Part 3

'I don't believe--I cannot believe--that you, a man of reason--you, a man with legal training--can act such a quixotish part?' exclaimed Mrs. Sidebottom, becoming for the moment alarmed. Then she calmed down again. 'I see through you, Philip,' she said. 'Having failed to persuade me, you seek to terrify me. It will not do. I do not believe so badly of humanity as to think that you will act so wickedly. Come, think no more of this. I hope you like sirloin?'

'I refuse to sit down with you,' said Philip angrily.

'Then go!' exclaimed his aunt, with an explosion of spleen. 'Go as an impracticable lout to your housekeeper's room, to sup on a bowl of gruel and cottage-pie!'

*CHAPTER XX.*

*A FACE IN THE DARK.*

Mrs. Sidebottom was not at ease in her mind after the suggestion thrown out by Philip that the business might suffer if so much capital were suddenly withdrawn from it. She recalled how it had been when her brother Nicholas had insisted on taking out of it his share--how angry Jeremiah had been; how, for awhile, the stability of the firm had been shaken, and how crippled it had been for some years. She remembered how that her share of the profits had been reduced, and she had no desire to meet with a recurrence of this shrinkage. When Nicholas made that great call on the resources of the firm, there was Jeremiah in the office, thoroughly experienced, and he was able, through his ability and knowledge, to pull through; but it was another matter now with Philip, a raw hand, in authority.

Then, again, Mrs. Sidebottom knew her brother Jeremiah had contemplated a large outlay in new and improved machinery. To keep up with the times, abreast with other competitors, it was necessary that this costly alteration should be made. But could it be done if four or five thousand pounds were sacrificed to a caprice?

'Philip is such a fool!' she muttered. 'He inherits some of his father's obstinacy, as well as his carelessness about money. Nicholas no sooner got money in his hands than he played ducks and drakes with it; and Philip is bent on doing the same. Four thousand pounds to that minx, Salome! There goes the church bell. When will Lamb be in?'

Mrs. Sidebottom lit a bedroom candle, and went upstairs to dress for dinner. Whilst ascending, she was immersed in thought, and suddenly an idea occurred to her which made her quicken her steps. Instead of dressing for dinner, she put on her bonnet. The church bell had diverted her thoughts into a new channel. When dressed to go out, she rang for the parlourmaid. 'Susan,' she said, 'I had forgotten. This is a holy day. I believe, I am morally certain, it is a saint's day, and appointed by the Church to make us holy. We must deny ourselves. So put off dinner half an hour. I am going to church--to set an example.'

Mrs. Sidebottom was not an assiduous church-goer. She attended on Sundays to do the civil to the parson, but was rarely or never seen within the sacred walls on week days. Consequently her announcement to Susan, that she was about to assist at divine worship that evening, and that dinner was to be postponed accordingly, surprised the domestic and surprised and angered the cook, who did not object to unpunctuality in herself, but resented it in her master and mistress.

'If Salome is not at church,' said Mrs. Sidebottom to herself, 'I shall be taken with faintness; fan myself with my pocket-handkerchief, to let the congregation see I am poorly, and will come away at the _Nunc Dimittis_.'

But Mrs. Sidebottom tarried in church through the _Nunc Dimittis_, professed her adhesion to the Creed, and declared her transgressions. As she listened to the lessons, her mind reverted to the quenilles. 'They will be done to chips!' she sighed, and then forgetting herself, intoned, 'A--men.' At the prayers she thought of the shoulder of mutton, and in the hymn hovered in soul over the marmalade-pudding. Probably, if the hearts of other worshippers that evening had been revealed, they would not have been discovered more wrapped in devotion than that of Mrs. Sidebottom. In the life of St. Modwenna, Abbess of Stoke-on-Trent, we read that this holy woman had the faculty of seeing the prayers of her nuns dancing like midges under the choir roof; they could not pierce the vault, being deficient in the boring organ, which is true devotion. It is perhaps fortunate we have not the same gift. On that evening a row of tittering girls sought to attract the attention and engross the admiration of the choristers. Five young ladies, hating each other as rivals, sought by their attendance to catch the curate, who was unmarried. Old Bankes was there, because he hoped to sell two bags of potatoes to the parson. Mary Saunders was there, because some unpleasant stories had circulated concerning her character, and she hoped to smother them by appearing at church on week days. Mr. Gruff was there, to find fault with the parson's conduct of the service, and Mrs. Tomkins attended to see who were present.

