Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (555 page)

Ezra Girdlestone remained behind, stretching his legs In front of the empty grate. “The governor is a hard nail,” he soliloquized, as he stared down at the shining steel bars. “Depend upon it, though, he feels this more than he shows. Why, it’s the only friend he ever had in the world — or ever will have, in all probability. However, it’s no business of mine,” with which comforting reflection he began to whistle as he turned over the pages of the private day-book of the firm.

It is possible that his son’s surmise was right, and that the gaunt, unemotional African merchant felt an unwonted heartache as he hailed a hansom and drove out to his friend’s house at Fulham. He and Harston had been charity schoolboys together, had roughed it together, risen together, and prospered together. When John Girdlestone was a raw-boned lad and Harston a chubby-faced urchin, the latter had come to look upon the other as his champion and guide. There are some minds which are parasitic in their nature. Alone they have little vitality, but they love to settle upon some stronger intellect, from which they may borrow their emotions and conclusions at second-hand. A strong, vigorous brain collects around it in time many others, whose mental processes are a feeble imitation of its own. Thus it came to pass that, as the years rolled on, Harston learned to lean more and more upon his old school-fellow, grafting many of his stern peculiarities upon his own simple vacuous nature, until he became a strange parody of the original. To him Girdlestone was the ideal man, Girdlestone’s ways the correct ways, and Girdlestone’s opinions the weightiest of all opinions. Forty years of this undeviating fidelity must, however he might conceal it, have made an impression upon the feelings of the elder man.

Harston, by incessant attention to business and extreme parsimony, had succeeded in founding an export trading concern. In this he had followed the example of his friend. There was no fear of their interests ever coming into collision, as his operations were confined to the Mediterranean. The firm grew and prospered, until Harston began to be looked upon as a warm man in the City circles. His only child was Kate, a girl of seventeen. There were no other near relatives, save Dr. Dimsdale, a prosperous West-end physician. No wonder that Ezra Girdlestone’s active business mind, and perhaps that of his father too, should speculate as to the disposal of the fortune of the dying man.

Girdlestone pushed open the iron gate and strode down the gravel walk which led to his friend’s house. A bright autumn sun shining out of a cloudless heaven bathed the green lawn and the many-coloured flower-beds in its golden light. The air, the leaves, the birds, all spoke of life. It was hard to think that death was closing its grip upon him who owned them all. A plump little gentleman in black was just descending the steps.

“Well, doctor,” the merchant asked, “how is your patient?”

“You’ve not come with the intention of seeing him, have you?” the doctor asked, glancing up with some curiosity at the grey face and overhanging eyebrows of the merchant.

“Yes, I am going up to him now.”

“It is a most virulent case of typhoid. He may die in an hour or he may live until nightfall, but nothing can save him. He will hardly recognise you, I fear, and you can do him no good. It is most infectious, and you are incurring a needless danger. I should strongly recommend you not to go.”

“Why, you’ve only just come down from him yourself, doctor.”

“Ah, I’m there in the way of duty.”

“So am I,” said the visitor decisively, and passing up the stone steps of the entrance strode into the hall. There was a large sitting-room upon the ground floor, through the open door of which the visitor saw a sight which arrested him for a moment. A young girl was sitting in a recess near the window, with her lithe, supple figure bent forward, and her hands clasped at the back of her head, while her elbows rested upon a small table in front of her. Her superb brown hair fell in a thick wave on either side over her white round arms, and the graceful curve of her beautiful neck might have furnished a sculptor with a study for a mourning Madonna. The doctor had just broken his sad tidings to her, and she was still in the first paroxysm of her grief — a grief too acute, as was evident even to the unsentimental mind of the merchant, to allow of any attempt at consolation. A greyhound appeared to think differently, for he had placed his fore-paws upon his young mistress’s lap, and was attempting to thrust his lean muzzle between her arms and to lick her face in token of canine sympathy. The merchant paused irresolutely for a moment, and then ascending the broad staircase he pushed open the door of Harston’s room and entered.

