CHAPTER V. JOE RAPER

The little incident which forms the subject of the last chapter occurred some weeks before my father's return to Ireland, and while as yet the fact of his marriage was still a secret to all, save his most intimate friends. The morning after f.a.gan's visit, however, MacNaghten received a few lines from my father, desiring him to look after and "pa.s.s" through the Custom House certain packages of value which would arrive there about that time. It chanced that poor Dan's circ.u.mstances just at this moment made seclusion the safer policy, and so he forwarded the commission to f.a.gan.

The packages contained the wardrobe of Madame de Carew, and revealed the mystery of my father's marriage. f.a.gan's plans and speculations must have attained to a great maturity in his own mind, to account for the sudden shock which this intelligence gave him. He was habitually a cautious calculator, rarely or never carried away by hope beyond the bounds of stern reality, and only accepting the "probable" as the "possible." In this instance, however, he must have suffered himself a wider lat.i.tude of expectation, for the news almost stunned him. Vague as were the chances of obtaining my father for a son-in-law, they were yet fair subjects of speculation; and he felt like one who secures a great number of tickets in a lottery, to augment his likelihood to win.

Despite of all this, he had now to bear the disappointment of a "blank."

The great alliance on which he had built all his hopes of position and station was lost to him forever; and, unable to bear up against the unexpected stroke of fortune, he feigned illness and withdrew.

It is very difficult for some men to sever the pain of a disappointment from a sense of injury towards the innocent cause of it. Unwilling to confess that they have calculated ill, they turn their anger into some channel apart from themselves. In the present case f.a.gan felt as if my father had done him a foul wrong, as though he had been a party to the deceit he practised on himself, and had actually traded on the hopes which stirred his own heart. He hastened home, and, pa.s.sing through the little shop, entered the dingy parlor behind it.

At a large, high desk, at each side of which stood innumerable pigeon-holes, crammed with papers, a very diminutive man was seated writing. His suit of snuff-brown was worn and threadbare, but scrupulously clean, as was also the large cravat of spotless white which enclosed his neck like a pillory. His age might have been about fifty-one or two; some might have guessed him more, for his features were cramped and contracted with wrinkles, which, with the loss of one of his eyes from small-pox, made him appear much older than he was. His father had been one of the first merchants of Dublin, in whose ruin and bankruptcy, it was said, f.a.gan's father had a considerable share. The story also ran that Joe Raper--such was his name--had been the accepted suitor of her who subsequently married f.a.gan. The marriage having been broken off when these disasters became public, young Raper was forced by poverty to relinquish his career as a student of Trinity College, and become a clerk in f.a.gan's office and an inmate of his house. In this station he had pa.s.sed youth and manhood, and was now growing old; his whole ambition in life being to see the daughter of his former sweetheart grow up in beauty and accomplishments, and to speculate with himself on some great destiny in store for her. Polly's mother had died within two years after her marriage, and to her child had Joe transmitted all the love and affection he had borne to herself. He had taken charge of her education from infancy, and had labored hard himself to acquire such knowledge as might keep him in advance of his gifted pupil. But for this self-imposed task it is more than likely that all his little cla.s.sic lore had been long forgotten, and that the graceful studies of his earlier days had been obliterated by the wear and tear of a life so little in unison with them. To be her teacher, he had toiled through the long hours of the night, h.o.a.rding up his miserable earnings to buy some coveted book of reference, some deeply prized authority in criticism. By dint of downright labor,--for his was not one of those bright intelligences that acquire as if by instinct,--he had mastered several of the modern languages of Europe, and refreshed his knowledge of the ancient ones. With such companionship and such training, Polly f.a.gan's youth had been fashioned into that strange compound, where high ambitions and gentle tastes warred with each other, and the imaginative faculties were cultivated amidst views of life alone suggestive of gain and money-getting.

