Collected works of j s f.., p.10
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 10
A light tap at his office door interrupted him.
“May I come in?” asked a sweet voice.
Martin turned in his chair and looked towards the door in surprise. “You here, my dear?” he said. “What’s brought you down here at this time? I was thinking of going home to dinner.”
Through the half-open door came a fair, gracious girl of nineteen or twenty summers. She was tall and lissome, and though not exactly beautiful, her face was so attractive that no man would have passed her without doing homage to its beauty. As she came across the office to her father’s side Martin Aylmer felt his clouds all the darker because this brown-eyed daughter of his would have to remain for awhile at least beneath their shadow. Rose had been the pride and joy of his existence until then. He had no other children, and his wife had been dead many years. From the cares and anxieties of his business Martin Aylmer had turned to his daughter for rest and consolation, and Rose had never failed to give him both. They were all in all to each other, these two, and the father knew well that whatever pained him would pain his girl.
Since Mrs. Aylmer’s death, at which time Rose became everything to her father, there had only been one cloud between the merchant and his daughter. At eighteen Rose had fallen hopelessly and irretrievably in love with her cousin Leonard, who had been head over ears in love with her ever since she wore short frocks. Leonard Aylmer was the son of a brother of Martin’s who had not done over well in life, and had finally died leaving his boy unprotected and unprovided for, Martin took Leonard in hand, sent him to a good school, spared no expense in educating him, and finally gave him room in his own house and a desk in his office. It never seemed to strike him that Leonard and Rose were certain to fall in love with each other as time went on. Yet that was a tolerably palpable fact to other people, for Leonard was a handsome, well-favoured youngster, and Rose was sweet enough for any man to love. When the discovery came Martin Aylmer was somewhat vexed. He did not feel any resentment towards the young people. It was only natural, he said, that they should fall in love with each other. But he blamed himself for not having seen how things were turning out. “It is not that I have any objection to your marrying Rose, my boy,” he said kindly enough to Leonard; “but you are both too young.”
“I am twenty-five,” said Leonard, “Exactly; and Rose is just eighteen. Time enough to think of marriage in another five years, when you have both seen a little more of life.”
“Oh, papa!” said Rose, who had stolen into the room unobserved. “What a long time!”
“It will soon pass, my dear. But I don’t mean to separate you for five years,” said Martin Aylmer, seeing that both young people were looking very much concerned.
“Do you mean to separate us at all, sir?” asked Leonard.
“Just as much as will be for your good, my boy,” answered the merchant. “Now listen to me. You shall go away, Leonard, for two years, and during that time you shall not attempt to hold any communication with Rose. I shall give you sufficient money to start you out. If you come back at the end of two years, having succeeded in whatever you turn your hand to, Rose shall be yours.”
There was a pause. Leonard looked at Rose; Rose glanced at Leonard. The same thought was in the minds of both.
“Life is a battle, sir,” said Leonard after a while, “and the most earnest and willing soldier sometimes gets knocked on the head before he can strike a blow. Suppose, having done my very best, I come back to you, a failure? Shall I — —”
“In that case, my boy,” interrupted Martin Aylmer, “you shall have Rose all the same, provided that you love her. I know you will do your best. And if you fail, why, you shall start afresh here. But you will not fail, Leonard.”
“No,” said Leonard, looking at his sweetheart, “I shall not fail.”
So it was settled. Martin Aylmer supplied his nephew with money, and Leonard after a lingering farewell and warm promises to be true, sailed away for new shores. For two years he was to be silent and unseen. At the end of that time he was to come back to claim his bride.
The sending away of Leonard was the only thing on which Rose and her father had ever differed. The girl thought the needs of the case might have been met by Leonard going to London or Edinburgh, and serving his probation within easy distance of her. She thought also that they might have been permitted to correspond. And she put her views before her father with womanly pertinacity and eloquence.
“My darling,” said Martin Aylmer, “I am sure you can trust your father, Leonard and you will find that what I am doing is the right thing. Do you remember how Jacob served fourteen years for his wife Rachel? If you and Leonard love each other truly and really, this two years’ separation will only make your love stronger.”
