CHAPTER III.

FOR MERCIES VOUCHSAFED.

For once, however, Mr. Asherill was in earnest. Knowing what liquidation meant to the debtor and the creditors (he had grasped its meaning thoroughly before deciding to make his living out of it) he did think it a sad thing Mortomley should liquidate. He did not wish to disoblige Mr. Forde; and yet having gauged that gentleman and the people with whom he was most intimately connected, he felt no wild desire to mell or meddle in any affair of theirs.

For no bait Mr. Kleinwort could hold out would this man have mixed himself up with an affair he, for some reason, considered so doubtful as Mortomley's,--with a business in which he saw there lay, to quote his own mental phrase, something so "fishy" as the conjunction of Kleinwort, Werner, and Forde.

Mr. Asherill did not believe in the stars; but he was sufficiently superstitious to feel satisfied so astounding a terrestrial phenomenon as that mentioned must portend approaching calamity to more than one person.

"It will end badly, I fear," he said mentally. "I hope, I do hope, Swanland will be careful. After all, the estate can prove only a poor thing, not worth the risk."

Perhaps the weather had some share in producing these misgivings,--a steady downfall of rain, a dull yellow sky, the water pouring into the gutters, and the streets and side-paths thick and slippery with mud, are not stimulants to cheerful reflection; but possibly the fact that Mr. Asherill had not grown younger with the years may be considered as having more to do with his depression than even the wet misery of that especial Saturday.

The old head we are taught to consider so desirable, Mr. Asherill possessed, but, alas! it no longer surmounted young shoulders.

Mr. Swanland was waiting the return of his partner. The clerks had all gone, the books were put away, the safes locked up, the offices throughout the whole of the building closed, save alone that in the gallery, occupied by Messrs. Asherill and Swanland, which was the private temple of the senior partner.

There Mr. Swanland stood by the window, looking over a cheerful view of wet slates and tiles and grotesque chimney-pots; but he turned his eyes away from this prospect as Mr. Asherill entered.

"I waited to tell you I have agreed to act in that matter," he said, thrusting his right hand far down in his trousers' pocket, as was his habit when not quite at ease.

"So Bailey informed me. I met him," was the reply.

"There will be something to the good I fancy," remarked Mr. Swanland, feeling his way with his accustomed caution. Although he meant, at some not remote period, to be sole master in the firm, still as yet he was only a junior, and unlike some juniors, who ruin their prospects for want of thought, Mr. Swanland remembered this fact.

"To the good for whom?" inquired Mr. Asherill sharply; "for us, for the creditors, or for Mortomley?"

"I have been accustomed to regard the good of one as the good of all," said Mr. Swanland, with a touching appearance of sincerity Mr. Asherill himself might have envied.

"I am sorry you undertook the business," observed the senior, shifting his ground from theory to fact.

"Why, you left me to undertake it," expostulated Mr. Swanland.

"I left you to _refuse_ it," said Mr. Asherill emphatically. "I did not, for I could not, send back a message to Forde telling him to do his dirty work for himself, or get some one else to do it. I wanted to be rid, civilly, of the business, and I thought you would understand that."

"I certainly did not understand it," Mr. Swanland replied. "I thought you wished that estate to be wound up in our office, though you did not care, for some reason or other, to be brought forward prominently in it yourself. If I have done wrong, I am sorry for it. All I can say is, I did wrong with the best intentions."

And after this ample apology and vindication, Mr. Swanland thrust both hands deep in his pockets, and turned once more to the dripping roofs and twisted chimneys.

"Well, well, it cannot be helped now," said Mr. Asherill, in a conciliatory tone; "another time I will be more explicit; only you know, you must know, how resolutely I have always refused to have anything to do with a transaction upon which it seems a blessing cannot rest."

"Why cannot a blessing rest on this affair," interrupted Mr. Swanland impatiently.

"Because it is not straightforward. What have these men to do with the matter. They are not petitioning creditors; they are not, according to their own showing, pressing creditors. They want the man to go on, and he or his family want to stop. What is the English of it all? Why does not his solicitor appear?"

