Джером К. Джером
Tommy and Co.
Doctor William Smith (né Wilhelm Schmidt) shrugged his fat shoulders. “We can do noding. Dese fogs of ours: id is de one ting dat enables the foreigner to crow over us. Keep him quiet. De dormouse – id is a goot idea.”
That evening William Clodd mounted to the second floor of 16, Gough Square, where dwelt his friend, Peter Hope, and knocked briskly at the door.
“Come in,” said a decided voice, which was not Peter Hope’s.
Mr. William Clodd’s ambition was, and always had been, to be the owner or part-owner of a paper. To-day, as I have said, he owns a quarter of a hundred, and is in negotiation, so rumour goes, for seven more. But twenty years ago “Clodd and Co., Limited,” was but in embryo. And Peter Hope, journalist, had likewise and for many a long year cherished the ambition to be, before he died, the owner or part-owner of a paper. Peter Hope to-day owns nothing, except perhaps the knowledge, if such things be permitted, that whenever and wherever his name is mentioned, kind thoughts arise unbidden – that someone of the party will surely say: “Dear old Peter! What a good fellow he was!” Which also may be in its way a valuable possession: who knows? But twenty years ago Peter’s horizon was limited by Fleet Street.
Peter Hope was forty-seven, so he said, a dreamer and a scholar. William Clodd was three-and-twenty, a born hustler, very wide awake. Meeting one day by accident upon an omnibus, when Clodd lent Peter, who had come out without his purse, threepence to pay his fare with; drifting into acquaintanceship, each had come to acquire a liking and respect for the other. The dreamer thought with wonder of Clodd’s shrewd practicability; the cute young man of business was lost in admiration of what seemed to him his old friend’s marvellous learning. Both had arrived at the conclusion that a weekly journal with Peter Hope as editor, and William Clodd as manager, would be bound to be successful.
“If only we could scrape together a thousand pounds!” had sighed Peter.
“The moment we lay our hands upon the coin, we’ll start that paper. Remember, it’s a bargain,” had answered William Clodd.
Mr. William Clodd turned the handle and walked in. With the door still in his hand he paused to look round the room. It was the first time he had seen it. His meetings hitherto with Peter Hope had been chance rencontres in street or restaurant. Always had he been curious to view the sanctuary of so much erudition.
A large, oak-panelled room, its three high windows, each with a low, cushioned seat beneath it, giving on to Gough Square. Thirty-five years before, Peter Hope, then a young dandy with side whiskers close-cropped and terminating just below the ear; with wavy, brown hair, giving to his fresh-complexioned face an appearance almost girlish; in cut-away blue coat, flowered waistcoat, black silk cravat secured by two gold pins chained together, and tightly strapped grey trouserings, had, aided and abetted by a fragile little lady in crinoline and much-flounced skirt, and bodice somewhat low, with corkscrew curls each movement of her head set ringing, planned and furnished it in accordance with the sober canons then in vogue, spending thereupon more than they should, as is to be expected from the young to whom the future promises all things. The fine Brussels carpet! A little too bright, had thought the shaking curls. “The colours will tone down, miss – ma’am.” The shopman knew. Only by the help of the round island underneath the massive Empire table, by excursions into untrodden corners, could Peter recollect the rainbow floor his feet had pressed when he was twenty-one. The noble bookcase, surmounted by Minerva’s bust. Really it was too expensive. But the nodding curls had been so obstinate. Peter’s silly books and papers must be put away in order; the curls did not intend to permit any excuse for untidiness. So, too, the handsome, brass-bound desk; it must be worthy of the beautiful thoughts Peter would pen upon it. The great sideboard, supported by two such angry-looking mahogany lions; it must be strong to support the weight of silver clever Peter would one day purchase to place upon it. The few oil paintings in their heavy frames. A solidly furnished, sober apartment; about it that subtle atmosphere of dignity one finds but in old rooms long undisturbed, where one seems to read upon the walls: “I, Joy and Sorrow, twain in one, have dwelt here.” One item only there was that seemed out of place among its grave surroundings – a guitar, hanging from the wall, ornamented with a ridiculous blue bow, somewhat faded.
