Of the narrative just placed before the reader, it is clear that Leonard
could gather only desultory fragments. He could but see that his
ill-fated mother had been united to a man she had loved with surpassing
tenderness; had been led to suspect that the marriage was fraudulent;
had gone abroad in despair, returned repentant and hopeful; had gleaned
some intelligence that her lover was about to be married to another, and
there the manuscript closed with the blisters left on the page by
agonising tears. The mournful end of Nora—her lonely return to die under
the roof of her parents—this he had learned before from the narrative of
Dr Morgan.
But even the name of her supposed husband was not revealed. Of him
Leonard could form no conjecture, except that he was evidently of higher
rank than Nora. Harley L’Estrange seemed clearly indicated in the early
boy-lover. If so, he must know all that was left dark to Leonard, and to
him Leonard resolved to confide the MS. With this resolution he left the
cottage, resolving to return and attend the funeral obsequies of his
departed friend. Mrs Goodyer willingly permitted him to take away the
papers she had lent to him, and added to them the packet which had been
addressed to Mrs Bertram from the Continent.
Musing in anxious gloom over the record he had read, Leonard entered
London on foot, and bent his way towards Harley’s hotel; when, just as
he had crossed into Bond Street, a gentleman in company with Baron Levy,
and who seemed, by the flush on his brow and the sullen tone of his
voice, to have had rather an irritating colloquy with the fashionable
usurer, suddenly caught sight of Leonard, and, abruptly quitting Levy,
seized the young man by the arm.
“Excuse me, sir,” said the gentleman, looking hard into Leonard’s face;
“but unless these sharp eyes of mine are mistaken, which they seldom
are, I see a nephew whom, perhaps, I behaved to rather too harshly, but
who still has no right to forget Richard Avenel.”
“My dear uncle,” exclaimed Leonard, “this is indeed a joyful surprise;
at a time, too, when I needed joy! No; I have never forgotten your
kindness, and always regretted our estrangement.”
“That is well said; give us your fist again. Let me look at you—quite
the gentleman I declare!—still so good-looking too. We Avenels always
were. Good bye, Baron Levy. Need not wait for me; I am not going to run
away. I shall see you again.”
“But,” whispered Levy, who had followed Avenel across the street, and
eyed Leonard with a quick curious searching glance—“but it must be as I
say with regard to the borough; or (to be plain) you must cash the bills
on the day they are due.”
“Very well, sir—very well. So you think to put the screw upon me, as if
I were a poor ten-pound householder. I understand—my money or my
borough?”
“Exactly so,” said the Baron, with a soft smile.
“You shall hear from me—you shall hear from me. (Aside, as Levy strolled
away)—D——d tarnation rascal!”
Dick Avenel then linked his arm in his nephew’s, and strove for some
minutes to forget his own troubles, in the indulgence of that curiosity
in the affairs of another which was natural to him, and, in this
instance, increased by the real affection which he had felt for Leonard.
But still his curiosity remained unsatisfied; for long before Leonard
could overcome his habitual reluctance to speak of his success in
letters, Dick’s mind wandered back to his rival at Screwstown, and the
curse of “over-competition”—to the bills which Levy had discounted, in
order to enable Dick to meet the crushing force of a capitalist larger
than himself—and the “tarnation rascal” who now wished to obtain two
seats at Lansmere, one for Randal Leslie, one for a rich Nabob whom Levy
had just caught as a client; and Dick, though willing to aid Leslie, had
a mind to the other seat for himself. Therefore Dick soon broke in upon
the hesitating confessions of Leonard, with exclamations far from
pertinent to the subject, and rather for the sake of venting his own
griefs and resentment than with any idea that the sympathy or advice of
his nephew could serve him.
