LIKE one who accepts an indifferent gift, rather to pleasure a friend than for his own gratification, Sir Robert Linne held his reprieve in his pocket, as it were, with a careless hand, and, accompanied by the lawyer, re-entered the humming lists of life.
Silently the two made their way westwards, the man of deeds accommodating his pace, with some secret chafing, to the leisurely progress of his companion. Now and again he would glance stealthily aside into the latter’s face, and give a half-comical shrug of chagrin over its expression of tranquil good-humour that seemed such a genial satire upon the situation.
“If he hobnobs with death so calmly, how will his philosophy accept a living estate?” thought the uneasy scrivener; and, “light come, light go,” he groaned in his heart.
Presently they were in Holborn, without the rag of a sentence to pass between them; and so came opposite the block of houses known as Middle Row.
Here suddenly Sir Robert stopped, and took his companion by the arm.
“You itch to improve on the situation,” said he, with a twinkling gravity. “Harkee! Now’s your opportunity. Here am I;—yonder stands Branscome’s lottery office. Draw your moral, my friend, and ease you of your load.”
The lawyer drew in his breath, his face crinkling.
“Well,” said he—fore-read and embarrassed but conscious of right—“the man was an earl’s fellow once.”
“It proves him the more admirable for being a rich man now!”
“Sir Robert, Sir Robert! ’tis an evil system and a mistaken. How is he rich? On the pitiful savings of shoeblacks and servant wenches. ’Tis such as he bid industry sit hands in lap and starve on illusive hopes. For a single chance in fifty thousand he buys her ruin; and what is all this but bitter gambling?”
“Ha, ha! old gentleman. We reach the point at once. But, believe me, sir, I never starved a servant wench or took anything from her but a kiss—and that I returned.”
The lawyer sighed.
“Go your ways,” he said. “You have your father’s laugh.”
“What—you knew him?”
“I had the fortune to do him a service once—’twas during the riots of ’68, when foul John Wilkes was committed to King’s Bench, on a writ of capias utlagatum, and the red-coats let fly at the mob. Your father commanded. They called it the St. George’s Fields massacre, and all concerned in it gained a mighty unpopularity.”
“Yet he was but a simple soldier and obeyed orders.”
“Well, sir, an unpopular king must needs have unpopular ministers, and so down the scale. Let a tyrant fall (I speak in illustration only—God bless his Majesty!) and his very scullions come down with him. I did Sir Robert a service, I say; and he repaid me with his confidence.”
“His son is beholden to you. You repeat yourself on behalf of a scapegrace, I fear. You were not his adviser?”
“In one matter only that you shall learn. Now, my friend?”
The last words were addressed to an odd-looking individual who had come up to them as they talked, and who now presented certain savoury goods to their inspection with a dumb gesture of invitation.
The creature was a lank, middle-sized man, with a meagre face of decorum and rather delicate features set in an expression of confident apathy. He was scrupulously attired in dress-coat, vest and knee-breeches of stainless black broadcloth; and black silk stockings, ending in shoes decorated with large steel buckles, encased his neat deliberate legs. A great shirt-frill stood out from his breast, like a table napkin from a tumbler, and his neck cherished the spotless embrace of a lawny cravat. On his head he wore no covering save its natural one; but this was so clipt and bepowdered as almost to give the appearance of a close cap of linen. A short apron of the softest texture, which concealed a third of his glories, seemed designed rather to advertise his calling than to protect his broadcloth.
Thus apparelled, he presented to the talkers a little round tray, on which was set for consideration a pudding, neatly sliced and sugared, that gave out a pleasant fragrance. To the obvious merits of this he silently drew attention with a short, bright spatula which he carried in his other hand.
“No, no,” said the lawyer. “Not to-day, my friend; not to-day.”
He smiled good-humouredly; and the oddling dropped a courtly bow—“the loss is mutual,” it expressed—and carried his comestible elsewhere.
“Sir Robert,” said the attorney, with a droll, kindly look, “the lottery office missed fire; but I have another moral for you.”
