Up the centre aisle of Hillford Church, the Tinleys (late as usual) were
seen trooping for morning service in midwinter. There was a man in the
rear known to be a man by the sound of his boots and measure of his
stride, for the ladies of Brookfield, having rejected the absurd
pretensions of Albert Tinley, could not permit curiosity to encounter the
risk of meeting his gaze by turning their heads. So, with charitable
condescension they returned the slight church nod of prim Miss Tinley
passing, of the detestable Laura Tinley, of affected Rose Tinley (whose
complexion was that of a dust-bin), and of Madeline Tinley (too young for
a character beyond what the name bestowed), and then they arranged their
prayer-books, and apparently speculated as to the possible text that
morning to be given forth from the pulpit. But it seemed to them all
that an exceedingly bulky object had passed as guardian of the light-
footed damsels preceding him. Though none of the ladies had looked up as
he passed, they were conscious of a stature and a circumference which
they had deemed to be entirely beyond the reach of the Tinleys, and a
scornful notion of the Tinleys having hired a guardsman, made Arabella
smile at the stretch of her contempt, that could help her to conceive the
ironic possibility. Relieved on the suspicion that Albert was in
attendance of his sisters, they let their eyes fall calmly on the Tinley
pew. Could two men upon this earthly sphere possess such a bearskin?
There towered the shoulders of Mr. Pericles; his head looking diminished
by the hugeous collar. Arabella felt a seizure of her hand from Adela's
side. She placed her book open before her, and stared at the pulpit.
From neither of the three of Brookfield could Laura's observation extract
a sign of the utter astonishment she knew they must be experiencing; and
had it not been for the ingenuous broad whisper of Mrs. Chump, which
sounded toward the verge even of her conception of possibilities, the
Tinleys would not have been gratified by the first public display of the
prize they had wrested from the Poles.
"Mr. Paricles--oh!" went Mrs. Chump, and a great many pews were set in
commotion.
Forthwith she bent over Cornelia's lap, and Cornelia, surveying her
placidly, had to murmur, "By-and-by; by-and-by."
"But, did ye see 'm, my dear? and a forr'ner in a Protestant Church!
And such a forr'ner as he is, to be sure! And, ye know, ye said he'd
naver come with you, and it's them creatures ye don't like. Corrnelia!"
"The service commences," remarked that lady, standing up.
Many eyes were on Mr. Pericles, who occasionally inspected the cornices
and corbels and stained glass to right and left, or detected a young lady
staring at him, or anticipated her going to stare, and put her to
confusion by a sharp turn of his head, and then a sniff and smoothing
down of his moustache. But he did not once look at the Brookfield pew.
By hazard his eye ranged over it, and after the first performance of this
trick he would have found the ladies a match for him, even if he had
sought to challenge their eyes. They were constrained to admit that
Laura Tinley managed him cleverly. She made him hold a book and appear
respectably devout. She got him down in good time when seats were taken,
and up again, without much transparent persuasion. The first notes of
the organ were seen to agitate the bearskin. Laura had difficulty to
induce the man to rise for the hymn, and when he had listened to the
intoning of a verse, Mr. Pericles suddenly bent, as if he had snapped in
two: nor could Laura persuade him to rejoin the present posture of the
congregation. Then only did Laura, to cover her failure, turn the
subdued light of a merry smile upon the Brookfield pew.
The smile was noticed by Apprehension sitting in the corner of one eye,
and it was likewise known that Laura's chagrin at finding that she was
not being watched affected her visibly. At the termination of the
sermon, the ladies bowed their heads a short space, and placing Mrs.
Chump in front drove her out, so that her exclamations of wonderment, and
affectedly ostentatious gaspings of sympathy for Brookfield, were heard
by few. On they hurried, straight and fast to Brookfield. Mr. Pole was
talking to Tracy Runningbrook at the gate. The ladies cut short his
needless apology to the young man for not being found in church that day,
by asking questions of Tracy. The first related to their brother's
whereabouts; the second to Emilia's condition. Tracy had no time to
reply. Mrs. Chump had identified herself with Brookfield so warmly that
the defection of Mr. Pericles was a fine legitimate excitement to her.
"I hate 'm!" she cried. "I pos'tively hate the man! And he to go to
church! A pretty figure for an angel--he, now! But, my dears, we cann't
let annybody else have 'm. Shorrt of his bein' drowned or killed, we
must intrigue to keep the wretch to ourselves."
