Arrived at his dingy little office in The Poultry, halfway up the
narrow, shady alley of low-browed, drab-faced houses near the Banking
House of Lubbock, you saw Thompson Jowell, recruited by a solid
luncheon, bending severe brows upon a pale-faced, weak-eyed clerk, who
had grievously offended, and was up for judgment.
“What’s this? Now, what’s this, Standish?” the great man blustered.
“You have been doing overtime and ask to be paid for it? Lawful claims
are met with prompt settlement in this office, as you have good cause
to know. But, lookee here!” The speaker puffed out his pendulous cheeks
in his characteristic way, and held up a stout, menacing finger before
the wincing eyes of the unfortunate Standish. “Don’t you, or any other
man in my employment get trying to make money out of ME! Because you
won’t, you know!” said Mr. Thompson Jowell. “D’ye see?” and jabbed at
the thorax of the unfortunate Standish with the finger, and then rubbed
his own nose smartly with it, and thrust it, with its fellows, into his
large, deep trousers-pocket as the livid victim faltered:
“You were good enough, previously to the Christmas holidays, sir, to
send for me, and say that if I cared to----”
Thompson Jowell solemnly shook his little pear-shaped head, and goggled
with his large, round brown eyes upon the scared victim, saying:
“Not ‘cared to,’ Standish. Be accurate, my good fellow, in word as in
deed!”
“You hinted to me, sir----” stammered the unfortunate.
Thompson Jowell swelled to such portentous size at this that the clerk
visibly shrank and dwindled before the awful presence.
“I am not accustomed to hint, Standish!”
“You intimated, sir, that if I was willing”--gulped the pallid
Standish--“to devote my evenings to making up the New Year’s
accounts and checking the files of duplicate invoices against the
office-ledgers, you--you would undertake--or so you were good enough to
give me to understand--that I should be the better for it!”
“But if I mentioned overtime,” returned his employer, thrusting his
short fat hands under his wide coat-tails, and rocking backwards and
forwards on the office hearthrug, a cheap and shabby article to which
the great man was accustomed to point with pride as illustrative of
the robust humility of his own nature, “I’ll eat my hat!” He glanced
at the low-crowned, shiny beaver hanging on a wooden peg beside his
private safe, in company with the shaggy box-coat and a fur-lined,
velvet-collared cloak of sumptuous appearance, adding, “and that’s a
meal would cost me thirty shillings. For there’s no such a thing as
overtime. It don’t exist! And if you proved to me it did I wouldn’t
believe you!” said Thompson Jowell, thrusting his thick right hand
deep into the bosom of the gorgeous waistcoat, and puffing himself out
still more. “For your time, young man! in return for a liberal salary
of Twenty Shillings per week, belongs to Me--to Me, Standish, whenever
I choose to employ it! As for being the better for having done the work
you say you have, you _are_ the better morally, in having discharged
your duty to a generous employer; and if you choose to injure your
constitution by stopping here o’ nights until eleven p.m. it’s no
affair of mine. John Downright my name is!--besides the one that’s on
the brass doorplate of these offices, and what I say is--it’s no affair
of mine! Though, mind you! in burning gas upon these premises up to
I don’t know what hour of the night, you’ve materially increased the
Company’s quarterly bill, and in common justice ought to defray their
charges. I’ll let you off that!--so think yourself lucky! and don’t
come asking me to remunerate you for overtime again. Now, get out with
you!”
Unlucky Standish, yellow and green with disappointed hopes and secret
fury, and yet admiring, in spite of himself, the clever way in which
he had been defrauded, backed towards the narrow door, and in the act
collided with a visitor, who, entering, straightway impregnated and
enlivened the dead and musty atmosphere with a heterogeneous mixture of
choice perfumes, in which super-fine Macassar and bear’s grease, the
fashionable Frangipani and Jockey Club; Russia-leather, a suspicion
of stables, and more than a hint of malt liquor, combined with the
fragrance of the choice Havana cheroot which the newcomer removed from
his mouth as he entered, to make way for the filial salutation:
“Halloa, Governor! All serene?”
