Jacob's Ladder. Oppenheim Edward Phillips
however,” Jacob pointed out, “are abnormal. I ventured to take out a list of six names, on each one of whom you have acceptances running to the tune of twenty or thirty thousand pounds.”
“The majority of my customers,” Mr. Bultiwell declared, with a little catch in his breath, “are as safe as the Bank of England.”
Jacob produced a very elegant morocco pocketbook, with gold edges, and studied a slip of paper which he held towards his companion.
“Here is a list of the firms,” he continued. “I have interviewed most of them and made it worth their while to tell me the truth. There isn’t one of them that isn’t hopelessly insolvent. They are being kept on their legs by you and your bankers, simply and solely to bolster up the credit of the House of Bultiwell.”
“Sir!” Mr. Bultiwell thundered.
“I should drop that tone, if I were you,” Jacob advised coldly. “You have been a bully all your life, and a cruel one at that. Lately you have become dishonest. When the firm of Bultiwell is compelled to file its petition in bankruptcy, which I imagine will be a matter of only a few weeks, I do not envy you your examination before the official receiver.”
Mr. Bultiwell collapsed like a pricked bladder. He shrivelled in his clothes. There was a whine in his tone as he substituted appeal for argument.
“There’s good business to be done here still,” he pleaded. “Even if the firm lost a little money on those names, there are two of them at least who might weather the storm, with reasonable assistance. Pratt, they tell me you’re pretty well a millionaire. I’m sorry if I was hard on you in the old days. If you won’t take a partnership, will you buy the business?”
Jacob laughed scornfully.
“If I were ten times a millionaire,” he said, rising to his feet, “I would never risk a penny of my money to rid you of the millstone you have hung around your neck. It is going to be part of my activity in life, Mr. Bultiwell, to assist nature in dispensing justice. For many years you have ruled the trade in which we were both brought up, and during the whole of that time you have never accomplished a single gracious or kindly action. You have wound up by trying to drag me into a business which is rotten to the core. Your accountants may be technically justified in reckoning that hundred and forty thousand pounds owed you by those six men as good, because they never failed, but you yourself know that they are hopelessly insolvent, and that the moment you stop renewing their bills they will topple down like ninepins… I would not help you if you were starving. I shall read of your bankruptcy with pleasure. There is, I think, nothing more to be said.”
Mr. Bultiwell sat in his chair, dazed, for long after Jacob had left him. His daughter reappeared and left at once, harshly dismissed. His clerks went out for lunch and returned at the appointed hour. Mr. Bultiwell was seeing ghosts…
Jacob and his friend dined together that night in a well-known grill-room. Dauncey, to whom, in those days, every man seemed to be a brother and every place he entered a fairy palace, showed signs of distress as he listened to his companion’s story.
“Dear friend,” he remonstrated, “of what use in the world is revenge? I do not suggest that you should throw your money away trying to help Bultiwell, but you might at least have left him alone.”
Jacob shook his head. The corners of his mouth tightened. He spoke with grave seriousness.
“Dick,” he said, “you are like the man who sympathises with the evil growth which it is the surgeon’s task to remove. In the days of his prosperity, Bultiwell was a brute and a bully. His only moments of comparative geniality came when he was steeped in wine and glutted with food. His own laziness and self-indulgence paved the way to his ruin. He then became dishonest. He deliberately tried to cheat me; he stooped even to the paltry trick of remembering that I once admired his daughter, and dragged her in to complete his humiliation. Believe me, the world is a better place without its Bultiwells – a better and a healthier place – and where I find them in life, I am going to use the knife.”
“You have used it this time perhaps even more effectually than you thought,” Dauncey groaned, as he took an evening paper from his pocket and passed it across the table. “Mr. Bultiwell shot himself in his office, late this afternoon. I did not tell you before, for fear it might spoil your dinner.”
Jacob sipped his wine, unmoved.
“It was really the only thing left for him,” was his brief comment.
Dauncey was once more the melancholy man.
“I hope that all your interventions, or whatever you may call them,” he said, “won’t end in the same way.”
Jacob’s eyes looked through the walls of the restaurant. A sudden impulse of fancy had carried him forward into that land of adventure to which he held the golden key. He felt the thrill of danger, the mystery of unknown places. He passed from palace to hovel. He heard the curse of the defeated schemer, he felt the warmth and joy of gratitude. All these figures, save one, were imaginary, and that one was always there, always watching, always with that look of reproach which he seemed already to see in her cold blue eyes. He fancied himself pleading with her, only to be scorned; hiding from the dangers she invoked; fancied her the protectress of his enemies, the evil genius of those whom he would have befriended. And all the time there lingered in the background of his mind the memory of that single evening when, angered by her father’s condescension, she had chosen to be kind to him; had shown him the secret places in that wonderful garden, glorious with budding rhododendrons, fragrant with the roses drooping from the long pergola, – a little scene out of fairyland, through which he had walked under the rising moon like a man bewildered with strange happiness.
Richard leaned forward in his place.
“Are you seeing ghosts?” he asked curiously.
Jacob was suddenly back from that unreal world into which his magical prosperity had pitchforked him. He drained the glass which he raised to his lips with firm fingers.
“Ghosts belong to the past,” he answered. “All that we have any concern with is the future.”
CHAPTER V
Jacob, in the midst of those pleasant activities necessitated by his change of fortunes, found time to write a letter. He wrote it with great care and after many revisions, and not until after it was dispatched did he realise with how much anxiety he awaited the reply.
Dear Miss Bultiwell,
I am venturing to write these few lines to assure you of my very deep sympathy with you in the loss which you have sustained, and I beg also to express the earnest hope that you will not associate me in any way with those misfortunes of your father which I was powerless to avert or lighten.
I have a further object in writing to you, which I hesitate to touch upon for fear I should give you offence, but I do beg, Miss Bultiwell, that you will accept my offer in a kind and generous spirit, and believe that it is entirely dictated by feelings of friendship for you. I gather that your father’s affairs are so much involved that a considerable interval may elapse before any substantial sum can be collected from his estate for the benefit of yourself and your mother. I beg, therefore, as a person into whose hands great wealth has come quite unexpectedly, that you will, if it is the slightest convenience to you, permit me to offer to make any advance necessary for your comfort. At a word from you, it will give me the greatest pleasure to place a thousand pounds, or any such sum, in any bank you may name, for your use until the estate is wound up.
If I have expressed myself crudely, please forgive me, Miss Bultiwell. I have a sincere desire to be of service to you, and I would like very much to be able to sign myself
The reply came by return of post. It was dated from the late Mr. Bultiwell’s house, a few miles farther down the line than Marlingden.
Dear Mr. Pratt,
The offer contained in your letter, which I received this morning, may possibly have been kindly meant, but