When the service was concluded, Mrs. Sidebottom came out of church beside Salome, who had been seated in front of her. She at once addressed her.

'My dear Miss Cusworth, how soothing it is to have week-day prayer. I have had so much of the world forced on me of late, that I felt I must for the good of my soul to fly to the sanctuary.'

'There is always service on Thursday evening.'

'My goodness!--is this not a saint's day? I thought it was, and I have been so devout, too. You don't mean to tell me there is no special call for it?--and these saints--they are perfectly fascinating creatures.'

Mrs. Sidebottom could talk what she called 'goody' when there was need for it; she generally talked it when chance led her into a poor man's cottage. As children are given lollipops by their elders, so the poor, she thought, must be given 'goody talk' by their superiors. She put on her various suits of talk as occasion offered. She had her scandal suit and her pious suit, and her domestic-worry suit and her political suit--just like those picture-books children have, whose one face does for any number of transformation garments, and the same head figures now as a bronze, then as Nell Gwynne, as a Quakeress, or as a tight-rope dancer.

The author at one time knew a bedridden man who had two suits of conversation--the one profane, abusive, brutal, the other pious, sanctified, and seasoned with salt. When his cottage-door was open, the passer heard some such exclamations as these as he approached, addressed to the wife: 'Now then, you ---- toad!' Then a reference to her eyes best left unquoted. 'If I could only get at you, I'd skin you!' Then a change. 'Fetch me my Boible; O my soul, be joyful, raise the sacred hanthem! Bah! I thought 'twas the parson's step, and he'd give me a shilling! Now then, you gallopading kangaroo!' This, of course, was an extreme case, and Mrs. Sidebottom was far too well-bred to go to extremities.

'I was so glad you came in when you did,' said Mrs. Sidebottom. 'I was really feeling somewhat faint. I feared I would have been forced to leave at the _Nunc Dimittis_, and I was just fanning myself with my handkerchief, on which was a drop of eau de Cologne, when you came in, and a whiff of cool air from the door revived me, so I was able to remain. I am so thankful! The hymn afforded me such elevating thoughts! I felt as if I had wings of angels, which I could spread, and upward fly!'

'I was late--I could not get away earlier.'

'And I am grateful to be able to walk back with you. You will allow me to take your arm. I am still shaken with my temporary faintness. I have, I fear, been overdone. I have had so much to try me of late. But when the bell rang, I was drawn towards the sacred building. Upon my word, I thought it was a saint's day, and it was a duty as well as a pleasure to be there. I am so glad I went; and now I am able to walk back with you, and after public worship--though the congregation was rather thin--the mind is turned to devotion, and the thoughts are framed, are, in fact, just what they ought to be, you know. I have wanted for some time to speak to you, and tell you how grieved I was that I was forced to give your mother notice to leave. I had no thought of being inconsiderate and unkind.'

'I am aware of that,' answered Salome quietly. 'Mr. Philip Pennycomequick has already told mamma that the notice was a mere formality. The explanation was a relief to us, as mamma was somewhat hurt. She had tried to do her best for dear Mr. Pennycomequick.'

'You will have to induce her to forgive me. What is religion for, and churches built, and organs, and hot-water apparatus, and all that sort of thing, but to cultivate in us the forgiving spirit. I am, myself, the most placable person in the world, and after singing such a hymn as that in which I have just joined, I could forgive Susan if she dropped the silver spoons on the floor and dinted them.'

No one would have been more astonished than Mrs. Sidebottom if told that she was artificial, that she affected interests, sympathies, to which she was strange. At the time that she talked she felt what she said, but the feeling followed the expression, did not originate it.

'My dear Miss Cusworth,' she went on, 'I am not one to bear a grudge. I never could. When my poor Sidebottom was alive, if there had been any unpleasantness between us during the day--and all married people have their tiffs--when you are married you will have tiffs. As I was saying, if there had been any unpleasantness between us, I have shaken him at night to wake him up, that he might receive my pardon for an incivility said or done.'

