The Pennycomequicks (Volume 2 of 3)

He was ill-pleased to see her returning with his aunt hanging on her arm; he mistrusted this exhibition of sudden affection in Mrs. Sidebottom for one whom he knew she disliked.

'You see, Philip,' said his aunt, 'I thought it was a saint's day, and the saints want encouragement; so I went to the parish church. I put dinner off – now can I induce you and Miss Cusworth to come in and pick a little meat with me? – not bones, Philip, these we have pulled already together. I was taken with a little faintness in church, and Miss Cusworth has kindly lent me support on my way home.'

The little group stood near the doorstep to the house occupied by Mrs. Sidebottom. A gaslight was at the edge of the footway, a few paces lower down the road. Mrs. Sidebottom disengaged her hand from the arm of Salome – then the girl started, shrank back, and uttered an exclamation of terror.

'What is the matter?' asked Mrs. Sidebottom.

'I have seen it again,' said the girl, in a low tone.

'Seen what?' asked the lady.

'Never mind what,' interrupted Philip, divining immediately from Salome's alarm and agitation what she meant. 'We must not keep my aunt waiting in the street. The ground is damp and the wind cold. Good-night, Aunt Louisa. I will escort Miss Cusworth home.'

When Philip was alone with Salome, he said: 'What was it? – what did you see?'

'I saw that same man, standing by the lamp-post, looking at us. He wore

his

 hat and overcoat. Again I was unable to see any face, because the strong light fell from above, and it was in shadow. You had your back to the lamp, and the figure was in your rear. When you turned – it was gone.'

CHAPTER XXI

HYACINTH BULBS

The figure seen in the dark had diverted Philip from his purpose of speaking to Salome about money. He was not particularly eager to make his proposal, because that proposition had in it a smack of evasion of an offer already made; as though he had speedily repented of the liberality of the first. In this there was some moral cowardice, such as is found in all but blunt natures, and induces them to catch at excuses for deferring an unpleasant duty. There exists a wide gulf between two sorts of persons – the one shrinks and shivers at the obligations to say or do anything that may pain another; the other rushes at the chance with avidity, like a hornet impatient to sting. On this occasion Philip had a real excuse for postponing what he had come out to say, for Salome was not in a frame of mind to attend to it; she was alarmed and bewildered by this second encounter with a man whose face she had not seen, and who was so mysterious in his proceedings.

Accordingly Philip went to bed that night without having discharged the unpleasant task, and with the burden still weighing on him.

Next day, when he returned from the factory, in ascending the stairs he met Salome descending with her hands full of hyacinth glasses, purple, yellow and green, and a pair tucked under her arms.

She smiled recognition, and the faintest tinge of colour mounted to her face. Her foot halted, held suspended for a moment on the step, and Philip flattered himself that she desired to speak to him, yet lacked the courage to address him.

Accordingly he spoke first, volunteering his assistance.

'Oh, thank you,' she replied, 'I am merely taking the glasses and bulbs to the Pummy cupboard again.'

'Thank you in English is the equivalent for

s'il vous plait

 and not of

merci

,' he said, 'so I shall carry some of the glasses. But – what is the Pummy cupboard?'

'You do not know the names of the nooks and corners of your own house,' said Salome, laughing. 'My sister and I gave foolish names to different rooms and closets when we were children, and they have retained them, or we have not altered them. I had put the bulbs in a closet under the staircase till we thought of changing quarters, and then I removed them so as to pack them. It was whilst I was thus engaged that I saw that strange, inexplicable figure for the first time. Now that I know we are to remain here, I have put them in glasses to taste water, and am replacing them in the dark, in the cupboard.'

'Have you many?'

'A couple of dozen named bulbs, all good.'

'I will help you to carry down the glasses and roots. Where are they?'

'In the drawing-room. We kept the glasses there all summer in the chiffonnier.'

'I hope you will be able to spare me one or two for my study.'

'Of course you shall have a supply in your window. They were procured partly for Mr. Pennycomequick and partly for my mother.'

'You say "of course"; but I do not see the force of the words. Remember I have had a lodging-house experience; my sense of the fitness of things is framed on that model, and my landlady never said "of course" to anything I suggested which would give me pleasure, but cost her some trouble. I am like Kaspar Hauser, of whom you may have heard; he was brought up in a solitary dark cell, and denied everything, except bare necessaries; when he escaped and came among men, he had no notion how to behave, and was lost in amazement to find they were not all gaolers. I had on my chimney-piece two horrible sprigs of artificial flowers, originally from a bridecake, that from length of existence and accumulation of soot were become so odious that at last I burnt them. The landlady made me pay for them as though they were choice orchids.'

