Part 8

'It does matter, Salome. Two hundred and fifty pounds cannot have made themselves wings and flown away without leaving their address. Bo Peep's sheep left their tails behind them. This money ought to be accounted for. One thing I do know--the name of the person to whom it passed.'

'Who was that?'

'One Beaple Yeo. Have you any knowledge of the man? Who is he? What had your mother to do with him?'

'I never heard his name before.'

'The money was drawn and paid to Beaple Yeo directly after the death of Uncle Jeremiah. I made inquiries at the bank, and ascertained this. Who Beaple Yeo is your mother will not say, nor why she paid this large sum of money to him. I would not complain of this reticence unless she had called me in to examine her affairs.'

'No, Philip, it was I who asked you to be so kind as to do for her the same as Uncle Jeremiah.'

'She is perfectly welcome to do what she likes with her money: but if she complains of a loss, and then seeks an investigation into her loss, and all the time throws impediments in the way of inquiry--I say that her conduct is not right. It is like a client calling in a solicitor and then refusing to state his case.'

'I was to blame,' said Salome meekly. 'Mamma has her little store--the savings she has put by--and a small sum left by my father, and I ought not to have interfered. She did not ask me to do so, and it was meddlesome of me to intervene unsolicited; but I did so with the best intentions. She had told me that she suffered from a loss which crippled her, and I assumed that her money matters had become confused, because no longer supervised. I ought to have asked her permission before speaking to you.'

'When I made the offer, she might have refused. I would not have been offended. What I do object to is the blowing of hot and cold with one breath.'

'I dare say she thought it very kind of you to propose to take the management; and there may have been a misunderstanding. She wished you to manage for the future and not inquire into the past.'

'Then she should have said so. She complained of a loss, and became reticent and evasive when pressed as to the particulars of this alleged loss.'

'I think the matter may be dropped,' said Salome.

'By all means--only, understand--I am dissatisfied.'

'Hush!' exclaimed Salome. 'I hear baby crying.'

Then she rose to leave the room.

'Now look here,' said Philip, 'would it be fair to the doctor whom you call in about baby to withhold from him the particulars of the ailments you expect him to cure.'

'Never mind that now,' said Salome, and she kissed her husband to silence him. 'Baby is awake and is crying for me.'

This brief conversation will serve to let the reader see an unlovable feature in Philip's character. He possessed a peculiarity not common in men, that of harbouring a grievance and recurring to it. Men usually dismiss a matter that has annoyed them, and are unwilling to revert to it. It is otherwise with women, due to the sedentary life they lead at their needlework. Whilst their fingers are engaged with thread or knitting-pins, their minds turn over and over again little vexations, and roll them like snowballs into great grievances. Probably the solitary life Philip had led had tended to develop the same feminine faculty of harbouring and enlarging his grievances.

The front-door bell tingled. Salome did not leave the room to go after baby till she heard who had come. The door was thrown open upon them, and Mrs. Sidebottom burst in.

This good lady had thought proper to swallow her indignation at the marriage of Philip, because it was against her interest to be on bad terms with her nephew; and after the first ebullition of bad temper she changed her behaviour towards Philip and Salome, and became gracious. They accepted her overtures with civility but without cordiality, and a decent appearance of friendship was maintained. She pressed Salome to visit her at York, with full knowledge that the invitation would be declined. Occasionally she came from York to see how the mill was working and what business was being transacted.

As she burst in on Philip and his wife, both noticed that she was greatly disturbed; her usual assurance was gone. She was distressed and downcast. Almost without a word of recognition cast to Salome, she pushed past her at the door, entered the room, ran to her nephew and exclaimed, 'Oh, Philip! You alone can help me. Have you heard? You do not know what has happened? I am sure you do not, or you would have come to York to my rescue.'

'What is the matter? Take a chair, Aunt Louisa.'

'What is the matter! Oh, my dear! I cannot sit, I am in such a nervous condition. It is positively awful. And poor Lamb a director. I am afraid it will damage his prospects.'

'But what has happened?'

