Chapter VI

_Dulce est desipere in loco_—a Latin tag that assures us we may on occasions pleasantly unbend. Edward Beaumont, as we have seen, was dreaming love’s young dream, than which we are all convinced there is nothing sweeter in this brief life of ours, and seeing visions of a glorious future rounded by the woolsack, and I know not what other suggestions of a lively imagination. Sam Storth, the partner whom he was fool enough to at the same time trust implicitly and regard with a sort of good-humoured contempt, was essaying the gentle art, _desipere in loco_, after a fashion of his own, in a word, combining business with pleasure. The Long Vacation, beloved of lawyers of ample means, bemoaned by those members of the junior bar to whom briefs—briefs lightly “marked” at that—are as angels’ visits, few and far between, was now dragging its weary course—and Mr. Storth had time enough and to spare on his hands. He would have liked to don that much-prized shooting-jacket and those knickerbockers that so fittingly displayed a calf whose proportions Sam surveyed with a proper pride, and to which he rightly conceived the costume of the courts failed to do adequate justice. But here was he doomed to the treadmill, whilst his partner dangled at the petticoats of an Archdeacon’s daughter, and had the confounded impudence to stretch his legs under an earl’s mahogany.

“There’s Beaumont,” the irate junior partner thus unburthened himself, “doing the la-di-da in baronial halls, whilst I’m expected to moil and toil trying to find work for a set of idle clerks in the deadest season of the legal year. How Beaumont, with the principles he professes can cheek to make himself so very much at home, as I’m sure from his letters he has done, in _gremio ecclesiae_, in the very bosom of the Church, or, what is more scandalous still, of the Church’s daughter, passes my comprehension. But I suppose Beaumont’s not such a fool as a fellow’d take him to be by his talk. These Radicals are all alike. They rail against aristocrats, but give me a Radical for kow-towing to a duke; they gibe at the Church as by law established, but trust ’em to be uncommon deferential to a bishop; they declaim against pensions and annuities, but wouldn’t they just like a soft job themselves. Oh, no, I don’t think. There’s Beaumont, whose grandfather, I verily believe, used to wear clogs and a blue smock, and take his twopenny-ha’penny pieces to market on a donkey’s back, quaffing the vintages of Burgundy in the baronial halls aforesaid, whilst I, forsooth, whose father was a——”

“Was a what?” queried the fair damsel to whom Master Sam had opened the floodgates of his eloquence.

“Well, he wasn’t a damned poverty-knocker anyway,” said Charles hurriedly; “whilst I, as I was saying, must content myself with a tankard of bitter in a——”

“In a what, sir?” asked the lady, tartly.

“In a place that I much refer to baronial halls,” quoth Sam gallantly.

The place so honoured was the snug of the Royal Albert in Huddersfield, and the lady to whom Mr. Storth was confiding his grievances was Miss Amelia Wrigley, the very comely daughter of the landlord of that old-established hostelry, a lady not only well-dowered by Nature with a good figure, a pleasing face, and a sprightly wit, but reputed to be likely in the years to come to be well-dowered by the worthy but gouty sire, whose ales and liquors Mr. Storth so vastly appreciated.

Now, Miss Amelia Wrigley was not only of a good figure, a pleasing face, and a sprightly wit, and with those promising prospects that are a mighty agreeable adjunct to personal charms; she was also fully aware of her own value. She knew to the decimal of an inch how far it was prudent to permit the thirsty youths who frequented the Royal Albert Hotel to go in their amorous advances. Of course, she must not be too frigid, and there were occasions when it was politic to be diplomatically hard of hearing. The ingenious Hebe who ministers to the pleasures of manufacturers, flushed by the frequent “friendly glasses” inseparable from the conduct of business on market-day, must affect not to hear many an innuendo that crapulous youth seems to think he may safely utter in the presence of a barmaid, though he would soundly trounce the fellow who should utter the like in the hearing of his sister in the domestic drawing-room. Poor Hebe’s face may glow with outraged modesty, her eyes may flash her indignation and resentment, but business requires that she should smile and smirk and say smooth things. Miss Amelia Wrigley was declared by many a young buck of Huddersfield to be “too stand-offish” for his taste, which required that a girl should be able “to give a joke and take a joke, don’t you know”; though the kind of joke required by this predilection to be given and taken was not defined with that precision beloved of the mathematician. But it may be put down to Mr. Sam Storth’s credit that this stand-offishness of the fair Amelia was very far from diminishing that lady’s attractiveness in his eyes.

