He had been living a lie, just one of the things Dolly knew his wife would find it most difficult to forgive. Had he told her duty demanded the sacrifice, she might—Mrs. Mortomley understood—have agreed to live in a house at twenty pounds a year, and wear print dresses, and be extremely strict about the tea and sugar, but she could not have done this with a good grace.
Nevertheless, Dolly believed she could have borne that better than the consciousness that the rich raiment she purchased, the luxurious dinner she provided, the rare wines they drank, had been paid for by a man all the time virtually bankrupt—a man keeping up an appearance so as to obtain fresh credit, and defer the striking of that hour of reckoning which could now be deferred no longer.
Mrs. Mortomley loved Mrs. Werner, and she did not love Mr. Werner, yet certainly her sympathies were that night with the man rather than with the woman.
One's affections are not perhaps strong for the naughty boy who is always persecuting one's cat, and stoning one's dog, and slaying one's chickens, or stealing one's fruit, and yet, when the wicked little wretch comes to grief and goes home with a battered face and cut shins, one's heart is more one with him than with the strong-minded mother, a strict disciplinarian, who we know will lecture or beat him for his sins, as the case may be.
I do not say it is right, for I cannot think it is, that our sympathies should generally be with the evil-doer, but it is very difficult not to feel sorry for the man who, being down, is struck his bitterest blow by those of his own household; and Dolly—well, Dolly did not think if she were in Mr. Werner's shoes she would like to tell the unvarnished truth to Leonora.
Upon the whole Dolly decided he was wise to go abroad, instead of remaining to face the domestic difficulty. "He will write to her," she thought, "tell her all, and she will be very indignant, and think about honour and honesty, and all the rest of it; but she will not, if he is wise, know where to address a letter to him at present. Then she will grow anxious, both about him and the future of the children, and at the end of six months I give her this parcel, when the whole affair is settled and she need feel no scruples about taking the money, and then she will feel touched to remember he thought of her, and then she will relent and we will find out where he is; perhaps he may write now and then to me, and she will go to him, or he will come back to her, my poor dear Lenny!"
Having completed which pleasing programme of the Werners' future, Mrs. Mortomley ought to have gone to sleep, but she could not do so, and towards four o'clock she became so intolerant of her own wakefulness that she rose and, stealing into the room where Lenore lay fast asleep, dressed herself noiselessly and went downstairs, and, letting herself out, walked across the road and along a footpath leading to the Lea, which crossed the field in which stood the shed where she had established her factory.
Not a likely-looking building, and yet it is in the least pretentious factories that fortunes are made,—successes won; and Mrs. Mortomley thanked God every time she looked across the meadow and beheld the red-tiled roof which covered the "Hertfordshire Colour Works" that Lang had so strenuously and—as it turned out—so wisely advised her to establish.
The name of Mortomley had a certain power still, and, though the business letters were signed in Dolly's scrawl, "D. Mortomley," people did not stop to inquire whether it was an A or a D who was able to supply them with the colours they required.
Neither was the new company worse thought of because they were able to supply so very little. The public, always liable to be gulled, did not attribute this to any paucity of means of production, but rather to the extent of orders received by the "Hertfordshire Colour Company." Acting under Lang's advice, Dolly had taken the business bull by the horns, and the moment she had settled upon a residence, a neat circular informed all the customers whose names Lang could recollect, or Dolly wring at intervals out of her husband's intermittent memory, that future orders intended for Mortomley and Co. should be addressed to Newham, Herts. Further, she amazed Mr. Swanland by giving directions at the post-office that all letters intended for her husband should be forwarded to that address; and as no fewer than three other persons had applied for the letters, each claiming a right in them, the post-office was somewhat perplexed. First, Mr. Swanland, who, after Dolly had proved to him by chapter and verse that he could claim no letters after the expiration of three months from the meeting of creditors, was forced to strike his flag; secondly, the Thames Street clerk, who had—being trusted by Mr. Swanland—been opening the town letters and suppressing them during the time when the accountant had a right to their possession, and who, so far as I know, is opening and suppressing them to this day; and, third, Hankins, who, being a modified sort of blackguard, made all right with the postmen who delivered at Homewood by representing himself as Mr. Mortomley's chief in absence, and forwarded some letters and retained others.