Like one who accepts an indifferent gift, rather to pleasure a
friend than for his own gratification, Sir Robert Linne held his
reprieve in his pocket, as it were, with a careless hand, and,
accompanied by the lawyer, re-entered the humming lists of life.
Silently the two made their way westwards, the man of deeds
accommodating his pace, with some secret chafing, to the leisurely
progress of his companion. Now and again he would glance stealthily
aside into the latter’s face, and give a half-comical shrug of chagrin
over its expression of tranquil good-humour that seemed such a genial
satire upon the situation.
“If he hobnobs with death so calmly, how will his philosophy accept a
living estate?” thought the uneasy scrivener; and, “light come, light
go,” he groaned in his heart.
Presently they were in Holborn, without the rag of a sentence to pass
between them; and so came opposite the block of houses known as Middle
Row.
Here suddenly Sir Robert stopped, and took his companion by the arm.
“You itch to improve on the situation,” said he, with a twinkling
gravity. “Harkee! Now’s your opportunity. Here am I;--yonder stands
Branscome’s lottery office. Draw your moral, my friend, and ease you
of your load.”
The lawyer drew in his breath, his face crinkling.
“Well,” said he--fore-read and embarrassed but conscious of
right--“the man was an earl’s fellow once.”
“It proves him the more admirable for being a rich man now!”
“Sir Robert, Sir Robert! ’tis an evil system and a mistaken. How is he
rich? On the pitiful savings of shoeblacks and servant wenches. ’Tis
such as he bid industry sit hands in lap and starve on illusive hopes.
For a single chance in fifty thousand he buys her ruin; and what is
all this but bitter gambling?”
“Ha, ha! old gentleman. We reach the point at once. But, believe me,
sir, I never starved a servant wench or took anything from her but a
kiss--and that I returned.”
The lawyer sighed.
“Go your ways,” he said. “You have your father’s laugh.”
“What--you knew him?”
“I had the fortune to do him a service once--’twas during the riots of
’68, when foul John Wilkes was committed to King’s Bench, on a writ of
_capias utlagatum_, and the red-coats let fly at the mob. Your father
commanded. They called it the St. George’s Fields massacre, and all
concerned in it gained a mighty unpopularity.”
“Yet he was but a simple soldier and obeyed orders.”
“Well, sir, an unpopular king must needs have unpopular ministers, and
so down the scale. Let a tyrant fall (I speak in illustration
only--God bless his Majesty!) and his very scullions come down with
him. I did Sir Robert a service, I say; and he repaid me with his
confidence.”
“His son is beholden to you. You repeat yourself on behalf of a
scapegrace, I fear. You were not his adviser?”
“In one matter only that you shall learn. Now, my friend?”
The last words were addressed to an odd-looking individual who had
come up to them as they talked, and who now presented certain savoury
goods to their inspection with a dumb gesture of invitation.
The creature was a lank, middle-sized man, with a meagre face of
decorum and rather delicate features set in an expression of confident
apathy. He was scrupulously attired in dress-coat, vest and
knee-breeches of stainless black broadcloth; and black silk stockings,
ending in shoes decorated with large steel buckles, encased his neat
deliberate legs. A great shirt-frill stood out from his breast, like a
table napkin from a tumbler, and his neck cherished the spotless
embrace of a lawny cravat. On his head he wore no covering save its
natural one; but this was so clipt and bepowdered as almost to give
the appearance of a close cap of linen. A short apron of the softest
texture, which concealed a third of his glories, seemed designed
rather to advertise his calling than to protect his broadcloth.
Thus apparelled, he presented to the talkers a little round tray, on
which was set for consideration a pudding, neatly sliced and sugared,
that gave out a pleasant fragrance. To the obvious merits of this he
silently drew attention with a short, bright spatula which he carried
in his other hand.
“No, no,” said the lawyer. “Not to-day, my friend; not to-day.”
He smiled good-humouredly; and the oddling dropped a courtly bow--“the
loss is mutual,” it expressed--and carried his comestible elsewhere.
“Sir Robert,” said the attorney, with a droll, kindly look, “the
lottery office missed fire; but I have another moral for you.”
