Part 31 (1/2)
”Sir,--I cannot sufficiently express my thanks for your kindness in writing to me on the subject of the bills, of which I had also heard a few hours previously. As a perfect stranger to you, I cannot estimate your kind consideration at too high a value. I trust the matter will be explained; but I should much like to see you. If you would be kind enough to write a note as soon as you receive this, I will order it to be sent to me at once to Tyburn Square. I will wait on you at any hour on Friday you may appoint. I believe that I am not mistaken in supposing that you transact business for my friend, Sir John Markham, and you will therefore know the inclosed to be his handwriting. Again thanking you most gratefully, allow me to remain your much and deeply obliged, JULIANA SNAPE.”
This note was written upon delicate French paper embossed with a coat of arms. It was in a fancy envelope--the whole richly perfumed, and redolent of rank and fas.h.i.+on. Its contents were an implied confession of forgery. Silence, or three lines of indignation, would have been the only innocent answer to my letter. But Miss Snape thanked me. She let me know, by implication that she was on intimate terms with a name good on a West-End bill. My answer was, that I should be alone on the following afternoon at five.
At the hour fixed, punctual to a moment, a brougham drew up at the corner of the street next to my chambers. The Honorable Miss Snape's card was handed in. Presently, she entered, swimming into my room, richly, yet simply dressed in the extreme of Parisian good taste. She was pale--or rather colorless. She had fair hair, fine teeth, and a fas.h.i.+onable voice.
She threw herself gracefully into the chair I handed to her, and began by uncoiling a string of phrases, to the effect that her visit was merely to consult me on ”unavoidable pecuniary difficulties.”
According to my mode, I allowed her to talk; putting in only an occasional word of question that seemed rather a random observation than a significant query. At length after walking round and round the subject, like a timid horse in a field around a groom with a sieve of oats, she came nearer and nearer the subject. When she had fairly approached the point, she stopped, as if her courage had failed her. But she soon recovered, and observed, ”I cannot think why you should take the trouble to write so to me, a perfect stranger.” Another pause--”I wonder no one ever suspected me before.”
Here was a confession and a key to character. The cold gray eye, the thin compressed lips, which I had had time to observe, were true indexes to the ”lady's inner heart;” selfish calculating, utterly devoid of conscience; unable to conceive the existence of spontaneous kindness; utterly indifferent to anything except discovery, and almost indifferent to that, because convinced that no serious consequences could affect a lady of her rank and influence.
”Madam,” I replied, ”as long as you dealt with tradesmen accustomed to depend on aristocratic customers, your rank and position, and their large profits, protected you from suspicion; but you have made a mistake in descending from your vantage ground to make a poor shopman your innocent accomplice--a man who will be keenly alive to anything that may injure his wife or children. His terrors--but for my interposition--would have ruined you utterly. Tell me, how many of these things have you put afloat?”
She seemed a little taken a-back by this speech, but was wonderfully firm. She pa.s.sed her white, jewelled hand over her eyes, seemed calculating, and then whispered, with a confiding look of innocent helplessness, admirably a.s.sumed, ”About as many as amount to twelve hundred pounds.”
”And what means have you for meeting them?”
At this question so plainly put, her face flushed. She half rose from her chair, and exclaimed in the true tone of aristocratic _hauteur_, ”Really, sir, I do not know what right you have to ask me that question.”
I laughed a little, though not very loud. It was rude, I own; but who could have helped it? I replied, speaking low, but slowly and distinctly--”You forget. I did not send for you; you came to me. You have forged bills to the amount of twelve hundred pounds. Yours is not the case of a ruined merchant or an ignorant over-tempted clerk. In your case a jury”--(she shuddered at that word)--”would find no extenuating circ.u.mstances; and if you should fall into the hands of justice you will be convicted, degraded, clothed in a prison-dress, and transported for life. I do not want to speak harshly; but I insist that you find means to take up the bill which Mr. Axminster has so unwittingly endorsed!”
