Front matter (continued 2)

Then he left the room, and slung the door after him with violence, and certainly with discourtesy. Never before had he lost his self-control as he had lost it in Mrs. Sidebottom's presence on this occasion, but before he had reached the foot of the staircase he had recovered his cold and formal manner.

As he saw Salome come from the cupboard where she was arranging the hyacinths, he bade her in an imperious manner attend him into the breakfast-room, and she obeyed readily, supposing he had some domestic order to give.

'Shut the door, please,' he said. The anger raised by Mrs. Sidebottom affected his address and behaviour to Salome. A sea that has been lashed into fury beats indiscriminately against every object, rock or sand-bank. He stationed himself with his back to the window, and signed to the girl to face him.

'Miss Cusworth,' he said, putting his hands behind him, as though he were standing before the hearth and not at a window, 'my aunt has imposed on your ignorance, has taken a wicked advantage of your generosity, in persuading you to decline the offer that was made you.'

'I decline it from personal motives, uninfluenced by her.'

'Do you mean to tell me she has not been meddling in the matter? I know better.'

'I do not deny that she spoke to me yesterday, but her words did not prompt, they only served to confirm the resolution already arrived at.'

'But I will not allow you to refuse. You shall have the money.'

'I never withdraw a word once given,' said Salome, with equal decision.

'Then you shall take a share in the mill—be a partner.'

'I cannot,' she said hastily, with a rush of colour. 'Indeed this is impossible.'

'Why so?'

'It cannot be. I will not go back from my word.'

'I have my conscience, that speaks imperiously,' said Philip. 'I cannot, I will not be driven by your obstinacy to act dishonourably, unjustly.'

Salome said nothing. She was startled by his vehemence, by his roughness of manner, so unlike what she had experienced from him.

'Very well,' said he hurriedly. 'You shall take me, and with me my share of the mill, and so satisfy every scruple. That, I trust, will content you as it does me.'

The girl was frightened, and looked up suddenly to see if he meant what he said. His back was toward the window. Had he occupied a reverse position she would have seen that his eyes were not kindled with the glow of love, that he spoke in anger, and to satisfy his conscience, not because he had made up his mind that she, Salome, was the only woman that could make him happy.

The Rabbis say that the first man was made male-female, and was parted asunder, and that the perfect man is only to be found in the union of the two severed halves. So each half wanders about the world seeking its mate, and gets attached to wrong halves, and this is the occasion of much misery; only where the right organic sections coalesce is there perfect harmony.

It did not seem as if Philip and Salome were the two halves gravitating towards each other, for the attraction was small, and the thrust together came from without—was due, in fact, to the uninviting hand of Mrs. Sidebottom.

'Come,' said he, 'I wait for an answer. I see no other way of getting out of our difficulties. What I now propose will assure to you and your mother a right in this house, and Mrs. Sidebottom will be able to obtain admission only by your permission. Do you see? I cannot, without a moral wound and breakdown of my self-respect, accept a share of the mill without indemnifying you, according to what I believe to have been the intentions of my uncle. You refuse to take anything to which you have not a right. Accept me, and you have all that has fallen to me.'

Certainly Philip's proposal was not made in a tender manner. He probably perceived that it was unusual and inappropriate, for he added in a quieter tone, 'Rely on it, that I will do my utmost to make you happy; and I believe firmly that with you at my side my happiness will be complete. I am a strictly conscientious man, and I will conscientiously give you all the love, respect, and forbearance that a wife has a right to demand.'

'You must give me time to consider,' said Salome timidly.

'Not ten minutes,' answered Philip hastily. 'I want an answer at once. That woman upstairs—I mean my aunt—I—I particularly wish to knock her down with the news that she is checkmated.'

Again Salome looked up at him, trying to form her decision by his face, by the expression of his eyes, but she could not see whether real love streamed out of them such as certainly did not find utterance by the tongue.

Her heart was beating fast. Did she love him? She liked him. She looked up to him. Some of the old regard which had been lavished on the uncle devolved on Philip with the inheritance, as his by right, as the representative of the house. Salome had been accustomed all her life to have recourse to old Mr. Pennycomequick in all doubt, in every trouble to look to him as a guide, to lean on him as a stay, to fly to him as a protector. And now that she was friendless she felt the need of someone, strong, trustworthy and kind, to whom she could have recourse as she had of old to Mr. Pennycomequick. Mrs. Sidebottom had been hostile, but Philip had been friendly. Salome recognised in him a scrupulously upright mind, and with a girlish ignorance of realities, invested him with a halo of goodness and heroism, which were not his due. There was in him considerable self-reliance; he was not a vain, a conceited man; but he was a man who knew his own mind and resolutely held to his opinion—that Salome saw, or believed she saw; and female weakness is always inclined to be attracted by strength.

Moreover, her sister Janet had been strong in expressing her disapproval of Philip, her dislike of his formal ways, his wooden manner, his want of that ease and polish which she had come in France to exact of every man as essential. Salome had combated the ridicule, the detraction, with which her sister spoke of Philip, and had become his champion in her little family circle.

'I think—I really think,' said Salome, 'that you must give me time to consider what you have said.' She moved to leave the room.

'No,' answered he,' you shall not go. I must have my answer in a Yes or a No, at once. Come, give me your hand.'

She hesitated. It was a little wanting in consideration for her, thus to press for an immediate answer. He had promised to show her the forbearance due to a wife, he was hardly showing her that due to a girl at the most critical moment of her life. She stood steeped in thought, and alternate flushes of colour and pauses of pallor showed the changes of feeling in her heart.

Philip so far respected her hesitation that he kept silence, but he was not inclined to suffer the hesitation to continue long.

Love, Philip had never felt, nor had Salome; but Philip was conscious of pleasure in the society of the girl, of feeling an interest in her such as he entertained for no one else. He respected and admired her. He was aware that she exerted over him a softening, humanizing influence, such as was exercised over him by no one else.

Presently, doubtfully, as if she were putting forth her fingers to touch what might scorch her, Salome extended her right hand.

'Is that yes?' he asked.

'Yes.'

'And,' said he, 'I have your assurance that you never go back from your word. Now,' there recurred his mind at that moment his aunt's sneer about his lack of wit in not offering Salome his arm; 'and now,' he said, 'let us go together and tell my aunt that you take all my share, along with me. Let me offer you—my arm.'

CHAPTER XXIII.

EARLE SCHOFIELD.

Philip Pennycomequick entered the hall, with Salome on his arm, but she instantly disengaged her hand as she saw Mrs. Sidebottom, and was conscious that there was something grotesque in her appearance hooked on to Philip.

As to Philip, he had been so long exposed to the petrifying drip of legal routine, unrelieved by any softening influences, that he was rapidly approaching fossilization.

A bird's wing, a harebell, left to the uncounteracted effect of silex in suspense, in time becomes stone, and the drudgery of office and the sordid experience of lodging-house life had encrusted Philip, and stiffened him in mind and manner. He had the feelings of a gentleman, but none of that ease which springs out of social intercourse; because he had been excluded from intercourse with those of his class, men and women, through the pecuniary straits in which his father had been for many years.

When, therefore, Philip proposed to Salome, he knew no better than to offer her his arm, as if to conduct her to dinner, or convey her through a crowd from the opera.

If he had been told that it was proper for him to kiss his betrothed, he would have looked in the glass and called for shaving-water, to make sure that his chin and lip were smooth before delivering the salute etiquette exacted.

The silicious drip had, as already said, encrusted Philip, but he had not been sufficiently long exposed to it to have his heart petrified.

Many clerks in offices keep fresh and green in spite of the formality of business, because they have in their homes everything necessary for counteracting the hardening influence, or they associate with each other and run out in mild Bohemianism.

Philip's father had existed, not lived, in lodgings, changing them periodically, as he quarrelled with his landlady, or the landlady quarrelled with him. Mr. Nicholas Pennycomequick had been a grumbler, cynical, finding fault with everything and every person with which and with whom he came in contact, as is the manner of those who have failed in life. Such men invariably regard the world of men as in league to insult and annoy them; it never occurs to them to seek the cause of their failure in themselves.

Philip had met with no love, none of the emollient elements which constitute home. He belonged, or thought he belonged, socially and intellectually, to a class superior to that from which his fellow-clerks were drawn. The reverses from which his father had suffered had made Philip proud, and had restrained him from association with the other young men. Thrown on himself, he had become self-contained, rigid in his views, his manners, and stiff in his movements. When he offered his arm to Salome, she did not like to appear ungracious and decline it. She touched it lightly, and readily withdrew her hand, as she encountered the eye of Mrs. Sidebottom.

'Oh!' said that lady, 'I was only premature, Philip, in saying that your arm was taken last night.'

'Only premature,' replied Philip; 'I have persuaded Miss Cusworth out of that opinion which you forced on her when you took her arm.'

'She is, perhaps, easily persuaded,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, with a toss of her head.

'I have induced her to agree to enter into partnership.'

'How? I do not understand. Is the firm to be in future Pennycomequick and Co.—the Co. to stand for Cusworth?'

'You ask how,' said Philip. 'I reply, as my wife.'

He allowed his aunt a minute to digest the information, and then added:

'I am unable to ask you to stay longer at present, as I must inform Mrs. Cusworth of the engagement.'

