O MY PROPHETIC SOUL!
Harry thought nothing about the papers which were found among the notes
that evening, because he was wholly engaged in the contemplation of a
man who had suddenly gone back thirty-five years in his life. The gray
hairs, thin at the top and gone at the temples, were not, it is true,
replaced by the curly brown locks of youth, though one thinks that
Josephus must always have been a straight-haired young man. But it was
remarkable to hear that man of fifty-five talking as if the years had
rolled backward, and he could take up the thread of life where he had
dropped it so long ago. He spoke of his evening lectures and his
Sunday-school with the enthusiasm of a boy. He would study--work of that
sort always paid: he would prepare his lessons for the school
beforehand, and stand well with the superintendent: it was good for men
in business offices, he said, to have a good character with the
superintendent. Above all, he would learn French and bookkeeping, with
mensuration, gauging, and astronomy, at the Beaumont Institute. All
these things would come in useful, some time or the other, at the
brewery; besides, it helps a man to be considered studious in his
habits. He became, in fact, in imagination a young man once more. And
because in the old days, when he had a character to earn, he did not
smoke tobacco, so now he forgot that former solace of the day, his
evening pipe.
"The brewery," he said, "is a splendid thing to get into. You can rise:
you may become--ah! even chief accountant: you may look forward to draw
over a thousand a year at the brewery, if you are steady and well
conducted, and get a good name. It is not every one, mind you, gets the
chance of such a service. And once in, always in. That's the pride of
the brewery. No turning out: there you stay, with your salary always
rising, till you die."
In the morning, the exultation of spirits was exchanged for a
corresponding depression. Josephus went to the brewery, knowing that he
should sit on that old seat of his no longer.
He went to look at it: the wooden stool was worn black; the desk was
worn black; he knew every cut and scratch in the lid at which he had
written so many years. There were all the books at which he had worked
so long: not hard work, nor work requiring thought, but simple entering
and ticking off of names, which a man can do mechanically--on summer
afternoons, with the window open and an occasional bee buzzing in from
Hainault Forest, and the sweet smell of the vats and the drowsy rolling
of the machinery--one can do the work half asleep and never make a
mistake. Now he would have to undertake some different kind of work,
more responsible work: he would have to order and direct; he would have
a chair instead of a stool, and a table instead of a desk. So that he
began to wish that he had in the old days gone further in his
studies--but he was always slow at learning--before the accident
happened; and to wonder if anything at all remained of the knowledge he
had then painfully acquired after all these years.
As a matter of fact, nothing remained. Josephus had become perfectly,
delightfully, inconceivably stupid. He had forgotten everything, and
could now learn no new thing. Pending the decision of Miss Messenger, to
whom the case was referred, they tried him with all sorts of simple
work--correspondence, answering letters, any of the things which require
a little intelligence. Josephus could do nothing. He sat like a helpless
boy and looked at the documents. Then they let him alone, and for a
while he came every day, sat all day long, half asleep, and did nothing,
and was much less happy than when he had been kept at work from nine
o'clock in the morning till six o'clock at night.
When Harry remembered the packet of papers placed in his hand, which was
on the following morning, he read them. And the effect of his reading
was that he did not go to work that morning at all.
He was not a lawyer, and the principal paper was a legal instrument, the
meaning of which it took him some little time to make out.
"Hum--hum--um--why can't they write plain English. 'I give to my said
trustees, John Skelton and Benjamin Bunker, the three freehold houses as
follows: that called number twenty-nine on Stepney Green, forty-five in
Beaumont Square, and twenty-three in Redman's Row, upon trust to apply
the rents and income of the same as in their absolute discretion they
may think fit for the maintenance, education, and benefit of the said
Caroline, until she be twenty-one years old or until she marry, and to
invest from time to time the accumulations of such rents and income as
is hereintofore provided, and to apply the same when invested in all
respects as I direct concerning the last above-mentioned premises. And
when the said Caroline shall attain the age of twenty-one, or marry, I
direct my said trustees to pay to her the said rents and income and the
income of the accumulation of the same, if any during her life, by four
equal quarterly payments for her sole and separate use, free from the
debts and engagements of any husband or husbands she may marry; and I
direct that on the death of the said Caroline my said trustees shall
hold and stand possessed of all the said premises for such person or
persons and in such manner in all respects as the said Caroline shall by
deed or will appoint. And in default of such appointment and so far as
the same shall not extend upon trust'--and so on--and so on."
