Stephen Radcliffe did not bargain for that. It nearly always happens that in doing an ill deed we overreach ourselves in some fatal way. Knowing that no sound, though it were loud enough to awaken the seven sleepers, could penetrate from that upper room through the massive walls of the house, and be heard below, Stephen thought his secret was safe, and that Frank might call out, if he would, until Doomsday. It never occurred to him that the cries could get out through that unglazed window in the tower wall, and set the neighbourhood agog with curiosity. They did, however: and Stephen, whatever amount of dread it might have brought his heart, was unable to stop them. Not until Frank had been for some months chained in his den, did it occur to himself to make those cries, so hopeless was he of their being heard below to any good purpose. But one winter night when the wind was howling outside, and the sound of it came booming into his ears through the window, it struck him that he might be heard through that very opening; and from that time his voice was raised in supplication evening after evening. Stephen could do nothing. He dared not brick the opening up lest some suspicion or other should be excited outside; he could not remove Frank, for there was no other secret room to remove him to, or where his cries would not have been heard below. He ordered Frank to be still: he threatened him; he once took a horsewhip to him and laid it about his shoulders. All in vain. When Frank was alone, his cries for release never ceased. Stephen and his household put it upon the birds and the wind, and what not; but they grew to dread it: and Stephen, even at this time, of discovery, was perpetually ransacking his brains for some safe means of departing for Canada and carrying Frank with him. The difficulty lay in conveying Frank out of the Torr and away. They might drug him for the bare exit, but they could not keep him perpetually drugged; they could not hinder him coming in contact with his fellow-men on the journey and transit, and Frank had a tongue in his head. No: Stephen saw no hope, no safety, but in keeping him where he was.
“But how could you allow yourself to be brought up here?—and fastened to a stake in this shameful fashion?” was nearly the first question of the Squire when he could collect his senses: and he asked it with just a touch of temper, for he was beginning to think that Frank, in permitting it, must have been as simple as the fool in a travelling circus.
“He got me up by stratagem,” answered Frank, tossing his long hair back from his face. “While we were sitting at supper the night we arrived here, he began talking about the wonderful discovery he had made of the staircase and opening to the tower. Naturally I was interested; and when Stephen proposed to show it me at once, I assented gladly. Becca came with us, saying she’d carry the candle. We got up here, and were all three standing in the middle of the floor, just where we are standing now, when I suddenly had a chain—this chain—slipped round my waist, and found myself fastened to the wall, a prisoner.”
“But why did you come to the Torr at all?” stamped the Squire, while old Jones stretched out his hands, as if putting imaginary handcuffs on Stephen’s. “Why did you not go at once to your own home—or come to us? When you knew you were going to leave Dale’s, why didn’t you write to say so?”
“When events are past and gone we perceive the mistakes we have made, though we do not see them at the time,” answered Frank, turning his blue eyes from one to the other of us. “Dr. Dale did not wish me to quit his house quite so soon; though I was perfectly well, he said another month there would be best for me. I, however, was anxious to get away, more eager for it than I can tell you—which was only natural. Stephen whispered to me that he would accomplish it, but that I must put myself entirely in his hands, and not write to any one down here about it. He got me out, sooner than I had thought for: sooner, as he declared, than he had thought for himself; and he said we must break the news to Annet very cautiously, for she was anything but strong. He proposed to take me to the Torr for the first night of my return, and give me a bed there; and the following day the communication could be made to Annet at Pitchley’s Farm, and then I might follow it as soon as I pleased. It all seemed to me feasible; quite the right way of going to work; in fact, the only way: I thanked Stephen, and came down here with him in all confidence.”
“Good patience!” cried the Squire. “And you had no suspicions, Frank Radcliffe!—knowing what Stephen was!”
“I never knew he would do such a dastardly deed as this. How could I know it?”
“Oh, come along!” returned the Squire, beginning to stumble down the narrow, dark stairs. “We’ll have the law of him.”
The key of the chain had been found hanging on a nail outside the door, out of poor Frank’s reach. He was soon free; but staggered a little when he began to descend the stairs. Duffham laid hold of him behind, and Tod went before.
“Thank God! thank God!” he broke out with reverent emotion, when the bright sun burst upon him through the windows, after passing the dark lumber-room. “I feared I might never see full daylight again.”
“Have you any clothes?” asked Duffham. “This coat’s in rags.”
“I’m sure I don’t know whether I have or not,” replied Frank. “The coat is all I have had upon me since coming here.”
“Becca’s a beast,” put in Tod. “And I hope Stephen will have his neck stretched.”
Eunice Gibbon was nowhere to be seen below. The premises were deserted. She had made a rush to her brother’s, the gamekeeper’s lodge, to warn Becca of what was taking place. We started for Dyke Manor, Frank in our midst, leaving the Torr, and its household gods, including the cackling fowls and the dinnerless pigs, to their fate. Mr. Brandon met us at the second field, and he took Frank’s hand in silence.
“God bless you, lad! So you have been shut up there!”
“And chained to a stake in the wall,” cried the Squire.
“Well, it seems perfectly incredible that such a thing should take place in these later days. It reads like an episode of the dark ages.”
“Won’t we pay out Master Radcliffe for ’t!” put in old Jones, at work with his imaginary handcuffs again. “I should say, for my part, it ’ud be a’most a case o’ transportation to Botany Bay.”
Frank Radcliffe was ensconced within Dyke Manor (sending Mrs. Todhetley into hysterics, for she had known nothing), and Duffham undertook the task of breaking it to Frank’s wife. Frank, when his hair should have been trimmed up a little, was to put himself into a borrowed coat and to follow on presently.
Pitchley’s Farm and Pitchley’s roses lay hot and bright under the summer sunshine. Mr. Duffham went straight in, and looked about for its mistress. In the sitting-rooms, in the kitchen, in the dairy: he and his cane, and could not see her.
“Missis have stepped out, sir,” said Sally, who was scrubbing the kitchen table. “A fearful headache she have got to-day.”
“A headache, has she!” responded Duffham.
“I don’t think she’s never without one,” remarked Sally, dipping her brush into the saucer of white sand.
“Where’s Mr. Skate?”
“Him? Oh, he be gone over to Alcester market, sir.”
“You go and find your mistress, Sally, and say I particularly wish to speak with her. Tell her that I have some very good news for her.”
Sally left her brush and her sand, and went out with the message. The doctor strolled into the best parlour, and cribbed one of the many roses intruding their blooming beauty into the open window. Mr. Duffham had to exercise his patience. It seemed to him that he waited half-an-hour.
Annet came in at last, saying how sorry she was to have kept him: she had stepped over to see their carter’s wife, who was ill, and Sally had only just found her. She wore her morning gown of black and white print, with the small net widow’s cap on her bright hair. But for the worn look in her face, the sad eyes, she was just as pretty as ever; and Duffham thought so.
