by Ellen Wood
“Yes, it is to be given in the large club-room at the Bell to-night,” she answered. “Shall you come over for it?”
“Are you going to it, Emma?”
“Oh yes. Papa has taken twelve tickets. A great many people are coming in to go with us.”
“I shall go also,” said Tom decidedly. And at that the roses came again.
“What a large parcel you are carrying!”
Tom held the brown-paper parcel further out at the remark.
“They are my goods and chattels,” said he. “Things that I had at the office. I have left it, Emma.”
“Left the office!” she repeated, looking as though she did not understand. “You don’t mean really left it? — left it for good?”
“I have left it for good, Emma. Valentine — —”
“Here’s papa,” interrupted Emma, as a stout, elderly gentleman with iron-grey hair turned out of the stationer’s; neither of them having the least idea he was there.
“Is it you, Tom Chandler?” cried Mr. Paul.
“Yes, it is, sir.”
“And fine to be you, I should say! Spending your time in gossip at the busiest part of the day.”
“Unfortunately I have to-day no business to do,” returned Tom, smiling in the old lawyer’s face. “And I was just telling Miss Paul why. I have left the office, sir, and am looking out for another situation.”
Mr. Paul stared at him. “Why, it is your own office. What’s that for?”
“It ought to be my own office in part, as it was my father’s before me. But Valentine cannot see that, sir. He tells me he will not take me into partnership; that I ought not to expect it. I refuse to remain on any other terms; and so I have left him for good. These are my rattletraps. Odds and ends of things that I am bringing away.”
Mr. Paul continued to look at Tom in silence for a minute or two. Tom thought he was considering what he should next say. It was not that, however. “How well he would suit me! How I should like to take him! What a load of work he’d lift off my shoulders!” Those were the thoughts that were running rapidly through Mr. Paul’s mind.
But he did not speak them. In fact, he had no intention of speaking them, or of taking on Tom, much as he would have liked to do it.
“When Jacob Chandler lay dying only yesterday, as it were, he told me you would join his son; that the two of you would carry on the practice together.”
“Yes, he said the same thing to me,” replied Tom. “But Valentine refuses to carry it out. So I told him I would not be a servant where I ought to be a master, and came away.”
“And what are you going to do, young man?”
Tom smiled. He was just as much a lawyer as Mr. Paul was. “I should like to set up in practice for myself,” he answered; “but I do not yet see my way sufficiently clear to do so. There may be a chance for me at Worcester, as managing clerk. I have written to ask if the place is filled up. May I join your party to the concert to-night, sir?” he asked.
“I don’t mind — if you are going to it,” said the old lawyer: “but I can’t see what young men want at concerts?”
Tom caught Miss Emma’s eye and her blushes, and gave her a glance that told her he should be sure to come.
But, before the lapse of twenty-four hours, in spite of his non-intention, Mr. Paul had taken on Tom Chandler and, looking back in later years, it might be seen that it had been on the cards of destiny that Tom should be taken.
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.”
Lawyer Paul was still in his dining-room that evening in his handsome house just out of Islip, and before any of his expected guests had come, when Tom arrived to say he could not make one, and was shown into the drawing-room. Feasting his eyes with Miss Emma’s charming dress, and shaking her hand longer than was at all polite, Tom told her why he could not go.
“My mother took me to task severely, Emma. She asked me what I could be thinking of to wish to go to a public concert when my uncle was only buried the day before yesterday. The truth is, I never thought of that.”
“I am so sorry,” whispered Emma. “But I am worse than you are. It was I who first asked whether you meant to go. And it is to be the nicest concert imaginable!”
“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-button.”
“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 buttons. “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-glass. Though never more than one glass, 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.�
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“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 passed 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 glass. “I accused Tom of it one day, and for once in his life he flew into a passion, 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 assure 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 glass, 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 glass he went on to drink two glasses, 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 glass, but he could not leave the effects of what the glass 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 passing 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.
