and has worried me beyond
endurance.'

'Certainly.  Go with Lambert.  In my house you
will be in Liberty Hall, where you can smoke——'

'I never smoke.'

'And drink whisky and water.'

'I take nothing at night.'

'And talk over social scandals.'

'In which I have not the smallest interest.'

'Well, well, we dine in a quarter of an hour here.
You will stay.  No dressing, quite *en famille*.  Fried
soles, a joint and cutlets *à la tomato*.'

'Thank you.  I accept; for the inns, I learn, are
quite full.  I will give orders to the porter to take my
traps over to your house, and then, perhaps, you will
give me ten minutes to tell me what has happened
to my uncle, for I am still in the dark respecting him.'

'So are we all,' said Lambert.

From the room into which Salome had drawn her
sister, and which was the sitting-room of their
invalided mother, could be heard the sobbing of Janet
and the broken accents of the old lady and Salome.
There were tears in all their voices.

Then there flashed through the mind of Philip
Pennycomequick the thought that, here without in the
hall, were the sister and two nephews of the lost man,
who had been as yet scarcely alluded to by them, but
he had been told about what there was for dinner;
whereas, divided from them by a door were three
persons unconnected with Uncle Jeremiah, who were
moved by his death or disappearance as by that of a
dear connection.

Philip, however, said nothing.  He turned to the
front door to speak to the porter, when a violent ring
at the bell called his attention to another man who
stood on the steps.

'Beg pardon,' said this man, 'where is Miss Salome?'

'I will call her,' said Philip.  'Who shall I say
wants to speak to her?'

'The night-watchman, Fanshawe.'

'Oh, Mr. Fanshawe!' exclaimed Mrs. Sidebottom,
running through the hall to him, 'has he been found?'

'No such luck,' was the answer.

Philip tapped at the door through which the girls
had retreated, and Salome opened it.  Her eyes were
glittering with tears, and her cheeks were moist.

'There is a fellow called Fanshawe wants a word
with you,' said Philip.

The girl advanced through the hall to the door.

'Oh, miss!' said the night-watchman,'some o' us
chaps aren't content to let matters stand as they be.
For sewer t'owd gen'lman be somewheer, and we're
boun' to mak' anither sarch.  We thowt tha'd like to
knaw.'

'But—where?'

'I't canal.'

'How?—By night?'

'For sewer.  Wi' a loaf o' cake and a can'l.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WITH A LOAF AND A CANDLE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X.


.. class:: center medium bold

   WITH A LOAF AND A CANDLE.

.. vspace:: 2

With a loaf and a candle!

We live in the oldest world, where men labour to
do the simplest things in the most roundabout way,
and to put whatever they come in contact with to
purposes other than those intended.  We have seen
champagne bottles used as candlesticks, and a bonnet
given to a cat to kitten in, and a preacher haranguing
in a theatre, and a pugilist occupying a pulpit, women
dressing and cutting their hair like men, and men
affecting girlish ways; members of Parliament
exhibiting themselves as blackguards, and leaders of the
people leading them to political suicide, as Jack the
Giant-killer made Giant Gruff-me-gruff rip himself
open.  Those who have feet to walk on, affect
standing on their heads, and those who have heads to
reason with, think with their stomachs.

With a loaf and a candle!

Astronomers tell us that there are as many suns
visible in the firmament as there are human beings in
Great Britain—about thirty millions, and that each of
these suns is presumably the centre of a system of
worlds like our own, and perhaps peopled by beings
of like calibre to ourselves.  Let us say that each sun
is given ten planets, that makes three hundred millions
of worlds, having in them the same proportion of
thoughtless, unreasoning beings as in this globe with
which we are familiar.  Who would have supposed that
there was such a diffusion of silliness, wrongheadedness,
and blunder brains diffused through space.

With a loaf and a candle!

It is the fashion to believe in evolution, to hold that
mankind is developed through a long progression from
something as inarticulate as frog spawn.  And we
believe it, because we see so much of this inchoate,
inorganic spawn still taking the place of brain in the
heads of humanity.

Men have grown and become vertebrate and have
branched into members, but the spawn still lingers as
it was in the cells of the skull.

With a loaf and a candle!

Full a score of in-the-main not unintelligent men
were about to search for the body of their master with
a loaf of cake and a candle.[#]  How a loaf and a candle
should conduce towards the finding the object they
sought, it is not easy to see.  What there was in the
nature of the loaf or candle to make each appropriate
to the purpose, not one of these in-the-main not
unintelligent men asked.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[#] In Yorkshire, cake is white bread: bread is
oatcake—Haver-bread.

.. vspace:: 2

The upper reach of the canal had drained itself
away, but at the locks the rush of water had furrowed
the bed, pent in as it had been between the walls,
and had left deep pools.  Below the locks the face of
the land was flat, the fall slight, and there the canal
was brimming, and much of the water that had
overflowed still lay about in the fields.  This portion of
the Keld basin went by the name of the Fleet, which
indicated a time, perhaps not remote, when it had
been a waste of ooze and water channels, sometimes
overflowed and sometimes dry.

The whole of the drained canal bed had been
searched between the lock and the bridge that carried
the road across the river and canal, a distance of
three-quarters of a mile, but without success.  The
men who intended prosecuting the search in their
own fashion were clustered below the shattered locks.
But the gathering did not consist of men only.  With
them were some mill-girls from a factory on the slope
that had not stopped, not having been affected by
the flood.  They wore scarlet or pink kerchiefs over
their heads, pinned under the chin, and plain white
pinafores to protect their dresses at their work from
the oil, a custom as picturesque and becoming as
convenient.  These girls were there, because it was an
unsuitable place for them—no other season will suffice
to explain their presence.  But women, water and
wind, will penetrate everywhere.

Mrs. Sidebottom and Salome were also on the canal
bank.  They had no faith in the experiment about to
be tried, but each for different reasons thought it
expedient to be present.  Salome would not be away,
so intense was her anxiety about the fate of Uncle
Jeremiah, and Mrs. Sidebottom would be there so as
not to seem indifferent.  Janet, tired from her long
journey, and not strong, did not come out; she
remained with her mother.  Philip and Lambert
Pennycomequick were there as a duty; a disagreeable and
onerous duty the captain considered it, because it
spoiled his dinner.

A loaf and a candle!

A good round loaf of baker's bread had a hole
scooped out of it, and into this hole a tallow candle
was thrust.  The candle was lighted and sent adrift
on the water of the canal.

The night was dark, the moon did not rise for
another hour or more.  All the mills in the valley
were dark.  Not only had they been brought to a
standstill by the flood, but the main of the gas was
broken.  This was the cause of the eclipse likewise
of the lamps on the road.  The water had left the
cottage of the lock-keeper, and the bodies of the dead
man and his wife had been found and laid on the
sodden bed.  A yellow glimmer shone out of the
window, for a candle burnt there, and a fire had been
kindled.  An old woman, a relation, driven from her
home by the water, was sitting there, trying to coax
a fire to keep in, in the wet and rusty grate, and
supplying herself with gin to keep out the chill from
her bones.

The town on the hill flank twinkled with lights, and
just beyond the ridge pulsated the auroral flicker from
the distant foundries.  The lamps on the railway
shone green and red.  Some of those engaged in the
search bore lanterns.

The cluster on the embankment with the moving
lights, the occasional flash over a red kerchief or a
white pinafore and the reflections in the water, united
to form a striking picture.

'Si' there,' said one man, 't'leet' (light) 'be headin'
agin t' stream.'

'There's no stream flowing,' said another.

'There owt ta be, and there is for sewer.  T'can'l
be gan'in up t' course.'

'Because t' wind be blawing frae t' east.'

It was true; the loaf of bread which had been placed
in the water, instead of taking a seaward direction
with the natural fall of the current, was swimming
slowly but perceptibly upwards.  The yellow flame of
the candle was turned towards the locks, showing in
which direction the wind set, and explaining naturally
the phenomenon.  The current was so slight that the
wind acting on the loaf had power to overcome it.

'Sho's travellin' upwards,' said the first speaker.
'Sho's boun to seek him aht.'

Into the canal suddenly fell a mass of undermined
bank, making a splash and sending the floating light,
gyrating and dancing as the wavelets formed.  One of
the mill-girls, going too near the edge, had trodden on
the loosened soil, and nearly fell in herself, provoking
a laugh and a reprimand.

'Mind what tha'rt aboot, lass,' shouted one of the men.

'If tha falls in I'm none bound to hug thee aht.'

'I can crawl aht wi'out thy hugging, Bill,' answered
the girl promptly.

'Eh!' said another, 'Effie, for sewer thou'rt not
bawn to be drowned.'

Some byplay went on, a half romp, in the rear,
between a young woolcomber and a girl reeler.

'Na then,' shouted the night-watch, 'we're none
come aht for laikes' (games), 'and if you're gan'ing
to remain you must be quiet.'

The incongruity of their behaviour with the gravity
of the occasion struck the young people, and they
desisted.

What had become of the refuge hut?

Curiously enough, till this moment no one had
noticed its disappearance, perhaps because of the
completeness with which it had been effaced.  No
sooner had the stream penetrated to its interior than
it had collapsed, and every brick and slate and rafter
had been swept away from the platform it had
occupied.

The policeman had joined the party, carrying a
bull's-eye lantern.

One of the men had provided grappling-irons,
always kept near the bridge, because accidents
were not uncommon in the canal and the river;
drunken men fell in, children in play got pushed
over, girls in paroxysms of despair threw
themselves in.

The loaf with the light had now got above the spot
where the bank had fallen in, and the ripple aided
the wind in carrying it within the locks.

'Sho's got an idee!'

'Wheer?  I't crust or i't crumb?'

'Sho's makin' reet ahead for t' deepest hoyle (hole)
in all t' canal.'

It was so, the loaf had entered within the walls.

Every now and then, on a ripple, the bread leaped
and the flame wavered as a banner.  The draught
snuffed the glowing wick, and carried some of the
red sparks away and extinguished them in the black
water.

The searchers now congregated on the paved platform,
and looked timorously yet inquisitively into the
gulf where lay the pool dark as ink.  The candle-flame
faintly irradiated the enclosing walls, and
painted a streak of fire on the surface of the water.

When thus enclosed, the movements of the loaf
were such as to give colour to the superstition, for it
careered in circles, then struck across the canal, went
back as if disappointed in its quest, ran up the course,
and then turned and went down the enclosed space,
and finally came forth from between the walls.  There
it halted a moment, and danced and careened over,
and righted itself again, as relaxing from its search,
and tossing the flame in a defiant manner, as if it was
disgusted with its work and resolved no longer to
prosecute the inquiry.  But a minute later it came
apparently to a better mind, the flame became steadier,
it recommenced its gyrations, described a loop, and
suddenly became stationary at a spot a little short of
half way across the canal.

The strange conduct of the loaf was in reality caused
by the currents and revolutions of the water, but as
these were unperceived by those who looked on, they
became impressed with the conviction that the loaf
was really animated by a mysterious occult power
that impelled it to fulfil the task allotted to it.

All now stood hushed for full five minutes, almost
breathless, none stirring, every eye directed to the
light, to see whether it would remain where it was, or
recommence its wanderings.

Then the night-watch exclaimed:

'The moon!'

All turned to the east, and saw the orb rise red
above a wooded hill.  The darkness was at once
sensibly relieved.

'Naw then!' shouted Bill; 'in wi't irons, just at
place wheer t' can'l stands.'

The grapplers were cast in, and caught immediately
in some object near the surface.  The men drew at
the ropes, and the waters gurgled and were disturbed
about the loaf, producing a broad commotion.  The
loaf leaped, turned over, and the light was extinguished.
It had accomplished its task.

'Whatever can't be?' asked one of the men.  'Sho
might be a coil (coal) barge sunk i' t' canal.  Sho's
sae heavy.'

'Stay,' said the night-watch.  'T' water for sewer
ain't deep here, nobbut up to t' armpits.  Whativer it
be, 'tis this at ha' caught and held t' cake.  Ah fancy
t' top o' t' concarn is just belaw t' surface.  If some
o' you chaps'll help, I'll get in, and together we'll hug
it out.'

Two or three volunteered, and after much wading
and splashing a cumbrous article was heaved out of
the water, but not by three or four men, for several
more, taunted by the mill-lasses, went in to the
assistance of the first volunteers.

'Why,' rose in general exclamation, 'sho's a pi-ano!'

This discovery provoked a laugh, in which all shared.

'How iver could a piano ha' got there?' was
asked.

