Sir Jasper Carew: His Life and Experience. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      At a large, high desk, at each side of which stood innumerable pigeon-holes, crammed with papers, a very diminutive man was seated writing. His suit of snuff-brown was worn and threadbare, but scrupulously clean, as was also the large cravat of spotless white which enclosed his neck like a pillory. His age might have been about fifty-one or two; some might have guessed him more, for his features were cramped and contracted with wrinkles, which, with the loss of one of his eyes from small-pox, made him appear much older than he was. His father had been one of the first merchants of Dublin, in whose ruin and bankruptcy, it was said, Fagan’s father had a considerable share. The story also ran that Joe Raper – such was his name – had been the accepted suitor of her who subsequently married Fagan. The marriage having been broken off when these disasters became public, young Raper was forced by poverty to relinquish his career as a student of Trinity College, and become a clerk in Fagan’s office and an inmate of his house. In this station he had passed youth and manhood, and was now growing old; his whole ambition in life being to see the daughter of his former sweetheart grow up in beauty and accomplishments, and to speculate with himself on some great destiny in store for her. Polly’s mother had died within two years after her marriage, and to her child had Joe transmitted all the love and affection he had borne to herself. He had taken charge of her education from infancy, and had labored hard himself to acquire such knowledge as might keep him in advance of his gifted pupil. But for this self-imposed task it is more than likely that all his little classic lore had been long forgotten, and that the graceful studies of his earlier days had been obliterated by the wear and tear of a life so little in unison with them. To be her teacher, he had toiled through the long hours of the night, hoarding up his miserable earnings to buy some coveted book of reference, some deeply prized authority in criticism. By dint of downright labor, – for his was not one of those bright intelligences that acquire as if by instinct, – he had mastered several of the modern languages of Europe, and refreshed his knowledge of the ancient ones. With such companionship and such training, Polly Fagan’s youth had been fashioned into that strange compound, where high ambitions and gentle tastes warred with each other, and the imaginative faculties were cultivated amidst views of life alone suggestive of gain and money-getting.

      If Fagan took little interest in the care bestowed by Raper on his daughter’s education, he was far from indifferent to the devotion of his faithful follower; while Joe, on the other hand, well knowing that without him the complicated business of the house could not be carried on for a single day, far from presuming on his indispensable services, only felt the more bound in honor to endure any indignity rather than break with one so dependent on him. It had been a kind of traditionary practice with the Fagans not to keep regular books, but to commit all their transactions to little fragments of paper, which were stuffed, as it seemed, recklessly into some one or other of that vast nest of pigeon-holes, which, like a gigantic honeycomb, formed the background of Joe Raper’s desk, and of which he alone, of men, knew the secret geography. No guide existed to these mysterious receptacles, save when occasionally the name of some suitor of uncommon importance appeared over a compartment; and as an evidence of what a share our family enjoyed in such distinction, I have heard that the word “Carew” figured over as many as five of these little cells.

      Joe turned round hastily on his stool as his chief entered, and saluted him with a respectful bow; and then, as if continuing some unbroken thread’ of discourse, said, “Whyte is protested, – Figgis and Read stopped.”

      “What of Grogan?” said Fagan, harshly.

      “Asks for time. If he sells his stock at present prices, he ‘ll be a heavy loser.”

      “So let him, – say that we’ll proceed.”

      “The writ can’t run there; he lives in Mayo.”

      “We ‘ll try it.”

      “We did so before, and the sub-sheriff was shot.”

      “Attorneys are plenty, – we ‘ll send down another.”

      “Hump!” muttered Joe, as he turned over a folio of papers before him. “Ay, here it is,” said he. “Oliver Moore wishes to go to America, and will give up his lease; he only begs that you will vouchsafe to him some small compensation – ”

      “Compensation! That word is one of yours, Mr. Raper, and I’ve no doubt has a classical origin, – you got it in Homer, perhaps; but, let me tell you, sir, that it is a piece of vulgar cant, and, what is worse, a swindle! Ay, grow pale if you like; but I ‘ll repeat the word, – a swindle! When a man wants to sell a pair of old boots, does he think of charging for all the blacking he has put on them for the three years before? And yet that is precisely what you dignify with the name of compensation. Tell him if he built a house, that he lived in it; if he fenced the land, that the neighbors’ cattle made fewer trespasses; if he drained, the soil was the drier. Your cry of compensation won’t do, Raper. I might as well ask an insurance office to pay me for taking care of my health, and give me a bonus whenever I took castor oil!”

      “The cases are not alike, sir. If his improvements be of a permanent character – ”

      “Is this an office, Mister Raper, or is it a debating society?” broke in Fagan. “My answer to Moore is, pay, and go – to the devil, if he likes.”

      “Sir Harry Wheeler,” continued Joe, “writes from Cheltenham that he thinks there must be a mistake about the bill for three hundred and forty odd, – that it was included In the bond he gave in September last.”

      “File a bill, send for Crowther, and let him proceed against him.”

      “But I think he ‘s right, sir; the memorandum is somewhere here. I put it amongst the W’s; for we have no box for Sir Harry.”

      “It’s a nice way to keep accounts, Mister Raper; I must say it’s very creditable to you,” said Fagan, who, when any inaccuracy occurred, always reproached Joe with the system that he rigidly compelled him to follow. “Perhaps it’s classical, however; maybe it’s the way the ancients did it! But I ‘ll tell you what, sir, you ‘d cut an ugly figure before the courts if you came to be examined; your Latin and Greek wouldn’t screen you there.”

      “Here it is, – here’s the note,” said Joe, who had all the while been prosecuting his search. “It’s in your own hand, and mentions that this sum forms a portion of the debt now satisfied by his bond.”

      “Cancel the bill, and tell him so. What’s that letter yonder?”

      “It is marked ‘strictly private and confidential,’ sir; but comes from Walter Carew, Esq.”

      “Then why not give it to me at once? Why keep pottering about every trifle of no moment, sir?” said Fagan, as he broke the seal, and drew near to the window to read. It was very brief, and ran thus: —

      Dear Fagan, – Shylock could n’t hold a candle to you; such an infernal mess of interest, compound interest, costs, and commission as you have sent me I never beheld! However, for the present I must endure all your exactions, even to the tune of fifty per cent. Let me have cash for the enclosed three bills, for one thousand each, drawn at the old dates, and, of course, to be ‘done’ at the old discount.

      I have just taken a wife, and am in want of ready money to buy some of the customary tomfooleries of the occasion.

      Regards to Polly and her fat terrier.

      Yours, in haste,

      Walter Carew.

      “Read that,” said Fagan, handing the letter to his clerk, while the veins in his forehead swelled out with passion, and his utterance grew hoarse СКАЧАТЬ