AGAINST TIME.*
IT may be a source of satisfaction to Mr. Shand to reflect that, during its appearance in the Cordial Magazine, his story was commonly attributed to Lever. But while this speaks well for the liveliness and spirit of the book, it is not so favourable to the author's originality. We grant the novelty of the scenes which are laid in the boardroom of the Credit Foncier of Turkey, and the truth with which the Overend panic is reproduced in Mr. Shand's pages. Limited liability has found in him a keensighted and accurate historian. His acquaintance with the mechanism of a
• Against Time. By Alexander banes Shand. 8 vols. London: Smith and Elder. 1870.
joint-stock company and with the dealings of the Stock Exchange may perhaps impress outsiders more than those who are behind the scenes, and there is something superficial in the thinly veiled allusions to departed houses and in the mechanical repetition of the slang of speculation. Yet with all this, Mr. Shand keeps us thoroughly absorbed in the ways and means of illegitimate business. We are almost persuaded at the first to take shares in the Credit Foncier of Turkey. The description given us of its prospects, when the two chief promoters are closeted together, is quite as tempting as that submitted to the first general meeting. The grand coup with the new Turkish Loan takes away the reader's breath, as it took away the breath of the directors. Of course we know that the crash must come at the end, and if the shareholders had possessed half our knowledge they would have sold at a moderate premium. But we are not prepared for the way in which a call is averted, and the announcement finds us even more incredulous than the cynics of the last general meeting.
The wild improbability of the plot, which makes speculation necessary to Mr. Shand's hero, is too much in keeping with the growth of limited liability ta excite more than a passing censure. Hugh Childersleigh is the head of an ancient house, and the owner of a historic estate which has been heavily dipped and mortgaged. A wealthy maiden aunt has brought him up in idleness, and taught him to count upon her property ; but by a strange caprice she leaves him only a few thousand pounds at her death, tying up the remainder for three years. At the end of that time it is to go to Hugh Childersleigh, if he has become possessed, otherwise than by mar- riage, of an equal sum ; if not, it is to be disposed of according to the directions contained in a sealed paper. Hugh's only resource is to carry his ancient name, his high connection, and a suddenly developed genius for business into the City. Associated with a money-lending attorney named Hemprigge, who is the son of his aunt's butler, and who knows the secret of the sealed paper, Hugh starts the Credit Foncier of Turkey, gathers all the varieties of City men round him, achieves a brilliant success, earns the required sum, and is on the high road to every kind of fortune. Bat though Hemprigge is interested in the success of the Credit Fonder, he is Hugh's rival and mortal enemy. He has his own views about the disposal of old Miss Childersleigh's money. After two or three vain attempts to embroil Hugh with the other directors of the com- pany, he takes advantage of Hugh's unlucky absence during the height of the panic, to bolt with all the money and securities on which he can lay his hands. Winding-up, appointment of an official liquidator, ruin of shareholders, stormy meetings, calls, are the necessary results, and then Hugh Childersleigh steps grandly forward and makes over his whole property to the company. As he had already earned enough to satisfy the conditions of his aunt's will, and the three years had almost expired, this is an absolute sacrifice of all his prospects. But he is rewarded by a poetic jus- tice which the reader has foreseen from the time when Hemprigge is shown to be hankering after a portionless maiden. The sealed paper directs the payment of Miss Childersleigh's money, in the event of Hugh not complying with the conditions of the will, to an orphan protege'e, and before the sealed paper is opened the fortunate girl has become the wife of Hugh Childersleigh. Hem- prigge had known of this provision, and had done his best to make himself agreeable to the possible heiress. Yet he had the mortification of seeing that Hugh Childersleigh had two strings to his bow. In the first place, the Credit Foncier of Turkey suc- ceeded beyond all expectations, and even Hemprigge's flight with its assets did not affect what Hugh had realized. But, in the second place, the orphan rejected Hemprigge's advances, and it was clear to him who was his rival. Thus the odds in favour of the hero were unusually heavy, and the scoundrel was over- weighted. We do not know whether it is the custom in the City for schemers to back those whom they wish to ruin. It seems to us rather like selling for a rise and buying for a fall. The mistake into which Hemprigge falls is that of having two antagonistic interests. Like a novice in betting, he has made a book by which he stands to lose, whatever happens. He wants to prevent Hugh from earning Miss Childersleigh's money, and with this view he joins him in a daring speculation. Either the Credit Foncier of Turkey will succeed, and then Hugh's fortune is made ; or it will fail, and then his own fortune is marred. He wants to see Miss Childersleigh's money pass to the orphan, Lucy Winter, and to claim it himself with her hand. Yet he finds that her affections are fixed on Hugh, and his own chances are worse than nothing. What ought a prudent scoundrel to do under the circumstances? Hemprigge plays the part of a fool.