“It shall have my respectful attention, sir, in honour of my father’s
friend.”
The words were spoken with gravity. The other gave a twitch of
surprise. Then said he in a pretty gentle voice:
“’Tis from him with the pudding. They call him the Flying Pieman; but
his proper business is to paint pictures, at which he has a fine
skill, they say. Fortune missed him, however. He married ‘for love’--a
course for which there is plenty of precedent, but no authority--and
love begets a family, but nothing to put in its empty crops. At the
last pinch he kicked over his easel and went out to sell puddings. He
did nought by halves. If his pictures are half as good as his victuals
he deserves the Presidency. He hath made himself a character in the
neighbourhood, but a finer one in God’s eyes, I will venture. ’Tis
said that, no whit faithless to his art, he trades all day that he may
indulge his real bent after hours. That is to be a man and an
example.”
“To me, sir, to me, you would say; and so he is. I have no family; but
that is an accident--not an excuse. I take the pieman to my heart, and
see no ostentatious vanity in his shirt-frill. I read another moral
here too. This is ‘Heavy Hill,’ and goes to Tyburn.”
“Oh, Heaven send you to the House of Correction! Come on, I beg. My
office is close by.”
“Then your prayer is answered. You shall do the overseer, and whip me
with maxims.”
The lawyer smacked in his lips as if he were sampling some sharp but
not disagreeable berry; regarded his incorrigible companion a moment
through covert eyelids; then turned and led the way across the road
and under the old gate-arch of Gray’s Inn.
Beyond this portal, a short distance, pleasant tranquillity prevailed.
It is the humour of the Law to hatch in antique solitudes the plots
that vex many lives with turmoil and disquiet. Around its Inn Halls
the Devil’s cloisters invite to peripatetic contemplation of quibble
and sophistry; and its silent gardens cherish that grimy tree of Death
whose trunk is freckled like the serpent’s with discs of yellow.
Up a step or two, through a venerable doorway with fluted pilasters,
the long man ushered his visitor, and so to a dusty comfortable room
on the first floor, where tiers of japanned boxes, the caskets of dead
passions and aspirations, were piled high against the walls like
coffins in a family vault.
“Mr. Creel?” said the baronet, sitting up on a high stool and crossing
his legs.
The lawyer bowed.
“So I read it on the door, sir. Believe me, I hold the name in honour
for my father’s sake.”
“It is a good sign,” said the other; “and so far of happy augury.
Here, I hope, is soil that may be renewed and yield yet a plentiful
crop of wholesome grain.”
He sat himself down, and, toying with a pencil, fixed his eyes
steadily and gravely on the young man.
“I crave your permission,” he said gently, “to speak very plainly,
very freely, and--within proper limits--without reserve.”
“Surely, sir; for should I not be dead by now? ’Tis a _post-mortem_
examination. Out with your scalpel, and cut and dissect as you list.”
“It is a family matter and very private to your ear.”
“Mr. Creel, who so taciturn as a ghost? Even a lawyer may give his
confidence to a shadow.”
“You please to jest. Will you be serious for once? What I have to say
affects you nearly. I represent your dead father--am his agent, not in
authority, but in loving-kindness.”
“I listen, I listen. Perhaps I am a little light-headed. I have thrown
out all my ballast, remember.”
“You saw but little of the late Sir Robert?”
“I was eleven years old when he died. That was in the war of ’80. He
fought under Clinton and lies in Charleston where he fell. He was
always a soldier in my vague memory of him--saturnine, pre-occupied,
with a rare smile for odd moments.”
“He feared God and loved his king--rest his memory! He had one other
love--his only child; but him he was troubled for.”
“Troubled for? But why should I ask?”
“The boy was of high spirit, reckless, generous. He wore, even at that
age, his heart on his sleeve for daws to peck at.”
“They have left all threadbare. Well, well!”
“Sir Robert’s was not a great fortune; but it was sufficient, with
management, for his wants.”
“They were fewer than mine, good man. I feel sure, sir, this
retrospect is for a worthy purpose. Otherwise--well, it is obvious I
was acquainted with the extent of my own inheritance.”
