A VERY OLD STORY.
Mrs. Burfield was a pale-faced and pinched-looking person,
hollow-cheeked and spare of figure, who in these latter days would have
inspired a stranger with the idea that she was a rigid disciplinarian of
the school founded by Mr. Banting. She looked as if all saccharine and
fatty elements had been carefully excluded from her food; and yet, on
the other hand, she had none of the muscular energy which might be
supposed to result from a carnivorous habit. She was a depressing kind
of woman, with thin locks of whity-brown hair dangling upon each side of
her thin face, and thin garments hanging limply upon her scanty figure,
and a thin voice. There was something in Mrs. Burfield’s appearance
which called up vague images of drizzly days, and pattens, and washing
done at home, and a man in the passage clamorous for a water-rate, and
all the most unpleasant associations of poverty.
She was a woman who prefaced every sentence she uttered with a sigh. She
sighed as she admitted to Mr. Tredethlyn that her name was Burfield, as
if even that fact were in some manner an affliction. She sighed as she
told him, apologetically, that the house was full of lodgers, so she
must ask him to step down into the little sitting-room below stairs. And
yet, as she subsisted by the letting of lodgings, the crowded state of
her house should have been a cause for rejoicing.
Francis had some slight difficulty in conveying his long legs down the
narrow little staircase, in which there was a breakneck corner, whence
awkward maid-servants were wont to precipitate themselves headlong in
company with an avalanche of tea-things; but he managed to find his way
down somehow or other, and was ushered into a little faded-looking
underground parlour, where all the furniture seemed to have undergone a
prolonged course of Banting, and where the evidence of children’s
habitation was untidily visible in every direction. The children were
all at school, however, Mrs. Burfield told Francis with another sigh;
though, as she added directly afterwards that they drove her next door
to raving madness when they were at home, _that_ fact need scarcely have
depressed her.
“I had a governess for them some time back,” she said, unconsciously
approaching the subject of Mr. Tredethlyn’s business with her, “and the
young person was very useful to me in many ways; but things have been so
dull, and lodgers so uncertain, and so close as to rent and kitchen
fire, and such like, that I couldn’t afford to engage another young
person, if I could have found anyone as reasonable and as willing as
her, which wasn’t likely.”
Here Mrs. Burfield sighed again, and to her surprise found herself
echoed by her visitor.
“It is about that person, the governess, that I have come to inquire,”
said Francis. “I have reason to believe--I may say that I am almost
sure--she is my cousin; very near and very dear to me. Pray tell me all
you can about her. I am a rich man, and I am looking for my cousin, who
has a better claim than I have to the money that has lately come to me.
Pray tell me everything; you shall not find me ungrateful. I will make
it well worth your while to help me in this matter.”
It might be supposed that Mrs. Burfield, being ground into the very dust
by the iron heel of poverty, would brighten a little on hearing this
promising speech: but she did nothing of the kind; she only sighed
rather more plaintively than usual, and remarked somewhat irrelevantly
that her boys were beginning to grow up now, and the boots they knocked
out, and the way they wore their things at the knees and elbows, were
something awful.
“Tell me all you can about my cousin,” urged Mr. Tredethlyn. “Ah, you
don’t know how long I have been away from England, and how eager I am to
find that poor desolate girl. Pray tell me all you know, and quickly.”
“It’s a long story,” said Mrs. Burfield, in the very words used by the
grocer--“it’s a long story, and goodness knows the rights or the wrongs
of it; but if you are her cousin,--and you are, I suppose----”
“I do not think there can be any doubt of it,” Francis Tredethlyn
answered eagerly; “I do not think there can be any doubt that the person
of whom I have heard this morning was my cousin, Susan Tredethlyn.”
“The young person to whom _I_ allude called herself Susan Turner.”
“Yes, yes. It is only natural she should change her name. She left her
home because she had been very much persecuted there. She was no doubt
afraid of being taken back, and was anxious to hide herself under a
false name.”
