Part 3

The opportunity for young men of the wealthier class proving their manhood came sooner than Holmes anticipated when he penned the above remarks; for less than three years later, the civil war broke out, and then this class were not slack in responding to the call of their country for their services. Numerous instances occurred of young men reared in luxury—unable to obtain commissions owing to their want of military training—shouldering muskets in the ranks of the Federal armies; and their patriotism received due recognition from their fellow-citizens. But in time of peace it is the members of the community who are engaged in those pursuits best remunerated who are held in the highest estimation—a necessary result of a condition of society in which wealth is the standard by which social position is measured and defined. The girl who in the French song exclaims, ‘Oh! que j’aime les militaires!’ utters a sentiment which as a rule finds no echo in the hearts of the American fair. An odd illustration of this fact came under the observation of the writer when he was resident in New York. A lady—whose brother had been educated at the government Military Academy at West Point—gave, in all seriousness, the reason why this gentleman, after graduating, had not accepted a commission in the army, in these words: ‘He had a higher ambition than to be a mere soldier, so he has become a dry-goods merchant.’

In New York, and indeed in all the larger Atlantic cities, a class has sprung up of late years which affects to look down upon the political and social institutions of their country. Mr Howells, in his novel _A Woman’s Reason_, speaking of one of the Upper Ten, says: ‘He saw what a humbug democracy and equality really were. He must have seen that nobody practically believes in them.’ This sentiment may accurately reflect the opinions of a limited class, but it is an absolute fallacy to assert that such views are generally entertained. On the contrary, they have not to any appreciable extent permeated the people at large, and there is not the slightest likelihood of their affecting the national life or changing its standards.

In closing these desultory observations upon some of the characteristic traits of the Americans, the writer may state that they are based upon personal observation during a residence of several years in the United States.

COUSIN GEORGE.

IN TWO CHAPTERS.—CHAP. I.

Mr Nicholas Smethby lived, in pretty easy circumstances, at a town some thirty or forty miles distant from London, from which metropolis he had retired on leaving off business. His profession had been, nominally, that of an accountant; but he had seldom troubled himself greatly about accounts, and had not received many commissions to investigate them. He had really been a speculator in stocks and shares, in a small but profitable way; and while he lent but little of his own money in loans, had made a great deal of profit as agent, or ‘middleman,’ between those who wished to borrow and those who were able to lend. So Mr Smethby had lived in a circle in which it was necessary for him to have his wits about him, and in which a somewhat decided hankering for gain was likely to be developed; yet in this he was perhaps no worse than most of his neighbours; while, ’cute as he was, he was not a bad sort of fellow, take him altogether. He was pleasant and social enough in his family circle, a pretty large one, but reduced, as far as his own household was concerned, to one daughter, Harriet, the other members having married. Two of these had settled in the neighbourhood of Valeborough, the town referred to; while Mr Smethby had long been a widower. He had no other relations, that he knew of, and, as he was wont to say when speaking on the subject, he did not want to hear of any. His cousin, George Styles, was the last he had had much to do with, and, ah!—Mr Smethby would exclaim at such times as the subject was brought up—he did not care about any more like him.

‘Twenty years ago, sir,’ he would explain, ‘he called on me with a cock-and-bull story of his being in trouble and wanting to get to Australia; and I was fool enough to lend him twenty pounds. Yes, sir, lent twenty pounds to a man I did not care two straws for, and had seen barely a dozen times in my life. What was the consequence? Why, I never heard any more of him or my twenty pounds either, and don’t know to this day whether he went to Australia or not. I should decidedly say _not_. That is all I know about my relations.’

It must be owned that it was at the best a selfish kind of cheerfulness, which was derived from the belief that he had no kith or kin out of his own household; but Smethby was rather a selfish man. He certainly was too fond of talking in this strain.

It happened that, towards the close of a bright June day, Mr Smethby was at a railway station some two or three miles from his residence. To aid in identifying the town, we may say that there was another line which ran through or at least close to it; but from the station in question, an omnibus plied to Valeborough, and it was for this vehicle that Mr Smethby waited on the little platform.

‘We shall have a wet night, I expect,’ said a voice in his ear.

He looked round, and saw a sailor-like man, whom he had already noticed, and who was scanning the horizon in a sailor-like manner. Mr Smethby made a fitting reply to this remark, and a desultory conversation ensued. The expected omnibus now coming into sight as it crossed a rise in the road at some distance, Smethby instinctively shifted his valise a little nearer to the gate. The man good-naturedly helped him, as he was close to the bag, and exclaimed, as he saw the label upon it: ‘Smethby! It is odd that I should see that name to-day, for it is not a common one.’

