This conclusion, however inconclusive, was certainly a triumph for Westray’s persuasive oratory, but his satisfaction was chastened by some doubts as to how far he was justified in assailing the scrupulous independence which had originally prompted Mr. Sharnall to refuse to have anything to do with Lord Blandamer’s offer. If Mr. Sharnall had scruples in the matter, ought not he, Westray, to have respected those scruples? Was it not tampering with rectitude to have overcome them by a too persuasive rhetoric?
His doubts were not allayed by the observation that Mr. Sharnall himself had severely felt the strain of this mental quandary, for the organist said that he was upset by so difficult a question, and filled himself a bumper of whisky to steady his nerves. At the same time he took down from a shelf two or three notebooks and a mass of loose papers, which he spread open upon the table before him. Westray looked at them with a glance of unconscious inquiry.
“I must really get to work at these things again,” said the organist; “I have been dreadfully negligent of late. They are a lot of papers and notes that Martin Joliffe left behind him. Poor Miss Euphemia never had the heart to go through them. She was going to burn them just as they were, but I said, ‘Oh, you mustn’t do that; turn them over to me. I will look into them, and see whether there is anything worth keeping.’ So I took them, but haven’t done nearly as much as I ought, what with one interruption and another. It’s always sad going through a dead man’s papers, but sadder when they’re all that’s left of a life’s labour—lost labour, so far as Martin was concerned, for he was taken away just when he began to see daylight. ‘We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we shall carry nothing out.’ When that comes into my mind, I think rather of the little things than of gold or lands. Intimate letters that a man treasured more than money; little tokens of which the clue has died with him; the unfinished work to which he was coming back, and never came; even the unpaid bills that worried him; for death transfigures all, and makes the commonplace pathetic.”
He stopped for a moment. Westray said nothing, being surprised at this momentary softening of the other’s mood.
“Yes, it’s sad enough,” the organist resumed; “all these papers are nebuly coat—the sea-green and silver.”
“He was quite mad, I suppose?” Westray said.
“Everyone except me will tell you so,” replied the organist; “but I’m not so very sure after all that there wasn’t a good deal more in it than madness. That’s all that I can say just now, but those of us who live will see. There is a queer tradition hereabout. I don’t know how long ago it started, but people say that there is some mystery about the Blandamer descent, and that those in possession have no right to what they hold. But there is something else. Many have tried to solve the riddle, and some, you may depend, have been very hot on the track. But just as they come to the touch, something takes them off; that’s what happened to Martin. I saw him the very day he died. ‘Sharnall,’ he said to me, ‘if I can last out forty-eight hours more, you may take off your hat to me, and say “My lord.” ’
“But the nebuly coat was too much for him; he had to die. So don’t you be surprised if I pop off the hooks some of these fine days; if I don’t, I’m going to get to the bottom, and you will see some changes here before so very long.”
He sat down at the table, and made a show for a minute of looking at the papers.
“Poor Martin!” he said, and got up again, opened the cupboard, and took out the bottle. “You’ll have a drop,” he asked Westray, “won’t you?”
“No, thanks, not I,” Westray said, with something as near contempt as his thin voice was capable of expressing.
“Just a drop—do! I must have just a drop myself; I find it a great strain working at these papers; there may be more at stake in the reading than I care to think of.”
He poured out half a tumbler of spirit. Westray hesitated for a moment, and then his conscience and an early puritan training forced him to speak.
“Sharnall,” he said, “put it away. That bottle is your evil angel. Play the man, and put it away. You force me to speak. I cannot sit by with hands folded and see you going down the hill.”
The organist gave him a quick glance; then he filled up the tumbler to the brim with neat spirit.
“Look you,” he said: “I was going to drink half a glass; now I’m going to drink a whole one. That much for your advice! Going down the hill indeed! Go to the devil with your impertinence! If you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head, you had better get your supper in someone else’s room.”
A momentary irritation dragged Westray down from the high podium of judicial reproof into the arena of retort.
“Don’t worry yourself,” he said sharply; “you may rely on my not troubling you with my company again.” And he got up and opened the door. As he turned to go out, Anastasia Joliffe passed through the passage on her way to bed.
The glimpse of her as she went by seemed still further to aggravate Mr. Sharnall.