'Let me tender my congratulations,' said Mrs. Sidebottom; 'and let me recommend a new lock on the garden-door, lest And Co. should bring in through it a train of rapacious out-at-elbow relatives, who would hardly be satisfied with a great-coat and a hat.'

Philip was too incensed to answer. He allowed his aunt to open the front-door unassisted.

When she was gone, he said to Salome:

'I am not in a humour to see your mother now. Besides, it is advisable, for her sake, that the news should be told her through you. I am so angry with that insolent—I mean with Mrs. Sidebottom, that I might frighten your mother. I will come later.'

He left Salome and mounted to his study, where he paced up and down, endeavouring to recover his composure, doubly shaken by his precipitation in offering marriage without premeditation, and by his aunt's sneer. He had been surprised into taking the most important step in life, without having given a thought to it before. He was astonished at himself, that he, schooled as he had been, should have acted without consideration on an impulse. He had been carried away, not by the passion of love, but of anger.

In the story of the Frog-Prince, the faithful Eckhard fastened three iron bands round his heart to prevent it from bursting with sorrow when his master was transformed into a loathsome frog. When, however, the Prince recovered his human form, then the three iron bands snapped in succession. One hoop after another of hard constraint had been welded about the heart of Philip, and now, in a sudden explosion of wrath, all had given way like tow.

When Philip was alone, and had cooled, he became fully aware of the gravity of his act; and, as a natural result, a reaction set in.

He knew little of Salome, nothing of her parentage; and though he laid no store on pedigree, he was keenly aware that a union with one who had, or might have, objectionable and impecunious relatives, as difficult to drive away as horseflies, might subject him to much annoyance.

In a manufacturing district, little is thought of a man's ancestors so long as he is himself respectable and his pockets are full. Those who begin life as millhands often end it as millheads, and the richest men are sometimes the poorest in social qualifications.

Mrs. Sidebottom, with feminine shrewdness and malice, had touched Philip where she knew he would feel the touch and would wince. She had put her finger at once on the weak point of the situation he was creating for himself.

Philip was vexed at his own weakness; as vexed as he was surprised. He could not charge Salome with having laid a trap for him, nevertheless he felt as if he had fallen into one. He had sufficient consciousness of the course he had taken to be aware that Mrs. Sidebottom had given the impetus which had shot him, unprepared, into an engagement. He certainly liked Salome. There was not a girl he knew whom he esteemed more highly. He respected her for her moral worth, and admired her for her beauty. She was not endowed with wealth by fortune, and yet, if she came to him, she would not come poor, for she was jointured with the four thousand pounds which he had undertaken to set apart for her.

That he could be happy with Salome he did not question; but he was not partial to her mother, whom he regarded, not as a vulgar, but as an ordinary woman. She had not the refinement of Salome, nor the vivacity of Janet. How two such charming girls should have been turned out from such a mould as Mrs. Cusworth was a marvel to Philip; but then it is precisely the same enigma that all charming girls present to young men who look at them, and then at their mothers, and cannot believe that these girls will in time be even as their mothers. The glow-worm is surrounded by a moony halo till mated, and then appears but an ordinary grub, and the birds assume rainbow tints whilst thinking of nesting, and then hop about as dowdy, draggle-feathered fowls.

It was true that Philip had requested Mrs. Cusworth to remain in his house before he proposed to her daughter; it was true also that he had asked to be received at her table before he thought of an alliance; but it was one thing to have this old creature as a housekeeper, and another thing to be saddled with her as mother-in-law. Moreover, it was by no means certain but that Mrs. Cusworth might develop new and unpleasant peculiarities of manner or temper, as mother-in-law, which would be held in control so long as she was housekeeper, just as change of climate or situation brings out humours and rashes which were latent in the blood, and unsuspected. Some asthmatic people breathe freely on gravel, but are wheezy on clay; and certain livers become torpid below a hundred feet from the sea-level, and are active above that line. So Mrs. Cusworth might prove amiable and commonplace in a situation of subordination, but would manifest self-assertion and cock-a-hoopedness when lifted into a sphere of authority.

According to the classic fable, Epimetheus—that is, Afterthought—filled the world with discomfort and unrest; whereas Prometheus—that is, Forethought—shed universal blessing on mankind.

For once, Philip had not invoked Prometheus, and now, in revenge, Epimetheus opened his box and sent forth a thousand disquieting considerations. But it is always so—whether we act with forethought or without. Epimetheus is never napping. He is sure to open his box when an act is beyond recall.

In old English belief, the fairies that met men and won their love were one-faced beings, convex as seen from the front, concave when viewed from the rear. It is so with every blessing ardently desired, every object of ambition. We are drawn towards it, trusting to its solidity; and only when we have turned round it do we perceive its vanity. No man has ever taken a decided step without a look back and a bitter laugh. Where he saw perfection he sees defect, everything on which he had reckoned is reversed to his eyes.

In Philip Pennycomequick's case there had been no ardent looking forward, no idealization of Salome, no painting of the prospect with fancy's brush; nevertheless, now when he had committed himself, and fixed his fate, he stood breathless, aghast, fearful what next might be revealed to his startled eyes. His past life had been without charm to him, it had inspired him with disgust; but the ignorance in which he was as to what the future had in store, filled him with vague apprehension.

He was alarmed at his own weakness. He could no longer trust himself; his faith in his own prudence was shaken. It is said that the stoutest hearts fail in an earthquake, for then all confidence in stability goes; but there is something more demoralizing than the stagger of the earth under our feet, and that is the reel and quake of our own self-confidence. When we lose trust in ourselves, our faith in the future is lost.

There are moments in the night when the consequences of our acts appear to us as nightmares, oppressing and terrifying us. A missionary put a magnifying-glass into the hand of a Brahmin, and bade him look through it at a drop of water. When the Hindu saw under his eye a crystal world full of monsters, he put the glass aside, and perished of thirst rather than swallow another animated drop of fluid. Fancy acts to us like that inconsiderate missionary, shows us the future, and shows it to us peopled with horrors, and the result is sometimes the paralysis of effort, the extinction of ambition. There are moments in the day, as in the night, when we look through the lens into the future, and see forms that smite us with numbness. Such a moment was that Philip underwent in his own room. He saw Mrs. Cusworth develop into a prodigious nuisance; needy kinsfolk of his wife swimming as sponges in the crystal element of the future, with infinite capacity for suction; Janet's coquetry break through her widow's weeds. He saw more than that. He had entered on a new career, taken the management of a thriving business, to which he had passed through no apprenticeship, and which, therefore, with the best intentions, he might mismanage and bring to failure. What if he should have a family, and ruin come upon him then?

Philip wiped his brow, on which some cold moisture had formed in drops. Was he weak? What man is not weak when he is about to venture on an untried path, and knows not whither it may lead? Only such as have no sense of the burden of responsibilities are free from moments of depression and alarm such as came on Philip now.

It is not the sense of weakness and dread of the future stealing over the heart that makes a man weak; it is the yielding to it, and, because of the possible consequences, abandoning initiative.

With Philip the dread passed quickly. He had youth, and youth is hopeful; and he had a vast recuperative force of self-confidence, which speedily rallied after the blow dealt his assurance. When he had recovered his balance of mind and composure of manner, he descended the stairs to call on Mrs. Cusworth.

He found Janet in the room with her. Salome had retired to her own chamber, to solitude, of which she felt the need.

Philip spoke cheerfully to the old lady, and accepted Janet's sallies with good humour.

'You will promise to be kind to Salome,' said Mrs. Cusworth. 'Indeed she deserves kindness; she is so good a child.'

'Of that have no doubt.'

'And you will really love her?'

'I ought to be a hearty lover,' said Philip, with a slight smile, 'for I am a hearty hater, and proverbially the one qualifies for the other. Love and hatred are the two poles of the magnet; a weakly energized needle that hardly repels at one end, will not vigorously attract at the other.'

'But surely you hate no one!'

'Do I not? I have been driven to the verge of it to-day, by my aunt; but I pardon her because of the consequences that sprang out of her behaviour. She exasperated me to such a degree that I found courage to speak, and but for the stimulus applied to me, might have failed to make a bid for what I have now secured.'

'I am sorry to think that you hate anyone,' said the old lady. 'We cannot command our likes and dislikes, but we can hold hatred in check, which is an unchristian sentiment.'

'Then in hatred I am a heathen. I shall become a good Christian in time under Salome's tuition. I shall place myself unreservedly at her feet as a catechumen.'

'Sometimes,' said Janet, laughing, 'love turns to hate, and hate to love. A bishop's crosier is something like your magnetic needle. At one end is a pastoral crook, and at the other a spike, and in a careless hand the crook that should reclaim the errant lamb may be turned, and the spike transfix it.'

'I can no more conceive of love for Salome altering its quality than I can imagine my detestation—no, I will call it hate, for a certain person becoming converted to love.'

'But whom do you hate—not your aunt?'

'No; the man who ruined my father, made his life a burden to him, turned his heart to wormwood, lost him his brother's love, and his sister's regard—though that latter was no great loss—deprived him of his social position, threw him out of the element in which alone he could breathe, and bade fair to mar my life also.'

'I never heard of your troubles,' said Mrs. Cusworth; 'Mr. Pennycomequick did not speak to us of your father. He was very reserved about family matters.'

'He never forgave my father so long as the breath was in him. That was like a Pennycomequick. We are slow in forming attachments or dislikes, but when formed we do not alter. And I—I shall never forgive the man who spoiled my father's career, and well-nigh spoiled mine.'

