A COMPROMISE
“Come to get another speech, Fred?” Christopher looked up cheerily from
the work before him. The sweet spring season, when the big dinners are
going on, is his time of harvest, and after June he can send his sheaves
of golden grain to the Bank. It promised to be a busy and a prosperous
season. “Come for another speech, old man?” he repeated. “I’m doing a
humorous one on Literature, but I can make room for you.”
“Hang your speeches!” Fred sat down on the table. “You might offer a man
a drink.” He spoke as one oppressed with a sense of injustice.
“Seem out of sorts, Fred. What’s gone wrong? Colonial Enterprise? The
great concern which interests all Lombard Street hitched up somehow?” He
asked with the exasperating grin of the doubter. But he opened a
cupboard and produced a bottle, a glass, and two or three sodas. “Well,
old man, there’s your drink.”
Fred grunted, helped himself liberally, though it was as yet only eleven
in the forenoon.
“The great Colonial concern is where it was,” he explained vaguely.
“So I supposed. And about Lombard Street?”
“Well, I thought better of the City. I thought there was still some
enterprise left in this rotten, stagnant, decaying, and declining old
country.”
Christopher laughed.
“They won’t look at it, eh?”
“On the contrary, they won’t do anything till they have looked at it.”
“Humph! Awkward, isn’t it? I say, Fred, what did you come back for at
all? Why not stay in Australia?”
“I came back for many reasons. Partly to look after you, Brother Chris.”
“Oh! After me? Why after me?”
“Well, you see, you are the only one left who knew of my existence.
Leonard remembered nothing about me. My grandfather’s lawyers had never
heard of me. And one day there came into my head--it was like a voice
speaking to me--it said, ‘Fred, you are a Fool. You’ve been twenty years
in this country. You’ve got an old lunatic of a grandfather who must
have piles and piles of money. Perhaps he’s dead. And no one but
Christopher left to remember you. Get off home as quick as you can.
Christopher,’ said this remarkable voice, ‘is quite capable of putting
his hands on the lot and forgetting you.’ That is what the voice said,
my brother.”
“Sometimes it’s rats: sometimes it’s cats: sometimes it’s circles:
sometimes it’s a voice. Fred, you must have been pretty far gone.”
“Perhaps. But I listened to that voice, and, what is more, I obeyed it,
and came home. The old man isn’t gone yet. So far that’s safe. And the
lawyers know of my existence. So that’s all right. You won’t get the
chance of forgetting me, after all.”
“Very good, very good. There will be very soon, I should say, the
division of a most almighty pile, Fred. You are quite welcome to your
share.”
“Much obliged, I’m sure. Do you know how much it is?”
“I am afraid to calculate. Besides, what will has he made?”
“Will, my boy! He’s got £6,000 a year, and he spends nothing and he
gives nothing. All that money, with something he had from his mother,
has been rolling up and rolling up. How much is it? A million? Two
millions? And here am I hard up for want of a few pounds, and you, a
Fraud and an Impostor, working like a nigger, and all that money waiting
to be spent as it should be spent. It’s maddening, Chris--it’s
maddening.”
“So it is, so it is. But nothing can be done. Well, you were on the
highroad to D.T., and, instead of seeing rats, you heard a voice
calumniating your brother, and you came home; and you put your vast
concern in your pocket--the waistcoat pocket held it all, no doubt.”
“What the devil does it matter which pocket held it?”
Christopher leaned back and joined the tips of his fingers.
“I wasn’t going to spoil your game, Fred, though that devil of a voice
did speak such utterances. But I knew all along. I smelt a fake, so to
speak. You a man of business? You the head of a great Colonial
Enterprise? No, no; it was too thin, my brother--too thin. Not but what
you looked the part--I will say that.”
“Upon my word, I thought it was going to come off. I got hold of a
company promoter. He said he’s steered craft more crazy than mine into
Port. Talked of a valuation: talked of assigning 50,000 shares to me as
owner of the Colonial business----”
“Well, but, Fred, come to the facts; sooner or later the facts would
have to be faced, you know. What was the Colonial business?”
“It was a going concern fast enough when I left it. Whether it’s going
now I don’t know. A lovely shanty by the roadside, stocked with a large
assortment of sardines, Day and Martin, tea, flour, and sugar. What more
do you want? The thing I traded on was not the shanty, but the possible
‘development.’”
“The development of the shanty. Excellent!”
