IN WHICH MORRIS TAKES ACTION
Some days later, accordingly, the three males of this depressing family
might have been observed (by a reader of G. P. R. James) taking their
departure from the East Station of Bournemouth. The weather was raw and
changeable, and Joseph was arrayed in consequence according to the
principles of Sir Faraday Bond, a man no less strict (as is well known)
on costume than on diet. There are few polite invalids who have not
lived, or tried to live, by that punctilious physician's orders. "Avoid
tea, madam," the reader has doubtless heard him say, "avoid tea, fried
liver, antimonial wine, and bakers' bread. Retire nightly at 10.45; and
clothe yourself (if you please) throughout in hygienic flannel.
Externally, the fur of the marten is indicated. Do not forget to procure
a pair of health boots at Messrs. Dall and Crumbie's." And he has
probably called you back, even after you have paid your fee, to add with
stentorian emphasis: "I had forgotten one caution: avoid kippered
sturgeon as you would the very devil!" The unfortunate Joseph was cut to
the pattern of Sir Faraday in every button; he was shod with the health
boot; his suit was of genuine ventilating cloth; his shirt of hygienic
flannel, a somewhat dingy fabric; and he was draped to the knees in the
inevitable greatcoat of marten's fur. The very railway porters at
Bournemouth (which was a favourite station of the doctor's) marked the
old gentleman for a creature of Sir Faraday. There was but one evidence
of personal taste, a vizarded forage-cap; from this form of headpiece,
since he had fled from a dying jackal on the plains of Ephesus, and
weathered a bora in the Adriatic, nothing could divorce our traveller.
The three Finsburys mounted into their compartment, and fell immediately
to quarrelling, a step unseemly in itself and (in this case) highly
unfortunate for Morris. Had he lingered a moment longer by the window,
this tale need never have been written. For he might then have observed
(as the porters did not fail to do) the arrival of a second passenger in
the uniform of Sir Faraday Bond. But he had other matters on hand, which
he judged (God knows how erroneously) to be more important.
"I never heard of such a thing," he cried, resuming a discussion which
had scarcely ceased all morning. "The bill is not yours; it is mine."
"It is payable to me," returned the old gentleman, with an air of bitter
obstinacy. "I will do what I please with my own property."
The bill was one for eight hundred pounds, which had been given him at
breakfast to endorse, and which he had simply pocketed.
"Hear him, Johnny!" cried Morris. "His property! the very clothes upon
his back belong to me."
"Let him alone," said John. "I am sick of both of you."
"That is no way to speak of your uncle, sir," cried Joseph. "I will not
endure this disrespect. You are a pair of exceedingly forward, impudent,
and ignorant young men, and I have quite made up my mind to put an end
to the whole business."
"O skittles!" said the graceful John.
But Morris was not so easy in his mind. This unusual act of
insubordination had already troubled him; and these mutinous words now
sounded ominously in his ears. He looked at the old gentleman uneasily.
Upon one occasion, many years before, when Joseph was delivering a
lecture, the audience had revolted in a body; finding their entertainer
somewhat dry, they had taken the question of amusement into their own
hands; and the lecturer (along with the board schoolmaster, the Baptist
clergyman, and a working-man's candidate, who made up his bodyguard) was
ultimately driven from the scene. Morris had not been present on that
fatal day; if he had, he would have recognised a certain fighting
glitter in his uncle's eye, and a certain chewing movement of his lips,
as old acquaintances. But even to the inexpert these symptoms breathed
of something dangerous.
"Well, well," said Morris. "I have no wish to bother you further till we
get to London."
Joseph did not so much as look at him in answer; with tremulous hands he
produced a copy of the _British Mechanic_, and ostentatiously buried
himself in its perusal.
"I wonder what can make him so cantankerous?" reflected the nephew. "I
don't like the look of it at all." And he dubiously scratched his nose.