Harry read this document with a sense, at first, of mystification. Then
he read it a second time, and began to understand it.
"The houses," he said, "my mother's houses, are hers, free from any
debts contracted by her husband: they are vested in trustees for her
behalf; she could not sell or part with them. And the trustees were John
Skelton and Benjamin Bunker. John Skelton--gone to Abraham's bosom, I
suppose. Benjamin Bunker--where will he go to? The houses were tied
up--settled--entailed."
He read the document right through for the third time.
"So," he said. "The house at number twenty-nine Stepney Green. That is
the house which Bunker calls his own; the house of the Associated
Dressmakers; and it's mine--mine." He clinched his fist and looked
dangerous. "Then the house at twenty-three Redman's Row, and at
forty-five Beaumont Square. Two more houses. Also mine. And Bunker, the
perfidious Bunker, calls them all his own! What shall be done to
Bunker?"
"Next," he went on, after reading the document again, "Bunker is a
fraudulent trustee, and his brother trustee too, unless he has gone
dead. Of that there can be no doubt whatever. That virtuous and
benevolent Bunker was my mother's trustee--and mine. And he calmly
appropriates the trust to his own uses--Uncle Bunker! Uncle Bunker!"
"I knew from the beginning that there was something wrong. First, I
thought he had taken a sum of money from Lord Jocelyn. Then I found out
that he had got possession of houses in a mysterious manner. And now I
find that he was simply the trustee. Wicked Uncle Bunker!"
Armed with his precious document, he put on his hat and walked straight
off, resolution on his front, toward his uncle's office. He arrived just
when Mr. Bunker was about to start on a daily round among his houses. By
this frequent visitation he kept up the hearts of his tenants, and
taught them the meaning of necessity; so that they put by their money
and religiously paid the rent. Else----
"Pray," said Harry, "be so good as to take off your hat, and sit down
and have five minutes' talk with me."
"No, sir," said Bunker, "I will not. You can go away, do you hear? Be
off; let me lock my office and go about my own business."
"Do take off your hat, my uncle."
"Go, sir, do you hear?"
"Sit down and let us talk--my honest--trustee!"
Mr. Bunker dropped into a chair.
In all the conversations and dramatic scenes made up in his own mind to
account for the possession of the houses, it had never occurred to him
that the fact of his having been a trustee would come to light. All were
dead, except himself, who were concerned in that trust: he had forgotten
by this time that there was any deed: by ignoring the trust he
simplified, to his own mind, the transfer of the houses; and during all
these years he had almost forgotten the obligations of the trust.
"What do you mean?" he stammered.
"Virtuous uncle! I mean that I know all. Do you quite understand me? I
mean really and truly all. Yes: all that there is to know--all that you
hide away in your own mind and think that no one knows."
"What--what--what do you know?"
"First, I know which the houses are--I mean my houses--my mother's
houses. The house in Stepney Green that you have let to Miss Kennedy is
one; a house in Beaumont Square--do you wish to know the number?--is
another; and a house in Redman's Row--and do you want to know the number
of that?--is the third. You have collected the rents of those houses
and paid those rents to your own account for twenty years and more."
"Go on. Let us hear what you pretend to know. Suppose they were
Caroline's houses, what then?" He spoke with an attempt at bounce; but
he was pale, and his eyes were unsteady.
"This next. These houses, man of probity, were not my mother's property
to dispose of as she pleased."
"Oh! whose were they, then?"
"They were settled upon her and her heirs after her; and the property
was placed in the hands of two trustees: yourself, my praiseworthy; and
a certain John Skelton, of whom I know nothing. Presumably, he is dead."
Mr. Bunker made no reply at all. But his cheek grew paler.
"Shall I repeat this statement, or is that enough for you?" asked Harry.
