A Rich Man's Relatives (Vol. 3 of 3)

by Robert Cleland

CHAPTER VIII.

[IT WAS ALL WEBB'S FAULT].

It was a day or two before Ralph's nerves recovered their tone. It mortified him to discover that such things formed part of his internal economy, for he had supposed himself to resemble the strong and successful men of history and finance, who march straight forward to their purpose, looking neither behind nor to either side, careless alike of the downtrodden and the overthrown who mark their onward path, conquering and to conquer. It was a day or two before he calmed down, or, as his wife expressed it, "got over that little turn, which, now it was over, she was free to confess, had made her feel real anxious." The cares of business had been too much, she thought, and she was sure he wanted a change. "Why would he not take her for a few weeks to the sea; or to the White Mountains she was so fond of? Why keep a dog and be always barking himself? Had he not made Gerald a partner? Then why not leave him in charge of the business? She was sure her boy, with his inherited smartness and fine education, could manage very well for a week or two; and at the worst there was always the telegraph, and he could recall his father if he found the responsibility too much for him. Is he not a fine young man, Ralph? Own up for once, though he is your own son."

"Yes, my dear, certainly!--Very fine indeed, and very nice--and a good lad to boot; but he knows no more of my business than you do, and I do not wish that he ever should."

Martha sighed. She had her misgivings that there were depths and recesses in her husband's thoughts and his affairs, which she had never sounded or peered into, and which might yield up skeletons and unwelcome truths to an over-inquisitive search. She had never attempted to know more than was disclosed, therein manifesting her wisdom. "Why should she, indeed?" as she asked herself. Ralph had always been kind; once upon a time, at least, he had been more, he had been really fond of her; and, for herself, she knew that she still loved him very dearly, and therefore it was wisdom to keep disturbing considerations out of sight. It is so always. There is much in life to make the moral perceptions jar. Good and evil are linked in such close relations--concurrent streams which occupy one channel amicably, and with mutual convenience, but without mingling--the wheat and tares growing up together, and both contributing to the luxuriance of the scene, however the strictly moral eye may disapprove. Still, Martha had her misgivings; or rather, if she would have heeded them, her intuitions. They started from the most trivial grounds, an inadvertent phrase, a laugh, or even a shrug of scorn, at something good or noble, which betrayed that there were things, and not so far either from the gates of speech, which, if they came forth, would raise a barrier between them which could never be pulled down; and so, as the guardian of her own happiness and peace, she resolutely turned her observation the other way, rather than see what it would cost her far too dear to know, as leading to an alienation worse than widowhood; for there could be mingled with it no tender regret, no hope, or even wish for reunion.

"Then is Gerald to have no holidays this year?" said Martha, by way of resuming the talk. "If you will not go away yourself you may surely send him."

"I don't think he wants to travel farther

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[Pages 86-87 missing.]

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was finished. No, sir-ree! Not if I know it."

"But, my dear fellow, I really do not know whom you are talking about. I assure you. I have not seen or heard of him since the other evening when we called on him together."

"Who has seen him since then, I should like to know? But it is clear you know well enough what I'm driving at. Now, tell me, for we have little time to act in, have you taken any steps towards getting hold of his papers yet?"

"What steps would you wish me to take? or rather, what steps would be possible? Podevin--his host, remember, and the man has no one belonging to him, or more nearly interested in him, in this country--thinks he must have gone to New York by the early train the other morning; that he went straight from his room to the station without going into the hotel. You see the train stops for breakfast at that small station, fifty miles down the line. So he is no way disturbed at his guest's absence, who has taken his room for the season, and goes and comes as he likes."

"But the man is drowned! I saw him sink with my own eyes."

"If you will report that to the authorities, it will both simplify and hasten matters. Only the first question which they will ask is sure to be why you waited so many days before saying a word. The heat, no doubt, may be made to account for a good deal, but you had better have medical advice before committing yourself."

"But there is the boat. He undressed in the boat. That will tell the whole story. One of Podevin's boats, too."

"Ha! Yes; I think I remember, now you mention it, Randolph's telling us at dinner, yesterday, that Podevin's boat-house had been broken open and a boat carried off--yes, and the boat was picked up far down the river, and brought back all safe. And the old man has been fretting himself to make out which of his servants could have given it, for he is sure the boat-house has been opened from the inside. Not a word about clothes, though, and you see there is no anxiety whatever about his disappearance. We must wait. The body may be found."

