And whilst we have hammered out this iron sermon upon one kind of home, what a different home have our lovers—Basil and Bessy—already made in the wilderness! Basil has talked of all he has purchased,—ploughs, axes, hammers; all sorts of field implements; and Bessy has listened with an earnestness that tried to understand their separate use. And then Basil had given particular orders for plants and seeds. “For you see, my love,” said he, “I intend to take as much of England as we can with us.”
“To be sure,” cried Bessy. “Oh yes!”
“And so, I’ve cuttings of raspberry, and currant, and gooseberry; and for flowering shrubs, rhododendrons, and camellias, and roses as various, yes as the beauty they are the type of.”
“And I too have seen to a great many seeds,” said Bessy. “Above all, I’ve not forgotten the heart’s-ease.”
“That”—said Basil, taking a kiss as the best comment—“that, Bessy, I may be always sure of.”
CHAPTER XIX.
Mr. Jericho, as in gratitude bound, was proud of the friendship of the Duke of St. George. If, at any time, Solomon thought of the peerage—and we cannot deny that his soul did now and then hover about the House of Lords—it was his belief that to the high party interest of the duke he should owe the strawberry leaves. Besides, Jericho had his own personal claims. He was religiously observant of the wishes of the Minister, and—if a dog could vote—not even that grateful animal would have barked aye or no with better docility; or even with quicker intelligence. Again, it was only too plain to Jericho’s intimate friends that he was dying for his country. “Parliament is killing that dear man,” was the frequent cry of Candituft. “He is wasting piecemeal,” was the complaint of Mizzlemist. “All his flesh,” cried Mrs. Jericho, the tears peeping from her eyes, “all his flesh goes into those filthy blue books.” And this belief became a very popular superstition among the crowd of folks who visited the Man of Money. His blood and brain, aye the marrow of the senator, all was consumed to reappear in statistical details: yes, his very soul might be recognised by friendship, sympathetic and imaginative, sacrificed to printer’s ink. And—as Colonel Bones would ask—“What cared the people of Toadsham for the devotion of their member?” Whilst Commissioner Thrush declared that to stick by his seat with the tenacity of Jericho, was not to sit leisurely and like a gentleman for a borough, but to be impaled in Parliament. To be sure, Mrs. Jericho was again and again promised by sanguine friends that “Mr. Jericho must some day have a coronet.” But the wife, loath to be comforted, would again fall upon her husband’s daily waste. “A coronet! Yes; a coronet is all very well, but if the dear fellow dwindles and dwindles in Parliament as he has done, why—poor creature—when the coronet comes, he’ll have no head to put in it.” An impossible case, of course; and only to be received as the morbid apprehension of conjugal affection.
It was a great pity that Jericho’s intimacy with the Duke did not begin in early youth. His Grace himself sweetly confounded Jericho by more than once protesting such regret. “My dear Solomon,” his Grace would say, and at first all the blood in Jericho’s body seemed turned into ichor by the condescension, “My dear Solomon; I only wish we had met at College. However,” the Duke would add with fortitude, “we must make the best of the time that remains to us.” And certainly, Jericho might take to himself this comfort: at no period of his life could his friendship have been so useful to St. George as at the very moment of his acquaintance. The fact is, the Duke was in debt. Debt, indeed, was his family distinction. All his ancestors, from Hugh de Gorge—who, to give the slip to his Norman tailor, came with William to Hastings, and cut for himself a good slice of land with his carving sword—all St. George’s ancestors were in debt. They were all born to prodigious bills, just as other high families are born to thick lips and elliptic noses. Therefore, we say, Jericho was now a cherished guest at Red Dragon House. Two days before the marriage of Agatha, the Man of Money passed the greater part of the night there: it was four in the morning when he returned home. Of course, Mrs. Jericho thought him in Parliament; wasting himself, in her own impatient words, upon those wretches of Toadsham. “And what would they care if he killed himself outright in their service? Why, they’d erect nothing to his memory. Not so much as his statue in gilt gingerbread.” At this Mr. Jericho would smile incredulously; and in his bitter way, declare a female patriot to be the rarest of animals.
It was late, very late when Jericho appeared in his library. The servant, waiting at the breakfast-table, eyed his master with looks of dismay. The honest fellow’s teeth chattered as though he was compelled to wait upon a ghost. Jericho observed the condition of the lacquey, and, affronted by his terror, ordered him to quit the room. And the man, it was afterwards discovered, rushed to his bedchamber, skinned himself of his livery; scratched on his old plain clothes, and—as though he was making off with the silver tea-pot—sneaked stealthily from the house. (That man—if we may quit our story to say as much—that man is now in Bedlam; his hopeless madness a belief that his own face is nothing more than a razor blade. Poor fellow! Evidently possessed by the sharpened visage of Jericho, as it cruelly gleamed upon him from the breakfast-table.)