The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney Part 30

"Sir,--In answer to your application on behalf of Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy, we beg to inform you that, under the administration of a paternal aunt who died intestate, your client is ent.i.tled to two thousand five hundred pounds eight shillings and sixpence, Three per Cents.; one thousand five hundred pounds nineteen shillings and fourpence, Three per Cents., Reduced; one thousand pounds, Long Annuities; five hundred pounds, Bank Stock; three thousand five hundred pounds, India Stock, besides other securities, making up about ten thousand pounds, which we are prepared to transfer over to Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy's direction forthwith."

Here was a windfall! It quite took away my breath.

At dusk came my gentleman beggar, and what puzzled me was how to break the news to him. Being very much overwhelmed with business that day, I had not much time for consideration. He came in rather better dressed than when I first saw him, with only a week's beard on his chin; but, as usual, not quite sober. Six weeks had elapsed since our first interview. He was still the humble, trembling, low-voiced creature, I first knew him.

After a prelude, I said, "I find, Mr. F., you are ent.i.tled to something; pray, what do you mean to give me in addition to my bill, for obtaining it?" He answered rapidly, "Oh, take half; if there is one hundred pounds, take half--if there is five hundred pounds, take half."

"No, no; Mr. F., I don't do business in that way, I shall be satisfied with ten per cent."

It was so settled. I then led him out into the street, impelled to tell him the news, yet dreading the effect; not daring to make the revelation in my office, for fear of a scene.

I began hesitatingly, "Mr. Fitz-Roy, I am happy to say that I find you are ent.i.tled to ... ten thousand pounds!"

"Ten thousand pounds!" he echoed. "Ten thousand pounds!" he shrieked.

"Ten thousand pounds!" he yelled; seizing my arm violently. "You are a brick--Here, cab! cab!" Several drove up--the shout might have been heard a mile off. He jumped in the first.

"Where to?" said the driver.

"To a tailor's, you rascal!"

"Ten thousand pounds! ha, ha, ha!" he repeated hysterically, when in the cab; and every moment grasping my arm. Presently he subsided, looked me straight in the face, and muttered with agonizing fervor, "What a jolly brick you are!"

The tailor, the hosier, the boot-maker, the hair-dresser, were in turn visited by this poor pagan of externals. As by degrees under their hands he emerged from the beggar to the gentleman, his spirits rose; his eyes brightened; he walked erect, but always nervously grasping my arm--fearing, apparently, to lose sight of me for a moment, lest his fortune, should vanish with me. The impatient pride with which he gave his orders to the astonished tradesman for the finest and best of everything, and the amazed air of the fashionable hairdresser when he presented his matted locks and stubble chin, to be "cut and shaved," may be _acted_--it cannot be described.

By the time the external transformation was complete, and I sat down in a Cafe in the Haymarket opposite a haggard but handsome thoroughbred-looking man, whose air, with the exception of the wild eyes and deeply browned face, did not differ from the stereotyped men about town sitting around us, Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy had already almost forgotten the past. He bullied the waiter, and criticised the wine, as if he had done nothing else but dine and drink and scold there all the days of his life.

Once he wished to drink my health, and would have proclaimed his whole story to the coffee-room a.s.sembly, in a raving style. When I left he almost wept in terror at the idea of losing sight of me. But, allowing for these ebullitions--the natural result of such a whirl of events--he was wonderfully calm and self-possessed.

The next day, his first care was to distribute fifty pounds among his friends, the cadgers, at a "house of call" in Westminster, and formally to dissolve his connection with them; those present undertaking for the "fraternity," that for the future he should never be noticed by them in public or private.

I cannot follow his career much further. Adversity had taught him nothing. He was soon again surrounded by the well-bred vampires who had forgotten him when penniless; but they amused him, and that was enough.

