The Battle of Life. A Love Story

“Not ruined, Mr. Warden,” returned Snitchey. “Not so bad as that. You have done a good deal towards it, I must say, but you are not ruined. A little nursing – ”

“A little Devil,” said the client.

“Mr. Craggs,” said Snitchey, “will you oblige me with a pinch of snuff? Thank you, Sir.”

As the imperturbable lawyer applied it to his nose, with great apparent relish and a perfect absorption of his attention in the proceeding, the client gradually broke into a smile, and, looking up, said:

“You talk of nursing. How long nursing?”

“How long nursing?” repeated Snitchey, dusting the snuff from his fingers, and making a slow calculation in his mind. “For your involved estate, Sir? In good hands? S. and C.’s, say? Six or seven years.”

“To starve for six or seven years!” said the client with a fretful laugh, and an impatient change of his position.

“To starve for six or seven years, Mr. Warden,” said Snitchey, “would be very uncommon indeed. You might get another estate by shewing yourself, the while. But we don’t think you could do it – speaking for Self and Craggs – and consequently don’t advise it.”

“What do you advise?”

“Nursing, I say,” repeated Snitchey. “Some few years of nursing by Self and Craggs would bring it round. But to enable us to make terms, and hold terms, and you to keep terms, you must go away, you must live abroad. As to starvation, we could ensure you some hundreds a year to starve upon, even in the beginning, I dare say, Mr. Warden.”

“Hundreds,” said the client. “And I have spent thousands!”

“That,” retorted Mr. Snitchey, putting the papers slowly back into the cast-iron box, “there is no doubt about. No doubt a – bout,” he repeated to himself, as he thoughtfully pursued his occupation.

The lawyer very likely knew his man; at any rate his dry, shrewd, whimsical manner, had a favourable influence upon the client’s moody state, and disposed him to be more free and unreserved. Or perhaps the client knew his man; and had elicited such encouragement as he had received, to render some purpose he was about to disclose the more defensible in appearance. Gradually raising his head, he sat looking at his immovable adviser with a smile, which presently broke into a laugh.

“After all,” he said, “my iron-headed friend – ”

Mr. Snitchey pointed out his partner. “Self and – excuse me – Craggs.”

“I beg Mr. Craggs’s pardon,” said the client. “After all, my iron-headed friends,” he leaned forward in his chair, and dropped his voice a little, “you don’t know half my ruin yet.”

Mr. Snitchey stopped and stared at him. Mr. Craggs also stared.

“I am not only deep in debt,” said the client “but I am deep in – ”

“Not in love!” cried Snitchey.

“Yes!” said the client, falling back in his chair, and surveying the Firm with his hands in his pockets. “Deep in love.”

“And not with an heiress, Sir?” said Snitchey.

“Not with an heiress.”

“Nor a rich lady?”

“Nor a rich lady that I know of – except in beauty and merit.”

“A single lady, I trust?” said Mr. Snitchey, with great expression.

“Certainly.”

“It’s not one of Doctor Jeddler’s daughters?” said Snitchey, suddenly squaring his elbows on his knees, and advancing his face at least a yard.

“Yes!” returned the client.

“Not his younger daughter?” said Snitchey.

“Yes!” returned the client.

“Mr. Craggs,” said Snitchey, much relieved, “will you oblige me with another pinch of snuff? Thank you. I am happy to say it don’t signify, Mr. Warden; she’s engaged, Sir, she’s bespoke. My partner can corroborate me. We know the fact.”

“We know the fact,” repeated Craggs.

“Why, so do I perhaps,” returned the client quietly. “What of that? Are you men of the world, and did you never hear of a woman changing her mind?”

“There certainly have been actions for breach,” said Mr. Snitchey, “brought against both spinsters and widows, but in the majority of cases – ”

“Cases!” interposed the client, impatiently. “Don’t talk to me of cases. The general precedent is in a much larger volume than any of your law books. Besides, do you think I have lived six weeks in the Doctor’s house for nothing?”

