The Duke of Omnium had notified to Mr Fothergill his wish that some arrangement should be made about the Chaldicotes mortgages, and Mr Fothergill had understood what the duke meant as well as though his instructions had been written down with all a lawyer’s verbosity. The duke’s meaning was this, that Chaldicotes was to be swept up and garnered, and made part and parcel of the Gatherum property. It had seemed to the duke that that affair between his friend and Miss Dunstable was hanging fire, and, therefore, it would be well that Chaldicotes should be swept up and garnered. And, moreover, tidings had come into the western division of the county that young Frank Gresham of Boxall Hill was in treaty with the Government for the purchase of all that Crown property called the Chace of Chaldicotes. It had been offered to the duke, but the duke had given no definite answer. Had he got his money back from Mr Sowerby he could have forestalled Mr Gresham; but now that did not seem to be probable, and his grace resolved that either the one property or the other should be garnered. Therefore Mr Fothergill went up to town, and therefore Mr Sowerby was, most unwillingly, compelled to have a business interview with Mr Fothergill. In the meantime, since last we saw him, Mr Sowerby had learned from his sister the answer which Miss Dunstable had given to his proposition, and knew that he had no further hope in that direction. There was no further hope thence of absolute deliverance, but there had been a tender of money service. To give Mr Sowerby his due, he had at once declared that it would be quite out of the question that he should now receive any assistance of that sort from Miss Dunstable; but his sister had explained to him that it would be mere business transaction; that Miss Dunstable would receive her interest; and that, if she would be content with four per cent, whereas the duke received five, and other creditors six, seven, eight, ten, and Heaven only knows how much more, it might be well for all parties. He, himself, understood, as well as Fothergill had done, what was the meaning of the duke’s message. Chaldicotes was to be gathered and garnered, as had been done with so many another fair property lying in those regions. It was to be swallowed whole, and the master was to walk out from his old family hall, to leave the old woods that he loved, to give up utterly to another the parks and paddocks and pleasant places which he had known from his earliest infancy, and owned from his earliest manhood.
There can be nothing more bitter to a man than such a surrender. What, compared to this, can be the loss of wealth to one who has himself made it, and brought it together, but has never actually seen it with his bodily eyes? Such wealth has come by one chance, and goes by another: the loss of it is part of the game which the man is playing; and if he cannot lose as well as win, he is a poor, weak, cowardly creature. Such men, as a rule, do know how to bear a mind fairly equal to adversity. But to have squandered the acres which have descended from generation to generation; to be the member of one’s family that has ruined that family; to have swallowed up in one’s own maw all that should have graced one’s children, and one’s grandchildren! It seems to me that the misfortunes of this world can hardly go beyond that! Mr Sowerby, in spite of his recklessness and that dare-devil gaiety which he knew so well how to wear and use, felt all this as keenly as any man could feel it. It had been absolutely his own fault. The acres had come to him all his own, and now, before his death, every one of them would have gone bodily into that greedy maw. The duke had bought up nearly all the debts which had been secured upon the property, and now could make a clean sweep of it. Sowerby, when he received that message from Mr Fothergill, knew well that this was intended; and he knew well also, that when once he should cease to be Mr Sowerby of Chaldicotes, he need never again hope to be returned as member for West Barsetshire. This world would for him be all over. And what must such a man feel when he reflects that this world for him is all over? On the morning in question he went to his appointment, still bearing a cheery countenance. Mr Fothergill, when in town on such business as this, always had a room at his service in the house of Messrs Gumption & Gagebee, the duke’s London law agents, and it was thither that Mr Sowerby had been summoned. The house of business of Messrs Gumption & Gagebee was in South Audley Street; and it may be said that there was no spot on the whole earth which Mr Sowerby hated as he did the gloomy, dingy back sitting-room upstairs in that house. He had been there very often, but had never been there without annoyance. It was a horrid torture-chamber, kept for such dread purposes as these, and no doubt had been furnished, and papered, and curtained with the express object of finally breaking down the spirits of such poor country gentlemen as chanced to be involved. Everything was of a brown crimson,— of a crimson that had become brown. Sunlight, real genial light of the sun, never made its way there, and no amount of candles could illuminate the gloom of that brownness. The windows were never washed; the ceiling was of a dark brown; the old Turkey carpet was thick with dust, and brown withal. The ungainly office-table, in the middle of the room, had been covered with black leather, but that was now brown. There was a bookcase full of dingy brown law books in a recess on one side of the fireplace, but no one had touched them for years, and over the chimney-piece hung some old legal pedigree table, black with soot. Such was the room which Mr Fothergill always used in the business house of Messrs Gumption & Gagebee, in South Audley Street, near to Park Lane.
