Hot, dusty, and conventionally empty as London now was, and stifling
as was the confined air of St Nicholas Poultney, Mr Enoch Wilkins was
in gay good-humour. He shewed it by the urbanity with which he was
dismissing a shabby-genteel man of middle age, to whose remonstrances
he had listened with a bland semi-serious patience unusual to him.
‘Now, really, Mr Greening, really we must have no more of this,’ he
said, shewing his white front teeth in an affable smile. ‘“Can’t pay”
and “Won’t pay” are, I fancy, convertible phrases. The Loan Office
cannot afford to do business on sentimental principles. And it’s all
very well to say that you only had in cash nine seven eleven, as
consideration for your notes of hand, amounting to—let me see.’ And the
solicitor glanced at a bundle of papers on the table.
‘To twenty-eight pounds six and fourpence,’ said the debtor piteously;
‘two-thirds of which are for interest and commission.’
‘But that,’ pursued the solicitor, ‘by no means affects the legal
aspect of the case. The bill of sale over your furniture is none the
less valid. I didn’t quite catch your last remark.—Ah! to sell you up
would be to you sheer ruin? Then, my good Mr Greening, I advise you to
stave off the ruin by prompt payment, to escape the very heavy expenses
to which you will otherwise be put. Good-day to you.—Now,’ he added to
his clerk, ‘I will see this Mr Hold.’ And as the impecunious Greening
took his melancholy leave, the sunburnt countenance of Richard Hold
became visible in the doorway.
‘From abroad, I presume?’ said Mr Wilkins affably, as his observant eye
noted the seafaring aspect of his visitor and the bronze on his cheek,
which might well have become a successful Australian digger, fresh with
his dust and nuggets from the gold-fields.
‘Well—I have been abroad; I have knocked about the world a goodish
bit,’ answered Hold slowly, ‘but just latterly I’ve stayed ashore.’
Mr Wilkins picked up the office penknife and tapped the table with
the buckhorn handle of it somewhat impatiently. He did not entertain
quite so high an opinion of the swarthy stranger as before. The first
glance had suggested damages in a running-down case at sea; the second,
some claim for salvage; the third, an investment of savings earned,
according to the picturesque phrase, ‘where the gold grows.’ But
the solicitor knew life well enough to be aware that those who have
knocked, in Hold’s words, about the world, are rolling stones whereon
seldom grows the moss of profit.
‘What, Mr Hold, may be your business with me?’ he asked curtly.
Richard Hold was not in the least nettled at this chilling reception.
His dark roving eyes made their survey of the lawyer’s surroundings,
from the heavy silver inkstand to the prints on the walls, and then
settled on the face of Mr Enoch Wilkins himself.
‘That depends,’ said Hold, with a lazy good-humour, as he leaned
against the door-post nearest to him, ‘on what you call business,
skipper!’
Mr Wilkins frowned; but the words, sharp and peremptory, that rose to
his lips, remained unspoken. His first idea had been that this was
the saucy freak of an ill-conditioned sailor, and that a word to his
clerk and a summons to the policeman on his beat hard by, would rid
him of the intruder. But the man was quite sober. There must be some
reason for his singular tone and bearing. Wherefore, when Mr Wilkins
spoke again, it was urbanely enough: ‘If I can be of use to you
professionally, sir, you may command me; at least I shall be glad to
hear what you have got to say. Perhaps you feel somewhat strange in a
lawyer’s office?’
‘I haven’t seen the inside of one since six years ago I was in trouble
at Singapore about—never mind what!’ returned Hold, checking his
too communicative flow of words, and then added: ‘Now I hail from
Devonshire—Dartmoor way—Carbery Chase way, not to mince matters.’
Mr Wilkins started. ‘Have you a message for me—from Sir Sykes, I mean?’
he inquired, in an altered voice.
‘No!’ replied Hold, in a dubious tone, and coughing expressively behind
his broad brown hand; ‘not exactly that.’
The lawyer looked keenly at his visitor. Hold’s bold eyes met his. The
man’s unabashed confident air was not lost on so shrewd an observer of
human nature as was Enoch Wilkins. ‘Take a chair, I beg, Mr Hold,’ he
said civilly; and Hold took a chair, placed it sideways, and seating
himself upon it in a careless informal attitude, rested one elbow on
the chair-back, and contemplated the lawyer with serene scrutiny.