'Who was that, and how did he manage it?' asked Janet.

'How did he manage it? Why, he first induced my father to draw his money out of this business, and then swindled him out of it—out of almost every pound he had. By his rascality he reduced my poor father from being a man comfortably off to one in straitened circumstances; he deprived him of a home, drove him—can you conceive of a worse fate?—to live and die in furnished lodgings.'

Mrs. Cusworth did not speak. She was a little shocked at his bitterness. His face had darkened as with a suffusion of black blood under the skin, and a hard look came into his eyes, giving them a metallic glitter. He went on, noticing the bad impression he had made—he went on to justify himself. 'My father's heart was broken. He lost all hope, all joy in life, all interest in everything. I think of him as a wreck, over which the waves beat and which is piecemeal broken up—partly by the waves, partly by wreckers. That has soured me. Hamilcar brought up his son Hannibal to swear hatred to the Romans. I may almost say that I was reared in the same manner; not by direct teaching, but by every privation, every slight, every discouragement—by the sight of my father's crushed life, and by the hopelessness that had come on my own, to sear a bitter implacable hatred of the name of Schofield.'

'Of whom?'

'Schofield—Earle Schofield. Earle was his Christian name—that is, his forename. He had not anything Christian about him.'

Philip detected a look—a startled, terrified exchange of glances—between mother and daughter.

'I see,' continued Philip, 'that I have alarmed you by the strength of my feelings. If you had endured what my father and I have endured, knowing that it was attributable to one man, then, also, you would be a heathen in your feelings towards him and all belonging to him.'

The old lady and her daughter no longer exchanged glances; they looked on the ground.

'However,' said Philip, in a lighter tone, and the shadow left his face, 'it is an innocuous feeling. I know nothing more of the man since he robbed my father. I do not know where he is, whether he be still alive. He is probably dead. I have heard no tidings of him since a rumour reached us that he had gone to America, where, if he has died, I have sufficient Christianity in me to be able to say, "Peace to his ashes!"

He looked at Mrs. Cusworth. The old woman was strangely agitated, her face of the deadly hue that flesh assumes when the blood has retreated to the heart.

Janet was confused and uneasy—but that was explicable. Her mother's condition accounted for it.

'Mr. John Dale!' The maid opened the door and introduced the doctor from Bridlington.

'Mr. Dale!' Janet and her mother started up and drew a long breath, as though relieved by his appearance from a situation embarrassing and painful.

'Oh, Mr. Dale! how glad, how heartily glad we are to see you!'

Then turning, first to Philip and next to the surgeon, Janet said, with a smile: 'Now I must introduce you—my guardian and my brother-in-law prospective.'

CHAPTER XXIV.

A RECOGNITION.

Jeremiah Pennycomequick remained quietly at his friend's house at Bridlington for some weeks.

'As so much time has slipped away since your disappearance,' said John Dale, 'it does not much matter whether a little more be sent tobogganing after it. I can't go to Mergatroyd very well just now; I am busy, and have a delicate case on my hands that I will not entrust to others. If you can and will wait my convenience, I promise you I will go. If not—go yourself. But, upon my word, I should dearly like to be at Mergatroyd to witness your resurrection.'

Jeremiah waited. He had been weakened by his illness, and had become alarmed about himself. He shrank from exertion, from strong emotion, fearing for his heart. In an amusing story by a Swiss novelist, a man believes that he has a fungus growing on his heart, and he comes to live for this fungus, to eat only such things as he is convinced will disagree with the fungus, to engage in athletic sports, with the hope of shaking off the fungus, to give up reading the newspapers, because he ceases to take interest in politics, being engrossed in his fungus, and finally to discover that he has been subjected to a delusion, the fungus existing solely in his imagination.

Mr. Pennycomequick had become alarmed about his heart; he put his finger periodically to his pulse to ascertain its regularity, imagined himself subject to spasms, to feel stabs; he suspected numbness, examined his lips and eyelids at the glass to discover whether he were more or less bloodless than the day before, and shunned emotion as dangerous to a heart whose action was abnormal. The rest from business, the relief from responsibility, were good for him. The even life at his friend's house suited him. But he did not rapidly gain strength.

He walked on the downs when the weather permitted, not too fast lest he should unduly distress his heart, nor too slowly lest he should catch cold. He was dieted by his doctor, and ate docilely what was meted to him; if he could have had his sleep and wakefulness measured as well, he would have been content, but sleep would not come when called, banished by thoughts of the past, and questions concerning the future.

John Dale was a pleasant man to be with; fond of a good story, and able to tell one; fond of a good dinner, and—being a bachelor—able to keep a cook who could furnish one; fond of good wine, and with a cellar stocked with it. He was happy to have his old comrade with him; and Jeremiah enjoyed being the guest of John Dale, enjoyed discussing old acquaintances, reviewing old scenes, refreshing ancient jokes.

Thus time passed, and passed pleasantly, though not altogether satisfactorily to Jeremiah, who was impatient at being unwell, and uneasy about his heart.

At length John Dale fulfilled his undertaking; he went to Mergatroyd to see how matters progressed there. He arrived, as has already been stated, at a moment when his appearance afforded relief to the widow. He talked with Janet, and with Salome; but he had not many hours at his disposal, and his interviews with the Cusworths were necessarily brief. He was obliged to consult with Janet about her affairs, and that occupied most of his time. From Salome he learned nothing concerning the will more than what he had already heard. She told him no particulars; and, indeed, considered it unnecessary to discuss it, as her engagement to Philip altered her prospects.

'But, bless me, this must have been a case of love at first sight!' said Mr. Dale. 'Why, Salome, you did not know him till the other day!'

'No; I had not seen him till after the death of my dear uncle, but I, somehow, often thought of and a little fretted about him. I was troubled that dear uncle had not made friends with his brother, and that he kept his nephew at arm's length. I pitied Mr. Philip before I knew him. I could not hear that he had done anything to deserve this neglect; and what little was told me about the cause of difference between uncle and his brother did not make me think that the estrangement ought to last and be extended to the next generation. In my stupid way I sometimes tried to bring uncle to another mind, and to think more kindly of them. I was so grieved to think that Mr. Philip should grow up in ignorance of the nobility and worth of his uncle's character. Do you know—Mr. Dale—one reason why I am glad that I am going to marry Philip is that I may have a real right to call Mr. Pennycomequick my uncle? Hitherto I called him so to himself, and mamma, and one or two others, but I knew that he was no relation.'

'How about the identification of Mr. Jeremiah's body?' asked the surgeon.

'With that I had nothing to do. I was not called on to give my opinion. Mrs. Sidebottom swore to it. The body wore the surtout that I know belonged to Mr. Pennycomequick, but that was all. How he came by it I cannot explain. Mrs. Sidebottom was so convinced that her view was correct that she had an explanation to give why the corpse wore hardly any other clothes. I did not believe when it was found, and I do not believe now, that the body was that of uncle.'

'But you do not doubt that Mr. Pennycomequick is dead?'

'Oh no! of course not. If he had been alive he would have returned to us. There was nothing to hinder him from doing so.'

'Nothing of which you are aware.'

John Dale heard a favourable account of Philip from everyone to whom he spoke, except Janet, who did not appreciate his good qualities, and was keenly alive to his defects. He could not inquire at the factory, but he was a shrewd man, and he picked up opinions from the station-master, from some with whom he walked up the hill, from a Mergatroyd tradesman who travelled with him in the same railway-carriage. All were decidedly in Philip's favour. The popular voice was appreciative. He was regarded as a man of business habits and integrity of character.

John Dale returned to Bridlington.

'News for you, old boy!' shouted he, as he entered his house, and then looked steadily at Jeremiah to see how he would receive the news he brought. 'What do you think? Wonders will never cease. Salome——'

'Well, what about Salome?'

Jeremiah's mouth quivered. John Dale smiled. 'Young people naturally gravitate towards each other. There is only one commandment given to men that receives general and cheerful acceptance, save from a few perverse creatures such as you and me—and that commandment is to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. Salome is engaged to be married.'

Jeremiah's face became like chalk. He put his hand over his eyes, then hastily withdrew it. Dale saw his emotion, and went on talking so as to cover it and give him time to master it. 'I have read somewhere, that in mediæval times in the German cities the marriageable young men were summoned before the Burgomaster on New Year's Day, and ordered to get married before Easter on pain of expulsion from the city. Bachelorhood was regarded as unpatriotic if not criminal. It is a pity this law was not in force here a few years ago—and that you and I were not policed into matrimony. Now it is too late; both of us have acquired bachelor habits, and it would be cruelty to force us into a condition which we have eschewed, and for which we have ceased to be fitted.'

'Whom is she going to marry?' asked Jeremiah, controlling his emotions by an effort.

'No other than your nephew Philip. I will tell you what I know.'

Then John Dale gave his friend a succinct account of what he had heard. He told him what he had learned of Philip.

'Do you grudge her to your nephew?' asked Dale.

'I do not know Philip,' answered Jeremiah curtly.

'I heard nothing but golden opinions of him,' said Dale. 'The only person to qualify these was that puss, Janet, and she of course thinks no one good enough for her dear sister Salome.'

Jeremiah's heart swelled. How easy it would be for him to spoil all the schemes that had been hatched since his disappearance. Philip was reckoning on becoming a well-to-do manufacturer; on founding a household; was looking forward to a blissful domestic life enriched with the love of Salome. Jeremiah had but to show himself; and all these plans would disappear as the desert mirage; Philip would have to return to his lawyer's clerkship and abandon every prospect of domestic happiness and commercial success.

