unaccountable depression is weighing on me--no, not altogether
unaccountable, for I can trace it back to the society in which I have
been. It has left me with a mistrust of the honesty and sincerity of
everyone in the world, of everyone, that is, but you; you'--he touched
her copper-gold head lightly with a shaking hand--'you I cannot
mistrust; you--it would kill me to mistrust. I hold to life, to my
respect for humanity, through you as a golden chain. Salome, I have a
great trust to confide to you, and I do it because I know no one else in
whom I can place reliance. This is my will, and I desire you to take
charge of it. I commit it to your custody. Put it where it may be safe,
and where you may know where to lay hand on it when it shall be wanted.'
'But, uncle, why not leave it with your lawyer.'
'I have no lawyer,' he answered sharply. 'I have never gone to law, and
thrown good money after bad. You know my dislike for lawyers. I wrote
my will with my own hand after your sister married, and I flatter myself
that no wit of man or rascality of lawyers can pervert it. I can set
down in plain English what my intentions are as to the disposal of my
property, so that anyone can understand my purpose, and no one can upset
its disposition.'
'But, uncle--why should I have it who am so careless?'
'You are not careless. I trust you. I have perfect confidence that
what is committed to you you will keep, whether the will concerns you or
not. I wish you to have it, and you will obey my wishes.'
He put the paper into her reluctant hands, and waited for her to say
something. Her cheeks were flushed with mingled concern for him and
fear for herself. Such a valuable deed she thought ought to have been
kept in his strong iron safe, and not confided to her trembling hands.
He put his hand on her shoulder.
'Thank you, Salome,' he said. 'You have relieved my mind of a great
anxiety.'
'And now, uncle, you will go to bed?'
He stood, with his hand still on her shoulder, hesitatingly. 'I don't
know; I am not sleepy.' He thought further. 'Yes, I will go.
Good-night, my child.'
Then he left the room, ascended the stairs, passed through his study
into his bedchamber beyond, where he turned down the clothes, and threw
off his dress coat and waistcoat, and then cast himself on the bed.
His brain was in a whirl. He could not retire to rest in that condition
of excitement. He would toss on his bed, which would be one of nettles
to him. He left it, stood up, drew on a knitted cardigan jersey, and
then put his arms through his great-coat.
About a quarter of an hour after he had mounted to his room he descended
the stairs again, and then he encountered Salome once more, leaving the
little parlour with the envelope that contained his will in her hand.
'What! You not gone to bed, Salome?'
'No, uncle, I have been dreaming over the fire. But, surely, you are not
going out?'
'Yes, I am. There has been such a downpour of rain all day that I have
not taken my customary constitutional. I cannot sleep. The night is
fine, and I shall go for a stroll on the canal bank.'
'But, uncle, it is past twelve o'clock.'
'High time for you to be in bed. For me, it is another matter. My
brain is on fire; I must take a composing draught of fresh night air.'
'But, uncle----'
'Do not remain up longer. I have acted inconsiderately in keeping you
from your bed so long. Go to sleep speedily, and do not trouble
yourself about me. I have my latch-key, and will let myself in. The
gas shall remain turned down in the hall. I am always upset unless I
have a walk during the day, and the sheets of rain that poured down have
kept me a prisoner. I shall not be out for long. I will cool my head
and circulate my blood, under the starry sky.'
'But you will find the roads sloppy, after the rain.'
'The towpath will be dry. I am going there, by the canal. Good-night.'
She held up her innocent, sweet face for the kiss he had neglected to
give her a quarter of an hour ago, when he left the room. He half
stooped, then turned away without kissing her.
'Good-night, dear Salome. Mind the will. It is a trust.'
Then he went out.
*CHAPTER IV.*
*ON THE TOWPATH.*
There are points, occasions on life's journey, when our guides fail us,
and these points and occasions are neither few nor far between. The
signposts that might instruct us are either illegible or have not been
set up. The forming of a determination is of vital importance, but the
material on which to form a determination is withdrawn from us, as the
straw was taken from the Israelites when they were ordered to make
bricks.
We buy a map and start on our journey, and come to branch-roads which
are not set down. The map is antiquated, and no longer serviceable.
