NOT QUITE SATISFIED.
Time went by once more; not as it had done at Berrie Down, smoothly as a
calm river gliding noiselessly to the sea, but swiftly and excitedly,
splashing among the stones, dashing between rocks, rushing over slight
obstacles, eddying round larger impediments, rapid as a mountain stream
speeding to the valley, with as great a roar and hurry and excitement as
that wherewith water falls from a vast height into the basin it has
through the centuries worn for itself below. Thus time sped by in
London, so rapidly, so like an arrow cleaving the air, that often
Heather’s breath was almost taken from her by the swiftness and
impetuosity of its passage.
And yet the change was not wholly or even partially unpleasant. There is
a great adaptability about some natures which makes the work of
transplantation easy and pleasant to accomplish. Their roots are not
ungrateful; move them where you will almost, they contrive to extract
nourishment from the soil, and put forth their leaves, and their
flowers, and their fruits, in the city, as in the field; in the midst of
bricks and mortar, as away in the far country where the air is pure and
pleasant.
They take good out of all things, whence good is possible to be
extracted; they are willing to sing songs in a strange land, and will
take down their harps and tune them in whatsoever household their lot is
cast. The man or woman who enjoys one pleasure keenly is not likely to
be insensible to another; and therefore, although Heather’s first love
was her last, still she made herself very contented in London—was amused
with the excitement and the variety that surrounded her; went to
concerts and theatres with all the pleasure a young girl might have
evinced, and conducted herself, on the whole, not merely to the
satisfaction of her husband, but also to that of Mr. Black.
Who was now a power not to be despised, a man worth ever so much money,
and likely to be worth ever so much more, a man engaged in floating
fresh companies, and successful in obtaining grants and concessions, and
first refusals, and early information to an extent which it would be
quite outside the province of this story to explain more fully.
He had bought a splendid house out at Ealing, and was fitting it up
regardless of expense. In Stanley Crescent he gave the most wonderful
parties that it had ever entered into Mrs. Dudley’s imagination to
conceive could be given by any one not possessed of a ducal revenue. She
had thought the furniture in Lincoln’s Inn Fields far and away more
expensive than any Mr. Black should have persuaded Arthur into
purchasing, but the promoter assured her it was “all right; upon his
sacred word of honour, it had not cost a sixpence more than Dudley was
perfectly justified in spending.” And when she beheld Adamant House, as
Mr. Black’s new house at Ealing was happily called, she thought if one
of the chiefs of the Company could afford such magnificence, their own,
by comparison modest establishment, could not be considered
“over-timbered,” to quote from the promoter’s vocabulary over again.
From room to room she walked, dazzled and bewildered, and Mr. Black
walked beside, enjoying her astonishment, and kindly acting as cicerone
to her inexperienced country understanding.
“Now, is not this better than grubbing on?” he triumphantly inquired,
when, seated in his carriage, they were driving back to Lincoln’s Inn.
“This is what a man can do who is not afraid, who feels his own
strength, and is sure of being able to keep his feet under him. Ay, and
by Jove, Dudley shall do as well yet as I have done! He deserves to do
well, and so do you, Mrs. Dudley; for a more sensible woman, and one
less under the dominion of prejudice, I never met. Many a wife would
have striven to keep Dudley back—to dissuade him from coming to London,
but you were too wise to attempt such interference, and therefore I say
you deserve to succeed, and to have every bit as fine a carriage as this
to bowl about in.”
Which termination struck Heather as being so intensely ludicrous that
she laughed outright, laughed even while she thought gravely enough
that, had her interference been likely to produce the slightest good
result, she would never have refrained from attempting it. This little
explanation, however, being quite unnecessary to offer to Mr. Black, she
took his compliment as though she deserved it every word, and laughed
while the promoter thought, in his own elegant language, “that he had
got to the blind side of Mrs. Dudley also, and would be shortly able to
wind her round his finger as he had done the Squire.”
In those early days, Arthur Dudley certainly proved himself to be as
foolish and confiding a gentleman as any rogue need have desired to meet
with.
Although he saw the grand house at Ealing, although every morning Mr.
Black, _en route_ to the City, thundered up to the door of the Protector
Company’s offices in his carriage and pair, and swaggered and blustered
about the place as though the clerks, and the secretary, and the
cashier, and the whole concern, in fact, were his own personal and
exclusive property, still Arthur never insisted on a settlement of their
accounts, never objected to renew bills, never made any difficulty about
accepting new ones. He believed implicitly every sentence Mr. Black told
him, and had much greater faith in the promoter’s genius than in that of
his own especial principal, Mr. Stewart, who, having put in a secretary
and cashier of his own choosing, now rarely came near the office
excepting on special board days, and when he paid formal visits to Mrs.
Dudley, who always received him with the uncomfortable feeling, that if
he knew who she really was, his calls would be fewer and shorter still.
But at length there came a certain coolness between the promoter and the
secretary, which commenced in this wise:—
“Now I tell you what it is, Dudley,” said Mr. Black, one day when, for
the third time, his kinsman’s renewals had been required and effected;
“I tell you what it is,—this paper of yours has been through the fire
often enough, it will never do to run it on till it gets scorched. You
don’t know what I mean, I see, but it is just this: a girl may walk out
with a man once, and people think nothing about it—they may have met by
accident, no consequence—but if she goes on walking, talk begins, there
is some game up. Now, a man’s credit is much in the same position. He
may renew once or twice, and nobody thinks anything strange of his doing
so; if he continue renewing, however, his name gets blown upon, and
banks begin—especially if he be in no business—to look askance on his
paper. That is your position at the present time; you must not ask for
more discount, or, at least, if you do, you will not get it. I have done
my best for you this time, and so has Crossenham, but I am greatly
afraid we shall not be able to get you passed again.”