'You must not make me laugh,' said Salome, 'or I shall drop the glasses from under my arms.'

'Then let me take them,' said Philip promptly; 'you have two in your hands, that suffices. I tire you with my reminiscences of lodging-house life?'

'Not at all – they divert me.'

'It is the only subject on which my conversation flows. I do not know why it is that when I speak on politics I have a difficulty in expressing my ideas, but when I come on landlady-dom, the words boil out of my heart, like the water from a newly-tapped artesian well. I have a great mind to tell you my Scarborough experiences.'

'Do so.'

'Once when I was out of sorts I went to the sea-coast for a change – but I am detaining you.'

'Well, I will put down the glasses and bulbs in the Pummy cupboard and return to hear your story.'

Instead of going downstairs with Salome, Philip, though he had relieved her of two glasses, went with them to the drawing-room, whence she had taken them – which was in no way assisting her. Moreover, when he was there, he put down the glasses on the table and began examining the names of the bulbs – double pink blush, single china blue, the queen of the yellows, and so on. He had offered to help Salome, but he was doing nothing of the kind; he waited till she had filled the glasses with water, planted a couple of bulbs in them, and consigned them to the depths of the cupboard. When she returned to the parlour, he was still examining the names of the tubers.

'Now,' said he, 'I will tell you about my landlady at Scarborough.' He made no attempt to carry down glasses, he detained the girl from prosecuting her work. 'I was at Scarborough for a week, and when I left my lodgings the landlady charged me thirty shillings for a toilet set, because there was a crack in the soap-dish. I had not injured it. I pointed out the fact that the crack was gray with age, that the discolouration betokened antiquity; but she was inaccessible to reason, impossible to convince. The injury done to the soap-dish spoiled the whole set, she said, and I must pay for an entire set. I might have contested the point at law; but it was hardly worth my while, so I agreed to pay the thirty shillings, only I stipulated that I should carry off the fractured soap-dish with me. Then she resisted; the soap-dish, she argued, could be of no use to me. I must leave it, and at last, when I persisted in my resolve, she let me off with a couple of shillings.'

'But why?'

'Because the cracked soap-dish was to her a source of revenue. Every lodger for years had been bled on account of that crack to the tune of thirty shillings, and that cracked soap-dish was worth many pounds per annum to that wretched woman.' Then, with a sudden tightening of the muscles at the corners of his mouth, he added, 'I know their tricks and their ways! I have been brought up among landladies, as Romulus was nursed by a wolf, and Jupiter was reared among goats.'

'I suppose there are good lodging-house keepers as well as bad ones,' said Salome, laughing.

'Charity hopeth all things,' answered Philip grimly, 'but I never came across one. Just as colliers acquire a peculiar stoop and walk, and horse-dealers a special twist in conscience, and sailors a peculiar waddle, engendered by their professions, so does lodging-house keeping produce a warp and crick and callousness in women with which they were not born. You do not know what it is, you cannot know what it is, to be brought up and to form one's opinions among landladies. It forces one to see the world, to contemplate life through their medium as through lenses that break and distort all rays. Do you recall what the King of Israel said when the King of Syria sent to him Naäman to be healed of his leprosy?'

'Yes,' answered Salome, '"See how he seeketh a quarrel against me."'

'Exactly. And those who live in furnished lodgings are kept continually in the King of Israel's frame of mind. Whatever the landlady does, whatever she leaves undone, when she rolls her eyes round the room, when she sweeps with them the carpet, one is always saying to one's self, see how this woman seeketh a quarrel against me. Landladies are the cantharides of our nineteenth century civilization, the great source of blister and irritation. Even a man of means, who has not to count his shillings, must feel his wretchedness in lodgings; but consider the apprehensions, the unrest that must possess a man, pinched in his circumstances who lives among landladies. Her eye,' continued Philip, who had warmed to his subject, 'is ever searching for spots on the carpet, fraying of sofa edges, tears in the curtains, scratches in the mahogany, chips in the marble mantelpiece. I think it was among Quarles' emblems that I saw a picture of man's career among traps and snares on every side. In lodgings every article of furniture is a gin ready to snap on you if you use it.'

Then Philip took up two hyacinth glasses, one yellow, the other blue, but put down that which was blue, and took up another that was yellow, not for æsthetic predilection, but to prolong the time. It was a real relief to him to unburden his memory of its gall, to go through his recollections, like a Jew on the Paschal preparation, searching for and casting out every scrap of sour leaven.

'I dare say you are wondering, Miss Cusworth,' he said, 'to what this preamble on landladies is leading.'