It chanced that on the very same Sunday evening, when they were talking at North Villa of Valentine’s doings, Tom broached the subject to his mother. They were sitting out of doors in the warm summer twilight, sniffing the haycocks in the neighbouring field. Tom spoke abruptly.
“Should you mind my going to London, mother?”
“To London!” cried Mrs. Chandler. “What for?”
“To live.”
“You — you are not leaving Mr. Paul, are you?”
“I am thinking of it. You see, mother mine, there is no prospect of advancement where I am. It seems to me that I may jog on for ever at two hundred a-year — —”
“It is enough for us, Tom.”
“As things are, yes: but nothing more. If — for instance — if I wanted to set up a home of my own, I have no means of doing it. Never shall have, at the present rate.”
Mrs. Chandler turned and looked at Tom’s face. “Are you thinking of marrying, Tom?”
“No. It is of no use to think of it. If I thought of it ever so, I could not do it. Putting that idea aside, it occurs to me sometimes to remember that I am eight-and-twenty, and ought to be doing better for myself.”
“Do you fancy you could do better in London?”
“I am sure I could. Very much better.”
Opening the Bible on her lap, Mrs. Chandler took out the spectacles that lay between the leaves, and put them into their case with trembling fingers.
“Do whatever you think best, Tom,” she said at length, having waited to steady her voice. “Children leave their parents’ home for one of their own; this Book tells us that they should do so. Had Jacob Chandler done the right thing by you, you would never have needed to leave Islip: had his son done the right thing by me, I should not be the burden to you that I am. But now that George has taken to sending me money over from Canada — —”
“Burden!” interrupted Tom, laughingly. “Don’t you talk treason, Mrs. Chandler. If I do go to London, you will have to come with me, and see the lions.”
That night, lying awake, Tom made his mind up. He had been offered a good appointment in London to manage a branch office for a large legal firm — four hundred a-year salary. And he would never for a moment have hesitated to take it, but for not liking to leave old Paul and (especially) old Paul’s daughter.
Walking to Islip the next morning, he thought a bit about the best way of breaking it to Mr. Paul — who would be sure to come down upon him with a storm. By midday he had found no opportunity of speaking: people were perpetually coming in: and in the afternoon Tom had to go a mile or two into the country. In returning he overtook Emma. She was walking
along the field-path under the hedge, her hat hanging on her arm by its strings.
“It is so warm,” said she, in apology, as Tom shook hands. “And the trees make it shady here. I went over to ask Mary Maceveril to come back with me and dine: but they have gone to Worcester for the day.”
“So much the better for me,” said Tom. “I want to tell you, Emma, that I am going to leave.”
“To leave!”
“I have had a very good place offered me in London. Mr. Paul knows nothing about it yet, for I did not make up my mind till last night, and I could not get a minute alone with him this morning.”
She had turned her face suddenly to the hedge, seemingly to pick a wild rose. Tom saw that the pink roses on her cheek had turned to white ones.
“I shall be very sorry to leave Islip, Emma. But what else can I do? Situated as I am now, I cannot even glance at any plans for the future. By making this change, I may be able to do so. My salary will be a good one and enable me to put by: and the firm I am going to dropped me a hint of a possible partnership.”
“I wish these dog-roses had no thorns! And I wish they would grow double, as the garden roses do!”
“So that I — having considered the matter thoroughly — believe I shall do well to make the change. Perhaps then I may begin to indulge dreams of a future.”
“There! all the petals are off!”
“Let me gather them for you. What is the matter, Emma?”
“Matter? Nothing, sir. What should there be?”
“Here is a beauty. Will you take it?”
“Thank you. I never thought you would leave papa, Mr. Chandler.”
“But — don’t you perceive my reasons, Emma? What prospect is there for me as long as I remain here? What hope can I indulge, or even glance at, of — of settling in life?”
“I dare say you don’t want to settle.”
“I do not put the question to myself, because it is so useless.”
“I shall be late for dinner. Good-bye.”
She took a sudden flight to the little white side-gate of her house, which opened to the field, ran across the garden, and disappeared within doors. Tom, catching a glimpse of her face, saw that it was wet with tears.