Chobley, the leaden-complexioned, meant a great deal the reverse; and the clerk knew it as he went away for the doctor; and the manager—having loosened his employer’s collar and cravat, opened the window to admit what passed in The Poultry for fresh air. And presently Jowell recovered sufficiently to be hoisted up from the carpet, and got into his chair; and damn them for calling in the medical man.
He went home early to Hanover Square, and—saying nothing of his own indisposition—broke the news of Morty’s peril and deliverance—escape-end first—to his boy’s mother. And then—sending one of the large powdered footmen for the immense gilt Church Service, usually borne after him upon Sundays in the country by one of these privileged menials, as the great man waddled up the aisle of Market Drowsing Parish Church—he mounted his glasses and read, occasionally pausing to take off and wipe these aids to vision—the Prayer for Those at Sea.
His wife, subsequently entering his library, found him thus employed, and was secretly thankful. It seemed like a first answer to all her petitions for him. He looked up as she came in, and found no fault with her red eyes on this occasion, his own being, if possible, redder.
He spoke gently to her, and finding him in this unusual mood, and being anxious to improve the occasion, she bade him take comfort and be thankful, for their dear son was under the protection—forbid that I should quote the words irreverently!—of a Heavenly Father’s Hand.
At which Jowell blew his nose—cocked at quite a subdued angle—and agreed with her, adding:
“All the same, the boy has got a good ’un Down Here. No man can call me Ben Blinker at any time, but where my son’s concerned I’m William Wide Awake, Esquire. As to the hay firing of itself—I don’t believe it! To palm off hay green, or hay half-cured, upon Her Majesty’s Government’s Contractors would be a Fraud. People don’t do such things—they ain’t capable of it!” said Jowell virtuously. “Some drunken sailor dropped a lighted candle-lantern into the fore-hold, or some trooper smoking on the sly on stable duty stuck his pipe in amongst the straw and left it there—and if I had him here,” said Jowell ogreishly, “I’d make him smoke on the wrong side of his mouth, by Gosh, I would!”
He added: “And you’re a good woman, Maria, by Gosh, you are!” And in testimony to this excellence he bought her, the very next day, an immense cameo brooch, representing the triumph of Venus, and set with many blazing brilliants of great price.
Wounds of the soul, neglects of years, are healed and made as nought in the belief of men like this man, by a trinket purchased at the jeweler’s. Disloyalties and treacheries are blotted out—harsh words, ill-usage and infidelity atoned for. The wives who receive these gewgaws know sorrowfully well why they are given.
All unsolicited gifts bestowed by men like Jowell are sops to the shrill-voiced Conscience chiding behind their waistcoats. Thus, the man gave to his wife because she had so much to forgive; he sent a draft for a great sum to his son, not only because his own dishonesty had placed that beloved one in peril, but because he had so greatly swindled the sons of other men. That half-pint of porter shed upon the troopers and their wives in the ’tween-decks did them good, perhaps! But how they paid for it in the end!