Salome looked amused and puzzled; so perhaps is the reader.

Philip had been, as he said, for so many years in furnished lodgings, and had for so many years had before his eyes nothing but a prospect of spending all his days in them, and of expiring in the arms of lodging-house keepers, that he had come to loathe the life. Now that his financial position was altered, and before him opened a career unhampered and unsoured by pecuniary difficulties, a desire woke up in him to enjoy a more cheerful, social life than that of his experience. Now the difference between the days in his uncle's house at Mergatroyd and those he had spent in lodgings at Nottingham did not differ radically. It was true that he no longer had the tongue of a landlady hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles, but his day was no brighter, quite as colourless.

He was beneath the same roof with an old lady who belonged, as his suspicious eye told him, to the same clay as that out of which the landlady is modelled, only circumstances had not developed in her the pugnacity and acridity of the class. In herself, she was an uninteresting person, whom only the love and respect of her daughters could invest with any favour. But those daughters were both charming. His prejudice against Salome was gone completely, that against Janet almost gone. As his suspicions of Salome left, his dislike of Janet faded simultaneously. He had conceived a mistrust of Salome because he had conceived an aversion against Janet; now that he began to like Salome, this liking influenced his regard for the sister.

The society of his aunt was no gain to Philip. He disapproved of her lack of principle and disliked her selfishness. The tone of her mind and talk were repugnant to him, and Lambert and he would never become friends, because the cement of common interests was lacking.

Philip discovered himself not infrequently during the day looking at the office clock, and wishing that worktime were over; not that he wearied of his work, but that he was impatient to be home and have a chance of a word with Salome. When he returned from the factory, if he did not meet her in the hall, or on the stairs, or see her in the garden, he was disappointed. It was remarkable how many wants he discovered that necessitated a descent to Mrs. Cusworth's apartments, and how, when he entered and found that one of the daughters was present, his visit was prolonged, and the conversation was not confined to his immediate necessity. If on his entering, the tea-table was covered, he was easily persuaded to remain for a cup. His reserve, his coldness, did not wholly desert him, except when he was alone with Salome, when her freshness and frankness exercised on him a relaxing fascination; all his restraint fell away at once, and he became natural, talkative, and cheerful.

'The fact of the matter is,' said Philip, 'I have been lifting the veil to you that covers furnished lodging-house life, and exposing my wretchedness to enlist your sympathy because I am about to ask a considerable favour.'

'I am sure we need no persuasion to do what we can for you.'

'It is this. If your mother would not object, I should like to have my meals with you all, just as my uncle was wont. Having everything served in my room recalls my past with too great intensity. I have heard of a prisoner who had spent many years in the Bastille, that in after-life, when free, he could not endure to hear the clink of fireirons. It recalled to him his chains. If there be things at which my soul revolts it is steak, chops, cutlets.'

'Oh! it would indeed be a pleasure to us – such a pleasure!' and Salome's face told Philip that what she spoke she felt; the colour deepened in her cheeks, and the dimples formed at the corners of her mouth.

'And now,' she said, still with the smile on her face, playing about her lips; 'and now, Mr. Pennycomequick, you will not be angry if I ask you a favour.'

'I angry!'

'Must I enlist your sympathy first of all, and inveigle you into promising before you know what the request is I am about to make? I might tell you that a young girl like me has a little absurd pride in her, and that it is generous of a man to respect it, let it stand, and not knock it over.'

'What is the favour? I am too cautious – have been too long in a lawyer's office to undertake anything the particulars and nature of which I do not know.'

'It is this, Mr. Pennycomequick. I want you not to say another word about your kind and liberal offer to me. I will not accept it, not on any account, because I have no right to it. So that is granted.'

'Miss Cusworth, I will not hear of this.' Philip's face darkened, though not a muscle moved. 'Why do you ask this of me? What is the meaning of your refusal?'

'I will not take that to which I have no right,' she replied firmly.

'You have a right,' answered Philip, somewhat sharply. 'You know as well as I do that my uncle intended to provide for you, at least as he did for Mrs. Baynes. It was not his wish that you should be left without proper provision.'

'I know nothing of the sort. What he put into my hands was merely an evidence that he had at one time purposed to do an unfair thing, and that he repented of it in time.'

'Miss Cusworth, that cancelled will still remains to me a mystery, and I do not see how I shall ever come to an understanding of how it was that the signature was gone. From your account my uncle – '

'Never mind going over that question again. As you say, an understanding of the mystery will never be reached. Allow it to remain unattempted. I am content.'

'But, Miss Cusworth, we do not offer you a handsome, but a moderate provision.'

