CHAPTER VI.

A BENEVOLENT SPIDER.

M. Rouget de la Hache was hard up. He was a "swell," in a small way, after the mild colonial fashion, with a seigniory whose ancient privileges had been curtailed by advancing civilization; but civilization had paid him a good round sum when it abolished his rights over the persons and property of his humble neighbours--rights which were becoming an anachronism, and always more difficult to exercise. Being a swell, he did not work, but he was closely related to many who did, and who exercised the most important functions in the country, while they still looked up to him as in some sort their chief; though, in reason, the deference should have been all the other way. M. Rouget did not work, and therefore, not being a vegetable, it was necessary that he should play. When circumstances, in mistaken kindness, lay no burden on a man's shoulders, he fits one on himself--_il faut s'amuser_--and one which often proves hard to carry. There is a taskmaster, as the nursery saw tells us, still ready to find occupation for idle hands, occupation in which they too often burn their fingers.

Guns and dogs answer well enough at a time, so do trotting horses; but by-and-by there must be other men's horses to trot with, and give the interest of emulation. A man cannot continue to amuse himself on his own land; and in colonial cities people are too busy making their fortunes to be amusing company for an idle man. However, Saratoga, in its season, was not far away, and there was New York beyond, which lasts all the year round--more or less. Rouget had been used to be "of the best" at home--a personage, in a small way, wherever he appeared--and abroad it did not occur to him to abate his pretentions. Measured by the golden foot-rule of New York, he would have found himself on a far back bench, and even then his neighbours would have been able to lay down a dollar for every dime which he could produce; but the idea of applying such a standard did not occur to him. He believed himself a notability, and looked among the foremost for his peers. Was he not related to several of those old French governors who traded beads for peltry in the wake of a Jesuit Missionary, chaffering with the simple children of the wilderness beneath the forest shade, ere ever a vulgar common-place Englishman had arrived to cut timber, open a shop, or make money? And the foremost accepted him at his own valuation, as something "_ro_mantic, and quite beyond." He was ready to put down his stakes alongside theirs, and it would not be "manners" to ask the size of the pile from whence the stakes were drawn. Wherefore the American heart opened genially to receive him, just as it opens to the Lord Toms and Sir Harrys who each year enter its hospitable gates, and remain while their money lasts, or till they are found out.

It is hard upon the pipkin who adventures to sail down stream with the brazen bowls. There are eddies on the smoothest streams, and among the eddies there will be bumping. Only the pipkins need mind that, it is they alone who suffer. They inevitably get cracked in a collision, while the brass goes bumping and ringing along for very sport. It can come to no harm. Mr. Rouget got cracked--badly cracked--at last; but the wonder is that it had not befallen him long before. His friends did what they could for him--friends always do, when the subject is a worthless one, while virtue gets leave to shift for itself in its disasters, virtue being essentially prosaic, uninteresting and unpicturesque--but even his friends ran dry at last, and he had to mortgage his land. That occurred when Jordan began first to invest moneys for the Herkimer estate, and it was he who had bought the mortgage. It was a fairly profitable operation for Jordan, and had been the beginning of a useful intimacy; but it seemed to him, ere long, after the accruing advantages were well secured, that to sink so large a sum in so long-winded a transaction had been a mistake, and he might have done better in short loans, money on call, and general usury. There was the idea, to be sure, of engrafting his son effectually upon the dominant French interest by marriage, and if that could be compassed, it might turn out that the money had been well invested; but the boy was so head-strong and contrary, so like the Irishman's pig, which insists on going the other way, in what way soever he may be desired to go, that there was no certainty of working out the scheme, however compliant they of the other side might be.

Jordan was sitting in his office one day, in the week following his wife's party, examining his diary of bills coming due, considering where renewals might be granted, and how much he might extort in consideration of his forebearance, what sums would be paid him, and how they were to be employed. Rouget, overbearing the clerk who kept the sanctum door--it was an inner room, lined with tin boxes, but free from the professional lumber which garnished that wherein he received his clients, the spider-hole, in fact, where he sat to devour his flies, and very private--appeared before him.

"Jordain! Your clerk ees not _respectueux_. I must complain. He tell me you were gone out. Yen vid dis ear I hear you cough my ownself. Everee body know Jordain's cough. Yet he _défend_ my entry."

Jordan laid down his pen testily, but composed himself at once. "M. Rouget de la Hache, eh? The young man has orders to let no one in here. He should have said I was engaged. Those were his orders."

"He deed say so; but I shust look heem in ze eye--so!--vit a grand _sévérité_; and he fail of his word, and grow _confus_; and zen he tell me you were gone out. And so--behold me."

"Sim should stick to his orders. The first lie is always the best and safest. Not that this was a lie--he had his orders to say I was engaged, and admit no one. _You_ would have been an exception, of course, had I expected to see you. But how should I? Nevertheless, most pleased to see you; though really I am very busy. Pray sit down. How can I serve you?"

Rouget sat down, looking vacantly about him. To attempt to hurry him, shook up his muddy wits, which needed all their accustomed rest to clarify themselves in any measure.

