Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 2

"I perfectly understand you, sir—and am penetrated by a sense of gratitude! I listen to you with inexpressible anxiety," said Mr. Aubrey.

"Had I been consulted," continued Mr. Gammon, "we should have proposed to you, with reference to our bill, (which I frankly acknowledge contains a much more liberal entry than would probably be allowed on taxation, but with equal truth I declare that it is none of my doing,")—Gammon knew the credit for candor which this acknowledgment of a fact, of which Messrs. Runnington would quickly apprise Mr. Aubrey after examining the bill, was likely to obtain for him with Mr. Aubrey—"I say, I should have proposed to you, in the first instance, the payment of our bill by easy instalments, during the next three or four years, provided you could have obtained partial security. But I am only one of three, and I know the determination of Mr. Quirk and Mr. Snap, not to listen to any proposal with reference to the mesne profits which is not based upon—in short, they say, the bill must be paid at once without being looked into—I mean," he added quickly, "without its being subjected to the harassing and protracted scrutiny which a distrustful, an ungrateful client, or unreasonable opponent, has it too frequently in his power to inflict. Oh, let me disguise nothing from you, my dear sir, in a conversation of this kind between two gentlemen!" continued Gammon, with an admirable air of frankness, for he perceived that Mr. Aubrey looked slightly staggered. "I am ashamed to acknowledge that our bill does contain exorbitant entries—entries which have led to very frequent and fierce disputes between me and my partners. But what is to be done? Mr. Quirk is—to be completely candid with you—the moneyed man of the firm; and if you were but to glance at the articles of our partnership"—Gammon shrugged his shoulders and sighed—"you would see the tyrannical extent of power over us which he has thereby secured! You observe how candid I am—perhaps foolishly so."

["I've not quite mastered him—I can tell it by his eye"—thought Gammon—"is this a game of chess between us? I wonder whether, after all, Messrs. Runnington are aware of his being here—knowing and trusting to his ability—and have put him thoroughly on his guard? He is checking strong feelings incessantly, and evidently weighing every word I utter. Misery has sharpened faculties naturally acute."]

"Pray do not say so, Mr. Gammon, I fully appreciate your motives. I am devoured with anxiety for an intimation of the nature of the terms which you were about, so kindly, to specify."

"Specify, Mr. Aubrey, is perhaps rather too strong a term—but to proceed. Supposing the preliminary matter which I have alluded to satisfactorily arranged, I am disposed to say, that if you could find security for the payment of the sum of ten thousand pounds within a year, or a year and a half"—[Mr. Aubrey's teeth almost chattered at the mention of it]—"I—I—that is, my impression is—but—I repeat—it is only mine"—added Gammon, earnestly—"that the rest should be left to your own honor, giving at the same time a personal undertaking to pay at a future—a very distant day—in the manner most convenient to yourself—the sum of ten thousand pounds more—making in all only one-third of the sum due from you; and receiving an absolute release from Mr. Titmouse in respect of the remaining two-thirds, namely, forty thousand pounds."

Mr. Aubrey listened to all this with his feelings and faculties strung to the utmost pitch of intensity; and when Gammon had ceased, experienced a transient sense, as if the fearful mountain which had pressed so long on his heart were moving.

"Have I made myself intelligible, Mr. Aubrey?" inquired Gammon, kindly, but very gravely.

"Perfectly—but I feel so oppressed and overwhelmed with the magnitude of the topics we are discussing, that I scarcely at present appreciate the position in which you would place me. I must throw myself, Mr. Gammon, entirely upon your indulgence!"

Gammon looked a little disappointed.

"I can imagine your feelings, sir," said he, as, thrusting into a heap the papers lying on the table, he threw them into a drawer, and then took a sheet of paper and a pencil; and while he made a few memoranda of the arrangement which he had been mentioning, he continued—"You see—the grand result of what I have been hastily sketching off is—to give you ample time to pay the amount which I have named, and to relieve you, at once, absolutely from no less a sum than Forty Thousand Pounds," said he, with emphasis and deliberation, "for which—and with interest—you will otherwise remain liable to the day of your death;—there can be no escape," he continued with pointed significance of manner—"except, perhaps, into banishment, which, with your feelings, would be worse than death—for it would—of course—be a dishonorable exile—to avoid just liabilities;—and those who bear your name would, in such an"–

