The Black Prophet Part 54

"How is that? What do you grin at, confound you?"

"You can take the money, sir; that's what I mane by _doin'_ him. Ha, ha, ha!"

"Very good, Charley; but I'm sick; and I very much fear that I've caught this confounded typhus."

The next day being that on which the trial took place, he rose not from his bed; and when the time appointed for meeting Travers came he was not at all in anything of an improved condition. His gig was got ready, however, and, accompanied by Hanlon, he drove to the agent's office.

Travers was a quick, expert man of business, who lost but little time and few words in his dealings with the world. He was clear, rapid, and decisive, and having once formed an opinion, there was scarcely any possibility in changing it. This, indeed, was the worst and most impracticable point about him; for as it often happened that his opinions were based upon imperfect or erroneous data, it consequently followed that his inflexibility was but another name for obstinacy, and not unfrequently for injustice.

As Henderson entered the office, he met our friend the pedlar and old Dalton going out.

"Dalton," said Travers, "do you and your friend stay in the next room; I wish to see you again before you go. How do you do, Henderson?"

"I am not well," replied Henderson, "not at all well; but it won't signify."

"How is your father?"

"Much as usual: I wonder he didn't call on you."

"No, he did not, I suppose he's otherwise engaged--the a.s.sizes always occupy him. However, now to business, Mr. Henderson;" and he looked inquiringly at d.i.c.k, as much as to say, I am ready to hear you.

"We had better see, I think," proceeded d.i.c.k, "and make arrangements about these new leases."

"I shall expect to be bribed for each of them, Mr. Richard."

"Bribed!" exclaimed the other, "ha, ha, ha! that's good."

"Why, do you think there's anything morally wrong or dishonorable in a bribe?" asked the other, with a very serious face.

"Come, come, Mr. Travers," said d.i.c.k, "a joke's a joke; only don't put so grave a face on you when you ask such a question. However, as you say yourself, now to business--about these leases."

"I trust," continued Travers, "that I am both an honest man and a gentleman, yet I expect a bribe for every lease."

"Well, then," replied Henderson, "it is not generally supposed that either an honest man or a gentleman--"

"Would take a bribe?--eh?"

"Well, d--n it, no; not exactly that either; but come, let us understand each other. If you will be wilful on it, why a wilful man, they say, must have his way. Bribery, however--rank bribery--is a--"

"Crime to which neither an honest man nor a gentleman would stoop. You see I antic.i.p.ate what you are about to say; you despise bribery, Mr.

Henderson?"

"Sir," replied the other, rather warmly, "I trust that I am a gentleman and an honest man, too."

"But still, a wilful man, Mr. Henderson must have his way, you know.

Well, of course, you are a gentleman and an honest man."

He then rose, and touching the bell, said to the servant who answered it:

"Send in the man named Darby Skinadre."

If that miserable wretch was thin and shrivelled-looking when first introduced to our readers, he appeared at the present period little else than the shadow of what he had been. He not only lost heavily the usurious credit he had given, in consequence of the wide-spread poverty and crying distress of the wretched people, who were mostly insolvent, but he suffered severely by the outrages which had taken place, and doubly so in consequence of the anxiety which so many felt to wreak their vengeance on him, under that guise, for his heartlessness and blood-sucking extortions upon them.

"Your name," proceeded the agent, "is Darby Skinadre?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you have given this gentleman the sum of a hundred pounds, as a bribe, for promising you a lease of Cornelius Dalton's farm?"

"I gave him a hundred pounds, but not at all as a bribe, sir; I'm an honest man, I trust--an' the Lord forbid I'd have anything to do wid a bribe; an' if you an' he knew--if you only knew, both o' you--the hard strivin,' an' sc.r.a.pin,' an' sweepin' I had to get it together--"

"That will do, sir; be silent. You received this money, Mr. Henderson?"

"Tut, Travers, my good friend; this is playing too high a card about such a matter. Don't you know, devilish well, that these things are common, aye, and among gentlemen and honest men too, as you say?"

"Well, that is a discussion upon which I shall not enter. Now, as you say, to business."

"Well, then," continued Henderson, smiling, "if you have no objection, I am willing that you should take Skinadre's affair and mine as a precedent between you and me. Let us not be fools, Mr. Travers; it is every one for himself in this world."

"What is it you expect, in the first place?" asked the agent.

"Why, new leases," replied the other, "upon reasonable terms, of course."

"Well, then," said Travers, "I beg to inform you that you shall not have them, with only one exception. You shall have a lease of sixty-nine acres attached to the Grange, being the quant.i.ty of land you actually farm."

"Pray, why not of all the property?" asked d.i.c.k.

"My good friend," replied the agent, nearly in his own words to the Pedlar; "the fact is, that we are about to introduce a new system altogether upon our property. We are determined to manage it upon a perfectly new principle. It has been too much sublet under us, and we have resolved, Mr. Henderson, to rectify this evil. That is my answer.

With the exception of the Grange farm, you get no leases. We shall turn over a new leaf, and see that a better order of things be established upon the property. As for you, Skinadre, settle this matter of your hundred pounds with Mr. Henderson as best you may. That was a private transaction between yourselves; between yourselves, then, does the settlement of it lie."

He once more touched the bell, and desired Cornelius Dalton and the Pedlar to be sent in.

"Mr. Henderson," he proceeded, "I will bid you good morning; you certainly look ill. Skinadre, you may go. I have sent for Mr. Dalton, Mr. Henderson, to let him know that he shall be reinstated in his farm, and every reasonable allowance made him for the oppression and injustice which he and his respectable family have suffered at--I will not say whose hands."

"Travers," replied Henderson, "your conduct is harsh--and--however, I cannot now think of leases--I am every moment getting worse--I am very ill--good-morning."

He then went.

"An' am I to lose my hundre pounds, your honor, of my hard earned money, that I squeezed--"

"Out of the blood and marrow and life of the struggling people, you heartless extortioner! Begone, sirra; a foot of land upon the property for which I am agent you shall never occupy. You and your tribe, whether you batten upon the distress of struggling industry in the deceitful Maelstrooms of the metropolis, or in the dirty, dingy shops of a private country village, are each a scorpion curse to the people. Your very existence is a libel upon the laws by which the rights of civil society are protected."

"Troth, your honor does me injustice; I never see a case of distress that my heart doesn't bleed--"

"With a leech-like propensity to pounce upon it. Begone!"

The man slunk out.

"Dalton," he proceeded, when the old man, accompanied by the Pedlar, came in, "I sent for you to say that I am willing you should have your farm again."