CHAPTER XV.
THE WOMAN WITH A PIPE
What had become in the meantime of Mr. Jeremiah Pennycomequick, over whose leavings such a dispute was being waged? We left him clinging to the head of a Lombardy poplar that was being swept down the valley of the Keld by the flood.
The head of a poplar was by no means the most agreeable sort of vessel in which to shoot the rapids of Fleet Lock and navigate the lower Keld-dale. In the first place it allowed the wash of the descending current to overflow it, and in the next it had no proper balance, and was disposed to revolve like a turbine in the stream. This latter propensity was presently counteracted by the branches catching and entangling about some ponderous matter in the bed, perhaps a chain from the locks. It was not possible for Mr. Pennycomequick to keep dry. He was like Moses in the cradle of bulrushes, from which the pitch calking had been omitted. He was completely drenched, because submerged except for his head and shoulders, chilled, numb, and giddy.
The tree made a plunge over the lock edge, where the stream formed a cataract, carried him under water, and came up again with him still among the branches. He had seen the hut crumble into the stream before he made his dive. When the water cleared out of his eyes, and he looked again, he could see it no more.
He threw himself on his back, with his arms interlaced among the pliant boughs, and his face towards the night sky. He saw the clouds like curd, and the moon glaring pitilessly down on him in his distress, showing him a wide field of water on all sides and help nowhere. He was too cold to cry out; he knew that it would be useless to do so. Succour was out of reach. Lying cradled among the branches, elastic as those of willow, he was fast as in a net; bedded among the twigs, he might let go his hold and would be carried on. He looked up steadily at the moon, and wondered how long it would be before his eyes stiffened and he saw the things of creation no longer. He could distinguish the shadows in the moon and make out the darkened portion of the disc. How cold and cheerless it must be yonder! A life of numbness and lack of volition and impulse must be the lot of the Selenites! Fear of death, anxiety for himself, had disappeared; only a sort of curiosity remained in his brain to know whether the condition of life in the moon was more miserable in its chill and helplessness than his present state of drifting in the cold water.
Then he turned his head to take a last look at Mergatroyd. The lights were twinkling there. He could distinguish those of his own house on the hill-slope. He would never again set foot within its doors, enjoy the comfort of his fireside; never see Salome again. And then in that odd, incongruous manner in which droll thoughts rise up in the mind at the most inappropriate moments, it occurred to him that there was to be anchovy-toast for breakfast. He had been asked by Mrs. Cusworth if he liked it, and she had promised it him. And as he drifted, immersed in the deadeningly cold brown water, at the thought the taste of anchovy came into his mouth.
The valley of the Keld contracted – a spur of hill ran forward from the ridge on which Mergatroyd was built, and forced the river and canal to describe a semi-circular bend. The line, however, had bored itself a way through the hill, and came out beyond, in a park, among stately but blackened elms. The spur contracted the volume of the flood, which therefore became deeper and more rapid.
With his numbed hands Mr. Pennycomequick unloosed his white neckcloth, and with it bound his arm to a branch of the poplar, tying the knot with one hand and his teeth, whilst the water ran through his mouth over his tongue, and washed away from it the smack of anchovy that fancy had conjured to it.
Then he resigned himself to his lot. A dull sense of being in the power of an inexorable fate came over him, the eagerness for life had faded away, and was succeeded by indifference as to what befel him, this to make way, as the cold and misery intensified, for impatience that all might be over speedily. He still looked up at the moon, but no longer cared what the life of the Selenites was like, it was their concern, not his. The thought of anchovy toast no longer had power to bring its flavour to his tongue. Then the moon passed behind a drift of vapour that obscured but did not extinguish it, and Jeremiah, half-unconsciously with his stiffening lips, found himself murmuring the words of Milton which he had learned at school, and had not repeated since:
'The wandering moon
Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that hath been led astray
Through the heav'ns wide pathless way,
And oft, as if her head she bow'd,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.'
And so murmuring again, and more brokenly, at last fell into complete unconsciousness.
The critic who generally hits on those particulars in a story which are facts, to declare them to be impossibilities, and those characters to be unnatural, which are transcripts from nature, is certain to attack the author for making a man who trembles on the confines of death think of anchovy toast and quote 'Il Penseroso;' to which criticism we answer that he has had no experience such as that described, or he would know that what has been described above is in accordance with nature.
