Upsidonia

CHAPTER XX

I woke up the next morning without that sense of something delightful about to happen to me to which I had grown accustomed since my arrival in Upsidonia, but soon brightened again as I laid my plans for acquiring an easy and immediate fortune. I knew that a rich man in Upsidonia would present me with twenty or thirty thousand pounds as readily as a poor man in England would allow me to present him with it, and would thank his lucky stars at finding a fool big enough to take it. I only had to find the rich man.

It seemed to me that I already knew who to apply to. I had made the acquaintance of a very rich man indeed, when I had gone district visiting with Mrs. Perry. His name was Hobson, and he had not always been as rich as he was at present. Mining speculations had ruined him.

He could not touch a thing that turned out right. So sure as he bought shares in a mine that was supposed to have no gold in it, it turned out to be one of the richest ever heard of. And even silver played him false; he had come his biggest cropper over a worked-out silver mine, in which antimony or some such metal was discovered the moment the shares seemed to be worth nothing, with the consequence that they had jumped up again to unheard-of alt.i.tudes.

When the crash had come Mr. Hobson had put a bold face on it, and his wife had behaved n.o.bly. She had given up the confined home in which she had been so happy without a murmur, and had bought every stick of furniture that she could cram into a large house. She had bought silks and laces, furs and jewels, for herself, and clothed her young children in the richest attire; and she had given up without flinching the household work in which she had taken such a delight, and engaged a large staff of servants. All Mr. Hobson"s debtors had been allowed to pay him in full, and he and his family had retired to their mansion, with a name free of all reproach, it is true, but to such misery as only people of refinement could experience from such a change in their surroundings.

And that was not the worst. Mr. Hobson was a kind husband and an affectionate father. But he had the gambler"s fever in his blood, and the hard lesson he had received had not sufficed to purge him of it.

Since his downfall he had continued to speculate, but with no greater success than before, and it was much to be feared that unless some help came to him, not only he, but his blameless wife and his innocent young children, would sink into yet deeper depths of degradation, and be obliged at last to go to the playhouse.

Mrs. Perry had come home one afternoon from a round of her district, full of the troubles of the Hobsons. Mr. Hobson had broken out again, and had risked a small fortune, not this time in mining, but in a patent for increasing the amount of petrol to be used in motor-cars. His excuse was that he had some mechanical knowledge, and had spotted an error in the invention which he thought would make it useless. But, unfortunately, he had mentioned his discovery to others, the errors had been pointed out to the patentees, and they had succeeded in putting them right. Or, as was darkly hinted, there had been no error at all, and Mr. Hobson had fallen into a trap. But, in any case, he had had to realise at a high figure, and had come out of the deal more overloaded with wealth than ever.

We had all sympathised deeply over the picture of misery that Mrs. Perry had drawn. Mr. Hobson, she said, was overcome with remorse, and like a man distracted. He had sat in his overfurnished dining-room with his head in his hands, while his wife, scintillating with diamonds, though it was early in the afternoon, had tried to comfort him, her face pale but full of courage. It had been almost insupportable to hear the children crying at the table loaded with provisions, and to think that the father, the bread-loser of the family, was powerless to help them.

"Cannot we do something for them, Samuel?" Mrs. Perry cried.

But her husband shook his head sadly, and said he was afraid not.

"Hobson has himself to thank for it," he said, "and I fear he is incorrigible. If we were to take the burden of this mistake on our shoulders he would only make another one. The fact is, he is unfitted for business affairs. You can lose more money in the city than anywhere else, but you have to get up very early in the morning to do it, and the men who are successful at it, and lose large fortunes, are a good deal cleverer than poor Hobson."

I had offered then and there to look into the case and see if I could do anything to help. But although everybody said that it was very generous of me, they all tried to dissuade me from risking the small number of debts I already possessed. Edward did more. He rather annoyed me by taking me aside and telling me that my duty was now towards Miriam, and that it would not be right for me to be charitable at her expense, which was what it would come to if I tried to straighten out the Hobsons"

badly involved affairs.

But I had now made up my mind that nothing should stand in the way of my charitable instincts. I was not in a position to do much. I could not set the unfortunate Hobson on his feet again as a poor man. But I could go and see him, and come away leaving him a good deal poorer than he was before.

My heart glowed as I thought of the blessings I should call down upon my head from him and his sorely tried family. I should be almost in the position of a walking miracle, bringing relief that must have been despaired of. The warm grat.i.tude of that unfortunate family would follow me wherever I went, even if I went out of Upsidonia, as I fully intended to do, after having relieved Mr. Hobson of part of his burden.

As I jumped out of bed I had already made up my mind. I would go and see him that very morning. When one has decided upon an errand of mercy one should lose no time in setting about it.

