CHAPTER IX.

THE FIRST MUTTERINGS OF THE STORM.

"DEAR AUNT,--(thus Mrs. Mortomley to Miss Gerace)--I have been a little ill, and I am here by the doctor's advice for change of air and scene; but I find that the moaning of the sea and the howling of the wind depress me at night, and I think I should get well quicker if I were at Dassell in my own old room.

"May I go to you--will you have me? Lenore is with me at present, but I will not trouble you with her. She shall go back to her papa at Homewood, if you say you have a corner still in your house for your affectionate niece,

"DOLLY."

It is no exaggeration to say Mrs. Mortomley waited with a sickening impatience for the answer which should justify her in starting forthwith for Dassell. She believed she should get well there at once. She longed to hear the solemn silence of the woods; to behold once more the familiar landscape; to run over to the Court, and talk to Mrs. Trebasson; in her matronhood, to stop for a moment and rehabilitate the beauty of her girlish life--where it had once been a breathing presence.

Perhaps in the new notion of economy which possessed her, she desired to be strengthened in her purpose by a glimpse of the land where she had been content with so little of the world's wealth. Anyhow, let the reason be what it might, Dolly wanted to go back home--as she mentally phrased it--and waited anxiously for Miss Gerace's letter. It came: it ran as follows:--

"MY DEAR NIECE,--I grieve to hear of your ill-health, although I cannot marvel you have broken down at last; you know my opinions. They may be old fashioned; but, at all events, they carry with them the weight of an experience longer and wiser than my own.

"Health and undue excitement are incompatible. You left me blessed with a strong constitution; you have ruined it. You were a robust girl; you are a delicate woman. But I refrain, aware that my remarks now must be as distasteful as my previous advice has proved.

"When you were married I told you my home, so long as I had one, should always be yours. Though you have changed, I have not--and therefore, if you really think this air and place likely to benefit so _fashionable a lady as yourself_--pray come to me at once.

"Do not send your little girl back to Homewood, because you fear her giving trouble to a fidgety old maid. If you remember, I was not in my first youth when I took sole charge of you; and if I failed to train you into a perfect character, I do not think the blame could be laid altogether at my door. _But_ I will have none of your fly-away, fine-lady servants, remember that. You and the child are welcome; but there is no place in my small house for London maids or nurses.

"I hope you will take what I have written in the spirit in which it is meant, and

"Believe me, "Your affectionate Aunt, "M. GERACE."

To which epistle, Dolly, in an ecstasy of indignation, replied:--

"MY DEAR AUNT,--(from which commencement Miss Gerace anticipated stormy weather to follow; 'my' as a prefix to 'dear,' having always with Dolly been a declaration of hostility)--Of course I cannot tell in what spirit your letter was written, but I should say in a very bad one. At all events, I cannot go to Dassell now, and I regret asking you to have me. I will not visit any one who gives me a grudging welcome.

"I am not a fashionable lady. I am not a delicate woman. If being 'perfect' includes the power of saying disagreeable things to unoffending people, I am very thankful to admit I am, spite of your judicious training, an imperfect character. I suppose you have been waiting your opportunity to say something unpleasant to me, because Mrs. Edward Gerace spent a week with us in the Summer. I do not like her or her husband; but when they offered to visit us, we could not very well say there were plenty of Hotels within their means in London.

"And when they did come, I admit we tried to make them comfortable, which, no doubt assumes in your eyes the proportions of a sin. I daresay Edward Gerace's father did not treat my father well; but Edward is not responsible for that. For my part, I think in family feuds there ought to be a statute of limitations, as I believe there is for debt; nothing more fatiguing can be imagined, than to go on acting the Montague and Capulet business through all the days of one's life. If you had written to propose visiting me, I should have returned a very different answer; but I suppose people cannot help their dispositions. More is the pity!

"Your affectionate Niece, "DOLLABELLA MORTOMLEY."

Which signature was adding insult to injury. 'Dollabella' had always been an offence in the nostrils of Miss Gerace. 'Dolly' was absurd; still, between the name and the owner, there was a certain fitness and unity.

With 'Dollabella' there was none. The "Minerva Press" twang about it had ever seemed intolerable to the practical spinster, nor did the fact of Mrs. Mortomley having been left the best part of her Godmother's money, tend to reconcile Miss Gerace to the polysyllabic appellation, all of which Mrs. Mortomley knew, and for that very reason she signed it in full.

