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TERCEIRA PARTE.

CAPÍTULO 1.

            MR. TRESHAM was possessed by an ambition. That ambition, however, had ceased to be centered in himself as he receded from the prime of life, and as his nephew approached it. It then became his desire to found and endow a great and wealthy family. His sister’s only child, Edmund Noel, was well-born enough for anything. He, the uncle, would supply the idea and the fortune, and by the co-operation of his nephew in an ingenious combination of names, the Noel-Treshams would rise into dignity as one of the great families of England.

            Without divulging his scheme, Mr. Tresham bent every energy toward the acquirement of such wealth as would justify him in anticipating a splendid career for the name of Noel-Tresham. He was much attached to his nephew, but felt that in this somewhat precarious world he would have been better pleased to have had a second string to his bow in the shape of another heir in reserve. An idea occurred to him while enacting the part of father at the marriage-ceremony of the Maynards. It was that James, Lord Littmass, should be his second string. Still keeping his idea to himself he set to work with renewed energy to increase his already large fortune.

            Shrewd and self-reliant, Mr. Tresham neither employed, nor consulted, nor trusted any man as partner, confidential clerk, or agent. His own knowledge of the principles and details of all branches of commerce and all kinds of produce, had sufficed to enable him to become a name and a power in the city.

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            It was through fancying that he was on equally safe ground in relying on his estimate of men, that Mr. Tresham made his first and his last mistake. Accustomed all his life to the regime of probity, which had made the name of British Merchant a pride and a boast, Mr. Tresham was slow in admitting the idea that the old standard of honour, which still prevailed out of business circles, had come to obtain but a diminished recognition in the city.

            It must be said in defence of his discrimination that the approaches of the conspirators against his honour and his substance were laid down with consummate skill. It was not merely that the bribe was an enormous one, but the manner of its conveyance to him was so flattering and delicate, that only the most ingrained suspiciousness of character and almost preternatural discernment could have prompted hesitation.

            The Spanish Government had accepted the tender of an English contractor to construct a certain railway. It was clear that, with capital, the line could be made at a vast reduction upon the contract price. The contractor, not having the requisite capital at his command, sought the assistance of a London Company of good standing. The enterprise bade fair to be so profitable that the company, rather than forego all share in it owing to its own funds not being immediately available, fixed upon Mr. Tresham as one able and likely to help it. The whole scheme was placed before him, and he was assured that his signature as collateral security, together with those of the directors of the company, would be ample satisfaction for the required advances from the banks, and that in consideration of the accommodation, a portion of the anticipated profits of the undertaking, amounting to some hundreds of thousands of pounds, should be his, and that the Spanish Government had, through its agents, expressed its high satisfaction at a gentleman of Mr. Tresham’s standing being associated in the business. The matter was urged upon him by a man of high city reputation, who was a director of the company, as well as of the bank that was to make the principal advances, and it was chiefly upon his representation that Mr. Tresham’s signature would be sufficient, and that he would not be called upon for any actual outlay, that he at length consented to give his name.

            No sooner was his act past recall than he was allowed to discover that he had been deliberately and mercilessly victimised. So far from the company’s position being sound, as

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the balance sheets placed before him had indicated, it was already enormously indebted to the very bank whose director had induced him to sign; and instead of advances being made upon his security for the purpose of fulfilling the contract, the contract itself was little more than a myth, and his acceptances went in repayment of debts which had been concealed from him. Instead, moreover, of his co-signitaries, the conspirators, being valid securities with him, they all proved to be men of straw, and he was saddled with their portion of the liabilities in addition to his own. So large was the aggregate amount that it threatened to engulf his whole estate.

            In the first agony of his humiliation and mortification his system, ordinarily equable, gave way. A stroke of paralysis made it for some time impossible for him to take any steps towards an extrication, and it was only guided by the light of his unconscious and broken utterings that his lawyer obtained a clue which enabled him to arrest the action of the creditors. As soon as Mr. Tresham was again able to give any intelligent attention to his affairs, the action of the lawyer was confirmed and his case strengthened by the evidences of conspiracy and fraud, which Mr. Tresham was able to supply.

            ‘And now,’ said the poor victim one day to his lawyer, after a lengthened consultation, ‘what do you think of my chances? Must I begin the world afresh, or will they leave me enough for my old age, and something over for my nephew?’

            ‘In strict justice,’ said the lawyer, ‘you ought not to lose a sixpence. But strict justice is a thing which no law that has yet been devised can ensure. Do not let the word escape you that I am going to utter. My best hope is in forcing our opponents to a compromise. But they must not think so. Rather must we appear as indignantly threatening a counter-prosecution for fraud and conspiracy. We may not be able to prove these points against the principal enemy, the bank, but we may indicate enough of our case to induce them to think it prudent to seek for a compromise, which would at once lessen our liabilities by at least one half. The principal steps I have taken during your illness have proved successful beyond my most sanguine expectations. I have called upon them to prove value received for your acceptances, and obtained an order of the court for them to produce their minute-books. It is very clear to me, from what you say, that they cannot do the first, and I know enough of the present mode of conducting business in some

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of these banks, to be pretty certain that they dare not do the second. But the proceedings will take a long time; and the best thing you can do, after making some necessary affidavits in Court, will be to accept the offer of your friends’ companionship and go abroad for a thorough change. You will come back, I trust, a new man in health, and still a subject of envy to a good many of us in purse.’