“Sally says you have some good news for me,” she observed with a poor, faint smile. “It must be a joke of yours, Mr. Duffham. There’s no news that could be good for me.”
“Wait till you hear it,” said he. “You have had a fortune left you! It is so good, Mrs. Frank Radcliffe, that I’m afraid to tell you. You may go into a fit; or do some other foolish thing.”
“Indeed no. Nothing can ever have much effect on me again.”
“Don’t you make too sure of that,” said Duffham. “You’ve never felt quite sure about that death of your husband, up at Dales, have you? Thought there was something queer about it—eh?”
“Yes,” she said. “I have thought it.”
“Well, some of us have been looking into it a little. And we find—in short, we are not at all sure that—that Frank did die.”
“Oh!”—her hands lifting themselves in agitation—“what is it, sir? You have come to disclose to me that my husband was murdered.”
“The contrariness of woman!” exclaimed Duffham, giving the floor a thump with his cane. “Why, Mrs. Frank Radcliffe, I told you as plainly as I could speak, that it was good news I brought. So good, that I hardly thought you could bear it with equanimity. Your husband was not murdered.”
Poor Annet never answered a word to this. She only gazed at him.
“And our opinion is that Frank did not die at all; at Dale’s, or elsewhere. Some of us think he is alive still, and—now don’t you drop down in a heap.”
“Please go on,” she breathed, turning whiter than her own cap. “I—shall not drop down.”
“We have reason to think it, Mrs. Frank. To think that he is alive, and well, and as sane in mind as you’d wish him to be. We believe it, ma’am; we all but know it.”
She let her head fall back in the chair. “You, I feel sure, would not tell me this unless you had good grounds for it, Mr. Duffham. Oh, if it may but be so! But—then—what of those cries that we heard?” she added, recollecting them. “I am sure they were his.”
“Very likely. Stephen may have had him shut up in the tower, and Frank cried out to let the world know he was there. Oh, I dare say that was it. I should not wonder, Mrs. Frank, but your husband may be here to-day.”
She rose from her seat, face lightening, hands trembling. She had caught sight through the window of a small knot of people approaching the house-door, and she recognized the cut of Frank’s fair Saxon face amongst them, and the gleam of his golden hair. Duffham knew no more till she was in Frank’s arms, sobbing and crying.
Ring! knock! shake! Shake! knock! ring! It was at the front-door of the Torr, and old Jones was doing it. He had gone there to apprehend Stephen Radcliffe, a whole posse of us at his tail—where we had no business to be—and the handcuffs in his side-pocket.
By the afternoon of the day just told of, the parish was up in arms. Had Frank Radcliffe really risen from the dead, it could scarcely have caused more commotion. David Skate, for one, was frightened nearly out of his senses. Getting in from Alcester market, Sally accosted him, as he was crossing the yard, turning round from the pump to do it, where she was washing the summer cabbage for dinner.
“The master be in there, sir.”
“What master?” asked David, halting on the way.
“Why, the master hisself, Mr. Frank. He be come back again.”
To hear that a dead man has “come back” again and is then in the house you are about to enter, would astonish most of us. David Skate stared at Sally, as if he thought she had been making free with the cider barrel. At that moment, Frank appeared at the door, greeting David with a smile of welcome. The sun shone on his face, making it look pale, and David verily and truly believed he saw Frank’s ghost. With a shout and a cry, and cheeks all turned to a sickly tremor, he backed behind the pump and behind Sally. Sally, all on the broad grin, enjoyed it.
“Why, sir, it be the master hisself. There ain’t nothing to be skeered at.”
“David, don’t you know me?” called out Frank heartily; and came forth with outstretched hands.
But David did not get his cheeks right again for a good quarter-of-an-hour. And he was in a maze of wonder all day.
A warrant had been issued for the apprehension of Stephen Radcliffe of the Torr, and old Jones started off to the Torr to execute it. As if Stephen was likely to be found there! Ringing the bell, knocking at the door, shaking the handle, stood old Jones; the whole string of us behind burning to help him. It was not answered, and old Jones went at it again. You might have heard the noise over at Church Dykely.
Presently the door was drawn slowly back by Stephen Radcliffe’s daughter—the curate’s wife. She was trembling all over and looking fit to drop. Lizzy had come over from Birmingham and learned what had taken place. Naturally it scared her. She had always been the best of the bunch; and she had, of course, not known the true secret of the cries.
“I want to see Mr. Radcliffe, if you please, ma’am,” began old Jones, putting his foot inside, so that the door should not be closed again.
“My father is not here,” she answered, shaking and shivering.
“Not here!” repeated old Jones, surreptitiously stealing one hand round to feel the handcuffs.
“There’s no one in the house but myself,” she said. “When I got here, an hour or two ago, I found the place deserted.”
“I should like to see that for myself, ma’am,” returned incredulous old Jones.
“You can,” she answered, drawing back a little. For she saw how futile it would be to attempt to keep him out.
Old Jones and some more went in to the search. Not a living creature was there but herself and the dog. Stephen Radcliffe had never been back since he started for Alcester in the morning.
In fact, Stephen was not to be found anywhere, near or distant. Mrs. Stephen was not to be found. Eunice Gibbon was not to be found. They had all made themselves scarce. The women had no doubt contrived to convey the news to Stephen while he was at Alcester, and he must have lost no time in turning his back on Warwickshire.
In a day or two, a rumour arose that Stephen Radcliffe and his wife had sailed for Canada. It proved to be true. “So much the better,” said old Jones, regaling himself, just then, with cold beef in the Squire’s kitchen. “Let him go! Good shut of bad rubbish!”
Just the sentiments that prevailed generally! Canada was the best place for Stephen the crafty. It spared us further sight of his surly face and saved the bother of a prosecution. He took only his own three hundred a-year with him; the Squire, for Frank, had resumed the receipt of the other three. And Lizzy, the daughter, with a heap of little ones at her skirts, remained in possession of the Torr until it should be taken. She had charge to let it as soon as might be.
Pitchley’s Farm resumed its bustle and its sounds of everyday, happy life. The crowds that flocked to it to shake hands with Frank and welcome his wonderful resuscitation were beyond telling. Frank had sworn a solemn oath never to drink again: he never would, God helping him. He knew that he never should, he whispered one day to Mr. Brandon, a joyous light in his face as he spoke. His mother praying for him in dying, had told him that he would overcome; she had seen that he would in that last solemn hour, for the prayer had been heard, bringing her peace. He had overcome now, he said, and he would and should overcome to the end.
And Mr. Brandon, reading the faith and the earnestness, felt as sure of it as Frank did.
Frank kept his word. And, two years later, there he was, back at the Torr again. For Stephen had died of a severely cold winter in Canada, and his son Tom had died, but not of cold, and the Torr was Frank’s.