The train travelled forth into the world, bearing along with it the
customary freight of obliterated voyagers, and along with these old
Joseph, affecting immersion in his paper, and John slumbering over the
columns of the _Pink Un_, and Morris revolving in his mind a dozen
grudges, and suspicions, and alarms. It passed Christ Church by the sea,
Herne with its pinewoods, Ringwood on its mazy river. A little behind
time, but not much for the South-Western, it drew up at the platform of
a station, in the midst of the New Forest, the real name of which (in
case the railway company "might have the law of me") I shall veil under
the _alias_ of Browndean.
Many passengers put their heads to the window, and among the rest an old
gentleman on whom I willingly dwell, for I am nearly done with him now,
and (in the whole course of the present narrative) I am not in the least
likely to meet another character so decent. His name is immaterial, not
so his habits. He had passed his life wandering in a tweed suit on the
continent of Europe; and years of _Galignani's Messenger_ having at
length undermined his eyesight, he suddenly remembered the rivers of
Assyria and came to London to consult an oculist. From the oculist to
the dentist, and from both to the physician, the step appears
inevitable; presently he was in the hands of Sir Faraday, robed in
ventilating cloth and sent to Bournemouth; and to that domineering
baronet (who was his only friend upon his native soil) he was now
returning to report. The case of these tweed-suited wanderers is unique.
We have all seen them entering the table d'hote (at Spezzia, or Graetz,
or Venice) with a genteel melancholy and a faint appearance of having
been to India and not succeeded. In the offices of many hundred hotels
they are known by name; and yet, if the whole of this wandering cohort
were to disappear tomorrow, their absence would be wholly unremarked.
How much more, if only one--say this one in the ventilating
cloth--should vanish! He had paid his bills at Bournemouth; his worldly
effects were all in the van in two portmanteaux, and these after the
proper interval would be sold as unclaimed baggage to a Jew; Sir
Faraday's butler would be a half-crown poorer at the year's end, and the
hotel-keepers of Europe about the same date would be mourning a small
but quite observable decline in profits. And that would be literally
all. Perhaps the old gentleman thought something of the sort, for he
looked melancholy enough as he pulled his bare, grey head back into the
carriage, and the train smoked under the bridge, and forth, with ever
quickening speed, across the mingled heaths and woods of the New Forest.
Not many hundred yards beyond Browndean, however, a sudden jarring of
brakes set everybody's teeth on edge, and there was a brutal stoppage.
Morris Finsbury was aware of a confused uproar of voices, and sprang to
the window. Women were screaming, men were tumbling from the windows on
the track, the guard was crying to them to stay where they were; at the
same time the train began to gather way and move very slowly backward
toward Browndean; and the next moment, all these various sounds were
blotted out in the apocalyptic whistle and the thundering onslaught of
the down express.
The actual collision Morris did not hear. Perhaps he fainted. He had a
wild dream of having seen the carriage double up and fall to pieces like
a pantomime trick; and sure enough, when he came to himself, he was
lying on the bare earth and under the open sky. His head ached savagely;
he carried his hand to his brow, and was not surprised to see it red
with blood. The air was filled with an intolerable, throbbing roar,
which he expected to find die away with the return of consciousness; and
instead of that it seemed but to swell the louder and to pierce the more
cruelly through his ears. It was a raging, bellowing thunder, like a
boiler-riveting factory.
And now curiosity began to stir, and he sat up and looked about him. The
track at this point ran in a sharp curve about a wooded hillock; all of
the near side was heaped with the wreckage of the Bournemouth train;
that of the express was mostly hidden by the trees; and just at the
turn, under clouds of vomiting steam and piled about with cairns of
living coal, lay what remained of the two engines, one upon the other.
On the heathy margin of the line were many people running to and fro,
and crying aloud as they ran, and many others lying motionless like
sleeping tramps.
Morris suddenly drew an inference. "There has been an accident!" thought
he, and was elated at his perspicacity. Almost at the same time his eye
lighted on John, who lay close by as white as paper. "Poor old John!
poor old cove!" he thought, the schoolboy expression popping forth from
some forgotten treasury, and he took his brother's hand in his with
childish tenderness. It was perhaps the touch that recalled him; at
least John opened his eyes, sat suddenly up, and after several
ineffectual movements of his lips, "What's the row?" said he, in a
phantom voice.