You then saw young Mortimer Jowell, only surviving sapling of the
sturdy stem of tough old British oak ticketed Thompson Jowell, received
in that fond father’s arms, who warmly hugged him to his bosom, crying:
“Morty! My own boy!”
“How goes it, Governor?” responded Morty, winking tremendously, and
patting his parent on his stout back with a large-sized hand, gloved
with the most expensive lemon kid. “Hold on, you!” he hailed, as the
ghastly Standish, seeing Distress for Rent written large across the
page of the near future, was creeping out. “Come back and help us
out of this watchbox, will yer?” Adding, as the clerk assisted him
out of a capacious driving-coat of yellow cloth, with biscuit-sized
mother-o’-pearl buttons:
“You look uncommon green, Standish, my boy--Standish’s your name, ain’t
it?”
“Yes, Mr. Mortimer, sir. And--I am quite well, sir, thank you, sir.
There’s nothing the matter with me beyond ordinary.”
He hung up the son’s coat on the peg beneath the low-crowned,
curly-brimmed beaver of the parent, and went out. Morty, retaining his
own fashionable, shaggy headgear upon a skull of the bullet rather than
the pear-shaped order, had forgotten the clerk and his sick face before
the door closed behind him.
“Don’t you worry about Standish and his looks, my boy!” said Thompson
Jowell. “That’s the way to spoil a good clerk, that is. Cock ’em up
with an idea that they’re overworked, next thing is they’re in bed, and
their wives--and why the devil they should have wives, when at that
fellow’s age I couldn’t afford the luxury, beats me!--their wives are
writing letters begging me not to stop the substitute’s pay out of the
husband’s salary, because he, and she, and the children--and it’s like
their extravagance and presumption to have children when they can’t
afford to keep ’em!--will have to go to the Workhouse if you do. And
why shouldn’t they go to the Workhouse? What do we ratepayers keep it
up for, if it ain’t good enough for you, ma’am, and the likes of you
and yours? My name being Tom Candid--that’s what I say to her.”
He had, in fact, said it to a suppliant of the proud, presumptuous
class he complained of, only that morning. And now, as he blew out
his big, pendulous cheeks and triple chin above their stiff circular
frill of iron-gray whisker, his tall son took him by the shoulders and
shook him playfully backwards and forwards in the grip of the great
hands that were clothed with the extra-sized lemon kids, saying, as he
regarded his affectionate parent with a pair of brown round eyes, that,
with the narrow brain behind them, were a trifle bemused with liquor
even at this early hour, yet wonderfully frank and honest for a son of
Thompson Jowell’s:
“You knowin’ old File! You first-class, extra-ground, double-edged
Shylock, you! You jolly old Fee-Faw-Fum, smellin’ the blood of
Englishmen, and grindin’ their bones to make your bread--or the flour
you sell to the British Government, and take precious jolly good care
to sell dear!--you’re lookin’ in the prime of health and the pink of
condition, and that’s what I like to see!”
“Really, Morty! Truly, now, my dear boy?”
Morty nodded, with a cheerful grin, and Thompson Jowell’s heart
glowed with fatherly pride in this big young man with the foolish,
good-natured face and the round, somewhat owlish eyes, that resembled
his own, though not in their simplicity. But Morty’s invariable
and characteristic method of expressing frank admiration of those
invaluable business qualities of unscrupulousness, greed, and cunning,
which the author of his being, while fattening upon them, preferred
to disown--was a venomed dart rankling in the fleshy ribs that were
clothed by the gorgeous waistcoat. His narrow slanting forehead, that
was like the lid of a Noah’s Ark--furrowed as he heard. He said, with
hurry and effort:
“Yes--yes! Well--well! And how did you come, dear boy?”
