Rachel Ray Part 53

"Then I wouldn't," said Tappitt, "and what's more, I won't. But brewing ain't like other businesses;--there's more in it than in most others."

"Of course there is," said Sharpit; "it isn't like any common trade."

"That's true too," said the podgy grocer.

A man usually receives some compensation for having gone through the penance of the chairman's duties. For the remainder of the evening he is ent.i.tled to the flattery of his companions, and generally receives it till they become tipsy and insubordinate. Tappitt had not the character of an intemperate man, but on this occasion he did exceed the bounds of a becoming moderation. The room was hot and the tobacco smoke was thick. The wine had been bad and the brandy was strong.

Sharpit, too, urged him to new mixtures and stronger denunciations against Rowan, till at last, at eleven o'clock, when he took himself to the brewery, he was not in a condition proper for the father of such daughters or for the husband of such a wife.

"Shall I see him home?" said the podgy grocer to Mr. Sharpit.

Tappitt, with the suspicious quickness of a drunken man, turned sharply upon the podgy and abashed grocer, and abused him for his insolence. He then made his way out of the inn-yard, and along the High Street, and down Brewery Lane to his own door, knowing the way as well as though he had been sober, and pa.s.sing over it as quickly.

Nor did he fall or even stumble, though now and again he reeled slightly. And as he went the idea came strongly upon him that Sharpit was a dangerous man, and that perhaps at this very moment he, Tappitt, was standing on the brink of a precipice. Then he remembered that his wife would surely be watching for him, and as he made his first attempt to insert the latch-key into the door his heart became forgetful of the brandy, and sank low within his breast.

How affairs went between him and Mrs. Tappitt on that night I will not attempt to describe. That she used her power with generosity I do not doubt. That she used it with discretion I am quite convinced. On the following morning at ten o'clock Tappitt was still in bed; but a note had been written by Mrs. T. to Messrs. Sharpit and Longfite, saying that the projected visit had, under altered circ.u.mstances, become unnecessary. That Tappitt's head was racked with pain, and his stomach disturbed with sickness, there can be no doubt, and as little that Mrs. T. used the consequent weakness of her husband for purposes of feminine dominion; but this she did with discretion and even with kindness. Only a word or two was said as to the state in which he had returned home,--a word or two with the simple object of putting that dominion on a firm basis. After that Mrs. Tappitt took his condition as an established fact, administered to him the comforts of her medicine-chest and teapot, excused his illness to the girls as having been produced by the fish, and never left his bedside till she had achieved her purpose. If ever a man got tipsy to his own advantage, Mr. Tappitt did so on that occasion. And if ever a man in that condition was treated with forbearing kindness by his wife, Mr.

Tappitt was so treated then.

"Don't disturb yourself, T.," she said; "there's nothing wants doing in the brewery, and if it did what would it signify in comparison with your health? The brewery won't be much to you now, thank goodness; and I'm sure you've had enough of it. Thirty years of such work as that would make any man sick and weak. I'm sure I don't wonder at your being ill;--not the least. The wonder is that you've ever stood up against it so long as you have. If you'll take my advice you'll just turn round and try to sleep for an hour or so."

Tappitt took her advice at any rate, so far that he turned round and closed his eyes. Up to this time he had not given way about the brewery. He had uttered no word of a.s.sent. But he was gradually becoming aware that he would have to yield before he would be allowed to put on his clothes. And now, in the base and weak condition of his head and stomach, yielding did not seem to him to be so very bad a thing. After all, the brewery was troublesome, the fight was hara.s.sing. Rowan was young and strong, and Mr. Sharpit was very dangerous. Rowan, too, had risen in his estimation as in that of others, and he could not longer argue, even to himself, that the stipulated income would not be paid. He did not sleep, but got into that half-drowsy state in which men think of their existing affairs, but without any power of active thought. He knew that he ought to be in his counting-house and at work. He half feared that the world was falling away from him because he was not there. He was ashamed of himself, and sometimes almost entertained a thought of rising up and shaking off his lethargy. But his stomach was bad, and he could not bring himself to move. His head was tormented, and his pillow was soft; and therefore there he lay. He wondered what was the time of day, but did not think of looking at his watch which was under his head. He heard his wife's steps about the room as she shaded some window from his eyes, or crept to the door to give some household order to one of her girls outside; but he did not speak to her, nor she to him. She did not speak to him as long as he lay there motionless, and when he moved with a small low groan she merely offered him some beef tea.

It was nearly six o'clock, and the hour of dinner at the brewery was long pa.s.sed, when Mrs. Tappitt sat herself down by the bedside determined to reap the fruit of her victory. He had just raised himself in his bed and announced his intention of getting up,--declaring, as he did so, that he would never again eat any of that accursed fish. The moment of his renovation had come upon him, and Mrs. Tappitt perceived that if he escaped from her now, there might even yet be more trouble.

"It wasn't only the fish, T.," she said, with somewhat of sternness in her eye.

"I hardly drank anything," said Tappitt.

"Of course I wasn't there to see what you took," said she; "but you were very bad when you came home last night;--very bad indeed. You couldn't have got in at the door only for me."

"That's nonsense."

"But it is quite true. It's a mercy, T., that neither of the girls saw you. Only think! But there'll be nothing more of that kind, I'm sure, when we are out of this horrid place; and it wouldn't have happened now, only for all this trouble."

To this Tappitt made no answer, but he grunted, and again said that he thought he would get up.

"Of course it's settled now, T., that we're to leave this place."

"I don't know that at all."