“Mr. William Clodd?” demanded the decided voice.
Clodd started and closed the door.
“Guessed it in once,” admitted Mr. Clodd.
“I thought so,” said the decided voice. “We got your note this afternoon. Mr. Hope will be back at eight. Will you kindly hang up your hat and coat in the hall? You will find a box of cigars on the mantelpiece. Excuse my being busy. I must finish this, then I’ll talk to you.”
The owner of the decided voice went on writing. Clodd, having done as he was bid, sat himself in the easy-chair before the fire and smoked. Of the person behind the desk Mr. Clodd could see but the head and shoulders. It had black, curly hair, cut short. It’s only garment visible below the white collar and red tie might have been a boy’s jacket designed more like a girl’s, or a girl’s designed more like a boy’s; partaking of the genius of English statesmanship, it appeared to be a compromise. Mr. Clodd remarked the long, drooping lashes over the bright, black eyes.
“It’s a girl,” said Mr. Clodd to himself; “rather a pretty girl.”
Mr. Clodd, continuing downward, arrived at the nose.
“No,” said Mr. Clodd to himself, “it’s a boy – a cheeky young beggar, I should say.”
The person at the desk, giving a grunt of satisfaction, gathered together sheets of manuscript and arranged them; then, resting its elbows on the desk and taking its head between its hands, regarded Mr. Clodd.
“Don’t you hurry yourself,” said Mr. Clodd; “but when you really have finished, tell me what you think of me.”
“I beg your pardon,” apologised the person at the desk. “I have got into a habit of staring at people. I know it’s rude. I’m trying to break myself of it.”
“Tell me your name,” suggested Mr. Clodd, “and I’ll forgive you.”
“Tommy,” was the answer – “I mean Jane.”
“Make up your mind,” advised Mr. Clodd; “don’t let me influence you. I only want the truth.”
“You see,” explained the person at the desk, “everybody calls me Tommy, because that used to be my name. But now it’s Jane.”
“I see,” said Mr. Clodd. “And which am I to call you?”
The person at the desk pondered. “Well, if this scheme you and Mr. Hope have been talking about really comes to anything, we shall be a good deal thrown together, you see, and then I expect you’ll call me Tommy – most people do.”
“You’ve heard about the scheme? Mr. Hope has told you?”
“Why, of course,” replied Tommy. “I’m Mr. Hope’s devil.”
For the moment Clodd doubted whether his old friend had not started a rival establishment to his own.
“I help him in his work,” Tommy relieved his mind by explaining. “In journalistic circles we call it devilling.”
“I understand,” said Mr. Clodd. “And what do you think, Tommy, of the scheme? I may as well start calling you Tommy, because, between you and me, I think the idea will come to something.”
Tommy fixed her black eyes upon him. She seemed to be looking him right through.
“You are staring again, Tommy,” Clodd reminded her. “You’ll have trouble breaking yourself of that habit, I can see.”
“I was trying to make up my mind about you. Everything depends upon the business man.”
“Glad to hear you say so,” replied the self-satisfied Clodd.
“If you are very clever – Do you mind coming nearer to the lamp? I can’t quite see you over there.”
Clodd never could understand why he did it – never could understand why, from first to last, he always did what Tommy wished him to do; his only consolation being that other folks seemed just as helpless. He rose and, crossing the long room, stood at attention before the large desk, nervousness, to which he was somewhat of a stranger, taking possession of him.
“You don’t look very clever.”
Clodd experienced another new sensation – that of falling in his own estimation.
“And yet one can see that you are clever.”
The mercury of Clodd’s conceit shot upward to a point that in the case of anyone less physically robust might have been dangerous to health.
Clodd held out his hand. “We’ll pull it through, Tommy. The Guv’nor shall find the literature; you and I will make it go. I like you.”
