THE MAN WHO HAD DINED TOO WELL
"SIT down, Mr. Archibald Dalrymple," said the tea-broker, with a sarcastic emphasis on the name, as if its distinction were a mere aristocratic pretence. "Sit down, sir."
He noticed with disfavour how the young man, despite his agitation, slightly pulled up the knees of his irreproachable trousers as he obeyed. The act brought into prominence a couple of long thin feet in varnished boots, at the vision of which Mr. Huggins sniffed audibly. He was too extreme a Tory not to be sensible of his own shortcomings, literally, in the leg and foot department. A bluff insistence on the proverbial inadequacy of clothes to prove the gentleman was his solitary refuge from a self-consciousness of his own thick inelegance, and the general incompetency of tailors to better it. It was certainly hard that this whipper-snapper, on a hundred and nothing a year, should possess, on no warrant but that of his birth, what he with all his thousands was denied—the personality of a gentleman. Therefore he was sarcastic at the expense of his visitor's name and boots, and insulting in his use of the only counter-check at his command to all which they implied. Impecuniosity, the young man must learn, was not the less subject, because patrician, to the dictatorialness of wealth.
"It's a dirty day," he said; "and I suppose you never thought of doing anything but walk?"
The interview, by the way, was in his own drawing-room; the hour, midday on a Sabbath.
"I hope, sir," said Mr. Dalrymple, with an ingratiatory smile, "that you've no fault to find with that sort of providence? "
He was tall and slender, with a pale not very wise face; but, like many aristocratic unintelligences, he seemed capable of a certain fixity of purpose.
"That depends," said the tea-broker, "on what's behind it. The more you're justified in cabs and such-like ostentations, the better you'll be advised to chuck 'em."
"Honestly, I'm not justified in any ostentation," said the young man.
"Exactly," said the tea-broker; "and you've come, I understand, to ask me for the hand of my daughter, who is. Now, how you're going to reconcile me, as a plain man of business, to that, is the question."
"My prospects," began the suitor.
"Are without end, sir," interrupted the tea-broker. "It's the case with all of us. But they aren't the sort of asset I favour in a marriage contract. Real estate, sir; a balance at your bankers; a profitable occupation—those are the telling arguments."
He bent his heavy eyebrows on the visitor, who sat looking down and nervously roping his gloves together.
"Young gentleman," he said, "you'll do me the justice of assuming that my daughter Kate is at least as dear to me as she is to you. Only I've got a more intimate experience of her worth. Put it on the practical footing, then, that I'm not going to sell precious goods cheap. I want my equivalent for value received—my equivalent, you'll understand, which is nothing less than a guarantee of her happiness at the hands of a possible vendee. Do I see that in your offer? which, of course, at the same time, I acknowledge with all politeness. I ask you, as a mere question of business, Would you pledge the best of your credit with a bankrupt?"
"You're too hard on me, sir. You spoke of a profitable occupation. Surely the Bar is that?"
"Surely it may be—to a publican. As to your tale of briefs, now?"
The suitor blushed.
"I've some, what you may call, good connexions, sir."
"I don't dispute it."
Consciously or unconsciously, the tea-broker seemed to glance at the varnished boots again. Anyhow, he sniffed.
"Your family's all right," he said. "I don't dispute it, I say."
"With influence, moneyed influence, to back me," began the suitor, momentarily deluded into eagerness; but the other checked him.
"So, young gentleman," he said, "I'm to be your bribe to Fortune? I'm to accept you first and make you afterwards? Why, any beggar at the gate could equal that guarantee."
The suitor's hopes, bitterly abashed, fell to zero.
"I didn't quite mean it," he murmured. "You—you spoke of Kate's—Miss Huggins's happiness. I don't—with respect, sir, I don't yield to you in that matter. However unworthy I may be, she, at least, believes it to be bound up in mine. But, perhaps, she hasn't—you don't" "Make your mind easy. She's taken me into her confidence. I've been treated to a deal of the sort of stuff they call fairy gold—precious glittering stuff, too, in the light of gas-lamps and romance, but dust, sir, dust in the light of day and commonsense. I know in what her happiness has laid up to now, and I know, as a practical man, that it's not going to accommodate itself all of a sudden to buses and third-class fares."
"Really, sir, you exaggerate."
"Do I?"
"I've a small independent income."
"What return—you'll excuse me—do you make on it to the assessors? "
"None; I'm exempt—that is—moreover, I earn a little by literature."
"By what?"
"Literature—articles, and so on, in the papers."
