Chapter VII (2)

The morning came, and with it the necessity for action. He had determined to continue his bright career for a day or two at least, as far as his mother and father-in-law were concerned: after that period, the numerous interesting enquiries which would undoubtedly be made about him by the Cowes tradesmen, Hickman, and all the rest of the Vectans, would render a retreat necessary; not but that, upon the whole, he thought the arrangement about the yacht was a good one,--as it _was_ to go, it was best as it was; and then for the smaller bills, if his mother was good-natured, why, he would pay them,--for in money matters there really was no bad principle about Jack; and in the affair of the five-hundred-pound bill, which he had not paid, it was given more because he felt he had actually a claim to what he required, out of the business, and that Salmon was assuming rather too much in the direction of the financial department of the establishment.

At about twelve o’clock, then, Jack issued forth from his “little place,” and calling a hackney-coach from the stand at Kennington-Cross, stepped into it, and directed the man to drive him to his bankers’. The man, of course, obeyed, and Jack entered the shop;--was received, as usual, by one of the partners, with great civility,--talked of the weather, of Cowes, of the Yacht-Club, of Wagley, and everybody else as usual,--till, by way of varying the conversation, he asked for a checque, and drew thereupon for one hundred pounds: this he tossed down on the counter with one of his most graceful movements, saying loud enough to astonish a butcher’s-boy and a maid-servant who were respectively getting three pound ten, and two pound five, from the cashier, “I’ll take one fifty, four tens, and ten sovereigns.”

The cashier looked at the checque,--then fumbled in a drawer,--then carried it to a gentleman with a pen behind his ear, who was standing at a desk in a corner; _he_ took it from him, and walked off with it and a parchment-covered book into the parlour, and the cashier began to read another checque and prepare to pay it.

“Well,” said Jack, “where’s the money?”

“Would you just step into the parlour, sir?” said the cashier.

“Parlour!” said Jack; “eh?--I--I don’t know.”

“Mr. Brag!” said the partner, coming forward and indicating a desire for a parley. Jack obeyed the call, and left the counter,--a movement followed by a strange look interchanged between the cashier and the clerk next him, which being truly interpreted by the butcher’s boy, and the maid-servant, caused the former to put his finger to his nose, and the latter to burst out laughing, the one having been most unceremoniously shoved out of his turn, and the other most engagingly looked at by Jack, when he was presenting his draft in all the ecstacy of swagger.

“We have no money of yours in our hands,” said the partner to Brag; “and you know our rule upon that point.”

“No money of mine!” said Brag; “why, you have three hundred pounds of mine paid in to my account by Mr. Salmon, and you acknowledged the receipt--sent me word to say so, all straight up, right down, and no mistake!”

“So we had,” said the partner, “till yesterday; but we yesterday paid your acceptance for five hundred, in favour of Mr. Salmon himself.”

“Paid it!” said Brag, “the deuce you did! What! advanced two hundred on my account?”

“No;” said the partner, “you had five hundred pounds here to your credit, and of course the bill was paid.”

“I, five hundred!” said Jack; “why, when was the other two paid in?”

“Yesterday morning, I think,” said the partner, “Mr. Jiggins, just turn to Mr. Brag’s account.”

Jiggins did turn to the account, and yesterday morning it was.

The reader, perhaps, is at this moment as little aware of the real nature of this proceeding as Jack himself was; but when he comes to be enlightened, he will have, perhaps, a higher opinion of Mr. Salmon’s intellectuality than he previously had. The truth is, that Salmon had not paid away Jack’s bill; but on the morning it became due,--the morning preceding the day of which we now treat,--Mr. Salmon, having duly endorsed the said bill, sent a friend to the bankers’ to present it; it was dishonoured, as he anticipated, they not having assets to pay it.

The moment Salmon gets this intelligence, he proceeds to the banking-house, in great agitation, and states his surprise at such a “return,” as he himself had paid in three hundred very recently to Mr. Brag’s account.

“Very true,” said the partner to Salmon, “and _that_ he has not drawn upon; but, Mr. Salmon, you know our rule.”

