by Grant Allen
“I should like,” Mr. Solomons said, as he entered the shop and addressed himself with severity to the smugfaced and black-whiskered young man at the counter; “I should like to see a diamond necklet.”
“Yes, sir. About what price, sir?” the smug-faced young man replied briskly.
Mr. Solomons looked him through and through with a contemptuous air. “The price,” he answered sententiously, “depends as a rule to some extent upon the quality.”
“Merely as a guide to the class of goods I should first submit to you,” the smug-faced young man went on, still more briskly than before. “Our immense stock! The variety of our patterns! The difficulty of a selection!”
“Do you take me for a fool, young man?” Mr. Solomons retorted severely, eying him askance. “Nobody has an immense stock of diamond necklets, ready-made. Show me your goods first, and I’ll make my choice. After that we’ll arrive at an arrangement as to value.
“I think, Mr. Nathan,” the proprietor observed to the smug-faced young man, who fell back, crestfallen, “I’d better attend to this gentleman myself.” For he plainly foresaw hard bargaining. “I’ve met you before, sir, I believe,” he went on. “Mr. Solomons of Hillborough?”
Mr. Solomons nodded.
“My name, sir,” he answered. “I was recommended here by our mutual friend, Mocatta. And I want to see some diamond necklets.”
The proprietor did not fall into the smug-faced young man’s juvenile error. He knew his trade too well. The two fellow-tribesmen had measured one another at a glance. He brought down a couple of cases and opened them temptingly before Mr. Solomons’ face. Mr. Solomons turned them over with critical hand and eye.
“Not good enough,” he said laconically, and the proprietor nodded.
“How are these?” the jeweler asked, striking a higher note, three octaves up on the gamut of price.
Mr. Solomons regarded them with a shadow on his face. He knew exactly how much he meant to give (which was just why he refrained from mentioning a figure), and he thought these were probably far above his intention. In fact, in order to clarify his conceptions and bring his rusty knowledge well up to date, he had already priced several small lots of gems that very morning at several Christian jewelers’.
“How much?” he asked suspiciously. For he had come to a shop of his own race for the express reason that here only could he indulge in the luxury of bargaining.
“Four hundred pounds,” the proprietor said, looking hard at him without moving a muscle.
Mr. Solomons shook his head resolutely.
“More than I want to give,” he replied in that tone of conviction which precludes debate. “It won’t do. Show me another.”
The proprietor gauged the just mean at once.
“Try these, then,” he said persuasively.
Mr. Solomons’ eyes picked out its choice at a glance.
“That’ll do,” he answered, selecting one that precisely suited as to quality. “Lowest figure for this?”
The proprietor glanced at him with inquiring eyes.
“What do you want it for?” he asked.
“It’s for a lady of title,” Mr. Solomons answered, swelling with just pride. “What’ll you take for it?”
The proprietor put his head on one side reflectively.
“We have a fixed price, of course,” he said.
“Of — course,” Mr. Solomons echoed slowly.
“But to you, Mr. Solomons, as a friend of our friend Mocatta’s, and as it’s for a present, apparently, we’ll consent to make it — three hundred guineas.”
“Why we?” Mr. Solomons inquired abstractedly. “I came here believing I dealt between man and man. I object to we. I deal with principals.”
“I’d make it three hundred, then,” the proprietor corrected gravely.
“Why guineas?” Mr. Solomons went on once more with chilly precision. “No, don’t say pounds, please. That’s why I ask you, Why make it guineas. You put it in guineas for people with whom you mean to strike off the odd shillings only. That won’t do for me, I’m too old for that. As a basis for negotiation, if you please, we’ll begin with pounds. Begin with pounds, I say, Mr. Zacharias; mind, begin, you understand, not end with them.”
“Begin with three hundred and fifteen pounds?” the proprietor queried, with his small eyes blinking.
“Certainly, if you wish it,” Mr. Solomons went on. “I’ve no objection to your putting on the extra fifteen pounds — three hundred shillings to cover the guineas — if it gives you any pleasure; as, of course, we shall only have to knock them off at once again. Well, we go on, then, to three hundred pounds for this necklet. Now Mr. Zacharias, what do you take me for?”