“Tooled the Tilbury with the tandem over from Norwood,” Morty
responded, “on purpose to have a good look at you. Lord Adolphus
Noddlewood, my friend and chum at the Reverend’s, came along too. Lots
of fun on the way! Tre-menjous row with tollgate-keeper’s wife at
Camberwell Gate--Tollman, gone to bed, after bein’ up all night, stuck
his head out of upper-window in a red nightcap to tell us, if we ain’t
too drunk to remember it!--we’re talkin’, for once in our lives, to a
decent woman.... (And you ought to ha’ heard the names she’d called
us!) ... ‘Dolph, my boy,’ says I to Lord Adolphus when we got into the
Borough Road--and plenty of excitement there, with a leader that kep’
tryin’ to get into the omnibuses after the old ladies!... ‘Dolph, my
buck,’ says I, ‘I’m goin’ to show you where the Guinea Tree grows.’
‘Ha, ha, ha! That means,’ says he to me, ‘you’re goin’ to fly a kite
among the Jews.’ ‘You’re dead out there, Dolph!’ says I. ‘For one
thing, the Gov’ bleeds free. A touch of the lancet, and he brims the
basin. For another--there isn’t a Hebrew among the Ten Tribes, from Dan
to Beersheba, ’ud dare to lend me a penny-piece on my tidiest signature
for fear of what my father’d do when he found out they’d been gettin’
hold of his precious boy! For, deep as they are, my father’s deeper,’
says I, ‘and artful as they are, he’s more artful still; and grinding
and grasping extortioners as it’s their nature to be, there’s not a
Jew among ’em that the Governor wouldn’t give ninety points out of a
hundred to, and beat at Black Pool--with the nigger in the pocket and a
general shell-out all round! Ha, ha, haw! Whew!...” Morty whipped out
a handkerchief of brilliant hue, diffusing odors of Araby, and applied
it to his nose: “Piff! this here jolly old rat-hole of yours stinks
over and above a bit. Why don’t you burn it down?--you’re inspired to
the hilt, or I don’t know you, dad! And take a smart, snug, comfortable
office in Cheapside or Cornhill?”
“It wouldn’t do! I began in this place, and have grown up here, as
one might say, and have got too used to it to fancy another. And--be
a little careful, Morty, my boy!” urged the father of this shining
specimen, admiring the son’s high spirit and volubility, yet suffering
at his well-earned praise. He felt so keen a pride in this tall,
bullet-headed, broad-shouldered, loosely-jointed son, that the tears
stood in his round eyes as they goggled at him; and the upright gray
hair upon his pear-shaped head bristled more stiffly. “Somebody outside
there might be listening,” he pleaded, “and that kind of joke’s
dangerous if repeated. Be careful, my dear boy!”
“If you mean careful of those tallow-faced, inky, chilblain-fingered
chaps in the office outside this, and the room on the other side of
the passage,” said Morty, jerking up his coat-tails, and seating
himself upon the large, important blotting-pad that lay upon the
stained leather of the kneehole writing-table, that, with the iron
safe previously mentioned; an armchair with loops of horsehair
stuffing coming through the torn leather covering of its arms, and
bulging through the torn leather covering of its back; a wooden
stool adorned with a fantastic pattern of perforations; a dusty set
of wooden pigeon-holes stuffed with dustier papers, and a bookcase
containing Shipping-Lists, References, Handy Volumes, Compendiums,
Ready Reckoners, and Guides, such as are commonly used by business men
who chase the goose that lays the golden egg of Profit through the
tortuous ways of Finance;--with a few more, likely to be of use to an
Auxiliary-Transport Agent and Forage Contractor--comprised, with a
blistered little yellow iron washstand, furtively lurking in a shady
corner, the furniture of the office,--“if you mean those clerks of
yours, you’re joking when you talk of them repeating anything _they_
hear. They know you too well, Gov! They’ve sold themselves to you,
body and soul. For you’re the Devil, Governor--the very Devil! Ain’t
you? Gaw! Don’t tell me you ain’t! I don’t believe you!” said Morty,
with a tinge of the paternal manner. “I won’t believe you! I wouldn’t
believe you if you took a pair of wings (detachable patent), like what
the Pasbas--there’s a stunnin’ creature!--sports in the new Opera Bally
as the ‘Sylph of the Silver Sham’--no, dammy!--that ain’t it! ‘Sylph
of the Silver Strand’--out of your safe, and a harp and a crown out of
the corner-cupboard by the fireplace”--a rusty, narrow fireplace, with
a bent poker thrust in between the bars of the niggardly grate that had
a smoking lump of coal in it--“and showed me,” said Morty, with a gleam
of imagination, “your first-class diploma as a qualified practicing
Angel! And so you know!”