"But I am going off--off to the White Mountains with my wife, for the rest of the warm weather, and there is no saying when I shall get back."

"No; I suppose not."

"And I want to take those securities, or whatever they are--you don't seem to know yourself? a pretty trustee!--along with me. Can I depend on you to send them after me?"

"You should know. Would you do it yourself?" and Jordan, braced into self-assertion by the overbearing tone of the other, looked defiantly in his face. "In a year and ten months from now your son will have a right to dictate, if, as Considine phrased it the other evening, he shall then prove to be the heir. In the meantime, I am accountable only to my fellow-trustee, and if he does not call me to account I know of no one else in the position to do so. At the same time, your assistance in unloading my copper shares might be of vast benefit to me, and I am willing to pay for that, and pay handsomely, though it is idle to discuss at present what I may see my way to doing if ever I become sole trustee."

Ralph turned away with a shrug to buy his morning newspaper. "Brag is a good dog, but Hold-fast is a better," was all he said to himself as he seated himself in the railway carriage, and began to look over the news. It was a truism he had long been familiar with, but one which came pleasanter when he happened to own Hold-fast, instead of poor Brag. However, one must fight the dog he happens to have, there are chances, always, only one need not lament when what might have been expected comes to pass. It did seem to him, however, that he had very needlessly befouled himself with crime; he was going to make nothing out of it, that was pretty clear, and, as he cynically expressed it, the devil was picking him up a bargain, dirt cheap. His hide, however--his moral hide, that is--was tough and callous, and he congratulated himself on the circumstance. So long as the "untoward incident" was not known, it should not interfere with his appetite or his spirits. Already he had become accustomed to that ugly word "murderer" in his mind; it was bearable he found, so long as it carried no external mark; though he regretted it, undoubtedly, now that it had turned out so utterly useless. As there was every prospect of its never being known, he would survive it well enough, he felt; but he would take precious good care next time that there should be no mistake about the quid pro quo, before again running the risk of so many ugly possibilities.

He reached town busied with these reflections, and hurried to his office, where he soon was deep in the correspondence of the days he had been absent, with Stinson behind his chair contributing condensed verbal information by way of commentary as he went along.

"Yes, Stinson, you'll do," he said, when he had laid down the last letter. "You've been a good clerk, and an apt pupil. You have feathered your nest nicely, I make no doubt, and when the house goes up, as it must, in three weeks at the outside--I think I can keep it standing till then--you will be in a good position, no one better, to start for yourself; and, with what I have taught you, to make your fortune right off. You will be able to start at once, I say, but if you take the advice of an old friend--who has not been a bad friend to you either, though I say it--you will wait on here and wind up the business. The creditors will be only too glad to have you. In fact, there is no one else who ever will unravel things. You will, and can, make your own terms with them, I doubt not; and the only favour I have to ask of you is that you will do what you can to let that boy Gerald down easy, and get him his discharge as soon as possible. It is well for him now, that he should have been so unfit for business--financial business, I mean, or rather, perhaps, our special application of the science of finance. He would have done well in some steady, old-fashioned, respectable concern, I make no doubt, for he is not a fool; but he wants enterprise, vim, go, and he has too many scruples for a rising man. His mother, good woman, has spoiled his prospects for life in this walk; but, as he will probably be independent, perhaps it is best so. There's nothing like high-souled honour to keep a man's head up in the world--when he can afford it, that is--I never could, not till after my road was chosen, at least, when it would have been too late; so broad views in economics and morals were the only ones for me, and I fancy some of my admirers will find them to have been even broader than they thought, after I have cleared out, and they find their money scattered past picking up again. But this is digression, Stinson; never mind me, only keep the boy's name clean. It would break his spirit and kill his mother--the truest woman alive--if any reproach fell on him. Fling everything on me, I shall have so much to carry that a trifle more or less will make no matter. And, after all, when Pikes Peak and Montana comes up to par, I shall be back again with a pocketful of money big enough to make them all keep quiet. If anybody strong enough to carry on a lawsuit for years has a colourable claim, I can settle with him out of court; and as for the small fry, I shall snap my fingers at them, and they will think me a finer fellow than ever for being able to over-ride them. They're like dogs, they reverence the man who can hide them soundly. But I talk discursively this morning. Eh, Stinson? I hope you will impress upon the lad, what, indeed, is the fact, and what the books of the firm show conclusively, and that is, that the firm is solvent--almost, that is; ninety-eight cents to the dollar they show, and there would be a surplus, if the firm's funds had not been diverted to my private operations, with which he has no concern, and which it would be casting a reflection on me for him now to touch. There is the Bank, the Copper Company, and the St. Lawrence and Hudson's Bay, in which he has absolutely no interest whatever. If the creditors of these come to him with representations, and claims of honour--I know how they will put it--asking him to promise a payment out of my uncle's fortune when he gets it, tell him from me, that I expect him as a good son to close his ears to every slanderous story, and to have nothing to do with those who tell it, and never to admit the possibility of such claims having a foundation, by attempting to settle them. It will not surprise me much if that inheritance of his turns out to be no great thing after all. It has not been in the most judicious keeping, and----But see, who is that at the door. Tell him, whoever he is, I am engaged, and can't see him. There are several drawers full of papers in the safe--the accumulation of years--I shall need your memory to help me, perhaps. We will tackle them to-day in case of accidents."