"There," she thought to herself as she directed, sealed, and stamped the letter. "I hope Miss Gerace will like that."

For after the manner of her sex, she was petulant and little in unimportant matters.

It is the most purely womanly women who are given to similar outbursts.

Mrs. Werner could never so far have forgotten her own dignity as to indite such an epistle; but then, on the other hand, neither could she have repented for having done so, as Dolly did.

Barely was the letter posted before that repentance began. First, Mrs. Mortomley, her anger not yet assuaged, mentally pictured her aunt's horror and astonishment when she read. She saw the postman come up to the door. She saw the prim servant receive the letter. She saw her carry it into the breakfast-parlour. She saw Miss Gerace put on her spectacles. And at that point Dolly's anger began to ebb, and her regret to flow; after all, her aunt's innings out of life had been few and her own many; and she had her opinions just as Dolly had hers; and she had taken her nephew's child home when he died, and shared her small income with her, and done her duty faithfully, if not always pleasantly, and by way of return, Mrs. Mortomley had penned that letter, which by this time she herself styled nasty and detestable.

She could not send the antidote with the bane, for the early post had already gone out, taking her letter with it. But she could write by the night mail, and Miss Gerace would then receive her apology on the afternoon of the same day, which witnessed her offence.

One of the servants from the Court always went over for the letter bag twice a day, and it was understood Miss Gerace's correspondence went and came at the same time.

She need not therefore sleep upon the first letter; Dolly decided she would not sleep either till the second was written.

"DEAR AUNT,--(so began number two of the same date)--I am so sorry for the ill-tempered things I said this morning. I did not really mean one of them. Your letter made me angry for the minute, and I wrote without stopping to think, indeed I did.

"Dear auntie, forgive me. When I remember all the years during which you stinted yourself to provide for me, I feel a monster of ingratitude. I will go to you now if you will have me, and take Lenore; but _no servant_; and Archie shall fetch me back when I have made my peace, and you are quite tired of me. I love you better than a thousand Edward Geraces, and their wives into the bargain, and their is not a stone in your house, or a plant in your garden that is not dear to me.

"Your ever affectionate, "DOLLY."

After which came a postscript.

"A message from home has just arrived. My husband is ill, so I cannot go to Dassell. Direct to Homewood."

Which Miss Gerace did.

With a good grace she said she was sorry to hear of Mr. Mortomley's illness and trusted he would soon be restored to health. With a bad grace she sent Mrs. Mortomley her forgiveness, and regretted Dolly's tendency to ill-temper was the besetting sin even her course of education had been unable to rectify. The one thing--she added with her own peculiar grace--she lamented to find was so strong a taint of vulgarity in her brother's child. The letter for which she so properly apologized would not have disgraced a Billingsgate fishwife. For that trait in her character she must have gone back to some alien blood.

"Poor aunt!" remarked Dolly, putting the letter aside, "she will never be good friends with me again. If she knew how ill Archie is, I do not think she would be so hard upon me."

Certainly Mr. Mortomley was very ill. For no light cause would Antonia Halling have summoned Mrs. Mortomley back as she did, but when she sent her telegram she really was afraid of the owner of Homewood dying in her hands.

To Dolly sickness was nothing new. As a clergyman's daughter she had been with it more or less all her life; less certainly since her marriage than before that event.

But one strong experience is perhaps enough. She had helped nurse her father; nay, she had tended him more unweariedly than any one else, and by reason of those vigils knew how to watch by the sick.

Beside her husband she took her post, and through the valley of the shadow brought him back to health, or at least what the doctors were pleased to call health.

They did not understand, though perhaps Dolly might instinctively, that the man who has once sickened through mental distress will never really even begin to recover until the mental pressure be removed.

Hot and fast Richard Halling's bills were pouring in. Mr. Mortomley was beginning fully to understand what "lending a name" means. Unfortunately he believed he could, as he said to Dolly, "win through"; and in that belief he was encouraged by the holders of every bill which had his name on the back of it.

"We will renew, of course," they said, and Mortomley instead of facing the question put it off; just as you would do, reader, were you similarly situated and had a great deal to lose.