"I have a letter from him," said Mr. Swanland, lifting a sheet of note paper off the table and handing it to his partner.

Mr. Asherill looked first at the signature. "Michael Benning," he read, and looked at Mr. Swanland in blank consternation.

"Why, he is solicitor to the General Chemical Company."

"No; surely not?"

"Surely yes. I told you there was something underneath all this."

"I do not see that exactly. Why should he not be Mr. Mortomley's solicitor too?"

"Because I happen to know his solicitor. As honest a man as ever breathed; and that is more than Michael Benning could be accused of."

"Perhaps Mr. Mortomley has quarrelled with his honest solicitor," suggested Mr. Swanland; a sneer lurking in his tone. "Travellers on the road to ruin are very apt to quarrel with their best friends. However, let that be as it may, I have nothing to do with creditor or debtor, save to hold the scales even between them. If we do our work conscientiously and impartially, I cannot see what it matters to us how much finessing there may be on the part of others."

"Unless we are placed in a false position in consequence," observed Mr. Asherill.

"I will take care of that," said the junior, rash and over-confident as even middle-aged youth is sometimes prone to be.

"Another thing," commenced Mr. Asherill. "You know how resolutely I always set my face against having to do anything with the affairs of gentlemen."

"I am aware of your prejudices," was the reply; "we have lost a considerable amount of valuable business in consequence."

"We need not argue that point now," said Mr. Asherill.

"Certainly not, seeing this Mr. Mortomley is a colour maker."

"And what else?" asked Mr. Asherill.

"I have not an idea," replied Mr. Swanland, looking at his partner with some curiosity.

"The son of a gentleman--of as true a gentleman as ever made trade an honourable calling, when trade was a very different thing to what it is now. Many and many a poor wretch he saved from ruin. Many and many a man owes all he has, all he is, to the princely munificence, to the wide, silent charity of Mortomley's father."

"Well, perhaps some of the number will come forward to help the son," suggested Mr. Swanland.

"No," said Mr. Asherill, "it is not in our rank any one who knows the world looks for gratitude or friendship. Mortomley's help will not come from those his father assisted; it will come from the only men who ever really stick to each other--the gentry. His business is gone I see plainly, but he will not go; and there will come a day of reckoning and explanation yet, which may prove unpleasant for some people if they live to see it."

Mr. Swanland shrugged his shoulders. His knowledge of the world was confined to a very small section of the world; and though it would have very much astonished him to hear any one thought so, he really had still much to learn.

"Meanwhile," he remarked, "I fear we must liquidate Mortomley. There seems, indeed, no help for it, with half-a-dozen executions in or about to go in."

"You are not serious?"

"Never was more serious in my life. Here is a list of them,--two at Whip's Cross, one in Thames Street, judgment summons returnable to-day, two executions in the hands of the sheriff, one in the district county court expected to seize daily."

Mr. Asherill lifted his hands.

"Why did he ever let it come to this?"

"Forde would not allow him to stop."

"How could he prevent him?"

"I do not know. He would prevent it now if he could only see the man. Forde, so far as I can understand, is a person who, being mentally short-sighted, can only see to twelve o'clock the next day. If twelve o'clock can by hook or crook be reached, he thinks twelve o'clock the following day is possible likewise. This is the sort of life he seems to have been forcing on Mortomley--helping him at the last gasp to pay out the sheriff, and suggesting all sorts of ridiculous plans to enable him to float a little longer. Even according to the showing of his friend Kleinwort Forde must be a perfect fool."

"His friend Kleinwort did not happen to show you anything else he was?" asked Mr. Asherill. "No. Well, you will find out for yourself in time. Meanwhile I should advise you to order your steps discreetly in this matter, or you may repent it to the last day of your life. I will not detain you any longer. I have said my final word about Mortomley and his affairs. Good afternoon, God bless you," and the senior wrung his young partner's hand and once again descended the staircase; while Mr. Swanland, putting on his top-coat and taking his hat and umbrella, remarked half audibly,

"The old hypocrite grows childish, but there is always a grain of truth amongst his maunderings. Yes, Mr. Forde, you think to use me for a tool, but I will not cut an inch unless I find it to my own advantage to do so."