For how long Mr. Pennycomequick was unconscious he never knew, and no one, of course, was able to inform him. When he returned to himself, he found that he was lying in a contracted and queer bed, in the side of a chamber equally contracted and queer, tenanted, as far as he could make out, only by a contracted and queer human being, whose sex was not to be determined at first glance. If Mr. Pennycomequick had recovered his sense of smell at the same time that he recovered his other senses, he would have supposed that during the period of unconsciousness he had been steeped in creosote, for the atmosphere about him was charged with the odour of tar.
He was, in fact, on board a coal-barge, in the little low cabin, and in the little low berth that occupied almost an entire side of the cabin. This cabin was but five feet high; it was lighted by the hatchway, through which the steps descended into it. At the extremity, opposite the hatch, was an iron stove, the pipe from which poked through the deck above. At this stove was done all the cooking ever done in this establishment, and all the washing supposed to be necessary in it, as a concession to public prejudice. On the side opposite Mr. Pennycomequick's berth was another, on which were heaped gowns, coats, wading-boots, a frying-pan, a bird-cage, a broken jug, Tom Treddlehoyle's 'Bairnsley-Folks' Almanack,' and a Bible. When that berth was tenanted by a human inmate, then the gowns, coats, boots, frying-pan, bird-cage, broken beer-jug, almanack and Bible were transferred to the floor.
Near the stove, peeling potatoes, and as she peeled them chucking the peelings on to the berth, with its accumulation of gowns, coats, frying-pan and other articles, was a woman wearing a man's black felt wide-awake, a man's coat, and smoking a mahogany-coloured pipe.
Her face was so brown, rugged, and masculine, that it was only possible to determine her sex when she stood up. Then she revealed petticoats, short, and fastened together between the calves, so as to convert them into something like Turkish trousers. Beneath them protruded feet as big as those of a man, encased in stout boots.
'Bless me!' exclaimed Mr. Pennycomequick. 'Where am I?'
Then the woman half rose. She could not stand upright in the cabin, she was so tall; and she came over to the berth in stooping posture.
'Eh, lad, tha'rt wick! Dos't a' want to know wheer tha' art? Why, for sure, tha'rt i't Conquering Queen, as carries coils t' Goole.'
'How came I here?'
'Ah reckon ah hugged (drew) thee aht o't water mysen. Ah saw thee floatin' by on tha' rig (back) taizled like i' an owd tree. Sea (so) I had thee aht i' a jiffy. If ah hed'dnt, tha'd been dead long agone. Hev naw a sup o' tea, and we'll talk after.'
Mr. Pennycomequick tried to move – to raise himself – but he was stiff in all his joints, and unable to stir more than his head.
'Weel naw!' exclaimed the woman, 'tha'rt wor nor I thowt. Ah be main sorry for thee. Ah'll bring t' peggy-tub, and turn't upside daan, and sot me a top, t'll do as weel as owt Ah can talk ta thee a bit – I da'ant mind. But I'm glad tha'rt better, lad. Come na,' if tha woant ha' no tea, mebbe tha'll tak a sup o' tar-water.'
By degrees Mr. Pennycomequick got to understand how he had been rescued, and where he was.
The flood had caught the Conquering Queen coal barge some way below Mergatroyd, where the land was flat, and where accordingly the water had spread and its violence was expended. It had snapped the cable that fastened the boat, and she had been carried on down the canal. She had not been lifted and stranded beyond the banks, but had gone along with the current in the proper course. The Conquering Queen was the property of Ann Dewis, who inhabited and managed her, along with a boy, a gawky lad of fifteen, all legs and arms, which became entangled among ropes and chains, and stumbled over lumps of coal and mooring posts, who never descended the ladder without slipping and falling to the bottom in a heap; and whose face and body, if not perpetually begrimed with coal dust, would have shown blue with bruises.
Ann Dewis had given up her berth to the man she had drawn out of the water, and slept on the floor beside the clothing, bird-cage, cooking utensils, and literature sacred and profane.
'Sure sartain,' said Mrs. Dewis, 't'ull be a long time wal (until) thar't better; and curias it es, but all wor profezied i' Tom Treddlehoyle i' hes predicshons for 1870. Jest yo listen till this. November: Ah look for menny foakes bein' brawt low, throo abaht t' middle ta t'end a' t'munth; hahiver, theaze a good prospecht a' ther' sooin lookin' up agean, if it is at they're laid flat a' ther' back. T'es fortunate these floods doant come offance (often) or we'd a' be ruined. Looik here, lad, ah'l clap t' pot o't'stove an' mak thee poultices for thy joints.'