“I like a larky girl as well as any man,” he confided to his partner, “and when I’m in for fun I don’t want to have to do with a condemned iceberg; but fun’s one thing and matrimony’s another and don’t you forget it. And when I place a lady at the head of my mahogany, I don’t want to think that every doddering idiot in Huddersfield that can sport a flash ring and chain has blown a cloud of cigarette smoke in her face and drawled out ‘Another special, Millie, my angel, and a smile with it.’ You don’t ‘Millie’ Amelia Wrigley, I can tell you.”

From which profound observation it may be inferred that in the conversation of which we have heard but a part, and of which, by your leave, good reader, we will take the liberty to hear more, Mr. Sam Storth could not boast of that self-assurance and complacency that usually marked his intercourse with the ladies he honoured with his acquaintance. In some mysterious way the talk had drifted, as talk between a young man and maid will drift, to the perilous subject of liking, of love, of the choice of a lover and so forth.

“I used to think I wasn’t a marrying man, Miss Amelia—I may call you that mayn’t I?—Miss Wrigley’s so formal, so cold, between friends, don’t you think?—not a marrying man by a long chalk. Seen so much billing and cooing in my time, and then a chain that can’t very well be broken with a cat at one end of it and a dog at the other. I always draw the line at that particular service in the Prayer Book that so appropriately begins with “dearly beloved” and ends with “amazement! But”—with a sigh that was intended to be sentimental, and a glance that was unmistakeably amorous—“but a man never knows his fate. How true it is that man proposes but God disposes.”

“Then man shouldn’t propose,” suggested the lady.

“Oh, do be serious, Miss Amelia, or may say I Amelia?”

“Certainly you may not say Amelia, Storth, at least not to me. Why should you?”

“Because, because oh! hang it Amelia, I mean Miss Amelia, you make it confounded difficult for a fellow. Jove! Isn’t it hot?”—and Mr. Storth mopped his troubled and moist brow with a vast bandana. “I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll have another pint of bitter, with a top on.”

Miss Wrigley rose, and, moving with stately ease to the pumps, drew a large tankard of the foaming beverage.

“I never knew such a man as you for beer, Mr. Storth.”

“Safer than whisky, my dear. I mean Miss Amelia; but I was saying——”

“Yes; you were saying.”

“Well, lately, ever since I came to know you in fact, I’ve been thinking of settling down. I’m not a sentimental young fool, as you know. This isn’t calf love, in fact, I never had any such tommyrot to bother me as calf-love. It’s the genuine article, warranted 18 carat and entered A1 at Lloyd’s. I’ve met my fate at last. A lady, young, and yet not too young; I do hate your simpering schoolgirl-misses, just out of short frocks, and long what-do-you-call-’ems, with the crochet frills on; tall, a good figure, handsome, of good intelligence and education and manners—by Jove, the manners of a duchess.”

“Oh! so you’ve met such a lady at last, have you, Mr. Storth, and deigned to approve of her figure, face, mind, and manners, and all.”

“Why, you know I have, Amelia. Ain’t I telling you so?”

“Meaning me, I suppose?” queried the lady, with much composure.

“Why, of course I mean you. You don’t think I’m such a confounded ass as to sit here half the afternoon talking about another girl. I may be ten or twenty different kinds of fool, but I’m not such a fool as all that comes to. Of course I mean you.”

“I’m sure I’m vastly obliged to you,” commented the lady. “You’ve assured me, somewhat obliquely, to be sure, that I’ve a fine figure, a passable face, an intelligent mind, and the manners of a duchess, I think you were so flattering as to observe; and you’ve also assured me, also somewhat obliquely, but ’twill pass, that I’m your fate. You’ve said nothing, by the way, about my heart, Mr. Storth, nor, now I come to think of it, unless very, very obliquely, about your own.”

“Oh! that’s of course,” declared Sam, with considerable vigour.