“If I had known that she had come to me under a false name, never would
she have slept a night in this house,” exclaimed Mrs. Burfield, with
something between a sigh and a shudder.
“She was a good and honest girl, under whatever name she came to you,”
answered Francis Tredethlyn; “but pray tell me the story.”
But Mrs. Burfield could not immediately comply with this request; she
had to go into the kitchen first, to see that “the girl” was basting
some mutton that was being roasted for a very fastidious “front
parlour,” who had a rooted objection to baked meats; and then she had to
go out into a little area, in which the window looked out, and to hold
parley with some person above, who dropped her down divers loaves, and
disputed with her as to a certain “twopenny German” which had been had,
or had not been had, on the previous Tuesday. At last, however, she was
able to seat herself opposite poor Francis, and to begin her story, from
the narration of which she seemed to derive a dismal kind of enjoyment.
“It’s close upon seven years since my poor dear husband died,” Mrs.
Burfield began; and for some little time Francis Tredethlyn was afraid
that she was going to favour him with a sketch of her own personal
history rather than that story which he was so eager to know. “It’s
close upon seven years, seven years of toil and trouble for me, and up
to that time I’d never known what it was to want for anything in a
moderate way. He was managing clerk in an insurance office, sir, and was
as fine a looking man as you need wish to see; but he was
taken--sudden--and I was left alone to provide for four young children.
Well, sir, I tried one thing and another, but being genteelly brought
up, things seemed to go harder with me than they go with some people;
and at last an uncle, on my mother’s side, who is very wealthy, and
lately retired from the patent chimney-pot business, gave me enough to
buy a little furniture and start fresh down here. It’s been a hard life,
sir, but I shouldn’t have so much minded that if it hadn’t been for the
children. I couldn’t bear to see them running wild upon the shore, or
playing with vulgar, dirty children on the waste ground; so, a little
better than four years ago, I thought I’d try if I couldn’t get a person
to take care of them, who’d be a kind of governess to them, and would
give me a helping hand with the house when my lodgings were full, and
wouldn’t want above a few pounds a year, just to get herself a new gown
once in a way, and so on. Well, sir, I inquired for such a person, but
lor’! you might just as well inquire for anything you wanted on Robinson
Crusoe’s island as at Coltonslough, unless it’s queen’s-taxes and
poor-rates; and you can have plenty of them without asking. So at last
someone says to me--I think it was Mr. Sanders at the post-office--‘Why
don’t you advertise in the “Times,” Mrs. Burfield? it’ll cost you a
trifle, but you are sure to get what you want.’ So the long and the
short of it was, I did advertise for a genteel person who would
undertake to teach young children, and make herself generally useful, in
consideration of a comfortable home and a honorarium of ten pounds per
annum. Mr. Sanders advised me to put it in the light of a honorarium, as
he said it looked more that way. A young person from the country
preferred, I stated in the advertisement; for _the things_ that lodgers
from London bring down with their luggage, and then turn round upon you
and object to the bedding, had quite set me against Londoners. Well,
sir, I got a good many answers, but the best-written letter was signed
Susan Turner. So I wrote to Miss Turner--the address was at a little
coffee-house near the Great Western terminus--and I told her that if she
liked to come down to Coltonslough for an interview, I would be her
expenses one way. Well, she came, and I found her a very
pleasant-spoken, respectable-looking young person, and I took to her at
first sight to that degree that I allowed her to come to me without
reference, she being at variance, as she told me, with her relations in
the country.”
“She came to you at once, then?”
“Yes, she stayed with me there and then, not caring to go back to
London, the strangeness of which frightened her, she said; and she had
no luggage, except a little bit of a carpet-bag, full of things, which
she sent for next day; and then by-and-by the truth came out, that she’d
run away from home. But she had a couple of sovereigns, and she went out
and bought herself a few more things, and made herself as neat and
comfortable as she could. She didn’t make much secret of how she’d left
her home, poor girl. Her father had wanted her to marry against her own
wishes, she said, and, in her fear of him, she had run away.”
