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Updated: May 13, 2025
"Come to the bottom of your little garden, Father Fischer," said the important man. "You are hearty?" he went on, sitting down under a vine arbor and scanning the old man from head to foot, as a dealer in human flesh scans a substitute for the conscription. "Ay, hearty enough for a tontine," said the lean little old man; his sinews were wiry, and his eye bright. "Does heat disagree with you?"
"Upon my word," cried Morris, "if you do not understand for yourself, I almost despair of telling you." "O, of course it's some rot about the tontine," returned the other. "But it's the merest nonsense. We've lost it, and there's an end." "I tell you," said Morris, "Uncle Masterman is dead. I know it, there's a voice that tells me so." "Well, and so is Uncle Joseph," said John.
It was indeed with great news that he came charged. The demise was announced of Lieutenant-General Sir Glasgow Biggar, K.C.S.I., K.C.M.G., etc., and the prize of the tontine now lay between the Finsbury brothers. Here was Morris's opportunity at last. The brothers had never, it is true, been cordial. When word came that Joseph was in Asia Minor, Masterman had expressed himself with irritation.
But John was in a dangerous humour, and his brother was prepared for any sacrifice. By seven o'clock, Morris, with incredible agony, had lost a couple of half-crowns. Even with the tontine before his eyes, this was as much as he could bear; and, remarking that he would take his revenge some other time, he proposed a bit of supper and a grog.
Take me to it? 'O, you want it, do you? And the other man, Dickson does he want it? enquired Gideon. 'Who do you mean by Dickson? O, Michael Finsbury! Why, of course he does! He lost it too. If he had it, he'd have won the tontine tomorrow. 'Michael Finsbury! Not the solicitor? cried Gideon. 'Yes, the solicitor, said Morris. 'But where is the body? 'Then that is why he sent the brief!
But the way there was nothing to the journey back; for the mere sight of the place of business, as well as every detail of its transactions, was enough to poison life for any Finsbury. Joseph's name was still over the door; it was he who still signed the cheques; but this was only policy on the part of Morris, and designed to discourage other members of the tontine.
All my books of account are written up to date. All bills for the houses, fences, etc., are settled, and nothing now remains but the daily tontine of recitations and drills.
"And why didn't it? why did it go to Pitman? what right had Pitman to open it?" "If you come to that, Morris, what have you done with the colossal Hercules?" asked Michael. "He went through it with the meat-axe," said John. "It's all in spillikins in the back garden." "Well, there's one thing," snapped Morris; "there's my uncle again, my fraudulent trustee. He's mine, anyway. And the tontine too.
The daughter who remains unmarried has no fortune until her father dies: very often she has none after that event. In Germany, where the custom of the dot is not, I believe, so prevalent, there are companies or societies founded for the express purpose of providing for unmarried women. They work, I am told, with a kind of tontine it is, in fact, a lottery.
The story told in vivid detail of the attempts of the Confederate veterans to go back home to the quiet and industrious productive life which now that peace was at hand, they yearned most for. The papers gave a brief history of each member of the dwindling Tontine group.
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