Anthony Trollope - The Palliser Novels - Complete Series - All 6 Books in One Edition

“And you’d let your house to the Tory party, Grimes!” said Mr Scruby, in a tone in which disgust and anger were blended.

“Who said anything of my letting my house to the Tory party, Mr Scruby? I’m as round as your hat, Mr Scruby, and as square as your elbow; I am. But suppose as all the liberal gents as employs you, Mr Scruby, was to turn again you and not pay you your little bills, wouldn’t you have your eyes open for customers of another kind? Come now, Mr Scruby?”

“You won’t make much of that game, Grimes.”

“Perhaps not; perhaps not. There’s a risk in all these things; isn’t there, Mr Vavasor? I should like to see you a Parliament gent; I should indeed. You’d be a credit to the districts; I really think you would.”

“I’m much obliged by your good opinion, Mr Grimes,” said George.

“When I sees a gent coming forward I knows whether he’s fit for Parliament, or whether he ain’t. I says you are fit. But Lord love you, Mr Vavasor; it’s a thing a gentleman always has to pay for.”

“That’s true enough; a deal more than it’s worth, generally.”

“A thing’s worth what it fetches. I’m worth what I’ll fetch; that’s the long and the short of it. I want to have my balance, that’s the truth. It’s the odd money in a man’s bill as always carries the profit. You ask Mr Scruby else;—only with a lawyer it’s all profit I believe.”

“That’s what you know about it,” said Scruby.

“If you cut off a man’s odd money,” continued the publican, “you break his heart. He’d almost sooner have that and leave the other standing. He’d call the hundreds capital, and if he lost them at last, why he’d put it down as being in the way of trade. But the odd money;—he looks at that, Mr Vavasor, as in a manner the very sweat of his brow, the work of his own hand; that’s what goes to his family, and keeps the pot a boiling downstairs. Never stop a man’s odd money, Mr Vavasor; that is, unless he comes it very strong indeed.”

“And what is it you want now?” said Scruby.

“I wants ninety-two pounds thirteen and fourpence, Mr Scruby, and then we’ll go to work for the new fight with contented hearts. If we’re to begin at all, it’s quite time; it is indeed, Mr Vavasor.”

“And what you mean us to understand is, that you won’t begin at all without your money,” said the lawyer.

“That’s about it, Mr Scruby.”

“Take a fifty-pound note, Grimes,” said the lawyer.

“Fifty-pound notes are not so ready,” said George.

“Oh, he’ll be only too happy to have your acceptance; won’t you, Grimes.”

“Not for fifty pounds, Mr Scruby. It’s the odd money that I wants. I don’t mind the thirteen and four, because that’s neither here nor there among friends, but if I didn’t get all them ninety-two pounds I should be a brokenhearted man; I should indeed, Mr Vavasor. I couldn’t go about your work for next year so as to do you justice among the electors. I couldn’t indeed.”

“You’d better give him a bill for ninety pounds at three months, Mr Vavasor. I have no doubt he has got a stamp in his pocket.”

“That I have, Mr Scruby; there ain’t no mistake about that. A bill stamp is a thing that often turns up convenient with gents as mean business like Mr Vavasor and you. But you must make it ninety-two; you must indeed, Mr Vavasor. And do make it two months if you can, Mr Vavasor; they do charge so unconscionable on ninety days at them branch banks; they do indeed.”

George Vavasor and Mr Scruby, between them, yielded at last, so far as to allow the bill to be drawn for ninety-two pounds, but they were stanch as to the time. “If it must be, it must,” said the publican, with a deep sigh, as he folded up the paper and put it into the pocket of a huge case which he carried. “And now, gents, I’ll tell you what it is. We’ll make safe work of this here next election. We know what’s to be our little game in time, and if we don’t go in and win, my name ain’t Jacob Grimes, and I ain’t the landlord of the ‘Handsome Man.’ As you gents has perhaps got something to say among yourselves, I’ll make so bold as to wish you good morning.” So, with that, Mr Grimes lifted his hat from the floor, and bowed himself out of the room.

“You couldn’t have done it cheaper; you couldn’t, indeed,” said the lawyer, as soon as the sound of the closing front door had been heard.

“Perhaps not; but what a thief the man is! I remember your telling me that the bill was about the most preposterous you had ever seen.”

“So it was, and if we hadn’t wanted him again of course we shouldn’t have paid him. But we’ll have it all off his next account, Mr Vavasor,—every shilling of it, It’s only lent; that’s all;—it’s only lent.”

“But one doesn’t want to lend such a man money, if one could help it.”

“That’s true. If you look at it in that light, it’s quite true. But you see we cannot do without him. If he hadn’t got your bill, he’d have gone over to the other fellows before the week was over; and the worst of it would have been that he knows our hand. Looking at it all round you’ve got him cheap, Mr Vavasor;—you have, indeed.”

“Looking at it all round is just what I don’t like, Mr Scruby, But if a man will have a whistle, he must pay for it.”

“You can’t do it cheap for any of these metropolitan seats; you can’t, indeed, Mr Vavasor. That is, a new man can’t. When you’ve been in four or five times, like old Duncombe, why then, of course, you may snap your fingers at such men as Grimes. But the Chelsea districts ain’t dear. I don’t call them by any means dear. Now Marylebone is dear,—and so is Southwark. It’s dear, and nasty; that’s what the borough is. Only that I never tell tales, I could tell you a tale, Mr Vavasor, that’d make your hair stand on end; I could indeed.”

“Ah! the game is hardly worth the candle, I believe.”

“That depends on what way you choose to look at it. A seat in Parliament is a great thing to a man who wants to make his way;—a very great thing;—specially when a man’s young, like you, Mr Vavasor.”

“Young!” said George. “Sometimes it seems to me as though I’ve been living for a hundred years. But I won’t trouble you with that, Mr Scruby, and I believe I needn’t keep you any longer.” With that, he got up and bowed the attorney out of the room, with just a little more ceremony than he had shown to the publican.

“Young!” said Vavasor to himself, when he was left alone. “There’s my uncle, or the old squire,—they’re both younger men than I am. One cares for his dinner, and the other for his bullocks and his trees. But what is there that I care for, unless it is not getting among the sheriff’s officers for debt?” Then he took out a little memorandum-book from his breast-pocket, and having made in it an entry as to the amount and date of that bill which he had just accepted on the publican’s behalf, he conned over the particulars of its pages. “Very blue; very blue, indeed,” he said to himself when he had completed the study. “But nobody shall say I hadn’t the courage to play the game out, and that old fellow must die some day, one supposes. If I were not a fool, I should make it up with him before he went; but I am a fool, and shall remain so to the last.” Soon after that he dressed himself slowly, reading a little every now and then as he did so. When his toilet was completed, and his Sunday newspapers sufficiently perused, he took up his hat and umbrella and sauntered out.

Table of Contents Table of Contents Can You Forgive Her? Phineas Finn The Eustace Diamonds Phineas Redux The Prime Minister The Duke’s Children