"IT'S ALL UP, MR. RICHARDS, IT'S ALL UP!"
"The busy crew the sails unbending,
The ship in harbour safe arrived;
Jack Oakum, all his perils ending,
Has made the port where Kitty lived."
DIBDIN.
We return now to the day before Sir Digby's ball.
Richards lived in chambers, and in no great state. He never cared for
it. Had you gone straight into his sitting-room from the fresh air, what
would have struck you most would have been the smell of strong tobacco
smoke; and I believe you would have come to the conclusion that the
principal furniture consisted of tobacco-pipes. They were of all sorts
and sizes, and hung in rows and racks, and lay on shelves and on the
mantlepiece. Well, what did it matter? honest Richards was a bachelor,
and not once in a blue moon did a lady look in to see him.
But one afternoon, shortly before Sir Digby's great ball, a lady did;
and that lady was Mary herself.
"Which I've been dying to see you, sir," she began.
"Sit down, my dear, sit down."
Mary sat down, and proceeded,--
"It's all up, Mr. Richards, it's all up!"
The poor girl was crying now bitterly.
"Missus is as good as sold. She's goin' to the ball, and Sir Digby's
goin' to propose. She told me, and Sir Digby kissed me and told me. Oh,
oh, what ever shall I do?"
Richards lit a huge pipe, and walked about smoking for fully five
minutes. Then he went over and took Mary's hand, and Mary looked up
innocently in his face, and said innocently through her tears,--
"Do you want to kiss me too, sir?"
"Well, I wasn't thinking about that; but there, Mary, there. Now, I'll
tell you what you've got to do; and I do believe it will all come right,
even yet."
So Mary and Richards had a long "confab" together, and she went back
home happy and smiling.
After she had gone Richards lit another pipe, threw himself on a
rocking-chair, and smoked long and thoughtfully. Then he got up and
took a rapid turn or two up and down the floor. Presently he paused, and
gazed curiously at himself in a mirror.
"Old Richards," he said, shaking his fist at his reflection, "I didn't
think it was in you. You're a designing, unscrupulous old lawyer. Never
mind; it's all for my baby's sake. I'll do it. Hang me if I don't."
An hour after this, Richards had called a carriage--a luxury he indulged
in very seldom indeed. He first visited the lawyer who had transacted
the business of the Grantley Hall mortgage for him. With this gentleman
he was closeted for some considerable time. Then he drove to a
fashionable tailor's, then to a jeweller's, and next to a
wine-merchant's, and as all those individuals showed him to his carriage
with many gracious smiles and bows, it was evident that his business
with them had been of a very agreeable kind indeed--to them. Richards
drove to other places which I need not name; and when he got back home
at last, he sank into his rocking-chair with a tired but happy sigh, and
immediately lit his biggest pipe.
He was smiling to himself. "I've done it," he said half aloud, "and my
baby's safe for a time. But if his rich old brother comes to the
rescue, my game is spoiled. Poor Jack! I wonder what he is doing at this
moment."
* * * * *
On the night of the great ball, Sir Digby Auld was very much with Miss
Gordon; and everybody said how well matched they were, which certainly
was paying no compliment to Sir Digby. He gave her many dances, and he
said many soft and pretty things to her, which caused her to bend down
her painted face and pretend to blush.
In the course of the evening he forgathered with D'Orsay. D'Orsay lifted
his brows and smiled.
"Getting on famously?" he said.
"I've been trying; but, D'Orsay, 'pon my life I can't. And look you
here: I may be a fool, I may be mad, but to-morrow forenoon I go to
Keane's and throw myself at Gerty's feet. There! the die is cast."
A servant in livery at this moment approached him. "Beg parding, sir.
Two gentlemen wants to speak to you a moment in the library."
Sir Digby turned pale.
"I'd come, sir," whispered the servant; "there will be a scene else."
Sir Digby followed him out.
"Sorry we are, sir, to disturb yer 'onor; but we has a warrant for your
'rrest, and the carriage is awaitin' at the door."
"At whose instance?"
"Richards of the firm of Griffith, Keane, and Co."
Sir Digby muttered an oath. He staggered and almost fell.
D'Orsay, a quarter of an hour after this, informed the guests that Sir
Digby Auld had been taken suddenly ill, but that they were to continue
to enjoy themselves all the same.
Meanwhile the prisoner was being rapidly whirled away to the Fleet.
And the letter that Keane had received that night was to the effect that
the man who proposed marrying his daughter was a bankrupt and a beggar,
and would that evening be arrested in his own house and among his
guests.