And so Leonard had now been gone a year.
“What brings you down here, my dear?” asked the merchant as Rose entered his office, “Don’t you remember, papa, I am going to the theatre with Mrs. Walker? You were to follow us there, were you not, later in the evening?”
“Oh! said Martin Aylmer, “Ye — es, I had forgotten all about it. I’m afraid, my dear, I shan’t be able to go to-night. I have so much to attend to.”
While he spoke Rose’s quick eye had noticed how pale her father’s face looked. She noted, too his haggard eyes and general air of anxiety. She came to his side and laid her hand on his arm.
“Papa,” she said, “you are not well. You look quite ill. Come, let me take you home. The brougham is at the door. I can send a note to Mrs. Walker, excusing myself.”
“No, no, my dear,” said the merchant. “Nonsense. I’m not going to deprive you of an evening’s amusement because I happen to have a little extra worry. Off you go and enjoy yourself.”
“I wish you would do what I want,” said the girl, still disturbed on her father’s account. “I should enjoy a quiet evening at home with you far more than a noisy one at the theatre.”
“Nonsense,” again said Martin Aylmer, striving to be light-hearted in his daughter’s presence. “Come, away with you, miss. Mrs. Walker will think you’re not going.”
“Oh,” said Rose, moving reluctantly towards the door, “I’ve plenty of time!”
“If you have plenty of time,” said Martin, “I wish you would call in the High Street and see if young Lattimer, the solicitor, is in. He often stops late in his chambers. If he is still there ask him to step round here.”
“Very well, papa. You will go home soon, will you not?”
“Yes, my dear, yes; I shall not remain here long after Lattimer has been. Good-night for the present.”
He put his hand on her shoulder and, stooping, kissed her on the cheek and forehead. “Poor child!” he said as she went away, “she may as well have her pleasure to-night. She will have sorrow enough to-morrow; Though Martin Aylmer did not know it, he was just then a prophet whose words were to come true. About five minutes after Rose had left her father’s room a man entered very softly, and laid a key and some papers at the merchant’s elbow. “Oh,” said Martin Aylmer, looking up, “are you going now, Murgatroyd?”
“Unless you require me again, sir,” replied the other. He was a tall, spare man, apparently of thirty or thirty-five years of age, dressed throughout in black, and suggesting, because of his soft cat-like movements, the idea of cunning and subtlety. His face was very pale, and seemed paler by contrast with his black, garments and with the dark moustache and sharply trimmed beard which he wore. His eyes and hair were coal black; the eyes were small and half-closed, the hair was cut close to the head.
“I don’t know that I shall want you again,” said Martin Aylmer. “If all the clerks and warehousemen have gone you may lock up.”
“I have done so, sir. This is the key.”
“All right. Leave the outer door open. I expect some one calling. I will lock it when I go.”
“Very well, sir. Good-night.”
“Good-night, Murgatroyd.”
Simon Murgatroyd went out of the room softly. At the door he turned and gave his master a quick glance. Martin Aylmer’s head was again bowed over his desk in that despairing attitude in which we first saw him.
The merchant sat thinking and arranging his papers until a knock at the outer door warned him of Mr. Lattimer’s arrival. He got up and went across the wide hall and admitted the solicitor.
“Come in, Lattimer,” he said. “I wasn’t sure that you would still be in town, but I thought it possible.”
“I was just going when Miss Aylmer drove up,” said Mr. Lattimer, following his client into the latter’s private office. “But I am not in any particular hurry to get home. I can take the 8.15 train if you set me at liberty in time.”
Martin Aylmer pointed the solicitor to a seat and resumed his own. “I shall not occupy much of your time, Lattimer,” he said, sighing heavily. “My business is soon told.”
“I hope it is nothing serious,” observed Mr. Lattimer.
“It is very serious, very serious indeed. Lattimer, things have come to a crisis with me I have sent for you to-night to tell you that you will have to file my petition in bankruptcy.”
