strange clothes for river-work upon him, and a haunting activity which
drove him from the lock to the inn, and again from the inn to the lock
with a crazy restlessness which was maddening. I had been for some hours
whipping the mill-stream, which lies over against the lockhouse at
Pangbourne; but meeting with no success amongst the chub, which on this
particular July evening were aggravatingly indifferent even to the
succulent frog, I had punted to the bushes in the open river; and there
lit my pipe and fell to speculation upon him who favored me with so
close an attention. I have said that he was a conspicuous man, and to
this I owed it that I had seen him. He wore the straw hat of Jesus
College, Cambridge, and a velvet coat which shone brown and greasy in
the falling sunlight; but his legs were encased in salmon-pink riding
breeches, and he had brown boots reaching to his knees. Beyond this, he
was singularly handsome, so far as I could judge with the river's
breadth between us; and his hair was fair with a ridiculous golden
strain quite unlooked for in one who has grown to manhood. Why he
watched me so closely I could not even conjecture, but the fact was not
to be disputed. I had lain by the mill since the forenoon, and since the
forenoon he had hugged to the weir-bridge or to the lockhouse, giving no
attention to the score of small boats and launches which passed up or
down to Goring or Mapledurham; or even to the many pretty women who
basked upon the cushions of punts or pair-oars. I alone was the object
of his gaze, and for me he seemed to wait through the afternoon and
until the twilight.
Now, had the man hailed me, I should have gone shorewards at once, for
my curiosity had been petted by his attentions until it waxed warm and
harassing, but this he did not do; keeping his eyes upon me even when I
had rested from casting and sat idling in the punt. It would have been
easy, I concede, to have gone up river toward Goring and so to have
avoided him; but this would have cut short the chance of explanation,
and have left ungratified my desire to know who he was, and wherefrom
came his embarrassing interest in my failure to ensnare the exasperating
chub. So I sat there, in turn wondering if he were honest or a rogue, an
adventurer or an idler, a river-man or a fop from Piccadilly. And as the
problem was beyond me, I left it at last; and taking up my punt-pole I
gave three or four vigorous thrusts which sent me immediately to the
landing-stage of the Swan Inn, and thence to my room.
It may be urged that this was an indifferent way of dealing with the man
in the velvet coat if I wished to know more of him; but I had taken that
little parlor of the inn which juts out upon the hard of the boathouse;
and I could see from my open windows both the panorama of the lock and
that of the open reach away towards the islands. It was now close upon
the hour of seven, and the most part of the river lay in cooling shadow.
I could hear by no means inharmonious music floating out over the water
from a girl's guitar; there were several launches waiting for the
lock-gates; and I recall well the face of a very remarkable woman, who
presently came to the landing-stage in a gig, the cushions of which were
of an aggressive yellow, but one which was a striking contrast to her
black hair and ivory-white skin. Quite apart, however, from her
indisputable beauty, I had reason to watch this conspicuous oarswoman,
for no sooner had she come to the landing-stage than the man in the
velvet coat went to her assistance, and taking a number of bags and
baskets from the boat, accompanied her up the village high street, and
so carried her from my view.
Here then, thought I, is the end of my mystery. The man had been waiting
for the return of his wife, when I, with preposterous conceit, plumed
myself that he had been looking to speak with me. What creatures of
ideas we are! And when I reflected upon it, certainly it was monstrous
absurd to think that one man should wish to watch another failing to
catch fish through a long summer's afternoon. Indeed, I laughed heartily
at myself as the maid set my dinner, and I put my creel and rod upon the
piano (one puts everything upon the piano in a Thames village) before
daring the very substantial, if rural, repast served to me.
One dines up river, as most people know, in semi-public state. Loafers,
loiterers, fruit-sellers, boatmen--all these congregate near the open
window, and discuss verbally the dishes which the diner discusses more
substantially. Custom so stales us that this publicity in no way
interferes with our pleasure. I have so long learned to tolerate the
presence before my casement of oarsman, pedlar, and even the less
welcome bargee, that these now are almost as salt to my appetite. And
for the matter of that, on the evening of which I am writing, the crowd
was less than usual, being composed of one vendor of fruit, three men in
obviously Cheapside blazers, and an old woman who sold boot-laces and
discussed the weather with me through the casement at one and the same
time. She was such a merry old soul, and gave me so much of her history
and of that of her son, who was "fightin' for his quane and counthry" in
a place which she could not mind herself of, that I forgot the
ridiculous romance of the velvet-coated man, and even his existence,
until of a sudden he presented himself, no longer watching me upon the
bridge, but standing at the casement, and asking to be admitted.
