The landlady laughed sarcastic.
“In London, sir,” she said, “herthquakes—as is p’raps beknownst to you—sends out sulfurious perfumes, and not the heffluvium of brandy.”
“Good heavens!” exclaimed my uncle. “But what——?”
“I reveal nothing, Mr. Paxton,” she interrupted him, “but what my nose tells me. You may smell it yet, sir, begging your pardon, about the Mitre.”
“But——”
“I’ve ’eard tell, sir, of ile wells, but never of brandy. I may be wrong; and halso I may be wrong in doubting that gunpowder forms of itself in the ’oller places of the herth,” and with these enigmatic words she left us.
But it must be said that, for all her withering gentility, she made us an excellent landlady, as we had full opportunity of proving. For—I may as well out with it at once—we had come to Dunberry to stay.
CHAPTER VII.
MR. SANT.
I think, perhaps, Uncle Jenico foresaw it no more than I. Without doubt, at first, he would have laughed to scorn the idea of sinking all his eager interests in this little Suffolk fishing village, whose communications with any town of even fifth-rate importance, such as Yokestone, were by seven miles at least of villainous roads. Our settlement was gradual; our departure postponed, in the beginning, week by week, probably like that of the man who went to Venice for a fortnight and stayed for thirty years. The initiatory step towards our continued residence was certainly my uncle’s acceptance of Mr. Sant’s offer to instruct me. That was, as the French say, le premier pas qui coûte. Afterwards, the offer—being extended, with infinite consideration for our means, to one for my general tuition by the clergyman—grew to confirm our attachment to the place, until it came to be tacitly understood that Dunberry was to see me through my education.
But there was another reason. Uncle Jenico seemed never quite to recover from the stun inflicted upon him at his landing. His affection, his geniality, his inventiveness were no whit impaired; yet somehow the last, one could have thought, had relapsed from the practical upon the theoretic. He was a trifle less restless; a trifle more inert. He appeared to bask in a sort of luminous placidity, and more and more his concern in his patents diminished. I do not mean by this to imply that his schemes for our enrichment were all forgotten. On the contrary, they concentrated to an intensity as pathetic as it was single in its object. I know at this date that Uncle Jenico was a lovable failure. I recognize, moreover, as I hardly recognized then, that a wistful realization of this fact—minus its qualifying adjective—was beginning to dawn upon him, and that he was inclining to consider his “lame and impotent conclusions” a right judgment upon him for his self-seeking. God bless him, I say! He thought to atone for this, his egotism, dear charitable soul, by devoting all his remaining energies to the task of making the fortune of the little trust committed to his care. He wrought, in fact, that he might die content, leaving me rich; and, in the furtherance of this object, his schemes were not, as I say, forgotten, but transferred. They were consolidated, in short, into one, which in the end was to become an obsession. But of that I will treat in its place.