“The development, I say, out of this humble roadside beginning. I made
great use of the humble beginning: I thought they would accept the
first steps of the development. I proposed a vast company with stores
all over Australia for the sale of everything. Barlow Brothers were to
serve the Australian Continent. We were to have our sugar estates in the
Mauritius: our coffee estates in Ceylon: our tea estates in Assam: our
flour-mills everywhere: our vineyards in France and Germany----”
“I see--I see. Quite enough, Fred; the scheme does you great honour. So
you went into the City with it.”
“I did. I’ve wasted buckets full of champagne over it, and whisky enough
to float a first-class yacht. And what’s the result?”
“I see. And you’ve come to an end.”
“That is so. The very end. Look!” He pulled out his watch-chain. There
was no watch at the end of it. “The watch has gone in,” he said. “The
chain will go next. And there’s the hotel bill.”
“Rather a heavy bill, I should imagine.”
“I’ve done myself well, Christopher.”
“And how are you going to pay that bill? And what are you going to do
afterwards?”
“I thought of those accumulations. I went down to see the old man. He’s
quite well and hearty--wouldn’t speak to me. Pretends to be deaf and
dumb. But the housekeeper says he understands everything. So he knows of
my existence. The woman gave me the address of his solicitors, and I’ve
been to see them. I wanted an advance, you know, just a little advance
on the accumulations.”
“Ah!”
“But they won’t acknowledge that they have any power. ‘My dear Sir,’ I
said, ‘I don’t ask whether you have any power or not--I don’t care
whether you advance me a thousand on my reversionary interest, or
whether you lend it yourself.’ No, sir, the fellow wouldn’t budge. Said
I must prove the possession of reversionary interest: said he wasn’t a
money-lender: said I had better go to a bank and show security. Here I
am one of the heirs to a noble fortune. I don’t know how much, but it
must be something enormous. Why, his estate is worth £6,000 a year, and
I know that there was money besides which he had from his mother.
Enormous! Enormous! And here I am wanting a poor thousand.”
“It seems hard, doesn’t it? But, then, are you sure that you are one of
the heirs?”
“The old man is off his head. Everything will be divided. He can’t live
long.”
“No. But he may live five or six years more.”
“Well, Christopher, the long and the short of it is that you will have
to find that money. You may charge interest: you may take my bond: you
will do what you like: but I must have that money.”
“The long and the short of it, Fred, is this: I am not going to give, or
to lend, or to advance, any money to you at all. Put that in your pipe.”
“Oh!” Fred helped himself to another whisky-and-water. “You won’t, eh?
Then, what do you think of my blowing this flourishing concern of
yours, eh?”
Christopher changed colour.
“What do you think, Christopher, of my going to call on Pembridge
Crescent, and letting out in the most natural and casual way in the
world, that I’ve just come from the rooms in Chancery Lane where you
carry on your business?”
“Fred, you--you--you are a most infernal scoundrel!”
“What business? asks my sister-in-law. What business? asks my niece.
What business? asks my nephew. Why, says I, don’t you know? Hasn’t he
told you? Quite a flourishing income--almost as flourishing as Barlow
Brothers. It’s in the Fraudulent Speech Supply Line. That’s a pretty
sort of shell to drop in the middle of your family circle, isn’t it?”
“Fred, you were always the most cold-blooded villain that ever walked.”
“That’s what I shall do, my dear brother. More than that, I shall go and
see Leonard. That aristocratic young gentleman, who thinks so much about
his family, will be greatly pleased, will he not?”
We need not follow the conversation, which became at this point
extremely animated. Memories long since supposed to be forgotten and
buried and put away were revived, with comments satirical, indignant, or
contemptuous. Language of the strongest was employed. The office boy put
down his novelette, and wondered what Jack Harkaway would do under such
circumstances. Indeed, the past lives of the two brothers lent
themselves singularly to the recollection of romantic adventures and
episodes of a startling character. Presently--we are not Cain and
Abel--the conversation became milder. Some kind of compromise began to
be considered.
“Well, I don’t mind,” said Fred at length. “I don’t care so long as I
can get the money. But I must have the money--or some money--and that
before long.”
“You can put your case before Leonard, if you like. He won’t give you
much, because he hasn’t got much to give. I think he has a few hundreds
a year from his mother. He might advance on his reversions, but he isn’t
that sort of man at all.”
“I’ll try. But, look you, Christopher, if he refuses I’ll take it out of
you. How would you like all the world to know how you live? And, by the
Lord, sir, if I have to tell all the world, I will.”
“I was a great fool, Fred, to let you into the secret. I might have
known, from old experience, what you would do with it to suit your own
purpose. Always the dear old uncalculating, unselfish, truthful
brother--always!”
Fred took another drink and another cigar. Then he invoked a blessing
upon his brother with all the cordiality proper for such a blessing and
retired.