“Then you intend to pension the wives?” Ezra said, with a sly smile.
“By no means,” his father returned with decision. “Girdlestone and Co. are not an insurance office. The labourer is worthy of his hire, but when his work in this world is over, his family must fall back upon what has been saved by his industry and thrift. It would be a dangerous precedent for us to allow pensions to the wives of these sailors, for it would deprive the others of all motive for laying their money by, and would indirectly encourage vice and dissipation.”
Ezra laughed, and continued to rattle his silver and keys.
“It is not upon this matter that I desired to speak to you,” Girdlestone continued. “It has, however, always been my practice to prefer matters of business to private affairs, however pressing. John Harston is said to be dying, and he has sent a message to me saying that he wishes to see me. It is inconvenient for me to leave the office, but I feel that it is my Christian duty to obey such a summons. I wish you, therefore, to look after things until I return.”
“I can hardly believe that the news is true,” Ezra said, in astonishment. “There must be some mistake. Why, I spoke to him on ‘Change last Monday.”
“It is very sudden,” his father answered, taking his broad-brimmed hat from a peg. “There is no doubt about the fact, however. The doctor says that there is very little hope that he will survive until evening. It is a case of malignant typhoid.”
“You are very old friends?” Ezra remarked, looking thoughtfully at his father.
“I have known him since we were boys together,” the other replied, with a slight dry cough, which was the highest note of his limited emotional gamut. “Your mother, Ezra, died upon the very day that Harston’s wife gave birth to this daughter of his, seventeen years ago. Mrs. Harston only survived a few days. I have heard him say that, perhaps, we should also go together. We are in the hands of a higher Power, however, and it seems that one shall be taken and another left.”
“How will the money go if the doctors are right?” Ezra asked keenly.
“Every penny to the girl. She will be an heiress. There are no other relations that I know of, except the Dimsdales, and they have a fair fortune of their own. But I must go.”
“By the way, malignant typhoid is very catching, is it not?”
“So they say,” the merchant said quietly, and strode off through the counting-house.
Ezra Girdlestone remained behind, stretching his legs In front of the empty grate. “The governor is a hard nail,” he soliloquized, as he stared down at the shining steel bars. “Depend upon it, though, he feels this more than he shows. Why, it’s the only friend he ever had in the world — or ever will have, in all probability. However, it’s no business of mine,” with which comforting reflection he began to whistle as he turned over the pages of the private day-book of the firm.
It is possible that his son’s surmise was right, and that the gaunt, unemotional African merchant felt an unwonted heartache as he hailed a hansom and drove out to his friend’s house at Fulham. He and Harston had been charity schoolboys together, had roughed it together, risen together, and prospered together. When John Girdlestone was a raw-boned lad and Harston a chubby-faced urchin, the latter had come to look upon the other as his champion and guide. There are some minds which are parasitic in their nature. Alone they have little vitality, but they love to settle upon some stronger intellect, from which they may borrow their emotions and conclusions at second-hand. A strong, vigorous brain collects around it in time many others, whose mental processes are a feeble imitation of its own. Thus it came to pass that, as the years rolled on, Harston learned to lean more and more upon his old school-fellow, grafting many of his stern peculiarities upon his own simple vacuous nature, until he became a strange parody of the original. To him Girdlestone was the ideal man, Girdlestone’s ways the correct ways, and Girdlestone’s opinions the weightiest of all opinions. Forty years of this undeviating fidelity must, however he might conceal it, have made an impression upon the feelings of the elder man.
Harston, by incessant attention to business and extreme parsimony, had succeeded in founding an export trading concern. In this he had followed the example of his friend. There was no fear of their interests ever coming into collision, as his operations were confined to the Mediterranean. The firm grew and prospered, until Harston began to be looked upon as a warm man in the City circles. His only child was Kate, a girl of seventeen. There were no other near relatives, save Dr. Dimsdale, a prosperous West-end physician. No wonder that Ezra Girdlestone’s active business mind, and perhaps that of his father too, should speculate as to the disposal of the fortune of the dying man.
Girdlestone pushed open the iron gate and strode down the gravel walk which led to his friend’s house. A bright autumn sun shining out of a cloudless heaven bathed the green lawn and the many-coloured flower-beds in its golden light. The air, the leaves, the birds, all spoke of life. It was hard to think that death was closing its grip upon him who owned them all. A plump little gentleman in black was just descending the steps.
“Well, doctor,” the merchant asked, “how is your patient?”
“You’ve not come with the intention of seeing him, have you?” the doctor asked, glancing up with some curiosity at the grey face and overhanging eyebrows of the merchant.
“Yes, I am going up to him now.”
“It is a most virulent case of typhoid. He may die in an hour or he may live until nightfall, but nothing can save him. He will hardly recognise you, I fear, and you can do him no good. It is most infectious, and you are incurring a needless danger. I should strongly recommend you not to go.”
“Why, you’ve only just come down from him yourself, doctor.”
“Ah, I’m there in the way of duty.”
