The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (best fiction novels of all time .TXT) 📕

summer months;⁠—and they said also that he made up for this by working hard all Sunday. Such was Mr. Squercum⁠—a sign, in his way, that the old things are being changed.

Squercum sat at a desk, covered with papers in chaotic confusion, on a chair which moved on a pivot. His desk was against the wall, and when clients came to him, he turned himself sharp round, sticking out his dirty shoes, throwing himself back till his body was an inclined plane, with his hands thrust into his pockets. In this attitude he would listen to his client’s story, and would himself speak as little as possible. It was by his instructions that Dolly had insisted on getting his share of the purchase money for Pickering into his own hands, so that the incumbrance on his own property might be paid off. He now listened as Dolly told him of the delay in the payment. “Melmotte’s at Pickering?” asked the attorney. Then Dolly informed him how the tradesmen of the great financier had already half knocked down the house. Squercum still listened, and promised to look to it. He did ask what authority Dolly had given for the surrender of the title-deeds. Dolly declared that he had given authority for the sale, but none for the surrender. His father, some time since, had put before him, for his signature, a letter, prepared in Mr. Bideawhile’s office, which Dolly said that he had refused even to read, and certainly had not signed. Squercum again said that he’d look to it, and bowed Dolly out of his room. “They’ve got him to sign something when he was tight,” said Squercum to himself, knowing something of the habits of his client. “I wonder whether his father did it, or old Bideawhile, or Melmotte himself?” Mr. Squercum was inclined to think that Bideawhile would not have done it, that Melmotte could have had no opportunity, and that the father must have been the practitioner. “It’s not the trick of a pompous old fool either,” said Mr. Squercum, in his soliloquy. He went to work, however, making himself detestably odious among the very respectable clerks in Mr. Bideawhile’s office⁠—men who considered themselves to be altogether superior to Squercum himself in professional standing.

And now there came this rumour which was so far particular in its details that it inferred the forgery, of which it accused Mr. Melmotte, to his mode of acquiring the Pickering property. The nature of the forgery was of course described in various ways⁠—as was also the signature said to have been forged. But there were many who believed, or almost believed, that something wrong had been done⁠—that some great fraud had been committed; and in connection with this it was ascertained⁠—by some as a matter of certainty⁠—that the Pickering estate had been already mortgaged by Melmotte to its full value at an assurance office. In such a transaction there would be nothing dishonest; but as this place had been bought for the great man’s own family use, and not as a speculation, even this report of the mortgage tended to injure his credit. And then, as the day went on, other tidings were told as to other properties. Houses in the East-end of London were said to have been bought and sold, without payment of the purchase money as to the buying, and with receipt of the purchase money as to the selling.

It was certainly true that Squercum himself had seen the letter in Mr. Bideawhile’s office which conveyed to the father’s lawyer the son’s sanction for the surrender of the title-deeds, and that that letter, prepared in Mr. Bideawhile’s office, purported to have Dolly’s signature. Squercum said but little, remembering that his client was not always clear in the morning as to anything he had done on the preceding evening. But the signature, though it was scrawled as Dolly always scrawled it, was not like the scrawl of a drunken man.

The letter was said to have been sent to Mr. Bideawhile’s office with other letters and papers, direct from old Mr. Longestaffe. Such was the statement made at first to Mr. Squercum by the Bideawhile party, who at that moment had no doubt of the genuineness of the letter or of the accuracy of their statement. Then Squercum saw his client again, and returned to the charge at Bideawhile’s office, with the positive assurance that the signature was a forgery. Dolly, when questioned by Squercum, quite admitted his propensity to be “tight.” He had no reticence, no feeling of disgrace on such matters. But he had signed no letter when he was tight. “Never did such a thing in my life, and nothing could make me,” said Dolly. “I’m never tight except at the club, and the letter couldn’t have been there. I’ll be drawn and quartered if I ever signed it. That’s flat.” Dolly was intent on going to his father at once, on going to Melmotte at once, on going to Bideawhile’s at once, and making there “no end of a row,”⁠—but Squercum stopped him. “We’ll just ferret this thing out quietly,” said Squercum, who perhaps thought that there would be high honour in discovering the peccadillos of so great a man as Mr. Melmotte. Mr. Longestaffe, the father, had heard nothing of the matter till the Saturday after his last interview with Melmotte in the City. He had then called at Bideawhile’s office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and had been shown the letter. He declared at once that he had never sent the letter to Mr. Bideawhile. He had begged his son to sign the letter and his son had refused. He did not at that moment distinctly remember what he had done with the letter unsigned. He believed he had left it with the other papers; but it was possible that his son might have taken it away. He acknowledged that at the time he had been both angry and unhappy. He didn’t think that he could have sent the letter back unsigned⁠—but he was not sure. He had more than once