Volume Two—Chapter Four.
Mr Saxby has Aspirations.
A couple of months had passed.
“Mr Saxby wants to speak to you, ma’am,” said Fanny; and Aunt Sophia jumped up in a pet. “What does he want now? This is four times he has been down this month. Where is he?”
“In the study, ma’am. He wouldn’t come in here.”
Aunt Sophia entered the study to find quite a strong odour in the room. It was something between lemon-scented verbena and magnolia; and as soon as she noticed it, she began to sniff, with the result that the busy City man, so strong in his office, so weak outside, began to turn red.
“Well, Mr Saxby,” said Aunt Sophia, “have you sold those consols for me?”
“Yes, ma’am, as you insisted; but you’ll excuse me, I’m sure, when I tell you that—”
“There, there, there, man! I know what you are going to say; but it is my own money, and I shall do with it what I please, and—” Sniff, sniff, sniff. “Whatever is it smells so strong?”
“Strong, ma’am, strong?” said Mr Saxby, wiping his brow, for Aunt Sophia had a peculiar effect upon him, causing him to grow moist about the palms of his hands and dew to form upon his temples.
“Why, it’s that handkerchief, man: and you’ve been putting scent upon your hair!”
“Well, a little, ma’am, just a little,” said Saxby, with a smile that was more indicative of feebleness than strength. “I was coming into the country, you see, and, ahem!—sweets to the sweet.”
“Stuff!—How about that money.”
“There’s the cheque, ma’am,” said Mr Saxby, taking out his pocket-book; “but I give it to you with regret; and—let me beg of you, my dear madam, to be guided by me.”
“That will do, Saxby. I know what I am about; and now, I suppose, you have some eligible investment to propose?”
“Well, no, my dear madam; no. Things are very quiet. Money’s cheap as dirt.”
“May I ask, then, why you have come down?”
“The—er—the cheque, my dear madam.”
“Might very well have come by post, Mr Saxby.”
“Yes, but I was anxious to see and hear about how poor Sir James is getting on; to say a few words of condolence to Lady Scarlett. I esteem them both very highly, Miss Raleigh; I do indeed.”
“Dear me! Ah!” said Aunt Sophia; “and—Shall I finish for you, Saxby?”
“Finish for me, my dear madam? I do not understand.”
“Then I will, Saxby: you thought that if you came down and brought the cheque, you might perhaps see my niece.”
“My dear madam! My dear Miss Raleigh! Really, my dear madam!”
“Don’t be a sham, Saxby. Own it like a man.”
Mr Saxby looked helplessly round the room, as if in search of help, even of an open door through which he could escape; but there was none; and whenever he looked straight before him, there was the unrelenting eye of the elderly maiden lady fixed upon him, and seeming to read him through and through. He wished that he had not come; he wished that he could bring his office effrontery down with him; he wished that he could make Aunt Sophia quail, as he could his clerks; but all in vain. Aunt Sophia, to use her own words, could turn him round her finger when she had him there, and at last he gasped out:
“Well, there, I’ll be honest about it—I did.”
“I didn’t need telling,” said Aunt Sophia. “I believe, Saxby, I could even tell you what you are thinking now.”
“Oh nonsense, ma’am—nonsense!”
“Oh yes, I could,” said Aunt Sophia sharply. “You were thinking that I was a wretched old griffin, and you wished I was dead.”
“Wrong!” cried Saxby triumphantly, and speaking more like himself. “I’ll own to the griffin; but hang me if I will to the wishing you dead!”
“Why, you know you think she’ll have my money, Saxby.”
“Hang your money, ma’am!” cried the stockbroker sharply. “I’ve got plenty of my own, and can make more; and as to yours—why, if it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t have a penny. It would be all gone in some swindling company. I—I beg your pardon, Miss Raleigh; I—ah—really—ah—I’m afraid I rather forgot myself—I—”
“You’re quite right, Saxby, quite right,” said Aunt Sophia quietly. “I’m afraid I am a very stupid, sanguine old woman over money matters, and you have saved me several times. But now about Naomi. Whatever is it you want?”
“What do I want?” said Saxby.
“Yes. Why do you come hanging about here like this? Do you want to marry the girl?”
“Well—er—yes, my dear madam; to be candid, that is what I thought. For ever since the day when I first set—”
“Thank you: that will do, Saxby. Rhapsodies do sound such silly stuff to people at my age. Really, if you talk like that, I shall feel as if it would be madness to come to consult you again on business.”
“But really, my dear madam—”
“Yes,” said Aunt Sophia, interrupting; “I know. Well, then, we’ll grant that you like her.”
“Like her, madam? I worship her?”
“No: don’t, my good man. Let’s be sensible, if we can. My niece Naomi is a very nice, amiable, good girl.”
“She’s an angel, ma’am!”
“No; she is not,” said Aunt Sophia stiffly; “and so the man who marries her will find. She’s only a nice English girl, and I don’t want her feelings hurt by any one.”
“Miss Raleigh, it would be my study to spare her feelings in every way.”
“If you had the opportunity, my good man. As it happens, I must speak plainly to you, and tell you that I am afraid she has formed an attachment to Mr Prayle.”