"I'm most horribly sorry," said he, "to intrude upon you at your dinner,
but my train leaves for town in ten minutes, and I particularly want
your opinion upon something which they tell me you know more about than
any man in England."
"By all means," said I. "But your estimate of my opinion is hopelessly
flattering; it concerns jewels, I suppose?"
"Exactly," said he; "and I shall be under very large obligations to you
if you will tell me whether two emeralds I have in my pocket are of any
value, and if so, where would be the best place to dispose of them?"
He took a little paper box from his coat, and laid it near to my plate.
I saw that it was a box which had contained tabloids of nitro-glycerine
(a drug prescribed for diseases of the heart); and that it had been sold
by a chemist of the name of Benjamin Wain, whose shop was in the High
Street at Reading. These things I observed with my intuitive habit of
grasping detail, learnt in long contention with rogues; and then forgot
them as the man opened a screw of tissue paper, and I beheld two of the
finest emeralds I have seen during my career. The stones were perfectly
matched, of a rich velvety, but brilliant color, and came, I did not
doubt after my first sight of them, from the Upper Orinoco or from
Columbia. Their weight I judged to be about five carats each, and I knew
that if they were without a flaw, which very few emeralds are, they
would be worth fifteen hundred pounds at a very low estimate. All this
passed through my mind like a flash; but with admiration of the gems,
which brought covetousness in its path, there came at once the other
thought--what is this man doing here with these stones, and how comes it
that he can carry them and yet be unconscious of their value? But this I
endeavored to conceal, and waited for him to speak.
"Well," said he, after a pause, "do you find much the matter with
them?"
"I should want my glass to see," said I with caution; "the light is
failing, and my eyes are not as good as they were."
"You mean a magnifying glass, I suppose?" said he, producing a lens from
his pocket. "Well, I happen to have one."
Why it was I cannot tell you, but this trifling circumstance I marked
down in my mind as my first sound cause of suspicion against him.
Perhaps I coupled it with that spontaneous distrust which I felt when
first he spoke, for the very softness of his voice was obviously
assumed; and now that I saw him near to me, I did not fail to notice
that the velvet coat was much worn, and the rowing club tie he wore
frayed beyond respectability. But I took his lens, and, having examined
the stones long and critically under it, I found them to be without flaw
or blemish. Then I gave him my opinion.
"They are fine stuff," said I; "do you happen to know where they come
from?"
I looked him full in the face when I spoke, and observed a slight
drawing of the lines above his mouth. When he answered me I was sure
that he had thought out a lie--and with effort.
"I believe they come from Salzburg," he stammered; "at least I have
heard so."
"That could not possibly be," said I; "the worst emeralds we have are
the best product of that mine. I fancy they are from Venezuela."
"Ah, that's the place," said he, "I remember it now; but I've a wretched
head for geography."
While he said this the train to London steamed out of the railway
station, which is not a stone's throw from the inn, and he, forgetful of
his tale to me, sat watching it unconcernedly. I had discovered him in a
second lie, and I waited to entrap him to a third with the practised
pleasure of a cross-examiner.
"Do you sell these stones for yourself or as an agent?" I asked,
assuming some authority as I felt surer of him. His hesitation in
answering was merely momentary, but it was enough for my purpose.
"For myself," said he; and then with clumsy maladroitness he added,
"They were left to me by my father, and I have never had the heart to
offer them to any one. I'll tell you what, though; if you'll give me a
thousand pounds for the pair, you shall keep them."
"That's a long price," said I; "and if you don't mind the suggestion, my
dinner's getting cold."
I had spoken thus with the design of putting him off; but he was
undisguisedly an ill-bred man, and I saw that I could have bought the
emeralds from him for five hundred pounds. My hint--if such you could
call it--fell upon deaf ears; and he, seeming not to hear it, continued
to argle-bargle, but betraying himself in every word he said.
"Come, now," he cried, "you don't want to be hard upon me; give me a
check for five hundred, and send the balance to Brighton in a week if
you find them as good as you think. That's a fair offer, isn't it?"
"The offer is fair enough," said I; "but you forget that I did not come
here to buy emeralds. I am in Pangbourne to catch chub, as you saw this
afternoon."
"I'm afraid I can't agree to that," he replied with a laugh; "I did not
see you catch chub this afternoon--I saw you miss three."
