_Dulce est desipere in loco_—a Latin tag that assures us we may on
occasions pleasantly unbend. Edward Beaumont, as we have seen, was
dreaming love’s young dream, than which we are all convinced there is
nothing sweeter in this brief life of ours, and seeing visions of a
glorious future rounded by the woolsack, and I know not what other
suggestions of a lively imagination. Sam Storth, the partner whom he was
fool enough to at the same time trust implicitly and regard with a sort
of good-humoured contempt, was essaying the gentle art, _desipere in
loco_, after a fashion of his own, in a word, combining business with
pleasure. The Long Vacation, beloved of lawyers of ample means, bemoaned
by those members of the junior bar to whom briefs—briefs lightly
“marked” at that—are as angels’ visits, few and far between, was
now dragging its weary course—and Mr. Storth had time enough and to
spare on his hands. He would have liked to don that much-prized
shooting-jacket and those knickerbockers that so fittingly displayed a
calf whose proportions Sam surveyed with a proper pride, and to which he
rightly conceived the costume of the courts failed to do adequate
justice. But here was he doomed to the treadmill, whilst his partner
dangled at the petticoats of an Archdeacon’s daughter, and had the
confounded impudence to stretch his legs under an earl’s mahogany.
“There’s Beaumont,” the irate junior partner thus unburthened
himself, “doing the la-di-da in baronial halls, whilst I’m expected
to moil and toil trying to find work for a set of idle clerks in the
deadest season of the legal year. How Beaumont, with the principles he
professes can cheek to make himself so very much at home, as I’m sure
from his letters he has done, in _gremio ecclesiae_, in the very bosom
of the Church, or, what is more scandalous still, of the Church’s
daughter, passes my comprehension. But I suppose Beaumont’s not such a
fool as a fellow’d take him to be by his talk. These Radicals are all
alike. They rail against aristocrats, but give me a Radical for
kow-towing to a duke; they gibe at the Church as by law established, but
trust ’em to be uncommon deferential to a bishop; they declaim against
pensions and annuities, but wouldn’t they just like a soft job
themselves. Oh, no, I don’t think. There’s Beaumont, whose
grandfather, I verily believe, used to wear clogs and a blue smock, and
take his twopenny-ha’penny pieces to market on a donkey’s back,
quaffing the vintages of Burgundy in the baronial halls aforesaid,
whilst I, forsooth, whose father was a——”
“Was a what?” queried the fair damsel to whom Master Sam had opened
the floodgates of his eloquence.
“Well, he wasn’t a damned poverty-knocker anyway,” said Charles
hurriedly; “whilst I, as I was saying, must content myself with a
tankard of bitter in a——”
“In a what, sir?” asked the lady, tartly.
“In a place that I much refer to baronial halls,” quoth Sam
gallantly.
The place so honoured was the snug of the Royal Albert in Huddersfield,
and the lady to whom Mr. Storth was confiding his grievances was Miss
Amelia Wrigley, the very comely daughter of the landlord of that
old-established hostelry, a lady not only well-dowered by Nature with a
good figure, a pleasing face, and a sprightly wit, but reputed to be
likely in the years to come to be well-dowered by the worthy but gouty
sire, whose ales and liquors Mr. Storth so vastly appreciated.
Now, Miss Amelia Wrigley was not only of a good figure, a pleasing face,
and a sprightly wit, and with those promising prospects that are a
mighty agreeable adjunct to personal charms; she was also fully aware of
her own value. She knew to the decimal of an inch how far it was prudent
to permit the thirsty youths who frequented the Royal Albert Hotel to go
in their amorous advances. Of course, she must not be too frigid, and
there were occasions when it was politic to be diplomatically hard of
hearing. The ingenious Hebe who ministers to the pleasures of
manufacturers, flushed by the frequent “friendly glasses”
inseparable from the conduct of business on market-day, must affect not
to hear many an innuendo that crapulous youth seems to think he may
safely utter in the presence of a barmaid, though he would soundly
trounce the fellow who should utter the like in the hearing of his
sister in the domestic drawing-room. Poor Hebe’s face may glow with
outraged modesty, her eyes may flash her indignation and resentment, but
business requires that she should smile and smirk and say smooth things.
Miss Amelia Wrigley was declared by many a young buck of Huddersfield to
be “too stand-offish” for his taste, which required that a girl
should be able “to give a joke and take a joke, don’t you know”;
though the kind of joke required by this predilection to be given and
taken was not defined with that precision beloved of the mathematician.
