Framley Parsonage, Anthony Trollope [popular e readers txt] 📗

his ideas Sowerby was attempting to cheat the duke. It may be imagined, therefore, that Mr. Sowerby did not feel any very great delight in attending at South Audley Street.

And then rumour was spread about among all the bill-discounting leeches that blood was once more to be sucked from the Sowerby carcase. The rich Miss Dunstable had taken up his affairs; so much as that became known in the purlieus of the Goat and Compasses. Tom Tozer’s brother declared that she and Sowerby were going to make a match of it, and that any scrap of paper with Sowerby’s name on it would become worth its weight in banknotes; but Tom Tozer himself⁠—Tom, who was the real hero of the family⁠—pooh-poohed at this, screwing up his nose, and alluding in most contemptuous terms to his brother’s softness. He knew better⁠—as was indeed the fact. Miss Dunstable was buying up the squire, and by jingo she should buy them up⁠—them, the Tozers, as well as others! They knew their value, the Tozers did;⁠—whereupon they became more than ordinarily active.

From them and all their brethren Mr. Sowerby at this time endeavoured to keep his distance, but his endeavours were not altogether effectual. Whenever he could escape for a day or two from the lawyers he ran down to Chaldicotes; but Tom Tozer in his perseverance followed him there, and boldly sent in his name by the servant at the front-door.

“Mr. Sowerby is not just at home at the present moment,” said the well-trained domestic.

“I’ll wait about then,” said Tom, seating himself on an heraldic stone griffin which flanked the big stone steps before the house. And in this way Mr. Tozer gained his purpose. Sowerby was still contesting the county, and it behoved him not to let his enemies say that he was hiding himself. It had been a part of his bargain with Miss Dunstable that he should contest the county. She had taken it into her head that the duke had behaved badly, and she had resolved that he should be made to pay for it. “The duke,” she said, “had meddled long enough;” she would now see whether the Chaldicotes interest would not suffice of itself to return a member for the county, even in opposition to the duke. Mr. Sowerby himself was so harassed at the time, that he would have given way on this point if he had had the power; but Miss Dunstable was determined, and he was obliged to yield to her. In this manner Mr. Tom Tozer succeeded and did make his way into Mr. Sowerby’s presence⁠—of which intrusion one effect was the following letter from Mr. Sowerby to his friend Mark Robarts:⁠—

Chaldicotes, July, 185-.

My dear Robarts⁠—I am so harassed at the present moment by an infinity of troubles of my own that I am almost callous to those of other people. They say that prosperity makes a man selfish. I have never tried that, but I am quite sure that adversity does so. Nevertheless I am anxious about those bills of yours⁠—

“Bills of mine!” said Robarts to himself, as he walked up and down the shrubbery path at the parsonage, reading this letter. This happened a day or two after his visit to the lawyer at Barchester.

—and would rejoice greatly if I thought that I could save you from any further annoyance about them. That kite, Tom Tozer, has just been with me, and insists that both of them shall be paid. He knows⁠—no one better⁠—that no consideration was given for the latter. But he knows also that the dealing was not with him, nor even with his brother, and he will be prepared to swear that he gave value for both. He would swear anything for five hundred pounds⁠—or for half the money, for that matter. I do not think that the father of mischief ever let loose upon the world a greater rascal than Tom Tozer.

He declares that nothing shall induce him to take one shilling less than the whole sum of nine hundred pounds. He has been brought to this by hearing that my debts are about to be paid. Heaven help me! The meaning of that is that these wretched acres, which are now mortgaged to one millionnaire, are to change hands and be mortgaged to another instead. By this exchange I may possibly obtain the benefit of having a house to live in for the next twelve months, but no other. Tozer, however, is altogether wrong in his scent; and the worst of it is that his malice will fall on you rather than on me.

What I want you to do is this: let us pay him one hundred pounds between us. Though I sell the last sorry jade of a horse I have, I will make up fifty; and I know you can, at any rate, do as much as that. Then do you accept a bill, conjointly with me, for eight hundred. It shall be done in Forrest’s presence, and handed to him; and you shall receive back the two old bills into your own hands at the same time. This new bill should be timed to run ninety days; and I will move heaven and earth during that time to have it included in the general schedule of my debts which are to be secured on the Chaldicotes property.

The meaning of which was that Miss Dunstable was to be cozened into paying the money under an idea that it was part of the sum covered by the existing mortgage.

What you said the other day at Barchester, as to never executing another bill, is very well as regards future transactions. Nothing can be wiser than such a resolution. But it would be folly⁠—worse than folly⁠—if you were to allow your furniture to be seized when the means of preventing it are so ready to your hand. By leaving the new bill in Forrest’s hands you may be sure that you are safe from the claws of such birds of prey