"The bait was poor," I said meaningly; "fish are as canny as men, and
don't take pretty things if they think there's a hook in them."
This I gave him with such a stare that he rose up suddenly from his
chair, and, having made a bungling parcel of his jewels, went off by
himself. He had to pass my window as he left the inn, and as he crossed
the road I called after him, saying--
"You'll be losing your train to London."
"Be d----d to that!" said he; and with such a salute he turned the angle
of the road, and I lost sight of him.
But I thought much of his emeralds through the night, both in my walk
across the old wooden bridge to Whitchurch, when the river lay dark and
gloomy with the sough of the breeze in the reeds and sedge-grass; and
again as I lay in the old wooden "best-bed" of the inn, and contemplated
the "sampler" which bore witness to the energy of one Jane Atkins, whose
work it was. By what chance had the man found me out? Whence came his
seedy clothes and his jewels? Who was the pretty woman who had gone up
from the hard with him? He had come by the stones fraudulently, of
course; had the case been different he would have sent them to London to
a house of substance, and there got his price for them. At one time I
felt that it lay upon me to advise the police in Reading of the offer I
had received; at another, there came some regret for the stones, and at
the manner of his departure. The season had been one of emeralds. I
could have sold the pair he had for some profit, and, as my greed told
me, I could have bought them cheap. At the end of it I fell asleep to
dream that I rowed to Mapledurham in an emerald boat, and that a man
with emerald eyes steered me abominably.
On the next day, quite early in the morning, I set out in a dog-cart for
Reading, having a _rendezvous_ with Barisbroke at the Kennet's mouth,
whence we were to start for a day's sport upon that fish-breeding river.
My drive took me by the old Bath-road, turning to the left midway up the
village street; but I had not gone very far upon the Reading-road before
I saw the handsome woman--the wife, as I assumed, of the velvet-coated
man--now dressed with exceeding poorness, and carrying a heavy bag
towards the biscuit town. At this point the sun beat early upon the
sandy way with a shimmer of white and misty light, which promised great
heat of the forenoon; there was scarce a quiver of wind in the woods to
the left of me, and I did not doubt that walking was a great labor. Yet,
when I reined in the cob, and asked the woman, if at least I might not
carry her bag to Reading and leave it for her, she thanked me somewhat
curtly, I thought, and evidently resented any notice of her difficulty.
It occurred to me, as I drove on, that the man, who had been with her on
the previous day, had really left by the last train for London; but when
I came into Reading, and was about to cross the High Street, to reach
Earleigh, I saw the name Benjamin Wain superscribed above a little
chemist's shop, and I stopped at once. I know that a country tradesman
will gossip like a fishwife; and I asked the man for some preparation
which he could not possibly find in the pharmacopoeia, and so began to
feel my ground.
"You're well ahead of the times here," said I, looking at his show-case,
which was wofully destitute of drugs. "I shouldn't have thought that
you'd be asked for tabloids in a place like Reading."
"Oh, but we are," said he, readily; "it's a wonderfully advanced town is
Reading--you won't get much in Regent Street which is not here. I've
lived in Reading all my life--and seen changes, sir, indeed I have!"
"You know most of the people then?" said I, with a purpose.
"Ay," said he, "I've born and buried a many, so to speak; seen children
grow to men and women, and men and women grow to children--you wouldn't
think it perhaps!"
"No," said I, "you don't show it; but your reputation, if I may say so,
goes beyond this place. I was in Pangbourne yesterday, where a tall,
yellow-haired man was speaking of you; who is he, I wonder?"
"A tall, yellow-haired man!" he exclaimed, putting his finger in the
center of his forehead as if in aid of memory; "I didn't know there were
such in Reading. A tall, yellow--let me see, now----"
"You sold him some tabloids of nitro-glycerine; perhaps that will help
to his identification?" said I.
"Ah, now I know you're wrong," said he; "there's only one man within
five miles of here who uses that stuff, and he hasn't got yellow
hair--ha, ha, he hasn't got any at all."
"Who is he?" I asked with growing curiosity.
"Why, old Jabez Ladd, the miser, out at Yore Park; he takes that stuff
for his heart, sir. Wonderful weak heart he has, too; but he hasn't got
yellow hair--no, I may say with conviction that he has no hair at all."