"Oh, dear!" said Adela impatiently.
"Well, and I didn't say to myself, ye little jealous thing!" retorted
Mrs. Chump.
"Indeed, ma'am, you are welcome to him."
"And indeed, miss, I don't want 'm. And, perhaps, ye were flirtin' all
the fun out of him on board the yacht, and got tired of 'm; and that's
why."
Adela said: "Thank you," with exasperating sedateness, which provoked an
intemperate outburst from Mrs. Chump. "Sunday! Sunday!" cried Mr. Pole.
"Ain't I the first to remember ut, Pole? And didn't I get up airly so as
to go to church and have my conscience qui't, and 'stead of that I come
out full of evil passions, all for the sake o' these ungrateful garls
that's always where ye cann't find 'em. Why, if they was to be married
at the altar, they'd stare and be 'ffendud if ye asked them if they was
thinking of their husbands, they would! 'Oh, dear, no! and ye're
mistaken, and we're thinkin' o' the coal-scuttle in the back parlour,'--
or somethin' about souls, if not coals. There's their answer. What did
ye do with Mr. Paricles on board the yacht? Aha!"
"What's this about Pericles?" said Mr. Pole.
"Oh, nothing, Papa," returned Adela.
"Nothing, do ye call ut!" said Mrs. Chump. "And, mayhap, good cause too.
Didn't ye tease 'm, now, on board the yacht? Now, did he go on board the
yacht at all?"
"I should think you ought to know that as well as Adela," said Mr. Pole.
Adela interposed, hurriedly: "All this, my dear Papa, is because Mr.
Pericles has thought proper to visit the Tinleys' pew. Who would
complain how or where he does it, so long as the duty is fulfilled?"
Mr. Pole stared, muttering: "The Tinleys!"
"She's botherin' of ye, Pole, the puss!" said Mrs. Chump, certain that
she had hit a weak point in that mention of the yacht. "Ask her what
sorrt of behaviour--"
"And he didn't speak to any of you?" said Mr. Pole.
"No, Papa."
"He looked the other way?"
"He did us that honour."
"Ask her, Pole, how she behaved to 'm on board the yacht," cried Mrs.
Chump. "Oh! there was flirtin', fiirtin'! And go and see what the noble
poet says of tying up in sacks and plumpin' of poor bodies of women into
forty fathoms by them Turks and Greeks, all because of jeal'sy. So, they
make a woman in earnest there, the wretches, 'cause she cann't have onny
of her jokes. Didn't ye tease Mr. Paricles on board the yacht, Ad'la?
Now, was he there?"
"Martha! you're a fool!" said Mr. Pole, looking the victim of one of his
fits of agitation. "Who knows whether he was there better than you?
You'll be forgetting soon that we've ever dined together. I hate to see
a woman so absurd! There--never mind! Go in: take off bonnet something
--anything! only I can't bear folly! Eh, Mr. Runningbrook?"
"'Deed, Pole, and ye're mad." Mrs. Chump crossed her hands to reply with
full repose. "I'd like to know how I'm to know what I never said."
The scene was growing critical. Adela consulted the eyes of her sisters,
which plainly said that this was her peculiar scrape. Adela ended it by
going up to Mrs. Chump, taking her by the shoulders, and putting a kiss
upon her forehead. "Now you will see better," she said. "Don't you know
Mr. Pericles was not with us? As surely as he was with the Tinleys this
morning!"
"And a nice morning it is!" ejaculated Mr. Pole, trotting off hurriedly.
"Does Pole think--" Mrs. Chump murmured, with reference to her voyaging
on the yacht. The kiss had bewildered her sequent sensations.
"He does think, and will think, and must think," Adela prattled some
persuasive infantine nonsense: her soul all the while in revolt against
her sisters, who left her the work to do, and took the position of
spectators and critics, condemning an effort they had not courage to
attempt.
"By the way, I have to congratulate a friend of mine," said Tracy,
selecting Adela for an ironical bow.
"Then it is Captain Gambier," cried Mrs. Chump, as if a whole revelation
had burst on her. Adela blushed. "Oh! and what was that I heard?"
continued the aggravating woman.
Adela flashed her eyes round on her sisters. Even then they left her
without aid, their feeling being that she had debased the house by her
familiarity with this woman before Tracy.