Salmon _did_ know their rule, and that knowledge had induced him, as we know, to have another banker. However, Jem had done all he wanted, he had ascertained that his worthy son-in-law and senior had left the three hundred untouched; whereupon, somewhere about one o’clock, he sends a friend,--not the man who had presented the bill, but another,--and through _him_ pays in two hundred pounds to Jack’s account; having done this, his former friend “calls again” before five, at the banking-house with the five-hundred-pound acceptance, to hear if there is any better news for him, and, Jack’s account now being adequate to the demand, the bill is paid. Salmon, by this manœuvre gets back the three hundred pounds he had advanced to Jack, and the additional two, which he had so recently paid in, leaving to the honour, if not profit, of poor Brag, the five-hundred-pound bill, duly paid and “released.”

This was a _coup_ for which Jack certainly was not prepared--it destroyed his last hope: fifteen shillings and ninepence halfpenny was now the amount of his ready money. Could he continue, under such circumstances, even for a day, to ride the high horse with Salmon; it _was_ a question; and the more he thought over the matter, the more he considered the fact that Salmon had not only saved _his_ credit at the banker’s, but got back his own money, the more he encouraged the hope that he might be inclined to put faith in the representations which he proposed to make with regard to his affairs; all depending upon their being made off hand, straight up, right down, and no mistake.

Jack, mystified as he was at the time, proceeded to his door-plate in Grosvenor-street, where the master of the house, whose “lady” occupied the lower part of it as a milliner, was greatly pleased to see him once again, and in the plenitude of his happiness informed him that several persons from the Isle of Wight had called to enquire for him that morning, and that two of them said they would call again in the evening. This intelligence, if not altogether pleasant, was at all events seasonable; since, as the next day was Sunday, if Jack could contrive to avoid these “obliging enquirers” till after midnight, he might have a day to himself in which to make some sort of arrangement.

Jack prudently resolved to house himself until the shades of evening might render his wanderings secure, and then to betake himself to the shop, find Salmon, and manage him as he best could, according to circumstances. Where he concealed himself is no matter of importance to us; but about nine o’clock, when the natural darkness of the evening, greatly improved by the tinting of a metropolitan atmosphere, seemed apt and fitting for his purpose, he bent his steps towards the well-known home of his fathers; having arrived at which, he found, contrary to the custom of other times, that, although it was Saturday night, the shop closed, the shutters hermetically sealed, and the whole lower part of the house enveloped in Cimmerian darkness: not so, however, the drawing-room floor; there, although the blinds were down, blazed a brilliant light; and as he paused under the windows, Jack thought he heard singing, and was sure he heard laughter loud and long. He knocked at the door; it was opened by an old servant who as yet had not received her discharge.

“Ah, Margery!” said Jack, “how are you? alive and merry still?--Salmon at home?--how’s mother?”

“Mr. Salmon is at home, Master John,” said the old woman, “as you may hear; missus is out at the lodgings.”

“Is there any company here?” said Jack.

“I believe there is, too,” said Margery.

“Well,” said Jack, “take up my name--eh?--I’ll go and have a look at ’em; straight up, right down, and no mistake!”

“Take up your name in your own house!” said Margery; “if your name goes up, you’ll see none o’ the fun, depend upon it; go yourself into the drawing-room--who has so good a reason?--and then you’ll see what’s what, and then I hope my poor missus will know of the goings on.”

“Gad, I believe you are right,” said Jack; “so I will:” to which resolution Jack instantly screwed himself, because he thought that by catching Salmon out, as he called it, in his dissipation, he might threaten him into compliance with his demands, and accordingly up he went; the old woman standing in the passage rubbing her hands for joy, and chuckling aloud as she mumbled the words, “That’s just what I wanted.”

Jack went through the masonic ceremony of knocking at the door; but the joyous “Come in!” of the master of the house so speedily followed the “tap,” that in another second Jack stood in the midst of the astonished assembly. Banquo’s arrival at Lady Macbeth’s party, could not have been more unexpected or unwelcome; a dead silence followed his appearance; and Salmon, involuntarily getting up from his seat, muttered a word or two.

“I hope,” said Jack, “I don’t intrude, as the man says in the play.”

“Not in the least,” said Salmon. “Glad to see you. Won’t you take a chair?--Thought you were at Cowes,--twig?”

