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.
Out of kindness to fair authoresses, we will give them the staple topics
that in real life go to make up after-dinner talk, whether in the
messroom, or at the bencher's table, or round the squire's mahogany.
And they shall be given in the order in which they stand in the male
mind:
1. Horses.
2. Dogs.
3. Game.
4. Guns.
5. Cricket.
6. Politics.
7. 'Shop.'
Where in all this is Woman? Echo answers Where? Conceivably, when
every other topic fails, she may be introduced, just in the same way as
when all game is done, even rabbits, a trap and clay pigeons are brought
out to be knocked over; so, possibly, a fine girl may be introduced into
the conversation, sprung out of a trap--but only as a last resource, as
a clay pigeon.
The house-door opened once more, this time without the bell being
sounded--opened by a latch-key--and immediately Mrs. Sidebottom heard
Salome's step in the hall. Salome did not go directly upstairs to
remove her bonnet and kiss baby, but entered her mother's room.
Thereat a silence fell on the voices below--a silence that lasted a full
minute, and then was broken by the plaintive pipe of the widow lady.
She must have a long story to tell, thought Mrs. Sidebottom, who now put
down her book, because she had arrived at three pages of description of
a bungalow on the spurs of the Himalayas. Then she heard a cry from
below, a cry as of pain or terror; and again the male voice was audible,
mingled with that of the widow, raised as in expostulation, protest, or
entreaty. At times the voices were loud, and then suddenly drowned.
Mrs. Sidebottom laid the book open on the table, turned down to keep her
place.
'The doctor, I suppose,' she thought; 'and he has pronounced
unfavourably of baby. Can't they accept his verdict and let him go?
They cannot do good by talk. I never saw anything so disagreeable as
mothers, except grandmothers. What a fuss they are making below about
that baby!'
Presently she took up the book again and tried to read, but found
herself listening to the voices below, and only rarely could she catch
the tones of Salome. All the talking was done by her mother and the
man--the doctor.
Then Mrs. Sidebottom heard the door of the widow's apartment open, and
immediately after a tread on the stairs. Salome was no doubt ascending
to the nursery, but not hurriedly--indeed, the tread was unlike that of
Salome. Mrs. Sidebottom put the novel down once more at the description
of a serpent-charmer, and went outside her door, moved by
inquisitiveness.
'Is that the doctor below?' she asked, as she saw that Salome was
mounting the stairs. 'What opinion does he give of little Phil?'
Then she noticed that a great change had come over her hostess. Salome
was ascending painfully, with a hand on the banisters, drawing one foot
up after the other as though she were suffering from partial paralysis.
Her face was white as chalk, and her eyes dazed as those of a dreamer
suddenly roused from sleep.
'What is it?' asked Mrs. Sidebottom again. 'Is baby worse?'
Salome turned her face to her, but did not answer. All life seemed to
have fled from her, and she did not apparently hear the questions put to
her. But she halted on the landing, her hand still on the banisters
that rattled under the pressure, showing how she was trembling.
'You positively must tell me,' said Mrs. Sidebottom. 'What has the
doctor said?'
But Salome, gathering up her energy, made a rush past her, ran up two or
three steps, then relaxed her pace, and continued to mount, ascending
the last portion of the stair as one climbing the final stretch of an
Alpine peak, fagged, faint, doubtful whether his strength will hold out
till he reach the apex.
Mrs. Sidebottom was offended.
'This is rude,' she muttered. 'But what is to be expected of a bagman's
daughter?' She tossed her head and retreated to the study.
Reseating herself, she resumed her novel, but found no further interest
in it.
'Why,' she exclaimed suddenly, 'the doctor has not been upstairs; he has
not seen baby. This is quaint.'
Mrs. Cusworth did not appear at dinner. Salome told Mrs. Sidebottom
that her mother was very, very ill, and prayed that she might be
excused.
'Oh!' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'I suppose the doctor called to see your
mother, and not the baby. You are not chiefly anxious about the
latter?'
'Baby is unwell, but mamma is seriously ill,' answered Salome, looking
down at her plate.
'Her illness does not seem to have affected her conversational powers,'
said Mrs. Sidebottom. 'I heard her talking a great deal to the doctor;
but perhaps that is one of the signs of fever--is she delirious?'
Salome made no reply. She maintained her place at table, deadly pale;
and though, during dinner, she endeavoured to talk, it was clear that
her mind was otherwise engaged.
Mrs. Sidebottom was thankful when dinner was over. 'Mrs. Philip will
never make a hostess,' she said to herself. 'She is heavy and dull.
You can't make lace out of stocking yarn.'