If f.a.gan took little interest in the care bestowed by Raper on his daughter's education, he was far from indifferent to the devotion of his faithful follower; while Joe, on the other hand, well knowing that without him the complicated business of the house could not be carried on for a single day, far from presuming on his indispensable services, only felt the more bound in honor to endure any indignity rather than break with one so dependent on him. It had been a kind of traditionary practice with the f.a.gans not to keep regular books, but to commit all their transactions to little fragments of paper, which were stuffed, as it seemed, recklessly into some one or other of that vast nest of pigeon-holes, which, like a gigantic honeycomb, formed the background of Joe Raper's desk, and of which he alone, of men, knew the secret geography. No guide existed to these mysterious receptacles, save when occasionally the name of some suitor of uncommon importance appeared over a compartment; and as an evidence of what a share our family enjoyed in such distinction, I have heard that the word "Carew" figured over as many as five of these little cells.

Joe turned round hastily on his stool as his chief entered, and saluted him with a respectful bow; and then, as if continuing some unbroken thread' of discourse, said, "Whyte is protested,--Figgis and Read stopped."

"What of Grogan?" said f.a.gan, harshly.

"Asks for time. If he sells his stock at present prices, he 'll be a heavy loser."

"So let him,--say that we'll proceed."

"The writ can't run there; he lives in Mayo."

"We 'll try it."

"We did so before, and the sub-sheriff was shot."

"Attorneys are plenty,--we 'll send down another."

"Hump!" muttered Joe, as he turned over a folio of papers before him.

"Ay, here it is," said he. "Oliver Moore wishes to go to America, and will give up his lease; he only begs that you will vouchsafe to him some small compensation--"

"Compensation! That word is one of yours, Mr. Raper, and I've no doubt has a cla.s.sical origin,--you got it in Homer, perhaps; but, let me tell you, sir, that it is a piece of vulgar cant, and, what is worse, a swindle! Ay, grow pale if you like; but I 'll repeat the word,--a swindle! When a man wants to sell a pair of old boots, does he think of charging for all the blacking he has put on them for the three years before? And yet that is precisely what you dignify with the name of compensation. Tell him if he built a house, that he lived in it; if he fenced the land, that the neighbors' cattle made fewer trespa.s.ses; if he drained, the soil was the drier. Your cry of compensation won't do, Raper. I might as well ask an insurance office to pay me for taking care of my health, and give me a bonus whenever I took castor oil!"

"The cases are not alike, sir. If his improvements be of a permanent character--"

"Is this an office, Mister Raper, or is it a debating society?" broke in f.a.gan. "My answer to Moore is, pay, and go--to the devil, if he likes."

"Sir Harry Wheeler," continued Joe, "writes from Cheltenham that he thinks there must be a mistake about the bill for three hundred and forty odd,--that it was included In the bond he gave in September last."

"File a bill, send for Crowther, and let him proceed against him."

"But I think he 's right, sir; the memorandum is somewhere here. I put it amongst the W's; for we have no box for Sir Harry."

"It's a nice way to keep accounts, Mister Raper; I must say it's very creditable to you," said f.a.gan, who, when any inaccuracy occurred, always reproached Joe with the system that he rigidly compelled him to follow. "Perhaps it's cla.s.sical, however; maybe it's the way the ancients did it! But I 'll tell you what, sir, you 'd cut an ugly figure before the courts if you came to be examined; your Latin and Greek wouldn't screen you there."

"Here it is,--here's the note," said Joe, who had all the while been prosecuting his search. "It's in your own hand, and mentions that this sum forms a portion of the debt now satisfied by his bond."

"Cancel the bill, and tell him so. What's that letter yonder?"

"It is marked 'strictly private and confidential,' sir; but comes from Walter Carew, Esq."

"Then why not give it to me at once? Why keep pottering about every trifle of no moment, sir?" said f.a.gan, as he broke the seal, and drew near to the window to read. It was very brief, and ran thus:--

Dear f.a.gan,--Shylock could n't hold a candle to you; such an infernal mess of interest, compound interest, costs, and commission as you have sent me I never beheld! However, for the present I must endure all your exactions, even to the tune of fifty per cent. Let me have cash for the enclosed three bills, for one thousand each, drawn at the old dates, and, of course, to be 'done' at the old discount.

