Читать книгу The Mill of Many Windows - J. S. Fletcher - Страница 5

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Charlesworth Marrashaw, on leaving his private office, passed out through the counting-house and the highly decorated, marble-pilastered entrance hall beyond it, and down a flight of broad stairs to the swinging doors and granite steps which gave on the quadrangle. There, on the asphalted drive, stood his brougham, a neat, solid, luxuriously-fitted equipage drawn by a pair of fine bay horses, in charge of an elderly, highly-respectable coachman. Charlesworth never got in or out of that brougham without casting a pleased and critical eye over it and its cattle: he paused now, drawing on his gloves, to glance at the horses: they were recent acquisitions, and he had given five hundred guineas for the pair. There was something comforting in looking at that sort of thing: it drove from his mind the disagreeable news which he had just heard from Lockwood Clough. And he glanced from the horses to their driver with a certain sly look of smug satisfaction.

“I think I got my money’s worth in these two, Crowther,” he remarked. “They seem to look better every day!”

“Fine pair, sir,” assented the coachman. “A very fine pair! Rowbottom, the vet., said to me this morning, sir, when I had ’em out on the moor, ‘Crowther,’ he says, ‘that’s t’ finest pair I’ve set eyes on this many a long day,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what your master paid for ’em,’ he says, ‘but they’re worth every penny o’ six hundred pound!’ That’s what he said, sir.”

Charlesworth heard this with a double delight—it pleased him to know that he possessed such excellent horseflesh; it pleased him still more to know that a competent judge priced his possession at a hundred pounds more than he had given for it.

“Aye, well, Rowbottom knows what he’s talking about,” he observed as he moved to the door of the brougham. “Now then, I want you to call at Pearman’s, the jewellers, in High Street—you know—t’ watch and clock shop.”

The coachman lifted his whip in sign of assent, and Charlesworth got into the brougham and was driven away. There were always papers and magazines in a basket attached to the padded cushions at his side; he took one out now, and began to skim its pages: it was very rarely that he ever looked out of the windows of his carriage until he was near his own private residence on the outskirts of the town. There was little on the homeward way that interested him. For the smart brougham and high-stepping horses, on leaving the mill, turned through the narrow, winding streets of the old part of Haverthwaite, a dull, dismal, almost squalid quarter which Charlesworth, if he ever looked at it, viewed with an apathy that almost amounted to indifference. Here there were long, formal rows of grey stone cottages, all built before modern ideas about house-planning and sanitation came into existence; the folk who lived in them were cramped for accommodation, badly off as regards water-supply, sparsely furnished with gas-lamps, and herded too closely together for comfort. And most of them, nine-tenths of them, were Charlesworth’s workpeople, and in his opinion what had been good enough for their fathers and mothers was good enough for them.

Over the stone-paved streets of this quarter of narrow lanes, dark squares, and cellar dwellings, the rubber-tyred wheels of the brougham swiftly sped, to emerge into the wider and more modern thoroughfares of the business centre of the town. The electric lights were flashing there, and their cold radiance fell strongly on the window of the jeweller’s shop at which Crowther pulled up the bay horses. There was a wealth of gold and silver, pearls and diamonds, in that window, evidences of a highly valuable stock: the well-to-do folk of Haverthwaite had a somewhat barbaric taste for furnishing their tables with the rare metals and decorating their women folk with gems: Charlesworth himself, busy man though he was, rarely passed down High Street without spending a few minutes in front of Pearman’s window, admiring the wares set out there. But on this occasion he walked straight into the shop, well knowing what he wanted. The proprietor, an elderly, fashionably dressed man, who looked more like a highly prosperous banker than a tradesman, came forward from his desk in the rear, with a smile and bow which suggested his admiration of the Marrashaw ability.

“Now then, Mr. Pearman,” said Charlesworth, in his usual abrupt, bluff fashion. “We’ve come to do a bit of business with you. No objection, I reckon—what? Not that you’re ever slack in that way, I’ll lay—plenty o’ going-out and coming-in here, I’ll warrant!”

“Always pleased to do still a little more, you know, Mr. Marrashaw,” answered the jeweller with a smile. He threw open a door and bowed his customer into a quiet, snugly furnished little parlour at the back of the shop. “What can we do for you, sir?” he asked.

Charlesworth, seating himself at the centre table of this retreat, glanced round with some curiosity.

“I reckon this is where you bring them that wants to buy a wedding-ring?” he said, slyly. “They like to do that sort o’ thing—measuring t’ finger, and what not—in private, eh? You reckon to give ’em half-a-dozen silver spoons along of a ring, don’t you?—I have some recollection ’at summat o’ that sort happened me when I bowt mine,” he went on, relapsing into the familiar dialect. “Bowt it of old Gankrodger, I did, ’at hed a clock shop at that time in Low Green. But he’s dead many a year—and it’s five-and-twenty years since I did that bit o’ business—I married late i’ life.”

“Wanting to buy another, Mr. Marrashaw?” asked the jeweller. “Very happy to hear it, if you do.”

