It was a delicate question to put thus nakedly.
""Come, name a figure. Say five thousand pounds.""
Candytuft looked blankly at Jericho, moving not a muscle.
""What do you say to seven?"
"Candytuft gently lifted his eyebrows, deprecating the amount.
""Come, then, we"ll advance to ten?"
"The lover"s face began to thaw, and he showed some signs of kindly animation.
""At a word, then," cried Jericho with affected heartiness, "will you take fifteen thousand?"
""From you--yes," cried Candytuft; and he seized Jericho"s hand.
"The man of money looked at Candytuft with a contemptuous sneer, and with a wrench twisted his hand away. He then dropped into a chair, and a strange, diabolical scowl possessed his countenance. The man of money looked like a devil.
""And where--where do you think this money is to come from? Where?"
asked Jericho, and he rose from his chair, and it seemed as though the demon possessing him would compel the wretch to talk--would compel him to make terrible revelations. Each word he uttered was born of agony.
But there he stood, forced to give utterances that tortured him. "I will tell you," roared Jericho, "what this money is. Look about you! What do you see?--fine pictures, fine everything. Why, you see me--tortured, torn, worked up, changed. The walls are hung with my flesh--my flesh you walk upon. I am worn piecemeal by a hundred thieves, but I"ll be shared among them no longer.""
By this time the girls and Sir Arthur Homadod, alarmed by the cries of Jericho, had entered the room.
""And you had a fine feast, had you not?" cried the possessed man of money, writhing with misery and howling his confession. "And what did you eat?--my flesh. What did you drink?--my blood!""
It would be impossible to imagine a more satisfactory realization of this powerful scene than Leech"s rendering of it. The shrinking figure of Candytuft as he retreats before the fury of the moneyed man; the awful pa.s.sion of the shrivelled Jericho; above all, the vacuous expression of Sir Arthur, all are done to perfection and without exaggeration. Beyond the endeavour to make the meaning of the ill.u.s.trations in the "Man made of Money" clear to my readers, I have little or nothing to do with the story. I may note, however, that young Basil Pennibacker falls in love with Bessy, the pretty daughter of the ruined merchant Carraway, and that bold bankrupt, who is about to seek a new fortune at the Antipodes, calls upon Jericho to ask his consent to his stepson"s marriage. How the announcement of the engagement was received may be imagined, or if my reader be not satisfied with his idea of what may have taken place, he can read in Mr. Jerrold"s book how Mr.
Carraway was met by his old friend. He will also find an ill.u.s.tration of an interview between "The Pauper and the Man of Money," but as I do not think it quite worthy of Leech, I do not reproduce it. I may as well add that Basil--who turns out to be a very good fellow--does marry Bessy, and the happy pair, with the parent pair of Carraways, depart for Australia in the good ship _Halcyon_.
Mr. Jericho"s explosion, and his unpleasant conduct generally--especially regarding Monica"s dowry--had altered Mr.
Candytuft"s matrimonial intentions for the present: there were delays.
"He had suddenly discovered some dormant right to some long-forgotten property, and he meant to secure that, and lay it as an offering at the feet of his bride." How the foolish Sir Arthur agreed to marry Agatha without a dowry, to the intense delight of Jericho--how splendid preparations for the wedding were made--how the wedding-party, Jericho included, waited at the church for the bridegroom, who never came (he had overslept himself in consequence of an overdose of medicine taken to steady his nerves)--for these details my reader is again referred to Mr.
Jerrold, who describes the whole most enjoyably. Leech draws the baronet awakened by his servant, but too late: the canonical hour has pa.s.sed. A report was spread that Sir Arthur had taken poison to avoid the Jericho connection.
Just at this time Mr. Jericho was offered a most satisfactory mortgage--so any way there was land for his money--no less than five-and-forty thousand pounds, by his friend the Duke of St. George.
Jericho lent the money, in the hope of climbing into the House of Lords with the a.s.sistance of the Duke; but this last drain upon his resources, with its penalty of attenuation, had left very little of him to go anywhere.
"He had shrunk," says the author. "How horribly he had dwindled, how wretchedly small he had become! Ay, how small! He would measure himself, he would know the exact waste. Whereupon Jericho took the silken cord and pa.s.sed it round his breast. Why, it would twice encircle him--twice!
and a piece to spare. With horror and loathing he flung the cord into the fire. He would never again take d.a.m.ning evidence against himself."