'One thing more,' said Dale, 'I do not quite like the looks of my little pet, Janet. Her troubles have worn her more than I suspected. Besides she never had the robustness of her sister. It is hard that wits and constitution should go to one of the twins, and leave the other scantily provided with both.'

Jeremiah said no more. He was looking gloomily before him into vacancy. John Dale declared he must visit his patients, and left his friend.

Jeremiah continued for some minutes in a brown study; and then he, also, rose, put on his overcoat and muffler, and went forth to the cliffs, to muse on what he had heard, and to decide his future course.

The tidings of Salome's engagement were hard to bear. He thought he had taught himself to think of her no longer in the light of a possible wife. His good sense had convinced him that it would be unwise for him to think of marriage with her; it told him also that he was as yet too infirm of purpose to trust himself in her presence.

Could he now return? If he did, in what capacity?—as the maker or marrer of Philip's fortunes? If he took him into partnership, so as to enable him to marry, could he—Jeremiah—endure the daily spectacle of his nephew's happiness?—endure to witness the transfer to another of that love and devotion which had been given to him? And if he banished Philip, what would be the effect on Salome? Would she not resent his return, and regret that he had not died in the flood? If he were to allow those in Mergatroyd to know that he was alive it would be almost the same thing as returning into their midst, as it would disconcert their arrangements effectually. The wisest course for himself, and the kindest to them, would be for him to depart from England for a twelvemonth or more, without giving token that he still existed, and then on his return he would be able to form an unprejudiced opinion of his nephew, and act accordingly. If he found him what, according to Dale's account, he promised to become—a practical, hardworking, honourable manager—he would leave the conduct of the business in his hands, only reclaiming that share which had been grasped by Mrs. Sidebottom, which, moreover, he would feel a——perhaps malicious pleasure in taking from her.

He seated himself on one of the benches placed at intervals on the down for the convenience of visitors, and looked out to sea. The sun shone, and the day, for a winter's day, was warm. Very little air stirred, and Jeremiah thought that to rest himself on the bench could do him no harm, so long as he did not remain there till he felt chilled.

As he sat on the bench, immersed in his troubled thoughts, a gentleman came up, bowed, and took a place at his side.

'Beautiful weather! beautiful weather!' said the stranger, 'and such weather, I am glad to say, is general at Bridlington. Of the three hundred and sixty-five days in the year the average of days on which the sun shines is two hundred and seventy-three decimal four. When we get an interruption of what we regard as bad weather, oh! what murmurers, sad murmurers we are against a beneficent Providence. The so-called bad weather dissipates the insalubrious gases and brings in a fresh supply of invigorating ozone, life-sustaining oxygen, and the other force-stimulating elements—elements.'

Jeremiah nodded. He was not well pleased to be drawn into conversation at this moment, when occupied with his own thoughts.

'"La santé avant tout," say the French,' continued the gentleman, 'with that terseness which characterizes the Gallic tongue—the tongue, sir.' When he repeated a word he ruffled and swelled and turned himself about like a pluming turkey, and as though believing that he had said a good thing. 'I agree with them; I would subordinate every consideration to health, every consideration, sir, except religion, which towers, sir, steeples and weather-cocks high above every other mundane con—sid—er—ation.' As he pronounced each syllable apart, as though each was a pearl he dropped from his lips, he turned himself about, scattering his precious particles, till he faced Jeremiah. 'You, yourself, sir, I perceive, are in search of that inestimable prize, health—Hygiene, I mean.'

Mr. Pennycomequick was startled at this random shot, and looked more closely at his interlocutor. He saw a man of about his own height, with long hair, whiskers that were elaborately curled, and perhaps darkened with antimony; a handsome man, but with a mottled face and a nose inclined to redness. There was a something—Jeremiah could not tell what, it was in his face—that made him suspect he had seen the man before; or, if he had not seen him before, had seen someone like him. He looked again at his face, not steadily, lest he should seem discourteous, but hastily, and withal searchingly. No, he had not seen him previously, and yet there was certainly something in his face that was familiar.

'You are not, I presume, aware,' continued the gentleman, 'that there is a very remarkable and unique feature of this bay which points it out specially as the sanatorium of the future. The iodine in the seaweed here—the i-o-dine, sir—reaches a percentage unattained elsewhere. It has been analysed, and, whereas along the seaside resorts on the English Channel it is two decimal four to five decimal one of potass, there is a steady accession of iodine in the seaweed, as you mount the east coast—the east coast, sir—till it reaches its maximum at the spot where we now are; where the proportions are almost reversed, the iodine standing at five, or, to be exact, four decimal eight, and the potass at three decimal two. This is a very interesting fact, sir, and as important as it is interesting—as it is in-ter-est-ing.'

The gentleman worked his elbows, as though uncomfortable in his overcoat, that did not fit him.

'The iodine is suspended in the atmosphere, as also is the ozone; but it is concentrated in the algae. Conceive of the advantage to humanity, and contemplate the beneficence of Providence, not only in gathering into one focus the distributed iodine of the universe, but also in discovering this fact to me, and enabling me and a few others to whom I confide the secret, to realize out of the iodine, I will not say a competence, but a colossal fortune.'

'And pray,' said Jeremiah, with a tone of sarcasm in his voice, 'what is the good of iodine when you have it?'

'What is the good—the good of iodine?'

The gentleman turned round solidly and looked at Mr. Pennycomequick from head to foot. 'Do you mean to tell me, sir, that you do not know for what purpose an all-wise Providence has put iodine in the world? Why, it is one of the most potent, I may say it is the only agent for the reduction of muscular, vascular, osseous, abnormal secretions.' From the way in which he employed such words as vascular, osseous, abnormal, and secretions, it was apparent that they gave the speaker thorough enjoyment to use them. 'For any and every form of disorder of the cartilaginous system it is sovereign—sov-er-eign.'

'For the heart also?' asked Jeremiah, becoming interested in iodine.

'For all cardiac affections—supreme. It is known as yet to very few—only to such as know it through me—that Bridlington is a spot so abounding in iodine, so marked out by nature as a resort for all those who suffer from glandular affections, stiff joints, rickets, cardial infirmities—and, according to a system I am about to make public—tubercular phthisis.'

He turned himself about and shook his mouth, as shaking comfits out of a bag, 'tu-ber-cular phthi-sis!'

After a pause, in which he smiled, well pleased with himself, he said, 'Perhaps you will condescend to take my card, and if I can induce you to take a share in Iodinopolis——'

'Iodinopolis?'

'The great sanatorium of the future. A company is being formed to buy up land, to erect ranges of beautiful marine villas, to rear palatial hotels. There is a low church here already, and if we can persuade his grace the Archbishop to help us to a high church also, the place will be ready, the nest prepared for the birds. Then we propose to give a bonus to every physician who recommends a patient to Bridlington, for the first three or four years, till the tide of fashion has set in so strong that we can dispense with bonuses, the patients themselves insisting on being sent here. What said Ledru Rollin? "I am the leader of the people, therefore I must follow them." He handed his card to Mr. Pennycomequick, who looked at it and saw:

'MR. BEAPLE YEO,

Financier.'

Every now and then there came in the stranger's voice an intonation that seemed familiar to Jeremiah; in itself nothing decided, but sufficient, like a scent, to recall something, yet not pronounced enough to enable him to determine what it was in the past that was recalled. Again Jeremiah looked at the gentleman, and his attention was all at once directed to his great-coat.

'How odd—how strange!' he muttered.

'What, sir? what is strange?' asked the gentleman. 'That such a splendid opportunity of making a fortune should lie at our feet—lie literally at our feet, without figure of speech—for there it is, in the seaweed, here it is, in the air we inhale, now humming in the grass of the down? Perhaps you may like——' he fumbled in his great-coat pocket.

'Excuse me,' said Jeremiah, 'that overcoat bears the most extraordinary resemblance to——' but he checked himself.

'Made by my tailor in New Bond Street,' said Mr. Yeo. 'Here, sir, is the prospectus. This is a speculation on which not only large capitalists may embark, but also the widow can contribute her mite, and reap as they have sown, the capitalist receiving in proportion as the widow—as the widow. I myself, guarantee eighteen and a half per cent. That I guarantee on my personal security—but I reckon that the return will be at the rate of twenty-four decimal three—the decimal is important, because the calculation has been strict.'

Mr. Pennycomequick ran his eye over the list of managers.

'You will see,' said Mr. Yeo, 'that our chairman is the Earl of Schofield. His lordship has taken up a hundred and twenty shares of £10 each—the first call is for five shillings per share.'

'Earl Schofield!' murmured Mr. Pennycomequick. 'Earl Schofield! Earl Schofield! I do not know much of the peerage—not in my line—but the name is familiar to me. Earl Schofield!—Excuse me, but there was a great scoundrel——'

'Hah!' interrupted Mr. Yeo, and waved his cane, 'there is my secretary signalling to me from away yonder on the dunes. Excuse me—I must go to him.'

He rose and walked hastily away.

'How very odd!' said Jeremiah. 'I could swear he was in my great-coat.' He watched the man as he strode away. 'And that hat!—surely I know that also.'

CHAPTER XXV.

WITHOUT BELLS.