“Where’s mother?” said Jack.

“At the willa,” said Salmon. “She can’t stand London air, so----”

Here some of the party coughed, and some tittered; and Miss Hogg, who was seated on Salmon’s left hand, leaned across him to her ma’, who was placed on his right, to announce her recognition of “the fool of a son of the Widow Waddle,” whom she had denounced to his face at Lewes. Two slang-looking men graced the board, between whom was placed Mrs. Cropper,--Mrs. Dallington’s housekeeper,--of whom the reader has heard before; and, to crown all, acting as croupier to Jim Salmon, was installed, with a group of jugs and bottles before him, the confidential minister of Colonel Stiffkey, who had taken so active a part in the manufacture of Sir Stumpy Dubbs’s particular punch on the evening, at Eastbourne, when Jack had lost the money at _Ecarté_ which he had not paid.

The moment Jack glanced his eye round the room, saw the profusion of fruits, and wines, and everything else of the best sort, with which the table was covered, and beheld the guests considerably elevated by their libations, of whom the faces of two or three were fatally familiar to his eye, he stammered something, retreated towards the door, and, making one of his “slap-up” bows, told Salmon he would call on him in the morning; and quitted the room without making any further observation, or taking the least notice of anybody who was in it.

As he skipped down the stairs, a shout of laughter from the assembled guests rang in his ears; and without stopping to see old Margery, or to have the door opened for him, he quitted the house, called a hackney-coach, and with a stock of ready money reduced to less than thirteen shillings and four-pence,--a sum never to be forgotten by _him_ after reading Leveret’s bill,--he told the coachman to drive him to No. 72, Elysium Row, Pentonville.

Jack, as we have seen, was a foolish, vain, conceited fellow; and, in supporting a system of absurd pretensions, was betrayed, not only into equivocations and evasions, but even into falsehood: yet, mean and contemptible as he might have been, he was not quite insensible to the feelings of humanity. The flushed countenances of the maudlin revellers in the room which he had been accustomed only on Sundays to see occupied by his parents and his lost sister, at a time when the proceedings of the family were regulated by religion and honesty,--the fumes of the wine,--the gaudy display of luxuries hitherto strangers to that board,--the sounds of mirth and gaiety ringing in his ears,--and _she_, who had for years been mistress of the house, from whose property the means to furnish out the feast were derived,--absent--exiled--neglected!--the voice of nature was heard in the midst of all the clamour, and Jack felt filially angry as he entered his neglected parent’s lonesome lodging.

He found her on the point of retiring to rest, sitting in an arm-chair, sipping a nearly finished glass of “something warm,” with one candle burning on the table, and a little girl--her landlady’s daughter--reading, or rather spelling, to her the “Daily Advertiser,” borrowed from some neighbouring ale-house. At her feet lay a cat watching her attentively, in hopes to get a crumb of the dry bread upon which the poor old lady was supping. The place was still, and the silence unbroken, except by the parasitical purring of Puss, the ticking of a clock in the corner of the room, or the occasional shrill cry of “Beer” from a peripatetic pot-boy in the road.

“Johnny, my boy,” said she, as Jack entered the apartment, “this is good of you,--kind of you. I didn’t expect to see you for many days to come. Sit down. Nelly dear, get another candle. What will you have?--something to eat? Get some hot water in the kettle, dear. God bless you, Johnny, for coming to see me; for I have been very bad since I wrote to you Monday. I thought, somehow, you would not be long either, because you never answered my letter; and poor Jemes was very anxious to know about those people I wrote about.”

“Jemes be----” Jack stopped himself. “My poor mother, you _do_ look ill; but--I don’t want anything to eat;--no, no; let the little girl go down. I only want to talk to _you_.”

“Go dear,” said Mrs. Salmon. “I’ll ring for you if I want you. I should have been in bed in half an hour. Jemes bids me never sit up for him after half-past ten; and on Saturdays he has so much to do.”

“Do!” said Jack. “He’s----Never mind, mother. He is a bad one,--a right regular bad one, and no mistake. He has nothing to do; but--no, I’ll not worry you about _that_; time enough, mother. Mother, I’m ruined! that’s the long and the short of it; and, as I believe, we are all ruined.”

