Tales from Blackwood Volume Viii Part 1

Tales from Blackwood.

VOL 8.

by Various.

THE SURVEYOR'S TALE.

BY PROFESSOR AYTOUN.

[_MAGA._ APRIL 1846.]

Good resolutions are, like gla.s.s, manufactured for the purpose of being broken. Immediately after my marriage, I registered in the books of my conscience a very considerable vow against any future interference with the railway system. The Biggleswade speculation had turned out so well that I thought it unsafe to pursue my fortune any further. The incipient gambler, I am told, always gains, through the a.s.sistance of a nameless personage who shuffles the cards a great deal oftener than many materialists suppose. Nevertheless, there is always a day of retribution.

I wish I had adhered to my original orthodox determination. During the whole period of the honeymoon, I remained blameless as to shares. Uncle Scripio relinquished the suggestion of "dodges" in despair. He was, as usual, brimful of projects, making money by the thousand, and bearing or bulling, as the case might be, with genuine American enthusiasm. I believe he thought me a fool for remaining so easily contented, and very soon manifested no further symptom of his consciousness of my existence than by transmitting me regularly a copy of the _Railway Gazette_, with some mysterious pencil-markings at the list of prices, which I presume he intended for my guidance in the case of an alteration of sentiment.

For some time I never looked at them. When a man is newly married, he has a great many other things to think of. Mary had a decided genius for furniture, and used to pester me perpetually with damask curtains, carved-wood chairs, gilt lamps, and a whole wilderness of household paraphernalia, about which, in common courtesy, I was compelled to affect an interest. Now, to a man like myself, who never had any fancy for upholstery, this sort of thing is very tiresome. My wife might have furnished the drawing-room after the pattern of the Cham of Tartary's for anything I cared, provided she had left me in due ignorance of the proceeding; but I was not allowed to escape so comfortably. I looked over carpet-patterns and fancy papers innumerable, mused upon all manner of bell-pulls, and gave judgment between conflicting rugs, until the task became such a nuisance that I was fain to take refuge in the sacred sanctuary of my club. Young women should be particularly careful against boring an accommodating spouse. Of all places in the world, a club is the surest focus of speculation. You meet gentlemen there who hold stock in every line in the kingdom--directors, committee-men, and even crack engineers. I defy you to continue an altogether uninterested auditor of the fascinating intelligence of Mammon. In less than a week my vow was broken, and a new _liaison_ commenced with the treacherous Delilah of scrip. As nine-tenths of my readers have been playing the same identical game towards the close of last year, it would be idle to recount to them the various vicissitudes of the market. It is a sore subject with most of us--a regular undeniable case of "_infandum regina_." The only comfort is, that our fingers were simultaneously burned.

Amongst other transactions, I had been induced by my old friend Cutts, now in practice as an independent engineer, to apply for a large allocation of shares in the Slopperton Valley, a very spirited undertaking, for which the Saxon (as we used to call him) was engaged to invent the gradients. This occurred about the commencement of the great Potato Revolution--an event which I apprehend will be long remembered by the squirearchy and shareholders of these kingdoms. The money-market was beginning to exhibit certain symptoms of tightness; premiums were melting perceptibly away, and new schemes were in diminished favour.

Under these circ.u.mstances, the Provisional Committee of the Slopperton Valley Company were beneficent enough to gratify my wishes to the full, and accorded to me the large privilege of three hundred original shares.

Two months earlier this would have been equivalent to a fortune--as it was, I must own that my grat.i.tude was hardly commensurate to the high generosity of the donors. I am not sure that I did not accompany the receipt of my letter of allocation with certain expletives by no means creditable to the character of the projectors--at all events, I began to look with a milder eye upon the atrocities of Pennsylvanian repudiation.

However, as the crash was by no means certain, my sanguine temperament overcame me, and in a fit of temporary derangement I paid the deposit.

In the ensuing week the panic became general. Capel-court was deserted by its herd--Liverpool in a fearful state of commercial coma--Glasgow trembling throughout its Gorbals--and Edinburgh paralytically shaking.

The grand leading doctrine of political economy once more was recognised as a truth: the supply exorbitantly exceeded the demand, and there were no buyers. The daily share-list became a far more pathetic doc.u.ment in my eyes than the Sorrows of Werter. The circular of my brokers, Messrs Tine and Transfer, contained a tragedy more woful than any of the conceptions of Shakespeare--the agonies of blighted love are a joke compared with those of baffled avarice; and of all kinds of consumption, that of the purse is the most severe. One circ.u.mstance, however, struck me as somewhat curious. Neither in share-list nor circular could I find any mention made of the Slopperton Valley. It seemed to have risen like an exhalation, and to have departed in similar silence. This boded ill for the existence of the 750 I had so idiotically invested, the recuperation whereof, in whole or in part, became the subject of my nightly meditations; and as correspondence in such matters is usually unsatisfactory, I determined to start personally in search of my suspended deposit.

