登陆注册
5393100000057

第57章

"Maybe it's been a good thing for you, Maggie," grumbled my aunt; "if it wasn't for cantankerous, disagreeable people like me, gentle, patient people like you wouldn't get any practice. Perhaps, after all, I've been a blessing to you in disguise."

I cannot honestly say we ever wished her back; though we certainly did miss her--missed many a joke at her oddities, many a laugh at her cornery ways. It takes all sorts, as the saying goes, to make a world. Possibly enough if only we perfect folk were left in it we would find it uncomfortably monotonous.

As for Amy, I believe she really regretted her.

"One never knows what's good for one till one's lost it," sighed Amy.

"I'm glad to think you liked her," said my mother.

"You see, mum," explained Amy, "I was one of a large family; and a bit of a row now and again cheers one up, I always think. I'll be losing the power of my tongue if something doesn't come along soon."

"Well, you are going to be married in a few weeks now," my mother reminded her.

But Amy remained despondent. "They're poor things, the men, at a few words, the best of them," she replied. "As likely as not just when you're getting interested you turn round to find that they've put on their hat and gone out."

My mother and I were very much alone after my aunt's death. Barbara had gone abroad to put the finishing touches to her education--to learn the tricks of the Nobs' trade, as old Hasluck phrased it; and I had left school and taken employment with Mr. Stillwood, without salary, the idea being that I should study for the law.

"You are in luck's way, my boy, in luck's way," old Mr. Gadley had assured me. "To have commenced your career in the office of Stillwood, Waterhead and Royal will be a passport for you anywhere.

It will stamp you, my boy."

Mr. Stillwood himself was an extremely old and feeble gentleman--so old and feeble it seemed strange that he, a wealthy man, had not long ago retired.

"I am always meaning to," he explained to me one day soon after my advent in his office. "When your poor father came to me he told me very frankly the sad fact--that he had only a few more years to live.

'Mr. Kelver,' I answered him, 'do not let that trouble you, so far as I am concerned. There are one or two matters in the office I should like to see cleared up, and in these you can help me. When they are completed I shall retire! Yet, you see, I linger on. I am like the old hackney coach horse, Mr. Weller--or is it Mr. Jingle--tells us of; if the shafts were drawn away I should probably collapse. So I jog on, I jog on.'"

He had married late in life a common woman much younger than himself, who had brought to him a horde of needy and greedy relatives, and no doubt, as a refuge from her noisy neighbourhood, the daily peace of Lombard Street was welcome to him. We saw her occasionally. She was one of those blustering, "managing" women who go through life under the impression that making a disturbance is somehow "putting things to rights." Ridiculously ashamed of her origin, she sought to hide it under what her friends assured her was the air of a duchess, but which, as a matter of fact, resembled rather the Sunday manners of an elderly barmaid. Mr. Gadley alone was not afraid of her; but, on the contrary, kept her always very much in fear of him, often speaking to her with refreshing candour. He had known her in the days it was her desire should be buried in oblivion, and had always resented as a personal insult her entry into the old established aristocratic firm of Stillwood & Co.

Her history was peculiar. Mr. Stillwood, when a blase man about town, verging on forty, had first seen her, then a fair-haired, ethereal-looking child, in spite of her dirt, playing in the gutter.

To his lasting self-reproach it was young Gadley himself, accompanying his employer home from Westminster, who had drawn Mr. Stillwood's attention to the girl by boxing her ears for having, as he passed, slapped his face with a convenient sprat. Stillwood, acting on the impulse of the moment, had taken the child by the hand and dragged her, unwilling, to her father's place of business--a small coal shed in the Horseferry Road. The arrangement he there made amounted practically to the purchase of the child. She was sent abroad to school and the coal shed closed. On her return, ten years later, a big, handsome young woman, he married her, and learned at leisure the truth of the old saying, "what's bred in the bone will come out in the flesh," scrub it and paint it and hide it away under fine clothes as you will.

Her constant complaint against her husband was that he was only a solicitor, a profession she considered vulgar; and nothing "riled" old Gadley more than hearing her views upon this point.

"It's not fair to the gals," I once heard her say to him. I was working in the next room, with the door not quite closed, added to which she talked at the top of her voice on all subjects. "What real gentleman, I should like to know, is going to marry the daughter of a City attorney? As I told him years ago, he ought to have retired and gone into the House."

"The very thing your poor father used to talk of doing whenever things were going a bit queer in the retail coal and potato business," grunted old Gadley.

Mrs. Stillwood called him a "low beast" in her most aristocratic tones, and swept out of the room.

Not that old Stillwood himself ever expressed fondness for the law.

"I am not at all sure, Kelver," I remember his saying to me on one occasion, "that you have done wisely in choosing the law. It makes one regard humanity morally as the medical profession regards it physically:--as universally unsound. You suspect everybody of being a rogue. When people are behaving themselves, we lawyers hear nothing of them. All we hear of is roguery, trickery and hypocrisy. It deteriorates the character, Kelver. We live in a perpetual atmosphere of transgression. I sometimes fancy it may be infectious."