Virgilius, Bishop of Salzburg in the eighth century, condemned the erroneous doctrine held by some that we have antipodes. It was, no doubt, true that men in the Middle Ages had not their antipodes, but it is certainly otherwise now. Where our fathers' heads were, there now are our feet. Everything is the reverse in this Generation of what it was in the last. Medicine condemns those things which medicine did enjoin, and enjoins those things which were forbidden. What our parents revered that we turn into burlesque, and what they cast aside as worthless that we collect and treasure. Maxims that moulded the conduct in the last generation are trampled underfoot in this, and principles thought immutable are broken by the succeeding age, as royal seals are broken on the death of the sovereign. If we were bred up by our fathers in high Toryism, when of age we turn a somersault and pose as Social Democrats; if we learned the Gospel at our mother's knee we profess Buddhism with the sprouting of our whiskers. The social and moral barriers set up by our fathers we throw down, and just as pigs when driven in one direction turn their snouts the other way, so do we—so do our children; which is an evidence in favour of Darwinianism, showing that the porcine character still inheres.

It was regarded of old as a canon by romance writers, that the final chapter of the last volume, be it the seventh as in the days of Richardson, or the third as in these of Mudie and Smith, should end with the marriage of the hero and heroine. A cruel and wayward Fate held the couple apart through the entire story, but they came together in the end. And there was a reason for this. Marriage is the climax of the romance of life. It concludes one epoch and opens another, and that which it opens is prosaic. It was concluded, and concluded with some show of reason that a romance should deal with the romantic period of life and finish when that reaches its apogee.

The Parliament of Love at Toulouse in the twelfth century laid down that love and marriage were mutually exclusive terms; that romance died to the sound of wedding-bells, or at longest lingered to the expiration of the honeymoon. This law has governed novelists ever since. The ingenuity of the author has consisted in devising impediments to the union of the lovers, and in knocking them out of their way as the story neared its conclusion.

But in this revolutionary age we have discarded the rule; and carried away by the innovating stream the author of this tale has ventured to displace the marriage. Had he been completely lost to reverence for the ancient canons, in his desire to be original, he would have opened his novel with a wedding procession, strutting to the carriages over strewn flowers, holding bouquets, with the pealing of wedding-bells, whilst the bridegroom's man circulates, tipping the parson, the curate, the pewopener, the sexton, the clerk, the bellringers, and all the other sharks that congregate about a bridegroom, as the fish congregate about a ship on board of which is a corpse. But, as the author is still held in check by old rule, or prejudice, and yet yields somewhat to the modern spirit of relaxation, he compromises between the extremes, and introduces the marriage in the middle of his tale.

In a novel, a marriage is always built up of much romantic and picturesque and floral adjunct. It is supposed necessarily to involve choral hymns, white favours, bridal veils, orange blossoms, tears in the bride, flaming cheeks in the bridegroom, speeches at the breakfast, an old slipper, and a shower of rice. Without these condiments a wedding is a very insipid dish.

But here we are forced to innovate.

The marriage of Philip Pennycomequick and Salome Cusworth was hurried on; there was no necessity for delay, and it was performed in a manner so prosaic as to void it of every feature of romance and refinement.

In the parish church there was morning prayer every day at nine, and this service Salome frequently attended.

On one morning—as it happened, a gray one, with a spitting sky—Philip also attended matins, from 'the wicked man' to the final 'Amen.' When, however, the service was concluded—a service attended by five Sisters of Mercy and three devout ladies—the vicar, instead of leaving the desk, coughed, blew his nose, and glowered down the church.

Then the clerk began to fumble among some books, the five Sisters of Mercy perked up, the devout ladies who had moved from their seats towards the church door were seized with a suspicion that something unusual was about to take place, and hastily returned to their places. The Sisters of Mercy had with them one penitent, whom with sugar-plums they were alluring into the paths of virtue. It at once occurred to these religious women that to witness a wedding would have an elevating, healthy effect on their penitent, and they resolved to stay—for her sake, for her sake only; they, for their parts, being raised above all mundane interests. Also, the servants of the vicarage, which adjoined the churchyard, by some means got wind of what was about to occur, and slipped ulsters over their light cotton gowns, and tucked their caps under pork-pie hats, and tumbled into church breathing heavily.

Then Philip, trying to look as if nothing was about to happen, came out of his pew, and in doing so stumbled over a hassock, knocked down his umbrella which leaned against the pew, and sent some hymnals and church services about the floor. Then he walked up the church, and was joined by Salome and her sister and mother. No psalm was sung, no 'voice breathed o'er Eden,' but the Sisters of Mercy intoned the responses with vociferous ardour, and the penitent took the liveliest interest in the ceremonial, expressing her interest in giggles and suppressed 'Oh my's!'

Finally, after 'amazement,' the parson, clerk, bride and bridegroom, and witnesses adjourned to the vestry, where the vicar made his customary joke about the lady signing her surname for the last time.

The bellringers knew nothing about the wedding, and having been unforewarned were not present to ring a peal. No carriage with white favours to horses and driver was at the door of the church—no cab was kept at Mergatroyd—no rice was thrown, no slipper cast.

The little party walked quietly and unobserved back to their house under umbrellas, and on reaching home partook of a breakfast that consisted of fried fish, bacon, eggs, toast, butter, and home-made marmalade. No guests were present, no speeches were made, no healths drunk. There was to be no wedding tour. Philip could not leave the mill, and the honeymoon must be passed in the smoky atmosphere of Mergatroyd, and without the intermission of the daily routine of work.

As Philip walked home with Salome under the same umbrella, from the points of which the discoloured water dropped, he said in a low tone to her, 'I have, as you desired, offered your mother to manage her affairs for her. She has accepted my offer, and I have looked through her accounts. She has very little money.'

'I do not suppose she can have much; my poor father died before he was in a position to save any considerable sum.'

'She has about five hundred pounds in Indian railway bonds, and a couple of hundred in a South American loan, and some three hundred in home railways—about fifteen to sixteen hundred pounds in all—that is to say, she had this a little while ago.'

'And has it still, no doubt.'

'No; you yourself told me she had met with losses.'

'She informed me that she had, but I cannot understand how this can have been. I doubt entirely that she met with losses.'

'But she allowed me to see her book, and she has sold out some stock—in fact, between two and three hundred pounds' worth. She did that almost immediately after my uncle's death.'

'But she has the money realized, I suppose.'

'Not at all. It is gone.'

'Gone!'

'She cannot and will not account for it to me, except by the vague explanation that she had a sudden and unexpected call upon her which she was forced to meet.'

'But—she said nothing about this to me. It is very odd.'

'It is, as you say, odd. It is, of course, possible that Janet may have had something to do with it, but I cannot say; your mother will not enlighten me.'

'I cannot understand this,' said Salome musingly.

'I regret my offer,' said Philip. 'I would not have made it if I had not thought I should be met with candour, and given the information I desired.'

When Mrs. Sidebottom heard that the marriage had actually taken place, then her moral sense reared like a cob unaccustomed to the curb.

'It is a scandal!' she exclaimed, 'and so shortly after my sweet brother's death. A bagman's daughter, too!'

'Uncle Jeremiah died in November,' said the captain.

'Well, and this is March. To marry a bagman's daughter in March! It is a scandal, an outrage on the family.'

'My uncle would have had no objections, I suppose. Philip is as good as Mr. Baynes.'

'As good! How you talk, Lamb! as if all the brains in your skull had gone to water. Philip is a Pennycomequick, and Baynes is—of course, a Baynes.'

'What of that?'

'Mr. Baynes was a manufacturer.'

'So is Philip.'

'Well, yes; for his sins. But then he is allied to us who have dropped an n, and capitalized a Q, and adopted and inserted a hyphen. Mr. Baynes was not in the faintest degree related to us. Philip has behaved with gross indecency. A bagman's daughter within five months of his uncle's death! Monstrous. If she had been his social equal we could have waived the month—but, a bagman's daughter! I feel as if allied to blackbeetles.'

'Her father was about to be taken into partnership when he died,' argued the captain.

'If he had been a partner, that would have been another matter, and I should not have been so pained and mortified; but he was not, and a man takes his position by the place he occupied when he died, not by that which he might have occupied had he lived. Why, if Sidebottom had lived and been elected Mayor of Northingham in the year of the Prince's visit he might have been knighted, but that does not make me Lady Sidebottom.'

'You call him a bagman,' said Captain Lambert. 'But I should say he was a commercial traveller.'

'And how does that mend matters? Do seven syllables make a difference? A dress-improver is no other than a bustle, and an influenza than a cold in the head.'

'All I know is,' said the captain, 'that his daughters are deuced pretty girls, and as good a pair of ladies as you will meet anywhere. I've known some of your grand ladies say awfully stupid things, and I can't imagine Janet doing that; and some do rather mean things, and Salome could not by any chance do what was unkind or ungenerous. I've a deuce of a mind to propose to Janet, as I have been chiselled out of my one hundred and fifty.'

'Chiselled out!'

'Yes, out of my annuity. If the will had been valid I should have had that of my own; but now I have nothing, and am forced to go to you for every penny to buy tobacco. It is disgusting. I'll marry Janet. I am glad she is a widow and available. She has a hundred and fifty per annum of her own, and is certainly left something handsome by Baynes.'

'Fiddlesticks!' exclaimed Mrs. Sidebottom.