"Stay! didn't ye both--" Mrs. Chump was saying.
"Yes?"--Adela passed by her--"only in your ears alone, you know! "At
which hint Mrs. Chump gleefully turned and followed her. A rumour was
prevalent of some misadventure to Adela and the captain on board the
yacht. Arabella saw her depart, thinking, "How singular is her
propensity to imitate me!" for the affirmative uttered in the tone of
interrogation was quite Arabella's own; as also occasionally the
negative,--the negative, however, suiting the musical indifference of the
sound, and its implied calm breast.
"As for Pericles," said Tracy, "you need not wonder that the fellow prays
in other pews than yours. By heaven! he may pray and pray: I'd send him
to Hades with an epigram in his heart!"
From Tracy the ladies learnt that Wilfrid had inflicted public
chastisement upon Mr. Pericles for saying a false thing of Emilia. He
danced the prettiest pas seal that was ever footed by debutant on the hot
iron plates of Purgatory. They dared not ask what it was that Mr.
Pericles had said, but Tracy was so vehement on the subject of his having
met his deserts, that they partly guessed it to bear some relation to
their sex's defencelessness, and they approved their brother's work.
Sir Twickenham and Captain Gambier dined at Brookfield that day. However
astonishing it might be to one who knew his character and triumphs, the
captain was a butterfly netted, and was on the highroad to an exhibition
of himself pinned, with his wings outspread. During the service of the
table Tracy relieved Adela from Mrs. Chump's inadvertencies and little
bits of feminine malice, but he could not help the captain, who blundered
like a schoolboy in her rough hands. It was noted that Sir Twickenham
reserved the tolerating smile he once had for her. Mr. Pole's nervous
fretfulness had increased. He complained in occasional underbreaths,
correcting himself immediately with a "No, no!" and blinking briskly.
But after dinner came the time when the painfullest scene was daily
enacted. Mrs. Chump drank Port freely. To drink it fondly, it was
necessary that she should have another rosy wineglass to nod to, and Mr.
Pole, whose taste for wine had been weakened, took this post as his duty.
The watchful, pinched features of the poor pale little man bloomed
unnaturally, and his unintelligible eyes sparkled as he emptied his
glass. His daughters knew that he drank, not for his pleasure, but for
their benefit; that he might sustain Martha Chump in the delusion that he
was a fitting bridegroom, and with her money save them from ruin. Each
evening, with remorse that blotted all perception of the tragic
comicality of the show, they saw him, in his false strength and his
anxiety concerning his pulse's play, act this part. The recurring words,
"Now, Martha, here's the Port," sent a cold wave through their blood.
They knew what the doctor remarked on the effect of that Port. "Ill!"
Mrs. Chump would cry, when she saw him wink after sipping; "you, Pole!
what do they say of ye, ye deer!" and she returned the wink, the ladies
looking on. Not to drink a proper quantum of Port, when Port was on the
table, was, in Mrs. Chump's eyes, mean for a man. Even Chump, she would
say, was master of his bottle, and thought nothing of it. "Who does?"
cried her present suitor, and the Port ebbed, and his cheeks grew
crimson.
This frightful rivalry with the ghost of Alderman Chump continued night
after night. The rapturous Martha was incapable of observing that if she
drank with a ghost in memory, in reality she drank with nothing better
than an animated puppet. The nights ended with Mr. Pole either sleeping
in his arm-chair (upon which occasions one daughter watched him and told
dreadful tales of his waking), or staggering to bed, debating on the
stairs between tea and brandy, complaining of a loss of sensation at his
knee-cap, or elbow, or else rubbing his head and laughing hysterically.
His bride was not at such moments observant. No wonder Wilfrid kept out
of the way, if he had not better occupation elsewhere. The ladies, in
their utter anguish, after inveighing against the baneful Port, had
begged their father to delay no more to marry the woman. "Why?" said Mr.
Pole, sharply; "what do you want me to marry her for?" They were obliged
to keep up the delusion, and said, "Because she seems suited to you as a
companion." That satisfied him. "Oh! we won't be in a hurry," he said,
and named a day within a month; and not liking their unready faces,
laughed, and dismissed the idea aloud, as if he had not earnestly been
entertaining it.
