IN WHICH HIS FRIENDS VISIT THE SICK.
MR. LEVI, when Sarah Rumble gave him her lodger's message, did not, as
he said, "vally it a turn of a half-penny." He could not be very ill
if he could send his attendant out of doors, and deliver the terms in
which his messages were to be communicated. Mr. Levi's diagnosis was
that Mr. Dingwell's attack was in the region of the purse or
pocket-book, and that the "dodge" was simply to get the partners and
Mr. Larkin together for the purpose of extracting more money.
Mr. Larkin was in town, and he had written to that gentleman's hotel;
also he had told Mr. Goldshed, who took the same view, and laughed in
his lazy diapason over the weak invention of the enemy.
Levi accordingly took the matter very easily, and hours had passed
before his visit, which was made pretty late in the afternoon, and he
was smiling over his superior sagacity in seeing through Dingwell's
little dodge, as he walked into the court, when an officious little
girl, in her mother's bonnet, running by his knee, said, pompously--
"You'd better not go there, sir."
"And why so, chickabiddy?" inquired Mr. Levi, derisively.
"No, you'd better not; there's a gentleman as has took the fever
there."
"Where?" said Mr. Levi, suddenly interested.
"In Mrs. Rumble's."
"_Is_ there?--how do you know?"
"Lucy Maria Rumbles, please, sir, she told me, and he's _very bad_."
The fashion of Levi's countenance was changed as he turned from her
suddenly, and knocked so sharply at the door that the canary, hanging
from the window in his cage over the way, arrested his song, and was
agitated for an hour afterwards.
So Mr. Levi was now thoroughly aroused to the danger that had so
suddenly overcast his hopes, and threatened to swallow in the
bottomless sea of death the golden stake he had ventured.
It was not, nevertheless, until eight o'clock in the evening, so hard
a thing is it to collect three given men [what then must be the office
of whip to Whig or Tory side of the House?] that the two Jews and Mr.
Larkin were actually assembled in Mr. Dingwell's bed-room, now reeking
with disinfectants and prophylactic fluids.
The party were in sore dismay, for the interesting patient had begun
to maunder very preposterously in his talk. They listened, and heard
him say--
"That's a lie--I say, I'd nail his tongue to the table. Bells won't
ring for it--lots of bells in England; you'll not find 'em _here_,
though."
And then it went off into a mumbling, and Mr. Goldshed, who was
listening disconsolately, exclaimed, "My eyesh!"
"Well, how do you like it, guv'nor? I said he'd walk the plank, and so
he will," said Levi. "He will--he will;" and Levi clenched his white
teeth, with an oath.
"_There_, Mr. Levi, _pray_, pray, none of _that_," said Mr. Larkin.
The three gentlemen were standing in a row, from afar off observing
the patient, with an intense scrutiny of a gloomy and, I may say, a
savage kind.
"He was an unfortunate agent--no energy, except for his pleasures,"
resentfully resumed Mr. Larkin, who was standing furthest back of the
three speculators. "Indolent, impracticable enough to ruin fifty
cases; and now here he lies in a fever, contracted, you think, Mr.
Levi, in some of his abominable haunts."
Mr. Larkin did not actually say "d---- him," but he directed a very
dark, sharp look upon his acquaintance in the bed.
"Abawminable, to be sure, abawminable. Bah! It's all true. The hornies
has their eye on him these seven weeks past--curse the beasht,"
snarled Mr. Levi, clenching his fists in his pockets, "and every
da--a--m muff that helped to let me in for this here rotten business."
"Meaning _me_, sir?" said Mr. Larkin, flushing up to the top of his
head a fierce pink.
Levi answered nothing, and Mr. Larkin did not press his question.
It is very easy to be companionable and good-humoured while all goes
pleasantly. It is failure, loss, and disappointment, that try the
sociable qualities; even those three amiable men felt less amicable
under the cloud than they had under the sunshine.
So they all three looked in their several ways angrily and
thoughtfully at the gentleman in the typhus fever, who said rather
abruptly--
"She killed herself, sir; foolish 'oman! Capital dancing, gentlemen!
Capital dancing, ladies! Capital--capital--admirable dancing. God
help us!" and so it sunk again into mumbling.
"Capital da-a-ancing, and who pays the piper?" asked Mr. Goldshed,
with a rather ferocious sneer. "It has cost us fifteen hundred to two
thousand!"