A lawyer is not often surprised. He hears and sees too many wonderful things for anything ordinary to disturb his equanimity. But Mr. Lattimer was very much surprised on this occasion. He stared at Martin Aylmer with wide-open eyes, “File — your — petition — in — bankruptcy!” he repeated. “Good heavens, Mr. Aylmer, do you really mean it?”
“I do, Lattimer. As I have already said, things are come to a crisis with me.”
“A house of sixty years’ standing!” said Mr. Lattimer.
The merchant looked up at his grandfather’s portrait and sighed. “Ay!” he said, “a house of sixty years’ standing, as you say. If I had retired into private life, Lattimer, when I succeeded to this business, I should have been worth a hundred thousand pounds. Ten years ago I should have been worth a hundred and fifty thousand. To-day I can’t meet my liabilities.”
Mr. Lattimer was shocked. “I am more surprised than I can say,” he said. “I know that trade has been bad — —”
“Bad? Man, there has been practically no trade for the last few years! I ought to have got out while I could. But consider — I wanted to keep the house’s name alive. I thought things would mend. I thought we should weather the storm. And now all’s gone. Tomorrow is settling day for the past fortnight, and I am ten or twelve thousand pounds short.”
If Mr. Lattimer or his client had chanced at that moment to turn towards the partly open door they would have seen the face of Simon Murgatroyd peering through it, listening to every word they uttered.
“What will the liabilities be?” asked the lawyer presently.
“About fifty-six thousand, and the assets about forty thousand.”
“Come,” said Mr. Lattimer, “that’s not so bad, Mr. Aylmer. There’ll be a good dividend. The creditors won’t be hard on you, and the glories of the house will revive in time.”
“I hope it may be so,” said Martin Aylmer, shaking his head, “But it’s a blow, a terrible blow. What would my grandfather and father have thought of it? Well, Lattimer, get the necessary papers prepared for the creditors.”
He accompanied the solicitor to the outer door, said good-night to him, and remained a moment watching the traffic in the busy street. As he stood there a young man emerged from the darkness and came hurriedly up the broad steps, his hands stretched out, a smile on his face.
Martin Aylmer started as though he had been shot. “Great heavens!” he cried. “Leonard? Home again?”
CHAPTER II.
A TALE OF WONDER.
THE YOUNG MAN, springing up the steps with ready hand and face lighted with more than ordinary joy and happiness, was a tall young fellow of pleasant appearance, dressed in a rough grey tweed ulster and travelling cap. His face was brown and weather-beaten, his eyes blue, his fair curly hair peeped out in tumbled confusion from under his cap. He was the very picture of a fine healthy young Englishman, sound in wind and limb and in mind also.
“Yes,” cried this new arrival, clasping Martin Aylmer’s hands between his own and giving them a tremendous squeeze. “Home again Uncle Martin! Hooray!” He seemed so full of spirits that his joyful shout was quite excusable. He smiled all over his handsome face, and kept squeezing Martin Aylmer’s hands until the merchant shrank from the vigorous pressure, “Well, you surprised me, Leonard,” said Martin Aylmer, drawing his nephew inside. “You surprised me wonderfully.”
“I’ve no doubt,” cried Leonard. “I meant to. It was quite by chance I turned in here, though, I was hurrying to the cab-stand as hard as I could, to drive up home. I saw you come to the door as I passed along.”
“You look well, Leonard.”
“Well?” said Leonard, laughing. “I should think I am well! You don’t look well, though, Uncle Martin. And now, tell me, how is Rose? Is she well? does she love me as much as ever?”
He had hurried on from commenting on his uncle’s appearance to asking after his sweetheart. Martin laughed.
“She’s quite well, my boy, and more in love than ever, I suppose. She was here not an hour ago, on her way to the theatre.”
“Oh,” said Leonard, “if I had only got here an hour earlier! Now I shall have to wait till the play’s over, I expect.”
“Sit down, Leonard,” said the merchant. “You haven’t told me yet why you are here. You were to be absent two years, you know, and the first year is only just over. Let me see, it is a year and a few days since you went. You ate your Christmas dinner with us, and then you sailed away.”
“Yes,” said Leonard, “I sailed away to fame and fortune, Uncle Martin; to fame and fortune!”
