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 agonizing
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, Harley must know all that was left dark to Leonard,
and to him Leonard resolved to confide the manuscripts. 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 a handsome family.
"Good-by, 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 little householder. I understand,--my money or my
borough?"
"Exactly so," said the baron, with a soft smile.
"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 literature,
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 demoralized 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 Mr. Dyce, 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 dare say 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 "Ransom; "jump in,
Leonard,-jump in. I'll buy your patent,--that is, if it be worth a
straw; and as for payment--"
"Payment! Don't talk of that!"
"Well, I won't," said Dick, mildly; "for 't is 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; I'm all for reform
against those high and mighty right honourable borough-mongers; and what
with loans and mortgages on the small householders, and a long course of
'Free and Easies' with the independent freemen, I carry one--seat
certain, perhaps both seats of 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 alight
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-by, good-by,--Goon-by, MY DEAR, nephew!"