CHAPTER XII.

LEAVING HOMEWOOD.

Days passed--days longer than had ever previously been known at Homewood--the weather, which brightened up for Mrs. Mortomley's visit to Salisbury House, became on the Sunday as bad as ever again, and continued rainy and miserable during the early part of the week. The men in possession did not leave. It was understood they were to be paid. Mr. Swanland had hoped to get rid of them without going through this ceremony, but finding the law against him, and having an objection to part with money, arranged for them to stay on till he had "sufficient in hand," to quote his own phrase, to settle their claims.

Meantime on the Saturday there had been almost a turn out of the workmen, who were kept waiting for their wages until it suited Mr. Bailey's convenience to go down from London to pay them.

They grumbled pretty freely concerning this irregularity; so freely, indeed, that Mr. Bailey told them if they did not like Mr. Swanland's management they had better leave. Whereupon they said they did not like Mr. Swanland's management if it kept them kicking their heels for five hours when they might have been at home, and that they would leave.

On hearing this, Mr. Bailey drew in his horns, and said they had better not be hasty, and that he would speak to Mr. Swanland. To both of which suggestions they agreed somewhat sullenly, and so ended that week.

The next opened with the valuation of the Homewood furniture and other effects--as a "mere matter of form," so Mr. Swanland declared--but, like the trustee's, the auctioneer's men took possession of the place as if it belonged to them, and without either with your leave or by your leave, walked from room to room making their inventory.

Up to the time of their arrival Dolly had entertained hopes of inducing her husband to make an effort to get downstairs. For days previously she had been artfully striving to make him believe his presence in the works was earnestly needed. She had suggested his spending an evening in the drawing-room. She had on Sunday drawn a picture of the conservatory sufficient to have tempted any ordinary invalid to hazard the undertaking, but Mortomley's malady was as much mental as physical, and not any medicine she could administer was able to cure that mind diseased, which, no less than bodily illness, had stricken him with a blow so sudden and so sharp.

"We will see to-morrow, dear," was all the answer she could ever elicit.

All in vain she guaranteed him immunity from indignant creditors, who would persist in visiting Homewood in order to recite their wrongs, and to hope Mr. Mortomley would see _them_ safe at all events; in vain she promised that not a man in possession should cross his sight; in vain she spoke of the brighter days dawning before them; in vain she employed eloquence, and it may be a little deceit.

It was always, "We will see to-morrow;" but once the morrow came, the evil hour was again deferred when Mortomley should look on the face of his fair house dishonoured, when he should nerve himself up to pass where sacrilegious feet had trodden down the beauty and the grace, destroyed all the sweet memories which once clustered round and about the place where his father had lived, where he himself was born.

And sometimes Dolly felt angry and sometimes sad, but she never felt hopeless until those men intruding into the very room where Mortomley sat listlessly looking out at the gloomy sky, taught him the precise position he occupied.

With a white face Dolly watched their movements, and when in a short time they shut the door behind them, she went up to her husband and kissed his forehead.

"Should you not like to be away from all this?" she asked.

"Yes, if there were any place to which we could go away," was the answer.

"We must leave," said Dolly, and then--for she was growing wise--she sat down to calculate the cost.

She wanted to take him to the seaside, but she failed to see how that was to be managed.

She could have done it by running into debt, for her credit was good at those seaside places where she had been the idol of landlords and where tradespeople had delighted at her reappearance. But she had no intention of going into debt unless she saw some means of being able to repay those who put trust in her honesty.

She could not take her husband to the seaside, and yet she felt he must be got away from Homewood. The changed atmosphere of that once charming home was killing him. With the rare sympathy which women like Dolly, capable of putting themselves and their interests entirely on one side, possess, she understood that air breathed by those dreadful men was death to a person in his state of health; and she racked her brains to think of some plan by which she might get him away, even for a fortnight, from the sound of strange voices, from the haunting presence of Messrs. Turner and Meadows, and the other more insignificant sheriff's officer.

Not in the worst time they ever previously passed through, had Mrs. Mortomley experienced such utter misery as that which fell to her lot after Mr. Swanland took the reins of government.

