CHAPTER III.
It was mid-day when Mrs. Jericho next entered her bed-room. She came in, humming a little piece of a song. Whereupon, the culprit between the sheets took courage to observe—“I don’t think I ever passed so wretched a night.”
“Considering the night was over when you came home, Mr. Jericho, you of course are the best judge. How should I know anything about it?” Such was the home-thrust relentlessly given by Mrs. Jericho. She would not be mollified.
“I went, my dear,”—began Jericho.
The outraged wife would not be insulted. Suddenly twisting round, as though stung by the hypocritic tenderness, Mrs. Jericho desired the man to keep his fine words for people out of doors. Her eyes were at length opened; she had a long time—too long—been fondly blind; but at last she knew all; she was satisfied, and—she again repeated it—she would not be insulted.
Jericho was not to be diverted into a quarrel. Pacific man! He would struggle to keep the peace. Hence, in tones, feloniously intended to soften and cajole, he returned to what he called the terrors of the past night.
“If I were to live a thousand years, my love”—
“Love!” exclaimed Mrs. Jericho, and this time she turned full upon the offender. For a minute, she stood withering him from between the bed-curtains. And Jericho, not wholly lost to shame, dragged his night-cap over his brow, and shrinking, rolled himself upon the other side. With his heavy eye upon the parrots and parroquets perched and flying upon the bed-room paper that adorned the wall—for Mrs. Jericho, as she told her bosom friends, would have that paper at any price; the birds, and the palms, and the savannahs, as she said, so reminding her of past happiness with Pennibacker,—Jericho manfully continued:
“Yes, a thousand years, I shouldn’t forget last night.”
“Very likely not,” said Mrs. Jericho. “I’ve no doubt you deserve to remember it. I shouldn’t wonder.”
“You don’t know, my dear Sabilla”—Mrs. Jericho trod the room anew, impatient of such daring familiarity—“you don’t know what I’ve suffered. Such an extraordinary dream! I feel it now. It has almost killed me with bile. But it’s the usual case with me. An uncomfortable dream always does. Killed with bile.”
(The wretched hypocrite! With such baited cunning, he angled in the depths of woman’s tenderness for unmerited sympathy. But we trust the reader will feel a grim pleasure at his disappointment; he took none.)
“The dream, my love, the dream has quite scorched me up. I’m a man—as I believe you’ll give me credit for, dear Sabilla—a man with a mind above such things; otherwise, I should think something dreadful, very dreadful, was going to happen. Could you give me some soda-water?”
“I am very sure, Mr. Jericho, there is not a single drop of soda-water in the house.”
Hereupon the sufferer ventured to make a suggestion.
“Couldn’t you send for some?”
“Certainly not,” replied Mrs. Jericho, with instant decision. “If I cannot reclaim you to propriety, at least let me have the satisfaction, for the sake of your children, Pennib—Mr. Jericho—for their sake, let me, if possible, hide from an inquisitive world the vices of their father. Let me, at least, have such barren consolation.” Jericho was silent. In consequence thereof, Mrs. Jericho, with gushing fluency, continued—“I have no wish, sir, to busy the idle world with my private wrongs; none whatever.”
“I don’t see, my—my dear”—said Jericho, from under the clothes—“I don’t see why you should.”
“And yet you ask me to send the servants for soda-water at this time of the day. But what do you care how the domestics talk! How your conduct as a husband and a father is made the gossip of the neighbourhood! I can just fancy, at this hour, Edwin asking for soda-water; and how very cleverly you’d be brought upon the counter. Of course, servants will talk. No wages will stop ’em. And—no, Mr. Jericho, no”—and his wife spoke as though sternly re-assured in her purpose—“you may stab my heart if you will; but at least you shall not—that is, if I can help it—you shall not call about the vulgar and unfeeling world to gaze upon the bleeding wound.” And Mrs. Jericho sat down.
