Hard Cash Part 125

500, and told her she had better keep it for fear he should be arrested.

He sent her on an errand to the other part of the town: then with his poison and the pistol before him on the table, wrote a brief but emphatic curse for his son and Julia; and a line to Peggy to thank her for her fidelity to one so much older than herself, and to advise her to take a tobacconist's shop with his money. When he had done all this, he poured out the fragrant poison and tasted it.

Ere he could drink it, one of those quidnunes, who are always interrupting a gentleman when he has important business on hand, came running in with all manner of small intelligence. Mr. Hardie put down the gla.s.s, and gave him short, sullen answers, in hopes he would then go away and let him proceed to business. And at last his visitor did rise and go. Mr. Hardie sat down with a sigh of relief to his fragrant beverage.

Doesn't the door open, and this bore poke in his head: "Oh I forgot to tell you; the Old Turks are going up today, like a shot." And with this he slammed the door again, and was off.

At this the cup began to tremble in the resolute wretch's hand. The Old Turks going up! He poured the poison back into the phial, and put it and the pistol and all the letters carefully into his pocket, and took a cab to the City.

The report was true; there was an extraordinary movement in the Old Turks. The Sultan was about to pay a portion of this loan, being at six per cent.; this had transpired, and at four o'clock the Turks were quoted at 73. Mr. Hardie returned a gainer of L. 5000 instead of a loser. He locked up the means of death for the present.

And now an ordinary man would have sold out, and got clear of the fatal trap: but this was not an ordinary man: he would not sell a share that day. In the afternoon they rose to 74. He came home, unloaded his pistol, and made himself some brandy-and-water, and with a grim smile, flavoured it with a few drops of the poison--that was a delicious tumbler. The Turks went up, up, up, to 82. Then he sold out, and cleared L. 49,000, and all in about ten days.

With this revived the habits of his youth; no more cheating: nothing could excuse that but the dread of poverty. He went to his appointment with Mr. Compton; asked to see the Receipt; said "Yes; that was his form, and Skinner's handwriting; he had never personally received one farthing of the money; Skinner had clearly embezzled it: but that did not matter; of course, Captain Dodd must not lose his money. Send your bill of costs in Hardie _v._ Hardie to me, Mr. Compton," said he, "they shall not be taxed: you have lost enough by me already."

There was an air of dignity and good faith about the man that half imposed even on Compton. And when Mr. Hardie drew out the notes and said, "I should be grateful if you would forgive me the interest; but for a great piece of good fortune on the Stock Exchange, I could never have paid the whole princ.i.p.al," he said warmly, "the interest should never be demanded through him."

He called in Colls, delivered up the Receipt, and received the L.

14,010, 12s. 6d. from Mr. Hardie.

O immortal Cas.h.!.+ You, like your great inventor, have then a kind of spirit as well as a body; and on this, not on your grosser part, depends your personal ident.i.ty. So long as that survives, your body may be recalled to its lawful owner from Heaven knows where.

Mr. Compton rushed to Pembroke Street, and put this hard, hard Cash in David Dodd's hands once more.

Love and Constancy had triumphed: and Julia and Alfred were to be married and go down to Albion Villa to prepare it for the whole party: tenants no more: Alfred had bought it. The Commissioners of Lunacy had protected his L. 20,000 zealously from the first: and his trustees had now paid the money over.

Alfred consulted by Mrs. Dodd, whose pet of pets he now was, as to the guests to be asked to the wedding breakfast, suggested "None but the tried friends of our adversity."

"What an excellent idea!" said Mrs. Dodd naively.

Dr. Sampson being duly invited asked if he should bring his Emulsion.

This proposal puzzled all but Mrs. Dodd. She was found laughing heartily in a corner without any sound of laughter. Being detected and pointed out by Julia, she said, with a little crow, "He means his wife. Yes, certainly, bring your Emulcent"--pretending he had used that more elegant word--"and then they will all see how well you can behave."

Accordingly he brought a lady, who was absurdly pretty to be the mother of several grown young ladies and gentlemen, and two shades more quiet and placid than Mrs. Dodd. She quietly had her chair placed by Dr.

Sampson's, and, whenever he got racy, she put a hand gently on his shoulder, and by some mesmeric effect it moderated him as Neptune did the waves in the AEneid. She was such a mistress of this mesmeric art, that she carried on a perfect conversation with her other neighbour, yet modulated her lion lord with a touch of that composing hand, in a parenthetical manner, and even while looking another way.

This hand, soft as down, yet irresistible, suppressed the great art of healing, vital chronometry, the wrongs of inventors, the collusions of medicine, the Mad Ox, and all but drawing-room topics, at the very first symptom, and only just allowed the doctor to be the life and soul of the party.

Julia and Mrs. Dodd had a good cry at parting. Of course Alfred consoled them: reminded them it was only for a week, and carried off his lovely prize, who in the carriage soon dried her eyes upon his shoulder.