I did not know a single individual of the Slopperton Provisional Committee, but I was well enough acquainted with Cutts, whose present residence was in a midland county of England, where the work of railway construction was going actively forward. As I drove into the town where the Saxon had established his headquarters, I saw with feelings of peculiar disgust immense gangs of cut-throat-looking fellows--"the navvies of the nations," as Alfred Tennyson calls them--busy at their embankments, absorbing capital at an alarming ratio, and utterly indifferent to the state of the unfortunate shareholders then writhing under the pressure of calls. Philanthropy is a very easy thing when our own circ.u.mstances are prosperous, but a turn of the wheel of fortune gives a different complexion to our views. If I had been called upon two months earlier to p.r.o.nounce an oration upon the vast benefits of general employment and high wages, I should have launched out _con amore_. Now, the spectacle which I beheld suggested no other idea than that of an enormous cheese fast hastening to decomposition and decay beneath the nibbling of myriads of mites.

I found Cutts in his apartment of the hotel in the unmolested enjoyment of a cigar. He seemed fatter, and a little more red in the gills, than when I saw him last, otherwise there was no perceptible difference.

"Hallo, old fellow!" cried the Saxon, pitching away a pile of estimates; "what the mischief has brought you up here? Waiter--a bottle of sherry!

You wouldn't prefer something hot at this hour of the morning, would you?"

"Certainly not."

"Ay--you're a married man now. How's old Morgan? Lord! what fun we had at Shrewsbury when I helped you to your wife!"

"So far as I recollect, Mr Cutts, you nearly finished that business. But I want to have a serious talk with you about other matters. What has become of that confounded Slopperton Valley, for which you were engineer?"

"Slopperton Valley! Haven't you heard about it? The whole concern was wound up about three weeks ago. Take a gla.s.s of wine."

"Wound up? Why, this is most extraordinary. I never received any circular!"

"I thought as much," said Cutts, very coolly. "That's precisely what I said to old Hasherton, the chairman, the day after the secretary bolted.

I told him he should send round notice to the fellows at a distance, warning them not to cash up; but it seems that the list of subscribers had gone amissing, and so the thing was left to rectify itself."

"Bolted! You don't mean Mr Glanders, of the respectable firm of Glanders and Co.?"

"Of course I do. I wonder you have not heard of it. That comes of living in a confounded country where there are neither breeches nor newspapers--help yourself--and no direct railway communication. Glanders bolted as a matter of course, and I can tell you that I thought myself very lucky in getting hold of as much of the deposits as cleared my preliminary expenses."

"Cutts--are you serious?"

"Perfectly. But what's the use of making a row about it? You look as grim as if there was verjuice in the sherry. You ought to thank your stars that the thing was put a stop to so soon."

"Why--didn't you recommend me to apply for shares?"

"Of course I did, and I wonder you don't feel grateful for the advice.

Everybody thought they would have come out at a high premium. I would not have taken six pounds for them in the month of September; but this infernal potato business has brought on the panic, and n.o.body will table a shilling for any kind of new stock. It was a lucky thing for us that we got a kind of hint to draw in our horns in time."

"And pray, since the concern is wound up, as you say, how much of our deposit-money will be returned?"

"You don't mean to say," said Cutts, with singularly elaborate articulation--"You don't mean to say that you were such an inconceivable a.s.s as to pay up your letter of allotment? Well, I never heard of such a piece of deliberate infatuation! Why, man, a blacksmith with half an eye must have seen that the game was utterly up a week before the calls were due. I don't think there is a single man out of Scotland who would have made such a fool of himself; indeed, so far as I know, n.o.body cashed up except a dozen old women who knew nothing about the matter, and ten landed proprietors, who expected compensation, and deserved to be done accordingly. You need not look as though you meditated razors. The Biggleswade profits will pay for this more than thirty times over."

"I'll tell you what, Cutts," said I in a paroxysm, "this is a most nefarious transaction, and I'm hanged if I don't take the law with every one connected with it. I'll make an example of that fellow Hasherton, and the whole body of the committee."

"Just as you like," replied the imperturbable Cutts. "You're a lawyer, and the best judge of those sort of things. I may, however, as well inform you that Hasherton went into the Gazette last week, and that you won't find another member of the committee at this moment within the four seas of Great Britain."