Mrs. Stephen came back again, and took up her abode at her brother’s. She would enjoy the three hundred a-year for life, by Stephen’s will; it would then go to her daughter Lizzy—who would want it badly enough with her flock of youngsters. Becca and Eunice turned their attention to poultry, and sent rare fowls to shows, and gained prizes for them. Eunice returned long before Mrs. Stephen. She had never been out of England at all; and, finding it safe for her, put in an appearance, one winter day, at the gamekeeper’s lodge.
Frank began to make alterations at the Torr as soon as he entered it, cutting down trees, and trying to render it a little less gloomy. Annet, with a calm face of sweet content, was much occupied at that time with a young man who was just getting on his legs, propelling him before her by the help of some safety reins that she called “backstrings,” a fair child, who had the frank face and the golden curls of his father. And in all the country round about, there was not a gentleman more liked and respected than Francis Radcliffe of Sandstone Torr.
CHANDLER AND CHANDLER.
I.
Standing at right angles between North Crabb and South Crabb, and from two to three miles distant, was a place called Islip. A large village or small town, as you might please to regard it; and which has not a railroad as yet.
Years and years before my days, one Thomas Chandler, who had served his articles to a lawyer in Worcester, set up in practice for himself at Islip. At the same time another lawyer, one John Paul, also set up at Islip. The two had no wish to rival one another; but each had made his arrangements, and neither of them would give way. Islip felt itself suddenly elevated to pride, now that it could boast of two established lawyers, when until then it had not possessed one, but concluded that both of them would come to grief in less than a twelve-month. At the twelve-month’s end, however, each was bearing steadily onwards, and had procured one or two valuable land agencies; in addition to the legal practice, which, as yet, was not much. So they kept themselves afloat: and if they had sometimes to eat bread-and-cheese for dinner, it was nothing to Islip.
In the second or third year, Mr. Chandler took his brother Jacob, who had qualified for a solicitor, into the office; and subsequently made him a partner, giving him a full half share. Islip thought it was an extravagantly generous thing of Mr. Chandler to do, and told him he had better be careful. And, after that, the years went on, and the Chandlers flourished. The business, what with the land agencies and other things, increased so much that it required better offices: and so Mr. Chandler, who had always lived on the premises, moved into a larger and a handsomer house some doors further up the street. Jacob Chandler had a pretty little place called North Villa, just outside Crabb, and walked to and fro night and morning. Both were married and had children. Their only sister, Mary Ann Chandler, had married a farmer in Gloucestershire, Stephen Cramp. Upon his death, a year or two afterwards, she came back and settled herself in a small farm near Islip, where she hoped to get along, having been left but poorly off. And that is enough by way of explanation.
I was only a little shaver, but I remember the commotion well. We were staying for the autumn at Crabb Cot; and, one afternoon, I, with Tod and the Squire, found myself on the Islip Road. I suppose we were going for a walk; perhaps to Islip; but I know nothing about that. All in a moment we saw a gig coming along at a frightful pace. The horse had run away.
“Here, you boys, get out of harm’s way!” cried the Squire, and bundled us over the fence into the field. “Bless my heart and mind, it is Chandler!” he added, as the gig drew nearer. “Chandler and his brother!”
Mr. Chandler was driving: we could see that as the gig flew past. He was a tall, strong man; and, perched up on the driving-cushion, looked like a giant compared with Jacob, who seemed no bigger than a shrimp beside him. Mr. Chandler’s face wore its usual healthy colour, and he appeared to retain all his presence of mind. Jacob sat holding on to the driving-cushion with his right hand and to the gig-wing with the left, and was just as white as a sheet.
“Dear me, dear me, I hope and trust there will be no accident!” groaned the Squire. “I hope Chandler will be able to hold in the horse!”
He set off back to North Crabb at nearly as fleet a pace as the horse, Tod after him, and I as fast as my small legs would take me. At the first turning we saw what had happened, for there was a group lying in the road, and people from the village were running up to it.
The horse had dashed at the bank, and turned them over. He was not hurt, the wretched animal. Jacob stood shivering in the highway, quitte pour la peur, as the French say; Mr. Chandler lay in a heap.
Jacob’s house was within a stone’s-throw, and they carried Mr. Chandler to it on a hurdle, and sent for Cole. The Squire went in with the rest; Tod and I sat on the opposite stile and waited. And if I am able to tell you what passed within the doors, it is owing to the Squire’s having been there and staying to the end. No need was there for Cole to tell Thomas Chandler that the end was at hand: he knew it himself. There remained no hope for him: no hope. Some complicated injury had been done him inwardly, through that fiend of a horse trampling on him; and neither Cole nor all the doctors in the world could save him.
He was carried into one of the parlours and laid upon a mattress, hastily placed upon the carpet. Somebody got another gig and drove fiercely off to fetch his wife and son from Islip. He had two sons only, Thomas and George. Thomas, sixteen years old now, was in the office, articled to his father; George was at school, too far off to be sent for. Mrs. Chandler was soon with him. She had been a farmer’s daughter, and was a meek, patient kind of a woman, who gave you the idea of never having a will of her own. The office clerks went posting about Islip to find Tom; he having been out when the gig and messenger arrived.
It chanced that Jacob Chandler’s wife had gone abroad that day, taking her daughters; so the house was empty, save for the two maid-servants. The afternoon wore on. Cole had done what he could (which was nothing), and was now waiting in the other parlour with the clergyman; who had also done all that was left to do. The Squire stayed in the room; Chandler seemed to wish it; they had always liked one another. Mrs. Chandler knelt by the mattress, holding the dying hand: Jacob stood leaning against the book-case with folded arms and looking the very picture of misery: the Squire sat on the other side, nursing his knees.
“There’s no time to alter my will, Betsy,” panted poor Chandler, who could only speak by snatches: “and I don’t know that I should alter it if I had the time. It was made when the two lads were little ones. Everything is left to you without reserve. I know I can trust you to do a mother’s part by them.”
“Always,” responded Mrs. Chandler meekly, the silent tears rolling down her cheeks.
“You will have enough for comfort. Thoughts have crossed me at times of making a fortune for you and the lads: I was working on and laying by for it. How little we can foresee the future! God alone knows what that will be, and shapes it out. Not a day, not a day can we call our own: I see it now. With your own little income, and the interest of what I have been able to put by, you can live. There will also be money paid to you yearly from the practice——”
He was stopped by want of breath. Could not go on.
“Do not trouble yourself to think of these things,” she said, catching up a sob, for she did not want to give way before him. “We shall have quite plenty. As much as I wish for.”
“And when Tom is out of his articles he will take my place, you know, and will be well provided for and help you,” said Mr. Chandler, taking up the word again. “And George you must both of you see to. If he has set his heart upon being a farmer instead of a clergyman, as I wished, why, let him be one. ‘If you are a clergyman, Georgy, you will always be regarded as a gentleman,’ I said to him the other day when he was at home, telling me he wanted to be a farmer. But now that I am going, Betsy, I see how valueless these distinctions are. Provided a man does his duty in the world and fears God, it hardly matters what his occupation in it is. It is for so short a time. Why, it seems only the other day that I was a boy, and now my few poor years are over, and I am going into the never-ending ages of immortality!”
