After Dark - Wilkie Collins (affordable ebook reader .txt) š
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āNot many,ā I said. āI should not be a poor man if commissions for life-size portraits often fell in my way.ā
āYou poor!ā exclaimed Mr. Boxsious, contemptuously. āI dispute that point with you at the outset. Why, youāve got a good cloth coat, a clean shirt, and a smooth-shaved chin. Youāve got the sleek look of a man who has slept between sheets and had his breakfast. You canāt humbug me about poverty, for I know what it is. Poverty means looking like a scarecrow, feeling like a scarecrow, and getting treated like a scarecrow. That was my luck, let me tell you, when I first thought of trying the law. Poverty, indeed! Do you shake in your shoes, Mr. Artist, when you think what you were at twenty? I do, I can promise you.ā
He began to shift about so irritably in his chair, that, in the interests of my work, I was obliged to make an effort to calm him.
āIt must be a pleasant occupation for you in your present prosperity,ā said I, āto look back sometimes at the gradual processes by which you passed from poverty to competence, and from that to the wealth you now enjoy.ā
āGradual, did you say?ā cried Mr. Boxsious; āit wasnāt gradual at all. I was sharpādamned sharp, and I jumped at my first start in business slap into five hundred pounds in one day.ā
āThat was an extraordinary step in advance,ā I rejoined. āI suppose you contrived to make some profitable investmentāā
āNot a bit of it! I hadnāt a spare sixpence to invest with. I won the money by my brains, my hands, and my pluck; and, whatās more, Iām proud of having done it. That was rather a curious case, Mr. Artist. Some men might be shy of mentioning it; I never was shy in my life and I mention it right and left everywhereāthe whole case, just as it happened, except the names. Catch me ever committing myself to mentioning names! Mumās the word, sir, with yours to command, Thomas Boxsious.ā
āAs you mention āthe caseā everywhere,ā said I, āperhaps you would not be offended with me if I told you I should like to hear it?ā
āMan alive! havenāt I told you already that I canāt be offended? And didnāt I say a moment ago that I was proud of the case? Iāll tell you, Mr. Artistābut stop! Iāve got the interests of the Town Council to look after in this business. Can you paint as well when Iām talking as when Iām not? Donāt sneer, sir; youāre not wanted to sneerāyouāre wanted to give an answerāyes or no?ā
āYes, then,ā I replied, in his own sharp way. āI can always paint the better when I am hearing an interesting story.ā
āWhat do you mean by talking about a story? Iām not going to tell you a story; Iām going to make a statement. A statement is a matter of fact, therefore the exact opposite of a story, which is a matter of fiction. What I am now going to tell you really happened to me.ā
I was glad to see that he settled himself quietly in his chair before he began. His odd manners and language made such an impression on me at the time, that I think I can repeat his āstatementā now, almost word for word as he addressed it to me.
THE LAWYERāS STORY
OF
A STOLEN LETTER.
I served my timeānever mind in whose officeāand I started in business for myself in one of our English country towns, I decline stating which. I hadnāt a farthing of capital, and my friends in the neighborhood were poor and useless enough, with one exception. That exception was Mr. Frank Gatliffe, son of Mr. Gatliffe, member for the county, the richest man and the proudest for many a mile round about our parts. Stop a bit, Mr. Artist, you neednāt perk up and look knowing. You wonāt trace any particulars by the name of Gatliffe. Iām not bound to commit myself or anybody else by mentioning names. I have given you the first that came into my head.
Well, Mr. Frank was a stanch friend of mine, and ready to recommend me whenever he got the chance. I had contrived to get him a little timely helpāfor a consideration, of courseāin borrowing money at a fair rate of interest; in fact, I had saved him from the Jews. The money was borrowed while Mr. Frank was at college. He came back from college, and stopped at home a little while, and then there got spread about all our neighborhood a report that he had fallen in love, as the saying is, with his young sisterās governess, and that his mind was made up to marry her. What! youāre at it again, Mr. Artist! You want to know her name, donāt you? What do you think of Smith?
