by Grant Allen
So to Florence we went. My first idea was to travel by the Brenner route through the Tyrol; but a queer little episode which met us at the outset on the Austrian frontier put a check to this plan. We cycled to the border, sending our trunks on by rail. When we went to claim them at the Austrian Custom-house, we were told they were detained ‘for political reasons.’
‘Political reasons?’ I exclaimed, nonplussed.
‘Even so, Fräulein. Your boxes contain revolutionary literature.’
‘Some mistake!’ I cried, warmly. I am but a drawing-room Socialist.
‘Not at all; look here.’ And he drew a small book out of Elsie’s portmanteau.
What? Elsie a conspirator? Elsie in league with Nihilists? So mild and so meek! I could never have believed it. I took the book in my hands and read the title, ‘Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies.’
‘But this is astronomy,’ I burst out. ‘Don’t you see? Sun-and-star circling. The revolution of the planets.’
‘It matters not, Fräulein. Our instructions are strict. We have orders to intercept all revolutionary literature without distinction.’
‘Come, Elsie,’ I said, firmly, ‘this is too ridiculous. Let us give them a clear berth, these Kaiserly-Kingly blockheads!’ So we registered our luggage right back to Lucerne, and cycled over the Gotthard.
PAINTING THE SIGN-BOARD.
When at last, by leisurely stages, we arrived at Florence, I felt there was no use in doing things by halves. If you are going to start the Florentine School of Stenography and Typewriting, you may as well start it on a proper basis. So I took sunny rooms at a nice hotel for myself and Elsie, and hired a ground floor in a convenient house, close under the shadow of the great marble Campanile. (Considerations of space compel me to curtail the usual gush about Arnolfo and Giotto.) This was our office. When I had got a Tuscan painter to plant our flag in the shape of a sign-board, I sailed forth into the street and inspected it from outside with a swelling heart. It is true, the Tuscan painter’s unaccountable predilection for the rare spellings ‘Scool’ without an h and ‘Stenografy’ with an f, somewhat damped my exuberant pride for the moment; but I made him take the board back and correct his Italianate English. As soon as all was fitted up with desk and tables we reposed upon our laurels, and waited only for customers in shoals to pour in upon us. I called them ‘customers’; Elsie maintained that we ought rather to say ‘clients.’ Being by temperament averse to sectarianism, I did not dispute the point with her.
We reposed on our laurels — in vain. Neither customers nor clients seemed in any particular hurry to disturb our leisure.
I confess I took this ill. It was a rude awakening. I had begun to regard myself as the special favourite of a fairy godmother; it surprised me to find that any undertaking of mine did not succeed immediately. However, reflecting that my fairy godmother’s name was really Enterprise, I recalled Mr. Cyrus W. Hitchcock’s advice, and advertised.
‘There’s one good thing about Florence, Elsie,’ I said, just to keep up her courage. ‘When the customers do come, they’ll be interesting people, and it will be interesting work. Artistic work, don’t you know — Fra Angelico, and Della Robbia, and all that sort of thing; or else fresh light on Dante and Petrarch!’
‘When they do come, no doubt,’ Elsie answered, dubiously. ‘But do you know, Brownie, it strikes me there isn’t quite that literary stir and ferment one might expect in Florence. Dante and Petrarch appear to be dead. The distinguished authors fail to stream in upon us as one imagined with manuscripts to copy.’
I affected an air of confidence — for I had sunk capital in the concern (that’s business-like — sunk capital!). ‘Oh, we’re a new firm,’ I assented, carelessly. ‘Our enterprise is yet young. When cultivated Florence learns we’re here, cultivated Florence will invade us in its thousands.’
But we sat in our office and bit our thumbs all day; the thousands stopped at home. We had ample opportunities for making studies of the decorative detail on the Campanile, till we knew every square inch of it better than Mr. Ruskin. Elsie’s notebook contains, I believe, eleven hundred separate sketches of the Campanile, from the right end, the left end, and the middle of our window, with eight hundred and five distinct distortions of the individual statues that adorn its niches on the side turned towards us.
At last, after we had sat, and bitten our thumbs, and sketched the Four Greater Prophets for a fortnight on end, an immense excitement occurred. An old gentleman was distinctly seen to approach and to look up at the sign-board which decorated our office.