            Mr. Tresham employed the morning after Edmund Noel’s arrival at Capri in telling him all this. He also intimated to him that however cheered he felt by his nephew’s society, he could serve him still better by going to London to watch the proceedings and keep the lawyers up to the mark.

            ‘All these affairs,’ he said, ‘require undivided individual attention, and by making the case your own, you will materially help in discomfiting the enemy. But now I want to know about Maynard and the prospects in Mexico. I am glad to see his sweet wife back with her children, and think that under the circumstances of the country it was only prudent to send them. But what of Maynard himself? Is he a man fit to be left alone? I may as well tell you that I am myself no longer interested in the property, and yet that I am more interested in it than I should have been were it involved in my disaster. As if by a lucky inspiration, shortly before I signed those miserable bills, I executed a deed of gift conveying the whole right and title of the property in Mexico to you and to Maynard in equal shares; so that it at least is safe from the harpies in London. You and he are, therefore, partners in respect of the mine, and must determine the best course to pursue in regard to it. If it makes you rich, and I have to become poor through my folly, I may not object to receiving back from you an allowance out of my gift:’ (he smiled sadly as he said this:) ‘indeed, nothing can be more fortunate than the circumstance of my having safely transferred it before my embarrassments began. Otherwise it would have been liable with the rest, and figured as an “asset” in the schedule of my estate.’

            ‘My dear uncle,’ exclaimed Edmund, ‘your generosity to myself is beyond my thanks. And I cannot tell you how grateful I feel for your conduct to the Maynards. They deserve all that we can do for them. Nothing could be more fortunate than your having done this just when you did. It will always be easy for me to re-transfer my half to you when matters are settled and there is no longer any danger. But I

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quite understand your feeling about James. He is a man of peculiar temperament, and it is impossible to foresee the effect that any given circumstances may have upon him. There is enough, however, in the condition of Mexico to keep him from brooding too much over his domestic affairs; and it is probable that, as he may have to lead a more active life and be more away from his work than hitherto, the absence of his family may save him from considerable embarrassment.’

            And then Edmund excited his uncle’s interest and astonishment by telling him of the remarkable position which James and himself had occupied in Mexico, and of their relations with Juarez, and their endeavours to influence the conduct of the expedition in favour of the President and the aboriginal inhabitants.

            ‘The only source of danger to our interests that I see in this,’ said Mr. Tresham, when Edmund had finished his narration, ‘lies in the possibility of its exciting the anger of the Spanish parties, should they succeed in crushing your friend Juarez.’

            ‘My hope,’ said Edmund, ‘is that, if war breaks out, the fighting may not extend so far from the capital as to affect either the working of the mine, or the transport to the coast. The relations between James and the President are known to no one but themselves, and of the protection of the latter we are certain so long as he can give it. The principal risk in case of a war is from forced loans to the dominant party, and from the strolling bands of robbers.’

            ‘What do you think of the Emperor’s scheme?’

            ‘It is so wild and fanciful, and involves such a manifest usurpation over the Mexican people, that, unless I had heard it from Juarez himself, and had it confirmed afterwards by our Minister, I should have deemed it altogether incredible. I cannot believe that England will back France in carrying it out, or that France will persist in endeavouring to carry it out by herself.’

            ‘You think it cannot succeed?’

            ‘Not so long as Juarez lives and has a Mexican to back him, even if there were no Great Republic alongside. The French Emperor presumes upon the American civil war; but, however that may end, the Americans will suffer no empire to stand long in Mexico.’

            Noel remained several days in Capri before he could make

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up his mind as to his future course. His uncle so evidently enjoyed his society and so rapidly improved in health under its cheering influence, that he was very reluctant to leave him. He had also succeeded, partly by his own tact, and partly by the consummate perception of Margaret, in baffling and almost setting to rest the dreaded scrutiny of Sophia, so that there was not the drawback that he had anticipated to his enjoyment of Margaret’s society. For Margaret herself he had, if possible, a higher admiration than before. For she had no sooner found herself fixed in a settled home for a season, than she set herself in the most methodical manner to the regular division of her time and employment of her faculties. In the instruction of her children and the pursuit of her old studies, music and painting, especially landscape painting, for which Capri afforded opportunities of most glorious scenery and colouring, Margaret astonished Sophia by her disciplined self-helpful method and resolution. And both Noel and Sophia owned that she excelled them in the power of withdrawing herself from merely desultory engrossments, and in practical devotion to refining and ennobling work: while Lady Bevan delighted to recognise in her an identity of character with her own family which strongly reminded her of her own lost sister.

