Froth Part 13

It was still early. Before reaching the Bank, it occurred to him that he would go to see his friend and connection Calderon, whose warehouse and counting-house were in the Calle de San Felipe Neri, still in the state in which his father had left them--that is to say, very poverty-stricken, not to say dirty and squalid. In these quarters, where the light filtered in through panes darkened by dust and protected by clumsy ironwork, and where the smell of hides was perfectly sickening, old Calderon with mechanical regularity had acc.u.mulated dollar on dollar, till several piles of a million each had formed there. His son Julian had made no change. Though he was one of the wealthiest bankers in Madrid he had not given up the hide warehouse and the small profits which this business brought in--small as compared with those on securities and stocks which the banking house dealt in.

Calderon was a banker of a different type from Salabert. He was of an essentially conservative temper, timid in speculation, always preferring small profits to large when there was any risk. His intelligence was somewhat limited, cautious, hesitating and circ.u.mspect. Every new undertaking struck him as madness. When he saw a friend embarking on one he smiled maliciously, and congratulated himself on the superior shrewdness with which he was gifted; if it turned out well he would shake his head, saying with determined foreboding: "Those who laugh last, laugh longest." At home he was parsimonious, nay stingy to a scandal; and though the house was kept on a comparatively luxurious footing, this was partly the result of his wife's entreaties, and the raillery of his friends, but even more of his conviction, slowly formed, that some external prestige was indispensable, if he was to compete with the numbers of skilful financiers established in the capital. But after having bought good furniture, he insisted on such care being taken of it, such refinements of precaution on the part of the servants and his wife and children, that they were really the slaves of these costly possessions. Then with regard to the carriage, it is impossible to imagine the anxieties and agitations without end which it cost him.

Every time the coachman told him that a horse wanted shoeing it was a fresh worry. He had a pair of French mares of some value, and he loved them as he loved his children, or more. He drove them out of an evening; but never to go to the theatre for fear of cold; he would rather see his wife walk or take a hired carriage than expose them to any risk. And if one of them really fell ill, there are no words for our banker's state of mind; anxiety and dejection were written in his face. He went frequently to see the animal, patted and petted her, and would often a.s.sist the coachman and the vet. in applying the remedies, however unpleasant. Till the invalid had recovered no one in the house had any peace.

As a husband he was most officious; but in this he was hardly to blame.

His wife's apathy was such that if he had not taken charge of the kitchen accounts and the store-cupboard keys, G.o.d knows how the house would have been kept. Mariana did nothing and gave no orders. Any other woman would have felt humiliated by finding herself obliged to refer to her husband at every moment for the most trifling details of domestic life, but she took it quite as a matter of course, and found it most convenient, when Calderon's stinginess did not make itself too pressingly felt. Her part was that of a child in the house, and she was quite content to play it.

The person who sometimes dumbly rebelled against the exclusive centralisation of all administrative power in the master's hands was Mariana's mother, the diminutive lady with deep set eyes, of whom mention was made in the first chapter. Her protests indeed were neither frequent nor lengthy. At heart she and her son-in-law were in perfect agreement. The old woman, the widow of a provincial merchant, who herself had helped in saving his capital, was even more devoted to order and economy than Calderon himself--that is to say, more sordidly thrifty. For this reason she never would have endured to live with her son; his expensive tastes, and, yet more, Clementina's extravagance and disreputable caprices enraged her, and would have embittered every moment of her life. In Calderon's house she was inspector or spy over the servants, and she filled the part to admiration. Her son-in-law could rest in confidence, and thanks to this and to his expectation that Mariana would be enriched by her will, he showed far more consideration for her than for his wife.

