A man made of money

by Douglas William Jerrold

“What does the boy mean?” cried Mrs. Jericho. “Seizin!”

“Quite right, my dear madam. Seizin’s the word. You’ve no notion of the amount of law I know. In another fortnight I’m called, and then—upon my life when I think of some people, they fire me with ambition. They do. I’ll get upon the bench, if it’s only to hang ’em.”

“Not you, my dear sir,” said Candituft—“you don’t know your own heart. We do.”

“I haven’t your charity; I wish I had: only a little—you’ve too much. You waste it. ’Pon my life, you are so good, you’d pour rose-water over a toad,” and Basil leered at the Man-Tamer. Then, stooping, Basil picked up an apple, and holding it between his finger and thumb, with ceremonious gravity addressed the ireful Man of Money.—“Permit me, sir, in this little apple to give you seizin of the land. And, sir, this little apple is wondrously appropriate to the interesting occasion. It is golden, and smiling, and like yourself.”

“Beautiful, Basil! and so true,” said Agatha.

“During your many visits, you were here when this apple was a blossom. No doubt of it, gorgeous sir, that when this apple was a pretty pink and white flower, you were here, rosy, and light, and glad; and looking full of pleasant promise to jolly old Carraways. Times are changed, sir; you’re very rich: the blossom’s grown into fruit. A flower you were, and”—and Basil threw the apple up, catching it—“and a golden pippin you are. Therefore, sir, take the apple as seizin; ’tis so like you. Oh, very like! See, a golden promise”—Basil bit the apple in half—“a sour and bitter inside; and to make the thing complete—look, sir—a maggot at the heart.” And Basil dropt the fruit with the sentence.

There was general consternation at the boldness, the wickedness (as Candituft whispered) of the simile. Mrs. Jericho, with all the fears of woman, moved between her husband and Basil. The young man bowed to his mother, turned upon his heel, and went his way. There was a dead pause. At length, Mr. Jericho solemnly proclaimed to his wife: “Mrs. Jericho, I will no longer encourage that viper. Either you give up your son, or give up me.” Mrs. Jericho made no answer; it was not a genial moment for reply. She silently placed her arm in Jericho’s, and led the way to the carriage. They would make a little circuit of the country, ere they returned to town.

A very few words will account for the sudden appearance of Basil in the apple-tree. Bob Topps, the old serving-man of Carraways—we may say old, for he had grown from mere childhood to the maturity of seven-and-twenty in the Squire’s house—had, within the past week, married Jenny White, honoured, it may be remembered, in a former page, by the praise of Sir Arthur Hodmadod. Mrs. Topps had removed with her husband to London, where Bob had started as an independent cabman, driving his own vehicle—certainly, the very neatest on the stand; for the which neatness there was this reason: the cab had been the property of Carraways: one of the chattels of the Hall, knocked down, dispersed by the hammer—at times more terrible, more crushing, more causeful of blood and tears than the hammer of Thor—the hammer of the broker. Topps with his savings bought the carriage. “It might fall into worse hands,” he said. “Now, he felt almost a love for it, for the sake of them as had ridden in it.” Again; he said “he shouldn’t like to go into any other service. A cabman’s life was, after all, an independent thing. He could sit upon his box, and—beholden to nobody—could see how the world wagged about him.” True it is that Mrs. Topps had a first objection to the brass badge, an objection that had more than its inherent force, for it was made in the honeymoon. Still, as it was the honeymoon, she the more readily smiled and, as Bob said, “listened to reason.” “I tell you what, Jenny,” said Bob, “the noblest sight on earth is a man talking reason, and his wife sitting at the fireside listening to him.” Everybody wore a badge of some sort, ran the philosophy of Bob. Brass or gold, the thing was the same, it was only the metal that was different. Whereupon Mrs. Topps was thoroughly convinced, and we verily believe was rather proud of her husband’s badge than otherwise.

A very natural incident had thrown Basil and Bob together. The night before, Basil had supped some three miles from his chambers. Bob by chance was hailed, and drove young Pennibacker to his student’s home. “What have I to pay?” asked Basil. “Why, sir,” said the neophyte, “I hope you won’t think eighteenpence too much.” “What!” cried Basil, in thrilling surprise. “Well, then, sir, say sixteenpence,” said the shrinking cabman. Basil, laying hold of the man’s collar and crying—“A vehicular phenomenon! I must have a portrait of you,” pulled him under a lamp; and thereupon took place what Basil called a tremendous recognition. In few words, Bob told of his marriage, and his prospects; and moreover, that he was going to Marigolds the next day. He was going to drive his wife there—he had borrowed a cab, and lent his own for the day; for he hoped he knew himself better than to take what had been Squire Carraways’ to the village. Miss Bessy wanted a few trifles that Jenny knew best about; and Jenny herself had not brought all her things from Marigolds: indeed, she seemed as if there would be no end to her moving; it seemed as if the things grew she had left behind her. In few words, Basil made an appointment with Bob for the journey. “I should like to see the Hall once more myself,” said Basil, “and I should like to go quietly; so I tell you what. I’ll take the cab for the day; and out of my abounding generosity shall be happy to present Mrs. Topps with a lift.” “You’re very kind, sir,” said Bob, delighted. “She can ride on the box close aside me.” And Basil came, a visitor to the Hall. When he learned that his family were there, in the idleness of his high spirits, he mounted a tree in the hope of a joke; and, such as the joke was in the apple-shower, he had it. Mrs. Topps very soon despatched her errand at the Hall, where poor Mrs. Blanket duly wept over her as “one she had nursed from a baby, and one who was going back, a wife, to London.”

Basil, we must observe, did not, as he had appointed, arrive at the village in the cab of Topps. In the morning he somehow thought horseback would be a more fitting, a more expeditious mode of transit. Mrs. Topps herself was very soon reconciled to the new arrangement. She could not but reflect that she would then have all the inside of the vehicle for a few of the things she had left behind. As the Jerichos drove through the village, they looked curiously at a London cab at a cottage-door, with baskets, and shrubs, and flowers in pots standing about it; and with “that young woman that wore the silver bee” kissing a score of children one after the other, duly setting aside every child when finished. It was, indeed, a very busy, a very exciting afternoon in Marigolds, when Mrs. Topps returned, just for an hour or two, from London. She brought an importance with her, that the people could not but feel, though they could not explain. She had seen all the sights of London; and she was stared at as though some of their glory hung still about her. There was Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s, the Queen’s Palace, the Waxwork, and all the playhouses in some odd way mixed up with Jenny Topps. (It would be hard for some of us to look at a man fresh from the Chinese court, and not think of long almond eyes, white clay faces, pigtails, and peacocks’ feathers.) Jenny had, from babyhood, been a favourite with all the village. She was so good-natured, so cheerful, and what was an especial virtue, in the words of a female eulogist, “she never seemed to think nothing of her good looks.” Clever Jenny! Twenty times had she been asked how she liked London, and how she liked her husband? Whether she was as happy as when at home—and whether—and here the querists hugely laughed—and whether she would not like to come back again. To all these inquiries Jenny with a sweet gravity—for they were grave questions to her—made due reply. “She had no notion, though she had been there twice before, that there had been such a place as London in this world; and she never thought anybody could be so happy as she was, out of London.” And then she dwelt upon a fear that did now and then possess her. It was, that her husband would some day quite lose himself—it was so hard for him in his business to learn the ways of town.