"O, indeed! What's the most you've ever made out of it, out of anything, in a day?"
"In a single day?"
"There's no need to waste words."
"O! I couldn't tell, really."
"A hundred pounds?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Fifty?"
"I can't say as much."
"Ten?"
"No, not even that."
"What, then?"
"I once got a cheque for two-five for a short story in The United Family."
The tea-broker rose, the other with him.
"Good day," said the former.
You will give me—us—no hope whatever?" pleaded the suitor desperately.
"Young man," said Mr. Huggins grimly, "you may have heard, or you may not have heard, of a neighbour of mine called Matcham. But I won't be hard on you. Come to me at any time with the assurance that you've earned by your wits as much as a hundred pounds in a single day, and I'll reconsider your case."
"Do you give your word on that?" asked the suitor dolefully.
"I give my business word," answered the tea-broker, with a sardonic chuckle. "Only, mind, I guarantee nothing in the interval."
Mr. Dalrymple gazed at him a moment, wrung his hand fervently but respectfully, and departed in the greatest depression.
"He's not a bad chap, and well connected, too," mused Mr. Huggins, standing in the middle of the room when the door was shut; "but—all that pretence, boots and things, on nothing—and then to go and plead Matcham!"
He pursed his lips, shook his head, and subsided into thought.
In the meanwhile a tragic issue was enacting in a little room off the hall.
"Yes, my dearest girl," said Archibald, "he refuses to hear another word until I can bring proof that I've scored, off my own bat, as much as a hundred pounds in a single day."
"Why," said Kate, looking up through her tears; "that shouldn't be so very difficult. Did he limit you to the means? "
"Certainly not."
"Borrow it of me, then."
"My dear, is that moral? Besides, it wouldn't be making it."
"I don't know. There's nothing I wouldn't value one of your precious letters at."
"Yes, my Kate. But don't you see how for you to give me a hundred pounds for one, would be sort of robbing Peter to pay Paul?"
"Why?"
"Why? I should borrow from you to give to you. We might as well take in one another's washing."
"Really, Archie!"
"It's a proverb, my dear, about the wives of Scilly."
"Well, I'm sure it's silly enough for anything. But I'd rather you'd waited till I was your wife."
"Now I've offended you. Good God! and I've already, I'm afraid, put my foot in it with your father. I'm a failure all round."
"Hush! It was thoughtless; but don't be agitated. What did you say to him?"
"He asked me how much I'd ever earned in a day; and I blurted out, quite forgetting, the sum I'd received from The United Family for 'Love's Nursling.'"
"Mr. Matcham's paper?"
She looked at him aghast.
"That was unwise—but"
She dwelt a little, pondering on his eyes. Kate certainly covered a multitude of paternal sins. She was a very sweet homely girl, with just a fragrant genius for domesticity. Her surname was her least lovable possession, and even that greeted one with a hug. While she gazes in silence, we will slip in a parenthesis.
Mr. Huggins and Mr. Matcham—the latter proprietor-editor of The United Family magazine—were brother masons, near neighbours on Brixted Common, and deadly enemies in spite of everything. Their mutual hostility turned upon a question of land-grabbing. Mr. Huggins had arrogantly enclosed within posts and rails a strip of public green, situated beyond the haw-haw which terminated his front lawn on the Common side, and Mr. Matcham. a furious democrat, had called him a thief in consequence. That had been sufficiently offensive; but the word had carried, and had been intended to carry, a bifurcated sting, the second point of which touched upon an unfortunate occurrence which had lately further complicated the relations of the two. Mr. Huggins, present master of the local masonic lodge to which they both belonged, had, about a week before the date of this narrative, been entrusted with the care of some official badges (antiques, and of very considerable value), which he had promptly gone and lost. He had carried them home in a cab, from which he had duly conveyed them into his house (of that he was certain); and thereafter they were not. Such was his story, and such was nobody else's belief. The loss was serious, the scandal grave. There were whispers of unhallowed merriment at the dinner which preceded this catastrophe. There were whispers of a man who had dined too well. The cabman who had conveyed this man—Mr. Huggins, to be frank—home, was found and cross-examined to no purpose—by the defaulter himself, that is to say. But to others he told, in self-defence, a dark and, paradoxically, an illuminating tale of an inebriated fare who, deposited at the gates of his own drive, wrestled for some time unavailingly with the simple latch of a swing gate, and finally, having mastered it, tacked his way housewards by a series of cannons from tree to tree. Then appeared an advertisement, offering a reward of two hundred pounds for the recovery of the jewels, and no questions asked. No questions asked! Scandal should think not, indeed! A disgraceful business altogether. He had never conveyed the packet into his house at all. Probably he had dropped it, getting into or out of the cab, and it had been snatched by some prowling loafer. Possibly the cabman knew more about it than he would tell; possibly, even, tea-broker and cabby were in collusion. The jewels were worth an astonishing sum, which grew in immensity from day to day. Ugly, and quite unjustified, slanders pierced to Mr. Huggins's ears, and he recognised, or believed he recognised, in their propagator his injurious neighbour. Judge if Mr. Dalrymple's ingenuous confession predisposed him in favour of that suitor.
