Abednego, the money-lender

Chapter I

"Antonio and old Shylock, both stand forth.” — Shake spear.

During the uproar of excitement, rejoicing, prodigality of pleasure, splendor, riot and intemperance, which attended the ratification of peace, after the downfall of Napoleon, there appeared in London a mysterious personage who soon distinguished himself and became very eminent among that numerous and respectable class of capitalists who ad <rertise “money to be advanced to noblemen or gentlemen on THE MOST favorable terms.” This person was in a short time singularly familiar to the young spendthrifts of the uni. versities and the Guards, and his advertisements directed the reader to a certain A. CL, to whom reference was to be made by letter, addressed to the Ilungerford Coffee-house. There was a tone of respectability in the phrasing of these manifestoes. They had the airof pro ©ceding from some gentlemen with a large floating capital, and no great faith in government securities, anxious to obtain good interest anda safe investment for his money, —perhaps for the "benefit of a deserving wife and numerous family. People reduced for the first time to the sdiame of borrowing, said to themselves, <c A. 0. is mv man !” There was fir less humiliation in addressing a letter to the Hunger, ford Coffee-house, than in being seen entering the^ door of notorious mcney.brokers in Cork street or Pall Mall.

Bat it ivas observed that no man after a similar application, was ever known to refer his friend to the same source of relief. No one talked about A. O., — no one admitted that he had any cognizance of this mysterous personage. Or if, in an orgie of thoughtless boys about to repair to the gambling table, or Confessing the ill luck of the previous night and its results, some novice suggested the well advertised name of A. O., every one present appeared anxious to change Inc conversation. Each had instantly some pet. usurer to recommend. Still, not a soul was positively heard- "to say, “ Beware of A. O. !” A cnarm seemed attached to the name, so averse were even the most liardened thirsters after the pocket's blood to pronounce those direful initials. However prompt to revile the originators of all other ad-

NEW-YQRK, JANUARY 10, 1843.

vertisements of a similar description, as legitimate descendants of Barabbas, no one whispered a syllable against A. O. Discriminating persons may, perhaps, infer from this, that most of these cautious friends were in his power !

At a dinner at the Guard’s Club in S(. James’s street, early in the autumn of 1822, it was observed that, discussion having arisen concerning recent losses at play, at Graham’s renowned Temple of Chance, where, at that moment, fortunes were winning and losing with fearful rapidity, the countenance of a young officer, who had hitherto listened to such allusion with perfect unconcern, became singularly agitated. It was noticed with the more surprise, because Basil Annesicy never entered the doors of Graham's, and bore no relationship to any one of the parties whose affairs were thus freely canvassed. ,

“ Four thousand on Thursday night, and three thousand last week observed Colonel Loftus, “ Poor Sir Grinsel ! I’m afraid ’tis all up with him ! He told me himself he had raised twelve thousand ia3t month ; and that be had not a resource left, — mortgaged to the last guinea, — every stick on his Irish estates gone ! —Poor Sir Grinsel ^

“ He has latterly had recourse to A. O.,” added Captain Blencowe, in a grave under tone ; “ so one can understand the sort of straits to which he must be reduced.*'

“ A. O. ? — Why surely that is the person to whom my uncle, the Duke of Rochester, is said to owe thirty thousand pounds?” — c'ied a youngster who had lately joined, and was fond of citing his “ uncle the duke,” (a weakness of course hoaxed out of him before he had been six months in the regiment )

“ Ay. and out of whose clutches half the fellows you meet every day in St. James’s street would be right glad to extricate themselves,” retorted Captain Blencowe. “ A. O. is the last resource of ruined men — the executioner who gives the coup de grace.'*

“ What the deuce do you mean by the coup de grace ?” — demanded the lad so proud of being nephew to a duke.

“ The coup de g^ace, is the stroke given to a vicUm on the wheel, to put him out of his pain,” replied a grey matter-of fact old colonel, who officiated as dry-nurse to the subalterns.