I once heard this room spoken of by an old friend of mine, one Mr Gresham of Greshambury, the father of Frank Gresham, who was now about to purchase that part of the Chace of Chaldicotes which belonged to the Crown. He also had had evil days, though now happily they were past and gone; and he, too, had sat in that room, and listened to the voice of men who were powerful over his property, and intended to use that power. The idea which he left on my mind was much the same as that which I had entertained, when a boy, of a certain room in the castle of Udolpho. There was a chair in that Udolpho room in which those who sat were dragged out limb by limb, the head one way and the legs another; the fingers were dragged off from the hands, and the teeth out from the jaws, and the hair off the head, and the flesh from the bones, and the joints from their sockets, till there was nothing left but a lifeless trunk seated in the chair. Mr Gresham, as he told me, always sat in the same seat, and the tortures were suffered when so seated, the dislocations of his property which he was forced to discuss, the operations of his very self which he was forced to witness, made me regard that room as worse than the chamber of Udolpho. He, luckily — a rare instance of good fortune — had lived to see all his bones and joints put together again, and flourishing soundly; but he never could speak of the room without horror. ‘No consideration on earth,’ he once said to me, very solemnly,—‘I say none, should make me again enter that room.’ And indeed this feeling was so strong with him, that from the day when his affairs took a turn he would never even walk down South Audley Street. On the morning in question into this torture-chamber Mr Sowerby went, and there, after some two or three minutes, he was joined by Mr Fothergill.
Mr Fothergill was, in one respect, like to his friend Sowerby. He enacted two together different persons on occasions which were altogether different. Generally speaking, with the world at large, he was a jolly, rollicking, popular man, fond of eating and drinking, known to be devoted to the duke’s interests, and supposed to be somewhat unscrupulous, or at any rate hard, when they were concerned; but in other respects a good-natured fellow: and there was a report about that he had once lent somebody money, without charging him interest or taking security. On the present occasion Sowerby saw at a glance that he had come thither with all the aptitudes and appurtenances of his business about him. He walked into the room with a short, quick step; there was no smile on his face as he shook hands with his old friend; he brought with him a box laden with papers and parchments, and he had not been a minute in the room before he was seated in one of the old dingy chairs. ‘How long have you been in town, Fothergill?’ said Sowerby, still standing with his back against the chimney. He had resolved on only one thing — that nothing should induce him to touch, look at, or listen to any of those papers. He knew well enough that no good would come of that. He also had his own lawyers, to see that he was pilfered according to rule.
‘How long? Since the day before yesterday. I never was so busy in my life. The duke, as usual, wants to have everything done at once.’
‘If he wants to have all that I owe him paid at once, he is like to be out in his reckoning.’
‘Ah, well; I’m glad you are ready to come quickly to business, because it’s always best. Won’t you come and sit down here?’
‘No, thank you. I’ll stand.’
‘But we shall have to go through these figures, you know.’
‘Not a figure, Fothergill. What good would it do? None to me, and none to you either, as I take it. If there is anything wrong, Potter’s fellows will find it out. What is it the duke wants?’
‘Well; to tell the truth, he wants his money.’
‘In one sense, and that the main sense, he has got it. He gets his interest regularly, does not he?’
‘Pretty we............