Six weeks were passed by Mr. Jeremiah Pennycomequick in the cabin of the Conquering Queen, in great pain, sometimes in delirium, for he was attacked with rheumatic fever. Throughout his illness he was attended indefatigably by Ann Dewis. She called in no doctor, she procured no medicine. The sole remedy she knew and favoured, and which she exhibited against all diseases, was tar-water, a remedy easily made on board the barge, of material always at hand.
Ann Dewis was reduced to temporary inactivity by the destruction wrought by the flood. The canal was closed for repairs, and the repairs were likely to consume many months. Accordingly she could no longer ply between the coalpits and the wharf on the Humber. This enforced inactivity enabled her to devote her undivided attention to her patient. She had no house of her own – not an acre; no, not a foot of garden ground of her own in any of the various forms of ownership – freehold, copyhold or leasehold. She had no other home than her barge. She paid no taxes – no rates; the only charges that fell on her were the dues levied at the locks. And 'Darn it!' said Ann; 'that flood will ha' sent up the dues like scaldin' water sends up t'momenter.'
She belonged to no parish, came into no census, was attached to no denomination, and was identifiable as a Yorkshire woman of the West Riding only by her brogue. When the fever quitted Jeremiah Pennycomequick, it left him weak as a child. He lay in the berth powerless to rise, and long after his mind had cleared his joints were swollen and painful. He foresaw that many weeks, perhaps months, must elapse before he regained his former strength.
She did her best to amuse her patient as well as to cure him. She read to him the richest jokes out of 'Tom Treddlehoyle,' and puzzled him with questions from the same, compounded as conundrums. But what interested him chiefly was her account of herself.
She had been married, but that was nowt but a scratch, she said. 'Wunce I thowt for sartain sure ah'd hev to give up to be Dewis, and stick to the Schofield.'
'Schofield!' said Mr. Pennycomequick, and passed his hand over his brow. His memory was somewhat affected. The name was familiar to him, but he did not recollect when he had heard it.
'Eh, lad, it wor a thing of no consekans. Ah'll tell thee t' tale.' For the benefit of south country readers we will to some extent modify the broad West Riding brogue.
'It was na' lang that Earle and I were acquainted – '
'Earle?'
'Eh, every man has two names, as he has two legs, and two arms, and two eyes and ears. He was called Earle Schofield for sartain; and he used to come and visit me in t' Conquering Queen. My mother was dead, and had left me a tidy bit o' brass, for shoo was a saving woman, an' shoo had been cap'n, boatswain, steward, and all to t' Conquering Queen ever sin' my father died. All t' brass he and she had addled (earned) was kip in – but there I wi'nt tell thee, not that I mistrust thee, but we're all frail creeturs, and terribly tempted. So there, lad, this here pipe belonged to Earle. He wor a bit o' a gentleman, he wor. He'd niver been in a coil barge trading up an' down t'canal. We'd a famous scheme atwixt us. He was to set up a coil store an' a hoffis by t'warf at Hull, an' he sed that he knew o' a chap as 'ud sell t'good-will and all his custom for a hundred pounds. And Earle – he wor an uncommon clever hand at accounts, he figured it a' up on a slate, and he showed me how great 'ud be our profits. And he to'd me that it wor the coil marchants as got a' t'profits out o' t'sale o' coils, and I got nobbut their crumbs, as I may say. And he showed me how if he sold and I carried coils we'd be rich in no time, and after we'd got married then I tow'd him where I kep' t'brass. I didn't tell him before – believe me. We were sitting on this deck, drawed up by t'side o' t'wharf at Hull, as he showed a' that, and as I tow'd him where I had my brass. Then he took t'pipe he wor smoking out o' his mouth and put it into mine, and sed I wor to kip it aleet wall he came back, he'd go an' deposit a hundred pound, he sed, for t'good-will, and secure the hoffis at wunce. And I let him take all my brass, for sartain I thow't as we'd been married for three weeks all war right, and what was mine was his. He took t'brass, and he went ashore, and t'last words he sed to me wor, "Ann, keep t'pipe aleet wall I return." I waited, but from that day I've niver clapt eyes on him.'