It was a bare little room, all but its wall covering of shelves, supporting tin boxes, which were all brown japanned alike, and garnished with gold letters and numbers enough to give one headache. There were three chairs, on one of which he was sitting, while Jordan had another, and the third stood waiting--for whom? It disturbed him, this foolish question, for it was impossible to answer it. The table was covered with black leather, and there was a book open--a big fat book--wonder what it was about?--and a bit of paper with names and figures, which Jordan was noting down with a pencil. Wonder what he meant by it? Had it anything to do with him, Jean Vincent de Paul Rouget? But yet the pencil and slip of paper looked unimportant enough, and so, with the bold assurance of ignorance Rouget concluded that they could not possibly be of much consequence, and Jordan was only making believe--a humbug, in fact, as all people _là bas_ mostly were. It takes a transatlantic "swell," who has never seen one of the acknowledged great ones of the earth, to fully realize the vast inferiority of the "lower orders" to his own ineffable mightiness.

And yet it was easier to make the grand entrance he had achieved, and even to seat himself with dignity, than to plunge at once _in medias res_. He shuddered a little, like a bather on the brink, and looked round the room again, but it was so bare it would not suggest anything; and he wanted an idea--some neutral subject of talk which could be steered and edged about, whither he would; like a boat to waft him round the cliffs on the opposing shore, to some unguarded inlet with sloping banks, where he could land in good order and deploy at will toward the point he sought to gain. But this fellow was so abrupt. The _brusquerie_ was not in good taste, and at another time he would have let him see it; but now----

"How can I serve you?" said the spider again. He knew the value of directness and dispatch. A fly must be well inmeshed in the web to be there present. It is mercy to the poor things to come to the point with a bound, and bleed or devour. To prolong the preliminaries is but adding gratuitous pain. The victim will but flutter the more wildly, and what usurer would make rich if he heeded the remonstrance of impotence? In prolonged palaver, too, and the frantic flutterings, may not the captive burst a gossamer bond, and be free? The bonds are all gossamer, at first, like the rainbow-coloured rays of a sea anemone, but they thicken and grow tense when the prey gets among them, and do it so quietly that he is partly swallowed before he realizes his danger, and then his struggles are apt to be in vain. Still, there are chances, and vigour and dispatch are best.

"How can I serve you?" and Jordan glanced into the book before him, and then made a cross with his pencil at a name and some failures on the list he seemed to be making out. It was manifest that he guessed already what was going to be said. It was mortifying, and still it was a relief to see that preliminaries were unnecessary and the subject already opened.

"I find I cannot meet all the interest due the day after to-morrow."

A mere bow of the head from the spider. Not a motion of an eyebrow, even, in token of surprise. This composure hurt M. Rouget much. Was he not an important person, and looked upon as rich? And was it not the duty of ordinary people to expect him to pay up? He felt almost insulted that anybody should thus take his inability as a matter of course. He coloured, and looked an interrogation.

"Yes?" said Jordan.

"I vill give a cheque for two tousand dollars. You must hold over the rest for the present."

"Make it three, and I will take your note for the rest at thirty days--Sim!" touching the hand-bell at his elbow.

"That vill not do! I shall not be able to pay so soon," said Rouget more disturbed. What did the man mean by calling in his clerk so quickly to increase his embarrassment?

"Never mind, Sim! a mistake," and the door closed again.

"Tirty days would be no use. You mus give me time. I have had looses, and want time to retrieve myself."

"But how? Mr. Rouget. You will say I have no right to ask such a question, perhaps, and I dare say I appear discourteous; but in business it is essential to understand the case clearly, and our transactions are for such large sums that you must excuse seeming intrusiveness. Will sixty days suit you?"

"No. I want time! and freedom from all anxieties. I have a _système_ wich is infallible in the end, and must make me rich, but it demands time, watchfulness, and money."

"Phew!"--Jordan whistled slowly, lying back in his chair and burying his hands in his pockets. "That is--Well, we will not wrangle over spilt milk, and I do not question your right to do as you choose with your own money; but it seems to me, when you granted those large mortgages, you made use of that same expression--referred to something, something or other under the name of a system."

"And what then?" said Rouget flushing. A little indignation would help him, conversationally at least, he began to think. Not being in trade, he was unfamiliar with the liberties which money will empower a lender to take with the man who would borrow, or worse, who would be excused when the time comes round for repayment.

"Oh! nothing. Only if it has cost $150,000 already before the system begins to work favourably, it may take as much more yet, and where is the money to come from?"

"It vill not! It _cannot_ take so much. It mus' be propice ver soon. I have confidence. I have considered. There is certainty!"

"And the first of the three repayments of $50,000 comes due in six months."

"I know it, and I want you to add dese few tousands to the new mortgage you will draw--wid interests and commissions, all to be sure, widout question;" and the poor man rallied his waning pomposity to make one little shrug in naming the gains and perquisites of the _roturier_; before whom, his heart misgave him, he might yet have to quake.

