"Yes, if there were any place to which we could go away," was the answer.
"We must leave," said Dolly, and then—for she was growing wise—she sat down to calculate the cost.
She wanted to take him to the seaside, but she failed to see how that was to be managed.
She could have done it by running into debt, for her credit was good at those seaside places where she had been the idol of landlords and where tradespeople had delighted at her reappearance. But she had no intention of going into debt unless she saw some means of being able to repay those who put trust in her honesty.
She could not take her husband to the seaside, and yet she felt he must be got away from Homewood. The changed atmosphere of that once charming home was killing him. With the rare sympathy which women like Dolly, capable of putting themselves and their interests entirely on one side, possess, she understood that air breathed by those dreadful men was death to a person in his state of health; and she racked her brains to think of some plan by which she might get him away, even for a fortnight, from the sound of strange voices, from the haunting presence of Messrs. Turner and Meadows, and the other more insignificant sheriff's officer.
Not in the worst time they ever previously passed through, had Mrs. Mortomley experienced such utter misery as that which fell to her lot after Mr. Swanland took the reins of government.
She knew utter anarchy prevailed in the works. She knew the men were at daggers drawn with each other, unanimous only in one desire viz., that of circumventing Mr. Meadows and outwitting his vigilance. She knew the horses were not properly attended to; and when Lang justly indignant at the proceeding, told her Bess had been put in one of the carts and sent out with a load for the docks, Mrs. Mortomley was fain to make an excuse to get rid of the man, that he might not see the passion of grief his news excited in her.
Helpless they were, both Mortomley and his wife. Ciphers where they had once had authority; mere paupers, living on sufferance in a house no longer theirs; by rapid degrees Dolly was learning what liquidation by arrangement really meant, and why Mr. Kleinwort had said her husband would find bankruptcy not all pleasure.
While she was pondering how to get away from it all, how to escape from the sight of ills she was powerless to cure, and the sound of complaints to which she was weary of listening, Thursday came, and with a, to her, startling discovery. Mr. Meadows, who after the first morning or so, decided it was more comfortable to lie in bed late than to get up early, had on the Wednesday evening left on Mr. Lang's desk a memorandum concerning some account-books which he wished sent up to Salisbury House, said memorandum being pencilled on the back of part of the very note at the end of which Mr. Swanland had made that inquiry concerning Mr. Mortomley's letters previously recorded.