“It shall all be as you wish, Thomas,” she whispered.
“Ay,” he answered. “Jacob, come here.”
Jacob let his arms drop, and left the book-case to stand close over his brother. Mr. Chandler lifted his right hand, and Jacob stooped and took it.
“When we drew up our articles of partnership, Jacob, a clause was inserted, that upon the death of either of us, the survivor should pay a hundred and fifty pounds a-year out of the practice to those the other should leave behind him, provided the business could afford it. You remember that?”
“Yes,” said Jacob. “I wish it had been me to go instead of you, Thomas.”
“The business will afford it well, as you know, and more than afford it: you might well double it, Jacob. But I suppose you will have to take an additional clerk in my place, some efficient man, and he must be paid. So we will let it be at the hundred and fifty, Jacob. Pay that sum to my wife regularly.”
“To be sure I will,” said Jacob.
“And when Tom shall be of age he must take my place, you know, and draw his full half share. That was always an understood thing between you and me, Jacob, if I were taken. Your own son will, I suppose, be coming in shortly: so that in later years, when you shall have followed me to a better world, the old firm will be perpetuated in them—Chandler and Chandler. Tom and Valentine will divide the profits equally, as we have divided them.”
“To be sure,” said Jacob.
“Yes, yes; my mind is at rest on the score of worldly things. I would that all dying men could be as much at ease. God bless and prosper you, Jacob! You’ll give a fatherly eye over Tom and George in my place, and lead them in straightforward paths.”
“That I will,” said Jacob. “I wish with all my heart this dreadful day’s work had never happened!”
“And so will I too,” put in the Squire. “I’ll look a bit after your two boys myself, Chandler.”
Mr. Chandler, drawing his hand from his brother, held it towards the Squire. At that moment, a suppressed stir was heard outside, and an eager voice. Tom had arrived: having run all the way from Islip.
“Where’s papa?—where’s he lying? Is he hurt very much?”
Cole appeared, marshalling him in. A well-grown young fellow for sixteen, with dark eyes, a fresh colour, and a good-natured face; altogether, the image of his father. Cole took a look down at the mattress, and saw how very much nearer something was at hand than it had been only a few minutes before.
“Hush, Tom,” he said, hastily pouring some drops into half a wine-glass of water. “Gently, lad. Let me give him this.”
Poor Tom Chandler, aghast at what he beheld, was too frightened to speak. A sudden stillness fell upon him, and he knelt down by the side of his mother. Cole’s drops did no good. There could be only a few last words.
“I never thought it would end thus—that I should not have time granted me for even a last farewell,” spoke the dying man in a faint voice and with a gasp between every word, as he took Tom’s hand. “Tom, my boy, I cannot say to you what I would.”
Tom gave a great burst as though he were choking, and was still the next minute.
“Do your duty, my boy, before God and man with all the best strength that Heaven gives you. You must some time lie as I am lying, Tom; it may be with as little warning of it as I have had: at the best, this life will last such a little while as compared with life eternal. Fear God; find your Saviour; love and serve your fellow-creatures. Make up your accounts with your conscience morning and evening. And—Tom——”
“Yes, father; yes, father?” spoke poor Tom, entreatingly, as the voice died away, and he was afraid that the last words were dying away too and would never be spoken.
“Take care of your mother and be dutiful to her. And do you and George be loving brothers to each other always: tell him I enjoined it with my closing breath. Poor George! if I could but see him! And—and—and——”
“Yes, oh yes, I will; I will indeed! What else, father?”
But there was nothing else. Just two or three faint words as death came in, and a final gasp to close them.
“God be with you ever, Tom!”
That was all. And the only other thing I recollect was seeing the sister, Mrs. Cramp, come up in a yellow chaise from the Bell at Islip, and pass into the house, as we sat on the gate. But she was just too late.
You may be sure that the affair caused a commotion. So grave a calamity had never happened at North Crabb. Mr. Chandler and his brother had started from Islip in their gig to look at some land that was going to be valued, which lay a mile or two on the other side Crabb on the Worcester Road. They had driven the horse a twelvemonth and never had any trouble with him. It was supposed that something must have been wrong with the harness. Any way, he had started, kicked, backed, and finally run away.
I saw the funeral: standing with Tod in the churchyard amidst many other spectators, and reading the inscriptions on the grave-stones while we waited. Mr. Chandler had been taken back to his house at Islip, and was brought from thence to Crabb to be buried. Tom and George Chandler came in the first mourning-coach with their Uncle Jacob and his son Valentine. In the next sat two other relatives, with the Squire and Mr. Cole.
Changes followed. Mrs. Chandler left the house at Islip, and Jacob Chandler and his family moved into it. She took a pretty cottage at North Crabb, and Tom walked to the office of a morning and home again at night. Valentine, Jacob’s only son, was removed from school at once to be articled to his father. He was fifteen, just a year younger than Tom.
Years passed on. Tom grew to be four-and-twenty, Valentine three-and-twenty. Both of them were good-looking young men, tall and straight; but Tom had the pleasanter face, address, and manners. Every one liked him. Crabb had thought when Tom attained his majority, and got his certificate as a solicitor, that his uncle would have taken him into partnership. The Squire had said it publicly. Instead of that, old Jacob gave him a hundred a-year salary to start with, and said to him, “Now we shall go on comfortably, Tom.” Tom, who was anything but exacting, supposed his uncle wished him to add a year or two to his age and some more experience, before taking him in. So he thanked old Jacob for the hundred a-year, and was contented.
George Chandler had emigrated to Canada. Which rather gave his mother a turn. Some people they knew had gone out there, purchased land, and were doing well on it; and George resolved to follow them. George had been placed with a good farmer in Gloucestershire and learnt farming thoroughly. That accomplished, he began to talk to his mother about his prospects. What he would have liked was, to take a farm on his own account. But he had no money to stock it, and his mother had none to give him. Her income, including the hundred and fifty paid to her from the business, was about four hundred pounds, all told: home living and her sons’ expenses had taken it all, leaving no surplus. “There’s nothing for me but going to Canada, mother,” said George: “I don’t see any opening for me in England. I shall be sure to get on, over there. I am healthy and steady and industrious; and those are the qualities that make way in a new country. If the worst comes to the worst, and I do not succeed, I can but come back again.” His arguments prevailed at length, and he sailed for Canada, their friends over there promising to receive and help him.
All this while Jacob Chandler had flourished. His practice had gradually increased, and he had become a great man. Great in show and expense. It was not his fault; it was that of his family: of his own will, he would never have put a foot forward out of his plain old groove. Mrs. Jacob Chandler, empty-headed, vain, and pretty, had but two thoughts in the world: the one to make her way amidst fashionable people, the other to marry her daughters well. Originally a small tradesman’s daughter in Birmingham, she was now ridiculously upstart, and put on more airs and graces in an hour than a lady born and bred would in a lifetime. Mrs. Jacob Chandler’s people had sold brushes and brooms, soaps and pickles: she had occasionally stood behind the counter and served out the soap with her own hands; and Mrs. Jacob now looked down upon Birmingham itself and every one in it.
