Delphi collected works o.., p.354
Delphi Collected Works of Grant Allen, page 354
Now Nea was young, but Nea was a rock of practical commonsense, as your good and impulsive West Country girl is often apt to be. Instead of jumping foolishly at Mr. Solomons’ proposal because it offered a loophole for immediate marriage, as you or I would have done, she answered at once, with judicious wisdom, that, much as she loved Paul and much as she longed for that impossible day to arrive when they two might be one, she couldn’t bear, even with Mr. Solomons’ consent, so far to burden Paul’s already too heavily mortgaged future.
“Paul!” she said, trembling, for it was a hard wrench, “if I loved you less, I might perhaps say yes; but I love you so much that I must still say no to you. Perhaps some day you may make a great hit — and then you could wipe off all your burdens at once — and then, dear, we two could be happy together. But, till then, I love you too well to add to your anxieties. I know there’s some truth in what Mr. Solomons says; but it’s only half a truth if you examine it closely. When I look forward and think of the long struggle it would bring you, and the weary days of working at your desk, and the fears and anxieties, I can’t bear to face it. We must wait and hope still, Paul: after all, it looks a little nearer now than when you said good-by to me that day at Oxford!”
Paul looked down at the gravel-path with a certain shock of momentary disappointment. He had expected all this; indeed, if Nea hadn’t said it, he would have thought the less of her; and yet, for all that, he was disappointed.
“It seems such an interminable time to wait,” he said, with a rising lump in his throat. “I know you’re right — I felt sure you’d say so — but, still, it’s hard to put it off again, Nea. When Mr. Solomons spoke to me I half felt it was best to do as he said. But now you’ve put it as you put it just now, I feel I’ve no right to impose the strain upon you, dearest.”
“Some day something will turn up,” Nea answered hopefully — for Paul’s sake — lest she should wholly crush him. “I can wait for you forever, Paul. If you love me, that’s enough. And it’s a great thing that I can write to you, and that my letters cheer you.”
Nevertheless, it was with a somewhat heavy heart that Paul rejoined Mr. Solomons at Par Junction that evening, feeling that he must still wait, as before, for some indefinite future.
“Well, what have you arranged?” Mr. Solomons asked, with a certain shadow of interest rare with him these last days, as he advanced to greet him.
“Oh, nothing!” Paul answered blandly. “Miss Blair says we oughtn’t to get married while I’m so much burdened; and I didn’t think it would be right on her account to urge her to share my burdens under such peculiar circumstances. You see I’ve her interests as well as yours to think about.”
Mr. Solomons glanced hard at him with a suspicious look. For a second his lips parted, irresolute, as if he half intended to say something important. Then they shut again close, like an iron trap, with that cold, hard look now fixed sternly upon them.
“I shall lose my money,” he said curtly. “I shall never be paid as long as I live. You’ll do no proper work with that girl on your brain. But no matter — no matter. The Jewish widows and orphans won’t lose in the end. I can trust you to work your fingers to the bone rather than leave a penny unpaid, however long it may take you. And mark you, Sir Paul, as you and the young lady won’t follow my advice, I expect you to do it, too — I expect you to do it.”
Paul bowed his head to his task-master.
“I will pay you every penny, Mr. Solomons,” he said, “if I work myself to death with it.”
The old man’s face grew harder and colder still.
“Well, mind you do it quick,” he said testily. “I haven’t got long left to live now, and I don’t want to be kept out of my money forever.”
But at the rectory near Fowey, if Paul could only have seen the profoundly affectionate air with which, the moment his back was turned, Mr. Blair threw his arm round his daughter’s neck, and inquired eagerly, “Well, what did Sir Paul say to you, Nea?” — even he would have laughed at his own timid fears anent the bearding of that alarming animal, the British father, in his own rectorial lair in Cornwall. And had he further observed the dejected surprise with which Mr. Blair received Nea’s guarded report of their brief interview, he would have wondered to himself how he could ever have overlooked the mollifying influence on the paternal heart of that magical sound, “Sir Paul Gascoyne, Baronet.”