And then began that sharp contest of wits that Mr. Solomons delighted in, and in which Mr. Zacharias, to do him justice, was no unworthy antagonist. The two men’s eyes gleamed with the joy of the conflict as they joined in the fray. It was to them what a game of chess or a debate in the House is to keen, intellectual combatants of another order. They understood one another perfectly — too perfectly to have recourse to the petty blandishments and transparent deceptions wherewith Mr. Zacharias might have attempted to cajole an accidental purchaser. It was Greek meet Greek, diamond cut diamond. The price was to be settled, not in current coin of the realm, but in doubtful paper. And it was to be arrived at by a curious process of double-bargaining, greatly to the taste of either diplomatist. Mr. Solomons was first to bate down Mr. Zacharias to a given price, say a hundred and fifty, and Mr. Zacharias was then to bate down the doubtful bills till he had arrived at last at a proximate equation between the two sums agreeable to both parties. And to this congenial contest they both addressed their wits in high good humor, entering into it with the zest that every man displays when pitted against a foeman just worthy of his steel, in a sport at which both are acknowledged masters.
The debate was long, exciting, and varied. But in the end the game was drawn, each side coming off with honorable scars and insignificant trophies. Mr. Solomons calculated that he had got the necklet for two hundred and forty-five pounds’ worth of doubtful paper, and that it might fairly be valued at two hundred and fifty. Mr. Zacharias calculated that a knowing customer might have had the necklet for two hundred and forty-two pounds, and that the doubtful bills would probably realize, when discounted, two hundred and sixty. So each left off well satisfied with his morning’s work, besides having had a long hour’s good intellectual exercise for his money.
And Mr. Solomons went away with the pleasing conviction that if Sir Paul Gascoyne, for example, had bought the necklet in the regular way at a West End jewelers’, he would no doubt have paid that enterprising tradesman the original three hundred guineas demanded for it. Of so great avail is it to a wise man to know the City.
By an odd coincidence, that very same day Paul, for his part, received three letters, all tending greatly to disconcert his settled policy. The first two came by the morning post, the third followed by the eleven o’clock delivery. Was this design or accident? Who shall say? Fortune, that usually plays us such scurvy tricks, now and again indulges, by way of change, in a lucky coincidence.
The first of his letters Paul opened was from Fowey, where Nea was not. It was brief and paternal — the British father in his favorite character of practical commonsense, enforcing upon giddy and sentimental youth the business aspect of life as a commercial speculation. Much as the Reverend Walter Blair, Clerk in Holy Orders, esteemed the prospective honor of counting Sir Paul Gascoyne, Baronet, as his son-in-law, he must point out to Sir Paul at last that this engagement was running to a truly preposterous length, and that some sort of effort ought to be made to terminate it. “Does that mean break it off?” Paul queried internally, with a horrid start of alarm. But no; the next sentence reassured his startled soul as to that doubtful verb. The Reverend Walter Blair had the fullest confidence in his young friend’s ability to support his (laughter in a way suitable to her position in life, and would urge,
on the contrary, that the marriage should be entered into — great Heavens, what was this? — on the earliest opportunity!
If not — the Reverend Walter Blair was conveniently vague as to what might follow upon his non-compliance: but Paul’s heart went down with a very violent sinking, indeed, as he thought how much that paternal reticence might possibly cover. Vague visions of Nea wedded against her will (oh, boundless imagination of youth!) to a muttonfaced Cornish squire of restricted intelligence oppressed his soul. As though anybody — even a society mother — could marry off an English girl of Nea Blair’s type where she didn’t wish to be married! Why, Mrs. Partington with the ocean at her doors had a comparatively wide and correct conception of character and conduct.