North Villa had not been given up, though they did move to Islip. Jacob Chandler held a long lease of it, and he sub-let it for three or four years. At the end of that period it occurred to Mrs. Jacob that she should like to keep it for herself, as a sort of country house to retire to at will. As she was the grey mare, this was done; though Jacob grumbled. So North Villa was furbished up, and some new furniture put into it; and the garden, a very nice one, improved: and Mrs. Jacob, with one or other or all three of her daughters, might be frequently seen driving her pony-carriage with its handsome ponies between North Villa and Islip, streamers flying, ribbons fluttering: you would have taken it for a rainbow coming along. The girls were not bad-looking, played and sang with open windows loud enough to frighten the passers-by, and were given to speak to one another in French at table. “Voulez-vouz donner-moi la sel, Clementina?” “Voulez-vous passer-moi le moutarde, Georgiana?” “Voulez-vous envoyer-moi les poivre, Julietta?” For, as Mrs. Jacob would have told you, they had learnt French at school; and to converse in it was of course only natural to themselves, and most instructive to any visitor who might chance to be present. Added to these advantages Mrs. and the Miss Chandlers adored dress, their out-of-door toilettes being grander than a queen’s.
All this: the two houses and the company received in them; the ponies and the groom; the milliners’ bills and the dress-makers’, made a hole in Jacob Chandler’s purse. Not too much of a hole in one sense of the word; Jacob took care of that: but it prevented him from putting by all the money he wished. He made plenty of it: more than the world supposed.
In this manner matters had gone on since the departure of George Chandler for Canada. Mrs. Chandler living quietly in her home making it a happy one for her son Tom, and treasuring George’s letters from over the sea: Mrs. Jacob Chandler and her daughters keeping the place alive; Valentine getting to be a very fine gentleman indeed; old Jacob sticking to business and pocketing his gains. The first interruption came in the shape of a misfortune for Mrs. Chandler. She lost a good portion of her money through a calamity that you have heard of before—the bursting-up of Clement Pell. It left her with very little, save the hundred and fifty pounds a-year paid to her regularly by Jacob. Added to this was the hundred a-year Tom earned, and which his uncle had not increased. And this brings us down to the present time, when Tom was four-and-twenty.
Jacob Chandler sat one morning in his own room at his office, when a clerk came in and said Mrs. Chandler from Crabb was asking to see him. Cordiality had always subsisted between the two families, though they were not much together; Mrs. Chandler disliking their show; Mrs. Jacob and her daughters intensely despising one who wore black silk for best, and generally made her puddings with her own fingers. “So low-lived, you know, my dears,” Mrs. Jacob would say, with a toss of her bedecked head.
Jacob heard his clerk’s announcement with annoyance; the lines on his brow grew deeper. He had always been a shrimp of a man, but he looked like a shrivelled one now. His black clothes sat loosely upon him; his white neckcloth, for he dressed like a parson, seemed too large for his thin neck.
“Mrs. Chandler can come in,” said he, after a few moments’ hesitation. “But say I am busy.”
She came in, putting back her veil: she had worn a plain-shaped bonnet with a white border ever since her husband died. It suited her meek, kind, and somewhat homely face, on which the brown hair, streaked with grey, was banded.
“Jacob, I am sorry to disturb you, especially as you are busy; but I have wanted to speak to you for some time now and have not liked to come,” she began, taking the chair that stood near the table at which he sat. “It is about Tom.”
“What about him?” asked Jacob. “Has he been up to any mischief?”
“Mischief! Tom! Why, Jacob, I hardly think there can be such another young man as he, for steadiness and good conduct; and, I may say, for kindness. I have never heard anything against him. What I want to ask you is, when you think of making a change?”
“A change?” echoed Jacob, as if the words puzzled him, biting away at the feather of his pen. “A change?”
“Is it not time that he should be taken into the business? I—I thought—and Tom I know also thought, Jacob—that you would have done it when he was twenty-one.”
“Oh, did you?” returned Jacob, civilly.
“He is twenty-four, you know, now, Jacob, and naturally wishes to get forward in life. I am anxious that he should; and I think it is time—forgive me for saying it, Jacob—that something was settled.”
“I was thinking of raising Tom’s salary,” coolly observed Jacob; “of giving him, say, fifty pounds a-year more. Valentine has been bothering me to do the same by him; so I suppose I must.”
The fixed colour on Mrs. Chandler’s thin cheeks grew a shade deeper. “But, Jacob, it was his father’s wish, you know, that he should be taken into partnership, should succeed to his own share of the business; and I thought you would have arranged it ere this. An increase of salary is not the thing at all: it is not that that is in question.”
“Nothing can be so bad for a young man as to make him his own master too early,” cried Jacob. “I’ve known it ruin many a one.”
“You promised my husband when he was dying that it should be so,” she gently urged. “Besides, it is Tom’s right. I understood that when he was of a proper age, he was to come in, in accordance with a previous arrangement made between you and poor Thomas.”
Jacob bit the end of the pen right off and nearly swallowed it. “Thomas left all things in my hands,” said he, coughing and choking. “Tom must acquire some further experience yet.”
“When do you propose settling it, then? How long will it be first?”
“Well, that depends, you know. I shall see.”
“Will it be in another year? Tom will be five-and-twenty then.”
“Ay, he will: and Val four-and-twenty. How time flies! It seems but the other day that they were in jackets and trousers.”
“But will it be then—in another year? You have not answered me, Jacob.”
“And I can’t answer you,” returned Jacob. “How can I? Don’t you understand me when I say I must wait and see?”
“You surely will do what is right, Jacob?”
“Well now, can you doubt it, Betsy? Of course I shall. When did you hear from George?”
Mrs. Chandler rose, obliged to be satisfied. To urgently press any interest of her own was not in her nature. As she shook hands with Jacob she was struck with the sickly appearance of his face.
“Are you feeling quite well, Jacob? You look but poorly.”
“I have felt anything but well for a long time,” he replied, in a fretful tone. “I don’t know what ails me: too much work, perhaps, but I seem to have strength for nothing.”
“You should give yourself a rest, Jacob, and take some bark.”
“Ay. Good-day.”
Now it came to pass that in turning out of the house, after nodding to Tom and Valentine, who sat at a desk side by side in the room to the left, the door of which stood open, Mrs. Chandler saw the Squire on the opposite side of the street, and crossed over to him. He asked her in a joking way whether she had been in to get six and eightpenceworth of law. She told him what she had been in for, seeing no reason for concealing it.
“Bless me, yes!” cried he, in his impulsive way. “I’m sure it’s quite time Tom was in the firm. I’ll go and talk to Jacob.”
