"You're an old fool, Burdon, and it's all your fault."
That's what Sir John said, as he shook his Malacca cane at me; and I
suppose it was my fault; but then, how could I see what was going to
happen?
It began in 1851. I remember it so well because that was the year of
the Great Exhibition, and Sir John treated me to a visit there; and when
I'd been and was serving breakfast next morning, he asked me about it,
and laughed and asked me if I'd taken much notice of the goldsmiths'
work. I said I had, and that it was a great mistake to clean gold plate
with anything but rouge.
"Why?" he said.
Because, I told him, if any of the plate-powder happened to be left in
the cracks, if it was rouge it gave a good effect; but if it was a white
preparation, it looked dirty and bad.
"Then we'll have all the chests open to-morrow, James Burdon," he said;
"and you shall give the old gold plate a good clean up with rouge, and
I'll help you."
"You, Sir John?"
He nodded. And the very next day he sent all the other servants to the
Exhibition, came down to my pantry, opened the plate-room, and put on an
apron just like a servant would, and helped me to clean that gold plate.
He got tired by one o'clock, and sat down upon a chair and looked at it
all glistening as it was spread out on the dresser and shelves--some
bright with polishing, some dull and dead and ancient-looking. Cups and
bowls and salvers and round dishes covered with coats of arms; some
battered and bent, and some as perfect as on the day it left the
goldsmith's hands.
I'd worked hard--as hard as I could, for sneezing, for I was doing that
half the time, just as if I had a bad cold. For every cup or dish was
kept in a green baize bag that fitted in one of the old ironbound oak
chests, and these chests were lined with green baize. And all this
being exceedingly old, the moths had got in; and pounds and pounds of
pepper had been scattered about the baize, to keep them away.
"I'll have a glass of wine, Burdon," Sir John says at last; "and we'll
put it all away again. It's very beautiful. That's Cellini work--
real," he says, as he took up a great golden bowl, all hammered and
punched and engraved. "But the whole lot of it is an incubus, for I
can't use it, and I don't want to make a show."
"Take a glass yourself, my man," he said, as I got him the sherry--a
fresh bottle from the outer cellar. "Ha! at a moderate computation that
old gold plate is worth a hundred thousand pounds; and a hundred
thousand pounds at only three per cent in the funds, Burdon, would be
three thousand a year. So you see I lose that income by letting this
heap of old gold plate lie locked up in those chests.--Now, what would
you do with it, if it were yours?"
"Sell it, Sir John, and put it in houses," I said sharply.
"Yes, James Burdon; and a sensible thing to do. But you are a servant,
and I'm a baronet; though I don't look one, do I?" he said, holding up
his red hands and laughing.
"You always look a gentleman, Sir John," I said; "and that's what you
are."
"Please God, I try to be," he said sadly. "But I don't want the money,
James; and these are all old family heirlooms that I hold in trust for
my life, and have to hand over--bound in honour to do so--to my son.--
Look!" he said, "at the arms and crest of the Boileaus on every piece."
"Boileau, Sir John?"
"Well, Drinkwater, then. We translated the name when we came over to
England. There; let's put it all away. It's a regular incubus."
So it was all packed up again in the chests; for he wouldn't let me
finish cleaning it, saying it would take a week; and that it was more
for the sake of seeing and going over it, than anything, that he had had
it out. So we locked it all up again in the plate-room. And it took
five waters hot as he could bear 'em to wash his hands; and even then
there was some rouge left in the cracks, and in the old signet ring with
the coat of arms cut in the stone--same as that on the plate.
I don't know how it was; perhaps I was out of sorts, but from that day I
got thinking about gold plate and what Sir John said about its worth. I
knew what "incubus" meant, for I went up in the library and looked out
the word in the big dictionary; and that plate got to be such an incubus
to me that I went up to Sir John one morning and gave him warning.
"But what for?" he said. "Wages?"
"No, Sir John. You're a good master, and her ladyship was a good
mistress before she was took up to heaven."
"Hush, man, hush!" he says sharply.
"And it'll break my heart nearly not to see young Master Barclay when he
comes back from school."
