Kissing the Rod: A Novel. (Vol. 1 of 3)

There was no name on the doorposts, nothing beyond the number--"48"--to serve as a guide; and yet it may be doubted whether any firm in the City was better known to the postman, the bankers'-clerks, and all who had regular business to transact with them, than that of Streightley and Son. The firm had been Streightley and Son, and it had been located at 48 Bullion Lane, for the last hundred and fifty years. They were money-brokers and scrip-sellers at the time of the South-Sea bubble, and were among the very few who were not ruined by that disastrous swindle. So little ruined were they that they prospered by it, and in the next generation extended their business and enlarged their profits; both of which, however, were consider curtailed by rash speculations during the French Revolution and the American War. Within the first quarter of the present century the business of Streightley and Son recovered itself; and, under the careful management of old Sam Streightley and his head clerk, Mr. Fowler, the house became highly esteemed as one of the safest bill-broking establishments in the City. It was not, however, until young Mr. Robert, following the bounden career of all the eldest sons of that family, joined the business, and, after close application, had thoroughly mastered its details, that fortune could be said to have smiled steadily on the firm. Young Mr. Robert's views were so large and his daring so great, that his father, old Mr. Sam, at first stood aghast, and had to be perpetually supplicated before he gave permission to experiment on the least hazardous of all the young man's suggestions; but after the son had been about two years a partner in the firm it happened that the father was laid up with such a terrible attack of gout as to be incapable of attending to business for months; and when he at length obtained the physician's grudging assent to his visiting the City he found things so prosperous, but withal so totally changed, that the old gentleman was content to jog down to Bullion Lane about three times a month until his death, which was not long in overtaking him.

Prosperous and changed! Yes; no doubt about that. Up that staircase, hitherto untrodden save by merchants'-clerks leaving bills for acceptance or notices of bills due; by stags with sham prospectuses of never-to-be-brought-out companies; or by third-rate City solicitors giving the quasi-respectability of their names to impotent semi-swindles, which, though they would never see the light, yet afforded the means for creating an indisputable and meaty bill of costs;--up that staircase now came heavy magnates of the City, directors of the Bank of England, with short ill-made Oxford-mixture trousers, and puckered coats, and alpaca umbrellas; or natty stockbrokers, most of them a trifle horsy in garb, all with undeniable linen, and good though large jewelry, carefully-cultivated whiskers, and glossy boots. In the little waiting-room might be found an Irish member of Parliament; the managing director of a great steam-shipping company; a West-end dandy, with a letter of introduction from some club acquaintance with a handle to his name, who idiotically imagined that that handle would serve as a lever to raise money out of Robert Streightley; a lawyer or two; and, occasionally the bronzed captain of a steamer arrived with news from the Pacific; or some burnt and bearded engineer fresh from the inspection of a silver mine in Central America. A long purgatory, for the most part, did these gentlemen spend in the little waiting-room, or in the clerk's room beyond it, where they were exposed to the sharp fusillade of Mr. Fowler's eyes and the keen glances of the two young men who assisted him. The only people who were shown by the messenger at once into Mr. Streightley's presence were the City editors of the various newspapers, and a very prettily-appointed young gentleman, wise withal beyond his years, who occasionally drove down to Bullion Lane from Downing Street in a hansom cab, and who was private secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Robert Streightley had done all this by his own talent and exertion--"on his own hook," as the Stock Exchange men phrased it. The keenness of his business intellect was astounding. He seemed to sift a proposition as it was being laid before him; and as soon as the proposer ceased speaking, Robert Streightley closed with or pooh-poohed the offer, with incontrovertible reasons for his decision. He spoke out plainly and boldly before the oldest and the youngest who sought his advice; he was neither deferential nor patronising; and never sought to please--simply for the sake of pleasing--any of his clients. The young men looked up to him in wonder, and spoke of him over mid-day chops and sherry as a "cool card," a "long-headed chap," "just about one," and in other complimentary slangisms. The older men scarcely knew what to make of him; they hated him for his daring and success, for the dashing manner in which he was passing them all in the race for wealth and distinction; and they would have well liked to have shrugged their shoulders and hinted about his being "fast," and "going ahead," and finally making a grand smash of it; but they had no pretext. So long as Robert Streightley's business relations were thoroughly sound and wholesome it would have been against that esprit de corps which largely prevails among City men to breathe a word against him; and as for his private life, they could scarcely bring a charge of reckless extravagance against a man who went home to a seventy-pound-a-year house at Brixton in the "Paragon" omnibus, and there indulged in the dissipation of a "meat-tea" in the society of his mother and sister. So they found another vent for their spleen, and talked of him as a "doosid close-fisted fellow," a "mean narrow-minded hunks," and a "niggardly screw." He merited none of these appellations. He was a straightforward, honourable business-man, bred in a narrow circle, which his own innate business habits were narrowing year by year. As a boy he had had instilled into him the value of money and the secret of money-getting; as a young man the whole scope of his faculties had been directed to this end. Such little fancy as he possessed--and with such a father the smallness of that fancy could be easily divined--had been ruthlessly eradicated, and all the nascent tendencies of his mind had been directed into one strong channel of fact. That Jack had ever found giants to slay, that glass slippers were ever worn by cinder-wenches, or pumpkins could by any possibility become carriages, were fictions not to be found in Bonnycastle and ignored by Walkinghame; but that two and two made four, or that a talent of silver hid in a napkin remained an unproductive talent of silver, whereas a hundred pounds invested in Consols produced yearly three pounds as interest to its holder, were as demonstrable as the light and heat of the sun at noonday.

