him.
"What I mean, Mr. Crowder, is this." Here Mr. Scales paused to puff, and pull down his waistcoat in a gentlemanly manner, and drink. He was wont in this way to give his hearers time for meditation.
"Come, then, speak English; I'm not against being taught," said the reasonable Crowder.
"What I mean is, that in a large way of trade a man turns his capital over almost as soon as he can turn himself. Bless your soul! I know something about these matters, eh, Brent?"
"To be sure you do – few men more," said the gardener, who was the person appealed to.
"Not that I've had anything to do with commercial families myself. I've those feelings that I look to other things besides lucre. But I can't say that I've not been intimate with parties who have been less nice than I am myself; and knowing what I know, I shouldn't wonder if Transome had as much as five hundred thousand. Bless your soul, sir! people who get their money out of land are as long scraping five pounds together as your trading men are in turning five pounds into a hundred."
"That's a wicked thing, though," said Mr. Crowder, meditatively. "However," he went on, retreating from this difficult ground, "trade or no trade, the Transomes have been poor enough this many a long year. I've a brother a tenant on their estate – I ought to know a little bit about that."
"They've kept up no establishment at all," said Mr. Scales, with disgust. "They've even let their kitchen gardens. I suppose it was the son's gambling. I've seen something of that. A man who has always lived in first-rate families is likely to know a thing or two on that subject."
"Ah, but it wasn't gambling did the first mischief," said Mr. Crowder, with a slight smile, feeling that it was his turn to have some superiority. "New-comers don't know what happened in this country twenty and thirty years ago. I'm turned fifty myself, and my father lived under Sir Maximus's father. But if anybody from London can tell me more than I know about this country-side, I'm willing to listen."
"What was it, then, if it wasn't gambling?" said Mr. Scales, with some impatience. "I don't pretend to know."
"It was law – law – that's what it was. Not but what the Transomes always won."
"And always lost," said the too-ready Scales. "Yes, yes; I think we all know the nature of law."
"There was the last suit of all made the most noise, as I understood," continued Mr. Crowder; "but it wasn't tried hereabout. They said there was a deal o' false swearing. Some young man pretended to be the true heir – let me see – I can't justly remember the names – he'd got two. He swore he was one man, and they swore he was another. However Lawyer Jermyn won it – they say he'd win a game against the Old One himself – and the young fellow turned out to be a scamp. Stop a bit – his name was Scaddon – Henry Scaddon."
Mr. Christian here let a lemon slip from his hand into the punch-bowl with a splash which sent some of the nectar into the company's faces.
"Hallo! What a bungler I am!" he said, looking as if he were quite jarred by this unusual awkwardness of his. "Go on with your tale, Mr. Crowder – a scamp named Henry Scaddon."
"Well, that's the tale," said Mr. Crowder. "He was never seen nothing of anymore. It was a deal talked of at the time – and I've sat by; and my father used to shake his head; and always when this Mrs. Transome was talked of, he used to shake his head, and say she carried things with a high hand once. But, Lord! it was before the battle of Waterloo, and I'm a poor hand at tales; I don't see much good in 'em myself – but if anybody'll tell me a cure for the sheep-rot, I'll thank him."
Here Mr. Crowder relapsed into smoking and silence, a little discomfited that the knowledge of which he had been delivered had turned out rather a shapeless and insignificant birth.
"Well, well, bygones should be bygones; there are secrets in most good families," said Mr. Scales, winking, "and this young Transome, coming back with a fortune to keep up the establishment, and have things done in a decent and gentlemanly way – it would all have been right if he'd not been this sort of Radical madman. But now he's done for himself. I heard Sir Maximus say at dinner that he would be excommunicated; and that's a pretty strong word, I take it."
"What does it mean, Scales?" said Mr. Christian, who loved tormenting.
"Ay, what's the meaning?" insisted Mr. Crowder, encouraged by finding that even Christian was in the dark.
"Well, it's a law term – speaking in a figurative sort of way – meaning that a Radical was no gentleman."
"Perhaps it's partly accounted for by his getting his money so fast, and in foreign countries," said Mr. Crowder, tentatively. "It's reasonable to think he'd be against the land and this country – eh, Sircome?"
Sircome was an eminent miller who had considerable business transactions at the Manor, and appreciated Mr. Scales's merits at a handsome percentage on the yearly account. He was a highly honorable tradesman, but in this and in other matters submitted to the institutions of his country; for great houses, as he observed, must have great butlers. He replied to his friend Crowder sententiously.
"I say nothing. Before I bring words to market, I should like to see 'em a bit scarcer. There's the land and there's trade – I hold with both. I swim with the stream."
"Hey-day, Mr. Sircome! that's a Radical maxim," said Mr. Christian, who knew that Mr. Sircome's last sentence was his favorite formula. "I advise you to give it up, else it will injure the quality of your flour."
"A Radical maxim!" said Mr. Sircome, in a tone of angry astonishment. "I should like to hear you prove that. It's as old as my grandfather, anyhow."
"I'll prove it in one minute," said the glib Christian. "Reform has set in by the will of the majority – that's the rabble, you know; and the respectability and good sense of the country, which are in the minority, are afraid of Reform running on too fast. So the stream must be running toward Reform and Radicalism; and if you swim with it, Mr. Sircome, you're a Reformer and a Radical, and your flour is objectionable, and not full weight – and being tried by Scales, will be found wanting."
There was a roar of laughter. This pun upon Scales was highly appreciated by every one except the miller and butler. The latter pulled down his waistcoat, and puffed and stared in rather an excited manner. Mr. Christian's wit, in general, seemed to him a poor kind of quibbling.
"What a fellow you are for fence, Christian," said the gardener. "Hang me, if I don't think you're up to everything."
"That's a compliment you might pay Old Nick, if you come to that," said Mr. Sircome, who was in the painful position of a man deprived of his formula.
"Yes, yes," said Mr. Scales; "I'm no fool myself, and could parry a thrust if I liked, but I shouldn't like it to be said of me that I was up to everything. I'll keep a little principle if you please."
"To be sure," said Christian, ladling out the punch. "What would justice be without Scales?"
The laughter was not quite so full-throated as before. Such excessive cleverness was a little Satanic.
"A joke's a joke among gentlemen," said the butler, getting exasperated; "I think there has been quite liberties enough taken with my name. But if you must talk about names, I've heard of a party before now calling himself a Christian, and being anything but it."
"Come, that's beyond a joke," said the surgeon's assistant, a fast man, whose chief scene of dissipation was the manor. "Let it drop, Scales."
"Yes, I dare say it's beyond a joke. I'm not a harlequin to talk nothing but jokes. I leave that to other Christians, who are up to everything, and have been everywhere – to the hulks, for what I know; and more than that, they come from nobody knows where, and try to worm themselves into gentlemen's confidence, to the prejudice of their betters."
There was a stricter sequence in Mr. Scales's angry eloquence than was apparent – some chief links being confined to his own breast, as is often the case in energetic discourse. The company were in a state of expectation. There was something behind worth knowing, and something before them worth seeing. In the general decay of other fine British pugnacious sports, a quarrel between gentlemen was all the more exciting,