He broke open the second letter, posted at Sheffield, and skimmed it through hurriedly. To his immense surprise it pointed in precisely the same direction as Mr. Blair’s. Since Nea had been with her, Faith said, in her simple sisterly fashion, she had noticed more than once that that dear girl was growing positively thin and ill with the harassing care of a long engagement. Nea was a dear, and would never complain; not for worlds would she add a jot to Paul’s heavy burden while he had still that debt of Mr. Solomons’ on his hands; but still, Faith thought, “it was hard she should be wasting her golden youth when she ought to be happy and enjoy her ladyship while it would be of most satisfaction and service to her.” And since Mr. Solomons himself approved of the union, as Nea told her, why, Faith, for her part, could hardly imagine what reasons could induce Paul to shilly-shally any longer. “And Charlie says,” the letter went on, “he fully agrees with me.”
At eleven o’clock, to clench it all, came a brief little note from Nea herself, design or accident:
“Dear Faith has been declaring to me for the last two days, Paul, darling, that’s its positively wicked of me to keep you waiting and despairing any longer; and this morning, by an odd coincidence, the inclosed note came from papa. You will see from it that he’s very much in earnest indeed about the matter, and that he objects to our engagement remaining so long indefinite. So, Paul, they’ve easily succeeded between them at last in talking me over; and if you think as they do, “Yours always, “NEA.”
Paul laid down the note, and reflected seriously.
CHAPTER XLVII.
“PUTTING ON THE SCREWS.”
THE combination was too strong in the end for Paul. Faith and Nea, backed up by Mr. Solomons’ advice and Mr. Blair’s protest, were more than the sternest virtue could resist — especially when inclination itself lay disturbing the balance in the selfsame scale. Paul wavered — and was lost. Before he knew exactly how it was all happening, he found himself the central, though secondary, figure of a domestic event. He was given to understand by all parties concerned that he had been duly selected by external destiny for the post of bridegroom in a forthcoming wedding.
And, indeed, if he continued to harbor any passing doubts upon the subject himself, the periodical literature of his country must shortly have undeceived him. For, happening to drop in at his club the next Saturday afternoon — as a journalist, Paul had regarded the luxury of membership at the Cheyne Row as a trade expense — he lighted by chance upon a paragraph of gossip in that well-known second-rate society paper, the Whisperer: “A marriage has just been arranged, and will take place early next month, between Sir Paul Gascoyne, Bart., of Hillborough, and Nea Mary Eustacia, only daughter of the Rev. Walter Blair, Rector of Lanhydran, near Fowey, Cornwall. Sir Paul, though he rejoices in the dignity of a fourteenth baronet, and boasts some of the bluest blood in Glamorganshire, is by no means overwhelmed with this world’s wealth; but his career at Christ Church was sufficiently distinguished, and he has since made his mark more generally as a journalist and essayist in the London Press. Unless he throws away his opportunities and wastes his talents, the new proprietor ought to do much in time to restore the lost glories of Gascoyne Manor.”
A fiery red spot burned in Paul’s cheek as he laid down the indiscreet sheet with its annoying blunders, and picked up, for a change, its rival, the Blab of a week later date. There, almost the first words that met his eyes were those that composed his own name, staring him in the face in that rudely obtrusive way that one’s own name always does stare at one from a printed paper. “No, no, Arthur,” the editor of the Blab remarked, in his gently colloquial style to his brother chronicler; “you’re out of it this time about young Gascoyne of Christ Church. Sir Paul Emery Howard Gascoyne — to give him the full benefit of his empty title, for it carries no money, is the fifteenth — not, as you say, the fourteenth — baronet of that ancient family. He is not of Hillborough, which was the only place where his late respected papa carried on a harmless, though useful, calling; but of a decent lodging-house in Somers Row, Gower Street. He has nothing to do in any way with Gascoyne Manor, the old seat of his ancestors, which is the property of a distant and not overfriendly cousin. And if you mean to insinuate by certain stray hints about wasted opportunities and so forth and so forth that Miss Blair, his future wife, has money of her own, allow us to assure you, on the very best authority, that the lady’s face is her fortune — and a very pretty fortune, too, it might have been, if she hadn’t chosen to throw it away recklessly on a penniless young journalist with a useless baronetcy. However, Sir Paul has undoubtedly youth and brains on his side, and, if you don’t succeed in spoiling his style, will, no doubt, manage to pull through in the end by aid of a pen which is more smart than gentlemanly. Give him a post on your staff outright, dear Arthur, and he’ll exactly suit the requirements of the Whisperer.”