She knew utter anarchy prevailed in the works. She knew the men were at daggers drawn with each other, unanimous only in one desire viz., that of circumventing Mr. Meadows and outwitting his vigilance. She knew the horses were not properly attended to; and when Lang justly indignant at the proceeding, told her Bess had been put in one of the carts and sent out with a load for the docks, Mrs. Mortomley was fain to make an excuse to get rid of the man, that he might not see the passion of grief his news excited in her.

Helpless they were, both Mortomley and his wife. Ciphers where they had once had authority; mere paupers, living on sufferance in a house no longer theirs; by rapid degrees Dolly was learning what liquidation by arrangement really meant, and why Mr. Kleinwort had said her husband would find bankruptcy not all pleasure.

While she was pondering how to get away from it all, how to escape from the sight of ills she was powerless to cure, and the sound of complaints to which she was weary of listening, Thursday came, and with a, to her, startling discovery. Mr. Meadows, who after the first morning or so, decided it was more comfortable to lie in bed late than to get up early, had on the Wednesday evening left on Mr. Lang's desk a memorandum concerning some account-books which he wished sent up to Salisbury House, said memorandum being pencilled on the back of part of the very note at the end of which Mr. Swanland had made that inquiry concerning Mr. Mortomley's letters previously recorded.

This precious morsel Lang carried to Esther, who carried it to her mistress, who in her turn demanded from Mr. Meadows an explanation as to how it happened his employer dared to intercept her letters.

Mr. Meadows was civil but firm. He told her Mr. Swanland had a right to everything about the place or that came into the place. He had a right to Mr. Mortomley's letters, and inclusively Mrs. Mortomley's. Mr. Meadows did not think it was usual for a lady's letters to be opened; but Mr. Swanland had law on his side. He had also law on his side when he refused to pay the corn-chandler for oats sent in for the horses the day before the petition was presented. Mr. Meadows had no doubt the man thought himself hardly done by in the matter, but he must be regarded as a creditor like every one else.

Further, Mr. Meadows admitted--for Mrs. Mortomley having at length commenced to speak concerning her grievances, thought it too good an opportunity to be lost about airing them all--that there might be an appearance of injustice in setting down small country traders who had paid for their colours in advance as creditors, but Mr. Swanland could only deal with the estate as he found it, and if he sent on the goods ordered, he might have to make up the different amounts out of his own pocket. Moreover, after various indignant questions had been asked and answered in a similar manner, Mr. Meadows professed himself unable to imagine why Mrs. Mortomley had paid, and was paying for the maintenance of himself and the other two gentlemen in waiting. He was quite certain Mr. Swanland would not be able to satisfy the creditors if he repaid her the amount so disbursed.

"I assure you, ma'am," finished Mr. Meadows, "I have often felt that I should like to mention this matter to you, and would have done so, but that I feared to give offence. I know you imagine I have taken too much upon me since I came here; but indeed I have endeavoured to keep unpleasantnesses from you. In cases like these, if a lady and gentleman will remain in the house, as you and Mr. Mortomley have done, it is impossible they should find things agreeable. As I have often said to your servants, you ought to have left the morning after Mr. Swanland came down, and then you would have been out of the way of all this."

Having delivered himself of which speech, spoken quietly and respectfully, Mr. Meadows waited for any observation which it might please Mrs. Mortomley to make.

She made none. She stood perfectly silent for about a minute.

Then she said--"You can go," and quite satisfied with his morning's work, Mr. Meadows bowed and--went.

When he had closed the door after him, Mrs. Mortomley rang the bell.

"Esther," she began as the girl appeared, "directly you are at leisure begin to pack."

"You are going to leave then, ma'am?" said Esther interrogatively.

"Yes, at once. I do not know where we shall go," she added, understanding the unspoken question. "I must think, but upon one thing I am determined, and that is not to stop another night in this house until Mr. Mortomley is master of it again. And if he never is again--"

"Oh! ma'am," exclaimed the girl in protest, and then she burst into tears.

"Don't cry," commanded her mistress imperiously. "We shall all of us have plenty of time for crying hereafter; but there are other things to be done now. Pack your own clothes as well as mine. I will see to your master's, and tell Susan to put up hers also."

"Do you mean, ma'am, that you mean to leave the house with no one in it but those men. What will become of all the things?"