'And your money?'
'Nor on that noather.'
'What a great rascal he must have been!'
'Nay, I won't say that. We're a' sinful creeturs, and our temptations is terrible. Wot became o' him I can'na say, but fur sure sartin he'd a mind to retarn to me, or he'd not ha' tow'd me keep t'pipe aleet. Wha can tell, he may ha' got a drop o' liquor on shore, and ha' been robbed, and then ashamed to come back and tell me; or he may ha' found t'chap none so ready to sell t'good-will – and so ha' gone about looiking for summat else and not found it – or he may ha' been took by them rampagin' an' roarin' lions, as seek whom they can lock up – the perlice. Nay! I'll not condemn him, and allow that he wor a rascal, for what sez Tom Treddlehoyle:
'"This world, we all naw, hez its ups and its daans,
An' shorter, wi'r time keeps windin',
An' day after day we are crost i' wir way,
Then speak of a man as yo find him."
'But I think you found him serve you badly enough,' said Mr. Pennycomequick, from his berth, 'to walk off with your savings and leave you with nothing.'
'Nay, not exactly,' answered Anne. 'There wor this pipe for wun, he left; and,' after a pause, 'there wer Jozeph. T'bairn came varra comfortin' when I wer i' a tew aboot loising ma' brass. Besides, t' lad, Joe, ha' been ov use to me as much as I paid a lad afore seven shilling a week, and he hev a' been t'same to me for six years. If tha comes ta reckon at fifty-two weeks i't year, that's eighteen pound ten per hannum; and for six year that mounts up to nigh on a hundred and ten pound, which is a scoering off of t' account.'
'And that is his pipe you are smoking?'
'Ees, for sartaen. I sed I'd keep't aleet, and if he comes back at t' end o' seven more year, I'll say, "There, Earle, is t'pipe burning, and as for't account, Joe hev a' scored it off, interest and principal."'
CHAPTER XVI.
WHO? WHAT?
It is hateful – hateful as poison – the packing, the turning out of drawers, and then the tilting of the drawers to get out the dust and grit and flue that has accumulated in the corners; the arranging of correspondence, the discrimination between valuables and things that may become valuable, and things that are not, but were valuable; the throwing away of rubbish, the consideration as to what things are to be disposed of, and if disposed of, how to be disposed of, and to whom, and all the business and care and misery of change of quarters.
And yet, how out of thorns spring roses, and out of troubles virtues come into bloom! Never, probably, in our whole career did charity, the bond of all virtues, so luxuriate, throw out such all-embracing tendrils, emit such fragrance, ripen into such fruit, as on the occasion of change of quarters. Old boots, slightly damaged bonnets, heavy battered pieces of furniture, for which a dealer would not give sixpence; articles that would fetch nothing in a sale, antiquated school-books, magazines five years old, novels that have lost their backs, games, deficient in one or two pieces, odd gloves, iron bedsteads minus their brass knobs, and that have to be tied together with wire; cracked dishes, snipped tumblers, saucepans corroded with rust – with what lavish and lordly magnificence we distribute them to all who will accept such alms.
And then – what a lesson does change of quarters teach us, to discriminate between the worthless and the valuable; and with equanimity to endure separation from things which have become interesting to us, but which we cannot remove. When the author was a boy, his life was spent in travelling on the Continent; in rambles from the Pyrenees to the plains of Hungary, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, and wherever he went, he made collections of objects of curiosity, crystals, petrifactions, dried flowers, butterflies, mediæval armour, books. Before quitting any place of sojourn for a winter, or halt for a night, his father explored every pocket and crevice of the carriage, and turned out the treasures there secreted, on which his son's heart were set and his pocket-money had been expended.
Nothing escaped his eye, nothing melted his heart. The author came to a place bringing nothing with him, and left it, carrying nothing with him away, all he acquired he was forced to leave. It was an excellent discipline for life, and yet hardly attained; even to this day he finds that he clings to trifles.