The din of that devil's smithy still thundered in their ears. "Let us
get away from that," Morris cried, and pointed to the vomit of steam
that still spouted from the broken engines. And the pair helped each
other up, and stood and quaked and wavered and stared about them at the
scene of death.
Just then they were approached by a party of men who had already
organised themselves for the purposes of rescue.
"Are you hurt?" cried one of these, a young fellow with the sweat
streaming down his pallid face, and who, by the way he was treated, was
evidently the doctor.
Morris shook his head, and the young man, nodding grimly, handed him a
bottle of some spirit.
"Take a drink of that," he said; "your friend looks as if he needed it
badly. We want every man we can get," he added; "there's terrible work
before us, and nobody should shirk. If you can do no more, you can carry
a stretcher."
The doctor was hardly gone before Morris, under the spur of the dram,
awoke to the full possession of his wits.
"My God!" he cried. "Uncle Joseph!"
"Yes," said John, "where can he be? He can't be far off. I hope the old
party isn't damaged."
"Come and help me to look," said Morris, with a snap of savage
determination strangely foreign to his ordinary bearing; and then, for
one moment, he broke forth. "If he's dead!" he cried, and shook his fist
at heaven.
To and fro the brothers hurried, staring in the faces of the wounded, or
turning the dead upon their backs. They must have thus examined forty
people, and still there was no word of Uncle Joseph. But now the course
of their search brought them near the centre of the collision, where the
boilers were still blowing off steam with a deafening clamour. It was a
part of the field not yet gleaned by the rescuing party. The ground,
especially on the margin of the wood, was full of inequalities--here a
pit, there a hillock surmounted with a bush of furze. It was a place
where many bodies might lie concealed, and they beat it like pointers
after game. Suddenly Morris, who was leading, paused and reached forth
his index with a tragic gesture. John followed the direction of his
brother's hand.
In the bottom of a sandy hole lay something that had once been human.
The face had suffered severely, and it was unrecognisable; but that was
not required. The snowy hair, the coat of marten, the ventilating cloth,
the hygienic flannel--everything down to the health boots from Messrs.
Dall and Crumbie's, identified the body as that of Uncle Joseph. Only
the forage-cap must have been lost in the convulsion, for the dead man
was bare-headed.
"The poor old beggar!" said John, with a touch of natural feeling; "I
would give ten pounds if we hadn't chivied him in the train!"
But there was no sentiment in the face of Morris as he gazed upon the
dead. Gnawing his nails, with introverted eyes, his brow marked with the
stamp of tragic indignation and tragic intellectual effort, he stood
there silent. Here was a last injustice; he had been robbed while he was
an orphan at school, he had been lashed to a decadent leather business,
he had been saddled with Miss Hazeltine, his cousin had been defrauding
him of the tontine, and he had borne all this, we might almost say, with
dignity, and now they had gone and killed his uncle!
"Here!" he said suddenly, "take his heels, we must get him into the
woods. I'm not going to have anybody find this."
"O, fudge!" said John, "Where's the use?"
"Do what I tell you," spirted Morris, as he took the corpse by the
shoulders. "Am I to carry him myself?"
They were close upon the borders of the wood; in ten or twelve paces
they were under cover; and a little farther back, in a sandy clearing
of the trees, they laid their burthen down, and stood and looked at it
with loathing.
"What do you mean to do?" whispered John.
"Bury him, to be sure!" responded Morris, and he opened his pocket-knife
and began feverishly to dig.
"You'll never make a hand of it with that," objected the other.
"If you won't help me, you cowardly shirk," screamed Morris, "you can go
to the devil!"
"It's the childishest folly," said John; "but no man shall call me a
coward," and he began to help his brother grudgingly.
The soil was sandy and light, but matted with the roots of the
surrounding firs. Gorse tore their hands; and as they baled the sand
from the grave, it was often discoloured with their blood. An hour
passed of unremitting energy upon the part of Morris, of lukewarm help
on that of John; and still the trench was barely nine inches in depth.
