"He is; we have all got our little vanity, and like to be thought worthy of confidence."
"Humph!"
"And then I can"t sleep for puzzling. Why should you stop every letter that comes here from Australia. Oh, bless me, how neglectful I am; here is a letter from there, just come. To think of me bringing it, and then forgetting."
"Give it me, directly."
"There it is. And then, why on earth are we ruining old Mr. Merton without benefiting you? and you seem so friendly with him; and indeed, you say he is not to be harmed--only ruined; it makes my head ache.
Why, what is the matter, Mr. Meadows, sir? What is wrong? No ill news, I hope. I wish I"d never brought the letter."
"That will do, Crawley," said Meadows, faintly, "you may go."
Crawley rose with a puzzled air.
"Come here to-morrow evening at nine o"clock, and you shall have your wish. All the worse for you," added he, moodily. "All the worse for me.
Now go, without one word."
Crawley retired dumfounded. He saw the iron man had received some strange, unexpected and terrible blow; but for a moment awe suppressed curiosity, and he went off on tiptoe, saying almost in a whisper, "To-morrow night at nine, sir."
Meadows spread George"s letter on the table and leaned on his two hands over it.
The letter was written some weeks after the last desponding one. It was full of modest, but warm and buoyant exultation. Heaven had been very good to Susan and him. Robinson had discovered gold; gold in such abundance and quality as beat even California. The thousand pounds, so late despaired of, was now a certainty. Six months" work, with average good fortune, would do it. Robinson said five thousand apiece was the least they ought to bring home; but how could he (George) wait so long as that would take! "And, Susan, dear, if anything could make this wonderful luck sweeter, it is to think that I owe it to you and to your goodness. It was you that gave Tom the letter, and bade me be kind to him, and keep him by me for his good; he has repaid me by making us two man and wife, please G.o.d. See what a web life is! Tom and I often talk of this. But Tom says it is Parson Eden I have to thank for it, and the lessons he learned in the prison; but I tell him if he goes so far back as that, he should go farther, and thank Farmer Meadows, for he it was that sent Tom to the prison, where he was converted, and became as honest a fellow as any in the world, and a friend to your George as true as steel."
The letter concluded as it began, with thanks to Heaven, and bidding Susan expect his happy return in six months after this letter. In short, the letter was one "Hurrah!" tempered with simple piety and love.
Meadows turned cold as death in reading it. At the part where Farmer Meadows was referred to as the first link in the golden chain, he dashed it to the ground and raised his foot to trample on it, but forbore lest he should dirty a thing that must go to Susan.
Then he walked the room in great agitation.
"Too late, George Fielding," he cried aloud--"too late; I can"t shift my heart like a weatherc.o.c.k to suit the changes in your luck. You have been feeding me with hopes till I can"t live without them. I never longed for a thing yet but what I got it, and I"ll have this though I trample a hundred George Fieldings dead on my way to it. Now let me think."
He pondered deeply, his great brows knitted and lowered. For full half an hour invention and resource poured scheme after scheme through that teeming brain, and prudence and knowledge of the world sat in severe and cool judgment on each in turn, and dismissed the visionary ones. At last the deep brow began to relax, and the eye to kindle; and when he rose to ring the bell his face was a sign-post with Eureka written on it in Nature"s vivid handwriting. In that hour he had hatched a plot worthy of Machiavel---a plot complex yet clear. A servant-girl answered the bell.
"Tell David to saddle Rachel directly."
And in five minutes Mr. Meadows, with a shirt, a razor, a comb, and a map of Australia, was galloping by cross lanes to the nearest railway station. There he telegraphed Mr. Clinton to meet him at Peel"s Coffee-House at two o"clock. The message flashed up to town like lightning. The man followed it slowly like the wind.
CHAPTER LV.
MEADOWS found Mr. Clinton at Peel"s. "Mr. Clinton, I want a man of intelligence to be at my service for twenty-four hours. I give you the first offer."
Mr. Clinton replied that really he had so many irons in the fire that twenty-four hours--
Meadows put a fifty-pound note on the table.
"Will all your irons iron you out fifty pounds as flat as that?"
"Why, hem?"
"No, nor five. Come, sir, sharp is the word. Can you be my servant for twenty-four hours for fifty pounds? yes or no!"
"Why, this is dramatic--yes!"
"It is half-past two. Between this and four o"clock I must buy a few hundred acres in Australia, a fair bargain."
"Humph! Well, that can be done. I know an old fellow that has land in every part of the globe."
"Take me to him."
In ten minutes they were in one of those dingy, narrow alleys in the city of London, that look the abode of decent poverty, and they could afford to buy Grosvenor Square for their stables; and Mr. Clinton introduced his friend to a blear-eyed merchant in a large room papered with maps; the windows were incrusted; mustard and cress might have been grown from them. Beauty in clean linen collar and wristbands would have shown here with intolerable l.u.s.ter; but the blear-eyed merchant did not come out bright by contrast; he had taken the local color. You could see him and that was all. He was like a partridge in a furrow. A snuff-colored man; coat rusty all but the collar, and that greasy; poor as its color was, his linen had thought it worth emulating; blackish nails, cotton wipe, little bald place on head, but didn"t shine for the same reason the windows didn"t. Mr. Clinton approached this "dhirrrty money," this rusty coin, in the spirit of flunkyish.
"Sir," said he, in a low reverential tone, "this party is disposed to purchase a few hundred acres in the colonies."
Mr. Rich looked up from his desk and pointed with a sweep of his pen to the walls.
"There are the maps; the red crosses are my land. They are numbered.
Refer to the margin of map, and you will find the acres and the lat.i.tude and longitude calculated to a fraction. When you have settled in what part of the world you buy, come to me again; time is gold."
And the blear-eyed merchant wrote and sealed and filed and took no notice of his customers. They found red crosses in several of the United States, in Canada, in Borneo, in nearly all the colonies, and as luck would have it they found one small cross within thirty miles of Bathurst, and the margin described it as five hundred acres. Mr. Meadows stepped toward the desk.
"I have found a small property near Bathurst."
"Bathurst? where is that?"
"In Australia."
"Suit?"
"If the price suits. What is the price, sir?"
"The books must tell us that."
Mr. Rich stretched out his arm and seized a ledger, and gave it Meadows.
"I have but one price for land, and that is five per cent profit on my outlay. Book will tell you what it stands me in, you can add five per cent to that, and take the land away or leave it."
With this curt explanation, Mr. Rich resumed his work.
"It seems you gave five shillings an acre, sir," said Mr. Clinton.
"Five times five hundred shillings, one hundred and twenty-five pounds.
Interest at five per cent, six pounds five."
"When did I buy it?" asked Mr. Rich.
"Oh, when did you buy it, sir?"
Mr. Rich s.n.a.t.c.hed the book a little pettishly, and gave it to Meadows.