THE WITTLEWORTH FAMILY.
While everything appeared to be well with the banker, into whose
exchequer the revenues of the block of stores flowed with
unintermitting regularity, the affairs of the other branch of the
Osborne family were in a far less hopeful condition. John Wittleworth
drank to excess, and did not attend to his business. It was said that
he gambled largely; but it was not necessary to add this vice to the
other in order to rob him of his property, and filch from him his good
name.
He failed in business, and was unable to reestablish himself. He
obtained a situation as a clerk, but his intemperate habits unfitted
him for his duties. If he could not take care of his own affairs, much
less could he manage the affairs of another. He had become a confirmed
sot, had sacrificed everything, and given himself up to the demon of
the cup. He became a ragged, filthy drunkard; and as such, friends who
had formerly honored him refused to recognize him, or to permit him to
enter their counting-rooms. Just before the opening of our story, he
had been arrested as a common drunkard; and it was even a relief to his
poor wife to know that he was safely lodged in the House of Correction.
When Mrs. Wittleworth found she could no longer depend upon her natural
protector, she went to work with her own hands, like an heroic woman,
as she was. As soon as her son was old enough to be of any assistance
to her, a place was found for him in a lawyer's office, where he
received a couple of dollars a week. Her own health giving way under
the drudgery of toil, to which she had never been accustomed, she was
obliged to depend more and more upon Fitz, who, in the main, was not a
bad boy, though his notions were not suited to the station in which he
was compelled to walk. At last she was obliged to appeal to her
brother-in-law, who gave Fitz his situation.
Fitz was rather "airy." He had a better opinion of himself than anybody
else had--a vicious habit, which the world does not readily forgive. He
wanted to dress himself up, and "swell" round among bigger men than
himself. His mother was disappointed in him, and tried to teach him
better things; but he believed that his mother was only a woman, and
that he was wiser, and more skilful in worldly affairs, than she was.
He paid her three dollars a week out of his salary of five dollars, and
in doing this he believed that he discharged his whole duty to her.
Perhaps we ought again to apologize to Mr. Checkynshaw for leaving him
so long in such a disagreeable place as the poor home of his first
wife's sister; but he was seated before the cooking-stove, and the
contemplation of poverty would do him no harm; so we shall not beg his
pardon.
The banker looked around the room, at the meagre and mean furniture,
and then at the woman herself; her who had once been the belle of the
circle in which she moved, now clothed in the cheapest calico, her face
pale and hollow from hard work and ceaseless anxiety. Perhaps he found
it difficult to believe that she was the sister of his first wife.
"Where is Fitz?" asked he, in gruff accents.
"He has gone up in Summer Street. He will be back in a few minutes,"
replied Mrs. Wittleworth, as she seated herself opposite the banker,
still fearing that some new calamity was about to overtake her.
"I want to see him," added Mr. Checkynshaw, in the most uncompromising
tones.
"Fitz says you discharged him," continued the poor woman, heaving a
deep sigh.
"I didn't; he discharged himself. I could not endure the puppy's
impudence. But that is neither here nor there. I don't want to see him
about that."
"I hope you will take him back."
"Take him back if he will behave himself."
"Will you?" asked she, eagerly.
"I will; that is, if it turns out that he was not concerned in robbing
my safe."
"In what?" exclaimed Mrs. Wittleworth.
"My safe has been robbed of some of my most valuable papers."
"Robbed!"
"Yes, robbed."
"Did Fitz do it?" gasped the wretched mother; and this was even a
greater calamity than any she had dreaded.
"I don't know whether he did or not; that's what I want to find out;
that's what I want to see him for."
Mr. Checkynshaw proceeded to relate the circumstances under which the
safe had been robbed. Before he had finished, Fitz came in, and his
mother was too impatient to wait for her distinguished visitor to set
any of his verbal traps and snares. She bluntly informed her hopeful
son that he was suspected of being concerned in the robbery.
"I don't know anything about it. I had nothing to do with it,"
protested Fitz. "There's nothing too mean for Checkynshaw to say."
"Don't be saucy, Fitz. Try to be civil," pleaded his mother.
"Be civil! What, when he comes here to accuse me of robbing his safe? I
can't stand that, and I won't, if I know myself," replied Fitz, shaking
his head vehemently at the banker.
"I haven't accused you of anything, Fitz," added Mr. Checkynshaw, very
mildly for him. "I came to inquire about it."
"Do you think if I did it that I would tell you of it?"
"I wish to ask you some questions."
"Well, you needn't!"
"Very well, young man," said the banker, rising from his chair, "if you
don't choose to answer me, you can answer somebody else. I'll have you
arrested."
"Arrested! I'd like to see you do it! What for? I know something about
law!" He had been an errand boy in a lawyer's office!
"Don't be so rude, Fitz," begged his mother.
"Arrest me!" repeated the violent youth, whose dignity had been touched
by the threat. "Do it! Why didn't you do it before you came here? You
can't scare me! I wasn't brought up in the city to be frightened by a
brick house. Why don't you go for a constable, and take me up now? I'd
like to have you do it."
"I will do it if you don't behave yourself," said the banker, beginning
to be a little ruffled by the violent and unreasonable conduct of Mr.