If Mr. Shand's plot does not bear analyzing, his characters are wanting both in distinctiveness and.novelty. Most of them are
slight variations on well-known types, and though they play their parts with ease and readiness, that is no more than we expect of their practised experience. We have no doubt that Hemprigge is the character with whom most trouble has been taken, and many happy touches are devoted to him. "If the perfection of good- breeding, "says Mr. Shand in one place, " is to be perfectly unaffected and natural, Hemprigge was never so much of a gentleman as when he was least of one." But even here we do not get far below the surface, and as soon as we are inside the man we light on the well-trodden ground of self-made scheming. From the hero of a novel we do not hope for more than good looks, manliness, and success, so that we may be duly gratified in Hugh Childersleigh. As for the other characters, Lord Rush- brook is amusing, Dr. Silke Reynardson is a good caricature of religion in daily life, McAlpine, Barrington, and George Childersleigh are fine specimens of the gentlemen of the three kingdoms. Hugh's banking relations, Sir Basil and Purkiss, would have deserved some praise if Sir Brian and Barnes New- come had never existed. In like manner both Badger, the great owner of tan-yards, and Dr. Silke Reynardson, the popular preacher and speculator, might have claimed some originality for their re- marks on the treatment of the poor, if they had not been fore- stalled by Pope. "Ninety-nine times in a hundred," vociferates Budger, "when a man starves, the fault's his own ; show me a
pauper, and I'll show you a rascal." The Doctor adds, meekly, "I am so far inclined to agree with Mr. Budger, that I believe poverty to be for the most part the appointed penalty of vice, and that again brings us face to face with our consciences. In taking wholesale steps to relieve it, may we not be flying in the face of Providence ?" What are these sentences but a reproduction of the pointed lines in the epistle "Of the Use of Riches ?"
"Bond damns the poor and hates them from his heart.
The grave Sir Gilbert holds it for a rule That every man in want is knave or fool.
'God cannot love,' says Blunt with tearless eyes, 'The wretch he starves,' and piously denies ; But the good Bishop, with a meeker air, Admits, and leaves them Providence's care."
With all these failings, however, Against Time is a thoroughly spirited and readable story. If there is not much in it that tempts the critical palate to taste and linger, there is not a dull page from first to last. Mr. Shand knows how to keep his readers on the alert
by a constant succession of incidents ; his conversations are lively, and his descriptions vivid. Business life, as we have seen, is exciting enough when it is conducted on the principles of limited liability, when shares are at a fabulous premium one day, and are worth considerably less than nothing on the morrow. But, like McAlpine, Mr. Shand is quite as much at home in the Highlands as in the City. The descriptions of the approach to Killoden, of Lord Rashbrook's adventure with Maud Childersleigh when the mist comes down the sides of Ben-y-Gair, of the desperate row across Loch Loden with the water gaining every moment on the foundering boat, and of the last hopeless struggle with which George Childersleigh, after saving Lucy Winter, falls back into the greedy waves, are admirably worked up, and contribute largely to the interest of the novel. Perhaps Mr. Shand is not quite so happy in the opening scene, which is laid at Homburg.
The venerable Countess of Coucy-Clichy, with her hooked beak and talons, and the paint falling in flakes from her face ; the Russian princes, Mexican millionaires, and German Jews who play side by side, are too familiar to us from many other sketches, and the gaming-tables of the watering-places have been worked too much to retain their former attractions. But Mr. Shand's ambition seems to be the display of cosmopolite intelligence. It is not enough for him to write of grouse packing on Highland moors, of "warm" men in the City, of "rouge gagne et couleur; " he must also give a list of all the works executed in Turkey by the Credit Foncier, and show that when Hugh Childersleigh and Hemprigge put their heads together they devised something better than a bubble company. Listen to the advantages proposed :—
" I've been pretty often to Constantinople in my time, and from all I've seen and heard there, I believe there's no such country in the world for turning over capital. Every one sings the same song, and you never hear a discordant note except from some fool who's burned his fingers. Men of the embassies, correspondents of the press, shopkeepers iu Pera, merchants in Galata, Greeks of the Fanar ; at the table d'hote at Misseri's, the whist-tables of the club, the boats on the Bosphorus,— Armenians, Turks, Jews, and infidels, all tell the same story. From the Sultan on the throne to the Hamel on the wharf, every one is hard up ; and what is more to our purpose, most of them have valid security of some sort to offer. All over the kingdom we give fresh facilities to commerce, new impulses to agriculture. We undersell the native money- lender, and as money-lending goes hand-in-hand with philanthropy, you may pick and choose your loans on land at fifteen to twenty per cent. from the Iron Gates down to the Sans mouth in a country far richer and safer than Tipperary. Not a fig tree in Syria or mulberry in Asia Minor but you may advance on it half as much again, and have the owner bless your charity when he brings your interest. As fast as you can handle it you tarn over your money in freights of grain from Galata and Ibraila, on consignments of Hungarian horses, Transylvanian oxen, and Bulgarian fowls,—not to speak of pawnbroking in the capital, when you take half the jewels of the place into your strongbox, and hold them security for any terms you like to make. In discounting, any- where from Brusa to Bagdad the ball is at your feet, and you can kick it where you please. You cut out the Armenian Saraffs,—gentlemen who, as I know to my cost, think nothing of six per cent, a month on unexceptionable security. In short, Hempriggo, it's more than a field that opens to us there ; it is a province, with no limits but the horizon. Work it as we please, we shall never see a tenth of it under cultivatign in our day.'" Were we not right in saying that this glowing picture was as good as any statement submitted to a general meeting? But Mr. Shand treats business throughout in this tone, throwing a halo of enchantment over balance-sheets, and making "£5 paid" into a fairy vision. Such magic, indeed, brings with it its own punish- ment, and the events at the end of the story resemble a trans- formation scene in a pantomime rather than anything in life. Yet a crowning surprise was needed after the scene at the last general meeting where Hugh gives up all his property, and if Mr. Shand had stopped short of the fullest measure of restitution he might have perpetrated an anti-climax. As it is, the whole story is in keeping.
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