“Poor girl! poor girl!”
“Well, sir,” sighed Mrs. Burfield, “we got on very comfortable for some
months. I never met a young person more kind or more willing. The
children took to her as if she’d been their own sister, and she was
altogether the steadiest, most industrious young person. Things had gone
pretty comfortable with me that season; and in the autumn, quite late,
going on for November, when people don’t expect to see a single lodger
in all Coltonslough, what should I hear, one afternoon, but the wheels
of a fly, and a tremendous double knock at my door; and who should I see
when I opened it, but a tall, handsome-looking gentleman, who walked
straight into my parlour, and took the rooms off-hand, and without so
much as inquiring what the terms would be, which, considering the
haggling and beating down I’d been accustomed to in the very best part
of the season, seemed almost like a dream.”
Mrs. Burfield had warmed with her subject, and had refrained for some
time from the relief of a sigh; but she paused now to indulge herself in
a very heavy one, and then, after a general disquisition upon the
sorrows of a lodging-house keeper, went on,--
“He really was one of the handsomest, easiest-spoken gentlemen I ever
met with, and he seemed to take away one’s breath almost; he had such a
dashing kind of way with him that, if you’d have shut your eyes, you’d
almost have fancied him on horseback, galloping away for dear life. He
seemed all upon the prance, as it were, if I may use the observation.
‘Now I dare say you’ll want references,’ he said, ‘and if so I can’t
jive you any without putting myself to more trouble than I care about.
But you can have some rent in advance if that’ll do; and I’ve no end of
luggage, if that’ll do.’ And then he flung himself into one of the
arm-chairs, and burst out laughing when it creaked and groaned, as it
were, under him; for lodgers have no more feeling for an unprotected
female’s furniture than if they was so many Ojibbeway Indians--and I
can’t deny that the parlour chairs were uncertain. But I didn’t mind the
strange gentleman making game of them, somehow, for he had such a
pleasant way with him, and showed his white teeth, and looked so
handsome, that he seemed quite to brighten up the place.
“‘Well,’ he said presently, ‘can you guess why I came to Coltonslough in
the month of November?’ And of course I told him no, I couldn’t, not
having the pleasure of being acquainted with him. Upon which he burst
out laughing, again. ‘I came here,’ he said, ‘because I was told
Coltonslough was about the dullest place upon the surface of the earth;
and I mean to stay here till after Christmas. So you may tell the man
outside to bring in my luggage, and look sharp about it.’ Upon which the
flyman brought in a couple of big portmanteaus, and a gun-case, and a
hat-box, and two of the heaviest trunks that ever came into my passage.
‘Books, ma’am, books, every one of them, and all as heavy as lead,’ said
the young gentleman, as the corners of the boxes went scratching and
bumping upon the paper,--and the way lodgers’ boxes do scratch and bump
an unprotected female’s paper is something awful. But for all that I
wasn’t sorry to see plenty of luggage, though the books might have been
brickbats neatly packed in hay, as has been known to happen in this very
terrace. ‘Well, ma’am,’ says the gentleman, when his luggage had all
been brought in and the flyman paid, ‘now I can settle down comfortably.
Do I look as if I’d been plucked, do you think, ma’am?’ he asked,
looking at me very hard, and sticking his hands deep down in his
pockets, which was one of those ways of his that I venture to call
prancing. I didn’t quite catch his meaning, but I thought he alluded to
something unpleasant; so I said, ‘No, indeed, I should think not.’ ‘But
I have, ma’am,’ he answered, looking at me in a measuring sort of way,
as if I’d been a five-barred gate, and he was just going to fly clean
over me; and that measuring look of his was another of his galloping
ways. ‘But I _have_ been plucked, ma’am,’ he said, ‘as clean as any fowl
that they ever send you home from the poulterer’s. I’m a featherless
biped, ma’am. So I’ve come down to Coltonslough, being, as I understand,
the dullest hole upon the earth’s crust, and I mean to go in a
perisher.’ A ‘perisher’ was his expression. ‘And I mean to read like old
boots; so you may let your servant light me a fire, ma’am, and get me
some chops; for I suppose I must resign myself to an existence sustained
upon chops so long as I’m at Coltonslough.’”
