Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  “‘Ope an’ Charity was two blessed little creatures,” Mrs. Gascoyne interposed with a tear in her eye. “They never got in nobody’s way, I’m sure, Emery. ‘Ope ‘ud be eighteen year old come May, if she’d ‘a lived. An’ Charity was always ‘ead of the class in ‘rithmetic. Miss Taylor, she says to me more’n once, ‘Wot a wonderful ‘ead that there child o’ yours have got, to be sure, Mrs. Gascoyne, for figgers and such like.’”

  “‘E’s a rare clever man, Mr. Solomons,” the father repeated, relapsing, after the wont of his kind, into the dominant subject: “an’ if any man could do it, you take my word for it, missus, Mr. Solomons ‘ud ‘a done it.”

  “It seems sort o’ throwed away as things stand now,” Mrs. Gascoyne went on, in spite of a quick deprecatory glance from her daughter’s eyes. “It aint no good at all, as far as I can see, except for a customer to chaff you about sometimes.”

  The baronet blew the smoke slowly through his ringed lips. “I might a’ kep’ a public, an’ made money out of it that way,” he said, “but you was always agin a public, mother; an’ I don’t blame you for it. A public’s a poor sort o’ way for a man to employ a historical name, as Mr. Solomons puts it. But if I ‘adn’t ‘a’ been married now, afore the title came to us, I might ‘a’ made something of it like that myself you see, missus — meanin’ to say, in the way of a hairess.”

  Poor Faith saw that the bolt had fallen — that well-known bolt which descended with periodical regularity from the clear sky of her father’s unruffled good humor — and she gave up the attempt any longer to delay the rising tempest.

  “I’m sure, Emery,” her mother broke in, with a stifled sob, “you needn’t always be a-castin’ that in my teeth — that I stood in your way agin makin’ your fortune. It aint no fault o’ mine, nor my people’s neither, that you was took with me and arst me to marry you. Arnt Emily was always agin my ‘avin’ you. An’ there was many as said at the time, you know yourself well enough, I’d throw’d myself away, an’ I might ‘a’ done better far to take another one. Why, there was Alfred Dyke, him as owned the mill at Chase’s Corner—”

  The baronet of the United Kingdom checked her threatened outburst of early reminiscences kindly. “It aint for myself, I’m thinkin’, mother,” he said, with a nod or two of his chin; “it aint for myself, not anyways, but for the children. Wot a thing it ‘ud ‘a’ been for Faith and Paul, now, if I’d ‘a’ ‘appened to be a bachelor, don’t you see, at the time wen this thing fell in, and ‘ad married a hairess, as would ‘ave brought ’em up like ladies and gentlemen — ladies an’ gentlemen the same as they’d ought to be!”

  Faith couldn’t forbear a gentle smile. “But, father dear,” she said, smoothing his hand with hers, “don’t you see yourself it wouldn’t have been Paul and me at all in that case? It’d be somebody else we none of us know or care anything about, wouldn’t it?”

  “But it do seem a pity,” her father went on musingly, “that the value of the baronite-cy, for commercial purposes,” he paused a while, and then repeated once more that high-sounding phrase, “for commercial purposes,” rolling it on his palate like one who loved it, “should ‘a’ been clean throwed away, as Mr. Solomons says, all through the fack that I ‘appened to be married afore I came into it.” Mrs. Gascoyne’s handkerchief went up to her eyes with dramatic rapidity; and Faith, holding up one finger to her father, stroked her mother’s hair with her other hand with filial tenderness. “I wish,” she said half angrily, “Mr. Solomons had never put these ideas into your head, father. I’m sure you’d never have thought of it at all, for yourself. You’d never have dreamt of making money out of anything on earth so sacred as that is.”

  “I don’t say, Faith,” her father went on, eyeing his beer with the light of the paraffin lamp shining through it; “I don’t say as ever I’d married for money, or made capital like, as Mr. Solomons says, out o’ the title an’ that. I don’t say as I’ve the manners or the eddication to do it. I’m satisfied with your mother, as ‘as always been a true an’ faithful wife to me, in sickness an’ in ‘ealth, an’ no woman better.”

  “If you weren’t,” Faith interposed, “you’d be the ungratefullest man in all Hillborough.”