“I wouldn’t do such a thing, and you know I wouldn’t. Sabilla, dear, you know I wouldn’t.” Mrs. Jericho made no spoken reply; but her foot, tapping the carpet, was eloquent of unbelief and wrong.
There was no answering this, therefore Jericho adroitly sought to turn the current of discourse. For several minutes he hunted for a thought, his wife’s foot still accompanying him on the search. At last he deemed himself successful, and with the vivacity of good fortune, said—
“Can I have a cup of tea?”
Mrs. Jericho rose like a sultana, and with a cold dignity, and in deep searching tones, that made Jericho wince in the sheets, said—“Of course, Mr. Jericho; you are master in your own house. Of course, you can have a cup of tea.” And with this assurance, Mrs. Jericho slowly swept from her profaned bed-room.
“Well, and what does the old felon say? The scaly old griffin! What’s he got to answer for himself?”
A young gentleman close upon one of the privileges of legal manhood—the privilege of going to prison for his own debts—put this sudden question to Mrs. Jericho, on her instant return to the drawing-room, from the interview narrated above.
“Come, what is it? Will he give me the money? In a word,” asked the hurried youth, “will he go into the melting-pot like a man and a father?”
“My dear Basil, you mustn’t ask me,” replied Mrs. Jericho to her emphatic first-born.
“Oh, mustn’t I, though?” cried Basil. “It’s as little as I can do. Ha! you don’t know the lot of people that’s asking me. Bless you! they ask a hundred times to my once. Well, will old Jericho tip the loyalty? Did you give him my sentiment, mother, eh? Money—money’s like the air you breathe; if you have it not you die. Have you brought me the beggarly allowance?—If I don’t blush a hole in my cheek to take it! It’s disgusting. A hundred a year! Not enough to keep a blind man in dogs.”
“My dear Basil, where do you imbibe such extraordinary parallels?” asked Mrs. Jericho; and with her eyes feeding upon the knowing, impudent face of the young man, she affectionatelyadjusted his cravat. “What a careless child you are—I’m sure you don’t take care of yourself.”
“First make it worth my while, mother. Care! What’s the use of buttoning an empty pocket? But about this worse half of yours; this supernumerary father of mine. Only wished I’d ha’ guessed what he’s turned out. Little as I was, I’d ha’ forbid the banns—I would—if I’d jumped upon a three-legged stool to do it.”
Mrs. Jericho drew a deep, deep sigh, and tenderly pressed the hero in her arms.
“Don’t sigh, ma’am,” said the youth, “don’t sigh; for times are bad, and bobbin’s getting dearer.” Mrs. Jericho tapped the young gentleman on his cheek. “To business, as the sun said when he rose late—to business, my dear madam. What does that ruffian-in-law answer to my just proposal?”
“Basil, really, my dear Basil, I cannot listen: whatever Mr. Jericho’s faults may be, if I can endure them—if I can be silent—at least I may expect my children”—
“Not at all, my dear lady, not at all. Your children never said a word to the bargain. They only looked on while you were sold. They have all the freedom of English subjects, and may abuse your husbandad libitum. I do nothing rashly, dear madam; I’ve inquired into the law, and I know it. My allegiance, my dear lady, is due to my own buried father; and as I’m told, he was a gentleman”—
“Basil, don’t—pray don’t! You bring him up before me. Ha! Basil, your fatherwasa man.”
“No doubt of it, my dear lady; no doubt of it, my revered mother;” and the young gentleman, with really a touch of grace, bent his head, and raised his mother’s hand to his lips. “Would shoot the fellow, my dear lady, who doubted it. Well, why did you hook-and-eye yourself to the individual up stairs? Why were you induced to drop upon the golden name of Pennibacker the tin extinguisher of Jericho? As Hamlet somewhere says, why did you leave that Primrose Hill of clover, to go to grass on Wormwood Scrubs?”