I instantly slipped in a sheet of foolscap, and began to type-write with alarming speed — click, click, click; while Elsie, rising to the occasion, set to work to transcribe imaginary shorthand as if her life depended upon it.
The old gentleman, after a moment’s hesitation, lifted the latch of the door somewhat nervously. I affected to take no notice of him, so breathless was the haste with which our immense business connection compelled me to finger the keyboard: but, looking up at him under my eyelashes, I could just make out he was a peculiarly bland and urbane old person, dressed with the greatest care, and some attention to fashion. His face was smooth; it tended towards portliness.
He made up his mind, and entered the office. I continued to click till I had reached the close of a sentence— ‘Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.’ Then I looked up sharply. ‘Can I do anything for you?’ I inquired, in the smartest tone of business. (I observe that politeness is not professional.)
THE URBANE OLD GENTLEMAN.
The Urbane Old Gentleman came forward with his hat in his hand. He looked as if he had just landed from the Eighteenth Century. His figure was that of Mr. Edward Gibbon. ‘Yes, madam,’ he said, in a markedly deferential tone, fussing about with the rim of his hat as he spoke, and adjusting his pince-nez. ‘I was recommended to your — ur — your establishment for shorthand and typewriting. I have some work which I wish done, if it falls within your province. But I am rather particular. I require a quick worker. Excuse my asking it, but how many words can you do a minute?’
‘Shorthand?’ I asked, sharply, for I wished to imitate official habits.
The Urbane Old Gentleman bowed. ‘Yes, shorthand. Certainly.’
I waved my hand with careless grace towards Elsie — as if these things happened to us daily. ‘Miss Petheridge undertakes the shorthand department,’ I said, with decision. ‘I am the typewriting from dictation. Miss Petheridge, forward!’
Elsie rose to it like an angel. ‘A hundred,’ she answered, confronting him.
The old gentleman bowed again. ‘And your terms?’ he inquired, in a honey-tongued voice. ‘If I may venture to ask them.’
We handed him our printed tariff. He seemed satisfied.
‘Could you spare me an hour this morning?’ he asked, still fingering his hat nervously with his puffy hand. ‘But perhaps you are engaged. I fear I intrude upon you.’
‘Not at all,’ I answered, consulting an imaginary engagement list. ‘This work can wait. Let me see: 11.30. Elsie, I think you have nothing to do before one, that cannot be put off? Quite so! — very well, then; yes, we are both at your service.’
The Urbane Old Gentleman looked about him for a seat. I pushed him our one easy chair. He withdrew his gloves with great deliberation, and sat down in it with an apologetic glance. I could gather from his dress and his diamond pin that he was wealthy. Indeed, I half guessed who he was already. There was a fussiness about his manner which seemed strangely familiar to me.
He sat down by slow degrees, edging himself about till he was thoroughly comfortable. I could see he was of the kind that will have comfort. He took out his notes and a packet of letters, which he sorted slowly. Then he looked hard at me and at Elsie. He seemed to be making his choice between us. After a time he spoke. ‘I think,’ he said, in a most leisurely voice, ‘I will not trouble your friend to write shorthand for me, after all. Or should I say your assist
ant? Excuse my change of plan. I will content myself with dictation. You can follow on the machine?’
‘As fast as you choose to dictate to me.’
He glanced at his notes and began a letter. It was a curious communication. It seemed to be all about buying Bertha and selling Clara — a cold-blooded proceeding which almost suggested slave-dealing. I gathered he was giving instructions to his agent: could he have business relations with Cuba, I wondered. But there were also hints of mysterious middies — brave British tars to the rescue, possibly! Perhaps my bewilderment showed itself upon my face, for at last he looked queerly at me. ‘You don’t quite like this, I’m afraid,’ he said, breaking off short.
I was the soul of business. ‘Not at all,’ I answered. ‘I am an automaton — nothing more. It is a typewriter’s function to transcribe the words a client dictates as if they were absolutely meaningless to her.’
‘Quite right,’ he answered, approvingly. ‘Quite right. I see you understand. A very proper spirit!’
