Miss Cayley's Adventures Part 18

'I do not resemble her, I hope,' he persisted, with a look which I could almost describe as wistful.

'A family likeness, perhaps,' I put in. 'Family likenesses exist, you know--often with complete divergence of tastes and character.'

He looked relieved. 'That is true. Oh, how true! But the likeness in my case, I must admit, escapes me.'

I temporised. 'Strangers see these things most,' I said, airing the stock plat.i.tudes. 'It may be superficial. And, of course, one knows that profound differences of intellect and moral feeling often occur within the limits of a single family.'

'You are quite right,' he said, with decision. 'Georgina's principles are not mine. Excuse my remarking it, but you seem to be a young lady of unusual penetration.'

I saw he took my remark as a compliment. What I really meant to say was that a commonplace man might easily be brother to so clever a woman as Lady Georgina.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE BOWED TO US EACH SEPARATELY.]

He gathered up his hat, his stick, his gloves, his notes, and his typewritten letters, one by one, and backed out politely. He was a punctilious millionaire. He had risen by urbanity to his brother directors, like a model guinea-pig. He bowed to us each separately as if we had been d.u.c.h.esses.

As soon as he was gone, Elsie turned to me. 'Brownie, how on earth did you guess it? They're so awfully different!'

'Not at all,' I answered. 'A few surface unlikenesses only just mask an underlying ident.i.ty. Their features are the same; but his are plump; hers, shrunken. Lady Georgina's expression is sharp and worldly; Mr.

Ashurst's is smooth, and bland, and financial. And then their manner!

Both are fussy; but Lady Georgina's is honest, open, ill-tempered fussiness; Mr. Ashurst's is concealed under an artificial mask of obsequious politeness. One's cantankerous; the other's only pernicketty.

It's one tune, after all, in two different keys.'

From that day forth, the Urbane Old Gentleman was a daily visitor. He took an hour at a time at first; but after a few days, the hour lengthened out (apologetically) to an entire morning. He 'presumed to ask' my Christian name the second day, and remembered my father--'a man of excellent principles.' But he didn't care for Elsie to work for him.

Fortunately for her, other work dropped in, once we had found a client, or else, poor girl, she would have felt sadly slighted. I was glad she had something to do; the sense of dependence weighed heavily upon her.

The Urbane Old Gentleman did not confine himself entirely, after the first few days, to Stock Exchange literature. He was engaged on a Work--he spoke of it always with bated breath, and a capital letter was implied in his intonation; the Work was one on the Interpretation of Prophecy. Unlike Lady Georgina, who was tart and crisp, Mr. Marmaduke Ashurst was devout and decorous; where she said 'pack of fools,' he talked with unction of 'the mental deficiencies of our poorer brethren.'

But his religious opinions and his stockbroking had got strangely mixed up at the wash somehow. He was convinced that the British nation represented the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel--and in particular Ephraim--a matter on which, as a mere lay-woman, I would not presume either to agree with him or to differ from him. 'That being so, Miss Cayley, we can easily understand that the existing commercial prosperity of England depends upon the promises made to Abraham.'

I a.s.sented, without committing myself. 'It would seem to follow.'

Mr. Ashurst, encouraged by so much a.s.sent, went on to unfold his System of Interpretation, which was of a strictly commercial or company-promoting character. It ran like a prospectus. 'We have inherited the gold of Australia and the diamonds of the Cape,' he said, growing didactic, and lifting one fat forefinger; 'we are now inheriting Klondike and the Rand, for it is morally certain that we shall annex the Transvaal. Again, "the chief things of the ancient mountains, and the precious things of the everlasting hills." What does that mean? The ancient mountains are clearly the Rockies; can the everlasting hills be anything but the Himalayas? "For they shall suck of the abundance of the seas"--that refers, of course, to our world-wide commerce, due mainly to imports--"and of the treasures hid in the sand." Which sand?

Undoubtedly, I say, the desert of Mount Sinai. What then is our obvious destiny? A lady of your intelligence must gather at once that it is----?' He paused and gazed at me.

'To drive the Sultan out of Syria,' I suggested tentatively, 'and to annex Palestine to our practical province of Egypt?'

He leaned back in his chair and folded his fat hands in undisguised satisfaction. 'Now, you are a thinker of exceptional penetration,' he broke out. 'Do you know, Miss Cayley, I have tried to make that point clear to the War Office, and the Prime Minister, and many leading financiers in the City of London, and I _can't_ get them to see it. They have no heads, those people. But _you_ catch at it at a glance. Why, I endeavoured to interest Rothschild and induce him to join me in my Palestine Development Syndicate, and, will you believe it, the man refused point blank. Though if he had only looked at Nahum iii. 17----'

'Mere financiers,' I said, smiling, 'will not consider these questions from a historical and prophetic point of view. They see nothing above percentages.'

'That's it,' he replied, lighting up. 'They have no higher feelings.

Though, mind you, there will be dividends too; mark my words, there will be dividends. This syndicate, besides fulfilling the prophecies, will pay forty per cent on every penny embarked in it.'

'Only forty per cent for Ephraim!' I murmured, half below my breath.

'Why, Judah is said to batten upon sixty.'

He caught at it eagerly, without perceiving my gentle sarcasm.

'In that case, we might even expect seventy,' he put in with a gasp of antic.i.p.ation. 'Though I approached Rothschild first with my scheme on purpose, so that Israel and Judah might once more unite in sharing the promises.'