Once more Mrs. Burfield stopped to take breath. Francis Tredethlyn
listened in silence, with a moody frown upon his face. Already he hated
this man, of whose share in his cousin’s history he was yet ignorant. He
felt as we feel sometimes at a play, when we see the villain first
appear upon the stage, and know he is a villain, yet do not know what
his special crime is to be.
“Well, sir, of all the pleasant lodgers that ever darkened a widow’s
door, the plucked young gentleman was the pleasantest. He got up early,
and went to his books and papers as soon as he was dressed, and had
chops and strong green tea for breakfast; and he sat at his books all
day, till it was too dark for him to sit any longer, and then he went
and strolled up and down the Esplanade, smoking for an hour or so; and
then he came in and had more chops and cold brandy-and-water for his
dinner, except when I took the liberty of roasting him a fowl, or
getting some other little nicety, just by way of variety; and then,
after dinner, he went to his books and papers again, and sat up till
very late, reading and writing and drinking strong green tea.”
“But my cousin Susan,” cried Francis. He was getting impatient under
this minute description of the lodger’s habits. “What has all this to do
with my cousin?”
“I’m coming to that,” Mrs. Burfield answered, with a sigh that was more
profound than usual. “You see, sir, it happened at this time, being the
end of the season, and Coltonslough as empty as it could be; it happened
that we were without a servant; so myself and Susan Turner took it in
turns to wait upon the young gentleman. Not that I ever asked her to do
anything that you can call menial; but she’d take him up his tea, and
clear away his dinner things, and light his candles for him, and such
like; and knowing her to be a respectable young woman, I didn’t keep
that sharp watch over her that some folks might have done. If she
stopped ten minutes or so in his room, talking to him, I usen’t to think
anything about it--you can hear almost every sound in these houses, and
it was quite pleasant to hear her soft voice and his laugh ringing out
every now and then. He wasn’t the sort of gentleman you could suspect of
any harm, he had such a happy kind of way with him, as if he was good
friends with himself and all the world. He lent Susan books--books of
poetry, with all sorts of pencil-writing upon the edges of them; and I
used sometimes to fancy Susan cared more for the pencil-writing than she
did for the poetry itself; she’d sit and pore over it so when the
children were gone to bed and we were alone in this room. Sometimes the
plucked young gentleman would come down here of an evening to fetch
himself another candle, or to tell us that he’d let his fire out, or
something of that kind; for he wasn’t a bit proud; and then, instead of
going back directly, he’d sit down and make himself as much at home as
if he had lived among us all his life; and Oh, dear me, sir, how he
would talk!--all about books and poetry, and the foreign places he’d
seen, and plays, and music, and writers, and actors, and singers. He
seemed to know everything in the world. So, you see, one way and
another, he saw a good deal of Susan; for I found out afterwards from
the children that when he went out in the dusk to smoke his cigar he
generally contrived to meet Susan, and then he’d walk with her and the
children till it was time for them to go indoors. She was a good girl,
and she wasn’t the girl to throw herself in his way. If they were much
together, it was because he followed her. I might have known the meaning
of his sitting in this room for hours together of a night; but he had
such a natural way of doing everything that it threw one off one’s
guard, somehow.”
“The scoundrel!” muttered Francis Tredethlyn, between his clenched
teeth. “But you haven’t told me his name. I want to know his name.”