'Oh--everything. Nothing so awful since the Fire of London and the Earthquake of Lisbon. And Smithies recommended it.'

'What--Smithies, whom you sent here to investigate the books?' asked Philip dryly.

'Oh, my dear! It is always best to do business in a business way. Of course, I don't distrust you, but I am sure it gratifies you that I should send my agent to run through the books.'

'Well, and what has your agent, Smithies, done now?'

'Oh, Smithies has done nothing himself. Smithies is as much concerned as myself. But he is to blame for advising me to sell my bonds in Indian railways and put the money into iodine or decimals, or something of that sort, and persuading Lamb to become a director of the company.'

'What company?'

'Oh! don't you know? The Iodinopolis Limited Liability Company. It promised to be a most successful speculation. It had an earl at the head. The company proposed to open quarries for stone, others for lime, erect houses, hotels, and churches, high and low, make a great harbour, and Beaple Yeo----'

'Who?'

'Beaple Yeo, the chief promoter and secretary, and treasurer _pro tem_. The speculation was certain to bring in twenty-five per cent., and he gave his personal security for seventeen.'

'And have you much capital in this concern?'

'Well--yes. The decimals grow thicker on this part of the coast than anywhere else in the world, and the decimals have an extraordinary healing effect in disease. They are cast up on the shore, and exhale a peculiar odour which is very stimulating. I have smelt the decimals myself--no, what am I saying, it is iodine, not decimals, but on my soul, I don't know exactly what the decimals are, but this I can tell you, they have run away with some good money of mine.'

'I do not understand yet.'

'How dense you are, Philip! For the sake of the iodine, we were going to build a city at or near Bridlington, to which all the sick people in Europe who could afford it, would troop. There was a crescent to be called after Lamb.'

'Well, has the land been bought on which to build and open the quarries?'

'No; that is the misfortune. Mr. Yeo has been unable to induce the landowners to sell, and so he has absconded with the money subscribed.'

'And is there no property on which to fall back?'

'Not an acre. What is to be done?'

Philip smiled. Now he understood what Mrs. Cusworth had done with her two hundred and fifty pounds. She also had been induced to invest in iodine or decimals.

'What is to be done?' repeated Philip. 'Bear your loss.'

*CHAPTER XXVIII.*

*THE SPARE ROOM.*

Philip insisted on Mrs. Sidebottom seating herself, and giving him as connected and plain an account of the loss she had met with, as it was in her power to give. But to give a connected and plain account of anything affecting the interests deeply is not more easy for some persons than it is for a tipsy man to walk straight. They gesticulate in their narration, lurch and turn about in a whimsical manner. But Philip had been in a solicitor's office, and knew how to deal with narrators of their troubles. Whenever Mrs. Sidebottom swayed from the direct path, he pulled her back into it; when she attempted to turn round, or retrace her steps, he took her by the shoulders--metaphorically, of course--and set her face in the direction he intended her to go. Mr. Smithies was a man in whom Mrs. Sidebottom professed confidence, and whom she employed professionally to watch and worry her nephew; to examine the accounts of the business, so as to ensure her getting from it her share to the last farthing.

Introduced by Mr. Smithies, Mr. Beaple Yeo had found access to her house, and had gained her ear. He was a plausible man, with that self-confidence which imposes, and with whiskers elaborately rolled--themselves tokens and guarantees of respectability. He pretended to be highly connected, and to have intimate relations with the nobility. When he propounded his scheme, and showed how money was to be made, when, moreover, he assured her that by taking part in the speculations of Iodinopolis she would be associated with the best of the aristocracy, then she entered eagerly, voraciously, into the scheme. She not only took up as many shares as she was able, but also insisted on the captain becoming a director.

'I have,' Mr. Beaple Yeo had told her, 'a score of special correspondents retained, ready, when I give the signal, to write up Iodinopolis in all the leading papers in town and throughout the north of England. I have arranged for illustrations in the pictorial periodicals, and for highly-coloured and artistic representations to be hung in the railway waiting-rooms. Success must crown our undertaking.'