We buy a legal compendium which is to obviate having recourse to
lawyers, and when we encounter a difficulty, turn to it for
enlightenment, and find that precisely this question is passed over.
We purchase a manual of domestic medicine to cut off the necessity of
calling in a doctor at every hitch, and when a hitch occurs we discover
that precisely this one is unnoted in our book.
We are provided with moral _vade-mecums_ which are to serve us in all
contingencies, but are arrested at every hundred paces by some knot
which the instructions in our _vade-mecum_ do not assist us in untying.
Jeremiah now found himself in a predicament from which he did not know
how to escape, at a fork in life's road, and he was unable to form a
judgment whether to turn to the left hand or to the right.
By his own generosity he had rendered his position discouraging. He had
behaved to Janet with so great liberality when she married, as to
produce a deep and general impression that Salome would be treated with
at least equal liberality in the event of her marriage. An admirer might
hesitate to offer for a portionless girl, however charming in feature
and perfect in mind, not because necessarily mercenary in his ideas, but
because he would know that as single life is impossible without means of
supporting it, so double life, containing in itself the promise of
development into a number of supplemental lives, is proportionately
impossible.
Jeremiah, might, accordingly, with almost certainty, reckon on being
left to a solitary and barren decline of life, after he had come late to
appreciate the warmth and amenities of domestic association--after he
had enjoyed them a sufficient number of years to esteem them
indispensable.
He recalled the dead and meagre existence he had led before he received
the little girls and their mother into his house, and he sickened at the
prospect of recurring to it. He could not disguise from himself that if
he lost Salome, everything that gave zest and interest to life would be
taken away from him. He would be forced to revert to the hard
uniformity of his previous existence; but that thought was repugnant to
him. Most men look back on their childhood or to college days as a
period of exuberant vitality and unspoiled delight. To but few is it
not given to begin their Book of Genesis with Paradise, flowing with
sparkling rivers whose beds are gold, rich with flowers, redolent with
odours. Sooner or later all are cast out through the gates, and there
is no return--only a reminiscence. To some more than to others the
smell of the flowers clings through life. The youth and early manhood
of Jeremiah had been joyless, spent among briars and thorns, and only
late had he found the gates of Eden, and the cherub with a smile had
withdrawn his sword, and allowed him a look in. What would be the end of
life to him if Salome were taken away? As his health and powers of
resistance failed, his house would be invaded by the Sidebottoms,
perhaps also by the unknown Philip, and they would wrangle over his
savings, and hold him a prisoner within his own walls. But--dare he
suggest to Salome that she should be his wife? He did not shut his eyes
to their disparity in age, to the fact that her regard for him was of a
totally different texture from such as a man exacts of a wife. Would it
be possible to change filial into marital love? Was it not as
preposterous of him to expect it as was the infatuation of the alchemist
to transmute one metal into another?
Then, again, would not his proposal shake, if it did not shatter, her
respect, forfeit that precious love she now tendered him with both hands
without stint? By asking for what she could not give, would he not lose
that which he had already, like the dog that dropped the meat snapping
at a shadow, and so leave him in utter destitution? The harbour of the
thought of a change of relations had affected the quality of his
intercourse with her, had clouded its serenity, disturbed its
simplicity. It had prevented him from meeting her frank eye, from
receiving her embrace, admitting the touch of her lips. He shrank from
her innocent endearments as though he had no right to receive them,
tendered in one coinage and received in another value. Were he to
communicate to her the thought that fermented within him, would not the
yeasty microbe alter her and change her sweet affection for him into
something that might be repugnance?
He drew a laboured breath.
'I am in a sore strait,' he groaned; 'I know not what to do. Would to
heaven that my course were determined for me.'
He had reached the towpath beside the canal.
'Good-night, sir.'
He was startled. The night watch had met him, the man employed to walk
around and through the factories at all hours of the night, on the
look-out against fire, on guard against burglars.
'Good-night, sir. Just been on the bank to look at the river. Very
full, and swelling instead of going down. Lot of rain fallen of late.
Cold for the goldfish yonder.'
'Good-night,' answered the manufacturer; 'I also want to see the river.
There is more rain yonder.'
He pointed to the western sky.