"I do not care what becomes of them," was the answer. "Now go and do as I have told you."

On her way upstairs Esther encountered Mr. Meadows, who about that house seemed indeed ubiquitous.

"She is a good deal cut up, ain't she?" he said confidentially.

"It is no business of yours whether she is or not," Esther retorted indignantly.

"Whether she is or not," mimicked Mr. Meadows, "you need not fly out at a fellow like that. It is none so pleasant for me being planted in such a beastly dull hole as this. The governor might as well have sent me to take charge of a church and churchyard. That job would have been about as lively as this precious Homewood place."

"Pity you and your governor are not in a churchyard together," said Esther, with her nose very much turned up, and the corners of her mouth very much drawn down, and her cheeks very red and her chin held very high. "If there wasn't another trade in the world, I would rather starve than take to yours."

Having fired which shot--one she knew would hit the bull's eye--Esther went swiftly on her way, while Mr. Meadows proceeded, the weather being still wet, to solace himself by smoking a pipe in the conservatory; the consequence being that when Mrs. Werner, a couple of hours later came to call upon Mrs. Mortomley, she found the drawing-room reeking of tobacco.

"They will bring their beer in here next," observed Dolly when she entered the apartment, and then she flung open the windows and commenced telling her story, for which Mrs. Werner was utterly unprepared.

She told it with dry eyes, with two red spots burning on her cheeks, with parched lips and a hard unnatural voice.

She did not break down when Mrs. Werner took her to her heart and cried over her as a mother might have done.

"Oh! Dolly," she sobbed. "Dolly, my poor darling--oh! the happy days we have spent together," and then she checked herself, and holding Dolly a little way off looked at her through a mist of tears.

"Why did I know nothing of this?" she went on. "Dolly, why did you not write and tell me? I thought everything was going to be straight and comfortable. I had not an idea you were in such trouble. Yes, you are right, you must leave Homewood. You have remained here too long already--where do you think of going?"

"I have not been able to think," Mrs. Mortomley answered. "Advise me, Lenny. I will do whatever you say is best."

"Will you really, darling, follow my advice for once?"

"Yes--really and truly--unless you wish us to go to Dassell. I should not like, I could not bear to take Archie there now."

"No, dear, I do not wish you to go to Dassell. We have taken a house at Brighton for a couple of months, and I am going down with the children to-morrow. Come home with me this afternoon, and we can all travel together. That is if Mr. Mortomley is fit to travel. If not you and he must stay for a few days in town till he is able to follow. That is settled, is not it Dolly? I have to pay a visit at Walthamstow and will return for you in less than an hour. You will come, dear."

Dolly did not answer verbally. She only put her arms round Mrs. Werner's neck and drawing down her face, kissed it in utter silence.

There was no need for much speech between those two women. Dolly had known Leonora Trebasson ever since she herself was born. They had grown up together. They had been friends always, and Mortomley's wife felt no more hesitation about accepting a kindness from Mrs. Werner in her need than Mrs. Werner would have experienced had it been needful for her in the halcyon days of old to ask for shelter and welcome at Homewood.

And as the visit was to be paid at Brighton, Dolly did not find the contemplation of Mr. Werner a drawback to the brightness of the picture.

Perfectly well she understood that when his wife and family were out of town, he never favoured them with much of his society.

Mr. Werner's god was business, and he did not care to absent himself for any lengthened period from the shrine at which he worshipped.

"I must just mention this to Archie," Mrs. Mortomley said at last.

"I will mention it to him," proposed Mrs. Werner. "We shall never get him to come for his own sake, but he will do so for yours."

"Thank you, Lenny," answered Mrs. Mortomley. "It does not signify for whose sake the move is made, so that it is made."

"Upon second thoughts," observed Mrs. Werner, "I shall not go on to Walthamstow to-day. I will stay and carry you off with me. You can give me some luncheon and let the horses have a feed, and that will be a far pleasanter arrangement in every way."

Dolly laughed and summoned Esther. "Mrs. Werner will lunch here," she said; "and find Mr. Meadows and send him to me."

"What do you want with that creature," asked her friend, and Dolly answered, "You shall hear."

Mr. Meadows entered the room and bowed solemnly to its occupants.