“ I meant that A. 0. was the blackguard who aims thS first blow at ruined men ; the sort of fellow to fling a stone at a drowning dog, scarcely able to keep his head above water.”

“ It was he, I fancy, who arrested Eggerston,” observed Colonel Loftus.

“ And it wras a writ obtained by A. O. that drove Frederick Lumley to Brussels,” rejoined Captain Blencowe. i( A man must inrhort have exhausted all other resources, to have recourse to him. However, it must be added that he is unfailing at a pinch. The brute is always flush of cash ; and, if one choose to rush into the jaws of a shark with one’s eyesopen/one is more to blame than the creature that follows it3 instincts by closing them upon one. I once borrowed

BROTHER JONATHAN EXTRA. — ABEDNEGO.

^aoncj of A. O. I had tried every other quarter. — A minor with only personal security to offer, the case seemed hopeless. However, the cormorant was tempted by thirty percent., and the attestation of my honest countenance and promissory note ; and to my dying day, never shall I forget the joy with which I found myself redeemed from the thraldom of the debt, within the year, by the generosity of an old aunt, who wa3 good enough to die for the purpose.0

“ Within a year, what had you to fear from him ?”

44 Nothing to fear , — much to endure ! I had made the interest of that accursed five hundred pounds, payable monthly, out of the allowance which my skin-flint of a Scotch guardian doled out to me in the same manner. Every third of the month was I visited by a hateful night-mare, in the shape of A. O. — I think I see the door of my room opening to admit him ! — ”

44 But why not makejt payable at your banker’s or agent’s ?”

|C 4i He conditioned that it should be paid from hand to hand. I suspect he chose to have an eye upon the morals and health of his debtor ; for one day, when he made his appearance as usual, and the effects of a gin-punch party at Limmer’s the previous night, were only too visible in my face, I remember his fixing his keen eyes into me, like the talons of a bird of pray, and inquiring the nature of the disorder that made me so ghastly just as a ghoul might be supposed to investigate the state of the corpse upon which it was about to make its loathsome repast.”

44 Fine him, — fine him ! — Upon my soul, Blencowe, you are too bad 1” — cried several voices.

44 You positively make me sick, with your ghoul and your A. O. !” added the Duke of Rochester’s nephew.

44 He did me /” retorted the captain earnestly ; 44 the very recollection sickens me now. — Loftus ! the claret, — something too much of this!” — and the wine was passed round, and the table soon resumed its tone of wonted hilarity.

AH this time, Basil Annesley had been peeling his walnuts as assiduously as though they were destined for some fair neighbor at a dinner party, instead of for his listless self. In point of fact, he knew not that he had so much as a walnut on his plate. Throughout the discussion, he had been all ear ; and chose an occupation enabling him to listen with his face depressed, so as to conceal his deep interest in the matter.

But the very means he took to disguise his emotion, caused it to be noticed. — Basil Annesley was one of those open-spirited fellows, who confront the observation of society, with an ever frank and fearless countenance ; and to find his forehead, usually held so high, thus pertinaciously incumbent, and his voice usually so free in discussion, thus perseveringly silent, excited surmises in the mind of Loftus. whossat opposite to him, as well as in the grey-headed colonel.

44 What is the meaning of all this ? Has poor Annesley been playing ?” was the secret conjecture of both. 41 Another victim to ecarte or hazard ! — Another victim for the remorseless claws of A. O !”

Yet Annesley had never been noticed to enter a gambling house. — The play of fashionable London was not then concentrated into so decided a focus, as it has since become. But in a community so small as that to which Basil was attached, a man addicted to any grosser vice, is soon convicted ; and he had hitherto passed for a lady’s man, — an Almacks’ pet, — rather than for a fellow likely to be carried away by the dissipations of roue life.

It was only a year, since Basil Annesley had joined the Guards. On quitting Harrow, he had completed his education at a foreign university ; and soon afterwards, as the son of the late Sir Bernard Annesley, one of the bravest victims of the Peninsular war, had obtained a commission from the generous patronage of the Royal Commander-in-chief. Of the state of his fortunes, little was authentically known. From the period of the General’s death, his mother had resided in retirement.