'That beats a',' shouted another, 'that t' loaf and
can'l shud tell where a piano lay drounded.'

'T' instrument 'ud sarve to produce a necessary
accompaniment to some o' thy songs, Joe.'

The moon had risen by this time sufficiently to
transform the whole sheet of water into one of light.

The bell of Mergatroyd Church-tower began to toll
for evensong.  Suddenly the laughter, the jokes, the
exclamations of wonder died away—for something
was seen that had risen from the depths, disturbed by
the commotion of the water and mud when the piano
was extracted.  And see! the loaf with its
extinguished candle was swimming towards the object.  It
reached it; it capered about it; it ran round it; and
then attached itself to it.

'What was it?'

The glassy, silvery surface of the water was broken
by it in several places.

Then there rushed by along the line a train, with
the engine shrieking and shrieking continuously to
give warning to workers on the embankment that it
was coming.  And that shriek so wrought on the
nerves of some of the girls present that they screamed
also in sudden terror, for, though no one answered the
question what that blot on the canal surface was,
everyone knew.

All stood motionless again, and waiting till the
scream of the train was lost, and then, in silence, two
men waded into the water, reached the object, drew
it after them to the bank, and with the assistance of
others raised it and laid it on the towpath.

Then the group drew towards it, after a momentary
hesitation and recoil, and the policeman passed the
ray of his bull's-eye lantern up and down it.

The question could no longer be asked, 'What was it?'

It must now be put, 'Who is it?'

Yes—who?  For the body just recovered was
defaced almost past recognition.

'Whoever he may be,' said the policeman, 'we
must find out by his cloas, for his face and head be
that mashed and mutilated—'tis a pictur'.  For cartain
the piano must ha' fallen on him, that is, on his head,
and left not a feature to recognise.'

'And the clothing is queer,' observed the night-watch.

It was so.  The body recovered was partially
naked, with bare legs and feet, and wore nothing
more than a nightshirt and a great-coat.

'Stand back,' ordered the policeman.  'Let Miss
Cusworth come for'ard.'

And he stooped and spread his hankerchief over
the face.  There was no need for her to see that.

Salome stepped forward.  She was shuddering, but
spoke with composure, and not till she had thoroughly
studied the corpse at her feet.

'This cannot be Mr. Pennycomequick,' she said;
'he was dressed in a black suit.  He had been out to
dinner.'

'I beg your pardon,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, who had
pushed forward; 'he was not dressed.  I went into
the bedroom as soon as I knew he was lost, and found
that his dress-clothes were there and the bed disturbed.'

The policeman, kneeling, examined the pockets.
From that in the breast of the overcoat he drew forth
a card-case, and held it close to the lantern.

Salome said immediately:

'That is Mr. Pennycomequick's card-case.'

'And his cards are in it,' added the policeman.

Salome looked again attentively at the body.

'That is Mr. Pennycomequick's overcoat.  I know
it—but that cannot be Mr. Pennycomequick wearing it.'

Then, overcome with the horror of the scene,
Salome shrank back.

The policeman had now extracted a letter from the
pocket; the address was blotted, but after a little
examination could be made out, 'J. Pennycomequick,
Esq., manufacturer, Mergatroyd.'

'It is strange that he should be without his boots,'
said the policeman.

'Not at all,' said Mrs. Sidebottom.  'Anyone but a
fool, as soon as he is in the water, kicks them off, as
they fill and drag him down.  I can swear to the
identity—that is my brother.  Remove the body to
the house.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`EXPECTATION`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   EXPECTATION.

.. vspace:: 2

As Philip Pennycomequick came next day to the
house of mourning—mourning, because three
dress-makers were engaged in making it—he saw that all
the blinds were down.  In the hall he met Salome,
who was there, evidently awaiting him.  She looked
ill and anxious, and her eyes were bright with a
feverish lustre.  She had not slept for two nights.

The extraordinary delicacy of her complexion gave
her a look as of the finest porcelain, a transparency
through which her doubting, disturbed and eager
spirit was visible.  Her pallor contrasted startlingly
at this time with the gorgeous tone of her luxuriant
hair.  Her eyes were large, the irises distended as
though touched with belladonna, and Philip felt his
mistrust fall away from off him, as in some fairy tale
the armour of a knight loosens itself, drops, and
leaves him unharnessed before an enchantress.  But
the enchantment which dissolved his panoply of
suspicion was an innocent one, it was the manifestation
of real suffering.  He could see that the girl was
rendered almost ill by the mental distress caused by
the loss of her friend and guardian.  That she had
loved him, and loved him with an innocent, unselfish
affection, seemed to him undoubted.

'I beg your pardon for waylaying you, Mr. Pennycomequick,'
she said, in a timid voice; one white hand
lifted, with an uncertain shake in it, touching her lips.
'But I very much desire to have a word with you in
private before you go upstairs to Mrs. Sidebottom.'

'I'm at your service.'

She led the way into the breakfast-room, recently
cleared of the meal.  She went to the window, and
stood between the glass and the curtain, with her left
hand entangled among the cords of the Venetian
blind.  In her nervousness it was necessary for her to
take hold of something.  Her delicate fingers ran up
the green strings and played with them, as though they
were the strings of a harp on which she was practising,
and, strangely enough, Philip felt within him every
touch; when she twanged a cord, some fibre in him
quivered responsive, and was only lulled when she
clasped the string and stopped its vibration.

A faint tinge rose in her white face to the
cheek-bones and temples, touching them with more than
colour, an apparent inner light, like the Alpine glow
after sundown on the white head of the Jungfrau.  As
she spoke she did not look at Philip, but with eyes
modestly lowered on the ground, or out of the window
looking sideways down the street.

'What I wished to say to you, Mr. Pennycomequick,
will soon be said.  I shall not detain you long.  I am
sorry to differ from Mrs. Sidebottom, but I cannot
share her conviction that the body found last night
is that of your uncle.'

'You do not dispute that he is dead?'

'No,' she sighed; 'I think there can be no question
about that.'

'Or that he was last seen on the canal bank at
no great distance from where the discovery was
made?'

'No,' she said, and her fingers unconsciously played
on the blind cords the time of the melody in Chopin's
'Marche Funèbre.'

'Why do you say no?'

'Mr. Pennycomequick was full dressed when he
went out—that is to say, he had on his great-coat and
his boots and—in fact it was not possible that he could
be discovered in the condition in which the body
recovered from the canal was found.'

'It is, of course, difficult to account for it, but not
impossible.  My aunt declares that she went up to the
bedroom of my uncle the same night, found the bed
disturbed, and the dress clothes, or some of them, on
the chair.  She concludes that he pulled on his
overcoat and went out half-dressed, that he got caught by
the water somewhere in some place of temporary
refuge, and saw that his only chance of escape was to
strip and swim.  That he drew on his great coat
again as a protection against the cold, till the proper
moment came for him to make the plunge—but she
concludes that he never did start to swim, either his
courage failed him, or the flood rose too rapidly and
carried him away before he had removed the
overcoat.  This may be an over-ingenious explanation,
nevertheless it is an explanation that accounts for all.'

'Not for all—the body is not that of
Mr. Pennycomequick.'  Salome spoke decidedly, and as she
spoke her hand gripped the strings hard.

Philip stood by the table, resting his hand on it.
The morning light fell strong on her face, and illumined
her auburn hair.  Philip took occasion to examine
her countenance more closely than had been possible
before.  She was like her sister in build, in feature
and in tone of colour, indeed strikingly like her, but
in that only—certainly, Philip thought, in that only.

All at once she looked up and met Philip's eyes.

'No—a thousand times no,' she said.  'That is
not uncle.  He was brought here because Mrs. Sidebottom
desired it, and is convinced of the identity.
No objection that I can raise disturbs her.  I thought
that possibly, last night, I might have judged on
insufficient evidence, and so I went this morning into
the room to look at the corpse.  Mrs. Sidebottom had
sent last night for women who attended to it and it
was laid out in the spare room.' She began to tremble
now as she spoke, and her fingers played a rapid
movement on the blind cords.  'I had made up my
mind to look at him, and I did.'

She paused, to recover the control that was fast
deserting her, as the delicate glow of colour in her
face had now left it.  'It is not my uncle.  I looked
at his hands.  The head is—is not to be seen, nothing
is distinguishable there—but the hands are not those
of Mr. Pennycomequick.'

'In what does the difference consist?'

'I cannot describe it.  I knew his hands well.  He
often let me take them in mine when I sat on the
stool at his feet by the fire, and I have kissed
them.'  The clear tears rose in her eyes and rolled down her
cheeks.  'I am quite sure—if those had been his
dear hands that I saw on the bed this morning, I
would have kissed them again, but I could not.' She
shook her head, and shook away the drops from her
cheeks.  'No—I could not.'

'Miss Cusworth,' said Philip, 'you are perhaps
unaware of the great alteration that is produced by
immersion for many hours.'

'They are not his hands.  That is not uncle.'

She was so conspicuously sincere, so sincerely
distressed, that Philip relaxed his cold manner towards
her, and said in a gentle tone:

'Did my uncle wear a ring?  There was none on
the hands of the man found yesterday.'

'No; he wore no ring.'

'With what did he seal his letters?'

'Oh! he had a brass seal with his initials on it,
with a handle, that was in his pen-tray.  He used to
joke about it, and say he was a J.P. without the
Queen's commission.'

'For my own part,' said Philip, 'I am beyond
forming an opinion, as I have seen my uncle but once
since I was a boy, and then under circumstances
precluding exact observation.'

Salome said nothing to this, but heaved a long
breath.  Presently Philip said:

'Your mother—has she been taken upstairs?'

'Oh no!' exclaimed Salome, excited as by a fresh
terror.  'You do not know my mother.  She has
heart complaint, and we have to be most careful not
unduly to excite and alarm her.  She has suffered
much on account of what has taken place; and the
shock of seeing——'  She shivered.  'It cannot be.'

'And your sister?'

'She turned faint when brought to the door, and
I could not persuade her to enter.  She has been
much tried by the German invasion of France, and
her hurried journey.'

'Is there anything further you have to say?'

'No; Mrs. Sidebottom is wrong, that is all.'

Philip withdrew.

The girl had gained in his estimation.  There was
strength in her such as lacked in her sister.  She
must have had courage and determination to go by
herself into the room where lay the mutilated corpse,
and she had formed her own opinion, independently,
and held to it with a firmness there was no breaking
down.

Philip ascended the stairs thoughtfully.  It had
seemed to him at the time that his aunt had rushed
at identification with undue precipitation; still, she
was the sister of Uncle Jeremiah, and therefore better
capable than anyone else.  Now he was himself
uncertain.

When he entered the study where Mrs. Sidebottom
was, she saluted him with:

'Well, so you have had your interview with Salome.
She has been hanging about the hall all the morning
for the purpose of catching you.'

Philip made no reply.  Her light tone jarred on
his feelings, coming as he did from the presence of a
girl full of sadness.

'Has she gained you over to her side?'

'Upon my word, I do not know what to think.'

'Fiddlesticks!' said Mrs. Sidebottom; 'she has
made eyes at you.  Girls with good eyes know
how to use them; they are better advocates than
their tongues.'

'The difficulty to identification seems to me
insuperable.'

'Pshaw!  I have no doubt at all.  He had been
to bed; he went out without his coat and waistcoat.
He was last seen on the canal bank, not so very far
from the place where the corpse was found.  The
body is discovered wearing the great-coat.  I have
told you how I explain that.  I suppose Salome has
made a point to you that the nightshirt was not that of
Uncle Jeremiah?  Her mother looked after his linen.'

'No; she said nothing of that.'

'But I identify the shirt.'

'You, aunt?'

'Yes; it is one I gave him.'

'You—gave him?  An extraordinary present.'

'Not at all.  I was his sister; and I know that an
old bachelor's wardrobe would be in a sad state of
neglect.  I intended to replenish him with linen
altogether.'

Philip was greatly surprised.  He looked fixedly
at his aunt, to make out whether she were speaking
seriously.  She dashed off, however, at once on
another topic.

'That girl,' she said, 'naturally resisted the
conclusions at which I have arrived.'

'Why naturally?'

'Oh, you greenhorn!  Because if it be established
that Jeremiah is dead, out goes the whole Cusworth
brood.  They have lived here and preyed on him so
long that they cannot endure the notion of having to
leave, and will fight tooth and nail against the
establishment of his decease.'

'Not at all.  You misjudge them.  They allow that
he is dead, but disbelieve in the identity of the corpse
found with my uncle who is lost, which is another
matter.'

'Out they shall go,' said Mrs. Sidebottom.