But it may be put down to Mr. Sam Storth’s credit that this
stand-offishness of the fair Amelia was very far from diminishing that
lady’s attractiveness in his eyes.
“I like a larky girl as well as any man,” he confided to his
partner, “and when I’m in for fun I don’t want to have to do with
a condemned iceberg; but fun’s one thing and matrimony’s another and
don’t you forget it. And when I place a lady at the head of my
mahogany, I don’t want to think that every doddering idiot in
Huddersfield that can sport a flash ring and chain has blown a cloud of
cigarette smoke in her face and drawled out ‘Another special, Millie,
my angel, and a smile with it.’ You don’t ‘Millie’ Amelia
Wrigley, I can tell you.”
From which profound observation it may be inferred that in the
conversation of which we have heard but a part, and of which, by your
leave, good reader, we will take the liberty to hear more, Mr. Sam
Storth could not boast of that self-assurance and complacency that
usually marked his intercourse with the ladies he honoured with his
acquaintance. In some mysterious way the talk had drifted, as talk
between a young man and maid will drift, to the perilous subject of
liking, of love, of the choice of a lover and so forth.
“I used to think I wasn’t a marrying man, Miss Amelia—I may call
you that mayn’t I?—Miss Wrigley’s so formal, so cold, between
friends, don’t you think?—not a marrying man by a long chalk. Seen
so much billing and cooing in my time, and then a chain that can’t
very well be broken with a cat at one end of it and a dog at the other.
I always draw the line at that particular service in the Prayer Book
that so appropriately begins with “dearly beloved” and ends with
“amazement! But”—with a sigh that was intended to be sentimental,
and a glance that was unmistakeably amorous—“but a man never knows
his fate. How true it is that man proposes but God disposes.”
“Then man shouldn’t propose,” suggested the lady.
“Oh, do be serious, Miss Amelia, or may say I Amelia?”
“Certainly you may not say Amelia, Storth, at least not to me. Why
should you?”
“Because, because oh! hang it Amelia, I mean Miss Amelia, you make it
confounded difficult for a fellow. Jove! Isn’t it hot?”—and Mr.
Storth mopped his troubled and moist brow with a vast bandana. “I
think, if you don’t mind, I’ll have another pint of bitter, with a
top on.”
Miss Wrigley rose, and, moving with stately ease to the pumps, drew a
large tankard of the foaming beverage.
“I never knew such a man as you for beer, Mr. Storth.”
“Safer than whisky, my dear. I mean Miss Amelia; but I was
saying——”
“Yes; you were saying.”
“Well, lately, ever since I came to know you in fact, I’ve been
thinking of settling down. I’m not a sentimental young fool, as you
know. This isn’t calf love, in fact, I never had any such tommyrot to
bother me as calf-love. It’s the genuine article, warranted 18 carat
and entered A1 at Lloyd’s. I’ve met my fate at last. A lady, young,
and yet not too young; I do hate your simpering schoolgirl-misses, just
out of short frocks, and long what-do-you-call-’ems, with the crochet
frills on; tall, a good figure, handsome, of good intelligence and
education and manners—by Jove, the manners of a duchess.”
“Oh! so you’ve met such a lady at last, have you, Mr. Storth, and
deigned to approve of her figure, face, mind, and manners, and all.”
“Why, you know I have, Amelia. Ain’t I telling you so?”
“Meaning me, I suppose?” queried the lady, with much composure.
“Why, of course I mean you. You don’t think I’m such a confounded
ass as to sit here half the afternoon talking about another girl. I may
be ten or twenty different kinds of fool, but I’m not such a fool as
all that comes to. Of course I mean you.”
“I’m sure I’m vastly obliged to you,” commented the lady.
“You’ve assured me, somewhat obliquely, to be sure, that I’ve a
fine figure, a passable face, an intelligent mind, and the manners of a
duchess, I think you were so flattering as to observe; and you’ve also
assured me, also somewhat obliquely, but ’twill pass, that I’m your
fate. You’ve said nothing, by the way, about my heart, Mr. Storth,
nor, now I come to think of it, unless very, very obliquely, about your
own.”
“Oh! that’s of course,” declared Sam, with considerable vigour.
