XV
Arrived at his dingy little office in The Poultry, halfway up the narrow, shady alley of low-browed, drab-faced houses near the Banking House of Lubbock, you saw Thompson Jowell, recruited by a solid luncheon, bending severe brows upon a pale-faced, weak-eyed clerk, who had grievously offended, and was up for judgment.
“What’s this? Now, what’s this, Standish?” the great man blustered. “You have been doing overtime and ask to be paid for it? Lawful claims are met with prompt settlement in this office, as you have good cause to know. But, lookee here!” The speaker puffed out his pendulous cheeks in his characteristic way, and held up a stout, menacing finger before the wincing eyes of the unfortunate Standish. “Don’t you, or any other man in my employment get trying to make money out ofME! Because you won’t, you know!” saidMr.Thompson Jowell. “D’yesee?” and jabbed at the thorax of the unfortunate Standish with the finger, and then rubbed his own nose smartly with it, and thrust it, with its fellows, into his large, deep trousers-pocket as the livid victim faltered:
“You were good enough, previously to the Christmas holidays, sir, to send for me, and say that if I cared to——”
Thompson Jowell solemnly shook his little pear-shaped head, and goggled with his large, round brown eyes upon the scared victim, saying:
“Not ‘cared to,’ Standish. Be accurate, my good fellow, in word as in deed!”
“You hinted to me, sir——” stammered the unfortunate.
Thompson Jowell swelled to such portentous size at this that the clerk visibly shrank and dwindled before the awful presence.
“I am not accustomed to hint, Standish!”
“You intimated, sir, that if I was willing”—gulped the pallid Standish—“to devote my evenings to making up the New Year’s accounts and checking the files of duplicate invoices against the office-ledgers, you—you would undertake—or so you were good enough to give me to understand—that I should be the better for it!”
“But if I mentioned overtime,” returned his employer, thrusting his short fat hands under his wide coat-tails, and rocking backwards and forwards on the office hearthrug, a cheap and shabby article to which the great man was accustomed to point with pride as illustrative of the robust humility of his own nature, “I’ll eat my hat!” He glanced at the low-crowned, shiny beaver hanging on a wooden peg beside his private safe, in company with the shaggy box-coat and a fur-lined, velvet-collared cloak of sumptuous appearance, adding, “and that’s a meal would cost me thirty shillings. For there’s no such a thing as overtime. It don’t exist! And if you proved to me it did I wouldn’t believe you!” said Thompson Jowell, thrusting his thick right hand deep into the bosom of the gorgeous waistcoat, and puffing himself out still more. “For your time, young man! in return for a liberal salary of Twenty Shillings per week, belongs to Me—to Me, Standish, whenever I choose to employ it! As for being the better for having done the work you say you have,youarethe better morally, in having discharged your duty to a generous employer; and if you choose to injure your constitution by stopping here o’ nights until eleven p.m. it’s no affair of mine. John Downright my name is!—besides the one that’s on the brass doorplate of these offices, and what I say is—it’s no affair of mine! Though, mind you! in burning gas upon these premises up to I don’t know what hour of the night, you’ve materially increased the Company’s quarterly bill, and in common justice ought to defray their charges. I’ll let you off that!—so think yourself lucky! and don’t come asking me to remunerate you for overtime again. Now, get out with you!”
Unlucky Standish, yellow and green with disappointed hopes and secret fury, and yet admiring, in spite of himself, the clever way in which he had been defrauded, backed towards the narrow door, and in the act collided with a visitor, who, entering, straightway impregnated and enlivened the dead and musty atmosphere with a heterogeneous mixture of choice perfumes, in which super-fine Macassar and bear’s grease, the fashionable Frangipani and Jockey Club; Russia-leather, a suspicion of stables, and more than a hint of malt liquor, combined with the fragrance of the choice Havana cheroot which the newcomer removed from his mouth as he entered, to make way for the filial salutation:
“Halloa, Governor! All serene?”
You then saw young Mortimer Jowell, only surviving sapling of the sturdy stem of tough old British oak ticketed Thompson Jowell, received in that fond father’s arms, who warmly hugged him to his bosom, crying:
“Morty! My own boy!”