The blinds were drawn down and the chamber was very dark. A pungent whiff of disinfectants issued from it, mingled with the dank, heavy smell of disease. The bed was in a far corner. Without seeing him, Girdlestone could hear the fast laboured breathing of the invalid. A trimly dressed nurse who had been sitting by the bedside rose, and, recognising the visitor, whispered a few words to him and left the room. He pulled the cord of the Venetian blind so as to admit a few rays of daylight. The great chamber looked dreary and bare, as carpet and hangings had been removed to lessen the chance of future infection. John Girdlestone stepped softly across to the bedside and sat down by his dying friend.

The sufferer was lying on his back, apparently unconscious of all around him. His glazed eyes were turned upwards towards the ceiling, and his parched lips were parted, while the breath came in quick, spasmodic gasps. Even the unskilled eye of the merchant could tell that the angel of death was hovering very near him. With an ungainly attempt at tenderness, which had something pathetic in it, he moistened a sponge and passed it over the sick man’s feverish brow. The latter turned his restless head round, and a gleam of recognition and gratitude came into his eyes.

“I knew that you would come,” he said.

“Yes. I came the moment that I got your message.”

“I am glad that you are here,” the sufferer continued with a sigh of relief. From the brightened expression upon his pinched face, it seemed as if, even now in the jaws of death, he leaned upon his old schoolfellow and looked to him for assistance. He put a wasted hand above the counterpane and laid it upon Girdlestone’s.

“I wish to speak to you, John,” he said. “I am very weak. Can you hear what I say?”

“Yes, I hear you.”

“Give me a spoonful from that bottle. It clears my mind for a time.

I have been making my will, John.”

“Yes,” said the merchant, replacing the medicine bottle.

“The lawyer made it this morning. Stoop your head and you will hear me better. I have less than fifty thousand. I should have done better had I retired years ago.”

“I told you so,” the other broke in gruffly.

“You did — you did. But I acted for the best. Forty thousand I leave to my dear daughter Kate.”

A look of interest came over Girdlestone’s face. “And the balance?” he asked.

“I leave that to be equally divided among the various London institutions for educating the poor. We were both poor boys ourselves, John, and we know the value of such schools.”

Girdlestone looked perhaps a trifle disappointed. The sick man went on very slowly and painfully —

“My daughter will have forty thousand pounds. But it is so tied up that she can neither touch it herself nor enable any one else to do so until she is of age. She has no friends, John, and no relations, save only my cousin, Dr. George Dimsdale. Never was a girl left more lonely and unprotected. Take her, I beg of you, and bring her up under your own eye. Treat her as though she were your child. Guard her above all from those who would wreck her young life in order to share her fortune. Do this, old friend, and make me happy on my deathbed.”

The merchant made no answer. His heavy eyebrows were drawn down, and his forehead all puckered with thought.

“You are the one man,” continued the sufferer, “whom I know to be just and upright. Give me the water, for my mouth is dry. Should, which God forbid, my dear girl perish before she marries, then—” His breath failed him for a moment, and he paused to recover it.

“Well, what then?”

“Then, old friend, her fortune reverts to you, for there is none who will use it so well. Those are the terms of the will. But you will guard her and care for her, as I would myself. She is a tender plant, John, too weak to grow alone. Promise me that you will do right by her — promise it?”

“I do promise it,” John Girdlestone answered in a deep voice. He was standing up now, and leaning over to catch the words of the dying man.

Harston was sinking rapidly. With a feeble motion he pointed to a brown-backed volume upon the table.

“Take up the book,” he said.

The merchant picked it up.

“Now, repeat after me, I swear and solemnly pledge myself—”

“I swear and solemnly pledge myself —

“To treasure and guard as if she were my own—” came the tremulous voice from the bed.

“To treasure and guard as if she were my own—” in the deep bass of the merchant.

“Kate Harston, the daughter of my deceased friend—”

“Kate Harston, the daughter of my deceased friend—”

“And as I treat her, so may my own flesh and blood treat me!”

“And as I treat her, so may my own flesh and blood treat me!”

The sick man’s head fell back exhausted upon his pillow. “Thank God!” he muttered, “now I can die in peace.”