For Mr. Blair heaved a deep sigh as he heard it, and murmured softly to himself.
“He seems a most worthy, high-minded, well-principled young man. I wish we could help him out of his difficulties anyhow.” —
CHAPTER XLV.
PRESSURE AND TENSION.
A YEAR passed away — a long, long year of twelve whole weary months — during which many small but important incidents happened to Paul and to Nea also.
For one thing, a few days after Paul’s return to town, Mr. Solomons dropped in one afternoon at the young man’s chambers in the little lane off Gower street. The week had aged him much. A settled gloom brooded over his face, and that stern look about the corners of his mouth seemed more deeply ingrained in its very lines than ever. His hair was grayer and his eyes less keen. But, strange to say, the blue tint had faded wholly from his lips, and his cheeks bore less markedly the signs of that weakness of the heart which some short time before had been so painfully apparent. He sat down moodily in Paul’s easy-chair, and drew forth a folded sheet of official-looking paper from his inner breast-pocket.
“Sir Paul,” he said, bending forward, with less of familiarity and more coldness than usual, “I’ve brought up this paper for you to take care of. I’ve brought it to you rather than to anybody else because I believe I can really trust you. After the blow I’ve received — and how terrible a blow it was no man living will ever know, for I’m of the sort that these things affect internally — after the blow I’ve received, perhaps I’m a fool to trust any man. But I think not. I think I know you. As I said to that miserable woman the other evening, one ought at least to know when one has a gentleman to deal with.”
Paul bowed his head with a faint blush of modesty at so much commendation from Mr. Solomons.
“It’s very good of you,” he said, “to think so well of me. I hope, Mr. Solomons, I shall always be able to deserve your confidence.”
Mr. Solomons glanced up suspiciously once more.
“I hope so,” he said in a very dry voice. “I hope you won’t forget that a debt’s a debt, whether it’s owed to poor Leo and me or to the Metropolitan Jewish Widows and Orphans. Well, that’s neither here nor there. What I want you to do to-day is to look at this will — circumstances have compelled me to make a new one — and to see whether it meets with your approbation.”
Paul took the paper with a faint smile and read it carefully through. It resembled the former one in most particulars, except, of course, for the entire omission of Lionel’s name in the list of bequests; but it differed in two or three minor points. The bulk of Mr. Solomons’ fortune was now left, in trust, to the Jewish Board of Guardians; and the notes and acceptances of Sir Paul Gascoyne, Baronet, were specially mentioned by name among the effects bequeathed to those worthy gentlemen, to be employed for the good of the Metropolitan Hebrew community. Mention was also made of a certain sum, already paid over in trust to the Board for the benefit of Maria Agnese Solomons, widow of Lionel Solomons, deceased, which was to revert, on the death of the said Maria Agnese to the General Trust, and be employed by the Guardians for the same purposes. There was a special bequest of ten pounds to Sir Paul Gascoyne, Baronet, for a mourning ring; and a similar bequest to Faith, wife of Charles Thistleton, Esquire, ‘and one of the testator’s most esteemed friends. But beyond that small testimony of regard there was little to interest Paul in the document. He handed it back with a smile to Mr. Solomons, and said shortly, “I think there’s nothing to object to in any part of it. It was kind of you to remember myself and my sister.”
Mr. Solomons’ eyes looked him through and through.
“I want you to take care of it,” he said abruptly.
“I will,” Paul answered. “But I would like first to ask you just one favor.”
“What’s that?” Mr. Solomons asked sharply.
“If I can succeed in paying you off during — well, during your own lifetime, will you kindly remove the mention of my notes and acceptances? I wouldn’t like them to be noticed in the papers, if possible.”
“I will,” Mr. Solomons answered, looking at him harder than ever. “Sir Paul, you’re a very honorable young man.”
“Thank you,” Paul replied. “You are always very good to me.”
“They don’t all talk like that!” Mr. Solomons retorted, with temper. “They mostly call me a ‘damned old Jew.’ That’s generally all the praise a man gets for helping people out of their worst difficulties.”
And he left the will with Paul with many strict injunctions to keep it safe, and to take care nobody ever had a chance of meddling with it.