"Pray, sir, be silent!" exclaimed Mr. Aubrey, in a tone and manner which electrified Gammon, who started in his chair. Mr. Aubrey's face was whitened; his eye glanced lightning at his companion. Dagon-like, Gammon had put forth his hand and touched the ark of Aubrey's honor. Gammon lost his color, and for, perhaps, the first time in his life, quailed before the majesty of man; 'twas also the majesty of suffering; for he had been torturing a noble nature. Neither of them spoke for some time—Mr. Aubrey continuing highly excited—Gammon gazing at him with unfeigned amazement. The paper which he held in his hand rustled, and he was obliged to lay it down on his lap, lest Mr. Aubrey should notice this evidence of his agitation.

"I am guilty of great weakness, sir," said at length Mr. Aubrey—his excitement only a little abated. He stood erect, and spoke with stern precision; "but you, perhaps unconsciously, provoked the display of it. Sir, I am ruined; I am a beggar: we are all ruined; we are all beggars: it is the ordering of God, and I bow to it. But do you presume, sir, to think that at last my HONOR is in danger? and consider it necessary, as if you were warning one whom you saw about to become a criminal, to expatiate on the nature of the meditated act by which I am to disgrace myself and my family?" Here that family seemed suddenly standing around him: his lip quivered; his eyes filled; he ceased speaking; and trembled with excessive emotion.

"This is a sally equally unexpected, Mr. Aubrey, and, permit me to add, unwarrantable," said Gammon, calmly, having recovered his self-possession. "You have entirely misunderstood me, sir; or I have ill-explained myself. Your evident emotion and distress touch my very soul, Mr. Aubrey." Gammon's voice trembled. "Suffer me to tell you—unmoved by your violent rebuke—that I feel an inexpressible respect and admiration for you, and am miserable at the thought of one word of mine having occasioned you an instant's uneasiness." When a generous nature is thus treated, it is apt to feel an excessive contrition for any fault or extravagance which it may have committed—an excessive appreciation of the pain which it may have inflicted on another. Thus it was, that by the time Gammon had done speaking, Mr. Aubrey felt ashamed and mortified at himself, and conceived an admiration of the dignified forbearance of Gammon, which quickly heightened into respect for his general character as it appeared to Aubrey, and fervent gratitude for the disposition which he had evinced, from first to last, so disinterestedly to serve a ruined man. He seemed now to view all that Gammon had proposed in quite a new light—through quite another medium; and his excited feelings were in some danger of disturbing his judgment.

"As I am a man of business, Mr. Aubrey," said Gammon, shortly afterwards, with a very captivating smile—how frank and forgiving seeming his temper, to Aubrey!—"and this is a place for business, shall we resume our conversation? With reference to the first ten thousand pounds, it can be a matter of future arrangement as to the mode of securing its payment; and as for the remaining ten thousand, if I were not afraid of rendering myself personally liable to Mr. Titmouse for neglecting my professional duty to him, I should be content with your verbal promise—your mere word of honor, to pay it, as and when you conveniently could. But in justice to myself, I really must take a show of security from you. Say, for instance, two promissory notes, for £5,000 each, payable to Mr. Titmouse. You may really regard them as matters of mere form; for, when you shall have given them to me, they will be deposited there," (pointing to an iron safe,) "and not again be heard of until you may have thought proper to inquire for them. The influence which I happen to have obtained over Mr. Titmouse, you may rely upon my exercising with some energy, if ever he should be disposed to press you for payment of either of the instruments I have mentioned. I tell you candidly that they must be negotiable in point of form; but I assure you, as sincerely, that I will not permit them to be negotiated. Now, may I venture to hope that we understand each other?" added Gammon, with a cheerful air; "and that this arrangement, if I shall be only able to carry it into effect, is a sufficient evidence of my desire to serve you, and will relieve you from an immense load of anxiety and liability?"

"An immense—a crushing load, indeed, sir, if Providence shall in any manner (to me at present undiscoverable) enable me to perform my part of the arrangement, and if you have but power to carry your views into effect," replied Mr. Aubrey, sighing heavily, but with a look of gratitude.

