'This is preposterous,' said Philip irritably. 'You have made no allowance for another contingency—that the door may have been left unlocked and ajar by the gardener, when last at work.'
'That will not do. The gardener has not been about the place for a fortnight or three weeks. You say that the servants may have allowed a friend to take the pick of Jeremiah's clothes. That explains nothing: for it does not account for the garden door being unlocked, though it might for the house door being left open. Why should not the Cusworths have needy relatives and hangers-on as well as the servant girls? Needy relatives smelling of beer, with patched small clothes and pimply faces, who fly about with the bats, and to whom the cast-off clothing, the good hat and warm overcoat, would be a boon. Who are these Cusworths? Whence have they come? Out of as great an uncertainty as this mysterious figure. They are creations out of nothing, like the universe, but not, like it, to be pronounced very good. Now, Philip, is not my solution of the riddle the only logical one?'
'This is enough on the subject,' said Philip, especially chafed because his aunt's explanation really was the simplest, and yet was one which he was unwilling to allow. 'You charge high-minded, honourable people with——'
'I charge them with doing no harm,' interrupted Mrs. Sidebottom. 'The clothes were laid out to be distributed to the needy; and Mrs. Cusworth was given the disposal of them. If she chose to favour a relative, who is to blame her? Not I. She would probably not care to have the sort of relative who would touch his cap for Jeremiah's old suits, come openly to the door in the blaze of day, and before the eyes of the giggling maids. No doubt she said to the moulting relative, "Come in the dark; help yourself to new plumage, but do not discredit us by proclaiming kinship."'
Philip was too angry to answer his aunt. To change the subject he said, 'Miss Cusworth has refused to receive anything from us. That some influence has been brought to bear on her to induce this, I have no doubt, and I have as little doubt as to whose influence was exerted.' He looked fixedly at his aunt.
'I am glad she has had the grace to do so,' answered Mrs. Sidebottom cheerily. 'No, Philip, you need not drive your eyes into me, as if they were bradawls. I can quite understand that she has told you all, and laid the blame on me. I do not deny my part in the transaction. I am not ashamed of it; on the contrary, I glory in it. You were on the threshold of a great folly, that jeopardized the firm of Pennycomequick, and my allowance out of it as well. I have stepped in to stop you. I had my own interests to look after. I have saved you four thousand pounds, which you could not afford to lose. Am not I an aunt whose favour is worth cultivating; an aunt who deserves to be treated with elementary politeness?'
Then Philip's anger boiled up.
'We see everything through opposite ends of the telescope. What is infinitely small to me and far away, is to you present and immense; and what to me is close at hand and overwhelming, is quite beyond your horizon. To my view of things we are committing a moral wrong when technically right. How that will was cancelled, and by whom, will probably never be known; but nothing in the world will persuade me that Uncle Jeremiah swung from one extremity of liberality to Miss Cusworth, coupled with injustice to us, to the other extreme of generosity to us and absolute neglect of her. Such a thing could not be. He would turn in his grave if he thought that she, an innocent, defenceless girl, was to be left in this heartless, criminal manner, without a penny in the world, contrary to his wishes.'
'Why did he not make another will, if he wished it so much?'
'Upon my word,' said Philip angrily, 'I would give up my share readily to have Uncle Jeremiah back, and know the rights of the matter of the will.' He stood looking at his aunt with eyes that were full of anger, and the arteries in his temples dark and swollen. 'I shall take care,' he said, 'that she is not defrauded of what is her due.'