CHAPTER XVI.
Those poor pocket-cannibals, how society does persecute them! Even
a menial servant would give warning if disturbed at his meals. But
your man-eater is the meekest of creatures; he will never give
warning, and--not often take it.
Whatever the source that had supplied Jasper Losely with the money from
which he had so generously extracted the sovereigns intended to console
Waife for the loss of Sophy, that source either dried up or became wholly
inadequate to his wants; for elasticity was the felicitous peculiarity of
Mr. Losely's wants. They accommodated themselves to the state of his
finances with mathematical precision, always requiring exactly five times
the amount of the means placed at his disposal. From a shilling to a
million, multiply his wants by five times the total of his means, and you
arrived at a just conclusion. Jasper called upon Poole, who was slowly
recovering, but unable to leave his room; and finding that gentleman in a
more melancholy state of mind than usual, occasioned by Uncle Sam's
brutal declaration that "if responsible for his godson's sins he was not
responsible for his debts," and that he really thought "the best thing
Samuel Dolly could do, was to go to prison for a short time and get
whitewashed," Jasper began to lament his own hard fate: "And just when
one of the finest women in Paris has come here on purpose to see me,"
said the lady-killer,--"a lady who keeps her carriage, Dolly! Would have
introduced you, if you had been well enough to go out. One can't be
always borrowing of her. I wish one could. There's mother Crane would
sell her gown off her back for me; but 'Gad, sir, she snubs, and
positively frightens me. Besides, she lays traps to demean me; set me to
work like a clerk!--not that I would hurt your feelings, Dolly: if you
are a clerk, or something of that sort, you are a gentleman at heart.
Well, then, we are both done up and cleaned out; and my decided opinion
is, that nothing is left but a bold stroke."
"I have no objection to bold strokes, but I don't see any; and Uncle
Sam's bold stroke of the Fleet prison is not at all to my taste."
"Fleet prison! Fleet fiddlestick! No. You have never been in Russia.
Why should we not go there both? My Paris friend, Madame Caumartin, was
going to Italy, but her plans are changed, and she is now all for St.
Petersburg. She will wait a few days for you to get well. We will all
go together and enjoy ourselves. The Russians dote upon whist. We shall
get into their swell sets and live like princes." Therewith Jasper
launched forth on the text of Russian existence in such glowing terms
that Dolly Poole shut his aching eyes and fancied himself sledging down
the Neva, covered with furs; a countess waiting for him at dinner, and
counts in dozens ready to offer bets to a fabulous amount that Jasper
Losely lost the rubber.
Having lifted his friend into this region of aerial castles, Jasper then,
descending into the practical world, wound up with the mournful fact that
one could not get to St. Petersburg, nor when there into swell sets,
without having some little capital on hand.
"I tell you what we will do. Madame Caumartin lives in prime style. Get
old Latham, your employer, to discount her bill at three months' date for
L500, and we will be all off in a crack." Poole shook his head. "Old
Latham is too knowing a file for that. A foreigner! He'd want
security."
"I'll be security."
Dolly shook his head a second time, still more emphatically than the
first.
"But you say he does discount paper,--gets rich on it?"
"Yes, gets rich on 'it, which he might not do if he discounted the paper
you propose. No offence."
"Oh, no offence among friends! You have taken him bills which he has
discounted?"
"Yes,--good paper."
"Any paper signed by good names is good paper. We can sign good names if
we know their handwritings."
Dolly started, and turned white. Knave he was,--cheat at cards, blackleg
on the turf,--but forgery! that crime was new to him. The very notion of
it brought on a return of fever; and while Jasper was increasing his
malady by arguing with his apprehensions, luckily for Poole, Uncle Sam
came in. Uncle Sam, a sagacious old tradesman, no sooner clapped eyes on
the brilliant Losely than he conceived for him a distrustful repugnance,
similar to that with which an experienced gander may regard a fox in
colloquy with its gosling. He had already learned enough of his godson's
ways and chosen society to be assured that Samuel Dolly had indulged in
very anti-commercial tastes, and been sadly contaminated by very anti-
commercial friends. He felt persuaded that Dolly's sole chance of
redemption was in working on his mind while his body was still suffering,
so that Poole might, on recovery, break with all former associations.