“How goes it, Governor?” responded Morty, winking tremendously, and patting his parent on his stout back with a large-sized hand, gloved with the most expensive lemon kid. “Hold on, you!” he hailed, as the ghastly Standish, seeing Distress for Rent written large across the page of the near future, was creeping out. “Come back and help us out of this watchbox, will yer?” Adding, as the clerk assisted him out of a capacious driving-coat of yellow cloth, with biscuit-sized mother-o’-pearl buttons:
“You look uncommon green, Standish, my boy—Standish’s your name, ain’t it?”
“Yes,Mr.Mortimer, sir. And—I am quite well, sir, thank you, sir. There’s nothing the matter with me beyond ordinary.”
He hung up the son’s coat on the peg beneath the low-crowned, curly-brimmed beaver of the parent, and went out. Morty, retaining his own fashionable, shaggy headgear upon a skull of the bullet rather than the pear-shaped order, had forgotten the clerk and his sick face before the door closed behind him.
“Don’t you worry about Standish and his looks, my boy!” said Thompson Jowell. “That’s the way to spoil a good clerk, that is. Cock ’em up with an idea that they’re overworked, next thing is they’re in bed, and their wives—and why the devil they should have wives, when at that fellow’s age I couldn’t afford the luxury, beats me!—their wives are writing letters begging me not to stop the substitute’s pay out of the husband’s salary, because he, and she, and the children—and it’s like their extravagance and presumption to have children when they can’t afford to keep ’em!—will have to go to the Workhouse if you do. And why shouldn’t they go to the Workhouse? What do we ratepayers keep it up for, if it ain’t good enough for you, ma’am, and the likes of you and yours? My name being Tom Candid—that’s what I say to her.”
He had, in fact, said it to a suppliant of the proud, presumptuous class he complained of, only that morning. And now, as he blew out his big, pendulous cheeks and triple chin above their stiff circular frill of iron-gray whisker, his tall son took him by the shoulders and shook him playfully backwards and forwards in the grip of the great hands that were clothed with the extra-sized lemon kids, saying, as he regarded his affectionate parent with a pair of brown round eyes, that, with the narrow brain behind them, were a trifle bemused with liquor even at this early hour, yet wonderfully frank and honest for a son of Thompson Jowell’s:
“You knowin’ old File! You first-class, extra-ground, double-edged Shylock, you! You jolly old Fee-Faw-Fum, smellin’ the blood of Englishmen, and grindin’ their bones to make your bread—or the flour you sell to the British Government, and take precious jolly good care to sell dear!—you’re lookin’ in the prime of health and the pink of condition, and that’s what I like to see!”
“Really, Morty! Truly, now, my dear boy?”
Morty nodded, with a cheerful grin, and Thompson Jowell’s heart glowed with fatherly pride in this big young man with the foolish, good-natured face and the round, somewhat owlish eyes, that resembled his own, though not in their simplicity. But Morty’s invariable and characteristic method of expressing frank admiration of those invaluable business qualities of unscrupulousness, greed, and cunning, which the author of his being, while fattening upon them, preferred to disown—was a venomed dart rankling in the fleshy ribs that were clothed by the gorgeous waistcoat. His narrow slanting forehead, that was like the lid of a Noah’s Ark—furrowed as he heard. He said, with hurry and effort:
“Yes—yes! Well—well! And how did you come, dear boy?”