I have just taken a wife, and am in want of ready money to buy some of the customary tomfooleries of the occasion.

Regards to Polly and her fat terrier.

Yours, in haste,

Walter Carew.

"Read that," said f.a.gan, handing the letter to his clerk, while the veins in his forehead swelled out with pa.s.sion, and his utterance grew hoa.r.s.e and thick.

Raper carefully perused the note, and then proceeded to examine the bills, when f.a.gan s.n.a.t.c.hed them rudely from his hand.

"It was his letter I bade you read,--the gross insolence of his manner of addressing me. Where's his account, Raper? How does he stand with us?"

"That's a long affair to make out," said Joe, untying a thick roll of papers.

"I don't want details. Can you never understand that? Tell me in three words how he stands."

"Deeply indebted,--very deeply indebted, sir," said Joe, poring over the papers.

"Tell Crowther to come over this evening at six o'clock, and write to Carew by this post, thus:--

"'Mr. f.a.gan regrets that in the precarious condition of the money market he is obliged to return you the bills, herewith enclosed, without acceptance. Mr. F., having some large and pressing claims to meet, desires to call your attention to the accompanying memorandum, and to ask at what early period it will be your convenience to make an arrangement for its settlement.'

"Make out an account and furnish it, Raper; we'll see how he relishes Shylock when he comes to read that."

Joseph sat with the pen in his hand, as if deep in thought.

"Do you hear me, Raper?" asked f.a.gan, in a harsh voice.

"I do," said the other, and proceeded to write.

"There's a judgment entered upon Carew's bond of February, isn't there?"

"There is! Crowther has it in his office."

"That's right. We 'll see and give him a pleasant honeymoon." And with these words, uttered with an almost savage malevolence, he pa.s.sed out into the street.

Joe Raper's daily life was a path on which the sunlight seldom fell; but this day it seemed even darker than usual, and as he sat and wrote, many a heavy sigh broke from him, and more than once did he lay down his pen and draw his hand across his eyes. Still he labored on, his head bent down over his desk, in that selfsame spot where he had spent his youth, and was now dropping down into age unnoticed and unthought of. Of those who came and went from that dreary room, who saw and spoke with him, how many were there who knew him, who even suspected what lay beneath that simple exterior! To some he was but the messenger of dark tidings, the agent of those severe measures which f.a.gan not unfrequently employed against his clients. To others he seemed a cold, impa.s.sive, almost misanthropic being, without a tie to bind him to his fellow-man; while not a few even ascribed to his influences all the harshness of the "Grinder." It is more than likely that he never knew of, never suspected, the different judgments thus pa.s.sed on him. So humbly did he think of himself, so little disposed was he to fancy that he could be an object of attention to any, the chances are that he was spared this source of mortification. Humility was the basis of his whole character, and by its working was every action of his simple life influenced. It might be a curious subject of inquiry how far this characteristic was fashioned by his habits of reading and of thought. Holding scarcely any intercourse with the world of society, companionless as he was, his a.s.sociates were the great writers of ancient or modern times,--the mighty spirits whose vast conceptions have created a world of their own. Living amongst them, animated by their glorious sentiments, feeling their thoughts, breathing their words, how natural that he should have fallen back upon himself with a profound sense of his inferiority! How meanly must he have thought of his whole career in life, in presence of such standards!

Upon this day Joe never once opened a book; the little volumes which lay scattered through his drawers were untouched, nor did he, as was his wont, turn for an instant to refresh himself in the loved pages of Metastasio or of Uhland. Whenever he had more than usual on hand, it was his custom not to dine with the family, but to eat something as he sat at his desk. Such was his meal now: a little bread and cheese, washed down by a gla.s.s of water.