“To fame and fortune?” said Martin Aylmer; “what, within a year?”
“Ay, within a year!”
Martin Aylmer looked puzzled. “Tell me about it,” he said, pointing to the chair near his desk, at which he had resumed his seat. “Tell me all about it, Leonard.”
Leonard took the chair, and stretched out his long legs to the blaze in the grate before him. As he took his seat the head of Simon Murgatroyd again appeared at the door in a listening attitude.
“It’s a wonderful story,” said Leonard, “so wonderful, Uncle Martin, that if you heard it in the ordinary story-telling way, you’d say it was just a novelist’s imagination and nothing more. And I think before I go further that I’d better convince you of its truth. I guess this is such a proof as would satisfy the most sceptical man living.”
He threw open his great coat, and plunging his hand into some hidden pocket in his inner garments drew forth a pocket-book and held it up before the merchant’s eyes.
“What’s that, Leonard?” asked Martin Aylmer.
Leonard tapped the pocket-book triumphantly. “Uncle Martin,” he said, “this pocket-book contains twenty-thousand pounds’ worth of bank-notes!”
Martin Aylmer started. Twenty thousand pounds! Enough and more for his needs. Was it Providence that had sent the boy whom he had been a father to in his necessity to help him now that he needed help?
“Twenty thousand pounds!” he repeated. “It’s a little fortune, Leonard.”
“Ay,” said Leonard, “it is — to some people; to me, Uncle Martin, it is as nothing.”
The ears at the half-open door began to listen more intently, “Nothing, Leonard? Twenty thousand pounds nothing? You must be joking,” said Martin Aylmer.
“No,” said Leonard. “I’m in sober earnest. It’s nothing, Uncle Martin, because where I got this twenty thousand pounds I can get a million, two millions, three millions!”
The elder man drew his hand across his forehead wonderingly. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Tell me about it, Leonard.”
Leonard put the pocket-book in his breast again.
“When I went away.” he began, while Martin Aylmer watched him curiously, and the listening figure at the door strove to let no word go unobserved; “when I went away, Uncle Martin, I shaped my course for New York. I thought I should find work to do in the States which I couldn’t meet with in any other quarter of the globe. So I steamed away from Liverpool, and in ten days was in Broadway. I thought at first of establishing myself in business in New York. But I remembered, perhaps fortunately, that I was a stranger, unaccustomed to American usages, and unacquainted with any commercial custom? I decided, therefore, to look around me before definitely deciding on anything.”
“Very wise, Leonard,” said Martin Aylmer, “very wise. But I knew you had plenty of common sense.”
“I stayed but a short time in New York, and went on from there to Chicago. I thought that in a town which has raised itself up like the phoenix I might find some scope for my energy. I felt very energetic, you may be sure.”
“I am sure you did, my boy,” said Martin Aylmer.
“But somehow I didn’t find things to my liking in Chicago. I still felt like a stranger in a foreign land. I might have put my capital into bacon, but I didn’t care for that, so I decided to go out west, and see if there was anything likely in that direction, and travelling towards San Francisco I came across Obadiah F. Cadd.”
“Obadiah F. Cadd? And who is he, Leonard?”
“He is the best fellow that ever lived,” said Leonard heartily. “A middle-aged man, tall, gaunt, dry as a chip, with quaint sayings and a fund of dry humour, but the most sterling good qualities. A fellow who has knocked up and down all over the globe, and who has got his reward at last. A fellow who’s been all sorts of things — editor, showman, patent medicine maker, preacher, and Heaven knows what not.
“Well, Cadd and I became pretty thick in the course of a longish journey. He took to me, I took to him. I told him what I wanted. He told me that he had grown sick of his last trade, and was going to have a turn at the gold-diggings again. And all of a sudden, Uncle Martin, it struck me that it would do me no harm to see something of the gold mines. I confess that it looked like wasting time to go on such a precarious expedition. I resolved, however, to accompany Cadd and see a little of the life. I didn’t mean to stay long, and, in order that I mightn’t lose my money or be robbed of it, I remitted the bulk to a New York house, and only took sufficient for my needs.”
