“Pipes in the middle of the day's regular revelry,” ejaculated Anthony,
whose way of holding the curved pipe-stem displayed a mind bent on
reckless enjoyment, and said as much as a label issuing from his
mouth, like a figure in a comic woodcut of the old style:--“that's,” he
pursued, “that's if you haven't got to look up at the clock every two
minutes, as if the devil was after you. But, sitting here, you know, the
afternoon's a long evening; nobody's your master. You can on wi' your
slippers, up wi' your legs, talk, or go for'ard, counting, twicing, and
three-timesing; by George! I should take to drinking beer if I had my
afternoons to myself in the city, just for the sake of sitting and doing
sums in a tap-room; if it's a big tap-room, with pew sort o' places, and
dark red curtains, a fire, and a smell of sawdust; ale, and tobacco, and
a boy going by outside whistling a tune of the day. Somebody comes in.
'Ah, there's an idle old chap,' he says to himself, (meaning me), and
where, I should like to ask him, 'd his head be if he sat there dividing
two hundred and fifty thousand by forty-five and a half!”
The farmer nodded encouragingly. He thought it not improbable that
a short operation with these numbers would give the sum in Anthony's
possession, the exact calculation of his secret hoard, and he set to
work to stamp them on his brain, which rendered him absent in manner,
while Mrs. Sumfit mixed liquor with hot water, and pushed at his
knee, doubling in her enduring lips, and lengthening her eyes to aim a
side-glance of reprehension at Anthony's wandering loquacity.
Rhoda could bear it no more.
“Now let me hear of my sister, uncle,” she said.
“I'll tell you what,” Anthony responded, “she hasn't got such a pretty
sort of a sweet blackbirdy voice as you've got.”
The girl blushed scarlet.
“Oh, she can mount them colours, too,” said Anthony.
His way of speaking of Dahlia indicated that he and she had enough of
one another; but of the peculiar object of his extraordinary visit not
even the farmer had received a hint. Mrs. Sumfit ventured to think aloud
that his grog was not stiff enough, but he took a gulp under her eyes,
and smacked his lips after it in a most convincing manner.
“Ah! that stuff wouldn't do for me in London, half-holiday or no
half-holiday,” said Anthony.
“Why not?” the farmer asked.
“I should be speculating--deep--couldn't hold myself in: Mexicans,
Peroovians, Venzeshoolians, Spaniards, at 'em I should go. I see
bonds in all sorts of colours, Spaniards in black and white,
Peruvians--orange, Mexicans--red as the British army. Well, it's just my
whim. If I like red, I go at red. I ain't a bit of reason. What's more,
I never speculate.”
“Why, that's safest, brother Tony,” said the farmer.
“And safe's my game--always was, always will be! Do you think”--Anthony
sucked his grog to the sugar-dregs, till the spoon settled on his
nose--“do you think I should hold the position I do hold, be trusted as
I am trusted? Ah! you don't know much about that. Should I have money
placed in my hands, do you think--and it's thousands at a time,
gold, and notes, and cheques--if I was a risky chap? I'm known to be
thoroughly respectable. Five and forty years I've been in Boyne's Bank,
and thank ye, ma'am, grog don't do no harm down here. And I will take
another glass. 'When the heart of a man!'--but I'm no singer.”
Mrs. Sumfit simpered, “Hem; it's the heart of a woman, too: and she have
one, and it's dying to hear of her darlin' blessed in town, and of who
cuts her hair, and where she gets her gownds, and whose pills--”
The farmer interrupted her irritably.
“Divide a couple o' hundred thousand and more by forty-five and a half,”
he said. “Do wait, mother; all in good time. Forty-five and a-half,
brother Tony; that was your sum--ah!--you mentioned it some time
back--half of what? Is that half a fraction, as they call it? I haven't
forgot fractions, and logareems, and practice, and so on to algebrae,
where it always seems to me to blow hard, for, whizz goes my head in a
jiffy, as soon as I've mounted the ladder to look into that country.