And when he got in—making straight across the street with the words, and through the passage, and so to the room without halt or ceremony—he saw Jacob leaning back in his chair, his hands thrust into his black side-pockets, and his head bent on his chest in deep thought. The Squire noticed how deep the lines in his brow had grown, just as Mrs. Chandler had.
“But you know, Jacob Chandler, that it was an agreement with the dead,” urged the Squire, in his eagerness, after listening to some plausible (and shuffling) remarks from Jacob.
“An agreement with the dead!” repeated Jacob, looking up at the Squire for explanation. They were both standing on the matting near the fender: which was filled with an untidy mass of torn and twisted scraps of paper. “What do you mean, Squire? I never knew before that the dead could make an agreement.”
“You know what I mean,” cried the Squire, hotly. “Poor Thomas was close upon death at the time you and he had the conversation: he wanted but two or three minutes of it.”
“Oh, ah, yes; that’s true enough, so far as it goes, Squire,” replied Jacob, pulling up his white cravat as if his throat felt cold.
“Well,” argued the Squire. “Did not you and he agree that Tom was to come in when he was twenty-one? Both of you seemed to imply that there existed a previous understanding to that effect.”
“There never was a word said about his coming in when he was twenty-one,” contended Jacob.
“Why, bless my heart and mind, do you suppose my ears were shut, Jacob Chandler?” retorted the Squire, beginning to rub his head with his red silk handkerchief. “I heard the words.”
“No, Squire. Think a bit.”
Jacob spoke so calmly that the Squire began to rub up his memory as well as his head. He had no cause to suppose Jacob Chandler to be other than an honourable man.
“‘When Tom shall be of age, he must take my place:’ those were I think the very words,” repeated the Squire. “I can see your poor brother’s face now as he lay down on the floor and spoke them. It had death in it.”
“Yes, it had death in it,” acquiesced Jacob, in a tone of discomfort. “What he said was this, Squire: ‘When Tom shall be of an age.’ Meaning of course a suitable age to justify the step.”
“I don’t think so: I did not hear it so,” persisted the Squire. “There was no ’an’ in it. ‘When Tom shall be of age:’ that was it. Meaning when he should be twenty-one.”
“Oh dear, no; quite a mistake. You can’t think my ears would deceive me at such a time as that, Mr. Todhetley. And about our own business too.”
“Well, you ought to know best, of course, though my impression is that you are wrong,” conceded the Squire. “Put it that it was as you say: don’t you think Tom Chandler is now quite old enough for it to be acted upon?”
“No, I don’t,” replied Jacob. “As I have just told his mother, nothing can be more pernicious for a young man than to be made his own master too early. Nine young fellows out of every ten would get ruined by it.”
“Do you think so?” asked the Squire, dubiously.
“I am sure so, Squire. Tom Chandler is steady now, for aught I know to the contrary; but just let him get the reins into his hands, and you’d see what it would be. That is, what it might be. And I am not going to risk it.”
“He is as steady-going a young man as any one could wish for; diligent, straightforward. Not at all given to spending money improperly.”
“Because he has not had it to spend. I have known many a young blade to be quiet and cautious while his pockets were empty; and as soon as they were filled, perhaps all at once, he has gone headlong to rack and ruin. How do we know that it would not be the case with Tom?”
“Well, I—I don’t think it would be,” said the Squire, with hesitation, for he was coming round to Jacob’s line of argument.
“But I can’t act upon ‘thinking,’ Squire; I must be sure. Tom will just stay on with me at present as he is; so there’s an end of it. His salary is going to be raised: and I—I consider that he is very well off.”
“Well, perhaps he’ll be none the worse for a little longer spell of clerkship,” repeated the Squire, coming wholly round. “And now good-morning. I’m rather in a hurry to-day, but I thought it right to put in a word for Tom’s sake, as I was present when poor Thomas died.”
“Good-morning, Mr. Todhetley,” answered Jacob, as he sat down to his desk again.
But he did not get to work. He bent his head on his neckcloth as before, and set on to think. What had just passed did not please him at all: for Jacob Chandler was not devoid of conscience; though it was an elastic one, and he was in the habit of deadening it at will. It was not his intention to take his nephew into partnership at all; then or later. Almost ever since the day of his brother’s funeral he had looked at matters after his own fashion, and soon grew to think that Tom had no manner of right to a share in the business; that as Thomas was dead and gone, it was all his, and ought to be all his. He and Thomas had shared it between them: therefore it was only just and proper that he, the survivor, should take it. That’s how Jacob Chandler, who was the essence of covetousness, had been reasoning, and his mind was made up.
It was therefore very unpleasant to be pounced upon in this way by two people in one morning. Their application as regarded Tom himself would not have troubled him: he knew how to put disputants off civilly, saying neither yes nor no, and promising nothing: but what annoyed him was the reminiscence they had called up of his dying brother. Jacob intended to get safely into the world above, some day, by hook or by crook; he went to church regularly, and considered himself a model of good behaviour. But these troublesome visitors had somehow contrived to put before his conscience the fact that he might be committing a lifelong act of injustice on Tom; and that, to do so, was not the readiest way of getting to heaven. Was that twelve o’clock? How the morning had passed!
“Uncle Jacob, I am going over to Brooklands about that lease. Have you any particular instructions to give me?”
It was Tom himself who had entered. A tall, good-looking, fresh-coloured young man, who had honesty and kindliness written on every line of his open face.
Jacob lifted his bent head, and drew his chair nearer his table as if he meant to set to work in earnest. But his mouth took a cross look.
“Who told you to go? I said Valentine was to go.”
“Valentine has stepped out. He asked me to go for him.”
“Where has he stepped to?”
“He did not say,” replied Tom, evasively. For he knew quite well where Valentine was gone: to the Bell inn over the way. Valentine went to the Bell a little too much, and was a little too fond of the Bell’s good liquor.
“I suppose you can go, then. No, I have no instructions: you know what to say as well as I do. We don’t give way a jot, mind. Oh, and—Tom!” added Jacob, calling him back as he went out.
“Yes, sir.”
“I am intending to raise your salary. From the beginning of next month, you will have a hundred and fifty a-year.”
“Oh, thank you, Uncle Jacob.”
Tom spoke as he in his ready good-nature felt—brightly and gratefully. Nevertheless, a shade of disappointment did cross his mind, for he thought his position in the house ought to be a different one.
“And I am sure it is quite as much as I ought to do for him,” argued Jacob with his conscience. And he put away unpleasant prickings and set to work like a house on fire.
It was one o’clock when Valentine came in. He had an excuse ready for his father: the latter, turning out of the clerks’ room, chanced to see him enter. “He had been down to Tyler’s to see if he could get that money from them.” It was an untruth, for he had stayed all the while at the Bell; and his father noticed that his face was uncommonly flushed. Old Jacob had had his suspicions before; yes, and spoken of them to Valentine: he now motioned him to go before him into the private room.
