FAR ABOVE RUBIES.
A Novel.
BY
MRS. J. H. RIDDELL,
AUTHOR OF “GEORGE GEITH,” “CITY AND SUBURB,” “TOO MUCH ALONE,” “THE RACE
FOR WEALTH,” ETC., ETC.
_IN THREE VOLUMES._
VOL. III.
LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND.
1867.
[_The Right of Translation and Reproduction reserved._]
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING
CROSS.
CONTENTS OF VOL. III.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
A GLIMPSE OF THE CANVAS 1
CHAPTER II.
GREAT SUCCESSES 18
CHAPTER III.
“LIKE A MAN’S HAND” 43
CHAPTER IV.
AT KEMMS PARK 67
CHAPTER V.
THE PAPER WAR 89
CHAPTER VI.
FOR EVERMORE 115
CHAPTER VII.
IN BERRIE DOWN LANE 145
CHAPTER VIII.
WOMAN TO WOMAN 171
CHAPTER IX.
DIFFICULTIES 199
CHAPTER X.
THE BUBBLE BURSTS 225
CHAPTER XI.
FORGOTTEN 251
CHAPTER XII.
THE BITTERNESS OF DEATH 267
CHAPTER XIII.
SUNSET AT BERRIE DOWN 298
FAR ABOVE RUBIES.
CHAPTER I.
A GLIMPSE OF THE CANVAS.
Whether the moneys, with a memorandum of which the promoter so
obligingly furnished him, had ever come into his hands or not, Arthur
Dudley still felt a certain sense of having been cheated—of having been
made the cat’s-paw wherewith Mr. Black’s chestnuts were drawn out of the
fire. He knew, although to the letter Mr. Black’s statements might be
correct, still that in the spirit he had deceived him grossly.
He was perfectly well aware the meaning conveyed to him by the Company
“paying all,” was that he, Arthur Dudley, should never have to meet a
single bill, nor be a penny the worse for the money he had advanced to
float the Protector.
Bitterly now he remembered Nellie and his stock—the latter sold at a
considerable sacrifice. The young bullocks and the fat beeves, the
flocks of sheep, and the lambs which ought to have been kept over the
winter, appeared again, and formed a sad procession before his mind’s
eye. Hay parted with before the price rose at the turn of the year;
wheat threshed off and sent to market, when the markets were falling
instead of rising; straw disposed of at rates which scarcely left a
margin of profit, after deducting cartage and expenses—these things
recurred to the Squire’s memory, and roused fresh anger in his heart
against the man who had led him so grievously astray.
Now he recollected Mr. Stewart’s prophetic words, and cursed that
gentleman’s clear-sightedness as he did so. Now he recalled those
sentences—“I am prepared to lose, and you are not;” “I can afford to
wait; you, perhaps, are differently situated;” and they seemed to make
his difficulty clear in a moment. “He was not prepared to lose—he was
not able to wait.” He had stretched his arm out farther than he could
draw it back; to lose, with him meant ruin; to wait, meant anxiety and
distress unutterable.
What should he do? Looking back over the events of the previous twelve
months, Squire Dudley lamented his own credulity and anathematized Mr.
Black. He did not regret joining the Protector, or accepting the
secretaryship, or leaving Berrie Down, but he bit his nails and drummed
upon the table, and then, rising, kicked his chair over, and walked up
and down the room, while he called himself all the names imaginable for
having accepted bills and spent money, and bought the house in Lincoln’s
Inn Fields.
He had been eager to buy that house the moment Mr. Black said it was in
the market. He would scarcely take time to look over the premises before
closing with the owner, so fearful was he of another purchaser
forestalling him; but he forgot all this now, and worked himself up into
the belief that the promoter had given him no rest till the deposit was
paid and the deeds were signed.
He had thought himself so clever, and, behold, another hand stretched
out beyond his, secured the prize. He had got nothing but a thousand a
year and his shares, and he had to work for his thousand a year, do a
vast amount more than “read the _Times_, and talk to people.” He had to
write letters, at least dictate them, or else put down the heads which
were to be written, and then see that his clerk filled them in properly,
which the clerk never did sufficiently well to satisfy Arthur, who, on
the whole, declared he found it easier to take the correspondence
himself, than “to try to hammer the sense of what he wanted conveyed
into any other person’s stupid head.”