“Ruined, Johnny!” said Mrs. Salmon. “How--?”

“I can’t tell you all,” said Jack. “Things have turned out bad. Salmon has behaved ill to me, and----”

“He thinks you have behaved ill to _him_,” said Mrs. Salmon; “and spoke very much about the bill last night when he was here.”

“Never mind,” said Jack. “He has the right on his side. I have no pull upon him. Father having left you the whole business, it is now all his; and I’m regularly floored.”

“My poor boy, John! don’t say so,” said Mrs. Salmon; and the tears ran down her cheeks as she looked at her son, and held his hand affectionately between hers.

“It’s a long story, mother,” said he, “and I have no time to tell it. I know I might, after what has happened, as well try to get honey out of a flint-stone as anything like help from Jem. All that’s my own fault. I have played a fool’s game, and must pay for losing. To-morrow is Sunday, and to-morrow I am safe; but after that I must go,--bolt,--and I haven’t a single sovereign in the world. Nor am I likely to get one?”

“Always, always,” said the poor old lady, bursting into a flood of grief, and catching the crest-fallen pretender to her heart, “while I have one to give you.”

“God help us! mother,” said Jack. “Neither you nor I know how long that may be.”

“Where are you going, John, my boy,--my poor boy?--Where are you going?” said Mrs. Salmon.

“Ah!” said Jack, “that, mother, is more than I can tell. Somewhere it must be,--and that immediately.”

“John,” said Mrs. Salmon, wiping away her tears,--“John, hand me that box,--that brown box: just look under the paper there, I think you’ll find my keys. Ah! there,--there they are! Give it me;--thank God for this. Oh! my poor John,” continued she, while searching for the particular key wherewith to open the box; “if you had but have minded what I kept saying, this would not have happened. If you hadn’t persuaded me to change my name, there would have been the business and----”

“----Don’t, mother,” said Jack,--“don’t rake up old grievances. I know it,--I see it now it is too late. I am a fool,--a beast!”

“Bless your heart! my poor boy,” said his mother, “don’t talk so;--we are all of us weak, blind creatures; don’t. Keep up your heart, John; only tell me, my child, that you have done nothing wrong to be obliged to go away?”

“No,” said Jack,--“debt, mother;--that’s all.”

“Thank God for that!” said Mrs. Salmon. “I wish I could say so of my poor Kate. However, we must look to the present. Here, John, are fifteen pounds. Jemes is very careful and doesn’t allow me much for expenses: but this I have saved up to buy myself a few little things I shall want for the winter. I don’t like to be always asking him for money; it puts him out of humour. Here, take them, my Johnny, and I’ll contrive to do without what I want.”

“Mother, mother!” said Jack, “I don’t deserve this. I won’t have it:--no, no. Give me five,--that’s all. Some of the best men amongst us have started with a tenth part as much. I have to begin life again,--you shall keep the rest, mother.”

“If you don’t take it, John,” said his mother, “I’ll send it after you to-morrow.”

“Where?” said Jack. “Where shall I be to-morrow?--where the next day? No, no, you shall hear from me. It is all of no use my keeping you up, to hear my story now. I’ll write to you all about it, and how I have fallen into this scrape. Nay, I would come to you to-morrow, if I thought you would be alone.”

“I’m sure to be alone,” said the old lady; “for Jemes told me, if he did not come home this evening he shouldn’t be back till Monday.”

“Then, mother, expect me here to-morrow,” said Jack. “I’ll settle my plans to-night; and the last hours I spend in London shall be with _you_.”

“Bless you, John! bless you, my poor child!” said his fond parent; and again giving him a cordial embrace, they parted.

And what do this meeting and this parting show? In the days of his assumption she admonished him,--in the time of his pride she rebuked him,--in the career of his folly she laughed at him; but, neglected and despised as she had been by him, when he comes to her in the day of defeat and in the hour of distress, she clasps him to the bosom which first nurtured him; sacrifices her own comforts to his necessities; and, with all her little imperfections on her head, proves herself the sweetest and tenderest of all God’s noble works,--a MOTHER.