How many times since boyhood has he had to shift quarters? and each time he has experienced a struggle, and has had to surrender some things on which his heart was fixed, but from which it was, perhaps, well to be free. He recalls how one winter at Bayonne, he collected every match and spill-end that had been used for lighting cigars and candles till he had accumulated a trunk full. When, in spring, the move came, his father peremptorily refused to despatch this trunk-load of scorched paper scraps by grande or petite vitesse to Vienna, and they were consigned to the flames. When he was in Yorkshire, he had collected some prehistoric querns, stone hand-mills. When he contracted with a furniture-mover to translate his goods to the south of England, the man struck at the mill-stones, they were not in his bond. The author had to resign them; but his heart aches for those stones to this day.
When a family has inhabited a house for nigh on twenty years, it is incredible what accumulations have gathered round them, how every corner, cupboard, closet, drawers, the cellar, the attic are stuffed with articles of various utility and importance, or let us rather say of different degrees of inutility and worthlessness; none of which, however, can be spared without a pang, for to every one of them a recollection clings.
The Cusworths had been, not indeed twenty years, but approaching that time, in the house of Mr. Pennycomequick. Every room, the garden, the attic, were crowded with reminiscences, mostly pleasant; to the ordinary eye a thin veil of soot took the brilliance and sharpness off all things in this smoke-laden part of England, but to the girls, Salome and Janet, everything was overlaid with the gold dust of childish memories. Mrs. Cusworth had come to regard the house as a quiet home in which she might spend her declining days, without a care for the future of her children, for Janet was provided for, and Salome would not be forgotten. But now, with the loss of Mr. Pennycomequick, the prop had fallen on which the future was reared; and suddenly she found herself in bad health, obliged to think about her prospects, and leave the house in quest of another home.
Mrs. Sidebottom, with the eagerness with which some women fly to do a spiteful thing, had taken advantage of her position to give the widow notice to remove.
The Cusworths had received notice to move within a fortnight, and it was not easy for them to find quarters into which to go. Salome had sought lodgings in Mergatroyd, but in vain. There none were vacant, and she had been obliged to engage temporarily a part of a house in the nearest manufacturing town, a house that was called Redstone, but which was popularly known only as Blackhole. It was a low house, surrounded by tall factories that crushed it into a well between them, into which no sun could penetrate, but which received all day and night showers of condensed soot. She counted herself fortunate in having secured this, and she had already given orders for the removal to it of some of the packing-cases filled with their goods.
The time had been one of strain to Salome, already distressed by the loss of her best friend, and the subsequent doubt about the identity of the corpse recovered. Mrs. Sidebottom had gone out of her way to make her feel uncomfortable, had said ill-natured things, had slighted her mother, and irritated Janet to the verge of an outbreak. She had been obliged to exercise great self-control, to disregard the sneers of Mrs. Sidebottom, to screen her mother and hold her sister in check. She had been painfully affected, moreover, by the mistrust Philip had shown, and though he had apologized for what he had said, the wound dealt to her self-respect was unhealed. She felt this blow the more because she had unconsciously reposed confidence in Philip; not that he had given her reason for reliance on him, but that she had felt the need for someone to whom to look, now that Mr. Jeremiah Pennycomequick was removed, and she had trusted that he would be honourable and considerate in his conduct, as behoved a Pennycomequick.
To add to her difficulties, her mother had suddenly and unaccountably had a relapse, was seriously shaken, and in no condition to be moved. Unaccountably, for the attack had not come on when it might have been expected – on hearing the news of the death of the old manufacturer. She had borne up marvellously under this trial; the bringing the corpse to the house and the funeral had not materially affected her. She had spoken of the necessity she was under of leaving the house with sorrow, indeed, but not agitation; she had taken some interest in the assortment and packing of the family goods; and then, in the midst of the preparations to depart, had been taken alarmingly ill.
When the funeral was over, Mrs. Sidebottom had returned to her own house. All necessity for her remaining in that of her deceased half-brother was gone. Nevertheless, she was in and out of the house several times during the day.
One evening she had left after nine, having dined there with her nephew, who had moved into his uncle's apartments, and had enjoyed some of her brother's best wine.
At half-past nine the front-door was locked and chained, and the gaslight in the hall turned down, but not extinguished. Old Mr. Pennycomequick had kept early hours, and the servants observed the same routine of meals and work that had been instituted in his time, as they had received no orders to the contrary. Now that Philip had taken possession of his uncle's apartments on the first-floor, and went to the mill at the same hours, and took his meals at the same hours, the house seemed to have relapsed into its old ways, out of which it had been bustled by the advent of Mrs. Sidebottom.