'It is painful for them to leave a house where they
have been happy, and in which the young ladies have
grown up from childhood.'

'Other people have to undergo painful experiences,'
said his aunt; and again, 'Out they go.'

'Not at once.'

'As soon as the funeral is over.'

'But why act with such precipitation?'

'Because I cannot endure them.  Do you
remember the story of the Republican judge, when a
gentleman contended before him for his paternal
acres against a *sans-culotte*, who had appropriated
them?  "These acres," said the plaintiff, "have
belonged to my family for four hundred years."  "High
time," said the judge, "that they should be
transferred to others;" and he gave sentence for the
defendant.  These Cusworths have been in possession
quite long enough.  High time that they should
budge, and make room for me.'

'But you must consider the feelings of the old
lady.  You have no excuse for acting peremptorily.'

'I shall inquire what wage she has received, pay
her a month, and send her off.  That is to say,' added
Mrs. Sidebottom on further consideration, 'I will pay
her as soon as I have got some of Jeremiah's money
out of the bank.'

'And that cannot be touched till his will has been
proved.'

'There is no will.'

'How do you know that?'

'I have searched every drawer, closet, and chest.  I
have looked everywhere.  There is no will.'

'It will be at the lawyers'.'

'Jeremiah never had a lawyer.  That was one of
his fads.'

'Then at the bank.'

'I wrote to the bank the moment I heard of his
death.  I have received an answer.  There is no will
at the bank.'

'There is time enough to discuss this later.'

'No, there is not,' said Mrs. Sidebottom peremptorily.
'The factory must not be allowed to come to
a stand, and the business to drift away.  You have no
claim.'

'That remains to be seen.  If there be no will, I
shall have a claim, and a pretty substantial one.'

'Your father withdrew his share from the concern.
I did not.  I have my interest in the business, and
will see that it be kept up.  Where is Lamb?'

'The captain will be here directly.  Hush!  I hear
him in the hall.'

In another minute, Lambert Pennycomequick
entered the room, very fresh, well dressed, and
pleasant.

'Lamb!' exclaimed his mother, 'there is no will.'

'Then, I suppose,' said the captain, 'we shall have
to take out an administration.  I don't understand
these things myself, but Cousin Philip is here on the
spot to manage for us.'

'If there be no will,' explained Philip, 'you, Aunt
Louisa, as sole surviving sister of Uncle Jeremiah,
will have to act.  You will have to take oath that he
is dead, and that he died intestate.  Then you will
be granted administration as next of kin.  If I had
any doubt about his death, I would enter a *caveat*
and prevent the grant; and then the death would
have to be proved in solemn form in court.  But I
have no doubt that my uncle is dead, though I may
think it an open matter whether the body in the
other room be his.'

'And, if I am granted administration as nearest of
kin, all the property comes to me?' said Mrs. Sidebottom.

'Not so—most certainly.'

'Why not?  I am nearest.  I alone have a stake
in the mill.  Yours was withdrawn long ago.  I am
his sister, you only a half-nephew.'

'For all that, you do not take everything.  I have
my share.'

'Well, if it must be, we will divide into three.  I
take a third in addition to what I have by my
marriage settlement; Lamb has a third, and you the
remainder.'

'Wrong again, aunt.  Lambert is out of the
running.  The estate will be divided between you and
me in equal portions.'

'This is monstrous.  My Lambert is a nephew
every whit as much as you.'

'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.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`SURPRISES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   SURPRISES.

.. vspace:: 2

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.

Philip drew his penknife from his pocket, opened
it, and leisurely cut through the top of the envelope,
extracted the document, and unfolded it.  He glanced
at the heading, and then, with lawyer-like instinct, at
the end, then, with a sharp look of surprise at Salome,
who waited with lowered eyes, he said: 'This is
worthless.  The signature has been torn away.'

'Torn away!' echoed Mrs. Sidebottom.

Salome looked up in astonishment.

'This is a cancelled will,' said Philip.  'It is of no
more value than waste paper.  When do you say
my uncle entrusted it to you?'

'Shortly before he left the house on the night
that he disappeared.  I am quite sure he thought it was
of importance, from his manner towards me in
commending it.  He said it was a trust, an important
trust.'

'Then,' said Philip, 'there is some mystery behind
unsolved.'

'Read it,' urged Mrs. Sidebottom; 'and see if
that will clear it up.'

'I will read it, certainly,' said Philip; 'but it is a
document entirely devoid of legal force.'

Philip began to run his eye over it before reading
aloud.

'Well, upon my word,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'you
are inclined to keep us on tenterhooks.  The will, if
not valid, is still interesting, no doubt.'

'This,' said Philip, in a tone that had harshness in
it, 'this is a most extraordinary document.  It is in
the first place clearly made up from some of those
formulas which are found in popular handbooks; for
aught I know picked out of "Inquire Within for
Everything," or the "Family Save-All."  The last
portion is also clearly taken from no formula at all,
but is the expression of my uncle's peculiar
idiosyncrasies.'

'Well, read it, and pass your comments on it later,'
said Mrs. Sidebottom, shifting her position in her
seat and rearranging her skirts.

Before reading, Philip cast a searching glance at
Salome.  He now seated himself at the table, and
proceeded to read:

'I, Jeremiah Pennycomequick, of Mergatroyd, in
the County of York, and the West Riding of said
county, manufacturer, being in sound health and in
full possession of my faculties, do give, bequeath, and
devise all the real and personal estate of which I shall
be possessed or entitled at the time of my decease,
together with my factory, my house with garden, which
are all leasehold for twenty-one years, together with
all the appurtenances thereof, unto Salome Cusworth,
my adopted daughter, absolutely; chargeable,
however, with such sum annually to be paid out of the
profits, *pro rata*, to my half-sister, Louisa Sidebottom,
as was agreed by her marriage settlement.  And I
further direct and bequeath to my nephew, Lambert
Sidebottom, and to my nephew, Philip Pennycomequick,
to each severally an annuity of one hundred
pounds, to be paid to the said Lambert Sidebottom
and the said Philip Pennycomequick during their
respective lives, in half-quarterly payments.  And I
hereby request my executor to invest a sufficient sum
in the purchase of such annuities out of the moneys
arising from my personal estate.  And I further
appoint the aforesaid Salome Cusworth, my adopted
daughter, sole executrix of my will, and revoke all
former wills by me at any time heretofore made.

'And whereas I have been during the whole course
of my lifetime an enemy to lawsuits, and what little
I leave I desire may not be squandered away on the
gentlemen of the long robe, for whom all the veneration
I have is at a distance, and wishing that there
was more justice and less law in the world, I devise
that should any legatee trouble my executor by going
to law, by commencing any suit of law, in any tribunal
whatsoever, the said person be deprived of the benefit
of the legacy hereby bequeathed.'[#]

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[#] The conclusion of this will is taken verbatim from one
made by a member of the author's family, and proved in the
Prerogative Court of Canterbury (Bedford, f. 167).

.. vspace:: 2

Philip paused, then added: 'The will is dated about
a twelvemonth ago, and is witnessed by Marianne
Cusworth, widow, of Mergatroyd, and John Dale,
surgeon, of Bridlington.'  The silence that had been
maintained during the reading continued unbroken
for a couple of minutes after it was concluded.

The first to break it was the captain, who said: 'A
bad job for me.  I lose my hundred a year, and am
left as before, dependent on my mother's apron-string.'

Philip looked at Salome; she saw by the contraction
of the irises of his eyes that there was aversion
in his heart.

'Miss Cusworth,' he said in metallic tones, 'there
is but one explanation of this extraordinary matter;
this explanation that presents itself to my mind is
not to your credit.  Shall I say what I think, or shall
I forbear?'

'Tell me what your opinion is,' she said quietly.

'This will was drawn up, clearly without advice
and by his own hand, by my uncle, Mr. Jeremiah
Pennycomequick.  What can have induced him to
make such an unjust disposition of his property in
your favour you can best tell.'

'I cannot tell.  It is unjust.  I am glad that the
will is worthless.'

'Sour grapes,' muttered Mrs. Sidebottom to her son.

'That undue influence was exercised, I make no
doubt.  Had this will been perfect, with signature
complete, Mrs. Sidebottom, who risks nothing by the
outrageous proviso in the second part, would have
contested it; this I doubt no more than I doubt that
pressure was brought to bear on an old, and perhaps
feeble man, to make this will.'

Salome's blood flamed up to the roots of her hair.

'After this will had been made and duly attested,
my uncle on thinking the matter over calmly,
considered the injustice he had done, and cancelled his
signature.  He had changed his mind.  You, I presume,
still exercised pressure on him, and to relieve himself
of this, he gave the will into your custody; it was a
deception probably justifiable under the circumstances.
He unquestionably intended to make another will with
quite different provisions, but was prevented by death
from executing his intentions.'

'You think,' exclaimed Salome, her bosom heaving
and her colour changing rapidly—'you think I could
behave so unworthily.'

'I can find no other solution.'

She was cut, wounded to her heart's core.

'You say that the will was given you to keep.
For what reason?  Because it interested you
extraordinarily?'

'Yes,' said Salome, 'so Mr. Pennycomequick said
when he gave it me.'

'But why did he think it necessary to give it you
when he knew it was invalid?  He must have done it
to quiet your importunities.  I can see no other
reason.'

'You wrong me,' said the girl, with pain and
dignity.  'I am sure that he did not know it was
worthless when he handed it to me.  His manner
was so serious.'

'You do not suppose it was tampered with after it
came into your possession?'

'Oh no, certainly not.  It was locked up in my
workbox under the tray where are my cottons and
needles.'

Mrs. Sidebottom watched their faces and followed
the dialogue with almost breathless attention.  Now
she smiled sarcastically.

'It is disappointing,' she said, 'after the toils have
been laid to lose the game.'

Salome again crimsoned.

'You think that I used my position in this house,
took advantage of my nearness to Mr. Pennycomequick,
to induce him to commit an injustice?'

Philip bowed stiffly.

'You charge me with the grossest breach of honour,
with wicked ingratitude to the man who has been to
me as a father?'

'We do not accuse you personally,' said Lambert,
who thought that, as he would have expressed it, his
cousin and mother were 'down on the girl too hard,'
'but we think it awfully queer that uncle should have
made such a will.  Your mother, for instance——'

'My mother is as incapable of such meanness as
myself,' said Salome.  'To such as can think of me so
basely, no justification I could make would be of any
avail.  With your leave——'

She bowed, and now white as ivory, with spots of
fire in her temples, she swept out of the room.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WHAT NEXT?`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   WHAT NEXT?

.. vspace:: 2

What was to be done?

Mrs. Sidebottom was the first to see what was to be
done.

'I shall take out an administration at once,' she said.

Philip said nothing.  Of course she must do what
she said.  She was the proper person to take out an
administration as nearest of kin.  But he was not
thinking of her and of what she proposed to do.  He
was standing still with the will in his hand.  Salome
had not reclaimed it, as it was worthless.  He
proceeded to fold it and replace it in the cover.  Philip
was not easy in his mind.  He had spoken in a rude
manner to the girl, throwing a gross charge against
her, and had grievously hurt her.

Was the charge just?  Was it possible to explain
the peculiar circumstances in any other way than that
which had occurred to him?

Suddenly looking up at Mrs. Sidebottom, and then
at the captain, he looked down again, and this time
with great attention at the envelope.

'The envelope has been tampered with,' he said.

'In what way?' asked Mrs. Sidebottom.

'It has been opened by means of a heated penknife.
Here are the marks of the smoke that have been
rubbed off the blade upon the paper; and here are
cuts made by the knife in the paper.  The envelope,
after having been sealed, was opened carefully, even
cunningly.'

'Why carefully or cunningly I cannot tell, but of
course opened it has been,' said Mrs. Sidebottom.
'You do not suppose Jeremiah could destroy his
signature without opening the envelope?'

'Certainly not.  But I should not have supposed
he would take pains to do it in such a manner.  He
had plenty of long envelopes at hand.  Then, again, to
refasten it a different sealing-wax was employed to
what had been used before, a slight difference in tint
of scarlet, and one impression of the stamp can be
traced over the other, the earlier not being wholly
obliterated.  Excuse me one moment, Aunt Louisa, I
should like to have a look at my uncle's study.'

'Philip—the room is in disorder!' said Mrs. Sidebottom,
starting to her feet and flushing, 'I cannot,
really; upon my word, I will not permit——'

But he had left the room before she could prevent
him.  She moved to follow him, but reconsidered
herself and turned back.