“To him!” groaned Saxby.
“Now, look here, Mr Saxby; if you are going to act sensibly, I’ll talk to you; if you are going on like that, I’ve done. This is not part of a play.”
“Yes, ma’am, it is,” said Saxby dolefully; “the tragedy of my life.”
“Now, don’t be a goose, Saxby. If the girl likes somebody else better than you, don’t go making yourself miserable about it. Have some common-sense.”
Saxby shook his head.
“There’s no common-sense in love.”
Aunt Sophia looked at him in a half-pitying, half-contemptuous manner. “It isn’t very deep, is it?” she said good-humouredly.
“I don’t know,” he said; “only, that somehow she’s seemed to me to be like the flowers; and when I’ve gone to my office every morning, I’ve bought a rose or something of that kind, and put it in water, and it’s been company to me, as if she were there all the time. And now, after what you’ve told me, ma’am, I don’t think I shall ever buy a rose again.” He got up, walked to the window and looked out, so that Aunt Sophia should not see his face.
“Poor fellow!” she said softly to herself, and it was evident that her sympathies were touched.
“Mr Prayle has not spoken to Naomi yet,” she said, and there was a smile in her eye as she saw the sudden start that Saxby gave, and the look of hope that came back into his countenance as he turned round and faced her.
“Does he—does he—care for her very much?” said Saxby.
Aunt Sophia hesitated for a few moments, and then seemed to make up her mind. “I don’t know,” she said; “but I’ll speak plainly to you, Saxby, for I like you.”
“You—Miss Raleigh!—you—like—me?”
“Yes. Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because—because—”
“Yes; I know. Because you opposed me sometimes. Well, a woman likes to be opposed. Some stupid people say that a woman likes to have her own way in everything. It isn’t true. She likes to find some one who will and who does master her. It’s her nature, Saxby, and whenever you find anyone who asserts the contrary, set him or her down as ignorant or an impostor.”
“But don’t raise my hopes, Miss Raleigh, don’t, pray, if there’s no chance for me.”
“I’m not going to raise your hopes—not much. I shall only say to you, that I am sorry about my niece’s leanings, and that, perhaps, after all, it is but a girlish fancy. If I were a man—”
“Yes, Miss Raleigh, if you were a man?”
“And cared for a woman, I should never give her up till I saw that my case was quite hopeless.”
“Miss Raleigh,” cried the stockbroker excitedly, “your words are like fresh air in a hot office. One thinks more clearly; life seems better worth living for; and there’s a general rise of one’s natural stock all over a fellow’s market.—Might I kiss your hand?”
“No,” cried Aunt Sophia; “but you may behave sensibly. Stop down a day or two, and see how the land lies.”
“May I?”
“Yes; I’ll answer for your welcome.—And now, mind this: I’m not going to interfere with my niece and her likes and dislikes; but let me give you a bit of advice.”
“If you would!” exclaimed Saxby.
“Then don’t go about sighing like a bull-goose. Women don’t care for such weak silly creatures. Naomi’s naturally weak, and what she looks for in a man is strength both in brain and body.”
“Yes, I see,” said Saxby sadly. “I under stand stocks and shares, but I don’t understand women.”
“Of course you don’t. No man yet ever did; not even Solomon, with all his experience; and no man ever will.”
“But, I thought, Miss Raleigh—I hoped—”
“Well, what did you think and hope?”
“That you might help me—as an old and trustworthy friend—about Miss Naomi.”
“Why, bless the boy—man, I mean—if I were to tell Naomi to love you, or that she was to be your wife, she’d do as all girls do.”
“What’s that, Miss Raleigh?”
“What’s that? Why, go off at a tangent, whatever that may be, and marry Prayle at once.”
“Ah, yes, I suppose so,” faltered Saxby.
“Well, well, pluck up your spirits, man, and be what you are at your office. I do trust you Saxby; and to show you my confidence, I’ll tell you frankly that I should be deeply grieved if anything came of her leanings towards that smooth, good-looking fellow.—There, what stuff I am talking. You ought to be able to get on without advice from me.”
Then Aunt Sophia smiled and nodded her head at the stockbroker, after which she sailed out of the room, leaving him hopeful and ready to take heart of grace, even though just then he saw Arthur Prayle go by in company with the object of his aspirations. Certainly, though, Lady Scarlett, was with them; while directly after, Sir James Scarlett passed, hanging upon Scales’s arm; and the aspect of the baronet’s face startled Saxby, who was clever enough at reading countenances, possessing as he did all the shrewdness of the dealer in questions of the purse. For in that face he read, or fancied he read, hopeless misery, jealousy, and distrust mingled in one.
“Why,” exclaimed Saxby, as they passed out of sight beyond the bushes, “the poor fellow looks worse than ever; and—everything—is drifting into the hands of that Prayle. I hope he’s honest. Hang him! I hate him.
“Well, I must be civil to him while I’m here. But I’ll wager he hates me too; and knows that I have stood in his way just the same as he does in mine. No, not the same,” he added, as he opened the French window to go out on the lawn. “In my case it is a lady, in his money. Which of us will win?”