Volume One—Chapter Twenty Four.
Pressed for Money.
As a rule, a tailor is one who will give unlimited credit so long as his client is a man of society, with expectations, and the maker of garments can charge his own prices; but Stuart Denville, Esq, MC, of Saltinville, paid a visit to his tailor to find that gentleman inexorable.
“No, Mr Denville, sir, it ain’t to be done. I should be glad to fit out the young man, as he should be fitted out as a gentleman, sir; but there is bounds to everything.”
“Exactly, my dear Mr Ping, but I can assure you that before long both his and my accounts shall be paid.”
“No, sir, can’t do it. I’m very busy, too. Why not try Crowder and Son?”
“My dee-ar Mr Ping—you’ll pardon me? I ask you as a man, as an artist in your profession, could I see my son—my heir—a gentleman who I hope some day will make a brilliant match—a young man who is going at once into the best of society—could I now, Mr Ping, see that youth in a suit of clothes made by Crowder and Son? Refuse my appeal, if you please, my dear sir, but—you’ll pardon me—do not add insult to the injury.”
Mr Ping was mollified, and rubbed his hands softly. This was flattering: for Crowder and Son, according to his view of the case, did not deserve to be called tailors—certainly not gentlemen’s tailors; but he remained firm.
“No, Mr Denville, sir, far be it from me to wish to insult you, sir, and I thank you for the amount of custom you’ve brought me. You can’t say as I’m unfair.”
“You’ll pardon me, Mr Ping; I never did.”
“Thank you, sir; but as I was a saying, you’ve had clothes of me, sir, for years, and you haven’t paid me, sir, and I haven’t grumbled, seeing as you’ve introduced me clients, but I can’t start an account for Mr Denville, junior, sir, and I won’t.”
The MC took snuff, and rested first on one leg and then on the other; lastly, he held his head on one side and admired two or three velvet waistcoat pieces, so as to give Mr Ping time to repent. But Mr Ping did not want time to repent, and he would not have repented had the MC stayed an hour, and this the latter knew, but dared not resent, bowing himself out at last gracefully.
“Good-morning, Mr Ping, good-morning. I am sorry you—er—but no matter. Lovely day, is it not?”
“Lovely, sir. Good-morning—poor, penniless, proud, stuck-up, half-starved old dandy,” muttered the prosperous tradesman, as he stood in his shirt-sleeves at the door, his grey hair all brushed forward into a fierce frise, and a yellow inch tape round his neck like an alderman’s chain. “I wouldn’t trust his boy a sixpence to save his life. Prospects, indeed. Fashion, indeed. I expect he’ll have to ’list.”
The MC went smiling and mincing along the parade, waving his cane jauntily, and passing his snuff-box into the other hand now and then to raise his hat to some one or another, till he turned up a side street, when, in the solitude of the empty way, he uttered a low groan, and his face changed.
“My God!” he muttered. “How long is this miserable degradation to last?”
He looked round sharply, as if in dread lest the emotion into which he had been betrayed should have been observed, but there was no one near.
“I must try Barclay. I dare not go to Frank Burnett, for poor May’s sake.”
A few minutes later he minced and rolled up to a large, heavy-looking mansion in a back street, where, beneath a great dingy portico, a grotesque satyr’s head held a heavy knocker, and grinned at the visitor who made it sound upon the door.
“Hallo, Denville, you here?” said Mr Barclay, coming up from the street. “Didn’t expect to see you. I’ve got the key: come in.”
“A little bit of business, my dear sir. I thought I’d come on instead of writing. Thanks—you’ll pardon me—a pinch of snuff—the Prince’s own mixture.”
“Ah yes.” Snuff, snuff, snuff. “Don’t like it though—too scented for me. Come along.”
He led the way through a large, gloomy hall, well hung with large pictures and ornamented with pedestals and busts, up a broad, well-carpeted staircase and into the drawing-room of the house—a room, however, that looked more like a museum, so crowded was it with pictures, old china, clocks, statues, and bronzes. Huge vases, tiny Dresden ornaments, rich carpets, branches and lustres of cut-glass and ormolu, almost jostled each other, while the centre of the room was filled with lounges, chairs and tables, rich in buhl and marqueterie.
At a table covered with papers sat plump, pleasant-looking Mrs Barclay, in a very rich, stiff brocade silk. Her appearance was vulgar; there were too many rings upon her fat fingers, too much jewellery about her neck and throat; and her showy cap was a wonder of lace and ribbons; but Nature had set its stamp upon her countenance, and though she was holding her head on one side, pursing up her lips and frowning as she wrote in the big ledger-like book open before her, there was no mistaking the fact that she was a thoroughly good-hearted amiable soul.