“May I come in?” asked a sweet voice.
Martin turned in his chair and looked towards the door in surprise. “You here, my dear?” he said. “What’s brought you down here at this time? I was thinking of going home to dinner.”
Through the half-open door came a fair, gracious girl of nineteen or twenty summers. She was tall and lissome, and though not exactly beautiful, her face was so attractive that no man would have passed her without doing homage to its beauty. As she came across the office to her father’s side Martin Aylmer felt his clouds all the darker because this brown-eyed daughter of his would have to remain for awhile at least beneath their shadow. Rose had been the pride and joy of his existence until then. He had no other children, and his wife had been dead many years. From the cares and anxieties of his business Martin Aylmer had turned to his daughter for rest and consolation, and Rose had never failed to give him both. They were all in all to each other, these two, and the father knew well that whatever pained him would pain his girl.
Since Mrs. Aylmer’s death, at which time Rose became everything to her father, there had only been one cloud between the merchant and his daughter. At eighteen Rose had fallen hopelessly and irretrievably in love with her cousin Leonard, who had been head over ears in love with her ever since she wore short frocks. Leonard Aylmer was the son of a brother of Martin’s who had not done over well in life, and had finally died leaving his boy unprotected and unprovided for, Martin took Leonard in hand, sent him to a good school, spared no expense in educating him, and finally gave him room in his own house and a desk in his office. It never seemed to strike him that Leonard and Rose were certain to fall in love with each other as time went on. Yet that was a tolerably palpable fact to other people, for Leonard was a handsome, well-favoured youngster, and Rose was sweet enough for any man to love. When the discovery came Martin Aylmer was somewhat vexed. He did not feel any resentment towards the young people. It was only natural, he said, that they should fall in love with each other. But he blamed himself for not having seen how things were turning out. “It is not that I have any objection to your marrying Rose, my boy,” he said kindly enough to Leonard; “but you are both too young.”
“I am twenty-five,” said Leonard, “Exactly; and Rose is just eighteen. Time enough to think of marriage in another five years, when you have both seen a little more of life.”
“Oh, papa!” said Rose, who had stolen into the room unobserved. “What a long time!”
“It will soon pass, my dear. But I don’t mean to separate you for five years,” said Martin Aylmer, seeing that both young people were looking very much concerned.
“Do you mean to separate us at all, sir?” asked Leonard.
“Just as much as will be for your good, my boy,” answered the merchant. “Now listen to me. You shall go away, Leonard, for two years, and during that time you shall not attempt to hold any communication with Rose. I shall give you sufficient money to start you out. If you come back at the end of two years, having succeeded in whatever you turn your hand to, Rose shall be yours.”
There was a pause. Leonard looked at Rose; Rose glanced at Leonard. The same thought was in the minds of both.
“Life is a battle, sir,” said Leonard after a while, “and the most earnest and willing soldier sometimes gets knocked on the head before he can strike a blow. Suppose, having done my very best, I come back to you, a failure? Shall I — —”
“In that case, my boy,” interrupted Martin Aylmer, “you shall have Rose all the same, provided that you love her. I know you will do your best. And if you fail, why, you shall start afresh here. But you will not fail, Leonard.”
“No,” said Leonard, looking at his sweetheart, “I shall not fail.”
So it was settled. Martin Aylmer supplied his nephew with money, and Leonard after a lingering farewell and warm promises to be true, sailed away for new shores. For two years he was to be silent and unseen. At the end of that time he was to come back to claim his bride.
The sending away of Leonard was the only thing on which Rose and her father had ever differed. The girl thought the needs of the case might have been met by Leonard going to London or Edinburgh, and serving his probation within easy distance of her. She thought also that they might have been permitted to correspond. And she put her views before her father with womanly pertinacity and eloquence.
“My darling,” said Martin Aylmer, “I am sure you can trust your father, Leonard and you will find that what I am doing is the right thing. Do you remember how Jacob served fourteen years for his wife Rachel? If you and Leonard love each other truly and really, this two years’ separation will only make your love stronger.”
