CHAPTER XXIV.
Though Mrs. Jericho had failed in her hopes of sympathetic assistance from the friends she had summoned about her, she would not quit the field. She would dispute the ground inch by inch. On her final interview with Basil—she would rather not see Bessy, she wished to be spared the trial—she declared that, albeit Mr. Jericho was strangely wayward, it was but a passing whim. However, be that as it might, it was her duty as a wife and mother to remain where she was. And Basil, having taken his measures that, at the worst, his mother and sisters might be protected, bade them a gay farewell; for he felt that the separation would be only for a short time. “My dear mother,” he said, “in a while, and you’ll be making pumpkin pie in a log-hut; as rosy as the ruddiest milkmaid.” Mrs. Jericho smiled very wanly at the picture. “And you, girls, why, what hands you’ll be at rearing chicks, and fattening pigs.” The young ladies shuddered at the thought. And when Basil prophesied for them a brace of stalwart farmers for husbands, why, in their own words, “their blood ran cold at the bare idea.”
Meanwhile our Man of Money hugged himself in his triumph. He had despoiled his wife and her daughters of the costly gifts that in his horns of ignorant weakness had been beguiled from him. And when he looked at the jewels—when he knew that they were his own again,—the victory was saddened by the despairing thought that, he could by no known means, repossess himself of all the money—all he had wasted upon them. “No; no. It is a curse to think it, buttheycannot to the crucible. They cannot yield up an ounce—nay not a grain—of the glorious money cast away upon their pampered flesh—their mincing appetites—their brainsick whims. No: that money is gone; buried in the graves of vanity, and gluttony, and show. Gone! Gone! In another land I might have sold those milk-facedwitches for something to reimburse me. But there is no help for it here—none.” These savage and fantastic thoughts fermented in the brain of Jericho; and, still defeated in his moody musings, he would still return to the idea of his loss, to the hope to cover it. “To think that they—the sleek white cats!—to think that they should be the tombs wherein I have buried so much! To think that they should have so devoured me! That they should have worn my heart! Should have been arrayed with my life! Should have worn it in their ears, about their tiny wrists! Nay, should have trod upon it, in their damned glass slippers! And not a penny—not a penny can I melt from them!” And then, as some consolation, the miser would look at the jewels—the plunder he had secured. Any way, that was something snatched from the wreck. Yet it was hard to gain nothing more. Hard to know that the cost of past days, the bye-gone pomp and luxury,—was irrevocable as the departed hours.
The Man of Money sat crouched in the scullion’s garret. His sordid serving-man—with his eyes fiercely bent upon his master; his mouth curved with a sharp grin, as though he read odd, strange, diabolic matter in the brain laid bare to his looks—his servant Plutus stood apart. The morning was come, and in a while, the buyers would crowd to purchase; to buy the contents of the mansion bit by bit, so that—as Jericho rejoiced—he might carry them in his pocket.
“There’s some of them,” said Jericho, turning up his cheek as the knocker struck through the house. The Man of Money, followed by his servant, descended the stairs, with tripping pace. “Bring them to me—here,” said Jericho, passing into a room; whilst the menial proceeded to the door. “Not gone, yet—not yet!” exclaimed the Man of Money to his weeping wife as, pale and trembling, she approached him.
“My dear Solomon,”—
“Well?” answered Jericho, with hyena laugh, “well, my very dear wife?”
“For the last time, let me supplicate you,” said the woman.
“I am content, for the last time. Well, go on; supplicate,” answered the Man of Money.
“You will destroy us,” exclaimed the poor wife—“utterly, utterly destroy us.”
“Well? I know it—I know it,” answered Jericho. “And may I not destroy what I have made? You were all beggars when I took ye, and to beggars ye shall return. The rags, with my blood, were changed into gold-cloth. Now, I’ll have my blood again—I will—and you shall have your rags.”
“Dear Jericho! This is madness,” cried the wife.
“No, it isn’t,” answered Jericho, with a strange calmness. “It isn’t madness, my dear, dear spouse, as the wise Doctor Mizzlemist has signified. Oh, it was a rare meeting! How happy you might have been! What rare junkettings, here! What a world of fashion, making this house a heaven,—and the poor devil, the madman owner, the maniac bone of your bone—the lunatic flesh of your flesh—fast bound, fast barred! What music you would have had—and he, the Bedlamite, howling to the moon. Go!” yelled the Man of Money, stamping his thin noiseless foot upon the floor; but the woman, drawing herself up, resolved to stand her ground. “What! you thought because you had not yet eaten the fruit, you would never taste its bitterness.”
