The Pennycomequicks (Volume 2 of 3)

'Oh!' said that lady, 'I was only premature, Philip, in saying that your arm was taken last night.'

'Only premature,' replied Philip; 'I have persuaded Miss Cusworth out of that opinion which you forced on her when you took her arm.'

'She is, perhaps, easily persuaded,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, with a toss of her head.

'I have induced her to agree to enter into partnership.'

'How? I do not understand. Is the firm to be in future Pennycomequick and Co. – the Co. to stand for Cusworth?'

'You ask how,' said Philip. 'I reply, as my wife.'

He allowed his aunt a minute to digest the information, and then added:

'I am unable to ask you to stay longer at present, as I must inform Mrs. Cusworth of the engagement.'

'Let me tender my congratulations,' said Mrs. Sidebottom; 'and let me recommend a new lock on the garden-door, lest And Co. should bring in through it a train of rapacious out-at-elbow relatives, who would hardly be satisfied with a great-coat and a hat.'

Philip was too incensed to answer. He allowed his aunt to open the front-door unassisted.

When she was gone, he said to Salome:

'I am not in a humour to see your mother now. Besides, it is advisable, for her sake, that the news should be told her through you. I am so angry with that insolent – I mean with Mrs. Sidebottom, that I might frighten your mother. I will come later.'

He left Salome and mounted to his study, where he paced up and down, endeavouring to recover his composure, doubly shaken by his precipitation in offering marriage without premeditation, and by his aunt's sneer. He had been surprised into taking the most important step in life, without having given a thought to it before. He was astonished at himself, that he, schooled as he had been, should have acted without consideration on an impulse. He had been carried away, not by the passion of love, but of anger.

In the story of the Frog-Prince, the faithful Eckhard fastened three iron bands round his heart to prevent it from bursting with sorrow when his master was transformed into a loathsome frog. When, however, the Prince recovered his human form, then the three iron bands snapped in succession. One hoop after another of hard constraint had been welded about the heart of Philip, and now, in a sudden explosion of wrath, all had given way like tow.

When Philip was alone, and had cooled, he became fully aware of the gravity of his act; and, as a natural result, a reaction set in.

He knew little of Salome, nothing of her parentage; and though he laid no store on pedigree, he was keenly aware that a union with one who had, or might have, objectionable and impecunious relatives, as difficult to drive away as horseflies, might subject him to much annoyance.

In a manufacturing district, little is thought of a man's ancestors so long as he is himself respectable and his pockets are full. Those who begin life as millhands often end it as millheads, and the richest men are sometimes the poorest in social qualifications.

Mrs. Sidebottom, with feminine shrewdness and malice, had touched Philip where she knew he would feel the touch and would wince. She had put her finger at once on the weak point of the situation he was creating for himself.

Philip was vexed at his own weakness; as vexed as he was surprised. He could not charge Salome with having laid a trap for him, nevertheless he felt as if he had fallen into one. He had sufficient consciousness of the course he had taken to be aware that Mrs. Sidebottom had given the impetus which had shot him, unprepared, into an engagement. He certainly liked Salome. There was not a girl he knew whom he esteemed more highly. He respected her for her moral worth, and admired her for her beauty. She was not endowed with wealth by fortune, and yet, if she came to him, she would not come poor, for she was jointured with the four thousand pounds which he had undertaken to set apart for her.

That he could be happy with Salome he did not question; but he was not partial to her mother, whom he regarded, not as a vulgar, but as an ordinary woman. She had not the refinement of Salome, nor the vivacity of Janet. How two such charming girls should have been turned out from such a mould as Mrs. Cusworth was a marvel to Philip; but then it is precisely the same enigma that all charming girls present to young men who look at them, and then at their mothers, and cannot believe that these girls will in time be even as their mothers. The glow-worm is surrounded by a moony halo till mated, and then appears but an ordinary grub, and the birds assume rainbow tints whilst thinking of nesting, and then hop about as dowdy, draggle-feathered fowls.