'Fiddlesticks!' she said angrily; 'nothing but
fiddlesticks.'

'I am the sufferer,' grumbled Lambert; 'I shall be
left in the cold.  You and Philip take everything.'

'What I have serves to make you comfortable,'
retorted the mother.

'That may be,' answered Lambert, 'but it is one
thing to have money of one's own, and another thing
to have to come to one's mammy for every penny, and
to find that the mammy rarely has any pennies in her
purse.'

'Hitherto I have been pinched in circumstances.
It will be different now, Lamb, you will see.'  After a
pause, she added, 'Unless that meddlesome, vexatious
prig, Philip, prove an obstruction.

Presently Philip returned.

'It is as I thought,' said he.  'The sealing-wax
employed the second time is that now in the pen-tray
on my uncle's desk; not only so, but his knife is there
also, bearing on it the traces of exposure to fire.  It
was probably thrust into the flame of the gas to heat
it so as to enable it to dissolve the wax off the seal.'

'No doubt about it,' said Mrs. Sidebottom; 'and
this proves that Jeremiah cancelled his will shortly
before his death.  I should not be surprised if he did
it the same night that he died, immediately before
giving it to Salome.'

'The case is a most extraordinary one,' said Philip.

'Not at all; it is clear as day.'

Philip did not care to debate the matter with his
aunt, so he left the room, and taking his hat, entered
the garden.

The garden, as already said, descended from the
house to the valley.  It consisted of two slopes,
divided by a wall; the upper slope ended in a terrace-walk,
with the coping of the wall serving as a parapet
to it.  Access to the lower garden was obtained by a
flight of steps at each end.  The upper of the two
divisions was devoted to flowers, the lower to
vegetables, and fruit-trees were trained against the wall
that buttressed up the terrace.

Philip paced the upper terrace for several minutes,
and was unable to come to a decision; he could not
see that the matter was as simple as his aunt
pretended.  For, as he argued, why should his uncle have
taken pains to preserve the original envelope when
there was no apparent necessity for so doing.  If
anyone else had opened the envelope, then he could
understand the care taken to preserve it with its
superscription, 'The Last Will and Testament of
Jeremiah Pennycomequick,' and to conceal the fact
that it had been adroitly unclosed.

But who would have been likely to commit such an
act?  Certainly not Salome, in whose keeping, under
lock and key, the will had been.  It was hardly
possible that it had been tampered with since it was
given to her.  Was it possible that it had been
cancelled before, unknown to Jeremiah?

Philip saw that he had not the data, or had not data
sufficient, on which to come to a decision.  He must
have another interview with Salome.  He therefore
returned to the house, and meeting a servant in the
hall, asked her to request Miss Cusworth to speak with
him a few minutes in the garden.

Without delay Salome came.  She had not put on
a bonnet, but had thrown a gray shawl over her head,
and pinned it under her chin like a mill-girl.  Some
of her burnished hair, like autumn oak-leaves flaming
in the evening sun, shone out from under the shawl,
and the gray wool contrasted pleasantly with the
delicately beautiful complexion, now no longer white,
but with flying tinges of colour in it, like a sunset sky
in which are drifts of vapour, high aloft, undefined,
yet sensitive to the rays of the declining orb.  She
was deeply wounded, and the changes in her colour
followed the fluctuations of resentment, humiliation,
anger and pain in her heart.

She had been crying—Philip saw that—for though
she had wiped her eyes, the tears were still near the
surface, and with difficulty restrained from
overflowing.

'Miss Cusworth,' said Philip, with stiffness, but an
attempt at graciousness, 'I regret that I addressed
you a few moments ago without that charity which I
was bound to entertain.  I was surprised, indignant,
and rushed to a conclusion which may prove to have
been formed too precipitately.  I shall be greatly—very
greatly obliged, if you will accept my apology,
and allow me to ask you a series of questions on the
subject of the will, to enable me to form a matured
opinion as to the manner in which it was cancelled,
and by whom it was done; two points that appear to
me at this moment by no means as clear as they did
a quarter of an hour ago, because a close examination
of the envelope has shown me that it was opened
recently, and in a manner that seems to me suspicious.'

'I will answer any questions you put—as far as it is
in my ability to answer them.'

'And—we shall be more at our ease, more in
private, if we take the lower walk at the foot of the
wail,' said Philip, 'as from the windows everyone can
see us here and comment on our interview.  May I
ask you to do me the further favour of walking with
me below the steps?'

'Certainly,' answered Salome, and began to descend.

Philip would have been devoid of the elementary
faculties by which beauty is perceived and admired, if
he had not been struck at this time by the young and
graceful figure that preceded him, and by the perfect
sweetness of the innocent, sad face that turned at the
bottom and looked back at him.  She did not reproach
him with her eyes, and yet, when he caught them, his
own eyes fell, and he became uncomfortable and
conscious of having wronged her.  She puzzled him.
Was she tricky, double, self-seeking? or was she what
she looked—sincere and straightforward?

A consciousness stole over Philip that had he lived
in the same house with her for sixteen or seventeen
years, as had Uncle Jeremiah, and had come to make
his will, then without her uttering a word of
persuasion, he would be leaving her everything he
had—just as Jeremiah had at one time done; only he would
never have worded his will in such a clumsy, absurd,
and unusual fashion.  As soon as he reached the foot
of the steps, he took his place at her side.  Here was
a broad walk parallel to that above, facing the sun,
sheltered, with the trained trees against the wall on
one side, and a box-edging on the other, with, in
summer, a border of herbaceous flowers fringing the
beds of cabbage, onions, brussels sprouts, and carrots.

'I am at your service,' said Salome.

'Then I will begin my catechism at once,' said
Philip.  'Please to give me an exact account of what
passed in your last interview with Mr. Pennycomequick.'

'Do you mean actually the last—as he went out
for his walk by the canal, or when he gave me the
will to keep?'

'I mean the latter.'

'He had been out to dinner.  I sat up awaiting
him, thinking he might want something before he
went to bed.  It was most unusual for him to accept
invitations to dine out.  When he came back——'

'He had been dining with Mrs. Sidebottom, I think?'

'Yes; when he came back it was early—that is to
say, earlier than I expected.  But he was out of
spirits, and told me he left as soon as he could get
away for that reason.'

'Had anything occurred to disturb him?'

'Not that I know.  But he certainly was in a
more desponding mood than I had seen him in at
any time previously.'

'Did he give any reason for it?'

Salome hesitated.

'What reason did he give for his depressed spirits?'

'He did not exactly give a reason for it, but he
was a little mistrustful—perhaps of the world in
general.'

'And of anyone in particular?'

Salome coloured; her hand caught her shawl
below her chin and worked nervously at it.

'I had rather you did not force me to answer that
question,' she said timidly.

'Very well,' said Philip, 'only let me observe that
this is not answering me with the fulness that was
promised.'

'I think he was unjust—and I had rather that
little ebullition of injustice was forgotten.'

'Go on,' said Philip.  'Did he give you the will,
then?—and was it in anyway in connection with the
mistrust he expressed?'

'I cannot say that.  He started up, said he would
confide to me a most solemn trust, that concerned me
nearly, and went out of the room——'

'Whither did he go?'

'To the study, I fancy; and in a moment returned——'

'Excuse me.  In a moment?'

'Yes, almost directly, returned with the paper.'

'It was in the envelope?'

'Oh yes, just as I gave it you.'

'You do not think he would have had time to
open the envelope, tear off his signature, and reseal
the cover before coming back to the room where you
were?'

'Oh no!  He went upstairs and came down again
immediately.'

'Now tell me.  Are you quite sure that he believed
the will was intact when he gave it you?'

'I am sure of it from his manner.'

'And where did he keep it before he gave it you?'

'I do not know.'

'Had you any previous knowledge of the will and
its contents?'

'None whatever.  I have not even heard my mother
speak of it; and she must have known, because she
witnessed it.  But I am sure also she had no idea as
to its contents, or she would have joined with me in
entreating him not to make such an unjust disposition
of his property.  I am glad the will is worthless,
because I never could have felt that I had a right to
receive all uncle—I mean Mr. Pennycomequick—left
me in that will.  I should have felt that I was robbing
the relations, and I would have refused to benefit by
the will.'

'Who is the John Dale who signed as witness along
with your mother?'

'Mr. Dale!  Oh, he was a dear friend of Mr. Pennycomequick.
He always spent his Christmas here, and
uncle went at Whitsuntide to spend a few days with
him at Bridlington.  Mr. Dale is trustee to Janet.
We both like him.'

Salome spoke so openly, so quietly, and with such
self-possession, that again his suspicions began to
yield to the charm of her honesty, as they had before.

'One matter further,' said Philip.  'After Mr. Pennycomequick
had given you the will, you locked it up in—I
remember you said—a workbox.'

'Yes, in my workbox.'

'And the workbox—was that put away anywhere?'

'Oh no.  I use it every day.'

'Then—the same box is unlocked very often?'

'Yes.'

'And left unlocked?'

Salome hesitated a moment, then said: 'Yes—but
it is in my room.  No one would meddle with my
things—no one has any interest in my little odds and
ends.  Besides, no one would be so mean.'  Then
after a pause, 'Mr. Pennycomequick, you charged me
with a piece of baseness which'—she shook her head
impatiently, as if to shake off the imputation—'which
it is a stain on me to think of as possible.  I could
not—I would die rather than do what is mean.
Mean!'  She turned her face suddenly round on
him; it was flushed, and the eyes sparkled.  'No,
Mr. Pennycomequick, I could be wicked, but not
mean—no, not that on any account, under whatever
provocation—no, not mean!'

'I beg your pardon, Miss Cusworth, most sincerely.
I committed myself to a rash charge, which I withdraw.'

She paid no attention to his apology, but went on:
'No, I would not have taken advantage of the will
had it been in form and right; for that would have
been mean.  Dear Mr. Pennycomequick I loved and
love still from the depths of my heart; but he had his
faults, and one was that he was not forgiving to his
own relations—to you.  And he thought harshly of
his sister, Mrs. Sidebottom, and despised Captain
Pennycomequick.  I had no claim on him at all, and
if he saw that he had done wrong, and had himself
cancelled the will, no one would rejoice more than
myself; for it would show me that he had returned to
a more kindly view of you all.'

'But how do you account for the signature being torn off?'

'I have not thought much about it since.  I thought
only of the hurt you had done me.'

'Is it possible that he can have changed his mind,
invalidated his will, and then forgotten that he had
done so?  No, that is impossible.  The act was too
recent,' Philip argued aloud.

'I would not have had people think ill of dear old
uncle,' said Salome, pursuing her own train of thought,
little concerned how the will was invalidated,
concerned only with her solicitude for the memory of the
deceased.  'He had been unspeakably kind to my
mother and my sister and me.  Everyone would talk,
all would say he had been unjust, supposing that will
had stood.  Over his grave—that was not he who
was buried to-day—his grave, wherever it may be,
heart-burnings would have arisen, and reproachful
words would have been cast at his memory.  He
wrote that will in some queer mood when he was not
quite himself.  He never, I must say it, quite valued
Mrs. Sidebottom as a sister, and he was ill-pleased
when she left York and settled at Mergatroyd.  The
captain, he thought, had not much brains and was
imprudent about money.  You he did not know, and
he had a mistaken prejudice against lawyers.  But
there—how the will was made of no effect; whether
by himself or—or how, matters little; the deed is
done, and no one can ever say that he wronged his
own flesh and blood.'

She had spoken quickly, eagerly, without pause,
and with a heightened colour.

A sudden idea came into Philip's mind with a flash.

'You—Miss Cusworth!  For the sake of his memory
did you meddle with the will?'

This was a repetition of the charge.  First, he
charged her with coarse self-seeking, now with blind
self-effacement.

'I—I—oh!  Mr. Pennycomequick, of course not.
It was a trust.  I could not touch it, even to save his
dear name from reproach.'

'Miss Cusworth,' said Philip, 'have you any objection
to my seeing your mother?'

'Not in the least.  Only remember she is frail.
She suffers from her heart.'

'Will you take me to her at once?'

'Certainly.  Follow me.'

She led Philip up the steps, through the upper
garden; Philip's eyes, which had watched her descend
the steps with admiration, saw her mount them with
even greater.  She conducted him to the room occupied
oy her mother as a parlour.