So Mr. Mortomley, according to the doctors, was once again strong and able to attend to business. Nevertheless, his wife noticed he stayed a good deal in his laboratory after his attack, whilst his nephew went to town to look after affairs there. Indeed, the man's nerves were so shaken, his organization being delicate, that Dolly felt very glad to see any one, even Rupert, take his place in the City.

The doctors had their own way at last, and Homewood was quiet. In the face of her husband's illness, Dolly could not prove a gadabout. With unusual embarrassments surrounding him, Mortomley could not entertain as his fathers had done before he was thought of.

Nevertheless, there were occasional dinner-parties, and at one of these Dolly first saw Mr. Forde.

In deference to a suggestion of Mr. Werner's, who now interested and busied himself not a little with the concerns of his old friend, he had been asked to the house.

When he came no one knew exactly what to do with him. A stranger amongst strange people is rarely to be envied his lot; but perhaps the position of strange people when a stranger ventures amongst them is more unenviable still.

Mrs. Mortomley felt their modest establishment must seem poor in the eyes of a man who talked so glibly of the fine seats possessed by this alderman and that retired tallow-chandler. Although affably anxious to descend to the position, Mr. Forde lost no opportunity of letting the Mortomleys know Homewood seemed a mere doll's-house in comparison with the mansions to which he was daily invited. He and Mr. Werner had the bulk of the talk to themselves, and it related principally to City incidents and City men, to the fortune left by this merchant and the _fiasco_ made by his neighbour, with other pleasing incidents of a like nature interspersed with political observations that made Dolly yawn frightfully behind her handkerchief.

Notwithstanding which pretences of under-rating Homewood and its occupiers, Mr. Forde was impressed by both. The unities of decent society always do impress men who have lived during the whole of their earlier years on the edge of society or below it.

After that first visit Mr. Forde came frequently to Homewood, but of this Mrs. Mortomley took little notice until one day when having, for reasons of her own, suggested putting off his proposed visit, Rupert remarked,

"I am afraid that would scarcely be a safe move. At any inconvenience to ourselves, we must be civil to him."

"Why?" asked Dolly.

"Well; for various reasons. If a man gets into Queer Street, he can scarcely afford to quarrel with the people who live there."

"Do you mean that Archie is in Queer Street?" Mrs. Mortomley inquired.

"In something very like it, at any rate," was the reply.

"How does it happen?"

"I cannot tell," he answered in all sincerity.

"When will he be out of it?"

"That is what puzzles me. We ought to have been out of it long ago."

Misfortune, like age, comes differently upon different people. There are those whose hair turns white in a single night, and those again to whom grey hairs come almost one by one, and in similar fashion ruin overwhelms some in an hour, whilst others are reduced to beggary by a slow and almost imperceptible process, the beginning and progress of which it seems impossible to trace.

The end every one understands, the commencement is usually unintelligible to those who ought to know most about it.

In the February of that year in which this story opens, came the first thunderclap heralding very bad weather to come.

For reasons best known to himself, Rupert had neglected to meet a somewhat important acceptance and had failed to take sufficient notice of a writ of which he, in Mr. Mortomley's absence, accepted service. The option had lain with the holder of proceeding against his debtor in Essex, or The City, and he selected the former as being likely to give the greatest annoyance.

To do him justice, Rupert was only vaguely acquainted with the nature of writs, and the spectacle of a sheriff's officer appearing at Homewood, proved as great a shock to him as it did to Miss Halling and Mortomley and Dolly and the servants.

They were all so perfectly new to business of the kind that they did not even try to keep the matter secret. From the cook to the page boy, from the lady's-maid to the groom, from the foreman manager in the works to the youngest lad employed about the place, every creature knew that a "man in possession" had taken up his residence in Homewood.

It was then the principal of Dolly's fortune proved of service. Within twenty-four hours the money was raised, the debt paid, and the man despatched to herald ruin to some other family, but the evil was wrought. Mortomley's credit had gone; and not all the sops thrown to fate out of Mrs. Mortomley's _dot_ could pacify the wolves which now came howling round that doomed estate.

For a time, however, Mrs. Mortomley entertained no fear that their ship was sinking.

So far as she saw, beyond a certain gravity in her husband's face, a certain discontent in that of Miss Halling, and a retrenchment which she accepted as just and necessary in her own expenditure, there was no cause to anticipate danger. Things went on much as usual, the waters over which they floated seemed calm enough, and the winds fair and favourable.