"Engaged most particularly," cried Stinson, unbolting the door and holding it ajar. "Can see nobody, Mr. Jordan. Indeed, sir--you cannot come in--no, indeed!"

"Stand back, you fool. Don't I tell you I must?" and Jordan, looking red and white in patches, hot and cold at once, his hat on his head askew, and his waistcoat torn open, struggled in, pushing Stinson aside, closing the door again, and locking it himself.

"See here! Herkimer. Have you been served with this?--I have got one as solicitor, but you as president should be served also, and so should each individual director, I hold, and I mean to push the point as to their being served individually; but there can be no question about the necessity of serving the president."

"What is it? Let me see. Hm! Webb v. St. Euphrase Mining Association. Motion to show cause--pay dividend. Don't know, I'm sure. It may be in the outer office. Have been busy this morning--let nobody in but you--and that was only because Stinson failed to keep you out. Ask in the office as you go out, they will tell you--if you think it of consequence."

"Consequence? If they have not served you I can certainly get the hearing postponed, and secure time to unload."

"Time to unload? Who wants to unload? I don't. I unloaded long ago."

"But I do."

"And pray, Mr. Jordan, what of that? You are not a director of this company--only the solicitor, its paid professional adviser. Send in your bill, it will be filed with the rest of the claims, and rank as the law prescribes when we go into liquidation."

"Good God! Ralph. It will ruin me!" Jordan had grown all white now, and beads of moisture were standing on his forehead. "We must stave off this argument in court. The shares will be unsaleable at a cent in the dollar. As it is, my brokers have been able to get off none for three days back--some inkling of this, no doubt. But if I can stave off the argument in court for a fortnight, there will be time for us to circulate encouraging rumours."

"Us? What have I to do with it? I will have no hand in circulating false reports. Understand that clearly, Mr. Jordan. I wonder what I can have done"--turning to Stinson, who stood by the door enjoying the comedy--"to give any one the right to approach me with such a proposal," and he blew his nose loudly, grinning the while under cover of his pocket-handkerchief.

"Do you want to ruin me, Herkimer? I have all the shares I ever took up still on my hands, not only those I subscribed for, but all Rouget's, and I was to have given him up his mortgage in payment of them; but I had already realized that, and bought more of your infernal shares with the money; and now, the fat's in the fire! If I can't unload I am a ruined and a dishonoured man. Everything I have will go, and then the Law Society will come down on me for irregularities, when I have lost the ability to square the benchers, and I shall be disbarred. Ralph!" and he clasped his hands, "I shall be ruined if you do not help me at this pinch. You must!"

"I don't seem to see it. I fear it is impossible. Unfortunate, of course; but just what happens constantly, when a man leaves the groove of his own profession, and ventures into fields of enterprise he does not understand, and has no experience in. You lawyers are so very superior to the rest of us. You go into court and talk so glibly of our affairs, and so much more knowingly than we can do ourselves, that by-and-by you persuade yourselves that you really understand them. Then you try a hand at them yourselves, and then you cut your fingers. It is droll, my dear fellow. Forgive my saying so, but as a man of the world you must see it yourself; and if only it had been some one else you would have appreciated the humour of the situation thoroughly."

"Keep your jesting, Mr. Herkimer, for a more seemly opportunity," cried Jordan, rallying into something like manhood under the sting of the other's gibes. "It will prove no very amusing jest for yourself if I am ruined. Your son's inheritance is involved with my fortune, and both must sink or swim together. Remember that! I have something in my power, too, so beware!"