In the course of the year, too, Paul was very successful in his literary ventures. Work flowed in faster than he could possibly do it. That’s the luck of the trade: sometimes the deserving man plods on unrecognized till he’s nearly fifty before anybody hears of him; sometimes editors seem to hunt out with a rush the merest beginner who shows promise or performance. It’s all a lottery, and Paul happened to be one of the lucky few who draw winning numbers. Perhaps that magical suffix of “Bart.” stood here, too, in good stead; perhaps his own merits secured him custom; but, at any rate, he wrote hopefully to Nea, if health and strength kept up, he could get as many engagements now as ever he wanted.
Health and strength, however, were severely tried in the effort to fulfill Mr. Solomons’ exacting requirements. Paul worked early and late, at the hardest of all trades (for if you think literature is mere play, dear sir or madam, you’re profoundly mistaken); and he saved, too, much out of food and lodging in order to meet as many as possible of those hateful notes from quarter to quarter. Mr. Solomons himself remonstrated at times; he complained that Paul, by starving himself and working too hard, was running the risk in the long run of defrauding his creditor. “For all that, you know,” he said demonstratively, “your health and strength’s my only security. Of course there’s the insurance; that’s all right if you die outright; but literary men who break down don’t generally die; they linger on forever a burden to their friends or the parish, with nervous diseases. As a duty to me, Sir Paul, and to the Metropolitan Widows and Orphans, you ought to feed yourself better and take more rest. I don’t mean to say I don’t like to see a young man working hard and paying up regular; that’s only honest; but what I say is this: there’s moderation in all things. It isn’t fair to me, you see, to run the risk of laying yourself up before you’ve paid it all off to the last farthing.”
Nevertheless it must be admitted that Mr. Solomons received Paul’s hard-earned money with a certain close-fisted joy which sometimes shocked, and even surprised, his simple-hearted young debtor. To say the truth, the miserly instinct in Mr. Solomons, kept somewhat in check by many better feelings during Mr. Lionel’s lifetime, seemed now completely to have gained the upper hand in his cramped and narrowed later nature. They say the ruling passions grow fiercer in old age; doubtless they are wrong; but in Mr. Solomons’ case the proverbial paradox had at least a certain external semblance of justification. Quarter after quarter, as Paul paid in his instalments of principal and interest, the old man grumbled over and over again at the insufficiency of the amount and the slowness of the repayment. Yet what seemed to Paul strangest of all was the apparent contradiction that while Mr. Solomons thus perpetually urged him by implication to work harder and harder, he was at the same time forever urging him in so many words to take more holiday and spend more money and time on food and pleasure. Not that Mr. Solomons ever put these requests upon sympathetic grounds: he always based them solely and wholly on considerations of his own interest. “If you don’t take more care of yourself,” he would often say with that cold stern face unchanged for one moment, “you’ll make yourself ill, and go off into a nervous wreck, and come upon the parish — and then what’ll become of all the money I’ve advanced you?”
“I can’t help it,” Paul would answer. “I feel I must somehow; I can never rest till I’ve cleared it all off, and am my own master.”
“I know what that means,” Mr. Solomons said once, near the end of the year when autumn was coming round again. “You’re in a hurry to marry this young lady down in Cornwall. Ah, that’s just the way of all you borrowing people. You enter into contracts with one man first, for money down, his own hard-saved money, that he’s made and hoarded; and then, when you’ve eaten and drunk it all up, you go and fall in love with some girl you’ve never seen in your lives before, and for her sake, a stranger’s sake, you forget all about your vested obligations. I wish you’d take my advice and marry the young woman out of hand. I’d be all the safer in the end to get my money.” Paul shook his head.
“I can’t bear to, and, even if I would, Miss Blair wouldn’t. She said herself she’d never burden my life any further. I must work on now to the bitter end, and in the course of years, perhaps, I may be able to marry her.”
