The Sapphire Cross

He waited for some response to his words, but none was forthcoming.

“I’m not going to be treated like this!” exclaimed the visitor, with mock anger. “I’ll soon – ”

“There, there – stop, and I’ll tell you all about it. It is worth waiting for.”

His lordship stopped short again, and his by no means intellectual countenance displayed strongly the shame and humiliation he felt.

“Well?” said the Jew.

“It’s about a marriage – a matrimonial affair.”

The Jew looked at him as if he would read his every thought.

“Plenty of money?” he said, at last.

“One of the richest heiresses in England.”

“Are you sure of that?” said Braham; “or has some foreign countess got hold of you again?”

“Sure? Yes!” cried Maudlaine, excitedly. “The father has been living out of England for years past at the rate of a couple of thousand a year, and his income’s at least twenty. All been increasing and piling up ever since.”

The Jew again looked piercingly at the young man; but it was plain enough that the ability was not in him to invent this as a fiction upon the spur of the moment.

“Well,” said the interlocutor, “go on. Have you any chance?”

“Yes; of course I have,” said Maudlaine.

“Father agreeable?”

“Yes!”

“Lady?”

“Well, yes – pretty well; but that’s all right, I tell you.”

“Meet them abroad?”

“Yes.”

“Have they come back to town?”

“To England – not town.”

“Humph!” ejaculated the visitor, still narrowly scanning his victim. “And that’s why you came back?”

“Of course.”

“Now, look here, Maudlaine,” said the Jew, fiercely, “I’m not a man to be trifled with. I was your slave once, and you did not forget to show it. You are mine now, and you must not be surprised at my turn, now it has come, being brought strongly before your attention. But I’ll be frank with you: I lend money for interest. Well and good: I’d rather wait and let you pay me that money and that interest than have to arrest you. I don’t want to get a bad name amongst your class. Now I’ve not much confidence in you as to promises to pay; but I’ll believe your word of honour. Is all this true?”

“On my word of honour, yes!” said Maudlaine, angrily.

“Who is the lady, then?” The Viscount flushed deeply, bit his lips, and was silent; for to answer this question seemed to him too great a humiliation. “Who is the lady?” was asked again. There was no answer. “I suppose you don’t want my help, then?” said the Jew. “Just as you like. Prove to me that this is worth my while to wait – say six or twelve months – and I’ll lend you a few hundreds to go on with. But, there, I’m not anxious; just as you like. Shall I call up the men?”

“Confound you, no!” exclaimed the young man, angrily. “She is the daughter of a wealthy baronet, of Lincolnshire. Now are you satisfied?”

“No,” said the Jew, taking out pencil and pocket-book; “I want his name.”

“Good old family,” said the Viscount, hastily. “Only child. I am invited down there, and the baronet is quite willing. Will that do?”

“Name – name – name!” exclaimed the creditor, impatiently.

“Sir Murray Gernon. There, then!” cried the young man, furiously.

“Sir Murray Gernon,” said the Jew, quietly, as he tapped his teeth with his large gold pencil-case – “Sir Murray Gernon. Ah! let me see; there was a screw loose there, if I recollect right, years ago. Rich family, though – very. Young lady’s mamma bolted, I think; but that don’t matter to you. Yes, that will do, Viscount – that will do. I think I’ll wait.”

“And you will advance me what I require?” said his lordship, eagerly, forgetting all humiliation in his brightened prospects.

“In reason, yes,” said the Jew, with a mocking smile once more overspreading his face; “but I shall not do it for nothing, my Lord Viscount Maudlaine – I shall not do it for nothing.”

“No,” muttered the young man, “I know that.”

“It’s quite possible that I may go so far as to make my own terms,” said the Jew, with a grin. “But I’ll leave you, now, to think over the matter; and if you want any little help, of course you’ll come to my chambers, where we can renew one of the bills.”

“Confound the bills!” cried the young man, angrily; “I must have a cheque for some hard cash to go on with.”

“Very good. Come to me, then, my lord,” said the Jew, all suavity once more. “Excuse me for hurrying away, but it is for your sake. It is not seemly to have Sheriffs’ officers waiting opposite to an hotel. Good morning, my lord!”

“Good morning!” said the Viscount, sulkily.

“You shall fly a little longer, my fine bird – just a little longer!” said Mr Joshua Braham, as he went out; “but it shall be just as long as I like, and with a string tied to your leg – a string, my fine fellow, of which I hold the end?”

In Peril

“It is of no use,” said Brace Norton, one day, when he had been home about a month, “I can’t fight against fate. I vowed that I’d think no more about her, and I’ve thought about nothing else ever since. I go out very seldom, but when I do, I always seem to meet her. I’ve heard a good deal of milk-and-sugar talk about love; and if this is what is called love, all I can say is that it’s worse than mast-heading. I can’t help it – I can’t keep free of it! What in the world did I get looking at her for, as I did, that day coming home? Brace Norton – Brace Norton, I’m afraid that you are a great ass!”

He sat thinking for awhile, trying to be light-hearted, and to sweep his troubles away, but he soon owned to himself that it was no laughing matter.

“Heaven help me!” he groaned, “for a miserable, unhappy wretch – one who seems fated to make those about him suffer! It seems almost as if I were to endure the same torments as my poor father, without the alleviation of some other gentle hand to heal my wounds. Wounds! Pooh! stuff! What romantic twaddle I am talking! It is time I was off back to sea. But, there, I’ve fought against it, all for their sakes, till it has been enough to drive me mad. I suppose men were meant to be butterflies, and to burn their wings in the light of some particular star; so the sooner I get mine singed off, and get on board ship, the better. There’s no romance there. Anything’s better than this state of torment. Here am I, making myself disagreeable to the best of fathers and the tenderest of mothers; and because things run in a rut different from that which suits me, I go sulking about like a spoiled child in love with a jam-pot; and after making everybody miserable at home, go sneaking and wandering about after the fashion of a confounded tramp poaching somebody’s goslings. I expect I shall be locked up one of these days. Seriously, though, I wish I had not come back,” he said, dreamily; “I wish that a reconciliation were possible; I wish I had never seen her; I wish – I wish – There, what is the good of wishing? What a wretched life this is, and how things do contrive to get in a state of tangle! I don’t think I ever tried to meet her, and yet how often, day after day, we seem to encounter! Even the thought of the old past sorrows seems to bring her closer and closer. Why, then, should not this be the means of bringing old sorrows to an end, and linking together the two families?”

Brace Norton brought his ponderings to a close, as, bit by bit, he recalled the past; and then he groaned in spirit, as his reason told him how impossible was a reconciliation.

“I must dismiss it all,” he at last said, bitterly. “They have had their sufferings; I will not be so cowardly as to shrink from mine. I’ll take an interest in the governor’s pursuits; and here goes to begin. I’ll run over to the Marsh, and see where they are pegging out the drain; but I may as well take a gun, and see if I cannot bag a couple or two of ducks.”

Brace Norton’s reverie had been in his own room; and with this determination fresh upon him, he walked, cheery of aspect, into the room where Captain and Mrs Norton had been discussing the unsatisfactory turn matters had taken, when the young man’s bright look, and apparently buoyant spirits, came upon them like a burst of sunshine.

“Gun? Yes, my dear boy!” exclaimed the Captain, delighted at the change that seemed to have come over his son. “Here you are,” he said, opening a case – “everything to your hand. You’ll be back to dinner?”

“Ay, ay, sir!” cried Brace, strengthened in his resolve, on seeing the pleasure his high spirits seemed to impart to his elders. “I am going to see where they are marking out the drain.”