Salabert was at heart not less covetous than Calderon, and hardly less timid; but his intellect was very superior, his cowardice was counterbalanced by a strong infusion of bounce, and his avarice by a profound knowledge of mankind. He knew very well that the paraphernalia and ostentation of wealth have a marked influence on the minds of the most indifferent, and contribute in a great measure to inspire the confidence without which no important enterprise can prosper. Hence the luxury in which he lived--his palace, his servants, and the famous b.a.l.l.s he occasionally gave to the fashionable world of Madrid. For Calderon he had a profound contempt, though at the same time his society put him into a good humour. As he contemplated his friend's inferiority he swelled in his own esteem, regarding himself as a greater man than he really was, and deriving from it the liveliest satisfaction. He not only judged himself to have more cleverness and astuteness--the only superior qualities he really possessed--but, to be, by comparison, generous and liberal, almost a prodigy.

Panting and puffing he went into the dark warehouse in the Calle de San Felipe Neri, producing the usual effect of amazing, crushing, annihilating the clerks of the house, to whom the Duke de Requena was not merely the greatest man in Spain, but a quite supernatural being.

His visit impressed them with the same reverence and enthusiasm, awe and adoration, as the appearance of the Mikado arouses in the j.a.panese. And if they did not prostrate themselves with their foreheads in the dust, they coloured up to their ears, and for some minutes they could not put pen to paper, nor attend to the requirements of a customer. They looked at each other with awe-stricken eyes, repeating in an undertone, what indeed they all knew: "The Duke!" "The Duke!"

The Duke pa.s.sed in, as usual when he by chance called there, without vouchsafing them a glance, and made his way to the little room where Calderon sat. Long before reaching him, he began shouting: "Caramba, Julian! When do you mean to get out of this hole? This is not a banking-house, it is a stye. Are you not ashamed to be seen here? Poof!

Do you skin the beasts here, or what? The stink is intolerable."

Calderon's private room was beyond the front office, a mere closet, separated from the rest by a part.i.tion of painted wood, with a spring door. Thus he could hear all that his friend was saying, before Salabert reached him.

"What do you expect, man?" said he, somewhat nettled at his clerks being made the confidants of this philippic. "We are not all dukes, trampling millions under foot."

"Millions! Does it need millions to keep an office clean and comfortable? You had better confess that you cannot bear to spend a peseta in making yourself decent. I have told you many times, Julian, you are poor, and you will be poor all your days. I should be richer with a thousand pence than you with a thousand dollars--because I know how to spend them."

Calderon grumbled a protest and went on with his work. The Duke, without taking his hat off, dropped into the only easy chair, covered with white buckskin, or which ought to have been white, for it was of a doubtful hue now, between yellow and greenish-grey, with black patches where heads and hands were wont to rest. There were besides three or four stools covered with the same material, in the same state, a book-case full of bundles of papers, a small cash-box, an ancient walnut-wood writing-table covered with oil-cloth, and behind the table a greasy, shabby arm-chair in which the head of the house sat enthroned. This small room was lighted by a barred window, to ward off the prying looks of pa.s.sers-by; there were blinds, which, being the cheapest and commonest of their kind, had this peculiarity, that one was much too wide and the other so short that it did not cover the lower pane by at least a quarter.

"Why in the world don't you quit this blessed leather-shop, which is not worthy of a man of your position and fortune?"

"Fortune--fortune!" muttered Calderon with his eyes still fixed on the paper he was writing on. "People talk of my fortune I know, but if I were compelled to liquidate, who knows what would come of it?"

Calderon never confessed his wealth; he loved to crawl; any allusion to his riches annoyed him beyond measure. Salabert, on the contrary, loved to flourish his millions in the face of the world, and play the nabob, at the smallest possible cost of course.

"Besides," Calderon went on with some acerbity, "every one looks at what comes in and never thinks of what goes out. Our expenses are greater every day. Have you any idea, now, of what our private expenditure has been this year? Come."

"Nothing much," replied Requena, with a depreciating smile.

"Nothing much? Why it amounts to more than seventy-five thousand dollars, and we are only in November."