How 'bout that forty-five and a half, brother Tony, if you don't mind
condescending to explain?”
“Forty-five and a half?” muttered Anthony, mystified.
“Oh, never mind, you know, if you don't like to say, brother Tony.” The
farmer touched him up with his pipe-stem.
“Five and a half,” Anthony speculated. “That's a fraction you got hold
of, brother William John,--I remember the parson calling out those names
at your wedding: 'I, William John, take thee, Susan;' yes, that's a
fraction, but what's the good of it?”
“What I mean is, it ain't forty-five and half of forty-five. Half of
one, eh? That's identical with a fraction. One--a stroke--and two under
it.”
“You've got it correct,” Anthony assented.
“How many thousand divide it by?”
“Divide what by, brother William John? I'm beat.”
“Ah! out comes the keys: lockup everything; it's time!” the farmer
laughed, rather proud of his brother-in-law's perfect wakefulness after
two stiff tumblers. He saw that Anthony was determined with all due
friendly feeling to let no one know the sum in his possession.
“If it's four o'clock, it is time to lock up,” said Anthony, “and bang
to go the doors, and there's the money for thieves to dream of--they
can't get a-nigh it, let them dream as they like. What's the hour,
ma'am?”
“Not three, it ain't,” returned Mrs. Sumfit; “and do be good creatures,
and begin about my Dahly, and where she got that Bumptious gownd, and
the bonnet with blue flowers lyin' by on the table: now, do!”
Rhoda coughed.
“And she wears lavender gloves like a lady,” Mrs. Sumfit was continuing.
Rhoda stamped on her foot.
“Oh! cruel!” the comfortable old woman snapped in pain, as she applied
her hand to the inconsolable fat foot, and nursed it. “What's roused ye,
you tiger girl? I shan't be able to get about, I shan't, and then who's
to cook for ye all? For you're as ignorant as a raw kitchen wench, and
knows nothing.”
“Come, Dody, you're careless,” the farmer spoke chidingly through Mrs.
Sumfit's lamentations.
“She stops uncle Anthony when he's just ready, father,” said Rhoda.
“Do you want to know?” Anthony set his small eyes on her: “do you want
to know, my dear?” He paused, fingering his glass, and went on: “I,
Susan, take thee, William John, and you've come of it. Says I to myself,
when I hung sheepish by your mother and by your father, my dear, says
I to myself, I ain't a marrying man: and if these two, says I, if any
progeny comes to 'em--to bless them, some people'd say, but I know what
life is, and what young ones are--if--where was I? Liquor makes you
talk, brother William John, but where's your ideas? Gone, like hard
cash! What I meant was, I felt I might some day come for'ard and help
the issue of your wife's weddin', and wasn't such a shady object among
you, after all. My pipe's out.”
Rhoda stood up, and filled the pipe, and lit it in silence. She divined
that the old man must be allowed to run on in his own way, and for a
long time he rambled, gave a picture of the wedding, and of a robbery of
Boyne's Bank: the firm of Boyne, Burt, Hamble, and Company. At last, he
touched on Dahlia.
“What she wants, I can't make out,” he said; “and what that good lady
there, or somebody, made mention of--how she manages to dress as she
do! I can understand a little goin' a great way, if you're clever in
any way; but I'm at my tea”--Anthony laid his hand out as to exhibit a
picture. “I ain't a complaining man, and be young, if you can, I say,
and walk about and look at shops; but, I'm at my tea: I come home rather
tired there's the tea-things, sure enough, and tea's made, and, maybe,
there's a shrimp or two; she attends to your creature comforts. When
everything's locked up and tight and right, I'm gay, and ask for a bit
of society: well, I'm at my tea: I hear her foot thumping up and down
her bed-room overhead: I know the meaning of that: I'd rather hear
nothing: down she runs: I'm at my tea, and in she bursts.”--Here
followed a dramatic account of Dahlia's manner of provocation, which was
closed by the extinction of his pipe.