“Exactly, that’s, as you say, of course. So I’ve a good figure, a fair face, an intelligent mind, the manners of a duchess. I never met a duchess, but I presume the comparison is meant as complimentary; all these, and, to boot, a heart that’s, as you say, of course. Now, pray, Mr. Storth, what do you offer in exchange for all this?”

“What do I offer? I? Why, surely you can’t misunderstand me, you cannot fail to know that all this time I’ve been offering MYSELF!”

“I see ‘myself,’ in large capitals, I suppose.” Sam Storth looked, as he doubtless felt, somewhat nonplussed by this reception of what he assured himself was an uncommonly handsome offer.

“Yourself!” continued the object of his well-regulated affections; “h’m, yourself. That’s so comprehensive as to be a trifling vague. You were good enough to enter into detailed particulars, quite a bill of quantities, or particular invoice of what should be included in the self, the other self besides yourself, on which you would deign to lavish the treasures of your heart. Cannot you be a little more precise as to what is included in YOURSELF? What’s to be the _quid pro quo_ for my good figure, my fair face, my excellent understanding and my manners of a duchess? Is it to be _par example your_ good figure?”

Now, it has been said that Mr. Storth, however excellent a lawyer, was no Adonis.

He winced and sate silent.

“_Your_ fair face?”

Again Mr. Storth winced and found no words.

“_Your_ excellent understanding? _Your_ manners? I suppose they should be ducal to match mine?”

“Oh, hang it all, Miss Wrigley! I think you’re piling it on a bit too thick. I don’t set up for a beauty, though I’ve had my successes,” Sam added, in parenthesis.

“So I understand. In the _coulisses_ of the music-hall.”

“And I don’t set up for a saint. But that’s all over now. But you’ve beauty and goodness enough for the pair of us, and if I’m neither an Adonis nor a saint I’m not generally looked upon as a fool. I’m a gentleman by profession, I’ve a good business, and I’m making enough to keep a wife, and if that isn’t good enough, why, I can’t help it, and there’s an end on’t.”

“Ah! now you’re talking sense. You’re making, you say, a good income. But as what? As the junior partner of Mr. Edward Beaumont; the man who does the leavings of his work, takes the cases he doesn’t think important enough to attend to himself, and does the drudgery he thinks beneath his high and mightiness.”

“Oh, damn Edward Beaumont!” broke in Storth, hotly.

“With all the pleasure in life,” pursued the lady serenely, “though perhaps it isn’t quite in harmony with ducal manners to say so in the presence of a lady. But that’s the position you offer me—the wife of a junior partner, whose senior is, I understand, the guest of an Archdeacon, and is, you imagine, basking in the smiles of the Archdeacon’s daughter. I suppose I should be expected to take up the _role_ of a junior partner’s wife, to receive an occasional invitation to dinner when no one else in particular was invited, to be on visiting terms with the managing clerk and his lady, and to be humbly thankful when my partner’s wife acknowledged me in New Street. No thank you, Mr. Storth, it isn’t good enough.”

“Is that your final word?” asked Storth, savagely.

“No, it isn’t, and you needn’t glare at me like that. I’m not in the witness box, and, if I were, I shouldn’t be afraid of _you_. It isn’t my final word. If you want me you must win me.”

“How?” interjected Sam, eagerly.

“Only show me how.”

“Cease to be a junior partner, and if, in doing so, you humble your Mr. Edward Beaumont to the dust, I shall be none the less pleased on that account. Make a position that is your own. I know you’ve brains. Perhaps not of the highest order, but still good enough for the work you have to do. Use them to lift you up from the shadow by which you are now obscured, the shadow of another man’s personality. And then come to me. And, meanwhile, don’t forget what I said about your precious Mr. Edward Beaumont.”

“Then it’s a promise, Amelia?” asked Storth eagerly, his face lit up with the joy of triumph.”

“It’s what I think you lawyers would call a conditional promise. You keep your part of the bargain, Sam, and I’ll keep mine. There, that’ll do. I’m not fond of those demonstrations, and I don’t like the smell of beer. You’ll have to take to claret—some day.”

“And that day isn’t far off, you bet, Amelia. I’m not too fond of Mr. Edward Beaumont, as you call him, myself; and I’ll be no more sorry than yourself to see my lord taught a lesson he badly needs. Well what is it, Ainley?”—this to one of the clerks of his firm who was heard inquiring if Mr. Storth was about.