"And a doctor," suggested Levi.
"Doctor, the devil! I say; I've paid through the nose," or, as he
pronounced that organ through which his metallic declamation droned,
_noshe_. "It's Mr. Larkin's turn now; it's all da-a-am rot; a warm
fellow like you, Mr. Larkin, putting all the loss on me; how can I
sta-a-an' that--sta-a-an' all the losses, and share the
profits--ba-a-ah, sir; that couldn't pay nohow."
"I think," said Mr. Larkin, "it may be questionable how far a
physician would be, just in this imminent stage of the attack, at all
useful, or even desirable; but, Miss Rumble, if I understand you, he
is quite _compos_--I mean, quite, so to speak, in his senses, in the
early part of the day."
He paused, and Miss Rumble from the other side of the bed contributed
her testimony.
"Well, that being so," began Mr. Larkin, but stopped short as Mr.
Dingwell took up his parable, forgetting how wide of the mark the sick
man's interpolations were.
"That's a vulture over there--devilish odd birds," said Mr. Dingwell's
voice, with an unpleasant distinctness; "you just tie a turban on a
stick," and then he was silent.
Mr. Larkin cleared his voice and resumed--
"Well, as I was saying, when the attack, whatever it is, has developed
itself, a medical man may possibly be available; but in the mean time,
as he is spared the possession of his faculties, and we all agree,
gentlemen, whatever particular form of faith may be respectively ours,
that some respect is due to futurity; I would say, that a clergyman,
at all events, might make him advantageously a visit to-morrow, and
afford him an opportunity at least of considering the interests of his
soul."
"Oh! da--a--m his shoul, it's his _body_. We must try to keep him
together," said Mr. Goldshed, impatiently. "If he dies the money's all
lost, every shtiver; if he don't, he's a sound speculation; we must
raise a doctor among us, Mr. Larkin."
"It is highly probable indeed that before long the unfortunate
gentleman may require medical advice," said Mr. Larkin, who had a high
opinion of the "speculation," whose pulse was at this moment
unfortunately at a hundred and twenty. "The fever, my dear sir, if
such it be, will have declared itself in a day or two; in the meantime,
nursing is all that is really needful, and Miss Rumble, I have
no doubt, will take care that the unhappy gentleman is properly
provided in that respect."
The attorney, who did not want at that moment to be drawn into a
discussion on contributing to expenses, smiled affectionately on Miss
Rumble, to whom he assigned the part of good Samaritan.
"He'll want some one at night, sir, please; I could not undertake
myself, sir, for both day and night," said brown Miss Rumble, very
quietly.
"_There!_ That'sh it!" exclaimed Levi, with a vicious chuckle, and a
scowl, extending his open hand energetically toward Miss Rumble, and
glaring from Mr. Larkin to his partner.
"Nothing but _pay_; down with the dust, Goldshed and Levi. Bleed like
a pair o' beashtly pigs, Goldshed and Levi, _do_! There's death in
that fellow's face, I say. It's all bosh, doctors and nurses; throwing
good money after bad, and then, five pounds to bury him, drat him!"
"Bury? ho, no! the parish, the workhoushe-authorities shall bury him,"
said Mr. Goldshed, briskly.
"Dead--dead--dead, as a Mameluke--dead as a Janizary--eh?
eh?--bowstrung!" exclaimed, Mr. Dingwell, and went off into an
indistinct conversation in a foreign language.
"Stuff a stocking down his throat, will you?" urged Mr. Levi; a duty,
however, which no one undertook.
"I see that cove's booked; he looks just like old Solomon's looked
when _he_ had it. It isn't no use; all rot, throwing good money arter
bad, I say; let him be; let him die."
"I'll _not_ let him die; no, he shan't. I'll _make_ him pay. I made
the Theatre of Fascination pay," said Mr. Goldshed serenely, alluding
to a venture of his devising, by which the partnership made ever so
much money in spite of a prosecution and heavy fines and other
expenses.
"I say 'tisn't my principle to throw up the game, by no
means--_no_--with my ball in hand, and the stakes in the
pocket--_never_!"
Here Mr. Goldshed wagged his head slowly with a solemn smile, and Mr.