Into this the body was rudely flung: sand was piled upon it, and then
more sand must be dug, and gorse had to be cut to pile on that; and
still from one end of the sordid mound a pair of feet projected and
caught the light upon their patent-leather toes. But by this time the
nerves of both were shaken; even Morris had enough of his grisly task;
and they skulked off like animals into the thickest of the neighbouring
covert.
"It's the best that we can do," said Morris, sitting down.
"And now," said John, "perhaps you'll have the politeness to tell me
what it's all about."
"Upon my word," cried Morris, "if you do not understand for yourself, I
almost despair of telling you."
"O, of course it's some rot about the tontine," returned the other. "But
it's the merest nonsense. We've lost it, and there's an end."
"I tell you," said Morris, "Uncle Masterman is dead. I know it, there's
a voice that tells me so."
"Well, and so is Uncle Joseph," said John.
"He's not dead, unless I choose," returned Morris.
"And come to that," cried John, "if you're right, and Uncle Masterman's
been dead ever so long, all we have to do is to tell the truth and
expose Michael."
"You seem to think Michael is a fool," sneered Morris. "Can't you
understand he's been preparing this fraud for years? He has the whole
thing ready: the nurse, the doctor, the undertaker, all bought, the
certificate all ready but the date! Let him get wind of this business,
and you mark my words, Uncle Masterman will die in two days and be
buried in a week. But see here, Johnny; what Michael can do, I can do.
If he plays a game of bluff, so can I. If his father is to live for
ever, by God, so shall my uncle!"
"It's illegal, ain't it?" said John.
"A man must have _some_ moral courage," replied Morris with dignity.
"And then suppose you're wrong? Suppose Uncle Masterman's alive and
kicking?"
"Well, even then," responded the plotter, "we are no worse off than we
were before; in fact, we're better. Uncle Masterman must die some day;
as long as Uncle Joseph was alive, he might have died any day; but we're
out of all that trouble now: there's no sort of limit to the game that I
propose--it can be kept up till Kingdom Come."
"If I could only see how you meant to set about it!" sighed John. "But
you know, Morris, you always were such a bungler."
"I'd like to know what I ever bungled," cried Morris; "I have the best
collection of signet rings in London."
"Well, you know, there's the leather business," suggested the other.
"That's considered rather a hash."
It was a mark of singular self-control in Morris that he suffered this
to pass unchallenged, and even unresented.
"About the business in hand," said he, "once we can get him up to
Bloomsbury, there's no sort of trouble. We bury him in the cellar, which
seems made for it; and then all I have to do is to start out and find a
venal doctor."
"Why can't we leave him where he is?" asked John.
"Because we know nothing about the country," retorted Morris. "This wood
may be a regular lovers' walk. Turn your mind to the real difficulty.
How are we to get him up to Bloomsbury?"
Various schemes were mooted and rejected. The railway station at
Browndean was, of course, out of the question, for it would now be a
centre of curiosity and gossip, and (of all things) they would be least
able to despatch a dead body without remark. John feebly proposed
getting an ale-cask and sending it as beer, but the objections to this
course were so overwhelming that Morris scorned to answer. The purchase
of a packing-case seemed equally hopeless, for why should two gentlemen
without baggage of any kind require a packing-case? They would be more
likely to require clean linen.
"We are working on wrong lines," cried Morris at last. "The thing must
be gone about more carefully. Suppose now," he added excitedly, speaking
by fits and starts, as if he were thinking aloud, "suppose we rent a
cottage by the month. A householder can buy a packing-case without
remark. Then suppose we clear the people out to-day, get the
packing-case to-night, and to-morrow I hire a carriage--or a cart that
we could drive ourselves--and take the box, or whatever we get, to
Ringwood or Lyndhurst or somewhere; we could label it 'specimens,' don't
you see? Johnny, I believe I've hit the nail at last."
"Well, it sounds more feasible," admitted John.