‘You come from Sir Sykes, however, although you do not bring a
message?’ asked Mr Wilkins.
‘Take your affidavy of that, squire!’ returned Hold, in an assured
tone. ‘We ought to be friends, you and I,’ he added, with what was
meant for an engaging smile, ‘for we are both, I reckon, in the same
boat.’
‘In the same boat, hey?’ repeated Mr Wilkins cautiously. ‘How’s that?’
‘I mean,’ said Hold, knitting his black brows, ‘that we are both pretty
much on the same lay—that we know a thing or two about a rich party
that shall be nameless, and about certain old scores, and a certain
young lady, and—— Why should I do all the chat, master? Is this Greek
to you, or do you catch my meaning?’
Mr Wilkins, whose eyes had opened very widely as he listened, here
started as though he had been electrified. ‘I understand you to imply,’
he said smoothly, ‘that our interests are identical?’
‘Well, I guess they are,’ responded Hold, in the blunt fashion that was
natural to him. ‘We both, I suppose, want as many of Sir Sykes Denzil’s
yellow coins as we can conjure out of his pocket; and both need no
teaching to turn the screw pretty smartly when we see our way to it;
eh, mister?’
Enoch Wilkins, gentleman, winced before this over-candid home-thrust.
It is indeed one thing to be guilty of a particular act and another
to hear it defined with unmannerly plainness of speech. And he did
not quite like the being bracketed, as to his motives and position,
with a piratical-looking fellow, such as he saw Hold to be. But to
take offence was not his cue; so he laughed softly, as at the sallies
of some rough humorist, and rattled his watch-guard to and fro, as he
warily made answer: ‘All men, I believe, are supposed to take care of
Number One. I do not profess to be a bit more disinterested than my
neighbours, and if I did, you are too wide awake to believe me.’
‘Right you are!’ responded Richard with a mollified grin and an
amicable snap of the ends of his hard fingers. ‘I never cruised in
company with a philanderer’ (meaning probably a philanthropist) ‘but
once, and _he_ made off with my kit and gold-dust while I was taking my
turn down shaft at Flathead Creek, in California there. My notion is
that there are pickings for both. Why should we two fall out so long
as Sir Sykes Denzil, Baronet, is good for this kind of thing?’ And the
ruffian imitated, in expressive pantomime, the action of squeezing a
sponge.
Again the lawyer laughed. ‘No need,’ he said with well-feigned
admiration for the other’s astuteness, ‘to send _your_ wits to the
whetstone, Mr—or perhaps I should say Captain—Hold.’
‘Well, I don’t dislike the handle to my name; and I’ve a fairish right
to it, since I’ve had my own cuddy and my own quarter-deck,’ rejoined
Hold boastfully. ‘And now, squire, I’d like to hear your views a little
more explicit out than I have had the pleasure.’
It was the attorney’s turn to cough now, as he replied, still swaying
his watch-guard to and fro: ‘There you push me, my good sir, into
a corner. Every profession has its point of honour, you know; and
we lawyers are shy of talking over the affairs of an absent client
unless’——
‘Client, you call him, do you?’ broke in Hold. ‘Maybe you’re correct
there, since you’ve brought the Bart. to throw Pounce and Pontifex
overboard, and make you first-officer over his tenants; but he warn’t a
client before yesterday.’
The astonishment written in Mr Wilkins’s face was very genuine. Of all
the extraordinary confidants whom Sir Sykes could have selected, surely
this coarse fierce adventurer was the most unlikely. And yet how, save
from Sir Sykes himself, could the fellow have acquired his knowledge of
the truth?
‘I was not prepared’—— stammered out the lawyer.
‘Not prepared,’ interrupted Hold coolly, ‘to find a rough diamond like
yours to command, so deep in the Bart.’s little secrets. Perhaps not.
Mind ye, I don’t want to quarrel. Live and let live. But it’s good
sometimes to fire a shotted gun athwart a stranger’s bows, d’ ye see?’
‘You and Sir Sykes are old acquaintances?’ said the lawyer, feeling his
way.
‘Pretty well for that. Years too have gone by a few since you and
he first came within hailing distance,’ replied Hold with assumed
carelessness.