"You wanted me, ma'am," he said, standing just inside the doorway and addressing Mrs. Mortomley.

"Yes. I wished to know if you think Mr. Swanland can answer any questions that my husband's creditors may put to him, if Mrs. Werner's horses have a feed of corn--because if not, I must ask her coachman to put up at the public-house."

Mr. Meadows turned white with rage at this cool question and the sneer which accompanied it.

"That woman is a fiend," he thought, "and will trouble some of our people yet, and serve them right too;" but he answered quietly enough,

"I am certain, madam, that Mr. Swanland would wish every consideration to be paid to you and your friends, and I can take it upon myself to tell this lady's coachman to put up his horses here."

"You are very good," remarked Dolly. She could not have said, "Thank you," had the salvation of Homewood depended on her uttering the words.

"Has it come to that?" asked Mrs. Werner as Mr. Meadows retired, and Mrs. Mortomley answered--

"It has come to that."

Mrs. Werner found it a more difficult task to induce Mortomley to accept her invitation than she had expected it would prove; but eventually her arguments and his love for Dolly carried the day, and he agreed to go to Brighton, and stay with his wife's friend for a week, or perhaps ten days.

"I must get well," he said, "before the meeting of creditors, and I feel I can never get well here. You are very, very kind, Mrs. Werner. Dolly and I will be but dull guests I fear; but you must put up with our--stupidity."

And he stretched out his thin wasted hand which she took in hers, and there came before them both a vision of the old house at Dassell, embowered in trees, with its green lawns and stately park, its low, spacious rooms, its quiet and its peace, where he first met Dolly in the summer days gone by.

Looking back over one's experience of life, it seems marvellous to recollect how few words one ever has heard spoken in times of danger or of trial; how the once fluent tongue is paralysed by the overflowing heart; how trouble stands sentinel beside the lips, and bars the utterance of sentences which in happier times ran glibly and smoothly on.

In the time of their agony, Mortomley had nothing to say, and his wife but little.

He made no lamentation nor did she. Ruin had come upon them, and how they should make their way through it no man could tell; but they were silent about their griefs. It was upon the most ordinary topics Mrs. Werner and Mortomley discoursed, whilst Dolly's utterances to Esther were of the most commonplace description. How a portion of their luggage was to be sent to Brighton, and the remainder, except the small amount Dolly proposed taking with her, left at Homewood until further orders.

How Esther was to be certain to look after her own comforts, and purchase trifling luxuries for herself, how Mrs. Mortomley depended on her writing every day, and trusting the posting of the letters only to Lang or Hankins--with fifty other such little charges--this was all she found to say while packing up to leave the dear home of all her happy married life in the possession of strangers. _And such strangers._

As she thought of it, Dolly flung open the window and looked out.

Oh! fair--fair home--smiling with your wealth of flowers under the dark autumnal sky, can it be that when those whose hearts have been entwined about you are gone, who have loved you with perhaps too earthly a love, are departed, you shall turn as sweet a face and give as tender a greeting to the future men and women destined to look upon your beauty as you did to those who are leaving you for ever?

No, thank God, there comes a desolation of place as there comes a wreck of person; nature seems to sympathize with humanity, and when the old owners have been torn from the soil, the soil as if in sympathy grows weeds instead of flowers--grows a tangle of discontent where sweet buds were wont to climb.

If in prophetic vision Dolly had been able at that moment to see Homewood as it appeared six months after, she would have felt comforted. As it was, she looked forth over the sweet modest home which had been hers and his with a terrible despair, but she bore the pain in silence.

"First or last," as Esther said afterwards, "she never heard a murmur from husband or wife."

Which was perhaps why she loved them both so well. With every vein in her heart that simple country girl, who was not very clever, but whose heart stood her amply instead of brains, loved the master and mistress upon whom misfortune had fallen so suddenly, and to her thinking so inexplicably.

Physically she was not brave, but she would have faced death to keep trouble from them. She was not possessed of much courage; no, not the courage which will go downstairs alone if it hears a noise in the night, but she would have encountered any danger had Dolly asked her to do so.

