The Purse of Gold
The Baronet was very slightly known in his county. He had led a reserved
and inhospitable life. He was pressed upon by heavy debts; and being a
proud man, held aloof from society and its doings. He wished people to
understand that he was nursing his estate; but somehow the estate did
not thrive at nurse. In the country other people's business is admirably
well known; and the lord of Mardykes was conscious, perhaps, that his
neighbours knew as well he did, that the utmost he could do was to pay
the interest charged upon it, and to live in a frugal way enough.
The lake measures some four or five miles across, from the little jetty
under the walls of Mardykes Hall to Cloostedd.
Philip Feltram, changed and morose, loved a solitary row upon the lake;
and sometimes, with no one to aid him in its management, would take the
little sailboat and pass the whole day upon those lonely waters.
Frequently he crossed to Cloostedd; and mooring the boat under the
solemn trees that stand reflected in that dark mirror, he would
disembark and wander among the lonely woodlands, as people thought,
cherishing in those ancestral scenes the memory of ineffaceable
injuries, and the wrath and revenge that seemed of late to darken his
countenance, and to hold him always in a moody silence.
One autumnal evening Sir Bale Mardykes was sourly ruminating after his
solitary meal. A very red sun was pouring its last low beams through the
valley at the western extremity of the lake, across its elsewhere sombre
waters, and touching with a sudden and blood-red tint the sail of the
skiff in which Feltram was returning from his lonely cruise.
"Here comes my domestic water-fiend," sneered Sir Bale, as he lay back
in his cumbrous arm-chair. "Cheerful place, pleasant people, delicious
fate! The place alone has been enough to set that fool out of his little
senses, d--n him!"
Sir Bale averted his eyes, and another subject not pleasanter entered
his mind. He was thinking of the races that were coming off next week at
Heckleston Downs, and what sums of money might be made there, and how
hard it was that he should be excluded by fortune from that brilliant
lottery.
"Ah, Mrs. Julaper, is that you?"
Mrs. Julaper, who was still at the door, curtsied, and said, "I came,
Sir Bale, to see whether you'd please to like a jug of mulled claret,
sir."
"Not I, my dear. I'll take a mug of beer and my pipe; that homely solace
better befits a ruined gentleman."
"H'm, sir; you're not that, Sir Bale; you're no worse than half the
lords and great men that are going. I would not hear another say that of
you, sir."
"That's very kind of you, Mrs. Julaper; but you won't call _me_ out for
backbiting myself, especially as it is true, d----d true, Mrs. Julaper!
Look ye; there never was a Mardykes here before but he could lay his
hundred or his thousand pounds on the winner of the Heckleston Cup; and
what could I bet? Little more than that mug of beer I spoke of. It was
my great-grandfather who opened the course on the Downs of Heckleston,
and now _I_ can't show there! Well, what must I do? Grin and bear it,
that's all. If you please, Mrs. Julaper, I will have that jug of claret
you offered. I want spice and hot wine to keep me alive; but I'll smoke
my pipe first, and in an hour's time it will do."
When Mrs. Julaper was gone, he lighted his pipe, and drew near the
window, through which he looked upon the now fading sky and the twilight
landscape.
He smoked his pipe out, and by that time it had grown nearly dark. He
was still looking out upon the faint outlines of the view, and thinking
angrily what a little bit of luck at the races would do for many a man
who probably did not want it half so much as he. Vague and sombre as his
thoughts were, they had, like the darkening landscape outside, shape
enough to define their general character. Bitter and impious they
were--as those of egotistic men naturally are in suffering. And after
brooding, and muttering by fits and starts, he said:
"How many tens and hundreds of thousands of pounds will change hands at
Heckleston next week; and not a shilling in all the change and shuffle
will stick to me! How many a fellow would sell himself, like Dr.
Faustus, just for the knowledge of the name of the winner! But he's no
fool, and does not buy his own."
Something caught his eye; something moving on the wall. The fire was
lighted, and cast a flickering and gigantic shadow upward; the figure of
a man standing behind Sir Bale Mardykes, on whose shoulder he placed a
lean hand. Sir Bale turned suddenly about, and saw Philip Feltram. He
was looking dark and stern, and did not remove his hand from his
shoulder as he peered into the Baronet's face with his deep-set mad
eyes.
"Ha, Philip, upon my soul!" exclaimed Sir Bale, surprised. "How time
flies! It seems only this minute since I saw the boat a mile and a half
away from the shore. Well--yes; there has been time; it is dark now. Ha,
ha! I assure you, you startled me. Won't you take something? Do. Shall I
touch the bell?"