'You cannot force me to take what I refuse to receive. Who was that king to whom molten gold was offered? He shut his teeth against the draught. So do I. I clench mine and you cannot force them open.'

'What is the meaning of this? Why do you refuse to have my uncle's wishes carried out? You put us in an invidious position.'

Salome had shut her mouth. She shook her head. The pretty dimples were in her cheeks. Her colour had deepened.

'Someone has been talking to you,' said Philip. 'I know there has. Who was it?'

Salome again shook her head, with a provoking smile dappling and dimpling her face; but seeing that Philip was seriously annoyed, it faded, and she broke silence.

'There is a real favour you can do us, Mr. Pennycomequick, if you will.'

'What is that?' asked Philip. His ease and cheerfulness were gone. He was angry, for he was convinced that Mrs. Sidebottom had said something to the girl which had induced her to refuse the offer.

'It is this – mamma had all her money matters managed for her by dear Mr. Pennycomequick. She did not consult us about them, and we knew and know nothing about her property. I do not know how much she has, and in what investment it is. She did not, I believe, understand much about these affairs herself, she trusted all to the management of Mr. Pennycomequick. He was so clever, so kind, and he did everything for her without giving her trouble. But now that he is gone, I fancy she is worried and bewildered about these things. She does not understand them, and she has been fretting recently because she supposes that she has encountered a great loss. But that is impossible. She has touched nothing since Mr. Pennycomequick died, and what he had invested for her must certainly have been invested securely. It is not conceivable that she has lost since his death. I have been puzzling my head about the matter, and I suspect that some of her vouchers have got among Mr. Pennycomequick's papers, and she fancies they are lost to her. It is of course possible as he kept the management of her little moneys, that some of her securities may have been taken with his. If you would kindly look into this matter for her, I am sure she will be thankful, and so – without saying – will I. If you can disabuse her mind of the idea that she has met with heavy losses, you will relieve her of a great, haunting trouble.'

'I will do this cheerfully. But this does not affect the obligation – '

'My teeth are set again. But – see! you offered to carry down my glasses, and you have not done so. You have, moreover, hindered me in my work.'

The house-door bell was rung.

'My aunt,' muttered Philip. 'I know the touch of her hand on knocker or bell-pull. I am beginning to entertain towards her some of the feelings I had towards my landladies in the old unregenerate lodging-house days. Confound her! Why should she come now?'

CHAPTER XXII.

YES OR NO?

Philip was right. He had recognised the ring of Mrs. Sidebottom. As soon as the door was opened her voice was audible, and Philip used a strong expression, which only wanted raising another stage to convert it into an oath.

Salome caught up a couple of hyacinth glasses and resumed her interrupted occupation; and Philip went to the window to remove a spring-nail that incommoded him. There are certain voices which, when coming unexpectedly on the ear, make the conscience feel guilty, though it may be free from fault. Such was that of Mrs. Sidebottom. If Philip had been studying his Bible instead of talking to Salome, when he heard her, he would have felt as though he had been caught reading an improper French novel; and if Salome had been engaged in making preserves in the kitchen, she would have been conscious of inner horror and remorse as though she had been concocting poison. The reason of this is that those who hear the voice know that the owner of the voice is certain, whatever they do, to believe them to be guilty of some impropriety; and they are frightened, not at what they have done, but at what they may be supposed to have done.

'I suppose that Mr. Pennycomequick is in his room,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, passing on, to the servant who had admitted her. 'It is not his time to be at the office.'

She ascended the stairs to the study door, and in so doing passed Salome, who bowed, and was not sorry to be unable to respond to the proffered hand, having both of her own engaged, carrying glasses.

Philip heard his aunt enter the study, after a premonitory rap, and remained where he was, hoping that as she did not find him in his room she would conclude he was out, and retire. But Mrs. Sidebottom was not a person to be evaded thus; and after having looked round the room and called at his bedroom door, she came out on the landing and entered the drawing-room, when she discovered him, penknife in hand, removing his spring-nail.

'Oh!' she said, with an eye on the bulbs and flower-glasses. 'Adam and Eve in Paradise.'

'To whom entered the mischief-maker,' said Philip, promptly turning upon her.

'Not complimentary, Philip.'

'You brought it on yourself.'

'It takes two to pick a quarrel,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'and I am in the most amiable mood to-day. By the way, you might have inquired about my health this morning, for you knew I was not well yesterday. As you had not the grace to do so, I have come to announce to you that I am better.'

'I did not suppose that you had been seriously ill.'

'Not seriously ill, but indisposed. I nearly fainted in church last night, as I told you; but you were otherwise occupied than in listening to me. Now, I want to know, Philip, what was that rigmarole about something or someone seen in the dark?'