“Tooled the Tilbury with the tandem over from Norwood,” Morty responded, “on purpose to have a good look at you. Lord Adolphus Noddlewood, my friend and chum at the Reverend’s, came along too. Lots of fun on the way! Tre-menjous row with tollgate-keeper’s wife at Camberwell Gate—Tollman, gone to bed, after bein’ up all night, stuck his head out of upper-window in a red nightcap to tell us, if we ain’t too drunk to remember it!—we’re talkin’, for once in our lives, to a decent woman.... (And you ought to ha’ heard the names she’d called us!) ... ‘Dolph, my boy,’ says I to Lord Adolphus when we got into the Borough Road—and plenty of excitement there, with a leader that kep’ tryin’ to get into the omnibuses after the old ladies!... ‘Dolph, my buck,’ says I, ‘I’m goin’ to show you where the Guinea Tree grows.’ ‘Ha, ha, ha! That means,’ says he to me, ‘you’re goin’ to fly a kite among the Jews.’ ‘You’re dead out there, Dolph!’ says I. ‘For one thing, the Gov’ bleeds free. A touch of the lancet, and he brims the basin. For another—there isn’t a Hebrew among the Ten Tribes, from Dan to Beersheba, ’ud dare to lend me a penny-piece on my tidiest signature for fear of what my father’d do when he found out they’d been gettin’ hold of his precious boy! For, deep as they are, my father’s deeper,’ says I, ‘and artful as they are, he’s more artful still; and grinding and grasping extortioners as it’s their nature to be, there’s not a Jew among ’em that the Governor wouldn’t give ninetypoints out of a hundred to, and beat at Black Pool—with the nigger in the pocket and a general shell-out all round! Ha, ha, haw! Whew!...” Morty whipped out a handkerchief of brilliant hue, diffusing odors of Araby, and applied it to his nose: “Piff! this here jolly old rat-hole of yours stinks over and above a bit. Why don’t you burn it down?—you’re inspired to the hilt, or I don’t know you, dad! And take a smart, snug, comfortable office in Cheapside or Cornhill?”
“It wouldn’t do! I began in this place, and have grown up here, as one might say, and have got too used to it to fancy another. And—be a little careful, Morty, my boy!” urged the father of this shining specimen, admiring the son’s high spirit and volubility, yet suffering at his well-earned praise. He felt so keen a pride in this tall, bullet-headed, broad-shouldered, loosely-jointed son, that the tears stood in his round eyes as they goggled at him; and the upright gray hair upon his pear-shaped head bristled more stiffly. “Somebody outside there might be listening,” he pleaded, “and that kind of joke’s dangerous if repeated. Be careful, my dear boy!”
“If you mean careful of those tallow-faced, inky, chilblain-fingered chaps in the office outside this, and the room on the other side of the passage,” said Morty, jerking up his coat-tails, and seating himself upon the large, important blotting-pad that lay upon the stained leather of the kneehole writing-table, that, with the iron safe previously mentioned; an armchair with loops of horsehair stuffing coming through the torn leather covering of its arms, and bulging through the torn leather covering of its back; a wooden stool adorned with a fantastic pattern of perforations; a dusty set of wooden pigeon-holes stuffed with dustier papers, and a bookcase containing Shipping-Lists, References, Handy Volumes, Compendiums, Ready Reckoners, and Guides, such as are commonly used by business men who chase the goose that lays the golden egg of Profit through the tortuous ways of Finance;—with a few more, likely to be of use to an Auxiliary-Transport Agent and Forage Contractor—comprised, with a blistered little yellow iron washstand, furtively lurking in a shady corner, the furniture of the office,—“if you mean those clerks of yours, you’re joking when you talk of them repeating anythingtheyhear. They know you too well, Gov! They’vesold themselves to you, body and soul. For you’re the Devil, Governor—the very Devil! Ain’t you? Gaw! Don’t tell me you ain’t! I don’t believe you!” said Morty, with a tinge of the paternal manner. “I won’t believe you! I wouldn’t believe you if you took a pair of wings (detachable patent), like what the Pasbas—there’s a stunnin’ creature!—sports in the new Opera Bally as the ‘Sylph of the Silver Sham’—no, dammy!—that ain’t it! ‘Sylph of the Silver Strand’—out of your safe, and a harp and a crown out of the corner-cupboard by the fireplace”—a rusty, narrow fireplace, with a bent poker thrust in between the bars of the niggardly grate that had a smoking lump of coal in it—“and showed me,” said Morty, with a gleam of imagination, “your first-class diploma as a qualified practicing Angel! And so you know!”
He poked Thompson Jowell in the meaty ribs that were covered by his gorgeous waistcoat, and though the hidden thorn rankled more and more, and though allusions to the personage mentioned seemed to savor of irreligion, the great man’s brow relaxed, and he chuckled, as he rattled the money in the tills of his big trouser-pockets.
“And how goes the learning, Morty, with the reverend gentleman at Norwood? Does he seem to have his trade as Tutor at his fingers’ ends? Does he push you on and prepare you? coach you and generally cram you with the things you ought to be master of? As a young fellow of means and expectations—who will shortly (or great people break promises!)—hold a Commission in Her Majesty’s Foot Guards?”
“Oh, Lord!” groaned Morty. “Don’t he, though?”