  “If I wasn’t,” her father repeated dutifully, following his cue, “I’d be the ongratefullest man in all Hillborough. I know all that, an’ I aint a-denyin’ of it. But wot I says is just this: I says to Solomons this very last Sunday, ‘Mr. Solomons,’ says I, ‘if I’d a’bin a bachelor w’en this title fell in, there’s many a tidy woman as ‘ad her thousand pound or two put away in the bank, ‘ud ‘a’ bin glad to call ‘erself Lady Gascoyne on the strength of it.”

  “Emery,” his wife sobbed, holding her face in her hands, “I call it most onmanly of you. Many’s the time I’ve done a good cry, all along of your talking in that onmanly manner.”

  The father of the family turned round to her soothingly. “Mind you, mother,” he went on, in a demonstrative voice, “I don’t say as I’d ever ‘ave wanted ‘er for all ‘er thousands. I aint that kind. I’m not one as sets so much store by the money. Wot I do say is, as a matter o’ business, it’s a pity the baronite-cy should be throwed away, an’all for nothing,”

  “It won’t be throwed away,” the mother responded, drying her eyes hysterically, “not after our time. Paul ‘ave ‘ad a good education, an’ Paul’ll marry a woman as is fit for ’im.”

  “There aint no doubt at all about that,” the British baronet answered in a mollified tone. “As Mr. Solomons says, our Paul ‘ave a splendid future before him.”

  “Oxford ‘ave made a gentleman of ’im,” Mrs. Gascoyne continued, gloating over the words.

  “It ‘ave,” the father replied, gazing deep into the fire. “There aint no doubt of it. We’ve all got reason to be main grateful to Mr. Solomons for that much.”

  “I never feel quite so sure about that, somehow,” Faith ventured to say. “I often wonder whether Paul wouldn’t have been happier, and whether we wouldn’t all have been happier, if Mr. Solomons had never meddled at all in our private business.”

  “I do wonder at you, Faith?” her mother exclaimed, aghast. “You to talk like that, when we ought all to be so beholden like to Mr. Solomons!”

  “Look what ‘e’ve done for Paul!” the father cried eagerly. “If it wasn’t for ’im, Paul might be tendin’ the ‘osses still, the same as I do.”

  “But we’ve got to pay him for it,” Faith answered stoutly. “Sooner or later we’ve got to pay him. And see what notes of hand he’s made you sign for it!”

  “Ay, but Paul’ll settle all that,” the father replied with absolute confidence, “and afore long, too, I warrant you, little one! Why, if it ‘adn’t bin for Mr. Solomons, we’d never so much as ‘a’ thought o’ sendin’ ’im to college an’ makin’ a gentleman of ’im. An’ now, Mr. Solomons says ‘e’s a’most through with ’is collegin’, an’ ready to make ’is start in life. If ’e does as Mr. Solomons means ’im to do, ‘e’ll pay it all off, principal an’ interest, as easy as winkin’. We’ve all got reason to be main grateful to Mr. Solomons. ‘E’s a clever-one, ’e is, if ever there was one. An’ ’e says it as knows, says ’e to me, ‘Gascoyne,’ says ’e, ‘your boy Paul, if ’e plays ’is cards well,’ says ’e, ‘as ‘e’d ought to play ’em, ‘ave a splendid future,’ says ’e, ‘before ’im.’”

  “But he won’t play them as Mr. Solomons wants him, I’m sure,” Faith answered, unabashed. “He’ll play them his own way, He can’t do any other.”

  “‘E’ll pay it all off,” the baronet repeated, ruminating the words with infinite pleasure, “‘e’ll pay it all off, when ’e once gets ’is start, principal an’ interest, as easy as winkin’.” The happiness he derived from the mere sound of those opulent expressions, “principal and interest,” as he rolled them on his palate, seemed more than to repay him for any little passing discomfort the sense of indebtedness to his supposed benefactor might otherwise have cost him. It ma
kes a man feel almost like a capitalist himself when he can talk glibly about principal and interest.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  PAUL’S ADVISER.

  IN another room at Hillborough, that self-same evening, two other people were discussing still more eagerly together this identical problem of the market value of a British baronetcy.