‘I do not think it is often met with,’ said Mr Smethby. ‘But what is there odd in your seeing it to-day?’

‘Well, perhaps not much,’ replied the man, with a smile; ‘but I was talking about that name a good deal yesterday, and for weeks before.’

‘Indeed! May I ask how that was?’ said his listener.

‘I have just come from Australia,’ returned the sailor. (Mr Smethby could not help growing suddenly attentive at this.) ‘I landed yesterday at Gravesend, and bade good-bye to an old chum. Ah! he was a good chum too! Five years had I worked in the next claim to old George, as we called him. His right name was George Styles.’

‘George Styles!’ exclaimed Mr Smethby.—‘But I must apologise for interrupting you.’

‘He had done well—better than any of us,’ continued the sailor. ‘Some folks said he was worth a quarter of a million of money; but I never believed that; about half the figure would be nigher. He said he had no friends in England he cared for now, except one Mr Smethby. That is why the name startled me. He was always talking about him. It was on purpose to see him he went on to London with the ship; he lives somewhere in the City.’

‘O—h!’ said Mr Smethby. This was a long-sustained syllable, the gentleman having a curiously complicated rush of thought just then.

‘Yes, he lives in London; and I think old George means playing a rare trick on him,’ said the sailor, whose smile broke into a laugh here. ‘He used to say what a game it would be to go and pretend he was poor and broken down, so as to see who were his real friends and who were not. It is my belief he will do it too; and when I go back to London, I’ll try to find him out, to hear all about it. Ha, ha, ha!’

The omnibus drew up at this moment; and the sailor, knowing their conference must end, touched his cap and drew back.

‘A—was this George Styles really so rich? I ask, because your story has interested me,’ said Mr Smethby hurriedly. ‘He must be a droll fellow!’

‘Rich! Why, I’ve seen with my own eyes the banker’s receipts for the best part of a ton of gold of his, first and last,’ returned the sailor; ‘and that was only a part of his luck. His last words to me were: “Bill”—my name is Bill Brown—“Bill, as long as I live, you shall never want a friend.” Nor I shan’t, I know.—Good-day, sir.’

Mr Smethby entered the vehicle, and had a silent, thoughtful ride to Valeborough. The sailor’s conversation, helter-skelter and rattle-brain as it was, had furnished him with much food for thought; and finding that his son was at his house, when he arrived there—this son was married and settled at Valeborough—he immediately took him, with Miss Harriet, into council. During his narrative, repeated exclamations of astonishment broke from his hearers.

‘Why, father,’ cried his daughter as he finished, ‘this must be your cousin George; and you are the Mr Smethby he is looking for.’

‘Of course I am; I saw that at once,’ replied her father.

‘But what is to be done?’ asked Mr Joe, the son. ‘You have left London for years; he may be looking about for you till doomsday, and be no nearer finding you.’

‘I suppose he will go to my old address. The people there know where I am, and will send him down,’ said Mr Smethby. ‘I expect that is how it will be.’

‘I hope so, I am sure,’ continued his son; ‘otherwise, we may lose a splendid chance.’

Smethby could not help admitting the possibility of this, which seemed to disturb him a good deal, yet nothing could be done to avert it.

‘We must be careful to show him every kindness,’ said Harriet. ‘After having been away from England so long, he will feel pleased at’——

‘Leave me alone,’ interposed Smethby, with a nod and a wink, which meant much. ‘I flatter myself I can see my way here pretty clearly. I only hope he comes, that is all.’

Mr Smethby would have written to his successors in London, asking them to give his address to any inquirer; but he abstained, partly because he felt sure they would do this in any case, but chiefly from the danger that his request might be mentioned to his cousin, and so show that he, Mr Smethby, had a knowledge of his arrival in England.

No days in the lives of Mr Smethby and his family had ever appeared so long as each of the next two or three which followed their little family interview. The suspense was—as the elder gentleman pronounced it to be—‘excruciating;’ but it came to an end in time.

Mr Smethby was in his front-garden in the afternoon, trying to occupy himself; but his mind was busy on a subject very different from botany, when, happening to look up from his flower-beds, he met the eyes of a man who was watching him over the fence, as this man stood on the footpath. He smiled when he met the glance of Smethby, who actually recoiled in his astonishment; for although he had been thinking without cessation of his cousin, yet it was like an electric shock in its suddenness to look round and find the very man face to face with him; for this was, must be, he felt, George Styles. He did not know him, had no recollection of his features; but the bronzed, bushy-whiskered, bushy-bearded man, dressed something like a sailor, yet not to be mistaken for one, who smiled at him across the garden fence, was his cousin, there could be no doubt of that.

