‘TEA IS READY.’
Tea was served in the room on the other side of the Hall. Like the
study, this room was a lovely old room also, completely wainscoted
with cedar. There were the same carvings over the mantel--fruit,
flowers, grapes, leaves and branches, and the shield with the family
coat-of-arms. The room was, however, lighter than the study, partly
because it contained in each of the upper panels family portraits, and
on the panels below oil-paintings representing the river as seen from
the boat-yard, with its ships, barges, hoys, lighters, boats, and all
the life and motion and business of the river in the last century. So
little regard for art was there in the family that no one knew who
had painted these panels. Yet it was no mean hand which had designed
and executed them. Many indications pointed to the daily occupancy of
the room by the household. In the window, for instance, stood a small
table, with a work-basket placed there out of the way. There was a
sideboard--period, the second George--of mahogany, black with age. It
was one of the kind consisting of two square towers, each with a locked
door and two compartments within, and a broad, flat connecting-piece
with a drawer. In the middle portion stood a noble old punch-bowl,
surrounded by glasses--lovely old glasses: the convivial rummer, the
useful tumbler, the tall champagne glass, the old-fashioned little
port glass, the tiny liqueur glass--a beautiful assortment such as a
mere modern cannot understand. On one side of the towers stood a glass
filled with spring flowers; and on the other, as if belonging to the
masculine sex, a case for spirits. On the panels above the pictures
was a row of plates; they had stood there for a hundred years, only
taken down from time to time to be dusted. On the other side of the
room, opposite to the door, was a cottage piano, open, with music
piled on the top. In one corner, near the fireplace, was a little
stack of churchwarden pipes; and in the other corner was a door, half
open, which revealed a surprising cupboard. The eighteenth-century
housewife demanded so many store-rooms for all her jams, jellies,
pickles, wines, cordials, and strong waters; so many still-rooms,
linen-rooms, and pantries for the immense collections which her family
wanted for the successful conduct of a household, that it became
necessary to have a cupboard in the parlour, or general living-room,
as well. This cupboard belonged to the Burnikels of the last century;
but its use was continued by the present occupants. Here were kept the
cups and saucers, old and new; here was the plate-basket, containing
the forks and spoons in daily use--silver, not plated, and thin with
age; here were certain books of devotion which once formed the family
library--they were those referred to by Robert; here were tea-caddy,
coffee-caddy, and sugar-basin; here were the decanters which belonged
to the Sunday dinner; here were household account-books; here was the
corkscrew; here were mysterious phials; here were kept the marking
ink, the writing ink, the pens and paper; here was the current pot
of jam; here were the lemons; here, in short, the thousand and one
things likely to be wanted every day by the household. For this room
was the family keeping or living-room; it was not the dining-room or
the breakfast-room: it was the parlour. Robert’s room had been the best
parlour until he changed it into the study.
One did not take in all these details at once; but I had abundant
opportunities afterwards of noting everything. Meantime, what I
observed first of all was that ‘tea’ meant sitting down to a table
covered with a white cloth, spread with a magnificent display of good
things. I remembered my cousin’s ominous words: ‘I told them that
you might come in to tea.’ ‘They’ had provided this square meal in
hospitality for me.
The girl who sat behind the tea-tray, ready to serve, was doubtless the
housekeeper, accountant, secretary, clerk, whom my cousin was some day
going to marry. A slight, delicate-looking girl she appeared to be; and
she seemed shy, her head drooping. Beside her stood, supported by a
stick, an elderly man.
‘This is Captain Dering,’ said my cousin, introducing his friend, ‘and
this is Isabel Dering.’
The girl bowed stiffly. The Captain extended a friendly hand.
‘Glad to make your acquaintance, sir,’ he said heartily. ‘There was a
time when I made new friends every voyage, but those times are over.
The sight of a stranger at Wapping is a rare event, I assure you.’
‘Especially,’ I said, ‘a stranger who comes in search of a long-lost
cousin.’
The face and dress and general appearance of this old gentleman
indicated his profession. It was nautical.
‘My tough old figure-head,’ they all cried aloud together, ‘tells you
that I am a sailor, though retired. My clear, honest eyes tell you
that I am a sailor. My red and weather-beaten cheek; my blue cloth; the
shape of my jacket--all proclaim that I am a sailor--and proud of it,
sir, proud of it.’