He lived but for his business, nothing else. He was in his office at ten o'clock, and he never left it, save on some business errand, until six. He never took a holiday except on Christmas-day and Good Friday, when the newspapers proclaimed all business suspended; he never dined out save twice or thrice a-year at the anniversary banquets of the directors of some of those companies in which his stake was large. His enemies wronged him when they said he had no heart. He had sincerely grieved for the old father who had brought him up and loved him deeply in his own peculiar way; his purse-strings were always at the command of those good Samaritans on the Stock Exchange who do so much in such a quiet and unassuming manner; and the clergyman at Brixton knew he might always count upon Mr. Streightley for a handsome subscription to any charity brought under his notice. His manner was odd and brusque, arising partly from his preoccupation, partly from his having never mixed in society; but there was nothing pretentious or vulgar, fast or underbred in him: he might have been thought an oddity; he never could have been set down for a snob.

See him now as he sits at his desk, poring over his diary, a tall strongly-built man, with long limbs lacking in due amount of muscular development from want of exercise. With a high forehead, a head prematurely bald, but surrounded with a thick fringe of brown hair, with sharp gray eyes looking out from overhanging brows, a thinly-cut aquiline nose, and rather full lips. He has a full whisker, after the ordinary respectable "mutton-chop" outline, and might, if he so pleased, have a large beard, as you can tell by the dark-blue outline round his chin; but Robert Streightley would as soon think of coming up to town outside the Paragon omnibus in a turban as of committing any such unbusiness-like atrocity as growing a beard. One other person is in the room with him just now--Mr. Fowler, his chief clerk, known in the City as Downy Fowler; an old gentleman, who is looked upon as the essence of knowingness, and to whom the fortunes of Streightley and Son are not a little attributable. When this is hinted at, old Mr. Fowler smiles enigmatically; but only in strictest confidence, and to one or two very old friends, declares that, whatever he might have been to the old gentleman, he does not pretend to hold a candle to Mr. Robert, "whose head, my dear sir, is something won-der-ful!" A short sleek gray-headed man, Mr. Fowler; with a high-collared coat much too long in the sleeves, a waistcoat with traces of bygone snuff-pinches lingering in the creases, gray trousers, and gaiter boots. A silent little man, rarely speaking, but in the habit of calling his principal's attention to matters under consideration, such as letters, invoices, and share-lists, with his pointed forefinger. That forefinger was at work at the very moment when they are first presented to reader. It rested on an entry in the diary, and Mr. Fowler looked up into his principal's face inquiringly.

"Well?" said Robert Streightley, "I see. Markwell, 1350_l_.; Baxter, 870_l_.; Currie and Tull, 340_l_.; Guyon, 180_l_. 17_s_. 3_d_.; Banks, 97_l_. 6_s_. Total, 2888_l_. 3_s_. 3_d_.--paid to us by Davidson--due to-day--what of that?"

Mr. Fowler did not answer, but placed his forefinger more decidedly on one of the items of the account.

"O, I see," said Streightley; "Guyon's acceptance! Ay, ay; I recollect now. You called my attention to that, and declared that it was doubtful at the time that Davidson paid it in. Of course you made inquiries?"

Mr. Fowler nodded.

"And they were unsatisfactory? Well, that's no matter to us. The usual notice has been served, of course? Very well, we look to Davidson; but let Boswell's people have the usual instructions to proceed. So Tierra del Fuegos stand the same, do they? All right then; hold on. Ocean Marine have gone up; so that advance to Walton and Pycroft is well covered. Let Brattle step round to--well, what is it, Brattle?" this to the junior clerk, who, after knocking at the door, entered the room.