And Peter Hope, entering at the moment, caught a spark from the light that shone in the eyes of William Clodd and Tommy, whose other name was Jane, as, gripping hands, they stood with the desk between them, laughing they knew not why. And the years fell from old Peter, and, again a boy, he also laughed he knew not why. He had sipped from the wine-cup of youth.
“It’s all settled, Guv’nor!” cried Clodd. “Tommy and I have fixed things up. We’ll start with the New Year.”
“You’ve got the money?”
“I’m reckoning on it. I don’t see very well how I can miss it.”
“Sufficient?”
“Just about. You get to work.”
“I’ve saved a little,” began Peter. “It ought to have been more, but somehow it isn’t.”
“Perhaps we shall want it,” Clodd replied; “perhaps we shan’t. You are supplying the brains.”
The three for a few moments remained silent.
“I think, Tommy,” said Peter, “I think a bottle of the old Madeira – ”
“Not to-night,” said Clodd; “next time.”
“To drink success,” urged Peter.
“One man’s success generally means some other poor devil’s misfortune,” answered Clodd.
“Can’t be helped, of course, but don’t want to think about it to-night. Must be getting back to my dormouse. Good night.”
Clodd shook hands and bustled out.
“I thought as much,” mused Peter aloud.
“What an odd mixture the man is! Kind – no one could have been kinder to the poor old fellow. Yet all the while – We are an odd mixture, Tommy,” said Peter Hope, “an odd mixture, we men and women.” Peter was a philosopher.
The white-whiskered old dormouse soon coughed himself to sleep for ever.
“I shall want you and the missis to come to the funeral, Gladman,” said Mr. Clodd, as he swung into the stationer’s shop; “and bring Pincer with you. I’m writing to him.”
“Don’t see what good we can do,” demurred Gladman.
“Well, you three are his only relatives; it’s only decent you should be present,” urged Clodd. “Besides, there’s the will to be read. You may care to hear it.”
The dry old law stationer opened wide his watery eyes.
“His will! Why, what had he got to leave? There was nothing but the annuity.”
“You turn up at the funeral,” Clodd told him, “and you’ll learn all about it. Bonner’s clerk will be there and will bring it with him. Everything is going to be done comme il faut, as the French say.”
“I ought to have known of this,” began Mr. Gladman.
“Glad to find you taking so much interest in the old chap,” said Clodd. “Pity he’s dead and can’t thank you.”
“I warn you,” shouted old Gladman, whose voice was rising to a scream, “he was a helpless imbecile, incapable of acting for himself! If any undue influence – ”
“See you on Friday,” broke in Clodd, who was busy.
Friday’s ceremony was not a sociable affair. Mrs. Gladman spoke occasionally in a shrill whisper to Mr. Gladman, who replied with grunts. Both employed the remainder of their time in scowling at Clodd. Mr. Pincer, a stout, heavy gentleman connected with the House of Commons, maintained a ministerial reserve. The undertaker’s foreman expressed himself as thankful when it was over. He criticised it as the humpiest funeral he had ever known; for a time he had serious thoughts of changing his profession.
The solicitor’s clerk was waiting for the party on its return from Kensal Green. Clodd again offered hospitality. Mr. Pincer this time allowed himself a glass of weak whisky-and-water, and sipped it with an air of doing so without prejudice. The clerk had one a little stronger, Mrs. Gladman, dispensing with consultation, declined shrilly for self and partner. Clodd, explaining that he always followed legal precedent, mixed himself one also and drank “To our next happy meeting.” Then the clerk read.
It was a short and simple will, dated the previous August. It appeared that the old gentleman, unknown to his relatives, had died possessed of shares in a silver mine, once despaired of, now prospering. Taking them at present value, they would produce a sum well over two thousand pounds. The old gentleman had bequeathed five hundred pounds to his brother-in-law, Mr. Gladman; five hundred pounds to his only other living relative, his first cousin, Mr. Pincer; the residue to his friend, William Clodd, as a return for the many kindnesses that gentleman had shown him.
