Far above rubies (Vol. 2 of 3)

Time went by once more; not as it had done at Berrie Down, smoothly as a calm river gliding noiselessly to the sea, but swiftly and excitedly, splashing among the stones, dashing between rocks, rushing over slight obstacles, eddying round larger impediments, rapid as a mountain stream speeding to the valley, with as great a roar and hurry and excitement as that wherewith water falls from a vast height into the basin it has through the centuries worn for itself below. Thus time sped by in London, so rapidly, so like an arrow cleaving the air, that often Heather’s breath was almost taken from her by the swiftness and impetuosity of its passage.

And yet the change was not wholly or even partially unpleasant. There is a great adaptability about some natures which makes the work of transplantation easy and pleasant to accomplish. Their roots are not ungrateful; move them where you will almost, they contrive to extract nourishment from the soil, and put forth their leaves, and their flowers, and their fruits, in the city, as in the field; in the midst of bricks and mortar, as away in the far country where the air is pure and pleasant.

They take good out of all things, whence good is possible to be extracted; they are willing to sing songs in a strange land, and will take down their harps and tune them in whatsoever household their lot is cast. The man or woman who enjoys one pleasure keenly is not likely to be insensible to another; and therefore, although Heather’s first love was her last, still she made herself very contented in London—was amused with the excitement and the variety that surrounded her; went to concerts and theatres with all the pleasure a young girl might have evinced, and conducted herself, on the whole, not merely to the satisfaction of her husband, but also to that of Mr. Black.

Who was now a power not to be despised, a man worth ever so much money, and likely to be worth ever so much more, a man engaged in floating fresh companies, and successful in obtaining grants and concessions, and first refusals, and early information to an extent which it would be quite outside the province of this story to explain more fully.

He had bought a splendid house out at Ealing, and was fitting it up regardless of expense. In Stanley Crescent he gave the most wonderful parties that it had ever entered into Mrs. Dudley’s imagination to conceive could be given by any one not possessed of a ducal revenue. She had thought the furniture in Lincoln’s Inn Fields far and away more expensive than any Mr. Black should have persuaded Arthur into purchasing, but the promoter assured her it was “all right; upon his sacred word of honour, it had not cost a sixpence more than Dudley was perfectly justified in spending.” And when she beheld Adamant House, as Mr. Black’s new house at Ealing was happily called, she thought if one of the chiefs of the Company could afford such magnificence, their own, by comparison modest establishment, could not be considered “over-timbered,” to quote from the promoter’s vocabulary over again.

From room to room she walked, dazzled and bewildered, and Mr. Black walked beside, enjoying her astonishment, and kindly acting as cicerone to her inexperienced country understanding.

“Now, is not this better than grubbing on?” he triumphantly inquired, when, seated in his carriage, they were driving back to Lincoln’s Inn. “This is what a man can do who is not afraid, who feels his own strength, and is sure of being able to keep his feet under him. Ay, and by Jove, Dudley shall do as well yet as I have done! He deserves to do well, and so do you, Mrs. Dudley; for a more sensible woman, and one less under the dominion of prejudice, I never met. Many a wife would have striven to keep Dudley back—to dissuade him from coming to London, but you were too wise to attempt such interference, and therefore I say you deserve to succeed, and to have every bit as fine a carriage as this to bowl about in.”

Which termination struck Heather as being so intensely ludicrous that she laughed outright, laughed even while she thought gravely enough that, had her interference been likely to produce the slightest good result, she would never have refrained from attempting it. This little explanation, however, being quite unnecessary to offer to Mr. Black, she took his compliment as though she deserved it every word, and laughed while the promoter thought, in his own elegant language, “that he had got to the blind side of Mrs. Dudley also, and would be shortly able to wind her round his finger as he had done the Squire.”

In those early days, Arthur Dudley certainly proved himself to be as foolish and confiding a gentleman as any rogue need have desired to meet with.