The farmer, while his mind still hung about thousands of pounds and
a certain incomprehensible division of them to produce a distinct
intelligible total, and set before him the sum of Anthony's riches,
could see that his elder daughter was behaving flightily and neglecting
the true interests of the family, and he was chagrined. But Anthony,
before he entered the house, had assured him that Dahlia was well, and
that nothing was wrong with her. So he looked at Mrs. Sumfit, who
now took upon herself to plead for Dahlia: a young thing, and such a
handsome creature! and we were all young some time or other; and would
heaven have mercy on us, if we were hard upon the young, do you think?
The motto of a truly religious man said, try 'em again. And, maybe,
people had been a little hard upon Dahlia, and the girl was apt to
take offence. In conclusion, she appealed to Rhoda to speak up for her
sister. Rhoda sat in quiet reserve.
She was sure her sister must be justified in all she did but the picture
of the old man coming from his work every night to take his tea quite
alone made her sad. She found herself unable to speak, and as she did
not, Mrs. Sumfit had an acute twinge from her recently trodden foot,
and called her some bitter names; which was not an unusual case, for
the kind old woman could be querulous, and belonged to the list of those
whose hearts are as scales, so that they love not one person devotedly
without a corresponding spirit of opposition to another. Rhoda merely
smiled.
By-and-by, the women left the two men alone.
Anthony turned and struck the farmer's knee.
“You've got a jewel in that gal, brother William John.”
“Eh! she's a good enough lass. Not much of a manager, brother Tony. Too
much of a thinker, I reckon. She's got a temper of her own too. I'm a
bit hurt, brother Tony, about that other girl. She must leave London, if
she don't alter. It's flightiness; that's all. You mustn't think ill of
poor Dahly. She was always the pretty one, and when they know it, they
act up to it: she was her mother's favourite.”
“Ah! poor Susan! an upright woman before the Lord.”
“She was,” said the farmer, bowing his head.
“And a good wife,” Anthony interjected.
“None better--never a better; and I wish she was living to look after
her girls.”
“I came through the churchyard, hard by,” said Anthony; “and I read that
writing on her tombstone. It went like a choke in my throat. The first
person I saw next was her child, this young gal you call Rhoda; and,
thinks I to myself, you might ask me, I'd do anything for ye--that I
could, of course.”
The farmer's eye had lit up, but became overshadowed by the
characteristic reservation.
“Nobody'd ask you to do more than you could,” he remarked, rather
coldly.
“It'll never be much,” sighed Anthony.
“Well, the world's nothing, if you come to look at it close,” the farmer
adopted a similar tone.
“What's money!” said Anthony.
The farmer immediately resumed his this-worldliness:
“Well, it's fine to go about asking us poor devils to answer ye that,”
he said, and chuckled, conceiving that he had nailed Anthony down to a
partial confession of his ownership of some worldly goods.
“What do you call having money?” observed the latter, clearly in the
trap. “Fifty thousand?”
“Whew!” went the farmer, as at a big draught of powerful stuff.
“Ten thousand?”
Mr. Fleming took this second gulp almost contemptuously, but still
kindly.
“Come,” quoth Anthony, “ten thousand's not so mean, you know. You're a
gentleman on ten thousand. So, on five. I'll tell ye, many a gentleman'd
be glad to own it. Lor' bless you! But, you know nothing of the world,
brother William John. Some of 'em haven't one--ain't so rich as you!”
“Or you, brother Tony?” The farmer made a grasp at his will-o'-the-wisp.
“Oh! me!” Anthony sniggered. “I'm a scraper of odds and ends. I pick up
things in the gutter. Mind you, those Jews ain't such fools, though
a curse is on 'em, to wander forth. They know the meaning of the
multiplication table. They can turn fractions into whole numbers. No;
I'm not to be compared to gentlemen. My property's my respectability. I
said that at the beginning, and I say it now. But, I'll tell you what,
brother William John, it's an emotion when you've got bags of thousands
of pounds in your arms.”