“This friend of yours you’ve brought with you is a swell, it seems?” resumed his father.
“Lord Adolphus Noddlewood ... I believe you, Gov!” returned the son, screwing up his round, young, foolish face into an expression of portentous knowingness. “Eldest son of the Marquess of Crumphorn—ain’t that the tip-top thing?”
“Eldest son of the Marquess of Crumphorn! We’ll look him up in the Peerage presently, or your mother shall—that’s the sort of thing a woman enjoys doing,” said Thompson Jowell, rather viciously, “and that keeps her from grizzling and groaning, and thinking herself an invalid.”
“How is my mother, sir?” asked the son, with a shade of resentment at the other’s slighting tone.
“She’s pretty much the same as usual,” said Thompson Jowell sourly, and ceased to puff himself out to double his natural size, and left off rattling the tills in his trousers, “or she was when I left her early this morning. A decent, worthy sort of woman, your mother,” he added, snorting, “without any spirit or go in her. And as for setting off fine clothes and jewels, as the wife of a man in My position ought to—you might as well hang ’em on a pump. Indeed, you’d show ’em off to more advantage, because a pump can’t retire into the background with a Dorcas work-basket and a Prayer-Book, and generally efface itself. It stops where it is,—and if it ain’t a rattler as regards conversation, people do get some kind of response from it, if they’re at the trouble of working the handle. Now, your mother——”
“My mother, sir, is as good company and as well worth looking at—in fine clothes or shabby ones—as any lady in the land!” said Morty. “I’m dam’ if she ain’t!” And so red and angry a light shone in the round brown eyes that were generally dull and lusterless, and so well-developed a scowl sat on the rather pimply forehead, from which the tall shaggy white beaver stove-pipe of the latest fashion was jovially tilted back, that Thompson Jowell changed the conversation rather hurriedly.
“Well, well! perhaps she is!” he agreed, in rather a floundering manner. “And if her own son didn’t think so, who should? Run down to Market Drowsing and see her as soon as you’re able. She won’t come up to Hanover Square before the beginning of May. Give her compliments, along with mine, to the Honorable and Reverend Alfred de Gassey and Lady Alicia Brokingbole. There’s a thorough-paced nob for you, the Honorable and Reverend! And his wife! The genuine hallmarked Thing, registered and stamped—that’s what she is!”
He referred in these terms of unqualified admiration to a needy sprig of nobility who had held a commission in a Cavalry regiment; and, having with highly commendable rapidity run through a considerable fortune, had exchanged, some years previously, at the pressing instance of his creditors, the Army for the Church, and a family livingwhich fell vacant at a particularly appropriate moment. And, having married another slip of the aristocracy as impecunious as himself, the Reverend Alfred had hit upon the philanthropic idea of enlarging his clerical stipend and benefiting Humanity at large, by receiving under his roof two or three young gentlemen of backward education and large fortune, who should require to be prepared for the brilliant discharge of their duty to their Sovereign and their country, as subaltern officers of crack regimental corps.
Not that preparation was essential in those days, when Army Coaches were vehicles as rare as swan-drawn water-chariots; and the cramming-establishments that were some years later to spring up like mushrooms on Shooter’s Hill or Primrose Hill, or in the purlieus of Hammersmith or Peckham, were unknown. Ensigns of Infantry, or cornets of Cavalry Regiments, joined their respective corps without having received the ghost of a technical military education; often without possessing any knowledge whatever beyond a nodding acquaintance with two out of the three R’s.... Mathematics, Fortification, French and German, were not imparted by the Honorable and Reverend Alfred to his wealthy pupils, for the simple reason that he, the instructor, was not acquainted with these. But in Boxing, Fencing, Riding, the clauses of the Code of Honor regulating the Prize Ring and the dueling-ground, not to mention the rules governing the game of Whist, at which the Reverend Alfred always won; he was a very fully-qualified tutor. And his wife, the Lady Alicia Brokingbole, youngest daughter of the Earl of Gallopaway, initiated the more personable of the young gentlemen into the indispensable art of handing chairs, winding Berlin wools, giving an arm to a lady, copying sweet poems from theForget-Me-NotorThe Keepsakeinto her album, and generally making themselves useful and agreeable. Nor was the Lady Alicia averse to a little discreet flirtation, or a little game of piquet, or a little rubber of whist, at which, like the Reverend Alfred, she invariably won. It will be comprehended that, provided the bear-cub who came to Norwood to be licked into shape were rich, the said cub might spend a fairly pleasant time; and be regaled with a good deal of flattery and adulation, mixed with chit-chat,gossip, and scandal, of the most aristocratic and exclusive kind.