Although he saw the grand house at Ealing, although every morning Mr. Black, en route to the City, thundered up to the door of the Protector Company’s offices in his carriage and pair, and swaggered and blustered about the place as though the clerks, and the secretary, and the cashier, and the whole concern, in fact, were his own personal and exclusive property, still Arthur never insisted on a settlement of their accounts, never objected to renew bills, never made any difficulty about accepting new ones. He believed implicitly every sentence Mr. Black told him, and had much greater faith in the promoter’s genius than in that of his own especial principal, Mr. Stewart, who, having put in a secretary and cashier of his own choosing, now rarely came near the office excepting on special board days, and when he paid formal visits to Mrs. Dudley, who always received him with the uncomfortable feeling, that if he knew who she really was, his calls would be fewer and shorter still.

But at length there came a certain coolness between the promoter and the secretary, which commenced in this wise:—

“Now I tell you what it is, Dudley,” said Mr. Black, one day when, for the third time, his kinsman’s renewals had been required and effected; “I tell you what it is,—this paper of yours has been through the fire often enough, it will never do to run it on till it gets scorched. You don’t know what I mean, I see, but it is just this: a girl may walk out with a man once, and people think nothing about it—they may have met by accident, no consequence—but if she goes on walking, talk begins, there is some game up. Now, a man’s credit is much in the same position. He may renew once or twice, and nobody thinks anything strange of his doing so; if he continue renewing, however, his name gets blown upon, and banks begin—especially if he be in no business—to look askance on his paper. That is your position at the present time; you must not ask for more discount, or, at least, if you do, you will not get it. I have done my best for you this time, and so has Crossenham, but I am greatly afraid we shall not be able to get you passed again.”

“Then I suppose you will take up the bills next time?” suggested Arthur.

“I have no objection to taking up those that I have had value for,” answered Mr. Black, a little astonished, perhaps, at Arthur’s so speedily discovering the weak point in his armour; “but what are you to do with yours? That is the important part of the business, is it not?”

“I do not know,” Arthur replied; “I should have supposed one part of it to be about as important as the other.”

“Well, you would have supposed wrong, then,” retorted Mr. Black; “because, though I am deucedly short, and shall be short for the next twelvemonth, still I could make a pinch of meeting my bills; but how you are to take up yours, until the shares become marketable, I confess puzzles me to imagine—unless, indeed, you decide to raise a few thousands on Berrie Down.”

“A few thousands!” repeated Arthur, in amazement, “a few thousands! Why, my bills altogether cannot amount to more than a few hundreds!”

“Don’t they, by Jove!” said Mr. Black, coolly. “Just run your eye over that little list—there is not sixpence of mine among it,—and you will soon change your opinion. You have had a lot of money, one time and another. Then you bought this place; then there is the discount.”

“I thought you were going to pay that?” Arthur interrupted.

“On those which were drawn for my accommodation, of course,” replied Mr. Black. “I am now talking of yours. Then there was the doing up of this house——”

“You told me the Company would put it in proper order for me to live in,” once again interposed Mr. Dudley.

“So they would, had it been for any other person excepting the owner of the house,” answered Mr. Black. “I had, as I told you, to waive that point. I wrote you all about it after you were up at the beginning of the year.”

“Indeed, you are mistaken,” said Arthur; “you never wrote a syllable to me on the subject!”

“All I can say is, then, that I either wrote or intended to write,” answered Mr. Black; “but I had such a deuce of a lot of things to attend to about that time, your letter may have slipped my memory. However, that’s nothing to do with what we are talking of now. If you will consider the affair, it was absurd to expect the Company both to pay you rent and to paint and paper your house. They could not do it. I forgot about its being your own property—about your, in fact, being landlord and our being tenants, till you were back at Berrie Down. We pay you a very good rent, so you must not be dissatisfied. Then, you see, there is the furniture.”

