by Ellen Wood
“Yes, it had death in it,” acquiesced Jacob, in a tone of discomfort. “What he said was this, Squire: ‘When Tom shall be of an age.’ Meaning of course a suitable age to justify the step.”
“I don’t think so: I did not hear it so,” persisted the Squire. “There was no ‘an’ in it. ‘When Tom shall be of age:’ that was it. Meaning when he should be twenty-one.”
“Oh dear, no; quite a mistake. You can’t think my ears would deceive me at such a time as that, Mr. Todhetley. And about our own business too.”
“Well, you ought to know best, of course, though my impression is that you are wrong,” conceded the Squire. “Put it that it was as you say: don’t you think Tom Chandler is now quite old enough for it to be acted upon?”
“No, I don’t,” replied Jacob. “As I have just told his mother, nothing can be more pernicious for a young man than to be made his own master too early. Nine young fellows out of every ten would get ruined by it.”
“Do you think so?” asked the Squire, dubiously.
“I am sure so, Squire. Tom Chandler is steady now, for aught I know to the contrary; but just let him get the reins into his hands, and you’d see what it would be. That is, what it might be. And I am not going to risk it.”
“He is as steady-going a young man as any one could wish for; diligent, straightforward. Not at all given to spending money improperly.”
“Because he has not had it to spend. I have known many a young blade to be quiet and cautious while his pockets were empty; and as soon as they were filled, perhaps all at once, he has gone headlong to rack and ruin. How do we know that it would not be the case with Tom?”
“Well, I — I don’t think it would be,” said the Squire, with hesitation, for he was coming round to Jacob’s line of argument.
“But I can’t act upon ‘thinking,’ Squire; I must be sure. Tom will just stay on with me at present as he is; so there’s an end of it. His salary is going to be raised: and I — I consider that he is very well off.”
“Well, perhaps he’ll be none the worse for a little longer spell of clerkship,” repeated the Squire, coming wholly round. “And now good-morning. I’m rather in a hurry to-day, but I thought it right to put in a word for Tom’s sake, as I was present when poor Thomas died.”
“Good-morning, Mr. Todhetley,” answered Jacob, as he sat down to his desk again.
But he did not get to work. He bent his head on his neckcloth as before, and set on to think. What had just passed did not please him at all: for Jacob Chandler was not devoid of conscience; though it was an elastic one, and he was in the habit of deadening it at will. It was not his intention to take his nephew into partnership at all; then or later. Almost ever since the day of his brother’s funeral he had looked at matters after his own fashion, and soon grew to think that Tom had no manner of right to a share in the business; that as Thomas was dead and gone, it was all his, and ought to be all his. He and Thomas had shared it between them: therefore it was only just and proper that he, the survivor, should take it. That’s how Jacob Chandler, who was the essence of covetousness, had been reasoning, and his mind was made up.
It was therefore very unpleasant to be pounced upon in this way by two people in one morning. Their application as regarded Tom himself would not have troubled him: he knew how to put disputants off civilly, saying neither yes nor no, and promising nothing: but what annoyed him was the reminiscence they had called up of his dying brother. Jacob intended to get safely into the world above, some day, by hook or by crook; he went to church regularly, and considered himself a model of good behaviour. But these troublesome visitors had somehow contrived to put before his conscience the fact that he might be committing a lifelong act of injustice on Tom; and that, to do so, was not the readiest way of getting to heaven. Was that twelve o’clock? How the morning had passed!
“Uncle Jacob, I am going over to Brooklands about that lease. Have you any particular instructions to give me?”
It was Tom himself who had entered. A tall, good-looking, fresh-coloured young man, who had honesty and kindliness written on every line of his open face.
Jacob lifted his bent head, and drew his chair nearer his table as if he meant to set to work in earnest. But his mouth took a cross look.
“Who told you to go? I said Valentine was to go.”
“Valentine has stepped out. He asked me to go for him.”
“Where has he stepped to?”