“I entreat you, Basil—I supplicate, my dearest boy, that you desist! You”—
“All right, my dear lady, all right, and got the receipt. What I meant to say was this. You sacrificed yourself for the good of your family?” And Basil Pennibacker, with wrinkled forehead, looked inquiringly about, gesticulating as though chewing his emotion. “Didn’t you?”
“I did, Basil, I did; but don’t grieve for that—I can be resigned; Ihavebeen resigned.”
“Like a tame lamb,” said Basil, bursting into metaphor, “like a tame lamb you wreathed your brow with orange flowers, and in the very handsomest manner gave yourself away. Can I forget it? Ought I to forget it? Ought my sisters to forget it? Never. You married our destroyer-in-law—pardon my feelings, my dear madam; as your dutiful son I must call him so: you married our cannibal-in-law, to make the fortunes of your innocent orphans? Did you not?”
“I did, Basil,” said Mrs. Jericho, and she shuddered. “Your father knows I did.”
“In which case, madam, as one of those orphans, it is my first duty to take care that your intentions are honourably carried out. Now, madam, can I see Mr. Jericho?”
“My dear child,” said Mrs. Jericho, “he is not yet up.”
“And nearly one o’clock—what an insult”—and Basil pointed towards the sun—“what a marked insult to that respectable luminary. Never mind. We’ll hold a little bed of justice in this matter. For I do assure you, my dear lady, I tremble for myself; I do indeed. I never was so disloyal in all my life; never.”
Let not Mr. Basil Pennibacker suffer in the opinion of the faithful subject. That young gentleman—it was his whim, his characteristic mode of speech—adopted the word disloyalty as his synonym of poverty.
“My good sir,”—we give in the way of illustration a speech of Basil’s to an earnest tailor—“my good sir, you know I always desire to respect the constituted authorities. I always like tohave their images about me. But my good sir, I have not seen the face of the monarch, sir, no not on the smallest piece of silver, for a natural twelvemonth, sir. I never felt myself such a traitor, sir. Look here”—and Basil twitched out his empty purse—“look here; not a pennyweight of loyalty in it, sir. ’Pon my life, sir, I’ve quite forgotten the quarterings of my native land. I’m a quadruped, sir, and not a gentleman, if I know whether Britannia holds a trident or a dung-fork. I’m disgusted with life, sir; for I’ve no loyalty—not an ounce of loyalty.”
Thus, Mrs. Jericho—familiar with the figurative style of her son—was in no way alarmed, when he declared he felt himself the greatest traitor on earth; he had been so long lost to loyalty.
“I should be very sorry, my dear madam,” he added, “for the credit of the family, very sorry to be left alone with the crown, a blue bag in my hand, and the door open. I tremble, madam, at the picture. For I know it, my dear madam—I feel it, my affectionate parent—you would not like to see the head of your only and erring son upon Tower Hill. I’m sure, my dear lady, you could not survive that moment. Therefore, to prevent serious consequences, when am I to have an advance of loyalty?”
“My dear Basil, you are so impetuous. I have not yet had an opportunity”—
“Had an opportunity! Make one, my dear lady. But I see how it is; you shrink before the tyrant. The ruffian that you have ennobled by consenting to wear his name, refuses to make the advance. Did you tell him that with three years’ allowance down, I’d throw off five per cent. for the ready loyalty? And he refuses! Why, my dear lady, it’s next to embezzlement. Upon my life, I wish to treat the individual with respect; nevertheless, it does flash across my mind that it’s nowhere written that a man may not thrash his own father-in-law.”
“Basil, I will not hear this. I tell you, I will not. Whatever may be the faults of Mr. Jericho—and who should know them better than myself?—I cannot sanction such sentiments. At a proper season”—
“My dear maternal lady, money isn’t like green peas, coming in with a season; the proper season for money’s when money’s wanted. A season with me, my dear madam, that lasts all the year round, I can assure you,” and again Basil kissed the hand of his anxious parent.
“The truth is, Basil, I do believe that Mr. Jericho is very much pressed—very much. And you know he is indulgent to you; and so, you must not be hard upon him: indeed, my love, you must not. I am very much afraid,”—and Mrs. Jericho looked at the youth with new affection—“very much afraid that you’re an extravagant child.”
