Erema; Or, My Father's Sin Part 20

"Yes, for a long time you would have been," replied the Saturnian banker. "I do not wish to disparage your attractions when you were a fortnight old. They may have begun already to be irresistible. Excuse me; you have led me into the light vein, when speaking of a most sad matter. You must blame your self-a.s.sertion for it. All I wish to convey to you is my belief that something wholly unknown to us, some dark mystery of which we have no inkling, lies at the bottom of this terrible affair. Some strange motive there must have been, strong enough even to overcome all ordinary sense of honor, and an Englishman's pride in submitting to the law, whatever may be the consequence. Consider that his 'flight from justice,' as it was called, of course, by every one, condemned his case and ruined his repute. Even for that he would not have cared so much as for his own sense of right. And though he was a very lively fellow, as I first remember him, full of tricks and jokes, and so on, which in this busy age are out of date, I am certain that he always had a stern sense of right. One never knows how love affairs and weakness about children may alter almost any man; but my firm conviction is that my dear old school-fellow, George Castlewood, even with a wife and lovely children hanging altogether upon his life, not only would not have broken jail, but would calmly have given up his body to be hanged--pardon me, my dear, for putting it so coa.r.s.ely--if there had not been something paramount to override even apparent honor. What it can have been I have no idea, and I presume you have none."

"None whatever," I said at once, in answer to his inquiring gaze. "I am quite taken by surprise; I never even thought of such a thing. It has always seemed to me so natural that my dear father, being shamefully condemned, because appearances were against him, and n.o.body could enter into him, should, for the sake of his wife and children, or even of one child like me, depart or banish himself, or emigrate, or, as they might call it, run away. Knowing that he never could have a fair trial, it was the only straightforward and good and affectionate thing for him to do."

"You can not see things as men see them. We must not expect it of you,"

Mr. Shovelin answered, with a kind but rather too superior smile, which reminded me a little of dear Uncle Sam when he listened to what, in his opinion, was only female reason; "but, dear me, here is Major Hockin come! Punctuality is the soul of business."

"So I always declare," cried the Major, who was more than three-quarters of an hour late, for which in my heart I thanked him. "My watch keeps time to a minute, Sir, and its master to a second. Well, I hope you have settled all questions of finance, and endowed my young maid with a fortune."

"So far from that," Mr. Shovelin replied, in a tone very different from that he used to me, "we have not even said one word of business; all that has been left for your return. Am I to understand that you are by appointment or relations.h.i.+p the guardian of this young lady?"

"G.o.d forbid!" cried Major Hockin, shortly. I thought it very rude of him, yet I could not help smiling to see how he threw his gla.s.ses up and lifted his wiry crest of hair. "Not that she is bad, I mean, but good, very good; indeed, I may say the very best girl ever known outside of my own family. My cousin, Colonel Gundry, who owns an immense estate in the most auriferous district of all California, but will not spoil his splendid property by mining, he will--he will tell you the very same thing, Sir."

"I am very glad to hear it," said the banker, smiling at me, while I wondered what it was, but hoped that it meant my praises. "Now I really fear that I must be very brief, though the daughter of my oldest friend may well be preferred to business. But now we will turn at once to business, if you please."

CHAPTER XXVII

COUSIN MONTAGUE

Mr. Shovelin went to a corner of the room, which might be called his signal-box, having a little row of port-holes like a toy frigate or accordion, and there he made sounds which brought steps very promptly, one clerk carrying a mighty ledger, and the other a small strong-box.

"No plate," Major Hockin whispered to me, shaking his gray crest with sorrow; "but there may be diamonds, you know, Erema. One ounce of diamonds is worth a ton of plate."

"No," said Mr. Shovelin, whose ears were very keen, "I fear that you will find nothing of mercantile value. Thank you, Mr. Robinson; by-and-by perhaps we shall trouble you. Strictly speaking, perhaps I should require the presence of your father's lawyer, or of some one producing probate, ere I open this box, Miss Castlewood. But having you here, and Major Hockin, and knowing what I do about the matter (which is one of personal confidence), I will dispense with formalities. We have given your father's solicitor notice of this deposit, and requested his attention, but he never has deigned to attend to it; so now we will dispense with him. You see that the seal is unbroken; you know your father's favorite seal, no doubt. The key is nothing; it was left to my charge. You wish that I should open this?"