On seeing Jasper in the dress of an exquisite, with the thrws of a prize-
fighter, Uncle Sam saw the stalwart incarnation of all the sins which a
godfather had vowed that a godson should renounce. Accordingly, he made
himself so disagreeable that Losely, in great disgust, took a hasty
departure. And Uncle Sam, as he helped the nurse to plunge Dolly into
his bed, had the brutality to tell his nephew, in very plain terms, that
if ever he found that Brummagem gent in Poole's rooms again, Poole would
never again see the colour of Uncle Sam's money. Dolly beginning to
blubber, the good man relenting patted him on the back, and said, "But as
soon as you are well, I'll carry you with me to my country-box, and keep
you out of harm's way till I find you a wife, who will comb your head for
you;" at which cheering prospect Poole blubbered more dolefully than
before. On retiring to his own lodging in the Gloucester Coffee-house,
Uncle Sam, to make all sure, gave positive orders to Poole's landlady,
who respected in Uncle Sam the man who might pay what Poole owed to her,
on no account to let in any of Dolly's profligate friends, but especially
the chap he had found there; adding, "'T is as much as my nephew's life
is worth; and, what is more to the purpose, as much as your bill is."
Accordingly, when Jasper presented himself at Poole's door again that
very evening, the landlady apprised him of her orders; and, proof to his
insinuating remonstrances, closed the door in his face. But a French
chronicler has recorded that when Henry IV. was besieging Paris, though
not a loaf of bread could enter the walls, love-letters passed between
city and camp as easily as if there had been no siege at all. And does
not Mercury preside over money as well as Love? Jasper, spurred on by
Madame Caumartin, who was exceedingly anxious to exchange London for St.
Petersburg as soon as possible, maintained a close and frequent
correspondence with Poole by the agency of the nurse, who luckily was not
above being bribed by shillings. Poole continued to reject the villany
proposed by Jasper; but, in course of the correspondence, he threw out
rather incoherently--for his mind began somewhat to wander--a scheme
equally flagitious, which Jasper, aided perhaps by Madame Caumartin's yet
keener wit, caught up, and quickly reduced to deliberate method. Old Mr.
Latham, amongst the bills he discounted, kept those of such more bashful
customers as stipulated that their resort to temporary accommodation
should be maintained a profound secret in his own safe. Amongst these
bills Poole knew that there was one for L1,000 given by a young nobleman
of immense estates, but so entailed that he could neither sell nor
mortgage, and, therefore, often in need of a few hundreds for pocket
money. The nobleman's name stood high. His fortune was universally
known; his honour unimpeachable. A bill of his any one would cash at
sight. Could Poole but obtain that bill! It had, he believed, only a
few weeks yet to run. Jasper or Madame Caumartin might get it discounted
even by Lord -------'s own banker; and if that were too bold, by any
professional bill-broker, and all three be off before a suspicion could
arise. But to get at that safe, a false key might be necessary. Poole
suggested a waxen impression of the lock. Jasper sent him a readier
contrivance,--a queer-looking tool, that looked an instrument of torture.
All now necessary was for Poole to recover sufficiently to return to
business, and to get rid of Uncle Sam by a promise to run down to the
country the moment Poole had conscientiously cleared some necessary
arrears of work. While this correspondence went on, Jasper Losely
shunned Mrs. Crane, and took his meals and spent his leisure hours with
Madame Caumartin. He needed no dressing-gown and slippers to feel
himself at home there. Madame Canmartin had really taken a showy house
in a genteel street. Her own appearance was eminently what the French
call /distingue/; dressed to perfection from head to foot; neat and
finished as an epigram; her face in shape like a thoroughbred cobra-
capella,--low smooth frontal widening at the summit, chin tapering but
jaw strong, teeth marvellously white, small, and with points sharp as
those in the maw of the fish called the "Sea Devil;" eyes like dark
emeralds, of which the pupils, when she was angry or when she was
scheming, retreated upward towards the temples, emitting a luminous green
ray that shot through space like the gleam that escapes from a dark-
lantern; complexion superlatively feminine (call it not pale but white,
as if she lived on blanched almonds, peach-stones, and arsenic); hands so
fine and so bloodless, with fingers so pointedly taper there seemed
stings at their tips; manners of one who had ranged all ranks of society
from highest to lowest, and duped the most wary in each of them. Did she
please it, a crown prince might have thought her youth must have passed
in the chambers of porphyry! Did she please it, an old soldier would
have sworn the creature had been a vivandiere,--in age, perhaps,
bordering on forty. She looked younger, but had she been a hundred and
twenty, she could not have been more wicked. Ah, happy indeed for Sophy,
if it were to save her youth from ever being fostered in elegant boudoirs
by those bloodless hands, that the crippled vagabond had borne her away
from Arabella's less cruel unkindness; better far even Rugge's village
stage; better far stealthy by-lanes, feigned names, and the erudite
tricks of Sir Isaac!