"Leave that to me, Mr. Aubrey; I will undertake to do it; I will move heaven and earth to do it—and the more eagerly, that I may thereby hope to establish a kind of set-off against the misery and loss which my professional exertions have unfortunately contributed to occasion you—and your honored family!"

"I feel deeply sensible of your very great—your unexpected kindness, Mr. Gammon; but still, the arrangement suggested is one which occasions me dreadful anxiety as to my being ever able to carry out my part of it."

"Never, never despair, Mr. Aubrey! Heaven helps those who help themselves; and I really imagine I see your powerful energies already beginning to surmount your prodigious difficulties! When you shall have slept over the matter, you will feel the full relief which this proposed arrangement is so calculated to afford your spirits. Of course, too, you will lose no time in communicating to Messrs. Runnington the nature of the proposal. I can predict that they will be not a little disposed to urge upon you its completion. I cannot, however, help once more reminding you, in justice to myself, Mr. Aubrey, that it is but a proposition, in making which, I hope it will not prove that I have been carried away by my feelings much further than my duty to my client or his interests "–

Mr. Aubrey was afraid to hear him finish the sentence, lest the faint dawn of hope should disappear from the dark and rough surface of the sea of trouble upon which he was being tossed. "I will consult, as you suggest, sir, my experienced and honorable professional advisers; and am strongly inclined to believe that they will feel as you predict. I am of course bound to defer to them,"–

"Oh, certainly! certainly! I am very strict in the observance of professional etiquette, Mr. Aubrey, I assure you; and should not think of going on with this arrangement, except with their concurrence, acting on your behalf. One thing I have to beg, Mr. Aubrey, that either you or they will communicate the result of your deliberations to me, personally. I am very desirous that the suggested compromise should be broken to my partners and our client by me.—By the way, if you will favor me with your address, I will make a point of calling at your house, either late in the evening or early in the morning."

[As if Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap had not kept eagle eyes upon his every movement since quitting Yatton, with a view to any sudden application for a writ of Ne Exeas, which a suspicious approach of his towards the sea-coast might render necessary!]

"I am infinitely obliged to you, sir—but it would be far more convenient for both of us, if you could drop me a line, or favor me with a call at Mr. Weasel's, in Pomegranate Court in the Temple."

Gammon blushed scarlet: but for this accidental mention of the name of Mr. Weasel, who was one of the pleaders occasionally employed by Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap in heavy matters—in all probability Mr. Aubrey might, within a day or two's time, have had to exercise his faculties, if so disposed, upon a declaration of Trespass for Mesne Profits, in a cause of "Titmouse v. Aubrey!"

"As you choose, Mr. Aubrey," replied Gammon, with difficulty concealing his feelings of pique and disappointment at losing the opportunity of a personal introduction by Mr. Aubrey to his family. After a few words of general conversation, Gammon inquiring how Mr. Aubrey liked his new profession, and assuring him, in an emphatic manner, that he might rely upon being supported, from the moment of his being called to the bar, by almost all the common-law business of the firm of "Quirk, Gammon, and Snap"—they parted. It had been to Mr. Aubrey a memorable interview—and to Gammon a somewhat arduous affair, taxing to an unusual extent his great powers of self-command, and of dissimulation. As soon as he was left alone, his thoughts instantly recurred to Aubrey's singular burst of hauteur and indignation. Gammon had a stinging sense of submission to superior energy—and felt indignant with himself for not having at the moment resented it. Setting aside this source of exquisite irritation to the feelings of a proud man, he felt a depressing consciousness that he had not met with his usual success in his recent encounter with Mr. Aubrey; who had been throughout cautious, watchful, and courteously distrustful. He had afforded occasional glimpses of the unapproachable pride of his nature—and Gammon had crouched! Was there anything in their interview—thought he, walking thoughtfully to and fro in his room—which, when Aubrey came to reflect upon—for instance—had Gammon disclosed too much concerning the extent of his influence over Titmouse? His cheek slightly flushed; a sigh of fatigue and excitement escaped him; and gathering together his papers, he began to prepare for quitting the office for the day.

