CONCERNING A ROULEAU OF GUINEAS AND THE CRACK OF A PISTOL.
Dangerfield went up the river that morning with his rod and net, and his
piscatory fidus Achates, Irons, at his elbow. It was a nice gray sky,
but the clerk was unusually silent even for him; and the sardonic
piscator appeared inscrutably amused as he looked steadily upon the
running waters. Once or twice the spectacles turned full upon the clerk,
over Dangerfield's shoulder, with a cynical light, as if he were on the
point of making one of his ironical jokes; but he turned back again with
a little whisk, the jest untold, whatever it was, to the ripple and the
fly, and the coy gray troutlings.
At last, Dangerfield said over his shoulder, with the same amused look,
'Do you remember Charles Archer?'
Irons turned pale, and looked down embarrassed as it seemed, and began
plucking at a tangled piece of tackle, without making any answer.
'Hey? Irons,' persisted Dangerfield, who was not going to let him off.
'Yes, I do,' answered the man surlily; 'I remember him right well; but
I'd rather not, _and_ I won't speak of him, that's all.'
'Well, Charles Archer's _here_, we've seen him, haven't we? and just the
devil he always was,' said Dangerfield with a deliberate chuckle of
infinite relish, and evidently enjoying the clerk's embarrassment as he
eyed him through his spectacles obliquely.
'He has seen _you_, too, he says; and thinks _you_ have seen _him_,
hey?' and Dangerfield chuckled more and more knowingly, and watched his
shiftings and sulkings with a pleasant grin, as he teased and quizzed
him in his own enigmatical way.
'Well, supposing I _did_ see him,' said Irons, looking up, returning
Dangerfield's comic glance with a bold and lowering stare; 'and
supposing _he_ saw _me_, so long as we've no business one of another,
and never talks like, nor seems to remember--I think 'tisnt, no ways, no
one's business--that's what I say.'
'True, Irons, very true; you, I, and Sturk--the doctor I mean--are cool
fellows, and don't want for nerve; but I think, don't you? we're afraid
of Charles Archer, for all that.'
'Fear or no fear, I don't want to talk _to_ him nor _of_ him, no ways,'
replied the clerk, grimly, and looking as black as a thunder-cloud.
'Nor I neither, but you know he's here, and what a devil he is; and we
can't help it,' replied Dangerfield, very much tickled.
The clerk only looked through his nearly closed eyes, and with the same
pale and surly aspect toward the point to which Dangerfield's casting
line had floated, and observed--
'You'll lose them flies, Sir.'
'Hey?' said Dangerfield, and made another cast further into the stream.
'Whatever he may seem, and I think I know him pretty well,' he continued
in the same sprightly way, 'Charles Archer would dispose of each of
us--you understand--without a scruple, precisely when and how best
suited his convenience. Now doctor Sturk has sent him a message which I
know will provoke him, for it sounds like a threat. If he reads it so,
rely on't, he'll lay Sturk on his back, one way or another, and I'm
sorry for him, for I wished him well; but if he will play at brag with
the _devil I_ can't help him.'
'I'm a man that holds his tongue; I never talks none, even in my liquor.
I'm a peaceable man, and no bully, and only wants to live quiet,' said
Irons in a hurry.
'A disciple of _my_ school, you're right, Irons, that's my way; _I_
never _name_ Charles except to the two or three who meet him, and then
only when I can't help it, just as you do; fellows of that kidney I
always take quietly, and I've prospered. Sturk would do well to
reconsider his message. Were _I_ in his shoes, I would not eat an egg or
a gooseberry, or drink a glass of fair water from that stream, while he
was in the country, for fear of _poison_! curse him! and to think of
Sturk expecting to meet him, and walk with him, after such a message,
together, as you and I do here. Do you see that tree?'
It was a stout poplar, just a yard away from Irons's shoulder; and as
Dangerfield pronounced the word 'tree,' his hand rose, and the sharp
report of a pocket-pistol half-deafened Irons's ear.
'I say,' said Dangerfield, with a startling laugh, observing Irons
wince, and speaking as the puff of smoke crossed his face, 'he'd lodge a
bullet in the cur's heart, as suddenly as I've shot that tree;' the
bullet had hit the stem right in the centre, 'and swear he was going to
rob him.'
Irons eyed him with a livid squint, but answered nothing. I think he
acquiesced in Dangerfield's dreadful estimate of Charles Archer's
character.
'But we must give the devil his due; Charles can do a handsome thing
sometimes. You shall judge. It seems he saw you, and you him--here, in
this town, some months ago, and each knew the other, and you've seen him
since, and done likewise; but you said nothing, and he liked your
philosophy, and hopes you'll accept of this, which from its weight I
take to be a little rouleau of guineas.'
During this speech Irons seemed both angry and frightened, and looked
darkly enough before him on the water; and his lips were moving, as if
in a running commentary upon it all the while.
When Dangerfield put the little roll in his hand, Irons looked
suspicious and frightened, and balanced it in his palm, as if he had
thoughts of chucking it from him, as though it were literally a satanic
douceur. But it is hard to part with money, and Irons, though he still
looked cowed and unhappy, put the money into his breeches' pocket, and
he made a queer bow, and he said--
'You know, Sir, I never asked a farthing.'
'Ay, so he says,' answered Dangerfield.
'And,' with an imprecation, Irons added, 'I never expected to be a
shilling the better of him.'
'He knows it; and now you have the reason why I mentioned Charles
Archer; and having placed that gold in your hand, I've done with him,
and we sha'n't have occasion, I hope, to name his name for a good while
to come,' said Dangerfield.
Then came a long refreshing silence, while Dangerfield whipt the stream
with his flies. He was not successful; but he did not change his flies.
It did not seem to trouble him; indeed, mayhap he did not perceive it.
And after fully twenty minutes thus unprofitably employed, he suddenly
said, as if in continuation of his last sentence--
'And, respecting that money you'll use caution; a hundred guineas is not
always so honestly come by. Your wife drinks--suppose a relative in
England had left you that gold, by will, 'twould be best not to let
_her_ know; but give it to Dr. Walsingham, secretly, to keep for you,
telling him the reason. He'll undertake the trust and tell no
one--_that's_ your plan--mind ye.'
Then came another long silence, and Dangerfield applied himself in
earnest to catch some trout, and when he had accomplished half-a-dozen,
he tired altogether of the sport, and followed by Irons, he sauntered
homewards, where astounding news awaited him.