The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson

CHAPTER XX

SHOWING HOW MR. BRISKET DIDN'T SEE HIS WAY

Then two months passed by, and the summer was over. Early in September Mr. Brown had been taken ill, and he went to Margate for a fortnight with his unmarried daughter. This had been the means of keeping Brisket quiet for a while with reference to that sum of money which he was to receive, and had given a reason why the marriage with him should not be performed at once. On Mr. Brown's return, the matter was discussed, and Brisket became impatient. But the middle of October had come before any steps were taken to which it will be necessary to allude in the annals of the firm.

At that time Brisket, on two successive days, was closeted with his proposed father-in-law, and it was evident to Robinson that after each of these interviews Mr. Brown was left in an unhappy frame of mind. At this time the affairs of the shop were not absolutely ruinous, – or would not have been so had there been a proper watch kept on the cash taken over the counter. The heaviest amounts due were to the stationer, printer, and advertising agents. This was wrong, for such people of course press for their money; and whatever hitch or stoppage there may be in trade, there should, at any rate, be no hitch or stoppage in the capability for advertising. For the goods disposed of by the house payments had been made, if not with absolute punctuality on every side, at any rate so fairly that some supply was always forthcoming. The account at the bank had always been low; and, though a few small bills had been discounted, nothing like a mercantile system of credit had been established. All this was wrong, and had already betrayed the fact that Brown, Jones, and Robinson were little people, trading in a little way. It is useless to conceal the fact now, and these memoirs would fail to render to commerce that service which is expected from them, were the truth on this matter kept back from the public. Brown, Jones, and Robinson had not soared upwards into the empyrean vault of commercial greatness on eagle's wings. There are bodies so ponderous in their nature, that for them no eagle's wings can be found. The firm had commenced their pecuniary transactions on a footing altogether weak and unsubstantial. They had shown their own timidity, and had confessed, by the nature of their fiscal transactions, that they knew themselves to be small. To their advertising agents they should never have been behindhand in their payments for one day; but they should have been bold in demanding credit from their bank, and should have given their orders to the wholesale houses without any of that hesitation or reserve which so clearly indicates feebleness of purpose.

But in spite of this acknowledged weakness, a brisk trade over the counter had been produced; and though the firm had never owned a large stock, an unremitting sale was maintained of small goods, such as ribbons, stockings, handkerchiefs, and cotton gloves. The Katakarion shirts also had been successful, and now there was a hope that, during the coming winter, something might be done in African monkey muffs. At that time, therefore, the bill of the house at three months, though not to be regarded as a bank-note, was not absolutely waste paper. How far Brisket's eyes were open on this matter cannot now be said; but he still expressed himself willing to take one hundred pounds in cash, and the remainder of Maryanne's fortune in the bill of the firm at three months.

And then Mr. Brisket made a third visit to Bishopsgate Street. On all these occasions he passed by the door of the little room in which Robinson sat, and well did his late rival know his ponderous step. His late rival; – for Brisket was now welcome to come and go. "Mr. Brown!" said he, on one occasion, "I have come here to have a settlement about this thing at once."

"I've been ill, Brisket; very ill, you know," said Mr. Brown, pleadingly, "and I'm not strong now."

"But that can't make no difference about the money. Maryanne is willing, and me also. When Christmas is coming on, it's a busy time in our trade, and I can't be minding that sort of thing then. If you've got the cash ready, and that bit of paper, we'll have it off next week."

"I've never spoken to him about the paper;" and Mr. Brown, as he uttered these words, pointed down towards the room in which Robinson was sitting.

"Then you'd better," said Brisket. "For I shan't come here again after to-day. I'll see it out now one way or the other, and so I've told Maryanne."

Mr. Brown's sigh, when he heard these words, was prolonged and deep. "You heard what he said that night," continued Brisket. "You ask him. He's game for anything of that sort."

All these words Robinson had overheard, for the doors of the two rooms were close together, and neither of them had been absolutely closed. Now was the moment in which it behoved him to act. No false delicacy as to the nature of the conversation between his partner and that partner's proposed son-in-law withheld him; but rising from his seat, he walked straight into the upper room.

"Here he is, by jingo," said Brisket. "Talk of the – "

"Speak of an angel and behold his wings," said Robinson, with a faint smile. "I come on a visit which might befit an angel. Mr. Brown, I consent that your daughter's dowry shall be paid from the funds of the firm."

But Mr. Brown, instead of expressing his thankful gratitude, as was expected, winked at his partner. The dull Brisket did not perceive it; but Robinson at once knew that this act of munificence on his part was not at the moment pleasing to the lady's father.

"You're a trump," said Brisket; "and when we're settled at home like, Maryanne and I that is, I hope you'll let bygones be bygones, and come and take pot luck with us sometimes. If there's a tender bit of steak about the place it shall be sent to the kitchen fire when you show your face."