He had to be at the office for a certain number of hours every day, and
to see and discourse with hundreds of “perfect idiots”—shareholders—who,
it is only fair to add, went away with the impression that Mr. Dudley
was far too fine a gentleman to understand anything of the affairs of
the Company to which he was secretary.
Further, the directors expected him to know every circumstance connected
directly or indirectly with the Protector, whether that circumstance
were in his department or not. Especially, there sat on the board a
General Sinclair, C.B., who was the very plague and torment of Arthur
Dudley’s life; who was always asking for information; eternally wanting
the secretary to “refer back,” continually reverting to something which
had occurred at the very creation of the Company, and of which the
present secretary had no cognizance whatever.
A change this from Berrie Down Hollow; from doing what he liked, as he
liked, without question asked by any one; a change this from coming and
going as he pleased; from refraining from work; from wandering idly and
purposelessly round the farm.
He detested the work, but he liked the thousand a year; he could not
bear what he called the drudgery of London life, but he delighted in
London gaiety, and in that gaiety he had expected to participate without
ever having to labour before he enjoyed.
This life which he was leading; this life—and one a hundred times more
agreeable, Mr. Black had told him, should be his—for the mere price of
Nellie advanced into the Protector, Limited; and now it was no thanks to
Mr. Black he was even in London at all; Mr. Stewart had procured him
this trashy appointment, which he would have spurned excepting as a
stepping-stone to something much better. Everybody had made, and was
making, a fortune out of the Company excepting himself, and it was his
money which had floated it; his money which had enabled Mr. Black to buy
that place at Ealing, and furnish it without a second thought as to the
cost!
But in this conclusion, Arthur Dudley—like all people who, reasoning in
a passion, reason illogically—chanced to be wrong. His few thousands
would have made but a very poor figure when placed to the credit of Mr.
Black’s recent purchases; they would have been a drop in the ocean, a
blade of grass on the prairie, a single crow amongst the occupants of a
rookery. Those poor thousands were many for a poor man to lose; but even
had he pocketed every sixpence of the money for which Arthur was
responsible, the whole amount would not have tided Mr. Black over three
months’ expenditure.
For in those days he was “going in for the whole thing.” He meant either
to rise or to fall—so he informed the Crossenhams. His companies were
now all floated; some of them, indeed, in course of winding up, and out
of each, and all, the promoter either had reaped, or was hoping to reap,
largely. He had a dozen irons in the fire. On the strength of his
connection with the Protector, he had suddenly become a man “looked
after” by those who had a “good thing” in view.
As he had looked after Allan Stewart, so minor promoters now began to
look after and solicit him. He dressed as Peter Black, Esquire, had
never dressed before. His light summer overcoat was a work of art to be
admired by clerks and porters as a “West End cut;” his boots were
articles of attire to be envied; while his hats looked as though they
had been that moment taken out of silk paper, and placed jauntily on his
head. He had abundant leisure now for attending to the adornment of his
outward man, and he did attend to it thoroughly.
The Hoxton days, when he shaved before a piece of broken looking-glass,
and performed the very slight ablutions to which he treated his person
in a blue Delft washing-basin about six inches in diameter, were left at
a convenient distance; and Peter Black, Esquire—quite another individual
from the Mister Black who inhabited those wretched lodgings in a street
leading out of Pitfield Street, Hoxton—had his house fitted up with hot
and cold baths (which he used), while his dressing-table was furnished
with as many oils, and scents, and pomades, as might have sufficed to
dress up an old beauty for her three thousandth ball.
All of which things Arthur remembered, and was wroth accordingly. Had
his money not helped to start the Protector? and had Mr. Black not
promised to go shares with him? Certainly he had told him as plainly as
he could speak that he should have the half of that twenty or thirty
thousand pounds he expected to make out of the Company, providing only
he lent him in the first instance a hundred pounds!
Arthur Dudley had neither sense enough nor wit enough to perceive the
absurdity of this climax. He was awfully stupid, and he had implicitly
believed, and here was the result.
He had really thought he should, from one seed, reap immediately a whole
field of wheat; he had really credited what a very clever and a very
plausible man implied to be the fact, and many a reader will, I know,
laugh at him for his credulity, or else scoff at me for drawing the
portrait of an impossibly confiding man.
