The city banker : or, Love and money

Chapter I. An Unconscious Marplot

A RATHER remarkable incident diversified the time of her husband's absence, also, for Mrs. Oliver Mulgrave. She was sitting at some fancy work, in which she was instructing her younger daughter, while lending an unattentiveear to the elder one's ex quisite practice on the piano, absorbed in her own melancholy thoughts on the subject of Valentine, VOL. II. B the morning after Mr. Mulgrave's departure, when a visitor was announced. Mrs. Mulgrave started to hear that a lady of the name of Snareswell requested the pleasure of speaking with her for a few minutes. But no, it could not be that Mrs. Snareswell ! That Mrs. Snareswell had now been Lady Mul grave for several months, and was not a person at all likely to drop her honours. Could it be her schoolfellow, Matilda, whose similarity of name she had used as a pretence for an inroad at Villa Albano ?

Mrs. Mulgrave was still debating the subject in her own mind, without returning an answer to the surprised maid-servant, when her per plexity was solved by the appearance of the visitor. " Oh, Katharine ! I am sure you remember me !" exclaimed a pleasant, and still girlish sounding voice ; and a short, but extremely well made, plump, and softly-complexioned woman, leading a couple of handsome children by the hand, came gliding in. " Matilda ! — And do I really see you at last again?" said Mrs. Mulgrave, affectionately em bracing her old schoolfellow. " Indeed you do, Katharine — and here are my two little boys. And those are your darlings ? — Oh ! how like that sweet girl is to you, when you were her age, Kate ; and so she is still ! Though it sounds like flattery to say so — she is such a perfect little angel !" exclaimed the visitor, over flowing with joy and kindliness at her friendly reception.

" We call her Katharine, too — and what are the names of your fine boys ?" said the gratified mother, with a fond gaze at her beautiful daughter, who, blushing, and rather confused, had risen from the piano. " Archibald and Kiddypore — they are twins — we divided their poor dear father's names between them," said Mrs. Snareswell ; and after some effort to repress her emotion, she fairly burst into tears. " Ah, we heard some time ago. Poor things ! but they have a kind mother left to them still !" said Mrs. Mulgrave, soothingly. " Yet I dare say you thought I was married again, six or seven months ago — and to a grand personage, too, of your own name — didn't you ? You saw — you must have seen — how a Mrs. Snareswell, of Kingston, was married, then, to a b Sir Peter Mulgrave ?" said the visitor, changing as rapidly almost to laughter in the midst of her tears.

"Why, you are not in the least changed, Kate — I remember you just such a girl as you are a woman," said Mrs. Mulgrave. " Well, I really was rather astonished at observing what you mention at the time. More especially as, if you had married the Sir Peter in question, you would have become — let us see, what rela tion to us ? — My step-mother-in-law." " Dear me, how strange ! But I don't think he was called Sir Peter always, was he ? Not when you married his son, you know, and he was not agreeable to the match ; for Julia Mas ters, who was one of your bridesmaids, told me since, none of the bridegroom's family was present," said the visitor. " And we are on as bad terms — perhaps on worse — still," replied Mrs. Mulgrave. " But, my dear, I knew it could not be you, for the Mrs. Snareswell's name was Susannah in the paper.

And, besides, I knew you were never the woman to marry an old fellow for his mo ney — as no doubt that creature did. And yet she had plenty of her own, they say." " I can prove that to you, Kate — what you say about my not marrying again for money — or anything else, indeed," said the young widow ; she was, at all events, still in the prime of widowhood (about thirty-five), and she blushed and laughed, as she added, " I refused a capital offer not long ago — and made under such peculiar circumstances, too, I wonder really how I could ! But it will be all for the best, in the long run, I dare say." " But where have you been living all this time, and how comes it you have never looked me up before ?" said Mrs. Mulgrave. " I have often made inquiries about you, and the last I heard of you was, that you were gone abroad with Mr. Snareswell."

" Ah, poor Archie ! poor, dear Archie !" again wept this little April shower of a tender-hearted, simple woman. " I brought him no luck by going out with him, did I ? However, I was with him, poor fellow ! when he died of that horrible fever. It is some comfort, Katharine, isn't it, that he died with my arms round his poor neck, and with my kiss upon his dying lips ? — And he knew me to the last — I know he did by his look at me — to the very instant when he died. He knew and loved me, Kate, to the very last, as fondly and truly as on the day he wedded me." " Poor fellow !" sympathized Mrs. Mulgrave, also wiping her eyes. " Well, but as soon as you came home, you ought to have made in quiries after me. However, here we have found one another at last, and I shall not part with you very easily again ; so come to my room, and put off your bonnet and shawl for the day."

