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 mediaeval 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.'