“Will you have the goodness to reply to that batch of letters, Mr Litton?” said Elbraham haughtily. “I asked your opinion—or, rather, gave you my opinion—of Miss Clotilde Dymcox, and you favour me with a pack of impertinent insinuations regarding the family at Hampton Court.” Mr Elbraham went angrily out into the hall to don his light and tight overcoat and grey hat, and walk down to the station.
As Litton heard the door close he sank back in his chair at the writing-table, and laughed silently and heartily.
“Ha, ha, ha!” he ejaculated; “and this is your clever financier—this is your man far above the ordinary race in shrewdness! Why am I not wealthy, too, when I can turn the scoundrel round my finger, clever as he believes he is? Clever, talented, great! Why, if I metaphorically pull his tail like one would that of a pig, saying, ‘You shan’t go that way!’ he grunts savagely, and makes straight for the hole.”
Arthur Litton took one of Mr Elbraham’s choice cigars from his case, deliberately pitched aside the letters he had to answer, struck a light, placed his heels upon the table, and, balancing his chair upon two legs, began to smoke.
“Well, so far so good,” he said at last, as he watched the aromatic rings of smoke ascend towards the ceiling. “I suppose it is so. Mr Elbraham is one of the cleverest men on ’Change, and he manages the money-making world. I can manage Mr Elbraham. Ergo, I am a cleverer man than the great financier; but he makes his thousands where I make shillings and pence. Why is this?”
The answer was all smoke; and satisfactory as that aromatic, sedative vapour was in the mouth, it was lighter than the air upon which it rose, and Arthur Litton continued his soliloquising.
“I’m afraid that I shall never make any money upon ’Change, or by bolstering up bad companies, and robbing the widow, the orphan, the retired officer, and the poor parson of their savings. It is not my way. I should have no compunction if they were fools enough to throw me their money. I should take it and spend it, as Elbraham and a score more such scoundrels spend theirs. What does it matter? What is the difference to him between having a few hundred pounds more or less in this world? They talk about starvation when their incomes are more than mine. They say they are beggared when they have hundreds left. Genteel poverty is one of the greatest shams under the sun.”
“Not a bad cigar,” he said, after a fresh pause. “He has that virtue in him, certainly, he does get good cigars; and money! money! money! how he does get money—a scoundrel!—while I get none, or next to none. Well, well, I think I am pulling the strings in a way that should satisfy the most exacting of Lady Littletowns, and it is ridiculous how the scoundrel of a puppet dances to the tune I play.”
He laughed in a way that would have made his fortune had he played Mephistopheles upon the stage. Then, carefully removing a good inch and a half of ash:
“And now, my sweet old match-maker,” he continued, “will you keep your promise? I am a poor unlucky devil, and the only way to save me is by settling me with a rich wife such as she promises.