Mr. Gladman rose, more amused than angry.
“And you think you are going to pocket that one thousand to twelve hundred pounds. You really do?” he asked Mr. Clodd, who, with legs stretched out before him, sat with his hands deep in his trousers pockets.
“That’s the idea,” admitted Mr. Clodd.
Mr. Gladman laughed, but without much lightening the atmosphere. “Upon my word, Clodd, you amuse me – you quite amuse me,” repeated Mr. Gladman.
“You always had a sense of humour,” commented Mr. Clodd.
“You villain! You double-dyed villain!” screamed Mr. Gladman, suddenly changing his tone. “You think the law is going to allow you to swindle honest men! You think we are going to sit still for you to rob us! That will – ” Mr. Gladman pointed a lank forefinger dramatically towards the table.
“You mean to dispute it?” inquired Mr. Clodd.
For a moment Mr. Gladman stood aghast at the other’s coolness, but soon found his voice again.
“Dispute it!” he shrieked. “Do you dispute that you influenced him? – dictated it to him word for word, made the poor old helpless idiot sign it, he utterly incapable of even understanding – ”
“Don’t chatter so much,” interrupted Mr. Clodd. “It’s not a pretty voice, yours. What I asked you was, do you intend to dispute it?”
“If you will kindly excuse us,” struck in Mrs. Gladman, addressing Mr. Clodd with an air of much politeness, “we shall just have time, if we go now, to catch our solicitor before he leaves his office.”
Mr. Gladman took up his hat from underneath his chair.
“One moment,” suggested Mr. Clodd. “I did influence him to make that will. If you don’t like it, there’s an end of it.”
“Of course,” commenced Mr. Gladman in a mollified tone.
“Sit down,” suggested Mr. Clodd. “Let’s try another one.” Mr. Clodd turned to the clerk. “The previous one, Mr. Wright, if you please; the one dated June the 10th.”
An equally short and simple document, it bequeathed three hundred pounds to Mr. William Clodd in acknowledgment of kindnesses received, the residue to the Royal Zoological Society of London, the deceased having been always interested in and fond of animals. The relatives, “Who have never shown me the slightest affection or given themselves the slightest trouble concerning me, and who have already received considerable sums out of my income,” being by name excluded.
“I may mention,” observed Mr. Clodd, no one else appearing inclined to break the silence, “that in suggesting the Royal Zoological Society to my poor old friend as a fitting object for his benevolence, I had in mind a very similar case that occurred five years ago. A bequest to them was disputed on the grounds that the testator was of unsound mind. They had to take their case to the House of Lords before they finally won it.”
“Anyhow,” remarked Mr. Gladman, licking his lips, which were dry, “you won’t get anything, Mr. Clodd – no, not even your three-hundred pounds, clever as you think yourself. My brother-in-law’s money will go to the lawyers.”
Then Mr. Pincer rose and spoke slowly and clearly. “If there must be a lunatic connected with our family, which I don’t see why there should be, it seems to me to be you, Nathaniel Gladman.”
Mr. Gladman stared back with open mouth. Mr. Pincer went on impressively.
“As for my poor old cousin Joe, he had his eccentricities, but that was all. I for one am prepared to swear that he was of sound mind in August last and quite capable of making his own will. It seems to me that the other thing, dated in June, is just waste paper.”
Mr. Pincer having delivered himself, sat down again. Mr. Gladman showed signs of returning language.
“Oh! what’s the use of quarrelling?” chirped in cheery Mrs. Gladman. “It’s five hundred pounds we never expected. Live and let live is what I always say.”
“It’s the damned artfulness of the thing,” said Mr. Gladman, still very white about the gills.
“Oh, you have a little something to thaw your face,” suggested his wife.
Mr. and Mrs. Gladman, on the strength of the five hundred pounds, went home in a cab. Mr. Pincer stayed behind and made a night of it with Mr. Clodd and Bonner’s clerk, at Clodd’s expense.