The ten thousand pounds were rapidly melting when he invited me to a grand dinner at Richmond, which included a dozen of the most agreeable, good-looking, well-dressed dandies of London, interspersed with a display of pretty b.u.t.terfly bonnets. We dined deliciously, and drank as men do of iced wines in the dog-days--looking down from Richmond Hill.

One of the pink-bonnets crowned Fitz-Roy with a wreath of flowers; he looked--less the intellect--as handsome as Alcibiades. Intensely excited and flushed, he rose with a champagne gla.s.s in his hand to propose my health.

The oratorical powers of his father had not descended on him. Jerking out sentences by spasms, at length he said, "I was a beggar--I am a gentleman--thanks to this--"

Here he leaned on my shoulder heavily a moment, and then fell back. We raised him, loosened his neckcloth--

"Fainted!" said the ladies--

"Drunk!" said the gentlemen--

He was _dead_!

A FASHIONABLE FORGER.

I am an attorney and a bill-discounter. As it is my vocation to lend money at high interest to extravagant people, my connection princ.i.p.ally lies among "fools," sometimes among rogues "of quality." Mine is a pursuit which a prejudiced world either holds in sovereign contempt, or visits with envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness; but to my mind, there are many callings, with finer names, that are no better. It gives me two things which I love--money and power; but I cannot deny that it brings with it a bad name. The case lies between character and money, and involves a matter of taste. Some people like character; I prefer money.

If I am hated and despised, I chuckle over the "per contra." I find it pleasant for members of a proud aristocracy to condescend from their high estate to fawn, feign, flatter; to affect even mirthful familiarity in order to gain my good-will. I am no Shylock. No client can accuse me of desiring either his flesh or his blood. Sentimental vengeance is no item in my stock in trade. Gold and bank-notes satisfy my "rage;" or, if need be, a good mortgage. Far from seeking revenge, the worst defaulter I ever had dealings with cannot deny that I am always willing to accept a good post-obit.

I say again, I am daily brought in contact with all ranks of society, from the poverty-stricken patentee to the peer; and I am no more surprised at receiving an application from a d.u.c.h.ess than from a pet opera-dancer. In my ante room wait, at this moment, a crowd of borrowers. Among the men, (beardless folly and mustachioed craft are most prominent,) there is a handsome young fellow, with an elaborate cane and wonderfully vacant countenance, who is antic.i.p.ating in feeble follies, an estate that has been in the possession of his ancestors since the reign of Henry the Eighth--there is a hairy, high-nosed, broken-down nondescript, in appearance something between a horse-dealer and a pugilist. He is an old Etonian. Five years ago he drove his four-in-hand; he is now waiting to beg a sovereign, having been just discharged from the Insolvent Court, for the second time. Among the women, a pretty actress, who, a few years since, looked forward to a supper of steak and onions, with bottled stout, on a Sat.u.r.day night, as a great treat, now finds one hundred pounds a month insufficient to pay her wine merchant and her confectioner. I am obliged to deal with each case according to its peculiarities. Genuine undeserved Ruin seldom knocks at my doer. Mine is a perpetual battle with people who imbibe trickery at the same rate as they dissolve their fortunes. I am a hard man, of course. I should not be fit for my pursuit if I were not; but when, by a remote chance, honest misfortune pays me a visit, as Rothschilds amused himself at times by giving a beggar a guinea, so I occasionally treat myself to the luxury of doing a kind action. My favorite subjects for this unnatural generosity, are the very young or the poor, innocent, helpless people, who are unfit for the war of life. Many among my clients (especially those tempered in the "ice book" of fashion and high-life--polished and pa.s.sionless) would be too much for me, if I had not made the face, the eye, the accent, as much my study as the mere legal and financial points of discount To show what I mean, I will relate what happened to me not long since:--

One day, a middle-aged man in the usual costume of a West-End shopman, who had sent in his name as Mr. Axminster, was shown into my private room. After a little hesitation, he said, "Although you do not know me, living at this end of the town, I know you very well by reputation, and that you discount bills. I have a bill here which I want to get discounted. I am in the employ of Messrs. Russle and Smooth. The bill is drawn by one of our best customers, the Hon. Miss Snape, niece of Lord Blimley, and accepted by Major Munge, whom, no doubt, you know by name.

