A Rich Man's Relatives Volume II Part 3

Once or twice, by a lucky chance, he was able to catch the busy man at a vacant moment intrenched behind black bags bursting with briefs, volumes of consolidated statutes, and calf-bound authorities.

"Ha, Considine!" he would cry, in a tone almost too jolly for "the profession" in business hours, "so glad to have been disengaged when you called! See you so seldom. Sit down, old man, and tell me what I can do for you. Don't hurry, I am at leisure now--that is to say, for the next four minutes and a half," he would add, pulling out his watch. "Am to see the judge in chambers just five minutes from now.

But take time, I can run down in thirty seconds, so you have good four minutes and a half. So glad you dropped in when I was at leisure."

Then Considine would hesitate and grow confused. He had charged batteries of artillery in his day, had "difficulties" on Mississippi steamboats, which were afterwards arranged with six shooters, "each to go on firing till one dropped," and he had never flinched from his task or quailed before antagonist. But how call this man antagonist?

He seemed more ready to embrace than to fight. It was grievous to see him so friendly, and made our warrior feel but a shabby fellow with his inquiries and questions, which would sound so like insinuations, and might wound the genial soul which bore him so much goodwill. Being in for it, however, he must go on. It would never do for a Mississippian to run away, even in honour's cause. He pulled from his pocket a list of the bonds and debentures he held under their joint trusteeship.

"I want you to examine this list of securities, which I keep in my box at the Bank of Progress, and indorse your approval on the back, if you do approve, and we can go over to the bank and compare the papers with the memorandum any day you find convenient."

"Tush, man! It's all perfectly right, I am quite certain. I have every confidence in you, General," declining to receive the paper.

"But I really wish you would look at it. I feel this irregular responsibility unpleasant."

"Bosh! it's all regular enough among friends. You know Ralph Herkimer this ever so long, and I should hope you know _me!_ Imagine either of us getting ugly, and blaming you--whom the testator trusted so entirely--for anything you may do. No, no! And really, you must excuse me, but I cannot afford to muddle my head with unnecessary figures--even to please you! I need, all my clearness for the delicate questions which arise in my practice. I abominate figures at all times, and never tackle them unnecessarily."

"But ought not I to affix some sort of approval to the mortgages you have bought for the estate?"

Jordan lifted his eyes to the other's face, in gentle wonder, as a good man might when wounded rather than offended by an unlooked for aspersion on his honour; and Considine, confused and abashed, stopped short, and then floundered on again:

"I mean it, of course, in no distrustfulness--for what should I distrust?--but just so as fairly and fully to divide the responsibility in case of the heirs desiring to call us to account."

"I really do not know," answered Jordan, matching his voice to the look of mild disappointment without reproach which the other found it so hard to bear up under; "I really don't know. I have not considered the point. It did not occur to me that you would wish to enter into the intricacies of t.i.tles in this country, which is a comparatively old one, and the tenures bear no resemblance to those of Mississippi, where I am told you go back only to General Jackson. Our system of law, too, is very different, being derived from the French, and not from the common law, as with you. No! It did not occur to me that you could possibly wish to enter into these mysteries. Our period of trusteeship, too, is drawing near its close. Three years, I should suppose, would conclude it; though I cannot speak precisely without reference to the will, and the date of Mrs. Selby's marriage. Will the study of our Quebec land-system repay you, do you think? And our friend Ralph is so entirely satisfied. Why should you bother?

"But we are not responsible to Ralph."

"No, not exactly. But it will be his boy Gerald, which is much the same thing. The lad goes into partnership with his father shortly, so their interests are identical; and it would surprise me to be told that Master Gerald did or knew anything but what his father told him.

A nice boy. Wish my scapegrace was as manageable."

"I have never felt sure of that--of Ralph's boy being heir, I mean.

There has been no proof of the missing infant's death; and where there is money the claimant seemingly never dies, but is always reappearing when least expected. But if, as you antic.i.p.ate, it is to be Ralph we shall have to make up accounts with in the end, I am not confident that we might not have trouble, if he saw an opening for complaint. I have known him long, as you are aware, he is a fine man for business--none better--and has made a handsome fortune, but I had rather not be in his power."