“’Pon my life, my dear madam, when I see what other young fellows do, I feel myself a mean man; sometimes despise myself. You don’t know how I struggle to keep down the miser in me. I’ve a dreadful idea sometimes, of what my end will be.”
“My dear Basil!” cried the mother, in tender alarm.
“Sometimes, dear lady, I look into the middle of next century, and see myself a wretched being. Long beard, nails like fish-hooks, one shirt a year, and dinners of periwinkles. Unless I exert all my strength of mind, I shall go off in mildew—die a miser. ‘He denied himself the common necessaries of life’—that’s what I sometimes fear will be my history—‘and thus, it is believed, hastened his wretched and untimely end.’”
“Basil! How can you!”
“That’s my fate, I fear. ‘On his room being searched, bank-notes to a large amount were found in an old tinder-box, and a hundred and fifty guineas of the time of George the Second, secreted in a German flute!’ Sometimes, when I’m melancholy and disloyal, I think that’s my fate; but I’ll struggle against the feeling,” said Basil with filial emphasis—“I will struggle, my dear lady.”
Whereupon Mrs. Jericho, haply comforted by his moral heroism, assured her boy that she would not let Mr. Jericho rest until he gave a definitive answer to his son-in-law’s moderate proposition.
“That is all I want to know, my dear lady. Whether I’mto stop short at sudden ruin, or to go on. I’m disgusted with life at present, but I’m open to any arrangement that shall make me change my opinion. Hallo! Aggy, why you’re come out of a rainbow.”
This sudden salutation was addressed to Miss Agatha Pennibacker who, fine and gauze-like as a dragonfly, floated into the room, and settled upon a sofa. “I have told you twenty times,” said the young lady with face severely set, “I will not be called Aggy. It’s hideous.”
“Then why don’t you change it? I say, mother, when are you going to consign these girls to India? Market’s full here. Bless you, such a glut of wedding-rings, I’m told they hang mackerel on ’em.” And Basil laughed saucily at Agatha; and Agatha pouted contemptuously.
“My dear Basil, I thought I heard your voice. Where have you been, you naughty child? I’m sure your poor sisters”—it was Monica Pennibacker who spoke as she entered—“your poor sisters might as well be without a brother.”
“That’s their opinion Nic,” and the youth was about to chuck Monica’s chin, when Monica drew herself like a pouter pigeon above the familiarity.
“When you can address your elder sister as you ought, Basil”—
“Come, if you’re going to act domestic tragedy I shall leave the house, and not take a check to come back,” said Basil. “What’s the matter with you both? Why, you’re as stiff as if you slept in sheet iron and boarded on whalebone. What’s the matter? Just wish you’d some of my troubles. Only yesterday, I lost Scrub my terrier; a love of a thing that would kill rats as fast as he could see ’em. Turn out a hundred rats, and in a twinkling he’d make ’em feel as if the eyes of Europe were on ’em. And that dog’s dead. Yet look at me,” and Basil passed his fingers through his hair, and with much fortitude, wiped an imaginary tear from his eye. “Scrub’s departed, yet I consent to breathe.”
“Scrub! Bringing terriers before ladies,” said Monica; “do not be so vulgar.”
“Indeed Basil,” chirrupped young Agatha, “you get so low, your sisters must disown you.”
“Poor little kittens,” cried Basil, and he dropped astride a chair, and shook his head at the young ladies, and sighed.—“Well, ’pon my life, I do wish you were out of this world!”
“Basil!” exclaimed the sisters, with a slight hysteric scream.
“Basil!” said Mrs. Jericho in deep, reproving thunder.
“You’re too good for this earth, you are, indeed, girls. Take it in the lump, and see what a lot of it’s beneath your notice. What a little of it’s really respectable. If it wasn’t unmanly, I could weep to think that my superfine sisters lived in the same wicked vulgar world that makes black-puddings and sells cat’s-meat.”