Situated within a mile of the New Forest, the ancient mansion inhabited by the widow of Sir Bernard Annesley resembled rather a moated farm-house than the cottages of gentility to which widows of moderate means are apt to retire to meet the exigencies of a small establishment. Concealed within the intricacies of a wooded coun, try, attainable only by a detestable cross road or rather cross-lane cutting across the Forest from Ljmdhurst, Barlingbam Grange, or as it was abbreviated by the cottagers in the neighborhood, the Grange, was cut off from all communication with the active world ; and Lady Annesley was so cold in her deportment, and so wedded to the solitude in which she had resolutely ensconced herself, that, but for the affectionate fervor of Basil’s nature, itmust have appeared a penance to him rather than a schoolboy’s holiday, to journey twice a year from Harrow into Hampshire, and return thither for a couple of months, between the period of his quitting Heidelberg, and entering the army.

Accustomed, however, to ascribe the melancholy reserve <sf his surviving parent to affliction for the loss of his father, Basil respected her austere melancholy ; and though in his boyhood there had been moments when, weary of flinging stones into the old moat to startle the dab-chicka from the reeds, and of contemplating the dilapidated pointed gables of the old brick mansion, he had almost wished he might not again set eyes on Barlingham, — he never returned thithe , to be folded with momentary warmth to the heart of his grave mother, arid submit anew to the cross-questioning of her venerable maid Dorcas, and the maundering of the old gardner, the only male domestic of that primitive establishment, without feeling that, after all, home was home, — a mother, a mother ; although the former exhibited the uttermost stagnation of earthly dulness, and the latter a reserve according better with th« measured affections of more distant relationship.

But Lady Annesley was no longer young. Though still exhibiting traces of beauty of the highest order, she had long passed her fiftieth year ; and those eager demonstrations of maternal affections, which burst from the hearts of younger mothers, were not to bo expected of a widowed matron, in whom a life of utter solitude confirmed the tendencies which had led to its adoption. Nor was Basil an only child. She -had a daughter, twelve years older than himself; a daughter who, having married young and settled in the North, was now the mother of a numerous family of her own ; and as, from the period of her marriage Lady Annesley and Mrs. Vernon had never been known to meet, it might be inferred that the maternal sensibilities of Sir Bernard’s widow were of no very vivid nature. She had evidently never recovered the shock of his untimely death.

Still, in spite of appearances, Basil thought otherwise. Undemonstrative as she was, there were moments when he had detected his mother’s eyes suffused with tears when fixed, as if furtively, upon his face. On one occasion, when she had taken leave of him with her usual serenity on his departure for Harrow, having been compelled to return a quarter of an hour afterwards in search of a letter addressed to Dr. Butler which he had left behind, he found her, on re-entering her cheerless sitting room, with her face buried in the cushions of her sofa, sobbing as if her heart would break. Yet when aware of his presence, as if irritated that he should have been a witness of her. grief, she only chided his carlessness, and did not renew her parting caress.

He could scarcely remember his sister. She had been brought up by her father’s family. Basil was only seven years old at the period of her marriage ; and whenever, in earlier life, he expressed to his mother a wish to see Helena again, Lady Annesley replied, that they were not likely to meet, Mr. Vernon being an odd man ; an equivocal phrase, implying little or much, according to the acceptation of the hearer. Basil had taken it for granted that his brother-in-law was a brute, who, on account of his sister’s want of fortune, tyrannized over her, and kept her apart from her family. But as Mrs. Vernon, during their two or three interviews, had not deigned to bestow on him a single sisterly caress, he felt little indignation in her behalf ; and had in fact almost ceased to recall to mind the existence of this estranged relative.

44 It is really disgraceful that Helena should exhibit such unuatual indifference !” he once observed to his mother. 44 The result of bringing up a child under another’s roof ! Barlingham was never her home, and she has forgotten that it is that of her mother and brother.”

