Front matter (continued 3)

'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 Yours was withdrawn long ago.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.'

CHAPTER XII.

SURPRISES.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mrs. Sidebottom tossed her head.

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.'[#]

[#] 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).

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.

CHAPTER XIII.

WHAT NEXT?

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.'

CHAPTER XIV.

ADMINISTRATION.

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.

CHAPTER XV.

THE WOMAN WITH A PIPE.

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."'

CHAPTER XVI.

WHO? WHAT?

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.