“Exactly, that’s, as you say, of course. So I’ve a good figure, a
fair face, an intelligent mind, the manners of a duchess. I never met a
duchess, but I presume the comparison is meant as complimentary; all
these, and, to boot, a heart that’s, as you say, of course. Now, pray,
Mr. Storth, what do you offer in exchange for all this?”
“What do I offer? I? Why, surely you can’t misunderstand me, you
cannot fail to know that all this time I’ve been offering MYSELF!”
“I see ‘myself,’ in large capitals, I suppose.” Sam Storth
looked, as he doubtless felt, somewhat nonplussed by this reception of
what he assured himself was an uncommonly handsome offer.
“Yourself!” continued the object of his well-regulated affections;
“h’m, yourself. That’s so comprehensive as to be a trifling vague.
You were good enough to enter into detailed particulars, quite a bill of
quantities, or particular invoice of what should be included in the
self, the other self besides yourself, on which you would deign to
lavish the treasures of your heart. Cannot you be a little more precise
as to what is included in YOURSELF? What’s to be the _quid pro quo_
for my good figure, my fair face, my excellent understanding and my
manners of a duchess? Is it to be _par example your_ good figure?”
Now, it has been said that Mr. Storth, however excellent a lawyer, was
no Adonis.
He winced and sate silent.
“_Your_ fair face?”
Again Mr. Storth winced and found no words.
“_Your_ excellent understanding? _Your_ manners? I suppose they should
be ducal to match mine?”
“Oh, hang it all, Miss Wrigley! I think you’re piling it on a bit
too thick. I don’t set up for a beauty, though I’ve had my
successes,” Sam added, in parenthesis.
“So I understand. In the _coulisses_ of the music-hall.”
“And I don’t set up for a saint. But that’s all over now. But
you’ve beauty and goodness enough for the pair of us, and if I’m
neither an Adonis nor a saint I’m not generally looked upon as a fool.
I’m a gentleman by profession, I’ve a good business, and I’m
making enough to keep a wife, and if that isn’t good enough, why, I
can’t help it, and there’s an end on’t.”
“Ah! now you’re talking sense. You’re making, you say, a good
income. But as what? As the junior partner of Mr. Edward Beaumont; the
man who does the leavings of his work, takes the cases he doesn’t
think important enough to attend to himself, and does the drudgery he
thinks beneath his high and mightiness.”
“Oh, damn Edward Beaumont!” broke in Storth, hotly.
“With all the pleasure in life,” pursued the lady serenely,
“though perhaps it isn’t quite in harmony with ducal manners to say
so in the presence of a lady. But that’s the position you offer
me—the wife of a junior partner, whose senior is, I understand, the
guest of an Archdeacon, and is, you imagine, basking in the smiles of
the Archdeacon’s daughter. I suppose I should be expected to take up
the _role_ of a junior partner’s wife, to receive an occasional
invitation to dinner when no one else in particular was invited, to be
on visiting terms with the managing clerk and his lady, and to be humbly
thankful when my partner’s wife acknowledged me in New Street. No
thank you, Mr. Storth, it isn’t good enough.”
“Is that your final word?” asked Storth, savagely.
“No, it isn’t, and you needn’t glare at me like that. I’m not in
the witness box, and, if I were, I shouldn’t be afraid of _you_. It
isn’t my final word. If you want me you must win me.”
“How?” interjected Sam, eagerly.
“Only show me how.”
“Cease to be a junior partner, and if, in doing so, you humble your
Mr. Edward Beaumont to the dust, I shall be none the less pleased on
that account. Make a position that is your own. I know you’ve brains.
Perhaps not of the highest order, but still good enough for the work you
have to do. Use them to lift you up from the shadow by which you are now
obscured, the shadow of another man’s personality. And then come to
me. And, meanwhile, don’t forget what I said about your precious Mr.
Edward Beaumont.”
“Then it’s a promise, Amelia?” asked Storth eagerly, his face lit
up with the joy of triumph.”
“It’s what I think you lawyers would call a conditional promise. You
keep your part of the bargain, Sam, and I’ll keep mine. There,
that’ll do. I’m not fond of those demonstrations, and I don’t like
the smell of beer. You’ll have to take to claret—some day.”
“And that day isn’t far off, you bet, Amelia. I’m not too fond of
Mr. Edward Beaumont, as you call him, myself; and I’ll be no more
sorry than yourself to see my lord taught a lesson he badly needs. Well
what is it, Ainley?”—this to one of the clerks of his firm who was
heard inquiring if Mr. Storth was about.
