IT IS ASSERTED BY THOSE LEARNED MEN WHO HAVE DEVOTED THEIR LIVES TO
THE STUDY OF THE MANNERS AND HABIT OF INSECT SOCIETY, THAT WHEN A
SPIDER HAS LOST ITS LAST WEB, HAVING EXHAUSTED ALL THE GLUTINOUS
MATTER WHEREWITH TO SPIN ANOTHER, IT STILL. PROTRACTS ITS INNOCENT
EXISTENCE, BY OBTRUDING ITS NIPPERS ON SOME LESS WARLIKE BUT MORE
RESPECTABLE SPIDER, POSSESSED OF A CONVENIENT HOME AND AN AIRY
LARDER. OBSERVANT MORALISTS HAVE NOTICED THE SAME PECULIARITY IN
THE MANEATER, OR POCKET-CANNIBAL.
Eleven o’clock, A.M., Samuel Adolphus Poole, Esq., is in his
parlour,--the house one of those new dwellings which yearly spring up
north of the Regent’s Park,--dwellings that, attesting the eccentricity
of the national character, task the fancy of the architect and the
gravity of the beholder--each tenement so tortured into contrast with
the other, that, on one little rood of ground, all ages seemed blended,
and all races encamped. No. 1 is an Egyptian tomb!--Pharaohs may repose
there! No. 2 is a Swiss chalet--William Tell may be shooting in its
garden! Lo! the severity of Doric columns--Sparta is before you!
Behold that Gothic porch--you are rapt to the Norman days! Ha! those
Elizabethan mullions--Sidney and Raleigh, rise again! Ho! the trellises
of China--come forth, Confucius, and Commissioner Yeh! Passing a few
paces, we are in the land of the Zegri and Abencerrage:
‘Land of the dark-eyed maid and dusky Moor.’
Mr. Poole’s house is called Alhambra Villa! Moorish
verandahs--plate-glass windows, with cusped heads and mahogany sashes--a
garden behind, a smaller one in front--stairs ascending to the doorway
under a Saracenic portico, between two pedestalled lions that resemble
poodles--the whole new and lustrous--in semblance stone, in substance
stucco-cracks in the stucco denoting “settlements.” But the house being
let for ninety-nine years--relet again on a running lease of seven,
fourteen, and twenty-one--the builder is not answerable for duration,
nor the original lessee for repairs. Take it altogether, than
Alhambra Villa masonry could devise no better type of modern taste and
metropolitan speculation.
Mr. Poole, since we saw him between four and five years ago, has entered
the matrimonial state. He has married a lady of some money, and become a
reformed man. He has eschewed the turf, relinquished Belcher neckcloths
and Newmarket coats-dropped his old-bachelor acquaintances. When a man
marries and reforms, especially when marriage and reform are
accompanied with increased income, and settled respectably in Alhambra
Villa--relations, before estranged, tender kindly overtures: the world,
before austere, becomes indulgent. It was so with Poole--no longer
Dolly. Grant that in earlier life he had fallen into bad ways, and,
among equivocal associates, had been led on by that taste for sporting
which is a manly though a perilous characteristic of the true-born
Englishman; he who loves horses is liable to come in contact with
blacklegs; the racer is a noble animal; but it is his misfortune that
the better his breeding the worse his company:--Grant that, in the
stables, Adolphus Samuel Poole had picked up some wild oats--he had sown
them now. Bygones were bygones. He had made a very prudent marriage.
Mrs. Poole was a sensible woman--had rendered him domestic, and would
keep him straight! His uncle Samuel, a most worthy man, had found him
that sensible woman, and, having found her, had paid his nephew’s debts,
and adding a round sum to the lady’s fortune, had seen that the whole
was so tightly settled on wife and children that Poole had the tender
satisfaction of knowing that, happen what might to himself, those dear
ones were safe; nay, that if, in the reverses of fortune, he should be
compelled by persecuting creditors to fly his native shores, law could
not impair the competence it had settled upon Mrs. Poole, nor destroy
her blessed privilege to share that competence with a beloved spouse.
Insolvency itself, thus protected by a marriage settlement, realises the
sublime security of VIRTUE immortalised by the Roman muse:
--“Repulse nescia sordidae,
Intaminatis fulget honoribus;
Nec sumit ant ponit secures
Arbitrio popularis aurae.”
Mr. Poole was an active man in the parish vestry--he was a sound
politician--he subscribed to public charities--he attended public
dinners he had votes in half a dozen public institutions--he talked
of the public interests, and called himself a public man. He chose his
associates amongst gentlemen in business--speculative, it is true,
but steady. A joint-stock company was set up; he obtained an official
station at its board, coupled with a salary--not large, indeed, but
still a salary.
“The money,” said Adolphus Samuel Poole, “is not my object; but I like
to have something to do.” I cannot say how he did something, but no
doubt somebody was done.
Mr. Poole was in his parlour, reading letters and sorting papers, before
he departed to his office in the West End. Mrs. Poole entered, leading
an infant who had not yet learned to walk alone, and denoting, by an
interesting enlargement of shape, a kindly design to bless that infant,
at no distant period, with a brother or sister, as the case might be.
