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MORTOMLEY'S ESTATE.
A Novel.
BY
MRS. RIDDELL,
AUTHOR OF
"GEORGE GEITH," "TOO MUCH ALONE," "HOME, SWEET HOME,"
"THE EARL'S PROMISE," ETC. ETC.
_IN THREE VOLUMES._
VOL. I.
LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS. 8, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND.
1874.
_All rights of Translation and Reproduction are Reserved._
PRINTED BY TAYLOR AND CO.,
LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS.
TO
Emma Martin,
OF
WADESMILL, HERTS,
THIS STORY IS DEDICATED,
AS A TOKEN OF THE AUTHOR'S RESPECT AND AFFECTION.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. INTRODUCES MR. ASHERILL TO THE READER 1
II. A VERY WET SATURDAY 20
III. FOR MERCIES VOUCHSAFED 43
IV. SUMMER DAYS 63
V. ABOUT MRS. MORTOMLEY AND OTHERS 99
VI. MRS. MORTOMLEY IS ADVISED FOR HER GOOD 119
VII. LENORE 134
VIII. A DEAD FAINT 147
IX. THE FIRST MUTTERINGS OF THE STORM 167
X. MR. FORDE TAKES HIS HAT 200
XI. RUPERT SPEAKS VERY PLAINLY 225
XII. THE SAME DAY AT HOMEWOOD 242
XIII. MORTOMLEY'S FRIENDS 256
XIV. KLEINWORT IS SYMPATHETIC 271
MORTOMLEY'S ESTATE.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCES MR. ASHERILL TO THE READER.
During the course of the last ten or at most fifteen years, a new class
of building has, mushroom like, sprung up in the Metropolis, which
cannot perhaps better be described in a sentence than as
"The City of London Offices" (Limited).
True, none of the "Houses," "Chambers," "Halls," "Buildings" that swell
the ranks of this new army of offices, are so far as I know called by
the above name, but they are all situated within the precincts of the
City; they have been promoted by City men, they all belong to Limited
Companies or to the liquidators of those Companies, and they all
resemble each other more or less--more indeed rather than less.
They are to be met with in various lanes, alleys, streets, and courts.
So far as a casual observer can see, they are principally remarkable for
an utter absence of comfort. They possess longer corridors, smaller
rooms, steeper and more unpromising stone staircases than any other
class of building, Newgate not excepted, east of Temple Bar.
So far as the mind can grasp, they are tenanted by a more wonderful race
of men than Captain Cook discovered in the South Sea Islands, or Darwin
conceived could ever have been eliminated from monkeys.
The windows are noticeable for having no front light, the edifices
themselves are curious for the simple reason that they have been
apparently built without the usual preliminaries of either architect or
plan, while the men who during business hours inhabit the offices afford
subject for the wildest speculation.
They have as a rule come from no one knows where; they live no one, save
their victims, knows how; their business, though stated with sufficient
distinctness on the walls of the halls and corridors, and the glass and
panels of the doors, is a sealed mystery to every one but themselves and
the poor wretches who in those dreary offices are stripped of every
valuable they possess, every rag of social consideration, every vestige
of self-respect, and turned out naked as they came into the world to
meet the world's opprobrium and that which is tenfold harder to
bear--the world's pity, and to try to make their way once again through
a world it is unhappily necessary for them to pass through. And yet the
men who are able to set up in business in the trade or profession
(which?) that I have indicated, like the wicked, flourish as green bay
trees; they gather riches, they purchase houses and inhabit them, they
build barns and fill them, they lay by much treasure, they hug
themselves on their balances, their position, the deference shown
fearfully and servilely by those who are poorer than themselves, the
familiarity of those who are richer,--never recking of that possible
hour when poverty shall come upon them like an armed man, and when a
hand more terrible than that of death itself shall be laid upon their
shoulders and a voice whisper in their ear, "Thou fool, this night thy
substance is required of thee."
As for their souls, they never think of them either. Money is palpable,
spirit impalpable.
