It was nearly six o’clock, and the hour of dinner at the brewery was long passed, 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 assented 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 muffled 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 armchair, 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.
XXVIII
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 assent 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