"No fear of that! I fancy I know blaster Ralph, too," pulling out his watch, "but there are few men of mark, especially in business, whom we lawyers cannot lay a hand on, when necessary, to keep them quiet. His bark would be worse than his bite in our case, for I think I know where to light on a muzzle that will keep him quiet enough. Time's up, I see. If you are bent on overhauling those papers of mine, why not come up to dinner some evening? We could do it far more comfortably with the help of a gla.s.s of sherry and a good cigar. What day will you come? Friday? Or, let me see, what are you doing this evening? Come up to-night. Half-past seven, sharp. Good-bye, for the present. So glad you are coming."

And Considine would go as invited, and would find a number of other guests a.s.sembled; and Jordan would be all geniality and pleasure at having him; but never an allusion to business would escape his lips, nor would they find themselves alone together, even for a moment, till the evening was spent and it was time to go home. And so it fell that Considine's anxieties, while seeming to himself to require but one vigorous effort to end them, were never resolved, but hung about him vague and undefined, like the beginning of a low fever which has not as yet p.r.o.nounced itself; causing restlessness and care, but bringing also a habit of acceptance which enabled him to live his life in spite of it, only with a diminished relish. His distrust wore in time out of the acute into the chronic form; and it is remarkable, with time, how much of anxiety a healthy man can work through, and apparently be none the worse. Endurance brings a kind of strength to the mind like that which persistence does to the body, when the a.r.s.enic eater, after having consumed ounces of the deadly stuff, becomes able to swallow with impunity more than would have killed him not so many months before. The gouty and the rheumatic, too, how long they live!--live and enjoy even, somewhat, through their sufferings.

And in some such fashion Considine lived on, in moderate comfort and prosperity, with the shadow of possible ruin in the back-ground; always felt, but not so strongly that he must disturb the daily furniture of his life by an effort to exorcise the demon; which is a state of things not so very different from what the rest of us endure.

We have our threatening shadows too, loss, disease, madness, not so very far off, and always the dismal shade of Death himself looming up behind and dwarfing all the others; yet, like the people before the flood, we manage pretty well to comfort and amuse ourselves in the present.

Considine solaced himself not unsuccessfully under his cares. He had naturally much of the wise vegetable enjoyment of existence, and things conducing thereto, eating, smoking and gentle exercise, which is natural to the country bred more than to those brought up in cities. He had 'Change through the day to gossip and lounge upon, and his club in the evening. He had opportunities too of going into society, even if he did not make the most of them, and very frequently he would spend an hour in the Misses Stanley's drawing-room, sipping tea and talking over the news. He had fallen into the way of spending the hot months at St. Euphrase, just as those ladies spent the cold ones in the city. Their migrations agreed pretty closely in time, and both he and they, owing to years and circ.u.mstances, being somewhat out of the swim of busy life, found it pleasant to sit together on the banks, as it were, and watch the gambols and antics of those younger and brisker, who disported themselves in mid-current.

The ladies had come to town the first winter solely for their niece's education, but the following year they undoubtedly had their own solacement quite as much in view as her improvement. The tranquillity and repose of their rural life was if anything too complete, and after having once broken it by wintering in the city, it would have felt like returning to bed after lunch to have remained in the country all the following year. There is a feeling of companionship to be derived even from the faces of our fellows as they pa.s.s us in the street, which is pleasant to such as have been leading secluded lives, and it takes months for this mild excitement to lose its relish; but it will grow tame eventually, and so, too, will the morning calls among ladies of a certain age. Humanity being in two forms, which combine with and supplement each other to const.i.tute the perfect whole, a social circle composed of one kind alone must needs be incomplete, tending to limpness if it be feminine, to hardness if all of men.

The day for flirtation and matrimonial intentions may be over, but still the habits and tastes formed in that brighter time survive, even when incorrigible celibacy has caused society to pa.s.s by the offenders as hopeless subjects. Fortune, by endowing a young lady with competence, grants her the privilege to be unworldly or critical, so that she lets her precious springtime pa.s.s unused. The privilege is by no means an unalloyed boon as the years go by. She finds herself inadmissible to the conclaves of matrons of her own age, where husbands, doctors and children are discussed with freedom; yet her G.o.d-daughters and nieces can scarcely be expected to accept her as a compeer; she is a _demoiselle pa.s.see_, an outside hoverer on the confines of social life, with the gay bachelors of earlier decades who are still unwed, and whom society pa.s.ses by as obdurate and hopelessly unavailable for matrimonial use.