“She’s a spankin’ fine woman, is Lady Alicia,” agreed Morty, with the air of a connoisseur, “though a dam’ sight too fond of revokin’ at whist with pound points to suit my book!” he added, with a cloud upon the brow that might have been more intellectual.
“But she’s an Earl’s daughter!—an Earl’s daughter, Morty, my boy!” urged Thompson Jowell; “and moves in high Society, the very highest—or so I have been given to understand.”
“Correct, too. Knows everybody worth knowin’—got the entire Peerage andCourt Circularat her finger-ends,” declared simple Morty. “I drove her four-in-hand from Norwood to the Row only yesterday. Gaw! You should have seen us! Bowin’ right and left like China Manda—what-do-you-call-’ems?—to the most tre-menjous nobs (in coroneted carriages, with flunkeys in powder and gold lace) you ever clapped your eyes on! And you ought to hear her tell of the huntin’ supper she sat down to at her cousin’s castle in Bohemia—the chap’s an Austrian Prince with a name like a horse’s cough. Four-and-forty covers, two Crowned Heads, five Hereditary Grand-Dukes with their Duchesses, a baker’s dozen of Princes, and for the rest, nothin’ under a Count or Countess, ‘until,Mr.Jowell,’ she says, ‘you arrived at Alfred, who would grace any social circle, however lofty, and poor little humble Me!’ And they played a Charade afterwards, and Lady Alicia had no jewels to wear in the part of Cleopatra, ‘having chosen,’ she says, ‘to wed for Love rather than Ambition.’ And the Prince had an iron coffin brought in—or was it a copper?—cram-jam-full of diamonds and rubies as big as pigeons’ eggs, and told her ladyship to take what she chose. ‘Gaw! those sort of relatives are worth havin’! Shouldn’t mind a few of ’em myself!’ says I to Lady A.”
“That’s the sort of woman to cultivate, Morty, my boy!” advised Thompson Jowell, smiling and rubbing his hands. “With a little managing and cleverness, she ought to get you into the swim. The Goldfish Tank, I mean, where the titled heiresses are. You represent Money, solid Money!—but what we want—to set our Money off, is Rank! Andthe men of the British Aristocracy are easy enough to get at, and easy enough to get on with, provided you don’t happen to tread on their damned exclusive corns. But their women, confound ’em!—their high-nosed, long-necked women—they’re as hard to get on a level of chatty equality with as Peter Wilkins’ flying females were; and the mischief of it is, my boy, you can’t do without their good word. So cultivate Lady A! Wink at her cheating at cards—it’s in the blood of all these tip-top swells—and get her to take you about with her. And one of these days we may be hearing how Lady Rosaline Jowell, second daughter of the Earl, or the Marquess, or the Duke of Something-or-other, was Presented, on her marriage withMr.Mortimer Jowell, of the Foot Guards; and what sort of figure her husband cut at the Prince’s Levée. And, by Gosh! though I don’t keep a coffer full of diamonds as big as pigeons’ eggs in my safe, we’ll see what Bond Street can do in the way of a Tiara for the head, and a Zone for the waist, and a necklace and bracelets of the biggest shiners that can be got, for her Ladyship, Thompson Jowell’s daughter-in-law! And what I say I’ll do, I do! My name’s Old Trusty, ain’t it, Morty boy?”
His round eyes goggled almost appealingly at his son.
“And if I’m—what you say—a bit of a Squeezer as regards making people pay; and a bit of a Grinder—though that I don’t admit—at driving hard bargains; and Mister Sharp of Cutters’ Lane when it comes to getting the best of So-and-So, and Such-and-Such—who’d cheerfully skin me alive, only give ’em the chance of it—you’re the last person in the world, Morty, who ought to throw it in my face.”
He spoke with almost weeping earnestness; there were blobs of moisture in the corners of his eyes; his blustering Boreas-voice was almost soft and pleading as Thompson Jowell bid for the good opinion of his son. “Not that I reproach you,” was the refrain of his song, “but you ought to be the last!”