"I know. You seem to have forgotten our conversation this morning very quickly. You then defined your position with a frankness which left nothing more to say. You made it perfectly clear that you would never leave hold on my uncle's fortune till we compelled you, and we cannot do that at present. If you saved your money at the present pinch, you would lose it again next opportunity; or, at least, you would make sure that we should not get at it. No! Mr. Jordan. I shall put in no rejoinder, or whatever may be the proper name for it. Mr. Webb may have his order, and welcome, for any obstruction from me. In fact, as I am taking my wife on a tour through the White Mountains, it would be inconvenient for me to be detained watching a lawsuit. If I might suggest, change of scene will be beneficial to your own health, as a relief from the worries of share-jobbing. Meanwhile, let me wish you good-bye. No saying how long it may be before we meet again. Stinson! Let's get on with those papers. I think I may be able to get away to the White Mountains to-morrow."

The very next morning Martha, escorted by Ralph, set out on a journey of pleasure through the White Mountains; and a day or two later, Amelia Jordan, tantalized out of patience by her husband's continued procrastination as to their summer holiday, went off to Long Branch alone, and it was not many days later that Jordan himself did not appear at his office, though where he had gone nobody knew. Some said he had followed his wife to the fashionable seaside resort, others, that he had joined Herkimer in his travels. The latter view became the popular one; it kept the two names conjoined, which seemed best, they came up together so often now in the talk on 'Change; for the great house in the Rue des Borgnes--Ralph Herkimer & Son--had come down, and great was the fall of it, the Banque Sangsue Prêteuse was involved in the ruin, so was the Mining Association of St. Euphrase, and so were other important concerns. They had all tumbled together in one confusion of ruin which set the ears of the public ringing, and filled their eyes with so much dust that they could see nothing clearly; but Jordan having been heard to anathematize "that fellow Webb," it was universally held during the worst days of the excitement that he had originated or precipitated the calamity for his own base ends. In truth, Webb was one of the severest sufferers, his fellow-directors having taken the hint to save themselves in time, and even to make money out of it; while he, good man, found all his savings and all his ready money evaporated in smoke or converted into scrip fit for nothing but pipe-lights, with impending possibilities of litigation, should any victimized shareholder be tempted to throw good money after bad and relieve his indignation with a lawsuit. But then he had the high moral satisfaction of having vindicated his superior probity in his own eyes--the world's, I fear, were so busy with its own affairs that they took no heed. He lay down at night with an easy conscience and a light pocket, if sometimes a heavy heart, for it must be confessed that his neighbours' non-appreciation of his virtuous conduct was afflicting. But he was young still, and strong, and sanguine, and his farm and stock were fairly good. He would make money yet, he vowed, if only Providence would spare him in the land of the living; and that--money-making, I mean--is, as all the world knows, the whole duty of man.

Webb realized, however, that he must now have a woman in his household, to help him to make it quickly; not a hireling, as heretofore, in his days of bachelorhood and prosperity, to be courted and considered at every turn, lest she should go off and leave him, but a lawful wife; tied to his homestead by the institutions of God and man, to churn his butter, fatten his poultry, and look after his comfort; and do it, too, for life, without other wage than her keep, and the dignity of being a married woman.

He had had dreams, like other young men, of a being with golden hair and wonderful eyes, a human bird of paradise, for whom he was to build a delightful bower, and live happy with her in it for ever after; but the day for fantastic dreaming was gone by; birds of paradise are expensive, and he had no money. He must content himself with less, with a serviceable work-a-day barn-door fowl, content to roost anywhere, and for whom a nest of wholesome straw would be as meet as a gilded aviary for the other--and such a one rose before his mind's eye in the person of Betsey Bunce. "A homely girl," as he told himself, "but active and handy, able to bake and mend, and willing to do it"--for him at least, he flattered himself. She was "awful homely," he confessed as he mused; "and a fool about her clothes, but if he looked after the spendings, as he 'allowed' to do, he would have her dressed sensibly enough, he flattered himself, so soon as her wedding finery wore out."

He did not feel as if he could ever come to be foolishly fond of her, but he thought he had descried tokens that she was not indisposed to attach herself to him. So there would be a certain modicum of love to furnish out their board, and if it was not he who provided it, at least he would be its object, which was the next best thing, and as much, perhaps, as a man could look for, after losing his money. Wherefore he made up his mind, and the very next Sunday after church he put his resolve in practice.