“You have been drinking, sir!”
“I!—good gracious, no,” returned Valentine, boldly, his blue eyes fearlessly meeting his father’s. “What fancies you do pick up!”
“Valentine, when I was your age I never drank a drop of anything till night, and then it was only a glass of beer with my supper. It seems to me that young men of the present day think they can drink at all hours with impunity.”
“I don’t drink, father.”
“Very well. Take care you do not. It is a habit more easily acquired than left off. Look here: I am going to give you fifty pounds a-year more. Mind you make it do: and do not spend it in waste.”
It was not very long after this that Jacob Chandler had a shock: a few months, or so. During that time he had been growing thinner and weaker, and looked so shrivelled up that there seemed to be nothing left of him. Islip, small place though it was, had a market-day—Friday;—when farmers would drive or walk in and congregate at the Bell. One afternoon, just as the ordinary was over, Jacob went to the inn, as was his general custom: he had always some business or other to transact with the farmers; or, if not, something to say. His visit to them over, he said good-day and left: but the next minute he turned back, having forgotten something. Some words fell on his ear as he opened the door.
“Ay. He is not long for this world.”
They were spoken by old Farmer Blake—a big, burly, kind-hearted man. And Jacob Chandler felt as certain that they were meant to apply to himself as though his name had been mentioned. He went into a cold shiver, and shut the door again without entering.
Was it true, he asked himself, as he walked across the street to his office: was it indeed a fact that he was slowly dying? A great fear fell upon him: a dread of death. What, leave all this beautiful sunshine, this bright world in which he was so busy, and pass into the cold dark grave! Jacob turned sick at the thought.
It was true that he had long been ailing; but not with any specific ailment. He could not deny that he was now more like a shadow than a man, or that every day seemed to bring him less of strength. Passing into his dining-parlour instead of into his private business room, he drank two glasses of wine off at once, and it seemed to revive him. He was a very abstemious man in general.
Well, if Farmer Blake did say it—stupid old idiot!—it was not obliged to be true, reflected Jacob then. People judged by his spareness: he wished he could get a little fatter. And so he reasoned and persuaded himself out of his fears, and grew sufficiently reassured to transact his business, always pressing on a Friday.
But that same evening, Jacob Chandler drove to North Villa in his gig, telling his wife he should sleep there for a week or two, for the sake of the fresh air. And the next morning, before he went to Islip, he sent for the doctor—Cole.
“People are saying you won’t live!” repeated Cole, having listened to Jacob’s confidential communication. “I don’t see why you should not live. Let’s examine you a bit. You should not take up fancies.”
Cole could find nothing particular the matter with him. He recommended him rest from business, change of air, and a generous diet. “Try it for a month,” said he.
“I can’t try it—except the diet,” returned Jacob. “It’s all very well for you to talk about rest from business, Cole, but how am I to take rest? My business could not get on without me. Business is a pleasure to me; it’s not a pain.”
“You want rest from it all the same,” said Cole. “You have stuck closely to it this many a year.”
“My mother died without apparent cause,” said Jacob, dreamily. “She seemed just to drift out of life. About my age, too.”
“That’s no reason why you should,” argued Cole.
Well, they went on, talking at one another; but nothing came of it. And Cole left, saying he would send him in some tonics to take.
By the evening it was known all over the place that Jacob Chandler was ill and had sent for Cole. People talked of it the next morning as they went to church. Jacob appeared, looking much as usual, and sat down in his pew. The next to come in was Mrs. Cramp; who walked over to our church sometimes. She stayed to dine with the Lexoms, and went to call at North Villa after dinner; finding Mrs. Jacob and the rest of them at dessert with a guest or two. Jacob was somewhere in the garden.
Mrs. Cramp found him in the latticed arbour, and sat down opposite to him, taking up her brown shot-silk gown, lest the seat should be dusty. When she told him it was the hearing of his illness which had brought her over to Crabb, he turned cross. He was not ill, he said; only a trifle out of sorts, as every one else must be at times and seasons. By dint of questioning, Mrs. Cramp, who was a stout, comely woman, fond of having her own way, got out of him all Cole had said.
“And Cole is right, Jacob: it is rest and change you want,” she remarked. “You are sure you do not need it? don’t tell me. A stitch in times saves nine, remember.”
“You know nothing about it, Mary Ann.”
“I know that you look thinner and thinner every time I see you. Be wise in time, brother.”
“Cole told me to go away to the seaside for a month. Why, what should I do, mooning for a whole month in a strange place by myself? I should be like a fish out of water.”
“Take your wife and the girls.”
“I dare say! They would only worry me with their fine doings. And look at the expense.”
“I will go with you if you like, Jacob, rather than you should go alone, though it would be an inconvenience to me. And pay my own expenses.”
“Mary Ann, I am not going at all; or thinking of it. It would be impossible for me to leave my business.”
Mrs. Cramp, turning over matters in her mind, determined to put the case plainly before him, and did so; telling him that it would be better to leave his business for a temporary period now, than to find shortly that he must leave it for ever. Jacob sat gazing out straight before him at the Malvern Hills, the chain of which lay against the sky in the distance.
“If you took my advice, brother, you would retire from business altogether. You have made enough to live without it, I suppose——”
“But I have not made enough,” he interrupted.
“Then you ought to have made it, Jacob.”
“Oughts don’t go for much.”
“What I mean is, that you ought to have made it, judging by the style in which you live. Two houses, a carriage and ponies (besides your gig), expensive dress, parties: all that should never be gone into, brother, unless the realized income justifies it.”
“It is the style we live in that has not let me put by, Mary Ann. I don’t tell you I have put nothing by: I have put a little by year by year; but it is not enough to live upon.”
“Then make arrangements for half the proceeds of the business to be given over to you. Let the two boys take to it, and——”
“Who?” cried Jacob.
“The two boys, Tom and Valentine. It will be theirs some time, you know, Jacob: let them have it at once. Tom’s name must be first, as it ought to be. Valentine——”
“I have no intention of doing anything of the kind,” interposed Jacob, sharply. “I shall keep the business in my own hands as long as I live. Perhaps I may take Valentine into it: not Tom.”
Mrs. Cramp sat for a full minute staring at Jacob, her stout hands, from which the gloves had been taken, and her white lace ruffles lying composedly on her brown gown.
“Not take Tom into the business!” she repeated, in a slow, astonished tone. “Why, Jacob, what do you mean?”
“That,” said Jacob. “Tom will stay on at a good salary: I shall increase it, I dare say, every two years, or so; but he will not come into the firm.”
“You can’t mean what you say.”
“I have meant it this many a year past, Mary Ann. I have never intended to take him in.”
“Jacob, beware! No luck ever comes of fraud.”
“Of what? Fraud?”
“Yes; I say fraud. If you deprive Tom of the place that is justly his, it will be a cheat and a fraud, and nothing short of it.”