"The situation is pretty, perhaps not novel: the heir has gone away,
probably never to come back again; the trustee, sole surviving, no doubt
receives the rents. Heir comes back. Trustee swears the houses are his
own. When the trustee is brought before a court of law and convicted,
the judge says that the case is one of peculiar enormity, and must be
met by transportation for five-and-twenty years;
five--and--twenty--years, my patriarch! think of that, in uniform and
with short hair."
Mr. Bunker said nothing. But by the agitation of his fingers it was
plain that he was thinking a great deal.
"I told you," cried Harry. "I warned you, some time ago, that you must
now begin to think seriously about handcuffs and prison, and men in
blue. The time has come now, when, unless you make restitution of all
that you have taken, action will be taken, and you will realize what it
is that people think of the fraudulent trustee. Uncle Bunker, my heart
bleeds for you."
"Why did you come here?" asked his uncle, piteously. "Why did you come
here at all? We got on very well without you--very well and comfortably,
indeed."
This seemed a feeble sort of bleat. But, in fact, the Bunker's mind was
for the moment prostrated. He had no sound resistance left.
"I offered you," he went on, "twenty-five pounds--to go. I'll double
it--there. I'll give you fifty pounds to go, if you'll go at once. So
that there will be an end to all this trouble."
"Consider," said Harry, "there's the rent of Miss Kennedy's
house--sixty-five pounds a year for that; there's the house in Beaumont
Square--fifty for that; and the house in Redman's Row at five-and-twenty
at least: comes to a hundred and forty pounds a year, which you have
drawn, my precious uncle, for twenty-one years at least. That makes,
without counting interest, two thousand nine hundred and forty pounds.
And you want to buy me off for fifty pounds!"
"Not half the money--not half the money!" his uncle groaned. "There's
repairs and painting--and bad tenants; not half the money."
"We will say, then," lightly replied his nephew, as if nine hundred were
a trifle, "we will say two thousand pounds. The heir to that property
has come back; he says, 'Give me my houses, and give me an account of
the discharge of your trust.' Now"--Harry rose from the table on which
he had been sitting--"let us have no more bounce: the game is up. I have
in my pocket--here," he tapped his coat-pocket, "the original deed
itself. Do you want to know where it was found? Behind a safe at the
Brewery, where it was hidden by your brother-in-law, Bob Coppin, with
all the country notes which got Josephus into a mess. As for the date I
will remind you that it was executed about thirty-five years ago, when
my mother was still a girl and unmarried, and you had recently married
her sister. I have the deed here. What is more, it has been seen by the
chief accountant at the Brewery, who gave it me. Bunker, the game is
up."
He moved toward the door.
"Have you anything to say before I go? I am now going straight to a
lawyer."
"What is the--the--lowest--O good Lord!--the very lowest figure that you
will take to square it? Oh! be merciful; I am a poor man, indeed a very
poor man, though they think me warm. Yet I must scrape and save to get
along at all."
"Two thousand," said Harry.
"Make it fifteen hundred. Oh! fifteen hundred to clear off all scores,
and then you can go away out of the place; I could borrow fifteen
hundred."
"Two thousand," Harry repeated. "Of course, besides the houses, which
are mine."
"_Besides_ the houses? Never. You may do your worst. You may drag your
poor old uncle, now sixty years of age, before the courts, but two
thousand besides the houses? Never!"
He banged the floor with his stick, but his agitation was betrayed by
the nervous tapping of the end upon the oil-cloth which followed the
first hasty bang.
"No bounce, if you please." Harry took out his watch. "I will give you
five minutes to decide; or, if your mind is already made up, I will go
and ask advice of a lawyer at once."
"I cannot give you that sum of money," Bunker declared; "it is not that
I would not; I would if I could. Business has been bad; sometimes I've
spent more than I've made; and what little I've saved I meant always for
you--I did, indeed. I said, 'I will make it up to him. He shall have it
back with----'"
"One minute gone," said Harry, relentlessly.
"Oh! this is dreadful. Why, to get even fifteen hundred I should have to
sell all my little property at a loss; and what a dreadful thing it is
to sell property at a loss! Give me more time to consider, only a week
or so, just to look round."