“He’d been with us more than a fortnight before ever I asked him what
his name was, and then somehow or other the question came up, and he
said his name was Lesley--Robert Lesley; but somehow, looking back upon
it afterwards, it seemed to me as if he hesitated a little before he
said the name. Well, things went on as comfortable as possible for more
than two months, and then he went away, taking all his luggage with him,
and paying me very liberal for everything he’d had, besides half-a-crown
apiece to the children, which at that time of year came very welcome;
and of course I took it from them immediately to go towards their new
boots. He went away; and as I thought, somehow, he’d had a kind of a
liking for Susan, and Susan for him, I half expected the poor girl would
fret a little when he was gone; but she didn’t, and looking at her
sometimes as she sat at work opposite to me, I used to fancy there was a
kind of happy smile like upon her face. She’d been with me six months by
this time, and I paid her the little trifle that was due; and what did
she do next day but go out and spend ever so much in toys and such-like
for the children, which, as I told her, was very wrong, considering how
badly off she was for clothes. But she made no answer, except to look at
me with the same smile I’d seen so often on her face since Mr. Lesley
had gone.”
“Poor girl--poor, helpless, innocent girl!”
The dark frown melted into a softer expression as Francis Tredethlyn
muttered these few broken words. He was no longer thinking of the
stranger--the nameless villain of this common story. He was thinking of
his cousin Susy’s innocent face, with the smile of girlish trustfulness
upon it.
“One day, when Mr. Lesley had been gone a little better than three
weeks, a letter came for Susan--I’d need to notice it, for it was the
first she’d had since she’d been with me. She ran upstairs directly she
heard the postman’s knock, and took the letter from him with her own
hands, and stopped to read it in the passage. She was putting it in her
pocket as she came back into this room, and her cheeks were flushed as
bright as two red roses; but she didn’t say a word about the letter. All
that afternoon she seemed in a kind of flutter, and every now and then
she would come all over in a tremble, and drop her work in her lap. She
was making some pinafores for the boys, and I said to her, ‘Susan, what
ever is the matter?’ but she turned it off somehow, and nothing more was
said until after tea, when the children were safe out of the way, and we
were sitting alone together. Then I never did see anybody so restless as
she was, laying her work down and taking it up again, and fetching a
book--one of the books he’d left with her,--and opening and shutting it,
and then pretending to read, but all in the same restless way; till at
last she came suddenly behind my chair, and flung her arms round my
neck, and began to sob fit to break her poor loving heart. And it was
ever so long before she could get calm enough to say anything; but at
last she cried out, ‘Oh, Mrs. Burfield, I’m afraid I’m very ungrateful;
you’ve been so good to me, and we’ve been so happy together.’ And so we
had; though I do think, poor tender-hearted dear, she’d gone through as
much on account of the taxes as if she’d been the householder instead of
me. ‘I’m going to leave you, Mrs. Burfield,’ she said; ‘I’m going to
leave you, and the children that love me so dearly. I’m going away to be
married to Mr. Lesley. I’m to go by the first train to-morrow morning,
and he’s to meet me at the station, and at eleven o’clock we’re to be
married.’