'We had made our preparations to leave Mergatroyd,' said Salome, 'but my mother has been ill again, and my poor sister has heard of the death of her husband, who fell in a skirmish with the Germans. So when Mr. Philip Pennycomequick was so kind as to ask my mother to remain on in the house, in the same capacity as heretofore, we were too thankful----'

'What! You stay?'

'Yes, my mother is not in a condition to move just now, and my sister is broken down with grief. But, of course, this is only a temporary arrangement.'

Mrs. Sidebottom said nothing for a moment. Presently, however, she observed: 'No doubt this is best, and I am very, very pleased to hear it. Philip did not mention it--I mean Mr. Pennycomequick. I must not any longer call him Philip, as he is now head of the family, unless the captain be regarded also as a head, then the family will be like the Austrian eagle--one body with two heads. But, my dear Miss Cusworth, tell me, did Mr. Pennycomequick say some foolish nonsense about three or four thousand pounds?'

'He mentioned something of the sort to mamma.'

'It is all fiddlesticks,' said Mrs. Sidebottom confidentially. 'He is the most inconsiderate and generous fellow in the world. His father was so before him. But it won't do. The mill will suffer, the business fall to the ground; we shall all go into the bankruptcy court. I respect the memory of my darling brother too highly to wish that the firm he managed should collapse like a house of cards. Philip is generous and all that sort of thing, and he will try to press money on you. You must not consent to receive it, for two reasons--first, because it would smash the whole concern, and next, because people would talk in a way you would not like about you. Do you understand--you could not receive a large allowance from a young unmarried man. However,' continued Mrs. Sidebottom, 'do not suppose I wish you to waive all expectations of getting anything. I ask you only to trust me. Lean on me and wait; I have your interests at heart as much as my own. I dare say you have heard my brother say he would be driven to adopt improved machinery?'

'Yes, I heard him say that.'

'Very well. My nephew, Philip, must reconstruct the mechanism of the factory at the cost of several thousands. Now, my dear brother did not leave enough money to be used both on this and on satisfying your just claims. If you will wait, say till your marriage--then you may be sure I and my son and nephew will strain every nerve to make you comfortable.'

'Mrs. Sidebottom,' said Salome calmly, 'you are very kind. When Mr. Philip Pennycomequick made the request to my mother that she should stay in the house, she consented, but only temporarily, till he is settled, and has had time to look about him for someone who will be a more active housekeeper than my mother can be; and at the same time it will be a convenience to us, giving us breathing-time in which to recover from the shock of Mr. Albert Baynes' death, and consider in what manner my sister Janet's future will be tied up with our own. As for that other very generous offer--we had no time to give it a thought, as it came to us simultaneously with the crushing news from France.' Salome halted. 'You have passed your door, Mrs. Sidebottom.'

'Bless me! So I have--I was so interested in what you were saying, and so charmed with your noble sentiments. Can I persuade you to enter and dine with us--only shoulder of mutton, quenilles, and marmalade-pudding.'

Salome declined: she must return immediately to her mother.

'Why!' exclaimed Mrs. Sidebottom, 'bless my soul, here is my nephew come to meet us--I cannot, however, take the compliment as paid to me, for we have parted in dudgeon.'

Philip had left his aunt's house in boiling indignation. She had led him into a trap, from which escape was difficult. He felt himself in honour bound by the proposal he had made to Miss Cusworth; he could not withdraw from it, and yet at that time to have to find the entire sum mentioned would severely embarrass him. He could not tell Salome that he had been precipitate in making the offer, and crave her indulgence to allow him to put off the fulfilment to a convenient season. The only way out of the difficulty that commended itself to him was to offer Salome an annual sum, charged on the profit of the mill, till such time as it suited her to withdraw her four thousand pounds and invest it elsewhere; in a word, to take her into partnership.

Having come to this decision, he resolved on preparing it for her acceptance at once, and he descended to the rooms occupied by the Cusworths, there to learn that she had gone to church. He at once took his hat and walked to meet her.

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 Naaeman to be healed of his leprosy?'

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