“Mr. Schofield would like to see you, sir.”
“Pat as the heft to the blade,” exclaimed Storth. “I’ll tell you
some day what I mean,” he added, as he hastily drained his pewter,
wiped his lips and nodded his adieus to Miss Wrigley.
Mr. William Schofield, the client whom Mr. Storth found nervously
awaiting him, was a man of some sixty years of age, of middle stature,
with hard, one might say, harsh features, his face clean shaven save for
a ragged, grizzled fringe of hair that ran down the sides of the cheeks
and under the chin, leaving unadorned the close lips, and exposed the
few yellow front teeth advancing years had left; eyes bright, keen and
greedy. Mr. Schofield had been, as he would have told you with pride, a
hard worker all his life. He had known the hardships in his youth of the
unreformed, uncoerced Factory System. As a boy, not yet in his teens, he
had been a “billy piecener,” walking miles to the mill in all sorts
of weather, in winter time long before sunrise, he had worked his
fourteen and fifteen hours a day for a beggarly wage of a few shillings
weekly, subsisting for the most part on water porridge, which he often
had to eat cold. What education he had he had picked up in the Sunday
School attached to the Golcar Baptist Chapel. There he had learned to
read, to write, and to “sum,” so that by the aid of a ready-reckoner
he could make out an invoice.
Despite, or perhaps because of, his early disadvantages he had
prospered. He had by the time he was forty years old become a small
lindsey manufacturer. He worked hard six days a week, and he could
scarce be said to rest on the seventh, for he was a deacon of the chapel
in whose Sunday school he had learned the rudiments. He had worked hard
and he had lived hard, denying himself almost necessary food and fuel
and clothing, “clamming,” so it was said by the envious, himself and
his wife, that he might put more and more of his earnings into his
business. He had no pleasures, unless the hearing of the non-elect
vigorously damned every Sunday by a Predestinarian preacher be a
pleasure, and excepting always that: great and all-sufficing joy of
adding shilling by shilling to his store. He had no children, and when
he reflected that unless he left his money to the chapel it should in
the natural course go to a spendthrift nephew he often consoled himself
by the thought that the nephew could not have more pleasure in
dissipating his patrimony than the uncle had in hoarding it. He cared
neither for literature nor arts. He never read anything but the Bible,
the Baptist Magazine, and the Leeds Mercury. He called himself a
Liberal, but his Liberalism was not based so much on a desire for the
betterment of the condition of the many as upon resentment of the
privileges of the few. And Edward Beaumont was his solicitor, as Edward
Beaumont’s father before him had been.
“Howd’ye do, Mr. Schofield? Fine day, isn’t it? Glad to see you
looking so fit, ’pon my word you look younger every time you give us a
call.” It was one of Mr. Sam Storth’s most cherished maxims that
politeness—to the people to whom it is worth while to be
polite—costs nothing.
“Well, I’m nobbut so-so, Mr. Storth, nobbut so-so, a plaguy lot o’
rheumatiz these days, but aw reckon aw mun expect to feel th’ years
creepin ower me, tho aw’m nobbut a lad yet in a manner o’
speakin’, that is, wheer some come; but it wer’ Mr. Beaumont aw
wer’ wantin’ to see. Aw reckon yo’n know nowt abaat that bit o’
brass o’ mine, if yo can call a matter o’ three thousand paand a bit
o’ brass at Edward’s father ligged aat at interest for me. I’d
better wait and see hissen.”
“But Mr. Beaumont’s away, down in Lincolnshire, and I can’t quite
say when he’ll be back. Perhaps you can tell me what it is you want to
know and I may be able to give you the information you require. Let me
see, you’re the mortgagee of Midgley’s mill, aren’t you?”
“Aye, that’s me. Yo’ see, it’s abaat ten yer sin’ aw, put th’ brass
aat. It were i’ Edward’s father’s time an’ he made th’ writins for me.
It wer’ a seet o’ eggs to put i’ one basket—three thaasand paand,
awmost th’ savin’s o’ my lifetime—but Midgley were doin’ well then an’
th’ rate o’ interest, five per cent., were temptin’. But aw’d never ony
bother abaat th’ interest till just abaat th’ time th’ owd man, tho’ he
woren’t so owd to be sure, Edward’s father aw mean, took an’,
died, and Edward stepped into his shoin. That were afore yo’ came to
th’ office, so happen yo’ won’t know th’ ins an’ th’ outs on
it. Then owd Midgley went dahn th’ slot, banked tha’ knows. Awst
nivver forget that market-day, when th’ news came to th’ market.