The ladies of Brookfield held no more their happy, energetic midnight
consultations. They had begun to crave for sleep and a snatch of
forgetfulness, the scourge being daily on their flesh: and they had now
no plans to discuss; they had no distant horizon of low vague lights that
used ever to be beyond their morrow. They kissed at the bedroom door of
one, and separated. Silence was their only protection to the Nice
Feelings, now that Fine Shades had become impossible. Adela had almost
made herself distinct from her sisters since the yachting expedition.
She had grown severely careful of the keys of her writing-desk, and would
sometimes slip the bolt of her bedroom door, and answer "Eh?" dubiously
in tone, when her sisters had knocked twice, and had said "Open" once.
The house of Brookfield showed those divisional rents which an admonitory
quaking of the earth will create. Neither sister was satisfied with the
other. Cornelia's treatment of Sir Twickenham was almost openly
condemned, but at the same time it seemed to Arabella that the baronet
was receiving more than the necessary amount of consolation from the
bride of Captain Gambier, and that yacht habits and moralities had been
recently imported to Brookfield. Adela, for her part, looked sadly on
Arabella, and longed to tell her, as she told Cornelia, that if she
continued to play Freshfield Sumner purposely against Edward Buxley, she
might lose both. Cornelia quietly measured accusations and judged
impartially; her mind being too full to bring any personal observations
to bear. She said, perhaps, less than she would have said, had she not
known that hourly her own Nice Feelings had to put up a petition for Fine
Shades: had she not known, indeed, that her conduct would soon demand
from her sisters an absolutely merciful interpretation. For she was now
simply attracting Sir Twickenham to Brookfield as a necessary medicine to
her Papa. Since Mrs. Chump's return, however, Mr. Pole had spoken
cheerfully of himself, and, by innuendo emphasized, had imparted that his
mercantile prospects were brighter. In fact, Cornelia half thought that
he must have been pretending bankruptcy to gain his end in getting the
consent of his daughters to receive the woman. She, and Adela likewise,
began to suspect that the parental transparency was a little mysterious,
and that there is, after all, more than we see in something that we see
through. They were now in danger of supposing that because the old man
had possibly deceived them to some extent, he had deceived them
altogether. But was not the after-dinner scene too horribly true? Were
not his hands moist and cold while the forehead was crimson? And could a
human creature feel at his own pulse, and look into vacancy with that
intense apprehensive look, and be but an actor? They could not think so.
But his conditions being dependent upon them, the ladies felt in their
hearts a spring of absolute rebellion when the call for fresh sacrifices
came. Though they did not grasp the image, they had a feeling that he
was nourished bit by bit by everything they held dear; and though they
loved him, and were generous, they had begun to ask, "What next?"
The ladies were at a dead-lock, and that the heart is the father of our
histories, I am led to think when I look abroad on families stagnant
because of so weak a motion of the heart. There are those who have none
at all; the mass of us are moved from the propulsion of the toes of the
Fates. But the ladies of Brookfield had hearts lively enough to get them
into scrapes. The getting out of them, or getting on at all, was left to
Providence. They were at a dead-lock, for Arabella, flattered as she was
by Freshfield Sumner's wooing, could not openly throw Edward over, whom
indeed she thought that she liked the better of the two, though his
letters had not so wide an intellectual range. Her father was irritably
anxious that she should close with Edward. Adela could not move: at
least, not openly. Cornelia might have taken an initiative; but
tenderness for her father's health had hitherto restrained her, and she
temporized with Sir Twickenham on the noblest of principles. She was, by
the devotion of her conduct, enabled to excuse herself so far that she
could even fish up an excuse in the shape of the effort she had made to
find him entertaining: as if the said effort should really be re-payment
enough to him for his assiduous and most futile suit. One deep grief sat
on Cornelia's mind. She had heard from Lady Gosstre that there was
something like madness in the Barrett family. She had consented to meet
Sir Purcell clandestinely (after debate on his claim to such a sacrifice
on her part), and if, on those occasions, her lover's tone was raised, it
gave her a tremour. And he had of late appeared to lose his noble calm;
he had spoken (it might almost be interpreted) as if he doubted her.
Once, when she had mentioned her care for her father, he had cried out
upon the name of father with violence, looking unlike himself.