'I will, indeed, unless I am more liberally treated. I hate to be dependent on you for everything. I wish I had served a caveat against your getting administration of the property, and done something to get the old will put to rights.'

Mrs. Sidebottom turned green with anger and alarm.

'I will go to Philip's wedding breakfast, or dinner, or dance, or whatever he is going to have, and snatch a kiss from little Janet, pull her behind the window-curtains and propose for her hundred and fifty, I will.'

Lambert's mother was very angry, but she said no more. She knew the character of her son; he would not bestir himself to do what he threatened. His bark was worse than his bite. He fumed and then turned cold.

But Philip gave no entertainment on his wedding-day, invited no one to his house; consequently Lambert had not the opportunity he desired for pulling Janet behind the window-curtains, snatching a kiss and proposing for her hundred and fifty pounds.

'I shall refuse to know them,' said Mrs. Sidebottom.

'And return to York?' asked her son.

'I can't leave at once,' answered his mother. 'I have the house on my hands. Besides, I must have an eye on the factory. Lamb, if you had any spirit in you, you would learn book-keeping, so as to be able to control the accounts. I do not trust Philip; how can I, when he marries a bagman's daughter? It is a proof of deficiency in common sense, and a lack of sense of rectitude. Who was Salome's mother? We do not know her maiden name. These sort of people are like diatoms that fill the air, and no one can tell whence they came and what they are. They are everywhere about us and all equally insignificant.'

Mrs. Sidebottom had but the ears of her son into which to pour her discontent, for she had no acquaintances in Mergatroyd.

On coming there she had been met by the manufacturers' wives in a cordial spirit. Her brother was highly respected, and they hastened to call on her and express their readiness to do her any kindness she might need as a stranger in the town. She would have been received into the society there—a genial one—had she been inclined. But she was supercilious. She allowed the ladies of Mergatroyd to understand that she belonged to another and a higher order of beings, and that the days in which the gods and goddesses came down from Olympus to hold converse with men were over.

The consequence was that she was left to herself, and now she grumbled at the dulness of a place which was only dull to her, because of her own want of tact. No more kindly, friendly people are to be found in England than the north country manufacturers; but the qualities of frankness, directness, which are conspicuous in them, were precisely those qualities which Mrs. Sidebottom was incapable of appreciating, were qualities which to her mind savoured of barbarism.

And yet Mrs. Sidebottom belonged, neither by birth nor by marriage nor by acceptance, to a superior class. She was the daughter of a manufacturer, and the widow of a small country attorney. As the paralytic in the sheep-market waited for an angel to put him into the pool, so did Mrs. Sidebottom spend her time and exhaust her powers in vain endeavours to get dipped in the cleansing basin of county society, in which she might be purged of the taint of trade. And, like the paralytic of the story, she had to wait, and was disappointed annually, and had the mortification of seeing some neighbour or acquaintance step past her and enter the desired circle, whilst she was making ready and beating about for an introducer.

She attended concerts, public balls, went to missionary meetings; she joined working parties for charitable objects, took stalls at bazaars, hoping by these means to get within the vortex of the fashionable world and be drawn in, but was always disappointed. Round every eddy may be seen sticks and straws that spin on their own axes; they make dashes inwards, and are repelled, never succeeding in being caught by the coil of the whirlpool. So was she ever hovering on the outskirts of the aristocratic ring, ever aiming to pierce it, and always missing her object.

A poem by Kenrick, written at the coronation of George III., represents that celebrated beauty and toast, the Countess of Coventry, recently deceased, applying to Pluto for permission to return to earth and mingle in the entertainments of the Coronation. Pluto gives his consent; she may go—but as a ghost remain unseen.

Then says the Countess:

'A fig for fine sights, if unseen one's fine face,

What signifies seeing, if one's self is not seen?'

So Mrs. Sidebottom found that it was very little pleasure to her to hover about genteel society, and see into it, without herself being seen in it. Her descent to Mergatroyd was in part due to a rebuff she had met with at York, quite as much as to her desire to conciliate her half-brother. She trusted that when she returned to York she would be so much richer than before that this would afford her the requisite momentum which might impel her within the magic circle, within which, when once rotating, she would be safe, confident of being able to maintain her place.

'My dear Lamb,' said she, 'I may inform you, in the strictest confidence, that I see my way to becoming wealthy, really wealthy. There is a speculation on foot, of which I have received information through my York agent, to buy up land and build a great health resort near Bridlington, to be called Iodinopolis or Yeoville, the name is not quite fixed. No one is to know anything about it but the few who take preference shares. I am most anxious to realize some of the securities that came to me through my darling brother's death, so as to invest. The manager is called Beaple Yeo.'

'Never heard of him.'

'And the chairman is the Earl of Schofield. Mr. Beaple Yeo and the Earl together guarantee seventeen per cent—think of that, Lamb!—on their own guarantee!—an Earl, too—and the funds are only three or three and a half!'

CHAPTER XXVI.

HYMEN.

A twelvemonth slipped away, easily, happily; to none more so than to Philip Pennycomequick.

To the Fates, how strange must seem the readiness with which women plunge into matrimony, and the shyness with which some men look at it! for matrimony is emphatically an institution designed for the comfort of man irrespective of the interests of the woman. The married man ceases to have care about his meals, they come to him; he gives no thought to his servants, they are managed for him; he is not troubled about his clothing, it now hangs together, whereas formerly it fell to pieces.

When the married man prepares to shave, the soap-dish is full, his tidy is clean, his razors in order; the bachelor finds all in confusion. Before marriage, he who had a cook was served with India-rubber; after it, he gets his meat succulent and well cooked. Before marriage, the linen went to the wash, and only half returned, silk handkerchiefs returned as cotton, stockings came odd, jerseys in holes, sheets in rags, and shirt-fronts enamelled with iron-mould; after marriage, everything returns in good condition and in proper number.

But to the woman, matrimony is by no means a relief from cares. On the contrary, the woman passes through the ring into an arena of battle. We are told by anthropologists that in the primitive condition of society a subdivision of tasks took place; one set of men undertook to till the earth and manage the domestic animals, whilst another girded on their arms and defended the infant community. These latter, for their services, were fed by the tillers, housed, and clothed with food they had not grown, houses they had not builded, clothing they had not woven. The same subdivision of labour continues still in the family, where the man is the tiller and toiler, and the woman is the military element. She marches round the confines of his house, fights daily battles with those foes of domestic felicity—the servants. When they oversleep themselves, she routs them out of their beds; when they neglect the dusting, she flies in pursuit to bring them to their duties; when they are impudent, she drives them out of the house.

With what unflagging zeal does she maintain her daily conflicts! How she countermines, discovers ambushes, circumvents, throws open the gates, and charges the foe!

Now consider what was the life of the girl before she married. She had no worries, no warfare; she was petted, admired; she enjoyed herself, indulged her caprices unrestrained, gave way to her humours unrebuked. Her bonnets, her dresses were given to her, she had no care what she might eat, any more than the lilies of the field, only, unlike them, devoting herself to the thoughts of her clothing, for which, however, she had not to pay. Unmarried girls were anciently termed spinsters, and are so derisively still in the banns, for they formerly spun the linen for their future homes; now they toil not, neither do they spin.

Then comes marriage, and all is changed. They enter into a world of discords and désagréments. They have to grow long nails and to sharpen their teeth; they have to haggle with shopkeepers, fight their servants; whereas the husbands, those sluggard kings of creation, smack their lips over their dinners, and lounge in their easy-chairs, and talk politics with their friends, and smile, and smile, unconscious of the struggles and passions that rage downstairs.

The eyes that, in the girl, looked at the beauties of creation, in the married woman search out delinquencies in their domestics, and defects in the household furniture. The eyes that looked for violets now peer for cobwebs; that lingered lovingly on the sunset glow, now examine the coal-bill; and the ear that listed to the song of Philomel, is now on the alert for a male voice in the kitchen. The nose that of old inhaled the perfume of the rose, now pokes into pots and pans in quest of dripping.

From what has been said above, the reader may conclude that the position of the wife, though a belligerent one, is at all events regal. She is queen of the house, and if she has trouble with her servants, it is as a sovereign who has to resist revolutionary movements among her subjects.

No more mistaken idea can well be entertained. As the Pope writes himself, 'Servant of the servants of Heaven,' so does the lady of the house subscribe herself servant of the servants of the establishment. If she searches into their shortcomings, remonstrates, and resents them, it is as the subject criticising, murmuring at, and revolting personally against the tyranny of her oppressors. So far from being the head of the house, she is the door-mat, trampled on, kicked, set at nought, obliged to swallow all the dirt that is brought into the house.

Marriage had produced a change in Philip. It had made him less stony, angular, formal. Matrimony often has a remarkable effect on those who enter into it, reducing their peculiarities, softening their harshnesses, and accentuating those points of similarity which are to be found in the two brought into close association, so that in course of time a singular resemblance in character and features is observable in married folk. In an old couple there is to be seen occasionally a likeness as that of brother and sister. This is caused by their being exposed to the same caresses and the same strokes of fortune; they are weathered by the same breezes, moistened by the same rains. In addition to the exterior forces moulding a couple, comes the reciprocal action of the inner powers—their passions, prejudices—so that they recoil on each other. They come to think alike, to feel alike, as well as to look alike. The man unconsciously loses some of his ruggedness, and the woman acquires some of his breadth and strength. They become in some measure reflectors to each other, the light one catches is cast on and brightens the other, and they mirror whatever passes along the face of the other.