Mrs. Mulgrave, besides the really kindly and affectionate interest she felt in her early companion and school-fellow, had a great curiosity to question her on certain points which struck her as strange coincidences between her story and that of the lady of Villa Albano. At the same time she did not wish for auditors so young and indiscreet as her own and the real Mrs. Snares well's children. The visitor readily agreed to accept the invitation, having also a good deal to disburthen her mind of. The children were recommended to one another's attention, and the collective group to the surveillance of Mrs. Mulgrave's governess ; and the two ladies adjourned to the former's bed-room. " What a beautiful shawl you have on, Ma tilda ! — real Indian, I am quite certain," said Mrs. Mulgrave, following her friend up-stairs, and speaking on a subject considerably remote from her actual thoughts at the moment.

" Oh, yes ; but it is a present, Katharine, and I could not refuse it without seeming too un grateful, you know ; but I did not wish to take it," replied the visitor, nevertheless, rather dis playing the splendid article of dress alluded to, by raising her elbows beneath it. " You know it was never my taste ; I always liked such dreadfully quiet things. But I want to consult you about that, too — and about everything." " Well, and where have you been living since you came home from the coast of Africa ?" said Mrs. Mulgrave, composing herself on a low wicker seat before the mirror, while her visitor proceeded to remove her walking habiliments. " Oh, you know his mother had a little cot tage, all covered with roses and clematis, at Kingston-on-Thames. So when we came home we went to live with her.

But she died very soon after." " So near London ! and never even to make inquiries after me, Matilda ?" " Oh, yes, I did ! But we were so poor, we had hardly enough to live upon in the plainest possible way ; and I heard you were married into such a high family, I was afraid it would disgrace you in your husband's eyes to know such people. People that had next to nothing ; and I heard your Mulgraves were such a very, very rich family — all bankers, are you not ?" " Yes ; but we are not all so rich as to be above every natural and kindly feeling, Matilda. I should have welcomed you just the same if you had come in rags." "Do you think you would, dear? Well, you were always one of the kindest creatures in the world, Kate ! But I should never have dared to come but for — but for such a curious thing.

I did not even venture, you know, though I was so astonished at seeing a person of almost ex actly the same queer name as my own married to a Sir Peter Mulgrave, that I thought of coming on purpose to say it was not me !" " It would have been too late, then," said Mrs. Mulgrave, almost involuntarily giving some utterance to her increasing suspicions aloud. " But have you had only these two brave-looking young boys, Matilda ? — Kingston-on-Thames ! You never, surely, had one that was drowned in the river there ?" " Oh, no, no — God forbid ! But you must have heard of the accident that befel Archie, I suppose ? and that's how all the rest of the affair came about," said Matilda, turning quite pale, then colouring and laughing outright, all, as it were, at once. " I have heard that a little boy of your name — but he was the son of the rich widow at Albano Villa — was drowned in the Thames, and so she could bear the place where she was living — but I think it was said to be Twickenham — no longer, and came to reside at Kensington ?" said Mrs. Mulgrave, with much anxiety.

" No, he was not drowned ! my boy was not ! and I did not move on that account, but on another — and we don't live at Kensington, but at Islington," replied the simple-hearted widow ; no counterpart, certainly, of her namesake of the former locality. " Do you mean that he fell into the river, and — was not drowned?" said Mrs. Mulgrave, a little impatiently. B " Yes; he was fishing, or playing some child ish trick after the swans, and got into a deep place, and would have been drowned, only for — for an old gentleman. Such a good old gentle man, Kate ! and he is not so very old, either, but he has been a long time in India, and he is a little dark, you know, to look at him. But they came and told me all of a sudden about my boy's being nearly saved — drowned, I mean — and it took such an effect on me, that I — my poor little girl was born the same night, and died almost directly."

" Indeed ! — It is very strange how exactly your story — not exactly, either, but it is strangely like — tallies with the one Lady Mulgrave's im pudent waiting-woman told Sarah Hopkins about the loss of her mistress's children," mused Oliver's wife aloud. " The gentleman's name that saved my little Archie is Dalrymple. He has been a Resident, or something of that title, in India, and is wonderfully rich, they say," pursued the real Mrs. Snareswell, in her own vein of the subject. " Wonderfully rich, is he ? — And did he make you a present of this shawl? — Ah, Matilda! I begin to comprehend," said Mrs. Mulgrave, playfully, unwilling that the cause of her own thoughtfulness should be inquired into. " But indeed you don't, Kate. I have refused him, money and all ! And that is one of the reasons I left Kingston, where he has — oh ! such a fine house !