Dingwell, from the bed, said with a moan--
"Move it, will you? That way--I wish you'd help--b-bags, sir--sacks,
sir--awfully hard lying--full of ears and--ay--_noses_--egad!--why
not? cut them all off, I say. D--n the Greeks! Will you move it? _Do_
move that sack--it hurts his ribs--ribs--_I_ never got the bastinado."
"Not but what you deserved it," remarked Mr. Levi.
And Mr. Dingwell's babbling went on, but too indistinctly to be
unravelled.
"I say," continued Mr. Goldshed, sublimely, "if that 'ere speculative
thing in the bed there comes round, and gets all square and right,
I'll make him pay. I'm not funked--who's afraid--wiry old brick!"
"I think so," acquiesced Mr. Larkin with gentle solemnity; "Mr.
Dingwell is certainly, as you say, wiry. There are many things in his
favour, and Providence, Mr. Goldshed--Providence is over us all."
"Providence, to be sure," said Mr. Goldshed, who did not disdain help
from any quarter. "Where does he keep his money, ma'am?"
"Under his bolster, please, sir--under his head," answered Sarah
Rumble.
"Take it out, please," said Mr. Goldshed.
She hesitated.
"_Give_ the man hish money, woman, ca-a-ant you?" bawled Mr. Levi
fiercely, and extending his arm toward the bed.
"You had better--_yes_, ma'am, the money belongs to Messrs. Goldshed
and Levi," said Mr. Larkin, interposing in the character of the _vir
pietate gravis_.
Sally Rumble, recollecting Mr. Dingwell's direction, "Let 'em have the
money, too, if they press for it," obeyed, and slid her hand under his
bolster, and under his head, from the other side where she was
standing; and Dingwell, feeling the motion, I suppose, raised his head
and stared with sunken eyes dismally at the three gentlemen, whom he
plainly did not recognise, or possibly saw in the shapes of foxes,
wolves, or owls, which AEsop would have metaphorically assigned them,
and with a weary groan he closed his wandering eyes again, and sank
down on the pillow.
Miss Rumble drew forth a roll of bank-notes with a string tied round
them.
"Take the money, Levi," said Goldshed, drawing a step backward.
"Take it yourself, guv'nor," said Levi, waving back Miss Sally Rumble,
and edging back a little himself.
"Well," said Goldshed, quietly, "I see you're afraid of that
infection."
"I believe you," answered Levi.
"So am I," said Goldshed, uneasily.
"And no wonder!" added Mr. Larkin, anticipating himself an invitation
to accept the questionable trust.
"Put them notes down on the table there," said Mr. Goldshed.
And the three gentlemen eyed the precious roll of paper as I have seen
people at a chemical lecture eye the explodable compounds on the
professor's table.
"I tell you what, ma'am," said Goldshed, "you'll please get a dry
bottle and a cork, and put them notes into it, and cork it down,
ma'am, and give it to Mr. Levi."
"And count them first, please, Miss Rumble--shan't she, Mr. Goldshed?"
suggested Mr. Larkin.
"What for?--isn't the money ours?" howled Mr. Levi, with a ferocious
stare on the attorney's meek face.
"Only, Mr. Goldshed, with a view to distinctness, and to prevent
possible confusion in any future account," said Mr. Larkin, who knew
that Dingwell had got money from the Verneys, and thought that if
there was anything recovered from the wreck he had as good a right to
his salvage as another.
Mr. Goldshed met his guileless smile with an ugly sneer, and said--
"Oh, count them, to be sure, for the gentleman. It isn't a ha'penny to
me."
So Miss Rumble counted seventy-five pounds in bank notes and four
pounds in gold, which latter Mr. Goldshed committed to her in trust
for the use of the patient, and the remainder were duly bottled and
corked down according to Mr. Goldshed's grotesque precaution, and in
this enclosure Mr. Levi consented to take the money in hand, and so it
was deposited for the night in the iron safe in Messrs. Goldshed and
Levi's office, to be uncorked in the morning by old Rosenthal, the
cashier, who would, no doubt, be puzzled by the peculiarity of the
arrangement, and with the aid of a cork-screw, lodged to the credit of
the firm.