He poked Thompson Jowell in the meaty ribs that were covered by his
gorgeous waistcoat, and though the hidden thorn rankled more and
more, and though allusions to the personage mentioned seemed to savor
of irreligion, the great man’s brow relaxed, and he chuckled, as he
rattled the money in the tills of his big trouser-pockets.
“And how goes the learning, Morty, with the reverend gentleman at
Norwood? Does he seem to have his trade as Tutor at his fingers’
ends? Does he push you on and prepare you? coach you and generally
cram you with the things you ought to be master of? As a young fellow
of means and expectations--who will shortly (or great people break
promises!)--hold a Commission in Her Majesty’s Foot Guards?”
“Oh, Lord!” groaned Morty. “Don’t he, though?”
“This friend of yours you’ve brought with you is a swell, it seems?”
resumed his father.
“Lord Adolphus Noddlewood ... I believe you, Gov!” returned the son,
screwing up his round, young, foolish face into an expression of
portentous knowingness. “Eldest son of the Marquess of Crumphorn--ain’t
that the tip-top thing?”
“Eldest son of the Marquess of Crumphorn! We’ll look him up in the
Peerage presently, or your mother shall--that’s the sort of thing a
woman enjoys doing,” said Thompson Jowell, rather viciously, “and
that keeps her from grizzling and groaning, and thinking herself an
invalid.”
“How is my mother, sir?” asked the son, with a shade of resentment at
the other’s slighting tone.
“She’s pretty much the same as usual,” said Thompson Jowell sourly,
and ceased to puff himself out to double his natural size, and left
off rattling the tills in his trousers, “or she was when I left her
early this morning. A decent, worthy sort of woman, your mother,” he
added, snorting, “without any spirit or go in her. And as for setting
off fine clothes and jewels, as the wife of a man in My position ought
to--you might as well hang ’em on a pump. Indeed, you’d show ’em off to
more advantage, because a pump can’t retire into the background with a
Dorcas work-basket and a Prayer-Book, and generally efface itself. It
stops where it is,--and if it ain’t a rattler as regards conversation,
people do get some kind of response from it, if they’re at the trouble
of working the handle. Now, your mother----”
“My mother, sir, is as good company and as well worth looking at--in
fine clothes or shabby ones--as any lady in the land!” said Morty.
“I’m dam’ if she ain’t!” And so red and angry a light shone in the
round brown eyes that were generally dull and lusterless, and so
well-developed a scowl sat on the rather pimply forehead, from which
the tall shaggy white beaver stove-pipe of the latest fashion was
jovially tilted back, that Thompson Jowell changed the conversation
rather hurriedly.
“Well, well! perhaps she is!” he agreed, in rather a floundering
manner. “And if her own son didn’t think so, who should? Run down to
Market Drowsing and see her as soon as you’re able. She won’t come up
to Hanover Square before the beginning of May. Give her compliments,
along with mine, to the Honorable and Reverend Alfred de Gassey and
Lady Alicia Brokingbole. There’s a thorough-paced nob for you, the
Honorable and Reverend! And his wife! The genuine hallmarked Thing,
registered and stamped--that’s what she is!”