"But, my dear sir, the operation is not a profitable one, and I did not contemplate renewing the mortgage. I can do much better with the money on the street."

"_Mon Dieu!_ Jourdain. What do I hear? Increase ze interests if so mus' be--and ze security is good. Ze ministre, _mon frère_, say zey are firs class, and zat I pay _trop_--too much."

"Quite so, Mr. Rouget, that is just where it is. I have my feelings and my reputation like another man. Why should I place myself in such a position that the Minister of Drainage and Irrigation should look on me as a usurer? I can command better terms for my money on the street, with nothing said, than I could charge you on your mortgage even with the loss of reputation involved in that word usurer."

"My dear sair! But ze mortgages were to be for fortune to M. Randolphe, in heemself marrying to Adeline, who would have the _survivance_ of La Hashe for _dot_."

"But if receiving interest on the mortgages is to be contingent on the success of a 'system'--and of course a son-in-law must grant indulgence if his wife's father gets behind--the young people might not have much to live on. In any case, there are still the other instalments--a very fair provision--if the young lady should condescend, and the young man can be brought to the point--which, with the unruly youth of the present day, is, I confess, doubtful; and the more difficult to accomplish, the less ground of dissatisfaction there may be, beyond mere aversion to be dictated to. Business arrangements cannot be left open, in waiting, to accommodate the whims of boys and girls."

"Would you buy La Hache? How much would you give?"

"Are you in earnest? Do you propose to hand it over in settlement of the mortgages?"

"How much more would you give--'to boot,' as you say in buying a horse."

"I didn't contemplate buying. It would not suit me to have so large a sum tied up in unremunerative acres. If I were to buy, it could only be that I might sell again, and that involves delays, expenses, uncertainties, loss of interest. No! Mr. Rouget, it is not to be thought of. If there is a default in payment all the mortgages fall due at once, and in our small market the sum involved in the foreclosure is as large as any buyer would be likely to bid on one property."

"But, my friend! Ze securities aire ample. You had it valued four years ago."

"Certainly. It seemed safe for the money at that time. But you were then supposed to be well off, independently of the property; today you have explained that you are so no longer, and cannot even attend to the regular interest."

"Lend me anoder fifty tousand on de property."

"Not to be thought of."

"Tirty----"

"Could not do it."

"Tventy----"

"Sorry it cannot be."

"Ze lands aire rich."

"Realize them, then, Mr. Rouget. I will promise to place no unnecessary impediments in your way."

"Zere is vealth in ze ground itself. Richesses of minerals. See! Behold," and he drew from under his fur gloves, cap, and muffler, which he had thrown upon the table in a heap on entering, a small box which he proceeded to open, and displaying a number of mineralogical specimens, handed across to the other. There was a green incrustation on the stones where they had been long exposed to the weather, but the new faces made by recent hammer-fracture, shone red and metallic like a beetle's back.

"Ah," said Jordan. "Really very nice. I am no judge of such things, but to my ignorant eye some of these must be nearly pure copper. Were they found at La Hache, and does the deposit appear extensive?"

"Dey were in de swamp, a mile back from the river, last fall. We were shooting, I, that is, and a young _savant_ of my friend's, who studies wit Professor Hammerstone. The professor has examined, himself, since den, and he finds the indications ver rich and abundant. He says zere is a fortune there beyond compute. Now! What say you? You know the Professor Hammerstone is of great reputation. Wat you say now?"

"Say? For one thing, Mr. Rouget, I congratulate you, and I would say that your prospects look infinitely more hopeful from this point of view than in connection with your 'system,' which--you must forgive my saying it--was leading you to destruction. In heaven's name let the 'system' slide, and apply yourself to develop your property."

"But ze money? my friend. You cannot develop wid notting. Lend me money, and I vill give my vor d'honneur"--and he patted his palms outstretched on the bosom of his greatcoat--"to abandon de système."

"Mining matters are outside of my field; I do not understand them. You should call on some of our leading capitalists and speculators with your specimens. They will look into the affair, and if there is anything in it, will make you a proposal. On one point only let me offer a word of advice. Do not insist upon too much money down to begin with. You cannot expect them to subscribe a capital merely to hand it over to you. Show your willingness to take the bulk of your price in shares and you will get something very handsome indeed. So soon as the stock is all taken up, the shares become saleable, rising and falling in sympathy with public talk, long before any of the ore has been got to market, and you may be able to sell out at good prices very soon, if the scheme happens to strike the general fancy. For myself, as I have said, mining is not in my line, but I will do what I can not to embarrass you. I will take your note at ninety days for that unpaid interest, and as for the mortgage due next summer, we will talk of it when the time comes, and, meanwhile, we shall have time to see how the mining enterprise will prosper--Sim!"

Sim appeared, received orders to draw a promissory note for Mr. Rouget to sign, and withdrew, followed by that gentleman seemingly let down from the self-satisfied attitude of feeling in which he had entered--meeker, much meeker, but yet more hopeful for his own future than he would have felt, perhaps, if his demands had been complied with.