On the morning on which the great steamer glided within the tranquil waters of Long Island, Quackinboss appeared at Layton's berth, to announce the fact, as well as report progress with the stranger. “I was right, sir,” said he; “he's been and burnt his fingers on 'Change; that's the reason he's here. The crittur was in the share-market, and got his soup too hot! You Britishers seem to have the bright notion that, when you've been done at home, you 'll be quite sharp enough to do us here, and so, whenever you make a grand smash in Leadenhall Street, it's only coming over to Broadway! Well, now, sir, that's considerable of a mistake; we understand smashing too,—ay, and better than folk in the old country. Look you here, sir; if I mean to lose my ship on the banks, or in an ice-drift, or any other way, I don't go and have her built of strong oak plank and well-seasoned timber, copper-fastened, and the rest of it; but I run her up with light pine, and cheap fixin's everywhere. She not only goes to pieces the quicker, but there ain't none of her found to tell where it happened, and how. That's how it comes we founder, and there 's no noise made about it; while one of your chaps goes bumpin' on the rocks for weeks, with fellows up in the riggin', and life-boats takin' 'em off, and such-like, till the town talks of nothing else, and all the newspapers are filled with pathetic incidents, so that the very fellows that calked her seams or wove her canvas are held up to public reprobation. That's how you do it, sir, and that's where you 're wrong. When a man builds a cardhouse, he don't want iron fastenings. I've explained all to that crittur there, and he seems to take it in wonderful.” “Who is he—what is he?” asked Layton.
“His name's Trover; firm, Trover, Twist, and Co., Frankfort and Florence, bankers, general merchants, rag exporters, commission agents, doing a bit in the picture line and marble for the American market, and sole agents for the sale of Huxley's tonic balsam. That's how he is,” said the Colonel, reading the description from his note-book.
“I never heard of him before.”
“He knows you, though,—knew you the moment he came aboard; said you was tutor to a lord in Italy, and that he cashed you circular notes on Stanbridge and Sawley. These fellows forget nobody.”
“What does he know of the Heathcotes?”
“Pretty nigh everything. He knows that the old Baronet would be for makin' a fortune out of his ward's money, and has gone and lost a good slice of it, and that the widow has been doin' a bit of business in the share-market, in the same profitable fashion,—not but she's a rare wide-awake 'un, and sees into the 'exchanges' clear enough. As to the gal, he thinks she sold her—”
“Sold her! What do you mean?” cried Layton, in a voice of horror.
“Jest this, that one of those theatrical fellows as buys singing-people, and gets 'em taught,—it's all piping-bullfinch work with 'em,—has been and taken her away; most probably cheap, too, for Trover said she was n't nowise a rare article; she had a will of her own, and was as likely to say 'I won't,' as 'I will.'”
“Good heavens! And are things like this suffered,—are they endured in the age we live in?”
“Yes, sir. You've got all your British sympathies very full about negroes and 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' you 're wonderful strong about slavery and our tyrants down South, and you 've something like fifty thousand born ladies, called governesses, treated worse than housemaids, and some ten thousand others condemned to what I won't speak of, that they may amuse you in your theatres. I can tell you, sir, that the Legrees that walk St. James's Street and Piccadilly are jest as black-hearted as the fellows in Georgia or Alabama, though they carry gold-headed walking-sticks instead of cow-hides.”