I was so grateful to him for little Archie's sake, that — that I was afraid I should have had him at last, if I had stayed." " And why not, if he was so rich ? had it been merely for your children's sake," said Mrs. Mulgrave, not lending much attention to her own observation : it was not in the tone of her usually generous and disinterested ideas. " Oh ! I heard he was so dreadfully gloomy and morose ! He had been jilted when he was a young man by some young woman or another, and really, people made him out to be a sort of Bluebeard, in the way he spoke of women ! I don't mean to say, of course, he strangled them and hung them up in his closet, and kept a little key of them, but he never spoke any good of them, and it frightened me. Then they said his temper was so violent and irascible. Upon my word, I durst not marry him, even if I could have made up my mind to forget poor Archibald !"

"Do you think, Matilda," said Mrs. Mulgrave, absently, " that Lady Mulgrave — that now is — that her former husband can have been any relation to yours ? — Did you ever hear of a very rich one being in the family ?" " Oh no, never ! There was not one of our Snareswells able to do the least thing for me or the children, when poor Archie was gone !'» responded the simple-minded widow. " That may be only a proof of their worldli ness," observed Mrs. Mulgrave. " It really is all very singular. But what do you say about this Mr. Dalrymple? He saved your child's hfe, and offered, in addition, to marry you, Ma tilda?" " I'll tell you all how it happened," said Mrs. Snareswell, twirling her ringleted hair into co quettish festoons as she spoke, partly to hide the glow of her complexion. " I told you how little Archibald fell into the water, and Mr. Dal rymple was fishing in a punt, close at hand He would fish for whole days, they said, without speaking a word to anybody or taking the least notice of anyone.

But the moment he heard Kiddypore's scream, and saw Archie splashing about in the water — although he is a man that's dreadfully afraid of taking cold, and he thinks it is as much as his life is worth if he did — he stripped off his great-coat, comforter, and all — and it was a hot July day too ! — and plunged at once into the water, and down among the mud and reeds; and he had to dive three times before he could find him. And then he had to drag him up by the heels ! And a person came off, as hard as he could, before he knew whether Archie was dead or not, to tell me the good news. But I was so frightened, as they had not got him fairly out. And poor Mr. Dalrymple had a rheumatism and a cramp in his legs, and all kinds of things, for months after." " I am sure that sort of behaviour did not argue a bad disposition.

I think you might have risked his temper, if that had been the only objection," was Mrs. Mulgrave's commen tary. " Oh, but his own nephew gave me such an account of him, and said he would be sure to murder a wife before he had been married to her a week ! and he said he had quite a harem when he was in India, and ordered them all to be burned before he came away !" " What nonsense !" exclaimed Mrs. Mulgrave, laughing, although her mood was by no means merry at heart — " what wonderful nonsense ! — Grown-up people believe far more improbable things than children ever would ! — I suppose the nephew had his objects to serve, and wanted to set you against his uncle." " Indeed, I have since heard — I found out, in fact, myself, by an impudent proposal he made to me — that he is a very bad young man !" said Mrs. Snareswell.

" Do you know he had the audacity to pretend to fall in love with me him self, and to say that if I would run away with him, his uncle would forgive us both, and pay his debts, and leave us his money when he died ! And he said the old gentleman was accustomed to be jilted, and would not care in the least about it." " What's the scampish fellow's name ? — to impose so on your credulity ! — Excuse me, my dear, but you were always too ready of belief," said Mrs. Mulgrave. She was turned for the moment from the consideration of her own com plex puzzle by this new involution of human duplicity. " Captain Dalrymple : at least, he was a captain once, but his uncle himself told me, when he was in one of his ' currypowder passions,' as the nephew calls them, that he was broken for cheating at cards, and was turned out of the service."

" And depending on the report of such a fellow as this appears to have been, did you reject what, after all, might have been quite an excel lent offer ?" said Mrs. Mulgrave. " But he made it so queerly — and I did not know about the nephew then — and he told me his uncle was touched in the brain by a sun stroke in India ; so that I really thought that he was mad at the time," was the reply. "How did he make it?" " Well, I knew nothing about anything for a good long while after the accident — only I remembered it was Mr. Dalrymple that brought in the child to me, all over green ooze, and stream ing with water, to try and make me see he was not drowned. But I couldn't believe my own eyes, you know, I was so put out of my senses ; and I kept raving continually for him to come and tell me my child was not dead.