If in their blindness they ignore the probability of money making unto
itself wings--even money coined as theirs has been out of the blood
drawn from men's hearts, the anguished tears of women, the broken hopes
of youth, and the disgrace heaped upon old age--it is not in the
slightest degree likely they trouble themselves concerning the possible
vagaries of their spirits.
Death, if the idea of dying present itself, is looked at either as an
end of happiness or a cessation from anxiety.
It is bankruptcy in both cases. It ends a successful career; it smooths
all difficulties in the path of those whose experiments have proved
abortive, whose attempts have resulted in failure; and, as the
earth-worm is no respecter of persons, it cuts short the career of
worldly consideration, it renders men's good opinion valueless, it
places the best-esteemed City magnate in a position where even a plum of
money will not enable him to pass muster in a more creditable manner
than the Bethnal Green pauper who has nothing to leave his family except
his bones.
Death is bankruptcy. Can I say more in its disfavour when writing of a
class who hold personal bankruptcy--their own, I mean--a calamity too
great to contemplate; who estimate a man's standing, for here and
hereafter, by the amount he has managed to rake and scrape together; and
who live by swooping down upon his possessions, and selling the house
which shelters him, the bed he lies on, the toys his children have
played with, the dog he has fondled, the horses he has ridden, the harp
his dead mother's fingers have touched?
Much more might be said of the race, but as one man of the genus waits,
claiming particular attention, you and I reader will, leaving
generalities, walk up to the first floor of Salisbury Buildings,
Leadenhall Street, City, and enter the private office of Mr. Asherill,
senior partner in the firm of Asherill and Swanland, Public Accountants.
Well known was Mr. Asherill in the City; his large frame, his high
well-developed forehead, his massive head, his broad shoulders, his
perfectly white hair, were as familiar to the _habitués_ of Basinghall
Street, and the thorough-fares conducting to that heaven for rogues and
hell for honest people, as the faces of the ticket-porters in Lombard
Street, or the livery of those stately gentlemen who lounge about the
entrance to the Bank of England.
And indeed it must have been accounted a shame had it proved otherwise,
for Mr. Asherill was living, moving, and having his being in the City
for five-and-twenty years at all events, before the new Bankruptcy Act
developed that particular class of industry in which Mr. Asherill is at
this present moment employing the great and varied talents with which,
to quote his own modest phrase,--"The Lord has seen fit to bless him."
How he employed the thirty-five years preceding the above-mentioned
twenty-five of his sojourn in this wicked world, it would be tedious to
specify.
His enemies--for even such is the depravity of human nature, Mr.
Asherill had enemies--said a considerable portion of the period must
have been spent in obtaining a practical knowledge of the roguery, vice,
falsehood, and trickery, which he denounced so unctuously; and it is
quite certain that in whatever school he may have graduated, his
information on the subject of all the sins to which flesh is prone, his
thorough acquaintance with all the forms of lying and cheating, to which
what he habitually styled "poor human nature" is addicted, were as
complete as marvellous.
There must have been a black night at some period or other in his life;
but no man in the City, at all events, could fix a date and locality
when and where that event happened which caused Mr. Asherill to conceive
a dread of, and dislike for, gentlemen and ladies, which was the one
weak spot in an otherwise almost perfect Christian character.
Mr. Asherill's account of his own early life was that he worked in a
cotton mill at Manchester; that through the kindness of a poor scholar
who lodged in the house of his, Asherill's, sole surviving relative, his
grandmother, he learned to read, write and cipher; that, being steady
and hardworking, he attracted the attention and secured the interest of
a Christian blessed with worldly means and influence, who took him first
into his own warehouse, and subsequently procured for him an appointment
in India, where he remained for a long time, and might have remained
till the end of his life, had not the delicate health of his wife
compelled him, ten years after his marriage, to choose the alternative
of parting from her or leaving India.
"Guided by Providence," said Mr. Asherill, "I decided on returning to
England."
Which was all likely enough and plausible enough, only it happened to be
untrue in one particular at least.
An unregenerate wag who met Mr. Asherill at the Crystal Palace in the
days when the mysteries of cotton spinning were expounded in the
machinery department for the benefit of the masses, who were then
supposed to be hungering and thirsting after solid information,
persuaded that gentleman to inspect the process, and under pretence of
ignorance beguiled the former factory lad into making various statements
which proved conclusively he never could have been in a mill, save as a
mere visitor, in his life.
