IN THE MATTER OF A TRUST.
“Mr. Fairfax, sir, to see you.”
“Say that I cannot see him.”
The butler hesitated a moment, and then begged Mr. Shelf’s pardon, and
hinted that Fairfax seemed to have anticipated some such message.
“He said, sir, I was to explain it was on very important business, or he
would not have called so late at night. And he said, too, sir”—here the
butler hesitated again—“that he _must_ see you.”
“Tell him——,” Shelf began passionately; but there he stopped, and the
rest of the sentence was lost. Fairfax had walked into the room.
The butler stood his ground, glancing with nervous respect from one to
the other, till Shelf waved him to the door, through which he vanished
noiselessly, with an apologetic sigh of relief. Then the other two faced
one another.
“I must say, sir,” the shipowner began, with icy politeness, “that after
what has occurred between us this day your intrusion strikes me as
vastly wanting in taste. Of course, as a Christian, it has been my duty
to forgive you the injurious thoughts which you bore against me; but, as
a frail human man, I confess to have been so wounded by them that the
sight of you tempts me to the sin of anger afresh. But, perhaps, sir, you
have come here to express contrition, and to ask that I will hand back
the resignation of the directorate which you so rudely thrust upon me.”
“I have come,” replied Fairfax, shortly, “for neither one thing nor the
other. I am not calling upon you in your City capacity at all. I want
to speak with you in your position of trustee to the lady whom I am now
shortly going to marry.”
“She has sent you?”
“She is perfectly aware of my errand. A property in Kent has suddenly
come into the market which will go for a comparatively low sum for
cash down. I have been spending the day examining it, and meanwhile my
solicitor has been going through the deeds. The place will suit us to the
ground, and the title is as clear as could be wished for.”
“So you wish to buy this property with your wife’s money?” Shelf asked
with a sneer.
“I am not disguising from myself the fact that Amy is an heiress. At
the same time, I am not altogether a pauper myself. But I don’t think
we two need go into that part of the money question, Mr. Shelf. As a
point of fact (as you know quite well), she and I first met one another
abroad, and fell in love, and got engaged without knowing a single word
about our mutual outlook, social or financial. The point here is that Amy
wants to become part purchaser in this Kent property with myself, and
on her behalf I come to you for the formal permission. You know by the
terms of her father’s will she was to have all her wishes with regard
to the property taken into consideration after she reached the age of
twenty-one, but was still to be under the semi-guidance of the trustees
till she reached her twenty-third birthday.”
“I am only one of the trustees,” said Shelf. “You must arrange to bring
my co-trustee up to meet me, and then I will talk the matter over with
him.”
“I have called on that reverend gentleman before I came to you,” said
Fairfax, “and he quite meets with mine and Amy’s views. He will come up
to town and see you himself in the morning at the City office. But in the
mean time he sends his permission in this letter.”
Fairfax selected a paper from his pocket-book and handed it to Mr. Shelf.
“I suppose you recognize the signature,” he said.
Shelf started, the paper rustling between his large white fingers. He
had a sentence on the end of his tongue, but with an effort he swallowed
it. Then, with a frown and a quick catching of the breath, he turned to
the letter and read it through. As it chanced, Fairfax had seen that
momentary look of disquiet, and being a young man of some penetration,
he argued down to the reason of it. “Why,” he asked himself, “should the
old hypocrite be upset when I ‘supposed he recognized his co-trustee’s
handwriting?’ I’m bothered if I can see any definite reason, but there
must be something pretty fishy somewhere. Theodore Shelf is not the man
to let slip that kind of nervousness without some very excellent cause.
I’m beginning to think that those of Amy’s interests which are in his
hands will be none the worse for being a little looked after.”
Mr. Theodore Shelf glanced up from the letter. “Of course you
understand,” he said, “that I cannot act upon an informal communication
like this? My co-trustee is a most excellent Christian, but, I regret to
say, a bad man of business.”
“Pernicious, to say the least of him. He seems to have the flimsiest
notion of the use of paper and signatures. Still, he means entirely well,
and that is why I do not want to worry him unduly. So, with permission,
Mr. Shelf, and to take the burden of details off your shoulders as
well as off his, I will instruct my own solicitor to see to all the
preliminaries as to which stock will bear selling out of best.”
“You take it for granted,” said the shipowner sourly, “that I shall not
put my veto on this scheme for spending my ward’s money.”
“Why should you? You have given your consent to the marriage, and
whatever may be your personal feelings towards me, at any rate, you like
her. She wishes to marry me, and intends to do that anyway; she wishes
for this estate, and I do not see that you have any reasonable grounds
for refusing to gratify her wish; besides, as an investment, the thing is
as good as a first mortgage or Three per cent. Corporation Stock.”
“There are many grave objections to this course,” said Shelf.
“Then, perhaps,” said Fairfax, “you will tell me what they are?”
“I do not see that I am called upon to do anything of the kind.”
“There we differ. Moreover, Mr. Shelf, you force me to a very unpleasant
conclusion.”
“And what, sir, might that be?”