"Then why do you want to go?"
"Well, Sir John, a good home and good food and good treatment's right
enough; but I don't want to be found some morning a-weltering in my
gore."
"Now, look here, James Burdon," he says, laughing. "I trust you with
the keys of the wine-cellar, and you've been at the sherry."
"You know better than that, Sir John. No, sir. You said that gold
plate was an incubus, and such it is, for it's always a-sitting on me,
so as I can't sleep o' nights. It's killing me, that's what it is.
Some night I shall be murdered, and all that plate taken away. It ain't
safe, and it's cruel to a man to ask him to take charge of it."
He did not speak for a few minutes.
"What am I to do, then, Burdon?"
"Some people send their plate to the bank, Sir John."
"Yes," he says; "some people do a great many things that I do not intend
to do.--There; I shall not take any notice of what you said."
"But you must, please, Sir John; I couldn't stay like this."
"Be patient for a few days, and I'll have something done to relieve
you."
I went down-stairs very uneasy, and Sir John went out; and next day,
feeling quite poorly, after waking up ten times in the night, thinking I
heard people breaking in, as there'd been a deal of burglary in
Bloomsbury about that time, I got up quite thankful I was still alive;
and directly after breakfast, the wine-merchant's cart came from Saint
James's Street with fifty dozen of sherry, as we really didn't want.
Sir John came down and saw to the wine being put in bins; and then he
had all the wine brought from the inner cellar into the outer cellar,
both being next my pantry, with a door into the passage just at the foot
of the kitchen stairs.
"That's a neat job, Burdon," said Sir John, as we stood in the far
cellar all among the sawdust, and the place looking dark and damp, with
its roof like the vaults of a church, and stone flag floor, but with
every bin empty.
"Going to lay down some more wine here, Sir John?" I said; but he
didn't answer, only stood with a candle in the arched doorway, which was
like a passage six feet long, opening from one cellar into the other.
Then he went up-stairs, and I locked up the cellar and put the keys in
my drawer.
"He always was eccentric before her ladyship died," I said to myself;
"and now he's getting worse."
I saw it again next morning, for Sir John gave orders, sudden-like, for
everybody to pack off to the country-house down by Dorking; and of
course everybody had to go, cook and housekeeper and all; and just as I
was ready to start, I got word to stay.
Sir John went off to his club, and I stayed alone in that old house in
Bloomsbury, with the great drops of perspiration dripping off me every
time I heard a noise, and feeling sometimes as if I could stand it no
longer; but just as it was getting dusk, he came back, and in his short
abrupt way, he says: "Now, Burdon, we'll go to work."
I'd no idea what he meant till we went down-stairs, when he had the
strong-room door opened and the cellar too and then he made me help him
carry the old plate-chests right through my pantry into the far
wine-cellar, and range them one after the other along one side.
I wanted to tell him that they would not be so safe there; but I daren't
speak, and it was not till what followed that I began to understand;
for, as soon as we had gone through the narrow arched passage back to
the outer cellar, he laughed, and he says, "Now, we'll get rid of the
incubus, Burdon. Fix your light up there, and I'll help."
He did help; and together we got a heap of sawdust and hundreds of empty
wine-bottles; and these we built up at the end of the arched entrance
between the cellars from floor to ceiling, just as if it had been a
wine-bin, till the farther cellar was quite shut off with empty bottles.
And then, if he didn't make me move the new sherry that had just come
in and treat that the same, building up full bottles in front of the
empty ones till the ceiling was reached once more, and the way in to the
chests of gold plate shut up with wine-bottles two deep, one stack full,
the other empty.
He saw me shake my head, as if I didn't believe in it; and he laughed
again in his strange way, and said: "Wait a bit."
Next morning I found he'd given orders, for the men came with a load of
bricks and mortar, and they set to work and built up a wall in front of
the stacked-up bottles, regularly bricking up the passage, just as if it
was a bin of wine that was to be left for so many years to mature; after
which the wall was white-washed over, the men went away, and Sir John
clapped me on the shoulder. "There, Burdon!" he said; "we've buried the
incubus safely. Now you can sleep in peace."