“My dear Basil,” said Mrs. Jericho in a tone of tender remonstrance, “do not be so extravagant. And you hurt your sisters; you do, indeed. A man”—and Mrs. Jericho took breath for a great utterance—“a man never so beautifully shows his own strength, as when he respects our softness.”
“No, indeed;” said the young ladies, speaking and shaking their heads in sympathy. “No!”
“I’ve a whole bank of respect in me, ma’am”—and Basil spread his fingers over his breast—“but I don’t pay a penn’orth of it to forged drafts. Now, softness is one thing; and—my dear parent I am quite prepared to prove what I say—and gammon is another.”
“If you allude to me, sir,”—said Monica, who had evidently made up her mind for an apothegm—“permit me once and for all to observe, that I don’t know what you mean.”
“That’s exactly my feelings on the subject, Monica dear,” cried Agatha.
“Now, children, I cannot endure this. It distresses me. These little quarrels lacerate me. You know, as I have often said, girls, I gave up everything for my children. Had I consulted my own feelings, I should have glided a solitary thing to—to your father. Therefore,”—here Mrs. Jericho drew forth her pocket-handkerchief; and both the girls, with a precisionquite military, imitated the movement—“therefore, kiss one another and be friends.”
“With all my heart, and all my mouth,” said Basil. “Come along, girls”—and he folded his arms—“come along; I won’t bite.”
“What a creature you are!” cried Monica, wiping her eyes, as her mother moved her towards Basil.
“I dare say,” said the young Agatha, lifting herself upon her toes, to Basil, “I dare say, now, you don’t kiss Bessy Carraways in that manner.”
“Bessy Carraways,” said Basil, and the blood ran all over his face, his mother silently smiling at the emotion—“Bessy Carraways is a—a—” Basil stammered, then laughed—“a flower.”
“No doubt, dear Basil,” said Monica. “So are all young ladies of Bessy’s age; all flowers.”
“But I mean,” said Basil, “the natural thing. You see, my beloved sisters, there are two sorts of flowers. Now, Bessy isn’t too fine, or too good for this world. No; she’s a flesh and blood flower, growing upon the earth, and not thinking it too dirty for her: a flower that gives out the sweetness of her own natural self, and doesn’t think it too good for other people: and why, because she thinks no more about it, than a rose or a lily, or any other blossom that’s delicious and doesn’t know it.”
“Upon my word, Basil,” cried Mrs. Jericho, with joyous emphasis, “you are quite a poet.”
“Should be very sorry, ma’am, for the respectability of the family,” said Basil.
“Oh, quite a bard,” exclaimed Monica, with a sarcasm so very fine, it was unfelt by its object. “Now, you have given us one sort of female flower, what—dear boy—what is the other?”
“Certainly, Nic,” and Basil took his sister’s hand between his own. “The other flower doesn’t root in the world at all: earth’s too vulgar for it, dearest maid. It’s a flower so fine, it’s grown out of silk or velvet, and stands upon a wire stalk. Whatever scent it has, it isn’t its own: it doesn’t come out ofitself, sweet girl, but out of the fashion. Very fine flowers; very bright, and very sweet, and very wax-like,—but still, my darling virgin, they are flowers, sown in silk, cultivated by the scissors, and perched upon stiffness. Not at all the sort of flower for my button-hole, I can tell you.”
“Dear no! Of course not,” cried the wicked Agatha, clapping her hands. “Bessy is, of course,yourheart’s-ease.”
“My dear little puss,” said Basil, “I like Bessy, as I said, because she doesn’t think herself too good for other people: for all that, I’m not good enough for her. No, my little tortoise-shell, I shall always study humility, it’s safest—shall always think myself not good enough for any woman in the world. When I die, this is the epitaph I shall have grown over me:—‘He was so humble of spirit, he never lifted his thoughts to marriage. Reader, go and do likewise.’”