"Of course we must take assumed names," continued Morris. "It would
never do to keep our own. What do you say to 'Masterman' itself? It
sounds quiet and dignified."
"I will _not_ take the name of Masterman," returned his brother; "you
may, if you like. I shall call myself Vance--the Great Vance; positively
the last six nights. There's some go in a name like that."
"Vance!" cried Morris. "Do you think we are playing a pantomime for our
amusement? There was never anybody named Vance who wasn't a music-hall
singer."
"That's the beauty of it," returned John; "it gives you some standing at
once. You may call yourself Fortescue till all's blue, and nobody cares;
but to be Vance gives a man a natural nobility."
"But there's lots of other theatrical names," cried Morris. "Leybourne,
Irving, Brough, Toole----"
"Devil a one will I take!" returned his brother. "I am going to have my
little lark out of this as well as you."
"Very well," said Morris, who perceived that John was determined to
carry his point, "I shall be Robert Vance."
"And I shall be George Vance," cried John, "the only original George
Vance! Rally round the only original!"
Repairing as well as they were able the disorder of their clothes,
Finsbury brothers returned to Browndean by a circuitous route in quest
of luncheon and a suitable cottage. It is not always easy to drop at a
moment's notice on a furnished residence in a retired locality; but
fortune presently introduced our adventurers to a deaf carpenter, a man
rich in cottages of the required description, and unaffectedly eager to
supply their wants. The second place they visited, standing, as it did,
about a mile and a half from any neighbours, caused them to exchange a
glance of hope. On a nearer view, the place was not without depressing
features. It stood in a marshy-looking hollow of a heath; tall trees
obscured its windows; the thatch visibly rotted on the rafters; and the
walls were stained with splashes of unwholesome green. The rooms were
small, the ceilings low, the furniture merely nominal; a strange chill
and a haunting smell of damp pervaded the kitchen; and the bedroom
boasted only of one bed.
Morris, with a view to cheapening the place, remarked on this defect.
"Well," returned the man, "if you can't sleep two abed, you'd better
take a villa residence."
"And then," pursued Morris, "there's no water. How do you get your
water?"
"We fill _that_ from the spring," replied the carpenter, pointing to a
big barrel that stood beside the door. "The spring ain't so _very_ far
off, after all, and it's easy brought in buckets. There's a bucket
there."
Morris nudged his brother as they examined the water-butt. It was new,
and very solidly constructed for its office. If anything had been
wanting to decide them, this eminently practical barrel would have
turned the scale. A bargain was promptly struck, the month's rent was
paid upon the nail, and about an hour later Finsbury brothers might have
been observed returning to the blighted cottage, having along with them
the key, which was the symbol of their tenancy, a spirit-lamp, with
which they fondly told themselves they would be able to cook, a pork pie
of suitable dimensions, and a quart of the worst whisky in Hampshire.
Nor was this all they had effected; already (under the plea that they
were landscape-painters) they had hired for dawn on the morrow a light
but solid two-wheeled cart; so that when they entered in their new
character, they were able to tell themselves that the back of the
business was already broken.
John proceeded to get tea; while Morris, foraging about the house, was
presently delighted by discovering the lid of the water-butt upon the
kitchen shelf. Here, then, was the packing-case complete; in the absence
of straw, the blankets (which he himself, at least, had not the smallest
intention of using for their present purpose) would exactly take the
place of packing; and Morris, as the difficulties began to vanish from
his path, rose almost to the brink of exultation. There was, however,
one difficulty not yet faced, one upon which his whole scheme depended.
Would John consent to remain alone in the cottage? He had not yet dared
to put the question.
It was with high good-humour that the pair sat down to the deal table,
and proceeded to fall-to on the pork pie. Morris retailed the discovery
of the lid, and the Great Vance was pleased to applaud by beating on the
table with his fork in true music-hall style.
"That's the dodge," he cried. "I always said a water-butt was what you
wanted for this business."
"Of course," said Morris, thinking this a favourable opportunity to
prepare his brother, "of course you must stay on in this place till I
give the word; I'll give out that uncle is resting in the New Forest. It
would not do for both of us to appear in London; we could never conceal
the absence of the old man."