The old lady was in black, and was dusting.  That
was her daily occupation.  She travelled about the
house with a duster in her pocket, and when the
duster became dirty she took her pocket-handkerchief
and dusted with that; and it was also black.  She
had been an energetic woman in her youth, and now
that she suffered from her heart, was impatient at not
being allowed to do as much as she had been wont.
She had made an excellent housekeeper to
Mr. Pennycomequick.  When he was short of domestics she
turned her hand to anything—cooked, did housework,
needlework—would have cleaned the knives and boots
if the boy had failed.  The deficiency in servants was
not an extraordinary event.  In a manufacturing
district few girls care to enter domestic service and submit
to its restraints, when they can earn their livelihood
at the mills, and have the evenings to themselves in
which to meet their friends.  When Mr. Pennycomequick's
establishment was complete, she spent her
day in making up for the deficiencies of the
domestics—putting straight what they had crooked, cleaning
out corners they had neglected, brushing down
cobwebs they had overlooked, detecting breakages they
had made, and repairing rents they had effected in
household linen.  She was not a good-looking woman,
but the likeness of the two girls to her was traceable;
moreover, she must have had at one time auburn hair,
for though her hair was much darker now, it had in it
glints of red copper.  Her heart-complaint had given
to her face a waxy, even greenish tint, and her lips
were leaden.

On being introduced to her, Philip felt somewhat
ashamed of not having made her acquaintance before,
because he had allowed himself to be influenced by
Mrs. Sidebottom's prejudice.  His aunt had treated
the widow with studied indifference, and when
noticing her, behaved towards her with superciliousness.
Mrs. Cusworth had accordingly kept very much
to herself in the rooms allotted to her use.

Janet was fired with indignation at the discourtesy
shown to her mother; she wished to defy Mrs. Sidebottom,
but her mother bade her remember that now
this lady was in authority, and that she and her
daughters remained in the house upon sufferance only.

Philip bowed on entering, and apologized somewhat
lamely for not having made the lady's acquaintance
earlier, and then, turning, saw Salome glide out of
the room with her arm in that of her sister.  The girl
rightly understood that Philip desired to speak with
Mrs. Cusworth alone.  He proceeded at once to
cross-question her on the subject of the will.

'You must excuse me,' he said, 'but I am forced to
make inquiries.  I presume you have been told that
a very advantageous will, made in favour of your
daughter, has been found, cancelled, and no subsequently
drawn will has been discovered.  Mr. Pennycomequick
gave this valueless one to Miss Cusworth
to keep, and I cannot doubt he did so believing he
entrusted her with one that was valid.  Now, either
he took this one by mistake for a subsequent will
which has disappeared, or the will has been—no, I
will not commit myself to the statement of the
alternative.  Be so good as to tell me what you recollect
about the signing of the will?'

'It was done just after Janet's wedding.'

'Were you aware of the contents?'

'Certainly not.  Mr. Pennycomequick sent for me
to his study, where he was with Dr. Dale.  He merely
asked me to witness his signature to his will; but he
entered into no particulars.'

'You had no reason to believe he intended to
constitute Miss Cusworth his heiress?'

'Not the least.  I supposed he would leave her
something as he had dealt so liberally by my other
daughter at her marriage; I neither wished for nor
expected more; certainly for nothing which might
cause annoyance to the family.'

'He never alluded to his intention?'

'Never.  He was a reserved man.'

'And you have no reason to suppose he made
another will subsequent to that?'

'I know nothing.  I was not called in to witness
another.'

'Thank you,' said Philip, rising.  'The mystery is
to me as dark now as before, only'—and this he said
to himself—'the one explanation I gave at first is, I
am now convinced, certainly the wrong one.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`ADMINISTRATION`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   ADMINISTRATION.

.. vspace:: 2

Philip Pennycomequick returned to the garden.
He was still greatly perplexed, but a new and
disquieting suspicion had invaded his mind.  He was
now completely satisfied that no undue influence had
been used to force the old man to make his
extraordinary will.  He was also tolerably certain that he
handed it to Salome in good faith, believing it to be
untouched.  The will had been tampered with, either
just before or after his death.  It was hardly possible
that this could have been done before, when preserved,
as he little doubted, in the iron chest in which Jeremiah
kept all his deeds and papers of value.  It was more
probable that the mutilation had been effected
afterwards, when carelessly kept in Salome's workbox,
which probably had a lock easily fitted with a key
and which was sometimes incautiously left unlocked
when Salome was not in her room.

But who would be likely to do such an act, commit
a felony?  He dared not accuse his aunt; even in
thought, such an accusation was too terrible.  He
had no confidence in her rectitude.  His mistrust of
her truthfulness had been deepened by her audacious
assertion that Jeremiah had worn a nightshirt she had
given him, a statement which he was convinced was
untrue, and one made by her to get over the difficulty
about the linen of the drowned man differing from
that known to have belonged to her brother.

He could not disguise from himself that, on the
supposition that Mrs. Sidebottom had mutilated the
will, all the difficulty in explaining the mystery
disappeared.  She had heard from Salome where the
will was—in her desk and in her room.  It was to
Mrs. Sidebottom's interest to know its contents, and
to invalidate it when she did know them.  But Philip,
though he held his aunt in low esteem, could hardly
think she could be guilty of such wickedness.  But
how else explain the difficulty.  Then, again,
supposing he reached moral conviction that she had
tampered with the document, what course could he
pursue?  He had absolutely no evidence to justify a
public accusation, and without very strong and
conclusive evidence he could not make such a charge—a
charge of felony against his own aunt.

When he considered the grounds on which his
suspicion rested, he found how slight they were.  The
facts were that Mrs. Sidebottom knew where the will
was, that she was in the house, and had opportunities
of obtaining access to the will, and that it was to her
interest to destroy its force.  He had no reason to
think his aunt morally capable of such a crime.  His
belief in her veracity was shaken, but it is a long
way between telling a lie and committing a crime
such as that he was half-inclined to attribute to her.

With his mind still unsatisfied he went to the study,
where he knew he would find her.  Captain Lambert
had gone out.  The captain had borne the restraint
imposed on him by the death of his uncle with
impatience.  He had been prevented from playing his
usual game of billiards.  He had yawned in the
morning and stood at the window with his hands in
his pockets, then had shifted his position to the fire,
and stood before that with his hands behind him, and
found neither position to his taste.  In the afternoon
he had lounged between the two houses, and had
sauntered in the garden, and grumbled and yawned
continually.  In the evening, when alone after dinner,
in his frogged smoking-jacket and slippers, lounging
in an arm-chair, he read a little, and when Philip
was there, talked with him.  But nothing satisfied
him; the *Field* he found 'awfully dull!' his cousin
'awfully prosy!' and he pronounced as his criticism
of every novel he dipped into that it was 'awful
trash!'

Philip and Lambert had no interests in common,
because Lambert had no interests at all.  Philip was
reserved, Lambert open, with the difference that exists
between a purse and a glove.  Philip had much in him
which was not for all the world, Lambert had nothing
in him whatever.

Lambert was easy-going, selfish and good-natured
in what did not touch his own comfort and ease.  He
had little conversation, and what he had was
uninteresting.  We come across people continually who
have to be dredged that anything may be got out of
them, and when dredged, yield nothing to compensate
the labour of dredging.  In some rivers it is worth
while to try the depths with rakes and grapples, or
even by diving, for on examination they yield gold-dust,
diamonds and pearls.  But out of others nothing
is extracted save pots, weeds, the waste matter and
sewage of civilization.  When Lambert was dredged
he gave up worthless stuff, scraps of stale news, old
jokes worn to pieces, venerable conundrums that had
lost their point, and familiar anecdotes retailed without
salt.  Undredged, he yielded nothing, except among
those of his own mental calibre, and with them he
talked about people he had met, houses at which he
had visited, wines that he had drunk, game that he
had shot, the relationships of his acquaintance, about
jolly fellows, nice girls, good cigars, and scrumptious
dinners.  He was a harmless, lazy man who would
not wilfully do what was wrong, and would never
exert himself to do what was right.

There are tens of thousands of these negative beings
about, male and female, useful in their way, as nitrogen
is of use in the atmosphere, void of quality itself, but
diluting the active oxygen; as certain ingredients are
serviceable as fluxes to valuable metals, but have no
other known use in creation.

Lambert's mother had energy for both, and managed
for herself and for him.  He was well content that it
should be so, it saved him trouble.  He left her to
decide everything for him, as he left his clothes to be
brushed and folded and put away by the servant.
And as he was a man without a pursuit, he voted
everything he had to do a bore, and was voted by
everyone who knew him the worst of bores.

'Well, Philip,' said Mrs. Sidebottom cheerily as her
nephew entered; she was engaged in looking through
a list of designs for mourning dresses.  'Well, Philip,
I am knocked to pieces with the strain, and am glad
all is over.  I hope you have had a satisfactory
interview with that girl, brought her to a humble frame of
mind, and induced her to confess that she and her
mother concocted that abominable will?'

'On the contrary,' answered Philip gravely, 'I am
satisfied from what she and Mrs. Cusworth have told
me that they had nothing to do with it.  Not only was
no undue pressure brought to bear on my uncle, but
they were completely ignorant of the contents of his
testament.'

'Fiddle-faddle,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'I don't give
them credit for being such fools.  They had Jeremiah
in their hands for many years.  He made that will in
their favour, at their suggestion; only when I came
here did his conscience speak out, and then he
cancelled it.  The case is as plain as a pikestaff.'

'You wrong her—her mother,' said Philip with
some heat.

'You—yourself,' retorted Mrs. Sidebottom, 'accused
her of having employed unfair means to procure the
will.  I am only repeating what you said.'

'I did so.  I was hasty.  I now regard both Mrs. and
Miss Cusworth as incapable of such conduct.'

'Why!—what a weather-cock you are!  You men
are easily talked round by women.  A cow has horns,
a horse has hoofs, and a dog teeth, for self-protection;
but a woman has only her tongue, which she can use
skilfully—far more skilfully than the brutes use their
weapons.  Why, Philip, there are insects that
accommodate themselves in colour and appearance to the
ground they are on, or the tree or leaf they are
destroying, so as to escape detection; and you would
have this precious Salome less clever than an insect?
She has assumed the colour necessary for imposing on
your eyes.'

Philip winced.  He had changed his mind twice with
respect to Salome, and both times in consequence of
an interview with her.

'I have a proposal to make,' he said; 'but before
making it, I must lay the case before you plainly.'

'I desire nothing better, but I wish Lamb were here
also.'

'I wish first to discuss it with you alone, after that
we can take Lambert into conference.'

'I am all attention.'

'In the first place, I take it that my uncle made the
will without having been subject to any direct pressure.
Indirect there was, but that was also unconscious.
The children had grown up in his house, he had
become warmly attached to them, and when one was
married, he provided for her.'

'Most unbecomingly and unnecessarily.'

'He did as he thought fit.  The money was his own—his
savings; and he had a perfect right to dispose
of it as he considered proper.  In full possession of
his faculties, more than a twelvemonth ago, he made
a marriage settlement of a large sum on one of the
young ladies, and then, as she was provided for, he
made his will, providing for the sister.  Miss Salome
had been as a daughter to him, he loved her not less
than he did Miss Janet, and certainly had no intention
that she should be left destitute when he was removed.'

'I grant you all that,' said Mrs. Sidebottom.  'He
might have left her an annuity of fifty or a hundred
pounds.  That would have sufficed.  But why leave
her everything?  But there—what is the good of
discussing a document which is of no legal force?'

'Allow me to proceed.  Whether he acted rightly
or wrongly is a question I will not enter into.  What
he did was what he had proposed in his heart to do, to
provide for Miss Salome, and to leave to Lambert and
me only small annuities.  He did not bequeath the
factory to Lambert, whom he very well knew was not
calculated to manage a business, and he did not leave
it to me, because he knew nothing about my capabilities
and character.  I think it is by no means improbable
that there is something else behind.  Miss
Cusworth may be engaged to a suitable person, whom
Uncle Jeremiah approved as one likely to carry on the
business and not throw it away.  I conceive that the
will may have been prompted quite as much by concern
for an old-established and respected business as by
regard for the young girl.  He may have calculated on
the marriage, but not have cared to allude to it at an
early stage of the engagement.  This is merely a
conjecture of mine, and I have no knowledge of
anything to substantiate it.  You must take it for what
it is worth.'

'Oh, that is likely enough; but as the will is
cancelled, why harp upon it?'

'Such I imagine was the mind of my uncle when he
framed that will.  In two words, he desired that the
firm should be carried on, and that his adopted
daughter should be provided for.'

'I allow all that.'

'Now the will has been invalidated in a mysterious
manner by the signature being torn away.  By whom
that was done is not known to us, but I do not allow
it is at all conclusive that Uncle Jeremiah did it
himself.'

