Johnny Ludlow Fourth Series Part 38

"I don't care for the concert," avowed Tom. "I--I should like to have gone to it, though."

"At least you--you will stay and take some tea," suggested Emma.

"If I may."

"Would you please loose my hand?" went on Emma. "The lace has caught in your sleeve-b.u.t.ton."

"I'll undo it," said Tom. "What pretty lace it is! Is it Valenciennes?

My mother thinks there's no lace like Valenciennes."

"It is only pillow," replied Emma, bending her face over the lace and the b.u.t.tons. "After you left this morning, papa said he wished he had remembered to ask you where he could get a prospectus of those water-works. He----"

"Mrs. and Miss Maceveril," interrupted a servant, opening the door to show in some ladies.

So the interview was over; and Tom took the opportunity to go to the lawyer's dining-room, and tell him about the water-works.

"You have come over from Crabb to go to this fine concert!" cried Mr.

Paul, sipping his port wine; which he always took out of a claret-gla.s.s.

Though never more than one gla.s.s, he would be half-an-hour over it.

"I have come to say I can't go to it," replied Tom. "My mother thinks it would not be seemly so soon after Uncle Jacob's death."

"Quite right of her, too. Why don't you sit down? No wine? Well, sit down all the same. I want to talk to you. Will you come into my office?"

The proposal was so sudden, so unexpected, that Tom scarcely knew what to make of it. He did not know that Mr. Paul's office wanted him.

"I have been thinking upon matters since I saw you this morning, Tom Chandler. I am growing elderly; some people would say old; and the thought has often crossed me that it might be as well if I had some one about me different from an ordinary clerk. Were I laid aside by illness to-morrow the conduct of the business would still lie upon me; and lie it must, unless I get a confidential manager, who is a qualified lawyer: one who can act in my place without reference to me. I offer you the post; and I will give you, to begin with, two hundred a-year."

"I should like it of all things," cried Tom in delight, eyes and face sparkling. "I am used to Islip and don't care to leave it. Yes, sir, I will come with the greatest pleasure."

"Then that's settled," said old Paul.

Just about two years had gone on, and it was hot summer again. In the same room at North Villa where poor Thomas Chandler had died, sat Valentine Chandler and his mother. It was evening, and the window was open to the garden. In another room, its window also open, sat the three girls, Georgiana, Clementina, and Julietta; all of them singing and playing and squalling.

"Not talk about business on a Sunday night! You must have grown wonderfully serious all on a sudden!" exclaimed Mrs. Chandler, tartly.

"I never get to see you except on a Sunday: you know that, Valentine."

"It is not often I can get time to come over on a week-day," responded Valentine, helping himself to some spirits and water, which had been placed on the table after supper. "Business won't let me."

"If all I hear be true, it is not business that hinders you," said Mrs.

Chandler. "Be quiet, Valentine: I _must_ speak. I have put it off and off, disliking to do it; but I must speak at last. Your business, as I am told, is falling off alarmingly; that a great deal of it has gone over to John Paul."

"Who told you?"

"That is beyond the question, Valentine, and I am not going to make mischief. Is it true, or is it not true?"

"A little of the practice went over to Paul when Tom left me. It was not much. Some of the clients, you see, had been accustomed to Tom at our place, and they followed him. That was a crafty move of John Paul's--getting hold of Tom."

"I am not alluding to the odds and ends of practice that left you then, Valentine. I speak chiefly of this last year. Hardly a week has pa.s.sed in it but some client or other has left you for Paul."

"If they have, I can't help it," was the careless reply. "How those girls squall!"

"I suppose there is no underhand influence at work, Valentine?" she said dubiously. "Tom Chandler does not hold out baits for your clients, and so fish them away from you?"

"Well, no, I suppose not," repeated the young lawyer, draining his gla.s.s. "I accused Tom of it one day, and for once in his life he flew into a pa.s.sion, asking me what I had ever seen in him to suspect he could be guilty of such a thing."