“What fruit? What bitterness?” cried Mrs. Jericho, rising in spirit.
Jericho gave no direct reply. Hugging his arms about him, he swayed to and fro. “Some lies,” he cried, “like some truths, are of long growth ere they bear; but they do bear at last. Now, the lie you sowed”—
“I!” exclaimed the indignant wife.
“The lie you sowed,”—repeated Jericho doggedly—“fell upon hard ground, ’tis true. The altar stone, no less. Still, the lie has sprouted, has struck root; has shot up, and its fruit—like the fruit of every lie, I know that much now—is bitterness.The wine it makes is misery, to the dregs of life—and you shall drink your fill of it. No; I am not mad; even, saying this, I am not mad;” cried Jericho, for he marked the eloquent meaning of the woman’s looks—“not mad, but enlightened. This is not frenzy, madam; but wisdom—withering wisdom,” sighed Jericho, and there was such a sound of human suffering in the words that, with a smile in her face, the wife looked up at her persecutor.
“My dear, you are not well—this is”—
“Why stay you here?” cried the Man of Money, with the old ferocity. “Why will you not be warned? Well, well, take your own way—you know best; you know best. But in a few hours, and there’s not a bed left for your fine, costly bones to lie upon. Now, will you depart?” cried Jericho.
“No,” exclaimed the wife. “I know my course. I am advised.” Jericho laughed. “Oh, do not doubt that,” repeated the angry woman. “I will not quit the house while a tatter remains. It shall be your work to leave me destitute, and then”—
“Aye, destitute; as I took you. The rich widow—the Indian queen—the sultana”—
“The man of wealth—the shipowner—the holder of stocks—the golden merchant”—
“Well, and has it turned out otherwise?” asked Jericho, sullenly and proudly. “Has my wealth been wanting? Did I cheat you? Have you not shared and shared? Have you not cursed me? You married me for your money-drudge—your golden slave. And still, with your speech you goaded me; still with that whip of asp—a shrew’s tongue—you scourged me. Money—money! And despairingly I wished even of the fiend for money. I have my wish”—and Jericho slowly fixed his eyes upon his wife, whose sympathy returned with the man’s suffering—fixed his eyes, whilst his face became ghastly pale, though with the paleness came back something of the calmer look of former days—“I have my wish,” groaned Jericho,spreading his hand upon his breast—“and—I feel it—I am damned for it.”
“Husband!” cried the wife, and her arm sought to embrace him. “Heavens!” she screamed in terror; and with her arm—some time divorced—around her husband, her blood stood frozen at the change. His body seemed as a wand—a willow wand. The wife trembled, and did not dare to look at what she deemed monstrous—devilish. With her heart beating thick, her brow bedewed, her arm fell as dead to her side.
“The brain burns brightest, I have heard,” said Jericho, with mournful, meaning voice—with features pale and tranquil, and with a gleam of their old expression—“brightest a while before ’tis clay—if it be so, in the running of some minutes, Iwas. My God! What do I see?” and Jericho stared with eyes suddenly lustrous, “What do I see?” he groaned. “The skeletons of things! Outside beauty has departed, and here—here I stand—in a house of dust. I know that was some fine thing upon you—some silken rag of pride—and now it is a web of dust—of woven dust! I look upon your face—that fine, large, glowing, breathing lie that was, and it is a lie no longer. No; it is resolved into the one truth—the universal dust, thecaput mortuumof the last day.”
“My love,” said the wife, with a voice of terror; but the man possessed would not hear.
“Why could I not see this before? Why, I know that thing about your neck was gold;isgold still to the blind ignorance of the world. It is a piece of yellow dust; so light, a breath must scatter it. All dust. Your fine, proud, sweeping body! Why, now I see it as it is. I could crumble it with my hands. And your heart, I see that too! And what is called the blood passing through it. Blood! why, it is a gush of sand. And your brain?—as busy as an ant-hill; as busy and as earthy.”
“My dear,” said the wife, struck with the change, yet fain to play the comforter, “you are better now.”