‘We were younger men, that’s certain,’ returned the lawyer with a jolly
laugh and a twinkling eye. That anybody should try to extract from
him—from him, Enoch Wilkins, information that he desired to keep to
himself—to pump him, in homely phraseology, seemed to the attorney of
St Nicholas Poultney, in the light of an exquisitely subtle joke. Hold,
in spite of his confidence in his own shrewdness, began to entertain
vague doubts as to whether in a fair field he was quite a match for
the London solicitor. Fortune, however, had dealt him a handful of
court-cards, and he proceeded to improve the occasion.
‘Now, squire,’ said Hold impressively, and laying one brawny hand, as
if to enforce the argument, on the table as he spoke, ‘I could, if I
chose, clap a match to the powder-magazine and blow the whole concern
sky-high. Suppose I weren’t well used among ye? Suppose I began to
meet cold looks and buttoned-up pockets? What easier than to make
a clean breast of what it no longer pays to keep secret, stand the
consequences—I’ve stood worse on the Antipodes side of the world—and
get another sniff of blue water. That would spoil your market, squire!’
Mr Wilkins muttered something about edge-tools; but his seafaring
guest answered the remark by a short laugh of scorn. ‘You know a thing
or two,’ he said incisively; ‘so do I. Are we or are we not to act in
concert? If not, up with your colours and fire a broadside. Anyhow,
friend or enemy, I’ll thank you to speak out.’
All Mr Wilkins’s liveliness vanished in an instant, and he seemed
strongly and soberly in earnest as he said: ‘I will speak out, as you
call it. I should very much prefer to be on good terms with you. I
should like us, as far as we prudently can, to co-operate. But you have
not as yet told me what you would have me do.’
‘I’ll tell you,’ said Hold confidentially, edging his chair nearer to
the lawyer’s. ‘When you go down to Carbery——You mean to go, don’t you?’
he added abruptly.
‘Certainly,’ said the lawyer, touching a spring in the table by which
he sat, and producing from a concealed drawer, that flew open at his
touch, a letter, which he unfolded and handed to his visitor. ‘You know
so much, captain, that I need not keep back this from you. It is from
Sir Sykes, as you see. The contents are probably not strange to you.’
‘Not likely,’ returned the seaman, throwing his eyes, with
ill-dissembled eagerness, on the letter. ‘He asks you to come down
then, and names an early day. The rents will be passing through your
hands before long, Mister. ’Tain’t that, though, I want to speak of.
You’ll find when you get to the Chase, a young lady there.’
‘I understood that Sir Sykes had two daughters,’ said the attorney
innocently.
‘He had three, if you come to that,’ was Hold’s rough answer. ‘But this
is no daughter. Maybe she’ll be a daughter-in-law, some fine day.’
‘Oho!’ said Mr Wilkins, arching his eyebrows. ‘Young lady on a visit, I
presume?’
‘On a very long visit,’ answered Hold. ‘A ward she is of the Bart.,
orphan daughter of an old Indian brother-officer. Name of Willis;
Christian name Ruth.’
‘Ruth!’ Trained and practised as the sharp London man of business was
in the incessant struggle of wits and jarring interests, he could not
repress the exclamation. ‘Bless me—Ruth!’ he added breathlessly, and
grew red and pale by turns. There seemed to be some magic in the sound
of that apparently simple name which affected those who heard it.
‘Name of Willis; Christian name Ruth,’ repeated Hold. ‘Like one of
themselves she is now. Shouldn’t wonder if she were to change her
name, first to Mrs Captain Denzil, afterwards to Lady Denzil when Sir
Jasper that will be comes into title and property. You’ve known Sir
Jasper that will be, squire; you’ve had dealings with him. Now, mark
me! The sooner that young dandy makes up his mind to place a gold
ring on Miss Ruth’s pretty finger, the better for him and for the
Bart. and for you too Mr Wilkins. “A nod’s as good as a wink”—you know
the rest of the proverb.’ And throwing on the table a card, on which
were legibly pencilled the words ‘CAPTAIN HOLD. Inquire at Plugger’s
Boarding-house;’ and promising, ominously, to see Mr Wilkins again, in
London or at Carbery, the seaman took his leave.
Left alone, the lawyer’s features relaxed into a smile of satisfaction.
‘A cleverish fellow and vain of his cleverness, this Hold, but very
communicative. It would surprise you, my good captain, if you knew
how very much you have been kind enough to tell me, during our late
interview.’