"No, Master Robert," said the old woman; "there's no letters, and there's nobody been but Miss Hester Gould, a-wantin' to know when Miss Ellen's comin' home."
[CHAPTER IV.]
MR. GUYON'S FRIEND.
The astonishment of Mr. Guyon at the liberal treatment which he had received at the hands of his new creditor was by no means feigned. That worthy gentleman, in the course of a long career of impecuniosity, had become acquainted with all the various plans of all the leading discounters of the city of London; knew what he called their "whole bag of tricks;" understood the different ways of getting time or obtaining renewal, according to the various idiosyncrasies of the holders of his stamped paper; and gave to the subject an amount of talent, industry, and attention which, otherwise employed, might have brought him in a very fair income. A very fair income was not a thing to be despised by a gentleman in Mr. Guyon's position, whose actually reliable income was represented by one figure, and that a round one. A sum of five thousand pounds indeed stood in the Consols in Edward Guyon's name; but on that pleasantly-sounding amount was laid a distringas, a horrible legal instrument preventing its withdrawal by the said Edward Guyon, while the annual interest, which would at least have kept him in cigars and gloves, found its way into the clutches of Messrs. Sharkey and Maw, attorneys-at-law, who had a few years previously advanced a sufficient sum to free Mr. Guyon from an unpleasant incarceration in the Queen's Bench, leaving him a few pounds over to convey himself to the Newmarket Spring Meeting, whither he proceeded immediately on his release. All that pleasant estate known as Bedingfield, in the county of Cheshire, with its three thousand acres of arable land, its salt- and coal-mines, its since-made railway bit, its punctually-paying tenant, and its various sources of revenue; which belonged to the Honourable Piers Rankley, and which every one thought he would bequeath to his cousin, Edward Guyon, had been left to a distant relative of Piers Rankley's childless dead wife, one Jacob Long, a member of the Plymouth Brethren, and originally a hide-dresser in Bermondsey, who under the influence of qualms of conscience agreed to allow his reprobate connection Edward Guyon a sum of a thousand a-year, "at his pleasure." It had been a matter of acute annoyance to Ned Guyon that he had no legal claim or hold on this allowance; so that it was impossible for him to mortgage or anticipate it in any way, save by a three months' acceptance for the amount of the quarterly instalment--less commission and discount--payable on the day that instalment was due; but in reality it enabled him to pay renewal fees, to have occasional ready-money for certain menus plaisirs of his own and little treats for Kate, and to give such an air of respectability as it possessed to that old house in Queen Anne Street, the lease of which, with its dingy furniture and ten pounds for a mourning ring, had been his sole legacy from Piers Rankley.
But no income, however fair, would have tempted Mr. Guyon to undertake any honest work, or, as he phrased it, any "d--d low ungentlemanlike slavery;" and the consequence was that, what with an accumulation of gambling-table (he was a member of the Nob and Heels Club, where they play whist for twenty-four hours at a sitting, pound points and a tenner on the rub) and turf debts, he was just at the time of his introduction into this story in a really desperate condition. It had been an unlucky season with him. His racing information had been bad throughout. Commencing ill last Chester, he had been hard hit at Epsom, had dropped more money at Ascot, and could only pull off a stake at the coming Doncaster by a most unlikely fluke. He had had frightful ill-luck at cards. Acknowledged to be one of the best whist-players of the day, he had scarcely held a trump since the winter, and had been beaten by the merest tyros. That very acceptance, which his new acquaintance Streightley held, had been given to Davidson for a card debt; and Guyon had forgotten all about it, having, contrary to his usual custom, omitted to enter it in his book. However, that was staved off for the present; and the few words which he had had with his daughter on the subject had opened a new well-spring of life in Mr. Guyon's breast. If what Kate surmised, or rather half hinted at, were true--and, with all her pride and wilfulness, she had wonderful common-sense and shrewdness--it might, with judicious management, be turned to wondrous advantage. It was but in embryo yet, to be sure; but, with Kate's beauty and his own tact, it could be brought off at any moment, and the value of it would be--well, he would see at once what the value of it would be by representing it as a certainty to his chief creditor and principal discount-agent, Mr. Daniel Thacker.