I had learnt all I needed, for the mere mention of the name Jabez Ladd
was sufficient for me. At the man's words a whole freshet of ideas
seemed to rush to my mind. I had known the miser for years as one of the
hardest jewel buyers in the country; I had sold him thousands of pounds'
worth of stuff; I had heard the strangest traditions of his astounding
meanness and self-denial. They even said that he forbade himself a
candle after dusk, and that his fare was oatmeal and brown bread; while
he lived in a house which would not have been a poor retreat for a
millionaire. This I knew, but the words of the apothecary had made other
things clear to me--one, that the yellow-haired man had got his emeralds
in a box which must have come from Ladd's house, since he alone in the
neighborhood took tabloids of nitro-glycerine; another, that the man's
very shabbiness and obvious shuffling pointed very strongly to the
conclusion that he should be watched.
Of these things was I sure as I met Barisbroke, and I turned them over
in my mind often during the moderate sport of the forenoon, and after.
Not that I had any troublesome friendship for Ladd, who was no sort of a
man to think about; yet I could not forget that he was a buyer, and it
seemed both wise and likely to be profitable to warn him. Possibly I had
reared a fine superstructure of suspicion upon a mere flimsy basis of
prejudice; but in any case I could do no harm, I thought, and might even
sell the old scoundrel a parcel of jewels in the attempt. His house, as
I then knew, lay over by the hills of Caversham; and I remembered that I
could take it by a circuitous route which would bring me to Pangbourne,
after I had passed through Mapledurham and Whitchurch. In the end, I
resolved at least to see the old man; and when I had dined at a
ridiculously early hour with Barisbroke, I crossed the river by the
white bridge, and in thirty minutes I was at the gate of Yore Hall.
I am no archaeologist, and have an exceedingly poor eye for a building;
but my first impression of this hall was a pleasing one. It is true that
the wooden gate of the drive was broken down, and the garden-land beyond
it nothing but a tangle of swaying grass, thistle, and undergrowth,
preparing one for poor things to come; but the house itself was a
massive and even a grand attempt at a towered and battlemented
structure, built in stout stone with Norman windows, and the pretense of
a keep, which gave strength to its air of antiquity. When I came near to
it, I saw that many of the gargoyles had fallen from the roof of the
left wing, which seemed to be unfinished, and the parapet was broken
away and decaying above the porch; while--and this was even more
singular--there did not seem a single curtain to the house. It was now
upon the hour of seven, and a glimmer of sunlight shining redly upon the
latticed casements lit up the facade with a greater brilliance than one
looks to see out of Italy. There were rooks circling and cawing in the
great elms by the moat which ran round three sides of the house; I could
hear the baying of a hound in the courtyard by the stables--but of man
or woman I saw nothing, though I rang the great bell thrice, and birds
fled from the eaves at the clatter, and the rabbits that had sported by
the thicket disappeared in the warren.
Some minutes after the third ring, and when I was preparing to drive off
and leave Jabez Ladd to his own affairs, the stable door opened, and a
girl came out, dressed, it seemed to me, curiously in a smart white
frock; but with untidy hair, though much of it; and an exceedingly
pretty face, which had been the prettier for a little scouring. The
creature had great dark eyes like a _grisette_ of Bordeaux; and when she
saw me, stood swaying upon her feet, and laughing as she bit at her
apron-strings, as though my advent was an exceedingly humorous thing.
Then she said,--
"Is it Mr. Ladd you're wanting?"
I told her that it was.
"You'll not be a county man?" she asked.
"I'm from London," said I, "and my name is Bernard Sutton. Tell Mr.
Ladd that I'll not keep him five minutes."
"There's no need," said she, simpering again; "he's been a-bed since the
milk."
"In bed!" cried I amazed.
"Yes," said she, "it's over late for company; but if ye'll write
something I'll run up with it; the housekeeper's away sick."
She seemed to think that all this was a good joke, and wondered, I doubt
not, that I did not simper at her again. I was on the very point of
whipping up the nag, and leaving such a curious household, when one of
the landing windows went up with a creak, and Ladd himself, with a
muffler round his throat, was visible.
"What d'ye want in my grounds?" he roared. "Here, you hussy, what are ye
chattering there for?--thought I was asleep did ye--ha!"
"Good evening, Mr. Ladd," said I, quietly; "I'm sorry, but I appear to
have disturbed you. I've a word for your ear if you'll come down."
"Hullo," cried he, in his cracked and piercing voice; "why it's you, is
it? egad, I thought you were the butcher! What's your business?--I'm
biding in bed, as you can see."
"I can't shout," said I, "and my business is private."
"Won't it wait?" he snarled. "You haven't come to sell me anything?"