Then Robert Burnikel, to my confusion, because I thought the custom,
over a cup of tea, long exploded, pronounced a grace. It was an old
family grace, dating from the time when all respectable families of the
middle class were extremely religious, and the Church of England was
evangelical, and when ladies conversed and wrote letters to each other,
almost entirely on the condition of their souls. Quite a long collect,
this grace was. Yet the utterance was as purely formal as that of grace
in a College Hall, or grace in a workhouse, which is the most formal
thing I know. Robert pronounced that grace mechanically.
This form of prayer concluded, we all sat down. A tremendous tea was
on the table: ham in slices, boiled eggs, potted tongue, prawns,
bread-and-butter, cakes of many kinds, including plum-cake, seed-cake,
Madeira-cake, tea-cake (which is a buttered or bilious variety),
short-cake, biscuits, jam, marmalade, and honey. A hospitable tea.
A square tea, in fact. A tea, like Robert Burnikel himself, at once
serious and earnest and heavy.
As a rule, I repeat, I take nothing with my afternoon tea. But one
must not be churlish. My cousin glanced at me before the prayer, as
if to say, ‘You shall see for yourself how Wapping can do it.’ And I
was expected to do justice to all these good things provided in my
honour. Why, if this splendid spread was put on the table every day,
the Captain’s clear eye would become yellow, and the Master would find
it no longer possible to follow out an argument, for the black spots,
lines, and circles which would be bobbing about between his nose and
the printed page. It must have been an exceptional spread. No one could
live through a month of such teas. I avoided the ham, and escaped the
eggs, and declined the shrimps. But I went in for the cakes, and on
the whole acquitted myself, I believe, creditably. The Captain and
the giver of the feast, on their parts, ploughed their way resolutely
through the whole array of dishes. When the first pangs were appeased,
the Captain spoke.
‘Sir George Burnikel,’ he said, with solemnity, ‘I commanded the _Maid
of Athens_, which ran between Calicut and Ceylon, for many years. As
the captain of that noble vessel I’ve taken passengers abroad of the
highest rank--the very highest--not to speak of coffee-planters. Not
that their rank made them better sailors. I acknowledge so much. But it
made me a respecter of the British aristocracy, Sir George Burnikel,
of which you are a worthy member. Robert here is all for pulling down.
Why? I ask you humbly, Sir George--why?’
Robert grunted.
‘Why? I ask. When you break up an old ship she’s gone. Don’t break her
up. Let her be. Let her go on till she’s wrecked or cast away. No, sir,
when you’ve carried noblemen upon the Indian Ocean, and found out that
they are exactly like other people--must be stroked the right way; want
the most comfortable berths; drink the same grog, and talk the same
language--then you get to respect the aristocracy. Because, you see,
with their chances, they might have been so very different. And then
you ask, Why pull down? Why sweep away?’ He addressed the question to
Robert, who only grunted. It was obviously an old subject of dispute.
Then the Captain turned to the table again, and proceeded to work
through the festive spread in silence.
The lagging of conversation enabled me to look about and observe. To
observe in a strange house is to make discoveries. First, I regarded
the girl at the tea-tray. She was rather pretty, I thought; too
pale, as if she took too little exercise, or worked too hard, or
was underfed; she had curiously soft and limpid eyes--of the kind
which seem to hold within them unknown depths of something--wisdom,
perhaps; love, perhaps; prophecy, perhaps--according to the lover’s
interpretation. Her features were regular, but not of classical
outline; her cheek looked soft as velvet; her lips were mobile. But
she was too grave; she looked sad, even. I remembered what my cousin
said: ‘No fondling and nonsense.’ At twenty-four one has not a large
experience, but I certainly could not help thinking that she was a girl
designed and intended by Nature to live upon love, and the fondlings
and caresses and outward signs of love, which her _fiancé_ thought so
ridiculous. To have none! To wait for ten, twelve, fifteen years, and
to lack that consolation and comfort! Poor child! Poor Isabel!
And then I made another discovery. The girl was afraid of her
cousin--the Master--the man who would not permit his own mother to
entertain any illusions about the mastery. She was afraid of her own
_fiancé_; she watched him anxiously; she anticipated his wants in
silence; he received her attentions without acknowledgment. Why was she
afraid of him? Did he scold and abuse his secretary?
My host, I perceived, conducted his eating with the resolution and the
rapidity that becomes habitual when one sits down to eat and not to
talk. As I learned afterwards, there was little conversation at the
table in this house, because the master was always full of his own
thoughts, and despised the common topics of the day and the season.
Perceiving, when he had himself finished a very substantial stop-gap
between dinner and supper, that his guest had also ceased taking in
provisions, he rose abruptly, pushing back his chair and his plate. One
may remark this thing done daily in the cottage and in the village.
