“Behave in what way? Haven’t I worked like a horse? Do you mean to tell me that I am to give up my business, and my position, and everything I have in the world, and go away because a young scoundrel comes to Baslehurst and tells me that he wants to have my brewery? I tell you what, Margaret, if you think I’m that sort of man, you don’t know me yet.”
“I don’t know about knowing you, T.”
“No; you don’t know me.”
“If you come to that, I know very well that I have been deceived. I didn’t want to speak of it, but now I must. I have been made to believe for these last twenty years that the brewery was all your own, whereas it now turns out that you’ve only got a share in it, and for aught I can see, by no means the best share. Why wasn’t I told all that before?”
“Woman!” shouted Mr. Tappitt.
“Yes; woman indeed! I suppose I am a woman, and therefore I’m to have no voice in anything. Will you answer me one question, if you please? Are you going to that man, Sharpit?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Then, Mr. Tappitt, I shall consult my brothers.” Mrs. Tappitt’s brothers were grocers in Plymouth; men whom Mr. Tappitt had never loved. “They mayn’t hold their heads quite as high as you do—or rather as you used to do when people thought that the establishment was all your own; but such as it is nobody can turn them out of their shop in the Marketplace. If you are going to Sharpit, I shall consult them.”
“You may consult the devil, if you like it.”
“Oh, oh! very well, Mr. Tappitt. It’s clear enough that you’re not yourself any longer, and that somebody must take up your affairs and manage them for you. If you’ll follow my advice you’ll stay at home this evening and take a dose of physic and see Dr. Haustus quietly in the morning.”
“I shall do nothing of the kind.”
“Very well. Of course I can’t make you. As yet you’re your own master. If you choose to go to this silly meeting and then to drink gin and water and to smoke bad tobacco till all hours at the Dragon, and you in the dangerous state you are at present, I can’t help it. I don’t suppose that anything I could do now, that is quite immediately, would enable me to put you under fitting restraint.”
“Put me where?” Then Mr. Tappitt looked at his wife with a look that was intended to annihilate her, for the time being—seeing that no words that he could speak had any such effect—and he hurried out of the room without staying to wash his hands or brush his hair before he went off to preside at the meeting.
Mrs. Tappitt remained where she was for about half an hour and then descended among her daughters.
“Isn’t papa going to dine at home?” said Augusta.
“No, my dear; your papa is going to dine with some friends of Mr. Hart’s, the candidate who was beaten.”
“And has he settled anything about the brewery?” Cherry asked.
“No; not as yet. Your papa is very much troubled about it, and I fear he is not very well. I suppose he must go to this electioneering dinner. When gentlemen take up that sort of thing, they must go on with it. And as they wish your father to preside over the petition, I suppose he he can’t very well help himself.”
“Is papa going to preside over the petition?” asked Augusta.
“Yes, my dear.”
“I hope it won’t cost him anything,” said Martha. “People say that those petitions do cost a great deal of money.”
“It’s a very anxious time for me, girls; of course, you must all of you see that. I’m sure when we had our party I didn’t think things were going to be as anxious as this, or I wouldn’t have had a penny spent in such a way as that. If your papa could bring himself to give up the brewery, everything would be well.”
“I do so wish he would,” said Cherry, “and let us all go and live at Torquay. I do so hate this nasty dirty old place.”
“I shall never live in a house I like so well,” said Martha.
“The house is well enough, my dears, and so is the brewery, but it can’t be expected that your father should go on working forever as he does at present. It’s too much for his strength;—a great deal too much. I can see it, though I don’t suppose anyone else can. No one knows, only me, what your father has gone through in that brewery.”
“But why doesn’t he take Mr. Rowan’s offer?” said Cherry.
“Everybody seems to say now that Rowan is ever so rich,” said Augusta.
“I suppose papa doesn’t like the feeling of being turned out,” said Martha.
“He wouldn’t be turned out, my dear; not the least in the world,” said Mrs. Tappitt. “I don’t choose to interfere much myself because, perhaps, I don’t understand it; but certainly I should like your papa to retire. I have told him so; but gentlemen sometimes don’t like to be told of things.”
Mrs. Tappitt could be very severe to her husband, could say to him terrible words if her spirit were put up, as she herself was wont to say. But she understood that it did not become her to speak ill of their father before her girls. Nor would she willingly have been heard by the servants to scold their master. And though
