COUSIN MONTAGUE
Mr. Shovelin went to a corner of the room, which might be called his
signal-box, having a little row of port-holes like a toy frigate or
accordion, and there he made sounds which brought steps very promptly,
one clerk carrying a mighty ledger, and the other a small strong-box.
“No plate,” Major Hockin whispered to me, shaking his gray crest with
sorrow; “but there may be diamonds, you know, Erema. One ounce of
diamonds is worth a ton of plate.”
“No,” said Mr. Shovelin, whose ears were very keen, “I fear that
you will find nothing of mercantile value. Thank you, Mr. Robinson;
by-and-by perhaps we shall trouble you. Strictly speaking, perhaps I
should require the presence of your father's lawyer, or of some one
producing probate, ere I open this box, Miss Castlewood. But having you
here, and Major Hockin, and knowing what I do about the matter (which is
one of personal confidence), I will dispense with formalities. We have
given your father's solicitor notice of this deposit, and requested
his attention, but he never has deigned to attend to it; so now we will
dispense with him. You see that the seal is unbroken; you know your
father's favorite seal, no doubt. The key is nothing; it was left to my
charge. You wish that I should open this?”
Certainly I did, and the banker split the seal with an ebony-handled
paper-knife, and very soon unlocked the steel-ribbed box, whose weight
was chiefly of itself. Some cotton-wool lay on the top to keep the
all-penetrative dust away, and then a sheet of blue foolscap paper,
partly covered with clear but crooked writing, and under that some
little twists of silver paper, screwed as if there had been no time
to tie them, and a packet of letters held together by a glittering
bracelet.
“Poor fellow!” Mr. Shovelin said, softly, while I held my breath, and
the Major had the courtesy to be silent. “This is his will; of no
value, I fear, in a pecuniary point of view, but of interest to you his
daughter. Shall I open it, Miss Castlewood, or send it to his lawyers?”
“Open it, and never think of them,” said I. “Like the rest, they have
forsaken him. Please to read it to yourself, and then tell us.”
“Oh, I wish I had known this before!” cried the banker, after a rapid
glance or two. “Very kind, very flattering, I am sure! Yes, I will do my
duty by him; I wish there was more to be done in the case. He has left
me sole executor, and trustee of all his property, for the benefit of
his surviving child. Yet he never gave me the smallest idea of expecting
me to do this for him. Otherwise, of course, I should have had this old
box opened years ago.”
“We must look at things as they are,” said Major Hockin, for I could say
nothing. “The question is, what do you mean to do now?”
“Nothing whatever,” said the banker, crisply, being displeased at the
other's tone; and then, seeing my surprise, he addressed himself to
me: “Nothing at present, but congratulate myself upon my old friend's
confidence, and, as Abernethy said, 'take advice.' A banker must never
encroach upon the province of the lawyer. But so far as a layman may
judge, Major Hockin, I think you will have to transfer to me the care of
this young lady.”
“I shall be only too happy, I assure you,” the Major answered,
truthfully. “My wife has a great regard for her, and so have I--the very
greatest, the strongest regard, and warm parental feelings; as you know,
Erema. But--but, I am not so young as I was; and I have to develop my
property.”
“Of which she no longer forms a part,” Mr. Shovelin answered, with a
smile at me, which turned into pleasure my momentary pain at the other's
calm abandonment. “You will find me prompt and proud to claim her, as
soon as I am advised that this will is valid; and that I shall learn
to-morrow.”
In spite of pride, or by its aid, my foolish eyes were full of tears,
and I gave him a look of gratitude which reminded him of my father, as
he said in so many words.
“Oh, I hope it is valid! How I hope it is!” I exclaimed, turning round
to the Major, who smiled rather grimly, and said he hoped so too.
“But surely,” he continued, “as we are all here, we should not neglect
the opportunity of inspecting the other contents of this box. To me
it appears that we are bound to do so; that it is our plain duty to
ascertain--Why, there might even be a later will. Erema, my dear, you
must be most anxious to get to the bottom of it.”
So I was, but desired even more that his curiosity should be foiled. “We
must leave that to Mr. Shovelin,” I said.
“Then for the present we will seal it down again,” the banker answered,
quietly; “we can see that there is no other will, and a later one would
scarcely be put under this. The other little packets, whatever they may
be, are objects of curiosity, perhaps, rather than of importance. They
will keep till we have more leisure.”
“We have taken up a great deal of your time, Sir, I am sure,” said the
Major, finding that he could take no more. “We ought to be, and we are,
most grateful.”
“Well,” the banker answered, as we began to move, “such things do not
happen every day. But there is no friend like an old friend, Erema, as I
mean to call you now. I was to have been your godfather; but I fear that
you never have been baptized.”
“What!” cried the Major, staring at us both. “Is such a thing possible
in a Christian land? Oh, how I have neglected my duty to the Church!