John's jaw dropped.
"O, come!" he cried. "You can stay in this hole yourself. I won't."
The colour came into Morris's cheeks. He saw that he must win his
brother at any cost.
"You must please remember, Johnny," he said, "the amount of the tontine.
If I succeed, we shall have each fifty thousand to place to our bank
account; ay, and nearer sixty."
"But if you fail," returned John, "what then? What'll be the colour of
our bank account in that case?"
"I will pay all expenses," said Morris, with an inward struggle; "you
shall lose nothing."
"Well," said John, with a laugh, "if the ex-s are yours, and
half-profits mine, I don't mind remaining here for a couple of days."
"A couple of days!" cried Morris, who was beginning to get angry and
controlled himself with difficulty; "why, you would do more to win five
pounds on a horse-race!"
"Perhaps I would," returned the Great Vance; "it's the artistic
temperament."
"This is monstrous!" burst out Morris. "I take all risks; I pay all
expenses; I divide profits; and you won't take the slightest pains to
help me. It's not decent; it's not honest; it's not even kind."
"But suppose," objected John, who was considerably impressed by his
brother's vehemence, "suppose that Uncle Masterman is alive after all,
and lives ten years longer; must I rot here all that time?"
"Of course not," responded Morris, in a more conciliatory tone; "I only
ask a month at the outside; and if Uncle Masterman is not dead by that
time you can go abroad."
"Go abroad?" repeated John eagerly. "Why shouldn't I go at once? Tell
'em that Joseph and I are seeing life in Paris."
"Nonsense," said Morris.
"Well, but look here," said John; "it's this house, it's such a pig-sty,
it's so dreary and damp. You said yourself that it was damp."
"Only to the carpenter," Morris distinguished, "and that was to reduce
the rent. But really, you know, now we're in it, I've seen worse."
"And what am I to do?" complained the victim. "How can I entertain a
friend?"
"My dear Johnny, if you don't think the tontine worth a little trouble,
say so, and I'll give the business up."
"You're dead certain of the figures, I suppose?" asked John.
"Well"--with a deep sigh--"send me the _Pink Un_ and all the comic
papers regularly. I'll face the music."
As afternoon drew on, the cottage breathed more thrillingly of its
native marsh; a creeping chill inhabited its chambers; the fire smoked,
and a shower of rain, coming up from the channel on a slant of wind,
tingled on the window-panes. At intervals, when the gloom deepened
toward despair, Morris would produce the whisky-bottle, and at first
John welcomed the diversion--not for long. It has been said this spirit
was the worst in Hampshire; only those acquainted with the county can
appreciate the force of that superlative; and at length even the Great
Vance (who was no connoisseur) waved the decoction from his lips. The
approach of dusk, feebly combated with a single tallow candle, added a
touch of tragedy; and John suddenly stopped whistling through his
fingers--an art to the practice of which he had been reduced--and
bitterly lamented his concessions.
"I can't stay here a month," he cried. "No one could. The thing's
nonsense, Morris. The parties that lived in the Bastille would rise
against a place like this."
With an admirable affectation of indifference, Morris proposed a game of
pitch-and-toss. To what will not the diplomatist condescend! It was
John's favourite game; indeed his only game--he had found all the rest
too intellectual--and he played it with equal skill and good fortune. To
Morris himself, on the other hand, the whole business was detestable; he
was a bad pitcher, he had no luck in tossing, and he was one who
suffered torments when he lost. But John was in a dangerous humour, and
his brother was prepared for any sacrifice.
By seven o'clock, Morris, with incredible agony, had lost a couple of
half-crowns. Even with the tontine before his eyes, this was as much as
he could bear; and, remarking that he would take his revenge some other
time, he proposed a bit of supper and a grog.
Before they had made an end of this refreshment it was time to be at
work. A bucket of water for present necessities was withdrawn from the
water-butt, which was then emptied and rolled before the kitchen fire to
dry; and the two brothers set forth on their adventure under a starless
heaven.