  The house in which they discussed it had a dingy, stingy, gloomy-looking front, commanding a full view of the market and the High Street; and on the venerable wire-blinds in the office window the inquiring wayfarer might make out through the dust that clogged them the simple legend, “Judah P. Solomons, Auctioneer and Estate Agent.” Not that Mr. Solomons really subsisted upon the net profits of his auctioneering and commission on rents. Those were but the ostensible and officially avowed sources of his comfortable revenue. The business that really enriched Mr. Solomons — for Mr. Solomons was undoubtedly rich — was the less respectable and less openly confessed trade of a general money-lender. Mr. Solomons was, in fact, by profession a capitalist. He made those familiar advances, on note of hand alone, without security, at moderate interest, which have so often roused our ardent admiration for the generous mixture of philanthropic spirit and the love of adventure in the amiable lender when we read the tempting announcement of the proffered boon in the advertisement columns of our pet daily paper.

  Mr. Solomons himself, the philanthropist in question, was a short but portly man of a certain age: it was clear he had thriven on the results of his well directed benevolence. His figure was rotund and his face fat: he had small black, beady eyes, rich in life and humor; and his mouth, though full, was by no means deficient in human kindness.

  His hair was curly, and displayed, perhaps, a trifling disregard of economy in the matter of bear’s grease; but his entire appearance was not wholly unprepossessing: he looked like a sharp and cunning business man, in whom, nevertheless, the trade of assisting his fellow-creatures in distress (for a modest percentage) had not altogether killed out the heart that beat within the ample and well-filled fancy waistcoat. The acute reader may, perhaps, already have jumped to the conclusion that Mr. Solomons was by race a Jew, and in that conclusion the acute reader would not, as a matter of fact, have been quite unjustified. In creed, however, Mr. Solomons had conformed so successfully to the Church of England (mainly, perhaps, for business reasons) that he filled at that moment the onerous duty of vicar’s churchwarden for the parish of Hillborough. In a country town Judaism is at a discount; and Mr. Solomons was too good a Jew at heart ever to touch anything at a discount, except, of course, for the purpose of bulling or bearing it.

  The younger gentleman who sat opposite Mr. Solomons, at the first floor fireplace above the dingy office, was half an inch taller, and many inches smaller round the waist; but he otherwise bore a distinct resemblance in figure and feature to his prosperous relative. Only, in Lionel Solomons’ face, the cunning and the sharpness of his uncle’s eyes and mouth seemed, if anything, to be actually exaggerated, while the redeeming qualites of good humor and good fellowship were both, on the contrary, conspicuous by their absence. Lionel was handsome with the Oriental handsomeness of the well-fed young Jew; and he had brought down from town with him the offensive underbred jaunty cosmopolitanism of the shady middle class in that great desert of London which is so peculiarly repulsive to a cultivated understanding. His hair was even curlier and more oleaginous than Mr. Solomons’ own; and he held between his lips a cheap bad cigar, which he managed with all the consummate easy grace of a gentleman accustomed to ride into the City every morning in the envied seat beside the driver of the omnibus he honored with his distinguished patronage.

  Mr. Solomons unrolled a packet of greasy, much-folded papers, which he had taken from a pigeon-hole in the safe by his side, and laid them one after another upon his knee, where he regarded them closely with evident affection. “Yes, Leo,” he said re-assuringly, “they’re all right enough. Every penny of that money’s as safe as houses.”

  “I’d like to see the collateral, that’s all,” Mr. Lionel answered, with a jaunty toss of his curled head. “It’s a precious lot of money to lend upon personal security, and that a man of straw, or less than straw, if it comes to that, Uncle Judah.” —

  Mr. Solomons took up the newest of the lot and examined it tenderly. “Twelve months after date,” he mused to himself in a softly murmuring tone, “for value received — two hundred pounds — renewable with twenty per cent interest, Emery Gascoyne — perfectly regular. It’s a good investment, Leo — a good investment.” He turned over a second, and looked at the endorsement. “Sir Emery Gascoyne, Bart.,” he continued softly; “accepted as fair as an acceptance can be. Good business, Leo, my boy — very good business.”

  “How much did you give him for this two hundred, now?” Mr. Lionel asked in a somewhat contemptuous tone, taking it up carefully.

  The elder man seized it once more with a nervous grasp, like one who fears to let a favorite and fragile object pass for a moment out of his own possession.

  “A hundred and fifty,” he answered, refolding it and replacing it in due order; “and then twenty per cent., you see, on the full two hundred, every time it’s renewed, after the first year, gives a good interest.”

  Lionel looked up with an amused air.