Speaking as a lawyer, I consider report, in a general way, to be a fool and a liar. But in this case report turned out to be something very different. Mr. Frank told me he was really in love, and said upon his honor (an absurd expression which young chaps of his age are always using) he was determined to marry Smith, the governessāthe sweet, darling girl, as he called her; but Iām not sentimental, and I call her Smith, the governess. Well, Mr. Frankās father, being as proud as Lucifer, said āNo,ā as to marrying the governess, when Mr. Frank wanted him to say āYes.ā He was a man of business, was old Gatliffe, and he took the proper business course. He sent the governess away with a first-rate character and a spanking present, and then he, looked about him to get something for Mr. Frank to do. While he was looking about, Mr. Frank bolted to London after the governess, who had nobody alive belonging to her to go to but an auntāher fatherās sister. The aunt refuses to let Mr. Frank in without the squireās permission. Mr. Frank writes to his father, and says he will marry the girl as soon as he is of age, or shoot himself. Up to town comes the squire and his wife and his daughter, and a lot of sentimentality, not in the slightest degree material to the present statement, takes places among them; and the upshot of it is that old Gatliffe is forced into withdrawing the word No, and substituting the word Yes.
I donāt believe he would ever have done it, though, but for one lucky peculiarity in the case. The governessās father was a man of good familyāpretty nigh as good as Gatliffeās own. He had been in the army; had sold out; set up as a wine-merchantāfailedādied; ditto his wife, as to the dying part of it. No relation, in fact, left for the squire to make inquiries about but the fatherās sisterāwho had behaved, as old Gatliffe said, like a thorough-bred gentlewoman in shutting the door against Mr. Frank in the first instance. So, to cut the matter short, things were at last made up pleasant enough. The time was fixed for the wedding, and an announcement about itāMarriage in High Life and all thatāput into the county paper. There was a regular biography, besides, of the governessās father, so as to stop people from talkingāa great flourish about his pedigree, and a long account of his services in the army; but not a word, mind ye, of his having turned wine-merchant afterward. Oh, noānot a word about that!
I knew it, though, for Mr. Frank told me. He hadnāt a bit of pride about him. He introduced me to his future wife one day when I met him out walking, and asked me if I did not think he was a lucky fellow. I donāt mind admitting that I did, and that I told him so. Ah! but she was one of my sort, was that governess. Stood, to the best of my recollection, five foot four. Good lissom figure, that looked as if it had never been boxed up in a pair of stays. Eyes that made me feel as if I was under a pretty stiff cross-examination the moment she looked at me. Fine red, kiss-and-come-again sort of lips. Cheeks and complexionāNo, Mr. Artist, you wouldnāt identify her by her cheeks and complexion, if I drew you a picture of them this very moment. She has had a family of children since the time Iām talking of; and her cheeks are a trifle fatter, and her complexion is a shade or two redder now, than when I first met her out walking with Mr. Frank.
The marriage was to take place on a Wednesday. I decline mentioning the year or the month. I had started as an attorney on my own accountāsay six weeks, more or less, and was sitting alone in my office on the Monday morning before the wedding-day, trying to see my way clear before me and not succeeding particularly well, when Mr. Frank suddenly bursts in, as white as any ghost that ever was painted, and says heās got the most dreadful case for me to advise on, and not an hour to lose in acting on my advice.
āIs this in the way of business, Mr. Frank?ā says I, stopping him just as he was beginning to get sentimental. āYes or no, Mr. Frank?ā rapping my new office paper-knife on the table, to pull him up short all the sooner.
āMy dear fellowāāhe was always familiar with meāāitās in the way of business, certainly; but friendshipāā
I was obliged to pull him up short again, and regularly examine him as if he had been in the witness-box, or he would have kept me talking to no purpose half the day.
āNow, Mr. Frank,ā says I, āI canāt have any sentimentality mixed up with business matters. You please to stop talking, and let me ask questions. Answer in the fewest words you can use. Nod when nodding will do instead of words.ā
I fixed him with my eye for about three seconds, as he sat groaning and wriggling in his chair. When Iād done fixing him, I gave another rap with my paper-knife on the table to startle him up a bit. Then I went on.
āFrom what you have been stating up to the present time,ā says I, āI gather that you are in a scrape which is likely to interfere seriously with your marriage on Wednesday?ā
(He nodded, and I cut in again before he could say a word):
āThe scrape affects your young lady, and goes back to the period of a transaction in which her late father was engaged, doesnāt it?ā
(He nods, and I cut in once more):
āThere is a party, who turned up after seeing the announcement of your marriage in the paper, who is cognizant of what he oughtnāt to know, and who is prepared to use his knowledge of the same to the prejudice of the young lady and of your marriage, unless he receives a sum of money to quiet him? Very well. Now, first of all, Mr. Frank, state what you have been told by the young lady herself about the transaction of her late father. How did you first come to have any knowledge of it?ā
āShe was talking to me about her father one day so tenderly and prettily, that she quite excited my interest about him,ā begins Mr. Frank; āand I asked her, among other things, what had occasioned his death. She said she believed it was distress of mind in the first instance; and added that this distress was connected with a shocking secret, which she and her mother had kept from everybody, but
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