She has dealt with us for some years--is very, very extravagant; but always pays." He put the acceptance--which was for two hundred pounds--into my hands.

I looked at it as scrutinizingly as I usually do at such paper The Major's signature was familiar to me; but having succeeded to a great estate, he had long ceased to be a customer. I instantly detected a forgery; by whom?--was the question. Could it be the man before me?

Experience told me it was not. Perhaps there was something in the expression of my countenance which Mr. Axminster did not like, for he said, "It is good for the amount, I presume?"

I replied, "Pray, sir, from whom did you get this bill?"

"From Miss Snape herself."

"Have you circulated any other bills made by the same drawer?"

"O yes!" said the draper, without hesitation; "I have paid away a bill for one hundred pounds to Mr. Sparkle, the jeweller, to whom Miss Snape owed twenty pounds. They gave me the difference."

"And how long has that bill to run now?"

"About a fortnight."

"Did you indorse it?"

"I did. Mr. Sparkle required me to do so, to show that the bill came properly into his possession."

"This second bill, you say is urgently required to enable Miss Snape to leave town?"

"Yes; she is going to Brighton for the winter."

I gave Mr. Axminster a steady, piercing look of inquiry. "Pray, sir," I said, "could you meet that one hundred pounds bill, supposing it could not be paid by the accepter?"

"Meet it!" The poor fellow wiped from his forehead the perspiration which suddenly broke out at the bare hint of a probability that the bill would be dishonored--"Meet it? O no! I am a married man, with a family, and have nothing but my salary to depend on."

"Then the sooner you get it taken up, and the less you have to do with Miss Snape's bill affairs, the better."

"She has always been punctual hitherto."

"That may be." I pointed to the cross-writing on the doc.u.ment, and said deliberately, "_This_ bill is a forgery!"

At these words the poor man turned pale. He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the doc.u.ment, and with many incoherent protestations, was rushing toward the door, when I called to him in an authoritative tone, to stop. He paused--his manner indicating not only doubt, but fear. I said to him, "Don't flurry yourself; I only want to serve you. You tell me that you are a married man, with children, dependent on daily labor for daily bread, and that you have done a little discounting for Miss Snape, out of your earnings.

Now, although I am a bill-discounter, I don't like to see such men victimized. Look at the body of this bill--look at the signature of your lady-customer, the drawer. Don't you detect the same fine, thin, sharp-pointed handwriting in the words 'Accepted, Dymmock Munge." The man, convinced against his will, was at first overcome. When he recovered, he raved; he would expose the Honorable Miss Snape, if it cost him his bread--he would go at once to the police office. I stopped him, by saying roughly, "Don't be a fool! Any such steps would seal your ruin.

Take my advice; return the bill to the lady, saying, simply, that you cannot get it discounted. Leave the rest to me, and I think the bill you have indorsed to Sparkle will be paid." Comforted by this a.s.surance, Axminster, fearfully changed from the nervous, but smug, hopeful man of the morning, departed. It now remained for me to exert what skill I possessed, to bring about the desired result. I lost no time in writing a letter to the Honorable Miss Snape, of which the following is a copy:--

"Madam,--A bill, purporting to be drawn by you, has been offered to me for discount. There is something wrong about it; and, though a stranger to you, I advise you to lose no time in getting it back into your own hands.--D.D."

I intended to deal with the affair quietly, and without any view to profit. The fact is, that I was sorry--you may laugh--but I really was sorry to think that a young girl might have given way to temptation under pressure of pecuniary difficulties. If it had been a man's case, I doubt whether I should have interfered. By the return of post, a lady's maid entered my room, profusely decorated with ringlets, lace, and perfumed with patchouli. She brought a letter from her mistress. It ran thus:--