“It shall have my respectful attention, sir, in honour of my father’s friend.”
The words were spoken with gravity. The other gave a twitch of surprise. Then said he in a pretty gentle voice:
“’Tis from him with the pudding. They call him the Flying Pieman; but his proper business is to paint pictures, at which he has a fine skill, they say. Fortune missed him, however. He married ‘for love’—a course for which there is plenty of precedent, but no authority—and love begets a family, but nothing to put in its empty crops. At the last pinch he kicked over his easel and went out to sell puddings. He did nought by halves. If his pictures are half as good as his victuals he deserves the Presidency. He hath made himself a character in the neighbourhood, but a finer one in God’s eyes, I will venture. ’Tis said that, no whit faithless to his art, he trades all day that he may indulge his real bent after hours. That is to be a man and an example.”
“To me, sir, to me, you would say; and so he is. I have no family; but that is an accident—not an excuse. I take the pieman to my heart, and see no ostentatious vanity in his shirt-frill. I read another moral here too. This is ‘Heavy Hill,’ and goes to Tyburn.”
“Oh, Heaven send you to the House of Correction! Come on, I beg. My office is close by.”
“Then your prayer is answered. You shall do the overseer, and whip me with maxims.”
The lawyer smacked in his lips as if he were sampling some sharp but not disagreeable berry; regarded his incorrigible companion a moment through covert eyelids; then turned and led the way across the road and under the old gate-arch of Gray’s Inn.
Beyond this portal, a short distance, pleasant tranquillity prevailed. It is the humour of the Law to hatch in antique solitudes the plots that vex many lives with turmoil and disquiet. Around its Inn Halls the Devil’s cloisters invite to peripatetic contemplation of quibble and sophistry; and its silent gardens cherish that grimy tree of Death whose trunk is freckled like the serpent’s with discs of yellow.
Up a step or two, through a venerable doorway with fluted pilasters, the long man ushered his visitor, and so to a dusty comfortable room on the first floor, where tiers of japanned boxes, the caskets of dead passions and aspirations, were piled high against the walls like coffins in a family vault.
“Mr. Creel?” said the baronet, sitting up on a high stool and crossing his legs.
The lawyer bowed.
“So I read it on the door, sir. Believe me, I hold the name in honour for my father’s sake.”
“It is a good sign,” said the other; “and so far of happy augury. Here, I hope, is soil that may be renewed and yield yet a plentiful crop of wholesome grain.”
He sat himself down, and, toying with a pencil, fixed his eyes steadily and gravely on the young man.
“I crave your permission,” he said gently, “to speak very plainly, very freely, and—within proper limits—without reserve.”
“Surely, sir; for should I not be dead by now? ’Tis a post-mortem examination. Out with your scalpel, and cut and dissect as you list.”
“It is a family matter and very private to your ear.”
“Mr. Creel, who so taciturn as a ghost? Even a lawyer may give his confidence to a shadow.”
“You please to jest. Will you be serious for once? What I have to say affects you nearly. I represent your dead father—am his agent, not in authority, but in loving-kindness.”
“I listen, I listen. Perhaps I am a little light-headed. I have thrown out all my ballast, remember.”
“You saw but little of the late Sir Robert?”
“I was eleven years old when he died. That was in the war of ’80. He fought under Clinton and lies in Charleston where he fell. He was always a soldier in my vague memory of him—saturnine, pre-occupied, with a rare smile for odd moments.”
“He feared God and loved his king—rest his memory! He had one other love—his only child; but him he was troubled for.”
“Troubled for? But why should I ask?”
“The boy was of high spirit, reckless, generous. He wore, even at that age, his heart on his sleeve for daws to peck at.”
“They have left all threadbare. Well, well!”
“Sir Robert’s was not a great fortune; but it was sufficient, with management, for his wants.”
“They were fewer than mine, good man. I feel sure, sir, this retrospect is for a worthy purpose. Otherwise—well, it is obvious I was acquainted with the extent of my own inheritance.”