Not for many a day had Mr. Asherill carried so--what he would have called--dubious a heart home with him as he did on that especial Saturday afternoon while he travelled from Broad Street to Kew.

There were people in the same compartment with him whom he knew, and who in the intervals of reading the evening papers exchanged remarks with him of that recondite and abstruse nature which railway travellers have made their own; but for once Mr. Asherill felt out of tune with politics, religion, commerce, and the stock exchange.

Something once very real had risen like a ghost before him, and he was not perhaps altogether sorry when, the last of his companions bidding him good evening, he was left to pursue the remainder of his journey in solitude, except for the presence of that phantom shadow which he faced resolutely, retracing step by step the road they two--the trouble and himself--had frantically hurried over together.

Out of the shadows of the past, the events of one day--one wet Saturday, one awful Saturday--showed themselves clear and distinct as a light tracing, against a dark background:--

He beheld day breaking upon him; a man out at elbows as regarded fortune--not for the first time in his life. A great dread had kept him wakeful. He had loathed the blackness of night, and yet when light dawned he had hidden his face from it.

What more?--a mean, poorly-furnished room; a sick woman to whom he carried the best cup of tea and a slice of bread toasted with his own hands, and then sat down to read a letter which took all appetite from him.

Out in the drenching rain, with only an old torn disreputable-looking cotton umbrella between him and the weather--out, with the wet soaking through his poor patched boots--out, his fingers numb with cold, and his heart less numb than paralysed with the same dread a hare feels when, her strength spent, she hears the hounds gaining on her.

From office to office--from one friend--Heaven save the mark!--to another; out again in the weather, with "No" ringing in every possible accent in which the word could be uttered or disguised; out hour after hour--for it was before the Saturday early-closing movement had been thought of--too wretched to feel hunger, too miserable to be exactly conscious of the length and depth of his almost frantic despair; out in the sloppy streets, under the sweeping pelting rain, with every resource exhausted, with ruin and worse than ruin staring him in the face.

For one desperate moment he thought of the river, sullen and turbid, flowing away to the sea, that would end the agony, frustrate the disgrace. He would do it--he would; and he went hurrying towards the Thames. There did not intervene five minutes between him and eternity when his eye happened quite by chance to fall on a great warehouse over the gates of which was written--

"Archibald Mortomley, White Lead and Colour Manufacturer."

"It would be nothing to him," said the poor wretch to himself. "I will ask; I can but be refused."

And so with the consciousness of that flowing river still upon him, only fainter, he closed his umbrella and, stepping within the formidable-looking gates, asked if he could see Mr. Mortomley on private business.

"He is engaged just now," answered a clerk, who knew Mr. Asherill by sight. "If you step up into his office and wait a minute, he will be with you."

Up into Mr. Mortomley's office went the man wet and miserable, who had scarcely had a civil word spoken to him during the whole of his weary pilgrimage,--up into the warmth, and what seemed to him the luxury of that comfortably furnished apartment.

Into the Turkey carpet his chilled feet sank gratefully. He was so wet he did not like to sit down and tarnish with his dripping garments the morocco leather of the easy chair. A sense of peace, and leisure, and quietness, and trust fell upon him.

The rush of the river grew less audible.

"I will do it. I will tell him all, by----."

And never in his later years had Mr. Asherill uttered the sacred name with such agonized earnestness as then.

A man entered, old, white-haired, affluent; a man who did not merely look like a gentleman, but who was one; a man who talked little about religion, but whose life had been a long worship, a perpetual thanksgiving, a continual striving to do good.

He looked at the saturated clothes, at the white anxious face, at the mute glance towards the still open door; then he walked to the door, and having closed and bolted it, came close up to his visitor and asked,

"What is it? what is the matter?"....