He referred in these terms of unqualified admiration to a needy sprig
of nobility who had held a commission in a Cavalry regiment; and,
having with highly commendable rapidity run through a considerable
fortune, had exchanged, some years previously, at the pressing instance
of his creditors, the Army for the Church, and a family living which
fell vacant at a particularly appropriate moment. And, having married
another slip of the aristocracy as impecunious as himself, the Reverend
Alfred had hit upon the philanthropic idea of enlarging his clerical
stipend and benefiting Humanity at large, by receiving under his roof
two or three young gentlemen of backward education and large fortune,
who should require to be prepared for the brilliant discharge of their
duty to their Sovereign and their country, as subaltern officers of
crack regimental corps.
* * * * *
Not that preparation was essential in those days, when Army Coaches
were vehicles as rare as swan-drawn water-chariots; and the
cramming-establishments that were some years later to spring up like
mushrooms on Shooter’s Hill or Primrose Hill, or in the purlieus of
Hammersmith or Peckham, were unknown. Ensigns of Infantry, or cornets
of Cavalry Regiments, joined their respective corps without having
received the ghost of a technical military education; often without
possessing any knowledge whatever beyond a nodding acquaintance with
two out of the three R’s.... Mathematics, Fortification, French and
German, were not imparted by the Honorable and Reverend Alfred to his
wealthy pupils, for the simple reason that he, the instructor, was not
acquainted with these. But in Boxing, Fencing, Riding, the clauses of
the Code of Honor regulating the Prize Ring and the dueling-ground,
not to mention the rules governing the game of Whist, at which the
Reverend Alfred always won; he was a very fully-qualified tutor. And
his wife, the Lady Alicia Brokingbole, youngest daughter of the Earl of
Gallopaway, initiated the more personable of the young gentlemen into
the indispensable art of handing chairs, winding Berlin wools, giving
an arm to a lady, copying sweet poems from the _Forget-Me-Not_ or
_The Keepsake_ into her album, and generally making themselves useful
and agreeable. Nor was the Lady Alicia averse to a little discreet
flirtation, or a little game of piquet, or a little rubber of whist,
at which, like the Reverend Alfred, she invariably won. It will be
comprehended that, provided the bear-cub who came to Norwood to be
licked into shape were rich, the said cub might spend a fairly pleasant
time; and be regaled with a good deal of flattery and adulation, mixed
with chit-chat, gossip, and scandal, of the most aristocratic and
exclusive kind.
* * * * *
“She’s a spankin’ fine woman, is Lady Alicia,” agreed Morty, with the
air of a connoisseur, “though a dam’ sight too fond of revokin’ at
whist with pound points to suit my book!” he added, with a cloud upon
the brow that might have been more intellectual.
“But she’s an Earl’s daughter!--an Earl’s daughter, Morty, my boy!”
urged Thompson Jowell; “and moves in high Society, the very highest--or
so I have been given to understand.”
“Correct, too. Knows everybody worth knowin’--got the entire Peerage
and _Court Circular_ at her finger-ends,” declared simple Morty.
“I drove her four-in-hand from Norwood to the Row only yesterday.
Gaw! You should have seen us! Bowin’ right and left like China
Manda--what-do-you-call-’ems?--to the most tre-menjous nobs (in
coroneted carriages, with flunkeys in powder and gold lace) you ever
clapped your eyes on! And you ought to hear her tell of the huntin’
supper she sat down to at her cousin’s castle in Bohemia--the chap’s
an Austrian Prince with a name like a horse’s cough. Four-and-forty
covers, two Crowned Heads, five Hereditary Grand-Dukes with their
Duchesses, a baker’s dozen of Princes, and for the rest, nothin’ under
a Count or Countess, ‘until, Mr. Jowell,’ she says, ‘you arrived at
Alfred, who would grace any social circle, however lofty, and poor
little humble Me!’ And they played a Charade afterwards, and Lady
Alicia had no jewels to wear in the part of Cleopatra, ‘having chosen,’
she says, ‘to wed for Love rather than Ambition.’ And the Prince had an
iron coffin brought in--or was it a copper?--cram-jam-full of diamonds
and rubies as big as pigeons’ eggs, and told her ladyship to take what
she chose. ‘Gaw! those sort of relatives are worth havin’! Shouldn’t
mind a few of ’em myself!’ says I to Lady A.”