Who was Mr. Daniel Thacker? If you had been heir to an entailed estate, with as large a taste for pleasure and as limited resources as such heirs usually possess; if you had been an officer in either of the Guards regiments, or any of the crack corps; if you had been a member of any of the West-end government offices, with fast tendencies; or an author; or an actor frequenting fast society; or a theatrical manager; or a pretty coryphée fond of suppers and admiration,--you would not have had to ask the question; for without doubt you would have possessed Mr. Thacker's acquaintance. A man combining the sharpest practice (in a gentlemanly way) as a bill-discounter with the keenest pursuit of pleasure of a strong, full-flavoured, not to say of a gross kind, was Mr. Thacker. A man who made cent per cent of his money by judicious investment, and who at the same time "parted" freely; living in capital chambers in St. James's Street, keeping horses and carriages, entertaining frequently and well, having an Opera-stall for himself and frequently an Opera-box for a female friend, visiting the theatres, riding to hounds, and carrying out every thing he attempted in very excellent style. Life seemed a broad and pleasantly-turfed path for Mr. Daniel Thacker, down which he could stroll in his easy polished boots without the smallest stumbling-block to cause him annoyance. But there was one thing which wrung and chafed him, which he could never shut out from his happiest hour, which proclaimed itself whenever he looked in the glass (which was not seldom), which lay like a hideous pitfall for Mr. Thacker's friends, into which they were perpetually tumbling and coming out covered with inarticulate excuses, which pointed the sarcasm of little boys in the streets at first overwhelmed by his splendour, and edged the repartee of insolent cabmen, to whom he called to clear the way for his high-stepping steeds,--a fact which nothing could hide, a brand which no money could obliterate;--Mr. Daniel Thacker was an unmistakable Jew. Unmistakable! as unmistakable as if he had retained his old family name of Hart; as if he had remained in his old family neighbourhood of St. Mary Axe; as if he had continued his old family occupation of contracting with the government for the supply of rum and lemons for the navy, and uniforms for the postmen. In that choice neighbourhood, and out of those apparently not very meaty contracts, had old Simeon Hart, Daniel's uncle, made all the wealth which he bequeathed to his nephew; and when, long before the old gentleman's decease, the young man's aspirations led him to declare to his senior that he thought the Hebraic name stood in their way in certain matters of business, and that he had some idea of taking some less-recognisable cognomen,--the old gentleman remarked, not without a touch of sarcasm in his voice, "Do ath you like, Daniel, ma tear; do ath you like. You're a threwd lad, and are thure to turn out right; but underthand one thing, ma tear,--you may change your name if you like, but you'll never be able to change your nothe." Mr. Simeon Hart was right; nothing short of cutting off that feature could have disguised Mr. Daniel Thacker's nationality. He was as distinctly marked as is the African; and though, with the addition of splendid sparkling black eyes, bright scarlet lips, a quantity of tightly-curling hair, and a fine flowing beard, he passed for a handsome man among certain of the other sex, there was no man to whom he had ever rendered a service--and he was in the main a kindly-disposed fellow so far as his profession permitted--but set him down for a "d--d Jew."
He never forgot this, it was never absent from his thoughts. If he saw any one regarding him attentively, he felt at once what they were thinking about; it haunted him in the theatre, in society, wherever there was a chance of casual mention of his forsworn race. He had tried to laugh it over in his business discount-dealings with money-borrowers, asking them in a light and airy manner "why they came to the Jews," of whom they must have had such serious warnings: but the raillery always fell flat and heavy; and sometimes, from cubs of fashion, produced unintentional clumsy sarcasms which stung him to the quick. The renegade paid the penalty of his cowardice. With the blunted notions of an unrefined mind, he thought that the prejudice was levelled at his race, not at the character which the dealings of some of his nation had won for it, and which he himself was supporting. In his blindness he ignored the fact that amongst all those whose good word was worth having, the prejudice had died out; that the names of certain proud old Jewish families, who could trace their pedigree far beyond the barber-surgeon or border-robber founders of Norman or Scottish families, were honoured amongst the honoured; and that in any case a man who, brought into contact with a set socially superior to his own, took up his position calmly on the strength of his own acquirements, be these what they might, was received with a courtesy and a kindness which were naturally refused to the most glowing impostor. With Mr. Guyon Thacker had long had extensive dealings--dealings which had extended over a long course of years; but of late he had been a little doubtful of his client's solvency, a little delicate in the matter of renewals and holdings-over; and with a clouded brow he heard from his clerk the announcement that Mr. Guyon was waiting to see him in the ante-room. He reflected for a moment, and seemed half disposed to deny himself to his visitor; then carefully shutting the right-hand drawer of his desk, in which he kept his checkbook, and placing the morocco-bound volume, which was a ledger, but looked like a diary, close by him, he said, "Show Mr. Guyon in, James; I've just five minutes at his disposal."
Dressed in the most perfect manner, with all the latest improvements of fashion sufficiently tempered to his time of life, calm, collected, bland, and airy, yet with a certain amount of anxiety visible about his eyes and in the shifting corners of his mouth, Mr. Guyon entered the apartment and shook hands warmly with his friend.
Mr. Thacker received him civilly but not cordially, and expressed his hope that he saw Mr. Guyon well.
"Thanks, my dear Thacker," said that sprightly gentleman; "I think I may say, never in better case. I was getting a little pulled with the gaieties of the season--we old fellows can't carry it through like you young ones, you know--and I was, to tell truth, knocking up a bit; but last week I went down for a couple of days to Maidenhead--Orkney Arms, Skindle's, you know--where there was a particularly jolly party, all of them friends of yours, by the way,--Bob Affington and Adèle, and Dalrymple and O'Dwyer, and Hattenheim and the Marchesa--a droll lot of people of the right sort--and we had great fun; and it quite set me up. Every body said they wished you'd been down there."