The residue worked out at eleven hundred and sixty-nine pounds and a few shillings. The capital of the new company, “established for the purpose of carrying on the business of newspaper publishers and distributors, printers, advertising agents, and any other trade and enterprise affiliated to the same,” was one thousand pounds in one pound shares, fully paid up; of which William Clodd, Esquire, was registered proprietor of four hundred and sixty-three; Peter Hope, M.A., of 16, Gough Square, of also four hundred and sixty-three; Miss Jane Hope, adopted daughter of said Peter Hope (her real name nobody, herself included, ever having known), and generally called Tommy, of three, paid for by herself after a battle royal with William Clodd; Mrs. Postwhistle, of Rolls Court, of ten, presented by the promoter; Mr. Pincer, of the House of Commons, also of ten (still owing for); Dr. Smith (né Schmidt) of fifty; James Douglas Alexander Calder McTear (otherwise the “Wee Laddie”), residing then in Mrs. Postwhistle’s first floor front, of one, paid for by poem published in the first number: “The Song of the Pen.”
Choosing a title for the paper cost much thought. Driven to despair, they called it Good Humour.
STORY THE THIRD – Grindley Junior drops into the Position of Publisher
Few are the ways of the West Central district that have changed less within the last half-century than Nevill’s Court, leading from Great New Street into Fetter Lane. Its north side still consists of the same quaint row of small low shops that stood there – doing perhaps a little brisker business – when George the Fourth was King; its southern side of the same three substantial houses each behind a strip of garden, pleasant by contrast with surrounding grimness, built long ago – some say before Queen Anne was dead.
Out of the largest of these, passing through the garden, then well cared for, came one sunny Sunday morning, some fifteen years before the commencement proper of this story, one Solomon Appleyard, pushing in front of him a perambulator. At the brick wall surmounted by wooden railings that divides the garden from the court, Solomon paused, hearing behind him the voice of Mrs. Appleyard speaking from the doorstep.
“If I don’t see you again until dinner-time, I’ll try and get on without you, understand. Don’t think of nothing but your pipe and forget the child. And be careful of the crossings.”
Mrs. Appleyard retired into the darkness. Solomon, steering the perambulator carefully, emerged from Nevill’s Court without accident. The quiet streets drew Solomon westward. A vacant seat beneath the shade overlooking the Long Water in Kensington Gardens invited to rest.
“Piper?” suggested a small boy to Solomon. “Sunday Times, ’Server?”
“My boy,” said Mr. Appleyard, speaking slowly, “when you’ve been mewed up with newspapers eighteen hours a day for six days a week, you can do without ’em for a morning. Take ’em away. I want to forget the smell of ’em.”
Solomon, having assured himself that the party in the perambulator was still breathing, crossed his legs and lit his pipe.
“Hezekiah!”
The exclamation had been wrung from Solomon Appleyard by the approach of a stout, short man clad in a remarkably ill-fitting broad-cloth suit.
“What, Sol, my boy?”
“It looked like you,” said Solomon. “And then I said to myself: ‘No; surely it can’t be Hezekiah; he’ll be at chapel.’”
“You run about,” said Hezekiah, addressing a youth of some four summers he had been leading by the hand. “Don’t you go out of my sight; and whatever you do, don’t you do injury to those new clothes of yours, or you’ll wish you’d never been put into them. The truth is,” continued Hezekiah to his friend, his sole surviving son and heir being out of earshot, “the morning tempted me. ’Tain’t often I get a bit of fresh air.”
“Doing well?”
“The business,” replied Hezekiah, “is going up by leaps and bounds – leaps and bounds. But, of course, all that means harder work for me. It’s from six in the morning till twelve o’clock at night.”
“There’s nothing I know of,” returned Solomon, who was something of a pessimist, “that’s given away free gratis for nothing except misfortune.”
“Keeping yourself up to the mark ain’t too easy,” continued Hezekiah; “and when it comes to other folks! play’s all they think of. Talk religion to them – why, they laugh at you! What the world’s coming to, I don’t know. How’s the printing business doing?”