His condemnation of the world, too, was not so Christian as it had been;
it betrayed what the vulgar would call spite, and was not all compassed
in his peculiar smooth shrug--expressive of a sort of border-land between
contempt and charity: which had made him wear in her sight all the
superiority which the former implies, with a considerable share of the
benign complacency of the latter. This had gone. He had been sarcastic
even to her; saying once, and harshly: "Have you a will?" Personally she
liked the poor organist better than the poor baronet, though he had less
merit. It was unpleasant in her present mood to be told "that we have
come into this life to fashion for ourselves souls;" and that "whosoever
cannot decide is a soulless wretch fit but to pass into vapour." He
appeared to have ceased to make his generous allowances for difficult
situations. A senseless notion struck Cornelia, that with the baronetcy
he had perhaps inherited some of the madness of his father.
The two were in a dramatic tangle of the Nice Feelings worth a glance as
we pass on. She wished to say to him, "You are unjust to my
perplexities;" and he to her, "You fail in your dilemma through
cowardice." Instead of uttering which, they chid themselves severally
for entertaining such coarse ideas of their idol. Doubtless they were
silent from consideration for one another: but I must add, out of extreme
tenderness for themselves likewise. There are people who can keep the
facts that front them absent from their contemplation by not framing them
in speech; and much benevolence of the passive order may be traced to a
disinclination to inflict pain upon oneself. "My duty to my father,"
being cited by Cornelia, Sir Purcell had to contend with it.
"True love excludes no natural duty," she said.
And he: "Love discerns unerringly what is and what is not duty."
"In the case of a father, can there be any doubt?" she asked, the answer
shining in her confident aspect.
"There are many things that fathers may demand of us!" he interjected
bitterly.
She had a fatal glimpse here of the false light in which his resentment
coloured the relations between fathers and children; and, deeming him
incapable of conducting this argument, she felt quite safe in her
opposition, up to a point where feeling stopped her.
"Devotedness to a father I must conceive to be a child's first duty," she
said.
Sir Purcell nodded: "Yes; a child's!"
"Does not history give the higher praise to children who sacrifice
themselves for their parents?" asked Cornelia.
And he replied: "So, you seek to be fortified in such matters by
history!"
Courteous sneers silenced her. Feeling told her she was in the wrong;
but the beauty of her sentiment was not to be contested, and therefore
she thought that she might distrust feeling: and she went against it
somewhat; at first very tentatively, for it caused pain. She marked a
line where the light of duty should not encroach on the light of our
human desires. "But love for a parent is not merely duty," thought
Cornelia. "It is also love;--and is it not the least selfish love?"
Step by step Sir Purcell watched the clouding of her mind with false
conceits, and knew it to be owing to the heart's want of vigour. Again
and again he was tempted to lay an irreverent hand on the veil his lady
walked in, and make her bare to herself. Partly in simple bitterness, he
refrained: but the chief reason was that he had no comfort in giving a
shock to his own state of deception. He would have had to open a dark
closet; to disentangle and bring to light what lay in an
undistinguishable heap; to disfigure her to herself, and share in her
changed eyesight; possibly to be, or seem, coarse: so he kept the door of
it locked, admitting sadly in his meditation that there was such a place,
and saying all the while: "If I were not poor!" He saw her running into
the shelter of egregious sophisms, till it became an effort to him to
preserve his reverence for her and the sex she represented. Finally he
imagined that he perceived an idea coming to growth in her, no other than
this: "That in duty to her father she might sacrifice herself, though
still loving him to whom she had given her heart; thus ennobling her love
for father and for lover." With a wicked ingenuity he tracked her
forming notions, encouraged them on, and provoked her enthusiasm by
putting an ironical question: "Whether the character of the soul was
subdued and shaped by the endurance and the destiny of the perishable?"
"Oh! no, no!" she exclaimed. "It cannot be, or what comfort should we
have?"
Few men knew better that when lovers' sentiments stray away from feeling,
they are to be suspected of a disloyalty. Yet he admired the tone she
took. He had got an 'ideal' of her which it was pleasanter to magnify
than to distort. An 'ideal' is so arbitrary, that if you only doubt of
its being perfection, it will vanish and never come again. Sir Purcell
refused to doubt. He blamed himself for having thought it possible to
doubt, and this, when all the time he knew.