“I ask no account of your stewardship. That is no part of the solemn
commission I accepted from my friend. Maybe you have been more sinned
against than sinning. Yet, is it not true that your father’s
apprehensions were justified?”
“Why else was I in the wherry?”
“You are ruined?”
“I am ruined.”
The lawyer sighed.
“It was foreseen,” he said, “by him who was dearest to you--foreseen
and provided against.”
“Provided against?”
Mr. Creel made no answer; but he quietly arose, went to one of the
japanned boxes, unlocked it and took thence a bundle of papers.
“These,” he said, “are the title-deeds of an estate that is yours--on
certain conditions.”
The young man had no word to say; but watched the other in amazement
as he took from the little heap a certain paper that was folded and
sealed with his father’s monogram.
“I follow my direction,” said the lawyer, “and break this seal. The
contents of the document are for your ear, but they are addressed to
me. I ask your attention while I make them known to you.”
He shifted so as to secure a full light, knitted his brow, and,
without pause or comment, read out in a brassy legal voice the lines
before him:--
“To my honoured friend, Mr. James Creel, of Gray’s Inn, I have
committed, to hold in trust for certain purposes, the estate of
‘Delsrop,’ in the county of Hampshire; whereof are dwelling-house and
messuage, ninety-four acres, together with two farms held on long
leases, the which it is not my desire to particularize in this the
present connection. But rather to state clearly that in event of the
bankruptcy at any time after my death of my only son, Robert (which
calamity I, considering the bent of his nature, do sorrowfully
foresee), and in no other event, the said estate is to be handed over
to him, to work to a profit if he will, and so redeem the past; but on
the condition that from that time being he shall forego his honourable
title and know himself and be known as Robert Tuke, which name of Tuke
hath his mother borne before him to her maiden honour and renown. And
this I state clearly, that he may take or reject without further
question, knowing the estate to be mine to give, and else seeking to
know nothing. And I offer it, a last chance of redemption, that he,
sloughing all that foulness of the past with his dishonoured name may
turn the fruits of evil to the account of good.”
In the minute of amazed silence, during which the listener sought to
ponder the import of this astonishing message, Mr. Creel refolded the
paper, returned it to the packet, and, sitting down again, tapped and
scraped his chin with the latter in a dry manner of expectancy.
“Well?” he said at length.
Sir Robert tilted himself to his feet, and stood rumpling his hair.
“I am at sea!” he cried, in a lost voice. “What does it all mean? I
never heard of this estate; nor, I protest, did the executors. How did
it come to him, and when?”
“That I may answer you. It was in the year ’79--not many months before
his death.”
“And from whom?”
The lawyer shook his head grimly.
“Ah!” said the baronet. “You love a secret, of course. Am I never to
know more than this?”
“Sir, you understand the conditions. You are to take or reject.”
“A messuage and the rest of it? And where is the working capital?”
“These many years I have nursed the property against this contingency.
It has yielded fairly, and there will be an accumulated sum to your
credit.”
“And if I reject?”
“Then the whole reverts to me.”
The young man’s eyes took a sudden softness. He was only thirty-one,
and susceptible yet to impressions of unworldliness.
“I fail to see your profit in the matter,” he said.
“My profit,” answered the lawyer sternly, “was in a good man’s
confidence.”
Then he went on more gently:
“I sought _no_ profit in the transaction. I would have sacrificed more
than the estate to save you and myself the necessity of this
explanation. It was my affection for your father bound me to this
solemn compact, as it was my regard for the latter drove me unknown to
you to set an anxious eye upon your career.”
“And so pluck a fool from the burning and lose an estate.”
Sir Robert advanced impetuously and seized the other’s corded hand.
“You are a noble soul. I will learn to pray, and you shall be my saint
to intercede. I take my life from you and this strange trust; doing my
duty by it and asking no questions.”
The old lawyer’s eyes moistened; but he answered somewhat caustically:
“I won’t say it is your deserts. But the gift is from Heaven, where
your father, his battles over, sits at peace. ’Tis he hath interceded,
and the Almighty--to satisfy his importunity, maybe--gives you a new
house, as erst he did to Job, but for a better reason.”
Then he added a little inconsequently:
“You’ll find it in a damned bad state of repair.”