“That’s the sort of woman to cultivate, Morty, my boy!” advised
Thompson Jowell, smiling and rubbing his hands. “With a little managing
and cleverness, she ought to get you into the swim. The Goldfish Tank,
I mean, where the titled heiresses are. You represent Money, solid
Money!--but what we want--to set our Money off, is Rank! And the men
of the British Aristocracy are easy enough to get at, and easy enough
to get on with, provided you don’t happen to tread on their damned
exclusive corns. But their women, confound ’em!--their high-nosed,
long-necked women--they’re as hard to get on a level of chatty equality
with as Peter Wilkins’ flying females were; and the mischief of it
is, my boy, you can’t do without their good word. So cultivate Lady
A! Wink at her cheating at cards--it’s in the blood of all these
tip-top swells--and get her to take you about with her. And one of
these days we may be hearing how Lady Rosaline Jowell, second daughter
of the Earl, or the Marquess, or the Duke of Something-or-other, was
Presented, on her marriage with Mr. Mortimer Jowell, of the Foot
Guards; and what sort of figure her husband cut at the Prince’s Levée.
And, by Gosh! though I don’t keep a coffer full of diamonds as big as
pigeons’ eggs in my safe, we’ll see what Bond Street can do in the way
of a Tiara for the head, and a Zone for the waist, and a necklace and
bracelets of the biggest shiners that can be got, for her Ladyship,
Thompson Jowell’s daughter-in-law! And what I say I’ll do, I do! My
name’s Old Trusty, ain’t it, Morty boy?”
His round eyes goggled almost appealingly at his son.
“And if I’m--what you say--a bit of a Squeezer as regards making people
pay; and a bit of a Grinder--though that I don’t admit--at driving hard
bargains; and Mister Sharp of Cutters’ Lane when it comes to getting
the best of So-and-So, and Such-and-Such--who’d cheerfully skin me
alive, only give ’em the chance of it--you’re the last person in the
world, Morty, who ought to throw it in my face.”
He spoke with almost weeping earnestness; there were blobs of moisture
in the corners of his eyes; his blustering Boreas-voice was almost soft
and pleading as Thompson Jowell bid for the good opinion of his son.
“Not that I reproach you,” was the refrain of his song, “but you ought
to be the last!”
“Old Gov!” The large young man repeated his previous action of taking
Thompson Jowell by his fleshy shoulders with the extra-sized hands,
encased in the lemon kid gloves, and pleasantly shaking him backwards
and forwards, as though he had been a large, plain, whiskered doll.