“In the course of years!” Mr. Solomons echoed fretfully. “In the course of years, indeed! And do you think, then, I’m going to live on forever? No, no; I want to see some pleasure and satisfaction out of my money in my own lifetime. I’m not going to stand this sort of thing much longer. You ought to marry her, and settle down in life to do better work. If you’d get a house of your own now, with Lady Gascoyne at the head of your table, and could give dinners, and invite the world, and take your proper part in London society, you’d soon be coining money — a man of your brains, with no home to entertain in! You’re keeping me out of my own — that’s just what I call it.”
“I’m sorry I disappoint you, Mr. Solomons,” Paul answered sadly, “but I’m afraid I can’t help it. I can never marry till I’m independent.”
Mr. Solomons rose and moved to the door.
“I must put a stop to this nonsense,” he murmured resolutely. “I can’t let this sort of thing go on much longer. If I have to put the Courts in action to get what I want, I must put a stop before another week to this confounded nonsense.”
“Put the Courts in action!” Paul cried, aghast at the ugly phrase. “Oh, no, Mr. Solomons, you can never mean that! You won’t expose an old friend, who has always tried his best to repay you for all your kindness, to so much unpleasantness. I’ll do anything — in reason — to prevent such a contingency.”
But Mr. Solomons only gazed back at him with that inquiring glance. Then he drew himself up and said with a stony face:
“Sir Paul Gascoyne, I’ve always said you were a gentleman. I hope you won’t compel me to be too hard upon you. I hope you’ll think it over, and see your way to marry the lady.”
Paul flung himself back in his easy-chair as Mr. Solomons closed the door behind him, and felt for once in his life very bitterly against his old benefactor, as he had always considered him. He was half inclined, in that moment of pique, to take him at his word, and to beg and implore Nea to marry him immediately.
As for Mr. Solomons, in his lonely room at Hillborough that night, he sat down by himself, with a resolute air, to write two letters which he hoped might influence his recalcitrant debtor. He wrote them in a firm, clear hand, little shaky with age, and read them over more than once to himself, admiring his own persuasive eloquence. Then he put them into two envelopes, and duly directed them. The superscription of one was to the Rev. Walter Blair, the Rectory, Lanhydran, near Fowey, Cornwall. That of the other was to Mrs. Charles Thistleton, Ward law House, The Parks, Sheffield. And what especially impelled him to write this last was the fact that Miss Nea Blair was at that moment in the north, on a long promised visit to Sir Paul’s sister.
CHAPTER XLVI.
A TRANSACTION IN DIAMONDS.
THREE days later Mr. Solomons happened to have business in town which took him up into Cheapside on a very unwonted shopping expedition. Mr. Solomons, in fact, was bent on the purchase of jewelry.
He had been more particularly driven to this novel pursuit by the simultaneous receipt of two letters from two opposite ends of England on that self-same morning. One of them bore the Fowey postmark; the other, addressed in a feminine hand, was dated “Sheffield.” Mr. Solomons smiled somewhat grimly to himself as he read this last. “Eighteen months of wealth and prosperity have strangely developed our old friend Faith,” he thought in his own soul. “How glibly she talks about money now, as if it was water! She doesn’t seem to think much about Sir Paul’s difficulties. They vanish far more easily in her mind to-day than in the hard old days down at Plowden’s Court in Hillborough.”
But Mr. Solomons was too much of a philosopher in his way to let this natural evolution of the female mind disturb for a moment his somber equanimity. Men, he knew, rise sometimes to the occasion; women always. So he went on his way to London with that settled solid calm of a life that has now no hope left in it, and that goes on upon its dull routine by pure mechanical habit.
Nevertheless, that habit was the habit of a lifetime devoted to making and saving money. In dealing with a debtor and in haggling with a seller, Mr. Solomons’ soul was still as keen as ever. He watched over the interests of the Jewish widows and orphans as closely as ever in happier times he had watched over his own and Leo’s. A gain or loss of sixpence still seemed to him a matter well worth struggling over a rise or fall of one-eighth per cent, on the market price of Portuguese Threes still put his overworked heart into a flutter of excitement. It was with judicious care, therefore, that he selected for his patronage the shop of a fellow-tribesman in a street off Cheapside, and proceeded to effect a suitable bargain in jewelry.