“He did not say,” replied Tom, evasively. For he knew quite well where Valentine was gone: to the Bell inn over the way. Valentine went to the Bell a little too much, and was a little too fond of the Bell’s good liquor.
“I suppose you can go, then. No, I have no instructions: you know what to say as well as I do. We don’t give way a jot, mind. Oh, and — Tom!” added Jacob, calling him back as he went out.
“Yes, sir.”
“I am intending to raise your salary. From the beginning of next month, you will have a hundred and fifty a-year.”
“Oh, thank you, Uncle Jacob.”
Tom spoke as he in his ready good-nature felt — brightly and gratefully. Nevertheless, a shade of disappointment did cross his mind, for he thought his position in the house ought to be a different one.
“And I am sure it is quite as much as I ought to do for him,” argued Jacob with his conscience. And he put away unpleasant prickings and set to work like a house on fire.
It was one o’clock when Valentine came in. He had an excuse ready for his father: the latter, turning out of the clerks’ room, chanced to see him enter. “He had been down to Tyler’s to see if he could get that money from them.” It was an untruth, for he had stayed all the while at the Bell; and his father noticed that his face was uncommonly flushed. Old Jacob had had his suspicions before; yes, and spoken of them to Valentine: he now motioned him to go before him into the private room.
“You have been drinking, sir!”
“I! — good gracious, no,” returned Valentine, boldly, his blue eyes fearlessly meeting his father’s. “What fancies you do pick up!”
“Valentine, when I was your age I never drank a drop of anything till night, and then it was only a glass of beer with my supper. It seems to me that young men of the present day think they can drink at all hours with impunity.”
“I don’t drink, father.”
“Very well. Take care you do not. It is a habit more easily acquired than left off. Look here: I am going to give you fifty pounds a-year more. Mind you make it do: and do not spend it in waste.”
It was not very long after this that Jacob Chandler had a shock: a few months, or so. During that time he had been growing thinner and weaker, and looked so shrivelled up that there seemed to be nothing left of him. Islip, small place though it was, had a market-day — Friday; — when farmers would drive or walk in and congregate at the Bell. One afternoon, just as the ordinary was over, Jacob went to the inn, as was his general custom: he had always some business or other to transact with the farmers; or, if not, something to say. His visit to them over, he said good-day and left: but the next minute he turned back, having forgotten something. Some words fell on his ear as he opened the door.
“Ay. He is not long for this world.”
They were spoken by old Farmer Blake — a big, burly, kind-hearted man. And Jacob Chandler felt as certain that they were meant to apply to himself as though his name had been mentioned. He went into a cold shiver, and shut the door again without entering.
Was it true, he asked himself, as he walked across the street to his office: was it indeed a fact that he was slowly dying? A great fear fell upon him: a dread of death. What, leave all this beautiful sunshine, this bright world in which he was so busy, and pass into the cold dark grave! Jacob turned sick at the thought.
It was true that he had long been ailing; but not with any specific ailment. He could not deny that he was now more like a shadow than a man, or that every day seemed to bring him less of strength. Passing into his dining-parlour ins
tead of into his private business room, he drank two glasses of wine off at once, and it seemed to revive him. He was a very abstemious man in general.
Well, if Farmer Blake did say it — stupid old idiot! — it was not obliged to be true, reflected Jacob then. People judged by his spareness: he wished he could get a little fatter. And so he reasoned and persuaded himself out of his fears, and grew sufficiently reassured to transact his business, always pressing on a Friday.
But that same evening, Jacob Chandler drove to North Villa in his gig, telling his wife he should sleep there for a week or two, for the sake of the fresh air. And the next morning, before he went to Islip, he sent for the doctor — Cole.
“People are saying you won’t live!” repeated Cole, having listened to Jacob’s confidential communication. “I don’t see why you should not live. Let’s examine you a bit. You should not take up fancies.”
Cole could find nothing particular the matter with him. He recommended him rest from business, change of air, and a generous diet. “Try it for a month,” said he.