‘Well, Nick, old fellow!’ began the stranger; ‘I see you know me, although it is many years since we parted.’

‘Why, it is George Styles!’ exclaimed Mr Smethby, with an assumption of surprise and ‘gush’ which did him infinite credit, and of which he felt secretly proud for a good while. He seized the other’s hand and wrung it over the fence with a prolonged heartiness, as though he could not bear to relinquish it. ‘My dear old boy, how glad I am to see you!’ he resumed, as soon, it appeared, as his feelings would allow him to speak. ‘Come in. How did you find me out? But never mind that now. Come in! I shall have a thousand things to talk about.—This is Harriet; the only unmarried one now; she was in arms when you went away, so I don’t expect you to remember her.—Now, Harriet, let us have a cup of tea; and put the best we have in the house on the table to-day, if we never do so again.’

‘You are almost too kind, Nick,’ said the other, and there was really a little catch in his voice as he spoke. ‘I did not expect—indeed, I don’t deserve such generosity. I think I had first better run down to the _Railway Tap_ and bespeak my room there, for I hope to stay three or four days at Valeborough.’

‘Three or four days!’ exclaimed Mr Smethby; ‘bespeak a room at the _Railway Tap_! I don’t mean to part with you, now I have found you again, under three or four months; and if you do not make this your home for everything, I—I—I’ll never forgive you.’

Miss Harriet, in an equally gratifying strain, indorsed these sentiments, at which Styles was evidently affected.

‘I did not expect—could not have hoped for this,’ he returned; ‘and seeing that I have returned a—a poor man’—the awkward stop he made, ere he could get this out, amused Smethby—‘it is so kind of you. If it will not cause any inconvenience, I will stay here a little while, and I will do anything I can to repay your generosity’——

Here he was interrupted by the good-tempered laughter which such an idea excited, and the evening passed off merrily.

Mr Joe and his wife looked in—by chance, as they explained; as did Mr Brooks and his wife—formerly Miss Susy Smethby—who came also by chance; the result being that there was quite a jovial party, and that Mr Styles received the warmest invitations to become a frequent visitor at the house of Mr Joe and at that of Mr Brooks.

After this night, too, there was unwonted pleasantry at Mr Smethby’s, for not only his family but some of the neighbours were constantly dropping in, and it was wonderful what an interest they all took in the gentleman from Australia. The latter was very guarded—kept up his character well, did him great credit, Mr Joe said. But no one can avoid an occasional flaw, and one or two were detected even in him. He was wont to deplore the hardships which unsuccessful men suffered in a colony—in fact, he did not like to enter on any detail of his painful experiences—never would do so.

‘Your hardships do not seem greatly to have injured you, George,’ his host would answer; ‘you look a good ten years younger than your age; and many a man who has never been fifty miles from London shows the wear and tear of toil and worry, of which you complain so much, more than you do.’

‘Ah! but it is the future!’ Mr Styles would say, when such a debate arose—he would say it with a sad shake of the head—‘it is the future which preys on my mind, what I am to do for the rest of my life.’

It was difficult for Mr Smethby, knowing so much as he did, to listen gravely to such arguments as these; but he was grave, and his manner encouraged Styles to confide in him—after a fashion.

He soon showed an interest in speaking of certain Australian investments which it appeared some friend of his thought highly of; a shallow ruse, not likely to deceive such a man as his cousin. Styles further mentioned that a gold-miner whom he knew had put ten thousand pounds into one of these specs less than two years before, and he could now sell out for thirty thousand any day he chose; but he was too good a judge to do that, as in another two years the present value would be doubled, and then, perhaps, he might be tempted to realise. This same miner, as he had heard, held five or six other investments, nearly all as good, and was in expectation of hearing news which would enable him to employ the other half of his capital, which was now lying idle—only making a paltry three per cent.—quite as well. All this Mr Styles had heard from his friend.

All this amused Smethby, who read his visitor the more thoroughly in proportion as the latter sought to envelop himself in these far-fetched disguises. No additional proof was needed to satisfy Smethby; but the evidence was in a manner forced upon him to expose most completely the absurd trick which his cousin was attempting to play off upon him.

Harriet found a letter on the floor of their visitor’s room: it would have been expecting too much from the feminine, or perhaps from any temperament, to suppose she would not read it. Its contents were so interesting, although exceedingly brief, that she showed the note to her father. It was from a firm in London, a stockbroker’s evidently, referring to some inquiry from ‘George Styles, Esq.’ as to the purchase of shares to the amount of twenty thousand pounds, in the Bodgamaree mines—the very speculation that Smethby had heard his cousin refer to in their last conversation as being in great favour with the unnamed gold-miner! The shares were low at present, the letter said, and could be bought at about eighty per cent., so that a little over sixteen thousand pounds would be sufficient.