The Honorable Miss Snape's grand manner melted away. She wept. She seized and pressed my hand. She cast up her eyes, full of tears, and went through the part of a repentant victim with great fervor. She would do anything--anything in the world to save the poor man. Indeed, she had intended to appropriate part of the two hundred pound bill to that purpose. She forgot her first statement, that she wanted the money to go out of town. Without interrupting, I let her go on and degrade herself by a simulated pa.s.sion of repentance, regret, and thankfulness to me, under which she hid her fear and her mortification at being detected. I at length put an end to a scene of admirable acting, by recommending her to go abroad immediately, to place herself out of reach of any sudden discovery; and then lay her case fully before her friends, who would no doubt feel bound to come forward with the full amount of the forged bills. ”But,” she exclaimed, with an entreating air, ”I have no money; I cannot go without money!” To that observation I did not respond although I am sure she expected that I should, check-book in hand, offer her a loan. I do not say so without reason; for, the very next week, this honorable young lady came again, and, with sublime a.s.surance and a number of very charming, winning speeches, (which might have had their effect upon a younger man), asked me to lend her one hundred pounds, in order that she might take the advice I had so obligingly given her, and retire into private life for a certain time in the country. I do meet with a great many impudent people in the course of my calling--I am not very deficient in a.s.surance myself--but this actually took away my breath.
”Really, madam,” I answered, ”you pay a very ill-compliment to my gray hairs, and would fain make me a very ill return for the service I have done you, when you ask me to lend a hundred pounds to a young lady who owns to having forged to the extent of one thousand two hundred pounds, and to owing eight hundred pounds besides. I wished to save a personage of your years and position from a disgraceful career; but I am too good a trustee for my children to lend money to anybody in such a dangerous position as yourself.”
”Oh!” she answered, quite unabashed, without a trace of the fearful, tender pleading of the previous week's interview--quite as if I had been an accomplice, ”I can give you excellent security.”
”That alters the case; I can lend any amount on good security.”
”Well, sir, I can get the acceptance of three friends of ample means”
”Do you mean to tell me, Miss Snape, that you will write down the names of three parties who will accept a bill for one hundred pounds for you?”
Yes, she could, and did actually write down the names of three distinguished men. Now I knew for certain, that not one of those n.o.blemen would have put his name to a bill on any account whatever for his dearest friend; but, in her unabashed self-confidence, she thought of pa.s.sing another forgery _on me_. I closed the conference by saying, ”I cannot a.s.sist you;” and she retired with the air of an injured person. In the course of a few days, I heard from Mr. Axminster, that his liability of one hundred pounds had been duly honored.
In my active and exciting life, one day extinguishes the recollection of the events of the preceding day; and, for a time, I thought no more about the fas.h.i.+onable forger. I had taken it for granted that, heartily frightened, although not repenting, she had paused in her felonious pursuits.
My business one day led me to the establishment of one of the most wealthy and respectable legal firms in the city, where I am well known, and, I believe, valued; for at all times I am most politely, I may say, most cordially received. Mutual profits create a wonderful freemasonry between those who have not any other sympathy or sentiment. Politics, religion, morality, difference of rank, are all equalized and republicanized by the division of an account. No sooner had I entered the _sanctum_, than the senior partner, Mr. Precepts, began to quiz his junior, Mr. Jones, with, ”Well, Jones must never joke friend Discount anymore about usury. Just imagine,” he continued, addressing me, ”Jones has himself been discounting a bill for a lady; and a deuced pretty one too. He sat next her at dinner in Grosvenor Square, last week. Next day she gave him a call here, and he could not refuse her extraordinary request. Gad, it is hardly fair for Jones to be poaching on your domains of West-End paper!”
Mr. Jones smiled quietly, as he observed, ”Why, you see, she is the niece of one of our best clients; and really I was so taken by surprise, that I did not know how to refuse.”
”Pray,” said I, interrupting his excuses, ”does your young lady's name begin with S.? Has she not a very pale face, and cold gray eye?”
The partners stared.
”Ah! I see it is so; and can at once tell you that the bill is not worth a rush.”
”Why, you don't mean--?”