“I ask no account of your stewardship. That is no part of the solemn commission I accepted from my friend. Maybe you have been more sinned against than sinning. Yet, is it not true that your father’s apprehensions were justified?”
“Why else was I in the wherry?”
“You are ruined?”
“I am ruined.”
The lawyer sighed.
“It was foreseen,” he said, “by him who was dearest to you—foreseen and provided against.”
“Provided against?”
Mr. Creel made no answer; but he quietly arose, went to one of the japanned boxes, unlocked it and took thence a bundle of papers.
“These,” he said, “are the title-deeds of an estate that is yours—on certain conditions.”
The young man had no word to say; but watched the other in amazement as he took from the little heap a certain paper that was folded and sealed with his father’s monogram.
“I follow my direction,” said the lawyer, “and break this seal. The contents of the document are for your ear, but they are addressed to me. I ask your attention while I make them known to you.”
He shifted so as to secure a full light, knitted his brow, and, without pause or comment, read out in a brassy legal voice the lines before him:—
“To my honoured friend, Mr. James Creel, of Gray’s Inn, I have committed, to hold in trust for certain purposes, the estate of ‘Delsrop,’ in the county of Hampshire; whereof are dwelling-house and messuage, ninety-four acres, together with two farms held on long leases, the which it is not my desire to particularize in this the present connection. But rather to state clearly that in event of the bankruptcy at any time after my death of my only son, Robert (which calamity I, considering the bent of his nature, do sorrowfully foresee), and in no other event, the said estate is to be handed over to him, to work to a profit if he will, and so redeem the past; but on the condition that from that time being he shall forego his honourable title and know himself and be known as Robert Tuke, which name of Tuke hath his mother borne before him to her maiden honour and renown. And this I state clearly, that he may take or reject without further question, knowing the estate to be mine to give, and else seeking to know nothing. And I offer it, a last chance of redemption, that he, sloughing all that foulness of the past with his dishonoured name may turn the fruits of evil to the account of good.”
In the minute of amazed silence, during which the listener sought to ponder the import of this astonishing message, Mr. Creel refolded the paper, returned it to the packet, and, sitting down again, tapped and scraped his chin with the latter in a dry manner of expectancy.
“Well?” he said at length.
Sir Robert tilted himself to his feet, and stood rumpling his hair.
“I am at sea!” he cried, in a lost voice. “What does it all mean? I never heard of this estate; nor, I protest, did the executors. How did it come to him, and when?”
“That I may answer you. It was in the year ’79—not many months before his death.”
“And from whom?”
The lawyer shook his head grimly.
“Ah!” said the baronet. “You love a secret, of course. Am I never to know more than this?”
“Sir, you understand the conditions. You are to take or reject.”
“A messuage and the rest of it? And where is the working capital?”
“These many years I have nursed the property against this contingency. It has yielded fairly, and there will be an accumulated sum to your credit.”
“And if I reject?”
“Then the whole reverts to me.”
The young man’s eyes took a sudden softness. He was only thirty-one, and susceptible yet to impressions of unworldliness.
“I fail to see your profit in the matter,” he said.
“My profit,” answered the lawyer sternly, “was in a good man’s confidence.”
Then he went on more gently:
“I sought no profit in the transaction. I would have sacrificed more than the estate to save you and myself the necessity of this explanation. It was my affection for your father bound me to this solemn compact, as it was my regard for the latter drove me unknown to you to set an anxious eye upon your career.”
“And so pluck a fool from the burning and lose an estate.”
Sir Robert advanced impetuously and seized the other’s corded hand.
“You are a noble soul. I will learn to pray, and you shall be my saint to intercede. I take my life from you and this strange trust; doing my duty by it and asking no questions.”
The old lawyer’s eyes moistened; but he answered somewhat caustically:
“I won’t say it is your deserts. But the gift is from Heaven, where your father, his battles over, sits at peace. ’Tis he hath interceded, and the Almighty—to satisfy his importunity, maybe—gives you a new house, as erst he did to Job, but for a better reason.”
Then he added a little inconsequently:
“You’ll find it in a damned bad state of repair.”