We may presume, and we do presume, of course, that ladies and gentlemen
who subscribe to Mudie’s would be much cleverer than all this comes to,
but still there are other ladies and gentlemen who, taking in the daily
papers and reading therein: “Ten pounds wanted for one week; fifteen
pounds will be given for the above at the end of seven days; ample
security deposited,” see and believe just as Arthur Dudley heard and
believed likewise. Even amongst the ladies and gentlemen who do
subscribe to Mudie’s, it is most probable there may have been a few who,
in times gone by, deluded by plausible circulars, took shares in some of
Mr. Black’s companies, and, as a natural consequence, lost their money;
and—since there is no one who speaks so loudly against the errors of his
former religion as an apostate—doubtless the individuals to whom I refer
will declare Arthur Dudley’s credulity to be wicked, if not impossible.
Deferentially I stand aside, while the book is laid down, and the
suitable oration delivered, then with all due respect I take up the
thread of my story once again, and speak of things which are taking
place every day in the City, where fresh dupes come hourly to be
fleeced, and fresh shearers, no more tender or scrupulous than Mr.
Black, attend to relieve the unsuspecting sheep of their superfluous
wool.
Arthur Dudley was to have had half!
Remembering this, which in the hurry and confusion of his interview with
Mr. Black he had forgotten, the secretary took his hat, and walked off
to the City.
Sooner than his friend had expected he accepted that gentleman’s
invitation, and entering the offices in Dowgate Hill, where another
company—the “Universal Law Stationery”—was in course of formation, found
the promoter up to his ears in business, with half a dozen people
waiting to see him.
“Tell Mr. Black I will not detain him five minutes,” said Arthur, quite
loud enough for the whole congregation to hear, after, it may be
remarked, the pleasing fashion of country people in London. “You know
me, don’t you?” he added, seeing the clerk hesitate, “I am the secretary
of the Protector Bread Company.”
Thereupon the visitors each drew his own conclusion. Some, very green
indeed, thought what a great man Mr. Dudley must be, thus to force
himself into the presence of the magnificent director; others, less
easily impressionable, decided that a screw had got loose in the
Protector, which Mr. Black was expected to set right. At all events,
they each and all began working out the problem of what the secretary
could want with his principal, while Arthur marched into the presence of
the great man, and found him not engaged with any individual, but simply
writing his letters for post.
“What’s up with you?” were his first words; “has any one come for a
million of shares? or is there a fire at Stangate—or—or what the devil
brings you into the City at such a time of day as this?”
“Our conversation this afternoon,” Arthur answered, boldly. “I could not
rest; it is not fair, Mr. Black; you have not treated me as I should
have treated you. Do you remember what you said to me that day when this
matter was first mooted between us?”
“Pray sit down,” said Mr. Black, magnificently, waving his visitor to a
seat, “and explain your meaning to me quietly, if you can. Do I remember
what? we said so many things that day it would be impossible for me to
recollect all, or indeed any, of them, unless recalled to my memory.”
“Do you remember what you said about going half profits with me?” Arthur
asked.
“I can’t say that I do. Were there any profits then to share?”
“Prospective profits,” the other answered. “You said you expected twenty
or thirty thousand pounds out of the ‘Protector,’ and that whatever you
got, you would go shares with me.”
“Did I?” asked Mr. Black, innocently. “I wish, Dudley, you had chosen
any other time in the day than this for coming to pester about
by-gones,” he added, “for I have no end of letters to write; but,
however, as you are here, say all you have got to say.”
“I have nothing to say excepting what I have already said,” answered
Arthur, “namely, that you promised to go shares with me in the Bread
Company.”
“Now, that is exactly the objection I have to doing business with a
gentleman,” remarked Mr. Black; “it is impossible to make him
understand, excepting literally, a sentence which would be plain as a
pikestaff to a boy in the London streets. Tell me the construction you
took out of that speech, which, I confess, I never remember to have
uttered.”
“You said you would have twenty or thirty thousand out of this bakery
affair, and were willing to give me half.”
“Precisely! not willing to give you half of my earnings, but willing to
give you a chance of winning fifteen thousand, which you would have done
but for that meddling idiot, Stewart. He has dished me, too, you know.