Aw’ were eitin’ a fourpenny plate o’ meat pie at Morton’s, when
somebody axed me if aw’d heerd owd Tommy Midgley had done a bank. It
welly choked me, an’ aw’d to struggle hard to finish th’ pie, but
aw couldn’t fashion to put it i’ mi pocket-hanker. Aw come up
straight to see Mr. Edward, an’ he made nowt but fun o’ me. He axed
me if aw’d forgotten th’ mortgage. As aw’m a miserable sinner it
had clean slipped my mind. He tried to sell th’ mill under th’
mortgage, but th’ highest bid wouldn’t have paid me off. Trade were
very bad just then, an’ folk failin’ reet an’ left. Midgley’s
mill were just a white elephant. But Mr. Edward came out like a
gentleman an’ he said as how his father had advised th’ loan he’d
take th’ responsibility on his showders till things mended. An’
aw’ve had my cheque reg’lar ivery half-year ever sin for th’
interest less th’ income-tax.”
“Ah! I see,” said Storth; “this is all new to me. You see this was, as
you say, before I came into the office, and it appears to have been a
private arrangement between you and Mr. Beaumont. A merely verbal
arrangement, I understand. You’ve only Mr. Beaumont’s word.”
“That’s all. It’s good enough, isn’t it?”
“Oh, quite so. But we’re all mortal, you know, and I like black and
white myself in business. Who’s running the mill now?”
“Aw couldn’t reetly say for sure. But aw yer it’s let off, or part
on it is, shoose ha’, i’ room an’ power. Aw nivver bothered my yed
abaat it, as long as th’ interest cam’ to hand. But it’s a week
o’er due, an’ aw’ve been expectin’ it by ivery post, so aw thowt
aw’d better call in an’ see abaat it. Yo’ won’t charge me owt
for that, will yo’?” he asked, as a sudden fear seized him.
“No, no, by no means—mortgagor’s costs. Make your mind easy. I’ve no
doubt it will be all right when Mr. Beaumont returns. Still...,” and
Mr. Storth fingered the seal on his watch-chain, and puckered his
brow and pursed his lips and slowly shook his head.
“Still, what?” asked Mr. Schofield, sharply. “There’s nowt
wrong, is there?”
“Wrong? No, no, of course not, at least…. well, well. No writing,
you say, only Mr. Beaumont’s word; and, of course, Mr. Beaumont’s
the soul of honour. You know what the poet says: “So are we all, all
honourable men.” Still, three thousand pounds is a tidy bit.”
“Yo’d ’ave thowt so if yo’d had to addle it an’ nip an’
scrat for it same as I had.”
“A very tidy bit. You have the deeds, of course?”
“They’re at the bank.”
“You’ve overdrawn on them, I suppose.”
“Then you suppose wrang, young man, aw dunnot lend money at five per
cent. to borrow brass fra’ the bank at six. That’s noan th’ way we
mak’ money i’ Golcar. Th’ writin’s are nobbut theer for safety.
Aw can fot ’em aat ony day aw like. What are yo’ axin’ for, if aw
may mak’ so bowd?”
“I’m not only asking, Mr. Schofield, I’m thinking. You read the
local papers, of course?”
“Aw see th’ Weekly Examiner ivery week. Me an’ a neighbour join at
it. What for?”
“Well, of course, you’ve read any time this last few weeks that
there’s great unrest in the industrial world. There was the strike at
Martin’s, of Lindley, not so long ago; there’s just been trouble at
Taylor and Littlewood’s, at Newsome, and I know for a fact that the
textile workers have formed a very strong and formidable union that
embraces not only Huddersfield, but the valleys of the Colne and the
Holme. In fact, Mr. Beaumont was fool enough to draw up the rules of the
union and make no charge.”
“That’s more nor he’d do for me, aw rekon. What sud he do that
for?”
“Oh, you know, he’s all for the rights of labour.”
“Rights o’ fiddlesticks. What’s a man want more nor plenty o’
wark an’ overtime? But what’s all this to do wi’ my brass?”