“Mr. Schofield would like to see you, sir.”

“Pat as the heft to the blade,” exclaimed Storth. “I’ll tell you some day what I mean,” he added, as he hastily drained his pewter, wiped his lips and nodded his adieus to Miss Wrigley.

Mr. William Schofield, the client whom Mr. Storth found nervously awaiting him, was a man of some sixty years of age, of middle stature, with hard, one might say, harsh features, his face clean shaven save for a ragged, grizzled fringe of hair that ran down the sides of the cheeks and under the chin, leaving unadorned the close lips, and exposed the few yellow front teeth advancing years had left; eyes bright, keen and greedy. Mr. Schofield had been, as he would have told you with pride, a hard worker all his life. He had known the hardships in his youth of the unreformed, uncoerced Factory System. As a boy, not yet in his teens, he had been a “billy piecener,” walking miles to the mill in all sorts of weather, in winter time long before sunrise, he had worked his fourteen and fifteen hours a day for a beggarly wage of a few shillings weekly, subsisting for the most part on water porridge, which he often had to eat cold. What education he had he had picked up in the Sunday School attached to the Golcar Baptist Chapel. There he had learned to read, to write, and to “sum,” so that by the aid of a ready-reckoner he could make out an invoice.

Despite, or perhaps because of, his early disadvantages he had prospered. He had by the time he was forty years old become a small lindsey manufacturer. He worked hard six days a week, and he could scarce be said to rest on the seventh, for he was a deacon of the chapel in whose Sunday school he had learned the rudiments. He had worked hard and he had lived hard, denying himself almost necessary food and fuel and clothing, “clamming,” so it was said by the envious, himself and his wife, that he might put more and more of his earnings into his business. He had no pleasures, unless the hearing of the non-elect vigorously damned every Sunday by a Predestinarian preacher be a pleasure, and excepting always that: great and all-sufficing joy of adding shilling by shilling to his store. He had no children, and when he reflected that unless he left his money to the chapel it should in the natural course go to a spendthrift nephew he often consoled himself by the thought that the nephew could not have more pleasure in dissipating his patrimony than the uncle had in hoarding it. He cared neither for literature nor arts. He never read anything but the Bible, the Baptist Magazine, and the Leeds Mercury. He called himself a Liberal, but his Liberalism was not based so much on a desire for the betterment of the condition of the many as upon resentment of the privileges of the few. And Edward Beaumont was his solicitor, as Edward Beaumont’s father before him had been.

“Howd’ye do, Mr. Schofield? Fine day, isn’t it? Glad to see you looking so fit, ’pon my word you look younger every time you give us a call.” It was one of Mr. Sam Storth’s most cherished maxims that politeness—to the people to whom it is worth while to be polite—costs nothing.

“Well, I’m nobbut so-so, Mr. Storth, nobbut so-so, a plaguy lot o’ rheumatiz these days, but aw reckon aw mun expect to feel th’ years creepin ower me, tho aw’m nobbut a lad yet in a manner o’ speakin’, that is, wheer some come; but it wer’ Mr. Beaumont aw wer’ wantin’ to see. Aw reckon yo’n know nowt abaat that bit o’ brass o’ mine, if yo can call a matter o’ three thousand paand a bit o’ brass at Edward’s father ligged aat at interest for me. I’d better wait and see hissen.”

“But Mr. Beaumont’s away, down in Lincolnshire, and I can’t quite say when he’ll be back. Perhaps you can tell me what it is you want to know and I may be able to give you the information you require. Let me see, you’re the mortgagee of Midgley’s mill, aren’t you?”