One swallow, however, does not make a summer; and even though a man be
convicted of having uttered one untruth, it does not follow that all his
other statements are necessarily false.
That Mr. Asherill had been in India there could be no question. He had
been there long enough to place a very effectual gulf between his
present and his past, and to render all attempts to fathom whatever
mystery may have attached to his early life utterly futile.
It might be the case, as some people declared, that he had not risen
from the ranks--that his real name was not Asherill--that he and his
father, a respectable tradesman, having had some difference concerning
the contents of the till, he was shipped out of the country and
requested to stay out of it--all this might be so, but who was to prove
it? and supposing it all capable of proof, who would be interested in
the matter?
All the king's horses and all the king's men could not undo the fact,
that for twenty-five years Mr. Asherill had held up his head in the
City--that he was a man of weight whom aldermen and common-councilmen
delighted to honour--who had been connected with every form of
speculation which the fashion of the day and the opportunities of each
commercial year brought into repute. He had made money by railways and
lost it, and come up again fresh and smiling as the director of various
banks and insurance companies, the very names of which are now almost
forgotten, so rapidly is the memory of one swindle wiped out by the
collapse of another more recent. He had something to do, directly or
indirectly, with nearly every "big thing" which was floated in the City.
To a nicety he knew the price of a lord, and was once clever enough to
bait a hook which enabled him to land a bishop. He was acquainted with
baronets and knights, whose names looked remarkably well on the list of
directors, whilst he had an army of generals, colonels, and majors ready
at any moment to take the financial field.
A ready man and an able--a man, a Yankee speculator, a canny Scot, a
German adventurer, or a religious philanthropist might have sat up all
night to catch napping, and eventually found the intended victim wider
awake than themselves.
If there were one thing more than another, always excepting
sanctimoniousness, which distinguished Mr. Asherill from other people,
it was his intense respectability. From the crown of his head to the
sole of his foot he looked the incarnation of that god which is the
Englishman's Fetish.
The folds of his immaculate white cravat were in themselves letters of
recommendation. Whenever any especially profitable and delicate piece of
business had to be manipulated in the Bankruptcy Court, Mr. Asherill
always made it a point to be present in person; and, with the exception
of one Commissioner, no Judge had ever yet been known to urge an
objection to any course Mr. Asherill suggested, and throw cold water on
any scheme that emanated from the brain which found no mean habitation
in the massive head covered with thick but perfectly snowy hair.
And whatever Mr. Asherill engaged in, he carried on and through
respectably. Had his lot been cast in a different sphere, he would have
made a splendid butler, a model parish clerk, or a magnificent hall
porter.
As it was he associated himself with company after company, and then
almost wept for those who lost their little savings, their policies of
insurance, their deposits, and their incomes.
Whoever else might be to blame in the affair, he never was. He was
always deceived; if there were one especial enterprise in which Mr.
Asherill had invested his largest stock of faith, it always proved to be
that which came to the most utter grief, which collapsed with the
mightiest shock.
Not only this, but the amount of money Mr. Asherill, according to his
own showing, lost on each of these occasions was positively appalling.
He would shake his head and beg that the subject might not be mentioned
to him, it was all so terrible; and then he would contrive to drop a
hint as to how far he was "in," and the majority of people believed him,
and the minority who did not believe was too small to count.
After that especial Friday, in eighteen hundred and sixty-six, when, had
any former citizen liked to get out of his coffin in the vaults of St.
Edmund the King and Martyr, adjacent to the notorious Corner House, he
might have fancied a second South Sea Bubble had just burst, after that
Black Afternoon which brought ruin to thousands, Mr. Asherill quietly
packed up a few clothes and left town.
Perhaps he had been waiting for some such opportunity; perhaps some
stray brick of that mighty pile touched him. Be this as it may, he went
quietly down to Lewes, got himself decorously arrested and lodged in
gaol, and then without the slightest fuss or useless publicity passed
his examination, received his certificate, joined his wife at Brighton,
and spent the summer at the sea-side. It was then he became a Christian
and began to wear white neckcloths.