  “Well, all I can say,” he put in with a smile, “is — that aint the way we do business in the city.”

  “Perhaps not,” his uncle answered with a faint air of vexation. It was evident that this was his pet venture, and that certain vague doubts as to its perfect soundness in his own mind made him all the more impatient of outside criticism. “But, Leo, you don’t know everything in London. One of the great points in a country business is just that — to be able to tell who you can trust, and who you can’t, on their own sense of honesty.”

  Mr. Lionel sneered.

  “I trust nobody myself,” he responded vigorously, puffing at his cigar with a violent puff, to inforce the full depth and breadth of his sentiment.

  “Then that’s bad business,” Mr. Solomons answered, with one fat forefinger raised didactically. “Take my word for it, my boy, that’s bad business. I wouldn’t be half what I am now, and you’d be helping me in the old shop in the Borough, if I’d trusted nobody. But I knew who to trust, and that’s what’s made me. Bind ’em down on paper as fast as you can, of course; I’m not one to omit having everything legal, and fixed, and regular; but all the papers and stamps and parchments in the world won’t do you any good if you’ve got hold of a rogue. No, never a stamp of them! A rogue can’t be made to pay if he don’t want. A rogue’ll go through the court to spite you. A rogue’ll take things before his honor, the county court judge, and explain everything; and his honor’ll give judgment for reduced interest. It aint the paper and the stamps and the signatures that does it; it’s the man himself you’ve got to trust to. You once get hold of an honest man, and if he works his fingers to the bone, and his knees to the stumps, he’ll pay you somehow — principal and interest; he’ll pay you somehow. And Sir Emery Gascoyne, Bart., he’s an honest man, and so’s Paul. He may only be a cab and fly proprietor,” Mr. Solomon went on, giving his debtor the full benefit of his whole legal designation; “but Sir Emery Gascoyne, Bart., cab and fly proprietor, of Plowden’s Court, Hillborough, is as honest a man as ever stepped, and Paul, his son, is one that takes after him.”

  “It was that title of ‘Bart.,’ in my opinion, that led you astray in the first instance,” his nephew went on, with a touch of scorn in his voice; “and, having once begun, you didn’t like to confess your mistake, and you’ve kept to it ever since, getting deeper and deeper in it.”

  Mr. Solomons shuffled uneasily in his chair. The young man had touched him on a tender point. “I don’t deny, Leo,” he answered with apologetic softness, “that the title of ‘Bart.’ had a great deal to do with it. A man who’s born a Jew can’t get over that; and I’m proud to think, if I’ve changed my religion, I’ve never attempted to s
kake off my ancestors. It came about like this, you see. It was six years ago or more — let me see, I have it here — yes, seven years ago on the fourth of February — number one falls due on the fourth every year; it was seven years ago Gascoyne came to me, and he says, ‘Mr. Solomons, I want your advice, knowing you to be a better man of business than any lawyer in the town’ — for Gascoyne knows Barr and Wilkie are fools—’ and I’ve just come into a baronetcy,’ says he. Well, when I heard that, I lifted my hat, having always a strong respect for rank and title and everything of that sort — I wouldn’t be one of the seed of Abraham if I hadn’t — and I said to him, ‘Sir Emery, I’m very glad to hear it; and if there’s anything I can do for you in the way of a little temporary accommodation’ — thinking, of course, there was money coming with it, as a man would naturally expect with a baronetcy—’ I’ll be happy to arrange it on the most moderate terms for you.’ For when a man in his position comes into a title and a big estate, he’s likely to want a little temporary accommodation at first, just to make a good show when he goes to claim his own of the executors.”

  “To be sure,” his nephew assented blandly.

  “Well, you see,” Mr. Solomons went on, still in a very self-exculpatory tone, “it soon turned out that there wasn’t any money — that the money’d all gone to the other branch of the family. But, having made Sir Emery a preliminary advance, and having been the very first man in the world to call him ‘Sir Emery,’” — Mr. Solomons loved to repeat that title in private life whenever he could; it was so dear to his soul to be thus brought into contact with a real live baronet— “I thought to myself, ‘Well, having once begun, I’ll see the thing through to the bitter end now, whatever it costs me.’ And I look at it accordingly, Leo, as a long investment.”

  “A very long investment, indeed!” Mr. Lionel answered, with an ugly smile. “You’ll never see a penny of your money again, I take it.”