'Of course he did it.  He did it because I was in
Mergatroyd, and he had come to value me.  Besides,
Lambert had changed his name; he had ceased to be
a Sidebottom, and had become a Pennycomequick.
Indeed, he said as much to me.  He was mightily
pleased at the change.  It was a compliment he took
to heart.'

Philip frowned.  His aunt had recollections of
things said and done that came in very conveniently
to support her theories.

'My impression is,' said Philip, 'that the will was
not torn by my uncle, but by someone else.'

'And pray,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, tossing her head
and moving uneasily in her seat, 'do you suspect anyone?'

'I accuse no one,' he said drily; 'I have no right
without evidence to do so.'

'Good gracious me!' laughed Mrs. Sidebottom.
'What an imagination you are endowed with, Philip!
First it leads you to scheme out the whole story of the
concoction and destruction of the will, and this you
pour out on Salome Cusworth; then you withdraw
the charge, and you conceive a probable engagement
between this young minx and an Admirable Crichton,
who is to manage the mill and carry on the business;
and now you have an idea of some outrageous fraud
having been committed.  Save us from such vagaries
of the fancy!'

'As it was my uncle's intention that Miss Cusworth
should be left comfortably off, and as—by whatever
means his will has been mutilated—she is now left
wholly unprovided for, which is most certainly against
his wish, I propose to you that we, who become the
heirs, should do something to assure to Miss Cusworth
a provision at least equal in amount to that made for
her sister.'

'I—I do not understand.'

'What I say is plain enough.  We who share the
property of my uncle must deduct from our shares in
equal proportions such sum as will, when invested,
bring in for the sole benefit of Miss Cusworth the
modest sum of a hundred and fifty pounds per annum.'

'A hundred and fifty fiddlesticks!' said Mrs. Sidebottom.
'I'll be hanged before I agree to that!'

'To what extent, then, do you propose to meet my
suggestion?'

'Not at all.  I will not consent to give her a
farthing!'

'You decline to carry out the wishes of your
brother?'

'I dispute that they were his wishes—at one time
maybe, before I arrived at Mergatroyd.  After that
he changed his mind altogether, and in evidence—he
cancelled his will.'

'I am by no means prepared to allow that that was
his doing.'

'A hundred and fifty pounds!  Why, at four per
cent. that would be nearly four thousand pounds.  I
would rather throw my money into the sea, or give it
to a hospital.'

'I repeat, it was the purpose of the testator to
provide for Miss Cusworth.  He had not altered his
purpose on the night that he died, for he handed her
the will to keep in such a manner——'

'According to her own account,' interjected Mrs. Sidebottom.

'As showed that he believed the will was untouched.
Either before that, or after—I cannot say when or by
whom—the act had been committed which destroyed
the value of the will.  But Uncle Jeremiah to the last
intended that the young lady should be provided for.'

'I will consent to nothing.'

'Very well,' said Philip, 'as you cannot agree to my
proposal, no other course is left me than to enter a
*caveat* against your taking out an administration.'

'What good will that do?'

'It will do no good to anyone—to you least of all;
I shall state my grounds before the Court—that I
believe the will of my uncle, which I shall present, has
been fraudulently dealt with by some person or
persons unknown, and I shall endeavour to get it
recognised, although it lacks his signature.'

'What!' exclaimed Mrs. Sidebottom, turning all
colours of mottled soap.  'Throw away your chance
of getting half!'

'Yes—because I will not be unjust.'

Mrs. Sidebottom was silent.  She was considering.
Her fidgets showed that she was alarmed.

'You will be able to effect nothing,' she said.  'The
Court would say that Jeremiah acted improperly when
he left his property away from his family, and that he
did right in cancelling the will.'

'Anyhow, I shall contest the grant of letters of
administration.'

'What a chivalrous knight that girl has found in
you!' sneered Mrs. Sidebottom.  'You had better
throw yourself at her feet altogether.'

Philip made no answer.

Mrs. Sidebottom fished up an antimacassar that
had been on the back of her chair but had fallen from
it, and had been worked into a rope by her movements
in the chair.  She pulled it out from under her, and
threw it on the floor.

'I detest these things,' she said.  'They are shoppy
and vulgar.  Only third-rate people, such as Cusworths,
would hang them about on sofas and arm-chairs.'

Philip remained unmoved.  He knew she was
taking about antimacassars merely to gain time.

Presently he said, 'I await your answer.'

Mrs. Sidebottom looked furtively at him.  She was
irritated at his composure.

'Very well—as you like,' she said, with a toss of
her head; 'but I did not expect this inhuman and
unreasonable conduct in you, Philip.'

'I take you at your word.  That is settled between
us.  Now let us turn to another consideration.  The
mill must not be stopped, the business must be carried
on.  I do not suppose that Lambert cares to enter
into commercial life.'

'Certainly not.'

'Or that you particularly relish life in Mergatroyd.'

'I hate the place.'

'I am quite willing to undertake the management
of the factory, at first provisionally, till some
arrangement has been come to between us.  As soon as the
administration is granted, we shall consider the division
of the estate, and deduct equally from our several
shares that portion which we have resolved to offer to
Miss Cusworth.'

'As you please,' said Mrs. Sidebottom sulkily.
'But you treat me abominably.  However—now, I
suppose, unopposed by you—I can ask for right to
administer?'

'Yes—on the conditions to which you have agreed.'

'Wait—this house is mine, I suppose.  Then I
will clear it of those who are odious to me.'

She started from her seat and left the room.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE WOMAN WITH A PIPE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE WOMAN WITH A PIPE.

.. vspace:: 2

What had become in the meantime of Mr. Jeremiah
Pennycomequick, over whose leavings such a dispute
was being waged?  We left him clinging to the head
of a Lombardy poplar that was being swept down the
valley of the Keld by the flood.

The head of a poplar was by no means the most
agreeable sort of vessel in which to shoot the rapids
of Fleet Lock and navigate the lower Keld-dale.  In
the first place it allowed the wash of the descending
current to overflow it, and in the next it had no proper
balance, and was disposed to revolve like a turbine in
the stream.  This latter propensity was presently
counteracted by the branches catching and entangling
about some ponderous matter in the bed, perhaps a
chain from the locks.  It was not possible for
Mr. Pennycomequick to keep dry.  He was like Moses in
the cradle of bulrushes, from which the pitch calking
had been omitted.  He was completely drenched,
because submerged except for his head and shoulders,
chilled, numb, and giddy.

The tree made a plunge over the lock edge, where
the stream formed a cataract, carried him under water,
and came up again with him still among the branches.
He had seen the hut crumble into the stream before
he made his dive.  When the water cleared out of
his eyes, and he looked again, he could see it no
more.

He threw himself on his back, with his arms interlaced
among the pliant boughs, and his face towards
the night sky.  He saw the clouds like curd, and the
moon glaring pitilessly down on him in his distress,
showing him a wide field of water on all sides and
help nowhere.  He was too cold to cry out; he knew
that it would be useless to do so.  Succour was out
of reach.  Lying cradled among the branches, elastic
as those of willow, he was fast as in a net; bedded
among the twigs, he might let go his hold and would
be carried on.  He looked up steadily at the moon,
and wondered how long it would be before his eyes
stiffened and he saw the things of creation no longer.
He could distinguish the shadows in the moon and
make out the darkened portion of the disc.  How
cold and cheerless it must be yonder!  A life of
numbness and lack of volition and impulse must be
the lot of the Selenites!  Fear of death, anxiety for
himself, had disappeared; only a sort of curiosity
remained in his brain to know whether the condition
of life in the moon was more miserable in its chill and
helplessness than his present state of drifting in the
cold water.

Then he turned his head to take a last look at
Mergatroyd.  The lights were twinkling there.  He
could distinguish those of his own house on the
hill-slope.  He would never again set foot within its doors,
enjoy the comfort of his fireside; never see Salome
again.  And then in that odd, incongruous manner in
which droll thoughts rise up in the mind at the most
inappropriate moments, it occurred to him that there
was to be anchovy-toast for breakfast.  He had been
asked by Mrs. Cusworth if he liked it, and she had
promised it him.  And as he drifted, immersed in the
deadeningly cold brown water, at the thought the
taste of anchovy came into his mouth.

The valley of the Keld contracted—a spur of hill
ran forward from the ridge on which Mergatroyd was
built, and forced the river and canal to describe a
semi-circular bend.  The line, however, had bored
itself a way through the hill, and came out beyond, in
a park, among stately but blackened elms.  The spur
contracted the volume of the flood, which therefore
became deeper and more rapid.

With his numbed hands Mr. Pennycomequick unloosed
his white neckcloth, and with it bound his arm
to a branch of the poplar, tying the knot with one
hand and his teeth, whilst the water ran through his
mouth over his tongue, and washed away from it the
smack of anchovy that fancy had conjured to it.

Then he resigned himself to his lot.  A dull sense
of being in the power of an inexorable fate came over
him, the eagerness for life had faded away, and was
succeeded by indifference as to what befel him, this
to make way, as the cold and misery intensified, for
impatience that all might be over speedily.  He still
looked up at the moon, but no longer cared what the
life of the Selenites was like, it was their concern, not
his.  The thought of anchovy toast no longer had
power to bring its flavour to his tongue.  Then the
moon passed behind a drift of vapour that obscured
but did not extinguish it, and Jeremiah, half-unconsciously
with his stiffening lips, found himself murmuring
the words of Milton which he had learned at
school, and had not repeated since:

   |      'The wandering moon
   |  Riding near her highest noon,
   |  Like one that hath been led astray
   |  Through the heav'ns wide pathless way,
   |  And oft, as if her head she bow'd,
   |  Stooping through a fleecy cloud.'

And so murmuring again, and more brokenly, at last
fell into complete unconsciousness.

The critic who generally hits on those particulars
in a story which are facts, to declare them to be
impossibilities, and those characters to be unnatural,
which are transcripts from nature, is certain to attack
the author for making a man who trembles on the
confines of death think of anchovy toast and quote
'Il Penseroso;' to which criticism we answer that he
has had no experience such as that described, or he
would know that what has been described above is in
accordance with nature.

For how long Mr. Pennycomequick was unconscious
he never knew, and no one, of course, was able to
inform him.  When he returned to himself, he found
that he was lying in a contracted and queer bed, in
the side of a chamber equally contracted and queer,
tenanted, as far as he could make out, only by a
contracted and queer human being, whose sex was not to
be determined at first glance.  If Mr. Pennycomequick
had recovered his sense of smell at the same
time that he recovered his other senses, he would have
supposed that during the period of unconsciousness
he had been steeped in creosote, for the atmosphere
about him was charged with the odour of tar.

He was, in fact, on board a coal-barge, in the little
low cabin, and in the little low berth that occupied
almost an entire side of the cabin.  This cabin was
but five feet high; it was lighted by the hatchway,
through which the steps descended into it.  At the
extremity, opposite the hatch, was an iron stove, the
pipe from which poked through the deck above.  At
this stove was done all the cooking ever done in this
establishment, and all the washing supposed to be
necessary in it, as a concession to public prejudice.
On the side opposite Mr. Pennycomequick's berth
was another, on which were heaped gowns, coats,
wading-boots, a frying-pan, a bird-cage, a broken jug,
Tom Treddlehoyle's 'Bairnsley-Folks' Almanack,' and
a Bible.  When that berth was tenanted by a human
inmate, then the gowns, coats, boots, frying-pan,
bird-cage, broken beer-jug, almanack and Bible were
transferred to the floor.

Near the stove, peeling potatoes, and as she peeled
them chucking the peelings on to the berth, with its
accumulation of gowns, coats, frying-pan and other
articles, was a woman wearing a man's black felt
wide-awake, a man's coat, and smoking a
mahogany-coloured pipe.

Her face was so brown, rugged, and masculine, that
it was only possible to determine her sex when she
stood up.  Then she revealed petticoats, short, and
fastened together between the calves, so as to convert
them into something like Turkish trousers.  Beneath
them protruded feet as big as those of a man, encased
in stout boots.

'Bless me!' exclaimed Mr. Pennycomequick.
'Where am I?'

Then the woman half rose.  She could not stand
upright in the cabin, she was so tall; and she came
over to the berth in stooping posture.

'Eh, lad, tha'rt wick!  Dos't a' want to know wheer
tha' art?  Why, for sure, tha'rt i't *Conquering Queen*,
as carries coils t' Goole.'

'How came I here?'