It is an action which seems to belong to a level lower than that of a
master boat-builder. One might have expected more attention to style;
but, as I learned afterwards, in a house where one man rules absolute,
like Nero of Rome, and nobody dares to expostulate, some deterioration
of manners is apt to creep in.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘if you won’t take any more tea-cake? a few shrimps? an
egg? No? Then, we’ll go and have another talk. Isabel, you needn’t come
in.’
The Captain took no notice of our departure. I bowed to the girl, who
looked a little surprised at this act of courtesy, and rather stiffly
inclined her head.
Outside the door Robert Burnikel stopped. ‘Upstairs,’ he said, ‘I think
there is something to interest you. Come along.’ On the second-floor
he threw open the door of a room. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is called the
spare-room. But I never remember that it was occupied. We could do
without it, I suppose; and we never had any visitors to stay the
night. So, you see, it is only half furnished.’ The room contained
a wooden bed with mattresses, but no feather-bed, or spring-bed, or
curtains--only the frame; there were three or four odd chairs standing
about, and there was a great sailor’s chest. ‘This,’ he explained, ‘is
the bed of old John Burnikel, the man who had the bag of diamonds.’
‘Oh, it is a pity we haven’t got the bag as well, isn’t it? Did your
great-grandfather buy it?’
‘I suspect there was no buying. He was on the spot and he took it--bed
and sea-chest and all. I suppose he thought that perhaps, in spite of
their failures to find it, the bag might be somewhere about the bed.’
‘And he searched, of course?’
‘I believe this bed must have been taken to pieces a hundred times.
My brother and I once took it to pieces and tapped every piece all
over with a hammer to see if it was hollow. Look! Here is the secret
cupboard in which people used to hide their things.’ It was at the
head of the bed. He pressed a certain spot in the woodwork and a door
flew open, disclosing a small recess. ‘Everybody knew the secret, but
everybody pretended not to know. Of course, when the old man was gone,
the first thing they did was to look into this secret cupboard. But
there was nothing there. Then they turned the house inside out. Then
they quarrelled and fought. Then they dissolved partnership.’
‘And then,’ I added, ‘they accused each other, for three generations
after, of stealing that bag. It’s a wonderful family story. Let me try.’
I put in my hand and felt round the little cupboard. There was nothing.
‘And this,’ my cousin went on, ‘is the old man’s sea-chest. That, too,
was brought here at the same time as the bed. The two things, except
for a table and a chair and a frying-pan, were all the furniture the
old man possessed. It’s a most marvellous thing to think of. What
became of that bag? A hundred times and more that old bed has been
pulled to pieces and that old chest has been turned out, to see if
there was any hiding-place still undiscovered.’
A large, iron-bound sea-chest. I threw open the lid. It seemed to
contain a queer lot of useless rubbish.
‘The sight of this box,’ said Robert, ‘makes one believe that there
really must have been a bag of diamonds, after all.’
‘Of course there was. The only thing is--what became of it? Nobody knew
anything about it. Nobody was in the house from the time that the old
man was taken ill until his nephews came; no outsider stole that bag.
What became of it, then? Of course, it is no good asking now. Still, it
is mysterious!’
‘Yes. And about ninety years ago the two cousins were standing over
the dead man’s bed, just as we are doing now. I feel as if it was
yesterday.’
‘Don’t accuse me,’ I said, ‘of stealing the thing, or there will be
another fight.’
Robert smiled grimly. Were there to be another fight, he was perfectly
assured about the event. A very superior young man in every direction.
I noted the smile and understood it. But it was all part of the very
singular and masterful personality to which I was thus singularly
introduced.
By this time I was fully impressed with the fact that I had to deal
with a very remarkable, resolute, and ambitious young man, who cared
about nothing in the world but his own advancement; strong and able,
masterful, self-confident even to the very rare degree of communicating
his secret ambitions. Most men, again, limit their ambitions by the
circumstances and the conditions of their lives; they do not look much
beyond. The ambition of the average working man is to get continuous
work; sometimes to become a master; the ambition of the average
young shopkeeper is to extend his business; the young solicitor hopes
for a steady practice; the young author hopes for acceptance by the
editor--only acceptance, only a chance; he has no thought at first of
great world-wide success; his ambition increases as he gets on. In
Robert’s case the ambition was from the outset full-grown. ‘I will
go into the House,’ he said, being only a boat-builder with a small
yard and a moderate business, ‘and I will become a Cabinet Minister.’
Such ambition was immense, presumptuous, audacious, considering his
position. And yet, considering the man, apart from his position, I
recognised almost from the outset that it was not ridiculous.