"I'm a warm man, you know, Poskitt," he said to me many a long year
after that. "A warm man, sir! There's nobody knows except myself,
Poskitt, how much I have. No, sir! Made it all, you know. Look at my
business, Poskitt!--one of the biggest and best businesses in the
country. Twenty different establishments. Four hundred employees.
Bring my own tea from Ceylon and China in my own ships. All the result
of energy, Poskitt--no sitting still with me, as you rustics do--no,
sir!"
Now let us analyze what this man really was. Because Keziah literally
drilled him into the pulling of himself together after his first great
slap in the face, he began to amass money, and very soon so deepened his
boyish instincts that money became his fetish.
Money--money--money--nothing but money! He estimated the value of a man
by the depth of that man's purse; he thoroughly believed, with the
Northern Farmer, that the poor in a lump are bad. And at last he was a
very rich man indeed--and then found, as all such men do, that he had no
power to enjoy his wealth. He could travel--and see nothing, for he did
not understand what he saw. He could buy anything he liked--and have no
taste for it. The little dressmaker had children--he had none. And as
his wealth increased, his temper grew sour. He had never read anything
beyond his trade journal and his newspaper, and therefore he had nothing
to think about but his money.
And so I come back to what my old friend said in his bluff Yorkshire
fashion--
"Doaen't think ower much about makkin' Brass! It's a good thing to mak'
Brass, and a good thing to be in possession on it, but Brass is neyther
here nor theer unless ye ware it on yer friends."
And whether Samuel Edward Wilkinson considered in the end of his days
that he had made a man of himself, or whether he had, after all, a
sneaking idea that he was little more than a mouse, I can't say. But
his great idea (that he could buy so many people up ten times over and
feel none the worse) had a certain pathos in that fact, that even to his
dull brain there came at times the conviction that when the end came he
would be as poor as any mouse that ever crept into its hole.
*CHAPTER XIII*
*A DEAL IN ODD VOLUMES*
It was baking-day at Low Meadow Farm, and the kitchen being rendered
unusually hot by the fact that it was also a blazing afternoon in July,
Mrs. Maidment, in the intervals of going to the oven, sat in a stout
elbow-chair at the kitchen door and fanned herself with her apron. She
was a comfortably built lady of at least fifty, and heat told upon her,
as she had remarked several times since breakfast. Her placid, moon-like
countenance, always rosy, was now as fiery as a winter afternoon's sun,
and when she was not fanning herself she mopped her brow with one of her
late husband's handkerchiefs, which she had taken from a drawer in the
press as being larger than her own, and therefore more suitable for the
purpose.
While she sat at the door Mrs. Maidment glanced at the prospect before
her--at the garden, the orchard, the fields beyond where the crops were
already whitening to harvest. Her thoughts were of a practical nature.
"I'm sure if Maidment can look down from Above," she murmured, "he'll
say it's all in very good order. He never could abide naught that were
not in proper order, couldn't Maidment. And if we only get a good
harvest----"
At that moment the widow's thoughts were interrupted by the sudden
clicking of the side gate. She turned and saw a strange man leading an
equipage into the yard. The equipage consisted of a very small pony,
which looked as if a generous feed of corn would do it good, and of a
peculiarly constructed cart, very shallow in body, and closed in at the
top by two folding doors--it resembled nothing so much, in fact, as a
cupboard laid flat-wise and provided with wheels. As for the person who
led in this strange turn-out, and at whom Mrs. Maidment was staring very
hard, he was a somewhat seedy-looking gentleman in a frock-coat which
was too large and trousers which were too short; there was a slight cast
in his right eye, but there was no mistaking the would-be friendliness
of his smile. He bowed low as he drew the pony towards Mrs. Maidment,
and he removed a straw-hat and revealed a high forehead and a bald head.
Mrs. Maidment stared still harder.
"Good-afternoon, ma'am," said the stranger, bowing again. "Allow me to
introduce myself, ma'am, as a travelling bookseller--it's a new
departure in the book trade, and one that I hope to do well in. Permit
me to show you my stock, ma'am--all the newest volumes of the day by the
most famous authors."
He threw back the folding-doors of his cart with a flourish and stepped
aside. The July sun flashed its fierce beams on row upon row of
flashily-bound, high-coloured volumes in green and scarlet and much fine
gold.
"The very latest, I assure you, ma'am," said their vendor.
Mrs. Maidment fanned herself and gazed at the glory before her.