“I can’t try it — except the diet,” returned Jacob. “It’s all very well for you to talk about rest from business, Cole, but how am I to take rest? My business could not get on without me. Business is a pleasure to me; it’s not a pain.”
“You want rest from it all the same,” said Cole. “You have stuck closely to it this many a year.”
“My mother died without apparent cause,” said Jacob, dreamily. “She seemed just to drift out of life. About my age, too.”
“That’s no reason why you should,” argued Cole.
Well, they went on, talking at one another; but nothing came of it. And Cole left, saying he would send him in some tonics to take.
By the evening it was known all over the place that Jacob Chandler was ill and had sent for Cole. People talked of it the next morning as they went to church. Jacob appeared, looking much as usual, and sat down in his pew. The next to come in was Mrs. Cramp; who walked over to our church sometimes. She stayed to dine with the Lexoms, and went to call at North Villa after dinner; finding Mrs. Jacob and the rest of them at dessert with a guest or two. Jacob was somewhere in the garden.
Mrs. Cramp found him in the latticed arbour, and sat down opposite to him, taking up her brown shot-silk gown, lest the seat should be dusty. When she told him it was the hearing of his illness which had brought her over to Crabb, he turned cross. He was not ill, he said; only a trifle out of sorts, as every one else must be at times and seasons. By dint of questioning, Mrs. Cramp, who was a stout, comely woman, fond of having her own way, got out of him all Cole had said.
“And Cole is right, Jacob: it is rest and change you want,” she remarked. “You are sure you do not need it? don’t tell me. A stitch in times saves nine, remember.”
“You know nothing about it, Mary Ann.”
“I know that you look thinner and thinner every time I see you. Be wise in time, brother.”
“Cole told me to go away to the seaside for a month. Why, what should I do, mooning for a whole month in a strange place by myself? I should be like a fish out of water.”
“Take your wife and the girls.”
“I dare say! They would only worry me with their fine doings. And look at the expense.”
“I will go with you if you like, Jacob, rather than you should go alone, though it would be an inconvenience to me. And pay my own expenses.”
“Mary Ann, I am not going at all; or thinking of it. It would be impossible for me to leave my business.”
Mrs. Cramp, turning over matters in her mind, determined to put the case plainly before him, and did so; telling him that it would be better to leave his business for a temporary period now, than to find shortly that he must leave it for ever. Jacob sat gazing out straight before him at the Malvern Hills, the chain of which lay against the sky in the distance.
“If you took my advice, brother, you would retire from business altogether. You have made enough to live without it, I suppose — —”
“But I have not made enough,” he interrupted.
“Then you ought to have made it, Jacob.”
“Oughts don’t go for much.”
“What I mean is, that you ought to have made it, judging by the style in which you live. Two houses, a carriage and ponies (besides your gig), expensive dress, parties: all that should never be gone into, brother, unless the realized income justifies it.”
“It is the style we live in that has not let me put by, Mary Ann. I don’t tell you I have put nothing by: I have put a little by year by year; but it is not enough to live upon.”
“Then make arrangements for half the proceeds of the business to be given over to you. Let the two boys take to it, and — —”
“Who?” cried Jacob.
“The two boys, Tom and Valentine. It will be theirs some time, you know, Jacob: let them have it at once. Tom’s name must be first, as it ought to be. Valentine — —”
“I have no intention of doing anything of the kind,” interposed Jacob, sharply. “I shall keep the business in my own hands as long as I live. Perhaps I may take Valentine into it: not Tom.”
Mrs. Cramp sat for a full minute staring at Jacob, her stout hands, from which the gloves had been taken, and her white lace ruffles lying composedly on her brown gown.
“Not take Tom into the business!” she repeated, in a slow, astonished tone. “Why, Jacob, what do you mean?”
“That,” said Jacob. “Tom will stay on at a good salary: I shall increase it, I dare say, every two years, or so; but he will not come into the firm.”
“You can’t mean what you say.”