"And pray, may I ask how _you_ came to be connected with so discreditable a project? Do you know that it is enough to blast your own reputation for ever?"

"I know nothing of the kind," said the Saxon, commencing another cigar.

"I look to the matter of employment, and have nothing to do with the character of my clients, beyond ascertaining their means of liquidating my account. The committee required the a.s.sistance of a first-rate engineer, and I flatter myself they could hardly have made a more unexceptionable selection. But what's the use of looking sulky about it?

You can't help yourself; and, after all, what's the amount of your loss?

A parcel of pound-notes that would have lain rotting in the bank had you not put them into circulation! Cheer up, Fred, you've made at least one individual very happy. Glanders is going it in New York. I shouldn't be surprised if half your deposit-money is already invested in mint-juleps, gin-slings, and sherry-cobblers."

"It is very easy for you to talk, Mr Cutts," said I, with considerable acrimony. "_Your_ account, at all events, appears to have been paid.

Doubtless you looked sharply after that. I cannot help putting my own construction upon the conduct of a gentleman who makes a direct profit out of the misfortunes of his friends."

"You affect me deeply," said Cutts, applying himself diligently to the decanter; "but you don't drink. Do you know you put me a good deal in mind of Macready? Did you ever hear him in Lear,

'How sharper than a serpent's thanks it is To have a toothless child?'

You're remarkably unjust, Fred, as you will acknowledge in your cooler moments. I am hurt by your ingrat.i.tude--I am," and the sympathising engineer buried his face in the folds of a Bandana handkerchief.

I knew, by old experience, that it was of no use to get into a rage with Cutts. After all, I had no tenable ground of complaint against him; for the payment of the deposit-money was my own deliberate act, and it was no fault of his that the shares were not issued at a premium. I therefore contrived to swallow, as I best could, my indignation, though it was no easy matter. Seven hundred and fifty pounds is a serious sum, and would have gone a long way towards the furnishing of a respectable domicile.

I believe that Cutts, though he never allowed himself to exhibit a symptom of ordinary regret, was internally annoyed at the confounded sc.r.a.pe in which I was landed by following his advice. At all events he soon ceased comporting himself after the manner of the comforters of Job, and finally undertook to look after my interest in case any fragment of the deposits could be rescued from the hands of the Philistines. I have since had a letter from him with the information that he has recovered a hundred pounds--a friendly exertion which shall be duly acknowledged so soon as I receive a remittance, which, however, has not yet come to hand.

By the time we had finished the sherry, I was restored, if not to good-humour, at least to a state of pa.s.sive resignation. The Saxon gave strict orders that he was to be denied to everybody, and made some incoherent proposals about "making a forenoon of it," which, however, I peremptorily declined.

"It's a very hard thing," said Cutts, "but I see it's an invariable rule that matrimony and good-fellowship can never go together. You're not half the brick you used to be, Fred; but I suppose it can't be helped. There's a degree of slow-coachiness about you which I take to be peculiarly distressing, and if you don't take care it will become a confirmed habit."

"Seven hundred and fifty pounds--what! all my pretty chickens and their----"

"Don't swear! it's a highly immoral practice. At all events you'll dine with me to-day at six. You shall have as much claret as you can conscientiously desire, and, for company, I have got the queerest fellow here you ever set eyes on. You used to pull the long bow with considerable effect, but this chap beats you hollow."

"Who is he?"

"How should I know? He calls himself Leopold Young Mandeville--is a surveyor by trade, and has been working abroad at some outlandish line or another for the last two years. He is a very fair hand at the compa.s.ses, and so I have got him here by way of a.s.sistant. You may think him rather dull at first, but wait till he has finished a pint, and I'm shot if he don't astonish you. Now, if you will have nothing more, we may as well go out, and take a ride by way of appetiser."

At six o'clock I received the high honour of an introduction to Mr Young Mandeville. As I really consider this gentleman one of the most remarkable personages of the era in which we live, I may perhaps be excused if I a.s.sume the privilege of an acquaintance, and introduce him also to the reader. The years of Mr Mandeville could hardly have exceeded thirty. His stature was considerably above the average of mankind, and would have been greater save for the geometrical curvature of his lower extremities, which gave him all the appearance of a walking parenthesis. His hair was black and streaky; his complexion atrabilious; his voice slightly raucous, like that of a tragedian contending with a cold. The eye was a very fine one--that is, the right eye--for the other optic was evidently internally damaged, and shone with an opalescent l.u.s.tre. There was a kind of native dignity about the man which impressed me favourably, notwithstanding the reserved manner in which he exchanged the preliminary courtesies.