Certainly I did, and the banker split the seal with an ebony-handled paper-knife, and very soon unlocked the steel-ribbed box, whose weight was chiefly of itself. Some cotton-wool lay on the top to keep the all-penetrative dust away, and then a sheet of blue foolscap paper, partly covered with clear but crooked writing, and under that some little twists of silver paper, screwed as if there had been no time to tie them, and a packet of letters held together by a glittering bracelet.

"Poor fellow!" Mr. Shovelin said, softly, while I held my breath, and the Major had the courtesy to be silent. "This is his will; of no value, I fear, in a pecuniary point of view, but of interest to you his daughter. Shall I open it, Miss Castlewood, or send it to his lawyers?"

"Open it, and never think of them," said I. "Like the rest, they have forsaken him. Please to read it to yourself, and then tell us."

"Oh, I wish I had known this before!" cried the banker, after a rapid glance or two. "Very kind, very flattering, I am sure! Yes, I will do my duty by him; I wish there was more to be done in the case. He has left me sole executor, and trustee of all his property, for the benefit of his surviving child. Yet he never gave me the smallest idea of expecting me to do this for him. Otherwise, of course, I should have had this old box opened years ago."

"We must look at things as they are," said Major Hockin, for I could say nothing. "The question is, what do you mean to do now?"

"Nothing whatever," said the banker, crisply, being displeased at the other's tone; and then, seeing my surprise, he addressed himself to me: "Nothing at present, but congratulate myself upon my old friend's confidence, and, as Abernethy said, 'take advice.' A banker must never encroach upon the province of the lawyer. But so far as a layman may judge, Major Hockin, I think you will have to transfer to me the care of this young lady."

"I shall be only too happy, I a.s.sure you," the Major answered, truthfully. "My wife has a great regard for her, and so have I--the very greatest, the strongest regard, and warm parental feelings; as you know, Erema. But--but, I am not so young as I was; and I have to develop my property."

"Of which she no longer forms a part," Mr. Shovelin answered, with a smile at me, which turned into pleasure my momentary pain at the other's calm abandonment. "You will find me prompt and proud to claim her, as soon as I am advised that this will is valid; and that I shall learn to-morrow."

In spite of pride, or by its aid, my foolish eyes were full of tears, and I gave him a look of grat.i.tude which reminded him of my father, as he said in so many words.

"Oh, I hope it is valid! How I hope it is!" I exclaimed, turning round to the Major, who smiled rather grimly, and said he hoped so too.

"But surely," he continued, "as we are all here, we should not neglect the opportunity of inspecting the other contents of this box. To me it appears that we are bound to do so; that it is our plain duty to ascertain--Why, there might even be a later will. Erema, my dear, you must be most anxious to get to the bottom of it."

So I was, but desired even more that his curiosity should be foiled. "We must leave that to Mr. Shovelin," I said.

"Then for the present we will seal it down again," the banker answered, quietly; "we can see that there is no other will, and a later one would scarcely be put under this. The other little packets, whatever they may be, are objects of curiosity, perhaps, rather than of importance. They will keep till we have more leisure."

"We have taken up a great deal of your time, Sir, I am sure," said the Major, finding that he could take no more. "We ought to be, and we are, most grateful."

"Well," the banker answered, as we began to move, "such things do not happen every day. But there is no friend like an old friend, Erema, as I mean to call you now. I was to have been your G.o.dfather; but I fear that you never have been baptized."

"What!" cried the Major, staring at us both. "Is such a thing possible in a Christian land? Oh, how I have neglected my duty to the Church!

Come back with me to Bruntsea, and my son shall do it. The church there is under my orders, I should hope; and we will have a dinner party afterward. What a horrible neglect of duty!"

"But how could I help it?" I exclaimed, with some terror at Major Hockin's bristling hair. "I can not remember--I am sure I can not say.

It may have been done in France, or somewhere, if there was no time in England. At any rate, my father is not to be blamed."

"Papistical baptism is worse than none," the Major said, impressively.

"Never mind, my dear, we will make that all right. You shall not be a savage always. We will take the opportunity to change your name. Erema is popish and outlandish; one scarcely knows how to p.r.o.nounce it. You shall have a good English Christian name--Jemima, Jane, or Sophy. Trust me to know a good name. Trust me."