“Turn your mind away from the vanities and dross of this world,” John Girdlestone said sternly, “and fix it upon that which is eternal, and can never die.”

“Are you going?” the invalid asked sadly, for he had taken up his hat and stick.

“Yes, I must go; I have an appointment in the City at six, which I must not miss.”

“And I have an appointment which I must not miss,” the dying man said with a feeble smile.

“I shall send up the nurse as I go down,” Girdlestone said.

“Good-bye!”

“Good-bye! God bless you, John!”

The firm, strong hand of the hale man enclosed for a moment the feeble, burning one of the sufferer. Then John Girdlestone plodded heavily down the stair, and these friends of forty years’ standing had said their last adieu.

The African merchant kept his appointment in the City, but long before he reached it John Harston had gone also to keep that last terrible appointment of which the messenger is death.

CHAPTER II
.

CHARITY A LA MODE
.

It was a dull October morning in Fenchurch Street, some weeks after the events with which our story opened. The murky City air looked murkier still through the glazed office windows. Girdlestone, grim and grey, as though he were the very embodiment of the weather, stooped over his mahogany table. He had a long list in front of him, on which he was checking off, as a prelude to the day’s work, the position in the market of the various speculations in which the capital of the firm was embarked. His son Ezra lounged in an easy chair opposite him, looking dishevelled and dark under the eyes, for he had been up half the night, and the Nemesis of reaction was upon him.

“Faugh!” his father ejaculated, glancing round at him with disgust.

“You have been drinking already this morning.”

“I took a brandy and seltzer on the way to the office,” he answered carelessly. “I needed one to steady me.”

“A young fellow of your age should not want steadying. You have a strong constitution, but you must not play tricks with it. You must have been very late last night. It was nearly one before I went to bed.”

“I was playing cards with Major Clutterbuck and one or two others.

We kept it up rather late.”

“With Major Clutterbuck?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t care about your consorting so much with that man. He drinks and gambles, and does you no good. What good has he ever done himself? Take care that he does not fleece you.” The merchant felt instinctively, as he glanced at the shrewd, dark face of his son, that the warning was a superfluous one.

“No fear, father,” Ezra answered sulkily; “I am old enough to choose my own friends.”

“Why such a friend as that?”

“I like to know men of that class. You are a successful man, father, but you — well, you can’t be much help to me socially. You need some one to show you the ropes, and the major is my man. When I can stand alone, I’ll soon let him know it.”

“Well, go your own way,” said Girdlestone shortly. Hard to all the world, he was soft only in this one direction. From childhood every discussion between father and son had ended with the same words.

“It is business time,” he resumed. “Let us confine ourselves to business. I see that Illinois were at 112 yesterday.”

“They are at 113 this morning.”

“What! have you been on ‘Change already?”

“Yes, I dropped in there on my way to the office. I would hold on to those. They will go up for some days yet.”

The senior partner made a pencil note on the margin of the list.

“We’ll hold on to the cotton we have,” he said.

“No, sell out at once,” Ezra answered with decision, “I saw young Featherstone, of Liverpool, last night, or rather this morning. It was hard to make head or tail of what the fool said, but he let fall enough to show that there was likely to be a drop.”

Girdlestone made another mark upon the paper. He never questioned his son’s decisions now, for long experience had shown him that they were never formed without solid grounds. “Take this list, Ezra,” he said, handing him the paper, “and run your eye over it. If you see anything that wants changing, mark it.”

“I’ll do it in the counting-house,” his son answered. “I can keep my eye on those lazy scamps of clerks. Gilray has no idea of keeping them in order.”

As he went out he cannoned against an elderly gentleman in a white waistcoat, who was being shown in, and who ricochetted off him into the office, where he shook hands heartily with the elder Girdlestone. It was evident from the laboured cordiality of the latter’s greeting that the new-comer was a man of some importance. He was, indeed, none other than the well-known philanthropist, Mr. Jefferson Edwards, M.P. for Middlehurst, whose name upon a bill was hardly second to that of Rothschild.