“Not much, perhaps. Only, you see, I don’t think, from what I saw of
that exceedingly amiable gentleman, Albert Clough, the weavers’
secretary, when he came to consult Beaumont about the draft of the new
rules—a cut-throat lace, if I ever saw one—that this new union’s
going to be idle very long.”
“Well, what’s that to me?”
“Nothing—perhaps; perhaps a great deal; perhaps a matter of that
tidy little bit of a three thousand pounds of yours.”
Mr. Schofield’s face sicklied over with the pale cast of a mortal
fear. His hands became cold and clammy, his heart sank within him.
“Good God! how can that be? Isn’t there th’ writin’s?”
“Oh, don’t alarm yourself unnecessarily, Mr. Schofield. It may be
all right. The late Mr. Beaumont was a very cautious man, I’ve always
understood. Still, as you say, there wasn’t a very spirited bidding
when the mill was put up before, and if there should be a general
strike, or what comes to much the same thing in the long run, a general
lockout, mill property will be a drug on the market.”
“Still, aw’ve Mr. Beaumont’s word.”
Mr. Storth shrugged his shoulders.
“Exactly. Well, Mr. Beaumont’s away. Lord only knows when he’ll be
back. It’s the Long Vacation, you know. Meanwhile, tho’ it’s very
irregular, I’ll let you have my own cheque, on my private account, for
the interest. Doubtless Beaumont will see me all right. All the same,
I’m glad my little bit isn’t out on mill property and I’ll take
precious good care it never is. Of course, it was all right to have your
money out in a good round sum when you were up to your eyes in business,
and hadn’t time to look after things. But if I were a man of your
years, with a fair amount of leisure and settled in my native village,
do you know the kind of investment I should fancy?”
“Let’s be knowing, sir, if yo’ don’t mind.”
“I’d lend a hundred here and a hundred there on good cottage
property—property that I could walk past every day of my life. I
should have the satisfaction of knowing I’d helped some hard-working
man to become the owner of his own dwelling.”
“Wi’ me on th’ top of it.”
“Exactly, with you on the top of it, as a sort of ballast; and if you
like to devote your retired leisure to serving your native village on
the Local Board, or on the Board of Guardians, why you could serve your
own interests at the same time by keeping the rates down . . . .”
“Them poor rates is a scandal,” interposed Mr. Schofield with
conviction.
“Keeping the rates down and consequently the value of property up; and
with three thousand pounds out in small sums take it you’ve thirty
voters at least you can rely on any time you like to put up for
office.”
“Aw winnot say but aw had thowt o’ th’ Local Board, an’
happen’ th’ Guardians. But nob’dy’s axed me to stand.”
Mr. Storth smiled indulgently.
“Oh, that’s easily managed when the time comes. Let me see, what’s
the formula? ‘Yielding to the urgent solicitations of a large and
influential body of my fellow townsmen I have consented to allow myself
to be nominated as a candidate for your suffrages at the forthcoming
election. If elected, etc.’ But we’re jumping a little before we get
to the stile, eh? You haven’t got these thirty nice snug mortgages
yet, have you?”
“No; but aw sooin can have. Just yo’ call in that brass i’ double
quick time.”
“No need to be precipitate. I’ll speak to Mr. Beaumont about it when
he returns. All the same, there’s no need to let the grass grow under
your feet. If you’ll make yourself comfortable with a newspaper in the
waiting-room for half-an-hour, I’ll draw up the formal notice of
withdrawal of the money—we shall have sufficient particulars in the
Deed Book, I’ve no doubt, and you can sign it, leaving the date open;
and if Mr. Beaumont concurs in my view, the notice can go without
troubling you again.”
But a few days after the consultation, at which we have been privileged
to assist, Edward Beaumont returned to Yorkshire and the duties there
awaiting him.
“Morning, Sam,” he exclaimed, as he grasped his partner’s chubby
hand. “I’m a bit overdue, I fear. The fact is, I didn’t come
straight on from Lincolnshire. I had to take a run up to town.”
“Did you go to see Russell about those Iron Works, those blasted
Blasting Works, as I’ve been tempted to call them. It’ll end in
Chancery, I suppose.”
“Not if I can help it; and I didn’t go to town to see Russell.”
Now, Mr. Russell, of Bedford Row, was the London agent of the firm of
Beaumont, Son, and Storth. “You’ll never guess whom I went to see,
and why. The fact is, I put in a good bit of time at the Reform Club.”
