Mrs. Jericho was wholly won by the story of her husband. Kind, good, generous creature! So liberal to Basil. She sent to Jericho a look of thankful fondness, and then shook her head at her abashed offspring.
Yes—abashed. Basil was puzzled by the ingenuous confession of his father-in-law. For a moment he felt a touch of remorse, and was about to spring forward and seize Jericho’s hand. And then he paused, and doubt came up again. “If I am wrong, Mr. Jericho—if I have been rash and rude, I shall be glad, delighted, sir, to ask your pardon. But you must allow me to take a little time—to sift my evidence a little finer. Meanwhile, sir, you may impound the money,” and Basil laid the notes before Mr. Jericho. “Good bye, my dear mother; you’ll hear, I hope, good news of me soon. Am on the high road of happiness, and hope soon to put up at All Earthly Bliss.”
“A strange, wild creature,” said Mrs. Jericho, following her son with loving looks as he darted from the room. “But good—yes, dear, believe it, good. His heart, I know it, is in its right place. And these”—and Mrs. Jericho took up the ten hundred pound notes with a hole in each—“and these protected your heart! Henceforth, to me they are enhanced beyond all price.—Yes, Jericho—Solomon—husband,” and the fond wife carefully folded up the bank notes, and as carefully placed them in her bosom, laying her guardian hand above them—“yes, I shall treasure them. No power—none, Jericho—shall tear them from me. They saved your life, and to me they are hereafter beyond all price.”
Jericho endeavoured to look resigned—pleased. Such devotion flattered him, though he could not but feel that it cost him a thousand pounds.
(With respect to the hole in the heart, let us clear up as we proceed. In a very little while every bank-note was perfect as before. This was to be expected. When a heart is wholly made of money, how can it long feel the worst of wounds?)
CHAPTER XV.
And Mr. Jericho went on, a rejoicing conqueror. His huge town mansion, burning with gold—the very domain of upholstery, massive, rich and gorgeous, for the Man of Money was for the most substantial, the most potent development of his creed, whereby to awe and oppress his worshippers—his house, in its wide hospitality, embraced, as Jericho devoutly believed, the world. Let all mankind outside his walls suddenly sink and die, and he would be convinced that still under his roof-tree were gathered together all the men and women who composed the heart, the kernel of human life. The earth might be replenished and set up again all the better, the finer; both for what was lost, and what was spared. The kernel might grow kernels, without husk or straw.
And comfortable, happy people, with the bread of competence and the butter of comfort inch-thick, would nevertheless marvel at the imagined happiness, the life-long rapture of Jericho. And honest, well-to-do folk, from country homes would stare at Jericho House as though it was made of a single diamond cut into chambers and banquetting-halls: for it was to them a magnified Mountain of Light, albeit they had never heard of the jewel. And London paupers stared at the walls, as though they saw in them a strange, fantastic reflection of their own rags and wretchedness; and took a savage pleasure, a malicious joy in seeing their hungry faces flung back from the House of Gold. And there were others who delighted, though they tasted not of his labours, in all that Jericho did: they instinctively loved him for his money, although they had no hope of a farthing of it. Nevertheless was he to them a mighty power—a great presence; one of the wonders of our mortal state. Could Mr. Jericho have papered the sky with bank-notes, these impartial admirers would have sung praises to the work and the workman. It would have been a marvellous triumph of wealth; to be honoured by the well-to-do accordingly.
Nevertheless, so headstrong, so self-destructive was Basil Pennibacker, that he refused to cross the threshold of Jericho House. He resolved to break for ever with the Man of Money. He had made his last essay upon his own spirit; and impulsive and indignant, it rose above the politic restraint. He would touch no farthing of Jericho’s means; he would, in his own want, be nevertheless his own man of money.