“My dear, strange Basil!” said Mrs. Jericho, with an incredulous laugh.
“Shall endeavour to leave five pounds a-year, to have that epitaph grown over me in mustard and cress. Five pounds a-year, ma’am, to the sexton, to keep my memory green.”
“I wonder what Miss Carraways would say if she heard you. But I know better,” said Monica. “I think, Agatha, we had better bespeak our posts as bridesmaids.”
“Wouldn’t suffer it, my darling girls,” said Basil. “If ever I was to marry—not that I ever shall; no, no,—I shall walk through the world with the mustard-and-cress steadily in my eye—you shouldn’t come near my wife. No, no; you’re too good, too fine, too embroidered, for the plain work of matrimony. Bless your little filagree hearts, before you marry you ought to perform quarantine in cotton, and serve seven years to pies and puddings.”
“Now, my dear, dear Basil”—
But Edwin, entering with a letter, destroyed Mrs. Jericho’s sentence in its early syllables.
“How curious!” cried Mrs. Jericho. “A letter from Mrs. Carraways. I know her dear hand from all my friends: there issuch a flow of the lady about it. Ha! the party. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Carraways request the honour of—’ yes; we are all invited. This is to be the great fête of the season. Jogtrot Lodge will be burningly brilliant. The richest people will be there, and I have heard,” and Mrs. Jericho lowered her voice, “I have heard, some of the nobility.”
“No doubt,” said Basil; “just a lord or two, to keep ’em sweet.”
“Really, Basil, you ought to go and live in a cave, upon wild elder-berries; you ought,” said Monica; and then she turned to her parent, with a look of touching helplessness. “But, my dear mamma;howare we to go?”
“Yes, mamma,” said the forlorn Agatha, “howare we to go?”
Mrs. Jericho was looking about her for an answer, when Basil observed—“I see; got no gowns. Ask a woman to a tea-party in the Garden of Eden, and she’d be sure to draw up her eyelids, and scream—‘I can’t go without a gown.’”
“I think, Basil”—said Miss Monica, a little majestically,—“you had better confine yourself to terriers, and things that, perhaps, you understand. What do you know about gowns?”
“Very true, my eider-duck, very true. And, mother, as I am to show at the Lodge, I must really have a supply of loyalty: for I quite sympathise with the girls; feel it quite impossible, my honoured lady, to appear at the same table twice in the same toothpick.”
Mrs. Jericho, tapping her palm with the missive from Jogtrot Lodge, was descending deep into meditation. Who shall say what visions rose before her? It had always been her ambition that her girls should—in her own nervous words—“make a blow in marriage.” And she felt—felt as a mother—that, perhaps, the time was come. The girls should go armed at all points for conquest. “It shall be so,” said Mrs. Jericho, self-communing; and then she serenely smiled upon all her children.
“Proud to take your word for it, my revered lady,” said Basil. “So as I’ve got to look at another dog at Chambers,—thoughScrub’s a first-love I shall never get over; yes, that dog’s a bruised place here, I can tell you”—and the mourner pointed his fore-finger to his heart—“I’ll be back in a couple of hours. I suppose, girls, you’ll go to this fête, like the rest of ’em, in your war-paint?” (The young ladies could not tell what he meant.) “Therefore, for the honour of the family, I must start a new tooth-pick. So, the loyalty I must have, my dear madam—the loyalty, my honoured parent, or in two hours I’m cutting my name with a shilling pen-knife in the Tower of London. Good morning,” and Basil, with his best grace, saluted the hand of his mother, filliped a kiss to both the girls, and strode from the room.
“Well, he is a handsome fellow,” said Monica.
“Handsome! he’s beautiful,” cried Agatha.
“Beautiful!”—exclaimed the mother, sighing—“he’s his own father, when I first met him. Yes; every look, and every tone a Pennibacker.”
“Mr. Jericho’s in his room, ma’am,” said Edwin the page.
“Oh!” said Mrs. Jericho.