“Well, I don’t doubt they do you very well at the Reform Club. Never
been beyond its august portals myself, but on general principles I
should argue a _cordon bleu_ for a _chef_ and a cellar second only to an
Emperor’s. Your true reformer who recommends vegetarianism and total
abstinence, high thinking and low feeding to the general, takes uncommon
good care to have the best of everything for himself.”
“Well, I only sampled a cigar and a whiskey and soda. Leatham took me
to interview the Junior Whip.”
Now Mr. Leatham was the Liberal member for Huddersfield.
“And what the deuce did you want with the Liberal Whip, if I may make
so free?”
“Why, what the deuce, to borrow your phrase, do people want with
Liberal Whips?”
“Can’t say. No use for ’em myself, and I should have thought you
hadn’t. But I can make a shrewd guess what the Junior Liberal Whip
wanted with Mr. Edward Beaumont, and that’s a subscription to the
party fund. Well, go ahead with your tale.”
“Well, it seems I was just the sort of man the party’s looking for.
There’s to be a vacancy soon in one of the West Staffordshire
Divisions—Staveley Hill’s the sitting member, a blue of the blues,
you know—and the party our party, want a man well up on the Land
Question to fight the seat. Now, I do rather fancy myself on the Land
Question.”
“I don’t think you know a turnip from a mangel wurzel, if that’s
what you call being well up on the Land Question.”
“Don’t be a fool, Sam. You know that’s nothing to do with the
question. And the long and short of it is I’ve promised to step into
the breach, and uncommon glad of the chance, too. Why, man, it’s an
honour to be permitted to carry the banner of Land Reform right up to
the entrenchments of feudalism.”
“Oh, you can keep that sort of talk for the free and independent. Have
you counted the cost? There hasn’t been a Liberal member for a county
constituency in the whole length and breadth of Staffordshire since the
days of Simon de Montfort, I imagine. The Southern Division’s an
awfully scattered one and almost purely agricultural.”
“There’s the mining district right in the heart of it,” broke in
Beaumont.
“True; and the miners haven’t a vote. They’ll crowd round your
meetings, and carry you shoulder high, shout themselves harse, and wring
the hands off you in their grimy fists, and sing ‘See the conquering
hero comes’ till you feel you can’t fail to head the poll. And when
the polling day comes, where are they? No more use than a row of
skittles. And while they’re roaring, your quiet comfortable farmer
draws up in his gig from his quiet comfortable farm, has a quiet and
comfortable glass at his favourite hostelry, and then quietly and
comfortably pills you in the polling-booth. Do you think the farmer is
such an insensate ass as to fall out with the vicar and the squire and
his relations, just to oblige Mr. Edward Beaumont, charm he never so
wisely?”
“Well, commend me to you for a Job’s comforter, Sam. It will be a
hard fight, I know, but, as the Whip put it, it will give me a chance to
show the stuff I’m made of, to win my spurs; and what can a man want
more? Anyway, I’ve passed my word, and I’m off to Wolverhampton in
next to no time to meet the election agent and arrange for a series of
meetings all over the Division. And I want you to cut off for your
holidays and come back as fit as a fiddle, for I expect during the next
few months you’ll have to do more than your share of the office
work.”
“Well, ‘who will to Cupar, maun to Cupar.’ Whom God wants to ruin,
He first turns mad; and if ever a man was qualifying for a lunatic
asylum, that man’s yourself, Beaumont. Don’t say I haven’t warned
you. You’ll think of what I say someday or my name’s not Sam Storth.
You’ll spend a lot of money.”…
“I don’t care if it costs every penny I have in the world.”
“You needn’t care. It _will_ cost every penny you have in the world,
and more to boot, unless you’ve stumbled across a gold mine in the
fens.”
“Better than a gold mine, my boy. The grandest, divinest
creature——”
“Exactly. I guessed there was a woman at the bottom of it. But for
electioneering purposes give me the gold mine. Well, just run through
these papers with me and then I’m off. My name’s Walker, and my
address the Highlands for the next six weeks.”
At the door Storth turned, as if on an afterthought.
“Oh, by-the-bye, Beaumont, I had a man here the other day, a William
Schofield, of Golcar. He’d got some maggot in his head about a
mortgage, and was in mortal terror about some overdue interest. He told
me the amount and I gave him my cheque for it. I suppose it was all
right?”