'There was no rigmarole, as you call it.'

'Oh! do not pick faults in my language. You know what I mean. What was the excuse made by Miss Cusworth for taking your arm?'

'Miss Cusworth did not take my arm.'

'Because you had not the wit to offer it; and yet the hint given was broad enough.'

'I am busy,' said Philip, in a tone of exasperation. His aunt's manner angered him, so that he could not speak or act with courtesy towards her.

'Oh yes. Busy planting forget-me-not and love in a mist. Come, do not be cross. What was the meaning of that exclamation? I want to know, for I also saw someone standing by the lamp-post, looking on.'

'I will tell you, and then, perhaps, you will be satisfied, Aunt Louisa. And when satisfied, I trust you will no longer detain me from my business.'

Then Philip shortly and plainly narrated to his aunt what had happened. He did so because he thought it possible, just possible, that she might be able to explain the apparition.

She was surprised and disconcerted by what she heard, but not for long.

'Who has the garden key?' she inquired.

'My uncle had one on his bunch.'

'And that bunch is in your possession?'

'Yes, and has not been out of it. It is locked up in my bureau.'

'Very well, then, the fellow did not get in by that means. Had anyone else a key?'

'Yes, Mrs. Cusworth.'

'And is there a third?'

'No; that is all.'

'Where was Mrs. Cusworth's key on the night in question?'

'I did not inquire. It was unnecessary.'

'Not at all unnecessary. If the man did not obtain access by your key, he did that of by the housekeeper.'

'This is preposterous,' said Philip irritably. 'You have made no allowance for another contingency – that the door may have been left unlocked and ajar by the gardener, when last at work.'

'That will not do. The gardener has not been about the place for a fortnight or three weeks. You say that the servants may have allowed a friend to take the pick of Jeremiah's clothes. That explains nothing: for it does not account for the garden door being unlocked, though it might for the house door being left open. Why should not the Cusworths have needy relatives and hangers-on as well as the servant girls? Needy relatives smelling of beer, with patched small clothes and pimply faces, who fly about with the bats, and to whom the cast-off clothing, the good hat and warm overcoat, would be a boon. Who are these Cusworths? Whence have they come? Out of as great an uncertainty as this mysterious figure. They are creations out of nothing, like the universe, but not, like it, to be pronounced very good. Now, Philip, is not my solution of the riddle the only logical one?'

'This is enough on the subject,' said Philip, especially chafed because his aunt's explanation really was the simplest, and yet was one which he was unwilling to allow. 'You charge high-minded, honourable people with – '

'I charge them with doing no harm,' interrupted Mrs. Sidebottom. 'The clothes were laid out to be distributed to the needy; and Mrs. Cusworth was given the disposal of them. If she chose to favour a relative, who is to blame her? Not I. She would probably not care to have the sort of relative who would touch his cap for Jeremiah's old suits, come openly to the door in the blaze of day, and before the eyes of the giggling maids. No doubt she said to the moulting relative, "Come in the dark; help yourself to new plumage, but do not discredit us by proclaiming kinship."'

Philip was too angry to answer his aunt. To change the subject he said, 'Miss Cusworth has refused to receive anything from us. That some influence has been brought to bear on her to induce this, I have no doubt, and I have as little doubt as to whose influence was exerted.' He looked fixedly at his aunt.

'I am glad she has had the grace to do so,' answered Mrs. Sidebottom cheerily. 'No, Philip, you need not drive your eyes into me, as if they were bradawls. I can quite understand that she has told you all, and laid the blame on me. I do not deny my part in the transaction. I am not ashamed of it; on the contrary, I glory in it. You were on the threshold of a great folly, that jeopardized the firm of Pennycomequick, and my allowance out of it as well. I have stepped in to stop you. I had my own interests to look after. I have saved you four thousand pounds, which you could not afford to lose. Am not I an aunt whose favour is worth cultivating; an aunt who deserves to be treated with elementary politeness?'

Then Philip's anger boiled up.

'We see everything through opposite ends of the telescope. What is infinitely small to me and far away, is to you present and immense; and what to me is close at hand and overwhelming, is quite beyond your horizon. To my view of things we are committing a moral wrong when technically right. How that will was cancelled, and by whom, will probably never be known; but nothing in the world will persuade me that Uncle Jeremiah swung from one extremity of liberality to Miss Cusworth, coupled with injustice to us, to the other extreme of generosity to us and absolute neglect of her. Such a thing could not be. He would turn in his grave if he thought that she, an innocent, defenceless girl, was to be left in this heartless, criminal m