Paul flung down the paper with a still angrier face. But, whatever else he felt, one thing was certain: he couldn’t now delay getting married to Nea.
The opinion of others has a vast effect upon even the most individualistic among us. And so it came to pass that Paul Gascoyne was dragged, at last, half against his will, into marrying Nea within the month, without having ever got rid of his underlying feeling that to do so was certainly foolish and almost wicked.
The wedding was to take place at Lanhydran, of course; and such a gathering of the clans from all parts of the world the little Cornish village had seldom witnessed! Charlie Thistleton and Faith were at Paddington to meet Paul and accompany him down. While the Master Cutler and his wife, unable to avoid this further chance of identifying themselves with the Gascoyne family, were to follow in their wake half a day later. Paul was delighted to find that Faith, whom he hadn’t seen for a year, had changed less than he expected, and far less than he feared. She had expanded with the expansion in her position, to be sure, as Mr. Solomons noted, and was quite at home in her surroundings. Less than that would be to be less a woman; but she retained all her old girlish simplicity, for all that, and she was quite as fiercely herself in sentiment as ever.
“We’ll travel first, Faith,” Charlie Thistleton said apologetically, “for the sake of getting a carriage to ourselves.
I know you and Paul will want to have a little family confab together after not seeing one another so long; now, won’t you?”
“Oh, well, if you put it on that ground,” Faith answered, mollified, “I don’t mind going first just this once, to please you. Though up in the North Country, Paul, I always insist upon travelling third still, just to scandalize Charlie’s grand acquaintances. When they ask me why, I always say, ‘Because that’s what I’m accustomed to; I never could afford to go second before I was married.’ And you should just see their faces when I add quietly, ‘Sir Paul and I were never rich enough to get beyond thirds; and I suppose poor Paul will have to go third as long as he lives, for he doesn’t mean, like me, to marry above him.’”
“But I do,” Paul answered, with a gentle smile. “I remember, when I first met dear Nea at Mentone, what an awful swell I thought her, and how dreadfully afraid I was even of talking to her.”
“Well, run and get the tickets, Charlie,” Mrs. Thistleton said, turning to her obedient slave; “and if by any chanc
e Mrs. Douglas is going down by this particular train, try to keep out of her way; for I want, if possible, to have my brother to myself for the last time this one long journey.”
By the aid of half-a-crown, judiciously employed in contravening the company’s regulations as to gratuities to porters, they succeeded in maintaining the desired privacy; and Faith could gossip to her heart’s content with Paul about everything that had happened since their last meeting. She was particularly curious to know about Mr. Solomons — his ways and doings.
“I always thought, do you know, Paul,” she said, “that, in a certain sort of queer, unacknowledged way, Mr. Solomons had an undercurrent of sneaking regard for you — a personal liking for you and a pride in what he’s made of you. I don’t think it was all mere desire for your money.”
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” Paul answered. “I’ve a great regard for Mr. Solomons myself. I’m sure it’s to him entirely I owe my present position, such as it is. And I believe he honestly desired, in his way, to serve me. The idea of the baronetcy going to waste, as a marketable commodity, first weighed upon his mind, of course. Whether it was his own, or whether it was somebody else’s, it vexed his good commercial soul to see so much intrinsic value running away, as it were, like beer from a barrel, all for nothing. But when once he got fairly embarked in the scheme, it became an end in itself to him — his favorite idea, his pet investment; and I was a part of it: he liked me because he had made me himself. It gave him importance in his own eyes to be mixed up with the family of an English baronet.”
“Oh, I’m sure he likes all your family personally,” Charlie Thistleton put in, in spite of a warning look from his wife. “You should hear the way he writes to Faith about you!”
“Writes to Faith!” Paul repeated, surprised.
“Well, yes,” Charlie answered, pulling himself up short with the contrite air of the husband who knows he has exceeded his wife’s instructions. “He wrote a letter to Faith about you once — some months ago; and he said he was proud of the position you were making for yourself in literary London. He also remarked you were paying up arrears with pleasing promptitude.”