"You have been troubled about those mortgages. I told you I should pay
them off, I thought."
Here there was a pause, and Sir Bale looked hard in Feltram's face. If
he had been in his ordinary spirits, or perhaps in some of his haunts
less solitary than Mardykes, he would have laughed; but here he had
grown unlike himself, gloomy and credulous, and was, in fact, a nervous
man.
Sir Bale smiled, and shook his head dismally.
"It is very kind of you, Feltram; the idea shows a kindly disposition. I
know you would do me a kindness if you could."
As Sir Bale, each looking in the other's eyes, repeated in this sentence
the words "kind," "kindly," "kindness," a smile lighted Feltram's face
with at each word an intenser light; and Sir Bale grew sombre in its
glare; and when he had done speaking, Feltram's face also on a sudden
darkened.
"I have found a fortune-teller in Cloostedd Wood. Look here."
And he drew from his pocket a leathern purse, which he placed on the
table in his hand; and Sir Bale heard the pleasant clink of coin in it.
"A fortune-teller! You don't mean to say she gave you that?" said Sir
Bale.
Feltram smiled again, and nodded.
"It _was_ the custom to give the fortuneteller a trifle. It is a great
improvement making _her_ fee you," observed Sir Bale, with an approach
to his old manner.
"He put that in my hand with a message," said Feltram.
"He? O, then it was a male fortune-teller!"
"Gipsies go in gangs, men and women. _He_ might lend, though _she_ told
fortunes," said Feltram.
"It's the first time I ever heard of gipsies lending money;" and he eyed
the purse with a whimsical smile.
With his lean fingers still holding it, Feltram sat down at the table.
His face contracted as if in cunning thought, and his chin sank upon his
breast as he leaned back.
"I think," continued Sir Bale, "ever since they were spoiled, the
Egyptians have been a little shy of lending, and leave that branch of
business to the Hebrews."
"What would you give to know, now, the winner at Heckleston races?" said
Feltram suddenly, raising his eyes.
"Yes; that would be worth something," answered Sir Bale, looking at him
with more interest than the incredulity he affected would quite warrant.
"And this money I have power to lend you, to make your game."
"Do you mean that really?" said Sir Bale, with a new energy in tone,
manner, and features.
"That's heavy; there are some guineas there," said Feltram with a dark
smile, raising the purse in his hand a little, and letting it drop upon
the table with a clang.
"There is _something_ there, at all events," said Sir Bale.
Feltram took the purse by the bottom, and poured out on the table a
handsome pile of guineas.
"And do you mean to say you got all that from a gipsy in Cloostedd
Wood?"
"A friend, who is--_myself_," answered Philip Feltram.
"Yourself! Then it is yours--_you_ lend it?" said the Baronet, amazed;
for there was no getting over the heap of guineas, and the wonder was
pretty equal whence they had come.
"Myself, and not myself," said Feltram oracularly; "as like as voice and
echo, man and shadow."
Had Feltram in some of his solitary wanderings and potterings lighted
upon hidden treasure? There was a story of two Feltrams of Cloostedd,
brothers, who had joined the king's army and fought at Marston Moor,
having buried in Cloostedd Wood a great deal of gold and plate and
jewels. They had, it was said, intrusted one tried servant with the
secret; and that servant remained at home. But by a perverse fatality
the three witnesses had perished within a month: the two brothers at
Marston Moor; and the confidant, of fever, at Cloostedd. From that day
forth treasure-seekers had from time to time explored the woods of
Cloostedd; and many a tree of mark was dug beside, and the earth beneath
many a stone and scar and other landmark in that solitary forest was
opened by night, until hope gradually died out, and the tradition had
long ceased to prompt to action, and had become a story and nothing
more.
The image of the nursery-tale had now recurred to Sir Bale after so long
a reach of years; and the only imaginable way, in his mind, of
accounting for penniless Philip Feltram having all that gold in his
possession was that, in some of his lonely wanderings, chance had led
him to the undiscovered hoard of the two Feltrams who had died in the
great civil wars.
"Perhaps those gipsies you speak of found the money where you found
them; and in that case, as Cloostedd Forest, and all that is in it is my
property, their sending it to me is more like my servant's handing me my
hat and stick when I'm going out, than making me a present."
"You will not be wise to rely upon the law, Sir Bale, and to refuse the
help that comes unasked. But if you like your mortgages as they are,
keep them; and if you like my terms as they are, take them; and when you
have made up your mind, let me know."
Philip Feltram dropped the heavy purse into his capacious coat-pocket,
and walked, muttering, out of the room.