“You may guess how she took my breath away when she told me this. But I
said, ‘Oh, my dear, you can’t mean to do anything so mad as go alone to
meet Mr. Lesley, which is little better than a stranger to you?’ ‘A
stranger!’ she cried out, ‘my darling Robert a stranger! Oh, if you only
knew how noble he is, and how much he is going to give up to marry a
poor girl like me!’ And then she went on about him as if he’d been
something better than a human creature; and having always found him so
much the gentleman myself, and so open-hearted and frank in all his
ways, I could scarcely do otherwise than believe her. But still I urged
her all I could against trusting him. ‘Don’t go, my dear,’ I said; ‘or,
if you must go, let me go with you.’ But she blushed very red, and said,
‘Oh, Mrs. Burfield, the marriage is to be a secret, and I promised
Robert again and again that I wouldn’t say a word about it to you or any
living creature. Only you’ve been so good to me, and I couldn’t bear to
go away without telling you the whole truth.’ And upon this I begged her
still harder not to go away; I told her no good ever came out of secret
marriages, and that there was generally something underhand and false at
the bottom of them, that brought about all kinds of trouble and
suffering afterwards. And I told her how my Burfield married me publicly
in St. Pancras’ Church, and would have his two sisters--one in pink and
one in blue--besides the Miss Parkinses, his first cousins, who were
sweetly dressed in green and salmon, to walk after me to the altar. But
it was no more use talking to Susan than if she’d been a stone statue,
though she sat herself on the little hassock at my feet, and kept crying
one minute and smiling the next, and talking about her darling Robert,
and kissing me, till I almost thought her brain was turned. It was no
use talking. ‘I love him so dearly,’ she said, ‘and I know how noble and
generous he is.’ And that was her only argument; and long before
daylight the next morning she went away by the early train; and though
my heart seemed bleeding for her, I couldn’t kiss her when she said
good-bye, and I couldn’t go to the station to see her off. ‘No, Susan,’
I said, ‘if you must go, you must, and I’ve no power to keep you back;
but I’ll be neither act nor part in your going.’ But I stood at my
window to see her go away, and I shall never forget the dark, drizzly
morning, with streaks of gray like on one side of the sky, and white
sickly-looking stars on the other, and Susan walking across the waste
ground all alone, with the rain driving at her, and the wind beating at
her, and a bit of a shabby carpet-bag in her hand. It seemed so dreadful
to think she was going to be married like that.”
“But she _did_ go away?” cried Francis. “She must have come back to you,
then; for the letter with the Coltonslough post-mark reached her father
less than eighteen months ago.”
“I’m coming to that,” answered Mrs. Burfield. “It’s about eighteen
months ago that she came back to me, looking, Oh! so changed, so broken
down, that I hadn’t the heart to ask her any questions. I could see that
all had gone wrong, and I could guess pretty well what kind of wrong it
was. She never mentioned Mr. Lesley’s name; and there was something in
her face that seemed to make me afraid to mention it myself. She wanted
to lodge with me, she said, and would pay me for her lodgings. I could
see that she wore a wedding-ring on her finger, but she had no other
jewellery whatever. She was dressed in black,--black silk that had once
been very handsome, but which was rusty and shabby then. The first night
she came to me she sat up very late writing, and in the morning she went
out with a letter in her hand. She was with me more than two months; but
that was the last time I ever saw her write. She used to be fond of
reading; but now she never took up a book, though Mr. Lesley had left a
good many of his books in the little chiffonier in the parlour, thinking
to come back, as he told me. She used to be fond of the children; but
now she never noticed them, and after a little while they seemed to
shrink away from her, as if she was strange to them somehow. For hours
and days together she used to sit in the bow-window, watching the road
from the station, as if she expected some one. At dusk she would go out
and walk upon the Esplanade, just at the time that he used to walk with
his cigar. It was the dull season, and there was no one to notice her.
At last, about the middle of May, when the visitors began to come to
Coltonslough, she told me one day that she must leave me. I said, ‘Was
it on account of the lodgings?’ because she knew I used to raise the
rent at that time of year, and I thought that might be the cause of her
wanting to go. But she said, ‘Oh! no, no.’ She had only had one purpose
in stopping so long, and that was in the hope of seeing some one, or
getting an answer to a letter she had written; and now there was no
longer any hope of that. So I couldn’t persuade her to stay any longer,
do what I would, and she went away. She had friends in London, she told
me, who had promised to put her in the way of getting her own living
somehow or other. I kissed her this time, willing enough, poor child,
and I went with her to the station; and I thought her pale face looked
almost like a ghost’s as she waved her hand to me from the carriage
window.”
“You’re a good woman!” cried Mr. Tredethlyn, half crushing Mrs.
Burfield’s skinny hands in his strong fingers,--“you’re a good woman,
and you did your best to befriend that poor girl.”
