第146章

'He's up there, and he knows all about the business just as well as Ido. When I found that I couldn't stay for you, I went through the account with him, and it's all settled. Good morning. I'll see you at the West End in a day or two.' Then he made his way out into Lombard Street, and Mrs Van Siever picked her steps across the yard, and mounted the stairs, and made her way into the room in which Mr Musselboro was sitting.

'Somebody's been smoking, Gus,' she said, almost as soon as she had entered the room.

'That's nothing new here,' he replied, as he got up from his chair.

'There's no good being done when men sit and smoke over their work. Is it you, or he, or both of you?'

'Well--it was Broughton was smoking just now. I don't smoke of a morning myself.'

'What made him get up and run away when I came?'

'How can I tell, Mrs Van Siever,' said Musselboro, laughing. 'If he did run away when you came, I suppose it was because he didn't want to see you.'

'And why shouldn't he want to see me? Gus, I expect the truth from you.

How are things going on here?' To this question Mr Musselboro made no immediate answer; but tilted himself back in his chair and took his hat off, and put his thumbs into the arm-holes of his waistcoat, and looked his patroness full in the face. 'Gus,' she said again, 'I do expect the truth from you. How are things going on here?'

'There'd be a good business--if he'd only keep things together.'

'But he's idle. Isn't he idle?'

'Confoundedly idle,' said Musselboro.

'And he drinks;--don't he drink in the day?'

'Like the mischief--some days. But that isn't the worst of it.'

'And what is the worst of it?'

'Newmarket;--that's the rock he's going to pieces on.'

'You don't mean to say he takes the money out of the business for that?'

And Mrs Van Siever's face, as she asked the question, expressed almost a tragic horror. 'If I thought that I wouldn't give him an hour's mercy.'

'When a man bets he doesn't well know what money he uses. I can't say that he takes money that is not his own. Situated as I am, I don't know what is his own and what isn't. If your money was in my name I could keep a hand on it;--but as it is not I can do nothing. I can see that what is put out is put out fairly well; and when I think of it, Mrs Van Siever, it is quite wonderful that we've lost so little. It has been next to nothing. That has been my doing--and that's about all I can do.'

'You must know whether he has used my money for his own purposes or not.'

'If you ask me, I think he has,' said Mr Musselboro.

'Then I'll go into it, and I'll find it out, and if it is so, as sure as my name's Van Siever, I'll sew him up.' Having uttered which terrible threat, the old woman drew a chair to the table and seated herself fairly down, as though she were determined to go through all the books of the office before she quitted that room. Mrs Van Siever in her present habiliments was not a thing so terrible to look at as she had been in her wiggeries at Mrs Dobbs Broughton's dinner-table. Her curls were laid aside altogether, and she wore simply a front beneath her close bonnet --and a very old front, too, which was not loudly offensive because it told no lies. Her eyes were as bright, and her little wizen face was as sharp as ever; but the wizen face and the bright eyes were not so much amiss as seen together with the old dark brown silk dress which she now wore, as they had been with the wiggeries and the evening finery. Even now, in her morning costume, in her work-a-day business dress, as we may call it, she looked to be very old--so old that nobody could guess her age. People attempting to guess would say that she must be at least over eighty. And yet she was wiry, and strong, and nimble.