But still it is due even to Jasper to state here that, in Losely's recent
design to transfer Sophy from Mr. Waife's care to that of Madame
Caumartin, the Sharper harboured no idea of a villany so execrable as the
character of the Parisienne led the jealous Arabella to suspect. His
real object in getting the child at that time once more into his power
was (whatever its nature) harmless compared with the mildest of
Arabella's dark doubts. But still if Sophy had been regained, and the
object, on regaining her, foiled (as it probably would have been), what
then might have become of her,--lost, perhaps, forever, to Waife,--in a
foreign land and under such guardianship? Grave question, which Jasper
Losely, who exercised so little foresight in the paramount question,
namely, what some day or other would become of himself? was not likely to
rack his brains by conjecturing!
Meanwhile Mrs. Crane was vigilant. The detective police-officer sent to
her by Mr. Rugge could not give her the information which Rugge desired,
and which she did not longer need. She gave the detective some
information respecting Madame Caumartin. One day towards the evening she
was surprised by a visit from Uncle Sam. He called ostensibly to thank
her for her kindness to his godson and nephew; and to beg her not to be
offended if he had been rude to Mr. Losely, who, he understood from
Dolly, was a particular friend of hers. "You see, ma'am, Samuel Dolly is
a weak young man, and easily led astray; but, luckily for himself, he has
no money and no stomach. So he may repent in time; and if I could find a
wife to manage him, he has not a bad head for the main chance, and may
become a practical man. Repeatedly I have told him he should go to
prison, but that was only to frighten him; fact is, I want to get him
safe down into the country, and he don't take to that. So I am forced to
say, 'My box, home-brewed and South-down, Samuel Dolly, or a Lunnon jail
and debtors' allowance.' Must give a young man his choice, my dear
lady."
Mrs. Crane observing that what he said was extremely sensible, Uncle Sam
warmed in his confidence.
"And I thought I had him, till I found Mr. Losely in his sick-room; but
ever since that day, I don't know how it is, the lad has had something on
his mind, which I don't half like,--cracky, I think, my dear lady,--
cracky. I suspect that old nurse passes letters. I taxed her with it,
and she immediately wanted to take her Bible-oath, and smelt of gin,
two things which, taken together, look guilty."
"But," said Mrs. Crane, growing much interested, "if Mr. Losely and Mr.
Poole do correspond, what then?"
"That's what I want to know, ma'am. Excuse me; I don't wish to disparage
Mr. Losely,--a dashing gent, and nothing worse, I dare say. But certain
sure I am that he has put into Samuel Dolly's head something which has
cracked it! There is the lad now up and dressed, when he ought to be in
bed, and swearing he'll go to old Latham's to-morrow, and that long
arrears of work are on his conscience! Never heard him talk of
conscience before: that looks guilty! And it does not frighten him any
longer when I say he shall go to prison for his debts; and he's very
anxious to get me out of Lunnon; and when I threw in a word about Mr.
Losely (slyly, my good lady,--just to see its effect), he grew as white
as that paper; and then he began strutting and swelling, and saying that
Mr. Losely would be a great man, and he should be a great man, and that
he did not care for my money; he could get as much money as he liked.
That looks guilty, my dear lady. And oh," cried Uncle Sam, clasping his
hands, "I do fear that he's thinking of something worse than he has ever
done before, and his brain can't stand it. And, ma'am, he has a great
respect for you; and you've a friendship for Mr. Losely. Now, just
suppose that Mr. Losely should have been thinking of what your flash
sporting gents call a harmless spree, and my sister's son should, being
cracky, construe into something criminal. Oh, Mrs. Crane, do go and see
Mr. Losely, and tell him that Samuel Dolly is not safe,--is not safe!"
"Much better that I should go to your nephew," said Mrs. Crane; "and with
your leave I will do so at once. Let me see him alone. Where shall I
find you afterwards?"
"At the Gloucester Coffee-house. Oh, my dear lady, how can I thank you
enough? The boy can be nothing to you; but to me, he's my sister's son,
--the blackguard!"