“Well, this,” said Fairfax, with a significant stare: “You’ve got
that money so—shall we say, securely—locked up, that it isn’t readily
available for this new investment.”
“You are talking like a child,” said Mr. Shelf, noisily.
“I am talking like a plain business man,” Fairfax retorted, “who intends
to take reasonable care of his future wife’s property. I think that will
explain my views; and, as nothing more need be said on that matter, I
will leave you. The other trustee will call upon you at midday to-morrow,
and I shall make it my duty to accompany him. So, for the present, sir,
_au revoir_.”
Fairfax left the room, and Mr. Theodore Shelf lay back in a swivel
writing chair. Mechanically his fingers stretched out and dallied with
a book which lay on the table. It was a Bradshaw. Once, indeed, he
opened it, and turned up the pages of the express service between London
and Southampton; and, for a full half-hour held it with his finger as
a page-marker; but at the end of that time he flung the book savagely
across the room, and stood up with clenched fists and the veins standing
out of his forehead.
“Amy may thank Fairfax for saving her property,” he muttered, “and a
thousand people will curse him for doing it. I believe I’m a fool not to
bolt now with what I’ve got, because nothing short of a miracle can bring
me up again. Still, there’s the money subscribed by those poor wretches
for this new company yet in hand, and that will stave off the immediate
present. There’s just a chance that Onslow’s _coup_ may be realized on
in time, and, if that comes off, I’m all right again. And if it doesn’t,
there’s the estançia on the Rio Paraguay always ready. Yes, George, old
chap, that it is. Snug and warm, beyond worries, safe from extradition.
I’ll risk it.”
The wire-haired terrier was rubbing against his leg. He lifted the dog on
to the cushion of an easy chair, and went to his safe. He took from that
a bundle of papers, and spread them on his writing-table.
They were the trust deeds and other papers connected with Miss Amy
Rivers’ property. Some of them were documents distinctly worth locking
up, because if the Public Prosecutor could have run his eye through
the collection for one short five minutes, he would infallibly have
procured for the saintly Mr. Theodore Shelf seven complete years of penal
servitude.
It is an unpleasant thing to level such a hint against so good a man;
but a fact or so will show solid reason for it. During the two preceding
years—partly through depression in trade, partly through his wife’s
broadcast extravagance—Theodore Shelf had found himself in desperate
straits for money. He had raised funds this way and that by all
legitimate means; had plunged, but with evil fortune; and finally had
been reduced to making his daily income by less reputable means. For long
he had laid covetous eyes on the fortune of his late partner, Marmaduke
Rivers, which was held in trust for the daughter by himself and a canon
of Winchester; and at last, in a moment of desperation, he determined to
have the use of it. The co-trustee was a man who had taken a double-first
at Oxford, and apparently spent all his life’s energies over the
process. He had settled down into an amiable country parson, who bred
prize-bantams, and wrote books on Armenian folk-lore. He was extremely
upright, vastly unsuspicious, and on matters of business possessed
an ignorance of unusual profundity. He respected Theodore Shelf, and
disliked him with an equal intenseness.
When Shelf made up his mind to tamper with the Rivers property, he did
not go through the formality of asking this good gentleman’s leave and
permission. He simply forged himself a power of attorney, signed it with
the excellent canon’s name and set to work. Being a man who never did
anything by halves, he did not take two bites at the cherry. He annexed
the whole of his ward’s property, lock, stock, and barrel, and paid
in the usual interest to her bankers with entire regularity. Humanly
speaking, there was not a chance of his being found out; and when fortune
smiled on him again he had every intention of repaying to the uttermost
farthing what he had taken. As has been said, he liked Amy Rivers
extremely, and, if he had not had his worthy self to consider, he would
have been the last person in the world to do her an injury.
And now this pestilent fellow Fairfax must need step in, bristling with
suspicion, and evidently intending to have money or an inquiry. Of
course, the latter was a thing which Mr. Shelf could not stand for one
minute. At the first glance it would be shown that the trust property did
not exist in its former state, and that the interest had been paid into
the bank out of Mr. Shelf’s own pocket. And so there were only two things
which could be done; either bolt forthwith, or pay the plundered trust
out of some other fund, and hope that the Providence which guards knaves
would pull things straight again. Mr. Shelf had chosen to take the latter
course, and it was the money subscribed by the wretched shareholders of
the Brothers Steamship Company which was alienated by him to make good
the property of Miss Amy Rivers.
It required not many strokes of the pen to do this; but, after
restitution had been made, Mr. Theodore Shelf commenced coquetting with
a more delicate piece of business. He desired to hide his tracks. It was
his wish that, even if the worst came, and he had to fly the country as a
detected swindler, no one should know that he had tampered with his own
ward’s trust money.