It was a common enough story, and it did not take long to tell. When it was ended, Mr. Mortomley went to his safe, unlocked it, took out his cheque-book, filled in a cheque, signed and blotted off the writing.

"You cannot get this cashed to-day," he said; "it is too late, but first thing on Monday will be time enough for what you want. There, there; don't thank me. Thank the Almighty for sending you here and saving you from a worse crime still. Now go. Yet stay a moment. You look as if you wanted food and drink and firing. Here are a couple of sovereigns; and now do, do pray let this be a warning to you for the remainder of your life."

That was the phantom memory conjured up. Instead of the river or a prison, relief and a fresh chance given him.

It all happened just as the waves of time brought it back to his recollection.

A similar Saturday--the rain pouring down--only now it was to the old man's son, ruin had come, and there was no one to hold out a helping hand to him.

Never had Mrs. Asherill beheld her husband in a more gracious or softer mood than when, after dinner, he sat before a blazing fire and helped her to grapes and filled a wine glass with some choice port, and insisted on her drinking it.

"I have some sad news for you," she said. "I have kept it till now lest it should spoil your appetite for dinner. My poor friend Rosa Gilbert is dead, and she has left me five hundred pounds."

"Dear, dear, dear; dead is she, poor thing!" remarked Mr. Asherill. "What frail creatures we are! Grass before the mower. Here to-day; to-morrow, where?" And he folded his hands and stretched out his feet towards the fire, whilst Mrs. Asherill considered the question of mourning, and thought it seemed but a few days since Rosa and she were girls together.

"My dear," said Mr. Asherill, "if you have no objection I should like to devote fifty pounds of this legacy in charity. I have heard to-day of a sad case, a most sad case; a family opulent, highly esteemed, of considerable social standing, reduced to beggary. With your permission I should wish to send fifty pounds to the family as a thanks offering for great mercies vouchsafed to ourselves."

Mrs. Asherill instantly agreed to this. Though a woman, she was not mean; though a Christian, she had not her husband's faculty for looking after loaves and fishes.

She only bargained she should see the kind letter which accompanied the gift, and then and there, accordingly, Mr. Asherill wrote a draft of it.

With morning, however, came reflection. Fifty pounds was a large sum Mr. Asherill considered, and the Mortomleys might stand in no need of it.

He decided not to send so much, but to say nothing of the reduced gift to his wife.

She had seen the letter. That letter could go all the same with a smaller enclosure. The acknowledgment of a friendly gift from J. J. could be inserted in the 'Daily News' as he had requested. There was no necessity to change the form of that.

Monday came, and with it more prudent reflections.

Tuesday, even the later impulses of his generosity had been absurd.

Wednesday, and with it questions from Mrs. Asherill.

Thursday, and a greater access of prudence. Nevertheless, something must be done, he felt, and so he did something. He wrote out the letter in a fair hand, signed it,--"Your well wisher, John Jones," and enclosed a post-office order for £2. 10_s_.

Saturday came, no advertisement in the 'Daily News,' and more questions from Mrs. Asherill.

Monday, and this paragraph met Mr. Asherill's eyes,--

"Mrs. M. begs to acknowledge the receipt of two pounds ten shillings from J. J., which she has forwarded to the Secretary of the London Hospital."

Mr. Asherill shook all over with indignation. He had seen Mrs. Mortomley on the previous Saturday and was not surprised when he read the foregoing paragraph. He had fervently prayed privately that she might never associate him and the so-signed John Jones together, but he felt indignant nevertheless.

Particularly as it compelled him to practise a deception on the wife of his bosom.

He had to draw out an advertisement himself and take the Thursday's paper containing it home to Kew for Mrs. Asherill's delectation.

"Mrs. M. acknowledges the receipt of £50 from J. J. to whom she begs to tender her most grateful thanks."

On the whole, occupied though Mrs. M.'s mind chanced at the time to be with other matters, it was quite as well for J. J. that the 'Daily News' was not a paper which the local vendor generally left at Homewood.