"Brisket," said Robinson, "there's my hand. I've loved her. I don't deny it. But you're welcome to her. No woman shall ever sit at the hearth of George Robinson; – but at her hearth George Robinson will never sit."

"You shall be as welcome as if you did," said Brisket; "and a man can't say no fairer."

But in the meantime Mr. Brown still continued to wink, and Robinson understood that his consent to that bill transaction was not in truth desired. "Perhaps, Mr. Brisket," said he, "as this is a matter of business, I and my partner had better discuss it for a moment together. We can go down into my room, Mr. Brown."

"With all my heart," said Brisket. "But remember this, both of you: if I don't see my way before I leave the house, I don't come here any more. I know my way pretty well from Aldersgate Street, and I'm sick of the road. I've been true to my word all along, and I'll be true to the end. But if I don't see my way before I leave this house, remember I'm off."

"You shouldn't have said that," whispered Brown to his partner as soon as the two were together.

"Why not?"

"The money won't be there at the end of three months, not if we pay them other things. And where's the hundred pounds of ready to come from?"

"That's your look-out."

"I haven't got it, George. Jones has it, I know; but I can't get it out of him."

"Jones got a hundred pounds! And where should Jones have gotten it?"

"I know we have been wrong, George; I know we have. But you can't wonder at me, George; can you? I did bring four thousand pounds into it; didn't I?"

"And now you haven't got a hundred pounds!"

"If I have it's as much as I can say. But Jones has it, and ever so much more. If Brisket will wait, we can frighten it out of Jones."

"If I know anything of human nature," said Robinson, "Brisket will not wait."

"He would, if you hadn't spoke to him that way. He'd say he wouldn't, and go away, and Maryanne would blow up; but I should have worked the money out of Jones at last, and then Brisket would have waited."

When Mr. Brown had made this disclosure, whispering all the time as he leaned his head and shoulder on Robinson's upright desk, they both remained silent for a while. "We have been wrong," he had said; "I know we have." And Robinson, as he heard the words, perceived that from the beginning to the end he had been a victim. No wonder that the business should not have answered, when such confessions as these were wrung from the senior partner! But the fact alleged by Mr. Brown in his own excuse was allowed its due weight by Robinson, even at that moment. Mr. Brown had possessed money, – money which might have made his old age comfortable and respectable in obscurity. It was not surprising that he should be anxious to keep in his own hand some small remnant of his own property. But as for Jones! What excuse could be made for Jones! Jones had been a thief; and worse than ordinary thieves, for his thefts were committed on his own friends.

"And he has got the money," said Robinson.

"Oh, yes!" said Mr. Brown, "there's no doubt in life about that."

"Then, by the heaven above us, he shall refund it to the firm from which he has stolen it," shouted Robinson, striking the desk with his fist as he did so.

"Whish, George, whish; Brisket will hear you."

"Who cares? I have been robbed on every side till I care for nothing! What is Brisket to me, or what is your daughter? What is anything?"

"But, George – "

"Is there no honesty left in the world, Mr. Brown? That there is no love I had already learned. Ah me, what an age is this in which we live! Deceit, deceit, deceit; – it is all deceit!"

"The heart of a man is very deceitful," said Mr. Brown. "And a woman's especially."

"Delilah would have been a true wife now-a-days. But never mind. That man is still there, and he must be answered. I have no hundred pounds to give him."

"No, George; no; we're sure of that."

"When this business is broken up, as broken up it soon will be – "

"Oh, George, don't say so."

"Ay, but it will. Then I shall walk out from Magenta House with empty pockets and with clean hands."

"But think of me, George. I had four thousand pounds when we began. Hadn't I, now?"

"I do think of you, and I forgive you. Now go up to Brisket, for he will want his answer. I can assist you no further. My name is still left to me, and of that you may avail yourself. But as for money, George Robinson has none."

About half an hour after that, Mr. Brisket again descended the stairs with his usual ponderous and slow step, and went forth into the street, shaking the dust from his feet as he did so. He was sore offended, and vowed in his heart that he would never enter that house again. He had pressed Mr. Brown home about the money; and that gentleman had suggested to him, first, that it should be given to him on the day after the marriage, and then that it should be included in the bill. "You offered to take it all in one bill before, you know," said Mr. Brown. Hereupon Brisket began to think that he did not see his way at all, and finally left the house in great anger.

He went direct from thence to Mrs. Poppins' lodgings, where he knew that he would find Miss Brown. Poppins himself was, of course, at his work, and the two ladies were together.

"I've come to wish you good-by," he said, as he walked into the room.

"Laws, Mr. Brisket!" exclaimed Mrs. Poppins.