“So am I,” said the visitor decisively, and passing up the stone steps of the entrance strode into the hall. There was a large sitting-room upon the ground floor, through the open door of which the visitor saw a sight which arrested him for a moment. A young girl was sitting in a recess near the window, with her lithe, supple figure bent forward, and her hands clasped at the back of her head, while her elbows rested upon a small table in front of her. Her superb brown hair fell in a thick wave on either side over her white round arms, and the graceful curve of her beautiful neck might have furnished a sculptor with a study for a mourning Madonna. The doctor had just broken his sad tidings to her, and she was still in the first paroxysm of her grief — a grief too acute, as was evident even to the unsentimental mind of the merchant, to allow of any attempt at consolation. A greyhound appeared to think differently, for he had placed his fore-paws upon his young mistress’s lap, and was attempting to thrust his lean muzzle between her arms and to lick her face in token of canine sympathy. The merchant paused irresolutely for a moment, and then ascending the broad staircase he pushed open the door of Harston’s room and entered.
The blinds were drawn down and the chamber was very dark. A pungent whiff of disinfectants issued from it, mingled with the dank, heavy smell of disease. The bed was in a far corner. Without seeing him, Girdlestone could hear the fast laboured breathing of the invalid. A trimly dressed nurse who had been sitting by the bedside rose, and, recognising the visitor, whispered a few words to him and left the room. He pulled the cord of the Venetian blind so as to admit a few rays of daylight. The great chamber looked dreary and bare, as carpet and hangings had been removed to lessen the chance of future infection. John Girdlestone stepped softly across to the bedside and sat down by his dying friend.
The sufferer was lying on his back, apparently unconscious of all around him. His glazed eyes were turned upwards towards the ceiling, and his parched lips were parted, while the breath came in quick, spasmodic gasps. Even the unskilled eye of the merchant could tell that the angel of death was hovering very near him. With an ungainly attempt at tenderness, which had something pathetic in it, he moistened a sponge and passed it over the sick man’s feverish
brow. The latter turned his restless head round, and a gleam of recognition and gratitude came into his eyes.
“I knew that you would come,” he said.
“Yes. I came the moment that I got your message.”
“I am glad that you are here,” the sufferer continued with a sigh of relief. From the brightened expression upon his pinched face, it seemed as if, even now in the jaws of death, he leaned upon his old schoolfellow and looked to him for assistance. He put a wasted hand above the counterpane and laid it upon Girdlestone’s.
“I wish to speak to you, John,” he said. “I am very weak. Can you hear what I say?”
“Yes, I hear you.”
“Give me a spoonful from that bottle. It clears my mind for a time.
I have been making my will, John.”
“Yes,” said the merchant, replacing the medicine bottle.
“The lawyer made it this morning. Stoop your head and you will hear me better. I have less than fifty thousand. I should have done better had I retired years ago.”
“I told you so,” the other broke in gruffly.
“You did — you did. But I acted for the best. Forty thousand I leave to my dear daughter Kate.”
A look of interest came over Girdlestone’s face. “And the balance?” he asked.
“I leave that to be equally divided among the various London institutions for educating the poor. We were both poor boys ourselves, John, and we know the value of such schools.”
Girdlestone looked perhaps a trifle disappointed. The sick man went on very slowly and painfully —
“My daughter will have forty thousand pounds. But it is so tied up that she can neither touch it herself nor enable any one else to do so until she is of age. She has no friends, John, and no relations, save only my cousin, Dr. George Dimsdale. Never was a girl left more lonely and unprotected. Take her, I beg of you, and bring her up under your own eye. Treat her as though she were your child. Guard her above all from those who would wreck her young life in order to share her fortune. Do this, old friend, and make me happy on my deathbed.”
The merchant made no answer. His heavy eyebrows were drawn down, and his forehead all puckered with thought.
“You are the one man,” continued the sufferer, “whom I know to be just and upright. Give me the water, for my mouth is dry. Should, which God forbid, my dear girl perish before she marries, then—” His breath failed him for a moment, and he paused to recover it.
“Well, what then?”
“Then, old friend, her fortune reverts to you, for there is none who will use it so well. Those are the terms of the will. But you will guard her and care for her, as I would myself. She is a tender plant, John, too weak to grow alone. Promise me that you will do right by her — promise it?”
“I do promise it,” John Girdlestone answered in a deep voice. He was standing up now, and leaning over to catch the words of the dying man.
Harston was sinking rapidly. With a feeble motion he pointed to a brown-backed volume upon the table.
“Take up the book,” he said.
The merchant picked it up.
“Now, repeat after me, I swear and solemnly pledge myself—”
“I swear and solemnly pledge myself —
“To treasure and guard as if she were my own—” came the tremulous voice from the bed.
“To treasure and guard as if she were my own—” in the deep bass of the merchant.
“Kate Harston, the daughter of my deceased friend—”
“Kate Harston, the daughter of my deceased friend—”
“And as I treat her, so may my own flesh and blood treat me!”
“And as I treat her, so may my own flesh and blood treat me!”
The sick man’s head fell back exhausted upon his pillow. “Thank God!” he muttered, “now I can die in peace.”