“Come and kiss Pa, Johnny,” said she to the infant. “Mrs. Poole, I am
busy,” growled Pa.
“Pa’s busy--working hard for little Johnny. Johnny will be better for it
some day,” said Mrs. Poole, tossing the infant half up to the ceiling,
in compensation for the loss of the paternal kiss.
“Mrs. Poole, what do you want?”
“May I hire Jones’s brougham for two hours to-day, to pay visits? There
are a great many cards we ought to leave; is there any place where I
should leave a card for you, lovey--any person of consequence you were
introduced to at Mrs. Haughton’s last night? That great man they were
all talking about, to whom you seemed to take such a fancy, Samuel,
duck--”
“Do get out! that man insulted me, I tell you.”
“Insulted you! No; you never told me.”
“I did tell you last night coming home.”
“Dear me, I thought you meant that Mr. Hartopp.”
“Well, he almost insulted me, too. Mrs. Poole, you are stupid and
disagreeable. Is that all you have to say?”
“Pa’s cross, Johnny dear! poor Pa!--people have vexed Pa,
Johnny--naughty people. We must go or we shall vex him too.”
Such heavenly sweetness on the part of a forbearing wife would have
softened Tamburlane. Poole’s sullen brow relaxed. If women knew how to
treat men, not a husband, unhenpecked, would be found from Indos to the
Pole.
And Poole, for all his surly demeanour, was as completely governed by
that angel as a bear by his keeper.
“Well, Mrs. Poole, excuse me. I own I am out of sorts to-day--give me
little Johnny--there (kissing the infant; who in return makes a dig at
Pa’s left eye, and begins to cry on finding that he has not succeeded
in digging it out)--take the brougham. Hush, Johnny--hush--and you
may leave a card for me at Mr. Peckham’s, Harley Street. My eye smarts
horribly; that baby will gouge me one of these days.”
Mrs. Poole had succeeded in stilling the infant, and confessing that
Johnny’s fingers are extremely strong for his age--but, adding that
babies will catch at whatever is very bright and beautiful, such as
gold and jewels and Mr. Poole’s eyes, administers to the wounded orb
so soothing a lotion of pity and admiration that Poole growls out quite
mildly: “Nonsense, blarney--by the by, I did not say this morning that
you should not have the rosewood chiffoniere!”
“No, you said you could not afford it, duck; and when Pa says he can’t
afford it, Pa must be the judge--must not he, Johnny dear?”
“But perhaps I can afford it. Yes, you may have it yes, I say, you shall
have it. Don’t forget to leave that card on Peckham--he’s a moneyed man.
There’s a ring at the bell. Who is it? run and see.”
Mrs. Poole obeyed with great activity, considering her interesting
condition. She came back in half a minute. “Oh, my Adolphus--I oh,
my Samuel! it is that dreadful-looking man who was here the other
evening--stayed with you so long. I don’t like his looks at all. Pray
don’t be at home.”
“I must,” said Poole, turning a shade paler, if that were possible.
“Stop--don’t let that girl go to the door; and you--leave me.” He
snatched his hat and gloves, and putting aside the parlour-maid, who
had emerged from the shades below in order to answer the “ring,” walked
hastily down the small garden.
Jasper Losely was stationed at the little gate. Jasper was no longer in
rags, but he was coarsely clad--clad as if he had resigned all pretence
to please a lady’s eye, or to impose upon a West-End tradesman--a check
shirt--a rough pea-jacket, his hands buried in its pockets.
Poole started with well--simulated surprise. “What, you! I am just going
to my office--in a great hurry at present.”
“Hurry or not, I must and will speak to you,” said Jasper, doggedly.
“What now? then, step in;--only remember I can’t give you more than
five minutes.”
The rude visitor followed Poole into the back parlour, and closed the
door after him.
Leaning his arm over a chair, his hat still on his head, Losely fixed
his fierce eyes on his old friend, and said in a low, set, deterinined
voice: “Now, mark me, Dolly Poole, if you think to shirk my business, or
throw me over, you’ll find yourself in Queer Street. Have you called on
Guy Darrell, and put my case to him, or have you not?”
“I met Mr. Darrell only last night, at a very genteel party.” (Poole
deemed it prudent not to say by WHOM that genteel party was given, for
it will be remembered that Poole had been Jasper’s confidant in that
adventurer’s former designs upon Mrs. Haughton; and if Jasper knew
that Poole had made her acquaintance, might he not insist upon Poole’s
reintroducing him as a visiting acquaintance?) “A very genteel party,”
repeated Poole. “I made a point of being presented to Mr. Darrell, and
very polite he was at first.”
“Curse his politeness--get to the point.”
“I sounded my way very carefully, as you may suppose; and when I had
got him into friendly chat, you understand, I began; Ah! my poor Losely,
nothing to be done there--he flew off in a tangent--as much as desired
me to mind my own business, and hold my tongue; and upon my life, I
don’t think there is a chance for you in that quarter.”