“Aye, that’s me. Yo’ see, it’s abaat ten yer sin’ aw, put th’ brass aat. It were i’ Edward’s father’s time an’ he made th’ writins for me. It wer’ a seet o’ eggs to put i’ one basket—three thaasand paand, awmost th’ savin’s o’ my lifetime—but Midgley were doin’ well then an’ th’ rate o’ interest, five per cent., were temptin’. But aw’d never ony bother abaat th’ interest till just abaat th’ time th’ owd man, tho’ he woren’t so owd to be sure, Edward’s father aw mean, took an’, died, and Edward stepped into his shoin. That were afore yo’ came to th’ office, so happen yo’ won’t know th’ ins an’ th’ outs on it. Then owd Midgley went dahn th’ slot, banked tha’ knows. Awst nivver forget that market-day, when th’ news came to th’ market. Aw’ were eitin’ a fourpenny plate o’ meat pie at Morton’s, when somebody axed me if aw’d heerd owd Tommy Midgley had done a bank. It welly choked me, an’ aw’d to struggle hard to finish th’ pie, but aw couldn’t fashion to put it i’ mi pocket-hanker. Aw come up straight to see Mr. Edward, an’ he made nowt but fun o’ me. He axed me if aw’d forgotten th’ mortgage. As aw’m a miserable sinner it had clean slipped my mind. He tried to sell th’ mill under th’ mortgage, but th’ highest bid wouldn’t have paid me off. Trade were very bad just then, an’ folk failin’ reet an’ left. Midgley’s mill were just a white elephant. But Mr. Edward came out like a gentleman an’ he said as how his father had advised th’ loan he’d take th’ responsibility on his showders till things mended. An’ aw’ve had my cheque reg’lar ivery half-year ever sin for th’ interest less th’ income-tax.”

“Ah! I see,” said Storth; “this is all new to me. You see this was, as you say, before I came into the office, and it appears to have been a private arrangement between you and Mr. Beaumont. A merely verbal arrangement, I understand. You’ve only Mr. Beaumont’s word.”

“That’s all. It’s good enough, isn’t it?”

“Oh, quite so. But we’re all mortal, you know, and I like black and white myself in business. Who’s running the mill now?”

“Aw couldn’t reetly say for sure. But aw yer it’s let off, or part on it is, shoose ha’, i’ room an’ power. Aw nivver bothered my yed abaat it, as long as th’ interest cam’ to hand. But it’s a week o’er due, an’ aw’ve been expectin’ it by ivery post, so aw thowt aw’d better call in an’ see abaat it. Yo’ won’t charge me owt for that, will yo’?” he asked, as a sudden fear seized him.

“No, no, by no means—mortgagor’s costs. Make your mind easy. I’ve no doubt it will be all right when Mr. Beaumont returns. Still...,” and Mr. Storth fingered the seal on his watch-chain, and puckered his brow and pursed his lips and slowly shook his head.

“Still, what?” asked Mr. Schofield, sharply. “There’s nowt wrong, is there?”

“Wrong? No, no, of course not, at least…. well, well. No writing, you say, only Mr. Beaumont’s word; and, of course, Mr. Beaumont’s the soul of honour. You know what the poet says: “So are we all, all honourable men.” Still, three thousand pounds is a tidy bit.”

“Yo’d ’ave thowt so if yo’d had to addle it an’ nip an’ scrat for it same as I had.”

“A very tidy bit. You have the deeds, of course?”

“They’re at the bank.”

“You’ve overdrawn on them, I suppose.”

“Then you suppose wrang, young man, aw dunnot lend money at five per cent. to borrow brass fra’ the bank at six. That’s noan th’ way we mak’ money i’ Golcar. Th’ writin’s are nobbut theer for safety. Aw can fot ’em aat ony day aw like. What are yo’ axin’ for, if aw may mak’ so bowd?”

“I’m not only asking, Mr. Schofield, I’m thinking. You read the local papers, of course?”

“Aw see th’ Weekly Examiner ivery week. Me an’ a neighbour join at it. What for?”

“Well, of course, you’ve read any time this last few weeks that there’s great unrest in the industrial world. There was the strike at Martin’s, of Lindley, not so long ago; there’s just been trouble at Taylor and Littlewood’s, at Newsome, and I know for a fact that the textile workers have formed a very strong and formidable union that embraces not only Huddersfield, but the valleys of the Colne and the Holme. In fact, Mr. Beaumont was fool enough to draw up the rules of the union and make no charge.”

“That’s more nor he’d do for me, aw rekon. What sud he do that for?”

“Oh, you know, he’s all for the rights of labour.”

“Rights o’ fiddlesticks. What’s a man want more nor plenty o’ wark an’ overtime? But what’s all this to do wi’ my brass?”