“There’s the Commission in the Guards, Morty. You wouldn’t
believe--having set my heart on making a first-class gentleman of my
boy--what an uncommon sight of trouble I’ve taken to bring that sealed
paper with Her Majesty’s signature on it, down from the sky-high
branch it hangs on! His Honor the Commissary-General kept his word in
presenting me to my Lord Dalgan, His Grace the Commander-in-Chief’s
confidential Secretary, yesterday, and after a little general
chit-chat, I felt my way to a hint, for we must be very humble with
such great folks,” said Thompson Jowell, rattling the tills, “and watch
for times and opportunities. My Lord was very high and lofty with me,
as you may suppose.... ‘So you have a son, Mr. Thompson Jowell,’ says
he. ‘I congratulate you, my dear sir, on having done your duty to
Posterity. And it is your ambition that this young man should enjoy the
privilege of wearing Her Majesty’s uniform? Well, well! We will see
what we can do with His Grace, Mr. Thompson Jowell, towards procuring
the young gentleman an ensigncy in some regiment of infantry.’ ‘Humbly
thanking you, my Lord,’ says I, ‘for the gracious encouragement
you have given to a man who might be called by persons less grand,
and noble, and generous-minded than your Lordship, an ambitious
tradesman;--since you permit me to speak my mind’--and he bows over his
stock in his stiff-necked, gracious way--‘I dare to say I fly higher
for my boy,’ says I, ‘than a mere marching regiment. And what I have
set my heart upon, and likewise my son his, is, plainly speaking, a
Commission in the Foot Guards, White Tufts or Cut Red Feathers.’ Up go
his eyebrows at that, Morty, and he taps with his shiny nails--a real
nobleman’s nails--on the carved arm of his chair, smiling. ‘Really, Mr.
Thompson Jowell’--and he leans back and throws his foot over his knee,
showing the Wellington boot with gold spurs and the white strap of the
pearl-gray trouser--‘ambition is, to a certain extent, laudable and to
be encouraged. But at the same time, permit me to say that you _do_ fly
high!’ ‘Begging your Lordship’s leave once more,’ says I, ‘to speak
out--and Plain’s my name and nature!--I have come to beg the greatest
nobleman in the land to make a hay-and-straw-and-flour merchant’s son
a gentleman. A word in the ear of His Grace, the Duke, and a stroke of
your pen will do it, my Lord,’ I says; ‘and when I find myself in the
presence of a power as lofty and as wide as yours, and am graciously
encouraged to ask a favor, I don’t ask a little one that a lesser
influence could grant. I plump for the Guards, and your Lordship can
but refuse me!’”
“You clever old Codger! Rubbin’ him down with a wisp of straw, and
ticklin’ him in all the right places.... But look here, you know!”
objected Morty, with a darkening brow, “I don’t half cotton to all that
patter about making a gentleman of a merchant’s son. Egad, sir, I’m
dam’ if I do like it!”
He sat upon the knee-hole table and folded his arms upon his waistcoat,
a garment of brown velvet embroidered with golden sprigs, worn in
conjunction with a satin cravat of dazzling green, peppered with
scarlet horseshoes and adorned with pins of Oriental pearl; and blew
out his round cheeks quite in the paternal manner as he shook his
bullet head.
“You mustn’t mind a bit of humble-pie, my boy!” pleaded Thompson
Jowell, “seeing what a great thing is to be got by eating it, and
looking as if you liked it. You don’t suppose I’m any fonder of the
dish than you are--but it’s for my son’s sake; and so, down it goes!
These stately swells will have you flatter ’em, stiff-necked, and fawn
upon ’em, and lick their boots for ’em. They were born to have men
cringe to ’em, and by Gosh, sir! can you stand upright and milk a cow
at the same time? You can’t, and you know it!--so you squat and whistle
to her, and down comes the milk between your fingers, squish!”
“I ain’t a dairymaid,” asserted Morty sulkily.
“Not you!” said Thompson Jowell, beaming on him fondly. “And when your
old Governor’s willing to do the dirty work, why should you soil your
hands?” His thick voice shook, and the tears stood in his goggle-eyes.
“I’d lie down in the gutter so that those polished Wellingtons I spoke
of just now should walk upon me dryshod--by Gosh, I would!” said
Thompson Jowell--“if only I might get up again with golden mud upon me,
to be scraped off and put away for you! Look here! You told your swell
friend, Lord ’Dolph, your Governor was a generous bleeder. Well, so I
am! I’ll fill your pail to-day.”
