Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/223

Charles Dickens] be leaving now very soon, it really makes no matter. To-morrow I shall seriously begin to think of fixing the day of departure—the next day still think of it—the third day fix it; the fourth day unfix, and put it off two days. Then begin to think again. In this way, said an old officer to me—at dinner, of course, the invariable time we form acquaintances—you discount and get value for every hour of your time. Each of these stages is a reprieve; otherwise the time slips away, and you are going before you have begun to enjoy yourself. Grainger was delighted to come. An expedition to Frankfort, he said, was the only thing that kept him up "in this hole." Accordingly we set off. I had some misgivings about taking him; but the reflection occurred that I might be saving him from temptation, and that bringing him back to taste these more innocent joys of life, might touch some old chord. Then really, pet of mine—comic as the notion may seem to you—I appeared to myself to be acting as a sort of special missionary to this place; really as benighted as were the Fee Jee Islanders. I know I am weak enough at home, dear, and anything but missionary like; but still this will be laying up a little treasury, a small deposit account on which I may hereafter draw, and say to myself, "Well, that time at Homburg, I did, or tried to do, some little good, and succeeded." What a strange old town. So quaint, so original, so fine, so ancient. I could have lingered on hours there, but I felt there was business before me, and I had no right to make holiday of it. We went straight to the merchant's house, and found him in. He was evidently a ci-devant Jew; he could not disguise those features, and a hard Jew also. I produced the deeds and papers. The signing was done speedily, and the money paid down. It was to be lodged in the Frankfort Bank in my name. Nothing could be more satisfactory. My friend, Mr. Bernard, directed me so to do until he sent me instructions as to its disposal, and there I think he will own, I have worked it favourably for him to the end. He will not object either to the little benefice I have made out for him, uninstructed. I dare say he will be more pleased at that, trifling as it is, just as the barrister or doctor does not like to have the shillings kept back out of his guineas. I was greatly pleased with Grainger. Grainger seemed a little surprised at my knowledge of business and savoir-faire, dealing so easily with a Jew banker, who is supposed to be up to all the tracasseries of money.

"Why," he said as we went out, "one would think you had been brought up in Frankfort, and were accustomed to meet these chaps. I couldn't have held my own to that cormorant as you did; but I have got cowed, I suppose."

"My dear Grainger," I said, "if you want to know the secret, it will come from a little self-reliance: I have something I can depend upon here. A man will swing himself across a precipice by a thin rope which you will be afraid of, simply because he knows and has tried its strength. There is the whole mystery, Grainger; and if I could only bring you to rely on your own heart, which is true, I know, and not be led here and there passively, the helpless victim of every idle whim and inclination——" He said nothing. I could see he was sunk in thought. In this way, by a sort of implied contrast, and not by officious ill-judged canting and preaching, which some of the "good people" would have thought the best, I know enough of the world to have discovered that we work these things out for ourselves best. We came home in great spirits.

"What will you do with all that money?" he said.

"We shall go straight and lodge it at the bank," I answered. And we did so.

"My God!" he said, in a low voice, "if I had that money, I should be ashamed to own to you the frightful idea that would occur to me. What a humiliation!"

"You would hardly be able to pass the kursaal without going in," I said gravely. "Well, there is no humiliation in being tempted—the best and bravest have been. The crime, the humiliation is in another direction. I don't think the worse of you, Grainger, for that confession."

Coming from the railway I meet the young husband and wife, he walking in front "brutally," both so changed. He had an angry and determined look that was almost ferocious. She was pale and scarcely able to walk. Their luggage very small, and I daresay, shrunk away, like the rest of their means, followed them on a man's shoulder. There was a splendid achievement on the side of Mephistopheles and Co. Sweet morsels for them—stripping the young and the innocent—surely the vengeance of Heaven should overtake such wretches—fire should come down from heaven, or rather by a simpler process, it is no sin to wish that a common earthly