He put it thus: "Let me, not knowing the meaning of a "talent," put it at 100 pounds. Now, if the good and faithful servant adventured five talents, or 500 pounds, at ten per cent, he made 50 pounds a year.
But if the servant with one talent can borrow four others, he has the same capital of 500 pounds. Suppose him to borrow at five per cent. and make ten like the other, he pays 20 pounds profit in interest, and has thirty per cent, left on the talent he started with."
"Father," said the boy that night at supper, "what ought the wicked servant to have done with his talent?"
"Parson told you that plain enough, if you"d a-been listening."
"But what do _you_ think?"
"I don"t need to think when the Bible tells me. "Thou wicked and slothful servant," it says, "thou oughtest to have put my money to the exchangers, and then I should have received mine own with usury.""
"That means he ought to have lent it?"
"Yes, sure."
"Well, now," said the boy, nodding, "_I_ think he ought to have borrowed."
Nicholas stared at his son gloomily. "Setting yourself up agen" the Scriptures, hey? It"s time you were a-bed."
"But, father."--
The ex-soldier seldom gave way to pa.s.sion, but now he banged his fist down on the table. "Go to bed!" he shouted. "Talk to _me_ of borrowing!
Don"t my shoulders ache wi" the curse of it?"
Martin took his discovery off and nursed it. By and by another grew out of it: If the wicked servant be making thirty per cent, against the other"s ten, he can afford for a time to abate some of his profit, lower his prices, and, by underselling, drive the other out of the market.
He grew up a tall and taciturn lad, pondering his thoughts while he dug and planted with his father in the kitchen-gardens. For this from the age of eighteen he received a small wage, which he carefully put aside.
Then in 1800 his uncle Michael died, and left him a legacy of 50 pounds.
He invested it in the privateering trade, in which the harbour did a brisk business just then. Three years later his father suffered a stroke of paralysis--a slight one, but it confined him to his room for some weeks.
Meanwhile, Martin took charge.
"I"ve been looking into your accounts," he announced one day, as soon as his father could bear talking to.
"Then you"ve been taking an infernal liberty."
"I see you"ve cleared off two of the mortgages--on the home estate here and the Nanscawne property. You"re making, one way and another, close on 500 pounds a year, half of which goes to paying up interest and reducing the princ.i.p.al by degrees."
"That"s about it."
"And to my knowledge three of your tenants are making from 200 to 400 pounds by growing corn, which you might grow yourself. Was ever such folly? Look at the price corn is making."
"Look at the labour. How can I afford it?"
"By borrowing again on the unc.u.mbered property."
"Your old lidden again? I take my oath I"ll never raise a penny on Hall so long as I live! With blood and sweat I"ve paid off that mortgage, and I"ll set my curse on you if you renew it when I"m gone."
"We"ll try the other, then. Your father raised 1500 pounds on the Nanscawne lands, and spent it on cards and ropery. We"ll raise the same money, and double it in three years. If we don"t--well, I"ve made 500 pounds of my own, and I"ll engage to hand you over every farthing of it."
"Well," his father gave in, "gain or loss, it will fall on you, and pretty soon. I wasn"t built for a long span; my father"s sins have made life bitter to me, and I thank G.o.d the end"s near. But if you have 500 pounds to spare, I can"t see why you drive me afield to borrow."
"To teach you a lesson, perhaps. As soon as you"re fit for it, we"ll drive over to Damelioc, and have a try with the new owner. He"ll jump at us. The two properties went together once, and when he hears our tale, he"ll say to himself, "Oho! here"s a chance to get "em together again."
He"ll think, of course, that you are in difficulties. But mind you stand out, and don"t you pay more than five per cent."
Here it must be explained that the great Damelioc estates, after pa.s.sing through several hands, had come in 1801 to an Irishman, a Mr. Eustatius Burke, who had made no small part of his fortune by voting for the Union.
Mr. Burke, as Martin rightly guessed, would have given something more than the value of Hall to add it to Damelioc; and so, when Nicholas Rosewarne drove over and pet.i.tioned for a loan of 1500 pounds, he lent with alacrity. He knew enough of the situation to be thoroughly deceived.
After Nanscawne, he would reach his hand out upon Hall itself. He lent the sum at five per cent, and dreamed of an early foreclosure.
Armed with ready money, the two Rosewarnes called in the leases of their fields, hired labourers, sowed corn, harvested, and sold at war prices.
They bought land--still upon mortgage--on the other side of the harbour, and at the close of the great year 1812 (when the price of wheat soared far above 6 pounds a quarter) Nicholas Rosewarne died a moderately rich man. By this time Martin had started a victualling yard in the town, a shipbuilding yard, and an emporium near the Barbican, Plymouth, where he purveyed ships" stores and slop-clothing for merchant seamen. He made money, too, as agent for most of the smuggling companies along the coast, although he embarked little of his own wealth in the business, and never a.s.sisted in an actual run of the goods. He had ceased to borrow actively now, for other people"s money came to him unsought, to be used.