"What do you say?" exclaimed the Duke greatly astonished. "Impossible!"

"As I tell you."

"Come, come; do not try to throw dust in my eyes, Julian. Unless you include in the seventy-five thousand the cost of the house you are building in Calle h.o.m.o de la Mata."

"Why, of course."

At this Salabert burst into such a fit of laughing that he seemed about to choke; the cigar dropped out of his mouth, his face, usually so pale, turned so red as to be alarming, and the fit of coughing which ensued was so violent that it threatened him with congestion.

"My dear fellow, I thank you! That is really delicious," he gasped between coughing and laughing. "I never thought of that before.

Henceforth I will include in my household expenses all the paper I buy and the houses I build. I shall have accounts like a king's to show."

The Duke's hearty and uproarious mirth annoyed and piqued Calderon out of all measure.

"I really do not see what you are laughing at. The money goes out of the cash-box under the head of expenditure. And, at any rate, Antonio, a fool knows more of his own affairs than a wise man knows of his neighbours'."

The Duke's visits to his friend had of late been somewhat frequent. He had been hovering round him a good deal to tempt him into the mining speculation. The moment was drawing near when the sale must come on, and meanwhile he was anxious to secure the co-operation of some of the more important shareholders. Don Julian was one, not merely by reason of the capital he represented, but by the position he held. He enjoyed the reputation in the financial world of being a very cautious, or indeed suspicious man; thus his name as partic.i.p.ator in a speculation was a guarantee of its security, and this was what Salabert required. So he was anxious not to vex him seriously, and changed the subject. With the curious suppleness and cunning which lay beneath his abrupt roughness, he managed to put him in a good humour by praising his foresight in a certain case when he would not be caught, reflecting on the folly of some rival dealers, and implying Calderon's superior skill and penetration. When he had got him into the right frame of mind he spoke, for the third or fourth time, in vague terms, of the mining company. He mentioned it as an unattainable vision, just to whet his friend's appet.i.te.

"If they only could buy up the mine one of these days, what a stroke of business that would be! He had never in his life met with a better.

Unfortunately the Government were not disposed to sell. However--d.a.m.n it all! By a little good management and steady perseverance, in time perhaps--meanwhile what was wanted were a few men who could afford to invest a good round sum. If they were not to be found in Spain they must be sought elsewhere."

At the mere notion of a speculation Calderon shrank as a snail does when it is touched. And this was so big a thing, to judge from the vague hints the Duke threw out, that he completely disappeared into his sh.e.l.l.

Then, when Salabert spoke rather more plainly, he turned gloomy and dull, uneasy and suspicious, as if he expected to be bled there and then of an exorbitant sum.

When Requena had finished a long and rather incoherent speech, which was almost a monologue, he abruptly rose:

"Ta ta, Julianito, I am off to the Bank."

He took out a fresh cigar, and without offering one to Calderon, who did not smoke, he lighted it for form's sake; but he at once let it go out and began chewing it as usual.

Don Julian gave a sigh of relief.

"Always in a state of feverish activity," said he with a smile, holding out his hand. "Always on the track of money!"

Just as he reached the door Calderon remembered that he might make something out of this visit.

"I say, Antonio, I have a heap of Londres. Do you want them? I will let you have them cheap."

"No, I don't want any at present. What do you ask for them?"

"Forty-seven."

"Are there many of them?"

"Eight thousand pounds in all."

"Well, I really don't want them, but it is a good bargain. Good-bye."

He went to the Bank, a.s.sisted at the meeting, and after cashing his cheque for nine thousand dollars, went out with his friend Urreta, another of the great Madrid bankers. On reaching the Puerta del Sol they shook hands to part.

"Which way are you going?" asked Salabert.

"I am going to Calderon's office to see if he happens to be able to help me to some Londres."

"Quite useless," said the other promptly. "I have just bought up all he had."

"That is unlucky. What did you give for them?"

"Forty-seven ten."