It became evident to Jericho that, if he desired to retain enough of his person to enable his friends and relations to recognise him, the drain upon the chest notes must cease.
"He would, therefore, not draw another note--no, not another. He would live upon what he had. He would turn the foolish superfluities about him into hard, tangible money."
Bent upon turning everything belonging not only to himself, but to his wife and daughters, into cash, he sent for Mrs. Jericho.
"The trembling wife had scarcely power to meet the eyes of her helpmate. In two days twenty years seemed to have gathered upon him. His face looked brown, thin, and withered as last year"s leaf. His whole body bent and swayed like a piece of paper moved by the air. As he held his hand aloof, the light shone through it. It was plain there was some horrid compact between her lord and the infernal powers, or--it was all as one--the tyranny of conscience had worn him to his present condition.
""Mrs. Jericho, madam, you will instantly bring me all your diamonds--jewellery--all. Give like orders to your daughters, the mincing harpies that eat me.""
The terrified woman remonstrated, asked for an explanation, offered to send for the doctor.
""Away with you! do as I command. Bring me all your treasures--all. And your minxes! See that they obey me too, and instantly."
""Yes, my love, to be sure," said Mrs. Jericho, for she was all but convinced that Solomon"s reason was gone or going. It was best to humour him. "And why, my love, do you wish for these things? Of course you shall have them, but why?"
""To turn them into money, madam," cried Jericho, rubbing his hands.
"We have had enough of the tomfoolery of wealth--I now begin to hunger for the substance. I"ll do without fashion. I"ll have power, madam--power!""
The conversation continued, and Mrs. Jericho became more and more convinced that her husband was mad.
""Oh that Dr. Stubbs would make a morning call!" silently prayed the wife."
The man of money, having determined to dismantle his house and send his wife and daughters adrift, retired with one servant, all the rest being discharged, into "one of his garrets, a den of a place," where the scullion had slept. The servant was the pauper grandfather of one of his footmen, an old man of "congenial weakness with Jericho. Indeed, there looked between them a strange similitude, twin brethren d.a.m.ned to the like sordidness, the like rapacity."
Jericho had nicknamed the old man Plutus. Jericho and Plutus were in face and expression as like as two snakes.
Mrs. Jericho, a.s.sured of her husband"s madness, took counsel with her friends. Drs. Stubbs and Mizzlemist, Colonel Bones, Commissioner Thrush, and Candytuft met in conclave and listened to Mrs. Jericho"s account of her husband"s ravings; but she failed to convince the doctors that what a jury would consider insanity, was apparent in anything that the man of money had said or done. As Dr. Mizzlemist delivered this opinion, a crash was heard in an adjoining room--another, and another, and then a loud triumphant laugh from the throat of Jericho.
Wife and daughters, with jury of friends, started to their feet.
Candytuft, ere he was aware--for had he reflected "a moment, he would as soon have unbarred a lion"s cage--opened the doors. And there stood Jericho, laden with spoil."
Though Mr. Jericho was voted sane by the doctors, his conduct displayed a brutality for which madness would be the only excuse. The Jews were coming, everything was to be sold.
""Why stay you here?" cried the man of money to his wife. "Why will you not be warned? In a few hours there will not be a bed for your fine costly bones to lie upon. Now will you depart?""
The Jews wandered about the rooms, appraising everything. Jericho was anxious to avoid a "public hubbub," as he called a sale.
""I want," said he to the brokers, "at a thought, to melt all you see, and have seen, into ready money. Take counsel together, I say, and make me an offer, a lumping offer, for the whole--eh?""
[Ill.u.s.tration: "_And there stood Jericho._"]
The man of money ascended to his garret and awaited the Jews" offer, which was promised for the evening. He was alone, "evening closed in, and the moon rose and looked reproachfully at the miser."
The garret door opened, and Plutus appeared.
""Well, has it come?" cried the master.
""Here it is," answered the servant, as he laid a letter upon the table.
""Well, now for their conscience!" exclaimed the man of money."
Light was required; there was a candle upon the table, and paper prepared to light it.
"Most precious paper--the heart"s flesh and blood of the man of money!
For the devilish serving-man had folded a note (how obtained can it matter?)--a note peeled from the breast of his master, a piece of money, a part of the d.a.m.ned Jericho sympathizing with him.