"Three minutes left," said Harry the hardened.
"Oh! oh! oh!" He burst into tears and weeping of genuine grief, and
shame, and rage. "Oh, that a nephew should be found to persecute his
uncle in such a way! Where is your Christian charity? Where is forgiving
and remitting?"
"Only two minutes left," said Harry, unmoved.
Then Bunker fell upon his knees: he grovelled and implored pardon; he
offered one house, two houses, and twelve hundred pounds, fifteen
hundred pounds, eighteen hundred pounds.
"One minute left," said Harry.
Then he sat down and wiped the tears from his eyes, and in good round
terms--in Poplar, Limehouse, Shadwell, Wapping, and Ratcliff Highway
terms--he cursed his nephew, and the houses, and the trust, and all that
therein lay, because, before the temptation came, he was an honest man,
whereas now he should never be able to look Stepney in the face again.
"Time's up," said Harry, putting on his hat.
In face of the inevitable, Mr. Bunker showed an immediate change of
front. He neither prayed, nor wept, nor swore. He became once more the
complete man of business. He left the stool of humiliation, and seated
himself on his own Windsor chair before his own table. Here, pen in
hand, he seemed as if he were dictating rather than accepting terms.
"Don't go," he said. "I accept."
"Very good," Harry replied. "You know what is best for yourself. As for
me, I don't want to make more fuss than is necessary. You know the
terms?"
"Two thousand down; the three houses; and a complete discharge in full
of all claims. Those are the conditions."
"Yes, those are the conditions."
"I will draw up the discharge," said Mr. Bunker, "and then no one need
be any the wiser."
Harry laughed. This cool and business-like compromise of felony pleased
him.
"You may draw it up if you like. But my opinion of your ability is so
great, that I shall have to show the document to a solicitor for his
approval and admiration."
Mr. Bunker was disconcerted. He had hoped--that is, thought--he saw his
way; but never mind. He quickly recovered and said, with decision:
"Go to Lawyer Pike, in the Mile End Road."
"Why? Is the Honorable Pike a friend of yours?"
"No, he isn't; that is why I want you to go to him. Tell him that you
and I have long been wishing to clear up these accounts, and that you've
agreed to take the two thousand with the houses." Mr. Bunker seemed now
chiefly anxious that the late deplorable scene should be at once
forgotten and forgiven. "He said the other day that I was nothing better
than a common grinder and oppressor. Now, when he sees what an
honorable trustee I am, he will be sorry he said that. You can tell
everybody if you like. Why, what is it? Here's my nephew comes home to
me and says, 'Give me my houses.' I say, 'Prove your title.' Didn't I
say so? How was I to know that he was my nephew? Then the gentleman
comes who took him away, and says, 'He is your long-lost nephew;' and I
say, 'Take your houses, young man, with the accumulations of the rent
hoarded up for you.' Why, you can tell everybody that story."
"I will leave you to tell it, Bunker, your own way. Everybody will
believe that way of telling the story. What is more, I will not go out
of my way to contradict it."
"Very good, then. And on that understanding I withdraw all the harsh
things I may have said to you, nephew. And we can be good friends
again."
"Certainly, if you like," said Harry, and fairly ran away for fear of
being called upon to make more concessions.
"It's a terrible blow!" The old man sat down and wiped his forehead. "To
think of two thousand down! But it might have been much worse. Ah! it
might have been very, very much worse. I've done better than I expected,
when he said he had the papers. The young man's a fool--a mere fool. The
houses let for £150 a year, and they have never been empty for six
months together; and the outside repairs are a trifle, and I've saved it
all every year. Ha! now a hundred and fifty pounds a year for twenty
years and more, at compound interest only five per cent., is close on
£5,000. I've calculated it out often enough to know. Yes, and I've made
five per cent. on it, and sometimes six and seven, and more, with no
losses. It might have been far, far worse. It's come to £7,000 if it's a
penny. And to get rid of that awful fear and that devil of a boy with
his grins and his sneers at £2,000, why, it's cheap, I call it cheap. As
for the houses, I'll get them back, see if I don't."