When Philip heard the whole story, he was surprised that so promising a swindle should have collapsed so suddenly. He expressed this opinion to his aunt.

'Well,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'you see the managers could get hold of no land. If they could have done that, everything would have gone well. They intended to build a great harbour, and import their own timber, to open their own quarries for building-stone, and burn their own lime, and have their own tile-yards, so that they would have cut off all the profits of timber-merchants, quarry-owners, lime-burners, tile-makers, and gathered them into the pocket of the company.'

'And they have secured no land?'

'Not an acre. Mr. Beaple Yeo did his best, but when he found he could get no land, then he ran away with the money that had been paid up for shares.'

'And what steps have been taken to arrest him?

'I don't know. I have left that with Smithies.'

'And how many persons have been defrauded?'

'I don't know. Perhaps Smithies does.'

'This is what I will do for you,' said Philip. 'Your loss is a serious one, and no time must be let slip without an attempt to stop the rascal with his loot. I will go at once to York, see Smithies, who, I suspect, has had his finger in the pie, and taken some of the plums to himself, and then on to Bridlington and see what can be done there. The police must be put on the alert.'

'In the meanwhile, if you and Salome have no objection, I will remain here,' said Mrs. Sidebottom. 'I am terribly cut up, am rendered ill. My heart, you know, is subject to palpitations. When you return, I shall see you directly, and learn the result.'

'Very well,' said Philip, 'stay here. The spare room is vacant, and at your service.'

Then he went off, packed his portmanteau, and left the house. He was vexed with his aunt for her folly, but he could not deny her his assistance.

Mrs. Sidebottom shook her head when her nephew mentioned the spare bedroom, but said nothing about it till he had left the house. Then she expressed her views to Salome.

'No, thank you,' she said; 'no, indeed--indeed not. I could not be induced to sleep in that chamber. No; not a hot bottle and a fire combined could drive the chill out of it. Remember what associations I have connected with it. It was in that apartment that poor Jeremiah was laid after he had been recovered from the bottom of the canal. I could not sleep there. I could not sleep there, no, not if it were to insure me the recovery of all I have sunk on Iodinopolis and its decimals. I am a woman of finely-strung nature, with a perhaps perfervid imagination. Get me ready Philip's old room; I was in that once before, and it is very cosy--inside the study. No one occupies it now?'

'No; no one.'

'I shall be comfortable there. But--as for that other bed--remembering what I do----' she shivered.

Salome admitted that her objection was justifiable, if not reasonable, and gave orders that the room should be prepared according to the wishes of Mrs. Sidebottom.

'A preciously dull time I shall have here,' said this lady, when alone in the room. 'I know no one in Mergatroyd, and I shall find no entertainment in the society of that old faded doll, Mrs. Cusworth, or in that of Salome, who, naturally, is wrapped up in her baby, and capable of talking of nothing else. I wonder whether there are any novels in the house?'

She went in search of Salome, and asked for some light reading.

'Oh, we have heaps of novels,' answered Salome. 'Janet has left them; she was always a novel-reader. I will bring you a basketful. But what do you say to a stroll? I must go out for an hour; the doctor has insisted on my taking a constitutional every day.'

'No, thank you,' said Mrs. Sidebottom. 'The wind is blowing, and your roads are stoned with glass clinkers ground into a horrible dust of glass needles that stab the eyes. I remember it. Besides, I am tired with my journey from York. I will sit in the arm-chair and read a novel, and perhaps doze.'

A fire was burning in the bedroom, another in the study. The former did not burn freely at first; puffs of wind occasionally sent whiffs of smoke out of the grate into the study. Mrs. Sidebottom moved from one room to the other, grumbling. One room was cold and the other smoky. Finally she elected to sit in the study. By opening the door on to the landing slightly, a draught was established which prevented the smoke from entering the room.

She threw herself into a rocking-chair, such as is found in every Yorkshire house, from that of the manufacturer to that of the mechanic.

'Bah!' groaned Mrs. Sidebottom, 'most of these books are about people that cannot interest me; low-class creatures such as one encounters daily in the street, and stands aside from. I don't want them in the boudoir. Oh! here is one to my taste--a military novel, by a lady, about officers, parades, and accoutrements.'