It was true that Philip had requested Mrs. Cusworth to remain in his house before he proposed to her daughter; it was true also that he had asked to be received at her table before he thought of an alliance; but it was one thing to have this old creature as a housekeeper, and another thing to be saddled with her as mother-in-law. Moreover, it was by no means certain but that Mrs. Cusworth might develop new and unpleasant peculiarities of manner or temper, as mother-in-law, which would be held in control so long as she was housekeeper, just as change of climate or situation brings out humours and rashes which were latent in the blood, and unsuspected. Some asthmatic people breathe freely on gravel, but are wheezy on clay; and certain livers become torpid below a hundred feet from the sea-level, and are active above that line. So Mrs. Cusworth might prove amiable and commonplace in a situation of subordination, but would manifest self-assertion and cock-a-hoopedness when lifted into a sphere of authority.

According to the classic fable, Epimetheus – that is, Afterthought – filled the world with discomfort and unrest; whereas Prometheus – that is, Forethought – shed universal blessing on mankind.

For once, Philip had not invoked Prometheus, and now, in revenge, Epimetheus opened his box and sent forth a thousand disquieting considerations. But it is always so – whether we act with forethought or without. Epimetheus is never napping. He is sure to open his box when an act is beyond recall.

In old English belief, the fairies that met men and won their love were one-faced beings, convex as seen from the front, concave when viewed from the rear. It is so with every blessing ardently desired, every object of ambition. We are drawn towards it, trusting to its solidity; and only when we have turned round it do we perceive its vanity. No man has ever taken a decided step without a look back and a bitter laugh. Where he saw perfection he sees defect, everything on which he had reckoned is reversed to his eyes.

In Philip Pennycomequick's case there had been no ardent looking forward, no idealization of Salome, no painting of the prospect with fancy's brush; nevertheless, now when he had committed himself, and fixed his fate, he stood breathless, aghast, fearful what next might be revealed to his startled eyes. His past life had been without charm to him, it had inspired him with disgust; but the ignorance in which he was as to what the future had in store, filled him with vague apprehension.

He was alarmed at his own weakness. He could no longer trust himself; his faith in his own prudence was shaken. It is said that the stoutest hearts fail in an earthquake, for then all confidence in stability goes; but there is something more demoralizing than the stagger of the earth under our feet, and that is the reel and quake of our own self-confidence. When we lose trust in ourselves, our faith in the future is lost.

There are moments in the night when the consequences of our acts appear to us as nightmares, oppressing and terrifying us. A missionary put a magnifying-glass into the hand of a Brahmin, and bade him look through it at a drop of water. When the Hindu saw under his eye a crystal world full of monsters, he put the glass aside, and perished of thirst rather than swallow another animated drop of fluid. Fancy acts to us like that inconsiderate missionary, shows us the future, and shows it to us peopled with horrors, and the result is sometimes the paralysis of effort, the extinction of ambition. There are moments in the day, as in the night, when we look through the lens into the future, and see forms that smite us with numbness. Such a moment was that Philip underwent in his own room. He saw Mrs. Cusworth develop into a prodigious nuisance; needy kinsfolk of his wife swimming as sponges in the crystal element of the future, with infinite capacity for suction; Janet's coquetry break through her widow's weeds. He saw more than that. He had entered on a new career, taken the management of a thriving business, to which he had passed through no apprenticeship, and which, therefore, with the best intentions, he might mismanage and bring to failure. What if he should have a family, and ruin come upon him then?

Philip wiped his brow, on which some cold moisture had formed in drops. Was he weak? What man is not weak when he is about to venture on an untried path, and knows not whither it may lead? Only such as have no sense of the burden of responsibilities are free from moments of depression and alarm such as came on Philip now.

It is not the sense of weakness and dread of the future stealing over the heart that makes a man weak; it is the yielding to it, and, because of the possible consequences, abandoning initiative.

With Philip the dread passed quickly. He had youth, and youth is hopeful; and he had a vast recuperative force of self-confidence, which speedily rallied after the blow dealt his assurance. When he had recovered his balance of mind and composure of manner, he descended the stairs to call on Mrs. Cusworth.

He found Janet in the room with her. Salome had retired to her own chamber, to solitude, of which she felt the need.

Philip spoke cheerfully to the old lady, and accepted Janet's sallies with good humour.

'You will promise to be kind to Salome,' said Mrs. Cusworth. 'Indeed she deserves kindness; she is so good a child.'

'Of that have no doubt.'

'And you will really love her?'

'I ought to be a hearty lover,' said Philip, with a slight smile, 'for I am a hearty hater, and proverbially the one qualifies for the other. Love and hatred are the two poles of the magnet; a weakly energized needle that hardly repels at one end, will not vigorously attract at the other.'

'But surely you hate no one!'

'Do I not? I have been driven to the verge of it to-day, by my aunt; but I pardon her because of the consequences that sprang out of her behaviour. She exasperated me to such a degree that I found courage to speak, and but for the stimulus applied to me, might have failed to make a bid for what I have now secured.'

'I am sorry to think that you hate anyone,' said the old lady. 'We cannot command our likes and dislikes, but we can hold hatred in check, which is an unchristian sentiment.'

'Then in hatred I am a heathen. I shall become a good Christian in time under Salome's tuition. I shall place myself unreservedly at her feet as a catechumen.'

'Sometimes,' said Janet, laughing, 'love turns to hate, and hate to love. A bishop's crosier is something like your magnetic needle. At one end is a pastoral crook, and at the other a spike, and in a careless hand the crook that should reclaim the errant lamb may be turned, and the spike transfix it.'

'I can no more conceive of love for Salome altering its quality than I can imagine my detestation – no, I will call it hate, for a certain person becoming converted to love.'

'But whom do you hate – not your aunt?'

'No; the man who ruined my father, made his life a burden to him, turned his heart to wormwood, lost him his brother's love, and his sister's regard – though that latter was no great loss – deprived him of his social position, threw him out of the element in which alone he could breathe, and bade fair to mar my life also.'

'I never heard of your troubles,' said Mrs. Cusworth; 'Mr. Pennycomequick did not speak to us of your father. He was very reserved about family matters.'

'He never forgave my father so long as the breath was in him. That was like a Pennycomequick. We are slow in forming attachments or dislikes, but when formed we do not alter. And I – I shall never forgive the man who spoiled my father's career, and well-nigh spoiled mine.'

'Who was that, and how did he manage it?' asked Janet.

'How did he manage it? Why, he first induced my father to draw his money out of this business, and then swindled him out of it – out of almost every pound he had. By his rascality he reduced my poor father from being a man comfortably off to one in straitened circumstances; he deprived him of a home, drove him – can you conceive of a worse fate? – to live and die in furnished lodgings.'

Mrs. Cusworth did not speak. She was a little shocked at his bitterness. His face had darkened as with a suffusion of black blood under the skin, and a hard look came into his eyes, giving them a metallic glitter. He went on, noticing the bad impression he had made – he went on to justify himself. 'My father's heart was broken. He lost all hope, all joy in life, all interest in everything. I think of him as a wreck, over which the waves beat and which is piecemeal broken up – partly by the waves, partly by wreckers. That has soured me. Hamilcar brought up his son Hannibal to swear hatred to the Romans. I may almost say that I was reared in the same manner; not by direct teaching, but by every privation, every slight, every discouragement – by the sight of my father's crushed life, and by the hopelessness that had come on my own, to sear a bitter implacable hatred of the name of Schofield.'

'Of whom?'

'Schofield – Earle Schofield. Earle was his Christian name – that is, his forename. He had not anything Christian about him.'

Philip detected a look – a startled, terrified exchange of glances – between mother and daughter.

'I see,' continued Philip, 'that I have alarmed you by the strength of my feelings. If you had endured what my father and I have endured, knowing that it was attributable to one man, then, also, you would be a heathen in your feelings towards him and all belonging to him.'

The old lady and her daughter no longer exchanged glances; they looked on the ground.

'However,' said Philip, in a lighter tone, and the shadow left his face, 'it is an innocuous feeling. I know nothing more of the man since he robbed my father. I do not know where he is, whether he be still alive. He is probably dead. I have heard no tidings of him since a rumour reached us that he had gone to America, where, if he has died, I have sufficient Christianity in me to be able to say, "Peace to his ashes!"

He looked at Mrs. Cusworth. The old woman was strangely agitated, her face of the deadly hue that flesh assumes when the blood has retreated to the heart.

Janet was confused and uneasy – but that was explicable. Her mother's condition accounted for it.

'Mr. John Dale!' The maid opened the door and introduced the doctor from Bridlington.

'Mr. Dale!' Janet and her mother started up and drew a long breath, as though relieved by his appearance from a situation embarrassing and painful.

'Oh, Mr. Dale! how glad, how heartily glad we are to see you!'

Then turning, first to Philip and next to the surgeon, Janet said, with a smile: 'Now I must introduce you – my guardian and my brother-in-law prospective.'