Then the Woman within me got the better of the Typewriter. ‘Though I confess,’ I continued, ‘I do feel it is a little unkind to sell Clara at once for whatever she will fetch. It seems to me — well — unchivalrous.’
He smiled, but held his peace.
‘Still — the middies,’ I went on: ‘they will perhaps take care that these poor girls are not ill-treated.’
He leaned back, clasped his hands, and regarded me fixedly. ‘Bertha,’ he said, after a pause, ’is Brighton A’s — to be strictly correct, London, Brighton, and South Coast First Preference Debentures. Clara is Glasgow and South-Western Deferred Stock. Middies are Midland Ordinary. But I respect your feeling. You are a young lady of principle.’ And he fidgeted more than ever.
HE WENT ON DICTATING FOR JUST AN HOUR.
He went on dictating for just an hour. His subject-matter bewildered me. It was all about India Bills, and telegraphic transfers, and selling cotton short, and holding tight to Egyptian Unified. Markets, it seemed, were glutted. Hungarians were only to be dealt in if they hardened — hardened sinners I know, but what are hardened Hungarians? And fears were not unnaturally expressed that Turks might be ‘irregular,’ Consols, it appeared, were certain to give way for political reasons; but the downward tendency of Australians, I was relieved to learn, for the honour of so great a group of colonies, could only be temporary. Greeks were growing decidedly worse, though I had always understood Greeks were bad enough already; and Argentine Central were likely to be weak; but Provincials must soon become commendably firm, and if Uruguays went flat, something good ought to be made out of them. Scotch rails might shortly be quiet — I always understood they were based upon sleepers; but if South-Eastern stiffened, advantage should certainly be taken of their stiffening. He would telegraph particulars on Monday morning. And so on till my brain reeled. Oh, artistic Florence! was this the Filippo Lippi, the Michael Angelo I dreamed of?
At the end of the hour, the Urbane Old Gentleman rose urbanely. He drew on his gloves again with the greatest deliberation, and hunted for his stick as if his life depended upon it. ‘Let me see; I had a pencil; oh, thanks; yes, that is it. This cover protects the point. My hat? Ah, certainly. And my notes; much obliged; notes always get mislaid. People are so careless. Then I will come again to-morrow; the same hour, if you will kindly keep yourself disengaged. Though, excuse me, you had better make an entry of it at once upon your agenda.’
‘I shall remember it,’ I answered, smiling.
‘No; will you? But you haven’t my name.’
‘I know it,’ I answered. ‘At least, I think so. You are Mr. Marmaduke Ashurst. Lady Georgina Fawley sent you here.’
He laid down his hat and gloves again, so as to regard me more undistracted. ‘You are a most remarkable young lady,’ he said, in a very slow voice. ‘I impressed upon Georgina that she must not mention to you that I was coming. How on earth did you recognise me?’
‘Intuition, most likely.’
He stared at me with a sort of suspicion. ‘Please don’t tell me you think me like my sister,’ he went on. ‘For though, of course, every right-minded man feels — ur — a natural respect and affection for the members his family — bows, if I may so say, to the inscrutable decrees of Providence — which has mysteriously burdened him with them — still, there are points about Lady Georgina which I cannot conscientiously assert I approve of.’
I remembered ‘Marmy’s a fool,’ and held my tongue judiciously.
‘I do not resemble her, I hope,’ he persisted, with a look which I could almost describe as wistful.
‘A family likeness, perhaps,’ I put in. ‘Family likenesses exist, you know — often with complete divergence of tastes and character.’
He looked relieved. ‘That is true. Oh, how true! But the likeness in my case, I must admit, escapes me.’
I temporised. ‘Strangers see these things most,’ I said, airing the stock platitudes. ‘It may be superficial. And, of course, one knows that profound differences of intellect and moral feeling often occur within the limits of a single family.’
‘You are quite right,’ he said, with decision. ‘Georgina’s principles are not mine. Excuse my remarking it, but you seem to be a young lady of unusual penetration.’
I saw he took my remark as a compliment. What I really meant to say was that a commonplace man might easily be brother to so clever a woman as Lady Georgina.
HE BOWED TO US EACH SEPARATELY.
He gathered up his hat, his stick, his gloves, his notes, and his typewritten letters, one by one, and backed out politely. He was a punctilious millionaire. He had risen by urbanity to his brother directors, like a model guinea-pig. He bowed to us each separately as if we had been duchesses.