"Then, T., you ought to know it. Come now; just look at the common sense of the thing. If we don't give up the brewery what are we to do? There isn't a decent respectable person in the town in favour of our staying here, only that rascal Sharpit. You desired me this morning to write and tell him you'd have nothing more to do with him; and so I did." Tappitt had not seen his wife's letter to the lawyer,--had not asked to see it, and now became aware that his only possible supporter might probably have been driven away from him.

Sharpit too, though dangerous as an enemy, was ten times more dangerous as a friend!

"Of course you'll take that young man's offer. Shall I sit down and write a line to Honyman, and tell him to come in the morning?"

Tappitt groaned again and again, said that he would get up, but Mrs. T. would not let him out of bed till he had a.s.sented to her proposition that Honyman should be again invited to the brewery. He knew well that the battle was gone from him,--had in truth known it through all those half-comatose hours of his bedridden day. But a man, or a nation, when yielding must still resist even in yielding.

Tappitt fumed and fussed under the clothes, protesting that his sending for Honyman would be useless. But the letter was written in his name and sent with his knowledge; and it was perfectly understood that that invitation to Honyman signified an unconditional surrender on the part of Mr. Tappitt. One word Mrs. T. said as she allowed her husband to escape from his prison amidst the blankets, one word by which to mark that the thing was done, and one word only. "I suppose we needn't leave the house for about a month or so,--because it would be inconvenient about the furniture."

"Who's to turn you out if you stay for six months?" said Tappitt.

The thing was marked enough then, and Mrs. Tappitt retired in m.u.f.fled triumph,--retired when she had made all things easy for the simplest ceremony of dressing.

"Just sponge your face, my dear," she said, "and put on your dressing-gown, and come down for half an hour or so."

"I'm all right now," said Tappitt.

"Oh! quite so;--but I wouldn't go to the trouble of much dressing."

Then she left him, descended the stairs, and entered the parlour among her daughters. When there she could not abstain from one blast of the trumpet of triumph. "Well, girls," she said, "it's all settled, and we shall be in Torquay now before the winter."

"No!" said Augusta.

"That'll be a great change," said Martha.

"In Torquay before the winter!" said Cherry. "Oh, mamma, how clever you have been!"

"And now your papa is coming down, and you should thank him for what he's doing for you. It's all for your sake that he's doing it."

Mr. Tappitt crept into the room, and when he had taken his seat in his accustomed arm-chair, the girls went up to him and kissed him.

Then they thanked him for his proposed kindness in taking them out of the brewery.

"Oh, papa, it is so jolly!" said Cherry.

Mr. Tappitt did not say much in answer to this;--but luckily there was no necessity that he should say anything. It was an occasion on which silence was understood as giving a perfect consent.

CHAPTER XIII.

WHAT TOOK PLACE AT BRAGG'S END FARM.

When Mrs. Tappitt had settled within her own mind that the brewery should be abandoned to Rowan, she was by no means, therefore, ready to a.s.sent that Rachel Ray should become the mistress of the brewery house. "Never," she had exclaimed when Cherry had suggested such a result; "never!" And Augusta had echoed the protestation, "Never, never!" I will not say that she would have allowed her husband to remain in his business in order that she might thus exclude Rachel from such promotion, but she could not bring herself to believe that Luke Rowan would be so fatuous, so ignorant of his own interests, so deluded, as to marry that girl from Bragg's End! It is thus that the Mrs. Tappitts of the world regard other women's daughters when they have undergone any disappointment as to their own. She had no reason for wishing well to Rowan, and would not have cared if he had taken to his bosom a harpy in marriage; but she could not endure to hear of the success of the girl whose attractions had foiled her own little plan. "I don't believe that the man can ever be such a fool as that!"

she said again to Augusta, when on the evening of the day following Tappitt's abdication, a rumour reached the brewery that Luke Rowan had been seen walking out upon the Cawston road.

Mr. Honyman, in accordance with his instructions, called at the brewery on that morning, and was received by Mr. Tappitt with a sullen and almost savage submission. Mrs. T. had endeavoured to catch him first, but in that she had failed; she did, however, manage to see the attorney as he came out from her husband.

"It's all settled," said Honyman; "and I'll see Rowan myself before half an hour is over."

"I'm sure it's a great blessing, Mr. Honyman," said the lady,--not on that occasion a.s.suming any of the glory to herself.

"It was the only thing for him," said Mr. Honyman;--"that is if he didn't like to take the young man in as acting partner."

"That wouldn't have done at all," said Mrs. T. And then the lawyer went his way.

In the mean time Tappitt sat sullen and wretched in the counting-house. Such moments occur in the lives of most of us,--moments in which the real work of life is brought to an end,--and they cannot but be sad. It is very well to talk of ease and dignity; but ease of spirit comes from action only, and the world's dignity is given to those who do the world's work. Let no man put his neck from out of the collar till in truth he can no longer draw the weight attached to it. Tappitt had now got rid of his collar, and he sat very wretched in his brewery counting-house.

"Be I to go, sir?"

Tappitt in his meditation was interrupted by these words, spoken not in a rough voice, and looking up he saw Worts standing in the counting-house before him. Worts had voted for Butler Cornbury, whereas, had he voted for Mr. Hart, Mr. Hart would have been returned; and, upon that, Worts, as a rebellious subject, had received notice to quit the premises. Now his time was out, and he came to ask whether he was to leave the scene of his forty years of work. But what would be the use of sending Worts away even if the wish to punish his contumacy still remained? In another week Worts would be brought back again in triumph, and would tread those brewery floors with the step almost of a master, while he, Tappitt, could tread them only as a stranger, if he were allowed to tread them at all.