When Salome rose, Mrs. Sidebottom said, 'Do not let me detain you from
your mother; and, by the way, I don't know if you have family prayers,
like them; they are good for the servants, and are a token of
respectability--but you will excuse me if I do not attend. I am awfully
interested in my novel, and tired after my journey--I shall go to bed.'
Mrs. Sidebottom did not, however, go to bed; she remained by the fire in
the study, trying to read, and speculating on Philip's chances of
recovering part if not all of her lost money--chances which she admitted
to herself were remote.
'There,' said she, 'the servants and the whole household are retreating
to their roosts. They keep early hours here. I suppose Salome sleeps
below with her mother. Goodness preserve me from anything happening to
either the old woman or the baby whilst I am in the house. These sort
of things upset the servants, and they send up at breakfast the eggs
hardboiled, the toast burnt, and the tea made with water that has not
been on the boil.'
Mrs. Sidebottom heaved a sigh.
'This is a stupid book after all,' she said, and laid down the novel.
'I shall go to bed. Bother Mr. Beaple Yeo.'
Beaple Yeo stood between Mrs. Sidebottom just now and every enjoyment.
As she read her book Beaple Yeo forced himself into the story. At meals
he spoiled the flavour of her food with iodine, and she knew but too
surely that he would strew her bed with decimals and banish sleep.
Mrs. Sidebottom drew up the blind of her bedroom window and looked forth
on the garden and the vale of the Keld, bathed in moonlight, a scene of
peace and beauty. Mrs. Sidebottom was not a woman susceptible to the
charms of nature. She was one of those persons to whom nothing is of
interest, nothing has charm, virtue, or value, unless it affects
themselves beneficially. She had not formulated to herself such a view
of the universe, but practically it was this--the sun rises and sets for
Mrs. Sidebottom; the moon pursues her silver path about Mrs. Sidebottom;
for her all things were made, and all such things as do not revolve
about, enrich, enliven, adorn, and nourish Mrs. Sidebottom are of no
account whatever.
Now, as Mrs. Sidebottom looked forth she saw a dark figure in the
garden; saw it ascend the steps from the lower garden, cross the lawn,
and disappear as it passed in the direction of the house out of the
range of her vision. The figure was that of a man in a hat and surtout,
carrying a walking-stick.
'Well, now,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'this is comical. That man must have
obtained admission through the locked garden door, like that other
mysterious visitant, and he is coming here after everyone is gone to
bed. Of course he will enter by the glass door. I suppose he is the
doctor, and they let him come this way to visit the venerable fossil
without disturbing the maids. I do hope nothing will happen to her. I
should not, of course, wear mourning for her, but for baby I should have
to make some acknowledgment, I suppose. Bother it.'
Mrs. Sidebottom went to bed. But, as Beaple Yeo had disturbed her day,
so did he spoil her night. She slept indifferently. Beaple Yeo came to
her in her dreams, and rubbed her with decimals, and woke her. But
other considerations came along with Beaple Yeo to fret and rouse her.
Mrs. Sidebottom was a woman of easy conscience. That which was good for
herself was, therefore, right. But there are moments when the most
obtuse and obfuscated consciences stretch themselves and open their
eyes. And now, as she lay awake in the night, she thought of her
brother Jeremiah, of the readiness with which she had identified his
body, on the slenderest evidence. She might have made a mistake. Then,
at once, the thought followed the course of all her ideas, and
gravitated to herself. If she had made a mistake, and it should come
out that she had made a wrong identification--would it hurt her?
On this followed another thought, also disquieting. How came Jeremiah's
will to be without its signature? Should it ever transpire that this
signature had been surreptitiously turn away, what would be the
consequences to herself?
As she tossed on her bed, and was tormented, now by Beaple Yeo with his
speculation, then by Jeremiah asking about his will, she thought that
she heard snoring.
Did the sound issue from the room downstairs, tenanted by Mrs. Cusworth,
or from the spare chamber?
Mrs. Sidebottom attempted to feel unconcern, but found that impossible.
The snoring disturbed her, and it disturbed her the more because she
could not satisfy herself whence the sound came.
'Perhaps it is the cook,' she said. 'She may be occupying the room
overhead, and cooks are given to stertorous breathing. Standing over
the stoves predisposes them to it.'
Finally, irritated, resolved to ascertain whence the sound proceeded,
Mrs. Sidebottom left her bed. Her fire was burning. She did not light
a candle. She drew on a dressing-gown, and stole into the study, and
thence through the door (which, on account of the smoke; had been left
ajar) upon the landing-place.
