The Pennycomequicks (Volume 2 of 3). Baring-Gould Sabine
the names of those lost he read his own, with the surprising information that the body had been recovered, and though frightfully mutilated, had been identified.
This was news indeed. That he was esteemed dead did not surprise Mr. Pennycomequick when he learned how long he had been ill, but that some other body should have been mistaken for his was indeed inexplicable.
'By this time,' said he to himself, 'Salome will have proved my will and Louisa will have exhausted her vituperation of my memory.'
It took him two days to digest what he had learned. As he recovered, his mind recurred to those thoughts which had engaged him on the night of the flood, as he walked on the towpath by the canal.
If he were to return to Mergatroyd when supposed to be dead, he was confident that Salome and her mother would receive him with unfeigned delight, and without reluctance surrender to him what they had received through his bequest. But he was by no means sure of himself, that in the joy of his return he would be able to control his feelings so as not to show to Salome what their real nature was.
He recalled his prayer to Heaven, that he might have the way pointed out to him which he should go, and startlingly, in a manner unexpected, in a direction not anticipated, the hand of Providence had flashed out of the sky and had pointed out his course. It had snapped his tie to Mergatroyd – at all events temporarily; had separated him from Salome, and set him where he had leisure and isolation in which to determine his conduct. Jeremiah was a man of religious mind, and this consideration profoundly affected him. He had been carried from his home, and his name blotted out of the book of the living.
What would be the probable consequences were he to return to Mergatroyd as soon as he was recovered? The very desire he felt to be back, to see Salome again, was so strong within him that it constituted evidence to his mind that if he were at home, in the exuberant joy of meeting her again he would let drop those words which his judgment told him ought not to be spoken. Other thoughts besides these exercised his mind.
He turned to the past, to his dead brother Nicholas, and his conscience reproached him for having maintained the feud so persistently and so remorselessly. Nicholas had suffered for what he had done, and by suffering had expiated his fault. He, Jeremiah, had, moreover, visited on the guiltless son the resentment he bore to the father. He endeavoured to pacify his conscience by the reflection that he had made a provision for Philip in his will; but this reflection did not satisfy him. Philip was the representative of the family, and Jeremiah had no right to exclude him from the firm without a trial of his worth.
Then he turned to another train of ideas connected with his present condition.
Was his health likely to be sufficiently restored to enable him to resume the old routine of work? Would a resumption of his duties conduce to the re-edification of his health? Would it not retard, if not prevent, complete recovery? Would it not be a better course for him to shake himself free from every care – keep his mind disengaged from business till his impaired constitution had been given time to recover? He knew that rheumatic fever often seriously affected the heart, and he asked himself whether he dare return to the conflict of feeling, the inner struggle, sure to attend a recurrence to the same condition as before. Would it not be the wisest course for him to go abroad for a twelvemonth or more, to some place where his mind might recover its balance, his health be re-established – and he might acquire that perfect mastery over his feelings which he had desired, but which he had lost.
What did he care about the fortune he had amassed – by no means a large one, but respectable? He was a man of simple habits and of no ambition. He was interested in his business, proud of the good name the firm had ever borne. He would be sorry to think that Pennycomequick should cease to be known in Yorkshire as the title of an old-established reliable business associated with figured linen damasks. But was his presence in the factory essential to its continuance?
He looked at Ann Dewis squatted by the fire smoking. For seventeen years she had kept Earle Schofield's pipe going, which he had put into her mouth, and she had been faithful to a simple request. He had put his mill into Salome's hands, and had said, 'Keep it going.' Was she less likely to fulfil his wish than had been Ann Dewis to the desire of Earle Schofield?
He was not concerned as to his means of subsistence should he determine to remain as one dead. He had an old friend, one John Dale, at Bridlington, the only man to whom he was not reserved and suspicious – the only man of whom he took counsel when in doubt and difficulty.
John Dale had a robust common-sense, and to him Jeremiah resolved to apply. When John Dale first went to Bridlington he had been lent a considerable sum of money by his friend, which had not been repaid, but which, now that Dale had established a good practice as a surgeon, he was ready and willing to repay. John Dale had been constituted trustee on the occasion of Janet's marriage. He had paid visits to Mergatroyd, and Jeremiah had visited Bridlington; but as both were busy men, such visits had been short and few. Though, however, they saw little of each other, their mutual friendship remained unimpaired.
As soon as Mr. Pennycomequick was sufficiently recovered to leave the barge, he provided himself with a suit of clothes at a slop-shop, and settled into an inn in the town of Hull, whence he wrote to Dale to come to him. He had his purse in his pocket when he was carried away from Mergatroyd, and the purse contained a few sovereigns, sufficient to satisfy his immediate necessities.
''Pon my word, never was so astonished in my life!' shouted John Dale, as he burst into the room occupied by his friend, then stood back, looked at him from head to foot, and roared.
Mr. Pennycomequick was strangely altered. He had been accustomed to shave his face, with the exception of a pair of cutlets that reached no lower than the lobe of his ears. Now his face was frouzy with hair: lips, jaws, cheeks, chin, throat, were overgrown, and the hair had got beyond the primary stage of stubbledom. He had been wont to attire himself in black or Oxford mixture of a dark hue, to wear a suit of formal cut, and chiefly to affect a double-breasted frock coat that gave a specially substantial mercantile look to the man. The suit in which he was now invested was snuff-coloured and cut away in stable fashion.
'Upon my word, this is a regeneration! Dead as a manufacturer, alive as a man on the turf. Is the moral transformation as radical? What is the meaning of this? I saw your death in the papers. I wrote to Salome about it, a letter of condolence, and had her reply. How came you to life again, you impostor, and in this guise?'
The doctor – he was really a surgeon – but everyone called him Dr. Dale, was a stout, florid man, with his hair cut short as that of a Frenchman, like the fur on the back of a mole. He was fresh, boisterous in manner when out of the sick-room, but when engaged on a patient, laid aside his roughness and noise. His cheeriness, his refusal to take a gloomy view of a case, made him popular, and perhaps went some way towards encouraging nature to make an effort to throw off disease.
Jeremiah told him the story of his escape.
'And now,' said Dale, 'I suppose you are going back. By Jove, I should like to see the faces when you reappear in the family circle thus dressed and behaired.'
'Before I consider about going back, I want you to overhaul me,' said Jeremiah, 'and please to tell me plainly what you find. I'm not a woman to be frightened at bad news.'
'At once, old man. Off with those togs,' shouted the surgeon.
When the medical examination was over, Dale told Mr. Pennycomequick that his heart was weak, but that there was no organic derangement. He must be careful of himself for some time to come. He must avoid climbing hills, ascending many stairs.
'As, for instance, the several flights of my factory.'
'Yes – you must content yourself with the office.'
'I might as well give up at once the entire management if I may not go to the several departments and see what is going on there.'
'You must economize the pulsations of your heart for awhile. You will find yourself breathless at every ascent. Your heart is at fault, not your lungs. The machine is weak, and you must not make an engine of one-horse power undertake work that requires one of five. If you could manage to knock off work altogether – '
'For how long?'
'That