Ordinarily, the farmer was a sensible man, as straight on the level of
dull intelligence as other men; but so credulous was he in regard to the
riches possessed by his wife's brother, that a very little tempted
him to childish exaggeration of the probable amount. Now that Anthony
himself furnished the incitement, he was quite lifted from the earth.
He had, besides, taken more of the strong mixture than he was ever
accustomed to take in the middle of the day; and as it seemed to him
that Anthony was really about to be seduced into a particular statement
of the extent of the property which formed his respectability (as
Anthony had chosen to put it), he got up a little game in his head
by guessing how much the amount might positively be, so that he could
subsequently compare his shrewd reckoning with the avowed fact. He tamed
his wild ideas as much as possible; thought over what his wife used to
say of Anthony's saving ways from boyhood, thought of the dark hints of
the Funds, of many bold strokes for money made by sagacious persons; of
Anthony's close style of living, and of the lives of celebrated misers;
this done, he resolved to make a sure guess, and therefore aimed below
the mark.
Money, when the imagination deals with it thus, has no substantial
relation to mortal affairs. It is a tricksy thing, distending and
contracting as it dances in the mind, like sunlight on the ceiling cast
from a morning tea-cup, if a forced simile will aid the conception. The
farmer struck on thirty thousand and some odd hundred pounds--outlying
debts, or so, excluded--as what Anthony's will, in all likelihood, would
be sworn under: say, thirty thousand, or, safer, say, twenty thousand.
Bequeathed--how? To him and to his children. But to the children in
reversion after his decease? Or how? In any case, they might make
capital marriages; and the farm estate should go to whichever of the two
young husbands he liked the best. Farmer Fleming asked not for any life
of ease and splendour, though thirty thousand pounds was a fortune; or
even twenty thousand. Noblemen have stooped to marry heiresses owning
no more than that! The idea of their having done so actually shot
across him, and his heart sent up a warm spring of tenderness toward the
patient, good, grubbing old fellow, sitting beside him, who had lived
and died to enrich and elevate the family. At the same time, he could
not refrain from thinking that Anthony, broad-shouldered as he was,
though bent, sound on his legs, and well-coloured for a Londoner,
would be accepted by any Life Insurance office, at a moderate rate,
considering his age. The farmer thought of his own health, and it was
with a pang that he fancied himself being probed by the civil-speaking
Life Insurance doctor (a gentleman who seems to issue upon us applicants
from out the muffled folding doors of Hades; taps us on the chest, once,
twice, and forthwith writes down our fateful dates). Probably, Anthony
would not have to pay a higher rate of interest than he.
“Are you insured, brother Tony?” the question escaped him.
“No, I ain't, brother William John;” Anthony went on nodding like an
automaton set in motion. “There's two sides to that. I'm a long-lived
man. Long-lived men don't insure; that is, unless they're fools. That's
how the Offices thrive.”
“Case of accident?” the farmer suggested.
“Oh! nothing happens to me,” replied Anthony.
The farmer jumped on his legs, and yawned.
“Shall we take a turn in the garden, brother Tony?”
“With all my heart, brother William John.”
The farmer had conscience to be ashamed of the fit of irritable vexation
which had seized on him; and it was not till Anthony being asked the
date of his birth, had declared himself twelve years his senior, that
the farmer felt his speculations to be justified. Anthony was nearly
a generation ahead. They walked about, and were seen from the windows
touching one another on the shoulder in a brotherly way. When they came
back to the women, and tea, the farmer's mind was cooler, and all his
reckonings had gone to mist. He was dejected over his tea.
“What is the matter, father?” said Rhoda.
“I'll tell you, my dear,” Anthony replied for him. “He's envying me some
one I want to ask me that question when I'm at my tea in London.”