Even when I had my boy before my eyes, and in my arms, and was kissing him for hours together, I thought it was only his ghost ; and I was always calling out for Mr. Dalrymple to come and tell me if he was saved. And people were quite asto nished, but he actually came ; and would sit with me for hours when the raving fit was upon me, and tell me over and over again, you can't tell how many thousand times, how he saved Archie, and that he was really and truly alive. And, afterwards, people said it was all my cunning to get the rich old Indian to come and see me, and that was another reason why I thought it best to leave Kingston." " After rejecting this kind Bluebeard's hand?" " He asked me so queerly, you know," said the real Mrs. Snareswell, half-laughing and half whimpering. " Only think ! — he came to me one evening, with half-a-dozen colours in his face with rage, and told me he had just kicked his nephew out of his house, discovering that he had seduced one of his housemaids !

Then he fell to work, and railed at women, and said they would do anything for money. That he never met with one that wouldn't — and of a sudden he turned upon me, and said he had no doubt now that if he was to offer himself to me — old, ugly, and sallow as he was — that I would marry him, wouldn't I ? — Merely for his money ! — I couldn't say anything else, could I, dear ? — but that I was sure I would not — for any thing ?" " You couldn't, my dear ! He must have intended to be rejected," said Mrs. Mulgrave, with warmth. Her sympathy as a woman was naturally outraged by so singular a style of address. " But, then, isn't it strange that he came after me to Islington ? though, to be sure, he says that he thought a sharper air would suit his con stitution better, for a change," resumed the real Mrs. Snareswell.

" That does seem rather particular." " And, do you know, he was so inconsiderate as to think it was I that was married to Sir Peter Mulgrave? and he sent to me, only the letter went to her, offering to adopt little Archie, in consequence, to save him from a stepfather, he said, and give him his own name, and leave him all his money. Wasn't that good of him, when he must have thought I had cut him for another person ?" " Did the letter go to her ? WThat answer did she make ?" said Mrs. Mulgrave, eagerly. " Oh, I suppose she thought Mr. Dalrymple was out of his mind, for his nephew had got up the report, and that the best way was to soothe him, for she answered quite quietly, and as if she was very much obliged. But said the little boy he inquired after, was drowned, and that she had not as yet been blessed with any issue of her present marriage."

" Did she answer that ? Really one would almost think she had taken upon her to personate you altogether, Matilda !" " Oh, why should anybody wish to pretend to be me ? A poor creature like me, Kate — no thing either in looks, or anything ?" "Your Indian ogre doesn't seem to be quite of that opinion. He has followed you, it seems, to Islington, and, I suppose, has resumed his addresses ?" " Not at all ; he only asks me continually to let him have Archie for an heir, for he is de termined his nephew shall never have a penny of his, for trying to make it out that he's a madman. Do you know, the wicked fellow actually got up a regular case against him, and there were doctors and all kinds of lawyers sit ting upon him; and Mr. Dalrymple managed them all. Mustn't he be clever, Kate ?" " I think, indeed, he must be.

But, perhaps, he is so anxious to get the boy, because he sees you won't part with him." " That's what I think, and I have told him so," said Matilda, rather sorrowfully. " And therefore he thinks, as you won't sepa rate yourself from your child, he shall get you both together," said Mrs. Mulgrave, smiling. " Well, my dear," she added, more seriously, " if you ask me for my advice, I must see the good man first, and judge for myself whether he is in or out of his senses. I don't think him mad for liking a pretty, kind-hearted woman ; and intending to disinherit a vicious, profligate man. That's a very different affair from Sir Peter Mulgrave's." " What has Sir Peter Mulgrave done ?" said the real Mrs. Snareswell, who, having now completed her toilette, seated herself, with a look of great interest, beside her friend.

" I'll tell you all, by and by. But do you think you would have the courage and the kind ness to do me a little favour I shall ask of you first ? For I don't think you would have the former if you knew all the particulars." " I never had any nerve, you know, Kate ! Don't you remember how the withered leaf nearly frightened me to the death in the wood, at Mr. Green's picnic ?" "I do : well — all I want you to do is to go to Sir Peter's bank, when he comes back — he's away in the country just now, I am told — with these two little boys in your company, and ask to see him personally. If you send in your name, I have no doubt he will see you, because he will imagine you are some relation of his wife's. And I think he must be a little curious, by this time, to know more about her kindred than she is willing to communicate."

