Johnny Ludlow Fourth Series Part 37

"Let me make one remark. You say the codicil stipulates that you shall pay a third of the profits to your mother--and it is a very just and right thing to do. Valentine, rely upon it, that your father's last intentions were that, of the other two-thirds left, one of them should be mine."

Valentine flushed red. He had a florid complexion at all times, something like salmon-colour. Very different from Tom's, which was clear and healthy.

"We won't talk any more about it, Tom. How you can get such crotchets into your head, I can't imagine. If you sit there till midday, I can say no more than I have said: I cannot take you into partners.h.i.+p."

"Then I shall leave you," said Tom, rising. He was a fine-looking young fellow, standing there with his arm on the back of the client's chair, in which he had sat; tall and straight. His good, honest face had a shade of pain in it, as it gazed straight out to Valentine's. He looked his full six-and-twenty years.

"Well, I wish you would leave me, Tom," replied Valentine, carelessly.

"I have heaps to do this morning."

"Leave the office, I mean. Leave you for good."

"Nonsense!"

"Though your father did not give me the rights that were my just due, I remained on, expecting and hoping that he would give them some time.

It was my duty to remain with him; at least, my mother told me so; and perhaps my interest. But the case is changed now. I will not stay with you, Valentine, unless you do me justice; I shall leave you now. Now, this hour."

"But you can't, Tom. You would put me to frightful inconvenience."

"And what inconvenience--inconvenience for life--are you putting me to, Valentine? You take my prospects from me. The position that ought to be mine, here at Islip, you refuse to let me hold. This was my father's practice; a portion of it, at least, ought to be mine. I will not continue to be a servant where I ought to be a master."

"Then you must go," said Valentine.

Tom held out his hand. "Good-bye. I do not part in enmity."

"Good-bye, Tom. I'm sorry: but it's your fault."

Tom Chandler went into the office where he had used to sit, opened his desk, and began putting up what things belonged to him. They made a tolerable-sized parcel. Valentine, left in his chair of state, sat on in a brown study. All the inconvenience that Tom's leaving him would be productive of was flas.h.i.+ng into his mind. Tom had been, under old Jacob, the prop and stay of the business; knew about everything, and had a clear head for details. He himself was different--and Valentine was never more sure of the fact than at this moment. There are lawyers and lawyers. Tom was one, Valentine was another. He, Valentine, had never much cared for business; he liked pleasure a great deal better. Indulged always by both father and mother, he had grown up self-indulgent. It was all very fine to perch himself in that chair and play the master; but he knew that, without Tom to direct things, for some time to come he should be three-parts lost. But, as to making him a partner and giving him a share? "No," concluded Valentine emphatically, "I won't do it."

Tom, carrying his paper parcel, left the house and crossed the road to the post-office, which was higher up the street, to post a letter he had hastily written. It was addressed to a lawyer at Worcester. A week or two before, Tom, being at Worcester, was asked by this gentleman if he would take the place of head clerk and manager in his office. The question was put jokingly, for the lawyer supposed Tom to be a fixture at Islip: but Tom saw that he would have been glad for him to take the berth. He hoped it might still be vacant. What with one thing and another, beginning with the injustice done him at the old place and his anxiety to get into another without delay, Tom felt more bothered than he had ever felt in his life. The tempting notion of setting-up somewhere for himself came into his mind. But it went out of it again: he could not afford to risk any waste of time, with his mother's home to keep up, and especially with this threat of Valentine's to stop her hundred and fifty pounds a-year income.

"How do you do, Mr. Chandler?"

At the sound of the pretty voice, Tom turned short round from the post-office window, which was a stationer's, to see a charming girl all ribbons and muslins, with sky-blue eyes and bright hair. Tom took the hand only half held out to him.

"I beg your pardon, Emma: I was reading this concert bill. The idea of Islip's getting up a concert!"

She was the only child of John Paul the lawyer, and had as fair a face as you'd wish to see, and a habit of blus.h.i.+ng at nothing. To watch her as she stood there, the roses coming and going, the dimples deepening, and the small white teeth peeping, did Tom good. He was reddening himself, for that matter.

"Yes, it is to be given in the large club-room at the Bell to-night,"

she answered. "Shall you come over for it?"

"Are you going to it, Emma?"

"Oh yes. Papa has taken twelve tickets. A great many people are coming in to go with us."

"I shall go also," said Tom decidedly. And at that the roses came again.

"What a large parcel you are carrying!"

Tom held the brown-paper parcel further out at the remark.

"They are my goods and chattels," said he. "Things that I had at the office. I have left it, Emma."

"Left the office!" she repeated, looking as though she did not understand. "You don't mean _really_ left it?--left it for good?"

"I have left it for good, Emma. Valentine----"

"Here's papa," interrupted Emma, as a stout, elderly gentleman with iron-grey hair turned out of the stationer's; neither of them having the least idea he was there.

"Is it you, Tom Chandler?" cried Mr. Paul.

"Yes, it is, sir."

"And fine to be you, I should say! Spending your time in gossip at the busiest part of the day."

"Unfortunately I have to-day no business to do," returned Tom, smiling in the old lawyer's face. "And I was just telling Miss Paul why. I have left the office, sir, and am looking out for another situation."

Mr. Paul stared at him. "Why, it is your own office. What's that for?"

"It ought to be my own office in part, as it was my father's before me.

But Valentine cannot see that, sir. He tells me he will not take me into partners.h.i.+p; that I ought not to expect it. I refuse to remain on any other terms; and so I have left him for good. These are my rattletraps.

Odds and ends of things that I am bringing away."

Mr. Paul continued to look at Tom in silence for a minute or two. Tom thought he was considering what he should next say. It was not that, however. "How well he would suit me! How I should like to take him! What a load of work he'd lift off my shoulders!" Those were the thoughts that were running rapidly through Mr. Paul's mind.

But he did not speak them. In fact, he had no intention of speaking them, or of taking on Tom, much as he would have liked to do it.

"When Jacob Chandler lay dying only yesterday, as it were, he told me you would join his son; that the two of you would carry on the practice together."

"Yes, he said the same thing to me," replied Tom. "But Valentine refuses to carry it out. So I told him I would not be a servant where I ought to be a master, and came away."

"And what are you going to do, young man?"

Tom smiled. He was just as much a lawyer as Mr. Paul was. "I should like to set up in practice for myself," he answered; "but I do not yet see my way sufficiently clear to do so. There may be a chance for me at Worcester, as managing clerk. I have written to ask if the place is filled up. May I join your party to the concert to-night, sir?" he asked.

"I don't mind--if you are going to it," said the old lawyer: "but I can't see what young men want at concerts?"

Tom caught Miss Emma's eye and her blushes, and gave her a glance that told her he should be sure to come.

But, before the lapse of twenty-four hours, in spite of his non-intention, Mr. Paul had taken on Tom Chandler and, looking back in later years, it might be seen that it had been on the cards of destiny that Tom should be taken.

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will."

Lawyer Paul was still in his dining-room that evening in his handsome house just out of Islip, and before any of his expected guests had come, when Tom arrived to say he could not make one, and was shown into the drawing-room. Feasting his eyes with Miss Emma's charming dress, and shaking her hand longer than was at all polite, Tom told her why he could not go.

"My mother took me to task severely, Emma. She asked me what I could be thinking of to wish to go to a public concert when my uncle was only buried the day before yesterday. The truth is, I never thought of that."

"I am so sorry," whispered Emma. "But I am worse than you are. It was I who first asked whether you meant to go. And it is to be the nicest concert imaginable!"