She did not know, neither did her husband, neither did Rupert, that there was a leak in their vessel which it would have required very different hands from theirs to stop.

Had Mr. Werner stood in Mr. Mortomley's shoes, he could have done it, and would have made matters remarkably unpleasant for any one who tried to prevent his doing so.

When the evil day came, Mr. Werner said Mortomley was a fool, with an extremely strong adjective prefixed to this flattering appellation; but he did not call him a rogue.

Neither did any-body else for the matter of that, except Mr. Forde.

Which was of the less consequence, because as a wag remarked, speaking of his violent vituperations against the colour-maker,

"Poor Forde's experience has as yet been too one-sided to enable him to distinguish good from evil."

Indeed, after all, when a man is down it makes very little difference what the world thinks of him, unless in this way: the world always helps a rogue, because it has a justifiable faith in his helping himself, whereas a fool or a fool's equivalent in the opinion of society--an honest man--though weak may, if once thrown, lie for ever like a sheep on the broad of his back, unless some Samaritan help him to his feet again.

And Samaritans are scarce now-a-days; and when they do appear are generally as scarce of pennies as rich people are of inclination to give them.

One evening in the early summer time, Dolly, putting aside the muslin curtains which draped one of the French windows leading on the lawn, entered that cool and pleasant drawing-room of which, under her _régime_, many a man and woman had carried away happy memories.

As she stood with the light muslin parted above her head, she saw that her husband and Rupert sat with chairs close together, the latter talking earnestly; and she would have retreated by the way she came, for Dolly never cared to intrude on the _tête-à-tête_ of any two persons, but Mortomley said, "You had better stay, dear. It is only right you should hear what we are saying."

"What is the matter?" asked Dolly, stepping up to the pair and looking from one to the other with a quick apprehension of something being wrong.

Her husband rose, and walking to the hearth, stood leaning with his back against the mantel-piece. Rupert rose likewise and looked out of the window nearest to where he stood; his hands plunged deep in his pockets, his dress dusty as when he returned from town, his hair, worn long as was the artist fashion he affected; looking rough and unkempt, and an expression on his face no one probably had ever seen there before, not even when Mr. Gideon told him he must make a slight inventory of a few articles and leave behind him the first creature, gentle or simple, to whom the owners of Homewood grudged extending hospitality.

How the room, the flowers, the soft evening light, the figures of the two men were photographed into her mind at that moment Mrs. Mortomley never knew until the months had come and the months had gone, and Homewood, its shady walks, its smooth lawns, its banks of flowers, its wealth of foliage, its modest luxury of appointment, its utter comfort and sweet simplicity, were all part and parcel of a past which could return--ah! nevermore.

"What is the matter?" she repeated. "What has gone wrong?"

"I do not know that anything has gone wrong," Rupert answered. "It may be, for aught I can tell, the beginning of greater peace than we have had for some time past. I have been telling Archie I think he ought to stop."

"I have thought so often lately," said Mortomley with quiet resignation.

"Stop what--stop when!" his wife interrogated; then she suddenly paused, adding the instant after, "Do you mean fail?"

"Certainly not," replied the younger man. "I merely mean that he should go into liquidation."

"What on earth is liquidation?"

"It is nothing very dreadful," said Mr. Halling reassuringly. "Nothing, of course, will be changed here--the works will go on as usual--you can live just as we have been doing lately; we could not expect to entertain, of course, until every one to whom anything is owing is paid off, and then we can do what we like. That is about the English of it, is it not?" he said turning to Mr. Mortomley, who replied with a set face,

"I do not know. I have never been in liquidation."

"But you know plenty of fellows who have."

"I cannot say that I do," was the answer; and he turned a little aside and began toying absently with the articles on the chimney-piece.

"At all events, you see quite clearly we cannot go on as we have been doing," persisted Rupert.

"I wonder we have been able to go on so long--"

"It would not be such a hopeless fight if we were not daily and hourly getting involved more deeply with the General Chemical Company."

"Yes; that is the worst feature of the position; and I confess I cannot understand how it happens."

"But I have explained the whole thing to you fully," said Rupert, looking angry and excited.

"Yes, according to your idea; but I tell you such a system is impossible in any respectable business."

"Do you consider the General Chemical Company a respectable concern?"