Mrs. Burfield sighed, and wiped her eyes with the corner of a rusty
black-silk apron. The world had been very hard for her; but there was a
gentle, womanly haven somewhere in her breast, and Susan Tredethlyn had
taken shelter there.
“She’d been gone a little over six weeks, when an old gentleman came one
morning, and asked to see a girl called Susan. That’s how he put it. He
was very stern looking, and he threw me all in a tremble, somehow, with
his ways; but I asked him down here, and then, little by little, he made
me tell him pretty nearly all I’ve told you. I couldn’t keep anything
back from him; he put his questions so fierce and sudden; and every time
I hesitated ever so little, he accused me of prevaricating with him, and
trying to deceive him. I could see his eyes glaring at me like coals of
fire, and his face turned of a bluish white, so that I was almost
frightened he’d drop down in a fit. But when he’d got all the story out
of me, he stood up as straight and stern as if he’d been only twenty
years old, and said, ‘No man of my name ever knew what disgrace was
until to-day; and may the heaviest curse that ever fell upon a woman’s
head come down upon my shameful daughter!’ He stretched up his two
hands,--and I shall never forget him as he stood there with his white
hair, and the bluish white of his face, and the dreadful glare in his
eyes. Then he put on his hat and walked out of the house, taking no more
notice of me than if I’d been a stock or a stone. I heard the front door
bang to after him; and I ran upstairs to the parlour window, and saw him
walking away towards the station; and that’s the last I saw of him.”
“Can you remember upon what day this occurred?”
“Yes, I can; for I’d had the parlour lodgers leave me the day before. It
was the 29th of June.”
The 29th of June! and on the 30th Oliver Tredethlyn had executed that
will which made Francis master of thirty thousand a year. The young man
knew now why his uncle had left him a great fortune, and found it still
more difficult to feel very grateful to his benefactor.
There was a long pause, during which vengeful thoughts had their full
way in the breast of Francis Tredethlyn.
“Can you tell me nothing more of this man,” he said presently,--“this
scoundrel, who called himself Robert Lesley?”
Mrs. Burfield only answered by a hopeless shake of her head.
“He left some books, you say. Was there none among them that would give
any clue to who or what he was?”
Again Mrs. Burfield shook her head.
“You’re welcome to look at the books,” she said; “there’s plenty of
pencil-writing in them, but no name or address,--only initials.”
She knelt down before a little chiffonier in a corner by the fireplace,
and took out a few volumes, some handsomely, some shabbily bound, and
placed them before Francis Tredethlyn.
Upon the handsomely-bound books the initials “R. L.” appeared in a
gilded monogram. Four of the volumes were German translations of some
recondite classics; but there was a fifth upon which Mr. Tredethlyn
fastened eagerly. It was a small flat volume, bound in sheepskin, and
fastened with a brass lock--a very superior kind of lock. On the cover
was written the one word “Journal.”
“Let me have this book,” he said; “I’ll give you a hundred pounds for
it.”
Mrs. Burfield’s mouth opened with a spasmodic action, and for once in
her life she forgot to sigh.
“A hundred pounds!”
“A hundred--two, if you like. Haven’t I told you that I’m a rich man?
and you’ve been kind to my cousin. I’ll give you the money as a free
gift, for the matter of that; but I must have this book. It’s a
journal--a book in which a man writes a history of his own life. An
officer I knew in Van Diemen’s Land used to write such a history by fits
and starts. How do I know what this may tell me about my cousin? Let me
have it. I know the book isn’t yours; but there can be no such thing as
honour or faith to be kept with a man like that. Let me have the book.”
There was a good deal more said upon the matter; but the end of it was
that Francis Tredethlyn went back to London with the sheepskin-covered
volume in his pocket; and Mrs. Burfield, retiring to rest after a heavy
supper of cold meat and cucumber, dreamt that she had inherited a
million of money from one of the Coltonslough tax-collectors.
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