As soon as he was gone, Elsie turned to me. ‘Brownie, how on earth did you guess it? They’re so awfully different!’
‘Not at all,’ I answered. ‘A few surface unlikenesses only just mask an underlying identity. Their features are the same; but his are plump; hers, shrunken. Lady Georgina’s expression is sharp and worldly; Mr. Ashurst’s is smooth, and bland, and financial. And then their manner! Both are fussy; but Lady Georgina’s is honest, open, ill-tempered fussiness; Mr. Ashurst’s is concealed under an artificial mask of obsequious politeness. One’s cantankerous; the other’s only pernicketty. It’s one tune, after all, in two different keys.’
From that day forth, the Urbane Old Gentleman was a daily visitor. He took an hour at a time at first; but after a few days, the hour lengthened out (apologetically) to an entire morning. He ‘presumed to ask’ my Christian name the second day, and remembered my father— ‘a man of excellent principles.’ But he didn’t care for Elsie to work for him. Fortunately for her, other work dropped in, once we had found a client, or else, poor girl, she would have felt sadly slighted. I was glad she had something to do; the sense of dependence weighed heavily upon her.
The Urbane Old Gentleman did not confine himself entirely, after the first few days, to Stock Exchange literature. He was engaged on a Work — he spoke of it always with bated breath, and a capital letter was implied in his intonation; the Work was one on the Interpretation of Prophecy. Unlike Lady Georgina, who was tart and crisp, Mr. Marmaduke Ashurst was devout and decorous; where she said ‘pack of fools,’ he talked with unction of ‘the mental deficiencies of our poorer brethren.’ But his religious opinions and his stockbroking had got strangely mixed up at the wash somehow. He was convinced that the British nation represented the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel — and in particular Ephraim — a matter on which, as a mere lay-woman, I would not presume either to agree with him or to differ from him. ‘That being so, Miss Cayley, we can easily understand that the existing commercial prosperity of England depends upon the promises made to Abraham.’
I assented, without committing myself. ‘It would seem to follow.’
Mr. Ashurst, encouraged by so much assent, went on to unfold his System of Interpretation, which was of a strictly commercial or
company-promoting character. It ran like a prospectus. ‘We have inherited the gold of Australia and the diamonds of the Cape,’ he said, growing didactic, and lifting one fat forefinger; ‘we are now inheriting Klondike and the Rand, for it is morally certain that we shall annex the Transvaal. Again, “the chief things of the ancient mountains, and the precious things of the everlasting hills.” What does that mean? The ancient mountains are clearly the Rockies; can the everlasting hills be anything but the Himalayas? “For they shall suck of the abundance of the seas” — that refers, of course, to our world-wide commerce, due mainly to imports— “and of the treasures hid in the sand.” Which sand? Undoubtedly, I say, the desert of Mount Sinai. What then is our obvious destiny? A lady of your intelligence must gather at once that it is —— ?’ He paused and gazed at me.
‘To drive the Sultan out of Syria,’ I suggested tentatively, ‘and to annex Palestine to our practical province of Egypt?’
He leaned back in his chair and folded his fat hands in undisguised satisfaction. ‘Now, you are a thinker of exceptional penetration,’ he broke out. ‘Do you know, Miss Cayley, I have tried to make that point clear to the War Office, and the Prime Minister, and many leading financiers in the City of London, and I can’t get them to see it. They have no heads, those people. But you catch at it at a glance. Why, I endeavoured to interest Rothschild and induce him to join me in my Palestine Development Syndicate, and, will you believe it, the man refused point blank. Though if he had only looked at Nahum iii. 17 — —’
‘Mere financiers,’ I said, smiling, ‘will not consider these questions from a historical and prophetic point of view. They see nothing above percentages.’
‘That’s it,’ he replied, lighting up. ‘They have no higher feelings. Though, mind you, there will be dividends too; mark my words, there will be dividends. This syndicate, besides fulfilling the prophecies, will pay forty per cent on every penny embarked in it.’
‘Only forty per cent for Ephraim!’ I murmured, half below my breath. ‘Why, Judah is said to batten upon sixty.’