"Jemima!" I cried. "Oh, Mr. Shovelin, save me from ever being called Jemima! Rather would I never be baptized at all."

"I am no judge of names," he answered, smiling, as he shook hands with us; "but, unless I am a very bad judge of faces, you will be called just what you please."

"And I please to be called what my father called me. It may be unlucky, as a gentleman told me, who did not know how to p.r.o.nounce it. However, it will do very well for me. You wish to see me, then, to-morrow, Mr.

Shovelin?"

"If you please; but later in the day, when I am more at leisure. I do not run away very early. Come at half past four to this door, and knock. I hear every sound at this door in my room; and the place will be growing quiet then."

He showed us out into a narrow alley through a heavy door sheathed with iron, and soon we recovered the fair light of day, and the brawl and roar of a London street.

"Now where shall we go?" the Major asked, as soon as he had found a cab again; for he was very polite in that way. "You kept early hours with your 'uncle Sam,' as you call Colonel Gundry, a slow-witted man, but most amusing when he likes, as slow-witted men very often are. Now will you come and dine with me? I can generally dine, as you, with virtuous indignation, found out at Southampton. But we are better friends now, Miss Heathen."

"Yes, I have more than I can ever thank you for," I answered, very gravely, for I never could become jocose to order, and sadness still was uppermost. "I will go where you like. I am quite at your orders, because Betsy Bowen is busy now. She will not have done her work till six o'clock."

"Well done!" he cried. "Bravo, Young America! Frankness is the finest of all good manners. And what a lot of clumsy deception it saves! Then let us go and dine. I will imitate your truthfulness. It was two words for myself, and one for you. The air of London always makes me hungry after too much country air. It is wrong altogether, but I can not help it. And going along, I smell hungry smells coming out of deep holes with a plate at the top. Hungry I mean to a man who has known what absolute starvation is--when a man would thank G.o.d for a blue-bottle fly who had taken his own nip any where. When I see the young fellows at the clubs pick this, and poke that, and push away the other, may I be d----d--my dear, I beg your pardon. Cabby, to the 'Grilled Bone and Scolloped c.o.c.kle,' at the bottom of St. Ventricle Lane, you know."

This place seemed, from what the Major said, to have earned repute for something special, something esteemed by the very clever people, and only to be found in true virtue here. And he told me that luxury and self-indulgence were the greatest sins of the present age, and how he admired a man who came here to protest against Epicureans, by dining (liquors not included) for the sum of three and sixpence.

All this, no doubt, was wise and right; but I could not attend to it properly now, and he might take me where he would, and have all the talking to himself, according to his practice. And I might not even have been able to say what this temple of bones and c.o.c.kles was like, except for a little thing which happened there. The room, at the head of a twisting staircase, was low and dark, and furnished almost like a farmhouse kitchen. It had no carpet, nor even a mat, but a floor of black timber, and a ceiling colored blue, with stars and comets, and a full moon near the fire-place. On either side of the room stood narrow tables endwise to the walls, inclosed with high-backed seats like settles, forming thus a double set of little stalls or boxes, with scarcely s.p.a.ce enough between for waiters, more urgent than New York firemen, to push their steaming and breathless way.

"Square or round, miss?" said one of them to me as soon as the Major had set me on a bench, and before my mind had time to rally toward criticism of the knives and forks, which deprecated any such ordeal; and he cleverly whipped a stand for something dirty, over something still dirtier, on the cloth.

"I don't understand what you mean," I replied to his highly zealous aspect, while the Major sat smiling dryly at my ignorance, which vexed me. "I have never received such a question before. Major Hockin, will you kindly answer him?"

"Square," said the Major; "square for both." And the waiter, with a glance of pity at me, hurried off to carry out his order.

"Erema, your mind is all up in the sky," my companion began to remonstrate. "You ought to know better after all your travels."

"Then the sky should not fall and confuse me so," I said, pointing to the Milky Way, not more than a yard above me; "but do tell me what he meant, if you can. Is it about the formation of the soup?"

"Hush, my dear. Soup is high treason here until night, when they make it of the leavings. His honest desire was to know whether you would have a grilled bone of mutton, which is naturally round, you know, or of beef, which, by the same law of nature, seems always to be square, you know."