The Pennycomequicks (Volume 1 of 3). Baring-Gould Sabine

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СКАЧАТЬ must be the distress of him who has had a well-furnished house to have an execution put in, and everything sold away from before his eyes, nothing left him but the bed on which to lie and gnash his teeth? How bald, how cold, how hateful the dismantled home will seem without the thousand comforts and beautifying objects to which his eyes have been accustomed! The children as they grew up had furnished Jeremiah's house with pleasant fancies, had hung the walls with bright remembrances, and filled every corner with tender associations. The floor was strewn with their primrose homage. The thought that as he had lost Janet, so must he some day lose Salome, rose up continually before Jeremiah, and sickened him with fear. He tried to steel himself in expectation of it. It was in the nature of things that young girls should marry. It was inevitable that a closer and stronger tie should be formed, and then that cord of reverential gratitude which now attached Salome to him would dwindle imperceptibly, yet surely, to a thread, and from a thread to a filament. In proportion as from the new bond other ties arose, so would that attaching her to him become attenuated till it became formal only.

      A great pain arose in Jeremiah's heart.

      And now, this evening, he looked at the girl engaged on her needlework, and observation returned into his eyes. Now he began that work of self-analysis, with her before him, that he had never thought of engaging in before, never dreamed would be requisite for him to engage in.

      As he looked steadily at Salome, his closed palms trembled, and he separated them, put one to his lips, for they were trembling also, and then to his brow, which was wet.

      Salome's soft brown eyes were lifted from her work, and rested steadily on him.

      'Dear uncle,' she said. 'My dear – dear, uncle! You are unwell.'

      She drew her stool close to him, and threw her arms about him, to draw his quivering face towards her own that she might kiss it. But he started up with a groan, backed from her arms, and paced the room in agitation. He dare not receive her embrace. He dare not meet her eyes. He had read his own heart for the first time, helped thereto by a casual joke from Captain Lambert Pennycomequick at table that evening.

      CHAPTER III.

      A TRUST

      During dinner that evening the conversation had turned on modern music. Yorkshire folk are, with rare exceptions, musical, and those who are not musical are expected, at all events, to be able to take their part in a conversation about music. Someone had spoken about old English ballads, whereupon Captain Lambert had said, as an aside to his uncle:

      'No one can doubt what is your favourite song.'

      'There you have the advantage of me,' said Jeremiah simply.

      '"Sally in our Alley" – but I must say you take slow time in getting to the last verse.'

      Then he hummed the words:

      'And when my seven long years are out,

      Oh, then I'll marry Sally!

      And then how happily we'll live,

      But not in our Alley.'

      Then it was that the blood had rushed into the manufacturer's temples, a rush of blood occasioned partly by anger at being made the subject of a joke, and partly by the suggestion which startled him.

      Never before that moment had the thought occurred to him that it was possible for him to bind Salome to him by the closest and surest of ties. No, never before had he imagined that this was possible.

      How one word starts a train of ideas! As a spark falling on thatch may cause a conflagration, so may a word carelessly dropped set blood on fire and drive a man to madness. That little remark had produced in Jeremiah an effect greater than Lambert could have calculated, and his mother went very near the truth when she rebuked him for saying what he had. From thenceforth Jeremiah could no longer look at Salome in the old light; she was no more a child to him, and he no more an old man beyond the reach of that flame that sweeps round the world and scorches all men. In Wagner's great opera of the 'Valkyrie,' Brunnhild is represented asleep, engirdled by a ring of fire, and Sigurd, who tries to reach her, can only do so by passing through the flame, and to render it innocuous he sings the wondrous fire-spell song, and the flame leaps and declines, and finally goes out to the cadences of the spell. But Jeremiah now found himself caught in the Waberlohe that enringed Salome, knowing no incantation by which to abate its ardour; whilst she sat unconscious of the peril to which she subjected others, of the magic that surrounded and streamed forth from her, guileless of the pain which she occasioned him whom she beckoned to her. Jeremiah was caught by the flame, it curled round him, and he writhed in its embrace. He was an old, at all events an elderly, man, his age five and fifty, and Salome was but twenty. He had passed the grand climateric when she was born. Could he, dare he, love her, except with the simple love of a parent for a child? But could he love her thus any longer now that his eyes were opened, and he had discovered the condition of his own heart? When Adam had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge his child-like simplicity was gone, and he made himself coverings to hide himself from himself and from others. So now, this man in the decline of life had tasted also and at once was filled with shame at himself, and he sought out evasion of the truth, a disguise for his feelings, lest Salome should suspect what was passing within him.

      'Salome, my child,' he said, 'those Sidebottoms vex me beyond endurance. What do you think! They served up a really sumptuous dinner on a table covered with a sheet.'

      'A sheet – from a bed!'

      'A sheet, not a tablecloth. It was characteristic.'

      'Has that upset you?'

      'No – not that. But, Salome, I have been considering how it would be, were this factory, after I am no more, to fall into such hands as those of the ninny captain.'

      'There is Mr. Philip,' said the girl.

      'Philip – !' the manufacturer paused. 'Philip – I hardly consider him as one of the family. His father behaved outrageously.'

      'But for all that he is your nephew.'

      'Of course he is, by name and blood, but – I do not like him.'

      'You do not know him, uncle.'

      'That is true; but – '

      'But he is your nearest relative.'

      Mr. Pennycomequick was silent. He returned to his chair and reseated himself; not now leaning back, with his arms folded on his breast, but bent forward, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

      He looked into the fire. After full five minutes' silence he said, in a tone of self-justification:

      'I can never forgive my half-brother Nicholas.'

      'Yet he is dead,' said the girl.

      There was no accent of reproach in her voice; nevertheless Jeremiah took her words as conveying a reproach.

      'I do not mean,' he said apologetically, 'that I allowed him to die unforgiven, but that his conduct was inexcusable. I have pardoned the man, but I cannot forgive his act.'

      'Philip, however,' said Salome, 'is the son of the man, and not of his mistake.'

      Jeremiah was touched, and winced; but he would not show it.

      'My brother Nicholas acted in such a manner as to produce an estrangement that has, and will have, lastingly influenced our relations. Philip I saw at his father's funeral, which I attended – which,' СКАЧАТЬ