Mr. Pennycomequick's apartments consisted of a study, with a bedroom opening out of it. The front of the house on the same floor was taken up with a drawing-room, rarely occupied. A third door on the same landing admitted into the spare bedroom, in which the corpse of the drowned man had laid till the burial.
On the ground-floor were two rooms, corresponding to those occupied by Mr. Pennycomequick, and these had been given up to Mrs. Cusworth, one – the outer – served as sitting-room. The dining-room and a breakfast-room – the latter under the spare bed-chamber – completed the arrangement on the ground-floor. Formerly Mrs. Cusworth and her daughters had slept on the story above the drawing-room and Mr. Pennycomequick's suite, and Salome's apartment were there still; but of late, owing to her mother's infirmity, her bed had been transferred to the inner room, which had been transformed from the housekeeper's office to a sleeping-apartment for the old lady, to whom it was injurious to ascend many steps; and as it was not advisable that Mrs. Cusworth should be alone at night, Salome had slept in the room with her. Since the arrival of Janet, however, she had returned to her apartment upstairs, as the old lady had expressed a wish to have her married daughter with her.
'My dear,' she had said, 'it is not much more that I can expect to see of Janet. She will have to return to her husband before long, and I am not likely to live to have the pleasure of many of her visits; so, if you do not mind, Salome, I should wish her to sleep in my room whilst she is here, that I may have her by me as much as I may.'
Salome had accordingly returned to her chamber upstairs. She was glad that at this time her sister was there to relieve her of attendance on her mother, whilst she went in search of lodgings and was engaged in packing.
'I am expecting a summons to return to Elboeuf every day,' said Janet, 'directly I get the news of the rout of the Prussians. Providence never intended that barbarism should prevail over culture; and the French have such accomplished manners, and such perfect taste – why, the German ladies I have seen have no idea how to dress.'
'You forget, Janet,' said the sister, 'that the barbarians did, of old, overwhelm Roman civilization.'
'Oh, yes; but only that they might assimilate the culture, and become civilized themselves. If the result of this wretched war were that German ladies learned how to put on their clothes tastefully, I almost forgive Sedan and Metz.'
Salome had as little knowledge of the arrangement arrived at between Mrs. Sidebottom and Philip as has the reader, and for the same reason. It had not been divulged. She, of course, could ask no questions. The reader does, but he must wait. He shall be told presently. Suffice it for him to know that Mrs. Sidebottom had, unopposed, sworn to her brother's death, without will, and had taken out letters of administration.
Philip did not have his meals with the Cusworth party; they were served to him apart.
On this evening, after the house was locked up, servants had retired to bed, Salome was in her own room; she had been engaged there for some hours, examining and sorting the house-bills, and destroying such as were not required to be preserved. When this was done, she began to pack her little library in a deal case, first wrapping each volume carefully in newspaper. As she did this she came on a garden manual that Mr. Pennycomequick had given her on her birthday when fifteen. The sight of this book suddenly reminded her of a score of hyacinth-bulbs she had put in a dark closet under the stairs, in which to form shoots before they were put in their glasses. The book had advised this as a corrective to the development of leaf at the expense of flower. In this cupboard, which Janet and she as children had named the Pummy closet – a name that had adhered to it ever since – she kept as well sundry garden requisites.
Fearful lest she should forget the bulbs if she postponed their removal to another time, and accustomed, on principle, to do at once whatever occurred to her mind as a thing that had to be done, she gently opened her door and lightly descended the staircase.
The steps were carpeted, so that her foot was noiseless. She had no need of a candle, for the gas, though reduced, still burnt in the hall.
She reached the bottom quickly; she was unwilling to disturb and alarm her mother, and so trod noiselessly through the hall to the closet door, beneath the steps. Her garden-gloves, some tools in a little box that had been given her by Janet, and the bulbs were there, the latter, in a row, showing stout horns. She gathered these bulbs into a chip-basket, and took the rest of her possessions in the other hand. Thus encumbered, she closed the Pummy closet door with her foot, put down the basket, turned the key, took up the basket and stepped out into the hall with the intention of reascending the stairs as noiselessly as she had come down.
But before she had reached the foot and had turned the balustrade, she was startled to see a figure on the first landing. At first shock she thought it was Mr. Jeremiah Pennycomequick dressed to go out, as she had seen him on the night that he disappeared. If the hour was not now midnight, it was near it.