As he said it himself, there can be no harm in my remarking that up to
the period of Overend and Gurney's collapse, he had not been a
Christian. He was not one when he visited Lewes--he was not one when he
reached Brighton, where, after more than a quarter of a century's bad
health, his wife was at length dying with a commendable if late
rapidity.
Whilst engaged in this occupation, she made the acquaintance of a widow
lady, who was serious and possessed of an ample competency, and who
being, moreover, amiably and charitably disposed, took the invalid
drives, and furnished her with many luxuries and comforts to which she
had always latterly been accustomed, but which, in the then state of the
Asherill finances, she might otherwise have sighed for in vain.
When Mr. Asherill once more returned to business--the City, his old
haunts, and companions--he was a changed man. If he had been respectable
before, he was ten times more respectable now.
He was a widower, and he mourned for his deceased wife in a hat-band a
foot deep, in black clothes of the best quality and of regular City
make; in jet studs, a ring containing her hair, and a white cravat which
would have made the fortune of an undertaker.
Nor was this all. Short as had been his absence, it proved long enough
to enable him to acquire the language and manners of the people amongst
whom he meant for the future to cast his lot; and he went about the City
lanes and streets, informing all with whom he stopped to speak, of the
irreparable loss he had sustained, of the great change which had been
wrought in himself. If he heard naughty words uttered in railway
carriages, he was wont to say, "Hush," and then read his dear young
friends a homily on their thoughtlessness and profanity.
He did not hesitate to tell them he had once been sinful, even as they,
and he always finished by expressing a hope they might be converted
earlier in life than had been the case with him.
He was always sowing good seed; and though some of it was necessarily
wasted, upon the whole, I am bound to say, Mr. Asherill found the
harvest pay him remarkably well.
His bankruptcy, his wife's death, the religious convictions which he was
able to receive, proved the making of his fortune.
Never had Mr. Asherill done better than when other men were doing as
badly as they knew how. Everything he touched turned out well for him,
at least; and nothing turned out a better speculation than the widow.
Naturally, after Mrs. Asherill's death, she imparted to the widower a
vast amount of religious consolation, and likewise naturally Mr.
Asherill found her conversation comfort and uphold him exceedingly.
Indeed, he found it so comforting that at the expiration of two years
from the period of his failure, that is, in the summer of eighteen
hundred and sixty-eight, he ventured to offer himself and his prospects
to the widow.
He was a man and a convert, what could a lone woman desire or ask more?
Nothing perhaps, and yet the widow had her doubts.
She had been so often angled for, that she looked rather closely at the
bait before she rose to it, and hinted that whilst friendship urged her
to say "Yes," prudence advised her to say "No."
She knew so little of Mr. Asherill's antecedents, she was so ignorant
even of the names of any of his friends, that--
"The name of Samuel Witney is familiar to you, doubtless," interrupted
Mr. Asherill.
Yes, the widow knew it well. He was a shining light in his own
particular denomination, and she had read his speeches, and listened to
his lectures with delight and instruction.
"I suppose then," suggested Mr. Asherill, "that if he writes to you
saying he has known me for twenty years, believes me incapable of a mean
action, and can vouch for my perfect respectability, I may hope--"
What he hoped was not exactly conveyed in words, but it resulted in the
widow saying,
"Oh! Mr. Asherill," and setting her cap, which had suddenly become
disarranged, straight.
I do not wish to enlarge upon this theme, however; the loves of elderly
couples cannot be made attractive by any sort of writing yet discovered,
and the billing and cooing of a pair of old doves is music which no art
can render sweet in the ear of the listener.
Immediately on Mr. Asherill's return to town, he informed Mr. Witney of
his wishes, as well as of the great change he had experienced, thus
killing, as was his wont, two birds with one stone.
He secured a second wife with a handsome income, every penny of which he
insisted should be settled on herself; and he cemented the friendship,
so called, which had after City fashion subsisted between himself and
Mr. Witney.
"It is so pleasant to think you are at last one of _us_," said that
gentleman, and undoubtedly Mr. Asherill thought so too.