"Well, I don't know, master," she said. "I'm not one for reading myself,
except the newspaper and a chapter in the Bible of a Sunday. But my
daughter's fond of her book--she might feel inclined. Here, Mary
Ellen!--here's a man at the door selling books."
Miss Mary Ellen Maidment, a comely damsel of nineteen with bright eyes
and peach-like cheeks, emerged expectant from the kitchen. The
itinerant bookseller greeted her with more bows and smiles.
"Oh, my!" exclaimed Mary Ellen, lifting up her hands. "What a lot of
beautiful books!"
"Your ma said you were fond of your book, miss," said the owner of this
intellectual treasure mine. "Yes, miss, this is an especially fine
line. What's your taste, now, miss? Poetry?"
"I like a good piece," answered Mary Ellen.
The itinerant selected two gorgeously bound volumes, and deftly
balancing them on the palm of one hand, pointed to their glories with
the outstretched forefinger of the other.
"'The Complete Poetical Works of Mrs. H*ee*mans,'" he said. "A very
sweet thing that, miss--one of the best articles in the poetry line."
He pointed to the other. "'The Works of the late Eliza Cook.' A very
superior production that, miss. It was that talented lady who wrote
'The Old Arm-Chair,' of which you have no doubt heard."
"I learnt it once at school," said Mary Ellen. "Have you got any tales?"
"Tales, miss--yes, miss," replied the vendor, setting Mrs. Hemans and
Miss Cook aside, and selecting a few more volumes. "Here's a beautiful
tale by the talented Emma Jane Worboise, the most famous authoress of
her day."
"Is there any love in it?" asked Mary Ellen.
"My daughter," broke in Mrs. Maidment, "likes books with love matters
and lords and ladies in 'em--she reads pieces of 'em to me at nights."
"That, ma'am, is the only sort I carry," said the book-proprietor.
"Now, miss, just let me show you----"
In the end Mary Ellen purchased one tale which dealt with much love and
many lords and ladies, and another which the seller described as a pious
work with a strong love interest, and recommended highly for Sunday
reading. She also bought Mrs. Hemans, because on turning over her pages
she saw several lines which she thought were pretty. And while she went
up-stairs to fetch her purse Mrs. Maidment asked the stranger inside to
drink a jug of ale. One can imagine his sharp glance round that old
farmhouse kitchen, with its lovely old oak furniture, its shining brass
and pewter, its old delf-ware....
"You don't happen to have any old books that you want to clear out of
the way, do you, ma'am?" he said, when he had been paid, and was
drinking his ale. "I buy anything like that--there's lots of people
glad to get rid of them. I've a sack full of 'em now under the cart
there. Of course, they're worth nothing but waste paper price. That's
what I have to sell them at, ma'am."
"Why, there's some old books in that chest there," said Mrs. Maidment,
pointing to an old chest in the deep window-seat. "I'm sure I've oft
said we'd burn 'em, for they're that old and printed so queer that
nobody can read 'em. Let him look at 'em, Mary Ellen."
What treasures were they that the wandering merchant's knowing eyes
gazed upon? He gazed upon them for some time, according to the
eye-witnesses, before he spoke, examining each book with great care.
"Aye, well, ma'am," he said at last. "Of course, as you say, nobody
could read them now-a-days. I'll tell you what--I'll give miss here
three new books out of the cart for them, and you can pick for yourself,
miss!"
Mary Ellen exclaimed joyfully--and the old books went into a sack.
It was not until the next year that a Summer Boarder from London took up
temporary quarters at Low Meadow Farm. According to the account which
Mrs. Maidment gave to her gossips of him he was a very quiet gentleman
who, when he wasn't rambling about the fields and by the streams, was
reading in the garden, and when he wasn't reading in the garden was
writing in the parlour. And the books he had brought with him, she
said, were more than the parson had.
One day, the Summer Boarder, rummaging in a cupboard in his bedroom,
saw, on a top-shelf, an old, dust-covered book, and took it down and
knocked the dust off and opened it. And then he sank in a chair,
gasping. There, in his hand, lay a perfect copy of a fifteenth-century
book, so rare that there is no copy of it in either the British Museum
or in the Bodleian Library--no, nor at the Vatican!
He stared at it for a long time, and then, carrying it as some men would
carry a rare diamond, he went down to the kitchen, where Mrs. Maidment
was making plum-pies.
"This is a queer old book which I found in my cupboard, Mrs. Maidment,"
he said. "May I look at it?"
"Aye, and welcome, sir!" said Mrs. Maidment. "And keep it, too, sir, if
you'll accept of it. Eh, we'd a lot of old stuff like that in that box
there in the window-place, but last year----" And then the Summer
Boarder heard the story of the travelling bookseller.