"It's all up about this marriage, and so I thought it right to come and tell you. I began straightforward, and I mean to end straightforward."

"You mean to say you're not going to have her," said Mrs. Poppins.

"Polly, don't make a fool of yourself," said Maryanne. "Do you think I want the man. Let him go." And then he did go, and Miss Brown was left without a suitor.

CHAPTER XXI

MR. BROWN IS TAKEN ILL

Brisket kept his word, and never entered Magenta House again, nor, as far as George Robinson is aware, has he seen any of the Brown family from that day on which he gave up his intended marriage to this present. For awhile Maryanne Brown protested that she was well satisfied that this should be so. She declared to Mrs. Poppins that the man was mercenary, senseless, uninteresting, heavy, and brutal; – and though in the bosom of her own family she did not speak out with equal freedom, yet from time to time she dropped words to show that she was not breaking her heart for William Brisket. But this mood did not last long. Before winter had come round the bitterness of gall had risen within her heart, and when Christmas was there her frame of mind was comfortable neither to herself nor to her unfortunate father.

During this time the house still went on. Set a business going, and it is astonishing how long it will continue to move by the force of mere daily routine. People flocked in for shirts and stockings, and young women came there to seek their gloves and ribbons, although but little was done to attract them, either in the way of advertisement or of excellence of supply. Throughout this wretched month or two Robinson knew that failure was inevitable, and with this knowledge it was almost impossible that he should actively engage himself in his own peculiar branch of business. There was no confidence between the partners. Jones was conscious of what was coming and was more eager than ever to feather his own nest. But in these days Mr. Brown displayed a terrible activity. He was constantly in the shop, and though it was evident to all eyes that care and sorrow were heaping upon his shoulders a burden which he could hardly bear, he watched his son-in-law with the eyes of an Argus. It was terrible to see him, and terrible, alas, to hear him; – for at this time he had no reserve before the men and women engaged behind the counters. At first there had been a pretence of great love and confidence, but this was now all over. It was known to all the staff that Mr. Brown watched his son-in-law, and known also that the youngest partner had been treated with injustice by them both.

They in the shop, and even Jones himself, knew little of what in these days was going on upstairs. But Robinson knew, for his room was close to that in which Mr. Brown and his daughter lived; and, moreover, in spite of the ill-feeling which could not but exist between him and Miss Brown, he passed many hours in that room with her father. The bitterness of gall had now risen within her breast, and she had begun to realize that truth which must be so terrible for a woman, that she had fallen to the ground between two stools. It is a truth terrible to a woman. There is no position in a man's life of the same aspect. A man may fail in business, and feel that no further chance of any real success can ever come in his way; or he may fail in love, and in the soreness of his heart may know that the pleasant rippling waters of that fountain are for him dried for ever. But with a woman the two things are joined together. Her battle must be fought all in one. Her success in life and her romance must go together, hand in hand. She is called upon to marry for love, and if she marry not for love, she disobeys the ordinance of nature and must pay the penalty. But at the same time all her material fortune depends upon the nature of that love. An industrious man may marry a silly fretful woman, and may be triumphant in his counting-house though he be bankrupt in his drawing-room. But a woman has but the one chance. She must choose her life's companion because she loves him; but she knows how great is the ruin of loving one who cannot win for her that worldly success which all in the world desire to win.

With Maryanne Brown these considerations had become frightfully momentous. She had in her way felt the desire for some romance in life, but she had felt more strongly still how needful it was that she should attain by her feminine charms a position which would put her above want. "As long as I have a morsel, you shall have half of it," her father had said to her more than once. And she had answered him with terrible harshness, "But what am I to do when you have no longer a morsel to share with me? When you are ruined, or dead, where must I then look for support and shelter?" The words were harsh, and she was a very Regan to utter them. But, nevertheless, they were natural. It was manifest enough that her father would not provide for her, and for her there was nothing but Eve's lot of finding an Adam who would dig for her support. She was hard, coarse, – almost heartless; but it may perhaps be urged in her favour, that she was not wilfully dishonest. She had been promised to one man, and though she did not love him she would have married him, intending to do her duty. But to this he would not consent, except under certain money circumstances which she could not command. Then she learned to love another man, and him she would have married; but prudence told her that she should not do so until he had a home in which to place her. And thus she fell to the ground between two stools, and, falling, perceived that there was nothing before her on which her eye could rest with satisfaction.

There are women, very many women, who could bear this, if with sadness, still without bitterness. It is a lot which many women have to bear; but Maryanne Brown was one within whose bosom all feelings were turned to gall by the prospect of such a destiny. What had she done to deserve such degradation and misfortune? She would have been an honest wife to either husband! That it could be her own fault in any degree she did not for a moment admit. It was the fault of those around her, and she was not the woman to allow such a fault to pass unavenged.