Having effectually disposed of Sir Digby for a time, Richards could
afford to quietly await the turn of events. His practice had been sharp,
but it was certainly justifiable. He had often hinted to his partner
Keane, nay, even told him plainly, that the baronet was but a man of
straw.
"Owes a few thousands perhaps," Keane had replied, with an
ill-concealed sneer. "They all do it. A post-obit would clear that up.
His brother can't live for ever. Sir Digby will be a lord, you know, on
his brother's death."
"I'll tell you what," Richards had gone so far as to exclaim one day:
"if I were you I'd pay Digby's debts for him. Ten thou., I reckon, would
do it. But I shouldn't marry my only daughter to a beggar!"
Keane turned on him sharply.
"Richards," he said, as calmly as he could, "I knew a gentleman once who
made an immense fortune by a very simple process."
"Indeed; how?"
"By minding his own business." Then Keane cackled over his ledger.
Richards said no more. But the idea of Keane, of all men, paying off a
future son-in-law's debts was too absurd.
When Richards went to Keane's house a few days after Digby's
incarceration, he found his partner in the throes of packing. He was
going to Italy for a time with Gerty, and of course Mary would accompany
her.
Months went by, and many a long delightful letter did Richards receive
from Gerty, and from Mary too, the latter always ending with "luv and
sweet kisses." Then came a final letter. They were coming home. Alas!
the ship never reached England. She was captured by a Don, and all were
made prisoners. Keane could have bought his liberty if he had cared to.
He preferred to wait, and waiting--died.
A few weeks afterwards poor lonely Gerty returned, and Mary. Richards
constituted himself Miss Keane's guardian. Indeed it had been Keane's
last wishes that he should do so. And, strange to say, the ruling
passion had manifested itself strongly in death; for by the help of a
priest he had written a letter to Richards, praying him, for the sake of
their long acquaintanceship and friendship, to see that Gerty married
Sir Digby. He died, he said, peacefully, knowing she would yet be Lady
Auld.
"A dying man's last request," said Richards to himself, "ought to be
attended to; but--"
Then he solemnly placed the letter in the fire, and it was cremated.
Sir Digby made himself as comfortable as possible in the Fleet. Richards
did not think it safe he should come out. Gerty was a strange girl. Her
heart bled for the poor man, as she called him. For sake of her father's
memory, there was no denying that she might even yet sacrifice herself.
D'Orsay paid many visits to Sir Digby in prison. He really acted like a
true friend, and did all he could for him. He had even gone to see his
old brother, and come back, figuratively speaking, with a finger in his
mouth.
"No good in that quarter," he told Sir Digby bluntly. "Says you're a
spendthrift and a ne'er-do-weel, and that he means to live for twenty
years yet; and 'pon honour, Digby, he looks as if he could. I did hear
too that he was looking out for a wife."
* * * * *
"I shall go and see my hero in his dark dungeon, in his prison cell, in
his chains and misery."
These are words spoken by Miss Gordon heroically to herself in the
mirror one morning. She had strange ideas of the Fleet.
She was astonished to find her hero in a flowered dressing-gown, smoking
a Havana, which he threw into the fire when he saw her, and living in a
handsomely-furnished room.
She went again and again. I do not know how she managed it, but I do
know that in a month's time Sir Digby was a free man, and married to
Miss Gordon.
This event took place just two days before Jack's ship staggered wearily
into Plymouth Sound.
While he still sat by his open port, gazing sadly landward, Tom Fairlie
came in with a rush and a run. He too had a copy of the _Times_.
"Listen, Jack," he cried, "and I'll read something that will astonish
you."
"Don't, Tom, don't. I have already seen the awful announcement. I am a
broken and crushed man!"
"Broken and crushed fiddlestick!" said Tom. "Listen, listen: 'At St.
Nicholas' Church, on the 5th inst., by the Rev. Charles Viewfield, Sir
Digby Auld to Miss Gertrude Gordon, daughter of--'"
"Hurrah!" cried Jack, springing from his seat and overturning the chair.
"Hurrah for the Rev. Charlie! Tom, shake hands, my dearest and best of
friends. You've made me the happiest man in the British Islands.
Hurrah!"
* * * * *
In a week's time the _Tonneraire_ was paid off and safe in dock, and a
carriage with postillions might have been seen tearing along the road
that leads from Plymouth to Tor Bay.
The carriage contained Jack Mackenzie and his friend Tom Fairlie.