There she halted and listened.
The gaslight in the hall below was left burning but lowered all night,
and the moon shone in through a window.
'I do believe the sound proceeds from the spare room,' she said, and
softly she stole to the door and turned the handle.
'There can be no one there,' she thought, 'because I was offered the
room, and yet the snoring certainly seems to proceed from it. No one
can be there--this must be an acoustic delusion.'
Noiselessly, timidly, she half opened the door. The hinges did not
creak. She looked in inquisitively. The blind was drawn down, but the
moon, shining through it, filled the room with suffused light.
Mrs. Sidebottom's eyes sought the bed. On it, where had lain the body
found in the canal, and much in the same position as that had been
placed there, lay the figure of a man, black against the white coverlet,
in a great-coat. The face was not visible--the curtain interposed and
concealed it.
Mrs. Sidebottom's heart stood still. A sense of sickness and faintness
stole over her. She dared not take a step further to obtain a glimpse
of the face, and she feared to see it.
With trembling hand she closed the door, and stood on the landing with
beating heart, recovering herself. 'What a fool I am to be frightened!'
she said, after a minute, and with a sigh of relief. 'Of course--the
doctor.'
*CHAPTER XXIX.*
*RECOGNITION.*
In one of his essays, Goldsmith relates the anecdote of a painter who
set up a picture in the market-place, with a pot of black paint and a
brush beside it, and the inscription, 'Please indicate faults.'
When in the evening he revisited his picture, he found it smudged out
eventually, as everyone had discovered and marked out a blemish. Next
day he set up a replica of the picture, with paint and brush as before,
and the inscription, 'Please indicate beauties.'
By evening, the entire canvas was covered with black. Everyone had
found a beauty, where previously everyone had detected a fault.
The modern novelist sends his work into the great forum, and without
inviting, expects criticism. The printer's ink is always available
wherewith to draw attention to his defects. In Goldsmith's apologue the
critics found beauties, in the present they see only blemishes, which
they dab at venomously, and the sorrowful author sits at evening over
his despised and bespattered production, bewildered, and ashamed to find
that his earnest work, that has called out his most generous feelings,
over which he has fagged and worn himself, is a mass of blunders, a
tissue of faults.
Now, one of the salient defects in the work of the author of this story,
according to his reviewers, is that he makes his personages talk more
smartly than they would naturally. But, he asks, would it be tolerable
to the reader, would it be just to the printer--to force upon them the
literal transcript of the ordinary conversation that passes between
people every day? When we were schoolboys we had a pudding served to us
on Wednesdays which we call milestone pudding, not because it was hard,
but because it was a plum-pudding with a mile between the plums. Is
there not a good mile between our _bon mots_? Is it legitimate art, is
it kind, to make the reader pursue a conversation through several pages
of talk void of thought, stuffed with matter of everyday interest? Is
it not more artistic, and more humane, to steam the whole down to an
essence, and then--well, add a grain of salt and a pinch of spice?
The reader shall be the judge. We will take the morning dialogue
between Mrs. Sidebottom and Salome at breakfast.
'Good-morning, Mrs. Sidebottom.'
'I wish you good-morning, Salome.'
Author: Cannot that be taken for granted? May it not be struck out with
advantage?
'I hope you slept well,' said Salome.
'Only so so. How is your poor mother?'
'Not much better, thank you.'
'And darling baby?'
'About the same. We have, indeed, a sick house. Tea or coffee, please?'
'Tea, please.'
'Sugar?'
'Sugar, please.'
'How many lumps?'
'Two will suffice.'
'I think you will find some grilled rabbit. Would you prefer buttered
egg?'
'Thank you, rabbit,' said Mrs. Sidebottom. 'I will help myself.'
'I hope your room was comfortable. You must excuse us, we are all much
upset in the house, servants as well as the rest. We have had a good
deal to upset us of late, and when we are upset it upsets the servants
too.'
Author: Now, there! Because we have dared to copy down, word for word,
what was said at breakfast, our heroine has revealed herself as
tautological. There were positively four upsets in that one little
sentence. And we are convinced that if the reader had to express the
same sentiment he or she would not be nice as to the literary form in
which the sentence was couched, would not cast it thus--'We have been
much upset; we have had much of late to disturb our equilibrium, and
when we are thrown out of our balance then the servants as well are
affected.' That would be better, no doubt, but the reader would not
speak thus, and Salome did not.
The author must be allowed to exercise his judgment and give only as
much of the conversation as is necessary, and not be obliged to record
the grammatical slips, the clumsy constructions, the tedious repetitions
that disfigure our ordinary conversation.