“Not much, perhaps. Only, you see, I don’t think, from what I saw of that exceedingly amiable gentleman, Albert Clough, the weavers’ secretary, when he came to consult Beaumont about the draft of the new rules—a cut-throat lace, if I ever saw one—that this new union’s going to be idle very long.”

“Well, what’s that to me?”

“Nothing—perhaps; perhaps a great deal; perhaps a matter of that tidy little bit of a three thousand pounds of yours.”

Mr. Schofield’s face sicklied over with the pale cast of a mortal fear. His hands became cold and clammy, his heart sank within him.

“Good God! how can that be? Isn’t there th’ writin’s?”

“Oh, don’t alarm yourself unnecessarily, Mr. Schofield. It may be all right. The late Mr. Beaumont was a very cautious man, I’ve always understood. Still, as you say, there wasn’t a very spirited bidding when the mill was put up before, and if there should be a general strike, or what comes to much the same thing in the long run, a general lockout, mill property will be a drug on the market.”

“Still, aw’ve Mr. Beaumont’s word.”

Mr. Storth shrugged his shoulders.

“Exactly. Well, Mr. Beaumont’s away. Lord only knows when he’ll be back. It’s the Long Vacation, you know. Meanwhile, tho’ it’s very irregular, I’ll let you have my own cheque, on my private account, for the interest. Doubtless Beaumont will see me all right. All the same, I’m glad my little bit isn’t out on mill property and I’ll take precious good care it never is. Of course, it was all right to have your money out in a good round sum when you were up to your eyes in business, and hadn’t time to look after things. But if I were a man of your years, with a fair amount of leisure and settled in my native village, do you know the kind of investment I should fancy?”

“Let’s be knowing, sir, if yo’ don’t mind.”

“I’d lend a hundred here and a hundred there on good cottage property—property that I could walk past every day of my life. I should have the satisfaction of knowing I’d helped some hard-working man to become the owner of his own dwelling.”

“Wi’ me on th’ top of it.”

“Exactly, with you on the top of it, as a sort of ballast; and if you like to devote your retired leisure to serving your native village on the Local Board, or on the Board of Guardians, why you could serve your own interests at the same time by keeping the rates down . . . .”

“Them poor rates is a scandal,” interposed Mr. Schofield with conviction.

“Keeping the rates down and consequently the value of property up; and with three thousand pounds out in small sums take it you’ve thirty voters at least you can rely on any time you like to put up for office.”

“Aw winnot say but aw had thowt o’ th’ Local Board, an’ happen’ th’ Guardians. But nob’dy’s axed me to stand.”

Mr. Storth smiled indulgently.

“Oh, that’s easily managed when the time comes. Let me see, what’s the formula? ‘Yielding to the urgent solicitations of a large and influential body of my fellow townsmen I have consented to allow myself to be nominated as a candidate for your suffrages at the forthcoming election. If elected, etc.’ But we’re jumping a little before we get to the stile, eh? You haven’t got these thirty nice snug mortgages yet, have you?”

“No; but aw sooin can have. Just yo’ call in that brass i’ double quick time.”

“No need to be precipitate. I’ll speak to Mr. Beaumont about it when he returns. All the same, there’s no need to let the grass grow under your feet. If you’ll make yourself comfortable with a newspaper in the waiting-room for half-an-hour, I’ll draw up the formal notice of withdrawal of the money—we shall have sufficient particulars in the Deed Book, I’ve no doubt, and you can sign it, leaving the date open; and if Mr. Beaumont concurs in my view, the notice can go without troubling you again.”

But a few days after the consultation, at which we have been privileged to assist, Edward Beaumont returned to Yorkshire and the duties there awaiting him.

“Morning, Sam,” he exclaimed, as he grasped his partner’s chubby hand. “I’m a bit overdue, I fear. The fact is, I didn’t come straight on from Lincolnshire. I had to take a run up to town.”

“Did you go to see Russell about those Iron Works, those blasted Blasting Works, as I’ve been tempted to call them. It’ll end in Chancery, I suppose.”

“Not if I can help it; and I didn’t go to town to see Russell.” Now, Mr. Russell, of Bedford Row, was the London agent of the firm of Beaumont, Son, and Storth. “You’ll never guess whom I went to see, and why. The fact is, I put in a good bit of time at the Reform Club.”