“The printing business,” responded the other, removing his pipe and speaking somewhat sadly, “the printing business looks like being a big thing. Capital, of course, is what hampers me – or, rather, the want of it. But Janet, she’s careful; she don’t waste much, Janet don’t.”
“Now, with Anne,” replied Hezekiah, “it’s all the other way – pleasure, gaiety, a day at Rosherville or the Crystal Palace – anything to waste money.”
“Ah! she was always fond of her bit of fun,” remembered Solomon.
“Fun!” retorted Hezekiah. “I like a bit of fun myself. But not if you’ve got to pay for it. Where’s the fun in that?”
“What I ask myself sometimes,” said Solomon, looking straight in front of him, “is what do we do it for?”
“What do we do what for?”
“Work like blessed slaves, depriving ourselves of all enjoyments. What’s the sense of it? What – ”
A voice from the perambulator beside him broke the thread of Solomon Appleyard’s discourse. The sole surviving son of Hezekiah Grindley, seeking distraction and finding none, had crept back unperceived. A perambulator! A thing his experience told him out of which excitement in some form or another could generally be obtained. You worried it and took your chance. Either it howled, in which case you had to run for your life, followed – and, unfortunately, overtaken nine times out of ten – by a whirlwind of vengeance; or it gurgled: in which case the heavens smiled and halos descended on your head. In either event you escaped the deadly ennui that is the result of continuous virtue. Master Grindley, his star having pointed out to him a peacock’s feather lying on the ground, had, with one eye upon his unobservant parent, removed the complicated coverings sheltering Miss Helvetia Appleyard from the world, and anticipating by a quarter of a century the prime enjoyment of British youth, had set to work to tickle that lady on the nose. Miss Helvetia Appleyard awakened, did precisely what the tickled British maiden of to-day may be relied upon to do under corresponding circumstances: she first of all took swift and comprehensive survey of the male thing behind the feather. Had he been displeasing in her eyes, she would, one may rely upon it, have anteceded the behaviour in similar case of her descendant of to-day – that is to say, have expressed resentment in no uncertain terms. Master Nathaniel Grindley proving, however, to her taste, that which might have been considered impertinence became accepted as a fit and proper form of introduction. Miss Appleyard smiled graciously – nay, further, intimated desire for more.
“That your only one?” asked the paternal Grindley.
“She’s the only one,” replied Solomon, speaking in tones less pessimistic.
Miss Appleyard had with the help of Grindley junior wriggled herself into a sitting posture. Grindley junior continued his attentions, the lady indicating by signs the various points at which she was most susceptible.
“Pretty picture they make together, eh?” suggested Hezekiah in a whisper to his friend.
“Never saw her take to anyone like that before,” returned Solomon, likewise in a whisper.
A neighbouring church clock chimed twelve. Solomon Appleyard, knocking the ashes from his pipe, arose.
“Don’t know any reason myself why we shouldn’t see a little more of one another than we do,” suggested Grindley senior, shaking hands.
“Give us a look-up one Sunday afternoon,” suggested Solomon. “Bring the youngster with you.”
Solomon Appleyard and Hezekiah Grindley had started life within a few months of one another some five-and-thirty years before. Likewise within a few hundred yards of one another, Solomon at his father’s bookselling and printing establishment on the east side of the High Street of a small Yorkshire town; Hezekiah at his father’s grocery shop upon the west side, opposite. Both had married farmers’ daughters. Solomon’s natural bent towards gaiety Fate had corrected by directing his affections to a partner instinct with Yorkshire shrewdness; and with shrewdness go other qualities that make for success rather than for happiness. Hezekiah, had circumstances been equal, might have been his friend’s rival for Janet’s capable and saving hand, had not sweet-tempered, laughing Annie Glossop – directed by Providence to her moral welfare, one must presume – fallen in love with him. Between Jane’s virtues and Annie’s three hundred golden sovereigns Hezekiah had not hesitated a moment. Golden sovereigns were solid facts; wifely virtues, by a serious-minded and strong-willed husband, could be instilled – at all events, light-heartedness suppressed. The two men, Hezekiah urged by his own ambition, Solomon by his wife’s, had arrived in London within a year of one another: Hezekiah to open a grocer’s shop in Kensington, which those who should have known assured him was a hopeless neighbourhood. But Hezekiah had the instinct of the money-maker. Solomon, after looking about him, had fixed upon the roomy, substantial house in Nevill’s Court as a promising foundation for a printer’s business.
