THE USURER'S BARGAIN.
Cora's father, Gerald Leslie, was the owner of a fine estate upon the
banks of a lake about two miles out of New Orleans, and also of a
handsome house in that city. It is at this latter residence that we
will introduce him to the reader.
Gerald Leslie was in the very prime of life. Scarcely yet forty-five
years of age, time had set no mark upon his thick chestnut hair or his
handsome face, save a few almost imperceptible wrinkles which the cares
of the last year or two had drawn in rigid lines about his well-shaped
mouth.
His features were massive and regular; the brow broad and intellectual;
the large hazel eyes bright but yet thoughtful; and there was a shade
of melancholy in the general expression of the countenance which lent a
peculiar charm to the face of Gerald Leslie.
It was the face of one who had suffered. It was the face of one who had
found himself a lonely man in the very prime of life; in that hour of
all other hours in which a man yearns for the smiles of loving eyes,
the warm pressure of friendly hands. It was the face of one who had
discovered too late that he had sacrificed the happiness of his life to
a mistaken principle.
While the good ship Virginia is sailing away from the dim blue shores
of the fading English coast, bearing Mrs. Montresor, her nephew and
niece and Cora Leslie to their far Southern home, let us enter the
planter's luxuriously furnished study, and watch him as he bends over
his desk.
The burning Southern sun is banished from the apartment by means of
Venetian shutters; the floor is covered with a cool matting woven from
Indian reeds; and the faint plash of a fountain in a small garden at
the back of the house is heard through one of the open windows.
It is not a pleasant task which occupies the planter. His brow
contracts as he examines the papers, pausing every now and then to jot
down two or three figures against a long row of accounts, which look
terribly formidable, even to the uninitiated. At last he throws down a
heap of documents with a weary sigh, and flinging himself back in his
chair, abandons himself to gloomy thought.
"Yes, the truth is out at last," he muttered; "no hope of a settlement
in England; no chance of a happy home on the other side of the blue
Atlantic with my Cora, my only one. Nothing before me but the weary
struggle of a ruined man, with difficulties so gigantic that, struggle
as I may, they must close in upon me and crush me at the last. Oh,
Philip Treverton, but for the cruel deception you practiced upon me, I
should not be in this position."
Philip Treverton was Gerald Leslie's late partner. He had been shot a
twelvemonth before the opening of our story, in a sanguinary duel with
a young Frenchman, who had insulted him in a gaming-house. But the
two men had been more than partners, they had been friends; true and
sincere friends; and Gerald Leslie no more doubted the honor of his
friend, Philip Treverton, than he would have doubted his own.
Among the debts owned by the two planters there was one of no less than
one hundred thousand dollars to a lawyer and usurer, one Silas Craig,
a man who was both disliked and feared in New Orleans; for he was
known to be a hard creditor, unscrupulous as to the means by which he
enriched himself, pitiless to those who were backward in paying him.
In an evil hour Gerald Leslie and Philip Treverton had had recourse to
this man, and borrowed from him, at a cruelly heavy rate of interest,
the sum above mentioned. Treverton was, unlike his partner, a reckless
speculator, and, unfortunately, not a little of a gamester; he
therefore thought lightly enough of the circumstances. Not so Gerald
Leslie. The thought of this loan oppressed him like a load of iron,
and he was determined that it should be repaid at any sacrifice. He
gathered together the money before leaving New Orleans to visit his
daughter in England, and intrusted the sum to his partner, Treverton,
with special directions that it should be paid immediately to Silas
Craig.
Gerald Leslie knew that his partner was a gamester, but he firmly
believed him to be one of the most honorable of men, and he had ever
found him strictly just in all their commercial dealings.
He departed, therefore, happy in the thought that the debt was paid,
and that Silas Craig, the usurer, could no longer rub his fat, greasy
hands, and chuckle at the thought of his power over the haughty
planter, Gerald Leslie. He departed happy in the thought that his next
voyage would be to convey him to an English home, where the tyranny of
prejudice could never oppress his beloved and lovely child.