'Ah reckon ah hugged (drew) thee aht o't water
mysen.  Ah saw thee floatin' by on tha' rig (back)
taizled like i' an owd tree.  Sea (so) I had thee aht i'
a jiffy.  If ah hed'dnt, tha'd been dead long agone.
Hev naw a sup o' tea, and we'll talk after.'

Mr. Pennycomequick tried to move—to raise himself—but
he was stiff in all his joints, and unable to
stir more than his head.

'Weel naw!' exclaimed the woman, 'tha'rt wor nor
I thowt.  Ah be main sorry for thee.  Ah'll bring t'
peggy-tub, and turn't upside daan, and sot me a top,
t'll do as weel as owt Ah can talk ta thee a bit—I
da'ant mind.  But I'm glad tha'rt better, lad.  Come
na,' if tha woant ha' no tea, mebbe tha'll tak a sup o'
tar-water.'

By degrees Mr. Pennycomequick got to understand
how he had been rescued, and where he was.

The flood had caught the *Conquering Queen* coal
barge some way below Mergatroyd, where the land
was flat, and where accordingly the water had spread
and its violence was expended.  It had snapped the
cable that fastened the boat, and she had been carried
on down the canal.  She had not been lifted and
stranded beyond the banks, but had gone along with
the current in the proper course.  The *Conquering
Queen* was the property of Ann Dewis, who inhabited
and managed her, along with a boy, a gawky lad of
fifteen, all legs and arms, which became entangled
among ropes and chains, and stumbled over lumps of
coal and mooring posts, who never descended the
ladder without slipping and falling to the bottom in
a heap; and whose face and body, if not perpetually
begrimed with coal dust, would have shown blue with
bruises.

Ann Dewis had given up her berth to the man she
had drawn out of the water, and slept on the floor
beside the clothing, bird-cage, cooking utensils, and
literature sacred and profane.

'Sure sartain,' said Mrs. Dewis, 't'ull be a long
time wal (until) thar't better; and curias it es, but all
wor profezied i' Tom Treddlehoyle i' hes predicshons
for 1870.  Jest yo listen till this.  November: Ah
look for menny foakes bein' brawt low, throo abaht t'
middle ta t'end a' t'munth; hahiver, theaze a good
prospecht a' ther' sooin lookin' up agean, if it is at
they're laid flat a' ther' back.  T'es fortunate these
floods doant come offance (often) or we'd a' be ruined.
Looik here, lad, ah'l clap t' pot o't'stove an' mak thee
poultices for thy joints.'

Six weeks were passed by Mr. Jeremiah Pennycomequick
in the cabin of the *Conquering Queen*, in
great pain, sometimes in delirium, for he was attacked
with rheumatic fever.  Throughout his illness he was
attended indefatigably by Ann Dewis.  She called in
no doctor, she procured no medicine.  The sole
remedy she knew and favoured, and which she
exhibited against all diseases, was tar-water, a remedy
easily made on board the barge, of material always at
hand.

Ann Dewis was reduced to temporary inactivity by
the destruction wrought by the flood.  The canal
was closed for repairs, and the repairs were likely to
consume many months.  Accordingly she could no
longer ply between the coalpits and the wharf on the
Humber.  This enforced inactivity enabled her to
devote her undivided attention to her patient.  She
had no house of her own—not an acre; no, not a foot
of garden ground of her own in any of the various
forms of ownership—freehold, copyhold or leasehold.
She had no other home than her barge.  She paid no
taxes—no rates; the only charges that fell on her
were the dues levied at the locks.  And 'Darn it!'
said Ann; 'that flood will ha' sent up the dues like
scaldin' water sends up t'momenter.'

She belonged to no parish, came into no census,
was attached to no denomination, and was identifiable
as a Yorkshire woman of the West Riding only by
her brogue.  When the fever quitted Jeremiah
Pennycomequick, it left him weak as a child.  He lay
in the berth powerless to rise, and long after his mind
had cleared his joints were swollen and painful.  He
foresaw that many weeks, perhaps months, must
elapse before he regained his former strength.

She did her best to amuse her patient as well as to
cure him.  She read to him the richest jokes out of
'Tom Treddlehoyle,' and puzzled him with questions
from the same, compounded as conundrums.  But what
interested him chiefly was her account of herself.

She had been married, but that was nowt but
a scratch, she said.  'Wunce I thowt for sartain sure
ah'd hev to give up to be Dewis, and stick to the
Schofield.'

'Schofield!' said Mr. Pennycomequick, and passed
his hand over his brow.  His memory was somewhat
affected.  The name was familiar to him, but he did
not recollect when he had heard it.

'Eh, lad, it wor a thing of no consekans.  Ah'll tell
thee t' tale.'  For the benefit of south country readers
we will to some extent modify the broad West Riding
brogue.

'It was na' lang that Earle and I were acquainted——'

'Earle?'

'Eh, every man has two names, as he has two legs,
and two arms, and two eyes and ears.  He was called
Earle Schofield for sartain; and he used to come and
visit me in t' *Conquering Queen*.  My mother was
dead, and had left me a tidy bit o' brass, for shoo was
a saving woman, an' shoo had been cap'n, boatswain,
steward, and all to t' *Conquering Queen* ever sin' my
father died.  All t' brass he and she had addled (earned)
was kip in—but there I wi'nt tell thee, not that I
mistrust thee, but we're all frail creeturs, and terribly
tempted.  So there, lad, this here pipe belonged to
Earle.  He wor a bit o' a gentleman, he wor.  He'd
niver been in a coil barge trading up an' down t'canal.
We'd a famous scheme atwixt us.  He was to set up
a coil store an' a hoffis by t'warf at Hull, an' he sed
that he knew o' a chap as 'ud sell t'good-will and all
his custom for a hundred pounds.  And Earle—he
wor an uncommon clever hand at accounts, he figured
it a' up on a slate, and he showed me how great 'ud
be our profits.  And he to'd me that it wor the coil
marchants as got a' t'profits out o' t'sale o' coils, and
I got nobbut their crumbs, as I may say.  And he
showed me how if he sold and I carried coils we'd be
rich in no time, and after we'd got married then I
tow'd him where I kep' t'brass.  I didn't tell him
before—believe me.  We were sitting on this deck,
drawed up by t'side o' t'wharf at Hull, as he showed
a' that, and as I tow'd him where I had my brass.
Then he took t'pipe he wor smoking out o' his mouth
and put it into mine, and sed I wor to kip it aleet
wall he came back, he'd go an' deposit a hundred
pound, he sed, for t'good-will, and secure the hoffis at
wunce.  And I let him take all my brass, for sartain
I thow't as we'd been married for three weeks all war
right, and what was mine was his.  He took t'brass,
and he went ashore, and t'last words he sed to me
wor, "Ann, keep t'pipe aleet wall I return."  I waited,
but from that day I've niver clapt eyes on him.'

'And your money?'

'Nor on that noather.'

'What a great rascal he must have been!'

'Nay, I won't say that.  We're a' sinful creeturs,
and our temptations is terrible.  Wot became o' him
I can'na say, but fur sure sartin he'd a mind to retarn
to me, or he'd not ha' tow'd me keep t'pipe aleet.
Wha can tell, he may ha' got a drop o' liquor on
shore, and ha' been robbed, and then ashamed to
come back and tell me; or he may ha' found t'chap
none so ready to sell t'good-will—and so ha' gone
about looiking for summat else and not found it—or
he may ha' been took by them rampagin' an' roarin'
lions, as seek whom they can lock up—the perlice.
Nay!  I'll not condemn him, and allow that he wor a
rascal, for what sez Tom Treddlehoyle:

   |  '"This world, we all naw, hez its ups and its daans,
   |    An' shorter, wi'r time keeps windin',
   |  An' day after day we are crost i' wir way,
   |    Then speak of a man as yo find him."
   |

'But I think you found him serve you badly
enough,' said Mr. Pennycomequick, from his berth,
'to walk off with your savings and leave you with
nothing.'

'Nay, not exactly,' answered Anne.  'There wor
this pipe for wun, he left; and,' after a pause, 'there
wer Jozeph.  T'bairn came varra comfortin' when I
wer i' a tew aboot loising ma' brass.  Besides, t' lad, Joe,
ha' been ov use to me as much as I paid a lad afore
seven shilling a week, and he hev a' been t'same
to me for six years.  If tha comes ta reckon at
fifty-two weeks i't year, that's eighteen pound ten per
hannum; and for six year that mounts up to nigh
on a hundred and ten pound, which is a scoering off
of t' account.'

'And that is his pipe you are smoking?'

'Ees, for sartaen.  I sed I'd keep't aleet, and if he
comes back at t' end o' seven more year, I'll say,
"There, Earle, is t'pipe burning, and as for't account,
Joe hev a' scored it off, interest and principal."'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WHO?  WHAT?`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   WHO?  WHAT?

.. vspace:: 2

It is hateful—hateful as poison—the packing, the
turning out of drawers, and then the tilting of the
drawers to get out the dust and grit and flue that has
accumulated in the corners; the arranging of
correspondence, the discrimination between valuables and
things that may become valuable, and things that are
not, but were valuable; the throwing away of rubbish,
the consideration as to what things are to be disposed
of, and if disposed of, how to be disposed of, and to
whom, and all the business and care and misery of
change of quarters.

And yet, how out of thorns spring roses, and out of
troubles virtues come into bloom!  Never, probably,
in our whole career did charity, the bond of all
virtues, so luxuriate, throw out such all-embracing
tendrils, emit such fragrance, ripen into such fruit, as
on the occasion of change of quarters.  Old boots,
slightly damaged bonnets, heavy battered pieces of
furniture, for which a dealer would not give sixpence;
articles that would fetch nothing in a sale, antiquated
school-books, magazines five years old, novels that
have lost their backs, games, deficient in one or two
pieces, odd gloves, iron bedsteads minus their brass
knobs, and that have to be tied together with wire;
cracked dishes, snipped tumblers, saucepans corroded
with rust—with what lavish and lordly magnificence
we distribute them to all who will accept such alms.

And then—what a lesson does change of quarters
teach us, to discriminate between the worthless and
the valuable; and with equanimity to endure separation
from things which have become interesting to us,
but which we cannot remove.  When the author was
a boy, his life was spent in travelling on the
Continent; in rambles from the Pyrenees to the plains of
Hungary, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, and
wherever he went, he made collections of objects of
curiosity, crystals, petrifactions, dried flowers,
butterflies, mediæval armour, books.  Before quitting any
place of sojourn for a winter, or halt for a night, his
father explored every pocket and crevice of the
carriage, and turned out the treasures there secreted, on
which his son's heart were set and his pocket-money
had been expended.

Nothing escaped his eye, nothing melted his heart.
The author came to a place bringing nothing with
him, and left it, carrying nothing with him away, all
he acquired he was forced to leave.  It was an excellent
discipline for life, and yet hardly attained; even
to this day he finds that he clings to trifles.

How many times since boyhood has he had to shift
quarters? and each time he has experienced a struggle,
and has had to surrender some things on which his
heart was fixed, but from which it was, perhaps, well
to be free.  He recalls how one winter at Bayonne,
he collected every match and spill-end that had been
used for lighting cigars and candles till he had
accumulated a trunk full.  When, in spring, the move
came, his father peremptorily refused to despatch this
trunk-load of scorched paper scraps by *grande* or *petite
vitesse* to Vienna, and they were consigned to the
flames.  When he was in Yorkshire, he had collected
some prehistoric querns, stone hand-mills.  When he
contracted with a furniture-mover to translate his
goods to the south of England, the man struck at the
mill-stones, they were not in his bond.  The author
had to resign them; but his heart aches for those
stones to this day.

When a family has inhabited a house for nigh on
twenty years, it is incredible what accumulations have
gathered round them, how every corner, cupboard,
closet, drawers, the cellar, the attic are stuffed with
articles of various utility and importance, or let us
rather say of different degrees of inutility and
worthlessness; none of which, however, can be spared
without a pang, for to every one of them a recollection
clings.

The Cusworths had been, not indeed twenty years,
but approaching that time, in the house of
Mr. Pennycomequick.  Every room, the garden, the attic, were
crowded with reminiscences, mostly pleasant; to the
ordinary eye a thin veil of soot took the brilliance and
sharpness off all things in this smoke-laden part of
England, but to the girls, Salome and Janet,
everything was overlaid with the gold dust of childish
memories.  Mrs. Cusworth had come to regard the
house as a quiet home in which she might spend her
declining days, without a care for the future of her
children, for Janet was provided for, and Salome
would not be forgotten.  But now, with the loss
of Mr. Pennycomequick, the prop had fallen on
which the future was reared; and suddenly she
found herself in bad health, obliged to think about
her prospects, and leave the house in quest of another
home.