The Rosewarnes, as large employers of labour, paid away considerable sums weekly in wages. But those were times of paper money. All coin was scarce, and in some villages a piece of gold would not be seen in a twelvemonth. Martin and his father paid for labour in part by orders on their own shops; for the rest, and at first for convenience rather than profit, they set up a bank and issued their own notes--those for one or two pounds payable at their own house, and those for larger sums by their London agent. At first these notes would be cashed at once. By and by they began to pa.s.s as ordinary tender. Before long, people who possessed a heap of this paper learnt that the Rosewarnes would give them interest for it as well as for money, and bethought them that, if h.o.a.rded, it ran the risk of robbery, besides being unproductive. Timidly and at long intervals men came to Martin and asked him to take charge of their wealth.
He agreed, of course. "Use the money of others" was still his motto.
So Rosewarne"s became a deposit bank.
To the end Nicholas imperfectly understood these operations. By a clause in his will he begged his son as a favour to pay off every penny of mortgage money. On the morning after the funeral, Martin stuffed three stout rolls of bank-notes into his pocket, and rode over to Damelioc.
Mr. Burke had for six years been Lord Killiow, in the peerage of Ireland, and for two years a Privy Councillor. He received Martin affably.
He recognised that this yeoman-looking fellow had been too clever for him, and bore no malice.
"I"ve a proposition to make to you, Rosewarne," said he, as he signed the receipts. "You are a vastly clever man, and I judge you to be trustworthy. For my part, I hate lawyers "--
"Amen!" put in Martin.
"And I thought of asking you to act as my steward at a salary. It won"t take up a great deal of your time," urged his lordship; for Martin had walked to the long window, and stood there, gazing out over the park, with his hands clasped beneath his coat-tails.
"As for that, I"ve time to spare," answered Martin. "Banking"s the easiest business in the world. When it"s hard, it"s wrong. But would you give me a free hand?"
"I cannot bind my brother Patrick, if that"s what you mean. When I"m in the grave he must act according to his folly. If he chooses to dismiss you."--
"I"ll chance that. But you are asking a good deal of me. Your brother is an incurable gambler. He owes something like 20,000 pounds at this moment--money borrowed mainly on _post obits_."
"You are well posted."
"I have reason to be. Man--my lord, I mean--he will want money, and what"s to prevent me adding Damelioc to Hall, as you would have added Hall to Damelioc?"
"There"s the boy, Rosewarne. I can tie up the estate on the boy."
Martin Rosewarne smiled. "Your brother"s is a good boy," he said.
"You can tie up the money with him. Or you may make me steward, and I"ll give you my word he shall not be ousted."
Eustatius, first Lord Killiow, died in 1822, and his brother, Patrick Henry, succeeded to the t.i.tle and estates. Martin Rosewarne retained his stewardship. To be sure he made an obliging steward. He saw that the man must go his own gait, and also that he was drinking himself to death.
So where a timid treasurer would have closed the purse-strings, he unloosed them. He cut down timber, he raised mortgages as soon as asked-- all to hasten the end. Thus encouraged, the second Lord Killiow ran his const.i.tution to a standstill, and succ.u.mbed in 1832. The heir was at that time an undergraduate at Christchurch, Oxford, and already the author of a treatise of one hundred and fifty pages on _The Limits of the Human Intelligence_. On leaving the University he put on a white hat and buff waistcoat, and made violent speeches against the Reform Bill. Later, he sobered down into a "philosophic" Radical; became Commissioner of Works; married an actress in London, Polly Wilkins by name; and died a year later, in 1850, at Rome, of malarial fever, leaving no heir.
Lady Killiow--whom we shall meet--buried him decently, and returned to spend the rest of her days in seclusion at Damelioc, committing all business to her steward, John Rosewarne.
For Martin Rosewarne had taken to wife in 1814 a yeoman"s daughter from the Meneage district, west of Falmouth, and the issue of that marriage was a daughter, who grew up to marry a ship"s captain, against her parents"
wishes, and a son, John, whom his father had set himself to train in his own ideas of business.
In intellect the boy inherited his father"s strength, if something less than his originality. But in temper, as well as in size of frame and limb, he threatened at first to be a throw-back to Nicholas, his great-grandfather of evil memory. All that his father could teach he learnt aptly. But his pa.s.sions were his own, and from fifteen to eighteen a devil seemed to possess the lad. He had no sooner mastered the banking business than he flatly refused to cross the bank"s threshold. For two years he dissipated all his early promise in hunting, horse-breaking, wrestling at fairs, prize-fighting, drinking, gaming, sparking.
Then, on a day after a furious quarrel at home, he disappeared, and for another three years his parents had never a word of him.