‘That settles it, then,’ said Smethby. ‘Be sure to put the letter back where you found it, Harriet; and mind what I told you the other day. Play your cards properly, and I am sure you will win.’

This utterance was rather obscure; but his daughter understood it well enough to induce her to pout and frown a little, and to move with what is generally described as a ‘flounce.’

‘Ah! it is all very well,’ said the gentleman; ‘but you ought to know better than to dream of allowing a quarter of a million of money to go out of the family.—Who is Robert Crewe, I should like to know?’

This speech would have been, to a third party, equally obscure with that which had gone before; but as we do not wish to have any mystery, we may explain that, almost from the first, Cousin George had appeared much impressed by Harriet’s good looks, and had shown her attentions which gradually became more marked. He was five-and-twenty years older than the girl, it was true; but as he had himself said to Smethby, a man ought to be a good deal older than a woman, when they marry; and when a man had been abroad, knocking about the world best part of his time, he then knew what a home was, and felt the want of a young and cheerful wife.

All this Smethby had pointed out to his daughter before; but was shocked to find—for he really considered her a sensible, clear-headed girl, as a rule—that a ridiculous friendship with one Robert Crewe, a doctor’s assistant in the town, blocked the way of this new road to wealth and position.

Robert Crewe! Smethby had not ordinary patience with the idea. He admitted that he had known of, and in some sort of way approved, or, rather, had not forbidden this intimacy—it was in this roundabout manner he now described his conduct—and the young fellow, in his place, might be well enough; but to compare him and his miserable gallipot and sticking-plaster prospects, with George Styles, was enough to put any man out of temper. Robert Crewe, forsooth!

Yet, with all this natural indignation and in spite of this sarcasm, Miss Harriet could not quite make up her mind to renounce the young doctor; but it might come in time.

That very night—after the discovery of the letter, we mean—Mr Styles on his return broached two subjects which were strongly suggestive, especially when his hearers were behind the scenes to a degree he did not suspect. These hearers were only Mr Smethby and his daughter. It was a quiet night, such as delighted Mr Styles; he really appeared to enjoy himself pretty well under all conditions; but he declared this evening that a snug little family chat was sweeter than anything else, to an old wanderer like himself. Port, sherry, and claret were at hand; for while Smethby was, as a rule, strictly economical, so that wine rarely appeared at his table, his hospitality to his cousin led him into a freer display of such luxuries now, than of old. But the taste of Mr Styles was simple—old-fashioned, he said; and he drank scarcely anything but cold brandy-and-water, to which he was remarkably partial. It was over a glass of this innocent beverage—always mixed half and half, at which, even in his bloom of hospitality, Mr Smethby winced—that he spoke of the subjects indicated. He referred to a friend of his—it was odd how satisfied he seemed with this shallow artifice, and how often he resorted to it—who was about to buy a small property near London. This property was at Richmond—only a mere toy, a little villa, with coachhouse and stables; a pretty conservatory, with a couple of acres of land—that was all. It was freehold—his friend would have nothing else—and it commanded the prettiest view on the river.

Now, what was Miss Harriet’s opinion? Did she prefer living in the country outright, or near London? What did she think of his friend’s choice? Harriet hesitated, and her colour went and came; but Smethby spoke up for her, and said that, like every other young girl, she would prefer living near the great metropolis, with its theatres, its balls, its parks and the like.—O yes! of course. Harriet but feebly echoed this opinion, which was repeated and enlarged on by Smethby.

Later in the evening, when the elders were alone, Styles brought up his friend again; it was, as before, in reference to an investment, and Mr George said how he wished his cousin had a little money to spare, as he knew—his friend knew, that was—of a chance for doubling and trebling every penny invested.

Smethby, with his usual good-tempered laugh—he was always good-tempered, when with Styles—said that for all George knew he might have a trifle by him. On hearing this, his cousin expressed his pleasure, and said that his friend was going to invest nearly twenty thousand pounds in the spec. Such figures were beyond Smethby, as that gentleman owned; but one, or even two thousand, he might command. In short, ere they parted that night, he had resolved to remove his cash from his deposit account at the town bank and join this friend in his speculation.

Styles was pleased to hear this; and when Smethby said he should like to see his friend, laughed, and confusedly said he would tell his cousin more about him soon.

ECONOMY OF FUEL.