'Your combined generosity and commercial instinct does you credit,' I answered. 'It is rare to find so much love for an abstract study side by side with such conspicuous financial ability.'

His guilelessness was beyond words. He swallowed it like an infant. 'So I think,' he answered. 'I am glad to observe that you understand my character. Mere City men don't. They have no soul above shekels. Though, as I show them, there are shekels in it, too. Dividends, dividends, di-vidends. But _you_ are a lady of understanding and comprehension. You have been to Girton, haven't you? Perhaps you read Greek, then?'

'Enough to get on with.'

'Could you look things up in Herodotus?'

'Certainly?'

'In the original?'

'Oh, dear, yes.'

He regarded me once more with the same astonished glance. His own cla.s.sics, I soon learnt, were limited to the amount which a public school succeeds in dinning, during the intervals of cricket and football into an English gentleman. Then he informed me that he wished me to hunt up certain facts in Herodotus "and elsewhere" confirmatory of his view that the English were the descendants of the Ten Tribes. I promised to do so, swallowing even that comprehensive "elsewhere." It was none of my business to believe or disbelieve: I was paid to get up a case, and I got one up to the best of my ability. I imagine it was at least as good as most other cases in similar matters: at any rate, it pleased the old gentleman vastly.

By dint of listening, I began to like him. But Elsie couldn't bear him.

She hated the fat crease at the back of his neck, she told me.

After a week or two devoted to the Interpretation of Prophecy on a strictly commercial basis of Founders' Shares, with interludes of mining engineers' reports upon the rubies of Mount Sinai and the supposed auriferous quartzites of Palestine, the Urbane Old Gentleman trotted down to the office one day, carrying a packet of notes of most voluminous magnitude. "Can we work in a room alone this morning, Miss Cayley?" he asked, with mystery in his voice: he was always mysterious.

"I want to intrust you with a piece of work of an exceptionally private and confidential character. It concerns Property. In point of fact," he dropped his voice to a whisper. "I want you to draw up my will for me."

"Certainly," I said, opening the door into the back office. But I trembled in my shoes. Could this mean that he was going to draw up a will, disinheriting Harold Tillington?

And, suppose he did, what then? My heart was in a tumult. If Harold were rich--well and good, I could never marry him. But, if Harold were poor-- I must keep my promise. Could I wish him to be rich? Could I wish him to be poor? My heart stood divided two ways within me.

The Urbane Old Gentleman began with immense deliberation, as befits a man of principle when Property is at stake. 'You will kindly take down notes from my dictation,' he said, fussing with his papers; 'and afterwards, I will ask you to be so good as to copy it all out fair on your typewriter for signature.'

'Is a typewritten form legal?' I ventured to inquire.

'A most perspicacious young lady!' he interjected, well pleased. 'I have investigated that point, and find it perfectly regular. Only, if I may venture to say so, there should be no erasures.'

'There shall be none,' I answered.

The Urbane Old Gentleman leant back in his easy chair, and began dictating from his notes with tantalising deliberateness. This was the last will and testament of him, Marmaduke Courtney Ashurst. Its verbiage wearied me. I was eager for him to come to the point about Harold.

Instead of that, he did what it seems is usual in such cases--set out with a number of unimportant legacies to old family servants and other hangers-on among 'our poorer brethren.' I fumed and fretted inwardly.

Next came a series of quaint bequests of a quite novel character. 'I give and bequeath to James Walsh and Sons, of 720 High Holborn, London, the sum of Five Hundred Pounds, in consideration of the benefit they have conferred upon humanity by the invention of a sugar-spoon or silver sugar-sifter, by means of which it is possible to dust sugar upon a tart or pudding without letting the whole or the greater part of the material run through the apertures uselessly in transit. You must have observed, Miss Cayley--with your usual perspicacity--that most sugar-sifters allow the sugar to fall through them on to the table prematurely.'

'I have noticed it,' I answered, trembling with anxiety.

'James Walsh and Sons, acting on a hint from me, have succeeded in inventing a form of spoon which does not possess that regrettable drawback. "Run through the apertures uselessly in transit," I think I said last. Yes, thank you. Very good. We will now continue. And I give and bequeath the like sum of Five Hundred Pounds--did I say, free of legacy duty? No? Then please add it to James Walsh's clause. Five Hundred Pounds, free of legacy duty, to Thomas Webster Jones, of Wheeler Street, Soho, for his admirable invention of a pair of braces which will not slip down on the wearer's shoulders after half an hour's use. Most braces, you must have observed, Miss Cayley----'

'My acquaintance with braces is limited, not to say abstract,' I interposed, smiling.

He gazed at me, and twirled his fat thumbs.

'_Of_ course,' he murmured. '_Of_ course. But most braces, you may not be aware, slip down unpleasantly on the shoulder-blade, and so lead to an awkward habit of hitching them up by the sleeve-hole of the waistcoat at frequent intervals. Such a habit must be felt to be ungraceful.

Thomas Webster Jones, to whom I pointed out this error of manufacture, has invented a brace the two halves of which diverge at a higher angle than usual, and fasten further towards the centre of the body in front--pardon these details--so as to obviate that difficulty. He has given me satisfaction, and he deserves to be rewarded.'

I heard through it all the voice of Lady Georgina observing, tartly, 'Why the idiots can't make braces to fit one at first pa.s.ses _my_ comprehension. But, there, my dear; the people who manufacture them are a set of born fools, and what can you expect from an imbecile?' Mr.