“Good Heavens!” exclaimed Arthur, “you never mean to say that the furniture we have in this house cost twelve hundred and seventy-eight pounds? Where could twelve hundred and seventy-eight pounds worth be put?”

“My dear fellow, how you talk!” said Mr. Black, with a smile of infinite superiority, “why, you might put double the money up in a corner and scarcely see it! Most economical I call the whole arrangement. You have a drawing-room fit to ask anybody into, a grand trichord thingamajig of Erard’s, good solid chairs and tables, every room fully carpeted, dinner and dessert services complete, glasses large enough for Buckingham Palace, bedchambers that you need not mind putting a duke to sleep in—all for twelve hundred odd pounds!”

“But that is more than a year’s income,” Arthur persisted.

“I beg your pardon—taking rent and everything, it is not nearly a year’s income; but, even if it were, the man who can rig a house up like this for a twelve months pay, is a very fortunate fellow. I told you, I would not run you to a farthing’s unnecessary expense, and neither I did. In your position here, in London, it would not do for you to have the same old-fashioned curiosities that served your purpose very well at Berrie Down; besides, the money is not lost, there is the furniture—well kept, it would fetch its cost any day by auction; now tot up those items, and let us see the sum total. Yes; that is just what I made it, running through the account roughly—four thousand six hundred and eleven pounds, seventeen shillings and nine pence.”

“Mr. Black! I never had that sum of money,” said Arthur, excitedly.

“If you had not money, you had goods,” answered Mr. Black; “but you have had a smartish sum of money too. The pace you have gone at the last twelvemonth has not been a slow one. Those dinners you gave—and the money you spent in town——”

“But you said the Company would pay all that.”

“So it has; you have your shares and your salary, and your good rent for these premises. I never meant direct payment. The idea is absurd. How would an entry like this sound:

“‘Dinner at the Wellington, to six desirable City men,’ or ‘Treating Cadger’s managing clerk to the theatre, with supper after,’ or ‘Stall tickets to the Misses Smithers,’ or ‘Half a sov. to Jenkins’ footman!’ Just bring the thing home, Dudley; think how ridiculous it would sound, and don’t be unreasonable. You have had your penn’orths, and you will have more—besides, it really is this house and furniture, neither of which is likely to run away, that has walked into the money. Think over the matter, will you? any time during the course of the next two months, and let me know what you decide;” and with that, the promoter was airily taking himself out of the room, when “Black!” sharply spoken by his companion, arrested his departure.

“I never had this money,” Mr. Dudley repeated. “I never could have had it; where has it gone—what has been done with it?”

“As for that, Dudley,” was the reply—“take my advice, and never waste your time inquiring after spent money. Enough for you, or any man, to know that it has gone—to the tomb of all those people one hears about. No use trying to hold a post-mortem examination on the body of a defunct ten-pound note. For the rest, you both could and did have all the sums I have debited you with; they are regularly entered on their dates of payment in my books. First day you are down in the City, call in and check them off. I’d rather you would do so—more satisfactory for us both.”

And with this Parthian shot, Mr. Black said “Good-day,” and shut the office-door after him, leaving Arthur far too much perplexed and bewildered to consider that a lie can be written as well as spoken, any day in the year, and that the mere fact of an entry to his debit being made on such and such a date, did not by any means of necessity prove that such debt had ever been incurred.

By Edmund Yates, Author of “The Forlorn Hope,” “Kissing the Rod,” etc. Reprinted from “All the Year Round.” 3 vols.

By Mrs. E. Lynn Linton, Author of “Lizzie Lorton of Greyrigg,” etc. 3 vols.

By Percy Fitzgerald, Author of “The Second Mrs. Tillotson,” etc. 3 vols.

By Edmund Yates, Author of “Black Sheep,” “Kissing the Rod,” etc. 3 vols.

By Joseph Hatton, Author of “Bitter Sweets,” etc. 3 vols.

By J. A. Maitland. 2 vols.

3 vols.