"I have always supposed so; but whether respectable or not, the errors, to use a mild term, you speak of are simply impossible in an establishment where there are clerks employed, and checks kept, and experienced book-keepers always engaged on the accounts."

Having made which observation, in a much more decided manner than it was his custom usually to employ, Mr. Mortomley walked out of the room, leaving his wife and Rupert alone together.

Rupert, looking after him, shrugged his shoulders, and thrusting his hands deeper into his pockets and planting one shoulder well up against the window shutter, remarked to Dolly,

"He won't believe those people have been cheating him right and left, and I don't know that any good purpose would be served if I could make him believe it. Because, owing to my stupidity, we never can prove the fact. If you and Lenore are beggared," he added, with a poor attempt at mirth, "I give you full leave to blame me for the whole of it."

"Do not be absurd," answered Mrs. Mortomley uneasily. "Archie is quite right, of course. People could not cheat, and if they could they would not be so wicked."

Rupert laughed outright. "Would they not, Mrs. Mortomley? Much you know of the world and its ways--I say and shall say to the end of my life, that the General Chemical Company has, by a system of splendid book-keeping, been robbing us of I should be afraid to say how much; and I say further, no system of book-keeping we could devise would be of the slightest use in preventing it. But it might have been stopped ere this by our stoppage. Nothing else will do it now. Remember what I say to you, Dolly; and they are not my words alone--they are the words of men who know far more about business and City matters than I ever want to do. If Archie is to do any good for himself and you and Lenore" (Rupert kept his own name and that of his sister discreetly out of sight) "he must stop now. If he speaks to you about it, don't dissuade him, Dolly; for God's sake don't try to induce him to put off the evil day any longer."

Vehemence of manner or expression was unusual at Homewood, and, for a moment, Rupert's words and looks startled Mrs. Mortomley. After that moment she answered,

"I shall not dissuade or persuade him, for I know nothing really about the matter."

"Do you mind coming with me into the works?" asked Rupert in reply.

"No." Dolly said she would go with him if he wished; and accordingly the pair went out together on to the lawn and across the flower-garden and so to the laurel-walk which people averred was the crowning beauty of Homewood. Who had first planted it no one knew, but tradition ascribed that virtuous deed to a far-away dignitary of the Church of Rome, who had considered Homewood, then a mere cottage and lands on the borders of the forest, a sort of hermitage to which, from the din of party and the clamour of men's tongues, he might retire to pray and meditate in peace.

And this view is confirmed by the fact, that in another country I remember well seeing in grounds belonging to an old monastic institution similar arcades of greenery, thick hedges to right and left, and overarching branches inter-twining and overlapping, till the light of day was shut out and the paths made dark as night.

At Homewood this inconvenience had been obviated by cutting at intervals openings in one of the hedges in the form of pointed arches; and the effect produced was consequently somewhat akin to that left on the mind by walking along some cloister in an ancient cathedral.

Quiet as any monastic pavement was the laurel-path at Homewood; and the frequent glimpses of emerald green and bright-hued flowers afforded by the openings mentioned, in no way detracted from the solemn feeling produced by the stillness of that remarkable passage.

Of late many a bitter thought and wearying anxiety had kept Mortomley company as he paced along it to the postern gate giving admission to his works; and this, Dolly's quick instinct enabled her to realise as she tried with her short uneven steps to keep up with Rupert's long careless stride.

"Oh! I wish I had known sooner," she said mentally; "I wish--I wish--I wish I had."

"It is a sweet place, Dolly," remarked Rupert, who possessed a keen sense of the beautiful in nature, women, and children, though his artistic power of reproducing beauty on canvas was meagre.

"Ay," she answered with a little gasp, "that it is."

"We must not risk losing it."

She did not answer, but she touched his arm with her hand entreatingly.

Looking down at the face upraised to his, he saw her eyes were full of tears. Lose Homewood! why it had never looked fairer than it did at that moment, with the evening sun shining athwart its lawns. Lose Homewood! where she had been so happy; it would be worse than death.

"Oh! Rupert," she cried at last, and she clung to him entreatingly, "you did not mean it--say you did not."

"I declare Dolly, you are prettier than Lenore," he answered irrelevantly, as it may seem; but the fact was, all at once, in that moment of mental anguish, of pathetic helplessness, he saw something in the woman's face he had never beheld there before--something grief had developed already, a grace and a beauty hitherto concealed.