Come back with me to Bruntsea, and my son shall do it. The church there
is under my orders, I should hope; and we will have a dinner party
afterward. What a horrible neglect of duty!”
“But how could I help it?” I exclaimed, with some terror at Major
Hockin's bristling hair. “I can not remember--I am sure I can not say.
It may have been done in France, or somewhere, if there was no time in
England. At any rate, my father is not to be blamed.”
“Papistical baptism is worse than none,” the Major said, impressively.
“Never mind, my dear, we will make that all right. You shall not be a
savage always. We will take the opportunity to change your name. Erema
is popish and outlandish; one scarcely knows how to pronounce it. You
shall have a good English Christian name--Jemima, Jane, or Sophy. Trust
me to know a good name. Trust me.”
“Jemima!” I cried. “Oh, Mr. Shovelin, save me from ever being called
Jemima! Rather would I never be baptized at all.”
“I am no judge of names,” he answered, smiling, as he shook hands with
us; “but, unless I am a very bad judge of faces, you will be called just
what you please.”
“And I please to be called what my father called me. It may be unlucky,
as a gentleman told me, who did not know how to pronounce it. However,
it will do very well for me. You wish to see me, then, to-morrow, Mr.
Shovelin?”
“If you please; but later in the day, when I am more at leisure. I do
not run away very early. Come at half past four to this door, and
knock. I hear every sound at this door in my room; and the place will be
growing quiet then.”
He showed us out into a narrow alley through a heavy door sheathed with
iron, and soon we recovered the fair light of day, and the brawl and
roar of a London street.
“Now where shall we go?” the Major asked, as soon as he had found a cab
again; for he was very polite in that way. “You kept early hours with
your 'uncle Sam,' as you call Colonel Gundry, a slow-witted man, but
most amusing when he likes, as slow-witted men very often are. Now will
you come and dine with me? I can generally dine, as you, with virtuous
indignation, found out at Southampton. But we are better friends now,
Miss Heathen.”
“Yes, I have more than I can ever thank you for,” I answered, very
gravely, for I never could become jocose to order, and sadness still was
uppermost. “I will go where you like. I am quite at your orders, because
Betsy Bowen is busy now. She will not have done her work till six
o'clock.”
“Well done!” he cried. “Bravo, Young America! Frankness is the finest of
all good manners. And what a lot of clumsy deception it saves! Then let
us go and dine. I will imitate your truthfulness. It was two words for
myself, and one for you. The air of London always makes me hungry after
too much country air. It is wrong altogether, but I can not help it. And
going along, I smell hungry smells coming out of deep holes with a
plate at the top. Hungry I mean to a man who has known what absolute
starvation is--when a man would thank God for a blue-bottle fly who had
taken his own nip any where. When I see the young fellows at the clubs
pick this, and poke that, and push away the other, may I be d----d--my
dear, I beg your pardon. Cabby, to the 'Grilled Bone and Scolloped
Cockle,' at the bottom of St. Ventricle Lane, you know.”
This place seemed, from what the Major said, to have earned repute for
something special, something esteemed by the very clever people, and
only to be found in true virtue here. And he told me that luxury and
self-indulgence were the greatest sins of the present age, and how he
admired a man who came here to protest against Epicureans, by dining
(liquors not included) for the sum of three and sixpence.
All this, no doubt, was wise and right; but I could not attend to it
properly now, and he might take me where he would, and have all the
talking to himself, according to his practice. And I might not even have
been able to say what this temple of bones and cockles was like, except
for a little thing which happened there. The room, at the head of
a twisting staircase, was low and dark, and furnished almost like a
farmhouse kitchen. It had no carpet, nor even a mat, but a floor of
black timber, and a ceiling colored blue, with stars and comets, and a
full moon near the fire-place. On either side of the room stood narrow
tables endwise to the walls, inclosed with high-backed seats like
settles, forming thus a double set of little stalls or boxes, with
scarcely space enough between for waiters, more urgent than New York
firemen, to push their steaming and breathless way.
“Square or round, miss?” said one of them to me as soon as the Major had
set me on a bench, and before my mind had time to rally toward criticism
of the knives and forks, which deprecated any such ordeal; and he
cleverly whipped a stand for something dirty, over something still
dirtier, on the cloth.
“I don't understand what you mean,” I replied to his highly zealous
aspect, while the Major sat smiling dryly at my ignorance, which vexed
me. “I have never received such a question before. Major Hockin, will
you kindly answer him?”
“Square,” said the Major; “square for both.” And the waiter, with a
glance of pity at me, hurried off to carry out his order.
“Erema, your mind is all up in the sky,” my companion began to
remonstrate. “You ought to know better after all your travels.”
“Then the sky should not fall and confuse me so,” I said, pointing to
the Milky Way, not more than a yard above me; “but do tell me what he
meant, if you can. Is it about the formation of the soup?”
“Hush, my dear. Soup is high treason here until night, when they make it
of the leavings. His honest desire was to know whether you would have a
grilled bone of mutton, which is naturally round, you know, or of beef,
which, by the same law of nature, seems always to be square, you know.”