A hectic flush tingled Lady Annesley’s pale cheek at the observation, and Basil instantly repented his words : for he had now begun to surmise that the strict seclusion in which they lived, and the adoption of his eldest sister by his uncle, and a common origin — in the straitened means of his mother. It was strange indeed, that Admiral Annesley should not have selected, as the object of his favor, the son rather than the daughter of his deceased brother. But this might be easily accounted for. At the period of Sir Bernard’s death, Basil was of an age to require the affectionate services of a mother ; while Helena was nearly sixteen, her education completed. Moreover he flattered himself that Lady Annesley’s partiality for her boy was not without its influence in the selection.

A portion of Basil’s uncertainties concerning his mother, however, were now at an end. During his sojourn at Heidelberg, his own developed intelligence enabled him to detect, even in her grave and earnest letters, a tone of strong maternal affection, subdued as if by an effort of resolution ; and on meeting her again, upon his return from Germany, his strengthened character and greater self-possession, gave him courage to indulge in such demonstrations of grateful fibal tenderness as served in some measure to thaw the icy self-restraint of the widow. If she had not treated him more fondly during the two months he had spent at Barlingham, she had treated him more openly. She had avowed to him that she was not on friendly terms with his father’s family, — not even on friendly terms with her daughter, —

44 It matters not with whom the fault,” said she, in answer to Basil’s eager interrogatories. 44 Suffice it that the Annesley family include the son so dear to me in their displeasure against myself, and are consequently little likely to make overtures of kindness towards you. Oblige me, therefore, dearest Basil, by abstaining from all further reference to the subject.”

On another point, she ha*d been equally candid. She informed him that she was poor, — very poor ; that her income of eight hundred ayear, derived m a great measure from her pension as the widow of a general officer, would only enable her to make him an allowance of three ; that the little she could lay aside, was forming a fund for his future promotion ; and that necessity, as well as choice, had induced her to make a hermitage of her retreat.

BROTHER JONATHAN EXTRA. — ABEDNEGO.

Ci All my desire, all my ambition, dearest Basil/’ said she, “is your advancement in life. My fate has been a sad one. I wa3 wedded against my inclination. Your father’s family caballed against me while he lived, and cast me off at hi3 death ; yet circumstances forbade me to refuse their offer to adopting Helen, for whom, indeed, — but no matter ! My happiness has been you , Basil ; my consola-

tion in you. For you have I lived ; for you I hope, and am happy. — Deficient as you may have sometimes fancied me in tenderness, so dear have you ever been to me, that, had I lost you, I would not, .1 could not have survived ! In your well-being, my very existence is bound up. Become what I expect of you, — a man— a man of honor, — a prudent man, endowed with the esteem of society, — and my old age may perhaps still enjoy the peace and honor denied to my youth. — But falter in the path, — disgrace yourself, — and I shall, become a widow indeed !”

A warm embrace sealed the compact between them, which Basil long promised himself to hold sacred ; and again and again, previous to his embarkation in London life, had poor Lady Annesley dwelt solemnly upon the fact that, possessing only a life income, should he involve himself in debt, she would be unable to afford him relief.

“Think,” she had said to him at parting, “ think, dearest Basil, what would be the distress, the despair, of this tranquil little household, over which the quiet years have been rolling unfelt,

should any mischance befall you ! Govern your conduct, my dear son, by the conviction, that disgrace to you' would convey death to your mother !’’

And after all this, with the impression still strong on his mind of the noble dignity of that mild woman, and the strong motherly love mysteriously concealed under her solemn deportment, he had done evil, — he was in debt, — and for present relief he had already resolved to refer himself to the interposition of A. 0., the Money Lender ! —

Chapter II

“ Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew ?” — Shakspeare. Long and tedious did the' hours appear to Basil Annesley, which served on the morrow to convey a post-paid letter to the Hungerford Coffee-house, and bring back a reply from the individual so bitterly contemned by his Club.