It is pitiful to see these disappointed "have-beens," with their relish for youthful pleasures still unslaked, flitting in a disregarded twilight, like Homer's ghosts, while the reviving blood of the sacrificial bull is quaffed by other lips. Well for them, is it not, if they can make up a little party among themselves, and by keeping each other in countenance, contrive to ruffle it without ridicule among the younger revellers?

And so, from mutual convenience and sympathy, Considine and the Misses Stanley became fast comrades. In their drawing-room he could drink a cup of tea with the ladies whenever he had a mind, and they were sure of an escort for the evening when they so desired.

CHAPTER IV.

BETSEY EX FeTE.

In spite of her pretence to make little of an invitation to a juvenile party, the prospect of that gaiety took strong possession of Betsey Bunce. Mr. Selby's lameness had prevented his taking her anywhere or affording her opportunity to spread her plumage among strangers; which, indeed, was all the satisfaction which could have accrued from going out with him, she not being musical, and he very little else.

Betsey's dissipations, therefore, had been of so meagre a kind that she might well set store by Mrs. Jordan's invitation; it would at least, she told herself, be an opportunity to show people that she was fit for better things. Her cousin Muriel had told her she might expect to meet a hundred guests or more, and surely they would not all be children, though poor Muriel was too young perhaps to know; but, at least, both her Montreal _beaux_, as she choose to denominate Randolph Jordan and Gerald Herkimer, would be there. So she made no doubt of having a "good time." The image of Joe Webb rose before her mind's eye as that idea occurred to her, and he seemed to her to look reproachful. "Poor Joe!" she sighed to herself, glancing archly in her gla.s.s; but Joe was fifteen miles away, and Betsey fancied herself a heart-breaker. "A girl can't help these things," her thoughts ran on; "and Joe has never said a word--though I can tell by the sinking of his voice when he speaks to me, he would say plenty if I just gave him encouragement. Poor Joe! he's too modest. The _beaux_ won't need encouragement! I guess I shall rather have to make them stand off a bit--at first, that is, they ain't going to think they are to have it all their own way with an Upper Canadian, even if she _has_ moved down to St. Euphrase. Nice fellows both; but such awful _dudes!_ When they walk down the street of St. Euphrase in their cricketing suits, the sidewalk don't seem broad enough to give them both room. And my! don't the _habitants_ stare at them? I kind of like a _dude_, or I almost think I could bring myself to like one," and as she glanced in the gla.s.s again, she coloured half shyly before the intelligence in her own eyes. "Their gloves and their boots do fit so splendid! Their necks look tight like in the stiff collars, but their tongues wag freely enough--too freely sometimes, at St. Euphrase. They're real 'sa.s.sy' sometimes. But at a large party, no doubt they'll know enough to behave. No! Dudes ain't half bad. But these two hai'nt got the fine manly shoulders and strong arms of Joe Webb."

"Ah, how big he is! And how safe a girl would be with him to take care of her! To see him gather up the reins behind that young team of his in one hand, when they grow fractious, and lash them with the other till they simmer down like lambs! Poor Joe!" and she took another look at her all conquering charms in the gla.s.s.

Her hair--how should she arrange it on the night of conquest? There was searching of fashion magazines for something distinguished yet chaste. Many startling novelties, with much expenditure of time and hairpins, were attempted, with signal unsuccess; and it was only after every florid device had been exhausted, that she had at last to confess that a severe simplicity accorded best with her other charms; or to speak plainly was the only hairdressing she could succeed in.

These labours led to a more critical scrutiny of her complexion than she had ever made before. Hitherto she had accepted it like her other perfections in contented faith; but now, on closer observation, was there not just a suspicion of yellowness under the eyes--tan marks on the neck--a freckle or two across the ridge of the nose? Violet powder! that was what she needed, and forthwith she repaired to an apothecary, who, I fear, supplied her with other embellishments at the same time. It is certain, at least, that on the looked-for evening, when, after keeping her aunt long waiting, she at length came downstairs arrayed in all her glory, with shawl and hood carried in her hand, that the a.s.sembled family might have the privilege of a private view, before she set out on her career of conquest, Mr. and Mrs. Selby being in the hall and a maidservant near to open the door and catch a glimpse of the show, she appeared in one of those startling complexions which are affected by equestrian ladies of the circus, in which not the lily and the rose combine, but the chalk-ball and rouge contrast their rawness.