Mr. Goldshed next insisted that Dingwell's life, fortunately for that
person, was too important to the gentlemen assembled there to be
trifled with; and said that sage--
"We'll have the best doctor in London--six pounds' worth of _him_--d'y
see? And under him a clever _young_ doctor to look in four times a
day, and we'll arrange with the young 'un on the principal of no cure
no pay--that is, we'll give fifty pounds this day six weeks, if the
party in bed here is alive at that date."
And upon this basis I believe an arrangement was actually completed.
The great Doctor Langley, when he called, and questioned Miss Rumble,
and inspected the patient, told Mr. Levi, who was in waiting, that the
old gentleman had been walking about in a fever for more than a week
before he took to his bed, and that the chances were very decidedly
against his recovery.
A great anxiety overcame Mr. Larkin like a summer cloud, and the
serene sunshine of that religious mind was overcast with storm and
blackness. For the recovery of Mr. Dingwell were offered up, in one
synagogue at least, prayers as fervent as any ever made for that of
our early friend Charles Surface, and it was plain that never was
patriarch, saint, or hero, mourned as the venerable Mr. Dingwell would
be, by at least three estimable men, if the fates were to make away
with him on this critical occasion.
The three gentlemen, as they left his room on the evening I have been
describing, cast their eyes upon Mr. Dingwell's desk, and hesitated,
and looked at one another, darkly, for a moment in silence.
"There'sh no reason why we shouldn't," drawled Mr. Goldshed.
"I object to the removal of the desk," said Mr. Larkin, with a shake
of his head, closing his eyes, and raising his hand as if about to
pronounce a benediction on the lid of it. "If he's spared it might
become a very serious thing--I decidedly object."
"Who want'sh to take the man's desk!" drawled Mr. Goldshed, surlily.
"Who want'sh to take it?" echoed Levi, and stared at him with an angry
gape.
"But there will be no harm, I shay, in looking what paper'sh there,"
continued Mr. Goldshed. "Does he get letters?"
"Only two, sir, please, as I can remember, since he came here."
"By po-sht, or by ha-a-an'?" inquired Goldshed.
"By 'and, sir, please; it was your Mr. Solomons as fetched 'em here,
sir."
He lifted up the desk, swayed it gently, and shook it a little,
looking at it as if it were a musical box about to strike up, and so
set it down again softly. "There'sh papersh in that box," he hummed
thoughtfully to himself.
"I think I may speak here," said Mr. Larkin, looking up sadly and
loftily, as he placed his hat upon his bald head, "with some little
authority as a professional man--if in no higher capacity--and I may
take upon myself to say, that by no possibility can the contents of
that desk affect the very simple and, in a certain sense, direct
transactions in which our clients' interests, and in a degree ours
also, are involved, and I object on higher grounds still, I hope, to
any irregularity as respects that desk."
"If you're confident, Mr. Larkinsh, there'sh nothing in it can affect
the bushiness we're on, I would not give you a cancel' Queen's head
for the lot."
"Perfectly confident, my dear Mr. Goldshed."
"He'sh perfectly confident," repeated Mr. Levi in his guv'nor's ear,
from over his shoulder.
"Come along then," said Mr. Goldshed, shuffling slowly out of the
room, with his hands in his pockets.
"It's agreed then, gentlemen, there's no tampering with the desk?"
urged Mr. Larkin, entreatingly.
"Shertainly," said Mr. Goldshed, beginning to descend the stairs.
"Shertainly," repeated Mr. Levi, following him.
And the three gentlemen, in grave and friendly guise, walked away
together, over the flagged court. Mr. Larkin did not half like taking
the arms of these gentlemen, but the quarter of the town was not one
where he was likely to meet any of either the spiritual or the
terrestrial aristocracy with whom he desired specially to stand well.
So he moved along conscious, not unpleasantly, of the contrast which a
high-bred gentleman must always present in juxtaposition with such
persons as Goldshed and Levi. They walked through the dingy corridor
called Caldwell Alley, and through Ive's Lane, and along the market,
already flaring and glaring with great murky jets of gas wavering in
the darkening stalls, and thence by the turn to the left into the
more open street, where the cab-stand is, and then having agreed to
dine together at the "Three Roses" in Milk Lane in half an hour, the
gentlemen parted--Messrs. Goldshed and Levi to fly in a cab to meet
their lawyer at their office, and Mr. Larkin to fly westward to his
hotel, to inquire for a letter which he expected. So smiling they
parted; and, so soon as Mr. Larkin was quite out of sight, Mr. Levi
descended from their cab, and with a few parting words which he
murmured in Mr. Goldshed's ear, left him to drive away by himself,
while he retraced his steps at his leisure to Rosemary Court, and
finding the door of Miss Rumble's house open with Lucy Maria at it,
entered and walked straight up to Mr. Dingwell's drawing-room, with a
bunch of small keys in his hand, in his coat-pocket.
