Roger shook his head.
“No such thing as love on a hundred and fifty a year. Now listen to me.”
“I vill not listen—I vill not listen.”
Roger slowly raised his umbrella, as if taking a lunar of the young man’s capacity.
“This is a passing fancy of my daughter’s,” he said; “she has one every year—you’re the last. Now you’re not getting on in London, your concert was a failure, the climate doesn’t suit you. I make you an offer.” He drew the envelope and his cheque book from his breast pocket. “Here’s a first-class passage to New York by the boat tomorrow morning from Liverpool.” He tapped his cheque book: “And three hundred pounds if you’ll go straight off now, without saying good-bye to her.”
He paused, steadily regarding the unfortunate young man, who broke into a violent perspiration, writhed on the window-sill, thrust his hands into his hair, and uttered a curious hissing. Roger made out the words:
“It ees dishonourable. She lof me.”
“Nonsense!” he said. “However, I’ll make it four hundred, and you can cash it on the way to the station. Now be sensible. My butler’s outside. He’ll see you comfortably off at Liverpool. With four hundred pounds you can make your name. With a wife and babies you’ll starve in a kennel. Give me a pen and ink.”
The young man’s face was ‘a study,’ his hair stood up, he stammered incomprehensible words, while his eyes made desperate efforts to avoid the cheque book. Roger waited, holding it open. It was like bidding at an auction.
“I’ll throw you in another fifty to start you fair. Don’t be a fool and condemn my daughter and yourself to wretchedness. I mean what I said—not one penny will she have from me. Now be a man and save her.”
The young man clapped his hand to the breast of his pink striped shirt.
“I feel it ’ere,” he said. “I cannot go like that.”
“Save her!” repeated Roger. “Come! Where’s the ink?”
The young man pointed. Roger saw on the mantelpiece a penny bottle of ink, and suddenly his nerves twittered. It was as if he had seen the brink on which his daughter was standing.
“Five hundred!” he said, sharply.
The young man threw up his hands. “I save her!” he cried.
Roger wrote the cheque.
“Smith! Take Mr. Ratcatski to Euston and catch the next train to Liverpool. Go to a good hotel, see he has everything he wants, and put him on board the boat for New York in the morning. He is called there on important business. On the way to the station go to my bank and get this cheque cashed, and give him the notes and his ticket, when he’s on board and NOT BEFORE. He’s a foreigner, and might get imposed on.” Then, turning to the young man, who was staring dreadfully, he added: “There’s a cab waiting. Smith will put your things together.”
Francie’s foreigner remained rooted to the window-sill, his hands embedded in his hair. Suddenly he came to life, and, seizing his violin, clasped it to his pink striped chest.
“Dees is my vife,” he said.
A feeling that the young man was at the moment perfectly sincere quarrelled violently in Roger with the desire to kick him.
“That’s right!” he said.
In the doorway he heard Smith murmur: “He’ll not get away from me, Sir, if I ‘ave to ‘old ’im by the slack of his breeches. I’ll get ’im off all right.”
Roger nodded. “Mum’s the word! And if he writes any letters, collar them.”
Out in the Mews, he wiped his forehead. Hot work! Passing the cab, he stopped at the corner to watch. He didn’t trust that young beggar a yard. In a few minutes, however, he saw him coming hugging his violin and followed by Smith carrying a large bag. They got into the cab and drove off. Roger uttered a sigh of such relief that a passer stopped to look at him; his knees had suddenly given way, and but for the man’s arm he would have fallen.
“‘Allo, Sir!” said the man. “Took ill?”
Roger shook off his arm.
“No,” he said, testily.
He moved away a few steps to assert his independence, but was obliged to stand still again. After all, he was seventy-five, the day was hot, and he had been bidding for the life of his only daughter. To think that a fourpenny foreigner had cost him five hundred odd pounds! Yes, and he’d only got him by pure bluff. HE knew—if that young beggar didn’t—that no Forsyte would be capable of watching his own daughter in actual want. If the fellow had held out and refused to budge, the fat would have been in the fire. Sooner or later he would have had to make them an allowance to keep the wolf from the door. A narrow shave! A regular squeak! And seeing a hansom in the distance, he hailed it.
At home, under the strict seal of secrecy, he retailed the matter to Mrs. Roger. She listened in a turmoil of admiration and dismay. “Poor Francie!” she said, tremulously.
“Poor fiddlestick! A fourpenny foreign adventurer! she ought to thank me on her knees. But there it is, I never get thanked for anything.”
“Oh! Roger, I’m sure we’re all very grateful; but—er—poor dear Francie!”
“If you ever tell her,” said Roger, “I’ll cut you off with a shilling.”
“Of course I shan’t tell her, Roger. But why did you make me ask them to lunch next week?”
“To put her off the scent, of course! What did you think? But women never think. Here! Give me one of those powders. I’ve got a headache.”
Smith returned the following afternoon. He had seen ‘Mr. Ragcatchy’ off. The young man had seemed low-spirited but had counted the notes twice. So far as he—Smith—knew, he had written no letter. As the ship moved out, Smith from the dock below had noticed that he was like a bear on hot bricks, and had caught hold of his hair.
“Hope he pulled some out,” said Roger. “I shall raise your wages for this.”
“Thank you, Sir,” said Smith, “but it was a reel pleasure to me, I do assure you. ‘E wouldn’ never ‘ave done for Miss Francie, if I may say so, Sir.”
And Francie! What she suffered, what she suspected, what she knew, no one ever heard. She wrote to her mother after four days saying that there had been a mistake and Guido had gone away. A week later she returned to Prince’s Gate, paler, thinner, more Keltic-looking than ever. She left town for Ilfracombe on the following day. In the autumn she took another ‘lover.’ No one ever heard her allude again to her “fourpenny foreigner.” In Roger’s mind alone did he remain enshrined as the most expensive fourpennyworth ever known.
FOUR-IN-HAND FORSYTE, 1890
Such historians as record the tides of social manners and morals, have neglected the bicycle. Yet would it be difficult to deny that this ‘invention of the devil,’ as Swithin Forsyte always called it because ‘a penny-farthing’ had startled his greys at Brighton in 1874—has been responsible for more movement in manners and morals than anything since Charles the Second. At its bone-shaking inception innocent, because of its extraordinary discomfort, in its ‘penny-farthing’ stage harmless, because only dangerous to the lives and limbs of the male sex, it began to be a dissolvent of the most powerful type when accessible to the fair in its present form. Under its influence, wholly or in part, have wilted chaperons, long and narrow skirts, tight corsets, hair that would come down, black stockings, thick ankles, large hats, prudery and fear of the dark; under its influence, wholly or in part, have bloomed week-ends, strong nerves, strong legs, strong language, knickers, knowledge of make and shape, knowledge of woods and pastures, equality of sex, good digestion and professional occupation—in four words, the emancipation of woman. But to Swithin, and possibly for that reason, it remained what it had been in the beginning, an invention of the devil. For, apart from that upset to his greys, having lived his first sixteen years with ‘Prinny’ in the offing, and formed himself under Lord Melbourne, the Cider Cellars and the Pavilion at Brighton, he remained to the end in taste and deportment a Buck of the Regency, unable to divest himself of a love for waistcoats and jewellery, or the conviction that women were perquisites to whom elegance and—ah—charm were of the first necessity.