“Nowt o’ t’ sort!” said Charlesworth. “Nay—once is enough, at my age. No!—I’ll tell you what I want. Yon lad o’ mine, my son, Mr. John Bright Marrashaw, comes of age to-morrow—he’ll be one and twenty years old at exactly seventeen minutes past nine to-morrow morning: I entered it all up i’ t’ family Bible within half-an-hour o’ t’ doctor reporting ’at mother an’ child were doing well. Seventeen minutes past nine, t’ eleventh day of February, in the year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and eighty five, so as it’s now t’ tenth o’ February, nineteen hundred and six, John Bright attains his majority, as they call it, and as I say, to-morrow.”

“Hearty congratulations, Mr. Marrashaw,” said the jeweller. “To both of you.”

“Thank yer,” replied Charlesworth. “I’m obliged to yer. Well, now, that’s what I came here for. It’s been a custom in our family, and this is t’ fifth generation on it, since it came to be what you might call a family o’ real standing and importance in t’ town, to give every lad a real, first-class watch on t’ day he came of age. A right, sound, good, dependable watch, you know, Pearman—summat ’at’ll last a lifetime. My father gave me one—this is it; his father gave him one; and his father gave him one before that: I have ’em all, locked up i’ my safe at Marrashaw Royd. That, I say, has been our family custom, and I mun stand by it.”

“A very good custom indeed, Mr. Marrashaw,” remarked the jeweller. “Much to be recommended. You want a real, first class watch for Mr. Bright: very good.”

“T’ best article you’ve got in all t’ shop,” declared Charlesworth. “Ne’er mind t’ expense! I shall hev’ summat left to buy a bit o’ meat and drink wi’ when I’ve paid yer.”

The jeweller laughed, and leaving his customer to himself for a few minutes, returned with a small velvet-lined tray whereon reposed three or four watches. Charlesworth, drawing out and putting on his gold-mounted pince-nez, bent over the tray with an admiring but business-like air.

“Well, now, come!” he remarked. “That’s a very nice looking class o’ goods! But I’m no expert at that sort o’ thing, you know, Pearman—I shall have to rely on you. Which o’ them, now, would yer thoroughly recommend?”

He sat quietly listening and observing while the jeweller went into details: in the end he put the tip of his finger on the watch which Pearman most favoured. “And that’s—how much?” he asked.

“Hundred and twenty guineas, Mr. Marrashaw,” answered the jeweller, promptly.

“Pounds, I think, Pearman,” said Charlesworth. “Pounds, now!”

“Well, pounds, then, Mr. Marrashaw,” assented the vendor, with a smile. “Pounds—to you.”

“Put it aside,” commanded Charlesworth. “Now, then, we mun have a chain—have you aught like this o’ mine? Plain, heavy, first-class.”

He presently selected a chain priced at thirty pounds, and drawing out his cheque-book carefully wrote out a cheque for a hundred and fifty pounds, and put watch and chain, duly wrapped up, in his pocket.

“That’ll be on my son John Bright’s plate when he sits down to his breakfast to-morrow morning,” he said, with a wink at the jeweller. “We mun keep these owd customs up, yer know, Pearman—there’s naught like ’em.”

“There’s nothing like having an indulgent and affectionate father, Mr. Marrashaw,” remarked the jeweller. “Your young people are fortunate! By-the-bye,” he went on, looking at his customer with a speculative eye, “oddly enough, I was thinking about you, and about Miss Marrashaw, just before you came in.”

Charlesworth became interested—it flattered him to think that anybody had him in thought.

“Aye?” he said. “And what about me and my daughter?”

“I was in London last week,” answered Pearman. “I bought a very good diamond ring while I was there—second-hand. I don’t mind telling you—I bought it from a certain lady of title; very high rank indeed, I assure you, who, as such ladies sometimes are, was a bit—you know.”

“Aye, short of the ready!” chuckled Charlesworth. “Such like often is. Well?”

“You wouldn’t like to buy it for your daughter?” suggested the jeweller. “It’s a bargain! You wouldn’t get a ring like it elsewhere for anything like what I’m willing to take for it. I wouldn’t take what I’ll ask you for it if it were not for a quick sale—I wouldn’t indeed.”

“My daughter’s a rare lot o’ them things,” said Charlesworth. “She’s gotten all her mother’s, and I’ve bought her a good many myself, one time or another. But—you say it’s a bargain?”

“Such a bargain as you’re not likely to see again very soon,” answered Pearman. “Let me show it to you.” He unlocked a small safe that was let into the wall at one corner of the room, and produced a case. “There!” he said, as he opened it. “Miss Marrashaw would like that, I know!”

Charlesworth professed to be something of a judge of diamonds—he sported one in his cravat and another on his finger, and he knew what he had given for each. He carefully inspected the ring which Pearman lifted from its velvet bed.

“How much do you want for it?” he asked suddenly.

The jeweller hesitated a moment.

“You and I know each other, Mr. Marrashaw,” he said, at last. “I’ll be candid with you. I gave five hundred for it—a week since. I’ll take seven hundred and fifty. It’s worth more.”

Charlesworth also hesitated, turning the ring over and over. Then he turned to the chair he had just risen from, and sitting down again pulled out his cheque-book for the second time. “Now, then!” he said. “I lay t’ lass’ll find a finger to put it on. And there’s allus t’ vally o’ your brass in diamonds.”

“You’re a very good judge of them, Mr. Marrashaw,” remarked the jeweller.