'The river is rising rapidly,' said the man; 'but there's no harm can
take Pennyquick's--ligs too high.' Jeremiah's factory went by his
surname, but contracted by the people through the omission of a
syllable.
Then the man passed on his way, rattling his keys. The gold-fish! What
did he mean?
Outside the wall of Mr. Pennycomequick's factory was a pool, into which
the waste steam and boiling water from the engine discharged, and this
pool was always hot. It swarmed with gold-fish. At some time or other,
no one knew when, or by whom, a few, perhaps only a pair, had been
thrown in, and now the little patch of water was thronged with fish.
They throve, they multiplied therein. The mill girls cast crumbs to
them from their breakfasts and dinners, and were allowed to net some
occasionally for their private keeping in glass globes, but not to make
of them an article of traffic. There was not a cottage in Pennyquick's
Fold that had not such a vessel in the window.
Jeremiah saw that the overflow from the river had reached this little
pool and converted it into a lake, chilling the steamy waters at the
same time. Mergatroyd town or village stood on the slope of the hill
that formed the northern boundary of Keld-dale. The Keld rose in that
range of limestone mountains that divides Lancashire from Yorkshire, and
runs from Derbyshire to the Scottish border. After a tortuous course
between high and broken hills, folding in on each other like the teeth
of a rat-trap, leaving in places scarce room in the bottom for road,
rail, and canal to run side by side, it burst forth into a broad basin,
banked on north and south by low hills of yellow sandstone, overlying
coal. Some way down this shallow trough, on the northern flank, built
about the hill-slope, and grouped about a church with an Italian spire
perched on pillars, stood Mergatroyd. There the valley spread to the
width of a mile, and formed a great bed of gravelly deposit of
unreckoned depth. A couple of spade-grafts below the surface, water was
reached; yet on this gravel stood most of the factories and their tall
chimneys. The nature of the soil forbade sinking for foundations.
Accordingly these were laid on the surface, the walls, and even the
chimneys, being reared on slabs of sandstone laid on the ground. It
might seem incredible that such fragile stone-slates should support such
superincumbent masses; nevertheless it was so. The pressure, however,
did not always fall on gravel equally compact; this resulted in
subsidences. Few walls had not cracked at some time, most were banded
with iron, and not a chimney stood exactly perpendicular.
The canal and the river ran side by side, with a towpath along the
former; but the high-road had deserted the valley and ran on the top of
the hill. Neither canal nor river were of crystalline purity, or of
ordinary cleanness; for into them the mills and dye-works discharged
their odorous and discoloured refuse water, dense with oil and pigment,
with impurities of every description and degree of nastiness. Fish had
long ago deserted these waters, and if an occasional eel was caught it
was inedible, so strongly did it taste of oil and dye.
The Yorkshire towns and rivers have their special 'bouquet,' which does
not receive favourable appreciation by a stranger; it is not a
fluctuating savour like that pervading the neighbourhood of Crosse and
Blackwell's, in Oxford Street, which is at one time redolent of
raspberries and another pungent with mixed pickles; summer and winter,
spring and fall alike, the same dyes, the same oil, and the same
horrible detergents are employed, and constitute a permanent,
all-pervading effluvium, that clings to the garment, the hair, the
breath of the inhabitants, as the savour of petroleum belongs to Baku,
and the spice of orange flowers and roses is appropriate to the Riviera.
Far away in the north-west, above the boundary hill, the sky throbbed
with light, from the iron furnaces seven miles distant, where the coal
and iron were dug out of the same beds, and the one served to fuse the
other, as in the human breast various qualities are found which tend to
temper, purify and turn to service the one the other. The flames that
leaped up from the furnaces as thirsty rolling tongues were not visible
from the Keld-dale bottom under Mergatroyd, but the reflection was
spread over a wide tract of cloud, and shone with rhythmetic flash, as
an auroral display. High up the river, at right angles to the axis of
the valley, stood a huge, gaunt, five-storied mill for cloth and serge,
commonly known as 'Mitchell's.' Every window in Mitchell's mill was
alight this night, for it was running incessantly. Trade in cloth and
serge was brisk on account of the Franco-German War. What is one man's
loss is another man's gain? The rattle of guns in France produced the
rattle of the looms in Yorkshire; and every bullet put through a
Frenchman's or a German's uniform put a sovereign into the pocket of a
cloth-weaver in England. Such is the law of equilibrium in Nature.