So she read languidly, shut her eyes, woke, read a little more, and shut her eyes again.

'I hear the front-door bell,' she said. 'No one to see me, so I need not say, "Not at home."'

Presently she heard voices in the room beneath her--the room given up to Mrs. Cusworth--one voice, distinctly that of a man.

The circumstance did not interest her, and she read on. She began to take some pleasure in the story. She had come on an account of a mess, and the colonel, some captains and lieutenants were introduced. The messroom conversation was given in full, according to what a woman novelist supposes it to be. Infinitely comical to the male reader are such revelations. The female novelist has a system on which she constructs her dialogue. She takes the talk of young girls in their coteries, and proceeds to transpose their thin, insipid twaddle into what she believes to be virile, pungent English, which is much like attempting to convert milk and water into rum punch. To effect this, to the stock are added a few oaths, a pinch of profanity, a spice of indecency, and then woman is grated over the whole, till it smacks of nothing else.

Out of kindness to fair authoresses, we will give them the staple topics that in real life go to make up after-dinner talk, whether in the messroom, or at the bencher's table, or round the squire's mahogany. And they shall be given in the order in which they stand in the male mind:

1. Horses. 2. Dogs. 3. Game. 4. Guns. 5. Cricket. 6. Politics. 7. 'Shop.'

Where in all this is Woman? Echo answers Where? Conceivably, when every other topic fails, she may be introduced, just in the same way as when all game is done, even rabbits, a trap and clay pigeons are brought out to be knocked over; so, possibly, a fine girl may be introduced into the conversation, sprung out of a trap--but only as a last resource, as a clay pigeon.

The house-door opened once more, this time without the bell being sounded--opened by a latch-key--and immediately Mrs. Sidebottom heard Salome's step in the hall. Salome did not go directly upstairs to remove her bonnet and kiss baby, but entered her mother's room.

Thereat a silence fell on the voices below--a silence that lasted a full minute, and then was broken by the plaintive pipe of the widow lady. She must have a long story to tell, thought Mrs. Sidebottom, who now put down her book, because she had arrived at three pages of description of a bungalow on the spurs of the Himalayas. Then she heard a cry from below, a cry as of pain or terror; and again the male voice was audible, mingled with that of the widow, raised as in expostulation, protest, or entreaty. At times the voices were loud, and then suddenly drowned.

Mrs. Sidebottom laid the book open on the table, turned down to keep her place.

'The doctor, I suppose,' she thought; 'and he has pronounced unfavourably of baby. Can't they accept his verdict and let him go? They cannot do good by talk. I never saw anything so disagreeable as mothers, except grandmothers. What a fuss they are making below about that baby!'

Presently she took up the book again and tried to read, but found herself listening to the voices below, and only rarely could she catch the tones of Salome. All the talking was done by her mother and the man--the doctor.

Then Mrs. Sidebottom heard the door of the widow's apartment open, and immediately after a tread on the stairs. Salome was no doubt ascending to the nursery, but not hurriedly--indeed, the tread was unlike that of Salome. Mrs. Sidebottom put the novel down once more at the description of a serpent-charmer, and went outside her door, moved by inquisitiveness.

'Is that the doctor below?' she asked, as she saw that Salome was mounting the stairs. 'What opinion does he give of little Phil?'

Then she noticed that a great change had come over her hostess. Salome was ascending painfully, with a hand on the banisters, drawing one foot up after the other as though she were suffering from partial paralysis. Her face was white as chalk, and her eyes dazed as those of a dreamer suddenly roused from sleep.

'What is it?' asked Mrs. Sidebottom again. 'Is baby worse?'

Salome turned her face to her, but did not answer. All life seemed to have fled from her, and she did not apparently hear the questions put to her. But she halted on the landing, her hand still on the banisters that rattled under the pressure, showing how she was trembling.

'You positively must tell me,' said Mrs. Sidebottom. 'What has the doctor said?'