“Oh, bless us, how you startled me!” she cried, throwing herself back, for the door had opened quietly, and steps were hardly heard upon the soft carpet. “Why, it’s you, Mr Denville, looking as if you were just going to a ball. How are you? Not well? You look amiss. And how’s Miss Claire? and pretty little Mrs Mayblossom—Mrs Burnett?”
“My daughters are well in the extreme, Mrs Barclay,” said the MC, taking the lady’s plump extended hand as she rose, to bend over it, and kiss the fingers with the most courtly grace. “And you, my dear madam, you?”
“Oh, she’s well enough, Denville,” said Barclay, chuckling. “Robust’s the word for her.”
“For shame, Jo-si-ah!” exclaimed the lady, reddening furiously. She had only blushed slightly before with pleasure; and after kicking back her stiff silk dress to make a profound curtsey. “You shouldn’t say such things. Why, Mr Denville, I haven’t seen you for ever so long; and I’ve meant to call on Miss Claire, for we always get on so well together; but I’m so busy, what with the servants, and the dusting, and the keeping the books, and the exercise as I’m obliged to take—”
“And don’t,” said Barclay, placing a chair for the MC, and then sitting down and putting his hands in his pockets.
“For shame, Jo-si-ah. I do indeed, Mr Denville, and it do make me so hot.”
“There, that’ll do, old lady. Mr Denville wants to see me on business. Don’t you, Denville?”
“Yes—on a trifle of business; but I know that Mrs Barclay is in your confidence. You’ll pardon me, Mrs Barclay?”
A looker-on would have imagined that he was about to dance a minuet with the lady, but he delicately took her fingers by the very tip and led her back to her seat, into which she meant to glide gracefully, but plumped down in a very feather-beddy way, and then blushed and frowned.
“Oh, Mr Denville won’t mind me; and him an old neighbour, too, as knows how I keep your books and everything. It isn’t as if he was one of your wicked bucks, and bloods, and macaronies as they calls ’em.”
“Now, when you’ve done talking, woman, perhaps you’ll let Denville speak.”
“Jo-si-ah!” exclaimed the lady, reddening, or to speak more correctly, growing more red, as she raised a large fan, which hung by a silken cord, and used it furiously.
“Now then, Denville, what is it?” said Barclay, throwing himself back in his chair, and looking the extreme of vulgarity beside the visitor’s refinement.
“You’ll pardon me, Mr Barclay?” said the MC, bowing. “Thanks. The fact is, my dear Barclay, the time has arrived when I must launch my son Morton upon the stream of the fashionable world.”
“Mean to marry him well?” said Barclay, smiling.
“Exactly. Yes. You’ll pardon me.”
He took snuff in a slow, deliberate, and studied mode that Mrs Barclay watched attentively, declaring afterwards that it was as good as a play, while her husband also took his pinch from his own box, but in a loud, rough, frill-browning way.
“I have high hopes and admirable prospects opening out before him, my dear Barclay. Fortune seems to have marked him for her own, and to have begun to smile.”
“Fickle jade, sir; fickle jade.”
“At times—you’ll pardon me. At times. Let us enjoy her smiles while we can. And now, my dear Barclay, that I wish to launch him handsomely and well—to add to his natural advantages the little touches of dress, a cane and snuff-box, and such trifles—I find, through the absence of so many fashionable visitors affecting my fees, I am troubled, inconvenienced for the want of a few guineas, and—er—it is very ridiculous—er—really I did not know whom to ask, till it occurred to me that you, my dear sir, would oblige me with, say, forty or fifty upon my note of hand.”
“Couldn’t do it, sir. Haven’t the money. Couldn’t.”
“Don’t talk such stuff, Jo-si-ah,” exclaimed Mrs Barclay, fanning herself sharply, and making a sausage-like curl wabble to and fro, and her ribbons flutter. “You can if you like.”
“Woman!” he exclaimed furiously.
“Oh, I don’t mind you saying ‘woman,’” retorted the lady. “Telling such wicked fibs, and to an old neighbour too. If it had been that nasty, sneering, snickle dandy, Sir Harry Payne, or that big, pompous, dressed-up Sir Matthew Bray, you’d have lent them money directly. I’m ashamed of you.”
“Will you allow me to carry on my business in my own way, madam?”
“Yes, when it’s with nobodies; but I won’t sit by and hear you tell our old neighbour, who wants a bit of help, that you couldn’t do it, and that you haven’t the money, when anybody can see it sticking out in lumps in both of your breeches’ pockets, if they like to look.”
