“I want neither one nor the other. I am home from Australia on a trip, and I have a sufficient competence to render me independent of anyone.”
“Ah! That puts a different complexion on the matter. You say you hail from Australia? And what may you have been doing there?”
“Gold-mining—pearling—trading!”
He came a step closer, and as he did so I noticed that his face had assumed a look of indescribable cunning that was evidently intended to be of an ingratiating nature. He spoke in little jerks, pressing his fingers together between each sentence.
“Gold-mining! Ah! And pearling! Well, well! And I suppose you have been fortunate in your ventures?”
“Very!” I replied, having by this time determined on my line of action. “I daresay my cheque for ten thousand pounds would not be dishonoured by the Bank of England.”
“Ten thousand pounds! Ten thousand pounds! Dear me, dear me!” He shuffled up and down the dingy room, all the time looking at me out of the corners of his eyes, as if to make sure that I was telling him the truth.
“Come, come, uncle,” I said, resolving to bring him to his bearings without further waste of time. “This is not a very genial welcome to the son of a long-lost brother!”
“Well, well, you mustn’t expect too much, my boy! You see for yourself the position I’m in. The old place is shut up, going to rack and ruin. Poverty is staring me in the face; I am cheated by everybody. Robbed right and left, not knowing which way to turn. But I’ll not be put upon. They may call me what they please, but they can’t get blood out of a stone. Can they? Answer me that, now!”
This speech showed me everything as plain as a pikestaff. I mean, of course, the reason of the deserted and neglected house, and his extraordinary reception of myself. I rose to my feet.
“Well, uncle—for my uncle you certainly are, whatever you may say to the contrary—I must be going. I’m sorry to find you like this, and from what you tell me I couldn’t think of worrying you with my society! I want to see the old church and have a talk with the parson, and then I shall go off never to trouble you again.” He immediately became almost fulsome in his effort to detain me.
“No, no! You mustn’t go like that. It’s not hospitable. Besides, you mustn’t talk with parson. He’s a bad lot is parson—a hard man with a cruel tongue. Says terrible things about me does parson. But I’ll be even with him yet. Don’t speak to him, laddie, for the honour of the family. Now ye’ll stay and take lunch with me?—potluck, of course—I’m too poor to give ye much of a meal; and in the meantime I’ll show ye the house and estate.”
This was just what I wanted, though I did not look forward to the prospect of lunch in his company.
With trembling hands he took down an old-fashioned hat from a peg and turned towards the door. When we had passed through it he carefully locked it and dropped the key into his breeches’ pocket. Then he led the way upstairs by the beautiful oak staircase I had so much admired on entering the house.
When we reached the first landing, which was of noble proportions and must have contained upon its walls nearly a hundred family portraits all coated with the dust of years, he approached a door and threw it open. A feeble light straggled in through the closed shutters, and revealed an almost empty room. In the centre stood a large canopied bed, of antique design. The walls were wainscotted, and the massive chimneypiece was carved with heraldic designs. I enquired what room this might be.
“This is where all our family were born,” he answered. “ ’Twas here your father first saw the light of day.”
I looked at it with a new interest. It seemed hard to believe that this was the birthplace of my own father, the man whom I remembered so well in a place and life so widely different. My companion noticed the look upon my face, and, I suppose, felt constrained to say something.
“Ah! James!” he said sorrowfully, “ye were always a giddy, roving lad. I remember ye well.” (He passed his hand across his eyes, to brush away a tear, I thought, but his next speech disabused me of any such notion.) “I remember that but a day or two before ye went ye blooded my nose in the orchard, and the very morning ye decamped ye borrowed half a crown of me, and never paid it back.”
A sudden something prompted me to put my hand in my pocket. I took out half a crown, and handed it to him without a word. He took it, looked at it longingly, put it in his pocket, took it out again, ruminated a moment, and then reluctantly handed it back to me.
“Nay, nay! my laddie, keep your money, keep your money. Ye can send me the Catullus.” Then to himself, unconscious that he was speaking his thoughts aloud: “It was a good edition, and I have no doubt would bring five shillings any day.”
From one room we passed into another, and yet another. They were all alike—shut up, dust-ridden, and forsaken. And yet with it all what a noble place it was—one which any man might be proud to call his own. And to think that it was all going to rack and ruin because of the miserly nature of its owner. In the course of our ramble I discovered that he kept but two servants, the old man who had admitted me to his presence, and his wife, who, as that peculiar phrase has it, cooked and did for him. I discovered later that he had not paid either of them wages