Mr. Aubrey left Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap's office with feelings of mingled exhaustion and despondency. As he walked down Saffron Hill—a dismal neighborhood!—what scenes did he witness! Poverty and profligacy revelling, in all their wild and revolting excesses! Here, was an Irishman, half-stupefied with liquor and bathed in blood, having just been rescued from a savage fight in a low underground public-house cellar, by his squalid wife, with dishevelled hair and a filthy infant in her arms—who walked beside him cursing, pinching, and striking him—reproaching him with the knowledge that she and her seven children were lying starving at home. Presently he stumbled; she with her wretched infant falling down with him; and she lay striking, and scratching, and abusing him till some one interfered.

There, was a woman—as it were a bloated mass of filth steeped in gin—standing with a drunken smile at an old-clothes stall, pawning a dirty little shirt, which she had a few minutes before stripped from the back of one of her four half-naked children!

A little farther on, was a noisy excited crowd round two men carrying a shutter, on which was strapped the bleeding body (a handkerchief spread over the face) of a poor bricklayer, who had fallen a few minutes before from the top of some scaffolding in the neighborhood, and was at that instant in the agonies of death—leaving behind him a wife and nine children, for whom the poor fellow had long slaved from morning to night, and who were now ignorant of the frightful fate which had befallen him, and that they were left utterly destitute.

There, was a skinny little terrified urchin, about eight years old, with nothing to conceal his dirty, half-starved body, but a tattered man's coat, pinned round him; dying with hunger, he had stolen a villanous-looking bare bone—scarce a halfpenny worth of meat upon it; and a brawny constable, his knuckles fiercely dug into the poor little offender's neck, (with his tight grasp,) was leading him off, followed by his shrieking mother, to the police-office, whence he would be committed to Newgate; and thence, after two or three months' imprisonment, and being flogged—miserable little wretch!—by the common hangman, (who had hanged the child's father some six months before,) he would be discharged—to return probably several times and undergo a similar process; then to be transported; and finally be hanged, as had been his father before him.

These startling scenes passed before Mr. Aubrey, in the course of a five minutes' walk down Saffron Hill—during which period he now and then paused, and gazed around him with feelings of pity, of astonishment, of disgust, which presently blended and deepened into a dark sense of horror. These scenes, to some so fatally familiar—fatally, I mean, on account of the INDIFFERENCE which familiarity is apt to induce—to Mr. Aubrey, had on them all the frightful glare of novelty. He had never witnessed anything of the sort before; and had no notion of its existence. The people residing on each side of the Hill, however, seemed accustomed to such scenes; which they appeared to view with the same dreadful indifference with which a lamb led to the slaughter is beheld by one who has spent his life next door to the slaughter-house. The Jew clothesman, before whose shop-window, arrested by the horrifying spectacle of the bleeding wretch borne along to the hospital—Mr. Aubrey had remained standing for a second or two—took the opportunity to assail him, with insolent and pertinacious importunities to purchase some articles of clothing! A fat baker, and a greasy eating-house keeper, stood each at his door, one with folded arms, the other with his hands thrust into his pockets—both of them gazing with a grin at two curs fighting in the middle of the street—oh, how utterly insensible to the ravenous want around them! The pallid spectres haunting the gin-shop—a large splendid building at the corner—gazed with sunken lack-lustre eye, and drunken apathy, at the shattered man who was being borne by.

Ah, God! what scenes were these! And of what other hidden wretchedness and horror did they not indicate the existence! "Gracious mercy!" thought Aubrey, "what a world have I been living in! And this dismal aspect of it exposed to me just when I have lost all power of relieving its wretchedness!"—here a thrill of anguish passed through his heart—"but woe, woe is me! if at this moment I had a thousand times ten thousand a-year, how far would it go amid the scenes similar to this, abounding in this one city? Oh God! what unutterable horror must be in store for those who, intrusted by Thee with an overflowing abundance, disregard the misery around them in guilty selfishness and indolence, or"—he shuddered—"expend it in sensuality and profligacy! Will Dives become sensible of his misconduct, only when he shall have entered upon his next stage of existence, and of punishment? Oh, merciful Creator! how is my heart wrung by the sight of horrors such as these? Awful and mysterious Author of our existence, Father of the spirits of all flesh, are these states of being which Thou hast ordained? Are these Thy children? Are these my fellow-creatures? Oh, help me! help me! my weak heart faints; my clouded understanding is confounded! I cannot—insect that I am!—discern the scope and end of Thy economy, of Thy dread government of the world; yet blessed be the name of my God!—I KNOW that thou reignest! though clouds and darkness are around thee! righteousness and judgment are the habitation of thy throne! with righteousness shalt thou judge the world, AND THE PEOPLE WITH EQUITY!"