It was well Mrs. Mortomley possessed a larger amount of common sense than any one gave her credit for, otherwise she might have incited her maid to deeds the execution of which would have filled Mr. Forde's soul with rejoicing. Dolly sternly prohibited all looting from the premises. Not a trunk she packed or saw packed, but might have borne the scrutiny of Mr. Swanland himself, and yet the modest bonnet-box and portmanteau carried down into the hall failed to meet with the approbation of Mr. Swanland's man.

"I am very sorry, ma'am," he said, "but I cannot allow these things to leave the house without Mr. Swanland's permission."

Dolly turned and looked at him. I think if a look could have struck him dead where he stood, he had never spoken more.

With all the authority of Salisbury House behind him, Meadows quailed at sight of her face, wondering what should follow.

But nothing followed except this:

"Take those things upstairs at once," she said, turning to Esther and Lang, "put them in my dressing-room with the other boxes, and bring me the key of the door."

"I do not know, madam," remarked Mr. Meadows, emboldened by what he considered her previous submission, "whether you are aware that if you lock the door we can break it open."

Then Dolly found tongue.

"Do it," she said; "only break open _any_ door I choose to lock, and I will make things unpleasant for you and your master too. I have endured at your hands and his what I believe no woman ever endured before, but if you presume another inch I will have justice if I carry our case into every court in England."

She did not know, poor soul, her cause had been settled in a court whence there is no appeal, and for that very reason speaking fearlessly her words carried weight.

Mr. Meadows shrank out of the hall as if she had struck him a blow, and Dolly leaning against the lintel of the porch and looking at Mrs. Werner's carriage and horses, which were framed to her by a wreath of clematis and roses, felt for the moment as if she had won a victory.

And by her retreat she had; but it is only after the battle any one engaged can tell when the tide of war began to turn.

It turned for the Mortomleys then. It turned when Mrs. Mortomley lifted up her voice and defied Mr. Swanland's bailiff. In that moment she ensured ultimate success for her husband--at a price.

The years are before him still--the years of his life full of promise, full of hope--that past of bankruptcy, recent though it may be, is, nevertheless, an old story, and the name of Mortomley is a power once more.

There is nothing the man is capable of he need despair of achieving, nothing this world can give him he need fail to grasp, and yet--and yet--I think, I know, that rather than go forth and gather the pleasant fruits ripening for him in distant vineyards, rather than pay the price success exacted ultimately for her wares, the man would have laid him down upon the bed a man in possession held in trust for his employer, and died a pauper, entitled only to a pauper's grave.

But no man can foresee. Happily, or else how many would live miserable.

Dolly could not foresee; she could not foretell the events of even four-and-twenty hours.

But she was nice to others in that her time of trial, and the fact served her in good stead in the evil hours to come.

"I think," she had said to Esther, "that Lang and Hankins would like to see Mr. Mortomley before we go. Lang had better give my husband his arm downstairs, and Hankins can help him into the carriage."

It was nice of Dolly, it was never forgotten about her for ever. It never will be till the children's children are greyheaded. By the carriage door stood the pair, hats in hand, tears running down their cheeks, speaking across Mrs. Werner to their master; their master whom they had loved and robbed, cheated and served honestly, believed in and grumbled concerning through years too long to count. And away in the background were a group of men, the faces of whom appalled Mr. Meadows, men who would have pumped on him had Mrs. Mortomley given the signal, who loved their master, though it might be they had not acted always honestly or straightforwardly by him, and who would at that moment have done any wickedness in his service, had he only pleased to show them the way.

With a mighty effort Dolly choked back her tears.

She heard the men say,

"And we wish you back, sir, better."

To which Mortomley replied,

"I hope I shall be better, but you will see me here no more."

"No more." Lang opened the door of the carriage for Dolly, who shook hands with him and his colleague ere the vehicle drove off.

"No more." Mortomley had said in those two words farewell to Homewood.

No more for ever did a Mortomley pace the familiar walks, or cross the remembered rooms. No more--no more--with the wail of that dirge in their ears the men went back to their labour exceedingly sad in spirit.

Mr. Meadows, however, was not sad. He sought out Esther crying in a convenient corner.

"Well, I am glad they are gone," he exclaimed, "and shall I tell you why?"

"You can if you like," Esther agreed, wiping her eyes with her muslin apron, which she had donned in honour of Mrs. Werner, "though for my