“Turn your mind away from the vanities and dross of this world,” John Girdlestone said sternly, “and fix it upon that which is eternal, and can never die.”
“Are you going?” the invalid asked sadly, for he had taken up his hat and stick.
“Yes, I must go; I have an appointment in the City at six, which I must not miss.”
“And I have an appointment which I must not miss,” the dying man said with a feeble smile.
“I shall send up the nurse as I go down,” Girdlestone said.
“Good-bye!”
“Good-bye! God bless you, John!”
The firm, strong hand of the hale man enclosed for a moment the feeble, burning one of the sufferer. Then John Girdlestone plodded heavily down the stair, and these friends of forty years’ standing had said their last adieu.
The African merchant kept his appointment in the City, but long before he reached it John Harston had gone also to keep that last terrible appointment of which the messenger is death.
CHAPTER II.
CHARITY A LA MODE.
It was a dull October morning in Fenchurch Street, some weeks after the events with which our story opened. The murky City air looked murkier still through the glazed office windows. Girdlestone, grim and grey, as though he were the very embodiment of the weather, stooped over his mahogany table. He had a long list in front of him, on which he was checking off, as a prelude to the day’s work, the position in the market of the various speculations in which the capital of the firm was embarked. His son Ezra lounged in an easy chair opposite him, looking dishevelled and dark under the eyes, for he had been up half the night, and the Nemesis of reaction was upon him.
“Faugh!” his father ejaculated, glancing round at him with disgust.
“You have been drinking already this morning.”
“I took a brandy and seltzer on the way to the office,” he answered carelessly. “I needed one to steady me.”
“A young fellow of your age should not want steadying. You have a strong constitution, but you must not play tricks with it. You must have been very late last night. It was nearly one before I went to bed.”
“I was playing cards with Major Clutterbuck and one or two others.
We kept it up rather late.”
“With Major Clutterbuck?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t care about your consorting so much with that man. He drinks and gambles, and does you no good. What good has he ever done himself? Take care that he does not fleece you.” The merchant felt instinctively, as he glanced at the shrewd, dark face of his son, that the warning was a superfluous one.
“No fear, father,” Ezra answered sulkily; “I am old enough to choose my own friends.”
“Why such a friend as that?”
“I like to know men of that class. You are a successful man, father, but you — well, you can’t be much help to me socially. You need some one to show you the ropes, and the major is my man. When I can stand alone, I’ll soon let him know it.”
“Well, go your own way,” said Girdlestone shortly. Hard to all the world, he was soft only in this one direction. From childhood every discussion between father and son had ended with the same words.
“It is business time,” he resumed. “Let us confine ourselves to business. I see that Illinois were at 112 yesterday.”
“They are at 113 this morning.”
“What! have you been on ‘Change already?”
“Yes, I dropped in there on my way to the office. I would hold on to those. They will go up for some days yet.”
The senior partner made a pencil note on the margin of the list.
“We’ll hold on to the cotton we have,” he said.
“No, sell out at once,” Ezra answered with decision, “I saw young Featherstone, of Liverpool, last night, or rather this morning. It was hard to make head or tail of what the fool said, but he let fall enough to show that there was likely to be a drop.”
Girdlestone made another mark upon the paper. He never questioned his son’s decisions now, for long experience had shown him that they were never formed without solid grounds. “Take this
list, Ezra,” he said, handing him the paper, “and run your eye over it. If you see anything that wants changing, mark it.”
“I’ll do it in the counting-house,” his son answered. “I can keep my eye on those lazy scamps of clerks. Gilray has no idea of keeping them in order.”
As he went out he cannoned against an elderly gentleman in a white waistcoat, who was being shown in, and who ricochetted off him into the office, where he shook hands heartily with the elder Girdlestone. It was evident from the laboured cordiality of the latter’s greeting that the new-comer was a man of some importance. He was, indeed, none other than the well-known philanthropist, Mr. Jefferson Edwards, M.P. for Middlehurst, whose name upon a bill was hardly second to that of Rothschild.
“How do, Girdlestone, how do?” he exclaimed, mopping his face with his handkerchief. He was a fussy little man, with a brusque, nervous manner. “Hard at it as usual, eh? Always pegging away. Wonderful man. Ha, ha! Wonderful!”
“You look warm,” the merchant answered, rubbing his hands. “Let me offer you some claret. I have some in the cupboard.”
“No, thank you,” the visitor answered, staring across at the head of the firm as though he were some botanical curiosity. “Extraordinary fellow. ‘Iron’ Girdlestone, they call you in the City. A good name, too — ha! ha! — an excellent name. Iron-grey, you know, and hard to look at, but soft here, my dear sir, soft here.” The little man tapped him with his walking-stick over the cardiac region and laughed boisterously, while his grim companion smiled slightly and bowed to the compliment.
“I’ve come here begging,” said Mr. Jefferson Edwards, producing a portentous-looking roll of paper from an inner pocket. “Know I’ve come to the right place for charity. The Aboriginal Evolution Society, my dear boy. All it wants are a few hundreds to float it off. Noble aim, Girdlestone — glorious object.”
“What is the object?” the merchant asked.
Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) Page 495