Like as the lesser light is lost in the greater, so, in Aubrey's case, was the lesser misery he suffered, merged in his sense of the greater misery he witnessed. What, after all, was his position, in comparison with that of those now before and around him? What cause of thankfulness had he not, for the merciful mildness of even the dispensations of Providence towards him? Such were his thoughts and feelings, as he stood gazing at the objects which had called them forth, when his eye lit on the figure of Mr. Gammon approaching him. He was threading his way, apparently lost in thought, through the scenes which had so powerfully affected Mr. Aubrey; who stood eying him with a sort of unconscious intensity, as if secure from his observation, till he was actually addressed by him.

"Mr. Aubrey!" exclaimed Gammon, courteously saluting him. Each took off his hat to the other. Though Aubrey hardly intended it, he found himself engaged in conversation with Gammon, who, in a remarkably feeling tone, and with a happy flattering deference of manner, intimated that he could guess the subject of Mr. Aubrey's thoughts, namely, the absorbing matters which they had been discussing together.

"No, it is not so," said Mr. Aubrey, with a sigh, as he walked on—Gammon keeping easily beside him—"I have been profoundly affected by scenes which I have witnessed in the immediate neighborhood of your office, since quitting it; what misery! what horror!"

"Ah, Mr. Aubrey!"—exclaimed Gammon, echoing the sigh of his companion, as they slowly ascended Holborn Hill, separate, but side by side—"what a checkered scene is life! Guilt and innocence—happiness and misery—wealth and poverty—disease and health—wisdom and folly—sensuality and refinement—piety and irreligion—how strangely intermingled we behold them, wherever we look on life—and how difficult, to the philosopher, to detect the principle"–

"Difficult?—Impossible! Impossible! God alone can do so!"—exclaimed Mr. Aubrey, thoughtfully.

"Comparison, I have often thought," said Gammon, after a pause—"of one's own troubles with the greater misfortunes endured by others, is beneficial or prejudicial—consolatory or disheartening—according as the mind of him who makes the comparison is well or ill regulated—possessed or destitute, of moral and religious principle!"

"It is so, indeed," said Mr. Aubrey. Though not particularly inclined to enter into or prolong conversation, he was pleased with the tone of his companion's remark.

"As for me," proceeded Gammon, with a slight sigh—"the absorbing anxieties of professional life; and, too, in a line of professional life which, infinitely to my distaste, brings me constantly into scenes such as you have been observing, have contributed to render me, I fear, less sensible of their real character; yet can I vividly conceive the effect they must, when first seen, produce upon the mind and heart of a compassionate, an observant, a reflecting man, Mr. Aubrey!"

Gammon looked a gentleman; his address was easy and insinuating, full of delicate deference, without the slightest tendency to cant or sycophancy; his countenance was an intellectual and expressive one; his conversation that of an educated and thinking man. He was striving his utmost to produce a favorable impression on Mr. Aubrey; and, as is very little to be wondered at, he succeeded. By the time that they had got about twenty yards beyond Fetter Lane, they might have been seen walking together, arm-in-arm. As they approached Oxford Street, they suddenly encountered Mr. Runnington.

"God bless me, Mr. Aubrey!" said he, surprisedly—"and Mr. Gammon? How do you do, Mr. Gammon?"—he continued, taking off his hat with a little formality, and speaking in a corresponding tone; but he was encountered by Gammon with greatly superior ease and distance, and was not a little nettled at it; for he was so palpably foiled with his own weapons.

"Well—I shall now resign you to your legitimate adviser, Mr. Aubrey," said Gammon, with a smile; then, addressing Mr. Runnington, in whose countenance pique and pride were abundantly visible—"Mr. Aubrey has favored me with a call to-day, and we have had some little discussion on a matter which he will explain to you. As for me, Mr. Aubrey, I ought to have turned off two streets ago—so I wish you good-evening."