“You will be saved the trouble of another excursion at four o’clock, Mr. Simeon,” observed Letitia. “We have only to regret having consumed some of your time already this day. You will hardly see us again till we have debts of honour to pay, or a Chancery elopement to provide for.”
Mr. Simeon considered himself a gainer by the transaction in proportion to the honour his poor counting-house had enjoyed; an honour the more precious for its being confined within his own breast. He knew his duty too well to reveal what had passed.
“Do as you please about that,” replied Letitia. “You and Mr. Waldie must agree about your keeping Mr. Waldie’s secrets; but, for my part, I have none. You owe neither honour nor duty to me, aware, as you no doubt are, that I did not come to borrow money on my own account.”
Mr. Simeon merely mentioned the temptation of talking about the affair, because it was really an extraordinary case. Not that it was a rare thing for ladies to want money; but that they usually employed agents to procure it. How indeed should it be otherwise? since not one woman in five thousand understood even the forms of business; and these solitary exceptions were in a class which had no dealings with moneylenders. On this, followed a series of narratives of fair ones’ difficulties for want of cash, which amused Letitia exceedingly, from the romance of adventure which was mixed up with the most sordid borrowing transactions. The heroines were only A. B. and C.; but they became real personages in Letitia’s imagination on the instant; and she was almost sorry when Mr. Simeon was called into the next room to review his securities and perform his promises.
It seemed an age before Mr. Waldie threw open the door, announcing that all was well. He briefly thanked Letitia for having saved him; urged them to return home and rest from their anxieties; and was only sorry that he could not accompany them, or even promise to follow them for some days, as he should be incessantly occupied till the expected cargo was secured. He perceived that his wife’s countenance fell on hearing this, and rallied her; asking what there was now left to be afraid of?—She did not know, but——
“She is worn out,” said Letitia. “I will take care that she shall recruit herself, and wait patiently, unless you try her too long.—You may be quite easy,” she continued to her sister, when Waldie’s last grave smile dismissed them. “All is safe, with him as well as with his affairs. How calm he is! How entirely himself! He will speculate no more, believe me.”
Maria shook her head, as her tears fell fast. It was not only that her nerves and spirits were shaken by what she had gone through. Her confidence was utterly overthrown, and she felt the present relief to be no more than a respite.
Chapter VIII.
CONSEQUENCES.
Those who had educated Waldie were partly answerable for his propensity to speculation, which arose more from a restless ambition than from a desire of overgrown wealth. The foundation of the fortunes of his family was laid by an ancestor who, a few hundred years ago, introduced a new manufacture, which he had learned abroad, into this country. Though, from having to take workmen away from other manufactures, and to engage them to learn his own, he gave higher wages than any of his neighbours, his profits were also very great, as his article bore a high price in the market, in the way that new articles of convenient manufacture generally do. If profits may be said (as they are by some said) to be as much the reward of labour as wages,—that is, the reward of present superintendence, and of the labour out of which arose the capital employed, it is certain that this first rich member of the Waldie family reaped as large a proportionate reward as his workmen; for long after their wages and his profits were lowered by his silk stuffs becoming more common, and the difficulty of getting workmen being less, he continued to grow rich from his having more capital to employ in bringing him profits. If every hundred pounds did not produce seventy-five, he had, in course of time, for every such hundred, five that brought 50 per cent., and afterwards fifteen that brought 25 per cent.; so that he continued to grow rich, just as individuals and countries may in these days, if accumulation proceeds faster than profits fall. His descendants for some generations carried on this manufacture, for which there was a permanent demand, and so steady a one that the variations in its price arose only from the variations in the prices of other things, and not from changes of fashion. Now and then the price of provisions fell, which enabled these manufacturers to lower their men’s wages, and enjoy larger profits, till the time came for profits to fall also; and sometimes the reverse happened, when the price of provisions rose. Sometimes complaints were made against the largeness of their profits, when the fact was that they gave precisely the same proportion of their produce to their workmen as before, but there were more workmen to divide this proportion; which was no fault of their masters. With these few variations, the family continued to prosper, being for the most part content with the ordinary rate of profits, and making up by continual accumulation for their gradual fall;—that fall which must take place wherever the supply of food is restricted. They were all proud of the ancestor who had founded the wealth of their family, and sent his praises down from generation to generation. The present Mr. Waldie had been early accustomed to listen to them, and impressed with the idea that it was time for somebody else to be adding glory to the family, as it had become much less distinguished in these times of improvements than in the first days of its wealth. He quitted the manufacture, and became a merchant, thinking that this occupation would afford better opportunities for the gratification of his ambition than the straightforward old manufacture. No wonder he was tempted by schemes which promised a higher than extraordinary rate of profits! No wonder he dealt in articles whose extremely varying prices were determined by other than the usual circumstances,—which prices he hoped to catch at the highest, and then to have done with the article! No wonder that he guessed respecting such uncertain circumstances as the changes of fashion, wet and dry seasons, the extent of particular crops on the other side the globe; and then proceeded to act upon these guesses! Sometimes he was right, sometimes wrong. Sometimes he made five thousand pounds at a stroke, sometimes lost ten in a season. Much as his capital was lessened on the whole by his speculations, this was by no means the worst result of his proceedings. Like all other gamesters, he became so fond of the excitement, that, much as he often suffered from it, he could no longer live without it; and the domestic influence which is the most powerful means of winning a man from bad habits of any kind, was not so powerful in Waldie’s case as if his first affections had not been disappointed. Attentive as he always was to his wife when with her, kind as he had till lately been to his children, vehement as were the fancies he took, now to Portugal laurels, now to tall trees, now to bay-windows or new drawing-room furniture, his happiness was not in his home, but in the heats and chills of his hopes, in city news of disasters at sea, of changeable weather, of new inventions or improvements of manufactured articles, and of political changes,—of anything that might affect his speculations. His poor wife knew nothing for a long while of his unfortunate ventures, though she heard enough of exultation over his good ones. She believed that he must be growing enormously rich, and sighed over the idea, since it seemed that the richer he became, the less pleasure he took in his home. When he first began to alter his tone, (which he did very suddenly,) when he talked one day of bringing up their children to provide for themselves, and moving into a small house in the city, and the next of purchasing some splendid estate, and again of giving up his carriages and sending away half his servants, she was confounded; not knowing how much to believe, or to wish to believe; whether to suppose poverty to be in prospect, or her husband to have lost the soundness of his judgment. It was now some comfort to know how their affairs stood, though she would rather have heard it from her husband than from Letitia. She had long seen that Waldie’s family ambition could not be gratified. Whichever way the scale might turn at last, whether he left his family in poverty or magnificence, it was impossible that his memory should be honoured like that of the ancestor who had prospered by uniting prudence and industry with his zeal of enterprise. Whether all was to be swallowed up in Kentish hops and Russian tallow, or all redeemed and even doubled by India spices, those of Waldie’s descendants who knew his history, would, in either case, pity or despise him as a gambler.—How much of pity his fate would call for, not even the most alarmed imaginations of his timid wife had fully conceived. She had fancied him, over and over again, in gaol, in poverty; the idea of suicide even had flashed across her mind; but that which actually happened took her more by surprise than arrest, or ruin, or death by his own hand.