Young Mr. Barters Repentance | Page 3

Bommaney's bell rang, he himself ushered the visitor upstairs, and in place of retiring to his own pew below stairs, lingered in a desert little apartment rarely used, and then stole out upon the landing and listened. He was the more prompted to this because the visitor, who had a bucolic hearty aspect, and was very talkative, had told him downstairs that Mr. Bommaney and himself were old friends and schoolfellows, and had been in each other's confidence for years.
'I am afraid, sir,' Mr. Hornett had said, when the visitor first presented himself, 'that Mr. Bommaney may not be able to see you at present. He gave orders not to be disturbed.'
'Not see me?' said the visitor with a laugh. 'I'll engage he will.' And then followed the statement about his old acquaintanceship with Mr. Hornett's employer.
If there were anything to be told at all, it seemed not unlikely that this visitor might be the recipient of the intelligence, and Mr. Hornett lingered to find if haply he might overhear. He heard nothing that enlightened him as to the reasons for his employer's disturbance, but heard most that passed between the two.
Bommaney had succeeded in composing himself and in washing away the traces of his tears. Then he had taken a stiffish dose of brandy and water, and was something like his own man again. He received his visitor cordially, and in his anxiety not to seem low-spirited was a little more boisterous than common.
'I'm busy, you see,' he said, waving a hand at the papers scattered on the desk, and keeping up the farce of prosperous merchandise to the last, 'but I can spare you a minute or two, old man. What brings you up to town?'
'I've come here to settle,' said the visitor. He was a florid man with crisp black hair with a hint of gray in it, and he was a countryman from head to heel. He seemed a little disposed to flaunt his bucolics upon the town, his hat, his necktie, his boots and gaiters, were of so countrified a fashion, and yet he looked somehow more of a gentleman than Bommaney.
'Yes,' he said, 'I've come to settle.' He rubbed his hands and laughed here, not because there was anything humorous and amusing in his thoughts, but out of sheer health and jollity of nature. Bommaney, still distrustful of his own aspect, and afraid of being observed, sat opposite to him with bent head and fidgeted with his papers, blindly pretending to arrange them.
'To settle,' he said absently. Then, rousing himself with an effort, 'I thought you hated London?'
'Ah, my boy,' said his visitor, 'when you're in the shafts with a whip behind you, you've got to go where you are driven.'
'Yes,' said Bommaney mechanically, 'that is so. That is so.'
The visitor was laughing and rubbing his hands again in perfect happiness and self-contentment, and had no eye for Bommaney's abstraction.
'Yes,' he said, 'it's Patty's doing. I've sold up every stick and stone, and I've taken a house in Gower Street. Do you know, Bommaney,' he added, with an air and voice suddenly serious and confidential, 'the country's going to the devil. Land's sinking in value every year. I've been farming at a growing loss these six years, and rents don't come in as they used to do. I got my chance and I took it. Lord Bellamy wanted to join the Mount Royal and the three estates. My little bit o' land lay between 'em, and I sold it to him. Sold it, too, begad, as well as I could have done half a dozen years ago.'
Then he laughed once more with great heartiness, and unbuttoning his overcoat, groped in an inner pocket. After a struggle, in the course of which he grew very red in the face, he drew forth a pocket-book of unusual dimensions, and slapped it on the desk so vigorously that his companion started.
'I got a tip the other day,' he went on; 'that old bank at Mount Royal, Fellowes and Fellowes, is going to crack up, my boy. There's something very queer in the commercial atmosphere just now, Bommaney. There are lots of old-fashioned solid people breaking up.'
To Bommaney's uneasy fancy there was in his visitor's voice an accent which sounded personal.
'I--I hope not,' he answered, somewhat feebly, 'so much depends----' (he tried hard to rally himself), 'so much depends upon a spirit of commercial confidence.'
'Exactly,' cried the visitor, laying hands' upon the pocket-book and opening it. 'I went to the bank and saw young Fellowes myself. "Look here, Fellowes," I told him, "I want my daughter's money." He stuck to it, sir; like a dog holding on to a bone. He growled about it, and he whined about it, said it wasn't fair to withdraw the money on