Kate smiled into her lover's eyes. She was already a beautiful rebel. Unknown to her father, she had regularly and loyally taken in The United Family ever since the appearance of "Love's Nursling" in its pages. She referred to it now.
"Do you know," she said, "that there is a treasure-disc story running through it at this very moment?"
"No," said Archibald.
"But there is, dear; and a hundred pounds (isn't it strange?) hidden somewhere for anybody who can find the clue. Archie, it's a providence! Find the hundred pounds, and I am yours! Pa never goes back on his word."
Pa, having, in a fit of profound abstraction, forgotten the two, now suddenly awoke to his remissness, and was heard noisily approaching. The young man stared between joy and bewilderment.
"To wring it out of Matcham!" he whispered ecstatically. "It would be a double triumph! I'll do it, Kate; I'll find it, if I have to turn grave-digger!"
He bolted before a portentous cough, tip-toeing away on winged though varnished feet.
That night he set to studying those current and back numbers of The United Family, which enshrined the clue so far as it had got. Before another fortnight was passed, he had mastered, with the final number of the story, the momentous problem. He seemed sure of the fact. He rose from his last perusal with a sort of choking gasp. The scent appeared to lie in so ridiculously obvious a direction, that he could not but plume himself on his own facile perspicacity in detecting it. He was cleverer, after all, than he had dared to suppose himself, than any other had seemed to suppose him to be. But, at the same time, he stood aghast before a revelation his discovery embodied. For it was patent, to him at least, that the disc-voucher for the hundred pounds was hid somewhere in Mr. Huggins's illegal enclosure on Brixted Common! In a flash he understood all the fiendish ingenuity of the plan. The deadly Matcham had designed this way of testing the right of his enemy to exclude the public from the plot in question!
It complicated matters; but it must be gone through with now, since Kate was the priceless guerdon of success. So, armed with a long-handled spud, artfully concealed in a wrapping of brown paper, he took train the next morning for Brixted, and, fervently praying that the tea-broker might already have departed for town, made his way, tingling, across the Common, uncovering his weapon as he went.
He was rather astonished to find its lonely acres unusually populated at that early hour. A scattered concourse of pedestrians streamed to a focus from every direction. They were mostly of the common sort, hurried and rude in action; and every one was furtively armed with a trowel, hoe, or other implement. Some, even, carried no more than fragments of old iron—a horseshoe for luck, the rusty blade of a table-knife, a two-pronged fork. One woman, with bibulous glazed eyes, held a shawl to her shaking mouth and an iron spoon half-concealed in the folds of it. She was a melancholy illustration of the catering to a hunger which knows no decency. One and all they moved on with a set eager purpose, spectres of a famished lust, hating each his neighbour in the race for gain—a sordid crew.
And then, in a moment, Archie gathered the clue to all this fevered rush, and stopped with a shock. The railed enclosure was black with swarming figures, which stooped and dug like rooks upon a new-ploughed field. He was not the first, it appeared, by a couple of hundred, to strike the obvious trail!
In the same instant he was aware of a sudden disturbance in the group. A stout and furious figure, flourishing a hunting-crop, had sprung into its midst, and, with maddened gesticulations, was scattering it in all directions. But it fled only to reform and hem in its devastator. The situation, literally at a blow, had become menacing.
Mr. Dalrymple's first impulse, in the immediate destruction of all his hopes and plans, was to turn and sneak away. Then a wiser and more generous policy prevailed. Here was his desired father-in-law in peril. He must go to the rescue of the old man. Besides, if he could help to clear Tom-Tiddler's ground!
In his agitation, becoming suddenly conscious of his incriminating spud, he thrust the thing in a panic up the right leg of his trousers, and stuck the end into his sock. Thus besplintered, he made anyhow for the enclosure, and, crossing the chain like a man on stilts, danced up to connect himself with the defence. That, gasping red anathema, was already, it seemed, on the verge of apoplexy.
