He had bought a splendid house out at Ealing, and was fitting it up regardless of expense. In Stanley Crescent he gave the most wonderful parties that it had ever entered into Mrs. Dudley’s imagination to conceive could be given by any one not possessed of a ducal revenue. She had thought the furniture in Lincoln’s Inn Fields far and away more expensive than any Mr. Black should have persuaded Arthur into purchasing, but the promoter assured her it was “all right; upon his sacred word of honour, it had not cost a sixpence more than Dudley was perfectly justified in spending.” And when she beheld Adamant House, as Mr. Black’s new house at Ealing was happily called, she thought if one of the chiefs of the Company could afford such magnificence, their own, by comparison modest establishment, could not be considered “over-timbered,” to quote from the promoter’s vocabulary over again.
From room to room she walked, dazzled and bewildered, and Mr. Black walked beside, enjoying her astonishment, and kindly acting as cicerone to her inexperienced country understanding.
“Now, is not this better than grubbing on?” he triumphantly inquired, when, seated in his carriage, they were driving back to Lincoln’s Inn. “This is what a man can do who is not afraid, who feels his own strength, and is sure of being able to keep his feet under him. Ay, and by Jove, Dudley shall do as well yet as I have done! He deserves to do well, and so do you, Mrs. Dudley; for a more sensible woman, and one less under the dominion of prejudice, I never met. Many a wife would have striven to keep Dudley back—to dissuade him from coming to London, but you were too wise to attempt such interference, and therefore I say you deserve to succeed, and to have every bit as fine a carriage as this to bowl about in.”
Which termination struck Heather as being so intensely ludicrous that she laughed outright, laughed even while she thought gravely enough that, had her interference been likely to produce the slightest good result, she would never have refrained from attempting it. This little explanation, however, being quite unnecessary to offer to Mr. Black, she took his compliment as though she deserved it every word, and laughed while the promoter thought, in his own elegant language, “that he had got to the blind side of Mrs. Dudley also, and would be shortly able to wind her round his finger as he had done the Squire.”
In those early days, Arthur Dudley certainly proved himself to be as foolish and confiding a gentleman as any rogue need have desired to meet with.
Although he saw the grand house at Ealing, although every morning Mr. Black, en route to the City, thundered up to the door of the Protector Company’s offices in his carriage and pair, and swaggered and blustered about the place as though the clerks, and the secretary, and the cashier, and the whole concern, in fact, were his own personal and exclusive property, still Arthur never insisted on a settlement of their accounts, never objected to renew bills, never made any difficulty about accepting new ones. He believed implicitly every sentence Mr. Black told him, and had much greater faith in the promoter’s genius than in that of his own especial principal, Mr. Stewart, who, having put in a secretary and cashier of his own choosing, now rarely came near the office excepting on special board days, and when he paid formal visits to Mrs. Dudley, who always received him with the uncomfortable feeling, that if he knew who she really was, his calls would be fewer and shorter still.
But at length there came a certain coolness between the promoter and the secretary, which commenced in this wise:—
“Now I tell you what it is, Dudley,” said Mr. Black, one day when, for the third time, his kinsman’s renewals had been required and effected; “I tell you what it is,—this paper of yours has been through the fire often enough, it will never do to run it on till it gets scorched. You don’t know what I mean, I see, but it is just this: a girl may walk out with a man once, and people think nothing about it—they may have met by accident, no consequence—but if she goes on walking, talk begins, there is some game up. Now, a man’s credit is much in the same position. He may renew once or twice, and nobody thinks anything strange of his doing so; if he continue renewing, however, his name gets blown upon, and banks begin—especially if he be in no business—to look askance on his paper. That is your position at the present time; you must not ask for more discount, or, at least, if you do, you will not get it. I have done my best for you this time, and so has Crossenham, but I am greatly afraid we shall not be able to get you passed again.”
“Then I suppose you will take up the bills next time?” suggested Arthur.
“I have no objection to taking up those that I have had value for,” answered Mr. Black, a little astonished, perhaps, at Arthur’s so speedily discovering the weak point in his armour; “but what are you to do with yours? That is the important part of the business, is it not?”