The subtle, mysterious modelling process had begun on Philip, although but recently married. Janet was no longer in the house; she had returned to France, and as her constitution was delicate had followed advice, and gone to the South for the winter.

Mrs. Sidebottom and the captain had shaken off the dust from their feet against Mergatroyd, and had returned to their favourite city, York, where they resumed the interrupted gyrations about the whirlpool of fashionable life, and Mrs. Sidebottom made her usual rushes, still ineffectual, at its centre.

Consequently, Philip was left to the undisturbed influence of Salome, and this influence affected him more than he was conscious of, and would have allowed was possible. He was very happy, but he was not the man to confess it, least of all to his wife. As a Canadian Indian deems it derogatory to his dignity to express surprise at any wonder of civilization shown him, so did Philip consider that it comported with his dignity to accept all the comforts, the ease, the love that surrounded him as though familiar with them from the beginning. Englishmen who have been exposed to tropic suns in Africa, have their faces shrivelled and lined. When they returned to England, in the soft, humid atmosphere the flesh expands, and drinks in moisture at every pore. The lines fade out, and the flesh becomes plump. So did the sweet, soothing influence of Salome, equable as it was gentle, fill, relax, refresh the spirit of Philip, and restore to him some of the lost buoyancy of youth. Salome was admirably calculated to render him happy, and Philip was not aware of the rare good fortune which had given him a wife who had the self-restraint to keep her crosses to herself. That is not the way with all wives. Many a wife makes a beast of burden of her husband, lading him with crosses, heaping on his shoulders not only her own, great or small, but also all those of her relatives, friends and acquaintances. Such a wife cracks a whip behind her good man; drives him through the town, stopping at every house and calling, 'Any old crosses! Old crosses! Old crosses! Chuck them on; his back is broad to bear them!' precisely as the scavenger goes through the streets with his cart and burdens it with the refuse of every house. Many a wife takes a pride in thus breaking the back, and galling the sides, and knocking together the knees of her husband with the crosses she piles on his shoulders.

As we walk through the wilderness of life, burrs adhere to the coat of Darby and to the skirts of Joan. Why should not each carry his or her own burrs, if they refuse to be picked off and thrown away? Why should Joan collect all hers and poke them down the neck of Darby, and expect him to work them down his back from the nape to the heel? Little thought had Philip how, unperceived and by stealth, Salome sought the burrs that adhered to him, removed them and thrust them into her own bosom, bearing them there with a smiling face, and leaving him unconscious that he had been delivered from any, and that they were fretting her.

We men are sadly regardless of the thousand little acts of forethought that lighten and ease our course. We give no thanks, we are not even aware of what has been done for us. Nevertheless, our wives do not go unrewarded, though unthanked, for what they have done or borne; their gentle attentions have served to give us a polish and a beauty we had not before we came into their tender hands.

A bright face met Philip when he returned from the factory every day. If Salome saw that he was downcast, she exerted herself to cheer him; if that he was cheerful, she was careful not to discourage him. Always neat in person, fresh in face, and pleasant in humour, keeping out of Philip's way whatever might annoy him, she made him as happy as he could well be.

Perfectly happy Philip could not be, because unable to shake off the sense of insecurity that attended his change of fortune. Constitutionally suspicious, habituated to the shade, he was dazzled and frightened when exposed to the light. The access of good luck had been too sudden and too great, for him to trust its permanency. The fish that has its jaws transfixed with broken hooks mistrusts the worm that floats down the stream unattached to a line. The expectation of disappointment had been bred in him by painful and repeated experience, and had engendered a sullen predetermination to mistrust Good Fortune. He regarded her as a treacherous goddess, and when she smiled, he was sure that she meditated a stab with a hidden dagger.

Such as are born in the lap of fortune, from which they have never been given a fall, or where they have never been dosed with quassia through a drenching spoon, such persons look on life with equanimity. Nothing would surprise them more than a reverse. But with the step-sons of fortune, the Cinderellas in the great household of humanity, who have encountered heart-break after heart-break, it is otherwise. When Fortune comes their way offering gifts, they mistrust them as the gifts of the Danai. It is with them as with him who is haunted. He knows that the spectre lurks at hand, and when he is about to close his eyes, will start up and scare him; when he is merry will rise above the table and echo his laugh with a jeer. So do those who have been unlucky fear ever lest misfortune should spring on them from some unforeseen quarter, at some unprepared moment.

The dread lest there should be a revulsion in his affairs never wholly left Philip, and took the edge off his happiness. He had found little difficulty in acquiring the requisite understanding of the business, and obtaining a firm hold over the conduct of the factory. There was no prospect of decline in the trade. Since the conclusion of the European war, it had become brisk. Peace had created a demand for figured damasks. He had no reason to dread a cessation of orders, a slackness in the trade.

CHAPTER XXVII.

AN ALARM.

Within a twelvemonth of his marriage Philip had been given one of the purest and best of the joys that spring out of matrimony—a child, a boy called after his own name, Philip; and the father loved his first-born, was proud of him, and was fearful lest the child should be snatched from him. As Polycrates was rendered uneasy because he was so powerful, rich, and happy, and cast his most costly jewel into the sea as a gift to the Fates, so was Philip inwardly disturbed with a suspicion that the gloomy, envious Fates which had harassed him so long were now only playing with him, and would exact of him some hostage. What would satisfy them? His commercial prosperity?—his child?—his health? In vain did Polycrates seek to propitiate the Fates by casting from him his most precious ring. The ring was returned to him in the belly of a fish, and kingdom and life were exacted of him.

'I never did understand what became of part of your mother's little property,' said Philip one evening when alone with Salome; 'and I think it odd that your mother should be reserved about it to me.'

'Oh, Philip! It does not matter. After all, it is only two hundred and fifty pounds, and the loss is mamma's, not yours.'

'It does matter, Salome. Two hundred and fifty pounds cannot have made themselves wings and flown away without leaving their address. Bo Peep's sheep left their tails behind them. This money ought to be accounted for. One thing I do know—the name of the person to whom it passed.'

'Who was that?'

'One Beaple Yeo. Have you any knowledge of the man? Who is he? What had your mother to do with him?'

'I never heard his name before.'

'The money was drawn and paid to Beaple Yeo directly after the death of Uncle Jeremiah. I made inquiries at the bank, and ascertained this. Who Beaple Yeo is your mother will not say, nor why she paid this large sum of money to him. I would not complain of this reticence unless she had called me in to examine her affairs.'

'No, Philip, it was I who asked you to be so kind as to do for her the same as Uncle Jeremiah.'

'She is perfectly welcome to do what she likes with her money: but if she complains of a loss, and then seeks an investigation into her loss, and all the time throws impediments in the way of inquiry—I say that her conduct is not right. It is like a client calling in a solicitor and then refusing to state his case.'

'I was to blame,' said Salome meekly. 'Mamma has her little store—the savings she has put by—and a small sum left by my father, and I ought not to have interfered. She did not ask me to do so, and it was meddlesome of me to intervene unsolicited; but I did so with the best intentions. She had told me that she suffered from a loss which crippled her, and I assumed that her money matters had become confused, because no longer supervised. I ought to have asked her permission before speaking to you.'

'When I made the offer, she might have refused. I would not have been offended. What I do object to is the blowing of hot and cold with one breath.'

'I dare say she thought it very kind of you to propose to take the management; and there may have been a misunderstanding. She wished you to manage for the future and not inquire into the past.'

'Then she should have said so. She complained of a loss, and became reticent and evasive when pressed as to the particulars of this alleged loss.'

'I think the matter may be dropped,' said Salome.

'By all means—only, understand—I am dissatisfied.'

'Hush!' exclaimed Salome. 'I hear baby crying.'

Then she rose to leave the room.

'Now look here,' said Philip, 'would it be fair to the doctor whom you call in about baby to withhold from him the particulars of the ailments you expect him to cure.'

'Never mind that now,' said Salome, and she kissed her husband to silence him. 'Baby is awake and is crying for me.'

This brief conversation will serve to let the reader see an unlovable feature in Philip's character. He possessed a peculiarity not common in men, that of harbouring a grievance and recurring to it. Men usually dismiss a matter that has annoyed them, and are unwilling to revert to it. It is otherwise with women, due to the sedentary life they lead at their needlework. Whilst their fingers are engaged with thread or knitting-pins, their minds turn over and over again little vexations, and roll them like snowballs into great grievances. Probably the solitary life Philip had led had tended to develop the same feminine faculty of harbouring and enlarging his grievances.

The front-door bell tingled. Salome did not leave the room to go after baby till she heard who had come. The door was thrown open upon them, and Mrs. Sidebottom burst in.

This good lady had thought proper to swallow her indignation at the marriage of Philip, because it was against her interest to be on bad terms with her nephew; and after the first ebullition of bad temper she changed her behaviour towards Philip and Salome, and became gracious. They accepted her overtures with civility but without cordiality, and a decent appearance of friendship was maintained. She pressed Salome to visit her at York, with full knowledge that the invitation would be declined. Occasionally she came from York to see how the mill was working and what business was being transacted.

As she burst in on Philip and his wife, both noticed that she was greatly disturbed; her usual assurance was gone. She was distressed and downcast. Almost without a word of recognition cast to Salome, she pushed past her at the door, entered the room, ran to her nephew and exclaimed, 'Oh, Philip! You alone can help me. Have you heard? You do not know what has happened? I am sure you do not, or you would have come to York to my rescue.'