" But what can I say when I do see him ? And what would be the use of it ?" " You can tell him how you lived at Kingston on-Thames, and all about your little boy's accident; and tell him how you happen to have learned that the gentleman who saved Archie's life has written about him and you, by mistake, to Sir Peter's lady. And you can conclude by stating your object to be that Sir Peter would be so very good as to interest himself in getting the letter from her ladyship, who, no doubt, considers it an absurd attempt at a joke upon her, that you may thank, and reply in a proper manner, to the extremely kind offer of the sender." " Oh, I can do that easily enough. And I should like to see the letter, too," replied Mrs. Snareswell, simply. " Only I am so afraid of rich people ; and he is very rich, is he not ?"

" Yes ; but he doesn't look so in his counting house, and there is nothing at all to frighten you in his appearance, without his furniture and all his fine things about him," said Mrs. Mul grave. " But now, why do you want me to do it ? — the letter can be of no consequence to you." " It may enable me, in some measure, to de termine on the writer's sanity," said Oliver's lady, smiling. " But that is not my real and principal motive, I confess. Only you are not to ask, you remember, until you have done what I request of you." " Oh, no, I remember ! And you were always considered so clever, Kate, that I am sure you must have a reason for what you wish me to do. Don't you remember how envious and sur prised all we girls were at the rate you went through your lessons ?" " I left you all behind, except Millicent Stammers — the girl with a strawberry mark on her arm, Matilda !

She was a plodder, and I was always remarkably quick ; yet she came up with me, and divided the prizes. The hare and tortoise, you know !" " No, I don't know — at least, I forget. What about the hare and tortoise, Katharine?" said the real Mrs. Suareswell, with all the implicit curiosity of a child. " It is rather a nursery story — but it is worth hearing, too. A capital story to encourage emu lation among young people ; so we may as well go down and let the children hear it at the same time," said Mrs. Mulgrave, unable to suppress her amusement at this display of innocent sim plicity of mind. " But I really don't wonder, Matilda, if your East Indian has been much of a victim to the craft and duplicity of the sex, that he has become enamoured of a woman of your yielding disposition and tranquil integrity of heart !

I can tell you hundreds of such stories, if you really think they will amuse you." And glad to have turned her friend's ideas from more exact inquiries into the nature of the mission she was to execute, Mrs. Mulgrave de scended with her to the drawing-room. Laugh ter, screams, and other suitable uproar in that direction, announced that the children's acquaintance had already prospered into a romp. When Oliver Mulgrave returned on the subse quent Tuesday, weary both in body and mind, with his report of what had happened at Apple Florey, it may be thought Mrs. Mulgrave was not turned from her detective project by any thing she learned of her father-in-law's demean our on that occasion. But the grief and anxiety which the certainty of the tidings concerning young Valentine caused her, and the necessity of devoting herself to calming and comforting her husband in his trouble, prevented her from putting it in immediate execution.

When even she recalled the project to mind, she thought it best not to harass her husband, by requesting his concurrence in the design, which, after all, might produce no results of im portance. Mrs. Mulgrave, perhaps, did not her self expect any. But we must confess, the reasonably exasperated state of her feelings was quickened by recent circumstances into a desire of retaliation, and that she had arrived almost at the conviction that some imposture had been practised on Sir Peter, which the appearance of her Mrs. Snareswell on the scene would tend to dispel. And we must add, that the consequences to his domestic felicity did not in the least deter her from following up the idea. A friendly invitation was, some time after Mr. Mulgrave's return, dispatched to Islington, and the real Mrs. Snareswell joyfully responded to the call.

Chapter II. Life In London

It was some days after the inquest on the un fortunate housekeeper at Poer Foundry before Apple Florey village and its vicinity subsided into their usual outward status of indifference and quiet. But several remarkable internal changes followed. In the first place, Fox Oggreson refused most absolutely to return to his superintendence of the works at the Foundry. He had taken an entirely new notion into his head, but which even his mother, usually so imperious and de spotic, found it in vain to combat. The cunning young villain indeed managed to direct VOL. II. c some of her own most cherished fancies as engines to effect his own secret purposes. " I am sick of it, mother ; it's the most profitless business in the world ! you might as well throw your money into the sea as down that confounded mine !