同类推荐
  • 说罪要行法

    说罪要行法

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 六祖坛经

    六祖坛经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 戒子益恩书

    戒子益恩书

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 墉城集仙录

    墉城集仙录

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 毛诗指说

    毛诗指说

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 冒险者传说:刺杀与守望

    冒险者传说:刺杀与守望

    请永远记住,你们是大森林的守望者,守护森林,守护生命,守护一切美好的东西,这就是——守望者。
  • 隐身杀手

    隐身杀手

    王大平留学回来后开了一家心理咨询室。对于这一职业选择,他的父母曾表示反对。心理咨询算什么呀,你既不能像医生那样给人治病,也不能像律师那样帮人打官司,就一个人坐在那里,等着有人上门送钱?这不是算命那一套诓人的把戏吗?但父母的反对没有阻止王大平创业的热情,心理咨询室还是开了起来。出乎意外,开张不久就生意不错,来求诊的人不少。这天傍晚王大平正要关门回家,进来一个年轻女孩,穿着一身黄色运动衣,头发在后脑束成一个大马尾巴,看上去泼辣精干。“你是心理医生吗?”她问着,一屁股坐在他对面的位置上。“我是心理咨询师。
  • 黑色破局

    黑色破局

    《黑色破局》是一部关于中日情报战争的长篇谍战小说,讲述了一个有关我地下党情报组长陈克和他的战友当年在隐蔽战线上将黑桃A、木村等老对手所设下的迷局逐一破除的故事。小说情节曲折复杂,悬念迭起。谍影飘忽,将远逝年代里情报大战中的我党地下人员、军统特工和日本间谍之间的残酷斗争,描述得淋漓尽致。全书分为“黑箭”、“黑洞”、“黑影”三篇,将敌特秘密行动梯次展开,栩栩如生地揭示了敌我双方在谍战中的设局、做局、布局、对局、破局等过程,错综迷幻,扣人心弦。
  • 循循不善诱

    循循不善诱

    夏日蝉鸣,少女夹着书本,埋头回家,也不看路。突然她看见地上出现了一个影子,抬起头,影子的主人露出一副非常欠扁的笑容:“纪循循,你跟我一起考艺术生吧?”“不要,烦死了,你别挡着我!”我猛地睁开眼,因为遮着窗户的窗帘十分厚,屋里显得阴沉沉的。我觉得整个脑袋疼死了。枕旁的手机的铃声响个不停,我一边按着太阳穴,一边接通电话,里面传来罪魁祸首的声音:“纪循循,你怎么还不起床?”
  • 侠以武

    侠以武

    将军府管家之子江无双,一心闯荡江湖,成为一代大侠,却被父亲灌输忠于将军府的思想,后将军府被皇帝下令所灭,仅有江无双一人逃生,为了复仇,为了自己曾经的大侠梦,江无双踏上江湖,各路学武,为了成长,他不择手段,为了复仇,他费尽心思。终于,他成为了一代大侠,江湖上威名赫赫,他推翻了皇帝,自己登临九五之尊,他的野心越发的膨胀,在他的眼中,只有自己……
  • 名门贵女破苍穹

    名门贵女破苍穹

    生父无情不认她?那咱也不认他!娘亲是下堂妇?那还犹豫什么?立刻改嫁!修仙,建宫门,扩势力,旁有妖孽美男妖王啸月相辅;回家,有娘亲疼,有哥哥爱,还胜过亲父的继父,谁也别想破坏她的幸福生活!八年后,她回到京城。当年的弃妇之女已经是官家千金。喜欢扮猪吃老虎的她又怎能容那些欺辱过她们母女的人继续逍遥下去?。。。。。。凤凰涅盘,重生的夏晨曦是曙光的女神,驾驭着神兽青龙,风华绝代,光芒万丈!。。。。。。结局一对一。。。。。。。
  • 玄真子外篇

    玄真子外篇

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 太上正一朝天三八谢罪法忏

    太上正一朝天三八谢罪法忏

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 倾我予你之欢

    倾我予你之欢

    他是学校的冰山校草,却唯独对她不一样,在学校拦着她追男神,私下对她各种欺压,壁咚!强吻!做完还不承认!某天某女实在受不了的问“韩奕宸,你为什么总是在我受伤的时候,及时出现啊?”某男听她说完,直接把她壁咚在身后的墙上,“笨蛋,因为我从未离开过你身后啊!”说完强吻上早已脸红的小人。
  • 爆炸新闻

    爆炸新闻

    “大火,大火!”潘丽颜坐在车里,从警局通讯监听器里,听到警局调度焦急地呼叫,心里一惊,扭头看看两边,以为大火就发生在她车子的附近。潘丽颜是本市电视台的新闻记者。为及时捕捉社会新闻,特别是杀人放火一类带有爆炸效应的新闻,台里给每个记者配备了一个警局通讯监听器,专门捕捉警员之间的通讯,以便在第一时间赶到现场,抢播新闻。在互联网越来越发达的时代,新闻竞争格外激烈,做电视记者不容易,做出人头地的电视记者就更难。台里有的记者嫌麻烦,不用这个监听器。潘丽颜不一样,她只要开上车,不管去哪儿,都一定会把监听器开着,绝不放过任何一个可能的机会。