Words for the Wise Part 22

"Why, he is indebted to you for his bread!"

"I know he is, and that makes his act one of deeper baseness."

"What could have induced him to be guilty of such a thing?"

"That's just what I've been trying to study out, and I believe I understand it all fully. Some six months ago, he asked me to sign a recommendation for his appointment to a vacant clerks.h.i.+p in one of our banks. I told him that I would do so with pleasure, only that my nephew was an applicant, and I had already given him my name. He didn't appear to like this, which I thought very unreasonable, to say the least of it."

"Why, the man must be insane! How could he expect you to sign the application of two men for the same place? Especially, how could he expect you to give him a preference over your own nephew?"

"Some men are strangely unreasonable."

"We don't live long in this world ere becoming cognisant of that fact."

"And for this he has held a grudge against you, and now takes occasion to revenge himself."

"So it would seem. I know of nothing else that he can have against me.

I have uniformly treated him with kindness and consideration."

"There must be something radically base in his character."

"I'm afraid there is."

"I wouldn't have such a man in my employment."

Everton shrugged his shoulders and elevated his eyebrows, but said nothing.

"A man who attempts thus to injure you in your business by false representations, will not hesitate to wrong you in other ways," said the acquaintance.

"A very natural inference," replied Everton. "I'm sorry to have to think so badly of Ayres; but, as you say, a man who would, in so base a manner, attack another, would not hesitate to do him an injury if a good opportunity offered."

"And it's well for you to think of that."

"True. However, I do not see that he has much chance to do me an ill-turn where he is. So far, I must do him the justice to say that he is faithful in the discharge of all his duties."

"He knows that his situation depends upon this."

"Of course. His own interest prompts him to do right here; but when an opportunity to stab me in the dark offers, he embraces it. He did not, probably, imagine that I would see the hand that held the dagger."

"No."

"But I am not so blind as he imagined. Well, such work must not be permitted to go unpunished."

"It ought not to be. When a man indulges his ill-nature towards one individual with entire impunity, he soon gains courage for extended attacks, and others become sharers in the result of his vindictiveness.

It is a duty that a man owes the community to let all who maliciously wrong him feel the consequences due to their acts."

"No doubt you are right; and, if I keep my present mind, I shall let my particular friend Mr. Ayres feel that it is not always safe to stab even in the dark."

The more Mr. Everton thought over the matter, the more fully satisfied was he that Ayres had made the attack upon him. This person was engaged as reporter and a.s.sistant editor of his newspaper, at a salary of ten dollars a week. He had a family, consisting of a wife and four children, the expense of whose maintenance rather exceeded than came within his income, and small acc.u.mulations of debt were a natural result.

Everton had felt some interest in this man, who possessed considerable ability as a writer; he saw that he had a heavy weight upon him, and often noticed that he looked anxious and dejected. On the very day previous to the appearance of the article above referred to, he had been thinking of him with more than usual interest, and had actually meditated an increase of salary as a compensation for more extended services. But that was out of the question now. The wanton and injurious attack which had just appeared shut up all his bowels of compa.s.sion, and so far from meditating the conferring of a benefit upon Ayres, he rather inclined to a dismissal of the young man from his establishment. The longer he dwelt upon it, the more inclined was he to pursue this course, and, finally, he made up his mind to take some one else in his place. One day, after some struggles with himself, he said, "Mr. Ayres, if you can suit yourself in a place, I wish you would do so in the course of the next week or two."

The young man looked surprised, and the blood instantly suffused his face.

"Have I not given you satisfaction?" inquired Ayres.

"Yes--yes--I have no fault to find with you," replied Mr. Everton, with some embarra.s.sment in his air. "But I wish to bring in another person who has some claims on me."

In this, Mr. Everton rather exceeded the truth. His equivocation was not manly, and Ayres was deceived by it into the inference of a reason for his dismissal foreign to the true one.

"Oh, very well," he replied, coldly. "If you wish another to take my place, I will give it up immediately."

Mr. Everton bowed with a formal air, and the young man, who felt hurt at his manner, and partly stunned by the unexpected announcement that he must give up his situation, retired at once.

On the next day, the Gazette contained another article, in which there was even a plainer reference to Mr. Everton than before, and it exhibited a bitterness of spirit that was vindictive. He was no longer in doubt as to the origin of these attacks, if he had been previously.

In various parts of this last article, he could detect the particular style of Ayres.

"I see that fellow is at work on you again," said the person with whom he had before conversed on the subject.

"Yes; but, like the viper, I think he is by this time aware that he is biting on a file."

"Ah! Have you dismissed him from your service?"

"Yes, sir."

"You have served him right. No man who attempted to injure me should eat my bread. What did he say?"

"Nothing. What could he say? When I told him to find himself another place as quickly as possible, his guilt wrote itself in his countenance."

"Has he obtained a situation?"

"I don't know; and, what is more, don't care."

"I hope he has, for the sake of his family. It's a pity that they should suffer for his evil deeds."

"I didn't think of them, or I might not have dismissed him; but it is done now, and there the matter rests."

And there Mr. Everton let it rest, so far as Ayres was concerned. The individual obtained in his place had been, for some years, connected with the press as news collector and paragraph writer. His name was Tompkins. He was not a general favourite, and had never been very highly regarded by Mr. Everton; but he must have some one to fill the place made vacant by the removal of Ayres, and Tompkins was the most available person to be had. There was a difference in the Journal after Tompkins took the place of a.s.sistant editor, and a very perceptible difference; it was not for the better.

About three months after Mr. Everton had dismissed Ayres from his establishment, a gentleman said to him,

"I am told that the young man who formerly a.s.sisted in your paper is in very dest.i.tute circ.u.mstances."

"Ayres?"

"Yes. That is his name."

"I am sorry to hear it. I wish him no ill; though he tried to do me all the harm he could."