A Rolling Stone, Vol. I

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XVIII.

‘O hateful error, melancholy's child!’

Trevet and Stapleton's business premises were advantageously situated in a street which, looked at from a tradesman's point of view, was the best in the town. Had it not been, rest assured neither Stapleton nor Trevet would have done business therein. They were too wise in their generation to flee from ‘the maddin crowd’ into any back street or lane, and their constancy to their post had its reward in a continual influx of this crowd into their dim and dingy house of business. They went not out again without leaving behind coins of the realm (terms strictly cash), and Trevet and Stapleton flourished.

The usual number of purchasers had visited the shop during the morning of a certain day. There had been a lull in the trade about noon, when, as a rule, even shopping has to give way to the claims of the midday meal. During this temporary depression of trade, when Mr. Stapleton was invisible, as indeed was generally the case, he being somewhat of a sleeping partner, and when Mr. Trevet was re-marking certain neckties which, by some accident, he really had been selling below cost price, a lady entered the shop with hurried step and asked an assistant if Mr. Trevet could be spoken with.

Mr. Trevet saw the lady come in, and concluded that she had been drawn thither, as many others had been, by his great sacrifice in household sheeting and window holland. He immediately ordered his assistant, Mr. Pinnock, to lay some eighty yards of the sacrificed commodities on the counter, and to hold himself in readiness to offer them up before the supposed purchaser. Mr. Pinnock vainly represented that the lady had expressed no desire either for sheeting or window holland, but had simply asked to see Mr. Trevet.

‘Very well,’ said that gentleman. ‘What of that? Do as I tell you, Mr. Pinnock’—and he made his way amongst mountainous masses of drapery in the direction of the lady.

‘I hear you have asked to see me, madam,’ he said, adroitly offering a tall spindle-shanked chair. ‘Most happy, I am sure, to do anything special for you. We are clearing off a great deal of this at present; obliged to sell low to make room for new stock. Good, useful material; wear like cast-iron, and last your lifetime. Mr. Pinnock! bring down some of the extra stout linen——’

Mr. Trevet had jerked out these fragments of sentences before the lady was able to interpose a word.

‘Oh, do not trouble to show me anything,’ she interrupted. ‘I only wish to ask you a few questions about a person who was once in your employ. I will not take up many moments of your time, but I should like to speak with you in private.’

‘Certainly, certainly, ma'am,’ said Mr. Trevet, piloting the lady down a long lane, shut in on either side by a row of carpeting and a festooned arrangement of curtains and tablecloths, which was very effective. ‘It's rather difficult to be private in this establishment, but I don't think even one of our young men could hear through all these goods. I should say this place is as nearly sound-proof as possible.’

Mr. Trevet led the way into a little square dark hole, barricaded with bale upon bale and box over box to the very roof. There was a window, high in the wall, but only one pane was allowed to fulfil its mission; the others were covered by a pile of hatboxes. There was an indescribable chaos in Mr. Trevet's shop, and he wasted no time in vain attempts to reduce it to order.

Again he offered a chair to the lady, and took his usual position of rest, leaning against a pile of carpeting, and waited for her to speak.

‘Some years ago,’ she said, fixing her keen dark eyes upon him, with an eager and anxious gaze, ‘you had a bookkeeper named Henry Randall. Do you remember him?’

‘Do I remember him!’ The felt carpeting swayed to and fro in response to Mr. Trevet's excited gesticulations. ‘A precious scamp! Yes; he was my first and last bookkeeper. We went into the cash system after that. We keep no books now, ma'am, nor bookkeepers either—had enough of ‘em.’

The lady turned very pale and gave a little gasp, as if for breath, at this answer; but with an effort she steadied her voice and asked, ‘Did he do anything wrong that you speak of him in such a manner.’

‘Well, he took what wasn't his; that's all,’ said Mr. Trevet. ‘Oh, he was a castaway. We heard all about him after we'd put a stop to his little game in our establishment. Why, he'd been guilty of the same thing before he left England. It was hushed up there: the family was high and proud; they sent him out of the country. But he was without any principle, so it was no warning to him.’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘surely this is not true. A second time!’

‘True? True as I am here. As for its being the second time, for all I know it may have been the seventh time. He was a deep fellow, but the case was clear. I was for giving him the benefit of the law but Stapleton's soft-hearted in such things, so we only sent him about his business, with a caution.

‘True!—it can't be true,’ murmured the lady, rather to herself than to Mr. Trevet.

‘Ma'am, there wasn't the least doubt of his guilt. No one else could have taken the money; and it was a large sum. Besides, there was his previous bad character to be considered. That was against him.’

‘No!’ she cried, indignantly. ‘It was unjust to reason from that. Because he had done wrong once, because he had yielded to some pressing temptation in one instance, you were ready to believe him guilty. And did he not deny it—did he take no steps to prove his innocence?’

‘Of course he denied it; he carried himself very high and lofty about the affair, but he couldn't prove his innocence. Couldn't be done, you see: things that don't exist can't be proved.’

Mr. Trevet sneered disagreeably, and the lady drew herself away from him with a hardly perceptible shiver. She was silent for a while, busying herself in clasping and reclasping her trembling hands. Mr. Trevet was impatient; he wanted to return to his favourite occupation of marking.