CHAPTER XXI

I got downstairs earlier than usual, and found Tom roaming about, with ten minutes or so on his hands before he went off to school.

He greeted me affably, for we were now very good friends. I had taught him to bowl "googlies," which were unknown in Upsidonian cricket before my arrival, and he had got into the first eleven of his school on the strength of it. He was properly grateful to me, and had quite forgiven me for my white flannel suit.

"I say, old boy," he said, "you"ve been going it! Biffed old Potter in the eye yesterday, didn"t you?"

"I didn"t biff him in the eye, Tom," I replied. "I rather wish I had.

How do you know about it?"

"I read it in the paper. I can"t show it to you because old Blother has taken it off into his pantry. But it said that Potter and you had had a sc.r.a.p, and he said you were a fraud; and they don"t think you come from the Highlands at all."

"Where _do_ they think I come from?"

"They don"t know, but they"re going to find out. They think it may have been you who committed the burglary."

"The burglary! What burglary?"

"Why, it was at m.u.f.fin"s Rents, about a fortnight ago, just before you came. The people woke up and found a lot of family plate in the dining-room. A burglar had broken in in the night and left it there. A cheeky beggar he was too, for he had left them a bottle of Ba.s.s and half a game pie as well. I thought it was just the sort of sporting thing that you would have done."

"My dear Tom, I a.s.sure you I didn"t. Why did they think it might have been me?"

"Well, they seemed to think you might have cleared out from some big house or other, because you were fed up with it, and got rid of your plate in that way."

"What a ridiculous idea!"

"Yes, it is rather. But I say, old boy, I wonder where you do come from."

I stared at him.

"Of course, I know you were a bit barmy before you came here, and don"t remember anything about it," he went on to say. "It"s a rummy thing altogether."

It seemed to me a very rummy thing that Tom should have any idea that I was supposed to have been what he called barmy.

"Who told you that?" I asked him.

"Oh, I heard them talking about it."

"Heard who talking about it?"

"Edward and old Blother. Old Blother said you seemed to be a very respectable young fellow, but he wasn"t quite easy in his mind about your marrying Miriam, and he wanted to know more about you. He said you didn"t talk like a Johnny from the Highlands. So then Edward said you didn"t really remember where you had come from, and told him that you had been a bit touched in the upper story, but you were all right now."

"Well, I hope that satisfied Mr. Blother," I said, mentally confounding his impudence, and furious with Edward for publishing his silly idea, which I had only allowed him to hold because I thought he would keep it to himself.

"Oh, yes," said Tom. "He said if that was it, he supposed it was all right, and he shouldn"t interfere unless he saw any further reason."

"Very kind of him indeed! Does anybody else know about this ridiculous idea of Edward"s?"

"Oh, yes, everybody knows."

"What, Miriam?"

"Yes, she knows all right. I don"t think she minds. I expect she thinks it"s rather a lark. But, I say, I must be getting off. Good-bye, old boy! don"t forget you promised to bowl to me this afternoon."

When I went into breakfast Miriam greeted me as usual, and showed none of that shrinking that might have been expected from a girl in the face of a lover whom she had discovered to have been at one time what Tom called barmy; I was greatly relieved at this, though determined to have it out with Edward at the first opportunity.

When Mr. Blother had shaken hands with us all, and asked us how we had slept--little attentions which he never omitted--he expressed himself with great indignation at the line taken by the newspaper over the occurrence of the day before.

Apparently, Edward"s explanation of any eccentricities of mine that had disturbed him had been quite satisfactory. Mr. Blother and I had always got on well together, and I was pleased to remember that only a few days before I had demanded of him a handsome tip, saying that I had been in the house for some time and was afraid that I had not given him much trouble. He was quite on my side, and expressed himself strongly about the impertinence of the newspaper in throwing doubt upon me.

"We shall have to announce the truth," he said, as he bustled about while the rest of the family took their seats. "Our young friend here set out to walk to Culbut, and either had a touch of sunstroke, or else forgot himself and became intoxicated--which would be reprehensible, but not altogether inexcusable in one of his youth--and cannot give an account of himself. No doubt his memory will come back, but until it does we must all stand together and protect him from these suspicions.

If there is one thing that is quite clear, it is that he has never been a rich man. Although his accent is not quite what one would expect from a Highlander, I believe myself that he _is_ one, because it was quite plain from the first that he had never seen a servant in his life, and had no idea of how to treat them. Now if you are all sure that you have everything that you want, I will go and get on with my work. Don"t leave quite so much on your plates as you did yesterday, please--I don"t mean you, Perry. And it is quite time that this ham showed more signs of wear."

With a cheery laugh Mr. Blother left the room, and Edward came in as he did so. He was generally up early, and had already been in to Culbut that morning.