“I think, Sir,” observed Mr. Snitchey, gravely addressing himself to his partner, “that of all the scrapes Mr. Warden’s horses have brought him into at one time and another – and they have been pretty numerous, and pretty expensive, as none know better than himself and you and I – the worst scrape may turn out to be, if he talks in this way, his having been ever left by one of them at the Doctor’s garden wall, with three broken ribs, a snapped collar-bone, and the Lord knows how many bruises. We didn’t think so much of it, at the time when we knew he was going on well under the Doctor’s hands and roof; but it looks bad now, Sir. Bad! It looks very bad. Doctor Jeddler too – our client, Mr. Craggs.”

“Mr. Alfred Heathfield too – a sort of client, Mr. Snitchey,” said Craggs.

“Mr. Michael Warden too, a kind of client,” said the careless visitor, “and no bad one either: having played the fool for ten or twelve years. However Mr. Michael Warden has sown his wild oats now; there’s their crop, in that box; and means to repent and be wise. And in proof of it, Mr. Michael Warden means, if he can, to marry Marion, the Doctor’s lovely daughter, and to carry her away with him.”

“Really, Mr. Craggs,” Snitchey began.

“Really Mr. Snitchey, and Mr. Craggs, partners both,” said the client, interrupting him; “you know your duty to your clients, and you know well enough, I am sure, that it is no part of it to interfere in a mere love affair, which I am obliged to confide to you. I am not going to carry the young lady off, without her own consent. There’s nothing illegal in it. I never was Mr. Heathfield’s bosom friend. I violate no confidence of his. I love where he loves, and I mean to win where he would win, if I can.”

“He can’t, Mr. Craggs,” said Snitchey, evidently anxious and discomfited. “He can’t do it, Sir. She dotes on Mr. Alfred.”

“Does she?” returned the client.

“Mr. Craggs, she dotes on him, Sir,” persisted Snitchey.

“I didn’t live six weeks, some few months ago, in the Doctor’s house for nothing; and I doubted that soon,” observed the client. “She would have doted on him, if her sister could have brought it about; but I watched them. Marion avoided his name, avoided the subject: shrunk from the least allusion to it, with evident distress.”

“Why should she, Mr. Craggs, you know? Why should she, Sir?” inquired Snitchey.

“I don’t know why she should, though there are many likely reasons,” said the client, smiling at the attention and perplexity expressed in Mr. Snitchey’s shining eye, and at his cautious way of carrying on the conversation, and making himself informed upon the subject; “but I know she does. She was very young when she made the engagement – if it may be called one, I am not even sure of that – and has repented of it, perhaps. Perhaps – it seems a foppish thing to say, but upon my soul I don’t mean it in that light – she may have fallen in love with me, as I have fallen in love with her.”

“He, he! Mr. Alfred, her old playfellow too, you remember, Mr. Craggs,” said Snitchey, with a disconcerted laugh; “knew her almost from a baby!”

“Which makes it the more probable that she may be tired of his idea,” calmly pursued the client, “and not indisposed to exchange it for the newer one of another lover, who presents himself (or is presented by his horse) under romantic circumstances; has the not unfavorable reputation – with a country girl – of having lived thoughtlessly and gaily, without doing much harm to anybody; and who, for his youth and figure, and so forth – this may seem foppish again, but upon my soul I don’t mean it in that light – might perhaps pass muster in a crowd with Mr. Alfred himself.”

There was no gainsaying the last clause, certainly; and Mr. Snitchey, glancing at him, thought so. There was something naturally graceful and pleasant in the very carelessness of his air. It seemed to suggest, of his comely face and well-knit figure, that they might be greatly better if he chose: and that, once roused and made earnest (but he never had been earnest yet), he could be full of fire and purpose. “A dangerous sort of libertine,” thought the shrewd lawyer, “to seem to catch the spark he wants from a young lady’s eyes.”

“Now, observe, Snitchey,” he continued, rising and taking him by the button, “and Craggs,” taking him by the button also, and placing one partner on either side of him, so that neither might evade him. “I don’t ask you for any advice. You are right to keep quite aloof from all parties in such a matter, which is not one in which grave men like you could interfere, on any side. I am briefly going to review in half-a-dozen words, my position and intention, and then I shall leave it to you to do the best for me, in money matters, that you can: seeing, that, if I run away with the Doctor’s beautiful daughter (as I hope to do, and to become another man under her bright influence), it will be, for the moment, more chargeable than running away alone. But I shall soon make all that up in an altered life.”