‘Well, madam,’ he said, in a harsh, rasping voice, ‘I suppose you don't want any more information about Mr. Henry Randall. He's one of those who are best left to themselves; that's my opinion.’

‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘I want to know everything you can tell me. What became of him when he left you, where he went to, and where he is now.’

‘Who knows where he is now? Ma'am, that sort of men find their way into places where their lady friends had best not follow them. I don't know what he did after he left us. I don't suppose any one else would take him. I felt it my duty to let others know the sort of character he had. I can tell you this—he went to the bad at the fastest rate he could, and the last time I heard of him he was working as a labourer in the harvest field.’

There was a dimness before the listener's eyes, and she felt as if she were slowly sinking down, down into some unfathomable deep. The bales and boxes that lined the walls of the room appeared to be whirling round her; Mr. Trevet seemed himself to be soaring above her, and to be speaking to her from some great distance, while his voice sounded loud and harsh as the voice of one who was proclaiming from the housetops the sad disgrace and fall of his neighbour.

Still he went on speaking, and still she listened. Oh, that she could persuade herself it was only a dream, or that it was of some stranger, of some man who was no more to her than other lost unfortunates that she heard those words:—‘A ne'er-do-well—not much better than a common vagrant, working at whatever came first, when he was obliged; doing nothing mostly—had been at the diggings—been an engineer he believed—been everything nearly, but done no good—lazy, worthless reprobate, whom hardworking men (such as Trevet) would have to keep some day in a public institution—very well if it weren't the gaol. Sorry for his friends and relatives; but pity would be wasted on him—he was lost.’

‘Lost, lost!’ she repeated to herself.

‘That's all I know, ma'am. If you'll allow me to give you some advice don't look after this young man any more. You may find him and wish afterwards you'd never looked for him. Trust me, he'd be no credit nor joy to any one if he should be helped into some respectable place again.’

The mist had cleared away now. She rose from her seat, thanked Mr. Trevet for his information, and turned to go.

Mr. Trevet never looked at her face; he had hardly noticed it during the interview, but Mr. Pinnock, his much-snubbed assistant, was frightened by the glimpse he caught of that pale countenance. The lady was passing him on her way out of the shop, but she walked very slowly, and put out her hands before her as if she were feeling her way or needed some support. She was going to faint, he thought, and he was wondering whether he should rush for a glass of water, when Mr. Trevet in a loud voice ordered him to show the object of his solicitude some cashmeres. ‘Splendid wearing material; all wool; immense width; save your money in the width; fashionable shades. Shall I cut you off a dress?’

All this Mr. Trevet had time to say while his assistant hesitated whether he should bring water or smelling salts, or whether he should bring anything at all. He became painfully conscious that there were tears in the lady's eyes, and that she was trying to put down her veil with fingers that trembled too much to be of any use. Mr. Trevet, to whom nothing was sacred, would not cease his attempts to effect a sale till he heard a positive refusal of his goods.

‘Anything else we can show you, ma'am?’ he said, following her. He had no answer; the lady had gone, just as Mr. Pinnock brought in a glass of water.

‘Mr. Pinnock, what's that for?’ said Mr. Trevet, jerking his thumb toward the glass. ‘Can't you get through your work without drinking cold water? A silly trick; it'll ruin your digestion. I never take it.’

Mr. Trevet certainly did not take water in the pure and unmixed form.

‘I thought the lady was going to be ill,’ said Mr. Pinnock. ‘I never saw any one so deathly pale.’

‘Stuff!’ said Mr. Trevet.

He was so lost in thought a moment after this, while wondering whether it would do to make further reduction in the price of certain Aberdeen winceys which would not ‘go off,’ that he did not hear his partner, Mr. Stapleton, come in. Mr. Stapleton went home to his lunch; he liked to have things comfortable. He was of a jovial appearance, younger and better-looking than Mr. Trevet, and (what was of more importance) better-tempered. He aroused his partner by a friendly nudge.

‘Well, what now?’ said Mr. Trevet, making a cabalistic mark, by which one of the initiated was to understand 11¾d. a yard.

‘What have you been after?’ said Stapleton. ‘As I came in I met a lady crying, or trying not to cry, and as pale as a sheet. Pinnock says you've been talking with her. Seems to me that's not the way to get customers, sending them away in tears.’

‘Pinnock is a blockhead,’ said Mr. Trevet. ‘She came to inquire after that young Randall—you remember him?’

‘That's it!’ cried Mr. Stapleton, bringing down his fist on the counter. ‘I wondered who she was like. She's as like Randall as a sister. What did you tell her? Aren't you ashamed? you've nearly broken her heart. Trevet, I shan't forget her face in a hurry.’

‘What a soft fellow you are!’ said his partner. ‘I only answered her questions. I told her Randall had ruined himself, and so he has. Was she his wife, do you think, or some near relative?’

‘Wife? He wasn't married. I believe she is his sister, and you might have spared her feelings.’

‘Well, you needn't make a fuss over it,’ said Trevet. ‘How was I to know his sister? I thought at first she might be some young woman he'd been engaged to, or something of the kind; and that the best thing I could do was to show the fellow up in his true light. His sister! I never thought of that. Mr. Pinnock! attend to that young lady.’