And so Leonard had now been gone a year.
“What brings you down here, my dear?” asked the merchant as Rose entered his office, “Don’t you remember, papa, I am going to the theatre with Mrs. Walker? You were to follow us there, were you not, later in the evening?”
“Oh! said Martin Aylmer, “Ye — es, I had forgotten all about it. I’m afraid, my dear, I shan’t be able to go to-night. I have so much to attend to.”
While he spoke Rose’s quick eye had noticed how pale her father’s face looked. She noted, too his haggard eyes and general air of anxiety. She came to his side and laid her hand on his arm.
“Papa,” she said, “you are not well. You look quite ill. Come, let me take you home. The brougham is at the door. I can send a note to Mrs. Walker, excusing myself.”
“No, no, my dear,” said the merchant. “Nonsense. I’m not going to deprive you of an evening’s amusement because I happen to have a little extra worry. Off you go and enjoy yourself.”
“I wish you would do what I want,” said the girl, still disturbed on her father’s account. “I should enjoy a quiet evening at home with you far more than a noisy one at the theatre.”
“Nonsense,” again said Martin Aylmer, striving to be light-hearted in his daughter’s presence. “Come, away with you, miss. Mrs. Walker will think you’re not going.”
“Oh,” said Rose, moving reluctantly towards the door, “I’ve plenty of time!”
“If you have plenty of time,” said Martin, “I wish you would call in the High Street and see if young Lattimer, the solicitor, is in. He often stops late in his chambers. If he is still there ask him to step round here.”
“Very well, papa. You will go home soon, will you not?”
“Yes, my dear, yes; I shall not remain here long after Lattimer has been. Good-night for the present.”
He put his hand on her shoulder and, stooping, kissed her on the cheek and forehead. “Poor child!” he said as she went away, “she may as well have her pleasure to-night. She will have sorrow enough to-morrow; Though Martin Aylmer did not know it, he was just then a prophet whose words were to come true. About five minutes after Rose had left her father’s room a man entered very softly, and laid a key and some papers at the merchant’s elbow. “Oh,” said Martin Aylmer, looking up, “are you going now, Murgatroyd?”
“Unless you require me again, sir,” replied the other. He was a tall, spare man, apparently of thirty or thirty-five years of age, dressed throughout in black, and suggesting, because of his soft cat-like movements, the idea of cunning and subtlety. His face was very pale, and seemed paler by contrast with his black, garments and with the dark moustache and sharply trimmed beard which he wore. His eyes and hair were coal black; the eyes were small and half-closed, the hair was cut close to the head.
“I don’t know that I shall want you again,” said Martin Aylmer. “If all the clerks and warehousemen have gone you may lock up.”
“I have done so, sir. This is the key.”
“All right. Leave the outer door open. I expect some one calling. I will lock it when I go.”
“Very well, sir. Good-night.”
“Good-night, Murgatroyd.”
Simon Murgatroyd went out of the room softly. At the door he turned and gave his master a quick glance. Martin Aylmer’s head was again bowed over his desk in that despairing attitude in which we first saw him.
The merchant sat thinking and arranging his papers until a knock at the outer door warned him of Mr. Lattimer’s arrival. He got up and went across the wide hall and admitted the solicitor.
“Come in, Lattimer,” he said. “I wasn’t sure that you would still be in town, but I thought it possible.”
“I was just going when Miss Aylmer drove up,” said Mr. Lattimer, following his client into the latter’s private office. “But I am not in any particular hurry to get home. I can take the 8.15 train if you set me at liberty in time.”
Martin Aylmer pointed the solicitor to a seat and resumed his own. “I shall not occupy much of your time, Lattimer,” he said, sighing heavily. “My business is soon told.”
“I hope it is nothing serious,” observed Mr. Lattimer.
“It is very serious, very serious indeed. Lattimer, things have come to a crisis with me I have sent for you to-night to tell you that you will have to file my petition in bankruptcy.”
A lawyer is not often surprised. He hears and sees too many wonderful things for anything ordinary to disturb his equanimity. But Mr. Lattimer was very much surprised on this occasion. He stared at Martin Aylmer with wide-open eyes, “File — your — petition — in — bankruptcy!” he repeated. “Good heavens, Mr. Aylmer, do you really mean it?”