'What is the matter? Take a chair, Aunt Louisa.'

'What is the matter! Oh, my dear! I cannot sit, I am in such a nervous condition. It is positively awful. And poor Lamb a director. I am afraid it will damage his prospects.'

'But what has happened?'

'Oh—everything. Nothing so awful since the Fire of London and the Earthquake of Lisbon. And Smithies recommended it.'

'What—Smithies, whom you sent here to investigate the books?' asked Philip dryly.

'Oh, my dear! It is always best to do business in a business way. Of course, I don't distrust you, but I am sure it gratifies you that I should send my agent to run through the books.'

'Well, and what has your agent, Smithies, done now?'

'Oh, Smithies has done nothing himself. Smithies is as much concerned as myself. But he is to blame for advising me to sell my bonds in Indian railways and put the money into iodine or decimals, or something of that sort, and persuading Lamb to become a director of the company.'

'What company?'

'Oh! don't you know? The Iodinopolis Limited Liability Company. It promised to be a most successful speculation. It had an earl at the head. The company proposed to open quarries for stone, others for lime, erect houses, hotels, and churches, high and low, make a great harbour, and Beaple Yeo——'

'Who?'

'Beaple Yeo, the chief promoter and secretary, and treasurer pro tem. The speculation was certain to bring in twenty-five per cent., and he gave his personal security for seventeen.'

'And have you much capital in this concern?'

'Well—yes. The decimals grow thicker on this part of the coast than anywhere else in the world, and the decimals have an extraordinary healing effect in disease. They are cast up on the shore, and exhale a peculiar odour which is very stimulating. I have smelt the decimals myself—no, what am I saying, it is iodine, not decimals, but on my soul, I don't know exactly what the decimals are, but this I can tell you, they have run away with some good money of mine.'

'I do not understand yet.'

'How dense you are, Philip! For the sake of the iodine, we were going to build a city at or near Bridlington, to which all the sick people in Europe who could afford it, would troop. There was a crescent to be called after Lamb.'

'Well, has the land been bought on which to build and open the quarries?'

'No; that is the misfortune. Mr. Yeo has been unable to induce the landowners to sell, and so he has absconded with the money subscribed.'

'And is there no property on which to fall back?'

'Not an acre. What is to be done?'

Philip smiled. Now he understood what Mrs. Cusworth had done with her two hundred and fifty pounds. She also had been induced to invest in iodine or decimals.

'What is to be done?' repeated Philip. 'Bear your loss.'

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE SPARE ROOM.

Philip insisted on Mrs. Sidebottom seating herself, and giving him as connected and plain an account of the loss she had met with, as it was in her power to give. But to give a connected and plain account of anything affecting the interests deeply is not more easy for some persons than it is for a tipsy man to walk straight. They gesticulate in their narration, lurch and turn about in a whimsical manner. But Philip had been in a solicitor's office, and knew how to deal with narrators of their troubles. Whenever Mrs. Sidebottom swayed from the direct path, he pulled her back into it; when she attempted to turn round, or retrace her steps, he took her by the shoulders—metaphorically, of course—and set her face in the direction he intended her to go. Mr. Smithies was a man in whom Mrs. Sidebottom professed confidence, and whom she employed professionally to watch and worry her nephew; to examine the accounts of the business, so as to ensure her getting from it her share to the last farthing.

Introduced by Mr. Smithies, Mr. Beaple Yeo had found access to her house, and had gained her ear. He was a plausible man, with that self-confidence which imposes, and with whiskers elaborately rolled—themselves tokens and guarantees of respectability. He pretended to be highly connected, and to have intimate relations with the nobility. When he propounded his scheme, and showed how money was to be made, when, moreover, he assured her that by taking part in the speculations of Iodinopolis she would be associated with the best of the aristocracy, then she entered eagerly, voraciously, into the scheme. She not only took up as many shares as she was able, but also insisted on the captain becoming a director.

'I have,' Mr. Beaple Yeo had told her, 'a score of special correspondents retained, ready, when I give the signal, to write up Iodinopolis in all the leading papers in town and throughout the north of England. I have arranged for illustrations in the pictorial periodicals, and for highly-coloured and artistic representations to be hung in the railway waiting-rooms. Success must crown our undertaking.'

When Philip heard the whole story, he was surprised that so promising a swindle should have collapsed so suddenly. He expressed this opinion to his aunt.

'Well,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'you see the managers could get hold of no land. If they could have done that, everything would have gone well. They intended to build a great harbour, and import their own timber, to open their own quarries for building-stone, and burn their own lime, and have their own tile-yards, so that they would have cut off all the profits of timber-merchants, quarry-owners, lime-burners, tile-makers, and gathered them into the pocket of the company.'

'And they have secured no land?'

'Not an acre. Mr. Beaple Yeo did his best, but when he found he could get no land, then he ran away with the money that had been paid up for shares.'

'And what steps have been taken to arrest him?

'I don't know. I have left that with Smithies.'

'And how many persons have been defrauded?'

'I don't know. Perhaps Smithies does.'

'This is what I will do for you,' said Philip. 'Your loss is a serious one, and no time must be let slip without an attempt to stop the rascal with his loot. I will go at once to York, see Smithies, who, I suspect, has had his finger in the pie, and taken some of the plums to himself, and then on to Bridlington and see what can be done there. The police must be put on the alert.'

'In the meanwhile, if you and Salome have no objection, I will remain here,' said Mrs. Sidebottom. 'I am terribly cut up, am rendered ill. My heart, you know, is subject to palpitations. When you return, I shall see you directly, and learn the result.'

'Very well,' said Philip, 'stay here. The spare room is vacant, and at your service.'

Then he went off, packed his portmanteau, and left the house. He was vexed with his aunt for her folly, but he could not deny her his assistance.

Mrs. Sidebottom shook her head when her nephew mentioned the spare bedroom, but said nothing about it till he had left the house. Then she expressed her views to Salome.

'No, thank you,' she said; 'no, indeed—indeed not. I could not be induced to sleep in that chamber. No; not a hot bottle and a fire combined could drive the chill out of it. Remember what associations I have connected with it. It was in that apartment that poor Jeremiah was laid after he had been recovered from the bottom of the canal. I could not sleep there. I could not sleep there, no, not if it were to insure me the recovery of all I have sunk on Iodinopolis and its decimals. I am a woman of finely-strung nature, with a perhaps perfervid imagination. Get me ready Philip's old room; I was in that once before, and it is very cosy—inside the study. No one occupies it now?'

'No; no one.'

'I shall be comfortable there. But—as for that other bed—remembering what I do——' she shivered.

Salome admitted that her objection was justifiable, if not reasonable, and gave orders that the room should be prepared according to the wishes of Mrs. Sidebottom.

'A preciously dull time I shall have here,' said this lady, when alone in the room. 'I know no one in Mergatroyd, and I shall find no entertainment in the society of that old faded doll, Mrs. Cusworth, or in that of Salome, who, naturally, is wrapped up in her baby, and capable of talking of nothing else. I wonder whether there are any novels in the house?'

She went in search of Salome, and asked for some light reading.

'Oh, we have heaps of novels,' answered Salome. 'Janet has left them; she was always a novel-reader. I will bring you a basketful. But what do you say to a stroll? I must go out for an hour; the doctor has insisted on my taking a constitutional every day.'

'No, thank you,' said Mrs. Sidebottom. 'The wind is blowing, and your roads are stoned with glass clinkers ground into a horrible dust of glass needles that stab the eyes. I remember it. Besides, I am tired with my journey from York. I will sit in the arm-chair and read a novel, and perhaps doze.'

A fire was burning in the bedroom, another in the study. The former did not burn freely at first; puffs of wind occasionally sent whiffs of smoke out of the grate into the study. Mrs. Sidebottom moved from one room to the other, grumbling. One room was cold and the other smoky. Finally she elected to sit in the study. By opening the door on to the landing slightly, a draught was established which prevented the smoke from entering the room.

She threw herself into a rocking-chair, such as is found in every Yorkshire house, from that of the manufacturer to that of the mechanic.

'Bah!' groaned Mrs. Sidebottom, 'most of these books are about people that cannot interest me; low-class creatures such as one encounters daily in the street, and stands aside from. I don't want them in the boudoir. Oh! here is one to my taste—a military novel, by a lady, about officers, parades, and accoutrements.'

So she read languidly, shut her eyes, woke, read a little more, and shut her eyes again.

'I hear the front-door bell,' she said. 'No one to see me, so I need not say, "Not at home."'

Presently she heard voices in the room beneath her—the room given up to Mrs. Cusworth—one voice, distinctly that of a man.

The circumstance did not interest her, and she read on. She began to take some pleasure in the story. She had come on an account of a mess, and the colonel, some captains and lieutenants were introduced. The messroom conversation was given in full, according to what a woman novelist supposes it to be. Infinitely comical to the male reader are such revelations. The female novelist has a system on which she constructs her dialogue. She takes the talk of young girls in their coteries, and proceeds to transpose their thin, insipid twaddle into what she believes to be virile, pungent English, which is much like attempting to convert milk and water into rum punch. To effect this, to the stock are added a few oaths, a pinch of profanity, a spice of indecency, and then woman is grated over the whole, till it smacks of nothing else.