“Well, I don’t doubt they do you very well at the Reform Club. Never been beyond its august portals myself, but on general principles I should argue a _cordon bleu_ for a _chef_ and a cellar second only to an Emperor’s. Your true reformer who recommends vegetarianism and total abstinence, high thinking and low feeding to the general, takes uncommon good care to have the best of everything for himself.”

“Well, I only sampled a cigar and a whiskey and soda. Leatham took me to interview the Junior Whip.”

Now Mr. Leatham was the Liberal member for Huddersfield.

“And what the deuce did you want with the Liberal Whip, if I may make so free?”

“Why, what the deuce, to borrow your phrase, do people want with Liberal Whips?”

“Can’t say. No use for ’em myself, and I should have thought you hadn’t. But I can make a shrewd guess what the Junior Liberal Whip wanted with Mr. Edward Beaumont, and that’s a subscription to the party fund. Well, go ahead with your tale.”

“Well, it seems I was just the sort of man the party’s looking for. There’s to be a vacancy soon in one of the West Staffordshire Divisions—Staveley Hill’s the sitting member, a blue of the blues, you know—and the party our party, want a man well up on the Land Question to fight the seat. Now, I do rather fancy myself on the Land Question.”

“I don’t think you know a turnip from a mangel wurzel, if that’s what you call being well up on the Land Question.”

“Don’t be a fool, Sam. You know that’s nothing to do with the question. And the long and short of it is I’ve promised to step into the breach, and uncommon glad of the chance, too. Why, man, it’s an honour to be permitted to carry the banner of Land Reform right up to the entrenchments of feudalism.”

“Oh, you can keep that sort of talk for the free and independent. Have you counted the cost? There hasn’t been a Liberal member for a county constituency in the whole length and breadth of Staffordshire since the days of Simon de Montfort, I imagine. The Southern Division’s an awfully scattered one and almost purely agricultural.”

“There’s the mining district right in the heart of it,” broke in Beaumont.

“True; and the miners haven’t a vote. They’ll crowd round your meetings, and carry you shoulder high, shout themselves harse, and wring the hands off you in their grimy fists, and sing ‘See the conquering hero comes’ till you feel you can’t fail to head the poll. And when the polling day comes, where are they? No more use than a row of skittles. And while they’re roaring, your quiet comfortable farmer draws up in his gig from his quiet comfortable farm, has a quiet and comfortable glass at his favourite hostelry, and then quietly and comfortably pills you in the polling-booth. Do you think the farmer is such an insensate ass as to fall out with the vicar and the squire and his relations, just to oblige Mr. Edward Beaumont, charm he never so wisely?”

“Well, commend me to you for a Job’s comforter, Sam. It will be a hard fight, I know, but, as the Whip put it, it will give me a chance to show the stuff I’m made of, to win my spurs; and what can a man want more? Anyway, I’ve passed my word, and I’m off to Wolverhampton in next to no time to meet the election agent and arrange for a series of meetings all over the Division. And I want you to cut off for your holidays and come back as fit as a fiddle, for I expect during the next few months you’ll have to do more than your share of the office work.”

“Well, ‘who will to Cupar, maun to Cupar.’ Whom God wants to ruin, He first turns mad; and if ever a man was qualifying for a lunatic asylum, that man’s yourself, Beaumont. Don’t say I haven’t warned you. You’ll think of what I say someday or my name’s not Sam Storth. You’ll spend a lot of money.”…

“I don’t care if it costs every penny I have in the world.”

“You needn’t care. It _will_ cost every penny you have in the world, and more to boot, unless you’ve stumbled across a gold mine in the fens.”

“Better than a gold mine, my boy. The grandest, divinest creature——”

“Exactly. I guessed there was a woman at the bottom of it. But for electioneering purposes give me the gold mine. Well, just run through these papers with me and then I’m off. My name’s Walker, and my address the Highlands for the next six weeks.”

At the door Storth turned, as if on an afterthought.

“Oh, by-the-bye, Beaumont, I had a man here the other day, a William Schofield, of Golcar. He’d got some maggot in his head about a mortgage, and was in mortal terror about some overdue interest. He told me the amount and I gave him my cheque for it. I suppose it was all right?”