That was ten years ago. The two friends, scorning delights, living laborious days, had seen but little of one another. Light-hearted Annie had borne to her dour partner two children who had died. Nathaniel George, with the luck supposed to wait on number three, had lived on, and, inheriting fortunately the temperament of his mother, had brought sunshine into the gloomy rooms above the shop in High Street, Kensington. Mrs. Grindley, grown weak and fretful, had rested from her labours.
Mrs. Appleyard’s guardian angel, prudent like his protégé, had waited till Solomon’s business was well established before despatching the stork to Nevill’s Court, with a little girl. Later had sent a boy, who, not finding the close air of St. Dunstan to his liking, had found his way back again; thus passing out of this story and all others. And there remained to carry on the legend of the Grindleys and the Appleyards only Nathaniel George, now aged five, and Janet Helvetia, quite a beginner, who took lift seriously.
There are no such things as facts. Narrow-minded folk – surveyors, auctioneers, and such like – would have insisted that the garden between the old Georgian house and Nevill’s Court was a strip of land one hundred and eighteen feet by ninety-two, containing a laburnum tree, six laurel bushes, and a dwarf deodora. To Nathaniel George and Janet Helvetia it was the land of Thule, “the furthest boundaries of which no man has reached.” On rainy Sunday afternoons they played in the great, gloomy pressroom, where silent ogres, standing motionless, stretched out iron arms to seize them as they ran. Then just when Nathaniel George was eight, and Janet Helvetia four and a half, Hezekiah launched the celebrated “Grindley’s Sauce.” It added a relish to chops and steaks, transformed cold mutton into a luxury, and swelled the head of Hezekiah Grindley – which was big enough in all conscience as it was – and shrivelled up his little hard heart. The Grindleys and the Appleyards visited no more. As a sensible fellow ought to have seen for himself, so thought Hezekiah, the Sauce had altered all things. The possibility of a marriage between their children, things having remained equal, might have been a pretty fancy; but the son of the great Grindley, whose name in three-foot letters faced the world from every hoarding, would have to look higher than a printer’s daughter. Solomon, a sudden and vehement convert to the principles of mediæval feudalism, would rather see his only child, granddaughter of the author of The History of Kettlewell and other works, dead and buried than married to a grocer’s son, even though he might inherit a fortune made out of poisoning the public with a mixture of mustard and sour beer. It was many years before Nathaniel George and Janet Helvetia met one another again, and when they did they had forgotten one another.
* * * * *
Hezekiah S. Grindley, a short, stout, and pompous gentleman, sat under a palm in the gorgeously furnished drawing-room of his big house at Notting Hill. Mrs. Grindley, a thin, faded woman, the despair of her dressmaker, sat as near to the fire as its massive and imposing copper outworks would permit, and shivered. Grindley junior, a fair-haired, well-shaped youth, with eyes that the other sex found attractive, leant with his hands in his pockets against a scrupulously robed statue of Diana, and appeared uncomfortable.
“I’m making the money – making it hand over fist. All you’ll have to do will be to spend it,” Grindley senior was explaining to his son and heir.
“I’ll do that all right, dad.”
“I’m not so sure of it,” was his father’s opinion. “You’ve got to prove yourself worthy to spend it. Don’t you think I shall be content to have slaved all these years merely to provide a brainless young idiot with the means of self-indulgence. I leave my money to somebody worthy of me. Understand, sir? – somebody worthy of me.”