He had got just two steps into the room towards the little table on
which the patient's desk stood, when from the other side of that piece
of furniture, and the now open desk, there rose up the tall form of
Mr. Jos. Larkin, of the Lodge.
The gentlemen eyed one another for a few seconds in silence, for the
surprise was great. Mr. Larkin did not even set down the parcel of
letters, which he had been sorting like a hand at whist, when Mr.
Levi had stepped in to divert his attention.
"I thought, Mr. Larkinsh, I might as well drop in just to give you a
lift," said Levi, with an elaborate bow, a politeness, and a great
smile, that rather embarrassed the good attorney.
"Certainly, Mr. Levi, I'm always happy to see you--always happy to see
_any_ man--I have never done anything I am ashamed of, nor shrunk from
any duty, nor do I mean to do so now."
"Your hands looksh pretty full."
"Yes, sir, _pretty_ tolerably full, sir," said Mr. Larkin, placing the
letters on the desk; "and I may add so do _yours_, Mr. Levi; those
keys, as you observe, might have given one a lift in opening this
desk, had I not preferred the _other_ course," said Mr. Larkin,
loftily, "of simply requesting Mr. Dingwell's friend, the lady at
present in charge of his papers, to afford me, at her own discretion,
such access to the papers possibly affecting my client as I may
consider necessary or expedient, as his legal adviser."
"You have changed your view of your duty, rather; haven't you, Mr.
Larkinsh?"
"No, sir, _no_; simply my action on a point of expediency. Of course,
there was some weight, too, sir, in the suggestions made by a
gentleman of Mr. Goldshed's experience and judgment; and I don't
hesitate to say that his--his ideas had their proper weight with me.
And I may say, once for all, Mr. Levi, I'll not be hectored, or
lectured, or _bullied_ by you, Mr. Levi," added Mr. Larkin, in a new
style, feeling, perhaps, that his logical and moral vein was not quite
so happy as usual.
"Don't frighten ush, Larkins, pray don't, only just give me leave to
see what them letters is about," said Levi, taking his place by him;
"did you put any of them in your pocket?"
"No, sir; upon my _soul_, Mr. Levi, I did no such thing," said Mr.
Larkin, with a heartiness that had an effect upon the Jew. "The
occasion is so serious that I hardly regret having used the
expression," said Mr. Larkin, who had actually blushed at his own
oath. "There was just one letter possibly worth looking at."
"That da-a-am foolish letter you wrote him to Constantinople?"
"I wrote him _no_ foolish letter, sir. I wrote him no letter, sir, I
should fear to have posted on the market cross, or read from the
pulpit, Mr. Levi. I only wonder, knowing all you do of Mr. Dingwell's
unfortunate temper, and reckless habits of assertion, that you should
attach the smallest weight to an expression thrown out by him in one
of his diabolical and--and--lamentable frenzies. As to my having
abstracted a letter of his--an imputation at which I smile--I can,
happily, cite evidence other than my own." He waved his hand toward
Miss Rumble. "This lady has happily, I will say, been in the room
during my very brief examination of my client's half-dozen papers.
Pray, madam, have I taken one of these--or, in fact, put it in my
pocket?"
"No, sir, please," answered Miss Rumble, who spoke in good faith,
having, with a lively remembrance of Mr. Dingwell's description of the
three gentlemen who had visited the sick that day, as "three robbers,"
kept her eye very steadily upon the excellent Mr. Larkin, during the
period of his search.
Mr. Levi would have liked to possess that letter. It would have proved
possibly a useful engine in the hands of the Firm in future dealings
with the adroit and high-minded Mr. Larkin. It was not to be had,
however, if it really existed at all; and when some more ironies and
moralities had been fired off on both sides, the gentlemen subsided
into their ordinary relations, and ultimately went away together to
dine on turtle, sturgeon, salmon, and I know not what meats, at the
famous "Three Roses" in Milk Lane.