Through endless labyrinths of delusion these two unhappy creatures might
be traced, were it profitable. Down what a vale of little intricate
follies should we be going, lighted by one ghastly conclusion! At times,
struggling from the midst of her sophisms, Cornelia prayed her lover
would claim her openly, and so nerve her to a pitch of energy that would
clinch the ruinous debate. Forgetting that she was an 'ideal'--the
accredited mistress of pure wisdom and of the power of deciding rightly--
she prayed to be dealt with as a thoughtless person, and one of the herd
of women. She felt that Sir Purcell threw too much on her. He expected
her to go calmly to her father, and to Sir Twickenham, and tell them
individually that her heart was engaged; then with a stately figure to
turn, quit the house, and lay her hand in his. He made no allowance for
the weakness of her sex, for the difficulties surrounding her, for the
consideration due to Sir Twickenham's pride, and to her father's ill-
health. She half-protested to herself that he expected from her the
mechanical correctness of a machine, and overlooked the fact that she was
human. It was a grave comment on her ambition to be an 'ideal.'
So let us leave them, till we come upon the ashy fruit of which this
blooming sentimentalism is the seed.
It was past midnight when Mrs. Chump rushed to Arabella's room, and her
knock was heard vociferous at the door. The ladies, who were at work
upon diaries and letters, allowed her to thump and wonder whether she had
come to the wrong door, for a certain period; after which, Arabella
placidly unbolted her chamber, and Adela presented herself in the passage
to know the meaning of the noise.
"Oh! ye poor darlin's, I've heard ut all, I have."
This commencement took the colour from their cheeks. Arabella invited
her inside, and sent Adela for Cornelia.
"Oh, and ye poor deers!" cried Mrs. Chump to Arabella, who remarked:
"Pray wait till my sisters come;" causing the woman to stare and observe:
"If ye're not as cold as the bottom of a pot that naver felt fire." She
repeated this to Cornelia and Adela as an accusation, and then burst on
"My heart's just breakin' for ye, and ye shall naver want bread, eh! and
roast beef, and my last bottle of Port ye'll share, though ye've no ideea
what a lot o' thoughts o' poor Chump's under that cork, and it'll be a
waste on you. Oh! and that monster of a Mr. Paricles that's got ye in
his power and's goin' to be the rroon of ye--shame to 'm! Your father's
told me; and, oh! my darlin' garls, don't think ut my fault. For, Pole--
Pole--"
Mrs. Chump was choked by her grief. The ladies, unbending to some
curiosity, eliminated from her gasps and sobs that Mr. Pole had, in the
solitude of his library below, accused her of causing the defection of
Mr. Pericles, and traced his possible ruin to it, confessing, that in the
way of business, he was at Mr. Pericles' mercy.
"And in such a passion with me!" Mrs. Chump wrung her hands. "What could
I do to Mr. Paricles? He isn't one o' the men that I can kiss; and Pole
shouldn't wish me. And Pole settin' down his rroon to me! What'll I do?
My dears! I do feel for ye, for I feel I'd feel myself such a beast,
without money, d'ye see? It's the most horrible thing in the world.
It's like no candle in the darrk. And I, ye know, I know I'd naver
forgive annybody that took my money; and what'll Pole think of me? For
oh! ye may call riches temptation, but poverty's punishment; and I heard
a young curate say that from the pulpit, and he was lean enough to know,
poor fella!"
Both Cornelia and Arabella breathed more freely when they had heard Mrs.
Chump's tale to an end. They knew perfectly well that she was blameless
for the defection of Mr. Pericles, and understood from her exclamatory
narrative that their father had reason to feel some grave alarm at the
Greek's absence from their house, and had possibly reasons of his own for
accusing Mrs. Chump, as he had done. The ladies administered consolation
to her, telling her that for their part they would never blame her; even
consenting to be kissed by her, hugged by her, playfully patted,
complimented, and again wept over. They little knew what a fervour of
secret devotion they created in Mrs. Chump's bosom by this astounding
magnanimity displayed to her, who laboured under the charge of being the
source of their ruin; nor could they guess that the little hypocrisy they
were practising would lead to any singular and pregnant resolution in the
mind of the woman, fraught with explosion to their house, and that quick
movement which they awaited.
Mrs. Chump, during the patient strain of a tender hug of Arabella, had
mutely resolved in a great heat of gratitude that she would go to Mr.
Pericles, and, since he was necessary to the well-being of Brookfield,
bring him back, if she had to bring him back in her arms.