Three times in the course of the day, did he return home to his lodgings, in hopes the post might have brought an answer which, he trusted, would afford a first step of extrication from the difficulties in which he had wantonly involved himself. Still he was disappointed. On his table were divers notes and letters; — some of invitation ; — some endited with the clerkly percision announcing, only too painfully to the conscious debtor, strong hints that hi3 earliest convenience must convey a settlement to some expectant creditor : — but not a syllable from A. O. ! —

In the evening, he had an engagement ; and, just as, full-dressed, but with his spirits in complete dishabille, he was quitting his lodgings, the double rap of the last evening post, caused the door of his small dwelling to vibrate, and Basil to recoil a step or two in the passage, while his servant offered the ignominious towpence in exchange for a shabby-looking rqissive, which was to convey tidings of life or death to the delinquent

The interview was accorded. “The following day, at noon;’’ — the place, obsure and strange enough, — No. 21 Greek street, Soho.

Daring his sojourn in London, he had probably traversed Greek street, Soho, fifty times, without noting more than that it contained the usual double lines of tedious unmeaning brick-houses peculiar to English streets ; — diversified only by varieties of Insurance plates, — the Phoenix, or the Sun- fire, — or exhibiting the interesting F. P., prating of the whereabout of their fire-plugs. But now, every house appeared instinct with meaning. Its glaziers’ or grocers’ shops, were not as the shops of other glaziers and grocers; and on arriving with, in a few doors of the number specified by A. O.’s communication, he began to count the houses, the earlier to familiarize himself with the “ complement external” of the Money-lender’s habitation.

It was one of those square roomy mansions, which still announce that Soho was a fashionable quarter of the town, when the higher classes, taking sudden fright at the insalubrity of the banks of the river, — till the reign of the Second James their favorite residence, — migrated as far as possible from the influence of its miasma. The door, ill-fitted to its shrunken disjointed case, was of that dingy ochrous complexion, peculiar to the loungers of the Cheltenham promenades ; and even the worn-out and broken caneblinds of the parlor were so closely surmounted by closed shutters, as to preclude all idea that the house was inhabited. It sounded hollow as the grave, when, in spite of appearances, Basil hazarded a modest knock and gentler ring ! —

Promptly, however, a3 at some well. lacqueyed lordly mansion, the summons was answered. An old woman of crippled shape, and having a complexion many degrees darker than her tawny front and the dirty fly-cap that surmounted it, opened and held wide open the door, not as if awaiting his inquiries, but as though he were expected and had only to enter. A glance at his feet, as hinting a hope that the door-scraper had not been overlooked, was all she vouchsafed him.

“ In the back parlor,” croaked her discordant voice, before he had recovered self-possession enough to ask a question ; and he saw that he was to make his own way in this desolate temple of echoes. With his heart beating more irregularly than he would have cared to own to his friend Blencowe, Basil accordingly advanced along the wide but bare and dirty passage, and knocked at the second door, which was slightly ajar. No one replied ;— and he accordingly pushed it open, and went in.

Chapter III

“ Let him who wants to know the value of money, try to borrow some.”

Popular Proverb .

The chamber into which Basil had thus unceremoniously introduced himself, though empty, had ail the appearance of having been recently occupied. Volumes of sulphurous yellow smoke ascended from a black mass of coals in the rusty grate, interspersed with damp shavings,. in token that some effort at least had been made to ignite them; and an old-fashioned bureau standing open against the wall, exhibited files of papers, and one or two open letters, besides a compact phalanx of diminutive rouleaux, apparently of sterling value.— Soon after Basil had seated himself, the Money-lender made his appearance. There was nothing, however, very remarkable' in his person. Though above the middle height, a certain ignoble character of form and gesture deprived him of the advantages usually inseparable from a commanding stature. His dress, if neither coarse nor rusty, was of an inferior cut ; and though his dark eyes might have passed for intelligent in the head of any other man, there was a discrepancy between the blackness of their tint, enhanced by the profuse black eyelashes and eyebrows by which they were overhung, and the scanty grey curls almost approaching to white, that figured on either side ahead, the crown of which was bare and lustrous. It was, in short, a face and figure, which, in squalid attire, with a beard and a slouched hat, would have passed muster among the itinerant dealers in old clothes, whose cries disturb the inhabitants of the West End, at an hour when none but Jews, fish-women, chickweed boys, scavengers’ carts, and twopenny postmen, are astir in the slumberous streets of the more civilized quarters of the town.