“I do, Lattimer. As I have already said, things are come to a crisis with me.”
“A house of sixty years’ standing!” said Mr. Lattimer.
The merchant looked up at his grandfather’s portrait and sighed. “Ay!” he said, “a house of sixty years’ standing, as you say. If I had retired into private life, Lattimer, when I succeeded to this business, I should have been worth a hundred thousand pounds. Ten years ago I should have been worth a hundred and fifty thousand. To-day I can’t meet my liabilities.”
Mr. Lattimer was shocked. “I am more surprised than I can say,” he said. “I know that trade has been bad — —”
“Bad? Man, there has been practically no trade for the last few years! I ought to have got out while I could. But consider — I wanted to keep the house’s name alive. I thought things would mend. I thought we should weather the storm. And now all’s gone. Tomorrow is settling day for the past fortnight, and I am ten or twelve thousand pounds short.”
If Mr. Lattimer or his client had chanced at that moment to turn towards the partly open door they would have seen the face of Simon Murgatroyd peering through it, listening to every word they uttered.
“What will the liabilities be?” asked the lawyer presently.
“About fifty-six thousand, and the assets about forty thousand.”
“Come,” said Mr. Lattimer, “that’s not so bad, Mr. Aylmer. There’ll be a good dividend. The creditors won’t be hard on you, and the glories of the house will revive in time.”
“I hope it may be so,” said Martin Aylmer, shaking his head, “But it’s a blow, a terrible blow. What would my grandfather and father have thought of it? Well, Lattimer, get the necessary papers prepared for the creditors.”
He accompanied the solicitor to the outer door, said good-night to him, and remained a moment watching the traffic in the busy street. As he stood there a young man emerged from the darkness and came hurriedly up the broad steps, his hands stretched out, a smile on his face.
Martin Aylmer started as though he had been shot. “Great heavens!” he cried. “Leonard? Home again?”
CHAPTER II.
A TALE OF WONDER.
THE YOUNG MAN, springing up the steps with ready hand and face lighted with more than ordinary joy and happiness, was a tall young fellow of pleasant appearance, dressed in a rough grey tweed ulster and travelling cap. His face was brown and weather-beaten, his eyes blue, his fair curly hair peeped out in tumbled confusion from under his cap. He was the very picture of a fine healthy young Englishman, sound in wind and limb and in mind also.
“Yes,” cried this new arrival, clasping Martin Aylmer’s hands between his own and giving them a tremendous squeeze. “Home again Uncle Martin! Hooray!” He seemed so full of spirits that his joyful shout was quite excusable. He smiled all over his handsome face, and kept squeezing Martin Aylmer’s hands until the merchant shrank from the vigorous pressure, “Well, you surprised me, Leonard,” said Martin Aylmer, drawing his nephew inside. “You surprised me wonderfully.”
“I’ve no doubt,” cried Leonard. “I meant to. It was quite by chance I turned in here, though, I was hurrying to the cab-stand as hard as I could, to drive up home. I saw you come to the door as I passed along.”
“You look well, Leonard.”
“Well?” said Leonard, laughing. “I should think I am well! You don’t look well, though, Uncle Martin. And now, tell me, how is Rose? Is she well? does she love me as much as ever?”
He had hurried on from commenting on his uncle’s appearance to asking after his sweetheart. Martin laughed.
“She’s quite well, my boy, and more in love than ever, I suppose. She was here not an hour ago, on her way to the theatre.”
“Oh,” said Leonard, “if I had only got here an hour earlier! Now I shall have to wait till the play’s over, I expect.”
“Sit down, Leonard,” said the merchant. “You haven’t told me yet why you are here. You were to be absent two years, you know, and the first year is only just over. Let me see, it is a year and a few days since you went. You ate your Christmas dinner with us, and then you sailed away.”
“Yes,” said Leonard, “I sailed away to fame and fortune, Uncle Martin; to fame and fortune!”