"And I'm sure, sir, it were very kind of the man," concluded Mrs.
Maidment, "and I've always said so, to give Mary Ellen three new books,
and bound so beautiful, for naught but a lot of old rubbish that nobody
could read!"
Then the Summer Boarder went out into the garden and faced a big Moral
Problem.
*CHAPTER XIV*
*THE CHIEF MAGISTRATE*
I
I suppose there never was a man in the world who was as full of pride as
Abraham Kellet was on the morning of the day which was to see him made
Mayor of Sicaster. That particular 9th of November, as I remember very
well, was more than usually dismal and foggy--there were thick mists
lying all over the lowlands and curling up the hill-sides as I drove
into the town to take part in the proceeding of the day (for I was an
old school-fellow of Abraham's, and he had graciously invited me to
witness his election), but I warrant that to his worship-to-be no July
day ever seemed so glorious nor no May-day sun ever so welcome as the
November greyness. All men have their ambitions--Abraham's one ambition
since boyhood had been to wear the mayoral chain, the mayoral robes, to
sit in the mayoral seat, to be the chief magistrate of his adopted town,
to know himself its foremost burgess, to have everybody's cap raised to
him, to have himself addressed by high and low as Mr. Mayor. It was a
worthy ambition, and he had worked hard for it--now that at last he was
within an ace of fulfilling it his pride became apparent to everybody.
It was not a vaunting pride, nor the pride which is puffed up, but the
pride of a man who knows that he has succeeded. He was a big-framed,
broad-countenanced man, Abraham Kellet, who put down a firm foot and
showed a portly front, and after it was settled that he was to be the
next Mayor of Sicaster his tread was firmer than ever and his front more
portly as he trod the cobble-paved streets of the little town. I can
see him now--a big, fine figure of a man of not much over fifty, his six
feet of height invariably habited in the best broadcloth; his linen as
scrupulously white and glossy as he himself was scrupulously shaven; his
boots as shining as the expensive diamond ring which he wore on the
little finger of his left hand. Decidedly a man to fill a mayoral chair
with dignity and fulness, was Abraham Kellet.
I thought as I rode into Sicaster that eventful morning of the story of
its new mayor's life. Like myself, Abraham was the son of a farmer, but
whereas my father was a man of considerable substance, his was a poor
man who had to work hard, early and late, to make a living out of a farm
the land of which was poor. I have always had an idea that it was my
father who paid for Abraham's schooling at Sicaster Grammar School,
though it is but an idea, because he was the last man in the world to
let his left hand know what his right hand did. Anyway, Benjamin Kellet
was a poor man, as things go, and had a growing family to keep, Abraham
being the eldest, and none of his other children got more education than
the village school afforded for the customary fee of two-pence a-week.
Why Abraham went from the village school to Sicaster Grammar School was
because he was regarded as a very promising youth, whose education ought
to be improved. The village school-master, in fact, when Abraham was
twelve years old, said that he could not teach him any more--no very
great thing in those days when nothing was taught but reading, writing
and arithmetic, with perhaps a smattering of English history and a
little grammar and geography--and that it was no use his staying any
longer at the red-tiled school-house, which lay under the shadow of the
church. Possibly the parson and my father (who was vicar's churchwarden
for many a long year before his death) put their heads together about
Abraham. However the case may have been, Abraham was sent to Sicaster
Grammar School with the understanding that he was to remain there two
years, when it would be time for him to be apprenticed to some trade.
He made his entrance there the same day that I did--that was where I got
to know him better. I had known him, of course, all along, but not
intimately, because my mother had insisted on having a governess for my
two sisters--both dead now, many a long year ago!--and so I had never
gone to the village school, nor had I mixed much with the village boys.
But when I was nine years old, my father said I had had quite enough of
apron-strings, and I must go to Sicaster Grammar School, as soon as the
next half began.
"To Sicaster Grammar School!" said my mother, speaking as if my father
had said I was to go to the Cannibal Islands. "Why, Sicaster's six
miles off! The child can't walk twelve miles a day and learn his
lessons as well."
"Who wants him to?" asked my father. "He can have the little pony and
phaeton and drive himself in and out. I'll buy another for you and the
girls. And there's that eldest lad of Keller's--he's going, too, and he
can drive with him."
"And his dinner?" said my mother.
"Give him it in a basket every day," replied my father. "And--put
plenty in for two. He can share with young Kellet."