            The presence of Margaret was always a sign for mere persiflage to vanish, and for conversation insensibly to take a higher tone. Those personal discussions which, involving the dissection and analysis of individuals, form so large a part of ordinary conversations, were only intensely distressing to her; and Noel observed that whenever, under the influence of strangers, the conversation took the shape of gossip, it was no rare thing for Margaret to disappear until after the departure of the visitants. Little accustomed as she was to general society, she could not comprehend that the most ill-natured stories may be related, the most unkind analyses exhibited, without a particle of bad feeling in the minds of narrator or listeners towards the subject of the conversation, but solely for the sake of telling a good story or saying a sharp thing.

            ‘A good story is always true,’ Sophia sought to persuade her, ‘and one must have somebody for a peg to hang it on. So far from thinking worse of one’s peg, one is rather grateful to any one who will fulfil the part.’

            However, without in the least appearing to have a design in it, and without feeling the smallest indifference to the society

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of her relations, Margaret contrived gradually to get the first half of each day more and more to herself, and to accustom them to expect her society only when her morning’s task was finished. Yet, though she shrank from general association with strangers, the society of Sophia, when they were together in their own circle, was perpetually a wonderment and a new delight.

            ‘Oh Sophia, what a charming Lady Superior you would make to some convent,’ cried Margaret, one evening when roused by an unusual exhibition of her talent and accomplishments.

            ‘Thank you, my dear,’ was her answer; ‘there is only one kind of convent I can ever consent to join, and that has not been founded yet. I have invented the plan of it, and have been waiting for Edmund to come home and help me to carry it out. You may look incredulous, but I am in earnest. I mean to start a convent where babies are allowed.’

            The shouts of laughter, which, led by Noel, here broke forth, interrupted her for some moments; but affecting not to comprehend the mirth, she presently went on: ‑

            ‘There is nothing ridiculous at all about it. Just think what a comfort it would be to numbers of poor women – now don’t begin laughing again till you know what I am going to say – who in the multiplicity of their duties, and their children, don’t know which way to turn, to be able to deposit their little ones in some nice place where they will be well cared for and brought up, not by mere paid women, who will do it in a hard business kind of way, but by tenderly nurtured gentlewomen who know what a happy home is, and who will devote themselves to the occupation out of benevolence and a desire to be useful. And think, too, what a blessing to the thousands of girls who pine at home in idleness, and wither away, soul and body, for lack of something to draw out their natural sympathies, and convert their desultory, aimless, hopeless lives to real use and beauty. Why, the habit of such an occupation would be the best education a young lady could have, and would go far to fit her to be a mother to her own children some day; and I assure you I know very few women who are fit to be mothers so far as the education of their children’s minds is concerned.’

            ‘I fancied,’ said Noel, ‘from what you wrote to me in Mexico, that you were rather bitten by the Bostonian idea, and

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were coveting the part of an English Margaret Fuller. I infinitely prefer your present scheme.’

            ‘It has been growing by degrees,’ replied Sophia; ‘not that I have given up my plan of a woman’s college or university; but, taking nature is to my counsels, I have combined such elements of the male institution as are adapted to women, with those which are peculiar to women. Thus I have arrived at a result which entirely satisfies me; and the university of my sex is a university indeed, inasmuch as it comprises a nursery for babies, a school for children, a training for mothers that are to be, and classes for the higher instruction of women who remain single. Why, Margaret, what are those tears doing in your eyes?’

            ‘I am only afraid that your students will be so happy in their college course that they will be very shy of leaving it for matrimony,’ replied Margaret, seeking to conceal the moisture that, for very intensity of sympathy with Sophia’s large benevolence, had gathered in her eyes.

            ‘At any rate, it will do the men good to have to put a higher value upon us,’ returned Sophia. ‘But the beauty of my plan is that it affords a training and an occupation for women of every shade and character. What becomes of your stupid good-natured youths at school or college? Nothing. You work up the clever ones to an immense pitch, and ignore the others. Now in my institution the girls who will have the least turn for head-work, will generally be just those in whom the domestic faculties are strongest, and who will be invaluable in my children’s department. Not that I mean to let any of them shirk any of the classes and occupy themselves exclusively with any one branch of study. The education is to be a thoroughly liberal one for all, and comprise all the arts from belles-lettres up to babies.’

            ‘And when and where is the experiment to be made?’

            ‘Ultimately in every town of any size. But first, I think, as near to Belgravia as I can obtain my supply of babies, for they will be as essential to my scheme, as a supply of “subjects” from the hospital or workhouse is for medical students. Think how blest I shall be by the unhappy damsels who are now condemned to pine in useless splendour and idle luxury, when I bring such an occupation for their faculties to their very doors. Indeed, this, too, is an essential part of my plan. I have no notion of universities of residence for my students. The home

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life must be combined with the college life, if anything real and permanent is to come of it. It is a great mistake for you men to think that we women care for nothing except to dress and be admired. There is nothing we love so much as making ourselves useful. It is only from fancying that men like it, that some of us commit the foolish extravagancies in dress and manner for which men are the first to ridicule us.’

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