“Much better; for I can see through all things. Why hadI not one glance of this before? Are we only to know what dirt is pride and pomp, only to know it when the tongue begins to taste the clay? But it is no matter,” and the wild look again dawned in the sick man’s face. Again, the fierce, wild, violent spirit grew strong within him. “It is no matter. All’s well. Very well! As I said—as I said. I am rich, and I am damned for it. I have earned hell—well earned it”—
“For the love of heaven,” cried the woman in despair, for the moment feeling a partner in the horror.
“None of that! No cowardice! No craven—twelfth-hour puling. Be honest when you can’t help it. ’Twas a bargain; a fair bargain with hell. So let the devil have his own. And mark you! Woman of sin—thing of smiles and fraud! you and your young hags take a witch’s flight, and be gone. You had best: much best. Wait another day, and there’ll not be a broomstick to fly with.”
And here, introduced by Plutus—how Mrs. Jericho shuddered at the creature’s presence!—came certain tradesmen; wreckers never absent when a fortune founders. Israel, Laban, and Issachar stood before the Man of Money, who, on the instant, returned to his hungry, ravenous self. Yes; at sight of the dealers, the face of Jericho put on its former wickedness; and philosophy and remorse were dumb and dead, and cunning and avarice again active and voluble. With a contemptuous chuck of the head, Jericho acknowledged the presence of the chapmen, and then turned fiercely upon his wife. “Are you advised now? A few hours, and if you will stay here, you shall rule the mistress of naked walls. Go!” And the poor woman, with terror in her looks, fled from the spot. How—in that moment—she accused the lingering, guilty pride, that had withheld her from communing with Basil! How willingly would she have followed him! With what alacrity have flung aside, like tarnished finery, her present life, and drawn the breath of simplicity and peace! And with this thought she sought her daughters. This thought she uttered with fervent utterance; and found no accordingsympathy. But youth is apt to be disdainful. And so it was with Monica, so even with the less courageous Agatha. Both of them bade their mother—she herself had taught the lesson, and now her pupils bade her not forget it—have a nobler spirit. They were prepared to defy the tyrant to the last! Indeed, in a wild, passionate moment, burning with revenge, Monica laughing and clapping her hands, declared it would be noble sport to set fire to the house, and all perish in the flames. Poor girl! We verily believe she had no such wicked intention. She only spoke from a desperate waywardness of spirit; for it must not be forgotten that the treasonous letter of the dastard Candituft—(he married, ten years after, a tyrannous old maid, with enormous expectations that ripened into nothing better than erysipelas)—the coward letter, like a live coal, was eating up Monica’s heart. However, the mother was re-assured by the spirit of her children; and having gathered together all the property—body goods, no other—allowed them by the tyrant Man of Money, was resolved to stay to the last. Neither would she take the judgment of the jury of friends as final. She must believe—moreover Monica, upon the strength of her grey experience was convinced—that the law was too kind, too just and benevolent towards feeble woman, not to dethrone and confine for life, her maniac despot.
In the meantime, the dealers, accompanied by Jericho, prowled from room to room. Furniture, plate, pictures—all that had made the glory of Jericho—were duly considered and duly debased by the men who wished to make them their own. For a while, Jericho endured the chaffering of the tribe. At length, he suddenly drew up. “Look ye here,” said the Man of Money, prepared at once to make clean work of it; for his impatience subdued his avarice,—“Look ye, here. I treat with men of honour; with scrupulous merchants whose only wish is a fair profit. I know this, gentlemen. The tone of your voices, the clear look of your eyes, the sterling worth of your words, as we have passed from room to room, consideringthe goods,—all convince me that I am safe in your hands.”
Israel, Laban, and Issachar, staring somewhat, bowed.
“Safe in your hands,” repeated Jericho. “Well, then, why should we waste time? I want to be quit of this. I want, at a thought, to melt all you see and have seen, into ready money. I know I must be a mighty loser. Oh yes! For money never was so scarce—trade never so very dead. This I knew before; so not a word about it now. Well then, worthy gentlemen, princely dealers, take counsel with yourselves, and to save a public hubbub—for I would pass from this fiery furnace of a house, this mansion burning with gold, to the peaceful corner I have provided me. You understand?”—
Again Israel, Laban, and Issachar, bowed. They understood perfectly.
“Take counsel, I say, and make me an offer, a lumping offer for the whole. Eh?”
Israel, Laban, and Issachar were impressed with the comprehensive largeness of the thought. It would save time, and trouble, and the liberal, the right royal Jericho would be a gainer—there could be no doubt of it—a great gainer in the end.