The first intelligence which greeted him on his return to New Orleans,
was the death of his friend and partner.
Philip Treverton had died a week before Gerald Leslie landed. He had
died at midnight in a wretched chamber at a gambling-house. There was a
mystery about his death--his last hours were shrouded in the darkness
of the silent secrets of the night. None knew who had watched beside
him in his dying moments. The murderer had escaped; the mutilated body
of the murdered man was found in the waters of the Mississippi.
Philip Treverton's death was a sad blow to his survivor, Gerald Leslie.
The two men had been associates for years; both thorough gentlemen,
intellectual, highly educated, they had been united in the bonds of a
sincere and heartfelt friendship.
What then were Gerald Leslie's feelings when he found that his friend,
his partner, his associate, the man whom he had fully trusted, had
deceived him; and that the money left him in Treverton's hands had
never been paid to Silas Craig?
In vain did he search among his friend's papers for the receipt; there
was not one memorandum, not one scrap of paper containing any mention
of the hundred thousand dollars; and a week after Gerald Leslie's
return, he received a visit from the usurer, who came to claim his
debt. The planter gave him a bill at a twelve-months' date, the heavy
interest for that period fearfully increasing the debt. This bill
came due on the very day on which we have introduced Gerald Leslie to
the reader, and he was now every moment expecting to hear the usurer
announced.
He was still without funds to meet his acceptance. Many other debts
were pressing upon him; and he felt that in a few months his plantation
must be sold, and he left a ruined man. But, as the drowning wretch
clutches at the feeblest straw, or the frailest plank, so he clung to
the hope furnished by delay.
"Once more," he muttered, as he leaned his head upon his hands in
the attitude of despair, "once more must I humiliate myself to this
low-minded wretch, and beg the delay which he may grant or refuse,
as it pleases his base nature. Heaven help me, I little dreamed that
Gerald Leslie would ever come to sue to Silas Craig."
At this moment a cheerful-looking negro entered the apartment, bearing
a card upon a silver salver.
"Massa Craig, please massa," he said.
"Tell him to walk in."
"Into this room, massa?"
"Yes, Caesar."
The negro departed, and in a few moments returned, ushering in a
fat man, of about fifty years of age, dressed in the loose and
light-colored coat and trousers, fashionable in New Orleans.
This summer costume, which was becoming to many, accorded ill with the
fat and awkward figure of Silas Craig. The loose open collar displayed
a bull neck that bespoke the brute force of a sensual nature. It was
almost impossible to imagine a more truly repulsive appearance than
that of the usurer of New Orleans; repulsive, not so much from natural
ugliness, as from that hidden something, dimly revealed beneath the
outward features that told the nature of the man, and caused the close
observer and the physiognomist to shrink from him with instinctive
abhorrence.
Cruelty leered out of the small rat-like gray eyes; hypocrisy and
sensuality alike were visible in the thick lips and wide animal mouth.
The usurer's hair, of a reddish yellow, was worn long, parted in the
middle, and pushed behind his ears, giving a sanctimonious expression
to his face. For it must be known to the reader that Silas Craig had
always contrived to preserve a character for great sanctity. His voice
was loudest in expressing horror at the backslidings of others; his
presence was unfailing at the most frequented places of worship; and
men who knew that the usurer would strip the widow or the orphan of
the utmost farthing, or the last rag of clothing, beheld him drop his
dollars into the plate at the close of every charity sermon.
By such pitiful artifices as these the world is duped, and Silas Craig
was universally respected in New Orleans; respected in outward seeming
by men who in their inmost soul loathed and execrated him.
With a bland smile, he obeyed Gerald Leslie's gesture, and seated
himself in a low rocking-chair, opposite the planter.
"Charming weather, Mr. Leslie," he said.
"Charming," answered Gerald, absently.
"I trust I see you well, my dear friend," murmured Silas Craig, in
the fat, oily voice peculiar to him, "and yet," he added, almost
affectionately, "I do not think you are looking well--no, decidedly
not, you look a little harassed; a little care-worn, as if the business
of this life was pressing too much upon you."
