The Master of the Ceremonies Part 33

"Yes--on a trifle of business; but I know that Mrs Barclay is in your confidence. You'll pardon me, Mrs Barclay?"

A looker-on would have imagined that he was about to dance a minuet with the lady, but he delicately took her fingers by the very tip and led her back to her seat, into which she meant to glide gracefully, but plumped down in a very feather-beddy way, and then blushed and frowned.

"Oh, Mr Denville won't mind me; and him an old neighbour, too, as knows how I keep your books and everything. It isn't as if he was one of your wicked bucks, and bloods, and macaronies as they calls 'em."

"Now, when you've done talking, woman, perhaps you'll let Denville speak."

"Jo-si-ah!" exclaimed the lady, reddening, or to speak more correctly, growing more red, as she raised a large fan, which hung by a silken cord, and used it furiously.

"Now then, Denville, what is it?" said Barclay, throwing himself back in his chair, and looking the extreme of vulgarity beside the visitor's refinement.

"You'll pardon me, Mr Barclay?" said the MC, bowing. "Thanks. The fact is, my dear Barclay, the time has arrived when I must launch my son Morton upon the stream of the fas.h.i.+onable world."

"Mean to marry him well?" said Barclay, smiling.

"Exactly. Yes. You'll pardon me."

He took snuff in a slow, deliberate, and studied mode that Mrs Barclay watched attentively, declaring afterwards that it was as good as a play, while her husband also took his pinch from his own box, but in a loud, rough, frill-browning way.

"I have high hopes and admirable prospects opening out before him, my dear Barclay. Fortune seems to have marked him for her own, and to have begun to smile."

"Fickle jade, sir; fickle jade."

"At times--you'll pardon me. At times. Let us enjoy her smiles while we can. And now, my dear Barclay, that I wish to launch him handsomely and well--to add to his natural advantages the little touches of dress, a cane and snuff-box, and such trifles--I find, through the absence of so many fas.h.i.+onable visitors affecting my fees, I am troubled, inconvenienced for the want of a few guineas, and--er--it is very ridiculous--er--really I did not know whom to ask, till it occurred to me that you, my dear sir, would oblige me with, say, forty or fifty upon my note of hand."

"Couldn't do it, sir. Haven't the money. Couldn't."

"Don't talk such stuff, Jo-si-ah," exclaimed Mrs Barclay, fanning herself sharply, and making a sausage-like curl wabble to and fro, and her ribbons flutter. "You can if you like."

"Woman!" he exclaimed furiously.

"Oh, I don't mind you saying 'woman,'" retorted the lady. "Telling such wicked fibs, and to an old neighbour too. If it had been that nasty, sneering, snickle dandy, Sir Harry Payne, or that big, pompous, dressed-up Sir Matthew Bray, you'd have lent them money directly. I'm ashamed of you."

"Will you allow me to carry on my business in my own way, madam?"

"Yes, when it's with n.o.bodies; but I won't sit by and hear you tell our old neighbour, who wants a bit of help, that you couldn't do it, and that you haven't the money, when anybody can see it sticking out in lumps in both of your breeches' pockets, if they like to look."

"'Pon my soul, woman," said Barclay, banging his fist down upon the table, "you're enough to drive a man mad. Denville, that woman will ruin me."

Mrs Barclay shut up her fan and sat back in her chair, and there was a curious kind of palpitating throbbing perceptible all over her that was almost startling at first till her face broke up in dimples, and the red lips parted, showing her white teeth, while her eyes half-closed. For Mrs Barclay was laughing heartily.

"Ruin him, Mr Denville, ruin him!" she cried. "Ha, ha, ha, and me knowing that--"

"Woman, will you hold your tongue?" thundered Barclay. "There, don't take any notice of what I said, Denville. I've been put out this morning and money's scarce. You owe me sixty now and interest, besides two years' rent."

"I do--I do, my dear sir; but really, my dear Barclay, I intend to repay you every guinea."

"He's going to lend it to you, Mr Denville," said Mrs Barclay. "It's only his way. He always tells people he hasn't any money, and that he has to get it from his friend in the City."

"Be quiet, woman," said Barclay, smiling grimly. "There, I'll let you have it, Denville. Make a memorandum of it, my gal. Let's see: how much do you want? Twenty-five will do, I suppose?"

"My dear friend--you'll pardon me--if you could make it fifty you would confer a lasting obligation upon me. I have great hopes, indeed."

"Fifty? It's a great deal of money, Denville."

"Lend him the fifty, Josiah, and don't make so much fuss about it," said the lady, opening the ledger, after drawing her chair to the table, taking a dip of ink, and writing rapidly in a round, clear hand. "Got a stamp?"

"Yes," said Barclay, taking a large well-worn pocket-book from his breast, and separating one from quite a quire. "Fill it up. Two months after date, Denville?"

"You'll pardon me."

"What's the use of doing a neighbour a good turn," said Mrs Barclay, filling up the slip of blue paper in the most business-like manner, "and spoiling it by being so tight. 'Six months--after--date--interest--at-- five--per--centum'--there."

Mrs Barclay put her quill pen across her mouth, and, turning the bill stamp over, gave it a couple of vigorous rubs on the blotting-paper before handing it to her husband, who ran his eye over it quickly.

"Why, you've put five per cent, _per annum_," he cried. "Here, fill up another. Five per cent."

"Stuff!" said Mrs Barclay stoutly; "are you going to charge the poor man sixty per cent? I shan't fill up another. Here, you sign this, Mr Denville. Give the poor man his money, Josiah."

"Well," exclaimed Barclay, taking a cash-box from a drawer and opening it with a good deal of noise, "if ever man was cursed with a tyrant for a wife--"

"It isn't you. There!" cried Mrs Barclay, taking the bill which the visitor had duly signed, and placing it in a case along with some of its kin.

"There you are, Denville," said Barclay, counting out the money in notes, "and if you go and tell people what a fool I am, I shall have to leave the town."

"Not while I live, Mr Barclay," said the MC, taking the notes carefully, but with an air of indolent carelessness and grace, as if they were of no account to such a man as he. "Sir, I thank you from my very heart. You have done me a most kindly action. Mrs Barclay, I thank you. My daughter shall thank you for this. You'll pardon me. My visit is rather short. But business. Mr Barclay, good-day. I shall not forget this. Mrs Barclay, your humble servant."

He took the hand she held out by the tips of the fingers, and bent over it to kiss them with the most delicate of touches; but somehow, just then there seemed to be a catch in his breath, and he pressed his lips firmly on the soft, fat hand.

"G.o.d bless you!" he said huskily, and he turned and left the room.

"Poor man!" said Mrs Barclay after a few moments' pause, as she and her lord listened to the descending steps, and heard the front door close.

"Why, look here, Josiah, at my hand, if it ain't a tear."

"Tchah! an old impostor and sham. Wipe it off, woman, wipe it off.

Kissing your hand, too, like that, before my very face."

"No, Jo-si-ah, I don't believe he's a bad one under all his sham and fuss. Folks don't know folkses' insides. They say you are about the hard-heartedest old money-lender that ever breathed, but they don't know you as I do. There, it was very good of you to let him have it, poor old man. I knew you would."

"I've thrown fifty pounds slap into the gutter."

"No, you haven't, dear; you've lent it to that poor old fellow, and you've just pleased me a deal better than if you'd given me a diamond ring, and that's for it, and more to come."

As she spoke she threw one plump arm round the money-lender's neck, and there was a sound in the room as of a smack.

Volume One, Chapter XXV.

A REVELATION.