CHAPTER XLVI

SIVIN AND FOUR AGAIN

MONEY, money, money, being our rich man’s sole end and aim, he was as cunning in getting it as a rat-catcher is at getting the rats to take his traps. Moreover, he had been tried in so many different ways, —bad bills, middling bills, forged bills, bad securities, middling securities, no securities—that he fancied himself half a lawyer, and talked and argued as if he were a whole one. This being a sort of character that a real lawyer does not like, our friend had been bowed out by independent practitioners and had now taken refuge under the pliant ignorance of young Mr. Saplington, who did his private business for nothing, in consideration of what he got out of the bank for writing —“on or before letters,” issuing latitats and missives of the forcing imperative order. Our Banker, indeed, would seem to have a natural relish and appreciation for the law, for whenever he got a bundle of title-deeds into his possession, he would set-to and read every document from end to end, no matter how mouldy or musty, and seemed thoroughly to enjoy their dreary headaching contents. Then, having them once into his clutches, no power on earth could induce him to let them go out of his sight until he got his money repaid. Saplington might come and copy them in his little den at the bank for anybody wanting to know their contents, but no taking away even to Saplington’s office, and as soon as the dinner hour came, back they were bundled into the tin box, the Bramah lock replaced, and the whole returned to the vast abyss of the strong iron safe. Many thousand acres of land had been compressed within its solid sides, many corn-stacks, many haystacks, many flocks and herds, many horses and implements of husbandry.

With a man so exact, even in a loan, with all the circumjacent contrivances to protect him, it is needless to say that in an out-and-out purchase he was consistently cautious, and Docket and he having at length got a deal, and the difficulty of the case might be thought to be over, lo and behold! it would seem to be only beginning, just as in matrimony, the difficulties are often all to come to, after the parties themselves think everything is smoothly settled, and are announcing the fact to their already well-aware friends.

Mr. Goldspink would seem to have conjured up all the blots and defects of all the titles he and his predecessors had ever had through their hands since the establishment of the bank in sivinteen hundred and sivinty-four, and to have invested Garlandale with the whole of them. Like Gil Blas’s mule, the title would seem to be all faults. The consequence was that he made Mr. Saplington put so many points and doubts, and queries, and draw his attention to so many things, that Mr. James Habendum, the conveyancer of the Temple, naturally concluded the Banker was an unwilling purchaser, wanting to be off his bargain. Now it so happened that the title was singularly clear, twist it as he would, Mr. Habendum could make nothing against it—nothing fatal at least—for it must be a marvellous title that a keen-nosed lawyer cannot take some exceptions to, but the evident anxiety of the party made him set his best wits to work to try if he could accommodate him, when he hit upon the following instance of the beautiful simplicity of our real property laws.

There had been a trust-money mortgage on the estate some forty years before, and between the time of making the mortgage and paying it off a new trustee, one Mr. Cracknel Cauldfield, had been appointed, which enabled Mr. Habendum to suggest that unless the death of the original trustee and the due appointment of his successor could be shown, the money (notwithstanding the surviving trustee joined in the receipt) might have been wrongly paid, and an intending purchaser might have to pay it over again—and this, after the lapse of the forty years, during which no claim for either principal or interest had ever been made; and Mr. Habendum further played as he thought into the Banker’s hands by saying that unless the vendor could show all this, a Court of Equity would not enforce the performance of the contract. The Banker was appalled when he read the opinion. It would have done Mr. Habendum good to have seen how he took it. “Sivin and four’s elivin!” exclaimed he to Mr. Saplington as that gentleman presented him in his little den at the bank with what he too thought would be an agreeable document, “Sivin and four’s elivin and eighty-four is ninety-five, and a underd-and-one is a underd and ninety-six. Why this is indeed a tremendious announcement!—a lamentable discovery! Thought the title seemed as clear as the sun at noonday, and here have I gone and told Mrs. Goldspink and she has told Mrs. Wedlock, and Mrs. Wedlock will have told Mrs. Sinney, and it will be all over the town that I’ve bought the estate, and now I haven’t got it. Oh dear! Oh dear!” continued he, wringing his fat hands in despair, “one should never holla without leave of the lawyers!” so saying, he sunk into the old hard-seated semcircular chair in which he had spent so much time, and calculated so much agreeable money.

Presently he became more composed, and looked at the matter in a different light. “Sivin and four’s elivin,” said he, crossing his fat legs and dry-shaving his chin, and “forty-one is fifty-two; it’s lucky praps that things have turned out as they have done. If I had set-to and built a messuage, tenement, or dwelling-house, with the appurtenances, and just as I got my carpets cut, and all on the square, this horrid old Cracknel Cauldfield had cast up from the continent, from Holland, or Flushing, or wherever he has been hiding, demanding the whole in the name of the Queen, or of Sir Alexander Cockburn, Baronet, at Westminster, I should have been in a pretty predicament; wholly, entirely, completely ruined.” Mr. Saplington then essayed to pacify him by pointing out that Mr. Goldspink would not lose the estate, but would only have to pay the mortgage-money over again; whereupon the banker seized upon the unfortunate word “only,” and worked it in a way that plainly showed he did not think it any trifle paying for a place twice over.

At length, having let off his vehemence, he began to take matters in a more amiable mood; and, now, for the first time, enlightened Mr. Saplington with the fact that he really wanted to buy the estate, and was not nibbling at it as an investment, or for the sake of covering a loan, and though he could not think of touching without the flaw being removed, he instructed Mr. Saplington to inform Mr. Docket that he should expect Mr. Docket to produce Mr. Cracknel Cauldfield dead or alive, to clear up the mystery about the money. And the lawyer having taken his departure, the Banker added another doubt to his long list of legal difficulties.

Wouldn’t he take care for the future to see that trustees were properly appointed! He would take nothing for granted. No, not even that he had a nose on his face without seeing it. And the inviting smell of roast goose now invading his den, our friend locked the opinion up in his safe, and proceeded to the discussion of more agreeble matters.