“Well, well,” said Dick, “another time for your history. I see you have
thrived, and that is enough for the present. Very odd; but just now I
can only think of myself. I’m in a regular fix, sir. Screwstown is not
the respectable Screwstown that you remember it—all demoralised and
turned topsy-turvy by a demoniacal monster capitalist, with
steam-engines that might bring the falls of Niagara into your back
parlour, sir! And, as if that was not enough to destroy and drive into
almighty shivers a decent fair-play Britisher like myself, I hear he is
just in treaty for some patent infernal invention that will make his
engines do twice as much work with half as many hands! That’s the way
those unfeeling ruffians increase our poor-rates! But I’ll get up a riot
against him—I will! Don’t talk to me of the law! What the devil is the
good of the law if it don’t protect a man’s industry—a _liberal_ man,
too, like me!” Here Dick burst into a storm of vituperation against the
rotten old country in general, and the monster capitalist of Screwstown
in particular.
Leonard started; for Dick now named, in that monster capitalist, the
very person who was in treaty for Leonard’s own mechanical improvement
on the steam-engine.
“Stop, uncle—stop! Why, then, if this man were to buy the contrivance
you speak of, it would injure you?”
“Injure me, sir! I should be a bankrupt—that is, if it succeeded; but I
daresay it is all a humbug.”
“No, it _will_ succeed—I’ll answer for that!”
“You! You have seen it?”
“Why, I invented it.”
Dick hastily withdrew his arm from Leonard’s.
“Serpent’s tooth!” he said, falteringly, “so it is you, whom I warmed at
my hearth, who are to ruin Richard Avenel?”
“No—but to save him! Come into the city and look at my model. If you
like it, the patent shall be yours!”
“Cab—cab—cab,” cried Dick Avenel, stopping a “Hansom;” “jump in,
Leonard—jump in. I’ll buy your patent—that is, if it is worth a straw;
and as for payment—”
“Payment! Don’t talk of that!”
“Well, I won’t,” said Dick, mildly; “for ’tis not the topic of
conversation I should choose myself, just at present. And as for that
black-whiskered alligator, the Baron, let me first get out of those
rambustious unchristian filbert-shaped claws of his, and then—But jump
in—jump in—and tell the man where to drive!”
A very brief inspection of Leonard’s invention sufficed to show Richard
Avenel how invaluable it would be to him. Armed with a patent, of which
the certain effects in the increase of power and diminution of labour
were obvious to any practical man, Avenel felt that he should have no
difficulty in obtaining such advances of money as he required, whether
to alter his engines, meet the bills discounted by Levy, or carry on the
war with the monster capitalist. It might be necessary to admit into
partnership some other monster capitalist—What then? Any partner better
than Levy. A bright idea struck him.
“If I can just terrify and whop that infernal intruder on my own ground,
for a few months, he may offer, himself, to enter into partnership—make
the two concerns a joint-stock friendly combination, and then we shall
flog the world.”
His gratitude to Leonard became so lively that Dick offered to bring his
nephew in for Lansmere instead of himself; and when Leonard declined the
offer, exclaimed, “Well, then, any friend of yours; you have only to say
the word at the last hour, for I am sure of both seats. I’m all for
Reform against those high and mighty right honourable boroughmongers;
and what with loans and mortgages on the small householders, and a long
course of “free and easies,” with the independent Freemen, I carry the
town of Lansmere in my breeches pocket.” Dick then, appointing an
interview with Leonard at his lawyer’s, to settle the transfer of the
invention, upon terms which he declared “should be honourable to both
parties,” hurried off, to search amongst his friends in the city for
some monster capitalist, who might be induced to extricate him from the
jaws of Levy, and the engines of his rival at Screwstown. “Mullins is
the man, if I can but catch him,” said Dick. “You have heard of
Mullins?—A wonderful great man; you should see his nails; he never cuts
them! Three millions, at least, he has scraped together with those nails
of his, sir. And in this rotten old country, a man must have nails a
yard long to fight with a devil like Levy! Good bye—good _bye_—GOOD bye,
my DEAR nephew!”