"No. I fear it is as I have been given to understand, Valentine: that the cause lies with you. You spend your time in pleasure instead of being at business. When clients go to the office, three times out of every five they do not find you. You are not there. You are over at the Bell, playing at billiards, or drinking in the bar."

"What an unfounded calumny!" exclaimed Valentine.

"I have been told," continued Mrs. Chandler, sinking her voice, "that you are getting to drink frightfully. It is nothing for clients now to find you in a state incapable of attending to them."

"Now, mother, I insist upon knowing who told you these lies," spluttered Valentine, getting up and striding to the window. "Let anybody come forward and prove that he has found me incapable--if he can."

"I heard that Sir John Whitney went in the other day and could make neither top nor tail of what you said," continued his mother, disregarding his denial. "You are agent for the little bit of property he owns here: he chanced to come over from Whitney Hall, and found you like that."

"I'll write to Sir John Whitney and ask what he means by saying it."

"He did not say it--that I know of. Others were witnesses of your state as well as he."

"If my clerks tell tales out of my office, I'll discharge them from it,"

burst forth Valentine, too angry to notice the tacit admission his words gave. "Not the clerks, you say? Then why don't you----"

"Do be still, Valentine. Putting yourself out like this will do no good.

I hope it is not true: if you a.s.sure me it is not, I am ready to believe you. All I spoke for was, to caution you, and to tell you what is being said, that you may be on your guard. Leave off going to the Bell; stick to business instead: people will soon cease talking then."

"I dare say they will!" growled Valentine.

"If you are always at your post, ready to confer with clients, they would have no plea for leaving you and going to Paul. For all our sakes, Valentine, you must do this."

"And so I do. If----"

"Hush! The girls are coming in. I hear them shutting the piano."

Valentine dashed out a second supply, and drank it, not caring whether it contained most brandy or water. We are never so angry as when conscience accuses us: and it was accusing him.

In came the young ladies, laughing, romping, and pushing one another; Georgiana, Clementina, and Julietta, arrayed in all the colours of the rainbow. The chief difference Sunday made to them was, that their smartest clothes came out.

Mrs. Chandler's accusations were right, and Valentine's denials wrong.

During the past two years he had been drifting downwards. The Bell was getting to possess so great a fascination for him that he could not keep away from it more than a couple of hours together. It was nothing for him to be seen playing billiards in the morning, or lounging in the parlour or the bar-room, drinking. One of his clerks would come interrupting him with news that some client was waiting at the office, and Valentine would put down his cue or his gla.s.s, and go flying over.

But clients, as a rule, don't like this kind of reception: they expect to find their legal advisers cool and ready on the spot.

The worst of all was the drink. Valentine had made a friend of it so long now, that he did not attempt to do without it. Thought he could not. Where he at first drank one gla.s.s he went on to drink two gla.s.ses, and the two gave place to three, or to more. Of course it told upon him. It told now and then upon his manner in the daytime: which was unfortunate. He could leave his billiards behind him and his gla.s.s, but he could not leave the effects of what the gla.s.s had contained; and it was no uncommon thing now for his clients, when he did go rushing in to them, to find his speech uncertain and his brains in a muddle. As a natural result, the practice was pa.s.sing over to John Paul as fast as it could: and Tom, who was chief manager at Paul's now, had been obliged to take on an extra clerk. Every day of his life old Paul told himself how lucky his move of engaging Tom had turned out. And this, not for the extra business he had gained: a great deal of that might have come to him whether Tom was with him or not: but because Tom had eased his shoulders of their hard work and care, and because he, the old man, had grown to like him so much.

But never a word had Mr. Paul said about raising Tom's salary. Tom supposed he did not intend to raise it. And, much as he liked his post, and, for many reasons, his stay at Islip, he entertained notions of quitting both. Valentine had stopped the income his father had paid to Mrs. Chandler; and Tom's two hundred a-year, combined with the trifle remaining to her out of her private income, only just sufficed to keep the home going.