Business was brisk among the cloth-workers, but slack among the
linen-weavers; the dead on the battle-field were not buried in
winding-sheets, least of all in figured damasks.
An unusual downpour of rain had taken place, lasting continuously
forty-eight hours. The very windows of heaven seemed to have been
opened; at sunset the sky had partially cleared, but there were still
lumbering masses of cloud drifting over the face of heaven, as icebergs
detached from the mighty wall of black vapour that still remained in the
west, built up half-way to the zenith over the great dorsal range, a
range that arrested the exhalations from the Atlantic and condensed them
into a thousand streams that leaped in 'fosses,' and wriggled and dived
among the hills, and cleft themselves roads, to the east or to the west,
to reach the sea.
To-night the Keld was very full, so swollen as to have overflowed, or
rather to have dived under the embankments, and to ooze up through the
soil in all directions in countless irrepressible springs, transforming
the paddocks into ponds, and the fields into lagoons.
The towpath was the only walk that was not a mass of mud or a sop of
water. It ran well above the level of the fields, and the rain that had
fallen on it had drained--or, as the local expression had it, 'siped'
away.
Along this towpath Jeremiah walked with his hands behind his back,
brooding over his difficulties, seeking a solution that escaped him. If
he remained silent, he must be content in a year or two to surrender
Salome to another. If he spoke, he might lose her immediately and
completely; for were she to refuse him she must at once withdraw from
under his roof and remain estranged from him permanently.
But--what if she were to accept him? He who was nearly thrice her age?
And what if, in the event of her accepting him, her heart were to wake
up and love another? Had he any right to subject her to such a risk, to
impose on her such a trial? Would there not be a sacrifice of his own
self-respect were he to offer himself to her? Would the love he would
demand of her, given hesitatingly, as a duty, forced and uncertain, make
up to him for the frank, ready, spontaneous gush of love which
surrounded him at present?
'I am in a strait,' said Jeremiah Pennycomequick, again. 'Would to
Heaven that the decision were taken out of my hands, and determined for
me.'
He had reached the locks. They were fast shut, and the man in charge
was away, in his cottage across the field; there was no light shining
from the window. He was asleep. No barges passed up and down at night.
His duties ended with the daylight. The field he would have to cross
next morning to the lock was now submerged. Mr. Pennycomequick halted
at the locks, and stood looking down into the lower level, listening to
the rush of the water that was allowed to flow through the hatch. He
could just see, below in the black gulf, a phosphorescent, or apparently
phosphorescent, halo; it was the foam caused by the fall of the
water-jet, reflecting the starlight overhead.
As Jeremiah thus stood, irresolute, looking at the lambent dance of the
foam, a phenomenon occurred which roused his attention and woke his
surprise.
The water in the canal, usually glassy and waveless, suddenly rose, as
the bosom rises at a long inhalation, and rolled like a tidal wave over
the top of the gates, and fell into the gulf below with a startling
crash, as though what had fallen were lead, not water.
What was the cause of this? Jeremiah had heard that on the occasion of
an earthquake such a wave was formed in the sea, and rushed up the
shore, without premonition.
But he had felt no shock, and--really--a petty canal could hardly be
supposed to act in such events like the ocean.
Jeremiah turned to retrace his steps along the path; and he had not gone
far before he saw something else that equally surprised him.
In the valley, about two miles above, was, as already said, Mitchell's
Mill, lying athwart it, like a huge stranded Noah's Ark. It had five
stories, and in each story were twenty windows on the long sides; that
made just one hundred windows towards the east, towards Jeremiah; one
hundred yellow points of light, against the sombre background of cloud
that enveloped the west.
The night was not absolutely dark; there was some light in the sky above
the clouds from stars, and a crescent moon, which latter was hidden, but
it was not sufficient to have revealed Mitchell's without the
illumination from within. Here and there a silvery vaporous light fell
through the interstices of the clouds, sufficient to give perspective to
the night scene, insufficient to disclose anything. Now Mitchell's was
distinguishable as five superimposed rows of twenty stars of equal size
and lustre.