“Then I suppose you will take up the bills next time?” suggested Arthur.
“I have no objection to taking up those that I have had value for,”
answered Mr. Black, a little astonished, perhaps, at Arthur’s so
speedily discovering the weak point in his armour; “but what are you to
do with yours? That is the important part of the business, is it not?”
“I do not know,” Arthur replied; “I should have supposed one part of it
to be about as important as the other.”
“Well, you would have supposed wrong, then,” retorted Mr. Black;
“because, though I am deucedly short, and shall be short for the next
twelvemonth, still I could make a pinch of meeting my bills; but how you
are to take up yours, until the shares become marketable, I confess
puzzles me to imagine—unless, indeed, you decide to raise a few
thousands on Berrie Down.”
“A few thousands!” repeated Arthur, in amazement, “a few thousands! Why,
my bills altogether cannot amount to more than a few hundreds!”
“Don’t they, by Jove!” said Mr. Black, coolly. “Just run your eye over
that little list—there is not sixpence of mine among it,—and you will
soon change your opinion. You have had a lot of money, one time and
another. Then you bought this place; then there is the discount.”
“I thought you were going to pay that?” Arthur interrupted.
“On those which were drawn for my accommodation, of course,” replied Mr.
Black. “I am now talking of yours. Then there was the doing up of this
house——”
“You told me the Company would put it in proper order for me to live
in,” once again interposed Mr. Dudley.
“So they would, had it been for any other person excepting the owner of
the house,” answered Mr. Black. “I had, as I told you, to waive that
point. I wrote you all about it after you were up at the beginning of
the year.”
“Indeed, you are mistaken,” said Arthur; “you never wrote a syllable to
me on the subject!”
“All I can say is, then, that I either wrote or intended to write,”
answered Mr. Black; “but I had such a deuce of a lot of things to attend
to about that time, your letter may have slipped my memory. However,
that’s nothing to do with what we are talking of now. If you will
consider the affair, it was absurd to expect the Company both to pay you
rent and to paint and paper your house. They could not do it. I forgot
about its being your own property—about your, in fact, being landlord
and our being tenants, till you were back at Berrie Down. We pay you a
very good rent, so you must not be dissatisfied. Then, you see, there is
the furniture.”
“Good Heavens!” exclaimed Arthur, “you never mean to say that the
furniture we have in this house cost twelve hundred and seventy-eight
pounds? Where could twelve hundred and seventy-eight pounds worth be
put?”
“My dear fellow, how you talk!” said Mr. Black, with a smile of infinite
superiority, “why, you might put double the money up in a corner and
scarcely see it! Most economical I call the whole arrangement. You have
a drawing-room fit to ask anybody into, a grand trichord thingamajig of
Erard’s, good solid chairs and tables, every room fully carpeted, dinner
and dessert services complete, glasses large enough for Buckingham
Palace, bedchambers that you need not mind putting a duke to sleep
in—all for twelve hundred odd pounds!”
“But that is more than a year’s income,” Arthur persisted.
“I beg your pardon—taking rent and everything, it is not nearly a year’s
income; but, even if it were, the man who can rig a house up like this
for a twelve months pay, is a very fortunate fellow. I told you, I would
not run you to a farthing’s unnecessary expense, and neither I did. In
your position here, in London, it would not do for you to have the same
old-fashioned curiosities that served your purpose very well at Berrie
Down; besides, the money is not lost, there is the furniture—well kept,
it would fetch its cost any day by auction; now tot up those items, and
let us see the sum total. Yes; that is just what I made it, running
through the account roughly—four thousand six hundred and eleven pounds,
seventeen shillings and nine pence.”
“Mr. Black! I never had that sum of money,” said Arthur, excitedly.
“If you had not money, you had goods,” answered Mr. Black; “but you have
had a smartish sum of money too. The pace you have gone at the last
twelvemonth has not been a slow one. Those dinners you gave—and the
money you spent in town——”
“But you said the Company would pay all that.”
“So it has; you have your shares and your salary, and your good rent for
these premises. I never meant direct payment. The idea is absurd. How
would an entry like this sound:
“‘Dinner at the Wellington, to six desirable City men,’ or ‘Treating
Cadger’s managing clerk to the theatre, with supper after,’ or ‘Stall
tickets to the Misses Smithers,’ or ‘Half a sov. to Jenkins’ footman!’
Just bring the thing home, Dudley; think how ridiculous it would sound,
and don’t be unreasonable. You have had your penn’orths, and you will
have more—besides, it really is this house and furniture, neither of
which is likely to run away, that has walked into the money. Think over
the matter, will you? any time during the course of the next two months,
and let me know what you decide;” and with that, the promoter was airily
taking himself out of the room, when “Black!” sharply spoken by his
companion, arrested his departure.
“I never had this money,” Mr. Dudley repeated. “I never could have had
it; where has it gone—what has been done with it?”
“As for that, Dudley,” was the reply—“take my advice, and never waste
your time inquiring after spent money. Enough for you, or any man, to
know that it has gone—to the tomb of all those people one hears about.
No use trying to hold a _post-mortem_ examination on the body of a
defunct ten-pound note. For the rest, you both could and did have all
the sums I have debited you with; they are regularly entered on their
dates of payment in my books. First day you are down in the City, call
in and check them off. I’d rather you would do so—more satisfactory for
us both.”
And with this Parthian shot, Mr. Black said “Good-day,” and shut the
office-door after him, leaving Arthur far too much perplexed and
bewildered to consider that a lie can be written as well as spoken, any
day in the year, and that the mere fact of an entry to his debit being
made on such and such a date, did not by any means of necessity prove
that such debt had ever been incurred.
END OF VOL. II.
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING
CROSS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.