He whipped out his check-book, large and bulky like himself, and--Morty
having condescendingly removed himself from the blotter--drew what
that scion of his race was moved to term “a whacker” of a check. And
sent him away gorged with that golden mud to which he had referred,
and correspondingly happy; so that he passed through the larger, outer
office, where seven pallid clerks were hard at work under the direction
of a gray-faced elderly man who inhabited a little ground-glass-paneled
sentry-box opening out of their place of bondage, with “Manager” in
blistered letters of black paint upon the door,--like a boisterous wind
tinged with stables, cigars, and mixed perfumery, and shed some drops
of his shining store on them in passing.
“Look here, you chaps! See what the Old Man’s stood me!” Morty
flourished the pink oblong, bearing the magic name of Coutts’. Six
of the seven pairs of eyes ravished from ledgers and correspondence,
flared with desperate longing and sickened with impotent desire.
Standish still kept his sea-green face downbent. And the gray Manager,
peeping out of his glass case, congratulated as in duty bound.
“You’re in luck again, Mr. Mortimer!... May I hope we see you well,
sir?”
“First rate, Chobley! Topping condition!” Morty stuffed the check with
lordly carelessness into a pocket in the gold-sprigged velvet vest,
withdrawing a little ball of crackly white paper, which he jovially
displayed between a finger and thumb attired in lemon kid.
“Twig this, hey? Well, it shall mean a dinner at the Albion in Drury
Lane for the lot of you ... and an evenin’ at the Play--if you ain’t
too proud for the Pit? Leave your wives at home!” the young reprobate
advised, with a wink; “you’re all too much married by a lot, hey,
Chobley? And half-a-bottle of fizz apiece it ought to stand you in....
And see that beggar Standish drinks his share!... Catch!... Gaw!--what
a butter-fingered beggar you are, Standish!”.... The paper insult,
flipped at ghastly Standish’s lowered nose, smartly hit that feature,
and rebounded into a letter-basket as Morty blustered out. The clerks
looked at each other as the swing-doors banged and gibbered behind the
young autocrat. They heard him hail Lord ’Dolph, heard the trampling
and slipping of the tandem-horses’ hoofs upon the uneven pavement;
heard Morty cheerfully curse the groom,--heard, too, the final “Gaw!”
with which the heir of the house of Jowell clinched the news of his
good luck with his Governor; the hiss and smack of the tandem-whip,
and the departing clatter of the tilbury westwards, to those regions
where golden-haired sirens smile upon young men with monkeys in their
pockets; and white-bosomed waiters dance attendance on their pleasure
in halls of dazzling light.
Then said the gray-faced Manager, breaking the silence:
“I suppose, gentlemen, we had better do as Mr. Mortimer so kindly
suggested? I presume that no one here is averse to theatrical
exhibitions, or objects to a good dinner, washed down with the
half-bottle of champagne the young gentleman liberally mentioned?”
“I prefer port!” said the hitherto silent Standish, in so strange a
voice it seemed as though another man had spoken.
“Do you, egad?” said a fellow-clerk sniggeringly. “Perhaps you’ll tell
us why?”
“_Because it is the color of blood_,” the pale drudge answered. He
dipped his pen in the red ink as he spoke, and dived into his ledger
again, and the face he bent over the closely-figured pages was yellow
and sharp as a wedge of cheese.
Chobley, the Manager, had looked sharply at Standish when he had given
voice to that strange reason for preferring the thick red wine. He had
respectfully smoothed out the crumpled five-pound note, and folded it
into a broad flat spill, and he scraped the pepper-and-salt bristles
of his chin with it thoughtfully as he took his eyes away from the
downcast, brooding face; and very shortly afterwards took himself,
upon a sufficient business-excuse, into Thompson Jowell’s room. And
next morning Standish did not appear at the office in The Poultry, and
thenceforwards the place upon the short-legged, horsehair-covered stool
that had been his was occupied by another white-gilled toiler; and his
frayed and ragged old black office coat vanished for good from its hook
behind the door.