All at once, suddenly as if a black curtain had fallen over the scene,
all these stars were eclipsed--not one by one, not in rows, by turns,
but altogether, instantaneously and completely, snuffed out at one snip,
and with the extinction Mitchell's fell back into the common obscurity,
and was no more seen than if it had been blotted out of existence.
'Stopped!' exclaimed Mr. Pennycomequick involuntarily. 'That is queer.
I thought they were at full-pressure, running night and day.'
What followed increased his perplexity.
He heard the steam whistle of Mitchell's shrill forth in palpitating,
piercing call, not briefly, as if to give notice that work was over, not
peremptorily, as signalling for a new batch of hands to replace such as
were released; not insistingly, as calling out of sleep, but with a
prolonged and growing intensity, with full force of steam, rising in
volumes to the highest pitch, as though Mitchell's great bulk were
uttering a shriek of infinite panic and acute pain.
And then, from the hillside, where stood another mill, called
Poppleton's, howled a 'syren'--another contrivance invented by a
perverse ingenuity to create the greatest possible noise of the worst
possible quality.
'Surely there must be a fire,' said Jeremiah; 'only bless me! I see no
flames anywhere.'
Then he heard a tramp, the tramp of a galloping horse, on the towpath,
and he stood aside so as not to be ridden over. A parting in the clouds
let down a soft gray light that made the surfaces of water into sheets
of steel, and converted the canal into a polished silver skewer. Along,
down the towpath, came the horse. Jeremiah could just distinguish a
black travelling spot. He waited, and presently saw that a man was
riding and controlling the horse, and this man drew rein somewhat as he
saw Jeremiah, and hallooed, 'Get back! get back! Holroyd reservoir has
burst.'
Then along the towpath he continued at accelerated speed, and
disappeared in the darkness in the direction of the locks.
The alarm bell on the roof of 'Pennyquick's' began to jangle. The news
had reached the night-watch, and he was rousing the operatives who lived
in the mill-fold. Then the 'buzzer' of the yarn-spinning factory
brayed, and the shoddy mill uttered a husky hoot. Lights started up,
and voices were audible, shouting, crying.
What was to be done?
Jeremiah Pennycomequick considered for a moment. He knew what the
bursting of the reservoir implied. He knew that he had not time to
retrace the path he had taken to its junction with the road. He was at
that point where the valley expanded to its fullest width, and where the
greatest space intervened between him and the hillside. Here the level
fields were all under water, and before he could cross them, wading,
maybe to his knee, the descending wave would be upon him. He looked
towards the locksman's cottage; that offered no security, even if he
could reach it in time, for it lay low and would be immediately
submerged. He turned, and ran down the path towards the locks, and as
he ran he heard behind him--not the roar, for roar there was none, but
the rumble of the descending flood, like the rumble and mutter of that
vast crowd that swept along the road from Paris to Versailles on the
memorable fifth of October. Then a wet blast sprang up suddenly and
rushed down the valley, swaying the trees, and so chill that when it
touched Jeremiah as he ran, it seemed to penetrate to his bones and
curdle his blood. It was a blast that travelled with the advancing
volume of water, a little forestalling it, as the lightning forestalls
the thunder.
Mr. Pennycomequick saw before him the shelter-hut of the locksman on the
embankment, a shelter-hut that had been erected as a protection against
rain and wind and frost. It was of brick, and the only chance of escape
that offered lay in a scramble to the roof.
How mysterious is it with our wishes and our prayers! We labour for
many a year with taut nerve, and ambition keenly, unswervingly set on
some object. We hope for it, we entreat for it, and it is as though the
heavens were brass, and our prayers could not pierce them, or as if it
were indifferent to our desires; it is as though a perverse fate smote
all our efforts with paralysis, and took pleasure in thwarting every
wish, and frustrating every attempt to obtain what we long for. At
another time, hardly knowing what we say, not calculating how what we
ask may be accomplished, not lifting a little finger to advance its
fulfilment, we form a wish, vague and inarticulate, and instantly,
completely, in the way least expected, and with a fulness hardly
desired, the prayer is answered, the wish is accomplished.