Mrs. Sidebottom, with the eagerness with which
some women fly to do a spiteful thing, had taken
advantage of her position to give the widow notice to
remove.

The Cusworths had received notice to move within
a fortnight, and it was not easy for them to find
quarters into which to go.  Salome had sought
lodgings in Mergatroyd, but in vain.  There none were
vacant, and she had been obliged to engage temporarily
a part of a house in the nearest manufacturing
town, a house that was called Redstone, but which
was popularly known only as Blackhole.  It was a
low house, surrounded by tall factories that crushed
it into a well between them, into which no sun could
penetrate, but which received all day and night showers
of condensed soot.  She counted herself fortunate in
having secured this, and she had already given orders
for the removal to it of some of the packing-cases
filled with their goods.

The time had been one of strain to Salome, already
distressed by the loss of her best friend, and the
subsequent doubt about the identity of the corpse
recovered.  Mrs. Sidebottom had gone out of her way
to make her feel uncomfortable, had said ill-natured
things, had slighted her mother, and irritated Janet
to the verge of an outbreak.  She had been obliged
to exercise great self-control, to disregard the sneers
of Mrs. Sidebottom, to screen her mother and hold
her sister in check.  She had been painfully affected,
moreover, by the mistrust Philip had shown, and
though he had apologized for what he had said, the
wound dealt to her self-respect was unhealed.  She
felt this blow the more because she had unconsciously
reposed confidence in Philip; not that he had given
her reason for reliance on him, but that she had felt
the need for someone to whom to look, now that
Mr. Jeremiah Pennycomequick was removed, and she had
trusted that he would be honourable and considerate
in his conduct, as behoved a Pennycomequick.

To add to her difficulties, her mother had suddenly
and unaccountably had a relapse, was seriously
shaken, and in no condition to be moved.
Unaccountably, for the attack had not come on when it
might have been expected—on hearing the news of
the death of the old manufacturer.  She had borne up
marvellously under this trial; the bringing the corpse
to the house and the funeral had not materially affected
her.  She had spoken of the necessity she was under
of leaving the house with sorrow, indeed, but not
agitation; she had taken some interest in the
assortment and packing of the family goods; and then, in
the midst of the preparations to depart, had been
taken alarmingly ill.

When the funeral was over, Mrs. Sidebottom had
returned to her own house.  All necessity for her
remaining in that of her deceased half-brother was gone.
Nevertheless, she was in and out of the house several
times during the day.

One evening she had left after nine, having dined
there with her nephew, who had moved into his uncle's
apartments, and had enjoyed some of her brother's
best wine.

At half-past nine the front-door was locked and
chained, and the gaslight in the hall turned down, but
not extinguished.  Old Mr. Pennycomequick had kept
early hours, and the servants observed the same routine
of meals and work that had been instituted in his time,
as they had received no orders to the contrary.  Now
that Philip had taken possession of his uncle's
apartments on the first-floor, and went to the mill at the
same hours, and took his meals at the same hours, the
house seemed to have relapsed into its old ways, out
of which it had been bustled by the advent of
Mrs. Sidebottom.

Mr. Pennycomequick's apartments consisted of a
study, with a bedroom opening out of it.  The front
of the house on the same floor was taken up with a
drawing-room, rarely occupied.  A third door on the
same landing admitted into the spare bedroom, in
which the corpse of the drowned man had laid till the
burial.

On the ground-floor were two rooms, corresponding
to those occupied by Mr. Pennycomequick, and these
had been given up to Mrs. Cusworth, one—the
outer—served as sitting-room.  The dining-room and a
breakfast-room—the latter under the spare
bed-chamber—completed the arrangement on the
ground-floor.  Formerly Mrs. Cusworth and her daughters
had slept on the story above the drawing-room and
Mr. Pennycomequick's suite, and Salome's apartment
were there still; but of late, owing to her mother's
infirmity, her bed had been transferred to the inner
room, which had been transformed from the housekeeper's
office to a sleeping-apartment for the old
lady, to whom it was injurious to ascend many steps;
and as it was not advisable that Mrs. Cusworth should
be alone at night, Salome had slept in the room with
her.  Since the arrival of Janet, however, she had
returned to her apartment upstairs, as the old lady
had expressed a wish to have her married daughter
with her.

'My dear,' she had said, 'it is not much more that
I can expect to see of Janet.  She will have to return
to her husband before long, and I am not likely to live
to have the pleasure of many of her visits; so, if you
do not mind, Salome, I should wish her to sleep in
my room whilst she is here, that I may have her by
me as much as I may.'

Salome had accordingly returned to her chamber
upstairs.  She was glad that at this time her sister
was there to relieve her of attendance on her mother,
whilst she went in search of lodgings and was engaged
in packing.

'I am expecting a summons to return to Elboeuf
every day,' said Janet, 'directly I get the news of the
rout of the Prussians.  Providence never intended
that barbarism should prevail over culture; and the
French have such accomplished manners, and such
perfect taste—why, the German ladies I have seen
have no idea how to dress.'

'You forget, Janet,' said the sister, 'that the
barbarians did, of old, overwhelm Roman civilization.'

'Oh, yes; but only that they might assimilate the
culture, and become civilized themselves.  If the
result of this wretched war were that German ladies
learned how to put on their clothes tastefully, I
almost forgive Sedan and Metz.'

Salome had as little knowledge of the arrangement
arrived at between Mrs. Sidebottom and Philip as has
the reader, and for the same reason.  It had not been
divulged.  She, of course, could ask no questions.  The
reader does, but he must wait.  He shall be told
presently.  Suffice it for him to know that Mrs. Sidebottom
had, unopposed, sworn to her brother's death,
without will, and had taken out letters of administration.

Philip did not have his meals with the Cusworth
party; they were served to him apart.

On this evening, after the house was locked up,
servants had retired to bed, Salome was in
her own room; she had been engaged there for some
hours, examining and sorting the house-bills, and
destroying such as were not required to be
preserved.  When this was done, she began to pack her
little library in a deal case, first wrapping each volume
carefully in newspaper.  As she did this she came
on a garden manual that Mr. Pennycomequick had
given her on her birthday when fifteen.  The sight
of this book suddenly reminded her of a score of
hyacinth-bulbs she had put in a dark closet under
the stairs, in which to form shoots before they were
put in their glasses.  The book had advised this as a
corrective to the development of leaf at the expense
of flower.  In this cupboard, which Janet and she as
children had named the Pummy closet—a name that
had adhered to it ever since—she kept as well sundry
garden requisites.

Fearful lest she should forget the bulbs if she
postponed their removal to another time, and accustomed,
on principle, to do at once whatever occurred to her
mind as a thing that had to be done, she gently
opened her door and lightly descended the staircase.

The steps were carpeted, so that her foot was
noiseless.  She had no need of a candle, for the gas,
though reduced, still burnt in the hall.

She reached the bottom quickly; she was unwilling
to disturb and alarm her mother, and so trod
noiselessly through the hall to the closet door, beneath the
steps.  Her garden-gloves, some tools in a little box
that had been given her by Janet, and the bulbs were
there, the latter, in a row, showing stout horns.  She
gathered these bulbs into a chip-basket, and took the
rest of her possessions in the other hand.  Thus
encumbered, she closed the Pummy closet door with her
foot, put down the basket, turned the key, took up
the basket and stepped out into the hall with the
intention of reascending the stairs as noiselessly as
she had come down.

But before she had reached the foot and had turned
the balustrade, she was startled to see a figure on the
first landing.  At first shock she thought it was
Mr. Jeremiah Pennycomequick dressed to go out, as she
had seen him on the night that he disappeared.  If
the hour was not now midnight, it was near it.

Salome could not see whence the figure had come,
whether from Philip's room or from the spare
bedroom.  Only from the drawing-room he could not
have issued, as that door was in view, and was shut.

Who was it?

The figure descended slowly, and with inaudible
tread.  The light from the gas was sufficient to show
that the figure was that of a man, but not to let her
see his face.

With a sickening feeling at the heart, and a chill
that ran through every artery and frosted her blood,
and deprived her both of motion and the will to
move, she stood looking at the apparition that glided
down the staircase, leisurely, noiselessly.  She
recognised the great-coat and hat—they were those of
Mr. Pennycomequick.  The great coat was that in which
the corpse had been discovered invested.

Who was this coming—coming probably from the
room recently tenanted by that strange, awful, dead
man?

That was the first thought of horror that shot
through her brain, followed by another still more
horrible.  'What is it?'

For a while Salome was bereft of power of speech
and motion.  There was a sensation in her brain as
though a handle were being turned that had attached
to it every nerve in her body, and that they were
being spun off her and on to a reel, like silk from a
cocoon.  Her hands contracted on what she held;
she could not have let them fall had she willed to
relax her grasp.  They stiffened as do the hands of
a corpse.  She could not cry out, her tongue was
paralyzed.  She could not stir a step forward or
backward; all control over her knees was gone from
her.

When the figure had nearly reached the bottom of
the stairs, it stopped and turned its head towards her,
and looked at her.

The light of the lowered gas-jet was on her and off
the face of the apparition; all she saw was black
shadow, as all she had seen of the face of the corpse
on the bed had been—a black handkerchief cast over
it.  But she distinguished the hair, somewhat long
behind the ears, and frowzy whiskers about the jaws.
That was all she could make out in that moment of
acute, agonizing horror.  The figure stood looking at
her, and she heard the clock in the hall, tick, tick,
tick, tick, and then begin the premonitory growl that
preceded striking.  The figure moved down the final
steps, and stole in the same stealthy, noiseless manner
to the garden door, and disappeared through it.

The look of the back, the set of the well-known
overcoat, the way in which the hat was worn, all
recalled to her the dear, lost friend, and yet she knew
it could not be he.  He would never have inspired
her with shuddering dread.  He would not have
passed her without a word.

In another moment the spell of rigidity was taken
off her.  The blood rushed tingling through every
vein, her hands, her feet, recovered activity, her heart
bounded and shook off its fear, and her mind recovered
its proper energy.

She ran after the apparition, and found that the
garden door was actually open.  Instantly, without
further consideration, she shut and locked it, and
then flew upstairs and knocked vehemently, loudly,
at Philip Pennycomequick's door.

He opened it, and was surprised to see Salome on
the landing, breathless.

'Is your mother worse?' he asked, for he saw that
she was shaking and white.

'Oh, Mr. Pennycomequick, do tell me.  Have you
had a man here with you?'

'I do not understand.'

'I have seen someone descend the stairs.  If he
did not come from your study, he issued from that
room in which—in which——'  She shuddered.  'I
mean from the spare bedroom.'

'No one has been with me.'

'But he came down the staircase, slowly and silently.
like a shadow, and passed me.'

'I have seen and heard no one.'

'And yet, there has been someone in the house.'

Philip thought, and then said: 'Miss Cusworth,
your nerves have been over-wrought.  You have been
imposed on by your imagination.'

'But—the garden door.  I found it open.  I have
just locked it.  The figure went out through it.'

'Did you distinguish who it was?'

'No, he came from the best bedroom, wearing dear
uncle's—I mean Mr. Pennycomequick's overcoat and
hat.'

Philip again mused.

'All my poor uncle's clothing,' he said, after a
moment of thought, 'all that remained, the overcoat
included, I ordered yesterday to be laid out in the
spare chamber.  I told your mother to dispose of
them as she thought proper.  I made no doubt that
she knew of poor persons to whom they would be
serviceable.'

'But no poor person would come at this time of
night, and slip out stealthily at the garden door, which
ought to be locked at half-past nine.'

'Let us go into the spare room and reassure
ourselves,' said Philip.  'You will find the overcoat
there, and then, perhaps, you will come to the same
conclusion that I have, that you have been over-worried
and over-wrought, and that fancy has conjured
up the ghost.'

He went back into his room for a candle, and
Salome, standing alone, with beating heart, on the
landing, asked herself whether she had been deluded
by her imagination.

Philip returned with the candle.  He smiled and
said: 'I remember particularly that great-coat.  It
was laid on the bed, and the hat by it.  I went into
the room this evening, about half-past eight, and both
were there then.'  He had his hand un the door.
'You are not afraid to come in with me?'

Salome shook her head.  She had begun to hope
that she had been a prey to fancy.

He opened the door, went in, and held the light
over his head.  The great coat and the hat—were
gone!

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center

   END OF VOL. I.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center small

   BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.

.. vspace:: 6

.. pgfooter::