"But vere's your money, my dear?"
"Wait a minute. 'What's the salary?' said I. 'A thousand a-year,' says he. 'You don't mean it?' says I again. 'Upon my soul,' says he. 'And what will it cost?' says I. 'The first year's salary,' says he; 'and I'll advance it, because I know you are a gentleman, and will not forget to pay me back.' 'If I do,' says I, 'I wish I may die.' Now, father, that there letter, as you sees, is official, and that's why he doesn't say 'dear Moses;' but if you was to see us together, it would do your heart good. Not that you ever will, because your unfortinate lowness of character will compel me, as a gent, to cut your desirable acquaintance the moment I steps into Lord Downy's Wellingtons. Now, if you have got no more fish in that 'ere cupboard, I wish you good morning."
"Shtay, shtay, Aby, you're in such a devil of a hurry!" exclaimed Methusaleh, holding him by the wrist. "Now, my dear boy, if you're dead to natur, there's an end of the matter, and I've nothing more to say; but if you've any real blood left in you, you von't break my heart. Vy shouldn't your father have the pleasure of advancing the money? If it is a true bill, Aby, you sha'n't be under no obligation to nobody!"
"True bill! I like that! Why, I have seen Lord Downy's own hand-*writing; and, what's more, seen him in the House of Lords, talking quite as familiarly, as I conwerse with you, with the Lord Chancellor, and all the rest on 'em. I heard him make a speech—next morning I looks into the paper—no deceit, sir—there was Lord Downy's name. Now, to-morrow, when I'm introduced to him, don't you think I shall be able to diskiver whether he's the same man or not?"
"Vere's the tousand pound?" inquired Mr Methusaleh.
"My friend goes with me to-morrow to hand it over. Three hundred is to be given up at Lord Downy's hotel in Oxford Street, and the balance at Mr Fitzalbert's chambers in Westminster, an hour afterwards, when I receive the appointment."
"My dear Aby, I von't beat about the bush with you. I'm quite sure, my child, ve should make it answer much better, if you'd let your father advance the money. Doesn't it go agin the grain to vurk into the hands of Christians against your own flesh and blood? If this Mr Fitzalbert advances the money, depend upon it it's to make someting handsome by the pargain. Let me go vith you to his lordship, and perhaps, if he's very hard-up, he'll take seven hundred instead of the thousand. Ve'll divide the three hundred between us. Don't you believe that your friend is doing all this for love. Vot can he see, my darling, in your pretty face, to take all this trouble for nothing? I shouldn't be at all surprised if he's a blackguard, and means to take a cruel advantage of his lordship's sitivation—give him perhaps only five hundred for his tousand. Aby, let your ould father do an act of charity, and put two hundred pounds into this poor gentleman's pockets."
Before Aby could reply to this benevolent appeal, a stop was put to the interesting conversation, by a violent knocking at the door, on the part of no less a gentleman than Warren de Fitzalbert himself.
Chapter II.
Whilst the domestic tête-à-tête, feebly described in the foregoing chapter, was in progress, the nobleman, more than once referred to, was passing miserable moments in his temporary lodgings at the Salisbury Hotel, in Oxford Street. A more unhappy gentleman than Baron Downy it would be impossible to find in or out of England. The inheritor of a cruelly-burdened title, he had spent a life in adding to its incumbrances, rather than in seeking to disentangle it from the meshes in which it had been transmitted to him. In the freest country on the globe, he had never known the bliss of liberty. He had moved about with a drag-chain upon his spiritual and physical energies, as long as he could remember his being. At school and at college, necessarily limited in his allowance, he contracted engagements which followed him for at least ten years after his entrance into life, and then only quitted him to leave him bound to others far more tremendous and inextricable. His most frequent visitors, his most constant friends, his most familiar acquaintance, were money-lenders. He had borrowed money upon all possible and unimaginable securities, from the life of his grandmother down to that last resource of the needy gentleman, the family repeater, chain, and appendages. His lordship, desperate as his position was, was a man of breeding, a nobleman in thought and feeling. But the more incapable of doing wrong, so much the more liable to deceit and fraud. He had been passed, so to speak, from hand to hand by all the representatives of the various money-lending classes that thrive in London on the folly and necessity of the reckless and the needy. All had now given him up. His name had an odour in the market, where his paper was a drug. His bills of a hundred found few purchasers at a paltry five pounds, and were positively rejected by all but wine-merchant-sheriff's officers, who took them at nothing, and contrived to make a handsome profit out of them into the bargain. Few had so little reason to be proud as the man whose name had become a by-word and a joke amongst the most detestable and degraded of their race; and yet, strange as it may seem, few had a keener sense of their position, or could be so readily stung by insult, let it but proceed from a quarter towards which punishment might be directed with credit or honour. A hundred times Lord Downy had cursed his fate, which had not made him an able-bodied porter, or an independent labourer in the fields, rather than that saddest of all sad contradictions, a nobleman without the means of sustaining nobility—a man of rank with no dignity—a superior without the shadow of pre-eminence; but for all the wealth of the kingdom, he would not have sullied the order to which he belonged, by what he conceived to be one act of meanness or sordid selfishness; as if there could be any thing foul or base in any act that seeks, by honourable industry, to repair the errors of a wayward fortune.