But Salome, gathering up her energy, made a rush past her, ran up two or three steps, then relaxed her pace, and continued to mount, ascending the last portion of the stair as one climbing the final stretch of an Alpine peak, fagged, faint, doubtful whether his strength will hold out till he reach the apex.

Mrs. Sidebottom was offended.

'This is rude,' she muttered. 'But what is to be expected of a bagman's daughter?' She tossed her head and retreated to the study.

Reseating herself, she resumed her novel, but found no further interest in it.

'Why,' she exclaimed suddenly, 'the doctor has not been upstairs; he has not seen baby. This is quaint.'

Mrs. Cusworth did not appear at dinner. Salome told Mrs. Sidebottom that her mother was very, very ill, and prayed that she might be excused.

'Oh!' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'I suppose the doctor called to see your mother, and not the baby. You are not chiefly anxious about the latter?'

'Baby is unwell, but mamma is seriously ill,' answered Salome, looking down at her plate.

'Her illness does not seem to have affected her conversational powers,' said Mrs. Sidebottom. 'I heard her talking a great deal to the doctor; but perhaps that is one of the signs of fever--is she delirious?'

Salome made no reply. She maintained her place at table, deadly pale; and though, during dinner, she endeavoured to talk, it was clear that her mind was otherwise engaged.

Mrs. Sidebottom was thankful when dinner was over. 'Mrs. Philip will never make a hostess,' she said to herself. 'She is heavy and dull. You can't make lace out of stocking yarn.'

When Salome rose, Mrs. Sidebottom said, 'Do not let me detain you from your mother; and, by the way, I don't know if you have family prayers, like them; they are good for the servants, and are a token of respectability--but you will excuse me if I do not attend. I am awfully interested in my novel, and tired after my journey--I shall go to bed.'

Mrs. Sidebottom did not, however, go to bed; she remained by the fire in the study, trying to read, and speculating on Philip's chances of recovering part if not all of her lost money--chances which she admitted to herself were remote.

'There,' said she, 'the servants and the whole household are retreating to their roosts. They keep early hours here. I suppose Salome sleeps below with her mother. Goodness preserve me from anything happening to either the old woman or the baby whilst I am in the house. These sort of things upset the servants, and they send up at breakfast the eggs hardboiled, the toast burnt, and the tea made with water that has not been on the boil.'

Mrs. Sidebottom heaved a sigh.

'This is a stupid book after all,' she said, and laid down the novel. 'I shall go to bed. Bother Mr. Beaple Yeo.'

Beaple Yeo stood between Mrs. Sidebottom just now and every enjoyment. As she read her book Beaple Yeo forced himself into the story. At meals he spoiled the flavour of her food with iodine, and she knew but too surely that he would strew her bed with decimals and banish sleep.

Mrs. Sidebottom drew up the blind of her bedroom window and looked forth on the garden and the vale of the Keld, bathed in moonlight, a scene of peace and beauty. Mrs. Sidebottom was not a woman susceptible to the charms of nature. She was one of those persons to whom nothing is of interest, nothing has charm, virtue, or value, unless it affects themselves beneficially. She had not formulated to herself such a view of the universe, but practically it was this--the sun rises and sets for Mrs. Sidebottom; the moon pursues her silver path about Mrs. Sidebottom; for her all things were made, and all such things as do not revolve about, enrich, enliven, adorn, and nourish Mrs. Sidebottom are of no account whatever.

Now, as Mrs. Sidebottom looked forth she saw a dark figure in the garden; saw it ascend the steps from the lower garden, cross the lawn, and disappear as it passed in the direction of the house out of the range of her vision. The figure was that of a man in a hat and surtout, carrying a walking-stick.

'Well, now,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, 'this is comical. That man must have obtained admission through the locked garden door, like that other mysterious visitant, and he is coming here after everyone is gone to bed. Of course he will enter by the glass door. I suppose he is the doctor, and they let him come this way to visit the venerable fossil without disturbing the maids. I do hope nothing will happen to her. I should not, of course, wear mourning for her, but for baby I should have to make some acknowledgment, I suppose. Bother it.'