“Very well--we shall see. Next, have you taken any steps to find out the
girl, my daughter?”
“I have, I assure you. But you give me so slight a clue. Are you quite
sure she is not in America after all?”
“I have told you before that that story about America was all bosh! a
stratagem of the old gentleman’s to deceive me. Poor old man,” continued
Jasper, in a tone that positively betrayed feeling, “I don’t wonder that
he dreads and flies me; yet I would not hurt him more than I have done,
even to be as well off as you are--blinking at me from your mahogany
perch like a pet owl with its crop full of mice. And if I would take the
girl from him, it is for her own good. For if Darrell could be got to
make a provision on her, and, through her, on myself, why, of course
the old man should share the benefit of it. And now that these infernal
pains often keep me awake half the night, I can’t always shut out the
idea of that old man wandering about the world, and dying in a ditch.
And that runaway girl--to whom, I dare swear, he would give away his
last crumb of bread--ought to be an annuity to us both: Basta, basta! As
to the American story--I had a friend at Paris, who went to America on
a speculation; I asked him to inquire about this Willaim Waife and his
granddaughter Sophy, who were said to have sailed for New York nearly
five years ago, and he saw the very persons--settled in New York--no
longer under the name of Waife, but their true name of Simpson, and got
out from the man that they had been induced to take their passage from
England in the name of Waife, at the request of a person whom the mail
would not-give up, but to whom he said he was under obligations. Perhaps
the old gentleman had done the fellow a kind turn in early life. The
description of this _soi-disant_ Waife and his grandchild settles the
matter--wholly unlike those I seek; so that there is every reason to
suppose they must still be in England, and it is your business to find
them. Continue your search--quicken your wits--let me be better pleased
with your success when I call again this day week--and meanwhile four
pounds, if you please--as much more as you like.”
“Why, I gave you four pounds the other day, besides six pounds for
clothes; it can’t be gone.”
“Every penny.”
“Dear, dear! can’t you maintain yourself anyhow? Can’t you get any one
to play at cards? Four pounds! Why, with your talent for whist, four
pounds are a capital!”
“Whom can I play with! Whom can I herd with? Cracksmen and pickpockets.
Fit me out; ask me to your own house; invite your own friends; make up a
rubber, and you will then see what I can do with four pounds; and may go
shares if you like, as we used to do.”
“Don’t talk so loud. Losely, you know very well that what you ask is
impossible. I’ve turned over a new leaf.”
“But I’ve still got your handwriting on the old leaf.”
“What’s the good of these stupid threats? If you really wanted to do me
a mischief, where could you go to, and who’d believe you?”
“I fancy your wife would. I’ll try. Hillo--”
“Stop--stop--stop. No row here, sir. No scandal. Hold your tongue, or
I’ll send for the police.”
“Do! Nothing I should like better. I’m tired out. I want to tell my own
story at the Old Bailey, and have my revenge upon you, upon Darrell,
upon all. Send for the police.”
Losely threw himself at length on the sofa--(new morocco with spring
cushions)--and folded his arms.
“You could only give me five minutes--they are gone, I fear. I am more
liberal. I give you your own time to consider. I don’t care if I stay to
dine; I dare say Mrs. Poole will excuse my dress.”
“Losely, you are such a--fellow! If I do give you the four pounds you
ask, will you promise to shift for yourself somehow, and molest me no
more?”
“Certainly not. I shall come once every week for the same sum. I can’t
live upon less--until--”
“Until what?”
“Until either you get Mr. Darrell to settle on me a suitable provision;
or until you place me in possession of my daughter, and I can then be in
a better condition to treat with him myself; for if I would make a claim
on account of the girl, I must produce the girl, or he may say she is
dead. Besides, if she be as pretty as she was when a child, the very
sight of her might move him more than all my talk.”
“And if I succeed in doing anything with Mr. Darrell, or discovering
your daughter, you will give up all such letters and documents of mine
as you say you possess?”
“‘Say I possess!’ I have shown them to you in this pocket-book, Dolly
Poole--your own proposition to rob old Latham’s safe.”
Poole eyed the book, which the ruffian took out and tapped. Had the
ruffian been a slighter man, Poole would have been a braver one. As it
was--he eyed and groaned. “Turn against one’s own crony! So unhandsome,
so unlike what I thought you were.”
“It is you who would turn against me. But stick to Darrell or find me my
daughter, and help her and me to get justice out of him; and you
shall not only have back these letters, but I’ll pay you
handsomely--handsomely, Dolly Poole. Zooks, sir--I am fallen, but I am
always a gentleman.”
Therewith Losely gave a vehement slap to his hat, which, crushed by the
stroke, improved his general appearance into an aspect so outrageously
raffish, that but for the expression of his countenance the contrast
between the boast and the man would have been ludicrous even to Mr.
Poole. The countenance was too dark to permit laughter. In the dress,
but the ruin of fortune--in the face, the ruin of man. Poole heaved a
deep sigh, and extended four sovereigns.
Losely rose and took them carelessly. “This day week,” he said--shook
himself--and went his way.