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', flirtin'! 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.