“’Pon my soul, woman,” said Barclay, banging his fist down upon the table, “you’re enough to drive a man mad. Denville, that woman will ruin me.”
Mrs Barclay shut up her fan and sat back in her chair, and there was a curious kind of palpitating throbbing perceptible all over her that was almost startling at first till her face broke up in dimples, and the red lips parted, showing her white teeth, while her eyes half-closed. For Mrs Barclay was laughing heartily.
“Ruin him, Mr Denville, ruin him!” she cried. “Ha, ha, ha, and me knowing that—”
“Woman, will you hold your tongue?” thundered Barclay. “There, don’t take any notice of what I said, Denville. I’ve been put out this morning and money’s scarce. You owe me sixty now and interest, besides two years’ rent.”
“I do—I do, my dear sir; but really, my dear Barclay, I intend to repay you every guinea.”
“He’s going to lend it to you, Mr Denville,” said Mrs Barclay. “It’s only his way. He always tells people he hasn’t any money, and that he has to get it from his friend in the City.”
“Be quiet, woman,” said Barclay, smiling grimly. “There, I’ll let you have it, Denville. Make a memorandum of it, my gal. Let’s see: how much do you want? Twenty-five will do, I suppose?”
“My dear friend—you’ll pardon me—if you could make it fifty you would confer a lasting obligation upon me. I have great hopes, indeed.”
“Fifty? It’s a great deal of money, Denville.”
“Lend him the fifty, Josiah, and don’t make so much fuss about it,” said the lady, opening the ledger, after drawing her chair to the table, taking a dip of ink, and writing rapidly in a round, clear hand. “Got a stamp?”
“Yes,” said Barclay, taking a large well-worn pocket-book from his breast, and separating one from quite a quire. “Fill it up. Two months after date, Denville?”
“You’ll pardon me.”
“What’s the use of doing a neighbour a good turn,” said Mrs Barclay, filling up the slip of blue paper in the most business-like manner, “and spoiling it by being so tight. ‘Six months—after—date—interest—at—five—per—centum’—there.”
Mrs Barclay put her quill pen across her mouth, and, turning the bill stamp over, gave it a couple of vigorous rubs on the blotting-paper before handing it to her husband, who ran his eye over it quickly.
“Why, you’ve put five per cent, per annum,” he cried. “Here, fill up another. Five per cent.”
“Stuff!” said Mrs Barclay stoutly; “are you going to charge the poor man sixty per cent? I shan’t fill up another. Here, you sign this, Mr Denville. Give the poor man his money, Josiah.”
“Well,” exclaimed Barclay, taking a cash-box from a drawer and opening it with a good deal of noise, “if ever man was cursed with a tyrant for a wife—”
“It isn’t you. There!” cried Mrs Barclay, taking the bill which the visitor had duly signed, and placing it in a case along with some of its kin.
“There you are, Denville,” said Barclay, counting out the money in notes, “and if you go and tell people what a fool I am, I shall have to leave the town.”
“Not while I live, Mr Barclay,” said the MC, taking the notes carefully, but with an air of indolent carelessness and grace, as if they were of no account to such a man as he. “Sir, I thank you from my very heart. You have done me a most kindly action. Mrs Barclay, I thank you. My daughter shall thank you for this. You’ll pardon me. My visit is rather short. But business. Mr Barclay, good-day. I shall not forget this. Mrs Barclay, your humble servant.”
He took the hand she held out by the tips of the fingers, and bent over it to kiss them with the most delicate of touches; but somehow, just then there seemed to be a catch in his breath, and he pressed his lips firmly on the soft, fat hand.
“God bless you!” he said huskily, and he turned and left the room.
“Poor man!” said Mrs Barclay after a few moments’ pause, as she and her lord listened to the descending steps, and heard the front door close. “Why, look here, Josiah, at my hand, if it ain’t a tear.”
“Tchah! an old impostor and sham. Wipe it off, woman, wipe it off. Kissing your hand, too, like that, before my very face.”
“No, Jo-si-ah, I don’t believe he’s a bad one under all his sham and fuss. Folks don’t know folkses’ insides. They say you are about the hard-heartedest old money-lender that ever breathed, but they don’t know you as I do. There, it was very good of you to let him have it, poor old man. I knew you would.”
“I’ve thrown fifty pounds slap into the gutter.”
“No, you haven’t, dear; you’ve lent it to that poor old fellow, and you’ve just pleased me a deal better than if you’d given me a diamond ring, and that’s for it, and more to come.”
As she spoke she threw one plump arm round the money-lender’s neck, and there was a sound in the room as of a smack.