"Dolly," he went on vehemently, "if I can keep Homewood for you I will; but you must help, you must not let Archie turn back from the battle. It is true, dear, I do not go on my own judgment; if he is not firm now, we shall all be lost!"

As he spoke he was unlocking the postern door, which admitted them to a small court which, in its turn, gave ingress to the foreman's office as well as to the more private offices of the establishment, Mr. Mortomley's own room and laboratory included.

When they entered the court, Hankins, the foreman, was fastening his door and came to meet them, swinging a great bunch of keys on his fingers in a _debonnaire_ manner the while.

Out of respect or, shall we say, gallantry he raised his hat to Mrs. Mortomley. Rupert's "Good evening," he answered with a nod. Mr. Hankins was a working-man of the very advanced type, who thought much of himself, and but little consequently of any one else. He was a clever fellow, as all Mortomley's picked men were, and fairly faithful and honest as the world goes now-a-days, which is not perhaps far.

But he understood his business and he did his work, and he saw that others did it also. Now that the day's labour was over, he had been, as he informed his visitors, "just taking as usual a look round to see everything was right."

"Mr. Lang gone?" asked Rupert.

"Yes, sir, not five minutes ago;" and Mr. Hankins swung his bunch of keys again as a polite intimation to Mr. Halling that it was not part of his contract to stand talking to him all night.

"You got some more barytes in to-day," remarked Rupert, wilfully disregarding the hint.

"You can call it barytes, of course, sir, if you like," was the reply, "I call it stuff."

"It is not good then?"

"Good! Now I should just wish you to see it. Naturally, not having been brought up to the business, you cannot be supposed to know all the ins and outs of our trade, but a child might tell the inferiority of this. If not detaining you, sir, I really should feel obliged by your stepping this way," and with an air he flung open the door of his office, and pointing to a powder of a whity-brown colour lying on the desk, asked ironically,

"That is a first-rate article, ain't it, sir?"

Rupert shook his head; and Mr. Hankins thus encouraged, pressed his point.

"Here, ma'am," he said, taking up an other parcel and opening it, "is something like. Look at the difference. I declare, upon my conscience," continued Mr. Hankins, turning to Rupert and forgetting in his energy the presence of his employer's wife, "it is enough to drive a man out of his mind to be obliged to sign a receipt-note for such rubbish. I often think things here might make people believe that old story the parsons tell about the Israelites being ordered to make bricks without straw. After what I have seen this last eighteen months I fancy I could almost swallow anything," finished Mr. Hankins with that advanced and almost unconscious scepticism which is so curious an adjunct to skilled labour at this period of the world's history.

Rupert looked uneasily at his companion. At any other time she might have felt inclined to enter into a controversy with Mr. Hankins on the religious question, but at that moment her heart was so full of her husband's position that the orthodoxy or non-orthodoxy of any person's opinions seemed quite a secondary matter in her eyes.

"Surely," she began, "Mr. Mortomley is the only person to say here what is good or bad. If he approves of this," and she pointed to the barytes, "it is not fitting any one else should disapprove."

"_Mr. Mortomley won't look at it, ma'am_," was the ominous answer. "If I go to him, he says, 'I am busy now,' or, 'you must do the best you can with it,' or, 'I will write and complain;' and all the while as fine a business as there is in the Home counties is going to the devil. I beg your pardon, ma'am, but I can't help saying it. You heard, sir, I suppose, that Traceys had sent back all the ten tons of Brunswick green," (Rupert nodded) "and if things go on much longer as they have been going, we shall have everything sent back. If it wasn't for the respect I have to Mr. Mortomley, I would not stay here an hour; and as it is, I do not know as how I can bear it much longer."

Which last was intended as a side blow to be carried by Mrs. Mortomley to her husband. Mr. Hankins folded up his samples, took his keys, said, "Evening, sir," "Good evening, ma'am," touched the brim of his hat, and sauntered leisurely across the yard leaving his visitors alone.

"I wanted you to hear, Dolly," said Rupert, "but I fear in my wisdom I have been a brute."

She did not answer, but she walked back steadily to the house. She dressed for dinner; and when that meal was served, they all sat down as people might the evening before an execution.

So far this narrative has been preliminary and introductory. In the next chapter the real story of Mortomley's Estate begins.