"Ha, Dalrymple!" shouted Huggins; "I know who's work this is! What the devil, man! Are you a recruit to his ranks?"
The newcomer ranged himself alongside and panted:
"Premonition, sir—couldn't keep away—dreamt you were in danger—and Miss Huggins—come to give a hand."
"To give a hand? What's the matter with your trousers? Damned bad fit, I call 'em! Hoop there!"
He swung his crop, clearing a circle. He was evidently half off his head with fury and excitement. The mob came on.
"Clear out of this, you dashed old hass!" shouted a ringleader.
"Clear out of it? Clear out of my own?" bellowed Huggins. "It's private property, you dogs! I'll have every man jack of you impounded for trespass! I'll ruin you every one!"
"Don't listen to him!" cried a voice on the outskirts. "He'd no right to enclose it; it's common land."
Vicious, glaring, spectacled, combative as a French poodle's, the face of Matcham showed through the press; and the next moment Matcham himself skipped up.
"You hound," roared the tea-broker. "This is your doing!"
Matcham folded his arms.
"It's an honester way to make money than some I've heard of," said he.
"Corrupting the poor!" snarled Huggins.
"Better than compounding a felony," said Matcham.
Mr. Huggins gasped.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Two hundred pounds reward to catch a thief," cried Matcham. "I say, Charity begins at home."
With the word, the two respectable men were at deadly grips, while the crowd hooted and laughed. Shocked and horrified, Archie drove between, with such force as to separate them. The next instant—how, he could never tell—he himself and Matcham were reeling and wrestling together, the furious poodle face of the editor breathing fire into his own. Round they went in a sort of Walpurgis dance, the shrieking voice of the crowd their accompaniment; and then somehow—the strength of the little monster was amazing—they were by the gates of the drive, on the brink of the haw-haw where it ended, and he was flung over and down. The spud cracked as he fell, lacerating his calf. He bowled like a tumbler to the deep bottom of the ditch, where, amongst the ferns and little gorse bushes, he subsided half stunned. Presently he gathered his senses and looked about him.
When, later, he was helped out, by the butler and Mr. Huggins himself, he rose to a consciousness of a cordon of gardeners and policemen ringing the empty enclosure, and of an excluded mob beyond sullenly dispersing or lingering in baffled groups. Mr. Matcham's name had been "taken"; the field, anyhow for the time being, was won. Silently hobbling, he was assisted into the house, and deposited on a chair in the library. Mr. Huggins, near as dishevelled as himself, and infinitely redder, suddenly stood before him, his hands behind his back.
"You've caught it," he said. "Good Lord, man, nobody would take you for a gentleman to see you now. Well, I'm obliged to you, and to this evidence of what you came for."
With a quick action he brought the broken pieces of the spud from behind his back.
"You didn't find the disc?" he said, with a grin.
Archie shook his head.
"No," went on the tea-broker; "and so you're as far as ever, you see, from earning your hundred pounds in a day. O! I understand, and I say I'm obliged to you, for all you came with a different intention. But trust me to take care you don't get the chance again."
Archie rose. He saw suddenly the sweet unbidden face of his love at the door. It was all clouded with trouble and concern. He lifted his hand, and she fled to him, in the uncontrollable impulse to claim and console.
"Hey!" roared her father, starting back. "What the devil's the meaning of this, miss?"
Archie looked firmly over the head bowed upon his breast.
"Never mind the disc, sir," he said. "I claim the two hundred pounds reward."
Kate trembled in his arms; but he held her close
"The—What do you?" gasped the father.
"For the lost badges, sir."
"Where are they?"
Groping in his inner breast-pocket, the young man produced a small brown-paper parcel, torn and sodden. The tea-broker, as in a dream, held out his hand for it.
"I don't understand," he began stupidly. "Where did you find?"
"In the haw-haw—at the end, under the gate. There's two hundred pounds to me, made in a day. I shall have to ask you to reconsider my case, sir."
A thrilling pause succeeded.
"I don't remember" began the man who had dined too well; then stopped suddenly, seemed to realise in a moment all that it meant to him both of shame and triumph, gave quite a foolish little laugh, flushed distinctly through his earlier red, and, turning, softly tip-toed from the room, leaving the two together.
Now, ultimately, adds history, Mr. Dalrymple, the public being excluded from the enclosure, rooted up the treasure-disc at his comparative leisure, which so delighted Huggins, for the final means it gave him to retort on Matcham, that he consented without further demur to a union which had never really been very remote from his wishes.
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH