offered hospitality kindly enough, but how was poor Philip to pay railway
expenses for servants, babies, and wife? In this strait Tregarvan from abroad,
having found out some monstrous design of Russ��of the Great Power of which he
stood in daily terror, and which, as we are in strict amity with that Power, no
other Power shall induce me to name��Tregarvan wrote to his editor, and
communicated to him in confidence a most prodigious and nefarious plot against
the liberties of all the rest of Europe, in which the Power in question was
engaged, and in a postscript added, "By the way, the Michaelmas quarter is due,
and I send you a cheque," O precious postscript!
"Didn't I tell you it would be so?" said my wife, with a self-satisfied air.
"Was I not certain that succour would come?"
And succour did come, sure enough; and a very happy little party went down to
Brighton in a second-class carriage, and got an extraordinarily cheap lodging,
and the roses came back to the little pale cheeks, and mamma was wonderfully
invigorated and refreshed, as all her friends could have seen when the little
family came back to town, only there was such a thick dun fog that it was
impossible to see complexions at all.
When the shooting season was come to an end, the parliamentary agents who had
employed Philip, came back to London; and, I am happy to say, gave him a cheque
for his little account. My wife cried, "Did I not tell you so?" more than ever.
"Is not everything for the best? I knew dear Philip would prosper!"
Everything was for the best, was it? Philip was sure to prosper, was he? What do
you think of the next news which the poor fellow brought to us? One night in
December he came to us, and I saw by his face that some event of importance had
befallen him.
"I am almost heart-broken," he said, thumping on the table when the young ones
had retreated from it. "I don't know what to do. I have not told you all. I have
paid four bills for him already, and now he has ��he has signed my name."
"Who has?"
"He at New York. You know," said poor Philip. "I tell you he has put my name on
a bill, and without my authority."
"Gracious heavens! You mean your father has for��" I could not say the word.
"Yes," groaned Philip. "Here is a letter from him;" and he handed a letter
across the table in the doctor's well-known handwriting.
"Dearest Philip," the father wrote, "a sad misfortune has befallen me, which I
had hoped to conceal, or at any rate, to avert from my dear son." For you,
Philip, are a participator in that misfortune through the imprudence��must I say
it?��of your father. Would I had struck off the hand which has done the deed,
ere it had been done! But the fault has taken wings and flown out of my reach.
Immeritus, dear boy, you have to suffer for the delicta majorum. Ah, that a
father should have to own his fault; to kneel and ask pardon of his son!
"I am engaged in many speculations. Some have succeeded beyond my wildest hopes:
some have taken in the most rational, the most prudent, the least sanguine of
our capitalists in Wall Street, and promising the greatest results have ended in
the most extreme failure! To meet a call in an undertaking which seemed to offer
the MOST CERTAIN PROSPECTS of success, which seemed to promise a fortune for me
and my boy, and your dear children, I put in amongst other securities which I
had to realize on a sudden, a bill, on which I used your name. I dated it as
drawn six months back by me at New York, on you at Parchment Buildings, Temple;
and I wrote your acceptance, as though the signature were yours. I give myself
up to you. I tell you what I have done. Make the matter public. Give my
confession to the world, as here I write, and sign it, and your father is
branded for ever to the world as a �� Spare me the word!"
"As I live, as I hope for your forgiveness, long ere that bill became due��it is
at five months' date, for 386l. 4s. 3d. value received, and dated from the
Temple, on the fourth of July��I passed it to one who promised to keep it until
I myself should redeem it! The commission which he charged me was enormous,
rascally; and not content with the immense interest which he extorted from me,
the scoundrel has passed the bill away, and it is in Europe, in the hands of an
enemy."
"You remember Tufton Hunt? Yes. You most justly chastised him. The wretch lately
made his detested appearance in this city, associated with the lowest of the
base, and endeavoured to resume his old practice of threats, cajoleries, and
you. He purchased it from the gambler, to whom it had been passed. As New York
was speedily too hot to hold him (for the unhappy man has even left me to pay
his hotel score) he has fled��and fled to Europe��taking with him that fatal
bill, which he says he knows you will pay. Ah! dear Philip, if that bill were
but once out of the wretch's hands! What sleepless hours of agony should I be
spared! I pray you, I implore you, make every sacrifice to meet it! You will not
disown it? No. As you have children of your own��as you love them��you would not
willingly let them have a dishonoured"
"Father."
"I have a share in a great medical discovery, [Note: �ther was first employed, I
believe, in America: and I hope the reader will excuse the substitution of
Chloroform in this instance.��
W. M. T.
] regarding which I have written to our friend, Mrs. Brandon, and which is sure
to realize an immense profit, as introduced into England by a physician so well
known��may I not say professionally? respected as myself. The very first profits
resulting from that discovery I promise, on my honour, to devote to you. They
will very soon far more than repay the loss which my imprudence has brought on
my dear boy. Farewell! Love to your wife and little ones.��G. B. F."
CHAPTER VIII. NEC PLENA CRUORIS HIRUDO.
The reading of this precious letter filled Philip's friend with an inward
indignation which it was very hard to control or disguise. It is no pleasant
task to tell a gentleman that his father is a rogue. Old Firmin would have been
hanged a few years earlier, for practices like these. As you talk with a very
great scoundrel, or with a madman, has not the respected reader sometimes
reflected, with a grim self-humiliation, how the fellow is of our own kind; and
homo est? Let us, dearly beloved, who are outside��I mean outside the hulks or
the asylum��be thankful that we have to pay a barber for snipping our hair, and
are entrusted with the choice of the cut of our own jerkins. As poor Philip read
his father's letter, my thought was: "And I can remember the soft white hand of
that scoundrel, which has just been forging his own son's name, putting
sovereigns into my own palm when I was a schoolboy." I always liked that
man:��but the story is not de me��it regards Philip.
"You won't pay this bill?" Philip's friend indignantly said, then.
"What can I do?" says poor Phil, shaking a sad head.
"You are not worth
five hundred pounds in the world," remarks the friend.
"Who ever said I was? I am worth this bill: or my credit is," answers the
victim.
"If you pay this, he will draw more."
"I daresay he will:" that Firmin admits.
"And he will continue to draw, as long as there is a drop of blood to be had out
of you."
"Yes," owns poor Philip, putting a finger to his lip. He thought I might be
about to speak. His artless wife and mine were conversing at that moment upon
the respective merits of some sweet chintzes which they had seen at Shoolbred's,
in Tottenham Court Road, and which were so cheap and pleasant, and lively to
look at! Really those drawing-room curtains would cost scarcely anything! Our
Regulus, you see, before stepping into his torture-tub, was smiling on his
friends, and talking upholstery with a cheerful, smirking countenance. On
chintz, or some other household errand, the ladies went prattling off: but there
was no care, save for husband and children, in Charlotte's poor little innocent
heart just then.
"Nice to hear her talking about sweet drawing-room chintzes, isn't it?" says
Philip. "Shall we try Shoolbred's, or the other shop?" And then he laughs. It
was not a very lively laugh.
"You mean that you are determined, then, on��"
"On acknowledging my signature? Of course," says Philip, "if ever it is
presented to me, I would own it." And having formed and announced this
resolution, I knew my stubborn friend too well to think that he ever would shirk
it.
The most exasperating part of the matter was, that however generously Philip's
helping hand. The doctor would draw more bills, and more. As sure as Philip
supplied, the parent would ask; and that devouring dragon of a doctor had
stomach enough for the blood of all of us, were we inclined to give it. In fact,
Philip saw as much, and owned everything with his usual candour. "I see what is
going on in your mind, old boy!" the poor fellow said, "as well as if you spoke.
You mean that I am helpless and irreclaimable, and doomed to hopeless ruin. So
it would seem. A man can't escape his fate, friend, and my father has made mine
for me. If I manage to struggle through the payment of this bill, of course he
will draw another. My only chance of escape is, that he should succeed in some
of his speculations. As he is always gambling, there may be some luck for him
one day or another. He won't benefit me, then. That is not his way. If he makes
a coup, he will keep the money, or spend it. He won't give me any. But he will
not draw upon me as he does now, or send forth fancy imitations of the filial
autograph. It is a blessing to have such a father, isn't it? I say, Pen, as I
think from whom I am descended, and look at your spoons, I am astonished I have
not put any of them in my pocket. You leave me in the room with 'em quite
unprotected. I say it is quite affecting the way in which you and your dear wife
have confidence in me." And with a bitter execration at his fate, the poor
fellow pauses for a moment in his lament.
His father was his fate, he seemed to think, and there were no means of averting
it. "You remember that picture of Abraham and Isaac in the doctor's study in Old
Parr Street?" he would say. "My patriarch has tied me up, and had the knife in
me repeatedly. He does not sacrifice me at one operation; but there will be a
final one some day, and I shall bleed no more. It's gay and amusing, isn't it?
Especially when one has a wife and children." I, for my part, felt so indignant,
that I was minded to advertise in the papers that all acceptances drawn in
Philip's name were forgeries; and let his father take the consequences of his
own act. But the consequences would have been life imprisonment for the old man,
and almost as much disgrace and ruin for the young one, as were actually
impending. He pointed out his clearly enough; nor could we altogether gainsay
his dismal logic. It was better, at any rate, to meet this bill, and give the
doctor warning for the future. Well: perhaps it was; only suppose the doctor
should take the warning in good part, accept the rebuke with perfect meekness,
and at an early opportunity commit another forgery? To this Philip replied, that
no man could resist his fate: that he had always expected his own doom through
his father: that when the elder went to America he thought possibly the charm
was broken; "but you see it is not," groaned Philip, "and my father's emissaries
reach me, and I am still under the spell." The bearer of the bowstring, we know,
was on his way, and would deliver his grim message ere long.
Having frequently succeeded in extorting money from Dr. Firmin, Mr. Tufton Hunt
thought he could not do better than follow his banker across the Atlantic: and
we need not describe the annoyance and rage of the doctor on finding this black
care still behind his back. He had not much to give; indeed the sum which he
took away with him, and of which he robbed his son and his other creditors, was
but small: but Hunt was bent upon having a portion of this; and, of course,
hinted that, if the doctor refused, he would carry to the New York press the
particulars of Firmin's early career and latest defalcations. Mr. Hunt had been
under the gallery of the House of Commons half a dozen times, and knew our
public men by sight. In the course of a pretty long and disreputable career he
had learned anecdotes regarding members of the aristocracy, turf-men, and the
like; and he offered to sell this precious knowledge of his to more than one
American paper, as other amiable exiles from our country have done. But Hunt was
too old, and his stories too stale for the New York public. They dated from
George IV., and the boxing and coaching times. He found but little market for
his wares; and the tipsy parson reeled from tavern to bar, only the object of
scorn to younger reprobates who despised his old-fashioned stories, and could
top them with blackguardism of a much more modern date.
After some two years' sojourn in the United States, this worthy felt the
passionate longing to revisit his native country which generous hearts often
experience, and made his way from Liverpool to London; and when in London
directed his steps to the house of the Little Sister, of which he expected to
find Philip still an inmate. Although Hunt had been once kicked out of the
premises, he felt little shame now about re-entering them. He had that in his
pocket which would insure him respectful behaviour from Philip. What were the
circumstances under which that forged bill was obtained? Was it a speculation
between Hunt and Philip's father? Did Hunt suggest that, to screen the elder
Firmin from disgrace and ruin, Philip would assuredly take the bill up? That a
forged signature was, in fact, a better document than a genuine acceptance? We
shall never know the truth regarding this transaction now. We have but the
statements of the two parties concerned; and as both of them, I grieve to say,
are entirely unworthy o
f credit, we must remain in ignorance regarding this
matter. Perhaps Hunt forged Philip's acceptance: perhaps his unhappy father
wrote it: perhaps the doctor's story that the paper was extorted from him was
true, perhaps false. What matters? Both the men have passed away from amongst
us, and will write and speak no more lies.
Caroline was absent from home when Hunt paid his first visit after his return
from America. Her servant described the man, and his appearance. Mrs. Brandon
felt sure that Hunt was her visitor, and foreboded no good to Philip from the
parson's arrival. In former days we have seen how the Little Sister had found
favour in the eyes of this man. The besotted creature, shunned of men, stained
with crime, drink, debt, had still no little vanity in his composition, and gave
himself airs in the tavern parlours which he frequented. Because he had been at
the University thirty years ago, his idea was that he was superior to ordinary
men who had not had the benefit of an education at Oxford or Cambridge; and that
the "snobs," as he called them, respected him. He would assume grandiose airs in
talking to a tradesman ever so wealthy; speak to such a man by his surname; and
deem that he honoured him by his patronage and conversation. The Little Sister's
grammar, I have told you, was not good; her poor little h's were sadly
irregular. A letter was a painful task to her. She knew how ill she performed
it, and that she was for ever making blunders.
She would invent a thousand funny little pleas and excuses for her faults of
writing. With all the blunders of spelling, her little letters had a pathos
which somehow brought tears into the eyes. The Rev. Mr. Hunt believed himself to
be this woman's superior. He thought his University education gave him a claim
upon her respect, and draped himself and swaggered before her and others in his
dingy college gown. He had paraded his Master of Arts degree in many thousand
tavern parlours, where his Greek and learning had got him a kind of respect. He
patronized landlords, and strutted by hostesses' bars with a vinous leer or a
tipsy solemnity. He must have been very far gone and debased indeed when he
could still think that he was any living man's better:��he, who ought to have
waited on the waiters, and blacked boots's own shoes. When he had reached a
certain stage of liquor he commonly began to brag about the University, and
recite the titles of his friends of early days. Never was kicking more
righteously administered than that which Philip once bestowed on this miscreant.
The fellow took to the gutter as naturally as to his bed, Firmin used to say;
and vowed that the washing there was a novelty which did him good.
Brandon soon found that her surmises were correct regarding her nameless
visitor. Next day, as she was watering some little flowers in her window, she
looked from it into the street, where she saw the shambling parson leering up at
her. When she saw him he took off his greasy hat and made her a bow. At the
moment she saw him, she felt that he was come upon some errand hostile to
Philip. She knew he meant mischief as he looked up with that sodden face, those
bloodshot eyes, those unshorn, grinning lips.
She might have been inclined to faint, or disposed to scream, or to hide herself
from the man, the sight of whom she loathed. She did not faint, or hide herself,
or cry out; but she instantly nodded her head and smiled in the most engaging
manner on that unwelcome, dingy stranger. She went to her door; she opened it
(though her heart beat so that you might have heard it, as she told her friend
afterwards). She stood there a moment archly smiling at him, and she beckoned
him into her house with a little gesture of welcome. "Law bless us" (these, I
have reason to believe, were her very words)��"Law bless us, Mr. Hunt, where
ever have you been this ever so long?" And a smiling face looked at him