That was how I came to go to school with Abraham Kellet. I used to set
off with the little pony-phaeton at a quarter to eight every morning and
pick Abraham up at the end of the lane which led to his father's farm.
At first he used to bring his dinner with him, but it soon became an
understood thing that his dinner was in my basket--we made no pretence,
and had no false ideas about it on either side. We used to jog into
Sicaster with great content, put the pony and trap up at the King George
and go to school. In winter we used to eat our meat pasties and our
fruit pies and drink our milk in one of the class-rooms; in summer we
spread our cloth under the trees on a certain knoll in the play-ground.
And afternoon, school over we jogged home again as easily as we had
come.
I have no great recollection of what I did at school, except that I had
the usual healthy boy's dislike of mere book-learning, and was always
unfeignedly glad when half-past four struck. Horses and dogs and the
open air, cricket and fishing, and running after the fox-hounds when
they came our way, appealed much more to me than anything else. I
believe Abraham did most of my home exercises as we drove to and from
school. As for himself he learned all he could--within certain limits.
He would have nothing of Latin or Greek, but he slaved like a nigger at
French, and during play-hours was always scheming to get into the
company of the French teacher. He cared little about history, but a
good deal about geography--French, arithmetic, and, above all,
book-keeping were Abraham's great loves. His handwriting brought tears
of joy and pride into the eyes of the writing-master; his figures might
have been printed; his specimens of book-keeping would have done credit
to a chartered accountant.
The reason of Abraham's devotion to these particular subjects was
this--he had set his mind on being a--Draper. Not a small, pettifogging
draper, to deal in cheap lines of goods, but a draper of the big sort
who would call himself Silk Mercer. There stood in the centre of the
market-place at Sicaster such an establishment--it was the daily sight
of it which inspired Abraham's dreams. A solid, highly respectable
establishment it was--though it would be thought old-fashioned now, it
was considered to be something very grand then, and in its windows were
set out the latest London and Paris fashions. There was a severely
plain sign in black and gold over the windows under the Royal Arms, with
an equally plain inscription--Paulsford and Tatham, Silk Mercers and
Drapers to H.M. the Queen.
"That's where I mean to be apprenticed, Poskitt," said Abraham, as we
set out one afternoon across the market-place. "That's the trade I
fancy. No farming for me. Farming! Slaving all day after a plough and
coming home up to your eyes in clay and as tired as a dog--and then
nothing to show at the year-end! No, thank you!"
"That's not my father's life," I said.
He shook his head knowingly.
"Your father's a rich man," he said. "I know. I keep my eyes open.
No--I'm going into that business."
I looked at him, trying to imagine him behind a counter, selling laces
and ribbons. He was a big, heavy boy, whose clothes were always too
small for him, and it seemed to me even then that it would look queer to
see such big hands handling delicate things.
"That's why I give so much attention to figures and to French, you see,
Poskitt," he said presently. "You can't get on in business unless
you're good at figures and book-keeping, and if you can speak French
you're at a great advantage over fellows who can't, because you stand a
chance of being sent over to Paris to see and buy the latest fashions."
"Give me farming and a good horse and a good dog and gun!" said I.
"Yes," he said, "but you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth.
I've got my way to make. I shall make it. I'll be Mayor of Sicaster
some day."
The first step towards Abraham's attainment of that wish came when he
left the Grammar School and was duly apprenticed to Messrs. Paulsford
and Tatham. He was then fourteen, and because of his big frame, heavy
countenance, and solemn expression, looked older. I used to see him in
the shop sometimes when I went there with my mother or sisters--he
assumed a tailed coat at a very early age and put on the true manner
with it. His term of apprenticeship, as was usual in those days, was
seven years--whether his indentures were cancelled or not I do not know,
but he was buyer to the firm at eighteen and manager when he was
twenty-one. He became known in Sicaster. His conduct was estimable, and
everybody spoke well of him. Six days of the week found him at his post
from eight to eight, and on Saturdays till ten; the seventh found him
diligent in attendance on the services of the Church, and in teaching in
the Sunday-school. He lodged with a highly-respectable widow lady, the
relict of a deceased tradesman, and he was never known to pay anything
but the most decorous attention to young women.
In this way ten years of Abraham's life passed--to all outward
appearance with absolute smoothness. The wiseacres of Sicaster,
especially those who congregated in snug bar-parlours and smoked their
pipes and drank their grog of a winter's evening, wagged their heads and
said that young Kellet must be saving a pretty penny, and that he well
knew what he was about. And I believe that few people, either in
Sicaster itself, or in the neighbourhood, were at all surprised when it
was suddenly announced in the _Sicaster Sentinel_ that the
old-established business of Messrs. Paulsford and Tatham had, because of
the great age and failing health of the sole remaining partner, Mr.