"I have good need to look harassed and care-worn," answered Gerald
Leslie, impatiently. "Come, Mr. Craig, do not let us waste our time
upon fine speeches, and sympathy which we cannot either of us expect to
feel--I know what you have come here for, and you know that I know it,
so why beat about the bush? You have my acceptance, due to-day in your
pocket, and you come to claim payment."
"You are as proud as ever, Mr. Leslie," said the usurer, an angry gleam
shooting out of his small eyes, in spite of the affected smile upon his
lips.
"Why should I be less proud than ever?" answered the planter,
haughtily. "If you call a contempt for falsehood, and a loathing of
hypocrisy pride, I am certainly among the proudest."
Gerald Leslie knew that every word he uttered was calculated to
infuriate Silas Craig, and that, at the moment when he had to ask a
favor of him; but the haughty spirit of the planter could less brook to
stoop now than ever--the very fact of having to ask this favor stung
him to the quick, and urged him on to show his contempt of the man from
whom he had to ask it.
The usurer sat for some few moments in silence, rubbing his hands
slowly, one over the other, and looking furtively at Gerald.
"You may ask me why you should be less proud to-day than ever, Mr.
Leslie," he said, with a malicious grin. "Shall I tell you why? Because
the tables are turned since the day when you passed Silas Craig in
the streets of New Orleans, as if he had been one of the slaves on
your plantation; when you spurned him as if he had been the dirt
beneath your feet. I know what you said of me in those days; I came
by my money by crooked ways; I was a rogue; an usurer; my ill-gotten
wealth would bring me to the gallows some day. These are the sort of
things you said, and I took them quietly enough; for I am of a patient
disposition, and I knew my turn would come. It has come. The times are
changed since then. My wealth was ill-gotten, was it? You were glad
enough to borrow a hundred thousand dollars of it, ill-gotten as it
was; and now when I come to-day to ask you for the payment of that
money, you take such a high tone that I can only believe you have it
ready for me in your cash-box yonder?"
It was with a malicious chuckle that he uttered those concluding words;
for the crafty wretch well knew the nature of Gerald Leslie, and he had
suspected from the first that the money was not forthcoming.
"Not one penny of it!" cried the planter; "not one penny of it, Mr.
Craig."
"Indeed!" said Silas. "Then I'm extremely sorry to hear it; as, of
course, under those circumstances, I can no longer delay putting an
execution upon your property, and sending the Leslie plantation and
your valuable lot of niggers to the auctioneer's hammer."
Having uttered this threat, he sat for some little time with his hands
on his knees, and a smile of triumph upon his face, watching the
countenance of the planter.
Gerald Leslie's was a gloomy face to look upon in that moment; but it
neither expressed grief nor humiliation, and his enemy was disappointed.
It was not enough to ruin the man he hated. Silas Craig would have
given half his fortune to see that haughty spirit lowered in the dust.
The planter sat for some minutes in perfect silence, as if he were
revolving some plan in his mind. Presently he looked up, and, without
any alteration of his former manner, addressed the usurer thus:
"Silas Craig, sooner than ask a favor of you, I would see every scrap
of property I possess sold in the public sale-room, and would leave my
native land a beggar. I do not ask you a favor, then; I offer you a
bargain. If my property is sold to-day, it will be sold at a loss. You
will be paid, it is true, but others, for whom (pardon me) I feel a
great deal more concern, will lose. Two months hence that same property
will, for certain commercial reasons known as well to you as to me,
realize a much larger amount. Besides which, I have friends in the
North who may come forward in the meantime to save me from ruin. Renew
your bill at two months from to-day, and for those two months I will
give you double the enormous interest I have been already paying--a
ruinous bargain for me, and as valuable a one for you. But no favor;
remember that! Do you accept?"
"I do," said Silas, after a few moments' deliberation. "The interest
ought to be trebled, though."
The planter laughed bitterly.
"I have offered you the utmost farthing I mean to offer," he said.
"I accept it," answered Silas. "Give me pen, ink and paper, and I'll
draw up the document."