Deuce a thing I have had out of the Company except trouble, my shares,
and position. It certainly has given me position. I meant we should have
made—you and I together—thousands and thousands out of it, instead of
which, when I had served my gentleman’s turn, he bows me off with, ‘The
Company won’t bear this, and the Company can’t afford that. Whatever
houses and offices we buy, must be bought on the mart. Our grain shall
not be supplied through any friend of yours. I shall put in my own
people to see you do not make sixpence out of that which owes its very
existence to you.’ Damn him,” added Mr. Black, heartily; “the next time
I go praying and begging for a great man’s name, I’ll get what I have
got this time—insolence instead of thanks—the door instead of money.”
There was no sham about Mr. Black’s manner while he delivered himself of
this sentence.
Clearly, Allan Stewart had rubbed his hair up the wrong way, and hurt
the promoter grievously in the process. Arthur sat silent for a moment,
surprised—wondering what he had best say next, and, while he meditated,
Mr. Black opened his mouth again:
“And, on the top of all this, you come,” he proceeded; “you come
dissatisfied with what I have done for you—indignant that I have failed
to do more. You are angry because I could not force the Company to buy
that cursed place of yours in Lincoln’s Inn, which, I wish to Heaven,
had never been for sale, just as though Stewart did not serve me the
same trick about that shop in the Poultry. I bought it on spec, pulled
the old buildings down, ran up a splendid new shop as far as the first
floor, and then offered it to the board. Do you think they would have
it? ‘Pooh, pooh!’ says Mr. Stewart; ‘what do we want with establishments
in the Poultry? Less expensive situations will do for us;’ and the
confounded thing was thrown upon my hands. Had it not been for the
‘London and Home Counties Bank,’ which had on its board a man I knew, I
should have been swamped—I tell you fairly that I should, Dudley. As it
was, I sold my interest to the Company at a switching profit, which
enabled me to give my friend ten per cent. on the purchase-money, and
that pulled me through; and there the bank is now as prosperous a
concern as any in London. Shares up to eight premium.”
It might all be true. With a terrible shock it occurred to Squire Dudley
that there were other people besides himself in the world—other people
looking for their halves, and percentages, and paid up shares also.
In a moment he seemed to understand that he had taken a hand at a game
of chances, in which no one, not even those best experienced in the
cards, could ensure success. It was a lottery in which he had embarked;
and, although he might blame those who had led him up to the wheel,
still he felt he could not complain when the man who had been most
sanguine of success drew a blank also. He was a gentleman. Even in his
blackest hour of need, Arthur, with all his faults, weaknesses, and
sins, never was untrue to his training and his ancestry. He had been
born—weak fool though he was—a gentleman, bred one, remained one, and he
could not bandy words with this clever, plausible swindler, who, seeing
his companion’s hesitation, continued:
“I have not much time to spare this afternoon, for I have letters to
write, and lots of people to see; but as I perceive you are
dissatisfied, Dudley, I’ll tell you what I’ll do: transfer to you a
couple of hundred of my shares in the ‘Protector,’ paid up. That’s two
thousand pounds, at the worst; and if I see I can do anything more for
you, I will. Don’t be in too great a hurry, old fellow. That is the
worst of all you country people—you think a fortune is to be made just
in a minute. I’ll stand by you, if you stand by me. I swear it to you,
Dudley; there’s my hand upon it. Now, do not—do not, I entreat of you,
go and make yourself and that dear wife of yours uncomfortable. If you
have to raise a few thousands on Berrie Down, what matter? Did Berrie
Down ever do anything for you that you should do anything for it?
Stick to the Protector and Allan Stewart—that’s my advice; and when
you are in any difficulty come to me—that is my advice also. Now,
good-bye—ta-ta—God bless you, Dudley!”
And thus exit Squire Dudley without speaking a word he had intended, but
with a very strong impression on his mind that Mr. Black, having been
making free with the contents of a certain bottle, labelled “Martell,”
ordinarily concealed in the recesses of one of Tann’s “Reliance” safes,
must, therefore, have spoken the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth.
As though people did not tell worse fibs when they are drunk than when
they are sober, more especially in London—as though “_In vino veritas_”
were not an exploded creed with the rising generation, many of whom do
not speak truth either in their cups or out of them.