“Quite right. If you’ll wait a moment I’ll write you a cheque for
the money. It’s a private account, you know. I’d forgotten the
interest was due. How quickly half-years slip away when you’ve money
to pay at the end of them. I think I’ve had more bother about that
loan of Schofield’s than all the rest of the business put together.”
“Ah! I didn’t quite get the hang of the matter from the old
gentleman. But I sized him up to be just the sort to talk enough about
his interest, if he didn’t get it, to shake the credit of the Bank of
England, so I just, as I say, calmed him down with a piece of stamped
paper with my name in the corner.”
“Well, I’d better tell you all about it. It seems he lent three
thousand pounds to Midgley, of Almondbury, on the security of Plover
Mill, and some adjacent cottages, in the mill-yard, I expect. That was
in my father’s time; and the strange thing about it is I’ve never
been able to find any valuer’s certificate as to the value of the
property at the time of the loan, though from what I know of my
father’s way of doing business I’m as certain there was one as I am
that the sun’s in the heavens. To make matters worse, soon after my
father’s death, poor old Midgley went smash and the mill has never
been wholly occupied since, and the rents from the cottages hardly pay a
clerk’s wages for collecting. However, I told Schofield I’d pay the
interest myself, and so I must, I fear, for the sake of the dear old
dad’s memory. It’s a bit of a pull though.”
“But what about the principal? Three thousand pounds isn’t exactly a
flea-bite, and it would about kill Schofield to lose it.”
“I suppose I’ll have to take it on my own shoulders. I’ve always
put off taking over the property, subject to the mortgage, though
Midgley’s trustee is willing enough to transfer the equity to me. I
hoped to get a good tenant, but things seem to go from bad to worse out
Almondbury way. Still, the thing’s got to be done. They can’t go on
in this slip-shod way. Just attend to the matter, Sam, when you come
back. Put it on a business footing. I’ll take over the whole thing,
lock, stock, and barrel, with Schofield’s mortgage on the top of
it.”
“All right; I’ll see to it between now and next interest-day No
hurry. I think you’re rather a fool though.”
“Well, you see, it wasn’t your father, Sam. If only that confounded
valuer’s certificate would turn up; but that’s past praying for, I
fear, and I don’t know who the valuer was and, what’s more, when I
tried to find out, some time ago, by inquiring among the auctioneers and
estate agents, nary a one of them had any recollection of making a
valuation.”
“All right, Beaumont, I’ll put things to ship-shape. Well, I
shan’t see you again before I start, so ta-ta. Hope biz. will brighten
up before I come back. It’s been as dull as ditch-water this month
back.”
Mr. Storth returned to his own room and began to set to rights, as he
styled it, the heterogeneous mass of papers that accumulate about a busy
lawyer’s desk and pigeon-holes and drawers. He was routing out the
contents of a deep recess, lettered XYZ, a receptacle apparently for
odds and ends of documents that could find no other home, reading the
endorsements, tearing up some, transferring others to their appropriate
resting-place, when he chanced upon a document bearing no
endorsement—an omission not a little irritating to the methodic mind.
“If I knew the clerk who’s responsible for this I’d give him a
piece of my mind,” muttered Mr. Storth, vindictively, as he opened the
folded paper and set about ascertaining its nature, with a view to duly
marking its date and character upon its back. He read a few lines and
then whistled softly.
“Well, I’m jiggered! The missing certificate! ‘Can recommend an
advance of £3,000 (three thousand) to £3,500 (three thousand five
hundred pounds).’ Now, what shall I do with this precious bit of
paper? What a load the finding of this will take off Beaumont’s mind!
I’ve a good mind to pop it in the fire. I know a young lady who would
say that’s what I ought to do. Shall I? No; hanged if I play it as low
as that, not even to pleasure Miss Amelia Wrigley.”
Mr. Storth was so absorbed in his own reflections that he did not hear a
gentle tap at his room door, did not hear the door open, did not hear
the deprecating cough by which the clerk who entered sought to attract
his attention, and only when the clerk stood by his side, and had cast a
quick glance at the document that engrossed his thoughts did he turn
swiftly round in his chair.
“That you, Barnes. What the deuce do you mean stealing into my room
like a confounded ghost? What do you want any way?” And Mr. Storth
huddled up the papers he had taken from the pigeon-hole XYZ, the long
lost, anxiously-searched certificate among them and thrust them into
that receptacle.
And though, later, Mr. Storth searched high and low for the document, he
found it not. It had again vanished.
And so had Mr. Barnes.