Then she applied to her new lord and master for information. "They _say_ that you and me are one, now," said she interrogatively.

He told her triumphantly it was so.

"At that rate you are Julius and I am Elfrida," said she.

"That is a bargain," said he, and sealed it on the sweet lips that were murmuring Heaven so near him.

In this sore-tried and now happy pair the ardour of possession lasted long, and was succeeded by the sober but full felicity of conjugal love and high esteem combined. They were so young and elastic, that past sorrows seemed but to give one zest more to the great draught of happiness they now drank day by day. They all lived together at Albion Villa, thanks to Alfred. He was by nature combative, and his warlike soul was roused at the current theory that you cannot be happy under the same roof with your wife's mother. "That is cant," said he to Mrs. Dodd; "let us, you and I, trample on it hand in hand."

"My child," said poor Mrs. Dodd sorrowfully, "I am a poor hand at trampling; and everybody says a mother-in-law in the house bores a young gentleman sadly."

"If a young gentleman can't live happy with you, mamma," said he, kissing her, "he is a little sn.o.b, that is all, and not fit to live at all. _Delenda est Cantilena!_ That means 'Down with Cant!'"

They did live together: and behold eleven French plays, with their thirty-three English adaptations, confuted to the end of time.

Creatures so high-bred as Mrs. Dodd never fidget one. There is a repose about them; they are balm to all those they love, and blister to none.

Item, no stranger could tell by Mrs. Dodd's manner whether Edward or Alfred was her own son.

Oh, you happy little villa! you were as like Paradise as any mortal dwelling can be. A day came, however, when your walls could no longer hold all the happy inmates. Julia presented Alfred with a lovely boy; enter nurses, and the villa showed symptoms of bursting. Two months more, and Alfred and his wife and boy overflowed into the next villa.

It was but twenty yards off; and there was a double reason for the migration. As often happens after a long separation Heaven bestowed on Captain and Mrs. Dodd another infant to play about their knees at present, and help them grow younger instead of older: for tender parents begin life again with their children.

The boys were nearly of a size, though the nephew was a month or two older than his uncle, a relations.h.i.+p that was early impressed on their young minds, and caused those who heard their prattle many a hearty laugh.

"Mrs. Dodd," said a lady, "I couldn't tell by your manner which is yours and which is your daughter's."

"Why they are both mine," said Mrs. Dodd piteously, and opening her eyes with gentle astonishment.

As years rolled on Dr. Sampson made many converts at home and abroad.

The foreign ones acknowledged their obligations. The leading London physicians managed more skilfully; they came into his ideas, and bit by bit reversed their whole practice, and, twenty years after, Sampson began to strengthen the invalid at once, instead of first prostrating him, and so causing either long sickness or sudden death. But, with all this, they disowned their forerunner, and still called him a quack while adopting his quackery. This dishonesty led them into difficulties.

To hide that their whole practice in medicine was reversed on _better information,_ they went from shuffle to shuffle, till at last they reached this climax of fatuity and egotism--THE TYPE OF DISEASE IS CHANGED.

Natura mutatur, non nos mutamur.

O, mutable Nature and immutable doctors!

O, unstable Omniscience, and infallible Nescience!

The former may err; the latter never--in its own opinion.

At this rate, draining the weak of their life blood was the right thing in Cervantes' day: and when he observed that it killed men like sheep, and said so under the head of Sangrado, he was confounding his own age with an age to come three hundred years later, in which coming age depletion was _going_ to be wrong.

Moliere--in las.h.i.+ng the whole scholastic system of lancet, purge, and blister as one of slaughter--committed the same error: mistook his century for one to come.

And Sampson, thirty years ago, sang the same tune, and mistook his inflammatory generation for the cool generation as yet unborn. In short, it is the characteristic of a certain blunder called genius to see things too far in advance. The surest way to avoid this is not to see them at all; but go blindly by the cant of the hour. _Race moutonuiere va!_

Sampson was indignant at finding that these gentry, after denouncing him for years as a quack, were pilfering his system, yet still reviling him.

He went in a towering pa.s.sion, and hashed them by tongue and pen: told them they were his subtractors now as well as detractors, asked them how it happened that in countries where there is no Sampson the type of disease remains unchanged, depletion is the practice, and death the result, as it was in every age?

No man, however stout, can help being deeply wounded when he sees his ideas stolen, yet their author and publisher disowned. Many men's hearts have been broken by this: but I doubt whether they were really great men.

Don't tell me Lilliput ever really kills Brobdignag. Except, of course, when Brobdignag takes medical advice of Lilliput.

Dr. Sampson had three s.h.i.+elds against subtraction, detraction, and all the wrongs inventors endure: to wit, a choleric temper, a keen sense of humour, and a good wife. He storms and rages at his detracting pupils; but ends with roars of laughter at their impudence. I am told he still hopes to meet with justice some day, and to give justice a chance, he goes to bed at ten, for, says he--

"Jinny us, jinny us, Take care of your carca.s.s,"