"Father," she would say, "you will be in the workhouse before this new year is ended."

"I hope not, my child."

"Hope! What's the good of hoping? You will. And where am I to go then? Mother left a handsome fortune behind her, and this is what you've brought us to."

"I've done everything for the best, Maryanne."

"Why didn't you give that man the money when you had it? You'd have had a home then when you'd ruined yourself. Now you'll have no home; neither shall I."

All this was very hard to be borne. "She nags at me that dreadful, George," he once said, as he sat in his old arm-chair, with his head hanging wearily on his chest, "that I don't know where I am or what I'm doing. As for the workhouse, I almost wish I was there."

She would go also to Poppins' lodgings, and there quarrel with her old friend Polly. It may be that at this time she did not receive all the respect that had been paid to her some months back, and this reverse was, to her proud spirit, unendurable. "Polly," she said, "if you wish to turn your back upon me, you can do so. But I won't put up with your airs."

"There's nobody turning their back upon you, only yourself," Polly replied; "but it's frightful to hear the way you're always a-grumbling; – as if other people hadn't had their ups and downs besides you."

Robinson also was taught by the manner of his friend Poppins that he could not now expect to receive that high deference which was paid to him about the time that Johnson of Manchester had been in the ascendant. Those had been the halcyon days of the firm, and Robinson had then been happy. Men at that time would point him out as he passed, as one worthy of notice; his companions felt proud when he would join them; and they would hint to him, with a mysterious reverence that was very gratifying, their assurance that he was so deeply occupied as to make it impossible that he should give his time to the ordinary slow courtesies of life. All this was over now, and he felt that he was pulled down with rough hands from the high place which he had occupied.

"It's all very well," Poppins would say to him, "but the fact is, you're a-doing of nothing."

"If fourteen hours a day – " began Robinson. But Poppins instantly stopped him.

"Fourteen hours' work a day is nothing, if you don't do anything. A man may sweat hard digging holes and filling them up again. But what I say is, he does not do any good. You've been making out all these long stories about things that never existed, but what's the world the better for it; – that's what I want to know. When a man makes a pair of shoes – ." And so he went on. Coming from such a man as Poppins, this was hard to be borne. But nevertheless Robinson did bear it. Men at the "Goose and Gridiron" also would shoulder him now-a-days, rather than make way for him. Geese whose names had never been heard beyond the walls of that room would presume to occupy his place. And on one occasion, when he rose to address the chamber, the Grand omitted the courtesy that had ever been paid to him, and forgot to lay down his pipe. This also he bore without flinching.

It was about the middle of February when a catastrophe happened which was the immediate forerunner of the fall of the house. Robinson had been at his desk early in the morning, – for, though his efforts were now useless, he was always there; and had been struck with dismay by the loudness of Maryanne's tone as she rebuked her father. Then Mrs. Jones had joined them, and the battle had raged still more furiously. The voice of the old man, too, was heard from time to time. When roused by suffering to anger he would forget to speak in his usual falsetto treble, and break out in a few natural words of rough impassioned wrath. At about ten, Mr. Brown came down into Robinson's room, and, seating himself on a low chair, remained there for awhile without moving, and almost without speaking. "Is she gone, George?" he asked at last. "Which of them?" said Robinson.

"Sarah Jane. I'm not so used to her, and it's very bad." Then Robinson looked out and said that Mrs. Jones was gone. Whereupon Mr. Brown returned to his own room.

Again and again throughout the day Robinson heard the voices; but he did not go up to the room. He never did go there now, unless specially called upon to do so by business. At about noon, however, there came a sudden silence, – a silence so sudden that he noticed it. And then he heard a quick step across the floor. It was nothing to him, and he did not move from his seat; but still he kept his ears open, and sat thoughtless of other matters, as though he expected that something was about to happen. The room above was perfectly still, and for a minute or two nothing was done. But then there came the fall of a quicker step across the room, and the door was opened, and Maryanne, descending the four stairs which led to his own closet, was with him in an instant. "George," she said, forgetting all propriety of demeanour, "father's in a fit!"

It is not necessary that the scene which followed should be described with minuteness in these pages. Robinson, of course, went up to Mr. Brown's room, and a doctor was soon there in attendance upon the sick man. He had been struck by paralysis, and thus for a time had been put beyond the reach of his daughters' anger. Sarah Jane was very soon there, but the wretched state in which the old man was lying quieted even her tongue. She did not dare to carry on the combat as she looked on the contorted features and motionless limbs of the poor wretch as he lay on his bed. On her mind came the conviction that this was partly her work, and that if she now spoke above her breath, those around her would accuse her of her cruelty. So she slunk about into corners, whispering now and again with her husband, and quickly took herself off, leaving the task of nursing the old man to the higher courage of her sister.