Wittleworth.
"I wish you would! I really wish you would! I should like to know what
my friend Choate would say about it."
"How silly you talk!" exclaimed his mother, quite as much disgusted as
her stately visitor.
"You may let him badger you, if you like, mother; but he shall not come
any odds on me--not if I know it, and I think I do!"
"It is useless for me to attempt to say anything to such a young
porcupine," added Mr. Checkynshaw, taking his hat from the table.
Mrs. Wittleworth burst into tears. She had hoped to effect a
reconciliation between her son and his employer, upon which her very
immunity from blank starvation seemed to depend. The case was a
desperate one, and the bad behavior of Fitz seemed to destroy her last
hope.
"I will give up now, Fitz, and go to the almshouse," sobbed she.
Fitz was inclined to give up also when this stunning acknowledgment was
made in the presence of his great enemy, the arch dragon of
respectability.
"I am willing to work, but not to be trodden upon," added he, sullenly;
but his spirit for the moment seemed to be subdued.
"Mr. Checkynshaw wishes to ask you some questions, and it is your duty
to answer them," said Mrs. Wittleworth, a little encouraged by the more
hopeful aspect of her belligerent son.
"Ask away," replied Fitz, settling himself into a chair, and fixing his
gaze upon the stove.
"Do you know Pilky Wayne?" asked the banker, who had a certain
undefined fear of Fitz since the robbery, which, however, the immensity
of his dignity prevented him from exposing.
"Know who?" demanded Fitz, looking up.
"Pilky Wayne."
"Never heard of him before."
"Yes, you have; you made an arrangement with him to rob my safe,"
continued the banker, who could not help browbeating his inferior.
"Did I? Well, if I did, I did," answered Fitz, shaking his head. "What
do you think my friend Choate would say to that?"
"He would say you were a silly fellow," interposed Mrs. Wittleworth.
"Don't be impudent, Fitz."
"Well, I won't be impudent!" said Fitz, with a kind of suppressed
chuckle.
"There were, or you thought there were, certain papers in my safe which
might be useful to you," added Mr. Checkynshaw.
"I don't believe there were any letters from my cousin Marguerite among
them," replied Fitz, with a sneering laugh. "Marguerite must be able to
write very pretty letters by this time."
"Be still, Fitz," pleaded Mrs. Wittleworth.
"Fitz, I don't want to quarrel with you," continued Mr. Checkynshaw, in
the most pliable tones Fitz had ever heard the banker use to him.
"I thought you did. Accusing a gentleman of robbing your safe is not
exactly the way to make friends with him," said Fitz, so much
astonished at the great man's change of tone that he hardly knew what
to say.
"I accuse you of nothing. Fitz, if you want your place in my office
again, you can return to-morrow morning."
Mr. Wittleworth looked at his disconsolate mother. A gleam of triumph
rested on his face. The banker, the head and front of the great house
of Checkynshaw, Hart, & Co., had fully and directly recognized the
value of his services; had fairly "backed out," and actually entreated
him to return, and fill the vacant place, which no other person was
competent to fill! That was glory enough for one day. But he concluded
that it would be better for the banker to come down a peg farther, and
apologize for his abusive treatment of his confidential clerk.
"Certainly he will be glad to take the place again, sir," said Mrs.
Wittleworth, who was anxious to help along the negotiation.
"Perhaps I will; and then again, perhaps I will not," replied Mr.
Wittleworth, who was beginning to be airy again, and threw himself back
on his chair, sucked his teeth, and looked as magnificent as an Eastern
prince. "Are you willing to double my salary, Mr. Checkynshaw?"
"After what I have heard here to-night, I am," answered the banker,
promptly. "I ought to have done it before; and I should, had I known
your mother's circumstances."
That was very unlike Mr. Checkynshaw. Mr. Wittleworth did not like it.
His salary was to be doubled as an act of charity, rather than because
he deserved such a favor. It was not like the banker to want him at all
after what had happened. There was something deep under it; but Fitz
was deep himself.
"Perhaps you might help me in finding my papers. Of course I don't care
a straw for the three hundred and fifty dollars or so which was stolen
with them," suggested Mr. Checkynshaw.
"Perhaps I might; perhaps I have some skill in business of that kind,
though I suppose it doesn't exactly become me to say so," added Fitz,
stroking his chin. "But if you mean to intimate that I know anything
about them, you are utterly and entirely mistaken. I'm an honest
man--the noblest work of God."
"I will give you ten dollars a week for the future, if you will
return," said Mr. Checkynshaw, impatiently.
"Of course he will," almost gasped the eager mother.
Fitz was deep. The banker was anxious. It meant something. Fitz thought
he knew what it meant.
"On the whole, I think I will _not_ return," replied he, deliberately.
"Are you crazy, Fitz?" groaned Mrs. Wittleworth, in despair.
"Never a more sane man walked the earth. Mr. Checkynshaw knows what he
is about; I know what I am about."
"We shall both starve, Fitz!" cried his mother.
"On the contrary, mother, we shall soon be in possession of that block
of stores, with an income of five or six thousand a year," added Fitz,
complacently.
"The boy's an idiot!" exclaimed the banker, as he took his hat, and
rushed out of the house.