Jonas Tatham, been sold to their manager, Mr. Abraham Kellet, who would
in future carry it on in his own name.
So now the old sign came down and a new one went up, and Abraham was no
longer the watchful, ubiquitous manager, but the lynx-eyed omnipresent
master. The look of power came into his eyes and manner; he trod the
streets and crossed the market-place with the tread of a man who had a
stake in the town. Men who knew him as an apprentice boy were quick to
"sir" him; some, to cap him; he had shown that he could make money.
Everybody knew now that he was going to write his name in large letters
on the rolls of Sicaster, whereon there were already a good many names
that were not of inconsiderable note.
And then, just as Abraham seemed to have settled down to the opening
stages of a brilliant commercial career of his own building, a great
calamity happened. It happened just when it might have been least
expected to happen--for all things seemed auspicious for Abraham's
greatness. He had bought a handsome house and was furnishing it
handsomely. He had just become engaged to the daughter and only child
of Alderman John Chepstow, who was a heiress in her own right and might
be expected to inherit her father's considerable fortune in due time.
Fortune seemed to be smiling upon him in her widest and friendliest
fashion. Suddenly she frowned.
One night the quiet, sleeping streets of Sicaster were suddenly roused
to hitherto unknown noise and activity. The rushing of feet on the
pavement, the rattle of horses' hoofs on the cobble-stones, the throwing
up of casements, the inarticulate cries of frightened people--all these
things culminated in one great cry--_Fire_! And men and women rushing
into the market-place saw that the stately old shop, Paulsford and
Tatham's for sixty years, and Abraham Kellet's for two, was on fire from
top to bottom, and that high above the holocaust of flame a thick cloud
of black smoke rose slowly towards the moon-lit sky.
Kellet's, late Paulsford and Tatham's, was burnt to the ground ere the
daylight came. There was one small fire-engine in the basement of the
Town Hall, which spat at the fire as a month-old kitten spits at a
mastiff, and when the brigades arrived from Clothford, twelve miles away
in one direction, and Wovefield, eight in another, there was little but
a few walls. They who saw it, told me that Abraham Kellet, arriving
early on the scene and seeing the hopelessness of the situation, took up
his stand on the steps of the market-cross, opposite, and watched his
property burn until the roof fell in. He never uttered a word all that
time, though several spoke to him, and when all was over, he turned away
home. Then a reporter tugged at his elbow, and asked him if he was
insured. He stared at the man for a moment as if he was mad; then he
nodded his head.
"Yes--yes!" he answered. "Oh, yes!"
Everybody was very sorry for Abraham Kellet--although he was insured
against fire it seemed to the Sicaster folk that a disaster like this
must cripple his business. But they did not know Abraham. He seemed to
be the only person who was really unconcerned, and he immediately
developed a condition of extraordinary activity. There was a large
building in the town which had been built as a circus--before ten
o'clock of the morning after the fire Abraham had taken this and had
sent circulars round announcing that his business would be carried on
there until his new premises were built. He added that the temporary
premises would be ready for the reception of customers in four days.
Then he completely disappeared. People laughed, and said that he must
have lost his reason. How could he have temporary premises open in four
days when every rag of his stock had perished? How could he make that
old circus, damp and musty, into a place where people could go shopping?
But Abraham was one of those men who refuse to believe in
impossibilities. How he managed to do it, no one ever knew who was not
actively concerned. But when the temporary premises were opened the old
circus had been transformed into a sort of bazaar, and there was such a
stock as had never been seen in the old shop. The whole town crowded
there, and the county families came, and everybody wanted to
congratulate Abraham. But having seen the temporary premises fairly
going, Abraham was off on another track--he was busy with architects
about the plans of the new shop. He laid the foundation stone of that
himself, well within a month of the big fire.
The new shop was finished and opened just twelve months later--competent
critics said it was as fine as a London or Paris shop, excepting, of
course, for size. The day after the opening Abraham married Miss
Chepstow, and indulged himself with a week's holiday. Then Mr. and Mrs.
Kellet settled down in their fine house to a life of money-making and
social advancement. And Abraham in time had leisure to devote to
municipal affairs and became a councillor, and then an alderman, and at
last reached the height of his ambition and saw the mayoral chair and
chain and robes before him--close at hand.
"_I've got my way to make. I shall make it. I'll be Mayor of Sicaster
some day!_"