“They have just knocked off for dinner—you need not say I told you, but Will Fielding was at the bank this morning, trying to get money on their bill, and the bank said No! They had my good word, too. The people of the bank sent over to me.”
They had his good word! but not his good tone! he had said. “Well, their father was a safe man;” but the accent with which he eulogized the parent had somehow locked the bank cash-box to the children.
“I never liked it, especially of late,” mused Merton. “But you see the young folk being cousins—”
“That is it, cousins,” put in Meadows; “it is not as if she loved him with all her heart and soul; she is an obedient daughter, isn't she?”
“Never gainsaid me in her life; she has a high spirit, but never with me; my word is law. You see, she is a very religious girl, is Susan.”
“Well, then, a word from you would save her—but there—all that is your affair, not mine,” added he.
“Of course it is,” was the reply. “You are a true friend. I'll step round to the barn and see what is doing.” And away went Susan's father uneasy in his mind.
Meadows went to the “Black Horse,” the village public house, to see what farmers wanted to borrow a little money under the rose, and would pawn their wheat ricks, and pay twenty per cent for that overrated merchandise.
At the door of the public-house he was met by the village constable, and a stranger of gentlemanly address and clerical appearance. The constable wore a mysterious look and invited Meadows into the parlor of the public-house.
“I have news for you, sir,” said he, “leastways I think so; your pocket was picked last Martinmas fair of three Farnborough bank-notes with your name on the back.”
“It was!”
“Is this one of them?” said the man, producing a note.
Meadows examined it with interest, compared the number with a memorandum in his pocketbook, and pronounced that it was.
“Who passed it?” inquired he.
“A chap that has got the rest—a stranger—Robinson—that lodges at “The Grove” with George Fielding; that is, if his name is Robinson, but we think he is a Londoner come down to take an airing. You understand, Sir.”
Meadows' eyes flashed actual fire. For so rich a man, he seemed wonderfully excited by this circumstance.
To an inquiry who was his companion, the constable answered sotto voce, “Gentleman from Bow Street, come to see if he knows him.” The constable went on to inform Meadows that Robinson was out fishing somewhere, otherwise they would already have taken him; “but we will hang about the farm, and take him when he comes home.”
“You had better be at hand, sir, to identify the notes,” said the gentleman from Bow Street, whose appearance was clerical.
Meadows had important business five miles off; he postponed it. He wrote a line in pencil, put a boy upon his black mare, and hurried him off to the rendezvous, while he stayed and entered with strange alacrity into this affair. “Stay,” cried he, “if he is an old hand he will twig the officer.”
“Oh, I'm dark, sir,” was the answer; “he won't know me till I put the darbies on him.”
The two men then strolled as far as the village stocks, keeping an eye ever on the farm-house.
Thus a network of adverse events was closing round George Fielding this day.
He was all unconscious of them; he was in good spirits. Robinson had showed him how to relieve the temporary embarrassment that had lately depressed him.
“Draw a bill on your brother,” said Robinson, “and let him accept it. The Farnborough Bank will give you notes for it. These country banks like any paper better than their own. I dare say they are right.”
George had done this, and expected William every minute with this and other moneys. And then Susanna Merton was to dine at “The Grove” to-day, and this, though not uncommon, was always a great event with poor George.
Dilly would not come to be killed just when he was wanted. In other words, Robinson, who had no idea how he was keeping people waiting, fished tranquilly till near dinner-time, neither taking nor being taken.
This detained Meadows in the neighborhood of the farm, and was the cause of his rencontre with a very singular personage, whose visit he knew at sight must be to him.
As he hovered about among George Fielding's ricks, the figure of an old man slightly bowed but full of vigor stood before him. He had a long gray beard with a slight division in the center, hair abundant but almost white, and a dark, swarthy complexion that did not belong to England; his thick eyebrows also were darker than his hair, and under them was an eye like a royal jewel; his voice had the Oriental richness and modulation—this old man was Isaac Levi; an Oriental Jew who had passed half his life under the sun's eye, and now, though the town of Farnborough had long been too accustomed to him to wonder at him, he dazzled any thoughtful stranger; so exotic and apart was he—so romantic a grain in a heap of vulgarity—he was as though a striped jasper had crept in among the paving-stones of their marketplace, or a cactus grandiflora shone among the nettles of a Berkshire meadow.
Isaac Levi, unlike most Jews, was familiar with the Hebrew tongue, and this and the Eastern habits of his youth colored his language and his thoughts, especially in his moments of emotion, and above all, when he forgot the money-lender for a moment, and felt and thought as one of a great nation, depressed, but waiting for a great deliverance. He was a man of authority and learning in his tribe.
At sight of Isaac Levi Meadows' brow towered, and he called out rather rudely without allowing the old gentleman to speak, “If you are come to talk to me about that house you are in you may keep your breath to cool your porridge.”
Meadows had bought the house Isaac rented, and had instantly given him warning to leave.
Isaac, who had become strangely attached to the only place in which he had ever lived many years, had not doubted for a moment that Meadows merely meant to raise the rent to its full value, so he had come to treat with his new landlord. “Mr. Meadows,” said he persuasively, “I have lived there twenty years—I pay a fair rent—but, if you think any one would give you more you shall lose nothing by me—I will pay a little more; and you know your rent is secure?”
“I do,” was the answer.
“Thank you, sir! well, then—”
“Well, then, next Lady-day you turn out bag and baggage.
“Nay, sir,” said Isaac Levi, “hear me, for you are younger than I. Mr. Meadows, when this hair was brown I traveled in the East; I sojourned in Madras and Benares, in Bagdad, Ispahan, Mecca and Bassora, and found no rest. When my hair began to turn gray, I traded in Petersburg and Rome and Paris, Vienna and Lisbon and other western cities and found no rest. I came to this little town, where, least of all, I thought to pitch my tent for life, but here the God of my fathers gave me my wife, and here He took her to Himself again—”
“What the deuce is all this to me, man?”
“Much, sir, if you are what men say; for men speak well of you; be patient, and hear me. Two children were born to me and died from me in the house you have bought; and there my Leah died also; and there at times in the silent hours I seem to hear their voices and their feet. In another house I shall never hear them—I shall be quite alone. Have pity on me, sir, an aged and a lonely man; tear me not from the shadows of my dead. Let me prevail with you?”
“No!” was the stern answer.
“No?” cried Levi, a sudden light darting into his eye; “then you must be an enemy of Isaac Levi?”
“Yes!” was the grim reply to this rapid inference.
“Aha!” cried the old Jew,