"I don't sell stuff in the street," said I; "come down and I'll talk to
you. But if you don't want to hear--well, go to bed."
His curiosity got the better of him at this point, and he snapped out
the words, "I'm coming down," and then disappeared from the window. But
he had no intention of opening the front door, as I found presently when
of a sudden he appeared at a casement upon the ground floor, and resumed
the conversation.
"You're not asking after my health," said he, "but I'll let you know
that I'm eat up with cold; can ye have done with it straight off?"
"Yes," said I, leaning over from the dog-cart to spare my voice. "Do you
know a tall man with yellow hair who's got two emeralds to sell?"
At these words his face whitened in the sunlight, and he opened his
great mouth as though to speak, but no sound came. Then quickly he drew
a small box from his pocket, such as I had seen in the hands of the
velvet-coated man, and took a tabloid from it.
"I'll be about letting you in," said he, as he went to shut down the
casement.
But I said, "I think not, there's a drive of five miles to Whitchurch
before me, and this horse trips."
"For the love of God," cried he, suddenly putting off all
self-restraint, "don't go till I've heard you--man, my life may depend
upon it!"
"How's that?" said I.
"I'm going to tell you," said he; "and if ye'll stay, we'll crack a
bottle of port together."
He had whetted my curiosity now, and presently I heard him nagging at
the pretty girl who had first greeted me. After that he threw the
stable door wide open, and dressed only, as I could see, in a loose
dressing-gown and a pair of carpet slippers, he led the horse to a stall
that had the half of a roof; crying to the maid to get her down to the
house of a man he named, there to beg a feed of corn and the loan of a
boy. But while he was doing it, he shivered incessantly, and seemed
eaten up with fear.
"You appear to think that I'm putting up with you," said I, when I heard
his orders; "there's no need to look after the nag--I shan't be here ten
minutes."
"Not ten minutes!" he exclaimed, still with quavering voice. "Oh, but
you will--when you've heard my talk. Would you see me murdered?"
I did not answer, being in the main amused at his attempts to get the
horse out of the trap, and particularly to unbuckle the very stiff
belly-band. The girl had gone tripping off with herself to the village
as I thought; but though at that time I had no intention of staying
beyond an hour with him, I unshafted the animal myself, and tethered the
beast to the rickety manger, throwing my own rug across his loins; then
I followed Ladd through a black and smoke-washed kitchen to a dingy
apartment near the hall, and, the place being shuttered, he kindled a
common paraffin lamp, which might have cost a shilling but would have
been dear at two.
"I'll be getting the port," said he, casting a wistful look at me in the
hope, perhaps, that I should decline his invitation to a glass, "you'll
not mind refreshment after your drive?"
"Thanks; you may be sure I won't," said I; and while he was gone
fumbling down the passage, I saw that his dining-room had once been a
fine apartment, oak-panelled and spacious; and that ancestors, whose
rubicund jowls spoke of "two-bottle" men, now seemed to survey the
economy below with agony unspeakable. For the rest, there was little in
the room but depressing Victorian chairs in mahogany, and a piano with a
high back, such as our grandmothers played upon.
When Ladd came back, he had a bottle in his hand. I smiled openly when I
saw that it was a pint; but he decanted it with a fine show of
generosity, and pushing a glass to me, took up the matter which
interested him at once.
"Where did ye see my nephew?" he asked, while I sipped the wine with
satisfaction; "it'll have been in London, perhaps?"
"I saw him--if he was your nephew--at Pangbourne last night," said I;
"he had a pretty woman with him, and wanted to sell me two emeralds."
"That must have been the wife he married in San Francisco," cried he,
"but she has no sinecure; you didn't hear that I paid his passage abroad
last spring after he'd robbed me of a thousand----Well and it was
emeralds he wanted to sell you?"
"Two of the finest I have ever seen," said I, "and matching perfectly."
The import of the emeralds had evidently been lost upon him until this
time; but now of a sudden he realized that he might be concerned in the
business, and his agitation was renewed. "I wonder what emeralds they
were?" he asked as if of himself; then turning to me, he exclaimed,
"Will you come upstairs with me a minute?"
He did not wait for me to answer, but led the way up bare stone steps to
a landing off which there led two long passages; and in a big and not
uncomfortable bedroom he showed me three safes, one a little one, which
he opened, and took therefrom a case containing seven emeralds of a size
and quality apparently similar to the two I had seen at Pangbourne. But
when he gave them to me to examine I saw at once that five of them were
genuine and two were false.