“Fellow,” and Jericho turned to his serf, “conduct the merchants into every corner. And gentlemen, let me have your offer—be it ever so rough a guess, still something like it—your offer to-night. No later; to-night.”
Israel, Laban, and Issachar, with their hearts glowing in their eyes, and smiling at their mouths, rubbed their hands, and promised. The magnificent Jericho should have their offer in the evening. They, the merchant friends—old associates, time-tried fellows—with one another would soon decide; and—there should be no miss in the matter—a plain, distinct offer should be made in the evening.
Whereupon, the Man of Money ascended to his garret, and the dealers pursued their occupation. There was only oneapartment shut against them. And here, Mrs. Jericho and her daughters defied a siege. Every other place was searched, and every article scanned by the dealers, who at length with a grave joy departed from the house, big with the belief in a glorious pennyworth.
The Man of Money sat alone in his garret. Evening closed in, and the moon rose, and looked reproachfully at the miser. The same moon that looked so tenderly upon millions; the same moon that shone upon the silvery sails of theHalcyon, flying like a sea-bird to its home.
The Man of Money started in his chair. “What’s that?” The garret door opened. “You,—is’t not?”
“I,” answered the slave Plutus.
“Well? Has it come?” cried the master.
“Here it is,” answered the servant; and he laid a letter upon the table.
“Well, now for their conscience!” exclaimed the Man of Money. “Go, while I read it,” and the servant departed. “Stay, dog. A light—I cannot read else. Do you hear? A light.”
The fellow came not in; but his voice was heard without. “There is a candle on the table; and paper prepared to light it.”
Most precious paper! The heart’s flesh and blood of the Man of Money. For the devilish serving-man had folded a note—(how obtained, can it matter?)—a note peeled from the breast of his master; a piece of money, a part of the damned Jericho, sympathising with him.
The Man of Money took the paper,—the devil with his ear upturned crept closer to the door—and thrust it amidst the dying coals. A moment, and the garret is rent as with a lightning flash.
Yelling, and all on fire, the Man of Money falls prostrate, with hell in his face. Then his lips move, but not a sound is heard. And the fire communicated by the sympathy of theliving note—the flesh of his flesh—like a snake of flame, glides up his limbs, devouring them. And so he is consumed. A minute; and the Man of Money is a thin, black paper ash. Now, the night wind stirs it; and now, a sudden breeze carries the cinerous corpse away, flattering it to dust impalpable.
And at the moment, the possessions of Jericho—all he had bought with his flesh, and blood, and soul—all was blasted to tinder, consumed to ashes. The pictures dropt in dust from the walls; the walls crumbled; the very gold the wretch had hoarded became as nought.
Candituft looked at his diamond ring—the gift of Jericho—and it was a speck of charcoal. Bones and Thrush, drawing forth their golden snuff-boxes, found in their hands two lumps of soot.
Mrs. Jericho and her daughters were alike disenchanted. The very moment Jericho passed away in flame, they found themselves in garments of tinder.
And thus were all things of the Man made of Money—things of dust and ashes.
The night has passed, and day—lovely summer time—smiles a benison upon the world. TheHalcyon, with her sea-pilgrims aboard, lies-to off the western shore. There are two voyagers yet to come. And there—a thing no bigger than a nautilus—a boat comes shooting out; tussling and bounding with the breeze and sea, and now fairly leaping from wave to wave towards the ship, as with the instinct of some creature towards its parent breast. “There they are!” shouts Carraways, and his wife cries and laughs—and Jenny Topps jumps about—and Robert claps his hands—and Old White blesses himself—and Doctor Dodo smiles, and Mrs. Dodo is so happy—and the nine children Dodos—baby at the breast counting for nothing—give a scream and a shout of delight!
The end of the Man of Money.
The end of the Man of Money.
The end of the Man of Money.
Another minute, and the boat is alongside. And there arebride and bridegroom,—there is Bessy with such happiness filling her good face, with Basil’s arm around her—and Basil looking proud of his treasure! Another minute, and Bessy is upon the deck in her mother’s arms; and Basil grasps the hand of father Carraways.
Captain Goodbody’s eye—he sees all but says little—glistens at the meeting. The boat’s cast off—all’s right.
“’Bout ship!” cries the Captain. The yards swing round; the canvas fills as with the breath of good spirits. May such await the trusting and courageous hearts our vessel carries—await on them and all who, seeking a new home, sail the mighty deep!
THE END.
LONDON:BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.