Jack was however unable to fulfil his promise of visiting, or even writing to her. He returned late to his lodgings; and in the morning, having told his landlord that he was obliged to give up the rooms, the man saw so great a change in his manner, that he became apprehensive that something was preying upon his mind, which might induce serious consequences; and having received the amount of his bill, and consulted with his wife, with whom Jack considered himself an uncommon favourite, and no mistake, he plainly told him what he thought. Jack, who saw that the very last feather of the peacock had now dropped from the daw’s tail, and that a sincere friend, however humble his station, was what was most essential to him at the moment, admitted the fact of his involvement, and with equal sincerity avowed his inability to discover at the moment any means of extrication.

“Have you a mind,” said the carpenter, “to go to Spain?”

“Spain!” said Jack; “what! to fight?”

“No,” said the carpenter, “not exactly. Do you know what a Commissary is?”

“Can’t say I do,” said Jack.

“Why,” said the carpenter, “he has to get bread and meat, and other things of that sort for the army; I have a cousin going off to-morrow in the steamer, who _is_ one; and my wife and I are going down to Poplar to dine with him. I know they have room for three or four more,--good pay,--not ready money down, to be sure, but in uncommon good bills on an old established firm in Aldgate,--a very smart uniform and a very snug berth. I’m sure I could get you _that_.”

“But,” said Jack, “I don’t know how to get bread and bullocks.”

“Oh,” said the carpenter, “they tell _me_ that the office will be quite a sinecure; I think it’s a fair prospect; we all three can go down in my chay-cart and settle the thing at once, for my cousin Bill is high up in the service.”

Jack paused a little,--the struggle was a severe, but a short one;--at all events, the acceptance of the offer would get him free of expense out of the way of his creditors; and if they would allow him to change his name,--which the carpenter said he knew they would, inasmuch as his cousin Bill Nibbs, had done the same thing,--he would go: and accordingly, the next day, Sunday, the 23rd of August, redoubtable Jack, with the carpenter and the carpenter’s wife, drove in the chay-cart to Poplar, where they met their relation; and, before ten o’clock the next morning Jack was steaming down the river on his way to Falmouth, under the name, style, and title of acting-assistant-deputy-deputy--assistant commissary-general Templegrove, in the service of Her Catholic Majesty.

Nothing has been heard publicly of the acting-assistant-deputy-deputy-assistant-commissary-general since his departure. His mother has received a letter or two from him, the contents of which have not transpired.

Mr. Jemes Salmon early in the month of November, was run away with, by his spirited horse, thrown out of his gig, coming down the hill from Hampstead, where he had been taking a _tête-à-tête_ mutton chop with Miss Roseville, at Jack Straw’s Castle; and falling with his head upon a flint stone, was unfortunately killed upon the spot. His fair companion escaped with only a slight bruise or two, and having been put into an omnibus, arrived in time at the theatre, where she acted with unqualified applause the Widow Cheerly, in which character she introduced her popular ballad,

“I’m a poor country maid that’s for sartain;”

and concluded the evening’s entertainments with “The Actress of all Work.”

The widow Salmon, in consequence of her young husband’s death, is comfortably re-established in her shop, and has written to her son to come and take the command of his own forces in London: so that those who have laughed at his follies and vanities, and who have felt for the misfortunes of his kind-hearted parent, during his feverish and ill-judged career, may yet hope to see him respectably settled in trade, the sterling characteristic of our blessed country, in the pursuit and prosperity of which, every true-born Englishman must glory.

THE END.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
Dorset Street, Fleet Street.

Transcriber’s Notes

1. Kept spelling of author.
2. Page 12: Removed comma (She is a few years older than).
3. Page 13: Moved location of opening quotes (suiting the action to
the word, “and have everything go easy).
4. Pages 3 and 14: Changed ecarté to écarté (better than he played
écarté).
5. Page 113: Added full stop (as well as my own.).
6. Page 145: Replaced : with ; (compliments and congratulations on
the event;).
7. Page 145: Replaced : with ; (moments to perceive that their
affection was reciprocal;).
8. Page 293: Corrected typo (the agreeable et-ceteras).
9. Punctuation has been standardized.