“I have meant it this many a year past, Mary Ann. I have never intended to take him in.”
“Jacob, beware! No luck ever comes of fraud.”
“Of what? Fraud?”
“Yes; I say fraud. If you deprive Tom of the place that is justly his, it will be a cheat and a fraud, and nothing short of it.”
“You have a queer way of looking at things, Mrs. Cramp. Who has kept the practice together all these years, but me? and added to it little by little, and made it worth double what it was; ay, and more than double? It is right — right, mind you, Mary Ann — that my own son should succeed to it.”
“Who made the practice in the first place, and took you into it out of brotherly affection, and made you a full partner without your paying a farthing, and for seventeen or eighteen years was the chief prop and stay of it?” retorted Mrs. Cramp. “Why, poor Thomas; your elder brother. Who made him a promise when he was lying dying in that very parlour where your wife and children are now sitting, that Tom should take his proper place in the firm when he was of age, and his half-share with it, according to agreement? Why you. You did, Jacob Chandler.”
“That was all a mistake,” said Jacob, shuffling his thin legs and wrists.
“I will leave you,” said Mrs. Cramp. “I don’t care to discuss questions while you are in this frame of mind. Is this all the benefit you got from the parson’s sermon this morning, and the text he gave out before it? That text: think of it a bit, brother Jacob, and perhaps you’ll see your way to acting differently. Remember,” she added, turning back to him for the last word, which she always had, somehow, “that cheating never prospers in the long run. It never does, Jacob; never: for where it is crafty cheating, hidden away from the sight of man, it is seen and noted by God.”
Her brown skirts (all the shades of a copper tea-kettle) disappeared round the corner by the mulberry-tree, leaving Jacob very angry and uncomfortable. Angry with her, uncomfortable in himself. Do what he would, he could not get that text out of his mind — and what right had she to bring it cropping up to him in that inconvenient way, he wondered, or to speak to him about such matters at all. The verse was a beautiful verse in itself; he had always thought so: but it was not pleasant to be tormented by it — and all through Mary Ann! There it was haunting his memory again!
“Keep innocency, and take heed
unto the thing that is right: for that shall bring a man peace at the last.”
Jacob Chandler grew to look a little fresher, though not stouter, as the weeks went on: the drive, night and morning, seemed to do him good. Meeting Cole one day, he told him he felt stronger, and did not see why he should not live to be ninety. With all his heart, Cole answered, but most people found seventy long enough.
All at once, without warning, a notice appeared in the local papers, stating that Jacob Chandler had taken his son Valentine into partnership. Mrs. Chandler read it as she sat at breakfast.
“What does it mean, Tom?” she asked.
“I don’t know what it means, mother. We have heard nothing about it at the office.”
“Tom, you may depend your uncle Jacob has done it, and that he does not intend to take you in at all,” spoke Mrs. Chandler, in her strong conviction. “I shall go to him.”
She finished her breakfast and went off there and then, catching Jacob just as he was turning out of the white gate at North Villa to mount his gig: for he still came over to Crabb to sleep. The newspaper was in her hand, and she pointed to the advertisement.
“What does it mean, Jacob?” she asked, just as she had a few minutes before asked of Tom.
“Mean!” said Jacob. “It can’t have more than one meaning, can it? I’ve thought it best to let Val’s name appear in the practice, and made over to him a small share of the profits. Very small, Betsy. He won’t draw much more than he has been drawing as salary.”
“But what of Tom?” questioned poor Mrs. Chandler.
“Of Tom? Well, what of him?”
“When is he to be taken in?”
“Oh, there’s time enough for that. I can’t make two moves at once; it could not be expected of me, Betsy. My son is my son, and he had to come in first.”
“But — Jacob — don’t you think you ought to carry out the agreement made with Tom’s father — that you are bound in honour?” debated Mrs. Chandler, in her meek and non-insisting way.
“Time enough, Betsy. We shall see. And look there, my horse won’t stand: he’s always fresh in the morning.”