Whereas his modest home set about with gods of his own making and creating, may have been more desirable in his eyes than Chatsworth itself, and he may mourn over his dead with a grief less palpable, it is true, because the work-a-day world is intolerant of grief among the poor and lowly, but as real as that our Sovereign Lady feels for her husband, or as that wherein the sweet singer of Israel indulged when the messenger came swiftly and told him though not in words, "Absalom is slain."
To a business man especially the world is in this respect hard and unsympathetic.
Because we do not understand his trade, and should not care for it if we did, we fancy he has regarded his mills, his works, his factory as we look upon such erections. And yet the place where he has made his money, or lost it, has been most part of his world to him; as much his world as camps to the soldier, courts to the diplomatist, ball-rooms to the beauty, Africa to Livingstone.
A man cannot continue year after year to exercise any calling, if it be even the culture of watercresses, and not centre a large portion of his interest in it, and to a man like Mortomley it was a simple impossibility for his laboratory, his home, his works, his men, his colours to become matters of indifference to him.
There had been a time when it would have well-nigh broken his heart to leave Homewood and all its associations behind, but there were bitter memories now superadded to the sweet recollections of the olden time, memories which, throughout all the future, he should never be able to recall save with a galling sense of pain.
The old Homewood was dead to him, and in its place there was a new Homewood, the thought of which could never cross his mind save with a sense of shame and degradation.
It had been bad enough for the sheriffs' officers to hold the place in temporary possession, but when Mr. Swanland sent in his man Mortomley felt all hope had departed out of his life. If he was ever to do any good for himself and those belonging to him again, he must first go to some quiet place where he should have a chance of getting strong once more, and then having given up Homewood and everything belonging to him, compulsorily it might be, but still most thoroughly, commence life anew, commence at the very foot of the business ladder, and strive to work his way upward to success.
To both husband and wife the sensation of driving for their own mere ease and comfort through the suburbs of London was strange as though they had been labouring upon the pecuniary treadmill all the years of their life. Money anxieties had so long been present with them at bed and at board, that they found it difficult to realise the fact that they were free from these fetters.
By comparison beggary seemed heaven to the misery of their late existence; and Mortomley, weak as he was, seemed benefited by the change, whilst Dolly, all the time she had a strange feeling upon her of having started on a pilgrimage without the faintest idea of what her ultimate destination might prove, still experienced a sense of relief as mile after mile lengthened itself out between her and Homewood.