CHAPTER XII.
Already had Mr. Jericho banked the purchase-money for Jogtrot Hall. Thirty thousand pounds’ worth of flesh had he sacrificed to buy to himself a country mansion; the better, in the flattering words of his wife, to fill the world; who delighted as she was with the obedient ambition of her lord, was, nevertheless, touched in her tenderest affections when she contemplated his diminished presence. Even Jericho himself, prepared as he was for the astonishment of his family and familiars, winced as he caught the astounded glances of his circle. Breeks, the tailor, began to measure, and to re-measure with an increasing wonder, that in a little time deepened into awe, and threatened to explode into terror. “It’s like measuring a penknife for a sheath,” Breeks declared to his wife. “That Mr. Jericho’s quite a puzzle, Julia; quite. There’s no knowing where the paddin’ ends and the man begins. Man, Julia! He isn’t a man at all, but a cotton-pod. Why he can’t have no more stomach than a ’bacco-pipe.” Such were the confidential communings of man with wife; and, after certain intervals, with a whole round of Mrs. Breeks’s bosom gossips. In a little time, it was the growing-belief of a large circle that Jericho was no flesh, no man at all. “He was made up of coats,” ran the rumour, “like an onion.”
Jericho, we have said, was tenderly alive to his daily waste. Again and again had he passed the silken lace about his chest; the lace that, if the bank continued to be drawn upon, soon promised to wind round and round the anatomy of Jericho, like whipcord round a boy’s peg-top. Jericho, however, comforted himself—so had he taken measures—that the bank should be closed for many a day. He would not peel himself to a leaf, let his wife conjure as she might. Fortunately, he was never in better health. If he lost in substance, mere flesh, he somehow obtained an unusual toughness and strength of fibre. He was lithe, elastic as a rod of steel. And after all, what was flesh? Animal grossness. The less he had of it, the more spiritual the human creature.
But Mrs. Jericho would not thus be comforted. She had half-uttered her fears to Mr. Candituft. Would introduce Doctor Dodo, a friend of his, as a friend; not to alarm Mr. Jericho. Certainly not. But merely to lead him in the meanderings of a pleasant morning talk to his own individual case. Mrs. Jericho might depend upon the care of Candituft. He would study even the weakness of dear Jericho as a weakness to be reverenced. “Some weaknesses,” said Candituft, “were like flawed China: quite as good as the perfect thing, if not too rudely handled.” Mrs. Jericho declared the thought to be true and beautiful.
Now, it grieves us, as faithful chroniclers of this history to pain the reader with the intelligence that at the very time conjugal love and manly friendship were sweetly plotting for better health and insured life in the person of Solomon Jericho, there were men—certainly two constructive homicides—who contemplated the probable funeral of the Man of Money, and never once winced at the thought of the sable feathers. Let the reader judge.
Almost at the exact time that Basil Pennibacker fled in sorrow and confusion from the door of Carraways, Commissioner Thrush knocked at the postern of Solomon Jericho. And had Jericho’s household gods been as anxious, waking, instead—as we fear it too often happens with household gods in general—instead of sleeping, like pet spaniels at the fireside, sure we are that the chimney deities would have given a sympathetic shriek, or howl, or cry, or squall—hearing murder’s messenger at the door. “Is Mr. Jericho within?” asked the assistant homicide with a serene gravity worthy of the coming funeral. The victim was at home. The undertaker might walk up stairs; and making due allowance, might measure the living customer. And all this time, though the household gods might see in the burning embers, the splendid funeral of their master prefigured in glowing rays, with—if it further pleased them—a view, between the second and third bar, of the widow weeping over a pyramidal monument, weeping in a cloud of veil, with streaming wisp of handkerchief,—although every part and piece of this alarming spectacle were to be seen in the live coals of Jericho’s hearth, nevertheless Jericho’s household gods took no more account of the show than if it were a congregation of burning vapours brought together to roast the family goose, or cook the family mutton.
Commissioner Thrush walks placidly up to Mr. Jericho, and offers him his hand. And Jericho takes the palm in his own, never dreaming that, probably, he grasped a piece of churchyard clod.
“Though I come upon an unpleasant business, my dear sir—by the way I think you get thinner and thinner,” said Thrush.
“I believe Commissioner,” said Jericho very austerely, “I believe in polite society, a man’s flesh is silently permitted to be quite a matter for his own contemplation.”