Almost the first words which this singular individual addressed to Basil, was to impart to him the information that he (A. O.) in dealing with all classes of the people, had laid it down as a rule to place confidence only in those who showed confidence in him.”

“ In addressing myself to one known to me only by the initials of A. O., I did not feel bound to disclose more than my own of B. A./* replied the young soldier, gravely.

“Mine are pretty universally known to express my real name/’ replied the Money-lender. “ I am called Abednego Osalez ; and as this is the first time, I fancy, we have done business together. I must enquire whether you bring me no letter of recommendation from some other of my clients ?”

“ From no one,” replied Basil, spontaneously recalling to mind the the unsatisfactory terms in which the very clients on which he pinned his reliance, treated him in his absence.

“ It is merely my newspaper advertisements, then, which have attracted your notice ?’’ —

“ Not altogether,” replied Annesley. “ Mere than one of my brother officers have been extricated from pecuniary difficulty by your assistance. From them, I became a war e of your mode of business ; and — ”

“ Did they not also add,” interrupted the Money-lender, “ their exhortations that you should not apply to me , unless your case were desperate ? Did they not tell you, if any other earthly resource be open to you, beware of A. O. ? Did they not call me shark, cormorant, vulture, usurer, Jew ? You know they did ! Not a mess of any regiment in the service in which I am not thus opprobriated.”

Basil, who already repented his indiscretion, in having allowed the words “ brother officers,” to escape him, as too clearly indicative of his social position, would not, by an affirmative reply, hazard the exposure of his friends to the vindictive reprisals of such an enemy as A.O.

“ You are cautious, young gentleman 1” observed the Money-lender, whose large dark eyes seemed to penetrate the most hidden thoughte cf his companion. “Cautiop, however, is not the parent of confidence. You come to me in the hope of opening my strong-box ; and will scarcely accomplish the exploit with close lips and a closer heart. A calling such as mine necessitates some degree of mystery; but when once a bona.jide negotiation commences, all must be aboveboard,— all truth and daylight. I have told you my name is Abednego Osalez. I now ask the favor of your own ?” —

Still, Basil hesitated. He could not bear to disgrace the honorable patronymic borne by the object of his filial veneration, by inscription in the registers of a Jew !

“ You will be pleased to remember,” resumed the Money-lender, “ that no act can be authentic between us, unless the business be negotiated under our real names. If, therefore, you scruple to intrust me with yours, this interview has lasted too long already.”

Apprehending, from bis decided mode of uttering these words, that the peremptory Jew was about to rise and dismiss him, the agitated applicant murmured, in a low voice, “ My name, sir, is Annesley.”

BROTHER JONATHANEXTRA. — ABEDNEGO.

1 Annesley ?” — reiterated the Money-lender, as if requiring him to ye more articulate. “ Basil Annesley.”

The Jew rose with some precipitation from his seat; and, fora noment or two, occupied himself in taming over the papers lying ipen on his bureau, as if in search of writing materials, to enable him o take notes of the business of his new client.

“ You have lately, I believe, entered the Grenadier Guards ?” — aid he, still addressing Annesley, but without turning round.

“ I have been rather more than a year in the army.”

“ And during that short space of time, you have contrived to emmrrass y ourself ?”

“ Many contrive to do so in less than a twentieth part of it !” re. died Basil, as if resolved not to be brow-beaten by a stranger.

“Not the well.conditioned son of a mother in straitened circumtances,” replied the insolent Jew, who seemed endowed with an inutive insight into the position of his new client.

“ J applied to you, sir, a3 a Money-lender, not as a counsellor,” aid Basil, haughtily, now rising in his turn. “ My business may be triefly explained, — I am, as you seem to be aware, the only son of the ate Sir Bernard Annesley. I have immediate necessity fora sum of £350. — My allowance of three hundred a year — ”