“You have a queer way of looking at things, Mrs. Cramp. Who has kept the practice together all these years, but me? and added to it little by little, and made it worth double what it was; ay, and more than double? It is right—right, mind you, Mary Ann—that my own son should succeed to it.”
“Who made the practice in the first place, and took you into it out of brotherly affection, and made you a full partner without your paying a farthing, and for seventeen or eighteen years was the chief prop and stay of it?” retorted Mrs. Cramp. “Why, poor Thomas; your elder brother. Who made him a promise when he was lying dying in that very parlour where your wife and children are now sitting, that Tom should take his proper place in the firm when he was of age, and his half-share with it, according to agreement? Why you. You did, Jacob Chandler.”
“That was all a mistake,” said Jacob, shuffling his thin legs and wrists.
“I will leave you,” said Mrs. Cramp. “I don’t care to discuss questions while you are in this frame of mind. Is this all the benefit you got from the parson’s sermon this morning, and the text he gave out before it? That text: think of it a bit, brother Jacob, and perhaps you’ll see your way to acting differently. Remember,” she added, turning back to him for the last word, which she always had, somehow, “that cheating never prospers in the long run. It never does, Jacob; never: for where it is crafty cheating, hidden away from the sight of man, it is seen and noted by God.”
Her brown skirts (all the shades of a copper tea-kettle) disappeared round the corner by the mulberry-tree, leaving Jacob very angry and uncomfortable. Angry with her, uncomfortable in himself. Do what he would, he could not get that text out of his mind—and what right had she to bring it cropping up to him in that inconvenient way, he wondered, or to speak to him about such matters at all. The verse was a beautiful verse in itself; he had always thought so: but it was not pleasant to be tormented by it—and all through Mary Ann! There it was haunting his memory again!
“Keep innocency, and take heed unto the thing that is right: for that shall bring a man peace at the last.”
Jacob Chandler grew to look a little fresher, though not stouter, as the weeks went on: the drive, night and morning, seemed to do him good. Meeting Cole one day, he told him he felt stronger, and did not see why he should not live to be ninety. With all his heart, Cole answered, but most people found seventy long enough.
All at once, without warning, a notice appeared in the local papers, stating that Jacob Chandler had taken his son Valentine into partnership. Mrs. Chandler read it as she sat at breakfast.
“What does it mean, Tom?” she asked.
“I don’t know what it means, mother. We have heard nothing about it at the office.”
“Tom, you may depend your uncle Jacob has done it, and that he does not intend to take you in at all,” spoke Mrs. Chandler, in her strong conviction. “I shall go to him.”
She finished her breakfast and went off there and then, catching Jacob just as he was turning out of the white gate at North Villa to mount his gig: for he still came over to Crabb to sleep. The newspaper was in her hand, and she pointed to the advertisement.
“What does it mean, Jacob?” she asked, just as she had a few minutes before asked of Tom.
“Mean!” said Jacob. “It can’t have more than one meaning, can it? I’ve thought it best to let Val’s name appear in the practice, and made over to him a small share of the profits. Very small, Betsy. He won’t draw much more than he has been drawing as salary.”
“But what of Tom?” questioned poor Mrs. Chandler.
“Of Tom? Well, what of him?”
“When is he to be taken in?”
“Oh, there’s time enough for that. I can’t make two moves at once; it could not be expected of me, Betsy. My son is my son, and he had to come in first.”
“But—Jacob—don’t you think you ought to carry out the agreement made with Tom’s father—that you are bound in honour?” debated Mrs. Chandler, in her meek and non-insisting way.
“Time enough, Betsy. We shall see. And look there, my horse won’t stand: he’s always fresh in the morning.”
Shaking her hand hastily, he stepped up, took the reins from the man, and was off in a trice, bowling along at a quicker pace than usual. The poor woman, left standing there and feeling half-bewildered, saw Mrs. Jacob at one of the open windows, and crossed the lawn to speak.
“I came up about this announcement,” she said. “It is so strange a thing; we can’t understand it at all. Jacob should take Tom into partnership. Especially now that he has taken Valentine.”
“Do you think so?” drawled Mrs. Jacob; who wore a pink top-knot and dirty morning wrapper, and minced her words more than usual, for she thought the more she minced them the finer she was. “Dear me! I’m sure I don’t know anything about it. All well at home, I hope? I won’t ask you in, for I’m going to be busy. My daughters are invited to a garden-party this afternoon, and I must give directions about the trimming of their dresses. Good-morning.”
Back went Mrs. Chandler, and found her son watching for her at the door, waiting to hear what news she brought, before setting out on his usual walk.
“Your uncle slips through it like an eel, Tom,” she began. “I can make nothing of him one way or another. He does not say he will not take you in, but he does not say he will. What is to be done?”
“Nothing can be done that I know of, mother,” replied Tom; “nothing at all. Uncle Jacob holds the power in his own hands, you see. If it does not please him to give me my lawful share, we cannot oblige him to do it.”
“But how unjust it will be if he does not!”
“Yes. I think so. But, it seems to me there’s little else but injustice in the world,” added Tom, with a light smile. “You would say so if you were in a lawyer’s office and had to dive into the cases brought there. Good-bye, mother mine.”
Pretty nearly a year went on after this, bringing no change. “Jacob Chandler and Son, Solicitors, Conveyancers, and Land Agents,” flourished in gilt letters on the front-door at Islip, and Jacob Chandler and Son flourished inside, in the matter of business. But never a move was made to take in Tom. And when Jacob was asked about it, as he was once or twice, he civilly shuffled the topic off.
But, before the year had well elapsed, Jacob was stricken down. To look at him you would have said he had been growing thinner all that while, only that it seemed impossible. This time it was for death. He had not much grace given him, either: just a couple of days and a night.
He went to bed one night as well as usual, but the next morning did not get up, saying he felt “queer,” and sent for Cole. Jacob Chandler was a rare coward in illness. That fining-down process he had been going through so long had not troubled him: he thought it was only his natural constitution: and when real illness set in his fears sprang up.
“You had better stay in bed to-day,” said Cole. “I will send you a draught to take.”
“But what is it that’s the matter with me?” asked Jacob.
“I don’t know,” said Cole.
“Is it ague? Or intermittent fever coming on? See how I am shaking.”
“N—o,” hesitated Cole, either in doubt, or else because he would not say too much. “I’ll look in again by-and-by.”
Towards midday Jacob thought he’d get up, and see what that would do for him. It seemed to do nothing, except make him worse; and he went to bed again. Cole looked in three times during the day, but did not say what he thought.
In the middle of the night a paroxysm of illness came on again, and a servant ran to knock up the doctor. Jacob was shaking the very bed, and seemed in awful fear.
And in the morning he appeared to know that he had not many hours to live. Knew it by intuition, for Cole had not told him. An express went flying to Worcester for Dr. Malden: but Cole knew—and told it later—that all the physicians in the county could not save him.