“How do, Girdlestone, how do?” he exclaimed, mopping his face with his handkerchief. He was a fussy little man, with a brusque, nervous manner. “Hard at it as usual, eh? Always pegging away. Wonderful man. Ha, ha! Wonderful!”

“You look warm,” the merchant answered, rubbing his hands. “Let me offer you some claret. I have some in the cupboard.”

“No, thank you,” the visitor answered, staring across at the head of the firm as though he were some botanical curiosity. “Extraordinary fellow. ‘Iron’ Girdlestone, they call you in the City. A good name, too — ha! ha! — an excellent name. Iron-grey, you know, and hard to look at, but soft here, my dear sir, soft here.” The little man tapped him with his walking-stick over the cardiac region and laughed boisterously, while his grim companion smiled slightly and bowed to the compliment.

“I’ve come here begging,” said Mr. Jefferson Edwards, producing a portentous-looking roll of paper from an inner pocket. “Know I’ve come to the right place for charity. The Aboriginal Evolution Society, my dear boy. All it wants are a few hundreds to float it off. Noble aim, Girdlestone — glorious object.”

“What is the object?” the merchant asked.

“Well, the evolution of the aborigines,” Edwards answered in some confusion. “Sort of practical Darwinism. Evolve ‘em into higher types, and turn ‘em all white in time. Professor Wilder gave us a lecture about it. I’ll send you round a Times with the account. Spoke about their thumbs. They can’t cross them over their palms, and they have rudimentary tails, or had until they were educated off them. They wore all the hair off their backs by leaning against trees. Marvellous things! All they want is a little money.”

“It seems to be a praiseworthy object,” the merchant said gravely.

“I knew that you would think so!” cried the little philanthropist enthusiastically. “Of course, bartering as you do with aboriginal races, their development and evolution is a matter of the deepest importance to you. If a man came down to barter with you who had a rudimentary tail and couldn’t bend his thumb — well, it wouldn’t be pleasant, you know. Our idea is to elevate them in the scale of humanity and to refine their tastes. Hewett, of the Royal Society, went to report on the matter a year or so back, and some rather painful incident occurred. I believe Hewett met with some mishap — in fact, they go the length of saying that he was eaten. So you see we’ve had our martyrs, my dear friend, and the least that we can do who stay at home at ease is to support a good cause to the best of our ability.”

“Whose names have you got?” asked the merchant.

“Let’s see,” Jefferson Edwards said, unfolding his list. “Spriggs, ten;

Morton, ten; Wigglesworth, five; Hawkins, ten; Indermann, fifteen;

Jones, five; and a good many smaller amounts.”

“What is the highest as yet?”

“Indermann, the tobacco importer, has given fifteen.”

“It is a good cause,” Mr. Girdlestone said, dipping his pen into the ink-bottle. “‘He that giveth’ — you know what the good old Book says. Of course a list of the donations will be printed and circulated?”

“Most certainly.”

“Here is my cheque for twenty-five pounds. I am proud to have had this opportunity of contributing towards the regeneration of those poor souls whom Providence has placed in a lower sphere than myself.”

“Girdlestone,” said the member of Parliament with emotion, as he pocketed the cheque, “you are a good man. I shall not forget this, my friend; I shall never forget it.”

“Wealth has its duties, and charity is among them,” Girdlestone answered with unction, shaking the philanthropist’s extended hand. “Good-bye, my dear sir. Pray let me know if our efforts are attended with any success. Should more money be needed, you know one who may be relied on.”

There was a sardonic smile upon the hard face of the senior partner as he closed the door behind his visitor. “It’s a legitimate investment,” he muttered to himself as he resumed his seat. “What with his Parliamentary interest and his financial power, it’s a very legitimate investment. It looks well on the list, too, and inspires confidence. I think the money is well spent.”

Ezra had bowed politely as the great man passed through the office, and

Gilray, the wizened senior clerk, opened the outer door. Jefferson

Edwards turned as he passed him and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Lucky fellow,” he said in his jerky way. “Good employer — model to follow — great man. Watch him, mark him, imitate him — that’s the way to get on. Can’t go wrong,” and he trotted down the street in search of fresh contributions towards his latest fad.