“Oh, I see,” I replied, with some confusion, not at his osteology, but
at the gaze of a pair of living and lively eyes fastened upon me. A
gentleman, waiting for his bill, had risen in the next low box, and
stood calmly (as if he had done all his duty to himself) gazing over the
wooden back at me, who thus sat facing him. And Major Hockin, following
my glance, stood up and turned round to see to it.
“What! Cousin Montague! Bless my heart, who could have dreamed of
lighting on you here? Come in, my dear follow; there is plenty of
room. Let me introduce you to my new ward, Miss Erema Castlewood. Miss
Castlewood, this is Sir Montague Hockin, the son of my lamented first
cousin Sir Rufus, of whom you have heard so much. Well, to be sure! I
have not seen you for an age. My dear fellow, now how are you?”
“Miss Castlewood, please not to move; I sit any where. Major, I am most
delighted to see you. Over and over again I have been at the point of
starting for Bruntsea Island--it is an island now, isn't it? My father
would never believe that it was till I proved it from the number of
rabbits that came up. However, not a desolate island now, if it contains
you and all your energies, and Miss Castlewood, as well as Mrs. Hockin.”
“It is not an island, and it never shall be,” the Major cried, knocking
a blue plate over, and spilling the salt inauspiciously. “It never
was an island, and it never shall be. My intention is to reclaim it
altogether. Oh, here come the squares. Well done! well done! I quite
forget the proper thing to have to drink. Are the cockles in the pan,
Mr. Waiter? Quite right, then; ten minutes is the proper time; but they
know that better than I do. I am very sorry, Montague, that you have
dined.”
“Surely you would not call this a dinner; I take my true luncheon
afterward. But lately my appetite has been so bad that it must be fed up
at short intervals. You can understand that, perhaps, Miss Castlewood.
It makes the confectioners' fortunes, you know. The ladies once came
only twice to feed, but now they come three times, I am assured by a
young man who knows all about it. And cherry brandy is the mildest form
of tipple.”
“Shocking scandal! abominable talk!” cried the Major, who took every
thing at its word. “I have heard all that sort of stuff ever since I was
as high as this table. Waiter, show me this gentleman's bill. Oh well,
oh well! you have not done so very badly. Two squares and a round, with
a jug of Steinberg, and a pint of British stout with your Stilton. If
this is your ante-lunch, what will you do when you come to your real
luncheon? But I must not talk now; you may have it as you please.”
“The truth of it is, Miss Castlewood,” said the young man, while I
looked with some curiosity at my frizzling bone, with the cover just
whisked off, and drops of its juice (like the rays of a lustre) shaking
with soft inner wealth--“the truth of it is just this, and no more:
we fix our minds and our thoughts, and all the rest of our higher
intelligence, a great deal too much upon our mere food.”
“No doubt we do,” I was obliged to answer. “It is very sad to think of,
as soon as one has dined. But does that reflection occur, as it should,
at the proper time to be useful--I mean when we are hungry?”
“I fear not; I fear that it is rather praeterite than practical.”
“No big words now, my dear fellow,” cried the Major. “You have had your
turn; let us have ours. But, Erema, you are eating nothing. Take a knife
and fork, Montague, and help her. The beauty of these things consists
entirely, absolutely, essentially, I may say, in their having the smoke
rushing out of them. A gush of steam like this should follow every turn
of the knife. But there! I am spoiling every bit by talking so.”
“Is that any fault of mine?” asked Sir Montague, in a tone which made me
look at him. The voice was not harsh, nor rough, nor unpleasant, yet it
gave me the idea that it could be all three, and worse than all three,
upon occasion. So I looked at him, which I had refrained from doing, to
see whether his face confirmed that idea. To the best of my perception,
it did not. Sir Montague Hockin was rather good-looking, so far as
form and color go, having regular features, and clear blue eyes, very
beautiful teeth, and a golden beard. His appearance was grave, but
not morose, as if he were always examining things and people without
condemning them. It was evident that he expected to take the upper hand
in general, to play the first fiddle, to hold the top saw, to “be helped
to all the stuffing of the pumpkin,” as dear Uncle Sam was fond of
saying. Of moderate stature, almost of middle age, and dressed nicely,
without any gewgaws, which look so common upon a gentleman's front, he
was likely to please more people than he displeased at first on-sight.
The Major was now in the flush of goodwill, having found his dinner
genial; and being a good man, he yielded to a little sympathetic anger
with those who had done less justice to themselves. And in this state
of mind he begged us to take note of one thing--that his ward should
be christened in Bruntsea Church, as sure as all the bells were his,
according to their inscriptions, no later than next Thursday week, that
being the day for a good sirloin; and if Sir Montague failed to come to
see how they could manage things under proper administration, he might
be sure of one thing, if no more--that Major Hockin would never speak to
him again.