It seems almost laughable that the man should have put himself to this
piece of pains. In the vast sweep of his other ponderous frauds, this
very natural one might well pass without special obloquy from the great
shorn public. But it was not for the general ruck of his victims that
Shelf was working then. He had sacrificed a thousand (under compulsion)
to repay one; and, having made repayment, he wanted to cancel the odium
of robbery. Next to himself and his dog, he probably loved Amy Rivers
better than anything in all the world; and, if the worst came, and he had
to go, it would be pleasanter for him to think that she, at least, would
have nothing but kind memories of him. She would know quite well that he
might have included her fortune in his other robberies, because Fairfax
would tell her that, if she did not guess it for herself; and she would
feel a kindness towards him for his forbearance.
Of course, he would be getting this genial sentiment under false
pretenses, but that was a trifle which counted as nothing to Mr. Theodore
Shelf. Your true hypocrite deludes no one more perfectly and artistically
than himself when he sets squarely about it.
The time was long past midnight when he had finished tampering with
the last of the papers on his writing-table; and, as he passed the
blotting-paper over his final forgery, he heard the clash of the front
door in the hall below. Quickly bunching the papers together, he put them
into the safe, locked it, threw himself into an easy chair, and picked
up a quarto volume of his own published sermons. He was serenely reading
these when his wife sailed majestically into the room, with Amy Rivers at
her side.
The girl stepped forward, took both of his hands in hers, and shook them
warmly. “All congratulations,” she said. “I’ve only just heard. May I
call you ‘Sir Theodore’ in advance?”
Shelf let the book slide to the floor, and sat up staring first at one
and then the other. “I am much obliged to you, Amy dear,” he said at
last; “but, upon my word, I don’t know what you mean.”
“It’s out!” she said. “Everybody was talking about it to-night. You’ll
be gazetted in the next Birthday List. And not a trumpery knighthood,
either. You’re to be a full-blown baronet—no less.”
Theodore Shelf lay back in his chair with a very queer expression on
his face. He put his white fingers together under his chin, and stared
curiously at his wife. “Your doing, I suppose, Laura?”
“You may thank me for it entirely,” she replied with a smiling bow. “I
arranged for it here with the Minister; and at the two places where we
looked in at afterwards, I told the news to three of my dearest friends
in the very strictest of confidence. Consequently, it is all over London
to-night, and will be in all the papers in England to-morrow. Would you
like to congratulate me?”
“I’ll wait,” said the shipowner, “till I see you Lady Shelf. The title is
not formally given over for a fortnight, and between now and then so much
may happen. Man is but a frail creature.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Mrs. Shelf, disgustedly, “don’t cant now.
When you are Sir Theodore I can’t have you disgracing me by preaching
and holding forth to those low people you used to know. You must cut all
that connection. Good heavens, Theodore, you can’t like it! And there’s
really no more to be got out of that sort of thing. You’ve used those
dreary, goody-goody folks, and made your fortune out of them, and let
that suffice. Now, if you want to get on further, you’ve got to pick up
with another set. Don’t you understand?”
For reply Theodore Shelf burst into a sudden wild cackle of laughter.
His wife drew back a step, half-scared. She had scarcely ever heard the
man laugh once in all her life with him; never like that; and she did
not know what to make of it. But at last he stopped and spoke. “You’re
a clever woman, Laura, and a handsome one. I’ve never seen you look so
fine as you do to-night. But you are a bit too rapid in some of your
movements. You’re counting at present that, beyond a doubt, the servants
will be calling you ‘miladi’ within a fortnight, and I suppose you’ll
go out to-morrow and get a new card-plate engraved. Well, my dear, if I
were you, I’d wait. A fortnight is fourteen days, and in every minute of
that time something may happen to bring you an appalling disappointment.
For instance, I may die. Take it that the Almighty does make me die, and
where then comes in the use for your new card-plate? There is precedent
for creating a baroness, I grant you; but I don’t think they are likely
to manufacture another precedent by making you Lady Shelf in your own
right if I am not at hand to share the dignity.”
A servant came in and announced that Fairfax was in the hall below.
Amy Rivers said “Good-night” hurriedly, and slipped out of the room.
Mrs. Shelf took up her stand in front of the fireplace, flushed with
triumph and wrath, and looking her superbest. “You are talking the
merest nonsense, Theodore,” she said, “and before that girl, too! Thank
goodness, she is practically one of the family, and will not gossip.
Die, indeed! You die! what an absurdity! One would think, to hear you,
that the world was coming to an end before the Birthday List is out. Of
course you will have the baronetcy. There can’t be a doubt about it now,
thanks to me.”
“What do you want me to say?” Shelf asked.
“Well, to begin with, in common decency you might thank me. If it had not
been for my diplomacy in this house to-night, you would only have had a
beggarly knighthood offered, if as much as that. You have the chance of
making a sensation now.”
Shelf stood slowly up, and strode up to the hearth-rug and faced her,
with his head thrust forward and his arms folded across his breast.
“Yes,” he said slowly, “I have a chance of making a sensation—one of
the biggest of the century; and mostly owing to your efforts. The Lord
grant that the chance slips away from me! You are very beautiful and very
clever. But I believe, Laura, that you are the devil, sent expressly on
earth to tempt. You’d better go to bed now, and leave me. This is one of
the times when I am tempted to kill you.”