“Old Gov!” The large young man repeated his previous action of taking Thompson Jowell by his fleshy shoulders with the extra-sized hands, encased in the lemon kid gloves, and pleasantly shaking him backwards and forwards, as though he had been a large, plain, whiskered doll.
“There’s the Commission in the Guards, Morty. You wouldn’t believe—having set my heart on making a first-class gentleman of my boy—what an uncommon sight of trouble I’ve taken to bring that sealed paper with Her Majesty’s signature on it, down from the sky-high branch it hangs on! His Honor the Commissary-General kept his word in presenting me to my Lord Dalgan, His Grace the Commander-in-Chief’s confidential Secretary, yesterday, and after a little general chit-chat, I felt my way to a hint, for we must be very humble with such great folks,” said Thompson Jowell, rattling the tills, “and watch for times and opportunities. My Lord was very high and lofty with me, as you may suppose.... ‘So you have a son,Mr.Thompson Jowell,’ says he. ‘I congratulate you, my dear sir, on having done your duty to Posterity. And it is your ambition that this young man should enjoy the privilege of wearing Her Majesty’s uniform? Well, well! We will see what we can do with His Grace,Mr.Thompson Jowell, towards procuring the young gentleman an ensigncy in some regiment of infantry.’ ‘Humbly thanking you, my Lord,’ says I, ‘for the gracious encouragement you have given to a man who might be called by persons less grand, and noble, and generous-minded than your Lordship, an ambitious tradesman;—since you permit me to speak my mind’—and he bows over his stock in his stiff-necked, gracious way—‘I dare to say I fly higher for my boy,’ says I, ‘than a mere marching regiment. And what I have set my heart upon, and likewise my son his, is, plainly speaking, a Commission in the Foot Guards, White Tufts or Cut Red Feathers.’ Up go his eyebrows at that, Morty, and he taps with his shiny nails—a real nobleman’s nails—on the carved arm of his chair, smiling. ‘Really,Mr.Thompson Jowell’—and he leans back and throws his foot over his knee, showing the Wellington boot with gold spurs and the white strap of the pearl-gray trouser—‘ambition is, to a certain extent, laudable and to be encouraged. But at the same time, permit me to say that youdofly high!’ ‘Begging your Lordship’s leave once more,’ says I, ‘to speak out—and Plain’s my name and nature!—I have come to beg the greatest nobleman in the land to make a hay-and-straw-and-flour merchant’s son a gentleman. A word in the ear of His Grace, the Duke, and a stroke of your pen will do it, my Lord,’ I says; ‘andwhen I find myself in the presence of a power as lofty and as wide as yours, and am graciously encouraged to ask a favor, I don’t ask a little one that a lesser influence could grant. I plump for the Guards, and your Lordship can but refuse me!’”
“You clever old Codger! Rubbin’ him down with a wisp of straw, and ticklin’ him in all the right places.... But look here, you know!” objected Morty, with a darkening brow, “I don’t half cotton to all that patter about making a gentleman of a merchant’s son. Egad, sir, I’m dam’ if I do like it!”
He sat upon the knee-hole table and folded his arms upon his waistcoat, a garment of brown velvet embroidered with golden sprigs, worn in conjunction with a satin cravat of dazzling green, peppered with scarlet horseshoes and adorned with pins of Oriental pearl; and blew out his round cheeks quite in the paternal manner as he shook his bullet head.
“You mustn’t mind a bit of humble-pie, my boy!” pleaded Thompson Jowell, “seeing what a great thing is to be got by eating it, and looking as if you liked it. You don’t suppose I’m any fonder of the dish than you are—but it’s for my son’s sake; and so, down it goes! These stately swells will have you flatter ’em, stiff-necked, and fawn upon ’em, and lick their boots for ’em. They were born to have men cringe to ’em, and by Gosh, sir! can you stand upright and milk a cow at the same time? You can’t, and you know it!—so you squat and whistle to her, and down comes the milk between your fingers, squish!”
“I ain’t a dairymaid,” asserted Morty sulkily.