“To fame and fortune?” said Martin Aylmer; “what, within a year?”
“Ay, within a year!”
Martin Aylmer looked puzzled. “Tell me about it,” he said, pointing to the chair near his desk, at which he had resumed his seat. “Tell me all about it, Leonard.”
Leonard took the chair, and stretched out his long legs to the blaze in the grate before him. As he took his seat the head of Simon Murgatroyd again appeared at the door in a listening attitude.
“It’s a wonderful story,” said Leonard, “so wonderful, Uncle Martin, that if you heard it in the ordinary story-telling way, you’d say it was just a novelist’s imagination and nothing more. And I think before I go further that I’d better convince you of its truth. I guess this is such a proof as would satisfy the most sceptical man living.”
He threw open his great coat, and plunging his hand into some hidden pocket in his inner garments drew forth a pocket-book and held it up before the merchant’s eyes.
“What’s that, Leonard?” asked Martin Aylmer.
Leonard tapped the pocket-book triumphantly. “Uncle Martin,” he said, “this pocket-book contains twenty-thousand pounds’ worth of bank-notes!”
Martin Aylmer started. Twenty thousand pounds! Enough and more for his needs. Was it Providence that had sent the boy whom he had been a father to in his necessity to help him now that he needed help?
“Twenty thousand pounds!” he repeated. “It’s a little fortune, Leonard.”
“Ay,” said Leonard, “it is — to some people; to me, Uncle Martin, it is as nothing.”
The ears at the half-open door began to listen more intently, “Nothing, Leonard? Twenty thousand pounds nothing? You must be joking,” said Martin Aylmer.
“No,” said Leonard. “I’m in sober earnest. It’s nothing, Uncle Martin, because where I got this twenty thousand pounds I can get a million, two millions, three millions!”
The elder man drew his hand across his forehead wonderingly. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Tell me about it, Leonard.”
Leonard put the pocket-book in his breast again.
“When I went away.” he began, while Martin Aylmer watched him curiously, and the listening figure at the door strove to let no word go unobserved; “when I went away, Uncle Martin, I shaped my course for New York. I thought I should find work to do in the States which I couldn’t meet with in any other quarter of the globe. So I steamed away from Liverpool, and in ten days was in Broadway. I thought at first of establishing myself in business in New York. But I remembered, perhaps fortunately, that I was a stranger, unaccustomed to American usages, and unacquainted with any commercial custom? I decided, therefore, to look around me before definitely deciding on anything.”
“Very wise, Leonard,” said Martin Aylmer, “very wise. But I knew you had plenty of common sense.”
“I stayed but a short time in New York, and went on from there to Chicago. I thought that in a town which has raised itself up like the phoenix I might find some scope for my energy. I felt very energetic, you may be sure.”
“I am sure you did, my boy,” said Martin Aylmer.
“But somehow I didn’t find things to my liking in Chicago. I still felt like a stranger in a foreign land. I might have put my capital into bacon, but I didn’t care for that, so I decided to go out west, and see if there was anything likely in that direction, and travelling towards San Francisco I came across Obadiah F. Cadd.”
“Obadiah F. Cadd? And who is he, Leonard?”
“He is the best fellow that ever lived,” said Leonard heartily. “A middle-aged man, tall, gaunt, dry as a chip, with quaint sayings and a fund of dry humour, but the most sterling good qualities. A fellow who has knocked up and down all over the globe, and who has got his reward at last. A fellow who’s been all sorts of things — editor, showman, patent medicine maker, preacher, and Heaven knows what not.
“Well, Cadd and I became pretty thick in the course of a longish journey. He took to me, I took to him. I told him what I wanted. He told me that he had grown sick of his last trade, and was going to have a turn at the gold-diggings again. And all of a sudden, Uncle Martin, it struck me that it would do me no harm to see something of the gold mines. I confess that it looked like wasting time to go on such a precarious expedition. I resolved, however, to accompany Cadd and see a little of the life. I didn’t mean to stay long, and, in order that I mightn’t lose my money or be robbed of it, I remitted the bulk to a New York house, and only took sufficient for my needs.”