Mrs. Selby's mild and weary eyes opened in amused amazement, and her spouse coughed industriously behind his hand to stifle his laughter.

Mrs. Bunce lifted her "pinch-nose" to her eyes in dismay and indignation.

"What is it? Who is it?" she asked, while Betsey simpered and tossed her head. "That I should live to see a clergyman's niece make a----"

"Guy of herself with violet powder and druggist's red," volunteered Mr. Selby. "It's a mistake, my dear Betsey, I a.s.sure you, attempting to improve Nature's choicest effort, the cheek of a pretty girl. It's like painting the lily--gilding refined gold."

Betsey turned wrathfully round, flushing scarlet here and there where the powder lay less thickly. "But perhaps he meant well, too," she thought. His concluding words implied a gratifying appreciation of her everyday looks; so she let it pa.s.s, and the angry red subsided from her forehead.

"Fie, Betsey!" continued the aunt. "There is scripture against such sinful interference with the natural complexion. Think of the wicked Hebrew queen."

"Who painted her face and was thrown out of the window," added Selby, with some irreverence. Poor man, he was apt to grow jocose.

"But, auntie, the fashion magazine says brilliant complexions are all the go, especially with simple _coiffures_; and I am sure mine is simple enough--nothing but a bang, an Irish wisp, and--well, only three or four pads. In Europe, it is said, they use rouge and pearl-white quite freely. I have only put on a little powder."

"A _little_, my dear?" muttered Selby, half aside, "you look as if you had come out of a flour barrel--with the white flakes sticking all over you. It ought to be a fancy ball you were going to, and you to represent a snowstorm. The dust is flying from you every time you turn your head."

"Nonsense, George," said his wife. "You are vexing, and very ridiculous. Why tease the girl? We have all made mistakes of that kind in our day, Betsey, my dear. You should have seen Mr. Selby himself, when he was a young man, and wanted to look his best. He could hardly walk--he hobbled--from the tightness of his boots."

"You are mean, Mary, to go back to that. If I did, it was only when I hoped to walk or dance with you."

"And you would have danced far better if your shoes had been a larger size. But truly, Betsey, if you will try the effect of a wet sponge on your face, you will find your own nice natural colour infinitely more becoming."

"I am afraid it will make me awful pale. I'd hate to look pale alongside Muriel, her colour brightens so when she gets animated. And there's Tilly Martindale; perhaps she'll be there, and I guess _she's_ sure to have a colour, however she comes by it."

"_They_ are not in the Church," said Mrs. Bunce, grandly.

"Nor am I, auntie. It's a _party_ I'm going to." Public opinion, however, so freely expressed, had its effect, and Betsey returned to her room, to reappear more like her ordinary self, and accept with little satisfaction the congratulations and praises which good-hearted Mrs. Selby felt bound to shower upon her.

As the aunt and niece drew near their destination they felt their hack suddenly slow off into a walk. There was a sleigh in front of them, and when Betsey stood up, craning her short neck to reconnoitre, there was another in front of that, and another, and another. Then there were gates and an illuminated mansion beyond, up to which the line of sleighs was streaming, slowly and intermittently, as each in succession stopped to set down its load, and then vanished.

"I declare, auntie, we're in a procession! Ain't it cunning? and quite grand. The company will all arrive together, and there's no doubt they will make a grand entry, two and two with the music playing a march--just like there was in Tullover's Circus, last year, at St.

Euphrase. Only we'll have to walk, on account of the stairs, and not having horses. I always knew it was the stage and the pulpit gave the law about speaking, but I didn't know before, it was the circus set the fashion for other things. Ain't it well, now, that I was there?--though you scarcely thought so at the time. You just keep as near me as you can, and I'll tell you what to do--all I know. But, to be sure, they'll be providin' us with _beaux_, and we'll have to go wherever the gentlemen take us. Ah! When I remember the lady in the yellow satin riding habit, with the knight in steel b.u.t.ton armour and the peac.o.c.k plume! It was something beyond. I don't see why steel b.u.t.ton armour should not go quite as well with geranium poplin as yellow satin. But knights, if there are any, won't wear their uniform at a private party, I'm afraid. The Queen makes them keep it for wearing at the palace, most likely; but it's mean of her, all the same. However, black swallow-tails look real nice, with almost any colour a girl can put on, and it's just the very thing to tone down my geranium colour, and make it look moderate."