Читать книгу The Pennycomequicks (Volume 2 of 3) - Baring-Gould Sabine, Baring-Gould Sabine - Страница 1

Next morning Salome was agreeably surprised to find her mother better, brighter, and without the expression of mingled alarm and pain that her face had worn for the last two days. She refrained from telling her about the mysterious nocturnal visitor, because it was her invariable practice to spare the old lady everything that might cause her anxiety and provoke a relapse. It could do no good to unnecessarily alarm her, and Salome knew how to refrain from speaking unnecessarily.

Before paying her mother her morning visit, Salome made an attempt to get at the bottom of the matter that puzzled her and rendered her uneasy. It was the duty of the housemaid to lock the doors at night. Salome sent for her, and inquired about that which gave admission to the garden. The girl protested that she had fastened up as usual, and had not neglected any one of the doors.

Notwithstanding this assurance, Salome remained unshaken in her conviction that the open doorway was due to the neglect of the servant. She knew that in the class of domestics, truth is esteemed too precious to be wasted by telling it, and that the asseveration of a maid charged with misdemeanour is to be read like morning dreams. She did not pursue the matter with the young woman, so as not to involve her in fresh falsehoods; she, herself, remained of the same opinion.

On her way across the hall to her mother's room, Salome noticed that the garden-door was not only locked, but that the key had been withdrawn from it. This Philip had done last night, and he had not replaced it. It now occurred to her that she had omitted taking a step which might, and probably would, have led to the detection of the trespasser. The door led into the garden, but egress from the garden could only be had through the door in the wall of the lower or vegetable garden, rarely used, generally locked, through which manure was brought, and the man occasionally employed in the garden passed when there employed. As this gate would certainly be locked, the man who had gone out of the house into the garden could only have escaped thence with difficulty. If he had been at once pursued, he might have been captured before he could scale the wall. This had not occurred to her or to Philip at the time.

'Salome, my dear,' said Mrs. Cusworth, after her daughter had kissed her and congratulated her on her improvement, 'I am thankful to say that I am better. A load that has troubled and oppressed me for some days has been lifted off my heart.'

'I am glad, mamma,' said the girl, 'that at last you are reconciled to the change. It was inevitable. I dare say you will feel better when we are settled at Redstone.'

'My dear,' answered Mrs. Cusworth, 'I must abandon the idea of going there.'

'Where? To Redstone?'

'Yes. The house is beyond my means. I cannot possibly afford it.'

'But – mamma.' Salome was startled. 'I have already secured the lodgings.'

'Only for a quarter, and it would be better to sacrifice a quarter's rent than turn out again in three months. I could not endure the shift again, so quickly following this dreadful change.'

'But – mamma!' Salome was greatly taken aback. 'This is springing a surprise on me. We have no other house into which we can go.'

'A cottage, quite a cottage, such as the artisans occupy, must content us. We shall have to cut our coat according to our cloth.'

'Mamma! You allowed me to engage Redstone.'

'I did not then know how we were circumstanced. To make both ends meet we shall have to pinch.'

'But why pinch? You told me before that we had enough on which to live quietly but comfortably.'

'I was mistaken. I have had a great and unexpected loss.'

'Loss, mamma! What loss?'

'I mean – well,' the old lady stammered, 'I mean a sore disappointment. I am not so well off as I had supposed. I had miscalculated my resources.'

'Have you only just discovered what your means really are?'

'You must not excite her,' said Janet reproachfully.

'I do not wish to do so,' explained Salome. 'But I am so surprised, so puzzled – and this is such an upset of our plans at the last moment, after I had engaged the lodgings – I do not know what to think about it.' She paused, considered, and said with a flush in her face: 'Mamma, you surely had not reckoned on poor uncle's will?'

Mrs. Cusworth hesitated, then said: 'Of course, it is a severe blow to me that no provision had been made for you and me. We might fairly have reckoned on receiving something after what was done for Janet, and you were his favourite.'

'Oh, mamma, you did not count on this?'

'Remember that you are left absolutely destitute. What little I have saved will hardly support us both. Janet can do nothing for us just now.'

'Because of the Prussians,' said Mrs. Baynes. 'Wait a bit; as soon as we have swept them from the face of fair France, I shall make you both come to me at Elboeuf.'

'Mamma,' said Salome, 'I am still puzzled. You knew very well that uncle's will was worthless when you let me make arrangements for Redstone, and now that I have settled everything you knock over my plans. If you had told me – '

'I could not tell you. I did not know,' said the widow. 'That is to say, I had misreckoned my means.'

'Then there is no help for it. I must try to get out of the agreement for Redstone, if I can. I am afraid the agent will not let me off. We shall have to pay double rent, and there is little chance of underletting Redstone at this time of the year.'

'Better pay double than have to make a double removal; it will be less expense in the end.'

'Perhaps so,' answered Salome; then she left her mother's room that she might go upstairs and think over this extraordinary change of plans. She was painfully aware that she had been treated without due consideration, subjected unnecessarily to much trouble and annoyance.

In the hall she saw Mr. Philip Pennycomequick. He beckoned to her to follow him to the garden-door, and she obeyed. He unlocked the door.

'I took away the key last night,' he said, 'and now you see my reason.'

He pointed to the turf.

A slight fall of snow, that comminuted snow that is like meal, had taken place at sundown, and it had covered the earth with a fine film of white, fine as dust. No further fall had taken place during the night.

A track of human feet was impressed on the white surface from the door to the steps that gave access to the vegetable garden.

Without exchanging a word, both followed the track, walking wide of it, one on each side. A footprint marked each step, and the track led, less distinctly, down the lower garden to the door in the wall at the bottom, through which it doubtless passed, as there were no signs of a scramble. The door was locked.

'Have you the key?' asked Philip.

'I have not. There is one on Mr. Pennycomequick's bunch, and my mother has a second.'

'It matters not,' said Philip. 'Outside is a path along which the mill people have gone this morning to their work, and have trampled out all the traces of our mysterious visitor. The prints are those of unshod feet. The shape of the impression tells me that.'

They returned to the house.

'This unpleasant incident convinces me of one thing,' said Philip. 'It will not do for me to live in this place alone. I can explain this mysterious affair in one or other way. Either one of the servants having a brother, cousin, or lover, whom she wished to favour with the pick of my uncle's clothes, that she knew were laid out for distribution, allowed him to come and choose for himself – '

'Or else – '

'Or else the gardener left the little door in the wall ajar. Some passing tramp, seeing it open, ventured in, and finding nothing worth taking in the garden, pursued his explorations to the house, where he was fortunate enough to find another door open, through which he effected his entrance and helped himself to what he first laid hands on. He would have taken more had he not been disturbed by you.'

'He was not disturbed by me.'

'He may have seen you pass down the stairs, and so have taken the alarm and decamped. My second explanation is the least probable, for it demands a double simultaneous neglect of fastening doors by two independent persons, the housemaid and the gardener.'

'The gardener has not been working for some weeks.'

'Then how this has occurred concerns me less than the prevention of a recurrence,' said Philip. 'I must have a responsible person in the house. May I see your mother?'

As he asked, he entered the hall, and Janet at the same moment came out of her mother's sitting-room with a beaming face. She slightly bowed to Philip, and said eagerly to her sister, 'Salome, the postman is coming down the road. I am sure he brings me good news. I am going to the door to meet him.'

Salome admitted Philip into the sitting-room. She would have withdrawn, but he requested her to stay.

'What I have to say to Mrs. Cusworth,' he said shortly, 'concerns you as well as your mother.'

He took a chair at the widow's request, and then, in his matter-of-fact business fashion, plunged at once into the subject of his visit.

'I dare say that you have wondered, madam, that neither Mrs. Sidebottom nor I have made any call on you lately with a proposal. The fact is that only yesterday did my aunt and I arrive at a definite and permanent settlement. You are aware that she has acted as administratrix of my uncle's property. We have, after some difference, come to an arrangement, and by that arrangement I take the factory under my management – that, however, is not a matter of interest to you. What does concern you is the agreement we have struck about the house, which is become practically mine, I shall live in it henceforth and conduct the business so successfully carried on by my uncle, and I hope and trust without allowing it to decline. You are well aware that Mrs. Sidebottom gave you formal notice to quit: this was a formality, because at the time nothing was settled relative to the firm and the house. Please not to consider for a moment that there was a slight intended. As far as I am concerned, nothing could have been more foreign to my wishes. Do not allow that notice to affect your arrangements.'

'We accepted the notice, and have made our plans to leave,' said Salome quietly.

'In the first uncertainty as to what would be done,' said Philip, 'Mrs. Sidebottom came to you, Mrs. Cusworth, and I fear spoke with haste and impetuosity. She was excited, and at the time in a state of irritation with me, who had withstood her wishes. Since then an arrangement has been concluded between us which leaves me the house. This house henceforth belongs to me, and not to my aunt, who ceases to have authority within its walls. I am going to live here. But, madam, as you may well believe, I am incapable of managing domestic affairs. I have been unused to have such duties devolve on me. I shall be engaged in mastering new responsibilities which will occupy my whole attention, and it is imperative that I should be spared the distraction of housekeeping. The event of last night – the appearance of a man invading this house – '

Mrs. Cusworth turned deadly pale, and a look of fear came into her eyes. Salome hastily turned to Philip, and her appealing glance told him he must not touch on a subject that would alarm and agitate her mother.

'I mean,' said Philip hastily, 'that a man, inexperienced like myself, entering a large house in which there are domestics, of whose freaks and vagaries he knows nothing, and desires to know less, is like a colonist in Papua, of the natives of which nothing certain has been revealed. They may be cannibals; they may, on the other hand, be inoffensive. Of landladies in lodging-houses I have had a long and bitter experience. I have run the gamut of them, from the reduced gentlewoman to the wife of an artisan, and I believe it is one of those professions which, like vivisection, dries up the springs of moral worth. It will be essential to my happiness, I may say to my success in the business, to have a responsible person to manage the house for me. You, madam, will relieve me from grave embarrassments if you will consent to remain here on the same terms as heretofore. It will indeed be conferring on me a lasting favour, which I know I am not justified in asking.'

'It is very good of you to suggest this,' began the widow.

'On the contrary,' interrupted Philip, 'it is selfish of me to propose it – to wish to retain you in a place where you must be surrounded by sorrowful reminiscences, and tie you to work when you ought to be free from every care.'

'I thank you,' said Mrs. Cusworth. 'It so happens that I am distressed by pecuniary losses, and I am therefore glad to accept your offer.'

'I am sorry, madam, that you have met with losses. But I do not wish to force you to accept obligations for which you do not feel yourself equal without understanding exactly how matters stand. Mrs. Sidebottom and I have consulted together about the probable wishes of my deceased uncle, and we unite in thinking that he never intended to leave Miss Cusworth unprovided for. The will he had drawn out perhaps erred on the side of excessive liberality to her and disregard of the claims of his own relations. That was cancelled – how, we cannot say. Suffice it to say, it was cancelled, but without cancelling the obligation to do something for Miss Cusworth. We are quite sure that Mr. Pennycomequick intended to provide for her, and Mrs. Sidebottom and I agree in proposing for her acceptance such a sum as was invested by my late uncle for the benefit of Mrs. Baynes on her marriage a twelve month ago.'

He was the lawyer – formal, cold, stiff – as he spoke, measuring his sentences and weighing his words. Even when he endeavoured to be courteous, as when inviting the widow to stay on in his house, he spoke without ease of manner, graciousness, and softness of tone.

'Of course,' said Mrs. Cusworth, 'it has been a great disappointment to us that we received nothing from Mr. Pennycomequick – '

'Mother!' interrupted Salome, quivering, flushing to the roots of her hair, then turning white. Mrs. Cusworth was one of those ordinary women who think it becomes them not to receive a favour as a favour, but as a due. Salome at once felt the grace and kindness of the arrangement proposed for her advantage by Philip, and had little hesitation in attributing it to him, and freeing Mrs. Sidebottom from the initiative, at least, in it. But her mother supposed it due to her dignity to receive it as a concession to a legitimate claim.

Salome did not look in Philip's face. Afraid that her mother might say something further that was unsuited to the situation, she interposed:

'Mr. Pennycomequick,' she said, in a low, gentle voice, 'you said just now that you had no claim on our services. You have created such a claim. Your proposal is so generous, so kindly intentioned, and so far transcending what we had any right to ask or to expect, that you lay us under an obligation which it will be a pleasure for us to discharge. My dear mother is not herself able to do much with her hands, but she is like a general in a battlefield – on a commanding eminence she issues her directions, and I am her orderly who fly about carrying her commands. We accept with gratitude and pleasure your offer to continue in this house, at least for a while. For that other offer that concerns me alone, will you allow me time to consider it?'

At that moment, before Philip could reply, the door was burst open, and Janet rushed in, with a face of despair, holding an open letter before her.

'Mamma! Oh, mamma! The Prussians have killed him. Albert – has been shot!'