“Not you!” said Thompson Jowell, beaming on him fondly. “And when your old Governor’s willing to do the dirty work, why should you soil your hands?” His thick voice shook, and the tears stood in his goggle-eyes. “I’d lie down in the gutter so that those polished Wellingtons I spoke of just now should walk upon me dryshod—by Gosh, I would!” said Thompson Jowell—“if only I might get up again with golden mud upon me, to be scraped off and put away for you! Look here! You told your swell friend, Lord ’Dolph, your Governor was a generous bleeder. Well, so I am! I’ll fill your pail to-day.”
He whipped out his check-book, large and bulky like himself, and—Morty having condescendingly removed himselffrom the blotter—drew what that scion of his race was moved to term “a whacker” of a check. And sent him away gorged with that golden mud to which he had referred, and correspondingly happy; so that he passed through the larger, outer office, where seven pallid clerks were hard at work under the direction of a gray-faced elderly man who inhabited a little ground-glass-paneled sentry-box opening out of their place of bondage, with “Manager” in blistered letters of black paint upon the door,—like a boisterous wind tinged with stables, cigars, and mixed perfumery, and shed some drops of his shining store on them in passing.
“Look here, you chaps! See what the Old Man’s stood me!” Morty flourished the pink oblong, bearing the magic name of Coutts’. Six of the seven pairs of eyes ravished from ledgers and correspondence, flared with desperate longing and sickened with impotent desire. Standish still kept his sea-green face downbent. And the gray Manager, peeping out of his glass case, congratulated as in duty bound.
“You’re in luck again,Mr.Mortimer!... May I hope we see you well, sir?”
“First rate, Chobley! Topping condition!” Morty stuffed the check with lordly carelessness into a pocket in the gold-sprigged velvet vest, withdrawing a little ball of crackly white paper, which he jovially displayed between a finger and thumb attired in lemon kid.
“Twig this, hey? Well, it shall mean a dinner at the Albion in Drury Lane for the lot of you ... and an evenin’ at the Play—if you ain’t too proud for the Pit? Leave your wives at home!” the young reprobate advised, with a wink; “you’re all too much married by a lot, hey, Chobley? And half-a-bottle of fizz apiece it ought to stand you in.... And see that beggar Standish drinks his share!... Catch!... Gaw!—what a butter-fingered beggar you are, Standish!”.... The paper insult, flipped at ghastly Standish’s lowered nose, smartly hit that feature, and rebounded into a letter-basket as Morty blustered out. The clerks looked at each other as the swing-doors banged and gibbered behind the young autocrat. They heard him hail Lord ’Dolph, heard the trampling and slipping of the tandem-horses’ hoofs upon the uneven pavement; heard Morty cheerfully curse the groom,—heard, too, the final“Gaw!” with which the heir of the house of Jowell clinched the news of his good luck with his Governor; the hiss and smack of the tandem-whip, and the departing clatter of the tilbury westwards, to those regions where golden-haired sirens smile upon young men with monkeys in their pockets; and white-bosomed waiters dance attendance on their pleasure in halls of dazzling light.
Then said the gray-faced Manager, breaking the silence:
“I suppose, gentlemen, we had better do asMr.Mortimer so kindly suggested? I presume that no one here is averse to theatrical exhibitions, or objects to a good dinner, washed down with the half-bottle of champagne the young gentleman liberally mentioned?”
“I prefer port!” said the hitherto silent Standish, in so strange a voice it seemed as though another man had spoken.
“Do you, egad?” said a fellow-clerk sniggeringly. “Perhaps you’ll tell us why?”
“Because it is the color of blood,” the pale drudge answered. He dipped his pen in the red ink as he spoke, and dived into his ledger again, and the face he bent over the closely-figured pages was yellow and sharp as a wedge of cheese.
Chobley, the Manager, had looked sharply at Standish when he had given voice to that strange reason for preferring the thick red wine. He had respectfully smoothed out the crumpled five-pound note, and folded it into a broad flat spill, and he scraped the pepper-and-salt bristles of his chin with it thoughtfully as he took his eyes away from the downcast, brooding face; and very shortly afterwards took himself, upon a sufficient business-excuse, into Thompson Jowell’s room. And next morning Standish did not appear at the office in The Poultry, and thenceforwards the place upon the short-legged, horsehair-covered stool that had been his was occupied by another white-gilled toiler; and his frayed and ragged old black office coat vanished for good from its hook behind the door.