“Quite right. If you’ll wait a moment I’ll write you a cheque for the money. It’s a private account, you know. I’d forgotten the interest was due. How quickly half-years slip away when you’ve money to pay at the end of them. I think I’ve had more bother about that loan of Schofield’s than all the rest of the business put together.”

“Ah! I didn’t quite get the hang of the matter from the old gentleman. But I sized him up to be just the sort to talk enough about his interest, if he didn’t get it, to shake the credit of the Bank of England, so I just, as I say, calmed him down with a piece of stamped paper with my name in the corner.”

“Well, I’d better tell you all about it. It seems he lent three thousand pounds to Midgley, of Almondbury, on the security of Plover Mill, and some adjacent cottages, in the mill-yard, I expect. That was in my father’s time; and the strange thing about it is I’ve never been able to find any valuer’s certificate as to the value of the property at the time of the loan, though from what I know of my father’s way of doing business I’m as certain there was one as I am that the sun’s in the heavens. To make matters worse, soon after my father’s death, poor old Midgley went smash and the mill has never been wholly occupied since, and the rents from the cottages hardly pay a clerk’s wages for collecting. However, I told Schofield I’d pay the interest myself, and so I must, I fear, for the sake of the dear old dad’s memory. It’s a bit of a pull though.”

“But what about the principal? Three thousand pounds isn’t exactly a flea-bite, and it would about kill Schofield to lose it.”

“I suppose I’ll have to take it on my own shoulders. I’ve always put off taking over the property, subject to the mortgage, though Midgley’s trustee is willing enough to transfer the equity to me. I hoped to get a good tenant, but things seem to go from bad to worse out Almondbury way. Still, the thing’s got to be done. They can’t go on in this slip-shod way. Just attend to the matter, Sam, when you come back. Put it on a business footing. I’ll take over the whole thing, lock, stock, and barrel, with Schofield’s mortgage on the top of it.”

“All right; I’ll see to it between now and next interest-day No hurry. I think you’re rather a fool though.”

“Well, you see, it wasn’t your father, Sam. If only that confounded valuer’s certificate would turn up; but that’s past praying for, I fear, and I don’t know who the valuer was and, what’s more, when I tried to find out, some time ago, by inquiring among the auctioneers and estate agents, nary a one of them had any recollection of making a valuation.”

“All right, Beaumont, I’ll put things to ship-shape. Well, I shan’t see you again before I start, so ta-ta. Hope biz. will brighten up before I come back. It’s been as dull as ditch-water this month back.”

Mr. Storth returned to his own room and began to set to rights, as he styled it, the heterogeneous mass of papers that accumulate about a busy lawyer’s desk and pigeon-holes and drawers. He was routing out the contents of a deep recess, lettered XYZ, a receptacle apparently for odds and ends of documents that could find no other home, reading the endorsements, tearing up some, transferring others to their appropriate resting-place, when he chanced upon a document bearing no endorsement—an omission not a little irritating to the methodic mind.

“If I knew the clerk who’s responsible for this I’d give him a piece of my mind,” muttered Mr. Storth, vindictively, as he opened the folded paper and set about ascertaining its nature, with a view to duly marking its date and character upon its back. He read a few lines and then whistled softly.

“Well, I’m jiggered! The missing certificate! ‘Can recommend an advance of £3,000 (three thousand) to £3,500 (three thousand five hundred pounds).’ Now, what shall I do with this precious bit of paper? What a load the finding of this will take off Beaumont’s mind! I’ve a good mind to pop it in the fire. I know a young lady who would say that’s what I ought to do. Shall I? No; hanged if I play it as low as that, not even to pleasure Miss Amelia Wrigley.”

Mr. Storth was so absorbed in his own reflections that he did not hear a gentle tap at his room door, did not hear the door open, did not hear the deprecating cough by which the clerk who entered sought to attract his attention, and only when the clerk stood by his side, and had cast a quick glance at the document that engrossed his thoughts did he turn swiftly round in his chair.

“That you, Barnes. What the deuce do you mean stealing into my room like a confounded ghost? What do you want any way?” And Mr. Storth huddled up the papers he had taken from the pigeon-hole XYZ, the long lost, anxiously-searched certificate among them and thrust them into that receptacle.

And though, later, Mr. Storth searched high and low for the document, he found it not. It had again vanished.

And so had Mr. Barnes.